to wait for the last train to Willesden. It left at 11.21, I remember,
and Raffles was put out to find it did not go on to Kensal Rise. We had
to get out at Willesden Junction and walk on through the streets into
fairly open country that happened to be quite new to me. I could never
find the house again. I remember, however, that we were on a dark
footpath between woods and fields when the clocks began striking twelve.

"Surely," said I, "we shall find him in bed and asleep?"

"I hope we do," said Raffles grimly.

"Then you mean to break in?"

"What else did you think?"

I had not thought about it at all; the ultimate crime had monopolized
my mind. Beside it burglary was a bagatelle, but one to deprecate none
the less. I saw obvious objections: the man was au fait with cracksmen
and their ways: he would certainly have firearms, and might be the
first to use them.

"I could wish nothing better," said Raffles. "Then it will be man to
man, and devil take the worst shot. You don't suppose I prefer foul
play to fair, do you? But die he must, by one or the other, or it's a
long stretch for you and me."

"Better that than this!"

"Then stay where you are, my good fellow. I told you I didn't want
you; and this is the house. So good-night."

I could see no house at all, only the angle of a high wall rising
solitary in the night, with the starlight glittering on battlements of
broken glass; and in the wall a tall green gate, bristling with spikes,
and showing a front for battering-rams in the feeble rays an outlying
lamp-post cast across the new-made road. It seemed to me a road of
building-sites, with but this one house built, all by itself, at one
end; but the night was too dark for more than a mere impression.

Raffles, however, had seen the place by daylight, and had come prepared
for the special obstacles; already he was reaching up and putting
champagne corks on the spikes, and in another moment he had his folded
covert-coat across the corks. I stepped back as he raised himself, and
saw a little pyramid of slates snip the sky above the gate; as he
squirmed over I ran forward, and had my own weight on the spikes and
corks and covert-coat when he gave the latter a tug.

"Coming after all?"

"Rather!"

"Take care, then; the place is all bell-wires and springs. It's no
soft thing, this! There--stand still while I take off the corks."

The garden was very small and new, with a grass-plot still in se