xt the shop, was black and blank as the sky itself.

"Better give it up for to-night," I urged. "Surely the morning will be
time enough!"

"Not a bit of it," said Raffles. "I have his key. We'll surprise him.
Come along."

And seizing my right arm, he hurried me across the road, opened the
door with his latch-key, and in another moment had shut it swiftly but
softly behind us. We stood together in the dark. Outside, a measured
step was approaching; we had heard it through the fog as we crossed the
street; now, as it drew nearer, my companion's fingers tightened on my
arm.

"It may be the chap himself," he whispered. "He's the devil of a
night-bird. Not a sound, Bunny! We'll startle the life out of him.
Ah!"

The measured step had passed without a pause. Raffles drew a deep
breath, and his singular grip of me slowly relaxed.

"But still, not a sound," he continued in the same whisper; "we'll take
a rise out of him, wherever he is! Slip off your shoes and follow me."

Well, you may wonder at my doing so; but you can never have met A. J.
Raffles. Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the
commander in the leader. And it was impossible not to follow one who
led with such a zest. You might question, but you followed first. So
now, when I heard him kick off his own shoes, I did the same, and was
on the stairs at his heels before I realized what an extraordinary way
was this of approaching a stranger for money in the dead of night. But
obviously Raffles and he were on exceptional terms of intimacy, and I
could not but infer that they were in the habit of playing practical
jokes upon each other.

We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I had time to make more than
one note before we reached the top. The stair was uncarpeted. The
spread fingers of my right hand encountered nothing on the damp wall;
those of my left trailed through a dust that could be felt on the
banisters. An eerie sensation had been upon me since we entered the
house. It increased with every step we climbed. What hermit were we
going to startle in his cell?

We came to a landing. The banisters led us to the left, and to the
left again. Four steps more, and we were on another and a longer
landing, and suddenly a match blazed from the black. I never heard it
struck. Its flash was blinding. When my eyes became accustomed to the
light, there was Raffles holding up the match with one hand, and
shading it with the oth