errible incompetence. In
all these years how many blows have you known me to strike? Not one, I
believe; but I have been quite ready to kill my man every time, if the
worst came to the worst."

I asked him how he proposed to enter von Heumann's state-room
unobserved, and even through the curtained gloom of ours his face
lighted up.

"Climb into my bunk, Bunny, and you shall see."

I did so, but could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and tapped
the ventilator, a sort of trapdoor in the wall above his bed, some
eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened outwards into the
ventilating shaft.

"That," said he, "is our door to fortune. Open it if you like; you
won't see much, because it doesn't open far; but loosening a couple of
screws will set that all right. The shaft, as you may see, is more or
less bottomless; you pass under it whenever you go to your bath, and
the top is a skylight on the bridge. That's why this thing has to be
done while we're at Genoa, because they keep no watch on the bridge in
port. The ventilator opposite ours is von Heumann's. It again will
only mean a couple of screws, and there's a beam to stand on while you
work."

"But if anybody should look up from below?"

"It's extremely unlikely that anybody will be astir below, so unlikely
that we can afford to chance it. No, I can't have you there to make
sure. The great point is that neither of us should be seen from the
time we turn in. A couple of ship's boys do sentry-go on these decks,
and they shall be our witnesses; by Jove, it'll be the biggest mystery
that ever was made!"

"If von Heumann doesn't resist."

"Resist! He won't get the chance. He drinks too much beer to sleep
light, and nothing is so easy as to chloroform a heavy sleeper; you've
even done it yourself on an occasion of which it's perhaps unfair to
remind you. Von Heumann will be past sensation almost as soon as I get
my hand through his ventilator. I shall crawl in over his body, Bunny,
my boy!"

"And I?"

"You will hand me what I want and hold the fort in case of accidents,
and generally lend me the moral support you've made me require. It's a
luxury, Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult to do without it after
you turned pi!"

He said that Von Heumann was certain to sleep with a bolted door, which
he, of course, would leave unbolted, and spoke of other ways of laying
a false scent while rifling the cabin. Not that Raffles anticip