t there may be two. In that case they'll be top and
bottom, and we shall have two fresh holes to make, as the door opens
inwards. It won't open two inches as it is."

I confess I did not feel sanguine about the lock-picking, seeing that
one lock had baffled us already; and my disappointment and impatience
must have been a revelation to me had I stopped to think. The truth is
that I was entering into our nefarious undertaking with an involuntary
zeal of which I was myself quite unconscious at the time. The romance
and the peril of the whole proceeding held me spellbound and entranced.
My moral sense and my sense of fear were stricken by a common
paralysis. And there I stood, shining my light and holding my phial
with a keener interest than I had ever brought to any honest avocation.
And there knelt A. J. Raffles, with his black hair tumbled, and the
same watchful, quiet, determined half-smile with which I have seen him
send down over after over in a county match!

At last the chain of holes was complete, the lock wrenched out bodily,
and a splendid bare arm plunged up to the shoulder through the
aperture, and through the bars of the iron gate beyond.

"Now," whispered Raffles, "if there's only one lock it'll be in the
middle. Joy! Here it is! Only let me pick it, and we're through at
last."

He withdrew his arm, a skeleton key was selected from the bunch, and
then back went his arm to the shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I
heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very watch ticking in my
pocket, and ever and anon the tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key.
Then--at last--there came a single unmistakable click. In another
minute the mahogany door and the iron gate yawned behind us; and
Raffles was sitting on an office table, wiping his face, with the
lantern throwing a steady beam by his side.

We were now in a bare and roomy lobby behind the shop, but separated
therefrom by an iron curtain, the very sight of which filled me with
despair. Raffles, however, did not appear in the least depressed, but
hung up his coat and hat on some pegs in the lobby before examining
this curtain with his lantern.

"That's nothing," said he, after a minute's inspection; "we'll be
through that in no time, but there's a door on the other side which may
give us trouble."

"Another door!" I groaned. "And how do you mean to tackle this thing?"

"Prise it up with the jointed jimmy. The weak point of these iron
curtains is th