f the
master was sinking into me, and he Heaven knew where! But my
punishment was swift to follow, for within the hour the bell rang
imperiously twice, and there was Dr. Theobald on our mat; in a yellow
Jaeger suit, with a chin as yellow jutting over the flaps that he had
turned up to hide his pyjamas.

"What's this about a bad night?" said he.

"He couldn't sleep, and he wouldn't let me," I whispered, never
loosening my grasp of the door, and standing tight against the other
wall. "But he's sleeping like a baby now."

"I must see him."

"He gave strict orders that you should not."

"I'm his medical man, and I--"

"You know what he is," I said, shrugging; "the least thing wakes him,
and you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be the last
time, I warn you! I know what he said, and you don't."

The doctor cursed me under his fiery moustache.

"I shall come up during the course of the morning," he snarled.

"And I shall tie up the bell," I said, "and if it doesn't ring he'll be
sleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by coming to the door
again."

And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as Raffles had
said; but what would it profit me if some evil had befallen him? And
now I was prepared for the worst. A boy came up whistling and leaving
papers on the mats; it was getting on for eight o'clock, and the
whiskey and soda of half-past twelve stood untouched and stagnant in
the tumbler. If the worst had happened to Raffles, I felt that I would
either never drink again, or else seldom do anything else.

Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but roamed the flat in a
misery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my cheeks
and chin now tawny from the unwholesome night. How long would it go
on? I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune: how long could I
endure it?

It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance cannot be
measured by the time, for to me every hour of it was an arctic night.
Yet it cannot have been much after eleven when the ring came at the
bell, which I had forgotten to tie up after all. But this was not the
doctor; neither, too well I knew, was it the wanderer returned. Our
bell was the pneumatic one that tells you if the touch be light or
heavy; the hand upon it now was tentative and shy.

The owner of the hand I had never seen before. He was young and
ragged, with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some