oom; and the windows are
wide open. Electric light, too, by Jove!"

Since stop I must, I had done so on the other side of the road, in the
shadow of the leafy palings, and as Raffles spoke the ground floor
windows opposite had flown alight, showing as pretty a little
dinner-table as one could wish to see, with a man at his wine at the
far end, and the back of a lady in evening dress toward us. It was
like a lantern-picture thrown upon a screen. There were only the pair
of them, but the table was brilliant with silver and gay with flowers,
and the maid waited with the indefinable air of a good servant. It
certainly seemed a good house.

"She's going to let down the blind!" whispered Raffles, in high
excitement. "No, confound them, they've told her not to. Mark down
her necklace, Bunny, and invoice his stud. What a brute he looks! But
I like the table, and that's her show. She has the taste; but he must
have money. See the festive picture over the sideboard? Looks to me
like a Jacques Saillard. But that silver-table would be good enough
for me."

"Get on," said I. "You're in a bath-chair."

"But the whole square's at dinner! We should have the ball at our
feet. It wouldn't take two twos!"

"With those blinds up, and the cook in the kitchen underneath?"

He nodded, leaning forward in the chair, his hands upon the wraps about
his legs.

"You must be mad," said I, and got back to my handles with the word,
but when I tugged the chair ran light.

"Keep an eye on the rug," came in a whisper from the middle of the
road; and there stood my invalid, his pale face in a quiver of pure
mischief, yet set with his insane resolve. "I'm only going to see
whether that woman has a silver-table--"

"We don't want it--"

"It won't take a minute--"

"It's madness, madness--"

"Then don't you wait!"

It was like him to leave me with that, and this time I had taken him at
his last word had not my own given me an idea. Mad I had called him,
and mad I could declare him upon oath if necessary. It was not as
though the thing had happened far from home. They could learn all
about us at the nearest mansions. I referred them to Dr. Theobald;
this was a Mr. Maturin, one of his patients, and I was his keeper, and
he had never given me the slip before. I heard myself making these
explanations on the doorstep, and pointing to the deserted bath-chair
as the proof, while the pretty parlor maid ran for the police. I