A Thief in the Night - E. W. Hornung (phonics reader .TXT) 📗

had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss; sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in our old house. My dancing days were already over; there I had taken the one resolution to which I remained as true as better men to better vows; there the painful association was no mere sense of personal unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room of other dances⁠ ⁠… and was still smoking the cigarette which Raffles had taught me to appreciate when I looked up to find him regarding me from the door. He had opened it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors, and now he closed it in the same professional fashion.

“I missed Achilles hours ago,” said he. “And still he’s sulking in his tent!”

“I have been,” I answered, laughing as he could always make me, “but I’ll chuck it if you’ll stop and smoke. Our host doesn’t mind; there’s an ashtray provided for the purpose. I ought to be sulking between the sheets, but I’m ready to sit up with you till morning.”

“We might do worse; but, on the other hand, we might do still better,” rejoined Raffles, and for once he resisted the seductive Sullivan. “As a matter of fact, it’s morning now; in another hour it will be dawn; and where could day dawn better than in Warfield Woods, or along the Stockley road, or even on the Upper or the Middle? I don’t want to turn in, any more than you do. I may as well confess that the whole show down here has exalted me more than anything for years. But if we can’t sleep, Bunny, let’s have some fresh air instead.”

“Has everybody gone to bed?” I asked.

“Long ago. I was the last in. Why?”

“Only it might sound a little odd, our turning out again, if they were to hear us.”

Raffles stood over me with a smile made of mischief and cunning; but it was the purest mischief imaginable, the most innocent and comic cunning.

“They shan’t hear us at all, Bunny,” said he. “I mean to get out as I did in the good old nights. I’ve been spoiling for the chance ever since I came down. There’s not the smallest harm in it now; and if you’ll come with me I’ll show you how it used to be done.”

“But I know,” said I. “Who used to haul up the rope after you, and let it down again to the minute?”

Raffles looked down on me from lowered lids, over a smile too humorous to offend.

“My dear good Bunny! And do you suppose that even then I had only one way of doing a thing? I’ve had a spare loophole all my life, and when you’re ready I’ll show you what it was when I was here. Take off those boots, and carry your tennis-shoes; slip on another coat; put out your light; and I’ll meet you on the landing in two minutes.”

He met me with uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and downstairs he led me, stocking soles close against the skirting, two feet to each particular step. It must have seemed child’s play to Raffles; the old precautions were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess that to me it was all refreshingly exciting⁠—for once without a risk of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the hall, and could have walked out of the street door without danger or difficulty. But that would not do for Raffles. He must needs lead me into the boys’ part, through the green baize door. It took a deal of opening and shutting, but Raffles seemed to enjoy nothing better than these mock obstacles, and in a few minutes we were resting with sharp ears in the boys’ hall.

“Through these windows?” I whispered, when the clock over the piano had had matters its own way long enough to make our minds quite easy.

“How else?” whispered Raffles, as he opened the one on whose ledge our letters used to await us of a morning.

“And then through the quad⁠—”

“And over the gates at the end. No talking, Bunny; there’s a dormitory just overhead; but ours was in front, you remember, and if they had ever seen me I should have nipped back this way while they were watching the other.”

His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I remember how the gravel hurt as we left the smooth flagged margin of the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats (whereon you prepared your construe for the second-school in the summer term) was mercifully handy; and once in our rubber soles we had no difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fives-courts. Moreover, we dropped into a very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when we doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor heard a footfall in the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the night-dews and the petals of the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went.

“So you and Nipper had a word⁠—or was it words? I saw you out of the tail of my eye when I was dancing, and I heard you out of the tail of my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name. He’s the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy. But he’ll subscribe all right, you’ll see, and be very glad I made him.”

I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had not heard all Nasmyth had said of him. And neither would he listen to the little I meant to repeat to