"What else could they be?"
"What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head and deliberate pen.
"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!"
"I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience, Bunny, and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, or else get out by yourself as you came in."
I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police behind them.
Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand my shoulder at one and the same awful moment.
"Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice.
"Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?"
"I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?"
"You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears."