"An unoccupied house, Bunny."
"Do you mean to occupy it?"
"I mean our passenger to do so—if we can land him alive or dead!"
"Hush, Raffles!"
"It's a case of heels first, this time—"
"Shut up!"
Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage—luckily on a level with our rowlocks—and reaching down into the boat.
"Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him."
"I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!"
And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there was a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the river beyond.