"Good old Raffles!" I chuckled. "I begin to forgive you for being in bad form at dinner."
"But I was never more earnest in my life."
"Go on!"
"I mean it."
"You know very well that you wouldn't commit a murder, whatever else you might do."
"I know very well I'm going to commit one to-night!"
He had been leaning back in the saddle-bag chair, watching me with keen eyes sheathed by languid lids; now he started forward, and his eyes leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard. They struck home to my slow wits; their meaning was no longer in doubt. I, who knew the man, read murder in his clenched hands, and murder in his locked lips, but a hundred murders in those hard blue eyes.
"Baird?" I faltered, moistening my lips with my tongue.
"Of course."
"But you said it didn't matter about the room in Chelsea?"