A Thief in the Night quotes

In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend.

The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart.

Raffles was a villain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to glaze the fact; yet I have done so myself before today. I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side.

The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart.

Raffles was a villain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to glaze the fact

; yet I have done so myself before today. I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side.

and that was his last question. My answer was enough for him. And to this day I cannot say whether it was more in relief than in regret that he laid a hand upon my shoulder.

“So you are out of Paradise after all!” said Raffles.

“I was not sure, or I should have come round before. Well, Bunny, if they don’t want you there, there’s a little Inferno in the Albany where you will be as welcome as ever.”

“So all the time you never meant it!”

“Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours’ enforced Rest Cure was the worst I wished him.”

“You might have told me, Raffles!”

“Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours’ enforced Rest Cure was the worst I wished him.”

“You might have told me, Raffles!”

“That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me!”

“You might have told me, Raffles!”

“That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me!”

Carter Paterson was out of the question, and any labelling or addressing to be avoided on obvious grounds.

But Raffles stabled the white elephants in the cloakroom at Charing Cross⁠—and sent Lord Thornaby the ticket.

I neither knew nor cared: yet a wretched premonitory fascination held me breathless till I was told.

“I’d prefer to see him a thief!” said Nasmyth savagely

; and when his eyes were done with me, he turned upon his heel. So that ended that stage of my discomfiture.

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.

Raffles was smiling under the double lamps of the first-class compartment that we had to ourselves.

“I wouldn’t say that, Bunny. We have done worse.”

“Do you mean to tell me that you did anything at all?”

Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this occasion.

But any sheep would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.

“I wonder if he rang me up?” I exclaimed, as if inspired.

“The difficulty is to keep a grip; but I’ve been up and down them before tonight. And it’s our only chance. I’ll go first, Bunny: you watch me, and do exactly as I do if I get down all right.”

“If I don’t,” whispered Raffles, as he wormed through the window feet foremost, “I’m afraid you’ll have to face the music where you are, and I shall have the best of it down in Acheron!”

And he slid out of reach without another word, leaving me to shudder alike at his levity and his peril; nor could I follow him very far by the wan light of the April stars;

You may say I ought to have thought of all that before! you may say what you like, and you won’t say more than I deserve. It was hysterical, and it was mean, for I kept the cases to impose on you.”

“You were always a bad liar, Bunny,” said Raffles, smiling.

“Will you think me one when I tell you that I can understand what you felt, and even what you did? As a matter of fact, I have understood for several hours now.”

Accordingly, though with much misgiving, I did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street, where, despite my past, I was already making a certain lowly footing for myself.

Success followed as it will when one longs to fail;

and one fine evening I returned to Ham Common with a card from the Convict Supervision Office, New Scotland Yard, which I treasure to this day.

The clerk’s reply came pat and unexpected.

“The greatest burgular we ever had,” said he, “till good old Raffles knocked him out!”

“The greatest of the pre-Raffleites,” the master murmured, as we passed on to the safer memorials of mere murder. There were misshapen bullets and stained knives that had taken human life;

“You may have ended up there,” I conceded. “But where did you go first when you slipped out behind my back, and how the devil did you know where to go?”

“I never did slip out,” said Raffles, “behind your back. I slipped in.”

I burst out laughing in his face.