It made it no better that this was characteristic of the man and
of his attitude towards me. For a month we had been, I suppose,
the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was
curiously incomplete. With all his charming frankness, there was
in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible
enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive
secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make
mysteries of matters of common concern; for example, I never knew
how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels, on the
proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of
hundreds of other young fellows about town. He was consistently
mysterious about that and other details, of which it seemed to me
that I had already earned the right to know everything. I could
not but remember how he had led me into my first felony, by means
of a trick, while yet uncertain whether he could trust me or not.
That I could no longer afford to resent, but I did resent his
want of confidence in me now. I said nothing about it, but it
rankled every day, and never more than in the week that succeeded
the Rosenthall dinner. When I met Raffles at the club he would
tell me nothing; when I went to his rooms he was out, or
pretended to be.
One day he told me he was getting on well, but slowly; it was a
more ticklish game than he had thought; but when I began to ask
questions he would say no more.
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