Take a lesson from our last
escape, and fly lower as you value our skins. Study the house as
much as you like, but do--not--go and shove your head into
Mackenzie's mouth!"
My wealth of metaphor brought him to a stand-still, with his
cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining
eyes.
"You're quite right, Bunny. I won't. I really won't. Yet--you
saw old Lady Melrose's necklace? I've been wanting it for years!
But I'm not going to play the fool; honor bright, I'm not; yet
--by Jove!--to get to windward of the professors and Mackenzie
too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!"
"Well, you mustn't play it this week."
"No, no, I won't. But I wonder how the professors think of going
to work? That's what one wants to know. I wonder if they've
really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their
game! But it's all right, Bunny; don't you be jealous; it shall
be as you wish."
And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed
with an incredibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest
man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to
dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is
merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an
incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked.
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