Only
lately I also had been to the man, but in my proper person. We
had needed capital for the getting of these very emeralds, and I
had raised a hundred pounds, on the terms you would expect, from
a soft-spoken graybeard with an ingratiating smile, an incessant
bow, and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to rim of
a pair of spectacles. So the original sinews and the final
spoils of war came in this case from the self-same source--a
circumstance which appealed to us both.
But these same final spoils I was still to see, and I waited and
waited with an impatience that grew upon me with the growing
dusk. At my open window I had played Sister Ann until the faces
in the street below were no longer distinguishable. And now I was
tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible hypotheses--a grip
that tightened when at last the lift-gates opened with a clatter
outside--that held me breathless until a well-known tattoo
followed on my door.
"In the dark!" said Raffles, as I dragged him in. "Why, Bunny,
what's wrong?"
"Nothing--now you've come," said I, shutting the door behind him
in a fever of relief and anxiety. "Well? Well? What did they
fetch?"
"Five hundred."
"Down?"
"Got it in my pocket."
"Good man!" I cried. "You don't know what a stew I've been in.
I'll switch on the light.
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