"
It had been sent off from Waterloo at 6.42.
So Raffles was back in town; at an earlier stage of our relations
I should have hunted him up then and there, but now I knew
better. His telegram meant that he had no desire for my society
that night or the following forenoon; that when he wanted me I
should see him soon enough.
And see him I did, towards one o'clock next day. I was watching
for him from my window in Mount Street, when he drove up
furiously in a hansom, and jumped out without a word to the man.
I met him next minute at the lift gates, and he fairly pushed me
back into my rooms.
"Five minutes, Bunny!" he cried. "Not a moment more."
And he tore off his coat before flinging himself into the nearest
chair.
"I'm fairly on the rush," he panted; "having the very devil of a
time! Not a word till I tell you all I've done. I settled my
plan of campaign yesterday at lunch. The first thing was to get
in with this man Craggs; you can't break into a place like the
Metropole, it's got to be done from the inside. Problem one, how
to get at the fellow. Only one sort of pretext would do--it must
be something to do with this blessed picture, so that I might see
where he'd got it and all that. Well, I couldn't go and ask to
see it out of curiosity, and I couldn't go as a second
representative of the other old chap, and it was thinking how I
could go that made me such a bear at lunch.
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