But no more followed.
"Do you think you would live happily?" I made bold to ask him.
"God knows!" he answered. And with that he left me, to marvel at
his look and tone, and, more than ever, at the insufficiently
exciting cause.
III
Of all the mere feats of cracksmanship which I have seen Raffles
perform, at once the most delicate and most difficult was that
which he accomplished between one and two o'clock on the Tuesday
morning, aboard the North German steamer Uhlan, lying at anchor
in Genoa harbor.
Not a hitch occurred. Everything had been foreseen; everything
happened as I had been assured everything must. Nobody was about
below, only the ship's boys on deck, and nobody on the bridge.
It was twenty-five minutes past one when Raffles, without a
stitch of clothing on his body, but with a glass phial, corked
with cotton-wool, between his teeth, and a tiny screw-driver
behind his ear, squirmed feet first through the ventilator over
his berth; and it was nineteen minutes to two when he returned,
head first, with the phial still between his teeth, and the
cotton-wool rammed home to still the rattling of that which lay
like a great gray bean within. He had taken screws out and put
them in again; he had unfastened von Heumann's ventilator and had
left it fast as he had found it--fast as he instantly proceeded
to make his own.
Pages:
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211