Bulstrode, not knowing the significance of
these symptoms, interpreted this new nervous susceptibility into
a means of alarming Raffles into true confessions, and taxed him
with falsehood in saying that he had not told anything, since he
had just told the man who took him up in his gig and brought him
to Stone Court. Raffles denied this with solemn adjurations;
the fact being that the links of consciousness were interrupted in him,
and that his minute terror-stricken narrative to Caleb Garth had been
delivered under a set of visionary impulses which had dropped back
into darkness.
Bulstrode's heart sank again at this sign that he could get no
grasp over the wretched man's mind, and that no word of Raffles
could be trusted as to the fact which he most wanted to know,
namely, whether or not he had really kept silence to every one in
the neighborhood except Caleb Garth. The housekeeper had told him
without the least constraint of manner that since Mr. Garth left,
Raffles had asked her for beer, and after that had not spoken,
seeming very ill. On that side it might be concluded that there
had been no betrayal. Mrs. Abel thought, like the servants at
The Shrubs, that the strange man belonged to the unpleasant "kin"
who are among the troubles of the rich; she had at first referred
the kinship to Mr. Rigg, and where there was property left,
the buzzing presence of such large blue-bottles seemed natural enough.
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