His expenses were small. He had his car, of course, and he was a heavy smoker. Well, we all were. Being exposed to alcohol in that particular way hadn’t put him off it for life, as you might expect, and most days when he arrived he brought in a bottle of whiskey or vodka. But he bought nothing else as far as I could see. However, he had one expense only Silver knew about.

One day he was going to kill his father. The old man—he had been nearly fifty when Jonny was born—was still very much alive. Jonny never saw him, he hadn’t seen him since he was fifteen, and at the time I’m writing of he was twenty-six. But he had had a watch kept on him. For years he’d been paying a down-and-out to keep tabs on George Rathbone, so that he knew exactly where the old man was, the kind of life he led and who his companions were. When the time was ripe, and he’d know when that time came, he would go to him, tell him he was going to kill him and how, and he’d do it. If he hadn’t quite killed Tudorlap, he had had practice at attempting to kill. It would be easier, and he’d be better at it, the second time. Even Silver didn’t know what form this murder would take. He didn’t even believe in it, he said it was hot air.

But for some reason Jonny needed to be a rich man before he could do it. Hence the burglaries and the ranging across the roofs of Maida Vale. He was enormously proud of a newspaper cutting he had, a piece from the Ham and High, when they carried a story about him, calling him the Vale Villain and giving an entirely imaginary description of him as tall and bearded. According to their account he had carried out more than fifty burglaries in Maida Vale and Little Venice.

“I wish,” said Jonny.

I’d like to be able to tell you what Silver and I so much loved about roof climbing, but I can’t. I’d no more want to climb out of windows onto roofs now than I’d want to imagine myself Heidi in Johanna Spyri’s books and the gently undulating Suffolk landscape the Swiss Alps, as I did when I was seven. Or to climb pylons as I did when I was in my teens. I no longer understand my motivation or my enjoyment. All I can say is that it became a compulsion and I did enjoy it tremendously. Whatever impelled me impelled Silver also. And, eventually, we lost interest at the same time too.