 1. Out of Paradise. If I must tell more tales of raffles, I can but back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In doing so I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank across which you may have conceived me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles was a villain when all is written. It is no service to his memory to glaze the fact, yet I have done so myself before to-day. I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side. And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant glamour that made my villain more to me than any hero. But at least there shall be no more reservations, and as an earnest I shall make no further secret of the greatest wrong that even raffles ever did me. I pick my words with care and pain, loyal as I still would be to my friend, and yet remembering as I must those ides of march when he led me blindfolded into temptation and crime. That was an ugly office, if you will. It was a moral bagatelle to the treacherous trick he was to play me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other hand, was to prove the less serious of the two against society, and might in itself have been published to the world years ago. There had been private reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only too intimately mine and too discreditable to raffles. One other was involved in it, one dearer to me than raffles himself, one whose name shall not even now be sullied by association with ours. Suffice it that I had been engaged to her before that mad-march deed. True, her people called it an understanding, and frowned even upon that, as well they might, but their authority was not direct. We bowed to it as an act of politic grace. Between us, all was well, but my unworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess that this was how the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses at Baccarat, and afterward turned to raffles in my need. Even after that I saw her sometimes, but I let her guess that there was more upon my soul than she must ever share, and at last I had written to end it all. I remember that week so well. It was the close of such a may as we had never had since, and I was too miserable even to follow the heavy scoring in the papers. Raffles was the only man who could get a wicket up at Lord's, and I never once went to see him play. Against Yorkshire, however, he helped himself to a hundred runs as well, and that brought raffles round to me on his way home to the Albany. We must dine and celebrate the rare event, said he. A century takes it out of one at my time of life. And you, Bunny, you look quite as much in need of your end of a worthy bottle. Suppose we make it the Café Royal, and eat sharp? I'll be there first to fix up the table and the wine. And at the Café Royal I incontinently told him of the trouble I was in. It was the first he had ever heard of my affair, and I told him all, though not before our bottle had been succeeded by a pint of the same exemplary brand. Raffles heard me out with grave attention. His sympathy was the more grateful, for the tactful brevity with which it was indicated rather than expressed. He only wished that I had told him of this complication in the beginning. As I had not, he agreed with me that the only course was a candid and complete renunciation. It was not as though my divinity had a penny of her own, or I could earn an honest one. I had explained to Raffles that she was an orphan, who spent most of her time with an aristocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder under the repressive roof of a pompous politician in palace gardens. The aunt had, I believe, still a sneaking softness for me, but her lustrous brother had set his face against me from the first. Hector Carruthers. murmured Raffles, repeating the detested name, with his clear cold eye on mine. I suppose you haven't seen much of him. Not a thing for ages, I replied. I was at the house two or three days last year, but they've neither asked me since nor been at home to me when I've called. The old beast seems a judge of men. And I laughed bitterly in my glass. Nice house? said Raffles, glancing at himself in his silver cigarette case. Top shelf? said I. You know the houses in palace gardens, don't you? Not so well as I should like to know them, Bunny. Well, it's about the most palatial of the lot. The old ruffian is as rich as creases. It's a country place in town. What about the window fastenings? asked Raffles casually. I recoiled from the open cigarette case that he proffered as he spoke. Our eyes met, and in his there was that starry twinkle of mirth and mischief, that sunny beam of audacious devilment, which had been my undoing two months before, which was to undo me as often as he chose until the chapter's end. Yet for once I withstood its glamour. For once I turned aside that luminous glance with front of steel. There was no need for Raffles to voice his plans. I read them all between the strong lines of his smiling, eager face. And I pushed back my chair in the equal eagerness of my own resolve. Not if I know it, said I, a house I've dined in, a house I've seen her in, a house where she stays by the month together. Don't put it into words, Raffles, or I'll get up and go. You mustn't do that before the coffee and liqueur, said Raffles laughing. Have a small Sullivan first. It's the royal road to a cigar. And now, let me observe that your scruples would do you honour, if Old Carruthers still lived in the house in question. Do you mean to say he doesn't? Raffles struck a match and handed it first to me. I mean to say, my dear Bunny, that Perless Gardens knows the very name no more. You began by telling me you had heard nothing of these people all this year. That's quite enough to account for our little misunderstanding. I was thinking of the house, and you were thinking of the people in the house. But who are they, Raffles? Who has taken the house? If Old Carruthers has moved, how do you know that it's still worth a visit? In answer to your first question, Lord Locke-Mabin, replied Raffles, blowing bracelets of smoke toward the ceiling. You look as though you had never heard of him. But as the cricket and racing are the only part of your paper that you can't descend to read, you can't expect to keep track of all the peers created in your time. Your other question is not worth answering. How do you suppose that I know these things? It's my business to get to know them. And that's all there is to it. As a matter of fact, Lady Locke-Mabin has just as good diamonds as Mrs. Carruthers ever had. And the chances are that she keeps them when Mrs. Carruthers kept hers, if you could enlighten me on that point. As it happened, I could, since I knew from his niece that it was one on which Mr. Carruthers had been a fattest in his time. He had made quite a study of the cracksman's craft in a resolve to circumvent it with his own. I remembered myself how the ground floor windows were elaborately bolted and shuttered, and how the doors of all the rooms opening upon the square inner hall were fitted with extra Yale locks at an unlikely height, not to be discovered by one within the room. It had been the butler's business to turn and to collect all these keys before retiring for the night. But the key of the safe and the study was supposed to be in the jealous keeping of the master of the house himself. That safe was in its turn so ingeniously hidden that I never should have found it for myself. I well remember how one who showed it to me, in the innocence of her heart, laughed as she assured me that even her little trinkets were solemnly locked up in it every night. It had been let into the wall behind one end of the bookcase, expressly to preserve the barbaric splendor of Mrs. Carruthers. Without a doubt these locked maybans would use it for the same purpose, and in the altered circumstances I had no hesitation in giving raffles all the information he desired. I even drew him a rough plan of the ground floor on the back of my menu-card. It was rather clever of you to notice the kind of locks on the inner doors. He remarked as he put it in his pocket. I suppose you don't remember if it was a Yale on the front door as well. It was not. I was able to answer quite promptly. I happened to know because I once had the key when, when we went to a theatre together. Thank you, old chap. Said Raffles sympathetically. That's all I shall want from you, Bunny, my boy. There's no night like tonight. It was one of his sayings when bent upon his worst. I looked at him aghast. Our cigars were just in blast, yet already he was signalling for his bill. It was impossible to remonstrate with him until we were both outside in the street. I'm coming with you, I said, running my arm through his. Nonsense, Bunny. Why is it nonsense? I know every inch of the ground, and since the house has changed hands I have no compunction. Besides, I have been there in the other sense as well. Once a thief, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound. It was ever my mood when the blood was up. But my old friend failed to appreciate the characteristic as he usually did. We crossed Regent Street in silence. I had to catch his sleeve to keep a hand in his inhospitable arm. I really think you had better stay away, said Raffles as we reached the other curb. I've no use for you this time. Yet I thought I had been so useful up to now. That may be, Bunny, but I tell you frankly I don't want you tonight. Yet I know the ground and you don't. I tell you what, said I, I'll come just to show you the ropes, and I won't take a pennyweight of the leg. Such was the teasing fashion in which he invariably prevailed upon me. It was delightful to note how it caused him to yield in his turn. But Raffles had the grace to give in with a laugh, whereas I too often lost my temper with my point. You little rabbit! he chuckled. You shall have your share, whether you come or not. But seriously, don't you think you might remember the girl? What's the use? I groaned. You agree there is nothing for it but to give her up. I am glad to say that for myself, before I asked you, and wrote to tell her so on Sunday. Now it is Wednesday, and she hasn't answered by line or sign. It's waiting for one word from her that's driving me mad. Perhaps you wrote to Palace Gardens. No, I sent it to the country. There's been time for an answer, wherever she may be. We had reached the Albany, and halted with one accord at the Piccadilly Portico, red cigar to red cigar. You wouldn't like to go and see if the answer's in your rooms, he asked. No, what's the good? Where's the point in giving her up if I'm going to straighten out when it's too late? It's too late, I have given her up, and I am coming with you. The hand that bowled the most puzzling ball in England, once it found its length, descended on my shoulder with surprising promptitude. Very well, Bunny, that's finished. But your blood be on your own fate if evil comes of it. Meanwhile, we can't do better than turn in here, till you have finished your cigar as it deserves, and topped up with such a cup of tea as you must learn to like if you hope to get on in your new profession. And when the hours are small enough, Bunny, my boy, I don't mind admitting I shall be very glad to have you with me. I have a vivid memory of the interim in his rooms. I think it must have been the first and last of its kind that I was called upon to sustain with so much knowledge of what lay before me. I passed the time with one restless eye upon the clock, and the other on the tantalus which raffles ruthlessly declined to unlock. He admitted that it was like waiting with one's pads on, and in my slender experience of the game, of which he was a world's master, that was an ordeal not to be endured without a general quaking of the inner man. I was, on the other hand, all right when I got to the metaphorical wicket, and half the surprises that raffles sprung on me were doubtless due to his early recognition of the fact. On this occasion, I fell swiftly and hopelessly out of love with the prospect I had so graciously embraced. It was not only my repugnance to enter that house in that way, which grew upon my better judgment as the artificial enthusiasm of the evening evaporated for my veins. Strong as that repugnance became, I had an even stronger feeling that we were embarking on an important enterprise far too much upon the spur of the moment. The latter, qualm, I had the temerity to confess to raffles. Nor have I often loved him more than when he freely admitted it to be the most natural feeling in the world. He assured me, however, that he had had my Lady Locke Maven and her jewels in his mind for several months. He had sat behind them at first nights, and long ago determined what to take or to reject. In fine, he had only been waiting for those topographical details, which it had been my chance privilege to supply. I now learned he had numerous houses in a similar state upon his list. Something or other was wanting in each case in order to complete his plans. In that of the Bond Street Jeweler it was a trusty accomplice, in the present instance, a more intimate knowledge of the house. And lastly, this was a Wednesday night, when the tired legislator gets early to his bed. How I wish I could make the whole world see and hear him and smell the smoke of his beloved Sullivan, as he took me into these, the secrets of his infamous trade. Neither look nor language would betray the infamy. As a mere talker, I shall never listen to the like of raffles on this side of the sod. And his talk was seldom garnished by an oath, never in my remembrance by the unclean word. Then he looked like a man who had dressed to dine out, not like one who had long since dined. For his curly hair, the longer than another's, was never untidy in its length. And these were the days when it was still as black as ink. Nor were there many lines as yet upon the smooth and mobile face. And its frame was still that dear den of disorder and good taste. With the carved bookcase, the dresser and chests of still older oak. And the watsas and rosettis hung anyhow on the walls. It must have been one o'clock before we drove in a handsome as far as Kensington Church, instead of getting down at the gates of our private road to ruin. Constitutionally shy of the direct approach, raffles was further deterred by a ball in full swing at the empress' rooms, once potential witnesses were pouring between dances into the cool deserted street. Instead he led me a little way up Church Street, and so through the narrow passage into palace gardens. He knew the house as well as I did. We made our first survey from the other side of the road, and the house was not quite in darkness. There was a dim light over the door, a brighter one in the stables, which stood still farther back from the road. That's a bit of a bore, said raffles. The ladies have been out somewhere, trust them to spoil the show. They would get to bed before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and our profession. Somebody's not home yet. That will be the son of the house. But he's a beauty who may not come home at all. Another Alec Carruthers. I murmured, recalling the one I liked least of all the household as I remembered it. They might be brothers. Rejoined raffles. Who knew all the loose fish about town? Well, I'm not sure that I shall want you after all, Bunny. Why not? If the front door's only on the latch, and you're right about the lock, I shall walk in as though I were the son of the house myself. He jingled the skeleton bunch that he carried on a chain as honest men carry their latch-keys. You forget the inner doors and the safe. True, you might be useful to me there. But I still don't like leading you in where it isn't absolutely necessary, Bunny. Then let me lead you, I answered. And forthwith, marched across the broad, secluded road, with the great houses standing back on either side in their ample gardens, as though the one opposite belonged to me. I thought raffles had stayed behind, for I never heard him at my heels. Yet there he was when I turned round at the gate. I must teach you the step. He whispered, shaking his head. You shouldn't use your heel at all. Here's a grass-border for you. Walk it as you would walk the plank. Gravel makes a noise and flower-beds tell a tale. Wait, I must carry you across this. It was the sweep of the drive, and in the dim light from above the door, the soft gravel plowed into ridges by the night's wheels, threatened an alarm at every step. Yet raffles, with me in his arms, crossed the zone of peril softly as the pard. Shoes in your pocket, that's the beauty of pumps. He whispered on the step. His light bunch tinkled faintly. A couple of keys he stooped and tried, with the touch of a humane dentist. The third led us into the porch, and as we stood together on the mat, as he was gradually closing the door, a clock within chimed a half hour in fashion so thrillingly familiar to me that I caught raffles by the arm. My half hours of happiness had flown to just such chimes. I looked wildly about me in the dim light. Hat stand and oak sati belonged equally to my past, and raffles was smiling in my face as he held the door wide for my escape. You told me a lie! I gasped in whispers. I did nothing of the sort, he replied. The furniture's the furniture of Hector Carruthers, but the house is the house of Lord Luck-Mabin, look here. He had stooped and was smoothing out the discarded envelope of a telegram. Lord Luck-Mabin, I read in pencil by the dim light, and the case was plain to me on the spot. My friends had let their house furnished, as anybody but raffles would have explained to me in the beginning. All right, I said, shut the door. And he not only shut it without a sound, but drew a bolt that might have been sheathed in rubber. In another minute we were at work upon the study door. I, with the tiny lantern and the bottle of rock oil, he with the brace and the largest bit. The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It was placed high up in the door, feet above the handle, and the chain of holes with which raffles had soon surrounded it were bored on a level with his eyes. Yet the clock in the hall chimed again, and two ringing strokes resounded through the silent house before we gained admittance to the room. Raffles' next care was to muffle the bell on the shuttered window with a silk handkerchief from the hat stand, and to prepare an emergency exit by opening first the shutters and then the window itself. Luckily it was a still night, and very little wind came in to embarrass us. He then began operations on the safe, revealed by me behind its folding screen of books, while I stood sentry on the threshold. I may have stood there for a dozen minutes, listening to the loud hall clock, and to the gentle dentistry of raffles in the mouth of the safe behind me, when a third sound thrilled my every nerve. It was the equally cautious opening of a door in the gallery overhead. I moistened my lips to whisper a word of warning to raffles, but his ears had been as quick as mine, and something longer. His lantern darkened as I turned my head. Next moment I felt his breath upon the back of my neck. It was now too late even for a whisper, and quite out of the question to close the mutilated door. There we could only stand, eye on the threshold, raffles at my elbow, while one carrying a candle crept down the stairs. The study door was at right angles to the lowest flight, and just to the right of one alighting in the hall. It was thus impossible for us to see who it was, until the person was close abreast of us. But by the rustle of the gown we knew that it was one of the ladies, and dressed just as she had come from the theatre or ball. Insensibly I drew back as the candle swam into our field of vision. It had not traversed many inches when a hand was clasped firmly but silently across my mouth. I could forgive raffles for that at any rate. In another breath I should have cried aloud. For the girl with the candle, the girl in her bald dress, at dead of night, the girl with the letter for the post, was the last girl on God's wide earth whom I should have chosen thus to encounter. A midnight intruder in the very house where I had been reluctantly received on her account. I forgot raffles. I forgot the new and unforgivable grudge I had against him now. I forgot his very hand across my mouth, even before he paid me the compliment of removing it. There was the only girl in all the world. I had eyes and brains for no one and for nothing else. She had neither seen nor heard us, had looked neither to the right hand nor the left. But a small oak table stood on the opposite side of the hall. It was to this table that she went. On it was one of those boxes, in which one puts one's letters for the post. And she stooped to read by her candle, the times at which this box was cleared. The loud clock ticked and ticked. She was standing at her full height now, her candle on the table, her letter in both hands, and in her downcast face, a sweet and pitiful perplexity that drew the tears to my eyes. Through a film I saw her open the envelope so lately sealed and read her letter once more, as though she would have altered it a little at the last. It was too late for that. But of a sudden she plucked a rose from her bosom and was pressing it in with her letter when I groaned aloud. How could I help it? The letter was for me. Of that I was as sure as though I had been looking over her shoulder. She was as true as tempered steel. There were not two of us to whom she wrote and sent roses at dead of night. It was her one chance of writing to me. None would know that she had written. And she cared enough to soften the reproaches I had richly earned with a red rose warm from her own warm heart. And there, and there was I, a common thief who had broken in to steel. Yet I was unaware that I had uttered a sound until she looked up, startled, and the hands behind me pinned me where I stood. I think she must have seen us, even in the dim light of the solitary candle. Yet not a sound escaped her as she peered courageously in our direction. Neither did one of us move. But the whole clock went on and on, every tick like the beat of a drum to bring the house about our ears, until a minute must have passed as in some breathless dream. And then came the awakening, with such a knocking and a ringing at the front door as brought all three of us to our senses on the spot. The son of the house. Whispered raffles in my ear, as he dragged me back to the window he had left open for our escape. But as he leaped out first, a sharp cry stopped me at the sill. Get back, get back, we're trapped! He cried. And in the single second that I stood there, I saw him fell one officer to the ground and dart across the lawn with another at his heels. A third came running up to the window. What could I do but double back into the house? And there in the hall I met my lost love face to face. Till that moment she had not recognized me. I ran to catch her as she all but fell, and my touch repelled her into life, so that she shook me off and stood gasping. You of all men! You of all men! Until I could bear it no more, but broke again for the steady window. Not that way, not that way! She cried in an agony at that. Her hands were upon me now. In there, in there! She whispered, pointing and pulling me to a mirror cupboard under the stairs, where hats and coats were hung. And it was she who shut the door on me with a sob. Doors were already opening overhead, voices calling, voices answering, the alarm running like wildfire from room to room. Lost feet pattered in the gallery and down the stairs about my very ears. I do not know what made me put on my own shoes as I heard them, but I think that I was ready and even longing to walk out and give myself up. I need not say what and who it was that alone restrained me. I heard her name. I heard them crying to her as though she had fainted. I recognized the detested voice of my bet noir, Alec Crothers, thick as might be expected of the dissipated dog, daring to stutter out her name. And then I heard, without catching, her low reply. It was an answer to the somewhat stern questioning of quite another voice. And from what followed I knew that she had never fainted at all. Upstairs, Miss, did he? Are you sure? I did not hear her answer. I conceived her as simply pointing up the stairs. In any case, about my very ears once more, there now followed such a patterned tramp of barren-booted feet as renewed me in a base fear for my own skin. But voices and feet passed over my head, went up and up higher and higher, and I was wondering whether or not to make a dash for it, when one light pair came running down again, and in very despair I marched out to meet my preserver, looking as little as I could like the abject thing I felt. Be quick! she cried in a harsh whisper, and pointed peremptorily to the porch. But I stood stubbornly before her, my heart hardened by her hardness, and perversely indifferent to all else. And as I stood I saw the letter she had written, in the hand with which she pointed crushed into a ball. Quickly! she stamped her foot. Quickly, if you ever cared! Without bitterness, without contempt, but with a sudden, wild and treaty that breathed upon the dying embers of my poor manhood, I drew myself together for the last time in her sight. I turned, and left her as she wished. For her sake, not for mine. And as I went I heard her tearing her letter into little pieces, and the little pieces falling on the floor. Then I remembered raffles, and could have killed him for what he had done. Doubtless by this time he was safe and snug in the Albany. What did my fate matter to him? Never mind. This should be the end between him and me as well. It was the end of everything, this dark night's work. I would go and tell him so. I would jump into a cab, and drive there and then to his accursed rooms. But first I must escape from the trap in which he had been so ready to leave me. And on the very steps I drew back in despair. They were searching the shrubberies between the drive and the road. A policeman's lantern kept flashing in and out among the laurels, while a young man in evening clothes directed him from the gravel sweep. It was this young man whom I must dodge. But at my first step in the gravel he wheeled round, and it was raffles himself. Hello! he cried. So you've come up to join the dance as well. How to look inside, have you? You'll be better employed in helping us to draw the cover in front here. It's all right, officer, only another gentleman from the Empress' rooms. And we made a brave show of assisting in the feudal search, until the arrival of more police and a broad hint from an irritable sergeant gave us an excellent excuse for going off arm in arm. But it was raffles who had thrust his arm through mine. I shook him off as we left the scene of shame behind. My dear Bunny, he exclaimed, do you know what brought me back? I answered savagely that I neither knew nor cared. I had the very devil of a squeak for it, he went on. I did the hurdles over two or three garden walls, but so did the flyer who was on my tracks, and he drove me back into the strait and down to High Street like any lamplighter. If he had only had the breath to sing out, it would have been all up with me then. As it was, I pulled off my coat the moment I was round the corner, and took a ticket for it at the Empress' rooms. I suppose you had one for the dance that was going on, I growled. Nor would it have been a coincidence for raffles to have had a ticket for that or any other entertainment of the London season. I never asked what the dance was, he returned. I merely took the opportunity of revising my toilet and getting rid of that rather distinctive overcoat which I shall call for now. They're not too particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I should have seen someone I knew if I had gone right in. I might even have had a turn if only I had been less uneasy about you, Bunny. It was like you to come back to help me out, said I, but to lie to me, and to infagle me with your lies into that house of all houses. That was not like you, raffles, and I never shall forgive it or you. Raffles took my arm again. We were near the high street gates of Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist in advance which I meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat. Come, come, Bunny. There wasn't much in vagging about it, said he. I did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen to me. If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough, I retorted. But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me. I cared so much that I came back to see. You might have spared yourself the trouble. The wrong had been done. Raffles, raffles, don't you know who she was? It was my hand that gripped his arm once more. I guessed. He answered, gravely enough even for me. It was she who saved me, not you, I said, and that is the bitterest part of all. Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had lost through him forever. As I ended we turned into high street, in the prevailing stillness the faint strains of the band reached us from the empress' rooms, and I hailed a crawling handsome as Raffles turned that way. Bunny said he. It's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult in a case like this. If ever there was or will be such another. Only believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the smallest shadow of a suspicion that she was in the house. And in my heart of hearts I did believe him, but I could not bring myself to say the words. You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country. He pursued. And that letter I rejoined in a fresh wave of bitterness. That letter she had written at dead of night and stolen down to post. It was the one I had been waiting for all these days. I should have got it tomorrow. Now I shall never get it. Never hear from her again, nor I have another chance in this world or in the next. I don't say it was all your fault. You no more knew that she was there than I did. But you told me a deliberate lie about her people. And that I never shall forgive. I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The handsome was waiting at the curb. I can say no more than I have said. Returned Raffles with a shrug. Lie or no lie, I didn't tell it to bring you with me. But to get you to give me certain information without feeling a beast about it. But, as a matter of fact, it was no lie about old Hector Carruthers and Lord Locke Maybin, and anybody but you would have guessed the truth. What is the truth? I as good as told you, Bunny, again and again. Then tell me now. If you read your paper there would be no need. But if you want to know, old Carruthers headed the list of birthday honours, and Lord Locke Maybin is the title of his choice. And this miserable quibble was not a lie. My lip curled. I turned my back without a word and drove home to my Mount Street flat in a new fury of savage scorn. Not a lie indeed. It was the one that is half a truth, the meanest lie of all, and the very last to which I could have dreamt that Raffles would stoop. So far there had been a degree of honour between us, if only of the kind understood who obtained between thief and thief. Now all that was at an end. Raffles had cheated me. Raffles had completed the ruin of my life. I was done with Raffles, as she, who shall not be named, was done with me. And yet, even while I blamed him most bitterly and utterly abominated his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart that the result was put of all proportion to the intent. He had never dreamt of doing me this injury, or indeed any injury at all. Intrinsically, the deceit had been quite venial. The reason for it, obviously the reason that Raffles had given me. It was quite true that he had spoken of this Locke Maybin peerage as a new creation and of the heir to it in a fashion only applicable to Alec Carothers. He had given me hints which I had been too dense to take, and he had certainly made more than one attempt to deter me from accompanying him on this fatal enterprise. Had he been more explicit, I might have made it my business to deter him. I could not say in my heart that Raffles had failed to satisfy such honour as I might reasonably expect to subsist between us. Yet it seems to me to require a superhuman sanity always and unerringly to separate cause from effect, achievement from intent. And I, for one, was never quite able to do so in this case. I could not be accused of neglecting my newspaper during the next few wretched days. I read every word that I could find about the attempted jewel robbery in Palace Gardens, and the reports afforded me my sole comfort. In the first place, it was only an attempted robbery. Nothing had been taken after all. And then, and then, the one member of the household, who had come nearest to a personal encounter with either of us, was unable to furnish any description of the man, had even expressed a doubt as to the likelihood of identification in the event of an arrest. I will not say with what mingled feelings I read and dwelt on that announcement. It kept a certain faint glow alive within me, until the morning brought me back the only presence I had ever made her. They were books. Jewelry had been tabooed by the authorities. And the books came back without a word, though the parcel was directed in her hand. I had made up my mind not to go near Raffles again. But in my heart I already regretted my resolve. I had forfeited love. I had sacrificed honour. And now I must deliberately alienate myself from the one being whose society might yet be some recompense for all that I had lost. The situation was aggravated by the state of my ex- checker. I expected an ultimatum from my banker by every post. Yet this influence was nothing to the other. It was Raffles I loved. It was not the dark life we led together. Still less its base rewards. It was the man himself, his gaiety, his humour, his dazzling audacity, his incomparable courage and resource. And a very horror of turning to him again in mere need of greed set the seal on my first angry resolution. But the anger was soon gone out of me. And when at length Raffles bridged the gap by coming to me, I rose to greet him almost with a shout. He came as though nothing had happened. And indeed, not very many days had passed, though they might have been months to me. Yet I fancied the gays that watched me through our smoke, a trifle less sunny than it had been before. And it was a relief to me when he came with few preliminaries to the inevitable point. Did you ever hear from her bunny? He asked. In a way, I answered, we won't talk about it if you don't mind Raffles. That sort of way? He exclaimed. He seemed both surprised and disappointed. Yes, I said, that sort of way. It's finished. What did you expect? I don't know, said Raffles. I only thought that the girl who went so far to get a fellow out of a tight place might go a little farther to keep him from getting into another. I don't see why she should, said I, honestly enough, yet with the irritation of a less just feeling deep down in my inmost consciousness. Yet you did hear from her, he persisted. She sent me back my poor presence without a word, I said, if you call that hearing. I could not bring myself to own to Raffles that I had given her only books. He asked if I was sure that she had sent them back herself. And that was his last question. My answer was enough for him. And to this day I cannot say whether it was more in relief than in regret, that he laid a hand upon my shoulder. So you are out of paradise after all, said Raffles. I was not sure, or I should have come round before. Well, Bunny, if they don't want you there, there's a little inferno in the Albany where you will be as welcome as ever. And still, with all the magic mischief of his smile, there was that touch of sadness which I was yet to read to write. CHAPTER II. THE CHEST OF SILVER. Like all the tribe of which I held him head, Raffles professed the liveliest disdain for unwieldy plunder of any description. It might be old Shefffield, or it might be solid silver or gold, but if the thing was not to be concealed about the person, he would none whatever of it. Unlike the rest of us, however, in this, as in all else, Raffles would not infrequently allow the acquisitive spirit of the mere collector to silence the dictates of professional prudence. The old oak chests and even the mahogany wine-cooler, for which he had doubtless paid like an honest citizen, were thus immovable with pieces of crested plate which he had neither the temerity to use nor the hardy-hood to melt or sell. He would but gloat over them behind locked doors, as I used to tell him, and at last one afternoon I caught him at it. It was in the year after that of my novitiate, a Halcyon period at the Albany, when Raffles left no crib uncracked, and I played second murderer every time. I had called in response to a telegram in which he stated that he was going out of town, and must say good-bye to me before he went, and I could only think that he was inspired by the same impulse toward the bronzed salvers and the tarnished teapots with which I found him surrounded, until my eyes lit upon the enormous silver chest into which he was fitting them one by one. Allow me, Bunny, I shall take the liberty of locking both doors behind you and putting the key in my pocket, said Raffles when he had let me in. Not that I mean to take you prisoner, my dear fellow, but there are those of us who can turn keys from the outside, though it was never an accomplishment of mine. Not crashe again! I cried, standing still in my hat. Raffles regarded me with that tantalizing smile of his, which might mean nothing, yet which often meant so much. And in a flash I was convinced that our most jealous enemy and dangerous rival, the Doyenne of an older school, had paid him yet another visit. That remains to be seen, was the measured reply, and I for one have not set naked eyes on the fellow since I saw him off through that window and left myself for dead on this very spot. In fact, I imagined him comfortably back in jail. Not old crashe, said I. He's far too good a man to be taken twice. I should call him the very prince of professional cracksmen. Should you? said Raffles coldly, with his cold and I looking into mine. Then you had better prepare to repel princes when I'm gone. But gone where? I asked, finding a corner for my hat and coat, and helping myself to the comforts of the venerable dresser, which was one of our friend's greatest treasures. Where is it you are off to, and why are you taking this herd of white elephants with you? Raffles bestowed the cashe of his smile on my description of his motley plate. He joined me in one of his favorite cigarettes, only shaking a superior head at his own decanter. One question at a time, Bunny. Said he. In the first place I am going to have these rooms freshened up with a pot full of paint, the electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long. Good! I cried. Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and night. And get overheard and run in for our pains. I shall wait till you are run in, I think. Said Raffles cruelly. But the rest's a necessity. Not that I love new paint or impining for electric light, but for reasons which I will just breathe in your private ear, Bunny. You must not try to take them too seriously. But the fact is, there is just the least bit of a Twitter against me in this rookery of an Albany. It must have been started by that tame old bird, Policeman Mackenzie. It isn't very bad as yet, but it needn't be that to reach my ears. Well, it was open to me either to clear out altogether, and so confirm whatever happened to be in the air, or to go off for a time under some arrangement, which would give the authorities ample excuse for overhauling every inch of my rooms. Which would you have done, Bunny? Cleared out while I could, said I devoutly. So I should have thought, rejoined Raffles. Yet you see the merit of my plan, so I shall leave every mortal thing unlocked. Except that, said I, kicking the huge oak case with the iron bands and clamps, and the bays lining fast disappearing under heavy packages bearing the shapes of urns and candelabra. That, replied Raffles, is neither to go with me nor to remain here. Then what do you propose to do with it? You have your banking account and your banker, he went on. This was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments of emergency. Well? Well, pay in this bundle of notes this afternoon, and say you have had a great week at Liverpool and Lincoln. Then ask them if they can do with your silver, while you run over to Paris for a merry Easter. I should tell them it's rather heavy, a lot of old family stuff that you've got a good mind to leave with them till you marry and settle down. I winced at this, but consented to the rest after a moment's consideration. After all, and for more reasons than I need enumerate, it was a plausible tale enough, and Raffles had no banker. It was quite impossible for him to explain across any single counter the large sums of hard cash which did sometimes fall into his hands. And it might well be that he had nursed my small account in view of the very quandary which had now arisen. On all grounds it was impossible for me to refuse him, and I am still glad to remember that my assent was given on the whole ungrudgingly. But when will the chest be ready for me? I merely asked, as I stuffed the notes into my cigarette case. And how are we to get it out of this, in banking hours, without attracting any amount of attention at this end? Raffles gave me an approving nod. I'm glad to see you spot the crux so quickly, Bunny. I have thought of your taking it round your place first, under cloud of night. But we are bound to be seen even so, and on the whole it would look far less suspicious in broad daylight. It will take you some twelve or fifteen minutes to drive to your bank in a growler. So if you are here with one at a quarter to ten to-morrow morning, that will exactly meet the case. But you must have a handsome this minute if you mean to prepare the way with those notes this afternoon. It was only to like the Raffles of those days to dismiss a subject and myself in the same breath, with a sudden nod and a brief grasp of the hand he was already holding out for mine. I had a great mind to take another of his cigarettes instead, for there were one or two points on which he had carefully omitted to enlighten me. Thus I had still to learn the bare direction of his journey, and it was all that I could do to drag it from him as I stood buttoning my coat and gloves. Scotland. He vouchsafed at last. At Easter, I remarked. To learn the language, he explained. I have no tongue but my own, you see, but I try to make up for it by cultivating every shade of that. Some of them have come in useful even to your knowledge, Bunny. What price my cockney that night in St. John's wood. I can keep up my end in stage Irish, real Devonshire, very fair Norfolk, and three distinct Yorkshire dialects. But my good Galloway scouts might be better, and I mean to make it so. You still haven't told me where to write to you. I'll write to you first, Bunny. At least let me see you off. I urged at the door. I promise not to look at your ticket if you tell me the train. The eleven fifty from Houston. Then I'll be with you by quarter to ten. And I left him without further parlay, reading his impatience in his face. Everything to be sure seemed clear enough, without that fuller discussion which I loved and Raffles hated. Yet I thought we might at least have dined together, and in my heart I felt just the least bit hurt, until it occurred to me as I drove to count the notes in my cigarette case. Resentment was impossible after that. The sum ran well into three figures, and it was plain that Raffles meant me to have a good time in his absence. So I told his lie with unction at my bank, and made due arrangements for the reception of his chest next morning. Then I repaired to our club, hoping he would drop in, and that we might dine together after all. In that I was disappointed. It was nothing, however, to the disappointment awaiting me at the Albany when I arrived in my four-wheeler at the appointed hour next morning. Mr. Raffles is gone, sir, said the porter with a note of reproach in his confidential undertone. The man was a favourite with Raffles, who used him and tipped him with consummate tact, and he knew me only less well. Gone, I echoed aghast, where on earth, too? Scotland, sir. Already? By the eleven-fifty last night. Last night I thought he meant eleven-fifty this morning. He knew you did, sir, when you never came, and he told me to tell you there was no such train. I could have rent my garments in mortification and annoyance with myself and Raffles. It was as much his fault as mine. But for his indecent haste in getting rid of me, his characteristic abruptness at the end, there would have been no misunderstanding or mistake. Any other message? I inquired morosely. Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as you was going to take charge of it, time he's away. And I have a friend ready to lend a hand in getting it on the cab. It's a rare heavy one, but Mr. Raffles and me could lift it all right between us, so I had to say me and my friend can. For my own part, I must confess that its weight concerned me less than the vast size of that infernal chest, as I drove with it past club and park at ten o'clock in the morning. So, as far back as I might in the four-wheeler, I could conceal neither myself nor my connection with the huge iron-clamped case upon the roof. In my heated imagination, its wood was glass through which all the world could see the guilty contents. Once an officious constable held up the traffic at our approach, and for a moment I put a blood-curdling construction upon this simple ceremony. Lowboy shouted after us, or if it was not after us I thought it was, and that their cry was stop thief. Enough said of one of the most unpleasant cab drives I ever had in my life, Horesco Referenz. At the bank, however, thanks to the foresight and liberality of raffles, all was smooth water. I paid my cab manhandsomely, gave a florin to the stout fellow in livery whom he helped with the chest, and could have pressed gold upon the genial clerk who laughed like a gentleman at my jokes about the Liverpool winners and the latest betting on the family plate. I was only disconcerted when he informed me that the bank gave no receipts for deposits of this nature. I am now aware that few London banks do, but it is pleasing to believe that at the time I looked, what I felt, as though all I valued upon earth were in jeopardy. I should have got through the rest of that day happily enough. Such was the load off my mind in hands, but for an extraordinary and most disconcerting note received late at night from raffles himself. He was a man who telegraphed freely, but seldom wrote a letter. Sometimes, however, he sent a scribbled line by special messenger, and overnight, evidently in the train, he had scribbled this one to post in the small hours at crew. Where, Prince of Professors, he was in the offing when I left, if slightest cause for uneasiness about bank, withdraw it once and keep in own rooms like Goodchap, AJR, PS, other reasons as you shall hear. There was a nice nightcap for a puzzled head. I had made rather an evening of it, what with increase of funds and decrease of anxiety. But this cryptic admonition spoiled the remainder of my night. It had arrived by a late post, and I only wished that I had left it all night in my letterbox. What exactly did it mean? And what exactly must I do? These were questions that confronted me with fresh force in the morning. The news of crochet did not surprise me. I was quite sure that raffles had been given good reason to bear him in mind before his journey, even if he had not again beheld the ruffian and the flesh. That ruffian and that journey might be more intimately connected than I had yet supposed. Raffles never told me all. Yet the solid fact held good, held better than ever, that I had seen his plunder safely planted in my bank. Crochet himself could not follow it there. I was certain he had not followed my cab. In the acute self-consciousness induced by that abominable drive, I should have known it in my bones if he had. I thought of the porter's friend who had helped me with the chest. No, I remembered him as well as I remembered crochet. They were quite different types. To remove that vile box from the bank, on top of another cab, with no stronger pretext and no further instructions, was not to be thought of for a moment. Yet I did think of it for hours. I was always anxious to do my part by raffles. He had done more than his by me, not once or twice, to-day or yesterday, but again and again from the very first. I need not state the obvious reasons I had for fighting shy of the personal custody of his accursed chest. Yet he had run worse risks for me, and I wanted him to learn that he too could depend on a devotion not unworthy of his own. In my dilemma I did what I have often done when at a loss for light and leading. I took hardly any lunch, but went to Northumberland Avenue and had a Turkish bath instead. I know nothing so cleansing to mind as well as body. Nothing better calculated to put the finest possible edge on such judgment as one may happen to possess. Even raffles, without an ounce to lose or a nerve to soothe, used to own a sensuous appreciation of the peace of mind in person to be gained in this fashion when all others failed. For me the fun began before the boots were off one's feet, the muffled footfalls, the thin sound of the fountain, even the spent swathed forms upon the couches, and the whole clean warm idle atmosphere were so much unction to my simpler soul. The half hour in the hot rooms I used to count but a strenuous step to a divine lassitude of limb and accompanying exultation of intellect. And yet, and yet, it was in the hottest room of all, in a temperature of 270 degrees Fahrenheit, that the bolts fell from the Palmol Gazette, which I had bought outside the bath. I was turning over the hot crisp pages and positively reveling in my fiery furnace when the following headlines and leaded paragraphs leapt to my eye with the force of a veritable blow. Bank robbers in the West End, daring and mysterious crime. An audacious burglary and dastardly assault have been committed on the premises of the city and suburban bank in Sloan Street, West. From the details so far to hand the robbery appears to have been deliberately planned and adroitly executed in the early hours of this morning. A night watchman named Fawcett states that between one and two o'clock he heard a slight noise in the neighborhood of the lower strong room, used as a repository for the plate and other possessions of various customers of the bank. Going down to investigate, he was instantly attacked by a powerful Ruffian, who succeeded in felling him to the ground before an alarm could be raised. Fawcett is unable to furnish any description of his assailant or assailants, but is of opinion that more than one were engaged in the commission of the crime. When the unfortunate man recovered consciousness, no trace of the thieves remained, with the exception of a single candle which had been left burning on the flags of the corridor. The strong room, however, had been opened, and it is feared the rate on the chests of plate and other valuables may prove to have been only too successful, in view of the Easter Exodus, which the thieves had evidently taken into account. The ordinary banking chambers were not even visited. Entry and exit are believed to have been affected through the coal cellar, which is also situated in the basement. Up to the present the police have affected no arrest. I sat practically paralyzed by this appalling news, and I swear that even in that incredible temperature it was a cold perspiration in which I sweltered from head to heel. Crochet, of course! Crochet once more upon the track of raffles in his ill-gotten gains. And once more I blamed raffles himself. His warning had come too late. He should have wired me at once not to take the box to the bank at all. He was a madman ever to have invested in so obvious and obtrusive a receptacle for treasure. It would serve raffles right if that and no other was the box which had been broken into by the thieves. But when I considered the character of his treasure I fairly shuddered in my sweat. It was a horde of criminal relics. Suppose his chest had indeed been rifled and emptied of every silver thing but one, that one remaining piece of silver, seen of men, was quite enough to cast raffles into the outer darkness of penal servitude. And Crochet was capable of it, of perceiving the insidious revenge, of taking it without compunction or remorse. There is only one course for me. I must follow my instructions to the letter and recover the chest at all hazards or be taken myself in the attempt. If only raffles had left me some address to which I could have wired some word of warning. But it was no use thinking of that. For the rest there was time enough up to four o'clock. And as yet it was not three. I determined to go through with my bath and make the most of it. Might it not be my last for years? But I was past enjoying even a Turkish bath. I had not the patience for a proper shampoo or sufficient spirit for the plunge. I weighed myself automatically. For that was a matter near my heart. But I forgot to give my man his sixpence until the reproachful intonation of his adieu recalled me to myself. And my couch in the cooling gallery, my favourite couch in my favourite corner, which I had secured with gusto on coming in. It was a bed of thorns, with hideous visions of a plank bed to follow. I ought to be able to add that I heard the burglary disgust on adjacent couches before I left. I certainly listened for it, and was rather disappointed more than once when I had held my breath in vain. But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed without further aggravation from without. Only as I drove to Sloan Street the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of a clue which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved to share. Already there was something in the nature of a run upon the Sloan Street branch of the city in suburban. A cab drove away with a chest of reasonable dimensions as mine drove up. While in the bank itself a lady was making a painful scene. As for the genial Clark Hood roared at my jokes the day before, he was mercifully in no mood for any more. But on the contrary, quite rude to me at sight. I've been expecting you all the afternoon, he said, you needn't look so pale. Is it safe? That Noah's Ark of yours? Yes, so I hear. They just got to it when they were interrupted, and they never went back again. Then it wasn't even opened? Only just begun on, I believe. Thank God! You may, we don't, growled the Clark. The manager says he believes your chest was at the bottom of it all. How could it be? I asked uneasily. By being seen on the cab a mile off and followed, said the Clark. Does the manager want to see me? I asked boldly. Not unless you want to see him, was the blunt reply. He's been at it with others all the afternoon. They haven't all got off as cheap as you. Then my silver shall not embarrass you any longer, I said grandly. I meant to leave it if it was all right, but after all you have said I certainly shall not. Let your man or men bring up the chest at once. I dare say they also have been at it with others all the afternoon, but I shall make this worth their while. I did not mind driving through the streets with the thing this time. My present relief was too overwhelming as yet to admit of pangs and fears for the immediate future. No summer sun had ever shown more brightly than that rather watery one of early April. There was a green and gold dust of buds and shoots on the trees as we passed the park. I felt greater things sprouting in my heart. Handsoms passed with schoolboys just home for the Easter holidays. Four-wheelers outward bound, with bicycles and perambulators atop. None that rode in them were half so happy as I, with the great load on my cab, but the greater one off my heart. Up Mount Street it just went into the lift. That was a stroke of luck, and the lift man and I between us carried it into my flat. It seemed a featherweight to me now. I felt a Samson in the exaltation of that hour, and I will not say what my first act was when I found myself alone with my white elephant in the middle of the room. Enough that the siphon was still doing its work when the glass slipped through my fingers to the floor. Bunny. It was Raffles. Yet for a moment I looked about me quite in vain. He was not at the window, he was not at the open door. And yet Raffles it had been, or at all events his voice, and that bubbling over with fun and satisfaction be his body were it might. In the end I dropped my eyes, and there was his living face in the middle of the lid of the chest, like that of the saint upon its charger. But Raffles was alive. Raffles was laughing as those vocal chords would snap. There was neither tragedy nor illusion in the apparition of Raffles. A life-sized jack in the box, he had thrust his head through a lid within the lid, cut by himself between the two iron bands that ran round the chest like the straps of a portmanteau. He must have been busy at it when I found him pretending to pack, if not far into that night, for it was a very perfect piece of work. And even as I stared without a word, and he crouched, laughing in my face, an arm came squeezing out, keys in hand. One was turned in either of the two great padlocks, the whole lid lifted, and outstepped Raffles like the conjurer he was. So you were the burglar, I exclaimed at last. Well, I am just as glad I didn't know. He had wrung my hand already, but at this he fairly mangled it in his. You dear little brick, he cried. That's the one thing of all things I longed to hear you say. How could you have behaved as you've done if you had known? How could any living man? How could you have acted as the polar star of all the stages could not have acted in your place? Remember that I have heard a lot, and as good as seen as much as I've heard. Bunny, I don't know where you were greatest at the Albany here or at your bank. I don't know where I was the most miserable, I rejoined, beginning to see the matter in a less perforated light. I know you don't credit me with much finesse, but I would undertake to be in the secret, and to do quite as well. The only difference would be in my own peace of mind, which of course doesn't count. But Raffles wagged away with his most charming and disarming smile. He was in old clothes, rather tattered and torn, and more than a little grimy as to the face and hands. But on the surface, wonderfully little the worse for his experience. And, as I say, this smile was the smile of the Raffles I loved best. You would have done your damnedest, Bunny. There is no limit to your heroism. But you forget the human equation and the pluckiest of the plucky. I couldn't afford to forget it, Bunny. I couldn't afford to give a point away. Don't talk as though I hadn't trusted you. I trusted my very life to your loyal tenacity. What do you suppose would have happened to me if you had let rip in that strong room? Do you think I ever would have crept out and given myself up? Yes, I'll have a peg for once. The beauty of all laws is in the breaking, even of the kind we make unto ourselves. I had a Sullivan for him, too, and in another minute he was spread out on my sofa, stretching his cramped limbs with infinite gusto, a cigarette between his fingers, a yellow bumper at hand on the chest of his triumph and my tribulation. Never mind when it occurred to me, Bunny. As a matter of fact, it was only the other day when I had decided to go away for the real reasons I have already given you. I may have made more of them to you than I do in my own mind, but at all events they exist, and I really did want the telephone in the electric light. But where did you stow the silver before you went? Nowhere. It was in my luggage, a portmanteau, cricket bag, and suitcase, full of very little else, and by the same token I left a lot at Euston, and one of us must fetch them this evening. I can do that, said I. But did you really go all the way to crew? Didn't you get my note? I went all the way to crew to post you those few lines, my dear Bunny. It's no use taking trouble if you don't take trouble enough. I wanted you to show the proper set of faces at the bank and elsewhere. And I know you did. Besides, there was an up train four minutes after mine got in. I simply posted my letter in crew station and changed from one train to the other. At two in the morning? Nearer three, Bunny. It was after seven when I slung in with the Daily Mail. The milk had beaten me by a short can. But even so I had two very good hours before you were due. And to think, I murmured, how you deceived me there. With your own assistance, said Raffles, laughing. If you had looked it up you would have seen there was no such train in the morning. And I never said there was. But I meant you to be deceived, Bunny, and I won't say I didn't. It was all for the sake of the side. Well, when you carded me away with such laudable dispatch, I had rather an uncomfortable half hour. But that was all just then. I had my candle, I had matches, and lots to read. It was quite nice in that strong room, until a very unpleasant incident occurred. Do tell me, my dear fellow. I must have another Sullivan, thank you, and a match. The unpleasant incident was steps outside in a key in the lock. I was desporting myself on the lid of the trunk at the time. I had barely time to knock out my light and slip down behind it. Luckily it was only another box of sorts, a jewel case, to be more precise. You shall see the contents in a moment. The Easter Exodus has done me even better than I dared to hope. His words reminded me of the Palmol Gazette, which I had brought in my pocket from the Turkish bath. I fished it out, all wrinkled and bloated by the heat of the hardest room, and handed it to raffles with my thumb upon the leaded paragraphs. Delightful, said he when he had read them. More thieves than one, and the coal cellar of all places is a way in. I certainly tried to give it that appearance. I left enough candle-grease there to make those coals burn bravely, but it looked up into a blind-back-yard bunny, and a boy of eight couldn't have squeezed through the trap. Long may that theory keep them happy at Scotland Yard. But what about the fellow you knocked out? I asked. That was not like you, raffles. Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa. His black hair tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against the light as those slashed out with the scissors. I know it wasn't bunny. He said regretfully. But things like that, as the poet will tell you, are really inseparable from victories like mine. It had taken me a couple of hours to break out of that strong room. I was devoting a third to the harmless task of simulating the appearance of having broken in, and it was then I heard the fellow's stealthy step. Some might have stood their ground and killed him. More would have bolted into a worse corner than they were in already. I left my candle where it was, crept to meet the poor devil, flattened myself against the wall, and let him have it as he passed. I acknowledged the foul blow, but here's evidence that it was mercifully struck. The victim has already told his tale. As he drained his glass, but shook his head when I wished to replenish it, raffles showed me the flask which he had carried in his pocket. It was still nearly full, and I found that he had otherwise provisioned himself over the holidays. On either Easter Day or Bank Holiday had I failed him, it had been his intention to make the best escape he could, but the risk must have been enormous, and it filled my glowing skin to think that he had not relied on me in vain. As for his gleaning's from such jewel cases, as were spending the Easter recess in the strong room of my bank, without going into rhapsodies or even particulars on the point, I may mention that they realized enough for me to join raffles on his deferred holiday in Scotland, besides enabling him to play more regularly for middle sex in the ensuing summer than had been the case for several seasons. In fine this particular exploit entirely justified itself in my eyes. In spite of the superfluous but invariable secretiveness which I could seldom help presenting in my heart, I never thought less of it than in the present instance. And my one mild reproach was on the subject of the phantom crochet. You let me think he was in the air again, I said, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that you had never heard of him since the day of his escape through your window. I never even thought of him, Bunny, until you came to see me the day before yesterday and put him into my head with your first words. The whole point was to make you as genuinely anxious about the plate as you must have seemed all along the line. Of course I see your point, I rejoined, but mine is that you labored it. You needn't have written me a downright lie about the fellow. Nor did I, Bunny. Not about the prince of professors being in the offing when you left? My dear Bunny, but so he was, cried raffles. Time was when I was none too pure an amateur. But after this I take leave to consider myself a professor of the professors. And I should like to see one more capable of skippering at their side. CHAPTER 3. THE REST CURE I had not seen raffles for a month or more, and I was sadly in need of his advice. My life was being made a burden to me by a wretch who had obtained a bill of sale over the furniture in Mount Street, and it was only by living elsewhere that I could keep the vulpine villain from my door. This cost ready money, and my balance at the bank was sorely in need of another lift from raffles. Yet, had he been in my shoes, he could not have vanished more effectually than he had done, both from the face of the town and from the ken of all who knew him. It was late in August. He never played first-class cricket after July, when a scholastic understudy took his place in the middle-sex eleven. And in vain did I scour my field and my sportsman for the country-house matches with which he willfully preferred to wind up the season. The matches were there, but never the magic name of A. J. Raffles. Nothing was known of him at the Albany. He had left no instructions about his letters either there or at the club. I began to fear that some evil had overtaken him. I scanned the features of captured criminals in the illustrated Sunday papers. On each occasion I breathed again, nor was anything worthy of raffles going on. I will not deny that I was less anxious on his account than on my own, but it was a double relief to me when he gave me a first characteristic sign of life. I had called at the Albany for the fiftieth time and returned to Piccadilly in my usual despair, when a street sloucher sidled up to me in furtive fashion and inquired if my name was what it is. Because this year's for you, he rejoined to my affirmation, and with that I felt a crumpled note in my palm. It was from raffles. I smoothed out the twisted scrap of paper, and on it were just a couple of lines in pencil. Meet me in Holland, walk at dark tonight. Walk up and down till I come. A-J-R. That was all? Not another syllable after all these weeks, and the few words scribbled in a wild caricature of his scholarly and dainty hand. I was no longer to be alarmed by this sort of thing. It was all so like the raffles I loved least. And to add to my indignation, when at length I looked up from the mysterious missive, the equally mysterious messenger had disappeared in a manner worthy of the whole affair. He was, however, the first creature I aspired under the tattered trees of Holland Walk that evening. Seen him yet. He inquired confidentially, blowing a vile cloud from his horrid pipe. No, I haven't. And I want to know where you've seen him, I replied sternly. Why did you run away like that the moment you had given me his note? Orders, orders, was the reply. I ain't such a juggins as to go again a toff makes it worth wild to do as I'm bid, and hold me tongue. And who may you be? I asked jealously. And what are you to Mr. Raffles? You silly-ass bunny, don't tell all Kensington that I'm in town, replied my tattered demalion, shooting up and smoothing out into a merrily shabby raffles. Here take my arm. I'm not so beastly as I look. But neither am I in town nor in England nor yet on the face of the earth, for all that's known of me to a single soul but you. Then where are you? I asked, between ourselves. I've taken a house near here for the holidays, where I'm going in for a rest cure of my own description. Why? Oh, for lots of reasons, my dear bunny. Among others, I have long had a wish to grow my own beard. Under the next lamppost you will agree that it's training on very nicely. Then you may not know it, but there's a canny man at Scotland Yard who has had a quiet eye on me longer than I like. I thought it about time to have an eye on him, and I stared him in the face outside the Albany this very morning. That was when I saw you go in and scribbled a line to give you when you came out. If he had caught us talking he would have spotted me at once. So you are lying low out here. I prefer to call it my rest cure. Returned raffles. And it's really nothing else. I've got a furnished house at a time when no one else would have dreamed of taking one in town, and my very neighbours don't know I'm there, though I'm bound to say there are hardly any of them at home. I don't keep a servant and do everything for myself. It's the next best fund to a desert island. Not that I make much work, for I'm really resting, but I haven't done so much solid reading for years. Rather a joke, bunny. The man whose house I've taken is one of Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons, and his studies a storehouse in criminology. It has been quite amusing to lie on one's back and have a good look at oneself as others fondly imagine they see one. But surely you get some exercise. I asked, for he was leading me at a good rate through the leafy byways of Campton Hill, and his step was as springy in his light as ever. The best exercise I've had in my life, said raffles. And you would never live to guess what it is. It's one of the reasons why I went in for this seedy kit. I follow cabs. Yes, bunny. I turn out about dusk and meet the expresses at Euston or King's Cross. That is, of course, I loaf outside and pick my cab, and often run my three or four miles for a barber less. And it not only keeps you in the very pink, if you're good they let you carry the trunks upstairs, and I've taken notes from the inside of more than one commodious residence, which will come in useful in the autumn. In fact, bunny, what with these new rotten houses, my beard, and my otherwise well-spent holiday, I hope to have quite a good autumn season before the erratic raffles turns up in town. I felt at high time to wedge in a word about my own far less satisfactory affairs. But it was not necessary for me to recount half my troubles. Raffles could be as full of himself as many a worse man, and I did not like his society the less for these human outpourings. They had rather the effect of putting me on better terms with myself, though bringing him down to my level for the time being. But his egoism was not even skin deep. It was rather a cloak, which Raffles could cast off quicker than any man I ever knew, as he did not fail to show me now. Why, bunny, this is the very thing, he cried. You must come and stay with me, and we'll lie low side by side. Only remember it really is a rest cure. I want to keep literally as quiet as I was without you. What do you say to forming ourselves at once into a practically silent order? You agree? Very well, then. Here's the street, and that's the house. It was ever such a quiet little street, turning out of one of those which climb right over the Pleasant Hill. One side was monopolized by the garden wall of an ugly but enviable mansion, standing in its own ground. Opposite were a solid file of smaller but taller houses. On neither side were there many windows alight, nor a solitary soul on the pavement or in the road. Raffles led the way to one of the small tall houses. It stood immediately behind a lamp post, and I could not but notice that a love lock of Virginia Creeper was trailing almost to the step, and that the bow window on the ground floor was closely shuttered. Raffles admitted himself with his latch-key, and I squeezed past him into a very narrow hall. I did not hear him shut the door, but we were no longer in the lamp light, and he pushed softly past me in his turn. I'll get a light. He muttered as he went. But to let him pass I had leaned against some electric switches, and while his back was turned I tried one of these without thinking. In an instant hall and staircase were flooded with light, in another Raffles was upon me in a fury, and all was darkness once more. He had not said a word, but I heard him breathing through his teeth. Nor was there anything to tell me now, the mere flash of electric light upon a hail of chaos and uncarpeted stairs, and on the face of Raffles as he sprang to switch it off, had been enough even for me. So this is how you have taken the house. I said in his own undertone, taken is good, taken is beautiful. Did you think I'd done it through an agent? He snarled. Upon my word, Bunny, I did give you the credit of supposing you saw the joke all the time. Why shouldn't you take a house? I asked, and pay for it. Why should I, he retorted, within three miles of the Albany? Besides, I should have had no peace, and I meant every word I said about my rest cure. You are actually staying in a house where you've broken in to steal? Not to steal, Bunny, I haven't stolen a thing, but staying here I certainly am, and having the most complete rest a busy man could wish. There'll be no rest for me. Raffles laughed as he struck a match. I had followed him into what would have been the back drawing-room in the ordinary little London house. The Inspector of Prisons had converted it into a separate study by filling the folding doors with book-shelves, which I scanned at once for the congenial works of which Raffles had spoken. I was not able to carry my examination very far. Raffles had lighted a candle, stuck by its own grease, in the crown of an opera hat, which he opened the moment the wick caught. The light thus struck the ceiling in an oval shaft, which left the rest of the room almost as dark as it had been before. Sorry, Bunny, said Raffles, sitting on one pedestal of a desk from which the top had been removed, and setting his makeshift lantern on the other. In broad daylight, when it can't be spotted from the outside, you shall have as much artificial light as you like. If you want to do some writing, that's the top of the desk on end against the mantelpiece. You'll never have a better chance so far as interruption goes. But no midnight oil or electricity. You observe that their last care was to fix up these shutters. They appear to have taken the top off the desk to get at them without standing on it. But the beastly thing wouldn't go all the way up, and the strip they leave would give us away to the backs of the other houses if we lit up after dark. Mind that telephone. If you touch the receiver they will know at the exchange that the house is not empty, and I wouldn't put it past the colonel to have told them exactly how long he was going to be away. He's pretty particular. Look at the strips of paper to keep the dust off his precious books. Is he a colonel? I asked, perceiving that Raffles referred to the absentee householder. Of sappers, he replied, and a VC into the bargain confound him. Got it at Raffles Drift. Prison governor or inspector ever since. Favorite recreation. What do you think? Revolver shooting. You can read all about him in his own Who's Who. A devil of a chapter tackle bunny when he's at home. And where is he now? I asked uneasily. And do you know he isn't on his way home? Switzerland. Replied Raffles chuckling. He wrote a one too many labels, and was considerate enough to leave it behind for our guidance. Well, no one ever comes back from Switzerland at the beginning of September, you know, and nobody ever thinks of coming back before the servants. When they turn up they won't get in. I keep the latch jammed, but the servants will think it's jammed itself. And while they're gone for the locksmith we shall walk out like gentlemen, if we haven't done so already. As you walked in, I suppose. Raffles shook his head in the dim light, to which my sight was growing inirred. No, Bunny. I regret to say I came in through the dormer window. They were painting next door but one. I never did like ladder work, but it takes less time than in picking a lock in the broad light of a street lamp. So they left you a latch key as well as everything else? No, Bunny. I was just able to make that for myself. I am playing at Robinson Crusoe, not the Swiss family Robinson. And now, my dear Friday, if you will kindly take off those boots, we can explore the island before we turn in for the night. The stairs were very steep and narrow, and they creaked alarmingly as raffles led the way up, with a single candle in the crown of the Colonel's hat. He blew it out before we reached the half-landing, where a naked window stared upon the backs of the houses in the next road, but lit it again at the drawing-room door. I just peeped in upon a semi-grand swathed in white, and a row of watercolors mounted in gold. An excellent bathroom broke our journey to the second floor. I'll have one tonight, said I, taking heart of a luxury unknown in my last sordid sanctuary. You'll do no such thing, snapped raffles. Have the goodness to remember that our island is one of a group inhabited by hostile tribes. You can fill the bath quietly if you try, but it empties under the study window and makes the very devil of a noise about it. No, Bunny, I bail out every drop and pour it away through the scullery sink, so you will kindly consult me before you turn a tap. Here's your room. Hold the light outside while I draw the curtains. It's the old chap's dressing-room. Now you can bring the glim. How's that for a jolly wardrobe? And look at his coats on their cross-trees and side. Dapper old dog, shouldn't you say? Mark the boots on the shelf above, and the little brass rail for his ties. Didn't I tell you he was particular, and wouldn't he simply love to catch us at his kit? Let's only hope it would give him an apoplexy, I said, shuddering. I shouldn't build on it, replied raffles. That's a big man's trouble, and neither you nor I could get into the old chap's clothes. But come into the best room, Bunny. You won't think me selfish if I don't give it up to you. Look at this, my boy. Look at this. It's the only one I use in all the house. I had followed him into a good room, with ample windows closely curtained, and he had switched on the light in a hanging lamp at the bedside. The rays fell from a thick green funnel in a plate full of strong light upon a table deep in books. I noticed several volumes of the invasion of the Crimea. That's where I rest the body and exercise the brain, said raffles. I have long wanted to read my King Lake from A to Z, and I manage about a volume a night. There's a style for you, Bunny. I love the punctilious thoroughness of the whole thing. One can understand its appeal to our careful Colonel. His name, did you say? Crutchly, Bunny. Colonel Crutchly, R-E-V-C. We'd put his valour to the test, said I, feeling more valiant myself after our tour of inspection. Not so loud on the stairs, whispered raffles. There's only one door between us and raffles stood still at my feet. And while he might, a deafening double knock had resounded through the empty house and to add to the utter horror of the movement, raffles instantly blew out the light. I heard my heart pounding, neither of us breathed. We were on our way down to the first landing, and for a moment we stood like mice. Then raffles heaved a deep sigh. And in the depths I heard the gate swing home. Only the postman, Bunny. He will come now and again, though they have obviously left instructions at the post office. I hope the old Colonel will let him have it when he gets back. I confess it gave me a turn. Turn, I gasped. I must have a drink if I die for it. My dear Bunny, that's no part of my rest cure. Then goodbye, I can't stand it. Feel my forehead, listen to my heart. Crusoe found a footprint, but he never heard a double knock at the street door. Better live in the midst of alarms, quoted raffles, than dwell in this horrible place. I must confess we get it both ways, Bunny. Yet I've nothing but tea in the house. And where do you make that? Aren't you afraid of smoke? There's a gas stove in the dining room. But surely to goodness, I cried, there's a cellar lower down. My dear good Bunny, said raffles, I've told you already that I didn't come in here on business. I came in for the cure. Not a penny will these people be the worse, except for their washing and their electric light. And I mean to leave enough to cover both items. Then, said I, since Brutus is such a very honorable man, we will borrow a bottle from the cellar and replace it before we go. Raffles slapped me softly on the back, and I knew that I had gained my point. It was often the case when I had the presence of heart and mind to stand up to him. But never was little victory of mine quite so grateful as this. Certainly it was a very small cellar, indeed a mere cupboard under the kitchen stairs, with a most ridiculous lock. Nor was this cupboard overstocked with wine. But I made out a jar of whiskey, a shelf of Zettinger, another of Claret, and a short one at the top, which presented a little battery of golden leafed necks and corks. Raffles said his hand no lower. He examined the labels while I held folded hat and naked light. Mum, 84, he whispered. G. H. Mum and A. D. 1884. I am no wine bibber, Bunny, as you know. But I hope you appreciate the specifications as I do. It looks to me like the only bottle, the last of its case. And it does seem a bit of a shame. But more shame for the miser who hoards in his cellar what was meant for mankind. Come, Bunny, lead the way. This baby is worth nursing. It would break my heart if anything happened to it now. So we celebrated my first night in the furnished house, and I slept beyond belief, slept as I never was to sleep there again. But it was strange to hear the milkman in the morning, and the postman knocking his way along the street an hour later, and to be passed over by one destroying angel after another. I had come down early enough, and watched through the drawing-room blind, the cleansing of all the steps in the street but ours. Yet Raffles had evidently been up some time. The house seemed far purer than overnight, as though he had managed to air it room by room, and from the one with the gas stove there came a frizzling sound that fattened the heart. I only would I had the pen to do justice to the week I spent indoors on Campton Hill. It might make amusing reading. The reality for me was far removed from the realm of amusement. Not that I was denied many a laugh of suppressed hardiness when Raffles and I were together, but half our time we very literally saw nothing of each other. I need not say whose fault that was. He would be quiet. He was in ridiculous and offensive earnest about his egregious cure. King Lake he would read by the hour together, day and night by the hanging lamp, lying upstairs on the best bed. Often I long to do something hysterically desperate, to rouse Raffles and bring the street about our ears. Once I did bring him about mine by striking a single note on the piano, with the soft pedal down. His neglect of me seemed wanton at the time. I have long realized that he was only wise to maintain silence at the expense of perilous amenities, and has fully justified in those secret and solitary sorties which made bad blood in my veins. He was far cleverer than I am at getting in and out, but even had I been his match for stealth and wariness, my company would have doubled every risk. I admit now that he treated me with quite as much sympathy as common caution would permit, but at the time I took it so badly as to plan a small revenge. But with his flourishing beard and the increasing shabbiness of the only suit he had brought with him to the house, there was no denying that Raffles had now the advantage of a permanent disguise. That was another of his excuses for leaving me as he did, and it was the one I was determined to remove. On a morning, therefore, when I awoke to find him flown again, I proceeded to execute a plan which I had already matured in my mind. Colonel Crutchley was a married man. There were no signs of children in the house. On the other hand, there was much evidence that the wife was a woman of fashion. Her dresses overflowed the wardrobe and her room. Large, flat cardboard boxes were to be found in every corner of the upper floors. She was a tall woman. I was not too tall a man. Like Raffles, I had not shaved on Camden Hill. That morning, however, I did my best with a very fair razor, which the Colonel had left behind in my room. Then I turned out the lady's wardrobe and the cardboard boxes and took my choice. I have fair hair, and at the time it was rather long. With a pair of Mrs. Crutchley's tongs and a discarded hair net, I was able to produce an almost immodest fringe. A big black hat with a wintry feather completed a headdress as unseasonable as my skating skirt and feather boa. Of course the good lady had all her summer frocks away with her in Switzerland. This was all the more annoying from the fact that we were having a very warm September. So I was not sorry to hear Raffles' return as I was busy adding a layer of powder to my heated countenance. I listened a moment on the landing, but as he went into the study I determined to complete my toilet in every detail. My idea was first to give him the fright he deserved, and secondly to show him that I was quite as fit to move abroad as he. It was, however, I confess, a pair of the Colonel's gloves that I was buttoning as I slipped down to the study even more quietly than usual. The electric light was on, as it generally was by day, and under it stood as formidable a figure as I have ever encountered in my life of crime. Imagine a thin but extremely wiry man, past middle age, brown and bloodless as any crab-apple, but as coolly translucent and as casually alert as Raffles at his worst. It was, it could only be, the fire-eating and prison-inspecting Colonel himself. He was ready for me, a revolver in his hand, taken, as I could see, from one of those locked drawers in the pedestal desk with which Raffles had refused to tamper. The drawer was open, and a bunch of keys depended from the lock. A grim smile crumpled up the parchment face, so that one eye was puckered out of sight, the other was propped open by an eyeglass, which, however, dangled on its string when I appeared. A woman begad, the warrior exclaimed, and where's the man you scarlet hussy? Not a word could I utter, but in my horror and amazement I have no sort of doubt that I acted the part I had assumed in a manner I never should have approached in happier circumstances. Come, come, my lass, cried the old oak veteran. I'm not going to put a bullet through you, you know. You tell me all about it, and I'll do you more good than harm. There, I'll put the nasty thing away, and God bless me if the brazen wench hasn't squeezed into the wife's kit. A squeeze it happened to have been, and in my emotion it felt more of one than ever. But his sudden discovery had not heightened the veteran's animosity against me. On the contrary, I caught a glint of humor through his gleaming glass, and he proceeded to pocket his revolver like the gentleman he was. Well, well, it's lucky I looked in, he continued. I only came round on the offchance of letters, but if I hadn't you'd have had another week in clover. Begad, though, I saw your handwriting the moment I'd got my nose inside. Now just be sensible and tell me where your good man is. I had no man. I was alone. Had broken in alone. There was not a soul in the affair much less the house except myself. So much I stuttered out in tones too hoarse to betray me on the spot. But the old man of the world shook a hard old head. Quite right not to give away your pal, said he. But I'm not one of the marines, my dear, and you mustn't expect me to swallow all that. Well, if you won't say you won't, and we must just send for those who will. In a flash I saw his fell design. The telephone directory lay open on one of the pedestals. He must have been consulting it when he heard me on the stairs. He had another look at it now, and that gave me my opportunity. With a presence of mind rare enough in me to excuse the boast, I flung myself upon the instrument in the corner and hurled it to the ground with all my might. I was myself sent spinning into the opposite corner at the same instant. But the instrument happened to be a standard of the more elaborate pattern, and I flattered myself that I had put the delicate engine out of action for the day. Not that my adversary took the trouble to ascertain. He was looking at me strangely in the electric light, standing intently on his guard, his right hand in the pocket where he had dropped his revolver. And I, I hardly knew it, but I caught up the first thing handy for self-defense, and was brandishing the bottle which Raffles and I had emptied in honour of my arrival on this fateful scene. Be shot if I don't believe you're the man himself, cried the Colonel shaking an armed fist in my face. You young wolf in sheep's clothing. Been at my wine, of course. Put down that bottle, down with it this instant, or I'll drill a tunnel through your middle. I thought so. Beak, Gad, sir. You shall pay for this. Don't you give me an excuse for parting you now, or I'll jump at the chance. My last bottle of eighty-four. You miserable blaggard, you unutterable beast! He had brow-beaten me into his own chair in his own corner. He was standing over me, empty bottle in one hand, revolver in the other, and murder itself in the purple puckers of his raging face. His language I will not even pretend to indicate. His skinny throat swelled and trembled with the monstrous volleys. He could smile at my appearance in his wife's clothes. He would have my blood for the last bottle of his best champagne. His eyes were not hidden now. They needed no eyeglass to prop them open. Large with fury, they stared from the livid mask. I watched nothing else. I could not understand why they should start out as they did. I did not try. I say I watch nothing else, until I saw the face of Raffles over the unfortunate officer's shoulder. Raffles had crept in unheard while our altercation was at its height, had watched his opportunity, and stolen on his man unobserved by either of us. While my own attention was completely engrossed, he had seized the Colonel's pistol-hand and twisted it behind the Colonel's back, until his eyes bulged out, as I have endeavored to describe. But the fighting man had some fight in him still, and scarcely had I grasped the situation when he hid out venomously behind with the bottle, which was smashed to bits on Raffles's shin. Then I threw my strength into the scale, and before many minutes we had our officer gagged and bound in his chair. But it was not one of our bloodless victories. Raffles had been cut to the bone by the broken glass, his leg bled wherever he limped, and the fierce eyes of the bound man followed the wet trail with gleams of sinister satisfaction. I thought I had never seen a man better bound or better gagged, but the humanity seemed to have run out of Raffles with his blood. He tore up tablecloths, he cut down blind cords, he brought the dust sheets from the drawing room, and multiplied every bond. The unfortunate man's legs were lashed to the legs of his chair, his arms to its arms, his thighs and back fairly welded to the leather. Either end of his own ruler protruded from his bulging cheeks. The middle was hidden by his mustache, and the gag kept in place by remorseless lashings at the back of his head. It was a spectacle I could not bear to contemplate at length, while from the first I found myself physically unable to face the ferocious gaze of those implacable eyes. But Raffles only laughed at my squeamishness, and flung a dust sheet over man and chair, and the stark outline drove me from the room. It was Raffles that is worst, Raffles as I never knew him before or after, a Raffles mad with pain and rage, and desperate as any other criminal in the land. Yet he had struck no brutal blow, he had uttered no disgraceful taunt, and probably not inflicted a tithe of the pain he himself had to bear. It is true that he was flagrantly in the wrong, his victim as laudably in the right. Nevertheless, granting the original sin of the situation, and given this unforeseen development, even I failed to see how Raffles could have combined greater humanity with any regard for our joint safety. And had his barbarities ended here, I for one should not have considered them an extraordinary aggravation of an otherwise minor offense. But in the broad daylight of the bathroom, which had a ground-glass window but no blind, I saw at once the serious nature of his wound, and of its effect upon the man. It will maim me for a month, said he, and if the VC comes out alive, the wound he gave may be identified with the wound I've got. The VC, there indeed was an aggravation to one illogical mind, but to cast a moment's doubt upon the certainty of his coming out alive. Of course he'll come out, said I, we must make up our minds to that. Did he tell you he was expecting the servants or his wife? If so, of course, we must hurry up. No, Raffles, I'm afraid he's not expecting anybody. He told me if he hadn't looked in for letters, we should have had the place to ourselves another week. That's the worst of it. Raffles smiled as he secured a regular putty of dusting sheet. No blood was coming through. I don't agree, Bunny, said he. It's quite the best of it, if you ask me. What, that he should die the death? Why not? And Raffles stared me out with a hard and merciless light in his clear blue eyes. A light that chilled the blood. If it's a choice between his life and our liberty, you're entitled to your decision and I'm entitled to mine, and I took it before I bound him as I did, said Raffles. I'm only sorry I took so much trouble if you're going to stay behind and put him in the way of releasing himself before he gives up the ghost. Perhaps you will go and think it over while I wash my bags and dry him at the gas stove. It will take me at least an hour, which will give me just time to finish the last volume of King Lake. Long before he was ready to go, however, I was waiting in the hall, clothed indeed, but not in a mind which I care to recall. Once or twice I peered into the dining room, where Raffles sat before the stove, without letting him hear me. He, too, was ready for the street at a moment's notice, but a steam ascended from his left leg as he sat immersed in his red volume. Into the study I never went again, but Raffles did, to restore to its proper shelf this and every other book he had taken out, and so destroy that clue to the manner of man who had made himself at home in the house. On his last visit I heard him whisk off the dust sheet, then he waited a minute, and when he came out it was to lead the way into the open air as though the accursed house belonged to him. We shall be seen, I whispered at his heels. Raffles, Raffles, there's a policeman at the corner. I know him intimately, replied Raffles, turning, however, the other way. He accosted me on Monday, when I explained that I was an old soldier of the Colonel's Regiment, who came in every few days to air the place, and send on any odd letters. You see, I have always carried one or two about me, redirected to that address in Switzerland, and when I showed them to him it was all right, but after that it was no use listening at the letter box for a clear coast, was it? I did not answer. There was too much to exasperate in these prodigies of cunning, which he could never trouble to tell me at the time, and I knew why he had kept his latest feats to himself. Unwilling to trust me outside the house, he had systematically exaggerated the dangers of his own walks abroad, and when to these injuries he added the insult of a patronizing compliment on my late disguise. I again made no reply. What's the good of you coming with me? He asked, when I had followed him across the main stream of Notting Hill. We may as well sink or swim together, I answered sullenly. Yes, well, I'm going to swim into the provinces, have a shave on the way, buy a new kit piecemeal, including a cricket bag, which I really want, and come limping back to the Albany with the same old strain in my bowling leg. I needn't add that I have been playing country-house cricket for the last month under an alias. It's the only decent way to do it when one's country has need of one. That's my itinerary bunny, but I really can't see why you should come with me. We may as well swing together, I growled. As you will, my dear fellow, replied raffles, but I begin to dread your company on the drop. I shall hold my pen on that provincial tour. Not that I joined raffles in any of the little enterprises with which you beguiled the breaks in our journey. Our last deed in London was far too great a weight upon my soul. I could see that gallant officer in his chair, see him at every hour of the day and night, now with his indomitable eyes meeting mine ferociously, now a stark outline underneath a sheet. The vision darkened my day and gave me sleepless nights. I was with our victim in all his agony. My mind would only leave him for that gallows of which raffles had said true things in jest. No, I could not face so vile a death lightly, but I could meet it somehow, better than I could endure a guilty suspense. In the watches of the second night I made up my mind to meet it half-way. That very morning, while still there might be time to save the life that we had left in jeopardy, and I got up early to tell raffles of my resolve. His room in the hotel where we were staying was littered with clothes and luggage new enough for any bridegroom. I lifted the locked cricket bag and found it heavier than a cricket bag has any right to be. But in the bed raffles was sleeping like an infant, his shaven self-worn, and the rest of the event, his shaven self once more. And when I shook him he awoke with a smile. Going to confess, eh, Bunny? Well, wait a bit. The local police won't thank you for knocking them up at this hour. And I bought a late addition which you ought to see. That must be it on the floor. You have a look in the stop-press column, Bunny. I found the place with a sunken heart, and this is what I read. WEST END OUTRAGE Colonel Crutchley, R-E-V-C, has been the victim of a dastardly outrage at his residence, Peter Street, Campton Hill, returning unexpectedly to the house, which had been left untenanted during the absence of the family abroad. It was found occupied by two ruffians, who overcame and secured the distinguished officer by the exercise of considerable violence. When discovered through the intelligence of the Kensington police, the gallant victim was gagged and bound hand and foot, and in an advanced state of exhaustion. THANKS TO THE Kensington police. Observed raffles as I read the last words aloud in my horror. They can't have gone when they got my letter. YOUR LETTER? I printed them a line while we were waiting for our train at Euston. They must have got it that night, but they can't have paid any attention to it until yesterday morning, and when they do, they take all the credit and give me no more than you did, Bunny. I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at the smiling, handsome face under the curls, and at last I understood. SO ALL THE TIME YOU NEVER MENT IT! SLOW MURDER? You should have known me better. A few hours in forced rest cure was the worst I wished him. You might have told me raffles. That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me. End of Chapter 3