A Thief in the Night............................................................................................................................................1

E. W. Hornung.........................................................................................................................................1

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 so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank,

across which you may conceive 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 today. 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

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 blindfold 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 have 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

"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 Caf�

And at the Caf� 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 believed, still

a sneaking softness for me, but her illustrious 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

"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."

"Well, it's about the most palatial of the lot. The old ruffian is as rich as Croesus. It's a countryplace in

I recoiled from the open cigarettecase 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

"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

"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 honor if old Carruthers

Raffles struck a match, and handed it first to me. "I mean to say, my dear Bunny, that Palace 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

"But who are they, Raffles? Who has taken the house, if old Carruthers has moved, and how do you know

"In answer to your first question Lord Lochmaben," 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 condescend to read, you can't be expected 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 Lochmaben has just as

good diamonds as Mrs. Carruthers ever had; and the chances are that she keeps them where Mrs. Carruthers

As it happened, I could, since I knew from his niece that it was one on which Mr. Carruthers had been a

faddist 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 groundfloor 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 in 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 Lochmabens 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

"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 happen to know because I once had the key when

"Thank you, old chap," said Raffles sympathetically. "That's all I shall want from you, Bunny, my boy.

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

"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

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

"I really think you had better stay away," said Raffles as we reached the other curb. "I've no use for you this

"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

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

"You little rabbit!" he chuckled. "You shall have your share, whether you come or not; but, seriously, don't

"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's Wednesday, and she hasn't answered

"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.

"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 is

The hand that bowled the most puzzling ball in England (once it found its length) descended on my shoulder

"Very well, Bunny! That's finished; but your blood be on your own pate 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

On this occasion I fell swiftly and hopelessly out of love with the prospect I had so gratuitously 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 from 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 Lochmaben 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 that 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 jeweller 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, though longer that 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 Wattses and Rossettis hung

It must have been one o'clock before we drove in a hansom 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, whence 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

"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

"Another Alick Carruthers," I murmured, recalling the one I liked least of all the household, as I remembered

"They might be brothers," rejoined Raffles, who knew all the loose fish about town. "Well, I'm not sure that I

"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

And he jingled the skeleton bunch that he carried on a chain as honest men carry their latchkeys.

"True. You might be useful to me there. But I still don't like leading you in where it isn't absolutely

"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

"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 the plank! Gravel makes a noise, and flowerbeds tell a tale. Wait

It was the sweep of the drive, and in the dim light from above the door, the soft gravel, ploughed into ridges

by the night's wheels, threatened an alarm at every step. Yet Raffles, with me in his arms, crossed the zone of

"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 let us into the porch. And

as we stood together on the mat, as he was gradually closing the door, a clock within chimed a halfhour in

fashion so thrillingly familiar to me that I caught Raffles by the arm. My halfhours of happiness had flown

to just such chimes! I looked wildly about me in the dim light. Hatstand and oak settee belonged equally to

my past. And Raffles was smiling in my face as he held the door wide for my escape.

"I did nothing of the sort," he replied. "The furniture's the furniture of Hector Carruthers; but the house is the

He had stooped, and was smoothing out the discarded envelope of a telegram. "Lord Lochmaben," 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

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 studydoor, I with the tiny lantern and the bottle of rockoil, 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

Raffle's next care was to muffle the bell on the shuttered window (with a silk handkerchief from the

hatstand) 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

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, I on the threshold, Raffles at my elbow, while one carrying a candle crept down

The studydoor 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 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 clapped

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 balldress, 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 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

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

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 steal! 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 hall 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

"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 studywindow. "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 mere

cupboard under the stairs, where hats and coats were hung; and it was she who shut the door on me with a

Doors were already opening overhead, voices calling, voices answering, the alarm running like wildfire from

room to room. Soft 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 bete noir, Alick Carruthers,

thick as might be expected of the dissipated dog, yet daring to stutter out her name. And then I heard, without

catching, her low reply; it was in answer to the somewhat stern questioning of quite another voice; and from

I did not hear her answer. I conceive her as simply pointing up the stairs. In any case, about my very ears

once more, there now followed such a patter and tramp of bare and booted feet as renewed in me 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.

This in a whisper, without bitterness, without contempt, but with a sudden wild entreaty 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,

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 eveningclothes 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.

"Hulloa!" he cried. "So you've come up to join the dance as well! Had a look inside, have you? You'll be

better employed in helping to draw the cover in front here. It's all right, officer only another gentleman

And we made a brave show of assisting in the futile search, until the arrival of more police, and a broad hint

from an irritable sergeant, gave us an excellent excuse for going off arminarm. But it was Raffles who had

thrust his arm through mine. I shook him off as we left the scene of shame behind.

"I had the very devil of a squeak for it," he went on. "I did the hurdles over two or three gardenwalls, but so

did the flyer who was on my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight 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 none right in. I

"It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie to me, and to inveigle 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

"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he. "I did my level best to leave you

"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."

"You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been done. Raffles Raffles don't you know

"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

"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

And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring myself to say the words.

"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 have been waiting for all these days! I should have got it tomorrow.

Now I shall never get it, never hear from her again, nor 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

I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The hansom 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 Lochmaben, and anybody but you would have

"If you read your paper there would be no need; but if you want to know, old Carruthers headed the list of the

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 honor between us, if only of the kind understood to obtain 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

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 Lochmaben peerage as a new

creation, and of the heir to it in a fashion only applicable to Alick Carruthers. 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 emprise; 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 honor 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 jewelrobbery 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

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 presents I had ever made her. They were books;

jewellery had been tabooed by the authorities. And the books came back without a word, though the parcel

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 honor, 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

exchequer. 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 gayety, his humor, 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

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 gaze 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.

"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

"I don't see why she should," said I, honestly enough, yet with the irritation of a less just feeling deep down in

"She sent me back my poor presents, 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

And still, with all the magic mischief of his smile, there was that touch of sadness which I was yet to read

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 Sheffield, 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 winecooler, 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 hardihood to melt or sell. He could 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 secondmurderer every time. I had

called in response to a telegram in which he stated that he was going out of town, and must say goodby 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

"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."

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 doyen of an older

"That remains to be seen," was the measured reply; "and I for one have not set naked eye 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

"Not old Crawshay!" said I. "He's far too good a man to be taken twice. I should call him the very prince of

"Should you?" said Raffles coldly, with as cold an eye looking into mine. "Then you had better prepare to

"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

Raffles bestowed the cachet of his smile on my description of his motley plate. He joined me in one of his

"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I am going to have these rooms freshened up

with a potful of paint, the electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long."

"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 am pining 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

"So I should have thought," rejoined Raffles. "Yet you see the merit of my plan. I shall leave every mortal

"Except that," said I, kicking the huge oak case with the iron bands and clamps, and the baize lining fast

"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, 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 a good mind to leave with them till you marry

I winced at this, but consented to the rest after a moment's consideration. After all, and for more reasons that 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,

"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?"

"I'm glad to see you spot the crux so quickly, Bunny. I have thought of your taking it round to 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 tomorrow morning, that will exactly meet the case.

But you must have a hansom this minute if you mean to prepare the way with those notes this afternoon!"

It was only too 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

"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 Scots might be better, and I mean

"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!"

And I left him without further parley, 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 fourwheeler at the appointed hour

"Mr. Raffles 'as gawn, sir," said the porter, with a note of reproach in his confidential undertone. The man

was a favorite with Raffles, who used him and tipped him with consummate tact, and he knew me only less

"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

"Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as you was goin' to take chawge of it time he's away, and I've a

friend ready to lend a 'and in getting it on the cab. It's a rare 'eavy 'un, but Mr. Raffles an' me could lift it all

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. Sit as far back as I might in the fourwheeler, I

could conceal neither myself nor my connection with the huge ironclamped 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 bloodcurdling construction

upon the simple ceremony. Low boys 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 cabdrives I ever had in my life.

At the bank, however, thanks to the foresight and liberality of Raffles, all was smooth water. I paid my

cabman handsomely, 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 and 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 Crewe:

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 Crawshay 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 in 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. Crawshay

himself could not follow it there. I was certain he had not followed my cab: in the acute selfconsciousness

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 remember him as well as I remembered Crawshay; they were

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, today 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

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 and 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 halfhour in the hotrooms I used to count but a strenuous step to a divine lassitude of limb and

accompanying exaltation of intellect. And yet and yet it was in the hottest room of all, in a temperature of

270� Fahrenheit, that the bolt fell from the Pall Mall Gazette which I had bought outside the bath.

I was turning over the hot, crisp pages, and positively revelling in my fiery furnace, when the following

headlines and leaded paragraphs leapt to my eye with the force of a veritable blow:

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. Crawshay, of course! Crawshay once more upon

the track of Raffles and his illgotten gains! And once more I blamed Raffles himself: his warning had come

too late: he should have wired to 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

Yet, when I considered the character of his treasure, I fairly shuddered in my sweat. It was a hoard 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 Crawshay was capable of it of perceiving the insidious revenge of taking it without

There was 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

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 favorite couch, in my favorite corner, which I had secured with gusto on coming in it

I ought to be able to add that I heard the burglary discussed 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 Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a clew" which spelt for me a

Already there was something in the nature of a "run" up on the Sloane Street branch of the City and

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 clerk who had 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," said he. "You needn't look so pale."

"That Noah's Ark of yours? Yes, so I hear; they'd just got to it when they were interrupted, and they never

"You may; we don't," growled the clerk. "The manager says he believes your chest was at the bottom of it

"Not unless you want to see him," was the blunt reply. "He's been at it with others all. the afternoon, and they

"Then my silver shall not embarrass you any longer," said I 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 shone more brightly than

that rather watery one of early April. There was a greenandgold dust of buds and shoots on the trees as we

passed the park. I felt greater things sprouting in my heart. Hansoms passed with schoolboys just home for

the Easter holidays, fourwheelers 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.

At Mount Street it just went into the lift; that was a stroke of luck; and the liftman 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.

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 where it might. In the end I dropped my eyes, and there was his living face in the

But Raffles was alive, Raffles was laughing as though his vocal cords would snap there was neither tragedy

nor illusion in the apparition of Raffles. A lifesize Jackinthebox, 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

"So you were the burglar!" I exclaimed at last. "Well, I am just as glad I didn't know."

"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

"I don't know where I was most miserable," I rejoined, beginning to see the matter in a less perfervid 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, his 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 in 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 me rip in that strongroom? Do you think I would ever

have crept out and given myself up? Yes, I'll have a peg for once; the beauty of all. laws is in the breaking,

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

"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 and the electric light."

"Nowhere; it was my luggage a portmanteau, cricketbag, and suitcase full of very little else and by the

same token I left the lot at Euston, and one of us must fetch them this evening."

"Didn't you get my note? I went all. the way to Crewe 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 uptrain four minutes after mine got in. I simply posted

"Nearer three, Bunny. It was after seven when I slung in with the Daily Mail. The milk had beaten me by a

"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 carted me away with such laudable despatch,

I had rather an uncomfortable halfhour, but that was all. just then. I had my candle, I had matches, and lots

to read. It was quite nice in that strongroom until a very unpleasant incident occurred."

"I must have another Sullivan thank you and a match. The unpleasant incident was steps outside and a

key in the lock! I was disporting 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 jewelcase, 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 Pall Mall 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 hottest room, and handed it to Raffles with my

"Delightful!" said he when he had read them. "More thieves than one, and the coalcellar of all. places as a

way in! I certainly tried to give it that appearance. I left enough candlegrease there to make those coals burn

bravely. But it looked up into a blind backyard, Bunny, and a boy of eight couldn't have squeezed through the

"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

"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 strongroom; 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 acknowledge the foul blow, but here's

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

As for his gleanings from such jewelcases as were spending the Easter recess in the strongroom 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 Middlesex 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 resenting in my heart I never thought less of it than in the present instance; and my

"You let me think he was in the air again," I said. "But it wouldn't surprise me to find that you had never

"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

"Of course I see your point," I rejoined; "but mine is that you labored it. You needn't have written me a

"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

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.

It was late in August; he never played firstclass cricket after July, when, a scholastic understudy took his

place in the Middlesex eleven. And in vain did I scour my Field and my Sportsman for the countryhouse

matches with which he wilfully 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

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.

"'Cause this 'ere's for you," he rejoined to my affirmative, 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 espied under the tattered trees of Holland Walk that evening.

"Seen 'im 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

"Orders, orders," was the reply. "I ain't such a juggins as to go agen a toff as makes it worf while to do as I'm

"You silly ass, Bunny, don't tell all. Kensington that I'm in town!" replied my tatterdemalion, shooting up and

smoothing out into a merely 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

"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 mayn't 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

"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 neighbors 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 fun 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 study's a storehouse of criminology. It has been quite amusing to

lie on one's back and have a good look at one's self 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

"The best exercise I ever 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 bob or 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 Rowton houses, my beard, and my

otherwise wellspent holiday, I hope to have quite a good autumn season before the erratic Raffles turns up

I felt it 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, through bringing him down to my level for the time being. But his egoism was not even skindeep; it

was rather a cloak, which Raffles could cast off quicker than any man I ever knew, as he did not fail to show

"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

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 lamppost, and I could not but notice that a lovelock of Virginia creeper was trailing

almost to the step, and that the bowwindow on the ground floor was closely shuttered. Raffles admitted

himself with his latchkey, 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 lamplight, 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 dark once more. He had not said a word,

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," said I 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 you the credit of

"Why should I," he retorted, "within three miles of the Albany? Besides, I should have had no peace; and I

"Not to steal, Bunny! I haven't stolen a thing. But staying here I certainly am, and having the most complete

Raffles laughed as he struck a match. I had followed him into what would have been the back drawingroom

in the ordinary little London house; the inspector of prisons had converted it into a separate study by filling

the folding doors with bookshelves, 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 mantlepiece. 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 'em without standing on it; but the beastly things 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

"Is he a colonel?" I asked, perceiving that Raffles referred to the absentee householder.

"Of sappers," he replied, "and a V.C. into the bargain, confound him! Got it at Rorke's 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 chap to 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 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

"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."

"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

The stairs were very steep and narrow, and they creaked alarmingly as Raffles led the way up, with the single

candle in the crown of the colonel's hat. He blew it out before we reached the halflanding, where a naked

window stared upon the backs of the houses in the next road, but lit it again at the drawingroom door. I just

peeped in upon a semigrand swathed in white and a row of water colors mounted in gold. An excellent

"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 bale 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 dressingroom. Now you can bring the glim. How's that for a

jolly wardrobe? And look at his coats on their crosstrees inside: 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

"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 bedroom, 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 plateful 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 Kinglake

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?

"We'd put his valor 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 well he might! A deafening double knock had resounded through the empty

house; and to add to the utter horror of the moment, 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

postoffice. I hope the old colonel will let them have it when he gets back. I confess it gave me a turn."

"Then goodby! I can't stand it; feel my forehead; listen to my heart! Crusoe found a footprint, but he never

"'Better live in the midst of alarms,'" quoted Raffles, "'than dwell in this horrible place.' I must confess we get

"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

"Then," said I, "since Brutus is such a very honorable man, we will borrow a bottle from the cellar, and

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

Zeltinger, another of claret, and a short one at the top which presented a little battery of goldenleafed necks

and corks. Raffles set his hand no lower. He examined the labels while I held folded hat and naked light.

"Mumm, '84!" he whispered. "G. H. Mumm, and A.D. 1884! I am no winebibber, 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

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 early 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 drawingroom 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 gasstove there came a frizzling sound that

I only would I had the pen to do justice to the week I spent indoors on Campden 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 heartiness 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. Kinglake he would read by the hour together, day and night, by

the hanging lamp, lying upstairs on the best bed. There was daylight enough for me in the drawingroom

below; and there I would sit immersed in criminous tomes weakly fascinated until I shivered and shook in my

stocking soles. Often I longed 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 as fully justified in those secret and solitary sorties which

made bad blood in my veins. He was far cleverer than I 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

What 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 Campden 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

I have fair hair, and at the time it was rather long. With a pair of Mrs. Crutchley's tongs and a discarded

hairnet, 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 ever I encountered in my life of crime.

Imagine a thin but extremely wiry man, past middle age, brown and bloodless as any crabapple, but as coolly

truculent and as casually alert as Raffles at his worst. It was, it could only be, the fireeating and

prisoninspecting 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

"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 my 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 it'll do you more good than harm. There, I'll put the nasty thing away and God bless

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

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

"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

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 selfdefence, and was brandishing the bottle which

"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! Begad, sir, you shall pay for this! Don't you give me an

excuse for potting you now, or I'll jump at the chance! My last bottle of '84 you miserable blackguard you

He had browbeaten 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 had 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 started 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 watched 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 pistolhand 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

hit 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 blindcords, he brought the dustsheets from the

drawingroom, 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 moustache 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 dustsheet over man and chair; and the stark outline

It was Raffles at his 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 had himself 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 offence. But in the broad daylight

of the bathroom, which had a groundglass window but no blind, I saw at once the serious nature of his

"It will maim me for a month," said he; "and if the V.C. comes out alive, the wound he gave may be

The V.C.! There, indeed, was an aggravation to one illogical mind. But to cast a moment's doubt upon the

"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

Raffles smiled as he secured a regular puttee of dustsheeting. No blood was coming through.

And Raffles stared me out with a hard and merciless light in his clear blue eyes a light that chilled the

"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 'em at the gas stove. It will take me at least an hour, which will

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 diningroom 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 clew to the manner of man who had made

himself at home in the house. On his last visit I heard him whisk off the dustsheet; 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

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 your coming with me he asked, when I had followed him across the main stream of

"Yes? Well, I'm going to swim into the provinces, have a shave on the way, buy a new kit piecemeal,

including a cricketbag (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 countryhouse cricket for the last month under an

alias; it's the only decent way to do it when one's county has need of one. That's my itinerary, Bunny, but I

"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

he 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 halfway, that very morning, while still there might be time to save the life that

His room in the hotel where we were staying was littered with clothes and luggage new enough for any

bridegroom; I lifted the locked cricketbag, and found it heavier than a cricketbag has any right to be. But

in the bed Raffles was sleeping like an infant, his shaven self once more. And when I shook him he awoke

"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 edition which you ought to see; that must be it on the floor. You have a look in the

"Thanks to the Kensington police," observed Raffles, as I read the last words aloud in my horror. "They can't

"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

I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at the smiling, handsome face under the curls. And at last I

"Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours' enforced Rest Cure was the worst I wished

"But who are they, Raffles, and where's their house? There's no such club on the list in Whitaker."

"The Criminologists, my dear Bunny, are too few for a local habitation, and too select to tell their name in

Gath. They are merely so many solemn students of contemporary crime, who meet and dine periodically at

And I brandished the invitation which had brought me hotfoot to the Albany: it was from the Right Hon. the

Earl of Thornaby, K.G.; and it requested the honor of my company at dinner, at Thornaby House, Park Lane,

to meet the members of the Criminologists' Club. That in itself was a disturbing compliment: judge then of

"They have got it into their heads," said he, "that the gladiatorial element is the curse of most modern sport.

They tremble especially for the professional gladiator. And they want to know whether my experience tallies

"They quote the case of a league player, sus per coll., and any number of suicides. It really is rather in my

"In yours, if you like, but not in mine," said I. "No, Raffles, they've got their eye on us both, and mean to put

"I almost wish you were right, Bunny! It would be even better fun than I mean to make it as it is. But it may

console you to hear that it was I who gave them your name. I told them you were a far keener criminologist

than myself. I am delighted to hear they have taken my hint, and that we are to meet at their gruesome board."

"If you don't," rejoined Raffles, "you will miss some sport after both our hearts. Think of it, Bunny! These

fellows meet to wallow in all. the latest crimes; we wallow with them as though we knew more about it than

themselves. Perhaps we don't, for few criminologists have a soul above murder; and I quite expect to have the

privilege of lifting the discussion into our own higher walk. They shall give their morbid minds to the fine art

of burgling, for a change; and while we're about it, Bunny, we may as well extract their opinion of our noble

selves. As authors, as collaborators, we will sit with the flower of our critics, and find our own level in the

expert eye. It will be a piquant experience, if not an invaluable one; if we are sailing too near the wind, we are

sure to hear about it, and can trim our yards accordingly. Moreover, we shall get a very good dinner into the

"We have a pavilion acquaintance, when it suits my lord," replied Raffles, chuckling. "But I know all. about

him. He was president one year of the M.C.C., and we never had a better. He knows the game, though I

believe he never played cricket in his life. But then he knows most things, and has never done any of them.

He has never even married, and never opened his lips in the House of Lords. Yet they say there is no better

brain in the August assembly, and he certainly made us a wonderful speech last time the Australians were

over. He has read everything and (to his credit in these days) never written a line. All. round he is a whale for

I now longed to behold this remarkable peer, in the flesh, and with the greater curiosity since another of the

things which he evidently never did was to have his photograph published for the benefit of the vulgar. I told

Raffles that I would dine with him at Lord Thornaby's, and he nodded as though I had not hesitated for a

moment. I see now how deftly he had disposed of my reluctance. No doubt he had thought it all. out before:

his little speeches look sufficiently premeditated as I set them down at the dictates of an excellent memory.

Let it, however, be borne in mind that Raffles did not talk exactly like a Raffles book: he said the things, but

he did not say them in so many consecutive breaths. They were punctuated by puffs from his eternal

cigarette, and the punctuation was often in the nature of a line of asterisks, while he took a silent turn up and

down his room. Nor was he ever more deliberate than when he seemed most nonchalant and spontaneous. I

came to see it in the end. But these were early days, in which he was more plausible to me than I can hope to

And I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it was, in fact, the one period at which I can remember his coming

round to see me more frequently than I went round to him. Of course he would come at his own odd hours,

often just as one was dressing to go out and dine, and I can even remember finding him there when I returned,

for I had long since given him a key of the flat. It was the inhospitable month of February, and I can recall

more than one cosy evening when we discussed anything and everything but our own malpractices; indeed,

there were none to discuss just then. Raffles, on the contrary, was showing himself with some industry in the

"There is nothing like it at this time of year," said he. "In the summer I have my cricket to provide me with

decent employment in the sight of men. Keep yourself before the public from morning to night, and they'll

Our behavior, in fine, had so long been irreproachable that I rose without misgiving on the morning of Lord

Thornaby's dinner to the other Criminologists and guests. My chief anxiety was to arrive under the aegis of

my brilliant friend, and I had begged him to pick me up on his way; but at five minutes to the appointed hour

there was no sign of Raffles or his cab. We were bidden at a quarter to eight for eight o'clock, so after all. I

Fortunately, Thornaby House is almost at the end of my street that was; and it seemed to me another fortunate

circumstance that the house stood back, as it did and does, in its own August courtyard; for, as I was about to

knock, a hansom came twinkling in behind me, and I drew back, hoping it was Raffles at the last moment. It

was not, and I knew it in time to melt from the porch, and wait yet another minute in the shadows, since

others were as late as I. And out jumped these others, chattering in stage whispers as they paid their cab.

"Thornaby has a bet about it with Freddy Vereker, who can't come, I hear. Of course, it won t be lost or won

"I don't believe he's the other thing," said a voice as brusque as the first was bland. "I believe it's all. bunkum.

"I think you'll find it's more than that," rejoined the other, as the doors opened and swallowed the pair.

I flung out limp hands and smote the air. Raffles bidden to what he had well called this "gruesome board,"

not as a cricketer but, clearly, as a suspected criminal! Raffles wrong all. the time, and I right for once in my

original apprehension! And still no Raffles in sight no Raffles to warn no Raffles, and the clocks striking

Well may I shirk the psychology of such a moment, for my belief is that the striking clocks struck out all.

power of thought and feeling, and that I played my poor part the better for that blessed surcease of intellectual

sensation. On the other hand, I was never more alive to the purely objective impressions of any hour of my

existence, and of them the memory is startling to this day. I hear my mad knock at the double doors; they fly

open in the middle, and it is like some sumptuous and solemn rite. A long slice of silkenlegged lackey is

seen on either hand; a very prelate of a butler bows a benediction from the sanctuary steps. I breathe more

freely when I reach a booklined library where a mere handful of men do not overflow the Persian rug before

the fire. One of them is Raffles, who is talking to a large man with the brow of a demigod and the eyes and

Lord Thornaby stared at me with inscrutable stolidity as we shook hands, and at once handed me over to a

tall, ungainly man whom he addressed as Ernest, but whose surname I never learned. Ernest in turn

introduced me, with a shy and clumsy courtesy, to the two remaining guests. They were the pair who had

driven up in the hansom; one turned out to be Kingsmill, Q.C.; the other I knew at a glance from his

photographs as Parrington, the backwoods novelist. They were admirable foils to each other, the barrister

being plump and dapper, with a Napoleonic cast of countenance, and the author one of the shaggiest dogs I

have ever seen in eveningclothes. Neither took much stock of me, but both had an eye on Raffles as I

exchanged a few words with each in turn. Dinner, however, was immediately announced, and the six of us

had soon taken our places round a brilliant little table stranded in a great dark room.

I had not been prepared for so small a party, and at first I felt relieved. If the worst came to the worst, I was

fool enough to say in my heart, they were but two to one. But I was soon sighing for that safety which the

adage associates with numbers. We were far too few for the confidential duologue with one's neighbor in

which I, at least, would have taken refuge from the perils of a general conversation. And the general

conversation soon resolved itself into an attack, so subtly concerted and so artistically delivered that I could

not conceive how Raffles should ever know it for an attack, and that against himself, or how to warn him of

his peril. But to this day I am not convinced that I also was honored by the suspicions of the club; it may have

It was Lord Thornaby himself who fired the first shot, over the very sherry. He had Raffles on his right hand,

and the backwoodsman of letters on his left. Raffles was hemmed in by the law on his right, while I sat

between Parrington and Ernest, who took the foot of the table, and seemed a sort of feudatory cadet of the

noble house. But it was the motley lot of us that my lord addressed, as he sat back blinking his baggy eyes.

"Mr. Raffles," said he, "has been telling me about that poor fellow who suffered the extreme penalty last

March. A great end, gentlemen, a great end! It is true that he had been unfortunate enough to strike a jugular

vein, but his own end should take its place among the most glorious traditions of the gallows. You tell them

"I tell the tale as I heard it last time I played at Trent Bridge; it was never in the papers, I believe," said

Raffles gravely. "You may remember the tremendous excitement over the Test Matches out in Australia at

the time: it seems that the result of the crucial game was expected on the condemned man's last day on earth,

and he couldn't rest until he knew it. We pulled it off, if you recollect, and he said it would make him swing

"The chaplain remonstrated with him on his excitement over a game at such a time, and the convict is said to

have replied: 'Why, it's the first thing they'll ask me at the other end of the drop!'"

The story was new even to me, but I had no time to appreciate its points. My concern was to watch its effect

upon the other members of the party. Ernest, on my left, doubled up with laughter, and tittered and shook for

several minutes. My other neighbor, more impressionable by temperament, winced first, and then worked

himself into a state of enthusiasm which culminated in an assault upon his shirtcuff with a joiner's pencil.

Kingsmill, Q.C., beaming tranquilly on Raffles, seemed the one least impressed, until he spoke.

"I am glad to hear that," he remarked in a high bland voice. "I thought that man would die game."

"I led for the Crown," replied the barrister, with a twinkle. "You might almost say that I measured the poor

The point must have been quite unpremeditated; it was not the less effective for that. Lord Thornaby looked

askance at the callous silk. It was some moments before Ernest tittered and Parrington felt for his pencil; and

in the interim I had made short work of my hock, though it was Johannisberger. As for Raffles, one had but to

"In itself, I have heard, it was not a sympathetic case?" was the remark with which he broke the general

"It would have been to me," vowed our author, while the barrister merely smiled. "I should have been very

"I don't care," said the uncouth scribe. "They didn't break in for that. They never thought of scragging her.

The foolish old person would make a noise, and one of them tied too tight. I call it jolly bad luck on them."

"On quiet, harmless, wellbehaved thieves," added Lord Thornaby, "in the unobtrusive exercise of their

And, as he turned to Raffles with his puffy smile, I knew that we had reached that part of the programme

which had undergone rehearsal: it had been perfectly timed to arrive with the champagne, and I was not

afraid to signify my appreciation of that small mercy. But Raffles laughed so quickly at his lordship's humor,

and yet with such a natural restraint, as to leave no doubt that he had taken kindly to my own old part, and

was playing the innocent inimitably in his turn, by reason of his very innocence. It was a poetic judgment on

old Raffles, and in my momentary enjoyment of the novel situation I was able to enjoy some of the good

things of this rich man's table. The saddle of mutton more than justified its place in the menu; but it had not

spoiled me for my wing of pheasant, and I was even looking forward to a sweet, when a further remark from

"But, I suppose," said he to Kingsmill, "it's many a burglar you've restored to his friends and his relations'?"

"Let us say many a poor fellow who has been charged with burglary," replied the cheery Q.C. "It's not quite

the same thing, you know, nor is 'many' the most accurate word. I never touch criminal work in town."

"It's the only kind I should care about," said the novelist, eating jelly with a spoon.

"I quite agree with you," our host chimed in. "And of all. the criminals one might be called upon to defend,

"It must be the breeziest branch of the business," remarked Raffles, while I held my breath.

But his touch was as light as gossamer, and his artless manner a triumph of even his incomparable art. Raffles

was alive to the danger at last. I saw him refuse more champagne, even as I drained my glass again. But it

was not the same danger to us both. Raffles had no reason to feel surprise or alarm at such a turn in a

conversation frankly devoted to criminology; it must have been as inevitable to him as it was sinister to me,

with my fortuitous knowledge of the suspicions that were entertained. And there was little to put him on his

"I am not very fond of Mr. Sikes," announced the barrister, like a man who had got his cue.

"But he was prehistoric," rejoined my lord. "A lot of blood has flowed under the razor since the days of

"True; we have had Peace," said Parrington, and launched out into such glowing details of that criminal's last

moments that I began to hope the diversion might prove permanent. But Lord Thornaby was not to be denied.

"William and Charles are both dead monarchs," said he. "The reigning king in their department is the fellow

There was a guilty silence on the part of the three conspirators for I had long since persuaded myself that

Lord Thornaby stared at him in consternation. The smile on the Napoleonic countenance of the barrister

looked forced and frozen for the first time during the evening. Our author, who was nibbling cheese from a

knife, left a bead of blood upon his beard. The futile Ernest alone met the occasion with a hearty titter.

"I wish I did," rejoined Raffles, chuckling. "No, Lord Thornaby, I only meant the jeweller, Danby. I go to

"Rather a coincidence," observed our host dryly, "for I believe you also know the Milchester people, where

"I was staying there at the time," said Raffles eagerly. No snob was ever quicker to boast of basking in the

"We believe it to be the same man," said Lord Thornaby, speaking apparently for the Criminologists' Club,

"I only wish I could come across him," continued Raffles heartily. "He's a criminal much more to my mind

than your murderers who swear on the drop or talk cricket in the condemned cell!"

"He might be in the house now," said Lord Thornaby, looking Raffles in the face. But his manner was that of

an actor in an unconvincing part and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter end; and he seemed embittered, as

"Still, I think you'll find it's a favorite time," argued Kingsmill, Q.C. "And it would be quite in keeping with

the character of this man, so far as it is known, to pay a little visit to the president of the Criminologists' Club,

and to choose the evening on which he happens to be entertaining the other members."

There was more conviction in this sally than in that of our noble host; but this I attributed to the trained and

skilled dissimulation of the bar. Lord Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the elaboration of his own

idea, and it was with some asperity that he called upon the butler, now solemnly superintending the removal

"Leggett! Just send upstairs to see if all. the doors are open and the rooms in proper order. That's an awful

idea of yours, Kingsmill, or of mine!" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of his order by an effort that I

could follow. "We should look fools. I don't know which of us it was, by the way, who seduced the rest from

the main stream of blood into this burglarious backwater. Are you familiar with De Quincey's masterpiece on

"You must read it again," pursued the earl. "It is the last word on a great subject; all. we can hope to add is

some baleful illustration or bloodstained footnote, not unworthy of De Quincey's text. "Well, Leggett?"

The venerable butler stood wheezing at his elbow. I had not hitherto observed that the man was an asthmatic.

The voice came in rude gasps, but words of reproach could scarcely have achieved a finer delicacy.

"Locking your lordship's dressingroom door behind your lordship, my lord," stuttered the unfortunate

Leggett, in the short spurts of a winded man, a few stertorous syllables at a time. "Been up myself, my lord.

But by this time the noble master was in worse case than the man. His fine forehead was a tangle of livid

cords; his baggy jowl filled out like a balloon. In another second he had abandoned his place as our host and

fled the room; and in yet another we had forgotten ours as his guests and rushed headlong at his heels.

Raffles was as excited as any of us now: he outstripped us all. The cherubic little lawyer and I had a fine race

for the last place but one, which I secured, while the panting butler and his satellites brought up a respectful

rear. It was our unconventional author, however, who was the first to volunteer his assistance and advice.

"No use pushing, Thornaby!" cried he. "If it's been done with a wedge and gimlet, you may smash the door,

"There's a ropeladder somewhere, in case of fire, I believe," said my lord vaguely, as he rolled a critical eye

"What's the good of bringing it down," cried Parrington, who had thrown back to the wilds in his excitement.

"Let him hang it out of the window above your own, and let me climb down and do the rest! I'll undertake to

The fastened doors were at right angles on the landing which we filled between us. Lord Thornaby smiled

grimly on the rest of us, when he had nodded and dismissed the author like a hound from the leash.

"It's a good thing we know something about our friend Parrington," said my lord. "He takes more kindly to

It was Raffles who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite for him, but in the tone there was a something

that just caught my private ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude of Parrington, without being

seriously suspicious in itself, was admirably calculated to put a previously suspected person in a grateful

shade. This literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out of the limelight, and gratitude for the service was

what I had detected in Raffles's voice. No need to say how grateful I felt myself. But my gratitude was shot

with flashes of unwonted insight. Parrington was one of those who suspected Raffles, or, at all. events, one

who was in the secret of those suspicions. What if he had traded on the suspect's presence in the house? What

if he were a deep villain himself, and the villain of this particular piece? I had made up my mind about him,

and that in a tithe of the time I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my man in the dressingroom. He

greeted us with an impudent shout; in a few moments the door was open, and there stood Parrington, flushed

Within was a scene of eloquent disorder. Drawers had been pulled out, and now stood on end, their contents

heaped upon the carpet. Wardrobe doors stood open; empty studcases strewed the floor; a clock, tied up in a

towel, had been tossed into a chair at the last moment. But a long tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in

one corner. And one had only to see Lord Thornaby's wry face behind the lid to guess that it was bent over a

"What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a twitch of humor at the corners of his canine mouth. "My peer's

We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I thought our scribe would put in his word. But even he either

"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord Thornaby. "But where would you gentlemen

stable your white elephants? And these were elephants as white as snow; by Jove, I'll job them for the

And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined the minute before; but the reason

dawned on me a little later, when we all. trooped downstairs, leaving the police in possession of the theatre

of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led the way. His step was lighter, his gayety no

longer sardonic; his very looks had improved. And I divined the load that had been lifted from the hospitable

"I only wish," said he, "that this brought us any nearer to the identity of the gentleman we were discussing at

dinner, for, of course, we owe it to all. our instincts to assume that it was he."

"But I'm sure of it, my dear sir," cried my lord. "The audacity is his and his alone. I look no further than the

fact of his honoring me on the one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain my brother Criminologists.

That's no coincidence, sir, but a deliberate irony, which would have occurred to no other criminal mind in

"You may be right," Raffles had the sense to say this time, though I flattered myself it was my face that made

"What is still more certain," resumed our host, "is that no other criminal in the world would have crowned so

delicious a conception with so perfect an achievement. I feel sure the inspector will agree with us."

The policeman in command had knocked and been admitted to the library as Lord Thornaby spoke.

"Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing outrage can be no other than the swell mobsman who relieved

Lady Melrose of her necklace and poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."

"The man who took the Thimblely diamonds and returned them to Lord Thimblely, you know."

"Not he! I don't mean to cry over my spilt milk. I only wish the fellow joy of all. he had time to take.

"Yes, my lord: the robbery took place between a quarter past eight and the halfhour."

"I have, my lord. He was in your lordship's room until close on the quarter, and all. was as it should be when

"It's impossible to say, my lord. He's not in the house now, for he could only be in your lordship's bedroom or

Lord Thornaby turned to us when the inspector had retreated, caressing his peaked cap.

"I told him to clear up these points first," he explained, jerking his head toward the door. "I had reason to

think my man had been neglecting his duties up there. I am glad to find myself mistaken."

I ought to have been no less glad to see my own mistake. My suspicions of our officious author were thus

proved to have been as wild as himself. I owed the man no grudge, and yet in my human heart I felt vaguely

disappointed. My theory had gained color from his behavior ever since he had admitted us to the

dressingroom; it had changed all. at once from the familiar to the morose; and only now was I just enough

to remember that Lord Thornaby, having tolerated those familiarities as long as they were connected with

useful service, had administered a relentless snub the moment that service had been well and truly performed.

But if Parrington was exonerated in my mind, so also was Raffles reinstated in the regard of those who had

entertained a far graver and more dangerous hypothesis. It was a miracle of good luck, a coincidence among

coincidences, which had whitewashed him in their sight at the very moment when they were straining the

expert eye to sift him through and through. But the miracle had been performed, and its effect was visible in

every face and audible in every voice. I except Ernest, who could never have been in the secret; moreover,

that gay Criminologist had been palpably shaken by his first little experience of crime. But the other three

vied among themselves to do honor where they had done injustice. I heard Kingsmill, Q.C., telling Raffles

the best time to catch him at chambers, and promising a seat in court for any trial he might ever like to hear.

Parrington spoke of a presentation set of his books, and in doing homage to Raffles made his peace with our

host. As for Lord Thornaby, I did overhear the name of the Athenaeum Club, a reference to his friends on the

The police were still in possession when we went our several ways, and it was all. that I could do to drag

Raffles up to my rooms, though, as I have said, they were just round the corner. He consented at last as a

lesser evil than talking of the burglary in the street; and in my rooms I told him of his late danger and my own

dilemma, of the few words I had overheard in the beginning, of the thin ice on which he had cut fancy figures

without a crack. It was all. very well for him. He had never realized his peril. But let him think of me

listening, watching, yet unable to lift a finger unable to say one warning word.

Raffles suffered me to finish, but a weary sigh followed the last symmetrical whiff of a Sullivan which he

"No, I won't have another, thank you. I'm going to talk to you, Bunny. Do you really suppose I didn't see

I flatly refused to believe he had done so before that evening. Why had he never mentioned his idea to me? It

had been quite the other way, as I indignantly reminded Raffles. Did he mean me to believe he was the man

to thrust his head into the lion's mouth for fun? And what point would there be in dragging me there to see the

"It has been my fortune before tonight, Bunny. It has also given me more confidence than you are likely to

"Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter with me either, my dear fellow; it was touchandgo at the

time. I might have called on you at any moment, and it was something to know I should not have called in

"Fight our way out and bolt!" he answered, with a mouth that meant it, and a fine gay glitter of the eyes.

"Nonsense! You were sitting at table at the time. No, but you may have taken some other fellow into the

"One's quite enough, Bunny," said Raffles dryly; he leaned back in his chair and took out another cigarette.

And I accepted of yet another from his case; for it was no use losing one's temper with Raffles; and his

"Of course," I went on, "if you really had brought off this thing on your own, I should be the last to criticise

your means of reaching such an end. You have not only scored off a far superior force, which had laid itself

out to score off you, but you have put them in the wrong about you, and they'll eat out of your hand for the

rest of their days. But don't ask me to believe that you've done all. this alone! By George," I cried, in a sudden

wave of enthusiasm, "I don't care how you've done it or who has helped you. It's the biggest thing you ever

And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more radiant, or better pleased with the world and himself, or

"I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this. It's the only window left alight in the house!"

His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and very much aslant through a long lane of

mews to a little square light like a yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window and leaned out before I

"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own raceglass. It has been the most useful thing of

But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so

much of Raffles these last few weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in the

evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses at his eyes. I saw through them sharply now.

The one lighted window pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my vision. I could not

see into the actual room, but the shadows of those within were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even

thought a black thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it must be, the window to which the

"Exactly!" said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. "And that's the window I have been watching these last

few weeks. By daylight you can see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house; and by

good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the house arrays himself in all. his nightly glory. It

was easily spotted by watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you were up! In the

evening his valet stays behind to put things straight; and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to

find out something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her outside at eight o'clock. Of

course he pretends he was at his post at the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow's work before my

own. I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to rag the room."

"It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen. By the way, I did that literally, of course,

in the case of the clock they found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but you must admit

that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all. ready to cart away. There was thus any amount of

primafade evidence of the robbery having taken place when we were all. at table. As a matter of fact, Lord

Thornaby left his dressingroom one minute, his valet followed him the minute after, and I entered the

"To be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay for your garden in town, in more ways than

one. You know the wall, of course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath contempt."

Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat. It was a stout bamboo with a polished

ferule. He unscrewed the ferule, and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes, exactly like

a child's fishingrod, which I afterward found to have been their former state. A double hook of steel was

now produced and quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then Raffles undid three buttons of his

waistcoat; and lapped round and round his waist was the finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of

"Is it necessary to go any further?" asked Raffles when he had unwound the rope. "This end is made fast to

that end of the hook, the other half of the hook fits over anything that comes its way, and you leave your rod

dangling while you swarm up your line. Of course, you must know what you've got to hook on to; but a man

who has had a porcelain bath fixed in his dressingroom is the man for me. The pipes were all. outside, and

fixed to the wall in just the right place. You see I had made a reconnaissance by day in addition to many by

"My dear Bunny," said Raffles, as he wound the hemp girdle round his waist once more, "I never did care for

ladder work, but I always said that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best of its kind yet invented. This

"From mother earth, to mother earth? About five minutes, tonight, and one of those was spent in doing

"What!" I cried. "You mean to tell me you climbed up and down, in and out, and broke into that cupboard

and that big tin box, and wedged up the doors and cleared out with a peer's robes and all. the rest of it in five

"Made two bites at the cherry, Bunny! I had a dress rehearsal in the dead of last night, and it was then I took

the swag. Our noble friend was snoring next door all. the time, but the effort may still stand high among my

small exploits, for I not only took all. I wanted, but left the whole place exactly as I found it, and shut things

after me like a good little boy. All. that took a good deal longer; tonight I had simply to rag the room a bit,

sweep up some studs and links, and leave ample evidence of having boned those rotten robes tonight. That,

if you come to think of it, was what you writing chaps would call the quintessential Q.E.F. I have not only

shown these dear Criminologists that I couldn't possibly have done this trick, but that there's some other

fellow who could and did, and whom they've been perfect asses to confuse with me."

You may figure me as gazing on Raffles all. this time in mute and rapt amazement. But I had long been past

that pitch. If he had told me now that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should not

have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with him to the Albany and find the regalia

under his bed. And I took down my overcoat as he put on his. But Raffles would not hear of my

"No, my dear Bunny, I am short of sleep and fed up with excitement. You mayn't believe it you may look

upon me as a plaster devil but those five minutes you wot of were rather too crowded even for my taste.

The dinner was nominally at a quarter to eight, and I don't mind telling you now that I counted on twice as

long as I had. But no one came until twelve minutes to, and so our host took his time. I didn't want to be the

last to arrive, and I was in the drawingroom five minutes before the hour. But it was a quicker thing than I

And his last word on the matter, as he nodded and went his way, may well be mine; for one need be no

criminologist, much less a member of the Criminologists' Club, to remember what Raffles did with the robes

and coronet of the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G. He did with them exactly what he might have been

expected to do by the gentlemen with whom he had foregathered; and he did it in a manner so characteristic

of himself as surely to remove from their minds the last aura of the idea that he and himself were the same

person. Carter Paterson was out of the question, and any labelling or addressing to be avoided on obvious

grounds. But Raffles stabled the white elephants in the cloakroom at Charing Cross and sent Lord

Nipper Nasmyth had been head of our school when Raffles was captain of cricket. I believe he owed his

nickname entirely to the popular prejudice against a dayboy; and in view of the special reproach which the

term carried in my time, as also of the fact that his father was one of the school trustees, partner in a banking

firm of four resounding surnames, and manager of the local branch, there can be little doubt that the stigma

was undeserved. But we did not think so then, for Nasmyth was unpopular with high and low, and appeared

to glory in the fact. A swollen conscience caused him to see and hear even more than was warranted by his

position, and his uncompromising nature compelled him to act on whatsoever he heard or saw: a savage

custodian of public morals, he had in addition a perverse enthusiasm for lost causes, loved a minority for its

own sake, and untenable tenets for theirs. Such, at all. events, was my impression of Nipper Nasmyth, after

my first term, which was also his last I had never spoken to him, but I had heard him speak with

extraordinary force and fervor in the school debates. I carried a clear picture of his unkempt hair, his

unbrushed coat, his dominant spectacles, his dogmatic jaw. And it was I who knew the combination at a

glance, after years and years, when the fateful whim seized Raffles to play once more in the Old Boys' Match,

and his will took me down with him to participate in the milder festivities of Founder's Day.

It was, however, no ordinary occasion. The bicentenary loomed but a year ahead, and a movement was on

foot to mark the epoch with an adequate statue of our pious founder. A special meeting was to be held at the

schoolhouse, and Raffles had been specially invited by the new head master, a man of his own standing,

who had been in the eleven with him up at Cambridge. Raffles had not been near the old place for years; but I

had never gone down since the day I left; and I will not dwell on the emotions which the once familiar

journey awakened in my unworthy bosom. Paddington was alive with Old Boys of all. ages but very few of

ours if not as lively as we used to make it when we all. landed back for the holidays. More of us had

moustaches and cigarettes and "loud" ties. That was all. Yet of the throng, though two or three looked twice

and thrice at Raffles, neither he nor I knew a soul until we had to change at the junction near our journey's

The man was own son of the boy we both remembered. He had grown a ragged beard and a moustache that

hung about his face like a neglected creeper. He was stout and bent and older than his years. But he spurned

the platform with a stamping stride which even I remembered in an instant, and which was enough for Raffles

"The Nipper it is!" he cried. "I could swear to that walk in a pantomime procession! See the independence in

every step: that's his heel on the neck of the oppressor: it's the nonconformist conscience in baggy breeches. I

must speak to him, Bunny. There was a lot of good in the old Nipper, though he and I did bar each other."

And in a moment he had accosted the man by the boy's nickname, obviously without thinking of an affront

"Forgive me," said Raffles undeterred. "One remembers a nickname and forgets all. it never used to mean.

Shake hands, my dear fellow! I'm Raffles. It must be fifteen years since we met."

"At least," replied Nasmyth coldly; but he could no longer refuse Raffles his hand. "So you are going down,"

he sneered, "to this great gathering?" And I stood listening at my distance, as though still in the middle

"Rather!" cried Raffles. "I'm afraid I have let myself lose touch, but I mean to turn over a new leaf. I suppose

He spoke with an enthusiasm rare indeed in him: it had grown upon Raffles in the train; the spirit of his

boyhood had come rushing back at fifty miles an hour. He might have been following some honorable calling

in town; he might have snatched this brief respite from a distinguished but exacting career. I am convinced

that it was I alone who remembered at that moment the life we were really leading at that time. With me there

walked this skeleton through every waking hour that was to follow. I shall endeavor not to refer to it again.

"It certainly is not necessary in my case," replied Nasmyth, still as stiff as any poker. "I happen to be a

"I congratulate you, my dear fellow!" cried the hearty Raffles a younger Raffles than I had ever known in

"But it must be a tremendous interest. And the proof is that you're going down to this show, like all. the rest

And I think the Nipper recalled that name as he ground his heel upon an unresponsive flagstone.

"I don't know. If I do there may be squalls. I don't know what you think about this precious scheme Raffles,

The ragged beard stuck out, set teeth showed through the wild moustache, and in a sudden outpouring we had

his views. They were narrow and intemperate and perverse as any I had heard him advocate as the firebrand

of the Debating Society in my first term. But they were stated with all. the old vim and venom. The mind of

Nasmyth had not broadened with the years, but neither had its natural force abated, nor that of his character

either. He spoke with great vigor at the top of his voice; soon we had a little crowd about us; but the tall

collars and the broad smiles of the younger Old Boys did not deter our dowdy demagogue. Why spend money

on a man who had been dead two hundred years? What good could it do him or the school? Besides, he was

only technically our founder. He had not founded a great public school. He had founded a little country

grammar school which had pottered along for a century and a half. The great public school was the growth of

the last fifty years, and no credit to the pillar of piety. Besides, he was only nominally pious. Nasmyth had

"Are there many of your opinion?" inquired Raffles, when the agitator paused for breath. And Nasmyth

"Not one to my knowledge as yet," said he. "But we shall see after tomorrow night. I hear it's to be quite an

exceptional gathering this year; let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There are none on the present

"I can understand your view," he said. "I am not sure that I don't share it to some extent. But it seems to me a

duty to support a general movement like this even if it doesn't take the direction or the shape of our own

"Give something? I? Not a brass farthing!" cried the implacable banker. "To do so would be to stultify my

whole position. I cordially and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all. my influence

against it. No, my good sir, I not only don't subscribe myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good

I was probably the only one who saw the sudden and yet subtle change in Raffles the hard mouth, the

harder eye. I, at least, might have foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet voice betrayed nothing, as

he inquired whether Nasmyth was going to speak at next night's meeting. Nasmyth said he might, and

certainly warned us what to expect. He was still fulminating when our train came in.

"Then we meet again at Philippi," cried Raffles in gay adieu. "For you have been very frank with us all.,

Nasmyth, and I'll be frank enough in my turn to tell you that I've every intention of speaking on the other

It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak by his old college friend, the new head master. Yet it was

not at the schoolhouse that he and I were to stay, but at the house that we had both been in as boys. It also

had changed hands: a wing had been added, and the double tier of tiny studies made brilliant with electric

light. But the quad and the fivescourts did not look a day older; the ivy was no thicker round the study

windows; and in one boy's castle we found the traditional print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked

about our studies ever since a son of the contractor first sold it when he left. Nay, more, there was the bald

remnant of a stuffed bird which had been my own daily care when it and I belonged to Raffles. And when we

all. filed in to prayers, through the green baize door which still separated the master's part of the house from

that of the boys, there was a small boy posted in the passage to give the sign of silence to the rest assembled

in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old days; the picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only we who

On our side of the baize door a fine hospitality and a finer flow of spirits were the order of the night. There

was a sound representative assortment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was a prehistoric time, and in

the trough of their modem chaff and chat we old stagers might well have been left far astern of the fun. Yet it

was Raffles who was the life and soul of the party, and that not by meretricious virtue of his cricket. There

happened not to be another cricketer among us, and it was on their own subjects that Raffles laughed with the

lot in turn and in the lump. I never knew him in quite such form. I will not say he was a boy among them, but

he was that rarer being, the man of the world who can enter absolutely into the fun and fervor of the salad

age. My cares and my regrets had never been more acute, but Raffles seemed a man without either in his life.

He was not, however, the hero of the Old Boys' Match, and that was expected of him by all. the school. There

was a hush when he went in, a groan when he came out. I had no reason to suppose he was not trying; these

things happen to the cricketer who plays out of his class; but when the great Raffles went on to bowl, and was

hit all. over the field, I was not so sure. It certainly failed to affect his spirits; he was more brilliant than ever

at our hospitable board; and after dinner came the meeting at which he and Nasmyth were to speak.

It was a somewhat frigid gathering until Nasmyth rose. We had all. dined with our respective hosts, and then

repaired to this business in cold blood. Many were lukewarm about it in their hearts; there was a certain

amount of mild prejudice, and a greater amount of animal indifference, to be overcome in the opening

speech. It is not for me to say whether this was successfully accomplished. I only know how the temperature

And I dare say, in all. the circumstances of the case, his really was a rather vulgar speech. But it was certainly

impassioned, and probably as purely instinctive as his denunciation of all. the causes which appeal to the

gullible many without imposing upon the cantankerous few. His arguments, it is true, were merely an

elaboration of those with which he had favored some of us already; but they were pointed by a concise

exposition of the several definite principles they represented, and barbed with a caustic rhetoric quite

admirable in itself. In a word, the manner was worthy of the very foundation it sought to shake, or we had

never swallowed such matter without a murmur. As it was, there was a demonstration in the wilderness when

the voice ceased crying. But we sat in the deeper silence when Raffles rose to reply.

I leaned forward not to lose a word. I knew my Raffles so well that I felt almost capable of reporting his

speech before I heard it. Never was I more mistaken, even in him! So far from a gibe for a gibe and a taunt

for a taunt, there never was softer answer than that which A. J. Raffles returned to Nipper Nasmyth before the

staring eyes and startled ears of all. assembled. He courteously but firmly refused to believe a word his old

friend Nasmyth had said about himself. He had known Nasmyth for twenty years, and never had he met a

dog who barked so loud and bit so little. The fact was that he had far too kind a heart to bite at all. Nasmyth

might get up and protest as loud as he liked: the speaker declared he knew him better than Nasmyth knew

himself. He had the necessary defects of his great qualities. He was only too good a sportsman. He had a

perfect passion for the weaker side. That alone led Nasmyth into such excesses of language as we had all.

heard from his lips that night. As for Raffles, he concluded his far too genial remarks by predicting that,

whatever Nasmyth might say or think of the new fund, he would subscribe to it as handsomely as any of us,

Even so did Raffles disappoint the Old Boys in the evening as he had disappointed the school by day. We had

looked to him for a noble raillery, a lofty and loyal disdain, and he had fobbed us off with friendly

personalities not even in impeccable taste. Nevertheless, this light treatment of a grave offence went far to

restore the natural amenities of the occasion. It was impossible even for Nasmyth to reply to it as he might to

a more earnest onslaught. He could but smile sardonically, and audibly undertake to prove Raffles a false

prophet; and though subsequent speakers were less merciful the note was struck, and there was no more bad

blood in the debate. There was plenty, however, in the veins of Nasmyth, as I was to discover for myself

You might think that in the circumstances he would not have attended the head master's ball with which the

evening ended; but that would be sadly to misjudge so perverse a creature as the notorious Nipper. He was

probably one of those who protest that there is "nothing personal" in their most personal attacks. Not that

Nasmyth took this tone about Raffles when he and I found ourselves cheek by jowl against the ballroom wall;

he could forgive his franker critics, but not the friendly enemy who had treated him so much more gently than

"I seem to have seen you with this great man Raffles," began Nasmyth, as he overhauled me with his fighting

"I remember now. You were with him when he forced himself upon me on the way down yesterday. He had

"What does that matter? I am glad to say I had too much selfrespect, and too little respect for Raffles, ever

to be a friend of his then. I knew too many of the things he did," said Nipper Nasmyth.

"You must have had special opportunities of observation, living in the town," said I; and drew first blood

"So he really did get out at nights?" remarked my adversary. "You certainly give your friend away. What's he

I let my eyes follow Raffles round the room before replying. He was waltzing with a master's wife waltzing

as he did everything else. Other couples seemed to melt before them. And the woman on his arm looked a

"I meant in town, or wherever he lives his mysterious life," explained Nasmyth, when I told him that he could

see for himself. But his clever tone did not trouble me; it was his epithet that caused me to prick my ears. And

"I thought everybody knew what he was doing; he's playing cricket most of his time," was my measured

reply; and if it bore an extra touch of insolence, I can honestly ascribe that to my nerves.

"You had better ask Raffles himself," said I to that. "It's a pity you didn't ask him in public, at the meeting!"

But I was beginning to show temper in my embarrassment, and of course that made Nasmyth the more

"Really, he might be following some disgraceful calling, by the mystery you make of it!" he exclaimed. "And

for that matter I call firstclass cricket a disgraceful calling, when it's followed by men who ought to be

gentlemen, but are really professionals in gentlemanly clothing. The present craze for gladiatorial athleticism

I regard as one of the great evils of the age; but the thinly veiled professionalism of the socalled amateur is

the greatest evil of that craze. Men play for the gentlemen and are paid more than the players who walk out of

another gate. In my time there was none of that. Amateurs were amateurs and sport was sport; there were no

Raffleses in firstclass cricket then. I had forgotten Raffles was a modern firstclass cricketer: that explains

him. Rather than see my son such another, do you know what I'd prefer to see him?"

I neither knew nor cared: yet a wretched premonitory fascination held me breathless till I was told!.

"I'd prefer to see him a thief!" said Nasmyth savagely; and when his eyes were done with me, he turned upon

It was only to give place to a worse. Was all. this accident or fell design? Conscience had made a coward of

me, and yet what reason had I to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss; sooner

or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I began to wish myself back in London, and I did get

back to my room in our old house. My dancing days were already over; there I had taken the one resolution to

which I remained as true as better men to better vows; there the painful association was no mere sense of

personal unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room of other dances ... and was still smoking the cigarette

which Raffles had taught me to appreciate when I looked up to find him regarding me from the door. He had

opened it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors, and now he closed it in the same professional

"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could always make me, "but I'll chuck it if you'll stop and smoke.

Our host doesn't mind; there's an ashtray provided for the purpose. I ought to be sulking between the sheets,

"We might do worse; but, on the other hand, we might do still better," rejoined Raffles, and for once he

resisted the seductive Sullivan. "As a matter of fact, it's morning now; in another hour it will be dawn; and

where could day dawn better than in Warfield Woods, or along the Stockley road, or even on the Upper or the

Middle? I don't want to turn in, any more than you do. I may as well confess that the whole show down here

has exalted me more than anything for years. But if we can't sleep, Bunny, let's have some fresh air instead."

"Only it might sound a little odd, our turning out again, if they were to hear us."

Raffles stood over me with a smile made of mischief and cunning; but it was the purest mischief imaginable,

"They shan't hear us at all., Bunny," said he. "I mean to get out as I did in the good old nights. I've been

spoiling for the chance ever since I came down. There's not the smallest harm in it now; and if you'll come

"But I know," said I. "Who used to haul up the rope after you, and let it down again to the minute?"

Raffles looked down on me from lowered lids, over a smile too humorous to offend.

"My dear good Bunny! And do you suppose that even then I had only one way of doing a thing? I've had a

spare loophole all. my life, and when you're ready I'll show you what it was when I was here. Take off those

boots, and carry your tennisshoes; slip on another coat; put out your light; and I'll meet you on the landing

He met me with uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and downstairs he led me, stocking soles close against

the skirting, two feet to each particular step. It must have seemed child's play to Raffles; the old precautions

were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess that to me it was all. refreshingly exciting for

once without a risk of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the hall, and could have

walked out of the street door without danger or difficulty. But that would not do for Raffles. He must needs

lead me into the boys' part, through the green baize door. It took a deal of opening and shutting, but Raffles

seemed to enjoy nothing better than these mock obstacles, and in a few minutes we were resting with sharp

"Through these windows?" I whispered, when the clock over the piano had had matters its own way long

"How else?" whispered Raffles, as he opened the one on whose ledge our letters used to await us of a

"And over the gates at the end. No talking, Bunny; there's a dormitory just overhead; but ours was in front,

you remember, and if they had ever seen me I should have nipped back this way while they were watching

His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I remember how the gravel hurt as we left the

smooth flagged margin of the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats (whereon you

prepared your construe for the secondschool in the summer term) was mercifully handy; and once in our

rubber soles we had no difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fivescourts. Moreover, we dropped into a

very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when we doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor

heard a footfall in the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the nightdews and the petals of

the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went.

"So you and Nipper had a word or was it words? I saw you out of the tail of my eye when I was dancing,

and I heard you out of the tail of my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name. He's

the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy. But he'll subscribe all. right, you'll see, and

I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had not heard all. Nasmyth had said of him.

And neither would he listen to the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but reiterate a conviction so

chimerical to my mind that I interrupted in my turn to ask him what ground he had for it.

"At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him. What a rabbit you are at a quotation!

"You may have forgotten your Shakespeare, Bunny, but you ought to remember that."

And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or Raffles meant, as I plainly told him.

Raffles had stopped suddenly in his walk. It was the last dark hour of the summer night, but the light from a

"I think you also inquired when," he continued. "Well, then, this minute if you will give me a leg up!"

And behind him, scarcely higher than his head, and not even barred, was a wide window with a wire blind,

"Not the whole outfit, Bunny. But you never know when you mayn't want one or two. I'm only thankful I

"But you ought to be glad I didn't," he rejoined with a smile. "It's going to mean old Nasmyth's subscription

to the Founder's Fund, and that's to be a big one, I promise you! The lucky thing is that I went so far as to

bring my bunch of safekeys. Now, are you going to help me use them, or are you not? If so, now's your

"Not so fast, Raffles," said I testily. "You must have planned this before you came down, or you would never

"My dear Bunny, they're a part of my kit! I take them wherever I take my eveningclothes. As to this potty

bank, I never even thought of it, much less that it would become a public duty to draw a hundred or so

without signing for it. That's all. I shall touch, Bunny I'm not on the make tonight. There's no risk in it

either. If I am caught I shall simply sham champagne and stand the racket; it would be an obvious frolic after

what happened at that meeting. And they will catch me, if I stand talking here: you run away back to bed

Now we had barely been a minute whispering where we stood, and the whole street was still as silent as the

tomb. To me there seemed least danger in discussing the matter quietly on the spot. But even as he gave me

my dismissal Raffles turned and caught the sill above him, first with one hand and then with the other. His

legs swung like a pendulum as he drew himself up with one arm, then shifted the position of the other hand,

and very gradually worked himself waisthigh with the sill. But the sill was too narrow for him; that was as

far as he could get unaided; and it was as much as I could bear to see of a feat which in itself might have

hardened my conscience and softened my heart. But I had identified his doggerel verse at last. I am ashamed

to say that it was part of a set of my very own writing in the school magazine of my time. So Raffles knew

the stuff better than I did myself, and yet scorned to press his flattery to win me over! He had won me: in a

second my rounded shoulders were a pedestal for those dangling feet. And before many more I heard the old

metallic snap, followed by the raising of a sash so slowly and gently as to be almost inaudible to me listening

Raffles went through hands first, disappeared for an instant, then leaned out, lowering his hands for me.

"Come on, Bunny! You're safer in than out. Hang on to the sill and let me get you under the arms. Now all.

No need to dwell on our proceedings in the bank. I myself had small part in the scene, being posted rather in

the wings, at the foot of the stairs leading to the private premises in which the manager had his domestic

being. But I made my mind easy about him, for in the silence of my watch I soon detected a nasal note

overhead, and it was resonant and aggressive as the man himself. Of Raffles, on the contrary, I heard nothing,

for he had shut the door between us, and I was to warn him if a single sound came through. I need scarcely

add that no warning was necessary during the twenty minutes we remained in the bank. Raffles afterward

assured me that nineteen of them had been spent in filing one key; but one of his latest inventions was a little

thick velvet bag in which he carried the keys; and this bag had two elastic mouths, which closed so tightly

about either wrist that he could file away, inside, and scarcely hear it himself. As for these keys, they were

clever counterfeits of typical patterns by two great safemaking firms. And Raffles had come by them in a

When he opened the door and beckoned to me, I knew by his face that he had succeeded to his satisfaction,

and by experience better than to question him on the point. Indeed, the first thing was to get out of the bank;

for the stars were drowning in a sky of ink and water, and it was a comfort to feel that we could fly straight to

our beds. I said so in whispers as Raffles cautiously opened our window and peeped out. In an instant his

"What was that, Bunny? No, you don't, my son! There's not a soul in sight that I can see, but you never know,

and we may as well lay a scent while we're about it. Ready? Then follow me, and never mind the window."

With that he dropped softly into the street, and I after him, turning to the right instead of the left, and that at a

brisk trot instead of the innocent walk which had brought us to the bank. Like mice we scampered past the

great schoolroom, with its gable snipping a paler sky than ever, and the shadows melting even in the

colonnade underneath. Masters' houses flitted by on the left, lesser landmarks on either side, and presently we

were running our heads into the dawn, one under either hedge of the Stockley road.

"I've seen it there before," continued Raffles. "He never was a good sleeper, and his ears reach to the street. I

wouldn't like to say how often I was chased by him in the small hours! I believe he knew who it was toward

I had no breath for comment. And on sped Raffles like a yacht before the wind, and on I blundered like a

wherry at sea, making heavy weather all. the way, and nearer foundering at every stride. Suddenly, to my

deep relief, Raffles halted, but only to tell me to stop my pipes while he listened.

"It's all. right, Bunny," he resumed, showing me a glowing face in the dawn. "History's on its own tracks once

more, and I'll bet you it's dear old Nab on ours! Come on, Bunny; run to the last gasp, and leave the rest to

I was past arguing, and away he went. There was no help for it but to follow as best I could. Yet I had vastly

preferred to collapse on the spot, and trust to Raffles's resource, as before very long I must. I had never

enjoyed long wind and the hours that we kept in town may well have aggravated the deficiency. Raffles,

however, was in firstclass training from firstclass cricket, and he had no mercy on Nab or me. But the

master himself was an old Oxford miler, who could still bear it better than I; nay, as I flagged and stumbled, I

"Come on, come on, or he'll do us!" cried Raffles shrilly over his shoulder; and a gruff sardonic laugh came

back over mine. It was pearly morning now, but we had run into a shallow mist that took me by the throat and

stabbed me to the lungs. I coughed and coughed, and stumbled in my stride, until down I went, less by

accident than to get it over, and so lay headlong in my tracks. And old Nab dealt me a verbal kick as he

But Raffles himself had abandoned the flight on hearing my downfall, and I was on hands and knees just in

time to see the meeting between him and old Nab. And there stood Raffles in the silvery mist, laughing with

his whole light heart, leaning back to get the full flavor of his mirth; and, nearer me, sturdy old Nab, dour and

"Then you're luckier than we are, sir," answered Raffles, "for I fear our man has given us the slip."

"Your man!" echoed Nab. His bushy eyebrows had shot up: it was as much as I could do to keep my own in

"We were indulging in the chase ourselves," explained Raffles, "and one of us has suffered for his zeal, as

you can see. It is even possible that we, too, have been chasing a perfectly innocent man."

"Not to say a reformed character," said our pursuer dryly. " suppose you don't mean a member of the school?"

he added, pinking his man suddenly as of yore, with all. the old barbed acumen. But Raffles was now his

"That would be carrying reformation rather far, sir. No, as I say, I may have been mistaken in the first

instance; but I had put out my light and was looking out of the window when I saw a fellow behaving quite

suspiciously. He was carrying his boots and creeping along in his socks which must be why you never

heard him, sir. They make less noise than rubber soles even that is, they must, you know! Well, Bunny had

just left me, so I hauled him out and we both crept down to play detective. No sign of the fellow! We had a

look in the colonnade I thought I heard him and that gave us no end of a hunt for nothing. But just as we

were leaving he came padding past under our noses, and that's where we took up the chase. Where he'd been

in the meantime I have no idea; very likely he'd done no harm; but it seemed worth while finding out. He had

"As it is, however, we will all. let the other fellow do so," said old Nab in a genial growl. "And you two had

You may imagine with what alacrity we complied; and yet I am bound to confess that I had never liked Nab

at school. I still remember my term in his form. He had a caustic tongue and fine assortment of damaging

epithets, most of which were levelled at my devoted skull during those three months. I now discovered that

he also kept a particularly mellow Scotch whiskey, an excellent cigar, and a fund of anecdote of which a

mordant wit was the worthy bursar. Enough to add that he kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells

As for Raffles, he appeared to me to feel far more compunction for the fable which he had been compelled to

foist upon one of the old masters than for the immeasurably graver offence against society and another Old

Boy. This, indeed, did not worry him at all.; and the story was received next day with absolute credulity on

all. sides. Nasmyth himself was the first to thank us both for our spirited effort on his behalf; and the incident

had the ironic effect of establishing an immediate entente cordiale between Raffles and his very latest victim.

I must confess, however, that for my own part I was thoroughly uneasy during the Old Boys' second innings,

when Raffles made a selfish score, instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his own way. There was

never any knowing with what new detail he was about to embellish it: and I have still to receive full credit for

the tact that it required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have I been more thankful than when

our train started next morning, and the poor, unsuspecting Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from the

"Lucky we weren't staying at Nab's," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail at its report

of the robbery. "There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he always was and will

"The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the morning, and yet we let them assume that

we came out that way. Nab would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been nabbed

It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had taken, and, of course, he had resolutely

eschewed any and every form of paper money. He posted his own first contribution of twentyfive pounds to

the Founder's Fund immediately on our return to town, before rushing off to more firstclass cricket, and I

gathered that the rest would follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd coincidence, however, a

mysterious but magnificent donation of a hundred guineas was almost simultaneously received in notes by

the treasurer of the Founder's Fund, from one who simply signed himself "Old Boy." The treasurer happened

to be our late host, the new man at our old house, and he wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was

pleased to consider a direct result of the latter's speech. I did not see the letter that Raffles wrote in reply, but

in due course I heard the name of the mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper

Nasmyth himself. I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask old Nipper pointblank if he

came up as usual to the Varsity match, and if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen, but I

had the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles when we encountered our shabby friend in

"My dear fellow," cried Raffles, "I hear it was you who gave that hundred guineas by stealth to the very

movement you denounced. Don't deny it, and don't blush to find it fame. Listen to me. There was a great lot

in what you said; but it's the kind of thing we ought all. to back, whether we strictly approve of it in our

"I know what you're going to say. Don't say it. There's not one in a thousand who would do as you've done,

"Everybody is saying so. You will find it all. over the place when you get back. You will find yourself the

I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward, ungainly, cantankerous man: all. his angles

seemed to have been smoothed away: there was something quite human in the flushed, undecided, wistful

face. "I never was popular in my life," he said. "I don't want to buy my popularity now. To be perfectly

"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing the bell. But you shouldn't have been angry with me for saying

you were a generous good chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all. the time. Goodby, old fellow!"

But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end. There was a sudden new light in his

Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody, would acknowledge no remark.

Neither did he attend to the cricket for the first halfhour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to

come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two chairs aloof from the fascinating

"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know," he began. "But I have been sorry since the interval. I've been

sorry for poor old Nipper Nasmyth. Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for the first time in

Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met. "I had everything to do with it. I tried to make him tell the

meanest lie. I made sure he would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at the last moment, he saw how to

"And with his own freewill. My good Bunny, is it possible you don't know what I did with the hundred we

"I knew what you were going to do with it," said I. "I didn't know you had actually got further than the

Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some more at the great white numbers over the

"We may as well have another look at the cricket," said he. "It's difficult to see the board from here, but I

There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a surreptitious interest. The brideelect

was living in some retirement, with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow

hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a prosperous son of the same suburban soil which

had nourished both families for generations. The wedding presents were so numerous as to fill several rooms

at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value calling for a special transaction with the Burglary

Insurance Company in Cheapside. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all. this information. I only know that it

proved correct in each particular. I was not indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured

me that it was "a oneman job," and naturally intended to be the one man himself. It was only at the eleventh

hour that our positions were inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English team in

In a flash I saw the chance of my criminal career. It was some years since Raffles had served his country in

these encounters; he had never thought to be called upon again, and his gratification was only less than his

embarrassment. The match was at Old Trafford, on the third Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in July; the other

affair had been all. arranged for the Thursday night, the night of the wedding at East Molesey. It was for

Raffles to choose between the two excitements, and for once I helped him to make up his mind. I duly

pointed out to him that in Surrey, at all. events, I was quite capable of taking his place. Nay, more, I insisted

at once on my prescriptive right and on his patriotic obligation in the matter. In the country's name and in my

own, I implored him to give it and me a chance; and for once, as I say, my arguments prevailed. Raffles sent

his telegram it was the day before the match. We then rushed down to Esher, and over every inch of the

ground by that characteristically circuitous route which he enjoined on me for the next night. And at six in the

evening I was receiving the last of my many instructions through a window of the restaurant car.

"Only promise me not to take a revolver," said Raffles in a whisper. "Here are my keys; there's an old

lifepreserver somewhere in the bureau; take that, if you like though what you take I rather fear you are the

"Then the rope be round my own neck!" I whispered back. "Whatever else I may do, Raffles, I shan't give

you away; and you'll find I do better than you think, and am worth trusting with a little more to do, or I'll

And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of Euston with raised eyebrows, and I turned grimly on my heel.

I saw his fears for me; and nothing could have made me more fearless for myself. Raffles had been wrong

about me all. these years; now was my chance to set him right. It was galling to feel that he had no

confidence in my coolness or my nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch. I had been loyal to him

through rough and smooth. In many an ugly corner I had stood as firm as Raffles himself. I was his right

hand, and yet he never hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time, at all. events, I should be neither one nor

the other; this time I was the understudy playing lead at last; and I wish I could think that Raffles ever

Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night, and first down the stairs into the open air.

The night was close and cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban builder has

marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere

tunnel of leaves at midsummer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane or cranny by the way. Naturally,

it was in this blind reach that I fancied I was being followed. I stopped in my stride; so did the steps I made

sure I had heard not far behind; and when I went on, they followed suit. I dried my forehead as I walked, but

soon brought myself to repeat the experiment when an exact repetition of the result went to convince me that

it had been my own echo all. the time. And since I lost it on getting quit of the avenue, and coming out upon

the straight and open road, I was not long in recovering from my scare. But now I could see my way, and

found the rest of it without mishap, though not without another semblance of adventure. Over the bridge

across the Mole, when about to turn to the left, I marched straight upon a policeman in rubber soles. I had to

call him "officer" as I passed, and to pass my turning by a couple of hundred yards, before venturing back

At last I had crept through a garden gate, and round by black windows to a black lawn drenched with dew. It

had been a heating walk, and I was glad to blunder on a garden seat, most considerately placed under a cedar

which added its own darkness to that of the night. Here I rested a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep

them dry, untying my shoes to save time, and generally facing the task before me with a coolness which I

strove to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine was a selfconscious quality, as far removed from the

original as any other deliberate imitation of genius. I actually struck a match on my trousers, and lit one of the

shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would not have done such a thing at such a moment. But I wished to tell

him that I had done it; and in truth I was not more than pleasurably afraid; I had rather that impersonal

curiosity as to the issue which has been the saving of me in still more precarious situations. I even grew

impatient for the fray, and could not after all sit still as long as I had intended. So it happened that I was

finishing my cigarette on the edge of the wet lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before stepping across the

gravel to the conservatory door, when a most singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a muffled gasping

somewhere overhead. I stood like stone; and my listening attitude must have been visible against the milky

"A detective officer," I replied, "sent down by the Burglary Insurance Company."

Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all. been prepared for me by Raffles, in case of

need. I was merely repeating a lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window there was

"I don't see why they should have sent you down," he said at length. "We are being quite well looked after by

"I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on my own account. "I met one of them at the corner just now, and

"No; they gave me that before I started," I replied. "But I'm sorry you saw me, sir; it's a mere matter of

routine, and not intended to annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all. night, but I own it

wasn't necessary to trespass as I've done. I'll take myself off the actual premises, if you prefer it."

This again was all. my own; and it met with a success that might have given me confidence.

"Not a bit of it," replied young Medlicott, with a grim geniality. "I've just woke up with the devil of an attack

of asthma, and may have to sit up in my chair till morning. You'd better come up and see me through, and kill

two birds while you're about it. Stay where you are, and I'll come down and let you in."

Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had not foreseen! Outside, in the dark, my audacious part was not

hard to play; but to carry the improvisation indoors was to double at once the difficulty and the risk. It was

true that I had purposely come down in a true detective's overcoat and bowler; but my personal appearance

was hardly of the detective type. On the other hand as the soidisant guardian of the gifts one might only

excite suspicion by refusing to enter the house where they were. Nor could I forget that it was my purpose to

effect such entry first or last. That was the casting consideration. I decided to take my dilemma by the horns.

There had been a scraping of matches in the room over the conservatory; the open window had shown for a

moment, like an empty pictureframe, a gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and in the next

halfminute I remembered to tie my shoes. But the light was slow to reappear through the leaded glasses of

an outer door farther along the path. And when the door opened, it was a figure of woe that stood within and

I have seen old men look half their age, and young men look double theirs; but never before or since have I

seen a beardless boy bent into a man of eighty, gasping for every breath, shaken by every gasp, swaying,

tottering, and choking, as if about to die upon his feet. Yet with it all., young Medlicott overhauled me

shrewdly, and it was several moments before he would let me take the candle from him.

"I shouldn't have come down made me worse," he began whispering in spurts. "Worse still going up again.

You must give me an arm. You will come up? That's right! Not as bad as I look, you know. Got some good

whiskey, too. Presents are all. right; but if they aren't you'll hear of it indoors sooner than out. Now I'm

It must have taken us minutes to climb that single flight of stairs. There was just room for me to keep his arm

in mine; with the other he hauled on the banisters; and so we mounted, step by step, a panting pause on each,

and a pitched battle for breath on the halflanding. In the end we gained a cosey library, with an open door

leading to a bedroom beyond. But the effort had deprived my poor companion of all. power of speech; his

laboring lungs shrieked like the wind; he could just point to the door by which we had entered, and which I

shut in obedience to his gestures, and then to the decanter and its accessories on the table where he had left

them overnight. I gave him nearly half a glassful, and his paroxysm subsided a little as he sat hunched up in a

"I was a fool ... to turn in," he blurted in more whispers between longer pauses. "Lying down is the devil ...

when you're in for a real bad night. You might get me the brown cigarettes ... on the table in there. That's

The asthmatic had bitten off either end of the stramonium cigarette, and was soon choking himself with the

crude fumes, which he inhaled in desperate gulps, to exhale in furious fits of coughing. Never was more

heroic remedy; it seemed a form of lingering suicide; but by degrees some slight improvement became

apparent, and at length the sufferer was able to sit upright, and to drain his glass with a sigh of rare relief. I

sighed also, for I had witnessed a struggle for dear life by a man in the flower of his youth, whose looks I

liked, whose smile came like the sun through the first break in his torments, and whose first words were to

That made me feel the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard. And I was not unready for the remark

"Do you know," said young Medlicott, "that you aren't a bit like the detective of my dreams?"

"Only to proud to hear it," I replied. "There would be no point in my being in plain clothes if I looked exactly

"There's something in that," said he, "although I do congratulate the insurance people on getting a man of

your class to do their dirty work. And I congratulate myself," he was quick enough to add, "on having you to

see me through as bad a night as I've had for a long time. You're like flowers in the depths of winter. Got a

drink? That's right! I suppose you didn't happen to bring down an evening paper?"

"Oh, I know all. about that," he interrupted. "I've seen the miserable score up to lunch. How many did we

And the note of admiration rang in my voice, though I tried in my selfconsciousness to keep it out. But

young Medlicott's enthusiasm proved an ample cloak for mine; it was he who might have been the personal

friend of Raffles; and in his delight he chuckled till he puffed and blew again.

"Good old Raffles!" he panted in every pause. "After being chosen last, and as a bowlerman! That's the

cricketer for me, sir; by Jove, we must have another drink in his honor! Funny thing, asthma; your liquor

affects your head no more than it does a man with a snakebite; but it eases everything else, and sees you

through. Doctors will tell you so, but you've got to ask 'em first; they're no good for asthma! I've only known

one who could stop an attack, and he knocked me sideways with nitrite of amyl. Funny complaint in other

ways; raises your spirits, if anything. You can't look beyond the next breath. Nothing else worries you. Well,

And he struggled to his feet for the toast; but I drank it sitting down. I felt unreasonably wroth with Raffles,

for coming into the conversation as he had done for taking centuries in Test Matches as he was doing,

without bothering his head about me. A failure would have been in better taste; it would have shown at least

some imagination, some anxiety on one's account I did not reflect that even Raffles could scarcely be

expected to picture me in my cups with the son of the house that I had come to rob; chatting with him,

ministering to him; admiring his cheery courage, and honestly attempting to lighten his load! Truly it was an

infernal position: how could I rob him or his after this? And yet I had thrust myself into it; and Raffles would

Even that was not the worst. I was not quite sure that young Medlicott was sure of me. I had feared this from

the beginning, and now (over the second glass that could not possibly affect a man in his condition) he

practically admitted as much to me. Asthma was such a funny thing (he insisted) that it would not worry him

a bit to discover that I had come to take the presents instead of to take care of them! I showed a sufficiently

faint appreciation of the jest. And it was presently punished as it deserved, by the most violent paroxysm that

had seized the sufferer yet: the fight for breath became faster and more furious, and the former weapons of no

more avail. I prepared a cigarette, but the poor brute was too breathless to inhale. I poured out yet more

I rushed into his room, and returned with a little tin of tiny cylinders done up like miniature crackers in scraps

of calico; the spent youth broke one in his handkerchief, in which he immediately buried his face. I watched

him closely as a subtle odor reached my nostrils; and it was like the miracle of oil upon the billows. His

shoulders rested from long travail; the stertorous gasping died away to a quick but natural respiration; and in

the sudden cessation of the cruel contest, an uncanny stillness fell upon the scene. Meanwhile the hidden face

had flushed to the ears, and, when at length it was raised to mine, its crimson calm was as incongruous as an

"It takes the blood from the heart," he murmured, "and clears the whole show for the moment. If it only

lasted! But you can't take two without a doctor; one's quite enough to make you smell the brimstone.... I say,

what's up? You're listening to something! If it's the policeman we'll have a word with him."

It was not the policeman; it was no outdoor sound that I had caught in the sudden cessation of the bout for

breath. It was a noise, a footstep, in the room below us. I went to the window and leaned out: right

underneath, in the conservatory, was the faintest glimmer of a light in the adjoining room.

"One of the rooms where the presents are!" whispered Medlicott at my elbow. And as we withdrew together,

I looked him in the face like an honest man, for a miracle was to make me one once more. My knot was cut

my course inevitable. Mine, after all., to prevent the very thing that I had come to do! My gorge had long

since risen at the deed; the unforeseen circumstances had rendered it impossible from the first; but now I

could afford to recognize the impossibility, and to think of Raffles and the asthmatic alike without a qualm. I

could play the game by them both, for it was one and the same game. I could preserve thieves' honor, and yet

So I thought as we stood face to face, our ears straining for the least movement below, our eyes locked in a

common anxiety. Another muffled footfall felt rather than heard and we exchanged grim nods of

simultaneous excitement. But by this time Medlicott was as helpless as he had been before; the flush had

faded from his face, and his breathing alone would have spoiled everything. In dumb show I had to order him

to stay where he was, to leave my man to me. And then it was that in a gusty whisper, with the same shrewd

look that had disconcerted me more than once during our vigil, young Medlicott froze and fired my blood by

"I've been unjust to you," he said, with his right hand in his dressinggown pocket. "I thought for a bit

never mind what I thought I soon saw I was wrong. But I've had this thing in my pocket all. the time!"

And he would have thrust his revolver upon me as a peaceoffering, but I would not even take his hand, as I

tapped the lifepreserver in my pocket, and crept out to earn his honest grip or to fall in the attempt. On the

landing I drew Raffles's little weapon, slipped my right wrist through the leathern loop, and held it in

readiness over my right shoulder. Then, downstairs I stole, as Raffles himself had taught me, close to the

wall, where the planks are nailed. Nor had I made a sound, to my knowledge; for a door was open, and a light

was burning, and the light did not flicker as I approached the door. I clenched my teeth and pushed it open;

"You blackguard!" I cried, and with a single thwack I felled the ruffian to the floor.

There was no question of a foul blow. He had been just as ready to pounce on me; it was simply my luck to

have got the first blow home. Yet a fellowfeeling touched me with remorse, as I stood over the senseless

body, sprawling prone, and perceived that I had struck an unarmed man. The lantern only had fallen from his

hands; it lay on one side, smoking horribly; and a something in the reek caused me to set it up in haste and

How it was possible, I did not pause to ask myself; if one man on earth could annihilate space and time, it

was the man lying senseless at my feet; and that was Raffles, without an instant's doubt. He was in villainous

guise, which I knew of old, now that I knew the unhappy wearer. His face was grimy, and dexterously

plastered with a growth of reddish hair; his clothes were those in which he had followed cabs from the

London termini; his boots were muffled in thick socks; and I had laid him low with a bloody scalp that filled

my cup of horror. I groaned aloud as I knelt over him and felt his heart. And I was answered by a bronchial

"Jolly well done!" cheered my asthmatical friend. "I heard the whole thing only hope my mother didn't. We

I could have cursed the creature's mother from my full heart; yet even with my hand on that of Raffles, as I

felt his feeble pulse, I told myself that this served him right. Even had I brained him, the fault had been his,

not mine. And it was a characteristic, an inveterate fault, that galled me for all. my anguish: to trust and yet

distrust me to the end, to race through England in the night, to spy upon me at his work to do it himself

"You must have hit him pretty hard," pursued young Medlicott, "but I suppose it was a case of getting first

knock. And a good job you got it, if this was his," he added, picking up the murderous little lifepreserver

"Look here," I answered, sitting back on my heels. "He isn't dead, Mr. Medlicott, and I don't know how long

he'll be as much as stunned. He's a powerful brute, and you're not fit to lend a hand. But that policeman of

"I suppose I am a bit better than I was," he replied doubtfully. "The excitement seems to have done me good.

If you like to leave me on guard with my revolver, I'll undertake that he doesn't escape me."

"I should never hear the last of it," said I. "No, in that case all. I can do is to handcuff the fellow and wait till

morning if he won't go quietly; and he'll be a fool if he does, while there's a fighting chance."

Young Medlicott glanced upstairs from his post on the threshold. I refrained from watching him too keenly,

"I'll go," he said hurriedly. "I'll go as I am, before my mother is disturbed and frightened out of her life. I owe

you something, too, not only for what you've done for me, but for what I was fool enough to think about you

at the first blush. It's entirely through you that I feel as fit as I do for the moment. So I'll take your tip, and go

I scarcely looked up until the good fellow had turned his back upon the final tableau of watchful officer and

prostrate prisoner and gone out wheezing into the night. But I was at the door to hear the last of him down the

path and round the corner of the house. And when I rushed back into the room, there was Raffles sitting

crosslegged on the floor, and slowly shaking his broken head as he stanched the blood.

"Of course I was stunned," he murmured, "and no thanks to you that I wasn't brained. Not to know me in the

kit you've seen scores of times! You never looked at me, Bunny; you didn't give me time to open my mouth. I

was going to let you run me in so prettily! We'd have walked off arminarm; now it's as tight a place as ever

we were in, though you did get rid of old blowpipes rather nicely. But we shall have the devil's own run for

Raffles had picked himself up between his mutterings, and I had followed him to the door into the garden,

where he stood busy with the key in the dark, having blown out his lantern and handed it to me. But though I

followed Raffles, as my nature must, I was far too embittered to answer him again. And so it was for some

minutes that might furnish forth a thrilling page, but not a novel one to those who know their Raffles and put

up with me. Suffice it that we left a locked door behind us, and the key on the garden wall, which was the

first of half a dozen that we scaled before dropping into a lane that led to a footbridge higher up the

backwater. And when we paused upon the footbridge, the houses along the bank were still in peace and

Knowing my Raffles as I did, I was not surprised when he dived under one end of this bridge, and came up

with his Inverness cape and opera hat, which he had hidden there on his way to the house. The thick socks

were peeled from his patentleathers, the ragged trousers stripped from an evening pair, bloodstains and

Newgate fringe removed at the water's edge, and the whole sepulchre whited in less time than the thing takes

to tell. Nor was that enough for Raffles, but he must alter me as well, by wearing my overcoat under his cape,

"And now," said he, "you may be glad to hear there's a 3:12 from Surbiton, which we could catch on all.

fours. If you like we'll go separately, but I don't think there's the slightest danger now, and I begin to wonder

So, indeed, did I, and with no small concern, until I read of his adventures (and our own) in the newspapers.

It seemed that he had made a gallant spurt into the road, and there paid the penalty of his rashness by a

sudden incapacity to move another inch. It had eventually taken him twenty minutes to creep back to locked

doors, and another ten to ring up the inmates. His description of my personal appearance, as reported in the

papers, is the only thing that reconciles me to the thought of his sufferings during that halfhour.

But at the time I had other thoughts, and they lay too deep for idle words, for to me also it was a bitter hour. I

had not only failed in my selfsought task; I had nearly killed my comrade into the bargain. I had meant well

by friend and foe in turn, and I had ended in doing execrably by both. It was not all. my fault, but I knew how

much my weakness had contributed to the sum. And I must walk with the man whose fault it was, who had

travelled two hundred miles to obtain this last proof of my weakness, to bring it home to me, and to make our

intimacy intolerable from that hour. I must walk with him to Surbiton, but I need not talk; all. through

Thames Ditton I had ignored his sallies; nor yet when he ran his arm through mine, on the river front, when

"Come, Bunny," he said at last, "I have been the one to suffer most, when all.'s said and done, and I'll be the

first to say that I deserved it. You've broken my head; my hair's all. glued up in my gore; and what yarn I'm to

put up at Manchester, or how I shall take the field at all., I really don't know. Yet I don't blame you, Bunny,

and I do blame myself. Isn't it rather hard luck if I am to go unforgiven into the bargain? I admit that I made a

"I was miserable about you frankly miserable!" he went on. "I couldn't get it out of my head that

somehow you would be laid by the heels. It was not your pluck that I distrusted, my dear fellow, but it was

your very pluck that made me tremble for you. I couldn't get you out of my head. I went in when runs were

wanted, but I give you my word that I was more anxious about you; and no doubt that's why I helped to put

on some runs. Didn't you see it in the paper, Bunny? It's the innings of my life, so far."

"Yes," I said, "I saw that you were in at close of play. But I don't believe it was you I believe you have a

"I'm afraid you didn't read your paper very carefully," said Raffles, with the first trace of pique in his tone. "It

was rain that closed play before five o'clock. I hear it was a sultry day in town, but at Manchester we got the

storm, and the ground was under water in ten minutes. I never saw such a thing in my life. There was

absolutely not the ghost of a chance of another ball being bowled. But I had changed before I thought of

doing what I did. It was only when I was on my way back to the hotel, by myself, because I couldn't talk to a

soul for thinking of you, that on the spur of the moment I made the man take me to the station instead, and

was under way in the restaurant car before I had time to think twice about it. I am not sure that of all. the mad

"It was the finest," I said in a low voice; for now I marvelled more at the impulse which had prompted his

"Heaven knows," he went on, "what they are saying and doing in Manchester! But what can they say? 'What

business is it of theirs? I was there when play stopped, and I shall be there when it starts again. We shall be at

Waterloo just after halfpast three, and that's going to give me an hour at the Albany on my way to Euston,

and another hour at Old Trafford before play begins. What's the matter with that? I don't suppose I shall notch

any more, but all. the better if I don't; if we have a hot sun after the storm, the sooner they get in the better;

"My dear fellow," replied Raffles, "that was my whole feeling about you. I wanted to 'see you at it' that was

absolutely all. I wanted to be near enough to lend a hand if you got tied up, as the best of us will at times. I

knew the ground better than you, and I simply couldn't keep away from it. But I didn't mean you to know that

I was there; if everything had gone as I hoped it might, I should have sneaked back to town without ever

letting you know I had been up. You should never have dreamt that I had been at your elbow; you would

have believed in yourself, and in my belief in you, and the rest would have been silence till the grave. So I

dodged you at Waterloo, and I tried not to let you know that I was following you from Esher station. But you

suspected somebody was; you stopped to listen more than once; after the second time I dropped behind, but

gained on you by taking the short cut by Imber Court and over the footbridge where I left my coat and hat. I

was actually in the garden before you were. I saw you smoke your Sullivan, and I was rather proud of you for

it, though you must never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word between you and the poor

devil upstairs. And up to a certain point, Bunny, I really thought you played the scene to perfection."

The station lights were twinkling ahead of us in the fading velvet of the summer's night. I let them increase

"In going indoors at all.," said Raffles. "If I had done that, I should have done exactly what you did from

that point on. You couldn't help yourself, with that poor brute in that state. And I admired you immensely,

Comfort! It was wine in every vein, for I knew that Raffles meant what he said, and with his eyes I soon saw

myself in braver colors. I ceased to blush for the vacillations of the night, since he condoned them. I could

even see that I had behaved with a measure of decency, in a truly trying situation, now that Raffles seemed to

think so. He had changed my whole view of his proceedings and my own, in every incident of the night but

one. There was one thing, however, which he might forgive me, but which I felt that I could forgive neither

Raffles nor myself. And that was the contused scalp wound over which I shuddered in the train.

"And to think that I did that," I groaned, "and that you laid yourself open to it, and that we have neither of us

got another thing to show for our night's work! That poor chap said it was as bad a night as he had ever had in

Raffles was smiling under the double lamps of the firstclass compartment that we had to ourselves.

"My dear Bunny," replied Raffles, "you should remember how long I had been maturing felonious little plan,

what a blow it was to me to have to turn it over to you, and how far I had travelled to see that you did it and

yourself as well as might be. You know what I did see, and how well I understood. I tell you again that I

should have done the same thing myself, in your place. But I was not in your place, Bunny. My hands were

not tied like yours. Unfortunately, most of the jewels have gone on the honeymoon with the happy pair; but

these emerald links are all. right, and I don't know what the bride was doing to leave this diamond comb

behind. Here, too, is the old silver skewer I've been wanting for years they make the most charming

paperknives in the world and this gold cigarettecase will just do for your smaller Sullivans."

Nor were these the only pretty things that Raffles set out in twinkling array upon the opposite cushions. But I

do not pretend that this was one of our heavy hauls, or deny that its chief interest still resides in the score of

I was just putting out my light when the telephone rang a furious tocsin in the next room. I flounced out of

bed more asleep than awake; in another minute I should have been past ringing up. It was one o'clock in the

"In that trap he bragged about. It serves me right. I didn't believe in it. But I'm caught at last ... caught ... at

"When he told us he set it every night! Oh, Raffles, what sort of a trap is it? What shall I do? What shall I

But his voice had grown fainter and wearier with every answer, and now there was no answer at all. Again

and again I asked Raffles if he was there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the

live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the

receiver still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful crash of a

In utter panic I rushed back into my bedroom, and flung myself into the crumpled shirt and evening clothes

that lay where I had cast them off. But I knew no more what I was doing than what to do next I afterward

found that I had taken out a fresh tie, and tied it rather better than usual; but I can remember thinking of

nothing but Raffles in some diabolical mantrap, and of a grinning monster stealing in to strike him senseless

with one murderous blow. I must have looked in the glass to array myself as I did; but the mind's eye was the

seeing eye, and it was filled with this frightful vision of the notorious pugilist known to fame and infamy as

It was only the week before that Raffles and I had been introduced to him at the Imperial Boxing Club.

Heavyweight champion of the United States, the fellow was still drunk with his sanguinary triumphs on that

side, and clamoring for fresh conquests on ours. But his reputation had crossed the Atlantic before Maguire

himself; the grandiose hotels had closed their doors to him; and he had already taken and sumptuously

furnished the house in Halfmoon Street which does not relet to this day. Raffles had made friends with the

magnificent brute, while I took timid stock of his diamond studs, his jewelled watchchain, his

eighteencarat bangle, and his sixinch lower jaw. I had shuddered to see Raffles admiring the gewgaws in

his turn, in his own brazen fashion, with that air of the cool connoisseur which had its double meaning for

me. I for my part would as lief have looked a tiger in the teeth. And when we finally went home with

Maguire to see his other trophies, it seemed to me like entering the tiger's lair. But an astounding lair it

proved, fitted throughout by one eminent firm, and ringing to the rafters with the last word on fantastic

The trophies were a still greater surprise. They opened my eyes to the rosier aspect of the noble art, as

presently practised on the right side of the Atlantic. Among other offerings, we were permitted to handle the

jewelled belt presented to the pugilist by the State of Nevada, a gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento,

and a model of himself in solid silver from the Fisticuff Club in New York. I still remember waiting with

bated breath for Raffles to ask Maguire if he were not afraid of burglars, and Maguire replying that he had a

trap to catch the cleverest cracksman alive, but flatly refusing to tell us what it was. I could not at the moment

conceive a more terrible trap than the heavyweight himself behind a curtain. Yet it was easy to see that

Raffles had accepted the braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did he deny it later when I taxed him with his

mad resolve; he merely refused to allow me to implicate myself in its execution. Well, there was a spice of

savage satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had been obliged to turn to me in the end. And, but for the

dreadful thud which I had heard over the telephone, I might have extracted some genuine comfort from the

Within the last twentyfour hours Barney Maguire had fought his first great battle on British soil. Obviously,

he would no longer be the man that he had been in the strict training before the fight; never, as I gathered,

was such a ruffian more off his guard, or less capable of protecting himself and his possessions, than in these

first hours of relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which Raffles had waited with characteristic foresight.

Nor was the terrible Barney likely to be more abstemious for signal punishment sustained in a far from

bloodless victory. Then what could be the meaning of that sickening and most suggestive thud? Could it be

the champion himself who had received the coup de grace in his cups? Raffles was the very man to

And yet and yet what else could have happened? I must have asked myself the question between each and

all. of the above reflections, made partly as I dressed and partly in the hansom on the way to Halfmoon

Street. It was as yet the only question in my mind. You must know what your emergency is before you can

decide how to cope with it; and to this day I sometimes tremble to think of the rashly direct method by which

I set about obtaining the requisite information. I drove every yard of the way to the pugilist's very door. You

Yet at the last I had a rough idea of what I meant to say when the door was opened. It seemed almost

probable that the tragic end of our talk over the telephone had been caused by the sudden arrival and as

sudden violence of Barney Maguire. In that case I was resolved to tell him that Raffles and I had made a bet

about his burglar trap, and that I had come to see who had won. I might or might not confess that Raffles had

rung me out of bed to this end. If, however, I was wrong about Maguire, and he had not come home at all.,

then my action would depend upon the menial who answered my reckless ring. But it should result in the

I had the more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang in vain. The hall, indeed, was in

darkness; but when I peeped through the letterbox I could see a faint beam of light from the back room.

That was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All. was quiet in the house: could they

have haled the intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes which it had taken me to dress and to drive

to the spot? That was an awful thought; but even as I hoped against hope, and rang once more, speculation

A brougham was coming sedately down the street from Piccadilly; to my horror, it stopped behind me as I

peered once more through the letterbox, and out tumbled the dishevelled prizefighter and two companions. I

was nicely caught in my turn. There was a lamppost right opposite the door, and I can still see the three of

them regarding me in its light. The pugilist had been at least a fine figure of a bully and a braggart when I

saw him before his fight; now he had a black eye and a bloated lip, hat on the back of his head, and madeup

tie under one ear. His companions were his sallow little Yankee secretary, whose name I really forget, but

whom I met with Maguire at the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a second skin of shimmering

I can neither forget nor report the terms in which Barney Maguire asked me who I was and what I was doing

there. Thanks, however, to Swigger Morrison's hospitality, I readily reminded him of our former meeting, and

"You'll remember Raffles," said I, "if you don't remember me. You showed us your trophies the other night,

and asked us both to look you up at any hour of the day or night after the fight."

I was going on to add that I had expected to find Raffles there before me, to settle a wager that we had made

about the mantrap. But the indiscretion was interrupted by Maguire himself, whose dreadful fist became a

hand that gripped mine with brute fervor, while with the other he clouted me on the back.

"You don't say!" he cried. "I took you for some darned crook, but now I remember you perfectly. If you

hadn't've spoke up slick I'd have bu'st your face in, sonny. I would, sure! Come right in, and have a drink to

The secretary had turned the latchkey in the door, only to be hauled back by the collar as the door stood

open, and the light from the inner room was seen streaming upon the banisters at the foot of the narrow stairs.

"A light in my den," said Maguire in a mighty whisper, "and the blamed door open, though the key's in my

pocket and we left it locked! Talk about crooks, eh? Holy smoke, how I hope we've landed one alive! You

And the hulking figure advanced on tiptoe, like a performing elephant, until just at the open door, when for a

second we saw his left revolving like a piston and his head thrown back at its fighting angle. But in another

second his fists were hands again, and Maguire was rubbing them together as he stood shaking with laughter

"Walk up!" he cried, as he beckoned to us three. "Walk up and see one o' their blamed British crooks laid as

Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow secretary went first; the sequins glittered at his heels, and I must

own that for one base moment I was on the brink of bolting through the street door. It had never been shut

behind us. I shut it myself in the end. Yet it was small credit to me that I actually remained on the same side

"Reel homegrown, lowdown, unwashed Whitechapel!" I had heard Maguire remark within. "Blamed if our

Bowery boys ain't cockangels to scum like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my knuckles on your ugly

face; but if I had my thick boots on I'd dance the soul out of your carcass for two cents!"

After this it required less courage to join the others in the inner room; and for some moments even I failed to

identify the truly repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no false hair upon the face,

but it was as black as any sweep's. The clothes, on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more

pestiferous in themselves than most worn by Raffles for professional purposes. And at first, as I say, I was far

from sure whether it was Raffles at all.; but I remembered the crash that cut short our talk over the telephone;

and this inanimate heap of rags was lying directly underneath a wall instrument, with the receiver dangling

"Think you know him?" asked the sallow secretary, as I stooped and peered with my heart in my boots.

"Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead," I explained, having satisfied myself that it was really

Raffles, and that Raffles was really insensible. "But what on earth has happened?" I asked in my turn.

"That's what I want to know," whined the person in sequins, who had contributed various ejaculations

"I should judge," observed the secretary, "that it's for Mr. Maguire to say, or not to say, just as he darn

But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian hearthrug, beaming upon us all. in a triumph too delicious

for immediate translation into words. The room was furnished as a study, and most artistically furnished, if

you consider outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic. There was nothing of the traditional prizefighter about

Barney Maguire, except his vocabulary and his lower jaw. I had seen over his house already, and it was fitted

and decorated throughout by a highart firm which exhibits just such a room as that which was the scene of

our tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of enormous

nails and tapestry compact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges of beaten metal. The

pugilist's own background presented an elaborate scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the

joiner, and a china cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes rolled with

rich delight from the decanter and glasses on the octagonal table to another decanter in the quaintest and

"Isn't it bully?" asked the prizefighter, smiling on us each in turn, with his black and bloodshot eyes and his

bloated lip. "To think that I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to walk right into!

You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great head at me, "you'll recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one when

you come in that night with the other sport? Say, pity he's not with you now; he was a good boy, and I liked

him a lot; but he wanted to know too much, and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to tell you now, or

"I was just looking at it," said the person in sequins. "You don't know what a turn I've had, or you'd offer me

"You shall have a little something in a minute," rejoined Maguire. "But if you take a little anything out of that

"Good heavens!" I cried out, with involuntary indignation, and his fell scheme broke upon me in a clap.

"Yes, sir!" said Maguire, fixing me with his bloodshot orbs. "My trap for crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of

hocussed whiskey, and I guess that's it on the table, with the silver label around its neck. Now look at this

other decanter, without any label at all.; but for that they're the dead spit of each other. I'll put them side by

side, so you can see. It isn't only the decanters, but the liquor looks the same in both, and tastes so you

wouldn't know the difference till you woke up in your tracks. I got the poison from a blamed Indian away

west, and it's ruther ticklish stuff. So I keep the label around the trapbottle, and only leave it out nights.

That's the idea, and that's all. there is to it," added Maguire, putting the labelled decanter back in the stand.

"But I figure it's enough for ninetynine crooks out of a hundred, and nineteen out of twenty 'll have their

"I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secretary, with a downward glance as though at the prostrate Raffles.

"Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the pseudoantique cabinet in which he kept them. "Then you can

save yourself the trouble," rejoined the secretary, as he dived under the octagonal table, and came up with a

small black bag that I knew at a glance. It was the one that Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I

The bag was so heavy now that the secretary used both hands to get it on the table. In another moment he had

taken out the jewelled belt presented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the solid silver statuette of himself,

Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost, or the feeling that the thief had dared to tamper with them after

all., suddenly infuriated Maguire to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple of brutal kicks upon the

"Play light, Mr. Maguire!" cried the sallow secretary. "The man's drugged, as well as down."

"Not till I've done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I'll punch his face into a jam pudding! He shall

"You make me feel quite ill," complained the grand lady in the chair. "I wish you'd give me a little

"Help yourself," said Maguire, ungallantly, "and don't talk through your hat. Say, what's the matter with the

"It looks to me," said he, "as though the crook had rung up somebody before he went off."

"It'll all. come out," said the secretary. "They'll tell us at the central, and we shall find out fast enough."

"It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's have a drink and then rouse the devil up."

But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time

being, the police would promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the burglar, and the fact of

my not having said a word about it would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us

both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the

Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my

tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of

my whole conduct on this occasion. But any sheep would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger

"You, sonny?" echoed Maguire, decanter in hand. "What in hell could he know about you?"

"Or what could you know about him?" amended the secretary, fixing me with eyes like drills.

"Nothing," I admitted, regretting my temerity with all. my heart. "But some one did ring me up about an hour

ago. I thought it was Raffles. I told you I expected to find him here, if you remember."

"But I don't see what that's got to do with the crook," pursued the secretary, with his relentless eyes boring

"No more do I," was my miserable reply. But there was a certain comfort in his words, and some

simultaneous promise in the quantity of spirit which Maguire splashed into his glass.

"Were you cut off sudden?" asked the secretary, reaching for the decanter, as the three of us sat round the

"So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew who it was who rang me up. No, thank you not any for me."

"What!" cried Maguire, raising a depressed head suddenly. "You won't have a drink in my house? Take care,

"Say, sonny, I like you a lot," said he. "But I shan't like you any if you're not a good boy!"

"Why should it have been your friend Raffles?" he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge, while

"I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was the first person who occurred to me. We are both on the

The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched. Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his

spreading shirtfront, and beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic armchair.

"What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary was blinking as he drained his glass.

"About the very thing we've just had explained to us," said I, watching my man intently as I spoke. "I made

sure it was a mantrap. Raffles thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous argument about it.

Raffles said it wasn't a mantrap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the

mantrap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was right it wasn't a mantrap. But it's every

bit as good every little bit and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except me!"

I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well have raised it instead. I had said the same

thing over and over again to see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary to open his eyes. It

seemed to have had the very opposite effect. His head fell forward on the table, with never a quiver at the

blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own sprawling arms. And there sat Maguire bolt

upright, but for the jowl upon his shirtfront, while the sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon the

reclining form of the lady in the fanciful chair. All. three were sound asleep, by what accident or by whose

design I did not pause to inquire; it was enough to ascertain the fact beyond all. chance of error.

I turned my attention to Raffles last of all. There was the other side of the medal. Raffles was still sleeping as

sound as the enemy or so I feared at first I shook him gently: he made no sign. I introduced vigor into the

process: he muttered incoherently. I caught and twisted an unresisting wrist and at that he yelped profanely.

"Bunny!" he yawned, and nothing more until his position came back to him. "So you came to me," he went

on, in a tone that thrilled me with its affectionate appreciation, "as I knew you would! Have they turned up

"No, they won't, old man!" I whispered. And he sat up and saw the comatose trio for himself.

Raffles seemed less amazed at the result than I had been as a puzzled witness of the process; on the other

hand, I had never seen anything quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his blackened countenance

like a light. It was all. obviously no great surprise, and no puzzle at all., to Raffles.

"Then we needn't lower our voices, and we needn't walk on our toes. Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking

And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time.

"He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him," said Raffles. "I don't suppose we could rouse

him now if we tried. How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose I took? About a tablespoonful! I

guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the

position of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in another minute I could hardly

keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly poisoned with some subtle drug. If I left the house at all.

in that state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag itself. In

any case I should have been picked up and run in, and that might have led to anything."

"It was my last brilliant inspiration a sort of flash in the brainpan before the end and I remember very

"As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was Maguire who had stolen a march on you and

I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this point his smile altered, his eyes softened,

"You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my body with Barney Maguire!

"It was no credit to me it was rather the other thing," said I, remembering my rashness and my luck, and

confessing both in a breath. "You know old Swigger Morrison?" I added in final explanation. "I had been

Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was still my infinite reward.

"I don't care," said he, "how deeply you had been dining: in vino veritas, Bunny, and your pluck would

always out! I have never doubted it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to get us out of this

My face must have fallen, as my heart sank at these words. I had said to myself that we were out of the mess

already that we had merely to make a clean escape from the house now the easiest thing in the world. But

as I looked at Raffles, and as Raffles looked at me, on the threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept

on without sound or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay before us. It was twofold; and the funny

thing was that I had seen both horns of the dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his senses. But with

Raffles in his right mind, I had ceased to apply my own, or to carry my share of our common burden another

inch. It had been an unconscious withdrawal on my part, an instinctive tribute to my leader; but, I was

sufficiently ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem in each other's eyes.

"If we simply cleared out," continued Raffles, "you would be incriminated in the first place as my

accomplice, and once they had you they would have a compass with the needle pointing straight to me. They

mustn't have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us both. And for my part they may as well!"

I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself in Raffles, but in my case a mere truism.

"It's easy enough for me," he went on. "I am a common housebreaker, and I escape. They don't know me

from Noah. But they do know you; and how do you come to let me escape? What has happened to you,

Bunny? That's the crux. What could have happened after they all. dropped off?" And for a minute Raffles

frowned and smiled like a sensation novelist working out a plot; then the light broke, and transfigured him

through his burnt cork. "I've got it, Bunny!" he exclaimed. "You took some of the stuff yourself, though of

"Splendid!" I cried. "They really were pressing it upon me at the end, and I did say it must be very little."

"You dozed off in your turn, but you were naturally the first to come to yourself. I had flown; so had the gold

brick, the jewelled belt, and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You couldn't succeed; nor

would you if you did try. So what did you do? What's the only really innocent thing you could do in the

"There's a telephone installed for the purpose," said Raffles. "I should ring them up, if I were you. Try not to

look blue about it, Bunny. They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and what you have to tell them is a

mere microbe to the camels I've made them swallow without a grain of salt. It's really the most convincing

story one could conceive; but unfortunately there's another point which will take more explaining away."

"They may," said Raffles. "I see that I managed to replace the receiver all. right. But still they may."

"I'm afraid they will," said I, uncomfortably. "I'm very much afraid I gave something of the kind away. You

see, you had not replaced the receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay. This very question came up,

and the brutes themselves seemed so quick to see its possibilities that I thought best to take the bull by the

horns and own that I had been rung up by somebody. To be absolutely honest, I even went so far as to say I

"What could I say? I was obliged to think of somebody, and I saw they were not going to recognize you. So I

put up a yarn about a wager we had made about this very trap of Maguire's. You see, Raffles, I've never

properly told you how I got in, and there's no time now; but the first thing I had said was that I half expected

to find you here before me. That was in case they spotted you at once. But it made all. that part about the

"I should think it did, Bunny," murmured Raffles, in a tone that added sensibly to my reward. "I couldn't have

done better myself, and you will forgive my saying that you have never in your life done half so well. Talk

about that crack you gave me on the head! You have made it up to me a hundredfold by all. you have done

tonight. But the bother of it is that there's still so much to do, and to hit upon, and so precious little time for

I took out my watch and showed it to Raffles without a word. It was three o'clock in the morning, and the

latter end of March. In little more than an hour there would be dim daylight in the streets. Raffles roused

"There's only one thing for it, Bunny," said he. "We must trust each other and divide the labor. You ring up

"You haven't hit upon any reason for the sort of burglar they think you were, ringing up the kind of man they

"Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so, and after all. it isn't for you to give the

"Then will you trust me to hit on something if possible before morning in any case by the time it s

wanted? I won't fail you, Bunny. You must see how I can never, never fail you after tonight!"

That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and remained on guard over the three sleepers while

Raffles stole upstairs. I have since learned that there were servants at the top of the house, and in the

basement a man, who actually heard some of our proceedings! But he was mercifully too accustomed to

nocturnal orgies, and those of a far more uproarious character, to appear unless summoned to the scene. I

believe he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made of his exit: he let himself out and told me afterward

that the first person he encountered in the street was the constable on the beat. Raffles wished him

goodmorning, as well he might; for he had been upstairs to wash his face and hands; and in the

prizefighter's great hat and fur coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of his having

the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver statuette of Maguire in the other, and round his waist

My immediate part was a little hard after the excitement of those small hours. I will only say that we had

agreed that it would be wisest for me to lie like a log among the rest for half an hour, before staggering to my

feet and rousing house and police; and that in that halfhour Barney Maguire crashed to the floor, without

waking either himself or his companions, though not without bringing my beating heart into the very roof of

It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested

with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told

it a dozen times, and all. on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even

without that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet sufficiently recovered to supply. And in

the end I was permitted to retire from the scene until required to give further information, or to identify the

prisoner whom the good police confidently expected to make before the day was out.

I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my hansom. His face alarmed me more than any

"Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he cried. "The thieves have taken everything they could lay hands

"Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two incriminating possessions up there, as well

"The door's been forced with a jimmy," said the porter. "It was the milkman who found it out. There's a

A constable poking about in my flat of all. others! I rushed upstairs without waiting for the lift. The invader

was moistening his pencil between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no further than the

forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept my trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a

"Yes, indeed some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true. But the family was not mine.

And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of value had been taken. But there was a

meaningless litter in all. the rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street; it was his

"Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your

wife tidy the place while I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I am, this

And go I did, in the first hansom I could find but not straight to Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in

Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him fresher, more immaculate, more

delightful to behold in every way. Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen, it

would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in

"It was the only solution," he answered, handing me the cigarettes. "I saw it the moment I got outside."

"I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in order to burgle you too, of course!"

And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all. his incomparable radiance and audacity.

"My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the police. But we will assist them to a fact

or two in due season. It was the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at the Imperial

Boxing Club we met him; and you meet queer fish at the Imperial Boxing Club. You may remember that he

telephoned to his man to prepare supper for us, and that you and he discussed telephones and treasure as we

marched through the midnight streets. He was certainly bucking about his trophies, and for the sake of the

argument you will be good enough to admit that you probably bucked about yours. What happens? You are

overheard; you are followed; you are worked into the same scheme, and robbed on the same night."

"And you really think this will meet the case?" "I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far as it rests wit us to

"Then give me another cigarette, my dear fellow, and let me push on to Scotland Yard."

"A false description! Bunny, you have no more to learn from me. Time was when I wouldn't have let you go

And for once I was not sorry for Raffles to have the last unworthy word, as he stood once more at his outer

There was one deed of those days which deserved a place in our original annals. It is the deed of which I am

personally most ashamed. I have traced the course of a score of felonies, from their source in the brain of

Raffles to their issue in his hands. I have omitted all. mention of the one which emanated from my own

miserable mind. But in these supplementary memoirs, wherein I pledged myself to extenuate nothing more

that I might have to tell of Raffles, it is only fair that I should make as clean a breast of my own baseness. It

was I, then, and I alone, who outraged natural sentiment, and trampled the expiring embers of elementary

I would not accuse myself the more vehemently by making excuses at this point. Yet I feel bound to state that

it was already many years since the place had passed from our possession into that of an utter alien, against

whom I harbored a prejudice which was some excuse in itself. He had enlarged and altered the dear old place

out of knowledge; nothing had been good enough for him as it stood in our day. The man was a hunting

maniac, and where my dear father used to grow prize peaches under glass, this vandal was soon stabling his

hothouse thoroughbreds, which took prizes in their turn at all. the country shows. It was a southern county,

and I never went down there without missing another greenhouse and noting a corresponding extension to the

stables. Not that I ever set foot in the grounds from the day we left; but for some years I used to visit old

friends in the neighborhood, and could never resist the temptation to reconnoiter the scenes of my childhood.

And so far as could be seen from the road which it stood too near the house itself appeared to be the one

My only other excuse may be none at all. in any eyes but mine. It was my passionate desire at this period to

"keep up my end" with Raffles in every department of the game felonious. He would insist upon an equal

division of all. proceeds; it was for me to earn my share. So far I had been useful only at a pinch; the whole

credit of any real success belonged invariably to Raffles. It had always been his idea. That was the tradition

which I sought to end, and no means could compare with that of my unscrupulous choice. There was the one

house in England of which I knew every inch, and Raffles only what I told him. For once I must lead, and

Raffles follow, whether he liked it or not. He saw that himself; and I think he liked it better than he liked me

for the desecration in view; but I had hardened my heart, and his feelings were too fine for actual

I, in my obduracy, went to foul extremes. I drew plans of all. the floors from memory. I actually descended

upon my friends in the neighborhood, with the sole object of obtaining snapshots over our own old garden

wall. Even Raffles could not keep his eyebrows down when I showed him the prints one morning in the

"Built in the late 'sixties, I see," said Raffles, "or else very early in the 'seventies."

"Exactly when it was built," I replied. "But that's worthy of a sixpenny detective, Raffles! How on earth did

"That slate tower bang over the porch, with the dormer windows and the iron railing and flagstaff atop makes

us a present of the period. You see them on almost every house of a certain size built about thirty years ago.

"Ours wasn't," I answered, with some warmth. "It was my sanctum sanctorum in the holidays. I smoked my

Raffles laid a kindly hand upon my shoulder "Bunny, Bunny, you can rob the old place, and yet you can't

"That's different," said I relentlessly. "The tower was there in my time, but the man I mean to rob was not."

"Not again, Bunny, not again," rejoined Raffles, laughing as he shook his head. "But do you think the man

"Well, that's as bad as a hundred on most lines. And when did you say it was to be?"

"It's the night of their Hunt PointtoPoint. They wind up the season with it every year; and the bloated

"Yes; and he tops up with no end of dinner there," I went on, "to his hunting pals and the bloods who ride for

him. If the festive board doesn't groan under a new regiment of challenge cups, it will be no fault of theirs,

"So it's a case of common pothunting," remarked Raffles, eyeing me shrewdly through the cigarette smoke.

"Not for us, my dear fellow," I made answer in his own tone. "I wouldn't ask you to break into the next set of

chambers here in the Albany for a few pieces of modern silver, Raffles. Not that we need scorn the cups if we

get a chance of lifting them, and if Guillemard does so in the first instance. It's by no means certain that he

will. But it is pretty certain to be a lively night for him and his pals and a vulnerable one for the best

bedroom!" "Capital!" said Raffles, throwing coils of smoke between his smiles. "Still, if it's a dinnerparty,

"Not all. of them, Raffles; she has far too many for that. Besides, it isn't an ordinary dinnerparty; they say

Mrs. Guillemard is generally the only lady there, and that she's quite charming in herself. Now, no charming

" and certainly not her emerald and diamond necklace on top of all.!" Raffles snatched the Sullivan from

"Of course I do," said I. "They are rich people, and he's not such a brute as to spend everything on his stable.

Her jewels are as much the talk as his hunters. My friends told me all. about both the other day when I was

down making inquiries. They thought my curiosity as natural as my wish for a few snapshots of the old place.

"I only hope you didn't ask too many questions, Bunny! But if your friends are such old friends, you will

never enter their heads when they hear what has happened, unless you are seen down there on the night,

which might be fatal. Your approach will require some thought: if you like I can work out the shot for you. I

shall go down independently, and the best thing may be to meet outside the house itself on the night of nights.

And on these refreshing lines our plan of campaign was gradually developed and elaborated into that finished

study on which Raffles would rely like any artist of the footlights. None were more capable than he of coping

with the occasion as it rose, of rising himself with the emergency of the moment, of snatching a victory from

the very dust of defeat. Yet, for choice, every detail was premeditated, and an alternative expedient at each

finger's end for as many bare and awful possibilities. In this case, however, the finished study stopped short at

the garden gate or wall; there I was to assume command; and though Raffles carried the actual tools of trade

of which he alone was master, it was on the understanding that for once I should control and direct their use.

I had gone down in eveningclothes by an evening train, but had carefully overshot old landmarks, and

alighted at a small station some miles south of the one where I was still remembered. This committed me to a

solitary and somewhat lengthy tramp; but the night was mild and starry, and I marched into it with a high

stomach; for this was to be no costume crime, and yet I should have Raffles at my elbow all. the night. Long

before I reached my destination, indeed, he stood in wait for me on the white highway, and we finished with

"I came down early," said Raffles, "and had a look at the races. I always prefer to measure my man, Bunny;

and you needn't sit in the front row of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guillemard. No wonder he doesn't

ride his own horses! The steeplechaser isn't foaled that would carry him round that course. But he's a fine

monument of a man, and he takes his troubles in a way that makes me blush to add to them."

"No, Bunny, but he didn't win a race! His horses were by chalks the best there, and his pals rode them like the

foul fiend, but with the worst of luck every time. Not that you'd think it, from the row they're making. I've

been listening to them from the road you always did say the house stood too near it."

"When it's your show? You should know me better. Not a foot would I set on the premises behind your back.

And I led it without a moment's hesitation, through the unpretentious sixbarred gate into the long but

shallow crescent of the drive. There were two such gates, one at each end of the drive, but no lodge at either,

and not a light nearer than those of the house. The shape and altitude of the lighted windows, the whisper of

the laurels on either hand, the very feel of the gravel underfoot, were at once familiar to my senses as the

sweet, relaxing, immemorial air that one drank deeper at every breath. Our stealthy advance was to me like

stealing back into one's childhood; and yet I could conduct it without compunction. I was too excited to feel

immediate remorse, albeit not too lost in excitement to know that remorse for every step that I was taking

would be my portion soon enough. I mean every word that I have written of my peculiar shame for this

night's work. And it was all. to come over me before the night was out. But in the garden I never felt it once.

The diningroom windows blazed in the side of the house facing the road. That was an objection to peeping

through the venetian blinds, as we nevertheless did, at our peril of observation from the road. Raffles would

never have led me into danger so gratuitous and unnecessary, but he followed me into it without a word. I can

only plead that we both had our reward. There was a sufficient chink in the obsolete venetians, and through it

we saw every inch of the picturesque board. Mrs. Guillemard was still in her place, but she really was the

only lady, and dressed as quietly as I had prophesied; round her neck was her rope of pearls, but not the

glimmer of an emerald nor the glint of a diamond, nor yet the flashing constellation of a tiara in her hair. I

gripped Raffles in token of my triumph, and he nodded as he scanned the overwhelming majority of flushed

foxhunters. With the exception of one stripling, evidently the son of the house, they were in evening pink to

a man; and as I say, their faces matched their coats. An enormous fellow, with a great red face and cropped

moustache, occupied my poor father's place; he it was who had replaced our fruitful vineries with his stinking

stables; but I am bound to own he looked a genial clod, as he sat in his fat and listened to the young bloods

boasting of their prowess, or elaborately explaining their mishaps. And for a minute we listened also, before I

There never was an easier house to enter. I used to feel that keenly as a boy, when, by a prophetic irony,

burglars were my bugbear, and I looked under my bed every night in life. The bowwindows on the ground

floor finished in inane balconies to the firstfloor windows. These balconies had ornamental iron railings, to

which a less ingenious ropeladder than ours could have been hitched with equal ease. Raffles had brought it

with him, round his waist, and he carried the telescopic stick for fixing it in place. The one was unwound, and

the other put together, in a secluded corner of the redbrick walls, where of old I had played my own game of

squashrackets in the holidays. I made further investigations in the starlight, and even found a trace of my

But it was not until we had effected our entry through the room which had been my very own, and made our

parlous way across the lighted landing, to the best bedroom of those days and these, that I really felt myself a

worm. Twin brass bedsteads occupied the site of the old fourposter from which I had first beheld the light.

The doors were the same; my childish hands had grasped these very handles. And there was Raffles securing

the landing door with wedge and gimlet, the very second after softly closing it behind us.

"The other leads into the dressingroom, of course? Then you might be fixing the outer dressingroom door,"

he whispered at his work, "but not the middle one Bunny, unless you want to. The stuff will be in there, you

My door was done in a moment, being fitted with a powerful bolt; but now an aching conscience made me

busier than I need have been. I had raised the ropeladder after us into my own old room, and while Raffles

wedged his door I lowered the ladder from one of the best bedroom windows, in order to prepare that way of

escape which was a fundamental feature of his own strategy. I meant to show Raffles that I had not followed

in his train for nothing. But I left it to him to unearth the jewels. I had begun by turning up the gas; there

appeared to be no possible risk in that; and Raffles went to work with a will in the excellent light. There were

some good pieces in the room, including an ancient tallboy in fruity mahogany, every drawer of which was

turned out on the bed without avail. A few of the drawers had locks to pick, yet not one triffle to our taste

within. The situation became serious as the minutes flew. We had left the party at its sweets; the solitary lady

might be free to roam her house at any minute. In the end we turned our attention to the dressingroom. And

"A bathroom bolt," he cried below his breath, "and no bath in the room! Why didn't you tell me, Bunny? A

bolt like that speaks volumes; there's none on the bedroom door, remember, and this one's worthy of a strong

room! What if it is their strong room, Bunny! Oh, Bunny, what if this is their safe?" Raffles had dropped

upon his knees before a carved oak chest of indisputable antiquity. Its panels were delightfully irregular, its

angles faultlessly faulty, its one modern defilement a strong lock to the lid. Raffles was smiling as he

produced his jimmy. R r r rip went lock or lid in another ten seconds I was not there to see which. I

had wandered back into the bedroom in a paroxysm of excitement and suspense. I must keep busy as well. as

Raffles, and it was not too soon to see whether the ropeladder was all. right. In another minute . . .

I stood frozen to the floor. I had hooked the ladder beautifully to the inner sill of wood, and had also let down

the extended rod for the more expeditious removal of both on our return to terra firma. Conceive my cold

horror on arriving at the open window just in time to see the last of hooks and bending rod, as they floated

out of sight and reach into the outer darkness of the night, removed by some silent and invisible hand below!

So I panted as I rushed on tiptoe to the dressingroom. Raffles had the working end of his jimmy under the

lid of a leathern jewel case. It flew open at the vicious twist of his wrist that preceded his reply.

"Good! Pocket some of these cases no time to open them. Which door's nearest the backstairs?"

And, as I leaned against the bedroom door, handle in hand, while Raffles stooped to unscrew the gimlet and

withdraw the wedge, I hit upon the ideal port in the storm that was evidently about to burst on our devoted

heads. It was the last place in which they would look for a couple of expert cracksmen with no previous

knowledge of the house. If only we could gain my haven unobserved, there we might lie in unsuspected

Alas for that sanguine dream! The wedge was out, and Raffles on his feet behind me. I opened the door, and

Creeping up the stairs before us, each on the tip of his silken toes, was a serried file of pink barbarians, redder

in the face than anywhere else, and armed with crops carried by the wrong end. The monumental person with

the short moustache led the advance. The fool stood still upon the top step to let out the loudest and cheeriest

It cost him more than he may know until I tell him. There was the wide part of the landing between us; we

had just that much start along the narrow part, with the walls and doors upon our left, the banisters on our

right, and the baize door at the end. But if the great Guillemard had not stopped to live up to his sporting

reputation, he would assuredly have laid one or other of us by the heels, and either would have been

tantamount to both. As I gave Raffles a headlong lead to the baize door, I glanced down the great well of

And gone I had, through the baize door to the back landing, with Raffles at my heels. I held the swing door

for him, and heard him bang it in the face of the spluttering and blustering master of the house. Other feet

were already in the lower flight of the backstairs; but the upper flight was the one for me, and in an instant we

were racing along the upper corridor with the chuckleheaded pack at our heels. Here it was all. but dark

they were the servants' bedrooms that we were passing now but I knew what I was doing. Round the last

corner to the right, through the first door to the left and we were in the room underneath the tower. In our

time a long stepladder had led to the tower itself. I rushed in the dark to the old corner. Thank God, the ladder

was there still! It leaped under us as we rushed aloft like one quadruped. The breakneck trapdoor was still

protected by a curved brass stanchion; this I grasped with one hand, and then Raffles with the other as I felt

my feet firm upon the tower floor. In he sprawled after me, and down went the trapdoor with a bang upon

I hoped to feel his deadweight shake the house, as he crashed upon the floor below; but the fellow must

have ducked, and no crash came. Meanwhile not a word passed between Raffles and me; he had followed me,

as I had led him, without waste of breath upon a single syllable. But the merry lot below were still yelling and

But their host of the mighty girth a man like a sodawater bottle, from my one glimpse of him on his feet

seemed sobered rather than stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice no more, but we

could feel him straining every thew against the trapdoor upon which Raffles and I stood side by side. At

least I thought Raffles was standing, until he asked me to strike a light, when I found him on his knees

instead of on his feet, busy screwing down the trapdoor with his gimlet. He carried three or four gimlets for

wedging doors, and he drove them all. in to the handle, while I pulled at the stanchion and pushed with my

But the upward pressure ceased before our efforts. We heard the ladder creak again under a ponderous and

slow descent; and we stood upright in the dim flicker of a candleend that I had lit and left burning on the

floor. Raffles glanced at the four small windows in turn and then at me. "Is there any way out at all.?" he

whispered, as no other being would or could have whispered to the man who had led him into such a trap.

"Thanks to me," I groaned. "The whole thing's my fault? "Nonsense, Bunny; there was no other way to run.

His magnanimity took me by the throat; without a word I led him to the one window looking inward upon

sloping slates and level leads. Often as a boy I had clambered over them, for the fearful fun of risking life and

limb, or the fascination of peering through the great square skylight, down the well of the house into the hall

below. There were, however, several smaller skylights, for the benefit of the top floor, through any one of

which I thought we might have made a dash. But at a glance I saw we were too late: one of these skylights

became a brilliant square before our eyes; opened, and admitted a flushed face on flaming shoulders.

"I'll give them a fright!" said Raffles through his teeth. In an instant he had plucked out his revolver, smashed

the window with its butt, and the slates with a bullet not a yard from the protruding head. And that, I believe,

was the only shot that Raffles ever fired in his whole career as a midnight marauder.

"You didn't hit him?" I gasped, as the head disappeared, and we heard a crash in the corridor.

"Of course I didn't, Bunny," he replied, backing into the tower; "but no one will believe I didn't mean to, and

it'll stick on ten years if we're caught. That's nothing, if it gives us an extra five minutes now, while they hold

"And they're sure to be rotten, and we should be seen cutting them down. No, Bunny, that won't do. Wait a

I opened one of the side windows and reached out as far as I could. xyz "You'll be seen from that skylight?

"No, I won't. I can't see it myself. But here's the lightningconductor, where it always was."

"They sometimes bear you," said Raffles, slipping on a pair of white kid gloves, and stuffing his handkerchief

into the palm of one. "The difficulty is to keep a grip; but I've been up and down them before tonight. And

it's our only chance. I'll go first, Bunny: you watch me, and do exactly as I do if I get down all. right."

"If I don't," whispered Raffles, as he wormed through the window feet foremost, "I'm afraid you'll have to

And he slid out of reach without another word, leaving me to shudder alike at his levity and his peril; nor

could I follow him very far by the wan light of the April stars; but I saw his forearms resting a moment in the

spout that ran around the tower, between bricks and slates, on the level of the floor; and I had another dim

glimpse of him lower still, on the eaves over the very room that we had ransacked. Thence the conductor ran

straight to earth in an angle of the facade. And since it had borne him thus far without mishap, I felt that

Raffles was as good as down. But I had neither his muscles nor his nerves, and my head swam as I mounted

So it was that at the last moment I had my first unobstructed view of the little old tower of other days. Raffles

was out of the way; the bit of candle was still burning on the floor, and in its dim light the familiar haunt was

cruelly like itself of innocent memory. A lesser ladder still ascended to a tinier trapdoor in the apex of the

tower; the fixed seats looked to me to be wearing their old, old coat of grained varnish; nay the varnish had

its ancient smell, and the very vanes outside creaked their message to my ears. I remembered whole days that

I had spent, whole books that I had read, here in this favorite fastness of my boyhood. The dirty little place,

with the dormer window in each of its four sloping sides, became a gallery hung with poignant pictures of the

past. And here was I leaving it with my life in my hands and my pockets full of stolen jewels! A superstition

seized me. Suppose the conductor came down with me . . . suppose I slipped . . . and was picked up dead,

I hardly remember what I did or left undone. I only know that nothing broke, that somehow I kept my hold,

and that in the end the wire ran redhot through my palms so that both were torn and bleeding when I stood

panting beside Raffles in the flowerbeds. There was no time for thinking then. Already there was a fresh

commotion indoors; the tidal wave of excitement which had swept all. before it to the upper regions was

subsiding in as swift a rush downstairs; and I raced after Raffles along the edge of the drive without daring to

We came out by the opposite gate to that by which we had stolen in. Sharp to the right ran the private lane

behind the stables and sharp to the right dashed Raffles, instead of straight along the open road. It was not the

course I should have chosen, but I followed Raffles without a murmur, only too thankful that he had assumed

the lead at last. Already the stables were lit up like a chandelier; there was a staccato rattle of horseshoes in

the stable yard, and the great gates were opening as we skimmed past in the nick of time. In another minute

we were skulking in the shadow of the kitchengarden wall while the highroad rang with the dying tattoo of

"That's for the police," said Raffles, waiting for me. "But the fun's only beginning in the stables. Hear the

uproar, and see the lights! In another minute they'll be turning out the hunters for the last run of the season

"We mustn't give them one, Raffles?" "Of course we mustn't; but that means stopping where we are."

"We can't do that?" "If they're wise they'll send a man to every railway station within ten miles and draw

every cover inside the radius. I can only think of one that's not likely to occur to them."

"Well, you must take me to another of your old haunts, where we can lie low till morning."

"Sufficient for the night, Bunny! The first thing is to find a burrow. What are those trees at the end of this

"Magnificent! They'll scour every inch of that before they come back to their own garden. Come, Bunny,

give me a leg up, and I'll pull you after me in two ticks? There was indeed nothing better to be done; and,

much as I loathed and dreaded entering the place again, I had already thought of a second sanctuary of old

days, which might as well be put to the base uses of this disgraceful night. In a far corner of the garden, over

a hundred yards from the house, a little ornamental lake had been dug within my own memory; its shores

were shelving lawn and steep banks of rhododendrons; and among the rhododendrons nestled a tiny

boathouse which had been my childish joy. It was half a dock for the dingy in which one plowed these

miniature waters and half a bathingbox for those who preferred their morning tub among the goldfish. I

could not think of a safer asylum than this, if we must spend the night upon the premises; and Raffles agreed

with me when I had led him by sheltering shrubbery and perilous lawn to the diminutive chalet between the

But what a night it was! The little bathingbox had two doors, one to the water, the other to the path. To hear

all. that could be heard, it was necessary to keep both doors open, and quite imperative not to talk. The damp

night air of April filled the place, and crept through our evening clothes and light overcoats into the very

marrow; the mental torture of the situation was renewed and multiplied in my brain; and all. the time one's

ears were pricked for footsteps on the path between the rhododendrons. The only sounds we could at first

identify came one and all. from the stables. Yet there the excitement subsided sooner than we had expected,

and it was Raffles himself who breathed a doubt as to whether they were turning out the hunters after all. On

the other hand, we heard wheels in the drive not long after midnight; and Raffles, who was beginning to scout

among the shrubberies, stole back to tell me that the guests were departing, and being sped, with an

unimpaired conviviality which he failed to understand. I said I could not understand it either, but suggested

the general influence of liquor, and expressed my envy of their state. I had drawn my knees up to my chin, on

the bench where one used to dry one's self after bathing, and there I sat in a seeming stolidity at utter variance

with my inward temper. I heard Raffles creep forth again and I let him go without a word. I never doubted

that he would be back again in a minute, and so let many minutes elapse before I realized his continued

Even then I only supposed that he had posted himself outside in some more commanding position. I took a

catlike stride and breathed his name. There was no answer. I ventured further, till I could overlook the lawns:

they lay like clean slates in the starlight: there was no sign of living thing nearer than the house, which was

still lit up, but quiet enough now. Was it a cunning and deliberate quiet assumed as a snare? Had they caught

Raffles, and were they waiting for me? I returned to the boathouse in an agony of fear and indignation. It

was fear for the long hours that I sat there waiting for him; it was indignation when at last I heard his stealthy

step upon the gravel. I would not go out to meet him. I sat where I was while the stealthy step came nearer,

nearer; and there I was sitting when the door opened, and a huge man in ridingclothes stood before me in

"Sorry I've been so long, Bunny, but we should never have got away as we were; this ridingsuit makes a

new man of me, on top of my own, and here's a youth's kit that should do you down to the ground."

"So you broke into the house again? "I was obliged to, Bunny; but I had to watch the lights out one by one,

and give them a good hour after that I went through that dressing room at my leisure this time; the only

difficulty was to spot the son's quarters at the back of the house; but I overcame it, as you see, in the end. I

only hope they'll fit, Bunny. Give me your patent leathers, and I'll fill them with stones and sink them in the

pond. I'm doing the same with mine. Here's a brown pair apiece, and we mustn't let the grass grow under

them if we're to get to the station in time for the early train while the coast's still clear."

The early train leaves the station in question at 6.20 A.M.; and that fine spring morning there was a police

officer in a peaked cap to see it off; but he was too busy peering into the compartments for a pair of very

swell mobsmen that he took no notice of the huge man in ridingclothes, who was obviously intoxicated, or

the more insignificant but not less horsy character who had him in hand. The early train is due at Victoria at

8.28, but these worthies left it at Clapham Junction, and changed cabs more than once between Battersea and

Piccadilly, and a few of their garments in each fourwheeler. It was barely nine o'clock when they sat

together in the Albany, and might have been recognized once more as Raffles and myself.

"And now," said Raffles, "before we do anything else, let us turn out those little cases that we hadn't time to

open when we took them. I mean the ones I handed to you, Bunny. I had a look into mine in the garden, and

I'm sorry to say there was nothing in them. The lady must have been wearing their proper contents."

Raffles held out his hand for the substantial leather cases which I had produced at his request. But that was

the extent of my compliance; instead of handing them over, I looked boldly into the eyes that seemed to have

"Yet she was wearing neither, as you prophesied, and as we both saw for ourselves? I had not taken my eyes

"Raffles," I said, "I'll be frank with you after all. I meant you never to know, but it's easier than telling you a

lie. I left both things behind me in the tower. I won't attempt to explain or defend myself; it was probably the

influence of the tower, and nothing else; but the whole thing came over me at the last moment, when you had

gone and I was going. I felt that I should very probably break my neck, that I cared very little whether I did or

not, but that it would be frightful to break it at that house with those things in my pocket. You may say I

ought to have thought of all. that before! you may say what you like, and you won't say more than I deserve.

"You were always a bad liar, Bunny," said Raffles, smiling. "Will you think me one when I tell you that I can

understand what you felt, and even what you did? As a matter of fact, I have understood for several hours

"And what you did. I guessed it in the boathouse. I knew that something must have happened or been

discovered to disperse that truculent party of sportsmen so soon and on such good terms with themselves.

They had not got us; they might have got something better worth having; and your phlegmatic attitude

suggested what. As luck would have it, the cases that I personally had collared were the empty ones; the two

prizes had fallen to you. Well, to allay my horrid suspicion, I went and had another peep through the lighted

"The two poor people whom it was your own idea to despoil," quoth Raffles, "prematurely gloating over

these two pretty things? He withdrew a hand from either pocket of his crumpled dinnerjacket, and opened

the pair under my nose. In one was a diamond tiara, and in the other a necklace of fine emeralds set in

"You must try to forgive me, Bunny," continued Raffles before I could speak. "I don't say a word against

what you did, or undid; in fact, now it's all. over, I am rather glad to think that you did try to undo it. But, my

dear fellow, we had both risked life, limb, and liberty; and I had not your sentimental scruples. Why should I

go empty away? If you want to know the inner history of my second visit to that good fellow's

dressingroom, drive home for a fresh kit and meet me at the Turkish bath in twenty minutes. I feel more

than a little grubby, and we can have our breakfast in the cooling gallery. Besides, after a whole night in your

It was in one of the magazines for December, 1899, that an article appeared which afforded our minds a brief

respite from the then consuming excitement of the war in South Africa. These were the days when Raffles

really had white hair, and when he and I were nearing the end of our surreptitious second innings, as

professional cracksmen of the deadliest dye. Piccadilly and the Albany knew us no more. But we still

operated, as the spirit tempted us, from our latest and most idyllic base, on the borders of Ham Common.

Recreation was our greatest want; and though we had both descended to the humble bicycle, a lot of reading

was forced upon us in the winter evenings. Thus the war came as a boon to us both. It not only provided us

with an honest interest in life, but gave point and zest to innumerable spins across Richmond Park, to the

nearest paper shop; and it was from such an expedition that I returned with inflammatory matter unconnected

with the war. The magazine was one of those that are read (and sold) by the million; the article was rudely

illustrated on every other page. Its subject was the socalled Black Museum at Scotland Yard; and from the

catchpenny text we first learned that the gruesome show was now enriched by a special and elaborate exhibit

"Bunny," said Raffles, "this is fame at last! It is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers into

the society of the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by the finger of time. The

Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics we've heard about, and here are mine!" "Which I wish to

goodness we could see," I added, longingly. Next moment I was sorry I had spoken. Raffles was looking at

me across the magazine. There was a smile on his lips that I knew too well, a light in his eyes that I had

"What an excellent idea? he exclaimed, quite softly, as though working it out already in his brain.

"In broad limelight," he answered, studying the magazine again, "to set eyes on my own once more. Why

here they all. are, Bunny you never told me there was an illustration. That's the chest you took to your bank

with me inside, and those must be my own ropeladder and things on top. They produce so badly in the baser

magazines that it's impossible to swear to them; there's nothing for it but a visit of inspection."

"Then you can pay it alone," said I grimly. "You may have altered, but they'd know me at a glance."

"A pass? I cried triumphantly. "Of course we should have to get one, and of course that puts an end to the

whole idea. Who on earth would give a pass for this show, of all. others, to an old prisoner like me?"

Raffles addressed himself to the reading of the magazine with a shrug that showed some temper.

"The fellow who wrote this article got one," said he shortly. "He got it from his editor, and you can get one

from yours if you tried. But pray don't try, Bunny: it would be too terrible for you to risk a moment's

embarrassment to gratify a mere whim of mine. And if I went instead of you and got spotted, which is so

likely with this head of hair, and the general belief in my demise, the consequences to you would be too

awful to contemplate! Don't contemplate them, my dear fellow. And do let me read my magazine."

Need I add that I set about the rash endeavor without further expostulation? I was used to such ebullitions

from the altered Raffles of these later days, and I could well understand them. All. the inconvenience of the

new conditions fell on him. I had purged my known offences by imprisonment, whereas Raffles was merely

supposed to have escaped punishment in death. The result was that I could rush in where Raffles feared to

tread, and was his plenipotentiary in all. honest dealings with the outer world. It could not but gall him to be

so dependent upon me, and it was for me to minimize the humiliation by scrupulously avoiding the least

semblance of an abuse of that power which I now had over him. Accordingly, though with much misgiving, I

did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street, where, despite my past, I was already making a certain lowly footing

for myself. Success followed as it will when one longs to fail; and one fine evening I returned to Ham

Common with a card from the Convict Supervision Office, New Scotland Yard, which I treasure to this day. I

am surprised to see that it was undated, and might still almost "Admit Bearer to see the Museum," to say

nothing of the bearer's friends, since my editor's name "and party" is scrawled beneath the legend.

"But he doesn't want to come," as I explained to Raffles. "And it means that we can both go, if we both like."

"It would be rather dangerous, Bunny. If they spotted you, they might think of me."

"I don't believe they will. I don't believe there's the slightest risk; but we shall soon see. I've set my heart on

"You do that when you present this card," I pointed out. "I shall hear of it fast enough if anything happens."

"Then we're both going, Bunny! And I give you my word," cried Raffles, "that no real harm shall come of it.

But you mustn't ask to see the Relics, and you mustn't take too much interest in them when you do see them.

Leave the questioning to me: it really will be a chance of finding out whether they've any suspicion of one's

resurrection at Scotland Yard. Still I think I can promise you a certain amount of fun, old fellow, as some

little compensation for your pangs and fears? The early afternoon was mild and hazy, and unlike winter but

for the prematurely low sun struggling through the haze, as Raffles and I emerged from the nether regions at

Westminster Bridge, and stood for one moment to admire the infirm silhouettes of Abbey and Houses in flat

gray against a golden mist. Raffles murmured of Whistler and of Arthur Severn, and threw away a good

Sullivan because the smoke would curl between him and the picture. It is perhaps the picture that I can now

see clearest of all. the set scenes of our lawless life. But at the time I was filled with gloomy speculation as to

whether Raffles would keep his promise of providing an entirely harmless entertainment for my benefit at the

We entered the forbidding precincts; we looked relentless officers in the face, and they almost yawned in ours

as they directed us through swing doors and up stone stairs. There was something even sinister in the casual

character of our reception. We had an arctic landing to ourselves for several minutes, which Raffles spent in

an instinctive survey of the premises, while I cooled my heels before the portrait of a late commissioner.

"Dear old gentleman? exclaimed Raffles, joining me. "I have met him at dinner, and discussed my own case

with him, in the old days. But we can't know too little about ourselves in the Black Museum, Bunny. I

remember going to the old place in Whitehall, years ago, and being shown round by one of the tiptop 'tecs.

But even I could see at a glance that there was nothing of the detective and everything of the clerk about the

very young man who had joined us at last upon the landing. His collar was the tallest I have ever seen, and

his face was as pallid as his collar. He carried a loose key, with which he unlocked a door a little way along

the passage, and so ushered us into that dreadful repository which perhaps has fewer visitors than any other of

equal interest in the world. The place was cold as the inviolate vault; blinds had to be drawn up, and glass

cases uncovered, before we could see a thing except the row of murderers' deathmasks the placid faces

with the swollen necks that stood out on their shelves to give us ghostly greeting.

"This fellow isn't formidable," whispered Raffles, as the blinds went up; "still, we can't be too careful. My

little lot are round the corner, in the sort of recess; don't look till we come to them in their turn."

So we began at the beginning, with the glass case nearest the door; and in a moment I discovered that I knew

far more about its contents than our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm, but the most inaccurate smattering

of his subject. He mixed up the first murderer with quite the wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the

next breath with an intolerable libel on the very pearl of our particular tribe.

"This revawlver," he began, "belonged to the celebrited burgular, Chawles Peace. These are his spectacles,

that's his jimmy, and this here knife's the one that Chawley killed the policeman with."

Now I like accuracy for its own sake, strive after it myself, and am sometimes guilty of forcing it upon others.

"No, he didn't; only one of them was a policeman; and he never killed anybody with a knife."

The clerk took the correction like a lamb. I could not have refrained from making it, to save my skin. But

Raffles rewarded me with as vicious a little kick as he could administer unobserved. "Who was Charles

The clerk's reply came pat and unexpected. "The greatest burgular we ever had," said he, "till good old

Raffles knocked him out!" "The greatest of the preRaffleites," the master murmured, as we passed on to the

safer memorials of mere murder. There were misshapen bullets and stained knives that had taken human life;

there were lithe, lean ropes which had retaliated after the live letter of the Mosaic law. There was one

bristling broadside of revolvers under the longest shelf of closed eyes and swollen throats. There were

festoons of ropeladders none so ingenious as ours and then at last there was something that the clerk

knew all. about. It was a small tin cigarettebox, and the name upon the gaudy wrapper was not the name of

"There, now," said our guide, "you'll never guess the history of that! I'll give you twenty guesses, and the

"I'm sure of it, my good fellow," rejoined Raffles, a discreet twinkle in his eye. "Tell us about it, to save

And he opened, as he spoke, his own old twentyfive tin of purely popular cigarettes; there were a few in it

still, but between the cigarettes were jammed lumps of sugar wadded with cottonwool. I saw Raffles

weighing the lot in his hand with subtle satisfaction. But the clerk saw merely the mystification which he

"I thought that'd beat you, sir," said he. "It was an American dodge. Two smart Yankees got a jeweller to take

a lot of stuff to a private room at Keliner's, where they were dining, for them to choose from. When it came to

paying, there was some bother about a remittance; but they soon made that all. right, for they were far too

clever to suggest taking away what they'd chosen but couldn't pay for. No, all. they wanted was that what

they'd chosen might be locked up in the safe and considered theirs until their money came for them to pay for

it. All. they asked was to seal the stuff up in something; the jeweller was to take it away and not meddle with

it, nor yet break the seals, for a week or two. It seemed a fair enough thing, now, didn't it, sir?"

"So the jeweller thought," crowed the clerk. "You see, it wasn't as if the Yanks had chosen out the half of

what he'd brought on appro.; they'd gone slow on purpose, and they'd paid for all. they could on the nail, just

for a blind. Well, I suppose you can guess what happened in the end? The jeweller never heard of those

Americans again; and these few cigarettes and lumps of sugar were all. he found."

"Duplicate boxes!" murmured Raffles, as profoundly impressed as a second Mr. Pickwick.

"Duplicate boxes!" echoed the triumphant clerk. "Artful beggars, these Americans, sir! You've got to crawss

"I suppose so," assented the grave gentleman wit the silver hair. "Unless," he added, as if suddenly inspired,

"It couldn't 've bin," jerked the clerk from his conningtower of a collar. "He'd gone to Davy Jones long

"Found and buried," replied our imaginative friend. "Malter, I think it was; or it may have been Giberaltar. I

"Besides," I put in, rather annoyed at all. this wilful work, yet not indisposed to make a late contribution

"besides, Raffles would never have smoked those cigarettes. There was only one brand for him. It was let

"Sullivans? cried the clerk, right for once. "It's all. a matter of 'abit," he went on, as he replaced the

twentyfive tin box with the vulgar wrapper. "I tried them once, and I didn't like 'em myself. It's all. a

question of taste. Now, if you want a good smoke, and cheaper, give me a Golden Gem at quarter of the

"What we really do want," remarked Raffles mildly, "is to see something else as clever as that last."

"Then come this way," said the clerk, and led us into a recess almost monopolized by the ironclamped chest

of thrilling memory, now a mere platform for the collection of mysterious objects under a dustsheet on the

lid. "These," he continued, unveiling them with an air, are the Raffles Relics, taken from his rooms in the

Albany after his death and burial, and the most complete set we've got. That's his centrebit, and this is the

bottle of rockoil he's supposed to have kept dipping it in to prevent making a noise. Here's the revawlver he

used when he shot at a gentleman on the roof down Horsham way; it was afterward taken from him on the P.

I could not help saying I understood that Raffles had never shot at anybody. I was standing with my back to

the nearest window, my hat jammed over my brows and my overcoat collar up to my ears.

"That's the only time we know about," the clerk admitted; "and it couldn't be brought 'ome, or his precious pal

would have got more than he did. This empty cawtridge is the one he 'id the Emperor's pearl in, on the

Peninsular and Orient. These gimlets and wedges were what he used for fixin' doors. This is his ropeladder,

with the telescope walkingstick he used to hook it up with; he's said to have 'ad it with him the night he

dined with the Earl of Thornaby, and robbed the house before dinner. That's his lifepreserver; but no one

can make out what this little thick velvet bag's for, with the two holes and the elawstic round each. Perhaps

Raffles had taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless filing of keys. Now he handled it as

though it were a tobaccopouch, putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a delicious

face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel filing as the result of his investigations, and murmured

in my ear, "These sweet police! I, for my part, could not but examine the lifepreserver with which I had

once smitten Raffles himself to the ground: actually, there was his blood upon it still; and seeing my horror,

the clerk plunged into a characteristically garbled version of that incident also. It happened to have come to

light among others at the Old Bailey, and perhaps had its share in promoting the quality of mercy which had

undoubtedly been exercised on my behalf. But the present recital was unduly trying, and Raffles created a

noble diversion by calling attention to an early photograph of himself, which may still hang on the wall over

the historic chest, but which I had carefully ignored. It shows him in flannels, after some great feat upon the

tented field. I am afraid there is a Sullivan between his lips, a look of lazy insolence in the halfshut eyes. I

have since possessed myself of a copy, and it is not Raffles at his best; but the features are cleancut and

regular; and I often wish that I had lent it to the artistic gentlemen who have battered the statue out of all.

"You wouldn't think it of him, would you?" quoth the clerk. "It makes you understand how no one ever did

The youth was looking full at Raffles, with the watery eyes of unsuspecting innocence. I itched to emulate the

"You said he had a pal," I observed, sinking deeper into the collar of my coat. "Haven't you got a photograph

The pale clerk gave such a sickly smile, I could have smacked some blood into his pasty face.

"You mean Bunny?" said the familiar fellow. "No, sir, he'd be out of place; we've only room for real

criminals here. Bunny was neither one thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles, but that's all. he could do.

He was no good on his own. Even when he put up the lowdown job of robbing his old 'ome, it's believed he

hadn't the 'eart to take the stuff away, and Raffles had to break in a second time for it. No, sir, we don't bother

our heads about Bunny; we shall never hear no more of 'im. He was a harmless sort of rotter, if you awsk

I had not asked him, and I was almost foaming under the respirator that I was making of my overcoat collar. I

"The only case I remember anything about," he remarked, tapping the clamped chest with his umbrella, "was

this; and that time, at all. events, the man outside must have had quite as much to do as the one inside. May I

"I imagined more relics inside. Hadn't he some dodge of getting in and out without opening the lid?"

"Of putting his head out, you mean," returned the clerk, whose knowledge of Raffles and his Relics was

really most comprehensive on the whole. He moved some of the minor memorials and with his penknife

"Why, what else did you expect?" asked the clerk, letting the trapdoor down again, and looking sorry that he

"A backdoor, at least!" replied Raffles, with such a sly look at me that I had to turn aside to smile. It was the

The door had opened as I turned, and an unmistakable detective had entered with two more sightseers like

ourselves. He wore the hard, round hat and the dark, thick overcoat which one knows at a glance as the

uniform of his grade; and for one awful moment his steely eye was upon us in a flash of cold inquiry. Then

the clerk emerged from the recess devoted to the Raffles Relics, and the alarming interloper conducted his

"Inspector Druce," the clerk informed us in impressive whispers, "who had the Chalk Farm case in hand. He'd

be the man for Raffles, if Raffles was alive today!" "I'm sure he would," was the grave reply. "I should be

very sorry to have a man like that after me. But what a run there seems to be upon your Black Museum!"

"There isn't reelly, sir," whispered the clerk. "We sometimes go weeks on end without having regular visitors

like you two gentlemen. I think those are friends of the Inspector's, come to see the Chalk Farm photographs,

that helped to hang his man. We've a lot of interesting photographs, sir, if you like to have a look at them."

"If it won't take long," said Raffles, taking out his watch; and as the clerk left our side for an instant he

gripped my arm. "This is a bit too hot," he whispered, "but we mustn't cut and run like rabbits. That might be

fatal. Hide your face in the photographs, and leave everything to me. I'll have a train to catch as soon as ever I

I obeyed without a word, and with the less uneasiness as I had time to consider the situation. It even struck

me that Raffles was for once inclined to exaggerate the undeniable risk that we ran by remaining in the same

room with an officer whom both he and I knew only too well by name and repute. Raffles, after all., had aged

and altered out of knowledge; but he had not lost the nerve that was equal to a far more direct encounter than

was at all. likely to be forced upon us. On the other hand, it was most improbable that a distinguished

detective would know by sight an obscure delinquent like myself; besides, this one had come to the front

since my day. Yet a risk it was, and I certainly did not smile as I bent over the album of horrors produced by

our guide. I could still take an interest in the dreadful photographs of murderous and murdered men; they

appealed to the morbid element in my nature; and it was doubtless with degenerate unction that I called

Raffles's attention to a certain scene of notorious slaughter. There was no response. I looked round. There

was no Raffles to respond. We had all. three been examining the photographs at one of the windows; at

another three newcomers were similarly engrossed; and without one word, or a single sound, Raffles had

Fortunately the clerk was himself very busy gloating over the horrors of the album; before he looked round I

had hidden my astonishment, but not my wrath, of which I had the instinctive sense to make no secret.

"My friend's the most impatient man on earth!" I exclaimed. "He said he was going to catch a train, and now

"No more did I; but he did touch me on the shoulder," I lied, "and say something or other. I was too deep in

this beastly book to pay much attention. He must have meant that he was off. Well, let him be off! I mean to

And in my nervous anxiety to allay any suspicions aroused by my companion's extraordinary behavior, I

outstayed even the eminent detective and his friends, saw them examine the Raffles Relics, heard them

discuss me under my own nose, and at last was alone with the anemic clerk. I put my hand in my pocket, and

measured him with a sidelong eye. The tipping system is nothing less than a minor bane of my existence. Not

that one is a grudging giver, but simply because in so many cases it is so hard to know whom to tip and what

to tip him. I know what it is to be the parting guest who has not parted freely enough, and that not from

stinginess but the want of a fine instinct on the point. I made no mistake, however, in the case of the clerk,

who accepted my pieces of silver without demur, and expressed a hope of seeing the article which I had

assured him I was about to write. He has had some years to wait for it, but I flatter myself that these belated

pages will occasion more interest than offense if they ever do meet those watery eyes.

Twilight was falling when I reached the street; the sky behind St. Stephen's had flushed and blackened like an

angry face; the lamps were lit, and under every one I was unreasonable enough to look for Raffles. Then I

made foolishly sure that I should find him hanging about the station, and hung thereabouts myself until one

Richmond train had gone without me. In the end I walked over the bridge to Waterloo, and took the first train

to Teddington instead. That made a shorter walk of it, but I had to grope my way through a white fog from

the river to Ham Common, and it was the hour of our cosy dinner when I reached our place of retirement.

There was only a flicker of firelight on the blinds: I was the first to return after all. It was nearly four hours

since Raffles had stolen away from my side in the ominous precincts of Scotland Yard. Where could he be?

Our landlady wrung her hands over him; she had cooked a dinner after her favorite's heart, and I let it spoil

Up to midnight there was no sign of him; but long before this time I had reassured our landlady with a voice

and face that must have given my words the lie. I told her that Mr. Ralph (as she used to call him) had said

something about going to the theatre; that I thought he had given up the idea, but I must have been mistaken,

and should certainly sit up for him. The attentive soul brought in a plate of sandwiches before she retired; and

I prepared to make a night of it in a chair by the sittingroom fire. Darkness and bed I could not face in my

anxiety. In a way I felt as though duty and loyalty called me out into the winter s night; and yet whither

should I turn to look for Raffles? I could think of but one place, and to seek him there would be to destroy

myself without aiding him. It was my growing conviction that he had been recognized when leaving Scotland

Yard, and either taken then and there, or else hunted into some new place of hiding. It would all. be in the

morning papers; and it was all. his own fault. He had thrust his head into the lion's mouth, and the lion's jaws

There was a bottle at my elbow, and that night I say deliberately that it was not my enemy but my friend. It

procured me at last some surcease from my suspense. I fell fast asleep in my chair before the fire. The lamp

was still burning, and the fire red, when I awoke; but I sat very stiff in the iron clutch of a wintry morning.

Suddenly I slued round in my chair. And there was Raffles in a chair behind me, with the door open behind

"Sorry to wake you, Bunny," said he. "I thought I was behaving like a mouse; but after a three hours' tramp

I did not get up and fall upon his neck. I sat back in my chair and blinked with bitterness upon his selfish

"Walk out from town?" I inquired, as indifferently as though he were in the habit of doing so.

"From Scotland Yard," he answered, stretching himself before the fire in his stocking soles.

"Scotland Yard?" I echoed. "Then I was right; that's where you were all. the time; and yet you managed to

"Of course I did," replied Raffles. "I never thought there would be much difficulty about that, but there was

even less than I anticipated. I did once find myself on one side of a sort of counter, and an officer dozing at

his desk at the other side. I thought it safest to wake him up and make inquiries about a mythical purse left in

a phantom hansom outside the Carlton. And the way the fellow fired me out of that was another credit to the

Metropolitan Police: it's only in the savage countries that they would have troubled to ask how one had got

Raffles looked down on me under raised eyebrows, as he stood with his coat tails to the dying fire.

"How and when, Bunny, you know as well as I do," said he, cryptically. "And at last you shall hear the honest

why and wherefore. I had more reasons for going to Scotland Yard, my dear fellow, than I had the face to tell

"I don't care why you went there!" I cried. "I want to know why you stayed, or went back, or whatever it was

you may have done. I thought they had got you, and you had given them the slip!"

"No, no, Bunny; I prolonged the visit, as I paid it, of my own accord. As for my reasons, they are far too

many for me to tell you them all.; they rather weighed upon me as I walked out; but you'll see them for

I was standing with my back to the chair in which I had been asleep; behind the chair was the round

lodginghouse table; and there, reposing on the cloth with the whiskey and sandwiches, was the whole

collection of Raffles Relics which had occupied the lid of the silverchest in the Black Museum at Scotland

Yard! The chest alone was missing. There was the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and there the

bloodstained lifepreserver, braceandbit, bottle of rockoil, velvet bag, ropeladder, walkingstick,

gimlets, wedges, and even the empty cartridgecase which had once concealed the gift of a civilized monarch

"I was a real Father Christmas," said Raffles, "when I arrived. It's a pity you weren't awake to appreciate the

scene. It was more edifying than the one I found. You never caught me asleep in my chair, Bunny!" He

thought I had merely fallen asleep in my chair! He could not see that I had been sitting up for him all. night

long! The hint of a temperance homily, on top of all. I had borne, and from Raffles of all. mortal men, tried

my temper to its last limit but a flash of late enlightenment enabled me just to keep it.

"You may have ended up there," I conceded. "But where did you go first when you slipped out behind my

"My dear fellow, I saw all. these things on the lid just afterward. Not one of them was moved. I watched that

"From the inside of the chest, Bunny. Don't look like that it's foolish. Try to recall a few words that went

before, between the idiot in the collar and me. Don't you remember my asking him if there was anything in

"One had to be sure it was empty, you see. Then I asked if there was a backdoor to the chest as well as a

"You wouldn't; it would never occur to you that I might want to find out whether anybody at the Yard had

found out that there was something precisely in the nature of a sidedoor it isn't a backdoor to that chest.

Well, there is one; there was one soon after I took the chest back from your rooms to mine, in the good old

days. You push one of the handles down which no one ever does and the whole of that end opens like the

front of a doll's house. I saw that was what I ought to have done at first: it's so much simpler than the trap at

the top; and one likes to get a thing perfect for its own sake. Besides, the trick had not been spotted at the

bank, and I thought I might bring it off again some day; meanwhile, in one's bedroom, with lots of things on

top, what a port in a sudden squall!" I asked why I had never heard of the improvement before, not so much

at the time it was made, but in these later days, when there were fewer secrets between us, and this one could

avail him no more. But I did not put the question out of pique. I put it out of sheer obstinate incredulity. And

Raffles looked at me without replying, until I read the explanation in his look.

"My dear Bunny, I am not always a very genial man," he answered; "but when you let me have a key of your

rooms I could not very well refuse you one of mine, although I picked your pocket of it in the end. I will only

say that when I had no wish to see you, Bunny, I must have been quite unfit for human society, and it was the

act of a friend to deny you mine. I don't think it happened more than once or twice. You can afford to forgive

a fellow after all. these years? "That, yes," I replied bitterly; "but not this, Raffles."

"Why not? I really hadn't made up my mind to do what I did. I had merely thought of it. It was that smart

"And we never even heard you!" I murmured, in a voice of involuntary admiration which vexed me with

"Exactly. They sometimes go weeks on end without a regular visitor. It was I who extracted that piece of

information, Bunny, and I did nothing rash until I had. Don't you see that with any luck it will be two or three

"And then, pray, how are they going to bring it home to us? Why should they even suspect us, Bunny? I left

early; that's all. I did. You took my departure admirably; you couldn't have said more or less if I had coached

you myself. I relied on you, Bunny, and you never more completely justified my confidence. The sad thing is

that you have ceased to rely on me. Do you really think that I would leave the place in such a state that the

first person who came in with a duster would see that there had been a robbery?"

"Have you forgotten the duster that was over these things, Bunny? Have you forgotten all. the other revolvers

and life preservers that there were to choose from? I chose most carefully, and I replaced my relics with a

mixed assortment of other people's which really look just as well. The ropeladder that now supplants mine

is, of course, no patch upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really looks much the same. To be sure, there was

no second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with another quite like it, and I even found an empty cartridge

to understudy the setting of the Polynesian pearl. You see the sort of fellow they have to show people round:

do you think he's the kind to see the difference next time, or to connect it with us if he does? One left much

the same things, lying much as he left them, under a dustsheet which is only taken off for the benefit of the

I admitted that we might be safe for three or four weeks. Raffles held out his hand.

"Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and smoke the cigarette of Sullivan and peace! A lot may happen in

three or four weeks; and what should you say if this turned out to be the last as well as the least of all. my

crimes? I must own that it seems to me their natural and fitting end, though I might have stopped more

characteristically than with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I make no promises, Bunny; now I have got these

things, I may be unable to resist using them once more. But with this war one gets all. the excitement one

requires and rather more than usual may happen in three or four weeks?" Was he thinking even then of

volunteering for the front? Had he already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his life

nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and shall never know. Yet his words were strangely

prophetic, even to the three or four weeks in which those events happened that imperilled the fabric of our

empire, and rallied her sons from the four winds to fight beneath her banner on the veldt. It all. seems very

ancient history now. But I remember nothing better or more vividly than the last words of Raffles upon his

last crime, unless it be the pressure of his hand as he said them, or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.

The last of all these tales of Raffles is from a fresher and a sweeter pen. I give it exactly as it came to me, in a

letter which meant more to me than it can possibly mean to any other reader. And yet, it may stand for

something with those for whom these pale reflections have a tithe of the charm that the real man had for me;

and it is to leave such persons thinking yet a little better of him (and not wasting another thought on me) that

The letter was my first healing after a chance encounter and a sleepless night; and I print every word of it

I omit her name and nothing else. Did I not say in the beginning that it should never be sullied by association

with mine? And yet and yet even as I write I have a hope in my heart of hearts which is not quite

consistent with that sentiment. It is as faint a hope as man ever had, and yet its audacity makes the pen

tremble in my fingers. But, if it be ever realized, I shall owe more than I could deserve in a century of

atonement to one who atoned more nobly than I ever can. And to think that to the end I never heard one word