t 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 theory and a sprat for practice--but he looks
quite capable of both at crime!"

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 render him to another human being.

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 most respectable society, and by his
advice I us