t 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 furniture.

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 heavy-weight 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 unerring sagacity with which he had chosen his night.

Within the last twenty-four 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 administer
it--but he had not talked like that man through the telephone.

And yet--and yet--what else could have happened? I must have