really forget, but whom I met with
Maguire at the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a second skin of
shimmering sequins.

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 of more that I only recalled as the words were in my mouth.

"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 man-trap. 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 show there's--Jeehoshaphat!"

The secretary had turned the latch-key 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
ladies and gentlemen, lay round where you are, while I see."

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 in the light of
the open door.

"Walk up!" he cried, as he beckoned to us three. "Walk up and see one
o' their blamed British crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet, and
nailed as tight!"

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