ly really innocent thing you could do in the circumstances?"

"Go for the police," I suggested dubiously, little relishing the
prospect.

"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."

And even Raffles looked grave enough as I nodded.

"You mean that they'll find out you rang me up?"

"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 thought it was Raffles!"

"You didn't, Bunny!"

"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 telephone fit in rather well."

"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 to-night. But the bother
of it is that there's still so much to do, and to hit upon, and so
precious little time for thought as well as action."

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 himself from a reverie w