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 I had left in Half-moon
Street. It alone might have spelled my ruin.

"Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he cried. "The thieves
have taken everything they could lay hands on."

"Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two
incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the Albany.

"The door's been forced with a jimmy," said the porter. "It was the
milkman who found it out. There's a constable up there now."

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 Bramah lock. The
lock was broken--the drawer void.

"Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my heels.

"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 wife who looked after the flat.

"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 minute!"

And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to
Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Picadilly on the way.

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 matutinal gray, cool and gay and
breezy as incarnate sp