ither one
thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles, but that's all he could
do. He was no good on his own. Even when he put up the low-down job
of robbing his old 'ome, it's believed he hadn't the 'eart to take the
stuff away, and Raffles had to break in a second time for it. No, sir,
we don't bother our heads about Bunny; we shall never hear no more of
'im. He was a harmless sort of rotter, if you awsk me."

I had not asked him, and I was almost foaming under the respirator that
I was making of my overcoat collar. I only hoped that Raffles would
say something, and he did.

"The only case I remember anything about," he remarked, tapping the
clamped chest with his umbrella, "was this; and that time, at all
events, the man outside must have had quite as much to do as the one
inside. May I ask what you keep in it?"

"Nothing, sir.

"I imagined more relics inside. Hadn't he some dodge of getting in and
out without opening the lid?"

"Of putting his head out, you mean," returned the clerk, whose
knowledge of Raffles and his Relics was really most comprehensive on
the whole. He moved some of the minor memorials and with his penknife
raised the trap-door in the lid.

"Only a skylight," remarked Raffles, deliciously unimpressed.

"Why, what else did you expect?" asked the clerk, letting the trap-door
down again, and looking sorry that he had taken so much trouble.

"A backdoor, at least!" replied Raffles, with such a sly look at me
that I had to turn aside to smile. It was the last time I smiled that
day.

The door had opened as I turned, and an unmistakable detective had
entered with two more sight-seers like ourselves. He wore the hard,
round hat and the dark, thick overcoat which one knows at a glance as
the uniform of his grade; and for one awful moment his steely eye was
upon us in a flash of cold inquiry. Then the clerk emerged from the
recess devoted to the Raffles Relics, and the alarming interloper
conducted his party to the window opposite the door.

"Inspector Druce," the clerk informed us in impressive whispers, "who
had the Chalk Farm case in hand. He'd be the man for Raffles, if
Raffles was alive to-day!"

"I'm sure he would," was the grave reply. "I should be very sorry to
have a man like that after me. But what a run there seems to be upon
your Black Museum!"

"There isn't reelly, sir," whispered the clerk. "We sometimes go weeks
on end without having regular visitors like you