ired by the same impulse toward the
bronzed salvers and the tarnished teapots with which I found him
surrounded, until my eyes lit upon the enormous silver-chest into which
he was fitting them one by one.

"Allow me, Bunny! I shall take the liberty of locking both doors
behind you and putting the key in my pocket," said Raffles, when he had
let me in. "Not that I mean to take you prisoner, my dear fellow; but
there are those of us who can turn keys from the outside, though it was
never an accomplishment of mine."

"Not Crawshay again?" I cried, standing still in my hat.

Raffles regarded me with that tantalizing smile of his which might mean
nothing, yet which often meant so much; and in a flash I was convinced
that our most jealous enemy and dangerous rival, the doyen of an older
school, had paid him yet another visit.

"That remains to be seen," was the measured reply; "and I for one have
not set naked eye on the fellow since I saw him off through that window
and left myself for dead on this very spot. In fact, I imagined him
comfortably back in jail."

"Not old Crawshay!" said I. "He's far too good a man to be taken
twice. I should call him the very prince of professional cracksmen."

"Should you?" said Raffles coldly, with as cold an eye looking into
mine. "Then you had better prepare to repel princes when I'm gone."

"But gone where?" I asked, finding a corner for my hat and coat, and
helping myself to the comforts of the venerable dresser which was one
of our friend's greatest treasures. "Where is it you are off to, and
why are you taking this herd of white elephants with you?"

Raffles bestowed the cachet of his smile on my description of his
motley plate. He joined me in one of his favorite cigarettes, only
shaking a superior head at his own decanter.

"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I am
going to have these rooms freshened up with a potful of paint, the
electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long."

"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and
night!"

"And get overheard and run in for our pains? I shall wait till you are
run in, I think," said Raffles cruelly. "But the rest's a necessity:
not that I love new paint or am pining for electric light, but for
reasons which I will just breathe in your private ear, Bunny. You must
not try to take them too seriously; but the fact is, there is just the
least bit of a