the Raffles I loved least; and to add to my indignation, when at length
I looked up from the mysterious missive, the equally mysterious
messenger had disappeared in a manner worthy of the whole affair. He
was, however, the first creature I espied under the tattered trees of
Holland Walk that evening.

"Seen 'im yet?" he inquired confidentially, blowing a vile cloud from
his horrid pipe.

"No, I haven't; and I want to know where you've seen him," I replied
sternly. "Why did you run away like that the moment you had given me
his note?"

"Orders, orders," was the reply. "I ain't such a juggins as to go agen
a toff as makes it worf while to do as I'm bid an' 'old me tongue."

"And who may you be?" I asked jealously. "And what are you to Mr.
Raffles?"

"You silly ass, Bunny, don't tell all Kensington that I'm in town!"
replied my tatterdemalion, shooting up and smoothing out into a merely
shabby Raffles. "Here, take my arm--I'm not so beastly as I look. But
neither am I in town, nor in England, nor yet on the face of the earth,
for all that's known of me to a single soul but you."

"Then where are you," I asked, "between ourselves?"

"I've taken a house near here for the holidays, where I'm going in for
a Rest Cure of my own description. Why? Oh, for lots of reasons, my
dear Bunny; among others, I have long had a wish to grow my own beard;
under the next lamppost you will agree that it's training on very
nicely. Then, you mayn't know it, but there's a canny man at Scotland
Yard who has had a quiet eye on me longer than I like. I thought it
about time to have an eye on him, and I stared him in the face outside
the Albany this very morning. That was when I saw you go in, and
scribbled a line to give you when you came out. If he had caught us
talking he would have spotted me at once."

"So you are lying low out here!"

"I prefer to call it my Rest Cure," returned Raffles, "and it's really
nothing else. I've got a furnished house at a time when no one else
would have dreamed of taking one in town; and my very neighbors don't
know I'm there, though I'm bound to say there are hardly any of them at
home. I don't keep a servant, and do everything for myself. It's the
next best fun to a desert island. Not that I make much work, for I'm
really resting, but I haven't done so much solid reading for years.
Rather a joke, Bunny: the man whose house I've taken is one of her
Majesty's inspectors of prisons, and h