with gleams of sinister satisfaction.

I thought I had never seen a man better bound or better gagged. But
the humanity seemed to have run out of Raffles with his blood. He tore
up tablecloths, he cut down blind-cords, he brought the dust-sheets
from the drawing-room, and multiplied every bond. The unfortunate
man's legs were lashed to the legs of his chair, his arms to its arms,
his thighs and back fairly welded to the leather. Either end of his
own ruler protruded from his bulging cheeks--the middle was hidden by
his moustache--and the gag kept in place by remorseless lashings at
the back of his head. It was a spectacle I could not bear to
contemplate at length, while from the first I found myself physically
unable to face the ferocious gaze of those implacable eyes. But
Raffles only laughed at my squeamishness, and flung a dust-sheet over
man and chair; and the stark outline drove me from the room.

It was Raffles at his worst, Raffles as I never knew him before or
after--a Raffles mad with pain and rage, and desperate as any other
criminal in the land. Yet he had struck no brutal blow, he had uttered
no disgraceful taunt, and probably not inflicted a tithe of the pain
he had himself to bear. It is true that he was flagrantly in the
wrong, his victim as laudably in the right. Nevertheless, granting the
original sin of the situation, and given this unforeseen development,
even I failed to see how Raffles could have combined greater humanity
with any regard for our joint safety; and had his barbarities ended
here, I for one should not have considered them an extraordinary
aggravation of an otherwise minor offence. But in the broad daylight
of the bathroom, which had a ground-glass window but no blind, I saw
at once the serious nature of his wound and of its effect upon the
man.

"It will maim me for a month," said he; "and if the V.C. comes out
alive, the wound he gave may be identified with the wound I've got."

The V.C.! There, indeed, was an aggravation to one illogical mind. But
to cast a moment's doubt upon the certainty of his coming out alive!

"Of course he'll come out," said I. "We must make up our minds to
that."

"Did he tell you he was expecting the servants or his wife? If so, of
course we must hurry up."

"No, Raffles, I'm afraid he's not expecting anybody. He told me, if he
hadn't looked in for letters, we should have had the place to
ourselves another week. That's the worst of it."

Raffles s