I could have cursed the creature's mother from my full heart; yet even
with my hand on that of Raffles, as I felt his feeble pulse, I told
myself that this served him right. Even had I brained him, the fault
had been his, not mine. And it was a characteristic, an inveterate
fault, that galled me for all my anguish: to trust and yet distrust me
to the end, to race through England in the night, to spy upon me at
his work--to do it himself after all!

"Is he dead?" wheezed the asthmatic coolly.

"Not he," I answered, with an indignation that I dared not show.

"You must have hit him pretty hard," pursued young Medlicott, "but I
suppose it was a case of getting first knock. And a good job you got
it, if this was his," he added, picking up the murderous little
life-preserver which poor Raffles had provided for his own
destruction.

"Look here," I answered, sitting back on my heels. "He isn't dead, Mr.
Medlicott, and I don't know how long he'll be as much as stunned. He's
a powerful brute, and you're not fit to lend a hand. But that
policeman of yours can't be far away. Do you think you could struggle
out and look for him?"

"I suppose I am a bit better than I was," he replied doubtfully. "The
excitement seems to have done me good. If you like to leave me on
guard with my revolver, I'll undertake that he doesn't escape me."

I shook my head with an impatient smile.

"I should never hear the last of it," said I. "No, in that case all I
can do is to handcuff the fellow and wait till morning if he won't go
quietly; and he'll be a fool if he does, while there's a fighting
chance."

Young Medlicott glanced upstairs from his post on the threshold. I
refrained from watching him too keenly, but I knew what was in his
mind.

"I'll go," he said hurriedly. "I'll go as I am, before my mother is
disturbed and frightened out of her life. I owe you something, too,
not only for what you've done for me, but for what I was fool enough
to think about you at the first blush. It's entirely through you that
I feel as fit as I do for the moment. So I'll take your tip, and go
just as I am, before my poor old pipes strike up another tune."

I scarcely looked up until the good fellow had turned his back upon
the final tableau of watchful officer and prostrate prisoner and gone
out wheezing into the night. But I was at the door to hear the last of
him down the path and round the corner of the house. And when I rushed
back into the room, th