er the telephone;
and this inanimate heap of rags was lying directly underneath a wall
instrument, with the receiver dangling over him.

"Think you know him?" asked the sallow secretary, as I stooped and
peered with my heart in my boots.

"Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead," I explained,
having satisfied myself that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles
was really insensible. "But what on earth has happened?" I asked in my
turn.

"That's what I want to know," whined the person in sequins, who had
contributed various ejaculations unworthy of report, and finally
subsided behind an ostentatious fan.

"I should judge," observed the secretary, "that it's for Mr. Maguire
to say, or not to say, just as he darn pleases."

But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian hearth-rug, beaming
upon us all in a triumph too delicious for immediate translation into
words. The room was furnished as a study, and most artistically
furnished, if you consider outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic.
There was nothing of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney
Maguire, except his vocabulary and his lower jaw. I had seen over his
house already, and it was fitted and decorated throughout by a
high-art firm which exhibits just such a room as that which was the
scene of our tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening
like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of enormous nails and tapestry
compact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges
of beaten metal. The pugilist's own background presented an elaborate
scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the joiner, and a
china cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his
bloodshot eyes rolled with rich delight from the decanter and glasses
on the octagonal table to another decanter in the quaintest and
craftiest of revolving spirit tables.

"Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling on us each in turn,
with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated lip. "To think that
I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to
walk right into! You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great head at me,
"you'll recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one when you come in
that night with the other sport? Say, pity he's not with you now; he
was a good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he wanted to know too much,
and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to tell you now, or else
bu'st. See that decanter on the table?