d with his penknife
raised the trap-door in the lid.

"Only a skylight," remarked Raffles, deliciously unimpressed.

"Why, what else did you expect?" asked the clerk, letting the
trap-door down again, and looking sorry that he had taken so much
trouble.

"A backdoor, at least!" replied Raffles, with such a sly look at me
that I had to turn aside to smile. It was the last time I smiled that
day.

The door had opened as I turned, and an unmistakable detective had
entered with two more sight-seers like ourselves. He wore the hard,
round hat and the dark, thick overcoat which one knows at a glance as
the uniform of his grade; and for one awful moment his steely eye was
upon us in a flash of cold inquiry. Then the clerk emerged from the
recess devoted to the Raffles Relics, and the alarming interloper
conducted his party to the window opposite the door.

"Inspector Druce," the clerk informed us in impressive whispers, "who
had the Chalk Farm case in hand. _He'd_ be the man for Raffles, if
Raffles was alive to-day!"

"I'm sure he would," was the grave reply. "I should be very sorry to
have a man like that after _me_. But what a run there seems to be
upon your Black Museum!"

"There isn't reelly, sir," whispered the clerk. "We sometimes go weeks
on end without having regular visitors like you two gentlemen. I think
those are friends of the Inspector's, come to see the Chalk Farm
photographs, that helped to hang his man. We've a lot of interesting
photographs, sir, if you like to have a look at them."

"If it won't take long," said Raffles, taking out his watch; and as
the clerk left our side for an instant he gripped my arm. "This is a
bit too hot," he whispered, "but we mustn't cut and run like rabbits.
That might be fatal. Hide your face in the photographs, and leave
everything to me. I'll have a train to catch as soon as ever I dare."

I obeyed without a word, and with the less uneasiness as I had time to
consider the situation. It even struck me that Raffles was for once
inclined to exaggerate the undeniable risk that we ran by remaining in
the same room with an officer whom both he and I knew only too well by
name and repute. Raffles, after all, had aged and altered out of
knowledge; but he had not lost the nerve that was equal to a far more
direct encounter than was at all likely to be forced upon us. On the
other hand, it was most improbable that a distinguished detective
would know by sight an obscure delin