the furniture in Mount Street, and it was
only by living elsewhere that I could keep the vulpine villain from my
door. This cost ready money, and my balance at the bank was sorely in
need of another lift from Raffles. Yet, had he been in my shoes, he
could not have vanished more effectually than he had done, both from
the face of the town and from the ken of all who knew him.

It was late in August; he never played first-class cricket after July,
when, a scholastic understudy took his place in the Middlesex eleven.
And in vain did I scour my _Field_ and my _Sportsman_ for the
country-house matches with which he wilfully preferred to wind up the
season; the matches were there, but never the magic name of A. J.
Raffles. Nothing was known of him at the Albany; he had left no
instructions about his letters, either there or at the club. I began
to fear that some evil had overtaken him. I scanned the features of
captured criminals in the illustrated Sunday papers; on each occasion
I breathed again; nor was anything worthy of Raffles going on. I will
not deny that I was less anxious on his account than on my own. But it
was a double relief to me when he gave a first characteristic sign of
life.

I had called at the Albany for the fiftieth time, and returned to
Piccadilly in my usual despair, when a street sloucher sidled up to me
in furtive fashion and inquired if my name was what it is.

"'Cause this 'ere's for you," he rejoined to my affirmative, and with
that I felt a crumpled note in my palm.

It was from Raffles. I smoothed out the twisted scrap of paper, and on
it were just a couple of lines in pencil:

"Meet me in Holland Walk at dark to-night. Walk up and down
till I come.

A. J. R."

That was all! Not another syllable after all these weeks, and the few
words scribbled in a wild caricature of his scholarly and dainty hand!
I was no longer to be alarmed by this sort of thing; it was all so
like 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. "Wh