imself. Only lately I also had been to the man, but in my
proper person. We had needed capital for the getting of these very
emeralds, and I had raised a hundred pounds, on the terms you would
expect, from a soft-spoken graybeard with an ingratiating smile, an
incessant bow, and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to
rim of a pair of spectacles. So the original sinews and the final
spoils of war came in this case from the self-same source--a
circumstance which appealed to us both.

But these same final spoils I was still to see, and I waited and waited
with an impatience that grew upon me with the growing dusk. At my open
window I had played Sister Ann until the faces in the street below were
no longer distinguishable. And now I was tearing to and fro in the grip
of horrible hypotheses--a grip that tightened when at last the
lift-gates opened with a clatter outside--that held me breathless until
a well-known tattoo followed on my door.

"In the dark!" said Raffles, as I dragged him in. "Why, Bunny, what's
wrong?"

"Nothing--now you've come," said I, shutting the door behind him in a
fever of relief and anxiety. "Well? Well? What did they fetch?"

"Five hundred."

"Down?"

"Got it in my pocket."

"Good man!" I cried. "You don't know what a stew I've been in. I'll
switch on the light. I've been thinking of you and nothing else for
the last hour. I--I was ass enough to think something had gone wrong!"

Raffles was smiling when the white light filled the room, but for the
moment I did not perceive the peculiarity of his smile. I was
fatuously full of my own late tremors and present relief; and my first
idiotic act was to spill some whiskey and squirt the soda-water all
over in my anxiety to do instant justice to the occasion.

"So you thought something had happened?" said Raffles, leaning back in
my chair as he lit a cigarette, and looking much amused. "What would
you say if something had? Sit tight, my dear chap! It was nothing of
the slightest consequence, and it's all over now. A stern chase and a
long one, Bunny, but I think I'm well to windward this time."

And suddenly I saw that his collar was limp, his hair matted, his boots
thick with dust.

"The police?" I whispered aghast.

"Oh, dear, no; only old Baird."

"Baird! But wasn't it Baird who took the emeralds?"

"It was."

"Then how came he to chase you?"

"My dear fellow, I'll tell you if you give me a chance; it's re