ou talk as though we were sitting in a
club; don't you know it's one o'clock in the morning, and the lights
on, and a dead man down below? For God's sake pull yourself together,
and do what I tell you, or you're a dead man yourself."

"I wish I was one!" Rutter sobbed. "I wish I had his revolver to blow
my own brains out. It's lying under him. O my God, my God!"

His knees knocked together: the frenzy of reaction was at its height.
We had to take him downstairs between us, and so through the front door
out into the open air.

All was still outside--all but the smothered weeping of the unstrung
wretch upon our hands. Raffles returned for a moment to the house;
then all was dark as well. The gate opened from within; we closed it
carefully behind us; and so left the starlight shining on broken glass
and polished spikes, one and all as we had found them.

We escaped; no need to dwell on our escape. Our murderer seemed set
upon the scaffold--drunk with his deed, he was more trouble than six
men drunk with wine. Again and again we threatened to leave him to his
fate, to wash our hands of him. But incredible and unmerited luck was
with the three of us. Not a soul did we meet between that and
Willesden; and of those who saw us later, did one think of the two
young men with crooked white ties, supporting a third in a seemingly
unmistakable condition, when the evening papers apprised the town of a
terrible tragedy at Kensal Rise?

We walked to Maida Vale, and thence drove openly to my rooms. But I
alone went upstairs; the other two proceeded to the Albany, and I saw
no more of Raffles for forty-eight hours. He was not at his rooms when
I called in the morning; he had left no word. When he reappeared the
papers were full of the murder; and the man who had committed it was on
the wide Atlantic, a steerage passenger from Liverpool to New York.

"There was no arguing with him," so Raffles told me; "either he must
make a clean breast of it or flee the country. So I rigged him up at
the studio, and we took the first train to Liverpool. Nothing would
induce him to sit tight and enjoy the situation as I should have
endeavored to do in his place; and it's just as well! I went to his
diggings to destroy some papers, and what do you think I found. The
police in possession; there's a warrant out against him already! The
idiots think that window wasn't genuine, and the warrant's out. It
won't be my fault if it's ever s