t one reflection makes many. I had not recognized
myself; who on earth would recognize me? London called me--and here I
am. Italy had broken my heart--and there it stays."

Flippant as a schoolboy one moment, playful even in the bitterness of
the next, and now no longer giving way to the feeling which had spoilt
the climax of his tale, Raffles needed knowing as I alone knew him for
a right appreciation of those last words. That they were no mere words
I know full well. That, but for the tragedy of his Italian life, that
life would have sufficed him for years, if not for ever, I did and do
still believe. But I alone see him as I saw him then, the lines upon
his face, and the pain behind the lines; how they came to disappear,
and what removed them, you will never guess. It was the one thing you
would have expected to have the opposite effect, the thing indeed that
had forced his confidence, the organ and the voice once more beneath
our very windows:

"Margarita de Parete,
era a' sarta d' e' signore;
se pugneva sempe e ddete
pe penzare a Salvatore!
"Mar--ga--ri,
e perzo e Salvatore!
Mar--ga--ri,
Ma l'ommo e cacciatore!
Mar--ga--ri,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch' e fatto, e fatto, un ne parlammo cchieu!"

I simply stared at Raffles. Instead of deepening, his lines had
vanished. He looked years younger, mischievous and merry and alert as
I remembered him of old in the breathless crisis of some madcap
escapade. He was holding up his finger; he was stealing to the window;
he was peeping through the blind as though our side street were
Scotland Yard itself; he was stealing back again, all revelry,
excitement, and suspense.

"I half thought they were after me before," said he. "That was why I
made you look. I daren't take a proper look myself, but what a jest if
they were! What a jest!"

"Do you mean the police?" said I.

"The police! Bunny, do you know them and me so little that you can
look me in the face and ask such a question? My boy, I'm dead to
them--off their books--a good deal deader than being off the hooks!
Why, if I went to Scotland Yard this minute, to give myself up, they'd
chuck me out for a harmless lunatic. No, I fear an enemy nowadays, and
I go in terror of the sometime friend, but I have the utmost confidence
in the dear police."

"Then whom do you mean?"

"The Camorra!"

I repeated the word