ot sordid and unprofitable into the
bargain. The latter epithets, and worse, have indeed already been
applied, if not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine upon
Raffles, by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need not
say how heartily I disagree with that truly pious opinion. So far
from admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the liveliest
warning that I am giving to the world. Raffles was a genius, and he
could not make it pay! Raffles had invention, resource, incomparable
audacity, and a nerve in ten thousand. He was both strategian and
tactician, and we all now know the difference between the two. Yet for
months he had been hiding like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his
altered face by night or day without risk, unless another risk were
courted by three inches of conspicuous crepe. Then thus far our
rewards had oftener than not been no reward at all. Altogether it was
a very different story from the old festive, unsuspected, club and
cricket days, with their noctes ambrosianae at the Albany.

And now, in addition to the eternal peril of recognition, there was yet
another menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no more of our
Neapolitan organ-grinders, though I did often think of the moving page
that they had torn for me out of my friend's strange life in Italy.
Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I had
entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the organ-grinders with
the Camorra, and imagining them upon his own tracks. I heard no more
of it, and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in the
autumn--I shrink from shocking the susceptible for nothing--but there
was a certain house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffles
would pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the
windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking about
it. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still up
Silver Street, a little tacking west and south, a plunge across High
Street, and presently we were home.

"Pyjamas first," said Raffles, with as much authority as though it
mattered. It was a warm night, however, though September, and I did
not mind until I came in clad as he commanded to find the autocrat
himself still booted and capped. He was peeping through the blind, and
the gas was still turned down. But he said that I could turn it up, as
he helped himself to a cigarette and nothing with it.

"May I