mix you one?" said I.

"No, thanks."

"What's the trouble?"

"We were followed."

"Never!"

"You never saw it."

"But YOU never looked round."

"I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny."

I helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have been
the case a minute before.

"So that was why--"

"That was why," said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile, and I put
down my glass untouched.

"They were following us then!"

"All up Palace Gardens."

"I thought you wound about coming back over the hill."

"Nevertheless, one of them's in the street below at this moment."

No, he was not fooling me. He was very grim. And he had not taken off
a thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while.

"Plain clothes?" I sighed, following the sartorial train of thought,
even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person once already
for a little aeon. Next time they would give me double. The skilly
was in my stomach when I saw Raffles's face.

"Who said it was the police, Bunny?" said he. "It's the Italians.
They're only after me; they won't hurt a hair of YOUR head, let alone
cropping it! Have a drink, and don't mind me. I shall score them off
before I'm done."

"And I'll help you!"

"No, old chap, you won't. This is my own little show. I've known
about it for weeks. I first tumbled to it the day those Neapolitans
came back with their organs, though I didn't seriously suspect things
then; they never came again, those two, they had done their part.
That's the Camorra all over, from all accounts. The Count I told you
about is pretty high up in it, by the way he spoke, but there will be
grades and grades between him and the organ-grinders. I shouldn't be
surprised if he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-creamer in the town
upon my tracks! The organization's incredible. Then do you remember
the superior foreigner who came to the door a few days afterwards? You
said he had velvet eyes."

"I never connected him with those two!"

"Of course you didn't, Bunny, so you threatened to kick the fellow
downstairs, and only made them keener on the scent. It was too late to
say anything when you told me. But the very next time I showed my nose
outside I heard a camera click as I passed, and the fiend was a person
with velvet eyes. Then there was a lull--that happened weeks ago.
They had sent me to Italy for identification by Count Corbucci."

"But this is all theory," I exclaime