es was after him at an
easy pace, and had himself almost reached the corner when my attention
was distracted from the alert nonchalance of his gait. I was
marvelling that it alone had not long ago betrayed him, for nothing
about him was so unconsciously characteristic, when suddenly I realized
that Raffles was not the only person in the little lonely street.
Another pedestrian had entered from the other end, a man heavily built
and clad, with an astrakhan collar to his coat on this warm night, and
a black slouch hat that hid his features from my bird's-eye view. His
steps were the short and shuffling ones of a man advanced in years and
in fatty degeneration, but of a sudden they stopped beneath my very
eyes. I could have dropped a marble into the dinted crown of the
black felt hat. Then, at the same moment, Raffles turned the corner
without looking round, and the big man below raised both his hands and
his face. Of the latter I saw only the huge white moustache, like a
flying gull, as Raffles had described it; for at a glance I divined
that this was his arch-enemy, the Count Corbucci himself.

I did not stop to consider the subtleties of the system by which the
real hunter lagged behind while his subordinate pointed the quarry like
a sporting dog. I left the Count shuffling onward faster than before,
and I jumped into some clothes as though the flats were on fire. If
the Count was going to follow Raffles in his turn, then I would follow
the Count in mine, and there would be a midnight procession of us
through the town. But I found no sign of him in the empty street, and
no sign in the Earl's Court Road, that looked as empty for all its
length, save for a natural enemy standing like a waxwork figure with a
glimmer at his belt.

"Officer," I gasped, "have you seen anything of an old gentleman with a
big white mustache?"

The unlicked cub of a common constable seemed to eye me the more
suspiciously for the flattering form of my address.

"Took a hansom," said he at length.

A hansom! Then he was not following the others on foot; there was no
guessing his game. But something must be said or done.

"He's a friend of mine," I explained, "and I want to overtake him. Did
you hear where he told the fellow to drive?"

A curt negative was the policeman's reply to that; and if ever I take
part in a night assault-at-arms, revolver versus baton, in the back
kitchen, I know which member of the Metropolitan Polic