e Force I should
like for my opponent.

If there was no overtaking the Count, however, it should be a
comparatively simple matter in the case of the couple on foot, and I
wildly hailed the first hansom that crawled into my ken. I must tell
Raffles who it was that I had seen; the Earl's Court Road was long, and
the time since he vanished in it but a few short minutes. I drove down
the length of that useful thoroughfare, with an eye apiece on either
pavement, sweeping each as with a brush, but never a Raffles came into
the pan. Then I tried the Fulham Road, first to the west, then to the
east, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I did
not realize my indiscretion until I had paid the man and was on the
stairs. Raffles never dreamt of driving all the way back; but I was
hoping now to find him waiting up above. He had said an hour. I had
remembered it suddenly. And now the hour was more than up. But the
flat was as empty as I had left it; the very light that had encouraged
me, pale though it was, as I turned the corner in my hansom, was but
the light that I myself had left burning in the desolate passage.

I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of it I
hung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears, catching every
footstep afar off, every hansom bell farther still, only to gather in
some alien whom I seldom even landed in our street. Then I would
listen at the door.

He might come over the roof; and eventually some one did; but now it
was broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the milkman's face,
which whitened at the shock as though I had ducked him in his own
pail.

"You're late," I thundered as the first excuse for my excitement.

"Beg your pardon," said he, indignantly, "but I'm half an hour before
my usual time."

"Then I beg yours," said I; "but the fact is, Mr. Maturin has had one
of his bad nights, and I seem to have been waiting hours for milk to
make him a cup of tea."

This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it) earned me
not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch of
the business of the man at the door. The good fellow said that he
could see I had been sitting up all night, and he left me pluming
myself upon the accidental art with which I had told my very necessary
tarra-diddle. On reflection I gave the credit to instinct, not
accident, and then sighed afresh as I realized how the influence o