ra--says so himself. One of the capi
paranze, my boy, no less; and the velvety Johnny a giovano onorato,
Anglice, fresher. This fellow here was also in it, and I've sworn to
protect him from them evermore; and it's just as I said, half the
organ-grinders in London belong, and the whole lot of them were put on
my tracks by secret instructions. This excellent youth manufactures
iced poison on Saffron Hill when he's at home."

"And why on earth didn't he come to me quicker?"

"Because he couldn't talk to you, he could only fetch you, and it was
as much as his life was worth to do that before our friends had
departed. They were going by the eleven o'clock from Victoria, and
that didn't leave much chance, but he certainly oughtn't to have run
it as fine as he did. Still you must remember that I had to fix things
up with him in the fewest possible words, in a single minute that the
other two were indiscreet enough to leave us alone together."

The ragamuffin in question was watching us with all his solitary eye,
as though he knew that we were discussing him. Suddenly he broke out
in agonized accents, his hands clasped, and a face so full of fear that
every moment I expected to see him on his knees. But Raffles answered
kindly, reassuringly, I could tell from his tone, and then turned to me
with a compassionate shrug.

"He says he couldn't find the mansions, Bunny, and really it's not to
be wondered at. I had only time to tell him to hunt you up and bring
you here by hook or crook before twelve to-day, and after all he has
done that. But now the poor devil thinks you're riled with him, and
that we'll give him away to the Camorra."

"Oh, it's not with him I'm riled," I said frankly, "but with those
other blackguards, and--and with you, old chap, for taking it all as
you do, while such infamous scoundrels have the last laugh, and are
safely on their way to France!"

Raffles looked up at me with a curiously open eye, an eye that I never
saw when he was not in earnest. I fancied he did not like my last
expression but one. After all, it was no laughing matter to him.

"But are they?" said he. "I'm not so sure."

"You said they were!"

"I said they should be."

"Didn't you hear them go?"

"I heard nothing but the clock all night. It was like Big Ben striking
at the last--striking nine to the fellow on the drop."

And in that open eye I saw at last a deep glimmer of the ordeal through
which he had pass