r the doctor. A
fresh, untrammelled start was a fascinating idea to me, though two was
company, and three in our case might be worse than none. But I did not
see how we could hope, with our respective handicaps, to solve a
problem which was already the despair of Scotland Yard.

"Suppose I have solved it," observed Raffles, cracking a walnut in his
palm.

"How could you?" I asked, without believing for an instant that he had.

"I have been taking the Morning Post for some time now."

"Well?"

"You have got me a good many odd numbers of the less base society
papers."

"I can't for the life of me see what you're driving at."

Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked another nut.

"That's because you've neither observation nor imagination, Bunny--and
yet you try to write! Well, you wouldn't think it, but I have a fairly
complete list of the people who were at the various functions under
cover of which these different little coups were brought off."

I said very stolidly that I did not see how that could help him. It was
the only answer to his good-humored but self-satisfied contempt; it
happened also to be true.

"Think," said Raffles, in a patient voice.

"When thieves break in and steal," said I, "upstairs, I don't see much
point in discovering who was downstairs at the time."

"Quite," said Raffles--"when they do break in."

"But that's what they have done in all these cases. An upstairs door
found screwed up, when things were at their height below; thief gone
and jewels with him before alarm could be raised. Why, the trick's so
old that I never knew you condescend to play it."

"Not so old as it looks," said Raffles, choosing the cigars and handing
me mine. "Cognac or Benedictine, Bunny?"

"Brandy," I said, coarsely.

"Besides," he went on, "the rooms were not screwed up; at Dorchester
House, at any rate, the door was only locked, and the key missing, so
that it might have been done on either side."

"But that was where he left his rope-ladder behind him!" I exclaimed in
triumph; but Raffles only shook his head.

"I don't believe in that rope-ladder, Bunny, except as a blind."

"Then what on earth do you believe?"

"That every one of these so-called burglaries has been done from the
inside, by one of the guests; and what's more I'm very much mistaken if
I haven't spotted the right sportsman."

I began to believe that he really had, there was such a wicked gravity
in the eyes that twinkl