She was even handsomer than I had thought, and her
beauty of a bolder type, but she was also angrier than I had
anticipated when I came so readily to the door. The passage into which
it opened was an exceedingly narrow one, as I have often said, but I
never dreamt of barring this woman's way, though not a word did she
stoop to say to me. I was only too glad to flatten myself against the
wall, as the rustling fury strode past me into the lighted room with
the open door.

"So this is your thieves' kitchen!" she cried, in high-pitched scorn.

I was on the threshold myself, and Raffles glanced towards me with
raised eyebrows.

"I have certainly had better quarters in my day," said he, "but you
need not call them absurd names before my man."

"Then send your 'man' about his business," said Jacques Saillard, with
an unpleasant stress upon the word indicated.

But when the door was shut I heard Raffles assuring her that I knew
nothing, that he was a real invalid overcome by a sudden mad
temptation, and all he had told her of his life a lie to hide his
whereabouts, but all he was telling her now she could prove for herself
without leaving that building. It seemed, however, that she had proved
it already by going first to the porter below stairs. Yet I do not
think she cared one atom which story was the truth.

"So you thought I could pass you in your chair," she said, "or ever in
this world again, without hearing from my heart that it was you!"

II

"Bunny," said Raffles, "I'm awfully sorry, old chap, but you've got to
go."

It was some weeks since the first untimely visitation of Jacques
Saillard, but there had been many others at all hours of the day, while
Raffles had been induced to pay at least one to her studio in the
neighboring square. These intrusions he had endured at first with an
air of humorous resignation which imposed upon me less than he
imagined. The woman meant well, he said, after all, and could be
trusted to keep his secret loyally. It was plain to me, however, that
Raffles did not trust her, and that his pretence upon the point was a
deliberate pose to conceal the extent to which she had him in her
power. Otherwise there would have been little point in hiding anything
from the one person in possession of the cardinal secret of his
identity.

But Raffles thought it worth his while to hoodwink Jacques Saillard in
the subsidiary matter of his health, in which Dr. Theobald lent him
u