Mr. Justice Raffles

so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down 'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen 'im! I'm ready for biters like that, gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!'

And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was not put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he placed it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of travel and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature.

'Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!' exclaimed Raffles, pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself the drink he had declined.

'Yes,' said Levy, 'the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your profession, eh, Raffles?'

'I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy.'

'Oh yes you do!' said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. 'How've you got on with that little bit o' burgling?'

And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night.

'How did you get on?' he repeated when he had given them up for the present.

'For a first attempt,' replied Raffles, without a twinkle, 'I don't think I've done so badly.' 

'Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner,' said Levy, catching the old note in his turn.

'A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square.'

'As easy?'

Raffles recollected his pose.

'It was enormous fun,' said he. 'Of course one couldn't know that there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only took rather longer.'

'What about the caretaker?' asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer to be concealed.

'He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre.'

'At your expense?'

'No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course.'

'So you got in without any difficulty?'

'Over the roof.'

'And then?'

'I hit upon the right room.'

'And then, Raffles?'

'I opened the right safe.'

'Go on, man!'

But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all.

'Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me.' Thus Raffles under increasing pressure.

'Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?'

There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract the denouement of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the living epitome of low cunning and foul play.

'The next thing that happened,' said Raffles, in his most leisurely manner, 'was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue.'

'Had he gone in with you?'

'No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of common, low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!'

'That was very kind of 'im,' snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon my person from his little black eyes.

'Kind!' cried Raffles. 'It saved the whole show.'

'It did, did it?'

'I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and never letting them know that I had got out at all.'

'Then you left them there?'

'In their glory!' said Raffles, radiant in his own.

Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself.

'And you came away, I suppose,' suggested the money-lender, ironically, 'with my original letter in your pocket?'

'Oh, no, I didn't,' replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head.

'I thought not!' cried Levy in a gust of exultation.

'I came away,' said Raffles, 'if you'll pardon the correction, with the letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!'

The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. 'You'd better let me see it,' said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of authority which it took a Raffles to resist.

Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a phylactery.

'You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy,' said Raffles, with a slight but sufficient emphasis on his verb.

'But I'm not to touch—is that it?'

'I'm afraid I must ask you to look first,' said Raffles, smiling. 'I should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me that part of your quid pro quo which you have doubtless in readiness; the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the three little papers can change hands simultaneously.'

Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the monster's self-control when of a sudden he