'Say, sonny, I like you a lot,' said he. 'But I shan't like you any if you're not a good boy!'
'Very well, very well,' I said hurriedly. 'One finger, if I must.'
And the secretary helped me to not more than two.
'Why should it have been your friend Raffles?' he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire roared 'Drink up!' and then drooped once more.
'I was half asleep,' I answered, 'and he was the first person who occurred to me. We are both on the telephone, you see. And we had made a bet - '
The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched. Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic armchair.
'What bet?' asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary was blinking as he drained his glass.
'About the very thing we've just had explained to us,' said I, watching my man intently as I spoke. 'I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous argument about it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-trap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was right - it wasn't a man-trap. But it's every bit as good - every little bit - and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except me!'
I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well have raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over again to see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary to open his eyes. It seemed to have had the very opposite effect. His head fell forward on the table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own sprawling arms. And there sat Maguire bolt upright, but for the jowl upon his shirt-front, while the sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon the reclining form of the lady in the fanciful chair. All. three were sound asleep, by what accident or by whose design I did not pause to inquire; it was enough to ascertain the fact beyond all. chance of error.
I turned my attention to Raffles last of all. There was the other side of the medal. Raffles was still sleeping as sound as the enemy - or so I feared at first I shook him gently: he made no sign. I introduced vigor into the process: he muttered incoherently. I caught and twisted an unresisting wrist - and at that he yelped profanely. But it was many and many an anxious moment before his blinking eyes knew mine.
'Bunny!' he yawned, and nothing more until his position came back to him. 'So you came to me,' he went on, in a tone that thrilled me with its affectionate appreciation, 'as I knew you would! Have they turned up yet? They will any minute, you know; there's not one to lose.'
'No, they won't, old man!' I whispered. And he sat up and saw the comatose trio for himself.
Raffles seemed less amazed at the result than I had been as a puzzled witness of the process; on the other hand, I had never seen anything quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his blackened countenance like a light. It was all. obviously no great surprise, and no puzzle at all., to Raffles.
'How much did they have, Bunny?' were his first whispered words.
'Maguire a good three fingers, and the others at least two.'
'Then we needn't lower our voices, and we needn't walk on our toes. Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking me in the ribs, and I believe it must have been true.'
He had risen with a hand to his side and a wry look on his sweep's face.
'You can guess which of them it was,' said I. 'The beast is jolly well served!'
And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time.
'He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him,' said Raffles. 'I don't suppose we could rouse him now if we tried. How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose I took? About a tablespoonful! I guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the position of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in another minute I could hardly keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly poisoned with some subtle drug. If I left the house at all. in that state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag itself. In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and that might have led to anything.'
'So you rang me up!'
'It was my last brilliant inspiration - a sort of flash in the brain-pan before the end - and I remember very little about it. I was more asleep than awake at the time.'
'You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue.'
'I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny.'
'You fell in a heap before you came to the end.'
'You didn't hear that through the telephone?'
'As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was Maguire who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out.'
I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in his.
'You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the- Giant-killer wasn't in it with you, Bunny!'
'It was no credit to me - it was rather the other thing,' said I, remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath. 'You know old Swigger Morrison?' I added in final explanation. 'I had been dining with him at his club!'
Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was still my infinite reward.
'I don't care,' said he, 'how deeply you had been dining: in vino veritas, Bunny, and your pluck would always out! I have never doubted it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to get us out of this mess.'
My face must have fallen, as my heart sank at these words. I had said to myself that we were out of the mess already - that we had merely to make a clean escape from the house - now the easiest thing in the world. But as I looked at Raffles, and as Raffles looked at me, on the threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept on without sound or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay before us. It was twofold; and the funny thing was that I had seen both horns of the dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his senses. But with Raffles in his right mind, I had ceased to apply my own, or to carry my share of our common burden another inch. It had been an unconscious withdrawal on my part, an instinctive tribute to my leader; but, I was sufficiently ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem in each other's eyes.
'If we simply cleared out,' continued Raffles, 'you would be incriminated in the first place as my accomplice, and once they had you they would have a compass with the needle pointing straight to me. They mustn't have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us both. And for my part they may as well!'
I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself in Raffles, but in my case a mere truism.
'It's easy enough for me,' he went on. 'I am a common house-breaker, and I escape. They don't know me from Noah. But they do know you; and how do you come to let me escape? What has happened to you, Bunny? That's the crux. What could have happened after they all. dropped off?' And for a minute Raffles frowned and smiled like a sensation novelist working out a plot; then the light broke, and transfigured him through his burnt cork. 'I've got it, Bunny!' he exclaimed. 'You took some of the stuff yourself, though of course not nearly so much as they did.
'Splendid!' I cried. 'They really were pressing it upon me at the end, and I did say it must be very little.'
'You dozed off in your turn, but you were naturally the first to come to yourself. I had flown; so had the gold brick, the jewelled belt, and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You couldn't succeed; nor would you if you did try. So what did you do? What's the only really innocent thing you could do in the circumstances?'
'Go for the police,' I suggested dubiously, little relishing the prospect.
'There's a telephone installed for the purpose,' said Raffles. 'I should ring them up, if I were you. Try not to look blue about it, Bunny. They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and what you have to tell them is a mere microbe to the camels I've made them swallow without a grain of salt. It's really the most convincing story one could conceive; but unfortunately there's another point which will take more explaining away.'
And even Raffles looked grave enough as I nodded.
'You mean that they'll find out you rang me up?'
'They may,' said Raffles. 'I see that I managed to replace the receiver all. right. But still - they may.'
'I'm afraid they will,' said I, uncomfortably. 'I'm very much afraid I gave something of the kind away. You see, you had not replaced the receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay. This very question came up, and the
