Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative.

"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It wouldn't be fair."

"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it trading on a fellow's good-nature-not that I care a curse!"

"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me if I have another dip at Dan Levy."

"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?"

"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder."

"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?"

"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart from these poor pals of mine."

"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?"

One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay pugnacity; nay, there was something behind the good Garlands and their culpably commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they be the Cause?

The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, outside the door.

CHAPTER IX

A Triple Alliance

It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible pa.s.sing of a hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had been plate-gla.s.s. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until a.s.surance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal vulgarian about town.

"May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability.

"May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you came in long ago! I heard you all right-you were listening at the door-probably looking through the keyhole-and you only knocked when I jumped up to open it!"

"My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder.

And he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome.

"But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or else picked the lock."

"Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality.

"Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony.

Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made no secret of a base suspicion.

"I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender.

"My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to see, and n.o.body could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; but that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old song now?"

"'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles."

"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a hair of the jolly dog that bit him-eh?"

"You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own up to it."

"Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have it-thieves! Common thieves!"

And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine.

"You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the only wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He grinned malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it-Mr. Ananias J. Raffles?"

"Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?"

"Chalks!" said I.

"I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own actual coin!"

"Well," said I, "there was no crime in that."

"Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there-a strapping young chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but this afternoon was when I jolly well knew."

Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his lips like a steel trap.

"I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still seriously think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?"

"I know you did."

"Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why didn't you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland Yard? Here I am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give me in charge?"

Levy chuckled consumedly-ventriloquously-behind his three gold b.u.t.tons and his one diamond stud.

"P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as I thought."

"Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?"

"P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr.

Raffles."

"Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?"

"I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took it for a bit o' fun!"

"If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd."

"I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I agree with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both inhabiting for our sins."

"The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very shrewd glance.

"It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure."

"'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?"

"Don't say 'another,' please."