"Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?"

"Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind."

"I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity.

"How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?"

Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And once more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the b.u.t.toned foil.

"It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor."

"I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?"

"I have-a case of recovering a man's own property."

"You being the man, Mr. Levy?"

"I being the man, Mr. Raffles."

"Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!"

I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy protested that in no circ.u.mstances could he have taken such a course. By the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had entirely escaped his notice in the past-incriminating things-things that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his strong suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, and evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and nothing more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever be done at all.

"Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?"

"Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a shrug.

"Preliminary, then?"

"Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by abstracting Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amus.e.m.e.nt-"

"So you a.s.sert, Mr. Levy."

"Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen-or not-as you decide," rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events you admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I ask you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that 'appens to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits."

"Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of property it is, and where you think it's to be found."

The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the one which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. We all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor looking specially hard at me for the first time.

"I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, "you are partners in-amus.e.m.e.nt? Otherwise I should insist on speaking to Mr. Raffles alone."

"Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily.

"Though two to one-numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to 'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!"

"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke.

"No-lighter than that-a letter!"

"One little letter?"

"That's all."

"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?"

"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his lips were framing an affirmative.

"I see; it was written to you, not by you."

"Wrong again, Raffles!"

"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?"

There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes.

"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should like to know what is?"

"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against Fact?"

"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?"

"I am naturally interested in the case."

"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much to say about it, with the whole case still sub judice."

"I read the original articles in Fact" said Raffles.

"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?"

"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the wind's eye."

"That's the one I want."

"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more serious sort of case."

"But it isn't genuine."

"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey."

"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse.

"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there."

Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the case came on.

"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and instantaneous effect."

"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me remind you that it's yours as well!"

"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it."