r of that moment?

It was Raffles himself!

How it was possible, I did not pause to ask myself; if one man on earth
could annihilate space and time, it was the man lying senseless at my
feet; and that was Raffles, without an instant's doubt. He was in
villainous guise, which I knew of old, now that I knew the unhappy
wearer. His face was grimy, and dexterously plastered with a growth of
reddish hair; his clothes were those in which he had followed cabs from
the London termini; his boots were muffled in thick socks; and I had
laid him low with a bloody scalp that filled my cup of horror. I
groaned aloud as I knelt over him and felt his heart. And I was
answered by a bronchial whistle from the door.

"Jolly well done!" cheered my asthmatical friend. "I heard the whole
thing--only hope my mother didn't. We must keep it from her if we can."

I could have cursed the creature's mother from my full heart; yet even
with my hand on that of Raffles, as I felt his feeble pulse, I told
myself that this served him right. Even had I brained him, the fault
had been his, not mine. And it was a characteristic, an inveterate
fault, that galled me for all my anguish: to trust and yet distrust me
to the end, to race through England in the night, to spy upon me at his
work--to do it himself after all!

"Is he dead?" wheezed the asthmatic coolly.

"Not he," I answered, with an indignation that I dared not show.

"You must have hit him pretty hard," pursued young Medlicott, "but I
suppose it was a case of getting first knock. And a good job you got
it, if this was his," he added, picking up the murderous little
life-preserver which poor Raffles had provided for his own destruction.

"Look here," I answered, sitting back on my heels. "He isn't dead, Mr.
Medlicott, and I don't know how long he'll be as much as stunned. He's
a powerful brute, and you're not fit to lend a hand. But that
policeman of yours can't be far away. Do you think you could struggle
out and look for him?"

"I suppose I am a bit better than I was," he replied doubtfully. "The
excitement seems to have done me good. If you like to leave me on
guard with my revolver, I'll undertake that he doesn't escape me."

I shook my head with an impatient smile.

"I should never hear the last of it," said I. "No, in that case all I
can do is to handcuff the fellow and wait till morning if he won't go
quietly; and he'll be a fool if he does, while there's a fightin