ll, 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 eye