can understand what you felt, and
even what you did? As a matter of fact, I have understood for several
hours now."

"You mean what I felt, Raffles?"

"And what you did. I guessed it in the boathouse. I knew that
something must have happened or been discovered to disperse that
truculent party of sportsmen so soon and on such good terms with
themselves. They had not got us; they might have got something better
worth having; and your phlegmatic attitude suggested what. As luck
would have it, the cases that I personally had collared were the empty
ones; the two prizes had fallen to you. Well, to allay my horrid
suspicion, I went and had another peep through the lighted venetians.
And what do you think I saw?"

I shook my head. I had no idea, nor was I very eager for enlightenment.

"The two poor people whom it was your own idea to despoil," quoth
Raffles, "prematurely gloating over these two pretty things?"

He withdrew a hand from either pocket of his crumpled dinner-jacket,
and opened the pair under my nose. In one was a diamond tiara, and in
the other a necklace of fine emeralds set in clusters of brilliants.

"You must try to forgive me, Bunny," continued Raffles before I could
speak. "I don't say a word against what you did, or undid; in fact,
now it's all over, I am rather glad to think that you did try to undo
it. But, my dear fellow, we had both risked life, limb, and liberty;
and I had not your sentimental scruples. Why should I go empty away?
If you want to know the inner history of my second visit to that good
fellow's dressing-room, drive home for a fresh kit and meet me at the
Turkish bath in twenty minutes. I feel more than a little grubby, and
we can have our breakfast in the cooling gallery. Besides, after a
whole night in your old haunts, Bunny, it's only in order to wind up in
Northumberland Avenue."

The Raffles Relics

It was in one of the magazines for December, 1899, that an article
appeared which afforded our minds a brief respite from the then
consuming excitement of the war in South Africa. These were the days
when Raffles really had white hair, and when he and I were nearing the
end of our surreptitious second innings, as professional cracksmen of
the deadliest dye. Piccadilly and the Albany knew us no more. But we
still operated, as the spirit tempted us, from our latest and most
idyllic base, on the borders of Ham Common. Recreation was our
greatest want; and thoug