he had traded on the suspect's presence in
the house? What if he were a deep villain himself, and _the_ villain
of this particular piece? I had made up my mind about him, and that in
a tithe of the time I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my
man in the dressing-room. He greeted us with an impudent shout; in a
few moments the door was open, and there stood Parrington, flushed and
dishevelled, with a gimlet in one hand and a wedge in the other.

Within was a scene of eloquent disorder. Drawers had been pulled out,
and now stood on end, their contents heaped upon the carpet. Ward-robe
doors stood open; empty stud-cases strewed the floor; a clock, tied up
in a towel, had been tossed into a chair at the last moment. But a
long tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in one corner. And one
had only to see Lord Thornaby's wry face behind the lid to guess that
it was bent over a somewhat empty tin trunk.

"What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a twitch of humor at the
corners of his canine mouth. "My peer's robes, with coronet complete!"

We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I thought our scribe would
put in his word. But even he either feigned or felt a proper awe.

"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord Thornaby.
"But where would you gentlemen stable your white elephants? And these
were elephants as white as snow; by Jove, I'll job them for the
future!"

And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined
the minute before; but the reason dawned on me a little later, when we
all trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in possession of the
theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led the
way. His step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic; his very
looks had improved. And I divined the load that had been lifted from
the hospitable heart of our host.

"I only wish," said he, "that this brought us any nearer to the
identity of the gentleman we were discussing at dinner, for, of
course, we owe it to all our instincts to assume that it was he."

"I wonder!" said old Raffles, with a foolhardy glance at me.

"But I'm sure of it, my dear sir," cried my lord. "The audacity is
his and his alone. I look no further than the fact of his honoring me
on the one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain my brother
Criminologists. That's no coincidence, sir, but a deliberate irony,
which would have occurred to no other criminal mind in England."