cleverest cracksman alive, but flatly refusing to tell us
what it was. I could not at the moment conceive a more terrible trap
than the heavy-weight himself behind a curtain. Yet it was easy to see
that Raffles had accepted the braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did
he deny it later when I taxed him with his mad resolve; he merely
refused to allow me to implicate myself in its execution. Well, there
was a spice of savage satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had
been obliged to turn to me in the end. And, but for the dreadful thud
which I had heard over the telephone, I might have extracted some
genuine comfort from the unerring sagacity with which he had chosen
his night.

Within the last twenty-four hours Barney Maguire had fought his first
great battle on British soil. Obviously, he would no longer be the man
that he had been in the strict training before the fight; never, as I
gathered, was such a ruffian more off his guard, or less capable of
protecting himself and his possessions, than in these first hours of
relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which Raffles had waited with
characteristic foresight. Nor was the terrible Barney likely to be
more abstemious for signal punishment sustained in a far from
bloodless victory. Then what could be the meaning of that sickening
and most suggestive thud? Could it be the champion himself who had
received the _coup de grace_ in his cups? Raffles was the very man to
administer it--but he had not talked like that man through the
telephone.

And yet--and yet--what else could have happened? I must have asked
myself the question between each and all of the above reflections,
made partly as I dressed and partly in the hansom on the way to
Half-moon Street. It was as yet the only question in my mind. You must
know what your emergency is before you can decide how to cope with
it; and to this day I sometimes tremble to think of the rashly direct
method by which I set about obtaining the requisite information. I
drove every yard of the way to the pugilist's very door. You will
remember that I had been dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.

Yet at the last I had a rough idea of what I meant to say when the
door was opened. It seemed almost probable that the tragic end of our
talk over the telephone had been caused by the sudden arrival and as
sudden violence of Barney Maguire. In that case I was resolved to tell
him that Raffles and I had made a bet about his burglar trap