invader was moistening his pencil
between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no
further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept
_my_ trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah
lock. The lock was broken--the drawer void.

"Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my
heels.

"Yes, indeed--some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true.
But the family was not mine.

And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of
value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the
rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street;
it was his wife who looked after the flat.

"Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going
straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while
I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I
am, this minute!"

And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to
Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Piccadilly on the way.

Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him
fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way.
Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen,
it would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door
in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray, cool and gay and
breezy as incarnate spring.

"What on earth did you do it for?" I asked within.

"It was the only solution," he answered, handing me the cigarettes.
"I saw it the moment I got outside."

"I don't see it yet."

"Why should a burglar call an innocent gentleman away from home?"

"That's what we couldn't make out."

"I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in
order to burgle you too, of course!"

And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his incomparable radiance and
audacity.

"But why me?" I asked. "Why on earth should he burgle _me_?"

"My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the
police. But we will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was
the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at
the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and you meet queer fish at the
Imperial Boxing Club. You may remember that he telephoned to his man
to prepare supper for us, and that you and he discussed telephones and
treasure as we marched through the midnight streets. He was c