aid I relentlessly. "The tower was there in my
time, but the man I mean to rob was not."

"You really do mean to do it, Bunny?"

"By myself, if necessary!" I averred.

"Not again, Bunny, not again," rejoined Raffles, laughing as he shook
his head. "But do you think the man has enough to make it worth our
while to go so far afield?"

"Far afield! It's not forty miles on the London and Brighton."

"Well, that's as bad as a hundred on most lines. And when did you say
it was to be?"

"Friday week."

"I don't much like a Friday, Bunny. Why make it one?"

"It's the night of their Hunt Point-to-Point. They wind up the season
with it every year; and the bloated Guillemard usually sweeps the
board with his fancy flyers."

"You mean the man in your old house?"

"Yes; and he tops up with no end of dinner there," I went on, "to his
hunting pals and the bloods who ride for him. If the festive board
doesn't groan under a new regiment of challenge cups, it will be no
fault of theirs, and old Guillemard will have to do them top-hole all
the same."

"So it's a case of common pot-hunting," remarked Raffles, eyeing me
shrewdly through the cigarette smoke.

"Not for us, my dear fellow," I made answer in his own tone. "I
wouldn't ask you to break into the next set of chambers here in the
Albany for a few pieces of modern silver, Raffles. Not that we need
scorn the cups if we get a chance of lifting them, and if Guillemard
does so in the first instance. It's by no means certain that he will.
But it is pretty certain to be a lively night for him and his
pals--and a vulnerable one for the best bedroom!"

"Capital!" said Raffles, throwing coits of smoke between his smiles.
"Still, if it's a dinner-party, the hostess won't leave her jewels
upstairs. She'll wear them, my boy."

"Not all of them, Raffles; she has far too many for that. Besides, it
isn't an ordinary dinner-party; they say Mrs. Guillemard is generally
the only lady there, and that she's quite charming in herself. Now, no
charming woman would clap on all sail in jewels for a roomful of
fox-hunters."

"It depends what jewels she has."

"Well, she might wear her rope of pearls."

"I should have said so."

"And, of course, her rings."

"Exactly, Bunny."

"But not necessarily her diamond tiara----"

"Has she got one?"

"----and certainly not her emerald and diamond necklace on top of
all!"

Raffles snatched the Sullivan from his lips, and his eyes burned