sandwiches, was the whole
collection of Raffles Relics which had occupied the lid of the
silver-chest in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard! The chest alone was
missing. There was the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and
there the blood-stained life-preserver, brace-and-bit, bottle of
rock-oil, velvet bag, rope-ladder, walking-stick, gimlets, wedges, and
even the empty cartridge-case which had once concealed the gift of a
civilized monarch to a potentate of color.

"I was a real Father Christmas," said Raffles, "when I arrived. It's a
pity you weren't awake to appreciate the scene. It was more edifying
than the one I found. You never caught _me_ asleep in my chair,
Bunny!"

He thought I had merely fallen asleep in my chair! He could not see
that I had been sitting up for him all night long! The hint of a
temperance homily, on top of all I had borne, and from Raffles of all
mortal men, tried my temper to its last limit--but a flash of late
enlightenment enabled me just to keep it.

"Where did you hide?" I asked grimly.

"At the Yard itself."

"So I gather; but whereabouts at the Yard?"

"Can you ask, Bunny?"

"I am asking."

"It's where I once hid before."

"You don't mean in the chest?"

"I do."

Our eyes met for a minute.

"You may have ended up there," I conceded. "But where did you go first
when you slipped out behind my back, and how the devil did you know
where to go?"

"I never did slip out," said Raffles, "behind your back. I slipped
in."

"Into the chest?"

"Exactly."

I burst out laughing in his face.

"My dear fellow, I saw all these things on the lid just afterward. Not
one of them was moved. I watched that detective show them to his
friends.

"And I heard him."

"But not from the inside of the chest!"

"From the inside of the chest, Bunny. Don't look like that--it's
foolish. Try to recall a few words that went before, between the idiot
in the collar and me. Don't you remember my asking him if there was
anything in the chest?"

"Yes."

"One had to be sure it was empty, you see. Then I asked if there was a
backdoor to the chest as well as a skylight."

"I remember."

"I suppose you thought all that meant nothing?"

"I didn't look for a meaning."

"You wouldn't; it would never occur to you that I might want to find
out whether anybody at the Yard had found out that there _was_
something precisely in the nature of a sidedoor--it isn't a
backdoor--to that chest.