did nothing!" I exclaimed.

"On the contrary, I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose's
room--"

"You did?"

"Without a moment's hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was
prepared to yell as much into her ear-trumpet for all the house to
hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake
easily."

"Well?"

"She didn't stir."

"And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take her
jewels, case and all!"

"All but this," said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. "I would
have shown it you before, but really, old fellow, your face all day has
been worth a fortune to the firm!"

And he opened his fist, to shut it next instant on the bunch of
diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen encircling the neck of
Lady Melrose.

LE PREMIER PAS

That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since the
fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just mentioned it as
an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in
getting a word out of Raffles on the subject. It was not for want of
trying; he would shake his head, and watch his cigarette smoke
thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half cynical, half wistful, as
though the decent honest days that were no more had had their merits
after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last,
with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to
imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly
egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead
remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony,
so that I had given the story up long before the night of our return
from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles's
cricket-bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with the
remains of an Orient label still adhering to the leather. My eyes had
been on this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes had been on
mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned to hear that yarn.

"It's no use," I replied. "You won't spin it. I must imagine it for
myself."

"How can you?"

"Oh, I begin to know your methods."

"You take it I went in with my eyes open, as I do now, eh?"

"I can't imagine your doing otherwise."

"My dear Bunny, it was the most unpremeditated thing I ever did in my
life!"

His chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden
energy. There w