sort of little beggar then, Bunny; you didn't
talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no questions and you told no
tales. I wonder if you're like that now?"

"I don't know," said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. "I've made such
a mess of my own affairs that I trust myself about as little as I'm
likely to be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my life went back
on a friend. I will say that, otherwise perhaps I mightn't be in such
a hole to-night."

"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent to
some hidden train of thought; "exactly what I remember of you, and I'll
bet it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't alter, Bunny.
We only develop. I suppose neither you nor I are really altered since
you used to let down that rope and I used to come up it hand over hand.
You would stick at nothing for a pal--what?"

"At nothing in this world," I was pleased to cry.

"Not even at a crime?" said Raffles, smiling.

I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he was
chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever, and for my
part I was in no mood for reservations.

"No, not even at that," I declared; "name your crime, and I'm your man."

He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in doubt; then
turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and the little cynical
laugh that was all his own.

"You're a nice chap, Bunny! A real desperate character--what? Suicide
one moment, and any crime I like the next! What you want is a drag, my
boy, and you did well to come to a decent law-abiding citizen with a
reputation to lose. None the less we must have that money to-night--by
hook or crook."

"To-night, Raffles?"

"The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock to-morrow morning
is an hour of risk. Let one of those checks get round to your own
bank, and you and it are dishonored together. No, we must raise the
wind to-night and re-open your account first thing to-morrow. And I
rather think I know where the wind can be raised."

"At two o'clock in the morning?"

"Yes."

"But how--but where--at such an hour?"

"From a friend of mine here in Bond Street."

"He must be a very intimate friend!"

"Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and a latch-key
all to myself."

"You would knock him up at this hour of the night?"

"If he's in bed."

"And it's essential that I should go in with you?"

"Absolutely."

"Then