ou're the
first. But it hit friend Theobald hardest of all. I'm an income to
him. I believe he's going to marry on me."

"Does he guess there's nothing wrong?"

"Knows, bless you! But he doesn't know I know he knows, and there
isn't a disease in the dictionary that he hasn't treated me for since
he's had me in hand. To do him justice, I believe he thinks me a
hypochondriac of the first water; but that young man will go far if he
keeps on the wicket. He has spent half his nights up here, at guineas
apiece."

"Guineas must be plentiful, old chap!"

"They have been, Bunny. I can't say more. But I don't see why they
shouldn't be again."

I was not going to inquire where the guineas came from. As if I cared!
But I did ask old Raffles how in the world he had got upon my tracks;
and thereby drew the sort of smile with which old gentlemen rub their
hands, and old ladies nod their noses. Raffles merely produced a
perfect oval of blue smoke before replying.

"I was waiting for you to ask that, Bunny; it's a long time since I did
anything upon which I plume myself more. Of course, in the first
place, I spotted you at once by these prison articles; they were not
signed, but the fist was the fist of my sitting rabbit!"

"But who gave you my address?"

"I wheedled it out of your excellent editor; called on him at dead of
night, when I occasionally go afield like other ghosts, and wept it out
of him in five minutes. I was your only relative; your name was not
your own name; if he insisted I would give him mine. He didn't
insist, Bunny, and I danced down his stairs with your address in my
pocket."

"Last night?"

"No, last week."

"And so the advertisement was yours, as well as the telegram!"

I had, of course, forgotten both in the high excitement of the hour, or
I should scarcely have announced my belated discovery with such an air.
As it was I made Raffles look at me as I had known him look before,
and the droop of his eyelids began to sting.

"Why all this subtlety?" I petulantly exclaimed. "Why couldn't you
come straight away to me in a cab?"

He did not inform me that I was hopeless as ever. He did not address
me as his good rabbit.

He was silent for a time, and then spoke in a tone which made me
ashamed of mine.

"You see, there are two or three of me now, Bunny: one's at the bottom
of the Mediterranean, and one's an old Australian desirous of dying in
the old country, but in no imme