st had power as yet to mar my joy in the one
central fact to which all the rest were as tapers to the sun.

"He is alive!" I cried. "Nothing else matters--he is alive!"

At last I did ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as I was
for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much care what
answer I received. Already I was figuring out how much we might each
get, and how old we should be when we came out. But my companion
tilted his hat to the back of his head, at the same time putting his
face close to mine, and compelling my scrutiny. And my answer, as you
have already guessed, was the face of Raffles himself, superbly
disguised (but less superbly than his voice), and yet so thinly that I
should have known him in a trice had I not been too miserable in the
beginning to give him a second glance.

Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the one
escape. Raffles had bought the doctor for a thousand pounds, and the
doctor had bought a "nurse" of his own kidney, on his own account; me,
for some reason, he would not trust; he had insisted upon my dismissal
as an essential preliminary to his part in the conspiracy. Here the
details were half-humorous, half-grewsome, each in turn as Raffles told
me the story. At one period he had been very daringly drugged indeed,
and, in his own words, "as dead as a man need be"; but he had left
strict instructions that nobody but the nurse and "my devoted
physician" should "lay a finger on me" afterwards; and by virtue of
this proviso a library of books (largely acquired for the occasion) had
been impiously interred at Kensal Green. Raffles had definitely
undertaken not to trust me with the secret, and, but for my untoward
appearance at the funeral (which he had attended for his own final
satisfaction), I was assured and am convinced that he would have kept
his promise to the letter. In explaining this he gave me the one
explanation I desired, and in another moment we turned into Praed
Street, Paddington.

"And I thought you said Bow Street!" said I. "Are you coming straight
down to Richmond with me?"

"I may as well," said Raffles, "though I did mean to get my kit first,
so as to start in fair and square as the long-lost brother from the
bush. That's why I hadn't written. The function was a day later than
I calculated. I was going to write to-night."

"But what are we to do?" said I, hesitating when he had paid the cab.
"I have bee