He had risen with a hand to his side and a wry look on his sweep's face. "You can guess which of them it was," said I. "The beast is jolly well served!" And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time. "He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him," said Raffles. "I don't suppose we could rouse him now if we tried. How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose _I_ took? About a tablespoonful! I guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the position of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in another minute I could hardly keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly poisoned with some subtle drug. If I left the house at all in that state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag itself. In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and that might have led to anything." "So you rang me up!" "It was my last brilliant inspiration--a sort of flash in the brain-pan before the end--and I remember very little about it. I was more asleep than awake at the time." "You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue." "I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny." "You fell in a heap before you came to the end." "You didn't hear that through the telephone?" "As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was Maguire who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out." I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in his. "You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn't in it with you, Bunny!" "It was no credit to me--it was rather the other thing," said I, remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath. "You know old Swigger Morrison?" I added in final explanation. "I had been dining with him at his club!" Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was still my infinite reward. "I don't care," said he, "how deeply you had been dining: _in vino veritas_, Bunny, and your pluck would always out! I have never doubted it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to get us out of this mess."