A constable poking about in my flat of all others! I rushed upstairs without waiting for the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept _my_ trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah lock. The lock was broken--the drawer void. "Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my heels. "Yes, indeed--some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true. But the family was not mine. And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street; it was his wife who looked after the flat. "Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I am, this minute!" And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Picadilly on the way. Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way. Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen, it would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray, cool and gay and breezy as incarnate spring. "What on earth did you do it for?" I asked within. "It was the only solution," he answered, handing me the cigarettes. "I saw it the moment I got outside." "I don't see it yet." "Why should a burglar call an innocent gentleman away from home?" "That's what we couldn't make out." "I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in order to burgle you too, of course!" And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his incomparable radiance and audacity. "But why me?" I asked. "Why on earth should he burgle _me?_" "My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the police. But we will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and you meet queer fish at the Imperial Boxing Club. You may remember that he telephoned to his man to prepare supper for us, and that you and he discussed telephones and treasure as we marched through the midnight streets. He was certainly bucking about his trophies, and for the sake of the argument you will be good enough to admit that you probably bucked about yours. What happens? You are overheard; you are followed; you are worked into the same scheme, and robbed on the same night." "And you really think this will meet the case?" "I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far as it rests wit us to meet the case at all."