"Thanks to the Kensington police," observed Raffles, as I read the last words aloud in my horror. "They can't have gone when they got my letter." "Your letter?" "I printed them a line while we were waiting for our train at Euston. They must have got it that night, but they can't have paid any attention to it until yesterday morning. And when they do, they take all the credit and give me no more than you did, Bunny!" I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at the smiling, handsome face under the curls. And at last I understood. "So all the time you never meant it!" "Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours' enforced Rest Cure was the worst I wished him." "You might have told me, Raffles!" "That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me!" The Criminologists' Club "But who are they, Raffles, and where's their house? There's no such club on the list in Whitaker." "The Criminologists, my dear Bunny, are too few for a local habitation, and too select to tell their name in Gath. They are merely so many solemn students of contemporary crime, who meet and dine periodically at each other's clubs or houses." "But why in the world should they ask us to dine with them?" And I brandished the invitation which had brought me hotfoot to the Albany: it was from the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G.; and it requested the honor of my company at dinner, at Thornaby House, Park Lane, to meet the members of the Criminologists' Club. That in itself was a disturbing compliment: judge then of my dismay on learning that Raffles had been invited too! "They have got it into their heads," said he, "that the gladiatorial element is the curse of most modern sport. They tremble especially for the professional gladiator. And they want to know whether my experience tallies with their theory." "So they say!" "They quote the case of a league player, _sus per coll._, and any number of suicides. It really is rather in my public line." "In yours, if you like, but not in mine," said I. "No, Raffles, they've got their eye on us both, and mean to put us under the microscope, or they never would have pitched on _me_." Raffles smiled on my perturbation. "I almost wish you were right, Bunny! It would be even better fun than I mean to make it as it is. But it may console you to hear that it was I who gave them your name. I told them you were a far keener criminologist than myself. I am delighted to hear they have taken my hint, and that we are to meet at their gruesome board." "If I accept," said I, with the austerity he deserved.