"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." "But that's the only place that matters," said I. "On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in the next room now." "Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." "She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from her, sir." "I?" "Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." "And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held out his hand. "Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark at this end." "Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard task for me!" "It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my leave of him. "What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl and hide my own anxiety?" "There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour into the brougham. "I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." "But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary disappearance?" "Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his insanity."