"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a desperate criminal with a loaded revolver." "Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a mind to impart. "It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for me and my wife." "Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. Miss Belsize only stared. "Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Levy." "Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the first he had heard of it. "But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, "except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back last night." "But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" "It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. "Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" "You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. "But you're the fittest man I know, Raffles," pursued old Garland with terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" "The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there, Mr. Levy?" Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: "Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives them back again!" The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and myself in his own office that very morning. "Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her silence on an eager note. Raffles turned to her at once. "The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy has the better information." Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. "I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the wilds of Austria," said I.