Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in front of Verulam Buildings. It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and dry in a hansom. "King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, and Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That little bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the first cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as scent is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge and a good five minutes to go!" "You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" "Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." "But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his note, and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. "I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." "And _I_ thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" Raffles laughed. "The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! To-night, for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your unselfish audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear fellow, it was a sadly unnecessary effort." "Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" "Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off for his pal." "Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." "Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside the Albany." "Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting for you in any case if you didn't show up." "Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it wasn't their job at all." "Not to take you in the act if they could?"