"On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That was your side of the bargain." "Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" "My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a matter of fact it was only to be got by crook--" "Aha!" "I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man ever made upon another!" Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice came next. "I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and the drink together made me mad." "So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" "Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." "You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" "Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." "In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" "That's it--with the letter." "You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you handle it?" "Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though it were a bad job. "Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" "_I_ have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should I? It must have been the police."