And with that he made off, closing the door behind him, and a moment later I heard his infernal automobile chugging down the drive at full speed. Twelve hours later, in response to a long-distance telephone message from New York, the police came bounding around to the house, and found me tied up and unconscious. The highwayman had at least been true to his word, and, as he had prophesied, the morning papers on Friday were full of the story of the most daring robbery of the century. Accurate stories in detail under huge scare-type headlines appeared in all the papers, narrating the losses of the Constant-Scrappes, as well as the rape of the jewels and money of Mrs. Van Raffles. The whole country rang with it, and the afternoon train brought not only detectives by the score, but the representative of the Constant-Scrappes and Henriette herself. She was highly hysterical over the loss not only of her own property but that of her landlord as well, but nobody blamed me. The testimony of the police as to my condition when found fully substantiated my story and was accepted as ample evidence that I had no criminal connection with the robbery. This was a great relief to me, but it was greater when Henriette stroked my hand and called me "poor old Bunny," for I must say I was worried as to what she would think of me for having proven so poor a guardian of her property. Since then months have passed and not a vestige of the stolen property has been recovered. The Constant-Scrappes bore their loss with equanimity, as became them, since no one could have foreseen such a misfortune as overtook them; and as for Mrs. Van Raffles, she never mentioned the matter again to me, save once, and that set me to thinking. "He was a clever rascal you say, Bunny?" she asked one morning. "Yes," said I. "One of the best in the business, I fancy." "A big fellow?" She grinned with a queer smile. "Oh, about your height," said I. "Well, by the hopping Harcourt," she retorted, quizzically, "if you give them the slightest hint of _my_ personal appearance, I'll come back and kill you. See?" _The man's very words!_ And then she laughed. "What?" I cried. "It was--you!" "Was it?" she returned, airily. "Why the devil you should go to all that trouble, when you had the stuff right here is what puzzles me," said I. "Oh, it wasn't any trouble," she replied. "Just sport--you looked so funny sitting up there in your pajamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that hold-up is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we could invent." "Well, you'd better be careful, Henriette," I said with a shiver. "The detectives are clever--"