“I don’t think. It was only an idea. That thing is so thoroughly Neapolitan, and I never heard it on a London organ before. Then again, what should bring them back here?” I peeped through the blind in my turn; and, to be sure, there was the fellow with the blue chin and the white teeth watching our windows, and ours only, as he bawled. “And why?” cried Raffles, his eyes dancing when I told him. “Why should they come sneaking back to _us?_ Doesn’t that look suspicious, Bunny; doesn’t that promise a lark?” “Not to me,” I said, having the smile for once. “How many people, should you imagine, toss them five shilling for as many minutes of their infernal row? You seem to forget that’s what you did an hour ago!” Raffles had forgotten. His blank face confessed the fact. Then suddenly he burst outlaughing at himself. “Bunny,” said he, “you’ve no imagination, and I never knew I had so much! Of course you’re right. I only wish you were not, for there’s nothing I should enjoy more than taking on another Neapolitan or two. You see, I owe them something still! I didn’t settle in full. I owe them more than ever I shall pay them on this side Styx!” He had hardened even as he spoke: the lines and the years had come again, and his eyes were flint and steel, with an honest grief behind the glitter. THE LAST LAUGH As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, the pick of our exploits, from a frankly criminal point of view, are of least use for the comparatively pure purposes of these papers. They might be appreciated in a trade journal (if only that want could be supplied), by skilled manipulators of the jemmy and the large light bunch; but, as records of unbroken yet insignificant success, they would be found at once too trivial and too technical, if not sordid and unprofitable into the bargain. The latter epithets, and worse, have indeed already been applied, if not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine upon Raffles, by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need not say how heartily I disagree with that truly pious opinion. So far from admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the liveliest warning that I am giving to the world. Raffles was a genius, and he could not make it pay! Raffles had invention, resource, incomparable audacity, and a nerve in ten thousand. He was both strategian and tactician, and we all now know the difference between the two. Yet for months he had been hiding like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his altered face by night or day without risk, unless another risk were courted by three inches of conspicuous crepe. Then thus far our rewards had oftener than not been no reward at all. Altogether it was a very different story from the old festive, unsuspected, club and cricket days, with their _noctes ambrosianæ_ at the Albany.