And now, in addition to the eternal peril of recognition, there was yet another menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no more of our Neapolitan organ-grinders, though I did often think of the moving page that they had torn for me out of my friend’s strange life in Italy. Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I had entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the organ-grinders with the Camorra, and imagining them upon his own tracks. I heard no more of it, and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in the autumn—I shrink from shocking the susceptible for nothing—but there was a certain house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffles would pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking about it. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still up Silver Street, a little tacking west and south, a plunge across High Street, and presently we were home. “Pyjamas first,” said Raffles, with as much authority as though it mattered. It was a warm night, however, though September, and I did not mind until I came in clad as he commanded to find the autocrat himself still booted and capped. He was peeping through the blind, and the gas was still turned down. But he said that I could turn it up, as he helped himself to a cigarette and nothing with it. “May I mix you one?” said I. “No, thanks.” “What’s the trouble?” “We were followed.” “Never!” “You never saw it.” “But _you_ never looked round.” “I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny.” I helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have been the case a minute before. “So that was why—” “That was why,” said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile, and I put down my glass untouched. “They were following us then!” “All up Palace Gardens.” “I thought you wound about coming back over the hill.” “Nevertheless, one of them’s in the street below at this moment.” No, he was not fooling me. He was very grim. And he had not taken off a thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while. “Plain clothes?” I sighed, following the sartorial train of thought, even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person once already for a little aeon. Next time they would give me double. The skilly was in my stomach when I saw Raffles’s face. “Who said it was the police, Bunny?” said he. “It’s the Italians. They’re only after me; they won’t hurt a hair of _your_ head, let alone cropping it! Have a drink, and don’t mind me. I shall score them off before I’m done.” “And I’ll help you!”