“That beast Corbucci!” said he—“how can I pity him? He took the flask; he would give me none; he flicked me in the face instead. My idea was that he, at least, should go with me—to sell my life as dearly as that—and a sniff would have settled us both. But no, he must tantalize and torment me; he thought it brandy; he must take it downstairs to drink to my destruction! Can you have any pity for a hound like that?” “Let us go,” I at last said, hoarsely, as Raffles finished speaking in Italian, and his second listener stood open-mouthed. “We will go,” said Raffles, “and we will chance being seen; if the worst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I have been tied up since one o’clock this morning, and the medical evidence will decide how long those dogs have been dead.” But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my unforgotten friend the cabman, who never came forward to say what manner of men he had driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on the very day upon which the tragedy was discovered there, or whence he had driven them. To be sure, they had not behaved like murderers, whereas the evidence at the inquest all went to show that the defunct Corbucci was little better. His reputation, which transpired with his identity, was that of a libertine and a renegade, while the infernal apparatus upstairs revealed the fiendish arts of the anarchist to boot. The inquiry resulted eventually in an open verdict, and was chiefly instrumental in killing such compassion as is usually felt for the dead who die in their sins. But Raffles would not have passed this title for this tale. TO CATCH A THIEF I