“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink! I was asked for my cricket. I haven’t forgotten it yet. But this fellow’s one of themselves, with the right of entrée into the houses which we could only ‘enter’ in a professional sense. That’s obvious unless all these little exploits are the work of different hands, which they as obviously are not. And it’s why I’d give five hundred pounds to put salt on him to-night!” “Not you,” said I, as I drained my glass in festive incredulity. “But I would, my dear Bunny. Waiter! another half-bottle of this,” and Raffles leant across the table as the empty one was taken away. “I never was more serious in my life,” he continued below his breath. “Whatever else our successor may be, he’s not a dead man like me, or a marked man like you. If there’s any truth in my theory he’s one of the last people upon whom suspicion is ever likely to rest; and oh, Bunny, what a partner he would make for you and me!” Under less genial influences the very idea of a third partner would have filled my soul with offence; but Raffles had chosen his moment unerringly, and his arguments lost nothing by the flowing accompaniment of the extra pint. They were, however, quite strong in themselves. The gist of them was that thus far we had remarkably little to show for what Raffles would call “our second innings.” This even I could not deny. We had scored a few “long singles,” but our “best shots” had gone “straight to hand,” and we were “playing a deuced slow game.” Therefore we needed a new partner—and the metaphor failed Raffles. It had served its turn. I already agreed with him. In truth I was tired of my false position as hireling attendant, and had long fancied myself an object of suspicion to that other impostor the doctor. A fresh, untrammelled start was a fascinating idea to me, though two was company, and three in our case might be worse than none. But I did not see how we could hope, with our respective handicaps, to solve a problem which was already the despair of Scotland Yard. “Suppose I have solved it,” observed Raffles, cracking a walnut in his palm. “How could you?” I asked, without believing for an instant that he had. “I have been taking the _Morning Post_ for some time now.” “Well?” “You have got me a good many odd numbers of the less base society papers.” “I can’t for the life of me see what you’re driving at.” Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked another nut. “That’s because you’ve neither observation nor imagination, Bunny—and yet you try to write! Well, you wouldn’t think it, but I have a fairly complete list of the people who were at the various functions under cover of which these different little coups were brought off.”