dust-sheets from the drawing-room, and multiplied every bond. The
unfortunate man's legs were lashed to the legs of his chair, his
arms to its arms, his thighs and back fairly welded to the leather.
Either end of his own ruler protruded from his bulging cheeks - the
middle was hidden by his moustache - and the gag kept in place by
remorseless lashings at the back of his head. It was a spectacle I
could not bear to contemplate at length, while from the first I
found myself physically unable to face the ferocious gaze of those
implacable eyes. But Raffles only laughed at my squeamishness, and
flung a dust-sheet over man and chair; and the stark outline drove me
from the room.

It was Raffles at his worst, Raffles as I never knew him before or
after - a Raffles mad with pain and rage, and desperate as any other
criminal in the land. Yet he had struck no brutal blow, he had
uttered no disgraceful taunt, and probably not inflicted a tithe of
the pain he had himself to bear. It is true that he was flagrantly
in the wrong, his victim as laudably in the right. Nevertheless,
granting the original sin of the situation, and given this unforeseen
development, even I failed to see how Raffles could have combined
greater humanity with any regard for our joint safety; and had his
barbarities ended here, I for one should not have considered them
an extraordinary aggravation of an otherwise minor offence. But in
the broad daylight of the bathroom, which had a ground-glass window
but no blind, I saw at once the serious nature of his wound and of
its effect upon the man.

"It will maim me for a month," said he; "and if the V.C. comes out
alive, the wound he gave may be identified with the wound I've got"