"I will," I cried with an oath. "I'll lend you a hand as often
as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in it once.
I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go
back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing matters another rap!
When you want me, I'm your man!"

And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides
of March.


A COSTUME PIECE

London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name
and nothing more. Reuben Rosenthall had made his millions on the
diamond fields of South Africa, and had come home to enjoy them
according to his lights; how he went to work will scarcely be
forgotten by any reader of the halfpenny evening papers, which
revelled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and
present prodigality, varied with interesting particulars of the
extraordinary establishment which the millionaire set up in St.
John's Wood. Here he kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were
literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous
diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a
prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any
means the worst element in the Rosenthall melange. So said
common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently established by the
interference of the police on at least one occasion, followed by
certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with
justifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid.