"But you didn't take it," said I. "You went and left it
behind."

I wish I had had a Kodak for the little smile with which Raffles
shook his head, for it was one that he kept for those great
moments of which our vocation is not devoid. All this time he
had been wearing his hat, tilted a little over eyebrows no
longer raised. And now at last I knew where the gold cup was.

It stood for days upon his chimney-piece, this costly trophy
whose ancient history and final fate filled newspaper columns
even in these days of Jubilee, and for which the flower of
Scotland Yard was said to be seeking high and low. Our
constable, we learnt, had been stunned only, and, from the
moment that I brought him an evening paper with the news,
Raffles's spirits rose to a height inconsistent with his equable
temperament, and as unusual in him as the sudden impulse upon
which he had acted with such effect. The cup itself appealed to
me no more than it had done before. Exquisite it might be,
handsome it was, but so light in the hand that the mere gold of
it would scarcely have poured three figures out of melting-pot.
And what said Raffles but that he would never melt it at all!

"Taking it was an offence against the laws of the land, Bunny.
That is nothing. But destroying it would be a crime against God
and Art, and may I be spitted on the vane of St. Mary Abbot's
if I commit it!"

Talk such as this was unanswerable; indeed, the whole affair had
passed the pale of useful comment; and the one course left to a