won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't
tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at
the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner."

Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten
the lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle
that he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he
waited for a dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room
balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box
after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the
folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy
"in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas."

"They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck
me, for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever
took. His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was
not; and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there
was no chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I
stuck my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up.
Good God, Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit,
and I was jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,'
says I in low German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise
that I was absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened
face. 'I don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.'
'_Das halsband_, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he.
But I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded.
He laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I
pointed to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live,
old girl,' says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to
shoot, and I don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other