threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You
couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow--he's the only honest one
in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?"

A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was
in liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he
thought so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone,
after shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his
stool at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more
similar peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was
told to hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other
clerks behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting
them hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence.

Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my
tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so
elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month
earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye,
but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a
gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie
filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had
engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd
and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its
massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity
of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer;
and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I
had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its
immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to
that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious
confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of