managed to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I
had been trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is
a letter, written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you
say, among other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no
excuses of any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten
times more trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get
rid of you. So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as
you may depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very
letter, and steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour.
This is your dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on
the subject.'"

"So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr.
Raffles."

"I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr.
Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?"

"Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his
prize-fighting jaws.

"Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a
year ago?"

"That's it."

"Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory
stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at
the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault."