"Of course I did," replied Raffles. "I never thought there would be
much difficulty about that, but there was even less than I anticipated.
I did once find myself on one side of a sort of counter, and an officer
dozing at his desk at the other side. I thought it safest to wake him
up and make inquiries about a mythical purse left in a phantom hansom
outside the Carlton. And the way the fellow fired me out of that was
another credit to the Metropolitan Police: it's only in the savage
countries that they would have troubled to ask how one had got in."
"And how did you?" I asked. "And in the Lord's name, Raffles, when and
why?"
Raffles looked down on me under raised eyebrows, as he stood with his
coat tails to the dying fire.
"How and when, Bunny, you know as well as I do," said he, cryptically.
"And at last you shall hear the honest why and wherefore. I had more
reasons for going to Scotland Yard, my dear fellow, than I had the face
to tell you at the time."
"I don't care why you went there!" I cried. "I want to know why you
stayed, or went back, or whatever it was you may have done. I thought
they had got you, and you had given them the slip!"
Raffles smiled as he shook his head.
"No, no, Bunny; I prolonged the visit, as I paid it, of my own accord.
As for my reasons, they are far too many for me to tell you them all;
they rather weighed upon me as I walked out; but you'll see them for
yourself if you turn round."
I was standing with my back to the chair in which I had been asleep;
behind the chair was the round lodging-house table; and there, reposing
on the cloth with the whiskey and sandwiches, was the whole collection
of Raffles Relics which had occupied the lid of the silver-chest in the
Black Museum at Scotland Yard! The chest alone was missing. There was
the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and there the
blood-stained life-preserver, brace-and-bit, bottle of rock-oil, velvet
bag, rope-ladder, walking-stick, gimlets, wedges, and even the empty
cartridge-case which had once concealed the gift of a civilized monarch
to a potentate of color.
"I was a real Father Christmas," said Raffles, "when I arrived. It's a
pity you weren't awake to appreciate the scene. It was more edifying
than the one I found. You never caught _me_ asleep in my chair, Bunny!"
He thought I had merely fallen asleep in my chair! He could not see
that I had been sitting up for him all night long! The hint of a
temperance homily, on top of all I had borne, and from Raffles of all
mortal men, tried my temper to its last limit--but a flash of late
enlightenment enabled me just to keep it.
"Where did you hide?" I asked grimly.
"At the Yard itself."
"So I gather; but whereabouts at the Yard?"
"Can you ask, Bunny?"
"I am asking."
"It's where I once hid before."
"You don't mean in the chest?"
"I do."
Our eyes met for a minute.
"You may have ended up there," I conceded. "But where did you go first
when you slipped out behind my back, and how the devil did you know
where to go?"
"I never did slip out," said Raffles, "behind your back. I slipped in."
"Into the chest?"
"Exactly."