If I left the house at all. in that state, I must leave the spoil
behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag
itself. In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and
that might have led to anything."
"So you rang me up!"
"It was my last brilliant inspiration - a sort of flash in the
brain-pan before the end - and I remember very little about it. I
was more asleep than awake at the time."
"You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue."
"I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny."
"You fell in a heap before you came to the end."
"You didn't hear that through the telephone?"
"As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was
Maguire who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out."
I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this
point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in
his.
"You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my
body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn't in it with
you, Bunny!"
"It was no credit to me - it was rather the other thing," said I,
remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath.
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