"Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off for his pal."

"Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs."

"Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside the Albany."

"Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting for you in any case if you didn't show up."

"Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it wasn't their job at all."

"Not to take you in the act if they could?"

"No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from old Levy."

"Levy!"

"Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?"

"His creatures, Raffles?"