"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his friends and his relations.'"
"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?"
"So I had, Bunny."
"What was that?"
"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole and he destroyed."
"And did he sign that?"
"I insisted on it for our protection."
"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?"
Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted platforms of Herne Hill.
"There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may hold his tongue about the last twenty-four hours—I believe he will—but that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be in the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing clouds of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our secondes noces—meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our elbows when we get them!"