"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. "Isn't it, Mr. Levy?"
"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender.
They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the three of them by turns from the other side of the hall.
"But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?"
"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there—is there, Mr. Levy?"
Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles:
"Unless you've got to cope with a swell mobsman who steals your wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives them back again!"
The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and myself in his own office that very morning.
"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her silence on an eager note.
Raffles turned to her at once.