"Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?"
Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative.
"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It wouldn't be fair."
"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it trading on a fellow's good-nature—not that I care a curse!"
"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me if I have another dip at Dan Levy."
"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?"
"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder."
"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?"
"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart from these poor pals of mine."
"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?"