"I'll have him out this time or die!" I ejaculated, filled with resolve, and then began such a pounding upon the door as should have sufficed to awake a dead Raffles, not to mention a living one.
"Hi, there, Jenkins!" cried a voice behind me, in the midst of this operation, identically the same voice, too, as that still going on in the room in front of me. "What the dickens are you trying to do—batter the house down?"
I whirled about like a flash, and was deeply startled to see Raffles himself standing by the divan I had just vacated, divesting himself of his gloves and light overcoat.
"You—Raffles?" I roared in astonishment.
"Yep," said he. "Who else?"
"But the—the other chap—in the room there?"
"Oh," laughed Raffles. "That's my alibi-prover—hold on a minute and I'll show you."
Whereupon he unlocked the door into the bedroom, whence had come the tuneful lyrics, threw it wide open, and revealed to my astonished gaze no less an object than a large talking-machine still engaged in the strenuous fulfilment of its noisy mission.
"What the dickens!" I said.
"It's attached to my front-door," said Raffles, silencing the machine. "The minute the door is opened it begins to sing like the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie."