The evening world. Newspaper, May 27, 1905, Page 9

“Then you must be a foo!" ——» He broke off, stared hard a! me, and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite. “Or a better KBave, than | thought you, Bunny, and, by Jove, it’s the knave! Wella-1 suppose I’m fairly drawn; I give you best, as they say out As a matter of fact, I've been thinking of the thing myself; last niznt’s I tell you what, though, this is breaking the one good there. racket reminds me of it in one or Lwo respects. an occasion in any case, and I’m going to celebrate it by tule of my life. Pm going to have a second drink!” The whiskey tinkled, the syphon fizzed, the ice plopped home; and seated there in his pajamas, f up hoping to hear. The with the inevitable cigarette, Raffles told me the story that 1 had given windows were wide open; the sounds of Piccadilly floated in at first. Long before he finished the last wheels had rattled, the last brawler was removed; we alone broke the quiet of the summer night, er x * No, they do you very well, indeed. You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, il but I'm afraid mine were of a comprehensive character. 1 had started in a hole, | ought really to «have refused the invitation; then we all went to the Melbourne Cup, and 1 had the certain winner that didn’t win, and that’s not the only way you can play the fool in Melbourne. 1 wasn’t the steady old stager 1 am now, Bunny; my arialysis was a con! ssion in itself. But the others didn’t know how hard up I was, and I swore they shouldn’t. 1 tried the Jews, but they’re extra fly out there. Then I thought of a kinsman of sorts, a second cousin of my father's whom none of us knew anything about, except that he was supposed to be in one or other of the Colonies. If he was a rich man, well and good, | would work him; if not, there would be no harm done, I tried to get on his tracks, and, as luck would have it, | succeeded (or thought 1 had) at the very moment when I happened to‘have a few days to myself. 1 was cul over on the hand, just before the big Christmas match, and couldn’t have bowled a ball if they had played me, “The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask me if I was any relation of Raffles, of the National Bank, and the pure luck of it almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high myself.” | E PR E M I E R P A Ss C) “How can you?’ official in one of the banks, who would finance me on my mere name—could anything be better? 1 siasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one . throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly gotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost ~ Of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that | had given the story up long before the night of our return from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles’s cricket-bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the , . fender, with the remains of an Orient label still adhering to the leather, ea SOREN 0 : r My eyes had been on this label tor some time, and 1 suppose his eyes had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if | still burned to hear that yarn, “It’s no use,” I replied. “You won't spin it. I must imagine it for BY E. W. HORNUNG. i doe er en Le am as I do now, eh?” ¥ ml - eeNRTt 5 HAT night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since the fateful “I can't imagine your doing otherwise.” NEXT SATURDAY—‘‘Wilful Murder, T morning of the Ides of March, when he had just mentioned it as an unreported “My dear Bunny, it was the most unpremeditated thing 1 ever did the Fourth Adventure of incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word out of in my life.” “RAFFLES, THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN’’ Rages on the subject. It was not for want of trying; he would shake his head and His chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden watch his cigarette smoke thoughtfully, a subtle look in his eyes, half cynical, half energy. There was quite an indignant glitter in his eyes, There will be Thirteen Adventures in this wistful, as though the decent, honest days that were no more had had their merits after “1 can't belie ”” sai i , E ve that,” said | craftily. “I can’t pay you such a poor new series, a complete story every Saturda all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity or glory in the last with the unmitigated enthu- compliment.” fdllscies Dutbinkes As bast Mba Abs! bab