Raffles

If I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals.

The affair was not only too intimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other was involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name shall not even now be sullied by association with ours.

That may be gauged when I confess that this was how the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses at baccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in my need.

A true Londoner, however, I myself had never heard of it until Raffles casually proposed a raid.

Raffles uttered these blasphemies under his breath, not, I am afraid, out of any respect for my one redeeming profession, but because we were taking a midnight airing on the roof, after a whole day of June in the little flat below.

"Ah, there you have it," said Raffles. "I only propose to reconnoitre the ground, to see what we can see.

His name was John Raffles, and he sometimes wrote jocosely W.A.G.

"Yes, I've done," said Raffles, taking hold of his hat which stood before him on the table, and giving it a sort of oratorical push.

As Rigg pronounced the last words he turned round and looked at Raffles with his prominent frozen eyes.

Raffles himself had merely discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumerable blazers.

"Raffles," said I, "you may well be surprised at my coming back in this way and at this hour.

"Not one of them was worth the paper it was written on, Raffles. I am overdrawn already at my bank!"