Mr. Justice Raffles

"Though two to one—numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to 'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!"

"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke.

"No—lighter than that—a letter!"

"One little letter?"

"That's all."

"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?"

"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his lips were framing an affirmative.

"I see; it was written to you, not by you."

"Wrong again, Raffles!"

"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?"

There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes.

"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should like to know what is?"

"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against Fact?"

"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?"

"I am naturally interested in the case."

"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much to say about it, with the whole case still sub judice."

"I read the original articles in Fact" said Raffles.

"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?"

"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the wind's eye."

"That's the one I want."

"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more serious sort of case."

"But it isn't genuine."

"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey."

"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse.

"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there."

Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the case came on.

"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and instantaneous effect."

"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me remind you that it's yours as well!"

"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it."

"You won't in any case, I should hope," said I.

"Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that."

Levy stopped talking quite like that.

"Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?"

"Abstract the—forgery?"

"Yes."

"Where from?"

"Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose."

"Who are the solicitors to Fact?"

"Burroughs and Burroughs."

"Of Gray's Inn Square?"

"That's right."

"The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!"

"I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender.

Raffles looked more than dubious.

"Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?"

"Too big by half."

"And you merely wish to have their letter—withdrawn, Mr. Levy?"

"That's the way to put it."

And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an intestine chuckle.

"Withdrawn—and nothing more?"

"That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles."

"Even though they miss it the very next morning?"

"Let them miss it."

Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in serene dissent.

"It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to go one better—if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it.

"What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently no such premonition.