Mr. Justice Raffles

"Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying it was your last chance."

"Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of course I'll come with you—"

"Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you sit up all night either. Where are you staying, my man?"

"Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd caught you early enough."

"Stout fellow! You stay here."

"My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully.

"My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake."

"But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?"

"You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed—do I, Bunny?"

"I've seldom seen you there," said I.

"But you were travelling all last night?"

"And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in to-night I shouldn't get a wink."

"Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how to sleep!"

"Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and lit it up.

"I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me as though we were old friends now.

"And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is."

Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm.

"Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes."

"What are they?"

"Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best."

"But won't they give me a frightful head?"

"Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?"

"I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed him to scorn.

"They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!"

And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as Raffles and myself!

CHAPTER III

Council of War

Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming and spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night.

"That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!"

"Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the conversation which I had managed not to overhear.