"Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling on us each in turn, with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated lip. "To think that I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to walk right into! You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great head at me, "you'll recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one when you come in that night with the other sport? Say, pity he's not with you now; he was a good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he wanted to know too much, and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to tell you now, or else bu'st. See that decanter on the table?"
"I was just looking at it," said the person in sequins. "You don't know what a turn I've had, or you'd offer me a little something."
"You shall have a little something in a minute," rejoined Maguire. "But if you take a little anything out of that decanter, you'll collapse like our friend upon the floor."
"Good heavens!" I cried out, with involuntary indignation, and his fell scheme broke upon me in a clap.
"Yes, sir!" said Maguire, fixing me with his bloodshot orbs. "My trap for crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of hocussed whiskey, and I guess that's it on the table, with the silver label around its neck. Now look at this other decanter, without any label at all; but for that they're the dead spit of each other. I'll put them side by side, so you can see. It isn't only the decanters, but the liquor looks the same in both, and tastes so you wouldn't know the difference till you woke up in your tracks. I got the poison from a blamed Indian away west, and it's ruther ticklish stuff. So I keep the label around the trap-bottle, and only leave it out nights. That's the idea, and that's all there is to it," added Maguire, putting the labelled decanter back in the stand. "But I figure it's enough for ninety-nine crooks out of a hundred, and nineteen out of twenty 'll have their liquor before they go to work."
"I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secretary, with a downward glance as though at the prostrate Raffles. "Have you looked to see if the trophies are all safe?"
"Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the pseudo-antique cabinet in which he kept them.
"Then you can save yourself the trouble," rejoined the secretary, as he dived under the octagonal table, and came up with a small black bag that I knew at a glance. It was the one that Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I had known him.
The bag was so heavy now that the secretary used both hands to get it on the table. In another moment he had taken out the jewelled belt presented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the solid silver statuette of himself, and the gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento.
Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost, or the feeling that the thief had dared to tamper with them after all, suddenly infuriated Maguire to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple of brutal kicks upon the senseless form of Raffles before the secretary and I could interfere.
"Play light, Mr. Maguire!" cried the sallow secretary. "The man's drugged, as well as down."
"He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!"
"I should judge it about time to telephone for the police."
"Not till I've done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I'll punch his face into a jam pudding! He shall wash down his teeth with his blood before the coppers come in for what's left!"
"You make me feel quite ill," complained the grand lady in the chair. "I wish you'd give me a little something, and not be more vulgar than you can 'elp."
"Help yourself," said Maguire, ungallantly, "and don't talk through your hat. Say, what's the matter with the 'phone?"
The secretary had picked up the dangling receiver.
"It looks to me," said he, "as though the crook had rung up somebody before he went off."
I turned and assisted the grand lady to the refreshment that she craved.
"Like his cheek!" Maguire thundered. "But who in blazes should hering up?"
"It'll all come out," said the secretary. "They'll tell us at the central, and we shall find out fast enough."
"It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's have a drink and then rouse the devil up."
But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time being, the police would promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the burglar, and the fact of my not having said a word about it would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this occasion. But any sheep would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.
"I wonder if he rang meup?" I exclaimed, as if inspired.
"You, sonny?" echoed Maguire, decanter in hand. "What in hell could he know about you?"
"Or what could you know about him?" amended the secretary, fixing me with eyes like drills.
"Nothing," I admitted, regretting my temerity with all my heart. "But some one did ring me up about an hour ago. I thought it was Raffles. I told you I expected to find him here, if you remember."
"But I don't see what that's got to do with the crook," pursued the secretary, with his relentless eyes boring deeper and deeper into mine.
"No more do I," was my miserable reply. But there was a certain comfort in his words, and some simultaneous promise in the quantity of spirit which Maguire splashed into his glass.
"Were you cut off sudden?" asked the secretary, reaching for the decanter, as the three of us sat round the octagonal table.
"So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew who it was who rang me up. No, thank you—not any for me."
"What!" cried Maguire, raising a depressed head suddenly. "You won't have a drink in my house? Take care, young man. That's not being a good boy!"
"But I've been dining out," I expostulated, "and had my whack. I really have."
Barney Maguire smote the table with terrific fist.
"Say, sonny, I like you a lot," said he. "But I shan't like you any if you're not a good boy!"
"Very well, very well," I said hurriedly. "One finger, if I must."
And the secretary helped me to not more than two.
"Why should it have been your friend Raffles?" he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire roared "Drink up!" and then drooped once more.
"I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was the first person who occurred to me. We are both on the telephone, you see. And we had made a bet——"
The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched. Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic armchair.
"What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary was blinking as he drained his glass.
"About the very thing we've just had explained to us," said I, watching my man intently as I spoke. "I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous argument about it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-trap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was right—it wasn't a man-trap. But it's every bit as good—every little bit—and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except me!"