"You don't corrupt me," I replied through naked teeth.
"Then come into my room. I'll lead the way. Think you can hit
me if I misbehave?"
I put the bed between us without a second's delay. My prisoner
flung a suit-case upon it, and tossed things into it with a
dejected air; suddenly, as he was fitting them in, without
raising his head (which I was watching), his right hand closed
over the barrel with which I covered him.
"You'd better not shoot," he said, a knee upon his side of the
bed; "if you do it may be as bad for you as it will be for me!"
I tried to wrest the revolver from him.
"I will if you force me," I hissed.
"You'd better not," he repeated, smiling; and now I saw that if I
did I should only shoot into the bed or my own legs. His hand
was on the top of mine, bending it down, and the revolver with
it. The strength of it was as the strength of ten of mine; and
now both his knees were on the bed; and suddenly I saw his other
hand, doubled into a fist, coming up slowly over the suit-case.
"Help!" I called feebly.
"Help, forsooth! I begin to believe YOU ARE from the Yard," he
said--and his upper-cut came with the "Yard." It caught me under
the chin.
It lifted me off my legs. I have a dim recollection of the crash
that I made in falling.
III
Raffles was standing over me when I recovered consciousness. I
lay stretched upon the bed across which that blackguard Belville
had struck his knavish blow.
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