"'Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour,' said he as we
entered. 'I thought you might like a tub first, and you'll find
all ready in the room at the end of the passage. Sing out if
there's anything you want. Your luggage hasn't turned up yet, by
the way, but here's a letter that came this morning.'
"'Not for me?'
"'Yes; didn't you expect one?'
"'I certainly did not!'
"'Well, here it is.'
"And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own superscription of
the previous day--to W. F. Raffles!
"Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I daresay; you
know what that's like? All I can say is that my moral wind was
bagged by that letter as I hope, old chap, I have never yet
bagged yours. I couldn't speak. I could only stand with my own
letter in my hands until he had the good taste to leave me by
myself.
"W. F. Raffles! We had mistaken EACH OTHER for W. F.
Raffles--for the new manager who had not yet arrived! Small
wonder we had conversed at cross-purposes; the only wonder was
that we had not discovered our mutual mistake. How the other man
would have laughed! But I--I could not laugh. By Jove, no, it
was no laughing matter for me! I saw the whole thing in a flash,
without a tremor, but with the direst depression from my own
single point of view. Call it callous if you like, Bunny, but
remember that I was in much the same hole as you've since been in
yourself, and that I had counted on this W.
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