 After publishing two novels , Dead Men Don 't Tell Tales in 1899 and Peccavi in 1900 , Hornung published a second collection of Raffles stories , The Black Mask , in 1901 . The nearly broke Manders is told to apply for the post of a nurse to an elderly invalid , who then reveals himself to be Raffles , who , as Manders describes , had " aged twenty years ; he looked fifty at the very least . His hair was white ; there was no trick about that ; and his face was another white . The lines about the corners of the eyes and mouth were both many and deep " . In the final story of the collection , " The <unk> of the Gods " , Raffles and Manders enlist in the army to fight in the Second Boer War ; the story closes with Manders wounded and Raffles killed . The critics again complained about the criminal aspect ; The Spectator declared " this sort of book presents crime in a form too entertaining and attractive to be moral " , while the reviewer for The Illustrated London News thought that Hornung 's " invention has obviously flagged ... It is <unk> , in a sense which the author never intended , to hear these <unk> <unk> about the honour of Old England . It is a pity that the man who wrote Peccavi should <unk> to this " . 
