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Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman

by E. W. Hornung · English · Gutenberg #707 · 312,313 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman

Author: E. W. Hornung


        
Release date: November 1, 1996 [eBook #707]
                Most recently updated: November 2, 2021

Language: English

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Credits: Judith Boss. HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAFFLES: FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN ***

[Illustration]




Raffles

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN

by E. W. Hornung


Contents

 NO SINECURE
 A JUBILEE PRESENT
 THE FATE OF FAUSTINA
 THE LAST LAUGH
 TO CATCH A THIEF
 AN OLD FLAME
 THE WRONG HOUSE
 THE KNEES OF THE GODS




RAFFLES




NO SINECURE

I

I am still uncertain which surprised me more, the telegram calling my
attention to the advertisement, or the advertisement itself. The
telegram is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed
in at Vere Street at eight o’clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and
received before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it
duly found me, unwashen but at work before the day grew hot and my
attic insupportable.

“See Mr. Maturin’s advertisement _Daily Mail_ might suit you earnestly
beg try will speak if necessary —— ——”


I transcribe the thing as I see it before me, all in one breath that
took away mine; but I leave out the initials at the end, which
completed the surprise. They stood very obviously for the knighted
specialist whose consulting-room is within a cab-whistle of Vere
Street, and who once called me kinsman for his sins. More recently he
had called me other names. I was a disgrace, qualified by an adjective
which seemed to me another. I had made my bed, and I could go and lie
and die in it. If I ever again had the insolence to show my nose in
that house, I should go out quicker than I came in. All this, and more,
my least distant relative could tell a poor devil to his face; could
ring for his man, and give him his brutal instructions on the spot; and
then relent to the tune of this telegram! I have no phrase for my
amazement. I literally could not believe my eyes. Yet their evidence
was more and more conclusive: a very epistle could not have been more
characteristic of its sender. Meanly elliptical, ludicrously precise,
saving half-pence at the expense of sense, yet paying like a man for
“Mr.” Maturin, that was my distinguished relative from his bald patch
to his corns. Nor was all the rest unlike him, upon second thoughts. He
had a reputation for charity; he was going to live up to it after all.
Either that, or it was the sudden impulse of which the most calculating
are capable at times; the morning papers with the early cup of tea,
this advertisement seen by chance, and the rest upon the spur of a
guilty conscience.

Well, I must see it for myself, and the sooner the better, though work
pressed. I was writing a series of articles upon prison life, and had
my nib into the whole System; a literary and philanthropical daily was
parading my “charges,” the graver ones with the more gusto; and the
terms, if unhandsome for creative work, were temporary wealth to me. It
so happened that my first check had just arrived by the eight o’clock
post; and my position should be appreciated when I say that I had to
cash it to obtain a _Daily Mail_.

Of the advertisement itself, what is to be said? It should speak for
itself if I could find it, but I cannot, and only remember that it was
a “male nurse and constant attendant” that was “wanted for an elderly
gentleman in feeble health.” A male nurse! An absurd tag was appended,
offering “liberal salary to University or public-school man”; and of a
sudden I saw that I should get this thing if I applied for it. What
other “University or public-school man” would dream of doing so? Was
any other in such straits as I? And then my relenting relative; he not
only promised to speak for me, but was the very man to do so. Could any
recommendation compete with his in the matter of a male nurse? And need
the duties of such be necessarily loathsome and repellent? Certainly
the surroundings would be better than those of my common lodging-house
and own particular garret; and the food; and every other condition of
life that I could think of on my way back to that unsavory asylum. So I
dived into a pawnbroker’s shop, where I was a stranger only upon my
present errand, and within the hour was airing a decent if antiquated
suit, but little corrupted by the pawnbroker’s moth, and a new straw
hat, on the top of a tram.

The address given in the advertisement was that of a flat at Earl’s
Court, which cost me a cross-country journey, finishing with the
District Railway and a seven minutes’ walk. It was now past mid-day,
and the tarry wood-pavement was good to smell as I strode up the Earl’s
Court Road. It was great to walk the civilized world again. Here were
men with coats on their backs, and ladies in gloves. My only fear was
lest I might run up against one or other whom I had known of old. But
it was my lucky day. I felt it in my bones. I was going to get this
berth; and sometimes I should be able to smell the wood-pavement on the
old boy’s errands; perhaps he would insist on skimming over it in his
bath-chair, with me behind.

I felt quite nervous when I reached the flats. They were a small pile
in a side street, and I pitied the doctor whose plate I saw upon the
palings before the ground-floor windows; he must be in a very small
way, I thought. I rather pitied myself as well. I had indulged in
visions of better flats than these. There were no balconies. The porter
was out of livery. There was no lift, and my invalid on the third
floor! I trudged up, wishing I had never lived in Mount Street, and
brushed against a dejected individual coming down. A full-blooded young
fellow in a frock-coat flung the right door open at my summons.

“Does Mr. Maturin live here?” I inquired.

“That’s right,” said the full-blooded young man, grinning all over a
convivial countenance.

“I—I’ve come about his advertisement in the _Daily Mail_.”

“You’re the thirty-ninth,” cried the blood; “that was the thirty-eighth
you met upon the stairs, and the day’s still young. Excuse my staring
at you. Yes, you pass your prelim., and can come inside; you’re one of
the few. We had most just after breakfast, but now the porter’s heading
off the worst cases, and that last chap was the first for twenty
minutes. Come in here.”

And I was ushered into an empty room with a good bay-window, which
enabled my full-blooded friend to inspect me yet more critically in a
good light; this he did without the least false delicacy; then his
questions began.

“’Varsity man?”

“No.”

“Public school?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

I told him, and he sighed relief.

“At last! You’re the very first I’ve not had to argue with as to what
is and what is not a public school. Expelled?”

“No,” I said, after a moment’s hesitation; “no, I was not expelled. And
I hope you won’t expel me if I ask a question in my turn?”

“Certainly not.”

“Are you Mr. Maturin’s son?”

“No, my name’s Theobald. You may have seen it down below.”

“The doctor?” I said.

“His doctor,” said Theobald, with a satisfied eye. “Mr. Maturin’s
doctor. He is having a male nurse and attendant by my advice, and he
wants a gentleman if he can get one. I rather think he’ll see you,
though he’s only seen two or three all day. There are certain questions
which he prefers to ask himself, and it’s no good going over the same
ground twice. So perhaps I had better tell him about you before we get
any further.”

And he withdrew to a room still nearer the entrance, as I could hear,
for it was a very small flat indeed. But now two doors were shut
between us, and I had to rest content with murmurs through the wall
until the doctor returned to summon me.

“I have persuaded my patient to see you,” he whispered, “but I confess
I am not sanguine of the result. He is very difficult to please. You
must prepare yourself for a querulous invalid, and for no sinecure if
you get the billet.”

“May I ask what’s the matter with him?”

“By all means—when you’ve got the billet.”

Dr. Theobald then led the way, his professional dignity so thoroughly
intact that I could not but smile as I followed his swinging coat-tails
to the sick-room. I carried no smile across the threshold of a darkened
chamber which reeked of drugs and twinkled with medicine bottles, and
in the middle of which a gaunt figure lay abed in the half-light.

“Take him to the window, take him to the window,” a thin voice snapped,
“and let’s have a look at him. Open the blind a bit. Not as much as
that, damn you, not as much as that!”

The doctor took the oath as though it had been a fee. I no longer
pitied him. It was now very clear to me that he had one patient who was
a little practice in himself. I determined there and then that he
should prove a little profession to me, if we could but keep him alive
between us. Mr. Maturin, however, had the whitest face that I have ever
seen, and his teeth gleamed out through the dusk as though the withered
lips no longer met about them; nor did they except in speech; and
anything ghastlier than the perpetual grin of his repose I defy you to
imagine. It was with this grin that he lay regarding me while the
doctor held the blind.

“So you think you could look after me, do you?”

“I’m certain I could, sir.”

“Single-handed, mind! I don’t keep another soul. You would have to cook
your own grub and my slops. Do you think you could do all that?”

“Yes, sir, I think so.”

“Why do you? Have you any experience of the kind?”

“No, sir, none.”

“Then why do you pretend you have?”

“I only meant that I would do my best.”

“Only meant, only meant! Have you done your best at everything else,
then?”

I hung my head. This was a facer. And there was something in my invalid
which thrust the unspoken lie down my throat.

“No, sir, I have not,” I told him plainly.

“He, he, he!” the old wretch tittered; “and you do well to own it; you
do well, sir, very well indeed. If you hadn’t owned up, out you would
have gone, out neck-and-crop! You’ve saved your bacon. You may do more.
So you are a public-school boy, and a very good school yours is, but
you weren’t at either University. Is that correct?”

“Absolutely.”

“What did you do when you left school?”

“I came in for money.”

“And then?”

“I spent my money.”

“And since then?”

I stood like a mule.

“And since then, I say!”

“A relative of mine will tell you if you ask him. He is an eminent man,
and he has promised to speak for me. I would rather say no more
myself.”

“But you shall, sir, but you shall! Do you suppose that I suppose a
public-school boy would apply for a berth like this if something or
other hadn’t happened? What I want is a gentleman of sorts, and I don’t
much care what sort; but you’ve got to tell me what did happen, if you
don’t tell anybody else. Dr. Theobald, sir, you can go to the devil if
you won’t take a hint. This man may do or he may not. You have no more
to say to it till I send him down to tell you one thing or the other.
Clear out, sir, clear out; and if you think you’ve anything to complain
of, you stick it down in the bill!”

In the mild excitement of our interview the thin voice had gathered
strength, and the last shrill insult was screamed after the devoted
medico, as he retired in such order that I felt certain he was going to
take this trying patient at his word. The bedroom door closed, then the
outer one, and the doctor’s heels went drumming down the common stair.
I was alone in the flat with this highly singular and rather terrible
old man.

“And a damned good riddance!” croaked the invalid, raising himself on
one elbow without delay. “I may not have much body left to boast about,
but at least I’ve got a lost old soul to call my own. That’s why I want
a gentleman of sorts about me. I’ve been too dependent on that chap. He
won’t even let me smoke, and he’s been in the flat all day to see I
didn’t. You’ll find the cigarettes behind the Madonna of the Chair.”

It was a steel engraving of the great Raffaelle, and the frame was
tilted from the wall; at a touch a packet of cigarettes tumbled down
from behind.

“Thanks; and now a light.”

I struck the match and held it, while the invalid inhaled with normal
lips; and suddenly I sighed. I was irresistibly reminded of my poor
dear old Raffles. A smoke-ring worthy of the great A. J. was floating
upward from the sick man’s lips.

“And now take one yourself. I have smoked more poisonous cigarettes.
But even these are not Sullivans!”

I cannot repeat what I said. I have no idea what I did. I only know—I
only knew—that it was A. J. Raffles in the flesh!

II

“Yes, Bunny, it was the very devil of a swim; but I defy you to sink in
the Mediterranean. That sunset saved me. The sea was on fire. I hardly
swam under water at all, but went all I knew for the sun itself; when
it set I must have been a mile away; until it did I was the invisible
man. I figured on that, and only hope it wasn’t set down as a case of
suicide. I shall get outed quite soon enough, Bunny, but I’d rather be
dropped by the hangman than throw my own wicket away.”

“Oh, my dear old chap, to think of having you by the hand again! I feel
as though we were both aboard that German liner, and all that’s
happened since a nightmare. I thought that time was the last!”

“It looked rather like it, Bunny. It was taking all the risks, and
hitting at everything. But the game came off, and some day I’ll tell
you how.”

“Oh, I’m in no hurry to hear. It’s enough for me to see you lying
there. I don’t want to know how you came there, or why, though I fear
you must be pretty bad. I must have a good look at you before I let you
speak another word!”

I raised one of the blinds, I sat upon the bed, and I had that look. It
left me all unable to conjecture his true state of health, but quite
certain in my own mind that my dear Raffles was not and never would be
the man that he had been. He 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. On the other hand, the eyes themselves
were alight and alert as ever; they were still keen and gray and
gleaming, like finely tempered steel. Even the mouth, with a cigarette
to close it, was the mouth of Raffles and no other: strong and
unscrupulous as the man himself. It was only the physical strength
which appeared to have departed; but that was quite sufficient to make
my heart bleed for the dear rascal who had cost me every tie I valued
but the tie between us two.

“Think I look much older?” he asked at length.

“A bit,” I admitted. “But it is chiefly your hair.”

“Whereby hangs a tale for when we’ve talked ourselves out, though I
have often thought it was that long swim that started it. Still, the
Island of Elba is a rummy show, I can assure you. And Naples is a
rummier!”

“You went there after all?”

“Rather! It’s the European paradise for such as our noble selves. But
there’s no place that’s a patch on little London as a non-conductor of
heat; it never need get too hot for a fellow here; if it does it’s his
own fault. It’s the kind of wicket you don’t get out on, unless you get
yourself out. So here I am again, and have been for the last six weeks.
And I mean to have another knock.”

“But surely, old fellow, you’re not awfully fit, are you?”

“Fit? My dear Bunny, I’m dead—I’m at the bottom of the sea—and don’t
you forget it for a minute.”

“But are you all right, or are you not?”

“No, I’m half-poisoned by Theobald’s prescriptions and putrid
cigarettes, and as weak as a cat from lying in bed.”

“Then why on earth lie in bed, Raffles?”

“Because it’s better than lying in gaol, as I am afraid _you_ know, my
poor dear fellow. I tell you I am dead; and my one terror is of coming
to life again by accident. Can’t you see? I simply dare not show my
nose out of doors—by day. You have no idea of the number of perfectly
innocent things a dead man daren’t do. I can’t even smoke Sullivans,
because no one man was ever so partial to them as I was in my lifetime,
and you never know when you may start a clew.”

“What brought you to these mansions?”

“I fancied a flat, and a man recommended these on the boat; such a good
chap, Bunny; he was my reference when it came to signing the lease. You
see I landed on a stretcher—most pathetic case—old Australian without a
friend in old country—ordered Engadine as last chance—no go—not an
earthly—sentimental wish to die in London—that’s the history of Mr.
Maturin. If it doesn’t hit you hard, Bunny, you’re the first. But it
hit friend Theobald hardest of all. I’m an income to him. I believe
he’s going to marry on me.”

“Does he guess there’s nothing wrong?”

“Knows, bless you! But he doesn’t know I know he knows, and there isn’t
a disease in the dictionary that he hasn’t treated me for since he’s
had me in hand. To do him justice, I believe he thinks me a
hypochondriac of the first water; but that young man will go far if he
keeps on the wicket. He has spent half his nights up here, at guineas
apiece.”

“Guineas must be plentiful, old chap!”

“They have been, Bunny. I can’t say more. But I don’t see why they
shouldn’t be again.”

I was not going to inquire where the guineas came from. As if I cared!
But I did ask old Raffles how in the world he had got upon my tracks;
and thereby drew the sort of smile with which old gentlemen rub their
hands, and old ladies nod their noses. Raffles merely produced a
perfect oval of blue smoke before replying.

“I was waiting for you to ask that, Bunny; it’s a long time since I did
anything upon which I plume myself more. Of course, in the first place,
I spotted you at once by these prison articles; they were not signed,
but the fist was the fist of my sitting rabbit!”

“But who gave you my address?”

“I wheedled it out of your excellent editor; called on him at dead of
night, when I occasionally go afield like other ghosts, and wept it out
of him in five minutes. I was your only relative; your name was not
your own name; if he insisted I would give him mine. He didn’t insist,
Bunny, and I danced down his stairs with your address in my pocket.”

“Last night?”

“No, last week.”

“And so the advertisement was yours, as well as the telegram!”

I had, of course, forgotten both in the high excitement of the hour, or
I should scarcely have announced my belated discovery with such an air.
As it was I made Raffles look at me as I had known him look before, and
the droop of his eyelids began to sting.

“Why all this subtlety?” I petulantly exclaimed. “Why couldn’t you come
straight away to me in a cab?”

He did not inform me that I was hopeless as ever. He did not address me
as his good rabbit.

He was silent for a time, and then spoke in a tone which made me
ashamed of mine.

“You see, there are two or three of me now, Bunny: one’s at the bottom
of the Mediterranean, and one’s an old Australian desirous of dying in
the old country, but in no immediate danger of dying anywhere. The old
Australian doesn’t know a soul in town; he’s got to be consistent, or
he’s done. This sitter Theobald is his only friend, and has seen rather
too much of him; ordinary dust won’t do for his eyes. Begin to see? To
pick you out of a crowd, that was the game; to let old Theobald help to
pick you, better still! To start with, he was dead against my having
anybody at all; wanted me all to himself, naturally; but anything
rather than kill the goose! So he is to have a fiver a week while he
keeps me alive, and he’s going to be married next month. That’s a pity
in some ways, but a good thing in others; he will want more money than
he foresees, and he may always be of use to us at a pinch. Meanwhile he
eats out of my hand.”

I complimented Raffles on the mere composition of his telegram, with
half the characteristics of my distinguished kinsman squeezed into a
dozen odd words; and let him know how the old ruffian had really
treated me. Raffles was not surprised; we had dined together at my
relative’s in the old days, and filed for reference a professional
valuation of his household gods. I now learnt that the telegram had
been posted, with the hour marked for its despatch, at the pillar
nearest Vere Street, on the night before the advertisement was due to
appear in the _Daily Mail_. This also had been carefully prearranged;
and Raffles’s only fear had been lest it might be held over despite his
explicit instructions, and so drive me to the doctor for an explanation
of his telegram. But the adverse chances had been weeded out and weeded
out to the irreducible minimum of risk.

His greatest risk, according to Raffles, lay nearest home: bedridden
invalid that he was supposed to be, his nightly terror was of running
into Theobald’s arms in the immediate neighborhood of the flat. But
Raffles had characteristic methods of minimizing even that danger, of
which something anon; meanwhile he recounted more than one of his
nocturnal adventures, all, however, of a singularly innocent type; and
one thing I noticed while he talked. His room was the first as you
entered the flat. The long inner wall divided the room not merely from
the passage but from the outer landing as well. Thus every step upon
the bare stone stairs could be heard by Raffles where he lay; and he
would never speak while one was ascending, until it had passed his
door. The afternoon brought more than one applicant for the post which
it was my duty to tell them that I had already obtained. Between three
and four, however, Raffles, suddenly looking at his watch, packed me
off in a hurry to the other end of London for my things.

“I’m afraid you must be famishing, Bunny. It’s a fact that I eat very
little, and that at odd hours, but I ought not to have forgotten you.
Get yourself a snack outside, but not a square meal if you can resist
one. We’ve got to celebrate this day this night!”

“To-night?” I cried.

“To-night at eleven, and Kellner’s the place. You may well open your
eyes, but we didn’t go there much, if you remember, and the staff seems
changed. Anyway we’ll risk it for once. I was in last night, talking
like a stage American, and supper’s ordered for eleven sharp.”

“You made as sure of me as all that!”

“There was no harm in ordering supper. We shall have it in a private
room, but you may as well dress if you’ve got the duds.”

“They’re at my only forgiving relative’s.”

“How much will get them out, and square you up, and bring you back bag
and baggage in good time?”

I had to calculate.

“A tenner, easily.”

“I had one ready for you. Here it is, and I wouldn’t lose any time if I
were you. On the way you might look up Theobald, tell him you’ve got it
and how long you’ll be gone, and that I can’t be left alone all the
time. And, by Jove, yes! You get me a stall for the Lyceum at the
nearest agent’s; there are two or three in High Street; and say it was
given you when you come in. That young man shall be out of the way
to-night.”

I found our doctor in a minute consulting-room and his shirt-sleeves, a
tall tumbler at his elbow; at least I caught sight of the tumbler on
entering; thereafter he stood in front of it, with a futility which had
my sympathy.

“So you’ve got the billet,” said Dr. Theobald. “Well, as I told you
before, and as you have since probably discovered for yourself, you
won’t find it exactly a sinecure. My own part of the business is by no
means that; indeed, there are those who would throw up the case, after
the kind of treatment that you have seen for yourself. But professional
considerations are not the only ones, and one cannot make too many
allowances in such a case.”

“But what is the case?” I asked him. “You said you would tell me if I
was successful.”

Dr. Theobald’s shrug was worthy of the profession he seemed destined to
adorn; it was not incompatible with any construction which one chose to
put upon it. Next moment he had stiffened. I suppose I still spoke more
or less like a gentleman. Yet, after all, I was only the male nurse. He
seemed to remember this suddenly, and he took occasion to remind me of
the fact.

“Ah,” said he, “that was before I knew you were altogether without
experience; and I must say that I was surprised even at Mr. Maturin’s
engaging you after that; but it will depend upon yourself how long I
allow him to persist in so curious an experiment. As for what is the
matter with him, my good fellow, it is no use my giving you an answer
which would be double Dutch to you; moreover, I have still to test your
discretionary powers. I may say, however, that that poor gentleman
presents at once the most complex and most troublesome case, which is
responsibility enough without certain features which make it all but
insupportable. Beyond this I must refuse to discuss my patient for the
present; but I shall certainly go up if I can find time.”

He went up within five minutes. I found him there on my return at dusk.
But he did not refuse my stall for the Lyceum, which Raffles would not
allow me to use myself, and presented to him off-hand without my leave.

“And don’t you bother any more about me till to-morrow,” snapped the
high thin voice as he was off. “I can send for you now when I want you,
and I’m hoping to have a decent night for once.”

III

It was half-past ten when we left the flat, in an interval of silence
on the noisy stairs. The silence was unbroken by our wary feet. Yet for
me a surprise was in store upon the very landing. Instead of going
downstairs, Raffles led me up two flights, and so out upon a perfectly
flat roof.

“There are two entrances to these mansions,” he explained between stars
and chimney-stacks: “one to our staircase, and another round the
corner. But there’s only one porter, and he lives on the basement
underneath us, and affects the door nearest home. We miss him by using
the wrong stairs, and we run less risk of old Theobald. I got the tip
from the postmen, who come up one way and down the other. Now, follow
me, and look out!”

There was indeed some necessity for caution, for each half of the
building had its L-shaped well dropping sheer to the base, the parapets
so low that one might easily have tripped over them into eternity.
However, we were soon upon the second staircase, which opened on the
roof like the first. And twenty minutes of the next twenty-five we
spent in an admirable hansom, skimming east.

“Not much change in the old hole, Bunny. More of these magic-lantern
advertisements ... and absolutely the worst bit of taste in town,
though it’s saying something, in that equestrian statue with the gilt
stirrups and fixings; why don’t they black the buffer’s boots and his
horse’s hoofs while they are about it? ... More bicyclists, of course.
That was just beginning, if you remember. It might have been useful to
us.... And there’s the old club, getting put into a crate for the
Jubilee; by Jove, Bunny, we ought to be there. I wouldn’t lean forward
in Piccadilly, old chap. If you’re seen I’m thought of, and we shall
have to be jolly careful at Kellner’s.... Ah, there it is! Did I tell
you I was a low-down stage Yankee at Kellner’s? You’d better be
another, while the waiter’s in the room.”

We had the little room upstairs; and on the very threshold I, even I,
who knew my Raffles of old, was taken horribly aback. The table was
laid for three. I called his attention to it in a whisper.

“Why, yep!” came through his nose. “Say, boy, the lady, she’s not
comin’, but you leave that tackle where ’tis. If I’m liable to pay, I
guess I’ll have all there is to it.”

I have never been in America, and the American public is the last on
earth that I desire to insult; but idiom and intonation alike would
have imposed upon my inexperience. I had to look at Raffles to make
sure that it was he who spoke, and I had my own reasons for looking
hard.

“Who on earth was the lady?” I inquired aghast at the first
opportunity.

“She isn’t on earth. They don’t like wasting this room on two, that’s
all. Bunny—my Bunny—here’s to us both!”

And we clinked glasses swimming with the liquid gold of Steinberg,
1868; but of the rare delights of that supper I can scarcely trust
myself to write. It was no mere meal, it was no coarse orgy, but a
little feast for the fastidious gods, not unworthy of Lucullus at his
worst. And I who had bolted my skilly at Wormwood Scrubbs, and
tightened my belt in a Holloway attic, it was I who sat down to this
ineffable repast! Where the courses were few, but each a triumph of its
kind, it would be invidious to single out any one dish; but the Jambon
de Westphalie au Champagne tempts me sorely. And then the champagne
that we drank, not the quantity but the quality! Well, it was Pol
Roger, ’84, and quite good enough for me; but even so it was not more
dry, nor did it sparkle more, than the merry rascal who had dragged me
thus far to the devil, but should lead me dancing the rest of the way.
I was beginning to tell him so. I had done my honest best since my
reappearance in the world; but the world had done its worst by me. A
further antithesis and my final intention were both upon my tongue when
the waiter with the Château Margaux cut me short; for he was the bearer
of more than that great wine; bringing also a card upon a silver tray.

“Show him up,” said Raffles, laconically.

“And who is this?” I cried when the man was gone. Raffles reached
across the table and gripped my arm in a vice. His eyes were steel
points fixed on mine.

“Bunny, stand by me,” said he in the old irresistible voice, a voice
both stern and winning. “Stand by me, Bunny—if there’s a row!”

And there was time for nothing more, the door flying open, and a dapper
person entering with a bow; a frock-coat on his back, gold pince-nez on
his nose; a shiny hat in one hand, and a black bag in the other.

“Good-evening, gentlemen,” said he, at home and smiling.

“Sit down,” drawled Raffles in casual response. “Say, let me introduce
you to Mr. Ezra B. Martin, of Shicawgo. Mr. Martin is my future
brother-in-law. This is Mr. Robinson, Ezra, manager to Sparks &
Company, the cellerbrated joolers on Re-gent Street.”

I pricked up my ears, but contented myself with a nod. I altogether
distrusted my ability to live up to my new name and address.

“I figured on Miss Martin bein’ right here, too,” continued Raffles,
“but I regret to say she’s not feelin’ so good. We light out for Parrus
on the 9 A. M. train to-morrer mornin’, and she guessed she’d be too
dead. Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Robinson; but you’ll see I’m
advertisin’ your wares.”

Raffles held his right hand under the electric light, and a diamond
ring flashed upon his little finger. I could have sworn it was not
there five minutes before.

The tradesman had a disappointed face, but for a moment it brightened
as he expatiated on the value of that ring and on the price his people
had accepted for it. I was invited to guess the figure, but I shook a
discreet head. I have seldom been more taciturn in my life.

“Forty-five pounds,” cried the jeweller; “and it would be cheap at
fifty guineas.”

“That’s right,” assented Raffles. “That’d be dead cheap, I allow. But
then, my boy, you gotten ready cash, and don’t you forget it.”

I do not dwell upon my own mystification in all this. I merely pause to
state that I was keenly enjoying that very element. Nothing could have
been more typical of Raffles and the past. It was only my own attitude
that was changed.

It appeared that the mythical lady, my sister, had just become engaged
to Raffles, who seemed all anxiety to pin her down with gifts of price.
I could not quite gather whose gift to whom was the diamond ring; but
it had evidently been paid for; and I voyaged to the moon, wondering
when and how. I was recalled to this planet by a deluge of gems from
the jeweller’s bag. They lay alight in their cases like the electric
lamps above. We all three put our heads together over them, myself
without the slightest clew as to what was coming, but not unprepared
for violent crime. One does not do eighteen months for nothing.

“Right away,” Raffles was saying. “We’ll choose for her, and you’ll
change anything she don’t like. Is that the idea?”

“That was my suggestion, sir.”

“Then come on, Ezra. I guess you know Sadie’s taste. You help me
choose.”

And we chose—lord! What did we not choose? There was her ring, a
diamond half-hoop. It cost £95, and there was no attempt to get it for
£90. Then there was a diamond necklet—two hundred guineas, but pounds
accepted. That was to be the gift of the bridegroom. The wedding was
evidently imminent. It behooved me to play a brotherly part. I
therefore rose to the occasion; calculated she would like a diamond
star (£116), but reckoned it was more than I could afford; and
sustained a vicious kick under the table for either verb. I was afraid
to open my mouth on finally obtaining the star for the round hundred.
And then the fat fell in the fire; for pay we could not; though a
remittance (said Raffles) was “overdo from Noo York.”

“But I don’t know you, gentlemen,” the jeweller exclaimed. “I haven’t
even the name of your hotel!”

“I told you we was stoppin’ with friends,” said Raffles, who was not
angry, though thwarted and crushed. “But that’s right, sir! Oh, that’s
dead right, and I’m the last man to ask you to take Quixotic risks. I’m
tryin’ to figure a way out. Yes, _sir_, that’s what I’m tryin’ to do.”

“I wish you could, sir,” the jeweller said, with feeling. “It isn’t as
if we hadn’t seen the color of your money. But certain rules I’m sworn
to observe; it isn’t as if I was in business for myself; and—you say
you start for Paris in the morning!”

“On the 9 A. M. train,” mused Raffles; “and I’ve heard no-end yarns
about the joolers’ stores in Parrus. But that ain’t fair; don’t you
take no notice o’ that. I’m tryin’ to figure a way out. Yes, _sir!_”

He was smoking cigarettes out of a twenty-five box; the tradesman and I
had cigars. Raffles sat frowning with a pregnant eye, and it was only
too clear to me that his plans had miscarried. I could not help
thinking, however, that they deserved to do so, if he had counted upon
buying credit for all but £400 by a single payment of some ten per
cent. That again seemed unworthy of Raffles, and I, for my part, still
sat prepared to spring any moment at our visitor’s throat.

“We could mail you the money from Parrus,” drawled Raffles at length.
“But how should we know you’d hold up your end of the string, and mail
us the same articles we’ve selected to-night?”

The visitor stiffened in his chair. The name of his firm should be
sufficient guarantee for that.

“I guess I’m no better acquainted with their name than they are with
mine,” remarked Raffles, laughing. “See here, though! I got a scheme.
You pack ’em in this!”

He turned the cigarettes out of the tin box, while the jeweller and I
joined wondering eyes.

“Pack ’em in this,” repeated Raffles, “the three things we want, and
never mind the boxes; you can pack ’em in cotton-wool. Then we’ll ring
for string and sealing wax, seal up the lot right here, and you can
take ’em away in your grip. Within three days we’ll have our
remittance, and mail you the money, and you’ll mail us this darned box
with my seal unbroken! It’s no use you lookin’ so sick, Mr. Jooler; you
won’t trust us any, and yet we’re goin’ to trust you some. Ring the
bell, Ezra, and we’ll see if they’ve gotten any sealing-wax and
string.”

They had; and the thing was done. The tradesman did not like it; the
precaution was absolutely unnecessary; but since he was taking all his
goods away with him, the sold with the unsold, his sentimental
objections soon fell to the ground. He packed necklet, ring, and star,
with his own hands, in cotton-wool; and the cigarette-box held them so
easily that at the last moment, when the box was closed, and the string
ready, Raffles very nearly added a diamond bee-brooch at £51 10s. This
temptation, however, he ultimately overcame, to the other’s chagrin.
The cigarette-box was tied up, and the string sealed, oddly enough,
with the diamond of the ring that had been bought and paid for.

“I’ll chance you having another ring in the store the dead spit of
mine,” laughed Raffles, as he relinquished the box, and it disappeared
into the tradesman’s bag. “And now, Mr. Robinson, I hope you’ll
appreciate my true hospitality in not offering you any thing to drink
while business was in progress. That’s Château Margaux, sir, and I
should judge it’s what you’d call an eighteen-carat article.”

In the cab which we took to the vicinity of the flat, I was instantly
snubbed for asking questions which the driver might easily overhear,
and took the repulse just a little to heart. I could make neither head
nor tail of Raffles’s dealings with the man from Regent Street, and was
naturally inquisitive as to the meaning of it all. But I held my tongue
until we had regained the flat in the cautious manner of our exit, and
even there until Raffles rallied me with a hand on either shoulder and
an old smile upon his face.

“You rabbit!” said he. “Why couldn’t you wait till we got home?”

“Why couldn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” I retorted as of
yore.

“Because your dear old phiz is still worth its weight in innocence, and
because you never could act for nuts! You looked as puzzled as the
other poor devil; but you wouldn’t if you had known what my game really
was.”

“And pray what was it?”

“That,” said Raffles, and he smacked the cigarette-box down upon the
mantelpiece. It was not tied. It was not sealed. It flew open from the
force of the impact. And the diamond ring that cost £95, the necklet
for £200, and my flaming star at another £100, all three lay safe and
snug in the jeweller’s own cotton-wool!

“Duplicate boxes!” I cried.

“Duplicate boxes, my brainy Bunny. One was already packed and weighted,
and in my pocket. I don’t know whether you noticed me weighing the
three things together in my hand? I know that neither of you saw me
change the boxes, for I did it when I was nearest buying the bee-brooch
at the end, and you were too puzzled, and the other Johnny too keen. It
was the cheapest shot in the game; the dear ones were sending old
Theobald to Southampton on a fool’s errand yesterday afternoon, and
showing one’s own nose down Regent Street in broad daylight while he
was gone; but some things are worth paying for, and certain risks one
must always take. Nice boxes, aren’t they? I only wished they contained
a better cigarette; but a notorious brand was essential; a box of
Sullivans would have brought me to life to-morrow.”

“But they oughtn’t to open it to-morrow.”

“Nor will they, as a matter of fact. Meanwhile, Bunny, I may call upon
you to dispose of the boodle.”

“I’m on for any mortal thing!”

My voice rang true, I swear, but it was the way of Raffles to take the
evidence of as many senses as possible. I felt the cold steel of his
eyes through mine and through my brain. But what he saw seemed to
satisfy him no less than what he heard, for his hand found my hand, and
pressed it with a fervor foreign to the man.

“I know you are, and I knew you would be. Only remember, Bunny, it’s my
turn next to pay the shot!”

You shall hear how he paid it when the time came.




A JUBILEE PRESENT


The Room of Gold, in the British Museum, is probably well enough known
to the inquiring alien and the travelled American. A true Londoner,
however, I myself had never heard of it until Raffles casually proposed
a raid.

“The older I grow, Bunny, the less I think of your so-called precious
stones. When did they ever bring in half their market value in £. s. d.
There was the first little crib we ever cracked together—you with your
innocent eyes shut. A thousand pounds that stuff was worth; but how
many hundreds did it actually fetch. The Ardagh emeralds weren’t much
better; old Lady Melrose’s necklace was far worse; but that little lot
the other night has about finished me. A cool hundred for goods priced
well over four; and £35 to come off for bait, since we only got a
tenner for the ring I bought and paid for like an ass. I’ll be shot if
I ever touch a diamond again! Not if it was the Koh-i-noor; those few
whacking stones are too well known, and to cut them up is to decrease
their value by arithmetical retrogression. Besides, that brings you up
against the Fence once more, and I’m done with the beggars for good and
all. You talk about your editors and publishers, you literary swine.
Barabbas was neither a robber nor a publisher, but a six-barred,
barbed-wired, spike-topped Fence. What we really want is an
Incorporated Society of Thieves, with some public-spirited old forger
to run it for us on business lines.”

Raffles uttered these blasphemies under his breath, not, I am afraid,
out of any respect for my one redeeming profession, but because we were
taking a midnight airing on the roof, after a whole day of June in the
little flat below. The stars shone overhead, the lights of London
underneath, and between the lips of Raffles a cigarette of the old and
only brand. I had sent in secret for a box of the best; the boon had
arrived that night; and the foregoing speech was the first result. I
could afford to ignore the insolent asides, however, where the apparent
contention was so manifestly unsound.

“And how are you going to get rid of your gold?” said I, pertinently.

“Nothing easier, my dear rabbit.”

“Is your Room of Gold a roomful of sovereigns?”

Raffles laughed softly at my scorn.

“No, Bunny, it’s principally in the shape of archaic ornaments, whose
value, I admit, is largely extrinsic. But gold is gold, from Phœnicia
to Klondike, and if we cleared the room we should eventually do very
well.”

“How?”

“I should melt it down into a nugget, and bring it home from the U.S.A.
to-morrow.”

“And then?”

“Make them pay up in hard cash across the counter of the Bank of
England. And you _can_ make them.”

That I knew, and so said nothing for a time, remaining a hostile though
a silent critic, while we paced the cool black leads with our bare
feet, softly as cats.

“And how do you propose to get enough away,” at length I asked, “to
make it worth while?”

“Ah, there you have it,” said Raffles. “I only propose to reconnoitre
the ground, to see what we can see. We might find some hiding-place for
a night; that, I am afraid, would be our only chance.”

“Have you ever been there before?”

“Not since they got the one good, portable piece which I believe that
they exhibit now. It’s a long time since I read of it—I can’t remember
where—but I know they have got a gold cup of sorts worth several
thousands. A number of the immorally rich clubbed together and
presented it to the nation; and two of the richly immoral intend to
snaffle it for themselves. At any rate we might go and have a look at
it, Bunny, don’t you think?”

Think! I seized his arm.

“When? When? When?” I asked, like a quick-firing gun.

“The sooner the better, while old Theobald’s away on his honeymoon.”

Our medico had married the week before, nor was any fellow-practitioner
taking his work—at least not that considerable branch of it which
consisted of Raffles—during his brief absence from town. There were
reasons, delightfully obvious to us, why such a plan would have been
highly unwise in Dr. Theobald. I, however, was sending him daily
screeds, and both matutinal and nocturnal telegrams, the composition of
which afforded Raffles not a little enjoyment.

“Well, then, when—when?” I began to repeat.

“To-morrow, if you like.”

“Only to look?”

The limitation was my one regret.

“We must do so, Bunny, before we leap.”

“Very well,” I sighed. “But to-morrow it is!”

And the morrow it really was.

I saw the porter that night, and, I still think, bought his absolute
allegiance for the second coin of the realm. My story, however,
invented by Raffles, was sufficiently specious in itself. That sick
gentleman, Mr. Maturin (as I had to remember to call him), was really,
or apparently, sickening for fresh air. Dr. Theobald would allow him
none; he was pestering me for just one day in the country while the
glorious weather lasted. I was myself convinced that no possible harm
could come of the experiment. Would the porter help me in so innocent
and meritorious an intrigue? The man hesitated. I produced my
half-sovereign. The man was lost. And at half-past eight next
morning—before the heat of the day—Raffles and I drove to Kew Gardens
in a hired landau which was to call for us at mid-day and wait until we
came. The porter had assisted me to carry my invalid downstairs, in a
carrying-chair hired (like the landau) from Harrod’s Stores for the
occasion.

It was little after nine when we crawled together into the gardens; by
half-past my invalid had had enough, and out he tottered on my arm; a
cab, a message to our coachman, a timely train to Baker Street, another
cab, and we were at the British Museum—brisk pedestrians now—not very
many minutes after the opening hour of 10 A.M.

It was one of those glowing days which will not be forgotten by many
who were in town at the time. The Diamond Jubilee was upon us, and
Queen’s weather had already set in. Raffles, indeed, declared it was as
hot as Italy and Australia put together; and certainly the short summer
nights gave the channels of wood and asphalt and the continents of
brick and mortar but little time to cool. At the British Museum the
pigeons were crooning among the shadows of the grimy colonnade, and the
stalwart janitors looked less stalwart than usual, as though their
medals were too heavy for them. I recognized some habitual Readers
going to their labor underneath the dome; of mere visitors we seemed
among the first.

“That’s the room,” said Raffles, who had bought the two-penny guide, as
we studied it openly on the nearest bench; “number 43, upstairs and
sharp round to the right. Come on, Bunny!”

And he led the way in silence, but with a long methodical stride which
I could not understand until we came to the corridor leading to the
Room of Gold, when he turned to me for a moment.

“A hundred and thirty-nine yards from this to the open street,” said
Raffles, “not counting the stairs. I suppose we _could_ do it in twenty
seconds, but if we did we should have to jump the gates. No, you must
remember to loaf out at slow march, Bunny, whether you like it or not.”

“But you talked about a hiding-place for a night?”

“Quite so—for all night. We should have to get back, go on lying low,
and saunter out with the crowd next day—after doing the whole show
thoroughly.”

“What! With gold in our pockets—”

“And gold in our boots, and gold up the sleeves and legs of our suits!
You leave that to me, Bunny, and wait till you’ve tried two pairs of
trousers sewn together at the foot! This is only a preliminary
reconnoitre. And here we are.”

It is none of my business to describe the so-called Room of Gold, with
which I, for one, was not a little disappointed. The glass cases, which
both fill and line it, may contain unique examples of the goldsmith’s
art in times and places of which one heard quite enough in the course
of one’s classical education; but, from a professional point of view, I
would as lief have the ransacking of a single window in the West End as
the pick of all those spoils of Etruria and of ancient Greece. The gold
may not be so soft as it appears, but it certainly looks as though you
could bite off the business ends of the spoons, and stop your own teeth
in doing so. Nor should I care to be seen wearing one of the rings; but
the greatest fraud of all (from the aforesaid standpoint) is assuredly
that very cup of which Raffles had spoken. Moreover, he felt this
himself.

“Why, it’s as thin as paper,” said he, “and enamelled like a
middle-aged lady of quality! But, by Jove, it’s one of the most
beautiful things I ever saw in my life, Bunny. I should like to have it
for its own sake, by all my gods!”

The thing had a little square case of plate-glass all to itself at one
end of the room. It may have been the thing of beauty that Raffles
affected to consider it, but I for my part was in no mood to look at it
in that light. Underneath were the names of the plutocrats who had
subscribed for this national gewgaw, and I fell to wondering where
their £8,000 came in, while Raffles devoured his two-penny guide-book
as greedily as a school-girl with a zeal for culture.

“Those are scenes from the martyrdom of St. Agnes,” said he ...
“‘translucent on relief ... one of the finest specimens of its kind.’ I
should think it was! Bunny, you Philistine, why can’t you admire the
thing for its own sake? It would be worth having only to live up to!
There never was such rich enamelling on such thin gold; and what a good
scheme to hang the lid up over it, so that you can see how thin it is.
I wonder if we could lift it, Bunny, by hook or crook?”

“You’d better try, sir,” said a dry voice at his elbow.

The madman seemed to think we had the room to ourselves. I knew better,
but, like another madman, had let him ramble on unchecked. And here was
a stolid constable confronting us, in the short tunic that they wear in
summer, his whistle on its chain, but no truncheon at his side.
Heavens! how I see him now: a man of medium size, with a broad,
good-humored, perspiring face, and a limp moustache. He looked sternly
at Raffles, and Raffles looked merrily at him.

“Going to run me in, officer?” said he. “That _would_ be a joke—my
hat!”

“I didn’t say as I was, sir,” replied the policeman. “But that’s queer
talk for a gentleman like you, sir, in the British Museum!” And he
wagged his helmet at my invalid, who had taken his airing in frock-coat
and top-hat, the more readily to assume his present part.

“What!” cried Raffles, “simply saying to my friend that I’d like to
lift the gold cup? Why, so I should, officer, so I should! I don’t mind
who hears me say so. It’s one of the most beautiful things I ever saw
in all my life.”

The constable’s face had already relaxed, and now a grin peeped under
the limp moustache. “I daresay there’s many as feels like that, sir,”
said he.

“Exactly; and I say what I feel, that’s all,” said Raffles airily. “But
seriously, officer, is a valuable thing like this quite safe in a case
like that?”

“Safe enough as long as I’m here,” replied the other, between grim jest
and stout earnest. Raffles studied his face; he was still watching
Raffles; and I kept an eye on them both without putting in my word.

“You appear to be single-handed,” observed Raffles. “Is that wise?”

The note of anxiety was capitally caught; it was at once personal and
public-spirited, that of the enthusiastic savant, afraid for a national
treasure which few appreciated as he did himself. And, to be sure, the
three of us now had this treasury to ourselves; one or two others had
been there when we entered; but now they were gone.

“I’m not single-handed,” said the officer, comfortably. “See that seat
by the door? One of the attendants sits there all day long.”

“Then where is he now?”

“Talking to another attendant just outside. If you listen you’ll hear
them for yourself.”

We listened, and we did hear them, but not just outside. In my own mind
I even questioned whether they were in the corridor through which we
had come; to me it sounded as though they were just outside the
corridor.

“You mean the fellow with the billiard-cue who was here when we came
in?” pursued Raffles.

“That wasn’t a billiard-cue! It was a pointer,” the intelligent officer
explained.

“It ought to be a javelin,” said Raffles, nervously. “It ought to be a
poleaxe! The public treasure ought to be better guarded than this. I
shall write to the _Times_ about it—you see if I don’t!”

All at once, yet somehow not so suddenly as to excite suspicion,
Raffles had become the elderly busybody with nerves; why, I could not
for the life of me imagine; and the policeman seemed equally at sea.

“Lor’ bless you, sir,” said he, “I’m all right; don’t you bother your
head about _me_.”

“But you haven’t even got a truncheon!”

“Not likely to want one either. You see, sir, it’s early as yet; in a
few minutes these here rooms will fill up; and there’s safety in
numbers, as they say.”

“Oh, it will fill up soon, will it?”

“Any minute now, sir.”

“Ah!”

“It isn’t often empty as long as this, sir. It’s the Jubilee, I
suppose.”

“Meanwhile, what if my friend and I had been professional thieves? Why,
we could have over-powered you in an instant, my good fellow!”

“That you couldn’t; leastways, not without bringing the whole place
about your ears.”

“Well, I shall write to the _Times_, all the same. I’m a connoisseur in
all this sort of thing, and I won’t have unnecessary risks run with the
nation’s property. You said there was an attendant just outside, but he
sounds to me as though he were at the other end of the corridor. I
shall write to-day!”

For an instant we all three listened; and Raffles was right. Then I saw
two things in one glance. Raffles had stepped a few inches backward,
and stood poised upon the ball of each foot, his arms half raised, a
light in his eyes. And another kind of light was breaking over the
crass features of our friend the constable.

“Then shall I tell you what _I’ll_ do?” he cried, with a sudden clutch
at the whistle-chain on his chest. The whistle flew out, but it never
reached his lips. There were a couple of sharp smacks, like double
barrels discharged all but simultaneously, and the man reeled against
me so that I could not help catching him as he fell.

“Well done, Bunny! I’ve knocked him out—I’ve knocked him out! Run you
to the door and see if the attendants have heard anything, and take
them on if they have.”

Mechanically I did as I was told. There was no time for thought, still
less for remonstrance or reproach, though my surprise must have been
even more complete than that of the constable before Raffles knocked
the sense out of him. Even in my utter bewilderment, however, the
instinctive caution of the real criminal did not desert me. I ran to
the door, but I sauntered through it, to plant myself before a
Pompeiian fresco in the corridor; and there were the two attendants
still gossiping outside the further door; nor did they hear the dull
crash which I heard even as I watched them out of the corner of each
eye.

It was hot weather, as I have said, but the perspiration on my body
seemed already to have turned into a skin of ice. Then I caught the
faint reflection of my own face in the casing of the fresco, and it
frightened me into some semblance of myself as Raffles joined me with
his hands in his pockets. But my fear and indignation were redoubled at
the sight of him, when a single glance convinced me that his pockets
were as empty as his hands, and his mad outrage the most wanton and
reckless of his whole career.

“Ah, very interesting, very interesting, but nothing to what they have
in the museum at Naples or in Pompeii itself. You must go there some
day, Bunny. I’ve a good mind to take you myself. Meanwhile—slow march!
The beggar hasn’t moved an eyelid. We may swing for him if you show
indecent haste!”

“We!” I whispered. “We!”

And my knees knocked together as we came up to the chatting attendants.
But Raffles must needs interrupt them to ask the way to the Prehistoric
Saloon.

“At the top of the stairs.”

“Thank you. Then we’ll work round that way to the Egyptian part.”

And we left them resuming their providential chat.

“I believe you’re mad,” I said bitterly as we went.

“I believe I _was_,” admitted Raffles; “but I’m not now, and I’ll see
you through. A hundred and thirty-nine yards, wasn’t it? Then it can’t
be more than a hundred and twenty now—not as much. Steady, Bunny, for
God’s sake. It’s _slow_ march—for our lives.”

There was this much management. The rest was our colossal luck. A
hansom was being paid off at the foot of the steps outside, and in we
jumped, Raffles shouting “Charing Cross!” for all Bloomsbury to hear.

We had turned into Bloomsbury Street without exchanging a syllable when
he struck the trap-door with his fist.

“Where the devil are you driving us?”

“Charing Cross, sir.”

“I said King’s Cross! Round you spin, and drive like blazes, or we miss
our train! There’s one to York at 10:35,” added Raffles as the
trap-door slammed; “we’ll book there, Bunny, and then we’ll slope
through the subway to the Metropolitan, and so to ground _via_ Baker
Street and Earl’s Court.”

And actually in half an hour he was seated once more in the hired
carrying chair, while the porter and I staggered upstairs with my
decrepit charge, for whose shattered strength even one hour in Kew
Gardens had proved too much! Then, and not until then, when we had got
rid of the porter and were alone at last, did I tell Raffles, in the
most nervous English at my command, frankly and exactly what I thought
of him and of his latest deed. Once started, moreover, I spoke as I
have seldom spoken to living man; and Raffles, of all men, stood my
abuse without a murmur; or rather he sat it out, too astounded even to
take off his hat, though I thought his eyebrows would have lifted it
from his head.

“But it always was your infernal way,” I was savagely concluding. “You
make one plan, and yet you tell me another—”

“Not to-day, Bunny, I swear!”

“You mean to tell me you really did start with the bare idea of finding
a place to hide in for a night?”

“Of course I did.”

“It was to be the mere reconnoitre you pretended?”

“There was no pretence about it, Bunny.”

“Then why on earth go and do what you did?”

“The reason would be obvious to anyone but you,” said Raffles, still
with no unkindly scorn. “It was the temptation of a minute—the final
impulse of the fraction of a second, when Roberto saw that I was
tempted, and let me see that he saw it. It’s not a thing I care to do,
and I sha’n’t be happy till the papers tell me the poor devil is alive.
But a knock-out shot was the only chance for us then.”

“Why? You don’t get run in for being tempted, nor yet for showing that
you are!”

“But I should have deserved running in if I hadn’t yielded to such a
temptation as that, Bunny. It was a chance in a hundred thousand! We
might go there every day of our lives, and never again be the only
outsiders in the room, with the billiard-marking Johnnie practically
out of ear-shot at one and the same time. It was a gift from the gods;
not to have taken it would have been flying in the face of Providence.”

“But you didn’t take it,” said I. “You went and left it behind.”

I wish I had had a Kodak for the little smile with which Raffles shook
his head, for it was one that he kept for those great moments of which
our vocation is not devoid. All this time he had been wearing his hat,
tilted a little over eyebrows no longer raised. And now at last I knew
where the gold cup was.

It stood for days upon his chimney-piece, this costly trophy whose
ancient history and final fate filled newspaper columns even in these
days of Jubilee, and for which the flower of Scotland Yard was said to
be seeking high and low. Our constable, we learnt, had been stunned
only, and, from the moment that I brought him an evening paper with the
news, Raffles’s spirits rose to a height inconsistent with his equable
temperament, and as unusual in him as the sudden impulse upon which he
had acted with such effect. The cup itself appealed to me no more than
it had done before. Exquisite it might be, handsome it was, but so
light in the hand that the mere gold of it would scarcely have poured
three figures out of melting-pot. And what said Raffles but that he
would never melt it at all!

“Taking it was an offence against the laws of the land, Bunny. That is
nothing. But destroying it would be a crime against God and Art, and
may I be spitted on the vane of St. Mary Abbot’s if I commit it!”

Talk such as this was unanswerable; indeed, the whole affair had passed
the pale of useful comment; and the one course left to a practical
person was to shrug his shoulders and enjoy the joke. This was not a
little enhanced by the newspaper reports, which described Raffles as a
handsome youth, and his unwilling accomplice as an older man of
blackguardly appearance and low type.

“Hits us both off rather neatly, Bunny,” said he. “But what none of
them do justice to is my dear cup. Look at it; only look at it, man!
Was ever anything so rich and yet so chaste? St. Agnes must have had a
pretty bad time, but it would be almost worth it to go down to
posterity in such enamel upon such gold. And then the history of the
thing. Do you realize that it’s five hundred years old and has belonged
to Henry the Eighth and to Elizabeth among others? Bunny, when you have
me cremated, you can put my ashes in yonder cup, and lay us in the
deep-delved earth together!”

“And meanwhile?”

“It is the joy of my heart, the light of my life, the delight of mine
eye.”

“And suppose other eyes catch sight of it?”

“They never must; they never shall.”

Raffles would have been too absurd had he not been thoroughly alive to
his own absurdity; there was nevertheless an underlying sincerity in
his appreciation of any and every form of beauty, which all his
nonsense could not conceal. And his infatuation for the cup was, as he
declared, a very pure passion, since the circumstances debarred him
from the chief joy of the average collector, that of showing his
treasure to his friends. At last, however, and at the height of his
craze, Raffles and reason seemed to come together again as suddenly as
they had parted company in the Room of Gold.

“Bunny,” he cried, flinging his newspaper across the room, “I’ve got an
idea after your own heart. I know where I can place it after all!”

“Do you mean the cup?”

“I do.”

“Then I congratulate you.”

“Thanks.”

“Upon the recovery of your senses.”

“Thanks galore. But you’ve been confoundedly unsympathetic about this
thing, Bunny, and I don’t think I shall tell you my scheme till I’ve
carried it out.”

“Quite time enough,” said I.

“It will mean your letting me loose for an hour or two under cloud of
this very night. To-morrow’s Sunday, the Jubilee’s on Tuesday, and old
Theobald’s coming back for it.”

“It doesn’t much matter whether he’s back or not if you go late
enough.”

“I mustn’t be late. They don’t keep open. No, it’s no use your asking
any questions. Go out and buy me a big box of Huntley & Palmer’s
biscuits; any sort you like, only they must be theirs, and absolutely
the biggest box they sell.”

“My dear man!”

“No questions, Bunny; you do your part and I’ll do mine.”

Subtlety and success were in his face. It was enough for me, and I had
done his extraordinary bidding within a quarter of an hour. In another
minute Raffles had opened the box and tumbled all the biscuits into the
nearest chair.

“Now newspapers!”

I fetched a pile. He bid the cup of gold a ridiculous farewell, wrapped
it up in newspaper after newspaper, and finally packed it in the empty
biscuit-box.

“Now some brown paper. I don’t want to be taken for the grocer’s young
man.”

A neat enough parcel it made, when the string had been tied and the
ends cut close; what was more difficult was to wrap up Raffles himself
in such a way that even the porter should not recognize him if they
came face to face at the corner. And the sun was still up. But Raffles
would go, and when he did I should not have known him myself.

He may have been an hour away. It was barely dusk when he returned, and
my first question referred to our dangerous ally, the porter. Raffles
had passed him unsuspected in going, but had managed to avoid him
altogether on the return journey, which he had completed by way of the
other entrance and the roof. I breathed again.

“And what have you done with the cup?”

“Placed it!”

“How much for? How much for?”

“Let me think. I had a couple of cabs, and the postage was a tanner,
with another twopence for registration. Yes, it cost me exactly
five-and-eight.”

“_It_ cost _you!_ But what did you _get_ for it, Raffles?”

“Nothing, my boy.”

“Nothing!”

“Not a crimson cent.”

“I am not surprised. I never thought it had a market value. I told you
so in the beginning,” I said, irritably. “But what on earth have you
done with the thing?”

“Sent it to the Queen.”

“You haven’t!”

Rogue is a word with various meanings, and Raffles had been one sort of
rogue ever since I had known him; but now, for once, he was the
innocent variety, a great gray-haired child, running over with
merriment and mischief.

“Well, I’ve sent it to Sir Arthur Bigge, to present to her Majesty,
with the loyal respects of the thief, if that will do for you,” said
Raffles. “I thought they might take too much stock of me at the G.P.O.
if I addressed it to the Sovereign herself. Yes, I drove over to St.
Martin’s-le-Grand with it, and I registered the box into the bargain.
Do a thing properly if you do it at all.”

“But why on earth,” I groaned, “do such a thing at all?”

“My dear Bunny, we have been reigned over for sixty years by infinitely
the finest monarch the world has ever seen. The world is taking the
present opportunity of signifying the fact for all it is worth. Every
nation is laying of its best at her royal feet; every class in the
community is doing its little level—except ours. All I have done is to
remove one reproach from our fraternity.”

At this I came round, was infected with his spirit, called him the
sportsman he always was and would be, and shook his daredevil hand in
mine; but, at the same time, I still had my qualms.

“Supposing they trace it to us?” said I.

“There’s not much to catch hold of in a biscuit-box by Huntley &
Palmer,” replied Raffles; “that was why I sent you for one. And I
didn’t write a word upon a sheet of paper which could possibly be
traced. I simply printed two or three on a virginal post-card—another
half-penny to the bad—which might have been bought at any post-office
in the kingdom. No, old chap, the G.P.O. was the one real danger; there
was one detective I spotted for myself; and the sight of him has left
me with a thirst. Whisky and Sullivans for two, Bunny, if you please.”

Raffles was soon clinking his glass against mine.

“The Queen,” said he. “God bless her!”




THE FATE OF FAUSTINA


“Mar—ga—rì,
    e perzo a Salvatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
    Ma l’ommo è cacciatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
    Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch’ è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieù!”


A piano-organ was pouring the metallic music through our open windows,
while a voice of brass brayed the words, which I have since obtained,
and print above for identification by such as know their Italy better
than I. They will not thank me for reminding them of a tune so lately
epidemic in that land of aloes and blue skies; but at least it is
unlikely to run in their heads as the ribald accompaniment to a
tragedy; and it does in mine.

It was in the early heat of August, and the hour that of the lawful and
necessary siesta for such as turn night into day. I was therefore
shutting my window in a rage, and wondering whether I should not do the
same for Raffles, when he appeared in the silk pajamas to which the
chronic solicitude of Dr. Theobald confined him from morning to night.

“Don’t do that, Bunny,” said he. “I rather like that thing, and want to
listen. What sort of fellows are they to look at, by the way?”

I put my head out to see, it being a primary rule of our quaint
establishment that Raffles must never show himself at any of the
windows. I remember now how hot the sill was to my elbows, as I leant
upon it and looked down, in order to satisfy a curiosity in which I
could see no point.

“Dirty-looking beggars,” said I over my shoulder: “dark as dark; blue
chins, oleaginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as they make them, but
nothing picturesque in their rags.”

“Neapolitans all over,” murmured Raffles behind me; “and that’s a
characteristic touch, the one fellow singing while the other grinds;
they always have that out there.”

“He’s rather a fine chap, the singer,” said I, as the song ended. “My
hat, what teeth! He’s looking up here, and grinning all round his head;
shall I chuck him anything?”

“Well, I have no reason to love the Neapolitans; but it takes me
back—it takes me back! Yes, here you are, one each.”

It was a couple of half-crowns that Raffles put into my hand, but I had
thrown them into the street for pennies before I saw what they were.
Thereupon I left the Italians bowing to the mud, as well they might,
and I turned to protest against such wanton waste. But Raffles was
walking up and down, his head bent, his eyes troubled; and his one
excuse disarmed remonstrance.

“They took me back,” he repeated. “My God, how they took me back!”

Suddenly he stopped in his stride.

“You don’t understand, Bunny, old chap; but if you like you shall. I
always meant to tell you some day, but never felt worked up to it
before, and it’s not the kind of thing one talks about for talking’s
sake. It isn’t a nursery story, Bunny, and there isn’t a laugh in it
from start to finish; on the contrary, you have often asked me what
turned my hair gray, and now you are going to hear.”

This was promising, but Raffles’s manner was something more. It was
unique in my memory of the man. His fine face softened and set hard by
turns. I never knew it so hard. I never knew it so soft. And the same
might be said of his voice, now tender as any woman’s, now flying to
the other extreme of equally unwonted ferocity. But this was toward the
end of his tale; the beginning he treated characteristically enough,
though I could have wished for a less cavalier account of the island of
Elba, where, upon his own showing, he had met with much humanity.

“Deadly, my dear Bunny, is not the word for that glorified snag, or for
the mollusks, its inhabitants. But they started by wounding my vanity,
so perhaps I am prejudiced, after all. I sprung myself upon them as a
shipwrecked sailor—a sole survivor—stripped in the sea and landed
without a stitch—yet they took no more interest in me than you do in
Italian organ-grinders. They were decent enough. I didn’t have to pick
and steal for a square meal and a pair of trousers; it would have been
more exciting if I had. But what a place! Napoleon couldn’t stand it,
you remember, but he held on longer than I did. I put in a few weeks in
their infernal mines, simply to pick up a smattering of Italian; then
got across to the mainland in a little wooden timber-tramp; and
ungratefully glad I was to leave Elba blazing in just such another
sunset as the one you won’t forget.

“The tramp was bound for Naples, but first it touched at Baiæ, where I
carefully deserted in the night. There are too many English in Naples
itself, though I thought it would make a first happy hunting-ground
when I knew the language better and had altered myself a bit more.
Meanwhile I got a billet of several sorts on one of the loveliest spots
that ever I struck on all my travels. The place was a vineyard, but it
overhung the sea, and I got taken on as tame sailorman and emergency
bottle-washer. The wages were the noble figure of a lira and a half,
which is just over a bob, a day, but there were lashings of sound wine
for one and all, and better wine to bathe in. And for eight whole
months, my boy, I was an absolutely honest man. The luxury of it,
Bunny! I out-heroded Herod, wouldn’t touch a grape, and went in the
most delicious danger of being knifed for my principles by the thieving
crew I had joined.

“It was the kind of place where every prospect pleases—and all the rest
of it—especially all the rest. But may I see it in my dreams till I
die—as it was in the beginning—before anything began to happen. It was
a wedge of rock sticking out into the bay, thatched with vines, and
with the rummiest old house on the very edge of all, a devil of a
height above the sea: you might have sat at the windows and dropped
your Sullivan-ends plumb into blue water a hundred and fifty feet
below.

“From the garden behind the house—such a garden, Bunny—oleanders and
mimosa, myrtles, rosemarys and red tangles of fiery, untamed flowers—in
a corner of this garden was the top of a subterranean stair down to the
sea; at least there were nearly two hundred steps tunnelled through the
solid rock; then an iron gate, and another eighty steps in the open
air; and last of all a cave fit for pirates,
a-penny-plain-and-two-pence-colored. This cave gave upon the sweetest
little thing in coves, all deep blue water and honest rocks; and here I
looked after the vineyard shipping, a pot-bellied tub with a brown
sail, and a sort of dingy. The tub took the wine to Naples, and the
dingy was the tub’s tender.

“The house above was said to be on the identical site of a suburban
retreat of the admirable Tiberius; there was the old sinner’s private
theatre with the tiers cut clean to this day, the well where he used to
fatten his lampreys on his slaves, and a ruined temple of those ripping
old Roman bricks, shallow as dominoes and ruddier than the cherry. I
never was much of an antiquary, but I could have become one there if
I’d had nothing else to do; but I had lots. When I wasn’t busy with the
boats I had to trim the vines, or gather the grapes, or even help make
the wine itself in a cool, dark, musty vault underneath the temple,
that I can see and smell as I jaw. And can’t I hear it and feel it too!
Squish, squash, bubble; squash, squish, guggle; and your feet as though
you had been wading through slaughter to a throne. Yes, Bunny, you
mightn’t think it, but this good right foot, that never was on the
wrong side of the crease when the ball left my hand, has also been
known to

‘crush the lees of pleasure
    From sanguine grapes of pain.’”


He made a sudden pause, as though he had stumbled on the truth in jest.
His face filled with lines. We were sitting in the room that had been
bare when first I saw it; there were basket-chairs and a table in it
now, all meant ostensibly for me; and hence Raffles would slip to his
bed, with schoolboy relish, at every tinkle of the bell. This afternoon
we felt fairly safe, for Theobald had called in the morning, and Mrs.
Theobald still took up much of his time. Through the open window we
could hear the piano-organ and “Mar—gar—rì” a few hundred yards further
on. I fancied Raffles was listening to it while he paused. He shook his
head abstractedly when I handed him the cigarettes; and his tone
hereafter was never just what it had been.

“I don’t know, Bunny, whether you’re a believer in transmigration of
souls. I have often thought it easier to believe than lots of other
things, and I have been pretty near believing in it myself since I had
my being on that villa of Tiberius. The brute who had it in my day, if
he isn’t still running it with a whole skin, was or is as cold-blooded
a blackguard as the worst of the emperors, but I have often thought he
had a lot in common with Tiberius. He had the great high sensual Roman
nose, eyes that were sinks of iniquity in themselves, and that swelled
with fatness, like the rest of him, so that he wheezed if he walked a
yard; otherwise rather a fine beast to look at, with a huge gray
moustache, like a flying gull, and the most courteous manners even to
his men; but one of the worst, Bunny, one of the worst that ever was.
It was said that the vineyard was only his hobby; if so, he did his
best to make his hobby pay. He used to come out from Naples for the
week-ends—in the tub when it wasn’t too rough for his nerves—and he
didn’t always come alone. His very name sounded unhealthy—Corbucci. I
suppose I ought to add that he was a Count, though Counts are
two-a-penny in Naples, and in season all the year round.

“He had a little English, and liked to air it upon me, much to my
disgust; if I could not hope to conceal my nationality as yet, I at
least did not want to have it advertised; and the swine had English
friends. When he heard that I was bathing in November, when the bay is
still as warm as new milk, he would shake his wicked old head and say,
‘You are very audashuss—you are very audashuss!’ and put on no end of
side before his Italians. By God, he had pitched upon the right word
unawares, and I let him know it in the end!

“But that bathing, Bunny; it was absolutely the best I ever had
anywhere. I said just now the water was like wine; in my own mind I
used to call it blue champagne, and was rather annoyed that I had no
one to admire the phrase. Otherwise I assure you that I missed my own
particular kind very little indeed, though I often wished that _you_
were there, old chap; particularly when I went for my lonesome swim;
first thing in the morning, when the Bay was all rose-leaves, and last
thing at night, when your body caught phosphorescent fire! Ah, yes, it
was a good enough life for a change; a perfect paradise to lie low in;
another Eden until....

“My poor Eve!”

And he fetched a sigh that took away his words; then his jaws snapped
together, and his eyes spoke terribly while he conquered his emotion. I
pen the last word advisedly. I fancy it is one which I have never used
before in writing of A. J. Raffles, for I cannot at the moment recall
any other occasion upon which its use would have been justified. On
resuming, however, he was not only calm, but cold; and this flying for
safety to the other extreme is the single instance of self-distrust
which the present Achates can record to the credit of his impious
Æneas.

“I called the girl Eve,” said he. “Her real name was Faustina, and she
was one of a vast family who hung out in a hovel on the inland border
of the vineyard. And Aphrodite rising from the sea was less wonderful
and not more beautiful than Aphrodite emerging from that hole!

“It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this life.
Absolutely perfect features; a skin that reminded you of old gold, so
delicate was its bronze; magnificent hair, not black but nearly; and
such eyes and teeth as would have made the fortune of a face without
another point. I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad about a girl like
that. But I don’t believe there’s such another in the world. And there
she was wasting her sweetness upon that lovely but desolate little
corner of it! Well, she did not waste it upon me. I would have married
her, and lived happily ever after in such a hovel as her people’s—with
her. Only to look at her—only to look at her for the rest of my days—I
could have lain low and remained dead even to you! And that’s all I’m
going to tell you about that, Bunny; cursed be he who tells more! Yet
don’t run away with the idea that this poor Faustina was the only woman
I ever cared about. I don’t believe in all that ‘only’ rot;
nevertheless I tell you that she _was_ the one being who ever entirely
satisfied my sense of beauty; and I honestly believe I could have
chucked the world and been true to Faustina for that alone.

“We met sometimes in the little temple I told you about, sometimes
among the vines; now by honest accident, now by flagrant design; and
found a ready-made rendezvous, romantic as one could wish, in the cave
down all those subterranean steps. Then the sea would call us—my blue
champagne—my sparkling cobalt—and there was the dingy ready to our
hand. Oh, those nights! I never knew which I liked best, the moonlit
ones when you sculled through silver and could see for miles, or the
dark nights when the fishermen’s torches stood for the sea, and a red
zig-zag in the sky for old Vesuvius. We were happy. I don’t mind owning
it. We seemed not to have a care between us. My mates took no interest
in my affairs, and Faustina’s family did not appear to bother about
her. The Count was in Naples five nights of the seven; the other two we
sighed apart.

“At first it was the oldest story in literature—Eden _plus_ Eve. The
place had been a heaven on earth before, but now it was heaven itself.
So for a little; then one night, a Monday night, Faustina burst out
crying in the boat; and sobbed her story as we drifted without mishap
by the mercy of the Lord. And that was almost as old a story as the
other.

“She was engaged—what! Had I never heard of it? Did I mean to upset the
boat? What was her engagement beside our love? ‘Niente, niente,’
crooned Faustina, sighing yet smiling through her tears. No, but what
did matter was that the man had threatened to stab her to the heart—and
would do it as soon as look at her—that I knew.

“I knew it merely from my knowledge of the Neapolitans, for I had no
idea who the man might be. I knew it, and yet I took this detail better
than the fact of the engagement, though now I began to laugh at both.
As if I was going to let her marry anybody else! As if a hair of her
lovely head should be touched while I lived to protect her! I had a
great mind to row away to blazes with her that very night, and never go
near the vineyard again, or let her either. But we had not a lira
between us at the time, and only the rags in which we sat barefoot in
the boat. Besides, I had to know the name of the animal who had
threatened a woman, and such a woman as this.

“For a long time she refused to tell me, with splendid obduracy; but I
was as determined as she; so at last she made conditions. I was not to
go and get put in prison for sticking a knife into him—he wasn’t worth
it—and I did promise not to stab him in the back. Faustina seemed quite
satisfied, though a little puzzled by my manner, having herself the
racial tolerance for cold steel; and next moment she had taken away my
breath. ‘It is Stefano,’ she whispered, and hung her head.

“And well she might, poor thing! Stefano, of all creatures on God’s
earth—for her!

“Bunny, he was a miserable little undersized
wretch—ill-favored—servile—surly—and second only to his master in
bestial cunning and hypocrisy. His face was enough for me; that was
what I read in it, and I don’t often make mistakes. He was Corbucci’s
own confidential body-servant, and that alone was enough to damn him in
decent eyes: always came out first on the Saturday with the _spese_, to
have all ready for his master and current mistress, and stayed behind
on the Monday to clear and lock up. Stefano! That worm! I could well
understand _his_ threatening a woman with a knife; what beat me was how
any woman could ever have listened to him; above all, that Faustina
should be the one! It passed my comprehension. But I questioned her as
gently as I could; and her explanation was largely the thread-bare one
you would expect. Her parents were so poor. They were so many in
family. Some of them begged—would I promise never to tell? Then some of
them stole—sometimes—and all knew the pains of actual want. She looked
after the cows, but there were only two of them, and brought the milk
to the vineyard and elsewhere; but that was not employment for more
than one; and there were countless sisters waiting to take her place.
Then he was so rich, Stefano.

“‘Rich!’ I echoed. ‘Stefano?’

“‘Si, Arturo mio.’

“Yes, I played the game on that vineyard, Bunny, even to going my own
first name.

“‘And how comes he to be rich?’ I asked, suspiciously.

“She did not know; but he had given her such beautiful jewels; the
family had lived on them for months, she pretending an avocat had taken
charge of them for her against her marriage. But I cared nothing about
all that.

“‘Jewels! Stefano!’ I could only mutter.

“‘Perhaps the Count has paid for some of them. He is very kind.’

“‘To you, is he?’

“‘Oh, yes, very kind.’

“‘And you would live in his house afterwards?’

“‘Not now, mia cara—not now!’

“‘No, by God you don’t!’ said I in English. ‘But you would have done
so, eh?’

“‘Of course. That was arranged. The Count is really very kind.’

“‘Do you see anything of him when he comes here?’

“Yes, he had sometimes brought her little presents, sweetmeats,
ribbons, and the like; but the offering had always been made through
this toad of a Stefano. Knowing the men, I now knew all. But Faustina,
she had the pure and simple heart, and the white soul, by the God who
made it, and for all her kindness to a tattered scapegrace who made
love to her in broken Italian between the ripples and the stars. She
was not to know what I was, remember; and beside Corbucci and his
henchman I was the Archangel Gabriel come down to earth.

“Well, as I lay awake that night, two more lines of Swinburne came into
my head, and came to stay:

“God said ‘Let him who wins her take
    And keep Faustine.’


“On that couplet I slept at last, and it was my text and watchword when
I awoke in the morning. I forget how well you know your Swinburne,
Bunny; but don’t you run away with the idea that there was anything
else in common between his Faustine and mine. For the last time let me
tell you that poor Faustina was the whitest and the best I ever knew.

“Well, I was strung up for trouble when the next Saturday came, and
I’ll tell you what I had done. I had broken the pledge and burgled
Corbucci’s villa in my best manner during his absence in Naples. Not
that it gave me the slightest trouble; but no human being could have
told that I had been in, when I came out. And I had stolen nothing,
mark you, but only borrowed a revolver from a drawer in the Count’s
desk, with one or two trifling accessories; for by this time I had the
measure of these damned Neapolitans. They are spry enough with a knife,
but you show them the business end of a shooting-iron, and they’ll
streak like rabbits for the nearest hole. But the revolver wasn’t for
my own use. It was for Faustina, and I taught her how to use it in the
cave down there by the sea, shooting at candles stuck upon the rock.
The noise in the cave was something frightful, but high up above it
couldn’t be heard at all, as we proved to each other’s satisfaction
pretty early in the proceedings. So now Faustina was armed with
munitions of self-defence; and I knew enough of her character to
entertain no doubt as to their spirited use upon occasion. Between the
two of us, in fact, our friend Stefano seemed tolerably certain of a
warm week-end.

“But the Saturday brought word that the Count was not coming this week,
being in Rome on business, and unable to return in time; so for a whole
Sunday we were promised peace; and made bold plans accordingly. There
was no further merit in hushing this thing up. ‘Let him who wins her
take and keep Faustine.’ Yes, but let him win her openly, or lose her
and be damned to him! So on the Sunday I was going to have it out with
her people—with the Count and Stefano as soon as they showed their
noses. I had no inducement, remember, ever to return to surreptitious
life within a cab-fare of Wormwood Scrubbs. Faustina and the Bay of
Naples were quite good enough for me. And the prehistoric man in me
rather exulted in the idea of fighting for my desire.

“On the Saturday, however, we were able to meet for the last time as
heretofore—just once more in secret—down there in the cave—as soon as
might be after dark. Neither of us minded if we were kept for hours;
each knew in the end that the other would come; and there was a charm
of its own even in waiting with such knowledge. But that night I did
lose patience: not in the cave, but up above, where first on one
pretext and then on another the direttore kept me going until I smelt a
rat. He was not given to exacting overtime, this direttore, whose only
fault was his servile subjection to our common boss. It seemed pretty
obvious, therefore, that he was acting upon some secret instructions
from Corbucci himself, and, the moment I suspected this, I asked him to
his face if it was not the case. And it was; he admitted it with many
shrugs, being a conveniently weak person, whom one felt almost ashamed
of bullying as the occasion demanded.

“The fact was, however, that the Count had sent for him on finding he
had to go to Rome, and had said he was very sorry to go just then, as
among other things he intended to speak to me about Faustina. Stefano
had told him all about his row with her, and moreover that it was on my
account, which Faustina had never told me, though I had guessed as much
for myself. Well, the Count was going to take his jackal’s part for all
he was worth, which was just exactly what I had expected him to do. He
intended going for me on his return, but meanwhile I was not to make
hay in his absence, and so this tool of a direttore had orders to keep
me at it night and day. I undertook not to give the poor beast away,
but at the same time told him I had not the faintest intention of doing
another stroke of work that night.

“It was very dark, and I remember knocking my head against the oranges
as I ran up the long, shallow steps which ended the journey between the
direttore’s lodge and the villa itself. But at the back of the villa
was the garden I spoke about, and also a bare chunk of the cliff where
it was bored by that subterranean stair. So I saw the stars close
overhead, and the fishermen’s torches far below, the coastwise lights
and the crimson hieroglyph that spelt Vesuvius, before I plunged into
the darkness of the shaft. And that was the last time I appreciated the
unique and peaceful charm of this outlandish spot.

“The stair was in two long flights, with an air-hole or two at the top
of the upper one, but not another pin-prick till you came to the iron
gate at the bottom of the lower. As you may read of an infinitely
lighter place, in a finer work of fiction than you are ever likely to
write, Bunny, it was ‘gloomy at noon, dark as midnight at dusk, and
black as the ninth plague of Egypt at midnight.’ I won’t swear to my
quotation, but I will to those stairs. They were as black that night as
the inside of the safest safe in the strongest strong-room in the
Chancery Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got far down them with my bare
feet before I heard somebody else coming up in boots. You may imagine
what a turn that gave me! It could not be Faustina, who went barefoot
three seasons of the four, and yet there was Faustina waiting for me
down below. What a fright she must have had! And all at once my own
blood ran cold: for the man sang like a kettle as he plodded up and up.
It was, it must be, the short-winded Count himself, whom we all
supposed to be in Rome!

“Higher he came and nearer, nearer, slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping
to cough and gasp, now taking a few steps by elephantine assault. I
should have enjoyed the situation if it had not been for poor Faustina
in the cave; as it was I was filled with nameless fears. But I could
not resist giving that grampus Corbucci one bad moment on account. A
crazy hand-rail ran up one wall, so I carefully flattened myself
against the other, and he passed within six inches of me, puffing and
wheezing like a brass band. I let him go a few steps higher, and then I
let him have it with both lungs.

“‘Buona sera, eccellenza, signorì!’ I roared after him. And a scream
came down in answer—such a scream! A dozen different terrors were in
it; and the wheezing had stopped, with the old scoundrel’s heart.

“‘Chi sta la?’ he squeaked at last, gibbering and whimpering like a
whipped monkey, so that I could not bear to miss his face, and got a
match all ready to strike.

“‘Arturo, signorì.’

“He didn’t repeat my name, nor did he damn me in heaps. He did nothing
but wheeze for a good minute, and when he spoke it was with insinuating
civility, in his best English.

“‘Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the lower regions down there. I want
to speak with you.’

“‘No, thanks. I’m in a hurry,’ I said, and dropped that match back into
my pocket. He might be armed, and I was not.

“‘So you are in a ’urry!’ and he wheezed amusement. ‘And you thought I
was still in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until this afternoon, when I
caught train at the eleventh moment, and then another train from Naples
to Pozzuoli. I have been rowed here now by a fisherman of Pozzuoli. I
had not time to stop anywhere in Naples, but only to drive from station
to station. So I am without Stefano, Arturo, I am without Stefano.’

“His sly voice sounded preternaturally sly in the absolute darkness,
but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for a sham. I had
laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently in my hand; he also was
holding it where he stood. And these suppressed tremors, or rather
their detection in this way, struck a strange chill to my heart, just
as I was beginning to pluck it up.

“‘It is lucky for Stefano,’ said I, grim as death.

“‘Ah, but you must not be too ’ard on ’im,’ remonstrated the Count.
‘You have stole his girl, he speak with me about it, and I wish to
speak with you. It is very audashuss, Arturo, very audashuss! Perhaps
you are even going to meet her now, eh?’”

I told him straight that I was.

“‘Then there is no ’urry, for she is not there.’

“‘You didn’t see her in the cave?’ I cried, too delighted at the
thought to keep it to myself.

“‘I had no such fortune,’ the old devil said.

“‘She is there, all the same.’

“‘I only wish I ’ad known.’

“‘And I’ve kept her long enough!’

“In fact I threw this over my shoulder as I turned and went running
down.

“‘I ’ope you will find her!’ his malicious voice came croaking after
me. ‘I ’ope you will—I ’ope so.’

“And find her I did.”

Raffles had been on his feet some time, unable to sit still or to
stand, moving excitedly about the room. But now he stood still enough,
his elbows on the cast-iron mantelpiece, his head between his hands.

“Dead?” I whispered.

And he nodded to the wall.

“There was not a sound in the cave. There was no answer to my voice.
Then I went in, and my foot touched hers, and it was colder than the
rock ... Bunny, they had stabbed her to the heart. She had fought them,
and they had stabbed her to the heart!”

“You say ‘they,’” I said gently, as he stood in heavy silence, his back
still turned. “I thought Stefano had been left behind?”

Raffles was round in a flash, his face white-hot, his eyes dancing
death.

“He was in the cave!” he shouted. “I saw him—I spotted him—it was broad
twilight after those stairs—and I went for him with my bare hands. Not
fists, Bunny; not fists for a thing like that; I meant getting my
fingers into his vile little heart and tearing it out by the roots. I
was stark mad. But he had the revolver—hers. He blazed it at arm’s
length, and missed. And that steadied me. I had smashed his funny-bone
against the rock before he could blaze again; the revolver fell with a
rattle, but without going off; in an instant I had it tight, and the
little swine at my mercy at last.”

“You didn’t show him any?”

“Mercy? With Faustina dead at my feet? I should have deserved none in
the next world if I had shown him any in this! No, I just stood over
him, with the revolver in both hands, feeling the chambers with my
thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at me; but I stepped back to that one,
and brought him down with a bullet in his guts.

“‘And I can spare you two or three more,’ I said, for my poor girl
could not have fired a shot. ‘Take that one to hell with you—and
that—and that!’

“Then I started coughing and wheezing like the Count himself, for the
place was full of smoke. When it cleared my man was very dead, and I
tipped him into the sea, to defile that rather than Faustina’s cave.
And then—and then—we were alone for the last time, she and I, in our
own pet haunt; and I could scarcely see her, yet I would not strike a
match, for I knew she would not have me see her as she was. I could say
good-by to her without that. I said it; and I left her like a man, and
up the first open-air steps with my head in the air and the stars all
sharp in the sky; then suddenly they swam, and back I went like a
lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to bring her back to life ...
Bunny, I can’t tell you any more.”

“Not of the Count?” I murmured at last.

“Not even of the Count,” said Raffles, turning round with a sigh. “I
left him pretty sorry for himself; but what was the good of that? I had
taken blood for blood, and it was not Corbucci who had killed Faustina.
No, the plan was his, but that was not part of the plan. They had found
out about our meetings in the cave: nothing simpler than to have me
kept hard at it overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute force in
the boat. It was their only chance, for she had said more to Stefano
than she had admitted to me, and more than I am going to repeat about
myself. No persuasion would have induced her to listen to him again; so
they tried force; and she drew Corbucci’s revolver on them, but they
had taken her by surprise, and Stefano stabbed her before she could
fire.”

“But how do you know all that?” I asked Raffles, for his tale was going
to pieces in the telling, and the tragic end of poor Faustina was no
ending for me.

“Oh,” said he, “I had it from Corbucci at his own revolver’s point. He
was waiting at his window, and I could have potted him at my ease where
he stood against the light listening hard enough but not seeing a
thing. So he asked whether it was Stefano, and I whispered, ‘Si,
signore’; and then whether he had finished Arturo, and I brought the
same shot off again. He had let me in before he knew who was finished
and who was not.”

“And did you finish him?”

“No; that was too good for Corbucci. But I bound and gagged him about
as tight as man was ever gagged or bound, and I left him in his room
with the shutters shut and the house locked up. The shutters of that
old place were six inches thick, and the walls nearly six feet; that
was on the Saturday night, and the Count wasn’t expected at the
vineyard before the following Saturday. Meanwhile he was supposed to be
in Rome. But the dead would doubtless be discovered next day, and I am
afraid this would lead to his own discovery with the life still in him.
I believe he figured on that himself, for he sat threatening me gamely
till the last. You never saw such a sight as he was, with his head
split in two by a ruler tied at the back of it, and his great moustache
pushed up into his bulging eyes. But I locked him up in the dark
without a qualm, and I wished and still wish him every torment of the
damned.”

“And then?”

“The night was still young, and within ten miles there was the best of
ports in a storm, and hundreds of holds for the humble stowaway to
choose from. But I didn’t want to go further than Genoa, for by this
time my Italian would wash, so I chose the old Norddeutscher Lloyd, and
had an excellent voyage in one of the boats slung in-board over the
bridge. That’s better than any hold, Bunny, and I did splendidly on
oranges brought from the vineyard.”

“And at Genoa?”

“At Genoa I took to my wits once more, and have been living on nothing
else ever since. But there I had to begin all over again, and at the
very bottom of the ladder. I slept in the streets. I begged. I did all
manner of terrible things, rather hoping for a bad end, but never
coming to one. Then one day I saw a white-headed old chap looking at me
through a shop-window—a window I had designs upon—and when I stared at
him he stared at me—and we wore the same rags. So I had come to that!
But one reflection makes many. I had not recognized myself; who on
earth would recognize me? London called me—and here I am. Italy had
broken my heart—and there it stays.”

Flippant as a schoolboy one moment, playful even in the bitterness of
the next, and now no longer giving way to the feeling which had spoilt
the climax of his tale, Raffles needed knowing as I alone knew him for
a right appreciation of those last words. That they were no mere words
I know full well. That, but for the tragedy of his Italian life, that
life would have sufficed him for years, if not for ever, I did and do
still believe. But I alone see him as I saw him then, the lines upon
his face, and the pain behind the lines; how they came to disappear,
and what removed them, you will never guess. It was the one thing you
would have expected to have the opposite effect, the thing indeed that
had forced his confidence, the organ and the voice once more beneath
our very windows:

“Margarita de Parete,
    era a’ sarta d’ e’ signore;
    se pugneva sempe e ddete
    pe penzare a Salvatore!
“Mar—ga—rì,
    e perzo e Salvatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
    Ma l’ommo è cacciatore!
Mar—ga—rì,
    Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch’ è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieù!”


I simply stared at Raffles. Instead of deepening, his lines had
vanished. He looked years younger, mischievous and merry and alert as I
remembered him of old in the breathless crisis of some madcap escapade.
He was holding up his finger; he was stealing to the window; he was
peeping through the blind as though our side street were Scotland Yard
itself; he was stealing back again, all revelry, excitement, and
suspense.

“I half thought they were after me before,” said he. “That was why I
made you look. I daren’t take a proper look myself, but what a jest if
they were! What a jest!”

“Do you mean the police?” said I.

“The police! Bunny, do you know them and me so little that you can look
me in the face and ask such a question? My boy, I’m dead to them—off
their books—a good deal deader than being off the hooks! Why, if I went
to Scotland Yard this minute, to give myself up, they’d chuck me out
for a harmless lunatic. No, I fear an enemy nowadays, and I go in
terror of the sometime friend, but I have the utmost confidence in the
dear police.”

“Then whom do you mean?”

“The Camorra!”

I repeated the word with a different intonation. Not that I had never
heard of that most powerful and sinister of secret societies; but I
failed to see on what grounds Raffles should jump to the conclusion
that these everyday organ-grinders belonged to it.

“It was one of Corbucci’s threats,” said he. “If I killed him the
Camorra would certainly kill me; he kept on telling me so; it was like
his cunning not to say that he would put them on my tracks whether or
no.”

“He is probably a member himself!”

“Obviously, from what he said.”

“But why on earth should you think that these fellows are?” I demanded,
as that brazen voice came rasping through a second verse.

“I don’t think. It was only an idea. That thing is so thoroughly
Neapolitan, and I never heard it on a London organ before. Then again,
what should bring them back here?”

I peeped through the blind in my turn; and, to be sure, there was the
fellow with the blue chin and the white teeth watching our windows, and
ours only, as he bawled.

“And why?” cried Raffles, his eyes dancing when I told him. “Why should
they come sneaking back to _us?_ Doesn’t that look suspicious, Bunny;
doesn’t that promise a lark?”

“Not to me,” I said, having the smile for once. “How many people,
should you imagine, toss them five shilling for as many minutes of
their infernal row? You seem to forget that’s what you did an hour
ago!”

Raffles had forgotten. His blank face confessed the fact. Then suddenly
he burst outlaughing at himself.

“Bunny,” said he, “you’ve no imagination, and I never knew I had so
much! Of course you’re right. I only wish you were not, for there’s
nothing I should enjoy more than taking on another Neapolitan or two.
You see, I owe them something still! I didn’t settle in full. I owe
them more than ever I shall pay them on this side Styx!”

He had hardened even as he spoke: the lines and the years had come
again, and his eyes were flint and steel, with an honest grief behind
the glitter.




THE LAST LAUGH


As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, the pick of our exploits,
from a frankly criminal point of view, are of least use for the
comparatively pure purposes of these papers. They might be appreciated
in a trade journal (if only that want could be supplied), by skilled
manipulators of the jemmy and the large light bunch; but, as records of
unbroken yet insignificant success, they would be found at once too
trivial and too technical, if not sordid and unprofitable into the
bargain. The latter epithets, and worse, have indeed already been
applied, if not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine upon
Raffles, by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need not
say how heartily I disagree with that truly pious opinion. So far from
admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the liveliest warning
that I am giving to the world. Raffles was a genius, and he could not
make it pay! Raffles had invention, resource, incomparable audacity,
and a nerve in ten thousand. He was both strategian and tactician, and
we all now know the difference between the two. Yet for months he had
been hiding like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his altered face
by night or day without risk, unless another risk were courted by three
inches of conspicuous crepe. Then thus far our rewards had oftener than
not been no reward at all. Altogether it was a very different story
from the old festive, unsuspected, club and cricket days, with their
_noctes ambrosianæ_ at the Albany.

And now, in addition to the eternal peril of recognition, there was yet
another menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no more of our
Neapolitan organ-grinders, though I did often think of the moving page
that they had torn for me out of my friend’s strange life in Italy.
Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I had
entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the organ-grinders with
the Camorra, and imagining them upon his own tracks. I heard no more of
it, and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in the autumn—I
shrink from shocking the susceptible for nothing—but there was a
certain house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffles would
pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the windows. But
Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking about it. Sharp to
the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still up Silver Street, a
little tacking west and south, a plunge across High Street, and
presently we were home.

“Pyjamas first,” said Raffles, with as much authority as though it
mattered. It was a warm night, however, though September, and I did not
mind until I came in clad as he commanded to find the autocrat himself
still booted and capped. He was peeping through the blind, and the gas
was still turned down. But he said that I could turn it up, as he
helped himself to a cigarette and nothing with it.

“May I mix you one?” said I.

“No, thanks.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“We were followed.”

“Never!”

“You never saw it.”

“But _you_ never looked round.”

“I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny.”

I helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have been
the case a minute before.

“So that was why—”

“That was why,” said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile, and I put
down my glass untouched.

“They were following us then!”

“All up Palace Gardens.”

“I thought you wound about coming back over the hill.”

“Nevertheless, one of them’s in the street below at this moment.”

No, he was not fooling me. He was very grim. And he had not taken off a
thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while.

“Plain clothes?” I sighed, following the sartorial train of thought,
even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person once already
for a little aeon. Next time they would give me double. The skilly was
in my stomach when I saw Raffles’s face.

“Who said it was the police, Bunny?” said he. “It’s the Italians.
They’re only after me; they won’t hurt a hair of _your_ head, let alone
cropping it! Have a drink, and don’t mind me. I shall score them off
before I’m done.”

“And I’ll help you!”

“No, old chap, you won’t. This is my own little show. I’ve known about
it for weeks. I first tumbled to it the day those Neapolitans came back
with their organs, though I didn’t seriously suspect things then; they
never came again, those two, they had done their part. That’s the
Camorra all over, from all accounts. The Count I told you about is
pretty high up in it, by the way he spoke, but there will be grades and
grades between him and the organ-grinders. I shouldn’t be surprised if
he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-creamer in the town upon my
tracks! The organization’s incredible. Then do you remember the
superior foreigner who came to the door a few days afterwards? You said
he had velvet eyes.”

“I never connected him with those two!”

“Of course you didn’t, Bunny, so you threatened to kick the fellow
downstairs, and only made them keener on the scent. It was too late to
say anything when you told me. But the very next time I showed my nose
outside I heard a camera click as I passed, and the fiend was a person
with velvet eyes. Then there was a lull—that happened weeks ago. They
had sent me to Italy for identification by Count Corbucci.”

“But this is all theory,” I exclaimed. “How on earth can you know?”

“I don’t know,” said Raffles, “but I should like to bet. Our friend the
bloodhound is hanging about the corner near the pillar-box; look
through my window, it’s dark in there, and tell me who he is.”

The man was too far away for me to swear to his face, but he wore a
covert-coat of un-English length, and the lamp across the road played
steadily on his boots; they were very yellow, and they made no noise
when he took a turn. I strained my eyes, and all at once I remembered
the thin-soled, low-heeled, splay yellow boots of the insidious
foreigner, with the soft eyes and the brown-paper face, whom I had
turned from the door as a palpable fraud. The ring at the bell was the
first I had heard of him, there had been no warning step upon the
stairs, and my suspicious eye had searched his feet for rubber soles.

“It’s the fellow,” I said, returning to Raffles, and I described his
boots.

Raffles was delighted.

“Well done, Bunny; you’re coming on,” said he. “Now I wonder if he’s
been over here all the time, or if they sent him over expressly? You
did better than you think in spotting those boots, for they can only
have been made in Italy, and that looks like the special envoy. But
it’s no use speculating. I must find out.”

“How can you?”

“He won’t stay there all night.”

“Well?”

“When he gets tired of it I shall return the compliment and follow
_him_.”

“Not alone,” said I, firmly.

“Well, we’ll see. We’ll see at once,” said Raffles, rising. “Out with
the gas, Bunny, while I take a look. Thank you. Now wait a bit ... yes!
He’s chucked it; he’s off already; and so am I!”

But I slipped to our outer door, and held the passage.

“I don’t let you go alone, you know.”

“You can’t come with me in pyjamas.”

“Now I see why you made me put them on!”

“Bunny, if you don’t shift I shall have to shift you. This is my very
own private one-man show. But I’ll be back in an hour—there!”

“You swear?”

“By all my gods.”

I gave in. How could I help giving in? He did not look the man that he
had been, but you never knew with Raffles, and I could not have him lay
a hand on me. I let him go with a shrug and my blessing, then ran into
his room to see the last of him from the window.

The creature in the coat and boots had reached the end of our little
street, where he appeared to have hesitated, so that Raffles was just
in time to see which way he turned. And Raffles was after him at an
easy pace, and had himself almost reached the corner when my attention
was distracted from the alert nonchalance of his gait. I was marvelling
that it alone had not long ago betrayed him, for nothing about him was
so unconsciously characteristic, when suddenly I realized that Raffles
was not the only person in the little lonely street. Another pedestrian
had entered from the other end, a man heavily built and clad, with an
astrakhan collar to his coat on this warm night, and a black slouch hat
that hid his features from my bird’s-eye view. His steps were the short
and shuffling ones of a man advanced in years and in fatty
degeneration, but of a sudden they stopped beneath my very eyes. I
could have dropped a marble into the dinted crown of the black felt
hat. Then, at the same moment, Raffles turned the corner without
looking round, and the big man below raised both his hands and his
face. Of the latter I saw only the huge white moustache, like a flying
gull, as Raffles had described it; for at a glance I divined that this
was his arch-enemy, the Count Corbucci himself.

I did not stop to consider the subtleties of the system by which the
real hunter lagged behind while his subordinate pointed the quarry like
a sporting dog. I left the Count shuffling onward faster than before,
and I jumped into some clothes as though the flats were on fire. If the
Count was going to follow Raffles in his turn, then I would follow the
Count in mine, and there would be a midnight procession of us through
the town. But I found no sign of him in the empty street, and no sign
in the Earl’s Court Road, that looked as empty for all its length, save
for a natural enemy standing like a waxwork figure with a glimmer at
his belt.

“Officer,” I gasped, “have you seen anything of an old gentleman with a
big white mustache?”

The unlicked cub of a common constable seemed to eye me the more
suspiciously for the flattering form of my address.

“Took a hansom,” said he at length.

A hansom! Then he was not following the others on foot; there was no
guessing his game. But something must be said or done.

“He’s a friend of mine,” I explained, “and I want to overtake him. Did
you hear where he told the fellow to drive?”

A curt negative was the policeman’s reply to that; and if ever I take
part in a night assault-at-arms, revolver _versus_ baton, in the back
kitchen, I know which member of the Metropolitan Police Force I should
like for my opponent.

If there was no overtaking the Count, however, it should be a
comparatively simple matter in the case of the couple on foot, and I
wildly hailed the first hansom that crawled into my ken. I must tell
Raffles who it was that I had seen; the Earl’s Court Road was long, and
the time since he vanished in it but a few short minutes. I drove down
the length of that useful thoroughfare, with an eye apiece on either
pavement, sweeping each as with a brush, but never a Raffles came into
the pan. Then I tried the Fulham Road, first to the west, then to the
east, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I did not
realize my indiscretion until I had paid the man and was on the stairs.
Raffles never dreamt of driving all the way back; but I was hoping now
to find him waiting up above. He had said an hour. I had remembered it
suddenly. And now the hour was more than up. But the flat was as empty
as I had left it; the very light that had encouraged me, pale though it
was, as I turned the corner in my hansom, was but the light that I
myself had left burning in the desolate passage.

I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of it I
hung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears, catching every
footstep afar off, every hansom bell farther still, only to gather in
some alien whom I seldom even landed in our street. Then I would listen
at the door.

He might come over the roof; and eventually some one did; but now it
was broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the milkman’s face,
which whitened at the shock as though I had ducked him in his own pail.

“You’re late,” I thundered as the first excuse for my excitement.

“Beg your pardon,” said he, indignantly, “but I’m half an hour before
my usual time.”

“Then I beg yours,” said I; “but the fact is, Mr. Maturin has had one
of his bad nights, and I seem to have been waiting hours for milk to
make him a cup of tea.”

This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it) earned me
not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch of
the business of the man at the door. The good fellow said that he could
see I had been sitting up all night, and he left me pluming myself upon
the accidental art with which I had told my very necessary
tarra-diddle. On reflection I gave the credit to instinct, not
accident, and then sighed afresh as I realized how the influence of the
master was sinking into me, and he Heaven knew where! But my punishment
was swift to follow, for within the hour the bell rang imperiously
twice, and there was Dr. Theobald on our mat; in a yellow Jaeger suit,
with a chin as yellow jutting over the flaps that he had turned up to
hide his pyjamas.

“What’s this about a bad night?” said he.

“He couldn’t sleep, and he wouldn’t let me,” I whispered, never
loosening my grasp of the door, and standing tight against the other
wall. “But he’s sleeping like a baby now.”

“I must see him.”

“He gave strict orders that you should not.”

“I’m his medical man, and I—”

“You know what he is,” I said, shrugging; “the least thing wakes him,
and you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be the last time,
I warn you! I know what he said, and you don’t.”

The doctor cursed me under his fiery moustache.

“I shall come up during the course of the morning,” he snarled.

“And I shall tie up the bell,” I said, “and if it doesn’t ring he’ll be
sleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by coming to the door
again.”

And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as Raffles had
said; but what would it profit me if some evil had befallen him? And
now I was prepared for the worst. A boy came up whistling and leaving
papers on the mats; it was getting on for eight o’clock, and the
whiskey and soda of half-past twelve stood untouched and stagnant in
the tumbler. If the worst had happened to Raffles, I felt that I would
either never drink again, or else seldom do anything else.

Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but roamed the flat in a
misery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my cheeks
and chin now tawny from the unwholesome night. How long would it go on?
I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune: how long could I endure
it?

It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance cannot be
measured by the time, for to me every hour of it was an arctic night.
Yet it cannot have been much after eleven when the ring came at the
bell, which I had forgotten to tie up after all. But this was not the
doctor; neither, too well I knew, was it the wanderer returned. Our
bell was the pneumatic one that tells you if the touch be light or
heavy; the hand upon it now was tentative and shy.

The owner of the hand I had never seen before. He was young and ragged,
with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some fell excitement. And
straightway he burst into a low torrent of words, of which all I knew
was that they were Italian, and therefore news of Raffles, if only I
had known the language! But dumb-show might help us somewhat, and in I
dragged him, though against his will, a new alarm in his one wild eye.

“Non capite?” he cried when I had him inside and had withstood the
torrent.

“No, I’m bothered if I do!” I answered, guessing his question from his
tone.

“Vostro amico,” he repeated over and over again; and then, “Poco tempo,
poco tempo, poco tempo!”

For once in my life the classical education of my public-school days
was of real value. “My pal, my pal, and no time to be lost!” I
translated freely, and flew for my hat.

“Ecco, signore!” cried the fellow, snatching the watch from my
waistcoat pocket, and putting one black thumb-nail on the long hand,
the other on the numeral twelve. “Mezzogiorno—poco tempo—poco tempo!”
And again I seized his meaning, that it was twenty past eleven, and we
must be there by twelve. But where, but where? It was maddening to be
summoned like this, and not to know what had happened, nor to have any
means of finding out. But my presence of mind stood by me still, I was
improving by seven-league strides, and I crammed my handkerchief
between the drum and hammer of the bell before leaving. The doctor
could ring now till he was black in the face, but I was not coming, and
he need not think it.

I half expected to find a hansom waiting, but there was none, and we
had gone some distance down the Earl’s Court Road before we got one; in
fact, we had to run to the stand. Opposite is the church with the clock
upon it, as everybody knows, and at sight of the dial my companion had
wrung his hands; it was close upon the half-hour.

“Poco tempo—pochissimo!” he wailed. “Bloom-buree Ske-warr,” he then
cried to the cabman—“numero trentotto!”

“Bloomsbury Square,” I roared on my own account, “I’ll show you the
house when we get there, only drive like be-damned!”

My companion lay back gasping in his corner. The small glass told me
that my own face was pretty red.

“A nice show!” I cried; “and not a word can you tell me. Didn’t you
bring me a note?”

I might have known by this time that he had not, still I went through
the pantomime of writing with my finger on my cuff. But he shrugged and
shook his head.

“Niente,” said he. “Una quistione di vita, di vita!”

“What’s that?” I snapped, my early training come in again. “Say it
slowly—andante—rallentando.”

Thank Italy for the stage instructions in the songs one used to murder!
The fellow actually understood.

“Una—quistione—di—vita.”

“Or mors, eh?” I shouted, and up went the trap-door over our heads.

“Avanti, avanti, avanti!” cried the Italian, turning up his one-eyed
face.

“Hell-to-leather,” I translated, “and double fare if you do it by
twelve o’clock.”

But in the streets of London how is one to know the time? In the Earl’s
Court Road it had not been half-past, and at Barker’s in High Street it
was but a minute later. A long half-mile a minute, that was going like
the wind, and indeed we had done much of it at a gallop. But the next
hundred yards took us five minutes by the next clock, and which was one
to believe? I fell back upon my own old watch (it was my own), which
made it eighteen minutes to the hour as we swung across the Serpentine
bridge, and by the quarter we were in the Bayswater Road—not up for
once.

“Presto, presto,” my pale guide murmured. “Affretatevi—avanti!”

“Ten bob if you do it,” I cried through the trap, without the slightest
notion of what we were to do. But it was “una quistione di vita,” and
“vostro amico” must and could only be my miserable Raffles.

What a very godsend is the perfect hansom to the man or woman in a
hurry! It had been our great good fortune to jump into a perfect
hansom; there was no choice, we had to take the first upon the rank,
but it must have deserved its place with the rest nowhere. New tires,
superb springs, a horse in a thousand, and a driver up to every trick
of his trade! In and out we went like a fast half-back at the Rugby
game, yet where the traffic was thinnest, there were we. And how he
knew his way! At the Marble Arch he slipped out of the main stream, and
so into Wigmore Street, then up and in and out and on until I saw the
gold tips of the Museum palisade gleaming between the horse’s ears in
the sun. Plop, plop, plop; ting, ling, ling; bell and horse-shoes,
horse-shoes and bell, until the colossal figure of C. J. Fox in a grimy
toga spelt Bloomsbury Square with my watch still wanting three minutes
to the hour.

“What number?” cried the good fellow over-head.

“Trentotto, trentotto,” said my guide, but he was looking to the right,
and I bundled him out to show the house on foot. I had not
half-a-sovereign after all, but I flung our dear driver a whole one
instead, and only wish that it had been a hundred.

Already the Italian had his latch-key in the door of 38, and in another
moment we were rushing up the narrow stairs of as dingy a London house
as prejudiced countryman can conceive. It was panelled, but it was dark
and evil-smelling, and how we should have found our way even to the
stairs but for an unwholesome jet of yellow gas in the hall, I cannot
myself imagine. However, up we went pell-mell, to the right-about on
the half-landing, and so like a whirlwind into the drawing-room a few
steps higher. There the gas was also burning behind closed shutters,
and the scene is photographed upon my brain, though I cannot have
looked upon it for a whole instant as I sprang in at my leader’s heels.

This room also was panelled, and in the middle of the wall on our left,
his hands lashed to a ring-bolt high above his head, his toes barely
touching the floor, his neck pinioned by a strap passing through
smaller ring-bolts under either ear, and every inch of him secured on
the same principle, stood, or rather hung, all that was left of
Raffles, for at the first glance I believed him dead. A black ruler
gagged him, the ends lashed behind his neck, the blood upon it caked to
bronze in the gaslight. And in front of him, ticking like a
sledge-hammer, its only hand upon the stroke of twelve, stood a simple,
old-fashioned, grandfather’s clock—but not for half an instant
longer—only until my guide could hurl himself upon it and send the
whole thing crashing into the corner. An ear-splitting report
accompanied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the fallen clock, and
I saw a revolver smoking in a vice screwed below the dial, an
arrangement of wires sprouting from the dial itself, and the single
hand at once at its zenith and in contact with these.

“Tumble to it, Bunny?”

He was alive; these were his first words; the Italian had the
blood-caked ruler in his hand, and with his knife was reaching up to
cut the thongs that lashed the hands. He was not tall enough, I seized
him and lifted him up, then fell to work with my own knife upon the
straps. And Raffles smiled faintly upon us through his blood-stains.

“I want you to tumble to it,” he whispered; “the neatest thing in
revenge I ever knew, and another minute would have fixed it. I’ve been
waiting for it twelve hours, watching the clock round, death at the end
of the lap! Electric connection. Simple enough. Hour-hand only—O Lord!”

We had cut the last strap. He could not stand. We supported him between
us to a horsehair sofa, for the room was furnished, and I begged him
not to speak, while his one-eyed deliverer was at the door before
Raffles recalled him with a sharp word in Italian.

“He wants to get me a drink, but that can wait,” said he, in firmer
voice; “I shall enjoy it the more when I’ve told you what happened.
Don’t let him go, Bunny; put your back against the door. He’s a decent
soul, and it’s lucky for me I got a word with him before they trussed
me up. I’ve promised to set him up in life, and I will, but I don’t
want him out of my sight for the moment.”

“If you squared him last night,” I exclaimed, “why the blazes didn’t he
come to me till the eleventh hour?”

“Ah, I knew he’d have to cut it fine though I hoped not quite so fine
as all that. But all’s well that ends well, and I declare I don’t feel
so much the worse. I shall be sore about the gills for a bit—and what
do you think?”

He pointed to the long black ruler with the bronze stain; it lay upon
the floor; he held out his hand for it, and I gave it to him.

“The same one I gagged him with,” said Raffles, with his still ghastly
smile; “he was a bit of an artist, old Corbucci, after all!”

“Now let’s hear how you fell into his clutches,” said I, briskly, for I
was as anxious to hear as he seemed to tell me, only for my part I
could have waited until we were safe in the flat.

“I do want to get it off my chest, Bunny,” old Raffles admitted, “and
yet I hardly can tell you after all. I followed your friend with the
velvet eyes. I followed him all the way here. Of course I came up to
have a good look at the house when he’d let himself in, and damme if he
hadn’t left the door ajar! Who could resist that? I had pushed it half
open and had just one foot on the mat when I got such a crack on the
head as I hope never to get again. When I came to my wits they were
hauling me up to that ring-bolt by the hands, and old Corbucci himself
was bowing to me, but how _he_ got here I don’t know yet.”

“I can tell you that,” said I, and told how I had seen the Count for
myself on the pavement underneath our windows. “Moreover,” I continued,
“I saw him spot you, and five minutes after in Earl’s Court Road I was
told he’d driven off in a cab. He would see you following his man,
drive home ahead, and catch you by having the door left open in the way
you describe.”

“Well,” said Raffles, “he deserved to catch me somehow, for he’d come
from Naples on purpose, ruler and all, and the ring-bolts were ready
fixed, and even this house taken furnished for nothing else! He meant
catching me before he’d done, and scoring me off in exactly the same
way that I scored off him, only going one better of course. He told me
so himself, sitting where I am sitting now, at three o’clock this
morning, and smoking a most abominable cigar that I’ve smelt ever
since. It appears he sat twenty-four hours when I left _him_ trussed
up, but he said twelve would content him in my case, as there was
certain death at the end of them, and I mightn’t have life enough left
to appreciate my end if he made it longer. But I wouldn’t have trusted
him if he could have got the clock to go _twice_ round without firing
off the pistol. He explained the whole mechanism of that to me; he had
thought it all out on the vineyard I told you about; and then he asked
if I remembered what he had promised me in the name of the Camorra. I
only remembered some vague threats, but he was good enough to give me
so many particulars of that institution that I could make a European
reputation by exposing the whole show if it wasn’t for my unfortunate
resemblance to that infernal rascal Raffles. Do you think they would
know me at the Yard, Bunny, after all this time? Upon my soul I’ve a
good mind to risk it!”

I offered no opinion on the point. How could it interest me then? But
interested I was in Raffles, never more so in my life. He had been
tortured all night and half a day, yet he could sit and talk like this
the moment we cut him down; he had been within a minute of his death,
yet he was as full of life as ever; ill-treated and defeated at the
best, he could still smile through his blood as though the boot were on
the other leg. I had imagined that I knew my Raffles at last. I was not
likely so to flatter myself again.

“But what has happened to these villains?” I burst out, and my
indignation was not only against them for their cruelty, but also
against their victim for his phlegmatic attitude toward them. It was
difficult to believe that this was Raffles.

“Oh,” said he, “they were to go off to Italy _instanter;_ they should
be crossing now. But do listen to what I am telling you; it’s
interesting, my dear man. This old sinner Corbucci turns out to have
been no end of a boss in the Camorra—says so himself. One of the _capi
paranze_, my boy, no less; and the velvety Johnny a_ giovano onorato_,
Anglicé, fresher. This fellow here was also in it, and I’ve sworn to
protect him from them evermore; and it’s just as I said, half the
organ-grinders in London belong, and the whole lot of them were put on
my tracks by secret instructions. This excellent youth manufactures
iced poison on Saffron Hill when he’s at home.”

“And why on earth didn’t he come to me quicker?”

“Because he couldn’t talk to you, he could only fetch you, and it was
as much as his life was worth to do that before our friends had
departed. They were going by the eleven o’clock from Victoria, and that
didn’t leave much chance, but he certainly oughtn’t to have run it as
fine as he did. Still you must remember that I had to fix things up
with him in the fewest possible words, in a single minute that the
other two were indiscreet enough to leave us alone together.”

The ragamuffin in question was watching us with all his solitary eye,
as though he knew that we were discussing him. Suddenly he broke out in
agonized accents, his hands clasped, and a face so full of fear that
every moment I expected to see him on his knees. But Raffles answered
kindly, reassuringly, I could tell from his tone, and then turned to me
with a compassionate shrug.

“He says he couldn’t find the mansions, Bunny, and really it’s not to
be wondered at. I had only time to tell him to hunt you up and bring
you here by hook or crook before twelve to-day, and after all he has
done that. But now the poor devil thinks you’re riled with him, and
that we’ll give him away to the Camorra.”

“Oh, it’s not with him I’m riled,” I said frankly, “but with those
other blackguards, and—and with you, old chap, for taking it all as you
do, while such infamous scoundrels have the last laugh, and are safely
on their way to France!”

Raffles looked up at me with a curiously open eye, an eye that I never
saw when he was not in earnest. I fancied he did not like my last
expression but one. After all, it was no laughing matter to him.

“But are they?” said he. “I’m not so sure.”

“You said they were!”

“I said they should be.”

“Didn’t you hear them go?”

“I heard nothing but the clock all night. It was like Big Ben striking
at the last—striking nine to the fellow on the drop.”

And in that open eye I saw at last a deep glimmer of the ordeal through
which he had passed.

“But, my dear old Raffles, if they’re still on the premises—”

The thought was too thrilling for a finished sentence.

“I hope they are,” he said grimly, going to the door. “There’s a gas
on! Was that burning when you came in?”

Now that I thought of it, yes, it had been.

“And there’s a frightfully foul smell,” I added, as I followed Raffles
down the stairs. He turned to me gravely with his hand upon the
front-room door, and at the same moment I saw a coat with an astrakhan
collar hanging on the pegs.

“They are in here, Bunny,” he said, and turned the handle.

The door would only open a few inches. But a detestable odor came out,
with a broad bar of yellow gaslight. Raffles put his handkerchief to
his nose. I followed his example, signing to our ally to do the same,
and in another minute we had all three squeezed into the room.

The man with the yellow boots was lying against the door, the Count’s
great carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance it was evident
that both men had been dead some hours. The old Camorrist had the stem
of a liqueur-glass between his swollen blue fingers, one of which had
been cut in the breakage, and the livid flesh was also brown with the
last blood that it would ever shed. His face was on the table, the huge
moustache projecting from under either leaden cheek, yet looking itself
strangely alive. Broken bread and scraps of frozen macaroni lay upon
the cloth and at the bottom of two soup-plates and a tureen; the
macaroni had a tinge of tomato; and there was a crimson dram left in
the tumblers, with an empty fiasco to show whence it came. But near the
great gray head upon the table another liqueur-glass stood, unbroken,
and still full of some white and stinking liquid; and near that a tiny
silver flask, which made me recoil from Raffles as I had not from the
dead; for I knew it to be his.

“Come out of this poisonous air,” he said sternly, “and I will tell you
how it has happened.”

So we all three gathered together in the hall. But it was Raffles who
stood nearest the street-door, his back to it, his eyes upon us two.
And though it was to me only that he spoke at first, he would pause
from point to point, and translate into Italian for the benefit of the
one-eyed alien to whom he owed his life.

“You probably don’t even know the name, Bunny,” he began, “of the
deadliest poison yet known to science. It is cyanide of cacodyl, and I
have carried that small flask of it about with me for months. Where I
got it matters nothing; the whole point is that a mere sniff reduces
flesh to clay. I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know,
but I always felt it worth while to be forearmed against the very
worst. Well, a bottle of this stuff is calculated to stiffen an
ordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and I
remembered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the small
hours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I
begged them to give me a drink before they left me. And what do you
suppose they did?”

I thought of many things but suggested none, while Raffles turned this
much of his statement into sufficiently fluent Italian. But when he
faced me again his face was still flaming.

“That beast Corbucci!” said he—“how can I pity him? He took the flask;
he would give me none; he flicked me in the face instead. My idea was
that he, at least, should go with me—to sell my life as dearly as
that—and a sniff would have settled us both. But no, he must tantalize
and torment me; he thought it brandy; he must take it downstairs to
drink to my destruction! Can you have any pity for a hound like that?”

“Let us go,” I at last said, hoarsely, as Raffles finished speaking in
Italian, and his second listener stood open-mouthed.

“We will go,” said Raffles, “and we will chance being seen; if the
worst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I have been
tied up since one o’clock this morning, and the medical evidence will
decide how long those dogs have been dead.”

But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my unforgotten
friend the cabman, who never came forward to say what manner of men he
had driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on the very day upon which
the tragedy was discovered there, or whence he had driven them. To be
sure, they had not behaved like murderers, whereas the evidence at the
inquest all went to show that the defunct Corbucci was little better.
His reputation, which transpired with his identity, was that of a
libertine and a renegade, while the infernal apparatus upstairs
revealed the fiendish arts of the anarchist to boot. The inquiry
resulted eventually in an open verdict, and was chiefly instrumental in
killing such compassion as is usually felt for the dead who die in
their sins.

But Raffles would not have passed this title for this tale.




TO CATCH A THIEF

I

Society persons are not likely to have forgotten the series of
audacious robberies by which so many of themselves suffered in turn
during the brief course of a recent season. Raid after raid was made
upon the smartest houses in town, and within a few weeks more than one
exalted head had been shorn of its priceless tiara. The Duke and
Duchess of Dorchester lost half the portable pieces of their historic
plate on the very night of their Graces’ almost equally historic
costume ball. The Kenworthy diamonds were taken in broad daylight,
during the excitement of a charitable meeting on the ground floor, and
the gifts of her belted bridegroom to Lady May Paulton while the outer
air was thick with a prismatic shower of _confetti_. It was obvious
that all this was the work of no ordinary thief, and perhaps inevitable
that the name of Raffles should have been dragged from oblivion by
callous disrespecters of the departed and unreasoning apologists for
the police. These wiseacres did not hesitate to bring a dead man back
to life because they knew of no living one capable of such feats; it is
their heedless and inconsequent calumnies that the present paper is
partly intended to refute. As a matter of fact, our joint innocence in
this matter was only exceeded by our common envy, and for a long time,
like the rest of the world, neither of us had the slightest clew to the
identity of the person who was following in our steps with such
irritating results.

“I should mind less,” said Raffles, “if the fellow were really playing
my game. But abuse of hospitality was never one of my strokes, and it
seems to me the only shot he’s got. When we took old Lady Melrose’s
necklace, Bunny, we were not staying with the Melroses, if you
recollect.”

We were discussing the robberies for the hundredth time, but for once
under conditions more favorable to animated conversation than our
unique circumstances permitted in the flat. We did not often dine out.
Dr. Theobald was one impediment, the risk of recognition was another.
But there were exceptions, when the doctor was away or the patient
defiant, and on these rare occasions we frequented a certain
unpretentious restaurant in the Fulham quarter, where the cooking was
plain but excellent, and the cellar a surprise. Our bottle of ’89
champagne was empty to the label when the subject arose, to be touched
by Raffles in the reminiscent manner indicated above. I can see his
clear eye upon me now, reading me, weighing me. But I was not so
sensitive to his scrutiny at the time. His tone was deliberate,
calculating, preparatory; not as I heard it then, through a head full
of wine, but as it floats back to me across the gulf between that
moment and this.

“Excellent fillet!” said I, grossly. “So you think this chap is as much
in society as we were, do you?”

I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy
without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.

“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no
comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we
never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink! I
was asked for my cricket. I haven’t forgotten it yet. But this fellow’s
one of themselves, with the right of entrée into the houses which we
could only ‘enter’ in a professional sense. That’s obvious unless all
these little exploits are the work of different hands, which they as
obviously are not. And it’s why I’d give five hundred pounds to put
salt on him to-night!”

“Not you,” said I, as I drained my glass in festive incredulity.

“But I would, my dear Bunny. Waiter! another half-bottle of this,” and
Raffles leant across the table as the empty one was taken away. “I
never was more serious in my life,” he continued below his breath.
“Whatever else our successor may be, he’s not a dead man like me, or a
marked man like you. If there’s any truth in my theory he’s one of the
last people upon whom suspicion is ever likely to rest; and oh, Bunny,
what a partner he would make for you and me!”

Under less genial influences the very idea of a third partner would
have filled my soul with offence; but Raffles had chosen his moment
unerringly, and his arguments lost nothing by the flowing accompaniment
of the extra pint. They were, however, quite strong in themselves. The
gist of them was that thus far we had remarkably little to show for
what Raffles would call “our second innings.” This even I could not
deny. We had scored a few “long singles,” but our “best shots” had gone
“straight to hand,” and we were “playing a deuced slow game.” Therefore
we needed a new partner—and the metaphor failed Raffles. It had served
its turn. I already agreed with him. In truth I was tired of my false
position as hireling attendant, and had long fancied myself an object
of suspicion to that other impostor the doctor. A fresh, untrammelled
start was a fascinating idea to me, though two was company, and three
in our case might be worse than none. But I did not see how we could
hope, with our respective handicaps, to solve a problem which was
already the despair of Scotland Yard.

“Suppose I have solved it,” observed Raffles, cracking a walnut in his
palm.

“How could you?” I asked, without believing for an instant that he had.

“I have been taking the _Morning Post_ for some time now.”

“Well?”

“You have got me a good many odd numbers of the less base society
papers.”

“I can’t for the life of me see what you’re driving at.”

Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked another nut.

“That’s because you’ve neither observation nor imagination, Bunny—and
yet you try to write! Well, you wouldn’t think it, but I have a fairly
complete list of the people who were at the various functions under
cover of which these different little coups were brought off.”

I said very stolidly that I did not see how that could help him. It was
the only answer to his good-humored but self-satisfied contempt; it
happened also to be true.

“Think,” said Raffles, in a patient voice.

“When thieves break in and steal,” said I, “upstairs, I don’t see much
point in discovering who was downstairs at the time.”

“Quite,” said Raffles—“when they do break in.”

“But that’s what they have done in all these cases. An upstairs door
found screwed up, when things were at their height below; thief gone
and jewels with him before alarm could be raised. Why, the trick’s so
old that I never knew you condescend to play it.”

“Not so old as it looks,” said Raffles, choosing the cigars and handing
me mine. “Cognac or Benedictine, Bunny?”

“Brandy,” I said, coarsely.

“Besides,” he went on, “the rooms were not screwed up; at Dorchester
House, at any rate, the door was only locked, and the key missing, so
that it might have been done on either side.”

“But that was where he left his rope-ladder behind him!” I exclaimed in
triumph; but Raffles only shook his head.

“I don’t believe in that rope-ladder, Bunny, except as a blind.”

“Then what on earth do you believe?”

“That every one of these so-called burglaries has been done from the
inside, by one of the guests; and what’s more I’m very much mistaken if
I haven’t spotted the right sportsman.”

I began to believe that he really had, there was such a wicked gravity
in the eyes that twinkled faintly into mine. I raised my glass in
convivial congratulation, and still remember the somewhat anxious eye
with which Raffles saw it emptied.

“I can only find one likely name,” he continued, “that figures in all
these lists, and it is anything but a likely one at first sight. Lord
Ernest Belville was at all those functions. Know anything about him,
Bunny?”

“Not the Rational Drink fanatic?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I want to know.”

“Quite,” said Raffles; “and yet what could be more promising? A man
whose views are so broad and moderate, and so widely held already
(saving your presence, Bunny), does not bore the world with them
without ulterior motives. So far so good. What are this chap’s motives?
Does he want to advertise himself? No, he’s somebody already. But is he
rich? On the contrary, he’s as poor as a rat for his position, and
apparently without the least ambition to be anything else; certainly he
won’t enrich himself by making a public fad of what all sensible people
are agreed upon as it is. Then suddenly one gets one’s own old idea—the
alternative profession! My cricket—his Rational Drink! But it is no use
jumping to conclusions. I must know more than the newspapers can tell
me. Our aristocratic friend is forty, and unmarried. What has he been
doing all these years? How the devil was I to find out?”

“How did you?” I asked, declining to spoil my digestion with a
conundrum, as it was his evident intention that I should.

“Interviewed him!” said Raffles, smiling slowly on my amazement.

“You—interviewed him?” I echoed. “When—and where?”

“Last Thursday night, when, if you remember, we kept early hours,
because I felt done. What was the use of telling you what I had up my
sleeve, Bunny? It might have ended in fizzle, as it still may. But Lord
Ernest Belville was addressing the meeting at Exeter Hall; I waited for
him when the show was over, dogged him home to King John’s Mansions,
and interviewed him in his own rooms there before he turned in.”

My journalistic jealousy was piqued to the quick. Affecting a
scepticism I did not feel (for no outrage was beyond the pale of his
impudence), I inquired dryly which journal Raffles had pretended to
represent. It is unnecessary to report his answer. I could not believe
him without further explanation.

“I should have thought,” he said, “that even you would have spotted a
practice I never omit upon certain occasions. I always pay a visit to
the drawing-room, and fill my waistcoat pocket from the card-tray. It
is an immense help in any little temporary impersonation. On Thursday
night I sent up the card of a powerful writer connected with a powerful
paper; if Lord Ernest had known him in the flesh I should have been
obliged to confess to a journalistic ruse; luckily he didn’t—and I had
been sent by my editor to get the interview for next morning. What
could be better—for the alternative profession?”

I inquired what the interview had brought forth.

“Everything,” said Raffles. “Lord Ernest has been a wanderer these
twenty years. Texas, Fiji, Australia. I suspect him of wives and
families in all three. But his manners are a liberal education. He gave
me some beautiful whiskey, and forgot all about his fad. He is strong
and subtle, but I talked him off his guard. He is going to the
Kirkleathams’ to-night—I saw the card stuck up. I stuck some wax into
his keyhole as he was switching off the lights.”

And, with an eye upon the waiters, Raffles showed me a skeleton key,
newly twisted and filed; but my share of the extra pint (I am afraid no
fair share) had made me dense. I looked from the key to Raffles with
puckered forehead—for I happened to catch sight of it in the mirror
behind him.

“The Dowager Lady Kirkleatham,” he whispered, “has diamonds as big as
beans, and likes to have ’em all on—and goes to bed early—and happens
to be in town!”

And now I saw.

“The villain means to get them from her!”

“And I mean to get them from the villain,” said Raffles; “or, rather,
your share and mine.”

“Will he consent to a partnership?”

“We shall have him at our mercy. He daren’t refuse.”

Raffles’s plan was to gain access to Lord Ernest’s rooms before
midnight; there we were to lie in wait for the aristocratic rascal, and
if I left all details to Raffles, and simply stood by in case of a
rumpus, I should be playing my part and earning my share. It was a part
that I had played before, not always with a good grace, though there
had never been any question about the share. But to-night I was nothing
loath. I had had just champagne enough—how Raffles knew my measure!—and
I was ready and eager for anything. Indeed, I did not wish to wait for
the coffee, which was to be especially strong by order of Raffles. But
on that he insisted, and it was between ten and eleven when at last we
were in our cab.

“It would be fatal to be too early,” he said as we drove; “on the other
hand, it would be dangerous to leave it too late. One must risk
something. How I should love to drive down Piccadilly and see the
lights! But unnecessary risks are another story.”

II

King John’s Mansions, as everybody knows, are the oldest, the ugliest,
and the tallest block of flats in all London. But they are built upon a
more generous scale than has since become the rule, and with a less
studious regard for the economy of space. We were about to drive into
the spacious courtyard when the gate-keeper checked us in order to let
another hansom drive out.

It contained a middle-aged man of the military type, like ourselves in
evening dress. That much I saw as his hansom crossed our bows, because
I could not help seeing it, but I should not have given the incident a
second thought if it had not been for his extraordinary effect upon
Raffles. In an instant he was out upon the curb, paying the cabby, and
in another he was leading me across the street, away from the mansions.

“Where on earth are you going?” I naturally exclaimed.

“Into the park,” said he. “We are too early.”

His voice told me more than his words. It was strangely stern.

“Was that him—in the hansom?”

“It was.”

“Well, then, the coast’s clear,” said I, comfortably. I was for turning
back then and there, but Raffles forced me on with a hand that hardened
on my arm.

“It was a nearer thing than I care about,” said he. “This seat will do;
no, the next one’s further from a lamp-post. We will give him a good
half-hour, and I don’t want to talk.”

We had been seated some minutes when Big Ben sent a languid chime over
our heads to the stars. It was half-past ten, and a sultry night.
Eleven had struck before Raffles awoke from his sullen reverie, and
recalled me from mine with a slap on the back. In a couple of minutes
we were in the lighted vestibule at the inner end of the courtyard of
King John’s Mansions.

“Just left Lord Ernest at Lady Kirkleatham’s,” said Raffles. “Gave me
his key and asked us to wait for him in his rooms. Will you send us up
in the lift?”

In a small way, I never knew old Raffles do anything better. There was
not an instant’s demur. Lord Ernest Belville’s rooms were at the top of
the building, but we were in them as quickly as lift could carry and
page-boy conduct us. And there was no need for the skeleton key after
all; the boy opened the outer door with one of his own, and switched on
the lights before leaving us.

“Now that’s interesting,” said Raffles, as soon as we were alone; “they
can come in and clean when he is out. What if he keeps his swag at the
bank? By Jove, that’s an idea for him! I don’t believe he’s getting rid
of it; it’s all lying low somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, and he’s not
a fool.”

While he spoke he was moving about the sitting-room, which was
charmingly furnished in the antique style, and making as many remarks
as though he were an auctioneer’s clerk with an inventory to prepare
and a day to do it in, instead of a cracksman who might be surprised in
his crib at any moment.

“Chippendale of sorts, eh, Bunny? Not genuine, of course; but where can
you get genuine Chippendale now, and who knows it when they see it?
There’s no merit in mere antiquity. Yet the way people pose on the
subject! If a thing’s handsome and useful, and good cabinet-making,
it’s good enough for me.”

“Hadn’t we better explore the whole place?” I suggested nervously. He
had not even bolted the outer door. Nor would he when I called his
attention to the omission.

“If Lord Ernest finds his rooms locked up he’ll raise Cain,” said
Raffles; “we must let him come in and lock up for himself before we
corner him. But he won’t come yet; if he did it might be awkward, for
they’d tell him down below what I told them. A new staff comes on at
midnight. I discovered that the other night.”

“Supposing he does come in before?”

“Well, he can’t have us turned out without first seeing who we are, and
he won’t try it on when I’ve had one word with him. Unless my
suspicions are unfounded, I mean.”

“Isn’t it about time to test them?”

“My good Bunny, what do you suppose I’ve been doing all this while? He
keeps nothing in here. There isn’t a lock to the Chippendale that you
couldn’t pick with a penknife, and not a loose board in the floor, for
I was treading for one before the boy left us. Chimney’s no use in a
place like this where they keep them swept for you. Yes, I’m quite
ready to try his bedroom.”

There was but a bathroom besides; no kitchen, no servant’s room;
neither are necessary in King John’s Mansions. I thought it as well to
put my head inside the bathroom while Raffles went into the bedroom,
for I was tormented by the horrible idea that the man might all this
time be concealed somewhere in the flat. But the bathroom blazed void
in the electric light. I found Raffles hanging out of the starry square
which was the bedroom window, for the room was still in darkness. I
felt for the switch at the door.

“Put it out again!” said Raffles fiercely. He rose from the sill, drew
blind and curtains carefully, then switched on the light himself. It
fell upon a face creased more in pity than in anger, and Raffles only
shook his head as I hung mine.

“It’s all right, old boy,” said he; “but corridors have windows too,
and servants have eyes; and you and I are supposed to be in the other
room, not in this. But cheer up, Bunny! This is _the_ room; look at the
extra bolt on the door; he’s had that put on, and there’s an iron
ladder to his window in case of fire! Way of escape ready against the
hour of need; he’s a better man than I thought him, Bunny, after all.
But you may bet your bottom dollar that if there’s any boodle in the
flat it’s in this room.”

Yet the room was very lightly furnished; and nothing was locked. We
looked everywhere, but we looked in vain. The wardrobe was filled with
hanging coats and trousers in a press, the drawers with the softest
silk and finest linen. It was a camp bedstead that would not have
unsettled an anchorite; there was no place for treasure there. I looked
up the chimney, but Raffles told me not to be a fool, and asked if I
ever listened to what he said. There was no question about his temper
now. I never knew him in a worse.

“Then he has got it in the bank,” he growled. “I’ll swear I’m not
mistaken in my man!”

I had the tact not to differ with him there. But I could not help
suggesting that now was our time to remedy any mistake we might have
made. We were on the right side of midnight still.

“Then we stultify ourselves downstairs,” said Raffles. “No, I’ll be
shot if I do! He may come in with the Kirkleatham diamonds! You do what
you like, Bunny, but I don’t budge.”

“I certainly shan’t leave you,” I retorted, “to be knocked into the
middle of next week by a better man than yourself.”

I had borrowed his own tone, and he did not like it. They never do. I
thought for a moment that Raffles was going to strike me—for the first
and last time in his life. He could if he liked. My blood was up. I was
ready to send him to the devil. And I emphasized my offence by nodding
and shrugging toward a pair of very large Indian clubs that stood in
the fender, on either side of the chimney up which I had presumed to
glance.

In an instant Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them about
his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado which
I should have thought him altogether above.

And suddenly as I watched him his face changed, softened, lit up, and
he swung the clubs gently down upon the bed.

“They’re not heavy enough for their size,” said he rapidly; “and I’ll
take my oath they’re not the same weight!”

He shook one club after the other, with both hands, close to his ear;
then he examined their butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what
he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed
excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable
tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened
the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the
small end under my arm, and presented the other to Raffles.

“Hold him tight,” he whispered, smiling. “He’s not only a better man
than I thought him, Bunny; he’s hit upon a better dodge than ever I
did, of its kind. Only I should have weighted them evenly—to a hair.”

He had screwed the gimlet into the circular butt, close to the edge,
and now we were wrenching in opposite directions. For a moment or more
nothing happened. Then all at once something gave, and Raffles swore an
oath as soft as any prayer. And for the minute after that his hand went
round and round with the gimlet, as though he were grinding a
piano-organ, while the end wormed slowly out on its delicate thread of
fine hard wood.

The clubs were as hollow as drinking-horns, the pair of them, for we
went from one to the other without pausing to undo the padded packets
that poured out upon the bed. These were deliciously heavy to the hand,
yet thickly swathed in cotton-wool, so that some stuck together,
retaining the shape of the cavity, as though they had been run out of a
mould. And when we did open them—but let Raffles speak.

He had deputed me to screw in the ends of the clubs, and to replace the
latter in the fender where we had found them. When I had done the
counterpane was glittering with diamonds where it was not shimmering
with pearls.

“If this isn’t that tiara that Lady May was married in,” said Raffles,
“and that disappeared out of the room she changed in, while it rained
confetti on the steps, I’ll present it to her instead of the one she
lost.... It was stupid to keep these old gold spoons, valuable as they
are; they made the difference in the weight.... Here we have probably
the Kenworthy diamonds.... I don’t know the history of these pearls....
This looks like one family of rings—left on the basin-stand,
perhaps—alas, poor lady! And that’s the lot.”

Our eyes met across the bed.

“What’s it all worth?” I asked, hoarsely.

“Impossible to say. But more than all we ever took in all our lives.
That I’ll swear to.”

“More than all—”

My tongue swelled with the thought.

“But it’ll take some turning into cash, old chap!”

“And—must it be a partnership?” I asked, finding a lugubrious voice at
length.

“Partnership be damned!” cried Raffles, heartily. “Let’s get out
quicker than we came in.”

We pocketed the things between us, cotton-wool and all, not because we
wanted the latter, but to remove all immediate traces of our really
meritorious deed.

“The sinner won’t dare to say a word when he does find out,” remarked
Raffles of Lord Ernest; “but that’s no reason why he should find out
before he must. Everything’s straight in here, I think; no, better
leave the window open as it was, and the blind up. Now out with the
light. One peep at the other room. That’s all right, too. Out with the
passage light, Bunny, while I open—”

His words died away in a whisper. A key was fumbling at the lock
outside.

“Out with it—out with it!” whispered Raffles in an agony; and as I
obeyed he picked me off my feet and swung me bodily but silently into
the bedroom, just as the outer door opened, and a masterful step strode
in.

The next five were horrible minutes. We heard the apostle of Rational
Drink unlock one of the deep drawers in his antique sideboard, and
sounds followed suspiciously like the splash of spirits and the steady
stream from a siphon. Never before or since did I experience such a
thirst as assailed me at that moment, nor do I believe that many
tropical explorers have known its equal. But I had Raffles with me, and
his hand was as steady and as cool as the hand of a trained nurse. That
I know because he turned up the collar of my overcoat for me, for some
reason, and buttoned it at the throat. I afterwards found that he had
done the same to his own, but I did not hear him doing it. The one
thing I heard in the bedroom was a tiny metallic click, muffled and
deadened in his overcoat pocket, and it not only removed my last
tremor, but strung me to a higher pitch of excitement than ever. Yet I
had then no conception of the game that Raffles was deciding to play,
and that I was to play with him in another minute.

It cannot have been longer before Lord Ernest came into his bedroom.
Heavens, but my heart had not forgotten how to thump! We were standing
near the door, and I could swear he touched me; then his boots creaked,
there was a rattle in the fender—and Raffles switched on the light.

Lord Ernest Belville crouched in its glare with one Indian club held by
the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking,
well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at
that moment, if he had never been either before.

“Lord Ernest Belville,” said Raffles, “it’s no use. This is a loaded
revolver, and if you force me I shall use it on you as I would on any
other desperate criminal. I am here to arrest you for a series of
robberies at the Duke of Dorchester’s, Sir John Kenworthy’s, and other
noblemen’s and gentlemen’s houses during the present season. You’d
better drop what you’ve got in your hand. It’s empty.”

Lord Ernest lifted the club an inch or two, and with it his
eyebrows—and after it his stalwart frame as the club crashed back into
the fender. And as he stood at his full height, a courteous but ironic
smile under the cropped moustache, he looked what he was, criminal or
not.

“Scotland Yard?” said he.

“That’s our affair, my lord.”

“I didn’t think they’d got it in them,” said Lord Ernest. “Now I
recognize you. You’re my interviewer. No, I didn’t think any of you
fellows had got all that in you. Come into the other room, and I’ll
show you something else. Oh, keep me covered by all means. But look at
this!”

On the antique sideboard, their size doubled by reflection in the
polished mahogany, lay a coruscating cluster of precious stones, that
fell in festoons about Lord Ernest’s fingers as he handed them to
Raffles with scarcely a shrug.

“The Kirkleatham diamonds,” said he. “Better add ’em to the bag.”

Raffles did so without a smile; with his overcoat buttoned up to the
chin, his tall hat pressed down to his eyes, and between the two his
incisive features and his keen, stern glance, he looked the ideal
detective of fiction and the stage. What _I_ looked God knows, but I
did my best to glower and show my teeth at his side. I had thrown
myself into the game, and it was obviously a winning one.

“Wouldn’t take a share, I suppose?” Lord Ernest said casually.

Raffles did not condescend to reply. I rolled back my lips like a
bull-pup.

“Then a drink, at least!”

My mouth watered, but Raffles shook his head impatiently.

“We must be going, my lord, and you will have to come with us.”

I wondered what in the world we should do with him when we had got him.

“Give me time to put some things together? Pair of pyjamas and
tooth-brush, don’t you know?”

“I cannot give you many minutes, my lord, but I don’t want to cause a
disturbance here, so I’ll tell them to call a cab if you like. But I
shall be back in a minute, and you must be ready in five. Here,
inspector, you’d better keep this while I am gone.”

And I was left alone with that dangerous criminal! Raffles nipped my
arm as he handed me the revolver, but I got small comfort out of that.

“‘Sea-green Incorruptible?’” inquired Lord Ernest as we stood face to
face.

“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. The suit-case was on the floor, but its dastardly
owner had disappeared.

“Is he gone?” was my first faint question.

“Thank God you’re not, anyway!” replied Raffles, with what struck me
then as mere flippancy. I managed to raise myself upon one elbow.

“I meant Lord Ernest Belville,” said I, with dignity. “Are you quite
sure that he’s cleared out?”

Raffles waved a hand towards the window, which stood wide open to the
summer stars.

“Of course,” said he, “and by the route I intended him to take; he’s
gone by the iron-ladder, as I hoped he would. What on earth should we
have done with him? My poor, dear Bunny, I thought you’d take a bribe!
But it’s really more convincing as it is, and just as well for Lord
Ernest to be convinced for the time being.”

“Are you sure he is?” I questioned, as I found a rather shaky pair of
legs.

“Of course!” cried Raffles again, in the tone to make one blush for the
least misgiving on the point. “Not that it matters one bit,” he added,
airily, “for we have him either way; and when he does tumble to it, as
he may any minute, he won’t dare to open his mouth.”

“Then the sooner we clear out the better,” said I, but I looked askance
at the open window, for my head was spinning still.

“When you feel up to it,” returned Raffles, “we shall _stroll_ out, and
I shall do myself the honor of ringing for the lift. The force of habit
is too strong in you, Bunny. I shall shut the window and leave
everything exactly as we found it. Lord Ernest will probably tumble
before he is badly missed; and then he may come back to put salt on us;
but I should like to know what he can do even if he succeeds! Come,
Bunny, pull yourself together, and you’ll be a different man when
you’re in the open air.”

And for a while I felt one, such was my relief at getting out of those
infernal mansions with unfettered wrists; this we managed easily
enough; but once more Raffles’s performance of a small part was no less
perfect than his more ambitious work upstairs, and something of the
successful artist’s elation possessed him as we walked arm-in-arm
across St. James’s Park. It was long since I had known him so pleased
with himself, and only too long since he had had such reason.

“I don’t think I ever had a brighter idea in my life,” he said; “never
thought of it till he was in the next room; never dreamt of its coming
off so ideally even then, and didn’t much care, because we had him all
ways up. I’m only sorry you let him knock you out. I was waiting
outside the door all the time, and it made me sick to hear it. But I
once broke my own head, Bunny, if you remember, and not in half such an
excellent cause!”

Raffles touched all his pockets in his turn, the pockets that contained
a small fortune apiece, and he smiled in my face as we crossed the
lighted avenues of the Mall. Next moment he was hailing a hansom—for I
suppose I was still pretty pale—and not a word would he let me speak
until we had alighted as near as was prudent to the flat.

“What a brute I’ve been, Bunny!” he whispered then, “but you take half
the swag, old boy, and right well you’ve earned it. No, we’ll go in by
the wrong door and over the roof; it’s too late for old Theobald to be
still at the play, and too early for him to be safely in his cups.”

So we climbed the many stairs with cat-like stealth, and like cats
crept out upon the grimy leads. But to-night they were no blacker than
their canopy of sky; not a chimney-stack stood out against the starless
night; one had to feel one’s way in order to avoid tripping over the
low parapets of the L-shaped wells that ran from roof to basement to
light the inner rooms. One of these wells was spanned by a flimsy
bridge with iron handrails that felt warm to the touch as Raffles led
the way across! A hotter and a closer night I have never known.

“The flat will be like an oven,” I grumbled, at the head of our own
staircase.

“Then we won’t go down,” said Raffles, promptly; “we’ll slack it up
here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are! I’ll fetch
you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan’t come down till you feel
more fit.”

And I let him have his way, I will not say as usual, for I had even
less than my normal power of resistance that night. That villainous
upper-cut! My head still sang and throbbed, as I seated myself on one
of the aforesaid parapets, and buried it in my hot hands. Nor was the
night one to dispel a headache; there was distinct thunder in the air.
Thus I sat in a heap, and brooded over my misadventure, a pretty figure
of a subordinate villain, until the step came for which I waited; and
it never struck me that it came from the wrong direction.

“You have been quick,” said I, simply.

“Yes,” hissed a voice I recognized; “and you’ve got to be quicker
still! Here, out with your wrists; no, one at a time; and if you utter
a syllable you’re a dead man.”

It was Lord Ernest Belville; his close-cropped, iron-gray moustache
gleamed through the darkness, drawn up over his set teeth. In his hand
glittered a pair of handcuffs, and before I knew it one had snapped its
jaws about my right wrist.

“Now come this way,” said Lord Ernest, showing me a revolver also, “and
wait for your friend. And, recollect, a single syllable of warning will
be your death!”

With that the ruffian led me to the very bridge I had just crossed at
Raffles’s heels, and handcuffed me to the iron rail midway across the
chasm. It no longer felt warm to my touch, but icy as the blood in all
my veins.

So this high-born hypocrite had beaten us at our game and his, and
Raffles had met his match at last! That was the most intolerable
thought, that Raffles should be down in the flat on my account, and
that I could not warn him of his impending fate; for how was it
possible without making such an outcry as should bring the mansions
about our ears? And there I shivered on that wretched plank, chained
like Andromeda to the rock, with a black infinity above and below; and
before my eyes, now grown familiar with the peculiar darkness, stood
Lord Ernest Belville, waiting for Raffles to emerge with full hands and
unsuspecting heart! Taken so horribly unawares, even Raffles must fall
an easy prey to a desperado in resource and courage scarcely second to
himself, but one whom he had fatally underrated from the beginning. Not
that I paused to think how the thing had happened; my one concern was
for what was to happen next.

And what did happen was worse than my worst foreboding, for first a
light came flickering into the sort of companion-hatch at the head of
the stairs, and finally Raffles—in his shirt-sleeves! He was not only
carrying a candle to put the finishing touch to him as a target; he had
dispensed with coat and waistcoat downstairs, and was at once
full-handed and unarmed.

“Where are you, old chap?” he cried, softly, himself blinded by the
light he carried; and he advanced a couple of steps towards Belville.
“This isn’t you, is it?”

And Raffles stopped, his candle held on high, a folding chair under the
other arm.

“No, I am not your friend,” replied Lord Ernest, easily; “but kindly
remain standing exactly where you are, and don’t lower that candle an
inch, unless you want your brains blown into the street.”

Raffles said never a word, but for a moment did as he was bid; and the
unshaken flame of the candle was testimony alike to the stillness of
the night and to the finest set of nerves in Europe. Then, to my
horror, he coolly stooped, placing candle and chair on the leads, and
his hands in his pockets, as though it were but a popgun that covered
him.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” he asked insolently as he rose. “Frightened of
the noise? I should be, too, with an old-pattern machine like that. All
very well for service in the field—but on the house-tops at dead of
night!”

“I shall shoot, however,” replied Lord Ernest, as quietly in his turn,
and with less insolence, “and chance the noise, unless you instantly
restore my property. I am glad you don’t dispute the last word,” he
continued after a slight pause. “There is no keener honor than that
which subsists, or ought to subsist, among thieves; and I need hardly
say that I soon spotted you as one of the fraternity. Not in the
beginning, mind you! For the moment I did think you were one of these
smart detectives jumped to life from some sixpenny magazine; but to
preserve the illusion you ought to provide yourself with a worthier
lieutenant. It was he who gave your show away,” chuckled the wretch,
dropping for a moment the affected style of speech which seemed
intended to enhance our humiliation; “smart detectives don’t go about
with little innocents to assist them. You needn’t be anxious about him,
by the way; it wasn’t necessary to pitch him into the street; he is to
be seen though not heard, if you look in the right direction. Nor must
you put all the blame upon your friend; it was not he, but you, who
made so sure that I had got out by the window. You see, I was in my
bathroom all the time—with the door open.”

“The bathroom, eh?” Raffles echoed with professional interest. “And you
followed us on foot across the park?”

“Of course.”

“And then in a cab?”

“And afterwards on foot once more.”

“The simplest skeleton would let you in down below.”

I saw the lower half of Lord Ernest’s face grinning in the light of the
candle set between them on the ground.

“You follow every move,” said he; “there can be no doubt you are one of
the fraternity; and I shouldn’t wonder if we had formed our style upon
the same model. Ever know A. J. Raffles?”

The abrupt question took my breath away; but Raffles himself did not
lose an instant over his answer.

“Intimately,” said he.

“That accounts for you, then,” laughed Lord Ernest, “as it does for me,
though I never had the honor of the master’s acquaintance. Nor is it
for me to say which is the worthier disciple. Perhaps, however, now
that your friend is handcuffed in mid-air, and you yourself are at my
mercy, you will concede me some little temporary advantage?”

And his face split in another grin from the cropped moustache downward,
as I saw no longer by candlelight but by a flash of lightning which
tore the sky in two before Raffles could reply.

“You have the bulge at present,” admitted Raffles; “but you have still
to lay hands upon your, or our, ill-gotten goods. To shoot me is not
necessarily to do so; to bring either one of us to a violent end is
only to court a yet more violent and infinitely more disgraceful one
for yourself. Family considerations alone should rule that risk out of
your game. Now, an hour or two ago, when the exact opposite—”

The remainder of Raffles’s speech was drowned from my ears by the
belated crash of thunder which the lightning had foretold. So loud,
however, was the crash when it came, that the storm was evidently
approaching us at a high velocity; yet as the last echo rumbled away, I
heard Raffles talking as though he had never stopped.

“You offered us a share,” he was saying; “unless you mean to murder us
both in cold blood, it will be worth your while to repeat that offer.
We should be dangerous enemies; you had far better make the best of us
as friends.”

“Lead the way down to your flat,” said Lord Ernest, with a flourish of
his service revolver, “and perhaps we may talk about it. It is for me
to make the terms, I imagine, and in the first place I am not going to
get wet to the skin up here.”

The rain was beginning in great drops, even as he spoke, and by a
second flash of lightning I saw Raffles pointing to me.

“But what about my friend?” said he.

And then came the second peal.

“Oh, _he’s_ all right,” the great brute replied; “do him good! You
don’t catch me letting myself in for two to one!”

“You will find it equally difficult,” rejoined Raffles, “to induce me
to leave my friend to the mercy of a night like this. He has not
recovered from the blow you struck him in your own rooms. I am not such
a fool as to blame you for that, but you are a worse sportsman than I
take you for if you think of leaving him where he is. If he stays,
however, so do I.”

And, just as it ceased, Raffles’s voice seemed distinctly nearer to me;
but in the darkness and the rain, which was now as heavy as hail, I
could see nothing clearly. The rain had already extinguished the
candle. I heard an oath from Belville, a laugh from Raffles, and for a
second that was all. Raffles was coming to me, and the other could not
even see to fire; that was all I knew in the pitchy interval of
invisible rain before the next crash and the next flash.

And then!

This time they came together, and not till my dying hour shall I forget
the sight that the lightning lit and the thunder applauded. Raffles was
on one of the parapets of the gulf that my foot-bridge spanned, and in
the sudden illumination he stepped across it as one might across a
garden path. The width was scarcely greater, but the depth! In the
sudden flare I saw to the concrete bottom of the well, and it looked no
larger than the hollow of my hand. Raffles was laughing in my ear; he
had the iron railing fast; it was between us, but his foothold was as
secure as mine. Lord Ernest Belville, on the contrary, was the fifth of
a second late for the light, and half a foot short in his spring.
Something struck our plank bridge so hard as to set it quivering like a
harp-string; there was half a gasp and half a sob in mid-air beneath
our feet; and then a sound far below that I prefer not to describe. I
am not sure that I could hit upon the perfect simile; it is more than
enough for me that I can hear it still. And with that sickening sound
came the loudest clap of thunder yet, and a great white glare that
showed us our enemy’s body far below, with one white hand spread like a
starfish, but the head of him mercifully twisted underneath.

“It was all his own fault, Bunny. Poor devil! May he and all of us be
forgiven; but pull yourself together for your own sake. Well, you can’t
fall; stay where you are a minute.”

I remember the uproar of the elements while Raffles was gone; no other
sound mingled with it; not the opening of a single window, not the
uplifting of a single voice. Then came Raffles with soap and water, and
the gyve was wheedled from one wrist, as you withdraw a ring for which
the finger has grown too large. Of the rest, I only remember shivering
till morning in a pitch-dark flat, whose invalid occupier was for once
the nurse, and I his patient.

And that is the true ending of the episode in which we two set
ourselves to catch one of our own kidney, albeit in another place I
have shirked the whole truth. It is not a grateful task to show Raffles
as completely at fault as he really was on that occasion; nor do I
derive any subtle satisfaction from recounting my own twofold
humiliation, or from having assisted never so indirectly in the death
of a not uncongenial sinner. The truth, however, has after all a merit
of its own, and the great kinsfolk of poor Lord Ernest have but little
to lose by its divulgence. It would seem that they knew more of the
real character of the apostle of Rational Drink than was known at
Exeter Hall. The tragedy was indeed hushed up, as tragedies only are
when they occur in such circles. But the rumor that did get abroad, as
to the class of enterprise which the poor scamp was pursuing when he
met his death, cannot be too soon exploded, since it breathed upon the
fair fame of some of the most respectable flats in Kensington.




AN OLD FLAME

I

The square shall be nameless, but if you drive due west from Piccadilly
the cab-man will eventually find it on his left, and he ought to thank
you for two shillings. It is not a fashionable square, but there are
few with a finer garden, while the studios on the south side lend
distinction of another sort. The houses, however, are small and dingy,
and about the last to attract the expert practitioner in search of a
crib. Heaven knows it was with no such thought I trailed Raffles
thither, one unlucky evening at the latter end of that same season,
when Dr. Theobald had at last insisted upon the bath-chair which I had
foreseen in the beginning. Trees whispered in the green garden
aforesaid, and the cool, smooth lawns looked so inviting that I
wondered whether some philanthropic resident could not be induced to
lend us the key. But Raffles would not listen to the suggestion, when I
stopped to make it, and what was worse, I found him looking wistfully
at the little houses instead.

“Such balconies, Bunny! A leg up, and there you would be!”

I expressed a conviction that there would be nothing worth taking in
the square, but took care to have him under way again as I spoke.

“I daresay you’re right,” sighed Raffles. “Rings and watches, I
suppose, but it would be hard luck to take them from people who live in
houses like these. I don’t know, though. Here’s one with an extra
story. Stop, Bunny; if you don’t stop I’ll hold on to the railings!
This is a good house; look at the knocker and the electric bell.
They’ve had that put in. There’s some money here, my rabbit! I dare bet
there’s a silver-table in the drawing-room; and the windows are wide
open. Electric light, too, by Jove!”

Since stop I must, I had done so on the other side of the road, in the
shadow of the leafy palings, and as Raffles spoke the ground floor
windows opposite had flown alight, showing as pretty a little
dinner-table as one could wish to see, with a man at his wine at the
far end, and the back of a lady in evening dress toward us. It was like
a lantern-picture thrown upon a screen. There were only the pair of
them, but the table was brilliant with silver and gay with flowers, and
the maid waited with the indefinable air of a good servant. It
certainly seemed a good house.

“She’s going to let down the blind!” whispered Raffles, in high
excitement. “No, confound them, they’ve told her not to. Mark down her
necklace, Bunny, and invoice his stud. What a brute he looks! But I
like the table, and that’s her show. She has the taste; but he must
have money. See the festive picture over the sideboard? Looks to me
like a Jacques Saillard. But that silver-table would be good enough for
me.”

“Get on,” said I. “You’re in a bath-chair.”

“But the whole square’s at dinner! We should have the ball at our feet.
It wouldn’t take two twos!”

“With those blinds up, and the cook in the kitchen underneath?”

He nodded, leaning forward in the chair, his hands upon the wraps about
his legs.

“You must be mad,” said I, and got back to my handles with the word,
but when I tugged the chair ran light.

“Keep an eye on the rug,” came in a whisper from the middle of the
road; and there stood my invalid, his pale face in a quiver of pure
mischief, yet set with his insane resolve. “I’m only going to see
whether that woman has a silver-table—”

“We don’t want it—”

“It won’t take a minute—”

“It’s madness, madness—”

“Then don’t you wait!”

It was like him to leave me with that, and this time I had taken him at
his last word, had not my own given me an idea. Mad I had called him,
and mad I could declare him upon oath if necessary. It was not as
though the thing had happened far from home. They could learn all about
us at the nearest mansions. I referred them to Dr. Theobald; this was a
Mr. Maturin, one of his patients, and I was his keeper, and he had
never given me the slip before. I heard myself making these
explanations on the doorstep, and pointing to the deserted bath-chair
as the proof, while the pretty parlor maid ran for the police. It would
be a more serious matter for me than for my charge. I should lose my
place. No, he had never done such a thing before, and I would answer
for it that he never should again.

I saw myself conducting Raffles back to his chair, with a firm hand and
a stern tongue. I heard him thanking me in whispers on the way home. It
would be the first tight place I had ever got him out of, and I was
quite anxious for him to get into it, so sure was I of every move. My
whole position had altered in the few seconds that it took me to follow
this illuminating train of ideas; it was now so strong that I could
watch Raffles without much anxiety. And he was worth watching.

He had stepped boldly but softly to the front door, and there he was
still waiting, ready to ring if the door opened or a face appeared in
the area, and doubtless to pretend that he had rung already. But he had
not to ring at all; and suddenly I saw his foot in the letter-box, his
left hand on the lintel overhead. It was thrilling, even to a hardened
accomplice with an explanation up his sleeve! A tight grip with that
left hand of his, as he leant backward with all his weight upon those
five fingers; a right arm stretched outward and upward to its last
inch; and the base of the low, projecting balcony was safely caught.

I looked down and took breath. The maid was removing the crumbs in the
lighted room, and the square was empty as before. What a blessing it
was the end of the season! Many of the houses remained in darkness. I
looked up again, and Raffles was drawing his left leg over the balcony
railing. In another moment he had disappeared through one of the French
windows which opened upon the balcony, and in yet another he had
switched on the electric light within. This was bad enough, for now I,
at least, could see everything he did; but the crowning folly was still
to come. There was no point in it; the mad thing was done for my
benefit, as I knew at once and he afterward confessed; but the lunatic
reappeared on the balcony, bowing like a mountebank—in his crape mask!

I set off with the empty chair, but I came back. I could not desert old
Raffles, even when I would, but must try to explain away his mask as
well, if he had not the sense to take it off in time. It would be
difficult, but burglaries are not usually committed from a bath-chair,
and for the rest I put my faith in Dr. Theobald. Meanwhile Raffles had
at least withdrawn from the balcony, and now I could only see his head
as he peered into a cabinet at the other side of the room. It was like
the opera of _Aïda_, in which two scenes are enacted simultaneously,
one in the dungeon below, the other in the temple above. In the same
fashion my attention now became divided between the picture of Raffles
moving stealthily about the upper room, and that of the husband and
wife at table underneath. And all at once, as the man replenished his
glass with a shrug of the shoulders, the woman pushed back her chair
and sailed to the door.

Raffles was standing before the fireplace upstairs. He had taken one of
the framed photographs from the chimney-piece, and was scanning it at
suicidal length through the eye-holes in the hideous mask which he
still wore. He would need it after all. The lady had left the room
below, opening and shutting the door for herself; the man was filling
his glass once more. I would have shrieked my warning to Raffles, so
fatally engrossed overhead, but at this moment (of all others) a
constable (of all men) was marching sedately down our side of the
square. There was nothing for it but to turn a melancholy eye upon the
bath-chair, and to ask the constable the time. I was evidently to be
kept there all night, I remarked, and only realized with the words that
they disposed of my other explanations before they were uttered. It was
a horrible moment for such a discovery. Fortunately the enemy was on
the pavement, from which he could scarcely have seen more than the
drawing-room ceiling, had he looked; but he was not many houses distant
when a door opened and a woman gasped so that I heard both across the
road. And never shall I forget the subsequent tableaux in the lighted
room behind the low balcony and the French windows.

Raffles stood confronted by a dark and handsome woman whose profile, as
I saw it first in the electric light, is cut like a cameo in my memory.
It had the undeviating line of brow and nose, the short upper lip, the
perfect chin, that are united in marble oftener than in the flesh; and
like marble she stood, or rather like some beautiful pale bronze; for
that was her coloring, and she lost none of it that I could see,
neither trembled; but her bosom rose and fell, and that was all. So she
stood without flinching before a masked ruffian, who, I felt, would be
the first to appreciate her courage; to me it was so superb that I
could think of it in this way even then, and marvel how Raffles himself
could stand unabashed before so brave a figure. He had not to do so
long. The woman scorned him, and he stood unmoved, a framed photograph
still in his hand. Then, with a quick, determined movement she turned,
not to the door or to the bell, but to the open window by which Raffles
had entered; and this with that accursed policeman still in view. So
far no word had passed between the pair. But at this point Raffles said
something, I could not hear what, but at the sound of his voice the
woman wheeled. And Raffles was looking humbly in her face, the crape
mask snatched from his own.

“Arthur!” she cried; and that might have been heard in the middle of
the square garden.

Then they stood gazing at each other, neither unmoved any more, and
while they stood the street-door opened and banged. It was her husband
leaving the house, a fine figure of a man, but a dissipated face, and a
step even now distinguished by the extreme caution which precedes
unsteadiness. He broke the spell. His wife came to the balcony, then
looked back into the room, and yet again along the road, and this time
I saw her face. It was the face of one glancing indeed from Hyperion to
a satyr. And then I saw the rings flash, as her hand fell gently upon
Raffles’s arm.

They disappeared from that window. Their heads showed for an instant in
the next. Then they dipped out of sight, and an inner ceiling flashed
out under a new light; they had gone into the back drawing-room, beyond
my ken. The maid came up with coffee, her mistress hastily met her at
the door, and once more disappeared. The square was as quiet as ever. I
remained some minutes where I was. Now and then I thought I heard their
voices in the back drawing-room. I was seldom sure.

My state of mind may be imagined by those readers who take an interest
in my personal psychology. It does not amuse me to look back upon it.
But at length I had the sense to put myself in Raffles’s place. He had
been recognized at last, he had come to life. Only one person knew as
yet, but that person was a woman, and a woman who had once been fond of
him, if the human face could speak. Would she keep his secret? Would he
tell her where he lived? It was terrible to think we were such
neighbors, and with the thought that it was terrible came a little
enlightenment as to what could still be done for the best. He would not
tell her where he lived. I knew him too well for that. He would run for
it when he could, and the bath-chair and I must not be there to give
him away. I dragged the infernal vehicle round the nearer corner. Then
I waited—there could be no harm in that—and at last he came.

He was walking briskly, so I was right, and he had not played the
invalid to her; yet I heard him cry out with pleasure as he turned the
corner, and he flung himself into the chair with a long-drawn sigh that
did me good.

“Well done, Bunny—well done! I am on my way to Earl’s Court, she’s
capable of following me, but she won’t look for me in a bath-chair.
Home, home, home, and not another word till we get there!”

Capable of following him? She overtook us before we were past the
studios on the south side of the square, the woman herself, in a hooded
opera-cloak. But she never gave us a glance, and we saw her turn safely
in the right direction for Earl’s Court, and the wrong one for our
humble mansions. Raffles thanked his gods in a voice that trembled, and
five minutes later we were in the flat. Then for once it was Raffles
who filled the tumblers and found the cigarettes, and for once (and
once only in all my knowledge of him) did he drain his glass at a
draught.

“You didn’t see the balcony scene?” he asked at length; and they were
his first words since the woman passed us on his track.

“Do you mean when she came in?”

“No, when I came down.”

“I didn’t.”

“I hope nobody else saw it,” said Raffles devoutly. “I don’t say that
Romeo and Juliet were brother and sister to us. But you might have said
so, Bunny!”

He was staring at the carpet with as wry a face as lover ever wore.

“An old flame?” said I, gently.

“A married woman,” he groaned.

“So I gathered.”

“But she always was one, Bunny,” said he, ruefully. “That’s the
trouble. It makes all the difference in the world!”

I saw the difference, but said I did not see how it could make any now.
He had eluded the lady, after all; had we not seen her off upon a scent
as false as scent could be? There was occasion for redoubled caution in
the future, but none for immediate anxiety. I quoted the bedside
Theobald, but Raffles did not smile. His eyes had been downcast all
this time, and now, when he raised them, I perceived that my comfort
had been administered to deaf ears.

“Do you know who she is?” said he.

“Not from Eve.”

“Jacques Saillard,” he said, as though now I must know.

But the name left me cold and stolid. I had heard it, but that was all.
It was lamentable ignorance, I am aware, but I had specialized in
Letters at the expense of Art.

“You must know her pictures,” said Raffles, patiently; “but I suppose
you thought she was a man. They would appeal to you, Bunny; that
festive piece over the sideboard was her work. Sometimes they risk her
at the Academy, sometimes they fight shy. She has one of those studios
in the same square; they used to live up near Lord’s.”

My mind was busy brightening a dim memory of nymphs reflected in woody
pools. “Of course!” I exclaimed, and added something about “a clever
woman.” Raffles rose at the phrase.

“A clever woman!” he echoed, scornfully; “if she were only that I
should feel safe as houses. Clever women can’t forget their cleverness,
they carry it as badly as a boy does his wine, and are about as
dangerous. I don’t call Jacques Saillard clever outside her art, but
neither do I call her a woman at all. She does man’s work over a man’s
name, has the will of any ten men I ever knew, and I don’t mind telling
you that I fear her more than any person on God’s earth. I broke with
her once,” said Raffles, grimly, “but I know her. If I had been asked
to name the one person in London by whom I was keenest _not_ to be
bowled out, I should have named Jacques Saillard.”

That he had never before named her to me was as characteristic as the
reticence with which Raffles spoke of their past relations, and even of
their conversation in the back drawing-room that evening.

It was a question of principle with him, and one that I like to
remember. “Never give a woman away, Bunny,” he used to say; and he said
it again to-night, but with a heavy cloud upon him, as though his
chivalry was sorely tried.

“That’s all right,” said I, “if you’re not going to be given away
yourself.”

“That’s just it, Bunny! That’s just—”

The words were out of him, it was too late to recall them. I had hit
the nail upon the head.

“So she threatened you,” I said, “did she?”

“I didn’t say so,” he replied, coldly.

“And she is mated with a clown!” I pursued.

“How she ever married him,” he admitted, “is a mystery to me.”

“It always is,” said I, the wise man for once, and rather enjoying the
role.

“Southern blood?”

“Spanish.”

“She’ll be pestering you to run off with her, old chap,” said I.

Raffles was pacing the room. He stopped in his stride for half a
second. So she had begun pestering him already! It is wonderful how
acute any fool can be in the affairs of his friend. But Raffles resumed
his walk without a syllable, and I retreated to safer ground.

“So you sent her to Earl’s Court,” I mused aloud; and at last he
smiled.

“You’ll be interested to hear, Bunny,” said he, “that I am now living
in Seven Dials, and Bill Sikes couldn’t hold a farthing dip to me.
Bless you, she had my old police record at her fingers’ ends, but it
was fit to frame compared with the one I gave her. I had sunk as low as
they dig. I divided my nights between the open parks and a thieves’
kitchen in Seven Dials. If I was d

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