21486.47.45A

SHORT
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COLLECTIONS

IPTIBWARD PRESCOTT
Harvard College Lihrary



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A THIEF
IN THE NIGHT









I think she must have seen us, even in the dim light.


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A THIEF
IN THE NIGHT
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF
A. J. RAFFLES
CRICKETER AND CRACKSMAN
BY
E. W. HORNUNG
ILLUSTRATED BY
CYRUS CUNEO
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK :::::::::::::: 1908


21486.47,45
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
BEQUEST OF
WINWARD PRESCOTT
JANUARY 27, 1933
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
E. W. HORNUNG
COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS


CONTENTS
Page
Out of Paradise
I
The Chest of Silver
.
.
.
The Rest Cure
The Criminologists' Club
The Field of Philippi
I 22
A Bad Night
156
A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
184
The Spoils of Sacrilege
216
The Raffles Relics
247
The Last Word
278





ILLUSTRATIONS
I think she must have seen us, even in the
dim light
Frontispiece
Facing
Page
Raffles in the strong-room
54
76
It was the fire-eating and prison-inspecting colonel
himself. He was ready for me, a revolver in
his hand . . . .
Raffles was as excited as any of us now; he out-
stripped us all. ·
He kept us laughing in his study until the chapel
bells rang him out
.
106
152
The ragged trousers stripped
pair .
from
an
evening
232
Down went the trap-door with a bang. .
No one can make out what this little thick velvet
bag's for . . . :
260





A Thief in the Night
Out of Paradise
TF I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but
I go back to our earliest days together, and
fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing
annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small
part of an infinitely greater blank, across which
you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas
for the first frank portrait of my friend. The
whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint
in every wart. Raffles was a villain, when all is
written; it is no service to his memory to gloze
the fact; yet I have done so myself before to-day.
I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have
dwelt unduly on the redeeming side. And this I
may do again, blinded even as I write by the gal-
lant glamour that made my villain more to me than
any hero. But at least there shall be no more
reservations, and as an earnest I shall make no
further secret of the greatest wrong that even
Raffles ever did me.
ven


A Thief in the Night
I pick my words with care and pain, loyal as
I still would be to my friend, and yet remembering
as I must those Ides of March when he led me
blindfold into temptation and crime. That was
an ugly office, if you will. It was a moral baga-
telle to the treacherous trick he was to play me a
few weeks later. The second offence, on the other
hand, was to prove the less serious of the two
against society, and might in itself have been pub-
lished to the world years ago. There have been
private reasons for my reticence. The affair was
not only too intimately mine, and too discreditable
to Raffles. One other was involved in it, one
dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name
shall not even now be sullied by association with
ours.
Suffice it that I had been engaged to her before
that mad March deed. True, her people called
it "an understanding," and frowned even upon
that, as well they might. But their authority was
not direct; we bowed to it as an act of politic
grace; between us, all was well but my unworthi-
ness. That may be gauged when I confess that
this was how the matter stood on the night I gave
a worthless check for my losses at baccarat, and
afterward turned to Raffles in my need. Even
after that I saw her sometimes. But I let her
le


Out of Paradise
guess that there was more upon my soul than she
must ever share, and at last I had written to end
it all. I remember that week so well! It was
the close of such a May as we had never had
since, and I was too miserable even to follow the
heavy scoring in the papers. Raffles was the only
man who could get a wicket up at Lord's, and I
never once went to see him play. Against York-
shire, however, he helped himself to a hundred
runs as well; and that brought Raffles round to me,
on his way home to the Albany.
"We must dine and celebrate the rare event,''
said he. "A century takes it out of one at my
time of life; and you, Bunny, you look quite as
much in need of your end of a worthy bottle. Sup-
pose we make it the Café Royal, and eight sharp ?
I'll be there first to fix up the table and the wine."
And at the Café Royal I incontinently told him
of the trouble I was in. It was the first he had
ever heard of my affair, and I told him all, though
not before our bottle had been succeeded by a pint
of the same exemplary brand. Raffles heard me
out with grave attention. His sympathy was the
more grateful for the tactful brevity with which it
was indicated rather than expressed. He only
wished that I had told him of this complication
in the beginning; as I had not, he agreed with me


A Thief in the Night
that the only course was a candid and complete
renunciation. It was not as though my divinity
had a penny of her own, or I could earn an honest
one. I had explained to Raffles that she was an
orphan, who spent most of her time with an aris-
tocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder
under the repressive roof of a pompous politician
in Palace Gardens. The aunt had, I believed, still
a sneaking softness for me, but her illustrious
brother had set his face against me from the first.
"Hector Carruthers !” murmured Raffles, re-
peating the detested name with his clear, cold eye
on mine. “I suppose you haven't seen much of
him ?"
"Not a thing for ages," I replied. “I was at
the house two or three days last year, but they've
neither asked me since nor been at home to me
when I've called. The old beast seems a judge of
men."
And I laughed bitterly in my glass.
“Nice house?” said Raffles, glancing at himself
in his silver cigarette-case.
“Top shelf,” said I. “You know the houses
in Palace Gardens, don't you?".
"Not so well as I should like to know them,
Bunny."
"Well, it's about the most palatial of the lot.


Out of Paradise
The old ruffian is as rich as Cræsus. It's a coun-
try-place in town.”
"What about the window-fastenings?” asked
Raffles casually.
I recoiled from the open cigarette-case that he
proffered as he spoke. Our eyes met; and in his
there was that starry twinkle of mirth and mis-
chief, that sunny beam of audacious devilment,
which had been my undoing two months before,
which was to undo me as often as he chose until
the chapter's end. Yet for once I withstood its
glamour; for once I turned aside that luminous
glance with front of steel. There was no need
for Raffles to voice his plans. I read them all be-
tween the strong lines of his smiling, eager face.
And I pushed back my chair in the equal eager-
ness of my own resolve.
"Not if I know it!" said I. "A house I've
dined in a house I've seen her in—a house
where she stays by the month together! Don't
put it into words, Raffies, or I'll get up and go.”
“You mustn't do that before the coffee and
liqueur," said Raffles laughing. "Have a small
Sullivan first: it's the royal road to a cigar. And
now let me observe that your scruples would do
you honor if old Carruthers still lived in the house
in question."


A Thief in the Night
m
“Do you mean to say he doesn't?”.
Raffles struck a match, and handed it first to me.
"I mean to say, my dear Bunny, that Palace Gar-
dens knows the very name no more. You began
by telling me you had heard nothing of these peo-
ple all this year. That's quite enough to account
for our little misunderstanding. I was thinking
of the house, and you were thinking of the people
in the house."
"But who are they, Raffles ? Who has taken
the house, if old Carruthers has moved, and how
do you know that it is still worth a visit?"
"In answer to your first question-Lord Loch-
maben," replied Raffles, blowing bracelets of
smoke toward the ceiling. “You look as though
you had never heard of him; but as the cricket and
racing are the only part of your paper that you
condescend to read, you can't be expected to keep
track of all the peers created in your time. Your
other question is not worth answering. How do
you suppose that I know these things? It's my
business to get to know them, and that's all there
is to it. As a matter of fact, Lady Lochmaben
has just as good diamonds as Mrs. Carruthers
ever had; and the chances are that she keeps them
where Mrs. Carruthers kept hers, if you could
enlighten me on that point."


Out of Paradise
100
e
cre
As it happened, I could, since I knew from his
niece that it was one on which Mr. Carruthers
had been a faddist in his time. He had made quite
a study of the cracksman's craft, in a resolve to
circumvent it with his own. I remembered myself
how the ground-floor windows were elaborately
bolted and shuttered, and how the doors of all the
rooms opening upon the square inner hall were
fitted with extra Yale locks, at an unlikely height,
not to be discovered by one within the room. It
had been the butler's business to turn and to col-
lect all these keys before retiring for the night.
But the key of the safe in the study was supposed
to be in the jealous keeping of the master of the
house himself. That safe was in its turn so in-
geniously hidden that I never should have found
it for myself. I well remember how one who
showed it to me (in the innocence of her heart)
laughed as she assured me that even her little
trinkets were solemnly locked up in it every night.
It had been let into the wall behind one end of
the book-case, expressly to preserve the barbaric
splendor of Mrs. Carruthers; without a doubt
these Lochmabens would use it for the same pur-
pose; and in the altered circumstances I had
no hesitation in giving Raffles all the informa-
tion he desired. I even drew him a rough plan


A Thief in the Night
of the ground-floor on the back of my menu-
card.
"It was rather clever of you to notice the kind
of locks on the inner doors," he remarked as he
put it in his pocket. “I suppose you don't remem-
ber if it was a Yale on the front door as well ?"
"It was not," I was able to answer quite
promptly. “I happen to know because I once had
the key when—when we went to a theatre to-
gether."
"Thank you, old chap,” said Raffles sympa-
thetically. “That's all I shall want from you,
Bunny, my boy. There's no night like to-night!"
It was one of his sayings when bent upon his
worst. I looked at him aghast. Our cigars were
just in blast, yet already he was signalling for his
bill. It was impossible to remonstrate with him
until we were both outside in the street.
“I'm coming with you," said I, running my arm
through his.
"Nonsense, Bunny !"
“Why is it nonsense? I know every inch of the
ground, and since the house has changed hands I
have no compunction. Besides, 'I have been
there' in the other sense as well: once a thief, you
know! In for a penny, in for a pound !”
It was ever my mood when the blood vas up.


Out of Paradise
But my old friend failed to appreciate the char-
acteristic as he usually did. We crossed Regent
Street in silence. I had to catch his sleeve to keep
a hand in his inhospitable arm.
“I really think you had better stay away,” said
Raffles as we reached the other curb. “I've no
use for you this time.”
“Yet I thought I had been so useful up to
now ?"
“That may be, Bunny, but I tell you frankly,
I don't want you to-night.”
“Yet I know the ground and you don't! I
tell you what,” said I: "I'll come just to show
you the ropes, and I won't take a pennyweight of
the swag."
Such was the teasing fashion in which he in-
variably prevailed upon me; it was delightful to
note how it caused him to yield in his turn. But
Raffles had the grace to give in with a laugh,
whereas I too often lost my temper with my
point.
“You little rabbit !” he chuckled. “You shall
have your share, whether you come or not; but,
seriously, don't you think you might remember
the girl?"
"What's the use?” I groaned. “You agree
there is nothing for it but to give her up. I am


A Thief in the Night
ran
glad to say that for myself before I asked you,
and wrote to tell her so on Sunday. Now it's
Wednesday, and she hasn't answered by line or
sign. It's waiting for one word from her that's
driving me mad.”
"Perhaps you wrote to Palace Gardens ?”
“No, I sent it to the country. There's been time
for an answer, wherever she may be.”
We had reached the Albany, and halted with
one accord at the Piccadilly portico, red cigar to
red cigar.
"You wouldn't like to go and see if the an-
swer's in your rooms ?” he asked.
"No. What's the good? Where's the point
in giving her up if I'm going to straighten out
when it's too late? It is too late, I have given
her up, and I am coming with you!"
The hand that bowled the most puzzling ball
in England (once it found its length) descended
on my shoulder with surprising promptitude.
“Very well, Bunny! That's finished; but your
blood be on your own pate if evil comes of it.
Meanwhile we can't do better than turn in here
till you have finished your cigar as it deserves,
and topped up with such a cup of tea as you must
learn to like if you hope to get on in your new
profession. And when the hours are small
10


Out of Paradise
enough, Bunny, my boy, I don't mind admitting
I shall be very glad to have you with me."
I have a vivid memory of the interim in his
rooms. I think it must have been the first and
last of its kind that I was called upon to sustain
with so much knowledge of what lay before me.
I passed the time with one restless eye upon the
clock, and the other on the Tantalus which Raffles
ruthlessly declined to unlock. He admitted that it
was like waiting with one's pads on; and in my
slender experience of the game of which he was a
world's master, that was an ordeal not to be en-
dured without a general quaking of the inner man.
I was, on the other hand, all right when I got to
the metaphorical wicket; and half the surprises
that Raffles sprung on me were doubtless due to
his early recognition of the fact.
On this occasion I fell swiftly and hopelessly
out of love with the prospect I had so gratui-
tously embraced. It was not only my repugnance
to enter that house in that way, which grew upon
my better judgment as the artificial enthusiasm
of the evening evaporated from my veins. Strong
as that repugnance became, I had an even
stronger feeling that we were embarking on an
important enterprise far too much upon the spur
of the moment. The latter qualm I had the
II


A Thief in the Night
nun
temerity to confess to Raffles; nor have I often
loved him more than when he freely admitted it
to be the most natural feeling in the world. He
assured me, however, that he had had my Lady
Lochmaben and her jewels in his mind for several
months; he had sat behind them at first nights;
and long ago determined what to take or to reject;
in fine, he had only been waiting for those topo-
graphical details which it had been my chance
privilege to supply. I now learned that he had
numerous houses in a similar state upon his list;
something or other was wanting in each case in
order to complete his plans. In that of the Bond
Street jeweller it was a trusty accomplice; in the
present instance, a more intimate knowledge of
the house. And lastly, this was a Wednesday
night, when the tired legislator gets early to
his bed.
How I wish I could make the whole world see
and hear him, and smell the smoke of his beloved
Sullivan, as he took me into these, the secrets of
his infamous trade! Neither look nor language
would betray the infamy. As a mere talker, I
shall never listen to the like of Raffles on this side
of the sod; and his talk was seldom garnished by
an oath, never in my remembrance by the unclean
word. Then he looked like a man who had
12


Out of Paradise
site belonged to me. I thought Raffles had stayed
behind, for I never heard him at my heels, yet
there he was when I turned round at the gate.
“I must teach you the step," he whispered,
shaking his head. “You shouldn't use your heel
at all. Here's a grass border for you: walk it
as you would the plank! Gravel makes a noise,
and flower-beds tell a tale. Wait-I must carry
you across this."
It was the sweep of the drive, and in the dim
light from above the door, the soft gravel,
ploughed into ridges by the night's wheels, threat-
ened an alarm at every step. Yet Raffles, with
me in his arms, crossed the zone of peril softly as
the pard.
"Shoes in your pocket-that's the beauty of
pumps !” he whispered on the step; his light
bunch tinkled faintly; a couple of keys he stooped
and tried, with the touch of a humane dentist;
the third let us into the porch. And as we stood
together on the mat, as he was gradually closing
the door, a clock within chimed a half-hour in
fashion so thrillingly familiar to me that I caught
Raffles by the arm. My half-hours of happiness
had flown to just such chimes! I looked wildly
about me in the dim light. Hat-stand and oak
settee belonged equally to my past. And Raffles
15


A Thief in the Night
was S
ce as
was smiling in my face as he held the door wide
for my escape.
"You told me a lie!" I gasped in whispers.
"I did nothing of the sort," he replied. “The
furniture's the furniture of Hector Carruthers,
but the house is the house of Lord Lochmaben.
Look here!”
He had stooped, and was smoothing out the
discarded envelope of a telegram. “Lord Loch-
maben," I read in pencil by the dim light; and
the case was plain to me on the spot. My friends
had let their house, furnished, as anybody but
Raffles would have explained to me in the be-.
ginning
"All right," I said. "Shut the door."
And he not only shut it without a sound, but
drew a bolt that might have been sheathed in
rubber.
In another minute we were at work upon the
study-door, I with the tiny lantern and the bottle
of rock-oil, he with the brace and the largest bit.
The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It
was placed high up in the door, feet above the
handle, and the chain of holes with which Raffles
had soon surrounded it were bored on a level with
his eyes. Yet the clock in the hall chimed again,
and two ringing strokes resounded through the
16


Out of Paradise
silent house before we gained admittance to the
room.
Raffle's next care was to muffle the bell on the
shuttered window (with a silk handkerchief from
the hat-stand) and to prepare an emergency exit
by opening first the shutters and then the window
itself. Luckily it was a still night, and very little
wind came in to embarrass us. He then began
operations on the safe, revealed by me behind its
folding screen of books, while I stood sentry on
the threshold. I may have stood there for a
dozen minutes, listening to the loud hall clock and
to the gentle dentistry of Raffles in the mouth of
the safe behind me, when a third sound thrilled
my every nerve. It was the equally cautious open-
ing of a door in the gallery overhead.
I moistened my lips to whisper a word of warn-
ing to Raffles. But his ears had been as quick as
mine, and something longer. His lantern dark-
ened as I turned my head; next moment I felt his
breath upon the back of my neck. It was now too
late even for a whisper, and quite out of the ques-
tion to close the mutilated door. There we could
only stand, I on the threshold, Raffles at my elbow,
while one carrying a candle crept down the stairs.
The study-door was at right angles to the lowest
flight, and just to the right of one alighting in the
17


A Thief in the Night
wa
---
--
hall. It was thus impossible for us to see who it
was until the person was close abreast of us; but
by the rustle of the gown we knew that it was one
of the ladies, and dressed just as she had come
from theatre or ball. Insensibly I drew back as
the candle swam into our field of vision: it had
not traversed many inches when a hand was
clapped firmly but silently across my mouth.
I could forgive Raffles for that, at any rate!
In another breath I should have cried aloud: for
the girl with the candle, the girl in her ball-dress,
at dead of night, the girl with the letter for the
post, was the last girl on God's wide earth whom
I should have chosen thus to encounter—a mid-
night intruder in the very house where I had been
reluctantly received on her account !
I forgot Raffles. I forgot the new and unfor-
givable grudge I had against him now. I forgot
his very hand across my mouth, even before he
paid me the compliment of removing it. There
was the only girl in all the world: I had
eyes and brains for no one and for nothing else.
She had neither seen nor heard us, had looked
neither to the right hand nor the left. But a small
oak table stood on the opposite side of the hall;
it was to this table that she went. On it was one
of those boxes in which one puts one's letters for
--
18


Out of Paradise
the post; and she stooped to read by her candle
the times at which this box was cleared.
The loud clock ticked and ticked. She was
standing at her full height now, her candle on the
table, her letter in both hands, and in her down-
cast face a sweet and pitiful perplexity that drew
the tears to my eyes. Through a film I saw her
open the envelope so lately sealed and read her
letter once more, as though she would have altered
it a little at the last. It was too late for that; but
of a sudden she plucked a rose from her bosom,
and was pressing it in with her letter when I
groaned aloud.
How could I help it? The letter was for me:
of that I was as sure as though I had been looking
over her shoulder. She was as true as tempered
steel; there were not two of us to whom she wrote
and sent roses at dead of night. It was her one
chance of writing to me. None would know that
she had written. And she cared enough to soften
the reproaches I had richly earned, with a red rose
warm from her own warm heart. And there, and
there was I, a common thief who had broken in to
steal! Yet I was unaware that I had uttered a
sound until she looked up, startled, and the hands
behind me pinned me where I stood.
I think she must have seen us, even in the dim
19


A Thief in the Night
light of the solitary candle. Yet not a sound
escaped her as she peered courageously in our
direction; neither did one of us move; but the hall
clock went on and on, every tick like the beat of
a drum to bring the house about our ears, until a
minute must have passed as in some breathless
dream. And then came the awakening—with
such a kocking and a ringing at the front door
as brought all three of us to our senses on the
spot.
"The son of the house !" whispered Raffles in
my ear, as he dragged me back to the window he
had left open for our escape. But as he leaped
out first a sharp cry stopped me at the sill. “Get
back! Get back! We're trapped!” he cried; and
in the single second that I stood there, I saw him
fell one officer to the ground, and dart across the
lawn with another at his heels. A third came
running up to the window. What could I do but
double back into the house? And there in the hall
I met my lost love face to face.
Till that moment she had not recognized me.
I ran to catch her as she all but fell. And my
touch repelled her into life, so that she shook me
off, and stood gasping: “You, of all men! You,
of all men !" until I could bear it no more, but
broke again for the study-window. "Not that
20


Out of Paradise
way—not that way!" she cried in an agony at
that. Her hands were upon me now. "In there,
in there,” she whispered, pointing and pulling me
to a mere cupboard under the stairs, where hats
and coats were hung; and it was she who shut the
door on me with a sob.
Doors were already opening overhead, voices
calling, voices answering, the alarm running like
wildfire from room to room. Soft feet pattered
in the gallery and down the stairs about my very
ears. I do not know what made me put on my
own shoes as I heard them, but I think that I was
ready and even longing to walk out and give
myself up. I need not say what and who it was
that alone restrained me. I heard her name. I
heard them crying to her as though she had
fainted. I recognized the detested voice of my
bête noir, Alick Carruthers, thick as might be ex-
pected of the dissipated dog, yet daring to stutter
out her name. And then I heard, without catch-
ing, her low reply; it was in answer to the some-
what stern questioning of quite another voice; and
from what followed I knew that she had never
fainted at all.
"Upstairs, miss, did he? Are you sure?"
I did not hear her answer. I conceive her as
simply pointing up the stairs. In any case, about
21


A Thief in the Night
my very ears once more, there now followed such
a patter and tramp of bare and booted feet as
renewed in me a base fear for my own skin. But
voices and feet passed over my head, went up
and up, higher and higher; and I was wondering
whether or not to make a dash for it, when one
light pair came running down again, and in very
despair I marched out to meet my preserver, look-
ing as little as I could like the abject thing I felt.
"Be quick !" she cried in a harsh whisper, and
pointed peremptorily to the porch.
But I stood stubbornly before her, my heart
hardened by her hardness, and perversely indif-
ferent to all else. And as I stood I saw the letter
she had written, in the hand with which she
pointed, crushed into a ball.
"Quickly!” She stamped her foot. “Quickly
-if you ever cared!”
This in a whisper, without bitterness, without
contempt, but with a sudden wild entreaty that
breathed upon the dying embers of my poor man-
hood. I drew myself together for the last time
in her sight. I turned, and left her as she wished
—for her sake, not for mine. And as I went I
heard her tearing her letter into little pieces, and
the little pieces falling on the floor.
Then I remembered Raffles, and could have
22


Out of Paradise
killed him for what he had done. Doubtless by
this time he was safe and snug in the Albany:
what did my fate matter to him? Never mind;
this should be the end between him and me as
well; it was the end of everything, this dark night's
work! I would go and tell him so. I would jump
into a cab and drive there and then to his ac-
cursed rooms. But first I must escape from the
trap in which he had been so ready to leave me.
And on the very steps I drew back in despair.
They were searching the shrubberies between the
drive and the road; a policeman's lantern kept
flashing in and out among the laurels, while a
young man in evening-clothes directed him from
the gravel sweep. It was this young man whom
I must dodge, but at my first step in the gravel he
wheeled round, and it was Raffles himself.
"Hulloa !” he cried. “So you've come up to
join the dance as well! Had a look inside, have
you? You'll be better employed in helping to
draw the cover in front here. It's all right, officer
-only another gentleman from the Empress
Rooms."
And we made a brave show of assisting in the
futile search, until the arrival of more police, and
a broad hint from an irritable sergeant, gave us
an excellent excuse for going off arm-in-arm. But
23


A Thief in the Night
it was Raffles who had thrust his arm through
mine. I shook him off as we left the scene of
shame behind.
“My dear Bunny !” he exclaimed. “Do you
know what brought me back ?"
I answered savagely that I neither knew nor
cared.
"I had the very devil of a squeak for it,” he
went on. “I did the hurdles over two or three
garden-walls, but so did the flyer who was on my
tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and
down to High Street like any lamplighter. If he
had only had the breath to sing out it would have
been all up with me then; as it was I pulled off my
coat the moment I was round the corner, and took
a ticket for it at the Empress Rooms."
“I suppose you had one for the dance that was
going on,” I growled. Nor would it have been
a coincidence for Raffles to have had a ticket for
that or any other entertainment of the London
season.
"I never asked what the dance was," he re-
turned. "I merely took the opportunity of revis-
ing my toilet, and getting rid of that rather dis-
tinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now.
They're not too particular at such stages of such
proceedings, but I've no doubt I should have seen
24


Out of Paradise
someone I knew if I had gone right in. I might
even have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy
about you, Bunny.”
"It was like you to come back to help me out,"
said I. "But to lie to me, and to inveigle me with
your lies into that house of all houses—that was
not like you, Raffles—and I never shall forgive
it or you!"
Raffles took my arm again. We were near
the High Street gates of Palace Gardens, and I
was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.
"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much in-
veigling about it,” said he. “I did my level best
to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen
to me."
“If you had told me the truth I should have
listened fast enough,” I retorted. “But what's
the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what
happened to me.”
“I cared so much that I came back to see.”
"You might have spared yourself the trouble!
The wrong had been done. Raffles—Raffles-
don't you know who she was ?”
It was my hand that gripped his arm once
more.
25


A Thief in the Night
“I guessed,” he answered, gravely enough even
for me.
“It was she who saved me, not you," I said.
"And that is the bitterest part of all!"
Yet I told him that part with a strange sad.
pride in her whom I had lost—through him-
forever. As I ended we turned into High Street;
in the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the
band reached us from the Empress Rooms; and
I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles turned
that way.
“Bunny,” said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry.
Sorrow adds insult in a case like this—if ever
there was or will be such another! Only believe
me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not
the smallest shadow of a suspicion that she was in
the house."
And in my heart of hearts I did believe him;
but I could not bring myself to say the words.
"You told me yourself that you had written
to her in the country," he pursued.
"And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave
of bitterness: "that letter she had written at dead
of night, and stolen down to post, it was the one
I have been waiting for all these days! I should
have got it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it,
never hear from her again, nor have another
26


Out of Paradise
chance in this world or in the next. I don't say
it was all your fault. You no more knew that she
was there than I did. But you told me a deliber-
ate lie about her people, and that I never shall
forgive."
I spoke as vehemently as I could under my
breath. The hansom was waiting at the curb.
"I can say no more than I have said," returned
Raffles with a shrug. "Lie or no lie, I didn't tell
it to bring you with me, but to get you to give me
certain information without feeling a beast about
it. But, as a matter of fact, it was no lie about
old Hector Carruthers and Lord Lochmaben, and
anybody but you would have guessed the truth.”
“What is the truth ?”
"I as good as told you, Bunny, again and
again."
“Then tell me now."
"If you read your paper there would be no
need; but if you want to know, old Carruthers
headed the list of the Birthday Honors, and Lord
Lochmaben is the title of his choice."
And this miserable quibble was not a lie! My
lip curled, I turned my back without a word, and
drove home to my Mount Street flat in a new
fury of savage scorn. Not a lie, indeed! It was
the one that is half a truth, the meanest lie of all,
27


A Thief in the Night
and the very last to which I could have dreamt
that Raffles would stoop. So far there had been
a degree of honor between us, if only of the kind
understood to obtain between thief and thief.
Now all that was at an end. Raffles had cheated
me. Raffles had completed the ruin of my life.
I was done with Raffles, as she who shall not be
named was done with me.
And yet, even while. I blamed him most bit-
terly, and utterly abominated his deceitful deed,
I could not but admit in my heart that the result
was out of all proportion to the intent: he had
never dreamt of doing me this injury, or indeed
any injury at all. Intrinsically the deceit had been
quite venial, the reason for it obviously the reason
that Raffles had given me. It was quite true that
he had spoken of this Lochmaben peerage as a new
creation, and of the heir to it in a fashion only
applicable to Alick Carruthers. He had given
me hints, which I had been too dense to take, and
he had certainly made more than one attempt to
deter me from accompanying him on this fatal
emprise; had he been more explicit, I might have
made it my business to deter him. I could not
say in my heart that Raffles had failed to satisfy
such honor as I might reasonably expect to sub-
sist between us. Yet it seems to me to require a
superhuman sanity always and unerringly to sepa-
28


Out of Paradise
rate cause from effect, achievement from intent.
And I, for one, was never quite able to do so in
this case.
I could not be accused of neglecting my news-
paper during the next few wretched days. I read
every word that I could find about the attempted
jewel-robbery in Palace Gardens, and the reports
afforded me my sole comfort. In the first place,
it was only an attempted robbery; nothing had
been taken, after all. And then—and then-the
one member of the household who had come near-
est to a personal encounter with either of us was
unable to furnish any description of the man-
had even expressed a doubt as to the likelihood
of identification in the event of an arrest!
I will not say with what mingled feelings I read
and dwelt on that announcement. It kept a cer-
tain faint glow alive within me until the morning
brought me back the only presents I had ever
made her. They were books; jewellery had been
tabooed by the authorities. And the books came
back without a word, though the parcel was di-
rected in her hand.
I had made up my mind not to go near Raffles
again, but in my heart I already regretted my
resolve. I had forfeited love, I had sacrificed
honor, and now I must deliberately alienate myself
from the one being whose society might yet be
29


A Thief in the Night
some recompense for all that I had lost. The
situation was aggravated by the state of my ex-
chequer. I expected an ultimatum from my banker
by every post. Yet this influence was nothing to
the other. It was Raffles I loved. It was not the
dark life we led together, still less its base rewards;
it was the man himself, his gayety, his humor, his
dazzling audacity, his incomparable courage and
resource. And a very horror of turning to him
again in mere need of greed set the seal on my
first angry resolution. But the anger was soon
gone out of me, and when at length Rafles bridged
the gap by coming to me, I rose to greet him
almost with a shout.
He came as though nothing had happened; and,
indeed, not very many days had passed, though
they might have been months to me. Yet I fan-
cied the gaze that watched me through our smoke
a trifle less sunny than it had been before. And
it was a relief to me when he came with few pre-
liminaries to the inevitable point.
“Did you ever hear from her, Bunny?" he
asked.
“In a way," I answered. “We won't talk about
it, if you don't mind, Raffles.”
“That sort of way!" he exclaimed. He seemed
both surprised and disappointed.
30


Out of Paradise
“Yes,” I said, "that sort of way. It's finished.
What did you expect?”!
“I don't know,” said Raffles. “I only thought
that the girl who went so far to get a fellow out
of a tight place might go a little farther to keep
him from getting into another."
"I don't see why she should," said I, honestly
enough, yet with the irritation of a less just feeling
deep down in my inmost consciousness.
“Yet you did hear from her?” he persisted.
“She sent me back my poor presents, without a
word,” I said, "if you call that hearing."
I could not bring myself to own to Raffles that
I had given her only books. He asked if I was
sure that she had sent them back herself; and that
was his last question. My answer was enough for
him. And to this day I cannot say whether it was
more in relief than in regret that he laid a hand
upon my shoulder.
"So you are out of Paradise after all!” said
Raffles. "I was not sure, or I should have come
round before. Well, Bunny, if they don't want
you there, there's a little Inferno in the Albany
where you will be as welcome as ever!"
And still, with all the magic mischief of his
smile, there was that touch of sadness which I was
yet to read aright.


The Chest of Silver
L IKE all the tribe of which I held him head,
U Raffles professed the liveliest disdain for
unwieldy plunder of any description; it might be
old Sheffield, or it might be solid silver or gold,
but if the thing was not to be concealed about the
person, he would none whatever of it. Unlike
the rest of us, however, in this as in all else, Raffles
would not infrequently allow the acquisitive spirit
of the mere collector to silence the dictates of pro-
fessional prudence. The old oak chests, and even
the mahogany wine-cooler, for which he had
doubtless paid like an honest citizen, were thus
immovable with pieces of crested plate, which he
had neither the temerity to use nor the hardihood
to melt or sell. He could but gloat over them
behind locked doors, as I used to tell him, and at
last one afternoon I caught him at it. It was in
the year after that of my novitiate, a halcyon
period at the Albany, when Raffles left no crib
uncracked, and I played second-murderer every
time. I had called in response to a telegram in
which he stated that he was going out of town,
32


The Chest of Silver
Same
SUT.
and must say good-by to me before he went. And
I could only think that he was inspired by the
same impulse toward the bronzed salvers and the
tarnished teapots with which I found him sur-
rounded, until my eyes lit upon the enormous sil-
ver-chest into which he was fitting them one by
one.
"Allow me, Bunny! I shall take the liberty of
locking both doors behind you and putting the key
in my pocket,” said Raffles, when he had let me in.
"Not that I mean to take you prisoner, my dear
fellow; but there are those of us who can turn
keys from the outside, though it was never an
accomplishment of mine.”
"Not Crawshay again?" I cried, standing still
in my hat.
Raffles regarded me with that tantalizing smile
of his which might mean nothing, yet which often
meant so much; and in a flash I was convinced that
our most jealous enemy and dangerous rival, the
doyen of an older school, had paid him yet an-
other visit.
"That remains to be seen,” was the measured
reply; "and I for one have not set naked eye on
the fellow since I saw him off through that window
and left myself for dead on this very spot. In
fact, I imagined him comfortably back in jail.”
33


A Thief in the Night
"Not old Crawshay !” said I. "He's far too
good a man to be taken twice. I should call him
the very prince of professional cracksmen.”
“Should you ?” said Raffles coldly, with as cold
an eye looking into mine. “Then you had better
prepare to repel princes when I'm gone."
"But gone where?” I asked, finding a corner
for my hat and coat, and helping myself to the
comforts of the venerable dresser which was one
of our friend's greatest treasures. “Where is it
you are off to, and why are you taking this herd of
white elephants with you ?”
Raffles bestowed the cachet of his smile on my
description of his motley plate. He joined me in
one of his favorite cigarettes, only shaking a supe-
rior head at his own decanter.
"One question at a time, Bunny,” said he. "In
the first place, I am going to have these rooms
freshened up with a potful of paint, the electric
light, and the telephone you've been at me about
so long."
"Good!" I cried. “Then we shall be able to
talk to each other day and night!".
"And get overheard and run in for our pains ?
I shall wait till you are run in, I think,” said Raf-
fles cruelly. “But the rest's a necessity: not that I
love new paint or am pining for electric light, but
34


The Chest of Silver
for reasons which I will just breathe in your pri-
yate ear, Bunny. You must not try to take them
too seriously; but the fact is, there is just the least
bit of a twitter against me in this rookery of an
Albany. It must have been started by that tame
old bird, Policeman Mackenzie; it isn't very bad
as yet, but it needn't be that to reach my ears.
Well, it was open to me either to clear out alto-
gether, and so confirm whatever happened to be
in the air, or to go off for a time, under some
arrangement which would give the authorities
ample excuse for overhauling every inch of my
rooms. Which would you have done, Bunny ?"
“Cleared out, while I could !” said I devoutly.
“So I should have thought," rejoined Raffles.
“Yet you see the merit of my plan. I shall leave
every mortal thing unlocked.”
"Except that,” said I, kicking the huge oak case
with the iron bands and clamps, and the baize
lining fast disappearing under heavy packages
bearing the shapes of urns and candelabra.
"That,” replied Raffles, “is neither to go with
me nor to remain here."
“Then what do you propose to do with it?"
"You have your banking account, and your
banker," he went on. This was perfectly true,
though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one
35


A Thief in the Night
open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in
moments of emergency.
“Well?"
"Well, pay in this bundle of notes this after-
noon, and say you have had a great week at Liver-
pool and Lincoln; then ask them if they can do
with your silver while you run over to Paris for a
merry Easter. I should tell them it's rather heavy
-a lot of old family stuff that you've a good mind
to leave with them till you marry and settle down."
I winced at this, but consented to the rest after
a moment's consideration. After all, and for more
reasons that I need enumerate, it was a plausible
tale enough. And Raffles had no banker; it was
quite impossible for him to explain, across any
single counter, the large sums of hard cash which
did sometimes fall into his hands; and it might
well be that he had nursed my small account in
view of the very quandary which had now arisen.
On all grounds, it was impossible for me to refuse
him, and I am still glad to remember that my as-
sent was given, on the whole, ungrudgingly.
"But when will the chest be ready for me?"
I merely asked, as I stuffed the notes into my
cigarette case. “And how are we to get it out of
this, in banking hours, without attracting any
amount of attention at this end?”
36


The Chest of Silver
u
Raffles gave me an approving nod.
"I'm glad to see you spot the crux so quickly,
Bunny. I have thought of your taking it round
to your place first, under cloud of night; but we
are bound to be seen even so, and on the whole it
would look far less suspicious in broad daylight.
It will take you some twelve or fifteen minutes to
drive to your bank in a growler, so if you are here
with one at a quarter to ten to-morrow morning,
that will exactly meet the case. But you must
have a hansom this minute if you mean to prepare
the way with those notes this afternoon!"
It was only too like the Raffles of those days to
dismiss a subject and myself in the same breath,
with a sudden nod, and a brief grasp of the hand
he was already holding out for mine. I had a
great mind to take another of his cigarettes instead,
for there were one or two points on which he had
carefully omitted to enlighten me. Thus, I had
still to learn the bare direction of his journey; and
it was all that I could do to drag it from him as I.
stood buttoning my coat and gloves.,
“Scotland," he vouchsafed at last.
“At Easter," I remarked. .
"To learn the language," he explained. "I
have no tongue but my own, you see, but I try to
make up for it by cultivating every shade of that.


The Chest of Silver
his chest next morning. Then I repaired to our
club, hoping he would drop in, and that we might
dine together after all. In that I was disap-
pointed. It was nothing, however, to the dis-
appointment awaiting me at the Albany, when I
arrived in my four-wheeler at the appointed hour
next morning.
“Mr. Raffles 'as gawn, sir," said the porter,
with a note of reproach in his confidential under-
tone. The man was a favorite with Raffles, who
used him and tipped him with consummate tact,
and he knew me only less well.
“Gone!" I echoed aghast. “Where on earth to ?!!
“Scotland, sir."
“Already?”
"By the eleven-fifty lawst night.”
"Last night! I thought he meant eleven-fifty
this morning!"
"He knew you did, sir, when you never came,
and he told me to tell you there was no such train."
I could have rent my garments in mortification
and annoyance with myself and Raffles. It was as
much his fault as mine. But for his indecent
haste in getting rid of me, his characteristic abrupt-
ness at the end, there would have been no misun-
derstanding or mistake.
"Any other message?” I inquired morosely.
vasi
39


A Thief in the Night
"Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as
you was goin' to take chawge of it time he's away,
and I've a friend ready to lend a 'and in getting
it on the cab. It's a rare 'eavy 'un, but Mr. Raf-
files an' me could lift it all right between us, so I
dessay me an' my friend can.”
For my own part, I must confess that its weight
concerned me less than the vast size of that infernal
chest, as I drove with it past club and park at ten
o'clock in the morning. Sit as far back as I might
in the four-wheeler, I could conceal neither myself
nor my connection with the huge iron-clamped case
upon the roof: in my heated imagination its wood
was glass through which all the world could see
the guilty contents. Once an officious constable
held up the traffic at our approach, and for a
moment I put a blood-curdling construction upon
the simple ceremony. Low boys shouted after us
—or if it was not after us, I thought it was—and
that their cry was “Stop thief !” Enough said of
one of the most unpleasant cab-drives I ever had in
my life. Horresco referens.
At the bank, however, thanks to the foresight
and liberality of Raffles, all was smooth water.
I paid my cabman handsomely, gave a florin to
the stout fellow in livery whom he helped with
the chest, and could have pressed gold upon the
40


The Chest of Silver
genial clerk who laughed like a gentleman at my
jokes about the Liverpool winners and the latest
betting on the Family Plate. I was only discon-
certed when he informed me that the bank gave
no receipts for deposits of this nature. I am now
aware that few London banks do. But it is pleas-
ing to believe that at the time I looked-what I
felt—as though all I valued upon earth were in
jeopardy.
I should have got through the rest of that day
happily enough, such was the load off my mind and
hands, but for an extraordinary and most discon-
certing note received late at night from Raffles
himself. He was a man who telegraphed freely,
but seldom wrote a letter. Sometimes, however,
he sent a scribbled line by special messenger; and
overnight, evidently in the train, he had scribbled
this one to post in the small hours at Crewe:
"'Ware Prince of Professors! He was in the offing
when I left. If slightest cause for uneasiness about bank,
withdraw at once and keep in own rooms like good chap.
“A. J. R.
“P. S.-Other reasons, as you shall hear."
There was a nice nightcap for a puzzled head!
I had made rather an evening of it, what with
increase of funds and decrease of anxiety, but this
41


A Thief in the Night
cryptic admonition spoiled the remainder of my
night. It had arrived by a late post, and I only
wished that I had left it all night in my letter-box.
What exactly did it mean? And what exactly
must I do? These were questions that confronted
me with fresh force in the morning.
The news of Crawshay did not surprise me. I
was quite sure that Raffles had been given good
reason to bear him in mind before his journey,
even if he had not again beheld the ruffian in the
flesh. That ruffian and that journey might be
more intimately connected than I had yet supposed.
Raffles never told me all. Yet the solid fact held
good-held better than ever-that I had seen his
plunder safely planted in my bank. Crawshay
himself could not follow it there. I was certain
he had not followed my cab: in the acute self-
consciousness induced by that abominable drive, I
should have known it in my bones if he had. I
thought of the porter's friend who had helped me
with the chest. No, I remember him as well as
I remembered Crawshay; they were quite different
types.
To remove that vile box from the bank, on top
of another cab, with no stronger pretext and no
further instructions, was not to be thought of for
a moment. Yet I did think of it, for hours. I
42


The Chest of Silver
was always anxious to do my part by Raffles; he
had done more than his by me, not once or twice,
to-day or yesterday, but again and again from the
very first. I need not state the obvious reasons
I had for fighting shy of the personal custody of
his accursed chest. Yet he had run worse risks
for me, and I wanted him to learn that he, too,
could depend on a devotion not unworthy of his
own.
In my dilemma I did what I have often done
when at a loss for light and leading. I took hardly
any lunch, but went to Northumberland Avenue
and had a Turkish bath instead. I know nothing
so cleansing to mind as well as body, nothing bet-
ter calculated to put the finest possible edge on
such judgment as one may happen to possess. Even
Raffles, without an ounce to lose or a nerve to
soothe, used to own a sensuous appreciation of the
peace of mind and person to be gained in this
fashion when all others failed. For me, the fun
began before the boots were off one's feet; the
muffled footfalls, the thin sound of the fountain,
even the spent swathed forms upon the couches,
and the whole clean, warm, idle atmosphere, were
so much unction to my simpler soul. The half-
hour in the hot-rooms I used to count but a strenu-
ous step to a divine lassitude of limb and accom-
43


A Thief in the Night
panying exaltation of intellect. And yet-and
yet-it was in the hottest room of all, in a tempera-
'ture of 270° Fahrenheit, that the bolt fell from
the Pall Mall Gazette which I had bought outside
the bath.
I was turning over the hot, crisp pages, and
positively revelling in my fiery furnace, when the
following headlines and leaded paragraphs leapt
to my eye with the force of a veritable blow:
BANK ROBBERS IN THE WEST END-
DARING AND MYSTERIOUS CRIME
An audacious burglary and dastardly assault have been
committed on the premises of the City and Suburban Bank
in Sloane Street, W. From the details so far to hand,
the robbery appears to have been deliberately planned and
adroitly executed in the early hours of this morning.
A night watchman named Fawcett states that between
one and two o'clock he heard a slight noise in the neigh-
borhood of the lower strong-room, used as a repository
for the plate and other possessions of various customers
of the bank. Going down to investigate, he was instantly
attacked by a powerful ruffian, who succeeded in felling
him to the ground before an alarm could be raised.
Fawcett is unable to furnish any description of his as-
sailant or assailants, but is of opinion that more than one
were engaged in the commission of the crime. When
the unfortunate man recovered consciousness, no trace of
the thieves remained, with the exception of a single candle
44


The Chest of Silver
which had been left burning on the flags of the corridor.
The strong-room, however, had been opened, and it is
feared the raid on the chests of plate and other valuables
may prove to have been only too successful, in view of
the Easter exodus, which the thieves had evidently taken
into account. The ordinary banking chambers were not
even visited; entry and exit are believed to have been
effected through the coal cellar, which is also situated in
the basement. Up to the present the police have effected
no arrest.
I sat practically paralyzed by this appalling
news; and I swear that, even in that incredible
temperature, it was a cold perspiration in which I
sweltered from head to heel. Crawshay, of
course! Crawshay once more upon the track of
Raffles and his ill-gotten gains! And once more
I blamed Raffles himself: his warning had come
too late: he should have wired to me at once not
to take the box to the bank at all. He was a mad-
man ever to have invested in so obvious and obtru-
sive a receptacle for treasure. It would serve Raf-
fles right if that and no other was the box which
had been broken into by the thieves.
Yet, when I considered the character of his
treasure, I fairly shuddered in my sweat. It was
a hoard of criminal relics. Suppose his chest had
indeed been rifled, and emptied of every silver
thing but one; that one remaining piece of silver,
45


A Thief in the Night
seen of men, was quite enough to cast Raffles into
the outer darkness of penal servitude! And Craw-
shay was capable of it-of perceiving the insidious
revenge-of taking it without compunction or
remorse.
There was only one course for me. I must fol.
low my instructions to the letter and recover the
chest at all hazards, or be taken myself in the
attempt. If only Raffles had left me some address,
to which I could have wired some word of warn-
ing! But it was no use thinking of that; for the
rest there was time enough up to four o'clock, and
as yet it was not three. I determined to go through
with my bath and make the most of it. Might it
not be my last for years ?
But I was past enjoying even a Turkish bath.
I had not the patience for a proper shampoo, or
sufficient spirit for the plunge. I weighed myself
automatically, for that was a matter near my
heart; but I forgot to give my man his sixpence
until the reproachful intonation of his adieu re-
called me to myself. And my couch in the cooling
gallery-my favorite couch, in my favorite corner,
which I had secured with gusto on coming init
was a bed of thorns, with hideous visions of a
plank-bed to follow!
I ought to be able to add that I heard the burg-
46


The Chest of Silver
lary discussed on adjacent couches before I left.
I certainly listened for it, and was rather disap-
pointed more than once when I had held my
breath in vain. But this is the unvarnished record
of an odious hour, and it passed without further
aggravation from without; only, as I drove to
Sloane Street, the news was on all the posters, and
on one I read of "a clew” which spelt for me a
doom I was grimly resolved to share.
Already there was something in the nature of a
"run" upon the Sloane Street branch of the City
and Suburban. A cab drove away with a chest of
reasonable dimensions as mine drove up, while in
the bank itself a lady was making a painful scene.
As for the genial clerk who had roared at my
jokes the day before, he was mercifully in no mood
for any more, but, on the contrary, quite rude to
me at sight.
"I've been expecting you all the afternoon,"
said he. “You needn't look so pale.”
"Is it safe?"
"That Noah's Ark of yours? Yes, so I hear;
they'd just got to it when they were interrupted,
and they never went back again."
“Then it wasn't even opened?"
"Only just begun on, I believe."
“Thank God!"


A Thief in the Night
"You may; we don't,” growled the clerk. “The
manager says he believes your chest was at the
bottom of it all.”
“How could it be?" I asked uneasily.
"By being seen on the cab a mile off, and fol-
lowed,” said the clerk.
“Does the manager want to see me?" I asked
boldly.
“Not unless you want to see him," was the blunt
reply. "He's been at it with others all the after-
noon, and they haven't all got off as cheap as you."
"Then my silver shall not embarrass you any
longer," said I grandly. “I meant to leave it if it
was all right, but after all you have said I certainly
shall not. Let your man or men bring up the chest
at once. I dare say they also have been ‘at it with
others all the afternoon,' but I shall make this
worth their while."
I did not mind driving through the streets with
the thing this time. My present relief was too
overwhelming as yet to admit of pangs and fears
for the immediate future. No summer sun had
ever shone more brightly than that rather watery
one of early April. There was a green-and-gold
dust of buds and shoots on the trees as we passed
the park. I felt greater things sprouting in my
heart. Hansoms passed with schoolboys just home
48


The Chest of Silver
for the Easter holidays, four-wheelers outward
bound, with bicycles and perambulators atop; none
that rode in them were half so happy as I, with
the great load on my cab, but the greater one off
my heart.
At Mount Street it just went into the lift; that
was a stroke of luck; and the lift-man and I be-
tween us carried it into my flat. It seemed a
featherweight to me now. I felt a Samson in the
exaltation of that hour. And I will not say what
my first act was when I found myself alone with
my white elephant in the middle of the room;
enough that the siphon was still doing its work
when the glass slipped through my fingers to the
floor.
“Bunny!"
It was Raffles. Yet for a moment I looked
about me quite in vain. He was not at the win-
dow; he was not at the open door. And yet Raf-
fies it had been, or at all events his voice, and that
bubbling over with fun and satisfaction, be his
body where it might. In the end I dropped my
eyes, and there was his living face in the middle of
the lid of the chest, like that of the saint upon its
charger.
But Raffles was alive, Raffles was laughing as
though his vocal cords would snap—there was
was
49


A Thief in the Night
neither tragedy nor illusion in the apparition of
Raffles. A life-size Jack-in-the-box, he had thrust
his head through a lid within the lid, cut by
himself between the two iron bands that ran round
the chest like the straps of a portmanteau. He
must have been busy at it when I found him pre-
tending to pack, if not far into that night, for it
was a very perfect piece of work; and even as I
stared without a word, and he crouched laughing
in my face, an arm came squeezing out, keys in
hand; one was turned in either of the two great
padlocks, the whole lid lifted, and out stepped
Raffles like the conjurer he was.
"So you were the burglar!" I exclaimed at last.
“Well, I am just as glad I didn't know.”
He had wrung my hand already, but at this he
fairly mangled it in his.
"You dear little brick," he cried, "that's the one
thing of all things I longed to hear you say! How
could you have behaved as you've done if you had
known? How could any living man? How could
you have acted, as the polar star of all the stages
could not have acted in your place? Remember
that I have heard a lot, and as good as seen as much
as I've heard. Bunny, I don't know where you
were greatest: at the Albany, here, or at your
se
bank !"


The Chest of Silver
"I don't know where I was most miserable,” I
rejoined, beginning to see the matter in a less per-
fervid light. “I know you don't credit me with
much finesse, but I would undertake to be in the
secret and to do quite as well; the only difference
would be in my own peace of mind, which, of
course, doesn't count.”.
But Raffles wagged away with his most charm-
ing and disarming smile; he was in old clothes,
rather tattered and torn, and more than a little
grimy as to the face and hands, but, on the surface,
wonderfully little the worse for his experience.
And, as I say, his smile was the smile of the Raffles
I loved best.
"You would have done your damnedest, Bunny!
There is no limit to your heroism; but you forget
the human equation in the pluckiest of the plucky.
I couldn't afford to forget it, Bunny; I couldn't
afford to give a point away. Don't talk as though
I hadn't trusted you! I trusted my very life to
your loyal tenacity. What do you suppose would
have happened to me if you had let me rip in that
strong-room? Do you think I would ever have
crept out and given myself up? Yes, I'll have
a peg for once; the beauty of all laws is in the
breaking, even of the kind we make unto oure
selves."
51


A Thief in the Night
I had a Sullivan for him, too; and in another
minute he was spread out on my sofa, stretching his
cramped limbs with infinite gusto, a cigarette be-
tween his fingers, a yellow bumper at hand on the
chest of his triumph and my tribulation.
"Never mind when it occurred to me, Bunny;
as a matter of fact, it was only the other day, when
I had decided to go away for the real reasons I
have already given you. I may have made more
of them to you than I do in my own mind, but at
all events they exist. And I really did want the
telephone and the electric light.”
“But where did you stow the silver before you
went ?”
“Nowhere; it was my luggage-a portmanteau,
cricket-bag, and suit-case full of very little else-
and by the same token I left the lot at Euston, and
one of us must fetch them this evening."
"I can do that,” said I. "But did you really go
all the way to Crewe?"
“Didn't you get my note? I went all the way
to Crewe to post you those few lines, my dear
Bunny! It's no use taking trouble if you don't
take trouble enough; I wanted you to show the
proper set of faces at the bank and elsewhere, and
I know you did. Besides, there was an up-train
four minutes after mine got in. I simply posted
52


The Chest of Silver
my letter in Crewe station, and changed from one
train to the other.”
"At two in the morning!"
“Nearer three, Bunny. It was after seven when
I slung in with the Daily Mail. The milk had
beaten me by a short can. But even so I had two
very good hours before you were due.”
"And to think," I murmured, "how you de-
ceived me there!"
"With your own assistance," said Raffles laugh-
ing. “If you had looked it up you would have
seen there was no such train in the morning, and
I never said there was. But I meant you to be
deceived, Bunny, and I won't say I didn't-it was
all for the sake of the side! Well, when you
carted me away with such laudable despatch, I had
rather an uncomfortable half-hour, but that was
all just then. I had my candle, I had matches, and
lots to read. It was quite nice in that strong-room
until a very unpleasant incident occurred."
“Do tell me, my dear fellow !".
"I must have another Sullivan—thank you
and a match. The unpleasant incident was steps
outside and a key in the lock! I was disporting
myself on the lid of the trunk at the time. I had
barely time to knock out my light and slip down
behind it. Luckily it was only another box of
53


A Thief in the Night
sorts; a jewel-case, to be more precise; you shall
see the contents in a moment. The Easter exodus
has done me even better than I dared to hope."
His words reminded me of the Pall Mall
Gazette, which I had brought in my pocket from
the Turkish bath. I fished it out, all wrinkled and
bloated by the heat of the hottest room, and
handed it to Raffles with my thumb upon the
leaded paragraphs.
"Delightful!" said he when he had read them.
“More thieves than one, and the coal-cellar of all
places as a way in! I certainly tried to give it
that appearance. I left enough candle-grease
there to make those coals burn bravely. But it
looked up into a blind backyard, Bunny, and a
boy of eight couldn't have squeezed through the
trap. Long may that theory keep them happy at
Scotland Yard !"
"But what about the fellow you knocked out?"
I asked. “That was not like you, Raffles."
Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my
sofa, his black hair tumbled on the cushion, his pale
profile as clear and sharp against the light as
though slashed out with the scissors.
"I know it wasn't, Bunny," he said regretfully.
"But things like that, as the poet will tell you, are
really inseparable from victories like mine. It
54



SAN
NUN
Raffles in the strong-room.





The Chest of Silver
had taken me a couple of hours to break out of
that strong-room; I was devoting a third to the
harmless task of simulating the appearance of
having broken in; and it was then I heard the
fellow's stealthy step. Some might have stood
their ground and killed him; more would have
bolted into a worse corner than they were in
already, I left my candle where it was, crept to
meet the poor devil, flattened myself against the
wall, and let him have it as he passed. I ac-
knowledge the foul blow, but here's evidence that
it was mercifully struck. The victim has already
told his tale.”
As he drained his glass, but shook his head
when I wished to replenish it, Raffles showed me
the flask which he had carried in his pocket: it was
still nearly full; and I found that he had otherwise
provisioned himself over the holidays. On either
Easter Day or Bank Holiday, had I failed him,
it had been his intention to make the best escape
he could. But the risk must have been enormous,
and it filled my glowing skin to think that he had
not relied on me in vain.
As for his gleanings from such jewel-cases as
were spending the Easter recess in the strong-room
of my bank, without going into rhapsodies or even
particulars on the point, I may mention that they
55


The Chest of Silver
"My dear Bunny, but so he was!" cried Raffles.
"Time was when I was none too pure an amateur.
But after this I take leave to consider myself a pro-
fessor of the professors. And I should like to see
one more capable of skippering their side !".


The Rest Cure
HAD not seen Raffles for a month or more,
I and I was sadly in need of his advice. My
life was being made a burden to me by a wretch
who had obtained a bill of sale over the furniture
in Mount Street, and it was only by living else-
where that I could keep the vulpine villain from
my door. This cost ready money, and my balance
at the bank was sorely in need of another lift from
Raffles. Yet, had he been in my shoes, he could
not have vanished more effectually than he had
done, both from the face of the town and from
the ken of all who knew him.
It was late in August; he never played first-class
cricket after July, when, a scholastic understudy
took his place in the Middlesex eleven. And in
vain did I scour my Field and my Sportsman for
the country-house matches with which he wilfully
preferred to wind up the season; the matches were
there, but never the magic name of A. J. Raffles.
Nothing was known of him at the Albany; he had
left no instructions about his letters, either there
58


The Rest Cure
or at the club. I began to fear that some evil had
overtaken him. I scanned the features of cap-
tured criminals in the illustrated Sunday papers;
on each occasion I breathed again; nor was any-
thing worthy of Raffles going on. I will not deny
that I was less anxious on his account than on my
own. But it was a double relief to me when he
gave a first characteristic sign of life.
I had called at the Albany for the fiftieth time,
and returned to Piccadilly in my usual despair,
when a street sloucher sidled up to me in furtive
fashion and inquired if my name was what it is.
"'Cause this 'ere's for you," he rejoined to my
affirmative, and with that I felt a crumpled note
in my palm.
It was from Raffles. I smoothed out the twisted
scrap of paper, and on it were just a couple of
lines in pencil:
“Meet me in Holland Walk at dark to-night. Walk
up and down till I come.
A. J. R.”
That was all! Not another syllable after all
these weeks, and the few words scribbled in a wild
caricature of his 'scholarly and dainty hand! I
was no longer to be alarmed by this sort of thing;
it was all so like the Raffles I loved least; and to
add to my indignation, when ať length I looked up
was
59


A Thief in the Night
from the mysterious missive, the equally mys-
terious messenger had disappeared in a manner
worthy of the whole affair. He was, however, the
first creature I espied under the tattered trees of
Holland Walk that evening.
"Seen 'im yet ?” he inquired confidentially,
blowing a vile cloud from his horrid pipe.
"No, I haven't; and I want to know where
you've seen him," I replied sternly. “Why did
you run away like that the moment you had given
me his note ?"
"Orders, orders," was the reply. "I ain't such
a juggins as to go agen a toff as makes it worf
while to do as I'm bid an' 'old me tongue.”
"And who may you be?" I asked jealously.
"And what are you to Mr. Raffles ?”
"You silly ass, Bunny, don't tell all Kensington
that I'm in town!” replied my tatterdemalion,
shooting up and smoothing out into a merely
shabby Raffles. “Here, take my arm-I'm not
so beastly as I look. But neither am I in town,
nor in England, nor yet on the face of the earth,
for all that's known of me to a single soul but
you."
“Then where are you," I asked, "between our-
selves ?"
“I've taken a house near here for the holidays,
60


The Rest Cure
where I'm going in for a Rest Cure of my own
description. Why? Oh, for lots of reasons, my
dear Bunny; among others, I have long had a
wish to grow my own beard; under the next lamp-
post you will agree that it's training on very
nicely. Then, you mayn't know it, but there's
a canny man at Scotland Yard who has had a quiet
eye on me longer than I like. I thought it about
time to have an eye on him, and I stared him in
the face outside the Albany this very morning.
That was when I saw you go in, and scribbled a
line to give you when you came out. If he had
caught us talking he would have spotted me at
once."
"So you are lying low out here!"
"I prefer to call it my Rest Cure," returned
Raffles, “and it's really nothing else. I've got a
furnished house at a time when no one else would
have dreamed of taking one in town; and my very
neighbors don't know I'm there, though I'm
bound to say there are hardly any of them at
home. I don't keep a servant, and do everything
for myself. It's the next best fun to a desert
island. Not that I make much work, for I'm
really resting, but I haven't done so much solid
reading for years. Rather a joke, Bunny: the man
whose house I've taken is one of her Majesty's
61


A Thief in the Night
II
inspectors of prisons, and his study's a storehouse
of criminology. It has been quite amusing to lie
on one's back and have a good look at one's self
as others fondly imagine they see one."
"But surely you get some exercise ?" I asked;
for he was leading me at a good rate through the
leafy byways of Campden Hill; and his step was
as springy and as light as ever.
"The best exercise I ever had in my life," said
Raffles; "and you would never live to guess what
it is. It's one of the reasons why I went in for
this seedy kit. I follow cabs. Yes, Bunny, I
turn out about dusk and meet the expresses at
Euston or King's Cross; that is, of course, I loaf
outside and pick my cab, and often run my three
or four miles for a bob or less. And it not only
keeps you in the very pink: if you're good they
let you carry the trunks up-stairs; and I've taken
notes from the inside of more than one commo-
dious residence which will come in useful in the
autumn. In fact, Bunny, what with these new
Rowton houses, my beard, and my otherwise well-
spent holiday, I hope to have quite a good
autumn season before the erratic Raffles turns up
in town."
I felt it high time to wedge in a word about my
own far less satisfactory affairs. But it was not
62


The Rest Cure
necessary for me to recount half my troubles.
Raffles could be as full of himself as many a worse
man, and I did not like his society the less for
these human outpourings. They had rather the
effect of putting me on better terms with myself,
through bringing him down to my level for the
time being. But his egoism was not even skin-
deep; it was rather a cloak, which Raffles could
cast off quicker than any man I ever knew, as he
did not fail to show me now.
"Why, Bunny, this is the very thing!” he cried.
“You must come and stay with me, and we'll lie
low side by side. Only remember it really is a
Rest Cure. I want to keep literally as quiet as I
was without you. What do you say to forming
ourselves at once into a practically Silent Order?
You agree? Very well, then, here's the street
and that's the house."
It was ever such a quiet little street, turning out
of one of those which climb right over the pleas-
ant hill. One side was monopolized by the garden
wall of an ugly but enviable mansion standing in
its own ground; opposite were a solid file of
smaller but taller houses; on neither side were
there many windows alight, nor a solitary soul on
the pavement or in the road. Raffles led the way
to one of the small tall houses. It stood immedi-
63


A Thief in the Night
ately behind a lamppost, and I could not but
notice that a love-lock of Virginia creeper was
trailing almost to the step, and that the bow-win-
dow on the ground floor was closely shuttered.
Raffles admitted himself with his latch-key, and I
squeezed past him into a very narrow hall. I did
not hear him shut the door, but we were no longer
in the lamplight, and he pushed softly past me
in his turn.
"I'll get a light,” he muttered as he went; but
to let him pass I had leaned against some electric
switches, and while his back was turned I tried
one of these without thinking. In an instant hall
and staircase were flooded with light; in another
Raffles was upon me in a fury, and all was dark
once more. He had not said a word, but I heard
him breathing through his teeth.
Nor was there anything to tell me now. The
mere flash of electric light upon a hall of chaos
and uncarpeted stairs, and on the face of Raffles
as he sprang to switch it off, had been enough even
for me.
"So this is how you have taken the house," said
I in his own undertone. "Taken' is good; 'taken'
is beautiful!"
"Did you think I'd done it through an agent?”
he snarled. “Upon my word, Bunny, I did you
64


The Rest Cure
the credit of supposing you saw the joke all the
time!"
“Why shouldn't you take a house," I asked,
"and pay for it?”
"Why should I," he retorted, "within three
miles of the Albany? Besides, I should have had
no peace; and I meant every word I said about
my Rest Cure."
"You are actually staying in a house where
you've broken in to steal ?".
"Not to steal, Bunny! I haven't stolen a
thing. But staying here I certainly am, and hav-
ing the most complete rest a busy man could
wish.”
“There'll be no rest for me !"
Raffles laughed as he struck a match. I had
followed him into what would have been the back
drawing-room in the ordinary little London
house; the inspector of prisons had converted it
into a separate study by filling the folding doors
with book-shelves, which I scanned at once for the
congenial works of which Raffles had spoken. I
was not able to carry my examination very far.
Raffles had lighted a candle, stuck (by its own
grease) in the crown of an opera hat, which he
opened the moment the wick caught. The light
thus struck the ceiling in an oval shaft, which left
65


A Thief in the Night
the rest of the room almost as dark as it had been
before.
"Sorry, Bunny !” said Raffles, sitting on one
pedestal of a desk from which the top had been
removed, and setting his makeshift lantern on the
other. “In broad daylight, when it can't be
spotted from the outside, you shall have as much
artificial light as you like. If you want to do some
writing, that's the top of the desk on end against
the mantlepiece. You'll never have a better chance
so far as interruption goes. But no midnight oil
or electricity! You observe that their last care
was to fix up these shutters; they appear to have
taken the top off the desk to get at 'em without
standing on it; but the beastly things wouldn't go
all the way up, and the strip they leave would give
us away to the backs of the other houses if we lit
up after dark. Mind that telephone! If you
touch the receiver they will know at the exchange
that the house is not empty, and I wouldn't put
it past the colonel to have told them exactly how
long he was going to be away. He's pretty par-
ticular: look at the strips of paper to keep the dust
off his precious books!”
"Is he a colonel?” I asked, perceiving that Raf-
fles referred to the absentee householder.
"Of sappers,” he replied, “and a V.C. into the
66


A Thief in the Night
“So they left you a latch-key as well as every-
thing else!"
"No, Bunny. I was just able to make that for
myself. I am playing at 'Robinson Crusoe,' not
'The Swiss Family Robinson.' And now, my dear
Friday, if you will kindly take off those boots, we
can explore the island before we turn in for the
night."
The stairs were very steep and narrow, and
they creaked alarmingly as Raffles led the way
up, with the single candle in the crown of the
colonel's hat. He blew it out before we reached
the half-landing, where a naked window stared
upon the backs of the houses in the next road, but
lit it again at the drawing-room door. I just
peeped in upon a semi-grand swathed in white and
a row of water colors mounted in gold. An ex-
cellent bathroom broke our journey to the second
floor.
“I'll have one to-night," said I, taking heart of
a luxury unknown in my last sordid sanctuary.
"You'll do no such thing,” snapped Raffles.
"Have the goodness to remember that our island
is one of a group inhabited by hostile tribes. You
can fill the bath quietly if you try, but it empties
under the study window, and makes the very devil
of a noise about it. No, Bunny, I bale out every
68


The Rest Cure
drop and pour it away through the scullery sink,
so you will kindly consult me before you turn a
tap. Here's your room; hold the light outside
while I draw the curtains; it's the old chap's dress-
ing-room. Now you can bring the glim. How's
that for a jolly wardrobe? And look at his coats
on their cross-trees inside: dapper old dog,
shouldn't you say? Mark the boots on the shelf
above, and the little brass rail for his ties! Didn't
I tell you he was particular? And wouldn't he
simply love to catch us at his kit?”
"Let's only hope it would give him an apo-
plexy," said I shuddering.
"I shouldn't build on it,” replied Raffles.
"That's a big man's trouble, and neither you nor
I could get into the old chap's clothes. But come
into the best bedroom, Bunny. You won't think
me selfish if I don't give it up to you? Look at
this, my boy, look at this! It's the only one I
use in all the house."
I had followed him into a good room, with
ample windows closely curtained, and he had
switched on the light in a hanging lamp at the
bedside. The rays fell from a thick green fun-
nel in a plateful of strong light upon a table deep
in books. I noticed several volumes of the "In-
vasion of the Crimea.”


A Thief in the Night
"That's where I rest the body and exercise the
brain,” said Raffles. "I have long wanted to read
my Kinglake from A to Z, and I manage about
a volume a night. There's a style for you, Bunny!
I love the punctilious thoroughness of the whole
thing; one can understand its appeal to our careful
colonel. His name, did you say ? Crutchley,
Bunny-Colonel Crutchley, R.E., V.C.”
“We'd put his valor to the test !" said I, feeling
more valiant myself after our tour of inspec-
tion.
"Not so loud on the stairs," whispered Raffles.
“There's only one door between us and "
Raffles stood still at my feet, and well he might!
A deafening double knock had resounded through
the empty house; and to add to the utter horror
of the moment, Raffles instantly blew out the light.
I heard my heart pounding. Neither of us
breathed. We were on our way down to the first
landing, and for a moment we stood like mice;
then Raffles heaved a deep sigh, and in the depths
I heard the gate swing home.
"Only the postman, Bunny! He will come
now and again, though they have obviously left
instructions at the post-office. I hope the old colo-
nel will let them have it when he gets back. I
confess it gave me a turn."
70


The Rest Cure
“Turn!" I gasped. “I must have a drink, if I
die for it.”
“My dear Bunny, that's no part of my Rest
Cure.”
"Then good-by! I can't stand it; feel my fore-
head; listen to my heart! Crusoe found a foot-
print, but he never heard a double-knock at the
street door!”
“ 'Better live in the midst of alarms,'” quoted
Raffles, “ 'than dwell in this horrible place. I
must confess we get it both ways, Bunny. Yet
I've nothing but tea in the house."
"And where do you make that? Aren't you
afraid of smoke ?"
"There's a gas-stove in the dining-room."
“But surely to goodness," I cried, "there's a
cellar lower down!"
"My dear, good Bunny,” said Raffles, “I've
told you already that I didn't come in here on
business. I came in for the Cure. Not a penny
will these people be the worse, except for their
washing and their electric light, and I mean to
leave enough to cover both items."
“Then,” said I, “since Brutus is such a very
honorable man, we will borrow a bottle from the
cellar, and replace it before we go."
Raffles slapped me softly on the back, and I
21


A Thief in the Night
knew that I had gained my point. It was often the
case when I had the presence of heart and mind
to stand up to him. But never was little victory
of mine quite so grateful as this. Certainly it
was a very small cellar, indeed a mere cupboard
under the kitchen stairs, with a most ridiculous
lock. Nor was this cupboard overstocked with
wine. But I made out a jar of whiskey, a shelf of
Zeltinger, another of claret, and a short one at the
top which presented a little battery of golden-
leafed necks and corks. Raffles set his hand no
lower. He examined the labels while I held
folded hat and naked light.
"Mumm, '84!” he whispered. “G. H. Mumm,
and A.D. 1884! I am no wine-bibber, Bunny, as
you know, but I hope you appreciate the specifica-
tions as I do. It looks to me like the only bottle,
the last of its case, and it does seem a bit of a
shame; but more shame for the miser who hoards
in his cellar what was meant for mankind! Come,
Bunny, lead the way. This baby is worth nursing.
It would break my heart if anything happened to
it now !"
So we celebrated my first night in the furnished
house; and I slept beyond belief, slept as I never
was to sleep there again. But it was strange to
hear the milkman in the early morning, and the
72


The Rest Cure
postman knocking his way along the street an hour
later, and to be passed over by one destroying
angel after another. I had come down early
enough, and watched through the drawing-room
blind the cleansing of all the steps in the street
but ours. Yet Raffles had evidently been up some
time; the house seemed far purer than overnight
as though he had managed to air it room by room;
and from the one with the gas-stove there came
a frizzling sound that fattened the heart.
I only would I had the pen to do justice to the
week I spent in-doors on Campden Hill! It might
make amusing reading; the reality for me was far
removed from the realm of amusement. Not
that I was denied many a laugh of suppressed
heartiness when Raffles and I were together. But
half our time we very literally saw nothing of each
other. I need not say whose fault that was. He
would be quiet; he was in ridiculous and offensive
earnest about his egregious Cure. Kinglake he
would read by the hour together, day and night,
by the hanging lamp, lying up-stairs on the best
bed. There was daylight enough for me in the
drawing-room below; and there I would sit im-
mersed in criminous tomes weakly fascinated until
I shivered and shook in my stocking soles. Often
I longed to do something hysterically desperate,
73


A Thief in the Night
to rouse Raffles and bring the street about our
ears; once I did bring him about mine by striking
a single note on the piano, with the soft pedal
down. His neglect of me seemed wanton at the
time. I have long realized that he was only wise
to maintain silence at the expense of perilous
amenities, and as fully justified in those secret and
solitary sorties which made bad blood in my veins.
He was far cleverer than I at getting in and out;
but even had I been his match for stealth and
wariness, my company would have doubled every
risk. I admit now that he treated me with quite
as much sympathy as common caution would per-
mit. But at the time I took it so badly as to plan
a small revenge.
What with his flourishing beard and the in-
creasing shabbiness of the only suit he had
brought with him to the house, there was no deny-
ing that Raffles had now the advantage of a per-
manent disguise. That was another of his ex-
cuses for leaving me as he did, and it was the one
I was determined to remove. On a morning,
therefore, when I awoke to find him flown again,
I proceeded to execute a plan which I had already
matured in my mind. Colonel Crutchley was a
married man; there were no signs of children in
the house; on the other hand, there was much evi-
74


The Rest Cure
S.
dence that the wife was a woman of fashion. Her
dresses overflowed the wardrobe and her room;
large, flat, cardboard boxes were to be found in
every corner of the upper floors. She was a tall
woman; I was not too tall a man. Like Raffles,
I had not shaved on Campden Hill. That morn-
ing, however, I did my best with a very fair razor
which the colonel had left behind in my room;
then I turned out the lady's wardrobe and the
cardboard boxes, and took my choice.
I have fair hair, and at the time it was rather
long. With a pair of Mrs. Crutchley's tongs and
a discarded hair-net, I was able to produce an
almost immodest fringe. A big black hat with
a wintry feather completed a headdress as unsea-
sonable as my skating skirt and feather boa; of
course, the good lady had all her summer frocks
away with her in Switzerland. This was all the
more annoying from the fact that we were having
a very warm September; so I was not sorry to hear
Raffles return as I was busy adding a layer of pow-
der to my heated countenance. I listened a mo-
ment on the landing, but as he went into the study
I determined to complete my toilet in every detail.
My idea was first to give him the fright he de-
served, and secondly to show him that I was quite
as fit to move abroad as he. It was, however, I
75


A Thief in the Night
confess, a pair of the colonel's gloves that I was
buttoning as I slipped down to the study even more
quietly than usual. The electric light was on, as
it generally was by day, and under it stood as for-
midable a figure as ever I encountered in my life
of crime.
Imagine a thin but extremely wiry man, past
middle age, brown and bloodless as any crab-
apple, but as coolly truculent and as casually alert
as Raffles at his worst. It was, it could only be,
the fire-eating and prison-inspecting colonel him-
self! He was ready for me, a revolver in his
hand, taken, as I could see, from one of those
locked drawers in the pedestal desk with which
Raffles had refused to tamper; the drawer was
open, and a bunch of keys depended from the
lock. A grim smile crumpled up the parchment
face, so that one eye was puckered out of sight;
the other was propped open by an eyeglass, which,
however, dangled on its string when I appeared.
"A woman, begad!” the warrior exclaimed.
“And where's the man, you scarlet hussy?"
Not a word could I utter. But, in my horror
and my amazement, I have no sort of doubt that
I acted the part I had assumed in a manner I never
should have approached in happier circumstances.
“Come, come, my lass,” cried the old oak vet-
76



VA
SAN
NA
IN
It was the fire-eating and prison-inspecting colonel himself. He was ready for me,
a revolver in his hand.





The Rest Cure
eran, “I'm not going to put a bullet through you,
you know! You tell me all about it, and it'll do
you more good than harm. There, I'll put the
nasty thing away and—God bless me, if the brazen
wench hasn't squeezed into the wife's kit!”.
A squeeze it happened to have been, and in my
emotion it felt more of one than ever; but his
sudden discovery had not heightened the veteran's
animosity against me. On the contrary, I caught
a glint of humor through his gleaming glass, and
he proceeded to pocket his revolver like the gen-
tleman he was.
"Well, well, it's lucky I looked in,” he con-
tinued. "I only came round on the off-chance of
letters, but if I hadn't you'd have had another
week in clover. Begad, though, I saw your hand-
writing the moment I'd got my nose inside! Now
just be sensible and tell me where your good
man is.”
I had no man. I was alone, had broken in
alone. There was not a soul in the affair (much
less the house) except myself. So much I stut
tered out in tones too hoarse to betray me on the
spot. But the old man of the world shook a hard
old head.
"Quite right not to give away your pal," said
he. “But I'm not one of the marines, my dear, and
77


The Rest Cure
in my face. "You young wolf in sheep's clothing!
Been at my wine, of course! Put down that bot-
tle; down with it this instant, or I'll drill a tunnel
through your middle. I thought so! Begad, sir,
you shall pay for this! Don't you give me an
excuse for potting you now, or I'll jump at the
chance! My last bottle of '84—you miserable
blackguard—you unutterable beast!"
He had browbeaten me into his own chair in his
own corner; he was standing over me, empty bot-
tle in one hand, revolver in the other, and murder
itself in the purple puckers of his raging face.
His language I will not even pretend to indicate
his skinny throat swelled and trembled with the
monstrous volleys. He could smile at my appear-
ance in his wife's clothes; he would have had my
blood for the last bottle of his best champagne.
His eyes were not hidden now; they needed
no eyeglass to prop them open; large with fury,
they started from the livid mask. I watched noth-
ing else. I could not understand why they should
start out as they did. I did not try. I say I
watched nothing else—until I saw the face of
Raffles over the unfortunate officer's shoulder.
Raffles had crept in unheard while our alter-
cation was at its height, had watched his oppor-
tunity, and stolen on his man unobserved by either
79


A Thief in the Night
of us. While my own attention was completely
engrossed, he had seized the colonel's pistol-hand
and twisted it behind the colonel's back until his
eyes bulged out as I have endeavored to describe.
But the fighting man had some fight in him still;
and scarcely had I grasped the situation when he
hit out venomously behind with the bottle, which
was smashed to bits on Raffles's shin. Then I
threw my strength into the scale; and before many
minutes we had our officer gagged and bound in
his chair. But it was not one of our bloodless
victories. Raffles had been cut to the bone by the
broken glass; his leg bled wherever he limped;
and the fierce eyes of the bound man followed the
wet trail with gleams of sinister satisfaction.
I thought I had never seen a man better bound
or better gagged. But the humanity seemed to
have run out of Raffles with his blood. He tore
up tablecloths, he cut down blind-cords, he
brought the dust-sheets from the drawing-room,
and multiplied every bond. The unfortunate
man's legs were lashed to the legs of his chair, his
arms to its arms, his thighs and back fairly welded
to the leather. Either end of his own ruler pro-
truded from his bulging cheeks—the middle was
hidden by his moustache—and the gag kept in
place by remorseless lashings at the back of his
remo
80


A Thief in the Night
va-
if the V.C. comes out alive, the wound he gave
may be identified with the wound I've got."
The V.C.! There, indeed, was an aggrava-
tion to one illogical mind. But to cast a moment's
doubt upon the certainty of his coming out alive!
“Of course he'll come out," said I. “We must
make up our minds to that.”
“Did he tell you he was expecting the servants
or his wife? If so, of course we must hurry up."
“No, Raffles, I'm afraid he's not expecting any-
body. He told me, if he hadn't looked in for
letters, we should have had the place to ourselves
another week. That's the worst of it."
Raffles smiled as he secured a regular puttee of
dust-sheeting. No blood was coming through.
“I don't agree, Bunny," said he. "It's quite
the best of it, if you ask me."
“What, that he should die the death ?”
“Why not?"
And Raffles stared me out with a hard and mer-
ciless light in his clear blue eyes—a light that
chilled the blood.
“If it's a choice between his life and our liberty,
you're entitled to your decision and I'm entitled to
mine, and I took it before I bound him as I did,”
said Raffles. “I'm only sorry I took so much
trouble if you're going to stay behind and put him
82


The Rest Cure
in the way of releasing himself before he gives up
the ghost. Perhaps you will go and think it over
while I wash my bags and dry 'em at the gas-
stove. It will take me at least an hour, which will
just give me time to finish the last volume of
Kinglake."
Long before he was ready to go, however, I
was waiting in the hall, clothed indeed, but not in
a mind which I care to recall. Once or twice I
peered into the dining-room where Raffles sat be-
fore the stove, without letting him hear me. He,
too, was ready for the street at a moment's notice;
but a steam ascended from his left leg, as he sat
immersed in his red volume. Into the study I
never went again; but Raffles did, to restore to its
proper shelf this and every other book he had
taken out and so destroy that clew to the manner
of man who had made himself at home in the
house. On his last visit I heard him whisk off the
dust-sheet; then he waited a minute; and when he
came out it was to lead the way into the open air
as though the accursed house belonged to him.
“We shall be seen," I whispered at his heels.
"Raffles, Raffles, there's a policeman at the
corner!”
“I know him intimately," replied Raffles, turn-
ing, however, the other way. "He accosted me
83


A Thief in the Night
on Monday, when I explained that I was an old
soldier of the colonel's regiment, who came in
every few days to air the place and send on any
odd letters. You see, I have always carried one
or two about me, redirected to that address in
Switzerland, and when I showed them to him it was
all right. But after that it was no use listening at
the letter-box for a clear coast, was it?".
I did not answer; there was too much to exas-
perate in these prodigies of cunning which he could
never trouble to tell me at the time. And I knew
why he had kept his latest feats to himself: unwill-
ing to trust me outside the house, he had system-
atically exaggerated the dangers of his own walks
abroad; and when to these injuries he added the
insult of a patronizing compliment on my late dis-
guise, I again made no reply.
“What's the good of your coming with me?".
he asked, when I had followed him across the main
stream of Notting Hill.
“We may as well sink or swim together," I
answered sullenly.
“Yes? Well, I'm going to swim into the prov-
inces, have a shave on the way, buy a new kit
piecemeal, including a cricket-bag (which I really
want), and come limping back to the Albany with
the same old strain in my bowling leg. I needn't
SWIN
84


The Rest Cure
add that I have been playing country-house cricket
for the last month under an alias; it's the only de-
cent way to do it when one's county has need of
one. That's my itinerary, Bunny, but I really
can't see why you should come with me."
“We may as well swing together!" I growled.
"As you will, my dear fellow,” replied Raffles.
"But I begin to dread your company on the drop !"
I shall hold my pen on that provincial tour. Not
that I joined Raffles in any of the little enterprises
with which he beguiled the breaks in our journey;
our last deed in London was far too great a weight
upon my soul. I could see that gallant officer in
his chair, see him at every hour of the day and
night, now with his indomitable eyes meeting mine
ferociously, now a stark outline underneath a
sheet. The vision darkened my day and gave me
sleepless nights. I was with our victim in all his
agony; my mind would only leave him for that
gallows of which Raffles had said true things in
jest. No, I could not face so vile a death lightly,
but I could meet it, somehow, better than I could
endure a guilty suspense. In the watches of the
second night I made up my mind to meet it half-
way, that very morning, while still there might be
time to save the life that we had left in jeopardy.
And I got up early to tell Raffles of my resolve.
85


A Thief in the Night
His room in the hotel where we were staying
was littered with clothes and luggage new enough
for any bridegroom; I lifted the locked cricket-
bag, and found it heavier than a cricket-bag has
any right to be. But in the bed Raffles was sleep-
ing like an infant, his shaven self once more. And
when I shook him he awoke with a smile.
“Going to confess, eh, Bunny? Well, wait a
bit; the local police won't thank you for knocking
them up at this hour. And I bought a late edition
which you ought to see; that must be it on the
floor. You have a look in the stop-press column,
Bunny."
I found the place with a sunken heart, and this
is what I read:
WEST-END OUTRAGE
Colonel Crutchley, R.E., V.C., has been the victim of
a dastardly outrage at his residence, Peter Street, Camp-
den Hill. Returning unexpectedly to the house, which
had been left untenanted during the absence of the family
abroad, it was found occupied by two ruffians, who over-
came and secured the distinguished officer by the exercise
of considerable violence. When discovered through the
intelligence of the Kensington police, the gallant victim
was gagged and bound hand and foot, and in an ad-
vanced stage of exhaustion.
"Thanks to the Kensington police," observed
Raffles, as I read the last words aloud in my hor-
86


The Rest Cure
ro
ror. “They can't have gone when they got my
letter."
“Your letter ?"
"I printed them a line while we were waiting for
our train at Euston. They must have got it that
night, but they can't have paid any attention to it
until yesterday morning. And when they do, they
take all the credit and give me no more than you
did, Bunny !”
I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at
the smiling, handsome face under the curls. And
at last I understood.
"So all the time you never meant it!".
"Slow murder? You should have known me
better. A few hours' enforced Rest Cure was the
worst I wished him."
"You might have told me, Rafles !”
"That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly
to have trusted me!"


The Criminologists' Club
“DUT who are they, Raffles, and where's their
D house? There's no such club on the list in
Whitaker.”
“The Criminologists, my dear Bunny, are too
few for a local habitation, and too select to tell
their name in Gath. They are merely so many
solemn students of contemporary crime, who meet
and dine periodically at each other's clubs or
houses."
"But why in the world should they ask us to
dine with them?"
And I brandished the invitation which had
brought me hotfoot to the Albany: it was from the
Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G.; and it
requested the honor of my company at dinner, at
Thornaby House, Park Lane, to meet the mem-
bers of the Criminologists' Club. That in itself
was a disturbing compliment: judge then of my
dismay on learning that Raffles had been invited
too!
"They have got it into their heads," said he,
"that the gladiatorial element is the curse of most
88


The Criminologists' Club
modern sport. They tremble especially for the
professional gladiator. And they want to know
whether my experience tallies with their theory.”
“So they say !”
“They quote the case of a league player, sus per
coll., and any number of suicides. · It really is
rather in my public line.”
"In yours, if you like, but not in mine," said I.
“No, Raffles, they've got their eye on us both, and
mean to put us under the microscope, or they never
would have pitched on me.”
Raffles smiled on my perturbation.
"I almost wish you were right, Bunny! It
would be even better fun than I mean to make it
as it is. But it may console you to hear that it was
I who gave them your name. I told them you
were a far keener criminologist than myself. I
am delighted to hear they have taken my hint, and
that we are to meet at their gruesome board."
"If I accept,” said I, with the austerity he
deserved.
"If you don't," rejoined Raffles, "you will miss
some sport after both our hearts. Think of it,
Bunny! These fellows meet to wallow in all the
latest crimes; we wallow with them as though we
knew more about it than themselves. Perhaps we
don't, for few criminologists have a soul above
son


A Thief in the Night
murder; and I quite expect to have the privilegt
of lifting the discussion into our own higher walk.
They shall give their morbid minds to the fine art
of burgling, for a change; and while we're about
it, Bunny, we may as well extract their opinion of
our noble selves. As authors, as collaborators, we
will sit with the flower of our critics, and find our
own level in the expert eye. It will be a piquant
experience, if not an invaluable one; if we are
sailing too near the wind, we are sure to hear about
it, and can trim our yards accordingly. Moreover,
we shall get a very good dinner into the bargain,
or our noble host will belie a European repu-
tation."
"Do you know him?" I asked.
“We have a pavilion acquaintance, when it suits
my lord,” replied Raffles, chuckling. “But I know
all about him. He was president one year of the
M.C.C., and we never had a better. He knows
the game, though I believe he never played cricket
in his life. But then he knows most things, and
has never done any of them. He has never even
married, and never opened his lips in the House
of Lords. Yet they say there is no better brain in
the august assembly, and he certainly made us a
wonderful speech last time the Australians were
over. He has read everything and to his credit
90


The Criminologists' Club
in these days) never written a line. All round he
is a whale for theory and a sprat for practice—but
he looks quite capable of both at crime!"
I now longed to behold this remarkable peer
in the flesh, and with the greater curiosity since
another of the things which he evidently never did
was to have his photograph published for the ben-
efit of the vulgar. I told Raffles that I would dine
with him at Lord Thornaby's, and he nodded as
though I had not hesitated for a moment. I see
now how deftly he had disposed of my reluctance.
No doubt he had thought it all out before: his
little speeches look sufficiently premeditated as I
set them down at the dictates of an excellent mem-
ory. Let it, however, be borne in mind that Raffles
did not talk exactly like a Raffles book: he said the
things, but he did not say them in so many consecu-
tive breaths. They were punctuated by puffs from
his eternal cigarette, and the punctuation was often
in the nature of a line of asterisks, while he took a
silent turn up and down his room. Nor was he
ever more deliberate than when he seemed most
nonchalant and spontaneous. I came to see it in
the end. But these were early days, in which he
was more plausible to me than I can hope to render
him to another human being.
And I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it
8
91


A Thief in the Night
n
1
was, in fact, the one period at which I can remem-
ber his coming round to see me more frequently
than I went round to him. Of course he would
come at his own odd hours, often just as one was
dressing to go out and dine, and I can even remem-
ber finding him there when I returned, for I had
long since given him a key of the flat. It was the
inhospitable month of February, and I can recall
more than one cosy evening when we discussed any-
thing and everything but our own malpractices;
indeed, there were none to discuss just then. Raf-
fles, on the contrary, was showing himself with
some industry in the most respectable society, and
by his advice I used the club more than ever.
“There is nothing like it at this time of year,"
said he. "In the summer I have my cricket to
provide me with decent employment in the sight
of men. Keep yourself before the public from
morning to night, and they'll never think of you
in the still small hours."
Our behavior, in fine, had so long been irre-
proachable that I rose without misgiving on the
morning of Lord Thornaby's dinner to the other
Criminologists and guests. My chief anxiety was
to arrive under the ægis of my brilliant friend, and
I had begged him to pick me up on his way; but
at five minutes to the appointed hour there was no
92


The Criminologists' Club
sign of Raffles or his cab. We were bidden at a
quarter to eight for eight o'clock, so after all I
had to hurry off alone.
Fortunately, Thornaby House is almost at the
end of my street that was; and it seemed to me
another fortunate circumstance that the house'
stood back, as it did and does, in its own august
courtyard; for, as I was about to knock, a hansom
came twinkling in behind me, and I drew back,
hoping it was Raffles at the last moment. It was
not, and I knew it in time to melt from the porch,
and wait yet another minute in the shadows, since
others were as late as I. And out jumped these
others, chattering in stage whispers as they paid
their cab.
"Thornaby has a bet about it with Freddy
Vereker, who can't come, I hear. Of course, it
won't be lost or won to-night. But the dear man
thinks he's been invited as a cricketer!"
"I don't believe he's the other thing," said a
voice as brusque as the first was bland. "I believe
it's all bunkum. I wish I didn't, but I do!”
"I think you'll find it's more than that," re-
joined the other, as the doors opened and swal-
lowed the pair.
I flung out limp hands and smote the air.
Raffles bidden to what he had well called this
93


A Thief in the Night
Sa
"gruesome board,” not as a cricketer but, clearly,
as a suspected criminal! Raffles wrong all the
time, and I right for once in my original appre-
hension! And still no Raffles in sight—no Raffles
to warn—no Raffles, and the clocks striking eight!
Well may I shirk the psychology of such a
moment, for my belief is that the striking clocks
struck out all power of thought and feeling, and
that I played my poor part the better for that
blessed surcease of intellectual sensation. On the
other hand, I was never more alive to the purely
objective impressions of any hour of my existence,
and of them the memory is startling to this day.
I hear my mad knock at the double doors; they fly
open in the middle, and it is like some sumptuous
and solemn rite. A long slice of silken-legged
lackey is seen on either hand; a very prelate of a
butler bows a benediction from the sanctuary steps.
I breathe more freely when I reach a book-lined
library where a mere handful of men do not over-
flow the Persian rug before the fire. One of them
is Raffles, who is talking to a large man with the
brow of a demi-god and the eyes and jowl of a
degenerate bulldog. And this is our noble host.
Lord Thornaby stared at me with inscrutable
stolidity as we shook hands, and at once handed
me over to a tall, ungainly man whom he addressed
94


The Criminologists' Club
as Ernest, but whose surname I never learned.
Ernest in turn introduced me, with a shy and
clumsy courtesy, to the two remaining guests.
They were the pair who had driven up in the han-
som; one turned out to be Kingsmill, Q.C.; the
other I knew at a glance from his photographs as
Parrington, the backwoods novelist. They were
admirable foils to each other, the barrister being
plump and dapper, with a Napoleonic cast of coun-
tenance, and the author one of the shaggiest dogs
I have ever seen in evening-clothes. Neither took
much stock of me, but both had an eye on Raffles
as I exchanged a few words with each in turn.
Dinner, however, was immediately announced, and
the six of us had soon taken our places round a
brilliant little table stranded in a great dark
room.
I had not been prepared for so small a party,
and at first I felt relieved. If the worst came to
the worst, I was fool enough to say in my heart,
they were but two to one. But I was soon sighing
for that safety which the adage associates with
numbers. We were far too few for the confiden-
tial duologue with one's neighbor in which I, at
least, would have taken refuge from the perils of
a general conversation. And the general conver-
sation soon resolved itself into an attack, so subtly
95


The Criminologists' Club
the tremendous excitement over the Test Matches
out in Australia at the time: it seems that the result
of the crucial game was expected on the condemned
man's last day on earth, and he couldn't rest until
he knew it. We pulled it off, if you recollect, and
he said it would make him swing happy.”
“Tell 'em what else he said !" cried Lord Thorn-
aby, rubbing his podgy hands.
"The chaplain remonstrated with him on his
excitement over a game at such a time, and the
convict is said to have replied: 'Why, it's the first
thing they'll ask me at the other end of the
drop!'”
The story was new even to me, but I had no
time to appreciate its points. My concern was to
watch its effect upon the other members of the
party. Ernest, on my left, doubled up with laugh-
ter, and tittered and shook for several minutes.
My other neighbor, more impressionable by tem-
perament, winced first, and then worked himself
into a state of enthusiasm which culminated in an
assault upon his shirt-cuff with a joiner's pencil.
Kingsmill, Q.C., beaming tranquilly on Raffles,
seemed the one least impressed, until he spoke.
"I am glad to hear that,” he remarked in a
high bland voice. “I thought that man would die
game."
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“But they strangled her in her bed with her own
pillow-case !"
"I don't care," said the uncouth scribe. "They
didn't break in for that. They never thought of
scragging her. The foolish old person would
make a noise, and one of them tied too tight. I
call it jolly bad luck on them.”
"On quiet, harmless, well-behaved thieves,"
added Lord Thornaby, “in the unobtrusive exer-
cise of their humble avocation."
And, as he turned to Raffles with his puffy smile,
I knew that we had reached that part of the pro-
gramme which had undergone rehearsal: it had
been perfectly timed to arrive with the champagne,
and I was not afraid to signify my appreciation
of that small mercy. But Raffles laughed so
quickly at his lordship’s humor, and yet with such
a natural restraint, as to leave no doubt that he
had taken kindly to my own old part, and was
playing the innocent inimitably in his turn, by rea-
son of his very innocence. It was a poetic judg-
ment on old Raffles, and in my momentary enjoy-
ment of the novel situation I was able to enjoy
some of the good things of this rich man's table.
The saddle of mutton more than justified its place
in the menu; but it had not spoiled me for my
wing of pheasant, and I was even looking forward
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tertained. And there was little to put him on his
guard in the touch of his adversaries, which was
only less light than his own.
“I am not very fond of Mr. Sikes," announced
the barrister, like a man who had got his cue.
“But he was prehistoric,” rejoined my lord. “A
lot of blood has flowed under the razor since the
days of Sweet William.”
"True; we have had Peace," said Parrington,
and launched out into such glowing details of that
criminal's last moments that I began to hope the
diversion might prove permanent. But Lord
Thornaby was not to be denied.
"William and Charles are both dead mon-
archs,” said he. "The reigning king in their de-
partment is the fellow who gutted poor Danby's
place in Bond Street."
There was a guilty silence on the part of the
three conspirators—for I had long since persuaded
myself that Ernest was not in their secret-and
then my blood froze.
"I know him well,” said Raffles, looking up.
Lord Thornaby stared at him in consternation.
The smile on the Napoleonic countenance of the
barrister looked forced and frozen for the first
time during the evening. Our author, who was
nibbling cheese from a knife, left a bead of blood
IOI


A Thief in the Night
upon his beard. The futile Ernest alone met the
occasion with a hearty titter.
"What!” cried my lord. “You know the
thief?”
"I wish I did,” rejoined Raffles, chuckling.
“No, Lord Thornaby, I only meant the jeweller,
Danby. I go to him when I want a wedding
present.”
I heard three deep breaths drawn as one before
I drew my own.
“Rather a coincidence," observed our host
dryly, "for I believe you also know the Milchester
people, where Lady Melrose had her necklace
stolen a few months afterward."
"I was staying there at the time," said Raffles
eagerly. No snob was ever quicker to boast of
basking in the smile of the great.
"We believe it to be the same man," said Lord
Thornaby, speaking apparently for the Criminolo-
gists' Club, and with much less severity of voice.
"I only wish I could come across him," con-
tinued Raffles heartily. “He's a criminal much
more to my mind than your murderers who swear
on the drop or talk cricket in the condemned cell!"
"He might be in the house now," said Lord
Thornaby, looking Raffles in the face. But his
manner was that of an actor in an unconvincing
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part and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter
end; and he seemed embittered, as even a rich man
may be in the moment of losing a bet.
"What a joke if he were !" cried the Wild West
writer.
"Absit omen!” murmured Raffles, in better
taste.
"Still, I think you'll find it's a favorite time,”
argued Kingsmill, Q.C. “And it would be quite
in keeping with the character of this man, so far
as it is known, to pay a little visit to the president
of the Criminologists' Club, and to choose the
evening on which he happens to be entertaining
the other members."
There was more conviction in this sally than in
that of our noble host; but this I attributed to the
trained and skilled dissimulation of the bar. Lord
Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the
elaboration of his own idea, and it was with some
asperity that he called upon the butler, now sol-
emnly superintending the removal of the cloth.
"Leggett! Just send up-stairs to see if all the
doors are open and the rooms in proper order.
That's an awful idea of yours, Kingsmill, or of
mine !" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of
his order by an effort that I could follow. “We
should look fools. I don't know which of us it
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A Thief in the Night
was, by the way, who seduced the rest from the
main stream of blood into this burglarious back-
water. Are you familiar with De Quincey's mas-
terpiece on 'Murder as a Fine Art,' Mr. Raffles ?"
"I believe I once read it,” replied Raffles
doubtfully.
"You must read it again," pursued the earl.
"It is the last word on a great subject; all we can
hope to add is some baleful illustration or blood-
stained footnote, not unworthy of De Quincey's
text. Well, Leggett?"
The venerable butler stood wheezing at his
elbow. I had not hitherto observed that the man
was an asthmatic.
“I beg your lordship's pardon, but I think your
lordship must have forgotten."
The voice came in rude gasps, but words of
reproach could scarcely have achieved a finer
delicacy.
"Forgotten, Leggett! Forgotten what, may I
ask ?"
WILO
! "Locking your lordship's dressing-room door
behind your lordship, my lord,” stuttered the un-
fortunate Leggett, in the short spurts of a winded
man, a few stertorous syllables at a time. "Been
up myself, my lord. Bedroom door-dressing-
room door—both locked inside !"
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But by this time the noble master was in worse
case than the man. His fine forehead was a tangle
of livid cords; his baggy jowl filled out like a
balloon. In another second he had abandoned his
place as our host and fled the room; and in yet
another we had forgotten ours as his guests and
rushed headlong at his heels.
Raffles was as excited as any of us now: he out-
stripped us all. The cherubic little lawyer and I
had a fine race for the last place but one, which I
secured, while the panting butler and his satellites
brought up a respectful rear. It was our uncon-
ventional author, however, who was the first to
volunteer his assistance and advice.
"No use pushing, Thornaby !" cried he. "If
it's been done with a wedge and gimlet, you may,
smash the door, but you'll never force it. Is there
a ladder in the place ?"
"There's a rope-ladder somewhere, in case of
fire, I believe," said my lord vaguely, as he rolled
a critical eye over our faces. "Where is it kept,
Leggett?"
"William will fetch it, my lord.”
And a pair of noble calves went flashing to the
upper regions.
"What's the good of bringing it down," cried
Parrington, who had thrown back to the wilds in
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A Thief in the Night
mo
his excitement. “Let him hang it out of the win-
dow above your own, and let me climb down and
do the rest! I'll undertake to have one or other
of these doors open in two twos !"
The fastened doors were at right angles on
the landing which we filled between us. Lord
Thornaby smiled grimly on the rest of us, when
he had nodded and dismissed the author like a
hound from the leash.
"It's a good thing we know something about
our friend Parrington," said my lord. "He takes
more kindly to all this than I do, I can tell you."
"It's grist to his mill,” said Raffles charitably.
"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in
his next book."
"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first,” re-
marked Kingsmill, Q.C.
"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man
of action too!"
It was Raffles who said this, and the remark
seemed rather trite for him, but in the tone there
was a something that just caught my private ear.
And for once I understood: the officious attitude
of Parrington, without being seriously suspicious
in itself, was admirably calculated to put a pre-
viously suspected person in a grateful shade. This
literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out of the
nan
man
106



CYRUS CUNEO
!
Raffles was as excited as any of us now; he outstripped us all.





The Criminologists' Club
limelight, and gratitude for the service was what
I had detected in Raffles's voice. No need to say
how grateful I felt myself. But my gratitude was
shot with flashes of unwonted insight. Parrington
was one of those who suspected Raffles, or, at all
events, one who was in the secret of those sus-
picions. What if he had traded on the suspect's
presence in the house? What if he were a deep
villain himself, and the villain of this particular
piece? I had made up my mind about him, and
that in a tithe of the time I take to make it up
as a rule, when we heard my man in the dressing-
room. He greeted us with an impudent shout;
in a few moments the door was open, and there
stood Parrington, flushed and dishevelled, with a
gimlet in one hand and a wedge in the other.
Within was a scene of eloquent disorder.
Drawers had been pulled out, and now stood on
end, their contents heaped upon the carpet. Ward-
robe doors stood open; empty stud-cases strewed
the floor; a clock, tied up in a towel, had been
tossed into a chair at the last moment. But a long
tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in one
corner. And one had only to see Lord Thornaby's
wry face behind the lid to guess that it was bent
over a somewhat empty tin trunk.
“What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a
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A Thief in the Night
twitch of humor at the corners of his canine mouth.
“My peer's robes, with coronet complete !"
We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I
thought our scribe would put in his word. But
even he either feigned or felt a proper awe.
"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em,"
continued Lord Thornaby. "But where would
you gentlemen stable your white elephants? And
these were elephants as white as snow; by Jove,
I'll job them for the future !".
And he made merrier over his loss than any
of us could have imagined the minute before; but
the reason dawned on me a little later, when we
all trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in pos-
session of the theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby
linked arms with Raffles as he led the way. His
step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic;
his very looks had improved. And I divined the
load that had been lifted from the hospitable heart
of our host.
"I only wish,” said he, "that this brought us
any nearer to the identity of the gentleman we
were discussing at dinner, for, of course, we owe
it to all our instincts to assume that it was he."
"I wonder !” said old Raffles, with a foolhardy
glance at me.
“But I'm sure of it, my dear sir,” cried my lord.
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“The audacity is his and his alone. I look no
further than the fact of his honoring me on the
one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain
my brother Criminologists. That's no coincidence,
sir, but a deliberate irony, which would have oc-
curred to no other criminal mind in England."
"You may be right," Raffles had the sense to
say this time, though I flattered myself it was my
face that made him.
"What is still more certain," resumed our host,
"'is that no other criminal in the world would have
crowned so delicious a conception with so perfect
an achievement. I feel sure the inspector will
agree with us."
The policeman in command had knocked and
been admitted to the library as Lord Thornaby
spoke.
"I didn't hear what you said, my lord.”
“Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing
outrage can be no other than the swell mobsman
who relieved Lady Melrose of her necklace and
poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."
"I believe your lordship has hit the nail on
the head.”
“The man who took the Thimblely diamonds
and returned them to Lord Thimblely, you
know."
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A Thief in the Night
"Perhaps he'll treat your lordship the same.”
"Not he! I don't mean to cry over my spilt
milk. I only wish the fellow joy of all he had
time to take. Anything fresh up-stairs by the
way?"
“Yes, my lord: the robbery took place between
a quarter past eight and the half-hour."
“How on earth do you know?" ..
"The clock that was tied up in the towel had
stopped at twenty past.”
"Have you interviewed my man ?”
"I have, my lord. He was in your lordship's
room until close on the quarter, and all was as it
should be when he left it."
"Then do you suppose the burglar was in hiding
in the house?"
"It's impossible to say, my lord. He's not in
the house now, for he could only be in your lord-
ship's bedroom or dressing-room, and we have
searched every inch of both."
Lord Thornaby turned to us when the inspector
had retreated, caressing his peaked cap.
"I told him to clear up these points first,” he
explained, jerking his head toward the door. “I
had reason to think my man had been neglecting
his duties up there. I am glad to find myself mis-
taken."
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The Criminologists' Club
I ought to have been no less glad to see my
own mistake. My suspicions of our officious au-
thor were thus proved to have been as wild as
himself. I owed the man no grudge, and yet in
my human heart I felt vaguely disappointed. My
theory had gained color from his behavior ever
since he had admitted us to the dressing-room;
it had changed all at once from the familiar to
the morose; and only now was I just enough to
remember that Lord Thornaby, having tolerated
those familiarities as long as they were connected
with useful service, had administered a relentless
snub the moment that service had been well and
truly performed.
But if Parrington was exonerated in my mind,
so also was Raffles reinstated in the regard of those
who had entertained a far graver and more dan-
gerous hypothesis. It was a miracle of good luck,
a coincidence among coincidences, which had white-
washed him in their sight at the very moment when
they were straining the expert eye to sift him
through and through. But the miracle had been
performed, and its effect was visible in every face
and audible in every voice. I except Ernest, who
could never have been in the secret; moreover,
that gay Criminologist had been palpably shaken
by his first little experience of crime. But the
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The Criminologists' Club
"No, I won't have another, thank you. I'm
going to talk to you, Bunny. Do you really sup-
pose I didn't see through these wiseacres from the
first ?"
I flatly refused to believe he had done so before
that evening. Why had he never mentioned his
idea to me? It had been quite the other way, as
I indignantly reminded Raffles. Did he mean me
to believe he was the man to thrust his head
into the lion's mouth for fun? And what point
would there be in dragging me there to see the
fun?
"I might have wanted you, Bunny. I very
nearly did.”
"For my face?"
"It has been my fortune before to-night, Bunny.
It has also given me more confidence than you are
likely to believe at this time of day. You stimu-
late me more than you think.”
"Your gallery and your prompter's box in
one?"
“Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter
with me either, my dear fellow; it was touch-and-
go at the time. I might have called on you at
any moment, and it was something to know I
should not have called in vain."
"But what to do, Raffles ?"
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how you've done it or who has helped you. It's
the biggest thing you ever did in your life!".
* And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more
radiant, or better pleased with the world and him-
self, or nearer that elation which he usually left
to me.
“Then you shall hear all about it, Bunny, if
you'll do what I ask you."
“Ask away, old chap, and the thing's done."
“Switch off the electric lights."
“All of them?"
“I think so."
“There, then.”
"Now go to the back window and up with the
blind.”
“Well?"
“I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had
a look so late as this. It's the only window left
alight in the house !"
His cheek against the pane, he was pointing
slightly downward and very much aslant through
• a long lane of mews to a little square light like
a yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the
window and leaned out before I saw it for my-
self.
"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby
House?”
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A Thief in the Night
I was not familiar with the view from my back
windows.
“Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look
through your own race-glass. It has been the
most useful thing of all.”
But before I had the glass in focus more scales
had fallen from my eyes; and now I knew why
I had seen so much of Raffles these last few weeks,
and why he had always come between seven and
eight o'clock in the evening, and waited at this
very window, with these very glasses at his eyes.
I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted
window pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into
the dark circle of my vision. I could not see into
the actual room, but the shadows of those within
were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even
thought a black thread still dangled against the
square of light. It was, it must be, the window to
which the intrepid Parrington had descended from
the one above.
"Exactly!” said Raffles in answer to my excla-
mation. “And that's the window I have been
watching these last few weeks. By daylight you
can see the whole lot above the ground floor on
this side of the house; and by good luck one of
them is the room in which the master of the house
arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was
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le
m
easily spotted by watching at the right time. I
saw him shaved one morning before you were up!
In the evening his valet stays behind to put things
straight; and that has been the very mischief. In
the end I had to find out something about the man,
and wire to him from his girl to meet her outside
at eight o'clock. Of course he pretends he was
at his post at the time: that I foresaw, and did the
poor fellow's work before my own. I folded and
put away every garment before I permitted myself
to rag the room.”
"I wonder you had time!"
"It took me one more minute, and it put the
clock on exactly fifteen. By the way, I did that
literally, of course, in the case of the clock they
found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter
the time; but you must admit that it looked as
though one had wrapped it up all ready to cart
away. There was thus any amount of prima-facie
evidence of the robbery having taken place when
we were all at table. As a matter of fact, Lord
Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute, his
valet followed him the minute after, and I entered
the minute after that."
"Through the window?"
"To be sure. I was waiting below in the
garden. You have to pay for your garden in
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A Thiet in the Night
town, in more ways than one. You know the wall,
of course, and that jolly old postern? The lock
was beneath contempt."
"But what about the window? It's on the first
floor, isn't it?"
Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down
with his overcoat. It was a stout bamboo with
a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule, and
shook out of the cane a diminishing series of
smaller canes, exactly like a child's fishing-rod,
which I afterward found to have been their former
state. A double hook of steel was now produced
and quickly attached to the tip of the top joint;
then Raffles undid three buttons of his waistcoat;
and lapped round and round his waist was the
finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of foot-
loops at regular intervals.
"Is it necessary to go any further?" asked
Raffles when he had unwound the rope. "This
end is made fast to that end of the hook, the
other half of the hook fits over anything that
comes its way, and you leave your rod dangling
while you swarm up your line. Of course, you
must know what you've got to hook on to; but
a man who has had a porcelain bath fixed in his
dressing-room is the man for me. The pipes were
all outside, and fixed to the wall in just the right
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place. You see I had made a reconnoissance by
day in addition to many by night; it would hardly
have been worth while constructing my ladder on
chance."
“So you made it on purpose !"
“My dear Bunny,” said Raffles, as he wound
the hemp girdle round his waist once more, "I
never did care for ladder work, but I always said
that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best
of its kind yet invented. This one may come in
useful again.”
“But how long did the whole thing take you ?"
"From mother earth to mother earth? About
five minutes, to-night, and one of those was spent
in doing another man's work."
"What!” I cried. “You mean to tell me you
climbed up and down, in and out, and broke into
that cupboard and that big tin box, and wedged
up the doors and cleared out with a peer's robes
and all the rest of it in five minutes ?”
“Of course I don't, and of course I didn't."
"Then what do you mean, and what did
you do ?”
"Made two bites at the cherry, Bunny! I had
a dress rehearsal in the dead of last night, and it
was then I took the swag. Our noble friend was
snoring next door all the time, but the effort may
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A Thief in the Night
still stand high among my small exploits, for I
not only took all I wanted, but left the whole
place exactly as I found it, and shut things after
me like a good little boy. All that took a good
deal longer; to-night I had simply to rag the room
a bit, sweep up some studs and links, and leave
ample evidence of having boned those rotten robes
to-night. That, if you come to think of it, was
what you writing chaps would call the quintes-
sential Q.E.F. I have not only shown these dear
Criminologists that I couldn't possibly have done
this trick, but that there's some other fellow who
could and did, and whom they've been perfect asses
to confuse with me."
You may figure me as gazing on Raffles all this
time in mute and rapt amazement. But I had
long been past that pitch. If he had told me now
that he had broken into the Bank of England, or
the Tower, I should not have disbelieved him for
a moment. I was prepared to go home with him
to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed.
And I took down my overcoat as he put on his,
But Raffles would not hear of my accompanying
him that night.
“No, my dear Bunny, I am short of sleep and
fed up with excitement. You mayn't believe it-
you may look upon me as a plaster devil-but
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those five minutes you wot of were rather too
crowded even for my taste. The dinner was
nominally at a quarter to eight, and I don't mind
telling you now that I counted on twice as long
as I had. But no one came until twelve minutes
to, and so our host took his time. I didn't want
to be the last to arrive, and I was in the drawing-
room five minutes before the hour. But it was a
quicker thing than I care about, when all is said.”
And his last word on the matter, as he nodded
and went his way, may well be mine; for one need
be no criminologist, much less a member of the
Criminologists' Club, to remember what Raffles
did with the robes and coronet of the Right Hon.
the Earl of Thornaby, K.G. He did with them
exactly what he might have been expected to do
by the gentlemen with whom he had foregathered;
and he did it in a manner so characteristic of him-
self as surely to remove from their minds the last
aura of the idea that he and himself were the same
person. Carter Paterson was out of the question,
and any labelling or addressing to be avoided on
obvious grounds. But Raffles stabled the white
elephants in the cloak-room at Charing Cross-
and sent Lord Thornaby the ticket.
I21


The Field of Philippi
me
NTIPPER NASMYTH had been head of our
school when Raffles was captain of cricket.
I believe he owed his nickname entirely to the
popular prejudice against a day-boy; and in view
of the special reproach which the term carried in
my time, as also of the fact that his father was
one of the school trustees, partner in a banking
firm of four resounding surnames, and manager
of the local branch, there can be little doubt that
the stigma was undeserved. But we did not think
so then, for Nasmyth was unpopular with high and
low, and appeared to glory in the fact. A swollen
conscience caused him to see and hear even more
than was warranted by his position, and his un-
compromising nature compelled him to act on
whatsoever he heard or saw: a savage custodian
of public morals, he had in addition a perverse
enthusiasm for lost causes, loved a minority for
its own sake, and untenable tenets for theirs.
Such, at all events, was my impression of Nipper
Nasmyth, after my first term, which was also his
last. I had never spoken to him, but I had heard
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The Field of Philippi
him speak with extraordinary force and fervor in
the school debates. I carried a clear picture of his
unkempt hair, his unbrushed coat, his dominant
spectacles, his dogmatic jaw. And it was I who
knew the combination at a glance, after years and
years, when the fateful whim seized Raffles to play
once more in the Old Boys' Match, and his will
took me down with him to participate in the milder
festivities of Founder's Day.
It was, however, no ordinary occasion. The
bicentenary loomed but a year ahead, and a move-
ment was on foot to mark the epoch with an ade-
quate statue of our pious founder. A special
meeting was to be held at the school-house, and
Raffles had been specially invited by the new head
master, a man of his own standing, who had been
in the eleven with him up at Cambridge. Raffles
had not been near the old place for years; but I
had never gone down since the day I left; and I
will not dwell on the emotions which the once
familiar journey awakened in my unworthy bosom.
Paddington was alive with Old Boys of all ages
—but very few of ours--if not as lively as we
used to make it when we all landed back for the
holidays. More of us had moustaches and ciga-
rettes and "loud" ties. That was all. Yet of the
throng, though two or three looked twice and
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A Thief in the Night
thrice at Raffles, neither he nor I knew a soul until
we had to change at the junction near our jour-
ney's end, when, as I say, it was I who recognized
Nipper Nasmyth at sight.
The man was own son of the boy we both re-
membered. He had grown a ragged beard and
a moustache that hung about his face like a neg.
lected creeper. He was stout and bent and older
than his years. But he spurned the platform with
a stamping stride which even I remembered in an
instant, and which was enough for Raffles before
he saw the man's face.
“The Nipper it is !” he cried. "I could swear
to that walk in a pantomime procession! See the
independence in every step: that's his heel on the
neck of the oppressor: it's the nonconformist con-
science in baggy breeches. I must speak to him,
Bunny. There was a lot of good in the old Nip-
per, though he and I did bar each other."
And in a moment he had accosted the man by
the boy's nickname, obviously without thinking of
an affront which few would have read in that
hearty open face and hand.
“My name's Nasmyth,” snapped the other,
standing upright to glare.
“Forgive me,” said Raffles undeterred. “One
remembers a nickname and forgets all it never used
124


The Field of Philippi
ne
to mean. Shake hands, my dear fellow! I'm
Rafles. It must be fifteen years since we met."
"At least," replied Nasmyth coldly; but he
could no longer refuse Raffles his hand. “So you
are going down,” he sneered, "to this great gath-
ering?" And I stood listening at my distance,
as though still in the middle fourth.
"Rather!" cried Raffles. "I'm afraid I have
let myself lose touch, but I mean to turn over a
new leaf. I suppose that isn't necessary in your
case, Nasmyth?”
He spoke with an enthusiasm rare indeed in him:
it had grown upon Raffles in the train; the spirit
of his boyhood had come rushing back at fifty
miles an hour. He might have been following
some honorable calling in town; he might have
snatched this brief respite from a distinguished
but exacting career. I am convinced that it was
I alone who remembered at that moment the life
we were really leading at that time. With me
there walked this skeleton through every waking
hour that was to follow. I shall endeavor not
to refer to it again. Yet it should not be forgotten
that my skeleton was always there.
"It certainly is not necessary in my case," re-
plied Nasmyth, still as stiff as any poker. "I
happen to be a trustee."
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A Thief in the Night
“Of the school?"
"Like my father before me.”
“I congratulate you, my dear fellow !" cried the
hearty Raffles—a younger Raffles than I had ever
known in town.
"I don't know that you need,” said Nasmyth
sourly.
“But it must be a tremendous interest. And
the proof is that you're going down to this show,
like all the rest of us."
“No, I'm not. I live there, you see.”
And I think the Nipper recalled that name as
he ground his heel upon an unresponsive flagstone.
“But you're going to this meeting at the school-
house, surely ?"
"I don't know. If I do there may be squalls.
I don't know what you think about this precious
scheme Raffles, but I . . ."
The ragged beard stuck out, set teeth showed
through the wild moustache, and in a sudden out-
pouring we had his views. They were narrow and
intemperate and perverse as any I had heard him
advocate as the firebrand of the Debating Society
in my first term. But they were stated with all
the old vim and venom. The mind of Nasmyth
had not broadened with the years, but neither had
its natural force abated, nor that of his character
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The Field of Philippi
either. He spoke with great vigor at the top of
his voice; soon we had a little crowd about us;
but the tall collars and the broad smiles of the
younger Old Boys did not deter our dowdy dema-
gogue. Why spend money on a man who had
been dead two hundred years ? What good could
it do him or the school? Besides, he was only
technically our founder. He had not founded a
great public school. He had founded a little
country grammar school which had pottered along
for a century and a half. The great public school
was the growth of the last fifty years, and no credit
to the pillar of piety. Besides, he was only nomi-
nally pious. Nasmyth had made researches, and
he knew. And why throw good money after a
bad man?
"Are there many of your opinion ?" inquired
Raffles, when the agitator paused for breath. And
Nasmyth beamed on us with flashing eyes.
“Not one to my knowledge as yet," said he.
"But we shall see after tomorrow night. I hear
it's to be quite an exceptional gathering this year;
let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There
are none on the present staff, and I only know of
one among the trustees !".
Raffles refrained from smiling as his dancing
eye met mine.
127


A Thief in the Night
om
"I can understand your view," he said. “I am
not sure that I don't share it to some extent. But
it seems to me a duty to support a general
movement like this even if it doesn't take the
direction or the shape of our own dreams. I
suppose you yourself will give something, Nas-
myth?”
“Give something? I? Not a brass farthing !"
cried the implacable banker. “To do so would
be to stultify my whole position. I cordially and
conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and
shall use all my influence against it. No, my good
sir, I not only don't subscribe myself, but I hope
to be the means of nipping a good many subscrip-
tions in the bud.”
I was probably the only one who saw the
sudden and yet subtle change in Raffles—the hard
mouth, the harder eye. I, at least, might have
foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet
voice betrayed nothing, as he inquired whether
Nasmyth was going to speak at next night's meet-
ing. Nasmyth said he might, and certainly warned
us what to expect. He was still fulminating when
our train came in.
" Then we meet again at Philippi," cried Raf-
fles in gay adieu. “For you have been very frank
with us all, Nasmyth, and I'll be frank enough in
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The Field of Philippi
my turn to tell you that I've every intention of
speaking on the other side !"
It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak
by his old college friend, the new head master.
Yet it was not at the school-house that he and I
were to stay, but at the house that we had both
been in as boys. It also had changed hands: a
wing had been added, and the double tier of tiny
studies made brilliant with electric light. But the
quad and the fives-courts did not look a day older;
the ivy was no thicker round the study windows;
and in one boy's castle we found the traditional
print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked
about our studies ever since a son of the contractor
first sold it when he left. Nay, more, there was
the bald remnant of a stuffed bird which had been
my own daily care when it and I belonged to
Raffles. And when we all filed in to prayers,
through the green baize door which still separated
the master's part of the house from that of the
boys, there was a small boy posted in the passage
to give the sign of silence to the rest assembled
in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old days;
the picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only
we who were out of it in body and soul.
On our side of the baize door a fine hospitality
and a finer flow of spirits were the order of the
129


A Thief in the Night
night. There was a sound representative assort-
ment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was
a prehistoric time, and in the trough of their mod-
ern chaff and chat we old stagers might well have
been left far astern of the fun. Yet it was Raffles
who was the life and soul of the party, and that
not by meretricious virtue of his cricket. There
happened not to be another cricketer among us,
and it was on their own subjects that Raffles
laughed with the lot in turn and in the lump. I
never knew him in quite such form. I will not
say he was a boy among them, but he was that
rarer being, the man of the world who can enter
absolutely into the fun and fervor of the salad age.
My cares and my regrets had never been more
acute, but Raffles seemed a man without either in
his life.
He was not, however, the hero of the Old
Boys' Match, and that was expected of him by
all the school. There was a hush when he went
in, a groan when he came out. I had no reason
to suppose he was not trying; these things happen
to the cricketer who plays out of his class; but
when the great Raffles went on to bowl, and was
hit all over the field, I was not so sure. It certainly
failed to affect his spirits; he was more brilliant
than ever at our hospitable board; and after dinner
130


A Thief in the Night
in the wilderness when the voice ceased crying.
But we sat in the deeper silence when Raffles rose
to reply.
I leaned forward not to lose a word. I knew
my Raffles so well that I felt almost capable of
reporting his speech before I heard it. Never was
I more mistaken, even in him! So far from a gibe
for a gibe and a taunt for a taunt, there never was
softer answer than that which A. J. Raffles returned
to Nipper Nasmyth before the staring eyes and
startled ears of all assembled. He courteously but
firmly refused to believe a word his old friend Nas-
myth had said about himself. He had known
Nasmyth for twenty years, and never had he met
a dog who barked so loud and bit so little. The
fact was that he had far too kind a heart to bite
at all. Nasmyth might get up and protest as loud
as he liked: the speaker declared he knew him bet-
ter than Nasmyth knew himself. He had the nec-
essary defects of his great qualities. He was only
too good a sportsman. He had a perfect passion
for the weaker side. That alone led Nasmyth into
such excesses of language as we had all heard from
his lips that night. As for Raffles, he concluded his
far too genial remarks by predicting that, what-
ever Nasmyth might say or think of the new fund,
he would subscribe to it as handsomely as any of
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The Field of Philippi
us, like "the generous good chap" that we all knew
him to be.
Even so did Rafles disappoint the Old Boys in
the evening as he had disappointed the school by
day. We had looked to him for a noble raillery, a
lofty and loyal disdain, and he had fobbed us off
with friendly personalities not even in impeccable
taste. Nevertheless, this light treatment of a grave
offence went far to restore the natural amenities of
the occasion. It was impossible even for Nasmyth
to reply to it as he might to a more earnest on-
slaught. He could but smile sardonically, and
audibly undertake to prove Raffles a false prophet;
and though subsequent speakers were less merciful
the note was struck, and there was no more bad
blood in the debate. There was plenty, however,
in the veins of Nasmyth, as I was to discover for
myself before the night was out.
You might think that in the circumstances he
would not have attended the head master's ball
with which the evening ended; but that would be
sadly to misjudge so perverse a creature as the
notorious Nipper. He was probably one of those
who protest that there is nothing personal" in
their most personal attacks. Not that Nasmyth
took this tone about Raffles when he and I found
ourselves cheek by jowl against the ballroom wall;
133


The Field of Philippi
I let my eyes follow Raffles round the room
before replying. He was waltzing with a master's
wife—waltzing as he did everything else. Other
couples seemed to melt before them. And the
woman on his arm looked a radiant girl.
“I meant in town, or wherever he lives his mys-
terious life," explained Nasmyth, when I told him
that he could see for himself. But his clever
tone did not trouble me; it was his epithet that
caused me to prick my ears. And I found some
difficulty in following Raffles right round the room.
"I thought everybody knew what he was doing;
he's playing cricket most of his time,” was my
measured reply; and if it bore an extra touch of
insolence, I can honestly ascribe that to my nerves.
"And is that all he does for a living ?” pursued
my inquisitor keenly.
“You had better ask Raffles himself," said I to
that. “It's a pity you didn't ask him in public, at
the meeting!"
But I was beginning to show temper in my
embarrassment, and of course that made Nasmyth
the more imperturbable.
"Really, he might be following some disgraceful
calling, by the mystery you make of it!" he ex-
claimed. “And for that matter I call first-class
cricket a disgraceful calling, when it's followed by
135


The Field of Philippi
wish myself back in London, and I did get back
to my room in our old house. My dancing days
were already over; there I had taken the one reso-
lution to which I remained as true as better men to
better vows; there the painful association was no
mere sense of personal unworthiness. I fell to
thinking in my room of other dances ... and
was still smoking the cigarette which Raffles had
taught me to appreciate when I looked up to find
him regarding me from the door. He had opened
it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors,
and now he closed it in the same professional
fashion.
"I missed Achilles hours ago," said he. "And
still he's sulking in his tent!".
"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could
always make me, "but I'll chuck it if you'll stop
and smoke. Our host doesn't mind; there's an
ash-tray provided for the purpose. I ought to be
sulking between the sheets, but I'm ready to sit
up with you till morning.”
“We might do worse; but, on the other hand,
we might do still better," rejoined Raffles, and
for once he resisted the seductive Sullivan. “As
a matter of fact, it's morning now; in another hour
it will be dawn; and where could day dawn better
than in Warfield Woods, or along the Stockley
137


The Field of Philippi
S
thing? I've had a spare loophole all my life, and
when you're ready I'll show you what it was when
I was here. Take off those boots, and carry your
tennis-shoes; slip on another coat; put out your
light; and I'll meet you on the landing in two
minutes."
He met me with uplifted finger, and not a
syllable; and down-stairs he led me, stocking soles
close against the skirting, two feet to each particu-
lar step. It must have seemed child's play to Raf-
fles; the old precautions were obviously assumed
for my entertainment; but I confess that to me it
was all refreshingly exciting—for once without a
risk of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely
a creak we reached the hall, and could have walked
out of the street door without danger or difficulty.
But that would not do for Raffles. He must needs
lead me into the boys' part, through the green
baize door. It took a deal of opening and shut
ting, but Raffles seemed to enjoy nothing better
than these mock obstacles, and in a few minutes
we were resting with sharp ears in the boys'
hall.
“Through these windows?" I whispered, when
the clock over the piano had had matters its own
way long enough to make our minds quite easy.
"How else?” whispered Raffles, as he opened
139


The Field of Philippi
my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I
thought I caught my name. He's the most con-
sistent man I know, and the least altered from a
boy. But he'll subscribe all right, you'll see, and
be very glad I made him.".
I whispered back that I did not believe it for
a moment. Raffles had not heard all Nasmyth
had said of him. And neither would he listen to
the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but
reiterate a conviction so chimerical to my mind that
I interrupted in my turn to ask him what ground
he had for it.
"I've told you already," said Raffles. "I mean
to make him.”
"But how?" I asked. “And when, and where?"
"At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him.
What a rabbit you are at a quotation !
“And I think that the field of Philippi
Was where Cæsar came to an end;
But who gave old Brutus the tip, I
Can't comprehend !
"You may have forgotten your Shakespeare,
Bunny, but you ought to remember that."
And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or
Raffles meant, as I plainly told him.
"The theatre of war," he answered and here
we are at the stage door!”.
141


A Thief in the Night
Raffles had stopped suddenly in his walk. It
was the last dark hour of the summer night, but
the light from a neighboring lamppost showed me
the look on his face as he turned.
"I think you also inquired when," he continued.
"Well, then, this minute—if you will give me a
leg up!”
And behind him, scarcely higher than his head,
and not even barred, was a wide window with a
wire blind, and the name of Nasmyth among others
lettered in gold upon the wire.
“You're never going to break in ?"
"This instant, if you'll help me; in five or ten
minutes, if you won't.” .
"Surely you didn't bring the—the tools ?”
He jingled them gently in his pocket.
“Not the whole outfit, Bunny. But you never
know when you mayn't want one or two. I'm only
thankful I didn't leave the lot behind this time. I
very nearly did."
"I must say I thought you would, coming down
here," I said reproachfully.
"But you ought to be glad I didn't,” he rejoined
with a smile. "It's going to mean old Nasmyth's
subscription to the Founder's Fund, and that's to
be a big one, I promise you! The lucky thing is
that I went so far as to bring my bunch of safe-
142


The Field of Philippi
keys. Now, are you going to help me use them, or
are you not? If so, now's your minute; if not,
clear out and be- "
"Not so fast, Raffles," said I testily. "You
must have planned this before you came down,
or you would never have brought all those things
with you."
"My dear Bunny, they're a part of my kit! I
take them wherever I take my evening-clothes. As
to this potty bank, I never even thought of it,
much less that it would become a public duty to
draw a hundred or so without signing for it.
That's all I shall touch, Bunny—I'm not on the
make to-night. There's no risk in it either. If I
am caught I shall simply sham champagne and
stand the racket; it would be an obvious frolic after
what happened at that meeting. And they will
catch me, if I stand talking here: you run away
back to bed-unless you're quite determined to
'give old Brutus the tip!'"
Now we had barely been a minute whispering
where we stood, and the whole street was still as
silent as the tomb. To me there seemed least
danger in discussing the matter quietly on the spot.
But even as he gave me my dismissal Raffles turned
and caught the sill above him, first with one hand
and then with the other. His legs swung like a
143


A Thief in the Night
pendulum as he drew himself up with one arm,
then shifted the position of the other hand, and
very gradually worked himself waist-high with the
sill. But the sill was too narrow for him; that
was as far as he could get unaided; and it was
as much as I could bear to see of a feat which
in itself might have hardened my conscience and
softened my heart. But I had identified his dog-
gerel verse at last. I am ashamed to say that it
was part of a set of my very own writing in the
school magazine of my time. So Raffles knew the
stuff better than I did myself, and yet scorned to
press his flattery to win me over! He had won
me: in a second my rounded shoulders were a pedes-
tal for those dangling feet. And before many
more I heard the old metallic snap, followed by
the raising of a sash so slowly and gently as to be
almost inaudible to me listening just below.
Raffles went through hands first, disappeared for
an instant, then leaned out, lowering his hands
for me.
“Come on, Bunny! You're safer in than out.
Hang on to the sill and let me get you under the
arms. Now all together-quietly does it-and
over you come !"
No need to dwell on our proceedings in the
bank. I myself had small part in the scene, being
144


The Field of Philippi
posted rather in the wings, at the foot of the stairs
leading to the private premises in which the mana-
ger had his domestic being. But I made my mind
easy about him, for in the silence of my watch I
soon detected a nasal note overhead, and it was
resonant and aggressive as the man himself. Of
Rafiles, on the contrary; I heard nothing, for he
had shut the door between us, and I was to warn
him if a single sound came through. I need
scarcely add that no warning was necessary during
the twenty minutes we remained in the bank. Raf-
fles afterward assured me that nineteen of them
had been spent in filing one key; but one of his lat-
est inventions was a little thick velvet bag in which
he carried the keys; and this bag had two elastic
mouths, which closed so tightly about either wrist
that he could file away, inside, and scarcely hear
it himself. As for these keys, they were clever
counterfeits of typical patterns by two great safe-
making firms. And Raffles had come by them in
a manner all his own, which the criminal world
may discover for itself.
When he opened the door and beckoned to me,
I knew by his face that he had succeeded to his
satisfaction, and by experience better than to ques-
tion him on the point. Indeed, the first thing was
to get out of the bank; for the stars were drowning
145


A Thief in the Night
in a sky of ink and water, and it was a comfort to
feel that we could fly straight to our beds. I
said so in whispers as Raffles cautiously opened
our window and peeped out. In an instant
his head was in, and for another I feared the
worst.
“What was that, Bunny? No, you don't, my
son! There's not a soul in sight that I can see,
but you never know, and we may as well lay a
scent while we're about it. Ready? Then follow
me, and never mind the window.”
With that he dropped softly into the street,
and I after him, turning to the right instead of
the left, and that at a brisk trot instead of the inno-
cent walk which had brought us to the bank. Like
mice we scampered past the great schoolroom, with
its gable snipping a paler sky than ever, and the
shadows melting even in the colonnade underneath.
Masters' houses flitted by on the left, lesser land-
marks on either side, and presently we were run-
ning our heads into the dawn, one under either
hedge of the Stockley road.
"Did you see that light in Nab's just now?"
cried Raffles as he led.
"No; why?" I panted, nearly spent.
“It was in Nab's dressing-room.”
“Yes?"
146


The Field of Philippi
"I've seen it there before," continued Raffles.
"He never was a good sleeper, and his ears reach
to the street. I wouldn't like to say how often I
was chased by him in the small hours! I believe
he knew who it was toward the end, but Nab was
not the man to accuse you of what he couldn't
prove."
I had no breath for comment. And on sped
Raffles like a yacht before the wind, and on I
blundered like a wherry at sea, making heavy
weather all the way, and nearer foundering at
every stride. Suddenly, to my deep relief, Raffles
halted, but only to tell me to stop my pipes while
he listened.
"It's all right, Bunny,” he resumed, showing
me a glowing face in the dawn. "History's on
its own tracks once more, and I'll bet you it's dear
old Nab on ours! Come on, Bunny; run to the
last gasp, and leave the rest to me.”
I was past arguing, and away he went. There
was no help for it but to follow as best I could.
Yet I had vastly preferred to collapse on the spot,
and trust to Raffles's resource, as before very long
I must. I had never enjoyed long wind and the
hours that we kept in town may well have aggra-
vated the deficiency. Raffles, however, was in first-
class training from first-class cricket, and he had no
V
147


A Thief in the Night
mercy on Nab or me. But the master himself was
an old Oxford miler, who could still bear it better
than I; nay, as I flagged and stumbled, I heard
him pounding steadily behind.
"Come on, come on, or he'll do us !" cried Raf-
fles shrilly over his shoulder; and a gruff sardonic
laugh came back over mine. It was pearly morn-
ing now, but we had run into a shallow mist that
took me by the throat and stabbed me to the lungs.
I coughed and coughed, and stumbled in my stride,
until down I went, less by accident than to get it
over, and so lay headlong in my tracks. And old
Nab dealt me a verbal kick as he passed.
"You beast !" he growled, as I have known him
growl it in form.
But Raffles himself had abandoned the flight on
hearing my downfall, and I was on hands and
knees just in time to see the meeting between him
and old Nab. And there stood Raffles in the
silvery mist, laughing with his whole light heart,
leaning back to get the full flavor of his mirth;
and, nearer me, sturdy old Nab, dour and grim,
with beads of dew on the hoary beard that had
been lamp-black in our time.
"So I've caught you at last!" said he. “After
more years than I mean to count !”.
“Then you're luckier than we are, sir," an-
148


The Field of Philippi
swered Raffles, "for I fear our man has given us
the slip.”
“Your man!" echoed Nab. His bushy eye-
brows had shot up: it was as much as I could do
to keep my own in their place.
"We were indulging in the chase ourselves,"
explained Raffles, "and one of us has suffered for
his zeal, as you can see. It is even possible that
we, too, have been chasing a perfectly innocent
man."
"Not to say a reformed character," said our pur-
suer dryly. "I suppose you don't mean a member
of the school?” he added, pinking his man sud-
denly as of yore, with all the old barbed acumen.
But Raffles was now his match.
"That would be carrying reformation rather
far, sir. No, as I say, I may have been mistaken
in the first instance; but I had put out my light
and was looking out of the window when I saw a
fellow behaving quite suspiciously. He was carry-
ing his boots and creeping along in his socks-
which must be why you never heard him, sir. They
make less noise than rubber soles even-that is,
they must, you know! Well, Bunny had just left
me, so I hauled him out and we both crept down
to play detective. No sign of the fellow! We
had a look in the colonnade-I thought I heard
149


The Field of Philippi
more compunction for the fable which he had been
compelled to foist upon one of the old masters
than for the immeasurably graver offence against
society and another Old Boy. This, indeed, did
not worry him at all; and the story was received
next day with absolute credulity on all sides. Nas-
myth himself was the first to thank us both for our
spirited effort on his behalf; and the incident had
the ironic effect of establishing an immediate en-
tente cordiale between Raffles and his very latest
victim. I must confess, however, that for my own
part I was thoroughly uneasy during the Old Boys'
second innings, when Raffles made a selfish score,
instead of standing by me to tell his own story in
his own way. There was never any knowing with
what new detail he was about to embellish it: and I
have still to receive full credit for the tact that it
required to follow his erratic lead convincingly.
Seldom have I been more thankful than when our
train started next morning, and the poor, unsuspect-
ing Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from
the platform.
"Lucky we weren't staying at Nab's,” said Raf-
fles, as he lit a Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail
at its report of the robbery. “There was one
thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old
bird he always was and will be."
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A Thief in the Night
“What was that?"
“The front door must have been found duly
barred and bolted in the morning, and yet we let
them assume that we came out that way. Nab
would have pounced on the point, and by this
time we might have been nabbed ourselves.”
It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that
Raffles had taken, and, of course, he had resolutely
eschewed any and every form of paper money.
He posted his own first contribution of twenty-
five pounds to the Founder's Fund immediately on
our return to town, before rushing off to more first-
class cricket, and I gathered that the rest would
follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd
coincidence, however, a mysterious but magnificent
donation of a hundred guineas was almost simulta-
neously received in notes by the treasurer of the
Founder's Fund, from one who simply signed him-
self “Old Boy." The treasurer happened to be
our late host, the new man at our old house, and
he wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was
pleased to consider a direct result of the latter's
speech. I did not see the letter that Raffles wrote
in reply, but in due course I heard the name of the
mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other
than Nipper Nasmyth himself. I asked Raffles
if it was true. He replied that he would ask old
152



CUNEO
He kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.





The Field of Philippi
Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the
'Varsity match, and if they had the luck to meet.
And not only did this happen, but I had the
greater luck to be walking round the ground with
Raffles when we encountered our shabby friend in
front of the pavilion.
“My dear fellow," cried Raffles, "I hear it was
you who gave that hundred guineas by stealth to
the very movement you denounced. Don't deny
it, and don't blush to find it fame. Listen to me.
There was a great lot in what you said; but it's
the kind of thing we ought all to back, whether
we strictly approve of it in our hearts or not."
"Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is ".
"I know what you're going to say. Don't say
it. There's not one in a thousand who would do
as you've done, and not one in a million who would
do it anonymously.”
“But what makes you think I did it, Raffles ?" ni
Everybody is saying so. You will find it all over
the place when you get back. You will find yourself
the most popular man down there, Nasmyth !".
I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that
of this awkward, ungainly, cantankerous man: all
his angles seemed to have been smoothed away:
there was something quite human in the flushed,
undecided, wistful face.
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A Thief in the Night
every
“I never was popular in my life,” he said. "I
don't want to buy my popularity now. To be
perfectly candid with you, Raffles— "
"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing
the bell. But you shouldn't have been angry with
me for saying you were a generous good chap, Nas-
myth, when you were one all the time. Good-by,
old fellow !"
But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His
hesitation was at an end. There was a sudden
new light in his face.
“Was I?" he cried. “Then I'll make it two
hundred, and damn the odds !"
Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our
seats. He saw nobody, would acknowledge no
remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for
the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventu-
ally invited me to come for a stroll on the practice
ground, where, however, we found two chairs
aloof from the fascinating throng.
"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know,”
he began. “But I have been sorry since the in-
terval. I've been sorry for poor old Nipper Nas-
myth. Did you see the idea of being popular dawn
upon him for the first time in his life?”
“I did; but you had nothing to do with that,
my dear man."
154 .


The Field of Philippi
Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met.
“I had everything to do with it. I tried to
make him tell the meanest lie. I made sure he
would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then,
at the last moment, he saw how to hedge things
with his conscience. And his second hundred will
be a real gift."
“You mean under his own name?".
"And with his own free-will. My good Bunny,
is it possible you don't know what I did with the
hundred we drew from that bank!".
“I knew what you were going to do with it,"
said I. "I didn't know you had actually got fur-
ther than the twenty-five you told me you were
sending as your own contribution.”
Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.
“And you actually thought that came out of his
money?"
"Naturally."
"In my name?"
“I thought so."
Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some mo-
ments, and for some more at the great white num-
bers over the grand-stand.
"We may as well have another look at the
cricket," said he. "It's difficult to see the board
from here, but I believe there's another man out."
155


A Bad Night
NHERE was to be a certain little wedding
in which Raffles and I took a surreptitious
interest. The bride-elect was living in some retire-
ment, with a recently widowed mother and an
asthmatical brother, in a mellow hermitage on the
banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a pros-
perous son of the same suburban soil which had
nourished both families for generations. The wed-
ding presents were so numerous as to fill several
rooms at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of
an intrinsic value calling for a special transaction
with the Burglary Insurance Company in Cheap-
side. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all this
information. I only know that it proved correct
in each particular. I was not indeed deeply inter-
ested before the event, since Raffles assured me
that it was "a one-man job,” and naturally in-
tended to be the one man himself. It was only at
the eleventh hour that our positions were inverted
by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for
the English team in the Second Test Match.
156


A Thief in the Night
sen ver so
an old life-preserver somewhere in the bureau; take
that, if you like—though what you take I rather
fear you are the chap to use !"
"Then the rope be round my own neck!” I
whispered back. “Whatever else I may do, Raf-
fles, I shan't give you away; and you'll find I
do better than you think, and am worth trusting
with a little more to do, or I'll know the reason
why!”
And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of
Euston with raised eyebrows, and I turned grimly
on my heel. I saw his fears for me; and nothing
could have made me more fearless for myself.
Raffles had been wrong about me all these years;
now was my chance to set him right. It was
galling to feel that he had no confidence in my
coolness or my nerve, when neither had ever failed
him at a pinch. I had been loyal to him through
rough and smooth. In many an ugly corner I had
stood as firm as Raffles himself. I was his right
hand, and yet he never hesitated to make me his
catspaw. This time, at all events, I should be
neither one nor the other; this time I was the
understudy playing lead at last; and I wish I could
think that Raffles ever realized with what gusto
I threw myself into his part.
Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at
158


A Bad Night
Esher next night, and first down the stairs into the
open air. The night was close and cloudy; and the
road to Hampton Court, even now that the sub-
urban builder has marked much of it for his own,
is one of the darkest I know. The first mile is still
a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of leaves at mid-
summer; but at that time there was not a lighted
pane or cranny by the way. Naturally, it was in
this blind reach that I fancied I was being fol.
lowed. I stopped in my stride; so did the steps
I made sure I had heard not far behind; and when
I went on, they followed suit. I dried my fore-
head as I walked, but soon brought myself to
repeat the experiment when an exact repetition of
the result went to convince me that it had been my
own echo all the time. And since I lost it on get-
ting quit of the avenue, and coming out upon the
straight and open road, I was not long in recover-
ing from my scare. But now I could see my way,
and found the rest of it without mishap, though
not without another semblance of adventure. Over
the bridge across the Mole, when about to turn
to the left, I marched straight upon a policeman
in rubber soles. I had to call him "officer" as I
passed, and to pass my turning by a couple of hun-
dred yards, before venturing back another way.
At last I had crept through a garden gate, and
159


A Thief in the Night
round by black windows to a black lawn drenched
with dew. It had been a heating walk, and I was
glad to blunder on a garden seat, most consider-
ately placed under a cedar which added its own
darkness to that of the night. Here I rested a few
minutes, putting up my feet to keep them dry,
untying my shoes to save time, and generally facing
the task before me with a coolness which I strove
to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine was
a self-conscious quality, as far removed from the
original as any other deliberate imitation of genius.
I actually struck a match on my trousers, and lit
one of the shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would
not have done such a thing at such a moment.
But I wished to tell him that I had done it; and
in truth I was not more than pleasurably afraid; I
had rather that impersonal curiosity as to the issue
which has been the saving of me in still more pre-
carious situations. I even grew impatient for the
fray, and could not after all sit still as long as I
had intended. So it happened that I was finishing
my cigarette on the edge of the wet lawn, and
about to slip off my shoes before stepping across
the gravel to the conservatory door, when a most
singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a
muffled gasping somewhere overhead. I stood like
stone; and my listening attitude must have been
160


A Bad Night
visible against the milky sheen of the lawn, for a
labored voice hailed me sternly from a window.
"Who on earth are you?" it wheezed.
"A detective officer," I replied, “sent down by
the Burglary Insurance Company."
Not a moment had I paused for my precious
fable. It had all been prepared for me by Raffles,
in case of need. I was merely repeating a lesson
in which I had been closely schooled. But at the
window there was pause enough, filled only by the
uncanny wheezing of the man I could not see.
"I don't see why they should have sent you
down," he said at length. “We are being quite
well looked after by the local police; they're giv-
ing us a special call every hour.”
“I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on
my own account. "I met one of them at the cor-
ner just now, and we passed the time of night.”
My heart was knocking me to bits. I had
started for myself at last.
“Did you get my name from him ?” pursued my
questioner, in a suspicious wheeze.
"No; they gave me that before I started," I
replied. “But I'm sorry you saw me, sir; it's a
mere matter of routine, and not intended to annoy
anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place
all night, but I own it wasn't necessary to trespass
161


A Thief in the Night
as I've done. I'll take myself off the actual prem-
ises, if you prefer it."
This again was all my own; and it met with
a success that might have given me confidence.
“Not a bit of it," replied young Medlicott, with
a grim geniality. "I've just woke up with the
devil of an attack of asthma, and may have to sit
up in my chair till morning. You'd better come
up and see me through, and kill two birds while
you're about it. Stay where you are, and I'll come
down and let you in."
Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had
not foreseen! Outside, in the dark, my audacious
part was not hard to play; but to carry the improv-
isation in-doors was to double at once the diffi-
culty and the risk. It was true that I had pur-
posely come down in a true detective's overcoat
and bowler; but my personal appearance was
hardly of the detective type. On the other hand
as the soi-disant guardian of the gifts one might
only excite suspicion by refusing to enter the house
where they were. Nor could I forget that it was
my purpose to effect such entry first or last. That
was the casting consideration. I decided to take
my dilemma by the horns.
There had been a scraping of matches in the
room over the conservatory; the open window had
162


A Bad Night
shown for a moment, like an empty picture frame,
a gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and
in the next half-minute I remembered to tie my
shoes. But the light was slow to reappear through
the leaded glasses of an outer door farther along
the path. And when the door opened, it was a
figure of woe that stood within and held an un-
steady candle between our faces.
I have seen old men look half their age, and
young men look double theirs; but never before
or since have I seen a beardless boy bent into
a man of eighty, gasping for every breath, shaken
by every gasp, swaying, tottering, and choking,
as if about to die upon his feet. Yet with it all,
young Medlicott overhauled me shrewdly, and it
was several moments before he would let me take
the candle from him.
"I shouldn't have come down-made me
worse,” he began whispering in spurts. “Worse
still going up again. You must give me an arm.
You will come up ? That's right! Not as bad as
I look, you know. Got some good whiskey, too.
Presents are all right; but if they aren't you'll
hear of it in-doors sooner than out. Now I'm
ready—thanks! Mustn't make more noise than
we can help-wake my mother.”
It must have taken us minutes to climb that
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A Thief in the Night
single flight of stairs. There was just room for
me to keep his arm in mine; with the other he
hauled on the banisters; and so we mounted, step
by step, a panting pause on each, and a pitched
battle for breath on the half-landing. In the end
we gained a cosey library, with an open door lead-
ing to a bedroom beyond. But the effort had de-
prived my poor companion of all power of speech;
his laboring lungs shrieked like the wind; he could
just point to the door by which we had entered,
and which I shut in obedience to his gestures, and
then to the decanter and its accessories on the
table where he had left them overnight. I gave
him nearly half a glassful, and his paroxysm sub-
sided a little as he sat hunched up in a chair.
"I was a fool. . . to turn in,” he blurted
in more whispers between longer pauses. “Lying
down is the devil . . . when you're in for
a real bad night. You might get me the brown
cigarettes . . . on the table in there. That's
right... thanks awfully ... and
now a match !"
The asthmatic had bitten off either end of the
stramonium cigarette, and was soon choking him-
self with the crude fumes, which he inhaled in
desperate gulps, to exhale in furious fits of cough-
ing. Never was more heroic remedy; it seemed
164


A Thief in the Night
flowers in the depths of winter. Got a drink?
That's right! I suppose you didn't happen to
bring down an evening paper ?”
I said I had brought one, but had unfortu-
nately left it in the train.
"What about the Test Match?” cried my
asthmatic, shooting forward in his chair.
“I can tell you that,” said I. “We went in
first- ".
"Oh, I know all about that," he interrupted.
"I've seen the miserable score up to lunch. How
many did we scrape altogether?”
“We're scraping them still."
“No! How many ?”
“Over two hundred for seven wickets."
“Who made the stand?".
"Raffles, for one. He was 62 not out at close
of play!"
And the note of admiration rang in my voice,
though I tried in my self-consciousness to keep it
out. But young Medlicott's enthusiasm proved
an ample cloak for mine; it was he who might
have been the personal friend of Raffles; and in
his delight he chuckled till he puffed and blew
again.
“Good old Raffles !” he panted in every pause.
“After being chosen last, and as a bowler-man!
166


A Bad Night
That's the cricketer for me, sir; by Jove, we must
have another drink in his honor! Funny thing,
asthma; your liquor affects your head no more
than it does a man with a snake bite; but it eases
everything else, and sees you through. Doctors
will tell you so, but you've got to ask 'em first;
they're no good for asthma! I've only known
one who could stop an attack, and he knocked me
sideways with nitrite of amyl. Funny complaint
in other ways; raises your spirits, if anything.
You can't look beyond the next breath. Nothing
else worries you. Well, well, here's luck to A. J.
Raffles, and may he get his century in the morn-
morn-
ing!"
And he struggled to his feet for the toast; but
I drank it sitting down. I felt unreasonably wroth
with Raffles, for coming into the conversation
as he had donefor taking centuries in Test
Matches as he was doing, without bothering his
head about me. A failure would have been in
better taste; it would have shown at least some
imagination, some anxiety on one's account. I did
not reflect that even Raffles could scarcely be ex-
pected to picture me in my cups with the son of
the house that I had come to rob; chatting with
him, ministering to him; admiring his cheery
courage, and honestly attempting to lighten his
167


A Bad Night
buried his face. I watched him closely as a subtle
odor reached my nostrils; and it was like the
miracle of oil upon the billows. His shoulders
rested from long travail; the stertorous gasping
died away to a quick bui natural respiration; and
in the sudden cessation of the cruel contest, an un-
canny stillness fell upon the scene. Meanwhile
the hidden face had flushed to the ears, and,
when at length it was raised to mine, its
crimson calm was as incongruous as an optical
illusion.
"It takes the blood from the heart," he mur-
mured, “and clears the whole show for the mo-
ment. If it only lasted! But you can't take two
without a doctor; one's quite enough to make you
smell the brimstone.... I say, what's up?
You're listening to something! If it's the police-
man we'll have a word with him."
It was not the policeman; it was no out-door
sound that I had caught in the sudden cessation
of the bout for breath. It was a noise, a footstep,
in the room below us. I went to the window and
leaned out: right underneath, in the conservatory,
was the faintest glimmer of a light in the adjoin-
ing room.
"One of the rooms where the presents are !"
whispered Medlicott at my elbow. And as we
169


A Thief in the Night
as
withdrew together, I looked him in the face as
I had not done all night.
I looked him in the face like an honest man,
for a miracle was to make me one once more.
My knot was cut-my course inevitable. Mine,
after all, to prevent the very thing that I had
come to do! My gorge had long since risen at
the deed; the unforeseen circumstances had ren-
dered it impossible from the first; but now 1
could afford to recognize the impossibility, and to
think of Raffles and the asthmatic alike without
a qualm. I could play the game by them both,
for it was one and the same game. I could pre-
serve thieves' honor, and yet regain some shred
of that which I had forfeited as a man!
So I thought as we stood face to face, our ears
straining for the least movement below, our eyes
locked in a common anxiety. Another muffled
foot-fall-felt rather than heard—and we ex-
changed grim nods of simultaneous excitement
But by this time Medlicott was as helpless as he
had been before; the flush had faded from his
face, and his breathing alone would have spoiled
everything. In dumb show I had to order him to
stay where he was, to leave my man to me. And
then it was that in a gusty whisper, with the same
shrewd look that had disconcerted me more than
170


A Bad Night
once during our vigil, young Medlicott froze and
fired my blood by turns.
“I've been unjust to you," he said, with his
right hand in his dressing-gown pocket. "I
thought for a bit-never mind what I thought-
I soon saw I was wrong. But I've had this
thing in my pocket all the time !"
And he would have thrust his revolver upon me
as a peace-offering, but I would not even take his
hand, as I tapped the life-preserver in my pocket,
and crept out to earn his honest grip or to fall in
the attempt. On the landing I drew Raffles's
little weapon, slipped my right wrist through the
leathern loop, and held it in readiness over my
right shoulder. Then, down-stairs I stole, as Raf-
fles himself had taught me, close to the wall,
where the planks are nailed. Nor had I made a
sound, to my knowledge; for a door was open,
and a light was burning, and the light did not
flicker as I approached the door. I clenched my
teeth and pushed it open; and there was the
veriest villain waiting for me, his little lantern
held aloft.
"You blackguard !" I cried, and with a single
thwack I felled the ruffian to the floor.
There was no question of a foul blow. He
had been just as ready to pounce on me; it was
171


A Thief in the Night
simply my luck to have got the first blow home.
Yet a fellow-feeling touched me with remorse,
as I stood over the senseless body, sprawling prone,
and perceived that I had struck an unarmed man.
The lantern only had fallen from his hands; it
lay on one side, smoking horribly; and a some-
thing in the reek caused me to set it up in haste
and turn the body over with both hands.
Shall I ever forget the incredulous horror of
that moment?
It was Raffles himself!
How it was possible, I did not pause to ask
myself; if one man on earth could annihilate space
and time, it was the man lying senseless at my
feet; and that was Raffles, without an instant's
doubt. He was in villainous guise, which I knew
of old, now that I knew the unhappy wearer. His
face was grimy, and dexterously plastered with a
growth of reddish hair; his clothes were those in
which he had followed cabs from the London
termini; his boots were muffled in thick socks; and
I had laid him low with a bloody scalp that
filled my cup of horror. I groaned aloud as
I knelt over him and felt his heart. And I
was answered by a bronchial whistle from the
door.
"Jolly well done!” cheered my asthmatical
172


A Bad Night
friend. “I heard the whole thing—only hope my
mother didn't. We must keep it from her if we
can.”
n-
I could have cursed the creature's mother from
my full heart; yet even with my hand on that of
Raffles, as I felt his feeble pulse, I told myself
that this served him right. Even had I brained
him, the fault had been his, not mine. And it was
a characteristic, an inveterate fault, that galled
me for all my anguish: to trust and yet distrust
me to the end, to race through England in the
night, to spy upon me at his work—to do it him-
self after all!
"Is he dead?” wheezed the asthmatic coolly.
“Not he," I answered, with an indignation that
I dared not show.
: “You must have hit him pretty hard,” pursued
young Medlicott, “but I suppose it was a case of
getting first knock. And a good job you got it,
if this was his," he added, picking up the murder-
ous little life-preserver which poor Raffles had
provided for his own destruction.
"Look here," I answered, sitting back on my
heels. “He isn't dead, Mr. Medlicott, and I don't
know how long he'll be as much as stunned. He's a
powerful brute, and you're not fit to lend a hand.
But that policeman of yours can't be far away.
173


A Thief in the Night
Do you think you could struggle out and look
for him?"
“I suppose I am a bit better than I was," he
replied doubtfully. “The excitement seems to
have done me good. If you like to leave me on
guard with my revolver, I'll undertake that he
doesn't escape me."
I shook my head with an impatient smile.
"I should never hear the last of it," said I.
"No, in that case all I can do is to handcuff the
fellow and wait till morning if he won't go
quietly; and he'll be a fool if he does, while there's
a fighting chance."
Young Medlicott glanced upstairs from his post
on the threshold. I refrained from watching him
too keenly, but I knew what was in his mind.
"I'll go,” he said hurriedly. "I'll go as I am,
before my mother is disturbed and frightened out
of her life. I owe you something, too, not only
for what you've done for me, but for what I was
fool enough to think about you at the first blush.
It's entirely through you that I feel as fit as I do
for the moment. So I'll take your tip, and go just
as I am, before my poor old pipes strike up another
tune."
I scarcely looked up until the good fellow had
turned his back upon the final tableau of watchful
174


A Bad Night
officer and prostrate prisoner and gone out wheez-
ing into the night. But I was at the door to hear
the last of him down the path and round the cor-
ner of the house. And when I rushed back into
the room, there was Raffles sitting cross-legged
on the floor, and slowly shaking his broken head
as he stanched the blood.
"Et tu, Bunny !” he groaned. "Mine own
familiar friend!”
“Then you weren't even stunned!" I exclaimed.
"Thank God for that!"
"Of course I was stunned,” he murmured,
"and no thanks to you that I wasn't brained. Not
to know me in the kit you've seen scores of times !
You never looked at me, Bunny; you didn't give
me time to open my mouth. I was going to let
you run me in so prettily! We'd have walked off
arm-in-arm; now it's as tight a place as ever we
were in, though you did get rid of old blow-pipes
rather nicely. But we shall have the devil's own
run for our money!"
Raffles had picked himself up between his mut-
terings, and I had followed him to the door into
the garden, where he stood busy with the key in
the dark, having blown out his lantern and handed
it to me. But though I followed Raffles, as my
nature must, I was far too embittered to answer
175


A Thief in the Night
him again. And so it was for some minutes that
might furnish forth a thrilling page, but not a
novel one to those who know their Raffles and put
up with me. Suffice it that we left a locked door
behind us, and the key on the garden wall, which
was the first of half a dozen that we scaled before
dropping into a lane that led to a foot-bridge
higher up the backwater. And when we paused
upon the foot-bridge, the houses along the bank
were still in peace and darkness.
Knowing my Raffles as I did, I was not sur-
prised when he dived under one end of this bridge,
and came up with his Inverness cape and opera
hat, which he had hidden there on his way to the
house. The thick socks were peeled from his
patent-leathers, the ragged trousers stripped from
an evening pair, bloodstains and Newgate fringe
removed at the water's edge, and the whole sepul-
chre whited in less time than the thing takes to
tell. Nor was that enough for Raffles, but he
must alter me as well, by wearing my overcoat
under his cape, and putting his Zingari scarf about
my neck.
“And now," said he, "you may be glad to hear
there's a 3:12 from Surbiton, which we could
catch on all fours. If you like we'll go separately,
but I don't think there's the slightest danger now,
176



The ragged trousers stripped from an evening pair.


A Bad Night
and I begin to wonder what's happening to old
blow-pipes."
So, indeed, did I, and with no small concern,
until I read of his adventures (and our own) in
the newspapers. It seemed that he had made a
gallant spurt into the road, and there paid the
penalty of his rashness by a sudden incapacity to
move another inch. It had eventually taken him
twenty minutes to creep back to locked doors, and
another ten to ring up the inmates. His description
of my personal appearance, as reported in the
papers, is the only thing that reconciles me to the
thought of his sufferings during that half-hour.
But at the time I had other thoughts, and they
lay too deep for idle words, for to me also it was
a bitter hour. I had not only failed in my self-
sought task; I had nearly killed my comrade into
the bargain. I had meant well by friend and foe
in turn, and I had ended in doing execrably by
both. It was not all my fault, but I knew how
much my weakness had contributed to the sum
And I must walk with the man whose fault it
was, who had travelled two hundred miles to
obtain this last proof of my weakness, to bring it
home to me, and to make our intimacy intolerable
from that hour. I must walk with him to Sur-
biton, but I need not talk; all through Thames
nes
177


A Thief in the Night
Ditton I had ignored his sallies; nor yet when he
ran his arm through mine, on the river front, when
we were nearly there, would I break the seal my
pride had set upon my lips.
“Come, Bunny,” he said at last, "I have been
the one to suffer most, when all's said and done,
and I'll be the first to say that I deserved it.
You've broken my head; my hair's all glued up
in my gore; and what yarn I'm to put up at Man-
chester, or how I shall take the field at all, I
really don't know. Yet I don't blame you, Bunny,
and I do blame myself. Isn't it rather hard luck
if I am to go unforgiven into the bargain? I
admit that I made a mistake; but, my dear fellow,
I made it entirely for your sake.”
"For my sake!" I echoed bitterly.
Raffles was more generous; he ignored my
tone.
"I was miserable about you—frankly—mis-
erable!” he went on. “I couldn't get it out of
my head that somehow you would be laid by the
heels. It was not your pluck that I distrusted, my
dear fellow, but it was your very pluck that made
me tremble for you. I couldn't get you out of
my head. I went in when runs were wanted, but
I give you my word that I was more anxious about
you; and no doubt that's why I helped to put on
was more
178


A Bad Night
some runs. Didn't you see it in the paper,
Bunny? It's the innings of my life, so far.”
“Yes,” I said, "I saw that you were in at close
of play. But I don't believe it was you—I be-
lieve you have a double who plays your cricket
for you !"
And at the moment that seemed less incredible
than the fact.
"I'm afraid you didn't read your paper very
carefully," said Raffles, with the first trace of
pique in his tone. “It was rain that closed play
before five o'clock. I hear it was a sultry day in
town, but at Manchester we got the storm, and
the ground was under water in ten minutes. I
never saw such a thing in my life. There was
absolutely not the ghost of a chance of another
ball being bowled. But I had changed before I
thought of doing what I did. It was only when
I was on my way back to the hotel, by myself,
because I couldn't talk to a soul for thinking of
you, that on the spur of the moment I made the
man take me to the station instead, and was under
way in the restaurant car before I had time to
think twice about it. I am not sure that of all the
mad deeds I have ever done, this was not the mad-
dest of the lot!"
“It was the finest," I said in a low voice; for
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A Thief in the Night
now I marvelled more at the impulse which had
prompted his feat, and at the circumstances sur-
rounding it, than even at the feat itself.
"Heaven knows,” he went on, “what they are
saying and doing in Manchester! But what can
they say? What business is it of theirs? I was
there when play stopped, and I shall be there
when it starts again. We shall be at Waterloo
just after half-past three, and that's going to give
me an hour at the Albany on my way to Euston,
and another hour at Old Trafford before play
begins. What's the matter with that? I don't
suppose I shall notch any more, but all the better
if I don't; if we have a hot sun after the storm,
the sooner they get in the better; and may I have
a bowl at them while the ground bites !"
"I'll come up with you," I said, “and see you
at it."
"My dear fellow," replied Raffles, "that was
my whole feeling about you. I wanted to see
you at it—that was absolutely all. I wanted to
be near enough to lend a hand if you got tied up,
as the best of us will at times. I knew the ground
better than you, and I simply couldn't keep away
from it. But I didn't mean you to know that I
was there; if everything had gone as I hoped it
might, I should have sneaked back to town with-
180


A Bad Night
out ever letting you know I had been up. You
should never have dreamt that I had been at your
elbow; you would have believed in yourself, and
in my belief in you, and the rest would have been
silence till the grave. So I dodged you at Water-
loo, and I tried not to let you know that I was
following you from Esher station. But you sus-
pected somebody was; you stopped to listen more
than once; after the second time I dropped be-
hind, but gained on you by taking the short cut by
Imber Court and over the foot-bridge where I left
my coat and hat. I was actually in the garden
before you were. I saw you smoke your Sullivan,
and I was rather proud of you for it, though you
must never do that sort of thing again. I heard
almost every word between you and the poor
devil upstairs. And up to a certain point, Bunny,
I really thought you played the scene to per-
fection."
The station lights were twinkling ahead of us
in the fading velvet of the summer's night. I let
them increase and multiply before I spoke.
"And where," I asked, "did you think I first
went wrong?"
"In going in-doors at all,” said Raffles. "If I
had done that, I should have done exactly what
you did from that point on. You couldn't help
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A Thief in the Night
-
--
-
---------
yourself, with that poor brute in that state. And
I admired you immensely, Bunny, if that's any
comfort to you now.".
Comfort! It was wine in every vein, for I
knew that Raffles meant what he said, and with
his eyes I soon saw myself in braver colors. I
ceased to blush for the vacillations of the night,
since he condoned them. I could even see that
I had behaved with a measure of decency, in a
truly trying situation, now that Raffles seemed to
think so. He had changed my whole view of his
proceedings and my own, in every incident of the
night but one. There was one thing, however,
which he might forgive me, but which I felt that
I could forgive neither Raffles nor myself. And
that was the contused scalp wound over which I
shuddered in the train.
"And to think that I did that," I groaned,
"and that you laid yourself open to it, and that
we have neither of us got another thing to show
for our night's work! That poor chap said it
was as bad a night as he had ever had in his life;
but I call it the very worst that you and I ever had
in ours.”
Raffles was smiling under the double lamps of
the first-class compartment that we had to our-
selves.
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A Bad Night
"I wouldn't say that, Bunny. We have done
worse.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you did anything
at all?”
“My dear Bunny,” replied Raffles, "you should
remember how long I had been maturing this
felonious little plan, what a blow it was to me to
have to turn it over to you, and how far I had
travelled to see that you did it and yourself as well
as might be. You know what I did see, and how
well I understood. I tell you again that I should
have done the same thing myself, in your place.
But I was not in your place, Bunny. My hands
were not tied like yours. Unfortunately, most of
the jewels have gone on the honeymoon with the
happy pair; but these emerald links are all right,
and I don't know what the bride was doing to
leave this diamond comb behind. Here, too, is
the old silver skewer I've been wanting for years
—they make the most charming paper-knives in
the world—and this gold cigarette-case will just
do for your smaller Sullivans.”
Nor were these the only pretty things that Raf-
fles set out in twinkling array upon the opposite
cushions. But I do not pretend that this was one
of our heavy hauls, or deny that its chief interest
still resides in the score of the Second Test Match
of that Australian tour.
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A Thief in the Night
Ales in some diabolical man-trap, and of a grinning
monster stealing in to strike him senseless with one
murderous blow. I must have looked in the glass
to array myself as I did; but the mind's eye was
the seeing eye, and it was filled with this frightful
vision of the notorious pugilist known to fame and
infamy as Barney Maguire.
It was only the week before that Raffles and I
had been introduced to him at the Imperial Boxing
Club. Heavy-weight champion of the United
States, the fellow was still drunk with his sangui-
nary triumphs on that side, and clamoring for
fresh conquests on ours. But his reputation had
crossed the Atlantic before Maguire himself; the
grandiose hotels had closed their doors to him;
and he had already taken and sumptuously fur-
nished the house in Half-moon Street which does
not re-let to this day. Raffles had made friends
with the magnificent brute, while I took timid
stock of his diamond studs, his jewelled watch-
chain, his eighteen-carat bangle, and his six-inch
lower jaw. I had shuddered to see Raffles admir-
ing the gewgaws in his turn, in his own brazen
fashion, with that air of the cool connoisseur which
had its double meaning for me. I for my part
would as lief have looked a tiger in the teeth.
And when we finally went home with Maguire to
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A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
see his other trophies, it seemed to me like entering
the tiger's lair. But an astounding lair it proved,
fitted throughout by one eminent firm, and ringing
to the rafters with the last word on fantastic
furniture.
The trophies were a still greater surprise. They
opened my eyes to the rosier aspect of the noble
art, as presently practised on the right side of the
Atlantic. Among other offerings, we were per-
mitted to handle the jewelled belt presented to
the pugilist by the State of Nevada, a gold brick
from the citizens of Sacramento, and a model of
himself in solid silver from the Fisticuff Club in
New York. I still remember waiting with bated
breath for Rafiles to ask Maguire if he were not
afraid of burglars, and Maguire replying that he
had a trap to catch the cleverest cracksman alive,
but flatly refusing to tell us what it was. I could
not at the moment conceive a more terrible trap
than the heavy-weight himself behind a curtain.
Yet it was easy to see that Raffles had accepted the
braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did he deny
it later when I taxed him with his mad resolve; he
merely refused to allow me to implicate myself in
its execution. Well, there was a spice of savage
satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had been
obliged to turn to me in the end. And, but for the
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A Thief in the Night
dreadful thud which I had heard over the tele-
phone, I might have extracted some genuine com-
fort from the unerring sagacity with which he had
chosen his night.
Within the last twenty-four hours Barney Ma-
guire had fought his first great battle on British
soil. Obviously, he would no longer be the man
that he had been in the strict training before the
fight; never, as I gathered, was such a ruffian more
off his guard, or less capable of protecting himself
and his possessions, than in these first hours of
relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which
Raffles had waited with characteristic foresight.
Nor was the terrible Barney likely to be more
abstemious for signal punishment sustained in a
far from bloodless victory. Then what could be
the meaning of that sickening and most suggestive
thud? Could it be the champion himself who had
received the coup de grâce in his cups ? Raffles was
the very man to administer it—but he had not
talked like that man through the telephone.
And yet-and yet—what else could have hap-
pened? I must have asked myself the question
between each and all of the above reflections, made
partly as I dressed and partly in the hansom on
the way to Half-moon Street. It was as yet the
only question in my mind. You must know what
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A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
sea
your emergency is before you can decide how to
cope with it; and to this day I sometimes tremble
to think of the rashly direct method by which I
set about obtaining the requisite information. I
drove every yard of the way to the pugilist's very
door. You will remember that I had been dining
with Swigger Morrison at his club.
Yet at the last I had a rough idea of what I
meant to say when the door was opened. It
seemed almost probable that the tragic end of our
talk over the telephone had been caused by the
sudden arrival and as sudden violence of Barney
Maguire. In that case I was resolved to tell him
that Raffles and I had made a bet about his burglar
trap, and that I had come to see who had won. I
might or might not confess that Raffles had rung
me out of bed to this end. If, however, I was
wrong about Maguire, and he had not come home
at all, then my action would depend upon the
menial who answered my reckless ring. But it
should result in the rescue of Raffles by hook or
crook.
I had the more time to come to some decision,
since I rang and rang in vain. The hall, indeed,
was in darkness; but when I peeped through the
letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from
the back room. That was the room in which
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A Thief in the Night
Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All
was quiet in the house: could they have haled the
intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes
which it had taken me to dress and to drive to the
spot? That was an awful thought; but even as I
hoped against hope, and rang once more, specula-
tion and suspense were cut short in the last fashion
to be foreseen.
A brougham was coming sedately down the
street from Piccadilly; to my horror, it stopped
behind me as I peered once more through the let-
ter-box, and out tumbled the dishevelled prize-
fighter and two companions. I was nicely caught
in my turn. There was a lamp-post right oppo-
site the door, and I can still see the three of them
regarding me in its light. The pugilist had been
, at least a fine figure of a bully and a braggart when
I saw him before his fight; now he had a black eye
and a bloated lip, hat on the back of his head, and
made-up tie under one ear. His companions were
his sallow little Yankee secretary, whose name I
really forget, but whom I met with Maguire at
the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a
second skin of shimmering sequins.
I can neither forget nor report the terms in
which Barney Maguire asked me who I was and
what I was doing there. Thanks, however, to
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A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
Swigger Morrison's hospitality, I readily re-
minded him of our former meeting, and of more
that I only recalled as the words were in my
mouth.
"You'll remember Raffles," said I, "if you don't
remember me. You showed us your trophies the
other night, and asked us both to look you up at
any hour of the day or night after the fight."
I was going on to add that I had expected to
find Raffles there before me, to settle a wager that
we had made about the man-trap. But the indis-
cretion was interrupted by Maguire himself, whose
dreadful fist became a hand that gripped mine with
brute fervor, while with the other he clouted me
on the back.
"You don't say!” he cried. “I took you for
some darned crook, but now I remember you per-
fectly. If you hadn't 've spoke up slick I'd have
bu'st your face in, sonny. I would, sure! Come
right in, and have a drink to show there's-Jee-
hoshaphat!"
The secretary had turned the latch-key in the
door, only to be hauled back by the collar as the
door stood open, and the light from the inner
room was seen streaming upon the banisters at the
foot of the narrow stairs.
"A light in my den," said Maguire in a mighty
Cr
191


A Thief in the Night
whisper, "and the blamed door open, though the
key's in my pocket and we left it locked! Talk
about crooks, eh? Holy smoke, how I hope we've
landed one alive! You ladies and gentlemen, lay
round where you are, while I see."
And the hulking figure advanced on tiptoe, like
a performing elephant, until just at the open door,
when for a second we saw his left revolving like a
piston and his head thrown back at its fighting
angle. But in another second his fists were hands
again, and Maguire was rubbing them together
as he stood shaking with laughter in the light of
the open door.
"Walk up !” he cried, as he beckoned to us three.
"Walk up and see one o' their blamed British
crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet, and
nailed as tight!"
Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow
secretary went first; the sequins glittered at his
heels, and I must own that for one base moment
I was on the brink of bolting through the street
door. It had never been shut behind us. I shut
it myself in the end. Yet it was small credit to me
that I actually remained on the same side of the
door as Raffles.
"Reel home-grown, low-down, unwashed White-
chapel !" I had heard Maguire remark within.
192


A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
"Blamed if our Bowery boys ain't cock-angels to
scum like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my
knuckles on your ugly face; but if I had my thick
boots on I'd dance the soul out of your carcass for
two cents !”
After this it required less courage to join the
others in the inner room; and for some moments
even I failed to identify the truly repulsive object
about which I found them grouped. There was
no false hair upon the face, but it was as black as
any sweep's. The clothes, on the other hand, were
new to me, though older and more pestiferous in
themselves than most worn by Raffles for profes-
sional purposes. And at first, as I say, I was far
from sure whether it was Raffles at all; but I re-
membered the crash that cut short our talk over the
telephone; and this inanimate heap of rags was
lying directly underneath a wall instrument, with
the receiver dangling over him.
“Think you know him?" asked the sallow secre-
tary, as I stooped and peered with my heart in my
boots.
"Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he
was dead," I explained, having satisfied myself
that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles was
really insensible. "But what on earth has hap-
pened?" I asked in my turn.
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A Thief in the Night
"That's what I want to know," whined the per-
son in sequins, who had contributed various ejacu-
lations unworthy of report, and finally subsided
behind an ostentatious fan.
"I should judge," observed the secretary, “that
it's for Mr. Maguire to say, or not to say, just as
he darn pleases."
But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian
hearth-rug, beaming upon us all in a triumph too
delicious for immediate translation into words.
The room was furnished as a study, and most
artistically furnished, if you consider outlandish
shapes in fumed oak artistic. There was nothing
of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney Ma-
guire, except his vocabulary and his lower jaw.
I had seen over his house already, and it was fitted
and decorated throughout by a high-art firm which
exhibits just such a room as that which was the
scene of our tragedietta. The person in the se-
quins lay glistening like a landed salmon in a
quaint chair of enormous nails and tapestry com-
pact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire
with huge hinges of beaten metal. The pugilist's
own background presented an elaborate scheme of
oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the
joiner, and a china cupboard with leaded panes
behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes
194


A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
rolled with rich delight from the decanter and
glasses on the octagonal table to another decanter
in the quaintest and craftiest of revolving spirit
tables.
“Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling
on us each in turn, with his black and bloodshot
eyes and his bloated lip. “To think that I've only
to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed
crook to walk right into! You, Mr. Man," and
he nodded his great head at me, "you'll recollect
me telling you that I'd gotten one when you come
in that night with the other sport? Say, pity
he's not with you now; he was a good boy, and I
liked him a lot; but he wanted to know too much,
and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to
tell you now, or else bu'st. See that decanter on
the table?”
"I was just looking at it,” said the person in
sequins. “You don't know what a turn I've had,
or you'd offer me a little something."
“You shall have a little something in a minute,"
rejoined Maguire. "But if you take a little any-
thing out of that decanter, you'll collapse like our
friend upon the floor.”
“Good heavens!” I cried out, with involuntary
indignation, and his fell scheme broke upon me in
a clap.
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A Thief in the Night
“Yes, sir!” said Maguire, fixing me with his
bloodshot orbs. “My trap for crooks and cracks-
men is a bottle of hocussed whiskey, and I guess
that's it on the table, with the silver label around
its neck. Now look at this other decanter, with-
out any label at all; but for that they're the dead
spit of each other. I'll put them side by side, so
you can see. It isn't only the decanters, but the
liquor looks the same in both, and tastes so you
wouldn't know the difference till you woke up in
your tracks. I got the poison from a blamed
Indian away west, and it's ruther ticklish stuff.
So I keep the label around the trap-bottle, and
only leave it out nights. That's the idea, and
that's all there is to it," added Maguire, putting
the labelled decanter back in the stand. “But I
figure it's enough for ninety-nine crooks out of a
hundred, and nineteen out of twenty 'll have their
liquor before they go to work.”
"I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secre-
tary, with a downward glance as though at the
prostrate Raffles. "Have you looked to see if the
trophies are all safe?”
"Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the
pseudo-antique cabinet in which he kept them.
"Then you can save yourself the trouble," re-
joined the secretary, as he dived under the octa-
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A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
gonal table, and came up with a small black bag
that I knew at a glance. It was the one that
Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I
had known him.
The bag was so heavy now that the secretary
used both hands to get it on the table. In another
moment he had taken out the jewelled belt pre-
sented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the
solid silver statuette of himself, and the gold brick
from the citizens of Sacramento.
Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost,
or the feeling that the thief had dared to tamper
with them after all, suddenly infuriated Maguire
to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple of
brutal kicks upon the senseless form of Raffles be-
fore the secretary and I could interfere.
"Play light, Mr. Maguire !" cried the sallow
secretary. “The man's drugged, as well as down."
"He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and
blister him!”
"I should judge it about time to telephone for
the police.”
“Not till I've done with him. Wait till he
comes to! I guess I'll punch his face into a jam
pudding! He shall wash down his teeth with his
blood before the coppers come in for what's left!"
"You make me feel quite ill," complained the
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A Thief in the Night
grand lady in the chair. “I wish you'd give me a
little something, and not be more vulgar than you
can 'elp.”
"Help yourself,” said Maguire, ungallantly,
"and don't talk through your hat. Say, what's
the matter with the 'phone ?"
The secretary had picked up the dangling
receiver.
"It looks to me,” said he, “as though the crook
had rung up somebody before he went off.”
I turned and assisted the grand lady to the
refreshment that she craved.
"Like his cheek!” Maguire thundered. “But
who in blazes should he ring up?"
"It'll all come out,” said the secretary. “They'll
tell us at the central, and we shall find out fast
enough.”
“It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's
have a drink and then rouse the devil up."
But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw
quite clearly what this meant. Even if I rescued
Raffles for the time being, the police would
promptly ascertain that it was I who had been
rung up by the burglar, and the fact of my not
having said a word about it would be directly
damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate
us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we
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A Thief in the Night
sin
eor
simultaneous promise in the quantity of spirit
which Maguire splashed into his glass.
"Were you cut off sudden ?" asked the secretary,
reaching for the decanter, as the three of us sat
round the octagonal table.
“So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew
who it was who rang me up. No, thank you—
not any for me."
"What!” cried Maguire, raising a depressed
head suddenly. “You won't have a drink in my
house? Take care, young man. That's not being
a good boy !”
"But I've been dining out," I expostulated, “and
had my whack. I really have."
Barney Maguire smote the table with terrific
fist.
"Say, sonny, I like you a lot,” said he. “But I
shan't like you any if you're not a good boy!”
"Very well, very well,” I said hurriedly. “One
finger, if I must.”
And the secretary helped me to not more than
two.
“Why should it have been your friend Raffles ?”
he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge,
while Maguire roared "Drink up!" and then
drooped once more.
“I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was
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A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
the first person who occurred to me. We are both
on the telephone, you see. And we had made a
bet- "
The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set
it down untouched. Maguire's huge jaw had
dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and be-
yond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep
in the artistic armchair.
“What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start
in it. The secretary was blinking as he drained his
glass.
“About the very thing we've just had explained
to us,” said I, watching my man intently
"I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles thought it
must be something else. We had a tremendous
argument about it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-
trap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the
end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles
put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was
right-it wasn't a man-trap. But it's every bit as
good-every little bit—and the whole boiling of
you are caught in it except me!"
I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I
might just as well have raised it instead. I had
said the same thing over and over again to see
whether the wilful tautology would cause the sec-
retary to open his eyes. It seemed to have had the
ds
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A Thief in the Night
very opposite effect. His head fell forward on the
table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a
twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own
sprawling arms. And there sat Maguire bolt up-
right, but for the jowl upon his shirt-front, while
the sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon
the reclining form of the lady in the fanciful chair.
'All three were sound asleep, by what accident or by
whose design I did not pause to inquire; it was
enough to ascertain the fact beyond all chance of
error.
I turned my attention to Raffles last of all.
There was the other side of the medal. Raffles
was still sleeping as sound as the enemy—or so I
feared at first. I shook him gently: he made no
sign. I introduced vigor into the process: he mut-
tered incoherently. I caught and twisted an unre-
sisting wrist-and at that he yelped profanely.
But it was many and many an anxious moment be-
fore his blinking eyes knew mine.
"Bunny !” he yawned, and nothing more until
his position came back to him. “So you came to
me," he went on, in a tone that thrilled me with
its affectionate appreciation, "as I knew you would !
Have they turned up yet? They will any minute,
you know; there's not one to lose.”
"No, they won't, old man!" I whispered. And
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A Thief in the Night
out sound or movement, I grasped the real prob-
lem that lay before us. It was twofold; and the
funny thing was that I had seen both horns of the
dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his
senses. But with Raffles in his right mind, I had
ceased to apply my own, or to carry my share of
our common burden another inch. It had been
an unconscious withdrawal on my part, an instinc-
tive tribute to my leader; but I was sufficiently
ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem
in each other's eyes.
"If we simply cleared out," continued Raffles,
"you would be incriminated in the first place as
my accomplice, and once they had you they would
have a compass with the needle pointing straight
to me. They mustn't have either of us, Bunny,
or they will get us both. And for my part they
may as well!"
I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself
in Raffles, but in my case a mere truism.
“It's easy enough for me," he went on. "I am
a common house-breaker, and I escape. They
don't know me from Noah. But they do know
you; and how do you come to let me escape?
What has happened to you, Bunny? That's the
crux. What could have happened after they all
dropped off ?" And for a minute Raffles frowned
W
206


A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
and smiled like a sensation novelist working out
a plot; then the light broke, and transfigured him
through his burnt cork. "I've got it, Bunny!" he
exclaimed. “You took some of the stuff yourself,
though of course not nearly so much as they
did.
"Splendid !" I cried. “They really were press-
ing it upon me at the end, and I did say it must be
very little.”
"You dozed off in your turn, but you were
naturally the first to come to yourself. I had
flown; so had the gold brick, the jewelled belt,
and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the
others. You couldn't succeed; nor would you if
you did try. So what did you do? What's the
only really innocent thing you could do in the
circumstances ?"
“Go for the police," I suggested dubiously,
little relishing the prospect.
“There's a telephone installed for the purpose,"
said Raffles. "I should ring them up, if I were
you. Try not to look blue about it, Bunny.
They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and
what you have to tell them is a mere microbe to
the camels I've made them swallow without a
grain of salt. It's really the most convincing story
one could conceive; but unfortunately there's an-
еге
207


A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
you here before me. That was in case they spotted
you at once. But it made all that part about the
telephone fit in rather well.”
"I should think it did, Bunny," murmured
Rafles, in a tone that added sensibly to my re-
ward. “I couldn't have done better myself, and
you will forgive my saying that you have never
in your life done half so well. Talk about that
crack you gave me on the head! You have made
it up to me a hundredfold by all you have
done to-night. But the bother of it is that
there's still so much to do, and to hit upon,
and so precious little time for thought as well
as action.”
I took out my watch and showed it to Raffles
without a word. It was three o'clock in the morn-
ing, and the latter end of March. In little more
than an hour there would be dim daylight in the
streets. Raffles roused himself from a reverie
with sudden decision.
"There's only one thing for it, Bunny,” said
he. “We must trust each other and divide the
labor. You ring up the police, and leave the rest
to me."
"You haven't hit upon any reason for the sort
of burglar they think you were, ringing up the
kind of man they know I am?"
209


A Thief in the Night
"Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be
wanted for a day or so, and after all it isn't for
you to give the explanation. It would be highly
suspicious if you did.”
"So it would," I agreed.
“Then will you trust me to hit on something
if possible before morning-in any case by the
time it's wanted? I won't fail you, Bunny. You
must see how I can never, never fail you after
to-night!"
That settled it. I gripped his hand without
another word, and remained on guard over the
three sleepers while Raffles stole upstairs. I have
since learned that there were servants at the top
of the house, and in the basement a man, who
actually heard some of our proceedings! But he
was mercifully too accustomed to nocturnal orgies,
and those of a far more uproarious character, to
appear unless summoned to the scene. I believe
he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made
of his exit: he let himself out, and told me after-
ward that the first person he encountered in the
street was the constable on the beat. Raffles
wished him good-morning, as well he might; for
he had been upstairs to wash his face and hands;
and in the prize-fighter's great hat and fur coat
he might have marched round Scotland Yard
210


A Thief in the Night
pe
sessions
confidently expected to make before the day was
out.
I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew
to help me out of my hansom. His face alarmed
me more than any I had left in Half-moon Street.
It alone might have spelled my ruin.
"Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he
cried. “The thieves have taken everything they
could lay hands on."
"Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast.
There were one or two incriminating possessions
up there, as well as at the Albany.
"The door's been forced with a jimmy," said
the porter. "It was the milkman who found it
out. There's a constable up there now.”
A constable poking about in my flat of all
others! I rushed upstairs without waiting for
the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil
between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he
had penetrated no further than the forced door.
I dashed past him in a fever. I kept my trophies
in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bra-
mah lock. The lock was broken—the drawer
void.
"Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intru-
sive constable at my heels.
"Yes, indeed—some old family silver," I an-
Od.
212


A Thief in the Night
ing me the cigarettes. "I saw it the moment I got
outside."
"I don't see it yet.”
“Why should a burglar call an innocent gen-
tleman away from home?"
“That's what we couldn't make out.”
"I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He
called you away in order to burgle you too, of
course!"
And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his
incomparable radiance and audacity.
"But why me?" I asked. “Why on earth should
he burgle me?”
“My dear Bunny, we must leave something to
the imagination of the police. But we will assist
them to a fact or two in due season. It was the
dead of night when Maguire first took us to his
house; it was at the Imperial Boxing Club we met
him; and you meet queer fish at the Imperial Box-
ing Club. You may remember that he telephoned
to his man to prepare supper for us, and that you
and he discussed telephones and treasure as we
marched through the midnight streets. He was
certainly bucking about his trophies, and for the
sake of the argument you will be good enough to
admit that you probably bucked about yours.
What happens ? You are overheard; you are fol-
214


A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
lowed; you are worked into the same scheme, and
robbed on the same night."
"And you really think this will meet the case ?"
"I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far as it
rests with us to meet the case at all.”
“Then give me another cigarette, my dear fel-
low, and let me push on to Scotland Yard.”
Raffles held up both hands in admiring horror.
“Scotland Yard !"
“To give a false description of what you took
from that drawer in my wardrobe."
“A false description! Bunny, you have no
more to learn from me. Time was when I
wouldn't have let you go there without me to
retrieve a lost umbrella- let alone a lost cause !"
And for once I was not sorry for Raffles to have
the last unworthy word, as he stood once more at
his outer door and gayly waved me down the
stairs.
more
was
215


The Spoils of Sacrilege
THERE was one deed of those days which
1 deserved a place in our original annals. It
is the deed of which I am personally most ashamed.
I have traced the course of a score of felonies,
from their source in the brain of Raffles to their
issue in his hands. I have omitted all mention of
the one which emanated from my own miserable
mind. But in these supplementary memoirs,
wherein I pledged myself to extenuate nothing
more that I might have to tell of Raffles, it is only
fair that I should make as clean a breast of my own
baseness. It was I, then, and I alone, who out-
raged natural sentiment, and trampled the expir-
ing embers of elementary decency, by proposing
and planning the raid upon my own old home.
I would not accuse myself the more vehemently
by making excuses at this point. Yet I feel bound
to state that it was already many years since the
place had passed from our possession into that of
an utter alien, against whom I harbored a preju-
dice which was some excuse in itself. He had en-
larged and altered the dear old place out of
216


The Spoils of Sacrilege
was
knowledge; nothing had been good enough for
him as it stood in our day. The man was a hunt-
ing maniac, and where my dear father used to
grow prize peaches under glass, this vandal
was soon stabling his hothouse thoroughbreds,
which took prizes in their turn at all the country
shows. It was a southern county, and I never
went down there without missing another green-
house and noting a corresponding extension to the
stables. Not that I ever set foot in the grounds
from the day we left; but for some years I used to
visit old friends in the neighborhood, and could
never resist the temptation to reconnoitre the
scenes of my childhood. And so far as could be
seen from the road—which it stood too near-
the house itself appeared to be the one thing
that the horsey purchaser had left much as he
found it.
My only other excuse may be none at all in any
eyes but mine. It was my passionate desire at this
period to “keep up my end” with Raffles in every
department of the game felonious. He would
insist upon an equal division of all proceeds; it
was for me to earn my share. So far I had been
useful only at a pinch; the whole credit of any real
success belonged invariably to Raffles. It had
always been his idea. That was the tradition
217


A Thief in the Night
which I sought to end, and no means could com-
pare with that of my unscrupulous choice. There
was the one house in England of which I knew
every inch, and Raffles only what I told him. For
once I must lead, and Raffles follow, whether he
liked it or not. He saw that himself; and I think
he liked it better than he liked me for the desecra-
tion in view; but I had hardened my heart, and his
feelings were too fine for actual remonstrance on
such a point.
I, in my obduracy, went to foul extremes. I
drew plans of all the floors from memory. I actu-
ally descended upon my friends in the neighbor-
hood, with the sole object of obtaining snap-shots
over our own old garden wall. Even Raffles could
not keep his eyebrows down when I showed him the
prints one morning in the Albany. But he con-
fined his open criticisms to the house.
"Built in the late 'sixties, I see,” said Raffles,
"or else very early in the 'seventies."
"Exactly when it was built," I replied. "But
that's worthy of a sixpenny detective, Raffles!
How on earth did you know?"
"That slate tower bang over the porch, with
the dormer windows and the iron railing and flag-
staff atop makes us a present of the period. You
see them on almost every house of a certain size
218


The Spoils of Sacrilege
built about thirty years ago. They are quite the
most useless excrescences I know.”
“Ours wasn't," I answered, with some warmth.
“It was my sanctum sanctorum in the holidays. I
smoked my first pipe up there, and wrote my first
verses !”
Raffles laid a kindly hand upon my shoulder.
“Bunny, Bunny, you can rob the old place, and
yet you can't hear a word against it!”.
"That's different,” said I relentlessly. "The
tower was there in my time, but the man I mean to
rob was not."
“You really do mean to do it, Bunny ?"
"By myself, if necessary!" I averred.
"Not again, Bunny, not again," rejoined Raf-
fles, laughing as he shook his head. “But do you
think the man has enough to make it worth our
while to go so far afield ?".
"Far afield! It's not forty miles on the London
and Brighton."
"Well, that's as bad as a hundred on most lines.
And when did you say it was to be?"
"Friday week.”
"I don't much like a Friday, Bunny. Why
make it one?”
"It's the night of their Hunt Point-to-Point.
They wind up the season with it every year; and
219


The Spoils of Sacrilege
for that. Besides, it isn't an ordinary dinner-
party; they say Mrs. Guillemard is generally the
only lady there, and that she's quite charming in
herself. Now, no charming woman would clap
on all sail in jewels for a roomful of fox-hunters."
"It depends what jewels she has."
"Well, she might wear her rope of pearls." .
“I should have said so."
"And, of course, her rings."
"Exactly, Bunny."
"But not necessarily her diamond tiara- "
"Has she got one?”
"- and certainly not her emerald and dia-
mond necklace on top of all!".
Raffles snatched the Sullivan from his lips, and
his eyes burned like its end.
“Bunny, do you mean to tell me there are all
these things?”
"Of course I do,” said I. “They are rich peo-
ple, and he's not such a brute as to spend every-
thing on his stable. Her jewels are as much the
talk as his hunters. My friends told me all about
both the other day when I was down making
inquiries. They thought my curiosity as natural
as my wish for a few snapshots of the old place.
In their opinion the emerald necklace alone must be
worth thousands of pounds."
221


A Thief in the Night
Raffles rubbed his hands in playful pantomime.
“I only hope you didn't ask too many questions,
Bunny! But if your friends are such old friends,
you will never enter their heads when they hear
what has happened, unless you are seen down there
on the night, which might be fatal. Your ap-
proach will require some thought: if you like I
can work out the shot for you. I shall go down
independently, and the best thing may be to meet
outside the house itself on the night of nights. But
from that moment I am in your hands."
And on these refreshing lines our plan of cam-
paign was gradually developed and elaborated
into that finished study on which Raffles would rely
like any artist of the footlights. None were more
capable than he of coping with the occasion as it -
rose, of rising himself with the emergency of the
moment, of snatching a victory from the very dust
of defeat. Yet, for choice, every detail was pre-
meditated, and an alternative expedient at each
finger's end for as many bare and awful possibili-
ties. In this case, however, the finished study
stopped short at the garden gate or wall; there I
was to assume command; and though Raffles car-
ried the actual tools of trade of which he alone
was master, it was on the understanding that for
once I should control and direct their use.
222


The Spoils of Sacrilege
O
I had gone down in evening-clothes by an even-
ing train, but had carefully overshot old land-
marks, and alighted at a small station some miles
south of the one where I was still remembered.
This committed me to a solitary and somewhat
lengthy tramp; but the night was mild and starry,
and I marched into it with a high stomach; for
this was to be no costume crime, and yet I should
have Raffles at my elbow all the night. Long be-
fore I reached my destination, indeed, he stood in
wait for me on the white highway, and we finished
with linked arms.
"I came down early," said Raffles, "and had a
look at the races. I always prefer to measure my
man, Bunny; and you needn't sit in the front row
of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guille-
mard. No wonder he doesn't ride his own horses !
The steeple-chaser isn't foaled that would carry
him round that course. But he's a fine monument
of a man, and he takes his troubles in a way that
makes me blush to add to them."
"Did he lose a horse?" I inquired cheerfully.
"No, Bunny, but he didn't win a race! His
horses were by chalks the best there, and his pals
rode them like the foul fiend, but with the worst
of luck every time. Not that you'd think it, from
the row they're making. I've been listening to
223


The Spoils of Sacrilege
ne
The dining-room windows blazed in the side of
the house facing the road. That was an objection
to peeping through the venetian blinds, as we
nevertheless did, at our peril of observation from
the road. Raffles would never have led me into
danger so gratuitous and unnecessary, but he fol-
lowed me into it without a word. I can only plead
that we both had our reward. There was a suffi-
cient chink in the obsolete venetians, and through
it we saw every inch of the picturesque board.
Mrs. Guillemard was still in her place, but she
really was the only lady, and dressed as quietly as
I had prophesied; round her neck was her rope of
pearls, but not the glimmer of an emerald nor the
glint of a diamond, nor yet the flashing constella-
tion of a tiara in her hair. I gripped Raffles in
token of my triumph, and he nodded as he scanned
the overwhelming majority of flushed fox-hunters.
With the exception of one stripling, evidently the
son of the house, they were in evening pink to a
man; and as I say, their faces matched their coats.
An enormous fellow, with a great red face and
cropped moustache, occupied my poor father's
place; he it was who had replaced our fruitful
vineries with his stinking stables; but I am bound
to own he looked a genial clod, as he sat in his fat
and listened to the young bloods boasting of their
225


A Thief in the Night
fruity mahogany, every drawer of which was
turned out on the bed without avail. A few of
the drawers had locks to pick, yet not one trifle to
our taste within. The situation became serious
as the minutes flew. We had left the party at its
sweets; the solitary lady might be free to roam
her house at any minute. In the end we turned
our attention to the dressing-room. And no sooner
did Raffles behold the bolted door than up went
his hands.
“A bathroom bolt,” he cried below his breath,
"and no bath in the room! Why didn't you tell
me, Bunny? A bolt like that speaks volumes;
there's none on the bedroom door, remember, and
this one's worthy of a strong room! What if it
is their strong room, Bunny! Oh, Bunny, what
if this is their safe!"
Raffles had dropped upon his knees before a
carved oak chest of indisputable antiquity. Its
panels were delightfully irregular, its angles fault-
lessly faulty, its one modern defilement a strong
lock to the lid. Raffles was smiling as he produced
his jimmy. R-r-r-rip went lock or lid in
another ten seconds I was not there to see which.
I had wandered back into the bedroom in a
paroxysm of excitement and suspense. I must
keep busy as well as Raffles, and it was not too soon
LIET.
228


The Spoils of Sacrilege
was
to see whether the rope-ladder was all right. In
another minute . . .
I stood frozen to the floor. I had hooked the
ladder beautifully to the inner sill of wood, and
had also let down the extended rod for the more
expeditious removal of both on our return to terra
firma. Conceive my cold horror on arriving at the
open window just in time to see the last of hooks
and bending rod, as they floated out of sight
and reach into the outer darkness of the night,
removed by some silent and invisible hand
below!
"Raffles-Raffles—they've spotted us and
moved the ladder this very instant!"
So I panted as I rushed on tiptoe to the dress-
ing-room. Raffles had the working end of his
jimmy under the lid of a leathern jewel case. It
flew open at the vicious twist of his wrist that pre-
ceded his reply.
"Did you let them see that you'd spotted
that?”
"No."
“Good! Pocket some of these cases—no time
to open them. Which door's nearest the back-
stairs ?”
“The other."
“Come on then!"
229


A Thief in the Night
the dark to the old corner. Thank God, the lad-
der was there still! It leaped under us as we
rushed aloft like one quadruped. The breakneck
trap-door was still protected by a curved brass
stanchion; this I grasped with one hand, and then
Raffles with the other as I felt my feet firm upon
the tower floor. In he sprawled after me, and
down went the trap-door with a bang upon the
leading hound.
I hoped to feel his dead-weight shake the house,
as he crashed upon the floor below; but the fellow
must have ducked, and no crash came. Mean-
while not a word passed between Raffles and me;
he had followed me, as I had led him, without
waste of breath upon a single syllable. But the
merry lot below were still yelling and bellowing
in full cry.
“Gone to ground !” screamed one.
"Where's the terrier ?” screeched another.
But their host of the mighty girth—a man like
a soda-water bottle, from my one glimpse of him
on his feet-seemed sobered rather than stunned
by the crack on that head of his. We heard his
fine voice no more, but we could feel him straining
every thew against the trap-door upon which Raf-
fles and I stood side by side. At least I thought
Raffles was standing, until he asked me to strike
232



83
SAX
EX
CAUSED
Down went the trap-door with a bang.





A Thief in the Night
were, however, several smaller skylights, for the
benefit of the top floor, through any one of which
I thought we might have made a dash. But at a
glance I saw we were too late: one of these sky-
lights became a brilliant square before our eyes;
opened, and admitted a flushed face on flaming
shoulders.
"I'll give them a fright!” said Raffles through
his teeth. In an instant he had plucked out his
revolver, smashed the window with its butt, and
the slates with a bullet not a yard from the pro-
truding head. And that, I believe, was the only
shot that Raffles ever fired in his whole career as
a midnight marauder.
“You didn't hit him?" I gasped, as the head
disappeared, and we heard a crash in the corridor.
"Of course I didn't, Bunny," he replied, back-
ing into the tower; "but no one will believe I
didn't mean to, and it'll stick on ten years if we're
caught. That's nothing, if it gives us an extra
five minutes now, while they hold a council of war.
Is that a working flag-staff overhead?”
"It used to be."
“Then there'll be halliards."
“They were as thin as clothes-lines.”
"And they're sure to be rotten, and we should
be seen cutting them down. No, Bunny, that
234


A Thief in the Night
ms
re
light of the April stars; but I saw his forearms
resting a moment in the spout that ran around the
tower, between bricks and slates, on the level of
the floor; and I had another dim glimpse of him
lower still, on the eaves over the very room that
we had ransacked. Thence the conductor ran
straight to earth in an angle of the façade. And
since it had borne him thus far without mishap,
I felt that Raffles was as good as down. But I had
neither his muscles nor his nerves, and my head
swam as I mounted to the window and prepared
to creep out backward in my turn.
So it was that at the last moment I had my first
unobstructed view of the little old tower of other
days. Raffles was out of the way; the bit of candle
was still burning on the floor, and in its dim light
the familiar haunt was cruelly like itself of inno-
cent memory. A lesser ladder still ascended to a
tinier trap-door in the apex of the tower; the fixed
seats looked to me to be wearing their old, old
coat of grained varnish; nay the varnish had its
ancient smell, and the very vanes outside creaked
their message to my ears. I remembered whole
days that I had spent, whole books that I had read,
here in this favorite fastness of my boyhood. The
dirty little place, with the dormer window in each
of its four sloping sides, became a gallery hung
se
236


The Spoils of Sacrilege
with poignant pictures of the past. And here was
I leaving it with my life in my hands and my
pockets full of stolen jewels! A superstition
seized me. Suppose the conductor came down
with me . ; suppose I slipped . . .
and was picked up dead, with the proceeds of my
shameful crime upon me, under the very windows
... where the sun
Came peeping in at dawn ...
an
I hardly remember what I did or left undone.
I only know that nothing broke, that somehow I
kept my hold, and that in the end the wire ran
red-hot through my palms so that both were torn
and bleeding when I stood panting beside Raffles
in the flower-beds. There was no time for think-
ing then. Already there was a fresh commotion
in-doors; the tidal wave of excitement which had
swept all before it to the upper regions was sub-
siding in as swift a rush downstairs; and I raced
after Raffles along the edge of the drive without
daring to look behind.
We came out by the opposite gate to that by
which we had stolen in. Sharp to the right ran
the private lane behind the stables and sharp to
the right dashed Raffles, instead of straight along
237


The Spoils of Sacrilege
"Well, you must take me to another of your
old haunts, where we can lie low till morning."
"And then ?”
“Sufficient for the night, Bunny! The first
thing is to find a burrow. What are those trees
at the end of this lane?"
"St. Leonard's Forest.”
“Magnificent! They'll scour every inch of that
before they come back to their own garden.
Come, Bunny, give me a leg up, and I'll pull you
after me in two ticks!"
There was indeed nothing better to be done;
and, much as I loathed and dreaded entering the
place again, I had already thought of a second
sanctuary of old days, which might as well be put
to the base uses of this disgraceful night. In a far
corner of the garden, over a hundred yards from
the house, a little ornamental lake had been dug
within my own memory; its shores were shelving
lawn and steep banks of rhododendrons; and
among the rhododendrons nestled a tiny boat-
house which had been my childish joy. It was
half a dock for the dingy in which one plowed
these miniature waters and half a bathing-box for
those who preferred their morning tub among the
goldfish. I could not think of a safer asylum than
this, if we must spend the night upon the premises;
er
239


A Thief in the Night
door opened, and a huge man in riding-clothes
stood before me in the steely dawn.
I leaped to my feet, and the huge man
clapped me playfully on the shoulder.
"Sorry I've been so long, Bunny, but we should
never have got away as we were; this riding-suit
makes a new man of me, on top of my own, and
here's a youth's kit that should do you down to
the ground.”
“So you broke into the house again!"
“I was obliged to, Bunny; but I had to watch
the lights out one by one, and give them a good
hour after that. I went through that dressing-
room at my leisure this time; the only difficulty
was to spot the son's quarters at the back of the
house; but I overcame it, as you see, in the end.
I only hope they'll fit, Bunny. Give me your
patent leathers, and I'll fill them with stones and
sink them in the pond. I'm doing the same with
mine. Here's a brown pair apiece, and we mustn't
let the grass grow under them if we're to get to
the station in time for the early train while the
coast's still clear.”
The early train leaves the station in question
at 6.20 A.M.; and that fine spring morning there
was a police officer in a peaked cap to see it off;
but he was too busy peering into the compartments
242


The Spoils of Sacrilege
for a pair of very swell mobsmen that he took no
notice of the huge man in riding-clothes, who was
obviously intoxicated, or the more insignificant but
not less horsy character who had him in hand.
The early train is due at Victoria at 8.28, but these
worthies left it at Clapham Junction, and changed
cabs more than once between Battersea and Picca-
dilly, and a few of their garments in each four-
wheeler. It was barely nine o'clock when they sat
together in the Albany, and might have been recog-
nized once more as Raffles and myself.
"And now," said Raffles, “before we do any-
thing else, let us turn out those little cases that
we hadn't time to open when we took them. I
mean the ones I handed to you, Bunny. I had
a look into mine in the garden, and I'm sorry to
say there was nothing in them. The lady must
have been wearing their proper contents.”
Raffles held out his hand for the substantial
leather cases which I had produced at his request.
But that was the extent of my compliance; instead
of handing them over, I looked boldly into the
eyes that seemed to have discerned my wretched
secret at one glance.
"It is no use my giving them to you," I said.
"They are empty also.”
“When did you look into them?"
243


A Thief in the Night
"In the tower.”
"Well, let me see for myself.”
"As you like.”
“My dear Bunny, this one must have contained
the necklace you boasted about."
"Very likely."
"And this one the tiara.”
“I dare say."
“Yet she was wearing neither, as you proph-
esied, and as we both saw for ourselves !"
I had not taken my eyes from his.
"Raffles," I said, "I'll be frank with you after
all. I meant you never to know, but it's easier
than telling you a lie. I left both things behind
me in the tower. I won't attempt to explain or
defend myself; it was probably the influence of
the tower, and nothing else; but the whole thing
came over me at the last moment, when you had
gone and I was going. I felt that I should very
probably break my neck, that I cared very little
whether I did or not, but that it would be frightful
to break it at that house with those things in my
pocket. You may say I ought to have thought of
all that before! you may say what you like, and
you won't say more than I deserve. It was hys-
terical, and it was mean, for I kept the cases to
impose on you.”
came
244


The Spoils of Sacrilege
"You were always a bad liar, Bunny,” said Raf-
fles, smiling. “Will you think me one when I tell
you that I can understand what you felt, and even
what you did? As a matter of fact, I have under-
stood for several hours now.”
“You mean what I felt, Raffles ?".
"And what you did. I guessed it in the boat-
house. I knew that something must have hap-
pened or been discovered to disperse that truculent
party of sportsmen so soon and on such good terms
with themselves. They had not got us; they might
have got something better worth having; and your
phlegmatic attitude suggested what. As luck
would have it, the cases that I personally had col-
lared were the empty ones; the two prizes had
fallen to you. Well, to allay my horrid sus-
picion, I went and had another peep through
the lighted venetians. And what do you think
I saw ?"
I shook my head. I had no idea, nor was I
very eager for enlightenment.
"The two poor people whom it was your own
idea to despoil," quoth Raffles, "prematurely gloat-
ing over these two pretty things !”
He withdrew a hand from either pocket of his
crumpled dinner-jacket, and opened the pair under
my nose. In one was a diamond tiara, and in the
245


The Raffles Relics
IT was in one of the magazines for December,
T 1899, that an article appeared which afforded
our minds a brief respite from the then consuming
excitement of the war in South Africa. These
were the days when Raffles really had white hair,
and when he and I were nearing the end of our
surreptitious second innings, as professional
cracksmen of the deadliest dye. Piccadilly and
the Albany knew us no more. But we still oper-
ated, as the spirit tempted us, from our latest and
most idyllic base, on the borders of Ham Com-
mon. Recreation was our greatest want; and
though we had both descended to the humble
bicycle, a lot of reading was forced upon us in the
winter evenings. Thus the war came as a boon
to us both. It not only provided us with an honest
interest in life, but gave point and zest to innumer-
able spins across Richmond Park, to the nearest
paper shop; and it was from such an expedition
that I returned with inflammatory matter uncon-
nected with the war. The magazine was one of
247


A Thief in the Night
those that are read (and sold) by the million;
the article was rudely illustrated on every other
page. Its subject was the so-called Black Museum
at Scotland Yard; and from the catchpenny text
we first learned that the gruesome show was now
enriched by a special and elaborate exhibit known
as the Raffles Relics.
"Bunny,” said Raffles, "this is fame at last! It
is no longer notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck
of robbers into the society of the big brass gods,
whose little delinquencies are written in water by
the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know,
the Nelson Relics we've heard about, and here are
mine!"
"Which I wish to goodness we could see," I
added, longingly. Next moment I was sorry I
had spoken. Raffles was looking at me across the
magazine. There was a smile on his lips that I
knew too well, a light in his eyes that I had
kindled.
"What an excellent idea!” he exclaimed, quite
softly, as though working it out already in his
brain.
"I didn't mean it for one,” I answered, “and
no more do you."
“Certainly I do," said Raffles. "I was never
more serious in my life.”
248


The Raffles Relics
“You would march into Scotland Yard in broad
daylight?”
“In broad lime-light,” he answered, studying
the magazine again, “to set eyes on my own once
more. Why here they all are, Bunny—you never
told me there was an illustration. That's the chest
you took to your bank with me inside, and those
must be my own rope-ladder and things on top.
They produce so badly in the baser magazines that
it's impossible to swear to them; there's nothing
for it but a visit of inspection."
"Then you can pay it alone,” said I grimly.
"You may have altered, but they'd know me at a
glance."
"By all means, Bunny, if you'll get me the
pass.”
urse
“A pass !" I cried triumphantly. “Of course
we should have to get one, and of course that puts
an end to the whole idea. Who on earth would
give a pass for this show, of all others, to an old
prisoner like me?".
Raffles addressed himself to the reading of the
magazine with a shrug that showed some temper.
"The fellow who wrote this article got one,"
said he shortly. "He got it from his editor, and
you can get one from yours if you tried. But
pray don't try, Bunny: it would be too terrible for
une
249


A Thief in the Night
you to risk a moment's embarrassment to gratify
a mere whim of mine. And if I went instead of
you and got spotted, which is so likely with this
head of hair, and the general belief in my demise,
the consequences to you would be too awful to
contemplate! Don't contemplate them, my dear
fellow. And do let me read my magazine."
Need I add that I set about the rash endeavor
without further expostulation? I was used to
such ebullitions from the altered Raffles of these
later days, and I could well understand them. All
the inconvenience of the new conditions fell on him.
I had purged my known offences by imprisonment,
whereas Raffles was merely supposed to have
escaped punishment in death. The result was that
I could rush in where Raffles feared to tread, and
was his plenipotentiary in all honest dealings with
the outer world. It could not but gall him to be so
dependent upon me, and it was for me to minimize
the humiliation by scrupulously avoiding the least
semblance of an abuse of that power which I now
had over him. Accordingly, though with much
misgiving, I did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street,
where, despite my past, I was already making a
certain lowly footing for myself. Success fol-
lowed as it will when one longs to fail; and one
fine evening I returned to Ham Common with a
250


A Thief in the Night
which perhaps has fewer visitors than any other
of equal interest in the world. The place was cold
as the inviolate vault; blinds had to be drawn up,
and glass cases uncovered, before we could see a
thing except the row of murderers' death-masks
the placid faces with the swollen necks—that stood
out on their shelves to give us ghostly greeting.
"This fellow isn't formidable," whispered Raf-
fles, as the blinds went up; "still, we can't be too
careful. My little lot are round the corner, in
the sort of recess; don't look till we come to them
in their turn."
So we began at the beginning, with the glass
case nearest the door; and in a moment I dis-
covered that I knew far more about its contents
than our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm,
but the most inaccurate smattering of his subject.
He mixed up the first murderer with quite the
wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the next
breath with an intolerable libel on the very pearl
of our particular tribe.
“This revawlver," he began, "belonged to the
celebrited burgular, Chawles Peace. These are
his spectacles, that's his jimmy, and this here
knife's the one that Chawley killed the policeman
with."
Now I like accuracy for its own sake, strive
254


A Thief in the Night
longest shelf of closed eyes and swollen throats.
There were festoons of rope-ladders—none so in-
genious as ours—and then at last there was some-
thing that the clerk knew all about. It was a small
tin cigarette-box, and the name upon the gaudy
wrapper was not the name of Sullivan. Yet Raf-
Ales and I knew even more about this exhibit than
the clerk.
"There, now,” said our guide, "you'll never
guess the history of that! I'll give you twenty
guesses, and the twentieth will be no nearer than
the first."
"I'm sure of it, my good fellow," rejoined
Raffles, a discreet twinkle in his eye. “Tell us
about it, to save time."
And he opened, as he spoke, his own old twenty-
five tin of purely popular cigarettes; there were a
few in it still, but between the cigarettes were
jammed lumps of sugar wadded with cotton-wool.
I saw Raffles weighing the lot in his hand with
subtle satisfaction. But the clerk saw merely the
mystification which he desired to create.
"I thought that'd beat you, sir," said he. “It
was an American dodge. Two smart Yankees got
a jeweller to take a lot of stuff to a private room
at Kellner's, where they were dining, for them to
choose from. When it came to paying, there was
wa
256


The Raffles Relics
some bother about a remittance; but they soon
made that all right, for they were far too clever
to suggest taking away what they'd chosen but
couldn't pay for. No, all they wanted was that
what they'd chosen might be locked up in the safe
and considered theirs until their money came for
them to pay for it. All they asked was to seal the
stuff up in something; the jeweller was to take it
away and not meddle with it, nor yet break the
seals, for a week or two. It seemed a fair enough
thing, now, didn't it, sir?"
"Eminently fair," said Raffles sententiously.
"So the jeweller thought,” crowed the clerk.
“You see, it wasn't as if the Yanks had chosen
out the half of what he'd brought on appro.;
they'd gone slow on purpose, and they'd paid for
all they could on the nail, just for a blind. Well,
I suppose you can guess what happened in the
end? The jeweller never heard of those Ameri-
cans again; and these few cigarettes and lumps of
sugar were all he found.”
“Duplicate boxes !” I cried, perhaps a thought
too promptly.
"Duplicate boxes !" murmured Raffles, as pro-
foundly impressed as a second Mr. Pickwick.
"Duplicate boxes !" echoed the triumphant clerk.
“Artful beggars, these Americans, sir! You've
257


A Thief in the Night
got to crawss the 'Erring Pond to learn a trick
worth one o' that!"
"I suppose so," assented the grave gentleman
with the silver hair. “Unless," he added, as if
suddenly inspired, "unless it was that man Raf-
fles."
"It couldn't 've bin,” jerked the clerk from
his conning-tower of a collar. “He'd gone to
Davy Jones long before."
"Are you sure?" asked Raffles. "Was his body
ever found ?"
"Found and buried,” replied our imaginative
friend. "Malter, I think it was; or it may have
been Giberaltar. I forget which.”
"Besides," I put in, rather annoyed at all this
wilful work, yet not indisposed to make a late con-
tribution—"besides, Raffles would never have
smoked those cigarettes. There was only one
brand for him. It was let me see- "
“Sullivans !" cried the clerk, right for once.
"It's all a matter of 'abit,” he went on, as he re-
placed the twenty-five tin box with the vulgar
wrapper. "I tried them once, and I didn't like
'em myself. It's all a question of tiste. Now, if
you want a good smoke, and cheaper, give me a
Golden Gem at quarter of the price.”
"What we really do want,” remarked Raffles
258



CYRUS
CONGO
No one can make out what this little thick velvet bag's for.





A Thief in the Night
thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles,
but that's all he could do. He was no good on
his own. Even when he put up the low-down
job of robbing his old 'ome, it's believed he hadn't
the 'eart to take the stuff away, and Raffles had
to break in a second time for it. No, sir, we don't
bother our heads about Bunny; we shall never
hear no more of 'im. He was a harmless sort of
rotter, if you awsk me."
I had not asked him, and I was almost foam-
ing under the respirator that I was making of my
overcoat collar. I only hoped that Raffles would
say something, and he did.
“The only case I remember anything about,"
he remarked, tapping the clamped chest with his
umbrella, "was this; and that time, at all events,
the man outside must have had quite as much to
do as the one inside. May I ask what you keep
in it?"
"Nothing, sir.”
"I imagined more relics inside. Hadn't he
some dodge of getting in and out without opening
the lid?"
“Of putting his head out, you mean," returned
the clerk, whose knowledge of Raffles and his
Relics was really most comprehensive on the
whole. He moved some of the minor memorials
262


A Thief in the Night
me. But what a run there seems to be upon your
Black Museum !"
"There isn't reelly, sir," whispered the clerk.
"We sometimes go weeks on end without having
regular visitors like you two gentlemen. I think
those are friends of the Inspector's, come to see
the Chalk Farm photographs, that helped to
hang his man. We've a lot of interesting pho-
tographs, sir, if you like to have a look at
them.”
"If it won't take long,” said Raffles, taking out
his watch; and as the clerk left our side for an
instant he gripped my arm. “This is a bit too
hot," he whispered, “but we mustn't cut and run
like rabbits. That might be fatal. Hide your
face in the photographs, and leave everything to
me. I'll have a train to catch as soon as ever I
dare."
I obeyed without a word, and with the less
uneasiness as I had time to consider the situation.
It even struck me that Raffles was for once inclined
to exaggerate the undeniable risk that we ran by
remaining in the same room with an officer whom
both he and I knew only too well by name and
repute. Raffles, after all, had aged and altered out
of knowledge; but he had not lost the nerve that
was equal to a far more direct encounter than was
264


The Raffles Relics
at all likely to be forced upon us. On the other
hand, it was most improbable that a distinguished
detective would know by sight an obscure delin-
quent like myself; besides, this one had come to the
front since my day. Yet a risk it was, and I cer-
tainly did not smile as I bent over the album of
horrors produced by our guide. I could still take
an interest in the dreadful photographs of mur-
derous and murdered men; they appealed to the
morbid element in my nature; and it was doubtless
with degenerate unction that I called Raffles's at-
tention to a certain scene of notorious slaughter.
There was no response. I looked round. There
was no Raffles to respond. We had all three been
examining the photographs at one of the win-
dows; at another three newcomers were similarly
engrossed; and without one word, or a single
sound, Raffles had decamped behind all our
backs.
Fortunately the clerk was himself very busy
gloating over the horrors of the album; before he
looked round I had hidden my astonishment, but
not my wrath, of which I had the instinctive sense
to make no secret.
“My friend's the most impatient man on earth !"
I exclaimed. "He said he was going to catch a
train, and now he's gone without a word!"
265


The Raffies Relics
I flatter myself that these belated pages will occa-
sion more interest than offense if they ever do meet
those watery eyes.
Twilight was falling when I reached the street;
the sky behind St. Stephen's had flushed and black-
ened like an angry face; the lamps were lit, and
under every one I was unreasonable enough to look
for Raffles. Then I made foolishly sure that I
should find him hanging about the station, and
hung thereabouts myself until one Richmond train
had gone without me. In the end I walked over
the bridge to Waterloo, and took the first train to
Teddington instead. That made a shorter walk
of it, but I had to grope my way through a white
fog from the river to Ham Common, and it was
the hour of our cosy dinner when I reached our
place of retirement. There was only a flicker of
firelight on the blinds: I was the first to return
after all. It was nearly four hours since Raffles
had stolen away from my side in the ominous pre-
cincts of Scotland Yard. Where could he be ? Our
landlady wrung her hands over him; she had
cooked a dinner after her favorite's heart, and I
let it spoil before making one of the most melan-
choly meals of my life.
Up to midnight there was no sign of him; but
long before this time I had reassured our landlady
267


The Raffles Relics
red, when I awoke; but I sat very stiff in the iron
clutch of a wintry morning. Suddenly I slued
round in my chair. And there was Raffles in a
chair behind me, with the door open behind him,
quietly taking off his boots.
"Sorry to wake you, Bunny,” said he. “I
thought I was behaving like a mouse; but after a
three hours' tramp one's feet are all heels."
I did not get up and fall upon his neck. I sat
back in my chair and blinked with bitterness upon
his selfish insensibility. He should not know what
I had been through on his account.
"Walk out from town?" I inquired, as indiffer-
ently as though he were in the habit of doing so.
"From Scotland Yard,” he answered, stretching
himself before the fire in his stocking soles.
"Scotland Yard !" I echoed. “Then I was right;
that's where you were all the time; and yet you
managed to escape !"
I had risen excitedly in my turn
"Of course I did,” replied Raffles. “I never
thought there would be much difficulty about that,
but there was even less than I anticipated. I did
once find myself on one side of a sort of counter,
and an officer dozing at his desk at the other side.
I thought it safest to wake him up and make in-
quiries about a mythical purse left in a phantom
269


A Thief in the Night
“So I gather; but whereabouts at the Yard?".
“Can you ask, Bunny ?”
“I am asking.”
"It's where I once hid before."
“You don't mean in the chest ?"
"I do."
Our eyes met for a minute.
“You may have ended up there," I conceded.
“But where did you go first when you slipped out
behind my back, and how the devil did you know
where to go ?”
"I never did slip out,” said Raffles, "behind your
back. I slipped in."
"Into the chest?"
"Exactly."
I burst out laughing in his face.
"My dear fellow, I saw all these things on the
lid just afterward. Not one of them was moved.
I watched that detective show them to his friends.
"And I heard him.”
"But not from the inside of the chest!"
"From the inside of the chest, Bunny. Don't
look like that—it's foolish. Try to recall a few
words that went before, between the idiot in the
collar and me. Don't you remember my asking
him if there was anything in the chest?"
“Yes."
272


A Thief in the Night
more. But I did not put the question out of
pique. I put it out of sheer obstinate incredulity.
And Raffles looked at me without replying, until
I read the explanation in his look.
"I see," I said. “You used to get into it to hide
from me!”
“My dear Bunny, I am not always a very genial
man,” he answered; "but when you let me have a
key of your rooms I could not very well refuse you
one of mine, although I picked your pocket of it
in the end. I will only say that when I had no
wish to see you, Bunny, I must have been quite
unfit for human society, and it was the act of a
friend to deny you mine. I don't think it hap-
pened more than once or twice. You can afford to
forgive a fellow after all these years !"
"That, yes," I replied bitterly; "but not this,
Raffles.”
"Why not? I really hadn't made up my mind
to do what I did. I had merely thought of it. It
was that smart officer in the same room that made
me do it without thinking twice."
"And we never even heard you !" I murmured,
in a voice of involuntary admiration which vexed
me with myself. “But we might just as well!” I
was as quick to add in my former tone.
"Why, Bunny?”
274


A Thief in the Night
to choose from? I chose most carefully, and I
replaced my relics with a mixed assortment of other
people's which really look just as well. The rope-
ladder that now supplants mine is, of course, no
patch upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really
looks much the same. To be sure, there was no
second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with
another quite like it, and I even found an empty
cartridge to understudy the setting of the Polyne-
sian pearl. You see the sort of fellow they have
to show people round: do you think he's the kind
to see the difference next time, or to connect it with
us if he does ? One left much the same things,
lying much as he left them, under a dust-sheet
which is only taken off for the benefit of the curi-
ous, who often don't turn up for weeks on end."
I admitted that we might be safe for three or
four weeks. Raffles held out his hand.
"Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and
smoke the cigarette of Sullivan and peace! A lot
may happen in three or four weeks; and what
should you say if this turned out to be the last as
well as the least of all my crimes? I must own that
it seems to me their natural and fitting end, though
I might have stopped more characteristically than
with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I make no
promises, Bunny; now I have got these things, I
276


The Raffles Relics
on
may be unable to resist using them once more. But
with this war one gets all the excitement one re-
quires—and rather more than usual may happen
in three or four weeks!”
Was he thinking even then of volunteering for
the front? Had he already set his heart on the
one chance of some atonement for his life—nay,
on the very death he was to die? I never knew,
and shall never know. Yet his words were
strangely prophetic, even to the three or four
weeks in which those events happened that imper-
illed the fabric of our empire, and rallied her sons
from the four winds to fight beneath her banner on
the veldt. It all seems very ancient history now.
But I remember nothing better or more vividly
than the last words of Raffles upon his last crime,
unless it be the pressure of his hand as he said them,
or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.
277


The Last Word
you tell me how it happened. I honor and envy
every man of you~every name in those dreadful
lists that fill the papers every day. But I knew
about Mr. Raffles, and I did not know about you,
and there was something I longed to tell you about
him, something I could not tell you in a minute in
the street, or indeed by word of mouth at all. That
is why I asked you for your address.
"You said I spoke as if I had known Mr. Raffles.
Of course I have often seen him playing cricket,
and heard about him and you. But I only once
met him, and that was the night after you and I
met last. I have always supposed that you knew
all about our meeting. Yesterday I could see that
you knew nothing. So I have made up my mind to
tell you every word.
"That night-I mean the next night—they were
all going out to several places, but I stayed behind
at Palace Gardens. I had gone up to the drawing-
room after dinner, and was just putting on the
lights, when in walked Mr. Raffles from the bal-
cony. I knew him at once, because I happened to
have watched him make his hundred at Lord's only
the day before. He seemed surprised that no one
had told me he was there, but the whole thing was
such a surprise that I hardly thought of that. I
am afraid I must say that it was not a very pleasant
279


The Last Word
ALL
quietly; 'because I led him blindfold into the whole
business, and would rather pay the shot than see
poor Bunny suffer for it.'
"Those were his words, but as he said them he
made their meaning clear by going over to the bell,
and waiting with his finger ready to ring for what-
ever assistance or protection I desired. Of course
I would not let him ring at all; in fact, at first I
refused to believe him. Then he led me out into
the balcony, and showed me exactly how he had
got up and in. He had broken in for the second
night running, and all to tell me that the first night
he had brought you with him on false pretences.
He had to tell me a great deal more before I could
quite believe him. But before he went (as he had
come) I was the one woman in the world who
knew that A. J. Raffles, the great cricketer, and the
so-called 'amateur cracksman' of equal notoriety,
were one and the same person.
"He had told me his secret, thrown himself on
my mercy, and put his liberty if not his life in my
hands, but all for your sake, Harry, to right you
in my eyes at his own expense. And yesterday I
could see that you knew nothing whatever about it,
that your friend had died without telling you of
his act of real and yet vain self-sacrifice! Harry,
I can only say that now I understand your friend-
Ome
man-
can
281


The Last Word
reason
thing deeper than one's reason and one's sense of
right. Glamour, I suppose, is the word. Yet
there was far more in him than that. There were
depths, which called to depths; and you will not
misunderstand me when I say I think it touched
him that a woman should listen to him as I did,
and in such circumstances. I know that it touched
me to think of such a life so spent, and that I came
to myself and implored him to give it all up. I
don't think I went on my knees over it. But I am
afraid I did cry; and that was the end. He pre-
tended not to notice anything, and then in an instant
he froze everything with a flippancy which jarred
horribly at the time, but has ever since touched me
more than all the rest. I remember that I wanted
to shake hands at the end. But Mr. Raffles only
shook his head, and for one instant his face was
as sad as it was gallant and gay all the rest of the
time. Then he went as he had come, in his own
dreadful way, and not a soul in the house knew
that he had been. And even you were never told !
"I didn't mean to write all this about your own
friend, whom you knew so much better yourself,
yet you see that even you did not know how nobly
he tried to undo the wrong he had done you; and
now I think I know why he kept it to himself. It
is fearfully late-or early-I seem to have been
283


A Thief in the Night
W
writing all night—and I will explain the matter in
the fewest words. I promised Mr. Raffles that I
would write to you, Harry, and see you if I could.
Well, I did write, and I did mean to see you, but
I never had an answer to what I wrote. It was
only one line, and I have long known you never
received it. I could not bring myself to write more,
and even those few words were merely slipped into
one of the books which you had given me. Years
afterward these books, with my name in them,
must have been found in your rooms; at any rate
they were returned to me by somebody; and you
could never have opened them, for there was my
line where I had left it. Of course you had never
seen it, and that was all my fault. But it was too
late to write again. Mr. Raffles was supposed to
have been drowned, and everything was known
about you both. But I still kept my own inde-
pendent knowledge to myself; to this day, no one
else knows that you were one of the two in Palace
Gardens; and I still blame myself more than you
may think for nearly everything that has hap-
pened since.
"You said yesterday that your going to the war
and getting wounded wiped out nothing that had
gone before. I hope you are not growing morbid
about the past. It is not for me to condone it, and
m
284


The Last Word
yet I know that Mr. Raffles was what he was be-
cause he loved danger and adventure, and that you
were what you were because you loved Mr. Raffles.
But, even admitting it was all as bad as bad could
be, he is dead, and you are punished. The world
forgives, if it does not forget. You are young
enough to live everything down. Your part in the
war will help you in more ways than one. You
were always fond of writing. You have now
enough to write about for a literary lifetime. You
must make a new name for yourself. You must
Harry, and you will!
"I suppose you know that my aunt, Lady Mel-
rose, died some years ago? She was the best friend
I had in the world, and it is thanks to her that I am
living my own life now in the one way after my
own heart. This is a new block of flats, one of
those where they do everything for you; and
though mine is tiny, it is more than all I shall ever
want. One does just exactly what one likes—and
you must blame that habit for all that is least con-
ventional in what I have said. Yet I should like
you to understand why it is that I have said so
much, and, indeed, left nothing unsaid. It is be-
cause I want never to have to say or hear another
word about anything that is past and over. You
may answer that I run no risk! Nevertheless, if
285


ཕར་མཆཔ ཨཁབ་ཁ་བ་མ་ལ་མ་ལ་མོས་པ
་ བཞི་་་གས ་པས་
་་ ཨ་ཁ་ཐཨ ཁ་འལ་ བ
་ བ ་ ས བསམ ཁ་ པ་ དང
་ ལ་བ བསམ་ ་ བ་ བ