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Raffles
Further Adventures of the
Amateur Cracksman
By E. W. Hornung
Mustrated by F. C. Yohn
Charles Scribner's Sons
New York 1911



a 32101 0046 55278b
CONTENTS
No Sinecure
.......
A Jubilee Present ........
The Fate of Faustina ...
The Last Laugh ....
To Catch a Thief .....
An Old Flame . .....
The Wrong House ....
The Knees of the Gods ....
....188
Estate al
3789
781786
6-22-35


Raffles
Further Adventures of the
Amateur Cracksman





RAFFLES
NO SINECURE
I AM still uncertain which surprised me
I more, the telegram calling my attention
to the advertisement, or the advertisement
itself. The telegram is before me as I
write. It would appear to have been hand-
ed in at Vere Street at eight o'clock in the
morning of May 11, 1897, and received be-
fore half-past at Holloway B.O. And in
that drab region it duly found me, unwashen
but at work before the day grew hot and
my attic insupportable.
"See Mr. Maturin's advertisement Daily Mail
might suit you earnestly beg try will speak if
necessary
I transcribe the thing as I see it before
me, all in one breath that took away mine;


Raffles
but I leave out the initials at the end, which
completed the surprise. They stood very
obviously for the knighted specialist whose
consulting-room is within a cab-whistle of
Vere Street, and who once called me kins-
man for his sins. More recently he had
called me other names. I was a disgrace,
qualified by an adjective which seemed to
me another. I had made my bed, and I
could go and lie and die in it. If I ever
again had the insolence to show my nose
in that house, I should go out quicker than
I came in. All this, and more, my least
distant relative could tell a poor devil to
his face; could ring for his man, and give
him his brutal instructions on the spot; and
then relent to the tune of this telegram! I
have no phrase for my amazement. I lit-
erally could not believe my eyes. Yet their
evidence was more and more conclusive:
a very epistle could not have been more
characteristic of its sender. Meanly ellip-
tical, ludicrously precise, saving half-pence
at the expense of sense, yet paying like a
man for “Mr.” Maturin, that was my dis-
tinguished relative from his bald patch to


No Sinecure
his corns. Nor was all the rest unlike him,
upon second thoughts. He had a reputa-
tion for charity; he was going to live up
to it after all. Either that, or it was the
sudden impulse of which the most calculat-
ing are capable at times, the morning pa-
pers with the early cup of tea, this adver-
tisement seen by chance, and the rest upon
the spur of a guilty conscience.
Well, I must see it for myself, and the
sooner the better, though work pressed. I
was writing a series of articles upon prison
life, and had my nib into the whole System;
a literary and philanthropical daily was pa-
rading my “charges," the graver ones with
the more gusto; and the terms, if unhand-
some for creative work, were temporary
wealth to me. It so happened that my first
cheque had just arrived by the eight o'clock
post; and my position should be appreci-
ated when I say that I had to cash it to
obtain a Daily Mail.
Of the advertisement itself, what is to be
said ? It should speak for itself if I could
find it, but I cannot, and only remember
that it was a “male nurse and constant at-


No Sinecure
The address given in the advertisement
was that of a flat at Earl's Court, which
cost me a cross-country journey, finishing
with the District Railway and a seven min-
utes' walk. It was now past mid-day, and
the tarry wood-pavement was good to smell
as I strode up the Earl's Court Road. It
was great to walk the civilised world again.
Here were men with coats on their backs,
and ladies in gloves. My only fear was lest
I might run up against one or other whom
I had known of old. But it was my lucky
day. I felt it in my bones. I was going to
get this berth; and sometimes I should be
able to smell the wood-pavement on the old
boy's errands; perhaps he would insist on
skimming over it in his bath-chair, with me
behind.
I felt quite nervous when I reached the
flats. They were a small pile in a side
street, and I pitied the doctor whose plate
I saw upon the palings before the ground-
floor windows; he must be in a very small
way, I thought. I rather pitied myself as
well. I had indulged in visions of better
flats than these. There were no balconies.


Raffles
The porter was out of livery. There was
no lift, and my invalid on the third floor!
I trudged up, wishing I had never lived in
Mount Street, and brushed against a de-
jected individual coming down. A full-
blooded young fellow in a frock-coat fung
the right door open at my summons.
“Does Mr. Maturin live here?” I in-
quired.
“That's right,” said the full-blooded
young man, grinning all over a convivial
countenance.
“I—I've come about his advertisement
in the Daily Mail.”
“You're the thirty - ninth,” cried the
blood; "that was the thirty-eighth you
met upon the stairs, and the day's still
young. Excuse my staring at you. Yes,
you pass your prelim., and can come inside ;
you're one of the few. We had most just
after breakfast, but now the porter's head-
ing off the worst cases, and that last chap
was the first for twenty minutes. Come in
here.”
And I was ushered into an empty room
with a good bay-window, which enabled my


No Sinecure
full-blooded friend to inspect me yet more
critically in a good light; this he did with-
out the least false delicacy; then his ques-
tions began.
“ 'Varsity man?”
“No.”
“Public school ?”
“Yes."
“ Which one?”
I told him, and he sighed relief.
"At last! You're the very first I've not
had to argue with as to what is and what
is not a public school. Expelled ?”
tion; “no, I was not expelled. And I hope
you won't expel me if I ask a question in
my turn?”
“Certainly not."
" Are you Mr. Maturin's son?”
“No, my name's Theobald. You may
have seen it down below.”
“The doctor?” I said.
“His doctor," said Theobald, with a sat-
isfied eye. “Mr. Maturin's doctor. He is
having a male nurse and attendant by my
advice, and he wants a gentleman if he can


Raffles
get one. I rather think he'll see you,
though he's only seen two or three all day.
There are certain questions which he pre-
fers to ask himself, and it's no good going
over the same ground twice. So perhaps I
had better tell him about you before we get
any further."
And he withdrew to a room still nearer
the entrance, as I could hear, for it was a
very small flat indeed. But now two
doors were shut between us, and I had to
rest content with murmurs through the
wall until the doctor returned to summon
me.
“I have persuaded my patient to see
you,” he whispered, “but I confess I am
not sanguine of the result. He is very dif-
ficult to please. You must prepare yourself
for a querulous invalid, and for no sinecure
if you get the billet.”
“May I ask what's the matter with
him?”
“By all means — when you've got the
billet.”
Dr. Theobald then led the way, his pro-
fessional dignity so thoroughly intact that


No Sinecure
I could not but smile as I followed his
swinging coat-tails to the sick-room. I car-
ried no smile across the threshold of a dark-
ened chamber which reeked of drugs and
twinkled with medicine bottles, and in the
middle of which a gaunt figure lay abed in
the half-light.
“Take him to the window, take him to
the window," a thin voice snapped," and
let's have a look at him. Open the blind
a bit. Not as much as that, damn you, not
as much as that !”
The doctor took the oath as though it
had been a fee. I no longer pitied him.
It was now very clear to me that he had
one patient who was a little practice in him-
self. I determined there and then that he
should prove a little profession to me, if
we could but keep him alive between us.
Mr. Maturin, however, had the whitest face
that I have ever seen, and his teeth gleamed
out through the dusk as though the with-
ered lips no longer met about them; nor
did they except in speech; and anything
ghastlier than the perpetual grin of his re-
pose I defy you to imagine. It was with


Raffles
this grin that he lay regarding me while
the doctor held the blind.
“So you think you could look after me,
do you?”
" I'm certain I could, sir.”
“Single-handed, mind! I don't keep an-
other soul. You would have to cook your
own grub and my slops. Do you think you
could do all that?”
“Yes, sir, I think so.”
“Why do you? Have you any experi-
ence of the kind ?”
"No, sir, none."
“Then why do you pretend you have ?”
"I only meant that I would do my best."
“Only meant, only meant! Have you
done your best at everything else, then?”
I hung my head. This was a facer. And
there was something in my invalid which
thrust the unspoken lie down my throat.
“No, sir, I have not,” I told him plainly.
"He, he, he!” the old wretch tittered;
“and you do well to own it; you do well,
sir, very well indeed. If you hadn't owned
up, out you would have gone, out neck-and-
crop! You've saved your bacon. You may


No Sinecure
do more. So you are a public-school boy,
and a very good school yours is, but you
weren't at either University. Is that cor-
rect?”
“ Absolutely."
“What did you do when you left
school?”
“ I came in for money."
“And then?”
“I spent my money."
“And since then?”
I stood like a mule.
“And since then, I say!”
“A relative of mine will tell you if you
ask him. He is an eminent man, and he
has promised to speak for me. I would
rather say no more myself.”
“But you shall, sir, but you shall! Do
you suppose that I suppose a public-school
boy would apply for a berth like this if
something or other hadn't happened? What
I want is a gentleman of sorts, and I don't
much care what sort; but you've got to tell
me what did happen, if you don't tell any-
body else. Dr. Theobald, sir, you can go
to the devil if you won't take a hint. This
II


Raffles
man may do or he may not. You have no
more to say to it till I send him down to
tell you one thing or the other. Clear out,
sir, clear out; and if you think you've any-
thing to complain of, you stick it down in
the bill !”
In the mild excitement of our interview
the thin voice had gathered strength, and
the last shrill insult was screamed after the
devoted medico, as he retired in such order
that I felt certain he was going to take this
trying patient at his word. The bedroom
door closed, then the outer one, and the
doctor's heels went drumming down the
common stair. I was alone in the flat with
this highly singular and rather terrible old
man.
"And a damned good riddance ! ” croaked
the invalid, raising himself on one elbow
without delay. “I may not have much body
left to boast about, but at least I've got a
lost old soul to call my own. That's why I
want a gentleman of sorts about me. I've
been too dependent on that chap. He won't
even let me smoke, and he's been in the
flat all day to see I didn't. You'll find the
...
12


No Sinecure
cigarettes behind the Madonna of the
Chair.”
It was a steel engraving of the great
Raffaelle, and the frame was tilted from
the wall; at a touch a packet of cigarettes
tumbled down from behind.
“Thanks; and now a light.”
I struck the match and held it, while the
invalid inhaled with normal lips; and sud-
denly I sighed. I was irresistibly reminded
of my poor dear old Raffles. A smoke-ring
worthy of the great A. J. was floating up-
ward from the sick man's lips.
“And now take one yourself. I have
smoked more poisonous cigarettes. But
even these are not Sullivans !”
I cannot repeat what I said. I have no
idea what I did. I only know-I only knew
—that it was A. J. Raffles in the flesh!
13


Raffles
II
“Yes, Bunny, it was the very devil of
a swim; but I defy you to sink in the
Mediterranean. That sunset saved me.
The sea was on fire. I hardly swam under
water at all, but went all I knew for the
sun itself; when it set I must have been a
mile away; until it did I was the invisible
man. I figured on that, and only hope it
wasn't set down as a case of suicide. I shall
get outed quite soon enough, Bunny, but
I'd rather be dropped by the hangman than
throw my own wicket away.”
“Oh, my dear old chap, to think of hav-
ing you by the hand again! I feel as though
we were both aboard that German liner,
and all that's happened since a nightmare.
I thought that time was the last!”
" It looked rather like it, Bunny. It was
taking all the risks, and hitting at every-
thing. But the game came off, and some
day I'll tell you how.”
“Oh, I'm in no hurry to hear. It's
enough for me to see you lying there. I
don't want to know how you came there,
14


No Sinecure
or why, though I fear you must be pretty
bad. I must have a good look at you be-
fore I let you speak another word!”
I raised one of the blinds, I sat upon the
bed, and I had that look. It left me all
unable to conjecture his true state of health,
but quite certain in my own mind that my
dear Raffles was not and never would be
the man that he had been. He had aged
twenty years; he looked fifty at the very
least. His hair was white; there was no
trick about that; and his face was another
white. The lines about the corners of the
eyes and mouth were both many and deep.
On the other hand, the eyes themselves
were alight and alert as ever; they were
still keen and gray and gleaming, like finely
tempered steel. Even the mouth, with a
cigarette to close it, was the mouth of
Raffles and no other : strong and unscrupu-
lous as the man himself. It was only the
physical strength which appeared to have
departed; but that was quite sufficient to
make my heart bleed for the dear rascal
who had cost me every tie I valued but the
tie between us two.
15


No Sinecure
“But are you all right, or are you not ? ”
"No, I'm half-poisoned by Theobald's
prescriptions and putrid cigarettes, and as
weak as a cat from lying in bed.”
“ Then why on earth lie in bed, Raffles ? ”
“Because it's better than lying in gaol,
as I am afraid you know, my poor dear
fellow. I tell you I am dead; and my one
terror is of coming to life again by acci-
dent. Can't you see? I simply dare not
show my nose out of doors—by day. You
have no idea of the number of perfectly
innocent things a dead man daren't do. I
can't even smoke Sullivans, because no one
man was ever so partial to them as I was
in my lifetime, and you never know when
you may start a clue.”
“What brought you to these mansions?”
“I fancied a flat, and a man recom-
mended these on the boat; such a good
chap, Bunny; he was my reference when
it came to signing the lease. You see I
landed on a stretcher-most pathetic case
-old Australian without a friend in old
country-ordered Engadine as last chance
-no go—not an earthly-sentimental wish
17


Raffles
to die in London—that's the history of
Mr. Maturin. If it doesn't hit you hard,
Bunny, you're the first. But it hit friend
Theobald hardest of all. I'm an income
to him. I believe he's going to marry on
me.”
“Does he guess there's nothing wrong?”
“Knows, bless you! But he doesn't
know I know he knows, and there isn't a
disease in the dictionary that he hasn't
treated me for since he's had me in hand.
To do him justice, I believe he thinks me
a hypochondriac of the first water; but that
young man will go far if he keeps on the
wicket. He has spent half his nights up
here, at guineas apiece.”
“Guineas must be plentiful, old chap!”
“ They have been, Bunny. I can't say
more. But I don't see why they shouldn't
be again."
I was not going to inquire where the
guineas came from. As if I cared! But
I did ask old Raffles. how in the world he
had got upon my tracks; and thereby drew
the sort of smile with which old gentlemen
rub their hands, and old ladies nod their
18


No Sinecure
noses. Raffles merely produced a perfect
oval of blue smoke before replying.
"I was waiting for you to ask that,
Bunny; it's a long time since I did any-
thing upon which I plume myself more. Of
course, in the first place, I spotted you at
once by these prison articles; they were
not signed, but the fist was the fist of my
sitting rabbit!”
"But who gave you my address ? "
“I wheedled it out of your excellent edi-
tor; called on him at dead of night, when
I occasionally go afield like other ghosts,
and wept it out of him in five minutes. I
was your only relative; your name was not
your own name; if he insisted I would give
him mine. He didn't insist, Bunny, and I
danced down his stairs with your address
in my pocket.”
"Last night?”
"No, last week.”
“And so the advertisement was yours, as
well as the telegram!”
I had, of course, forgotten both in the
high excitement of the hour, or I should
scarcely have announced my belated discov-
19


Raffles
ery with such an air. As it was I made
Raffles look at me as I had known him
look before, and the droop of his eyelids
began to sting.
“Why all this subtlety?” I petulantly
exclaimed. “Why couldn't you come
straight away to me in a cab?”.
He did not inform me that I was hope-
less as ever. He did not address me as his
good rabbit. He was silent for a time,
and then spoke in a tone which made me
ashamed of mine.
“You see, there are two or three of me
now, Bunny: one's at the bottom of the
Mediterranean, and one's an old Australian
desirous of dying in the old country, but in
no immediate danger of dying anywhere.
The old Australian doesn't know a soul in
town; he's got to be consistent, or he's
done. This sitter Theobald is his only
friend, and has seen rather too much of
him; ordinary dust won't do for his eyes.
Begin to see? To pick you out of a crowd,
that was the game; to let old Theobald help
to pick you, better still! To start with he
was dead against my having anybody at all;
20


No Sinecure
wanted me all to himself, naturally; but
anything rather than kill the goose! So he
is to have a fiver a week while he keeps me
alive, and he's going to be married next
month. That's a pity in some ways, but a
good thing in others; he will want more
money than he foresees, and he may always
be of use to us at a pinch. Meanwhile he
eats out of my hand.”
I complimented Raffles on the mere com-
position of his telegram, with half the
characteristics of my distinguished kinsman
squeezed into a dozen odd words; and let
him know how the old ruffian had really
treated me. Raffles was not surprised; we
had dined together at my relative's in the
old days, and filed for reference a profes-
sional valuation of his household gods. I
now learnt that the telegram had been
posted, with the hour marked for its de-
spatch, at the pillar nearest Vere Street, on
the night before the advertisement was due
to appear in the Daily Mail. This also had
been carefully prearranged; and Raffles's
only fear had been lest it might be held
over despite his explicit instructions, and so
21


Raffles
drive me to the doctor for an explanation of
his telegram. But the adverse chances had
been weeded out and weeded out to the ir-
reducible minimum of risk.
His greatest risk, according to Raffles,
lay nearest home: bedridden invalid that he
was supposed to be, his nightly terror was
of running into Theobald's arms in the im-
mediate neighbourhood of the flat. But
Raffles had characteristic methods of mini-
mising even that danger, of which some-
thing anon; meanwhile he recounted more
than one of his nocturnal adventures, all,
however, of a singularly innocent type; and
one thing I noticed while he talked. His
room was the first as you entered the flat.
The long inner wall divided the room not
merely from the passage but from the outer
landing as well. Thus every step upon the
bare stone stairs could be heard by Raffles
where he lay; and he would never speak
while one was ascending, until it had passed
his door. The afternoon brought more than
one applicant for the post which it was my
duty to tell them that I had already ob-
tained. Between three and four, however,


No Sinecure
Raffles, suddenly looking at his watch,
packed me off in a hurry to the other end
of London for my things.
" I'm afraid you must be famishing,
Bunny. It's a fact that I eat very little,
and that at odd hours, but I ought not to
have forgotten you. Get yourself a snack
outside, but not a square meal if you can
resist one. We've got to celebrate this day
this night!”
“To-night?” I cried.
“To-night at eleven, and Kellner's the
place. You may well open your eyes, but
we didn't go there much, if you remember,
and the staff seems changed. Anyway we'll
risk it for once. I was in last night, talking
like a stage American, and supper's ordered
for eleven sharp.”
“You made as sure of me as all that!”
“There was no harm in ordering supper.
We shall have it in a private room, but you
may as well dress if you've got the duds.”
“They're at my only forgiving relative's.”
“How much will get them out, and
square you up, and bring you back bag and
baggage in good time?”
23


Raffles
I had to calculate.
“A tenner, easily."
“I had one ready for you. Here it is,
and I wouldn't lose any time if I were you.
On the way you might look up Theobald,
tell him you've got it and how long you'll
be gone, and that I can't be left alone all
the time. And, by Jove, yes! You get me
a stall for the Lyceum at the nearest agent's;
there are two or three in High Street; and
say it was given you when you come in.
That young man shall be out of the way
to-night.”
I found our doctor in a minute consulting-
room and his shirt-sleeves, a tall tumbler at
his elbow; at least I caught sight of the
tumbler on entering; thereafter he stood in
front of it, with a futility which had my
sympathy.
“So you've got the billet,” said Dr.
Theobald. “Well, as I told you before,
and as you have since probably discovered
for yourself, you won't find it exactly a
sinecure. My own part of the business is
by no means that; indeed, there are those
who would throw up the case, after the
cure.
24


No Sinecure
kind of treatment that you have seen for
yourself. But professional considerations
are not the only ones, and one cannot make
too many allowances in such a case.”
“ But what is the case?” I asked him.
“You said you would tell me if I was suc-
cessful.”
Dr. Theobald's shrug was worthy of the
profession he seemed destined to adorn; it
was not incompatible with any construction
which one chose to put upon it. Next mo-
ment he had stiffened. I suppose I still
spoke more or less like a gentleman. Yet,
after all, I was only the male nurse. He
seemed to remember this suddenly, and he
took occasion to remind me of the fact.
" Ah," said he, “ that was before I knew
you were altogether without experience;
and I must say that I was surprised even
at Mr. Maturin's engaging you after that;
but it will depend upon yourself how long
I allow him to persist in so curious an ex-
periment. As for what is the matter with
him, my good fellow, it is no use my giv-
ing you an answer which would be double
Dutch to you; moreover, I have still to test
25


Raffles
your discretionary powers. I may say,
however, that that poor gentleman presents
at once the most complex and most trouble-
some case, which is responsibility enough
without certain features which make it all
but insupportable. Beyond this I must re-
fuse to discuss my patient for the present;
but I shall certainly go up if I can find time."
He went up within five minutes. I found
him there on my return at dusk. But he
did not refuse my stall for the Lyceum,
which Raffles would not allow me to use
myself, and presented to him off-hand with-
out my leave.
"And don't you bother any more about
me till to-morrow," snapped the high thin
voice as he was off. “I can send for you
now when I want you, and I'm hoping to
have a decent night for once.”


No Sinecure
III
It was half-past ten when we left the
flat, in an interval of silence on the noisy
stairs. The silence was unbroken by our
wary feet. Yet for me a surprise was in
store upon the very landing. Instead of
going downstairs, Raffles led me up two
flights, and so out upon a perfectly flat roof.
“There are two entrances to these man-
sions,” he explained between stars and
chimney-stacks: "one to our staircase, and
another round the corner. But there's only
one porter, and he lives on the basement
underneath us, and affects the door nearest
home. We miss him by using the wrong
stairs, and we run less risk of old Theobald.
I got the tip from the postmen, who come
up one way and down the other. Now,
follow me, and look out!”
There was indeed some necessity for cau-
tion, for each half of the building had its
L-shaped well dropping sheer to the base,
the parapets so low that one might easily
have tripped over them into eternity. How-
ever, we were soon upon the second stair-
27


Raffles
case, which opened on the roof like the first.
And twenty minutes of the next twenty-
five we spent in an admirable hansom, skim-
ming east.
“Not much change in the old hole,
Bunny. More of these magic-lantern ad-
vertisements . .. and absolutely the
worst bit of taste in town, though it's say-
ing something, in that equestrian statue
with the gilt stirrups and fixings; why
don't they black the buffer's boots and his
horse's hoofs while they are about it? ...
More bicyclists, of course. That was just
beginning, if you remember. It might have
been useful to us. ... And there's the
old club, getting put into a crate for the
Jubilee; by Jove, Bunny, we ought to be
there. I wouldn't lean forward in Picca-
dilly, old chap. If you're seen I'm thought
of, and we shall have to be jolly careful at
Kellner's. ... Ah, there it is! Did I
tell you I was a low-down stage Yankee at
Kellner's? You'd better be another, while
the waiter's in the room.”
We had the little room upstairs; and on
the very threshold I, even I, who knew my
28


No Sinecure
Raffles of old, was taken horribly aback.
The table was laid for three. I called his
attention to it in a whisper.
“Why, yep!” came through his nose.
“Say, boy, the lady, she's not comin', but
you leave that tackle where 'tis. If I'm
liable to pay, I guess I'll have all there is
to it.”
I have never been in America, and the
American public is the last on earth that
I desire to insult; but idiom and intonation
alike would have imposed upon my inex-
perience. I had to look at Raffles to make
sure that it was he who spoke, and I had
my own reasons for looking hard.
“Who on earth was the lady?” I in-
quired aghast at the first opportunity.
“She isn't on earth. They don't like
wasting this room on two, that's all. Bunny
-my Bunny—here's to us both!”
And we clinked glasses swimming with
the liquid gold of Steinberg, 1868; but of
the rare delights of that supper I can
scarcely trust myself to write. It was no
mere meal, it was no coarse orgy, but a lit-
tle feast for the fastidious gods, not un-
29


Raffles
A
ART FOR
worthy of Lucullus at his worst. And I
who had bolted my skilly at Wormwood
Scrubbs, and tightened my belt in a Hollo-
way attic, it was I who sat down to this
ineffable repast! Where the courses were
few, but each a triumph of its kind, it would
be invidious to single out any one dish; but
the Jambon de Westphalie au Champagne
tempts me sorely. And then the champagne
that we drank, not the quantity but the
quality! Well, it was Pol Roger, '84, and
quite good enough for me; but even so it
i was not more dry, nor did it sparkle more,
· than the merry rascal who had dragged
me thus far to the devil, but should lead me
dancing the rest of the way. I was begin-
ning to tell him so. I had done my honest
best since my reappearance in the world;
but the world had done its worst by me. A
further antithesis and my final intention
were both upon my tongue when the waiter
with the Château Margaux cut me short;
for he was the bearer of more than that
great wine; bringing also a card upon a
silver tray.
"Show him up,” said Raffles, laconically.
30


No Sinecure
“And who is this?” I cried when the
man was gone. Raffles reached across the
table and gripped my arm in his vice. His
eyes were steel points fixed on mine.
“Bunny, stand by me,” said he in the old
irresistible voice, a voice both stern and
winning. “ Stand by me, Bunny—if there's
a row!”
And there was time for nothing more, the
door flying open, and a dapper person en-
tering with a bow; a frock-coat on his back,
gold pince-nez on his nose; a shiny hat in
one hand, and a black bag in the other.
“Good-evening, gentlemen,” said he, at
home and smiling.
“Sit down," drawled Raffles in casual
response. “Say, let me introduce you to
Mr. Ezra B. Martin, of Shicawgo. Mr.
Martin is my future brother-in-law. This
is Mr. Robinson, Ezra, manager to Sparks
& Company, the cellerbrated joolers on Re-
gent Street."
I pricked up my ears, but contented my-
self with a nod. I altogether distrusted my
ability to live up to my new name and ad-
dress.
31


Raffles
"I figured on Miss Martin bein' right
here, too,” continued Raffles, “but I regret
to say she's not feelin' so good. We light
out for Parrus on the 9 A.M. train to-morrer
mornin', and she guessed she'd be too dead.
Sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Robinson;
but you'll see I'm advertisin' your wares."
Raffles held his right hand under the
electric light, and a diamond ring flashed
upon his little finger. I could have sworn
it was not there five minutes before.
The tradesman had a disappointed face,
but for a moment it brightened as he ex-
patiated on the value of that ring and on
the price his people had accepted for it. I
was invited to guess the figure, but I shook
a discreet head. I have seldom been more
taciturn in my life.
“Forty-five pounds," cried the jeweller;
“and it would be cheap at fifty guineas."
“That's right," assented Raffles. “That'd
be dead cheap, I allow. But then, my boy,
you gotten ready cash, and don't you for-
get it.”
I do not dwell upon my own mystification
in all this. I merely pause to state that I
32


No Sinecure
was keenly enjoying that very element.
Nothing could have been more typical of
Raffles and the past. It was only my own
attitude that was changed.
It appeared that the mythical lady, my
sister, had just become engaged to Raffles,
who seemed all anxiety to pin her down
with gifts of price. I could not quite gather
whose gift to whom was the diamond ring;
but it had evidently been paid for; and I
voyaged to the moon, wondering when and
how. I was recalled to this planet by a
deluge of gems from the jeweller's bag.
They lay alight in their cases like the elec-
tric lamps above. We all three put our
heads together over them, myself without
the slightest clue as to what was coming,
but not unprepared for violent crime. One
does not do eighteen months for nothing.
“Right away,” Raffles was saying.
“We'll choose for her, and you'll change
anything she don't like. Is that the idea ?”
“That was my suggestion, sir."
“ Then come on, Ezra. I guess you know
Sadie's taste. You help me choose.”
And we chose-lord! What did we not
33


Raffles
choose? There was her ring, a diamond
half-hoop. It cost £95, and there was no
attempt to get it for £go. Then there was
a diamond necklet-two hundred guineas
but pounds accepted. That was to be the
gift of the bridegroom. The wedding was
evidently imminent. It behoved me to
play a brotherly part. I therefore rose to
the occasion; calculated she would like a
diamond star (£116), but reckoned it was
more than I could afford; and sustained a
vicious kick under the table for either verb.
I was afraid to open my mouth on finally
obtaining the star for the round hundred.
And then the fat fell in the fire; for
pay we could not; though a remittance
(said Raffles) was “overdo from Noo
York."
"But I don't know you, gentlemen,” the
jeweller exclaimed. “I haven't even the
name of your hotel ! ”
"I told you we was stoppin' with
friends,” said Raffles, who was not angry,
though thwarted and crushed. “But that's
right, sir! Oh, that's dead right, and I'm
the last man to ask you to take Quixotic
34


No Sinecure
risks. I'm tryin' to figure a way out. Yes,
sir, that's what I'm tryin' to do.”
"I wish you could, sir," the jeweller said,
with feeling. “ It isn't as if we hadn't seen
the colour of your money. But certain rules
I am sworn to observe; it isn't as if I was
in business for myself; and you say you
start for Paris in the morning!”
“On the 9 A.M. train,” mused Raffles;
"and I've heard no-end yarns about the
joolers' stores in Parrus. But that ain't
fair; don't you take no notice o' that. I'm
tryin' to figure a way out. Yes, sir!”
He was smoking cigarettes out of a
twenty-five box; the tradesman and I had
cigars. Raffles sat frowning with a preg-
nant eye, and it was only too clear to me
that his plans had miscarried. I could not
help thinking, however, that they deserved
to do so, if he had counted upon buying
credit for all but £400 by a single payment
of some ten per cent. That again seemed
unworthy of Raffles, and I, for my part,
still sat prepared to spring any moment at
our visitor's throat.
“We could mail you the money from
35


Raffles
Parrus," drawled Raffles at length. “But
how should we know you'd hold up your
end of the string, and mail us the same ar-
ticles we've selected to-night?”
The visitor stiffened in his chair. The
name of his firm should be sufficient guar-
antee for that.
"I guess I'm no better acquainted with
their name than they are with mine," re-
marked Raffles, laughing. “See here,
though! I got a scheme. You pack 'em
in this !”
He turned the cigarettes out of the tin
box, while the jeweller and I joined won-
dering eyes.
" Pack 'em in this,” repeated Raffles, “the
three things we want, and never mind the
boxes; you can pack 'em in cotton-wool.
Then we'll ring for string and sealing wax,
seal up the lot right here, and you can take
'em away in your grip. Within three days
we'll have our remittance, and mail you the
money, and you'll mail us this darned box
with my seal unbroken! It's no use you
lookin' so sick, Mr. Jooler; you won't trust
us any, and yet we're goin' to trust you
36


No Sinecure
some. Ring the bell, Ezra, and we'll see
if they've gotten any sealing-wax and
string."
They had; and the thing was done. The
tradesman did not like it; the precaution
was absolutely unnecessary; but since he
was taking all his goods away with him,
the sold with the unsold, his sentimental
objections soon fell to the ground. He
packed necklet, ring, and star, with his own
hands, in cotton-wool; and the cigarette-
box held them so easily that at the last mo-
ment, when the box was closed, and the
string ready, Raffles very nearly added a
diamond bee-brooch at £51 iOs. This temp-
tation, however, he ultimately overcame, to
the other's chagrin. The cigarette-box was
tied up, and the string sealed, oddly enough,
with the diamond of the ring that had been
bought and paid for.
“ I'll chance you having another ring in
the store the dead spit of mine," laughed
Raffles, as he relinquished the box, and it dis-
appeared into the tradesman's bag. “And
now, Mr. Robinson, I hope you'll appreciate
my true hospitality in not offering you any-


Raffles
thing to drink while business was in prog-
ress. That's Château Margaux, sir, and I
should judge it's what you'd call an eigh-
teen-carat article.”
In the cab which we took to the vicinity
of the fat, I was instantly snubbed for
asking questions which the driver might
easily overhear, and I took the repulse just
a little to heart. I could make neither head
nor tail of Raffles's dealings with the man
from Regent Street, and was naturally in-
quisitive as to the meaning of it all. But
I held my tongue until we had regained the
flat in the cautious manner of our exit, and
even there until Raffles rallied me with a
hand on either shoulder and an old smile
upon his face.
“You rabbit!” said he. “Why couldn't
you wait till we got home?”
"Why couldn't you tell me what you
were going to do?” I retorted as of yore.
" Because your dear old phiz is still worth
its weight in innocence, and because you
never could act for nuts! You looked as
puzzled as the other poor devil; but you
wouldn't if you had known what my game
really was.”
38


No Sinecure
“And pray what was it?"
“That,” said Raffles, and he smacked the
cigarette-box down upon the mantelpiece.
It was not tied. It was not sealed. It flew
open from the force of the impact. And
the diamond ring that cost £95, the necklet
for £200, and my flaming star at another
£100, all three lay safe and snug in the
jeweller's own cotton-wool!
“ Duplicate boxes!” I cried.
“Duplicate boxes, my brainy Bunny.
One was already packed, and weighted, and
in my pocket. I don't know whether you
noticed me weighing the three things to-
gether in my hand? I know that neither
of you saw me change the boxes, for I did
it when I was nearest buying the bee-
brooch at the end, and you were too puz-
zled, and the other Johnny too keen. It
was the cheapest shot in the game; the door
ones were sending old Theobald to South-
ampton on a fool's errand yesterday after-
noon, and showing one's own nose down
Regent Street in broad daylight while he
was gone; but some things are worth pay-
ing for, and certain risks one must always
39


Raffles
take. Nice boxes, aren't they? I only
wished they contained a better cigarette;
but a notorious brand was essential; a box
of Sullivans would have brought me to life
to-morrow.”
“But they oughtn't to open it to-mor-
row.”
"Nor will they, as a matter of fact.
Meanwhile, Bunny, I may call upon you to
dispose of the boodle.”
“I'm on for any mortal thing!”
My voice rang true, I swear, but it was
the way of Raffles to take the evidence of
as many senses as possible. I felt the cold
steel of his eye through mine and through
my brain. But what he saw seemed to
satisfy him no less than what he heard, for
his hand found my hand, and pressed it
with a fervour foreign to the man.
"I know you are, and I knew you would
be. Only remember, Bunny, it's my turn
next to pay the shot!”.
You shall hear how he paid it when the
time came.


Raffles
ring I bought and paid for like an ass. I'll
be shot if I ever touch a diamond again!
Not if it was the Koh-i-noor; those few
whacking stones are too well known, and
to cut them up is to decrease their value
by arithmetical retrogression. Besides, that
brings you up against the Fence once more,
and I'm done with the beggars for good
and all. You talk about your editors and
publishers, you literary swine. Barabbas
was neither a robber nor a publisher, but
a six-barred, barbed, wired, spike-topped
Fence. What we really want is an Incor-
porated Society of Thieves, with some pub-
lic-spirited old forger to run it for us on
business lines.”
Raffles uttered these blasphemies under
his breath, not, I am afraid, out of any
respect for my one redeeming profession,
but because we were taking a midnight air-
ing on the roof, after a whole day of June
in the little flat below. The stars shone
overhead, the lights of London underneath,
and between the lips of Raffles a cigarette
of the old and only brand. I had sent in
secret for a box of the best; the boon had


A Jubilee Present
arrived that night; and the foregoing
speech was the first result. I could afford
to ignore the insolent asides, however,
where the apparent contention was so mani-
festly unsound.
"And how are you going to get rid of
your gold?” said I, pertinently.
“Nothing easier, my dear rabbit.”
“Is your Room of Gold a roomful of
sovereigns?”
Raffles laughed softly at my scorn.
“No, Bunny, it's principally in the shape
of archaic ornaments, whose value, I admit,
is largely extrinsic. But gold is gold, from
Phænicia to Klondike, and if we cleared
the room we should eventually do very
well.”
"How?”
“I should melt it down into a nugget,
and bring it home from the U.S.A. to-
morrow.”
“And then?”
"Make them pay up in hard cash across
the counter of the Bank of England. And
you can inake them."
That I knew, and so said nothing for a
43


Raffles
time, remaining a hostile though a silent
critic, while we paced the cool black leads
with our bare feet, softly as cats.
“And how do you propose to get enough
away,” at length I asked,“ to make it worth
while?"
“Ah, there you have it,” said Raffles.
"I only propose to reconnoitre the ground,
to see what we can see. We might find
some hiding-place for a night; that, I am
afraid, would be our only chance."
“Have you ever been there before?”
“ Not since they got the one good, port-
able piece which I believe that they exhibit
now. It's a long time since I read of it,
I can't remember where—but I know they
have got a gold cup of sorts worth several
thousands. A number of the immorally
rich clubbed together and presented it to
the natijn; and two of the richly immoral
intend to snaffle it for themselves. At any
ratę we might go and have a look at it,
Bunny, don't you think?"
Think! I seized his arm.
“When? When? When?" I asked,
like a quick-firing gun.
44


Raffles
ever, invented by Raffles, was sufficiently
specious in itself. That sick gentleman,
Mr. Maturin (as I had to remember to call
him), was really, or apparently, sickening
for fresh air. Dr. Theobald would allow
him none; he was pestering me for just
one day in the country while the glorious
weather lasted. I was myself convinced
that no possible harm could come of the ex-
periment. Would the porter help me in so
innocent and meritorious an intrigue? The
man hesitated. I produced my half-sove-
reign. The man was lost. And at half-past
eight next morning—before the heat of the
day-Raffles and I drove to Kew Gardens
in a hired landau which was to call for us
at mid-day and wait until we came. The
porter had assisted me to carry my invalid
downstairs, in a carrying-chair hired (like
the landau) from Harrod's Stores for the
occasion.
It was little after nine when we crawled
together into the gardens; by half-past my
invalid had had enough, and out he tottered
on my arm; a cab, a message to our coach-
man, a timely train to Baker Street, another
46


A Jubilee Present
cab, and we were at the British Museum,
brisk pedestrians now—not very many min-
utes after the opening hour of 10 A.M.
It was one of those glowing days which
will not be forgotten by many who were in
town at the time. The Diamond Jubilee
was upon us, and Queen's weather had al-
ready set in. Raffles, indeed, declared it
was as hot as Italy and Australia put to-
gether; and certainly the short summer
nights gave the channels of wood and as-
phalt and the continents of brick and mortar
but little time to cool. At the British Mu-
seum the pigeons were crooning among the
shadows of the grimy colonnade, and the
stalwart janitors looked less stalwart than
usual, as though their medals were too heavy
for them. I recognised some habitual Read-
ers going to their labour underneath the
dome; of mere visitors we seemed among
the first.
“That's the room,” said Raffles, who had
bought the two-penny guide, as we studied
it openly on the nearest bench; "number
43, upstairs and sharp round to the right.
Come on, Bunny!"
47


A Jubilee Present
so-called Room of Gold, with which I, for
one, was not a little disappointed. The
glass cases, which both fill and line it, may
contain unique examples of the goldsmith's
art in times and places of which one heard
quite enough in the course of one's classical
education; but, from a professional point
of view, I would as lief have the ransacking
of a single window in the West End as the
pick of all those spoils of Etruria and of
ancient Greece. The gold may not be so
soft as it appears, but it certainly looks as
though you could bite off the business ends
of the spoons, and stop your own teeth in
doing so. Nor should I care to be seen
wearing one of the rings; but the greatest
fraud of all (from the aforesaid standpoint)
is assuredly that very cup of which Raffles
had spoken. Moreover, he felt this him-
self.
"Why, it's as thin as paper," said he,
“and enamelled like a middle-aged lady of
quality! But, by Jove, it's one of the most
beautiful things I ever saw in my life,
Bunny. I should like to have it for its own
sake, by all my gods!”


Raffles
The thing had a little square case of
plate-glass all to itself at one end of the
room. It may have been the thing of
beauty that Raffles affected to consider it,
but I for my part was in no mood to look
at it in that light. Underneath were the
names of the plutocrats who had subscribed
for this national gewgaw, and I fell to won-
dering where their £8,000 came in, while
Raffles devoured his two-penny guide-book
as greedily as a school-girl with a zeal for
culture.
“Those are scenes from the martyrdom
of St. Agnes," said he ..." translu-
cent on relief ... one of the finest
specimens of its kind.' I should think it
was! Bunny, you Philistine, why can't you
, admire the thing for its own sake? It
would be worth having only to live up to!
There never was such rich enamelling on
such thin gold; and what a good scheme
to hang the lid up over it, so that you can
see how thin it is. I wonder if we could
'lift it, Bunny, by hook or crook? ”
“You'd better try, sir,” said a dry voice
at his elbow.
50


A Jubilee Present
The madman seemed to think we had the
room to ourselves. I knew better, but, like
another madman, had let him ramble on
unchecked. And here was a stolid constable
confronting us, in the short tunic that they
wear in summer, his whistle on its chain,
but no truncheon at his side. Heavens !
how I see him now: a man of medium size,
with a broad, good-humoured, perspiring
face, and a limp moustache. He looked
sternly at Raffles, and Raffles looked merrily
at him.
“Going to run me in, officer? ” said he.
“That would be a joke—my hat!”
"I didn't say as I was, sir," replied the
policeman. “But that's queer talk for a
gentleman like you, sir, in the British Mu-
seum!” And he wagged his helmet at my
invalid, who had taken his airing in frock-
coat and top-hat, the more readily to as-
sume his present part.
“What!” cried Raffles, “ simply saying
to my friend that I'd like to lift the gold
cup? Why, so I should, officer, so I should !
I don't mind who hears me say so. It's
one of the most beautiful things I ever saw
in all my life and
51


Raffles
The constable's face had already relaxed,
and now a grin peeped under the limp mous-
tache. “I daresay there's many as feels
like that, sir,” said he.
"Exactly; and I say what I feel, that's
all,” said Raffles airily. “But seriously,
officer, is a valuable thing like this quite
safe in a case like that?”
“ Safe enough as long as I'm here," re-
plied the other, between grim jest and stout
earnest. Raffles studied his face; he was
still watching Raffles; and I kept an eye
on them both without putting in my word.
“You appear to be single-handed,” ob-
served Raffles. “Is that wise?”
The note of anxiety was capitally caught;
it was at once personal and public-spirited,
that of the enthusiastic savant, afraid for a
national treasure which few appreciated as
he did himself. And, to be sure, the three
of us now had this treasury to ourselves;
one or two others had been there when we
entered; but now they were gone.
" I'm not single-handed," said the officer,
comfortably. “See that seat by the door?
One of the attendants sits there all day
long.”
52


A Jubilee Present
“Then where is he now?”
“ Talking to another attendant just out-
side. If you listen you'll hear them for
yourself.”
We listened, and we did hear them, but
not just outside. In my own mind I even
questioned whether they were in the cor-
ridor through which we had come; to me
it sounded as though they were just out-
side the corridor.
“You mean the fellow with the billiard-
cue who was here when we came in?” pur-
sued Raffles.
“That wasn't a billiard-cue! It was a
pointer," the intelligent officer explained.
“ It ought to be a javelin,” said Raffles,
nervously. “ It ought to be a poleaxe!
The public treasure ought to be better
guarded than this. I shall write to the
Times about it-you see if I don't!"
All at once, yet somehow not so suddenly
as to excite suspicion, Raffles had become
the elderly busybody with nerves; why, I
could not for the life of me imagine; and
the policeman seemed equally at sea.
“Lor' bless you, sir,” said he, “ I'm all
53


Raffles
right; don't you bother your head about
me."
“But you haven't even got a truncheon!”
“Not likely to want one either. You
see, sir, it's early as yet; in a few minutes
these here rooms will fill up; and there's
safety in numbers, as they say.”
“Oh, it will fill up soon, will it?”
“Any minute now, sir.”
“Ah!”
" It isn't often empty as long as this, sir.
It's the Jubilee, I suppose.”
“Meanwhile, what if my friend and I had
been professional thieves? Why, we could
have overpowered you in an instant, my
good fellow!”
. “That you couldn't; leastways, not with-
out bringing the whole place about your
ears."
"Well, I shall write to the Times all the
same. I'm a connoisseur in all this sort of
thing, and I won't have unnecessary risks
run with the nation's property. You said
there was an attendant just outside, but he
sounds to me as though he were at the
other end of the corridor. I shall write
to-day!”
54


A Jubilee Present
For an instant we all three listened; and
Raffles was right. Then I saw two things
in one glance. Raffles had stepped a few
inches backward, and stood poised upon the
ball of each foot, his arms half raised, a
light in his eyes. And another kind of light
was breaking over the crass features of our
friend the constable.
" Then shall I tell you what I'll do?” he
cried, with a sudden clutch at the whistle-
chain on his chest. The whistle flew out,
but it never reached his lips. There were
a couple of sharp smacks, like double bar-
rels discharged all but simultaneously, and
the man reeled against me so that I could
not help catching him as he fell.
“Well done, Bunny! I've knocked him
out—I've knocked him out! Run you to
the door and see if the attendants have
heard anything, and take them on if they
have."
Mechanically I did as I was told. There
was no time for thought, still less for remon-
strance or reproach, though my surprise
must have been even more complete than
that of the constable before Raffles knocked
55


Raffles
the sense out of him. Even in my utter
bewilderment, however, the instinctive cau-
tion of the real criminal did not desert me.
I ran to the door, but I sauntered through
it, to plant myself before a Pompeiian fresco
in the corridor; and there were the two
attendants still gossiping outside the fur-
ther door; nor did they hear the dull crash
which I heard even as I watched them out
of the corner of each eye.
It was hot weather, as I have said, but
the perspiration on my body seemed already
to have turned into a skin of ice. Then I
caught the faint reflection of my own face
in the casing of the fresco, and it fright-
ened me into some semblance of myself as
Raffles joined me with his hands in his
pockets. But my fear and indignation were
redoubled at the sight of him, when a single
glance convinced me that his pockets were
as empty as his hands, and his mad outrage
the most wanton and reckless of his whole
career.
“Ah, very interesting, very interesting,
but nothing to what they have in the mu-
seum at Naples or in Pompeii itself. You
56


A Jubilee Present
must go there some day, Bunny. I've a
good mind to take you myself. Meanwhile
-slow march! The beggar hasn't moved
an eyelid. We may swing for him if you
show indecent haste!”
“We!” I whispered. “We!”
And my knees knocked together as we
came up to the chatting attendants. But
Raffles must needs interrupt them to ask
the way to the Prehistoric Saloon.
“At the top of the stairs."
“Thank you. Then we'll work round
that way to the Egyptian part.”
And we left them resuming their provi-
dential chat.
"I believe you're mad,” I said bitterly
as we went.
"I believe I was,” admitted Raffles;
" but I'm not now, and I'll see you through.
A hundred and thirty-nine yards, wasn't it?
Then it can't be more than a hundred and
twenty now—not as much. Steady, Bunny,
for God's sake. It's slow march—for our
lives.”
There was this much management. The
rest was our colossal luck. A hansom was.
57


Raffles
being paid off at the foot of the steps out-
side, and in we jumped, Raffles shouting
“Charing Cross!” for all Bloomsbury to
hear.
We had turned into Bloomsbury Street
without exchanging a syllable when he
struck the trap-door with his fist.
“Where the devil are you driving us?”
“Charing Cross, sir."
“I said King's Cross! Round you spin,
and drive like blazes, or we miss our train!
There's one to York at 10.35," added Raf-
fles as the trap-door slammed; “we'll book
there, Bunny, and then we'll slope through
the subway to the Metropolitan, and so to
ground via Baker Street and Earl's Court.”
And actually in half an hour he was
seated once more in the hired carrying chair,
while the porter and I staggered upstairs
with my decrepit charge, for whose shat-
tered strength even one hour in Kew Gar-
dens had proved too much! Then, and not
until then, when we had got rid of the
porter and were alone at last, did I tell
Raffles, in the most nervous English at
my command, frankly and exactly what I
58


Raffles
not a thing I care to do, and I shan't be
happy till the papers tell me the poor devil
is alive. But a knock-out shot was the only
chance for us then.”
“Why? You don't get run in for being
tempted, nor yet for showing that you are!”
“But I should have deserved running in
if I hadn't yielded to such a temptation as
that, Bunny. It was a chance in a hundred
thousand! We might go there every day
of our lives, and never again be the only
outsiders in the room, with the billiard-
marking Johnnie practically out of earshot
at one and the same time. It was a gift
from the gods; not to have taken it would
have been flying in the face of Providence.”
“But you didn't take it,” said I. “ You
went and left it behind.”
I wish I had had a Kodak for the little
smile with which Raffles shook his head,
for it was one that he kept for those great
moments of which our vocation is not de-
void. All this time he had been wearing
his hat, tilted a little over eyebrows no
longer raised. And now at last I knew
where the gold cup was.
60


A Jubilee Present
It stood for days upon his chimney-piece,
this costly trophy whose ancient history and
final fate filled newspaper columns even in
these days of Jubilee, and for which the
flower of Scotland Yard was said to be
seeking high and low. Our constable, we
learnt, had been stunned only, and, from
the moment that I brought him an evening
paper with the news, Raffles's spirits rose
to a height inconsistent with his equable
temperament, and as unusual in him as the
sudden impulse upon which he had acted
with such effect. The cup itself appealed
to me no more than it had done before.
Exquisite it might be, handsome it was, but
so light in the hand that the mere gold of
it would scarcely have poured three figures
out of melting-pot. And what said Raffles
but that he would never melt it at all!
“Taking it was an offence against the
laws of the land, Bunny. That is nothing.
But destroying it would be a crime against
God and Art, and may I be spitted on the
vane of St. Mary Abbot’s if I commit it!”
Talk such as this was unanswerable; in-
deed, the whole affair had passed the pale
61


Raffles
of useful comment; and the one course left
to a practical person was to shrug his shoul-
ders and enjoy the joke. This was not a
little enhanced by the newspaper reports,
which described Raffles as a handsome
youth, and his unwilling accomplice as an
older man of blackguardly appearance and
low type.
“ Hits us both off rather neatly, Bunny,"
said he. “But what they none of them do
justice to is my dear cup. Look at it; only
look at it, man! Was ever anything so rich
and yet so chaste? St. Agnes must have
had a pretty bad time, but it would be al-
most worth it to go down to posterity in
such enamel upon such gold. And then the
history of the thing. Do you realise that
it's five hundred years old and has belonged
to Henry the Eighth and to Elizabeth among
others? Bunny, when you have me cre-
mated, you can put my ashes in yonder cup,
and lay us in the deep-delvèd earth to-
gether!”
“And meanwhile?”
"It is the joy of my heart, the light of
my life, the delight of mine eye.”
62


A Jubilee Present
“And suppose other eyes catch sight of
it?”
“They never must; they never shall.”
Raffles would have been too absurd had
he not been thoroughly alive to his own ab-
surdity; there was nevertheless an under-
lying sincerity in his appreciation of any
and every form of beauty, which all his
nonsense could not conceal. And his in-
fatuation for the cup was, as he declared,
a very pure passion, since the circumstances
debarred him from the chief joy of the
average collector, that of showing his treas-
ure to his friends. At last, however, and at
the height of his craze, Raffles and reason
seemed to come together again as suddenly
as they had parted company in the Room
of Gold.
" Bunny,” he cried, flinging his news-
paper across the room, “ I've got an idea
after your own heart. I know where I can
place it after all!”
“Do you mean the cup?”
“I do."
“Then I congratulate you."
“ Thanks.”


Raffles
“Upon the recovery of your senses.”
“Thanks galore. But you've been con-
foundedly unsympathetic about this thing,
Bunny, and I don't think I shall tell you
my scheme till I've carried it out.”
“Quite time enough,” said I.
“It will mean your letting me loose for
an hour or two under cloud of this very
night. To-morrow's Sunday, the Jubilee's
on Tuesday, and old Theobald's coming
back for it."
“It doesn't much matter whether he's
back or not if you go late enough.”
“I mustn't be late. They don't keep
open. No, it's no use your asking any
questions. Go out and buy me a big box
of Huntley & Palmer's biscuits; any sort
you like, only they must be theirs, and ab-
solutely the biggest box they sell.”
“My dear man!”
“No questions, Bunny; you do your part
and I'll do mine.”
Subtlety and success were in his face. It
was enough for me, and I had done his
extraordinary bidding within a quarter of
an hour. In another minute Raffles had


A Jubilee Present
opened the box and tumbled all the biscuits
into the nearest chair.
“Now newspapers!”
I fetched a pile. He bid the cup of gold
a ridiculous farewell, wrapped it up in news-
paper after newspaper, and finally packed
it in the empty biscuit-box.
“Now some brown paper. I don't want
to be taken for the grocer's young man.”
A neat enough parcel it made, when the
string had been tied and the ends cut close;
what was more difficult was to wrap up
Raffles himself in such a way that even the
porter should not recognise him if they
came face to face at the corner. And the
sun was still up. But Raffles would go, and
when he did I should not have known him
myself.
He may have been an hour away. It was
barely dusk when he returned, and my first
question referred to our dangerous ally, the
porter. Raffles had passed him unsuspected
in going, but had managed to avoid him
altogether on the return journey, which he
had completed by way of the other entrance
and the roof. I breathed again.
65


Raffles
“And what have you done with the cup?"
“ Placed it!”
“How much for? How much for?”
“Let me think. I had a couple of cabs,
and the postage was a tanner, with another
twopence for registration. Yes, it cost me
exactly five-and-eight.”
"It cost you? But what did you get for
it, Raffles ? "
“Nothing, my boy."
“Nothing!”
“Not a crimson cent.”
“I am not surprised. I never thought it
had a market value. I told you so in the
beginning," I said, irritably. “But what
on earth have you done with the thing?”
“Sent it to the Queen."
“You haven't!”
Rogue is a word with various meanings,
and Raffles had been one sort of rogue ever
since I had known him; but now, for once,
he was the innocent variety, a great gray-
haired child, running over with merriment
and mischief.
“Well, I've sent it to Sir Arthur Bigge,
to present to her Majesty, with the loyal
66


A
Jubilee Present
respects of the thief, if that will do for
you," said Raffles. “I thought they might
take too much stock of me at the G.P.O.
if I addressed it to the Sovereign herself.
Yes, I drove over to St. Martin's-le-Grand
with it, and I registered the box into the
bargain. Do a thing properly if you do
it at all."
“But why on earth,” I groaned, “ do such
a thing at all?"
"My dear Bunny, we have been reigned
over for sixty years by infinitely the finest
monarch the world has ever seen. The
world is taking the present opportunity of
signifying the fact for all it is worth.
Every nation is laying of its best at her
royal feet; every class in the community is
doing its little level-except ours. All I
have done is to remove one reproach from
our fraternity.”
At this I came round, was infected with
his spirit, called him the sportsman he al-
ways was and would be, and shook his dare-
devil hand in mine; but, at the same time,
I still had my qualms.
“Supposing they trace it to us?” said I.
PATRIOTISH
67


Raffles
“There's not much to catch hold of in
a biscuit-box by Huntley & Palmer," re-
plied Raffles; "that was why I sent you
for one. And I didn't write a word upon
a sheet of paper which could possibly be
traced. I simply printed two or three on
a virginal post-card-another half-penny to
the bad—which might have been bought at
any post-office in the kingdom. No, old
chap, the G.P.O. was the one real danger;
there was one detective I spotted for my-
self; and the sight of him has left me with
a thirst. Whisky and Sullivans for two,
Bunny, if you please."
Raffles was soon clinking his glass against
mine.
“The Queen,” said he. “God bless
her!”


THE FATE OF FAUSTINA
“ Mar-ga-rì,
e perzo a Salvatore !
Mar-ga-ri,
Ma l'ommo è cacciatore !
Mar-ga-rì,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch' è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieu !"
PIANO-ORGAN was pouring the
A metallic music through our open win-
dows, while a voice of brass brayed the
words, which I have since obtained, and
print above for identification by such as
know their Italy better than I. They will
not thank me for reminding them of a tune
so lately epidemic in that land of aloes and
blue skies; but at least it is unlikely to run
in their heads as the ribald accompaniment
to a tragedy; and it does in mine.
It was in the early heat of August, and
the hour that of the lawful and necessary
siesta for such as turn night into day. I
69


Raffles
was therefore shutting my window in a
rage, and wondering whether I should not
do the same for Raffles, when he appeared
in the silk pajamas to which the chronic
solicitude of Dr. Theobald confined him
from morning to night.
“Don't do that, Bunny," said he. “I
rather like that thing, and want to listen.
What sort of fellows are they to look at,
by the way?”
I put my head out to see, it being a
primary rule of our quaint establishment
that Raffles must never show himself at any
of the windows. I remember now how hot
the sill was to my elbows, as I leant upon
it and looked down, in order to satisfy a
curiosity in which I could see no point.
shoulder: “dark as dark; blue chins, ole-
aginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as
they make them, but nothing picturesque in
their rags.”
“ Neapolitans all over,” murmured Raf-
fles behind me; “and that's a characteristic
touch, the one fellow singing while the other
grinds; they always have that out there."
70


Raffles
laugh in it from start to finish; on the con-
trary, you have often asked me what turned
my hair grey, and now you are going to
hear."
This was promising, but Raffles's manner
was something more. It was unique in my
memory of the man. His fine face softened
and set hard by turns. I never knew it so
hard. I never knew it so soft. And the
same might be said of his voice, now ten-
der as any woman's, now flying to the
other extreme of equally unwonted ferocity.
But this was toward the end of his tale;
the beginning he treated characteristically
enough, though I could have wished for a
less cavalier account of the island of Elba,
where, upon his own showing, he had met
with much humanity.
" Deadly, my dear Bunny, is not the
word for that glorified snag, or for the
mollusks its inhabitants. But they started
by wounding my vanity, so perhaps I am
prejudiced after all. I sprung myself upon
them as a ship-wrecked sailor-a sole sur-
vivor-stripped in the sea and landed with-
out a stitch-yet they took no more interest
72


The Fate of Faustina
in me than you do in Italian organ-grind-
ers. They were decent enough. I didn't
have to pick and steal for a square meal and
a pair of trousers; it would have been more
exciting if I had. But what a place! Na-
poleon couldn't stand it, you remember, but
he held on longer than I did. I put in a
few weeks in their infernal mines, simply
to pick up a smattering of Italian; then got
across to the mainland in a little wooden
timber-tramp; and ungratefully glad I was
to leave Elba blazing in just such another
sunset as the one you won't forget.
“ The tramp was bound for Naples, but
first it touched at Baiæ, where I carefully
deserted in the night. There are too many
English in Naples itself, though I thought
it would make a first happy hunting-ground
when I knew the language better and had
altered myself a bit more. Meanwhile I got:
a billet of several sorts on one of the loveli-
est spots that ever I struck on all my trav-
els. The place was a vineyard, but it over-
hung the sea, and I got taken on as tame
sailorman and emergency bottle-washer.
The wages were the noble figure of a lira
73


The Fate of Faustina
down to the sea; at least there were nearly
two hundred steps tunnelled through the
solid rock; then an iron gate, and another
eighty steps in the open air; and last of
all a cave fit for pirates a-penny-plain-and-
twopence-coloured. This cave gave upon
the sweetest little thing in coves, all deep
blue water and honest rocks; and here I
looked after the vineyard shipping, a pot-
bellied tub with a brown sail, and a sort of
dingy. The tub took the wine to Naples,
and the dingy was the tub's tender.
“ The house above was said to be on the
identical site of a suburban retreat of the
admirable Tiberius; there was the old sin-
ner's private theatre with the tiers cut clean
to this day, the well where he used to fatten
his lampreys on his slaves, and a ruined
temple of those ripping old Roman bricks,
shallow as dominos and ruddier than the
cherry. I never was much of an antiquary,
but I could have become one there if I'd
had nothing else to do; but I had lots.
When I wasn't busy with the boats I had
to trim the vines, or gather the grapes, or
even help make the wine itself in a cool,
75


Raffles
dark, musty vault underneath the temple,
that I can see and smell as I jaw. Ang
can't I hear it and feel it too! Squish,
squash, bubble; squash, squish, guggle;
and your feet as though you had been
wading through slaughter to a throne.
Yes, Bunny, you mightn't think it, but this
good right foot, that never was on the
wrong side of the crease when the ball left
my hand, has also been known to
crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.'"
He made a sudden pause, as though he
had stumbled on the truth in jest. His face
filled with lines. We were sitting in the
room that had been bare when first I saw
it; there were basket-chairs and a table in
it now, all meant ostensibly for me; and
hence Raffles would slip to his bed, with
schoolboy relish, at every tinkle of the bell.
This afternoon we felt fairly safe, for Theo-
bald had called in the morning, and Mrs.
Theobald still took up much of his time.
Through the open window we could hear
the piano-organ and “Mar-ga-rì” a few
76


Raffles
did his best to make his hobby pay. He
used to come out from Naples for the week-
ends in the tub when it wasn't too rough
for his nerves—and he didn't always come
alone. His very name sounded unhealthy
-Corbucci. I suppose I ought to add that
he was a Count, though Counts are two-a-
penny in Naples, and in season all the year
round.
"He had a little English, and liked to
air it upon me, much to my disgust; if I
could not hope to conceal my nationality as
yet, I at least did not want to have it adver-
tised; and the swine had English friends.
When he heard that I was bathing in No-
vember, when the bay is still as warm as
new milk, he would shake his wicked old
head and say, “You are very audashuss-
you are very audashuss!' and put on no
end of side before his Italians. By God,
he had pitched upon the right word un-
awares, and I let him know it in the end!
“But that bathing, Bunny; it was abso-
lutely the best I ever had anywhere. I said
just now the water was like wine; in my
own mind I used to call it blue champagne,
78


The Fate of Faustina
and was rather annoyed that I had no one
to admire the phrase. Otherwise I assure
you that I missed my own particular kind
very little indeed, though I often wished
that you were there, old chap; particularly
when I went for my lonesome swim; first
thing in the morning, when the Bay was
all rose-leaves, and last thing at night, when
your body caught phosphorescent fire! Ah,
yes, it was a good enough life for a change;
a perfect paradise to lie low in; another
Eden until ...
“My poor Eve!”
And he fetched a sigh that took away his
words; then his jaws snapped together, and
his eyes spoke terribly while he conquered
his emotion. I pen the last word advisedly.
I fancy it is one which I have never used
before in writing of A. J. Raffles, for I
cannot at the moment recall any other oc-
casion upon which its use would have been
justified. On resuming, however, he was
not only calm, but cold; and this flying for
safety to the other extreme is the single
instance of self-distrust which the present
Achates can record to the credit of his im-
pious Æneas.


Raffles
"I called the girl Eve,” said he. “Her
real name was Faustina, and she was one
of a vast family who hung out in a hovel
on the inland border of the vineyard. And
Aphrodite rising from the sea was less won-
derful and not more beautiful than Aphro-
dite emerging from that hole!
" It was the most exquisite face I ever
saw or shall see in this life. Absolutely
perfect features; a skin that reminded you
of old gold, so delicate was its bronze;
magnificent hair, not black but nearly; and
such eyes and teeth as would have made
the fortune of a face without another point.
I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad
about a girl like that. But I don't believe
there's such another in the world. And
there she was wasting her sweetness upon
that lovely but desolate little corner of it!
Well, she did not waste it upon me. I
would have married her, and lived happily
ever after in such a hovel as her people's
-with her. Only to look at her-only to
look at her for the rest of my days I could
have lain low and remained dead even to
you! And that's all I'm going to tell you
80


The Fate of Faustina
about that, Bunny; cursed be he who tells
more! Yet don't you run away with the
idea that this poor Faustina was the only
woman I ever cared about. I don't believe
in all that 'only' rot; nevertheless I tell
you that she was the one being who ever
entirely satisfied my sense of beauty; and I
honestly believe I could have chucked the
world and been true to Faustina for that
alone.
“We met sometimes in the little temple
I told you about, sometimes among the
vines; now by honest accident, now by
flagrant design; and found a ready-made
rendezvous, romantic as one could wish, in
Then the sea would call us—my blue cham-
pagne-my sparkling cobalt-and there was
the dingy ready to our hand. Oh, those
nights! I never knew which I liked best,
the moonlit ones when you sculled through
silver and could see for miles, or the dark
for the sea, and a red zig-zag in the sky for
old Vesuvius. We were happy. I don't
mind owning it. We seemed not to have a
81


Raffles
care between us. My mates took no inter-
est in my affairs, and Faustina's family did
not appear to bother about her. The Count
was in Naples five nights of the seven; the
other two we sighed apart.
“At first it was the oldest story in lit-
erature-Eden plus Eve. The place had
been a heaven on earth before, but now
it was heaven itself. So for a little; then
one night, a Monday night, Faustina burst
out crying in the boat; and sobbed her
story as we drifted without mishap by the
mercy of the Lord. And that was almost
as old a story as the other.
"She was engaged—what! Had I never
heard of it? Did I mean to upset the boat?
What was her engagement beside our love?
'Niente, niente, crooned Faustina, sighing
yet smiling through her tears. No, but
what did matter was that the man had
threatened to stab her to the heart-and
would do it as soon as look at her—that I
knew.
“I knew it merely from my knowledge
of the Neapolitans, for I had no idea who
the man might be. I knew it, and yet I
82.


The Fate of Faustina
took this detail better than the fact of the
engagement, though now I began to laugh
at both. As if I was going to let her marry
anybody else! As if a hair of her lovely
head should be touched while I lived to pro-
tect her! I had a great mind to row away
to blazes with her that very night, and never
go near the vineyard again, or let her either.
But we had not a lira between us at the
time, and only the rags in which we sat
barefoot in the boat. Besides, I had to
know the name of the animal who had
threatened a woman, and such a woman as
this.
“For a long time she refused to tell me,
with splendid obduracy; but I was as de-
termined as she; so at last she made con-
ditions. I was not to go and get put in
prison for sticking a knife into him-he
wasn't worth it—and I did promise not to
stab him in the back. Faustina seemed
quite satisfied, though a little puzzled by
my manner, having herself the racial tol-
erance for cold steel; and next moment she
had taken away my breath. “It is Stefano,'
she whispered, and hung her head.
83


Raffles
“And well she might, poor thing! Ste-
fano, of all creatures on God's earth—for
her!
“Bunny, he was a miserable little under-
sized wretch—ill-favoured-servile-surly
-and second only to his master in bestial
cunning and hypocrisy. His face was
enough for me; that was what I read in
it, and I don't often make mistakes. He
was Corbucci's own confidential body-ser-
vant, and that alone was enough to damn
him in decent eyes: always came out first
on the Saturday with the spese, to have all
ready for his master and current mistress,
and stayed behind on the Monday to clear
and lock up. Stefano! That worm! I
could well understand his threatening a
woman with a knife; what beat me was
how any woman could ever have listened to
him; above all, that Faustina should be the
one! It passed my comprehension. But I
questioned her as gently as I could; and
her explanation was largely the threadbare
one you would expect. Her parents were
so poor. They were so many in family.
Some of them begged—would I promise
84


The Fate of Faustina
never to tell? Then some of them stole
sometimes—and all knew the pains of actual
want. She looked after the cows, but there
were only two of them, and brought the
milk to the vineyard and elsewhere; but
that was not employment for more than
one; and there were countless sisters wait-
ing to take her place. Then he was so rich,
Stefano.
““ Rich?' I echoed. 'Stefano?'
“Si, Arturo mio.'
“Yes, I played the game on that vine-
yard, Bunny, even to going by my own first
name.
“And how comes he to be rich?' I
asked, suspiciously.
"She did not know; but he had given
her such beautiful jewels; the family had
lived on them for months, she pretending
an avocat had taken charge of them for her
against her marriage. But I cared nothing
about all that.
“Jewels! Stefano!' I could only mut-
ter.
"Perhaps the Count has paid for some
of them. He is very kind.'
85


Raffles
“To you, is he?'
"Oh, yes, very kind.'
“' And you would live in his house after-
wards?'
“Not now, mia cara-not now!'
“No, by God you don't !' said I in Eng-
lish. “But you would have done so, eh?'.
“Of course. That was arranged. The
Count is really very kind.'
“Do you see anything of him when he
comes here?'
“Yes, he had sometimes brought her lit-
tle presents, sweetmeats, ribbons, and the
like; but the offering had always been
made through this toad of a Stefano.
Knowing the men, I now knew all. But
Faustina, she had the pure and simple
heart, and the white soul, by the God who
made it, and for all her kindness to a tat-
tered scapegrace who made love to her in
broken Italian between the ripples and the
stars. She was not to know what I was,
remember; and besides Corbucci and his
henchman I was the Archangel Gabriel come
down to earth.
“Well, as I lay awake that night, two
86


The Fate of Faustina
more lines of Swinburne came into my head,
and came to stay:
“God said • Let him who wins her take
And keep Faustine.'
“On that couplet I slept at last, and it
was my text and watchword when I awoke
in the morning. I forget how well you
know your Swinburne, Bunny; but don't
you run away with the idea that there was
anything else in common between his Faus-
tine and mine. For the last time let me
tell you that poor Faustina was the whitest
and the best I ever knew.
"Well, I was strung up for trouble when
the next Saturday came, and I'll tell you
what I had done. I had broken the pledge
and burgled Corbucci's villa in my best
manner during his absence in Naples. Not
that it gave me the slightest trouble; but
no human being could have told that I had
been in, when I came out. And I had stolen
nothing, mark you, but only borrowed a re-
volver from a drawer in the Count's desk,
with one or two trifling accessories; for by
87


Raffles
this time I had the measure of these damned
Neapolitans. They are spry enough with a
knife, but you show them the business end
of a shooting-iron, and they'll streak like
rabbits for the nearest hole. But the re-
volver wasn't for my own use. It was for
Faustina, and I taught her how to use it
in the cave down there by the sea, shooting
at candles stuck upon the rock. The noise
in the cave was something frightful, but
high up above it couldn't be heard at all,
as we proved to each other's satisfaction
pretty early in the proceedings. So now
Faustina was armed with munitions of self-
defence; and I knew enough of her char-
acter to entertain no doubt as to their spir-
ited use upon occasion. Between the two
of us, in fact, our friend Stefano seemed
tolerably certain of a warm week-end.
"But the Saturday brought word that the
Count was not coming this week, being in
time; so for a whole Sunday we were
promised peace; and made bold plans ac-
cordingly. There was no further merit in
hushing this thing up. 'Let him who wins
88


The Fate of Faustina
her take and keep Faustine.' Yes, but let
him win her openly, or lose her and be
damned to him! So on the Sunday I was
going to have it out with her people—with
the Count and Stefano as soon as they
showed their noses. I had no inducement,
remember, ever to return to surreptitious
life within a cab-fare of Wormwood
Scrubbs. Faustina and the Bay of Naples
were quite good enough for me. And the
prehistoric man in me rather exulted in the
idea of fighting for my desire.
“On the Saturday, however, we were to
meet for the last time as heretofore-just
once more in secret-down there in the cave
-as soon as might be after dark. Neither
of us minded if we were kept for hours;
each knew that in the end the other would
come; and there was a charm of its own
even in waiting with such knowledge. But
that night I did lose patience: not in the
cave but up above, where first on one pre-
text and then on another the direttore kept
me going until I smelt a rat. He was not
given to exacting overtime, this direttore,
whose only fault was his servile subjection
89


Raffles
to our common boss. It seemed pretty ob-
vious, therefore, that he was acting upon
some secret instructions from Corbucci him-
self, and, the moment I suspected this, I
asked him to his face if it was not the case.
And it was; he admitted it with many
shrugs, being a conveniently weak person,
whom one felt almost ashamed of bullying
as the occasion demanded.
“The fact was, however, that the Count
had sent for him on finding he had to go to
Rome, and had said he was very sorry to
go just then, as among other things he in-
tended to speak to me about Faustina. Ste-
'fano had told him all about his row with
her, and moreover that it was on my ac-
count, which Faustina had never told me,
though I had guessed as much for myself.
Well, the Count was going to take his
jackal's part for all he was worth, which
was just exactly what I expected him to
do. He intended going for me on his re-
turn, but meanwhile I was not to make hay
in his absence, and so this tool of a direttore
had orders to keep me at it night and day.
í undertook not to give the poor beast away,
90


The Fate of Faustina
but at the same time told him I had not
the faintest intention of doing another
stroke of work that night.
“It was very dark, and I remember
knocking my head against the oranges as
I ran up the long, shallow steps which
ended the journey between the direttore's
lodge and the villa itself. But at the back
of the villa was the garden I spoke about,
and also a bare chunk of the cliff where it
was bored by that subterranean stair. So
I saw the stars close overhead, and the
fishermen's torches far below, the coastwise
lights and the crimson hieroglyph that spelt
Vesuvius, before I plunged into the dark-
ness of the shaft. And that was the last
time I appreciated the unique and peaceful
charm of this outlandish spot.
“The stair was in two long flights, with
an air-hole or two at the top of the upper
one, but not another pin-prick till you came
to the iron gate at the bottom of the lower.
As you may read of an infinitely lighter
place, in a finer work of fiction than you
are ever likely to write, Bunny, it was
'gloomy at noon, dark as midnight at dusk,
91


Raffles
and black as the ninth plague of Egypt at
midnight.' I won't swear to my quotation,
but I will to those stairs. They were as
black that night as the inside of the safest
safe in the strongest strong-room in the
Chancery Lane Deposit. Yet I had not got
far down them with my bare feet before I
heard somebody else coming up in boots.
You may imagine what a turn that gave
me! It could not be Faustina, who went
barefoot three seasons of the four, and yet
there was Faustina waiting for me down
below. What a fright she must have had !
And all at once my own blood ran cold:
for the man sang like a kettle as he plodded
up and up. It was, it must be, the short-
winded Count himself, whom we all sup-
posed to be in Rome!
“Higher he came and nearer, nearer,
slowly yet hurriedly, now stopping to cough
and gasp, now taking a few steps by ele-
phantine assault. I should have enjoyed
the situation if it had not been for poor
Faustina in the cave; as it was I was filled
with nameless fears. But I could not resist
giving that grampus Corbucci one bad mo-
92


The Fate of Faustina
ment on account. A crazy hand-rail ran up
one wall, so I carefully flattened myself
against the other, and he passed within
six inches of me, puffing and wheezing like
a brass band. I let him go a few steps
higher, and then I let him have it with both
lungs.
“Buona sera, eccellenza signorì!' I
roared after him. And a scream came down
in answer—such a scream! A dozen dif-
ferent terrors were in it; and the wheezing
had stopped, with the old scoundrel's heart.
“Chi sta la?' he squeaked at last, gib-
bering and whimpering like a whipped mon-
key, so that I could not bear to miss his
face, and got a match all ready to strike.
“ Arturo, signorì.'
“He didn't repeat my name, nor did he
damn me in heaps. He did nothing but
wheeze for a good minute, and when he
spoke it was with insinuating civility, in his
best English.
“Come nearer, Arturo. You are in the
lower regions down there. I want to speak
with you.'
“No, thanks. I'm in a hurry,' I said,
93


Raffles
and dropped that match back into my pocket.
He might be armed, and I was not.
“So you are in a 'urry!' and he wheezed
amusement. “And you thought I was still
in Rome, no doubt; and so I was until
this afternoon, when I caught train at the
eleventh moment, and then another train
from Naples to Pozzuoli. I have been
rowed here now by a fisherman of Pozzuoli.
I had not time to stop anywhere in Naples,
but only to drive from station to station,
So I am without Stefano, Arturo, I am
without Stefano.'
“ His sly voice sounded preternaturally
sly in the absolute darkness, but even
through that impenetrable veil I knew it for
a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail.
It shook violently in my hand; he also was
holding it where he stood. And these sup-
pressed tremors, or rather their detection
in this way, struck a strange chill to my
heart, just as I was beginning to pluck
it up.
"• It is lucky for Stefano,' said I, grim
as death.
“Ah, but you must not be too 'ard on
94


The Fate of Faustina
'im,' remonstrated the Count. “You have
stole his girl, he speak with me about it,
and I wish to speak with you. It is very
audashuss, Arturo, very audashuss! Per-
haps you are even going to meet her now,
eh?'
“I told him straight that I was.
"• Then there is no 'urry, for she is not
there.'
“You didn't see her in the cave?' I
cried, too delighted at the thought to keep
it to myself.
“I had no such fortune,' the old devil
said.
“She is there, all the same.'
“I only wish I 'ad known.'
“* And I've kept her long enough!'
“In fact I threw this over my shoulder
as I turned and went running down.
“I'ope you will find her!' his malicious
voice came croaking after me. 'I 'ope you
ill—I 'ope so.'
“And find her I did.”
Raffles had been on his feet some time,
unable to sit still or to stand, moving ex-
citedly about the room. But now he stood
95


Raffles
still enough, his elbows on the cast-iron
mantelpiece, his head between his hands.
“Dead ? " I whispered.
And he nodded to the wall.
“There was not a sound in the cave.
There was no answer to my voice. Then
I went in, and my foot touched hers, and
it was colder than the rock... Bunny,
they had stabbed her to the heart. She
had fought them, and they had stabbed her
to the heart!”
“You say 'they,'” I said gently, as he
stood in heavy silence, his back still turned.
" I thought Stefano had been left behind ?”
Raffles was round in a flash, his face
white-hot, his eyes dancing death.
"He was in the cave!” he shouted. “I
saw him-I spotted him—it was broad twi-
light after those stairs—and I went for him
with my bare hands. Not fists, Bunny;
not fists for a thing like that; I meant get-
ting my fingers into his vile little heart and
tearing it out by the roots. I was stark
mad. But he had the revolver-hers. He
blazed it at arm's length, and missed. And
that steadied me. I had smashed his funny-
96


The Fate of Faustina
bone against the rock before he could blaze
again; the revolver fell with a rattle, but
without going off; in an instant I had it
tight, and the little swine at my mercy at
last.”
“You didn't show him any ?”
“Mercy ? With Faustina dead at my
feet? I should have deserved none in the
next world if I had shown him any in this !
No, I just stood over him, with the revolver
in both hands, feeling the chambers with
my thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at
me; but I stepped back to that one, and
brought him down with a bullet in his guts.
"" And I can spare you two or three
more,' I said, for my poor girl could not
have fired a shot. 'Take that one to hell
with you—and that—and that!'
“Then I started coughing and wheezing
like the Count himself, for the place was
full of smoke. When it cleared my man
was very dead, and I tipped him into the
sea, to defile that rather than Faustina's
cave. And then—and then—we were alone
for the last time, she and I, in our own pet
haunt; and I could scarcely see her, yet I


Raffles
would not strike a match, for I knew she
would not have me see her as she was. I
could say good-bye to her without that. I
said it; and I left her like a man, and up
the first open-air steps with my head in the
air and the stars all sharp in the sky; then
suddenly they swam, and back I went like
a lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to
bring her back to life ... Bunny, I
can't tell you any more.”
“Not of the Count?” I murmured at last.
“Not even of the Count,” said Raffles,
turning round with a sigh. “I left him
pretty sorry for himself; but what was the
good of that? I had taken blood for blood,
and it was not Corbucci who had killed
Faustina. No, the plan was his, but that
was not part of the plan. They had found
out about our meetings in the cave: noth-
ing simpler than to have me kept hard at it
overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute
force in the boat. It was their only chance,
for she had said more to Stefano than she
had admitted to me, and more than I am
going to repeat about myself. No persua-
sion would have induced her to listen to
98


The Fate of Faustina
him again; so they tried force; and she
drew Corbucci's revolver on them, but they
had taken her by surprise, and Stefano
stabbed her before she could fire."
“But how do you know all that?" I
asked Raffles, for his tale was going to
pieces in the telling, and the tragic end of
poor Faustina was no ending for me.
“Oh,” said he, “I had it from Corbucci
at his own revolver's point. He was wait-
ing at his window, and I could have potted
him at my ease where he stood against the
light listening hard enough but not seeing
a thing. So he asked whether it was Ste-
fano, and I whispered, “Si, signore’; and
then whether he had finished Arturo, and I
brought the same shot off again. He had
let me in before he knew who was finished
and who was not."
“ And did you finish him?"
“No; that was too good for Corbucci.
But I bound and gagged him about as tight
as man was ever gagged or bound, and I
left him in his room with the shutters shut
and the house locked up. The shutters of
that old place were six inches thick, and
99


Raffles
the walls nearly six feet; that was on the
Saturday night, and the Count wasn't ex-
pected at the vineyard before the following
Saturday. Meanwhile he was supposed to
be in Rome. But the dead would doubtless
be discovered next day, and I am afraid this
would lead to his own discovery with the
life still in him. I believe he figured on
that himself, for he sat threatening me
gamely till the last. You never saw such
a sight as he was, with his head split in two
by a ruler tied at the back of it, and his
great moustache pushed up into his bulging
eyes. But I locked him up in the dark
without a qualm, and I wished and still
wish him every torment of the damned.”
" And then?"
“The night was still young, and within
ten miles there was the best of ports in a
storm, and hundreds of holds for the hum-
ble stowaway to choose from. But I didn't
want to go further than Genoa, for by this
time my Italian would wash, so I chose the
old Norddeutscher Lloyd, and had an ex-
cellent voyage in one of the boats slung in-
board over the bridge. That's better than
100


The Fate of Faustina
any hold, Bunny, and I did splendidly on
oranges brought from the vineyard.”
“And at Genoa ?”
“At Genoa I took to my wits once more,
and have been living on nothing else ever
since. But there I had to begin all over
again, and at the very bottom of the ladder.
I slept in the streets. I begged. I did all
manner of terrible things, rather hoping for
a bad end, but never coming to one. Then
one day I saw a white-headed old chap
looking at me through a shop-window-a
window I had designs upon-and when I
stared at him he stared at me—and we wore
the same rags. So I had come to that!
But one reflection makes many. I had not
recognised myself; who on earth would
recognise me? London called me—and
here I am. Italy had broken my heart-
and there it stays."
Flippant as a schoolboy one moment,
playful even in the bitterness of the next,
and now no longer giving way to the feel-
ing which had spoilt the climax of his tale,
Raffles needed knowing as I alone knew
him for a right appreciation of those last
TOT


Raffles
words. That they were no mere words I
know full well. That, but for the tragedy
of his Italian life, that life would have suf-
ficed him for years, if not for ever, I did
and do still believe. But I alone see him
as I saw him then, the lines upon his face,
and the pain behind the lines; how they
came to disappear, and what removed them,
you will never guess. It was the one thing
you would have expected to have the op-
posite effect, the thing indeed that had
forced his confidence, the organ and the
voice once more beneath our very windows:
" Margarita de Parete,
era a' sarta d' e' signore ;
se pugneva sempe e ddete
pe penzare a Salvatore!
“Mar-ga-rì,
e perzo e Salvatore !
Mar-ga-rì,
Ma l'ommo è cacciatore !
Mar-ga-rì,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch'è fatto, è fatto, un ne parlammo cchieů !"
I simply stared at Raffles. Instead of
deepening, his lines had vanished. He
102


The Fate of Faustina
looked years younger, mischievous and
merry and alert as I remembered him of
old in the breathless crisis of some madcap
escapade. He was holding up his finger;
he was stealing to the window; he was
peeping through the blind as though our
side street were Scotland Yard itself; he
was stealing back again, all revelry, excite-
ment, and suspense.
"I half thought they were after me be-
fore,” said he. “That was why I made
you look. I daren't take a proper look
myself, but what a jest if they were !
What a jest!”
“Do you mean the police ? ” said I.
“The police! Bunny, do you know them
and me so little that you can look me in
the face and ask such a question ? My boy,
I'm dead to them off their books—a good
deal deader than being off the hooks! Why,
if I went to Scotland Yard this minute, to
give myself up, they'd chuck me out for
a harmless lunatic. No, I fear an enemy
nowadays, and I go in terror of the some-
time friend, but I have the utmost confidence
in the dear police."
103


Raffles
“ Then whom do you mean?”
“ The Camorra!”
I repeated the word with a different in-
tonation. Not that I had never heard of
that most powerful and sinister of secret
societies; but I failed to see on what
grounds Raffles should jump to the con-
clusion that these every-day organ-grinders
belonged to it.
“It was one of Corbucci's threats," said
he. “If I killed him the Camorra would
certainly kill me; he kept on telling me so;
it was like his cunning not to say that he
would put them on my tracks whether or
no."
“He is probably a member himself !” :
“Obviously, from what he said.”
“But why on earth should you think that
these fellows are?” I demanded, as that
brazen voice came rasping through a sec-
ond verse.
“I don't think. It was only an idea.
That thing is so thoroughly Neapolitan,
and I never heard it on a London organ
before. Then again, what should bring
them back here?”
104


The Fate of Faustina
I peeped through the blind in my turn;
and, to be sure, there was the fellow with
the blue chin and the white teeth watching
our windows, and ours only, as he bawled.
“And why?” cried Raffles, his eyes danc-
ing when I told him. “Why should they
come sneaking back to us? Doesn't that
look suspicious, Bunny; doesn't that prom-
ise a lark?”
"Not to me," I said, having the smile
for once. “How many people, should you
imagine, toss them five shillings for as many
minutes of their infernal row? You seem
to forget that that's what you did an hour
ago!”
Raffles had forgotten. His blank face
confessed the fact. Then suddenly he burst
out laughing at himself.
“Bunny,” said he, "you've no imagina-
tion, and I never knew I had so much! Of
course you're right. I only wish you were
not, for there's nothing I should enjoy more
than taking on another Neapolitan or two.
You see, I owe them something still! I
didn't settle in full. I owe them more than
ever I shall pay them on this side Styx!”
. 105


Raffles
He had hardened even as he spoke: the
lines and the years had come again, and
his eyes were flint and steel, with an honest
grief behind the glitter.
106


Raffles
am giving to the world. Raffles was a
genius, and he could not make it pay! Raf-
fles had invention, resource, incomparable
audacity, and a nerve in ten thousand. He
was both strategian and tactician, and we
all now know the difference between the
two. Yet for months he had been hiding
like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his
altered face by night or day without risk,
unless another risk were courted by three
inches of conspicuous crape. Then thus far
our rewards had oftener than not been no
reward at all. Altogether it was a very dif-
ferent story from the old festive, unsus-
pected, club and cricket days, with their
noctes ambrosianæ at the Albany.
And now, in addition to the eternal peril
of recognition, there was yet another men-
ace of which I knew nothing. I thought
no more of our Neapolitan organ-grinders,
though I did often think of the moving page
that they had torn for me out of my friend's
strange life in Italy. Raffles never alluded
to the subject again, and for my part I had
entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting
the organ-grinders with the Camorra, and
108


The Last Laugh
imagining them upon his own tracks. I
heard no more of it, and thought as little,
as I say. Then one night in the autumn-
I shrink from shocking the susceptible for
nothing—but there was a certain house in
Palace Gardens, and when we got there
Raffles would pass on. I could see no soul
in sight, no glimmer in the windows. But
Raffles had my arm, and on we went with-
out talking about it. Sharp to the left on
the Notting Hill side, sharper still up Silver
Street, a little tacking west and south, a
plunge across High Street, and presently
we were home.
" Pyjamas first,” said Raffles, with as
much authority as though it mattered. It
was a warm night, however, though Sep-
tember, and I did not mind until I came in
clad as he commanded to find the autocrat
himself still booted and capped. He was
peeping through the blind, and the gas was
still turned down. But he said that I could
turn it up, as he helped himself to a ciga-
rette and nothing with it.
“May I mix you one?” said I.
“No, thanks."
109


'
Raffles
“What's the trouble?”
“We were followed.”
“Never!”
“ You never saw it."
“But you never looked round.”
“I have an eye at the back of each ear,
Bunny.”
I helped myself and I fear with less mod-
eration than might have been the case a
minute before.
“ So that was why-
“ That was why,” said Raffles, nodding;
but he did not smile, and I put down my
glass untouched.
“They were following us then!”
“All up Palace Gardens.”
"I thought you wound about coming
back over the hill."
“Nevertheless, one of them's in the street
below at this moment."
No, he was not fooling me. He was
very grim. And he had not taken off a
thing; perhaps he did not think it worth
while.
“ Plain clothes ?” I sighed, following the
sartorial train of thought, even to the loath-
11ο


The Last Laugh
ly arrows that had decorated my person
once already for a little æon. Next time
they would give me double. The skilly was
in my stomach when I saw Raffles's face.
“Who said it was the police, Bunny?”
said he. “It's the Italians. They're only
after me; they won't hurt a hair of your
head, let alone cropping it! Have a drink,
and don't mind me. I shall score them off
before I'm done.”
“And I'll help you!”
“No, old chap, you won't. This is my
own little show. I've known about it for
weeks. I first tumbled to it the day those
Neapolitans came back with their organs,
though I didn't seriously suspect things
then; they never came again, those two,
they had done their part. That's the Ca-
morra all over, from all accounts. The
Count I told you about is pretty high up in
it, by the way he spoke, but there will be
grades and grades between him and the
organ-grinders. I shouldn't be surprised if
he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-
creamer in the town upon my tracks! The
organisation's incredible. Then do you re-
III


Raffles
member the superior foreigner who came to
the door a few days afterwards? You said
he had velvet eyes.”
"I never connected him with those two!”
“Of course you didn't, Bunny, so you
threatened to kick the fellow downstairs,
and only made them keener on the scent.
It was too late to say anything when you
told me. But the very next time I showed
my nose outside I heard a camera click as
I passed, and the fiend was a person with
velvet eyes. Then there was a lull—that
happened weeks ago. They had sent me to
Italy for identification by Count Corbucci.”
"But this is all theory," I exclaimed.
“How on earth can you know?”.
“I don't know,” said Raffles, “but I
should like to bet. Our friend the blood-
hound is hanging about the corner near the
pillar-box; look through my window, it's
dark in there, and tell me who he is.”
The man was too far away for me to
swear to his face, but he wore a covert-coat
of un-English length, and the lamp across
the road played steadily on his boots; they
were very yellow, and they made no noise
II2


The Last Laugh
when he took a turn. I strained my eyes,
and all at once I remembered the thin-soled,
low-heeled, splay yellow boots of the in-
sidious foreigner, with the soft eyes and
the brown-paper face, whom I had turned
from the door as a palpable fraud. The
ring at the bell was the first I had heard of
him, there had been no warning step upon
the stairs, and my suspicious eye had
searched his feet for rubber soles.
“It's the fellow," I said, returning to
Raffles, and I described his boots.
Raffles was delighted.
“Well done, Bunny; you're coming on,"
said he.“ Now I wonder if he's been over
here all the time, or if they sent him over
expressly? You did better than you think
have been made in Italy, and that looks like
the special envoy. But it's no use specu-
lating. I must find out.”
“He won't stay there all night.”
“Well?”
"When he gets tired of it I shall return
the compliment and follow him.”
113


Raffles
“Not alone,” said I, firmly.
“Well, we'll see. We'll see at once,"
said Raffles, rising. “Out with the gas,
Bunny, while I take a look. Thank you.
Now wait a bit ... yes! He's chucked
it; he's off already; and so am I!”
But I slipped to our outer door, and held
the passage.
“I don't let you go alone, you know."
“ You can't come with me in pyjamas."
“Now I see why you made me put them
on!”
“Bunny, if you don't shift I shall have
to shift you. This is my very own private
one-man show. But I'll be back in an hour
—there!”
“You swear?”
“By all my gods.”
I gave in. How could I help giving in?
He did not look the man that he had been,
but you never knew with Raffles, and I
could not have him lay a hand on me. I
let him go with a shrug and my blessing,
then ran into his room to see the last of him
from the window.
The creature in the coat and boots had
114


The Last Laugh
reached the end of our little street, where
he appeared to have hesitated, so that Raf-
fles was just in time to see which way he
turned. And Raffles was after him at an
easy pace, and had himself almost reached
the corner when my attention was distracted
from the alert nonchalance of his gait. I
was marvelling that it alone had not long
ago bewrayed him, for nothing about him
was so unconsciously characteristic, when
suddenly I realised that Raffles was not the
only person in the little lonely street. An-
other pedestrian had entered from the other
end, a man heavily built and clad, with an
astrakhan collar to his coat on this warm
night, and a black slouch hat that hid his
features from my bird's-eye view. His
steps were the short and shuffling ones of a
man advanced in years and in fatty degen-
eration, but of a sudden they stopped be-
neath my very eyes. I could have dropped
a marble into the dinted crown of the black
felt hat. Then, at the same moment, Raf-
fles turned the corner without looking
round, and the big man below raised both
his hands and his face. Of the latter I saw
115


Raffles
only the huge white moustache, like a fly-
ing gull, as Raffles had described it; for at
a glance I divined that this was his arch-
enemy, the Count Corbucci himself.
I did not stop to consider the subtleties of
the system by which the real hunter lagged
behind while his subordinate pointed the
quarry like a sporting dog. I left the Count
shuffling onward faster than before, and I
jumped into some clothes as though the
flats were on fire. If the Count was going
to follow Raffles in his turn, then I would
follow the Count in mine, and there would
be a midnight procession of us through the
town. But I found no sign of him in the
empty street, and no sign in the Earl's
Court Road, that looked as empty for all
its length, save for a natural enemy stand-
ing like a waxwork with a glimmer at his
belt.
“Officer,” I gasped, “ have you seen any-
thing of an old gentleman with a big white
moustache?”
The unlicked cub of a common constable
seemed to eye me the more suspiciously for
the flattering form of my address.
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The Last Laugh
“Took a hansom,” said he at length.
A hansom! Then he was not following
the others on foot; there was no guessing
his game. But something must be said or
done.
"He's a friend of mine," I explained,
“and I want to overtake him. Did you
hear where he told the fellow to drive?”.
A curt negative was the policeman's re-
ply to that; and if ever I take part in a
night assault-at-arms, revolver versus baton
in the back kitchen, I know which member
of the Metropolitan Police Force I should
like for my opponent.
If there was no overtaking the Count,
however, it should be a comparatively sim-
ple matter in the case of the couple on foot,
and I wildly hailed the first hansom that
crawled into my ken. I must tell Raffles
who it was that I had seen; the Earl's
Court Road was long, and the time since he
vanished in it but a few short minutes. I
drove down the length of that useful thor-
oughfare, with an eye apiece on either pave-
ment, sweeping each as with a brush, but
never a Raffles came into the pan. Then I
117


Raffles
tried the Fulham Road, first to the west,
then to the east, and in the end drove home
to the flat as bold as brass. I did not realise
my indiscretion until I had paid the man
and was on the stairs. Raffles never dreamt
of driving all the way back; but I was hop-
ing now to find him waiting up above. He
had said an hour. I had remembered it
suddenly. And now the hour was more
than up. But the flat was as empty as I
had left it; the very light that had encour-
aged me, pale though it was, as I turned
the corner in my hansom, was but the light
that I myself had left burning in the deso-
late passage.
I can give you no conception of the night
that I spent. Most of it I hung across the
sill, throwing a wide net with my ears,
catching every footstep afar off, every han-
som bell farther still, only to gather in some
alien whom I seldom even landed in our
street. Then I would listen at the door.
He might come over the roof; and eventu-
ally some one did; but now it was broad
daylight, and I flung the door open in the
milkman's face, which whitened at the shock
118


The Last Laugh
1
as though I had ducked him in his own
pail.
“You're late," I thundered as the first
excuse for my excitement.
“ Beg your pardon," said he, indignant-
ly, “but I'm half an hour before my usual
time."
“ Then I beg yours," said I; “but the
fact is, Mr. Maturin has had one of his bad
nights, and I seem to have been waiting
hours for milk to make him a cup of tea.”
This little fib (ready enough for a Raffles,
though I say it) earned me not only for-
giveness but that obliging sympathy which
is a branch of the business of the man at the
door. The good fellow said that he could
see I had been sitting up all night, and he
left me pluming myself upon the accidental
art with which I had told my very necessary
tarradiddle. On reflection I gave the credit
to instinct, not accident, and then sighed
afresh as I realised how the influence of the
master was sinking into me, and he heaven
knew where! But my punishment was
swift to follow, for within the hour the bell
rang imperiously twice, and there was Dr.
119


Raffles
Theobald on our mat, in a yellow Jaeger
suit, with a chin as yellow jutting over the
flaps that he had turned up to hide his
pyjamas.
“What's this about a bad night?” said
he.
“He couldn't sleep, and he wouldn't let
me,” I whispered, never loosening my grasp
of the door, and standing tight against the
other wall." But he's sleeping like a baby
now."
“I must see him.”
“He gave strict orders that you should
not.”
“I'm his medical man, and 14 "
“You know what he is,” I said, shrug-
ging; "the least thing wakes him, and you
will if you insist on seeing him now. It
will be the last time, I warn you! I know
what he said, and you don't."
The doctor cursed me under his fiery
moustache.
" I shall come up during the course of the
morning,” he snarled.
" And I shall tie up the bell,” I said,
“and if it doesn't ring he'll be sleeping
120


The Last Laugh
still, but I will not risk waking him by
coming to the door again.”
And with that I shut it in his face. I
was improving, as Raffles had said; but
what would it profit me if some evil had
befallen him? And now I was prepared for
the worst. A boy came up whistling and
leaving papers on the mats; it was getting
on for eight o'clock, and the whisky and
soda of half-past twelve stood untouched
and stagnant in the tumbler. If the worst
had happened to Raffles, I felt that I would
either never drink again, or else seldom do
anything else.
Meanwhile I could not even break my
fast, but roamed the flat in a misery not to
be described, my very linen still unchanged,
my cheeks and chin now tawny from the
unwholesome night. How long would it go
on? I wondered for a time. Then I changed
my tune: how long could I endure it?
It went on actually until the forenoon
only, but my endurance cannot be measured
by the time, for to me every hour of it was
an arctic night. Yet it cannot have been
much after eleven when the ring came at
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Raffles
the bell, which I had forgotten to tie up
after all. But this was not the doctor;
neither, too well I knew, was it the wan-
derer returned. Our bell was the pneu-
matic one that tells you if the touch be light
or heavy; the hand upon it now was ten-
tative and shy.
The owner of the hand I had never seen
before. He was young and ragged, with
one eye blank, but the other ablaze with
some fell excitement. And straightway he
burst into a low torrent of words, of which
all I knew was that they were Italian, and
therefore news of Raffles, if only I had
known the language! But dumb-show
might help us somewhat, and in I dragged
him, though against his will, a new alarm
in his one wild eye.
“Non capite ?” he cried when I had him
inside and had withstood the torrent.
“No, I'm bothered if I do!” I answered,
guessing his question from his tone.
“Vostro amico," he repeated over and
over again; and then, “ Poco tempo, poco
tempo, poco tempo!”.
For once in my life the classical educa-
I 22


The Last Laugh
tion of my public school days was of real
value. “My pal, my pal, and no time to
be lost!” I translated freely, and flew for
my hat.
“Ecco, signore !” cried the fellow, snatch-
ing the watch from my waistcoat pocket,
and putting one black thumb-nail on the
long hand, the other on the numeral
twelve.“ Mezzogiorno-poco tempo--poco
tempo!” And again I seized his meaning,
that it was twenty past eleven, and we must
be there by twelve. But where, but where?
It was maddening to be summoned like this,
and not to know what had happened, nor to
have any means of finding out. But my
presence of mind stood by me still, I was
improving by seven-league strides, and I
crammed my handkerchief between the
drum and hammer of the bell before leav-
ing. The doctor could ring now till he was
black in the face, but I was not coming,
and he need not think it.
I half expected to find a hansom waiting,
but there was none, and we had gone some
distance down the Earl's Court Road before
we got one; in fact, we had to run to the
123


Raffles
stand. Opposite is the church with the
clock upon it, as everybody knows, and at
sight of the dial my companion had wrung
his hands; it was close upon the half-hour.
“ Poco tempo-pochissimo!” he wailed.
“ Bloomburee Ske-warr," he then cried to
the cabman—"numero trentotto!”
“ Bloomsbury Square," I roared on my
own account, “ I'll show you the house when
we get there, only drive like be-damned ! ”
My companion lay back gasping in his
corner. The small glass told me that my
own face was pretty red.
“A nice show!” I cried; "and not a
word can you tell me. Didn't you bring
me a note ? ”
I might have known by this time that he
had not, still I went through the pantomime
of writing with my finger on my cuff. But
he shrugged and shook his head.
“Niente,” said he. “Una quistione di
vita, di vita!”
“What's that?” I snapped, my early
training come in again. “Say it slowly-
andante-rallentando."
Thank Italy for the stage instructions in
124


The Last Laugh
the songs one used to murder! The fellow
actually understood.
“Una—quistione-di—vita.”
“Or mors, eh?” I shouted, and up went
the trap-door over our heads.
"Avanti, avanti, avanti!” cried the Ital-
ian, turning up his one-eyed face.
“Hell - to - leather," I translated, “and
double fare if you do it by twelve o'clock.”
But in the streets of London how is one
to know the time? In the Earl's Court
Road it had not been half-past, and at
Barker's in High Street it was but a min-
ute later. A long half-mile a minute, that
was going like the wind, and indeed we had
done much of it at a gallop. But the next
hundred yards took us five minutes by the
next clock, and which was one to believe ?
I fell back upon my own old watch (it was
my own), which made it eighteen minutes
to the hour as we swung across the Serpen-
tine bridge, and by the quarter we were in
the Bayswater Road—not up for once.
“Presto, presto," my pale guide mur-
mured. “Affretatevi-avanti!”.
“ Ten bob if you do it," I cried through
125


The Last Laugh
“What number?” cried the good fellow
overhead.
“Trentotto, trentotto,” said my guide,
but he was looking to the right, and I
bundled him out to show the house on foot.
I had not half-a-sovereign after all, but I
Aung our dear driver a whole one instead,
and only wish that it had been a hundred.
Already the Italian had his latch-key in
the door of 38, and in another moment we
were rushing up the narrow stairs of as
dingy a London house as prejudiced coun-
tryman can conceive. It was panelled, but
it was dark and evil-smelling, and how we
should have found our way even to the
stairs but for an unwholesome jet of yellow
gas in the hall, I cannot myself imagine.
However, up we went pell-mell, to the
right-about on the half-landing, and so like
a whirlwind into the drawing-room a few
steps higher. There the gas was also burn-
ing behind closed shutters, and the scene is
photographed upon my brain, though I can-
not have looked upon it for a whole instant
as I sprang in at my leader's heels.
This room also was panelled, and in the
127


Raffles
middle of the wall on our left, his hands
lashed to a ring-bolt high above his head,
his toes barely touching the floor, his neck
pinioned by a strap passing through smaller
ring-bolts under either ear, and every inch
of him secured on the same principle, stood,
or rather hung, all that was left of Raffles,
for at the first glance I believed him dead.
A black ruler gagged him, the ends lashed
behind his neck, the blood upon it caked to
bronze in the gaslight. And in front of
him, ticking like a sledge-hammer, its only
hand upon the stroke of twelve, stood a
simple, old-fashioned, grandfather's clock
—but not for half an instant longer-only
until my guide could hurl himself upon it
and send the whole thing crashing into the
corner. An ear-splitting report accompan-
ied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the
fallen clock, and I saw a revolver smoking
in a vice screwed below the dial, an arrange-
ment of wires sprouting from the dial itself,
and the single hand at once at its zenith
and in contact with these.
“Tumble to it, Bunny?”
He was alive; these were his first words;
128


The Last Laugh
the Italian had the blood-caked ruler in his
hand, and with his knife was reaching up to
cut the thongs that lashed the hands. He
was not tall enough, I seized him and lifted
him up, then fell to work with my own
knife upon the straps. And Raffles smiled
faintly upon us through his blood-stains.
"I want you to tumble to it,” he whis-
pered; "the neatest thing in revenge I
ever knew, and another minute would have
fixed it. I've been waiting for it twelve
hours, watching the clock round, death at
the end of the lap! Electric connection.
Simple enough. Hour-hand only — O
Lord!”
We had cut the last strap. He could not
stand. We supported him between us to a
horsehair sofa, for the room was furnished,
and I begged him not to speak, while his
one-eyed deliverer was at the door before
Raffles recalled him with a sharp word in
Italian.
“He wants to get me a drink, but that
can wait,” said he, in firmer voice; "I
shall enjoy it the more when I've told you
what happened. Don't let him go, Bunny;
129


The Last Laugh
for my part I could have waited until we
were safe in the flat.
"I do want to get it off my chest, Bun-
ny," old Raffles admitted, “ and yet I hardly
can tell you after all. I followed your
friend with the velvet eyes. I followed him
all the way here. Of course I came up to
have a good look at the house when he'd let
himself in, and damme if he hadn't left the
door ajar! Who could resist that? I had
pushed it half open and had just one foot
on the mat when I got such a crack on the
head as I hope never to get again. When
I came to my wits they were hauling me
up to that ring-bolt by the hands, and old
Corbucci himself was bowing to me, but
how he got here I don't know yet."
"I can tell you that,” said I, and told
how I had seen the Count for myself on
the pavement underneath our windows.
" Moreover,” I continued, “ I saw him spot
you, and five minutes after in Earl's Court
Road I was told he'd driven off in a cab.
He would see you following his man, drive
home ahead, and catch you by having the
door left open in the way you describe.”
131


Raffles
“Well,” said Raffles," he deserved to
catch me somehow, for he'd come from
Naples on purpose, ruler and all, and the
ring-bolts were ready fixed, and even this
house taken furnished for nothing else!
He meant catching me before he'd done,
and scoring me off in exactly the same way
that I scored off him, only going one better
of course. He told me so himself, sitting
where I am sitting now, at three o'clock
this morning, and smoking a most abom-
inable cigar that I've smelt ever since. It
appears he sat twenty-four hours when I
left him trussed up, but he said twelve
would content him in my case, as there was
certain death at the end of them, and I
mightn't have life enough left to appreciate
my end if he made it longer. But I wouldn't
have trusted him if he could have got the
clock to go twice round without firing off
the pistol. He explained the whole mech-
anism of that to me; he had thought it all
out on the vineyard I told you about; and
then he asked if I remembered what he had
promised me in the name of the Camorra.
I only remembered some vague threats, but
132


Raffles
matic attitude toward them. It was diffi-
cult to believe that this was Raffles.
“Oh,” said he, “they were to go off to
Italy instanter; they should be crossing
now. But do listen to what I am telling
you; it's interesting, my dear man. This
old sinner Corbucci turns out to have been
no end of a boss in the Camorra-says so
himself. One of the capi paranze, my boy,
no less; and the velvety Johnny a giovano
onorato, Anglicé, fresher. This fellow here
was also in it, and I've sworn to protect
him from them evermore; and it's just as
I said, half the organ-grinders in London
belong, and the whole lot of them were put
on my tracks by secret instructions. This
excellent youth manufactures iced poison
on Saffron Hill when he's at home.”
"And why on earth didn't he come to
me quicker?”
" Because he couldn't talk to you, he
could only fetch you, and it was as much
as his life was worth to do that before our
friends had departed. They were going by
the eleven o'clock from Victoria, and that
didn't leave much chance, but he certainly
134


The Last Laugh
oughtn't to have run it as fine as he did.
Still you must remember that I had to fix
things up with him in the fewest possible
words, in a single minute that the other
two were indiscreet enough to leave us
alone together.”
The ragamuffin in question was watch-
ing us with all his solitary eye, as though
he knew that we were discussing him.
Suddenly he broke out in agonised accents,
his hands clasped, and a face so full of
fear that every moment I expected to see
him on his knees. But Raffles answered
kindly, reassuringly, I could tell from his
tone, and then turned to me with a com-
passionate shrug.
“He says he couldn't find the mansions,
Bunny, and really it's not to be wondered ,
at. I had only time to tell him to hunt
you up and bring you here by hook or
crook before twelve to-day, and after all he
has done that. But now the poor devil
thinks you're riled with him, and that we'll
give him away to the Camorra.”
"Oh, it's not with him I'm riled,” I
said frankly, “but with those other black-
135


Raffles
guards, and—and with you, old chap, for
taking it all as you do, while such in-
famous scoundrels have the last laugh, and
are safely on their way to France !”
Raffles looked up at me with a curiously
open eye, an eye that I never saw when
he was not in earnest. I fancied he did
not like my last expression but one. After
all, it was no laughing matter to him.
“But are they? ” said he. “ I'm not so
sure."
“You said they were!”
“I said they should be."
“Didn't you hear them go?”
“I heard nothing but the clock all
night. It was like Big Ben striking at the
last-striking nine to the fellow on the
drop.”
And in that open eye I saw at last a
deep glimmer of the ordeal through which
he had passed.
“But, my dear old Raffles, if they're still
on the premises— "
The thought was too thrilling for a fin-
ished sentence.
“I hope they are,” he said grimly, go-
136


The Last Laugh
ing to the door. “There's a gas on!
Was that burning when you came in?”
Now that I thought of it, yes, it had
been.
"And there's a frightfully foul smell,” I
added, as I followed Raffles down the
stairs. He turned to me gravely with his
hand upon the front-room door, and at the
same moment I saw a coat with an astra-
khan collar hanging on the pegs.
“ They are in here, Bunny,” he said, and
turned the handle.
The door would only open a few inches.
But a detestable odour came out, with a
broad bar of yellow gaslight. Raffles put
his handkerchief to his nose. I followed
his example, signing to our ally to do the
same, and in another minute we had all
three squeezed into the room.
The man with the yellow boots was
lying against the door, the Count's great
carcase sprawled upon the table, and at a
glance it was evident that both men had
been dead some hours. The old Camor-
rist had the stem of a liqueur-glass between
his swollen blue fingers, one of which had
137


Raffles
been cut in the breakage, and the livid Aesh
was also brown with the last blood that it
would ever shed. His face was on the
table, the huge moustache projecting from
under either leaden cheek, yet looking it-
self strangely alive. Broken bread and
scraps of frozen macaroni lay upon the
cloth and at the bottom of two soup-plates
and a tureen; the macaroni had a tinge
of tomato; and there was a crimson dram
left in the tumblers, with an empty fiasco
to show whence it came. But near the
great grey head upon the table another
liqueur-glass stood, unbroken, and still full
of some white and stinking liquid; and
near that a tiny silver flask, which made
me recoil from Raffles as I had not from
the dead; for I knew it to be his.
“Come out of this poisonous air," he
said sternly, “and I will tell you how it
has happened."
So we all three gathered together in the
hall. But it was Raffles who stood nearest
the street-door, his back to it, his eyes
apon us two. And though it was to me
only that he spoke at first, he would pause
138


The Last Laugh
from point to point, and translate into
Italian for the benefit of the one-eyed alien
to whom he owed his life.
“ You probably don't even know the
name, Bunny,” he began, “ of the deadliest
poison yet known to science. It is cyanide
of cacodyl, and I have carried that small
flask of it about with me for months.
Where I got it matters nothing; the whole
point is that a mere sniff reduces flesh to
clay. I have never had any opinion of sui-
cide, as you know, but I always felt it
worth while to be fore-armed against the
very worst. Well, a bottle of this stuff
is calculated to stiffen an ordinary room-
ful of ordinary people within five minutes;
and I remembered my flask when they had
me as good as crucified in the small hours
of this morning. I asked them to take it
out of my pocket. I begged them to give
me a drink before they left me. And what
do you suppose they did ?”.
I thought of many things but suggested
none, while Raffles turned this much of his.
statement into sufficiently fluent Italian..
But when he faced me again his face was;
still flaming.
139


To Catch a Thief
no ordinary thief, and perhaps inevitable
that the name of Raffles should have been
dragged from oblivion by callous disre-
specters of the departed and unreasoning
apologists for the police. These wiseacres
did not hesitate to bring a dead man back
to life because they knew of no living one
capable of such feats; it is their heed-
less and inconsequent calumnies that the
present paper is partly intended to refute.
As a matter of fact, our joint innocence in
this matter was only exceeded by our com-
mon envy, and for a long time, like the
rest of the world, neither of us had the
slightest clue to the identity of the person
who was following in our steps with such
irritating results.
“I should mind less,” said Raffles, “if
the fellow were really playing my game.
But abuse of hospitality was never one of
my strokes, and it seems to me the only
shot he's got. When we took old Lady
Melrose's necklace, Bunny, we were not
staying with the Melroses, if you recollect.”
We were discussing the robberies for the
hundredth time, but for once under condi-
143


Raffles
tions more favourable to animated conver-
sation than our unique circumstances per-
mitted in the flat. We did not often dine
out. Dr. Theobald was one impediment, the
risk of recognition was another. But there
were exceptions, when the doctor was
away or the patient defiant, and on these
rare occasions we frequented a certain un-
pretentious restaurant in the Fulham quar-
ter, where the cooking was plain but ex-
cellent, and the cellar a surprise. Our
bottle of '89 champagne was empty to the
label when the subject arose, to be touched
by Raffles in the reminiscent manner indi-
cated above. I can see his clear eye upon
me now, reading me, weighing me. But
I was not so sensitive to his scrutiny at
the time. His tone was deliberate, calcu-
lating, preparatory; not as I heard it then,
though a head full of wine, but as it floats
back to me across the gulf between that
moment and this.
“Excellent fillet !” said I grossly. “So
you think this chap is as much in society
as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We
144


To Catch a Thief
had cause enough for jealousy without
that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an
eloquent half-inch.
"As much, my dear Bunny? He is not
only in it, but of it; there's no comparison
between us there. Society is in rings like
a target, and we never were in the bull's-
eye, however thick you may lay on the
ink! I was asked for my cricket. I
haven't forgotten it yet. But this fellow's
one of themselves, with the right of entrée
into houses which we could only 'enter'
in a professional sense. That's obvious un-
less all these little exploits are the work
of different hands, which they as obviously
are not. And it's why I'd give five hun-
dred pounds to put salt on him to-night!”
“Not you,” said I, as I drained my glass
in festive incredulity.
“But I would, my dear Bunny. Waiter!
another half-bottle of this," and Raffles
leant across the table as the empty one
was taken away. “I never was more seri-
ous in my life," he continued below his
breath. “Whatever else our successor may
be, he's not a dead man like me, or a
145


Raffles
marked man like you. If there's any truth
in my theory he's one of the last people
upon whom suspicion is ever likely to
rest; and oh, Bunny, what a partner he
would make for you and me!”
Under less genial influences the very
idea of a third partner would have filled
my soul with offence; but Raffles had
chosen his moment unerringly, and his ar-
guments lost nothing by the flowing ac-
companiment of the extra pint. They
were, however, quite strong in themselves.
The gist of them was that thus far we had
remarkably little to show for what Raffles
would call “our second innings.” This
even I could not deny. We had scored a
few " long singles,” but our “best shots"
had gone“ straight to hand,” and we were
“playing a deuced slow game.” Therefore
we needed a new partner-and the meta-
phor failed Raffles. It had served its turn.
I already agreed with him. In truth I was
tired of my false position as hireling at-
tendant, and had long fancied myself an
object of suspicion to that other impostor
the doctor. A fresh, untrammelled start
146


To Catch a Thief
was a fascinating idea to me, though two
was company, and three in our case might
be worse than none. But I did not see
how we could hope, with our respective
handicaps, to solve a problem which was
already the despair of Scotland Yard.
“Suppose I have solved it,” observed
Raffles, cracking a walnut in his palm.
“How could you?” I asked, without be-
lieving for an instant that he had.
"I have been taking the Morning Post
for some time now.”
“Well?”
“You have got me a good many odd
numbers of the less base society papers.”
"I can't for the life of me see what
you're driving at.”
Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked
another nut.
“That's because you've neither observa-
tion nor imagination, Bunny—and yet you
try to write! Well, you wouldn't think it,
but I have a fairly complete list of the
people who were at the various functions
under cover of which these different little
coups were brought off.”
147


Raffles
I said very stolidly that I did not see
how that could help him. It was the only
answer to his good-humoured but self-
satisfied contempt; it happened also to be
true.
“Think,” said Raffles, in a patient voice.
“When thieves break in and steal,” said
I, "upstairs, I don't see much point in
discovering who was downstairs at the
time."
" Quite,” said Raffles—" when they do
break in.”
" But that's what they have done in
all these cases. An upstairs door found
screwed up, when things were at their
height below; thief gone and jewels with
him before alarm could be raised. Why,
the trick's so old that I never knew you
condescend to play it."
“Not so old as it looks,” said Raffles,
choosing the cigars and handing me mine.
“ Cognac or Benedictine, Bunny?”
“ Brandy,” I said coarsely.
“Besides,” he went on," the rooms were
not screwed up; at Dorchester House, at
any rate, the door was only locked, and the
148


To Catch a Thief
key missing, so that it might have been
done on either side.”
“But that was where he left his rope-
ladder behind him!” I exclaimed in tri-
umph; but Raffles (nly shook his head.
“I don't believe in that rope-ladder,
Bunny, except as a blind.”
“ Then what on earth do you believe?"
“That every one of these so-called bur-
glaries has been done from the inside, by
one of the guests; and what's more I'm
very much mistaken if I haven't spotted
the right sportsman.”
I began to believe that he really had,
there was such a wicked gravity in the
eyes that twinkled faintly into mine. I
raised my glass in convivial congratula-
tion, and still remember the somewhat
anxious eye with which Raffles saw it
emptied.
“I can only find one likely name," he
continued, " that figures in all these lists,
and it is anything but a likely one at first
sight. Lord Ernest Belville was at all
those functions. Know anything about
him, Bunny?”
149


Raffles
“Not the Rational Drink fanatic?”
“ Yes."
“That's all I want to know.”
" Quite," said Raffles; "and yet what
could be more promising? A man whose
views are so broad and moderate, and so
widely' held already (saving your presence,
Bunny), does not bore the world with them
without ulterior motives. So far so good.
What are this chap's motives? Does he
want to advertise himself? No, he's some-
body already. But is he rich? On the
contrary, he's as poor as a rat for his po-
sition, and apparently without the least
ambition to be anything else; certainly he
won't enrich himself by making a public
fad of what all sensible people are agreed
upon as it is. Then suddenly one gets
one's own old idea—the alternative pro-
fession! My cricket—his Rational Drink!
But it is no use jumping to conclusions. I
must know more than the newspapers can
tell me. Our aristocratic friend is forty,
and unmarried. What has he been doing
all these years? How the devil was I to
find out?”
150


To Catch a Thief
“How did you?” I asked, declining to
spoil my digestion with a conundrum, as
it was his evident intention that I should.
“ Interviewed him!” said Raffles, smil-
ing slowly on my amazement.
“ You — interviewed him?” I echoed.
“When—and where?”
"Last Thursday night, when, if you re-
member, we kept early hours, because I
felt done. What was the use of telling
you what I had up my sleeve, Bunny? It
might have ended in fizzle, as it still may.
But Lord Ernest Belville was addressing
the meeting at Exeter Hall; I waited for
him when the show was over, dogged him
home to King John's Mansions, and in-
terviewed him in his own rooms there be-
fore he turned in."
My journalistic jealousy was piqued to
the quick. Affecting a scepticism I did
not feel (for no outrage was beyond the
pale of his impudence), I inquired dryly
which journal Raffles had pretended to
represent. It is unnecessary to report his
answer. I could not believe him without
further explanation.
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Raffles
“I should have thought," he said, “ that
even you would have spotted a practice I
never omit upon certain occasions. I al-
ways pay a visit to the drawing-room and
fill my waistcoat pocket from the card-tray.
It is an immense help in any little tem-
porary impersonation. On Thursday night
I sent up the card of a powerful writer
connected with a powerful paper; if Lord
Ernest had known him in the flesh I
should have been obliged to confess to a
journalistic ruse; luckily he didn't—and I
had been sent by my editor to get the in-
terview for next morning. What could be
better-for the alternative profession?”
I inquired what the interview had
brought forth.
"Everything,” said Raffles. “Lord Er-
nest has been a wanderer these twenty
years. Texas, Fiji, Australia. I suspect
him of wives and families in all three. But
his manners are a liberal education. He
gave me some beautiful whisky, and for-
got all about his fad. He is strong and
subtle, but I talked him off his guard. He
is going to the Kirkleathams' to-night-I
152


To Catch a Thief
saw the card stuck up. I stuck some wax
into his keyhole as he was switching off
the lights."
And, with an eye upon the waiters, Raf-
files showed me a skeleton key, newly
twisted and filed; but my share of the
extra pint (I am afraid no fair share) had
made me dense. I looked from the key to
Raffles with puckered forehead—for I hap-
pened to catch sight of it in the mirror
behind him.
“ The Dowager Lady Kirkleatham,” he
whispered, “ has diamonds as big as beans,
and likes to have 'em all on—and goes to
bed early—and happens to be in town!”
And now I saw.
“The villain means to get them from
her!”
“And I mean to get them from the
villain,” said Raffles; “or, rather, your
share and mine."
“Will he consent to a partnership?”
“We shall have him at our mercy. He
daren't refuse."
Raffles's plan was to gain access to Lord
Ernest's rooms before midnight; there we
153


Raffles
were to lie in wait for the aristocratic ras-
cal, and if I left all details to Raffles, and
simply stood by in case of a rumpus, I
should be playing my part and earning my
share. It was a part that I had played be-
fore, not always with a good grace, though
there had never been any question about
the share. But to-night I was nothing
loth. I had had just champagne enough-
how Raffles knew my measure !—and I was
ready and eager for anything. Indeed, I
did not wish to wait for the coffee, which
was to be especially strong by order of
Raffles. But on that he insisted, and it was
between ten and eleven when at last we
were in our cab.
" It would be fatal to be too early," he
said as we drove; "on the other hand, it
would be dangerous to leave it too late.
One must risk something. How I should
love to drive down Piccadilly and see the
lights! But unnecessary risks are another
story."
154


To Catch a Thief
II
KING John's Mansions, as everybody
knows, are the oldest, the ugliest, and the
tallest block of flats in all London. But
they are built upon a more generous scale
than has since become the rule, and with
a less studious regard for the economy of
space. We were about to drive into the
spacious courtyard when the gate-keeper
checked us in order to let another hansom
drive out. It contained a middle-aged man
of the military type, like ourselves in even-
ing dress. That much I saw as his han-
som crossed our bows, because I could not
help seeing it, but I should not have given
the incident a second thought if it had not
been for his extraordinary effect upon
Raffles. In an instant he was out upon
the curb, paying the cabby, and in another
he was leading me across the street, away
from the mansions.
“Where on earth are you going?” I
naturally exclaimed.
“Into the park,” said he. “We are too
early."
155


To Catch a Thief
In a small way, I never knew old Raffles
do anything better. There was not an
instant's demur. Lord Ernest Belville's
rooms were at the top of the building, but
we were in them as quickly as lift could
carry and page-boy conduct us. And there
was no need for the skeleton key after all;
the boy opened the outer door with one
of his own, and switched on the lights be-
fore leaving us.
“Now that's interesting,” said Raffles,
as soon as we were alone; "they can
come in and clean when he is out. What
if he keeps his swag at the bank? By
Jove, that's an idea for him! I don't be-
lieve he's getting rid of it; it's all lying
low somewhere, if I'm not mistaken, and
he's not a fool.”
While he spoke he was moving about
the sitting-room, which was charmingly
furnished in the antique style, and making
as many remarks as though he were an
auctioneer's clerk with an inventory to pre-
pare and a day to do it in, instead of a
cracksman who might be surprised in his
crib at any moment.
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Raffles
“ Chippendale of sorts, eh, Bunny? Not
genuine, of course; but where can you get
genuine Chippendale now, and who knows
it when they see it? There's no merit in
mere antiquity. Yet the way people pose
on the subject! If a thing's handsome and
useful, and good cabinet-making, it's good
enough for me.”
“Hadn't we better explore the whole
place?” I suggested nervously. He had
not even bolted the outer door. Nor would
he when I called his attention to the
omission.
"If Lord Ernest finds his rooms locked
up he'll raise Cain,” said Raffles; “we
must let him come in and lock up for him-
self before we corner him. But he won't
come yet; if he did it might be awkward,
for they'd tell him down below what I told
them. A new staff comes on at midnight.
I discovered that the other night."
“Supposing he does come in before?”.
"Well, he can't have us turned out
without first seeing who we are, and he
won't try it on when I've had one word
with him. Unless my suspicions are un-
founded, I mean.”
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To Catch a Thief
but Raffles told me not to be a fool, and
asked if I ever listened to what he said.
There was no question about his temper
now. I never knew him in a worse.
“ Then he has got it in the bank,” he
growled. “I'll swear I'm not mistaken in
my man!”
I had the tact not to differ with him
there. But I could not help suggesting
that now was our time to remedy any mis-
take we might have made. We were on
the right side of midnight still.
“Then we stultify ourselves downstairs,"
said Raffles. “No, I'll be shot if I do!
He may come in with the Kirkleatham
diamonds! You do what you like, Bunny,
but I don't budge."
"I certainly sha'n't leave you," I re-
torted, " to be knocked into the middle of
next week by a better man than yourself.”
I had borrowed his own tone, and he
did not like it. They never do. I thought
for a moment that Raffles was going to
strike me--for the first and last time in his
life. He could if he liked. My blood was
up. I was ready to send him to the devil.
161


Raffles
And I emphasised my offence by nodding
and shrugging toward a pair of very large
Indian clubs that stood in the fender, on
either side of the chimney up which I had
presumed to glance.
In an instant Raffles had seized the
clubs, and was whirling them about his
grey head in a mixture of childish pique
and puerile bravado which I should have
thought him altogether above. And sud-
denly as I watched him his face changed,
softened, lit up, and he swung the clubs
gently down upon the bed.
“They're not heavy enough for their
size," said he rapidly; "and I'll take my
oath they're not the same weight !”
He shook one club after the other, with
both hands, close to his ear; then he ex-
amined their butt-ends under the electric
light. I saw what he suspected now, and
caught the contagion of his suppressed
excitement. Neither of us spoke. But
Raffles had taken out the portable tool-
box that he called a knife, and always car-
ried, and as he opened the gimlet he
handed me the club he held. Instinctively
162


To Catch a Thief
I tucked the small end under my arm, and
presented the other to Raffles.
"Hold him tight,” he whispered, smil-
ing. “He's not only a better man than I
thought him, Bunny; he's hit upon a bet-
ter dodge than ever I did, of its kind.
Only I should have weighted them evenly
-to a hair."
He had screwed the gimlet into the cir-
cular butt, close to the edge, and now we
were wrenching in opposite directions.
For a moment or more nothing happened.
Then all at once something gave, and Raf-
Ales swore an oath as soft as any prayer.
And for the minute after that his hand
went round and round with the gimlet, as
though he were grinding a piano-organ,
while the end wormed slowly out on its
delicate thread of fine hard wood.
The clubs were as hollow as drinking-
horns, the pair of them, for we went from
one to the other without pausing to undo
the padded packets that poured out upon
the bed. These were deliciously heavy to
the hand, yet thickly swathed in cotton-
wool, so that some stuck together, retain-
163


Raffles
ing the shape of the cavity, as though they
had been run out of a mould. And when
we did open them—but let Raffles speak.
He had deputed me to screw in the ends
of the clubs, and to replace the latter in
the fender where we had found them.
When I had done the counterpane was
glittering with diamonds where it was not
shimmering with pearls.
“If this isn't the tiara that Lady May
was married in,” said Raffles, "and that
disappeared out of the room she changed
in, while it rained confetti on the steps,
I'll present it to her instead of the one
she lost.... It was stupid to keep
these old gold spoons, valuable as they are;
they made the difference in the weight ...
Here we have probably the Kenworthy
diamonds ... I don't know the his-
tory of these pearls . . . This looks like
one family of rings—left on the basin-
stand, perhaps — alas, poor lady! And
that's the lot.”
Our eyes met across the bed.
“What's it all worth?” I asked,
hoarsely.
164


Raffles
I am here to arrest you for a series of
robberies at the Duke of Dorchester's, Sir
John Kenworthy's, and other noblemen's
and gentlemen's houses during the present
season. You'd better drop what you've
got in your hand. It's empty.”
Lord Ernest lifted the club an inch or
two, and with it his eyebrows—and after
it his stalwart frame as the club crashed
back into the fender. And as he stood at
his full height, a courteous but ironic smile
under the cropped moustache, he looked
what he was, criminal or not.
“Scotland Yard?” said he.
“ That's our affair, my lord.”
“I didn't think they'd got it in them,”
said Lord Ernest. “Now I recognise you.
You're my interviewer. No, I didn't think
any of you fellows had got all that in you.
Come into the other room, and I'll show
you something else. Oh, keep me covered
by all means. But look at this ! ”
On the antique sideboard, their size
doubled by reflection in the polished ma-
hogany, lay a coruscating cluster of pre-
cious stones, that fell in festoons about
168


To Catch a Thief
Lord Ernest's fingers as he handed them
to Raffles with scarcely a shrug.
“The Kirkleatham diamonds,” said he.
“ Better add 'em to the bag.”
Raffles did so without a smile; with his
overcoat buttoned up to the chin, his tall
hat pressed down to his eyes, and between
the two his incisive features and his keen,
stern glance, he looked the ideal detective
of fiction and the stage. What I looked
God knows, but I did my best to glower
and show my teeth at his side. I had
thrown myself into the game, and it was
obviously a winning one.
“Wouldn't take a share, I suppose?”
Lord Ernest said casually.
Raffles did not condescend to reply. I
rolled back my lips like a bull-pup.
“Then a drink, at least ! ”
My mouth watered, but Raffles shook
his head impatiently.
“We must be going, my lord, and you
will have to come with us.”
I wondered what in the world we should
do with him when we had got him.
“Give me time to put some things to-
169


To Catch a Thief
closed over the barrel with which I cov-
ered him.
“You'd better not shoot,” he said, a
knee upon his side of the bed; “ if you do
it may be as bad for you as it will be for
me!”
I tried to wrest the revolver from him.
“I will if you force me," I hissed.
“You'd better not,” he repeated, smil-
ing; and now I saw that if I did I should
only shoot into the bed or my own legs.
His hand was on the top of mine, bending
it down, and the revolver with it. The
strength of it was as the strength of ten
of mine; and now both his knees were on
the bed; and suddenly I saw his other
hand, doubled into a fist, coming up slowly
over the suit-case.
“Help!” I called feebly.
“Help, forsooth! I begin to believe you
are from the Yard,” he said — and his
upper-cut came with the “yard.” It caught
me under the chin. It lifted me off my
legs. I have a dim recollection of the
crash that I made in falling.
171


Raffles
III
RAFFLES was standing over me when I
recovered consciousness. I lay stretched
upon the bed across which that black-
guard Belville had struck his knavish
blow. The suit-case was on the floor, but
its dastardly owner had disappeared.
"Is he gone?” was my first faint ques-
tion.
“Thank God you're not, anyway!” re-
plied Raffles, with what struck me then as
mere flippancy. I managed to raise my-
self upon one elbow.
"I meant Lord Ernest Belville,” said I
with dignity. “Are you quite sure that
he's cleared out?”.
Raffles waved a hand towards the win-
dow, which stood wide open to the sum-
mer stars.
“Of course," said he, “and by the route
I intended him to take; he's gone by the
iron ladder, as I hoped he would. What
on earth should we have done with him?
My poor dear Bunny, I thought you'd
take a bribe! But it's really more convinc-
172


To Catch a Thief
ing as it is, and just as well for Lord Er-
nest to be convinced for the time being."
" Are you sure he is?” I questioned, as
I found a rather shaky pair of legs.
“Of course!” cried Raffles again, in the
tone to make one blush for the least mis-
giving on the point. “Not that it matters
one bit,” he added, airily, “for we have
him either way; and when he does tumble
to it, as he may any minute, he won't dare
to open his mouth.”
“Then the sooner we clear out the bet-
ter," said I, but I looked askance at the
open window, for my head was spinning
still.
“When you feel up to it," returned
Raffles, “we shall stroll out, and I shall do
myself the honour of ringing for the lift.
The force of habit is too strong in you,
Bunny. I shall shut the window and leave
everything exactly as we found it. Lord
Ernest will probably tumble before he is
badly missed; and then he may come back
to put salt on us; but I should like to
know what he can do even if he succeeds!
Come, Bunny, pull yourself together, and
173


Raffles
you'll be a different man when you're in
the open air.”
And for a while I felt one, such was my
relief at getting out of those infernal man-
sions with unfettered wrists; this we man-
aged easily enough; but once more Raf-
fles's performance of a small part was no
less perfect than his more ambitious work
upstairs, and something of the successful
artist's elation possessed him as we walked
arm-in-arm across St. James's Park. It
was long since I had known him so pleased
with himself, and only too long since he
had had such reason.
“I don't think I ever had a brighter
idea in my life," he said; “never thought
of it till he was in the next room; never
dreamt of its coming off so ideally even
then, and didn't much care, because we
had him all ways up. I'm only sorry you
let him knock you out. I was waiting out-
side the door all the time, and it made me
sick to hear it. But I once broke my own
head, Bunny, if you remember, and not in
half such an excellent cause!”
Raffles touched all his pockets in his
174


To Catch a Thief
turn, the pockets that contained a small
fortune apiece, and he smiled in my face as
we crossed the lighted avenues of the Mall.
Next moment he was hailing a hansom-
for I suppose I was still pretty pale—and
not a word would he let me speak until we
had alighted as near as was prudent to the
flat.
“What a brute I've been, Bunny!” he
whispered then; “but you take half the
swag, old boy, and right well you've
earned it. No, we'll go in by the wrong
door and over the roof; it's too late for
old Theobald to be still at the play, and
too early for him to be safely in his cups."
So we climbed the many stairs with cat-
like stealth, and like cats crept out upon
the grimy leads. But to-night they were
no blacker than their canopy of sky; not
a chimney-stack stood out against the star-
less night; one had to feel one's way in
order to avoid tripping over the low para-
pets of the L-shaped wells that ran from
roof to basement to light the inner rooms.
One of these wells was spanned by a
flimsy bridge with iron handrails that felt
155


To Catch a Thief
“ Yes,” hissed a voice I recognised;
“and you've got to be quicker still! Here,
out with your wrists; no, one at a time;
and if you utter a syllable you're a dead
man.”
It was Lord Ernest Belville; his close-
cropped, iron - grey moustache gleamed
through the darkness, drawn up over his
set teeth. In his hand glittered a pair of
handcuffs, and before I knew it one had
snapped its jaws about my right wrist.
“Now come this way,” said Lord Er-
nest, showing me a revolver also, “and
wait for your friend. And, recollect, a
single syllable of warning will be your
death!”
With that the ruffian led me to the very
bridge I had just crossed at Raffles's heels,
and handcuffed me to the iron rail mid-
way across the chasm. It no longer felt
warm to my touch, but icy as the blood in
all my veins.
So this high-born hypocrite had beaten
us at our game and his, and Raffles
had met his match at last! That was
the most intolerable thought, that Raffles
177


To Catch a Thief
to him as a target; he had dispensed with
coat and waistcoat downstairs, and was at
once full-handed and unarmed.
"Where are you, old chap?” he cried
softly, himself blinded by the light he car-
ried; and he advanced a couple of steps
towards Belville. “This isn't you, is it?”
And Raffles stopped, his candle held on
high, a folding chair under the other arm.
“No, I am not your friend,” replied
Lord Ernest, easily; "but kindly remain
standing exactly where you are, and don't
lower that candle an inch, unless you want
your brains blown into the street.”
Raffles said never a word, but for a
moment did as he was bid; and the un-
shaken flame of the candle was testimony
alike to the stillness of the night and to
the finest set of nerves in Europe. Then,
to my horror, he coolly stooped, placing
candle and chair on the leads, and his
hands in his pockets, as though it were but
a pop-gun that covered him..
“Why didn't you shoot?” he asked in-
solently as he rose. “Frightened of the
noise ? I should be, too, with an old-
179


Raffles
pattern machine like that. All very well
for service in the field—but on the house-
tops at dead of night!"
"I shall shoot, however," replied Lord
Ernest, as quietly in his turn, and with less
insolence, “and chance the noise, unless
you instantly restore my property. I am
glad you don't dispute the last word,” he
continued after a slight pause. “ There is
no keener honour than that which subsists,
or ought to subsist, among thieves; and I
need hardly say that I soon spotted you
as one of the fraternity. Not in the be-
ginning, mind you! For the moment I
did think you were one of these smart de-
tectives jumped to life from some sixpenny
magazine; but to preserve the illusion you
ought to provide yourself with a worthier
lieutenant. It was he who gave your show
away,” chuckled the wretch, dropping for
a moment the affected style of speech
which seemed intended to enchance our
humiliation; “smart detectives don't go
about with little innocents to assist them.
You needn't be anxious about him, by the
way; it wasn't necessary to pitch him into
180


To Catch a Thief
the street; he is to be seen though not
heard, if you look in the right direction.
Nor must you put all the blame upon your
friend; it was not he, but you, who made
so sure that I had got out by the window.
You see, I was in my bath-room all the
time—with the door open.”
“The bath-room, eh?” Raffles echoed
with professional interest. “And you fol-
lowed us on foot across the park?”
“Of course."
“And then in a cab?”
“And afterwards on foot once more.”
“The simplest skeleton would let you
in down below.”
I saw the lower half of Lord Ernest's
face grinning in the light of the candle set
between them on the ground.
“You follow every move," said he;
“there can be no doubt you are one of the
fraternity; and I shouldn't wonder if we
had formed our style upon the same model.
Ever know A. J. Raffles ? "
The abrupt question took my breath
away; but Raffles himself did not lose an
instant over his answer.
181


Raffles
"Intimately,” said he.
“ That accounts for you, then," laughed
Lord Ernest, “as it does for me, though
I never had the honour of the master's
acquaintance. Nor is it for me to say
which is the worthier disciple. Perhaps,
however, now that your friend is hand-
cuffed in mid-air, and you yourself are at
my mercy, you will concede me some
little temporary advantage?”.
And his face split in another grin from
the cropped moustache downward, as I
saw no longer by candle-light, but by a
flash of lightning which tore the sky in
two before Raffles could reply.
"You have the bulge at present,” ad-
mitted Raffles; “ but you have still to lay
hands upon your, or our, ill-gotten goods.
To shoot me is not necessarily to do so;
to bring either one of us to a violent end
is only to court a yet more violent and in-
finitely more disgraceful one for yourself.
Family considerations alone should rule
that risk out of your game. Now, an hour
or two ago, when the exact opposite "
The remainder of Raffles's speech was
182


To Catch a Thief
drowned from my ears by the belated
crash of thunder which the lightning had
foretold. So loud, however, was the crash
when it came, that the storm was evidently
approaching us at a high velocity; yet
as the last echo rumbled away, I heard
Raffles talking as though he had never
stopped.
"You offered us a share,” he was say-
ing; "unless you mean to murder us both
in cold blood, it will be worth your while
to repeat that offer. We should be dan-
gerous enemies; you had far better make
the best of us as friends."
"Lead the way down to your flat," said
Lord Ernest, with a flourish of his service
revolver, “and perhaps we may talk about
it. It is for me to make the terms, I
imagine, and in the first place I am not
going to get wet to the skin up here."
The rain was beginning in great drops,
even as he spoke, and by a second flash of
lightning I saw Raffles pointing to me. -
“But what about my friend ? ” said he.
And then came the second peal.
"Oh, he's all right," the great brute re-
183


Raffles
plied; “ do him good! You don't catch
me letting myself in for two to one!”
“You will find it equally difficult," re-
joined Raffles, “ to induce me to leave my
friend to the mercy of a night like this.
He has not recovered from the blow you
struck him in your own rooms. I am not
such a fool as to blame you for that, but
you are a worse sportsman than I take
you for if you think of leaving him where
he is. If he stays, however, so do I.”
And, just as it ceased, Raffles's voice
seemed distinctly nearer to me; but in the
darkness and the rain, which was now as
heavy as hail, I could see nothing clearly.
The rain had already extinguished the can-
dle. I heard an oath from Belville, a laugh
from Raffles, and for a second that was all.
Raffles was coming to me, and the other
could not even see to fire; that was all I
knew in the pitchy interval of invisible rain
before the next crash and the next flash.
And then!
This time they came together, and not
till my dying hour shall I forget the sight
that the lightning lit and the thunder
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Raffles
a starfish, but the head of him mercifully
twisted underneath.
"It was his own fault, Bunny. Poor
devil! May he and all of us be forgiven;
but pull yourself together for your own
sake. Well, you can't fall; stay where
you are a minute."
I remember the uproar of the elements
while Raffles was gone; no other sound
mingled with it; not the opening of a
single window, not the uplifting of a single
voice. Then came Raffles with soap and
water, and the gyve was wheedled from
one wrist, as you withdraw a ring for
which the finger has grown too large. Of
the rest, I only remember shivering till
morning in a pitch-dark flat, whose invalid
occupier was for once the nurse, and I his
patient.
And that is the true ending of the epi-
sode in which we two set ourselves to
catch one of our own kidney, albeit in an-
other place I have shirked the whole truth.
It is not a grateful task to show Raffles as
completely at fault as he really was on that
occasion; nor do I derive any subtle satis-
186


AN OLD FLAME
CHE square shall be nameless, but if
T you drive due west from Piccadilly the
cabman will eventually find it on his left,
and he ought to thank you for two shil-
lings. It is not a fashionable square, but
there are few with a finer garden, while
the studios on the south side lend distinc-
tion of another sort. The houses, however,
are small and dingy, and about the last to
attract the expert practitioner in search of
a crib. Heaven knows it was with no such
thought I trailed Raffles thither, one un-
lucky evening at the latter end of that
same season, when Dr. Theobald had at
last insisted upon the bath-chair which I
had foreseen in the beginning. Trees
whispered in the green garden aforesaid,
and the cool smooth lawns looked so in-
viting that I wondered whether some phil-
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Raffles
other side of the road, in the shadow of
the leafy palings, and as Raffles spoke the
ground-floor windows opposite had flown
alight, showing as pretty a little dinner-
table as one could wish to see, with a man
at his wine at the far end, and the back of
a lady in evening dress toward us. It
was like a lantern-picture thrown upon a
screen. There were only the pair of them,
but the table was brilliant with silver and
gay with flowers, and the maid waited with
the indefinable air of a good servant. It
certainly seemed a good house.
“She's going to let down the blind!”
whispered Raffles, in high excitement.
“No, confound them, they've told her not
to. Mark down her necklace, Bunny, and
invoice his stud. What a brute he looks !
But I like the table, and that's her show.
She has the taste; but he must have
money. See the festive picture over the
sideboard? Looks to me like a Jacques
Saillard. But that silver-table would be
good enough for me."
“Get on,” said I. “You're in a bath-
chair."
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An Old Flame
“But the whole square's at dinner! We
should have the ball at our feet. It
wouldn't take two twos!”
“With those blinds up, and the cook in
the kitchen underneath?”
He nodded, leaning forward in the chair,
his hands upon the wraps about his legs.
“You must be mad,” said I, and got
back to my handles with the word, but
when I tugged the chair ran light.
“Keep an eye on the rug,” came in a
whisper from the middle of the road; and
there stood my invalid, his pale face in a
quiver of pure mischief, yet set with his
insane resolve. “I'm only going to see
whether that woman has a silver-table- "
"We don't want it ".
“ It won't take a minute - ”
“It's madness, madness—
“ Then don't you wait!”
It was like him to leave me with that,
and this time I had taken him at his last
word, had not my own given me an idea.
Mad I had called him, and mad I could
declare him upon oath if necessary. It
was not as though the thing had happened
191


Raffles
far from home. They could learn all about
us at the nearest mansions. I referred
them to Dr. Theobald; this was a Mr.
Maturin, one of his patients, and I was his
keeper, and he had never given me the
slip before. I heard myself making these
explanations on the doorstep, and point-
ing to the deserted bath-chair as the proof,
while the pretty parlour-maid ran for the
police. It would be a more serious matter
for me than for my charge. I should lose
my place. No, he had never done such a
thing before, and I would answer for it
that he never should again.
I saw myself conducting Raffles back to
his chair, with a firm hand and a stern
tongue. I heard him thanking me in whis-
pers on the way home. It would be the
first tight place I had ever got him out
of, and I was quite anxious for him to get
into it, so sure was I of every move. My
whole position had altered in the few sec-
onds that it took me to follow this illu-
minating train of ideas; it was now so
strong that I could watch Raffles without
much anxiety. And he was worth watch-
ing.
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An Old Flame
He had stepped boldly but softly to the
front door, and there he was still waiting,
ready to ring if the door opened or a face
appeared in the area, and doubtless to pre-
tend that he had rung already. But he
had not to ring at all; and suddenly I saw
his foot in the letter-box, his left hand on
the lintel overhead. It was thrilling, even
to a hardened accomplice with an explana-
tion up his sleeve! A tight grip with that
left hand of his, as he leant backward with
all his weight upon those five fingers; a
right arm stretched outward and upward
to its last inch; and the base of the low,
projecting balcony was safely caught.
I looked down and took breath. The
maid was removing the crumbs in the
lighted room, and the square was empty
as before. What a blessing it was the end
of the season! Many of the houses re-
mained in darkness. I looked up again,
and Raffles was drawing his left leg over
the balcony railing. In another moment
he had disappeared through one of the
French windows which opened upon the
balcony, and in yet another he had
193


Raffles
switched on the electric light within. This
was bad enough, for now I, at least, could
see everything he did; but the crowning
folly was still to come. There was no
point in it; the mad thing was done for
my benefit, as I knew at once and he
afterwards confessed; but the lunatic re-
appeared on the balcony, bowing like a
mountebank-in his crape mask!
I set off with the empty chair, but I
came back. I could not desert old Raffles,
even when I would, but must try to ex-
plain away his mask as well, if he had not
the sense to take it off in time. It would
be difficult, but burglaries are not usually
committed from a bath-chair, and for the
rest I put my faith in Dr. Theobald.
Meanwhile Raffles had at least withdrawn
from the balcony, and now I could only
see his head as he peered into a cabinet
at the other side of the room. It was like
the opera of Aïda, in which two scenes
are enacted simultaneously, one in the
dungeon below, the other in the temple
above. In the same fashion my attention
now became divided between the picture of
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An Old Flame
Raffles moving stealthily about the upper
room, and that of the husband and wife
at table underneath. And all at once, as
the man replenished his glass with a shrug
of the shoulders, the woman pushed back
her chair and sailed to the door.
Raffles was standing before the fireplace
upstairs. He had taken one of the framed
photographs from the chimney-piece, and
was scanning it at suicidal length through
the eye-holes in the hideous mask which
he still wore. He would need it after all.
The lady had left the room below, opening
and shutting the door for herself; the man
was filling his glass once more. I would
have shrieked my warning to Raffles, so
fatally engrossed overhead, but at this mo-
ment (of all others) a constable (of all
men) was marching sedately down our side
of the square. There was nothing for it
but to turn a melancholy eye upon the
bath-chair, and to ask the constable the
time. I was evidently to be kept there all
night, I remarked, and only realised with
the words that they disposed of my other
explanations before they were uttered. It
195


Raffles
was a horrible moment for such a dis.
covery. Fortunately the enemy was on
the pavement, from which he could scarce-
ly have seen more than the drawing-room
ceiling, had he looked; but he was not
many houses distant when a door opened
and a woman gasped so that I heard both
across the road. And never shall I forget
the subsequent tableaux in the lighted
room behind the low balcony and the
French windows.
Raffles stood confronted by a dark and
handsome woman whose profile, as I saw
it first in the electric light, is cut like a
cameo in my memory. It had the undevi-
ating line of brow and nose, the short
upper lip, the perfect chin, that are united
in marble oftener than in the flesh; and like
marble she stood, or rather like some beau-
tiful pale bronze; for that was her colour-
ing, and she lost none of it that I could
see, neither trembled; but her bosom rose
and fell, and that was all. So she stood
without flinching before a masked ruffian,
who, I felt, would be the first to appreciate
her courage; to me it was so superb that
196


An Old Flame
I could think of it in this way even then,
and marvel how Raffles himself could stand
unabashed before so brave a figure. He
had not to do so long. The woman
scorned him, and he stood unmoved, a
framed photograph still in his hand. Then,
with a quick, determined movement she
turned, not to the door or to the bell, but
to the open window by which Raffles had
entered; and this with that accursed po-
liceman still in view. So far no word had
passed between the pair. But at this point
Raffles said something, I could not hear
what, but at the sound of his voice the
woman wheeled. And Raffles was look-
ing humbly in her face, the crape mask
snatched from his own.
" Arthur!” she cried; and that might
have been heard in the middle of the
square garden.
Then they stood gazing at each other,
neither unmoved any more, and while they
stood the street-door opened and banged.
It was the husband leaving the house, a
fine figure of a man, but a dissipated face,
and a step even now distinguished by the
197


Raffles
extreme caution which precedes unsteadi-
ness. He broke the spell. His wife came
to the balcony, then looked back into the
room, and yet again along the road, and
this time I saw her face. It was the face
of one glancing indeed from Hyperion to
a satyr. And then I saw the rings flash,
as her hand fell gently upon Raffles's arm.
They disappeared from that window.
Their heads showed for an instant in the
next. Then they dipped out of sight, and
an inner ceiling flashed out under a new
light; they had gone into the back draw-
ing-room, beyond my ken. The maid
came up with coffee, her mistress hastily
met her at the door, and once more dis-
appeared. The square was as quiet as
ever. I remained some minutes where I
was. Now and then I thought I heard
their voices in the back drawing-room. I
was seldom sure.
My state of mind may be imagined by
those readers who take an interest in my
personal psychology. It does not amuse
me to look back upon it. But at length I
had the sense to put myself in Raffles's
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An Old Flame
place. He had been recognised at last, he
had come to life. Only one person knew
as yet, but that person was a woman, and
a woman who had once been fond of him,
if the human face could speak. Would she
keep his secret ? Would he tell her where
he lived ? It was terrible to think we were
such neighbours, and with the thought that
it was terrible came a little enlightenment
as to what could still be done for the best.
He would not tell her where he lived. I
knew him too well for that. He would
run for it when he could, and the bath-
chair and I must not be there to give him
away. I dragged the infernal vehicle round
the nearer corner. Then I waited—there
could be no harm in thatand at last he
came.
He was walking briskly, so I was right,
and he had not played the invalid to her;
yet I heard him cry out with pleasure as
he turned the corner, and he flung himself
into the chair with a long-drawn sigh that
did me good.
“Well done, Bunny-well done! I am
on my way to Earl's Court, she's capable
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Raffles
of following me, but she won't look for me
in a bath-chair. Home, home, home, and
not another word till we get there!”
Capable of following him? She over-
took us before we were past the studios on
the south side of the square, the woman
herself, in a hooded opera-cloak. But she
never gave us a glance, and we saw her
turn safely in the right direction for Earl's
Court, and the wrong one for our humble
mansions. Raffles thanked his gods in a
voice that trembled, and five minutes later
we were in the flat. Then for once it was
Raffles who filled the tumblers and found
the cigarettes, and for once (and once only
in all my knowledge of him) did he drain
his glass at a draught.
“You didn't see the balcony scene?” he
asked at length; and they were his first
words since the woman passed us on his
track.
“Do you mean when she came in?”
“No, when I came down.”
"I didn't.”
“I hope nobody else saw it,” said Raf-
fles devoutly. “I don't say that Romeo
300


Raffles
But the name left me cold and stolid. I
had heard it, but that was all. It was lam-
entable ignorance, I am aware, but I had
specialised in Letters at the expense of
Art.
“ You must know her pictures,” said
Raffles, patiently; “but I suppose you
thought she was a man. They would ap-
peal to you, Bunny; that festive piece over
the sideboard was her work. Sometimes
they risk her at the Academy, sometimes
they fight shy. She has one of those stu-
dios in the same square; they used to live
up near Lord's."
My mind was busy brightening a dim
memory of nymphs reflected in woody
pools. “Of course!” I exclaimed, and
added something about “ a clever woman.”
Raffles rose at the phrase.
"A clever woman!” he echoed, scorn-
fully; "if she were only that I should feel
safe as houses. Clever women can't forget
their cleverness, they carry it as badly as
a boy does his wine, and are about as dan-
gerous. I don't call Jacques Saillard clever
outside her art, but neither do I call her a
202


An Old Flame
woman at all. She does man's work over
a man's name, has the will of any ten men
I ever knew, and I don't mind telling you
that I fear her more than any person on
God's earth. I broke with her once," said
Raffles, grimly, “but I know her. If I had
been asked to name the one person in
London by whom I was keenest not to be
bowled out, I should have named Jacques
Saillard."
That he had never before named her to
me was as characteristic as the reticence
with which Raffles spoke of their past re-
lations, and even of their conversation in
the back drawing-room that evening; it
was a question of principle with him, and
one that I like to remember. “Never give
a woman away, Bunny,” he used to say;
and he said it again to-night, but with a
heavy cloud upon him, as though his chiv-
alry was sorely tried.
“That's all right,” said I, “if you're not
going to be given away yourself.”
“That's just it, Bunny! That's just- "
The words were out of him, it was too
late to recall them. I had hit the nail upon
the head.
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An Old Flame
police record at her fingers' ends, but it
was fit to frame compared with the one I
gave her. I had sunk as low as they dig.
I divided my nights between the open
parks and a thieves' kitchen in Seven Dials.
If I was decently dressed it was because I
had stolen the suit down the Thames Val-
ley beat the night before last. I was on
my way back when first that sleepy square,
and then her open window, proved too
much for me. You should have heard me
beg her to let me push on to the devil in
my own way; there I spread myself, for I
meant every word; but I swore the final
stage would be a six-foot drop.”
" You did lay it on," said I.
" It was necessary, and that had its ef-
fect. She let me go. But at the last mo-
ment she said she didn't believe I was so
black as I painted myself, and then there
was the balcony scene you missed."
So that was all. I could not help telling
him that he had got out of it better than
he deserved for ever getting in. Next mo-
ment I regretted the remark.
"If I have got out of it,” said Raffles,
205


Raffles
doubtfully. “We are dreadfully near neigh-
bours, and I can't move in a minute, with
old Theobald taking a grave view of my
case. I suppose I had better lie low, and
thank the gods again for putting her off
the scent for the time being."
No doubt our conversation was carried
beyond this point, but it certainly was not
many minutes later, nor had we left the
subject, when the electric bell thrilled us
both to a sudden silence.
“The doctor?” I queried, hope fighting
with my horror.
" It was a single ring."
“The last post ? ”
“You know he knocks, and it's long
past his time.”
The electric bell rang again, but now as
though it never would stop.
“You go, Bunny,” said Raffles, with de-
cision. His eyes were sparkling. His
smile was firm.
“What am I to say?".
“If it's the lady let her in."
It was the lady, still in her evening cloak,
with her fine dark head half-hidden by the
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An Old Flame
hood, and an engaging contempt of ap-
pearances upon her angry face. She was
even handsomer than I had thought, and
her beauty of a bolder type, but she was
also angrier than I had anticipated when I
came so readily to the door. The passage
into which it opened was an exceedingly
narrow one, as I have often said, but I
never dreamt of barring this woman's way,
though not a word did she stoop to say to
me. I was only too glad to flatten myself
against the wall, as the rustling fury strode
past me into the lighted room with the
open door.
“So this is your thieves' kitchen !" she
cried, in high-pitched scorn.
I was on the threshold myself, and Raf-
fles glanced toward me with raised eye-
brows.
“I have certainly had better quarters in
my day," said he, “but you need not call
them absurd names before my man.”
“Then send your 'man' about his busi-
ness,” said Jacques Saillard, with an un-
pleasant stress upon the word indicated.
But when the door was shut I heard
207


Raffles
don't know what it has been, Bunny, these
last few weeks; and gallantry forbids that
I should tell you even now. But would
you rather elope against your will, or have
your continued existence made known to
the world in general and the police in par-
ticular? That is practically the problem
which I have had to solve, and the tempo-
rary solution was to fall ill. As a matter
of fact I am ill; and now what do you
think? I owe it to you to tell you, Bunny,
though it goes against the grain. She
would take me to the dear, warm under-
world, where the sun really shines,' and she
would 'nurse me back to life and love!'
The artistic temperament is a fearsome
thing, Bunny, in a woman with the devil's
own will!”
Raffles tore up the letter from which he
had read these piquant extracts, and lay
back on the pillows with the tired air of
the veritable invalid which he seemed able
to assume at will. But for once he did
look as though bed was the best place for
him; and I used the fact as an argument
for my own retention in defiance of Dr.
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An Old Flame
Theobald. The town was full of typhoid,
I said, and certainly that autumnal scourge
was in the air. Did he want me to leave
him at the very moment when he might be
sickening for a serious illness?
“You know I don't, my good fellow,"
said Raffles, wearily; "but Theobald does,
and I can't afford to go against him now.
Not that I really care what happens to me
now that that woman knows I'm in the
land of the living; she'll let it out, to a
dead certainty, and at the best there'll be
a hue and cry, which is the very thing I
have escaped all these years. Now, what
I want you to do is to go and take some
quiet place somewhere, and then let me
know, so that I may have a port in the
storm when it breaks.”
"Now you're talking!” I cried, recov-
ering my spirits. “I thought you meant
to go and drop a fellow altogether!”
"Exactly the sort of thing you would
think,” rejoined Raffles, with a contempt
that was welcome enough after my late
alarm. “No, my dear rabbit, what you've
got to do is to make a new burrow for us
213


Raffles
both. Try down the Thames, in some
quiet nook that a literary man would natu-
rally select. I've often thought that more
use might be made of a boat, while the
family are at dinner, than there ever has
been yet. If Raffles is to come to life, old
chap, he shall go a-Raffling for all he's
worth! There's something to be done
with a bicycle, too. Try Ham Common
or Roehampton, or some such sleepy hol-
low a trifle off the line; and say you're
expecting your brother from the colonies.”
Into this arrangement I entered without
the slightest hesitation, for we had funds
enough to carry it out on a comfortable
scale, and Raffles placed a sufficient share
at my disposal for the nonce. Moreover,
I for one was only too glad to seek fresh
fields and pastures new-a phrase which I
determined to interpret literally in my
choice of fresh surroundings. I was tired
of our submerged life in the poky little flat,
especially now that we had money enough
for better things. I myself had of late had
dark dealings with the receivers, with the
result that poor Lord Ernest Belville's suc-
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An Old Flame
cesses were now indeed ours. Subsequent
complications had been the more galling
on that account, while the wanton way in
which they had been created was the most
irritating reflection of all. But it had
brought its own punishment upon Raffles,
and I fancied the lesson would prove salu-
tary when we again settled down.
"If ever we do, Bunny!” said he, as I
took his hand and told him how I was
already looking forward to the time.
“But of course we will,” I cried, con-
cealing the resentment at leaving him
which his tone and his appearance renewed
in my breast.
" I'm not so sure of it,” he said, gloom-
ily. “I'm in somebody's clutches, and I've
got to get out of them first."
“I'll sit tight until you do."
“Well,” he said, “ if you don't see me
in ten days you never will."
"Only ten days ? ” I echoed. “That's
nothing at all.”
“A lot may happen in ten days," replied
Raffles, in the same depressing tone, so
very depressing in him; and with that he
715


Raffles
held out his hand a second time, and
dropped mine suddenly after as sudden a
pressure for farewell.
I left the flat in considerable dejection
after all, unable to decide whether Raffles
was really ill, or only worried as I knew
him to be. And at the foot of the stairs
the author of my dismissal, that confounded
Theobald, flung open his door and waylaid
me.
" Are you going?” he demanded.
The traps in my hands proclaimed that
I was, but I dropped them at his feet to
have it out with him then and there.
“ Yes," I answered, fiercely, “thanks to
you!”
“Well, my good fellow," he said, his
full-blooded face lightening and softening
at the same time, as though a load were
off his mind, “it's no pleasure to me to
deprive any man of his billet, but you
never were a nurse, and you know that as
well as I do."
I began to wonder what he meant, and
how much he did know, and my specula-
tions kept me silent. " But come in here
316


Raffles
as to need a nurse who can nurse, by way
of a change."
With that his door shut in my face, and
I had to go my way, in the dark as to
whether he had mistaken my meaning, and
was telling me a lie, or not.
But for my misgivings upon this point
I might have extracted some very genuine
enjoyment out of the next few days. I had
decent clothes to my back, with money, as
I say, in most of the pockets, and more
freedom to spend it than was possible in
the constant society of a man whose per-
sonal liberty depended on a universal sup-
position that he was dead. Raffles was as
bold as ever, and I as fond of him, but
whereas he would run any risk in a pro-
fessional exploit, there were many inno-
cent recreations still open to me which
would have been sheer madness in him.
He could not even watch a match, from
the sixpenny seats, at Lord's Cricket-
ground, where the Gentlemen were every
year in a worse way without him. He
never travelled by rail, and dining out was
a risk only to be run with sonie ulterior
218


Raffles
mountains, the chimney-pots hidden in the
mist. At our entrance stood a nebulous
conveyance, that I took at first for a trades-
man's van; to my horror it proved to be
a hearse; and all at once the white breath
ceased upon my lips.
I had looked up at our windows and the
blinds were down!
I rushed within. The doctor's door stood
open. I neither knocked nor rang, but
found him in his consulting-room with red
eyes and a blotchy face. Otherwise he was
in solemn black from head to heel.
“Who is dead?” I burst out. “Who is
dead?”
The red eyes looked redder than ever as
Dr. Theobald opened them at the unwar-
rantable sight of me; and he was terribly
slow in answering. But in the end he did
answer, and did not kick me out as he evi-
dently had a mind.
“Mr. Maturin,” he said, and sighed like
a beaten man.
I said nothing. It was no surprise to
me. I had known it all these minutes.
Nay, I had dreaded this from the first,
224


An Old Flame
had divined it at the last, though to the
last also I had refused to entertain my own
conviction. Raffles dead! A real invalid
after all! Raffles dead, and on the point
of burial!
“What did he die of?” I asked, un-
consciously drawing on that fund of grim
self-control which the weakest of us seem
to hold in reserve for real calamity.
“Typhoid,” he answered. “Kensington
is full of it.”
“He was sickening for it when I left,
and you knew it, and could get rid of me
then!”
“My good fellow, I was obliged to have
a more experienced nurse for that very
reason."
The doctor's tone was so conciliatory
that I remembered in an instant what a
humbug the man was, and became sud-
denly possessed with the vague conviction
that he was imposing upon me now.
"Are you sure it was typhoid at all?”
I cried fiercely to his face.“ Are you sure
it wasn't suicide-or murder?”
I confess that I can see little point in
225


An Old Flame
---
fully describe as one of the most painful
of my whole existence. I can have known
very little of what I was doing. I only
remember finding myself in a hansom,
suddenly wondering why it was going so
slowly, and once more awaking to the
truth. But it was to the truth itself more
than to the liquor that I must have owed
my dazed condition. My next recollection
is of looking down into the open grave,
in a sudden passionate anxiety to see the
name for myself. It was not the name of
my friend, of course, but it was the one
under which he had passed for many
months.
I was still stupefied by a sense of in-
conceivable loss, and had not raised my
eyes from that which was slowly forcing
me to realise what had happened, when
there was a rustle at my elbow, and a
shower of hothouse flowers passed before
them, falling like huge snowflakes where
my gaze had rested. I looked up, and at
my side stood a majestic figure in deep
mourning. The face was carefully veiled,
but I was too close not to recognise the
327


An Old Flame
subconsciously taking him for the under-
taker's head man. He had certainly that
appearance, and even now I could scarcely
believe that he was anything else.
“My name won't help you,” he said,
pityingly. “But you will guess where I
come from when I tell you I have a war-
rant for your arrest.”
My sensations at this announcement may
not be believed, but I solemnly declare that
I have seldom experienced so fierce a sat-
isfaction. Here was a new excitement in
which to drown my grief; here was some-
thing to think about; and I should be
spared the intolerable experience of a soli-
tary return to the little place at Ham. It
was as though I had lost a limb and some
one had struck me so hard in the face
that the greater agony was forgotten. I
got into the hansom without a word, my
captor following at my heels, and giving
his own directions to the cabman before
taking his seat. The word “station” was
the only one I caught, and I wondered
whether it was to be Bow Street again.
My companion's next words, however, or
229


Raffles
much care what answer I received. Al-
ready I was figuring out how much we
might each get, and how old we should be
when we came out. But my companion
tilted his hat to the back of his head, at the
same time putting his face close to mine,
and compelling my scrutiny. And my an-
swer, as you have already guessed, was the
face of Raffles himself, superbly disguised
(but less superbly than his voice), and yet
so thinly that I should have known him
in a trice had I not been too miserable
in the beginning to give him a second
glance.
Jacques Saillard had made his life im-
possible, and this was the one escape.
Raffles had bought the doctor for a thou-
sand pounds, and the doctor had bought
a “ nurse ” of his own kidney, on his own
account; me, for some reason, he would
not trust; he had insisted upon my dis-
missal as an essential preliminary to his
part in the conspiracy. Here the details
were half-humorous, half-gruesome, each
in turn as Raffles told me the story. At
one period he had been very daringly
232


An Old Flame
drugged indeed, and, in his own words,
“as dead as a man need be "; but he had
left strict instructions that nobody but the
nurse and“ my devoted physician” should
“lay a finger on me” afterwards; and by
virtue of this proviso a library of books
(largely acquired for the occasion) had
been impiously interred at Kensal Green.
Raffles had definitely undertaken not to
trust me with the secret, and, but for my
untoward appearance at the funeral (which
he had attended for his own final satisfac-
tion), I was assured and am convinced that
he would have kept his promise to the
letter. In explaining this he gave me the
one explanation I desired, and in another
moment we turned into Praed Street, Pad-
dington.
“And I thought you said Bow Street ! ”
said I. “Are you coming straight down
to Richmond with me?”.
"I may as well,” said Raffles, “though
I did mean to get my kit first, so as to
start in fair and square as the long-lost
brother from the bush. That's why I
hadn't written. The function was a day
233


Raffles
later than I calculated. I was going to
write to-night.”
“But what are we to do?" said I, hesi-
tating when he had paid the cab. "I have
been playing the colonies for all they are
worth!”
“Oh, I've lost my luggage," said he,
“or a wave came into my cabin and spoilt
every stitch, or I had nothing fit to bring
ashore. We'll settle that in the train."
232


The Wrong House
It was an ideal cottage, as I said when I
found it, and in it our delicate man became
rapidly robust. Not that the air was also
ideal, for, when it was not raining, we had
the same faithful mist from November to
March. But it was something to Ralph to
get any air at all, other than night-air, and
the bicycle did the rest. We taught our-
selves, and may I never forget our earlier
rides, through and through Richmond
Park when the afternoons were shortest,
upon the incomparable Ripley Road when
we gave a day to it. Raffles rode a Beeston
Humber, a Royal Sunbeam was good
enough for me, but he insisted on our both
having Dunlop tyres.
“They seem the most popular brand. I
had my eye on the road all the way from
Ripley to Cobham, and there were more
Dunlop marks than any other kind. Bless
you, yes, they all leave their special tracks,
and we don't want ours to be extra special;
the Dunlop's like a rattlesnake, and the
Palmer leaves telegraph-wires, but surely
the serpent is more in our line."
That was the winter when there were so
Sherlock Holmes
237


Raffles
many burglaries in the Thames Valley
from Richmond upward. It was said that
the thieves used bicycles in every case, but
what is not said? They were sometimes on
foot to my knowledge, and we took a great
interest in the series, or rather sequence of
successful crimes. Raffles would often get
his devoted old lady to read him the latest
local accounts, while I was busy with my
writing (much I wrote) in my own room.
We even rode out by night ourselves, to see
if we could not get on the tracks of the
thieves, and never did we fail to find hot
coffee on the hob for our return. We had
indeed fallen upon our feet. Also, the
misty nights might have been made for the
thieves. But their success was not so con-
sistent, and never so enormous, as people
said, especially the sufferers, who lost more
valuables than they had ever been known
to possess. Failure was often the caitiffs'
portion, and disaster once; owing, iron-
ically enough, to that very mist which
should have served them. But I am going
to tell the story with some particularity,
and perhaps some gusto, you will see why
who read.
238


The Wrong House
The right house stood on high ground
near the river, with quite a drive (in at one
gate and out at the other) sweeping past
the steps. Between the two gates was a
half-moon of shrubs, to the left of the steps
a conservatory, and to their right the walk
leading to the tradesmen's entrance and the
back premises; here also was the pantry
window, of which more anon. The right
house was the residence of an opulent
stockbroker who wore a heavy watch-
chain and seemed fair game. There would
have been two objections to it had I been
the stockbroker. The house was one of a
row, though a goodly row, and an army-
crammer had established himself next door.
There is a type of such institutions in the
suburbs; the youths go about in knicker
bockers, smoking pipes, except on Satur-
day nights, when they lead each other home
from the last train. It was none of our
business to spy upon these boys, but their
manners and customs fell within the field
of observation. And we did not choose the
night upon which the whole row was likely
to be kept awake.
239


Raffles
The night that we did choose was as
misty as even the Thames Valley is capable
of making them. Raffles smeared vaseline
upon the plated parts of his Beeston Hum-
ber before starting, and our dear landlady
cosseted us both, and prayed we might
see nothing of the nasty burglars, not
denying as the reward would be very
handy to them that got it, to say noth-
ing of the honor and glory. We had prom-
ised her a liberal perquisite in the event of
our success, but she must not give other
cyclists our idea by mentioning it to a soul.
It was about midnight when we cycled
through Kingston to Surbiton, having
trundled our machines across Ham Fields,
mournful in the mist as those by Acheron,
and so over Teddington Bridge.
I often wonder why the pantry window
is the vulnerable point of nine houses out
of ten. This house of ours was almost the
tenth, for the window in question had bars
of sorts, but not the right sort. The only
bars that Raffles allowed to beat him were
the kind that are let into the stone outside;
those fixed within are merely screwed to
140


Raffles
blind mice. There was a gas-bracket, but
we did not meddle with that. Raffles went
armed these nights with a better light than
gas; if it were not immoral, I might rec-
ommend a dark-lantern which was more or
less his patent. It was that handy inven-
tion, the electric torch, fitted by Raffles with
a dark hood to fulfil the functions of a slide.
I had held it through the bars while he un-
did the screws, and now he held it to the
keyhole, in which a key was turned upon
the other side.
There was a pause for consideration, and
in the pause we put on our masks. It
was never known that these Thames Valley
robberies were all committed by miscreants
decked in the livery of crime, but that was
because until this night we had never even
shown our masks. It was a point upon
which Raffles had insisted on all feasible
occasions since his furtive return to the
world. To-night it twice nearly lost us
everything—but you shall hear.
There is a forceps for turning keys from
the wrong side of the door, but the imple-
ment is not so easy of manipulation as it
242


The Wrong House
---------------
“But I think he got over the wall
“Come on, you chaps, come on!”
And there was a soft stampede to the hall
door.
“Don't all desert me, I say!” gasped the
red-faced hero who held Raffles prisoner.
“We must have them both, Beefy!”
“That's all very well- ".
“Look here," I interposed, “I'll stay by
you. I've a friend outside, I'll get him
too."
“Thanks awfully,” said the valiant Beefy.
The hall was empty now. My heart beat
high.
“How did you hear them?” I inquired,
my eye running over him.
“We were down having drinks-game
o'nap-in there.”
Beefy jerked his great head toward an
open door, and the tail of my eye caught
the glint of glasses in the firelight, but the
rest of it was otherwise engaged.
"Let me relieve you,” I said, trembling.
“No, I'm all right.”.
“Then I must insist.”
And before he could answer I had him
247


Raffles
round the neck with such a will that not
a gurgle passed my fingers, for they were
almost buried in his hot smooth flesh. Oh,
I am not proud of it; the act was as vile as
act could be; but I was not going to see
Raffles taken, my one desire was to be the
saving of him, and I tremble even now
to think to what lengths I might have
gone for its fulfilment. As it was, I
squeezed and tugged until one strong hand
gave way after the other and came feeling
round for me, but feebly because they had
held on so long. And what do you suppose
was happening at the same moment? The
pinched white hand of Raffles, reddening
with returning blood, and with a clot of
blood upon the wrist, was craning upward
and turning the key in the lock without a
moment's loss.
“Steady on, Bunny!”
And I saw that Beefy's ears were blue;
but Raffles was feeling in his pockets as he
spoke. “Now let him breathe," said he,
clapping his handkerchief over the poor
youth's mouth. An empty phial was in his
other hand, and the first few stertorous
248


The Wrong House
looked also, and now he was being joined
by others equally short of wind.
“Where's Beefy?” he screamed. “What
on earth's happened to Beefy ?”
“My good boys,” exclaimed the cram-
mer,“ will one of you be kind enough to tell
me what you've been doing, and what these
gentlemen have been doing for you?
Come in all, before you get your death. I
see lights in the class-room, and more than
lights. Can these be signs of a carouse?”
“A very innocent one, sir,” said a well-
set-up youth with more moustache than I
have yet.
"Well, Olphert, boys will be boys. Sup-
pose you tell me what happened, before we
come to recriminations.”
The bad old proverb was my first warn-
ing. I caught two of the youths exchang-
ing glances under raised eyebrows. Yet
their stout, easy-going mentor had given
me such a reassuring glance of sidelong
humour, as between man of the world and
man of the world, that it was difficult to sus-
pect him of suspicion. I was nevertheless
itching to be gone.
253


Raffles
have detested blue eyes ever since, and
blonde moustaches, and the whole stout
easy-going type that is not such a fool as
it looks. I had brazened it out with the
boys, but the first grown man was too many
for me, and the blood ran out of my heart
as though there was no Raffles at my
back. Indeed, I had forgotten him. I
had so longed to put this thing through
by myself! Even in my extremity it
was almost a disappointment to me when
his dear cool voice fell like a delicious
draught upon my ears. But its effect upon
the others is more interesting to recall.
Until now the crammer had the centre of
the stage, but at this point Raffles usurped
a place which was always his at will. Peo-
ple would wait for what he had to say, as
these people waited now for the simplest
and most natural thing in the world.
“One moment!” he had begun.
“Well?” said the crammer, relieving me
of his eyes at last.
"I don't want to lose any of the fun "
“Nor must you," said the crammer, with
emphasis.
254


The Wrong House
“But we've left our bikes outside, and
mine's a Beeston Humber," continued Raf-
fles. “If you don't mind, we'll bring 'em
in before these fellows get away on them.”
And out he went without a look to see
the effect of his words, I after him with a
determined imitation of his self-control.
But I would have given something to turn
round. I believe that for one moment the
shrewd instructor was taken in, but as I
reached the steps I heard him asking his
pupils whether any of them had seen any
bicycles outside.
That moment, however, made the differ-
ence. We were in the shrubbery, Raffles
with his electric torch drawn and blazing,
when we heard them kicking at the pantry
door, and in the drive with our bicycles be-
fore man and boys poured pell-mell down
the steps.
We rushed our machines to the nearer
gate, for both were shut, and we got
through and swung it home behind us in
the nick of time. Even I could mount be-
fore they could reopen the gate, which Raf-
fles held against them for half an instant
255


Raffles
with unnecessary gallantry. But he would
see me in front of him, and so it fell to me
to lead the way.
Now, I have said that it was a very misty
night (hence the whole thing), and also that
these houses were on a hill. But they were
not nearly on the top of the hill, and I did
what I firmly believe that almost everybody
would have done in my place. Raffles, in-
deed, said he would have done it himself,
but that was his generosity, and he was the
one man who would not. What I did was
to turn in the opposite direction to the other
gate, where we might so easily have been
cut off, and to pedal for my life-up-hill!
“My God!” I shouted when I found it
out.
“Can you turn in your own length?"
asked Raffles, following loyally.
“Not certain.”
“Then stick to it. You couldn't help it.
But it's the devil of a hill!”.
"And here they come!”
“Let them,” said Raffles, and brandished
his electric torch, our only light as yet.
A hill seems endless in the dark, for you
256


The Wrong House
cannot see the end, and with the patter of
bare feet gaining on us, I thought this one
could have no end at all. Of course the
boys could charge up it quicker than we
could pedal, but I even heard the voice of
their stout instructor growing louder
through the mist.
"Oh, to think I've let you in for this !”
I groaned, my head over the handle-bars,
every ounce of my weight first on one foot
and then on the other. I glanced at Raffles,
and in the white light of his torch he was
doing it all with his ankles, exactly as
though he had been riding in a Gymkhana.
“ It's the most sporting chase I was ever
in,” said he. :
“ All my fault!”
“My dear Bunny, I wouldn't have
missed it for the world!”
Nor would he forge ahead of me, though
he could have done so in a moment, he who
from his boyhood had done everything of
the kind so much better than anybody else.
No, he must ride a wheel's length behind
me, and now we could not only hear the
boys running, but breathing also. And
257


Raffles
then of a sudden I saw Raffles on my right
striking with his torch; a face flew out of
the darkness to meet the thick glass bulb
with the glowing wire enclosed; it was the
face of the boy Olphert, with his enviable
moustache, but it vanished with the crash
of glass, and the naked wire thickened to
the eye like a tuning-fork struck red-hot.
I saw no more of that. One of them had
crept up on my side also; as I looked, hear-
ing him pant, he was grabbing at my left
handle, and I nearly sent Raffles into the
hedge by the sharp turn I took to the right.
His wheel's length saved him. But my boy
could run, was overhauling me again,
seemed certain of me this time, when all at
once the Sunbeam ran easily; every ounce
of my weight with either foot once more,
and I was over the crest of the hill, the grey
road reeling out from under me as I felt for
my brake. I looked back at Raffles. He
had put up his feet. I screwed my head
round still further, and there were the boys
in their pajamas, their hands upon their
knees, like so many wicket-keepers, and a
big man shaking his fist. There was a lamp-
258


The Wrong House
2
post on the hill-top, and that was the last I
saw.
We sailed down to the river, then on
through Thames Ditton as far as Esher
Station, when we turned sharp to the right,
and from the dark stretch by Imber Court
came to light in Molesey, and were soon
pedalling like gentlemen of leisure through
Bushey Park, our lights turned up, the
broken torch put out and away. The big
gates had long been shut, but you can
manæuvre a bicycle through the others.
We had no further adventures on the way
home, and our coffee was still warm upon
the hob.
“But I think it's an occasion for Sulli-
vans,” said Raffles, who now kept them for
such.“ By all my gods, Bunny, it's been
the most sporting night we ever had in our
lives! And do you know which was the
most sporting part of it?”
“That up-hill ride?”.
"I wasn't thinking of it.”
“Turning your torch into a truncheon?"
“My dear Bunny! A gallant lad-I
hated hitting him.”
259


Raffles
"I know," I said. “The way you got
us out of the house!”
“No, Bunny,” said Raffles, blowing
rings. “ It came before that, you sinner,
and you know it!"
“ You don't mean anything I did?” said
I, self-consciously, for I began to see that
this was what he did mean. And now at
latest it will also be seen why this story has
been told with undue and inexcusable
gusto; there is none other like it for me to
tell; it is my one ewe-lamb in all these an-
nals. But Raffles had a ruder name for it.
“ It was the Apotheosis of the Bunny,”
said he, but in a tone I never shall forget.
“I hardly knew what I was doing or say-
ing," I said. “The whole thing was a
fluke.”
“Then,” said Raffles, " it was the kind of
Auke I always trusted you to make when
runs were wanted.”
And he held out his dear old hand.
360


Raffles
him more than he asked, and then I held the
bicycles while he tried to pronounce
Eland's Laagte. We were never again
without our sheaf of evening papers, and
Raffles ordered three morning ones, and I
gave up mine in spite of its literary page.
We became strategists. We knew exactly
what Buller was to do on landing, and, still
better, what the other Generals should have
done. Our map was the best that could be
bought, with flags that deserved a better
fate than standing still. Raffles woke me
to hear The Absent-Minded Beggar on the
morning it appeared; he was one of the
first substantial subscribers to the fund.
By this time our dear landlady was more
excited than we. To our enthusiasm for
Thomas she added a personal bitterness
against the Wild Boars, as she persisted in
calling them, each time as though it were
the first. I could linger over our landlady's
attitude in the whole matter. That was her
only joke about it, and the true humorist
never smiled at it herself. But you had only
to say a syllable for a venerable gentleman,
declared by her to be at the bottom of it all,
263


The Knees of the Gods
styl
WAR
to hear what she could do to him if she
caught him. She could put him in a cage
and go on tour with him, and make him
howl and dance for his food like a debased
bear before a fresh audience every day. Yet
a more kind-hearted woman I have never
known. The war did not uplift our land-
lady as it did her lodgers.
But presently it ceased to have that pre-
cise effect upon us. Bad was being made
worse and worse; and then came more
than Englishmen could endure in that
black week across which the names of
three African villages are written forever in
letters of blood. “All three pegs," groaned
Raffles on the last morning of the week;
"neck-and-crop, neck-and-crop!” It was
his first word of cricket since the beginning
of the war.
We were both depressed. Old school-
fellows had fallen, and I know Raffles en-
vied them; he spoke so wistfully of such
an end. To cheer him up I proposed to
break into one of the many more or less
royal residences in our neighbourhood; a
tough crib was what he needed; but I will
263


The Knees of the Gods
him. And I wondered for one instant-
whether my little thrill had gone through
him. He was not a man of little thrills.
Then for a minute I was in misery. Of
course I wanted to go too—he shook my
hand without a word—but how could I?
They would never have me, a branded jail-
bird, in the Imperial Yeomanry! Raffles
burst out laughing; he had been looking
very hard at me for about three seconds.
“You rabbit,” he cried, “even to think
of it! We might as well offer ourselves to
the Metropolitan Police Force. No, Bunny,
we go out to the Cape on our own, and
that's where we enlist. One of these regi-
ments of irregular horse is the thing for
us; you spent part of your pretty penny
on horse-flesh, I believe, and you remem-
ber how I rode in the bush! We're the
very men for them, Bunny, and they won't
ask to see our birth-marks out there. I
don't think even my hoary locks would
put them off, but it would be too con-
spicuous in the ranks.”
Our landlady first wept on hearing our
determination, and then longed to have the
267


The Knees of the Gods
looked my last at her; it was heavy as the
raw thick air, until Raffles came and leant
upon the rail at my side.
"I know what you are thinking, and
you've got to stop," said he. “It's on the
knees of the gods, Bunny, whether we do or
we don't, and thinking won't make us see
over their shoulders.”
II
Now I made as bad a soldier (ex-
cept at heart) as Raffles made a good
one, and I could not say a harder thing
of myself. My ignorance of matters mili-
tary was up to that time unfathomable, and
is still profound. I was always a fool
with horses, though I did not think so at
one time, and I had never been any good
with a gun. The average Tommy may be
my intellectual inferior, but he must know
some part of his work better than I ever
knew any of mine. I never even learnt
to be killed. I do not mean that I ever ran
away. The South African Field Force
might have been strengthened if I had.
269


The Knees of the Gods
seen me one myself), I dedicate the story
of Corporal Connal, Captain Bellingham,
the General, Raffles, and myself.
I must be vague, for obvious reasons.
The troop is fighting as I write; you will
soon hear why I am not; but neither is
Raffles, nor Corporal Connal. They are
fighting as well as ever, those other hard-
living, harder-dying sons of all soils; but
I am not going to say where it was that
we fought with them. I believe that no
body of men of equal size has done half
so much heroic work. But they had got
themselves a bad name off the field, so to
speak; and I am not going to make it
worse by saddling them before the world
with Raffles and myself, and that ruffian
Connal.
The fellow was a mongrel type, a Glas-
gow Irishman by birth and upbringing, but
he had been in South Africa for years, and
he certainly knew the country very well.
This circumstance, coupled with the fact
that he was a very handy man with horses,
as all colonists are, had procured him the
first small step from the ranks which facili-
271


Raffles
tates bullying if a man be a bully by nat-
ure, and is physically fitted to be a success-
ful one. Connal was a hulking ruffian,
and in me had ideal game. The brute was
offensive to me from the hour I joined.
The details are of no importance, but I
stood up to him at first in words, and
finally for a few seconds on my feet. Then
I went down like an ox, and Raffles came
out of his tent. Their fight lasted twenty
minutes, and Raffles was marked, but the
net result was dreadfully conventional, for
the bully was a bully no more.
But I began gradually to suspect that
he was something worse. All this time we
were fighting every day, or so it seems when
I look back. Never a great engagement,
and yet never a day when we were wholly
out of touch with the enemy. I had thus
several opportunities of watching the other
enemy under fire, and had almost con-
vinced myself of the systematic harmless-
ness of his own shooting, when a more
glaring incident occurred.
One night three troops of our squadron
were ordered to a certain point whither
272


Raffles
to retire; yet it was eastward that we were
travelling now. I at once spurred along-
side Raffles, as he rode, bronzed and
bearded, with warworn wideawake over
eyes grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-
pipe sticking straight out from his front
teeth. I can see him now, so gaunt and
grim and debonnair, yet already with much
of the nonsense gone out of him, though I
thought he only smiled on my misgivings.
“ Did he get the instructions, Bunny, or
did we? Very well, then; give the devil
a chance."
There was nothing further to be said,
but I felt more crushed than convinced;
so we jogged along into broad daylight,
until Raffles himself gave a whistle of sur-
prise.
"A white flag, Bunny, by all my gods!”
I could not see it; he had the longest
sight in all our squadron; but in a little
the fluttering emblem, which had gained
such a sinister significance in most of our
eyes, was patent even to mine. A little
longer, and the shaggy Boer was in our
midst upon his shaggy pony, with a half-
274


Raffles
may be sure we did, the Kaffirs flogging
their teams in a fury of fear, and our pre-
cious corporal sullen but defiant.
I have said this was the conclusion of the
matter, and I blush to repeat that it prac-
tically was. Connal was indeed wheeled
up before the colonel, but his instructions
were not written instructions, and he lied
his way out with equal hardihood and tact.
“You said 'over there,' sir,” he stoutly
reiterated; and the vagueness with which
such orders were undoubtedly given was
the saving of him for the time being.
I need not tell you how indignant I felt,
for one.
“The fellow is a spy!” I said to Raffles,
with no nursery oath, as we strolled within
the lines that night.
He merely smiled in my face.
“And have you only just found it out,
Bunny? I have known it almost ever
since we joined; but this morning I did
think we had him on toast.”
"It's disgraceful that we had not,” cried
I. “He ought to have been shot like a
dog."
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Raffles
III
BLOEMFONTEIN had fallen since our ar-
rival, but there was plenty of fight in the
Free Staters still, and I will not deny that
it was these gentry who were showing us
the sport for which our corps came in.
Constant skirmishing was our portion,
with now and then an action that you
would know at least by name, did I feel
free to mention them. But I do not, and
indeed it is better so. I have not to de-
scribe the war even as I saw it, I am
thankful to say, but only the martial story
of us two and those others of whom you
wot. Corporal Connal was the dangerous
blackguard you have seen. Captain Bell-
ingham is best known for his position in
the batting averages a year or two ago,
and for his subsequent failure to obtain a
place in any of the five Test Matches. But
I only think of him as the officer who rec-
ognised Raffles.
We had taken a village, making quite a
little name for it and for ourselves, and in
the village our division was reinforced by
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The Knees of the Gods
“Now you see I am not."
“ But you are at your old games!”
“I am not,” cried Raffles, and his tone
was new to me. I have seldom heard one
more indignant. “Yes,” he continued,
“this is loot, and the wrong 'un will out.
That's what you're thinking, Peter-I beg
your pardon—sir. But he isn't let out in
the field! We're playing the game as much
as you are, old-sir."
The plural number caused the captain to
toss me a contemptuous look. “Is this the
fellah who was taken when you swam for
it?” he inquired, relapsing into his drawl.
Raffles said I was, and with that took a pas-
sionate oath upon our absolute rectitude as
volunteers. There could be no doubting
him; but the officer's eyes went back at the
bottles on the stoop.
“But look at those," said he; and as he
looked himself the light eye melted in his
fiery face. “And I've got Sparklets in my
tent,” he sighed. “You make it in a
minute!”
Not a word from Raffles, and none, you
may be sure, from me. Then suddenly
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Raffles
Bellingham told me where his tent was, and,
adding that our case was one for serious
consideration, strode in its direction with-
out another word until some sunlit paces
separated us.
“You can bring that stuff with you,” he
then flung over a shoulder-strap, “and I
advise you to put it where you had it
before."
A trooper saluted him some yards further
on, and looked evilly at us as we followed
with our loot. It was Corporal Connal of
ours, and the thought of him takes my mind
off the certainly gallant captain who only
that day had joined our division with the
reinforcements. I could not stand the man
myself. He added soda-water to our
whisky in his tent, and would only keep a
couple of bottles when we came away.
Softened by the spirit, to which disuse made
us all a little sensitive, our officer was soon
convinced of the honest part that we were
playing for once, and for fifty minutes of
the hour we spent with him he and Raffles
talked cricket without a break. On parting
they even shook hands; that was Long John
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The Knees of the Gods
in the captain's head; but the snob never
addressed a syllable to me.
And now to the gallows-bird who was
still corporal of our troop: it was not long
before Raffles was to have his wish and
the traitor's wicket. We had resumed our
advance, or rather our humble part in the
great surrounding movement then taking
place, and were under pretty heavy fire
once more, when Connal was shot in the
hand. It was a curious casualty in more
than one respect, and nobody seems to
have seen it happen. Though a flesh-
wound, it was a bloody one, and that may
be why the surgeon did not at once detect
those features which afterwards convinced
him that the injury had been self-inflicted.
It was the right hand, and until it healed
the man could be of no further use in
the firing line; nor was the case serious
enough for admission to a crowded field-
hospital; and Connal himself offered his
services as custodian of a number of our
horses which we were keeping out of
harm's way in a donga. They had come
there in the following manner. That morn-
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The Knees of the Gods
theless, he managed to lose three or four
fine chargers in the course of the first
night; and, early in the second, Raffles
shook me out of a heavy slumber in the
trenches where we had been firing all day.
"I have found the spot, Bunny," he
whispered; “we ought to out him before
the night is over.”
“ Connal?”
Raffles nodded.
“You know what happened to some of
his horses last night? Well, he let them
go himself.”
“Never!”
" I'm as certain of it,” said Raffles," as
though I'd seen him do it; and if he does
it again I shall see him. I can even tell
you how it happened. Connal insisted on
having one end of the donga to himself,
and of course his end is the one nearest
the Boers. Well, then, he tells the other
fellows to go to sleep at their end—I have
it direct from one of them and you bet
they don't need a second invitation. The
rest I hope to see to-night.”
" It seems almost incredible,” said I.
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The Knees of the Gods
be forgotten by those who recognise the
occasion from these remarks. Meanwhile
it was the eve of battle (most evenings
were), and there was that villain with the
horses in the donga, and here were we two
upon his track.
Raffles's plan was to reconnoitre the
place, and then take up a position from
which we could watch our man and pounce
upon him if he gave us cause. The spot
that we eventually chose and stealthily oc-
cupied was behind some bushes through
which we could see down into the donga;
there were the precious horses; and there
sure enough was our wounded corporal,
sitting smoking in his cloak, some glim-
mering thing in his lap.
“That's his revolver, and it's a Mauser,"
whispered Raffles. “He shan't have a
chance of using it on us; either we must be
on him before he knows we are anywhere
near, or simply report. It's easily proved
once we are sure ; but I should like to have
the taking of him too.”
There was a setting moon. Shadows
were sharp and black. The man smoked
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Raffles
my bandage in the teeth of that murderous
fire. It was on the knees of the gods, he
said, when I begged him to bend lower, but
for the moment I thought his tone as
changed as his face had been earlier in the
morning. To oblige me, however, he took
more care; and, when he had done all that
one comrade could for another, he did avail
himself of the cover he had found for me.
So there we lay together on the veldt, under
blinding sun and withering fire, and I sup-
pose it is the veldt that I should describe,
as it swims and flickers before wounded
eyes. I shut mine to bring it back, but all
that comes is the keen brown face of Raf-
fles, still a shade paler than its wont; now
bending to sight and fire; now peering to
see results, brows raised, eyes widened;
anon turning to me with the word to set
my tight lips grinning. He was talking all
the time, but for my sake, and I knew it.
Can you wonder that I could not see an
inch beyond him? He was the battle to me
then; he is the whole war to me as I look
back now.
“Feel equal to a cigarette ? It will buck
296