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THE AMATEUR
CRACKSMAN
BY
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F. C. YOHN
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
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CONTENTS
The Ides of March . . . . . . I
A Costume Piece . . . . . . . 36
Gentlemen and Players . . . . . . 65
Le Premier Pas . . . . . . . 97
Wilful Murder . . . . . . . 124
Nine Points of the Law . . . . . . 149
The Return Match . . . . . . 177
The Gifi of the Emperor . . . . . 204





ILLUSTRATIONS
Raffles . . . . . . A . Frontzlrpiere
Facing
P359
I saw them fiom my own window . . . . 94
Rafflcs announced his intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher I 60





The Amateur Cracksman
The Ides of March
I
T was half-past twelve when I returned to the
Albany as a last desperate resort. The scene
of my disaster was much as I had left it. The bac-
carat-counters still strewed the table, with the
empty glasses and the loaded ash-trays. A window
had been opened to let the smoke out, and was let-
ting in the fog instead. Rafiles himself had merely
discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumer-
able blazers. Yet he arched his eyebrows as
though I had dragged him from his bed.
“Forgotten something?” said he,,when he saw
' me on his mat.
“No,” said I, pushing past him without cere-
mony. And I led the way into his room with an
impudence amazing to myself.
“Not come back for your revenge, have
you? Because I’m afraid I can’t give it to you
I


. ,.. Amateur Cracksman
' was sorry myself that the
others———”
We were face to face by his fireside, and I cut
him short.
“Raflles,” said I, “you may well be surprised at
my coming back in this way and at this hour. I
hardly know you. I was never in your rooms be-
fore to-night. But I fagged for you at school, and
you said you remembered me. Of course that’s no
excuse; but will you listen to me — for two
minutes?”
In my emotion I had at first to struggle for
every word; but his face reassured me as I went on,
and I was not mistaken in its expression.
“Certainly, my dear man,” said he; “as many
minutes as you like. Have a Sullivan and sit
down.” And he handed me his silver cigarette-
case. .
“N o,” said I, finding a full voice as I shook my
head; “no, I won’t smoke, and I won’t sit down,
thank you. Nor will you ask me to do either when
you’ve heard what I have to say.”
“Really?” said he, lighting his own cigarette
with one clear blue eye upon me. “How do you
know?”
“Because you’ll probably show me the door,” I
cried bitterly; “and you will be justified in doing it!
2


The Amateur Craeksman
I cast myself into a chair and hid my face.
Raflies continued to pace the rich carpet that was
of a piece with everything else in his rooms. There
was no variation in his soft and even footfalls.
“You used to be a. literary little cuss,” he said
at length; “didn’t you edit the mag. before you
left? Anyway I recollect fagging you to do my
verses; and literature of all sorts is the very thing
nowadays; any fool can make a living at it.”
I shook my head. “Any fool couldn’t write ofi‘
my debts,” said I.
“Then you have a flat somewhere?” he went on.
“Yes, in Mount Street.”
“Well, what about the furniture?”
I laughed aloud in my misery. “There’s been a
bill of sale on every stick for months !”
And at that Raflles stood still, with raised eye-
brows and stern eyes that I could meet the better
now that he knew the worst; then, with a shrug,
he resumed his walk, and for some minutes neither
I of us spoke. But in his handsome, unmoved face I
read my fate and death-warrant; and with every
breath I cursed my folly and my cowardice in com-
ing to him at all. Because he had been kind to me
at school, when he was captain of the eleven, and
I his fag, I had dared to look for kindness from
him now; because I was ruined, and he rich enough
4


The Ides of March
to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for
the rest of the year, I had fatuously counted on his
mercy, his sympathy, his help! Yes, I had relied
on him in my heart, for all my outward dillidence
and humility; and I was rightly served. There
was as little of mercy as of sympathy in that curling
nostril, that rigid jaw, that cold blue eye which
never glanced my way. I caught up my hat. I
blundered to my feet. I would have gone with-
outa word; but Rafiles stood between me and the
door.
“Where are you going?” said he.
“That’s my business,” I replied. “I won’t
trouble you any more.”
“Then how am I to help you?”
“I didn’t ask your help.”
“Then why come to me?”
“Why, indeed!” I echoed. “Will you let me
pass?”
“Not until you tell me where you are going and
what you mean to do.”
“Can’t you guess?” I cried. And for many
seconds we stood staring in each other’s eyes.
“Have you got the pluck?” said he, breaking the
spell in a tone so cynical that it brought my last
drop of blood to the boil.
“You shall see,” said I, as I stepped back and
5


The Amateur Cracksman
whipped the pistol from my overcoat pocket.
“Now, will you let me pass or shall I do it here?”
The barrel touched my temple, and my thumb
the trigger. Mad with excitement as I was,
ruined, dishonored, and now finally determined to
make an end of my misspent life, my only surprise
to this day is that I did not do so then and there.
The despicable satisfaction of involving another
in one’s destruction added its miserable appeal to
my baser egoism; and had fear or horror flown to
my companion’s face, I shudder to think I might
have died diabolically happy with that look for my
last impious consolation. It was the look that
came instead which held my hand. Neither fear
nor horror were in it; only wonder, admiration,
and such a measure of pleased expectancy as caused
me after all to pocket my revolver with an oath.
“You devil !” I said. “I believe you wanted me
to do it!”
“Not quite,” was the reply, made with a little
. start, and a change of color that came too late.
“To tell you the truth, though, I half thought you
meant it, and I was never more fascinated in my
life. I never dreamt you had such stufi in you,
Bunny! N o, I’m hanged if I let you go now. And
you’d better not try that game again, for you won’t
catch me stand and look on a second time. We
6


The Ides of March
must think of some way out of the mess. I had no.
idea you were a chap of that sort! There, let me
have the gun.”
One of his hands fell kindly on my shoulder,
while the other slipped into my overcoat pocket,
and I sulfered him to deprive me of my weapon
without a murmur. Nor was this simply because
Raflles had the subtle power of making himself
irresistible at will. He was beyond comparison the
most masterful man whom I have ever known; yet
my acquiescence was due to more than the mere
subjection of the weaker nature to the stronger.
The forlorn hope which had brought me to the
Albany was turned as by magic into an almost
staggering sense of safety. Raflles would help me
after all! A. Raflles would be my friend! It
was as though all the world had come round sud»
denly to my side; so far therefore from resisting
his action, I caught and clasped his hand with a
fervor as uncontrollable as the frenzy which had
preceded it.
“God bless you!” I cried. “Forgive me for
everything. I will tell you the truth. I did think
you might help me in my extremity, though I well
knew that I had no claim upon you. Still—for the
old school’s sake—the sake of old times—I
thought you might give me another chance. If you
7


The Amateur Craeksman
wouldn’t I meant to blow out my brains—and will
still if you change your mind!”
In truth I feared that it was changing, with his
expression, even as I spoke, and in spite of his
kindly tone and kindlier use of my old school nick-
name. His next words showed me my mistake.
“What a boy it is for jumping to conclusions!
I have my vices, Bunny, but backing and filling is
not one of them. Sit down, my good fellow, and
have a cigarette to soothe your nerves. I insist.
Whiskey? The worst thing for you; here’s some
coffee that I was brewing when you came in. Now
listen to me. You speak of ‘another chance.’ What
do you mean? Another chance at baccarat? Not
if I know it! You think the luck must turn; sup-
pose it didn’t? We should only have made bad
worse. No, my dear chap, you’ve plunged enough.
Do you put yourself in my hands or do you not?
Very well, then you plunge no more, and I under-
take not to present my check. Unfortunately
there are the other men; and still more unfortu-
nately, Bunny, I’m as hard up at this moment as
you are yourself !”
It was my turn to stare at Raflies. “You?” I
vociferated. “You hard up? How am I to sit
here and believe that?”
“Did I refuse to believe it of you?” he returned,
8


The Ides of March
smiling. “And, with your own experience, do you
think that because a fellow has rooms in this place,
and belongs to a club or two, and plays a little
cricket, he must necessarily have a balance at the
bank? I tell you, my dear man, that at this mo-
ment I’m as hard up as you ever were. I have noth-
ing but my wits to live on—absolutely nothing else.
It was as necessary for me to win some money this
evening as it was for you. We’re in the same boat,
Bunny; we’d better pull together.”
“Together!” I jumped at it. “I’ll do anything
in this world for you, Raflles,” I said, “if you really
mean that you won’t give me away. Think of any-
thing you like, and I’ll do it! I was a desperate
man when I came here, and I’m just as desperate
now. I don’t mind what I do if only I can get out
of this without a scandal.”
Again I see him, leaning back in one of the lux-
urious chairs with which his room was furnished.
I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp,
clean-shaven features; his curly black hair; his
strong, unscrupulous mouth. And again I feel the
clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous
as a star, shining into my brain—sifting the very
secrets of my heart.
“I wonder if you mean all that!” he said at
length. “You do in your present mood; but who
9


The Amateur Cracksman
can back his mood to last? Still, there’s hope when
a chap takes that tone. Now I think of it, too, you
were a plucky little devil at school; you once did
me rather a good turn, I recollect. Remember it,
Bunny? Well, wait a bit, and perhaps I’ll be able
to do you a better one. Give me time to think.”
He got up, lit a fresh cigarette, and fell to pacing
the room once more, but with a slower and more
thoughtful step, and for a much longer period than
before. Twice he stopped at my chair as though
on the point of speaking, but each time he checked
himself and resumed his stride in silence. Once he
threw up the window, which he had shut some time
since, and stood for some moments leaning out into
the fog which filled the Albany courtyard. Mean-
while a clock on the chimney-piece struck one, and
one again for the half-hour, without a word be-
tween us.
Yet I not only kept my chair with patience, but
I acquired an incongruous equanimity in that half-
hour. Insensibly I had shifted my burden to the
broad shoulders of this splendid friend, and my
thoughts wandered with my eyes as the minutes
passed. The room was the good-sized, square one,
with the folding doors, the marble mantel-piece,
and the gloomy, old-fashioned distinction peculiar
to the Albany. It was charmingly furnished and
1o


The Ides of March
arranged, with the right amount of negligence and
the right amount of taste. What struck me most,
however, was the absence of the usual insignia
of a cricketer’s den. Instead of the conventional
rack of war-worn bats, a carved oak bookcase, with
every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one
wall; and where I looked for cricketing groups, I
found reproductions of such works as “Love and
Death” and “The Blessed Damozel,” in dusty
frames and dilferent parallels. The man might
have been a minor poet instead of an athlete of the
first water. But there had always been a fine
streak of arstheticism in his complex composition;
some of these very pictures I had myself dusted in
his study at school; and they set me thinking of
yet another of his many sides—and of the little
incident to which he had just referred.
Everybody knows how largely the tone of a
public school depends on that of the eleven, and
on the character of the captain of cricket in par-
ticular; and I have never heard it denied that in
A. J. RaH!es’s time our tone was good, or that such
influence as he troubled to exert was on the side
of the angels. Yet it was whispered in the school
that he was in the habit of parading the town at
night in loud checks and a false beard. It was
whispered, and disbelieved. I alone knew it for a
11


The Amateur Cracksman
fact; for night after night had I pulled the rope up
after him when the rest of the dormitory were
asleep, and kept awake by the hour to let it down
again on a given signal. Well, one night he was
over-bold, and within an ace of ignominious expul-
sion in the hey-day of his fame. Consummate dar-
ing and extraordinary nerve on his part, aided,
doubtless, by some little presence of mind on mine,
averted the untoward result; and no more need be
said of a discreditable incident. But I cannot pre-
tend to have forgotten it in throwing myself on
this man’s mercy in my desperation. And I was
wondering how much of his leniency was owing to
the fact that Rafiies had not forgotten it either,
when he stopped and stood over my chair once
more.
“I’ve been thinking of that night we had the
narrow squeak,” he began. “Why do you start?”
“I was thinking of it too.”
He smiled, as though he had read my thoughts.
“Well, you were the right sort of little beggar
then, Bunny; you didn’t talk and you didn’t flinch.
You asked no questions and you told no tales. I
wonder if you’re like that now?”
“I don’t know,” said I, slightly puzzled by his
tone. “I’ve made such a mess of my own affairs
that I trust myself about as little as I’m likely to
12


The Ides of March
be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my
life went back on a friend. I will say that, other-
wise perhaps I mightn’t be in such a hole to-night.”
“Exactly,” said Raflies, nodding to himself, as
though in assent to some hidden train of thought;
“exactly what I remember of you, and I’ll bet it’s
as true now as it was ten years ago. We don’t
alter, Bunny. We only develop. I suppose neither
you nor I are really altered since you used to let
down that rope and I used to come up it hand over
hand. You would stick at nothing for a pal—
what ?”
“At nothing in this world,” I was pleased to cry.
“Not even at a crime?” said Raflies, smiling.
I stopped to think, for his tone had changed,
and I felt sure he was chafiing me. Yet his eye
seemedas much in earnest as ever, and for my part
I was in no mood for reservations.
“N o, not even at that,” I declared; “name your
crime, and I’m your man.”
He looked at me one moment in wonder, and
another moment in doubt; then turned the matter
off with a shake of his head, and the little cynical
laugh that was all his own.
“You’re a nice chap, Bunny! A real desperate
character—what? Suicide one moment, and any
crime I like the next! What you want is a drag,
1s


The Amateur Cracksman
my boy, and you did well to come to a decent law-
abiding citizen with a reputation to lose. None
the less we must have that money to-night—by
hook or crook.”
“To-night, Raliles ?”
“The sooner the better. Every hour after ten
o’clock to-morrow morning is an hour of risk. Let
one of those checks get round to your own bank,
and‘ you and it are dishonored together. No, we
must raise the wind to-night and re-open your
account first thing to-morrow. And I rather think
I know where the wind can be raised.”
“At two o’clock in the morning?”
“Yes-7’
“But how—but where—at such an hour?”
“From a friend of mine here in Bond Street.”
“He must be a very intimate friend!”
“Intimate’s not the word. I have the run of his
place and a latch-key all to myself.”
“You would knock him up at this hour of the
night?”
“If he’s in bed.”
“And it’s essential that I should go in with you?”
“Absolutely.” A
“Then I must; but I’m bound to say I don’t like
the idea, Raflies.”
“Do you prefer the alternative?” asked my com-
14


The Amateur Cracksman
H
II
Piccadilly was a trench of raw white fog,
rimmed with blurred street-lamps, and lined
with a thin coating of adhesive mud. We met
no other wayfarers on the deserted flagstones,
and were ourselves favored with a very hard
stare from the constable of the beat, who, how-
ever, touched his helmet on recognizing my
companion.
“You see, I’m known to the police,” laughed
Raflles as we passed on. “Poor devils, they’ve got
to keep their weather eye open on a night like this!
A fog may be a bore to_you and me, Bunny, but it’s
a perfect godsend to the criminal classes, especially
so late in their season. Here we are, though—
and I’m hanged if the beggar isn’t in bed and
asleep after all!”
We had turned into Bond Street, and had halted
on the curb a few yards down on the right. Raf-
fles was gazing up at some windows across the road,
windows barely discernible through the mist, and
without the glimmer of a light to throw them out.
They were over a jeweller’s shop, as I could see
by the peep-hole in the shop door, and the bright
light burning within. But the entire “upper part,”
16


The Ides of March
with the private street-door next the shop, was
black and blank as the sky itself.
“Better give it up for to-night,” I urged.
“Surely the morning will be time enough!”
“Not a bit of it,” said Rafiles. “I have his key.
We’ll surprise him. Come along.”
And seizing my right arm, he hurried me across
the road, opened the door with his latch-key, and
in another moment had shut it swiftly but softly
behind us. We stood together in the dark. Out-
side, a measured step was approaching; we had
heard it through the fog as we crossed the street;
now, as it drew nearer, my companion’s fingers
tightened on my arm.
“It may be the chap himself,” he whispered.
“He’s the devil of a night-bird. Not a sound,
Bunny! We’ll startle the life out of him. Ah!”
The measured step had passed without a pause.
Rafiles drew a deep breath, and his singular grip
of me slowly relaxed.
“But still, not a sound,” he continued in the same
whisper; “we’ll take a rise out of him, wherever he
is! Slip off your shoes and follow me.”
Well, you may wonder at my doing so; but you
can never have met A. Raflles. Half his power
lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander
in the leader. And it was impossible not to follow
17


The Amateur Cracksman
one who led with such a zest. You might question,
but you followed first. So now, when I heard him
kick off his own shoes, I did the same, and was on
the stairs at his heels before I realized what an
extraordinary way was this of approaching a
stranger for money in the dead of night. But ob-
viously Rafiies and he were on exceptional terms of
intimacy, and I could not but infer that they were
in the habit of playing practical jokes upon each
other.
We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I
had time to make more than one note before we
reached the top. The stair was uncarpeted. The
spread fingers of my right hand encountered noth-
ing on the damp wall; those of my left trailed
through a dust that could be felt on the banisters.
An eerie sensation had been upon me since we
entered the house. It increased with every step we
climbed. What hermit were we going to startle
in his cell?
We came to a landing. The banisters led us to
the left, and to the left again. Four steps more,
and we were on another and a longer landing, and
suddenly a match blazed from the black. I never
heard it struck. Its flash was blinding. When my
eyes became accustomed to the light, there was
Raflies holding up the match with one hand, and
18


The Ides of March
shading it with the other, between bare boards,
stripped walls, and the open doors of empty rooms.
“Where have you brought me?” I cried. “The
house is unoccupied !”
“Hush! Wait!” he whispered, and he led the
way into one of the empty rooms. His match
went out as we crossed the threshold, and he struck
another without the slightest noise. Then he stood
with his back to me, fumbling with something that
I could not see. But, when he threw the second
match away, there was some other light in its stead,
and a slight smell of oil. I stepped forward
to look over his shoulder, but before I could do
so he had turned and flashed a tiny lantern in my
face.
“What’s this?” I gasped. “What rotten trick
are you going to play?”
“It’s played,” he answered, with his quiet laugh.
“On me ?”
“I am afraid so, Bunny.”
“Is there no one in the house, then?”
“No one but ourselves.”
“So it was mere chaff about your friend in Bond
Street, who could let us have that money?”
“Not altogether. It’s quite true that Danby is
a friend of mine.”
“Danby ?”
I9


The Ides of March
leave it to me. You won’t give me away, whatever
else you do!”
Oh, his cleverness! His fiendish cleverness!
Had he fallen back on threats, coercion, sneers, all
might have been dilferent even yet. But he set me
free to leave him in the lurch. He would not
blame me. He did not even bind me to secrecy;
he trusted me. He knew my weakness and my
strength, and was playing on both with his mas-
ter’s touch.
“Not so fast,” said I. “Did I put this into your
head, or were you going to do it in any case?”
“Not in any case,” said Rafiles. “It’s true I’ve
had the key for days, but when I won to-night I
thought of chucking it; for, as a matter of fact, it’s
not a one-man job.”
“That settles it. I’m your man.”
“You mean it ?”
“Yes—for to-night.”
“Good old Bunny,” he murmured, holding the
lantern for one moment to my face; the next he
was explaining his plans, and I was nodding, as
though we had been fellow-cracksmen all our days.
“I know the shop,” he whispered, “because I’ve
got a few things there. I know this upper part
too; it’s been to let for a month, and I got an order
to view, and took a cast of the key before using it.
21


The Amateur Cracksman
The one thing I don’t know is how to make a con-
nection between the two; at present there’s none.
We may make it up here, though I rather fancy the
basement myself. If you wait a minute I’ll tell
you.”
He set his lantern on the floor, crept to a back
window, and opened it with scarcely a sound: only
to return, shaking his head, after shutting the win-
dow with the same care.
“That was our one chance,” said he; “a back
window above a back window; but it’s too dark to
see anything, and we daren’t show an outside light.
Come down after me to the basement; and remem-
ber, though there’s not a soul on the premises, you
can’t make too little noise. There—there—listen
to that !”
It was the measured tread that we had heard
before on the flagstones outside. Rafiles darkened
his lantern, and again we stood motionless till it
had passed.
“Either a policeman,” he muttered, “or a watch-
man that all these jewellers run between them.
The watchman’s the man for us to watch; he’s
simply paid to spot this kind of thing.”
We crept very gingerly down the stairs, which
creaked a bit in spite of us, and we picked up our
shoes in the passage; then down some narrow stone
22


The Ides of March
steps, at the foot of which Rallies showed his light,
and put on his shoes once more, bidding me do the
same in a rather louder tone than he had permitted
himself to employ overhead. We were now con-
siderably below the level of the street, in a small
space with as many doors as it had sides. Three
were ajar, and we saw through them into empty
cellars; but in the fourth a key was turned and a
bolt drawn; and this one presently let us out into
the bottom of a deep, square well of fog. A simi-
lar door faced it across this area, and Rafiles had
the lantern close against it, and was hiding the
light with his body, when a short and sudden crash
made my heart stand still. Next moment I saw
the door wide open, and Rafiles standing within
and beckoning me with a jimmy.
“Door number one,” he whispered. “Deuce
knows how many more there’ll be, _but I know of
two at least. We won’t have to make much noise
over them, either; down here there’s less risk.”
We were now at the bottom of the exact fellow
to the narrow stone stair which we had just de-
scended: the yard, or well, being the one part com-
mon to both the private and the business premises.
But this flight led to no open passage; instead, a
singularly solid mahogany door confronted us at
the top.
23


The Amateur Cracksman
“I thought so,” muttered Raflles, handing me
the lantern, and pocketing a bunch of skeleton keys,
after tampering for a few minutes with the lock.
“It’ll be an hour’s work to get through that!”
“Can’t you pick it?”
“N o. I know these locks. It’s no use trying.
We must cut it out, and it’ll take us an hour.”
It took us forty-seven minutes by my watch; or,
rather, it took Raflles; and never in my life have I
seen anything more deliberately done. My part
was simply to stand by with the dark lantern in
one hand, and a small bottle of rock-oil in the
other. Ralfles had produced a pretty embroidered
case, intended obviously for his razors, but filled
instead with the tools of his secret trade, including
the rock-oil. From this case he selected a “bit,”
capable of drilling a hole an inch in diameter, and
fitted it to a small but very strong steel “brace.”
Then he took off his covert-coat and his blazer,
spread them neatly on the top step—knelt on them
——turned up his shirt cufls—and went to work with
brace-and-bit near the key-hole. But first he oiled
the bit to minimize the noise, and this he did invari-
ably before beginning a fresh hole, and often in
the middle of one. It took thirty-two separate
borings to cut around that lock.
I noticed that through the first circular orifice
24


The Ides of March
Raflies thrust a forefinger; then, as the circle be-
came an ever-lengthening oval, he got his hand
through up to the thumb; and I heard him swear
softly to himself.
“I was afraid so !”
“What is it?”
“An iron gate on the other side!”
“How on earth are we to get through that?” I
asked in dismay.
“Pick the lock. But there may be two. In that
case they’ll be top and bottom, and we shall have
two fresh holes to make, as the door opens inwards.
It won’t open two inches as it is.”
I confess I did not feel sanguine about the lock-
picking, seeing that one lock had baflied us already;
and my disappointment and impatience must have
been a revelation to me had I stopped to think.
The truth is that I was entering into our nefarious
undertaking with an involuntary zeal of which I
was myself quite unconscious at the time. The
romance and the peril of the whole proceeding
held me spellbound and entranced. My moral
sense and my sense of fear were stricken by a com-
mon paralysis. And there I stood, shining my
light and holding my phial with a keener interest
than I had ever brought to any honest avocation.
And there knelt A. J. Raflles, with his black hair
as


The Amateur Cracksman
tumbled, and the same watchful, quiet, determined
half-smile with which I have seen him send down
over after over in a county match!
At last the chain of holes was complete, the lock
wrenched out bodily, and a splendid bare arm
plunged up to the shoulder through the aper-
ture, and through the bars of the iron gate
beyond.
“Now,” whispered Rafiles, “if there’s only one
lock it’ll be in the middle. Joy! Here it is! Only
let me pick it, and we’re through at last.”
He withdrew his arm, a skeleton key was se-
lected from the bunch, and then back went his arm
to the shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I
heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very
Watch ticking in my pocket, and ever and anon the
tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key. Then—at last—
there came a single unmistakable click. In another
minute the mahogany door and the iron gate
yawned behind us; and Raflies was sitting on an
office table, wiping his face, with the lantern throw-
ing a steady beam by his side.
\Ve were now in a bare and roomy lobby behind
the shop, but separated therefrom by an iron cur-
tain, the very sight of which filled me with despair.
Raflles, however, did not appear in the least de-
pressed, but hung up his coat and hat on some pegs
26


The Ides of March
in the lobby before examining this curtain with his
lantern.
“That’s nothing,” said he, after a minute’s in-
spection; “we’ll be through that in no time, but
there’s a door on the other side which may give us
trouble.”
“Another door!” I groaned. “And how do you
mean to tackle this thing?”
“Prise it up with the jointed jimmy. The weak
point of these iron curtains is the leverage you can
get from below. But it makes a noise, and this is
where you’re coming in, Bunny; this is where I
couldn’t do without you. I must have you over-
head to knock through when the street’s clear. I’ll
come with you and show a light.”
Well, you may imagine how little I liked the
prospect of this lonely vigil; and yet there was
something very stimulating in the vital responsibil-
ity which it involved. Hitherto I had been a mere
spectator. Now I was to take part in the game.
And the fresh excitement made me more than ever
insensible to those considerations of conscience
and of safety which were already as dead nerves in
my breast.
So I took my post without a murmur in the front
room above the shop. The fixtures had been left
for the refusal of the incoming tenant, and fortu-
27


The Amateur Cracksman
nately for us they included Venetian blinds which
were already down. It was the simplest matter in
the world to stand peeping through the laths into
the street, to beat twice with my foot when any-
body was approaching, and once when all was
clear again. The noises that even I could hear
below, with the exception of one metallic crash at
the beginning, were indeed incredibly slight; but
they ceased altogether at each double rap from my
toe; and a policeman passed quite half a dozen
times beneath my eyes, and the man whom I took
to be the jeweller’s watchman oftener still, during
the better part of an hour that I spent at the win-
dow. Once, indeed, my heart was in my mouth,
but only once. It was when the watchman stopped
and peered through the peep-hole into the lighted
shop. I waited for his whistle—I waited for the
gallows or the gaol! But my signals had been
studiously obeyed, and the man passed on in undis-
turbed serenity. In the end I had a signal in my
turn, and retraced my steps with lighted matches,
down the broad stairs, down the narrow ones,
across the area, and up into the lobby where Raffles
awaited me with an outstretched hand.
“Well done, my boy!” said he. “You’re the
same good man in a pinch, and you shall have your
reward. I’ve got a thousand pounds’ worth if I’ve
28


The Ides of March
got a penn’oth. It’s all in my pockets. And here’s
something else I found in this locker; very decent
port and some cigars, meant for poor dear Danby’s
business friends. Take a pull, and you shall light
up presently. I’ve found a lavatory, too, and we
must have a wash-and-brush-up before we go, for
I’m as black as your boot.”
The iron curtain was down, but he insisted on
raising it until I could peep through the glass door
on the other side and see his handiwork in the shop
beyond. Here two electric lights were left burn-
ing all night long, and in their cold white rays I
could at first see nothing amiss. I looked along
an orderly lane, an empty glass counter on my left,
glass cupboards of untouched silver on my right,
and facing me the filmy black eye of the peep-hole
that shone like a stage moon on the street. The
counter had not been emptied by Raflles; its con-
tents were in the Chubb’s safe, which he had given
up at a glance; nor had he looked at the silver,
except to choose a cigarette case for me. He had
confined himself entirely to the shop window. This
was in three compartments, each secured for the
night by removable panels with separate locks.
Raflies had removed them a few hours before their
time, and the electric light shone on a corrugated
shutter bare as the ribs of an empty carcase. Every
in __- _
29


The Amateur Cracksman
article of value was gone from the one place which
was invisible from the little window in the door;
elsewhere all was as it had been left overnight.
And but for a train of mangled doors behind the
iron curtain, a bottle of wine and a cigar-box with
which liberties had been taken, a rather black towel
in the lavatory, a burnt match here and there, and
our finger-marks on the dusty banisters, not a trace
of our visit did we leave. _
“Had it in my head for long?” said Raflles, as
_ we strolled through the streets towards dawn, for
all the world as though we were returning from a
dance. “No, Bunny, I never thought of it till I
saw that upper part empty about a month ago, and
bought a few things in the shop to get the lie of the
land. That reminds me that I never paid for
them; but, by Jove, I will to-morrow, and if that
isn’t poetic justice, what is? One visit showed me
the possibilities of the place, but a second con-
vinced me of its impossibilities without a pal. So
I had practically given up the idea, when you came
along on the very night and in the very plight for
it! But here we are at the Albany, and I hope
there’s some fire left; for I don’t know how you
feel, Bunny, but for my part I’m as cold as Keats’s
owl.”
He could think of Keats on his way from a fel-
30


The Ides of March
ony! He could hanker for his fireside like another!
Floodgates were loosed within me, and the plain
English of our adventure rushed over me as cold
as ice. Rafiles was a burglar. I had helped him
to commit one burglary, therefore I was a burglar,
too. Yet I could stand and warm myself by his
fire, and watch him empty his pockets, as though
we had done nothing wonderful or wicked!
My blood froze. My heart sickened. My brain
whirled. How I had liked this villain! How I
had admired him! Now my liking and admiration
must turn to loathing and disgust. I waited for
the change. I longed to feel it in my heart. But
—I longed and I waited in vain!
I saw that he was emptying his pockets; the
table sparkled with their hoard. Rings by the
dozen, diamonds by the score; bracelets, pendants,
aigrettes, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sap-
phires; and diamonds always, diamonds in every-
thing, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling me—
blinding me—making me disbelieve because I could
no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, in-
deed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket.
And that struck a chord. I suppose I said some-
thing—my hand flew out. I can see Ralfles now,
as he looked at me once more with a high arch over
each clear eye. I can see him pick out the car-
31


The Amateur Cracksman
tridges with his quiet, cynical smile, before he
would give me my pistol back again.
“You mayn’t believe it, Bunny,” said he, “but I
never carried a loaded one before. On the whole
I think it gives one confidence. Yet it would be
very awkward if anything went wrong; one might
use it, and that’s not the game at all, though I have
often thought that the murderer who has just done
the trick must have great sensations before things
get too hot for him. Don’t look so distressed, my
dear chap. I’ve never had those sensations, and I
don’t suppose I ever shall.”
“But this much you have done before?” said I
hoarsely.
“Before? My dear Bunny, you offend me! Did
it look like a first attempt? Of course I have done
it before.”
“Often?”
“Well—no! Not often enough to destroy the
charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact,
unless I’m cursedly hard up. Did you hear about
the Thimbleby diamonds? Well, that was the last
time—and a poor lot of paste they were. Then
there was the little business of the Dormer house-
boat at Henley last year. That was mine also—
such as it was. I’ve never brought off a really big
coup yet; when I do I shall chuck it up.”
32


The Ides of March
Yes, I remembered both cases very well. To
think that he was their author! It was incredible,
outrageous, inconceivable. Then my eyes would
fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a
hundred places, and incredulity was at an end.
“How came you to begin?” I asked, as curiosity
overcame mere wonder, and a fascination for his
career gradually wove itself into my fascination
for the man.
“Ah! that’s a long story,” said Raflles. “It was
in the Colonies, when I was out there playing
cricket. It’s too long a story to tell you now, but
I was in much the same fix that you were in to-
night, and it was my only way out. I never meant
it for anything more; but I’d tasted blood, and it
was all over with me. Why should I work when
I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum
uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, dan-
ger and a decent living were all going begging
together? Of course it’s very wrong, but we can’t
all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is
very wrong to begin with. Besides, you’re not at
it all the time. I’m sick of quoting Gilbert’s lines
to myself, but they’re profoundly true. I only
wonder if you’ll like the life as much as I do!”
“Like it?” I cried out. “Not I! It’s no life
for me. Once is enough!”
33


The Amateur Cracksman
“You wouldn’t give me a hand another time?”
“Don’t ask me, Raflles. Don’t ask me, 'for
God’s sake!”
“Yet you said you would do anything for me!
You asked me to name my crime! But I knew at
the time you didn’t mean it; you didn’t go back on
me to-night, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness
knows! I suppose I’m ungrateful, and unreasona-
ble, and all that. I ought to let it end at this. But
you’re the very man for me, Bunny, the—very—
man! Just think how we got through to-night.
Not a scratch—not a hitch! There’s nothing very
terrible in it, you see; there never would be, while
we worked together.”
He was standing in front of me with a hand on
either shoulder; he was smiling as he knew so well
how to smile. I turned on my heel, planted my
elbows on the chimney-piece, and my burning head
between my hands. Next instant. a still heartier
hand had fallen on my back.
“All right, my boy! You are quite right and
I’m worse than wrong. I’ll never ask it again.
Go, if you want to, and come again about mid-day
for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of
course, I’ll get you out of your scrape—especially
after the way you’ve stood by me to-night.”
I was round again with my blood on fire.
34


The Ides of March
“I’ll do it again,” I said, through my teeth.
He shook his head. “Not you,” he said, smiling
quite good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm.
“I will,” I cried with an oath. “I’ll lend you a _
hand as often as you like! What does it matter
now? I’ve been in it once. I’ll be in it again. I’ve
gone to the devil anyhow. I can’t go back, and
wouldn’t if I could. Nothing matters another rap!
When you want me, I’m your man!”
And that is how Rafiies and I joined felonious
forces on the Ides of March.
35


A Costume Piece
all one knew of Reuben Rosenthall up to the time
when the Old Bohemian Club, having fallen on
evil days, found it worth its while to organize a
great dinner in honor of so wealthy an exponent
of the club’s principles. I was not at the banquet
myself, but a member took Raflies, who told me all
about it that very night.
“Most extraordinary show I ever went to in my
life,” said he. “As for the man himself—well, I
was prepared for something grotesque, but the
fellow fairly took my breath away. To begin
with, he’s the most astounding brute to look at,
well over six feet, with a chest like a barrel, and a
great hook-nose, and the reddest hair and whiskers
you ever saw. Drank like a fire-engine, but only
got drunk enough to make us a speech that I
wouldn’t have missed for ten pounds. I’m only
sorry you weren’t there, too, Bunny, old chap.”
I began to be sorry myself, for Raflles was any-
thing but an excitable person, and never had I seen
him so excited before. Had he been following
Rosenthall’s example? His coming to my rooms
at midnight, merely to tell me about his dinner,
was in itself enough to excuse a suspicion which
was certainly at variance with my knowledge of
A. Raflies.
“What did he say?” I inquired mechanically,
37


The Amateur Cracksman
divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and
wondering what on earth it could be.
“Say?” cried Raflles. “What did he not say!
He boasted of his rise, he bragged of his riches,
and he blackguarded society for taking him up for
his money and dropping him out of sheer pique
and jealousy because he had so much. He men-
tioned names, too, with the most charming free-
dom, and swore he was as good a man as the Old
Country had to show—pace the Old Bohemians.
To prove it he pointed to a great diamond in the
middle of his shirt-front with a little finger loaded
with another just like it: which of our bloated
princes could show a pair like that? As a matter
of fact, they seemed quite wonderful stones, with
a curious purple gleam to them that must mean a
pot of money. But old Rosenthall swore he
wouldn’t take fifty thousand pounds for the two,
and wanted to know where the other man was who
went about with twenty-five thousand in his shirt-
‘ front, and another twenty-five on his little finger.
He didn’t exist. If he did, he wouldn’t have the
pluck to wear them. But he had—he’d tell us why.
And before you could say ]ack Robinson he had
whipped out a whacking great revolver!”
“Not at the table?”
“At the table! In the middle of his speech!
38


A Costume Piece
But it was nothing to what he wanted to do. He
actually wanted us to let him write his name in
bullets on the opposite wall, to show us why he
wasn’t afraid to go about in all his diamonds!
That brute Purvis, the prize-fighter, who is his
paid bully, had to bully his master before he could
be persuaded out of it. There was quite a panic
for the moment; one fellow was saying his prayers
under the table, and the waiters bolted to a man.”
“What a grotesque scene!”
“Grotesque enough, but I rather wish they had
let him go the whole hog and blaze away. He was
as keen as knives to show us how he could take care
of his purple diamonds; and, do you know, Bunny,
I was as keen as knives to see.”
And Raflles leaned towards me with a sly, slow
smile that made the hidden meaning of his visit
only too plain to me at last.
“So you think of having a try for his diamonds
yourself?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It is horribly obvious, I admit. But—yes, I
have set my heart upon them! To be quite frank,
I have had them on my conscience for some time;
one couldn’t hear so much of the man, and his
prize-fighter, and his diamonds, without feeling it
a kind of duty to have a go for them; but when it
39


The Amateur Cracksman
comes to brandishing a revolver and practically
challenging the world, the thing becomes inevita-
ble. It is simply thrust upon one. I was fated to
hear that challenge, Bunny, and I, for one, must
take it up. I was only sorry I couldn’t get on my
hind legs and say so then and there.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t see the necessity as
things are with us; but, of course, I’m your man.”
My tone may have been half-hearted. I did my
best to make it otherwise. But it was barely a
month since our Bond Street exploit, and we cer-
tainly could have afforded to behave ourselves for
some time to come. We had been getting along
so nicely: by his advice I had scribbled a thing or
two; inspired by Rafiles, I had even done an article
on our own jewel robbery; and for the moment I
was quite satisfied with this sort of adventure. I
thought we ought to know when we were well off,
and could see no point in our running fresh risks
before we were obliged. On the other hand, I was
anxious not to show the least disposition to break
the pledge that I had given a month ago. But it
was not on my manifest disinclination that Rafiies I
fastened.
“Necessity, my dear Bunny? Does the writer
only write when the wolf is at the door? Does
the painter paint for bread alone? Must you and
40


A Costume Piece
I be driven to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of
Whitechapel? You pain me, my dear chap; you
needn’t laugh, because you do. Art for art’s sake
is a vile catchword, but I confess it appeals to me.
In this case my motives are absolutely pure, for I
doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of such
peculiar stones. But if I don’t have a try for them
——-after to-night—I shall never be able to hold up
my head again.”
His eye twinkled, but it glittered, too.
“We shall have our work cut out,” was all I
said.
“And do you suppose I should be keen on it if
we hadn’t?” cried Raflies. “My dear fellow, I
would rob St. Paul’s Cathedral if I could, but I
- could no more scoop a till when the shopwalker
wasn’t looking than I could bag the apples out of
an old woman’s basket. Even that little business
last month was a sordid affair, but it was necessary,
and I think its strategy redeemed it to some extent.
Now there’s some credit, and more sport, in going
where they boast they’re on their guard against
you. The Bank of England, for example, is the
ideal crib; but that would need half a dozen of us
with years to give to the job; and meanwhile Reu-
ben Rosenthall is high enough game for you and
me. We know he’s armed. We know how Billy
41


The Amateur Cracksman
Purvis can fight. It’ll be no soft thing, I grant you.
But what of that, my good Bunny—what of that?
A man’s reach must exceed his grasp, dear boy, or
what the dickens is a heaven for?”
“I would rather we didn’t exceed ours just yet,”
I answered laughing, for his spirit was irresistible,-
and the plan was growing upon me, despite my
qualms.
“Trust me for that,” was his reply; “I’ll see you
through. After all I expect to find that the difli-
culties are nearly all on the surface. These fellows
both drink like the devil, and that should simplify
matters considerably. But we shall see, and we
must take our time. There will probably turn out
to be a dozen different ways in which the thing
might be done, and we shall have to choose be-
‘ tween them. It will mean watching the house for
at least a week in any case; it may mean lots of
other things that will take much longer; but give
me a week and I will tell you more. That’s to say,
if you’re really on?”
“Of course I am,” I replied indignantly. “But
why should I give you a week? Why shouldn’t
we watch the house together?”
“Because two eyes are as good as four and take
up less room. Never hunt in couples unless you’re
obliged. But don’t you look offended, Bunny;
42


A Costume Piece
there’ll be plenty for you to do when the time
comes, that I promise you. You shall have your
share of the fun, never fear, and a purple diamond
all to yourself—if we’re lucky.”
On the whole, however, this conversation left
me less than lukewarm, and I still remember the
depression which came upon me when Raflles was
gone. I saw the folly of the enterprise to which I
had committed myself—the sheer, gratuitous, un-
necessary folly of it. And the paradoxes in which
Raflles revelled, and the frivolous casuistry which
was nevertheless half sincere, and which his mere
personality rendered wholly plausible at the mo-
ment of utterance, appealed very little to me when
recalled in cold blood. I admired the spirit of pure
mischief in which he seemed prepared to risk his
liberty and his life, but I did not find it an infec-
tious spirit on calm reflection. Yet the thought of
withdrawal was not to be entertained for a mo-
ment. On the contrary, I was impatient of the
delay ordained by Raflies; and, perhaps, no small
part of my secret disaffection came of his galling
determination to do without me until the last
moment.
It made it no better that this was characteristic
of the man and of his attitude towards me. For a
month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves
43


The Amateur Cracksman
in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously
incomplete. With all his charming frankness,
there was in Ralfles a vein of capricious reserve
which was perceptible enough to be very irritating.
He had the instinctive secretiveness of the invete-
rate criminal. He would make mysteries of mat-
ters of common concern; for example, I never
knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street
jewels, on the proceeds of which we were both still
leading the outward lives of hundreds of other
young fellows about town. He was consistently
mysterious about that and other details, of which
it seemed to me that I had already earned the right
to know everything. I could not but remember
how he had led me into my first felony, by means
of a trick, while yet uncertain whether he could
trust me or not. That I could no longer afford to
resent, but I did resent his want of confidence in
me now. I said nothing about it, but it rankled
every day, and never more than in the week that
succeeded the Rosenthall dinner. When I met
Raflies at the club he would tell me nothing; when
I went to his rooms he was out, or pretended to be.
One day he told me he was getting on well, but
slowly; it was a more ticklish game than he had
thought; but when I began to ask questions he
would say no more. Then and there, in my annoy-
44


A Costume Piece
ance, I took my own decision. Since he would tell
me nothing of the result of his vigils, I determined
to keep one on my own account, and that very
evening found my way to the millionaire’s front
gates.
The house he was occupying is, I believe, quite
the largest in the St. John’s Wood district. It
stands in the angle formed by two broad thorough-
fares, neither of which, as it happens, is a ’bus
route, and I doubt if many quieter spots exist
within the four-mile radius. Quiet also was the
great square house, in its garden of grass-plots
and shrubs; the lights were low, the millionaire
and his friends obviously spending their evening
elsewhere. The garden walls were only a few feet
high. In one there was a side door opening into
a glass passage; in the other two five-barred,
grained-and-varnished gates, one at either end of
the little semi-circular drive, and both wide open.
So still was the place that I had a great mind to
walk boldly in and learn something of the prem-
ises; in fact, I was on the point of doing so, when
I heard a quick, shufliing step on the pavement be-
hind me. I turned round and faced the dark scowl
and the dirty clenched fists of a dilapidated tramp.
“You fool!” said he. “You utter idiot!”
“Rallies!”
45


A Costume Piece
He looked hard at me from under the broken
brim of a battered billycock.
“You’re right,” he said at length. “I’ve been
too close. It’s become second nature with me when
I’ve anything on. But here’s an end of it, Bunny,
so far as you’re concerned. I’m going home now,
and I want you to follow me; but for heaven’s sake
keep your distance, and don’t speak to me again
till I speak to you. There-—-give me a start.” And
he was ofl again, a decrepit Vagabond, with his
hands in his pockets, his elbows squared, and frayed
coat-tails swinging raggedly from side to side.
I followed him to the Finchley Road. There
he took an Atlas omnibus, and I sat some rows .
behind him on the top, but not far enough to escape
the pest of his vile tobacco. That he could carry
his character-sketch to such a pitch—he who would
only smoke one brand of cigarette! It was the last,
least touch of the insatiable artist, and it charmed
away what mortification there still remained in me.
Once more I felt the fascination of a comrade who
was forever dazzling one with a fresh and unsus-
pected facet of his character.
As we neared Piccadilly I wondered what he
would do. Surely he was not going into the Albany
like that? No, he took another omnibus to Sloane
Street, I sitting behind him as before. At Sloane
47


A Costume Piece
himself of his rags. “I’m afraid you won’t find
any, but there’s the canvas I’m always going to
make a start upon. I tell them I’m looking high
and low for my ideal model. I have the stove lit
on principle twice a week, and look in and leave
a newspaper and a smell of Sullivans—how good
they are after shag! Meanwhile I pay my rent
and am a good tenant in every way; and it’s a very
useful little pied-Z1-terre—there’s no saying how
useful it might be at a pinch. As it is, the billy-
cock comes in and the topper goes out, and nobody
takes the slightest notice of either; at this time of
night the chances are that there’s not a soul in the
building except ourselves.”
“You never told me you went in for disguises,”
said I, watching him as he cleansed the grime from
his face and hands.
“No, Bunny, I’ve treated you very shabbily all
round. There was really no reason why I shouldn’t
have shown you this place a month ago, and yet
there was no point in my doing so, and circum-
stances are just conceivable in which it would have
suited us both for you to be in genuine ignorance
of my whereabouts. I have something to sleep on,
as you perceive, in case of need, and, of course, my
name is not Raflles in the King’s Road. So you will
see that one might bolt further and fare worse.”
49


The Amateur Cracksman
“Meanwhile you use the place as a dressing-
room?”
“It is my private pavilion,” said Raflies. “Dis-
guises? In some cases they’re half the battle, and
it’s always pleasant to feel that, if the worst comes
to the worst, you needn’t necessarily be convicted
under your own name. Then they’re indispensable
in dealing with the fences. I drive all my bargains
in the tongue and raiment of Shoreditch. If I
didn’t there’d be the very devil to pay in blackmail.
Now, this cupboard’s full of all sorts of toggery.
I tell the woman who cleans the room that it’s for
my models when I find ’em. By the way, I only
hope I’ve got something that’ll fit you, for you’ll
want a rig for to-morrow night.”
“To-morrow night!” I exclaimed. “Why, what
do you mean to do?”
“The trick,” said Rafiies. “I intended writing
to you as soon as I got back to my rooms, to ask
you to look me up to-morrow afternoon; then I
was going to unfold my plan of campaign, and take
you straight into action then and there. There’s
nothing like putting the nervous players in first;
it’s the sitting with their pads on that upsets their
applecart; that was another of my reasons for
being so confoundedly close. You must try to
forgive me. I couldn’t help remembering how
50


The Amateur Cracksman
“Illicit Diamond Buyer?”
“Exactly. Well, it seems that Rosenthall was
one. He must have let it out to Purvis in his cups.
, Anyhow, I heard Purvis taunting him with it, and
threatening him with the breakwater at Capetown;
and I begin to think our friends are friend and foe.
But about to-morrow night: there’s nothing subtle
in my plan. It’s simply to get in while these fel-
lows are out on the loose, and to lie low till they
come back, and longer. If possible, we must doc-
tor the whiskey. That would simplify the whole
thing, though it’s not a very sporting game to play;
still, we must remember Rosenthall’s revolver; we
don’t want him to sign his name on us. With all
those Kaflirs about, however, it’s ten to one on the
whiskey, and a hundred to one against us if we go
looking for it. A brush with the heathen would
spoil everything, if it did no more. Besides, there
are the ladies ”
“The deuce there are!”
“Ladies with an i, and the very voices for rais-
ing Cain. I fear, I fear the clamor! It would be
fatal to us. Au contraire, if we can manage to
stow ourselves away unbeknowns, half the battle
will be won. If Rosenthall turns in drunk, it’s a
purple diamond apiece. If he sits up sober, it may
be a bullet instead. We will hope not, Bunny:
52


A Costume Piece

and all the firing wouldn’t be on one side; but it’s
on the knees of the gods.”
And so we left it when we shook hands in Pic-
cadilly—not by any means as much later as I could
have wished. Raflles would not ask me to his
rooms that night. He said he made it a rule to
have a long night before playing| . cricket and——-
other games. His final word to me was framed on
the same principle.
“Mind, only one drink to-night, Bunny. Two
at the outside—as you value your life—and
mine!”
I remember my abject obedience; and the end-
less, sleepless night it gave me; and the roofs of the
houses opposite standing out at last against the
blue-gray London dawn. I wondered whether I
should ever see another, and was very hard on
myself for that little expedition which I had made
on my own wilful account.
It was between eight and nine o’clock in the
evening when we took up our position in the gar-
den adjoining that of Reuben Rosenthall; the
house itself was shut up, thanks to the outrageous
libertine next door, who, by driving away the
neighbors, had gone far towards delivering him-
self into our hands. Practically secure from sur-
prise on that side, we could watch our house under
53


A Costume Piece
Raflies ducked and pulled me down in great
excitement.
“The ladies are going with them,” he whis-_
pered. “This is great!”
“That’s better still.”
“The Gardenia!” the millionaire had bawled.
“And that’s best of all,” said Raflles, standing
upright as hoofs and wheels crunched through the
gates and rattled off at a fine speed.
“Now what?” I whispered, trembling with ex-
citement. _
“They’ll be clearing away. Yes, here come their
shadows. The drawing-room windows open on
the lawn. Bunny, it’s the psychological moment.
Where’s that mask?”
I produced it with a hand whose trembling I
tried in vain to still, and could have died for Raflles
when he made no comment on what he could not
fail to notice. His own hands were firm and cool
as he adjusted my mask for me, and then his own.
“By Jove, old boy,” he whispered cheerily,
“you look about the greatest rullian I ever saw!
These masks alone will down a nigger, if we meet
one. But I’m glad I remembered to tell you not to
shave. You’ll pass for Whitechapel if the worst
comes to the worst and you don’t forget to talk
the lingo. Better sulk like a mule if you’re not
55


The Amateur Cracksman
sure of it, and leave the dialogue to me; but, please
our stars, there will be no need. Now, are you
ready?”
“Quite.”
“Got your gag?”
“Yes.”
“Shooter?”
“Yes.”
“Then follow me.”
In an instant we were over the wall, in another
on the lawn behind the house. There was no moon.
The very stars in their courses had veiled them-
selves for our benefit. I crept at my leader’s heels
to some French windows opening upon a shallow
veranda. He pushed. They yielded.
“Luck again,” he whispered; “nothing but luck!
Now for a light.”
And the light came!
A good score of electric burners glowed red for
the fraction of a second, then rained merciless white
beams into our blinded eyes. When we found our
sight four revolvers covered us, and between two
of them the colossal frame of Reuben Rosenthall
shook with a wheezy laughter from head to foot.
“Good-evening, boys,” he hiccoughed. “Glad
to see ye at last. Shift foot or finger, you on the
left, though, and you’re a dead boy. I mean you,
56


A Costume Piece
you greaser!” he roared out at Raflies. “I know
you. I’ve been waitin’ for you. I’ve been watchin’
you all this week! Plucky smart you thought yer-
self, didn’t you? One day beggin’, next time
shammin’ tight, and next one o’ them old pals from
Kimberley what never come when I’m in. But you
left the same tracks every day, you buggins, an’
the same tracks every night, all round the blessed
premises.”
“All right, guv’nor,” drawled Rallles; “don’t
excite. It’s a fair cop. We don’t sweat to know
’ow you brung it orf. On’y don’t you go for to
shoot, ’cos we ’int awmed, s’help me Gord!”
“Ah, you’re a knowin’ one,” said Rosenthall,
fingering his triggers. “But you’ve struck a
knowin’er.”
“Ho, yuss, we know all abaht thet! Set a thief
to ketch a thief—ho, yuss.”
My eyes had torn themselves from the round
black muzzles, from the accursed diamonds that
had been our snare, the pasty pig-face of the over-
fed pugilist, and the flaming cheeks and hook nose
of Rosenthall himself. I was looking beyond them
at the doorway filled with quivering silk and plush,
black faces, white eyeballs, woolly pates. But a
sudden silence recalled my attention to the million-
aire. And only his nose retained its color.
57


The Amateur Cracksman
“What d’ye mean?” he whispered with a hoarse
oath. “Spit it out, or, by Christmas, I’ll drill
you!”
“Whort price thet brikewater ?” drawled Raffles
coolly.
“Eh ?”
Rosenthall’s revolvers were describing widening
orbits.
“Whort price thet brikewater—old I. D. B.?”
“Where in hell did you get hold 0’ that?” asked
Rosenthall, with a rattle in his thick neck, meant
for mirth.
“You may well arst,” says Raflies. “It’s all
over the plice w’ere I come from.”
“Who can have spread such rot?”
“I dunno,” says Ralfles; “arst the gen’leman on
yer left; p’r’aps ’e knows.” i
The gentleman on his left had turned livid with
emotion. Guilty conscience never declared itself
in plainer terms. For a moment his small eyes
bulged like currants in the suet of his face; the
next, he had pocketed his pistols on a professional
instinct, and was upon us with his fists.
“Out o’ the light—out o’ the light !” yelled
Rosenthall in a frenzy.
He was too late. No sooner had the burly pugi-
list obstructed his fire than Ralfles was through the
58


A Costume Piece
window at a bound; while I, for standing still and
saying nothing, was scientifically felled to the
lioor.
I cannot have been many moments without my
senses. When I recovered them there was a great
to-do in the garden, but I had the drawing-room
to myself. I sat up. Rosenthall and Purvis were
rushing about outside, cursing the Kaliirs and nag-
ging at each other.
“Over that wall, I tell yer!”
“I tell you it was this one. Can’t you whistle
for the police?”
“Police be damned! I’ve had enough of the
blessed police.”
“Then we’d better get back and make sure of
the other rotter.”
“Oh, make sure 0’ yer skin. That’s what you’d
better do. Jala, you black hog, if I catch you
skulkin’. ”
I never heard the threat. I was creeping from
the drawing-room on my hands and knees, my own
revolver swinging by its steel ring from my teeth.
For an instant I thought that the hall also was
deserted. I was wrong, and I crept upon a Kafiir
on all fours. Poor devil, I could not bring myself
to deal him a base blow, but I threatened him most
hideously with my revolver, and left the white
59


The Amateur Cracksman
teeth chattering in his black head as I took the
stairs three at a time. Why I went upstairs in that
decisive fashion, as though it were my only course,
I cannot explain. But garden and ground floor
seemed alive with men, and I might have done
worse.
I turned into the first room I came to. It was
a bedroom—empty, though lit up; and never shall
I forget how I started as I entered, on encounter-
ing the awful villain that was myself at full length
in a pier-glass! Masked, armed, and ragged, I
was indeed fit carrion for a bullet or the hangman,
and to one or the other I made up my mind. Nev-
ertheless, I hid myself in the wardrobe behind the
mirror; and there I stood shivering and cursing
my fate, my folly, and Rafiies most of all—Raflles
first and last—for I daresay half an hour. Then
the wardrobe door was flung suddenly open; they
had stolen into the room without a sound; and I
was hauled downstairs, an ignominious captive.
Gross scenes followed in the hall; the ladies
were now upon the stage, and at sight of the des-
perate criminal they screamed with one accord.
In truth I must have given them fair cause, though
my mask was now torn away and hid nothing but
my left ear. Rosenthall answered their shrieks
60


A Costume Piece
with a roar for silence; the woman with the bath-
sponge hair swore at him shrilly in return; the
place became a Babel impossible to describe. I
remember wondering how long it would be before
the police appeared. Purvis and the ladies were
for calling them in and giving me in charge with-
out delay. Rosenthal would not hear of it. He
swore that he would shoot man or woman who left
his sight. He had had enough of the police. He
was not going to have them coming there to spoil
sport; he was going to deal with me in his own
way. With that he dragged me from all other
hands, flung me against a door, and sent a bullet
crashing through the wood within an inch of my
ear.
“You drunken fool! It’ll be murder!” shouted
Purvis, getting in the way a second time.
“Wha’ do I care? He’s armed, isn’t he? I shot
him in self-defence. It’ll be a warning to
others. Will you stand aside, or d’ye want it
yourself?”
“You’re drunk,” said Purvis, still between us.
“I saw you take a neat tumblerful since you come
in, and it’s made you drunk as a fool. Pull your-
self together, old man. You ain’t a-going to do
what you’ll be sorry for.”
61


The Amateur Cracksman
“Then I won’t shoot at him, I’ll only shoot
roun’ an’ roun’ the beggar. You’re quite right,
ole feller. Wouldn’t hurt him. Great mishtake.
Roun’ an’ roun’. There—like that!”
His freckled paw shot up over Purvis’s shoul-
der, mauve lightning came from his ring, a red
flash from his revolver, and shrieks from the
women as the reverberations died away. Some
splinters lodged in my hair.
Next instant the prize-fighter disarmed him;
and I was safe from the devil, but finally doomed
to the deep sea. A policeman was in our midst.
He had entered through the drawing-room win-
dow; he was an oflicer of few words and creditable
promptitude. In a twinkling he had the handcuffs
on my wrists, while the pugilist explained the situ-
ation, and his patron reviled the force and its rep-
resentative with impotent malignity. A fine watch
they kept; a lot of good they did; coming in when
all was over and the whole household might have
been murdered in their sleep. The ofiicer only
deigned to notice him as he marched me off.
“We know all about you, sir,” said he con-
temptuously, and he refused the sovereign Purvis
proffered. “You will be seeing me again, sir, at
Marylebone.”
“Shall I come now ?”
62


A Costume Piece

“As you please, sir. I rather think the other
gentleman requires you more, and I don’t fancy
this young man means to give much trouble.”
“Oh, I’m coming quietly,” I said.
And I went.
In silence we traversed perhaps a hundred yards.
_It must have been midnight. We did not meet a
soul. At last I whispered:
“How on earth did you manage it?”
“Purely by luck,” said Raflies. “I had the luck
to get clear away through knowing every brick of
those back-garden walls, and the double luck to
have these togs with the rest over at Chelsea. The
helmet is one of a collection I made up at Oxford;
here it goes over this wall, and we’d better carry
the coat and belt before we meet a real olficer. I
got them once for a fancy ball—ostensibly—and
thereby hangs a yarn. -I always thought they
might come in useful a second time. My chief
crux to-night was getting rid of the hansom that
brought me back. I sent him off to Scotland Yard
with ten bob and a special message to good old
Mackenzie. The whole detective department will
be at Rosenthall’s in about half an hour. Of
course, I speculated on our gentleman’s hatred of
the police—another huge slice of luck. If you’d
got away, well and good; if not, I felt he was the
63


The Amateur Cracksman
man to play with his mouse as long as possible.
Yes, Bunny, it’s been more of a costume piece than
I intended, and we’ve come out of it with a good
deal less credit. But, by Jovc, we’re jolly lucky
to have come out of it at all!”
..-. I_>._.__;_.--a-@-i ~--- —- -1’


Gentlemen and Players
LD Raflies may or may not have been an ex-
ceptional criminal, but as a cricketer I dare
swear he was unique. Himself a dangerous bat, a
brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow
bowler of his decade, Fe took incredibly little in-
terest in the game at large. He never went up to
Lord’s without his cricket-bag, or showed the
slightest interest in the result of a match in which
he was not himself engaged. Nor was this mere
hateful egotism on his part. He professed to have
lost all enthusiasm for the game, and to keep it up
only from the very lowest motives.
“Cricket,” said Raflies, “like everything else, is
good enough sport until you discover a better. As
a source of excitement it isn’t in it with other things
you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary compari-
' son becomes a bore. What’s the satisfaction of
taking a man’s wicket when you want his spoons?
Still, if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won’t
get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot’s
just the kind of mental exercise one wants. 0 Yes,
perhaps there’s some allinity between the two
65


The Amateur Cracksman
things after all. But I’d chuck up cricket to-mor-
row, Bunny, if it wasn’t for the glorious protec-
tion it affords a person of my proclivities.”
“How so?” said I. “It brings you before the
public, I should have thought, far more than is
either safe or wise.”
“My dear Bunny, that’s exactly where you make
a mistake. To follow Crime with reasonable im-
punity you simply must have a parallel, ostensible
career—the more public the better. The principle
is obvious. Mr. Peace, of pious memory, dis-
armed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for
playing the fiddle and taming animals, and it’s my
profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a
really eminent public man, whose speeches were
very likely reported alongside his atrocities. Fill
the bill in some prominent part, and you’ll never
be suspected of doubling it with another of equal
prominence. That’s why I want you to cultivate
journalism, my boy, and sign all you can. And
it’s the one and only reason why I don’t burn my
bats for firewood.”
Nevertheless, when he did play there was no
keener performer on the field, nor one more anx-
ious to do well for his side. I remember how he
went to the nets, before the first match of the sea-
son, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he
66


The Amateur Cracksman
type came and squeezed himself in between us, and
met with a perfectly civil reception despite the
liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did
Ralfles introduce us; but their conversation pro-
claimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship
and a license on the lad’s part which combined to
puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when
Raflles was informed that the other’s father was
anxious to meet him, and he instantly consented to
gratify that whim.
“He’s in the Ladies’ Enclosure. Will you come
round now ?”
“With pleasure,” says Rafiies. “Keep a place
for me, Bunny.”
And they were gone.
“Young Crowley,” said some voice further
back. “Last year’s Harrow Eleven.”
“I remember him. Worst man in the team.”
“Keen cricketer, however. Stopped till he was
twenty to get his colors. Governor made him.
_ Keen breed. Oh, pretty, sir! Very pretty!”
The game was boring me. I only came to see
old Rafiles perform. Soon I was looking wist-
fully for his return, and at length I saw him
beckoning me from the palings to the right.
“Want to introduce you to old Amersteth,” he
whispered, when I joined him. “They’ve a cricket
68


Gentlemen and Players
week next month, when this boy Crowley comes of
age, and we’ve both got to go down and play.”
“Both !” I echoed. “But I’m no cricketer!”
“Shut up,” says Rallies. “Leave that to me.
I’ve been lying for all I’m worth,” he added
sepulchrally as we reached the bottom of the steps.
“I trust to you not to give the show away.”
There was a gleam in his eye that I knew well
enough elsewhere, but was unprepared for in those
healthy, sane surroundings; and it was with very
definite misgivings and surrnises that I followed
the Zingari blazer through the vast liower-bed of
hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies’
awning.
Lord Amersteth was a fine-looking man with a
short mustache and a double chin. He received
me with much dry courtesy, through which, how-
ever, it was not dillicult to read a less flattering
tale. I was accepted as the inevitable appendage
of the invaluable Raflles, with whom I felt deeply
incensed as I made my bow.
“I have been bold enough,” said Lord Amer-
steth, “to ask one of the Gentlemen of England
to come down and play some rustic cricket for us
next month. He is kind enough to say that he
would have liked nothing better, but for this little
fishing expedition of yours, Mr. , Mr. ,"

69


The Amateur Cracksman
and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering
my name.
It was, of course, the first I had ever heard of
that fishing expedition, but I made haste to say
that it could easily, and‘ should certainly, be put
off. Ralfles gleamed approval through his eye-
lashes. Lord Amersteth bowed and shrugged.
“You’re very good, I’m sure,” said he._ “But
I understand you’re a cricketer yourself?”
“He was one at school,” said Rafiles, with in-
famous readiness.
“Not a real cricketer,” I was stammering mean-
while.
“In the eleven?” said Lord Amersteth.
“I’m afraid not,” said I.
“But only just out of it,” declared Raflles, to my
horror. '
“Well, well, we can’t all play for the Gentle-
men,” said Lord Amersteth slyly. “My son Crow-
ley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow,
_ and he’s going to play. I may even come in myself
at a pinch; so you won’t be the only duffer, if you
are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come
down and help us too. You shall flog a stream
before breakfast and after dinner, if you like.”
. “I should be very proud,” I was beginning, as
the mere prelude to resolute excuses; but the eye
70


Gentlemen and Players
of Raflies opened wide upon me; and I hesitated
weakly, to be duly lost.
“Then that’s settled,” said Lord Amersteth,
with the slightest suspicion of grimness. “It’s to
be a little week, you know, when my son comes of
age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshiret
Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well.
But Mr. Raflies will tell you all about it, and
Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By Jove,
they’re all out! Then I rely on you both.” And,
with a little nod, Lord Amersteth rose and sidled
to the gangway.
Raflles rose also, but I caught the sleeve of his
blazer.
“What are you thinking of?” I whispered
savagely. “I was nowhere near the eleven. I’m
no sort of cricketer. I shall have to get out of
this!”
“Not you,” he whispered back. “You needn’t
play, but come you must. If you wait for me after
half-past six I’ll tell you why.”
But I could guess the reason; and I am ashamed
to say that it revolted me much less than did the
notion of making a public fool of myself on a
cricket-field. My gorge rose at this as it no longer
rose at crime, and it was in no tranquil humor
that I strolled about the ground while Rallies dis-
71


The Amateur Cracksman
appeared in the pavilion. Nor was my annoy-
ance lessened by a little meeting I witnessed be-
tween young Crowley and his father, who shrugged
as he stopped and stooped to convey some informa-
tion which made the young man look a little blank.
It may have been pure self-consciousness on my
part, but I could have sworn that the trouble was
their inability to secure the great Raflies without
his insignificant friend.
Then the bell rang, and I climbed to the top of
the pavilion to watch Raflies bowl. No subleties
are lost up there; and if ever a bowler was full of
them, it was A. Raflles on this day, as, indeed, all
the cricket world remembers. One had not to be
a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect com-
mand of pitch and break, his beautifully easy
action, which never varied with the varying pace,
his great ball on the leg-stump—-—his dropping
head-ball—in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that
versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of
athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and
one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw
the “aflinity between the two things,” saw it in
that afternoon’s tireless warfare against the flower
of professional cricket. It was not that Raflies
took many wickets for few runs; he was too fine
a bowler to mind being hit; and time was short,
72


Gentlemen and Players
and the wicket good. What I admired, and what
I remember, was the combination of resource and
cunning, of patience and precision, of head-work
and handiwork, which made every over an artistic
whole. It was all*so characteristic of that other
Rallles whom I alone knew!
“I felt like bowling this afternoon,” he told me
later in the hansom. “With a pitch to help me,
I’d have done something big; as it is, three for
forty-one, out of the four that fell, isn’t so bad
for a slow bowler on a plumb wicket against those
fellows. But I felt venomous! Nothing riles me
more than being asked about for my cricket as
though I were a pro. myself.”
“Then why on earth go?”
“To punish them, and—because we shall be
jolly hard up, Bunny, before the season’s
over!”
“Ah !” said I. “I thought it was that.”
“Of course, it was! It seems they’re going to
have the very devil of a week of it—balls—-
dinner parties—swagger house party—general
junketings—and obviously a houseful of diamonds
as well. Diamonds galore! As a general rule
nothing would induce me to abuse my position as
a guest. I’ve never done it, Bunny. But in this
case we’re engaged like the waiters and the
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Gentlemen and Players
been more the instinct of the criminal than the
judgment of the man.
It was on Monday, the tenth of August, that_we
were due at Milchester Abbey, Dorset; and the
beginning of the month found us cruising about
that very county, with fly-rods actually in our
hands. The idea was- that we should acquire at
once a local reputation as decent fishermen, and
some knowledge of the countryside, with a view
to further and more deliberate operations in the
event of an unprofitable week. There was another
idea which Raflies kept to himself until he had got
me down there. Then one day he produced a
cricket-ball in a meadow we were crossing, and
threw me catches for an hour together. More
hours he spent in bowling to me on the nearest
green; and, if I was never a cricketer, at least I
came nearer to being one, by the end of that week,
than ever before or since.
- Incident began early on the Monday. We had
sallied forth from a desolate little junction within
quite a few miles of Milchester, had been caught
in a shower, had run for shelter to a wayside inn.
A florid, overdressed man was drinking in the
parlor, and I could have sworn it was at the sight
of him that Rafiies recoiled on the threshold, and
afterwards insisted on returning to the station
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The Amateur Cracksman
band, and by heaven we’ll take our toll! Let’s
have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it
over.”
“It seems rather a vulgar sort of theft,” I could
not help saying; and to this, my single protest,
Raflles instantly assented.
“It is a vulgar sort,” said he; “but I can’t help
that. We’re getting vulgarly hard up again, and
there’s an end on ’t. Besides, these people deserve
it, and can afford it. And don’t you run away with
the idea that all will be plain sailing; nothing will
be easier than getting some stufl, and nothing
harder than avoiding all suspicion, as, of course,
we must. We may come away with no more than
a good working plan of the premises. Who
knows? In any case there’s weeks of thinking in
it for you and me.”
But with those weeks I will not weary you fur-
ther than by remarking that the “thinking,” was
done entirely by Raflies, who did not always trouble
to communicate hi/s thoughts to me. His reticence,
however, was no longer an irritant. I began to
accept it as a necessary convention of these little
enterprises. And, after our last adventure of the
kind, more especially after its dénouement, my
trust in Raflies was much too solid to be shaken by
a want of trust in me, which I still believe to have
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Gentlemen and Players
and she had only been asked to make an even num-
ber. She informed me of both facts before the
soup reached us, and her subsequent conversation
was characterized by the same engaging candor.
It exposed what was little short of a mania for
imparting information. I had simply to listen, to
nod, and to be thankful. When I confessed to
knowing very few of those present, even by sight,
my entertaining companion proceeded to tell me
who everybody was, beginning on my left and
working conscientiously round to her right. This
lasted quite a long time, and really interested me;
but a great deal that followed did not, and, ob-
viously to recapture my unworthy attention, Miss
Melhuish suddenly asked me, in a sensational
whisper, whether I could keep a secret.
I said I thought I might, whereupon another
question followed, in still lower and more thrilling
accents:
“Are you afraid of burglars?”
Burglars! I was roused at last. The word
, stabbed me. I repeated it in horrified query.
“So I’ve found something to interest you at
last!” said Miss Melhuish, in naive triumph.
“Yes—burglars! But don’t speak so loud. It’s
supposed to be kept a great secret. I really
oughtn’t to tell you at all!”
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The Amateur Cracksman
“But what is there to tell?” I whispered with
satisfactory impatience.
“You promise not to speak of it?”
“Of course!”
“Well, then, there are burglars in the neighbor-
hood.”
“Have they committed any robberies?”
“Not yet.”
“Then how do you know?”
“They’ve been seen. In the district. Two well-
known London thieves!”
Two! I looked at Raflles. I had done so often
during the evening, envying him his high spirits,
his iron nerve, his buoyant wit, his perfect ease
and self-possession. But now I pitied him; through
all my own terror and consternation, I pitied him
as he sat eating and drinking, and laughing and
talking, without a cloud of fear or of embarrass-
ment on his handsome, taking, daredevil face. I
caught up my champagne and emptied the glass.
“Who has seen them?” I then asked calmly.
“A detective. They were traced down from
town a few days ago. They are believed to have
designs on the Abbey!”
“But why aren’t they run in ?”
“Exactly what I asked papa on the way here this
evening; he says there is no warrant out against
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Gentlemen and Players
the men at present, and all that can be done is to
watch their movements.”
“Oh! so they are being watched ?”
“Yes, by a detective who is down here on pur-
pose. And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that
they had been seen this afternoon at Warbeck
Junction!”
The very place where Rallles and I had been
caught in the rain! Our stampede from the inn
was now explained; on the other hand, I was no
longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my
companion might have to tell me; and I succeeded
in looking her in the face with a smile.
“This is really quite exciting, Miss Melhuish,”
said I. “May I ask how you come to know so
much about it?”
“It’s papa,” was the confidential reply. “Lord
Amersteth consulted him, and he consulted me.
But for goodness’ sake don’t let it get about! I
can’t think what tempted me to tell you !”
“You may trust me, Miss Melhuish. But—
aren’t you frightened?”
Miss Melhuish giggled.
“Not a bit! They won’t come to the rectory.
There’s nothing for them there. But look round
the table: look at the diamonds: look at old Lady
Melrose’s necklace alone!”
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The Amateur Cracksman
The Dowager Marchioness of Melrose was one
of the few persons whom it had been unnecessary
to point out to me. She sat on Lord Amersteth’s
right, flourishing her ear-trumpet, and drinking
champagne with her usual notorious freedom, as
dissipated and kindly a dame as the world has ever
seen. It was a necklace of diamonds and sapphires
that rose and fell about her ample neck.
“They say it’s worth five thousand pounds at
least,” continued my companion. “Lady Mar-
garet told me so this morning (that’s Lady Mar-
garet next your Mr. Raflles, you know) ; and the
old dear will wear them every night. Think what
a haul they would be! N o; we don’t feel in imme-
'diate danger at the rectory.”
When the ladies rose, Miss Melhuish bound me
to fresh vows of secrecy; and left me, I should
think, with some remorse for her indiscretion, but
more satisfaction at the importance which it had
undoubtedly given her in my eyes. The opinion
may smack of vanity, though, in reality, the very
springs of conversation reside in that same human,
universal itch to thrill the auditor. The peculi-
arity of Miss Melhuish was that she must be thrill-
ing at all costs. And thrilling she had surely
been.
I spare you my feelings of the next two hours.
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Gentlemen and Players
I tried hard to get a word with Rallles, but again
and again I failed. In the dining-room he and
Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match,
and had their heads together all the time. In the
drawing-room I had the mortification of hearing
him talk interminable nonsense into the ear-trumpet
of Lady Melrose, whom he knew in town. Lastly,
in the billiard-room, they had a great and lengthy
pool, while I sat aloof and chafed more than ever
in the company of a very serious Scotchman, who
had arrived since dinner, and who would talk of
nothing but the recent improvements in instanta-
neous photography. He had not come to play in
the matches (he told me), but to obtain for Lord
Amersteth such a series of cricket photographs as
had never been taken before; whether as an ama-
teur or a professional photographer I was unable
to determine. I remember, however, seeking dis-
traction in little bursts of resolute attention to the
conversation of this bore. And so at last the
long ordeal ended; glasses were emptied, men
said good-night, and I followed Raflles to his
room.
“It’s all up!” I gasped, as he turned up the gas
and I shut the door. “We’re being watched.
We’ve been followed down from town. There’s
a detective here on the spot!”
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The Amateur Cracksman
“How do you know?” asked Raflles, turning
upon me quite sharply, but without the least dis-
may. And I told him how I knew.
“Of course,” I added, “it was the fellow'we saw
in the inn this afternoon.”
“The detective?” said Raflles. “Do you mean
to say you don’t know a detective when you see one,
Bunny?”
“If that wasn’t the fellow, which is?”
Raflles shook his head.
“To think that you’ve been talking to him for
the last hour in the billiard-room and couldn’t spot
What he was !”
“The Scotch photographer ”
I paused aghast.
“Scotch he is,” said Ralfles, “and photog-
rapher ‘he may be. He is also Inspector Mac-
kenzie of Scotland Yard—the very man I sent
the message to that night last April. And
you couldn’t spot who he was in a whole hour!
O Bunny, Bunny, you were never built for
crime!”
“But,” said I, “if that was Mackenzie, who was
the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck ?”
“The man he’s watching.” i
“But he’s watching us!”
Raflles looked at me with a pitying eye, and

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Gentlemen and Players
shook his head again before handing me his open
cigarette-case.
“I don’t know whether smoking’s forbidden in
one’s bedroom, but you’d better take one of these
and stand tight, Bunny, because I’m going to say
something oflensive.”
I helped myself with a laugh.
“Say what you like, my dear fellow, if it really
isn’t you and I that Mackenzie’s after.”
“Well, then, it isn’t, and it couldn’t be, and no-
body but a born Bunny would suppose for a mo-
ment that it was ! Do you seriously think he would
sit there and knowingly watch his man playing
pool under his nose? Well, he might; he’s a cool
hand, Mackenzie; but I’m not cool enough to win
a pool under such conditions. At least I don’t
think I am; it would be interesting to see. The
situation wasn’t free from strain as it was, though
I knew he wasn’t thinking of us. Crowley told
me all about it after dinner, you see, and then I’d
seen one of the men for myself this afternoon.
You thought it was a detective who made me turn
tail at that inn. I really don’t know why I didn’t
tell you at the time, but it was just the opposite.
That loud, red-faced brute is one of the cleverest
thieves in London, and I once had a drink with
him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender
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The Amateur Cracksman
from tongue to toe at the moment, but you will
understand that I don’t run unnecessary risks of
recognition by a brute like that.”
“He’s not alone, I hear.”
“By no means; there’s at least one other man
with him; and it’s suggested that there may be an
accomplice here in the house.”
“Did Lord Crowley tell you so?”
“Crowley and the champagne between them.
In confidence, of course, just as your girl told you;
but even in confidence he never let on about Mac-
kenzie. He told me there was a detective in the
background, but that was all. Putting him up as
a guest is evidently their big secret, to be kept
from the other guests because it might offend them,
but more particularly from the servants whom he’s
here to watch. That’s my reading of the situation,
Bunny, and you will agree with me that it’s infi-
nitely more interesting than we could have im-
agined it would prove.”
“But infinitely more difficult for us,” said I,
with a sigh of pusillanimous relief. “Our hands
are tied for this week, at all events.”
“Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I ad-
mit that the chances are against us. Yet I’m not
so sure of that either. There are all sorts of possi-
bilities in these three-cornered combinations. Set
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Gentlemen and Players
A to watch B, and he won’t have an eye left for
C. That’s the obvious theory, but then Mac-
kenzie’s a very big A. I should be sorry to have
any boodle about me with that man in the house.
Yet it would be great to nip in between A and B
and score olf them both at once! It would be
worth a risk, Bunny, to do that; it would be worth
risking something merely to take on old hands like
B and his men at their own old game! Eh,
Bunny? That would be something like a match.
Gentlemen and Players at single wicket, by
Jove !”
His eyes were brighter than I had known them
for many a day. They shone with the perverted
enthusiasm which was roused in him only by the
contemplation of some new audacity. He kicked
olf his shoes and began pacing his room with noise-
less rapidity; not since the night of the Old Bohe-
mian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall had Raflles ex-
hibited such excitement in my presence; and I was
not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the
fiasco to which that banquet had been the prelude.
“My dear A. J.,” said I in his very own tone,
“you’re far too fond of the uphill game; you will
eventually fall a victim to the sporting spirit and
nothing else. Take a lesson from our last escape,
and fly lower as you value our skins. Study the
35


The Amateur Cracksman
house as much as you like, but do—-not—go and
shove your head into Mackenzie’s mouth !”
My wealth of metaphor brought him to a stand-
still, with his cigarette between his fingers and a
grin beneath his shining eyes.
“You’re quite right, Bunny. I won’t. I really
won’t. Yet—you saw old Lady Melrose’s neck-
lace? I’ve been wanting it for years! But I’m not
going to play the fool; honor bright, I’m not; yet
—by Jove !—to get to windward of the professors
and Mackenzie too! It would be a great game,
Bunny, it would be a great game!”
“Well, you mustn’t play it this week.”
“N 0, no, I won’t. But I wonder how the pro-
fessors think of going to work? That’s what one
wants to know. I wonder if they’ve really got an
accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew
their game! But it’s all right, Bunny; don’t you
be jealous; it shall be as you wish.”
And with that assurance I went off to my own
room, and so to bed with an incredibly light heart.
I had still enough of the honest man in me to wel-
come the postponement of our actual felonies, to
dread their performance, to deplore their neces-
sity: which is merely another way of stating the
too patent fact that I was an incomparably weaker
man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked. I
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Gentlemen and Players
had, however, one rather strong point. I pos-
sessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considera-
tions, not intimately connected with the passing
moment, entirely from my mind. Through the
exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my
frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoy-
ment as I had derived from it the year before;
and similarly, here at Milchester, in the long-
dreaded cricket-week, I had after all a quite ex-
cellent time. '
It is true that there were other factors in this
pleasing disappointment. In the first place, mira-
bile dictu, there were one or two even greater duf-
fers than I on the Abbey cricket-field. Indeed,
quite early in the week, when it was of most value
to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky
catch; a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum,
stuck fast in my hand, which Lord Amersteth him-
self grasped in public congratulation. This happy
accident was not to be undone even by me, and, as
nothing succeeds like success, and the constant en-
couragement of the one great cricketer on the field
was in itself an immense stimulus, I actually made
a run or two in my very next innings. Miss Mel-
huish said pretty things to me that night at the
great ball in honor of Viscount Crowley’s ma-
jority; she also told me that was the night on which
87


The Amateur Cracksman
the robbers would assuredly make their raid, and
was full of arch tremors when we sat out in the
garden, though the entire premises were illumi-
nated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotch-
man took countless photographs by day, which he
developed by night in a dark room admirably situ-
ated in the servants’ part of the house; and it is
my firm belief that only two of his fellow-guests
knew Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mac-
kenzie of Scotland Yard. _
The week was to end with a trumpery match
on the Saturday, which two or three of us in-
tended abandoning early in order to return to town
that night. The match, however, was never
played. In the small hours of the Saturday
morning a tragedy took place at Milchester
Abbey.
Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it.
My room opened upon the central gallery, and
was not even on the same floor as that on which
Raflles—and I think all the other men—were quar-
tered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-
room of one of the grand suites, and my too near
neighbors were old Lady Melrose and my host
and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the
actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first
time that week, I must have been sound asleep
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Gentlemen and Players
since midnight, when all at once I found myself
sitting up breathless. A heavy thud had come
against my door, and now I heard hard breathing
and the dull stamp of muflied feet.
“I’ve got ye,” muttered a voice. “It’s no use
struggling.”
It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear
turned me cold. There was no reply, but the hard
breathing grew harder still, and the muflled feet
beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden
panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door.
A light burnt low on the landing, and by it I could
see Mackenzie swaying and staggering in a silent
tussle with some powerful adversary.
“Hold this man!” he cried, as I appeared.
“Hold the rascal!”
But I stood like a fool until the pair of them
backed into me, when, with a deep breath I flung
myself on the fellow, whose face I had seen at last.
He was one of the footmen who waited at table;
and no sooner had I pinned him than the detective
loosed his hold.
“Hang on to him,” he cried. “There’s more
of ‘em below.”
And he went leaping down the stairs, as other
doors opened and Lord Amersteth and his son ap-
peared simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that
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The Amateur Cracksman
my man ceased struggling; but I was still holding
him when Crowley turned up the gas.
“What the devil’s all this?” asked Lord Amer-
steth, blinking. “Who was that ran downstairs?”
“Mac—Clephane!” said I hastily.
“Aha!” said he, turning to the footman. “So
you’re the scoundrel, are you? Well done! Well
done! Where was he caught?”
I had no idea.
“Here’s Lady Melrose’s door open,” said
Crowley. “Lady Melrose! Lady Melrose !”
“You forget she’s deaf,” said Lord Amersteth.
“Ah! that’ll be her maid.”
An inner door had opened; next instant there
was a little shriek, and a white figure gesticulated
on the threshold.
“oa done est l’écrin de Madame la Marquise?
La fenétre est ouverte. I1 a disparu !”
“Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!”
exclaimed Lord Amersteth. “Mais comment est
Madame la Marquise? Estelle bien ?”
“Oui, milor. Elle dort.”
“Sleeps through it all,” said my lord. “She’s
the only one, then!”
“What made Mackenzie-Clephane—bolt?”
young Crowley asked me.
“Said there were more of them below.”
9°


Gentlemen and Players
“Why the devil couldn’t you tell us so before ?"
he cried, and went leaping downstairs in his turn.
He was followed by nearly all the cricketers,
who now burst upon the scene in a body, only to
desert it for the chase. Raflies was one of them,
and I would gladly have been another, had not the
footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him,
and to make a dash in the direction from which
they had come. Lord Amersteth had him in an
instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it
took the two of us to drag him downstairs, amid a
terrified chorus from half-open doors. Eventually
we handed him over to two other footmen who
appeared with their nightshirts tucked into their
trousers, and my host was good enough to compli-
ment me as he led the way outside.
“I thought I heard a shot,” he added. “Didn’t
you ?”
“I thought I heard three.”
And out we dashed into the darkness.
I remember how the gravel pricked my feet,
how the wet grass numbed them as we made for
the sound of voices on an outlying lawn. So dark
was the night that we were in the cricketers’ midst
before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and
then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie
as he lay prostrate in the dew.
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The Amateur Cracksman
“Who’s this?” he cried. “What on earth’s
happened?”
“It’s Clephane,” said a man who knelt over
him. “He’s got a bullet in him somewhere.”
“Is he alive?”
“Barely.”
“Good God! Where’s Crowley?”
“Here I am,” called a breathless voice. “It’s
no good, you fellows. There’s nothing to show
which way they’ve gone. Here’s Raflies; he’s
chucked it, too.” And they ran up panting.
“Well, we’ve got one of them, at all events,”
muttered Lord Amersteth. “The next thing is to
get this poor fellow indoors. Take his shoulders,
somebody. Now his middle. Join hands under
him. All together, now; that’s the way. Poor
fellow! Poor fellow! His name isn’t Clephane
at all. He’s a Scotland Yard detective, down here
for these very villains!”
Raflies was the first to express surprise; but he
had also been the first to raise the wounded man.
Nor had any of them a stronger or more tender
hand in the slow procession to the house. In a
little we had the senseless man stretched on
a sofa in the library. And there, with ice on his
wound and brandy in his throat, his eyes opened
and his lips moved.
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Gentlemen and Players
Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words.
“Yes, yes,” said he; “we’ve got one of them safe
and sound. The brute you collared upstairs.”
Lord Amersteth bent lower. “By Jove! Lowered
the jewel-case out of the window, did he? And
they’ve got clean away with it! Well, well! I
only hope we’ll be able to pull this good fellow
through. He’s oil again.”
An hour passed: the sun was rising.
It found a dozen young fellows on the settees
in the billiard-room, drinking whiskey and soda-
water in their overcoats and pyjamas, and still
talking excitedly in one breath. A time-table was
being passed from hand to hand: the doctor was
still in the library. At last the door opened, and
Lord Amersteth put in his head.
“It isn’t hopeless,” said he, “but it’s bad enough.
There’ll be no cricket to-day.”
Another hour, and most of us were on our way
to catch the early train; between us we filled a com-
partment almost to suflocation. And still we
talked all together of the night’s event; and still I
was a little hero in my way, for having kept my
hold of the one rullian who had been taken; and
my gratification was subtle and intense. Raflies
watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had
we had together; not a word did we have until we
93


‘ The Amateur Cracksman
had left the others at Paddington, and were skim-
ming through the streets in a hansom with noise-
less tires and a tinkling bell.
“Well, Bunny,” said Raflies, “so the professors
have it, eh?”
“Yes,” said I. “And I’m jolly glad!”
“That poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest?”
“That you and I have been on the decent side
for once.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“You’re hopeless, Bunny, quite hopeless! I
take it you wouldn’t have refused your share if
the boodle had fallen to us? Yet you positively
enjoy coming olf second best—for the second time
running! I confess, however, that the professors’
methods were full of interest to me. I, for one,
have probably gained as much in experience as I
have lost in other things. That lowering the jewel-
case out of the window was a very simple and elfec-
tive expedient; two of them had been waiting be~
low for it for hours.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I saw them from my own window, which was
just above the dear old lady’s. I was fretting for
that necklace in particular, when I went up to turn
in for our last night—and I happened to look out
of my window. In point of fact, I wanted to see
94



o
I saw them from my own window.





Le Premier Pas
HAT night he told me the story of his
earliest crime. Not since the fateful morn-
ing of the Ides of March, when he had just men-
tioned it as an unreported incident of a certain
cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word out
of Rallles on the subject. It was not for want of
trying; he would shake his head, and watch his
cigarette smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his
eyes, half cynical, half wistful, as though the
decent honest days that were no more had had
their merits after all. Raflies would plan a fresh
enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated
enthusiasm of the artist. -It was impossible to
imagine one throb or twitter of compuriction be-
neath those frankly egotistic and infectious trans-
ports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed
still to visit him with the memory of his first felony,
so that I had given the story up long before the
night of our return from Milchester. Cricket,
however, was in the air, and Rallies’s cricket-bag
back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender,
with the remains of an Orient label still adhering
97


The Amateur Cracksman
to the leather. My eyes had been on this label for
some time, and I suppose his eyes had been on
mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned
to hear that yarn.
“It’s no use,” I replied. “You won’t spin it.
I must imagine it for myself.”
“How can you?”
“Oh, I begin to know your methods.”
“You take it I went in with my eyes open, as I
do now, eh ?”
“I can’t imagine your doing otherwise.”
“My dear Bunny, it was the most unpremedi-
tated thing I ever did in my life!”
His chair wheeled back into the books as he
sprang up with sudden energy. There was quite
an indignant glitter in his eyes.
“I can’t believe that,” said I craftily. “I can’t
pay you such a poor compliment!”
“Then! you must be a fool ”
He broke olf, stared hard at me, and in a trice
stood smiling in his own despite.
“Or a better knave than I thought you, Bunny,
and by Jove it’s the knave! Well—-I suppose I’m
fairly drawn; I give you best, as they say out there.
As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking of the thing
myself; last night’s racket reminds me of it in one
or two respects. I tell you what, though, this is
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Le Premier Pas
an occasion in any case, and I’m going to celebrate
it by breaking the one good rule of my life. I’m
going to have a second drink!”
The whiskey tinkled, the syphon fizzed, the ice,
plopped home; and seated there in his pyjamas,
with the inevitable cigarette, Raflies told me the
story that I had given up hoping to hear. _The
windows were wide open; the sounds of Piccadilly
floated in at first. Long before he finished, the
last wheels had rattled, the last brawler was re-
moved, we alone broke the quiet of the summer
night.
“. No, they do you very well, indeed.
You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, but
I’m afraid mine were of a comprehensive char-
acter. I had started in a hole, I ought really to
have refused the invitation; then we all went to the
Melbourne Cup, and I had the certain winner that
didn’t win, and that’s not the only way you can
play the fool in Melbourne. I wasn’t the steady
old stager I am now, Bunny; my analysis was a
confession in itself. But the others didn’t know
how hard up I was, and I swore they shouldn’t. I
tried the Jews, but they’re extra fly out there.
Then I thought of a kinsman of sorts, a second
cousin of my father’s whom none of us knew any-
99


The Amateur Cracksman
thing about, except that he was supposed to be in
one or other of the Colonies. If he was a rich
man, well and good, I would work him; if not
there would be no harm done. I tried to get on
his tracks, and, as luck would have it, I succeeded
(or thought I had) at the very moment when I
happened to have a few days to myself. I was
cut over on the hand, just before the big Christmas
match, and couldn’t have bowled a ball if they
had played me.
“The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask
me if I was any relation of Raflles of the National
Bank, and the pure luck of it almost took my
breath away. A relation who was a high ofiicial
in one of the banks, who would finance me on my
mere name—could anything be better? I made
up my mind that this Raflles was the man I wanted,
and was awfully sold to find next moment that he
wasn’t a high olficial at all. Nor had the doctor
so much as met him, but had merely read of him
in connection with a small sensation at the subur-
ban branch which my namesake managed; an
armed robber had been rather pluckily beaten off,
with a bullet in him, by this Raflles; and the sort
of thing was so common out there that this was
the first I had heard of it! A suburban branch—
my financier had faded into some excellent fellow
100


Le Premier 1PIas- -= 2§:‘.;'=5:; 2-,; 2
with a billet to lose if he called his soul his own.
Still a manager was a manager, and I said I would
soon see whether this was the relative I was look-
ing for, if he would be good enough to give me
the name of that branch.
“ ‘I’ll do more,’ says the doctor. ‘I’ll get you
the name of the branch he’s been promoted to, for
I think I heard they’d moved him up one already.’
And the next day he brought me the name of the
township of Yea, some fifty miles north of Mel-
bourne; but, with the vagueness which charac-
terized all his information, he was unable to
say whether I should find my relative there
or not.
“ ‘I-Ie’s a single man, and his intitials are W.
F.,’ said the doctor, who was certain enough of the
immaterial points. ‘He left his old post several
days ago, but it appears he’s not due at the new
one till the New Year. No doubt he’ll go before
then to take things over and settle in. You might
find him up there and you might not. If I were
you I should write.’
“ ‘That’ll lose two days,’ said I, ‘and more if
he isn’t there,’ for I’d grown quite keen on this up-
country manager, and I felt that if I could get at
him while the holidays were still on, a little con-
viviality might help matters considerably.
101


_.A_riiateur Cracksman
“ ‘Then,’ said the doctor, ‘I should get a quiet
horse and ride. You needn’t use that hand.’
“ ‘Can’t I go by train?’
“ ‘You can and you can’t. You would still have
to ride. I suppose you’re a horseman ?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Then I should certainly ride all the way. It’s
a delightful road, through Whittlesea and over
the Plenty Ranges. It’ll give you some idea of
the bush, Mr. Raflles, and you’ll see the sources of
the water supply of this city, sir. You’ll see where
every drop of it comes from, the pure Yan Yean!
I wish I had time to ride with you.’
“ ‘But where can I get a horse?’
“The doctor thought a moment.
“ ‘I’ve a mare of my own that’s as fat as butter
for want of work,’ said he. ‘It would be a charity
to me to sit on her back for a hundred miles or so,
and then I should know you’d have no temptation
to use that hand.’
“ ‘You’re far too good!’ I protested.
“ ‘You’re A. Raflies,’ he said.
“And if ever there was a prettier compliment,
or a finer instance of even Colonial hospitality, I
can only say, Bunny, that I never heard of either.”
He sipped his whiskey, threw away the stump of
his cigarette, and lit another before continuing.
102


Le Premier Pas
“Well, I managed to write a line to W. F. with
my own hand, which, as you will gather, was not
very badly wounded; it was simply this third finger
that was split and in splints; and next morning the
doctor packed me ofl on a bovine beast that would
have done for an ambulance. Half the team came
up to see me start; the rest were rather sick with
me for not stopping to see the match out, as if I
could help them to win by watching them. They
little knew the game I’d got on myself, but still
less did I know the game I was going to play.
“It was an interesting ride enough, especially
after passing the place called \/Vhittlesea, a real
wild township on the lower slope of the ranges,
where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mut-
ton and tea, with the thermometer at three figures
in the shade. The first thirty miles or so was a
good metal road, too good to go half round the
world to ride on, but after Whittlesea it was a mere
track over the ranges, a_track I often couldn’t see
V and left entirely to the mare. Now it dipped into
a gully and ran through a creek, and all the time
the local color was inches thick; gum-trees galore
and parrots all colors of the rainbow. In one
place a whole forest of gums had been ring-barked,
and were just as though they had been painted
white, without a leaf or a living thing for miles.
103


The‘Amateur Cracksman
And the first living thing I did meet was the ‘sort
to give you the creeps; it was a riderless horse com-
ing full tilt through the bush, with the saddle
twisted round and the stirrup-irons ringing. With-
out thinking, I had a shot at heading him with the
doctor’s mare, and blocked him just enough to
allow a man who came galloping after to do the
rest.
“ ‘Thank ye, mister,’ growled the man, a huge
chap in a red checked shirt, with a beard like W.
G. Grace, but the very devil of an expression.
“ ‘Been an accident?’ said I, reining up.
“ ‘Yes,’ said he, scowling as though he defied
me to ask any more.
“ ‘And a nasty one,’ I said, ‘if that’s blood on the
saddle!’
“Well, Bunny, I may be a blackguard myself,
but I don’t think I ever looked at a fellow as that
chap looked at me. But I stared him out, and
forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted
saddle, and after that he became quite tame. He
told me exactly what had happened. A mate of
his had been dragged under a branch, and had his i
nose smashed, but that was all; had sat tight after
it till he dropped from loss of blood; another mate
was with him back in the bush.
“As I’ve said already, Bunny, I wasn’t the old
104


The Amateur Cracksman
his compliment to me, which was absolutely
pointless. 0
“ ‘I’m afraid you’ll find things pretty rough,’
he resumed, when he had unstrapped my valise,
and handed my reins to his man. ‘It’s lucky you’re
a bachelor like myself.’
“I could not quite see the point of this remark
either, since, had I been married, I should hardly
have sprung my wife upon him in this free-and-easy
fashion. I muttered the conventional sort of thing,
and then he said I should find it all right when I
settled, as though I had come to graze upon him
for weeks! ‘Well,’ thought I, ‘these Colonials
do take the cake for hospitality!’ And, still mar-
veiling, I let him lead me into the private part of
the bank.
“ ‘Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour,’
said he as we entered. ‘I thought you might like a
tub first, and you’ll find all ready in the room at the
end of the passage. Sing out if there’s anything you
_- want. Your luggage hasn’t turned up yet, by the
way, but here’s a letter that came this morning.’
“ ‘Not for me?’
“ ‘Yes; didn’t you expect one?’
' “ ‘I certainly did not!’
“ ‘Well, here it is.’
“And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own
106


Le Premier Pas
superscription of the previous day—to W. F.
Raflies!
“Bunny, you’ve had your wind bagged at footer,
I daresay; you know what that’s like? All I can
say is that my moral wind was bagged by that letter
as I hope, old chap, I have never yet bagged yours.
I couldn’t speak. I could only stand with my own
letter in my hands until he had the good taste to
leave me by myself.
“W. F. Raflies! We had mistaken each other
for W. F. Raflies—for the new manager who had
not yet arrived! Small wonder we had conversed
at cross-purposes; the only wonder was that we
had not discovered our mutual mistake. How the
other man would have laughed! But I—I could
not laugh. By Jove, no, it was no laughing matter
for me! I saw the whole thing in a flash, without
a tremor, but with the direst depression from my
own single point of view. Call it callous if yo=..'
like, Bunny, buf remember that I was in much the
same hole as you’ve since been in yourself, and that
I had counted on this W. F. Raflles even as you
counted on A. I thought of the man with the
W. G. beard—the riderless horse and the bloody
saddle—-the deliberate misdirection that had put
me off the track and out of the way—and now the
missing manager and the report of bushrangers at
107


The Amateur Cracksman
this end. But I simply don’t pretend to have felt
any personal pity for a man whom I had never
seen; that kind of pity’s usually cant; and besides,
all mine was needed for myself.
“I was in as big a hole as ever. What the devil
was I to do? I doubt if I have sulficiently im-
pressed upon you the absolute necessity of my re-
turning to Melbourne in funds. As a matter of
fact it was less the necessity than my own determi-
nation which I can truthfully ascribe as absolute.
“Money I would have—but how—but how?
Would this stranger be open to persuasion—if I
told him the truth? No; that would set us all
scouring the country for the rest of the night. Why
should I tell him? Suppose I left him to find out
his mistake . . . would anything be gained?
Bunny, I give you my word that I went in to dinner
without a definite intention in my head, or one pre-
meditated lie upon my lips. I might do the decent,
natural thing, and explain matters without loss of
time; on the other hand, there was no hurry.. I
had not opened the letter, and could always pre-
tend I had not noticed the initials; meanwhile some-
thing might turn up. I could wait a little and see.
Tempted I already was, but as yet the temptation
was vague, and its very vagueness made me
tremble.
108


Le Premier Pas
“ ‘Bad news, I’m afraid?’ said the manager,
when at last I sat down at his table.
“ ‘A mere annoyance,’ I answered—I do assure
you—-on the spur of the moment and nothing else.
But my lie was told; my position was taken; from
that moment onward there was no retreat. By
implication, without realizing what I was doing,
I had already declared myself W. F. Raflies.
Therefore, W. F. Raflles I would be, in that bank,
for that night. And the devil teach me how to use
my lie!
Again he raised his glass to his lips—I had for-
gotten mine. His cigarette-case caught the gas-
light as he handed it to me. I shook my head
without taking my eyes from his.
“The devil played up,” continued Rallles, with
a laugh. “Before I tasted my soup I had decided
what to do. I had determined to rob that bank
instead of going to bed, and to be back in Mel-
bourne for breakfast if the doctor’s mare could
do it. I would tell the old fellow that I had missed
my way and been bushed for hours, as I easily
might have been, and had never got to Yea at all.
At Yea, on the other hand, the personation and
robbery would ever after be attributed to a mem-
ber of the gang that had waylaid and murdered the
new manager with that very object. You are ac-
i
109


The Amateur Cracksman
quiring some experience in such matters, Bunny.
I ask you, was there ever a better get-out? Last
night’s was something like it, only never such a
certainty. And I saw it from the beginning—
saw to the end before I had finished my soup!
“To increase my chances, the cashier, who also
lived in the bank, was away over the holidays, had
actually gone down to Melbourne to see us play;
and the man who had taken my horse also waited
at table; for he and his wife were the only servants,
and they slept in a separate building. You may
depend I ascertained this before we had finished
dinner. Indeed I was by way of asking too many
questions (the most oblique and delicate was that
which elicited my host’s name, Ewbank), nor was
I careful enough to ‘conceal their drift.
“ ‘Do you know,’ said this fellow Ewbank, who
was one of the downright sort, ‘if it wasn’t you, I
should say you were in a funk of robbers? Have
you lost your nerve?’
“ ‘I hope not,’ said I, turning jolly hot, I can
tell you; ‘but—well, it is not a pleasant thing to
have to put a bullet through a fellow!’
“‘No?’ said he, coolly. ‘I should enjoy.
nothing better, myself; besides, yours didn’t go
through.’
“ ‘I wish it had!’ I was smart enough to cry.
11O


Le Premier Pas
“ ‘Amen!’ said he.
“And I emptied my glass; actually I did not
know whether my wounded bank-robber was in
prison, dead, or at large!
“But, now that I had had more than enough of
it, Ewbank would come back to the subject. He
admitted that the staff was small; but as for him-
self, he had a loaded revolver under his pillow all
night, under the counter all day, and he was only
waiting for his chance.
“ ‘Under the counter eh ?’ I was ass enough to
say.
“ ‘Yes; so had you!’
“He was looking at me in surprise, and some-
thing told me that to say ‘of course—I had for-
gotten!’ would have been quite fatal, considering
what I was supposed to have done. So I looked
down'my nose and shook my head.
“ ‘But the papers said you had!’ he cried.
“ ‘Not under the counter,” said I.
“ ‘But it’s the regulation!’
“For the moment, Bunny, I felt stumped, though
I trust I only looked more superior than before,
and I think I justified my look.
“ ‘The regulation!’ I said at length, in the most
ollensive tone at my command. ‘Yes, the regula-
tion would have us all dead men! My dear sir,
111


The Amateur Cracksman
do you expect your bank robber to let you reach for
your gun in the place where he knows it’s kept? I
had mine in my pocket, and I got my chance by
retreating from the counter with all visible re-
luctance.’
“Ewbank stared at me with open eyes and a
five-barred forehead, then down came his fist on the
table.
“ ‘By God! That was smart! Still,’ he added,
like a man who would not be in the wrong, ‘the
papers said the other thing, you know !’
“ ‘Of course,’ I rejoined, ‘because they said what
I told them. You wouldn’t have had me advertise
the fact that I improved upon the bank’s regula-
tions, would you?’
“So that cloud rolled over, and by Jove it was
a cloud with a golden lining. Not silver—real
good Australian gold! For old Ewbank hadn’t
quite appreciated me till then; he was a hard nut,
a much older man than myself, and I felt pretty
sure he thought me young for the place, and my
supposed feat a fluke. But I never saw a man
change his mind more openly. He got out his
best brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I
was smoking, and opened a fresh box. He was a
convivial-looking party, with a red moustache, and
a very humorous face (not unlike Tom Emmett’s),
n2


The Amateur Cracksman
in; the next word may bowl you out; it’s batting in
a bad light all through. I haven’t told you of half
the tight places I was in during a conversation that
ran into hours and became dangerously intimate
towards the end. You can imagine them for your-
self, and then picture me spread out on my bed,
getting my second wind for the big deed of the
night.
“Once more I was in luck, for I had not been
lying there long before I heard my dear Ewbank
snoring like a harmonium, and the music never
ceased for a moment; it was as loud as ever when
I crept out and closed my door behind me, as regu-
lar as everiwhen I stopped to listen at his. And I
have still to hear the concert that I shall enjoy
much more. The good fellow snored me out of
the bank, and was still snoring when I again stood
and listened under his open window.
“Why did I leave the bank first? To catch and
saddle the mare and tether her in a clump of trees
close by: to have the means of escape nice and
handy before I went to work. I have often won-
dered at the instinctive wisdom of the precaution;
unconsciously I was acting on what has been one
of my guiding principles ever since. Pains and
patience were required: I had to get my saddle
without waking the man, and I was not used to
114


Le Premier Pas
catching horses in a horse-paddock. Then I dis-
trusted the poor mare, and I went back to the sta-
bles for a hatful of oats, which I left with her in
the clump, hat and all. There was a dog, too, to
reckon with (our very worst enemy, Bunny) ; but -.
I had been ’cute enough to make immense friends
with him during the evening; and he wagged his
tail, not only when I came downstairs, but when I
reappeared at the back-door.
“As the soi-disant new manager, I had been able,
in the most ordinary course, to pump poor Ewbank
about anything and everything connected with the
working of the bank, especially in those twenty
last invaluable minutes before turning in. And I
had made a very natural point of asking him
where he kept, and would recommend me to keep,
the keys at night. Of course I thought he would
take them with him to his room; but no such thing;
he had a dodge worth two of that. What it was
doesn’t much matter, but no outsider would have
found those keys in a monthof Sundays.
“I, of course, had them in a few seconds, and in
a few more I was in the strong-room itself. I for-
got to say that the moon had risen and was letting
quite a lot of light into the bank. I had, however,
brought a bit of candle with me from my room;
and in the strong-room, which was down some
115


Le Premier Pas
shoot him with the revolver I had been new chum
enough to buy before leaving Melbourne, and make
a dash for that clump of trees and the doctor’s
mare. My mind was made up in an instant, and
I was at the top of the strong-room stairs, the
knocking still continuing, when a second sound
drove me back. It was the sound of bare feet
coming along a corridor.
“My narrow stair was stone, I tumbled down
it with little noise, and had only to push- open the
iron door, for I had left the keys in the safe. As
I did so I heard a handle turn overhead, and
thanked my gods that I had shut every single door
behind me. You see, old chap, one’s caution
doesn’t always let one in!
“ ‘Who’s that knocking?’ said Ewbank up
above.
“I could not make out the answer, but it sounded
to me like the irrelevant supplication of a spent
man. What I did hear, plainly, was the cocking
of the bank revolver before the bolts were shot
back. Then, a tottering step, a hard, short, shal-
low breathing, and Ewbank’s voice in horror—_—
“ ‘My God! Good Lord! What’s happened
to you? You’re bleeding like a pig!’
“ ‘Not now,’ came with a grateful sort of sigh.
“ ‘But you have been! What’s done it?’
117


The Amateur Cracksman
“ ‘Bushrangers.’
“ ‘Down the road?’
“ ‘This and Whittlesea—tied to tree—cock
shots—left me—bleed to death . . .’
The weak voice failed, and the bare feet
bolted. Now was my time—if the poor devil had
fainted. But I could not be sure, and there I
crouched down below in the dark, at the half-shut
iron door, not less spellbound than imprisoned. It
was just as well, for Ewbank wasn’t gone a minute.
“ ‘Drink this,’ I heard him say, and, when the
other spoke again, his voice was stronger.
“ ‘Now I begin to feel alive . . .’
“ ‘Don’t talk!’
“ ‘It does me good. You don’t know what it
was, all those miles alone, one an hour at the out-
side! I never thought I should come through.
You must let me tell you—in case I don’t !’
“ ‘Well, have another sip.’
“ ‘Thank you . . . I said bushrangers; of
course, there are no such things nowadays.’
“ ‘What were they, then?’
“ ‘Bank-thieves; the one that had the pot shots
was the very brute I drove out of the bank at
Coburg, with a bullet in him!’ ”
“I knew it !”
118


Le Premier Pas
“Of course you did, Bunny; so did I, down in
that strong-room; but old Ewbank didn’t, and I
thought he was never going to speak again.
“ ‘You’re delirious,’ he says at last. ‘Who in
blazes do you think you are ?’
“ ‘The new manager.’
“ ‘The new manager’s in bed and asleep
upstairs.’
“ ‘When did he arrive?’
“ ‘This evening.’
“ ‘Call himself Raflies?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Well, I’m damned!’ whispered the real man.
‘I thought it was just revenge, but now I see what
it was. My dear sir, the man upstairs is an im-
postor—if he’s upstairs still! He must be one of
the gang. He’s going to rob the bank—if he
hasn’t done so already!’
“ ‘If he hasn’t done so already,’ muttered Ew-
bank after him; ‘if he’s upstairs still! By God, if
he is, I’m sorry for him !’
“His tone was quiet enough, but about the nas-
tiest I ever heard. I tell you, Bunny, I was glad
I’d brought that revolver. It looked as though it
must be mine against his, muzzle to muzzle.
“ ‘Better have a look down here, first,’ said the
new manager.
119


The Amateur Cracksman
“ ‘While he gets through his window? No, no,
he’s not down here.’
“ ‘It’s easy to have a look.’
“Bunny, if you ask me what was the most thrill-
ing moment of my infamous career, I say it was
that moment. There I stood at the bottom of
those narrow stone stairs, inside the strong-room,
with the door a good foot open, and I didn’t know
whether it would creak or not. The light was
coming nearer—and I didn’t know! I had to
chance it. And it didn’t creak a bit; it was far
too solid and well-hung; and I couldn’t have
banged it if I tried, it was too heavy; and it fitted
so close that I felt and heard the air squeeze out
in my face. Every shred of light went out, except
the streak underneath, and it brightened. How I
blessed that door!
“ ‘No, he’s not down there,’ I heard, as though
through cotton-wool; then the streak went out too,
and in a few seconds I ventured to open once more,
and was in time to hear them creeping to my room.
“Well, now there was not a fifth of a second to
be lost; but I’m proud to say I came up those stairs
on my toes and fingers, and out of that bank
(they’d gone and left the door open) just as gin-
gerly as though my time had been my own. I
didn’t even forget to put on the hat that the doc-
120


The Amateur Cracksman
poor brute travel when I got among the trees!
Though we must have made it over fifty miles
from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail’s pace;
and those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up
to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt
her nose turned south. By Jove, it was no joke,
in and out among those trees, and under branches
with your face in the mane! I told you about the
forest of dead gums? It looked perfectly ghostly
in the moonlight. And I found it as still as I had
left it—so still that I pulled up there, my first halt,
and lay with my ear to the ground for two or three
minutes. But I heard nothing—not a thing but
the mare’s bellow and my own heart. I’m sorry,
Bunny; but if ever you write my memoirs, you
won’t have any diificulty in working up that chase.
Play those dead gum-trees for all they’re worth,
and let the bullets fly like hail. I’ll turn round in
my saddle to see Ewbank coming up hell-to-leather
in his white suit, and I’ll duly paint it red. Do it
in the third person, and they won’t know how it’s
going to end.”
“But I don’t know myself,” I complained.
“Did the mare carry you all the way back to
Melbourne ?”
“Every rod, pole or perch! I had her well seen
to at our hotel, and returned her to the doctor in
122


Le Premier Pas
the evening. He was tremendously tickled to hear
that I had been bushed; next morning he brought
me the paper to show me what I had escaped at
Yea!”
“Without suspecting anything?”
“Ah !” said Raflies, as he put out the gas; “that’s
a point on which I’ve never made up my mind.
The mare and her color was a coincidence—luckily
she was only a bay—and I fancied the condition
of the beast must have told a tale. The doctor’s
manner was certainly different. I’m inclined to
think he suspected something, though not the right
thing. I wasn’t expecting him, and I fear my
appearance may have increased his suspicions.”
I asked him why.
“I used to have rather a heavy moustache,” said
Rallies, “but I lost it the day after I lost my
innocence.”
123


Wilful Murder
F the various robberies in which we were
both concerned, it is but the few, I find, that
will bear telling at any length. Not that the others
contained details which even I would hesitate to
recount; it is, rather, the very absence of untoward
incident which renders them useless for my present
_ purpose. In point of fact our plans were so craftily
laid (by Raflies) that the chances of a hitch were
invariably reduced to a minimum before we went
to work. We might be disappointed in the market
value of our haul; but it was quite the exception for
us to find ourselves confronted by unforeseen‘
impediments, or involved in a really dramatic
dilemma. There was a sameness even in our spoil;
for, of course, only the most precious stones are
worth the trouble we took and the risks we ran. In
short, our most successful escapades would prove
the greatest weariness of all in narrative form; and
none more so than the dull alfair of the Ardagh
emeralds, some eight or nine weeks afier the Mil-
124


Wilful Murder
chester cricket week. The former, however, had
a sequel that I would rather forget than all our
burglaries put together.
It was the evening after our return from Ire-
land, and I was waiting at my rooms for Raflles,
who had gone off as usual to dispose of the plun-
der. Raflles had his own method of conducting
this very vital branch of our business, which I was
well content to leave entirely in his hands. He
drove the bargains, I believe, in a thin but subtle
disguise of the flashy-seedy order, and always in
the Cockney dialect, of which he had made him-
self a master. Moreover, he invariably employed
the same “fence,” who was ostensibly a money-
lender in a small (but yet notorious) way, and in
reality a rascal as remarkable as Raflles himself.
Only lately I also had been to the man, but in my
proper person. We had needed capital for the
getting of these very emeralds, and I had raised a
hundred pounds, on the terms you would expect,
from a soft-spoken graybeard with an ingratiating
smile, an incessant bow, and the shiftiest old eyes
that ever flew from rim to rim of a pair of specta-
cles. So the original sinews and the final spoils of
war came in this case from the self-same source——-
a circumstance which appealed to us both.
But these same final spoils I was still to see, and
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Wilful Murder
first idiotic act was to spill some whiskey and squirt
the soda-water all over in my anxiety to do instant
justice to the occasion.
“So you thought something had happened?”
said Raflles, leaning back in my chair as he lit a
cigarette, and looking much amused. “What
would you say if something had? Sit tight, my
dear chap! It was nothing of the slightest conse-
quence, and it’s all over now. A stern chase and
a long one, Bunny, but I think I’m well to wind-
ward this time.”
And suddenly_I saw that his collar was limp, his
hair matted, his boots thick with dust.
“The police?” I whispered aghast.
“Oh, dear, no; only old Baird.”
“Baird! But wasn’t it Baird who took the
emeralds?”
“It was.”
“Then how came he to chase you?”
“My dear fellow, I’ll tell you if you give me a
chance; it’s really nothing to get in the least excited
about. Old Baird has at last spotted that I’m not
quite the common cracksman I would have him
think me. So he’s been doing his best to run me
to my burrow.”
“And you call that nothing !”
“It would be something if he had succeeded;
127


The Amateur Cracksman
but he has still to do that. I admit, however, that
he made me sit up for the time being. It all comes
of going on the job so far from home. There was
the old brute with the whole thing in his morning
paper. He knew it must have been done by some
fellow who could pass himself off for a gentleman,
and I saw his eyebrows go up the moment I told
him I was the man, with the same old twang that
you could cut with a paper-knife. I did my best to
get out of it—-swore I had a pal who was a real
swell—but I saw very plainly that I had given
myself away. He gave up haggling. He paid
my price as though he enjoyed doing it. But I felt
him following me when I made tracks; though, of
course, I didn’t turn round to see.”
“Why not?”
“My dear Bunny, it’s the very worst thing you
can do. As long as you look unsuspecting they’ll
keep their distance, and so long as they keep their
distance you stand a chance. Once show that you
know you’re being followed, and it’s flight or fight
for all you’re worth. I never even looked round;
and mind you never do in the same hole. I just
hurried up to Blackfriars and booked for High
Street, Kensington, at the top of my voice; and as
the train was leaving Sloane Square out I hopped,
and up all those stairs like a lamplighter, and
128


The Amateur Cracksman
where he stood for a moment or two looking down
into the street.
“All right?” I asked him.
“All right,” said he; and we went downstairs
forthwith, and so to the Albany arm-in-arm.
But we were both rather silent on our way. I, for
my part, was wondering what Raflles would do
about the studio in Chelsea, whither, at all events,
he had been successfully dogged. To me the point
seemed one of immediate importance, but when I
mentioned it he said there was time enough to
think about that. His one other remark was made
after we had nodded (in Bond Street) to a young
blood of our acquaintance who happened to be
getting himself a bad name.
“Poor Jack Rutter!” said Raflies, with a sigh.
“Nothing’s sadder than to see a fellow going to
the bad like that. He’s about mad with drink and
debt, poor devil! Did you see his eye? Odd that
we should have met him to-night, by the way; it’s
old Baird who’s said to have skinned him. By
God, but I’d like to skin old Baird!”
And his tone took a sudden low fury, made the
more noticeable by another long silence, which
lasted, indeed, throughout an admirable dinner at
the club, and for some time after we had settled
down in a quiet corner of the smoking-room with
130


Wilful Murder
our coffee and cigars. Then at last I saw Raflies
looking at me with his lazy smile, and I knew that
the morose fit was at an end.
“I daresay you wonder what I’ve been thinking
about all this time?” said he. “I’ve been thinking
what rot it is to go doing things by halves !”
“Well,” said I, returning his smile, “that’s not
a charge that you can bring against yourself,
is it?”
“I’m not so sure,” said Raflies, blowing a medi-
tative pufl; “as a matter of fact, I was thinking
less of myself than of that poor devil of a Jack
Rutter. There’s a fellow who does things by
halves; he’s only half gone to the bad; and look
at the dillerence between him and us! He’s under
the thumb of'a villainous money-lender; we are
solvent citizens. He’s taken to drink; we’re as
sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning to
cut him; our dilliculty is to keep the pal from the
door. Enfin, he begs or borrows, which is stealing
by halves; and we steal outright and are done with
it. Obviously ours is the more honest course. Yet
I’m not sure, Bunny, but we’re doing the thing by
halves ourselves!” ,
“Why? What more could we do?” I exclaimed
in soft derision, looking round, however, to make
sure that we were not overheard.
131


The Amateur Cracksman
“What more,” said Ralfles. “Well, murder—
for one thing.”
“Rot !”
“A matter of opinion, my dear Bunny; I don’t
mean it for rot. I’ve told you before that the
biggest man alive is the man who’s committed a
murder, and not yet been found out; at least he
ought to be, but he so very seldom has the soul to
appreciate himself. Just think of it! Think of
coming in here and talking to the men, very likely
about the murder itself; and knowing you’ve done
it; and wondering how they’d look if they knew!
Oh, it would be great, simply great! But, besides
all that, when you were caught there’d be a merci-
ful and dramatic end of you. You’d fill the bill
for a few weeks, and then snulf out with a flourish
of extra-specials; you wouldn’t rust with a vile re-
pose for seven or fourteen years.”
“Good old Raflies!” I chuckled. “I begin to
forgive you for being in bad form at dinner.”
“But I was never more earnest in my life.”
“Go on !”
“I mean it.”
“You know very well that you wouldn’t commit
a murder, whatever else you might do.”
“I know very well I’m going to commit one
to-night !”
132


Wilful Murder
He had been leaning back in the saddle-bag
chair, watching me with keen eyes sheathed by
languid lids; now he started forward, and his eyes
leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard.
They struck home to my slow wits; their meaning
was no longer in doubt. I, who knew the man,
read murder in his clenched hands, and murder in
his locked lips, but a hundred murders in those
hard blue eyes.
“Baird?” I faltered, moistening my lips with
my tongue.
“Of course.”
“But you said it didn’t matter about the room
in Chelsea?”
“I told a lie.”
“Anyway you gave him the slip after-
wards!”
“That was another. I didn’t. I thought I had
when I came up to you this evening; but when I
looked out of your window—you remember? to
make assurance doubly sure—there he was on the
opposite pavement down below.”
“And you never said a word about it!”
“I wasn’t going to spoil your dinner, Bunny,
and I wasn’t going to let you spoil mine. But
there he was as large as life, and, of course, he
followed us to the Albany. A fine game for him
133


The Amateur Cracksman
to play, a game after his mean old heart: blackmail
from me, bribes from the police, the one bidding
against the other; but he sha’n’t play it with me,
he sha’n’t live to, and the world will have an extor-
tioner the less. Waiter! Two Scotch whiskeys
and sodas. I’m off at eleven, Bunny; it’s the only
thing to be done.”
“You know whefe he lives, then?”
“Yes, out Willesden way, and alone; the fel-
low’s a miser among other things. I long ago
found out all about him.”
Again I looked round the room; it was a young
man’s club, and young men were laughing, chat-
ting, smoking, drinking, on every hand. One
nodded to me through the smoke. Like a machine
I nodded to him, and turned back to Raflles with a
groan.
“Surely you will give him a chance!” I urged.
“The very sight of your pistol should bring him to
terms.”
“lt wouldn’t make him keep them.”
“But you might try the effect?”
“I probably shall. Here’s a drink for you,
Bunny. Wish me luck.”
“I’m coming too.”
“I don’t want you.”
“But I must come!”
134


Wilful Murder
An ugly gleam shot from the steel blue eyes.
“To interfere?” said Rallies.
“Not I.” 0
“You give me your word?”
“I do.”
“Bunny, if you break it ”
“You may shoot me, too!”
“I most certainly should,” said Raflies, solemnly.
“So you come at your own peril, my dear man; but,
if you are coming—well, the sooner the better, for
I must stop at my rooms on the way.”
Five minutes later I was waiting for him at the
Piccadilly entrance to the Albany. I had a reason
for remaining outside. It was the feeling—half
hope, half fear—that Angus Baird might still be
on our trail—that some more immediate and less
cold-blooded way of dealing with him might result
from a sudden encounter between the money-lender
and myself. I would not warn him of his danger;
but I would avert tragedy at all costs. And when
no such encounter had taken place, and Ralfles and
I were fairly on our way to Willesden, that, I
think, was still my honest resolve. I would not
break my word if I could help it, but it was a com-
fort to feel that I could break it if I liked, on an
understood penalty. Alas! I fear my good inten-
tions were tainted with a devouring curiosity, and
135


The Amateur Cracksman
overlaid by the fascination which goes hand in
hand with horror.
I have a poignant recollection of the hour it took
us to reach the house. We walked across St.
James’s Park (I can see the lights now, bright on
the bridge and blurred in the water), and we had
some minutes to wait for the last train to Willes-
den. It left at 1 1.2 1, I remember, and Raflles was
put out to find it did not go on to Kensal Rise.
We had to get out at Willesden Junction and walk
on through the streets into fairly open country that
happened to be quite new to me. I could never
find the house again. I remember, however, that
we were on a dark footpath between woods and
fields when the clocks began striking twelve.
“Surely,” said I, “we shall find him in bed and
asleep ?”
“I hope we do,” said Ralfles grimly.
“Then you mean to break in?”
“What else did you think?”
I had not thought about it at all; the ultimate
crime had monopolized my mind. Beside it burg-
lary was a bagatelle, but one to deprecate none the
less. I saw obvious objections: the man was au
fait with cracksmen and their ways: he would cer-
tainly have firearms, and might be the first to use
them.
136


The Amateur Cracksman
weight on the spikes and corks and covert-coat
when he gave the latter a tug.
“Coming after all?”
“Rather!”
“Take care, then; the place is all bell-wires and
springs. It’s no soft thing, this! There—stand
still while I take off the corks.”
The garden was very small and new, with a
grass-plot still in separate sods, but a quantity of
full-grown laurels stuck into the raw clay beds.
“Bells in themselves,” as Raflies whispered;
“there’s nothing else rustles so—cunning old
beast!” And we gave them a wide berth as we
crept across the grass.
“He’s gone to bed!”
“I don’t think so, Bunny. I believe he’s seen
7’
“Why?”
“I saw a light.”
“Where?”
“Downstairs, for an instant, when I
His whisper died away; he had seen the light
again; and so had I.
It lay like a golden rod under the front-door—
and vanished. It reappeared like a gold thread
under the lintel—-and vanished for good. We
heard the stairs creak, creak, and cease, also for
US
H
,A_s‘_._, _A_______i%1 ____ -.i__-___---._--.-_-—
.138


Wilful Murder
good. We neither saw nor heard any more,
though we stood waiting on the grass till our feet
were soaked with the dew.
“I’m going in,” said Raflies at last. “I don’t
believe he saw us at all. I wish he had. This
way.”
We trod gingerly on the path, but the gravel
stuck to our wet soles, and grated horribly in a little
tiled veranda with a glass door leading within.
It was through this glass that Rallies had first
seen the light; and he now proceeded to take out a
pane, with the diamond, the pot of treacle, and the
sheet of brown paper which were seldom omitted
from his impedimenta. Nor did he dispense with
my own assistance, though he may have accepted
it as instinctively as it was proffered. In any case
it was these fingers that helped to spread the treacle
on the brown paper, and pressed the latter to the
glass until the diamond had completed its circuit
and the pane fell gently back into our hands.
Raflies now inserted his hand, turned the key
in the lock, and, by making a long arm, succeeded
in drawing the bolt at the bottom of the door; it
proved to be the only one, and the door opened,
though not very wide.
“What’s that?” said Raflles, as something
crunched beneath his feet on the very threshold.
139


The Amateur Cracksman
but undisturbed; the second room was empty in
every sense; the third door was locked.
Raflies lit the landing gas.
“He’s in there,” said he, cocking his revolver.
“Do you remember how we used to break into the
studies at school? Here goes!”
His flat foot crashed over the keyhole, the lock
gave, the door flew open, and in the sudden draught
the landing gas heeled over like a cobble in a
squall; as the flame righted itself I saw a fixed bath,
two bath-towels knotted together—an open win-
dow—-a cowering figure—and Raflies struck aghast
on the threshold.
“J ack—Rutte1"?’ ’
The words came thick and slow with horror,
and in horror I heard myself repeating them,
while the cowering figure by the bathroom win-
dow rose gradually erect.
“It’s you !” he whispered, in amazement no less
than our own; “it’s you two! What’s it mean,
Raflles? I saw you get over the gate; a bell rang,
the place is full of them. Then you broke in.
What’s it all mean?”
“We may tell you that, when you tell us what
in God’s name you’ve done, Rutter!”
“Done? What have I done?” The unhappy
wretch came out into the light with bloodshot,
142


Wilful Murder
blinking eyes, and a bloody shirt-front. “You
know—you’ve seen—but I’ll tell you if you like.
I’ve killed a robber; that’s all. I’ve killed a rob-
ber, a usurer, a jackal, a blackmailer, the cleverest
and the cruellest villain unhung. I’m ready to
hang for him. I’d kill him again!”
And he looked us fiercely in the face, a fine de-
fiance in his dissipated eyes; his breast heaving,
his jaw like a rock.
“Shall I tell you how it happened?” he went pas-
sionately on. “He’s made my life a hell these
weeks and months past. You may know that. A
perfect hell! Well, to-night I met him in Bond
Street. Do you remember when I met you fel-
lows? He wasn’t twenty yards behind you; he was
on your tracks, Raflies; he saw me nod to you, and
stopped me and asked me who you were. He
seemed as keen as knives to know, I couldn’t think
why, and didn’t care either, for I saw my chance.
I said I’d tell him all about you if he’d give me a
private interview. He said he wouldn’t. I said
he should, and held him by the coat; by the time
I let him go you were out of sight, and I waited
where I was till he came back in despair. I had
the whip-hand of him then. I could dictate where
the interview should be, and I made him take me
home with him, still swearing to tell him all about
T43


The Amateur Cracksman
you when we’d had our talk. Well, when we got
here I made him give me something to eat, putting
him off and off; and about ten o’clock I heard the
gate shut. I waited a bit, and then asked him if he
lived alone.
“ ‘Not at all,’ says he; ‘did you not see the
servant?’
“I said I’d seen her, but I thought I’d heard
her go; if I was mistaken no doubt she would come
when she was called; and I yelled three times at
the top of my voice. Of course there was no serv-
ant to come. I knew that, because I came to see
him one night last week, and he interviewed me
himself through the gate, but wouldn’t open it.
Well, when I had done yelling, and not a soul had
come near us, he was as white as that ceiling.
Then I told him we could have our chat at last;
and I picked the poker out of the fender, and told
him how he’d robbed me,.but, by God, he shouldn’t
rob me any more. I gave him three minutes to
write and sign a settlement of all his iniquitous
i claims against me, or have his brains beaten out
over his own carpet. He thought a minute, and
then went to his desk for pen and paper. In two
seconds he was round like lightning with a re-
volver, and I went for him bald-headed. He fired
two or three times and missed; you can find the
144


Wilful Murder
holes if you like; but I hit him every time—my
God! I was like a savage till the thing was done.
And then I didn’t care. I went through his desk
looking for my own bills, and was coming away
when you turned up. I said I didn’t care, nor do
I; but I was going to give myself up to-night, and
shall still; so you see I sha’n’t give you fellows
much trouble!”
He was done; and there we stood on the landing
of the lonely house, the low, thick, eager voice
still racing and ringing through our ears; the dead
man below, and in front of us his impeniteht
slayer. I knew to whom the impenitence would
appeal when he had heard the story, and I was
not mistaken.
“That’s all rot,” said Raflles, speaking after a
pause; “we sha’n’t let you give yourself up.”
“You sha’n’t stop me! What would be the
good? The woman saw me; it would only be a
question of time; and I can’t face waiting to be
taken. Think of it: waiting for them to touch
you on the shoulder! No, no, no; I’ll give myself
up and get it over.”
His speech was changed; he faltered, floundered.
It was as though a clearer perception of his posi-
tion had come with the bare idea of escape from it.
“But listen to me,” urged Raflles; “We’re here
145


The Amateur Cracksman
at our peril ourselves. We broke in like thieves
to enforce redress for a grievance very like your
own. But don’t you see? We took out a pane—
did the thing like regular burglars. Regular burg-
lars will get the credit of all the rest!”
“You mean that I sha’n’t be suspected?”
“I do.”
“But I don’t want to get olf scotfree,” cried
Rutter hysterically. “I’ve killed him. I know
that. But it was in self-defence; it wasn’t mur-
der. I must own up and take the consequences.
I shall go mad if I don’t !”
His hands twitched; his lips quivered; the tears
were in his eyes. Raflies took him roughly by the
shoulder.
“Look here, you fool! If the three of us were
caught here now, do you know what those conse-
quences would be? We should swing in a row at
N ewgate in six weeks’ time! You talk as though
we were sitting in a club; don’t you know it’s one
o’clock in the morning, and the lights on, and a
dead man down below? For God’s sake pull
yourself together, and do what I tell you, or you’re
a dead man yourself.”
“I wish I was one!” Rutter sobbed. “I wish
I had his revolver to blow my own brains out.
It’s lying under him. O my God, my God!”
146


Wilful Murder
His knees knocked together: the frenzy of re-
action was at its height. We had to take him
downstairs between us, and so through the front
door out into the open air.
All was still outside—all but the smothered
weeping of the unstrung wretch upon our hands.
Raflles returned for a moment to the house; then
all was dark as well. The gate opened from
within; we closed it carefully behind us; and so
left the starlight shining on broken glass and pol-
ished spikes, one and all as we had found them.
We escaped; no need to dwell on our escape.
Our murderer seemed set upon the scaffold—
drunk with his deed, he was more trouble than six
men drunk with wine. Again and again we threat-
ened to leave him to his fate, to wash our hands
of him. But incredible and unmerited luck was
with the three of us. Not a soul did we meet be-
tween that and Willesden; and of those who saw
us later, did one think of the two young men with
crooked white ties, supporting a third in a seem-
ingly unmistakable condition, when the evening
papers apprised the town of a terrible tragedy!at
Kensal Rise?
We walked to Maida Vale, and thence drove
openly to my rooms. But I alone went upstairs;
the other two proceeded to the Albany, and I saw
I47


The Amateur Cracksman
no more of Ralfles for forty-eight hours. He was
not at his rooms when I called in the morning; he
had left no word. When he reappeared the papers
- were full of the murder; and the man who had
committed it was on the wide Atlantic, a steerage
passenger from Liverpool to New York.
“There was no arguing with him,” so Raflles
told me; “either he must make a clean breast of
it or flee the country. So I rigged him up at the
studio, and we took the first train to Liverpool.
Nothing would induce him to sit tight and enjoy
the situation as I should have endeavored to do
in his place; and it’s just as well! I went to his
diggings to destroy some papers, and what do you
think I found. The police in possession; there’s
a warrant out against him already! The idiots
think that window wasn’t genuine, and the war-
rant’s out. It won’t be my fault if it’s ever
served!”
Nor, after all these years, can I think it will be
mine.
148


The Amateur Cracksman
he chokes olf the million who answer an advertise-
ment every day—when they can raise the stamp.
My answer cost me five bob; but then I prepaid
another.”
“You don’t mean to say that you’ve applied?”
“Rather,” said Raflles. ,“I want two thousand
pounds as much as any man.”
“Put your own name?”
“Well—no, Bunny, I didn’t. In point of fact
I smell something interesting and illegal, and you
know what a cautious chap I am. I signed myself
Glasspool, care of Hickey, 38, Conduit Street;
that’s my tailor, and after sending the wire I went
round and told him what to_ expect. He promised
to send the reply along the moment it came. I
shouldn’t be surprised if that’s it!”
And he was gone before a double-knock on the
outer door had done ringing through the rooms,
to return next minute with an open telegram and
a face full of news.
“What do you think?” said he. “Security’s
that fellow Addenbrooke, the police-court lawyer,
and he wants to see me instanter!”
“Do you know him, then ?”
“Merely by repute. I only hope he doesn’t
know me. He’s the chap who got six weeks for
sailing too close to the wind in the Sutton-Wilmer
150


Nine Points of the Law
at all. Must you have his name too? I should
give him my real one, Bunny.”
Mr. Addenbrooke raised his eyebrows over the
card I found for him; then he drummed upon it
with his finger-nail, and his embarrassment ex-
pressed itself in a puzzled smile.
“The fact is, I find myself in a dilliculty,” he
confessed at last. “Yours is the first reply I have
received; people who can afford to send long tele-
grams don’t rush to the advertisements in the Daily
Telegraph; but, on the other hand, I was not quite
prepared to hear from men like yourselves. Can-
didly, and on consideration, I am not sure that you
are the stamp of men for me—men who belong to
good clubs! I rather intended to appeal to the—-
er—adventurous classes.”
“We are adventurers,” said Raflles gravely.
“But you respect the law?”
The black eyes gleamed shrewdly.
“We are not professional rogues, if that’s what
you mean,” said Raflles, smiling. “But on our
beam-ends we are; we would do a good deal for a (
thousand pounds apiece, eh, Bunny?”
“Anything,” I murmured.
The solicitor rapped his desk.
“I’ll tell you what I want you to do. You can
but refuse. It’s illegal, but it’s illegality in a good
- 1sa


Nine Points of the Law
pened; but first of all you must know, or you may
remember, that I appeared for young Debenham
in a little scrape he got into a year or two ago. I
got him off all right, and Sir Bernard paid me
handsomely on the nail. And no more did I hear
or see of either of them until one day last week.”
The lawyer drew his chair nearer ours, and leant
forward with a hand on either knee.
“On Tuesday of last week I had a telegram
from Sir Bernard; I was to go to him at once. I
found him waiting for me in the drive; without a
word he led me to the picture-gallery, which was
locked and darkened, drew up a blind, and stood
simply pointing to an empty picture-frame. It
was a long time before I could get a word out of
him. Then at last he told me that that frame had
contained one of the rarest and most valuable pic-
tures in England—in the world—an original
Velasquez. I have checked this,” said the lawyer,
“and it seems literally true; the picture was a por-
trait of the Infanta Maria Teresa, said to be one
of the artist’s greatest works, second only to an-
other portrait of one of the Popes in Rome—so
they told me at the National Gallery, where they
had its history by heart. They say there that the
picture is practically priceless. And young Deben-
ham has sold it for five thousand pounds !”
1ss


The Amateur Cracksman
“The deuce he has,” said Raflles.
I inquired who had bought it.
“A Queensland legislator of the name of Craggs
—the Hon. John Montagu Craggs, M.L.C., to
give him his full title. Not that we knew anything
about him on Tuesday last; we didn’t even know
for certain that young Debenham had stolen the
picture. But he had gone down for money on the
Monday evening, had been refused, and it was
plain enough that he had helped himself in this
way; he had threatened revenge, and this was it.
Indeed, when I hunted him up in town on the Tues-
day night, he confessed as much in the most brazen
manner imaginable. But he wouldn’t tell me who
was the purchaser, and finding out took the rest
of the week; but I did find out, and a nice time I’ve
had of it ever since! Backwards and forwards
between Esher and the Métropole, where the
Queenslander is staying, sometimes twice a day;
threats, offers, prayers, entreaties, not one of them
a bit of good!”
“But,” said Ralfles, “surely it’s a clear case?
The sale was illegal; you can pay him back his
money and force him to give the picture up.”
“Exactly; but not without an action and a pub-
lic scandal, and that my client declines to face.
He would rather lose even his picture than have
156


Nine Points of the Law
the whole thing get into the papers; he has dis-
owned his son, but he will not disgrace him; yet
his picture he must have by hook or crook, and
there’s the rub! I am to get it back by fair means
or foul. He gives me carte blanche in the matter,
and, I verily believe, would throw in a blank
check if asked. He oflered one to the Queens-
lander, but Craggs simply tore it in two; the
one old boy is as much a character as the
other, and between the two of them I’m at
my wits’ end.”
“So you put that advertisement in the paper?”
said Raflles, in the dry tones he had adopted
throughout the interview.
“As a last resort. I did.”
“And you wish us to steal this picture?”
It was magnificently said; the lawyer flushed
from his hair to his collar.
“I knew you were not the men!” he groaned.
“I never thought of men of your stamp! But it’s
not stealing,” he exclaimed heatedly; “it’s recover-
ing stolen property. Besides, Sir Bernard will
pay him his five thousand as soon as he has the pic-
ture; and, you’ll see, old Craggs will be just as
loath to let it come out as Sir Bernard himself.
No, no—it’s an enterprise, an adventure, if you
like—but not stealing.”
157


Nine Points of the Law
“Then I think it should be nothing if you fail.”
“Doubles or quits?” cried Raflies. “Well, that’s
sporting. Done!”
Addenbrooke opened his lips, half rose, then
sat back in his chair, and looked long and shrewdly
at Rallles—never once at me.
“I know your bowling,” said he refiectively. “I
go up to Lord’s whenever I want an hour’s real
rest, and I’ve seen you bowl again and again—yes,
and take the best wickets in England on a plumb
pitch. I don’t forget the last Gentleman and Play-
ers; I was there. You’re up to every trick—every
one . . . I’m inclined to think that if any-
body could bowl out this old Australian
Damme, I believe you’re my very man!”
The bargain was clinched at the Cafe Royal,
where Bennett Addenbrooke insisted on playing
host at an extravagant luncheon. I remember
that he took his whack of champagne with the
nervous freedom of a man at high pressure, and
have no doubt I kept him in countenance by an
equal indulgence; but Raflies, ever an exemplar
in such matters, was more abstemious even than »
his wont, and very poor company to boot. I can
see him now, his eyes in his plate—-thinking—-
thinking. I can see the solicitor glancing from
him to me in an apprehension of which I did my
159


The Amateur Cracksman
best to disabuse him by reassuring looks. At the
close Raflles apologized for his preoccupation,
called for an A.B.C. time-table, and announced his
intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher.
“You must excuse me, Mr. Addenbrooke,” said
he, “but I have my own idea, and for the moment
I should much prefer to keep it to myself. It may
end in fizzle, so I would rather not speak about it
to either of you just yet. But speak to Sir Ber-
nard I must, so will you write me one line to him
on your card? Of course, if you wish, you must
come down with me and hear what I say; but I
really don’t see much point in it.”
And as usual Raflles had his way, though Ben-
nett Addenbrooke showed some temper when he
was gone, and I myself shared his annoyance to no
small extent. I could only tell him that it was in
the nature of Raflles to be self-willed and secretive,
but that no man of my acquaintance had half his
audacity and determination; that I for my part
would trust him through and through, and let him
gang his own gait every time. More I dared not
say, even to remove those chill misgivings with
which I knew that the lawyer went his way.
That day I saw no more of Raflles, but a tele-
gram reached me when I was dressing for
dinner:
160



Raflies announced his intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher.





Nine Points of the Law
---| --1
“Be in your rooms to-morrow from noon and keep rest
of day clear, Rallies."
It had been sent oil from Waterloo at 6.4.2.
So Raflies was back in town; at an earlier stage
of our relations I should have hunted him up then
and there, but now I knew better. His telegram
meant that he had no desire for my society that
night or the following forenoon; that when he
wanted me I should see him soon enough.
And see him I did, towards one o’clock next day.
I was watching for him from my window in Mount
Street, when he drove up furiously in a hansom,
and jumped out without a word to the man. I met
him next minute at the lift gates, and he fairly
pushed me back into my rooms.
“Five minutes, Bunny!” he cried.
ment more.”
And he tore oil his coat before flinging himself
into the nearest chair.
“I’m fairly on the rush,” he panted; “having
the very devil of a time! Not a word till I tell
you all I’ve done. I settled my plan of campaign
yesterday at lunch. The first thing was to get in
with this man Craggs; you can’t break into a place
like the Métropole, it’s got to be done from the
inside. Problem one, how to get at the fellow.
“Not a mo-
161


The Amateur Cracksman
Only one sort of pretext would do—-it must be
something to do with this blessed picture, so that I
might see where he’d got it and all that. Well, I
couldn’t go and ask to see it out of curiosity, and
I couldn’t go as- a second representative of the other
old chap, and it was thinking how I could go that
made me such a bear at lunch. But I saw my way
before we got up. If I could only lay hold of a
copy of the picture I might ask leave to go and
compare it with the original. So down I went to
Esher to find out if there was a copy in existence,
and was at Broom Hall for one hour and a half
yesterday afternoon. There was no copy there,
but they must exist, for Sir Bernard himself
(there’s ‘copy’ there!) has allowed a couple to be
made since the picture has been in his possession.
He hunted up the painters’ addresses, and the rest
of the evening I spent in hunting up the painters
themselves; but their work had been done on com-
mission; one copy had gone out of the country,
and I’m still on the track of the other.”
“Then you haven’t seen Craggs yet?”
“Seen him and made friends with him, and if
possible he’s the funnier old cuss of the two; but
you should study ’em both. I took the bull by the
horns this morning, went in and lied like Ananias,
and it was just as well I did—the old ruflian sails
162


Nine Points of the Law
for Australia by to-morrow’s boat. I told him a
man wanted to sell me a copy of the celebrated
Infanta Maria Teresa of Velasquez, that I’d been
down to the supposed owner of the picture, only
to find that he had just sold it to him. You should
have seen his face when I told him that! He
grinned all round his wicked old head. ‘Did old
Debenham admit the sale?’ says he; and when I
said he had he chuckled to himself for about five
minutes. He was so pleased that he did just what
I hoped he would do; he showed me the great pic-
ture—luckily it isn’t by any means a large one—
also the case he’s got it in. It’s'an iron map-case
in which he brought over the plans of his land in
Brisbane; he wants to know who would suspect it
of containing an Old Master, too? But he’s had
it fitted with a new Chubb’s lock, and I managed
to take an interest in the key while he was gloating
over the canvas. I had the wax in the palm of my
hand, and I shall make my duplicate this after-
noon.”
Rallles looked at his watch and jumped up say-
ing he had given me a minute too much.
“By the way,” he added, “you’ve got to dine
with him at the Métropole to-night!”
‘CI ?,,
“Yes; don’t look so scared. Both of us are in-

163


Nine Points of the Law
“Not you, Bunny. I know you better than you
know yourself.”
He put on his coat and his hat.
“What time have I to be there ?” I asked him,
with a groan.
“Quarter to eight. There will be a telegram
from me saying I can’t turn up. He’s a terror to
talk, you’ll have no dilliculty in keeping the ball
rolling; but head him off his picture for all
you’re worth. If he olfers to show it to you,
say you must go. He locked up the case elabo-
rately this afternoon, and there’s no earthly
reason why he should unlock it again in this
hemisphere.”
“Where shall I find you when I get away ?”
“I shall be down at Esher. I hope to catch the
9-ss-”
“But surely I can see you again this after-
noon?” I cried in a ferment, for his hand was on
the door. “I’m not half coached up yet! I know I
shall make a mess of it!”
“Not you,” he said again, “but I shall if I waste
any more time. I’ve got a deuce of a lot of rushing
about to do yet. You won’t find me at my rooms.
Why not come down to Esher yourself by the last
train? That’s it—-down you come with the latest
news! I’ll tell old Debenham to expect you: he
165


The Amateur Cracksman
shall give us both a bed. By Jove! he won’t be
able to do us too well if he’s got his picture.”
“If !” I groaned as he nodded his adieu; and he
left me limp with apprehension, sick with fear, in a
perfectly pitiable condition of pure stage-fright.
For, after all, I had only to act my part; unless
Raflles failed where he never did fail, unless Raf-
fles the neat and noiseless was for once clumsy and
inept, all I had to do was indeed to “smile and
smile and be a villain.” I practised that smile half
the afternoon. I rehearsed putative parts in hypo-
thetical conversations. I got up stories. I dipped
in a book on Queensland at the club. And at last
it was 7.45, and I was making my bow to a some-
what elderly man with a small bald head and a
retreating brow.
“So you’re Mr. Raflles’s friend?” said he, over-
hauling me rather rudely with his light small eyes.
“Seen anything of him? Expected him early to
show me something, but he’s never come.”
3 No more, evidently, had his telegram, and my
troubles were beginning early. I said I had not
seen Raflles since one o’clock, telling the truth with
unction while I could; even as we spoke there came
a knock at the door; it was the telegram at last,
and, after reading it himself, the Queenslander
handed it to me.
166


Nine Points of the Law
“Called out of town!” he grumbled. “Sudden
illness of near relative! VVhat near relatives has
he got?” -
I knew of none, and for an instant I quailed be-
fore the perils of invention; then I replied that I
had never met any of his people, and again felt
fortified by my veracity.
“Thought you were bosom pals?” said he, with
(as I imagined) a gleam of suspicion in his crafty
little eyes.
“Only in town,” said I. “I’ve never been to his
place.”
“Well,” he growled, “I suppose it can’t be
helped. Don’t know why he couldn’t come and
have his dinner first. Like to see the death-
bed Pd go to without my dinner; it’s a full-skin
billet, if you ask me. Well, must just dine with-
out him, and he’ll have to buy his pig in a poke
after all. Mind touching that bell? Suppose you
know what he came to see me about? Sorry I
-l sha’n’t see him again, for his own sake. I liked
\Raflies—took to him amazingly. He’s a cynic.
Like cynics. One myself. Rank bad form of his
mother or his aunt, and I hope she will go and kick
the bucket.”
I connect these specimens of his conversation,
though they were doubtless detached at the time,
167


Nine Points of the Law
But later, to my horror, when the waiter had finally
withdrawn, Craggs himself sprang up and rushed
to his bedroom without a word. I sat like stone
till he returned.
“Thought I heard a door go,” he said. “Must
have been mistaken . . . imagination
gave me quite a turn. Raflles tell you priceless
treasure I got in there ?”
It was the picture at last; up to this point I had
kept him to Queensland and the making of his pile.
I tried to get him back there now, but in vain. He
was reminded of his great ill-gotten possession. I
said that Rallles had just mentioned it, and that set
him olf. With the confidential garrulity of a man
who has dined too well, he plunged into his darling
topic, and I looked past him at the clock. It was
only a quarter to ten.
In common decency I could not go yet. So
there I sat (we were still at port) and learnt what
had originally fired my host’s ambition to possess
what he was pleased to call a “real, genuine,
twin-screw, double-funnelled, copper-bottomed Old
Master”; it was to “go one better” than some rival
legislator of pictorial proclivities. But even an
epitome of his monologue would be so much weari-
ness; suflice it that it ended inevitably in the invi-
tation I had dreaded all the evening. ,
i 169


The Amateur Cracksman
key and soda-water became the order of the
hour. I scarcely touched it, but he drank co-
piously, and before eleven I left him incoherent.
And the last train for Esher was the 1 1.50 out of
Waterloo. '
I took a hansom to my rooms.
the hotel in thirteen minutes. I walked upstairs.
The corridor was empty; I stood an instant on the
sitting-room threshold, heard a snore within, and
admitted myself softly with my gentleman’s own
key, which it had been a very simple matter to take
away with me.
Craggs never moved; he was stretched on the
sofa fast asleep. But not fast enough for me. I
saturated my handkerchief with the chloroform
I had brought, and laid it gently over his mouth.
Two or three stertorous breaths, and the man was
a log.
I removed the handkerchief; I extracted the
keys from his pocket. In less than five minutes I
put them back, after winding the picture about my
body beneath my Inverness cape.
whiskey and soda-water before I went.
The train was easily caught—so easily that I
trembled for ten minutes in my first-class smoking
carriage—in terror of every footstep on the plat-
form, in unreasonable terror till the end. Then at
I was back at
~: :?-E¥.i£5~ -
I took some 
172


Nine Points of the Law
last I sat back and lit a cigarette, and the lights of
Waterloo reeled out behind.
Some men were returning from the theatre. I
can recall their conversation even now. They
were disappointed with the piece they had seen.
It was one of the later Savoy operas, and they
spoke wistfully of the days of “Pinafore” and
“Patience.” One of them hummed a stave, and
there was an argument as to whether the air was
out of “Patience” or the “Mikado.” They all got
out at Surbiton, and I was alone with my triumph
for a few intoxicating minutes. To think that I
had succeeded where Raflies had failed! Of all
our adventures this was the first in which I had
played a commanding part; and, of them all, this
was infinitely the least discreditable. It left me
without a conscientious qualm; I had but robbed a
robber, when all was said. And I had done it
myself, single-handed—ipse egomet!
I pictured Raflies, his surprise, his delight. He
would think a little more of me in future. And
that future, it should be different. We had two
thousand pounds apiece—surely enough to start
afresh as honest men—and all through me!
In a glow I sprang out at Esher, and took the
one belated cab that was waiting under the bridge.
In a perfect fever I beheld Broom Hall, with the
173


The Amateur Cracksman
lower story still lit up, and saw the front door
open as I climbed the steps.
“Thought it was you,” said Rallies cheerily.
“It’s all right. There’s a bed for you. Sir Ber-
nard’s sitting up to shake your hand.”
His good spirits disappointed me. But I knew
the man: he was one of those who wear their
brightest smile in the blackest hour. I knew him
too well by this time to be deceived.
“I’ve got it!” I cried in his ear. “I’ve got it!”
“Got what ?” he asked me, stepping back.
“The picture!”
“W hat?”
“The picture. He showed it me. You had to
go without it; I saw that. So I determined to have
it. And here it is.”
“Let’s see,” said Raflies grimly.
I threw off my cape and unwound the canvas
from about my body. While I was doing so an
untidy old gentleman made his appearance in
the hall, and stood looking on with raised eye-
brows.
“Looks pretty fresh for an Old Master, doesn’t
she?” said Raffles.
His tone was strange. I could only suppose
that he was jealous of my success.
“So Craggs said. I hardly looked at it myself.”
174


Nine Points of the Law
“Well, look now—look closely. By Jove, I
must have faked her better than I thought!”
“It’s a copy!” I cried.
“It’s the copy,” he answered. “It’s the copy
I’ve been tearing all over the country to procure.
It’s the copy I faked back and front, so that, on
your own showing, it imposed upon Craggs, and
might have made him happy for life. And you go
and rob him of that!”
I could not speak.
“How did you manage it?” inquired Sir Ber-
nard Debenham.
“Have you killed him?” asked Raflies sar-
donically.
I did not look at him; I turned to Sir Bernard
Debenham, and to him I told my story, hoarsely,
excitedly, for it was all that I could do to keep
from breaking down. But as I spoke I became
calmer, and I finished in mere bitterness, with the
remark that another time Raflles might tell me
what he meant to do.
“Another time!” he cried instantly. “My dear
Bunny, you speak as though we were going to turn -
burglars for a living!”
“I trust you won’t,” said Sir Bernard, smiling,
“for you are certainly two very daring young men.
Let us hope our friend from Queensland will do


175


The Amateur Cracksman
as he said, and not open his map-case till he gets
back there. He will find my check awaiting him,
and I shall be very much surprised if he troubles
any of us again.”
Raflles and I did not speak till I was in the room
which had been prepared for me. Nor was I
anxious to do so then. But he followed me and
took my hand.
“Bunny,” said he, “don’t you be hard on a fel-
low! I was in the deuce of a hurry, and didn’t know
that I should ever get what I wanted in time, and
that’s a fact. But it serves me right that you should
have gone and undone one of the best things I ever
did. As for your handiwork, old chap, you won’t
mind my saying that I didn’t think you had it in
you. In future ”
“Don’t talk to me about the future!” I cried.
“I hate the whole thing! I’m going to chuck
it up!”
“So am I,” said Raflles, “when I’ve made my
pile.”

.- \_|~-
176




The Return Match
HAD turned into Piccadilly, one thick evening
in the following November, when my guilty
heart stood still at the sudden grip of a hand upon
my arm. I thought—I was always thinking—that
my inevitable hour was come at last. It was only
Raflles, however, who stood smiling at me through
the fog.
“Well met!” said he. “I’ve been looking for
you at the club.”
“I was just on my way there,” I returned, with
an attempt to hide my tremors. It was an inef-
fectual attempt, as I saw from his broader smile,
and by the indulgent shake of his head.
“Come up to my place instead,” said he. “I’ve
something amusing to tell you.”
I made excuses, for his tone foretold the kind of
amusement, and it was a kind against which I had
successfully set my face for months. I have stated
before, however, and I can but reiterate, that to
me, at all events, there was never anybody in the
world so irresistible as Raflles when his mind was
177


The Amateur Cracksman
made up. That we had both been independent of
crime since our little service to Sir Bernard Deben-
ham—that there had been no occasion for that
masterful mind to be made up in any such direction
for many a day—was the undeniable basis of a
longer spell of honesty than I had hitherto enjoyed
during the term of our mutual intimacy. Be sure
I would deny it if I could; the very thing I am to
tell you would discredit such a boast. I made my
excuses, as I have said. But his arm slid through
mine, with his little laugh of light-hearted mas-
tery. And even while I argued we were on his
staircase in the Albany.
His fire had fallen low. He poked and replen-
ished it after lighting the gas. As for me, I stood
by sullenly in my overcoat until he dragged it olf
my back.
“What a chap you are!” said Raflles, playfully.
“One would really think -I had proposed to crack
another crib this blessed night! Well, it isn’t that,
Bunny; so get into that chair, and take one of these
Sullivans and sit tight.”
He held the match to my cigarette; he brought
me a whiskey and soda. Then he went out into
the lobby, and, just as I was beginning to feel
happy, I heard a bolt shot home. It cost me an
elfort to remain in that chair; next momerlt he was
1 78


The Return Match
straddling another and gloating over my discom-
fiture across his folded arms.
“You remember Milchester, Bunny, old boy?”
His tone was as bland as mine was grim when I
answered that I did.
“We had a little match there that wasn’t down
on the card. Gentlemen and Players, if you
recollect?”
“I don’t forget it.”
“Seeing that you never got an innings, so to
speak, I thought you might. Well, the Gentlemen
scored pretty freely, but the Players were all
caught.”
“Poor devils!”
“Don’t be too sure. You remember the fellow
we saw in the inn? The florid, over-dressed chap
who I told you was one of the cleverest thieves in
town?”
“I remember him. Crawshay his name turned
out to be.”
“Well, it was certainly the name he was con-
victed under, so Crawshay let it be. You needn’t
waste any pity on him, old chap; he escaped from
Dartmoor yesterday afternoon.”
“Well done!”
Raflles smiled, but his eyebrows had gone up,
and his shoulders followed suit.
179


The Amateur Cracksman
“You are perfectly right; it was very well done
indeed. I wonder you didn’t see it in the paper.
In a dense fog on the moor yesterday good old
Crawshay made a bolt for it, and got away with»
out a scratch under heavy fire. All honor to him,
I agree; a fellow with that much grit deserves his
liberty. But Crawshay has a good deal more.
They hunted him all night long; couldn’t find him
for nuts; and that was all you missed in the morn-
ing papers.”
He unfolded a Pall Mall, which he had brought
in with him.
“But listen to this; here’s an account of the
escape, with just the addition which puts the thing
on a higher level. ‘The fugitive has been traced
to Totnes, where he appears to have committed a
peculiarly daring outrage in the early hours of this
morning. He is reported to have entered the lodg-
ings of the Rev. A. H. Ellingworth, curate of the
parish, who missed his clothes on rising at the usual
hour; later in the morning those of the convict
were discovered neatly folded at the bottom of a
drawer. Meanwhile Crawshay had made good
his second escape, though it is believed that
so distinctive a guise will lead to his recapture
during the day.’ What do you think of that,
Bunny?”
180


The Return Match
“He is certainly a sportsman,” said I, reaching
for the paper.
“He’s more,” said Raflles, “he’s an artist, and
I envy him. The curate, of all men! Beautiful—
beautiful! But that’s not all. I saw just now on
the board at the club that there’s been an outrage
on the line near Dawlish. Parson found insensible
in the six-foot way. Our friend again! The tele-
gram doesn’t say so, but it’s obvious; he’s simply
knocked some other fellow out, changed clothes
again, and come on gayly to town. Isn’t it great?
I do believe it’s the best thing of the kind that’s
ever been done!”
“But why should he come to town?”
In an instant the enthusiasm faded from Raf-
fies’s face; clearly I had reminded him of some
prime anxiety, forgotten in his impersonal joy over
the exploit of a fellow-criminal. He looked over
his shoulder towards the lobby before replying.
“I believe,” said he, “that the beggar’s on my
tracks!”
And as he spoke he was himself again—quietly
amused—cynically unperturbed—characteristically
enjoying the situation and my surprise.
“But look here, what do you mean?” said I.
“What does Crawshay know about you?”
“Not much; but he suspects.”
181


The Return Match
had left in darkness, with the inner door shut as
carefully as the outer one. I asked him what he
meant to do.
“Let him knock—if he gets so far. The porter
is to say I’m out of town; it will be true, too, in
another hour or so.”
“You’re going off to-night ?”
“By the 7.15 from Liverpool Street. I don’t
say much about my people, Bunny, but I have the
best of sisters married to a country parson in the
eastern counties. They always make me welcome,
and let me read the lessons for the sake of getting
me to church. I’m sorry you won’t be there to
hear me on Sunday, Bunny. I’ve figured out some
of my best schemes in that parish, and I know of
no better port in a storm. But I must pack.
I thought I’d just let you know where I was
going, and why, in case you cared to follow my
example.”
He flung the stump -of his cigarette into the fire,
stretched himself as he rose, and remained so long
in the inelegant attitude that my eyes mounted
from his body to his face; a second later they had
followed his eyes across the room, and I also was
on my legs. On the threshold of the folding doors
that divided bedroom and sitting-room, a well-
built man stood in ill-fitting broadcloth, and bowed
183


The Amateur Cracksman
to us until his bullet head presented an unbroken
disk of short red hair.
Brief as was my survey of this astounding ap-
parition, the interval was long enough for Raflles
to recover his composure; his hands were in his
pockets, and a smile upon his face, when my eyes
flew back to him.
“Let me introduce you, Bunny,” said he, “to
our distinguished colleague, Mr. Reginald Craw-
shay.”
The bullet head bobbed up, and there was a
wrinkled brow above the coarse, shaven face, crim-
son also, I remember, from the grip of a collar
several sizes too small. But I noted nothing con-
sciously at the time. I had jumped to my own
conclusion, and I turned on Raflles with an oath.
“It’s a trick!” I cried. “It’s another of your
cursed tricks! You got him here, and then you
got me. You want me to join you, I suppose? I’ll
see you damned!”
So cold was the stare which met this outburst
that I became ashamed of my words while they
were yet upon my lips.
“Really, Bunny!” said Raflles, and turned his
shoulder with a shrug.
“Lord love yer,” cried Crawshay, “’e knew
nothin’. ’E didn’t expect me; ’e’s all right. And
184


The Return Match
you’re the cool canary, you are,” he went on to
Raflles. “I knoo you were, but, do me proud,
you’re one after my own kidney!” And he thrust
out a shaggy hand.
“After that,” said Raflies, taking it, “what am
Irto say? But you must have heard my opinion
of you. I am proud to make your acquaintance.
How the deuce did you get in?”
“Never you mind,” said Crawshay, loosening
his collar; “let’s talk about how I’m to get out.
Lord love yer, but that’s better!” There was a
livid ring round his bull-neck, that he fingered ten-
derly. “Didn’t know how much longer I might
have to play the gent,” he explained; “didn’t know
who you’d bring in.”
“Drink whiskey and soda?” inquired Rallies,
when the convict was in the chair from which I
had leapt.
“No, I drink it neat,” replied Crawshay, “but
I talk business first. You don’t get over me like
that, Lor’ love yer!”
“Well, then, what can I do for you?”
“You know without me tellin’ you.”
“Give it a name.”
“Clean heels, then; that’s what I want to show,
and I leaves the way to you. We’re brothers in
arms, though I ain’t armed this time. It ain’t
185


The Amateur Cracksman
necessary. You’ve too much sense. But brothers
we are, and you’ll see a brother through. Let’s
put it at that. You’ll see me through in yer own
way. I leaves it all to you.”
His tone was rich with conciliation and con-
cession; he bent over and tore a pair of button
boots from his bare feet, which he stretched to-
wards the fire, painfully uncurling his toes.
“I hope you take a larger size than them,” said
he. “I’d have had a see if you’d given me time.
I wasn’t in long afore you.”
“And you won’t tell me how you got in?”
“Wot’s the use? I can’t teach you nothin’.
Besides, I want out. I want out of London, an’
England, an’ bloomin’ Europe too. That’s all I
want of you, mister. I don’t arst how you go on
the job. You know w’ere I come from, ’cos I
’eard you say; you know w’ere I want to ’ead for,
’cos I’ve just told yer; the details I leaves entirely
to you.”
“Well,” said Ralfles, “we must see what can be
done."
“We must,” said Mr. Crawshay, and leaned
back comfortably, and began twirling his stubby
thumbs.
Raflles turned to me with a twinkle in his eye;
but his forehead was scored with thought, and re-
3: _;= .~i—-_ —--- — — —
186


The Return Match
solve mingled with resignation in the lines of his
mouth. And he spoke exactly as though he and I
were alone in the room.
“You seize the situation, Bunny? If our friend
here is ‘copped,’ to speak his language, he means
to ‘blow the gall’ on you and me. He is consider-
ate enough not to say so in so many words, but
it’s plain enough, and natural enough for that mat-
ter. I would do the same in his place. We had
the bulge before; he has it now; it’s perfectly fair.
We must take on this job; we aren’t in a position
to refuse it; even if we were, I should take it on!
Our friend is a great sportsman; he has got clear
away from Dartmoor; it would be a thousand
pities to let him go back. Nor shall he; not if I
can think of a way of getting him abroad.”
“Any way you like,” murmured Crawshay,
with his eyes shut. “I leaves the ’ole thing to
you.” '
“But you’ll have to wake up and tell us things.”
“All right, mister; but I’m fair on the rocks
for a sleep!”
And he stood up, blinking.
“Think you were traced to town?”
“Must have been.”
“And here ?”
“Not in this fog—not with any luck.”
187


The Amateur Cracksman
Raflies went into the bedroom, lit the gas there,
and returned next minute.
“So you got in by the window ?”
“That’s about it.”
“It was devilish smart of you to know which
one; it beats me how you brought it olf in day-
light, fog or no fog! But let that pass. You don’t
think you were seen?”
“I don’t think it, sir.”
“Well, let’s hope you are right. I shall recon-
noitre and soon find out. And you’d better come
too, Bunny, and have something to eat and talk it
over.”
As Raflies looked at me, I looked at Crawshay,
anticipating trouble; and trouble brewed in his
blank, fierce face, in the glitter of his startled eyes,
in the sudden closing of his fists.
“And what’s to become o’ me?” he cried out
with an oath.
“You wait here.”
“N 0, you don’t,” he roared, and at a bound had
his back to the door. “You don’t get round me
like that, you cuckoos!”
Raflles turned to me with a twitch of the shoul-
ders.
“That’s the worst of these professors,” said he;
“they never will use their heads. They see the
188


The Return Match
pegs, and they mean to hit ’em; but that’s all they
do see and mean, and they think we’re the same.
N0 wonder we licked them last time!”
“Don’t talk through yer neck,” snarled the con-
vict. “Talk out straight, curse you !”
“Right,” said Raflies. “I’ll talk as straight as
you like. You say you put yourself in my hands—
you leave it all to me—yet you don’t trust me an
inch! I know what’s tolhappen if I fail. I accept
the risk. I take this thing on. Yet you think I’m
going straight out to give you away and make you
give me away in my turn. You’re a fool, Mr.
Crawshay, though you have broken Dartmoor;
you’ve got to listen to a better man, and obey him.
I see you through in my own way, or not at all.
I come and go as I like, and with whom I like,
without your interference; you stay here and lie
just as low as you know how, be as wise as your
word, and leave the whole thing to me. If you
won’t—if you’re fool enough not to trust me—
there’s the door. Go out and say what you like,
and be damned to you !”
Crawshay slapped his thigh.
“That’s talking!” said he. “Lord love yer, I
know where I am when you talk like that. I’ll
trust yer. I know a man when he get’s his tongue
between his teeth; you’re all right. I don’t say
189


The Amateur Cracksman
so much about this other gent, though I saw him
along with you on the job that time in the prov-
inces; but if he’s a pal of yours, Mr. Rallies, he’ll
be all right too. I only hope you gents ain’t too
stony ”
And he touched his pockets with a rueful
face.
“I only went for their togs,” said he. “You
never struck two such stony-broke cusses in yer
life!”
“That’s all right,” said Raflles. “We’ll see you
through properly. Leave it to us, and you sit
tight.”
“Rightum!” said Crawshay. “And I’ll have a
sleep time you’re gone. But no sperrits—no,
thank’ee—not yet! Once let me loose on the lush,
and, Lord love yer, I’m a gone coon !”
Raflles got his overcoat, a long, light driving-
coat, I remember, and even as he put it on our
fugitive was dozing in the chair; we left him mur-
muring incoherently, with the gas out, and his bare
feet toasting.
“Not such a bad chap, that professor,” said
Ralfles on the stairs; “a real genius in his way, too,
though his methods are a little elementary for my
taste. But technique isn’t everything; to get out
of Dartmoor and into the Albany in the same
51> ___
190


The Return Match
twenty-four hours is a whole that justifies its
parts. Good Lord!”
We had passed a man in the foggy courtyard,
and Raflies had nipped my arm.
“Who was it?”
“The last man we want to see ! I hope to heaven
he didn’t hear me!”
“But who is he, Raflles ?”
“Our old friend Mackenzie, from the Yard!”
I stood still with horror.
“Do you think he’s on Crawshay’s track?”
“I don’t know. I’ll find out.”
And before I could remonstrate he had wheeled
me round; when I found my voice he merely
laughed, and whispered that the bold course was
the safe one every time.
“But it’s madness
“Not it. Shut up! Is that you, Mr. Mac-
kenzie ?”
The detective turned about and scrutinized us
keenly; and through the gaslit mist I noticed that
his hair was grizzled at the temples, and his face
still cadaverous, from the wound that had nearly
been his death.
“Ye have the advantage o’ me, sirs,” said
he.
“I hope you’re fit again,’
H
’ said my companion.
191


, The Amateur Cracksman
“My name is Raflles, and we met at Milchester
last year.”
“Is that a fact?” cried the Scotchman, with
quite a start. “Yes, now I remember your face,
and yours too, sir. Ay, yon was a bad business,
but it ended vera well, an’ that’s the main
thing.”
His native caution had returned to him. Raf-
fles pinched my arm.
“Yes, it ended splendidly, but for you,” said he.
“But what about this escape of the leader of the
gang, that fellow Crawshay? What do you think
of that, eh?”
“I havena the parteeculars,” replied the Scot.
“Good!” cried Raflles. “I was only afraid you
might be on his tracks once more!”
Mackenzie shook his head with a dry smile,
and wished us good evening as an invisible window
was thrown up, and a whistle blown softly through
the fog.
“We must see this out,” whispered Raflies.
“Nothing more natural than a little curiosity on
our part. After him, quick!”
And we followed the detective into another
entrance on the same side as that from which we
had emerged, the left-hand side on one’s way to
Piccadilly; quite openly we followed him, and at
192


The Return Match
I-Ellie,
the foot of the stairs met one of the porters of the
place. Raflies asked him what was wrong.
“Nothing, sir,” said the fellow glibly.
“Rot!” said Raflles. “That was Mackenzie,
the detective. I’ve just been speaking to him.
What’s he here for? Come on, my good fellow;
we won’t give you away, if you’ve instructions not
to tell.”
The man looked quaintly wistful, the tempta-
tion of an audience hot upon him; a door shut up-
stairs, and he fell.
“It’s like this,” he whispered. “This afternoon
a gen’leman comes arfter rooms, and I sent him to
the orfice; one of the clurks, ’e goes round with
’im an’ shows ’im the empties, an’ the gen’leman’s
partic’ly struck on the set the coppers is up in now.
So he sends the clurk to fetch the manager, as
there was one or two things he wished to speak
about; an’ when they come back, blowed if the gent
isn’t gone! Beg yer pardon, sir, but he’s clean
disappeared ofl the face 0’ the premises!” And
the porter looked at us with shining eyes.
“Well?” said Rallies.
“Well, sir, they looked about, an’ looked about,
an’ at larst they give him up for a bad job; thought
he’d changed his mind an’ didn’t want to tip the
clurk; so they shut up the place an’ come away.
193


The Return Match
‘found a knot of oflicers stooping over the window-
ledge with a constable’s lantern. Mackenzie was
the first to stand upright, and he greeted us with
a glare.
“May I ask what you gentlemen want?”
said he.
“We want to lend a hand,” said Raflles briskly.
“We lent one once before, and it was my friend
here who took over from you the fellow who split
on all the rest, and held him tightly. Surely that
entitles him, at all events, to see any fun that’s
going? As for myself, well, it’s true I only helped
to carry you to the house; but for old acquaintance
I do hope, my dear Mr. Mackenzie, that you will
permit us to share such sport as there may be. I
myself can only stop a few minutes, in any
case.”
“Then ye’ll not see much,” growled the detec-
tive, “for he’s not up here. Constable, go you and
stand at the foot 0’ the stairs, and let no other body
come up on any conseederation; these gentlemen
may be able to help us after all.”
“That’s kind of you, Mackenzie!” cried Raflles i
warmly. “But what is it all? I questioned a por-
ter I met coming down, but could get nothing out
of him, except that somebody had been to see these
rooms and not since been seen himself.”
195


The Amateur Cracksman
“He’s a man we want,” said Mackenzie. “He’s
concealed himself somewhere about these prem-
ises, or I’m vera much mistaken. D’ye reside in
the Albany, Mr. Rallles ?”
“I do.”
“VVill your rooms be near these?”
“On the next staircase but one.”
“Ye’ll just have left them?”
“Just.”
“Been in all the afternoon, likely ?”
“Not all.”
“Then I may have to search your rooms, sir. I
am prepared to search every room in the Albany!
Our man seems to have gone for the leads; but
unless he’s left more marks outside than in, or we
find him up there, I shall have the entire building
to ransack.”
“I will leave you my key,” said Raliles at once.
“I am dining out, but I’ll leave it with the officer
down below.”
I caught my breath in mute amazement. What
was the meaning of this insane promise? It was
wilful, gratuitous, suicidal; it made me catch at
his sleeve in open horror and disgust; but, with a
word of thanks, Mackenzie had returned to his
window-sill, and we sauntered unwatched through
the folding-doors into the adjoining room. Here
-ax “ _.-_-Z‘; -—--- -an _
196


The Amateur Cracksman
“Good-by, sir,” came in a preoccupied voice,
“and many thanks.”
Mackenzie was still busy at his window, and I
remained at mine, a prey to mingled fear and
wrath, for all my knowledge of Raflles and of his
infinite resource. By this time I felt that I knew
more or less what he would do in any given emer-
gency; at least I could conjecture a characteristic
course of equal cunning and audacity. He would
return to his rooms, put Crawshay on his guard,
and—stow him away? No——there were such
things as windows. Then why was Raflies going
to desert us all? I thought of many things—lastly
of a cab. These bedroom windows looked into a
narrow side-street; they were not very high; from
them a man might drop on to the roof of a cab—
even as it passed—and be driven away even
under the noses of the police! I pictured
Raflies driving that cab, unrecognizable in the
foggy night; the vision came to me as he passed
“under the window, tucking up the collar of his
great driving-coat on the way to his rooms; it was
still with me when he passed again on his way
back, and stopped to hand the constable his key.
“We’re on his track,” said a voice behind me.
“He’s got up on the leads, sure enough, though
how he managed it from yon window is a myst’ry
198


The Return Match
‘,4
to me. We’re going to lock up here and try what
like it is from the attics. So you’d better come with
us if you’ve a mind.”
The top floor at the Albany, as elsewhere, is de-
voted to the servants—a congeries of little kitchens
and cubicles, used by many as lumber-rooms—byt
Raflles among the many. The annex in this case
was, of course, empty as the rooms below; and that
was lucky, for we filled it, what with the manager,
who now joined us, and another tenant whom he
brought with him to Mackenzie’s undisguised
annoyance.
“Better let in all Piccadilly at a crown a head,”
said he. “Here, my man, out you go on the roof
to make one less, and have your truncheon handy.”
We crowded to the little window, which Mac-
kenzie took care to fill; and a minute yielded no
sound but the crunch and slither of constabulary
boots upon sooty slates. Then came a shout.
“What now ?” cried Mackenzie.
“A rope,” we heard, “hanging from the spout
by a hook!”
“Sirs,” purred Mackenzie, “yon’s how he got
up from below! He would do it with one o’ they
telescope sticks, an’ I never thocht o’t! How long
a rope, my lad?”
“Quite short. I’ve got it.”
199


The Return Match
“That’s all right. I wouldn’t have had him
miss it for worlds; and you mustn’t think me a
brute, old boy, for I fear that man, and, know,
we sink or swim together.”
“And now we sink or swim with Crawshay,
too,” said I dolefully.
“Not we!” said Raflles with conviction. “Old
Crawshay’s a true sportsman, and he’ll do by us
as we’ve done by him; besides, this makes us quits;
and I don’t think, Bunny, that we’ll take on the
professors again!”
203


The Gift of the Emperor
I
HEN the King of the Cannibal Islands
made faces at Queen Victoria, and a
European monarch set the cables tingling with
his compliments on the exploit, the indignation in
England was not less than the surprise, for the
thing was not so common as it has since become.
But when it transpired that a gift of peculiar sig-
nificance was to follow the congratulations, to give
them weight, the inference prevailed that the white
potentate and the black had taken simultaneous
leave of their fourteen senses. For the gift was a
pearl of price unparalleled, picked aforetime by
British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and
presented by British royalty to the sovereign who
seized this opportunity of restoring it to its origi-
nal possessor.
The incident would have been a godsend to the
Press a few weeks later. Even in Iune there were
leaders, letters, large headlines, leaded type; the
Daily Chronicle devoting half its literary page to
1 204


The Gift of the Emperor
a charming drawing of the island capital which the
new Pall Mall, in a leading article headed by a
pun, advised the Government to blow to liinders.
I was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill
at the time, and the topic of the hour goaded me
into satiric verse which obtained a better place
than anything I had yet turned out. I had let my
fiat in town, and taken inexpensive quarters at
Thames Ditton, on the plea of a disinterested pas-
sion for the river.
“First-rate, old boy!” said Rallies (who must
needs come and see me there), lying back in the
boat while I sculled and steered. “I suppose they
pay you pretty well for these, eh ?”
“Not a penny.”
“Nonsense, Bunny! I thought they paid so
well? Give them time, and you’ll get your
check.”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” said I gloomily. “I’ve got
to be content with the honor of getting in; the
editor wrote to say so, in so many words,” I added.
But I gave the gentleman his distinguished name.
“You don’t mean tp say you’ve written for pay-
ment already?”
No; it was the last thing I had intended to
admit. But I had done it. The murder was out;
there was no sense in further concealment. I had
205


The Gift of the Emperor
“A hundred, I believe; but ‘that wouldn’t scan.”
“A hundred thousand pounds!” said Raflles,
with his eyes shut. And again I made certain
what was coming, but again I was mistaken. “If
it’s worth all that,” he cried at last, “there would
be no getting rid of it at all; it’s not like a diamond
that you can subdivide. But I beg your pardon,
Bunny. I was forgetting!”
And we said no more about the emperor’s gift;
for pride thrives on an empty pocket, and no pri-
vation would have drawn from me the proposal
which I had expected Raflles to make. My ex-
pectation had been half a hope, though I only
knew it now. But neither did we touch again on
what Raflles professed to have forgotten—my
“apostasy,” my “lapse into virtue,” as he had been
pleased to call it. We were both a little silent,
a little constrained, each preoccupied with his own
thoughts. It was months since we had met, and,
as I saw him off towards eleven o’clock that Sun-
day night, I fancied it was for more months that
we were saying good-by.
But as we waited for the train I saw those clear
eyes peering at me under the station lamps,
and when I met their glance Raflles shook his
head.
“You don’t look well on it, Bunny,” said he.
207


The Amateur Cracksman
“I never did believe in this Thames Valley. You
want a change of air.”
I wished I might get it. '
“What you really want is a sea voyage.”
“And a winter at St. Moritz, or do you recom-
mend Cannes or Cairo? It’s all very well, A. J.,
but you forget what I told you about my
funds.”
“I forget nothing. I merely don’t want to hurt
your feelings. But, look here, a sea voyage you
shall have. I want a change myself, and you shall
come with me as my guest. We’ll spend July in
the Mediterranean.”
“But you’re playing cricket ”
“Hang the cricket!”
“Well, if I thought you meant it ”
“Of course I mean it. VVill you come?”
“Like a shot—if you go.”
And I shook his hand, and waved mine in fare-
well, with the perfectly good-humored conviction
that I should hear no more of the matter. It was
a passing thought, no more, no less. I soon
wished it were more; that week found me wishing
myself out of England for good and all. I was
making nothing. I could but subsist on the dif-
ference between the rent I paid for my flat and the
rent at which I had sublet it, furnished, for the




208


The Gift of the Emperor
season. And the season was near its end, and
creditors awaited me in town. Was it possible
to be entirely honest? I had run no bills when I
had money in my pocket, and the more downright
dishonesty seemed to me the less ignoble.
But from Raflles, of course, I heard nothing
more; a week went by, and half another week;
then, late on the second Wednesday night, I found
a telegram from him at my lodgings, after seek-
ing him vainly in town, and dining with despera-
tion at the solitary club to which I still belonged.
“Arrange to leave Waterloo by North German
Lloyd special,” he wired, “9.2 5 A. M. Monday
next will meet you Southampton aboard Uhlan
with tickets am writing.”
And write he did, a light-hearted letter enough,
but full of serious solicitude for me and for my
health and prospects; a letter almost touching in
the light of our past relations, in the twilight of
their complete rupture. He said that he had
booked two berths to Naples, that we were bound
for Capri, which was clearly the island of the
Lotos-eaters, that we would bask there together,
“and for a while forget.” It was a charming let-
ter. I had never seen Italy; the privilege of initia-
tion should be his. No mistake was greater than
to deem it an impossible country for the summer.
209


The Gift of the Emperor
heaviness. I had no ticket, nor the money to pay
for one. I did not even know the number of my
room. My heart was in my mouth as I waylaid a
steward and asked if a Mr. Raflles was on board.‘
Thank heaven—he was! But where? The man .
did not know, was plainly on some other errand,
and a-hunting I must go. But there was no sign
of him on the promenade deck, and none below
in the saloon; the smoking-room was empty but
for a little German with a red moustache twisted
into his eyes; nor was Raflles in his own cabin,
whither I inquired my way in desperation, but
where the sight of his own name on the baggage
was certainly a further reassurance. Why he him-
self kept in the background, however, I could not
conceive, and only sinister reasons would suggest
themselves in explanation.
“So there you are! I’ve been looking for you
all over the ship !”
Despite the graven prohibition, I had tried the
bridge as a last resort; and there, indeed, was A.
J. Rallies, seated on a skylight, and leaning over
one of the ofiicers’ long chairs, in which reclined
a girl in a white drill coat and skirt—a slip of a
girl with a pale skin, dark hair, and rather re-
markable eyes. So much I noted as he rose and
quickly turned; thereupon I could think of nothing
211


The Amateur Cracksman
but the swift grimace which preceded a start of
well-feigned astonishment.
“Why Bunny?" cried Raflies. “Where
have you sprung from?”
I stammered something as he pinched my hand.
“And are you coming in this ship? And to
Naples, too? Well, upon my word! Miss Wer-
ner, may I introduce him?”
And he did so without a blush, describing me
as an old schoolfellow whom he had not seen for
months, with wilful circumstance and gratuitous
detail that filled me at once with confusion, sus-
picion, and revolt. I felt myself blushing for us
both, and I did not care. My address utterly
deserted me, and I made no elfort to recover it,
to carry the thing off. All I would do was to mum-
ble such words as Raflles actually put into my
mouth, and that I doubt not with a thoroughly
evil grace.
“So you saw my name in the list of passengers
and came in search of me? Good old Bunny; I
say, though, I wish you’d share my cabin. I’ve
got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they
wouldn’t promise to keep me by myself. We ought
to see about it before they shove in some alien.
In any case we shall have to get out of this.”
For a quartermaster had entered the wheel-

212


The Gift of the Emperor
house, and even while we had been speaking the
pilot had taken possession of the bridge; as we de-
scended, the tender left us with flying handker-
chiefs and shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to
Miss Werner on the promenade deck, there came
a deep, slow throbbing under-foot, and our voy-
age had begun. _
It did not begin pleasantly between Ralfles and
me. On deck he had overborne my stubborn per-
plexity by dint of a forced though forceful jovial-
ity; in his cabin the gloves were oll.
“You idiot,” he snarled, “you’ve given me away
again!”
“How have I given you away?”
I ignored the separate insult in his last
word.
“How? I should have thought any clod could
see that I meant us to meet by chance!”
“After taking both tickets yourself?”
“They knew nothing about that on board;
besides, I hadn’t decided when I took the
tickets.”
“Then you should have let me know when you
did decide. You lay your plans, and never say a
word, and expect me to tumble to them by light
of nature. How was I to know you had any-
thing on?”
213


The Amateur Cracksman
I had turned the tables with some effect. Ralfles
almost hung his head.
“The fact is, Bunny, I didn’t mean you to know.
You-—-you’ve grown such a pious rabbit in your
old age!”
My nickname and his tone went far to mollify
me, other things went farther, but I had much to
forgive him still.
“If you were afraid of writing,” I pursued,
“it was your business to give me the tip the mo-
ment I set foot on board. I would have taken it
all right. I am not so virtuous as all that.”
Was it my imagination, or did Ralfles look
slightly ashamed? If so, it was for the first and
last time in all the years I knew him; nor can I
swear to it even now.
“That,” said he, “was the very thing I meant
to do—-to lie in wait in my room and get you as
you passed. Bu ”
“You were better engaged?”
“Say otherwise.”
“The charming Miss Werner?”
“She is quite charming.”
“Most Australian girls are,” said I.
“How did you know she was one?” he cried.
“I heard her speak.”
“Brute!” said Raflles, laughing; “she has no

214


The Gift of the Emperor
more twang than you have. Her people are Ger-
man, she has been to school in Dresden, and is on
her way out alone.”
“Money?” I inquired.
“Confound you!” he said, and, though he was
laughing, I thought it was a point at which the
subject might be changed.
“Well,” I said, “it wasn’t for Miss Werner
you wanted us to play strangers, was it? You
have some deeper game than that, eh ?”
“I suppose I have.”
“Then hadn’t you better tell me what it is?”
Rallles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny
that I knew so well; the very familiarity of it, after
all these months, set me smiling in a way that
might have reassured him; for dimly already I
divined his enterprise.
“It won’t send you oll in the pilot’s boat,
Bunny?”
“Not quite.”
“Then—you remember the pearl you wrote
the ,7
I did not wait for him to finish his sentence.
“You’ve got it!” I cried, my face on fire, for I
caught sight of it that moment in the stateroom
mirror.
Raflles seemed taken aback.

215


The Amateur Cracksman
“Not yet,” said he; “but I mean to have it be-
fore we get to Naples.”
“Is it on board?”
“Yes-7’
“But how—where—who’s got it?”
“A little German oliicer, a whipper-snapper
with perpendicular mustaches.”
“I saw him in the smoke-room.”
“That’s the chap; he’s always there. Herr
Captain Wilhelm von Heumann, if you look in
the list. Well, he’s the special envoy of the
emperor, and he’s taking the pearl out with
him.”
“You found this out in Bremen?”
“No, in Berlin, from a newspaper man I know
there. I’m ashamed to tell you, Bunny, that I
went there on purpose!”
I burst out laughing.
“You needn’t be ashamed. You are doing the
very thing I was rather hoping you were going
to propose the other day on the river.”
“You were hoping it?” said Raflles, with his
eyes wide open. Indeed, it was his turn to show
surprise, and mine to be much more ashamed than
I felt.
“Yes,” I answered, “I was quite keen on the
idea, but I wasn’t going to propose it.”
216


The Gift of fhe Emperor
“Yet you would have listened to me the other
day ?”
Certainly I would, and I told him so without
reserve; not brazenly, you understand; not even
now with the gusto of a man who savors such an
adventure for its own sake, but doggedly, defiantly,
through my teeth, as one who had tried to live
honestly and failed. And, while I was about it,
I told him much more. Eloquently enough, I dare-
say, I gave him chapter and verse of my hopeless
struggle, my inevitable defeat; for hopeless and
inevitable they were to a man with my record,
even though that record was written only in one’s
own soul. It was the old story of the thief trying
to turn honest man; the thing was against nature,
and there was an end of it.
Rallies entirely disagreed with me. He shook
his head over my conventional view. Human
nature was a board of checkers; why not reconcile
one’s self to alternate black and white? Why de-
sire to be all one thing or all the other, like our
forefathers on the stage or in the old-fashioned
fiction? For his part, he enjoyed himself on all
squares of the board, and liked the light the better
for the shade. My conclusion he considered
absurd.
“But you err in good company, Bunny, for all
217


The Amateur Cracksman
the cheap moralists who preach the same twaddle:
old Virgil was the first and worst offender of you
all. I back myself to climb out of Avernus any
day I like, and sooner or later I shall climb out for
good. I suppose I can’t very well turn myself into
a Limited Liability Company. But I could retire
and settle down and live blamelessly ever after.
I’m not sure that it couldn’t be done on this pearl
alone!”
“Then you don’t still think it too remarkable
to sell?”
“We might take a fishery and haul it up with
smaller fry. It would come after months of ill
luck, just as we were going to sell the schooner;
by Jove, it would be the talk of the Pacific!”
“Well, we’ve got to get it first. Is this von
What’s-his-name a formidable cuss?”
“More so than he looks; and he has the cheek
of the devil!”
As he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the
open state-room door, and I caught a glimpse of
an upturned moustache beyond.
“But is he the chap we have to deal with? Won’t
the pearl be in the purser’s keeping?”
Ralfles stood at the door, frowning out upon the
Solent, but for an instant he turned to me with a
snilf.
218


The Amateur Cracksman
With my scruples had fled all fear, and I was ready
to revel between bright skies and sparkling sea
with the light-hearted detachment of Rallies him-
self. It was Raflies himself who prevented me,
but not Raflles alone. It was Rallies and that
Colonial minx on her way home from school.
VVhat he could see in her—but that begs the
question. Of course he saw no more than I did,
but to annoy me, or perhaps to punish me for my
long defection, he must turn his back on me and
devote himself to this chit from Southampton to
the ‘Mediterranean. They were always together.
It was too absurd. After breakfast they would
begin, and go on until eleven or twelve at night;
there was no intervening hour at which you might
not hear her nasal laugh, or his quiet voice talking
soft nonsense into her ear. Of course it was non-
sense! Is it conceivable that a man like Raflles,
with his knowledge of the world, and his expe-
rience of women (a side of his character upon
which I have purposely never touched, for it de-
serves another volume) ; is it credible, I ask, that
such a man could find anything but nonsense to talk
by the day together to a giddy young schoolgirl?
I would not be unfair for the world. I think I
have admitted that the young person had points.
Her eyes, I suppose, were really fine, and certainly
22o


The Gift of the Emperor
the shape of the little brown face was charming,
so far as mere contour can charm. I admit also
more audacity than I cared about, with enviable
health, mettle, and vitality. I may not have occa-
sion to report any of this young lady’s speeches
(they would scarcely bear it), and am therefore
the more anxious to describe her without injustice.
I confess to some little prejudice against her. I
resented her success with Raflles, of whom, in con-
sequence, I saw less and less each day. It is a
mean thing'to have to confess, but there must
have been something not unlike jealousy rankling
within me.
Jealousy there was in another quarter—crude,
rampant, undignified jealousy. Captain von Heu-
mann would twirl his mustaches into twin spires,
shoot his white cufls over his rings, and stare at
me insolently through his rimless eyeglasses; we
ought to have consoled each other, but we never
exchanged a syllable. The captain had a murder-
ous scar across one of his cheeks, a present from
Heidelberg, and I used to think how he must long
to have Raflies there to serve the same. It was not
as though von Heumann never had his innings.
Raflies let him go in several times a day, for the
malicious pleasure of bowling him out as he was
“getting set”; those were his words when I taxed
221


The Amateur Cracksman
him disingenuously with obnoxious conduct to-
wards a German on a German boat.
“You’ll make yourself disliked on board!”
“By von Huemann merely.”
“But is that wise when he’s the man we’ve got
to diddle ?”
“The wisest thing I ever did. To have
chummed up with him would have been fatal—
the common dodge.”
I was consoled, encouraged, almost content. I
had feared Raflles was neglecting things, and I told
him so in a burst. Here we were near Gibraltar,
and not a word since the Solent. He shook his
head with a smile.
“Plenty of time, Bunny, plenty of time. We
can do nothing before we get to Genoa, and that
won’t be till Sunday night. The voyage is still
young, and so are we; let’s make the most of things
while we can.”
It was after dinner on the promenade deck, and
as Ralfles spoke he glanced sharply fore and aft,
leaving me next moment with a step full of pur-
pose. I retired to the smoking-room, to smoke
and read in a corner, and to watch von Huemann,
who very soon came to drink beer and to sulk in
another.
Few travellers tempt the Red Sea at midsummer;
222


The Amateur Cracksman
Raffles. “It’s the place where the deed’s got to be
done.”
“So you still mean to do it?”
“Did I ever say I didn’t?”
“You have said so little either way.”
“Advisedly so, my dear Bunny; why spoil a
pleasure trip by talking unnecessary shop? But
now the time has come. It must be done at Genoa
or not at all.”
“On land?”
“No, on board, to-morrow night. To-night
would do, but to-morrow is better, in case of mis-
hap. If we were forced to use violence we could
get away by the earliest train, and nothing be
known till the ship was sailing and von Heumann
found dead or drugged ”
“Not dead!” I exclaimed.
“Of course not,” assented Raflies, “or there
would be no need for us to bolt; but if we should
have to bolt, Tuesday morning is our time, when

- this ship has got to sailhwhatever happens. But
I don’t anticipate any violence. Violence is a con-
fession of terrible incompetence. In all these years
how many blows have you known me to strike?
Not one, I believe; but I have been quite ready to
kill my man every time, if the worst came to the
worst.”
224


The Amateur Cracksman
the time we turn in. A couple of ship’s boys do
sentry-go on these decks, and they shall be our
witnesses; by Jove, it’ll be the biggest mystery that
ever was made!” A
“If von Heumann doesn’t resist.”
“Resist! He won’t get the chance. He drinks
too much beer to sleep light, and nothing is so
easy as to chloroform a heavy sleeper; you’ve even
done it yourself on an occasion of which it’s per-
haps unfair to remind you. Von Heumann will be
past sensation almost as soon as I get my hand
through his ventilator. I shall crawl in over his
body, Bunny, my boy!”
“And I?”
You will hand me what I want and hold the
fort in case of accidents, and generally lend me the
moral support you’ve made me require. It’s a
luxury, Bunny, but I found it devilish dilficult to
do without it after you turned pi!”
He said that Von Heumann was certain to sleep
with a bolted door, which he, of course, would
leave unbolted, and spoke of other ways of laying
a false scent while rifling the cabin. Not that
Raflles anticipated a tiresome search. The pearl
would be about von Huemann’s person; in fact,
Ralfles knew exactly where and in what he kept it.
Naturally I asked how he could have come by
226


The Gift of the Emperor
such knowledge, and his answer led up to a mo-
mentary unpleasantness.
“It’s a very old story, Bunny. I really forget
in what Book it comes; I’m only sure of the Testa-
ment. But Samson was the unlucky hero, and one
Delilah the heroine.”
And he looked so knowing that I could not be
in a moment’s doubt as to his meaning.
“So the fair Australian has been playing Deli-
lah ?” said I.
“In a very harmless, innocent sort of way.”
“She got his mission out of him?”
“Yes, I’ve forced him to score all the points he
could, and that was his great stroke, as I hoped it
would be. He has even shown Amy the pearl.”
“Amy, eh! and she promptly told you?”
“Nothing of the kind. What makes you think
so? I had the greatest trouble in getting it out
of her.”
His tone should have been a sulficient warning
to me. I had not the tact to take it as such. At
last I knew the meaning of his furious flirtation,
and stood wagging my head and shaking my finger,
blinded to his frowns by my own enlightenment.
“Wily worm!” said I. “Now I see through it
all; how dense I’ve been!”
“Sure you’re not still?”
227


The Amateur Cracksman
to place the drenched wad first on his mustache,
and then to hold it between his gaping lips; there-
after the intruder had climbed both ways across his
shins without eliciting a groan.
And here was the prize—this pearl as large as a
filbert—with a pale pink tinge like a lady’s finger-
nail—this spoil of a filibustering age—this gift
from a European emperor to a South Sea chief.
We gloated over it when all was snug. We toasted
it in whiskey and soda-water laid in overnight in
view of the great moment. But the moment was
greater, more triumphant, than our most sanguine
dreams. All we had now to do was to secrete the
gem (which Raflfes had prised from its setting,
replacing the latter), so that we could stand the
strictest search and yet take it ashore with us at
Naples; and this Raflles was doing when I turned
in. I myself would have landed incontinently, that
night, at Genoa and bolted with the spoil; he would
not hear of it, for a dozen good reasons which will
be obvious.
‘ On the whole I do not think that anything was
discovered or suspected before we weighed anchor;
but I cannot be sure. It is difficult to believe that
a man could be chloroformed in his sleep and feel
no tell-tale elfects, sniff no suspicious odor, in the
morning. Nevertheless, von Heumann reappeared
230


The Gift of the Emperor
as though nothing had happened to him, his Ger-
man cap over his eyes and his mustaches brushing
the peak. And by ten o’clock we were quit of
Genoa; the last lean, blue-chinned oflicial had left
our decks; the last fruitseller had been beaten off
with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from
his boat; the last passenger had come aboard at
the last moment—a fussy graybeard who kept the
big ship waiting while he haggled with his boat-
man over half a lira. But at length we were
off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed,
and Raflles and I leaned together over the
rail, watching our shadows on the pale green,
liquid, veined marble that again washed the
vessel’s side.
Von Heumann was having his innings once
more; it was part of the design that he should re-
main in all day, and so postpone the inevitable
hour; and, though the lady looked bored, and was
for ever glancing in our direction, he seemed only
too willing to avail himself of his opportunities.
But Raflles was moody and ill-at-ease. He had
not the air of a successful man. I could but opine
that the impending parting at Naples sat heavily
on his spirit.
He would neither talk to me, nor would he let
me go.
231


The Amateur Cracksman
“Stop where you are, Bunny. I’ve things to tell
you. Can you swim ?”
“A bit.”
“Ten miles?”
“Ten?” I burst out laughing. “Not one! Why
do you ask?”
“VVe shall be within a ten miles’ swim of the
shore most of the day.”
“What on earth are you driving at, Raflies ?”
“Nothing; only I shall swim for it if the worst
comes to the worst. I suppose you can’t swim un-
der water at all?”
I did not answer his question. I scarcely heard
it: cold beads were bursting through my skin.
“Why should the worst come to the worst?” I
whispered. “We aren’t found out, are we?”
“No.”
“Then why speak as though we were ?”
“We may be; an old enemy of ours is on board.”
“An old enemy?”
“Mackenzie.”
“Never !”
“The man with the beard who came aboard
last.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure! I was only sorry to see you didn’t recog-
nize him too.”
232


The Gift of the Emperor
I took my handkerchief to my face; now that I
thought of it, there had been something familiar
in the old man’s gait, as well as something rather
youthful for his apparent years; his very beard
seemed unconvincing, now that I recalled it in the
light of this horrible revelation. I looked up and
down the deck, but the old man was nowhere to be
seen. ,
“That’s the worst of it,” said Raflies. “I saw
him go into the captain’s cabin twentyminutes ago.”
“But what can have brought him ?” I cried mis-
erably. “Can it be a coincidence-—is it somebody
else he’s after?”
Raflles shook his head.
“Hardly this time.”
“Then you think he’s after you?”
“I’ve been afraid of it for some weeks.”
“Yet there you stand!”
“VVhat_ am I to do? I don’t want to swim for it
before I must. I begin to wish I’d taken your
advice, Bunny, and left the ship at Genoa. But
I’ve not the smallest doubt that Mac was watching 1
both ship and station till the last moment. That’s
why he ran it so fine.” ’
He took a cigarette and handed me the case,
but I shook my head impatiently.
“I still don’t understand,” said I. “Why should
233


The Amateur Cracksman
he be after you? He couldn’t come all this way
about a jewel which was perfectly safe for all he
knew. What’s your own theory?”
“Simply that he’s been on my track for some
time, probably ever since friend Crawshay slipped
clean through his fingers last November. There
have been other indications. I am really not un-
prepared for this. But it can only be pure suspi-
cion. I’ll defy him to bring anything home, and
I’ll defy him to find the pearl! Theory, my dear
Bunny? I know how he’s got here as well as
though I’d been inside that Scotchman’s skin, and
I know what he’ll do next. He found out I’d gone
abroad, and looked for a motive; he found out
about von Heumann and his mission, and there was
his motive cut-and-dried. Great chance—to nab
me on a new job altogether. But he won’t do it,
Bunny; mark my words, he’ll search the ship and
search us all, when the loss is known; but he’ll
search in vain. And there’s the skipper beckoning
the whipper-snapper to his cabin: the fat will be
in the fire in five minutes!”
Yet there was no conflagration, no fuss, no
searching of the passengers, no whisper of what
had happened in the air; instead of a stir there was
portentous peace; and it was clear to me that Raf-
fles was not a little disturbed at the falsification of
234


The. Amateur Cracksman
but he would not so much as catch my eye. So at
last I gave it up. And I saw him next in the cap-
tain’s cabin.
They had summoned him first; he had gone in
smiling; and smiling I found him when they sum-
moned me. The state-room was spacious, as be-
fitted that of a commander. Mackenzie sat on the
settee, his beard in front of him on the polished
table; but a revolver lay in front of the captain;
and, when I had entered, the chief oliicer, who had
summoned me, shut the door and put his back to it.
Von Heumann completed the party, his fingers
busy with his mustache.
Raflies greeted me.
“This is a great joke!” he cried. “You remem-
ber the pearl you were so keen about, Bunny, the
emperor’s pearl, the pearl money wouldn’t buy?
It seems it was entrusted to our little friend here,
to take out to Canoodle Dum, and the poor little
chap’s gone and lost it; ergo, as we’re Britishers,
they think we’ve got it!”
“But I know ye have,” put in Mackenzie, nod-
ding to his beard.
“You will recognize that loyal and patriotic
voice,” said Raflies. “Mon, ’tis our auld acquaint-
ance Mackenzie, o’ Scoteland Yarrd an’ Scoteland
itsel’ !”
236


The Amateur Cracksman
bled in his breast pocket, and Raflles dived his hand
into his own. “Haud his wrist!” shouted the
Scotchman; and the huge Colt that had been with
us many a night, but had never been fired in my
hearing, clattered on the table and was raked in
by the captain.
“All right,” said Ralfles savagely to the mate.
“You can let go now. I won’t try it again. Now,
Mackenzie, let’s see your warrant!”
“Ye’ll no mishandle it?”
“What good would that do me? Let me see
it,” said Ralfies, peremptorily, and the detective
obeyed. Raflles raised his eyebrows as he perused
the document; his mouth hardened, but suddenly
relaxed; and it was with a smile and a shrug that
he returned the paper.
“Wull that do for ye?” inquired Mackenzie.
“It may. I congratulate you, Mackenzie; it’s a
strong hand, at any rate. Two burglaries and the
M elrose necklace, Bunny!” And he turned to me
with a rueful smile.
“An’ all easy to prove,” said the Scotchman,
pocketing the warrant. “I’ve one o’ these for
you,” he added, nodding to me, “only not such a
long one.”
“To think,” said the captain reproachfully,
“that my shib should be made a den of thiefs! It
238


The Gift of the Emperor
. shall be a very disagreeable madder, I have been
obliged to pud you both in irons until we get to
Nables.”
“Surely not!” exclaimed Raflles. “Mackenzie,
intercede with him; don’t give your countrymen
away before all hands! Captain, we can’t escape;
surely you could hush it up for the night? Look
here, here’s everything I have in my pockets; you
empty yours, too, Bunny, and they shall strip us
stark if they suspect we’ve weapons up our sleeves.
All I ask is that we are allowed to get out of this
without gyves upon our wrists!”
“Webbons you may not have,” said the captain;
“but wad aboud der bearl dat you were sdealing ?”
“You shall have it!” cried Raflles. “You shall
have it this minute if you guarantee no public in-
dignity on board!”
“That I’ll see to,” said Mackenzie, “as long as
you behave yourselves. There now, where is’t ?”
“On the table under your nose.”
My eyes fell with the rest, but no pearl was
there; only the contents of our pockets-—our
watches, pocket-books, pencils, penknives, cigar-
ette cases—lay on the shiny table along with the
revolvers already mentioned.
“Ye’re humbuggin’ us,” said Mackenzie.
“What’s the use?”
239


The Gift of the Emperor
“Captain, I’ve done a worse thing aboard your
ship than any of you know. I have become
engaged to be married, and I want to say
good-by!”
I suppose we were all equally amazed; but the
only one to express his amazement was von Heu-
mann, whose deep-chested German oath was almost
his first contribution to the proceedings. He was
not slow to follow it, however, with a vigorous
protest against the proposed farewell; but he was
overruled, and the masterful prisoner had his way.
He was to have five minutes with the girl, while
the captain and Mackenzie stood within range (but
not earshot), with their revolvers behind their
backs. As we were moving from the cabin, in a
body, he stopped and gripped my hand.
“S0 I’ve let you in at last, Bunny—at last and
after all! If you knew how sorry I am.
But you won’t get much—I don’t see why you
should get anything at all. Can you forgive me?
This may be for years, and it may be for ever, you
know! You were a good pal always when it came
to the scratch; some day or other you mayn’t be
so sorry to remember you were a good pal at the
last!”
There was a meaning in his eye that I under-
stood; and my teeth were set, and my nerve strung
241


The Amateur Cracksman
ready, as I wrung that strong and cunning hand
for the last time in my life.
How that last scene stays with me, and will stay
to my death! How I see every detail, every
shadow on the sunlit deck! We were among the
islands that dot the course from Genoa to Naples;
that was Elba falling back on our starboard quar-
ter, that purple patch with the hot sun setting over
it. The captain’s cabin opened to starboard, and
the starboard promenade deck, sheeted with sun-
shine and scored with shadow, was deserted, but
for the group of which I was one, and for the pale,
slim, brown figure further aft with Raflles. En-
gaged? I could not believe it, cannot to this day.
Yet there they stood together, and we did not hear
a word; there they stood out against the sunset, and
the long, dazzling highway of sunlit sea that
sparkled from Elba to the Uhlan's plates; and
their shadows reached almost to our feet.
Suddenly—an instant—and the thing was done
—a thing I have never known whether to admire
or to detest. He caught her—he kissed her before
us all—then flung her from him so that she almost
fell. It was that action which foretold the next.
The mate sprang after him, and I sprang after the
mate.
Raflies was on the rail, but only just.
242


The Gift of the Emperor
“Hold him, Bunny !” he cried. “Hold him
tight!”
And, as I obeyed that last behest with all my
might, without a thought of what I was doing,
save that he bade me do it, I saw his hands shoot
up and his head bob down, and his lithe, spare body
cut the sunset as cleanly and precisely as though he
had plunged at his leisure from a diver’s board!
* * * * * *
Of what followed on deck I can tell you nothing,
for I was not there. Nor can my final punishment,
my long imprisonment, my everlasting disgrace,
concern or profit you, beyond the interest and ad-
vantage to be gleaned from the knowledge that I
at least had my deserts. But one thing I must set
down, believe it who will—one more thing only
and I am done.
It was into a second-class cabin, on the starboard
side, that I was promptly thrust in irons, and the
door locked upon me as though I were another
Raflles. Meanwhile a boat was lowered, and the
sea scoured to no purpose, as is doubtless on record
elsewhere. But either the setting sun, flashing-
over the waves, must have blinded all eyes, or else
mine were victims of a strange illusion.
For the boat was back, the screw throbbing, and
the prisoner peering through his porthole across
243


The Amateur Cracksman
the sunlit waters that he believed had closed for
ever over his comrade’s head. Suddenly the sun
sank behind the Island of Elba, the lane of dancing
sunlight was instantaneously quenched and swal-
lowed in the trackless waste, and in the middle dis-
tance, already miles astern, either my sight de-
ceived me or a black speck bobbed amid the gray.
The bugle had blown for dinner: it may well be
that all save myself had ceased to strain an eye.
And now I lost what I had found, now it rose, now
sank, and now I gave it up utterly. Yet anon it
would rise again, a mere mote dancing in the dim
gray distance, drifting towards a purple island,
beneath a fading western sky, streaked with dead
gold and cerise. And night fell before I knew
whether it was a human head or not.
THE END
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