m 'g^ ill iili i kJ The Amateur Cracksman Books by Mr. Hornung THE SHADOW OF THE ROPE. $1.50. AT LARGE. $1.50. THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN. $1.25. RAFFLES. More Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman. Illustrated by F. C. YOHN. $1.50. PECCAVI. a Novel. $1.50. THE SHADOW OF A MAN. $1.25. DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES. A Novel. $1.25. SOME PERSONS UNKNOWN. $1.23. YOUNG BLOOD. $1.25. MY LORD DUKE. $1.25. THE ROGUE'S MARCH. A Romance. $1.50. THE BOSS OF TAROOMBA. [Ivory Series.] i6mo. $0.75. A BRIDE FROM THE BUSH, Uvary Series.'] i6mo. $0.75. IRRALIE'S BUSHRANGER. A Story OF Australian Adventure. [Ivory Series.} i6mo. $0.75. fi . . RAFFLES. The Amateur- Cracksman By E. W. Hornung Charles Scribner's Sons New York 1905 Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons /90b~ , TO A. c. a THIS FORM OF FLATTERY CONTENTS Pagt V}e Ides of March / A Costume Piece 43 Gentlemen and Players 77 Le Premier Pas . 7/5 Wilful Murder i47 Nine Points of the Law ^77 The Return Match 211 The Gift of the Emperor 242 LIST OF ILL US TR A TIONS Raffles Frontispiece Facing fage I saw them from my ozvn window . . .112 Raffles announced his intention of catch- the 5.2 to Esher 190 The Amateur Cracksman THE IDES OF MARCH T T was about half-past twelve when I re- turned to the Albany as a last desper- ate resort. The scene of my disaster was much as I had left it. The baccarat-count- ers still strewed the table, with the empty glasses and the loaded ash-trays. A win- dow had been opened to let the smoke out, and was letting in the fog instead. Raffles himself had merely discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumerable 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 I The Amateur Cracksman ceremony. 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 you single-handed. I was sorry myself that the others " We were face to face by his fireside, and I cut him short. " Raffles," said I, " you may well be sur- prised at my coming back in this way and at this hour. I hardly know you. I was never in your rooms before 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 Sulli- van and sit down." xA.nd he handed me his silver cigarette-case. " No," said I, finding a full voice as I shook my head; " no, I won't smoke, and I 2 The Ides of March 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'll be justi- fied in doing it! But it's no use beating about the bush. You know I dropped over two hundred just now? " He nodded. " I hadn't the money in my pocket." " I remember." " But I had my cheque-book, and I wrote each of you a cheque at that desk." "Well?" " Not one of them was w^orth the paper it was written on, Raffles. I am overdrawn already at my bank! " " Surely only for the moment? " " No. I have spent everything." " But somebody told me you w^ere so well off. I heard you had come in for money? " " So I did. Three years ago. It has been my curse; now it's all gone — every penny! 3 The Amateur Cracksman Yes, I've been a fool; there never was nor will be such a fool as I've been. . . . Isn't this enough for you? Why don't you turn me out?" He was walking up and down with a very long face instead. " Couldn't your people do anything? " he asked at length. " Thank God," I cried, " I have no peo- ple! I was an only child. I came in for everything there was. My one comfort is that they're gone, and will never know." I cast myself into a chair and hid my face. Raffles 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 fag- ging 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 off my debts," said I. " Then you have a flat somewhere? " he went on. 4 The Idts of March " 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 Raffles stood still, with raised eyebrows and stern eyes that I could meet the better now that he knew the w^orst; then, with a shrug, he resumed his walk, and for some minutes neither 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 coming 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 to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year, I had fatu- ously counted on his mercy, his sympathy, his help ! Yes, I had relied on him in my heart, for all my outward diffidence and hu- mility; and I was rightly served. There was as little of mercy as of sympathy in that curling nostril, that rigid jaw, that cold 5 file Amateur Cracksman blue eye which never glanced my way. I caught up my hat. I blundered to my feet. I would have gone without a word; but Raffles 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 whipped the pistol from my over- coat 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 6 The Ides of March I was, ruined, dishonoured, and now finally determined to make an end of my mis- spent life, my only surprise to this day is that I did not do so then and there. The despicable satisfaction of involving anothei in one's destruction added its miserable ap- peal to my baser egoism; and had fear or horror flown to my companion's face, I shudder to think I might have died dia- bolically 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, ad- miration, and such a measure of pleased expectancy as caused me after all to pocket my revolver with an oath. "You devil!" I said. "I beHeve you wanted me to do it! " " Not quite," was the reply, made with a little start, and a change of colour 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 stuff in you. Bunny! No, I'm hanged if I let you go now. And you'd better not try that game again, for you 7 The Amateur Cracksman won't catch me stand and look on a second time. We 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 suffered him to de- prive me of my weapon without a murmur. Nor was this simply because Rafifles had the subtle power of making himself irre- sistible 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 stagger- ing sense of safety. Raffles would help me after all! A. J. Raffles would be my friend! It was as though all the world had come round suddenly to my side; so far therefore from resisting his action, I caught and clasped his hand with a fervour as uncon- trollable as the frenzy which had pre- ceded it. " God bless you! " I cried. " Forgive me 8 The Ides of March for everything. I will tell you the truth. I did think you might help me in my extrem- ity, 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 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 nickname. His next words showed me my mistake. " What a boy it is for jumping to conclu- sions! I have my vices. Bunny, but back- ing and fUling is not one of them. Sit down, my good fellow, and have a cigarette to soothe your nerves. I insist. Whisky ? 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; suppose it didn't? We should only have made bad worse. No, my dear chap, you've plunged enough. Do 9 The Amateur Cracksman you put yourself in my hands or do you not? Very well, then you plunge no more, and I undertake not to present my cheque. Unfortunately there are the other men; and still more unfortunately, Bunny, I'm as hard up at this moment as you are yourself ! " It was my turn to stare at Raffles. "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, smiling. " And, with your own experience, do you think that because a fel- low 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 moment I'm as hard up as you ever were. I have nothing but my wits to live on — absolutely nothing else. It was as neces- sary for me to win some money this even- ing 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. Raffles," I said, " if you really mean that you won't give me away. Think of anything you like, lO The Ides of March 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 luxurious chairs with which his room was furnished. I see his indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, clean-shaven feat- ures ; his curly black hair ; his strong, un- scrupulous mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his Avonderful 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 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 II The Amateur Cracksman 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, with- out a word between 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 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 12 The Ides of March Tack of war-worn bats, a carved oak book- case, with every shelf in a Htter, filled the better part of one w^all ; and where I looked for cricketing groups, I found reproduc- tions of such works as " Love and Death " and " The Blessed Damozel," in dusty frames and different 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 aestheticism 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 re- ferred. 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 particular; and I have never heard it denied that in A. J. Raffles'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. 13 The Amateur Cracksman I alone knew it for a 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 igno- minious expulsion in the hey-day of his fame. Consummate daring and extraordi- nary nerve on his part, aided, doubtless, by some little presence of mind on mine, averted that untoward result; and no more need be said of a discreditable incident. But I cannot pretend to have forgotten it in throwing myself on this man's mercy in my desperation. And I was wbndering how much of his leniency was owfng to the fact that Raffles 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 rie;ht sort of little 14 The Ides of March 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 Hkely to be trusted by any- body 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 Raffles, nodding to him- self, as though in a: sent to some hidden train of thought; "exactly what I remem- ber 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 Raffles, smiling. 15 The Amateur Cracksman I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever, and for my part I was in no mood for reservations. "No, not even at that," I declared; " name your crime, and I'm your man." He looked at me one moment in won- der, and another moment in doubt; then turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and the little cynical laugh that v/as 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, 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, Raffles?" " The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock to-morrow morning is an hour of risk. Let one of those cheques get round to your own bank, and you and it are dishonoured together. No, we must i6 The Ides of March raise the wind to-night and reopen your ac- coimt first thing to-morrow. And I rather think I know where the wind can be raised." " At two o'clock in the morning? " " Yes." " 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." "Then I must; but I'm bound to say I don't Hke the idea, Raffles." " Do you prefer the alternative? " asked my companion, with a sneer. " No, hang it, that's unfair! " he cried apologetically in the same breath. " I quite understand. It's a beastly ordeal. But it would never do for you to stay outside. I tell you what, T7 The Amateur Cracksman you shall have a peg before we start — ^just one. There's the whisky, here's a syphon, and I'll be putting on an overcoat while you help yourself." Well, I daresay I did so with some free- dom, for this plan of his was not the less distasteful to me from its apparent inevi- tability. I must own, however, that it pos- sessed fewer terrors before my glass was empty. Meanwhile Raffles rejoined me, with a covert coat over his blazer, and a soft felt hat set carelessly on the curly head he shook with a smile as I passed him the decanter. " When we come back," said he. " Work first, play afterward. Do you see what day it is? " he added, tearing a leaflet from a Shakespearian calendar, as I drained my glass. " March 15th. ' The Ides of March, the Ides of March, remember.' Eh, Bunny, my boy? You won't forget them, will you? " And, with a laugh, he threw some coals on the fire before turning down the gas like a careful householder. So we went out together as the clock on the chimney-piece was striking two. 18 The Ides of March 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 flag- stones, and were ourselves favoured with a very hard stare from the constable of the beat, who, however, touched his helmet on recognising my companion. " You see, I'm known to the police," laughed Raffles 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 per- fect godsend to the criminal classes, espe- cially so late in their season. Here we are, ; though — and I'm hanged if the beggar isn't i 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. Raffles was gazing up at some win- dows across the road, windows barely dis- cernible through the mist, and without the glimmer of a light to throw them out. They 19 The Amateur Cracksman 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 en- tire " upper part," 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 Raffles. " 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. Outside, a meas- ured 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 whis- pered. " 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. Raffles drew a deep breath, and his singular grip of me slowly relaxed. 20 The Ides of March " 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. J. Raffles. Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader. And it was impossible not to follow one who led with such a zest. You might ques- tion, but you followed first. So now, when I heard him kick ofif his own shoes, I did the same, and was on the stairs at his heels before I realised what an extraordinary way was this of approaching a stranger for money in the dead of night. But obviously Raffles 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 nothing on the damp wall; those of my left trailed through a dust 21 The Amateur Cracksman that could be felt on the banisters. An eerie sensation had been upon me since we en- tered 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 Raffles holding up the match with one hand, and shading it with the other, be- tween 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 thres- hold, 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 22 The Ides of MarcTi 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'm afraid so. Bunny." ** Is there no one in the house, then? '* " No one but ourselves." " So it was mere chafT 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? " " The jeweller underneath." " What do you mean? " I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his meaning dawned upon me. " Are we to get the money from the jeweller? " " Well, not exactly." "What then?" *' The equivalent — from his shop." 23 The Amateur Cracksman There was no need for another question. I understood everything but my own den- sity. He had given me a dozen hints, and I had taken none. And there I stood star- ing at him, in that empty room; and there he stood with his dark lantern, laughing at me. " A burglar! " I gasped. " You— you! " " I told you I lived by my wits." " Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie?" I demanded, piqued to the quick for all my horror. " I wanted to tell you," said he. " I was on the point of telling you more than once. You may remember how I sounded you about crime, though you have probably for- gotten what you said yourself. I didn't think you meant it at the time, but I thought I'd put 3^ou to the test. Now I see you didn't, and I don't blame you. I only am to blame. Get out of it, my dear boy, as quick as you can; leave it to me. You won't give me away, whatever else you do! " Oh, his cleverness! His fiendish clever- ness! Had he fallen back on threats, co- 24 The Ides of March ercion, sneers, all might have been different 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 master'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 Rafifles. " 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 murm^ured, hold- ing the lantern for one moment to my face; the next he was explaining his plans, and I was nodding, as though we had been fel- low-cracksmen all our days. " I know the shop," he whispered, " be- cause 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 25 The Amateur Cracksman a cast of the key before using it. 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 window 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 remember, 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 flag-stones outside. RafHes darkened his lantern, and again we stood motionless till it had passed. **' Either a policeman," he muttered, " or a watchman that all these jewellers run be- tween them. The watchman's the man for 26 The Ides of March 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 steps, at the foot of which Raffles 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 considerably 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 similar door faced it across this area, and Raffles 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 Raffles stand- ing within and beckoning me with a jemmy. " Door number one," he whispered. " Deuce knows how many more there'll be, 27 The Amateur Cracksman 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 descended: the yard, or well, being the one part common 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. " I thought so," muttered Rafifles, hand- ing 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?" " No. 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 Raffles; and never in my life have I seen anything more de- liberately 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. 28 The Ides of March Raffles 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-cuffs — and went to work with brace-and-bit near the key-hole. But first he oiled the bit to mini- mise the noise, and this he did invariably before beginning a fresh hole, and often in the middle of one. It took thirty-two separate borings to cut round that lock. I noticed that through the first circular orifice Raffles thrust a forefinger; then, as the circle became 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. 29 The Amateur Cracksman " 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 baffled 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 common paraly- sis. 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. Raffles, with his black hair 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 Ides of March the lock wrertched out bodily, and a splen- did bare arm plunged up to the shoulder through the aperture, and through the bars of the iron gate beyond. " Now," whispered Raffles, " 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 selected from the bunch, and then back went his arm to the shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I heard the heart throb- bing 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 Raffles was sitting on an office table, wiping his face, with the lantern throwing a steady beam by his side. We were now in a bare and roomy lobby behind the shop, but separated therefrom toy an iron curtain, the very sight of which filled me with despair. Raffles, however, did not appear in the least depressed, but 31 The Amateur Cracksman hung up his coat and hat on some pegs in the lobby before examining this curtain with his lantern, " That's nothing," said he, after a min- ute's inspection; "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 jemmy. 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 responsibility 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 con- 32 The Ides of March science 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 fixt- ures had been left for the refusal of the incoming tenant, and fortunately for us they included Venetian blinds which were al- ready 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 anybody was approaching, and once when all was clear again. The noises that even I could hear below, with the ex- ception of one metallic crash at the begin- ning, 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 watch- man oftener still, during the better part of an hour that I spent at the window. 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 33 The Amateur Cracksman my signals had been studiously obeyed, and the man passed on in undisturbed 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 out- stretched 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 thou- sand pound's worth if I've got a penn'oth. It's all in my pockets. And here's some- thing else I found in this locker; very de- cent 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 in- sisted 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 burning all night long, and in their cold white rays ^4 The Ides of March I could at first see nothing amiss. I looked along an orderly lane, an empty glass coun- ter 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 Rafifles; 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 en- tirely to the shop window. This was in three compartments, each secured for the night by removable panels with separate locks. Raffles 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 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 to'.vel in the lavatory, a burnt match here 35 The Amateur Cracksman and there, and our finger-marks on the dusty banisters, not a trace of our visit did we leave. . -^-^^4^ " Had it in my head for long? " said Raffles, 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 possi- bilities of the place, but a second convinced 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 felony! He could hanker for his fireside like another ! Floodgates were loosed with- in me, and the plain EngUsh of our advent- 36 The Ides of March ure rushed over me as cold as ice. Raffles was a burglar. I had helped him to com- mit 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 ; brace- lets, pendants, aigrettes, necklaces; pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires; and diamonds always, diamonds in everything, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling me — blinding me — making me disbelieve because I could no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, indeed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket. And that struck a chord. I sup- pose I said something — my hand flew out. 37 The Amateur Cracksman I can see Raffles now, as he looked at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye. I can see him pick out the cartridges 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 con- fidence. 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 sen- sations 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 sup- pose 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 de- stroy the charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact, unless I'm cursedly hard up. 38 The Ides of March Did you hear about the Thimbleby dia- monds? 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." 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 in- credulity 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 Raffles. " It was in the Colonies, w-hen 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 any- thing more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I work 39 The Amateur Cracksman when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance, danger 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 pro- foundly 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! " " You wouldn't give me a hand another time?" " Don't ask me, Raffles. 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 unreasonable, 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 40 The Ides of March 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. " I'll do it again," I said, through my teeth. He shook his head. " Not you," he said, smiling quite gcod-humouredly on my in- sane enthusiasm. " I will," I cried with an oath. " I'll lend you a hand as often as you like! What 4J The Amaieur Cracksman 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 Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides of March. 42 A COSTUME PIECE, T ONDON was just then talking of one whose name is already a name and nothing more. Reuben Rosenthall had made his millions on the diamond fields of South Africa, and had come home to enjoy them according to his lights ; how he went to work will scarcely be forgotten by any read- er of the halfpenny evening papers, which revelled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and present prodigality, varied with interesting particulars of the extraor- dinary establishment which the millionaire set up in St. John's Wood. Here he kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were literally his> slaves ; and hence he would sally, with enor- mous diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any means the worst element in the Rosen- 43 The Amateur Cracksman thall menage. So said common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently established by the interference of the pohce on at least one occasion, followed by certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with jus- tifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid. And this was 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 organise a great dinner in honour of so wealthy an exponent of the club's principles. I was not at the banquet myself, but a member took Raffles, 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 him- self — 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 whisk- ers 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 44 A Costume Piece pounds. I'm only sorry you weren't there, too, Bunny, old chap." I began to be sorry myself, for Raffles was anything but an excitable person, and never had I seen him so excited before. Had he been following Rosenthall's exam- ple ? 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 knowl- edge of A. J. Raffles. " What did he say ? " I inquired mechan- ically, divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and wondering what on earth it could be. " Say? " cried Raffles. '' 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 mentioned names, too, with the most charming freedom, 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 45 The Amateur Cracksman 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 other 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 Jack Robinson he had whipped out a whack- ing great revolver ! " " Not at the table?" "At the table! In the middle of his speech! 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 46 A Costume Piece 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, Bun- ny, / was as keen as kniyes to see." And Raffles leant 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 horridly obvious, I admit. But — yes, I have set my heart upon them! To be quite frank. I have had them on my con- science 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 comes to brandishing a revolver and prac- tically challenging the world, the thing be- comes inevitable. It is simply thrust upon 47 The Amateur Cracksman 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 certainly could have af- forded 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 Raffles, 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 ofif, and could see no point in our running fresh risks be- fore we were obliged. On the other hand, I was anxious not to show the least dis- position to break the pledge that I had given a month ago. But it was not on my man- ifest disinclination that Raffles fastened. " Necessity, my dear Bunny ? Does the 48 A Costume Piece writer only write when the wolf is at the door? Does the painter paint for bread alone ? Must you and 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 abso- lutely 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 Raffles. " 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 49 The Amateur Cracksman sport, in going where they boast they're on their guard against you. The Bank of Eng- land, for example, is the ideal crib; but that would need half a dozen of us with years to give to the job; and meanwhile Reuben Rosenthall is high enough game for you and me. We know he's armed. We know how Billy 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 difficulties are nearly all on the sur- face. These fellows both drink like the devil, and that should simplify matters con- siderably. But v/e 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 between them. It will mean watch- A Costume Piece ing 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 ; 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 dia- mond all to yourself — if we're lucky." On the whole, however, this conversation left me less than lukewarm, and I still re- member the depression which came upon me when Raffles was gone. I saw the folly of the enterprise to which I had committed myself — the sheer, gratuitous, unnecessary folly of it. And the paradoxes in which Rafifles revelled, and the frivolous casuistry which was nevertheless half sincere, and which his mere personality rendered wholly 51 The Amateur Cracksman plausible at the moment of utterance, ap- pealed 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 infectious spirit on calm reflection. Yet the thought of withdrawal was not to be ea*:er- tained for a moment. On the contrary, I was impatient of the delay ordained vby Raffles ; and, perhaps, no small part of ray secret disaffection came of his galling de- termination to do without me until the last moment. It made it no better that this was charac- teristic of the man and of his attitude to- wards me. For a month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incom- plete. With all his charming frankness, there was in Raffles a vein of capricious re- serve which was perceptible enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make mysteries of matters of com- mon concern ; for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street 52 A Costume Piece jewels, on the proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of hun- dreds 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 noth- ing about it, but it rankled every day, and never more than in the week that succeeded the Rosenthall dinner. When I met Raffles 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 be- gan to ask questions he would say no more. Then and there, in my annoyance, I took my own decision. Since he would tell me nothing of the result of his vigils, I deter- mined to keep one on my own account, and 53 The Amateur Cracksman that very evening found my way to the mil- lionaire'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 thoroughfares, 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 million- aire 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 premises ; in fact, I was on the point of doing so, when I heard a quick, shuffling step on the pavement behind me. I turned round and faced the dark scowl and the dirty clenched fists of a dilapidated tramp. 5^ A Costume Piece " You fool f '• said he. " You utter idiot ! " " Raffles ! " " That's it," he whispered savagely ; " tell all the neighbourhood — give me away at the top of your voice I " With that he turned his back upon me, and shambled down the road, shrugging his shoulders and muttering to himself as though I had refused him alms. A few moments I stood astounded, indignant, at a loss ; then I followed him. His feet trailed, his knees gave, his back was bowed, his head kept nodding; it was the gait of a man eighty years of age. Presently he waited for me midway between two lamp-posts. As I came up he was lighting rank tobacco, in a cutty pipe, with an evil-smelling match, and the flame showed me the suspicion of a smile. " You must forgive my heat. Bunny, but it really was very foolish of you. Here am I trying every dodge — begging at the door one night — hiding in the shrubs the next — doing every mortal thing but stand and stare at the house as you went and did. It's a costume piece, and in you rush in your 55 The Amateur Cracksman ordinary clothes. I tell you they're on the look-out for us night and day. It's the toughest nut I ever tackled ! " " Well," said I, " if you had told me so before I shouldn't have come. You told me nothing." 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 v^^ith me when I've anything on. But here's an end of it, Bunny, so far as you're con- cerned. 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 off 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 56 A Costume Piece 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 unsuspected 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 Street we changed again, and were presently in the long lean artery of the King's Road. I was now all agog to know our destination, nor was I kept many more minutes in doubt. Rafifles got down. I followed. He crossed the road and disappeared up a dark turning. I pressed after him, and was in time to see his coat-tails as he plunged into a still dark- er flagged alley to the right. He was hold- ing himself up and stepping out like a young man once more; also, in some subtle way, he already looked less disreputable. But I alone was there to see him, the alley was absolutely deserted, and desperately dark. 57 The Amateur Cracksman At the further end he opened a door with a latch-key, and it was darker yet within. Instinctively I drew back and heard him chuckle. We could no longer see each other. " All right, Bunny ! There's no hanky- panky this time. These are studios, my friend, and I'm one of the lawful tenants." Indeed, in another minute we were in a lofty room with skylight, easels, dressing- cupboard, platform, and every other adjunct save the signs of actual labour. The first thing I saw, as Raffles lit the gas, was its reflection in his silk hat on the pegs beside the rest of his normal garments. "Looking for the works of art?" con- tinued Raffles, lighting a cigarette and be- ginning to divest 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 svove 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 ; 58 A Costume Piece and it's a very useful little picd-a-tcrre — there's no saying how useful it might be at a pinch. As it is, the billycock 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 dis- guises," said I, watching him as he cleansed the grime from his face and hands. " No, Bunny, I've treated you very shab- bily 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 circumstances 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 Raffles in the King's Road. So you will see that one might bolt further and fare worse." " Meanwhile you use the place as a dress- ing-room ? " " It's my private pavilion," said Raffles. " Disguises ? In some cases they're half the 59 The Amateur Cracksman 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 deal- ing 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 Raffles. " 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 rea- sons for being so confoundedly close. You must try to forgive me. I couldn't help 60 A Costume Piece remembering how well you played up last trip, without any time to weaken on it beforehand. All I want is for you to be as cool and smart to-morrow night as you were then ; though, by Jove, there's no com- parison between the two cases ! " " I thought you would find it so." " You were right. I have. Mind you, I don't say this will be the tougher job all round ; we shall probably get in without any difficulty at all; it's the getting out again that may flummox us. That's the worst of an irregular household ! " cried Raffles, with quite a burst of virtuous indignation. " I assure you, Bunny, I spent the whole of Monday night in the shrubbery of the gar- den next door, looking over the wall, and, if you'll believe me, somebody was about all night long! I don't mean the Kaffirs. I don't believe they ever get to bed at all — poor devils! No, I mean Rosenthall him- self, and that pasty-faced beast Purvis. They were up and drinking from midnight, when they came in, to broad daylight, when I cleared out. Even then I left them sober enough to slang each other, By the way, 6i The Amateur Cracksman they very nearly came to blows in the gar- den, within a few yards of me, and I heard something that might come in useful and make Rosenthall shoot crooked at a criti- cal moment. You know what an I. D. B. is?" "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 taunt- ing 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 fellows are out on the loose, and to lie low till they come back, and longer. If possible we must doctor the whisky. 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 Kaffirs about, however, it's ten to one on the whisky, and a hundred to one against us if we go look- ing for it. A brush with the heathen would 62 A Costume Pitce 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 raising Cain. I fear, I fear the clamour ! It would be fatal to us. Ati contraire, if we can manage to stow ourselves away un- beknowns, half the battle will be won. If Rosenthall turns in drunk, it's a purple dia- mond a-piece. If he sits up sober, it may be a bullet instead. We will hope not, Bun- ny; 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 Piccadilly — not by any means as much later as I could have wished. Raffles would not ask me to his rooms that night. He said he made it a rule to have a long i/ight 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 endless, sleepless night it gave me ; and the 63 The Amateur Cracksman roofs of the houses opposite standing out at last against the blue-grey London dawn. I wondered whether I should ever see an- other, 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 garden adjoining that of Reuben Rosenthall; the house itself was shut up, thanks to the outrageous libertine next door, who, by driving away the neighbours, had gone far towards delivering himself in- to our hands. Practically secure from sur- prise on that side, we could watch our house under cover of a wall just high enough to see over, while a fair margin of shrubs in either garden afforded us additional protec- tion. Thus entrenched, we had stood an hour, watching a pair of lighted bow-win- dows with vague shadows flitting continual- ly across the blinds, and listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices with- in. Our luck seemed to have deserted us : the owner of the purple diamonds was din- 64 A Costume Piece ing at home and dining at undue length. I thought it was a dinner-party. Raffles differed ; in the • end he proved right. Wheels grated in the drive, a carriage and pair stood at the steps; there w^as a stam- pede from the dining-room, and the loud voices died away, to burst forth presently from the porch. Let me make our position perfectly clear. We were over the wall, at the side of the house, but a few feet from the dining-room windows. On our right, one angle of the building cut the back lawn in two diagonal- ly; on our left, another angle just per- mitted us to see the jutting steps and the waiting carriage. We saw Rosenthall come out — saw the glimmer of his diamonds be- fore anything. Then came the pugilist; then a lady with a head of hair like a bath sponge; then another, and the party w^as complete. Raffles ducked and pulled me dovrn in great excitement. " The ladies are going with them," he whispered. "' This is great ! " " That's better still." 65 The Amateur Cracksman " The Gardenia ! " the millionaire had bawled. "And that's best of all," said Raffles, standing upright as hoofs and wheels crunched through the gates and rattled oft at a fine speed. "Now what?" I whispered, trembling with excitement. " 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 Raffles when he made no comment on what he could not fail to no- tice. His own hands were firm and cool as he adjusted my mask for me, and then his own. " By Jove, old boy," he whispered cheer- ily, " you look about the greatest ruffian I ever saw ! These masks alone will down a nigger, if we meet one. But I'm glad I re- membered to tell you not to shave. You'll pass for Whitechapel if the worst comes 66 A Costume Piece to the worst and you don't forget to talk the lingo. Better sulk like a mule if you're not 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 themselves for our ben- efit. I crept at my leader's heels to some French windows opening upon a shallow verandah. 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 67 The Amateur Cracksman 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 3'ou're a dead boy. I mean you, you greaser ! " he roared out at Raffles. " I know you. I've been waitin' for you. I've been zvatchin' 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 Raffles ; " don't excite. It's a fair cop. We don't sv/eat 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 Rosen- thall, 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 68 A Costume Piece round black muzzles, from the accursed dia- monds that had been our snare, the pasty pig-face of the over-fed pugiHst, 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 eye-balls, woolly pates. But a sudden silence recalled my attention to the millionaire. And only his nose re- tained its colour. " What d'ye mean ? " he whispered with a hoarse oath. " Spit it out, or, by Christ- mas, I'll drill you ! " " Whort price thet brikewater ? " drawled Raffles coolly. "Eh?" Rosenthall 's revolvers were describing widening orbits. " Whort price thet brikewater — old /. D. BJ" " Where in hell did you get hold o' that ? " asked Rosenthall, with a rattle in his thick neck, meant for mirth. " You may well arst," says Raffles. " It's all over the plice w'ere I come from." *' Who can have spread such rot ? " 69 The Amateur Cracksman " I dunno," says Raffles; " arst the gen'le- mzn on yer left; p'raps 'e knows." The gentleman on his left had turned livid with emotion. Guilty conscience nev- er declared itself in plainer terms. For a moment his small eyef bulged like currants in the suet of his face ; the next, he had pock- eted 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 h&d the burly pugilist obstructed his fire than Raffles was through the window at a bound ; while I, for standing still and saying noth- ing, was scientifically felled to the floor. I cannot have been many moments with- out my senses. Wlien 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 Kaffirs and nagging at each other. " Over that wall, I tell yer ! " " I tell you it was this one. Can't you -whistle for the police? " 70 A Costume Piece " 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 o' 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 up- on a Kaffir 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 teeth chat- tering 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 en- 71 The Amateur Cracksman tered, on encountering 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. Nevertheless, I hid myself in the wardrobe behind the mirror ; and there I stood shiver- ing and cursing my fate, my folly, and Raffles most of all— Raffles first and last— for I daresay half an hour. Then the ward- robe door was flung suddenly open; they had stolen into the room without a sound ; and I was hauled downstairs, an ignomin- ious captive. Gross scenes followed in the hall ; the la- dies were now upon the stage, and at sight of the desperate 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 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 de- scribe. I remember wondering how long it would be before the police appeared. Pur- 72 A Costume Piece vis and the ladies were for calling them in and giving me in charge without delay. Rosenthall 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 lan 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 warn- ing to others. Will you stand aside, or d'ye want it yourself ? " "You're drunk," said Purvis, still be- tween us. " I saw you take a neat tumbler- ful since you come in, and it's made you drunk as a fool. Pull yourself together, old man. You ain't a-going to do what you'll be sorry for." "Then I won't shoot at him, I'll only 73 The Amateur Cracksman 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 shoulder, mauve lightning came from his ring, a red flash from his revolver, and shrieks from the women as the reverbera- tions 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 police- man was in our midst. He had entered through the drawing-room window ; he was an ofificer of few words and creditable promptitude. In a twinkling he had the handcuffs on my wrists, while the pugilist explained the situation, and his patron re- viled the force and its representative wath 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 officer only deigned to notice him as he marched me ofl". 74 A Costume Piece ** We know all about you, sir," said he contemptuously, and he refused the sov- ereign Purvis proffered. " You will be see- ing me again, sir, at Marylebone." " Shall I come now ? " " 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 hun- dred yards. It must have been midnight. We did not meet a soul. At last I v.his- pered : " How on earth did you manage it ? " " Purely by luck," said Raffles. " 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 officer. I got them once for a fancy ball — ostensibly —and thereby hangs a yarn, I always 75 The Amateur Cracksman thought they might come in useful a sec- ond time. My chief crux to-night was get- ting 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 depart- ment 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 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 Jove, we're jolly lucky to have come out of it at all!" 7ft GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS /^LD Raffles may or may not have been ^"'^ an exceptional criminal, but as a cricketer I dare swear he was tmiqiie. Him- self a dangerous bat, a brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade, he took incredibly little interest 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 Raffles, " like everything else, is good enough sport until you dis- cover a better. As a source of excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison be- comes a bore. What's the satisfaction of 77 The Amateur Cracksman taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your xow cunning won't get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot's just the kind of mental exercise one wants. Yes, per- haps there's some affinity between the two things after all. But I'd chuck up cricket to-morrow, Bunny, if it wasn't for the glori- ous protection it affords a person of my proclivities." " How so? " said I. " It brings you be- fore 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 impunity you simply must have a parallel, ostensible career — the more pub- lic the better. The principle is obvious. Mr, Peace, of pious memory, disarmed sus- picion 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 78 Gentlemen and Players 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 fire- wood." Nevertheless, when he did play there was no keener performer on the field, nor one more anxious to do well for his side. I re- member how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead, while one man took £3 with a ball that spread- eagled the wicket. Raffles's practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns; but he had absolutely first-class bowling all the time ; and he made fifty-seven runs next day. It became my pleasure to accompany him to all his matches, to watch every ball he bowled, or played, or fielded, and to sit 79 The Amateur Cracksman chatting with him in the pavilion when he was doing none of these three things. You might have seen us there, side by side, dur- ing the greater part of the Gentlemen's first innings against the Players (who had lost the toss) on the second Monday in July. We were to be seen, but not heard, for Raf- fles had failed to score, and was uncommon- ly cross for a player who cared so little for the game. Merely taciturn with me, he was positively rude to more than one member who wanted to know how it had happened, or who ventured to commiserate him on his luck; there he sat, with a straw hat tilted over his nose and a cigarette stuck between lips that curled disagreeably at every ad- vance. I was therefore much surprised when a young fellow of the exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us, and met with a perfectly civil reception de- spite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a licence on the lad's part which combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when 80 Gentlemen and Players Raffles 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 Raffles. " Keep a place for me, Bunny." And they were gone. " Young Crowley," said some voice fur- ther 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 colours. Governor made him. Keen breed. Oh, pretty, sir! Very pretty! " The game was boring me. I only came to see old Raffles perform. Soon I was looking wistfully for his return, and at length I saw him beckoning me from the palings to the right. " Want to introduce you to old Amer- steth," he whispered, when I joined him. " They've a cricket week next month, when this boy Crowley comes of age, and we've both got to go down and play." 8i Tfte Amateur Cracksman " Both! " I echoed. " But I'm no crick- eter!" "Shut up," says Raffles. "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 the gleam in his eye that I knew well enough elsewhere, but was un- prepared for in those healthy, sane sur- roundings; and it was with very definite misgivings and surmises that I followed the Zingari blazer through the vast fiower-bed of hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies' awning. Lord Amersteth was a fine-looking man with a short moustache and a double chin. He received me with much dry courtesy, through which, however, it was not difficult to read a less flattering tale. I was accepted as the inevitable appendage of the invalu- able Raffles, with whom I felt deeply in- censed as I made my bow. " I have been bold enough," said Lord Amersteth, " to ask one of the Gentlemen of England to come down and play some 82 Gentlemen and Players rustic cricket for us next month. He is kind enough to say that he would have liked nothing better, but for this little fishing ex- pedition of yours, Mr. , Mr. ," and Lord Amersteth succeeded in remembering my name. It was, of course, the first I had ever heai d of that fishing expedition, but I made haste to say that it could easily, and should certainly, be put off. Raffles gleamed ap- proval througi: his eyelashes. Lord Amer- steth bowed and shrugged. " You're very good. I'm sure," said he. " But I understand you're a cricketer your- self?" " He was one at school," said Raffles, with infamous readiness. " Not a real cricketer," I was stammering meanwhile. " In the eleven?" said Lord Amersteth. " I'm afraid not," said I. " But only just out of it," declared Raf- fles, to my horror. " Well, well, we can't all play for the Gen- tlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. " ]\Iy son Crowley only just scraped into the 8s The Amateur Cracksman 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 dufifer, 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 begin- ning, as the mere prelude to resolute ex- cuses; but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me; and I hesitated weakly, to be duly lost. *' Then that's settled," said Lord Amer- steth, with the slightest suspicion of grim- ness. " It's to be a little week, you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles 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 Amer- steth rose and sidled to the gangway. Raffles rose also, but I caught the sleeve of his blazer. " What are you thinking of? " I whis-^ 84 Gentlemen and Players pered 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 humour that I strolled about the ground while Raffles dis- appeared in the pavilion. Nor was my an- noyance lessened by a little meeting I wit- nessed between young Crowley and his father, who shrugged as he stopped and stooped to convey some information 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 Raffles without his insignificant friend. Then the bell rang, and I climbed to the top of the pavilion to watch Raffles bowL S5 The Amattrur Cracksman No subtleties are lost up there; and if ever a bowler was full of them, it was A. J. Raf- fles on this day, as, indeed, all the cricket world remembers. One had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break, his beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the leg-stum.p — his dropping head-ball — in a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of athletic prow- ess, it was an intellectual treat, and one wath a special significance in my eyes. I saw the " affinity between the two things," saw it in that afternoon's tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket. It was not that Raffles took many wickets for few runs; he was too fine a bowler to mind being hit; and time was short, and the wicket good. What I admired, and what I remember, was the combination of resource and cunning, of patience and pre- cision, of head-work and handiwork, which made every over an artistic whole. It was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew! 86 Gentlemen and Players '* 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 go- ing 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 w^ell. 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 band, and by heaven we'll take our toll! Let's have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it over." 87 The Amate / Cracksman '* It seems rather a v.ilgar sort of theft." I could not help saying-; and to this, my single protest, Raffles 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 ^f^hh the idea that all will be plain sailing; noth- ing will be easier than getting some stuff, and nothing harder than avoiding all sus- picion, as, of course, we must. We may come away with no more than a good work- ing 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 further than by remarking that the " thinking," was done entirely by Raffles, who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me. His reticence, how- ever, was no longer an irritant. I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises. And, after our last ad- venture of the kind, more especially after its denouement, my trust in Raffles was much 88 Gentlemen and Players too solid to be shaken by a want of trust in me, which I still believe to have 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, Dor- set; 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 kttowledge of the countryside, with a view to further and more deliberate operations in the event of an unprofitable week. There was another idea which Raffles kept to him- self 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 be 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 i-unction within quite a few miles of Milches- 89 The Amateur Cracksman ter, had been caught in a shower, had run for shelter to a wayside inn. A florid, over- dressed man was drinking in the parlour, and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that Raffles recoiled on the threshold, and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain. He assured me, however, that the odour of stale ale had almost knocked him down. And I had to make what I could of his speculative, down- cast eyes and knitted brows. Milchester Abbey is a grey, quadrangu- lar pile, deep-set in rich woody country^ and twinkling with triple rows of quaint win- dows, every one of which seemed alight as we drove up just in time to dress for din- ner. The carriage had whirled us under I know not how many triumphal arches in process of construction, and past the tents and flag-poles of a juicy-looking cricket- field, on which Raffles undertook to bowl up to his reputation. But the chief signs of festival were within, w^here we found an enormous house-party assembled, including more persons of pomp, majesty, and domin- ion than I had ever encountered in one oo Gentlemen and Players room before. I confess I felt overpowered. Our errand and my own pretences com- bined to rob me of an address upon which I have sometimes plumed myself; and I have a grim recollection of my nervous relief when dinner was at last announced. I little knew what an ordeal it was to prove. I had taken in a much less formidable young lady than might have fallen to my lot. Indeed I began by blessing my good fortune in this respect. ^liss Melhuish was merely the rector's daughter, and she had only been asked to make an even number. She informed me of both facts before the soup reached us, and her subsequent con- versation was characterised by the same en- gaging candour. It exposed what was little short of a mania for imparting information. I had simply to Hsten, 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 91 The Amateur Cracksman that followed did not; and, obviously to recapture my unworthy attention, Miss Melhuish suddenly asked me, in a sensa- tional whisper, whether I could keep a se- cret. I said I thought I might, whereupon an- other 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 Mellruish, in naive tri- umph. "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! " " 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 neighbourhood." " Have they committed any robberies?" " Not yet." " Then how do you know? ** Q2 Gentlemen and Ir'layers " They've been seen. In the district. Two well-known London thieves! " Two! I looked at Raffles. 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 embarrassment 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 tovi'n a few days ago. They are be- lieved 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 war- rant out against the men at present, and all that can be done is to watch their move- ments." " Oh! so they are being watched? " " Yes, by a detective who is down here 93 The Amateur Cracksman on purpose. And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that they had been seen this after- noon at Warbeck Junction! " The very place where Raffles 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 compan- ion might have to tell me; and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile. " This is really quite exciting, Miss Mel- huish," 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 consuhed me. But for goodness' sake don't let it get about! I can't think zvhat 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 rec- tory. There's nothing for them there. But look round the table: look at the diamonds: look at old Lady Melrose's necklace alone!" Gentlemen and Players 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 dissi- pated 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 Margaret told me so this morning (that's Lady Margaret next your Mr. Raf- fles, you knovv-) ; and the old dear will wear them every night. Think what a haul they would be! No; we don't feel in immediate 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 95 The Amateur Cracksman human, universal itch to thrill the auditor. The peculiarity of Miss Melhuish was that she must be thrilling at all costs. And thrilling she had surely been. I spare you my feelings of the next two hours. 1 tried hard to get a word with Raffles, but again and again I failed. In tb.e 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 instantaneous photography. He had not come to play in the matches (he told me), but to obtain for Lord Amerstetli such a series of cricket photographs as had never been taken before; whether as an amateur or a professional photographer I was un- able to determine. I remember, however, 96 Gentlemen and Players seeking distraction in little bursts of reso- lute 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 Raffles 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 towa There's a detective here on the spot!" "How do you know?" asked Raffles, turning upon me quite sharply, but without the least dismay. And I told him how I knew. " Of course," I added, " it was the fellow we s;*w in the inn this afternoon." " The detective? " said Raffles. " Do you mean to say you don't know a detective when you see one, Bunny? " " If that wasn't the fellow, v.hich is? " Raffles 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. 97 The Amateur Cracksman " Scotch he is," said Raffles, " and pho- tographer he may be. He is also Inspector Mackenzie 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 War- beck?" " The man he's watching," " But he's watching us! " Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye, and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarette-case. " I don't know whether smoking's for- bidden in one's bedroom, but you'd better take one of these and stand tight. Bunny, because I'm going to say something oflfen- sive." 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 nobody but a born Bunny would sup- 98 Gentlemen and Players pose for a moment that it was! Do you seriously think he would sit there and know- ingly watch his man playing pool under his nose? Well, he might; he's a cool hand, INIackenzie; 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 think- ing 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 Lon- don, and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender 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 therf may be an accomplice here in the house." 99 The Amateur Cracksman " 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 Mackenzie. 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 ofifend them, but more particularly from the ser- vants whom he's here to watch. That's my reading of the situation, Bunny, and you will agree with me that it's infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined 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 admit that the chances are against us. Yet I'm not so sure of that either. There are all sorts of possibilities in these three-cornered combinations. Set A to watch B, and he won't have an eye left for C. That's the obvious theory, but then lOO Gentlemen and Players Mackenzie'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 off 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 some- thing like a match. Gentlemen and Play- ers 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 nev; audacity. He kicked off his shoes and began pacing his room with noiseless rapid- ity; not since the night of the Old Bohe- mian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall had Raf- fles exhibited such excitement in my pres- ence; 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 lOI The Amateur Cracksman the sporting spirit and nothing else. Take a lesson from our last escape, and fl}' lower as you value our skins. Study the 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 standstill, 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 Mel- rose's necklace? I've been wanting it for years! But I'm not going to play the fool; honour 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." " No, no, I won't. But I wonder how the professors think of going to work? That's what one w^ants 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 jeal= ous; it shall be as you wish." And with that assurance I went off to I02 Gentlemen and Players my own room, and so to bed with an m- credibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest man in me to welcome the post- ponement 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 incom- parably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked. I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected with the passing mo- ment, entirely from my mind. Through the exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment 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 excellent time. It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment. In the first place, mirabilc dictu, there were one or two even greater dufifers than I on the Ab- bey cricket field. Indeed, quite early in the week, when it was of most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky IC3 The Amateur Cracksman catch; a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum, stuck fast in my hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public con- gratulation. 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 Melhuish said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honour of Viscount Crowley's majority; she also told me that was the night on which 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 illuminated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotchman took countless photographs by day, which he de- veloped by night in a dark room admirably situated 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 Mackenzie of Scot- land Yard. The week was to end with a trumpery 104 Gentlemen and Players match on the Saturday, which two or three of tts intended 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 cen- tral gallery, and was not even on the same floor as that on which Raffles — and I think all the other men — were quartered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-room of one of the grand suites, and my too near neighbours were old Lady Melrose and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday even- ing the actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first time that week, I must have been sound asleep 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 muffled 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, 105 The Amateur Cracksman but the hard breathing grew harder still, and the muffled 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 stagger- ing in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary. "Hold this man!" he cried, as I ap- peared. " 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 appeared simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that my man ceased strug- gling; but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas. "What the devil's all this?" asked Lord io6 Gentlemen and Players Amersteth, 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 I " " You forget she's deaf," said Lord Amer- steth. " 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. " Ou done est I'ecrin de Madame la Mar- quise? La fenetre est ouverte. II a dis- paru ! " " Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove! " exclaimed Lord x^mersteth. " Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Est- elle bien? " " Oui, milor. Elle dort." " Sleeps through it all." said my lord, " She's the only one, then! " " What made IMackenzie — Clephane— bolt?" young Crowley asked me, 107 The Amateur Cracksman ** Said there were more of them below/* " Why the devil couldn't you tell us so before?" he cried, and went leaping down- stairs in his turn. He was followed by nearly all the cricket- ers, who now burst upon the scene in a body, only to desert it for the chase. Raffles 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 desper- ately, 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 ap- peared with their nightshirts tucked into their trousers, and my host was good enough to compliment 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 io8 Gentlemen and Players feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an out- lying 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. "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 some- where." "Is he alive?" " Barely." "Good God! Where's Crowley?" " Here I am," called a breathless voice, " It's no good, you fellows. There's noth- ing to show which way they've gone. Here's Raffles; 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 to- gether, now; that's the way. Poor fellow I lOQ The Amateur Cracksman Poor fellow! His name isn't Clephane at all. He's a Scotland Yard detective, down here for these very villains! " Raffles 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. Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words. "Yes, yes," said he; "we've got one of them safe and sound. The brute you col- lared 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 of? again." An hour passed : the sun was rising. It found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiard-room, drinking whisky and soda-water in their overcoats no Gentlemen and Players 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 compartment almost to suffoca- tion. 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 ruffian who had been taken; and my gratification was subtle and intense. Raffles watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had we had together; not a word did we have until we had left the others at Paddington, and were skimming through the streets in a hansom with noiseless tyres and a tinkling bell. " Well, Bunny," said Rafifles, " so the pro- fessors have it, eh?" " Yes," said I. " And I'm jolly glad! " " That poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest? " III The Amateur Cracksman "That you and I have been on the de- cent 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 off second best — for the second time running! I confess, however, that the professors' methods were full of interest to me. I, for one, have prob- ably 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 effective expedient; two of them had been waiting below 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 particu- lar, 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 whether the one below was open, and whether there was the slightest chance of working the oracle with my sheet for a rope. Of course I took the precaution of turning 112 '^'^-^—\ #4 I saw them from mv own window. Gentlemen and Players my light off first, and it was a lucky thing I did. I saw the pros, right down below, and they never saw me. I saw a Httle tiny luminous disc just for an instant, and then again for an instant a few minutes later. Of course I knew what it was, for I have my own watch-dial daubed with luminous paint; it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get no better. But these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern. They were under the old lady's window. They were watching the time. The whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside. Set a thief to catch a thief: in a minute I had guessed what the whole thing proved to be." " And you did nothing! " I exclaimed. " On the contrary, I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose's room " " You did? " " Without a moment's hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was prepared to yell as much into her ear-trumpet for all the house to hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily." "Well?" Hi The Amateur Cracksman " She didn't stir." " And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take her jewels, case and all!" " All but this," said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. " I would have shown it you before, but really, old fellow, your face all day has been worth a fortune to the firm! " And he opened his fist, to shut it next in- stant on the bunch of diamonds and of sap- phires that I had last seen encircling the neck of Lady Melrose. 8S4^ LE PREMIER PAS •yHAT night he told me the story of his earhest crime. Not since the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the sub- ject. It was not for want of trying; he would shake his head, and watch his cigar- ette 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. Raffles 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 compunction beneath those frankly egoistic and infectious trans- ports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the m.emory of his first felony, so that I had given the OS The Amateur Cracksman story lip long before the night of our return from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles's cricket-bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with the remains of an Orient label still adhering 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 unpre- meditated 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 off, stared hard at me, and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite. ii6 Le Premier Pas " 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 my- self ; last night's racket reminds me of it in one or two respects. I tell you what, though, this is 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 whisky tinkled, the syphon fizzed, the ice plopped home; and seated there in his pyjamas, with the inevitable cigarette, Raffles 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 removed, we alone broke the quiet of the summer night. "... No, they do you very well, in- deed. You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, but I'm afraid mine were of a com- prehensive character. I had started in a 117 The Amateur Cracksman hole, I ought really to have refused the invitation; then we all went to the Mel- bourne 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 anything 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 suc- ceeded (or thought I had) at the very mo- ment 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 hap- pened to ask me if I was any relation of ij8 Le Premier Pas Raffles of the National Bank, and the pure luck of it almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high official in one of the banks, who would finance me on my mere name — could anything be better? I made up my mind that this Raffles was the man I wanted, and was awfully sold to find next moment that he wasn't a high official at all. Nor had the doctor so much as met him, but had merely read of him in con- nection with a small sensation at the suburb- an branch which my namesake managed ; an armed robber had been rather pluckily beat- en off, with a bullet in him, by this Raffles ; 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 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 rela- tive I was looking 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 I TO The Amateur Cracksman 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 characterised all his information, he was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not. '* ' He's a single man, and his initials 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 hell 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 tliat if I could get at him while the holidays were still on, a little conviviality might help matters considerably. " ' Then,' said the doctor, ' I should get a quiet horse and ride. You needn't use that hand.' "'Can't I go by train?* 120 Lc Premier Pas " ' You can and you can't. You would still have to ride. I suppose you're a horse- man? ' " ' Yes.' '* ' Then I should certainly ride all the way. It's a delightful road, through Whit- tlesea and over the Plenty Ranges. It'll give you some idea of the bush, Mr. Raffles, and you'll see the sources of the water sup- ply 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. J. Raffles,' he said. " And if ever there was a prettier compli- ment, or a finer instance of even Colonial hospitality, I can only say. Bunny, that I never heard of either." 121 The Amateur Cracksman He sipped his whisky, threw away tlvt stump of his cigarette, and Ht another be- fore continuing. " 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 off 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 w^as an interesting ride enough, espe- cially after passing the place called Whit- tlesea, a real w^ild township on the lower slope of the ranges, where I recollect hav- ing a deadly meal of hot mutton 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 Whit- 122 Le Premier Pas tlesea it was a mere track over the ranges, a track I often couldn't see and left entirely to the mare. Now it dipped into a gully and ran through a creek, and all the time the local colour was inches thick : gum- trees galore and parrots all colours 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, with- out a leaf or a living thing for miles. And the first living thing I did meet was the sort to give you the creeps ; it was a riderless horse coming full tilt through the bush, with the saddle twisted round and the stirrup- irons ringing. Without 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 Iiuge 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. 123 The Amateur Cracksman " ' 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 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 stager that I am now — in any respect — and we parted good enough friends. He asked me which way I was going, and. when I told him, he said I should save seven miles, and get a good hour earlier to Yea, by striking off the track and making for a peak that we could see through the trees, and following a creek that I should see from the peak. Don't smile, Bunny ! I began by saying I was a child in those days. Of course, the short cut was the long way 124 Le Premier Pas round; and it was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single street of Yea. " I was looking for the bank when a fel- low in a white suit ran down from a veran- dah. "'Mr. Raffles?' said he. "'Mr. Raffles!' said I, laughing as I shook his hand. " ' You're late.' " ' I was misdirected.' "'That all? I'm relieved/ he said. ' Do you know what they are saying ? There are some brand-new bushrangers on the road between Whittlesea and this — a second Kelly gang! They'd have caught a Tartar in vou, eh ? ' " ' They would in you/ I retorted, and my til quoque shut him up and seemed to puzzle him. Yet there was much more sense in it than in his compliment to me, which was absolutely pointless. *' * I'm afraid you'll find things pretty rough/ he resumed, when he had un- strapped my valise, and handed my reins to his man. ' It's lucky you're a bachelor like myself/ '25 The Amateur Cracksman " 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 marvelling, 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, bv the wav, 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 superscription of the previous day —to W. F. Raffles ! 126 Le Premier Pas ** Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I daresay; you know what that's like? AH 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. Raffles! We had mistaken each other for W. F. Raffles — for the new manager who had not yet arrived! Small wonder we had conversed at cross-pur- poses ; 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 you like. Bunny, but remember that I was in much the same hole as you've since been in 3'pur- self, and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as you counted on A. J. I thought of the man with the W. G. beard — the riderless horse with the bloody saddle — 127 The Amateur Cracksman the deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the way — and now the missing manager and the report of bush- rangers at 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 sufficiently impressed upon you the absolute necessity of my returning to Melbourne in funds. As a matter of fact it was less the necessity than my own determination which I can truthfully describe as absolute. " Money I would have — but how — but how ? Would this stranger be open to per- suasion — 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 in- tention in my head, or one premeditated lie upon my lips. I might do the decent nat- 128 Le Premier Pas ural 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 pretend I had not noticed the initials; meanwhile something 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. '"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 po- sition was taken ; from that moment onward there was no retreat. By implication, with- out realising what I was doing, I had al- ready declared myself W. F. Raffles. Therefore, W. F. Raffles 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 forgotten mine. His cigarette-case caught the gaslight as he handed it to me. T20 The Amateur Cracksman I shook my head without taking my eyes from his. " The devil played up," continued Raffles, 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 Melbourne 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 per- sonation and robbery would ever after be attributed to a member of the gang that had waylaid and murdered the new manager with that very object. You are acquiring 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 Mel- bourne to see us play; and the man who Le Premier Fas 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 care- ful enough to conceal their drift. " ' Do you know,' said this fellow Ew- bank, 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's not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet through a fel- low!' " ' 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. " ' 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! 131 The Amateur Cracksman " 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 himself, 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 vou ! ' " He was looking at me in surprise, and something told me that to say * of course — I had forgotten ! ' 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 offensive tone at my command. ' Yes, the regulation would have us all dead men! My dear sir, do you expect your 132 Le Premier Pas 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 wath all visi- ble reluctance.' " 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 regulations, 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 133 The Amateur Cracksmar, 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), and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank. But he wasn't a Rosenthall, Bunny ; he had a treble- seamed, hand-sewn head, and could have drunk me under the table ten times over. " ' All right,' I thought, ' you may go to bed sober, but you'll sleep like a timber- yard ! ' And I threw half he gave me through the open window, when he wasn't looking. " But he was a good chap, Ewbank, and don't you imagine he was at all intemperate. Convivial I called him, and I only wish he had been something more. He did, how- ever, become more and more genial as the evening advanced, and I had not much diffi- culty in getting him to show me round the bank at what was really an unearthly hour for such a proceeding. It was when he went to fetch the revolver before turning in. I kept him out of his bed another twenty minutes, and I knew every inch of 134 Le Premier Pas the business premises before I shook hands Avith Ewbank in my room. " You won't guess what I did with my- self for the next hour. I undressed and went to bed. The incessant strain involved in even the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know; then how much more so when the impersonation is impromptu ! There's no getting your eye 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' to- wards the end. You can im.agine them for yourself, 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 rrot 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 regular as ever when I stopped to listen at his. And I have still to hear the concert that I shall 135 The Amateur Cracksman 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 wondered 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 catching horses in a horse-paddock. Then I distrusted the poor mare, and I went back to the stables 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-disanf new manager, I had 136 L€ Premier Pas 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 in- valuable 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 month of Sundays. " I, of course, had them in a few sec- onds, and in a few more I was in the strong- room itself. I forgot 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 stroir.g-room, which was down some narrow stairs behind the counter in the banking chamber, I had no hesitation in lighting it. There was no window down there, and, though I could no longer hear old Ewbank snoring, I had not the slight- est reason to anticipate disturbance from 137 The Amateur Cracksman that quarter. I did think of locking myseli in while I was at work, but, thank good- ness, the iron door had no keyhole on the inside. " Well, there were heaps of gold in the safe, but I only took what 1 needed and could comfortably carry, not much more than a couple of hundred altogether. Not a note would I touch, and my native cau- tion came out also in the way I divided the sovereigns between all my pockets, and packed them up so that I shouldn't be like the old woman of Banbury Cross. Well, you think me too cautious still, but I was insanely cautious then. And so it was that, just as I was ready to go, whereas I might have been gone ten minutes, there came a violent knocking at the outer door. " Bunny, it was the outer door of the banking chamber! My candle must have been seen ! And there I stood, with the grease running hot over my fingers, in that brick grave of a strong-room ! " There was only one thing to be done. I must trust to the sound sleeping of Ew- bank upstairs, open the door myself, 138 Le Premier Pas knock the visitor down, or 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 doc- tor'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 st^ne, 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 suppli- cation of a spent man. What I did hear, plainly, was the cocking of the bank revol- ver before the bolts were shot back. Then, a tottering step, a hard, short, shallow 139 The Amateur Cracksman breathing, and Evvbank's voice in hor- ror — " ' My God ! Good Lord ! What's hap- pened to you ? You're bleeding Hke a pig ! ' " ' Not now,' came with a grateful sort of sigh. " ' But you have been ! What's done it? ' " * 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 outside! I never thought I 140 Le Premier Pas should come through. You must let me tell you — in case I don't ! ' " ' Well, have another sip.' " ' Thank you ... I said bushran- gers ; 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!" " 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 Raffles?' " ' Yes.' 141 The Amateur Cracksman "'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 impostor — if he's up- stairs still ! He must be one of the gang. He's going to rob the bank — if he hasn't done so already ! ' " ' li he hasn't done so already,' muttered Ewbank 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 nastiest I ever heard. I tell you, Bun- ny, 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. " ' 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 thrilling moment of my infamous ca- reer, 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 142 Le Premier Pas whether it would creak or not. The light was coming nearer — and I didn't know ! 1 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'd 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 gingerly as though my time had been my own. I didn't even forget to put on the hat that the doctor's mare was eating her oats out of, as well as she could with a bit, or it alone would have landed me. I didn't even gallop away, but just jogged off quietly in the thick dust 143 The Amateur Cracksman at the side of the road (though I own my heart was galloping), and thanked my stars the bank was at that end of the township, in which I really hadn't set foot. The very last thing I heard was the two managers raising Cain and the coachman. And now, Bunny " He stood up and stretched himself, with a smile that ended in a yawTi. The black windows had faded through every shade of indigo ; they now framed their opposite neighbours, stark and livid in the dawn; and the gas seemed turned to nothing in the globes. " But that's not all ? " I cried. " I'm sorry to say it is," said Raffles apologetically. " The thing should have ended with an exciting chase, I know, but somehow it didn't. I suppose they thought I had got no end of a start ; then they had made up their minds that I belonged to the gang, which was not so many miles away ; and one of them had got as much as he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn't to know all that, and I'm bound to say that there was plenty of excitement 144 Le Premier Pas left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though v.'e 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 ia 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 diffi- culty 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-lcather 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." 145 The Amateur Cracksman " But I don't know myself," I com- plained. " 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 the evening. He was tre- mendously tickled to hear 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 Raffles, as he put out the gas ; " that's a point on which I've never made up my mind. The mare and her colour was a coincidence — luckily she was only a bay — and I fancy the condition of the beast must have told a tale. The doctor's manner was certainly different. I'm in- clined to think he suspected something, though not the right thing. I wasn't ex- pecting him, and I fear my appearance may have increased his suspicions." I asked him why. " I used to have rather a heavy mous- tache," said Raffles, " but I lost it the day after I lost my innocence." 146 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 de- tails which even I would hesitate to re- count; it is, rather, the very absence of un- toward incident which renders them useless for my present purpose. In point of fact our plans were so craftily laid (by Raf- fles) that the chances of a hitch were invari- ably 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 con- fronted by unforeseen impediments, or in- volved 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 147 The Amateur Cracksman would prove the greatest weariness of all in narrative form; and none more so than the dull affair of the Ardagh emeralds, some eight or nine weeks after the Milchester 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 Ireland, and I was waiting at my rooms for Raffles, who had gone off as usual to dis- pose of the plunder. Raffles 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 dis- guise of the flashy-seedy order, and always in the Cockney dialect of which he had made himself a master. Moreover, he in- variably 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 Raffles 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 148 Wilful Murder pounds, on the terms you would expect, from a soft-spoken greybeard with an in- gratiating smile, an incessant bow, and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to rim of a pair of spectacles. So the original sinews and the final spoils of war came in this case fromi the self-same source — a cir- cumstance which appealed to us both. But these same final spoils I was still to see, and I waited and waited with an im- patience that grew upon me with the grow- ing dusk. At my open window I had played Sister Ann until the faces in the street be- low were no longer distinguishable. And now I was tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible hypotheses — a grip that tightened when at last the lift-gates opened with a clatter outside — that held me breathless un- til a well-known tattoo followed on my door. " In the dark! " said Rafifles as I dragged him in. " Why, Bunny, what's wrong? " " Nothing — now you've come," said I, shutting the door behind him in a fever of relief and anxiety. "Well? Well? What did they fetch?" 149 The Amateur Cracksman " Five hundred." "Down?" " Got it in my pocket." " Good man! " I cried. " You don't know what a stew I've been in. I'll switch on the light. I've been thinking of you and nothing else for the last hour. I — I was ass enough to think something had gone wrong!" Raffles was smiling when the white light filled the room, but for the moment I did not perceive the peculiarity of his smile. I was fatuously full of my own late tremors and present relief; and my first idiotic act was to spill some whisky and squirt the soda-water all over in my anxiety to do in- stant justice to the occasion. " So you thought something had hap- pened?" said Raffles, leaning back in my chair as he lit a cigarette, and looking much amused. " What should you say if some- thing had? Sit tight, my dear chap! It was nothing of the slightest consequence, and it's all over now. A stern chase and a long one. Bunny, but I think I'm well to windward this time." 150 Wilful Murder 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 > ou 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 suc- ceeded; but he has still to do that. I ad- mit, 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 morn- ing paper. He knczv it must have been done by some fellow who could pass him- self off for a gentleman, and I saw his eye- 151 The Amateur Cracksman brows go up the moment I told hir/i 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 plain- ly that I had given myself away. He gave up haggling. He paid my price as though he enjoyed doing it. But I -felt him follow- ing 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 un- suspecting 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 f 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 leav- ing Sloane Square out I hopped, and up all those stairs^ike a lamplighter, and round to the studio by the back streets. Well, to be on the safe side, I lay low there all the 152 Wilful Murder afternoon, hearing nothing in the least sus- picious, and only wishing I had a window to look through instead of that beastly sky- hght. However, the coast seemed clear enough, and thus far it was my mere idea that he would follow me; there was nothing to show he had. So at last I marched out in my proper rig — almost straight into old Baird's arms! " " What on earth did you do? " " Walked past him as though I had never set eyes on him in my Hfe, and didn't then; took a hansom in the King's Road, and drove Hke the deuce to Clapham Junction ; rushed on to the nearest platform, without a ticket, jumped into the first train I saw, got out at Twickenham, walked full tilt back to Richmond, took the District to Charing Cross, and here I am ! Ready for a tub and a change, and the best dinner the club can give us. I came to you first, because I thought you might be getting anxious. Come round with me, and I won't keep you long." " You're certain you've given him the slip? " I said, as we put on our hats. 153 The Amateur Cracksman " Certain enough ; but we can make as- surance doubly sure," said Raffles, and went to my window, where he stood for a minute or two looking down into the street. '• All right? " I asked him. " All right," said he; and we went down- stairs forthwith, and so to the Albany arm- in-arm. But we were both rather silent on the way. I, for my part, was wondering what Raffles would do about the studio in Chel- sea, whither, at all events, he had been suc- cessfully 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 acquaint- ance who happened to be getting himself a bad name. "Poor Jack Rutter!" said Raffles, 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 154 Wilful Murder 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 our coffee and cigars. Then at last I saw Raffles look- ing 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 Rafifles, blowing a meditative puff; " as a matter of fact, I was thinking less of myself than of that poor devil of a Jack Rutter. There's a fel- low who does things by halves; he's only half gone to the bad; and look at the differ- ence between him and us! He's under the thumb of a villainous money-lender; we are ICC The Amateur Cracksman solvent citizens. He's taken to drink; we're as sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning to cut him; our difficulty 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. "What more?" said Raffles. "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 him- self. 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 156 Wilful Murder tJtey knew! Oh, it would be great, simply great ! But, besides all that, when you were caught there'd be a merciful and dramatic end of you. You'd fill the bill for a few weeks, and then snuff out with a flourish of extra-specials ; you wouldn't rust with a vile repose for seven or fourteen years." " Good old Raffles! " I chuckled. " I be- gin to forgive you for being in bad form at dinner." " But I was never more earnest in my life." "Goon!" " 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 ! " 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, 157 The Amateur Cracksman 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 pave- ment 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 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 158 Wilful Murder with me, he sha'n't live to, and the world will have an extortioner the less. Waiter! Two Scotch whiskies and sodas. I'm off at eleven. Bunny; it's the only thing to be done." " '" ' /^^?,,^*J?^ " You know where he lives, then? " " Yes, out Willesden way, and alone ; the fellow's a miser among other things. I long ago found out all abont him." Again I looked round the room; it was a young man's club, and young men were laughing, chatting, smoking, drinking, on every hand. One nodded to me through the smoke. Like a machine I nodded to him, and turned back to Rafales with a groan. " Surely you will give him a chance! " I urged. " The very sight of your pistol should bring him to terms." " It 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! " 159 The Amateur Cracksman An ugly gleam shot from the steel-blue eyes. " To interfere ? " said Raffles. " Not I." "You give me your word?" " I do." " Bunny, if you break it " " You may shoot me too! " " I most certainly should," said Raffles, 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 An- gus 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 Raffles and I were fairly on our way to Willesden, that, I think, was 1 60 Wilful Murder still my honest resolve. I would not break my word if I could help it, but it was a comfort to feel that I could break it if I liked, on an understood penalty. Alas! I fear my good intentions were tainted with a devouring curiosity, and 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 Willesden. It left at 11.21, I remember, and Raffles 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 Raffles grimly. i6i The Amateur Cracksman " Then you mean to break in? " " What else did you think ? " I had not thought about it at all; the ulti- mate crime had monopolised my mind. Be- side it burglary was a bagatelle, but one to deprecate none the less. I saw obvious ob- jections: the man was au fait with cracks- men and their ways: he would certainly have firearms, and might be the first to use them. " I could wish nothing better," said Raf- fles. " Then it will be man to man, and devil take the worst shot. You don't sup- pose I prefer foul play to fair, do you? But die he must, by one or the other, or it's a long stretch for you and me." " Better that than this ! " " Then stay where you are, my good fel- low. I told you I didn't want you; and this is the house. So good-night." I could see no house at all, only the angle of a high wall rising solitary in the night, with the starlight glittering on battlements of broken glass; and in the wall a tall green gate, bristling with spikes, and showing a front for battering-rams in the feeble rays 162 Wilful Murder an outlying lamp-post cast across the new- made road. It seemed to me a road of building sites, with but this one house built, all bj itself, at one end; but the night was too dark for more than a mere impression. Raffles, however, had seen the place by dayhght, and had come prepared for the special obstacles; already he was reaching up and putting champagne corks on the spikes, and in another moment he had his folded covert-coat across the corks. I stepped back as he raised himself, and saw a little pyramid of slates snip the sky above the gate; as he squirmed over I ran forward, and had my own 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 163 The Amateur Cracksman raw clay beds. '' Bells in themselves," as Raffles 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 us." it it 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 hke 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 good. We neither saw nor heard any more, though we stood wait- ing on the grass till our feet were soaked with the dew. " I'm going in," said Raffles 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 164 Wilful Murder gravel stuck to our wet soles, and grated horribly in a little tiled verandah with a glass door leading within. It was through this. glass that Raffles 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 instinc- tively 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 gent- ly back into our hands. Raffles now inserted his hand, turned the key in the lock, and, by making a long arm, succeeded in drawing the bolt at the bot- tom of the door; it proved to be the only one, and the door opened, though not very wide. "What's that?" said Raffles, as some- thing crunched beneath his feet on the very threshold. " A pair of spectacles," I whispered, pick- 165 The Amateur Cracksman ing them up. I was still fingering the broken lenses and the bent rims when Raffles tripped and almost fell, with a gasping cry that he made no effort to re- strain. " Hush, man, hush ! " I entreated under my breath. " He'll hear you! " For answer his teeth chattered — even his — and I heard him fumbling with his matches. " No, Bunny; he won't hear us," whispered Raffles, presently; and he rose from his knees and lit a gas as the match burnt down. Angus Baird was lying on his own floor, dead, with his grey hairs glued together by his blood; near him a poker with the black end glistening; in a corner his desk, ransacked, littered. A clock ticked noisily on the chimney-piece; for perhaps a hun- dred seconds there was no other sound. Raffles stood very still, staring down at the dead, as a man might stare into an abyss after striding blindly to its brink. His breath came audibly through wide nos- trils; he made no other sign, and his lips seemed sealed. 1 66 Wilful Murder " That light! " said I, hoarsely; " the light we saw under the door! " With a start he turned to me. "It's true! I had forgotten it. It was in here I saw it first! " " He must be upstairs still! " " If he is we'll soon rout him out. Come on!" Instead I laid a hand upon his arm, im- ploring him to reflect — that his enemy was dead now — that we should certainly be in- volved — that now or never was our own time to escape. He shook me ofT in a sud- den fury of impatience, a reckless contempt in his eyes, and, bidding me save my own skin if I liked, he once more turned his back upon me, and this time left me half resolved to take him at his word. Had he forgotten on what errand he himself was here? Was he determined that this night should end in black disaster? As I asked myself these questions his match flared in the hall; in another moment the stairs were creaking under his feet, even as they had creaked under those of the murderer; and the humane instinct that inspired him in de- 167 The Amateur Cracksman fiance of his risk was borne in also upon my slower sensibilities. Could we let the murderer go? My answer was to bound up the creaking stairs and to overhaul Raf- fles on the landing. But three doors presented themselves; the first opened into a bedroom with the bed turned down but undisturbed; the sec- ond room was empty in every sense; the third door was locked. Raffles lit the landing gas. " He's in there," said he, cocking his re- volver. " 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 Raffles struck aghast on the threshold. "Jack—Rittter?" The words came thick and slow with hor- ror, and in horror I heard myself repeating t68 Wilful Murder them, while the cowering figure by the bath-room window rose gradually erect. " It's you ! " he whispered, in amazement no Jess than our own ; " it's you two ! What's it mean, Raffles? 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, Rut- ter!" " Done? What have I done?" The un- happy wretch came out into the light with bloodshot, 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 robber, 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 defiance in his dissipated eyes; his breast heaving, his jaw like a rock. "Shall I tell you how it happened?" he went passionately on. " He's made my life a hell these weeks and months past. You 169 The Amateur Cracksman may know that. A perfect hell! Well, to- night I met him in Bond Street. Do you remember when I met you fellows? He wasn't twenty yards behind you; he was on your tracks, Raffles; 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 inter- view should be, and I made him take me home with him, still swearing to tell him all about you when we'd had our talk. Well, vvhen Ave 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 sec the servant? ' I70 Wilful Murder " 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 servant 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 ceihng. 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 in- iquitous 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 revolver, and I went for him bald-headed. He fired two or three times and missed; you can find the 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 171 The Amateur Cracksman 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 impenitent slayer. I knew to whom the impenitence would appeal when he had heard the storv, and I was not mistaken. "That's all rot," said Raffles, speaking after a pause; " we sha'n't let you give your- self 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 per- ception of his position had come with the bare idea of escape from it. 172 Wilful Murder " But listen to me," urged Raffles; " we're here at our peril ourselves. We broke in like thieves to enforce redress for a griev- ance very like your own. But don't you see? We took out a pane — did the thing like regular burglars. Regular burglars w'ill 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 off scot-free," cried Rutter hysterically. " I've killed him. I know that. But it was in self-defence; it wasn't murder, I must own up and take the consequences. I shall go mad if I don't!" His hands twitched; his lips quivered; the tears Avere in his eyes. Raffles took him roughly by the shoulder. "Look here, you fool! If the three of us were caught here now, do you know what those consequences would be? We should swing in a row at Newgate 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 173 The Amateur Cracksman 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 ! " His knees knocked together: the frenzy of reaction was at its height. We had to take him dov;nstairs between us, and so through the front door out into the open air. All was still outside — all but the smoth- ered weeping of the unstrung wretch upon our hands. Raffles returned for a moment to the house; then all was dark as well. The gate opened from within; we closed it care- fully behind us; and so left the starlight shining on broken glass and polished spikes, one and all as we had found them. We escaped; no need to dwell on our es- cape. 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 threatened to leave him to his fate, to wash our hands of him. But incredible and unmerited luck was with the I?* Wilful Murder 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 seemingly unmistakable condi- tion, 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 no more of Raffles 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 Liver- pool to New York. " There was no arguing with him," so Raffles 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 situa- tion as I should have endeavoured to do in his place; and it's just as well! I went i?5 The Amateur Cracksman to his diggings to destroy some papers, and what do you think I found? The poHce in possession; there's a warrant out against him already! The idiots think that window wasn't genuine, and the warrant'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. T7<> \ NINE POINTS OF THE LAW, '^' V\^ELL," said Raffles, " what do you make of it? " I read the advertisement once more be- fore replying. It was in the last column of the Daily Telegraph, and it ran: — JWO THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.— The above sum may be earned by any one qualified to undertake delicate mission and pre- pared to run certain risk.— Apply by telegram. Security, London. " I think," said I, " it's the most extraor- dinary advertisement that ever got into print!" Raffles smiled. " Not quite all that, Bunny; still, extraor- dinary enough, I grant you." " Look at the figure!" " It is certainly large." " And the mission — and the risk! " "Yes; the combination is frank, to say the least of it. But the really original point The Amateur Cracksman is requiring applications by telegram to a telegraphic address! There's something in the fellow who thought of that, and some- thing in his game; with one word he chokes ofi 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 ap- plied?" " Rather," said Raffles. " 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 il- legal, 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. 178 Nine Points of the Law * What do you think?" said he. "Se- curity's that fellow Addenbrooke, the police-court lawyer, and he wants to see me iusianter! " " 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 case; everybody won- dered why he wasn't struck off the rolls. Instead of that he's got a first-rate practice on the seamy side, and every blackguard with half a case takes it straight to Bennett Addenbrooke. He's probably the one man who would have the cheek to put in an ad- vertisement like that, and the one man who could do it without exciting suspicion. It's simply in his line; but you may be sure there's something shady at the bottom of it. The odd thing is that I have long made up my mind to go to Addenbrooke myself if accidents should happen." " And you're going to him now? " " This minute," said Raffles, brushing his hat ; " and so are you." " But I came in to drag you out to lunch*" 179 The Amateur Cracksman *■ You shall lunch with me when we've seen this fellow. Come on, Bunny, and we'll choose your name on the way. Mine's Glasspool, and don't you forget it." Mr. Bennett Addenbrooke occupied sub- stantial offices in Wellington Street, Strand, and was out when we arrived; but he had only just gone " over the way to the court; " and five minutes sufficed to produce a brisk, fresh-coloured, resolute-looking man, with a very confident, rather festive air, and black eyes that opened wide at the sight of Raffles. "Mr. — Glasspool?" exclaimed the law- yer. " My name," said RafBes, with dry ef- frontery. " Not up at Lord's however! " said the. other, slyly. " My dear sir, I have seen you take far too many wickets to make any mistake! " For a single moment Raffles looked ven- omous; then he shrugged and smiled, and the smile grew into a little cynical chuckle. " So you have bowled me out in my turn?" said he. "Well, I don't think 1 80 Nine Points of the Law there's anything to explain. I am harder up than I wished to admit under my own name, that's all, and I want that thousand pounds reward." " Two thousand," said the solicitor. " And the man who is not above an alias happens to be just the sort of man I want; so don't let that worry you, my dear sir. The matter, however, is of a strictly private and confidential character." And he looked very hard at me. " Quite so," said Raffles. " But there was something about a risk? " " A certain risk is involved." " Then surely three heads will be better than two. I said I wanted that thousand pounds; my friend here wants the other. We are both cursedly hard up, and we go into this thing together or not 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 expressed itself in a puzzled smile. i8i The Amateur Cracksman " The fact is, I find myself in a difficulty," he confessed at last. " Yours is the first re- ply I have received; people who can afford to send long telegrams 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 Raffles gravely. " But you respect the law? " The black eyes gleamed shrewdly. " We are not professional rogues, if that's what you mean," said Raffles, 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 cause; that's the risk, 182 Nine Points of the Law and my client is prepared to pay for it. He will pay for the attempt, in case of failure; the money is as good as yours once you con- seni to run the risk. ]\Iy client is Sir Ber- nard Debenham, of Broom Hall, Esher." " I know his son," I remarked. Raffles knew him too, but said nothing, and his eye drooped disapproval in my di- rection. Bennett Addenbrooke turned to me. " Then," said he, " you have the privi- lege of knowing one of the most complete young blackguards about town, and the fous et origo of the whole trouble. As you know the son, you may know the father too, at all events by reputation ; and in that case I needn't tell you that he is a very peculiar man. He lives alone in a store- house of treasures which no eyes but his ever behold. He is said to have the finest collection of pictures in the south of Eng- land, though nobody ever sees them to judge; pictures, fiddles and furniture are his hobby, and he is undoubtedly very ec- centric. Nor can one deny that there has been considerable eccentricity in his treat- 183 The Amateur Cracksman ment of his son. For years Sir Bernard paid his debts, and the other day, without the slightest warning, not only refused to do so any more, but absohitely stopped the lad's allowance. Well, I'll tell you what has happened; 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 m.ore 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 tele- gram 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 pic- ture-gallery, which was locked and dark- ened, 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 184 Nine Points of the Law most valuable pictures in England — m 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 another 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 Debenham has sold it for five thousand pounds! " " The deuce he has," said Raffles. 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 an}1:hing 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 him- self in this way; he had threatened revenge, and this was.it. Indeed, when I hunted him up in town on the Tuesday night, he con- i8s The Amateur Cracksman fessed 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! Back- wards and forwards between Esher and the Metropole, w-here the Queenslander is stay- ing, sometimes twice a day; threats, offers, prayers, entreaties, not one of them a bit of good!" " But," said Raffles, " 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 public scandal, and that my client de- clines to face. He would rather lose even his picture than have the whole thing get into the papers; he has disowned 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 cheque if asked. He offered one to the Queenslander, but Craggs sim- i86 Nine Points of the Law ply 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 Raffles, in the dry tones he had adopted throughout the interview. " As a last resort. I did." " And you v.-ish 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 m.en of your stamp! But it's not stealing," he exclaimed heatedly; "it's recovering stolen property. Besides, Sir Bernard will pay him his five thousand as soon as he has the picture; and, you'll see, old Craggs will be just as loth to let it come out as Sir Bernard himself. No, no — it's an enterprise, an adventure, if you like — but not stealing." " You yourself mentioned the law," mur- mured Raffles. " And the risk," I added. *' We pay for that," he said once more. " But not enough," said Raffles, shaking his head. " A'Ty good sir, consider what it 187 The Amateur Cracksman means to us. You spoke of those clubs; we should not only get kicked out of them, but put in prison like common burglars! It's true we're hard up, but it simply isn't worth it at the price. Double your stakes, and I for one am your man." Addenbrooke wavered. " Do you think you could bring it oflf ? " " We could try." " But you have no " "Experience? Well, hardly! " " And you would really run the risk for four thousand pounds?" Raffles looked at me. I nodded. " We would," said he, " and blow the odds!" " It's more than I can ask my client to pay," said Addenbrooke, growing firm. " Then it's more than you can expect us to risk." " You are in earnest? " "God wot!" " Say three thousand if you succeed! " " Four is our figure, Mr. Addenbrooke." " Then I think it should be nothing if you fail." 188 Nine Points of the Law "Doubles or quits?" cried Raffles. ''Well, that's sporting. Done!" Addenbrooke opened his lips, half rose, then sat back in his chair, and looked long and shrewdly at Raffles — never once at me, " I know your bowHng," said he reflec- tively. " 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 anybody 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 in- sisted on playing host at an extravagant luncheon. I remember that he took his whack of champagne with the nervous free- dom of a man at high pressure, and have no doubt I kept him in countenance by an equal indulgence; but Raffles, ever an ex- emplar in such matters, was more abstemi- ous even than his wont, and very poor com< 189 The Amateur Cracksman pany 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 best to disabuse him by reassuring looks. At the close Raffles apologized for his preoccupa- tion, called for an A.B.C. time-table, and an- nounced his intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher. " You must excuse me, Mr. Adden- brooke," 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 Bernard 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 Raffles had his way, though Bennett 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 Raffles to be self-willed and secretive, but that no 190 Raffles announced his intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher. Nine Points of the Law man of my acquaintance had half his au- dacity 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 law- yer went his way. That day I saw no more of Raffles, but a telegram reached me when I was dressing for dinner: — " Be in your rooms to-morrow from noon and keep rest of day clear, Raffles." It had been sent oflf from Waterloo at 6.42. So Raffles 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 fol- lowing 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 mv window in Mount Street, when he drove up furiously in a hansom, and jumped out lOI The Amateur Cracksman without a word to the man. I met him next minute at the Hft gates, and he fairly pushed me back into my rooms. " Five minutes, Bunny! " he cried. " Not a moment more." And he tore off 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 Metropole, it's got to be done from the inside. Problem one, how to get at the fellow. 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 com' 192 Nine Points of the Law pare 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 commission; 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 mornings went in and lied like Ananias, and it was just as well I did — the old rufKan sails for Australia by to-morrow's boat. I told him a man wanted to sell me a copy of the cele- brated Infanta Maria Teresa of Velasquez, that I'd been down to the supposed owner of the picture, only to find that he had just 1 0.3 The Amateur Cracksman 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 Deben- ham 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 picture — 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 Mas- ter, 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 afternoon." Rafifles looked at his watch and jumped up saying he had given me a minute too much. " By the way," he added, " you've got to dine with him at the Metropole to-night! " " I?" " Yes; don't look so scared. Both of us Tgt Nine Points of the Law are invited — I swore you were dining witK me. I accepted for us both; but I sha'n't be there." ^His clear eye was upon me, bright with meaning and with mischief. I implored him to tell me what his meaning was. " You will dine in his private sitting- room," said Raffles; "it adjoins his bed- room. You must keep him sitting as long as possible, Bunny, and talking all the time!" In a flash I saw his plan. " You're going for the picture while we're at dinner? " " I am." "If he hears you!" " He sha'n't." "But if he does!" And I fairly trembled at the thought. "If he does," said Raffles, "there will be a collision, that's all. Revolver would be out of place in the Metropole, but I shall certainly take a life-preserver." " But it's ghastly! " I cried. " To sit and talk to an utter stranger and to know that you're at work in the next room! " 195 The Amateur Cracksman " Two thousand apiece," said Raffles, quietly. " Upon my soul I believe I shall give it away ! " " 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 tele- gram from me saying I can't turn up. He's a terror to talk, you'll have no difficulty in keeping the ball rolling; but head him off his picture for all you're worth. If he offers to show it you, say you must go. He locked up the case elaborately 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 9.55." " But surely I can see you again this afternoon? " I cried in a ferment, for his hand was on the door. " I'm not half 196 Nine Points of the Law coached up yet! I know I shall make a mess of it! " " Not you," he said again, " but / 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 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 Raffles failed where he never did fail, unless Raffles the neat and noiseless was for once clumsy and inept, all I had to do was indeed to " smile and smile and be a vil- lain." I practised that smile half the after- noon. I rehearsed putative parts in hypo- thetical conversations. I got up stories. 1 dipped in a book on Queensland at the club. And at last it was 7.45, and I was making 197 The Amateur Cracksman my bow to a somewhat elderly man with a small bald head and a retreating brow. "So you're Mr. Raffles's friend?" said he, overhauling me rather rudely with his light small eyes. " Seen anything of him? Expected him early to show me something, but he's never come." No more, evidently, had his telegram, and my troubles were beginning early. I said I had not seen Raffles since one o'clock, tell- ing 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. "Called out of town!" he grumbled. "Sudden illness of near relative! What near relatives has he got?" I knew of none, and for an instant I quailed before the perils of invention; then I replied that I had never met any of his people, and again felt fortified by my verac- ity. "Thought you were bosom pals?" said he, with (as I imagined) a gleam of sus- picion in his crafty little eyes. 198 Nine Points of the Law " 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 Fd go to without my dinner; it's a full-skin billet, if you ask me. Well, must just dine without 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 sha'n't see him again, for his own sake. I liked Rafifles — 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 conver- sation, though they were doubtless detached at the time, and interspersed with remarks of mine here and there. They filled the interval until dinner was served, and they gave me an impression of the man which his every subsequent utterance confirmed. It was an impression which did away with all remorse for my treacherous presence at his table. He was that terrible type, the 199 The Amateur Cracksman Silly Cynic, his aim a caustic commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much compunction for my behaviour by the Hon. J. M. Craggs, M.L.C. But never shall I forget the private agonies of the situation, the listening to my host with one ear and for Raffles with the other! Once I heard him — though the rooms were not divided by the old-fashioned folding-doors, and though the door that did divide them w-as not only shut but richly curtained, I could have sworn I heard him once. I spilt my wine and laughed at the top of my voice at some coarse sally of my host's. And I heard nothing more, though my ears were on the strain. But later, to my horror, when the waiter had finally withdrawn, Craggs himself sprang up and 200 Nine Points of the Law rushed to his bedroom without a word. I sat Hke stone till he returned. " Thought I heard a door go," he said. '• Must have been mistaken . . . im- agination . . . gave me quite a turn. Raffles 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 mak- ing 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 Raffles had just mentioned it, and that set him off. 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 201 The Amateur Cracksman much weariness; suffice it that it ended in- evitably in the invitation I had dreaded all the evening. " But you must see it. Next room. This way." " Isn't it packed up? " I inquired hastily, " Lock and key. That's all." " Pray don't trouble," I urged. " Trouble be hanged ! " said he. *' Come along." And all at once I saw that to resist him further would be to heap suspicion upon myself against the moment of impending discovery. I therefore followed him into his bedroom without further protest, and suffered him first to show me the iron map- case which stood in one corner; he took a crafty pride in this receptacle, and I thought he would never cease descanting on its in- nocent appearance and its Chubb's lock. It seemed an interminable age before the key was in the latter. Then the ward clicked, and my pulse stood still. " By Jove! " I cried next instant. The canvas was in its place among the maps! 202 Nine Points of the Law "Thought it would knock you," said Craggs, drawing it out and unrolling it for my benefit. " Grand thing, ain't it? Wouldn't think it had been painted two hundred and thirty years? It has, though, viy word ! Old Johnson's face will be a treat when he sees it; won't go bragging about his pictures much more. Why, this one's worth all the pictures in Colony o' Queens- land put together. Worth fifty thousand pounds, my boy — and I got it for five! " He dug me in the ribs, and seemed in the mood for further confidences. My appear- ance checked him, and he rubbed his hands. " If you take it like that," he chuckled, "how will old Johnson take it? Go out and hang himself to his own picture-rods, I hope!" Heaven knows what I contrived to say at last. Struck speechless first by my relief, I continued silent from a very different cause. A new tangle of emotions tied my tongue. Raffles had failed — Raffles had failed! Could I not succeed? Was it too late? Was there no way? "So long," he said, taking a last look 203 The Amateur Cracksman at the canvas before he rolled it up — " so long till we get to Brisbane." The flutter I was in as he closed the case! *' For the last time," he went on, as his keys jingled back into his pocket. " It goes straight into the strong-room on board." For the last time! If I could but send him out to Australia with only its legiti- mate contents in his precious map-case! If I could but succeed where Raffles had failed! We returned to the other room. I have no notion how long he talked, or what about. Whisky and soda-water became the order of the hour. I scarcely touched it, but he drank copiously, and before eleven I left him incoherent. And the last train for Esher was the 11.50 out of Waterloo. I took a hansxDm to my rooms. I was back at the hotel in thirteen minutes. I walked upstairs. The corridor was empty; I stood an instant on the sitting-room thres- hold, 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. 204 Nine Points of the Law Craggs never moved; he was stretched on the sofa fast asleep. But not fast enough for me. I saturatd'd my handkerchief with the chloroform I had brought, and I 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 Inver- ness cape. I took some whisky 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 platform, in unreasonable terror till the end. Then at last I sat back and lit a cigarette, and the lights of Water- loo reeled out behind. Some men were returning from the thea- tre. 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 oi them hummed a stave, and there was an 205 The Amateur Cracksman 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 w^here Raf- fles had failed! Of all our adventures this was the first in which I had played a com- manding part; and, of them all, this w^as 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 cgomet! I pictured Raffles, his surprise, his de- light. 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! i 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, w-ith the lower storey still lit up, and saw the front door open as I climbed the steps. " Thought it was you," said Rafifles cheer- 206 Nine Points of the Law ily. " It's all right. There's a bed for you. Sir Bernard'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!" "Whatr" " The picture. He showed it me. You had to go without it; I saw that. So I de- termined to have it. And here it is." " Let's see," said Raffles 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 eyebrows. " Looks pretty fresh for an Old Master, 'doesn't she? " said Raffles. His tone was strange. I could only sup- pose that he was jealous of my success. 207 The Amateur Cracksman " So Craggs said. I hardly looked at it myself." " 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 im- posed upon Craggs, and might have made him happy for life. And you go and rob himi of that!" I could not speak. " How did you manage it? " inquired Sir Bernard Debenham. "Have you killed him?" asked Raffles sardonically. I did not look at him ; I turned to Sir Ber- nard 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, wdth the remark that an- other time RafBes might tell me what he meant to do. 208 Nine Points of the Law "Another time!" he cried instantly. " My dear Bimny, you speak as though we were going to turn burglars for a liv- ing ! " " 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 as he said, and not open his map-case till he gets back there. He will find my cheque awaiting him, and I shall be very much surprised if he troubles any of us again." Raffles 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 fellow'! 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 2cq The Amateur Cracksman cried. " I hate the whole thing! I'm go- ing to chuck it up! " "So am I," said Raffles, "when I've made my pile." 410 THE RETURN MATCH I HAD turned into Piccadilly, one thick evening in the following November, when my guilty heart stood still at the sud- den grip of a hand upon my arm. I thought — I w^as always thinking — that my inevitable hour was come at last. It was only Rafifles, however, who stood smiling at me through the fog. " Well met! " said he. " I've been look- ing for you at the club." " I was just on my way there," I re- turned, with an attempt to hide my tremors. It was an ineffectual 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 The Amateur Cracksman 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 Raffles when his mind was made up. That we had both been independent of crime since our little serv- ice to Sir Bernard Debenham — 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 mastery. And even while I argued we were on his staircase in the Albany. His fire had fallen low. He poked and replenished it after lighting the gas. As for me, I stood by sullenly in my overcoat until he dragged it off my back. " What a chap you are ! " said Raffles playfully. " One would really think I had proposed to crack another crib this blessed 212 The Return Match night! Well, it isn't that, Bunny; so get into that chair, and take one of these Sulli- vans and sit tight." He held the match to my cigarette; he brought me a whisky 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 effort to remain in that chair; next moment he was straddling another and gloating over my discomfiture across his folded arms. " You remember Milchester, Bunny, old boy?" His tone was as bland as mine was grira 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- 213 The Amateur Cracksman 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 convicted under, so Crawshay let it be. You needn't waste any pity on him, old chap ; he escaped from Dartmoor yesterday afternoon." " Well done ! " Raffles smiled, but his eyebrows had gone up, and his shoulders followed suit. " 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 without a scratch under heavy fire. All honour 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 morning papers." He unfolded a Pall Mall, which he had •l)rought in with him. " But listen to this ; here's an account of 214 The Return Match 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 out- rage in the early hours of this morning. He is reported to have entered the lodgings of the Rev. A. H. EUingworth, 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 Craw- shay 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 ? " " He is certainly a sportsman," said I, reaching for the paper. " He's more," said Raffles ; " he's an art- ist, 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 tel- egram doesn't say so, but it's obvious; he's simply knocked some other fellow out, 215 The Amateur Cracksman changed clothes again, and come on gaily 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 Raffles's face; clearly I had reminded him of some prime anxiety, forgotten in his im- personal joy over the exploit of a fellow- criminal. He looked over his shoulder to- wards 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." "Why should he?" " Because, in his way he's very nearly as good a man as I am ; because, my dear Bun- ny, with eyes in his head and brains behind them, he couldn't help suspecting. He saw 216 The Return Match me once in town with old Baird. He must have seen me that day in the pub. on the way to Milchester, as weh as afterwards on th& cricket-field. As a matter of fact, I know he did, for he wrote and told me so before his trial." " He wrote to you ! And you never told me!" The old shrug answered the old griev- ance. " What was the good, my dear fellow ? It would only have worried you." "Well, what did he say?" " That he was sorry he had been run in before getting back to town, as he had pro- posed doing himself the honour of paying me a call ; however, he trusted it was only a pleasure deferred, and he begged me not to go and get lagged myself before he came out. Of course he knew the Melrose neck- lace was gone, though he hadn't got it ; and he said that the man who could take that and leave the rest was a man after his own heart. And so on, with certain little pro- posals for the far future, which I fear may be the very near future indeed! I'm only surprised he hasn't turned up yet." 217 The Amateur Cracksman He looked again towards the lobby, which he 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 coun- try 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 218 The Return Match eye^ 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 to us until his bullet head presented an unbroken disc of short red hair. Brief as was my survey of this astound- ing apparition, the interval was long enough for Raffles 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. Regi- nald Crawshay." The bullet head bobbed up, and there was a wrinkled brow above the coarse, shaven face, crimson also, I remember, from the grip of a collar several sizes too small. But I noted nothing consciously at the time. I had jumped to my own conclusion, and I turned on Raffles 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! " 210 The Amateur Cracksman So cold was the stare which met this "out- burst that I became ashamed of my words while they were yet upon my lips. "Really, Bunny!" said Raffles, and turned his shoulder with a shrug. " Lord love yer," cried Crawshay, " V knew nothin'. '£ didn't expect me ; 'e^s all right. And you're the cool canary, yon are," he went on to Raffles. " 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 Raffles, taking it, " what am I to 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 tenderly. " Didn't know how much longer I might have to play the gent," he explained; *' didn't know who you'd bring in." " Drink whisky and soda? " inquired 220 The Return Match Raffles, when the convict was in the chair from which I had leapt. " No, I drink it neat," repHed Crawshay, " btit 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 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 concession ; he bent over and tore a pair of button boots from his bare feet, which he stretched towards the fire, painfully uncurl- ing 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?" 221 The Amateur Cracksman " 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, mis- ter. I don't arst how you go on the job. You know w'ere I come from, 'cos I 'card 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 Raffles, " we must see what can be done." " We must," said ]\Ir. Crawshay, and leaned back comfortably, and began twirl- ing his stubby thumbs. Raffles turned to me with a twinkle in his eye; but his forehead was scored with thought, and resolve mingled with resigna- tion 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 gafif ' on you and me. He is considerate enough not to say so in so many words, but it's plain enough, and natural enough for that matter. 222 The Return Match I would do the same in his place. We had the bulge before ; he has it now ; it's perfect- ly 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 Craw- shay, 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." Raffles went into the bedroom, lit the gaf there, and returned next minute. " So you got in by the window ? " " That's about it." 223 The Amateur Cracksman " It was devilish smart of you to know which one; it beats me how you brought it off in dayHght, 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 reconnoitre and soon find out. And you'd better come too, Bunny, and have some- thing to eat and talk it over." As Raffles 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 sud- den closing of his fists. " And what's to become o' me ? " he cried out with an oath. " You wait here." " No, 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 ! " Raffles turned to me with a twitch of the shoulders. " That's the worst of these professors," said he : " they never will use their heads. They see the pegs, and they mean to hit 'em ; 224 The Return Match but that's all they do see and mean, and they think we're the same. No wonder we licked them last time ! " " Don't talk through yer neck," snarled the convict. " Talk out straight, curse you ! " "Right," said Raffles. "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 to happen 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 ! " 225 The Amateur Cracksman Crawsliay 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 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. Raffles, 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 Raffles. " 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 ! " Raffles got his overcoat, a long, light driving-coat, I remember, and even as he 226 The Return Match put it on our fugitive was dozing in the chair ; we left him murmuring incoherently, with the gas out, and his bare feet toast- ing. "*Not such a bad chap, that professor," said Raffles 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 twenty- four hours is a whole that justifies its parts. Good Lord ! " We had passed a man in the foggy courts yard, and Raffles 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. Raffles?" *' 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 227 The Amateur Cracksman 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. Mackenzie ? " The detective turned about and scrutin- ised 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," said my com- panion. " My name is Raffles, 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. Raffles 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 Craw- shay? What do you think of that, eh?** 228 The Return Match " I havena the parteeculars," replied the Scot. "Good!" cried Raffles. "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 Raffles. " Nothing more natural than a little curiosity on our part. After him, quick!" And we followed the detective into an- other 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 the foot of the stairs met one of the porters of the place. Raffles asked him what was wrong. " Nothing, sir," said the fellow glibly. " Rot ! " said Raffles. " That was Mac- kenzie, the detective. I've just been speak- ing to him. What's he here for? Come on, my good fellow ; wq won't give you away, if you've instructions not to tell." 229 The Amateur Cracksman The man looked quaintly wistful, the temptation of an audience hot upon him; a door shut upstairs, arid he fell. " It's like this," he whispered. " This arfternoon 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 off the face o' the premises ! " And the por- ter looked at us with shining eyes. "Well?" said Raffles. " 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. An' that's all till about 'alf an hour ago, when I takes the manager his extry-speshul Star; in about ten minutes he comes run- ning out with a note, an' sends me with it 230 The Return Match to Scotland Yard in a hansom. An' that's all I know, sir— straight. The coppers is up there now, and the tec, and the manager, and they think their gent is about the place somewhere still. Least, I reckon that's their idea ; but who he is, or what they want him for, I dunno." " Jolly interesting ! " said Raffles. " I'm going up to inquire. Come on, Bunny; there should be some fun." " Beg yer pardon, Mr. Raffles, but you won't say nothing about me?" " Not I ; you're a good fellow. I won't forget it if this leads to sport. Sport ! " he whispered as we reached the landing. " It looks like precious poor sport for you and me. Bunny ! " " What are you going to do? " " I don't know. There's no time to think. This, to start with." And he thundered on the shut door; a policeman opened it. Raffles strode past him with the air of a chief commissioner, and I followed before the man had recovered from his astonishment. The bare boards rang under us ; in the bedroom we found 231 The Amateur Cracksman a knot of officers stooping over the window- ledge with a constable's lantern. Macken- zie 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 Raffles 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 tight. 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 ac- quaintance I do hope, my dear Mr. Macken- zie, 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 detective, " for he's not up here. Consta- ble, go you and stand at the foot o' 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 Raffles warmly. " But what is it all ? I 232 The Return Match questioned a porter 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." " He's a man we want," said Macken- zie. " He's concealed himself somewhere about these premises, or I'm vera much mistaken. D'ye reside in the Albany, Mr. Raffles?" " I do." '' Will 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 Raffles at once. " I am dining out, but I'll leave it with the officer down below." 233 The Amateur Cracksman I caught my breath in mute amazement. What was the meaning of this insane prom- ise? 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 the window looked down into the courtyard; it was still open; and as we gazed out in apparent idleness, Raffles re- assured me. " It's all right, Bunny ; you do what I tell you and leave the rest to me. It's a tight corner, but I don't despair. What you've got to do is to stick to these chaps, especial- ly if they search my rooms ; they mustn't poke about more than necessary, and they won't if you're there." " But where will you be? You're never going to leave me to be landed alone ? " " If I do, it will be to turn up trumps at the right moment. Besides, there are such things as windows, and Crawshay's the man to take his risks. You must trust me. Bunny; you've known me long enough." 234 The Return Match " And you're going now ? " " There's no time to lose. Stick to them, old chap ; don't let them suspect you, what- ever else you do." His hand lay an instant on my shoulder; then he left me at the window, and recrossed the room. " I've got to go now," I heard him say ; " but my friend will stay and see this through, and I'll leave the gas on in my rooms, and my key with the constable downstairs. Good luck, Mackenzie; only wish I could stay." " Goodbye, 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 Raffles and of his infinite resource. By this time I felt that I knew more or less what he would do in any given emergency ; 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 Rafifles going to desert us all ? I 235 The Amateur Cracksman thought of many things — lastly of a cab. These bedroom windows looked into a nar- row 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 po- lice! I pictured Raffles driving that cab, unrecognisable 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 wuth me when he passed again on his way back, and stopped to hand the con- stable his key. " We're on his track," said a voice behind me. " He's got up on the leads, sure enough, though hoAv he managed it from yon window is a myst'ry 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 devoted to the servants — a congeries of little kitchens and cubicles, used by many as lumber-rooms — ^by Raffles among the many. The annex in this case was, of 236 The Return Match 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 Mac- kenzie'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 Mackenzie 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." " Did it hang over a window ? Ask him that ! " cried the manager. " He can see by leaning over the parapet." 237 The Amateur Cracksman The question was repeated by Mackenzie ; a pause, then " Yes, it did." " Ask him how many windows along! " shouted the manager in high excitement. " Six, he says," said Mackenzie next minute; and he drew in his head and shoulders. " I should just like to see those rooms, six windows along." " Mr. Raffles's," announced the manager after a mental calculation. " Is that a fact ? " cried Mackenzie. "Then we shall have no difificulty at all. He's left me his key down below." The words had a dry, speculative intona- tion, which even then I found time to dis- like; it was as though the coincidence had already struck the Scotchman as something more. " Where is Mr. Raffles? " asked the man- ager, as we all filed downstairs. " He's gone out to his dinner," said Mac- kenzie. " Are you sure ? " " I saw him go," said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would not trust myself to speak again. But I wormed my way to 238 The Return Match a front place in the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man to cross the threshold that had been the Rubicon of my life*. As I did so I uttered a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back heavily on my toes; in another second I saw the reason, and saw it with another and a louder cry. A man was lying at full length before the fire on his back, with a little wound in the white forehead, and the blood draining into his eyes. And the man was Raffles him- self! " Suicide," said Mackenzie calmly. " No — here's the poker — looks more like mur- der." He went on his knees and shook his head quite cheerfully. " An' it's not even murder," said he, with a shade of disgust in his matter-of-fact voice ; " yon's no more than a flesh-wound, and I have my doubts whether it felled him; but, sirs, he just stinks o' chloryform ! " He got up and fixed his keen grey eyes upon me; my own were full of tears, but they faced him unashamed. " I understood ye to say ye saw him go out? " said he sternly. 239 The Amateur Cracksman (( I saw that long driving-coat; of course, I thought he was inside it." " And I could ha' sworn it was the same gent when he give me the key ! " It was the disconsolate voice of the con- stable in the background; on him turned Llackenzie, white to the lips. " You'd think anything, some of you damned policemen," said he. " What's your number, you rotter? P 34? You'll be hearing more of this, Mr. P 34! If that gentleman was dead — instead of coming to himself while I'm talking — do you know what you'd be? Guilty of his manslaughter, you stuck pig in buttons! Do you know who you've let slip, butter-fingers ? Craw- shay — no less — him that broke Dartmoor yesterday. By the God that made ye, P 34, if I lose him I'll hound ye from the forrce ! " Working face — shaking fist — a calm man on fire. It was a new side of Macken- zie, and one to mark and to digest. Next moment he had flounced from our midst. " Difficult thing to break your own head," said Raffles later ; " infinitely easier to cut 240 The Return Match your own throat. Chloroform's another matter ; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety. So you thought I was really gone ? Poor old Bunny ! But I hope Mackenzie saw your face ? " " He did," said I. I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have seen, however. " 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 to- gether." " And now we sink or swim with Craw- shay, too," said I dolefully. " Not we ! " said Raffles 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 ! " «41 THE GIFT OF THE EMPEROR \17HEN 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 com- mon as it has since become. But when it transpired that a gift of peculiar significance 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 unparal- leled, 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 original possessor. 242 The Gift of the Emperor The incident would have been a godsend to the Press a few weeks later. Even in June there were leaders, letters, large head- lines, leaded type; the Daily Chronicle de- voting half its literary page to 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 flinders. 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 passion for the river. " First-rate, old boy ! " said Raffles (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 cheque." " Oh, no, I sha'n't," said I gloomily. 243 The Amateur Cracksman *' I've got to be content with the honour 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 to say you've written for payment aheady? " 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 con- cealment. I had written for my money be- cause I really needed it; if he must know, I was cursedly hard up. Rafifles nodded as though he knew already. I warmed to my woes. It was no easy matter to keep your end up as a raw free lance of letters; for my part, I was afraid I wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for success. I suffered from a persistent ineffectual feel- ing after style. Verse I could manage; but it did not pay. To personal paragraphs and the baser journalism I could not and I would not stoop. RafHes nodded again, this time with a smile that stayed in his eyes as he leant back watching me. I knew that he was thinking of other things I had stooped to, 244 The Gift of the Emperor and I thought I knew what he was going to say. He had said it before so often; he was sure to say it again. 1 had my answer ready, but evidently he was tired of asking the same question. His Hds fell, he took up the paper he had dropped, and I sculled the length of the old red wall of Hampton Court before he spoke again. "And they gave you nothing for these! I\Iy dear Bunny, they're capital, not only qua verses but for crystallising your sub- ject and putting it in a nutshell. Certainly you've taught me more about it than I knew before. But is it really worth fifty thousand pounds — a single pearl?" " A hundred, I believe; but that wouldn't scan," "A hundred thousand pounds!" said Raffles, 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 245 The Amateur Cracksman gift; for pride thrives on an empty pocket, and no privation would have drawn from me the proposal which I had expected Raf- fles to make. My expectation had been half a hope, though I only knew it now. But neither did we touch again on what Rafides 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 pre- occupied with his own thoughts. It was months since we had met, and, as I saw him off towards eleven o'clock that Sunday night, I fancied it was for more months that we were saying goodbye. 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 Raffles shook his head. " You don't look well on it. Bunny," said he. " 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 recommend Cannes or Cairo? It's all very 246 The Gift of the Emperor 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 Mediter- ranean." " But you're playing cricket " " Hang the cricket!" " Well, if I thought you meant it " " Of course I mean it. Will you come? " " Like a shot — if you go." And I shook his hand, and waved mine in farewell, with the perfectly good- humoured 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 difiference between the rent I paid for my flat and the rent at which I had sub- let it, furnished, for the season. And the season was near its end, and creditors awaited me in town. Was it possible to be 247 The Amateur Cracksman 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 Raffles, of course, I heard noth- ing 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 seeking him vainly in town, and dining with desperation at the solitary club to which I still belonged. " Arrange to leave Waterloo by Ncrth German Lloyd special," he wired, " 9.25 a.m. Monday next will meet you South- ampton aboard Uhlan with tickets am writ- mg." And write he did, a light-hearted letter enough, but full of serious solicitude for me and for my health and prospects; a let- ter 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 to- gether, " and for a while forget." It was a 248 The Gift of the Emperor charming letter. I had never seen Italy; the privilege of initiation should be his. No mistake was greater than to deem it an im- possible country for the summer. The Bay of Naples was never so divine, and he wrote of " faery lands forlorn," as though the poetry sprang unbidden to his pen. To come back to earth and prose, I might think it unpatriotic of him to choose a German boat, but on no other line did you receive such attention and accommodation for your money. There was a hint of better reasons. Raffles wrote, as he had telegraphed, from Bremen; and I gathered that the personal use of some little influence with the authori- ties there had resulted in a material reduc- tion in our fares. Imagine my excitement and delight! I managed to pay what I owed at Thames Dttton, to squeeze a small editor for a very small cheque, and my tailors for one more flannel suit. I remember that I broke my last sovereign to get a box of Sullivan's cigarettes for Raffles to smoke on the voy- age. But my heart was as light as my purse on the Monday morning, the fairest 249 The Amateur Cracksman morning of an unfair summer, when the special whirled me through the sunshine to the sea. A tender awaited us at Southampton. Raffles was not on board, nor did I really look for him till we reached the liner's side. And then I looked in vain. His face was not among the many that fringed the rail; his hand was not of the few that waved to friends, I climbed aboard in a sudden 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. Raffles 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 Raffles in his own cabin, whither I in- quired my way in desperation, but where the sight of his own name on the baggage was certainly a further reassurance. Why 250 The Gift of the Emperor he himself kept in the background, however, I could not conceive, and only sinister rea- sons would suggest themselves in explana- tion. " 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. Raffles, seated on a sky- light, and leaning over one of the officers' 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 but the swift grimace which preceded a start of well-feigned as- tonishment " Why Bunny f " cried Raffles. " 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 Werner, may I introduce him? " And he did so without a blush, describ- 251 The Amateur Cracksman ing me as an old schoolfellow whom he had not seen for months, with wilful circum- stance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with confvision, suspicion, and re- volt. I felt myself blushing for us both, and I did not care. My address utterly de- serted me, and I made no eflfort to recover it, to carry the thing off. All I would do was to mumble such vv'ords as Raffles act- ually put into my mouth, and that I doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace. " So you saw my name in the list of pas- sengers 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-house, and even while we had been speaking the pilot had taken possession of the bridge; as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and shrill goodbyes; and as we bowed to Miss Werner 252 The Gift of the Emperor on the promenade deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing under-foot, and our voyage had begun. It did not begin pleasantly between Raf- fles and me. On deck he had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though forceful joviality; in his cabin the gloves were off. " You idiot," he snarled, " you've given me away again ! " " How have 1 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 know 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 anything on? " 253 The Amateur Cracksman I had turned the tables with some effect. Raffles 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 pur- sued, " it was your business to give me the tip the moment I set foot on board. I would have taken it all right. I am not so virtu- ous as all that." Was it my imagination, or did Raffles 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. But " " You were better engaged? " " Say otherwise." " The charming Miss Werner? " " She is quite charming." " Most Australian girls are," said I. 254 The Gift of the Emperor "How did you know she was one?" he cried. " I heard her speak." "*Brute!" said Raffles, laughing; "she has no more twang than you have. Her people are German, 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 Wer- ner 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?" Raffles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny that I knew so well; the very famil- iarity of it, after all these months, set me smiling in a way that might have reassured him; for dimly already I divined his enter- prise. " It won't send you off in the pilot's boat, Bunny? " 255 The Amateur Cracksman " Not quite." " Then — you remember the pearl you wrote the " I did not wait for him to finish his sen- tence, " You've got it! " I cried, my face on fire, for I caught sight of it that moment in the stateroom mirror. Raffles seemed taken aback. " Not yet," said he; " but I mean to have it before we get to Naples." "Is it on board?" " Yes." " But how — where — who's got it? " " A little German officer, a whipper-snap- per with perpendicular moustaches." " 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! " 256 The Gift of the Emperor I burst out laughing. " You needn't be ashamed. You are do- ing the very thing I was rather hoping you were going to propose the other day on the river." " You were hoping it? " said Raffles, with his eyes wide open. Indeed, it was his turn to show surprise, and mine to be much more ashamed than I feU. " Yes," I answered, " I was quite keen on the idea, but I wasn't going to propose it." " Yet you would have listened to me the other day?" Certainly I would, and I told him so with- out reserve; not brazenly, you understand; not even now with the gusto of a man who savours such an adventure for its own sake, but doggedly, defiantly, thro.ugh my teeth, as one who had tried to live honestly and bailed. And, while I was about it, I told him much more. Eloquently enough, I daresay, 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 rec- 257 The Amateur Cracksman ord 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. Raffles entirely disagreed with me. He shook his head over my conventional view. Human nature was a board of chequers; why not reconcile oneself to alternate black and white? Why desire 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 bet- ter for the shade. My conclusion he con- sidered absurd. " But you err in good company, Bunny, for all 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! " 258 The Gift of the Emperor " Then you don't still think it too remark- able 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 be- yond. " But is he the chap we have to deal with? Won't the pearl be in the purser's keep- ing? " Raffles stood at the door, frowning out upon the Solent, but for an instant he turned to me with a sniff. " ^ly good fellow, do you suppose the whole ship's company knows there's a gem like that aboard? You said that it was worth a hundred thousand pounds; in Berlin they say it's priceless. I doubt if the skipper 259 The Amateur Cracksman himself knows that von Heiimann has it on him." "And he has?" " Must have." " Then we have only him to deal with? " He answered me without a word. Some- thing white was fluttering past once more, and Raffles, stepping forth, made the promenaders three. II I do not ask to set foot aboard a finer steamship than the Uhlan of the Nord- deutscher Lloyd, to meet a kindlier gentle- man than her then commander, or better fellows than his officers. This much at least let me have the grace to admit. I hated the voyage. It was no fault of anybody connected with the ship; it was no fault of the weather, which was monotonously ideal. Not even in my own heart did the reason reside; conscience and I were divorced at last, and the decree made absolute. With my scruples had fled all fear, and I was 260 The Gift of the Emperor ready to revel between bright skies and sparkling sea with the light-hearted detach- ment of Raffles himself. It was Raffles himself who prevented me, but not Raffles alone. It was Raffles and that Colonial minx on her way home from school. What 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 Mediter- ranean. 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 nonsense! Is it conceivable that a man like Raffles, with his knowledge of the world, and his experi- ence of women (a side of his character upon W'hich I have purposely never touched, for it deserves another volume); is it credible, I ask, that such a man could find anything but nonsense to talk by the day together 261 The Amateur Cracksman to a giddy young schoolgirl? I would not be unfair for the world. I think I have ad- mitted that the young person had points. Her eyes, I suppose, were really fine, and certainly 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 occasion to report any of this young lady's speeches (they would scarcely bear it), and am there- fore the more anxious to describe her with- out injustice. I confess to some little preju- dice against her. I resented her success with Raffles, of whom, in consequence, 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. Cap- tain von Heumann would twirl his mous- taches into twin spires, shoot his white cufifs over his rings, and stare at me insolently through his rimless eye-glasses; we ought to have consoled each other, but we never 262 The Gift of the Emperor exchanged a syllable. The captain had a murderous scar across one of his cheeks, a present from Heidelberg, and I used to think how he must long to have Raffles there to serve the same. It was not as though von Heumann never had his in- nings. Raffles 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 him disin- genuously with obnoxious conduct towards a German on a German boat. " You'll make yourself disliked on board!" " By von Heumann 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 con- tent. I had feared Raffles 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. 26% The Amateur Cracksman " 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 Raffles spoke he glanced sharp- ly fore and aft, leaving me next moment with a step full of purpose. I retired to the smoking-room, to smoke and read in a corner, and to watch von Heumann, who very soon came to drink beer and to sulk in another. ' Few travellers tempt the Red Sea at mid- summer; the Uhlan was very empty indeed. She had, however, but a limited supply of cabins on the promenade deck, and there was just that excuse for my sharing Raf- fles's room. I could have had one to my- self downstairs, but I must be up above. Raffles had insisted that I should insist on the point. So we were together, I think, without suspicion, though also without any object that I could see. On the Sunday afternoon I was asleep in my berth, the lower one, when the cur- 264 Tiie Gift of the Emperor tains were shaken by Raffles, who was in his shirt- sleeves on the settee. "Achilles sulking in his bunk! " " What else is there to do? " I asked him as I stretched and yawned. I noted, how- ever, the good-humour of his tone, and did my best to catch it. " I have found something else, Bun- ny." "I daresay!" " You misunderstand me. The whipper- snapper's making his century this after- noon. I've had other fish to fry." I swung my legs over the side of my berth and sat forward, as he was sitting, all attention. The inner door, a grating, was shut and bolted, and curtained like the open porthole. " We shall be at Genoa before sunset," continued 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 z6?, The Amateur Cracksman 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 mishap. If we were forced to use violence we could get away by the earli- est 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 Rafifles, " 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 sail, whatever happens. But I don't anticipate any violence. Violence is a confession 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." I asked him how he proposed to enter von Heumann's state-room unobserved, and even through the curtained gloom of ours his face lighted up. 266 The Gift of the Emperor " Climb into my bunk, Bunny, and you shall see." I did so, but could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and tapped the ventilator, a sort of trap-door in the wall above his bed, some eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened outwards into the ventilating shaft. " That," said he, " is our door to fortune. Open it if you like; you won't see much, because it doesn't open far; but loosening a couple of screws will set that all right. The shaft, as you may see, is more or less bottomless; you pass under it whenever you go to your bath, and the top is a skylight on the bridge. That's why this thing has to be done while we're at Genoa, because they keep no watch on the bridge in port. The ventilator opposite ours is von Heumann's. It again will only m.ean a couple of screws, and there's a beam to stand on while you work." " But if anybody should look up from be- low?" " It's extremely unlikely that anybody will be astir below, so unlikely that we can 267 The Amateur Cracksman afford to chance it. No, I can't have you there to make sure. The great point is that neither of us should be seen from 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! " " 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 perhaps 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 gen- erally lend me the moral support you've made me require. It's a luxury. Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult to do v/ith- out it after you turned pi! " He said that von Heumann was certain to sleep with a bolted door, which he, of 268 The Gift of the Emperor course, would leave unbolted, and spoke of other ways of laying a false scent while rifling the cabin. Not that Raffles antici- pated a tiresome search. The pearl would be about von Heumann's person; in fact, Raffles knew exactly where and in what he kept it. Naturally I asked how he could have come by such knowledge, and his an- swer led up to a momentary unpleasantness. " It's a very old story, Bunny. I really forget in what Book it comes; I'm only sure of the Testam.ent. 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 mean- ing. " So the fair Australian has been playing Delilah?" 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? '* 269 The Amateur Cracksman " 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 sufficient 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?" " No; now I understand what has beaten me all the week. I simply couldn't fathom what you saw in that little girl. I never dreamt it was part of the game." " So you think it was that and nothing more? " " You deep old dog — of course I do! " " You didn't know she was the daughter of a wealthy squatter? " " There are wealthy women by the dozen who would marry you to-morrow." " It doesn't occur to you that I might like to draw stumps, start clean, and live happily ever after — in the bush? " 270 The Gift of the Emperor " With that voice? It certainly does not!" "Bunny!" he cried, so fiercely that I braced myself for a blow. But no more followed. " Do you think you would live happily? " I made bold to ask him. " God knows! " he answered. And with that he left me, to marvel at his look and tone, and, more than ever, at the insuf- ficiently exciting cause. Ill Of all the mere feats of cracksmanship which I have seen Raffles perform, at once the most delicate and most difficult was that which he accomplished between one and two o'clock on the Tuesday morning, aboard the North German steamer Uhlan, lying at anchor in Genoa harbour. Not a hitch occurred. Everything had been foreseen; everything happened as I had been assured everything must. No- body was about below, only the ship's boys 271 The Amateur Cracksman on deck, and nobody on the bridge. It was twenty-five minutes past one when Raf- fles, without a stitch of clothing on his body, but with a glass phial, corked with cotton- wool, between his teeth, and a tiny screw- driver behind his ear, squirmed feet first through the ventilator over his berth; and it was nineteen minutes to two when he re- turned, head first, with the phial still be- tween his teeth, and the cotton-wool rammed home to still the rattling of that which lay like a great grey bean within. He had taken screws out and put them in again; he had unfastened von Heumann's ventilator and had left it fast as he had found it — fast as he instantly proceeded to make his own. As for von Heumann, it had been enough to place the drenched wad first on his moustache, and then to hold it between his gaping lips; thereafter the in- truder 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 filibuster- ing age — this gift from a European em- 272 The Gift of the Emperor peror to a South Sea chief. We gloated over it when all was snug. We toasted it in whisky and soda-water laid in overnight in "view of the great moment. But the mo- ment was greater, more triumphant, than our most sanguine dreams. All we had now to do was to secrete the gem (which Raffles had prised from its setting, replacing the latter), so that we could stand the strict- est search and yet take it ashore with us at Naples; and this Raffles was doing when I turned in. I myself would have landed in- continently, 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 any- thing 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 effects, sniff no suspicious odour, in the morning. Nevertheless, von Heu- mann reappeared as though nothing had happened to him, his German cap over his eyes and his moustaches brushing the peak. And by ten o'clock we were quit of Genoa; 273 The Amateur Cracksman the last lean, blue-chinned official 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- greybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatman over half a lira. But at length we were off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed, and Raffles 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 remain in all day, and so post- pone the inevitable hour; and, though the lady looked bored, and was for ever glanc- ing in our direction, he seemed only too willing to avail himself of his opportunities. But Raffles 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. 274 The Gift of the Emperor " 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?" " We shall be within a ten miles' swim of the shore most of the day." " What on earth are you driving at, Raf- fles?" " Nothing; only I shall swim for it if the worst comes to the worst. I suppose you can't swim under 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? " " ]Macken2ie." "Never!" 275 The Amateur Cracksman " The man with the beard who came aboard last." " Are you sure? " " Sure ! I was only sorry to see you didn't recognise him too." I took my handkerchief to my face; now that I thought of it, there had been some- thing familiar in the old man's gait, as well as something rather youthful for his appar- ent years; his very beard seemed unconvinc- ing, now that T 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 Raffles. " I saw him go into the captain's cabin twenty minutes ago." "But what can have brought him?" I cried miserably. " Can it be a coincidence — is it somebody else he's after? " Raffles 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! " "What am I to do ^ I don't want to 276 The Gift of the Emperor 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 doMbt that Mac was watching 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 impatient- ly- " I still don't understand," said I. " Why should he be after you? He couldn't come all this way about a jewel which was per- fectly 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 Craw- shay slipped clean through his fingers last November. There have been other indica- tions. I am really not unprepared for this. But it can only be pure suspicion. 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 277 The Amateur Cracksman 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 Raffles was not a little disturbed at the falsification of all his predictions. There was something sinister in silence under such a loss, and the silence was sustained for hours during which Mac- kenzie never reappeared. But he was abroad during the luncheon-hour — he was in our cabin! I had left my book in Raf- fles's berth, and in taking it after lunch I touched the quilt. It was warm from the recent pressure of flesh and blood, and on an instinct I sprang to the ventilator; as I 278 The Gift of the Emperor opened it the ventilator opposite was closed with a snap. I waylaid Raffles. "All right! Let him find the pearl." " Have you dumped it overboard? " " That's a question I sha'n't condescend to answer." Jle turned on his heel, and at subsequent intervals I saw him making the most of his last afternoon with the inevitable Miss Wer- ner. I remember that she looked both cool and smart in quite a simple affair of brown holland, which toned well with her com- plexion, and was cleverly relieved with touches of scarlet. I quite admired her that afternoon, for her eyes were really very good, and so were her teeth, yet I had never admired her more directly in my own de- spite. For I passed them again and again in order to get a word with Raffles, to tell him I knew there was danger in the wind; but he would not so much as catch my eye. So at last I gave it up. And I saw him next in the captain's cabin. They had summoned him first; he had gone in smiling; and smiling I found him 279 The Amateur Cracksman when they summoned me. The state-room was spacious, as befitted that of a com- mander. Mackenzie sat on the settee, his beard in front of him on the poHshed table; but a revolver lay in front of the captain; and, when I had entered, the chief offieer, who had summoned me, shut the door and put his back to it. Von Heumann com- pleted the party, his fingers busy with his moustache. Raffles greeted me. " This is a great joke! " he cried. " You remember 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, nodding to his beard. " You will recognise that loyal and pa- triotic voice," said RalTles. " Mon, 'tis our auld acquaintance ]\Iackenzie, o' Scoteland Yarrd an' Scoteland itsel' ! " " Dat is enough," cried the captain. 2S0 The Gift of the Emperoi " Have you siibmid to be searge, or do i' vorce you? " "What you will," said Raffles, "but it win do you no harm to give us fair play first. You accuse us of breaking into Cap- tain von Heumann's state-room during the small hours of this morning, and abstract- ing from it this confounded pearl. Well, I can prove that I was in my own room all night long, and I have no doubt my friend can prove the same." " Most certainly I can," said I indignant- ly. "The ship's boys can bear witness to that." Mackenzie laughed, and shook his head at his reflection in the polished mahogany. " That was ver clever," said he, " and like enough it would ha' served ye had I not stepped aboard. But I've just had a look at they ventilators, and I think I know how ye worrked it. Anyway, captain, it makes no matter. I'll just be clappin* the darbies on these young sparks, an' then " "By what right?" roared Raffles, in a ringing voice, and I never saw his face in such a blaze. " Search us if you like; search 2«I The Amateur Cracksman every scrap and stitch we possess; but you dare to lay a finger on us without a war- rant!" " I wouldna' dare," said Mackenzie gravely, as he fumbled in his breast pocket, and Raffles 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 Raffles 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 Raffles, peremptorily, and the detective obeyed. Raffles raised his eye- brows 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 Mac- kenzie. " It may. I congratulate you, Macken- %82 The Gift of the Emperor zie; it's a strong hand, at any rate. Two burglaries and the Melrose necklace, Bunny ! " And he turned to me with a rue- ful smile. " An' all easy to prove," said the Scotch- man, 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 reproach- fully, " that my shib should be made a den of thiefs! It shall be a very disagreeable madder, I have been obliged to pud you both in irons until we ged to Na- bles." " Surely not! " exclaimed Raffles. " Mac- kenzie, intercede with him; don't give your countrymen away before all hands! Cap- tain, 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 283 The Amateur Cracksman captain; " but wad about der bearl dat you were sdealing? " " You shall have it! " cried Raffles. " You shall have it this minute if you guarantee no public indignity 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, pen- knives, cigarette cases — lay on the shiny table along with the revolvers already men- tioned. " Ye're humbuggin' us," said Mackenzie. " What's the use? " " I'm doing nothing of the sort," laughed Raffles. " I'm testing you. Where's the harm?" " It's here, joke apart? " " On that table, by all my gods." Mackenzie opened the cigarette cases and shook each particular cigarette. There- upon Raffles prayed to be allowed to smoke one, and, when his prayer was heard, ob- 284 The Gift of the Emperor served that the pearl had been on the table much longer than the cigarettes. Macken- zie promptly caught up the Colt and opened the chamber in the butt. "Not there, not there," said Raffles; " but you're getting hot. Try the car- tridges." Mackenzie emptied them into his palm, and shook each one at his ear without re- sult. " Oh, give them to me!" And, in an instant. Raffles had found the right one, had bitten out the bullet, and placed the emperor's pearl with a flourish in the centre of the table. " After that you will perhaps show me such little consideration as is in your power. Captain, I have been a bit of a villain, as you see, and as such I am ready and willing to lie in irons all night if you deem it requi- site for the safety of the ship. All I ask is that you do me one favour first." " That shall debend on wad der vafour has been." " Captain, I've done a worse thing aboard your ship than any of you know. I have 285 The Amateur Cracksman become engaged to be married, and I want to say goodbye! " I suppose we were all equally amazed; but the only one to express his amazement was von Heumann, whose deep-chested German oath was almost his first contribu- tion to the proceedings. He was not slow to follow it, however, with a vigorous pro- test 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 Mac- kenzie 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. " So 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! " 286 The Gift of the Emperor There was a meaning in his eye that I un- derstood; and my teeth were set, and my nerves strung ready, as I wrung that strong and cunning hand for the last time in my Hfe. How that last scene stays with me, and will stay to my death ! How I see every de- tail, every shadow on the sunlit deck! We were among the islands that dot the course from Genoa to Naples; that was Elba fall- ing back on our starboard quarter, that purple patch with the hot sun setting over it. The captain's cabin opened to starboard, and the starboard promenade deck, sheeted with sunshine 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 Raffles. Engaged? 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 287 The Amateur Cracksman done — a thing 1 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. Raffles was on the rail, but only just, " 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 ever-lasting disgrace, concern or profit you, beyond the interest and advantage to be gleaned from the knowledge that I at least had my deserts. But one thing I must 288 The Gift of the Emperor 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 Raffles. Meanwhile a boat was lowered, and the sea scoured to no purpose, as is doubtless on record else- where. But either the setting sun, flashing over the waves, must have blinded all eyes, or else mine were victims of a strange illu- sion. For the boat was back, the screw throb- bing, and the prisoner peering through his porthole across the sunlit waters that he be- lieved 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 distance, already miles astern, either my sight deceived me or a black speck bobbed amid the grey. 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 289 The Amateur Cracksman rose, now sank, and now I gave it up utterly. Yet anon it would rise again, a mere mote dancing in the dim grey 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. I^E End, '^^ ^^.i^^^ f OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG The Amateur Cracksman 30th Thousand. i2mo, $i.2j. The titles of the stories are: I. The Ides of March V. Wilful Murder II. A Costume Piece VI. Nine Points of the Law lU. Gentlemen and Players VII. The Return Match IV. Le Premier Pas VIII. The Gift of the Emperor " For sheer excitement and inventive genius the burglarian exploits of ' The Amateur Cracks- man ' carry off the palm. Raffles is as distinct and convincing a creation as Sherlock Holmes." — The Bookman. " Raffles is amazing ; his resource is perfect ; he talks like a gentleman and acts like one, except when occupied with pressing business in another man's house, at midnight, and naturally he has a ' cool nerve,' a nerve positively arctic. They all have nerves like that, these Raffleses. ' ' — Neta York Tribune. Dead MenTell NoTales I A Novel, 1 2 mo, $1.23 f I f** In this novel, as in the previous ones from Mr. Hornung's pen, there is a wealth of well- handled incidents. It is story-telling of the most direct kind and holds the attention from the first page to the last. Mr. Hornung seems to us in each succeeding book from his pen to gain in confidence and authority, and we do not hesitate to place him among the first of the comparatively new writers who must be reck- oned yv'Mh.''— Literature. OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG Some Persons Unknown " In about half-a-dozen cases the scene is laid in Australia, and the dramatic and tragic aspects of Colonial life are treated by Mr. Hornung with that happy union of vigor and sympathy which has stood him in such good stead in his earlier novels." — London Spectator, In the Ivory Series, Each iSmOf 1^ cents : The Boss of Taroomba "There are passages in E. W. Hornung's latest story, 'The Boss of Taroomba,' which remind us by their vividness and fantastic quality of Stevenson in some of his South Sea Island tales. . , . The hero is an uncommon creation even for fiction." — Chicago Times-Herald. A Bride from the Bush *' Mr. E. W. Hornung is one of the most- successful delineators of Bush life." — Chicago Tribune, ! Irralie's Bushranger *' A capital little story of Australian love and adventure. There is no flagging in the press and stir of the story." — The Nation. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG The Rogue's March A Romance. i2mo, S^-S^ *' Mr. Hornung has succeeded admirably in his object : his AustraHan scenes are a veritable nightmare; they sear the imagination, and it will be some time before we get Hookey Simpson, the clank of the chains, and the hero's degrada- tion off our mind." — London Saturday Review. "Vividly and vigorously told." — London Academy, Each i2mo, $1.25 : My Lord Duke ** Mr. Hornung is a natural humorist, and has the art of teUing a story." — Philadelphia Evening Telegraph. " It is pleasant to turn to a real story by a real story-writer. Such is * My Lord Duke.' . . . Its story is its own, both in plot and in characterization. It is a capital Httle novel.'' — The Nation. Young Blood "Whether Lowndes be entirely realized or not does not much matter ; the conception of him is already a distinction. He is an advent- urer of genius, but not built on the usual lines. . . And his vitality is inexhaustible. We leave him, not without a stain upon his char- acter, but with considerable regret in our minds." — The Bookman. OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG ** * Peccavi * is at once the most serious and the strongest novel that has issued from Mr. Homung's engaging pen, * * A striking and admirable **o'y-" —The Spectator, PECCAVI l2mo, $1.^0 **It must be said that the erring parson is a fine figure, standing aloof, yet never passive in his awful solitude. He vi^orks out a grand and unselfish salvation in an heroic v^^ay." — The Athenaum. r AT LARGE $1-50 '* Once more, he gives us a book decidedly entertaining to read." — New York Tribune. " More life and go than in most recent fiction and it is told so vi^ell that it has not a single dull page." — 5 an Francisco Chronicle. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York OTHER BOOKS BY MR. HORNUNG RAFFLES More Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman With tix full-page illustrations, by F. C. YOHN, drawn in a humor in exact harmony "witb Mr. HornuHg's conceptions. "D AFFLES, the clever, the resourceful, the "'■^ big-hearted, here appears again in a new series of experiences and adventures that not only prove as absorbing as those in The Ama- teur Cracksman^ but exhibit his character in its larger and later devel- opments and bring his interesting career to a heroic conclusion. The exploits detailed in this book illustrate the author's ability to satisfactorily follow a character of power and ideals such as Raffles possessed, through the intricacies of an environment so unnatural to it, to a consistent and satisfying climax. The final story, disclosing the conclusion of Raffles's career, has not appeared serially and is here first published. CONTENTS No Sinecure A Jubilee Present The Fate of Faustina The Last Laugh To Catch a Thief An Old Flame The Wrong House The Knees of the Gods Charles Scribner's Sons. 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