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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9806-8.txt b/9806-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8a5ebde --- /dev/null +++ b/9806-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8079 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mr. Justice Raffles + +Author: E. W. Hornung + +Posting Date: December 8, 2011 [EBook #9806] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 19, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + + BY E.W. HORNUNG + + 1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Chapter + + + I. An Inaugural Banquet + + II. "His Own Familiar Friend" + + III. Council of War + + IV. "Our Mr. Shylock" + + V. Thin Air + + VI. Camilla Belsize + + VII. In Which We Fail to Score + + VIII. The State of the Case + + IX. A Triple Alliance + + X. "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + XI. A Dash in the Dark + + XII. A Midsummer Night's Dream + + XIII. Knocked Out + + XIV. Corpus Delicti + + XV. Trial by Raffles + + XVI. Watch and Ward + + XVII. A Secret Service + + XVIII. The Death of a Sinner + + XIX. Apologia + + + + +Mr. Justice Raffles + + + + +CHAPTER I + +An Inaugural Banquet + + +Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no +conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at +Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity +match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The +telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of +course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a +specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my +horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous +caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet. + +"Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!" said he, +in tones as hollow as his cheeks. "No, I'm not going to stop to clear +my baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear +good pal." + +"Any time you like," said I, giving him my arm. "But where shall we dine? +Kellner's? Neapolo's? The Carlton or the Club?" + +But Raffles shook his head at one and all. + +"I don't want to dine at all," he said. "I know what I want!" + +And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the +sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of +the warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its +traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political +palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary +clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall +belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where +white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did +not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about +that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on +seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and +the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as +uncharacteristic of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the +table) as the sigh with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, +and crossed his arms upon the cloth. + +"I didn't know you were a member of this place," said I, feeling really +rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for +me to open than that of his late mysterious movements. + +"There are a good many things you don't know about me, Bunny," said he +wearily. "Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?" + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?" + +"You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?" + +"It's only three weeks ago, Bunny." + +"It seems months to me." + +"And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost +tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the +wife with the emerald necklace?" + +"I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise +Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J." + +"Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to +Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his +annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can +sympathise with the poor brute now!" + +"But what on earth took you there, old fellow?" + +"Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their +table when they'd gone, and how _I_ forgot myself and ran after them with +the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?" + +I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a +piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was +prepared for something even more perverse. + +"You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at +the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a +tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like +that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge." + +"You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more +interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale. + +"I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping +to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip +to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him." + +I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in +the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way +Raffles now sided with me against himself. + +"But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that +fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on +purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor +head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I +didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all +round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear +call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for +Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted." + +"Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such +bad form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's +the unkind cut I can't forgive." + +"My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The +cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me." + +"Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him. + +"Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book." + +"But why, in the name of all that's wanton?" + +"You don't know Carlsbad, or you wouldn't ask. The place is squirming +with spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize +humbugs laid down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, +and bowled out myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, +if old man Dante were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of +salubrity for the redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!" + +The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of +fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) +Raffles's only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive +tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we +couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only +achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. +And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation +as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his. + +"No, Bunny, you couldn't have borne it for half a week; you'd have looked +like that all the time!" quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as +it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; +that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling +matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of +humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at +my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no +doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of +good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; +mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, +except some aerated muck called Gieshübler. He was allowed to lap that up +an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. +We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked +quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have +known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two +instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks +together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective +that one couldn't get in a word about one's own works edgeways." + +"But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he +shook his head as one who was not so sure. + +"Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a +concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. +You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for +a doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of +course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the +rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me +from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general +condition. He said I had a liver! I'll swear I hadn't before I went to +Carlsbad, but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd brought one back." + +And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon +the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived. + +"It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I +only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve +to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend +the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of +that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of +German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of +the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to +joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in +between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, +Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was +the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion +all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as you would, or +as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the doctor's place +one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. +But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala." + +"But did you win those stakes after all?" + +"Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a look +that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and +I'll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought +me back so soon?" + +"Hadn't you finished your cure?" + +"Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the +Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of +fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should +be at Carlsbad still." + +E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one +of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had +made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in +town, where the young fellow's father had a house at which Raffles +became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both +against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son +whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand +the mutual attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed +he was a mere boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a +knowledge of the world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous +spring of sweetness and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could +sensibly pollute. And yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had +been somewhat freely sown, and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and +taken the sower in hand, and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are +made. At least I knew that no one could be sounder friend or saner +counsellor to any young fellow in need of either. And many there must be +to bear me out in their hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I +knew mine; and if they say that was why they thought so much of him, let +them have patience, and at last they shall hear something that need not +make them think the less. + +"I couldn't let poor Teddy keep at Lord's," explained Raffles, "and me +not there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in +those little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly +interest in the child." + +"You must have done him a lot of good," I suggested, "in every way." + +Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was +not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it. + +"Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask +me." + +"I didn't ask you, Bunny, that's just the point!" said Raffles. And I +watched him tip the waiter without the least _arrière-pensée_ on +either side. + +"After all," said I, on our way down the marble stair, "you have told me +a good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot +of debts, for example." + +"So I was afraid," replied Raffles, frankly; "and between ourselves, I +offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn't hear of it; +that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was +perfectly delightful in what he said. So don't jump to rotten +conclusions, Bunny, but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink." + +And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in +the hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place +with Raffles. + +"That," said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, +since I felt at one with all the world, "is certainly the finest +grill in Europe." + +"That's why we went there, Bunny." + +"But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place +where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!" + +I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own +caravanserai. + +"I would go a step further," he remarked, "and make every member show his +badge as they do at Lord's." + +"But surely the porter knows the members by sight?" + +"Not he! There are far too many thousands of them." + +"I should have thought he must." + +"And I know he doesn't." + +"Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you're a member yourself." + +"On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was +one!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +"His Own Familiar Friend" + + +How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been +wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this +was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous +will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London +lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost +theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due +to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I +felt I was the brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. +Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, +especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he +had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help +wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that +honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, +such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, to produce. + +So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, +thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was +our good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the +courtyard. + +"There's a gen'leman writing you a letter upstairs," said he to Raffles. +"It's Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up." + +"Teddy!" cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time. + +I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather +critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the +evening was spoilt for me--and God knows I was right! Not till my dying +day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar rooms. I +see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, which +lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a +problem picture itself in flesh and blood. + +Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the +boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had +very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the +sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that was the last of his +natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there +was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to +remind me of the Phoebus in Guido's Aurora, with its healthy pink and +bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our +gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as +if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. +I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each +sunburnt hand. + +"What is it? What are you hiding?" demanded Raffles. His love for the lad +had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular +and genial, but the other's attitude soon strangled that. All this time I +had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned +me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a +guilty face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the +door behind us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk. + +No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no +note young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously +copying into Raffles's cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a +pass-book with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather +back. Raffles had only that year opened a banking account, and I +remembered his telling me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the +instructions on his cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise +the fact. And this was the result. A glance convicted his friend of +criminal intent: a sheet of notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. +Yet Raffles could turn and look with infinite pity upon the miserable +youth who was still looking defiantly on him. + +"My poor chap!" was all he said. + +And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and +quavering old man. + +"Won't you hand me over and be done with it?" he croaked. "Must you +torture me yourself?" + +It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the +fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired +whether he had thought it all out before. + +"God knows I hadn't, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I +did," said Garland with a sudden sob. + +"No need to swear it," returned Raffles, actually smiling. "Your word's +quite good enough for me." + +"God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible +disorder now. + +"It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. + +"Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, +and my refusing it?" + +"Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness +that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter +to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such +conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which +seemed to me rather to aggravate the offence. + +"I have regretted that refusal ever since," young Garland continued very +simply. "It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it's +been a tragedy. Money I must have; I'll tell you why directly. When I got +your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been +answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind +to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet +I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back +to-night; and you weren't here when I came. I telephoned and found that +the train had come in all right, and that there wasn't another until the +morning. Tomorrow morning's my limit, and to-morrow's the match." He +stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. "Don't, Raffles, I don't +deserve it!" he added in fresh distress. + +But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the +corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to +the guilty youth. + +"Drink some," he said, "or I won't listen to another word." + +"I'm going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!" the poor fellow +insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. "And it'll break my +father's heart, and--and--" + +I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; +but either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward +in spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a +further explanation of his conduct. + +"I only came up to leave a line for Raffles," he said to me, "in case he +did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that +bureau. He'll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw +before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your +pass-book bulging with old cheques." + +"And as I wasn't back to write one for you," said Raffles, "you wrote it +for me. And quite right, too!" + +"Don't laugh at me!" cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he +looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the +sprightly sympathy of his friend. + +"I'm not laughing, Teddy," replied Raffles kindly. "I was never more +serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in +your fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my +back rather than let me feel I'd ruined you by not turning up in time. +You may shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a +higher compliment." + +And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less +miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing +really dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor +to accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down +upon himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet +there was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something +that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we +took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he +indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old +story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I +suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of +Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless +extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace +is constitutionally quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. +Suffice it that this one had thrown himself on his father's generosity, +only to find that the father himself was in financial straits. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "with that house on his hands?" + +"I knew it would surprise you," said Teddy Garland. "I can't understand +it myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for +me. I simply couldn't tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a +cheque for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that +I swore I'd never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!" + +The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then +he paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out +between his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde +young face, with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw +Raffles look another way until the match was blown out. + +"But at the time I might have done worse, and did," said Teddy, "a +thousand times! I went to the Jews. That's the whole trouble. There were +more debts--debts of honour--and to square up I went to the Jews. It was +only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you may know, +though I didn't, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the hands of +those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory note for +four hundred and fifty-six." + +"Only fifty per cent!" said Raffles. "You got off cheap if the percentage +was per annum." + +"Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The +four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty +quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. +That was soon after Christmas, when one's always hard up, and for the +first time I was a day or two late--not more, mind you; yet what do you +suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed balance +demanded on the nail!" + +Raffles was following intently, with that complete concentration which +was a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at +anything he heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge +upon the bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been +but for the kink in his nature which had made him what he was. + +"The promissory note was for four-fifty-six," said he, "and this sudden +demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?" + +"That's it." + +"What did you do?" I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp +of the case. + +"Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!" + +"And they?" + +"Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down +on me for--what do you suppose?" + +"Getting on for a thousand," said Raffles after a moment's thought. + +"Nonsense!" I cried. Garland looked astonished too. + +"Raffles knows all about it," said he. "Seven hundred was the actual +figure. I needn't tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since +the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. +And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I'll trouble you, +from the beginning of January down to date!" + +"Had you agreed to that?" + +"Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my +promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above +everything else when the original interest wasn't forthcoming." + +"Printed or written on your note of hand?" + +"Printed--printed small, I needn't tell you--but quite large enough for +me to read when I signed the cursed bond. In fact I believe I did read +it; but a halfpenny a week! Who could ever believe it would mount up like +that? But it does; it's right enough, and the long and short of it is +that unless I pay up by twelve o'clock to-morrow the governor's to be +called in to say whether he'll pay up for me or see me made a bankrupt +under his nose. Twelve o'clock, when the match begins! Of course they +know that, and are trading on it. Only this evening I had the most +insolent ultimatum, saying it was my 'dead and last chance.'" + +"So then you came round here?" + +"I was coming in any case. I wish I'd shot myself first!" + +"My dear fellow, it was doing me proud; don't let us lose our sense of +proportion, Teddy." + +But young Garland had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the +miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. +The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, +the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, +had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul +in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence +of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In +these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less +unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of +Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not +to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential +honesty too bright and brilliant to be dimmed by incidental dishonour; +and both remained to the younger man, in the eyes of the other two, who +were even then determining to preserve in him all that they themselves +had lost. The thought came naturally enough to me. And yet I may well +have derived it from a face that for once was easy to read, a clear-cut +face that had never looked so sharp in profile, or, to my knowledge, half +so gentle in expression. + +"And what about these Jews?" asked Raffles at length. + +"There's really only one." + +"Are we to guess his name?" + +"No, I don't mind telling you. It's Dan Levy." + +"Of course it is!" cried Raffles with a nod for me. "Our Mr. Shylock in +all his glory!" + +Teddy snatched his face from his hands. + +"You don't know him, do you?" + +"I might almost say I know him at home," said Raffles. "But as a matter +of fact I met him abroad." + +Teddy was on his feet. + +"But do you know him well enough--" + +"Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts +for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying +it was your last chance." + +"Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of +course I'll come with you--" + +"Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye +put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you +sit up all night either. Where are you staying, my man?" + +"Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd +caught you early enough." + +"Stout fellow! You stay here." + +"My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully. + +"My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you +stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you +want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake." + +"But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?" + +"You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed--do I, Bunny?" + +"I've seldom seen you there," said I. + +"But you were travelling all last night?" + +"And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a +train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in +to-night I shouldn't get a wink." + +"Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how +to sleep!" + +"Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and +lit it up. + +"I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me +as though we were old friends now. + +"And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is." + +Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from +which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm. + +"Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of +these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes." + +"What are they?" + +"Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best." + +"But won't they give me a frightful head?" + +"Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake +up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because +you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?" + +"I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed +him to scorn. + +"They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks +with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up +to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!" + +And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more +about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after +that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; +and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the +conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The +starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue +than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in +Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard +frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's +must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any +man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his +soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether +any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as +Raffles and myself! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Council of War + + +Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise +when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were +shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost +midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the +syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside +him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; +he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures +which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or +rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of +which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it +seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw +them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; +he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, +and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back +into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there +was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, +shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming +and spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night. + +"That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out +between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!" + +"Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the +conversation which I had managed not to overhear. + +"I don't say that, Bunny, though I never should have dreamt of his old +father being in one too. I own I can't understand that. They live in a +regular country house in the middle of Kensington, and there are only the +two of them. But I've given Teddy my word not to go to the old man for +the money, so it's no use talking about it." + +But apparently it was what they had been talking about behind the +folding-doors; it only surprised me to see how much Raffles took +it to heart. + +"So you have made up your mind to raise the money elsewhere?" + +"Before that lad in there opens his eyes." + +"Is he asleep already?" + +"Like the dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking +thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish +experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is +better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I +shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one +often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of +over-keenness which so often cuts one's own throat." + +"But what do you think of it all, A.J.?" + +"Not so much worse than I let him think I thought." + +"But you must have been amazed?" + +"I am past amazement at the worst thing the best of us ever does, and +contrariwise of course. Your rich man proves a pauper, and your honest +man plays the knave; we're all of us capable of every damned thing. But +let us thank our stars and Teddy's that we got back just when we did." + +"Why at that moment?" + +Raffles produced the unfinished cheque, shook his head over it, and sent +it fluttering across to me. + +"Was there ever such a childish attempt? They'd have kept him in the bank +while they sent for the police. If ever you want to play this game, +Bunny, you must let me coach you up a bit." + +"But it was never one of your games, A.J.!" + +"Only incidentally once or twice; it never appealed to me," said Raffles, +sending expanding circlets of smoke to crown the girls on the Golden +Stair that was no longer tilted in a leaning tower. "No, Bunny, an +occasional _exeat_ at school is my modest record as a forger, though I +admit that augured ill. Do you remember how I left my cheque-book about +on purpose for what's happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning, +in all the papers, would have set one up as an honest man for life. I +thought, God forgive me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that +kind. And to think it should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'! +Not that I ever did confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad." + +Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was +speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the +best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty _jeux d'esprit_. +This Raffles only meant half he said--but had generally done the other +half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own _Whitaker_) that +the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that +night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile. + +"I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we +could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the +sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken _ex itinere_. It's a +case for the _testudo_ and all the rest of it. You must remember that +I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if one +may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was as +impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon the +very rock of defence!" + +"You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his +kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there +was no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience +till all hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I +wanted fewer fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual +lantern. And yet these were the very moments that inspired his +pyrotechnic displays. + +"Oh, I shall tell you all right," said Raffles. "But just now the next +few hours are of more importance than the last few weeks. Of course +Shylock's the man for our money; but knowing our tribesmen as I do, I +think we had better begin by borrowing it like simple Christians." + +"Then we have it to pay back again." + +"And that's the psychological moment for raiding our 'miser's sunless +coffers'--if he happens to have any. It will give us time to find out." + +"But he doesn't keep open office all night," I objected. + +"But he opens at nine o'clock in the morning," said Raffles, "to catch +the early stockbroker who would rather be bled than hammered." + +"Who told you that?" + +"Our Mrs. Shylock." + +"You must have made great friends with her?" + +"More in pity than for the sake of secrets." + +"But you went where the secrets were?" + +"And she gave them away wholesale." + +"She would," I said, "to you." + +"She told me a lot about the impending libel action." + +"Shylock _v. Fact?_" + +"Yes; it's coming on before the vacation, you know." + +"So I saw in some paper." + +"But you know what it's all about, Bunny?" + +"No, I don't." + +"Another old rascal, the Maharajah of Hathipur, and his perfectly +fabulous debts. It seems he's been in our Mr. Shylock's clutches for +years, but instead of taking his pound of flesh he's always increasing +the amount. Of course that's the whole duty of money-lenders, but now +they say the figure runs well into six. No one has any sympathy with that +old heathen; he's said to have been a pal of Nana's before the Mutiny, +and in it up to the neck he only saved by turning against his own lot in +time; in any case it's the pot and the kettle so far as moral colour is +concerned. But I believe it's an actual fact that syndicates have been +formed to buy up the black man's debts and take a reasonable interest, +only the dirty white man always gets to windward of the syndicate. +They're on the point of bringing it off, when old Levy inveigles the +nigger into some new Oriental extravagance. _Fact_ has exposed the whole +thing, and printed blackmailing letters which Shylock swears are +forgeries. That's both their cases in a philippine! The leeches told the +Jew he must do his Carlsbad this year before the case came on; and the +tremendous amount it's going to cost may account for his dunning old +clients the moment he gets back." + +"Then why should he lend to you?" + +"I'm a new client, Bunny; that makes all the difference. Then we were +very good pals out there." + +"But you and Mrs. Shylock were better still?" + +"Unbeknowns, Bunny! She used to tell me her troubles when I lent her an +arm and took due care to look a martyr; my hunting friend had coarse +metaphors about heavy-weights and the knacker's yard." + +"And yet you came away with the poor soul's necklace?" + +Raffles was tapping the chronic cigarette on the table at his elbow; he +stood up to light it, as one does stand up to make the dramatic +announcements of one's life, and he spoke through the flame of the match +as it rose and fell between his puffs. + +"No--Bunny--I did not!" + +"But you told me you won the Emerald Stakes!" I cried, jumping up +in my turn. + +"So I did, Bunny, but I gave them back again." + +"You gave yourself away to her, as she'd given him away to you?" + +"Don't be a fool, Bunny," said Raffles, subsiding into his chair. "I +can't tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're +at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They +stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at +the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their +rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on +the second floor--where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from +under his mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been +made for me. Need I go on?" + +"I wonder you weren't suspected." + +"There's no end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old +rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had +the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off +in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it +was--well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his +shop next morning." + +"What had happened?" + +"A whole actful of unrehearsed effects; that's why I think twice before +taking on old Shylock again. I admire him, Bunny, as a steely foeman. I +look forward to another game with him on his own ground. But I must find +out the pace of the wicket before I put myself on." + +"I suppose you had tea with them, and all that sort of thing?" + +"Gieshübler!" said Raffles with a shudder. "But I made it last as long as +tea, and thought I had located the little green lamps before I took my +leave. There was a japanned despatch box in one corner. 'That's the +Emerald Isle,' I thought, 'I'll soon have it out of the sea. The old man +won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't +tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at +the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner." + +Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten +the lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle +that he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he +waited for a dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room +balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box +after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the +folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy +"in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." + +"They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck +me, for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever +took. His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was +not; and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there +was no chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I +stuck my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up. +Good God, Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit, +and I was jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,' +says I in low German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise +that I was absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened +face. 'I don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.' +'_Das halsband_, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he. +But I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded. +He laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I +pointed to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live, +old girl,' says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to +shoot, and I don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other +way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the +old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left +hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her +and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German +that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be +_ein toter Englander_! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was +meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging +on to him, instead of him to her!" + +I emptied my lungs and my glass too. Raffles took a sip himself. + +"But the rope was fixed to _your_ balcony, A.J.?" + +"But I began by fixing the other end to theirs, and the moment I was +safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found +it dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked +the right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as +pitch-dark, and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to +search for impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any +there might conceivably have been." + +"So nobody ever suspected you?" + +"Not a soul, I can safely say; I was the first my victims bored with the +whole yarn." + +"Then why return the swag? It's an old trick of yours, Raffles, but in a +case like this, with a pig like that, I confess I don't see the point." + +"You forget the poor old lady, Bunny. She had a dog's life before; after +that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for +her pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me; +there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift." + +"But how on earth did you manage that?" + +"Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into +my confidence _more cuniculi!"_ + +"I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?" + +"As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted +it in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch +lest it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a +substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to +blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered. +The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I +wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made +a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that +enormous dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a +living tomb." + +But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a +formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly. + +"That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked +forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the +halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric." + +"Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to +pay Peter?" + +"Excellent, Bunny!" cried Raffles, as though I had made a shot worthy of +his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains +and displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across +it. "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned +them from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up +o' nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our +methods. What a lot the two old pets must have missed!" + +"You haven't answered my question," said I resignedly. "Nor have you told +me how you propose to go to work to raise this money in the first +instance." + +"If you like to light another Sullivan," said Raffles, "and mix yourself +another very small and final one, I can tell you now, Bunny." + +And tell me he did. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"Our Mr. Shylock" + + +I have often wondered in what pause or phase of our conversation Raffles +hit upon the plan which we duly carried out; for we had been talking +incessantly, since his arrival about eight o'clock at night, until two in +the morning. Yet that which we discussed between two and three was what +we actually did between nine and ten, with the single exception +necessitated by an altogether unforeseen development, of which the less +said the better until the proper time. The foresight and imagination of a +Raffles are obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the +course of speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the +listener, and the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea +would culminate in a definite project, as the image comes into focus +under the lens, and with as much detail into the bargain. + +Suffice it that after a long night of it at the Albany, and but a bath +and a cup of tea at my own flat, I found Raffles waiting for me in +Piccadilly, and down we went together to the jaws of Jermyn Street. There +we nodded, and I was proceeding down the hill when I turned on my heel as +though I had forgotten something, and entered Jermyn Street not fifty +yards behind Raffles. I had no thought of catching him up. But it so +happened that I was in his wake in time to witness a first _contretemps_ +which did not amount to much at the time; this was merely the violent +exit of another of Dan Levy's early callers into the very arms of +Raffles. There was a heated apology, accepted with courteous composure, +and followed by an excited outpouring which I did not come near enough to +overhear. It was delivered by a little man in an aureole of indigo hair, +who brushed his great sombrero violently as he spoke and Raffles +listened. I could see from their manner that the collision which had just +occurred was not the subject under discussion; but I failed to +distinguish a word, though I listened outside a hatter's until Raffles +had gone in and his new acquaintance had passed me with blazing eyes and +a volley of husky vows in broken English. + +"Another of Mr. Shylock's victims," thought I; and indeed he might have +been bleeding internally from the loss of his pound of flesh; at any rate +there was bloodshed in his eyes. + +I stood a long time outside that hatter's window, and finally went in to +choose a cap. But the light is wicked in those narrow shops, and this +necessitated my carrying several caps to the broad daylight of the +threshold to gauge their shades, and incidentally to achieve a swift +survey of the street. Then they crowned me with an ingenious apparatus +like a typewriter, to get the exact shape and measure of my skull, for I +had intimated that I had no desire to dress it anywhere else for the +future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after +getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's +hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one +in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next +perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new +bowler) brought me face to face with Raffles once more. + +We shouted and shook hands; our encounter had taken place almost under +the money-lender's windows, and it was so un-English in its cordiality +that between our slaps and grasps Raffles managed deftly to insert a +stout packet in my breast pocket. I cannot think the most critical +pedestrian could have seen it done. But streets have as many eyes as +Argus, and some of them are always on one. + +"They had to send to the bank for it," whispered Raffles. "It barely +passed through their hands. But don't you let Shylock spot his own +envelope!" + +In another second he was saying something very different that anybody +might have heard, and in yet another he was hustling me across Shylock's +threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You +couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow--he's the only honest one +in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?" + +A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was +in liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he +thought so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone, +after shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his +stool at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more +similar peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was +told to hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other +clerks behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting +them hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence. + +Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my +tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so +elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month +earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, +but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a +gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie +filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had +engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd +and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its +massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity +of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; +and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I +had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its +immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to +that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious +confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of +light-hearted authority which stamped him in all shades of society. + +"'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you're well?" said Mr. Levy, dropping one +aspirate but putting in the next with care. "Take a seat, sir, please." + +But I kept my legs, though I felt them near to trembling, and, diving a +hand into a breast pocket, I began working the contents out of the +envelope that Raffles had given me, while I spoke out in a tone +sufficiently rehearsed at the Albany overnight. + +"I'm not so sure about the happiness," said I. "I mean about its lasting, +Mr. Levy. I come from my friend, Mr. Edward Garland." + +"I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much +indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I +could no longer see. + +"I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval +and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well. + +"Who _is_ the little biter?" the money-lender inquired of him with +delightful insolence. + +"An old friend of mine," replied Raffles, in an injured tone that made a +convincing end of the old friendship. "I thought he was hard up, or I +never should have brought him in to introduce to you." + +"I didn't ask you for your introduction, Raffles," said I offensively. "I +simply met you coming out as I was coming in. I thought you damned +officious, if you ask me!" + +Whereupon, with an Anglo-Saxon threat of subsequent violence to my +person, Raffles flung open the door to leave us to our interview. This +was exactly as it had been rehearsed. But Dan Levy called Raffles back. +And that was exactly as we had hoped. + +"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" said the Jew. "Please don't make a cockpit of my +office, gentlemen; and pray, Mr. Raffles, don't leave me to the mercies +of your very dangerous friend." + +"You can be two to one if you like," I gasped valiantly. "_I_ +don't care." + +And my chest heaved in accordance with my stage instructions, as also +with a realism to which it was a relief to give full play. + +"Come now," said Levy. "What did Mr. Garland send you about?" + +"You know well enough," said I: "his debt to you." + +"Don't be rude about it," said Levy. "What about the debt?" + +"It's a damned disgrace!" said I. + +"I quite agree," he chuckled. "It ought to 'ave been settled months ago." + +"Months ago?" I echoed. "It's only twelve months since he borrowed three +hundred pounds from you, and now you're sticking him for seven!" + +"I am," said Levy, opening uncompromising lips that entirely disappeared +again next instant. + +"He borrows three hundred for a year at the outside, and you blackmail +him for eight hundred when the year's up." + +"You said 'seven' just now," interrupted Raffles, but in the voice of a +man who was getting a fright. + +"You also said 'blackmailing,'" added Dan Levy portentously. "Do you want +to be thrown downstairs?" + +"Do _you_ deny the figures?" I retorted. + +"No, I don't; have you got his repayment cards?" + +"Yes, here in my hands, and they shan't leave them. You see, you're not +aware," I added severely, as I turned to Raffles, "that this young fellow +has already paid up one hundred in instalments; that's what makes the +eight; and all this is what'll happen to you if you've been fool enough +to get into the same boat." + +The money-lender had borne with me longer than either of us had expected +that he would; but now he wheeled back his chair and stood up, a pillar +of peril and a mouthful of oaths. + +"Is that all you've come to say?" he thundered. "If so, you young devil, +out you go!" + +"No, it isn't," said I, spreading out a document attached to the cards of +receipt which Raffles had obtained from Teddy Garland; these I had +managed to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I +had been trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is +a letter, written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you +say, among other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no +excuses of any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten +times more trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get +rid of you. So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as +you may depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very +letter, and steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour. +This is your dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on +the subject.'" + +"So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr. +Raffles." + +"I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr. +Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?" + +"Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his +prize-fighting jaws. + +"Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a +year ago?" + +"That's it." + +"Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory +stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at +the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault." + +"Of course it is, Mr. Raffles," cried the moneylender, taking a more +conciliatory tone himself. "It was my money; it was my three 'undred +golden sovereigns; and you can sell what's yours for what it'll fetch, +can't you?" + +"Obviously," said Raffles. + +"Very well, then, money's like anything else; if you haven't got it, and +can't beg or earn it, you've got to buy it at a price. I sell my money, +that's all. And I've a right to sell it at a fancy price if I can get a +fancy price for it. A man may be a fool to pay my figure; that depends +'ow much he wants the money at the time, and it's his affair, not mine. +Your gay young friend was all right if he hadn't defaulted, but a +defaulter deserves to pay through the nose, and be damned to him. It +wasn't me let your friend in; he let in himself, with his eyes open. Mr. +Garland knew very well what I was charging him, and what I shouldn't +'esitate to charge over and above if he gave me half a chance. Why should +I? Wasn't it in the bond? What do you all think I run my show for? It's +business, Mr. Raffles, not robbery, my dear sir. All business is +robbery, if you come to that. But you'll find mine is all above-board and +in the bond." + +"A very admirable exposition," said Raffles weightily. + +"Not that it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to +add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I +hope I may say that you're the one and not the other." + +"Then it comes to this," said I, "that you mean him to pay up in full +this morning?" + +"By noon, and it's just gone ten." + +"The whole seven hundred pounds?" + +"Sterling," said Mr. Levy "No cheques entertained." + +"Then," said I, with an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but +to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" + +I did not look at Levy, but I heard the sudden intake of his breath at +the sight of my bank-notes, and I felt its baleful exhalation on my +forehead as I stooped and began counting them out upon his desk. I had +made some progress before he addressed me in terms of protest. There was +almost a tremor in his voice. I had no call to be so hasty; it looked as +though I had been playing a game with him. Why couldn't I tell him I had +the money with me all the time? The question was asked with a sudden +oath, because I had gone on counting it out regardless of his overtures. +I took as little notice of his anger. + +"And now, Mr. Levy," I concluded, "may I ask you to return me Mr. +Garland's promissory note?" + +"Yes, you may ask and you shall receive!" he snarled, and opened his safe +so violently that the keys fell out. Raffles replaced them with exemplary +promptitude while the note of hand was being found. + +The evil little document was in my possession at last. Levy roared down +the tube, and the young man of the imperfect diction duly appeared. + +"Take that young biter," cried Levy, "and throw him into the street. Call +up Moses to lend you a 'and." + +But the first murderer stood nonplussed, looking from Raffles to me, and +finally inquiring which biter his master meant. + +"That one!" bellowed the money-lender, shaking a lethal fist at me. "Mr. +Raffles is a friend o' mine." + +"But 'e'th a friend of 'ith too," lisped the young man. "Thimeon Markth +come acroth the thtreet to tell me tho. He thaw them thake handth +outthide our plathe, after he'd theen 'em arm-in-arm in Piccadilly, 'an +he come in to thay tho in cathe--" + +But the youth of limited articulation was not allowed to finish his +explanation; he was grasped by the scruff of the neck and kicked and +shaken out of the room, and his collar flung after him. I heard him +blubbering on the stairs as Levy locked the door and put the key in his +pocket. But I did not hear Raffles slip into the swivel chair behind +the desk, or know that he had done so until the usurer and I turned +round together. + +"Out of that!" blustered Levy. + +But Raffles tilted the chair back on its spring and laughed softly +in his face. + +"Not if I know it," said he. "If you don't open the door in about one +minute I shall require this telephone of yours to ring up the police." + +"The police, eh?" said Levy, with a sinister recovery of self-control. +"You'd better leave that to me, you precious pair of swindlers!" + +"Besides," continued Raffles, "of course you keep an _argumentum ad +hominem_ in one of these drawers. Ah, here it is, and just as well in my +hands as in yours!" + +He had opened the top drawer in the right-hand pedestal, and taken +therefrom a big bulldog revolver; it was the work of few moments to empty +its five chambers, and hand the pistol by its barrel to the owner. + +"Curse you!" hissed the latter, hurling it into the fender with a fearful +clatter. "But you'll pay for this, my fine gentlemen; this isn't sharp +practice, but criminal fraud." + +"The burden of proof," said Raffles, "lies with you. Meanwhile, will you +be good enough to open that door instead of looking as sick as a cold +mud-poultice?" + +The money-lender had, indeed, turned as grey as his hair; and his +eyebrows, which were black and looked dyed, stood out like smears of ink. +Nevertheless, the simile which Raffles had employed with his own +unfortunate facility was more picturesque than discreet. I saw it set Mr. +Shylock thinking. Luckily, the evil of the day was sufficient for it and +him; but so far from complying, he set his back to the locked door and +swore a sweet oath never to budge. + +"Oh, very well!" resumed Raffles, and the receiver was at his ear without +more ado. "Is that the Exchange? Give me nine-two-double-three Gerrard, +will you?" + +"It's fraud," reiterated Levy. "And you know it." + +"It's nothing of the sort, and _you_ know it," murmured Raffles, with +the proper pre-occupation of the man at the telephone. + +"You lent the money," I added. "That's your business. It's nothing to do +with you what he chooses to do with it." + +"He's a cursed swindler," hissed Levy. "And you're his damned decoy!" + +I was not sorry to see Raffles's face light up across the desk. + +"Is that Howson, Anstruther and Martin?--they're only my solicitors, Mr. +Levy.... Put me through to Mr. Martin, please.... That you, Charlie? ... +You might come in a cab to Jermyn Street--I forget the number--Dan +Levy's, the money-lender's--thanks, old chap! ... Wait a bit, Charlie--a +constable...." + +But Dan Levy had unlocked his door and flung it open. + +"There you are, you scoundrels! But we'll meet again, my fine +swell-mobsmen!" + +Raffles was frowning at the telephone. + +"I've been cut off," said he. "Wait a bit! Clear call for you, Mr. Levy, +I believe!" + +And they changed places, without exchanging another word until Raffles +and I were on the stairs. + +"Why, the 'phone's not even _through!_" yelled the money-lender, +rushing out. + +"But _we_ are, Mr. Levy!" cried Raffles. And down we ran into the street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Thin Air + + +Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised +that he was not coming with me. + +"Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make +him get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in +half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back." + +His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to +escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he +deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which +Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it +as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately +lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of +faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however, +if a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating +over the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious +extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles; +and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we +had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a +species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose +battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his +breakfast, and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab. + +Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was +frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the +morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose. + +"Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out. + +"Of whom, Raffles?" + +"Teddy, of course!" + +"Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?" + +"Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he +is!" + +He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up +to his rooms. + +"But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?" + +"That's what I want to know." + +"Could he have gone out for a paper?" + +"They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed." + +"Or for a shave?" + +"That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour." + +"But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I +understood you left him fast asleep?" + +"That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough +saw him go out ten minutes after me." + +"Could you have disturbed him when you went?" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I +came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave +me a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the +doors after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open +them. I thought something horrible had happened!" + +"You don't think so still?" + +"I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned +out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves +away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up +the enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters, +Bunny; we shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I +should rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in +this rotten way." + +Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his +sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one +that seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind. + +"A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and +sound at Lord's." + +"I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him +then; besides, here's his cricket-bag." + +"He may have been at the club when I fetched it away--I never asked." + +"I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left." + +"Then what about his father's house?" + +"That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but +now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's +there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a +thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the +time it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with +the whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by +Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!" + +We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending +hastily enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man, +and Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we +looked at each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was +out of the room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing. + +"Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add. + +"Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice--in +accents of such acute dismay--that Mr. Garland had my sympathy +before we met. + +"He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute. +Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?" + +The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair +entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected +of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in +retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional +embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder +purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a +gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn +furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my +heart outright. + +"So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're +nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night +or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town +if necessary, and he evidently has." + +There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was +also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles +gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as +distinct from his words and deeds) overnight. + +"And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a +surprise to you, Raffles?" + +Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my +chair. What great news was this? + +"This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my +benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me +here; you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him; +but Miss Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with +us to the match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be +so disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see +very little of each other all day." + +I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this +engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at +night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window. +Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which +extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it +was not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation. +But his face had suddenly lit up. + +"May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you, +Mr. Garland?" + +"It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence." + +"Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?" + +"Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have +had to consult Lady Laura." + +"Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home +while you were on yours into town! How did you come?" + +"In the brougham." + +"Through the Park?" + +"Yes." + +"While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's +how you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight +back you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's." + +Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we +might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a +minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through +Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept +away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and +slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago. +It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all +keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one +side-street to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn +and towering tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more +forcibly (and favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a +house. And yet a double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a +few yards of the steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed. + +Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss +Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature. + +"Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his +books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he +turned to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I +haven't been told, and I insist on knowing what it is." + +"But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving +Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown." + +"What time was that?" + +"Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour." + +"Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?" + +"I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up +rather late." + +"But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you +were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why, +after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not +the first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming +girl; is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?" + +"About his engagement--not that I'm aware." + +"Then he is in some trouble?" + +"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he +isn't now." + +Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair. + +"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you +his confidence, I have no right simply as his father--" + +"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no +right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. +Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it _was_ about some +little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me." + +"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude +and humiliation. + +"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so +serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment." + +"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his +voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right +man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he +muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and +bent his head over his folded arms. + +He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance +in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his +watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour +now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master +recovered his self-control. + +"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's +for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose +it's Miss Belsize again." + +"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you +were not to be disturbed." + +"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of +trouble in his tone. "Listen to this--listen to this," he went on before +the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you +don't turn up in time.--J. S.'" + +"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper." + +"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" + +"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns +out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will +still be too late for him to play." + +"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his +chair with a groan. + +"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way." + +"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned +straight from Lord's--probably within the last few minutes--to a +messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!" + +Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look +ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his +back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a +monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the +adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but +this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well +have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a +panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and +straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with +an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy +fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in +the body of the room. + +"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a +barometer, Mr. Garland?" + +"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket." + +"How often do you set the indicator?" + +"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I +went to bed. It made me anxious." + +"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this +morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!" + +In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and +assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery. + +"Something has happened to my boy!" + +"But not necessarily anything terrible." + +"If I knew what, Raffles--if only I knew what!" + +Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He +himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the +rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute. + +"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, +we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your +help, sir." + +"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles." + +"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are." + +"Where I am?" + +"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential +to my idea." + +"And that is, Raffles?" + +"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up +to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he +shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment." + +"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked. + +"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his +face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." + +"But that's the only place that matters," said I. + +"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as +Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in +the next room now." + +"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." + +"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I +thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from +her, sir." + +"I?" + +"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil +her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for +an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. +Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them +in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and +the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." + +"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held +out his hand. + +"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another +five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself +in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may +be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from +me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the +better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark +at this end." + +"Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard +task for me!" + +"It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I +promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." + +With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that +turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my +leave of him. + +"What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl +and hide my own anxiety?" + +"There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If +either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." + +Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not +but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the +drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an +umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour +into the brougham. + +"I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the +coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, +but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We +should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." + +"But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary +disappearance?" + +"Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land +of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his +insanity." + +"And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you +disapprove of it?" + +"Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged +from under my umbrella into the brougham. + +"Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl +beneath him?" + +Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes. + +"You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to +hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Camilla Belsize + + +It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the +amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in +Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so +welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the +rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not +the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was +another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and +tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work +to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention +overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. +To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help +feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in +these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me +until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to +Teddy Garland at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping +Raffles to keep the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and +on the point of helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse +still from his daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the +worst of all to be hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me! + +Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out +from the conservatory in a continuous chain--each link with its own +temperature and its individual scent--and not a pane but rattled and +streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing +fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of +the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to +Miss Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face +must have made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the +same smile again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I +really think she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment. + +So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. +Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well +as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but +emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy +with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with +unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really +was a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was +wasting what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I +could suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still. + +"And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under +shelter, Miss Belsize." Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored. + +"But there's plenty of shelter there," said she. + +"Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it +before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know." + +"But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?" + +"They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting." + +That was a rash remark. + +"Then why doesn't Teddy come back?" + +"Oh, well, you know," I hedged, "you can never be quite absolutely sure. +It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. +And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn." + +"I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch," said Miss +Belsize, "even if he had to go back afterwards." + +"I shouldn't wonder if he did come," said I, conceiving the bare +possibility: "and A.J. with him." + +"Do you mean Mr. Raffles?" + +"Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!" + +Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had +confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. +Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been +watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold +profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her +out of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers +dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, +calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental--all that and more as I see them +now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled. + +"So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?" said Miss Belsize, harking +back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us. + +"Rather!" I replied. + +"Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?" + +I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. "Raffles and I were +at school together," I added loftily. + +"Really? I should have thought he was before your time." + +"No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag." + +"And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?" inquired Miss Belsize, +not by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own +devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little +jealousy of Raffles. + +"He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: +"captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic +champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth." + +"And you worshipped him, I suppose?" + +"Absolutely." + +My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she +looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes. + +"You must be rather disappointed in him now!" + +"Disappointed! Why?" I asked with much outward amusement. But I was +beginning to feel uncomfortable. + +"Of course I don't know much about him," remarked Miss Belsize as though +she cared less. + +"But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?" + +"I do," said I, with injudicious alacrity. + +"Well," said Miss Belsize, "what else is he?" + +"The best fellow in the world, among other things." + +"But what other things?" + +"Ask Teddy!" I said unluckily. + +"I have," replied Miss Belsize. "But Teddy doesn't know. He often +wonders how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing +any work." + +"Does he, indeed!" + +"Many people do." + +"And what do they say about him?" + +Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather +longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been +turned on again, before she answered: + +"More than their prayers, no doubt!" + +"Do you mean," I almost gasped, "as to the way Raffles gets his living?" + +"Yes." + +"You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!" + +"But if there's no truth in them?" + +"I'll soon tell you if there is or not." + +"But suppose I don't care either way?" said Miss Belsize with a +brilliant smile. + +"Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you." + +"Mind, I don't believe it myself, Mr. Manders." + +"You don't believe--" + +"That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and--his cricket!" + +I jumped to my feet. + +"Is that all they say about him?" I cried. + +"Isn't it enough?" asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my +demeanour. + +"Oh, quite enough, quite enough!" said I. "It's only the most +scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got +about--that's all!" + +This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that +one's first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to +discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was +unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth. + +"Yet you seemed to expect something worse," she said at length. + +"What could be worse?" I asked, my back against the wall of my own +indiscretion. "Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal +thing than a paid amateur!" + +"But you haven't told me what he _is_, Mr. Manders." + +"And you haven't told me, Miss Belsize, why you're so interested in A. J. +after all!" I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on +the strength of it. + +But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my +ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite +frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than +she cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was +the only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and +censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. +Mr. Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered +whether he was quite a good friend; and there I had "the whole thing in a +nutshell." + +I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too +often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I +did not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as +jealousy did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved +on that point. + +We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the +rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house +and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite +refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the +still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's +mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently +impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and +suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with +vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking +cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction +that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the +uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast +under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not +unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles +himself who had made it known to her. Raffles, whom she did not "know +much about," or consider "quite a good friend" for Teddy Garland! + +I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was +the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland +told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger +earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, +considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a +strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so +far infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon +with far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us +again until the butler with a visitor's card brought about his abrupt +departure from the conservatory. + +Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss +Belsize could have had her way we should all have started for Lord's that +minute. I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, +coldly scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. +Lord's would be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been +abandoned on that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure +about that; why should we not drive over and find out? I said that was +the surest way of missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there +and back in a half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but +said if we went at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, +and that in his own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and +when Miss Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my +ground, I could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the +softened gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss +Belsize took my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, +though with none too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw +what I had been curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path +towards us. And I saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking +hands with him. + +"They've given it up as a bad job at last," said he. "I've just come from +Lord's, and Teddy won't be very long." + +"Why didn't you bring him with you?" asked Miss Belsize pertinently. + +"Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once," said Raffles, +rather lamely for him; "and then a man playing in a 'Varsity match is +never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn't to keep you +waiting much longer." + +It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it +pretty plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had +been waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an +end she must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to +Mr. Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I +believe it took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her +intention, however hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the +conservatory and the library door, while Raffles and I went through into +the hall the other way. + +"I'm afraid I've put my foot in it," said he to me. "But it's just as +well, since I needn't tell you there's no sign of Teddy up at Lord's." + +"Have you been there all day?" I asked him under my breath. + +"Except when I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, +brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what +they say about Teddy here." + +And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in +the stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and +Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, "owing +to the serious illness of his father." + +"His father!" I exclaimed. "Why, his father's closeted with somebody or +other at this very moment behind the door you're looking at!" + +"I know, Bunny. I've seen him." + +"But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I +don't wonder you went to the office about it." + +"You'll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the +staff." + +"Of course you made him take it straight out?" + +"On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!" + +And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a +more felonious--but less incomprehensible--exploit. + +"Didn't you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library +this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on +fact. I wonder you don't see the point; as a matter of fact, there are +two points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was +to find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord's. Well, I +haven't actually found him yet; but if he's in the land of the living he +will see this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what +he will do! Meanwhile, there's nothing but sympathy for him at Lord's. +Studley couldn't have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to +the eleventh hour to-morrow. And if that isn't killing two birds with one +stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!" + +"But what will old Garland say, A. J.?" + +"He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note +before lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what +I had done. He doesn't mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save +his face before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look +out, Bunny--here she is!" + +The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it +was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the +hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I +suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal +pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had +taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven +both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago. + +"I didn't go into the library after all," she said, looking askance at +the library door. "I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview +with somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man's face as I hesitated, and +I thought I recognised him." + +"Who was it?" I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather +mysterious visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so +abruptly in the conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in +the hour of so many issues. + +"I believe it's a dreadful man I know by sight down the river," said +Miss Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened +and out came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the +usurer of European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain +enemy for life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +In Which We Fail to Score + + +Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was +evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we +were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a +terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice +he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of +mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and +delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed +to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue +from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. +Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as +he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; +for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all +knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an +exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an +ordinary guest. + +"You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that +worthy with a certain _aplomb_. "I know you very well by sight, Miss +Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain." + +"Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at +her command. + +"The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not +meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up +with adroit urbanity. + +"I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though +bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the +worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to +repent it." + +It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the +eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the +look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only +interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged +her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in +turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to +himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from +doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the +money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no +longer the sole anxiety. + +"And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the +firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?" + +"Where was that, Miss Belsize?" + +"Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I +know, but I forget the name of the place." + +"Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?" + +I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was +merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair. + +"Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I +remember now." + +"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An +unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a +desperate criminal with a loaded revolver." + +"Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. + +Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with +the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the +episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a +mind to impart. + +"It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling +it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss +Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came +in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for +me and my wife." + +"Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. + +Miss Belsize only stared. + +"Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting +Mr. Levy." + +"Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. +And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the +first he had heard of it. + +"But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, +"except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back +last night." + +"But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" + +"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. +"Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" + +"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. + +They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder +against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring +at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the +three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. + +"But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with +terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" + +"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there, +Mr. Levy?" + +Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: + +"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your +wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives +them back again!" + +The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and +myself in his own office that very morning. + +"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her +silence on an eager note. + +Raffles turned to her at once. + +"The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there +everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy +has the better information." + +Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I +followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. + +"I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the +wilds of Austria," said I. + +"There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman +knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His +'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is +nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was +actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was +marked down at some London theatre--or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?" + +"I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily +as their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you +were one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?" + +"Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no +doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious +from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was +as obvious a mistake. + +"Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and +Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed +that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver." + +"We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might +'ave been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no +error about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye +looking along the barrel into mine--as plainly as I'm looking into yours +now, Mr. Raffles." + +Raffles laughed outright. + +"I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me +that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat." + +"So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have +done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white +as yours are." + +"Any other little point in common?" + +"I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver." + +Raffles held out his hands. + +"Better have a good look at mine." + +"His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or +better kept." + +"Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy." + +"You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles." + +"You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily. + +"I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through +and through. + +"And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly +look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that +maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy. + +For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I +declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest +eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the +two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer +shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert +battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should +accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw +him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was +easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we +might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless +denunciation. + +"Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us +who it was?" + +"Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I +know all about him now!" + +I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set, +her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles +during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the +only entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the +firelit hall. + +Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that +kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed +almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang +up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in +the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst. + +Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a +syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood +gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had +the hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had +put it in? Was there any truth in it at all? + +"None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was +never better in my life." + +"Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I +suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to +lay hands on the joker!" + +His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring +himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the +appearance of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the +contrary, he looked both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his +sudden fit of passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered +so humiliated and abased. + +Raffles came forward from the fireside. + +"There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar +for bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm +the only one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of +you all day." + +Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going +to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had +really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and +then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance +which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance +was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which +was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us +with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report +about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him +the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him +and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were +brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their +friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they +fell upon his bugbear in the background. + +"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly +enough once he had found his voice. + +"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh. + +"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking +about, Teddy?" + +"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost +harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as +well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from +this man." + +"You borrowed from him?" + +It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an +emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy +with new loathing and abhorrence. + +"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars +every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own +fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in +his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last +drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves +me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again, +father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he +threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute +as to come to-day!" + +"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into +Teddy's hands. + +It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from +Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the +hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by +the throat before us all. + +"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely. + +"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy. + +"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?" + +"Every penny that you owed me, certainly." + +"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both +ways--your money and your spite as well!" + +"Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive +shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as +you're 'appy?" + +"No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come +back in time." + +"In time for what?" + +"To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!" + +The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded +his arms with a guttural chuckle. + +"So you mean to chuck me out, do you?" + +"By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the +door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again." + +The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with +his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; +but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning +twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the +fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the +harmless character of the shot. + +"May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable +chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation. + +"Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy +truculently, "and out you go!" + +"Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with +the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from +Mr. Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words. + +"The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous +scorn--"freehold and everything." + +"The whole place happens to be _mine_--'freehold and everything!'" +replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate syllables. "And as for +clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given you a week to do it +in--the two of you!" + +He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring +on us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all. + +"And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with +a passionate hiss, "like you did the son--_because I know all about +you now_!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The State of the Case + + +Of course I made all decent haste from the distressing scene, and of +course Raffles stayed behind at the solicitation of his unhappy friends. +I was sorry to desert him in view of one aspect of the case; but I was +not sorry to dine quietly at the club after the alarms and excitements +of that disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up +all night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in +the twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer +night and day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the +club to which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted +us at the Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the +overthrow of the money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely +disappearance of Teddy Garland, my day of it at his father's house, and +the rain and the ruse that saved the passing situation, only to +aggravate the crowning catastrophe of the money-lender's triumph over +Raffles and all his friends. + +Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the +nature of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new +risk run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last +word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently +complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no +mere mystery can hold the mind against impending peril; and I was less +exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in +wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. +Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from +downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more +effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my +dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my +corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a +countenance as though the whole world and he were one. + +"My dear Bunny! I've never given the matter another thought," said he in +answer to my nervous queries, "and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has +scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he's not such a fool as to put +himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn't possibly prove. They +wouldn't listen to him at Scotland Yard; it's not their job, in the +first place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. +Shylock that he hasn't a shred of evidence against me." + +"Still," said I, "he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that's half +the battle in a criminal charge." + +"Then it's a battle I should love to fight, if the odds weren't all on +Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property--he's not a +pin the worse off--but because he has a row with me about something else +he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But not in his +heart, Bunny; he's not such a fool as that. Dan Levy's no fool at all, +but the most magnificent knave I've been up against yet. If you want to +hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I'll open your +eyes for you." + +His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed +them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight +was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are +at theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the +historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial +subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, +Bunny! A foeman worthy of Excalibur itself." + +And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger +stake! But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless +head over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating +prowess of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends. + +"They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I +have them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't +a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. +But there isn't, Bunny, I don't mind telling you." + +"What I can't understand," said I, "is how father and son seem to have +walked into the same parlour--and the father a business man!" + +"Just what he never was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the +whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a +business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years +ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place +where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was +pretty stiff to start with; you might have a house in most squares and +quite a good place in the country for what you've got to pay for a cross +between the two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good +people; for it was not only in Mrs. Garland's time, but it seems she was +the first to set her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave +it for a better world--poor soul--before the glass was on the last +vinery. And the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone." + +"I wonder he didn't get rid of the whole show," said I, "after that." + +"I've no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don't get rid of a place +like that in five minutes; it's neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary +house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further +out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part +of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the +freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit +for building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a +fine investment, or would have been if he had left more margin for upkeep +and living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on +horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at +a fence that's brought down many a better rider." + +"What was that?" + +"South Africans!" replied Raffles succinctly. "Piles were changing hands +over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip +himself; that finished him off. There's no tiger like an old tiger that +never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer became a reckless +gambler, lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his +losses. They were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. +Thousands were wanted at almost a moment's notice; no time to fix up an +honest mortgage; it was a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! +And old Garland took ten thousand of the best from Dan Levy--and had +another dip!" + +"And lost again?" + +"And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his +house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and +branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy's hands for months +and years." + +"On a sort of mortgage?" + +"On a perfectly nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only +with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is +being bled to the heart for iniquitous interest on the first ten +thousand, and of course he can't meet the call for another fifteen when +it comes; but he thinks it's all right because Levy doesn't press for the +dibs. Of course it's all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to +take possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn't suit him to +have the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate a rising property, +and so poor old Garland is deliberately lulled into a false sense of +security. And there's no saying how long that state of things might have +lasted if we hadn't taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning." + +"Then it's our fault, A.J.?" + +"It's mine," said Raffles remorsefully. "The idea, I believe, was +altogether mine, Bunny; that's why I'd give my bowing hand to take the +old ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!" + +"But how _do_ you account for his getting them both into his toils?" I +asked. "What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father +already owed more than he could pay?" + +"There are so many points," said Raffles. "They love you to owe more than +you can pay; it's not their principal that they care about nearly so much +as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they've got +you. In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland +was about his boy--to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see +what an effort it's become. Levy would find out something about the boy; +that he's getting hard up himself, that he's bound to discover the old +man's secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he +does. 'Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,' says +Levy, 'then they'll both hold their tongues, and I'll have one of 'em +under each thumb till all's blue.' So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, +and finances father and son in watertight compartments until this libel +case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue +enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a +sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small +creditors all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it +all fits in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney +himself; that along with all the rest to scale, will run him into +thousands even if he wins his case." + +"May he lose it!" said I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the +inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. +Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless +friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly +characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not +remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly +that she had. By putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she +had taken the whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected +from those fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her +on the spot, and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but +when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. +Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between +his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which +she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was +no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not help +wondering why. + +There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much +more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in +Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of +his sensational disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My +interest in the escapade, however, was considerably quickened by the +prompt refusal of Raffles to tell me a word about it. + +"No, Bunny," said he, "I'm not going to give the boy away. His father +knows, and I know--and that's enough." + +"Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?" + +Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of +his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative. + +"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It +wouldn't be fair." + +"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to +cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, +and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it +trading on a fellow's good-nature--not that I care a curse!" + +"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I +should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been +treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me +if I have another dip at Dan Levy." + +"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?" + +"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder." + +"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?" + +"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for +another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart +from these poor pals of mine." + +"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire +the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?" + +One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain +facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter +manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man +thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was +standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that +interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, +to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not +divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay +pugnacity; nay, there was something behind the good Garlands and their +culpably commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they +be the Cause? + +The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash +might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in +the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, +outside the door. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Triple Alliance + + +It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole +not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible passing of a +hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be +that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; +nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had +been plate-glass. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing +and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we +entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the +one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until +assurance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. +And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it +open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent +figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and +gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal +vulgarian about town. + +"May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability. + +"May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you +came in long ago! I heard you all right--you were listening at the +door--probably looking through the keyhole--and you only knocked when I +jumped up to open it!" + +"My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder. +And he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome. + +"But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or +else picked the lock." + +"Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," +remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality. + +"Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than +Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony. + +Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the +back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. +Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made +no secret of a base suspicion. + +"I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender. + +"My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to +see, and nobody could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; +but that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete +expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again +type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old +song now?" + +"'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles." + +"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a +hair of the jolly dog that bit him--eh?" + +"You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're +cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own +up to it." + +"Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one +side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have +it--thieves! Common thieves!" + +And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine. + +"You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the +only wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He +grinned malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it--Mr. +Ananias J. Raffles?" + +"Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his +eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best +entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?" + +"Chalks!" said I. + +"I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a +grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick +upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! +One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own +actual coin!" + +"Well," said I, "there was no crime in that." + +"Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the +one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call +yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was +the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected +friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his +friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there--a strapping young +chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and +jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but +this afternoon was when I jolly well knew." + +Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his +lips like a steel trap. + +"I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still +seriously think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?" + +"I know you did." + +"Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why +didn't you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland +Yard? Here I am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give +me in charge?" + +Levy chuckled consumedly--ventriloquously--behind his three gold buttons +and his one diamond stud. + +"P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you +two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as _I_ thought." + +"Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick +recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?" + +"P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr. +Raffles." + +"Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?" + +"I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation +softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put +it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took +it for a bit o' fun!" + +"If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd." + +"I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I +agree with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than +anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both +inhabiting for our sins." + +"The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very +shrewd glance. + +"It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure." + +"'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?" + +"Don't say 'another,' please." + +"Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?" + +"Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind." + +"I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity. + +"How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the +pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?" + +Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And +once more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his +favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the +buttoned foil. + +"It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, +Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor." + +"I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?" + +"I have--a case of recovering a man's own property." + +"You being the man, Mr. Levy?" + +"I being the man, Mr. Raffles." + +"Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!" + +I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy +protested that in no circumstances could he have taken such a course. By +the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had +entirely escaped his notice in the past--incriminating things--things +that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he +against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with +unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his +strong suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, +and evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly +forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to +endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and +nothing more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever +be done at all. + +"Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested +Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?" + +"Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a +shrug. + +"Preliminary, then?" + +"Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by +abstracting Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amusement--" + +"So you assert, Mr. Levy." + +"Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen--or not--as you decide," +rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events you +admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I ask +you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that 'appens +to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits." + +"Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of +property it is, and where you think it's to be found." + +The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the +one which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. +We all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor +looking specially hard at me for the first time. + +"I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after +you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It +was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen +were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the +natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, +"you are partners in--amusement? Otherwise I should insist on speaking to +Mr. Raffles alone." + +"Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily. + +"Though two to one--numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a +disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the +more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to +'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!" + +"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke. + +"No--lighter than that--a letter!" + +"One little letter?" + +"That's all." + +"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?" + +"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his +lips were framing an affirmative. + +"I see; it was written to you, not by you." + +"Wrong again, Raffles!" + +"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?" + +There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new +difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the +moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes. + +"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, +written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should +like to know what is?" + +"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course +you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against _Fact_?" + +"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?" + +"I am naturally interested in the case." + +"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much +to say about it, with the whole case still _sub judice_." + +"I read the original articles in _Fact_" said Raffles. + +"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?" + +"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the +wind's eye." + +"That's the one I want." + +"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more +serious sort of case." + +"But it isn't genuine." + +"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," +pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has +been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey." + +"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse. + +"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution +love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the +less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to +bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, +with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late +lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there." + +Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his +case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely +than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his +sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another +wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and +burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial +prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would +ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to +thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at +sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it +before the case came on. + +"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could +possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and +instantaneous effect." + +"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me +remind you that it's yours as well!" + +"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it." + +"You won't in any case, I should hope," said I. + +"Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that." + +Levy stopped talking quite like that. + +"Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?" + +"Abstract the--forgery?" + +"Yes." + +"Where from?" + +"Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose." + +"Who are the solicitors to _Fact_?" + +"Burroughs and Burroughs." + +"Of Gray's Inn Square?" + +"That's right." + +"The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a +grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!" + +"I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender. + +Raffles looked more than dubious. + +"Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?" + +"Too big by half." + +"And you merely wish to have their letter--withdrawn, Mr. Levy?" + +"That's the way to put it." + +And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an +intestine chuckle. + +"Withdrawn--and nothing more?" + +"That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles." + +"Even though they miss it the very next morning?" + +"Let them miss it." + +Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in +serene dissent. + +"It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to +go one better--if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much +point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it. + +"What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently +no such premonition. + +"I should take a sheet of your paper with me, and forge the forgery!" +said Raffles, a light in his eye and a gusto in his voice that I knew +only too well. "But I shouldn't do my work as perfectly as--the other +cove--did his. My effort would look the same as yours--_his_--until Mr. +Attorney fixed it with his eyeglass in open court. And then the bottom +would be out of the defence in five minutes!" + +Dan Levy came straight over to Raffles--quivering like a jelly--beaming +at every pore. + +"Shake!" he cried. "I always knew you were a man after my own heart, but +I didn't know you were a man of genius until this minute." + +"It's no use my shaking," replied Raffles, the tips of his sensitive +fingers still together, "until I make up my mind to take on the job. And +I'm a very long way from doing that yet, Mr. Levy." + +I breathed again. + +"But you must, my dear friend, you simply must!" said Levy, in a new tone +of pure persuasion. I was sorry he forgot to threaten instead. Perhaps it +was not forgetfulness; perhaps he was beginning to know his Raffles as I +knew mine; if so, I was sorrier still. + +"It's a case of _quid pro quo_," said Raffles calmly. "You can't expect +me to break out into downright crime--however technical the actual +offence--unless you make it worth my while." + +Levy became the man I wanted him to be again. "I fancy it's worth your +while not to hear anything more about Carlsbad," said he, though still +with less of the old manner than I could have wished. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "when you own yourself that you've no evidence +against me there?" + +"Evidence is to be got that may mean five years to you; don't you make +any mistake about that." + +"Whereas the evidence of this particular letter against yourself has, on +your own showing, already been obtained! It's as you like, of course," +added Raffles, getting up with a shrug. "But if the Old Bailey sees us +both, Mr. Levy, I'll back my chance against yours--and your sentence +against mine!" + +Raffles helped himself to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, +decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a +tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. + +"There, damn you!" said he, blinking into an empty glass. "I trust you +further than I'd trust any other young blood of your kidney; name your +price, and you shall earn it if you can." + +"You may think it a rather long one, Mr. Levy." + +"Never mind; you say what you want." + +"Leave that money of yours on the mortgage with Mr. Garland; forgive +him his other debt as you hope to be forgiven; and either that letter +shall be in your hands, or I'll be in the hands of the police, before a +week is up!" + +Spoken from man to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a +voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, +the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my +fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a +dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for +Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his +sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first +assault on their oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his +empty tumbler into the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a +volley of abuse as I have seldom heard from human brute. + +"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, contemptuously; "if we +copied your tactics we should throw you through that open window!" + +And I stood by for my share in the deed. + +"Yes! I know it'd pay you to break my neck," retorted Levy. "You'd rather +swing than do time, wouldn't you?" + +"And you prefer the other alternative," said Raffles, "to loosing your +grip upon a man who's done you no harm whatever! In interest alone he's +almost repaid all you lent him in the first instance; you've first-class +security for the rest; yet you must ruin him to revenge yourself upon us. +On us, mark you! It's against us you've got your grievance, not against +old Garland or his son. You've lost sight of that fact. That little trick +this morning was our doing entirely. Why don't you take it out of us? Why +refuse a fair offer to spite people who have done you no harm?" + +"It's not a fair offer," growled Levy. "I made you the fair offer." + +But his rage had moderated; he was beginning to listen to Raffles and to +reason, with however ill a grace. It was the very moment which Raffles +was the very man to improve. + +"Mr. Levy," said he, "do you suppose I care whether you hold your tongue +or not on a matter of mere suspicion, which you can't support by a grain +of evidence? You lose a piece of jewellery abroad; you recover it intact; +and after many days you get the bright idea that I'm the culprit because +I happen to have been staying in your hotel at the time. It never +occurred to you there or then, though you interviewed the gentleman face +to face, as you were constantly interviewing me. But as soon as I borrow +some money from you, here in London in the ordinary way, you say I must +be the man who borrowed Mrs. Levy's necklace in that extraordinary way at +Carlsbad! I should say it to the marines, Mr. Levy, if I were you; +they're the only force that are likely to listen to you." + +"I do say it, all the same; and what's more you don't deny it. If you +weren't the man you wouldn't be so ready for another game like it now." + +"Ready for it?" cried Raffles, more than ready for an undeniable point. +"I'm always your man for a new sensation, Mr. Levy, and for years I've +taken an academic interest in the very fine art of burglary; isn't that +so, Bunny?" + +"I've often heard you say so," I replied without mishap. + +"In these piping times," continued Raffles, "it's about the one exciting +and romantic career open to us. If it were not so infernally dishonest I +should have half a mind to follow it myself. And here you come and put +up a crib for me to crack in the best interests of equity and justice; +not to enrich the wicked cracksman, but to restore his rightful property +to the honest financier; a sort of teetotal felony--the very ginger-ale +of crime! Is that a beverage to refuse--a chance to miss--a temptation to +resist? Yet the risks are just as great as if it were a fine old fruity +felony; you can't expect me to run them for nothing, or even for their +own exciting sake. You know my terms, Mr. Levy; if you don't accept them, +it's already two in the morning, and I should like to get to bed before +it's light." + +"And if I did accept them?" said Levy, after a considerable pause. + +"The letter to which you attach such importance would most probably be in +your possession by the beginning of next week." + +"And I should have to take my hands off a nice little property that has +tumbled into them?" + +"Only for a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be +permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of +blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. +Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the crime of blackmail!" + +A singular docility had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no +uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this +case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I +personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put +him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles +would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with +himself and his apparent advantage. + +"Will you give me until to-morrow morning?" said Levy, taking up his hat. + +"If you mean the morning; by eleven I must be at Lord's." + +"Say ten o'clock in Jermyn Street?" + +"It's a strange bargain, Mr. Levy. I should prefer to clinch it out of +earshot of your clerks." + +"Then I will come here." + +"I shall be ready for you at ten." + +"And alone?" + +There was a sidelong glance at me with the proviso. + +"You shall search the premises yourself and seal up all the doors." + +"Meanwhile," said Levy, putting on his hat, "I shall think about it, but +that's all. I haven't agreed yet, Mr. Raffles; don't you make too sure +that I ever shall. I shall think about it--but don't you make too sure." + +He was gone like a lamb, this wild beast of five minutes back. Raffles +showed him out, and down into the courtyard, and out again into +Piccadilly. There was no question but that he was gone for good; back +came Raffles, rubbing his hands for joy. + +"A fine night, Bunny! A finer day to follow! But a nice, slow, +wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" + +I came to my point with all vehemence. + +"Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had +run risks enough for his sake as it was!" + +"How do you know it's for his sake--or anybody's?" asked Raffles, quite +hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, Garlands +or no Garlands? Besides, there's far less risk in what I mean to do than +in what I've been doing; at all events it's in my line." + +"It's not in your line," I retorted, "to strike a bargain with a swine +who won't dream of keeping his side." + +"I shall make him," said Raffles. "If he won't do what I want he shan't +have what he wants." + +"But how could you trust him to keep his word?" + +"His word!" cried Raffles, in ironical echo. "We shall have to carry +matters far beyond his word, of course; deeds, not words, Bunny, and the +deeds properly prepared by solicitors and executed by Dan Levy before he +lays a finger on his own blackmailing letter. You remember old Mother +Hubbard in our house at school? He's a little solicitor somewhere in the +City; he'll throw the whole thing into legal shape for us, and ask no +questions and tell no tales. You leave Mr. Shylock to me and Mother, and +we'll bring him up to the scratch as he ought to go." + +There was no arguing with Raffles in such a mood; argue I did, but he +paid no attention to what I said. He had unlocked a drawer in the bureau, +and taken out a map that I had never seen before. I looked over his +shoulder as he spread it out in the light of his reading-lamp. And it was +a map of London capriciously sprinkled with wheels and asterisks of red +ink; there was a finished wheel in Bond Street, another in Half-Moon +Street, one on the site of Thornaby House, Park Lane, and others as +remote as St. John's Wood and Peter Street, Campden Hill; the asterisks +were fewer, and I have less reason to remember their latitude and +longitude. + +"What's this, A.J.?" I asked. "It looks exactly like a war-map." + +"It is one, Bunny," said he; "it's the map of one man's war against the +ordered forces of society. The spokes are only the scenes of future +operations, but each finished wheel marks the field of some past +engagement, in which you have usually been the one man's one and only +accomplice." + +And he stooped and drew the neatest of blood-red asterisks at the +southern extremity of Gray's Inn Square. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +"My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + +The historic sward had just been cleared for action when Raffles and I +met at Lord's next day. I blush to own I had been knave and fool enough +to suggest that he should smuggle me into the pavilion; but perhaps the +only laws of man that Raffles really respected were those of the M.C.C., +and it was in Block B. that he joined me a minute or so before eleven. +The sun was as strong and the sky as blue as though the disastrous day +before had been just such another. But its tropical shower-bath had left +the London air as cleanly and as clear as crystal; the neutral tints of +every day were splashes of vivid colour, the waiting umpires animated +snow-men, the heap of sawdust at either end a pyramid of powdered gold +upon an emerald ground. And in the expectant hush before the appearance +of the fielding side, I still recall the Yorkshire accent of the Surrey +Poet, hawking his latest lyric on some "Great Stand by Mr. Webbe and Mr. +Stoddart," and incidentally assuring the crowd that Cambridge was going +to win because everybody said Oxford would. + +"Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men +emerged from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light +blue. The captain's colours were bleached by service; but the +wicket-keeper's were the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male +historian I shrink from saying how well they suited him. + +"Teddy Garland looks as though nothing had happened," was what I said at +the time, as I peered through my binocular at the padded figure with the +pink face and the gigantic gloves. + +"That's because he knows there's a chance of nothing more happening," was +the reply. "I've seen him and his poor old governor up here since I saw +Dan Levy." + +I eagerly inquired as to the upshot of the earlier interview, but Raffles +looked as though he had not heard. The Oxford captain had come out to +open the innings with a player less known to fame; the first ball of the +match hurtled down the pitch, and the Oxford captain left it severely +alone. Teddy took it charmingly, and almost with the same movement the +ball was back in the bowler's hands. + +"_He's_ all right!" muttered Raffles with a long breath. "So is our Mr. +Shylock, Bunny; we fixed things up in no time after all. But the worst of +it is I shall only be able to stop--" + +He broke off, mouth open as it might have been mine. A ball had been +driven hard to extra cover, and quite well fielded; another had been +taken by Teddy as competently as the first, but not returned to the +bowler. The Oxford captain had played at it, and we heard something even +in Block B. + +"How's that?" came almost simultaneously in Teddy's ringing voice. Up +went the umpire's finger, and down came Raffles's hand upon my thigh. + +"He's caught him, Bunny!" he cried in my ear above the Cambridge cheers. +"The best bat on either side, and Teddy's outed him third ball!" He +stopped to watch the defeated captain's slow return, the demonstration on +the pitch in Teddy's honour; then he touched me on the arm and dropped +his voice. "He's forgotten all his troubles now, Bunny, if you like; +nothing's going to worry him till lunch, unless he misses a sitting +chance. And he won't, you'll see; a good start means even more behind the +sticks than in front of 'em." + +Raffles was quite right. Another wicket fell cheaply in another way; then +came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and +judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass +unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the +bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and +beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching +behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great +gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held +them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for +four byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; +so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain +particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice +extracted a stray detail. + +"The old sinner has a place on the river, Bunny, though I have my +suspicions of a second establishment nearer town. But I'm to find him at +his lawful home all the next few nights, and sitting up for me till two +in the morning." + +"Then you're going to Gray's Inn Square this week?" + +"I'm going there this morning for a peep at the crib; there's no time to +be lost, but on the other hand there's a devil of a lot to learn. I say, +Bunny, there's going to be another change of bowling; the fast stuff, +too, by Jove!" + +A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper +was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. + +"You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only +answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a +crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!" + +The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at +the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent +contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking +thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered +Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into +Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less +reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at +my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit +hard but very late. It was a hit that might have smashed the pavilion +palings. But it never reached them; it stuck in Teddy's left glove +instead, and none of us knew it till we saw him staggering towards +long-leg, and tossing up the ball as he recovered balance. + +"That's the worst ball that ever took a wicket in this match!" vowed a +reverend veteran as the din died down. + +"And the best catch!" cried Raffles. "Come on, Bunny; that's my _nunc +dimittis_ for the day. There would be nothing to compare with it if I +could stop to see every ball bowled, and I mustn't see another." + +"But why?" I asked, as I followed Raffles into the press behind the +carriages. + +"I've already told you why," said he. + +I got as close to him as one could in that crowd. + +"You're not thinking of doing it to-night, A.J.?" + +"I don't know." + +"But you'll let _me_ know?" + +"Not if I can help it, Bunny; didn't I promise not to drag you any +further through this particular mire?" + +"But if _I_ can help _you_?" I whispered, after a momentary separation in +the throng. + +"Oh! if I can't get on without you," said Raffles, not nicely, "I'll let +you know fast enough. But do drop the subject now; here come old Garland +and Camilla Belsize!" + +They did not see us quite so soon as we saw them, and for a moment one +felt a spy; but it was an interesting moment even to a person smarting +from a snub. The ruined man looked haggard, ill, unfit to be about, the +very embodiment of the newspaper report concerning him. But the spirit +beamed through the shrinking flesh, the poor old fellow was alight with +pride and love, exultant in spite of himself and his misfortunes. He had +seen his boy's great catch; he had heard the cheers, he would hear them +till his dying hour. Camilla Belsize had also seen and heard, but not +with the same exquisite appreciation. Cricket was a game to her, it was +not that quintessence and epitome of life it would seem to be to some of +its devotees; and real life was pressing so heavily upon her that the +trivial consolation which had banished her companion's load could not +lighten hers. So at least I thought as they approached, the man so worn +and radiant, the girl so pensive for all her glorious youth and beauty: +his was the old head bowed with sorrow, his also the simpler and the +younger heart. + +"That catch will console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to +Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I +wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little +enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the +cricket. And that was usual enough. + +Raffles was already saying he must go, with an explanatory murmur to Mr. +Garland, who clasped his hand with a suddenly clouded countenance. But +Miss Belsize only bowed, and scarcely took her eyes off a couple of +outwardly inferior men, who had attracted my attention through hers, +until they also passed out of the ground. + +Mr. Garland was on tip-toes watching the game again with mercurial +ardour. + +"Mr. Manders will look after me," she said to him, "won't you, Mr. +Manders?" I made some suitable asseveration, and she added: "Mr. +Garland's a member, you know, and dying to go into the Pavilion." + +"Only just to hear what they think of Teddy," the poor old boy confessed; +and when we had arranged where to meet in the interval, away he hurried +with his keen, worn face. + +Miss Belsize turned to me the moment he was gone. + +"I want to speak to you, Mr. Manders," she said quickly but without +embarrassment. "Where can we talk?" + +"And watch as well?" I suggested, thinking of the young man at his best +behind the sticks. + +"I want to speak to you first," she said, "where we shan't be overheard. +It's about Mr. Raffles!" added Miss Belsize as she met my stare. + +About Raffles again! About Raffles, after all that she had learnt the +day before! I did not enjoy the prospect as I led the way past the +ivy-mantled tennis-court of those days to the practice-ground, turned for +the nonce into a tented lawn. + +"And what about Raffles?" I asked as we struck out for ourselves across +the grass. + +"I'm afraid he's in some danger," replied Miss Belsize. And she stopped +in her walk and confronted me as frankly as though we had the animated +scene to ourselves. + +"Danger!" I repeated, guiltily enough, no doubt. "What makes you think +that, Miss Belsize?" + +My companion hesitated for the first time. + +"You won't tell him I told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"Not if you don't want me to," said I, taken aback more by her manner +than by the request itself. + +"You promise me that?" + +"Certainly." + +"Then tell me, did you notice two men who passed close to us just after +we had all met?" + +"There are so many men to notice," said I to gain time. + +"But these were not the sort one expects to see here to-day." + +"Did they wear bowlers and short coats?" + +"You did notice them!" + +"Only because I saw you watching them," said I, recalling the +whole scene. + +"They wanted watching," rejoined Miss Belsize dryly. "They followed Mr. +Raffles out of the ground!" + +"So they did!" I reflected aloud in my alarm. + +"They were following you both when you met us." + +"The dickens they were! Was that the first you saw of them?" + +"No; the first time was over there at the nets before play began. I +noticed those two men behind Teddy's net. They were not watching him; +that called my attention to them. It's my belief they were lying in wait +for Mr. Raffles; at any rate, when he came they moved away. But they +followed us afterwards across the ground." + +"You are sure of that?" + +"I looked round to see," said Miss Belsize, avoiding my eyes for the +first time. + +"Did you think the men--detectives?" + +And I forced a laugh. + +"I was afraid they might be, Mr. Manders, though I have never seen one +off the stage." + +"Still," I pursued, with painfully sustained amusement, "you were +ready to find A.J. Raffles being shadowed here at Lord's of all places +in the world?" + +"I was ready for anything, anywhere," said Miss Belsize, "after all I +heard yesterday afternoon." + +"You mean about poor Mr. Garland and his affairs?" + +It was an ingenuously disingenuous suggestion; it brought my companion's +eyes back to mine, with something of the scorn that I deserved. + +"No, Mr. Manders, I meant after what we all heard between Mr. Levy +and Mr. Raffles; and you knew very well what I meant," added Miss +Belsize severely. + +"But surely you didn't take all that seriously?" said I, without denying +the just impeachment. + +"How could I help it? The insinuation was serious enough, in all +conscience!" exclaimed Camilla Belsize. + +"That is," said I, since she was not to be wilfully misunderstood, "that +poor old Raffles had something to do with this jewel robbery at +Carlsbad?" + +"If it was a robbery." + +She winced at the word. + +"Do you mean it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's +own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to +embrace that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it +really was what she had meant. + +"Obviously!" says she, with an impromptu superiority worthy of Raffles +himself. "I wonder you never thought of that, Mr. Manders, when you know +what a trick you both played Mr. Levy only yesterday. Mr. Raffles himself +told us all about that; and I'm very grateful to you both; you must know +I am--for Teddy's sake," added Miss Belsize, with one quick remorseful +glance towards the great arena. "Still it only shows what Mr. Raffles +is--and--and it's what I meant when we were talking about him yesterday." + +"I don't remember," said I, remembering fast enough. + +"In the rockery," she reminded me. "When you asked what people said about +him, and I said that about living on his wits." + +"And being a paid amateur!" + +"But the other was the worst." + +"I'm not so sure," said I. "But his wits wouldn't carry him very far if +he only took necklaces and put them back again." + +"But it was all a joke," she reminded us both with a bit of a start. +"It must have been a joke, if Mr. Raffles did it at all. And it would +be dreadful if anything happened to him because of a wretched +practical joke!" + +There was no mistake about her feeling now; she really felt that it would +be "dreadful if anything happened" to the man whom yesterday she had +seemed both to dislike and to distrust. Her voice vibrated with anxiety. +A bright film covered the fine eyes, and they were finer than ever as +they continued to face me unashamed; but I was fool enough to speak my +mind, and at that they flashed themselves dry. + +"I thought you didn't like him?" had been my remark, and "Who says I do?" +was hers. "But he has done a lot for Teddy," she went on, "and never more +than yesterday," with her hand for an instant on my arm, "when you helped +him! I am dreadfully sorry for Mr. Garland, sorrier than I am for poor +Teddy. But Mr. Raffles is more than sorry. I know he means to do what he +can. He seems to think there must be something wrong; he spoke of +bringing that brute to reason--if not to justice. It would be too +dreadful if such a creature could turn the tables on Mr. Raffles by +trumping up any charge against him!" + +There was an absolute echo of my own tone in "trumping up any charge," +and I thought the echo sounded even more insincere. But at least it +showed me where we were. Miss Belsize was not deceived; she only wanted +me to think she was. Miss Belsize had divined what I knew, but neither +of us would admit to the other that the charge against Raffles would be +true enough. + +"But why should these men follow him?" said I, really wondering why they +should. "If there were anything definite against old Raffles, don't you +think he would be arrested?" + +"Oh! I don't know," was the slightly irritable answer. "I only think he +should be warned that he is being followed." + +"Whatever he has done?" I ventured. + +"Yes!" said she. "Whatever he has done--after what he did for Teddy +yesterday!" + +"You want me to warn him?" + +"Yes--but not from me!" + +"And suppose he really did take Mrs. Levy's necklace?" + +"That's just what we are supposing." + +"But suppose it wasn't for a joke at all?" + +I spoke as one playfully plumbing the abysmally absurd; what I did desire +to sound was the loyalty of this new, unexpected, and still captious +ally. And I thought myself strangely successful at the first cast; for +Miss Belsize looked me in the face as I was looking her, and I trusted +her before she spoke. + +"Well, after yesterday," she said, "I should warn him all the same!" + +"You would back your Raffles right or wrong?" I murmured, perceiving that +Camilla Belsize was, after all, like all the rest of us. + +"Against a vulgar extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without +repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think +anything of him--apart from what you did between you for Teddy +yesterday." + +We had continued our stroll some time ago, and now it was I who stood +still. I looked at my watch. It still wanted some minutes to the +luncheon interval. + +"If Raffles took a cab to his rooms," I said, "he must be nearly there +and I must telephone to him." + +"Is there a call-office on the ground?" + +"Only in the pavilion, I believe, for the use of the members." + +"Then you must go to the nearest one outside." + +"And what about you?" + +Miss Belsize brightened with her smile of perfect and unconscious +independence. + +"Oh, I shall be all right," she said. "I know where to find Mr. Garland, +even if I don't pick up an escort on the way." + +But it was she who escorted me to the tall turnstile nearest +Wellington Road. + +"And you do see why I want to put Mr. Raffles on his guard?" she said +pointedly as we shook hands. "It's only because you and he have done so +much for Teddy!" + +And because she did not end by reminding me of my promise, I was all the +more reluctantly determined to keep it to the letter, even though Raffles +should think as ill as ever of one who was at least beginning to think +better of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A Dash in the Dark + + +In a few lines which I found waiting for me at the club, and have +somewhat imprudently preserved, Raffles professes to have known he was +being shadowed even before we met at Lord's: "but it was no use talking +about it until the foe were in the cart." He goes on to explain the +simple means by which he reduced the gentlemen in billycocks to the pitch +of discomfiture implied in his metaphor. He had taken a hansom to the +Burlington Gardens entrance to the Albany, and kept it waiting while he +went in and changed his clothes; then he had sent Barraclough to pay off +the cab, and himself marched out into Piccadilly, what time the billycock +brims were still shading watchful eyes in Burlington Gardens. There, to +be sure, I myself had spotted one of the precious pair when I drove up +after vain exertions at the call-office outside Lord's; but by that time +his confederate was on guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not +only shown a clean pair of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an +empty cage. He dismisses them not unfairly with the epithet +"amateurish." Thus I was the more surprised, but not the less relieved, +to learn that he was "running down into the country for the weekend, to +be out of their way"; but he would be back on the Monday night, "to keep +an engagement you wot of, Bunny. And if you like you may meet me under +the clock at Waterloo (in flannel kit and tennis-shoes for choice) at the +witching hour of twelve sharp." + +If I liked! I had a premature drink in honour of an invitation more +gratifying to my vanity than any compliment old Raffles had paid me yet; +for I could still hear his ironical undertaking to let me know if he +could not do without me, and there was obviously no irony in this +delightfully early intimation of that very flattering fact. It altered my +whole view of the case. I might disapprove of the risks Raffles was +running for his other friends, but the more I was allowed to share in +them the less critical I was inclined to be. Besides I was myself clearly +implicated in the issue as between my own friend and the common enemy; it +was no more palatable to me than it was to Raffles, to be beaten by Dan +Levy after our initial victory over him. So I drank like a man to his +destruction, and subsequently stole forth to spy upon his foolish +myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The +imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens +looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy +jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not +so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally +distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a +barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking notice +than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility one could scarcely excel the +other; and between them they raised my spirits to the zenith. + +I spent the rest of the afternoon at their own game, dogging Miss Belsize +about Lord's until at last I had an opportunity of informing her that +Raffles was quite safe. It may be that I made my report with too much +gusto when my chance came; at any rate, it was only the fact that +appeared to interest Miss Belsize; the details, over which I gloated, +seemed to inspire in her a repugnance consistent with the prejudice she +had displayed against Raffles yesterday, but not with her grateful +solicitude on his behalf as revealed to me that very morning. I could +only feel that gratitude was the beginning and the end of her new regard +for him. Raffles had never fascinated this young girl as he did the rest +of us; ordinarily engaged to an ordinary man, she was proof against the +glamour that dazzled us. Nay, though she would not admit it even to me +his friend, though like Levy she pretended to embrace the theory of the +practical joke, making it the pretext for her anxiety, I felt more +certain than ever that she now guessed, and had long suspected, what +manner of man Raffles really was, and that her natural antipathy was +greater even than before. Still more certain was I that she would never +betray him by word or deed; that, whatever harm might come of his present +proceedings, it would not be through Camilla Belsize. + +But I was now determined to do my own utmost to minimise the dangers, to +be a real help to Raffles in the act of altruistic depravity to which he +had committed himself, and not merely a fifth wheel to his dashing +chariot. Accordingly I went into solemn training for the event before us: +a Turkish bath on the Saturday, a quiet Sunday between Mount Street and +the club, and most of Monday lying like a log in cold-blooded preparation +for the night's work. And when night fell I took it upon me to +reconnoitre the ground myself before meeting Raffles at Waterloo. + +Another cool and starry evening seemed to have tempted all the town and +his wife into the streets. The great streams of traffic were busier than +ever, the backwaters emptier, and Gray's Inn a basin drained to the last +dreg of visible humanity. In one moment I passed through gateway and +alley from the voices and lights of Holborn into a perfectly deserted +square of bare ground and bright stars. The contrast was altogether +startling, for I had never been there before; but for the same reason I +had already lost my bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square +when I was only in South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a +hopeless search for the offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after +door had I tried in vain, and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a +stray molecule of the population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, +but with the quick step of the man who knows his way. I darted from a +doorway to inquire mine, but he was across the square before I could cut +him off, and as he passed through the rays of a lamp beside a second +archway, I fell back thanking Providence and Raffles for my rubber soles. +The man had neither seen nor heard me, but at the last moment I had +recognised him as the burlier of the two blockheads who had shadowed +Raffles three days before. + +He passed under the arch without looking round. I flattened myself +against the wall on my side of the arch; and in so standing I was all +but eye-witness of a sudden encounter in the square beyond. + +The quick steps stopped, and there was a "Here you are!" on one side, +and a "Well! Where is he?" on the other, both very eager and below +the breath. + +"On the job," whispered the first voice. "Up to the neck!" + +"When did 'e go in?" + +"Nearly an hour ago; when I sent the messenger." + +"Which way?" + +"Up through number seventeen." + +"Next door, eh?" + +"That's right." + +"Over the roof?" + +"Can't say; he's left no tracks. I been up to see." + +"I suppose there's the usual ladder and trapdoor?" + +"Yes, but the ladder's hanging in its proper place. He couldn't have put +it back there, could he?" + +The other grunted; presently he expressed a doubt whether Raffles (and it +thrilled me to hear the very name) had succeeded in breaking into the +lawyer's office at all. The first man on the scene, however, was quite +sure of it--and so was I. + +"And we've got to hang about," grumbled the newcomer, "till he comes +out again?" + +"That's it. We can't miss him. He must come back into the square or +through into the gardens, and if he does that he'll have to come over +these here railings into Field Court. We got him either way, and there's +a step just here where we can sit and see both ways as though it had been +made for us. You come and try ... a door into the old hall ..." + +That was all I heard distinctly; first their footsteps, and then the few +extra yards, made the rest unintelligible. But I had heard enough. "The +usual ladder and trap-door!" Those blessed words alone might prove worth +their weight in great letters of solid gold. + +Now I could breathe again; now I relaxed my body and turned my head, and +peered through the arch with impunity, and along the whole western side +of Gray's Inn Square, with its dusky fringe of plane-trees and its vivid +line of lamps, its strip of pavement, and its wall of many-windowed +houses under one unbroken roof. Dim lights smouldered in the column of +landing windows over every door; otherwise there was no break in the +blackness of that gaunt façade. Yet in some dark room or other behind +those walls I seemed to see Raffles at work as plainly as I had just +heard our natural enemies plotting his destruction. I saw him at a safe. +I saw him at a desk. I saw him leaving everything as he had found it, +only to steal down and out into the very arms of the law. And I felt that +even that desperate _dénouement_ was little more than he deserved for +letting me think myself accessory before the fact, when all the time he +meant me to have nothing whatever to do with it! Well, I should have +everything to do with it now; if Raffles was to be saved from the +consequences of his own insanity, I and I alone must save him. It was the +chance of my life to show him my real worth. And yet the difficulty of +the thing might have daunted Raffles himself. + +I knew what to do if only I could gain the house which he had made the +base of his own operations; at least I knew what to attempt, and what +Raffles had done I might do. So far the wily couple within earshot had +helped me out of their own mouths. But they were only just round the +corner that hid them from my view; stray words still reached me; and they +knew me by sight, would recognise me at a glance, might pounce upon me as +I passed. Unless-- + +_I_ had it! + +The crowd in Holborn seemed strange and unreal as I jostled in its midst +once more. I was out of it in a moment, however, and into a 'bus, and out +of the 'bus in a couple of minutes by my watch. One more minute and I was +seeing how far back I could sit in a hansom bound for Gray's Inn Square. + +"I forget the number," I had told the cabman, "but it's three or four +doors beyond Burroughs and Burroughs, the solicitors." + +The gate into Holborn had to be opened for me, but the gate-keeper had +not seen me on my previous entrance and exit afoot through the postern. +It was when we drove under the further arch into the actual square that I +pressed my head hard against the back of the hansom, and turned my face +towards Field Court. The enemy might have abandoned their position, they +might meet me face to face as I landed on the pavement; that was my risk, +and I ran it without disaster. We passed the only house with an outer +door to it in the square (now there is none), and on the plate beside it +I read BURROUGHS AND BURROUGHS with a thrill. Up went my stick; my +shilling (with a peculiarly superfluous sixpence for luck) I thrust +through the trap with the other hand; and I was across the pavement, and +on the stairs four clear doors beyond the lawyer's office, before the +driver had begun to turn his horse. + +They were broad bare stairs, with great office doors right and left on +every landing, and in the middle the landing window looking out into the +square. I waited well within the window on the first floor; and as my +hansom drove out under the arch, the light of its near lamp flashed +across two figures lounging on the steps of that entrance to the hall; +but there was no stopping or challenging the cabman, no sound at all but +those of hoofs and bell, and soon only that of my own heart beating as I +fled up the rest of the stairs in my rubber soles. + +Near the top I paused to thank my kindly stars; sure enough there was a +long step-ladder hanging on a great nail over the last half-landing, and +a square trap-door right over the landing proper! I ran up just to see +the names on the two top doors; one was evidently that of some +pettifogging firm of solicitors, while the other bespoke a private +resident, whom I judged to be out of town by the congestion of postal +matter that met my fingers in his letter-box. Neither had any terrors for +me. The step-ladder was unhooked without another moment's hesitation. +Care alone was necessary to place it in position without making a noise; +then up I went, and up went the trapdoor next, without mishap or +hindrance until I tried to stand up in the loft, and caught my head a +crack against the tiles instead. + +This was disconcerting in more ways than one, for I could not leave the +ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match +and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. +The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the +roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, +and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have +wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute +before closing it with great caution, a squeak and a scuttle in the loft +itself being the only sign that I had disturbed a living creature. + +There was a grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but +leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now +stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here +in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless +chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of +pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone +wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and +aft in a similar slope to that at either side; the length of it +doubtless tallied with the frontage of a single house; and when I had +clambered over the southern extremity into a precisely similar valley I +saw that this must be the case. I had entered the fourth house beyond +Burroughs and Burroughs's, or was it the fifth? I threaded three +valleys, and then I knew. + +In all three there had been dormer windows on either hand, that on the +square side leading into the loft; the other, or others, forming a sort +of skylight to some top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these +standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake +on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of +Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the +strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled +into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room +if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles +had led the way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected +on something less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the +bars of a kitchen range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the +kitchen table. A cat was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a +step of a wooden chair, and came down like a cat myself. + +I found the kitchen door, found a passage so dark that the window at the +end hung like a picture slashed across the middle. Yet it only looked +into the square, for I peered out when I had crept along the passage, and +even thought I both heard and saw the enemy at their old post. But I was +in another enemy's country now; at every step I stopped to listen for the +thud of feet bounding out of bed. Hearing nothing, I had the temerity at +last to strike a match upon my trousers, and by its light I found the +outer door. This was not bolted nor yet shut; it was merely ajar, and so +I left it. + +The rooms opposite appeared to be an empty set; those on the second and +first floors were only partially shut off by swing doors leading to +different departments of the mighty offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. +There were no lights upon these landings, and I gathered my information +by means of successive matches, whose tell-tale ends I carefully +concealed about my person, and from copious legends painted on the walls. +Thus I had little difficulty in groping my way to the private offices of +Sir John Burroughs, head of the celebrated firm; but I looked in vain for +a layer of light under any of the massive mahogany doors with which this +portion of the premises was glorified. Then I began softly trying doors +that proved to be locked. Only one yielded to my hand; and when it was a +few inches open, all was still black; but the next few brought me to the +end of my quest, and the close of my solitary adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A Midsummer Night's Work + + +The dense and total darkness was broken in one place, and one only, by a +plateful of light proceeding from a tiny bulb of incandescence in its +centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a +pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other +side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its +plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, +and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his +task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute +concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was +a hint of the same quiet and wary smile with which Raffles would bowl an +over or drill holes in a door. + +I stood for some moments fascinated, entranced, before creeping in to +warn him of my presence in a whisper. But this time he heard my step, +snatched up electric torch and glittering revolver, and covered me with +the one in the other's light. + +"A.J.!" I gasped. + +"Bunny!" he exclaimed in equal amazement and displeasure. "What the devil +do you mean by this?" + +"You're in danger," I whispered. "I came to warn you!" + +"Danger? I'm never out of it. But how did you know where to find me, and +how on God's earth did _you_ get here?" + +"I'll tell you some other time. You know those two brutes you dodged the +other day?" + +"I ought to." + +"They're waiting below for you at this very moment." + +Raffles peered a few moments through the handful of white light between +our faces. + +"Let them wait!" said he, and replaced the torch upon the table and put +down his revolver for his pen. + +"They're detectives!" I urged. + +"Are they, Bunny?" + +"What else could they be?" + +"What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head +and deliberate pen. + +"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and +lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my +belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just +to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want +a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" + +"I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't +do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience, Bunny, +and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes +there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the +next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, +or else get out by yourself as you came in." + +I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the +landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my +way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to +surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same +mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not +one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" +I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and +listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to +welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police +behind them. + +Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand +my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. + +"Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. + +"Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" + +"I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" + +"You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would +have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." + +"Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. + +"Rather!" + +"Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." + +"It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that +the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper +in its place." + +"I never heard a sound." + +"I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You +see how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" + +I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the +house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. + +"Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" + +"Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. + +"You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This +is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a +commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come +when he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have +been a shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" + +We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against +Raffles's legs. + +"But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?" + +"Made friends with him when I called on Friday; didn't I tell you I had +an appointment with the bloated head of this notorious firm when I +cleared out of Lord's? I'm about to strengthen his already unrivalled +list of clients; you shall hear all about that later. We had another +interview this afternoon, when I asked my V.C. if he ever went to the +theatre; you see he had spotted Tom Fool, and told me he never had a +chance of getting to Lord's. So I got him tickets for 'Rosemary' instead, +but of course I swore they had just been given to me and I couldn't use +them. You should have seen how the hero beamed! So that's where he is, +he and his wife--or was, until the curtain went down." + +"Good Lord, Raffles, is the piece over?" + +"Nearly ten minutes ago, but it'll take 'em all that unless they come +home in a cab." + +And Raffles had been sitting before the fire, on the kitchen table, +encouraging the cat, when this formidable V.C. and his wife must be +coming every instant nearer Gray's Inn Square! + +"Why, my dear Bunny, I should back myself to swarm up and out without +making a sound or leaving a sign, if I heard our hero's key in the lock +this moment. After you, Bunny." + +I climbed up with trembling knees, Raffles holding the rope taut to make +it easier. Once more I stood upright under the stars and the telephone +wires, and leaned against a chimney-stack to wait for Raffles. But before +I saw him, before I even heard his unnecessarily noiseless movements, I +heard something else that sent a chill all through me. + +It was not the sound of a key in the lock. It was something far worse +than that. It was the sound of voices on the roof, and of footsteps +drawing nearer through the very next valley of leads and tiles. + +I was crouching on the leads outside the dormer window as Raffles +climbed into sight within. + +"They're after us up here!" I whispered in his face. "On the next roof! I +hear them!" + +Up came Raffles with his hands upon the sill, then with his knees between +his hands, and so out on all-fours into the narrow rivulet of lead +between the sloping tiles. Out of the opposite slope, a yard or two on, +rose a stout stack of masonry, a many-headed monster with a chimney-pot +on each, and a full supply of wires for whiskers. Behind this Gorgon of +the house-tops Raffles hustled me without a word, and himself took +shelter as the muffled voices on the next roof grew more distinct. They +were the voices that I had overheard already in the square, the voices +but not the tones. The tones--the words--were those of an enemy divided +against itself. + +"And now we've gone and come too far!" grumbled the one who had been last +to arrive upon the scene below. + +"We did that," the other muttered, "the moment we came in after 'em. We +should've stopped where we were." + +"With that other cove driving up and going in without ever showing a +glim?" + +Raffles nudged me, and I saw what I had done. But the weakling of the +pair still defended the position he had reluctantly abandoned on _terra +firma_; he was all for returning while there was time; and there were +fragments of the broken argument that were beginning to puzzle me when a +soft oath from the man in front proclaimed the discovery of the open +window and the rope. + +"We got 'em," he whispered, stagily, "like rats in a trap!" + +"You forget what it is we've got to get." + +"Well, we must first catch our man, mustn't we? And how d'ye know his pal +hasn't gone in to warn him where we were? If he has, and we'd stopped +there, they'd do us easy." + +"They may do us easier down there in the dark," replied the other, with a +palpable shiver. "They'll hear us and lie in wait. In the dark! We shan't +have a dog's chance." + +"All right! You get out of it and save your skin. I'd rather work alone +than with a blessed funk!" + +The situation was identical with many a one in the past between Raffles +and me. The poor brute in my part resented the charge against his courage +as warmly as I had always done. He was merely for the better part of +valour, and how right he was Raffles and I only knew. I hoped the lesson +was not lost upon Raffles. Dialogue and action alike resembled one of +our own performances far more than ordinary police methods as we knew +them. We heard the squeeze of the leader's clothes and the rattle of his +buttons over the window ledge. "It's like old times," we heard him +mutter; and before many moments the weakling was impulsively whispering +down to know if he should follow. + +I felt for that fellow at every stage of his unwilling proceedings. I was +to feel for him still more. Raffles had stepped down like a cat from +behind our cover; grasping an angle of the stack with either hand, I put +my head round after him. The wretched player of my old part was on his +haunches at the window, stooping forward, more in than out. I saw Raffles +grinning in the starlight, saw his foot poised and the other poor devil +disappear. Then a dull bump, then a double crash and such a cursing as +left no doubt that the second fellow had fallen plumb on top of the +first. Also from his language I fancied he would survive the fall. + +But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped +out at my feet than he had untied the other end. + +"Like lamplighters, Bunny!" + +And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the +hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or +two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs. + +"This is where I came out," I called to Raffles as he passed the place. +"There's a ladder here where I left it in the loft!" + +"No time for ladders!" cried Raffles over his shoulder, and not for some +moments did he stop in his stride. Nor was it I who stopped him then; it +was a sudden hubbub somewhere behind us, somewhere below; the blowing of +a police whistle, and the sound of many footsteps in the square. + +"That's for us!" I gasped. "The ladder! The ladder!" + +"Ladder be damned!" returned Raffles, roughly. "It isn't for us at all; +it's my pal the V.C. who has come home and bottled the other blighters." + +"Thinking they're thieves?" + +"Thinking any rot you like! Our course is over the rest of the roofs on +this side, over the whole lot at the top end, and, if possible, down the +last staircase in the corner. Then we only have to show ourselves in the +square for a tick before we're out by way of Verulam Buildings." + +"Is there another gate there?" I asked as he scampered on with me +after him. + +"Yes; but it's closed and the porter leaves at twelve, and it must be +jolly near that now. Wait, Bunny! Some one or other is sure to be looking +out of the top windows across the square; they'll see us if we take our +fences too freely!" + +We had come to one of the transverse tile-slopes, which hitherto we had +run boldly up and down in our helpful and noiseless rubber soles; now, +not to show ourselves against the stars, to a stray pair of eyes on some +other high level, we crept up on all fours and rolled over at full +length. It added considerably to our time over more than a whole side of +the square. Meanwhile the police whistles had stopped, but the company in +the square had swollen audibly. + +It seemed an age, but I suppose it was not many minutes, before we came +to the last of the dormer windows, looking into the last vale of tiles in +the north-east angle of the square. Something gleamed in the starlight, +there was a sharp little sound of splitting wood, and Raffles led me on +hands and knees into just such a loft as I had entered before by ladder. +His electric torch discovered the trapdoor at a gleam. Raffles opened it +and let down the rope, only to whisk it up again so smartly that it +struck my face like a whiplash. + +A door had opened on the top landing. We listened over the open +trap-door, and knew that another stood listening on the invisible +threshold underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart +leapt for he never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by +our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red +neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom +slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way +down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like looking up. + +Raffles threw his rope aside, gave me his hand instead, and dropped me on +the landing like a feather, dropping after me without a moment's pause. +In fact, the old fellow with the fez could hardly have completed his +descent of the stairs when we began ours. Yet through the landing window +we saw him charging diagonally across the square, shouting and +gesticulating in his flight to the gathering crowd near the far corner. + +"He spotted us, Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, after listening an instant +in the entrance. "Stick to me like my shadow, and do every blessed +thing I do." + +Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of +lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of +attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square +behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our +direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in +front of Verulam Buildings. + +It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at +the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us +through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can +the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate +had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and +dry in a hansom. + +"King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we +reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to +the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, +and Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That +little bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the +first cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as +scent is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to +ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge +and a good five minutes to go!" + +"You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" + +"Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." + +"But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his +note, and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. + +"I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied +Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." + +"And _I_ thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" + +Raffles laughed. + +"The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! +To-night, for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your +unselfish audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear +fellow, it was a sadly unnecessary effort." + +"Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" + +"Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off +for his pal." + +"Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." + +"Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never +have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going +in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me +on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and +those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside +the Albany." + +"Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting +for you in any case if you didn't show up." + +"Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it +wasn't their job at all." + +"Not to take you in the act if they could?" + +"No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to +earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from +old Levy." + +"Levy!" + +"Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?" + +"His creatures, Raffles?" + +"He set them to shadow me from the hour of our interview on Saturday +morning. Their instructions were to bag the letter from me as soon as I +got it, but to let me go free to the devil!" + +"How can you know, A.J.?" + +"My dear Bunny, where do you suppose I've been spending the week-end? Did +you think I'd go in with a sly dog like old Shylock without watching him +and finding out his real game? I should have thought it hardly necessary +to tell you I've been down the river all the time; down the river," +added Raffles, chuckling, "in a Canadian canoe and a torpedo beard! I was +cruising near the foot of the old brute's garden on Friday evening when +one of the precious pair came down to tell him they had let me slip +already. I landed and heard the whole thing through the window of the +room where we shall find him to-night. It was Levy who set them to watch +the crib since they'd lost the cracksman; he was good enough to reiterate +all his orders for my benefit. You will hear me take him through them +when we get down there, so it's no use going over the same ground twice." + +"Funny orders for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled +comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. + +"Scotland Yard?" said he. "My good Bunny, those were no limbs of the law; +they're old thieves set to catch a thief, and they've been caught +themselves for their pains!" + +Of course they were! Every detail of their appearance and their behaviour +confirmed the statement in the flash that brought them all before my +mind! And I had never thought of it, never but dreamt that we were doing +battle with the archenemies of our class. But there was no time for +further reflection, nor had I recovered breath enough for another word, +when the hansom clattered up the cobbles into Waterloo Station. And our +last sprint of that athletic night ended in a simultaneous leap into +separate carriages as the platform slid away from the 12:10 train. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Knocked Out + + +But it was hardly likely to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw +for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like +Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded +dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; +and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not +come in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings +in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still +impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's +mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their +first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the +real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light +enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in +Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any +consideration. His magnanimity in the matter, which he flatly refused to +take as seriously as I did, made it difficult for me to press old +Raffles, as I otherwise might have done, for an outline of those further +plans in which I hoped to atone for my blunders by being of some use to +him after all. His nonchalant manner convinced me that they were +cut-and-dried; but I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the +details. I merely gathered that he had brought down some document for +Levy to sign in execution of the verbal agreement made between them in +town; not until that agreement was completed by his signature was the +harpy to receive the precious epistle he pretended never to have written. +Raffles, in fine, had the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who +is none the less prepared for foul play on the other side, and by no +means perturbed at the prospect. + +We left the train at a sweet-smelling platform, on which the lights were +being extinguished as we turned into a quiet road where bats flew over +our heads between the lamp-posts, and a policeman was passing a disc of +light over a jerry-built abuse of the name of Queen Anne. Our way led +through quieter roads of larger houses standing further back, until at +last we came to the enemy's gates. They were wooden gates without a +lodge, yet the house set well beyond them, on the river's brim, was a +mansion of considerable size and still greater peculiarity. It was really +two houses, large and small, connected by a spine of white posts and +joists and glimmering glass. In the more substantial building no lights +were to be seen from the gates, but in the annex a large French window +made a lighted square at right angles with the river and the road. We had +set foot in the gravel drive; with a long line of poplars down one side, +and on the other a wide lawn dotted with cedars and small shrubs, when +Raffles strode among these with a smothered exclamation, and a wild +figure started from the ground. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Raffles, with all the righteous +austerity of a law-abiding citizen. + +"Nutting, sare!" replied an alien tongue, a gleam of good teeth in the +shadow of his great soft hat. "I been see Mistare Le-vie in ze 'ouse, on +ze beezness, shentlemen." + +"Seen him, have you? Then if I were you I should make a decent +departure," said Raffles, "by the gate--" to which he pointed with +increased severity of tone and bearing. + +The weird figure uncovered a shaggy head of hair, made us a grotesque bow +with his right hand melodramatically buried in the folds of a voluminous +cape, and stalked off in the starlight with much dignity. But we heard +him running in the road before the gate had clicked behind him. + +"Isn't that the fellow we saw in Jermyn Street last Thursday?" I asked +Raffles in a whisper. + +"That's the chap," he whispered back. "I wonder if he spotted us, Bunny? +Levy's treated him scandalously, of course; it all came out in a torrent +the other morning. I only hope he hasn't been serving Dan Levy as Jack +Rutter served old Baird! I could swear that was a weapon of sorts he'd +got under his cloak." + +And as we stood together under the stars, listening to the last of the +runaway footfalls, I recalled the killing of another and a less notorious +usurer by a man we both knew, and had even helped to shield from the +consequences of his crime. Yet the memory of our terrible discovery on +that occasion had not the effect of making me shrink from such another +now; nor could I echo the hope of Raffles in my heart of hearts. If Dan +Levy also had come to a bad end--well, it was no more than he deserved, +if only for his treachery to Raffles, and, at any rate, it would put a +stop to our plunging from bad to worse in an adventure of which the +sequel might well be worst of all. I do not say that I was wicked enough +absolutely to desire the death of this sinner for our benefit; but I saw +the benefit at least as plainly as the awful possibility, and it was not +with unalloyed relief that I beheld a great figure stride through the +lighted windows at our nearer approach. + +Though his back was to the light before I saw his face, and the whole man +might have been hacked out of ebony, it was every inch the living Levy +who stood peering in our direction, one hand hollowed at an ear, the +other shading both eyes. + +"Is that you, boys?" he croaked in sepulchral salute. + +"It depends which boys you mean," replied Raffles, marching into the zone +of light. "There are so many of us about to-night!" + +Levy's arms dropped at his sides, and I heard him mutter "Raffles!" with +a malediction. Next moment he was inquiring whether we had come down +alone, yet peering past us into the velvet night for his answer. + +"I brought our friend Bunny," said Raffles, "but that's all." + +"Then what do you mean by saying there are so many of you about?" + +"I was thinking of the gentleman who was here just before us." + +"Here just before you? Why, I haven't seen a soul since my 'ousehold +went to bed." + +"But we met the fellow just this minute within your gates: a little +foreign devil with a head like a mop and the cloak of an operatic +conspirator." + +"That beggar!" cried Levy, flying into a high state of excitement on the +spot. "That blessed little beggar on my tracks down here! I've 'ad him +thrown out of the office in Jermyn Street; he's threatened me by letter +and telegram; so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down +'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen '_im_! I'm ready for biters like that, +gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!" + +And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy +drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have +gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him +that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was +not put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he +placed it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on +entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping +with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that +the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of +travel and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature. + +"Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!" exclaimed Raffles, +pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself +the drink he had declined. + +"Yes," said Levy, "the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying +he'd shoot _me_ at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as +a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He +didn't get much show 'ere, _I_ can tell you; that little foreign snipe +won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. +I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, +I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to +your profession, eh, Raffles?" + +"I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy." + +"Oh yes you do!" said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. "How've +you got on with that little bit o' burgling?" + +And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open +windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his +mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy +had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, +in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the +table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions +to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for +the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night. + +"How did you get on?" he repeated when he had given them up for +the present. + +"For a first attempt," replied Raffles, without a twinkle, "I don't think +I've done so badly." + +"Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner," said Levy, catching the +old note in his turn. + +"A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as +easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square." + +"As easy?" + +Raffles recollected his pose. + +"It was enormous fun," said he. "Of course one couldn't know that +there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. +I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. +Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only +took rather longer." + +"What about the caretaker?" asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer +to be concealed. + +"He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre." + +"At your expense?" + +"No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course." + +"So you got in without any difficulty?" + +"Over the roof." + +"And then?" + +"I hit upon the right room." + +"And then, Raffles?" + +"I opened the right safe." + +"Go on, man!" + +But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed +him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all. + +"Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it +a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me." Thus Raffles under +increasing pressure. + +"Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?" + +There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract +the _dénouement_ of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must +have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily +plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of +victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, +and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant +little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This +was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the +living epitome of low cunning and foul play. + +"The next thing that happened," said Raffles, in his most leisurely +manner, "was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue." + +"Had he gone in with you?" + +"No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of +common, low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!" + +"That was very kind of 'im," snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon +my person from his little black eyes. + +"Kind!" cried Raffles. "It saved the whole show." + +"It did, did it?" + +"I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and +never letting them know that I had got out at all." + +"Then you left them there?" + +"In their glory!" said Raffles, radiant in his own. + +Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were +excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in +which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven +home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the +table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, +and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself. + +"And you came away, I suppose," suggested the money-lender, ironically, +"with my original letter in your pocket?" + +"Oh, no, I didn't," replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head. + +"I thought not!" cried Levy in a gust of exultation. + +"I came away," said Raffles, "if you'll pardon the correction, with the +letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!" + +The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the +self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. "You'd better let +me see it," said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of +authority which it took a Raffles to resist. + +Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet +in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. +But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further +from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with +the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a +phylactery. + +"You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, with a slight but +sufficient emphasis on his verb. + +"But I'm not to touch--is that it?" + +"I'm afraid I must ask you to look first," said Raffles, smiling. "I +should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me +that part of your _quid pro quo_ which you have doubtless in readiness; +the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the +three little papers can change hands simultaneously." + +Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the +exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and +unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he +ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the +monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my +side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, +spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles +with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other. + +"Now I'll have a look," he hiccoughed, "an' a good look, unless you want +a lump of lead in your liver!" + +Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile. + +"You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober," said he; +but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was +wondering how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the +nobbler of crude spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, +full in the face of Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and +flung upon the fire, while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, +and before I had struggled to my feet. + +Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was +streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already +crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the +blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first +jumping upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought +him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet +with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the +rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden +head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead +I believe I should have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot. + +I know that I rose exultant from my deed.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Corpus Delicti + + +Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, +and I heard him saying, "The letter, Bunny, the letter!" in a way that +made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since +the moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been +from the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the +hearth, were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such +store, for which Raffles had risked so much. + +"He's burnt it," said I. "He was too quick for me." + +"And he's nearly burnt my eyes out," returned Raffles, rubbing them +again. "He was too quick for us both." + +"Not altogether," said I, grimly. "I believe I've cracked his skull and +finished him off!" + +Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a +blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the +pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable. + +"No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are +any lights in the other part of the house." + +When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long +glass passage. + +"Not a light!" said I. + +"Nor a sound," he whispered. "We're in better luck than we might have +been; even his revolver didn't go off." Raffles extracted it from under +the prostrate body. "It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, +or one of us." And he put the pistol in his own pocket. + +"But have I killed him, Raffles?" + +"Not yet, Bunny." + +"But do you think he's going to die?" + +I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth +chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body +sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the +parquet floor. + +"He's all right," said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened +again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back +on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the +polished floor. "You'd better leave him to me," he said, looking and +getting up with sudden decision. + +"But what am I to do?" + +"Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat." + +"Where is the boathouse?" + +"You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge. +There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this." + +And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have +handed over a bunch of keys. + +"And what then?" + +"You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand +tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that +windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you +will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, +but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim +for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and +then lie low on board till I come." + +Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken +helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of +Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I +neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me +something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, +what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, +were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about +them. Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, +and I frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as +it seemed to have mattered now. Away from the _corpus delicti_, my horror +was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had quite a +level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter at the +worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing him to +life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go about my +own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of the +normal sensibilities. + +Not much do I remember of that dreamy interval, until the dream became +the nightmare that was still in store. The river ran like a broad road +under the stars, with hardly a glimmer and not a floating thing upon it. +The boathouse stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it +by stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the +stars. The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I +could not see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between +the slow ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and +heard at length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; +that was the last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out +of the river; indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of +stream underneath, for the open end of the boathouse was much less dark +than mine; and when the faint band of reflected starlight had broadened +as I thought enough, I ceased winding and groped my way down the steps +into the boat. + +But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last +thing I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs +wonder what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want +with the boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could +see the strategic value of my position if we had been robbing the house, +but Raffles was not out for robbery this time; and I did not believe he +would suddenly change his mind. Could it be that he had never been quite +confident of the recovery of Levy, but had sent me to prepare this means +of escape from the scene of a tragedy? I cannot have been long in the +boat, for my thwart was still rocking under me, when this suspicion shot +me ashore in a cold sweat. In my haste I went into the river up to one +knee, and ran across the lawn with that boot squelching. Raffles came out +of the lighted room to meet me, and as he stood like Levy against the +electric glare, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing an +overcoat that did not belong to him, and that the pockets of this +overcoat were bulging grotesquely. But it was the last thing I remembered +in the horror that was to come. + +Levy was lying where I had left him, only straighter, and with a cushion +under his head, as though he were not merely dead, but laid out in his +clothes where he had fallen. + +"I was just coming for you, Bunny," whispered Raffles before I could find +my voice. "I want you to take hold of his boots." + +"His boots!" I gasped, taking Raffles by the sleeve instead. "What on +earth for?" + +"To carry him down to the boat!" + +"But is he--is he still--" + +"Alive?" Raffles was smiling as though I amused him mightily. "Rather, +Bunny! Too full of life to be left, I can tell you; but it'll be daylight +if we stop for explanations now. Are you going to lend a hand, or am I to +drag him through the dew myself?" + +I lent every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by +the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off +the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a +very short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on +the gravel, and I watched over it for some of the longest minutes of my +life, while Raffles shut and fastened all the windows, left the room as +Levy himself might have left it, and finally found his way out by one of +the doors. And all the while not a movement or a sound came from the +senseless clay at my feet; but once, when I bent over him, the smell of +whiskey was curiously vital and reassuring. + +We started off again, Raffles with every muscle on the strain, I with +every nerve; this time we staggered across the lawn without a rest, +but at the boathouse we put him down in the dew, until I took off my +coat and we got him lying on that while we debated about the +boathouse, its darkness, and its steps. The combination beat us on a +moment's consideration; and again I was the one to stay, and watch, +and listen to my own heart beating; and then to the water bubbling at +the prow and dripping from the blades as Raffles sculled round to the +edge of the lawn. + +I need dwell no more upon the difficulty and the horror of getting that +inanimate mass on board; both were bad enough, but candour compels me to +admit that the difficulty dwarfed all else until at last we overcame it. +How near we were to swamping our craft, and making sure of our victim by +drowning, I still shudder to remember; but I think it must have prevented +me from shuddering over more remote possibilities at the time. It was a +time, if ever there was one, to trust in Raffles and keep one's powder +dry; and to that extent I may say I played the game. But it was his game, +not mine, and its very object was unknown to me. Never, in fact, had I +followed my inveterate leader quite so implicitly, so blindly, or with +such reckless excitement. And yet, if the worst did happen and our mute +passenger was never to open his eyes again, it seemed to me that we were +well on the road to turn manslaughter into murder in the eyes of any +British jury: the road that might easily lead to destruction at the +hangman's hands. + +But a more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment +of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and +swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank +while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night +was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt +fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between +my shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and _his_ white +shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his +white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it +with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. +Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip +his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely +hear them, and to keep peering behind him down the Stygian stream. + +So long had we been getting under way that nothing surprised me more +than the extreme brevity of our actual voyage. Not many houses and +gardens had slipped behind us on the Middlesex shore, when we turned +into an inlet running under the very windows of a house so near the +river itself that even I might have thrown a stone from any one of them +into Surrey. The inlet was empty and ill-smelling; there was a crazy +landing-stage, and the many windows overlooking us had the black gloss +of empty darkness within. Seen by starlight with a troubled eye, the +house had one salient feature in the shape of a square tower, which +stood out from the facade fronting the river, and rose to nearly twice +the height of the main roof. But this curious excrescence only added to +the forbidding character of as gloomy a mansion as one could wish to +approach by stealth at dead of night. + +"What's this place?" I whispered as Raffles made fast to a post. + +"An unoccupied house, Bunny." + +"Do you mean to occupy it?" + +"I mean our passenger to do so--if we can land him alive or dead!" + +"Hush, Raffles!" + +"It's a case of heels first, this time--" + +"Shut up!" + +Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage--luckily on a level with our +rowlocks--and reaching down into the boat. + +"Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. +You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him." + +"I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run +colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!" + +And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, +with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there +was a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the +river beyond. + +"Another narrow squeak!" he muttered with grim levity when the sound had +died away. "I wonder who it is paddling his own canoe at dead of night?" + +"I'm wondering how much he saw." + +"Nothing," said Raffles, as though there could be no two opinions on the +point. "What did we see to swear to between a sweater and a +pocket-handkerchief? Only something white, and we were looking out, and +it's far darker in here than out there on the main stream. But it'll +soon be getting light, and we really may be seen unless we land our big +fish first." + +And without more ado he dragged the lifeless Levy ashore by the heels, +while I alternately grasped the landing-stage to steady the boat, and did +my best to protect the limp members and the leaden head from actual +injury. All my efforts could not avert a few hard knocks, however, and +these were sustained with such a horrifying insensibility of body and +limb, that my worst suspicions were renewed before I crawled ashore +myself, and remained kneeling over the prostrate form. + +"Are you certain, Raffles?" I began, and could not finish the +awful question. + +"That he's alive?" said Raffles. "Rather, Bunny, and he'll be kicking +below the belt again in a few more hours!" + +"A few more _hours_, A.J.?" + +"I give him four or five." + +"Then it's concussion of the brain!" + +"It's the brain all right," said Raffles. "But for 'concussion' I should +say 'coma,' if I were you." + +"What have I done!" I murmured, shaking my head over the poor old brute. + +"You?" said Raffles. "Less than you think, perhaps!" + +"But the man's never moved a muscle." + +"Oh, yes, he has, Bunny!" + +"When?" + +"I'll tell you at the next stage," said Raffles. "Up with his heels and +come this way." + +And we trailed across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body +sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept +the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at +the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps +there were within, stone steps allowing so little room for one foot and +so much for the other as to suggest a spiral staircase from top to bottom +of the tower. So it turned out to be; but there were landings +communicating with the house, and on the first of them we laid our man +and sat down to rest. + +"How I love a silent, uncomplaining, stone staircase!" sighed the now +quite invisible Raffles. "So of course we find one thrown away upon an +empty house. Are you there, Bunny?" + +"Rather! Are you quite sure nobody else is here?" I asked, for he was +scarcely troubling to lower his voice. + +"Only Levy, and he won't count till all hours." + +"I'm waiting to hear how you know." + +"Have a Sullivan, first." + +"Are we as safe as all that?" + +"If we're careful to make an ash-tray of our own pockets," said Raffles, +and I heard him tapping his cigarette in the dark. I refused to run any +risks. Next moment his match revealed him sitting at the bottom of one +flight, and me at the top of the flight below; either spiral was lost in +shadow; and all I saw besides was a cloud of smoke from the blood-stained +lips of Raffles, more clouds of cobwebs, and Levy's boots lying over on +their uppers, almost in my lap. Raffles called my attention to them +before he blew out his match. + +"He hasn't turned his toes up yet, you see! It's a hog's sleep, but not +by any means his last." + +"Did you mean just now that he woke up while I was in the boathouse?" + +"Almost as soon as your back was turned, Bunny--if you call it waking up. +You had knocked him out, you know, but only for a few minutes." + +"Do you mean to tell me that he was none the worse?" + +"Very little, Bunny." + +My feeble heart jumped about in my body. + +"Then what knocked him out again, A.J.?" + +"I did." + +"In the same way?" + +"No, Bunny, he asked for a drink and I gave him one." + +"A doctored drink!" I whispered with some horror; it was refreshing to +feel once more horrified at some act not one's own. + +"So to speak," said Raffles, with a gesture that I followed by the red +end of his cigarette; "I certainly touched it up a bit, but I always +meant to touch up his liquor if the beggar went back on his word. He did +a good deal worse--for the second time of asking--and you did better than +I ever knew you do before, Bunny! I simply carried on the good work. Our +friend is full of a judicious blend of his own whiskey and the stuff poor +Teddy had the other night. And when he does come to his senses I believe +we shall find him damned sensible." + +"And if he isn't, I suppose you'll keep him here until he is?" + +"I shall hold him up to ransom," said Raffles, "at the top of this ruddy +tower, until he pays through both nostrils for the privilege of climbing +down alive." + +"You mean until he stands by his side of your bargain?" said I, only +hoping that was his meaning, but not without other apprehensions which +Raffles speedily confirmed. + +"And the rest!" he replied, significantly. "You don't suppose the skunk's +going to get off as lightly as if he'd played the game, do you? I've got +one of my own to play now, Bunny, and I mean to play it for all I'm +worth. I thought it would come to this!" + +In fact, he had foreseen treachery from the first, and the desperate +device of kidnapping the traitor proved to have been as deliberate a move +as Raffles had ever planned to meet a probable contingency. He had +brought down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of +Somnol. My own deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, +and Raffles vowed it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had +ever been over this empty house before, an irritable jerk of his +cigarette end foretold the answer. + +"My good Bunny, is this a time for rotten questions? Of course I've been +over the whole place; didn't I tell you I'd been spending the week-end in +these parts? I got an order to view the place, and have bribed the +gardener not to let anybody else see over it till I've made up my mind. +The gardener's cottage is on the other side of the main road, which runs +flush with the front of the house; there's a splendid garden on that +side, but it takes him all his time to keep it up, so he's given up +bothering about this bit here. He only sets foot in the house to show +people over; his wife comes in sometimes to open the downstairs windows; +the ones upstairs are never shut. So you perceive we shall be fairly free +from interruption at the top of this tower, especially when I tell you +that it finishes in a room as sound-proof as old Carlyle's crow's-nest in +Cheyne Row." + +It flashed across me that another great man of letters had made his local +habitation if not his name in this part of the Thames Valley; and when I +asked if this was that celebrity's house, Raffles seemed surprised that +I had not recognised it as such in the dark. He said it would never let +again, as the place was far too good for its position, which was now much +too near London. He also told me that the idea of holding Dan Levy up to +ransom had occurred to him when he found himself being followed about +town by Levy's "mamelukes," and saw what a traitor he had to cope with. + +"And I hope you like the idea, Bunny," he added, "because I was never +caught kidnapping before, and in all London there wasn't a bigger man +to kidnap." + +"I love it," said I (and it was true enough of the abstract idea), "but +don't you think he's just a bit too big? Won't the country ring with his +disappearance?" + +"My dear Bunny, nobody will dream he's disappeared!" said Raffles, +confidently. "I know the habits of the beast; didn't I tell you he ran +another show somewhere? Nobody seems to know where, but when he isn't +here, that's where he's supposed to be, and when he's there he cuts town +for days on end. I suppose you never noticed I've been wearing an +overcoat all this time, Bunny?" + +"Oh, yes, I did," said I. "Of course it's one of his?" + +"The very one he'd have worn to-night, and his soft hat from the same +peg is in one of the pockets; their absence won't look as if he'd come +out feet first, will it, Bunny? I thought his stick might be in the way, +so instead of bringing it too, I stowed it away behind his books. But +these things will serve a second turn when we see our way to letting him +go again like a gentleman." + +The red end of the Sullivan went out sizzling between a moistened thumb +and finger, and no doubt Raffles put it carefully in his pocket as he +rose to resume the ascent. It was still perfectly dark on the tower +stairs; but by the time we reached the sanctum at the top we could see +each other's outlines against certain ovals of wild grey sky and dying +stars. For there was a window more like a porthole in three of the four +walls; in the fourth wall was a cavity like a ship's bunk, into which we +lifted our still unconscious prisoner as gently as we might. Nor was that +the last that was done for him, now that some slight amends were +possible. From an invisible locker Raffles produced bundles of thin, +coarse stuff, one of which he placed as a pillow under the sleeper's +head, while the other was shaken out into a covering for his body. + +"And you asked me if I'd ever been over the place!" said Raffles, +putting a third bundle in my hands. "Why, I slept up here last night, +just to see if it was all as quiet as it looked; these were my +bed-clothes, and I want you to follow my example." + +"I go to sleep?" I cried. "I couldn't and wouldn't for a thousand +pounds, Raffles!" + +"Oh, yes, you could!" said Raffles, and as he spoke there was a horrible +explosion in the tower. Upon my word, I thought one of us was shot, until +there came the smaller sounds of froth pattering on the floor and liquor +bubbling from a bottle. + +"Champagne!" I exclaimed, when he had handed me the metal cap of a flask, +and I had taken a sip. "Did you hide that up here as well?" + +"I hid nothing up here except myself," returned Raffles, laughing. "This +is one of a couple of pints from the cellarette in Levy's billiard den; +take your will of it, Bunny, and perhaps the old man may have the other +when he's a good boy. I fancy we shall find it a stronger card than it +looks. Meanwhile let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep! And you'd be +far more use to me later, Bunny, if only you'd try to do the same." + +I was beginning to feel that I might try, for Raffles was filling up the +metal cup every minute, and also plying me with sandwiches from Levy's +table, brought hence (with the champagne) in Levy's overcoat pocket. It +was still pleasing to reflect that they had been originally intended for +the rival bravos of Gray's Inn. But another idea that did occur to me, I +dismissed at the time, and so justly that I would disabuse any other +suspicious mind of it without delay. Dear old Raffles was scarcely more +skilful and audacious as amateur cracksman than as amateur anaesthetist, +nor was he ever averse from the practice of his uncanny genius at either +game. But, sleepy as I soon found myself at the close of our very long +night's work, I had no subsequent reason to suppose that Raffles had +given _me_ drop or morsel of anything but sandwiches and champagne. + +So I rolled myself up on the locker, just as things were beginning to +take visible shape even without the tower windows behind them, and I was +almost dropping off to sleep when a sudden anxiety smote my mind. + +"What about the boat?" I asked. + +There was no answer. + +"Raffles!" I cried. "What are you going to do about the beggar's boat?" + +"You go to sleep," came the sharp reply, "and leave the boat to me." + +And I fancied from his voice that Raffles also had lain him down, but on +the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Trial by Raffles + + +When I awoke it was dazzling daylight in the tower, and the little scene +was quite a surprise to me. It had felt far larger in the dark. I suppose +the floor-space was about twelve feet square, but it was contracted on +one side by the well and banisters of a wooden staircase from the room +below, on another by the ship's bunk, and opposite that by the locker on +which I lay. Moreover, the four walls, or rather the four triangles of +roof, sloped so sharply to the apex of the tower as to leave an inner +margin in which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole +windows were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They +had evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly +obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of +comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; +but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the +atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's +day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other +merely scenic feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the +appearance of my two companions. + +Raffles, not quite at the top of the stairs, but near enough to loll over +the banisters, and Levy, cumbering the ship's bunk, were indeed startling +figures to an eye still dim with sleep. Raffles had an ugly cut from the +left nostril to the corner of the mouth; he had washed the blood from his +face, but the dark and angry streak remained to heighten his unusual +pallor. Levy looked crumpled and debauched, flabbily and feebly senile, +yet with his vital forces making a last flicker in his fiery eyes. He was +grotesquely swathed in scarlet bunting, from which his doubled fists +protruded in handcuffs; a bit of thin rope attached the handcuffs to a +peg on which his coat and hat were also hanging, and a longer bit was +taken round the banisters from the other end of the bunting, which I now +perceived to be a tattered and torn Red Ensign. This led to the discovery +that I myself had been sleeping in the Union Jack, and it brought my eyes +back to the ghastly face of Raffles, who was already smiling at mine. + +"Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and +present your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be +frightened of him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've +had to clap him in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given +him rope enough; he's got lashings of rope--eh, Bunny?" + +"That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul +play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only +you'd give me that drink." + +And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the +folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne +standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed +it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and +merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering +Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched +for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted +with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without +going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale +remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house. + +"I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The +poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole +in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his +trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other +pint to his own infernal cheek." + +"Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him +up to ransom?" + +"Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of +reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when +he's heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the +tap when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had +after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but +it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case." + +And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting +on the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court. + +"Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had +better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as +a preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and +granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused. +Drink has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that +necessitates your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week +of that chastening experience you come before me without knowing where +you are or how you got here." + +"That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That +was something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was, +and you'll pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of +my whisky." + +"Well," resumed Raffles, "your champagne is on the same high level, and +here's a pint of the best which you can open for yourself if only you +show your sense before I've done with you. But you won't advance that +little millennium by talking about foul play as though it were all on one +side and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the +business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice +in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, +attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules +of civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this +court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently +you will get an opportunity of addressing the court in mitigation of your +sentence. Or, if you like," continued Raffles, with a wink at me, "you +may be represented by counsel. My learned friend here, I'm sure, will be +proud to undertake your defence as a 'docker'; or--perhaps I should say a +'bunker,' Mr. Bunny?" + +And Raffles laughed as coyly as a real judge at a real judicial joke, +whereupon I joined in so uproariously as to find myself degraded from the +position of leading counsel to that of the general public in a single +flash from the judge's eye. + +"If I hear any more laughter," said Raffles, "I shall clear the court. +It's perfectly monstrous that people should come here to a court of +justice and behave as though they were at a theatre." + +Levy had been reclining with his yellow face twisted and his red eyes +shut; but now these burst open as with flames, and the dry lips spat a +hearty curse at the judge upon the locker. + +"Take care!" said Raffles. "Contempt of court won't do you any good, +you know!" + +"And what good will all this foolery do you? Say what you've got to say +against me, and be damned to you!" + +"I fear you're confusing our functions sadly," said Raffles, with a +compassionate shake of the head. "But so far as your first exhortation +goes, I shall endeavour to take you at your word. You are a money-lender +trading, among other places, in Jermyn Street, St. James's, under the +style and title of Daniel Levy." + +"It 'appens to be my name." + +"That I can well believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. +Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or +Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull +and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that +distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by +yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you +are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at +higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man +alive at your job; you are certainly the biggest villain." + +"But I'm up against a bigger now," said Levy, shifting his position and +closing his crimson eyes. + +"Possibly," said Raffles, as he produced a long envelope and unfolded a +sheet of foolscap; "but permit me to remind you of a few of your own +proven villainies before you take any more shots at mine. Last year you +had three of your great bargains set aside by the law as hard and +unconscionable; but every year you have these cases, and at best the +terms are modified in favour of your wretched client. But it's only the +exception who will face the music of the law-courts and the Press, and +you figure on the general run. You prefer people like the Lincolnshire +vicar you hounded into an asylum the year before last. You cherish the +memory of the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 +and 1894; that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! +You set great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you +to stay with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite +in exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for +your net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that +poor little builder at Bromley, who cut the throats--" + +"Stop it!" cried Levy, in a lather of impotent rage. + +"By all means," said Raffles, restoring the paper to its envelope. "It's +an ugly little load for one man's soul, I admit; but you must see it was +about time somebody beat you at your own beastly game." + +"It's a pack of blithering lies," retorted Levy, "and you haven't beaten +me yet. Stick to facts within your own knowledge, and then tell me if +your precious Garlands haven't brought their troubles on themselves?" + +"Certainly they have," said Raffles. "But it isn't your treatment of the +Garlands that has brought you to this pretty pass." + +"What is it, then?" + +"Your treatment of me, Mr. Levy." + +"A cursed crook like you!" + +"A party to a pretty definite bargain, however, and a discredited person +only so far as that bargain is concerned." + +"And the rest!" said the money-lender, jeering feebly. "I know more about +you than you guess." + +"I should have put it the other way round," replied Raffles, smiling. +"But we are both forgetting ourselves, prisoner in the bunk. Kindly note +that your trial is resumed, and further contempt will not be allowed to +go unpurged. You referred a moment ago to my unfortunate friends; you say +they were the engineers of their own misfortunes. That might be said of +all who ever put themselves in your clutches. You squeeze them as hard as +the law will let you, and in this case I don't see how the law is to +interfere. So I interfere myself--in the first instance as disastrously +as you please." + +"You did so!" exclaimed Levy, with a flicker of his inflamed eyes. "You +brought things to a head; that's all _you_ did." + +"On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," +said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand +for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten +thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another +fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead +of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That +was your side of the bargain." + +"Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" + +"My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you +by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a +matter of fact it was only to be got by crook--" + +"Aha!" + +"I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last +night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man +ever made upon another!" + +Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, +forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had +infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to +the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. +And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he +quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so +truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice +came next. + +"I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, +I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and +the drink together made me mad." + +"So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" + +"Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." + +"You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" + +"Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must +have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." + +"In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" + +"That's it--with the letter." + +"You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you +handle it?" + +"Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" + +Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the +tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of +fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, +but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled +hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though +it were a bad job. + +"Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment +that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" + +"_I_ have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should +I? It must have been the police." + +"It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as +if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both classes to be +deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no +difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave +me no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at +Gray's Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe +I have already mentioned to you." + +"You said you left them there in their glory." + +"It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs." + +Levy struggled into a less recumbent posture. + +"And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?" + +"I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know." + +"And how the devil do you know?" + +Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: +"You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!" + +The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked +himself at that and tried one more poser. + +"And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it +wasn't to ensure your safety?" + +"It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down +expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting +the treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea--prisoner in +the bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. +My compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite +colourable image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and +it had been a case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough +which I should let go." + +But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red +Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms. + +"They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his +teeth. "The traitors--the blasted traitors!" + +"It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, +"especially when one's elders and betters themselves succumb to it." + +"But they're such liars!" cried Levy, shifting his ground again. "Don't +you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your +own good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might +'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot +their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' +they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to +blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed +to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game +all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, +Raffles, and--and let me out o' this, like a good feller!" + +"Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the +judicial locker. + +"Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal +of all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those +two jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and +you were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling +you 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's +surely about time to stop treating me like a mad dog." + +"Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?" + +"Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of +doing anything else." + +"Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what +you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?" + +"In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket." + +"In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly +commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me. + +"What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if +only you'll take these damned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for +'em now, you know!" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, +prisoner. But my marshal will produce the note from your person if +it's there." + +It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact +while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples +which he had brought with him for the purpose. + +"It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look +that I intercepted at close quarters. + +"So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine +signature to this little document which is also a part of your bond." + +The little document turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on +parchment, embossed with a ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an +INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up +for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in +existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee +simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and +its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of £15,000 to remain +charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited +Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from--" that +summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and +innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom +Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy +of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. +I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they +had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed +was to be signed! + +Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected +of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was +obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his +ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less +with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform +his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince +us of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he +had succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of +the creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and +I had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma +in which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look +pleasant, or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he +looked as pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the +shadow of a fight for their immediate removal. + +"And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think +I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne." + +"Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only +at the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house +last night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do +of your own free will then." + +Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, +with fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I +told you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very +sorry for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again +from the bottom of my 'eart." + +"I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our +arrival was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last +of those acts of treachery for which you are still on your +trial--prisoner in the bunk!" + +"But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a +palsy of impotent rage and disappointment. + +"You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even +plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've +made, and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a +point by telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your +guilt. Have you nothing better to say why the sentence of the court +should not be passed upon you?" + +A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repetition +of the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower +lip of Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the +inflamed eyelids. + +"I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought--I'd +swindle--you." + +"Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let +me tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by +twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen +hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason." + +Though not unprepared for some such ultimatum, I must own I heard it with +dismay. On all sorts of grounds, some of them as unworthy as itself, this +last demand failed to meet with my approval; and I determined to +expostulate with Raffles before it was too late. Meanwhile I hid my +feelings as best I could, and admired the spirit with which Dan Levy +expressed his. + +"I'll see you damned first!" he cried. "It's blackmail!" + +"Guineas," said Raffles, "for contempt of court." + +And more to my surprise than ever, not a little indeed to my secret +disappointment, our captive speedily collapsed again, whimpering, +moaning, gnashing his teeth, and clutching at the Red Ensign, with closed +eyes and distorted face, so much as though he were about to have a fit +that I caught up the half-bottle of champagne, and began removing the +wire at a nod from Raffles. + +"Don't cut the string just yet," he added, however, with an eye on +Levy--who instantly opened his. + +"I'll pay up!" he whispered, feebly yet eagerly. "It serves me right. I +promise I'll pay up!" + +"Good!" said Raffles. "Here's your own cheque-book from your own room, +and here's my fountain pen." + +"You won't take my word?" + +"It's quite enough to have to take your cheque; it should have been +hard cash." + +"So it shall be, Raffles, if you come up with me to my office!" + +"I dare say." + +"To my bank, then!" + +"I prefer to go alone. You will kindly make it an open cheque payable +to bearer." + +The fountain pen was poised over the chequebook, but only because I had +placed it in Levy's fingers, and was holding the cheque-book under them. + +"And what if I refuse?" he demanded, with a last flash of his +native spirit. + +"We shall say good-bye, and give you until to-night." + +"All day to call for help in!" muttered Levy, all but to himself. + +"Do you happen to know where you are?" Raffles asked him. + +"No, but I can find out." + +"If you knew already you would also know that you might call till you +were black in the face; but to keep you in blissful ignorance you will be +bound a good deal more securely than you are at present. And to spare +your poor voice you will also be very thoroughly gagged." + +Levy took remarkably little notice of either threat or gibe. + +"And if I give in and sign?" said he, after a pause. + +"You will remain exactly as you are, with one of us to keep you company, +while the other goes up to town to cash your cheque. You can't expect me +to give you a chance of stopping it, you know." + +This, again, struck me as a hard condition, if only prudent when one came +to think of it from our point of view; still, it took even me by +surprise, and I expected Levy to fling away the pen in disgust. He +balanced it, however, as though also weighing the two alternatives very +carefully in his mind, and during his deliberations his bloodshot eyes +wandered from Raffles to me and back again to Raffles. In a word, the +latest prospect appeared to disturb Mr. Levy less than, for obvious +reasons, it did me. Certainly for him it was the lesser of the two evils, +and as such he seemed to accept it when he finally wrote out the cheque +for fifteen hundred guineas (Raffles insisting on these), and signed it +firmly before sinking back as though exhausted by the effort. + +Raffles was as good as his word about the champagne now: dram by dram +he poured the whole pint into the cup belonging to his flask, and dram +by dram our prisoner tossed it off, but with closed eyes, like a +delirious invalid, and towards the end, with a head so heavy that +Raffles had to raise it from the rolled flag, though foul talons still +came twitching out for more. It was an unlovely process, I will +confess; but what was a pint, as Raffles said? At any rate I could bear +him out that these potations had not been hocussed, and Raffles +whispered the same for the flask which he handed me with Levy's +revolver at the head of the wooden stairs. + +"I'm coming down," said I, "for a word with you in the room below." + +Raffles looked at me with open eyes, then more narrowly at the red lids +of Levy, and finally at his own watch. + +"Very well, Bunny, but I must cut and run for my train in about a minute. +There's a 9.24 which would get me to the bank before eleven, and back +here by one or two." + +"Why go to the bank at all?" I asked him point-blank in the lower room. + +"To cash his cheque before he has a chance of stopping it. Would you like +to go instead of me, Bunny?" + +"No, thank you!" + +"Well, don't get hot about it; you've got the better billet of the two." + +"The softer one, perhaps." + +"Infinitely, Bunny, with the old bird full of his own champagne, and his +own revolver in your pocket or your hand! The worst he can do is to +start yelling out, and I really do believe that not a soul would hear +him if he did. The gardeners are always at work on the other side of the +main road. A passing boatload is the only danger, and I doubt if even +they would hear." + +"My billet's all right," said I, valiantly. "It's yours that +worries me." + +"Mine!" cried Raffles, with an almost merry laugh. "My dear, good Bunny, +you may make your mind easy about my little bit! Of course, it'll take +some doing at the bank. I don't say it's a straight part there. But trust +me to play it on my head." + +"Raffles," I said, in a low voice that may have trembled, "it's not a +part for you to play at all! I don't mean the little bit at the bank. I +mean this whole blackmailing part of the business. It's not like you, +Raffles. It spoils the whole thing!" + +I had got it off my chest without a hitch. But so far Raffles had not +discouraged me. There was a look on his face which even made me think +that he agreed with me in his heart. Both hardened as he thought it over. + +"It's Levy who's spoilt the whole thing," he rejoined obdurately in +the end. "He's been playing me false all the time, and he's got to +pay for it." + +"But you never meant to make anything out of him, A.J.!" + +"Well, I do now, and I've told you why. Why shouldn't I?" + +"Because it's not your game!" I cried, with all the eager persuasion in +my power. "Because it's the sort of thing Dan Levy would do +himself--it's _his_ game, all right--it simply drags you down to his +level--" + +But there he stopped me with a look, and not the kind of look I often had +from Raffles, It was no new feat of mine to make him angry, scornful, +bitterly cynical or sarcastic. This, however, was a look of pain and even +shame, as though he had suddenly seen himself in a new and peculiarly +unlovely light. + +"Down to it!" he exclaimed, with an irony that was not for me. "As though +there could be a much lower level than mine! Do you know, Bunny, I +sometimes think my moral sense is ahead of yours?" + +I could have laughed outright; but the humour that was the salt of him +seemed suddenly to have gone out of Raffles. + +"I know what I am," said he, "but I'm afraid you're getting a hopeless +villain-worshipper!" + +"It's not the villain I care about," I answered, meaning every word. +"It's the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well." + +"I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better," replied Raffles, +laughing when I least expected it. "But you're by way of forgetting his +existence altogether. I shouldn't wonder if some day you wrote me up +into a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime! Let this +remind you what I always was and shall be to the end." + +And he took my hand, as I fondly hoped in surrender to my appeal to those +better feelings which I knew I had for once succeeded in quickening +within him. + +But it was only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the +spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in +the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, +handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at the top. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Watch and Ward + + +I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a +last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower +chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. +The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the +bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are +among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One +of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the +aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I +got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was +only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded +gardens and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe +in mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in +such surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a +coal-cellar. And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an +indefinite prospect of my prisoner's person at close quarters. + +Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me +some confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor +his eyes at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn +up to his chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I +remember taking a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved +remarkably in repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was +higher and broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough +now, but the closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of +all. On the whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had +been all the morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had +fallen asleep in his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject +enough; if not, I had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I +was in no hurry to show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and +took my seat by inches. + +Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or +other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as +a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was +not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The +wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint +and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the +house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh +period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every +time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have +come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into +my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with +less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that +breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my +prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound +down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another +sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it +from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to +penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as +of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only +audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could +hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my +breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or +altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I +was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was. + +His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, +and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as +though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less +violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as +they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. + +"I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain +before he spoke. + +"You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained. +"It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear." + +I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or +anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. +And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was. + +"Do you?" I demanded. + +"Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of +course." + +"What clock?" + +"The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road." + +"How do _you_ know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity. + +"My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as +well as I know the inside of this tower." + +"Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy +grinned in a way that ill became a captive. + +"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse +myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the +neighhour'ood." + +"Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth +merely broadened his grin. + +"Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." + +"It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my +austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with +quiet but most disquieting amusement. + +"I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my +way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to +keep an eye on me." + +"Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found +comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. + +"I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you +strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." + +I said nothing to that. + +"On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though +he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other _hand_" stooping to +pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes +so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he +hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use +hollering before you're out o' the wood." + +I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. + +"Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if +to himself. + +"Thought of what?" + +"Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't +tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been +thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen +going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to +be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" + +"How do you know he didn't?" + +"Because this 'appens to be the day!" + +And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was +beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his +present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles +would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the +satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's +statement. + +"That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too +much of a coincidence to be anything else." + +"The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One +of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the +other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you +know your own business best." + +"At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most +obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the +man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you." + +"I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run +away from--though he looks as hard as nails--what there is of him," said +Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry +some conviction. "He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; +some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same +trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like." + +"And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that +can possibly have to do with it up here." + +"No," said Levy; "he comes no higher than the floor below." I seemed to +remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. "But that's +near enough." + +"You mean that we shall hear him?" + +"And he us!" added Levy, with unmistakable determination. + +"Look here, Mr. Levy," said I, showing him his own revolver, "if we do +hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I +shall blow out your beastly brains!" + +The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such +deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of +it, and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more +mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if +anything could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the +guttural laugh with which he greeted it. + +"Excuse me," said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red +bunting, "but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to +preserve silence--why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play the +cold-blooded villain--_you_!" + +"I shall play him to some purpose," I hissed, "if you drive me to it. I +laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same +thing again this morning. So now you know." + +"That wasn't in cold blood," said Levy, rolling his head from side to +side; "that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't +count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last +night or this morning--though I can see that you're no brigand or +blackmailer at bottom--and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave +Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar +job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you +ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's +the magsman, you're only the swell. _I_ can see that. But the judge +won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a +thousand shames!" + +He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, +persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his +words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with +meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as +deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to +me with the significance of his altered tone. + +"I can't help it," I muttered. "I must go through with the whole +thing now." + +"Why must you?" demanded Levy. "You've been led into a job that's none of +your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the +job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found +out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?" + +"There's nothing else for it," I answered, with a sulky resignation, +though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming. + +And then it came. + +"Why not get out of the whole thing," suggested Levy, boldly, "before +it's too late?" + +"How can I?" said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition. + +"By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!" + +I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were +actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness +fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging +and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it +was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to +hesitate on quite different grounds. + +"It's all very well," I said, "but are you going to make it worth +my while?" + +"Certainly!" cried he. "Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where +you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll +write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred +before I leave this tower." + +"You really will?" I temporised. + +"I swear it!" he asseverated; and I still believe he might have kept his +word about that. But now I knew where he _had_ been lying to me, and now +was the time to let him know I knew it. + +"Two hundred pounds," said I, "for the liberty you are bound to get for +nothing, as you yourself have pointed out, when the man turns up to wind +the clock? A couple of hundred to save less than a couple of hours?" + +Levy changed colour as he saw his mistake, and his eyes flashed with +sudden fury; otherwise his self-command was only less admirable than his +presence of mind. + +"It wasn't to save time," said he; "it was to save my face in the +neighbourhood. The well-known money-lender found bound and handcuffed in +an empty house! It means the first laugh at my expense, whoever has the +last laugh. But you're quite right; it wasn't worth two hundred golden +sovereigns. Let them laugh! At any rate you and your flash friend'll be +laughing on the wrong side of your mouths before the day's out. So that's +all there is to it, and you'd better start screwing up your courage if +you want to do me in! I did mean to give you another chance in life--but +by God I wouldn't now if you were to go down on your knees for one!" + +Considering that he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he +defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his +picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. +I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his +clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big +bribe offered for his immediate freedom; but it was with something more +than mere adroitness that the money-lender had reconciled the two things. +In his place I should have been no less anxious to keep my humiliating +experience a secret from the world; with his means I could conceive +myself prepared to pay as dearly for such secrecy. On the other hand, if +his idea was to stop the huge cheque already given to Raffles, then there +was indeed no time to be lost, and the only wonder was that Levy should +have waited so long before making overtures to me. + +Raffles had now been gone a very long time, as it seemed to me, but my +watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they +kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying +still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out +the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of +these I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what +had seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only +knew that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out +at the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of +his trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, +and made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was +fast becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I +sat in my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air +as entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of +scarlet bunting, with a sudden oath which must have been the only sound +within the tower for an hour at least; all the rest of the time he lay +with fettered fists clenched upon his breast, with fierce eyes fixed upon +the top of the bunk, and something about the whole man that I was forced +to watch, something indomitable and intensely alert, a curious suggestion +of smouldering fires on the point of leaping into flame. + +I feared this man in my heart of hearts. I may as well admit it frankly. +It was not that he was twice my size, for I had the like advantage in +point of years; it was not that I had any reason to distrust the +strength of his bonds or the efficacy of the weapon in my possession. It +was a question of personality, not of material advantage or +disadvantage, or of physical fear at all. It was simply the spirit of +the man that dominated mine. I felt that my mere flesh and blood would +at any moment give a good account of his, as well they might with the +odds that were on my side. Yet that did not lessen the sense of subtle +and essential inferiority, which grew upon my nerves with almost every +minute of that endless morning, and made me long for the relief of +physical contest even on equal terms. I could have set the old ruffian +free, and thrown his revolver out of the window, and then said to him, +"Come on! Your weight against my age, and may the devil take the worse +man!" Instead, I must sit glaring at him to mask my qualms. And after +much thinking about the kind of conflict that could never be, in the end +came one of a less heroic but not less desperate type, before there was +time to think at all. + +Levy had raised his head, ever so little, but yet enough for my +vigilance. I saw him listening. I listened too. And down below in the +core of the tower I heard, or thought I heard, a step like a feather, and +then after some moments another. But I had spent those moments in gazing +instinctively down the stair; it was the least rattle of the handcuffs +that brought my eyes like lightning back to the bunk; and there was Levy +with hollow palms about his mouth, and his mouth wide open for the roar +that my own palms stifled in his throat. + +Indeed, I had leapt upon him once more like a fiend, and for an instant I +enjoyed a shameful advantage; it can hardly have lasted longer. The brute +first bit me through the hand, so that I carry his mark to this day; +then, with his own hands, he took me by the throat, and I thought that my +last moments were come. He squeezed so hard that I thought my windpipe +must burst, thought my eyes must leave their sockets. It was the grip of +a gorilla, and it was accompanied by a spate of curses and the grin of a +devil incarnate. All my dreams of equal combat had not prepared me for +superhuman power on his part, such utter impotence on mine. I tried to +wrench myself from his murderous clasp, and was nearly felled by the top +of the bunk. I hurled myself out sideways, and out he came after me, +tearing down the peg to which his handcuffs were tethered; that only gave +him the better grip upon my throat, and he never relaxed it for an +instant, scrambling to his feet when I staggered to mine, for by them +alone was he fast now to the banisters. + +Meanwhile I was feeling in an empty pocket for his revolver, which had +fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my +starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a +dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the +banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn +afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden +stairs. But what I still remember hearing most distinctly (and feeling +hot upon my face) is the stertorous breathing that was unbroken by a +single syllable after the first few seconds. + +It was a brutal encounter, not short and sharp like the one over-night, +but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one +side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts +in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant +had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against +the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our +united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be +better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. +Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself +over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed +upon the butt of the revolver that I thought had been kicked into the +room below! + +I was too far gone to realise that a miracle had happened--to be so much +as puzzled by it then. But I was not too far gone to use that revolver, +and to use it as I would have done on cool reflection. I thrust it under +my opponent's armpit, and I fired through into space. The report was +deafening. It did its work. Levy let go of me, and staggered back as +though I had really shot him. And that instant I was brandishing his +weapon in his face. + +"You tried to shoot me! You tried to shoot me!" he gasped twice over +through a livid mask. + +"No, I didn't!" I panted. "I tried to frighten you, and I jolly well +succeeded! But I'll shoot you like a dog if you don't get back to your +kennel and lie down." + +He sat and gasped upon the side of the bunk. There was no more fight in +him. His very lips were blue. I put the pistol back in my pocket, and +retracted my threat in a sudden panic. + +"There! It's your own fault if you so much as see it again," I promised +him, in a breathless disorder only second to his own. + +"But you jolly nearly strangled me. And now we're a pretty pair!" + +His hands grasped the edge of the bunk, and he leant his weight on them, +breathing very hard. It might have been an attack of asthma, or it might +have been a more serious seizure, but it was a case for stimulants if +ever I saw one, and in the nick of time I remembered the flask that +Raffles had left with me. It was the work of a very few seconds to pour +out a goodly ration, and of but another for Daniel Levy to toss off the +raw spirit like water. He was begging for more before I had helped +myself. And more I gave him in the end; for it was no small relief to me +to watch the leaden hue disappearing from the flabby face, and the +laboured breathing gradually subside, even if it meant a renewal of our +desperate hostilities. + +But all that was at an end; the man was shaken to the core by his +perfectly legitimate attempt at my destruction. He looked dreadfully old +and hideous as he got bodily back into the bunk of his own accord. There, +when I had yielded to his further importunities, and the flask was empty, +he fell at length into a sleep as genuine as the last was not; and I was +still watching over the poor devil, keeping the flies off him, and +sometimes fanning him with a flag, less perhaps from humane motives than +to keep him quiet as long as possible, when Raffles returned to light up +the tableau like a sinister sunbeam. + +Raffles had had his own adventures in town, and I soon had reason to feel +thankful that I had not gone up instead of him. It seemed he had foreseen +from the first the possibility of trouble at the bank over a large and +absolutely open cheque. So he had gone first to the Chelsea studio in +which he played the painter who never painted but kept a whole wardrobe +of disguises for the models he never hired. Thence he had issued on this +occasion in the living image of a well-known military man about town who +was also well known to be a client of Dan Levy's. Raffles said the +cashier stared at him, but the cheque was cashed without a word. The +unfortunate part of it was that in returning to his cab he had +encountered an acquaintance both of his own and of the spendthrift +soldier, and had been greeted evidently in the latter capacity. + +"It was a jolly difficult little moment, Bunny. I had to say there was +some mistake, and I had to remember to say it in a manner equally unlike +my own and the other beggar's! But all's well that ends well; and if +you'll do exactly what I tell you I think we may flatter ourselves that a +happy issue is at last in sight." + +"What am I to do now?" I asked with some misgiving. + +"Clear out of this, Bunny, and wait for me in town. You've done jolly +well, old fellow, and so have I in my own department of the game. +Everything's in order, down to those fifteen hundred guineas which are +now concealed about my person in as hard cash as I can carry. I've seen +old Garland and given him back his promissory note myself, with Levy's +undertaking about the mortgage. It was a pretty trying interview, as you +can understand; but I couldn't help wondering what the poor old boy would +say if he dreamt what sort of pressure I've been applying on his behalf! +Well, it's all over now except our several exits from the surreptitious +stage. I can't make mine without our sleeping partner, but you would +really simplify matters, Bunny, by not waiting for us." + +There was a good deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a +little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath +in town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably +dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental +relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my +plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front +door in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he +had told the caretaking gardener across the road; but he had borrowed the +gardener's keys as a probable purchaser of the property, who had to meet +his builder and a business friend at the house during the course of the +afternoon. I was to be the builder, and in that capacity to give the +gardener an ingenious message calculated to leave Raffles and Levy in +uninterrupted possession until my return. And of course I was never to +return at all. + +The whole thing seemed to me a super-subtle means to a far simpler end +than the one we had achieved by stealth in the dead of the previous +night. But it was Raffles all over and I ultimately acquiesced, on the +understanding that we were to meet again in the Albany at seven o'clock, +preparatory to dining somewhere in final celebration of the whole affair. + +But much was to happen before seven o'clock, and it began happening. I +shook the dust of that derelict tower from my feet; for one of them trod +on something at the darkest point of the descent; and the thing went +tinkling down ahead on its own account, until it lay shimmering in the +light on a lower landing, where I picked it up. + +Now I had not said much to Raffles about my hitherto inexplicable +experience with the revolver, when I thought it had gone through the +banisters, but found it afterwards in my hand. Raffles said it would not +have gone through, that I must have been all but over the banisters +myself when I grasped the butt as it protruded through them on the level +of the floor. This he said (like many another thing) as though it made an +end of the matter. But it was not the end of the matter in my own mind; +and now I could have told him what the explanation was, or at least to +what conclusion I had jumped. I had half a mind to climb all the way up +again on purpose to put him in the wrong upon the point. Then I +remembered how anxious he had seemed to get rid of me, and for other +reasons also I decided to let him wait a bit for his surprise. + +Meanwhile my own plans were altered, and when I had delivered my +egregious message to the gardener across the road, I sought the nearest +shops on my way to the nearest station; and at one of the shops I got me +a clean collar, at another a tooth-brush; and all I did at the station +was to utilise my purchases in the course of such scanty toilet as the +lavatory accommodation would permit. + +A few minutes later I was inquiring my way to a house which it took me +another twenty or twenty-five to find. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A Secret Service + + +This house also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar +compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to +the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy +stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable +attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback +three seasons out of the four. The wooden gate had not swung home behind +me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, +contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, +and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell. +There was indeed something oppressively and yet prettily Victorian about +the riparian retreat to which Lady Laura Belsize had retired in her +impoverished widowhood. + +It was not for Lady Laura that I asked, however, but for Miss Belsize, +and the almost slatternly maid really couldn't say whether Miss Belsize +was in or whether she wasn't. She might be in the garden, or she might +be on the river. Would I step inside and wait a minute? I would and did, +but it was more minutes than one that I was kept languishing in an +interior as dingy as the outside of the house. I had time to take the +whole thing in. There were massive remnants of deservedly unfashionable +furniture. The sofa I can still see in my mind's eye, and the steel +fire-irons, and the crystal chandelier. An aged and gigantic Broadwood +occupied nearly half the room; and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all +sorts of comparisons and contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of +Camilla Belsize resplendent in contemporary court kit. + +I was still studying that frankly barbaric paraphernalia--the feather, +the necklace, the coiled train--and wondering what noble kinsman had come +to the rescue for the great occasion, and why Camilla should have looked +so bored with her finery, when the door opened and she herself +entered--not even very smartly dressed--and looking anything but bored, +although I say it. + +But she did seem astonished, anxious, indignant, reproachful, and to my +mind still more nervous and distressed, though this hardly showed through +the loopholes of her pride. And as for her white serge coat and skirt, +they looked as though they had seen considerable service on the river, +and I immediately perceived that one of the large enamel buttons was +missing from the coat. + +Up to that moment, I may now confess, I had been suffering from no slight +nervous anxiety of my own. But all qualms were lost in sheer excitement +when I spoke. + +"You may well wonder at this intrusion," I began. "But I thought this +must be yours, Miss Belsize." + +And from my waistcoat pocket I produced the missing button of enamel. + +"Where did you find it?" inquired Miss Belsize, with an admirably slight +increase of astonishment in voice and look. "And how did you know it was +mine?" came quickly in the next breath. + +"I didn't know," I answered. "I guessed. It was the shot of my life!" + +"But you don't say where you found it?" + +"In an empty house not far from here." + +She had held her breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And +quite unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. + +"Well, Mr. Manders? I'm very much obliged to you. But may I have it +back again?" + +I returned her property. We had been staring at each other all the time. +I stared still harder as she repeated her perfunctory thanks. + +"So it was you!" I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely +puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the +rest in those chameleon eyes of hers. + +"Who did you think it was?" she asked me with a frosty little smile. + +"I didn't know if it was anybody at all. I didn't know what to think," +said I, quite candidly. "I simply found his pistol in my hand." + +"Whose pistol?" + +"Dan Levy's." + +"Good!" she said grimly. "That makes it all the better." + +"You saved my life." + +"I thought you had taken his--and I'd collaborated!" + +There was not a tremor in her voice; it was cautious, eager, daring, +intense, but absolutely her own voice now. + +"No," I said, "I didn't shoot the fellow, but I made him think I had." + +"You made me think so too, until I heard what you said to him." + +"Yet you never made a sound yourself." + +"I should think not! I made myself scarce instead." + +"But, Miss Belsize, I shall go perfectly mad if you don't tell me how you +happened to be there at all!" + +"Don't you think it's for you to tell me that about yourself +and--all of you?" + +"Oh, I don't mind which of us fires first!" said I, excitedly. + +"Then I will," she said at once, and took me to the dreadful sofa at the +inner end of the room, and sat down as though it were the most ordinary +experience she had to relate. Nor could I believe the things that had +really happened, and all so recently, as we talked them over in that +commonplace environment of faded gentility. There was a window behind us, +overlooking the ribbon of lawn and the cord of gravel, and the bunch of +willows that hedged them from the Thames. It all looked unreal to me, +unreal in its very realism as the scene of our incredible conversation. + +"You know what happened the other afternoon--I mean the day they +couldn't play," began Miss Belsize, "because you were there; and though +you didn't stay to hear all that came out afterwards, I expect you know +everything now. Mr. Raffles would be sure to tell you; in fact, I heard +poor dear Mr. Garland give him leave. It's a dreadful story from every +point of view. Nobody comes out of it with flying colours, but what nice +person could cope with a horrid money-lender? Mr. Raffles, perhaps--if +you call him nice!" + +I said that was about the worst thing I called him. I mentioned some of +the other things. Miss Belsize listened to them with exemplary patience. + +"Well," she resumed, "he was quite nice about this. I will say that for +him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be +done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be +done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had +been done already at Carlsbad--what exactly that horrid creature meant +when he was talking _at_ Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of course, I +knew what he meant us to think he meant; but was there, could there be, +anything in it?" + +Miss Belsize looked at me as though she expected an answer, only to stop +me the moment I opened my mouth to speak. + +"I don't want to know, Mr. Manders! Of course you know all about Mr. +Raffles"--there was a touch of feeling in this--"but it's nothing to me, +though in this case I should certainly have been on his side. You said +yourself that it could only have been a practical joke, if there was +anything in it at all, and so I tried to think in spite of those horrid +men who were following him about at Lord's, even in spite of the way he +vanished with them after him. But he never came near the match +again--though he had travelled all the way from Carlsbad to see it! Why +had he ever been there? What had he really done there? And what could he +possibly do to rescue anybody from Mr. Levy, if he himself was already in +Levy's power?" + +"You don't know Raffles," said I, promptly enough this time. "He never +was in any man's power for many minutes. I would back him to save the +most desperate situation you could devise." + +"You mean by some desperate deed? That's what I feared," declared Miss +Belsize, rather strenuously. "Something really had happened at Carlsbad; +something worse was by way of happening next. For Teddy's sake," she +whispered, "and his poor father's!" + +I agreed that old Raffles stuck at nothing for his friends, and Miss +Belsize again said that was what she had feared. Her tone had completely +altered about Raffles, as well it might. I thought it would have broken +with gratitude when she spoke of the unlucky father and son. + +"And I was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to +which I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the +match on Saturday--" + +"Though Teddy had done so well!" I was fool enough to interject. + +"I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Raffles," replied Camilla, with a +flash of her frank eyes, "and wondering, and wondering, what had +happened. And then on Sunday I saw him on the river." + +"He didn't tell me." + +"He didn't know I recognised him; he was disguised--absolutely!" said +Camilla Belsize under her breath. "But he couldn't disguise himself from +me," she added as though glorying in her perspicacity. + +"Did you tell him so, Miss Belsize?" + +"Not I, indeed! I didn't speak to him; it was no business of mine. But +there he was, at the bottom of Mr. Levy's garden, having a good look at +the boathouse when nobody was about. Why? What could his object be? And +why disguise himself? I thought of the affair at Carlsbad, and I felt +certain that something of the kind was going to happen again!" + +"Well?" + +"What could I do? Should I do anything at all? Was it any business of +mine? You may imagine the way I cross-questioned myself, and you may +imagine the crooked answers I got! I won't bore you with the psychology +of the thing; it's pretty obvious after all. It was not so much a case +of doing the best as of knowing the worst. All day yesterday there were +no developments of any sort, and there was no sign of Mr. Raffles; +nothing had happened in the night, or we should have heard of it; but +that made me all the more certain that something or other would happen +last night. The week's grace was nearly up--you know what I mean--their +last week at their own house. If anything was to be done, it was about +time, and I knew Mr. Raffles was going to do something. I wanted to know +what--that was all." + +"Quite right, too!" I murmured. But I doubt if Miss Belsize heard me; she +was in no need of my encouragement or my approval. The old light--her own +light--the reckless light--was burning away in her brilliant eyes! + +"The night before," she went on, "I hardly slept a wink; last night I +preferred not to go to bed at all. I told you I sometimes did weird +things that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last +night, if it wasn't early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I +have a canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went +out unbeknowns after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly--I beg +your pardon, Mr. Manders?" + +"I didn't speak." + +"Your face shouted!" + +"I'd rather you went on." + +"But if you know what I'm going to say?" + +Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. The nebulous +white-shirted figure in the canoe, that had skimmed past Dan Levy's +frontage as we were trying to get him aboard his own pleasure-boat, and +again past the empty house when we were in the act of disembarking him +there, that figure was the trim and slim one now at my side. She had seen +us--searched for us--each time. Our voices she had heard and recognised; +only our actions, or rather that midnight deed of ours, had she +misinterpreted. She would not admit it to me, but I still believe she +feared it was a dead body that we had shipped at dead of night to hide +away in that desolate tower. + +Yet I cannot think she thought it in her heart. I rather fancy (what she +indeed averred) that some vague inkling of the truth flashed across her +at least as often as that monstrous hypothesis. But know she must; +therefore, after boldly ascertaining that nothing was known of the +master's whereabouts at Levy's house, but that no uneasiness was +entertained on his account, this young woman, true to the audacity which +I had seen in her eyes from the first, had taken the still bolder step of +landing on the rank lawn and entering the empty tower to discover its +secret, for herself. Her stealthy step upon the spiral stair had been the +signal for my mortal struggle with Dan Levy. She had heard the whole, and +even seen a little of that; in fact, she had gathered enough from Levy's +horrible imprecations to form later a rough but not incorrect impression +of the situation between him and Raffles and me. As for the moneylender's +language, it was with a welcome gleam of humour that Miss Belsize assured +me she had "gone too straight to hounds" in her time to be as completely +paralysed by it as her mother's neighbours might have been. And as for +the revolver, it had fallen at her feet, and first she thought I was +going to follow it over the banisters, and before she could think again +she had restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand! + +"But when you fired I felt a murderess," she said. "So you see I +misjudged you for the second time." + +If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly +declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful +humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can +promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I +was thinking in my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as +these, so bold, so sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had +never listened to such a voice, or come across recklessness and +sentiment so harmonised, save also in her eyes! I was thinking that +there never was a girl to touch Camilla Belsize, or a man either except +A. J. Raffles! And yet-- + +And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, +exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and +sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly +exasperated man. + +"Of course," said Camilla at her garden gate, "of course you won't repeat +a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?" said I, somewhat +taken aback. + +"I mean every single thing we've talked about!" was her sweeping reply. +"Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry +I ever spoke to you." + +As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I +passed that, even if I noticed it at the time. + +"I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That +is--except--I suppose you don't mind--" + +"I do! There must be no exceptions." + +"Not even old Raffles?" + +"Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked +flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the +world who must ever know a single thing." + +"Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and +me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of +each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as +Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to +make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, +adamant heated in some hidden flame. + +"It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get +excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must +have done--unless it's a judgment on me--it's rather hard lines if you +give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!" + +This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage +between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my +very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once. + +"You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully. +"And I never let out a word of that." + +"Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation +that was almost wistful. + +"Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, +much less how keen you were for me to warn him." + +Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. +Then something won--I think it was only her pride--and she was holding +out her hand. + +"He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. +"And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always +shall for the future." + +"I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear +old Raffles!" + +I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I +made my point. + +"I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a +stranger stress she added, "I don't _like_ him either." + +And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why +Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes +away quicker still. + +I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not +an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would +have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and +had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the +platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge +when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight +before it stopped. + +The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met +at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever +since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did +what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him. + +"Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his +cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the +deevil himsel'!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Death of a Sinner + + +What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have +outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab +on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the +detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it +inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was +more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been +talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it +close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when +I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but +I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his +shirt-sleeves from the window. + +"I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I +were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about +Mackenzie in the lobby. + +"So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank +God, I was ready for him again." + +I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his +clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I +had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. +The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag +stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, +and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds. + +"Going away?" I ejaculated. + +"Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after +what you've told me?" + +"But you were packing before you knew!" + +"Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't +ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll +have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight +into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at +five to nine." + +"What platform, Raffles?" + +"Charing Cross. Continental train." + +"But where the deuce do you think of going?" + +"Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe." + +"Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?" + +"Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage +face, as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were +due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then +don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell +you everything in the train, Bunny." + +And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant +on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly +terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until +we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross. + +Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did +he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied +with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment +lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, +that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and +another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had +also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to +make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a +humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced +admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been +drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, +but that the _rencontre_ with Mackenzie had served to sober me. + +"Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where +we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little +dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up +to eat a bite of it!" + +"Didn't _you_?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse as +Raffles shook his head. + +"No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made +me so stuffy when you did turn up." + +Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share +the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he +had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than +going healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not +what I had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he +had merely fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for +our last on British soil. + +This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for +beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his +taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings +than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting +in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, +and whither in all earnest were we to fly? + +"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first +question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too +soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his +friends and his relations.'" + +"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?" + +"So I had, Bunny." + +"What was that?" + +"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he +had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his +last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole +and he destroyed." + +"And did he sign that?" + +"I insisted on it for our protection." + +"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?" + +Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted +platforms of Herne Hill. + +"There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send +him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may +hold his tongue about the last twenty-four hours--I believe he will--but +that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and +night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off +round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be +in the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating +thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing +clouds of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our +_secondes noces_--meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our +elbows when we get them!" + +But I was not convinced. There was something else at the bottom of this +sudden impulse and its inconceivably sudden execution. Why had he never +told me of this plan? Well, because it had never become one until after +the morning's work at Levy's bank, in itself a reason for being out of +the way, as I myself admitted. But he would have told me if only I had +turned up at seven: he had never meant to give me time for much packing, +added Raffles, as he was anxious that neither of us should leave the +impression that we had gone far afield. + +I thought this was childish, and treating me like a child, to which, +however, I was used; but more than ever did I feel that Raffles was not +being frank with me, that he for one was making good his escape from +something or somebody besides Dan Levy. And in the end he admitted that +this was so. But we had not dashed through Sitting-bourne and Faversham +before I wormed my way to about the last discovery that I expected to +make concerning A. J. Raffles. + +"What an inquisitor you are, Bunny!" said he, putting down an evening +paper that he had only just taken up. "Can't you see that this whole show +has been no ordinary one for me? I've been fighting for a crowd I rather +love. Their battle has got on my nerves as none of my own ever did; and +now it's won I honestly funk their gratitude as much as anything." + +That was another hard saying to swallow; and yet, as Raffles said it, I +knew it to be true. He was looking me full in the face in the ample +light of the first-class compartment, which we of course had to +ourselves. Some softening influence seemed to have been at work upon +him; he looked resolute as ever, but full of regret, than which nothing +was rarer in A.J. + +"I suppose," said I, "that poor old Garland has treated you to a pretty +good dose already?" + +"Yes, Bunny; that he has." + +"And well he may, and well may Teddy and Camilla Belsize!" + +"But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter +little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that +rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's +fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his +Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, +getting hold of his evening paper once more. + +"Is that to come off so soon?" + +"The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. + +"You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, +and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always +puzzled me. + +"I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh +at his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they +were both absolutely worthy of each other!" + +"And you don't think they are?" + +"No, I don't." + +"You think such a lot of young Garland?" + +"I'm very fond of him, Bunny." + +"But you see his faults?" + +"I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" + +"Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" + +"Not good enough--she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice +was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words +could have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you +get that idea?" + +"I thought it was yours, A.J." + +"But why?" + +"You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." + +"So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may +as well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, +Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." + +"Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for +them to marry after all!" + +Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me +catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and +I simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed +under no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. + +"Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything +of the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often +take my hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who +brought those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put +them asunder again." + +"It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. + +"More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks +running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before +the first week was over." + +"And yet you didn't cut him out!" + +"My dear Bunny, I should hope not." + +"But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if +you'd tried." + +Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But +neither would he ape an alien humility. + +"It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny--won or lost--Teddy or no Teddy: +And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like a +semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling +you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in +all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'" + +"I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down. + +"Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep +irritation of a half-hearted displeasure. + +"She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your +mate at heart--in pluck--in temperament!" + +"How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and +staring in my guilty face. + +But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind +upon occasion. + +"You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain." + +"Did she talk about me then?" + +"A little." + +"Had she her knife in me, Bunny?" + +"Well--yes--a little!" + +Raffles smiled stoically: it was a smile of duty done and odds +well damned. + +"Up to the hilt, Bunny, up to the hilt is what you mean. I stuck it in +for her. It's easily done, and it needed doing, for my sake if not for +hers. Sooner or later I should have choked her off, so the sooner the +better. You play them false, you cut a dance, you let them down over +something that doesn't matter, and they'll never give you a dog's chance +over anything that does! I got her to write and never answered. What do +you think of that for a cavalier swine? I said I'd call before I went +abroad, and only wired to say sorry I couldn't. I don't say it would or +could have been all right otherwise; but you see it was all right for +Teddy before I got back! Which was as it was to be. She would hardly look +at me at first last week; but, Bunny, she wasn't above looking when that +old Shylock was playing at giving me away before them all. She looked at +him, and she looked at me, and I've got one of the looks she gave him, +and another that she never meant me to see, bottled in my blackguard +heart forever!" + +Raffles looked dim to me across the narrow compartment; but there was +no nonsense in his look or voice. I longed to tell him all I knew, all +that she had said to me and he had unwittingly interpreted; that she +loved him, as now at last I knew she did; but I had given her my word, +and after all it was a word to keep for both their sakes as well as +for its own. + +"You were made for each other, you two!" + +That was all I said, and Raffles only laughed. + +"All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a +dog's chance of our meeting again." + +He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with +flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer +Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." +Raffles let it pass; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in +the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather +silently. Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking +of Camilla Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she +had never meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead +was glistening white and wet in the lamplight. + +"What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?" + +He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a +word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. +This was the item that danced before my eyes: + +TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER + +Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his +residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who +made good his escape. + +I looked up into a ghastly face. + +"It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!" + +"You left him--" + +I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier +thought. + +"As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you +think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?" + +Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the +less; for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under +equal provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were +making with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face +and voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla +Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he +had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done +without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either +any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man. + +"But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?" + +"I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?" + +"And you say you left him at half-past five?" + +"I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is +plumb right." + +"And you heard no shot as you went on?" + +"No--I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And now +I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound +to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what +Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. +There's no going back now." + +"Not for an innocent man?" + +"Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been +up to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours." + +He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human +compassion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile +misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a +much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin +to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and +beyond belief in my reading of his character. But through all there +peeped a conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the +novelty of fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and +yet compatible either with his story or with my own base dread. + +"Nobody need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that +nobody ever would know through the one other who knew already. But +Raffles threw cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and +good hope. + +"It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last +hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes +working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then +identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then +Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my +heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit +by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the +capital charge!" + +"Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact. +That's one thing!" + +"No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push +you out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put +up for the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place +for the likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules +when I'm gone." + +"You're not going without me, A.J." + +"Not even if I did it, Bunny?" + +"No; less than ever then!" + +Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in +his eyes, but a very tender light as well. + +"It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," +said he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that +we were making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat +from sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we +clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the +platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic +flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My God, Bunny!" +cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!" + +"Why? What's the matter now?" + +"A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!" + +"Mackenzie's?" + +"Yes!" + +I had seen it in his face. + +"After us already?" + +"God knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder." + +"Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?" + +Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was +turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat. + +"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." +He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the +cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty +hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it +mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go +upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at +home, we shall give him the slip all right." + +"Do you think he saw you?" + +"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too." + +"But before we started?" + +"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I +remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, +thank God!" + +They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were +already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated +townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I +from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not +Raffles at all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the +war was the observed of all observers about town. + +"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he +went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning +touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with +such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As +for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread +basket, you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But +here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!" + +The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier +platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must +nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and +that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while +the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging +passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I +cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the +nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod. + +"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk. + +"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a +palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law. + +"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with +deferential grin. + +"And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds +my lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my +horror. But it is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not +follow us on board. + +Neither did our disguises accompany our countenances across the Channel. +It was at dead of night on the upper deck (whence all but us had fled) +that Raffles showed me how to doff my beard and still look as though I +had merely buttoned it inside my overcoat; meanwhile his own moustachios +and imperial were disappearing by discreet degrees; and at last he told +me why, though not by any means without pressing. + +"I'm only afraid you'll want to turn straight back from Calais, Bunny!" + +"Oh, no, I shan't." + +"You'll come with me round the world, so to speak?" + +"To its uttermost ends, A. J.!" + +"You do know now who it really is that I don't want to see again +just yet?" + +"Yes. I know. Now tell me what Mackenzie told you." + +"It was all in the wire he showed me," said Raffles. "The wire was to say +that the murderer of Dan Levy had given himself up to the police!" + +Profane expletives flew from my lips; those of much holier men might +have been no less unguardedly emphatic in the self-same circumstances. + +"But who was it?" + +"I could have told you all along if you hadn't suspected me." + +"It wasn't a suspicion, Raffles. It was never more than a dread, and I +didn't even dread it in my heart of hearts. Do tell me now." + +Raffles watched the red end of a ruined Sullivan make a fine trajectory +as it flew to leeward between sea and stars. + +"It was that poor unlucky little alien who was waiting for him the other +morning in Jermyn Street, and again last night near his own garden gate. +That's where he got him in the end. But it wasn't a shooting case at all, +Bunny; that's why I never heard anything. It was a case of stabbing in +accordance with the best traditions of the Latin races." + +"God forgive both poor devils!" said I at last. + +"And other two," said Raffles, "who have rather more to be forgiven." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Apologia + + +On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton +and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the +best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club. +Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts, +and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to +find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath +was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit +me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but +in spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in +a Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite +to a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased +than my own. + +But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages +of physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar, +reddish countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot +to contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot +rooms my glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay +swathed upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine +fresh-faced owner of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache +rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the +shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual +order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong +wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on +Teddy in his turn. + +He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my +Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the +other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials. + +"But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland; +"you don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs +as all that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through +scullery windows--even for the fun of the thing!" he added with +somewhat tardy tact. + +It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there +was something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy +Garland had said it excellently. + +"Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles +and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for +me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see +the sort of chap he really was." + +"I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just +then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay +silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But +this one rose superior to his. + +"Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge +of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four +winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did +for the lot of us!" + +"Perhaps he did more than you ever knew." + +"Put it all in." + +"It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel." + +"Then make a book of it." + +"But I've written my last word about the old boy." + +"Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!" + +This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told +him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but +openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that +first day of the match, when it rained." + +Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home +and changed his face. + +"Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously. + +"No; he wouldn't give you away." + +"Not even to you--his pal?" + +"No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me." + +"What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love +him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all +this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was." + +"I must say it would interest me to know." + +My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you +would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face. + +"I don't suppose I should." + +"No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the +very sofa I was on a minute ago!" + +I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland +sitting on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his +bygone shame; he hurried on before I could find a word. + +"You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky +game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in +thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should," +said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put +me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was +awake before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered +everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again +in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you +won't wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head +was rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't +describe to you if I tried." + +"I've been there," said I, briefly. + +"Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but +to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you +in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in, +and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too. +I had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down +into this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is +finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden +idea that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I +remembered A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in +I came. I had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were +all to have a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should +be in plenty of time for that and Lord's--if only I hadn't boiled all the +cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I +hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a +boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute--and it was well on in the +afternoon when I awoke!" + +Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a +metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to +go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes +and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent. + +"Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot! +I had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight, +you can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on +top of it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't +hear any rain, do you?--It was after three, but I lay till nearly four +simply cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what +the papers had to say about me--who was playing in my place, who'd won +the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one, +and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'--and sudden illness of my poor +old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty +minutes after that we met." + +"And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the +bath, of course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you +sleep so long." + +"How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have +had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to +think of the rain coming on and saving me--for even Raffles couldn't have +done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck--while I was +lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still--for luck +rather than remembrance!" + +The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was +no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles +won my heart as he had never won it in his youth. + +"Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old +devil his due at last." + +"But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?" + +"My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and +wife as much as ever you like." + +"Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?" + +"Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?" + +I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than +I had supposed. + +"Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked. + +"Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted--so long as you change our +names--for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland. + +I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word? + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. 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Hornung + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; text-align: justify; font-size: 80%; font-style: italic;} + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + .xx-small {font-size: 60%;} + .x-small {font-size: 75%;} + .small {font-size: 85%;} + .large {font-size: 115%;} + .x-large {font-size: 130%;} + .indent5 { margin-left: 5%;} + .indent10 { margin-left: 10%;} + .indent15 { margin-left: 15%;} + .indent20 { margin-left: 20%;} + .indent25 { margin-left: 25%;} + .indent30 { margin-left: 30%;} + .indent35 { margin-left: 35%;} + .indent40 { margin-left: 40%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: 0.6em; + font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; + text-align: right; background-color: #FFFACD; + border: 1px solid; padding: 0.3em;text-indent: 0em;} + .side { float: left; font-size: 75%; width: 15%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; text-align: left; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + .head { float: left; font-size: 90%; width: 98%; padding-left: 0.8em; + border-left: dashed thin; text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; font-weight: bold; font-style: italic; + font-weight: bold; color: black; background: #eeeeee; border: solid 1px;} + p.pfirst, p.noindent {text-indent: 0} + span.dropcap { float: left; margin: 0 0.1em 0 0; line-height: 0.8 } + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Mr. Justice Raffles + +Author: E. W. Hornung + + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9806] +First Posted: October 19, 2003 +Last Updated: November 15, 2018 + + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + + + + +Etext produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + +HTML file produced by David Widger + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + </h1> + <h2> + By E.W. Hornung + </h2> + <h3> + 1909 + </h3> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <p> + <b>CONTENTS</b> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> <b>MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES</b> </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I — An Inaugural Banquet </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II — "His Own Familiar Friend" </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III — Council of War </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV — "Our Mr. Shylock" </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V — Thin Air </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI — Camilla Belsize </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII — In Which We Fail to Score + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII — The State of the Case </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX — A Triple Alliance </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X — "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI — A Dash in the Dark </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII — A Midsummer Night's Work </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII — Knocked Out </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV — Corpus Delicti </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV — Trial by Raffles </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI — Watch and Ward </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII — A Secret Service </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII — The Death of a Sinner </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2HCH0019"> CHAPTER XIX — Apologia </a> + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + </h1> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER I — An Inaugural Banquet + </h2> + <p> + Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no + conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at + Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity + match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The + telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of + course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a + specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my horror + he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous + caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet. + </p> + <p> + "Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!" said he, in + tones as hollow as his cheeks. "No, I'm not going to stop to clear my + baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear good + pal." + </p> + <p> + "Any time you like," said I, giving him my arm. "But where shall we dine? + Kellner's? Neapolo's? The Carlton or the Club?" + </p> + <p> + But Raffles shook his head at one and all. + </p> + <p> + "I don't want to dine at all," he said. "I know what I want!" + </p> + <p> + And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the + sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of the + warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its + traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political + palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary + clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall + belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where + white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did not + consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about that + in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on + seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and + the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as uncharacteristic + of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the table) as the sigh + with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, and crossed his arms + upon the cloth. + </p> + <p> + "I didn't know you were a member of this place," said I, feeling really + rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for + me to open than that of his late mysterious movements. + </p> + <p> + "There are a good many things you don't know about me, Bunny," said he + wearily. "Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?" + </p> + <p> + "Of course I didn't." + </p> + <p> + "Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?" + </p> + <p> + "You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?" + </p> + <p> + "It's only three weeks ago, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "It seems months to me." + </p> + <p> + "And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost + tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the + wife with the emerald necklace?" + </p> + <p> + "I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise + Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J." + </p> + <p> + "Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to + Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his + annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can + sympathise with the poor brute now!" + </p> + <p> + "But what on earth took you there, old fellow?" + </p> + <p> + "Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their + table when they'd gone, and how <i>I</i> forgot myself and ran after them + with the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?" + </p> + <p> + I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a + piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was + prepared for something even more perverse. + </p> + <p> + "You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at + the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a + tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like + that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge." + </p> + <p> + "You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more + interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale. + </p> + <p> + "I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping + to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip + to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him." + </p> + <p> + I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in + the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way + Raffles now sided with me against himself. + </p> + <p> + "But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that + fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on + purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor + head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I + didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all + round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear + call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for + Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted." + </p> + <p> + "Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such bad + form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's the + unkind cut I can't forgive." + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The + cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me." + </p> + <p> + "Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him. + </p> + <p> + "Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book." + </p> + <p> + "But why, in the name of all that's wanton?" + </p> + <p> + "You don't know Carlsbad, or you wouldn't ask. The place is squirming with + spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize humbugs laid + down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, and bowled out + myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, if old man Dante + were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of salubrity for the + redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!" + </p> + <p> + The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of + fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) + Raffles's only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive + tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we + couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only + achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. + And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation + as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his. + </p> + <p> + "No, Bunny, you couldn't have borne it for half a week; you'd have looked + like that all the time!" quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as + it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; + that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling + matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of + humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at + my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no + doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of good + cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; + mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, + except some aerated muck called Giesh|bler. He was allowed to lap that up + an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. We + went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked quite + good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have known him + tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two instead of + losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks together, but his + conversation used to get so physically introspective that one couldn't get + in a word about one's own works edgeways." + </p> + <p> + "But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he + shook his head as one who was not so sure. + </p> + <p> + "Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a + concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. + You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for a + doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of course + recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the rack. The + old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me from crown + to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general condition. He + said I had a liver! I'll swear I hadn't before I went to Carlsbad, but I + shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd brought one back." + </p> + <p> + And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon + the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived. + </p> + <p> + "It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I + only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve to + make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend the + hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of that + evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of German + damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of the same + well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to joke about; + mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in between, were to be + my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, Bunny? I told you that + you never would or could have stood it; but it was the only game to play + for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion all the time. And then + I didn't mind that part as much as you would, or as my hunting pal did; he + was driven to fainting at the doctor's place one day, in the forlorn hope + of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. But all he got was a glass of + cheap Marsala." + </p> + <p> + "But did you win those stakes after all?" + </p> + <p> + "Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a look + that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and I'll + tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought me back + so soon?" + </p> + <p> + "Hadn't you finished your cure?" + </p> + <p> + "Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the + Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of + fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should + be at Carlsbad still." + </p> + <p> + E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one of + the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had made + friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in town, + where the young fellow's father had a house at which Raffles became a + constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both against the + father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son whom I did meet + once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand the mutual + attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed he was a mere + boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a knowledge of the + world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous spring of sweetness + and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could sensibly pollute. And + yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had been somewhat freely sown, + and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and taken the sower in hand, + and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are made. At least I knew + that no one could be sounder friend or saner counsellor to any young + fellow in need of either. And many there must be to bear me out in their + hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I knew mine; and if they + say that was why they thought so much of him, let them have patience, and + at last they shall hear something that need not make them think the less. + </p> + <p> + "I couldn't let poor Teddy keep at Lord's," explained Raffles, "and me not + there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in those + little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly interest + in the child." + </p> + <p> + "You must have done him a lot of good," I suggested, "in every way." + </p> + <p> + Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was + not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it. + </p> + <p> + "Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask + me." + </p> + <p> + "I didn't ask you, Bunny, that's just the point!" said Raffles. And I + watched him tip the waiter without the least <i>arrihre-pensie</i> on + either side. + </p> + <p> + "After all," said I, on our way down the marble stair, "you have told me a + good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot of + debts, for example." + </p> + <p> + "So I was afraid," replied Raffles, frankly; "and between ourselves, I + offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn't hear of it; + that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was perfectly + delightful in what he said. So don't jump to rotten conclusions, Bunny, + but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink." + </p> + <p> + And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in the + hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place with + Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "That," said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, since I felt + at one with all the world, "is certainly the finest grill in Europe." + </p> + <p> + "That's why we went there, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place + where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!" + </p> + <p> + I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own caravanserai. + </p> + <p> + "I would go a step further," he remarked, "and make every member show his + badge as they do at Lord's." + </p> + <p> + "But surely the porter knows the members by sight?" + </p> + <p> + "Not he! There are far too many thousands of them." + </p> + <p> + "I should have thought he must." + </p> + <p> + "And I know he doesn't." + </p> + <p> + "Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you're a member yourself." + </p> + <p> + "On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was + one!" + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER II — "His Own Familiar Friend" + </h2> + <p> + How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been + wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this was + the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous will + that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London lamplight + that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost theatrical blue, he + looked another man already. If such a change was due to a few draughts of + bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I felt I was the + brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. Nevertheless I could + detect a serious side to my companion's mood, especially when he spoke + once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he had cabled to him also + before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help wondering, with a + discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that honest lad could + have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, such as I myself had + often tried, but always failed, to produce. + </p> + <p> + So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, + thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was our + good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the + courtyard. + </p> + <p> + "There's a gen'leman writing you a letter upstairs," said he to Raffles. + "It's Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up." + </p> + <p> + "Teddy!" cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time. + </p> + <p> + I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather + critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the + evening was spoilt for me—and God knows I was right! Not till my + dying day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar + rooms. I see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, + which lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a + problem picture itself in flesh and blood. + </p> + <p> + Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the + boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had + very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the + sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that was the last of his + natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there + was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to + remind me of the Phoebus in Guido's Aurora, with its healthy pink and + bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our + gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as + if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. + I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each sunburnt + hand. + </p> + <p> + "What is it? What are you hiding?" demanded Raffles. His love for the lad + had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular + and genial, but the other's attitude soon strangled that. All this time I + had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned + me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a guilty + face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the door behind + us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk. + </p> + <p> + No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no note + young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously copying + into Raffles's cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a pass-book + with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather back. Raffles + had only that year opened a banking account, and I remembered his telling + me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the instructions on his + cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise the fact. And this was + the result. A glance convicted his friend of criminal intent: a sheet of + notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. Yet Raffles could turn and + look with infinite pity upon the miserable youth who was still looking + defiantly on him. + </p> + <p> + "My poor chap!" was all he said. + </p> + <p> + And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and quavering old + man. + </p> + <p> + "Won't you hand me over and be done with it?" he croaked. "Must you + torture me yourself?" + </p> + <p> + It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the + fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired + whether he had thought it all out before. + </p> + <p> + "God knows I hadn't, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I did," + said Garland with a sudden sob. + </p> + <p> + "No need to swear it," returned Raffles, actually smiling. "Your word's + quite good enough for me." + </p> + <p> + "God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible + disorder now. + </p> + <p> + "It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. + </p> + <p> + "Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, + and my refusing it?" + </p> + <p> + "Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness + that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter to + me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such conspicuous + relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which seemed to me + rather to aggravate the offence. + </p> + <p> + "I have regretted that refusal ever since," young Garland continued very + simply. "It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it's + been a tragedy. Money I must have; I'll tell you why directly. When I got + your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been + answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind + to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet + I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back + to-night; and you weren't here when I came. I telephoned and found that + the train had come in all right, and that there wasn't another until the + morning. Tomorrow morning's my limit, and to-morrow's the match." He + stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. "Don't, Raffles, I don't deserve + it!" he added in fresh distress. + </p> + <p> + But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the corner + cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to the guilty + youth. + </p> + <p> + "Drink some," he said, "or I won't listen to another word." + </p> + <p> + "I'm going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!" the poor fellow + insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. "And it'll break my + father's heart, and—and—" + </p> + <p> + I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; but + either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward in + spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a further + explanation of his conduct. + </p> + <p> + "I only came up to leave a line for Raffles," he said to me, "in case he + did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that + bureau. He'll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw + before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your + pass-book bulging with old cheques." + </p> + <p> + "And as I wasn't back to write one for you," said Raffles, "you wrote it + for me. And quite right, too!" + </p> + <p> + "Don't laugh at me!" cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he + looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the sprightly + sympathy of his friend. + </p> + <p> + "I'm not laughing, Teddy," replied Raffles kindly. "I was never more + serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in your + fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my back + rather than let me feel I'd ruined you by not turning up in time. You may + shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a higher + compliment." + </p> + <p> + And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less + miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing really + dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor to + accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down upon + himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet there + was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something that + Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we took + his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he indeed had + been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old story of the + prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I suspected, a + certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of Raffles had already + quelled; but there had also been much reckless extravagance, of which + Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace is constitutionally + quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. Suffice it that this + one had thrown himself on his father's generosity, only to find that the + father himself was in financial straits. + </p> + <p> + "What!" cried Raffles, "with that house on his hands?" + </p> + <p> + "I knew it would surprise you," said Teddy Garland. "I can't understand it + myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for me. I + simply couldn't tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a cheque + for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that I swore + I'd never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!" + </p> + <p> + The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then he + paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out between + his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde young face, + with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw Raffles look + another way until the match was blown out. + </p> + <p> + "But at the time I might have done worse, and did," said Teddy, "a + thousand times! I went to the Jews. That's the whole trouble. There were + more debts—debts of honour—and to square up I went to the + Jews. It was only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you + may know, though I didn't, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the + hands of those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory + note for four hundred and fifty-six." + </p> + <p> + "Only fifty per cent!" said Raffles. "You got off cheap if the percentage + was per annum." + </p> + <p> + "Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The + four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty + quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. + That was soon after Christmas, when one's always hard up, and for the + first time I was a day or two late—not more, mind you; yet what do + you suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed + balance demanded on the nail!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was following intently, with that complete concentration which was + a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at anything he + heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge upon the + bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been but for + the kink in his nature which had made him what he was. + </p> + <p> + "The promissory note was for four-fifty-six," said he, "and this sudden + demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?" + </p> + <p> + "That's it." + </p> + <p> + "What did you do?" I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp of the + case. + </p> + <p> + "Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!" + </p> + <p> + "And they?" + </p> + <p> + "Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down + on me for—what do you suppose?" + </p> + <p> + "Getting on for a thousand," said Raffles after a moment's thought. + </p> + <p> + "Nonsense!" I cried. Garland looked astonished too. + </p> + <p> + "Raffles knows all about it," said he. "Seven hundred was the actual + figure. I needn't tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since + the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. + And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I'll trouble you, from + the beginning of January down to date!" + </p> + <p> + "Had you agreed to that?" + </p> + <p> + "Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my + promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above + everything else when the original interest wasn't forthcoming." + </p> + <p> + "Printed or written on your note of hand?" + </p> + <p> + "Printed—printed small, I needn't tell you—but quite large + enough for me to read when I signed the cursed bond. In fact I believe I + did read it; but a halfpenny a week! Who could ever believe it would mount + up like that? But it does; it's right enough, and the long and short of it + is that unless I pay up by twelve o'clock to-morrow the governor's to be + called in to say whether he'll pay up for me or see me made a bankrupt + under his nose. Twelve o'clock, when the match begins! Of course they know + that, and are trading on it. Only this evening I had the most insolent + ultimatum, saying it was my 'dead and last chance.'" + </p> + <p> + "So then you came round here?" + </p> + <p> + "I was coming in any case. I wish I'd shot myself first!" + </p> + <p> + "My dear fellow, it was doing me proud; don't let us lose our sense of + proportion, Teddy." + </p> + <p> + But young Garland had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the + miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. + The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, the + natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, had + faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul in + torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence of + the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In + these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less + unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of + Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not to + be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential honesty + too bright and brilliant to be dimmed by incidental dishonour; and both + remained to the younger man, in the eyes of the other two, who were even + then determining to preserve in him all that they themselves had lost. The + thought came naturally enough to me. And yet I may well have derived it + from a face that for once was easy to read, a clear-cut face that had + never looked so sharp in profile, or, to my knowledge, half so gentle in + expression. + </p> + <p> + "And what about these Jews?" asked Raffles at length. + </p> + <p> + "There's really only one." + </p> + <p> + "Are we to guess his name?" + </p> + <p> + "No, I don't mind telling you. It's Dan Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Of course it is!" cried Raffles with a nod for me. "Our Mr. Shylock in + all his glory!" + </p> + <p> + Teddy snatched his face from his hands. + </p> + <p> + "You don't know him, do you?" + </p> + <p> + "I might almost say I know him at home," said Raffles. "But as a matter of + fact I met him abroad." + </p> + <p> + Teddy was on his feet. + </p> + <p> + "But do you know him well enough—" + </p> + <p> + "Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts + for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying + it was your last chance." + </p> + <p> + "Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of + course I'll come with you—" + </p> + <p> + "Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye put + out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you sit up + all night either. Where are you staying, my man?" + </p> + <p> + "Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd + caught you early enough." + </p> + <p> + "Stout fellow! You stay here." + </p> + <p> + "My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully. + </p> + <p> + "My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you + stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you + want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake." + </p> + <p> + "But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed—do I, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "I've seldom seen you there," said I. + </p> + <p> + "But you were travelling all last night?" + </p> + <p> + "And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a + train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in + to-night I shouldn't get a wink." + </p> + <p> + "Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how to + sleep!" + </p> + <p> + "Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and + lit it up. + </p> + <p> + "I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me + as though we were old friends now. + </p> + <p> + "And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is." + </p> + <p> + Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from + which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm. + </p> + <p> + "Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of + these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes." + </p> + <p> + "What are they?" + </p> + <p> + "Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best." + </p> + <p> + "But won't they give me a frightful head?" + </p> + <p> + "Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake + up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because + you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?" + </p> + <p> + "I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed him to + scorn. + </p> + <p> + "They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks + with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up + to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!" + </p> + <p> + And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more + about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after + that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; + and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the + conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The + starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue + than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in + Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard + frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's + must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any man + had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his soul as + E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether any + heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as Raffles + and myself! + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER III — Council of War + </h2> + <p> + Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise + when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were + shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost + midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the + syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside him + also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; he + was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures + which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or rather + two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of which I + had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it seemed + that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw them + hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; he + gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, and + so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back into + the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there was + still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, + shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming and + spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night. + </p> + <p> + "That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out + between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!" + </p> + <p> + "Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the + conversation which I had managed not to overhear. + </p> + <p> + "I don't say that, Bunny, though I never should have dreamt of his old + father being in one too. I own I can't understand that. They live in a + regular country house in the middle of Kensington, and there are only the + two of them. But I've given Teddy my word not to go to the old man for the + money, so it's no use talking about it." + </p> + <p> + But apparently it was what they had been talking about behind the + folding-doors; it only surprised me to see how much Raffles took it to + heart. + </p> + <p> + "So you have made up your mind to raise the money elsewhere?" + </p> + <p> + "Before that lad in there opens his eyes." + </p> + <p> + "Is he asleep already?" + </p> + <p> + "Like the dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking + thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish + experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is + better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I + shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one + often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of + over-keenness which so often cuts one's own throat." + </p> + <p> + "But what do you think of it all, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "Not so much worse than I let him think I thought." + </p> + <p> + "But you must have been amazed?" + </p> + <p> + "I am past amazement at the worst thing the best of us ever does, and + contrariwise of course. Your rich man proves a pauper, and your honest man + plays the knave; we're all of us capable of every damned thing. But let us + thank our stars and Teddy's that we got back just when we did." + </p> + <p> + "Why at that moment?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles produced the unfinished cheque, shook his head over it, and sent + it fluttering across to me. + </p> + <p> + "Was there ever such a childish attempt? They'd have kept him in the bank + while they sent for the police. If ever you want to play this game, Bunny, + you must let me coach you up a bit." + </p> + <p> + "But it was never one of your games, A.J.!" + </p> + <p> + "Only incidentally once or twice; it never appealed to me," said Raffles, + sending expanding circlets of smoke to crown the girls on the Golden Stair + that was no longer tilted in a leaning tower. "No, Bunny, an occasional <i>exeat</i> + at school is my modest record as a forger, though I admit that augured + ill. Do you remember how I left my cheque-book about on purpose for what's + happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning, in all the papers, + would have set one up as an honest man for life. I thought, God forgive + me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that kind. And to think it + should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'! Not that I ever did + confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad." + </p> + <p> + Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was + speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the + best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty <i>jeux d'esprit</i>. + This Raffles only meant half he said—but had generally done the + other half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own <i>Whitaker</i>) + that the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that + night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile. + </p> + <p> + "I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we + could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the + sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken <i>ex itinere</i>. It's + a case for the <i>testudo</i> and all the rest of it. You must remember + that I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if + one may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was + as impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon + the very rock of defence!" + </p> + <p> + "You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his + kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there was + no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience till all + hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I wanted fewer + fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual lantern. And yet these + were the very moments that inspired his pyrotechnic displays. + </p> + <p> + "Oh, I shall tell you all right," said Raffles. "But just now the next few + hours are of more importance than the last few weeks. Of course Shylock's + the man for our money; but knowing our tribesmen as I do, I think we had + better begin by borrowing it like simple Christians." + </p> + <p> + "Then we have it to pay back again." + </p> + <p> + "And that's the psychological moment for raiding our 'miser's sunless + coffers'—if he happens to have any. It will give us time to find + out." + </p> + <p> + "But he doesn't keep open office all night," I objected. + </p> + <p> + "But he opens at nine o'clock in the morning," said Raffles, "to catch the + early stockbroker who would rather be bled than hammered." + </p> + <p> + "Who told you that?" + </p> + <p> + "Our Mrs. Shylock." + </p> + <p> + "You must have made great friends with her?" + </p> + <p> + "More in pity than for the sake of secrets." + </p> + <p> + "But you went where the secrets were?" + </p> + <p> + "And she gave them away wholesale." + </p> + <p> + "She would," I said, "to you." + </p> + <p> + "She told me a lot about the impending libel action." + </p> + <p> + "Shylock <i>v. Fact?</i>" + </p> + <p> + "Yes; it's coming on before the vacation, you know." + </p> + <p> + "So I saw in some paper." + </p> + <p> + "But you know what it's all about, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "No, I don't." + </p> + <p> + "Another old rascal, the Maharajah of Hathipur, and his perfectly fabulous + debts. It seems he's been in our Mr. Shylock's clutches for years, but + instead of taking his pound of flesh he's always increasing the amount. Of + course that's the whole duty of money-lenders, but now they say the figure + runs well into six. No one has any sympathy with that old heathen; he's + said to have been a pal of Nana's before the Mutiny, and in it up to the + neck he only saved by turning against his own lot in time; in any case + it's the pot and the kettle so far as moral colour is concerned. But I + believe it's an actual fact that syndicates have been formed to buy up the + black man's debts and take a reasonable interest, only the dirty white man + always gets to windward of the syndicate. They're on the point of bringing + it off, when old Levy inveigles the nigger into some new Oriental + extravagance. <i>Fact</i> has exposed the whole thing, and printed + blackmailing letters which Shylock swears are forgeries. That's both their + cases in a philippine! The leeches told the Jew he must do his Carlsbad + this year before the case came on; and the tremendous amount it's going to + cost may account for his dunning old clients the moment he gets back." + </p> + <p> + "Then why should he lend to you?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm a new client, Bunny; that makes all the difference. Then we were very + good pals out there." + </p> + <p> + "But you and Mrs. Shylock were better still?" + </p> + <p> + "Unbeknowns, Bunny! She used to tell me her troubles when I lent her an + arm and took due care to look a martyr; my hunting friend had coarse + metaphors about heavy-weights and the knacker's yard." + </p> + <p> + "And yet you came away with the poor soul's necklace?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was tapping the chronic cigarette on the table at his elbow; he + stood up to light it, as one does stand up to make the dramatic + announcements of one's life, and he spoke through the flame of the match + as it rose and fell between his puffs. + </p> + <p> + "No—Bunny—I did not!" + </p> + <p> + "But you told me you won the Emerald Stakes!" I cried, jumping up in my + turn. + </p> + <p> + "So I did, Bunny, but I gave them back again." + </p> + <p> + "You gave yourself away to her, as she'd given him away to you?" + </p> + <p> + "Don't be a fool, Bunny," said Raffles, subsiding into his chair. "I can't + tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're at the + Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They stare. I + come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at the other + Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their rooms. I + wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on the second + floor—where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from under his + mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been made for me. + Need I go on?" + </p> + <p> + "I wonder you weren't suspected." + </p> + <p> + "There's no end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old + rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had + the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off + in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it was—well, + I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his shop next + morning." + </p> + <p> + "What had happened?" + </p> + <p> + "A whole actful of unrehearsed effects; that's why I think twice before + taking on old Shylock again. I admire him, Bunny, as a steely foeman. I + look forward to another game with him on his own ground. But I must find + out the pace of the wicket before I put myself on." + </p> + <p> + "I suppose you had tea with them, and all that sort of thing?" + </p> + <p> + "Giesh|bler!" said Raffles with a shudder. "But I made it last as long as + tea, and thought I had located the little green lamps before I took my + leave. There was a japanned despatch box in one corner. 'That's the + Emerald Isle,' I thought, 'I'll soon have it out of the sea. The old man + won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't + tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at + the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner." + </p> + <p> + Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten the + lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle that + he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he waited for a + dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room balcony to the one + below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box after all; and just as + he had assured himself of the fact, the folding-doors opened "as it might + be these," and there stood Dan Levy "in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." + </p> + <p> + "They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck me, + for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever took. + His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was not; + and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there was no + chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I stuck + my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up. Good God, + Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit, and I was + jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,' says I in low + German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise that I was + absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened face. 'I + don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.' '<i>Das + halsband</i>, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he. But + I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded. He + laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I pointed + to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live, old girl,' + says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to shoot, and I + don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other way and alarm + the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the old woman, as + plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left hand. I longed to + refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her and shook her like a + rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German that if he showed + himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be <i>ein toter + Englander</i>! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was meant to + mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging on to him, + instead of him to her!" + </p> + <p> + I emptied my lungs and my glass too. Raffles took a sip himself. + </p> + <p> + "But the rope was fixed to <i>your</i> balcony, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "But I began by fixing the other end to theirs, and the moment I was + safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found it + dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked the + right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as pitch-dark, + and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to search for + impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any there might + conceivably have been." + </p> + <p> + "So nobody ever suspected you?" + </p> + <p> + "Not a soul, I can safely say; I was the first my victims bored with the + whole yarn." + </p> + <p> + "Then why return the swag? It's an old trick of yours, Raffles, but in a + case like this, with a pig like that, I confess I don't see the point." + </p> + <p> + "You forget the poor old lady, Bunny. She had a dog's life before; after + that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for her + pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me; + there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift." + </p> + <p> + "But how on earth did you manage that?" + </p> + <p> + "Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into my + confidence <i>more cuniculi!"</i> + </p> + <p> + "I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?" + </p> + <p> + "As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted it + in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch lest + it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a + substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to + blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered. + The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I + wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made + a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that enormous + dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a living tomb." + </p> + <p> + But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a + formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly. + </p> + <p> + "That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked + forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the + halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric." + </p> + <p> + "Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to + pay Peter?" + </p> + <p> + "Excellent, Bunny!" cried Raffles, as though I had made a shot worthy of + his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains and + displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across it. + "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned them + from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up o' + nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our + methods. What a lot the two old pets must have missed!" + </p> + <p> + "You haven't answered my question," said I resignedly. "Nor have you told + me how you propose to go to work to raise this money in the first + instance." + </p> + <p> + "If you like to light another Sullivan," said Raffles, "and mix yourself + another very small and final one, I can tell you now, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + And tell me he did. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER IV — "Our Mr. Shylock" + </h2> + <p> + I have often wondered in what pause or phase of our conversation Raffles + hit upon the plan which we duly carried out; for we had been talking + incessantly, since his arrival about eight o'clock at night, until two in + the morning. Yet that which we discussed between two and three was what we + actually did between nine and ten, with the single exception necessitated + by an altogether unforeseen development, of which the less said the better + until the proper time. The foresight and imagination of a Raffles are + obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the course of + speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the listener, and + the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea would culminate in + a definite project, as the image comes into focus under the lens, and with + as much detail into the bargain. + </p> + <p> + Suffice it that after a long night of it at the Albany, and but a bath and + a cup of tea at my own flat, I found Raffles waiting for me in Piccadilly, + and down we went together to the jaws of Jermyn Street. There we nodded, + and I was proceeding down the hill when I turned on my heel as though I + had forgotten something, and entered Jermyn Street not fifty yards behind + Raffles. I had no thought of catching him up. But it so happened that I + was in his wake in time to witness a first <i>contretemps</i> which did + not amount to much at the time; this was merely the violent exit of + another of Dan Levy's early callers into the very arms of Raffles. There + was a heated apology, accepted with courteous composure, and followed by + an excited outpouring which I did not come near enough to overhear. It was + delivered by a little man in an aureole of indigo hair, who brushed his + great sombrero violently as he spoke and Raffles listened. I could see + from their manner that the collision which had just occurred was not the + subject under discussion; but I failed to distinguish a word, though I + listened outside a hatter's until Raffles had gone in and his new + acquaintance had passed me with blazing eyes and a volley of husky vows in + broken English. + </p> + <p> + "Another of Mr. Shylock's victims," thought I; and indeed he might have + been bleeding internally from the loss of his pound of flesh; at any rate + there was bloodshed in his eyes. + </p> + <p> + I stood a long time outside that hatter's window, and finally went in to + choose a cap. But the light is wicked in those narrow shops, and this + necessitated my carrying several caps to the broad daylight of the + threshold to gauge their shades, and incidentally to achieve a swift + survey of the street. Then they crowned me with an ingenious apparatus + like a typewriter, to get the exact shape and measure of my skull, for I + had intimated that I had no desire to dress it anywhere else for the + future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after + getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's + hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one in + addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next + perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new + bowler) brought me face to face with Raffles once more. + </p> + <p> + We shouted and shook hands; our encounter had taken place almost under the + money-lender's windows, and it was so un-English in its cordiality that + between our slaps and grasps Raffles managed deftly to insert a stout + packet in my breast pocket. I cannot think the most critical pedestrian + could have seen it done. But streets have as many eyes as Argus, and some + of them are always on one. + </p> + <p> + "They had to send to the bank for it," whispered Raffles. "It barely + passed through their hands. But don't you let Shylock spot his own + envelope!" + </p> + <p> + In another second he was saying something very different that anybody + might have heard, and in yet another he was hustling me across Shylock's + threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You + couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow—he's the only honest + one in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?" + </p> + <p> + A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was in + liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he thought + so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone, after + shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his stool + at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more similar + peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was told to + hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other clerks + behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting them + hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence. + </p> + <p> + Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my + tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so + elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month earlier. + His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, but made + him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a gentleman; even + as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie filled me with + that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had engendered in + Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd and rather + scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its massive + features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity of the + pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; and the + nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I had seen + it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its immensity. It was + a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to that of Raffles, who + had entered with his own serene unconscious confidence, and now introduced + us with that inimitable air of light-hearted authority which stamped him + in all shades of society. + </p> + <p> + "'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you're well?" said Mr. Levy, dropping one + aspirate but putting in the next with care. "Take a seat, sir, please." + </p> + <p> + But I kept my legs, though I felt them near to trembling, and, diving a + hand into a breast pocket, I began working the contents out of the + envelope that Raffles had given me, while I spoke out in a tone + sufficiently rehearsed at the Albany overnight. + </p> + <p> + "I'm not so sure about the happiness," said I. "I mean about its lasting, + Mr. Levy. I come from my friend, Mr. Edward Garland." + </p> + <p> + "I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much + indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I + could no longer see. + </p> + <p> + "I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval + and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well. + </p> + <p> + "Who <i>is</i> the little biter?" the money-lender inquired of him with + delightful insolence. + </p> + <p> + "An old friend of mine," replied Raffles, in an injured tone that made a + convincing end of the old friendship. "I thought he was hard up, or I + never should have brought him in to introduce to you." + </p> + <p> + "I didn't ask you for your introduction, Raffles," said I offensively. "I + simply met you coming out as I was coming in. I thought you damned + officious, if you ask me!" + </p> + <p> + Whereupon, with an Anglo-Saxon threat of subsequent violence to my person, + Raffles flung open the door to leave us to our interview. This was exactly + as it had been rehearsed. But Dan Levy called Raffles back. And that was + exactly as we had hoped. + </p> + <p> + "Gentlemen, gentlemen!" said the Jew. "Please don't make a cockpit of my + office, gentlemen; and pray, Mr. Raffles, don't leave me to the mercies of + your very dangerous friend." + </p> + <p> + "You can be two to one if you like," I gasped valiantly. "<i>I</i> don't + care." + </p> + <p> + And my chest heaved in accordance with my stage instructions, as also with + a realism to which it was a relief to give full play. + </p> + <p> + "Come now," said Levy. "What did Mr. Garland send you about?" + </p> + <p> + "You know well enough," said I: "his debt to you." + </p> + <p> + "Don't be rude about it," said Levy. "What about the debt?" + </p> + <p> + "It's a damned disgrace!" said I. + </p> + <p> + "I quite agree," he chuckled. "It ought to 'ave been settled months ago." + </p> + <p> + "Months ago?" I echoed. "It's only twelve months since he borrowed three + hundred pounds from you, and now you're sticking him for seven!" + </p> + <p> + "I am," said Levy, opening uncompromising lips that entirely disappeared + again next instant. + </p> + <p> + "He borrows three hundred for a year at the outside, and you blackmail him + for eight hundred when the year's up." + </p> + <p> + "You said 'seven' just now," interrupted Raffles, but in the voice of a + man who was getting a fright. + </p> + <p> + "You also said 'blackmailing,'" added Dan Levy portentously. "Do you want + to be thrown downstairs?" + </p> + <p> + "Do <i>you</i> deny the figures?" I retorted. + </p> + <p> + "No, I don't; have you got his repayment cards?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes, here in my hands, and they shan't leave them. You see, you're not + aware," I added severely, as I turned to Raffles, "that this young fellow + has already paid up one hundred in instalments; that's what makes the + eight; and all this is what'll happen to you if you've been fool enough to + get into the same boat." + </p> + <p> + The money-lender had borne with me longer than either of us had expected + that he would; but now he wheeled back his chair and stood up, a pillar of + peril and a mouthful of oaths. + </p> + <p> + "Is that all you've come to say?" he thundered. "If so, you young devil, + out you go!" + </p> + <p> + "No, it isn't," said I, spreading out a document attached to the cards of + receipt which Raffles had obtained from Teddy Garland; these I had managed + to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I had been + trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is a letter, + written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you say, among + other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no excuses of + any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten times more + trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get rid of you. + So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as you may + depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very letter, and + steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour. This is your + dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on the subject.'" + </p> + <p> + "So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr. + Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr. + Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?" + </p> + <p> + "Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his + prize-fighting jaws. + </p> + <p> + "Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a year + ago?" + </p> + <p> + "That's it." + </p> + <p> + "Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory + stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at + the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault." + </p> + <p> + "Of course it is, Mr. Raffles," cried the moneylender, taking a more + conciliatory tone himself. "It was my money; it was my three 'undred + golden sovereigns; and you can sell what's yours for what it'll fetch, + can't you?" + </p> + <p> + "Obviously," said Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "Very well, then, money's like anything else; if you haven't got it, and + can't beg or earn it, you've got to buy it at a price. I sell my money, + that's all. And I've a right to sell it at a fancy price if I can get a + fancy price for it. A man may be a fool to pay my figure; that depends 'ow + much he wants the money at the time, and it's his affair, not mine. Your + gay young friend was all right if he hadn't defaulted, but a defaulter + deserves to pay through the nose, and be damned to him. It wasn't me let + your friend in; he let in himself, with his eyes open. Mr. Garland knew + very well what I was charging him, and what I shouldn't 'esitate to charge + over and above if he gave me half a chance. Why should I? Wasn't it in the + bond? What do you all think I run my show for? It's business, Mr. Raffles, + not robbery, my dear sir. All business is robbery, if you come to that. + But you'll find mine is all above-board and in the bond." + </p> + <p> + "A very admirable exposition," said Raffles weightily. + </p> + <p> + "Not that it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to + add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I hope + I may say that you're the one and not the other." + </p> + <p> + "Then it comes to this," said I, "that you mean him to pay up in full this + morning?" + </p> + <p> + "By noon, and it's just gone ten." + </p> + <p> + "The whole seven hundred pounds?" + </p> + <p> + "Sterling," said Mr. Levy "No cheques entertained." + </p> + <p> + "Then," said I, with an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but + to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" + </p> + <p> + I did not look at Levy, but I heard the sudden intake of his breath at the + sight of my bank-notes, and I felt its baleful exhalation on my forehead + as I stooped and began counting them out upon his desk. I had made some + progress before he addressed me in terms of protest. There was almost a + tremor in his voice. I had no call to be so hasty; it looked as though I + had been playing a game with him. Why couldn't I tell him I had the money + with me all the time? The question was asked with a sudden oath, because I + had gone on counting it out regardless of his overtures. I took as little + notice of his anger. + </p> + <p> + "And now, Mr. Levy," I concluded, "may I ask you to return me Mr. + Garland's promissory note?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes, you may ask and you shall receive!" he snarled, and opened his safe + so violently that the keys fell out. Raffles replaced them with exemplary + promptitude while the note of hand was being found. + </p> + <p> + The evil little document was in my possession at last. Levy roared down + the tube, and the young man of the imperfect diction duly appeared. + </p> + <p> + "Take that young biter," cried Levy, "and throw him into the street. Call + up Moses to lend you a 'and." + </p> + <p> + But the first murderer stood nonplussed, looking from Raffles to me, and + finally inquiring which biter his master meant. + </p> + <p> + "That one!" bellowed the money-lender, shaking a lethal fist at me. "Mr. + Raffles is a friend o' mine." + </p> + <p> + "But 'e'th a friend of 'ith too," lisped the young man. "Thimeon Markth + come acroth the thtreet to tell me tho. He thaw them thake handth outthide + our plathe, after he'd theen 'em arm-in-arm in Piccadilly, 'an he come in + to thay tho in cathe—" + </p> + <p> + But the youth of limited articulation was not allowed to finish his + explanation; he was grasped by the scruff of the neck and kicked and + shaken out of the room, and his collar flung after him. I heard him + blubbering on the stairs as Levy locked the door and put the key in his + pocket. But I did not hear Raffles slip into the swivel chair behind the + desk, or know that he had done so until the usurer and I turned round + together. + </p> + <p> + "Out of that!" blustered Levy. + </p> + <p> + But Raffles tilted the chair back on its spring and laughed softly in his + face. + </p> + <p> + "Not if I know it," said he. "If you don't open the door in about one + minute I shall require this telephone of yours to ring up the police." + </p> + <p> + "The police, eh?" said Levy, with a sinister recovery of self-control. + "You'd better leave that to me, you precious pair of swindlers!" + </p> + <p> + "Besides," continued Raffles, "of course you keep an <i>argumentum ad + hominem</i> in one of these drawers. Ah, here it is, and just as well in + my hands as in yours!" + </p> + <p> + He had opened the top drawer in the right-hand pedestal, and taken + therefrom a big bulldog revolver; it was the work of few moments to empty + its five chambers, and hand the pistol by its barrel to the owner. + </p> + <p> + "Curse you!" hissed the latter, hurling it into the fender with a fearful + clatter. "But you'll pay for this, my fine gentlemen; this isn't sharp + practice, but criminal fraud." + </p> + <p> + "The burden of proof," said Raffles, "lies with you. Meanwhile, will you + be good enough to open that door instead of looking as sick as a cold + mud-poultice?" + </p> + <p> + The money-lender had, indeed, turned as grey as his hair; and his + eyebrows, which were black and looked dyed, stood out like smears of ink. + Nevertheless, the simile which Raffles had employed with his own + unfortunate facility was more picturesque than discreet. I saw it set Mr. + Shylock thinking. Luckily, the evil of the day was sufficient for it and + him; but so far from complying, he set his back to the locked door and + swore a sweet oath never to budge. + </p> + <p> + "Oh, very well!" resumed Raffles, and the receiver was at his ear without + more ado. "Is that the Exchange? Give me nine-two-double-three Gerrard, + will you?" + </p> + <p> + "It's fraud," reiterated Levy. "And you know it." + </p> + <p> + "It's nothing of the sort, and <i>you</i> know it," murmured Raffles, with + the proper pre-occupation of the man at the telephone. + </p> + <p> + "You lent the money," I added. "That's your business. It's nothing to do + with you what he chooses to do with it." + </p> + <p> + "He's a cursed swindler," hissed Levy. "And you're his damned decoy!" + </p> + <p> + I was not sorry to see Raffles's face light up across the desk. + </p> + <p> + "Is that Howson, Anstruther and Martin?—they're only my solicitors, + Mr. Levy.... Put me through to Mr. Martin, please.... That you, Charlie? + ... You might come in a cab to Jermyn Street—I forget the number—Dan + Levy's, the money-lender's—thanks, old chap! ... Wait a bit, Charlie—a + constable...." + </p> + <p> + But Dan Levy had unlocked his door and flung it open. + </p> + <p> + "There you are, you scoundrels! But we'll meet again, my fine + swell-mobsmen!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was frowning at the telephone. + </p> + <p> + "I've been cut off," said he. "Wait a bit! Clear call for you, Mr. Levy, I + believe!" + </p> + <p> + And they changed places, without exchanging another word until Raffles and + I were on the stairs. + </p> + <p> + "Why, the 'phone's not even <i>through!</i>" yelled the money-lender, + rushing out. + </p> + <p> + "But <i>we</i> are, Mr. Levy!" cried Raffles. And down we ran into the + street. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER V — Thin Air + </h2> + <p> + Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised + that he was not coming with me. + </p> + <p> + "Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make him + get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in + half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back." + </p> + <p> + His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to + escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he + deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which + Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it + as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately + lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of + faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however, if + a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating over + the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious + extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles; + and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we + had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a + species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose + battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his breakfast, + and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab. + </p> + <p> + Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was + frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the + morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose. + </p> + <p> + "Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out. + </p> + <p> + "Of whom, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Teddy, of course!" + </p> + <p> + "Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?" + </p> + <p> + "Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he is!" + </p> + <p> + He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up + to his rooms. + </p> + <p> + "But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "That's what I want to know." + </p> + <p> + "Could he have gone out for a paper?" + </p> + <p> + "They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed." + </p> + <p> + "Or for a shave?" + </p> + <p> + "That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour." + </p> + <p> + "But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I + understood you left him fast asleep?" + </p> + <p> + "That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough + saw him go out ten minutes after me." + </p> + <p> + "Could you have disturbed him when you went?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles shook his head. + </p> + <p> + "I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I + came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave me + a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the doors + after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open them. I + thought something horrible had happened!" + </p> + <p> + "You don't think so still?" + </p> + <p> + "I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned + out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves + away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up the + enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters, Bunny; we + shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I should + rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in this + rotten way." + </p> + <p> + Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his + sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one that + seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind. + </p> + <p> + "A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and + sound at Lord's." + </p> + <p> + "I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him + then; besides, here's his cricket-bag." + </p> + <p> + "He may have been at the club when I fetched it away—I never asked." + </p> + <p> + "I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left." + </p> + <p> + "Then what about his father's house?" + </p> + <p> + "That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but + now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's + there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a + thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the time + it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with the + whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by + Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!" + </p> + <p> + We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending hastily + enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man, and + Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we looked at + each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was out of the + room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing. + </p> + <p> + "Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add. + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice—in + accents of such acute dismay—that Mr. Garland had my sympathy before + we met. + </p> + <p> + "He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute. + Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?" + </p> + <p> + The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair + entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected + of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in + retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional + embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder + purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a + gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn + furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my + heart outright. + </p> + <p> + "So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're + nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night + or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town + if necessary, and he evidently has." + </p> + <p> + There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was + also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles + gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as + distinct from his words and deeds) overnight. + </p> + <p> + "And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a + surprise to you, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my + chair. What great news was this? + </p> + <p> + "This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my + benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me here; + you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him; but Miss + Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with us to the + match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be so + disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see very + little of each other all day." + </p> + <p> + I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this + engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at + night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window. + Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which + extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it was + not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation. But + his face had suddenly lit up. + </p> + <p> + "May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you, Mr. + Garland?" + </p> + <p> + "It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence." + </p> + <p> + "Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?" + </p> + <p> + "Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have + had to consult Lady Laura." + </p> + <p> + "Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home + while you were on yours into town! How did you come?" + </p> + <p> + "In the brougham." + </p> + <p> + "Through the Park?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes." + </p> + <p> + "While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's how + you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight back + you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's." + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we + might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a + minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through + Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept + away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and + slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago. + It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all + keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one side-street + to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn and towering + tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more forcibly (and + favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a house. And yet a + double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a few yards of the + steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss + Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature. + </p> + <p> + "Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his + books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he turned + to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I haven't + been told, and I insist on knowing what it is." + </p> + <p> + "But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving + Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown." + </p> + <p> + "What time was that?" + </p> + <p> + "Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour." + </p> + <p> + "Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?" + </p> + <p> + "I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up + rather late." + </p> + <p> + "But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you + were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why, + after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not the + first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming girl; + is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "About his engagement—not that I'm aware." + </p> + <p> + "Then he is in some trouble?" + </p> + <p> + "He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he isn't + now." + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair. + </p> + <p> + "Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you + his confidence, I have no right simply as his father—" + </p> + <p> + "It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no right + to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. Garland, + there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it <i>was</i> about some little + temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me." + </p> + <p> + "And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude + and humiliation. + </p> + <p> + "Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so + serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment." + </p> + <p> + "God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his voice. + "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right man; he + knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he muttered to + himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and bent his + head over his folded arms. + </p> + <p> + He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance + in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his + watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour now; + but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master + recovered his self-control. + </p> + <p> + "This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's + for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose + it's Miss Belsize again." + </p> + <p> + "Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you + were not to be disturbed." + </p> + <p> + "Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of + trouble in his tone. "Listen to this—listen to this," he went on + before the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if + you don't turn up in time.—J. S.'" + </p> + <p> + "Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper." + </p> + <p> + "I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" + </p> + <p> + "And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns + out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will + still be too late for him to play." + </p> + <p> + "Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his + chair with a groan. + </p> + <p> + "But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way." + </p> + <p> + "No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned + straight from Lord's—probably within the last few minutes—to a + messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!" + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look + ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his back + upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a monument of + discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the adjoining + conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but this door was + a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well have walked, and + I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a panel of palms + and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and straight again before + my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with an alert lift of the + head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy fusillade, and then + the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in the body of the room. + </p> + <p> + "It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a + barometer, Mr. Garland?" + </p> + <p> + "That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket." + </p> + <p> + "How often do you set the indicator?" + </p> + <p> + "Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I + went to bed. It made me anxious." + </p> + <p> + "It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this morning. + And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!" + </p> + <p> + In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and + assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery. + </p> + <p> + "Something has happened to my boy!" + </p> + <p> + "But not necessarily anything terrible." + </p> + <p> + "If I knew what, Raffles—if only I knew what!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He + himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the + rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute. + </p> + <p> + "I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, we + may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your help, + sir." + </p> + <p> + "I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are." + </p> + <p> + "Where I am?" + </p> + <p> + "In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential + to my idea." + </p> + <p> + "And that is, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up to + Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he shall + keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment." + </p> + <p> + "But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked. + </p> + <p> + "I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his + face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." + </p> + <p> + "But that's the only place that matters," said I. + </p> + <p> + "On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as Miss + Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in the + next room now." + </p> + <p> + "Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." + </p> + <p> + "She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I + thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from + her, sir." + </p> + <h3> + "I?" + </h3> + <p> + "Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil + her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for + an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. + Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them in + the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and the + best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." + </p> + <p> + "And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held out his + hand. + </p> + <p> + "Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another + five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself + in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may + be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from me + on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the better, + if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark at this + end." + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard task + for me!" + </p> + <p> + "It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I + promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." + </p> + <p> + With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that + turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my leave + of him. + </p> + <p> + "What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl + and hide my own anxiety?" + </p> + <p> + "There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If + either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." + </p> + <p> + Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not + but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the + drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's <i>fiancee</i>, I took + an umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential + downpour into the brougham. + </p> + <p> + "I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the + coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, + but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We + should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." + </p> + <p> + "But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary + disappearance?" + </p> + <p> + "Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land + of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his insanity." + </p> + <p> + "And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you disapprove of + it?" + </p> + <p> + "Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged from + under my umbrella into the brougham. + </p> + <p> + "Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl + beneath him?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes. + </p> + <p> + "You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to hurry + up to Lord's—and pray that this rain may last!" + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VI — Camilla Belsize + </h2> + <p> + It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the + amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in + Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so + welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the + rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not + the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was + another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and + tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work to + propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention overnight. + But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. To me it need + prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help feeling that + even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in these people's + affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me until the last + few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to Teddy Garland + at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping Raffles to keep + the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and on the point of + helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse still from his + daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the worst of all to be + hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me! + </p> + <p> + Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out + from the conservatory in a continuous chain—each link with its own + temperature and its individual scent—and not a pane but rattled and + streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing + fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of the + drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to Miss + Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face must have + made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the same smile + again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I really think + she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment. + </p> + <p> + So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. + Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well + as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but + emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy + with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with + unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really was + a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was wasting + what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I could + suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still. + </p> + <p> + "And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under + shelter, Miss Belsize." Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored. + </p> + <p> + "But there's plenty of shelter there," said she. + </p> + <p> + "Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it + before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know." + </p> + <p> + "But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?" + </p> + <p> + "They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting." + </p> + <p> + That was a rash remark. + </p> + <p> + "Then why doesn't Teddy come back?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, well, you know," I hedged, "you can never be quite absolutely sure. + It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. + And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn." + </p> + <p> + "I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch," said Miss + Belsize, "even if he had to go back afterwards." + </p> + <p> + "I shouldn't wonder if he did come," said I, conceiving the bare + possibility: "and A.J. with him." + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean Mr. Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!" + </p> + <p> + Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had + confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. + Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been + watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold + profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her out + of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers + dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, + calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental—all that and more as I see + them now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled. + </p> + <p> + "So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?" said Miss Belsize, harking + back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us. + </p> + <p> + "Rather!" I replied. + </p> + <p> + "Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?" + </p> + <p> + I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. "Raffles and I were + at school together," I added loftily. + </p> + <p> + "Really? I should have thought he was before your time." + </p> + <p> + "No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag." + </p> + <p> + "And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?" inquired Miss Belsize, not + by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own + devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little jealousy + of Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: + "captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic champion, + and an ornament of the Upper Sixth." + </p> + <p> + "And you worshipped him, I suppose?" + </p> + <p> + "Absolutely." + </p> + <p> + My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she + looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes. + </p> + <p> + "You must be rather disappointed in him now!" + </p> + <p> + "Disappointed! Why?" I asked with much outward amusement. But I was + beginning to feel uncomfortable. + </p> + <p> + "Of course I don't know much about him," remarked Miss Belsize as though + she cared less. + </p> + <p> + "But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?" + </p> + <p> + "I do," said I, with injudicious alacrity. + </p> + <p> + "Well," said Miss Belsize, "what else is he?" + </p> + <p> + "The best fellow in the world, among other things." + </p> + <p> + "But what other things?" + </p> + <p> + "Ask Teddy!" I said unluckily. + </p> + <p> + "I have," replied Miss Belsize. "But Teddy doesn't know. He often wonders + how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing any + work." + </p> + <p> + "Does he, indeed!" + </p> + <p> + "Many people do." + </p> + <p> + "And what do they say about him?" + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather + longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been + turned on again, before she answered: + </p> + <p> + "More than their prayers, no doubt!" + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean," I almost gasped, "as to the way Raffles gets his living?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes." + </p> + <p> + "You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!" + </p> + <p> + "But if there's no truth in them?" + </p> + <p> + "I'll soon tell you if there is or not." + </p> + <p> + "But suppose I don't care either way?" said Miss Belsize with a brilliant + smile. + </p> + <p> + "Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you." + </p> + <p> + "Mind, I don't believe it myself, Mr. Manders." + </p> + <p> + "You don't believe—" + </p> + <p> + "That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and—his cricket!" + </p> + <p> + I jumped to my feet. + </p> + <p> + "Is that all they say about him?" I cried. + </p> + <p> + "Isn't it enough?" asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my + demeanour. + </p> + <p> + "Oh, quite enough, quite enough!" said I. "It's only the most scandalously + unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got about—that's all!" + </p> + <p> + This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that + one's first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to + discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was + unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth. + </p> + <p> + "Yet you seemed to expect something worse," she said at length. + </p> + <p> + "What could be worse?" I asked, my back against the wall of my own + indiscretion. "Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal + thing than a paid amateur!" + </p> + <p> + "But you haven't told me what he <i>is</i>, Mr. Manders." + </p> + <p> + "And you haven't told me, Miss Belsize, why you're so interested in A. J. + after all!" I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on + the strength of it. + </p> + <p> + But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my + ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite + frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than she + cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was the + only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and + censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. Mr. + Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered whether he + was quite a good friend; and there I had "the whole thing in a nutshell." + </p> + <p> + I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too + often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I did + not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as jealousy + did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved on that + point. + </p> + <p> + We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the rest + of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house and + further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite + refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the still + incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's mother + took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently impecunious + widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and suburban neighbours + whose manners and customs my companion hit off with vivacious intolerance. + She told me how she had shocked them by smoking cigarettes in the back + garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction that I of all people would + have been no less scandalised! That was in the uttermost vinery, and in + another minute two Sullivans were in full blast under the vines. I + remember discovering that the great brand was not unfamiliar to Miss + Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles himself who had made it + known to her. Raffles, whom she did not "know much about," or consider + "quite a good friend" for Teddy Garland! + </p> + <p> + I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was + the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland + told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger + earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, + considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a + strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so far + infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon with + far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us again + until the butler with a visitor's card brought about his abrupt departure + from the conservatory. + </p> + <p> + Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss Belsize + could have had her way we should all have started for Lord's that minute. + I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, coldly + scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. Lord's would + be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been abandoned on + that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure about that; why + should we not drive over and find out? I said that was the surest way of + missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there and back in a + half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but said if we went + at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, and that in his + own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and when Miss + Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my ground, I + could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the softened + gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss Belsize took + my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, though with none + too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw what I had been + curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path towards us. And I + saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking hands with him. + </p> + <p> + "They've given it up as a bad job at last," said he. "I've just come from + Lord's, and Teddy won't be very long." + </p> + <p> + "Why didn't you bring him with you?" asked Miss Belsize pertinently. + </p> + <p> + "Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once," said Raffles, + rather lamely for him; "and then a man playing in a 'Varsity match is + never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn't to keep you + waiting much longer." + </p> + <p> + It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it pretty + plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had been + waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an end she + must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to Mr. + Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I believe it + took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her intention, however + hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the conservatory and the + library door, while Raffles and I went through into the hall the other + way. + </p> + <p> + "I'm afraid I've put my foot in it," said he to me. "But it's just as + well, since I needn't tell you there's no sign of Teddy up at Lord's." + </p> + <p> + "Have you been there all day?" I asked him under my breath. + </p> + <p> + "Except when I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, + brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what they + say about Teddy here." + </p> + <p> + And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in the + stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and + Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, "owing to + the serious illness of his father." + </p> + <p> + "His father!" I exclaimed. "Why, his father's closeted with somebody or + other at this very moment behind the door you're looking at!" + </p> + <p> + "I know, Bunny. I've seen him." + </p> + <p> + "But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I don't + wonder you went to the office about it." + </p> + <p> + "You'll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the staff." + </p> + <p> + "Of course you made him take it straight out?" + </p> + <p> + "On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!" + </p> + <p> + And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a + more felonious—but less incomprehensible—exploit. + </p> + <p> + "Didn't you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library + this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on + fact. I wonder you don't see the point; as a matter of fact, there are two + points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was to + find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord's. Well, I haven't + actually found him yet; but if he's in the land of the living he will see + this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what he will + do! Meanwhile, there's nothing but sympathy for him at Lord's. Studley + couldn't have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to the + eleventh hour to-morrow. And if that isn't killing two birds with one + stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!" + </p> + <p> + "But what will old Garland say, A. J.?" + </p> + <p> + "He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note before + lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what I had + done. He doesn't mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save his face + before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look out, Bunny—here + she is!" + </p> + <p> + The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it + was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the + hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I + suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal + pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had + taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven + both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago. + </p> + <p> + "I didn't go into the library after all," she said, looking askance at the + library door. "I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview with + somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man's face as I hesitated, and I + thought I recognised him." + </p> + <p> + "Who was it?" I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather mysterious + visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so abruptly in the + conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in the hour of so many + issues. + </p> + <p> + "I believe it's a dreadful man I know by sight down the river," said Miss + Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened and out + came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the usurer of + European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain enemy for + life. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VII — In Which We Fail to Score + </h2> + <p> + Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was + evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we were + prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a + terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice + he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of + mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and + delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed + to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue + from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. + Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as + he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; for + having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all knowing + each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an exception, and + presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an ordinary guest. + </p> + <p> + "You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that worthy + with a certain <i>aplomb</i>. "I know you very well by sight, Miss + Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain." + </p> + <p> + "Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at her + command. + </p> + <p> + "The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not + meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up + with adroit urbanity. + </p> + <p> + "I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though bargains, + I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the worst of + one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to repent it." + </p> + <p> + It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the + eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the + look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only + interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged + her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in + turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to + himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from + doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the + money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no longer + the sole anxiety. + </p> + <p> + "And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the + firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "Where was that, Miss Belsize?" + </p> + <p> + "Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I + know, but I forget the name of the place." + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?" + </p> + <p> + I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was + merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair. + </p> + <p> + "Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I + remember now." + </p> + <p> + "I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An unarmed + man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a desperate + criminal with a loaded revolver." + </p> + <p> + "Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. + </p> + <p> + Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with the + best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the episode + for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a mind to + impart. + </p> + <p> + "It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling it + when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss Belsize, + you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came in for all the + excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for me and my wife." + </p> + <p> + "Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize only stared. + </p> + <p> + "Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. + Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. And + he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the + first he had heard of it. + </p> + <p> + "But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, "except + those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back last + night." + </p> + <p> + "But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + "It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. + "Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. + </p> + <p> + They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder + against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring + at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the + three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. + </p> + <p> + "But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with + terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" + </p> + <p> + "The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there—is + there, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: + </p> + <p> + "Unless you've got to cope with a <i>swell mobsman</i> who steals your + wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives them + back again!" + </p> + <p> + The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and + myself in his own office that very morning. + </p> + <p> + "Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her silence + on an eager note. + </p> + <p> + Raffles turned to her at once. + </p> + <p> + "The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there everybody + thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy has the + better information." + </p> + <p> + Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I + followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. + </p> + <p> + "I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the + wilds of Austria," said I. + </p> + <p> + "There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman + knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His + 'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is + nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was + actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was + marked down at some London theatre—or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily as + their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you were + one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?" + </p> + <p> + "Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no + doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious + from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was + as obvious a mistake. + </p> + <p> + "Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and + Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed + that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver." + </p> + <p> + "We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might 'ave + been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no error + about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye looking + along the barrel into mine—as plainly as I'm looking into yours now, + Mr. Raffles." + </p> + <p> + Raffles laughed outright. + </p> + <p> + "I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me + that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat." + </p> + <p> + "So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have + done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white as + yours are." + </p> + <p> + "Any other little point in common?" + </p> + <p> + "I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver." + </p> + <p> + Raffles held out his hands. + </p> + <p> + "Better have a good look at mine." + </p> + <p> + "His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or better + kept." + </p> + <p> + "Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + "You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily. + </p> + <p> + "I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through and + through. + </p> + <p> + "And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly + look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that + maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy. + </p> + <p> + For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I + declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest + eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the + two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer + shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert + battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should + accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw + him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was + easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we + might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless + denunciation. + </p> + <p> + "Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us who it + was?" + </p> + <p> + "Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I + know all about him now!" + </p> + <p> + I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set, + her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles + during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the only + entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the firelit + hall. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that + kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed + almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang + up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in + the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a + syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood + gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had the + hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had put + it in? Was there any truth in it at all? + </p> + <p> + "None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was + never better in my life." + </p> + <p> + "Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I + suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to + lay hands on the joker!" + </p> + <p> + His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring + himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the appearance + of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the contrary, he looked + both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his sudden fit of + passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered so humiliated + and abased. + </p> + <p> + Raffles came forward from the fireside. + </p> + <p> + "There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar for + bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm the only + one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of you all day." + </p> + <p> + Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going + to repudiate this cool <i>suggestio falsi</i>, and tell us all where he + had really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, + and then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance + which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance was + too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which was not + even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us with + eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report about his + health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him the better + for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him and rarely + becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were brilliant; they + met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their friendly light burst + into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they fell upon his bugbear + in the background. + </p> + <p> + "So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly enough + once he had found his voice. + </p> + <p> + "I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh. + </p> + <p> + "His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking about, + Teddy?" + </p> + <p> + "I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost + harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as + well know what I am—while there's time. I got into debt—I + borrowed from this man." + </p> + <p> + "You borrowed from him?" + </p> + <p> + It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an emphasis + harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy with new + loathing and abhorrence. + </p> + <p> + "Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars + every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own + fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in + his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last + drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves me + right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again, father! + I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he + threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute + as to come to-day!" + </p> + <p> + "Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into + Teddy's hands. + </p> + <p> + It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from Dan + Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the hand, + and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by the + throat before us all. + </p> + <p> + "Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely. + </p> + <p> + "It means that you are," replied Dan Levy. + </p> + <p> + "In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?" + </p> + <p> + "Every penny that you owed me, certainly." + </p> + <p> + "Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both ways—your + money and your spite as well!" + </p> + <p> + "Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive + shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as you're + 'appy?" + </p> + <p> + "No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come + back in time." + </p> + <p> + "In time for what?" + </p> + <p> + "To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!" + </p> + <p> + The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded + his arms with a guttural chuckle. + </p> + <p> + "So you mean to chuck me out, do you?" + </p> + <p> + "By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the + door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again." + </p> + <p> + The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with + his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; but + I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning + twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the + fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the + harmless character of the shot. + </p> + <p> + "May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable + chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation. + </p> + <p> + "Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy + truculently, "and out you go!" + </p> + <p> + "Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with + the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from Mr. + Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words. + </p> + <p> + "The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous scorn—"freehold + and everything." + </p> + <p> + "The whole place happens to be <i>mine</i>—'freehold and + everything!'" replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate + syllables. "And as for clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given + you a week to do it in—the two of you!" + </p> + <p> + He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring on + us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all. + </p> + <p> + "And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with a + passionate hiss, "like you did the son—<i>because I know all about + you now</i>!" + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER VIII — The State of the Case + </h2> + <p> + Of course I made all decent haste from the distressing scene, and of + course Raffles stayed behind at the solicitation of his unhappy friends. I + was sorry to desert him in view of one aspect of the case; but I was not + sorry to dine quietly at the club after the alarms and excitements of that + disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up all + night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in the + twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer night and + day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the club to + which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted us at the + Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the overthrow of the + money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely disappearance of Teddy + Garland, my day of it at his father's house, and the rain and the ruse + that saved the passing situation, only to aggravate the crowning + catastrophe of the money-lender's triumph over Raffles and all his + friends. + </p> + <p> + Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the nature + of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new risk + run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last word of + warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently complete + ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no mere + mystery can hold the mind against impending peril; and I was less + exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in + wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. + Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from + downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more + effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my + dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my + corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a + countenance as though the whole world and he were one. + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny! I've never given the matter another thought," said he in + answer to my nervous queries, "and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has + scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he's not such a fool as to put + himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn't possibly prove. They + wouldn't listen to him at Scotland Yard; it's not their job, in the first + place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. Shylock that + he hasn't a shred of evidence against me." + </p> + <p> + "Still," said I, "he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that's half + the battle in a criminal charge." + </p> + <p> + "Then it's a battle I should love to fight, if the odds weren't all on + Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property—he's + not a pin the worse off—but because he has a row with me about + something else he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But + not in his heart, Bunny; he's not such a fool as that. Dan Levy's no fool + at all, but the most magnificent knave I've been up against yet. If you + want to hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I'll open + your eyes for you." + </p> + <p> + His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed + them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight was + his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are at + theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the + historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial + subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, + Bunny! A foeman worthy of Excalibur itself." + </p> + <p> + And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger stake! + But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless head + over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating prowess + of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends. + </p> + <p> + "They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I have + them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't a + forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. But + there isn't, Bunny, I don't mind telling you." + </p> + <p> + "What I can't understand," said I, "is how father and son seem to have + walked into the same parlour—and the father a business man!" + </p> + <p> + "Just what he never was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the + whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a + business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years + ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place where + you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was pretty stiff + to start with; you might have a house in most squares and quite a good + place in the country for what you've got to pay for a cross between the + two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good people; for it + was not only in Mrs. Garland's time, but it seems she was the first to set + her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave it for a better + world—poor soul—before the glass was on the last vinery. And + the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone." + </p> + <p> + "I wonder he didn't get rid of the whole show," said I, "after that." + </p> + <p> + "I've no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don't get rid of a place + like that in five minutes; it's neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary + house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further + out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part + of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the + freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit for + building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a fine + investment, or would have been if he had left more margin for upkeep and + living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on + horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at + a fence that's brought down many a better rider." + </p> + <p> + "What was that?" + </p> + <p> + "South Africans!" replied Raffles succinctly. "Piles were changing hands + over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip + himself; that finished him off. There's no tiger like an old tiger that + never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer became a reckless gambler, + lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his losses. They + were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. Thousands were wanted + at almost a moment's notice; no time to fix up an honest mortgage; it was + a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! And old Garland took ten + thousand of the best from Dan Levy—and had another dip!" + </p> + <p> + "And lost again?" + </p> + <p> + "And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his + house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and + branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy's hands for months + and years." + </p> + <p> + "On a sort of mortgage?" + </p> + <p> + "On a perfectly nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only + with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is + being bled to the heart for iniquitous interest on the first ten thousand, + and of course he can't meet the call for another fifteen when it comes; + but he thinks it's all right because Levy doesn't press for the dibs. Of + course it's all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to take + possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn't suit him to have + the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate a rising property, and + so poor old Garland is deliberately lulled into a false sense of security. + And there's no saying how long that state of things might have lasted if + we hadn't taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning." + </p> + <p> + "Then it's our fault, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "It's mine," said Raffles remorsefully. "The idea, I believe, was + altogether mine, Bunny; that's why I'd give my bowing hand to take the old + ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!" + </p> + <p> + "But how <i>do</i> you account for his getting them both into his toils?" + I asked. "What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father + already owed more than he could pay?" + </p> + <p> + "There are so many points," said Raffles. "They love you to owe more than + you can pay; it's not their principal that they care about nearly so much + as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they've got you. + In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland was + about his boy—to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see + what an effort it's become. Levy would find out something about the boy; + that he's getting hard up himself, that he's bound to discover the old + man's secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he + does. 'Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,' says + Levy, 'then they'll both hold their tongues, and I'll have one of 'em + under each thumb till all's blue.' So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, + and finances father and son in watertight compartments until this libel + case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue + enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a + sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small creditors + all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it all fits + in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney himself; that + along with all the rest to scale, will run him into thousands even if he + wins his case." + </p> + <p> + "May he lose it!" said I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the + inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. + Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless + friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly characteristic + of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not remained to hear the + whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly that she had. By + putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she had taken the + whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected from those + fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her on the spot, + and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but when I applauded + her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. Nothing, indeed, + could have been more marked than the contrast between his reluctance to + discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which she had discussed + him. But in each case the inference was that there was no love lost + between the pair; and in each case I could not help wondering why. + </p> + <p> + There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much + more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in + Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of his + sensational disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My interest + in the escapade, however, was considerably quickened by the prompt refusal + of Raffles to tell me a word about it. + </p> + <p> + "No, Bunny," said he, "I'm not going to give the boy away. His father + knows, and I know—and that's enough." + </p> + <p> + "Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of + his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative. + </p> + <p> + "I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It + wouldn't be fair." + </p> + <p> + "I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to + cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, and + then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it + trading on a fellow's good-nature—not that I care a curse!" + </p> + <p> + "Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I + should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been + treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me + if I have another dip at Dan Levy." + </p> + <p> + "But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder." + </p> + <p> + "You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?" + </p> + <p> + "To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for + another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart + from these poor pals of mine." + </p> + <p> + "And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire the + secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?" + </p> + <p> + One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain + facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter + manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man + thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was + standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that + interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, to + guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not divine + for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay pugnacity; nay, + there was something behind the good Garlands and their culpably + commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they be the + Cause? + </p> + <p> + The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash + might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in the + room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, outside + the door. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER IX — A Triple Alliance + </h2> + <p> + It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole + not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible passing of a + hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be + that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; + nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had + been plate-glass. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing + and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we + entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the + one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until + assurance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. + And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it + open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent + figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and + gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal + vulgarian about town. + </p> + <p> + "May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability. + </p> + <p> + "May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you + came in long ago! I heard you all right—you were listening at the + door—probably looking through the keyhole—and you only knocked + when I jumped up to open it!" + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder. And + he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome. + </p> + <p> + "But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or + else picked the lock." + </p> + <p> + "Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," + remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality. + </p> + <p> + "Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than + Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony. + </p> + <p> + Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the + back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. + Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made + no secret of a base suspicion. + </p> + <p> + "I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender. + </p> + <p> + "My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to + see, and nobody could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; but + that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete + expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again + type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old + song now?" + </p> + <p> + "'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a + hair of the jolly dog that bit him—eh?" + </p> + <p> + "You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're + cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own + up to it." + </p> + <p> + "Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one + side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have it—thieves! + Common thieves!" + </p> + <p> + And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine. + </p> + <p> + "You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the only + wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He grinned + malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it—Mr. Ananias + J. Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his + eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best + entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "Chalks!" said I. + </p> + <p> + "I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a grim + contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick upon me, + so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! One borrowing + the money, and the other paying me back in my very own actual coin!" + </p> + <p> + "Well," said I, "there was no crime in that." + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the + one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call + yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was + the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected + friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his + friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there—a strapping + young chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and + jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but + this afternoon was when I jolly well knew." + </p> + <p> + Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his + lips like a steel trap. + </p> + <p> + "I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still seriously + think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?" + </p> + <p> + "I know you did." + </p> + <p> + "Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why didn't + you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland Yard? Here I + am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give me in charge?" + </p> + <p> + Levy chuckled consumedly—ventriloquously—behind his three gold + buttons and his one diamond stud. + </p> + <p> + "P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you + two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as <i>I</i> thought." + </p> + <p> + "Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick + recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?" + </p> + <p> + "P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr. + Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation + softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put + it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took + it for a bit o' fun!" + </p> + <p> + "If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd." + </p> + <p> + "I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I agree + with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than + anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both + inhabiting for our sins." + </p> + <p> + "The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very shrewd + glance. + </p> + <p> + "It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure." + </p> + <p> + "'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Don't say 'another,' please." + </p> + <p> + "Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?" + </p> + <p> + "Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind." + </p> + <p> + "I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity. + </p> + <p> + "How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the + pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And once + more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his + favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the + buttoned foil. + </p> + <p> + "It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, + Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor." + </p> + <p> + "I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?" + </p> + <p> + "I have—a case of recovering a man's own property." + </p> + <p> + "You being the man, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "I being the man, Mr. Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!" + </p> + <p> + I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy + protested that in no circumstances could he have taken such a course. By + the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had + entirely escaped his notice in the past—incriminating things—things + that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he + against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with + unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his strong + suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, and + evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly + forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to + endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and nothing + more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever be done + at all. + </p> + <p> + "Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested + Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?" + </p> + <p> + "Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a + shrug. + </p> + <p> + "Preliminary, then?" + </p> + <p> + "Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by abstracting + Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amusement—" + </p> + <p> + "So you assert, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen—or not—as you + decide," rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events + you admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I + ask you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that + 'appens to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits." + </p> + <p> + "Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of + property it is, and where you think it's to be found." + </p> + <p> + The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the one + which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. We + all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor looking + specially hard at me for the first time. + </p> + <p> + "I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after + you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It + was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen + were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the + natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, + "you are partners in—amusement? Otherwise I should insist on + speaking to Mr. Raffles alone." + </p> + <p> + "Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily. + </p> + <p> + "Though two to one—numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a + disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the + more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to 'andle + a lighter swag, gentlemen!" + </p> + <p> + "More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke. + </p> + <p> + "No—lighter than that—a letter!" + </p> + <p> + "One little letter?" + </p> + <p> + "That's all." + </p> + <p> + "Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his + lips were framing an affirmative. + </p> + <p> + "I see; it was written to you, not by you." + </p> + <p> + "Wrong again, Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + "Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new + difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the + moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes. + </p> + <p> + "They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, written on my + office paper; if that isn't my property, I should like to know what is?" + </p> + <p> + "It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course + you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against <i>Fact</i>?" + </p> + <p> + "I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?" + </p> + <p> + "I am naturally interested in the case." + </p> + <p> + "And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much + to say about it, with the whole case still <i>sub judice</i>." + </p> + <p> + "I read the original articles in <i>Fact</i>" said Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "And the letters I'm supposed to have written?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the + wind's eye." + </p> + <p> + "That's the one I want." + </p> + <p> + "If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more + serious sort of case." + </p> + <p> + "But it isn't genuine." + </p> + <p> + "Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," + pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has been + rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey." + </p> + <p> + "But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse. + </p> + <p> + "Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution + love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the less + it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to bits. A + palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, with a wink + at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late lamented Mr. + Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there." + </p> + <p> + Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his + case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely + than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his + sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another wink. + The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and burst out + in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial prejudice + against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would ever get justice + in a British court of law; easier for the camel to thread the needle's + eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at sight by our vaunted + British jury. The only chance was to abstract it before the case came on. + </p> + <p> + "But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could + possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and + instantaneous effect." + </p> + <p> + "I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me + remind you that it's yours as well!" + </p> + <p> + "If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it." + </p> + <p> + "You won't in any case, I should hope," said I. + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that." + </p> + <p> + Levy stopped talking quite like that. + </p> + <p> + "Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?" + </p> + <p> + "Abstract the—forgery?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes." + </p> + <p> + "Where from?" + </p> + <p> + "Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose." + </p> + <p> + "Who are the solicitors to <i>Fact</i>?" + </p> + <p> + "Burroughs and Burroughs." + </p> + <p> + "Of Gray's Inn Square?" + </p> + <p> + "That's right." + </p> + <p> + "The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a + grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!" + </p> + <p> + "I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender. + </p> + <p> + Raffles looked more than dubious. + </p> + <p> + "Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "Too big by half." + </p> + <p> + "And you merely wish to have their letter—withdrawn, Mr. Levy?" + </p> + <p> + "That's the way to put it." + </p> + <p> + And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an + intestine chuckle. + </p> + <p> + "Withdrawn—and nothing more?" + </p> + <p> + "That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles." + </p> + <p> + "Even though they miss it the very next morning?" + </p> + <p> + "Let them miss it." + </p> + <p> + Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in serene + dissent. + </p> + <p> + "It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to go + one better—if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much + point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it. + </p> + <p> + "What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently no + such premonition. + </p> + <p> + "I should take a sheet of your paper with me, and forge the forgery!" said + Raffles, a light in his eye and a gusto in his voice that I knew only too + well. "But I shouldn't do my work as perfectly as—the other cove—did + his. My effort would look the same as yours—<i>his</i>—until + Mr. Attorney fixed it with his eyeglass in open court. And then the bottom + would be out of the defence in five minutes!" + </p> + <p> + Dan Levy came straight over to Raffles—quivering like a jelly—beaming + at every pore. + </p> + <p> + "Shake!" he cried. "I always knew you were a man after my own heart, but I + didn't know you were a man of genius until this minute." + </p> + <p> + "It's no use my shaking," replied Raffles, the tips of his sensitive + fingers still together, "until I make up my mind to take on the job. And + I'm a very long way from doing that yet, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + I breathed again. + </p> + <p> + "But you must, my dear friend, you simply must!" said Levy, in a new tone + of pure persuasion. I was sorry he forgot to threaten instead. Perhaps it + was not forgetfulness; perhaps he was beginning to know his Raffles as I + knew mine; if so, I was sorrier still. + </p> + <p> + "It's a case of <i>quid pro quo</i>," said Raffles calmly. "You can't + expect me to break out into downright crime—however technical the + actual offence—unless you make it worth my while." + </p> + <p> + Levy became the man I wanted him to be again. "I fancy it's worth your + while not to hear anything more about Carlsbad," said he, though still + with less of the old manner than I could have wished. + </p> + <p> + "What!" cried Raffles, "when you own yourself that you've no evidence + against me there?" + </p> + <p> + "Evidence is to be got that may mean five years to you; don't you make any + mistake about that." + </p> + <p> + "Whereas the evidence of this particular letter against yourself has, on + your own showing, already been obtained! It's as you like, of course," + added Raffles, getting up with a shrug. "But if the Old Bailey sees us + both, Mr. Levy, I'll back my chance against yours—and your sentence + against mine!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles helped himself to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, + decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a + tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. + </p> + <p> + "There, damn you!" said he, blinking into an empty glass. "I trust you + further than I'd trust any other young blood of your kidney; name your + price, and you shall earn it if you can." + </p> + <p> + "You may think it a rather long one, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Never mind; you say what you want." + </p> + <p> + "Leave that money of yours on the mortgage with Mr. Garland; forgive him + his other debt as you hope to be forgiven; and either that letter shall be + in your hands, or I'll be in the hands of the police, before a week is + up!" + </p> + <p> + Spoken from man to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice + persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere + form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in + defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; + one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, little as + his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his sacrifices on their + behalf, that very minute I might have led the first assault on their + oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his empty tumbler into + the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a volley of abuse as I + have seldom heard from human brute. + </p> + <p> + "I'm surprised at you, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, contemptuously; "if we + copied your tactics we should throw you through that open window!" + </p> + <p> + And I stood by for my share in the deed. + </p> + <p> + "Yes! I know it'd pay you to break my neck," retorted Levy. "You'd rather + swing than do time, wouldn't you?" + </p> + <p> + "And you prefer the other alternative," said Raffles, "to loosing your + grip upon a man who's done you no harm whatever! In interest alone he's + almost repaid all you lent him in the first instance; you've first-class + security for the rest; yet you must ruin him to revenge yourself upon us. + On us, mark you! It's against us you've got your grievance, not against + old Garland or his son. You've lost sight of that fact. That little trick + this morning was our doing entirely. Why don't you take it out of us? Why + refuse a fair offer to spite people who have done you no harm?" + </p> + <p> + "It's not a fair offer," growled Levy. "I made you the fair offer." + </p> + <p> + But his rage had moderated; he was beginning to listen to Raffles and to + reason, with however ill a grace. It was the very moment which Raffles was + the very man to improve. + </p> + <p> + "Mr. Levy," said he, "do you suppose I care whether you hold your tongue + or not on a matter of mere suspicion, which you can't support by a grain + of evidence? You lose a piece of jewellery abroad; you recover it intact; + and after many days you get the bright idea that I'm the culprit because I + happen to have been staying in your hotel at the time. It never occurred + to you there or then, though you interviewed the gentleman face to face, + as you were constantly interviewing me. But as soon as I borrow some money + from you, here in London in the ordinary way, you say I must be the man + who borrowed Mrs. Levy's necklace in that extraordinary way at Carlsbad! I + should say it to the marines, Mr. Levy, if I were you; they're the only + force that are likely to listen to you." + </p> + <p> + "I do say it, all the same; and what's more you don't deny it. If you + weren't the man you wouldn't be so ready for another game like it now." + </p> + <p> + "Ready for it?" cried Raffles, more than ready for an undeniable point. + "I'm always your man for a new sensation, Mr. Levy, and for years I've + taken an academic interest in the very fine art of burglary; isn't that + so, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "I've often heard you say so," I replied without mishap. + </p> + <p> + "In these piping times," continued Raffles, "it's about the one exciting + and romantic career open to us. If it were not so infernally dishonest I + should have half a mind to follow it myself. And here you come and put up + a crib for me to crack in the best interests of equity and justice; not to + enrich the wicked cracksman, but to restore his rightful property to the + honest financier; a sort of teetotal felony—the very ginger-ale of + crime! Is that a beverage to refuse—a chance to miss—a + temptation to resist? Yet the risks are just as great as if it were a fine + old fruity felony; you can't expect me to run them for nothing, or even + for their own exciting sake. You know my terms, Mr. Levy; if you don't + accept them, it's already two in the morning, and I should like to get to + bed before it's light." + </p> + <p> + "And if I did accept them?" said Levy, after a considerable pause. + </p> + <p> + "The letter to which you attach such importance would most probably be in + your possession by the beginning of next week." + </p> + <p> + "And I should have to take my hands off a nice little property that has + tumbled into them?" + </p> + <p> + "Only for a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be + permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of + blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. + Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the crime of blackmail!" + </p> + <p> + A singular docility had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no + uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this case + ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I personally was + concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put him on his + guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles would not + even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with himself and + his apparent advantage. + </p> + <p> + "Will you give me until to-morrow morning?" said Levy, taking up his hat. + </p> + <p> + "If you mean the morning; by eleven I must be at Lord's." + </p> + <p> + "Say ten o'clock in Jermyn Street?" + </p> + <p> + "It's a strange bargain, Mr. Levy. I should prefer to clinch it out of + earshot of your clerks." + </p> + <p> + "Then I will come here." + </p> + <p> + "I shall be ready for you at ten." + </p> + <p> + "And alone?" + </p> + <p> + There was a sidelong glance at me with the proviso. + </p> + <p> + "You shall search the premises yourself and seal up all the doors." + </p> + <p> + "Meanwhile," said Levy, putting on his hat, "I shall think about it, but + that's all. I haven't agreed yet, Mr. Raffles; don't you make too sure + that I ever shall. I shall think about it—but don't you make too + sure." + </p> + <p> + He was gone like a lamb, this wild beast of five minutes back. Raffles + showed him out, and down into the courtyard, and out again into + Piccadilly. There was no question but that he was gone for good; back came + Raffles, rubbing his hands for joy. + </p> + <p> + "A fine night, Bunny! A finer day to follow! But a nice, slow, + wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" + </p> + <p> + I came to my point with all vehemence. + </p> + <p> + "Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had + run risks enough for his sake as it was!" + </p> + <p> + "How do you know it's for his sake—or anybody's?" asked Raffles, + quite hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, + Garlands or no Garlands? Besides, there's far less risk in what I mean to + do than in what I've been doing; at all events it's in my line." + </p> + <p> + "It's not in your line," I retorted, "to strike a bargain with a swine who + won't dream of keeping his side." + </p> + <p> + "I shall make him," said Raffles. "If he won't do what I want he shan't + have what he wants." + </p> + <p> + "But how could you trust him to keep his word?" + </p> + <p> + "His word!" cried Raffles, in ironical echo. "We shall have to carry + matters far beyond his word, of course; deeds, not words, Bunny, and the + deeds properly prepared by solicitors and executed by Dan Levy before he + lays a finger on his own blackmailing letter. You remember old Mother + Hubbard in our house at school? He's a little solicitor somewhere in the + City; he'll throw the whole thing into legal shape for us, and ask no + questions and tell no tales. You leave Mr. Shylock to me and Mother, and + we'll bring him up to the scratch as he ought to go." + </p> + <p> + There was no arguing with Raffles in such a mood; argue I did, but he paid + no attention to what I said. He had unlocked a drawer in the bureau, and + taken out a map that I had never seen before. I looked over his shoulder + as he spread it out in the light of his reading-lamp. And it was a map of + London capriciously sprinkled with wheels and asterisks of red ink; there + was a finished wheel in Bond Street, another in Half-Moon Street, one on + the site of Thornaby House, Park Lane, and others as remote as St. John's + Wood and Peter Street, Campden Hill; the asterisks were fewer, and I have + less reason to remember their latitude and longitude. + </p> + <p> + "What's this, A.J.?" I asked. "It looks exactly like a war-map." + </p> + <p> + "It is one, Bunny," said he; "it's the map of one man's war against the + ordered forces of society. The spokes are only the scenes of future + operations, but each finished wheel marks the field of some past + engagement, in which you have usually been the one man's one and only + accomplice." + </p> + <p> + And he stooped and drew the neatest of blood-red asterisks at the southern + extremity of Gray's Inn Square. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER X — "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + </h2> + <p> + The historic sward had just been cleared for action when Raffles and I met + at Lord's next day. I blush to own I had been knave and fool enough to + suggest that he should smuggle me into the pavilion; but perhaps the only + laws of man that Raffles really respected were those of the M.C.C., and it + was in Block B. that he joined me a minute or so before eleven. The sun + was as strong and the sky as blue as though the disastrous day before had + been just such another. But its tropical shower-bath had left the London + air as cleanly and as clear as crystal; the neutral tints of every day + were splashes of vivid colour, the waiting umpires animated snow-men, the + heap of sawdust at either end a pyramid of powdered gold upon an emerald + ground. And in the expectant hush before the appearance of the fielding + side, I still recall the Yorkshire accent of the Surrey Poet, hawking his + latest lyric on some "Great Stand by Mr. Webbe and Mr. Stoddart," and + incidentally assuring the crowd that Cambridge was going to win because + everybody said Oxford would. + </p> + <p> + "Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men emerged + from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light blue. The + captain's colours were bleached by service; but the wicket-keeper's were + the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male historian I shrink + from saying how well they suited him. + </p> + <p> + "Teddy Garland looks as though nothing had happened," was what I said at + the time, as I peered through my binocular at the padded figure with the + pink face and the gigantic gloves. + </p> + <p> + "That's because he knows there's a chance of nothing more happening," was + the reply. "I've seen him and his poor old governor up here since I saw + Dan Levy." + </p> + <p> + I eagerly inquired as to the upshot of the earlier interview, but Raffles + looked as though he had not heard. The Oxford captain had come out to open + the innings with a player less known to fame; the first ball of the match + hurtled down the pitch, and the Oxford captain left it severely alone. + Teddy took it charmingly, and almost with the same movement the ball was + back in the bowler's hands. + </p> + <p> + "<i>He's</i> all right!" muttered Raffles with a long breath. "So is our + Mr. Shylock, Bunny; we fixed things up in no time after all. But the worst + of it is I shall only be able to stop—" + </p> + <p> + He broke off, mouth open as it might have been mine. A ball had been + driven hard to extra cover, and quite well fielded; another had been taken + by Teddy as competently as the first, but not returned to the bowler. The + Oxford captain had played at it, and we heard something even in Block B. + </p> + <p> + "How's that?" came almost simultaneously in Teddy's ringing voice. Up went + the umpire's finger, and down came Raffles's hand upon my thigh. + </p> + <p> + "He's caught him, Bunny!" he cried in my ear above the Cambridge cheers. + "The best bat on either side, and Teddy's outed him third ball!" He + stopped to watch the defeated captain's slow return, the demonstration on + the pitch in Teddy's honour; then he touched me on the arm and dropped his + voice. "He's forgotten all his troubles now, Bunny, if you like; nothing's + going to worry him till lunch, unless he misses a sitting chance. And he + won't, you'll see; a good start means even more behind the sticks than in + front of 'em." + </p> + <p> + Raffles was quite right. Another wicket fell cheaply in another way; then + came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and + judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass + unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the + bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and + beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching + behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great + gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held + them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for + four byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; + so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain + particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice + extracted a stray detail. + </p> + <p> + "The old sinner has a place on the river, Bunny, though I have my + suspicions of a second establishment nearer town. But I'm to find him at + his lawful home all the next few nights, and sitting up for me till two in + the morning." + </p> + <p> + "Then you're going to Gray's Inn Square this week?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm going there this morning for a peep at the crib; there's no time to + be lost, but on the other hand there's a devil of a lot to learn. I say, + Bunny, there's going to be another change of bowling; the fast stuff, too, + by Jove!" + </p> + <p> + A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper + was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. + </p> + <p> + "You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only + answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a + crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!" + </p> + <p> + The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at + the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent + contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking + thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered + Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into + Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less + reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at my + side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit hard + but very late. It was a hit that might have smashed the pavilion palings. + But it never reached them; it stuck in Teddy's left glove instead, and + none of us knew it till we saw him staggering towards long-leg, and + tossing up the ball as he recovered balance. + </p> + <p> + "That's the worst ball that ever took a wicket in this match!" vowed a + reverend veteran as the din died down. + </p> + <p> + "And the best catch!" cried Raffles. "Come on, Bunny; that's my <i>nunc + dimittis</i> for the day. There would be nothing to compare with it if I + could stop to see every ball bowled, and I mustn't see another." + </p> + <p> + "But why?" I asked, as I followed Raffles into the press behind the + carriages. + </p> + <p> + "I've already told you why," said he. + </p> + <p> + I got as close to him as one could in that crowd. + </p> + <p> + "You're not thinking of doing it to-night, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "I don't know." + </p> + <p> + "But you'll let <i>me</i> know?" + </p> + <p> + "Not if I can help it, Bunny; didn't I promise not to drag you any further + through this particular mire?" + </p> + <p> + "But if <i>I</i> can help <i>you</i>?" I whispered, after a momentary + separation in the throng. + </p> + <p> + "Oh! if I can't get on without you," said Raffles, not nicely, "I'll let + you know fast enough. But do drop the subject now; here come old Garland + and Camilla Belsize!" + </p> + <p> + They did not see us quite so soon as we saw them, and for a moment one + felt a spy; but it was an interesting moment even to a person smarting + from a snub. The ruined man looked haggard, ill, unfit to be about, the + very embodiment of the newspaper report concerning him. But the spirit + beamed through the shrinking flesh, the poor old fellow was alight with + pride and love, exultant in spite of himself and his misfortunes. He had + seen his boy's great catch; he had heard the cheers, he would hear them + till his dying hour. Camilla Belsize had also seen and heard, but not with + the same exquisite appreciation. Cricket was a game to her, it was not + that quintessence and epitome of life it would seem to be to some of its + devotees; and real life was pressing so heavily upon her that the trivial + consolation which had banished her companion's load could not lighten + hers. So at least I thought as they approached, the man so worn and + radiant, the girl so pensive for all her glorious youth and beauty: his + was the old head bowed with sorrow, his also the simpler and the younger + heart. + </p> + <p> + "That catch will console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to + Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I + wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little + enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the + cricket. And that was usual enough. + </p> + <p> + Raffles was already saying he must go, with an explanatory murmur to Mr. + Garland, who clasped his hand with a suddenly clouded countenance. But + Miss Belsize only bowed, and scarcely took her eyes off a couple of + outwardly inferior men, who had attracted my attention through hers, until + they also passed out of the ground. + </p> + <p> + Mr. Garland was on tip-toes watching the game again with mercurial ardour. + </p> + <p> + "Mr. Manders will look after me," she said to him, "won't you, Mr. + Manders?" I made some suitable asseveration, and she added: "Mr. Garland's + a member, you know, and dying to go into the Pavilion." + </p> + <p> + "Only just to hear what they think of Teddy," the poor old boy confessed; + and when we had arranged where to meet in the interval, away he hurried + with his keen, worn face. + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize turned to me the moment he was gone. + </p> + <p> + "I want to speak to you, Mr. Manders," she said quickly but without + embarrassment. "Where can we talk?" + </p> + <p> + "And watch as well?" I suggested, thinking of the young man at his best + behind the sticks. + </p> + <p> + "I want to speak to you first," she said, "where we shan't be overheard. + It's about Mr. Raffles!" added Miss Belsize as she met my stare. + </p> + <p> + About Raffles again! About Raffles, after all that she had learnt the day + before! I did not enjoy the prospect as I led the way past the ivy-mantled + tennis-court of those days to the practice-ground, turned for the nonce + into a tented lawn. + </p> + <p> + "And what about Raffles?" I asked as we struck out for ourselves across + the grass. + </p> + <p> + "I'm afraid he's in some danger," replied Miss Belsize. And she stopped in + her walk and confronted me as frankly as though we had the animated scene + to ourselves. + </p> + <p> + "Danger!" I repeated, guiltily enough, no doubt. "What makes you think + that, Miss Belsize?" + </p> + <p> + My companion hesitated for the first time. + </p> + <p> + "You won't tell him I told you, Mr. Manders?" + </p> + <p> + "Not if you don't want me to," said I, taken aback more by her manner than + by the request itself. + </p> + <p> + "You promise me that?" + </p> + <p> + "Certainly." + </p> + <p> + "Then tell me, did you notice two men who passed close to us just after we + had all met?" + </p> + <p> + "There are so many men to notice," said I to gain time. + </p> + <p> + "But these were not the sort one expects to see here to-day." + </p> + <p> + "Did they wear bowlers and short coats?" + </p> + <p> + "You did notice them!" + </p> + <p> + "Only because I saw you watching them," said I, recalling the whole scene. + </p> + <p> + "They wanted watching," rejoined Miss Belsize dryly. "They followed Mr. + Raffles out of the ground!" + </p> + <p> + "So they did!" I reflected aloud in my alarm. + </p> + <p> + "They were following you both when you met us." + </p> + <p> + "The dickens they were! Was that the first you saw of them?" + </p> + <p> + "No; the first time was over there at the nets before play began. I + noticed those two men behind Teddy's net. They were not watching him; that + called my attention to them. It's my belief they were lying in wait for + Mr. Raffles; at any rate, when he came they moved away. But they followed + us afterwards across the ground." + </p> + <p> + "You are sure of that?" + </p> + <p> + "I looked round to see," said Miss Belsize, avoiding my eyes for the first + time. + </p> + <p> + "Did you think the men—detectives?" + </p> + <p> + And I forced a laugh. + </p> + <p> + "I was afraid they might be, Mr. Manders, though I have never seen one off + the stage." + </p> + <p> + "Still," I pursued, with painfully sustained amusement, "you were ready to + find A.J. Raffles being shadowed here at Lord's of all places in the + world?" + </p> + <p> + "I was ready for anything, anywhere," said Miss Belsize, "after all I + heard yesterday afternoon." + </p> + <p> + "You mean about poor Mr. Garland and his affairs?" + </p> + <p> + It was an ingenuously disingenuous suggestion; it brought my companion's + eyes back to mine, with something of the scorn that I deserved. + </p> + <p> + "No, Mr. Manders, I meant after what we all heard between Mr. Levy and Mr. + Raffles; and you knew very well what I meant," added Miss Belsize + severely. + </p> + <p> + "But surely you didn't take all that seriously?" said I, without denying + the just impeachment. + </p> + <p> + "How could I help it? The insinuation was serious enough, in all + conscience!" exclaimed Camilla Belsize. + </p> + <p> + "That is," said I, since she was not to be wilfully misunderstood, "that + poor old Raffles had something to do with this jewel robbery at Carlsbad?" + </p> + <p> + "If it was a robbery." + </p> + <p> + She winced at the word. + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's + own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to embrace + that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it really + was what she had meant. + </p> + <p> + "Obviously!" says she, with an impromptu superiority worthy of Raffles + himself. "I wonder you never thought of that, Mr. Manders, when you know + what a trick you both played Mr. Levy only yesterday. Mr. Raffles himself + told us all about that; and I'm very grateful to you both; you must know I + am—for Teddy's sake," added Miss Belsize, with one quick remorseful + glance towards the great arena. "Still it only shows what Mr. Raffles is—and—and + it's what I meant when we were talking about him yesterday." + </p> + <p> + "I don't remember," said I, remembering fast enough. + </p> + <p> + "In the rockery," she reminded me. "When you asked what people said about + him, and I said that about living on his wits." + </p> + <p> + "And being a paid amateur!" + </p> + <p> + "But the other was the worst." + </p> + <p> + "I'm not so sure," said I. "But his wits wouldn't carry him very far if he + only took necklaces and put them back again." + </p> + <p> + "But it was all a joke," she reminded us both with a bit of a start. "It + must have been a joke, if Mr. Raffles did it at all. And it would be + dreadful if anything happened to him because of a wretched practical + joke!" + </p> + <p> + There was no mistake about her feeling now; she really felt that it would + be "dreadful if anything happened" to the man whom yesterday she had + seemed both to dislike and to distrust. Her voice vibrated with anxiety. A + bright film covered the fine eyes, and they were finer than ever as they + continued to face me unashamed; but I was fool enough to speak my mind, + and at that they flashed themselves dry. + </p> + <p> + "I thought you didn't like him?" had been my remark, and "Who says I do?" + was hers. "But he has done a lot for Teddy," she went on, "and never more + than yesterday," with her hand for an instant on my arm, "when you helped + him! I am dreadfully sorry for Mr. Garland, sorrier than I am for poor + Teddy. But Mr. Raffles is more than sorry. I know he means to do what he + can. He seems to think there must be something wrong; he spoke of bringing + that brute to reason—if not to justice. It would be too dreadful if + such a creature could turn the tables on Mr. Raffles by trumping up any + charge against him!" + </p> + <p> + There was an absolute echo of my own tone in "trumping up any charge," and + I thought the echo sounded even more insincere. But at least it showed me + where we were. Miss Belsize was not deceived; she only wanted me to think + she was. Miss Belsize had divined what I knew, but neither of us would + admit to the other that the charge against Raffles would be true enough. + </p> + <p> + "But why should these men follow him?" said I, really wondering why they + should. "If there were anything definite against old Raffles, don't you + think he would be arrested?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh! I don't know," was the slightly irritable answer. "I only think he + should be warned that he is being followed." + </p> + <p> + "Whatever he has done?" I ventured. + </p> + <p> + "Yes!" said she. "Whatever he has done—after what he did for Teddy + yesterday!" + </p> + <p> + "You want me to warn him?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes—but not from me!" + </p> + <p> + "And suppose he really did take Mrs. Levy's necklace?" + </p> + <p> + "That's just what we are supposing." + </p> + <p> + "But suppose it wasn't for a joke at all?" + </p> + <p> + I spoke as one playfully plumbing the abysmally absurd; what I did desire + to sound was the loyalty of this new, unexpected, and still captious ally. + And I thought myself strangely successful at the first cast; for Miss + Belsize looked me in the face as I was looking her, and I trusted her + before she spoke. + </p> + <p> + "Well, after yesterday," she said, "I should warn him all the same!" + </p> + <p> + "You would back your Raffles right or wrong?" I murmured, perceiving that + Camilla Belsize was, after all, like all the rest of us. + </p> + <p> + "Against a vulgar extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without + repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think + anything of him—apart from what you did between you for Teddy + yesterday." + </p> + <p> + We had continued our stroll some time ago, and now it was I who stood + still. I looked at my watch. It still wanted some minutes to the luncheon + interval. + </p> + <p> + "If Raffles took a cab to his rooms," I said, "he must be nearly there and + I must telephone to him." + </p> + <p> + "Is there a call-office on the ground?" + </p> + <p> + "Only in the pavilion, I believe, for the use of the members." + </p> + <p> + "Then you must go to the nearest one outside." + </p> + <p> + "And what about you?" + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize brightened with her smile of perfect and unconscious + independence. + </p> + <p> + "Oh, I shall be all right," she said. "I know where to find Mr. Garland, + even if I don't pick up an escort on the way." + </p> + <p> + But it was she who escorted me to the tall turnstile nearest Wellington + Road. + </p> + <p> + "And you do see why I want to put Mr. Raffles on his guard?" she said + pointedly as we shook hands. "It's only because you and he have done so + much for Teddy!" + </p> + <p> + And because she did not end by reminding me of my promise, I was all the + more reluctantly determined to keep it to the letter, even though Raffles + should think as ill as ever of one who was at least beginning to think + better of him. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XI — A Dash in the Dark + </h2> + <p> + In a few lines which I found waiting for me at the club, and have somewhat + imprudently preserved, Raffles professes to have known he was being + shadowed even before we met at Lord's: "but it was no use talking about it + until the foe were in the cart." He goes on to explain the simple means by + which he reduced the gentlemen in billycocks to the pitch of discomfiture + implied in his metaphor. He had taken a hansom to the Burlington Gardens + entrance to the Albany, and kept it waiting while he went in and changed + his clothes; then he had sent Barraclough to pay off the cab, and himself + marched out into Piccadilly, what time the billycock brims were still + shading watchful eyes in Burlington Gardens. There, to be sure, I myself + had spotted one of the precious pair when I drove up after vain exertions + at the call-office outside Lord's; but by that time his confederate was on + guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not only shown a clean pair + of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an empty cage. He dismisses + them not unfairly with the epithet "amateurish." Thus I was the more + surprised, but not the less relieved, to learn that he was "running down + into the country for the weekend, to be out of their way"; but he would be + back on the Monday night, "to keep an engagement you wot of, Bunny. And if + you like you may meet me under the clock at Waterloo (in flannel kit and + tennis-shoes for choice) at the witching hour of twelve sharp." + </p> + <p> + If I liked! I had a premature drink in honour of an invitation more + gratifying to my vanity than any compliment old Raffles had paid me yet; + for I could still hear his ironical undertaking to let me know if he could + not do without me, and there was obviously no irony in this delightfully + early intimation of that very flattering fact. It altered my whole view of + the case. I might disapprove of the risks Raffles was running for his + other friends, but the more I was allowed to share in them the less + critical I was inclined to be. Besides I was myself clearly implicated in + the issue as between my own friend and the common enemy; it was no more + palatable to me than it was to Raffles, to be beaten by Dan Levy after our + initial victory over him. So I drank like a man to his destruction, and + subsequently stole forth to spy upon his foolish myrmidons, who flattered + themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The imbeciles were at it + still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens looked unutterably bored, + but with his blots of whisker and his grimy jowl, as flagrant a detective + officer as ever I saw, even if he had not so considerately dressed the + part. The other bruiser was an equally distinctive type, with a formidable + fighting face and a chest like a barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me + less occupied in taking notice than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility + one could scarcely excel the other; and between them they raised my + spirits to the zenith. + </p> + <p> + I spent the rest of the afternoon at their own game, dogging Miss Belsize + about Lord's until at last I had an opportunity of informing her that + Raffles was quite safe. It may be that I made my report with too much + gusto when my chance came; at any rate, it was only the fact that appeared + to interest Miss Belsize; the details, over which I gloated, seemed to + inspire in her a repugnance consistent with the prejudice she had + displayed against Raffles yesterday, but not with her grateful solicitude + on his behalf as revealed to me that very morning. I could only feel that + gratitude was the beginning and the end of her new regard for him. Raffles + had never fascinated this young girl as he did the rest of us; ordinarily + engaged to an ordinary man, she was proof against the glamour that dazzled + us. Nay, though she would not admit it even to me his friend, though like + Levy she pretended to embrace the theory of the practical joke, making it + the pretext for her anxiety, I felt more certain than ever that she now + guessed, and had long suspected, what manner of man Raffles really was, + and that her natural antipathy was greater even than before. Still more + certain was I that she would never betray him by word or deed; that, + whatever harm might come of his present proceedings, it would not be + through Camilla Belsize. + </p> + <p> + But I was now determined to do my own utmost to minimise the dangers, to + be a real help to Raffles in the act of altruistic depravity to which he + had committed himself, and not merely a fifth wheel to his dashing + chariot. Accordingly I went into solemn training for the event before us: + a Turkish bath on the Saturday, a quiet Sunday between Mount Street and + the club, and most of Monday lying like a log in cold-blooded preparation + for the night's work. And when night fell I took it upon me to reconnoitre + the ground myself before meeting Raffles at Waterloo. + </p> + <p> + Another cool and starry evening seemed to have tempted all the town and + his wife into the streets. The great streams of traffic were busier than + ever, the backwaters emptier, and Gray's Inn a basin drained to the last + dreg of visible humanity. In one moment I passed through gateway and alley + from the voices and lights of Holborn into a perfectly deserted square of + bare ground and bright stars. The contrast was altogether startling, for I + had never been there before; but for the same reason I had already lost my + bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square when I was only in + South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a hopeless search for the + offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after door had I tried in vain, + and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a stray molecule of the + population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, but with the quick step + of the man who knows his way. I darted from a doorway to inquire mine, but + he was across the square before I could cut him off, and as he passed + through the rays of a lamp beside a second archway, I fell back thanking + Providence and Raffles for my rubber soles. The man had neither seen nor + heard me, but at the last moment I had recognised him as the burlier of + the two blockheads who had shadowed Raffles three days before. + </p> + <p> + He passed under the arch without looking round. I flattened myself against + the wall on my side of the arch; and in so standing I was all but + eye-witness of a sudden encounter in the square beyond. + </p> + <p> + The quick steps stopped, and there was a "Here you are!" on one side, and + a "Well! Where is he?" on the other, both very eager and below the breath. + </p> + <p> + "On the job," whispered the first voice. "Up to the neck!" + </p> + <p> + "When did 'e go in?" + </p> + <p> + "Nearly an hour ago; when I sent the messenger." + </p> + <p> + "Which way?" + </p> + <p> + "Up through number seventeen." + </p> + <p> + "Next door, eh?" + </p> + <p> + "That's right." + </p> + <p> + "Over the roof?" + </p> + <p> + "Can't say; he's left no tracks. I been up to see." + </p> + <p> + "I suppose there's the usual ladder and trapdoor?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes, but the ladder's hanging in its proper place. He couldn't have put + it back there, could he?" + </p> + <p> + The other grunted; presently he expressed a doubt whether Raffles (and it + thrilled me to hear the very name) had succeeded in breaking into the + lawyer's office at all. The first man on the scene, however, was quite + sure of it—and so was I. + </p> + <p> + "And we've got to hang about," grumbled the newcomer, "till he comes out + again?" + </p> + <p> + "That's it. We can't miss him. He must come back into the square or + through into the gardens, and if he does that he'll have to come over + these here railings into Field Court. We got him either way, and there's a + step just here where we can sit and see both ways as though it had been + made for us. You come and try ... a door into the old hall ..." + </p> + <p> + That was all I heard distinctly; first their footsteps, and then the few + extra yards, made the rest unintelligible. But I had heard enough. "The + usual ladder and trap-door!" Those blessed words alone might prove worth + their weight in great letters of solid gold. + </p> + <p> + Now I could breathe again; now I relaxed my body and turned my head, and + peered through the arch with impunity, and along the whole western side of + Gray's Inn Square, with its dusky fringe of plane-trees and its vivid line + of lamps, its strip of pavement, and its wall of many-windowed houses + under one unbroken roof. Dim lights smouldered in the column of landing + windows over every door; otherwise there was no break in the blackness of + that gaunt fagade. Yet in some dark room or other behind those walls I + seemed to see Raffles at work as plainly as I had just heard our natural + enemies plotting his destruction. I saw him at a safe. I saw him at a + desk. I saw him leaving everything as he had found it, only to steal down + and out into the very arms of the law. And I felt that even that desperate + <i>dinouement</i> was little more than he deserved for letting me think + myself accessory before the fact, when all the time he meant me to have + nothing whatever to do with it! Well, I should have everything to do with + it now; if Raffles was to be saved from the consequences of his own + insanity, I and I alone must save him. It was the chance of my life to + show him my real worth. And yet the difficulty of the thing might have + daunted Raffles himself. + </p> + <p> + I knew what to do if only I could gain the house which he had made the + base of his own operations; at least I knew what to attempt, and what + Raffles had done I might do. So far the wily couple within earshot had + helped me out of their own mouths. But they were only just round the + corner that hid them from my view; stray words still reached me; and they + knew me by sight, would recognise me at a glance, might pounce upon me as + I passed. Unless— + </p> + <p> + <i>I</i> had it! + </p> + <p> + The crowd in Holborn seemed strange and unreal as I jostled in its midst + once more. I was out of it in a moment, however, and into a 'bus, and out + of the 'bus in a couple of minutes by my watch. One more minute and I was + seeing how far back I could sit in a hansom bound for Gray's Inn Square. + </p> + <p> + "I forget the number," I had told the cabman, "but it's three or four + doors beyond Burroughs and Burroughs, the solicitors." + </p> + <p> + The gate into Holborn had to be opened for me, but the gate-keeper had not + seen me on my previous entrance and exit afoot through the postern. It was + when we drove under the further arch into the actual square that I pressed + my head hard against the back of the hansom, and turned my face towards + Field Court. The enemy might have abandoned their position, they might + meet me face to face as I landed on the pavement; that was my risk, and I + ran it without disaster. We passed the only house with an outer door to it + in the square (now there is none), and on the plate beside it I read + BURROUGHS AND BURROUGHS with a thrill. Up went my stick; my shilling (with + a peculiarly superfluous sixpence for luck) I thrust through the trap with + the other hand; and I was across the pavement, and on the stairs four + clear doors beyond the lawyer's office, before the driver had begun to + turn his horse. + </p> + <p> + They were broad bare stairs, with great office doors right and left on + every landing, and in the middle the landing window looking out into the + square. I waited well within the window on the first floor; and as my + hansom drove out under the arch, the light of its near lamp flashed across + two figures lounging on the steps of that entrance to the hall; but there + was no stopping or challenging the cabman, no sound at all but those of + hoofs and bell, and soon only that of my own heart beating as I fled up + the rest of the stairs in my rubber soles. + </p> + <p> + Near the top I paused to thank my kindly stars; sure enough there was a + long step-ladder hanging on a great nail over the last half-landing, and a + square trap-door right over the landing proper! I ran up just to see the + names on the two top doors; one was evidently that of some pettifogging + firm of solicitors, while the other bespoke a private resident, whom I + judged to be out of town by the congestion of postal matter that met my + fingers in his letter-box. Neither had any terrors for me. The step-ladder + was unhooked without another moment's hesitation. Care alone was necessary + to place it in position without making a noise; then up I went, and up + went the trapdoor next, without mishap or hindrance until I tried to stand + up in the loft, and caught my head a crack against the tiles instead. + </p> + <p> + This was disconcerting in more ways than one, for I could not leave the + ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match + and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. + The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the + roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, + and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have + wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute + before closing it with great caution, a squeak and a scuttle in the loft + itself being the only sign that I had disturbed a living creature. + </p> + <p> + There was a grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but + leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now + stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here in + the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless chimney-stacks + deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of pollards rising + out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone wires that + interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and aft in a + similar slope to that at either side; the length of it doubtless tallied + with the frontage of a single house; and when I had clambered over the + southern extremity into a precisely similar valley I saw that this must be + the case. I had entered the fourth house beyond Burroughs and Burroughs's, + or was it the fifth? I threaded three valleys, and then I knew. + </p> + <p> + In all three there had been dormer windows on either hand, that on the + square side leading into the loft; the other, or others, forming a sort of + skylight to some top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these standing + very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake on the + leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of Raffles's + favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the strength of + any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled into a room in + which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room if ever I put + my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles had led the + way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected on something + less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the bars of a kitchen + range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the kitchen table. A cat + was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a step of a wooden + chair, and came down like a cat myself. + </p> + <p> + I found the kitchen door, found a passage so dark that the window at the + end hung like a picture slashed across the middle. Yet it only looked into + the square, for I peered out when I had crept along the passage, and even + thought I both heard and saw the enemy at their old post. But I was in + another enemy's country now; at every step I stopped to listen for the + thud of feet bounding out of bed. Hearing nothing, I had the temerity at + last to strike a match upon my trousers, and by its light I found the + outer door. This was not bolted nor yet shut; it was merely ajar, and so I + left it. + </p> + <p> + The rooms opposite appeared to be an empty set; those on the second and + first floors were only partially shut off by swing doors leading to + different departments of the mighty offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. + There were no lights upon these landings, and I gathered my information by + means of successive matches, whose tell-tale ends I carefully concealed + about my person, and from copious legends painted on the walls. Thus I had + little difficulty in groping my way to the private offices of Sir John + Burroughs, head of the celebrated firm; but I looked in vain for a layer + of light under any of the massive mahogany doors with which this portion + of the premises was glorified. Then I began softly trying doors that + proved to be locked. Only one yielded to my hand; and when it was a few + inches open, all was still black; but the next few brought me to the end + of my quest, and the close of my solitary adventures. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XII — A Midsummer Night's Work + </h2> + <p> + The dense and total darkness was broken in one place, and one only, by a + plateful of light proceeding from a tiny bulb of incandescence in its + centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a + pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other side, + something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its plated + parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, and he + could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his task. + Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute + concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was + a hint of the same quiet and wary smile with which Raffles would bowl an + over or drill holes in a door. + </p> + <p> + I stood for some moments fascinated, entranced, before creeping in to warn + him of my presence in a whisper. But this time he heard my step, snatched + up electric torch and glittering revolver, and covered me with the one in + the other's light. + </p> + <p> + "A.J.!" I gasped. + </p> + <p> + "Bunny!" he exclaimed in equal amazement and displeasure. "What the devil + do you mean by this?" + </p> + <p> + "You're in danger," I whispered. "I came to warn you!" + </p> + <p> + "Danger? I'm never out of it. But how did you know where to find me, and + how on God's earth did <i>you</i> get here?" + </p> + <p> + "I'll tell you some other time. You know those two brutes you dodged the + other day?" + </p> + <p> + "I ought to." + </p> + <p> + "They're waiting below for you at this very moment." + </p> + <p> + Raffles peered a few moments through the handful of white light between + our faces. + </p> + <p> + "Let them wait!" said he, and replaced the torch upon the table and put + down his revolver for his pen. + </p> + <p> + "They're detectives!" I urged. + </p> + <p> + "Are they, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "What else could they be?" + </p> + <p> + "What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head + and deliberate pen. + </p> + <p> + "You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and + lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my + belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just + to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want + a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" + </p> + <p> + "I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't do + things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience, Bunny, and + so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes + there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the next + ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, or else + get out by yourself as you came in." + </p> + <p> + I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the + landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my way + to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to + surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same + mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not + one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" + I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and + listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to + welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police + behind them. + </p> + <p> + Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand + my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. + </p> + <p> + "Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. + </p> + <p> + "Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" + </p> + <p> + "I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" + </p> + <p> + "You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would have + served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." + </p> + <p> + "Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. + </p> + <p> + "Rather!" + </p> + <p> + "Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." + </p> + <p> + "It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that the + crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper in its + place." + </p> + <p> + "I never heard a sound." + </p> + <p> + "I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You see + how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" + </p> + <p> + I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the + house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. + </p> + <p> + "Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" + </p> + <p> + "Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. + </p> + <p> + "You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This + is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a + commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come when + he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have been a + shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" + </p> + <p> + We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against + Raffles's legs. + </p> + <p> + "But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?" + </p> + <p> + "Made friends with him when I called on Friday; didn't I tell you I had an + appointment with the bloated head of this notorious firm when I cleared + out of Lord's? I'm about to strengthen his already unrivalled list of + clients; you shall hear all about that later. We had another interview + this afternoon, when I asked my V.C. if he ever went to the theatre; you + see he had spotted Tom Fool, and told me he never had a chance of getting + to Lord's. So I got him tickets for 'Rosemary' instead, but of course I + swore they had just been given to me and I couldn't use them. You should + have seen how the hero beamed! So that's where he is, he and his wife—or + was, until the curtain went down." + </p> + <p> + "Good Lord, Raffles, is the piece over?" + </p> + <p> + "Nearly ten minutes ago, but it'll take 'em all that unless they come home + in a cab." + </p> + <p> + And Raffles had been sitting before the fire, on the kitchen table, + encouraging the cat, when this formidable V.C. and his wife must be coming + every instant nearer Gray's Inn Square! + </p> + <p> + "Why, my dear Bunny, I should back myself to swarm up and out without + making a sound or leaving a sign, if I heard our hero's key in the lock + this moment. After you, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + I climbed up with trembling knees, Raffles holding the rope taut to make + it easier. Once more I stood upright under the stars and the telephone + wires, and leaned against a chimney-stack to wait for Raffles. But before + I saw him, before I even heard his unnecessarily noiseless movements, I + heard something else that sent a chill all through me. + </p> + <p> + It was not the sound of a key in the lock. It was something far worse than + that. It was the sound of voices on the roof, and of footsteps drawing + nearer through the very next valley of leads and tiles. + </p> + <p> + I was crouching on the leads outside the dormer window as Raffles climbed + into sight within. + </p> + <p> + "They're after us up here!" I whispered in his face. "On the next roof! I + hear them!" + </p> + <p> + Up came Raffles with his hands upon the sill, then with his knees between + his hands, and so out on all-fours into the narrow rivulet of lead between + the sloping tiles. Out of the opposite slope, a yard or two on, rose a + stout stack of masonry, a many-headed monster with a chimney-pot on each, + and a full supply of wires for whiskers. Behind this Gorgon of the + house-tops Raffles hustled me without a word, and himself took shelter as + the muffled voices on the next roof grew more distinct. They were the + voices that I had overheard already in the square, the voices but not the + tones. The tones—the words—were those of an enemy divided + against itself. + </p> + <p> + "And now we've gone and come too far!" grumbled the one who had been last + to arrive upon the scene below. + </p> + <p> + "We did that," the other muttered, "the moment we came in after 'em. We + should've stopped where we were." + </p> + <p> + "With that other cove driving up and going in without ever showing a + glim?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles nudged me, and I saw what I had done. But the weakling of the pair + still defended the position he had reluctantly abandoned on <i>terra firma</i>; + he was all for returning while there was time; and there were fragments of + the broken argument that were beginning to puzzle me when a soft oath from + the man in front proclaimed the discovery of the open window and the rope. + </p> + <p> + "We got 'em," he whispered, stagily, "like rats in a trap!" + </p> + <p> + "You forget what it is we've got to get." + </p> + <p> + "Well, we must first catch our man, mustn't we? And how d'ye know his pal + hasn't gone in to warn him where we were? If he has, and we'd stopped + there, they'd do us easy." + </p> + <p> + "They may do us easier down there in the dark," replied the other, with a + palpable shiver. "They'll hear us and lie in wait. In the dark! We shan't + have a dog's chance." + </p> + <p> + "All right! You get out of it and save your skin. I'd rather work alone + than with a blessed funk!" + </p> + <p> + The situation was identical with many a one in the past between Raffles + and me. The poor brute in my part resented the charge against his courage + as warmly as I had always done. He was merely for the better part of + valour, and how right he was Raffles and I only knew. I hoped the lesson + was not lost upon Raffles. Dialogue and action alike resembled one of our + own performances far more than ordinary police methods as we knew them. We + heard the squeeze of the leader's clothes and the rattle of his buttons + over the window ledge. "It's like old times," we heard him mutter; and + before many moments the weakling was impulsively whispering down to know + if he should follow. + </p> + <p> + I felt for that fellow at every stage of his unwilling proceedings. I was + to feel for him still more. Raffles had stepped down like a cat from + behind our cover; grasping an angle of the stack with either hand, I put + my head round after him. The wretched player of my old part was on his + haunches at the window, stooping forward, more in than out. I saw Raffles + grinning in the starlight, saw his foot poised and the other poor devil + disappear. Then a dull bump, then a double crash and such a cursing as + left no doubt that the second fellow had fallen plumb on top of the first. + Also from his language I fancied he would survive the fall. + </p> + <p> + But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped out + at my feet than he had untied the other end. + </p> + <p> + "Like lamplighters, Bunny!" + </p> + <p> + And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the + hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or + two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs. + </p> + <p> + "This is where I came out," I called to Raffles as he passed the place. + "There's a ladder here where I left it in the loft!" + </p> + <p> + "No time for ladders!" cried Raffles over his shoulder, and not for some + moments did he stop in his stride. Nor was it I who stopped him then; it + was a sudden hubbub somewhere behind us, somewhere below; the blowing of a + police whistle, and the sound of many footsteps in the square. + </p> + <p> + "That's for us!" I gasped. "The ladder! The ladder!" + </p> + <p> + "Ladder be damned!" returned Raffles, roughly. "It isn't for us at all; + it's my pal the V.C. who has come home and bottled the other blighters." + </p> + <p> + "Thinking they're thieves?" + </p> + <p> + "Thinking any rot you like! Our course is over the rest of the roofs on + this side, over the whole lot at the top end, and, if possible, down the + last staircase in the corner. Then we only have to show ourselves in the + square for a tick before we're out by way of Verulam Buildings." + </p> + <p> + "Is there another gate there?" I asked as he scampered on with me after + him. + </p> + <p> + "Yes; but it's closed and the porter leaves at twelve, and it must be + jolly near that now. Wait, Bunny! Some one or other is sure to be looking + out of the top windows across the square; they'll see us if we take our + fences too freely!" + </p> + <p> + We had come to one of the transverse tile-slopes, which hitherto we had + run boldly up and down in our helpful and noiseless rubber soles; now, not + to show ourselves against the stars, to a stray pair of eyes on some other + high level, we crept up on all fours and rolled over at full length. It + added considerably to our time over more than a whole side of the square. + Meanwhile the police whistles had stopped, but the company in the square + had swollen audibly. + </p> + <p> + It seemed an age, but I suppose it was not many minutes, before we came to + the last of the dormer windows, looking into the last vale of tiles in the + north-east angle of the square. Something gleamed in the starlight, there + was a sharp little sound of splitting wood, and Raffles led me on hands + and knees into just such a loft as I had entered before by ladder. His + electric torch discovered the trapdoor at a gleam. Raffles opened it and + let down the rope, only to whisk it up again so smartly that it struck my + face like a whiplash. + </p> + <p> + A door had opened on the top landing. We listened over the open trap-door, + and knew that another stood listening on the invisible threshold + underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart leapt for he + never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by our bird's-eye + view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red neck, a billow + of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom slippers at every + step that we could follow; but no face all the way down, because he was a + bent old boy who never looked like looking up. + </p> + <p> + Raffles threw his rope aside, gave me his hand instead, and dropped me on + the landing like a feather, dropping after me without a moment's pause. In + fact, the old fellow with the fez could hardly have completed his descent + of the stairs when we began ours. Yet through the landing window we saw + him charging diagonally across the square, shouting and gesticulating in + his flight to the gathering crowd near the far corner. + </p> + <p> + "He spotted us, Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, after listening an instant in + the entrance. "Stick to me like my shadow, and do every blessed thing I + do." + </p> + <p> + Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of + lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of + attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square + behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our + direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in + front of Verulam Buildings. + </p> + <p> + It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at + the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us + through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can + the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate + had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and dry + in a hansom. + </p> + <p> + "King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we + reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to + the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, and + Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That little + bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the first + cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as scent + is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to + ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge + and a good five minutes to go!" + </p> + <p> + "You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." + </p> + <p> + "But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his note, + and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. + </p> + <p> + "I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied + Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." + </p> + <p> + "And <i>I</i> thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles laughed. + </p> + <p> + "The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! To-night, + for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your unselfish + audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear fellow, it + was a sadly unnecessary effort." + </p> + <p> + "Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" + </p> + <p> + "Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off + for his pal." + </p> + <p> + "Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." + </p> + <p> + "Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never + have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going in + after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me on + my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and those + two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside the + Albany." + </p> + <p> + "Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting + for you in any case if you didn't show up." + </p> + <p> + "Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it wasn't + their job at all." + </p> + <p> + "Not to take you in the act if they could?" + </p> + <p> + "No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to + earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from + old Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Levy!" + </p> + <p> + "Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?" + </p> + <p> + "His creatures, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "He set them to shadow me from the hour of our interview on Saturday + morning. Their instructions were to bag the letter from me as soon as I + got it, but to let me go free to the devil!" + </p> + <p> + "How can you know, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny, where do you suppose I've been spending the week-end? Did + you think I'd go in with a sly dog like old Shylock without watching him + and finding out his real game? I should have thought it hardly necessary + to tell you I've been down the river all the time; down the river," added + Raffles, chuckling, "in a Canadian canoe and a torpedo beard! I was + cruising near the foot of the old brute's garden on Friday evening when + one of the precious pair came down to tell him they had let me slip + already. I landed and heard the whole thing through the window of the room + where we shall find him to-night. It was Levy who set them to watch the + crib since they'd lost the cracksman; he was good enough to reiterate all + his orders for my benefit. You will hear me take him through them when we + get down there, so it's no use going over the same ground twice." + </p> + <p> + "Funny orders for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled + comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. + </p> + <p> + "Scotland Yard?" said he. "My good Bunny, those were no limbs of the law; + they're old thieves set to catch a thief, and they've been caught + themselves for their pains!" + </p> + <p> + Of course they were! Every detail of their appearance and their behaviour + confirmed the statement in the flash that brought them all before my mind! + And I had never thought of it, never but dreamt that we were doing battle + with the archenemies of our class. But there was no time for further + reflection, nor had I recovered breath enough for another word, when the + hansom clattered up the cobbles into Waterloo Station. And our last sprint + of that athletic night ended in a simultaneous leap into separate + carriages as the platform slid away from the 12:10 train. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIII — Knocked Out + </h2> + <p> + But it was hardly likely to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw + for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like + Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded + dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; + and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not come + in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings in + Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still + impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's + mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their + first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the + real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light + enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in + Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any + consideration. His magnanimity in the matter, which he flatly refused to + take as seriously as I did, made it difficult for me to press old Raffles, + as I otherwise might have done, for an outline of those further plans in + which I hoped to atone for my blunders by being of some use to him after + all. His nonchalant manner convinced me that they were cut-and-dried; but + I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the details. I merely + gathered that he had brought down some document for Levy to sign in + execution of the verbal agreement made between them in town; not until + that agreement was completed by his signature was the harpy to receive the + precious epistle he pretended never to have written. Raffles, in fine, had + the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who is none the less + prepared for foul play on the other side, and by no means perturbed at the + prospect. + </p> + <p> + We left the train at a sweet-smelling platform, on which the lights were + being extinguished as we turned into a quiet road where bats flew over our + heads between the lamp-posts, and a policeman was passing a disc of light + over a jerry-built abuse of the name of Queen Anne. Our way led through + quieter roads of larger houses standing further back, until at last we + came to the enemy's gates. They were wooden gates without a lodge, yet the + house set well beyond them, on the river's brim, was a mansion of + considerable size and still greater peculiarity. It was really two houses, + large and small, connected by a spine of white posts and joists and + glimmering glass. In the more substantial building no lights were to be + seen from the gates, but in the annex a large French window made a lighted + square at right angles with the river and the road. We had set foot in the + gravel drive; with a long line of poplars down one side, and on the other + a wide lawn dotted with cedars and small shrubs, when Raffles strode among + these with a smothered exclamation, and a wild figure started from the + ground. + </p> + <p> + "What are you doing here?" demanded Raffles, with all the righteous + austerity of a law-abiding citizen. + </p> + <p> + "Nutting, sare!" replied an alien tongue, a gleam of good teeth in the + shadow of his great soft hat. "I been see Mistare Le-vie in ze 'ouse, on + ze beezness, shentlemen." + </p> + <p> + "Seen him, have you? Then if I were you I should make a decent departure," + said Raffles, "by the gate—" to which he pointed with increased + severity of tone and bearing. + </p> + <p> + The weird figure uncovered a shaggy head of hair, made us a grotesque bow + with his right hand melodramatically buried in the folds of a voluminous + cape, and stalked off in the starlight with much dignity. But we heard him + running in the road before the gate had clicked behind him. + </p> + <p> + "Isn't that the fellow we saw in Jermyn Street last Thursday?" I asked + Raffles in a whisper. + </p> + <p> + "That's the chap," he whispered back. "I wonder if he spotted us, Bunny? + Levy's treated him scandalously, of course; it all came out in a torrent + the other morning. I only hope he hasn't been serving Dan Levy as Jack + Rutter served old Baird! I could swear that was a weapon of sorts he'd got + under his cloak." + </p> + <p> + And as we stood together under the stars, listening to the last of the + runaway footfalls, I recalled the killing of another and a less notorious + usurer by a man we both knew, and had even helped to shield from the + consequences of his crime. Yet the memory of our terrible discovery on + that occasion had not the effect of making me shrink from such another + now; nor could I echo the hope of Raffles in my heart of hearts. If Dan + Levy also had come to a bad end—well, it was no more than he + deserved, if only for his treachery to Raffles, and, at any rate, it would + put a stop to our plunging from bad to worse in an adventure of which the + sequel might well be worst of all. I do not say that I was wicked enough + absolutely to desire the death of this sinner for our benefit; but I saw + the benefit at least as plainly as the awful possibility, and it was not + with unalloyed relief that I beheld a great figure stride through the + lighted windows at our nearer approach. + </p> + <p> + Though his back was to the light before I saw his face, and the whole man + might have been hacked out of ebony, it was every inch the living Levy who + stood peering in our direction, one hand hollowed at an ear, the other + shading both eyes. + </p> + <p> + "Is that you, boys?" he croaked in sepulchral salute. + </p> + <p> + "It depends which boys you mean," replied Raffles, marching into the zone + of light. "There are so many of us about to-night!" + </p> + <p> + Levy's arms dropped at his sides, and I heard him mutter "Raffles!" with a + malediction. Next moment he was inquiring whether we had come down alone, + yet peering past us into the velvet night for his answer. + </p> + <p> + "I brought our friend Bunny," said Raffles, "but that's all." + </p> + <p> + "Then what do you mean by saying there are so many of you about?" + </p> + <p> + "I was thinking of the gentleman who was here just before us." + </p> + <p> + "Here just before you? Why, I haven't seen a soul since my 'ousehold went + to bed." + </p> + <p> + "But we met the fellow just this minute within your gates: a little + foreign devil with a head like a mop and the cloak of an operatic + conspirator." + </p> + <p> + "That beggar!" cried Levy, flying into a high state of excitement on the + spot. "That blessed little beggar on my tracks down here! I've 'ad him + thrown out of the office in Jermyn Street; he's threatened me by letter + and telegram; so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down + 'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen '<i>im</i>! I'm ready for biters like + that, gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!" + </p> + <p> + And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy + drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have + gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him + that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was not + put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he placed + it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on entering; + and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping with the + advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that the + billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of travel + and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature. + </p> + <p> + "Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!" exclaimed Raffles, + pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself + the drink he had declined. + </p> + <p> + "Yes," said Levy, "the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying + he'd shoot <i>me</i> at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up + as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He + didn't get much show 'ere, <i>I</i> can tell you; that little foreign + snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my + blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look + at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought + up to your profession, eh, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + "Oh yes you do!" said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. "How've + you got on with that little bit o' burgling?" + </p> + <p> + And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open + windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his + mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy + had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, + in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the + table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions + to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for + the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night. + </p> + <p> + "How did you get on?" he repeated when he had given them up for the + present. + </p> + <p> + "For a first attempt," replied Raffles, without a twinkle, "I don't think + I've done so badly." + </p> + <p> + "Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner," said Levy, catching the + old note in his turn. + </p> + <p> + "A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as + easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square." + </p> + <p> + "As easy?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles recollected his pose. + </p> + <p> + "It was enormous fun," said he. "Of course one couldn't know that there + would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. I have to + thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. Levy, it was + as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only took rather + longer." + </p> + <p> + "What about the caretaker?" asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer + to be concealed. + </p> + <p> + "He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre." + </p> + <p> + "At your expense?" + </p> + <p> + "No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course." + </p> + <p> + "So you got in without any difficulty?" + </p> + <p> + "Over the roof." + </p> + <p> + "And then?" + </p> + <p> + "I hit upon the right room." + </p> + <p> + "And then, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "I opened the right safe." + </p> + <p> + "Go on, man!" + </p> + <p> + But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed + him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all. + </p> + <p> + "Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it + a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me." Thus Raffles under + increasing pressure. + </p> + <p> + "Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?" + </p> + <p> + There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract the + <i>dinouement</i> of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must + have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily + plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of + victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, and + there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant + little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This + was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the + living epitome of low cunning and foul play. + </p> + <p> + "The next thing that happened," said Raffles, in his most leisurely + manner, "was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue." + </p> + <p> + "Had he gone in with you?" + </p> + <p> + "No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of common, + low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!" + </p> + <p> + "That was very kind of 'im," snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon + my person from his little black eyes. + </p> + <p> + "Kind!" cried Raffles. "It saved the whole show." + </p> + <p> + "It did, did it?" + </p> + <p> + "I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and + never letting them know that I had got out at all." + </p> + <p> + "Then you left them there?" + </p> + <p> + "In their glory!" said Raffles, radiant in his own. + </p> + <p> + Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were + excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in + which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven home + our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the table + and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, and I + should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself. + </p> + <p> + "And you came away, I suppose," suggested the money-lender, ironically, + "with my original letter in your pocket?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, no, I didn't," replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head. + </p> + <p> + "I thought not!" cried Levy in a gust of exultation. + </p> + <p> + "I came away," said Raffles, "if you'll pardon the correction, with the + letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!" + </p> + <p> + The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the + self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. "You'd better let + me see it," said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of + authority which it took a Raffles to resist. + </p> + <p> + Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet + in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. But + Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further from + the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with the + notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a + phylactery. + </p> + <p> + "You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, with a slight but + sufficient emphasis on his verb. + </p> + <p> + "But I'm not to touch—is that it?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm afraid I must ask you to look first," said Raffles, smiling. "I + should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me + that part of your <i>quid pro quo</i> which you have doubtless in + readiness; the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after + that, the three little papers can change hands simultaneously." + </p> + <p> + Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the + exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and + unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he + ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the + monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my + side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, + spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles + with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other. + </p> + <p> + "Now I'll have a look," he hiccoughed, "an' a good look, unless you want a + lump of lead in your liver!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile. + </p> + <p> + "You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober," said he; + but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was wondering + how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the nobbler of crude + spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, full in the face of + Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and flung upon the fire, + while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, and before I had + struggled to my feet. + </p> + <p> + Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was + streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already + crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the + blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first jumping + upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought him down + with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet with his + skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the rasping of his + bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden head fall back; it + fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead I believe I should + have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot. + </p> + <p> + I know that I rose exultant from my deed.... + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIV — Corpus Delicti + </h2> + <p> + Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, + and I heard him saying, "The letter, Bunny, the letter!" in a way that + made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since the + moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been from + the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the hearth, + were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such store, for + which Raffles had risked so much. + </p> + <p> + "He's burnt it," said I. "He was too quick for me." + </p> + <p> + "And he's nearly burnt my eyes out," returned Raffles, rubbing them again. + "He was too quick for us both." + </p> + <p> + "Not altogether," said I, grimly. "I believe I've cracked his skull and + finished him off!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a + blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the + pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable. + </p> + <p> + "No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are any + lights in the other part of the house." + </p> + <p> + When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long + glass passage. + </p> + <p> + "Not a light!" said I. + </p> + <p> + "Nor a sound," he whispered. "We're in better luck than we might have + been; even his revolver didn't go off." Raffles extracted it from under + the prostrate body. "It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, + or one of us." And he put the pistol in his own pocket. + </p> + <p> + "But have I killed him, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Not yet, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "But do you think he's going to die?" + </p> + <p> + I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth + chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body + sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the parquet + floor. + </p> + <p> + "He's all right," said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened + again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back + on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the + polished floor. "You'd better leave him to me," he said, looking and + getting up with sudden decision. + </p> + <p> + "But what am I to do?" + </p> + <p> + "Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat." + </p> + <p> + "Where is the boathouse?" + </p> + <p> + "You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge. + There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this." + </p> + <p> + And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have + handed over a bunch of keys. + </p> + <p> + "And what then?" + </p> + <p> + "You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand + tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that + windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you will + be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, but if + you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim for it. + Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and then lie + low on board till I come." + </p> + <p> + Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken + helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of + Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I + neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me + something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, + what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, + were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about them. + Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, and I + frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as it + seemed to have mattered now. Away from the <i>corpus delicti</i>, my + horror was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had + quite a level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter + at the worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing + him to life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go + about my own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of + the normal sensibilities. + </p> + <p> + Not much do I remember of that dreamy interval, until the dream became the + nightmare that was still in store. The river ran like a broad road under + the stars, with hardly a glimmer and not a floating thing upon it. The + boathouse stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it by + stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the stars. + The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I could not + see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between the slow + ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and heard at + length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; that was the + last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out of the river; + indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of stream + underneath, for the open end of the boathouse was much less dark than + mine; and when the faint band of reflected starlight had broadened as I + thought enough, I ceased winding and groped my way down the steps into the + boat. + </p> + <p> + But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last thing + I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs wonder + what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want with the + boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could see the + strategic value of my position if we had been robbing the house, but + Raffles was not out for robbery this time; and I did not believe he would + suddenly change his mind. Could it be that he had never been quite + confident of the recovery of Levy, but had sent me to prepare this means + of escape from the scene of a tragedy? I cannot have been long in the + boat, for my thwart was still rocking under me, when this suspicion shot + me ashore in a cold sweat. In my haste I went into the river up to one + knee, and ran across the lawn with that boot squelching. Raffles came out + of the lighted room to meet me, and as he stood like Levy against the + electric glare, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing an + overcoat that did not belong to him, and that the pockets of this overcoat + were bulging grotesquely. But it was the last thing I remembered in the + horror that was to come. + </p> + <p> + Levy was lying where I had left him, only straighter, and with a cushion + under his head, as though he were not merely dead, but laid out in his + clothes where he had fallen. + </p> + <p> + "I was just coming for you, Bunny," whispered Raffles before I could find + my voice. "I want you to take hold of his boots." + </p> + <p> + "His boots!" I gasped, taking Raffles by the sleeve instead. "What on + earth for?" + </p> + <p> + "To carry him down to the boat!" + </p> + <p> + "But is he—is he still—" + </p> + <p> + "Alive?" Raffles was smiling as though I amused him mightily. "Rather, + Bunny! Too full of life to be left, I can tell you; but it'll be daylight + if we stop for explanations now. Are you going to lend a hand, or am I to + drag him through the dew myself?" + </p> + <p> + I lent every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by + the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off + the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a very + short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on the + gravel, and I watched over it for some of the longest minutes of my life, + while Raffles shut and fastened all the windows, left the room as Levy + himself might have left it, and finally found his way out by one of the + doors. And all the while not a movement or a sound came from the senseless + clay at my feet; but once, when I bent over him, the smell of whiskey was + curiously vital and reassuring. + </p> + <p> + We started off again, Raffles with every muscle on the strain, I with + every nerve; this time we staggered across the lawn without a rest, but at + the boathouse we put him down in the dew, until I took off my coat and we + got him lying on that while we debated about the boathouse, its darkness, + and its steps. The combination beat us on a moment's consideration; and + again I was the one to stay, and watch, and listen to my own heart + beating; and then to the water bubbling at the prow and dripping from the + blades as Raffles sculled round to the edge of the lawn. + </p> + <p> + I need dwell no more upon the difficulty and the horror of getting that + inanimate mass on board; both were bad enough, but candour compels me to + admit that the difficulty dwarfed all else until at last we overcame it. + How near we were to swamping our craft, and making sure of our victim by + drowning, I still shudder to remember; but I think it must have prevented + me from shuddering over more remote possibilities at the time. It was a + time, if ever there was one, to trust in Raffles and keep one's powder + dry; and to that extent I may say I played the game. But it was his game, + not mine, and its very object was unknown to me. Never, in fact, had I + followed my inveterate leader quite so implicitly, so blindly, or with + such reckless excitement. And yet, if the worst did happen and our mute + passenger was never to open his eyes again, it seemed to me that we were + well on the road to turn manslaughter into murder in the eyes of any + British jury: the road that might easily lead to destruction at the + hangman's hands. + </p> + <p> + But a more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment + of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and + swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank + while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night + was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt + fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between my + shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and <i>his</i> white + shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his + white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it + with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. + Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip + his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely hear + them, and to keep peering behind him down the Stygian stream. + </p> + <p> + So long had we been getting under way that nothing surprised me more than + the extreme brevity of our actual voyage. Not many houses and gardens had + slipped behind us on the Middlesex shore, when we turned into an inlet + running under the very windows of a house so near the river itself that + even I might have thrown a stone from any one of them into Surrey. The + inlet was empty and ill-smelling; there was a crazy landing-stage, and the + many windows overlooking us had the black gloss of empty darkness within. + Seen by starlight with a troubled eye, the house had one salient feature + in the shape of a square tower, which stood out from the facade fronting + the river, and rose to nearly twice the height of the main roof. But this + curious excrescence only added to the forbidding character of as gloomy a + mansion as one could wish to approach by stealth at dead of night. + </p> + <p> + "What's this place?" I whispered as Raffles made fast to a post. + </p> + <p> + "An unoccupied house, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean to occupy it?" + </p> + <p> + "I mean our passenger to do so—if we can land him alive or dead!" + </p> + <p> + "Hush, Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + "It's a case of heels first, this time—" + </p> + <p> + "Shut up!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage—luckily on a level with + our rowlocks—and reaching down into the boat. + </p> + <p> + "Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. + You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him." + </p> + <p> + "I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run + colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!" + </p> + <p> + And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, + with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there was + a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the river + beyond. + </p> + <p> + "Another narrow squeak!" he muttered with grim levity when the sound had + died away. "I wonder who it is paddling his own canoe at dead of night?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm wondering how much he saw." + </p> + <p> + "Nothing," said Raffles, as though there could be no two opinions on the + point. "What did we see to swear to between a sweater and a + pocket-handkerchief? Only something white, and we were looking out, and + it's far darker in here than out there on the main stream. But it'll soon + be getting light, and we really may be seen unless we land our big fish + first." + </p> + <p> + And without more ado he dragged the lifeless Levy ashore by the heels, + while I alternately grasped the landing-stage to steady the boat, and did + my best to protect the limp members and the leaden head from actual + injury. All my efforts could not avert a few hard knocks, however, and + these were sustained with such a horrifying insensibility of body and + limb, that my worst suspicions were renewed before I crawled ashore + myself, and remained kneeling over the prostrate form. + </p> + <p> + "Are you certain, Raffles?" I began, and could not finish the awful + question. + </p> + <p> + "That he's alive?" said Raffles. "Rather, Bunny, and he'll be kicking + below the belt again in a few more hours!" + </p> + <p> + "A few more <i>hours</i>, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "I give him four or five." + </p> + <p> + "Then it's concussion of the brain!" + </p> + <p> + "It's the brain all right," said Raffles. "But for 'concussion' I should + say 'coma,' if I were you." + </p> + <p> + "What have I done!" I murmured, shaking my head over the poor old brute. + </p> + <p> + "You?" said Raffles. "Less than you think, perhaps!" + </p> + <p> + "But the man's never moved a muscle." + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, he has, Bunny!" + </p> + <p> + "When?" + </p> + <p> + "I'll tell you at the next stage," said Raffles. "Up with his heels and + come this way." + </p> + <p> + And we trailed across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body + sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept + the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at + the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps + there were within, stone steps allowing so little room for one foot and so + much for the other as to suggest a spiral staircase from top to bottom of + the tower. So it turned out to be; but there were landings communicating + with the house, and on the first of them we laid our man and sat down to + rest. + </p> + <p> + "How I love a silent, uncomplaining, stone staircase!" sighed the now + quite invisible Raffles. "So of course we find one thrown away upon an + empty house. Are you there, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "Rather! Are you quite sure nobody else is here?" I asked, for he was + scarcely troubling to lower his voice. + </p> + <p> + "Only Levy, and he won't count till all hours." + </p> + <p> + "I'm waiting to hear how you know." + </p> + <p> + "Have a Sullivan, first." + </p> + <p> + "Are we as safe as all that?" + </p> + <p> + "If we're careful to make an ash-tray of our own pockets," said Raffles, + and I heard him tapping his cigarette in the dark. I refused to run any + risks. Next moment his match revealed him sitting at the bottom of one + flight, and me at the top of the flight below; either spiral was lost in + shadow; and all I saw besides was a cloud of smoke from the blood-stained + lips of Raffles, more clouds of cobwebs, and Levy's boots lying over on + their uppers, almost in my lap. Raffles called my attention to them before + he blew out his match. + </p> + <p> + "He hasn't turned his toes up yet, you see! It's a hog's sleep, but not by + any means his last." + </p> + <p> + "Did you mean just now that he woke up while I was in the boathouse?" + </p> + <p> + "Almost as soon as your back was turned, Bunny—if you call it waking + up. You had knocked him out, you know, but only for a few minutes." + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean to tell me that he was none the worse?" + </p> + <p> + "Very little, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + My feeble heart jumped about in my body. + </p> + <p> + "Then what knocked him out again, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "I did." + </p> + <p> + "In the same way?" + </p> + <p> + "No, Bunny, he asked for a drink and I gave him one." + </p> + <p> + "A doctored drink!" I whispered with some horror; it was refreshing to + feel once more horrified at some act not one's own. + </p> + <p> + "So to speak," said Raffles, with a gesture that I followed by the red end + of his cigarette; "I certainly touched it up a bit, but I always meant to + touch up his liquor if the beggar went back on his word. He did a good + deal worse—for the second time of asking—and you did better + than I ever knew you do before, Bunny! I simply carried on the good work. + Our friend is full of a judicious blend of his own whiskey and the stuff + poor Teddy had the other night. And when he does come to his senses I + believe we shall find him damned sensible." + </p> + <p> + "And if he isn't, I suppose you'll keep him here until he is?" + </p> + <p> + "I shall hold him up to ransom," said Raffles, "at the top of this ruddy + tower, until he pays through both nostrils for the privilege of climbing + down alive." + </p> + <p> + "You mean until he stands by his side of your bargain?" said I, only + hoping that was his meaning, but not without other apprehensions which + Raffles speedily confirmed. + </p> + <p> + "And the rest!" he replied, significantly. "You don't suppose the skunk's + going to get off as lightly as if he'd played the game, do you? I've got + one of my own to play now, Bunny, and I mean to play it for all I'm worth. + I thought it would come to this!" + </p> + <p> + In fact, he had foreseen treachery from the first, and the desperate + device of kidnapping the traitor proved to have been as deliberate a move + as Raffles had ever planned to meet a probable contingency. He had brought + down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of Somnol. My own + deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, and Raffles vowed + it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had ever been over this + empty house before, an irritable jerk of his cigarette end foretold the + answer. + </p> + <p> + "My good Bunny, is this a time for rotten questions? Of course I've been + over the whole place; didn't I tell you I'd been spending the week-end in + these parts? I got an order to view the place, and have bribed the + gardener not to let anybody else see over it till I've made up my mind. + The gardener's cottage is on the other side of the main road, which runs + flush with the front of the house; there's a splendid garden on that side, + but it takes him all his time to keep it up, so he's given up bothering + about this bit here. He only sets foot in the house to show people over; + his wife comes in sometimes to open the downstairs windows; the ones + upstairs are never shut. So you perceive we shall be fairly free from + interruption at the top of this tower, especially when I tell you that it + finishes in a room as sound-proof as old Carlyle's crow's-nest in Cheyne + Row." + </p> + <p> + It flashed across me that another great man of letters had made his local + habitation if not his name in this part of the Thames Valley; and when I + asked if this was that celebrity's house, Raffles seemed surprised that I + had not recognised it as such in the dark. He said it would never let + again, as the place was far too good for its position, which was now much + too near London. He also told me that the idea of holding Dan Levy up to + ransom had occurred to him when he found himself being followed about town + by Levy's "mamelukes," and saw what a traitor he had to cope with. + </p> + <p> + "And I hope you like the idea, Bunny," he added, "because I was never + caught kidnapping before, and in all London there wasn't a bigger man to + kidnap." + </p> + <p> + "I love it," said I (and it was true enough of the abstract idea), "but + don't you think he's just a bit too big? Won't the country ring with his + disappearance?" + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny, nobody will dream he's disappeared!" said Raffles, + confidently. "I know the habits of the beast; didn't I tell you he ran + another show somewhere? Nobody seems to know where, but when he isn't + here, that's where he's supposed to be, and when he's there he cuts town + for days on end. I suppose you never noticed I've been wearing an overcoat + all this time, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, I did," said I. "Of course it's one of his?" + </p> + <p> + "The very one he'd have worn to-night, and his soft hat from the same peg + is in one of the pockets; their absence won't look as if he'd come out + feet first, will it, Bunny? I thought his stick might be in the way, so + instead of bringing it too, I stowed it away behind his books. But these + things will serve a second turn when we see our way to letting him go + again like a gentleman." + </p> + <p> + The red end of the Sullivan went out sizzling between a moistened thumb + and finger, and no doubt Raffles put it carefully in his pocket as he rose + to resume the ascent. It was still perfectly dark on the tower stairs; but + by the time we reached the sanctum at the top we could see each other's + outlines against certain ovals of wild grey sky and dying stars. For there + was a window more like a porthole in three of the four walls; in the + fourth wall was a cavity like a ship's bunk, into which we lifted our + still unconscious prisoner as gently as we might. Nor was that the last + that was done for him, now that some slight amends were possible. From an + invisible locker Raffles produced bundles of thin, coarse stuff, one of + which he placed as a pillow under the sleeper's head, while the other was + shaken out into a covering for his body. + </p> + <p> + "And you asked me if I'd ever been over the place!" said Raffles, putting + a third bundle in my hands. "Why, I slept up here last night, just to see + if it was all as quiet as it looked; these were my bed-clothes, and I want + you to follow my example." + </p> + <p> + "I go to sleep?" I cried. "I couldn't and wouldn't for a thousand pounds, + Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes, you could!" said Raffles, and as he spoke there was a horrible + explosion in the tower. Upon my word, I thought one of us was shot, until + there came the smaller sounds of froth pattering on the floor and liquor + bubbling from a bottle. + </p> + <p> + "Champagne!" I exclaimed, when he had handed me the metal cap of a flask, + and I had taken a sip. "Did you hide that up here as well?" + </p> + <p> + "I hid nothing up here except myself," returned Raffles, laughing. "This + is one of a couple of pints from the cellarette in Levy's billiard den; + take your will of it, Bunny, and perhaps the old man may have the other + when he's a good boy. I fancy we shall find it a stronger card than it + looks. Meanwhile let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep! And you'd be + far more use to me later, Bunny, if only you'd try to do the same." + </p> + <p> + I was beginning to feel that I might try, for Raffles was filling up the + metal cup every minute, and also plying me with sandwiches from Levy's + table, brought hence (with the champagne) in Levy's overcoat pocket. It + was still pleasing to reflect that they had been originally intended for + the rival bravos of Gray's Inn. But another idea that did occur to me, I + dismissed at the time, and so justly that I would disabuse any other + suspicious mind of it without delay. Dear old Raffles was scarcely more + skilful and audacious as amateur cracksman than as amateur anaesthetist, + nor was he ever averse from the practice of his uncanny genius at either + game. But, sleepy as I soon found myself at the close of our very long + night's work, I had no subsequent reason to suppose that Raffles had given + <i>me</i> drop or morsel of anything but sandwiches and champagne. + </p> + <p> + So I rolled myself up on the locker, just as things were beginning to take + visible shape even without the tower windows behind them, and I was almost + dropping off to sleep when a sudden anxiety smote my mind. + </p> + <p> + "What about the boat?" I asked. + </p> + <p> + There was no answer. + </p> + <p> + "Raffles!" I cried. "What are you going to do about the beggar's boat?" + </p> + <p> + "You go to sleep," came the sharp reply, "and leave the boat to me." + </p> + <p> + And I fancied from his voice that Raffles also had lain him down, but on + the floor. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XV — Trial by Raffles + </h2> + <p> + When I awoke it was dazzling daylight in the tower, and the little scene + was quite a surprise to me. It had felt far larger in the dark. I suppose + the floor-space was about twelve feet square, but it was contracted on one + side by the well and banisters of a wooden staircase from the room below, + on another by the ship's bunk, and opposite that by the locker on which I + lay. Moreover, the four walls, or rather the four triangles of roof, + sloped so sharply to the apex of the tower as to leave an inner margin in + which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole windows + were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They had + evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly obvious + that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of + comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; but + in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the atmosphere + of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's day. And yet + neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other merely scenic + feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the appearance of my two + companions. + </p> + <p> + Raffles, not quite at the top of the stairs, but near enough to loll over + the banisters, and Levy, cumbering the ship's bunk, were indeed startling + figures to an eye still dim with sleep. Raffles had an ugly cut from the + left nostril to the corner of the mouth; he had washed the blood from his + face, but the dark and angry streak remained to heighten his unusual + pallor. Levy looked crumpled and debauched, flabbily and feebly senile, + yet with his vital forces making a last flicker in his fiery eyes. He was + grotesquely swathed in scarlet bunting, from which his doubled fists + protruded in handcuffs; a bit of thin rope attached the handcuffs to a peg + on which his coat and hat were also hanging, and a longer bit was taken + round the banisters from the other end of the bunting, which I now + perceived to be a tattered and torn Red Ensign. This led to the discovery + that I myself had been sleeping in the Union Jack, and it brought my eyes + back to the ghastly face of Raffles, who was already smiling at mine. + </p> + <p> + "Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and present + your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be frightened of + him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've had to clap him + in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given him rope enough; + he's got lashings of rope—eh, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul + play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only + you'd give me that drink." + </p> + <p> + And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the folds + of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne standing + against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed it + wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and + merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering + Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched + for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted with + a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without going + all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale remnant of + the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house. + </p> + <p> + "I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The + poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole + in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his + trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other + pint to his own infernal cheek." + </p> + <p> + "Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him + up to ransom?" + </p> + <p> + "Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of + reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when he's + heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the tap + when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had + after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but + it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case." + </p> + <p> + And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting on + the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court. + </p> + <p> + "Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had + better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as a + preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and + granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused. Drink + has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that necessitates + your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week of that + chastening experience you come before me without knowing where you are or + how you got here." + </p> + <p> + "That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That was + something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was, and you'll + pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of my whisky." + </p> + <p> + "Well," resumed Raffles, "your champagne is on the same high level, and + here's a pint of the best which you can open for yourself if only you show + your sense before I've done with you. But you won't advance that little + millennium by talking about foul play as though it were all on one side + and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the + business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice + in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, + attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules of + civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this + court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently you + will get an opportunity of addressing the court in mitigation of your + sentence. Or, if you like," continued Raffles, with a wink at me, "you may + be represented by counsel. My learned friend here, I'm sure, will be proud + to undertake your defence as a 'docker'; or—perhaps I should say a + 'bunker,' Mr. Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + And Raffles laughed as coyly as a real judge at a real judicial joke, + whereupon I joined in so uproariously as to find myself degraded from the + position of leading counsel to that of the general public in a single + flash from the judge's eye. + </p> + <p> + "If I hear any more laughter," said Raffles, "I shall clear the court. + It's perfectly monstrous that people should come here to a court of + justice and behave as though they were at a theatre." + </p> + <p> + Levy had been reclining with his yellow face twisted and his red eyes + shut; but now these burst open as with flames, and the dry lips spat a + hearty curse at the judge upon the locker. + </p> + <p> + "Take care!" said Raffles. "Contempt of court won't do you any good, you + know!" + </p> + <p> + "And what good will all this foolery do you? Say what you've got to say + against me, and be damned to you!" + </p> + <p> + "I fear you're confusing our functions sadly," said Raffles, with a + compassionate shake of the head. "But so far as your first exhortation + goes, I shall endeavour to take you at your word. You are a money-lender + trading, among other places, in Jermyn Street, St. James's, under the + style and title of Daniel Levy." + </p> + <p> + "It 'appens to be my name." + </p> + <p> + "That I can well believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. + Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or + Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull + and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that distinguish + you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by yourself. + Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you are more + brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at higher + game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man alive at + your job; you are certainly the biggest villain." + </p> + <p> + "But I'm up against a bigger now," said Levy, shifting his position and + closing his crimson eyes. + </p> + <p> + "Possibly," said Raffles, as he produced a long envelope and unfolded a + sheet of foolscap; "but permit me to remind you of a few of your own + proven villainies before you take any more shots at mine. Last year you + had three of your great bargains set aside by the law as hard and + unconscionable; but every year you have these cases, and at best the terms + are modified in favour of your wretched client. But it's only the + exception who will face the music of the law-courts and the Press, and you + figure on the general run. You prefer people like the Lincolnshire vicar + you hounded into an asylum the year before last. You cherish the memory of + the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 and 1894; + that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! You set + great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you to stay + with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite in + exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for your + net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that poor + little builder at Bromley, who cut the throats—" + </p> + <p> + "Stop it!" cried Levy, in a lather of impotent rage. + </p> + <p> + "By all means," said Raffles, restoring the paper to its envelope. "It's + an ugly little load for one man's soul, I admit; but you must see it was + about time somebody beat you at your own beastly game." + </p> + <p> + "It's a pack of blithering lies," retorted Levy, "and you haven't beaten + me yet. Stick to facts within your own knowledge, and then tell me if your + precious Garlands haven't brought their troubles on themselves?" + </p> + <p> + "Certainly they have," said Raffles. "But it isn't your treatment of the + Garlands that has brought you to this pretty pass." + </p> + <p> + "What is it, then?" + </p> + <p> + "Your treatment of me, Mr. Levy." + </p> + <p> + "A cursed crook like you!" + </p> + <p> + "A party to a pretty definite bargain, however, and a discredited person + only so far as that bargain is concerned." + </p> + <p> + "And the rest!" said the money-lender, jeering feebly. "I know more about + you than you guess." + </p> + <p> + "I should have put it the other way round," replied Raffles, smiling. "But + we are both forgetting ourselves, prisoner in the bunk. Kindly note that + your trial is resumed, and further contempt will not be allowed to go + unpurged. You referred a moment ago to my unfortunate friends; you say + they were the engineers of their own misfortunes. That might be said of + all who ever put themselves in your clutches. You squeeze them as hard as + the law will let you, and in this case I don't see how the law is to + interfere. So I interfere myself—in the first instance as + disastrously as you please." + </p> + <p> + "You did so!" exclaimed Levy, with a flicker of his inflamed eyes. "You + brought things to a head; that's all <i>you</i> did." + </p> + <p> + "On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," + said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand + for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten + thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another + fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead + of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That + was your side of the bargain." + </p> + <p> + "Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" + </p> + <p> + "My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you + by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a + matter of fact it was only to be got by crook—" + </p> + <p> + "Aha!" + </p> + <p> + "I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last + night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man + ever made upon another!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, + forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had + infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to + the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. + And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he + quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so + truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice + came next. + </p> + <p> + "I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, I'm + sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and the + drink together made me mad." + </p> + <p> + "So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." + </p> + <p> + "You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" + </p> + <p> + "Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must + have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." + </p> + <p> + "In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" + </p> + <p> + "That's it—with the letter." + </p> + <p> + "You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you handle + it?" + </p> + <p> + "Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the + tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of + fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, but only + its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled hands in + hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though it were a bad + job. + </p> + <p> + "Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment + that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" + </p> + <p> + "<i>I</i> have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why + should I? It must have been the police." + </p> + <p> + "It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as + if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both classes to be + deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no + difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave me + no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at Gray's + Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe I have + already mentioned to you." + </p> + <p> + "You said you left them there in their glory." + </p> + <p> + "It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs." + </p> + <p> + Levy struggled into a less recumbent posture. + </p> + <p> + "And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?" + </p> + <p> + "I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know." + </p> + <p> + "And how the devil do you know?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: + "You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!" + </p> + <p> + The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked + himself at that and tried one more poser. + </p> + <p> + "And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it wasn't + to ensure your safety?" + </p> + <p> + "It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down + expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting the + treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea—prisoner in the + bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. My + compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite colourable + image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and it had been a + case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough which I should let + go." + </p> + <p> + But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red + Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms. + </p> + <p> + "They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his teeth. + "The traitors—the blasted traitors!" + </p> + <p> + "It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, "especially + when one's elders and betters themselves succumb to it." + </p> + <p> + "But they're such liars!" cried Levy, shifting his ground again. "Don't + you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your own + good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might + 'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot + their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' + they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to + blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed + to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game all + right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, Raffles, + and—and let me out o' this, like a good feller!" + </p> + <p> + "Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the + judicial locker. + </p> + <p> + "Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal of + all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those two + jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and you + were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling you + 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's surely + about time to stop treating me like a mad dog." + </p> + <p> + "Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?" + </p> + <p> + "Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of + doing anything else." + </p> + <p> + "Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what + you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?" + </p> + <p> + "In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket." + </p> + <p> + "In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly + commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me. + </p> + <p> + "What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if only + you'll take these damned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for 'em + now, you know!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles shook his head. + </p> + <p> + "I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, prisoner. + But my marshal will produce the note from your person if it's there." + </p> + <p> + It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact + while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples + which he had brought with him for the purpose. + </p> + <p> + "It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look + that I intercepted at close quarters. + </p> + <p> + "So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine + signature to this little document which is also a part of your bond." + </p> + <p> + The little document turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on + parchment, embossed with a ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an + INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up + for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in + existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee + simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and + its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of #15,000 to remain + charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited + Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from—" that + summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and + innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom + Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy + of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. + I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they had + dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed was + to be signed! + </p> + <p> + Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected + of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was + obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his + ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less + with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform his + part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince us + of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he had + succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of the + creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and I + had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma in + which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look pleasant, + or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he looked as + pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the shadow of + a fight for their immediate removal. + </p> + <p> + "And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think + I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne." + </p> + <p> + "Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only at + the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house last + night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do of + your own free will then." + </p> + <p> + Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, with + fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I told + you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very sorry + for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again from the + bottom of my 'eart." + </p> + <p> + "I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our arrival + was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last of those + acts of treachery for which you are still on your trial—prisoner in + the bunk!" + </p> + <p> + "But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a palsy + of impotent rage and disappointment. + </p> + <p> + "You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even + plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've made, + and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a point by + telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your guilt. Have you + nothing better to say why the sentence of the court should not be passed + upon you?" + </p> + <p> + A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repetition of + the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower lip of + Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the inflamed + eyelids. + </p> + <p> + "I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought—I'd + swindle—you." + </p> + <p> + "Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let me + tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by + twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen + hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason." + </p> + <p> + Though not unprepared for some such ultimatum, I must own I heard it with + dismay. On all sorts of grounds, some of them as unworthy as itself, this + last demand failed to meet with my approval; and I determined to + expostulate with Raffles before it was too late. Meanwhile I hid my + feelings as best I could, and admired the spirit with which Dan Levy + expressed his. + </p> + <p> + "I'll see you damned first!" he cried. "It's blackmail!" + </p> + <p> + "Guineas," said Raffles, "for contempt of court." + </p> + <p> + And more to my surprise than ever, not a little indeed to my secret + disappointment, our captive speedily collapsed again, whimpering, moaning, + gnashing his teeth, and clutching at the Red Ensign, with closed eyes and + distorted face, so much as though he were about to have a fit that I + caught up the half-bottle of champagne, and began removing the wire at a + nod from Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "Don't cut the string just yet," he added, however, with an eye on Levy—who + instantly opened his. + </p> + <p> + "I'll pay up!" he whispered, feebly yet eagerly. "It serves me right. I + promise I'll pay up!" + </p> + <p> + "Good!" said Raffles. "Here's your own cheque-book from your own room, and + here's my fountain pen." + </p> + <p> + "You won't take my word?" + </p> + <p> + "It's quite enough to have to take your cheque; it should have been hard + cash." + </p> + <p> + "So it shall be, Raffles, if you come up with me to my office!" + </p> + <p> + "I dare say." + </p> + <p> + "To my bank, then!" + </p> + <p> + "I prefer to go alone. You will kindly make it an open cheque payable to + bearer." + </p> + <p> + The fountain pen was poised over the chequebook, but only because I had + placed it in Levy's fingers, and was holding the cheque-book under them. + </p> + <p> + "And what if I refuse?" he demanded, with a last flash of his native + spirit. + </p> + <p> + "We shall say good-bye, and give you until to-night." + </p> + <p> + "All day to call for help in!" muttered Levy, all but to himself. + </p> + <p> + "Do you happen to know where you are?" Raffles asked him. + </p> + <p> + "No, but I can find out." + </p> + <p> + "If you knew already you would also know that you might call till you were + black in the face; but to keep you in blissful ignorance you will be bound + a good deal more securely than you are at present. And to spare your poor + voice you will also be very thoroughly gagged." + </p> + <p> + Levy took remarkably little notice of either threat or gibe. + </p> + <p> + "And if I give in and sign?" said he, after a pause. + </p> + <p> + "You will remain exactly as you are, with one of us to keep you company, + while the other goes up to town to cash your cheque. You can't expect me + to give you a chance of stopping it, you know." + </p> + <p> + This, again, struck me as a hard condition, if only prudent when one came + to think of it from our point of view; still, it took even me by surprise, + and I expected Levy to fling away the pen in disgust. He balanced it, + however, as though also weighing the two alternatives very carefully in + his mind, and during his deliberations his bloodshot eyes wandered from + Raffles to me and back again to Raffles. In a word, the latest prospect + appeared to disturb Mr. Levy less than, for obvious reasons, it did me. + Certainly for him it was the lesser of the two evils, and as such he + seemed to accept it when he finally wrote out the cheque for fifteen + hundred guineas (Raffles insisting on these), and signed it firmly before + sinking back as though exhausted by the effort. + </p> + <p> + Raffles was as good as his word about the champagne now: dram by dram he + poured the whole pint into the cup belonging to his flask, and dram by + dram our prisoner tossed it off, but with closed eyes, like a delirious + invalid, and towards the end, with a head so heavy that Raffles had to + raise it from the rolled flag, though foul talons still came twitching out + for more. It was an unlovely process, I will confess; but what was a pint, + as Raffles said? At any rate I could bear him out that these potations had + not been hocussed, and Raffles whispered the same for the flask which he + handed me with Levy's revolver at the head of the wooden stairs. + </p> + <p> + "I'm coming down," said I, "for a word with you in the room below." + </p> + <p> + Raffles looked at me with open eyes, then more narrowly at the red lids of + Levy, and finally at his own watch. + </p> + <p> + "Very well, Bunny, but I must cut and run for my train in about a minute. + There's a 9.24 which would get me to the bank before eleven, and back here + by one or two." + </p> + <p> + "Why go to the bank at all?" I asked him point-blank in the lower room. + </p> + <p> + "To cash his cheque before he has a chance of stopping it. Would you like + to go instead of me, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "No, thank you!" + </p> + <p> + "Well, don't get hot about it; you've got the better billet of the two." + </p> + <p> + "The softer one, perhaps." + </p> + <p> + "Infinitely, Bunny, with the old bird full of his own champagne, and his + own revolver in your pocket or your hand! The worst he can do is to start + yelling out, and I really do believe that not a soul would hear him if he + did. The gardeners are always at work on the other side of the main road. + A passing boatload is the only danger, and I doubt if even they would + hear." + </p> + <p> + "My billet's all right," said I, valiantly. "It's yours that worries me." + </p> + <p> + "Mine!" cried Raffles, with an almost merry laugh. "My dear, good Bunny, + you may make your mind easy about my little bit! Of course, it'll take + some doing at the bank. I don't say it's a straight part there. But trust + me to play it on my head." + </p> + <p> + "Raffles," I said, in a low voice that may have trembled, "it's not a part + for you to play at all! I don't mean the little bit at the bank. I mean + this whole blackmailing part of the business. It's not like you, Raffles. + It spoils the whole thing!" + </p> + <p> + I had got it off my chest without a hitch. But so far Raffles had not + discouraged me. There was a look on his face which even made me think that + he agreed with me in his heart. Both hardened as he thought it over. + </p> + <p> + "It's Levy who's spoilt the whole thing," he rejoined obdurately in the + end. "He's been playing me false all the time, and he's got to pay for + it." + </p> + <p> + "But you never meant to make anything out of him, A.J.!" + </p> + <p> + "Well, I do now, and I've told you why. Why shouldn't I?" + </p> + <p> + "Because it's not your game!" I cried, with all the eager persuasion in my + power. "Because it's the sort of thing Dan Levy would do himself—it's + <i>his</i> game, all right—it simply drags you down to his level—" + </p> + <p> + But there he stopped me with a look, and not the kind of look I often had + from Raffles, It was no new feat of mine to make him angry, scornful, + bitterly cynical or sarcastic. This, however, was a look of pain and even + shame, as though he had suddenly seen himself in a new and peculiarly + unlovely light. + </p> + <p> + "Down to it!" he exclaimed, with an irony that was not for me. "As though + there could be a much lower level than mine! Do you know, Bunny, I + sometimes think my moral sense is ahead of yours?" + </p> + <p> + I could have laughed outright; but the humour that was the salt of him + seemed suddenly to have gone out of Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "I know what I am," said he, "but I'm afraid you're getting a hopeless + villain-worshipper!" + </p> + <p> + "It's not the villain I care about," I answered, meaning every word. "It's + the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well." + </p> + <p> + "I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better," replied Raffles, + laughing when I least expected it. "But you're by way of forgetting his + existence altogether. I shouldn't wonder if some day you wrote me up into + a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime! Let this remind you + what I always was and shall be to the end." + </p> + <p> + And he took my hand, as I fondly hoped in surrender to my appeal to those + better feelings which I knew I had for once succeeded in quickening within + him. + </p> + <p> + But it was only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the + spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in + the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, + handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at the top. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVI — Watch and Ward + </h2> + <p> + I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a + last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower + chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. The + stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the + bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are + among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One + of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the + aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I + got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was only + a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded gardens + and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe in + mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in such + surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a coal-cellar. + And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an indefinite prospect + of my prisoner's person at close quarters. + </p> + <p> + Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me some + confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor his eyes + at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn up to his + chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I remember taking + a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved remarkably in + repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was higher and + broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough now, but the + closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of all. On the + whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had been all the + morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had fallen asleep in + his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject enough; if not, I + had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I was in no hurry to + show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and took my seat by + inches. + </p> + <p> + Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or + other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as a + relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was not a + complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The wooden + stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint and + distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the house; + and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh period of + tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every time. Then + I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have come in + through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into my ken and + looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with less noise + than the brute itself was making; and not until after that breathless + achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my prisoner asleep. + Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound down! It was in + the next long silence that I became sensitive to another sound which + indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it from my mind + as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to penetrate even + to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as of a + sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only audible + when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could hardly be + near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my breath. + Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or altered, + so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I was not + even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was. + </p> + <p> + His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, and + that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as + though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less + violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as + they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. + </p> + <p> + "I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain before + he spoke. + </p> + <p> + "You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained. + "It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear." + </p> + <p> + I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or + anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. + And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was. + </p> + <p> + "Do you?" I demanded. + </p> + <p> + "Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of + course." + </p> + <p> + "What clock?" + </p> + <p> + "The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road." + </p> + <p> + "How do <i>you</i> know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity. + </p> + <p> + "My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as well + as I know the inside of this tower." + </p> + <p> + "Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy + grinned in a way that ill became a captive. + </p> + <p> + "Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse + myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the + neighhour'ood." + </p> + <p> + "Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth + merely broadened his grin. + </p> + <p> + "Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." + </p> + <p> + "It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my + austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with + quiet but most disquieting amusement. + </p> + <p> + "I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my + way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to + keep an eye on me." + </p> + <p> + "Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found + comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. + </p> + <p> + "I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you strike + me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." + </p> + <p> + I said nothing to that. + </p> + <p> + "On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though he + really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other <i>hand</i>" stooping + to pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles + takes so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he + hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use + hollering before you're out o' the wood." + </p> + <p> + I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. + </p> + <p> + "Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if to + himself. + </p> + <p> + "Thought of what?" + </p> + <p> + "Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't + tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been + thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen + going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to + be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" + </p> + <p> + "How do you know he didn't?" + </p> + <p> + "Because this 'appens to be the day!" + </p> + <p> + And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was + beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his + present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles + would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the + satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's + statement. + </p> + <p> + "That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too much + of a coincidence to be anything else." + </p> + <p> + "The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One + of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the + other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you + know your own business best." + </p> + <p> + "At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most + obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the + man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you." + </p> + <p> + "I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run + away from—though he looks as hard as nails—what there is of + him," said Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but + carry some conviction. "He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his + bike; some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the + same trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't + like." + </p> + <p> + "And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that can + possibly have to do with it up here." + </p> + <p> + "No," said Levy; "he comes no higher than the floor below." I seemed to + remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. "But that's + near enough." + </p> + <p> + "You mean that we shall hear him?" + </p> + <p> + "And he us!" added Levy, with unmistakable determination. + </p> + <p> + "Look here, Mr. Levy," said I, showing him his own revolver, "if we do + hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I + shall blow out your beastly brains!" + </p> + <p> + The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such + deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of it, + and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more + mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if anything + could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the guttural + laugh with which he greeted it. + </p> + <p> + "Excuse me," said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red + bunting, "but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to + preserve silence—why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play + the cold-blooded villain—<i>you</i>!" + </p> + <p> + "I shall play him to some purpose," I hissed, "if you drive me to it. I + laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same thing + again this morning. So now you know." + </p> + <p> + "That wasn't in cold blood," said Levy, rolling his head from side to + side; "that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't + count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last + night or this morning—though I can see that you're no brigand or + blackmailer at bottom—and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave + Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar + job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you + ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's the + magsman, you're only the swell. <i>I</i> can see that. But the judge + won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a + thousand shames!" + </p> + <p> + He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, + persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his + words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with + meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as + deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to me + with the significance of his altered tone. + </p> + <p> + "I can't help it," I muttered. "I must go through with the whole thing + now." + </p> + <p> + "Why must you?" demanded Levy. "You've been led into a job that's none of + your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the + job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found + out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?" + </p> + <p> + "There's nothing else for it," I answered, with a sulky resignation, + though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming. + </p> + <p> + And then it came. + </p> + <p> + "Why not get out of the whole thing," suggested Levy, boldly, "before it's + too late?" + </p> + <p> + "How can I?" said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition. + </p> + <p> + "By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!" + </p> + <p> + I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were + actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness + fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging + and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it + was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to hesitate + on quite different grounds. + </p> + <p> + "It's all very well," I said, "but are you going to make it worth my + while?" + </p> + <p> + "Certainly!" cried he. "Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where + you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll + write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred + before I leave this tower." + </p> + <p> + "You really will?" I temporised. + </p> + <p> + "I swear it!" he asseverated; and I still believe he might have kept his + word about that. But now I knew where he <i>had</i> been lying to me, and + now was the time to let him know I knew it. + </p> + <p> + "Two hundred pounds," said I, "for the liberty you are bound to get for + nothing, as you yourself have pointed out, when the man turns up to wind + the clock? A couple of hundred to save less than a couple of hours?" + </p> + <p> + Levy changed colour as he saw his mistake, and his eyes flashed with + sudden fury; otherwise his self-command was only less admirable than his + presence of mind. + </p> + <p> + "It wasn't to save time," said he; "it was to save my face in the + neighbourhood. The well-known money-lender found bound and handcuffed in + an empty house! It means the first laugh at my expense, whoever has the + last laugh. But you're quite right; it wasn't worth two hundred golden + sovereigns. Let them laugh! At any rate you and your flash friend'll be + laughing on the wrong side of your mouths before the day's out. So that's + all there is to it, and you'd better start screwing up your courage if you + want to do me in! I did mean to give you another chance in life—but + by God I wouldn't now if you were to go down on your knees for one!" + </p> + <p> + Considering that he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he + defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his + picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. + I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his + clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big + bribe offered for his immediate freedom; but it was with something more + than mere adroitness that the money-lender had reconciled the two things. + In his place I should have been no less anxious to keep my humiliating + experience a secret from the world; with his means I could conceive myself + prepared to pay as dearly for such secrecy. On the other hand, if his idea + was to stop the huge cheque already given to Raffles, then there was + indeed no time to be lost, and the only wonder was that Levy should have + waited so long before making overtures to me. + </p> + <p> + Raffles had now been gone a very long time, as it seemed to me, but my + watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they + kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying + still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out + the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of these + I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what had + seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only knew + that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out at + the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of his + trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, and + made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was fast + becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I sat in + my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air as + entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of + scarlet bunting, with a sudden oath which must have been the only sound + within the tower for an hour at least; all the rest of the time he lay + with fettered fists clenched upon his breast, with fierce eyes fixed upon + the top of the bunk, and something about the whole man that I was forced + to watch, something indomitable and intensely alert, a curious suggestion + of smouldering fires on the point of leaping into flame. + </p> + <p> + I feared this man in my heart of hearts. I may as well admit it frankly. + It was not that he was twice my size, for I had the like advantage in + point of years; it was not that I had any reason to distrust the strength + of his bonds or the efficacy of the weapon in my possession. It was a + question of personality, not of material advantage or disadvantage, or of + physical fear at all. It was simply the spirit of the man that dominated + mine. I felt that my mere flesh and blood would at any moment give a good + account of his, as well they might with the odds that were on my side. Yet + that did not lessen the sense of subtle and essential inferiority, which + grew upon my nerves with almost every minute of that endless morning, and + made me long for the relief of physical contest even on equal terms. I + could have set the old ruffian free, and thrown his revolver out of the + window, and then said to him, "Come on! Your weight against my age, and + may the devil take the worse man!" Instead, I must sit glaring at him to + mask my qualms. And after much thinking about the kind of conflict that + could never be, in the end came one of a less heroic but not less + desperate type, before there was time to think at all. + </p> + <p> + Levy had raised his head, ever so little, but yet enough for my vigilance. + I saw him listening. I listened too. And down below in the core of the + tower I heard, or thought I heard, a step like a feather, and then after + some moments another. But I had spent those moments in gazing + instinctively down the stair; it was the least rattle of the handcuffs + that brought my eyes like lightning back to the bunk; and there was Levy + with hollow palms about his mouth, and his mouth wide open for the roar + that my own palms stifled in his throat. + </p> + <p> + Indeed, I had leapt upon him once more like a fiend, and for an instant I + enjoyed a shameful advantage; it can hardly have lasted longer. The brute + first bit me through the hand, so that I carry his mark to this day; then, + with his own hands, he took me by the throat, and I thought that my last + moments were come. He squeezed so hard that I thought my windpipe must + burst, thought my eyes must leave their sockets. It was the grip of a + gorilla, and it was accompanied by a spate of curses and the grin of a + devil incarnate. All my dreams of equal combat had not prepared me for + superhuman power on his part, such utter impotence on mine. I tried to + wrench myself from his murderous clasp, and was nearly felled by the top + of the bunk. I hurled myself out sideways, and out he came after me, + tearing down the peg to which his handcuffs were tethered; that only gave + him the better grip upon my throat, and he never relaxed it for an + instant, scrambling to his feet when I staggered to mine, for by them + alone was he fast now to the banisters. + </p> + <p> + Meanwhile I was feeling in an empty pocket for his revolver, which had + fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my + starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a + dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the + banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn + afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden + stairs. But what I still remember hearing most distinctly (and feeling hot + upon my face) is the stertorous breathing that was unbroken by a single + syllable after the first few seconds. + </p> + <p> + It was a brutal encounter, not short and sharp like the one over-night, + but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one + side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts + in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant + had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against + the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our + united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be + better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. + Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself + over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed upon + the butt of the revolver that I thought had been kicked into the room + below! + </p> + <p> + I was too far gone to realise that a miracle had happened—to be so + much as puzzled by it then. But I was not too far gone to use that + revolver, and to use it as I would have done on cool reflection. I thrust + it under my opponent's armpit, and I fired through into space. The report + was deafening. It did its work. Levy let go of me, and staggered back as + though I had really shot him. And that instant I was brandishing his + weapon in his face. + </p> + <p> + "You tried to shoot me! You tried to shoot me!" he gasped twice over + through a livid mask. + </p> + <p> + "No, I didn't!" I panted. "I tried to frighten you, and I jolly well + succeeded! But I'll shoot you like a dog if you don't get back to your + kennel and lie down." + </p> + <p> + He sat and gasped upon the side of the bunk. There was no more fight in + him. His very lips were blue. I put the pistol back in my pocket, and + retracted my threat in a sudden panic. + </p> + <p> + "There! It's your own fault if you so much as see it again," I promised + him, in a breathless disorder only second to his own. + </p> + <p> + "But you jolly nearly strangled me. And now we're a pretty pair!" + </p> + <p> + His hands grasped the edge of the bunk, and he leant his weight on them, + breathing very hard. It might have been an attack of asthma, or it might + have been a more serious seizure, but it was a case for stimulants if ever + I saw one, and in the nick of time I remembered the flask that Raffles had + left with me. It was the work of a very few seconds to pour out a goodly + ration, and of but another for Daniel Levy to toss off the raw spirit like + water. He was begging for more before I had helped myself. And more I gave + him in the end; for it was no small relief to me to watch the leaden hue + disappearing from the flabby face, and the laboured breathing gradually + subside, even if it meant a renewal of our desperate hostilities. + </p> + <p> + But all that was at an end; the man was shaken to the core by his + perfectly legitimate attempt at my destruction. He looked dreadfully old + and hideous as he got bodily back into the bunk of his own accord. There, + when I had yielded to his further importunities, and the flask was empty, + he fell at length into a sleep as genuine as the last was not; and I was + still watching over the poor devil, keeping the flies off him, and + sometimes fanning him with a flag, less perhaps from humane motives than + to keep him quiet as long as possible, when Raffles returned to light up + the tableau like a sinister sunbeam. + </p> + <p> + Raffles had had his own adventures in town, and I soon had reason to feel + thankful that I had not gone up instead of him. It seemed he had foreseen + from the first the possibility of trouble at the bank over a large and + absolutely open cheque. So he had gone first to the Chelsea studio in + which he played the painter who never painted but kept a whole wardrobe of + disguises for the models he never hired. Thence he had issued on this + occasion in the living image of a well-known military man about town who + was also well known to be a client of Dan Levy's. Raffles said the cashier + stared at him, but the cheque was cashed without a word. The unfortunate + part of it was that in returning to his cab he had encountered an + acquaintance both of his own and of the spendthrift soldier, and had been + greeted evidently in the latter capacity. + </p> + <p> + "It was a jolly difficult little moment, Bunny. I had to say there was + some mistake, and I had to remember to say it in a manner equally unlike + my own and the other beggar's! But all's well that ends well; and if + you'll do exactly what I tell you I think we may flatter ourselves that a + happy issue is at last in sight." + </p> + <p> + "What am I to do now?" I asked with some misgiving. + </p> + <p> + "Clear out of this, Bunny, and wait for me in town. You've done jolly + well, old fellow, and so have I in my own department of the game. + Everything's in order, down to those fifteen hundred guineas which are now + concealed about my person in as hard cash as I can carry. I've seen old + Garland and given him back his promissory note myself, with Levy's + undertaking about the mortgage. It was a pretty trying interview, as you + can understand; but I couldn't help wondering what the poor old boy would + say if he dreamt what sort of pressure I've been applying on his behalf! + Well, it's all over now except our several exits from the surreptitious + stage. I can't make mine without our sleeping partner, but you would + really simplify matters, Bunny, by not waiting for us." + </p> + <p> + There was a good deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a + little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath in + town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably + dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental + relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my + plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front door + in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he had told + the caretaking gardener across the road; but he had borrowed the + gardener's keys as a probable purchaser of the property, who had to meet + his builder and a business friend at the house during the course of the + afternoon. I was to be the builder, and in that capacity to give the + gardener an ingenious message calculated to leave Raffles and Levy in + uninterrupted possession until my return. And of course I was never to + return at all. + </p> + <p> + The whole thing seemed to me a super-subtle means to a far simpler end + than the one we had achieved by stealth in the dead of the previous night. + But it was Raffles all over and I ultimately acquiesced, on the + understanding that we were to meet again in the Albany at seven o'clock, + preparatory to dining somewhere in final celebration of the whole affair. + </p> + <p> + But much was to happen before seven o'clock, and it began happening. I + shook the dust of that derelict tower from my feet; for one of them trod + on something at the darkest point of the descent; and the thing went + tinkling down ahead on its own account, until it lay shimmering in the + light on a lower landing, where I picked it up. + </p> + <p> + Now I had not said much to Raffles about my hitherto inexplicable + experience with the revolver, when I thought it had gone through the + banisters, but found it afterwards in my hand. Raffles said it would not + have gone through, that I must have been all but over the banisters myself + when I grasped the butt as it protruded through them on the level of the + floor. This he said (like many another thing) as though it made an end of + the matter. But it was not the end of the matter in my own mind; and now I + could have told him what the explanation was, or at least to what + conclusion I had jumped. I had half a mind to climb all the way up again + on purpose to put him in the wrong upon the point. Then I remembered how + anxious he had seemed to get rid of me, and for other reasons also I + decided to let him wait a bit for his surprise. + </p> + <p> + Meanwhile my own plans were altered, and when I had delivered my egregious + message to the gardener across the road, I sought the nearest shops on my + way to the nearest station; and at one of the shops I got me a clean + collar, at another a tooth-brush; and all I did at the station was to + utilise my purchases in the course of such scanty toilet as the lavatory + accommodation would permit. + </p> + <p> + A few minutes later I was inquiring my way to a house which it took me + another twenty or twenty-five to find. + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVII — A Secret Service + </h2> + <p> + This house also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar + compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to + the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy + stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable + attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback + three seasons out of the four. The wooden gate had not swung home behind + me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, + contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, + and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell. + There was indeed something oppressively and yet prettily Victorian about + the riparian retreat to which Lady Laura Belsize had retired in her + impoverished widowhood. + </p> + <p> + It was not for Lady Laura that I asked, however, but for Miss Belsize, and + the almost slatternly maid really couldn't say whether Miss Belsize was in + or whether she wasn't. She might be in the garden, or she might be on the + river. Would I step inside and wait a minute? I would and did, but it was + more minutes than one that I was kept languishing in an interior as dingy + as the outside of the house. I had time to take the whole thing in. There + were massive remnants of deservedly unfashionable furniture. The sofa I + can still see in my mind's eye, and the steel fire-irons, and the crystal + chandelier. An aged and gigantic Broadwood occupied nearly half the room; + and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all sorts of comparisons and + contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of Camilla Belsize resplendent in + contemporary court kit. + </p> + <p> + I was still studying that frankly barbaric paraphernalia—the + feather, the necklace, the coiled train—and wondering what noble + kinsman had come to the rescue for the great occasion, and why Camilla + should have looked so bored with her finery, when the door opened and she + herself entered—not even very smartly dressed—and looking + anything but bored, although I say it. + </p> + <p> + But she did seem astonished, anxious, indignant, reproachful, and to my + mind still more nervous and distressed, though this hardly showed through + the loopholes of her pride. And as for her white serge coat and skirt, + they looked as though they had seen considerable service on the river, and + I immediately perceived that one of the large enamel buttons was missing + from the coat. + </p> + <p> + Up to that moment, I may now confess, I had been suffering from no slight + nervous anxiety of my own. But all qualms were lost in sheer excitement + when I spoke. + </p> + <p> + "You may well wonder at this intrusion," I began. "But I thought this must + be yours, Miss Belsize." + </p> + <p> + And from my waistcoat pocket I produced the missing button of enamel. + </p> + <p> + "Where did you find it?" inquired Miss Belsize, with an admirably slight + increase of astonishment in voice and look. "And how did you know it was + mine?" came quickly in the next breath. + </p> + <p> + "I didn't know," I answered. "I guessed. It was the shot of my life!" + </p> + <p> + "But you don't say where you found it?" + </p> + <p> + "In an empty house not far from here." + </p> + <p> + She had held her breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And quite + unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. + </p> + <p> + "Well, Mr. Manders? I'm very much obliged to you. But may I have it back + again?" + </p> + <p> + I returned her property. We had been staring at each other all the time. I + stared still harder as she repeated her perfunctory thanks. + </p> + <p> + "So it was you!" I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely + puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the + rest in those chameleon eyes of hers. + </p> + <p> + "Who did you think it was?" she asked me with a frosty little smile. + </p> + <p> + "I didn't know if it was anybody at all. I didn't know what to think," + said I, quite candidly. "I simply found his pistol in my hand." + </p> + <p> + "Whose pistol?" + </p> + <p> + "Dan Levy's." + </p> + <p> + "Good!" she said grimly. "That makes it all the better." + </p> + <p> + "You saved my life." + </p> + <p> + "I thought you had taken his—and I'd collaborated!" + </p> + <p> + There was not a tremor in her voice; it was cautious, eager, daring, + intense, but absolutely her own voice now. + </p> + <p> + "No," I said, "I didn't shoot the fellow, but I made him think I had." + </p> + <p> + "You made me think so too, until I heard what you said to him." + </p> + <p> + "Yet you never made a sound yourself." + </p> + <p> + "I should think not! I made myself scarce instead." + </p> + <p> + "But, Miss Belsize, I shall go perfectly mad if you don't tell me how you + happened to be there at all!" + </p> + <p> + "Don't you think it's for you to tell me that about yourself and—all + of you?" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, I don't mind which of us fires first!" said I, excitedly. + </p> + <p> + "Then I will," she said at once, and took me to the dreadful sofa at the + inner end of the room, and sat down as though it were the most ordinary + experience she had to relate. Nor could I believe the things that had + really happened, and all so recently, as we talked them over in that + commonplace environment of faded gentility. There was a window behind us, + overlooking the ribbon of lawn and the cord of gravel, and the bunch of + willows that hedged them from the Thames. It all looked unreal to me, + unreal in its very realism as the scene of our incredible conversation. + </p> + <p> + "You know what happened the other afternoon—I mean the day they + couldn't play," began Miss Belsize, "because you were there; and though + you didn't stay to hear all that came out afterwards, I expect you know + everything now. Mr. Raffles would be sure to tell you; in fact, I heard + poor dear Mr. Garland give him leave. It's a dreadful story from every + point of view. Nobody comes out of it with flying colours, but what nice + person could cope with a horrid money-lender? Mr. Raffles, perhaps—if + you call him nice!" + </p> + <p> + I said that was about the worst thing I called him. I mentioned some of + the other things. Miss Belsize listened to them with exemplary patience. + </p> + <p> + "Well," she resumed, "he was quite nice about this. I will say that for + him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be + done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be + done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had + been done already at Carlsbad—what exactly that horrid creature + meant when he was talking <i>at</i> Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of + course, I knew what he meant us to think he meant; but was there, could + there be, anything in it?" + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize looked at me as though she expected an answer, only to stop + me the moment I opened my mouth to speak. + </p> + <p> + "I don't want to know, Mr. Manders! Of course you know all about Mr. + Raffles"—there was a touch of feeling in this—"but it's + nothing to me, though in this case I should certainly have been on his + side. You said yourself that it could only have been a practical joke, if + there was anything in it at all, and so I tried to think in spite of those + horrid men who were following him about at Lord's, even in spite of the + way he vanished with them after him. But he never came near the match + again—though he had travelled all the way from Carlsbad to see it! + Why had he ever been there? What had he really done there? And what could + he possibly do to rescue anybody from Mr. Levy, if he himself was already + in Levy's power?" + </p> + <p> + "You don't know Raffles," said I, promptly enough this time. "He never was + in any man's power for many minutes. I would back him to save the most + desperate situation you could devise." + </p> + <p> + "You mean by some desperate deed? That's what I feared," declared Miss + Belsize, rather strenuously. "Something really had happened at Carlsbad; + something worse was by way of happening next. For Teddy's sake," she + whispered, "and his poor father's!" + </p> + <p> + I agreed that old Raffles stuck at nothing for his friends, and Miss + Belsize again said that was what she had feared. Her tone had completely + altered about Raffles, as well it might. I thought it would have broken + with gratitude when she spoke of the unlucky father and son. + </p> + <p> + "And I was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to which + I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the match on + Saturday—" + </p> + <p> + "Though Teddy had done so well!" I was fool enough to interject. + </p> + <p> + "I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Raffles," replied Camilla, with a + flash of her frank eyes, "and wondering, and wondering, what had happened. + And then on Sunday I saw him on the river." + </p> + <p> + "He didn't tell me." + </p> + <p> + "He didn't know I recognised him; he was disguised—absolutely!" said + Camilla Belsize under her breath. "But he couldn't disguise himself from + me," she added as though glorying in her perspicacity. + </p> + <p> + "Did you tell him so, Miss Belsize?" + </p> + <p> + "Not I, indeed! I didn't speak to him; it was no business of mine. But + there he was, at the bottom of Mr. Levy's garden, having a good look at + the boathouse when nobody was about. Why? What could his object be? And + why disguise himself? I thought of the affair at Carlsbad, and I felt + certain that something of the kind was going to happen again!" + </p> + <p> + "Well?" + </p> + <p> + "What could I do? Should I do anything at all? Was it any business of + mine? You may imagine the way I cross-questioned myself, and you may + imagine the crooked answers I got! I won't bore you with the psychology of + the thing; it's pretty obvious after all. It was not so much a case of + doing the best as of knowing the worst. All day yesterday there were no + developments of any sort, and there was no sign of Mr. Raffles; nothing + had happened in the night, or we should have heard of it; but that made me + all the more certain that something or other would happen last night. The + week's grace was nearly up—you know what I mean—their last + week at their own house. If anything was to be done, it was about time, + and I knew Mr. Raffles was going to do something. I wanted to know what—that + was all." + </p> + <p> + "Quite right, too!" I murmured. But I doubt if Miss Belsize heard me; she + was in no need of my encouragement or my approval. The old light—her + own light—the reckless light—was burning away in her brilliant + eyes! + </p> + <p> + "The night before," she went on, "I hardly slept a wink; last night I + preferred not to go to bed at all. I told you I sometimes did weird things + that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last night, if + it wasn't early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I have a + canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went out + unbeknowns after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly—I beg + your pardon, Mr. Manders?" + </p> + <p> + "I didn't speak." + </p> + <p> + "Your face shouted!" + </p> + <p> + "I'd rather you went on." + </p> + <p> + "But if you know what I'm going to say?" + </p> + <p> + Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. The nebulous + white-shirted figure in the canoe, that had skimmed past Dan Levy's + frontage as we were trying to get him aboard his own pleasure-boat, and + again past the empty house when we were in the act of disembarking him + there, that figure was the trim and slim one now at my side. She had seen + us—searched for us—each time. Our voices she had heard and + recognised; only our actions, or rather that midnight deed of ours, had + she misinterpreted. She would not admit it to me, but I still believe she + feared it was a dead body that we had shipped at dead of night to hide + away in that desolate tower. + </p> + <p> + Yet I cannot think she thought it in her heart. I rather fancy (what she + indeed averred) that some vague inkling of the truth flashed across her at + least as often as that monstrous hypothesis. But know she must; therefore, + after boldly ascertaining that nothing was known of the master's + whereabouts at Levy's house, but that no uneasiness was entertained on his + account, this young woman, true to the audacity which I had seen in her + eyes from the first, had taken the still bolder step of landing on the + rank lawn and entering the empty tower to discover its secret, for + herself. Her stealthy step upon the spiral stair had been the signal for + my mortal struggle with Dan Levy. She had heard the whole, and even seen a + little of that; in fact, she had gathered enough from Levy's horrible + imprecations to form later a rough but not incorrect impression of the + situation between him and Raffles and me. As for the moneylender's + language, it was with a welcome gleam of humour that Miss Belsize assured + me she had "gone too straight to hounds" in her time to be as completely + paralysed by it as her mother's neighbours might have been. And as for the + revolver, it had fallen at her feet, and first she thought I was going to + follow it over the banisters, and before she could think again she had + restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand! + </p> + <p> + "But when you fired I felt a murderess," she said. "So you see I misjudged + you for the second time." + </p> + <p> + If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly + declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful humour + on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can promise my + worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I was thinking in + my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as these, so bold, so + sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had never listened to + such a voice, or come across recklessness and sentiment so harmonised, + save also in her eyes! I was thinking that there never was a girl to touch + Camilla Belsize, or a man either except A. J. Raffles! And yet— + </p> + <p> + And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, + exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and + sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly exasperated + man. + </p> + <p> + "Of course," said Camilla at her garden gate, "of course you won't repeat + a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?" + </p> + <p> + "You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?" said I, somewhat + taken aback. + </p> + <p> + "I mean every single thing we've talked about!" was her sweeping reply. + "Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry I + ever spoke to you." + </p> + <p> + As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I passed + that, even if I noticed it at the time. + </p> + <p> + "I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That is—except—I + suppose you don't mind—" + </p> + <p> + "I do! There must be no exceptions." + </p> + <p> + "Not even old Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked + flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the + world who must ever know a single thing." + </p> + <p> + "Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and + me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of + each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as + Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to make + him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, adamant + heated in some hidden flame. + </p> + <p> + "It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get + excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must have + done—unless it's a judgment on me—it's rather hard lines if + you give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!" + </p> + <p> + This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage + between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my very + irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once. + </p> + <p> + "You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully. + "And I never let out a word of that." + </p> + <p> + "Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation + that was almost wistful. + </p> + <p> + "Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, + much less how keen you were for me to warn him." + </p> + <p> + Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. + Then something won—I think it was only her pride—and she was + holding out her hand. + </p> + <p> + "He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. + "And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always shall + for the future." + </p> + <p> + "I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear + old Raffles!" + </p> + <p> + I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I made + my point. + </p> + <p> + "I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a stranger + stress she added, "I don't <i>like</i> him either." + </p> + <p> + And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why Miss + Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes away + quicker still. + </p> + <p> + I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not + an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would + have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and had + something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the + platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge + when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight + before it stopped. + </p> + <p> + The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met + at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever + since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did + what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him. + </p> + <p> + "Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his cabman, + with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the deevil + himsel'!" + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XVIII — The Death of a Sinner + </h2> + <p> + What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have + outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab + on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the + detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it + inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was more + I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been talking + to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it close upon + seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when I plunged + into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but I was a + good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his + shirt-sleeves from the window. + </p> + <p> + "I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I + were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about + Mackenzie in the lobby. + </p> + <p> + "So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank + God, I was ready for him again." + </p> + <p> + I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his + clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I + had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. The + bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag stood + strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, and + Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds. + </p> + <p> + "Going away?" I ejaculated. + </p> + <p> + "Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after + what you've told me?" + </p> + <p> + "But you were packing before you knew!" + </p> + <p> + "Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't + ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll + have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight + into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at + five to nine." + </p> + <p> + "What platform, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Charing Cross. Continental train." + </p> + <p> + "But where the deuce do you think of going?" + </p> + <p> + "Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe." + </p> + <p> + "Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?" + </p> + <p> + "Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage face, + as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were due here + one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then don't you + ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell you + everything in the train, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant + on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly + terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until + we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross. + </p> + <p> + Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did he + betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied with + his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment lights + ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, that they + made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and another that + Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had also a + quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to make a + meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a humorous + admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced admissions and + downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been drinking at some + riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, but that the <i>rencontre</i> + with Mackenzie had served to sober me. + </p> + <p> + "Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where + we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little + dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up + to eat a bite of it!" + </p> + <p> + "Didn't <i>you</i>?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse + as Raffles shook his head. + </p> + <p> + "No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made me + so stuffy when you did turn up." + </p> + <p> + Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share + the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he + had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than going + healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not what I + had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he had merely + fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for our last on + British soil. + </p> + <p> + This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for + beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his + taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings + than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting + in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, + and whither in all earnest were we to fly? + </p> + <p> + "Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first + question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too + soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his + friends and his relations.'" + </p> + <p> + "But I thought you had something else for him to sign?" + </p> + <p> + "So I had, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "What was that?" + </p> + <p> + "A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he + had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his + last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole + and he destroyed." + </p> + <p> + "And did he sign that?" + </p> + <p> + "I insisted on it for our protection." + </p> + <p> + "Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted platforms + of Herne Hill. + </p> + <p> + "There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send + him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may hold + his tongue about the last twenty-four hours—I believe he will—but + that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and + night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off + round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be in + the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating + thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing clouds + of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our <i>secondes + noces</i>—meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our elbows + when we get them!" + </p> + <p> + But I was not convinced. There was something else at the bottom of this + sudden impulse and its inconceivably sudden execution. Why had he never + told me of this plan? Well, because it had never become one until after + the morning's work at Levy's bank, in itself a reason for being out of the + way, as I myself admitted. But he would have told me if only I had turned + up at seven: he had never meant to give me time for much packing, added + Raffles, as he was anxious that neither of us should leave the impression + that we had gone far afield. + </p> + <p> + I thought this was childish, and treating me like a child, to which, + however, I was used; but more than ever did I feel that Raffles was not + being frank with me, that he for one was making good his escape from + something or somebody besides Dan Levy. And in the end he admitted that + this was so. But we had not dashed through Sitting-bourne and Faversham + before I wormed my way to about the last discovery that I expected to make + concerning A. J. Raffles. + </p> + <p> + "What an inquisitor you are, Bunny!" said he, putting down an evening + paper that he had only just taken up. "Can't you see that this whole show + has been no ordinary one for me? I've been fighting for a crowd I rather + love. Their battle has got on my nerves as none of my own ever did; and + now it's won I honestly funk their gratitude as much as anything." + </p> + <p> + That was another hard saying to swallow; and yet, as Raffles said it, I + knew it to be true. He was looking me full in the face in the ample light + of the first-class compartment, which we of course had to ourselves. Some + softening influence seemed to have been at work upon him; he looked + resolute as ever, but full of regret, than which nothing was rarer in A.J. + </p> + <p> + "I suppose," said I, "that poor old Garland has treated you to a pretty + good dose already?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes, Bunny; that he has." + </p> + <p> + "And well he may, and well may Teddy and Camilla Belsize!" + </p> + <p> + "But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter + little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that + rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's + fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his + Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, + getting hold of his evening paper once more. + </p> + <p> + "Is that to come off so soon?" + </p> + <p> + "The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. + </p> + <p> + "You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, + and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always puzzled + me. + </p> + <p> + "I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh at + his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they were + both absolutely worthy of each other!" + </p> + <p> + "And you don't think they are?" + </p> + <p> + "No, I don't." + </p> + <p> + "You think such a lot of young Garland?" + </p> + <p> + "I'm very fond of him, Bunny." + </p> + <p> + "But you see his faults?" + </p> + <p> + "I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" + </p> + <p> + "Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" + </p> + <p> + "Not good enough—she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice + was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words could + have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you get that + idea?" + </p> + <p> + "I thought it was yours, A.J." + </p> + <p> + "But why?" + </p> + <p> + "You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." + </p> + <p> + "So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may as + well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, Bunny, + but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." + </p> + <p> + "Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for + them to marry after all!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me + catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and I + simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed under + no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. + </p> + <p> + "Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything of + the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often take my + hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who brought + those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put them + asunder again." + </p> + <p> + "It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. + </p> + <p> + "More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks + running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before + the first week was over." + </p> + <p> + "And yet you didn't cut him out!" + </p> + <p> + "My dear Bunny, I should hope not." + </p> + <p> + "But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if you'd + tried." + </p> + <p> + Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But + neither would he ape an alien humility. + </p> + <p> + "It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny—won or lost—Teddy or no + Teddy: And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like + a semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling + you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in + all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'" + </p> + <p> + "I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down. + </p> + <p> + "Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep + irritation of a half-hearted displeasure. + </p> + <p> + "She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your + mate at heart—in pluck—in temperament!" + </p> + <p> + "How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and + staring in my guilty face. + </p> + <p> + But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind upon + occasion. + </p> + <p> + "You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain." + </p> + <p> + "Did she talk about me then?" + </p> + <p> + "A little." + </p> + <p> + "Had she her knife in me, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "Well—yes—a little!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles smiled stoically: it was a smile of duty done and odds well + damned. + </p> + <p> + "Up to the hilt, Bunny, up to the hilt is what you mean. I stuck it in for + her. It's easily done, and it needed doing, for my sake if not for hers. + Sooner or later I should have choked her off, so the sooner the better. + You play them false, you cut a dance, you let them down over something + that doesn't matter, and they'll never give you a dog's chance over + anything that does! I got her to write and never answered. What do you + think of that for a cavalier swine? I said I'd call before I went abroad, + and only wired to say sorry I couldn't. I don't say it would or could have + been all right otherwise; but you see it was all right for Teddy before I + got back! Which was as it was to be. She would hardly look at me at first + last week; but, Bunny, she wasn't above looking when that old Shylock was + playing at giving me away before them all. She looked at him, and she + looked at me, and I've got one of the looks she gave him, and another that + she never meant me to see, bottled in my blackguard heart forever!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles looked dim to me across the narrow compartment; but there was no + nonsense in his look or voice. I longed to tell him all I knew, all that + she had said to me and he had unwittingly interpreted; that she loved him, + as now at last I knew she did; but I had given her my word, and after all + it was a word to keep for both their sakes as well as for its own. + </p> + <p> + "You were made for each other, you two!" + </p> + <p> + That was all I said, and Raffles only laughed. + </p> + <p> + "All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a + dog's chance of our meeting again." + </p> + <p> + He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with + flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer + Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." + Raffles let it pass; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in + the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather silently. + Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking of Camilla + Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she had never + meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead was + glistening white and wet in the lamplight. + </p> + <p> + "What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?" + </p> + <p> + He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a + word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. + This was the item that danced before my eyes: + </p> + <h3> + TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER + </h3> + <p> + Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his + residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who made + good his escape. + </p> + <p> + I looked up into a ghastly face. + </p> + <p> + "It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!" + </p> + <p> + "You left him—" + </p> + <p> + I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier thought. + </p> + <p> + "As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you + think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?" + </p> + <p> + Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the less; + for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under equal + provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were making + with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face and + voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla + Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he + had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done + without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either + any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man. + </p> + <p> + "But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?" + </p> + <p> + "I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?" + </p> + <p> + "And you say you left him at half-past five?" + </p> + <p> + "I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is + plumb right." + </p> + <p> + "And you heard no shot as you went on?" + </p> + <p> + "No—I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And + now I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and + bound to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what + Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. + There's no going back now." + </p> + <p> + "Not for an innocent man?" + </p> + <p> + "Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been up + to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours." + </p> + <p> + He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human + compassion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile + misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a + much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin + to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and beyond + belief in my reading of his character. But through all there peeped a + conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the novelty of + fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and yet + compatible either with his story or with my own base dread. + </p> + <p> + "Nobody need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that nobody + ever would know through the one other who knew already. But Raffles threw + cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and good hope. + </p> + <p> + "It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last + hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes + working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then + identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then + Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my + heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit + by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the + capital charge!" + </p> + <p> + "Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact. + That's one thing!" + </p> + <p> + "No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push you + out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put up for + the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place for the + likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules when I'm + gone." + </p> + <p> + "You're not going without me, A.J." + </p> + <p> + "Not even if I did it, Bunny?" + </p> + <p> + "No; less than ever then!" + </p> + <p> + Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in + his eyes, but a very tender light as well. + </p> + <p> + "It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," said + he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that we were + making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat from + sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we + clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the + platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic + flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My God, Bunny!" + cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!" + </p> + <p> + "Why? What's the matter now?" + </p> + <p> + "A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!" + </p> + <p> + "Mackenzie's?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes!" + </p> + <p> + I had seen it in his face. + </p> + <p> + "After us already?" + </p> + <p> + "God knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder." + </p> + <p> + "Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?" + </p> + <p> + Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was + turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat. + </p> + <p> + "That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." + He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the + cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty + hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it + mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go + upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at + home, we shall give him the slip all right." + </p> + <p> + "Do you think he saw you?" + </p> + <p> + "Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too." + </p> + <p> + "But before we started?" + </p> + <p> + "No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I + remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, thank + God!" + </p> + <p> + They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were + already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated + townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I from + mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not Raffles at + all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the war was the + observed of all observers about town. + </p> + <p> + "It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he + went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning touch. + "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with such + success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As for you, + Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread basket, + you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But here we + are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!" + </p> + <p> + The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier + platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must + nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and that + almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while the old + hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging passengers with + both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I cannot say. We could + but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the nettle and salute + Mackenzie with a pleasant nod. + </p> + <p> + "Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk. + </p> + <p> + "I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a + palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law. + </p> + <p> + "Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with deferential + grin. + </p> + <p> + "And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds my + lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my horror. But it + is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not follow us on board. + </p> + <p> + Neither did our disguises accompany our countenances across the Channel. + It was at dead of night on the upper deck (whence all but us had fled) + that Raffles showed me how to doff my beard and still look as though I had + merely buttoned it inside my overcoat; meanwhile his own moustachios and + imperial were disappearing by discreet degrees; and at last he told me + why, though not by any means without pressing. + </p> + <p> + "I'm only afraid you'll want to turn straight back from Calais, Bunny!" + </p> + <p> + "Oh, no, I shan't." + </p> + <p> + "You'll come with me round the world, so to speak?" + </p> + <p> + "To its uttermost ends, A. J.!" + </p> + <p> + "You do know now who it really is that I don't want to see again just + yet?" + </p> + <p> + "Yes. I know. Now tell me what Mackenzie told you." + </p> + <p> + "It was all in the wire he showed me," said Raffles. "The wire was to say + that the murderer of Dan Levy had given himself up to the police!" + </p> + <p> + Profane expletives flew from my lips; those of much holier men might have + been no less unguardedly emphatic in the self-same circumstances. + </p> + <p> + "But who was it?" + </p> + <p> + "I could have told you all along if you hadn't suspected me." + </p> + <p> + "It wasn't a suspicion, Raffles. It was never more than a dread, and I + didn't even dread it in my heart of hearts. Do tell me now." + </p> + <p> + Raffles watched the red end of a ruined Sullivan make a fine trajectory as + it flew to leeward between sea and stars. + </p> + <p> + "It was that poor unlucky little alien who was waiting for him the other + morning in Jermyn Street, and again last night near his own garden gate. + That's where he got him in the end. But it wasn't a shooting case at all, + Bunny; that's why I never heard anything. It was a case of stabbing in + accordance with the best traditions of the Latin races." + </p> + <p> + "God forgive both poor devils!" said I at last. + </p> + <p> + "And other two," said Raffles, "who have rather more to be forgiven." + </p> + <p> + <br /><br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019"> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + CHAPTER XIX — Apologia + </h2> + <p> + On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton + and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the + best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club. + Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts, + and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to + find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath + was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit + me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but in + spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in a + Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite to + a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased than + my own. + </p> + <p> + But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages of + physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar, reddish + countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot to + contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot rooms my + glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay swathed + upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine fresh-faced owner + of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache rather spoilt him as + Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the shaven jaw and chin; + but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual order; and the amber + eye was as clear as ever, the great strong wicket-keeper's hand + unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on Teddy in his turn. + </p> + <p> + He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my + Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the + other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials. + </p> + <p> + "But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland; "you + don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs as all + that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through scullery windows—even + for the fun of the thing!" he added with somewhat tardy tact. + </p> + <p> + It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there was + something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy Garland + had said it excellently. + </p> + <p> + "Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles + and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for + me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see + the sort of chap he really was." + </p> + <p> + "I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just + then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay + silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But + this one rose superior to his. + </p> + <p> + "Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge + of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four + winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did + for the lot of us!" + </p> + <p> + "Perhaps he did more than you ever knew." + </p> + <p> + "Put it all in." + </p> + <p> + "It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel." + </p> + <p> + "Then make a book of it." + </p> + <p> + "But I've written my last word about the old boy." + </p> + <p> + "Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!" + </p> + <p> + This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told + him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but + openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that first + day of the match, when it rained." + </p> + <p> + Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home + and changed his face. + </p> + <p> + "Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously. + </p> + <p> + "No; he wouldn't give you away." + </p> + <p> + "Not even to you—his pal?" + </p> + <p> + "No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me." + </p> + <p> + "What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love + him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all + this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was." + </p> + <p> + "I must say it would interest me to know." + </p> + <p> + My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you + would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face. + </p> + <p> + "I don't suppose I should." + </p> + <p> + "No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the very + sofa I was on a minute ago!" + </p> + <p> + I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland sitting + on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his bygone shame; + he hurried on before I could find a word. + </p> + <p> + "You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky + game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in + thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should," + said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put + me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was awake + before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered + everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again + in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you won't + wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head was + rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't describe to + you if I tried." + </p> + <p> + "I've been there," said I, briefly. + </p> + <p> + "Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but + to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you + in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in, + and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too. I + had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down into + this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is + finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden idea + that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I remembered + A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in I came. I + had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were all to have + a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should be in plenty + of time for that and Lord's—if only I hadn't boiled all the cricket + out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I hadn't boiled + out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a boomerang. I closed my + eyes for a minute—and it was well on in the afternoon when I awoke!" + </p> + <p> + Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a + metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to + go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes + and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent. + </p> + <p> + "Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot! I + had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight, you + can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on top of + it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't hear any + rain, do you?—It was after three, but I lay till nearly four simply + cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what the + papers had to say about me—who was playing in my place, who'd won + the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one, + and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'—and sudden illness of my + poor old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty + minutes after that we met." + </p> + <p> + "And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the bath, of + course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you sleep so + long." + </p> + <p> + "How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have + had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to think + of the rain coming on and saving me—for even Raffles couldn't have + done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck—while I + was lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still—for + luck rather than remembrance!" + </p> + <p> + The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was + no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles + won my heart as he had never won it in his youth. + </p> + <p> + "Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old + devil his due at last." + </p> + <p> + "But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?" + </p> + <p> + "My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and + wife as much as ever you like." + </p> + <p> + "Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?" + </p> + <p> + "Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?" + </p> + <p> + I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than + I had supposed. + </p> + <p> + "Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked. + </p> + <p> + "Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted—so long as you change + our names—for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland. + </p> + <p> + I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word? + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. 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Hornung + +Posting Date: December 8, 2011 [EBook #9806] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 19, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and PG +Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + + + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + + BY E.W. HORNUNG + + 1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Chapter + + + I. An Inaugural Banquet + + II. "His Own Familiar Friend" + + III. Council of War + + IV. "Our Mr. Shylock" + + V. Thin Air + + VI. Camilla Belsize + + VII. In Which We Fail to Score + + VIII. The State of the Case + + IX. A Triple Alliance + + X. "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + XI. A Dash in the Dark + + XII. A Midsummer Night's Dream + + XIII. Knocked Out + + XIV. Corpus Delicti + + XV. Trial by Raffles + + XVI. Watch and Ward + + XVII. A Secret Service + + XVIII. The Death of a Sinner + + XIX. Apologia + + + + +Mr. Justice Raffles + + + + +CHAPTER I + +An Inaugural Banquet + + +Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no +conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at +Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity +match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The +telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of +course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a +specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my +horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous +caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet. + +"Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!" said he, +in tones as hollow as his cheeks. "No, I'm not going to stop to clear +my baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear +good pal." + +"Any time you like," said I, giving him my arm. "But where shall we dine? +Kellner's? Neapolo's? The Carlton or the Club?" + +But Raffles shook his head at one and all. + +"I don't want to dine at all," he said. "I know what I want!" + +And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the +sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of +the warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its +traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political +palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary +clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall +belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where +white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did +not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about +that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on +seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and +the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as +uncharacteristic of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the +table) as the sigh with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, +and crossed his arms upon the cloth. + +"I didn't know you were a member of this place," said I, feeling really +rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for +me to open than that of his late mysterious movements. + +"There are a good many things you don't know about me, Bunny," said he +wearily. "Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?" + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?" + +"You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?" + +"It's only three weeks ago, Bunny." + +"It seems months to me." + +"And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost +tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the +wife with the emerald necklace?" + +"I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise +Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J." + +"Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to +Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his +annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can +sympathise with the poor brute now!" + +"But what on earth took you there, old fellow?" + +"Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their +table when they'd gone, and how _I_ forgot myself and ran after them with +the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?" + +I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a +piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was +prepared for something even more perverse. + +"You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at +the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a +tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like +that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge." + +"You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more +interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale. + +"I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping +to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip +to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him." + +I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in +the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way +Raffles now sided with me against himself. + +"But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that +fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on +purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor +head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I +didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all +round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear +call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for +Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted." + +"Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such +bad form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's +the unkind cut I can't forgive." + +"My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The +cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me." + +"Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him. + +"Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book." + +"But why, in the name of all that's wanton?" + +"You don't know Carlsbad, or you wouldn't ask. The place is squirming +with spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize +humbugs laid down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, +and bowled out myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, +if old man Dante were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of +salubrity for the redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!" + +The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of +fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) +Raffles's only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive +tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we +couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only +achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. +And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation +as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his. + +"No, Bunny, you couldn't have borne it for half a week; you'd have looked +like that all the time!" quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as +it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; +that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling +matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of +humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at +my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no +doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of +good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; +mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, +except some aerated muck called Gieshuebler. He was allowed to lap that up +an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. +We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked +quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have +known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two +instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks +together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective +that one couldn't get in a word about one's own works edgeways." + +"But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he +shook his head as one who was not so sure. + +"Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a +concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. +You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for +a doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of +course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the +rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me +from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general +condition. He said I had a liver! I'll swear I hadn't before I went to +Carlsbad, but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd brought one back." + +And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon +the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived. + +"It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I +only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve +to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend +the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of +that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of +German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of +the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to +joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in +between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, +Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was +the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion +all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as you would, or +as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the doctor's place +one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. +But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala." + +"But did you win those stakes after all?" + +"Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a look +that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and +I'll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought +me back so soon?" + +"Hadn't you finished your cure?" + +"Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the +Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of +fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should +be at Carlsbad still." + +E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one +of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had +made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in +town, where the young fellow's father had a house at which Raffles +became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both +against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son +whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand +the mutual attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed +he was a mere boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a +knowledge of the world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous +spring of sweetness and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could +sensibly pollute. And yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had +been somewhat freely sown, and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and +taken the sower in hand, and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are +made. At least I knew that no one could be sounder friend or saner +counsellor to any young fellow in need of either. And many there must be +to bear me out in their hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I +knew mine; and if they say that was why they thought so much of him, let +them have patience, and at last they shall hear something that need not +make them think the less. + +"I couldn't let poor Teddy keep at Lord's," explained Raffles, "and me +not there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in +those little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly +interest in the child." + +"You must have done him a lot of good," I suggested, "in every way." + +Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was +not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it. + +"Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask +me." + +"I didn't ask you, Bunny, that's just the point!" said Raffles. And I +watched him tip the waiter without the least _arriere-pensee_ on +either side. + +"After all," said I, on our way down the marble stair, "you have told me +a good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot +of debts, for example." + +"So I was afraid," replied Raffles, frankly; "and between ourselves, I +offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn't hear of it; +that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was +perfectly delightful in what he said. So don't jump to rotten +conclusions, Bunny, but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink." + +And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in +the hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place +with Raffles. + +"That," said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, +since I felt at one with all the world, "is certainly the finest +grill in Europe." + +"That's why we went there, Bunny." + +"But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place +where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!" + +I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own +caravanserai. + +"I would go a step further," he remarked, "and make every member show his +badge as they do at Lord's." + +"But surely the porter knows the members by sight?" + +"Not he! There are far too many thousands of them." + +"I should have thought he must." + +"And I know he doesn't." + +"Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you're a member yourself." + +"On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was +one!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +"His Own Familiar Friend" + + +How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been +wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this +was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous +will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London +lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost +theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due +to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I +felt I was the brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. +Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, +especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he +had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help +wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that +honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, +such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, to produce. + +So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, +thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was +our good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the +courtyard. + +"There's a gen'leman writing you a letter upstairs," said he to Raffles. +"It's Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up." + +"Teddy!" cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time. + +I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather +critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the +evening was spoilt for me--and God knows I was right! Not till my dying +day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar rooms. I +see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, which +lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a +problem picture itself in flesh and blood. + +Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the +boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had +very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the +sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that was the last of his +natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there +was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to +remind me of the Phoebus in Guido's Aurora, with its healthy pink and +bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our +gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as +if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. +I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each +sunburnt hand. + +"What is it? What are you hiding?" demanded Raffles. His love for the lad +had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular +and genial, but the other's attitude soon strangled that. All this time I +had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned +me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a +guilty face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the +door behind us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk. + +No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no +note young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously +copying into Raffles's cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a +pass-book with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather +back. Raffles had only that year opened a banking account, and I +remembered his telling me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the +instructions on his cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise +the fact. And this was the result. A glance convicted his friend of +criminal intent: a sheet of notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. +Yet Raffles could turn and look with infinite pity upon the miserable +youth who was still looking defiantly on him. + +"My poor chap!" was all he said. + +And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and +quavering old man. + +"Won't you hand me over and be done with it?" he croaked. "Must you +torture me yourself?" + +It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the +fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired +whether he had thought it all out before. + +"God knows I hadn't, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I +did," said Garland with a sudden sob. + +"No need to swear it," returned Raffles, actually smiling. "Your word's +quite good enough for me." + +"God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible +disorder now. + +"It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. + +"Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, +and my refusing it?" + +"Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness +that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter +to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such +conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which +seemed to me rather to aggravate the offence. + +"I have regretted that refusal ever since," young Garland continued very +simply. "It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it's +been a tragedy. Money I must have; I'll tell you why directly. When I got +your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been +answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind +to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet +I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back +to-night; and you weren't here when I came. I telephoned and found that +the train had come in all right, and that there wasn't another until the +morning. Tomorrow morning's my limit, and to-morrow's the match." He +stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. "Don't, Raffles, I don't +deserve it!" he added in fresh distress. + +But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the +corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to +the guilty youth. + +"Drink some," he said, "or I won't listen to another word." + +"I'm going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!" the poor fellow +insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. "And it'll break my +father's heart, and--and--" + +I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; +but either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward +in spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a +further explanation of his conduct. + +"I only came up to leave a line for Raffles," he said to me, "in case he +did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that +bureau. He'll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw +before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your +pass-book bulging with old cheques." + +"And as I wasn't back to write one for you," said Raffles, "you wrote it +for me. And quite right, too!" + +"Don't laugh at me!" cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he +looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the +sprightly sympathy of his friend. + +"I'm not laughing, Teddy," replied Raffles kindly. "I was never more +serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in +your fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my +back rather than let me feel I'd ruined you by not turning up in time. +You may shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a +higher compliment." + +And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less +miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing +really dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor +to accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down +upon himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet +there was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something +that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we +took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he +indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old +story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I +suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of +Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless +extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace +is constitutionally quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. +Suffice it that this one had thrown himself on his father's generosity, +only to find that the father himself was in financial straits. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "with that house on his hands?" + +"I knew it would surprise you," said Teddy Garland. "I can't understand +it myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for +me. I simply couldn't tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a +cheque for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that +I swore I'd never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!" + +The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then +he paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out +between his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde +young face, with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw +Raffles look another way until the match was blown out. + +"But at the time I might have done worse, and did," said Teddy, "a +thousand times! I went to the Jews. That's the whole trouble. There were +more debts--debts of honour--and to square up I went to the Jews. It was +only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you may know, +though I didn't, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the hands of +those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory note for +four hundred and fifty-six." + +"Only fifty per cent!" said Raffles. "You got off cheap if the percentage +was per annum." + +"Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The +four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty +quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. +That was soon after Christmas, when one's always hard up, and for the +first time I was a day or two late--not more, mind you; yet what do you +suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed balance +demanded on the nail!" + +Raffles was following intently, with that complete concentration which +was a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at +anything he heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge +upon the bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been +but for the kink in his nature which had made him what he was. + +"The promissory note was for four-fifty-six," said he, "and this sudden +demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?" + +"That's it." + +"What did you do?" I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp +of the case. + +"Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!" + +"And they?" + +"Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down +on me for--what do you suppose?" + +"Getting on for a thousand," said Raffles after a moment's thought. + +"Nonsense!" I cried. Garland looked astonished too. + +"Raffles knows all about it," said he. "Seven hundred was the actual +figure. I needn't tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since +the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. +And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I'll trouble you, +from the beginning of January down to date!" + +"Had you agreed to that?" + +"Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my +promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above +everything else when the original interest wasn't forthcoming." + +"Printed or written on your note of hand?" + +"Printed--printed small, I needn't tell you--but quite large enough for +me to read when I signed the cursed bond. In fact I believe I did read +it; but a halfpenny a week! Who could ever believe it would mount up like +that? But it does; it's right enough, and the long and short of it is +that unless I pay up by twelve o'clock to-morrow the governor's to be +called in to say whether he'll pay up for me or see me made a bankrupt +under his nose. Twelve o'clock, when the match begins! Of course they +know that, and are trading on it. Only this evening I had the most +insolent ultimatum, saying it was my 'dead and last chance.'" + +"So then you came round here?" + +"I was coming in any case. I wish I'd shot myself first!" + +"My dear fellow, it was doing me proud; don't let us lose our sense of +proportion, Teddy." + +But young Garland had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the +miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. +The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, +the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, +had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul +in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence +of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In +these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less +unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of +Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not +to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential +honesty too bright and brilliant to be dimmed by incidental dishonour; +and both remained to the younger man, in the eyes of the other two, who +were even then determining to preserve in him all that they themselves +had lost. The thought came naturally enough to me. And yet I may well +have derived it from a face that for once was easy to read, a clear-cut +face that had never looked so sharp in profile, or, to my knowledge, half +so gentle in expression. + +"And what about these Jews?" asked Raffles at length. + +"There's really only one." + +"Are we to guess his name?" + +"No, I don't mind telling you. It's Dan Levy." + +"Of course it is!" cried Raffles with a nod for me. "Our Mr. Shylock in +all his glory!" + +Teddy snatched his face from his hands. + +"You don't know him, do you?" + +"I might almost say I know him at home," said Raffles. "But as a matter +of fact I met him abroad." + +Teddy was on his feet. + +"But do you know him well enough--" + +"Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts +for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying +it was your last chance." + +"Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of +course I'll come with you--" + +"Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye +put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you +sit up all night either. Where are you staying, my man?" + +"Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd +caught you early enough." + +"Stout fellow! You stay here." + +"My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully. + +"My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you +stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you +want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake." + +"But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?" + +"You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed--do I, Bunny?" + +"I've seldom seen you there," said I. + +"But you were travelling all last night?" + +"And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a +train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in +to-night I shouldn't get a wink." + +"Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how +to sleep!" + +"Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and +lit it up. + +"I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me +as though we were old friends now. + +"And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is." + +Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from +which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm. + +"Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of +these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes." + +"What are they?" + +"Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best." + +"But won't they give me a frightful head?" + +"Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake +up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because +you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?" + +"I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed +him to scorn. + +"They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks +with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up +to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!" + +And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more +about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after +that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; +and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the +conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The +starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue +than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in +Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard +frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's +must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any +man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his +soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether +any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as +Raffles and myself! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Council of War + + +Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise +when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were +shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost +midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the +syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside +him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; +he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures +which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or +rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of +which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it +seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw +them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; +he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, +and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back +into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there +was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, +shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming +and spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night. + +"That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out +between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!" + +"Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the +conversation which I had managed not to overhear. + +"I don't say that, Bunny, though I never should have dreamt of his old +father being in one too. I own I can't understand that. They live in a +regular country house in the middle of Kensington, and there are only the +two of them. But I've given Teddy my word not to go to the old man for +the money, so it's no use talking about it." + +But apparently it was what they had been talking about behind the +folding-doors; it only surprised me to see how much Raffles took +it to heart. + +"So you have made up your mind to raise the money elsewhere?" + +"Before that lad in there opens his eyes." + +"Is he asleep already?" + +"Like the dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking +thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish +experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is +better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I +shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one +often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of +over-keenness which so often cuts one's own throat." + +"But what do you think of it all, A.J.?" + +"Not so much worse than I let him think I thought." + +"But you must have been amazed?" + +"I am past amazement at the worst thing the best of us ever does, and +contrariwise of course. Your rich man proves a pauper, and your honest +man plays the knave; we're all of us capable of every damned thing. But +let us thank our stars and Teddy's that we got back just when we did." + +"Why at that moment?" + +Raffles produced the unfinished cheque, shook his head over it, and sent +it fluttering across to me. + +"Was there ever such a childish attempt? They'd have kept him in the bank +while they sent for the police. If ever you want to play this game, +Bunny, you must let me coach you up a bit." + +"But it was never one of your games, A.J.!" + +"Only incidentally once or twice; it never appealed to me," said Raffles, +sending expanding circlets of smoke to crown the girls on the Golden +Stair that was no longer tilted in a leaning tower. "No, Bunny, an +occasional _exeat_ at school is my modest record as a forger, though I +admit that augured ill. Do you remember how I left my cheque-book about +on purpose for what's happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning, +in all the papers, would have set one up as an honest man for life. I +thought, God forgive me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that +kind. And to think it should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'! +Not that I ever did confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad." + +Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was +speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the +best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty _jeux d'esprit_. +This Raffles only meant half he said--but had generally done the other +half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own _Whitaker_) that +the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that +night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile. + +"I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we +could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the +sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken _ex itinere_. It's a +case for the _testudo_ and all the rest of it. You must remember that +I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if one +may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was as +impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon the +very rock of defence!" + +"You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his +kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there +was no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience +till all hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I +wanted fewer fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual +lantern. And yet these were the very moments that inspired his +pyrotechnic displays. + +"Oh, I shall tell you all right," said Raffles. "But just now the next +few hours are of more importance than the last few weeks. Of course +Shylock's the man for our money; but knowing our tribesmen as I do, I +think we had better begin by borrowing it like simple Christians." + +"Then we have it to pay back again." + +"And that's the psychological moment for raiding our 'miser's sunless +coffers'--if he happens to have any. It will give us time to find out." + +"But he doesn't keep open office all night," I objected. + +"But he opens at nine o'clock in the morning," said Raffles, "to catch +the early stockbroker who would rather be bled than hammered." + +"Who told you that?" + +"Our Mrs. Shylock." + +"You must have made great friends with her?" + +"More in pity than for the sake of secrets." + +"But you went where the secrets were?" + +"And she gave them away wholesale." + +"She would," I said, "to you." + +"She told me a lot about the impending libel action." + +"Shylock _v. Fact?_" + +"Yes; it's coming on before the vacation, you know." + +"So I saw in some paper." + +"But you know what it's all about, Bunny?" + +"No, I don't." + +"Another old rascal, the Maharajah of Hathipur, and his perfectly +fabulous debts. It seems he's been in our Mr. Shylock's clutches for +years, but instead of taking his pound of flesh he's always increasing +the amount. Of course that's the whole duty of money-lenders, but now +they say the figure runs well into six. No one has any sympathy with that +old heathen; he's said to have been a pal of Nana's before the Mutiny, +and in it up to the neck he only saved by turning against his own lot in +time; in any case it's the pot and the kettle so far as moral colour is +concerned. But I believe it's an actual fact that syndicates have been +formed to buy up the black man's debts and take a reasonable interest, +only the dirty white man always gets to windward of the syndicate. +They're on the point of bringing it off, when old Levy inveigles the +nigger into some new Oriental extravagance. _Fact_ has exposed the whole +thing, and printed blackmailing letters which Shylock swears are +forgeries. That's both their cases in a philippine! The leeches told the +Jew he must do his Carlsbad this year before the case came on; and the +tremendous amount it's going to cost may account for his dunning old +clients the moment he gets back." + +"Then why should he lend to you?" + +"I'm a new client, Bunny; that makes all the difference. Then we were +very good pals out there." + +"But you and Mrs. Shylock were better still?" + +"Unbeknowns, Bunny! She used to tell me her troubles when I lent her an +arm and took due care to look a martyr; my hunting friend had coarse +metaphors about heavy-weights and the knacker's yard." + +"And yet you came away with the poor soul's necklace?" + +Raffles was tapping the chronic cigarette on the table at his elbow; he +stood up to light it, as one does stand up to make the dramatic +announcements of one's life, and he spoke through the flame of the match +as it rose and fell between his puffs. + +"No--Bunny--I did not!" + +"But you told me you won the Emerald Stakes!" I cried, jumping up +in my turn. + +"So I did, Bunny, but I gave them back again." + +"You gave yourself away to her, as she'd given him away to you?" + +"Don't be a fool, Bunny," said Raffles, subsiding into his chair. "I +can't tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're +at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They +stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at +the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their +rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on +the second floor--where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from +under his mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been +made for me. Need I go on?" + +"I wonder you weren't suspected." + +"There's no end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old +rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had +the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off +in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it +was--well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his +shop next morning." + +"What had happened?" + +"A whole actful of unrehearsed effects; that's why I think twice before +taking on old Shylock again. I admire him, Bunny, as a steely foeman. I +look forward to another game with him on his own ground. But I must find +out the pace of the wicket before I put myself on." + +"I suppose you had tea with them, and all that sort of thing?" + +"Gieshuebler!" said Raffles with a shudder. "But I made it last as long as +tea, and thought I had located the little green lamps before I took my +leave. There was a japanned despatch box in one corner. 'That's the +Emerald Isle,' I thought, 'I'll soon have it out of the sea. The old man +won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't +tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at +the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner." + +Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten +the lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle +that he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he +waited for a dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room +balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box +after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the +folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy +"in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." + +"They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck +me, for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever +took. His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was +not; and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there +was no chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I +stuck my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up. +Good God, Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit, +and I was jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,' +says I in low German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise +that I was absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened +face. 'I don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.' +'_Das halsband_, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he. +But I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded. +He laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I +pointed to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live, +old girl,' says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to +shoot, and I don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other +way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the +old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left +hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her +and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German +that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be +_ein toter Englander_! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was +meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging +on to him, instead of him to her!" + +I emptied my lungs and my glass too. Raffles took a sip himself. + +"But the rope was fixed to _your_ balcony, A.J.?" + +"But I began by fixing the other end to theirs, and the moment I was +safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found +it dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked +the right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as +pitch-dark, and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to +search for impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any +there might conceivably have been." + +"So nobody ever suspected you?" + +"Not a soul, I can safely say; I was the first my victims bored with the +whole yarn." + +"Then why return the swag? It's an old trick of yours, Raffles, but in a +case like this, with a pig like that, I confess I don't see the point." + +"You forget the poor old lady, Bunny. She had a dog's life before; after +that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for +her pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me; +there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift." + +"But how on earth did you manage that?" + +"Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into +my confidence _more cuniculi!"_ + +"I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?" + +"As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted +it in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch +lest it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a +substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to +blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered. +The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I +wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made +a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that +enormous dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a +living tomb." + +But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a +formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly. + +"That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked +forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the +halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric." + +"Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to +pay Peter?" + +"Excellent, Bunny!" cried Raffles, as though I had made a shot worthy of +his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains +and displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across +it. "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned +them from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up +o' nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our +methods. What a lot the two old pets must have missed!" + +"You haven't answered my question," said I resignedly. "Nor have you told +me how you propose to go to work to raise this money in the first +instance." + +"If you like to light another Sullivan," said Raffles, "and mix yourself +another very small and final one, I can tell you now, Bunny." + +And tell me he did. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"Our Mr. Shylock" + + +I have often wondered in what pause or phase of our conversation Raffles +hit upon the plan which we duly carried out; for we had been talking +incessantly, since his arrival about eight o'clock at night, until two in +the morning. Yet that which we discussed between two and three was what +we actually did between nine and ten, with the single exception +necessitated by an altogether unforeseen development, of which the less +said the better until the proper time. The foresight and imagination of a +Raffles are obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the +course of speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the +listener, and the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea +would culminate in a definite project, as the image comes into focus +under the lens, and with as much detail into the bargain. + +Suffice it that after a long night of it at the Albany, and but a bath +and a cup of tea at my own flat, I found Raffles waiting for me in +Piccadilly, and down we went together to the jaws of Jermyn Street. There +we nodded, and I was proceeding down the hill when I turned on my heel as +though I had forgotten something, and entered Jermyn Street not fifty +yards behind Raffles. I had no thought of catching him up. But it so +happened that I was in his wake in time to witness a first _contretemps_ +which did not amount to much at the time; this was merely the violent +exit of another of Dan Levy's early callers into the very arms of +Raffles. There was a heated apology, accepted with courteous composure, +and followed by an excited outpouring which I did not come near enough to +overhear. It was delivered by a little man in an aureole of indigo hair, +who brushed his great sombrero violently as he spoke and Raffles +listened. I could see from their manner that the collision which had just +occurred was not the subject under discussion; but I failed to +distinguish a word, though I listened outside a hatter's until Raffles +had gone in and his new acquaintance had passed me with blazing eyes and +a volley of husky vows in broken English. + +"Another of Mr. Shylock's victims," thought I; and indeed he might have +been bleeding internally from the loss of his pound of flesh; at any rate +there was bloodshed in his eyes. + +I stood a long time outside that hatter's window, and finally went in to +choose a cap. But the light is wicked in those narrow shops, and this +necessitated my carrying several caps to the broad daylight of the +threshold to gauge their shades, and incidentally to achieve a swift +survey of the street. Then they crowned me with an ingenious apparatus +like a typewriter, to get the exact shape and measure of my skull, for I +had intimated that I had no desire to dress it anywhere else for the +future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after +getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's +hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one +in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next +perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new +bowler) brought me face to face with Raffles once more. + +We shouted and shook hands; our encounter had taken place almost under +the money-lender's windows, and it was so un-English in its cordiality +that between our slaps and grasps Raffles managed deftly to insert a +stout packet in my breast pocket. I cannot think the most critical +pedestrian could have seen it done. But streets have as many eyes as +Argus, and some of them are always on one. + +"They had to send to the bank for it," whispered Raffles. "It barely +passed through their hands. But don't you let Shylock spot his own +envelope!" + +In another second he was saying something very different that anybody +might have heard, and in yet another he was hustling me across Shylock's +threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You +couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow--he's the only honest one +in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?" + +A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was +in liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he +thought so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone, +after shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his +stool at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more +similar peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was +told to hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other +clerks behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting +them hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence. + +Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my +tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so +elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month +earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, +but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a +gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie +filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had +engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd +and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its +massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity +of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; +and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I +had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its +immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to +that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious +confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of +light-hearted authority which stamped him in all shades of society. + +"'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you're well?" said Mr. Levy, dropping one +aspirate but putting in the next with care. "Take a seat, sir, please." + +But I kept my legs, though I felt them near to trembling, and, diving a +hand into a breast pocket, I began working the contents out of the +envelope that Raffles had given me, while I spoke out in a tone +sufficiently rehearsed at the Albany overnight. + +"I'm not so sure about the happiness," said I. "I mean about its lasting, +Mr. Levy. I come from my friend, Mr. Edward Garland." + +"I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much +indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I +could no longer see. + +"I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval +and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well. + +"Who _is_ the little biter?" the money-lender inquired of him with +delightful insolence. + +"An old friend of mine," replied Raffles, in an injured tone that made a +convincing end of the old friendship. "I thought he was hard up, or I +never should have brought him in to introduce to you." + +"I didn't ask you for your introduction, Raffles," said I offensively. "I +simply met you coming out as I was coming in. I thought you damned +officious, if you ask me!" + +Whereupon, with an Anglo-Saxon threat of subsequent violence to my +person, Raffles flung open the door to leave us to our interview. This +was exactly as it had been rehearsed. But Dan Levy called Raffles back. +And that was exactly as we had hoped. + +"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" said the Jew. "Please don't make a cockpit of my +office, gentlemen; and pray, Mr. Raffles, don't leave me to the mercies +of your very dangerous friend." + +"You can be two to one if you like," I gasped valiantly. "_I_ +don't care." + +And my chest heaved in accordance with my stage instructions, as also +with a realism to which it was a relief to give full play. + +"Come now," said Levy. "What did Mr. Garland send you about?" + +"You know well enough," said I: "his debt to you." + +"Don't be rude about it," said Levy. "What about the debt?" + +"It's a damned disgrace!" said I. + +"I quite agree," he chuckled. "It ought to 'ave been settled months ago." + +"Months ago?" I echoed. "It's only twelve months since he borrowed three +hundred pounds from you, and now you're sticking him for seven!" + +"I am," said Levy, opening uncompromising lips that entirely disappeared +again next instant. + +"He borrows three hundred for a year at the outside, and you blackmail +him for eight hundred when the year's up." + +"You said 'seven' just now," interrupted Raffles, but in the voice of a +man who was getting a fright. + +"You also said 'blackmailing,'" added Dan Levy portentously. "Do you want +to be thrown downstairs?" + +"Do _you_ deny the figures?" I retorted. + +"No, I don't; have you got his repayment cards?" + +"Yes, here in my hands, and they shan't leave them. You see, you're not +aware," I added severely, as I turned to Raffles, "that this young fellow +has already paid up one hundred in instalments; that's what makes the +eight; and all this is what'll happen to you if you've been fool enough +to get into the same boat." + +The money-lender had borne with me longer than either of us had expected +that he would; but now he wheeled back his chair and stood up, a pillar +of peril and a mouthful of oaths. + +"Is that all you've come to say?" he thundered. "If so, you young devil, +out you go!" + +"No, it isn't," said I, spreading out a document attached to the cards of +receipt which Raffles had obtained from Teddy Garland; these I had +managed to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I +had been trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is +a letter, written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you +say, among other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no +excuses of any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten +times more trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get +rid of you. So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as +you may depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very +letter, and steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour. +This is your dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on +the subject.'" + +"So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr. +Raffles." + +"I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr. +Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?" + +"Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his +prize-fighting jaws. + +"Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a +year ago?" + +"That's it." + +"Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory +stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at +the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault." + +"Of course it is, Mr. Raffles," cried the moneylender, taking a more +conciliatory tone himself. "It was my money; it was my three 'undred +golden sovereigns; and you can sell what's yours for what it'll fetch, +can't you?" + +"Obviously," said Raffles. + +"Very well, then, money's like anything else; if you haven't got it, and +can't beg or earn it, you've got to buy it at a price. I sell my money, +that's all. And I've a right to sell it at a fancy price if I can get a +fancy price for it. A man may be a fool to pay my figure; that depends +'ow much he wants the money at the time, and it's his affair, not mine. +Your gay young friend was all right if he hadn't defaulted, but a +defaulter deserves to pay through the nose, and be damned to him. It +wasn't me let your friend in; he let in himself, with his eyes open. Mr. +Garland knew very well what I was charging him, and what I shouldn't +'esitate to charge over and above if he gave me half a chance. Why should +I? Wasn't it in the bond? What do you all think I run my show for? It's +business, Mr. Raffles, not robbery, my dear sir. All business is +robbery, if you come to that. But you'll find mine is all above-board and +in the bond." + +"A very admirable exposition," said Raffles weightily. + +"Not that it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to +add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I +hope I may say that you're the one and not the other." + +"Then it comes to this," said I, "that you mean him to pay up in full +this morning?" + +"By noon, and it's just gone ten." + +"The whole seven hundred pounds?" + +"Sterling," said Mr. Levy "No cheques entertained." + +"Then," said I, with an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but +to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" + +I did not look at Levy, but I heard the sudden intake of his breath at +the sight of my bank-notes, and I felt its baleful exhalation on my +forehead as I stooped and began counting them out upon his desk. I had +made some progress before he addressed me in terms of protest. There was +almost a tremor in his voice. I had no call to be so hasty; it looked as +though I had been playing a game with him. Why couldn't I tell him I had +the money with me all the time? The question was asked with a sudden +oath, because I had gone on counting it out regardless of his overtures. +I took as little notice of his anger. + +"And now, Mr. Levy," I concluded, "may I ask you to return me Mr. +Garland's promissory note?" + +"Yes, you may ask and you shall receive!" he snarled, and opened his safe +so violently that the keys fell out. Raffles replaced them with exemplary +promptitude while the note of hand was being found. + +The evil little document was in my possession at last. Levy roared down +the tube, and the young man of the imperfect diction duly appeared. + +"Take that young biter," cried Levy, "and throw him into the street. Call +up Moses to lend you a 'and." + +But the first murderer stood nonplussed, looking from Raffles to me, and +finally inquiring which biter his master meant. + +"That one!" bellowed the money-lender, shaking a lethal fist at me. "Mr. +Raffles is a friend o' mine." + +"But 'e'th a friend of 'ith too," lisped the young man. "Thimeon Markth +come acroth the thtreet to tell me tho. He thaw them thake handth +outthide our plathe, after he'd theen 'em arm-in-arm in Piccadilly, 'an +he come in to thay tho in cathe--" + +But the youth of limited articulation was not allowed to finish his +explanation; he was grasped by the scruff of the neck and kicked and +shaken out of the room, and his collar flung after him. I heard him +blubbering on the stairs as Levy locked the door and put the key in his +pocket. But I did not hear Raffles slip into the swivel chair behind +the desk, or know that he had done so until the usurer and I turned +round together. + +"Out of that!" blustered Levy. + +But Raffles tilted the chair back on its spring and laughed softly +in his face. + +"Not if I know it," said he. "If you don't open the door in about one +minute I shall require this telephone of yours to ring up the police." + +"The police, eh?" said Levy, with a sinister recovery of self-control. +"You'd better leave that to me, you precious pair of swindlers!" + +"Besides," continued Raffles, "of course you keep an _argumentum ad +hominem_ in one of these drawers. Ah, here it is, and just as well in my +hands as in yours!" + +He had opened the top drawer in the right-hand pedestal, and taken +therefrom a big bulldog revolver; it was the work of few moments to empty +its five chambers, and hand the pistol by its barrel to the owner. + +"Curse you!" hissed the latter, hurling it into the fender with a fearful +clatter. "But you'll pay for this, my fine gentlemen; this isn't sharp +practice, but criminal fraud." + +"The burden of proof," said Raffles, "lies with you. Meanwhile, will you +be good enough to open that door instead of looking as sick as a cold +mud-poultice?" + +The money-lender had, indeed, turned as grey as his hair; and his +eyebrows, which were black and looked dyed, stood out like smears of ink. +Nevertheless, the simile which Raffles had employed with his own +unfortunate facility was more picturesque than discreet. I saw it set Mr. +Shylock thinking. Luckily, the evil of the day was sufficient for it and +him; but so far from complying, he set his back to the locked door and +swore a sweet oath never to budge. + +"Oh, very well!" resumed Raffles, and the receiver was at his ear without +more ado. "Is that the Exchange? Give me nine-two-double-three Gerrard, +will you?" + +"It's fraud," reiterated Levy. "And you know it." + +"It's nothing of the sort, and _you_ know it," murmured Raffles, with +the proper pre-occupation of the man at the telephone. + +"You lent the money," I added. "That's your business. It's nothing to do +with you what he chooses to do with it." + +"He's a cursed swindler," hissed Levy. "And you're his damned decoy!" + +I was not sorry to see Raffles's face light up across the desk. + +"Is that Howson, Anstruther and Martin?--they're only my solicitors, Mr. +Levy.... Put me through to Mr. Martin, please.... That you, Charlie? ... +You might come in a cab to Jermyn Street--I forget the number--Dan +Levy's, the money-lender's--thanks, old chap! ... Wait a bit, Charlie--a +constable...." + +But Dan Levy had unlocked his door and flung it open. + +"There you are, you scoundrels! But we'll meet again, my fine +swell-mobsmen!" + +Raffles was frowning at the telephone. + +"I've been cut off," said he. "Wait a bit! Clear call for you, Mr. Levy, +I believe!" + +And they changed places, without exchanging another word until Raffles +and I were on the stairs. + +"Why, the 'phone's not even _through!_" yelled the money-lender, +rushing out. + +"But _we_ are, Mr. Levy!" cried Raffles. And down we ran into the street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Thin Air + + +Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised +that he was not coming with me. + +"Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make +him get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in +half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back." + +His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to +escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he +deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which +Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it +as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately +lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of +faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however, +if a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating +over the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious +extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles; +and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we +had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a +species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose +battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his +breakfast, and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab. + +Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was +frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the +morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose. + +"Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out. + +"Of whom, Raffles?" + +"Teddy, of course!" + +"Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?" + +"Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he +is!" + +He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up +to his rooms. + +"But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?" + +"That's what I want to know." + +"Could he have gone out for a paper?" + +"They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed." + +"Or for a shave?" + +"That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour." + +"But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I +understood you left him fast asleep?" + +"That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough +saw him go out ten minutes after me." + +"Could you have disturbed him when you went?" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I +came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave +me a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the +doors after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open +them. I thought something horrible had happened!" + +"You don't think so still?" + +"I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned +out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves +away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up +the enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters, +Bunny; we shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I +should rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in +this rotten way." + +Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his +sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one +that seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind. + +"A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and +sound at Lord's." + +"I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him +then; besides, here's his cricket-bag." + +"He may have been at the club when I fetched it away--I never asked." + +"I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left." + +"Then what about his father's house?" + +"That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but +now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's +there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a +thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the +time it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with +the whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by +Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!" + +We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending +hastily enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man, +and Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we +looked at each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was +out of the room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing. + +"Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add. + +"Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice--in +accents of such acute dismay--that Mr. Garland had my sympathy +before we met. + +"He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute. +Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?" + +The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair +entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected +of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in +retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional +embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder +purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a +gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn +furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my +heart outright. + +"So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're +nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night +or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town +if necessary, and he evidently has." + +There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was +also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles +gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as +distinct from his words and deeds) overnight. + +"And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a +surprise to you, Raffles?" + +Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my +chair. What great news was this? + +"This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my +benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me +here; you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him; +but Miss Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with +us to the match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be +so disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see +very little of each other all day." + +I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this +engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at +night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window. +Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which +extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it +was not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation. +But his face had suddenly lit up. + +"May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you, +Mr. Garland?" + +"It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence." + +"Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?" + +"Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have +had to consult Lady Laura." + +"Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home +while you were on yours into town! How did you come?" + +"In the brougham." + +"Through the Park?" + +"Yes." + +"While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's +how you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight +back you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's." + +Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we +might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a +minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through +Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept +away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and +slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago. +It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all +keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one +side-street to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn +and towering tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more +forcibly (and favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a +house. And yet a double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a +few yards of the steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed. + +Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss +Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature. + +"Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his +books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he +turned to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I +haven't been told, and I insist on knowing what it is." + +"But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving +Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown." + +"What time was that?" + +"Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour." + +"Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?" + +"I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up +rather late." + +"But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you +were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why, +after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not +the first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming +girl; is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?" + +"About his engagement--not that I'm aware." + +"Then he is in some trouble?" + +"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he +isn't now." + +Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair. + +"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you +his confidence, I have no right simply as his father--" + +"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no +right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. +Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it _was_ about some +little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me." + +"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude +and humiliation. + +"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so +serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment." + +"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his +voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right +man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he +muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and +bent his head over his folded arms. + +He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance +in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his +watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour +now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master +recovered his self-control. + +"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's +for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose +it's Miss Belsize again." + +"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you +were not to be disturbed." + +"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of +trouble in his tone. "Listen to this--listen to this," he went on before +the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you +don't turn up in time.--J. S.'" + +"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper." + +"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" + +"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns +out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will +still be too late for him to play." + +"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his +chair with a groan. + +"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way." + +"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned +straight from Lord's--probably within the last few minutes--to a +messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!" + +Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look +ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his +back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a +monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the +adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but +this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well +have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a +panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and +straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with +an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy +fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in +the body of the room. + +"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a +barometer, Mr. Garland?" + +"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket." + +"How often do you set the indicator?" + +"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I +went to bed. It made me anxious." + +"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this +morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!" + +In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and +assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery. + +"Something has happened to my boy!" + +"But not necessarily anything terrible." + +"If I knew what, Raffles--if only I knew what!" + +Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He +himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the +rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute. + +"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, +we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your +help, sir." + +"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles." + +"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are." + +"Where I am?" + +"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential +to my idea." + +"And that is, Raffles?" + +"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up +to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he +shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment." + +"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked. + +"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his +face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." + +"But that's the only place that matters," said I. + +"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as +Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in +the next room now." + +"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." + +"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I +thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from +her, sir." + +"I?" + +"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil +her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for +an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. +Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them +in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and +the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." + +"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held +out his hand. + +"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another +five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself +in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may +be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from +me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the +better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark +at this end." + +"Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard +task for me!" + +"It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I +promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." + +With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that +turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my +leave of him. + +"What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl +and hide my own anxiety?" + +"There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If +either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." + +Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not +but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the +drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an +umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour +into the brougham. + +"I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the +coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, +but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We +should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." + +"But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary +disappearance?" + +"Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land +of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his +insanity." + +"And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you +disapprove of it?" + +"Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged +from under my umbrella into the brougham. + +"Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl +beneath him?" + +Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes. + +"You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to +hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Camilla Belsize + + +It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the +amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in +Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so +welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the +rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not +the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was +another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and +tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work +to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention +overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. +To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help +feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in +these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me +until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to +Teddy Garland at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping +Raffles to keep the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and +on the point of helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse +still from his daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the +worst of all to be hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me! + +Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out +from the conservatory in a continuous chain--each link with its own +temperature and its individual scent--and not a pane but rattled and +streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing +fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of +the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to +Miss Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face +must have made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the +same smile again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I +really think she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment. + +So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. +Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well +as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but +emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy +with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with +unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really +was a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was +wasting what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I +could suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still. + +"And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under +shelter, Miss Belsize." Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored. + +"But there's plenty of shelter there," said she. + +"Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it +before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know." + +"But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?" + +"They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting." + +That was a rash remark. + +"Then why doesn't Teddy come back?" + +"Oh, well, you know," I hedged, "you can never be quite absolutely sure. +It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. +And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn." + +"I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch," said Miss +Belsize, "even if he had to go back afterwards." + +"I shouldn't wonder if he did come," said I, conceiving the bare +possibility: "and A.J. with him." + +"Do you mean Mr. Raffles?" + +"Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!" + +Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had +confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. +Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been +watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold +profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her +out of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers +dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, +calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental--all that and more as I see them +now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled. + +"So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?" said Miss Belsize, harking +back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us. + +"Rather!" I replied. + +"Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?" + +I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. "Raffles and I were +at school together," I added loftily. + +"Really? I should have thought he was before your time." + +"No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag." + +"And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?" inquired Miss Belsize, +not by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own +devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little +jealousy of Raffles. + +"He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: +"captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic +champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth." + +"And you worshipped him, I suppose?" + +"Absolutely." + +My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she +looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes. + +"You must be rather disappointed in him now!" + +"Disappointed! Why?" I asked with much outward amusement. But I was +beginning to feel uncomfortable. + +"Of course I don't know much about him," remarked Miss Belsize as though +she cared less. + +"But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?" + +"I do," said I, with injudicious alacrity. + +"Well," said Miss Belsize, "what else is he?" + +"The best fellow in the world, among other things." + +"But what other things?" + +"Ask Teddy!" I said unluckily. + +"I have," replied Miss Belsize. "But Teddy doesn't know. He often +wonders how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing +any work." + +"Does he, indeed!" + +"Many people do." + +"And what do they say about him?" + +Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather +longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been +turned on again, before she answered: + +"More than their prayers, no doubt!" + +"Do you mean," I almost gasped, "as to the way Raffles gets his living?" + +"Yes." + +"You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!" + +"But if there's no truth in them?" + +"I'll soon tell you if there is or not." + +"But suppose I don't care either way?" said Miss Belsize with a +brilliant smile. + +"Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you." + +"Mind, I don't believe it myself, Mr. Manders." + +"You don't believe--" + +"That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and--his cricket!" + +I jumped to my feet. + +"Is that all they say about him?" I cried. + +"Isn't it enough?" asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my +demeanour. + +"Oh, quite enough, quite enough!" said I. "It's only the most +scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got +about--that's all!" + +This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that +one's first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to +discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was +unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth. + +"Yet you seemed to expect something worse," she said at length. + +"What could be worse?" I asked, my back against the wall of my own +indiscretion. "Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal +thing than a paid amateur!" + +"But you haven't told me what he _is_, Mr. Manders." + +"And you haven't told me, Miss Belsize, why you're so interested in A. J. +after all!" I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on +the strength of it. + +But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my +ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite +frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than +she cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was +the only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and +censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. +Mr. Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered +whether he was quite a good friend; and there I had "the whole thing in a +nutshell." + +I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too +often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I +did not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as +jealousy did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved +on that point. + +We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the +rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house +and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite +refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the +still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's +mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently +impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and +suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with +vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking +cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction +that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the +uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast +under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not +unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles +himself who had made it known to her. Raffles, whom she did not "know +much about," or consider "quite a good friend" for Teddy Garland! + +I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was +the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland +told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger +earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, +considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a +strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so +far infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon +with far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us +again until the butler with a visitor's card brought about his abrupt +departure from the conservatory. + +Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss +Belsize could have had her way we should all have started for Lord's that +minute. I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, +coldly scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. +Lord's would be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been +abandoned on that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure +about that; why should we not drive over and find out? I said that was +the surest way of missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there +and back in a half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but +said if we went at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, +and that in his own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and +when Miss Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my +ground, I could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the +softened gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss +Belsize took my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, +though with none too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw +what I had been curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path +towards us. And I saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking +hands with him. + +"They've given it up as a bad job at last," said he. "I've just come from +Lord's, and Teddy won't be very long." + +"Why didn't you bring him with you?" asked Miss Belsize pertinently. + +"Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once," said Raffles, +rather lamely for him; "and then a man playing in a 'Varsity match is +never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn't to keep you +waiting much longer." + +It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it +pretty plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had +been waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an +end she must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to +Mr. Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I +believe it took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her +intention, however hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the +conservatory and the library door, while Raffles and I went through into +the hall the other way. + +"I'm afraid I've put my foot in it," said he to me. "But it's just as +well, since I needn't tell you there's no sign of Teddy up at Lord's." + +"Have you been there all day?" I asked him under my breath. + +"Except when I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, +brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what +they say about Teddy here." + +And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in +the stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and +Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, "owing +to the serious illness of his father." + +"His father!" I exclaimed. "Why, his father's closeted with somebody or +other at this very moment behind the door you're looking at!" + +"I know, Bunny. I've seen him." + +"But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I +don't wonder you went to the office about it." + +"You'll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the +staff." + +"Of course you made him take it straight out?" + +"On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!" + +And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a +more felonious--but less incomprehensible--exploit. + +"Didn't you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library +this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on +fact. I wonder you don't see the point; as a matter of fact, there are +two points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was +to find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord's. Well, I +haven't actually found him yet; but if he's in the land of the living he +will see this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what +he will do! Meanwhile, there's nothing but sympathy for him at Lord's. +Studley couldn't have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to +the eleventh hour to-morrow. And if that isn't killing two birds with one +stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!" + +"But what will old Garland say, A. J.?" + +"He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note +before lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what +I had done. He doesn't mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save +his face before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look +out, Bunny--here she is!" + +The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it +was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the +hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I +suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal +pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had +taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven +both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago. + +"I didn't go into the library after all," she said, looking askance at +the library door. "I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview +with somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man's face as I hesitated, and +I thought I recognised him." + +"Who was it?" I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather +mysterious visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so +abruptly in the conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in +the hour of so many issues. + +"I believe it's a dreadful man I know by sight down the river," said +Miss Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened +and out came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the +usurer of European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain +enemy for life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +In Which We Fail to Score + + +Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was +evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we +were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a +terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice +he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of +mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and +delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed +to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue +from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. +Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as +he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; +for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all +knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an +exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an +ordinary guest. + +"You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that +worthy with a certain _aplomb_. "I know you very well by sight, Miss +Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain." + +"Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at +her command. + +"The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not +meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up +with adroit urbanity. + +"I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though +bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the +worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to +repent it." + +It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the +eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the +look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only +interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged +her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in +turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to +himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from +doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the +money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no +longer the sole anxiety. + +"And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the +firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?" + +"Where was that, Miss Belsize?" + +"Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I +know, but I forget the name of the place." + +"Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?" + +I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was +merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair. + +"Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I +remember now." + +"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An +unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a +desperate criminal with a loaded revolver." + +"Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. + +Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with +the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the +episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a +mind to impart. + +"It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling +it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss +Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came +in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for +me and my wife." + +"Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. + +Miss Belsize only stared. + +"Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting +Mr. Levy." + +"Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. +And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the +first he had heard of it. + +"But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, +"except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back +last night." + +"But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" + +"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. +"Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" + +"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. + +They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder +against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring +at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the +three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. + +"But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with +terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" + +"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there, +Mr. Levy?" + +Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: + +"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your +wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives +them back again!" + +The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and +myself in his own office that very morning. + +"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her +silence on an eager note. + +Raffles turned to her at once. + +"The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there +everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy +has the better information." + +Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I +followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. + +"I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the +wilds of Austria," said I. + +"There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman +knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His +'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is +nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was +actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was +marked down at some London theatre--or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?" + +"I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily +as their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you +were one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?" + +"Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no +doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious +from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was +as obvious a mistake. + +"Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and +Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed +that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver." + +"We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might +'ave been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no +error about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye +looking along the barrel into mine--as plainly as I'm looking into yours +now, Mr. Raffles." + +Raffles laughed outright. + +"I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me +that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat." + +"So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have +done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white +as yours are." + +"Any other little point in common?" + +"I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver." + +Raffles held out his hands. + +"Better have a good look at mine." + +"His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or +better kept." + +"Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy." + +"You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles." + +"You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily. + +"I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through +and through. + +"And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly +look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that +maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy. + +For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I +declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest +eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the +two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer +shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert +battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should +accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw +him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was +easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we +might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless +denunciation. + +"Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us +who it was?" + +"Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I +know all about him now!" + +I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set, +her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles +during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the +only entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the +firelit hall. + +Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that +kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed +almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang +up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in +the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst. + +Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a +syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood +gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had +the hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had +put it in? Was there any truth in it at all? + +"None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was +never better in my life." + +"Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I +suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to +lay hands on the joker!" + +His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring +himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the +appearance of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the +contrary, he looked both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his +sudden fit of passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered +so humiliated and abased. + +Raffles came forward from the fireside. + +"There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar +for bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm +the only one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of +you all day." + +Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going +to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had +really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and +then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance +which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance +was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which +was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us +with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report +about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him +the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him +and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were +brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their +friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they +fell upon his bugbear in the background. + +"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly +enough once he had found his voice. + +"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh. + +"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking +about, Teddy?" + +"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost +harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as +well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from +this man." + +"You borrowed from him?" + +It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an +emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy +with new loathing and abhorrence. + +"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars +every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own +fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in +his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last +drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves +me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again, +father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he +threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute +as to come to-day!" + +"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into +Teddy's hands. + +It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from +Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the +hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by +the throat before us all. + +"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely. + +"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy. + +"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?" + +"Every penny that you owed me, certainly." + +"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both +ways--your money and your spite as well!" + +"Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive +shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as +you're 'appy?" + +"No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come +back in time." + +"In time for what?" + +"To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!" + +The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded +his arms with a guttural chuckle. + +"So you mean to chuck me out, do you?" + +"By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the +door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again." + +The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with +his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; +but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning +twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the +fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the +harmless character of the shot. + +"May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable +chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation. + +"Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy +truculently, "and out you go!" + +"Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with +the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from +Mr. Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words. + +"The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous +scorn--"freehold and everything." + +"The whole place happens to be _mine_--'freehold and everything!'" +replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate syllables. "And as for +clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given you a week to do it +in--the two of you!" + +He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring +on us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all. + +"And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with +a passionate hiss, "like you did the son--_because I know all about +you now_!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The State of the Case + + +Of course I made all decent haste from the distressing scene, and of +course Raffles stayed behind at the solicitation of his unhappy friends. +I was sorry to desert him in view of one aspect of the case; but I was +not sorry to dine quietly at the club after the alarms and excitements +of that disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up +all night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in +the twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer +night and day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the +club to which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted +us at the Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the +overthrow of the money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely +disappearance of Teddy Garland, my day of it at his father's house, and +the rain and the ruse that saved the passing situation, only to +aggravate the crowning catastrophe of the money-lender's triumph over +Raffles and all his friends. + +Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the +nature of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new +risk run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last +word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently +complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no +mere mystery can hold the mind against impending peril; and I was less +exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in +wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. +Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from +downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more +effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my +dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my +corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a +countenance as though the whole world and he were one. + +"My dear Bunny! I've never given the matter another thought," said he in +answer to my nervous queries, "and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has +scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he's not such a fool as to put +himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn't possibly prove. They +wouldn't listen to him at Scotland Yard; it's not their job, in the +first place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. +Shylock that he hasn't a shred of evidence against me." + +"Still," said I, "he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that's half +the battle in a criminal charge." + +"Then it's a battle I should love to fight, if the odds weren't all on +Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property--he's not a +pin the worse off--but because he has a row with me about something else +he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But not in his +heart, Bunny; he's not such a fool as that. Dan Levy's no fool at all, +but the most magnificent knave I've been up against yet. If you want to +hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I'll open your +eyes for you." + +His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed +them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight +was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are +at theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the +historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial +subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, +Bunny! A foeman worthy of Excalibur itself." + +And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger +stake! But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless +head over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating +prowess of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends. + +"They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I +have them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't +a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. +But there isn't, Bunny, I don't mind telling you." + +"What I can't understand," said I, "is how father and son seem to have +walked into the same parlour--and the father a business man!" + +"Just what he never was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the +whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a +business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years +ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place +where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was +pretty stiff to start with; you might have a house in most squares and +quite a good place in the country for what you've got to pay for a cross +between the two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good +people; for it was not only in Mrs. Garland's time, but it seems she was +the first to set her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave +it for a better world--poor soul--before the glass was on the last +vinery. And the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone." + +"I wonder he didn't get rid of the whole show," said I, "after that." + +"I've no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don't get rid of a place +like that in five minutes; it's neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary +house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further +out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part +of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the +freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit +for building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a +fine investment, or would have been if he had left more margin for upkeep +and living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on +horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at +a fence that's brought down many a better rider." + +"What was that?" + +"South Africans!" replied Raffles succinctly. "Piles were changing hands +over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip +himself; that finished him off. There's no tiger like an old tiger that +never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer became a reckless +gambler, lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his +losses. They were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. +Thousands were wanted at almost a moment's notice; no time to fix up an +honest mortgage; it was a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! +And old Garland took ten thousand of the best from Dan Levy--and had +another dip!" + +"And lost again?" + +"And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his +house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and +branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy's hands for months +and years." + +"On a sort of mortgage?" + +"On a perfectly nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only +with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is +being bled to the heart for iniquitous interest on the first ten +thousand, and of course he can't meet the call for another fifteen when +it comes; but he thinks it's all right because Levy doesn't press for the +dibs. Of course it's all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to +take possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn't suit him to +have the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate a rising property, +and so poor old Garland is deliberately lulled into a false sense of +security. And there's no saying how long that state of things might have +lasted if we hadn't taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning." + +"Then it's our fault, A.J.?" + +"It's mine," said Raffles remorsefully. "The idea, I believe, was +altogether mine, Bunny; that's why I'd give my bowing hand to take the +old ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!" + +"But how _do_ you account for his getting them both into his toils?" I +asked. "What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father +already owed more than he could pay?" + +"There are so many points," said Raffles. "They love you to owe more than +you can pay; it's not their principal that they care about nearly so much +as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they've got +you. In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland +was about his boy--to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see +what an effort it's become. Levy would find out something about the boy; +that he's getting hard up himself, that he's bound to discover the old +man's secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he +does. 'Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,' says +Levy, 'then they'll both hold their tongues, and I'll have one of 'em +under each thumb till all's blue.' So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, +and finances father and son in watertight compartments until this libel +case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue +enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a +sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small +creditors all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it +all fits in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney +himself; that along with all the rest to scale, will run him into +thousands even if he wins his case." + +"May he lose it!" said I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the +inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. +Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless +friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly +characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not +remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly +that she had. By putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she +had taken the whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected +from those fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her +on the spot, and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but +when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. +Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between +his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which +she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was +no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not help +wondering why. + +There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much +more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in +Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of +his sensational disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My +interest in the escapade, however, was considerably quickened by the +prompt refusal of Raffles to tell me a word about it. + +"No, Bunny," said he, "I'm not going to give the boy away. His father +knows, and I know--and that's enough." + +"Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?" + +Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of +his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative. + +"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It +wouldn't be fair." + +"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to +cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, +and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it +trading on a fellow's good-nature--not that I care a curse!" + +"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I +should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been +treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me +if I have another dip at Dan Levy." + +"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?" + +"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder." + +"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?" + +"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for +another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart +from these poor pals of mine." + +"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire +the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?" + +One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain +facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter +manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man +thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was +standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that +interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, +to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not +divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay +pugnacity; nay, there was something behind the good Garlands and their +culpably commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they +be the Cause? + +The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash +might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in +the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, +outside the door. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Triple Alliance + + +It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole +not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible passing of a +hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be +that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; +nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had +been plate-glass. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing +and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we +entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the +one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until +assurance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. +And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it +open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent +figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and +gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal +vulgarian about town. + +"May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability. + +"May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you +came in long ago! I heard you all right--you were listening at the +door--probably looking through the keyhole--and you only knocked when I +jumped up to open it!" + +"My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder. +And he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome. + +"But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or +else picked the lock." + +"Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," +remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality. + +"Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than +Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony. + +Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the +back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. +Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made +no secret of a base suspicion. + +"I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender. + +"My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to +see, and nobody could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; +but that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete +expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again +type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old +song now?" + +"'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles." + +"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a +hair of the jolly dog that bit him--eh?" + +"You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're +cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own +up to it." + +"Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one +side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have +it--thieves! Common thieves!" + +And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine. + +"You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the +only wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He +grinned malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it--Mr. +Ananias J. Raffles?" + +"Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his +eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best +entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?" + +"Chalks!" said I. + +"I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a +grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick +upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! +One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own +actual coin!" + +"Well," said I, "there was no crime in that." + +"Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the +one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call +yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was +the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected +friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his +friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there--a strapping young +chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and +jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but +this afternoon was when I jolly well knew." + +Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his +lips like a steel trap. + +"I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still +seriously think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?" + +"I know you did." + +"Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why +didn't you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland +Yard? Here I am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give +me in charge?" + +Levy chuckled consumedly--ventriloquously--behind his three gold buttons +and his one diamond stud. + +"P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you +two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as _I_ thought." + +"Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick +recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?" + +"P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr. +Raffles." + +"Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?" + +"I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation +softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put +it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took +it for a bit o' fun!" + +"If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd." + +"I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I +agree with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than +anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both +inhabiting for our sins." + +"The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very +shrewd glance. + +"It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure." + +"'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?" + +"Don't say 'another,' please." + +"Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?" + +"Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind." + +"I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity. + +"How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the +pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?" + +Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And +once more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his +favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the +buttoned foil. + +"It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, +Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor." + +"I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?" + +"I have--a case of recovering a man's own property." + +"You being the man, Mr. Levy?" + +"I being the man, Mr. Raffles." + +"Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!" + +I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy +protested that in no circumstances could he have taken such a course. By +the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had +entirely escaped his notice in the past--incriminating things--things +that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he +against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with +unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his +strong suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, +and evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly +forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to +endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and +nothing more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever +be done at all. + +"Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested +Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?" + +"Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a +shrug. + +"Preliminary, then?" + +"Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by +abstracting Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amusement--" + +"So you assert, Mr. Levy." + +"Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen--or not--as you decide," +rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events you +admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I ask +you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that 'appens +to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits." + +"Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of +property it is, and where you think it's to be found." + +The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the +one which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. +We all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor +looking specially hard at me for the first time. + +"I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after +you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It +was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen +were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the +natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, +"you are partners in--amusement? Otherwise I should insist on speaking to +Mr. Raffles alone." + +"Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily. + +"Though two to one--numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a +disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the +more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to +'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!" + +"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke. + +"No--lighter than that--a letter!" + +"One little letter?" + +"That's all." + +"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?" + +"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his +lips were framing an affirmative. + +"I see; it was written to you, not by you." + +"Wrong again, Raffles!" + +"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?" + +There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new +difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the +moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes. + +"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, +written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should +like to know what is?" + +"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course +you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against _Fact_?" + +"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?" + +"I am naturally interested in the case." + +"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much +to say about it, with the whole case still _sub judice_." + +"I read the original articles in _Fact_" said Raffles. + +"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?" + +"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the +wind's eye." + +"That's the one I want." + +"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more +serious sort of case." + +"But it isn't genuine." + +"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," +pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has +been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey." + +"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse. + +"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution +love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the +less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to +bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, +with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late +lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there." + +Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his +case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely +than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his +sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another +wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and +burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial +prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would +ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to +thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at +sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it +before the case came on. + +"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could +possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and +instantaneous effect." + +"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me +remind you that it's yours as well!" + +"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it." + +"You won't in any case, I should hope," said I. + +"Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that." + +Levy stopped talking quite like that. + +"Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?" + +"Abstract the--forgery?" + +"Yes." + +"Where from?" + +"Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose." + +"Who are the solicitors to _Fact_?" + +"Burroughs and Burroughs." + +"Of Gray's Inn Square?" + +"That's right." + +"The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a +grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!" + +"I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender. + +Raffles looked more than dubious. + +"Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?" + +"Too big by half." + +"And you merely wish to have their letter--withdrawn, Mr. Levy?" + +"That's the way to put it." + +And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an +intestine chuckle. + +"Withdrawn--and nothing more?" + +"That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles." + +"Even though they miss it the very next morning?" + +"Let them miss it." + +Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in +serene dissent. + +"It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to +go one better--if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much +point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it. + +"What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently +no such premonition. + +"I should take a sheet of your paper with me, and forge the forgery!" +said Raffles, a light in his eye and a gusto in his voice that I knew +only too well. "But I shouldn't do my work as perfectly as--the other +cove--did his. My effort would look the same as yours--_his_--until Mr. +Attorney fixed it with his eyeglass in open court. And then the bottom +would be out of the defence in five minutes!" + +Dan Levy came straight over to Raffles--quivering like a jelly--beaming +at every pore. + +"Shake!" he cried. "I always knew you were a man after my own heart, but +I didn't know you were a man of genius until this minute." + +"It's no use my shaking," replied Raffles, the tips of his sensitive +fingers still together, "until I make up my mind to take on the job. And +I'm a very long way from doing that yet, Mr. Levy." + +I breathed again. + +"But you must, my dear friend, you simply must!" said Levy, in a new tone +of pure persuasion. I was sorry he forgot to threaten instead. Perhaps it +was not forgetfulness; perhaps he was beginning to know his Raffles as I +knew mine; if so, I was sorrier still. + +"It's a case of _quid pro quo_," said Raffles calmly. "You can't expect +me to break out into downright crime--however technical the actual +offence--unless you make it worth my while." + +Levy became the man I wanted him to be again. "I fancy it's worth your +while not to hear anything more about Carlsbad," said he, though still +with less of the old manner than I could have wished. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "when you own yourself that you've no evidence +against me there?" + +"Evidence is to be got that may mean five years to you; don't you make +any mistake about that." + +"Whereas the evidence of this particular letter against yourself has, on +your own showing, already been obtained! It's as you like, of course," +added Raffles, getting up with a shrug. "But if the Old Bailey sees us +both, Mr. Levy, I'll back my chance against yours--and your sentence +against mine!" + +Raffles helped himself to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, +decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a +tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. + +"There, damn you!" said he, blinking into an empty glass. "I trust you +further than I'd trust any other young blood of your kidney; name your +price, and you shall earn it if you can." + +"You may think it a rather long one, Mr. Levy." + +"Never mind; you say what you want." + +"Leave that money of yours on the mortgage with Mr. Garland; forgive +him his other debt as you hope to be forgiven; and either that letter +shall be in your hands, or I'll be in the hands of the police, before a +week is up!" + +Spoken from man to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a +voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, +the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my +fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a +dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for +Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his +sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first +assault on their oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his +empty tumbler into the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a +volley of abuse as I have seldom heard from human brute. + +"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, contemptuously; "if we +copied your tactics we should throw you through that open window!" + +And I stood by for my share in the deed. + +"Yes! I know it'd pay you to break my neck," retorted Levy. "You'd rather +swing than do time, wouldn't you?" + +"And you prefer the other alternative," said Raffles, "to loosing your +grip upon a man who's done you no harm whatever! In interest alone he's +almost repaid all you lent him in the first instance; you've first-class +security for the rest; yet you must ruin him to revenge yourself upon us. +On us, mark you! It's against us you've got your grievance, not against +old Garland or his son. You've lost sight of that fact. That little trick +this morning was our doing entirely. Why don't you take it out of us? Why +refuse a fair offer to spite people who have done you no harm?" + +"It's not a fair offer," growled Levy. "I made you the fair offer." + +But his rage had moderated; he was beginning to listen to Raffles and to +reason, with however ill a grace. It was the very moment which Raffles +was the very man to improve. + +"Mr. Levy," said he, "do you suppose I care whether you hold your tongue +or not on a matter of mere suspicion, which you can't support by a grain +of evidence? You lose a piece of jewellery abroad; you recover it intact; +and after many days you get the bright idea that I'm the culprit because +I happen to have been staying in your hotel at the time. It never +occurred to you there or then, though you interviewed the gentleman face +to face, as you were constantly interviewing me. But as soon as I borrow +some money from you, here in London in the ordinary way, you say I must +be the man who borrowed Mrs. Levy's necklace in that extraordinary way at +Carlsbad! I should say it to the marines, Mr. Levy, if I were you; +they're the only force that are likely to listen to you." + +"I do say it, all the same; and what's more you don't deny it. If you +weren't the man you wouldn't be so ready for another game like it now." + +"Ready for it?" cried Raffles, more than ready for an undeniable point. +"I'm always your man for a new sensation, Mr. Levy, and for years I've +taken an academic interest in the very fine art of burglary; isn't that +so, Bunny?" + +"I've often heard you say so," I replied without mishap. + +"In these piping times," continued Raffles, "it's about the one exciting +and romantic career open to us. If it were not so infernally dishonest I +should have half a mind to follow it myself. And here you come and put +up a crib for me to crack in the best interests of equity and justice; +not to enrich the wicked cracksman, but to restore his rightful property +to the honest financier; a sort of teetotal felony--the very ginger-ale +of crime! Is that a beverage to refuse--a chance to miss--a temptation to +resist? Yet the risks are just as great as if it were a fine old fruity +felony; you can't expect me to run them for nothing, or even for their +own exciting sake. You know my terms, Mr. Levy; if you don't accept them, +it's already two in the morning, and I should like to get to bed before +it's light." + +"And if I did accept them?" said Levy, after a considerable pause. + +"The letter to which you attach such importance would most probably be in +your possession by the beginning of next week." + +"And I should have to take my hands off a nice little property that has +tumbled into them?" + +"Only for a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be +permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of +blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. +Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the crime of blackmail!" + +A singular docility had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no +uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this +case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I +personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put +him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles +would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with +himself and his apparent advantage. + +"Will you give me until to-morrow morning?" said Levy, taking up his hat. + +"If you mean the morning; by eleven I must be at Lord's." + +"Say ten o'clock in Jermyn Street?" + +"It's a strange bargain, Mr. Levy. I should prefer to clinch it out of +earshot of your clerks." + +"Then I will come here." + +"I shall be ready for you at ten." + +"And alone?" + +There was a sidelong glance at me with the proviso. + +"You shall search the premises yourself and seal up all the doors." + +"Meanwhile," said Levy, putting on his hat, "I shall think about it, but +that's all. I haven't agreed yet, Mr. Raffles; don't you make too sure +that I ever shall. I shall think about it--but don't you make too sure." + +He was gone like a lamb, this wild beast of five minutes back. Raffles +showed him out, and down into the courtyard, and out again into +Piccadilly. There was no question but that he was gone for good; back +came Raffles, rubbing his hands for joy. + +"A fine night, Bunny! A finer day to follow! But a nice, slow, +wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" + +I came to my point with all vehemence. + +"Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had +run risks enough for his sake as it was!" + +"How do you know it's for his sake--or anybody's?" asked Raffles, quite +hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, Garlands +or no Garlands? Besides, there's far less risk in what I mean to do than +in what I've been doing; at all events it's in my line." + +"It's not in your line," I retorted, "to strike a bargain with a swine +who won't dream of keeping his side." + +"I shall make him," said Raffles. "If he won't do what I want he shan't +have what he wants." + +"But how could you trust him to keep his word?" + +"His word!" cried Raffles, in ironical echo. "We shall have to carry +matters far beyond his word, of course; deeds, not words, Bunny, and the +deeds properly prepared by solicitors and executed by Dan Levy before he +lays a finger on his own blackmailing letter. You remember old Mother +Hubbard in our house at school? He's a little solicitor somewhere in the +City; he'll throw the whole thing into legal shape for us, and ask no +questions and tell no tales. You leave Mr. Shylock to me and Mother, and +we'll bring him up to the scratch as he ought to go." + +There was no arguing with Raffles in such a mood; argue I did, but he +paid no attention to what I said. He had unlocked a drawer in the bureau, +and taken out a map that I had never seen before. I looked over his +shoulder as he spread it out in the light of his reading-lamp. And it was +a map of London capriciously sprinkled with wheels and asterisks of red +ink; there was a finished wheel in Bond Street, another in Half-Moon +Street, one on the site of Thornaby House, Park Lane, and others as +remote as St. John's Wood and Peter Street, Campden Hill; the asterisks +were fewer, and I have less reason to remember their latitude and +longitude. + +"What's this, A.J.?" I asked. "It looks exactly like a war-map." + +"It is one, Bunny," said he; "it's the map of one man's war against the +ordered forces of society. The spokes are only the scenes of future +operations, but each finished wheel marks the field of some past +engagement, in which you have usually been the one man's one and only +accomplice." + +And he stooped and drew the neatest of blood-red asterisks at the +southern extremity of Gray's Inn Square. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +"My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + +The historic sward had just been cleared for action when Raffles and I +met at Lord's next day. I blush to own I had been knave and fool enough +to suggest that he should smuggle me into the pavilion; but perhaps the +only laws of man that Raffles really respected were those of the M.C.C., +and it was in Block B. that he joined me a minute or so before eleven. +The sun was as strong and the sky as blue as though the disastrous day +before had been just such another. But its tropical shower-bath had left +the London air as cleanly and as clear as crystal; the neutral tints of +every day were splashes of vivid colour, the waiting umpires animated +snow-men, the heap of sawdust at either end a pyramid of powdered gold +upon an emerald ground. And in the expectant hush before the appearance +of the fielding side, I still recall the Yorkshire accent of the Surrey +Poet, hawking his latest lyric on some "Great Stand by Mr. Webbe and Mr. +Stoddart," and incidentally assuring the crowd that Cambridge was going +to win because everybody said Oxford would. + +"Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men +emerged from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light +blue. The captain's colours were bleached by service; but the +wicket-keeper's were the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male +historian I shrink from saying how well they suited him. + +"Teddy Garland looks as though nothing had happened," was what I said at +the time, as I peered through my binocular at the padded figure with the +pink face and the gigantic gloves. + +"That's because he knows there's a chance of nothing more happening," was +the reply. "I've seen him and his poor old governor up here since I saw +Dan Levy." + +I eagerly inquired as to the upshot of the earlier interview, but Raffles +looked as though he had not heard. The Oxford captain had come out to +open the innings with a player less known to fame; the first ball of the +match hurtled down the pitch, and the Oxford captain left it severely +alone. Teddy took it charmingly, and almost with the same movement the +ball was back in the bowler's hands. + +"_He's_ all right!" muttered Raffles with a long breath. "So is our Mr. +Shylock, Bunny; we fixed things up in no time after all. But the worst of +it is I shall only be able to stop--" + +He broke off, mouth open as it might have been mine. A ball had been +driven hard to extra cover, and quite well fielded; another had been +taken by Teddy as competently as the first, but not returned to the +bowler. The Oxford captain had played at it, and we heard something even +in Block B. + +"How's that?" came almost simultaneously in Teddy's ringing voice. Up +went the umpire's finger, and down came Raffles's hand upon my thigh. + +"He's caught him, Bunny!" he cried in my ear above the Cambridge cheers. +"The best bat on either side, and Teddy's outed him third ball!" He +stopped to watch the defeated captain's slow return, the demonstration on +the pitch in Teddy's honour; then he touched me on the arm and dropped +his voice. "He's forgotten all his troubles now, Bunny, if you like; +nothing's going to worry him till lunch, unless he misses a sitting +chance. And he won't, you'll see; a good start means even more behind the +sticks than in front of 'em." + +Raffles was quite right. Another wicket fell cheaply in another way; then +came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and +judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass +unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the +bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and +beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching +behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great +gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held +them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for +four byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; +so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain +particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice +extracted a stray detail. + +"The old sinner has a place on the river, Bunny, though I have my +suspicions of a second establishment nearer town. But I'm to find him at +his lawful home all the next few nights, and sitting up for me till two +in the morning." + +"Then you're going to Gray's Inn Square this week?" + +"I'm going there this morning for a peep at the crib; there's no time to +be lost, but on the other hand there's a devil of a lot to learn. I say, +Bunny, there's going to be another change of bowling; the fast stuff, +too, by Jove!" + +A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper +was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. + +"You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only +answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a +crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!" + +The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at +the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent +contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking +thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered +Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into +Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less +reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at +my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit +hard but very late. It was a hit that might have smashed the pavilion +palings. But it never reached them; it stuck in Teddy's left glove +instead, and none of us knew it till we saw him staggering towards +long-leg, and tossing up the ball as he recovered balance. + +"That's the worst ball that ever took a wicket in this match!" vowed a +reverend veteran as the din died down. + +"And the best catch!" cried Raffles. "Come on, Bunny; that's my _nunc +dimittis_ for the day. There would be nothing to compare with it if I +could stop to see every ball bowled, and I mustn't see another." + +"But why?" I asked, as I followed Raffles into the press behind the +carriages. + +"I've already told you why," said he. + +I got as close to him as one could in that crowd. + +"You're not thinking of doing it to-night, A.J.?" + +"I don't know." + +"But you'll let _me_ know?" + +"Not if I can help it, Bunny; didn't I promise not to drag you any +further through this particular mire?" + +"But if _I_ can help _you_?" I whispered, after a momentary separation in +the throng. + +"Oh! if I can't get on without you," said Raffles, not nicely, "I'll let +you know fast enough. But do drop the subject now; here come old Garland +and Camilla Belsize!" + +They did not see us quite so soon as we saw them, and for a moment one +felt a spy; but it was an interesting moment even to a person smarting +from a snub. The ruined man looked haggard, ill, unfit to be about, the +very embodiment of the newspaper report concerning him. But the spirit +beamed through the shrinking flesh, the poor old fellow was alight with +pride and love, exultant in spite of himself and his misfortunes. He had +seen his boy's great catch; he had heard the cheers, he would hear them +till his dying hour. Camilla Belsize had also seen and heard, but not +with the same exquisite appreciation. Cricket was a game to her, it was +not that quintessence and epitome of life it would seem to be to some of +its devotees; and real life was pressing so heavily upon her that the +trivial consolation which had banished her companion's load could not +lighten hers. So at least I thought as they approached, the man so worn +and radiant, the girl so pensive for all her glorious youth and beauty: +his was the old head bowed with sorrow, his also the simpler and the +younger heart. + +"That catch will console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to +Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I +wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little +enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the +cricket. And that was usual enough. + +Raffles was already saying he must go, with an explanatory murmur to Mr. +Garland, who clasped his hand with a suddenly clouded countenance. But +Miss Belsize only bowed, and scarcely took her eyes off a couple of +outwardly inferior men, who had attracted my attention through hers, +until they also passed out of the ground. + +Mr. Garland was on tip-toes watching the game again with mercurial +ardour. + +"Mr. Manders will look after me," she said to him, "won't you, Mr. +Manders?" I made some suitable asseveration, and she added: "Mr. +Garland's a member, you know, and dying to go into the Pavilion." + +"Only just to hear what they think of Teddy," the poor old boy confessed; +and when we had arranged where to meet in the interval, away he hurried +with his keen, worn face. + +Miss Belsize turned to me the moment he was gone. + +"I want to speak to you, Mr. Manders," she said quickly but without +embarrassment. "Where can we talk?" + +"And watch as well?" I suggested, thinking of the young man at his best +behind the sticks. + +"I want to speak to you first," she said, "where we shan't be overheard. +It's about Mr. Raffles!" added Miss Belsize as she met my stare. + +About Raffles again! About Raffles, after all that she had learnt the +day before! I did not enjoy the prospect as I led the way past the +ivy-mantled tennis-court of those days to the practice-ground, turned for +the nonce into a tented lawn. + +"And what about Raffles?" I asked as we struck out for ourselves across +the grass. + +"I'm afraid he's in some danger," replied Miss Belsize. And she stopped +in her walk and confronted me as frankly as though we had the animated +scene to ourselves. + +"Danger!" I repeated, guiltily enough, no doubt. "What makes you think +that, Miss Belsize?" + +My companion hesitated for the first time. + +"You won't tell him I told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"Not if you don't want me to," said I, taken aback more by her manner +than by the request itself. + +"You promise me that?" + +"Certainly." + +"Then tell me, did you notice two men who passed close to us just after +we had all met?" + +"There are so many men to notice," said I to gain time. + +"But these were not the sort one expects to see here to-day." + +"Did they wear bowlers and short coats?" + +"You did notice them!" + +"Only because I saw you watching them," said I, recalling the +whole scene. + +"They wanted watching," rejoined Miss Belsize dryly. "They followed Mr. +Raffles out of the ground!" + +"So they did!" I reflected aloud in my alarm. + +"They were following you both when you met us." + +"The dickens they were! Was that the first you saw of them?" + +"No; the first time was over there at the nets before play began. I +noticed those two men behind Teddy's net. They were not watching him; +that called my attention to them. It's my belief they were lying in wait +for Mr. Raffles; at any rate, when he came they moved away. But they +followed us afterwards across the ground." + +"You are sure of that?" + +"I looked round to see," said Miss Belsize, avoiding my eyes for the +first time. + +"Did you think the men--detectives?" + +And I forced a laugh. + +"I was afraid they might be, Mr. Manders, though I have never seen one +off the stage." + +"Still," I pursued, with painfully sustained amusement, "you were +ready to find A.J. Raffles being shadowed here at Lord's of all places +in the world?" + +"I was ready for anything, anywhere," said Miss Belsize, "after all I +heard yesterday afternoon." + +"You mean about poor Mr. Garland and his affairs?" + +It was an ingenuously disingenuous suggestion; it brought my companion's +eyes back to mine, with something of the scorn that I deserved. + +"No, Mr. Manders, I meant after what we all heard between Mr. Levy +and Mr. Raffles; and you knew very well what I meant," added Miss +Belsize severely. + +"But surely you didn't take all that seriously?" said I, without denying +the just impeachment. + +"How could I help it? The insinuation was serious enough, in all +conscience!" exclaimed Camilla Belsize. + +"That is," said I, since she was not to be wilfully misunderstood, "that +poor old Raffles had something to do with this jewel robbery at +Carlsbad?" + +"If it was a robbery." + +She winced at the word. + +"Do you mean it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's +own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to +embrace that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it +really was what she had meant. + +"Obviously!" says she, with an impromptu superiority worthy of Raffles +himself. "I wonder you never thought of that, Mr. Manders, when you know +what a trick you both played Mr. Levy only yesterday. Mr. Raffles himself +told us all about that; and I'm very grateful to you both; you must know +I am--for Teddy's sake," added Miss Belsize, with one quick remorseful +glance towards the great arena. "Still it only shows what Mr. Raffles +is--and--and it's what I meant when we were talking about him yesterday." + +"I don't remember," said I, remembering fast enough. + +"In the rockery," she reminded me. "When you asked what people said about +him, and I said that about living on his wits." + +"And being a paid amateur!" + +"But the other was the worst." + +"I'm not so sure," said I. "But his wits wouldn't carry him very far if +he only took necklaces and put them back again." + +"But it was all a joke," she reminded us both with a bit of a start. +"It must have been a joke, if Mr. Raffles did it at all. And it would +be dreadful if anything happened to him because of a wretched +practical joke!" + +There was no mistake about her feeling now; she really felt that it would +be "dreadful if anything happened" to the man whom yesterday she had +seemed both to dislike and to distrust. Her voice vibrated with anxiety. +A bright film covered the fine eyes, and they were finer than ever as +they continued to face me unashamed; but I was fool enough to speak my +mind, and at that they flashed themselves dry. + +"I thought you didn't like him?" had been my remark, and "Who says I do?" +was hers. "But he has done a lot for Teddy," she went on, "and never more +than yesterday," with her hand for an instant on my arm, "when you helped +him! I am dreadfully sorry for Mr. Garland, sorrier than I am for poor +Teddy. But Mr. Raffles is more than sorry. I know he means to do what he +can. He seems to think there must be something wrong; he spoke of +bringing that brute to reason--if not to justice. It would be too +dreadful if such a creature could turn the tables on Mr. Raffles by +trumping up any charge against him!" + +There was an absolute echo of my own tone in "trumping up any charge," +and I thought the echo sounded even more insincere. But at least it +showed me where we were. Miss Belsize was not deceived; she only wanted +me to think she was. Miss Belsize had divined what I knew, but neither +of us would admit to the other that the charge against Raffles would be +true enough. + +"But why should these men follow him?" said I, really wondering why they +should. "If there were anything definite against old Raffles, don't you +think he would be arrested?" + +"Oh! I don't know," was the slightly irritable answer. "I only think he +should be warned that he is being followed." + +"Whatever he has done?" I ventured. + +"Yes!" said she. "Whatever he has done--after what he did for Teddy +yesterday!" + +"You want me to warn him?" + +"Yes--but not from me!" + +"And suppose he really did take Mrs. Levy's necklace?" + +"That's just what we are supposing." + +"But suppose it wasn't for a joke at all?" + +I spoke as one playfully plumbing the abysmally absurd; what I did desire +to sound was the loyalty of this new, unexpected, and still captious +ally. And I thought myself strangely successful at the first cast; for +Miss Belsize looked me in the face as I was looking her, and I trusted +her before she spoke. + +"Well, after yesterday," she said, "I should warn him all the same!" + +"You would back your Raffles right or wrong?" I murmured, perceiving that +Camilla Belsize was, after all, like all the rest of us. + +"Against a vulgar extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without +repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think +anything of him--apart from what you did between you for Teddy +yesterday." + +We had continued our stroll some time ago, and now it was I who stood +still. I looked at my watch. It still wanted some minutes to the +luncheon interval. + +"If Raffles took a cab to his rooms," I said, "he must be nearly there +and I must telephone to him." + +"Is there a call-office on the ground?" + +"Only in the pavilion, I believe, for the use of the members." + +"Then you must go to the nearest one outside." + +"And what about you?" + +Miss Belsize brightened with her smile of perfect and unconscious +independence. + +"Oh, I shall be all right," she said. "I know where to find Mr. Garland, +even if I don't pick up an escort on the way." + +But it was she who escorted me to the tall turnstile nearest +Wellington Road. + +"And you do see why I want to put Mr. Raffles on his guard?" she said +pointedly as we shook hands. "It's only because you and he have done so +much for Teddy!" + +And because she did not end by reminding me of my promise, I was all the +more reluctantly determined to keep it to the letter, even though Raffles +should think as ill as ever of one who was at least beginning to think +better of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A Dash in the Dark + + +In a few lines which I found waiting for me at the club, and have +somewhat imprudently preserved, Raffles professes to have known he was +being shadowed even before we met at Lord's: "but it was no use talking +about it until the foe were in the cart." He goes on to explain the +simple means by which he reduced the gentlemen in billycocks to the pitch +of discomfiture implied in his metaphor. He had taken a hansom to the +Burlington Gardens entrance to the Albany, and kept it waiting while he +went in and changed his clothes; then he had sent Barraclough to pay off +the cab, and himself marched out into Piccadilly, what time the billycock +brims were still shading watchful eyes in Burlington Gardens. There, to +be sure, I myself had spotted one of the precious pair when I drove up +after vain exertions at the call-office outside Lord's; but by that time +his confederate was on guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not +only shown a clean pair of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an +empty cage. He dismisses them not unfairly with the epithet +"amateurish." Thus I was the more surprised, but not the less relieved, +to learn that he was "running down into the country for the weekend, to +be out of their way"; but he would be back on the Monday night, "to keep +an engagement you wot of, Bunny. And if you like you may meet me under +the clock at Waterloo (in flannel kit and tennis-shoes for choice) at the +witching hour of twelve sharp." + +If I liked! I had a premature drink in honour of an invitation more +gratifying to my vanity than any compliment old Raffles had paid me yet; +for I could still hear his ironical undertaking to let me know if he +could not do without me, and there was obviously no irony in this +delightfully early intimation of that very flattering fact. It altered my +whole view of the case. I might disapprove of the risks Raffles was +running for his other friends, but the more I was allowed to share in +them the less critical I was inclined to be. Besides I was myself clearly +implicated in the issue as between my own friend and the common enemy; it +was no more palatable to me than it was to Raffles, to be beaten by Dan +Levy after our initial victory over him. So I drank like a man to his +destruction, and subsequently stole forth to spy upon his foolish +myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The +imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens +looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy +jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not +so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally +distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a +barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking notice +than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility one could scarcely excel the +other; and between them they raised my spirits to the zenith. + +I spent the rest of the afternoon at their own game, dogging Miss Belsize +about Lord's until at last I had an opportunity of informing her that +Raffles was quite safe. It may be that I made my report with too much +gusto when my chance came; at any rate, it was only the fact that +appeared to interest Miss Belsize; the details, over which I gloated, +seemed to inspire in her a repugnance consistent with the prejudice she +had displayed against Raffles yesterday, but not with her grateful +solicitude on his behalf as revealed to me that very morning. I could +only feel that gratitude was the beginning and the end of her new regard +for him. Raffles had never fascinated this young girl as he did the rest +of us; ordinarily engaged to an ordinary man, she was proof against the +glamour that dazzled us. Nay, though she would not admit it even to me +his friend, though like Levy she pretended to embrace the theory of the +practical joke, making it the pretext for her anxiety, I felt more +certain than ever that she now guessed, and had long suspected, what +manner of man Raffles really was, and that her natural antipathy was +greater even than before. Still more certain was I that she would never +betray him by word or deed; that, whatever harm might come of his present +proceedings, it would not be through Camilla Belsize. + +But I was now determined to do my own utmost to minimise the dangers, to +be a real help to Raffles in the act of altruistic depravity to which he +had committed himself, and not merely a fifth wheel to his dashing +chariot. Accordingly I went into solemn training for the event before us: +a Turkish bath on the Saturday, a quiet Sunday between Mount Street and +the club, and most of Monday lying like a log in cold-blooded preparation +for the night's work. And when night fell I took it upon me to +reconnoitre the ground myself before meeting Raffles at Waterloo. + +Another cool and starry evening seemed to have tempted all the town and +his wife into the streets. The great streams of traffic were busier than +ever, the backwaters emptier, and Gray's Inn a basin drained to the last +dreg of visible humanity. In one moment I passed through gateway and +alley from the voices and lights of Holborn into a perfectly deserted +square of bare ground and bright stars. The contrast was altogether +startling, for I had never been there before; but for the same reason I +had already lost my bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square +when I was only in South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a +hopeless search for the offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after +door had I tried in vain, and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a +stray molecule of the population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, +but with the quick step of the man who knows his way. I darted from a +doorway to inquire mine, but he was across the square before I could cut +him off, and as he passed through the rays of a lamp beside a second +archway, I fell back thanking Providence and Raffles for my rubber soles. +The man had neither seen nor heard me, but at the last moment I had +recognised him as the burlier of the two blockheads who had shadowed +Raffles three days before. + +He passed under the arch without looking round. I flattened myself +against the wall on my side of the arch; and in so standing I was all +but eye-witness of a sudden encounter in the square beyond. + +The quick steps stopped, and there was a "Here you are!" on one side, +and a "Well! Where is he?" on the other, both very eager and below +the breath. + +"On the job," whispered the first voice. "Up to the neck!" + +"When did 'e go in?" + +"Nearly an hour ago; when I sent the messenger." + +"Which way?" + +"Up through number seventeen." + +"Next door, eh?" + +"That's right." + +"Over the roof?" + +"Can't say; he's left no tracks. I been up to see." + +"I suppose there's the usual ladder and trapdoor?" + +"Yes, but the ladder's hanging in its proper place. He couldn't have put +it back there, could he?" + +The other grunted; presently he expressed a doubt whether Raffles (and it +thrilled me to hear the very name) had succeeded in breaking into the +lawyer's office at all. The first man on the scene, however, was quite +sure of it--and so was I. + +"And we've got to hang about," grumbled the newcomer, "till he comes +out again?" + +"That's it. We can't miss him. He must come back into the square or +through into the gardens, and if he does that he'll have to come over +these here railings into Field Court. We got him either way, and there's +a step just here where we can sit and see both ways as though it had been +made for us. You come and try ... a door into the old hall ..." + +That was all I heard distinctly; first their footsteps, and then the few +extra yards, made the rest unintelligible. But I had heard enough. "The +usual ladder and trap-door!" Those blessed words alone might prove worth +their weight in great letters of solid gold. + +Now I could breathe again; now I relaxed my body and turned my head, and +peered through the arch with impunity, and along the whole western side +of Gray's Inn Square, with its dusky fringe of plane-trees and its vivid +line of lamps, its strip of pavement, and its wall of many-windowed +houses under one unbroken roof. Dim lights smouldered in the column of +landing windows over every door; otherwise there was no break in the +blackness of that gaunt facade. Yet in some dark room or other behind +those walls I seemed to see Raffles at work as plainly as I had just +heard our natural enemies plotting his destruction. I saw him at a safe. +I saw him at a desk. I saw him leaving everything as he had found it, +only to steal down and out into the very arms of the law. And I felt that +even that desperate _denouement_ was little more than he deserved for +letting me think myself accessory before the fact, when all the time he +meant me to have nothing whatever to do with it! Well, I should have +everything to do with it now; if Raffles was to be saved from the +consequences of his own insanity, I and I alone must save him. It was the +chance of my life to show him my real worth. And yet the difficulty of +the thing might have daunted Raffles himself. + +I knew what to do if only I could gain the house which he had made the +base of his own operations; at least I knew what to attempt, and what +Raffles had done I might do. So far the wily couple within earshot had +helped me out of their own mouths. But they were only just round the +corner that hid them from my view; stray words still reached me; and they +knew me by sight, would recognise me at a glance, might pounce upon me as +I passed. Unless-- + +_I_ had it! + +The crowd in Holborn seemed strange and unreal as I jostled in its midst +once more. I was out of it in a moment, however, and into a 'bus, and out +of the 'bus in a couple of minutes by my watch. One more minute and I was +seeing how far back I could sit in a hansom bound for Gray's Inn Square. + +"I forget the number," I had told the cabman, "but it's three or four +doors beyond Burroughs and Burroughs, the solicitors." + +The gate into Holborn had to be opened for me, but the gate-keeper had +not seen me on my previous entrance and exit afoot through the postern. +It was when we drove under the further arch into the actual square that I +pressed my head hard against the back of the hansom, and turned my face +towards Field Court. The enemy might have abandoned their position, they +might meet me face to face as I landed on the pavement; that was my risk, +and I ran it without disaster. We passed the only house with an outer +door to it in the square (now there is none), and on the plate beside it +I read BURROUGHS AND BURROUGHS with a thrill. Up went my stick; my +shilling (with a peculiarly superfluous sixpence for luck) I thrust +through the trap with the other hand; and I was across the pavement, and +on the stairs four clear doors beyond the lawyer's office, before the +driver had begun to turn his horse. + +They were broad bare stairs, with great office doors right and left on +every landing, and in the middle the landing window looking out into the +square. I waited well within the window on the first floor; and as my +hansom drove out under the arch, the light of its near lamp flashed +across two figures lounging on the steps of that entrance to the hall; +but there was no stopping or challenging the cabman, no sound at all but +those of hoofs and bell, and soon only that of my own heart beating as I +fled up the rest of the stairs in my rubber soles. + +Near the top I paused to thank my kindly stars; sure enough there was a +long step-ladder hanging on a great nail over the last half-landing, and +a square trap-door right over the landing proper! I ran up just to see +the names on the two top doors; one was evidently that of some +pettifogging firm of solicitors, while the other bespoke a private +resident, whom I judged to be out of town by the congestion of postal +matter that met my fingers in his letter-box. Neither had any terrors for +me. The step-ladder was unhooked without another moment's hesitation. +Care alone was necessary to place it in position without making a noise; +then up I went, and up went the trapdoor next, without mishap or +hindrance until I tried to stand up in the loft, and caught my head a +crack against the tiles instead. + +This was disconcerting in more ways than one, for I could not leave the +ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match +and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. +The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the +roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, +and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have +wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute +before closing it with great caution, a squeak and a scuttle in the loft +itself being the only sign that I had disturbed a living creature. + +There was a grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but +leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now +stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here +in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless +chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of +pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone +wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and +aft in a similar slope to that at either side; the length of it +doubtless tallied with the frontage of a single house; and when I had +clambered over the southern extremity into a precisely similar valley I +saw that this must be the case. I had entered the fourth house beyond +Burroughs and Burroughs's, or was it the fifth? I threaded three +valleys, and then I knew. + +In all three there had been dormer windows on either hand, that on the +square side leading into the loft; the other, or others, forming a sort +of skylight to some top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these +standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake +on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of +Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the +strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled +into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room +if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles +had led the way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected +on something less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the +bars of a kitchen range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the +kitchen table. A cat was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a +step of a wooden chair, and came down like a cat myself. + +I found the kitchen door, found a passage so dark that the window at the +end hung like a picture slashed across the middle. Yet it only looked +into the square, for I peered out when I had crept along the passage, and +even thought I both heard and saw the enemy at their old post. But I was +in another enemy's country now; at every step I stopped to listen for the +thud of feet bounding out of bed. Hearing nothing, I had the temerity at +last to strike a match upon my trousers, and by its light I found the +outer door. This was not bolted nor yet shut; it was merely ajar, and so +I left it. + +The rooms opposite appeared to be an empty set; those on the second and +first floors were only partially shut off by swing doors leading to +different departments of the mighty offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. +There were no lights upon these landings, and I gathered my information +by means of successive matches, whose tell-tale ends I carefully +concealed about my person, and from copious legends painted on the walls. +Thus I had little difficulty in groping my way to the private offices of +Sir John Burroughs, head of the celebrated firm; but I looked in vain for +a layer of light under any of the massive mahogany doors with which this +portion of the premises was glorified. Then I began softly trying doors +that proved to be locked. Only one yielded to my hand; and when it was a +few inches open, all was still black; but the next few brought me to the +end of my quest, and the close of my solitary adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A Midsummer Night's Work + + +The dense and total darkness was broken in one place, and one only, by a +plateful of light proceeding from a tiny bulb of incandescence in its +centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a +pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other +side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its +plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, +and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his +task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute +concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was +a hint of the same quiet and wary smile with which Raffles would bowl an +over or drill holes in a door. + +I stood for some moments fascinated, entranced, before creeping in to +warn him of my presence in a whisper. But this time he heard my step, +snatched up electric torch and glittering revolver, and covered me with +the one in the other's light. + +"A.J.!" I gasped. + +"Bunny!" he exclaimed in equal amazement and displeasure. "What the devil +do you mean by this?" + +"You're in danger," I whispered. "I came to warn you!" + +"Danger? I'm never out of it. But how did you know where to find me, and +how on God's earth did _you_ get here?" + +"I'll tell you some other time. You know those two brutes you dodged the +other day?" + +"I ought to." + +"They're waiting below for you at this very moment." + +Raffles peered a few moments through the handful of white light between +our faces. + +"Let them wait!" said he, and replaced the torch upon the table and put +down his revolver for his pen. + +"They're detectives!" I urged. + +"Are they, Bunny?" + +"What else could they be?" + +"What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head +and deliberate pen. + +"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and +lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my +belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just +to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want +a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" + +"I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't +do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience, Bunny, +and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes +there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the +next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, +or else get out by yourself as you came in." + +I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the +landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my +way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to +surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same +mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not +one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" +I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and +listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to +welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police +behind them. + +Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand +my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. + +"Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. + +"Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" + +"I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" + +"You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would +have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." + +"Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. + +"Rather!" + +"Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." + +"It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that +the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper +in its place." + +"I never heard a sound." + +"I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You +see how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" + +I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the +house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. + +"Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" + +"Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. + +"You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This +is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a +commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come +when he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have +been a shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" + +We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against +Raffles's legs. + +"But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?" + +"Made friends with him when I called on Friday; didn't I tell you I had +an appointment with the bloated head of this notorious firm when I +cleared out of Lord's? I'm about to strengthen his already unrivalled +list of clients; you shall hear all about that later. We had another +interview this afternoon, when I asked my V.C. if he ever went to the +theatre; you see he had spotted Tom Fool, and told me he never had a +chance of getting to Lord's. So I got him tickets for 'Rosemary' instead, +but of course I swore they had just been given to me and I couldn't use +them. You should have seen how the hero beamed! So that's where he is, +he and his wife--or was, until the curtain went down." + +"Good Lord, Raffles, is the piece over?" + +"Nearly ten minutes ago, but it'll take 'em all that unless they come +home in a cab." + +And Raffles had been sitting before the fire, on the kitchen table, +encouraging the cat, when this formidable V.C. and his wife must be +coming every instant nearer Gray's Inn Square! + +"Why, my dear Bunny, I should back myself to swarm up and out without +making a sound or leaving a sign, if I heard our hero's key in the lock +this moment. After you, Bunny." + +I climbed up with trembling knees, Raffles holding the rope taut to make +it easier. Once more I stood upright under the stars and the telephone +wires, and leaned against a chimney-stack to wait for Raffles. But before +I saw him, before I even heard his unnecessarily noiseless movements, I +heard something else that sent a chill all through me. + +It was not the sound of a key in the lock. It was something far worse +than that. It was the sound of voices on the roof, and of footsteps +drawing nearer through the very next valley of leads and tiles. + +I was crouching on the leads outside the dormer window as Raffles +climbed into sight within. + +"They're after us up here!" I whispered in his face. "On the next roof! I +hear them!" + +Up came Raffles with his hands upon the sill, then with his knees between +his hands, and so out on all-fours into the narrow rivulet of lead +between the sloping tiles. Out of the opposite slope, a yard or two on, +rose a stout stack of masonry, a many-headed monster with a chimney-pot +on each, and a full supply of wires for whiskers. Behind this Gorgon of +the house-tops Raffles hustled me without a word, and himself took +shelter as the muffled voices on the next roof grew more distinct. They +were the voices that I had overheard already in the square, the voices +but not the tones. The tones--the words--were those of an enemy divided +against itself. + +"And now we've gone and come too far!" grumbled the one who had been last +to arrive upon the scene below. + +"We did that," the other muttered, "the moment we came in after 'em. We +should've stopped where we were." + +"With that other cove driving up and going in without ever showing a +glim?" + +Raffles nudged me, and I saw what I had done. But the weakling of the +pair still defended the position he had reluctantly abandoned on _terra +firma_; he was all for returning while there was time; and there were +fragments of the broken argument that were beginning to puzzle me when a +soft oath from the man in front proclaimed the discovery of the open +window and the rope. + +"We got 'em," he whispered, stagily, "like rats in a trap!" + +"You forget what it is we've got to get." + +"Well, we must first catch our man, mustn't we? And how d'ye know his pal +hasn't gone in to warn him where we were? If he has, and we'd stopped +there, they'd do us easy." + +"They may do us easier down there in the dark," replied the other, with a +palpable shiver. "They'll hear us and lie in wait. In the dark! We shan't +have a dog's chance." + +"All right! You get out of it and save your skin. I'd rather work alone +than with a blessed funk!" + +The situation was identical with many a one in the past between Raffles +and me. The poor brute in my part resented the charge against his courage +as warmly as I had always done. He was merely for the better part of +valour, and how right he was Raffles and I only knew. I hoped the lesson +was not lost upon Raffles. Dialogue and action alike resembled one of +our own performances far more than ordinary police methods as we knew +them. We heard the squeeze of the leader's clothes and the rattle of his +buttons over the window ledge. "It's like old times," we heard him +mutter; and before many moments the weakling was impulsively whispering +down to know if he should follow. + +I felt for that fellow at every stage of his unwilling proceedings. I was +to feel for him still more. Raffles had stepped down like a cat from +behind our cover; grasping an angle of the stack with either hand, I put +my head round after him. The wretched player of my old part was on his +haunches at the window, stooping forward, more in than out. I saw Raffles +grinning in the starlight, saw his foot poised and the other poor devil +disappear. Then a dull bump, then a double crash and such a cursing as +left no doubt that the second fellow had fallen plumb on top of the +first. Also from his language I fancied he would survive the fall. + +But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped +out at my feet than he had untied the other end. + +"Like lamplighters, Bunny!" + +And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the +hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or +two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs. + +"This is where I came out," I called to Raffles as he passed the place. +"There's a ladder here where I left it in the loft!" + +"No time for ladders!" cried Raffles over his shoulder, and not for some +moments did he stop in his stride. Nor was it I who stopped him then; it +was a sudden hubbub somewhere behind us, somewhere below; the blowing of +a police whistle, and the sound of many footsteps in the square. + +"That's for us!" I gasped. "The ladder! The ladder!" + +"Ladder be damned!" returned Raffles, roughly. "It isn't for us at all; +it's my pal the V.C. who has come home and bottled the other blighters." + +"Thinking they're thieves?" + +"Thinking any rot you like! Our course is over the rest of the roofs on +this side, over the whole lot at the top end, and, if possible, down the +last staircase in the corner. Then we only have to show ourselves in the +square for a tick before we're out by way of Verulam Buildings." + +"Is there another gate there?" I asked as he scampered on with me +after him. + +"Yes; but it's closed and the porter leaves at twelve, and it must be +jolly near that now. Wait, Bunny! Some one or other is sure to be looking +out of the top windows across the square; they'll see us if we take our +fences too freely!" + +We had come to one of the transverse tile-slopes, which hitherto we had +run boldly up and down in our helpful and noiseless rubber soles; now, +not to show ourselves against the stars, to a stray pair of eyes on some +other high level, we crept up on all fours and rolled over at full +length. It added considerably to our time over more than a whole side of +the square. Meanwhile the police whistles had stopped, but the company in +the square had swollen audibly. + +It seemed an age, but I suppose it was not many minutes, before we came +to the last of the dormer windows, looking into the last vale of tiles in +the north-east angle of the square. Something gleamed in the starlight, +there was a sharp little sound of splitting wood, and Raffles led me on +hands and knees into just such a loft as I had entered before by ladder. +His electric torch discovered the trapdoor at a gleam. Raffles opened it +and let down the rope, only to whisk it up again so smartly that it +struck my face like a whiplash. + +A door had opened on the top landing. We listened over the open +trap-door, and knew that another stood listening on the invisible +threshold underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart +leapt for he never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by +our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red +neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom +slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way +down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like looking up. + +Raffles threw his rope aside, gave me his hand instead, and dropped me on +the landing like a feather, dropping after me without a moment's pause. +In fact, the old fellow with the fez could hardly have completed his +descent of the stairs when we began ours. Yet through the landing window +we saw him charging diagonally across the square, shouting and +gesticulating in his flight to the gathering crowd near the far corner. + +"He spotted us, Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, after listening an instant +in the entrance. "Stick to me like my shadow, and do every blessed +thing I do." + +Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of +lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of +attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square +behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our +direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in +front of Verulam Buildings. + +It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at +the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us +through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can +the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate +had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and +dry in a hansom. + +"King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we +reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to +the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, +and Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That +little bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the +first cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as +scent is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to +ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge +and a good five minutes to go!" + +"You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" + +"Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." + +"But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his +note, and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. + +"I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied +Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." + +"And _I_ thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" + +Raffles laughed. + +"The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! +To-night, for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your +unselfish audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear +fellow, it was a sadly unnecessary effort." + +"Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" + +"Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off +for his pal." + +"Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." + +"Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never +have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going +in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me +on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and +those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside +the Albany." + +"Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting +for you in any case if you didn't show up." + +"Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it +wasn't their job at all." + +"Not to take you in the act if they could?" + +"No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to +earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from +old Levy." + +"Levy!" + +"Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?" + +"His creatures, Raffles?" + +"He set them to shadow me from the hour of our interview on Saturday +morning. Their instructions were to bag the letter from me as soon as I +got it, but to let me go free to the devil!" + +"How can you know, A.J.?" + +"My dear Bunny, where do you suppose I've been spending the week-end? Did +you think I'd go in with a sly dog like old Shylock without watching him +and finding out his real game? I should have thought it hardly necessary +to tell you I've been down the river all the time; down the river," +added Raffles, chuckling, "in a Canadian canoe and a torpedo beard! I was +cruising near the foot of the old brute's garden on Friday evening when +one of the precious pair came down to tell him they had let me slip +already. I landed and heard the whole thing through the window of the +room where we shall find him to-night. It was Levy who set them to watch +the crib since they'd lost the cracksman; he was good enough to reiterate +all his orders for my benefit. You will hear me take him through them +when we get down there, so it's no use going over the same ground twice." + +"Funny orders for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled +comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. + +"Scotland Yard?" said he. "My good Bunny, those were no limbs of the law; +they're old thieves set to catch a thief, and they've been caught +themselves for their pains!" + +Of course they were! Every detail of their appearance and their behaviour +confirmed the statement in the flash that brought them all before my +mind! And I had never thought of it, never but dreamt that we were doing +battle with the archenemies of our class. But there was no time for +further reflection, nor had I recovered breath enough for another word, +when the hansom clattered up the cobbles into Waterloo Station. And our +last sprint of that athletic night ended in a simultaneous leap into +separate carriages as the platform slid away from the 12:10 train. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Knocked Out + + +But it was hardly likely to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw +for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like +Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded +dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; +and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not +come in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings +in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still +impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's +mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their +first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the +real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light +enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in +Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any +consideration. His magnanimity in the matter, which he flatly refused to +take as seriously as I did, made it difficult for me to press old +Raffles, as I otherwise might have done, for an outline of those further +plans in which I hoped to atone for my blunders by being of some use to +him after all. His nonchalant manner convinced me that they were +cut-and-dried; but I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the +details. I merely gathered that he had brought down some document for +Levy to sign in execution of the verbal agreement made between them in +town; not until that agreement was completed by his signature was the +harpy to receive the precious epistle he pretended never to have written. +Raffles, in fine, had the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who +is none the less prepared for foul play on the other side, and by no +means perturbed at the prospect. + +We left the train at a sweet-smelling platform, on which the lights were +being extinguished as we turned into a quiet road where bats flew over +our heads between the lamp-posts, and a policeman was passing a disc of +light over a jerry-built abuse of the name of Queen Anne. Our way led +through quieter roads of larger houses standing further back, until at +last we came to the enemy's gates. They were wooden gates without a +lodge, yet the house set well beyond them, on the river's brim, was a +mansion of considerable size and still greater peculiarity. It was really +two houses, large and small, connected by a spine of white posts and +joists and glimmering glass. In the more substantial building no lights +were to be seen from the gates, but in the annex a large French window +made a lighted square at right angles with the river and the road. We had +set foot in the gravel drive; with a long line of poplars down one side, +and on the other a wide lawn dotted with cedars and small shrubs, when +Raffles strode among these with a smothered exclamation, and a wild +figure started from the ground. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Raffles, with all the righteous +austerity of a law-abiding citizen. + +"Nutting, sare!" replied an alien tongue, a gleam of good teeth in the +shadow of his great soft hat. "I been see Mistare Le-vie in ze 'ouse, on +ze beezness, shentlemen." + +"Seen him, have you? Then if I were you I should make a decent +departure," said Raffles, "by the gate--" to which he pointed with +increased severity of tone and bearing. + +The weird figure uncovered a shaggy head of hair, made us a grotesque bow +with his right hand melodramatically buried in the folds of a voluminous +cape, and stalked off in the starlight with much dignity. But we heard +him running in the road before the gate had clicked behind him. + +"Isn't that the fellow we saw in Jermyn Street last Thursday?" I asked +Raffles in a whisper. + +"That's the chap," he whispered back. "I wonder if he spotted us, Bunny? +Levy's treated him scandalously, of course; it all came out in a torrent +the other morning. I only hope he hasn't been serving Dan Levy as Jack +Rutter served old Baird! I could swear that was a weapon of sorts he'd +got under his cloak." + +And as we stood together under the stars, listening to the last of the +runaway footfalls, I recalled the killing of another and a less notorious +usurer by a man we both knew, and had even helped to shield from the +consequences of his crime. Yet the memory of our terrible discovery on +that occasion had not the effect of making me shrink from such another +now; nor could I echo the hope of Raffles in my heart of hearts. If Dan +Levy also had come to a bad end--well, it was no more than he deserved, +if only for his treachery to Raffles, and, at any rate, it would put a +stop to our plunging from bad to worse in an adventure of which the +sequel might well be worst of all. I do not say that I was wicked enough +absolutely to desire the death of this sinner for our benefit; but I saw +the benefit at least as plainly as the awful possibility, and it was not +with unalloyed relief that I beheld a great figure stride through the +lighted windows at our nearer approach. + +Though his back was to the light before I saw his face, and the whole man +might have been hacked out of ebony, it was every inch the living Levy +who stood peering in our direction, one hand hollowed at an ear, the +other shading both eyes. + +"Is that you, boys?" he croaked in sepulchral salute. + +"It depends which boys you mean," replied Raffles, marching into the zone +of light. "There are so many of us about to-night!" + +Levy's arms dropped at his sides, and I heard him mutter "Raffles!" with +a malediction. Next moment he was inquiring whether we had come down +alone, yet peering past us into the velvet night for his answer. + +"I brought our friend Bunny," said Raffles, "but that's all." + +"Then what do you mean by saying there are so many of you about?" + +"I was thinking of the gentleman who was here just before us." + +"Here just before you? Why, I haven't seen a soul since my 'ousehold +went to bed." + +"But we met the fellow just this minute within your gates: a little +foreign devil with a head like a mop and the cloak of an operatic +conspirator." + +"That beggar!" cried Levy, flying into a high state of excitement on the +spot. "That blessed little beggar on my tracks down here! I've 'ad him +thrown out of the office in Jermyn Street; he's threatened me by letter +and telegram; so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down +'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen '_im_! I'm ready for biters like that, +gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!" + +And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy +drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have +gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him +that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was +not put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he +placed it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on +entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping +with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that +the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of +travel and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature. + +"Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!" exclaimed Raffles, +pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself +the drink he had declined. + +"Yes," said Levy, "the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying +he'd shoot _me_ at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as +a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He +didn't get much show 'ere, _I_ can tell you; that little foreign snipe +won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. +I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, +I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to +your profession, eh, Raffles?" + +"I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy." + +"Oh yes you do!" said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. "How've +you got on with that little bit o' burgling?" + +And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open +windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his +mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy +had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, +in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the +table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions +to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for +the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night. + +"How did you get on?" he repeated when he had given them up for +the present. + +"For a first attempt," replied Raffles, without a twinkle, "I don't think +I've done so badly." + +"Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner," said Levy, catching the +old note in his turn. + +"A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as +easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square." + +"As easy?" + +Raffles recollected his pose. + +"It was enormous fun," said he. "Of course one couldn't know that +there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. +I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. +Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only +took rather longer." + +"What about the caretaker?" asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer +to be concealed. + +"He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre." + +"At your expense?" + +"No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course." + +"So you got in without any difficulty?" + +"Over the roof." + +"And then?" + +"I hit upon the right room." + +"And then, Raffles?" + +"I opened the right safe." + +"Go on, man!" + +But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed +him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all. + +"Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it +a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me." Thus Raffles under +increasing pressure. + +"Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?" + +There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract +the _denouement_ of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must +have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily +plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of +victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, +and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant +little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This +was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the +living epitome of low cunning and foul play. + +"The next thing that happened," said Raffles, in his most leisurely +manner, "was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue." + +"Had he gone in with you?" + +"No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of +common, low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!" + +"That was very kind of 'im," snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon +my person from his little black eyes. + +"Kind!" cried Raffles. "It saved the whole show." + +"It did, did it?" + +"I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and +never letting them know that I had got out at all." + +"Then you left them there?" + +"In their glory!" said Raffles, radiant in his own. + +Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were +excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in +which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven +home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the +table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, +and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself. + +"And you came away, I suppose," suggested the money-lender, ironically, +"with my original letter in your pocket?" + +"Oh, no, I didn't," replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head. + +"I thought not!" cried Levy in a gust of exultation. + +"I came away," said Raffles, "if you'll pardon the correction, with the +letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!" + +The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the +self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. "You'd better let +me see it," said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of +authority which it took a Raffles to resist. + +Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet +in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. +But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further +from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with +the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a +phylactery. + +"You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, with a slight but +sufficient emphasis on his verb. + +"But I'm not to touch--is that it?" + +"I'm afraid I must ask you to look first," said Raffles, smiling. "I +should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me +that part of your _quid pro quo_ which you have doubtless in readiness; +the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the +three little papers can change hands simultaneously." + +Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the +exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and +unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he +ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the +monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my +side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, +spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles +with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other. + +"Now I'll have a look," he hiccoughed, "an' a good look, unless you want +a lump of lead in your liver!" + +Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile. + +"You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober," said he; +but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was +wondering how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the +nobbler of crude spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, +full in the face of Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and +flung upon the fire, while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, +and before I had struggled to my feet. + +Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was +streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already +crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the +blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first +jumping upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought +him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet +with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the +rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden +head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead +I believe I should have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot. + +I know that I rose exultant from my deed.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Corpus Delicti + + +Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, +and I heard him saying, "The letter, Bunny, the letter!" in a way that +made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since +the moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been +from the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the +hearth, were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such +store, for which Raffles had risked so much. + +"He's burnt it," said I. "He was too quick for me." + +"And he's nearly burnt my eyes out," returned Raffles, rubbing them +again. "He was too quick for us both." + +"Not altogether," said I, grimly. "I believe I've cracked his skull and +finished him off!" + +Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a +blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the +pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable. + +"No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are +any lights in the other part of the house." + +When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long +glass passage. + +"Not a light!" said I. + +"Nor a sound," he whispered. "We're in better luck than we might have +been; even his revolver didn't go off." Raffles extracted it from under +the prostrate body. "It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, +or one of us." And he put the pistol in his own pocket. + +"But have I killed him, Raffles?" + +"Not yet, Bunny." + +"But do you think he's going to die?" + +I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth +chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body +sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the +parquet floor. + +"He's all right," said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened +again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back +on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the +polished floor. "You'd better leave him to me," he said, looking and +getting up with sudden decision. + +"But what am I to do?" + +"Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat." + +"Where is the boathouse?" + +"You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge. +There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this." + +And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have +handed over a bunch of keys. + +"And what then?" + +"You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand +tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that +windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you +will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, +but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim +for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and +then lie low on board till I come." + +Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken +helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of +Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I +neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me +something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, +what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, +were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about +them. Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, +and I frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as +it seemed to have mattered now. Away from the _corpus delicti_, my horror +was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had quite a +level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter at the +worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing him to +life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go about my +own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of the +normal sensibilities. + +Not much do I remember of that dreamy interval, until the dream became +the nightmare that was still in store. The river ran like a broad road +under the stars, with hardly a glimmer and not a floating thing upon it. +The boathouse stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it +by stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the +stars. The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I +could not see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between +the slow ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and +heard at length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; +that was the last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out +of the river; indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of +stream underneath, for the open end of the boathouse was much less dark +than mine; and when the faint band of reflected starlight had broadened +as I thought enough, I ceased winding and groped my way down the steps +into the boat. + +But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last +thing I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs +wonder what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want +with the boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could +see the strategic value of my position if we had been robbing the house, +but Raffles was not out for robbery this time; and I did not believe he +would suddenly change his mind. Could it be that he had never been quite +confident of the recovery of Levy, but had sent me to prepare this means +of escape from the scene of a tragedy? I cannot have been long in the +boat, for my thwart was still rocking under me, when this suspicion shot +me ashore in a cold sweat. In my haste I went into the river up to one +knee, and ran across the lawn with that boot squelching. Raffles came out +of the lighted room to meet me, and as he stood like Levy against the +electric glare, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing an +overcoat that did not belong to him, and that the pockets of this +overcoat were bulging grotesquely. But it was the last thing I remembered +in the horror that was to come. + +Levy was lying where I had left him, only straighter, and with a cushion +under his head, as though he were not merely dead, but laid out in his +clothes where he had fallen. + +"I was just coming for you, Bunny," whispered Raffles before I could find +my voice. "I want you to take hold of his boots." + +"His boots!" I gasped, taking Raffles by the sleeve instead. "What on +earth for?" + +"To carry him down to the boat!" + +"But is he--is he still--" + +"Alive?" Raffles was smiling as though I amused him mightily. "Rather, +Bunny! Too full of life to be left, I can tell you; but it'll be daylight +if we stop for explanations now. Are you going to lend a hand, or am I to +drag him through the dew myself?" + +I lent every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by +the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off +the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a +very short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on +the gravel, and I watched over it for some of the longest minutes of my +life, while Raffles shut and fastened all the windows, left the room as +Levy himself might have left it, and finally found his way out by one of +the doors. And all the while not a movement or a sound came from the +senseless clay at my feet; but once, when I bent over him, the smell of +whiskey was curiously vital and reassuring. + +We started off again, Raffles with every muscle on the strain, I with +every nerve; this time we staggered across the lawn without a rest, +but at the boathouse we put him down in the dew, until I took off my +coat and we got him lying on that while we debated about the +boathouse, its darkness, and its steps. The combination beat us on a +moment's consideration; and again I was the one to stay, and watch, +and listen to my own heart beating; and then to the water bubbling at +the prow and dripping from the blades as Raffles sculled round to the +edge of the lawn. + +I need dwell no more upon the difficulty and the horror of getting that +inanimate mass on board; both were bad enough, but candour compels me to +admit that the difficulty dwarfed all else until at last we overcame it. +How near we were to swamping our craft, and making sure of our victim by +drowning, I still shudder to remember; but I think it must have prevented +me from shuddering over more remote possibilities at the time. It was a +time, if ever there was one, to trust in Raffles and keep one's powder +dry; and to that extent I may say I played the game. But it was his game, +not mine, and its very object was unknown to me. Never, in fact, had I +followed my inveterate leader quite so implicitly, so blindly, or with +such reckless excitement. And yet, if the worst did happen and our mute +passenger was never to open his eyes again, it seemed to me that we were +well on the road to turn manslaughter into murder in the eyes of any +British jury: the road that might easily lead to destruction at the +hangman's hands. + +But a more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment +of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and +swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank +while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night +was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt +fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between +my shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and _his_ white +shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his +white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it +with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. +Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip +his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely +hear them, and to keep peering behind him down the Stygian stream. + +So long had we been getting under way that nothing surprised me more +than the extreme brevity of our actual voyage. Not many houses and +gardens had slipped behind us on the Middlesex shore, when we turned +into an inlet running under the very windows of a house so near the +river itself that even I might have thrown a stone from any one of them +into Surrey. The inlet was empty and ill-smelling; there was a crazy +landing-stage, and the many windows overlooking us had the black gloss +of empty darkness within. Seen by starlight with a troubled eye, the +house had one salient feature in the shape of a square tower, which +stood out from the facade fronting the river, and rose to nearly twice +the height of the main roof. But this curious excrescence only added to +the forbidding character of as gloomy a mansion as one could wish to +approach by stealth at dead of night. + +"What's this place?" I whispered as Raffles made fast to a post. + +"An unoccupied house, Bunny." + +"Do you mean to occupy it?" + +"I mean our passenger to do so--if we can land him alive or dead!" + +"Hush, Raffles!" + +"It's a case of heels first, this time--" + +"Shut up!" + +Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage--luckily on a level with our +rowlocks--and reaching down into the boat. + +"Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. +You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him." + +"I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run +colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!" + +And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, +with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there +was a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the +river beyond. + +"Another narrow squeak!" he muttered with grim levity when the sound had +died away. "I wonder who it is paddling his own canoe at dead of night?" + +"I'm wondering how much he saw." + +"Nothing," said Raffles, as though there could be no two opinions on the +point. "What did we see to swear to between a sweater and a +pocket-handkerchief? Only something white, and we were looking out, and +it's far darker in here than out there on the main stream. But it'll +soon be getting light, and we really may be seen unless we land our big +fish first." + +And without more ado he dragged the lifeless Levy ashore by the heels, +while I alternately grasped the landing-stage to steady the boat, and did +my best to protect the limp members and the leaden head from actual +injury. All my efforts could not avert a few hard knocks, however, and +these were sustained with such a horrifying insensibility of body and +limb, that my worst suspicions were renewed before I crawled ashore +myself, and remained kneeling over the prostrate form. + +"Are you certain, Raffles?" I began, and could not finish the +awful question. + +"That he's alive?" said Raffles. "Rather, Bunny, and he'll be kicking +below the belt again in a few more hours!" + +"A few more _hours_, A.J.?" + +"I give him four or five." + +"Then it's concussion of the brain!" + +"It's the brain all right," said Raffles. "But for 'concussion' I should +say 'coma,' if I were you." + +"What have I done!" I murmured, shaking my head over the poor old brute. + +"You?" said Raffles. "Less than you think, perhaps!" + +"But the man's never moved a muscle." + +"Oh, yes, he has, Bunny!" + +"When?" + +"I'll tell you at the next stage," said Raffles. "Up with his heels and +come this way." + +And we trailed across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body +sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept +the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at +the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps +there were within, stone steps allowing so little room for one foot and +so much for the other as to suggest a spiral staircase from top to bottom +of the tower. So it turned out to be; but there were landings +communicating with the house, and on the first of them we laid our man +and sat down to rest. + +"How I love a silent, uncomplaining, stone staircase!" sighed the now +quite invisible Raffles. "So of course we find one thrown away upon an +empty house. Are you there, Bunny?" + +"Rather! Are you quite sure nobody else is here?" I asked, for he was +scarcely troubling to lower his voice. + +"Only Levy, and he won't count till all hours." + +"I'm waiting to hear how you know." + +"Have a Sullivan, first." + +"Are we as safe as all that?" + +"If we're careful to make an ash-tray of our own pockets," said Raffles, +and I heard him tapping his cigarette in the dark. I refused to run any +risks. Next moment his match revealed him sitting at the bottom of one +flight, and me at the top of the flight below; either spiral was lost in +shadow; and all I saw besides was a cloud of smoke from the blood-stained +lips of Raffles, more clouds of cobwebs, and Levy's boots lying over on +their uppers, almost in my lap. Raffles called my attention to them +before he blew out his match. + +"He hasn't turned his toes up yet, you see! It's a hog's sleep, but not +by any means his last." + +"Did you mean just now that he woke up while I was in the boathouse?" + +"Almost as soon as your back was turned, Bunny--if you call it waking up. +You had knocked him out, you know, but only for a few minutes." + +"Do you mean to tell me that he was none the worse?" + +"Very little, Bunny." + +My feeble heart jumped about in my body. + +"Then what knocked him out again, A.J.?" + +"I did." + +"In the same way?" + +"No, Bunny, he asked for a drink and I gave him one." + +"A doctored drink!" I whispered with some horror; it was refreshing to +feel once more horrified at some act not one's own. + +"So to speak," said Raffles, with a gesture that I followed by the red +end of his cigarette; "I certainly touched it up a bit, but I always +meant to touch up his liquor if the beggar went back on his word. He did +a good deal worse--for the second time of asking--and you did better than +I ever knew you do before, Bunny! I simply carried on the good work. Our +friend is full of a judicious blend of his own whiskey and the stuff poor +Teddy had the other night. And when he does come to his senses I believe +we shall find him damned sensible." + +"And if he isn't, I suppose you'll keep him here until he is?" + +"I shall hold him up to ransom," said Raffles, "at the top of this ruddy +tower, until he pays through both nostrils for the privilege of climbing +down alive." + +"You mean until he stands by his side of your bargain?" said I, only +hoping that was his meaning, but not without other apprehensions which +Raffles speedily confirmed. + +"And the rest!" he replied, significantly. "You don't suppose the skunk's +going to get off as lightly as if he'd played the game, do you? I've got +one of my own to play now, Bunny, and I mean to play it for all I'm +worth. I thought it would come to this!" + +In fact, he had foreseen treachery from the first, and the desperate +device of kidnapping the traitor proved to have been as deliberate a move +as Raffles had ever planned to meet a probable contingency. He had +brought down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of +Somnol. My own deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, +and Raffles vowed it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had +ever been over this empty house before, an irritable jerk of his +cigarette end foretold the answer. + +"My good Bunny, is this a time for rotten questions? Of course I've been +over the whole place; didn't I tell you I'd been spending the week-end in +these parts? I got an order to view the place, and have bribed the +gardener not to let anybody else see over it till I've made up my mind. +The gardener's cottage is on the other side of the main road, which runs +flush with the front of the house; there's a splendid garden on that +side, but it takes him all his time to keep it up, so he's given up +bothering about this bit here. He only sets foot in the house to show +people over; his wife comes in sometimes to open the downstairs windows; +the ones upstairs are never shut. So you perceive we shall be fairly free +from interruption at the top of this tower, especially when I tell you +that it finishes in a room as sound-proof as old Carlyle's crow's-nest in +Cheyne Row." + +It flashed across me that another great man of letters had made his local +habitation if not his name in this part of the Thames Valley; and when I +asked if this was that celebrity's house, Raffles seemed surprised that +I had not recognised it as such in the dark. He said it would never let +again, as the place was far too good for its position, which was now much +too near London. He also told me that the idea of holding Dan Levy up to +ransom had occurred to him when he found himself being followed about +town by Levy's "mamelukes," and saw what a traitor he had to cope with. + +"And I hope you like the idea, Bunny," he added, "because I was never +caught kidnapping before, and in all London there wasn't a bigger man +to kidnap." + +"I love it," said I (and it was true enough of the abstract idea), "but +don't you think he's just a bit too big? Won't the country ring with his +disappearance?" + +"My dear Bunny, nobody will dream he's disappeared!" said Raffles, +confidently. "I know the habits of the beast; didn't I tell you he ran +another show somewhere? Nobody seems to know where, but when he isn't +here, that's where he's supposed to be, and when he's there he cuts town +for days on end. I suppose you never noticed I've been wearing an +overcoat all this time, Bunny?" + +"Oh, yes, I did," said I. "Of course it's one of his?" + +"The very one he'd have worn to-night, and his soft hat from the same +peg is in one of the pockets; their absence won't look as if he'd come +out feet first, will it, Bunny? I thought his stick might be in the way, +so instead of bringing it too, I stowed it away behind his books. But +these things will serve a second turn when we see our way to letting him +go again like a gentleman." + +The red end of the Sullivan went out sizzling between a moistened thumb +and finger, and no doubt Raffles put it carefully in his pocket as he +rose to resume the ascent. It was still perfectly dark on the tower +stairs; but by the time we reached the sanctum at the top we could see +each other's outlines against certain ovals of wild grey sky and dying +stars. For there was a window more like a porthole in three of the four +walls; in the fourth wall was a cavity like a ship's bunk, into which we +lifted our still unconscious prisoner as gently as we might. Nor was that +the last that was done for him, now that some slight amends were +possible. From an invisible locker Raffles produced bundles of thin, +coarse stuff, one of which he placed as a pillow under the sleeper's +head, while the other was shaken out into a covering for his body. + +"And you asked me if I'd ever been over the place!" said Raffles, +putting a third bundle in my hands. "Why, I slept up here last night, +just to see if it was all as quiet as it looked; these were my +bed-clothes, and I want you to follow my example." + +"I go to sleep?" I cried. "I couldn't and wouldn't for a thousand +pounds, Raffles!" + +"Oh, yes, you could!" said Raffles, and as he spoke there was a horrible +explosion in the tower. Upon my word, I thought one of us was shot, until +there came the smaller sounds of froth pattering on the floor and liquor +bubbling from a bottle. + +"Champagne!" I exclaimed, when he had handed me the metal cap of a flask, +and I had taken a sip. "Did you hide that up here as well?" + +"I hid nothing up here except myself," returned Raffles, laughing. "This +is one of a couple of pints from the cellarette in Levy's billiard den; +take your will of it, Bunny, and perhaps the old man may have the other +when he's a good boy. I fancy we shall find it a stronger card than it +looks. Meanwhile let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep! And you'd be +far more use to me later, Bunny, if only you'd try to do the same." + +I was beginning to feel that I might try, for Raffles was filling up the +metal cup every minute, and also plying me with sandwiches from Levy's +table, brought hence (with the champagne) in Levy's overcoat pocket. It +was still pleasing to reflect that they had been originally intended for +the rival bravos of Gray's Inn. But another idea that did occur to me, I +dismissed at the time, and so justly that I would disabuse any other +suspicious mind of it without delay. Dear old Raffles was scarcely more +skilful and audacious as amateur cracksman than as amateur anaesthetist, +nor was he ever averse from the practice of his uncanny genius at either +game. But, sleepy as I soon found myself at the close of our very long +night's work, I had no subsequent reason to suppose that Raffles had +given _me_ drop or morsel of anything but sandwiches and champagne. + +So I rolled myself up on the locker, just as things were beginning to +take visible shape even without the tower windows behind them, and I was +almost dropping off to sleep when a sudden anxiety smote my mind. + +"What about the boat?" I asked. + +There was no answer. + +"Raffles!" I cried. "What are you going to do about the beggar's boat?" + +"You go to sleep," came the sharp reply, "and leave the boat to me." + +And I fancied from his voice that Raffles also had lain him down, but on +the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Trial by Raffles + + +When I awoke it was dazzling daylight in the tower, and the little scene +was quite a surprise to me. It had felt far larger in the dark. I suppose +the floor-space was about twelve feet square, but it was contracted on +one side by the well and banisters of a wooden staircase from the room +below, on another by the ship's bunk, and opposite that by the locker on +which I lay. Moreover, the four walls, or rather the four triangles of +roof, sloped so sharply to the apex of the tower as to leave an inner +margin in which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole +windows were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They +had evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly +obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of +comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; +but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the +atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's +day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other +merely scenic feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the +appearance of my two companions. + +Raffles, not quite at the top of the stairs, but near enough to loll over +the banisters, and Levy, cumbering the ship's bunk, were indeed startling +figures to an eye still dim with sleep. Raffles had an ugly cut from the +left nostril to the corner of the mouth; he had washed the blood from his +face, but the dark and angry streak remained to heighten his unusual +pallor. Levy looked crumpled and debauched, flabbily and feebly senile, +yet with his vital forces making a last flicker in his fiery eyes. He was +grotesquely swathed in scarlet bunting, from which his doubled fists +protruded in handcuffs; a bit of thin rope attached the handcuffs to a +peg on which his coat and hat were also hanging, and a longer bit was +taken round the banisters from the other end of the bunting, which I now +perceived to be a tattered and torn Red Ensign. This led to the discovery +that I myself had been sleeping in the Union Jack, and it brought my eyes +back to the ghastly face of Raffles, who was already smiling at mine. + +"Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and +present your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be +frightened of him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've +had to clap him in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given +him rope enough; he's got lashings of rope--eh, Bunny?" + +"That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul +play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only +you'd give me that drink." + +And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the +folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne +standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed +it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and +merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering +Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched +for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted +with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without +going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale +remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house. + +"I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The +poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole +in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his +trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other +pint to his own infernal cheek." + +"Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him +up to ransom?" + +"Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of +reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when +he's heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the +tap when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had +after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but +it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case." + +And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting +on the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court. + +"Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had +better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as +a preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and +granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused. +Drink has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that +necessitates your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week +of that chastening experience you come before me without knowing where +you are or how you got here." + +"That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That +was something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was, +and you'll pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of +my whisky." + +"Well," resumed Raffles, "your champagne is on the same high level, and +here's a pint of the best which you can open for yourself if only you +show your sense before I've done with you. But you won't advance that +little millennium by talking about foul play as though it were all on one +side and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the +business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice +in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, +attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules +of civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this +court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently +you will get an opportunity of addressing the court in mitigation of your +sentence. Or, if you like," continued Raffles, with a wink at me, "you +may be represented by counsel. My learned friend here, I'm sure, will be +proud to undertake your defence as a 'docker'; or--perhaps I should say a +'bunker,' Mr. Bunny?" + +And Raffles laughed as coyly as a real judge at a real judicial joke, +whereupon I joined in so uproariously as to find myself degraded from the +position of leading counsel to that of the general public in a single +flash from the judge's eye. + +"If I hear any more laughter," said Raffles, "I shall clear the court. +It's perfectly monstrous that people should come here to a court of +justice and behave as though they were at a theatre." + +Levy had been reclining with his yellow face twisted and his red eyes +shut; but now these burst open as with flames, and the dry lips spat a +hearty curse at the judge upon the locker. + +"Take care!" said Raffles. "Contempt of court won't do you any good, +you know!" + +"And what good will all this foolery do you? Say what you've got to say +against me, and be damned to you!" + +"I fear you're confusing our functions sadly," said Raffles, with a +compassionate shake of the head. "But so far as your first exhortation +goes, I shall endeavour to take you at your word. You are a money-lender +trading, among other places, in Jermyn Street, St. James's, under the +style and title of Daniel Levy." + +"It 'appens to be my name." + +"That I can well believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. +Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or +Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull +and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that +distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by +yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you +are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at +higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man +alive at your job; you are certainly the biggest villain." + +"But I'm up against a bigger now," said Levy, shifting his position and +closing his crimson eyes. + +"Possibly," said Raffles, as he produced a long envelope and unfolded a +sheet of foolscap; "but permit me to remind you of a few of your own +proven villainies before you take any more shots at mine. Last year you +had three of your great bargains set aside by the law as hard and +unconscionable; but every year you have these cases, and at best the +terms are modified in favour of your wretched client. But it's only the +exception who will face the music of the law-courts and the Press, and +you figure on the general run. You prefer people like the Lincolnshire +vicar you hounded into an asylum the year before last. You cherish the +memory of the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 +and 1894; that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! +You set great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you +to stay with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite +in exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for +your net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that +poor little builder at Bromley, who cut the throats--" + +"Stop it!" cried Levy, in a lather of impotent rage. + +"By all means," said Raffles, restoring the paper to its envelope. "It's +an ugly little load for one man's soul, I admit; but you must see it was +about time somebody beat you at your own beastly game." + +"It's a pack of blithering lies," retorted Levy, "and you haven't beaten +me yet. Stick to facts within your own knowledge, and then tell me if +your precious Garlands haven't brought their troubles on themselves?" + +"Certainly they have," said Raffles. "But it isn't your treatment of the +Garlands that has brought you to this pretty pass." + +"What is it, then?" + +"Your treatment of me, Mr. Levy." + +"A cursed crook like you!" + +"A party to a pretty definite bargain, however, and a discredited person +only so far as that bargain is concerned." + +"And the rest!" said the money-lender, jeering feebly. "I know more about +you than you guess." + +"I should have put it the other way round," replied Raffles, smiling. +"But we are both forgetting ourselves, prisoner in the bunk. Kindly note +that your trial is resumed, and further contempt will not be allowed to +go unpurged. You referred a moment ago to my unfortunate friends; you say +they were the engineers of their own misfortunes. That might be said of +all who ever put themselves in your clutches. You squeeze them as hard as +the law will let you, and in this case I don't see how the law is to +interfere. So I interfere myself--in the first instance as disastrously +as you please." + +"You did so!" exclaimed Levy, with a flicker of his inflamed eyes. "You +brought things to a head; that's all _you_ did." + +"On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," +said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand +for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten +thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another +fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead +of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That +was your side of the bargain." + +"Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" + +"My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you +by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a +matter of fact it was only to be got by crook--" + +"Aha!" + +"I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last +night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man +ever made upon another!" + +Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, +forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had +infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to +the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. +And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he +quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so +truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice +came next. + +"I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, +I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and +the drink together made me mad." + +"So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" + +"Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." + +"You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" + +"Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must +have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." + +"In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" + +"That's it--with the letter." + +"You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you +handle it?" + +"Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" + +Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the +tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of +fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, +but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled +hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though +it were a bad job. + +"Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment +that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" + +"_I_ have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should +I? It must have been the police." + +"It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as +if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both classes to be +deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no +difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave +me no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at +Gray's Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe +I have already mentioned to you." + +"You said you left them there in their glory." + +"It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs." + +Levy struggled into a less recumbent posture. + +"And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?" + +"I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know." + +"And how the devil do you know?" + +Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: +"You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!" + +The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked +himself at that and tried one more poser. + +"And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it +wasn't to ensure your safety?" + +"It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down +expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting +the treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea--prisoner in +the bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. +My compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite +colourable image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and +it had been a case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough +which I should let go." + +But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red +Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms. + +"They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his +teeth. "The traitors--the blasted traitors!" + +"It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, +"especially when one's elders and betters themselves succumb to it." + +"But they're such liars!" cried Levy, shifting his ground again. "Don't +you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your +own good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might +'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot +their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' +they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to +blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed +to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game +all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, +Raffles, and--and let me out o' this, like a good feller!" + +"Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the +judicial locker. + +"Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal +of all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those +two jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and +you were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling +you 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's +surely about time to stop treating me like a mad dog." + +"Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?" + +"Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of +doing anything else." + +"Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what +you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?" + +"In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket." + +"In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly +commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me. + +"What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if +only you'll take these damned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for +'em now, you know!" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, +prisoner. But my marshal will produce the note from your person if +it's there." + +It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact +while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples +which he had brought with him for the purpose. + +"It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look +that I intercepted at close quarters. + +"So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine +signature to this little document which is also a part of your bond." + +The little document turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on +parchment, embossed with a ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an +INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up +for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in +existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee +simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and +its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of L15,000 to remain +charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited +Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from--" that +summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and +innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom +Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy +of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. +I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they +had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed +was to be signed! + +Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected +of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was +obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his +ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less +with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform +his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince +us of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he +had succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of +the creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and +I had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma +in which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look +pleasant, or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he +looked as pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the +shadow of a fight for their immediate removal. + +"And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think +I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne." + +"Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only +at the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house +last night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do +of your own free will then." + +Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, +with fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I +told you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very +sorry for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again +from the bottom of my 'eart." + +"I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our +arrival was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last +of those acts of treachery for which you are still on your +trial--prisoner in the bunk!" + +"But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a +palsy of impotent rage and disappointment. + +"You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even +plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've +made, and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a +point by telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your +guilt. Have you nothing better to say why the sentence of the court +should not be passed upon you?" + +A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repetition +of the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower +lip of Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the +inflamed eyelids. + +"I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought--I'd +swindle--you." + +"Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let +me tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by +twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen +hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason." + +Though not unprepared for some such ultimatum, I must own I heard it with +dismay. On all sorts of grounds, some of them as unworthy as itself, this +last demand failed to meet with my approval; and I determined to +expostulate with Raffles before it was too late. Meanwhile I hid my +feelings as best I could, and admired the spirit with which Dan Levy +expressed his. + +"I'll see you damned first!" he cried. "It's blackmail!" + +"Guineas," said Raffles, "for contempt of court." + +And more to my surprise than ever, not a little indeed to my secret +disappointment, our captive speedily collapsed again, whimpering, +moaning, gnashing his teeth, and clutching at the Red Ensign, with closed +eyes and distorted face, so much as though he were about to have a fit +that I caught up the half-bottle of champagne, and began removing the +wire at a nod from Raffles. + +"Don't cut the string just yet," he added, however, with an eye on +Levy--who instantly opened his. + +"I'll pay up!" he whispered, feebly yet eagerly. "It serves me right. I +promise I'll pay up!" + +"Good!" said Raffles. "Here's your own cheque-book from your own room, +and here's my fountain pen." + +"You won't take my word?" + +"It's quite enough to have to take your cheque; it should have been +hard cash." + +"So it shall be, Raffles, if you come up with me to my office!" + +"I dare say." + +"To my bank, then!" + +"I prefer to go alone. You will kindly make it an open cheque payable +to bearer." + +The fountain pen was poised over the chequebook, but only because I had +placed it in Levy's fingers, and was holding the cheque-book under them. + +"And what if I refuse?" he demanded, with a last flash of his +native spirit. + +"We shall say good-bye, and give you until to-night." + +"All day to call for help in!" muttered Levy, all but to himself. + +"Do you happen to know where you are?" Raffles asked him. + +"No, but I can find out." + +"If you knew already you would also know that you might call till you +were black in the face; but to keep you in blissful ignorance you will be +bound a good deal more securely than you are at present. And to spare +your poor voice you will also be very thoroughly gagged." + +Levy took remarkably little notice of either threat or gibe. + +"And if I give in and sign?" said he, after a pause. + +"You will remain exactly as you are, with one of us to keep you company, +while the other goes up to town to cash your cheque. You can't expect me +to give you a chance of stopping it, you know." + +This, again, struck me as a hard condition, if only prudent when one came +to think of it from our point of view; still, it took even me by +surprise, and I expected Levy to fling away the pen in disgust. He +balanced it, however, as though also weighing the two alternatives very +carefully in his mind, and during his deliberations his bloodshot eyes +wandered from Raffles to me and back again to Raffles. In a word, the +latest prospect appeared to disturb Mr. Levy less than, for obvious +reasons, it did me. Certainly for him it was the lesser of the two evils, +and as such he seemed to accept it when he finally wrote out the cheque +for fifteen hundred guineas (Raffles insisting on these), and signed it +firmly before sinking back as though exhausted by the effort. + +Raffles was as good as his word about the champagne now: dram by dram +he poured the whole pint into the cup belonging to his flask, and dram +by dram our prisoner tossed it off, but with closed eyes, like a +delirious invalid, and towards the end, with a head so heavy that +Raffles had to raise it from the rolled flag, though foul talons still +came twitching out for more. It was an unlovely process, I will +confess; but what was a pint, as Raffles said? At any rate I could bear +him out that these potations had not been hocussed, and Raffles +whispered the same for the flask which he handed me with Levy's +revolver at the head of the wooden stairs. + +"I'm coming down," said I, "for a word with you in the room below." + +Raffles looked at me with open eyes, then more narrowly at the red lids +of Levy, and finally at his own watch. + +"Very well, Bunny, but I must cut and run for my train in about a minute. +There's a 9.24 which would get me to the bank before eleven, and back +here by one or two." + +"Why go to the bank at all?" I asked him point-blank in the lower room. + +"To cash his cheque before he has a chance of stopping it. Would you like +to go instead of me, Bunny?" + +"No, thank you!" + +"Well, don't get hot about it; you've got the better billet of the two." + +"The softer one, perhaps." + +"Infinitely, Bunny, with the old bird full of his own champagne, and his +own revolver in your pocket or your hand! The worst he can do is to +start yelling out, and I really do believe that not a soul would hear +him if he did. The gardeners are always at work on the other side of the +main road. A passing boatload is the only danger, and I doubt if even +they would hear." + +"My billet's all right," said I, valiantly. "It's yours that +worries me." + +"Mine!" cried Raffles, with an almost merry laugh. "My dear, good Bunny, +you may make your mind easy about my little bit! Of course, it'll take +some doing at the bank. I don't say it's a straight part there. But trust +me to play it on my head." + +"Raffles," I said, in a low voice that may have trembled, "it's not a +part for you to play at all! I don't mean the little bit at the bank. I +mean this whole blackmailing part of the business. It's not like you, +Raffles. It spoils the whole thing!" + +I had got it off my chest without a hitch. But so far Raffles had not +discouraged me. There was a look on his face which even made me think +that he agreed with me in his heart. Both hardened as he thought it over. + +"It's Levy who's spoilt the whole thing," he rejoined obdurately in +the end. "He's been playing me false all the time, and he's got to +pay for it." + +"But you never meant to make anything out of him, A.J.!" + +"Well, I do now, and I've told you why. Why shouldn't I?" + +"Because it's not your game!" I cried, with all the eager persuasion in +my power. "Because it's the sort of thing Dan Levy would do +himself--it's _his_ game, all right--it simply drags you down to his +level--" + +But there he stopped me with a look, and not the kind of look I often had +from Raffles, It was no new feat of mine to make him angry, scornful, +bitterly cynical or sarcastic. This, however, was a look of pain and even +shame, as though he had suddenly seen himself in a new and peculiarly +unlovely light. + +"Down to it!" he exclaimed, with an irony that was not for me. "As though +there could be a much lower level than mine! Do you know, Bunny, I +sometimes think my moral sense is ahead of yours?" + +I could have laughed outright; but the humour that was the salt of him +seemed suddenly to have gone out of Raffles. + +"I know what I am," said he, "but I'm afraid you're getting a hopeless +villain-worshipper!" + +"It's not the villain I care about," I answered, meaning every word. +"It's the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well." + +"I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better," replied Raffles, +laughing when I least expected it. "But you're by way of forgetting his +existence altogether. I shouldn't wonder if some day you wrote me up +into a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime! Let this +remind you what I always was and shall be to the end." + +And he took my hand, as I fondly hoped in surrender to my appeal to those +better feelings which I knew I had for once succeeded in quickening +within him. + +But it was only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the +spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in +the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, +handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at the top. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Watch and Ward + + +I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a +last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower +chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. +The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the +bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are +among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One +of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the +aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I +got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was +only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded +gardens and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe +in mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in +such surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a +coal-cellar. And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an +indefinite prospect of my prisoner's person at close quarters. + +Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me +some confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor +his eyes at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn +up to his chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I +remember taking a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved +remarkably in repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was +higher and broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough +now, but the closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of +all. On the whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had +been all the morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had +fallen asleep in his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject +enough; if not, I had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I +was in no hurry to show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and +took my seat by inches. + +Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or +other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as +a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was +not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The +wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint +and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the +house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh +period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every +time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have +come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into +my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with +less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that +breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my +prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound +down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another +sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it +from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to +penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as +of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only +audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could +hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my +breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or +altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I +was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was. + +His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, +and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as +though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less +violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as +they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. + +"I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain +before he spoke. + +"You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained. +"It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear." + +I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or +anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. +And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was. + +"Do you?" I demanded. + +"Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of +course." + +"What clock?" + +"The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road." + +"How do _you_ know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity. + +"My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as +well as I know the inside of this tower." + +"Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy +grinned in a way that ill became a captive. + +"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse +myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the +neighhour'ood." + +"Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth +merely broadened his grin. + +"Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." + +"It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my +austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with +quiet but most disquieting amusement. + +"I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my +way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to +keep an eye on me." + +"Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found +comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. + +"I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you +strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." + +I said nothing to that. + +"On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though +he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other _hand_" stooping to +pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes +so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he +hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use +hollering before you're out o' the wood." + +I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. + +"Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if +to himself. + +"Thought of what?" + +"Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't +tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been +thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen +going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to +be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" + +"How do you know he didn't?" + +"Because this 'appens to be the day!" + +And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was +beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his +present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles +would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the +satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's +statement. + +"That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too +much of a coincidence to be anything else." + +"The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One +of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the +other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you +know your own business best." + +"At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most +obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the +man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you." + +"I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run +away from--though he looks as hard as nails--what there is of him," said +Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry +some conviction. "He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; +some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same +trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like." + +"And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that +can possibly have to do with it up here." + +"No," said Levy; "he comes no higher than the floor below." I seemed to +remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. "But that's +near enough." + +"You mean that we shall hear him?" + +"And he us!" added Levy, with unmistakable determination. + +"Look here, Mr. Levy," said I, showing him his own revolver, "if we do +hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I +shall blow out your beastly brains!" + +The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such +deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of +it, and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more +mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if +anything could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the +guttural laugh with which he greeted it. + +"Excuse me," said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red +bunting, "but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to +preserve silence--why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play the +cold-blooded villain--_you_!" + +"I shall play him to some purpose," I hissed, "if you drive me to it. I +laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same +thing again this morning. So now you know." + +"That wasn't in cold blood," said Levy, rolling his head from side to +side; "that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't +count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last +night or this morning--though I can see that you're no brigand or +blackmailer at bottom--and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave +Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar +job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you +ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's +the magsman, you're only the swell. _I_ can see that. But the judge +won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a +thousand shames!" + +He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, +persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his +words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with +meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as +deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to +me with the significance of his altered tone. + +"I can't help it," I muttered. "I must go through with the whole +thing now." + +"Why must you?" demanded Levy. "You've been led into a job that's none of +your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the +job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found +out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?" + +"There's nothing else for it," I answered, with a sulky resignation, +though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming. + +And then it came. + +"Why not get out of the whole thing," suggested Levy, boldly, "before +it's too late?" + +"How can I?" said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition. + +"By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!" + +I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were +actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness +fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging +and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it +was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to +hesitate on quite different grounds. + +"It's all very well," I said, "but are you going to make it worth +my while?" + +"Certainly!" cried he. "Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where +you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll +write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred +before I leave this tower." + +"You really will?" I temporised. + +"I swear it!" he asseverated; and I still believe he might have kept his +word about that. But now I knew where he _had_ been lying to me, and now +was the time to let him know I knew it. + +"Two hundred pounds," said I, "for the liberty you are bound to get for +nothing, as you yourself have pointed out, when the man turns up to wind +the clock? A couple of hundred to save less than a couple of hours?" + +Levy changed colour as he saw his mistake, and his eyes flashed with +sudden fury; otherwise his self-command was only less admirable than his +presence of mind. + +"It wasn't to save time," said he; "it was to save my face in the +neighbourhood. The well-known money-lender found bound and handcuffed in +an empty house! It means the first laugh at my expense, whoever has the +last laugh. But you're quite right; it wasn't worth two hundred golden +sovereigns. Let them laugh! At any rate you and your flash friend'll be +laughing on the wrong side of your mouths before the day's out. So that's +all there is to it, and you'd better start screwing up your courage if +you want to do me in! I did mean to give you another chance in life--but +by God I wouldn't now if you were to go down on your knees for one!" + +Considering that he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he +defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his +picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. +I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his +clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big +bribe offered for his immediate freedom; but it was with something more +than mere adroitness that the money-lender had reconciled the two things. +In his place I should have been no less anxious to keep my humiliating +experience a secret from the world; with his means I could conceive +myself prepared to pay as dearly for such secrecy. On the other hand, if +his idea was to stop the huge cheque already given to Raffles, then there +was indeed no time to be lost, and the only wonder was that Levy should +have waited so long before making overtures to me. + +Raffles had now been gone a very long time, as it seemed to me, but my +watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they +kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying +still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out +the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of +these I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what +had seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only +knew that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out +at the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of +his trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, +and made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was +fast becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I +sat in my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air +as entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of +scarlet bunting, with a sudden oath which must have been the only sound +within the tower for an hour at least; all the rest of the time he lay +with fettered fists clenched upon his breast, with fierce eyes fixed upon +the top of the bunk, and something about the whole man that I was forced +to watch, something indomitable and intensely alert, a curious suggestion +of smouldering fires on the point of leaping into flame. + +I feared this man in my heart of hearts. I may as well admit it frankly. +It was not that he was twice my size, for I had the like advantage in +point of years; it was not that I had any reason to distrust the +strength of his bonds or the efficacy of the weapon in my possession. It +was a question of personality, not of material advantage or +disadvantage, or of physical fear at all. It was simply the spirit of +the man that dominated mine. I felt that my mere flesh and blood would +at any moment give a good account of his, as well they might with the +odds that were on my side. Yet that did not lessen the sense of subtle +and essential inferiority, which grew upon my nerves with almost every +minute of that endless morning, and made me long for the relief of +physical contest even on equal terms. I could have set the old ruffian +free, and thrown his revolver out of the window, and then said to him, +"Come on! Your weight against my age, and may the devil take the worse +man!" Instead, I must sit glaring at him to mask my qualms. And after +much thinking about the kind of conflict that could never be, in the end +came one of a less heroic but not less desperate type, before there was +time to think at all. + +Levy had raised his head, ever so little, but yet enough for my +vigilance. I saw him listening. I listened too. And down below in the +core of the tower I heard, or thought I heard, a step like a feather, and +then after some moments another. But I had spent those moments in gazing +instinctively down the stair; it was the least rattle of the handcuffs +that brought my eyes like lightning back to the bunk; and there was Levy +with hollow palms about his mouth, and his mouth wide open for the roar +that my own palms stifled in his throat. + +Indeed, I had leapt upon him once more like a fiend, and for an instant I +enjoyed a shameful advantage; it can hardly have lasted longer. The brute +first bit me through the hand, so that I carry his mark to this day; +then, with his own hands, he took me by the throat, and I thought that my +last moments were come. He squeezed so hard that I thought my windpipe +must burst, thought my eyes must leave their sockets. It was the grip of +a gorilla, and it was accompanied by a spate of curses and the grin of a +devil incarnate. All my dreams of equal combat had not prepared me for +superhuman power on his part, such utter impotence on mine. I tried to +wrench myself from his murderous clasp, and was nearly felled by the top +of the bunk. I hurled myself out sideways, and out he came after me, +tearing down the peg to which his handcuffs were tethered; that only gave +him the better grip upon my throat, and he never relaxed it for an +instant, scrambling to his feet when I staggered to mine, for by them +alone was he fast now to the banisters. + +Meanwhile I was feeling in an empty pocket for his revolver, which had +fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my +starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a +dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the +banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn +afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden +stairs. But what I still remember hearing most distinctly (and feeling +hot upon my face) is the stertorous breathing that was unbroken by a +single syllable after the first few seconds. + +It was a brutal encounter, not short and sharp like the one over-night, +but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one +side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts +in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant +had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against +the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our +united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be +better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. +Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself +over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed +upon the butt of the revolver that I thought had been kicked into the +room below! + +I was too far gone to realise that a miracle had happened--to be so much +as puzzled by it then. But I was not too far gone to use that revolver, +and to use it as I would have done on cool reflection. I thrust it under +my opponent's armpit, and I fired through into space. The report was +deafening. It did its work. Levy let go of me, and staggered back as +though I had really shot him. And that instant I was brandishing his +weapon in his face. + +"You tried to shoot me! You tried to shoot me!" he gasped twice over +through a livid mask. + +"No, I didn't!" I panted. "I tried to frighten you, and I jolly well +succeeded! But I'll shoot you like a dog if you don't get back to your +kennel and lie down." + +He sat and gasped upon the side of the bunk. There was no more fight in +him. His very lips were blue. I put the pistol back in my pocket, and +retracted my threat in a sudden panic. + +"There! It's your own fault if you so much as see it again," I promised +him, in a breathless disorder only second to his own. + +"But you jolly nearly strangled me. And now we're a pretty pair!" + +His hands grasped the edge of the bunk, and he leant his weight on them, +breathing very hard. It might have been an attack of asthma, or it might +have been a more serious seizure, but it was a case for stimulants if +ever I saw one, and in the nick of time I remembered the flask that +Raffles had left with me. It was the work of a very few seconds to pour +out a goodly ration, and of but another for Daniel Levy to toss off the +raw spirit like water. He was begging for more before I had helped +myself. And more I gave him in the end; for it was no small relief to me +to watch the leaden hue disappearing from the flabby face, and the +laboured breathing gradually subside, even if it meant a renewal of our +desperate hostilities. + +But all that was at an end; the man was shaken to the core by his +perfectly legitimate attempt at my destruction. He looked dreadfully old +and hideous as he got bodily back into the bunk of his own accord. There, +when I had yielded to his further importunities, and the flask was empty, +he fell at length into a sleep as genuine as the last was not; and I was +still watching over the poor devil, keeping the flies off him, and +sometimes fanning him with a flag, less perhaps from humane motives than +to keep him quiet as long as possible, when Raffles returned to light up +the tableau like a sinister sunbeam. + +Raffles had had his own adventures in town, and I soon had reason to feel +thankful that I had not gone up instead of him. It seemed he had foreseen +from the first the possibility of trouble at the bank over a large and +absolutely open cheque. So he had gone first to the Chelsea studio in +which he played the painter who never painted but kept a whole wardrobe +of disguises for the models he never hired. Thence he had issued on this +occasion in the living image of a well-known military man about town who +was also well known to be a client of Dan Levy's. Raffles said the +cashier stared at him, but the cheque was cashed without a word. The +unfortunate part of it was that in returning to his cab he had +encountered an acquaintance both of his own and of the spendthrift +soldier, and had been greeted evidently in the latter capacity. + +"It was a jolly difficult little moment, Bunny. I had to say there was +some mistake, and I had to remember to say it in a manner equally unlike +my own and the other beggar's! But all's well that ends well; and if +you'll do exactly what I tell you I think we may flatter ourselves that a +happy issue is at last in sight." + +"What am I to do now?" I asked with some misgiving. + +"Clear out of this, Bunny, and wait for me in town. You've done jolly +well, old fellow, and so have I in my own department of the game. +Everything's in order, down to those fifteen hundred guineas which are +now concealed about my person in as hard cash as I can carry. I've seen +old Garland and given him back his promissory note myself, with Levy's +undertaking about the mortgage. It was a pretty trying interview, as you +can understand; but I couldn't help wondering what the poor old boy would +say if he dreamt what sort of pressure I've been applying on his behalf! +Well, it's all over now except our several exits from the surreptitious +stage. I can't make mine without our sleeping partner, but you would +really simplify matters, Bunny, by not waiting for us." + +There was a good deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a +little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath +in town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably +dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental +relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my +plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front +door in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he +had told the caretaking gardener across the road; but he had borrowed the +gardener's keys as a probable purchaser of the property, who had to meet +his builder and a business friend at the house during the course of the +afternoon. I was to be the builder, and in that capacity to give the +gardener an ingenious message calculated to leave Raffles and Levy in +uninterrupted possession until my return. And of course I was never to +return at all. + +The whole thing seemed to me a super-subtle means to a far simpler end +than the one we had achieved by stealth in the dead of the previous +night. But it was Raffles all over and I ultimately acquiesced, on the +understanding that we were to meet again in the Albany at seven o'clock, +preparatory to dining somewhere in final celebration of the whole affair. + +But much was to happen before seven o'clock, and it began happening. I +shook the dust of that derelict tower from my feet; for one of them trod +on something at the darkest point of the descent; and the thing went +tinkling down ahead on its own account, until it lay shimmering in the +light on a lower landing, where I picked it up. + +Now I had not said much to Raffles about my hitherto inexplicable +experience with the revolver, when I thought it had gone through the +banisters, but found it afterwards in my hand. Raffles said it would not +have gone through, that I must have been all but over the banisters +myself when I grasped the butt as it protruded through them on the level +of the floor. This he said (like many another thing) as though it made an +end of the matter. But it was not the end of the matter in my own mind; +and now I could have told him what the explanation was, or at least to +what conclusion I had jumped. I had half a mind to climb all the way up +again on purpose to put him in the wrong upon the point. Then I +remembered how anxious he had seemed to get rid of me, and for other +reasons also I decided to let him wait a bit for his surprise. + +Meanwhile my own plans were altered, and when I had delivered my +egregious message to the gardener across the road, I sought the nearest +shops on my way to the nearest station; and at one of the shops I got me +a clean collar, at another a tooth-brush; and all I did at the station +was to utilise my purchases in the course of such scanty toilet as the +lavatory accommodation would permit. + +A few minutes later I was inquiring my way to a house which it took me +another twenty or twenty-five to find. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A Secret Service + + +This house also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar +compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to +the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy +stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable +attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback +three seasons out of the four. The wooden gate had not swung home behind +me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, +contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, +and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell. +There was indeed something oppressively and yet prettily Victorian about +the riparian retreat to which Lady Laura Belsize had retired in her +impoverished widowhood. + +It was not for Lady Laura that I asked, however, but for Miss Belsize, +and the almost slatternly maid really couldn't say whether Miss Belsize +was in or whether she wasn't. She might be in the garden, or she might +be on the river. Would I step inside and wait a minute? I would and did, +but it was more minutes than one that I was kept languishing in an +interior as dingy as the outside of the house. I had time to take the +whole thing in. There were massive remnants of deservedly unfashionable +furniture. The sofa I can still see in my mind's eye, and the steel +fire-irons, and the crystal chandelier. An aged and gigantic Broadwood +occupied nearly half the room; and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all +sorts of comparisons and contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of +Camilla Belsize resplendent in contemporary court kit. + +I was still studying that frankly barbaric paraphernalia--the feather, +the necklace, the coiled train--and wondering what noble kinsman had come +to the rescue for the great occasion, and why Camilla should have looked +so bored with her finery, when the door opened and she herself +entered--not even very smartly dressed--and looking anything but bored, +although I say it. + +But she did seem astonished, anxious, indignant, reproachful, and to my +mind still more nervous and distressed, though this hardly showed through +the loopholes of her pride. And as for her white serge coat and skirt, +they looked as though they had seen considerable service on the river, +and I immediately perceived that one of the large enamel buttons was +missing from the coat. + +Up to that moment, I may now confess, I had been suffering from no slight +nervous anxiety of my own. But all qualms were lost in sheer excitement +when I spoke. + +"You may well wonder at this intrusion," I began. "But I thought this +must be yours, Miss Belsize." + +And from my waistcoat pocket I produced the missing button of enamel. + +"Where did you find it?" inquired Miss Belsize, with an admirably slight +increase of astonishment in voice and look. "And how did you know it was +mine?" came quickly in the next breath. + +"I didn't know," I answered. "I guessed. It was the shot of my life!" + +"But you don't say where you found it?" + +"In an empty house not far from here." + +She had held her breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And +quite unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. + +"Well, Mr. Manders? I'm very much obliged to you. But may I have it +back again?" + +I returned her property. We had been staring at each other all the time. +I stared still harder as she repeated her perfunctory thanks. + +"So it was you!" I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely +puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the +rest in those chameleon eyes of hers. + +"Who did you think it was?" she asked me with a frosty little smile. + +"I didn't know if it was anybody at all. I didn't know what to think," +said I, quite candidly. "I simply found his pistol in my hand." + +"Whose pistol?" + +"Dan Levy's." + +"Good!" she said grimly. "That makes it all the better." + +"You saved my life." + +"I thought you had taken his--and I'd collaborated!" + +There was not a tremor in her voice; it was cautious, eager, daring, +intense, but absolutely her own voice now. + +"No," I said, "I didn't shoot the fellow, but I made him think I had." + +"You made me think so too, until I heard what you said to him." + +"Yet you never made a sound yourself." + +"I should think not! I made myself scarce instead." + +"But, Miss Belsize, I shall go perfectly mad if you don't tell me how you +happened to be there at all!" + +"Don't you think it's for you to tell me that about yourself +and--all of you?" + +"Oh, I don't mind which of us fires first!" said I, excitedly. + +"Then I will," she said at once, and took me to the dreadful sofa at the +inner end of the room, and sat down as though it were the most ordinary +experience she had to relate. Nor could I believe the things that had +really happened, and all so recently, as we talked them over in that +commonplace environment of faded gentility. There was a window behind us, +overlooking the ribbon of lawn and the cord of gravel, and the bunch of +willows that hedged them from the Thames. It all looked unreal to me, +unreal in its very realism as the scene of our incredible conversation. + +"You know what happened the other afternoon--I mean the day they +couldn't play," began Miss Belsize, "because you were there; and though +you didn't stay to hear all that came out afterwards, I expect you know +everything now. Mr. Raffles would be sure to tell you; in fact, I heard +poor dear Mr. Garland give him leave. It's a dreadful story from every +point of view. Nobody comes out of it with flying colours, but what nice +person could cope with a horrid money-lender? Mr. Raffles, perhaps--if +you call him nice!" + +I said that was about the worst thing I called him. I mentioned some of +the other things. Miss Belsize listened to them with exemplary patience. + +"Well," she resumed, "he was quite nice about this. I will say that for +him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be +done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be +done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had +been done already at Carlsbad--what exactly that horrid creature meant +when he was talking _at_ Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of course, I +knew what he meant us to think he meant; but was there, could there be, +anything in it?" + +Miss Belsize looked at me as though she expected an answer, only to stop +me the moment I opened my mouth to speak. + +"I don't want to know, Mr. Manders! Of course you know all about Mr. +Raffles"--there was a touch of feeling in this--"but it's nothing to me, +though in this case I should certainly have been on his side. You said +yourself that it could only have been a practical joke, if there was +anything in it at all, and so I tried to think in spite of those horrid +men who were following him about at Lord's, even in spite of the way he +vanished with them after him. But he never came near the match +again--though he had travelled all the way from Carlsbad to see it! Why +had he ever been there? What had he really done there? And what could he +possibly do to rescue anybody from Mr. Levy, if he himself was already in +Levy's power?" + +"You don't know Raffles," said I, promptly enough this time. "He never +was in any man's power for many minutes. I would back him to save the +most desperate situation you could devise." + +"You mean by some desperate deed? That's what I feared," declared Miss +Belsize, rather strenuously. "Something really had happened at Carlsbad; +something worse was by way of happening next. For Teddy's sake," she +whispered, "and his poor father's!" + +I agreed that old Raffles stuck at nothing for his friends, and Miss +Belsize again said that was what she had feared. Her tone had completely +altered about Raffles, as well it might. I thought it would have broken +with gratitude when she spoke of the unlucky father and son. + +"And I was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to +which I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the +match on Saturday--" + +"Though Teddy had done so well!" I was fool enough to interject. + +"I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Raffles," replied Camilla, with a +flash of her frank eyes, "and wondering, and wondering, what had +happened. And then on Sunday I saw him on the river." + +"He didn't tell me." + +"He didn't know I recognised him; he was disguised--absolutely!" said +Camilla Belsize under her breath. "But he couldn't disguise himself from +me," she added as though glorying in her perspicacity. + +"Did you tell him so, Miss Belsize?" + +"Not I, indeed! I didn't speak to him; it was no business of mine. But +there he was, at the bottom of Mr. Levy's garden, having a good look at +the boathouse when nobody was about. Why? What could his object be? And +why disguise himself? I thought of the affair at Carlsbad, and I felt +certain that something of the kind was going to happen again!" + +"Well?" + +"What could I do? Should I do anything at all? Was it any business of +mine? You may imagine the way I cross-questioned myself, and you may +imagine the crooked answers I got! I won't bore you with the psychology +of the thing; it's pretty obvious after all. It was not so much a case +of doing the best as of knowing the worst. All day yesterday there were +no developments of any sort, and there was no sign of Mr. Raffles; +nothing had happened in the night, or we should have heard of it; but +that made me all the more certain that something or other would happen +last night. The week's grace was nearly up--you know what I mean--their +last week at their own house. If anything was to be done, it was about +time, and I knew Mr. Raffles was going to do something. I wanted to know +what--that was all." + +"Quite right, too!" I murmured. But I doubt if Miss Belsize heard me; she +was in no need of my encouragement or my approval. The old light--her own +light--the reckless light--was burning away in her brilliant eyes! + +"The night before," she went on, "I hardly slept a wink; last night I +preferred not to go to bed at all. I told you I sometimes did weird +things that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last +night, if it wasn't early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I +have a canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went +out unbeknowns after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly--I beg +your pardon, Mr. Manders?" + +"I didn't speak." + +"Your face shouted!" + +"I'd rather you went on." + +"But if you know what I'm going to say?" + +Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. The nebulous +white-shirted figure in the canoe, that had skimmed past Dan Levy's +frontage as we were trying to get him aboard his own pleasure-boat, and +again past the empty house when we were in the act of disembarking him +there, that figure was the trim and slim one now at my side. She had seen +us--searched for us--each time. Our voices she had heard and recognised; +only our actions, or rather that midnight deed of ours, had she +misinterpreted. She would not admit it to me, but I still believe she +feared it was a dead body that we had shipped at dead of night to hide +away in that desolate tower. + +Yet I cannot think she thought it in her heart. I rather fancy (what she +indeed averred) that some vague inkling of the truth flashed across her +at least as often as that monstrous hypothesis. But know she must; +therefore, after boldly ascertaining that nothing was known of the +master's whereabouts at Levy's house, but that no uneasiness was +entertained on his account, this young woman, true to the audacity which +I had seen in her eyes from the first, had taken the still bolder step of +landing on the rank lawn and entering the empty tower to discover its +secret, for herself. Her stealthy step upon the spiral stair had been the +signal for my mortal struggle with Dan Levy. She had heard the whole, and +even seen a little of that; in fact, she had gathered enough from Levy's +horrible imprecations to form later a rough but not incorrect impression +of the situation between him and Raffles and me. As for the moneylender's +language, it was with a welcome gleam of humour that Miss Belsize assured +me she had "gone too straight to hounds" in her time to be as completely +paralysed by it as her mother's neighbours might have been. And as for +the revolver, it had fallen at her feet, and first she thought I was +going to follow it over the banisters, and before she could think again +she had restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand! + +"But when you fired I felt a murderess," she said. "So you see I +misjudged you for the second time." + +If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly +declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful +humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can +promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I +was thinking in my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as +these, so bold, so sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had +never listened to such a voice, or come across recklessness and +sentiment so harmonised, save also in her eyes! I was thinking that +there never was a girl to touch Camilla Belsize, or a man either except +A. J. Raffles! And yet-- + +And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, +exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and +sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly +exasperated man. + +"Of course," said Camilla at her garden gate, "of course you won't repeat +a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?" said I, somewhat +taken aback. + +"I mean every single thing we've talked about!" was her sweeping reply. +"Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry +I ever spoke to you." + +As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I +passed that, even if I noticed it at the time. + +"I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That +is--except--I suppose you don't mind--" + +"I do! There must be no exceptions." + +"Not even old Raffles?" + +"Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked +flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the +world who must ever know a single thing." + +"Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and +me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of +each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as +Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to +make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, +adamant heated in some hidden flame. + +"It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get +excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must +have done--unless it's a judgment on me--it's rather hard lines if you +give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!" + +This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage +between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my +very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once. + +"You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully. +"And I never let out a word of that." + +"Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation +that was almost wistful. + +"Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, +much less how keen you were for me to warn him." + +Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. +Then something won--I think it was only her pride--and she was holding +out her hand. + +"He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. +"And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always +shall for the future." + +"I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear +old Raffles!" + +I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I +made my point. + +"I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a +stranger stress she added, "I don't _like_ him either." + +And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why +Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes +away quicker still. + +I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not +an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would +have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and +had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the +platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge +when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight +before it stopped. + +The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met +at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever +since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did +what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him. + +"Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his +cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the +deevil himsel'!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Death of a Sinner + + +What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have +outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab +on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the +detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it +inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was +more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been +talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it +close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when +I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but +I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his +shirt-sleeves from the window. + +"I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I +were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about +Mackenzie in the lobby. + +"So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank +God, I was ready for him again." + +I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his +clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I +had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. +The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag +stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, +and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds. + +"Going away?" I ejaculated. + +"Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after +what you've told me?" + +"But you were packing before you knew!" + +"Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't +ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll +have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight +into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at +five to nine." + +"What platform, Raffles?" + +"Charing Cross. Continental train." + +"But where the deuce do you think of going?" + +"Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe." + +"Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?" + +"Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage +face, as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were +due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then +don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell +you everything in the train, Bunny." + +And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant +on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly +terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until +we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross. + +Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did +he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied +with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment +lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, +that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and +another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had +also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to +make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a +humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced +admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been +drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, +but that the _rencontre_ with Mackenzie had served to sober me. + +"Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where +we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little +dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up +to eat a bite of it!" + +"Didn't _you_?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse as +Raffles shook his head. + +"No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made +me so stuffy when you did turn up." + +Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share +the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he +had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than +going healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not +what I had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he +had merely fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for +our last on British soil. + +This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for +beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his +taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings +than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting +in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, +and whither in all earnest were we to fly? + +"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first +question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too +soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his +friends and his relations.'" + +"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?" + +"So I had, Bunny." + +"What was that?" + +"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he +had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his +last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole +and he destroyed." + +"And did he sign that?" + +"I insisted on it for our protection." + +"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?" + +Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted +platforms of Herne Hill. + +"There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send +him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may +hold his tongue about the last twenty-four hours--I believe he will--but +that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and +night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off +round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be +in the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating +thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing +clouds of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our +_secondes noces_--meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our +elbows when we get them!" + +But I was not convinced. There was something else at the bottom of this +sudden impulse and its inconceivably sudden execution. Why had he never +told me of this plan? Well, because it had never become one until after +the morning's work at Levy's bank, in itself a reason for being out of +the way, as I myself admitted. But he would have told me if only I had +turned up at seven: he had never meant to give me time for much packing, +added Raffles, as he was anxious that neither of us should leave the +impression that we had gone far afield. + +I thought this was childish, and treating me like a child, to which, +however, I was used; but more than ever did I feel that Raffles was not +being frank with me, that he for one was making good his escape from +something or somebody besides Dan Levy. And in the end he admitted that +this was so. But we had not dashed through Sitting-bourne and Faversham +before I wormed my way to about the last discovery that I expected to +make concerning A. J. Raffles. + +"What an inquisitor you are, Bunny!" said he, putting down an evening +paper that he had only just taken up. "Can't you see that this whole show +has been no ordinary one for me? I've been fighting for a crowd I rather +love. Their battle has got on my nerves as none of my own ever did; and +now it's won I honestly funk their gratitude as much as anything." + +That was another hard saying to swallow; and yet, as Raffles said it, I +knew it to be true. He was looking me full in the face in the ample +light of the first-class compartment, which we of course had to +ourselves. Some softening influence seemed to have been at work upon +him; he looked resolute as ever, but full of regret, than which nothing +was rarer in A.J. + +"I suppose," said I, "that poor old Garland has treated you to a pretty +good dose already?" + +"Yes, Bunny; that he has." + +"And well he may, and well may Teddy and Camilla Belsize!" + +"But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter +little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that +rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's +fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his +Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, +getting hold of his evening paper once more. + +"Is that to come off so soon?" + +"The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. + +"You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, +and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always +puzzled me. + +"I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh +at his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they +were both absolutely worthy of each other!" + +"And you don't think they are?" + +"No, I don't." + +"You think such a lot of young Garland?" + +"I'm very fond of him, Bunny." + +"But you see his faults?" + +"I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" + +"Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" + +"Not good enough--she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice +was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words +could have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you +get that idea?" + +"I thought it was yours, A.J." + +"But why?" + +"You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." + +"So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may +as well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, +Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." + +"Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for +them to marry after all!" + +Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me +catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and +I simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed +under no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. + +"Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything +of the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often +take my hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who +brought those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put +them asunder again." + +"It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. + +"More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks +running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before +the first week was over." + +"And yet you didn't cut him out!" + +"My dear Bunny, I should hope not." + +"But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if +you'd tried." + +Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But +neither would he ape an alien humility. + +"It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny--won or lost--Teddy or no Teddy: +And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like a +semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling +you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in +all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'" + +"I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down. + +"Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep +irritation of a half-hearted displeasure. + +"She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your +mate at heart--in pluck--in temperament!" + +"How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and +staring in my guilty face. + +But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind +upon occasion. + +"You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain." + +"Did she talk about me then?" + +"A little." + +"Had she her knife in me, Bunny?" + +"Well--yes--a little!" + +Raffles smiled stoically: it was a smile of duty done and odds +well damned. + +"Up to the hilt, Bunny, up to the hilt is what you mean. I stuck it in +for her. It's easily done, and it needed doing, for my sake if not for +hers. Sooner or later I should have choked her off, so the sooner the +better. You play them false, you cut a dance, you let them down over +something that doesn't matter, and they'll never give you a dog's chance +over anything that does! I got her to write and never answered. What do +you think of that for a cavalier swine? I said I'd call before I went +abroad, and only wired to say sorry I couldn't. I don't say it would or +could have been all right otherwise; but you see it was all right for +Teddy before I got back! Which was as it was to be. She would hardly look +at me at first last week; but, Bunny, she wasn't above looking when that +old Shylock was playing at giving me away before them all. She looked at +him, and she looked at me, and I've got one of the looks she gave him, +and another that she never meant me to see, bottled in my blackguard +heart forever!" + +Raffles looked dim to me across the narrow compartment; but there was +no nonsense in his look or voice. I longed to tell him all I knew, all +that she had said to me and he had unwittingly interpreted; that she +loved him, as now at last I knew she did; but I had given her my word, +and after all it was a word to keep for both their sakes as well as +for its own. + +"You were made for each other, you two!" + +That was all I said, and Raffles only laughed. + +"All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a +dog's chance of our meeting again." + +He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with +flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer +Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." +Raffles let it pass; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in +the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather +silently. Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking +of Camilla Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she +had never meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead +was glistening white and wet in the lamplight. + +"What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?" + +He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a +word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. +This was the item that danced before my eyes: + +TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER + +Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his +residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who +made good his escape. + +I looked up into a ghastly face. + +"It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!" + +"You left him--" + +I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier +thought. + +"As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you +think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?" + +Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the +less; for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under +equal provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were +making with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face +and voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla +Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he +had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done +without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either +any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man. + +"But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?" + +"I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?" + +"And you say you left him at half-past five?" + +"I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is +plumb right." + +"And you heard no shot as you went on?" + +"No--I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And now +I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound +to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what +Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. +There's no going back now." + +"Not for an innocent man?" + +"Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been +up to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours." + +He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human +compassion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile +misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a +much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin +to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and +beyond belief in my reading of his character. But through all there +peeped a conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the +novelty of fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and +yet compatible either with his story or with my own base dread. + +"Nobody need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that +nobody ever would know through the one other who knew already. But +Raffles threw cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and +good hope. + +"It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last +hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes +working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then +identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then +Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my +heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit +by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the +capital charge!" + +"Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact. +That's one thing!" + +"No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push +you out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put +up for the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place +for the likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules +when I'm gone." + +"You're not going without me, A.J." + +"Not even if I did it, Bunny?" + +"No; less than ever then!" + +Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in +his eyes, but a very tender light as well. + +"It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," +said he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that +we were making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat +from sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we +clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the +platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic +flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My God, Bunny!" +cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!" + +"Why? What's the matter now?" + +"A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!" + +"Mackenzie's?" + +"Yes!" + +I had seen it in his face. + +"After us already?" + +"God knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder." + +"Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?" + +Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was +turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat. + +"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." +He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the +cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty +hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it +mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go +upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at +home, we shall give him the slip all right." + +"Do you think he saw you?" + +"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too." + +"But before we started?" + +"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I +remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, +thank God!" + +They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were +already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated +townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I +from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not +Raffles at all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the +war was the observed of all observers about town. + +"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he +went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning +touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with +such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As +for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread +basket, you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But +here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!" + +The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier +platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must +nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and +that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while +the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging +passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I +cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the +nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod. + +"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk. + +"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a +palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law. + +"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with +deferential grin. + +"And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds +my lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my +horror. But it is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not +follow us on board. + +Neither did our disguises accompany our countenances across the Channel. +It was at dead of night on the upper deck (whence all but us had fled) +that Raffles showed me how to doff my beard and still look as though I +had merely buttoned it inside my overcoat; meanwhile his own moustachios +and imperial were disappearing by discreet degrees; and at last he told +me why, though not by any means without pressing. + +"I'm only afraid you'll want to turn straight back from Calais, Bunny!" + +"Oh, no, I shan't." + +"You'll come with me round the world, so to speak?" + +"To its uttermost ends, A. J.!" + +"You do know now who it really is that I don't want to see again +just yet?" + +"Yes. I know. Now tell me what Mackenzie told you." + +"It was all in the wire he showed me," said Raffles. "The wire was to say +that the murderer of Dan Levy had given himself up to the police!" + +Profane expletives flew from my lips; those of much holier men might +have been no less unguardedly emphatic in the self-same circumstances. + +"But who was it?" + +"I could have told you all along if you hadn't suspected me." + +"It wasn't a suspicion, Raffles. It was never more than a dread, and I +didn't even dread it in my heart of hearts. Do tell me now." + +Raffles watched the red end of a ruined Sullivan make a fine trajectory +as it flew to leeward between sea and stars. + +"It was that poor unlucky little alien who was waiting for him the other +morning in Jermyn Street, and again last night near his own garden gate. +That's where he got him in the end. But it wasn't a shooting case at all, +Bunny; that's why I never heard anything. It was a case of stabbing in +accordance with the best traditions of the Latin races." + +"God forgive both poor devils!" said I at last. + +"And other two," said Raffles, "who have rather more to be forgiven." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Apologia + + +On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton +and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the +best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club. +Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts, +and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to +find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath +was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit +me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but +in spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in +a Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite +to a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased +than my own. + +But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages +of physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar, +reddish countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot +to contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot +rooms my glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay +swathed upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine +fresh-faced owner of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache +rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the +shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual +order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong +wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on +Teddy in his turn. + +He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my +Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the +other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials. + +"But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland; +"you don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs +as all that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through +scullery windows--even for the fun of the thing!" he added with +somewhat tardy tact. + +It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there +was something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy +Garland had said it excellently. + +"Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles +and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for +me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see +the sort of chap he really was." + +"I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just +then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay +silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But +this one rose superior to his. + +"Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge +of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four +winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did +for the lot of us!" + +"Perhaps he did more than you ever knew." + +"Put it all in." + +"It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel." + +"Then make a book of it." + +"But I've written my last word about the old boy." + +"Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!" + +This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told +him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but +openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that +first day of the match, when it rained." + +Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home +and changed his face. + +"Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously. + +"No; he wouldn't give you away." + +"Not even to you--his pal?" + +"No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me." + +"What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love +him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all +this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was." + +"I must say it would interest me to know." + +My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you +would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face. + +"I don't suppose I should." + +"No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the +very sofa I was on a minute ago!" + +I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland +sitting on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his +bygone shame; he hurried on before I could find a word. + +"You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky +game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in +thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should," +said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put +me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was +awake before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered +everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again +in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you +won't wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head +was rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't +describe to you if I tried." + +"I've been there," said I, briefly. + +"Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but +to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you +in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in, +and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too. +I had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down +into this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is +finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden +idea that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I +remembered A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in +I came. I had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were +all to have a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should +be in plenty of time for that and Lord's--if only I hadn't boiled all the +cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I +hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a +boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute--and it was well on in the +afternoon when I awoke!" + +Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a +metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to +go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes +and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent. + +"Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot! +I had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight, +you can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on +top of it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't +hear any rain, do you?--It was after three, but I lay till nearly four +simply cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what +the papers had to say about me--who was playing in my place, who'd won +the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one, +and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'--and sudden illness of my poor +old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty +minutes after that we met." + +"And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the +bath, of course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you +sleep so long." + +"How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have +had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to +think of the rain coming on and saving me--for even Raffles couldn't have +done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck--while I was +lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still--for luck +rather than remembrance!" + +The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was +no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles +won my heart as he had never won it in his youth. + +"Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old +devil his due at last." + +"But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?" + +"My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and +wife as much as ever you like." + +"Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?" + +"Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?" + +I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than +I had supposed. + +"Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked. + +"Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted--so long as you change our +names--for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland. + +I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word? + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. 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JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + + BY E.W. HORNUNG + + 1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Chapter + + + I. An Inaugural Banquet + + II. "His Own Familiar Friend" + + III. Council of War + + IV. "Our Mr. Shylock" + + V. Thin Air + + VI. Camilla Belsize + + VII. In Which We Fail to Score + + VIII. The State of the Case + + IX. A Triple Alliance + + X. "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + XI. A Dash in the Dark + + XII. A Midsummer Night's Dream + + XIII. Knocked Out + + XIV. Corpus Delicti + + XV. Trial by Raffles + + XVI. Watch and Ward + + XVII. A Secret Service + + XVIII. The Death of a Sinner + + XIX. Apologia + + + + +Mr. Justice Raffles + + + + +CHAPTER I + +An Inaugural Banquet + + +Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no +conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at +Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity +match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The +telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of +course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a +specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my +horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous +caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet. + +"Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!" said he, +in tones as hollow as his cheeks. "No, I'm not going to stop to clear +my baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear +good pal." + +"Any time you like," said I, giving him my arm. "But where shall we dine? +Kellner's? Neapolo's? The Carlton or the Club?" + +But Raffles shook his head at one and all. + +"I don't want to dine at all," he said. "I know what I want!" + +And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the +sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of +the warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its +traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political +palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary +clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall +belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where +white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did +not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about +that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on +seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and +the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as +uncharacteristic of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the +table) as the sigh with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, +and crossed his arms upon the cloth. + +"I didn't know you were a member of this place," said I, feeling really +rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for +me to open than that of his late mysterious movements. + +"There are a good many things you don't know about me, Bunny," said he +wearily. "Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?" + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?" + +"You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?" + +"It's only three weeks ago, Bunny." + +"It seems months to me." + +"And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost +tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the +wife with the emerald necklace?" + +"I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise +Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J." + +"Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to +Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his +annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can +sympathise with the poor brute now!" + +"But what on earth took you there, old fellow?" + +"Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their +table when they'd gone, and how _I_ forgot myself and ran after them with +the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?" + +I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a +piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was +prepared for something even more perverse. + +"You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at +the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a +tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like +that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge." + +"You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more +interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale. + +"I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping +to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip +to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him." + +I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in +the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way +Raffles now sided with me against himself. + +"But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that +fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on +purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor +head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I +didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all +round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear +call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for +Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted." + +"Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such +bad form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's +the unkind cut I can't forgive." + +"My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The +cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me." + +"Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him. + +"Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book." + +"But why, in the name of all that's wanton?" + +"You don't know Carlsbad, or you wouldn't ask. The place is squirming +with spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize +humbugs laid down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, +and bowled out myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, +if old man Dante were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of +salubrity for the redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!" + +The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of +fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) +Raffles's only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive +tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we +couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only +achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. +And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation +as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his. + +"No, Bunny, you couldn't have borne it for half a week; you'd have looked +like that all the time!" quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as +it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; +that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling +matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of +humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at +my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no +doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of +good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; +mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, +except some aerated muck called Gieshuebler. He was allowed to lap that up +an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. +We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked +quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have +known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two +instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks +together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective +that one couldn't get in a word about one's own works edgeways." + +"But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he +shook his head as one who was not so sure. + +"Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a +concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. +You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for +a doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of +course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the +rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me +from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general +condition. He said I had a liver! I'll swear I hadn't before I went to +Carlsbad, but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd brought one back." + +And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon +the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived. + +"It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I +only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve +to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend +the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of +that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of +German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of +the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to +joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in +between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, +Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was +the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion +all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as you would, or +as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the doctor's place +one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. +But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala." + +"But did you win those stakes after all?" + +"Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a look +that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and +I'll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought +me back so soon?" + +"Hadn't you finished your cure?" + +"Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the +Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of +fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should +be at Carlsbad still." + +E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one +of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had +made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in +town, where the young fellow's father had a house at which Raffles +became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both +against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son +whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand +the mutual attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed +he was a mere boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a +knowledge of the world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous +spring of sweetness and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could +sensibly pollute. And yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had +been somewhat freely sown, and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and +taken the sower in hand, and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are +made. At least I knew that no one could be sounder friend or saner +counsellor to any young fellow in need of either. And many there must be +to bear me out in their hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I +knew mine; and if they say that was why they thought so much of him, let +them have patience, and at last they shall hear something that need not +make them think the less. + +"I couldn't let poor Teddy keep at Lord's," explained Raffles, "and me +not there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in +those little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly +interest in the child." + +"You must have done him a lot of good," I suggested, "in every way." + +Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was +not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it. + +"Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask +me." + +"I didn't ask you, Bunny, that's just the point!" said Raffles. And I +watched him tip the waiter without the least _arriere-pensee_ on +either side. + +"After all," said I, on our way down the marble stair, "you have told me +a good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot +of debts, for example." + +"So I was afraid," replied Raffles, frankly; "and between ourselves, I +offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn't hear of it; +that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was +perfectly delightful in what he said. So don't jump to rotten +conclusions, Bunny, but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink." + +And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in +the hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place +with Raffles. + +"That," said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, +since I felt at one with all the world, "is certainly the finest +grill in Europe." + +"That's why we went there, Bunny." + +"But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place +where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!" + +I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own +caravanserai. + +"I would go a step further," he remarked, "and make every member show his +badge as they do at Lord's." + +"But surely the porter knows the members by sight?" + +"Not he! There are far too many thousands of them." + +"I should have thought he must." + +"And I know he doesn't." + +"Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you're a member yourself." + +"On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was +one!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +"His Own Familiar Friend" + + +How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been +wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this +was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous +will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London +lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost +theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due +to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I +felt I was the brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. +Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, +especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he +had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help +wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that +honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, +such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, to produce. + +So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, +thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was +our good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the +courtyard. + +"There's a gen'leman writing you a letter upstairs," said he to Raffles. +"It's Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up." + +"Teddy!" cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time. + +I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather +critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the +evening was spoilt for me--and God knows I was right! Not till my dying +day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar rooms. I +see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, which +lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a +problem picture itself in flesh and blood. + +Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the +boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had +very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the +sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that was the last of his +natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there +was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to +remind me of the Phoebus in Guido's Aurora, with its healthy pink and +bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our +gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as +if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. +I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each +sunburnt hand. + +"What is it? What are you hiding?" demanded Raffles. His love for the lad +had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular +and genial, but the other's attitude soon strangled that. All this time I +had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned +me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a +guilty face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the +door behind us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk. + +No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no +note young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously +copying into Raffles's cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a +pass-book with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather +back. Raffles had only that year opened a banking account, and I +remembered his telling me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the +instructions on his cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise +the fact. And this was the result. A glance convicted his friend of +criminal intent: a sheet of notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. +Yet Raffles could turn and look with infinite pity upon the miserable +youth who was still looking defiantly on him. + +"My poor chap!" was all he said. + +And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and +quavering old man. + +"Won't you hand me over and be done with it?" he croaked. "Must you +torture me yourself?" + +It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the +fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired +whether he had thought it all out before. + +"God knows I hadn't, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I +did," said Garland with a sudden sob. + +"No need to swear it," returned Raffles, actually smiling. "Your word's +quite good enough for me." + +"God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible +disorder now. + +"It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. + +"Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, +and my refusing it?" + +"Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness +that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter +to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such +conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which +seemed to me rather to aggravate the offence. + +"I have regretted that refusal ever since," young Garland continued very +simply. "It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it's +been a tragedy. Money I must have; I'll tell you why directly. When I got +your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been +answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind +to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet +I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back +to-night; and you weren't here when I came. I telephoned and found that +the train had come in all right, and that there wasn't another until the +morning. Tomorrow morning's my limit, and to-morrow's the match." He +stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. "Don't, Raffles, I don't +deserve it!" he added in fresh distress. + +But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the +corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to +the guilty youth. + +"Drink some," he said, "or I won't listen to another word." + +"I'm going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!" the poor fellow +insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. "And it'll break my +father's heart, and--and--" + +I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; +but either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward +in spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a +further explanation of his conduct. + +"I only came up to leave a line for Raffles," he said to me, "in case he +did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that +bureau. He'll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw +before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your +pass-book bulging with old cheques." + +"And as I wasn't back to write one for you," said Raffles, "you wrote it +for me. And quite right, too!" + +"Don't laugh at me!" cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he +looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the +sprightly sympathy of his friend. + +"I'm not laughing, Teddy," replied Raffles kindly. "I was never more +serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in +your fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my +back rather than let me feel I'd ruined you by not turning up in time. +You may shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a +higher compliment." + +And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less +miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing +really dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor +to accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down +upon himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet +there was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something +that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we +took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he +indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old +story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I +suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of +Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless +extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace +is constitutionally quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. +Suffice it that this one had thrown himself on his father's generosity, +only to find that the father himself was in financial straits. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "with that house on his hands?" + +"I knew it would surprise you," said Teddy Garland. "I can't understand +it myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for +me. I simply couldn't tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a +cheque for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that +I swore I'd never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!" + +The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then +he paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out +between his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde +young face, with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw +Raffles look another way until the match was blown out. + +"But at the time I might have done worse, and did," said Teddy, "a +thousand times! I went to the Jews. That's the whole trouble. There were +more debts--debts of honour--and to square up I went to the Jews. It was +only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you may know, +though I didn't, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the hands of +those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory note for +four hundred and fifty-six." + +"Only fifty per cent!" said Raffles. "You got off cheap if the percentage +was per annum." + +"Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The +four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty +quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. +That was soon after Christmas, when one's always hard up, and for the +first time I was a day or two late--not more, mind you; yet what do you +suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed balance +demanded on the nail!" + +Raffles was following intently, with that complete concentration which +was a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at +anything he heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge +upon the bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been +but for the kink in his nature which had made him what he was. + +"The promissory note was for four-fifty-six," said he, "and this sudden +demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?" + +"That's it." + +"What did you do?" I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp +of the case. + +"Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!" + +"And they?" + +"Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down +on me for--what do you suppose?" + +"Getting on for a thousand," said Raffles after a moment's thought. + +"Nonsense!" I cried. Garland looked astonished too. + +"Raffles knows all about it," said he. "Seven hundred was the actual +figure. I needn't tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since +the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. +And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I'll trouble you, +from the beginning of January down to date!" + +"Had you agreed to that?" + +"Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my +promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above +everything else when the original interest wasn't forthcoming." + +"Printed or written on your note of hand?" + +"Printed--printed small, I needn't tell you--but quite large enough for +me to read when I signed the cursed bond. In fact I believe I did read +it; but a halfpenny a week! Who could ever believe it would mount up like +that? But it does; it's right enough, and the long and short of it is +that unless I pay up by twelve o'clock to-morrow the governor's to be +called in to say whether he'll pay up for me or see me made a bankrupt +under his nose. Twelve o'clock, when the match begins! Of course they +know that, and are trading on it. Only this evening I had the most +insolent ultimatum, saying it was my 'dead and last chance.'" + +"So then you came round here?" + +"I was coming in any case. I wish I'd shot myself first!" + +"My dear fellow, it was doing me proud; don't let us lose our sense of +proportion, Teddy." + +But young Garland had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the +miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. +The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, +the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, +had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul +in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence +of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In +these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less +unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of +Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not +to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential +honesty too bright and brilliant to be dimmed by incidental dishonour; +and both remained to the younger man, in the eyes of the other two, who +were even then determining to preserve in him all that they themselves +had lost. The thought came naturally enough to me. And yet I may well +have derived it from a face that for once was easy to read, a clear-cut +face that had never looked so sharp in profile, or, to my knowledge, half +so gentle in expression. + +"And what about these Jews?" asked Raffles at length. + +"There's really only one." + +"Are we to guess his name?" + +"No, I don't mind telling you. It's Dan Levy." + +"Of course it is!" cried Raffles with a nod for me. "Our Mr. Shylock in +all his glory!" + +Teddy snatched his face from his hands. + +"You don't know him, do you?" + +"I might almost say I know him at home," said Raffles. "But as a matter +of fact I met him abroad." + +Teddy was on his feet. + +"But do you know him well enough--" + +"Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts +for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying +it was your last chance." + +"Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of +course I'll come with you--" + +"Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye +put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you +sit up all night either. Where are you staying, my man?" + +"Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd +caught you early enough." + +"Stout fellow! You stay here." + +"My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully. + +"My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you +stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you +want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake." + +"But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?" + +"You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed--do I, Bunny?" + +"I've seldom seen you there," said I. + +"But you were travelling all last night?" + +"And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a +train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in +to-night I shouldn't get a wink." + +"Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how +to sleep!" + +"Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and +lit it up. + +"I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me +as though we were old friends now. + +"And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is." + +Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from +which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm. + +"Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of +these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes." + +"What are they?" + +"Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best." + +"But won't they give me a frightful head?" + +"Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake +up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because +you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?" + +"I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed +him to scorn. + +"They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks +with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up +to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!" + +And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more +about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after +that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; +and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the +conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The +starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue +than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in +Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard +frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's +must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any +man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his +soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether +any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as +Raffles and myself! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Council of War + + +Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise +when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were +shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost +midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the +syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside +him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; +he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures +which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or +rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of +which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it +seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw +them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; +he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, +and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back +into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there +was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, +shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming +and spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night. + +"That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out +between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!" + +"Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the +conversation which I had managed not to overhear. + +"I don't say that, Bunny, though I never should have dreamt of his old +father being in one too. I own I can't understand that. They live in a +regular country house in the middle of Kensington, and there are only the +two of them. But I've given Teddy my word not to go to the old man for +the money, so it's no use talking about it." + +But apparently it was what they had been talking about behind the +folding-doors; it only surprised me to see how much Raffles took +it to heart. + +"So you have made up your mind to raise the money elsewhere?" + +"Before that lad in there opens his eyes." + +"Is he asleep already?" + +"Like the dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking +thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish +experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is +better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I +shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one +often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of +over-keenness which so often cuts one's own throat." + +"But what do you think of it all, A.J.?" + +"Not so much worse than I let him think I thought." + +"But you must have been amazed?" + +"I am past amazement at the worst thing the best of us ever does, and +contrariwise of course. Your rich man proves a pauper, and your honest +man plays the knave; we're all of us capable of every damned thing. But +let us thank our stars and Teddy's that we got back just when we did." + +"Why at that moment?" + +Raffles produced the unfinished cheque, shook his head over it, and sent +it fluttering across to me. + +"Was there ever such a childish attempt? They'd have kept him in the bank +while they sent for the police. If ever you want to play this game, +Bunny, you must let me coach you up a bit." + +"But it was never one of your games, A.J.!" + +"Only incidentally once or twice; it never appealed to me," said Raffles, +sending expanding circlets of smoke to crown the girls on the Golden +Stair that was no longer tilted in a leaning tower. "No, Bunny, an +occasional _exeat_ at school is my modest record as a forger, though I +admit that augured ill. Do you remember how I left my cheque-book about +on purpose for what's happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning, +in all the papers, would have set one up as an honest man for life. I +thought, God forgive me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that +kind. And to think it should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'! +Not that I ever did confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad." + +Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was +speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the +best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty _jeux d'esprit_. +This Raffles only meant half he said--but had generally done the other +half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own _Whitaker_) that +the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that +night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile. + +"I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we +could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the +sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken _ex itinere_. It's a +case for the _testudo_ and all the rest of it. You must remember that +I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if one +may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was as +impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon the +very rock of defence!" + +"You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his +kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there +was no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience +till all hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I +wanted fewer fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual +lantern. And yet these were the very moments that inspired his +pyrotechnic displays. + +"Oh, I shall tell you all right," said Raffles. "But just now the next +few hours are of more importance than the last few weeks. Of course +Shylock's the man for our money; but knowing our tribesmen as I do, I +think we had better begin by borrowing it like simple Christians." + +"Then we have it to pay back again." + +"And that's the psychological moment for raiding our 'miser's sunless +coffers'--if he happens to have any. It will give us time to find out." + +"But he doesn't keep open office all night," I objected. + +"But he opens at nine o'clock in the morning," said Raffles, "to catch +the early stockbroker who would rather be bled than hammered." + +"Who told you that?" + +"Our Mrs. Shylock." + +"You must have made great friends with her?" + +"More in pity than for the sake of secrets." + +"But you went where the secrets were?" + +"And she gave them away wholesale." + +"She would," I said, "to you." + +"She told me a lot about the impending libel action." + +"Shylock _v. Fact?_" + +"Yes; it's coming on before the vacation, you know." + +"So I saw in some paper." + +"But you know what it's all about, Bunny?" + +"No, I don't." + +"Another old rascal, the Maharajah of Hathipur, and his perfectly +fabulous debts. It seems he's been in our Mr. Shylock's clutches for +years, but instead of taking his pound of flesh he's always increasing +the amount. Of course that's the whole duty of money-lenders, but now +they say the figure runs well into six. No one has any sympathy with that +old heathen; he's said to have been a pal of Nana's before the Mutiny, +and in it up to the neck he only saved by turning against his own lot in +time; in any case it's the pot and the kettle so far as moral colour is +concerned. But I believe it's an actual fact that syndicates have been +formed to buy up the black man's debts and take a reasonable interest, +only the dirty white man always gets to windward of the syndicate. +They're on the point of bringing it off, when old Levy inveigles the +nigger into some new Oriental extravagance. _Fact_ has exposed the whole +thing, and printed blackmailing letters which Shylock swears are +forgeries. That's both their cases in a philippine! The leeches told the +Jew he must do his Carlsbad this year before the case came on; and the +tremendous amount it's going to cost may account for his dunning old +clients the moment he gets back." + +"Then why should he lend to you?" + +"I'm a new client, Bunny; that makes all the difference. Then we were +very good pals out there." + +"But you and Mrs. Shylock were better still?" + +"Unbeknowns, Bunny! She used to tell me her troubles when I lent her an +arm and took due care to look a martyr; my hunting friend had coarse +metaphors about heavy-weights and the knacker's yard." + +"And yet you came away with the poor soul's necklace?" + +Raffles was tapping the chronic cigarette on the table at his elbow; he +stood up to light it, as one does stand up to make the dramatic +announcements of one's life, and he spoke through the flame of the match +as it rose and fell between his puffs. + +"No--Bunny--I did not!" + +"But you told me you won the Emerald Stakes!" I cried, jumping up +in my turn. + +"So I did, Bunny, but I gave them back again." + +"You gave yourself away to her, as she'd given him away to you?" + +"Don't be a fool, Bunny," said Raffles, subsiding into his chair. "I +can't tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're +at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They +stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at +the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their +rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on +the second floor--where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from +under his mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been +made for me. Need I go on?" + +"I wonder you weren't suspected." + +"There's no end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old +rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had +the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off +in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it +was--well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his +shop next morning." + +"What had happened?" + +"A whole actful of unrehearsed effects; that's why I think twice before +taking on old Shylock again. I admire him, Bunny, as a steely foeman. I +look forward to another game with him on his own ground. But I must find +out the pace of the wicket before I put myself on." + +"I suppose you had tea with them, and all that sort of thing?" + +"Gieshuebler!" said Raffles with a shudder. "But I made it last as long as +tea, and thought I had located the little green lamps before I took my +leave. There was a japanned despatch box in one corner. 'That's the +Emerald Isle,' I thought, 'I'll soon have it out of the sea. The old man +won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't +tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at +the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner." + +Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten +the lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle +that he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he +waited for a dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room +balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box +after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the +folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy +"in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." + +"They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck +me, for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever +took. His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was +not; and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there +was no chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I +stuck my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up. +Good God, Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit, +and I was jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,' +says I in low German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise +that I was absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened +face. 'I don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.' +'_Das halsband_, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he. +But I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded. +He laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I +pointed to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live, +old girl,' says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to +shoot, and I don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other +way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the +old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left +hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her +and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German +that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be +_ein toter Englander_! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was +meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging +on to him, instead of him to her!" + +I emptied my lungs and my glass too. Raffles took a sip himself. + +"But the rope was fixed to _your_ balcony, A.J.?" + +"But I began by fixing the other end to theirs, and the moment I was +safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found +it dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked +the right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as +pitch-dark, and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to +search for impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any +there might conceivably have been." + +"So nobody ever suspected you?" + +"Not a soul, I can safely say; I was the first my victims bored with the +whole yarn." + +"Then why return the swag? It's an old trick of yours, Raffles, but in a +case like this, with a pig like that, I confess I don't see the point." + +"You forget the poor old lady, Bunny. She had a dog's life before; after +that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for +her pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me; +there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift." + +"But how on earth did you manage that?" + +"Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into +my confidence _more cuniculi!"_ + +"I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?" + +"As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted +it in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch +lest it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a +substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to +blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered. +The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I +wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made +a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that +enormous dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a +living tomb." + +But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a +formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly. + +"That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked +forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the +halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric." + +"Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to +pay Peter?" + +"Excellent, Bunny!" cried Raffles, as though I had made a shot worthy of +his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains +and displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across +it. "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned +them from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up +o' nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our +methods. What a lot the two old pets must have missed!" + +"You haven't answered my question," said I resignedly. "Nor have you told +me how you propose to go to work to raise this money in the first +instance." + +"If you like to light another Sullivan," said Raffles, "and mix yourself +another very small and final one, I can tell you now, Bunny." + +And tell me he did. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"Our Mr. Shylock" + + +I have often wondered in what pause or phase of our conversation Raffles +hit upon the plan which we duly carried out; for we had been talking +incessantly, since his arrival about eight o'clock at night, until two in +the morning. Yet that which we discussed between two and three was what +we actually did between nine and ten, with the single exception +necessitated by an altogether unforeseen development, of which the less +said the better until the proper time. The foresight and imagination of a +Raffles are obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the +course of speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the +listener, and the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea +would culminate in a definite project, as the image comes into focus +under the lens, and with as much detail into the bargain. + +Suffice it that after a long night of it at the Albany, and but a bath +and a cup of tea at my own flat, I found Raffles waiting for me in +Piccadilly, and down we went together to the jaws of Jermyn Street. There +we nodded, and I was proceeding down the hill when I turned on my heel as +though I had forgotten something, and entered Jermyn Street not fifty +yards behind Raffles. I had no thought of catching him up. But it so +happened that I was in his wake in time to witness a first _contretemps_ +which did not amount to much at the time; this was merely the violent +exit of another of Dan Levy's early callers into the very arms of +Raffles. There was a heated apology, accepted with courteous composure, +and followed by an excited outpouring which I did not come near enough to +overhear. It was delivered by a little man in an aureole of indigo hair, +who brushed his great sombrero violently as he spoke and Raffles +listened. I could see from their manner that the collision which had just +occurred was not the subject under discussion; but I failed to +distinguish a word, though I listened outside a hatter's until Raffles +had gone in and his new acquaintance had passed me with blazing eyes and +a volley of husky vows in broken English. + +"Another of Mr. Shylock's victims," thought I; and indeed he might have +been bleeding internally from the loss of his pound of flesh; at any rate +there was bloodshed in his eyes. + +I stood a long time outside that hatter's window, and finally went in to +choose a cap. But the light is wicked in those narrow shops, and this +necessitated my carrying several caps to the broad daylight of the +threshold to gauge their shades, and incidentally to achieve a swift +survey of the street. Then they crowned me with an ingenious apparatus +like a typewriter, to get the exact shape and measure of my skull, for I +had intimated that I had no desire to dress it anywhere else for the +future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after +getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's +hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one +in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next +perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new +bowler) brought me face to face with Raffles once more. + +We shouted and shook hands; our encounter had taken place almost under +the money-lender's windows, and it was so un-English in its cordiality +that between our slaps and grasps Raffles managed deftly to insert a +stout packet in my breast pocket. I cannot think the most critical +pedestrian could have seen it done. But streets have as many eyes as +Argus, and some of them are always on one. + +"They had to send to the bank for it," whispered Raffles. "It barely +passed through their hands. But don't you let Shylock spot his own +envelope!" + +In another second he was saying something very different that anybody +might have heard, and in yet another he was hustling me across Shylock's +threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You +couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow--he's the only honest one +in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?" + +A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was +in liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he +thought so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone, +after shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his +stool at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more +similar peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was +told to hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other +clerks behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting +them hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence. + +Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my +tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so +elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month +earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, +but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a +gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie +filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had +engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd +and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its +massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity +of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; +and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I +had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its +immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to +that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious +confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of +light-hearted authority which stamped him in all shades of society. + +"'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you're well?" said Mr. Levy, dropping one +aspirate but putting in the next with care. "Take a seat, sir, please." + +But I kept my legs, though I felt them near to trembling, and, diving a +hand into a breast pocket, I began working the contents out of the +envelope that Raffles had given me, while I spoke out in a tone +sufficiently rehearsed at the Albany overnight. + +"I'm not so sure about the happiness," said I. "I mean about its lasting, +Mr. Levy. I come from my friend, Mr. Edward Garland." + +"I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much +indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I +could no longer see. + +"I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval +and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well. + +"Who _is_ the little biter?" the money-lender inquired of him with +delightful insolence. + +"An old friend of mine," replied Raffles, in an injured tone that made a +convincing end of the old friendship. "I thought he was hard up, or I +never should have brought him in to introduce to you." + +"I didn't ask you for your introduction, Raffles," said I offensively. "I +simply met you coming out as I was coming in. I thought you damned +officious, if you ask me!" + +Whereupon, with an Anglo-Saxon threat of subsequent violence to my +person, Raffles flung open the door to leave us to our interview. This +was exactly as it had been rehearsed. But Dan Levy called Raffles back. +And that was exactly as we had hoped. + +"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" said the Jew. "Please don't make a cockpit of my +office, gentlemen; and pray, Mr. Raffles, don't leave me to the mercies +of your very dangerous friend." + +"You can be two to one if you like," I gasped valiantly. "_I_ +don't care." + +And my chest heaved in accordance with my stage instructions, as also +with a realism to which it was a relief to give full play. + +"Come now," said Levy. "What did Mr. Garland send you about?" + +"You know well enough," said I: "his debt to you." + +"Don't be rude about it," said Levy. "What about the debt?" + +"It's a damned disgrace!" said I. + +"I quite agree," he chuckled. "It ought to 'ave been settled months ago." + +"Months ago?" I echoed. "It's only twelve months since he borrowed three +hundred pounds from you, and now you're sticking him for seven!" + +"I am," said Levy, opening uncompromising lips that entirely disappeared +again next instant. + +"He borrows three hundred for a year at the outside, and you blackmail +him for eight hundred when the year's up." + +"You said 'seven' just now," interrupted Raffles, but in the voice of a +man who was getting a fright. + +"You also said 'blackmailing,'" added Dan Levy portentously. "Do you want +to be thrown downstairs?" + +"Do _you_ deny the figures?" I retorted. + +"No, I don't; have you got his repayment cards?" + +"Yes, here in my hands, and they shan't leave them. You see, you're not +aware," I added severely, as I turned to Raffles, "that this young fellow +has already paid up one hundred in instalments; that's what makes the +eight; and all this is what'll happen to you if you've been fool enough +to get into the same boat." + +The money-lender had borne with me longer than either of us had expected +that he would; but now he wheeled back his chair and stood up, a pillar +of peril and a mouthful of oaths. + +"Is that all you've come to say?" he thundered. "If so, you young devil, +out you go!" + +"No, it isn't," said I, spreading out a document attached to the cards of +receipt which Raffles had obtained from Teddy Garland; these I had +managed to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I +had been trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is +a letter, written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you +say, among other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no +excuses of any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten +times more trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get +rid of you. So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as +you may depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very +letter, and steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour. +This is your dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on +the subject.'" + +"So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr. +Raffles." + +"I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr. +Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?" + +"Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his +prize-fighting jaws. + +"Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a +year ago?" + +"That's it." + +"Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory +stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at +the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault." + +"Of course it is, Mr. Raffles," cried the moneylender, taking a more +conciliatory tone himself. "It was my money; it was my three 'undred +golden sovereigns; and you can sell what's yours for what it'll fetch, +can't you?" + +"Obviously," said Raffles. + +"Very well, then, money's like anything else; if you haven't got it, and +can't beg or earn it, you've got to buy it at a price. I sell my money, +that's all. And I've a right to sell it at a fancy price if I can get a +fancy price for it. A man may be a fool to pay my figure; that depends +'ow much he wants the money at the time, and it's his affair, not mine. +Your gay young friend was all right if he hadn't defaulted, but a +defaulter deserves to pay through the nose, and be damned to him. It +wasn't me let your friend in; he let in himself, with his eyes open. Mr. +Garland knew very well what I was charging him, and what I shouldn't +'esitate to charge over and above if he gave me half a chance. Why should +I? Wasn't it in the bond? What do you all think I run my show for? It's +business, Mr. Raffles, not robbery, my dear sir. All business is +robbery, if you come to that. But you'll find mine is all above-board and +in the bond." + +"A very admirable exposition," said Raffles weightily. + +"Not that it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to +add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I +hope I may say that you're the one and not the other." + +"Then it comes to this," said I, "that you mean him to pay up in full +this morning?" + +"By noon, and it's just gone ten." + +"The whole seven hundred pounds?" + +"Sterling," said Mr. Levy "No cheques entertained." + +"Then," said I, with an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but +to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" + +I did not look at Levy, but I heard the sudden intake of his breath at +the sight of my bank-notes, and I felt its baleful exhalation on my +forehead as I stooped and began counting them out upon his desk. I had +made some progress before he addressed me in terms of protest. There was +almost a tremor in his voice. I had no call to be so hasty; it looked as +though I had been playing a game with him. Why couldn't I tell him I had +the money with me all the time? The question was asked with a sudden +oath, because I had gone on counting it out regardless of his overtures. +I took as little notice of his anger. + +"And now, Mr. Levy," I concluded, "may I ask you to return me Mr. +Garland's promissory note?" + +"Yes, you may ask and you shall receive!" he snarled, and opened his safe +so violently that the keys fell out. Raffles replaced them with exemplary +promptitude while the note of hand was being found. + +The evil little document was in my possession at last. Levy roared down +the tube, and the young man of the imperfect diction duly appeared. + +"Take that young biter," cried Levy, "and throw him into the street. Call +up Moses to lend you a 'and." + +But the first murderer stood nonplussed, looking from Raffles to me, and +finally inquiring which biter his master meant. + +"That one!" bellowed the money-lender, shaking a lethal fist at me. "Mr. +Raffles is a friend o' mine." + +"But 'e'th a friend of 'ith too," lisped the young man. "Thimeon Markth +come acroth the thtreet to tell me tho. He thaw them thake handth +outthide our plathe, after he'd theen 'em arm-in-arm in Piccadilly, 'an +he come in to thay tho in cathe--" + +But the youth of limited articulation was not allowed to finish his +explanation; he was grasped by the scruff of the neck and kicked and +shaken out of the room, and his collar flung after him. I heard him +blubbering on the stairs as Levy locked the door and put the key in his +pocket. But I did not hear Raffles slip into the swivel chair behind +the desk, or know that he had done so until the usurer and I turned +round together. + +"Out of that!" blustered Levy. + +But Raffles tilted the chair back on its spring and laughed softly +in his face. + +"Not if I know it," said he. "If you don't open the door in about one +minute I shall require this telephone of yours to ring up the police." + +"The police, eh?" said Levy, with a sinister recovery of self-control. +"You'd better leave that to me, you precious pair of swindlers!" + +"Besides," continued Raffles, "of course you keep an _argumentum ad +hominem_ in one of these drawers. Ah, here it is, and just as well in my +hands as in yours!" + +He had opened the top drawer in the right-hand pedestal, and taken +therefrom a big bulldog revolver; it was the work of few moments to empty +its five chambers, and hand the pistol by its barrel to the owner. + +"Curse you!" hissed the latter, hurling it into the fender with a fearful +clatter. "But you'll pay for this, my fine gentlemen; this isn't sharp +practice, but criminal fraud." + +"The burden of proof," said Raffles, "lies with you. Meanwhile, will you +be good enough to open that door instead of looking as sick as a cold +mud-poultice?" + +The money-lender had, indeed, turned as grey as his hair; and his +eyebrows, which were black and looked dyed, stood out like smears of ink. +Nevertheless, the simile which Raffles had employed with his own +unfortunate facility was more picturesque than discreet. I saw it set Mr. +Shylock thinking. Luckily, the evil of the day was sufficient for it and +him; but so far from complying, he set his back to the locked door and +swore a sweet oath never to budge. + +"Oh, very well!" resumed Raffles, and the receiver was at his ear without +more ado. "Is that the Exchange? Give me nine-two-double-three Gerrard, +will you?" + +"It's fraud," reiterated Levy. "And you know it." + +"It's nothing of the sort, and _you_ know it," murmured Raffles, with +the proper pre-occupation of the man at the telephone. + +"You lent the money," I added. "That's your business. It's nothing to do +with you what he chooses to do with it." + +"He's a cursed swindler," hissed Levy. "And you're his damned decoy!" + +I was not sorry to see Raffles's face light up across the desk. + +"Is that Howson, Anstruther and Martin?--they're only my solicitors, Mr. +Levy.... Put me through to Mr. Martin, please.... That you, Charlie? ... +You might come in a cab to Jermyn Street--I forget the number--Dan +Levy's, the money-lender's--thanks, old chap! ... Wait a bit, Charlie--a +constable...." + +But Dan Levy had unlocked his door and flung it open. + +"There you are, you scoundrels! But we'll meet again, my fine +swell-mobsmen!" + +Raffles was frowning at the telephone. + +"I've been cut off," said he. "Wait a bit! Clear call for you, Mr. Levy, +I believe!" + +And they changed places, without exchanging another word until Raffles +and I were on the stairs. + +"Why, the 'phone's not even _through!_" yelled the money-lender, +rushing out. + +"But _we_ are, Mr. Levy!" cried Raffles. And down we ran into the street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Thin Air + + +Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised +that he was not coming with me. + +"Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make +him get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in +half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back." + +His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to +escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he +deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which +Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it +as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately +lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of +faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however, +if a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating +over the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious +extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles; +and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we +had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a +species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose +battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his +breakfast, and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab. + +Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was +frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the +morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose. + +"Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out. + +"Of whom, Raffles?" + +"Teddy, of course!" + +"Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?" + +"Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he +is!" + +He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up +to his rooms. + +"But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?" + +"That's what I want to know." + +"Could he have gone out for a paper?" + +"They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed." + +"Or for a shave?" + +"That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour." + +"But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I +understood you left him fast asleep?" + +"That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough +saw him go out ten minutes after me." + +"Could you have disturbed him when you went?" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I +came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave +me a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the +doors after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open +them. I thought something horrible had happened!" + +"You don't think so still?" + +"I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned +out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves +away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up +the enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters, +Bunny; we shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I +should rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in +this rotten way." + +Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his +sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one +that seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind. + +"A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and +sound at Lord's." + +"I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him +then; besides, here's his cricket-bag." + +"He may have been at the club when I fetched it away--I never asked." + +"I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left." + +"Then what about his father's house?" + +"That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but +now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's +there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a +thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the +time it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with +the whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by +Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!" + +We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending +hastily enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man, +and Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we +looked at each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was +out of the room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing. + +"Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add. + +"Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice--in +accents of such acute dismay--that Mr. Garland had my sympathy +before we met. + +"He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute. +Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?" + +The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair +entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected +of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in +retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional +embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder +purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a +gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn +furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my +heart outright. + +"So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're +nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night +or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town +if necessary, and he evidently has." + +There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was +also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles +gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as +distinct from his words and deeds) overnight. + +"And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a +surprise to you, Raffles?" + +Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my +chair. What great news was this? + +"This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my +benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me +here; you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him; +but Miss Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with +us to the match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be +so disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see +very little of each other all day." + +I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this +engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at +night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window. +Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which +extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it +was not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation. +But his face had suddenly lit up. + +"May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you, +Mr. Garland?" + +"It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence." + +"Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?" + +"Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have +had to consult Lady Laura." + +"Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home +while you were on yours into town! How did you come?" + +"In the brougham." + +"Through the Park?" + +"Yes." + +"While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's +how you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight +back you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's." + +Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we +might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a +minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through +Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept +away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and +slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago. +It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all +keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one +side-street to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn +and towering tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more +forcibly (and favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a +house. And yet a double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a +few yards of the steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed. + +Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss +Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature. + +"Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his +books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he +turned to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I +haven't been told, and I insist on knowing what it is." + +"But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving +Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown." + +"What time was that?" + +"Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour." + +"Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?" + +"I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up +rather late." + +"But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you +were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why, +after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not +the first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming +girl; is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?" + +"About his engagement--not that I'm aware." + +"Then he is in some trouble?" + +"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he +isn't now." + +Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair. + +"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you +his confidence, I have no right simply as his father--" + +"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no +right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. +Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it _was_ about some +little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me." + +"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude +and humiliation. + +"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so +serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment." + +"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his +voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right +man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he +muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and +bent his head over his folded arms. + +He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance +in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his +watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour +now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master +recovered his self-control. + +"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's +for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose +it's Miss Belsize again." + +"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you +were not to be disturbed." + +"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of +trouble in his tone. "Listen to this--listen to this," he went on before +the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you +don't turn up in time.--J. S.'" + +"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper." + +"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" + +"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns +out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will +still be too late for him to play." + +"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his +chair with a groan. + +"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way." + +"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned +straight from Lord's--probably within the last few minutes--to a +messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!" + +Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look +ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his +back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a +monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the +adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but +this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well +have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a +panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and +straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with +an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy +fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in +the body of the room. + +"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a +barometer, Mr. Garland?" + +"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket." + +"How often do you set the indicator?" + +"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I +went to bed. It made me anxious." + +"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this +morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!" + +In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and +assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery. + +"Something has happened to my boy!" + +"But not necessarily anything terrible." + +"If I knew what, Raffles--if only I knew what!" + +Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He +himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the +rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute. + +"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, +we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your +help, sir." + +"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles." + +"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are." + +"Where I am?" + +"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential +to my idea." + +"And that is, Raffles?" + +"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up +to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he +shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment." + +"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked. + +"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his +face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." + +"But that's the only place that matters," said I. + +"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as +Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in +the next room now." + +"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." + +"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I +thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from +her, sir." + +"I?" + +"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil +her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for +an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. +Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them +in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and +the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." + +"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held +out his hand. + +"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another +five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself +in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may +be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from +me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the +better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark +at this end." + +"Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard +task for me!" + +"It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I +promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." + +With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that +turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my +leave of him. + +"What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl +and hide my own anxiety?" + +"There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If +either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." + +Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not +but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the +drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an +umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour +into the brougham. + +"I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the +coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, +but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We +should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." + +"But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary +disappearance?" + +"Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land +of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his +insanity." + +"And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you +disapprove of it?" + +"Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged +from under my umbrella into the brougham. + +"Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl +beneath him?" + +Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes. + +"You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to +hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Camilla Belsize + + +It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the +amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in +Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so +welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the +rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not +the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was +another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and +tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work +to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention +overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. +To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help +feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in +these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me +until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to +Teddy Garland at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping +Raffles to keep the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and +on the point of helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse +still from his daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the +worst of all to be hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me! + +Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out +from the conservatory in a continuous chain--each link with its own +temperature and its individual scent--and not a pane but rattled and +streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing +fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of +the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to +Miss Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face +must have made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the +same smile again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I +really think she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment. + +So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. +Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well +as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but +emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy +with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with +unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really +was a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was +wasting what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I +could suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still. + +"And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under +shelter, Miss Belsize." Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored. + +"But there's plenty of shelter there," said she. + +"Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it +before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know." + +"But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?" + +"They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting." + +That was a rash remark. + +"Then why doesn't Teddy come back?" + +"Oh, well, you know," I hedged, "you can never be quite absolutely sure. +It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. +And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn." + +"I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch," said Miss +Belsize, "even if he had to go back afterwards." + +"I shouldn't wonder if he did come," said I, conceiving the bare +possibility: "and A.J. with him." + +"Do you mean Mr. Raffles?" + +"Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!" + +Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had +confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. +Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been +watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold +profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her +out of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers +dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, +calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental--all that and more as I see them +now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled. + +"So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?" said Miss Belsize, harking +back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us. + +"Rather!" I replied. + +"Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?" + +I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. "Raffles and I were +at school together," I added loftily. + +"Really? I should have thought he was before your time." + +"No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag." + +"And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?" inquired Miss Belsize, +not by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own +devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little +jealousy of Raffles. + +"He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: +"captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic +champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth." + +"And you worshipped him, I suppose?" + +"Absolutely." + +My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she +looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes. + +"You must be rather disappointed in him now!" + +"Disappointed! Why?" I asked with much outward amusement. But I was +beginning to feel uncomfortable. + +"Of course I don't know much about him," remarked Miss Belsize as though +she cared less. + +"But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?" + +"I do," said I, with injudicious alacrity. + +"Well," said Miss Belsize, "what else is he?" + +"The best fellow in the world, among other things." + +"But what other things?" + +"Ask Teddy!" I said unluckily. + +"I have," replied Miss Belsize. "But Teddy doesn't know. He often +wonders how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing +any work." + +"Does he, indeed!" + +"Many people do." + +"And what do they say about him?" + +Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather +longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been +turned on again, before she answered: + +"More than their prayers, no doubt!" + +"Do you mean," I almost gasped, "as to the way Raffles gets his living?" + +"Yes." + +"You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!" + +"But if there's no truth in them?" + +"I'll soon tell you if there is or not." + +"But suppose I don't care either way?" said Miss Belsize with a +brilliant smile. + +"Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you." + +"Mind, I don't believe it myself, Mr. Manders." + +"You don't believe--" + +"That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and--his cricket!" + +I jumped to my feet. + +"Is that all they say about him?" I cried. + +"Isn't it enough?" asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my +demeanour. + +"Oh, quite enough, quite enough!" said I. "It's only the most +scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got +about--that's all!" + +This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that +one's first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to +discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was +unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth. + +"Yet you seemed to expect something worse," she said at length. + +"What could be worse?" I asked, my back against the wall of my own +indiscretion. "Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal +thing than a paid amateur!" + +"But you haven't told me what he _is_, Mr. Manders." + +"And you haven't told me, Miss Belsize, why you're so interested in A. J. +after all!" I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on +the strength of it. + +But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my +ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite +frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than +she cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was +the only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and +censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. +Mr. Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered +whether he was quite a good friend; and there I had "the whole thing in a +nutshell." + +I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too +often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I +did not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as +jealousy did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved +on that point. + +We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the +rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house +and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite +refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the +still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's +mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently +impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and +suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with +vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking +cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction +that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the +uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast +under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not +unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles +himself who had made it known to her. Raffles, whom she did not "know +much about," or consider "quite a good friend" for Teddy Garland! + +I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was +the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland +told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger +earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, +considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a +strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so +far infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon +with far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us +again until the butler with a visitor's card brought about his abrupt +departure from the conservatory. + +Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss +Belsize could have had her way we should all have started for Lord's that +minute. I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, +coldly scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. +Lord's would be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been +abandoned on that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure +about that; why should we not drive over and find out? I said that was +the surest way of missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there +and back in a half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but +said if we went at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, +and that in his own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and +when Miss Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my +ground, I could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the +softened gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss +Belsize took my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, +though with none too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw +what I had been curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path +towards us. And I saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking +hands with him. + +"They've given it up as a bad job at last," said he. "I've just come from +Lord's, and Teddy won't be very long." + +"Why didn't you bring him with you?" asked Miss Belsize pertinently. + +"Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once," said Raffles, +rather lamely for him; "and then a man playing in a 'Varsity match is +never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn't to keep you +waiting much longer." + +It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it +pretty plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had +been waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an +end she must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to +Mr. Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I +believe it took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her +intention, however hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the +conservatory and the library door, while Raffles and I went through into +the hall the other way. + +"I'm afraid I've put my foot in it," said he to me. "But it's just as +well, since I needn't tell you there's no sign of Teddy up at Lord's." + +"Have you been there all day?" I asked him under my breath. + +"Except when I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, +brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what +they say about Teddy here." + +And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in +the stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and +Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, "owing +to the serious illness of his father." + +"His father!" I exclaimed. "Why, his father's closeted with somebody or +other at this very moment behind the door you're looking at!" + +"I know, Bunny. I've seen him." + +"But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I +don't wonder you went to the office about it." + +"You'll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the +staff." + +"Of course you made him take it straight out?" + +"On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!" + +And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a +more felonious--but less incomprehensible--exploit. + +"Didn't you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library +this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on +fact. I wonder you don't see the point; as a matter of fact, there are +two points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was +to find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord's. Well, I +haven't actually found him yet; but if he's in the land of the living he +will see this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what +he will do! Meanwhile, there's nothing but sympathy for him at Lord's. +Studley couldn't have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to +the eleventh hour to-morrow. And if that isn't killing two birds with one +stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!" + +"But what will old Garland say, A. J.?" + +"He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note +before lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what +I had done. He doesn't mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save +his face before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look +out, Bunny--here she is!" + +The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it +was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the +hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I +suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal +pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had +taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven +both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago. + +"I didn't go into the library after all," she said, looking askance at +the library door. "I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview +with somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man's face as I hesitated, and +I thought I recognised him." + +"Who was it?" I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather +mysterious visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so +abruptly in the conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in +the hour of so many issues. + +"I believe it's a dreadful man I know by sight down the river," said +Miss Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened +and out came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the +usurer of European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain +enemy for life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +In Which We Fail to Score + + +Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was +evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we +were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a +terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice +he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of +mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and +delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed +to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue +from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. +Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as +he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; +for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all +knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an +exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an +ordinary guest. + +"You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that +worthy with a certain _aplomb_. "I know you very well by sight, Miss +Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain." + +"Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at +her command. + +"The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not +meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up +with adroit urbanity. + +"I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though +bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the +worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to +repent it." + +It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the +eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the +look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only +interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged +her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in +turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to +himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from +doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the +money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no +longer the sole anxiety. + +"And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the +firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?" + +"Where was that, Miss Belsize?" + +"Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I +know, but I forget the name of the place." + +"Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?" + +I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was +merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair. + +"Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I +remember now." + +"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An +unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a +desperate criminal with a loaded revolver." + +"Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. + +Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with +the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the +episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a +mind to impart. + +"It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling +it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss +Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came +in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for +me and my wife." + +"Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. + +Miss Belsize only stared. + +"Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting +Mr. Levy." + +"Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. +And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the +first he had heard of it. + +"But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, +"except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back +last night." + +"But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" + +"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. +"Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" + +"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. + +They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder +against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring +at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the +three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. + +"But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with +terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" + +"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there, +Mr. Levy?" + +Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: + +"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your +wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives +them back again!" + +The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and +myself in his own office that very morning. + +"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her +silence on an eager note. + +Raffles turned to her at once. + +"The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there +everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy +has the better information." + +Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I +followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. + +"I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the +wilds of Austria," said I. + +"There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman +knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His +'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is +nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was +actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was +marked down at some London theatre--or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?" + +"I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily +as their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you +were one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?" + +"Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no +doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious +from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was +as obvious a mistake. + +"Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and +Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed +that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver." + +"We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might +'ave been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no +error about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye +looking along the barrel into mine--as plainly as I'm looking into yours +now, Mr. Raffles." + +Raffles laughed outright. + +"I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me +that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat." + +"So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have +done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white +as yours are." + +"Any other little point in common?" + +"I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver." + +Raffles held out his hands. + +"Better have a good look at mine." + +"His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or +better kept." + +"Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy." + +"You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles." + +"You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily. + +"I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through +and through. + +"And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly +look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that +maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy. + +For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I +declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest +eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the +two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer +shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert +battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should +accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw +him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was +easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we +might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless +denunciation. + +"Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us +who it was?" + +"Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I +know all about him now!" + +I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set, +her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles +during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the +only entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the +firelit hall. + +Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that +kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed +almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang +up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in +the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst. + +Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a +syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood +gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had +the hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had +put it in? Was there any truth in it at all? + +"None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was +never better in my life." + +"Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I +suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to +lay hands on the joker!" + +His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring +himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the +appearance of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the +contrary, he looked both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his +sudden fit of passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered +so humiliated and abased. + +Raffles came forward from the fireside. + +"There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar +for bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm +the only one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of +you all day." + +Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going +to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had +really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and +then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance +which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance +was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which +was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us +with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report +about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him +the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him +and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were +brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their +friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they +fell upon his bugbear in the background. + +"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly +enough once he had found his voice. + +"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh. + +"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking +about, Teddy?" + +"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost +harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as +well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from +this man." + +"You borrowed from him?" + +It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an +emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy +with new loathing and abhorrence. + +"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars +every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own +fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in +his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last +drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves +me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again, +father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he +threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute +as to come to-day!" + +"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into +Teddy's hands. + +It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from +Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the +hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by +the throat before us all. + +"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely. + +"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy. + +"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?" + +"Every penny that you owed me, certainly." + +"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both +ways--your money and your spite as well!" + +"Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive +shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as +you're 'appy?" + +"No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come +back in time." + +"In time for what?" + +"To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!" + +The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded +his arms with a guttural chuckle. + +"So you mean to chuck me out, do you?" + +"By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the +door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again." + +The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with +his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; +but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning +twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the +fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the +harmless character of the shot. + +"May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable +chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation. + +"Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy +truculently, "and out you go!" + +"Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with +the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from +Mr. Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words. + +"The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous +scorn--"freehold and everything." + +"The whole place happens to be _mine_--'freehold and everything!'" +replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate syllables. "And as for +clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given you a week to do it +in--the two of you!" + +He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring +on us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all. + +"And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with +a passionate hiss, "like you did the son--_because I know all about +you now_!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The State of the Case + + +Of course I made all decent haste from the distressing scene, and of +course Raffles stayed behind at the solicitation of his unhappy friends. +I was sorry to desert him in view of one aspect of the case; but I was +not sorry to dine quietly at the club after the alarms and excitements +of that disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up +all night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in +the twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer +night and day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the +club to which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted +us at the Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the +overthrow of the money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely +disappearance of Teddy Garland, my day of it at his father's house, and +the rain and the ruse that saved the passing situation, only to +aggravate the crowning catastrophe of the money-lender's triumph over +Raffles and all his friends. + +Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the +nature of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new +risk run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last +word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently +complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no +mere mystery can hold the mind against impending peril; and I was less +exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in +wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. +Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from +downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more +effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my +dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my +corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a +countenance as though the whole world and he were one. + +"My dear Bunny! I've never given the matter another thought," said he in +answer to my nervous queries, "and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has +scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he's not such a fool as to put +himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn't possibly prove. They +wouldn't listen to him at Scotland Yard; it's not their job, in the +first place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. +Shylock that he hasn't a shred of evidence against me." + +"Still," said I, "he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that's half +the battle in a criminal charge." + +"Then it's a battle I should love to fight, if the odds weren't all on +Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property--he's not a +pin the worse off--but because he has a row with me about something else +he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But not in his +heart, Bunny; he's not such a fool as that. Dan Levy's no fool at all, +but the most magnificent knave I've been up against yet. If you want to +hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I'll open your +eyes for you." + +His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed +them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight +was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are +at theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the +historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial +subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, +Bunny! A foeman worthy of Excalibur itself." + +And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger +stake! But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless +head over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating +prowess of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends. + +"They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I +have them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't +a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. +But there isn't, Bunny, I don't mind telling you." + +"What I can't understand," said I, "is how father and son seem to have +walked into the same parlour--and the father a business man!" + +"Just what he never was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the +whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a +business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years +ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place +where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was +pretty stiff to start with; you might have a house in most squares and +quite a good place in the country for what you've got to pay for a cross +between the two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good +people; for it was not only in Mrs. Garland's time, but it seems she was +the first to set her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave +it for a better world--poor soul--before the glass was on the last +vinery. And the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone." + +"I wonder he didn't get rid of the whole show," said I, "after that." + +"I've no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don't get rid of a place +like that in five minutes; it's neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary +house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further +out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part +of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the +freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit +for building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a +fine investment, or would have been if he had left more margin for upkeep +and living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on +horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at +a fence that's brought down many a better rider." + +"What was that?" + +"South Africans!" replied Raffles succinctly. "Piles were changing hands +over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip +himself; that finished him off. There's no tiger like an old tiger that +never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer became a reckless +gambler, lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his +losses. They were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. +Thousands were wanted at almost a moment's notice; no time to fix up an +honest mortgage; it was a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! +And old Garland took ten thousand of the best from Dan Levy--and had +another dip!" + +"And lost again?" + +"And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his +house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and +branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy's hands for months +and years." + +"On a sort of mortgage?" + +"On a perfectly nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only +with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is +being bled to the heart for iniquitous interest on the first ten +thousand, and of course he can't meet the call for another fifteen when +it comes; but he thinks it's all right because Levy doesn't press for the +dibs. Of course it's all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to +take possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn't suit him to +have the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate a rising property, +and so poor old Garland is deliberately lulled into a false sense of +security. And there's no saying how long that state of things might have +lasted if we hadn't taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning." + +"Then it's our fault, A.J.?" + +"It's mine," said Raffles remorsefully. "The idea, I believe, was +altogether mine, Bunny; that's why I'd give my bowing hand to take the +old ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!" + +"But how _do_ you account for his getting them both into his toils?" I +asked. "What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father +already owed more than he could pay?" + +"There are so many points," said Raffles. "They love you to owe more than +you can pay; it's not their principal that they care about nearly so much +as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they've got +you. In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland +was about his boy--to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see +what an effort it's become. Levy would find out something about the boy; +that he's getting hard up himself, that he's bound to discover the old +man's secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he +does. 'Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,' says +Levy, 'then they'll both hold their tongues, and I'll have one of 'em +under each thumb till all's blue.' So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, +and finances father and son in watertight compartments until this libel +case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue +enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a +sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small +creditors all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it +all fits in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney +himself; that along with all the rest to scale, will run him into +thousands even if he wins his case." + +"May he lose it!" said I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the +inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. +Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless +friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly +characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not +remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly +that she had. By putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she +had taken the whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected +from those fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her +on the spot, and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but +when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. +Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between +his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which +she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was +no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not help +wondering why. + +There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much +more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in +Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of +his sensational disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My +interest in the escapade, however, was considerably quickened by the +prompt refusal of Raffles to tell me a word about it. + +"No, Bunny," said he, "I'm not going to give the boy away. His father +knows, and I know--and that's enough." + +"Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?" + +Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of +his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative. + +"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It +wouldn't be fair." + +"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to +cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, +and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it +trading on a fellow's good-nature--not that I care a curse!" + +"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I +should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been +treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me +if I have another dip at Dan Levy." + +"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?" + +"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder." + +"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?" + +"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for +another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart +from these poor pals of mine." + +"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire +the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?" + +One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain +facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter +manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man +thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was +standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that +interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, +to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not +divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay +pugnacity; nay, there was something behind the good Garlands and their +culpably commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they +be the Cause? + +The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash +might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in +the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, +outside the door. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Triple Alliance + + +It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole +not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible passing of a +hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be +that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; +nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had +been plate-glass. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing +and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we +entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the +one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until +assurance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. +And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it +open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent +figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and +gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal +vulgarian about town. + +"May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability. + +"May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you +came in long ago! I heard you all right--you were listening at the +door--probably looking through the keyhole--and you only knocked when I +jumped up to open it!" + +"My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder. +And he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome. + +"But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or +else picked the lock." + +"Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," +remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality. + +"Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than +Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony. + +Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the +back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. +Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made +no secret of a base suspicion. + +"I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender. + +"My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to +see, and nobody could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; +but that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete +expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again +type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old +song now?" + +"'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles." + +"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a +hair of the jolly dog that bit him--eh?" + +"You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're +cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own +up to it." + +"Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one +side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have +it--thieves! Common thieves!" + +And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine. + +"You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the +only wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He +grinned malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it--Mr. +Ananias J. Raffles?" + +"Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his +eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best +entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?" + +"Chalks!" said I. + +"I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a +grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick +upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! +One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own +actual coin!" + +"Well," said I, "there was no crime in that." + +"Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the +one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call +yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was +the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected +friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his +friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there--a strapping young +chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and +jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but +this afternoon was when I jolly well knew." + +Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his +lips like a steel trap. + +"I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still +seriously think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?" + +"I know you did." + +"Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why +didn't you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland +Yard? Here I am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give +me in charge?" + +Levy chuckled consumedly--ventriloquously--behind his three gold buttons +and his one diamond stud. + +"P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you +two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as _I_ thought." + +"Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick +recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?" + +"P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr. +Raffles." + +"Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?" + +"I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation +softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put +it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took +it for a bit o' fun!" + +"If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd." + +"I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I +agree with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than +anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both +inhabiting for our sins." + +"The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very +shrewd glance. + +"It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure." + +"'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?" + +"Don't say 'another,' please." + +"Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?" + +"Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind." + +"I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity. + +"How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the +pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?" + +Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And +once more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his +favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the +buttoned foil. + +"It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, +Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor." + +"I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?" + +"I have--a case of recovering a man's own property." + +"You being the man, Mr. Levy?" + +"I being the man, Mr. Raffles." + +"Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!" + +I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy +protested that in no circumstances could he have taken such a course. By +the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had +entirely escaped his notice in the past--incriminating things--things +that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he +against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with +unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his +strong suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, +and evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly +forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to +endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and +nothing more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever +be done at all. + +"Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested +Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?" + +"Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a +shrug. + +"Preliminary, then?" + +"Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by +abstracting Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amusement--" + +"So you assert, Mr. Levy." + +"Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen--or not--as you decide," +rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events you +admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I ask +you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that 'appens +to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits." + +"Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of +property it is, and where you think it's to be found." + +The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the +one which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. +We all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor +looking specially hard at me for the first time. + +"I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after +you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It +was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen +were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the +natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, +"you are partners in--amusement? Otherwise I should insist on speaking to +Mr. Raffles alone." + +"Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily. + +"Though two to one--numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a +disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the +more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to +'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!" + +"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke. + +"No--lighter than that--a letter!" + +"One little letter?" + +"That's all." + +"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?" + +"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his +lips were framing an affirmative. + +"I see; it was written to you, not by you." + +"Wrong again, Raffles!" + +"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?" + +There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new +difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the +moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes. + +"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, +written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should +like to know what is?" + +"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course +you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against _Fact_?" + +"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?" + +"I am naturally interested in the case." + +"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much +to say about it, with the whole case still _sub judice_." + +"I read the original articles in _Fact_" said Raffles. + +"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?" + +"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the +wind's eye." + +"That's the one I want." + +"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more +serious sort of case." + +"But it isn't genuine." + +"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," +pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has +been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey." + +"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse. + +"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution +love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the +less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to +bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, +with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late +lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there." + +Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his +case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely +than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his +sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another +wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and +burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial +prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would +ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to +thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at +sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it +before the case came on. + +"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could +possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and +instantaneous effect." + +"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me +remind you that it's yours as well!" + +"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it." + +"You won't in any case, I should hope," said I. + +"Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that." + +Levy stopped talking quite like that. + +"Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?" + +"Abstract the--forgery?" + +"Yes." + +"Where from?" + +"Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose." + +"Who are the solicitors to _Fact_?" + +"Burroughs and Burroughs." + +"Of Gray's Inn Square?" + +"That's right." + +"The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a +grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!" + +"I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender. + +Raffles looked more than dubious. + +"Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?" + +"Too big by half." + +"And you merely wish to have their letter--withdrawn, Mr. Levy?" + +"That's the way to put it." + +And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an +intestine chuckle. + +"Withdrawn--and nothing more?" + +"That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles." + +"Even though they miss it the very next morning?" + +"Let them miss it." + +Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in +serene dissent. + +"It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to +go one better--if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much +point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it. + +"What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently +no such premonition. + +"I should take a sheet of your paper with me, and forge the forgery!" +said Raffles, a light in his eye and a gusto in his voice that I knew +only too well. "But I shouldn't do my work as perfectly as--the other +cove--did his. My effort would look the same as yours--_his_--until Mr. +Attorney fixed it with his eyeglass in open court. And then the bottom +would be out of the defence in five minutes!" + +Dan Levy came straight over to Raffles--quivering like a jelly--beaming +at every pore. + +"Shake!" he cried. "I always knew you were a man after my own heart, but +I didn't know you were a man of genius until this minute." + +"It's no use my shaking," replied Raffles, the tips of his sensitive +fingers still together, "until I make up my mind to take on the job. And +I'm a very long way from doing that yet, Mr. Levy." + +I breathed again. + +"But you must, my dear friend, you simply must!" said Levy, in a new tone +of pure persuasion. I was sorry he forgot to threaten instead. Perhaps it +was not forgetfulness; perhaps he was beginning to know his Raffles as I +knew mine; if so, I was sorrier still. + +"It's a case of _quid pro quo_," said Raffles calmly. "You can't expect +me to break out into downright crime--however technical the actual +offence--unless you make it worth my while." + +Levy became the man I wanted him to be again. "I fancy it's worth your +while not to hear anything more about Carlsbad," said he, though still +with less of the old manner than I could have wished. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "when you own yourself that you've no evidence +against me there?" + +"Evidence is to be got that may mean five years to you; don't you make +any mistake about that." + +"Whereas the evidence of this particular letter against yourself has, on +your own showing, already been obtained! It's as you like, of course," +added Raffles, getting up with a shrug. "But if the Old Bailey sees us +both, Mr. Levy, I'll back my chance against yours--and your sentence +against mine!" + +Raffles helped himself to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, +decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a +tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. + +"There, damn you!" said he, blinking into an empty glass. "I trust you +further than I'd trust any other young blood of your kidney; name your +price, and you shall earn it if you can." + +"You may think it a rather long one, Mr. Levy." + +"Never mind; you say what you want." + +"Leave that money of yours on the mortgage with Mr. Garland; forgive +him his other debt as you hope to be forgiven; and either that letter +shall be in your hands, or I'll be in the hands of the police, before a +week is up!" + +Spoken from man to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a +voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, +the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my +fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a +dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for +Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his +sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first +assault on their oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his +empty tumbler into the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a +volley of abuse as I have seldom heard from human brute. + +"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, contemptuously; "if we +copied your tactics we should throw you through that open window!" + +And I stood by for my share in the deed. + +"Yes! I know it'd pay you to break my neck," retorted Levy. "You'd rather +swing than do time, wouldn't you?" + +"And you prefer the other alternative," said Raffles, "to loosing your +grip upon a man who's done you no harm whatever! In interest alone he's +almost repaid all you lent him in the first instance; you've first-class +security for the rest; yet you must ruin him to revenge yourself upon us. +On us, mark you! It's against us you've got your grievance, not against +old Garland or his son. You've lost sight of that fact. That little trick +this morning was our doing entirely. Why don't you take it out of us? Why +refuse a fair offer to spite people who have done you no harm?" + +"It's not a fair offer," growled Levy. "I made you the fair offer." + +But his rage had moderated; he was beginning to listen to Raffles and to +reason, with however ill a grace. It was the very moment which Raffles +was the very man to improve. + +"Mr. Levy," said he, "do you suppose I care whether you hold your tongue +or not on a matter of mere suspicion, which you can't support by a grain +of evidence? You lose a piece of jewellery abroad; you recover it intact; +and after many days you get the bright idea that I'm the culprit because +I happen to have been staying in your hotel at the time. It never +occurred to you there or then, though you interviewed the gentleman face +to face, as you were constantly interviewing me. But as soon as I borrow +some money from you, here in London in the ordinary way, you say I must +be the man who borrowed Mrs. Levy's necklace in that extraordinary way at +Carlsbad! I should say it to the marines, Mr. Levy, if I were you; +they're the only force that are likely to listen to you." + +"I do say it, all the same; and what's more you don't deny it. If you +weren't the man you wouldn't be so ready for another game like it now." + +"Ready for it?" cried Raffles, more than ready for an undeniable point. +"I'm always your man for a new sensation, Mr. Levy, and for years I've +taken an academic interest in the very fine art of burglary; isn't that +so, Bunny?" + +"I've often heard you say so," I replied without mishap. + +"In these piping times," continued Raffles, "it's about the one exciting +and romantic career open to us. If it were not so infernally dishonest I +should have half a mind to follow it myself. And here you come and put +up a crib for me to crack in the best interests of equity and justice; +not to enrich the wicked cracksman, but to restore his rightful property +to the honest financier; a sort of teetotal felony--the very ginger-ale +of crime! Is that a beverage to refuse--a chance to miss--a temptation to +resist? Yet the risks are just as great as if it were a fine old fruity +felony; you can't expect me to run them for nothing, or even for their +own exciting sake. You know my terms, Mr. Levy; if you don't accept them, +it's already two in the morning, and I should like to get to bed before +it's light." + +"And if I did accept them?" said Levy, after a considerable pause. + +"The letter to which you attach such importance would most probably be in +your possession by the beginning of next week." + +"And I should have to take my hands off a nice little property that has +tumbled into them?" + +"Only for a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be +permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of +blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. +Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the crime of blackmail!" + +A singular docility had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no +uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this +case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I +personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put +him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles +would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with +himself and his apparent advantage. + +"Will you give me until to-morrow morning?" said Levy, taking up his hat. + +"If you mean the morning; by eleven I must be at Lord's." + +"Say ten o'clock in Jermyn Street?" + +"It's a strange bargain, Mr. Levy. I should prefer to clinch it out of +earshot of your clerks." + +"Then I will come here." + +"I shall be ready for you at ten." + +"And alone?" + +There was a sidelong glance at me with the proviso. + +"You shall search the premises yourself and seal up all the doors." + +"Meanwhile," said Levy, putting on his hat, "I shall think about it, but +that's all. I haven't agreed yet, Mr. Raffles; don't you make too sure +that I ever shall. I shall think about it--but don't you make too sure." + +He was gone like a lamb, this wild beast of five minutes back. Raffles +showed him out, and down into the courtyard, and out again into +Piccadilly. There was no question but that he was gone for good; back +came Raffles, rubbing his hands for joy. + +"A fine night, Bunny! A finer day to follow! But a nice, slow, +wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" + +I came to my point with all vehemence. + +"Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had +run risks enough for his sake as it was!" + +"How do you know it's for his sake--or anybody's?" asked Raffles, quite +hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, Garlands +or no Garlands? Besides, there's far less risk in what I mean to do than +in what I've been doing; at all events it's in my line." + +"It's not in your line," I retorted, "to strike a bargain with a swine +who won't dream of keeping his side." + +"I shall make him," said Raffles. "If he won't do what I want he shan't +have what he wants." + +"But how could you trust him to keep his word?" + +"His word!" cried Raffles, in ironical echo. "We shall have to carry +matters far beyond his word, of course; deeds, not words, Bunny, and the +deeds properly prepared by solicitors and executed by Dan Levy before he +lays a finger on his own blackmailing letter. You remember old Mother +Hubbard in our house at school? He's a little solicitor somewhere in the +City; he'll throw the whole thing into legal shape for us, and ask no +questions and tell no tales. You leave Mr. Shylock to me and Mother, and +we'll bring him up to the scratch as he ought to go." + +There was no arguing with Raffles in such a mood; argue I did, but he +paid no attention to what I said. He had unlocked a drawer in the bureau, +and taken out a map that I had never seen before. I looked over his +shoulder as he spread it out in the light of his reading-lamp. And it was +a map of London capriciously sprinkled with wheels and asterisks of red +ink; there was a finished wheel in Bond Street, another in Half-Moon +Street, one on the site of Thornaby House, Park Lane, and others as +remote as St. John's Wood and Peter Street, Campden Hill; the asterisks +were fewer, and I have less reason to remember their latitude and +longitude. + +"What's this, A.J.?" I asked. "It looks exactly like a war-map." + +"It is one, Bunny," said he; "it's the map of one man's war against the +ordered forces of society. The spokes are only the scenes of future +operations, but each finished wheel marks the field of some past +engagement, in which you have usually been the one man's one and only +accomplice." + +And he stooped and drew the neatest of blood-red asterisks at the +southern extremity of Gray's Inn Square. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +"My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + +The historic sward had just been cleared for action when Raffles and I +met at Lord's next day. I blush to own I had been knave and fool enough +to suggest that he should smuggle me into the pavilion; but perhaps the +only laws of man that Raffles really respected were those of the M.C.C., +and it was in Block B. that he joined me a minute or so before eleven. +The sun was as strong and the sky as blue as though the disastrous day +before had been just such another. But its tropical shower-bath had left +the London air as cleanly and as clear as crystal; the neutral tints of +every day were splashes of vivid colour, the waiting umpires animated +snow-men, the heap of sawdust at either end a pyramid of powdered gold +upon an emerald ground. And in the expectant hush before the appearance +of the fielding side, I still recall the Yorkshire accent of the Surrey +Poet, hawking his latest lyric on some "Great Stand by Mr. Webbe and Mr. +Stoddart," and incidentally assuring the crowd that Cambridge was going +to win because everybody said Oxford would. + +"Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men +emerged from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light +blue. The captain's colours were bleached by service; but the +wicket-keeper's were the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male +historian I shrink from saying how well they suited him. + +"Teddy Garland looks as though nothing had happened," was what I said at +the time, as I peered through my binocular at the padded figure with the +pink face and the gigantic gloves. + +"That's because he knows there's a chance of nothing more happening," was +the reply. "I've seen him and his poor old governor up here since I saw +Dan Levy." + +I eagerly inquired as to the upshot of the earlier interview, but Raffles +looked as though he had not heard. The Oxford captain had come out to +open the innings with a player less known to fame; the first ball of the +match hurtled down the pitch, and the Oxford captain left it severely +alone. Teddy took it charmingly, and almost with the same movement the +ball was back in the bowler's hands. + +"_He's_ all right!" muttered Raffles with a long breath. "So is our Mr. +Shylock, Bunny; we fixed things up in no time after all. But the worst of +it is I shall only be able to stop--" + +He broke off, mouth open as it might have been mine. A ball had been +driven hard to extra cover, and quite well fielded; another had been +taken by Teddy as competently as the first, but not returned to the +bowler. The Oxford captain had played at it, and we heard something even +in Block B. + +"How's that?" came almost simultaneously in Teddy's ringing voice. Up +went the umpire's finger, and down came Raffles's hand upon my thigh. + +"He's caught him, Bunny!" he cried in my ear above the Cambridge cheers. +"The best bat on either side, and Teddy's outed him third ball!" He +stopped to watch the defeated captain's slow return, the demonstration on +the pitch in Teddy's honour; then he touched me on the arm and dropped +his voice. "He's forgotten all his troubles now, Bunny, if you like; +nothing's going to worry him till lunch, unless he misses a sitting +chance. And he won't, you'll see; a good start means even more behind the +sticks than in front of 'em." + +Raffles was quite right. Another wicket fell cheaply in another way; then +came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and +judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass +unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the +bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and +beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching +behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great +gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held +them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for +four byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; +so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain +particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice +extracted a stray detail. + +"The old sinner has a place on the river, Bunny, though I have my +suspicions of a second establishment nearer town. But I'm to find him at +his lawful home all the next few nights, and sitting up for me till two +in the morning." + +"Then you're going to Gray's Inn Square this week?" + +"I'm going there this morning for a peep at the crib; there's no time to +be lost, but on the other hand there's a devil of a lot to learn. I say, +Bunny, there's going to be another change of bowling; the fast stuff, +too, by Jove!" + +A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper +was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. + +"You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only +answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a +crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!" + +The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at +the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent +contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking +thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered +Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into +Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less +reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at +my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit +hard but very late. It was a hit that might have smashed the pavilion +palings. But it never reached them; it stuck in Teddy's left glove +instead, and none of us knew it till we saw him staggering towards +long-leg, and tossing up the ball as he recovered balance. + +"That's the worst ball that ever took a wicket in this match!" vowed a +reverend veteran as the din died down. + +"And the best catch!" cried Raffles. "Come on, Bunny; that's my _nunc +dimittis_ for the day. There would be nothing to compare with it if I +could stop to see every ball bowled, and I mustn't see another." + +"But why?" I asked, as I followed Raffles into the press behind the +carriages. + +"I've already told you why," said he. + +I got as close to him as one could in that crowd. + +"You're not thinking of doing it to-night, A.J.?" + +"I don't know." + +"But you'll let _me_ know?" + +"Not if I can help it, Bunny; didn't I promise not to drag you any +further through this particular mire?" + +"But if _I_ can help _you_?" I whispered, after a momentary separation in +the throng. + +"Oh! if I can't get on without you," said Raffles, not nicely, "I'll let +you know fast enough. But do drop the subject now; here come old Garland +and Camilla Belsize!" + +They did not see us quite so soon as we saw them, and for a moment one +felt a spy; but it was an interesting moment even to a person smarting +from a snub. The ruined man looked haggard, ill, unfit to be about, the +very embodiment of the newspaper report concerning him. But the spirit +beamed through the shrinking flesh, the poor old fellow was alight with +pride and love, exultant in spite of himself and his misfortunes. He had +seen his boy's great catch; he had heard the cheers, he would hear them +till his dying hour. Camilla Belsize had also seen and heard, but not +with the same exquisite appreciation. Cricket was a game to her, it was +not that quintessence and epitome of life it would seem to be to some of +its devotees; and real life was pressing so heavily upon her that the +trivial consolation which had banished her companion's load could not +lighten hers. So at least I thought as they approached, the man so worn +and radiant, the girl so pensive for all her glorious youth and beauty: +his was the old head bowed with sorrow, his also the simpler and the +younger heart. + +"That catch will console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to +Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I +wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little +enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the +cricket. And that was usual enough. + +Raffles was already saying he must go, with an explanatory murmur to Mr. +Garland, who clasped his hand with a suddenly clouded countenance. But +Miss Belsize only bowed, and scarcely took her eyes off a couple of +outwardly inferior men, who had attracted my attention through hers, +until they also passed out of the ground. + +Mr. Garland was on tip-toes watching the game again with mercurial +ardour. + +"Mr. Manders will look after me," she said to him, "won't you, Mr. +Manders?" I made some suitable asseveration, and she added: "Mr. +Garland's a member, you know, and dying to go into the Pavilion." + +"Only just to hear what they think of Teddy," the poor old boy confessed; +and when we had arranged where to meet in the interval, away he hurried +with his keen, worn face. + +Miss Belsize turned to me the moment he was gone. + +"I want to speak to you, Mr. Manders," she said quickly but without +embarrassment. "Where can we talk?" + +"And watch as well?" I suggested, thinking of the young man at his best +behind the sticks. + +"I want to speak to you first," she said, "where we shan't be overheard. +It's about Mr. Raffles!" added Miss Belsize as she met my stare. + +About Raffles again! About Raffles, after all that she had learnt the +day before! I did not enjoy the prospect as I led the way past the +ivy-mantled tennis-court of those days to the practice-ground, turned for +the nonce into a tented lawn. + +"And what about Raffles?" I asked as we struck out for ourselves across +the grass. + +"I'm afraid he's in some danger," replied Miss Belsize. And she stopped +in her walk and confronted me as frankly as though we had the animated +scene to ourselves. + +"Danger!" I repeated, guiltily enough, no doubt. "What makes you think +that, Miss Belsize?" + +My companion hesitated for the first time. + +"You won't tell him I told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"Not if you don't want me to," said I, taken aback more by her manner +than by the request itself. + +"You promise me that?" + +"Certainly." + +"Then tell me, did you notice two men who passed close to us just after +we had all met?" + +"There are so many men to notice," said I to gain time. + +"But these were not the sort one expects to see here to-day." + +"Did they wear bowlers and short coats?" + +"You did notice them!" + +"Only because I saw you watching them," said I, recalling the +whole scene. + +"They wanted watching," rejoined Miss Belsize dryly. "They followed Mr. +Raffles out of the ground!" + +"So they did!" I reflected aloud in my alarm. + +"They were following you both when you met us." + +"The dickens they were! Was that the first you saw of them?" + +"No; the first time was over there at the nets before play began. I +noticed those two men behind Teddy's net. They were not watching him; +that called my attention to them. It's my belief they were lying in wait +for Mr. Raffles; at any rate, when he came they moved away. But they +followed us afterwards across the ground." + +"You are sure of that?" + +"I looked round to see," said Miss Belsize, avoiding my eyes for the +first time. + +"Did you think the men--detectives?" + +And I forced a laugh. + +"I was afraid they might be, Mr. Manders, though I have never seen one +off the stage." + +"Still," I pursued, with painfully sustained amusement, "you were +ready to find A.J. Raffles being shadowed here at Lord's of all places +in the world?" + +"I was ready for anything, anywhere," said Miss Belsize, "after all I +heard yesterday afternoon." + +"You mean about poor Mr. Garland and his affairs?" + +It was an ingenuously disingenuous suggestion; it brought my companion's +eyes back to mine, with something of the scorn that I deserved. + +"No, Mr. Manders, I meant after what we all heard between Mr. Levy +and Mr. Raffles; and you knew very well what I meant," added Miss +Belsize severely. + +"But surely you didn't take all that seriously?" said I, without denying +the just impeachment. + +"How could I help it? The insinuation was serious enough, in all +conscience!" exclaimed Camilla Belsize. + +"That is," said I, since she was not to be wilfully misunderstood, "that +poor old Raffles had something to do with this jewel robbery at +Carlsbad?" + +"If it was a robbery." + +She winced at the word. + +"Do you mean it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's +own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to +embrace that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it +really was what she had meant. + +"Obviously!" says she, with an impromptu superiority worthy of Raffles +himself. "I wonder you never thought of that, Mr. Manders, when you know +what a trick you both played Mr. Levy only yesterday. Mr. Raffles himself +told us all about that; and I'm very grateful to you both; you must know +I am--for Teddy's sake," added Miss Belsize, with one quick remorseful +glance towards the great arena. "Still it only shows what Mr. Raffles +is--and--and it's what I meant when we were talking about him yesterday." + +"I don't remember," said I, remembering fast enough. + +"In the rockery," she reminded me. "When you asked what people said about +him, and I said that about living on his wits." + +"And being a paid amateur!" + +"But the other was the worst." + +"I'm not so sure," said I. "But his wits wouldn't carry him very far if +he only took necklaces and put them back again." + +"But it was all a joke," she reminded us both with a bit of a start. +"It must have been a joke, if Mr. Raffles did it at all. And it would +be dreadful if anything happened to him because of a wretched +practical joke!" + +There was no mistake about her feeling now; she really felt that it would +be "dreadful if anything happened" to the man whom yesterday she had +seemed both to dislike and to distrust. Her voice vibrated with anxiety. +A bright film covered the fine eyes, and they were finer than ever as +they continued to face me unashamed; but I was fool enough to speak my +mind, and at that they flashed themselves dry. + +"I thought you didn't like him?" had been my remark, and "Who says I do?" +was hers. "But he has done a lot for Teddy," she went on, "and never more +than yesterday," with her hand for an instant on my arm, "when you helped +him! I am dreadfully sorry for Mr. Garland, sorrier than I am for poor +Teddy. But Mr. Raffles is more than sorry. I know he means to do what he +can. He seems to think there must be something wrong; he spoke of +bringing that brute to reason--if not to justice. It would be too +dreadful if such a creature could turn the tables on Mr. Raffles by +trumping up any charge against him!" + +There was an absolute echo of my own tone in "trumping up any charge," +and I thought the echo sounded even more insincere. But at least it +showed me where we were. Miss Belsize was not deceived; she only wanted +me to think she was. Miss Belsize had divined what I knew, but neither +of us would admit to the other that the charge against Raffles would be +true enough. + +"But why should these men follow him?" said I, really wondering why they +should. "If there were anything definite against old Raffles, don't you +think he would be arrested?" + +"Oh! I don't know," was the slightly irritable answer. "I only think he +should be warned that he is being followed." + +"Whatever he has done?" I ventured. + +"Yes!" said she. "Whatever he has done--after what he did for Teddy +yesterday!" + +"You want me to warn him?" + +"Yes--but not from me!" + +"And suppose he really did take Mrs. Levy's necklace?" + +"That's just what we are supposing." + +"But suppose it wasn't for a joke at all?" + +I spoke as one playfully plumbing the abysmally absurd; what I did desire +to sound was the loyalty of this new, unexpected, and still captious +ally. And I thought myself strangely successful at the first cast; for +Miss Belsize looked me in the face as I was looking her, and I trusted +her before she spoke. + +"Well, after yesterday," she said, "I should warn him all the same!" + +"You would back your Raffles right or wrong?" I murmured, perceiving that +Camilla Belsize was, after all, like all the rest of us. + +"Against a vulgar extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without +repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think +anything of him--apart from what you did between you for Teddy +yesterday." + +We had continued our stroll some time ago, and now it was I who stood +still. I looked at my watch. It still wanted some minutes to the +luncheon interval. + +"If Raffles took a cab to his rooms," I said, "he must be nearly there +and I must telephone to him." + +"Is there a call-office on the ground?" + +"Only in the pavilion, I believe, for the use of the members." + +"Then you must go to the nearest one outside." + +"And what about you?" + +Miss Belsize brightened with her smile of perfect and unconscious +independence. + +"Oh, I shall be all right," she said. "I know where to find Mr. Garland, +even if I don't pick up an escort on the way." + +But it was she who escorted me to the tall turnstile nearest +Wellington Road. + +"And you do see why I want to put Mr. Raffles on his guard?" she said +pointedly as we shook hands. "It's only because you and he have done so +much for Teddy!" + +And because she did not end by reminding me of my promise, I was all the +more reluctantly determined to keep it to the letter, even though Raffles +should think as ill as ever of one who was at least beginning to think +better of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A Dash in the Dark + + +In a few lines which I found waiting for me at the club, and have +somewhat imprudently preserved, Raffles professes to have known he was +being shadowed even before we met at Lord's: "but it was no use talking +about it until the foe were in the cart." He goes on to explain the +simple means by which he reduced the gentlemen in billycocks to the pitch +of discomfiture implied in his metaphor. He had taken a hansom to the +Burlington Gardens entrance to the Albany, and kept it waiting while he +went in and changed his clothes; then he had sent Barraclough to pay off +the cab, and himself marched out into Piccadilly, what time the billycock +brims were still shading watchful eyes in Burlington Gardens. There, to +be sure, I myself had spotted one of the precious pair when I drove up +after vain exertions at the call-office outside Lord's; but by that time +his confederate was on guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not +only shown a clean pair of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an +empty cage. He dismisses them not unfairly with the epithet +"amateurish." Thus I was the more surprised, but not the less relieved, +to learn that he was "running down into the country for the weekend, to +be out of their way"; but he would be back on the Monday night, "to keep +an engagement you wot of, Bunny. And if you like you may meet me under +the clock at Waterloo (in flannel kit and tennis-shoes for choice) at the +witching hour of twelve sharp." + +If I liked! I had a premature drink in honour of an invitation more +gratifying to my vanity than any compliment old Raffles had paid me yet; +for I could still hear his ironical undertaking to let me know if he +could not do without me, and there was obviously no irony in this +delightfully early intimation of that very flattering fact. It altered my +whole view of the case. I might disapprove of the risks Raffles was +running for his other friends, but the more I was allowed to share in +them the less critical I was inclined to be. Besides I was myself clearly +implicated in the issue as between my own friend and the common enemy; it +was no more palatable to me than it was to Raffles, to be beaten by Dan +Levy after our initial victory over him. So I drank like a man to his +destruction, and subsequently stole forth to spy upon his foolish +myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The +imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens +looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy +jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not +so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally +distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a +barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking notice +than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility one could scarcely excel the +other; and between them they raised my spirits to the zenith. + +I spent the rest of the afternoon at their own game, dogging Miss Belsize +about Lord's until at last I had an opportunity of informing her that +Raffles was quite safe. It may be that I made my report with too much +gusto when my chance came; at any rate, it was only the fact that +appeared to interest Miss Belsize; the details, over which I gloated, +seemed to inspire in her a repugnance consistent with the prejudice she +had displayed against Raffles yesterday, but not with her grateful +solicitude on his behalf as revealed to me that very morning. I could +only feel that gratitude was the beginning and the end of her new regard +for him. Raffles had never fascinated this young girl as he did the rest +of us; ordinarily engaged to an ordinary man, she was proof against the +glamour that dazzled us. Nay, though she would not admit it even to me +his friend, though like Levy she pretended to embrace the theory of the +practical joke, making it the pretext for her anxiety, I felt more +certain than ever that she now guessed, and had long suspected, what +manner of man Raffles really was, and that her natural antipathy was +greater even than before. Still more certain was I that she would never +betray him by word or deed; that, whatever harm might come of his present +proceedings, it would not be through Camilla Belsize. + +But I was now determined to do my own utmost to minimise the dangers, to +be a real help to Raffles in the act of altruistic depravity to which he +had committed himself, and not merely a fifth wheel to his dashing +chariot. Accordingly I went into solemn training for the event before us: +a Turkish bath on the Saturday, a quiet Sunday between Mount Street and +the club, and most of Monday lying like a log in cold-blooded preparation +for the night's work. And when night fell I took it upon me to +reconnoitre the ground myself before meeting Raffles at Waterloo. + +Another cool and starry evening seemed to have tempted all the town and +his wife into the streets. The great streams of traffic were busier than +ever, the backwaters emptier, and Gray's Inn a basin drained to the last +dreg of visible humanity. In one moment I passed through gateway and +alley from the voices and lights of Holborn into a perfectly deserted +square of bare ground and bright stars. The contrast was altogether +startling, for I had never been there before; but for the same reason I +had already lost my bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square +when I was only in South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a +hopeless search for the offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after +door had I tried in vain, and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a +stray molecule of the population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, +but with the quick step of the man who knows his way. I darted from a +doorway to inquire mine, but he was across the square before I could cut +him off, and as he passed through the rays of a lamp beside a second +archway, I fell back thanking Providence and Raffles for my rubber soles. +The man had neither seen nor heard me, but at the last moment I had +recognised him as the burlier of the two blockheads who had shadowed +Raffles three days before. + +He passed under the arch without looking round. I flattened myself +against the wall on my side of the arch; and in so standing I was all +but eye-witness of a sudden encounter in the square beyond. + +The quick steps stopped, and there was a "Here you are!" on one side, +and a "Well! Where is he?" on the other, both very eager and below +the breath. + +"On the job," whispered the first voice. "Up to the neck!" + +"When did 'e go in?" + +"Nearly an hour ago; when I sent the messenger." + +"Which way?" + +"Up through number seventeen." + +"Next door, eh?" + +"That's right." + +"Over the roof?" + +"Can't say; he's left no tracks. I been up to see." + +"I suppose there's the usual ladder and trapdoor?" + +"Yes, but the ladder's hanging in its proper place. He couldn't have put +it back there, could he?" + +The other grunted; presently he expressed a doubt whether Raffles (and it +thrilled me to hear the very name) had succeeded in breaking into the +lawyer's office at all. The first man on the scene, however, was quite +sure of it--and so was I. + +"And we've got to hang about," grumbled the newcomer, "till he comes +out again?" + +"That's it. We can't miss him. He must come back into the square or +through into the gardens, and if he does that he'll have to come over +these here railings into Field Court. We got him either way, and there's +a step just here where we can sit and see both ways as though it had been +made for us. You come and try ... a door into the old hall ..." + +That was all I heard distinctly; first their footsteps, and then the few +extra yards, made the rest unintelligible. But I had heard enough. "The +usual ladder and trap-door!" Those blessed words alone might prove worth +their weight in great letters of solid gold. + +Now I could breathe again; now I relaxed my body and turned my head, and +peered through the arch with impunity, and along the whole western side +of Gray's Inn Square, with its dusky fringe of plane-trees and its vivid +line of lamps, its strip of pavement, and its wall of many-windowed +houses under one unbroken roof. Dim lights smouldered in the column of +landing windows over every door; otherwise there was no break in the +blackness of that gaunt facade. Yet in some dark room or other behind +those walls I seemed to see Raffles at work as plainly as I had just +heard our natural enemies plotting his destruction. I saw him at a safe. +I saw him at a desk. I saw him leaving everything as he had found it, +only to steal down and out into the very arms of the law. And I felt that +even that desperate _denouement_ was little more than he deserved for +letting me think myself accessory before the fact, when all the time he +meant me to have nothing whatever to do with it! Well, I should have +everything to do with it now; if Raffles was to be saved from the +consequences of his own insanity, I and I alone must save him. It was the +chance of my life to show him my real worth. And yet the difficulty of +the thing might have daunted Raffles himself. + +I knew what to do if only I could gain the house which he had made the +base of his own operations; at least I knew what to attempt, and what +Raffles had done I might do. So far the wily couple within earshot had +helped me out of their own mouths. But they were only just round the +corner that hid them from my view; stray words still reached me; and they +knew me by sight, would recognise me at a glance, might pounce upon me as +I passed. Unless-- + +_I_ had it! + +The crowd in Holborn seemed strange and unreal as I jostled in its midst +once more. I was out of it in a moment, however, and into a 'bus, and out +of the 'bus in a couple of minutes by my watch. One more minute and I was +seeing how far back I could sit in a hansom bound for Gray's Inn Square. + +"I forget the number," I had told the cabman, "but it's three or four +doors beyond Burroughs and Burroughs, the solicitors." + +The gate into Holborn had to be opened for me, but the gate-keeper had +not seen me on my previous entrance and exit afoot through the postern. +It was when we drove under the further arch into the actual square that I +pressed my head hard against the back of the hansom, and turned my face +towards Field Court. The enemy might have abandoned their position, they +might meet me face to face as I landed on the pavement; that was my risk, +and I ran it without disaster. We passed the only house with an outer +door to it in the square (now there is none), and on the plate beside it +I read BURROUGHS AND BURROUGHS with a thrill. Up went my stick; my +shilling (with a peculiarly superfluous sixpence for luck) I thrust +through the trap with the other hand; and I was across the pavement, and +on the stairs four clear doors beyond the lawyer's office, before the +driver had begun to turn his horse. + +They were broad bare stairs, with great office doors right and left on +every landing, and in the middle the landing window looking out into the +square. I waited well within the window on the first floor; and as my +hansom drove out under the arch, the light of its near lamp flashed +across two figures lounging on the steps of that entrance to the hall; +but there was no stopping or challenging the cabman, no sound at all but +those of hoofs and bell, and soon only that of my own heart beating as I +fled up the rest of the stairs in my rubber soles. + +Near the top I paused to thank my kindly stars; sure enough there was a +long step-ladder hanging on a great nail over the last half-landing, and +a square trap-door right over the landing proper! I ran up just to see +the names on the two top doors; one was evidently that of some +pettifogging firm of solicitors, while the other bespoke a private +resident, whom I judged to be out of town by the congestion of postal +matter that met my fingers in his letter-box. Neither had any terrors for +me. The step-ladder was unhooked without another moment's hesitation. +Care alone was necessary to place it in position without making a noise; +then up I went, and up went the trapdoor next, without mishap or +hindrance until I tried to stand up in the loft, and caught my head a +crack against the tiles instead. + +This was disconcerting in more ways than one, for I could not leave the +ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match +and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. +The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the +roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, +and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have +wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute +before closing it with great caution, a squeak and a scuttle in the loft +itself being the only sign that I had disturbed a living creature. + +There was a grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but +leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now +stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here +in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless +chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of +pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone +wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and +aft in a similar slope to that at either side; the length of it +doubtless tallied with the frontage of a single house; and when I had +clambered over the southern extremity into a precisely similar valley I +saw that this must be the case. I had entered the fourth house beyond +Burroughs and Burroughs's, or was it the fifth? I threaded three +valleys, and then I knew. + +In all three there had been dormer windows on either hand, that on the +square side leading into the loft; the other, or others, forming a sort +of skylight to some top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these +standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake +on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of +Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the +strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled +into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room +if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles +had led the way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected +on something less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the +bars of a kitchen range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the +kitchen table. A cat was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a +step of a wooden chair, and came down like a cat myself. + +I found the kitchen door, found a passage so dark that the window at the +end hung like a picture slashed across the middle. Yet it only looked +into the square, for I peered out when I had crept along the passage, and +even thought I both heard and saw the enemy at their old post. But I was +in another enemy's country now; at every step I stopped to listen for the +thud of feet bounding out of bed. Hearing nothing, I had the temerity at +last to strike a match upon my trousers, and by its light I found the +outer door. This was not bolted nor yet shut; it was merely ajar, and so +I left it. + +The rooms opposite appeared to be an empty set; those on the second and +first floors were only partially shut off by swing doors leading to +different departments of the mighty offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. +There were no lights upon these landings, and I gathered my information +by means of successive matches, whose tell-tale ends I carefully +concealed about my person, and from copious legends painted on the walls. +Thus I had little difficulty in groping my way to the private offices of +Sir John Burroughs, head of the celebrated firm; but I looked in vain for +a layer of light under any of the massive mahogany doors with which this +portion of the premises was glorified. Then I began softly trying doors +that proved to be locked. Only one yielded to my hand; and when it was a +few inches open, all was still black; but the next few brought me to the +end of my quest, and the close of my solitary adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A Midsummer Night's Work + + +The dense and total darkness was broken in one place, and one only, by a +plateful of light proceeding from a tiny bulb of incandescence in its +centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a +pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other +side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its +plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, +and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his +task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute +concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was +a hint of the same quiet and wary smile with which Raffles would bowl an +over or drill holes in a door. + +I stood for some moments fascinated, entranced, before creeping in to +warn him of my presence in a whisper. But this time he heard my step, +snatched up electric torch and glittering revolver, and covered me with +the one in the other's light. + +"A.J.!" I gasped. + +"Bunny!" he exclaimed in equal amazement and displeasure. "What the devil +do you mean by this?" + +"You're in danger," I whispered. "I came to warn you!" + +"Danger? I'm never out of it. But how did you know where to find me, and +how on God's earth did _you_ get here?" + +"I'll tell you some other time. You know those two brutes you dodged the +other day?" + +"I ought to." + +"They're waiting below for you at this very moment." + +Raffles peered a few moments through the handful of white light between +our faces. + +"Let them wait!" said he, and replaced the torch upon the table and put +down his revolver for his pen. + +"They're detectives!" I urged. + +"Are they, Bunny?" + +"What else could they be?" + +"What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head +and deliberate pen. + +"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and +lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my +belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just +to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want +a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" + +"I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't +do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience. Bunny, +and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes +there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the +next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, +or else get out by yourself as you came in." + +I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the +landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my +way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to +surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same +mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not +one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" +I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and +listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to +welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police +behind them. + +Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand +my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. + +"Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. + +"Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" + +"I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" + +"You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would +have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." + +"Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. + +"Rather!" + +"Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." + +"It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that +the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper +in its place." + +"I never heard a sound." + +"I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You +see how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" + +I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the +house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. + +"Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" + +"Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. + +"You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This +is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a +commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come +when he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have +been a shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" + +We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against +Raffles's legs. + +"But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?" + +"Made friends with him when I called on Friday; didn't I tell you I had +an appointment with the bloated head of this notorious firm when I +cleared out of Lord's? I'm about to strengthen his already unrivalled +list of clients; you shall hear all about that later. We had another +interview this afternoon, when I asked my V.C. if he ever went to the +theatre; you see he had spotted Tom Fool, and told me he never had a +chance of getting to Lord's. So I got him tickets for 'Rosemary' instead, +but of course I swore they had just been given to me and I couldn't use +them. You should have seen how the hero beamed! So that's where he is, +he and his wife--or was, until the curtain went down." + +"Good Lord, Raffles, is the piece over?" + +"Nearly ten minutes ago, but it'll take 'em all that unless they come +home in a cab." + +And Raffles had been sitting before the fire, on the kitchen table, +encouraging the cat, when this formidable V.C. and his wife must be +coming every instant nearer Gray's Inn Square! + +"Why, my dear Bunny, I should back myself to swarm up and out without +making a sound or leaving a sign, if I heard our hero's key in the lock +this moment. After you, Bunny." + +I climbed up with trembling knees, Raffles holding the rope taut to make +it easier. Once more I stood upright under the stars and the telephone +wires, and leaned against a chimney-stack to wait for Raffles. But before +I saw him, before I even heard his unnecessarily noiseless movements, I +heard something else that sent a chill all through me. + +It was not the sound of a key in the lock. It was something far worse +than that. It was the sound of voices on the roof, and of footsteps +drawing nearer through the very next valley of leads and tiles. + +I was crouching on the leads outside the dormer window as Raffles +climbed into sight within. + +"They're after us up here!" I whispered in his face. "On the next roof! I +hear them!" + +Up came Raffles with his hands upon the sill, then with his knees between +his hands, and so out on all-fours into the narrow rivulet of lead +between the sloping tiles. Out of the opposite slope, a yard or two on, +rose a stout stack of masonry, a many-headed monster with a chimney-pot +on each, and a full supply of wires for whiskers. Behind this Gorgon of +the house-tops Raffles hustled me without a word, and himself took +shelter as the muffled voices on the next roof grew more distinct. They +were the voices that I had overheard already in the square, the voices +but not the tones. The tones--the words--were those of an enemy divided +against itself. + +"And now we've gone and come too far!" grumbled the one who had been last +to arrive upon the scene below. + +"We did that," the other muttered, "the moment we came in after 'em. We +should've stopped where we were." + +"With that other cove driving up and going in without ever showing a +glim?" + +Raffles nudged me, and I saw what I had done. But the weakling of the +pair still defended the position he had reluctantly abandoned on _terra +firma_; he was all for returning while there was time; and there were +fragments of the broken argument that were beginning to puzzle me when a +soft oath from the man in front proclaimed the discovery of the open +window and the rope. + +"We got 'em," he whispered, stagily, "like rats in a trap!" + +"You forget what it is we've got to get." + +"Well, we must first catch our man, mustn't we? And how d'ye know his pal +hasn't gone in to warn him where we were? If he has, and we'd stopped +there, they'd do us easy." + +"They may do us easier down there in the dark," replied the other, with a +palpable shiver. "They'll hear us and lie in wait. In the dark! We shan't +have a dog's chance." + +"All right! You get out of it and save your skin. I'd rather work alone +than with a blessed funk!" + +The situation was identical with many a one in the past between Raffles +and me. The poor brute in my part resented the charge against his courage +as warmly as I had always done. He was merely for the better part of +valour, and how right he was Raffles and I only knew. I hoped the lesson +was not lost upon Raffles. Dialogue and action alike resembled one of +our own performances far more than ordinary police methods as we knew +them. We heard the squeeze of the leader's clothes and the rattle of his +buttons over the window ledge. "It's like old times," we heard him +mutter; and before many moments the weakling was impulsively whispering +down to know if he should follow. + +I felt for that fellow at every stage of his unwilling proceedings. I was +to feel for him still more. Raffles had stepped down like a cat from +behind our cover; grasping an angle of the stack with either hand, I put +my head round after him. The wretched player of my old part was on his +haunches at the window, stooping forward, more in than out. I saw Raffles +grinning in the starlight, saw his foot poised and the other poor devil +disappear. Then a dull bump, then a double crash and such a cursing as +left no doubt that the second fellow had fallen plumb on top of the +first. Also from his language I fancied he would survive the fall. + +But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped +out at my feet than he had untied the other end. + +"Like lamplighters, Bunny!" + +And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the +hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or +two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs. + +"This is where I came out," I called to Raffles as he passed the place. +"There's a ladder here where I left it in the loft!" + +"No time for ladders!" cried Raffles over his shoulder, and not for some +moments did he stop in his stride. Nor was it I who stopped him then; it +was a sudden hubbub somewhere behind us, somewhere below; the blowing of +a police whistle, and the sound of many footsteps in the square. + +"That's for us!" I gasped. "The ladder! The ladder!" + +"Ladder be damned!" returned Raffles, roughly. "It isn't for us at all; +it's my pal the V.C. who has come home and bottled the other blighters." + +"Thinking they're thieves?" + +"Thinking any rot you like! Our course is over the rest of the roofs on +this side, over the whole lot at the top end, and, if possible, down the +last staircase in the corner. Then we only have to show ourselves in the +square for a tick before we're out by way of Verulam Buildings." + +"Is there another gate there?" I asked as he scampered on with me +after him. + +"Yes; but it's closed and the porter leaves at twelve, and it must be +jolly near that now. Wait, Bunny! Some one or other is sure to be looking +out of the top windows across the square; they'll see us if we take our +fences too freely!" + +We had come to one of the transverse tile-slopes, which hitherto we had +run boldly up and down in our helpful and noiseless rubber soles; now, +not to show ourselves against the stars, to a stray pair of eyes on some +other high level, we crept up on all fours and rolled over at full +length. It added considerably to our time over more than a whole side of +the square. Meanwhile the police whistles had stopped, but the company in +the square had swollen audibly. + +It seemed an age, but I suppose it was not many minutes, before we came +to the last of the dormer windows, looking into the last vale of tiles in +the north-east angle of the square. Something gleamed in the starlight, +there was a sharp little sound of splitting wood, and Raffles led me on +hands and knees into just such a loft as I had entered before by ladder. +His electric torch discovered the trapdoor at a gleam. Raffles opened it +and let down the rope, only to whisk it up again so smartly that it +struck my face like a whiplash. + +A door had opened on the top landing. We listened over the open +trap-door, and knew that another stood listening on the invisible +threshold underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart +leapt for he never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by +our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red +neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom +slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way +down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like looking up. + +Raffles threw his rope aside, gave me his hand instead, and dropped me on +the landing like a feather, dropping after me without a moment's pause. +In fact, the old fellow with the fez could hardly have completed his +descent of the stairs when we began ours. Yet through the landing window +we saw him charging diagonally across the square, shouting and +gesticulating in his flight to the gathering crowd near the far corner. + +"He spotted us, Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, after listening an instant +in the entrance. "Stick to me like my shadow, and do every blessed +thing I do." + +Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of +lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of +attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square +behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our +direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in +front of Verulam Buildings. + +It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at +the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us +through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can +the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate +had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and +dry in a hansom. + +"King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we +reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to +the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, +and Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That +little bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the +first cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as +scent is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to +ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge +and a good five minutes to go!" + +"You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" + +"Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." + +"But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his +note, and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. + +"I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied +Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." + +"And _I_ thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" + +Raffles laughed. + +"The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! +To-night, for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your +unselfish audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear +fellow, it was a sadly unnecessary effort." + +"Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" + +"Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off +for his pal." + +"Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." + +"Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never +have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going +in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me +on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and +those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside +the Albany." + +"Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting +for you in any case if you didn't show up." + +"Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it +wasn't their job at all." + +"Not to take you in the act if they could?" + +"No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to +earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from +old Levy." + +"Levy!" + +"Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?" + +"His creatures, Raffles?" + +"He set them to shadow me from the hour of our interview on Saturday +morning. Their instructions were to bag the letter from me as soon as I +got it, but to let me go free to the devil!" + +"How can you know, A.J.?" + +"My dear Bunny, where do you suppose I've been spending the week-end? Did +you think I'd go in with a sly dog like old Shylock without watching him +and finding out his real game? I should have thought it hardly necessary +to tell you I've been down the river all the time; down the river," +added Raffles, chuckling, "in a Canadian canoe and a torpedo beard! I was +cruising near the foot of the old brute's garden on Friday evening when +one of the precious pair came down to tell him they had let me slip +already. I landed and heard the whole thing through the window of the +room where we shall find him to-night. It was Levy who set them to watch +the crib since they'd lost the cracksman; he was good enough to reiterate +all his orders for my benefit. You will hear me take him through them +when we get down there, so it's no use going over the same ground twice." + +"Funny orders for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled +comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. + +"Scotland Yard?" said he. "My good Bunny, those were no limbs of the law; +they're old thieves set to catch a thief, and they've been caught +themselves for their pains!" + +Of course they were! Every detail of their appearance and their behaviour +confirmed the statement in the flash that brought them all before my +mind! And I had never thought of it, never but dreamt that we were doing +battle with the archenemies of our class. But there was no time for +further reflection, nor had I recovered breath enough for another word, +when the hansom clattered up the cobbles into Waterloo Station. And our +last sprint of that athletic night ended in a simultaneous leap into +separate carriages as the platform slid away from the 12:10 train. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Knocked Out + + +But it was hardly likely to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw +for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like +Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded +dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; +and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not +come in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings +in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still +impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's +mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their +first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the +real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light +enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in +Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any +consideration. His magnanimity in the matter, which he flatly refused to +take as seriously as I did, made it difficult for me to press old +Raffles, as I otherwise might have done, for an outline of those further +plans in which I hoped to atone for my blunders by being of some use to +him after all. His nonchalant manner convinced me that they were +cut-and-dried; but I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the +details. I merely gathered that he had brought down some document for +Levy to sign in execution of the verbal agreement made between them in +town; not until that agreement was completed by his signature was the +harpy to receive the precious epistle he pretended never to have written. +Raffles, in fine, had the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who +is none the less prepared for foul play on the other side, and by no +means perturbed at the prospect. + +We left the train at a sweet-smelling platform, on which the lights were +being extinguished as we turned into a quiet road where bats flew over +our heads between the lamp-posts, and a policeman was passing a disc of +light over a jerry-built abuse of the name of Queen Anne. Our way led +through quieter roads of larger houses standing further back, until at +last we came to the enemy's gates. They were wooden gates without a +lodge, yet the house set well beyond them, on the river's brim, was a +mansion of considerable size and still greater peculiarity. It was really +two houses, large and small, connected by a spine of white posts and +joists and glimmering glass. In the more substantial building no lights +were to be seen from the gates, but in the annex a large French window +made a lighted square at right angles with the river and the road. We had +set foot in the gravel drive; with a long line of poplars down one side, +and on the other a wide lawn dotted with cedars and small shrubs, when +Raffles strode among these with a smothered exclamation, and a wild +figure started from the ground. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Raffles, with all the righteous +austerity of a law-abiding citizen. + +"Nutting, sare!" replied an alien tongue, a gleam of good teeth in the +shadow of his great soft hat. "I been see Mistare Le-vie in ze 'ouse, on +ze beezness, shentlemen." + +"Seen him, have you? Then if I were you I should make a decent +departure," said Raffles, "by the gate--" to which he pointed with +increased severity of tone and bearing. + +The weird figure uncovered a shaggy head of hair, made us a grotesque bow +with his right hand melodramatically buried in the folds of a voluminous +cape, and stalked off in the starlight with much dignity. But we heard +him running in the road before the gate had clicked behind him. + +"Isn't that the fellow we saw in Jermyn Street last Thursday?" I asked +Raffles in a whisper. + +"That's the chap," he whispered back. "I wonder if he spotted us, Bunny? +Levy's treated him scandalously, of course; it all came out in a torrent +the other morning. I only hope he hasn't been serving Dan Levy as Jack +Rutter served old Baird! I could swear that was a weapon of sorts he'd +got under his cloak." + +And as we stood together under the stars, listening to the last of the +runaway footfalls, I recalled the killing of another and a less notorious +usurer by a man we both knew, and had even helped to shield from the +consequences of his crime. Yet the memory of our terrible discovery on +that occasion had not the effect of making me shrink from such another +now; nor could I echo the hope of Raffles in my heart of hearts. If Dan +Levy also had come to a bad end--well, it was no more than he deserved, +if only for his treachery to Raffles, and, at any rate, it would put a +stop to our plunging from bad to worse in an adventure of which the +sequel might well be worst of all. I do not say that I was wicked enough +absolutely to desire the death of this sinner for our benefit; but I saw +the benefit at least as plainly as the awful possibility, and it was not +with unalloyed relief that I beheld a great figure stride through the +lighted windows at our nearer approach. + +Though his back was to the light before I saw his face, and the whole man +might have been hacked out of ebony, it was every inch the living Levy +who stood peering in our direction, one hand hollowed at an ear, the +other shading both eyes. + +"Is that you, boys?" he croaked in sepulchral salute. + +"It depends which boys you mean," replied Raffles, marching into the zone +of light. "There are so many of us about to-night!" + +Levy's arms dropped at his sides, and I heard him mutter "Raffles!" with +a malediction. Next moment he was inquiring whether we had come down +alone, yet peering past us into the velvet night for his answer. + +"I brought our friend Bunny," said Raffles, "but that's all." + +"Then what do you mean by saying there are so many of you about?" + +"I was thinking of the gentleman who was here just before us." + +"Here just before you? Why, I haven't seen a soul since my 'ousehold +went to bed." + +"But we met the fellow just this minute within your gates: a little +foreign devil with a head like a mop and the cloak of an operatic +conspirator." + +"That beggar!" cried Levy, flying into a high state of excitement on the +spot. "That blessed little beggar on my tracks down here! I've 'ad him +thrown out of the office in Jermyn Street; he's threatened me by letter +and telegram; so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down +'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen '_im_! I'm ready for biters like that, +gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!" + +And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy +drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have +gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him +that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was +not put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he +placed it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on +entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping +with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that +the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of +travel and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature. + +"Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!" exclaimed Raffles, +pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself +the drink he had declined. + +"Yes," said Levy, "the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying +he'd shoot _me_ at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as +a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He +didn't get much show 'ere, _I_ can tell you; that little foreign snipe +won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. +I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, +I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to +your profession, eh, Raffles?" + +"I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy." + +"Oh yes you do!" said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. "How've +you got on with that little bit o' burgling?" + +And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open +windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his +mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy +had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, +in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the +table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions +to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for +the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night. + +"How did you get on?" he repeated when he had given them up for +the present. + +"For a first attempt," replied Raffles, without a twinkle, "I don't think +I've done so badly." + +"Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner," said Levy, catching the +old note in his turn. + +"A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as +easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square." + +"As easy?" + +Raffles recollected his pose. + +"It was enormous fun," said he. "Of course one couldn't know that +there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. +I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. +Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only +took rather longer." + +"What about the caretaker?" asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer +to be concealed. + +"He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre." + +"At your expense?" + +"No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course." + +"So you got in without any difficulty?" + +"Over the roof." + +"And then?" + +"I hit upon the right room." + +"And then, Raffles?" + +"I opened the right safe." + +"Go on, man!" + +But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed +him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all. + +"Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it +a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me." Thus Raffles under +increasing pressure. + +"Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?" + +There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract +the _denouement_ of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must +have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily +plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of +victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, +and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant +little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This +was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the +living epitome of low cunning and foul play. + +"The next thing that happened," said Raffles, in his most leisurely +manner, "was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue." + +"Had he gone in with you?" + +"No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of +common, low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!" + +"That was very kind of 'im," snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon +my person from his little black eyes. + +"Kind!" cried Raffles. "It saved the whole show." + +"It did, did it?" + +"I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and +never letting them know that I had got out at all." + +"Then you left them there?" + +"In their glory!" said Raffles, radiant in his own. + +Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were +excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in +which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven +home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the +table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, +and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself. + +"And you came away, I suppose," suggested the money-lender, ironically, +"with my original letter in your pocket?" + +"Oh, no, I didn't," replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head. + +"I thought not!" cried Levy in a gust of exultation. + +"I came away," said Raffles, "if you'll pardon the correction, with the +letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!" + +The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the +self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. "You'd better let +me see it," said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of +authority which it took a Raffles to resist. + +Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet +in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. +But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further +from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with +the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a +phylactery. + +"You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, with a slight but +sufficient emphasis on his verb. + +"But I'm not to touch--is that it?" + +"I'm afraid I must ask you to look first," said Raffles, smiling. "I +should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me +that part of your _quid pro quo_ which you have doubtless in readiness; +the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the +three little papers can change hands simultaneously." + +Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the +exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and +unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he +ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the +monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my +side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, +spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles +with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other. + +"Now I'll have a look," he hiccoughed, "an' a good look, unless you want +a lump of lead in your liver!" + +Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile. + +"You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober," said he; +but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was +wondering how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the +nobbler of crude spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, +full in the face of Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and +flung upon the fire, while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, +and before I had struggled to my feet. + +Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was +streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already +crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the +blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first +jumping upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought +him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet +with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the +rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden +head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead +I believe I should have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot. + +I know that I rose exultant from my deed.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Corpus Delicti + + +Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, +and I heard him saying, "The letter, Bunny, the letter!" in a way that +made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since +the moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been +from the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the +hearth, were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such +store, for which Raffles had risked so much. + +"He's burnt it," said I. "He was too quick for me." + +"And he's nearly burnt my eyes out," returned Raffles, rubbing them +again. "He was too quick for us both." + +"Not altogether," said I, grimly. "I believe I've cracked his skull and +finished him off!" + +Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a +blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the +pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable. + +"No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are +any lights in the other part of the house." + +When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long +glass passage. + +"Not a light!" said I. + +"Nor a sound," he whispered. "We're in better luck than we might have +been; even his revolver didn't go off." Raffles extracted it from under +the prostrate body. "It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, +or one of us." And he put the pistol in his own pocket. + +"But have I killed him, Raffles?" + +"Not yet, Bunny." + +"But do you think he's going to die?" + +I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth +chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body +sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the +parquet floor. + +"He's all right," said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened +again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back +on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the +polished floor. "You'd better leave him to me," he said, looking and +getting up with sudden decision. + +"But what am I to do?" + +"Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat." + +"Where is the boathouse?" + +"You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge. +There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this." + +And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have +handed over a bunch of keys. + +"And what then?" + +"You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand +tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that +windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you +will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, +but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim +for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and +then lie low on board till I come." + +Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken +helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of +Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I +neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me +something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, +what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, +were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about +them. Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, +and I frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as +it seemed to have mattered now. Away from the _corpus delicti_, my horror +was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had quite a +level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter at the +worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing him to +life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go about my +own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of the +normal sensibilities. + +Not much do I remember of that dreamy interval, until the dream became +the nightmare that was still in store. The river ran like a broad road +under the stars, with hardly a glimmer and not a floating thing upon it. +The boathouse stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it +by stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the +stars. The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I +could not see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between +the slow ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and +heard at length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; +that was the last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out +of the river; indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of +stream underneath, for the open end of the boathouse was much less dark +than mine; and when the faint band of reflected starlight had broadened +as I thought enough, I ceased winding and groped my way down the steps +into the boat. + +But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last +thing I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs +wonder what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want +with the boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could +see the strategic value of my position if we had been robbing the house, +but Raffles was not out for robbery this time; and I did not believe he +would suddenly change his mind. Gould it be that he had never been quite +confident of the recovery of Levy, but had sent me to prepare this means +of escape from the scene of a tragedy? I cannot have been long in the +boat, for my thwart was still rocking under me, when this suspicion shot +me ashore in a cold sweat. In my haste I went into the river up to one +knee, and ran across the lawn with that boot squelching. Raffles came out +of the lighted room to meet me, and as he stood like Levy against the +electric glare, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing an +overcoat that did not belong to him, and that the pockets of this +overcoat were bulging grotesquely. But it was the last thing I remembered +in the horror that was to come. + +Levy was lying where I had left him, only straighter, and with a cushion +under his head, as though he were not merely dead, but laid out in his +clothes where he had fallen. + +"I was just coming for you, Bunny," whispered Raffles before I could find +my voice. "I want you to take hold of his boots." + +"His boots!" I gasped, taking Raffles by the sleeve instead. "What on +earth for?" + +"To carry him down to the boat!" + +"But is he--is he still--" + +"Alive?" Raffles was smiling as though I amused him mightily. "Rather, +Bunny! Too full of life to be left, I can tell you; but it'll be daylight +if we stop for explanations now. Are you going to lend a hand, or am I to +drag him through the dew myself?" + +I lent every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by +the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off +the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a +very short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on +the gravel, and I watched over it for some of the longest minutes of my +life, while Raffles shut and fastened all the windows, left the room as +Levy himself might have left it, and finally found his way out by one of +the doors. And all the while not a movement or a sound came from the +senseless clay at my feet; but once, when I bent over him, the smell of +whiskey was curiously vital and reassuring. + +We started off again, Raffles with every muscle on the strain, I with +every nerve; this time we staggered across the lawn without a rest, +but at the boathouse we put him down in the dew, until I took off my +coat and we got him lying on that while we debated about the +boathouse, its darkness, and its steps. The combination beat us on a +moment's consideration; and again I was the one to stay, and watch, +and listen to my own heart beating; and then to the water bubbling at +the prow and dripping from the blades as Raffles sculled round to the +edge of the lawn. + +I need dwell no more upon the difficulty and the horror of getting that +inanimate mass on board; both were bad enough, but candour compels me to +admit that the difficulty dwarfed all else until at last we overcame it. +How near we were to swamping our craft, and making sure of our victim by +drowning, I still shudder to remember; but I think it must have prevented +me from shuddering over more remote possibilities at the time. It was a +time, if ever there was one, to trust in Raffles and keep one's powder +dry; and to that extent I may say I played the game. But it was his game, +not mine, and its very object was unknown to me. Never, in fact, had I +followed my inveterate leader quite so implicitly, so blindly, or with +such reckless excitement. And yet, if the worst did happen and our mute +passenger was never to open his eyes again, it seemed to me that we were +well on the road to turn manslaughter into murder in the eyes of any +British jury: the road that might easily lead to destruction at the +hangman's hands. + +But a more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment +of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and +swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank +while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night +was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt +fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between +my shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and _his_ white +shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his +white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it +with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. +Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip +his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely +hear them, and to keep peering behind him down the Stygian stream. + +So long had we been getting under way that nothing surprised me more +than the extreme brevity of our actual voyage. Not many houses and +gardens had slipped behind us on the Middlesex shore, when we turned +into an inlet running under the very windows of a house so near the +river itself that even I might have thrown a stone from any one of them +into Surrey. The inlet was empty and ill-smelling; there was a crazy +landing-stage, and the many windows overlooking us had the black gloss +of empty darkness within. Seen by starlight with a troubled eye, the +house had one salient feature in the shape of a square tower, which +stood out from the facade fronting the river, and rose to nearly twice +the height of the main roof. But this curious excrescence only added to +the forbidding character of as gloomy a mansion as one could wish to +approach by stealth at dead of night. + +"What's this place?" I whispered as Raffles made fast to a post. + +"An unoccupied house, Bunny." + +"Do you mean to occupy it?" + +"I mean our passenger to do so--if we can land him alive or dead!" + +"Hush, Raffles!" + +"It's a case of heels first, this time--" + +"Shut up!" + +Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage--luckily on a level with our +rowlocks--and reaching down into the boat. + +"Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. +You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him." + +"I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run +colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!" + +And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, +with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there +was a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the +river beyond. + +"Another narrow squeak!" he muttered with grim levity when the sound had +died away. "I wonder who it is paddling his own canoe at dead of night?" + +"I'm wondering how much he saw." + +"Nothing," said Raffles, as though there could be no two opinions on the +point. "What did we see to swear to between a sweater and a +pocket-handkerchief? Only something white, and we were looking out, and +it's far darker in here than out there on the main stream. But it'll +soon be getting light, and we really may be seen unless we land our big +fish first." + +And without more ado he dragged the lifeless Levy ashore by the heels, +while I alternately grasped the landing-stage to steady the boat, and did +my best to protect the limp members and the leaden head from actual +injury. All my efforts could not avert a few hard knocks, however, and +these were sustained with such a horrifying insensibility of body and +limb, that my worst suspicions were renewed before I crawled ashore +myself, and remained kneeling over the prostrate form. + +"Are you certain, Raffles?" I began, and could not finish the +awful question. + +"That he's alive?" said Raffles. "Rather, Bunny, and he'll be kicking +below the belt again in a few more hours!" + +"A few more _hours_, A.J.?" + +"I give him four or five." + +"Then it's concussion of the brain!" + +"It's the brain all right," said Raffles. "But for 'concussion' I should +say 'coma,' if I were you." + +"What have I done!" I murmured, shaking my head over the poor old brute. + +"You?" said Raffles. "Less than you think, perhaps!" + +"But the man's never moved a muscle." + +"Oh, yes, he has, Bunny!" + +"When?" + +"I'll tell you at the next stage," said Raffles. "Up with his heels and +come this way." + +And we trailed across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body +sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept +the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at +the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps +there were within, stone steps allowing so little room for one foot and +so much for the other as to suggest a spiral staircase from top to bottom +of the tower. So it turned out to be; but there were landings +communicating with the house, and on the first of them we laid our man +and sat down to rest. + +"How I love a silent, uncomplaining, stone staircase!" sighed the now +quite invisible Raffles. "So of course we find one thrown away upon an +empty house. Are you there, Bunny?" + +"Rather! Are you quite sure nobody else is here?" I asked, for he was +scarcely troubling to lower his voice. + +"Only Levy, and he won't count till all hours." + +"I'm waiting to hear how you know." + +"Have a Sullivan, first." + +"Are we as safe as all that?" + +"If we're careful to make an ash-tray of our own pockets," said Raffles, +and I heard him tapping his cigarette in the dark. I refused to run any +risks. Next moment his match revealed him sitting at the bottom of one +flight, and me at the top of the flight below; either spiral was lost in +shadow; and all I saw besides was a cloud of smoke from the blood-stained +lips of Raffles, more clouds of cobwebs, and Levy's boots lying over on +their uppers, almost in my lap. Raffles called my attention to them +before he blew out his match. + +"He hasn't turned his toes up yet, you see! It's a hog's sleep, but not +by any means his last." + +"Did you mean just now that he woke up while I was in the boathouse?" + +"Almost as soon as your back was turned, Bunny--if you call it waking up. +You had knocked him out, you know, but only for a few minutes." + +"Do you mean to tell me that he was none the worse?" + +"Very little, Bunny." + +My feeble heart jumped about in my body. + +"Then what knocked him out again, A.J.?" + +"I did." + +"In the same way?" + +"No, Bunny, he asked for a drink and I gave him one." + +"A doctored drink!" I whispered with some horror; it was refreshing to +feel once more horrified at some act not one's own. + +"So to speak," said Raffles, with a gesture that I followed by the red +end of his cigarette; "I certainly touched it up a bit, but I always +meant to touch up his liquor if the beggar went back on his word. He did +a good deal worse--for the second time of asking--and you did better than +I ever knew you do before, Bunny! I simply carried on the good work. Our +friend is full of a judicious blend of his own whiskey and the stuff poor +Teddy had the other night. And when he does come to his senses I believe +we shall find him damned sensible." + +"And if he isn't, I suppose you'll keep him here until he is?" + +"I shall hold him up to ransom," said Raffles, "at the top of this ruddy +tower, until he pays through both nostrils for the privilege of climbing +down alive." + +"You mean until he stands by his side of your bargain?" said I, only +hoping that was his meaning, but not without other apprehensions which +Raffles speedily confirmed. + +"And the rest!" he replied, significantly. "You don't suppose the skunk's +going to get off as lightly as if he'd played the game, do you? I've got +one of my own to play now, Bunny, and I mean to play it for all I'm +worth. I thought it would come to this!" + +In fact, he had foreseen treachery from the first, and the desperate +device of kidnapping the traitor proved to have been as deliberate a move +as Raffles had ever planned to meet a probable contingency. He had +brought down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of +Somnol. My own deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, +and Raffles vowed it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had +ever been over this empty house before, an irritable jerk of his +cigarette end foretold the answer. + +"My good Bunny, is this a time for rotten questions? Of course I've been +over the whole place; didn't I tell you I'd been spending the week-end in +these parts? I got an order to view the place, and have bribed the +gardener not to let anybody else see over it till I've made up my mind. +The gardener's cottage is on the other side of the main road, which runs +flush with the front of the house; there's a splendid garden on that +side, but it takes him all his time to keep it up, so he's given up +bothering about this bit here. He only sets foot in the house to show +people over; his wife comes in sometimes to open the downstairs windows; +the ones upstairs are never shut. So you perceive we shall be fairly free +from interruption at the top of this tower, especially when I tell you +that it finishes in a room as sound-proof as old Carlyle's crow's-nest in +Cheyne Row." + +It flashed across me that another great man of letters had made his local +habitation if not his name in this part of the Thames Valley; and when I +asked if this was that celebrity's house, Raffles seemed surprised that +I had not recognised it as such in the dark. He said it would never let +again, as the place was far too good for its position, which was now much +too near London. He also told me that the idea of holding Dan Levy up to +ransom had occurred to him when he found himself being followed about +town by Levy's "mamelukes," and saw what a traitor he had to cope with. + +"And I hope you like the idea, Bunny," he added, "because I was never +caught kidnapping before, and in all London there wasn't a bigger man +to kidnap." + +"I love it," said I (and it was true enough of the abstract idea), "but +don't you think he's just a bit too big? Won't the country ring with his +disappearance?" + +"My dear Bunny, nobody will dream he's disappeared!" said Raffles, +confidently. "I know the habits of the beast; didn't I tell you he ran +another show somewhere? Nobody seems to know where, but when he isn't +here, that's where he's supposed to be, and when he's there he cuts town +for days on end. I suppose you never noticed I've been wearing an +overcoat all this time, Bunny?" + +"Oh, yes, I did," said I. "Of course it's one of his?" + +"The very one he'd have worn to-night, and his soft hat from the same +peg is in one of the pockets; their absence won't look as if he'd come +out feet first, will it, Bunny? I thought his stick might be in the way, +so instead of bringing it too, I stowed it away behind his books. But +these things will serve a second turn when we see our way to letting him +go again like a gentleman." + +The red end of the Sullivan went out sizzling between a moistened thumb +and finger, and no doubt Raffles put it carefully in his pocket as he +rose to resume the ascent. It was still perfectly dark on the tower +stairs; but by the time we reached the sanctum at the top we could see +each other's outlines against certain ovals of wild grey sky and dying +stars. For there was a window more like a porthole in three of the four +walls; in the fourth wall was a cavity like a ship's bunk, into which we +lifted our still unconscious prisoner as gently as we might. Nor was that +the last that was done for him, now that some slight amends were +possible. From an invisible locker Raffles produced bundles of thin, +coarse stuff, one of which he placed as a pillow under the sleeper's +head, while the other was shaken out into a covering for his body. + +"And you asked me if I'd ever been over the place!" said Raffles, +putting a third bundle in my hands. "Why, I slept up here last night, +just to see if it was all as quiet as it looked; these were my +bed-clothes, and I want you to follow my example." + +"I go to sleep?" I cried. "I couldn't and wouldn't for a thousand +pounds, Raffles!" + +"Oh, yes, you could!" said Raffles, and as he spoke there was a horrible +explosion in the tower. Upon my word, I thought one of us was shot, until +there came the smaller sounds of froth pattering on the floor and liquor +bubbling from a bottle. + +"Champagne!" I exclaimed, when he had handed me the metal cap of a flask, +and I had taken a sip. "Did you hide that up here as well?" + +"I hid nothing up here except myself," returned Raffles, laughing. "This +is one of a couple of pints from the cellarette in Levy's billiard den; +take your will of it, Bunny, and perhaps the old man may have the other +when he's a good boy. I fancy we shall find it a stronger card than it +looks. Meanwhile let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep! And you'd be +far more use to me later, Bunny, if only you'd try to do the same." + +I was beginning to feel that I might try, for Raffles was filling up the +metal cup every minute, and also plying me with sandwiches from Levy's +table, brought hence (with the champagne) in Levy's overcoat pocket. It +was still pleasing to reflect that they had been originally intended for +the rival bravos of Gray's Inn. But another idea that did occur to me, I +dismissed at the time, and so justly that I would disabuse any other +suspicious mind of it without delay. Dear old Raffles was scarcely more +skilful and audacious as amateur cracksman than as amateur anaesthetist, +nor was he ever averse from the practice of his uncanny genius at either +game. But, sleepy as I soon found myself at the close of our very long +night's work, I had no subsequent reason to suppose that Raffles had +given _me_ drop or morsel of anything but sandwiches and champagne. + +So I rolled myself up on the locker, just as things were beginning to +take visible shape even without the tower windows behind them, and I was +almost dropping off to sleep when a sudden anxiety smote my mind. + +"What about the boat?" I asked. + +There was no answer. + +"Raffles!" I cried. "What are you going to do about the beggar's boat?" + +"You go to sleep," came the sharp reply, "and leave the boat to me." + +And I fancied from his voice that Raffles also had lain him down, but on +the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Trial by Raffles + + +When I awoke it was dazzling daylight in the tower, and the little scene +was quite a surprise to me. It had felt far larger in the dark. I suppose +the floor-space was about twelve feet square, but it was contracted on +one side by the well and banisters of a wooden staircase from the room +below, on another by the ship's bunk, and opposite that by the locker on +which I lay. Moreover, the four walls, or rather the four triangles of +roof, sloped so sharply to the apex of the tower as to leave an inner +margin in which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole +windows were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They +had evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly +obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of +comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; +but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the +atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's +day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other +merely scenic feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the +appearance of my two companions. + +Raffles, not quite at the top of the stairs, but near enough to loll over +the banisters, and Levy, cumbering the ship's bunk, were indeed startling +figures to an eye still dim with sleep. Raffles had an ugly cut from the +left nostril to the corner of the mouth; he had washed the blood from his +face, but the dark and angry streak remained to heighten his unusual +pallor. Levy looked crumpled and debauched, flabbily and feebly senile, +yet with his vital forces making a last flicker in his fiery eyes. He was +grotesquely swathed in scarlet bunting, from which his doubled fists +protruded in handcuffs; a bit of thin rope attached the handcuffs to a +peg on which his coat and hat were also hanging, and a longer bit was +taken round the banisters from the other end of the bunting, which I now +perceived to be a tattered and torn Red Ensign. This led to the discovery +that I myself had been sleeping in the Union Jack, and it brought my eyes +back to the ghastly face of Raffles, who was already smiling at mine. + +"Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and +present your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be +frightened of him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've +had to clap him in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given +him rope enough; he's got lashings of rope--eh, Bunny?" + +"That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul +play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only +you'd give me that drink." + +And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the +folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne +standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed +it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and +merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering +Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched +for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted +with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without +going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale +remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house. + +"I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The +poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole +in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his +trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other +pint to his own infernal cheek." + +"Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him +up to ransom?" + +"Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of +reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when +he's heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the +tap when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had +after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but +it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case." + +And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting +on the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court. + +"Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had +better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as +a preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and +granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused. +Drink has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that +necessitates your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week +of that chastening experience you come before me without knowing where +you are or how you got here." + +"That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That +was something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was, +and you'll pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of +my whisky." + +"Well," resumed Raffles, "your champagne is on the same high level, and +here's a pint of the best which you can open for yourself if only you +show your sense before I've done with you. But you won't advance that +little millennium by talking about foul play as though it were all on one +side and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the +business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice +in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, +attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules +of civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this +court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently +you will get an opportunity of addressing the court in mitigation of your +sentence. Or, if you like," continued Raffles, with a wink at me, "you +may be represented by counsel. My learned friend here, I'm sure, will be +proud to undertake your defence as a 'docker'; or--perhaps I should say a +'bunker,' Mr. Bunny?" + +And Raffles laughed as coyly as a real judge at a real judicial joke, +whereupon I joined in so uproariously as to find myself degraded from the +position of leading counsel to that of the general public in a single +flash from the judge's eye. + +"If I hear any more laughter," said Raffles, "I shall clear the court. +It's perfectly monstrous that people should come here to a court of +justice and behave as though they were at a theatre." + +Levy had been reclining with his yellow face twisted and his red eyes +shut; but now these burst open as with flames, and the dry lips spat a +hearty curse at the judge upon the locker. + +"Take care!" said Raffles. "Contempt of court won't do you any good, +you know!" + +"And what good will all this foolery do you? Say what you've got to say +against me, and be damned to you!" + +"I fear you're confusing our functions sadly," said Raffles, with a +compassionate shake of the head. "But so far as your first exhortation +goes, I shall endeavour to take you at your word. You are a money-lender +trading, among other places, in Jermyn Street, St. James's, under the +style and title of Daniel Levy." + +"It 'appens to be my name." + +"That I can well believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. +Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or +Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull +and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that +distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by +yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you +are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at +higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man +alive at your job; you are certainly the biggest villain." + +"But I'm up against a bigger now," said Levy, shifting his position and +closing his crimson eyes. + +"Possibly," said Raffles, as he produced a long envelope and unfolded a +sheet of foolscap; "but permit me to remind you of a few of your own +proven villainies before you take any more shots at mine. Last year you +had three of your great bargains set aside by the law as hard and +unconscionable; but every year you have these cases, and at best the +terms are modified in favour of your wretched client. But it's only the +exception who will face the music of the law-courts and the Press, and +you figure on the general run. You prefer people like the Lincolnshire +vicar you hounded into an asylum the year before last. You cherish the +memory of the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 +and 1894; that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! +You set great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you +to stay with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite +in exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for +your net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that +poor little builder at Bromley, who cut the throats--" + +"Stop it!" cried Levy, in a lather of impotent rage. + +"By all means," said Raffles, restoring the paper to its envelope. "It's +an ugly little load for one man's soul, I admit; but you must see it was +about time somebody beat you at your own beastly game." + +"It's a pack of blithering lies," retorted Levy, "and you haven't beaten +me yet. Stick to facts within your own knowledge, and then tell me if +your precious Garlands haven't brought their troubles on themselves?" + +"Certainly they have," said Raffles. "But it isn't your treatment of the +Garlands that has brought you to this pretty pass." + +"What is it, then?" + +"Your treatment of me, Mr. Levy." + +"A cursed crook like you!" + +"A party to a pretty definite bargain, however, and a discredited person +only so far as that bargain is concerned." + +"And the rest!" said the money-lender, jeering feebly. "I know more about +you than you guess." + +"I should have put it the other way round," replied Raffles, smiling. +"But we are both forgetting ourselves, prisoner in the bunk. Kindly note +that your trial is resumed, and further contempt will not be allowed to +go unpurged. You referred a moment ago to my unfortunate friends; you say +they were the engineers of their own misfortunes. That might be said of +all who ever put themselves in your clutches. You squeeze them as hard as +the law will let you, and in this case I don't see how the law is to +interfere. So I interfere myself--in the first instance as disastrously +as you please." + +"You did so!" exclaimed Levy, with a flicker of his inflamed eyes. "You +brought things to a head; that's all _you_ did." + +"On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," +said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand +for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten +thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another +fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead +of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That +was your side of the bargain." + +"Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" + +"My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you +by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a +matter of fact it was only to be got by crook--" + +"Aha!" + +"I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last +night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man +ever made upon another!" + +Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, +forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had +infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to +the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. +And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he +quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so +truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice +came next. + +"I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, +I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and +the drink together made me mad." + +"So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" + +"Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." + +"You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" + +"Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must +have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." + +"In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" + +"That's it--with the letter." + +"You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you +handle it?" + +"Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" + +Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the +tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of +fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, +but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled +hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though +it were a bad job. + +"Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment +that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" + +"_I_ have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should +I? It must have been the police." + +"It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as +if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both classes to be +deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no +difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave +me no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at +Gray's Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe +I have already mentioned to you." + +"You said you left them there in their glory." + +"It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs." + +Levy struggled into a less recumbent posture. + +"And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?" + +"I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know." + +"And how the devil do you know?" + +Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: +"You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!" + +The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked +himself at that and tried one more poser. + +"And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it +wasn't to ensure your safety?" + +"It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down +expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting +the treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea--prisoner in +the bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. +My compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite +colourable image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and +it had been a case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough +which I should let go." + +But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red +Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms. + +"They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his +teeth. "The traitors--the blasted traitors!" + +"It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, +"especially when one's elders and betters themselves succumb to it." + +"But they're such liars!" cried Levy, shifting his ground again. "Don't +you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your +own good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might +'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot +their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' +they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to +blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed +to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game +all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, +Raffles, and--and let me out o' this, like a good feller!" + +"Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the +judicial locker. + +"Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal +of all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those +two jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and +you were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling +you 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's +surely about time to stop treating me like a mad dog." + +"Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?" + +"Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of +doing anything else." + +"Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what +you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?" + +"In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket." + +"In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly +commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me. + +"What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if +only you'll take these damned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for +'em now, you know!" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, +prisoner. But my marshal will produce the note from your person if +it's there." + +It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact +while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples +which he had brought with him for the purpose. + +"It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look +that I intercepted at close quarters. + +"So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine +signature to this little document which is also a part of your bond." + +The little document turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on +parchment, embossed with a ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an +INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up +for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in +existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee +simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and +its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of L15,000 to remain +charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited +Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from--" that +summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and +innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom +Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy +of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. +I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they +had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed +was to be signed! + +Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected +of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was +obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his +ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less +with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform +his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince +us of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he +had succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of +the creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and +I had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma +in which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look +pleasant, or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he +looked as pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the +shadow of a fight for their immediate removal. + +"And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think +I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne." + +"Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only +at the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house +last night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do +of your own free will then." + +Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, +with fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I +told you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very +sorry for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again +from the bottom of my 'eart." + +"I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our +arrival was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last +of those acts of treachery for which you are still on your +trial--prisoner in the bunk!" + +"But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a +palsy of impotent rage and disappointment. + +"You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even +plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've +made, and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a +point by telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your +guilt. Have you nothing better to say why the sentence of the court +should not be passed upon you?" + +A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repetition +of the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower +lip of Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the +inflamed eyelids. + +"I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought--I'd +swindle--you." + +"Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let +me tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by +twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen +hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason." + +Though not unprepared for some such ultimatum, I must own I heard it with +dismay. On all sorts of grounds, some of them as unworthy as itself, this +last demand failed to meet with my approval; and I determined to +expostulate with Raffles before it was too late. Meanwhile I hid my +feelings as best I could, and admired the spirit with which Dan Levy +expressed his. + +"I'll see you damned first!" he cried. "It's blackmail!" + +"Guineas," said Raffles, "for contempt of court." + +And more to my surprise than ever, not a little indeed to my secret +disappointment, our captive speedily collapsed again, whimpering, +moaning, gnashing his teeth, and clutching at the Red Ensign, with closed +eyes and distorted face, so much as though he were about to have a fit +that I caught up the half-bottle of champagne, and began removing the +wire at a nod from Raffles. + +"Don't cut the string just yet," he added, however, with an eye on +Levy--who instantly opened his. + +"I'll pay up!" he whispered, feebly yet eagerly. "It serves me right. I +promise I'll pay up!" + +"Good!" said Raffles. "Here's your own cheque-book from your own room, +and here's my fountain pen." + +"You won't take my word?" + +"It's quite enough to have to take your cheque; it should have been +hard cash." + +"So it shall be, Raffles, if you come up with me to my office!" + +"I dare say." + +"To my bank, then!" + +"I prefer to go alone. You will kindly make it an open cheque payable +to bearer." + +The fountain pen was poised over the chequebook, but only because I had +placed it in Levy's fingers, and was holding the cheque-book under them. + +"And what if I refuse?" he demanded, with a last flash of his +native spirit. + +"We shall say good-bye, and give you until to-night." + +"All day to call for help in!" muttered Levy, all but to himself. + +"Do you happen to know where you are?" Raffles asked him. + +"No, but I can find out." + +"If you knew already you would also know that you might call till you +were black in the face; but to keep you in blissful ignorance you will be +bound a good deal more securely than you are at present. And to spare +your poor voice you will also be very thoroughly gagged." + +Levy took remarkably little notice of either threat or gibe. + +"And if I give in and sign?" said he, after a pause. + +"You will remain exactly as you are, with one of us to keep you company, +while the other goes up to town to cash your cheque. You can't expect me +to give you a chance of stopping it, you know." + +This, again, struck me as a hard condition, if only prudent when one came +to think of it from our point of view; still, it took even me by +surprise, and I expected Levy to fling away the pen in disgust. He +balanced it, however, as though also weighing the two alternatives very +carefully in his mind, and during his deliberations his bloodshot eyes +wandered from Raffles to me and back again to Raffles. In a word, the +latest prospect appeared to disturb Mr. Levy less than, for obvious +reasons, it did me. Certainly for him it was the lesser of the two evils, +and as such he seemed to accept it when he finally wrote out the cheque +for fifteen hundred guineas (Raffles insisting on these), and signed it +firmly before sinking back as though exhausted by the effort. + +Raffles was as good as his word about the champagne now: dram by dram +he poured the whole pint into the cup belonging to his flask, and dram +by dram our prisoner tossed it off, but with closed eyes, like a +delirious invalid, and towards the end, with a head so heavy that +Raffles had to raise it from the rolled flag, though foul talons still +came twitching out for more. It was an unlovely process, I will +confess; but what was a pint, as Raffles said? At any rate I could bear +him out that these potations had not been hocussed, and Raffles +whispered the same for the flask which he handed me with Levy's +revolver at the head of the wooden stairs. + +"I'm coming down," said I, "for a word with you in the room below." + +Raffles looked at me with open eyes, then more narrowly at the red lids +of Levy, and finally at his own watch. + +"Very well, Bunny, but I must cut and run for my train in about a minute. +There's a 9.24 which would get me to the bank before eleven, and back +here by one or two." + +"Why go to the bank at all?" I asked him point-blank in the lower room. + +"To cash his cheque before he has a chance of stopping it. Would you like +to go instead of me, Bunny?" + +"No, thank you!" + +"Well, don't get hot about it; you've got the better billet of the two." + +"The softer one, perhaps." + +"Infinitely, Bunny, with the old bird full of his own champagne, and his +own revolver in your pocket or your hand! The worst he can do is to +start yelling out, and I really do believe that not a soul would hear +him if he did. The gardeners are always at work on the other side of the +main road. A passing boatload is the only danger, and I doubt if even +they would hear." + +"My billet's all right," said I, valiantly. "It's yours that +worries me." + +"Mine!" cried Raffles, with an almost merry laugh. "My dear, good Bunny, +you may make your mind easy about my little bit! Of course, it'll take +some doing at the bank. I don't say it's a straight part there. But trust +me to play it on my head." + +"Raffles," I said, in a low voice that may have trembled, "it's not a +part for you to play at all! I don't mean the little bit at the bank. I +mean this whole blackmailing part of the business. It's not like you, +Raffles. It spoils the whole thing!" + +I had got it off my chest without a hitch. But so far Raffles had not +discouraged me. There was a look on his face which even made me think +that he agreed with me in his heart. Both hardened as he thought it over. + +"It's Levy who's spoilt the whole thing," he rejoined obdurately in +the end. "He's been playing me false all the time, and he's got to +pay for it." + +"But you never meant to make anything out of him, A.J.!" + +"Well, I do now, and I've told you why. Why shouldn't I?" + +"Because it's not your game!" I cried, with all the eager persuasion in +my power. "Because it's the sort of thing Dan Levy would do +himself--it's _his_ game, all right--it simply drags you down to his +level--" + +But there he stopped me with a look, and not the kind of look I often had +from Raffles, It was no new feat of mine to make him angry, scornful, +bitterly cynical or sarcastic. This, however, was a look of pain and even +shame, as though he had suddenly seen himself in a new and peculiarly +unlovely light. + +"Down to it!" he exclaimed, with an irony that was not for me. "As though +there could be a much lower level than mine! Do you know, Bunny, I +sometimes think my moral sense is ahead of yours?" + +I could have laughed outright; but the humour that was the salt of him +seemed suddenly to have gone out of Raffles. + +"I know what I am," said he, "but I'm afraid you're getting a hopeless +villain-worshipper!" + +"It's not the villain I care about," I answered, meaning every word. +"It's the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well." + +"I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better," replied Raffles, +laughing when I least expected it. "But you're by way of forgetting his +existence altogether. I shouldn't wonder if some day you wrote me up +into a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime! Let this +remind you what I always was and shall be to the end." + +And he took my hand, as I fondly hoped in surrender to my appeal to those +better feelings which I knew I had for once succeeded in quickening +within him. + +But it was only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the +spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in +the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, +handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at the top. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Watch and Ward + + +I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a +last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower +chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. +The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the +bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are +among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One +of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the +aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I +got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was +only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded +gardens and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe +in mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in +such surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a +coal-cellar. And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an +indefinite prospect of my prisoner's person at close quarters. + +Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me +some confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor +his eyes at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn +up to his chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I +remember taking a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved +remarkably in repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was +higher and broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough +now, but the closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of +all. On the whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had +been all the morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had +fallen asleep in his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject +enough; if not, I had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I +was in no hurry to show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and +took my seat by inches. + +Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or +other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as +a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was +not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The +wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint +and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the +house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh +period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every +time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have +come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into +my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with +less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that +breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my +prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound +down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another +sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it +from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to +penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as +of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only +audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could +hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my +breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or +altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I +was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was. + +His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, +and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as +though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less +violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as +they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. + +"I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain +before he spoke. + +"You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained. +"It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear." + +I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or +anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. +And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was. + +"Do you?" I demanded. + +"Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of +course." + +"What clock?" + +"The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road." + +"How do _you_ know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity. + +"My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as +well as I know the inside of this tower." + +"Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy +grinned in a way that ill became a captive. + +"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse +myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the +neighhour'ood." + +"Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth +merely broadened his grin. + +"Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." + +"It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my +austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with +quiet but most disquieting amusement. + +"I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my +way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to +keep an eye on me." + +"Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found +comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. + +"I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you +strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." + +I said nothing to that. + +"On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though +he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other _hand_" stooping to +pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes +so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he +hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use +hollering before you're out o' the wood." + +I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. + +"Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if +to himself. + +"Thought of what?" + +"Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't +tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been +thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen +going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to +be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" + +"How do you know he didn't?" + +"Because this 'appens to be the day!" + +And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was +beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his +present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles +would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the +satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's +statement. + +"That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too +much of a coincidence to be anything else." + +"The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One +of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the +other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you +know your own business best." + +"At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most +obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the +man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you." + +"I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run +away from--though he looks as hard as nails--what there is of him," said +Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry +some conviction. "He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; +some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same +trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like." + +"And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that +can possibly have to do with it up here." + +"No," said Levy; "he comes no higher than the floor below." I seemed to +remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. "But that's +near enough." + +"You mean that we shall hear him?" + +"And he us!" added Levy, with unmistakable determination. + +"Look here, Mr. Levy," said I, showing him his own revolver, "if we do +hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I +shall blow out your beastly brains!" + +The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such +deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of +it, and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more +mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if +anything could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the +guttural laugh with which he greeted it. + +"Excuse me," said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red +bunting, "but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to +preserve silence--why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play the +cold-blooded villain--_you_!" + +"I shall play him to some purpose," I hissed, "if you drive me to it. I +laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same +thing again this morning. So now you know." + +"That wasn't in cold blood," said Levy, rolling his head from side to +side; "that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't +count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last +night or this morning--though I can see that you're no brigand or +blackmailer at bottom--and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave +Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar +job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you +ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's +the magsman, you're only the swell. _I_ can see that. But the judge +won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a +thousand shames!" + +He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, +persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his +words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with +meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as +deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to +me with the significance of his altered tone. + +"I can't help it," I muttered. "I must go through with the whole +thing now." + +"Why must you?" demanded Levy. "You've been led into a job that's none of +your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the +job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found +out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?" + +"There's nothing else for it," I answered, with a sulky resignation, +though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming. + +And then it came. + +"Why not get out of the whole thing," suggested Levy, boldly, "before +it's too late?" + +"How can I?" said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition. + +"By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!" + +I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were +actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness +fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging +and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it +was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to +hesitate on quite different grounds. + +"It's all very well," I said, "but are you going to make it worth +my while?" + +"Certainly!" cried he. "Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where +you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll +write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred +before I leave this tower." + +"You really will?" I temporised. + +"I swear it!" he asseverated; and I still believe he might have kept his +word about that. But now I knew where he _had_ been lying to me, and now +was the time to let him know I knew it. + +"Two hundred pounds," said I, "for the liberty you are bound to get for +nothing, as you yourself have pointed out, when the man turns up to wind +the clock? A couple of hundred to save less than a couple of hours?" + +Levy changed colour as he saw his mistake, and his eyes flashed with +sudden fury; otherwise his self-command was only less admirable than his +presence of mind. + +"It wasn't to save time," said he; "it was to save my face in the +neighbourhood. The well-known money-lender found bound and handcuffed in +an empty house! It means the first laugh at my expense, whoever has the +last laugh. But you're quite right; it wasn't worth two hundred golden +sovereigns. Let them laugh! At any rate you and your flash friend'll be +laughing on the wrong side of your mouths before the day's out. So that's +all there is to it, and you'd better start screwing up your courage if +you want to do me in! I did mean to give you another chance in life--but +by God I wouldn't now if you were to go down on your knees for one!" + +Considering that he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he +defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his +picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. +I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his +clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big +bribe offered for his immediate freedom; but it was with something more +than mere adroitness that the money-lender had reconciled the two things. +In his place I should have been no less anxious to keep my humiliating +experience a secret from the world; with his means I could conceive +myself prepared to pay as dearly for such secrecy. On the other hand, if +his idea was to stop the huge cheque already given to Raffles, then there +was indeed no time to be lost, and the only wonder was that Levy should +have waited so long before making overtures to me. + +Raffles had now been gone a very long time, as it seemed to me, but my +watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they +kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying +still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out +the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of +these I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what +had seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only +knew that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out +at the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of +his trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, +and made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was +fast becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I +sat in my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air +as entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of +scarlet bunting, with a sudden oath which must have been the only sound +within the tower for an hour at least; all the rest of the time he lay +with fettered fists clenched upon his breast, with fierce eyes fixed upon +the top of the bunk, and something about the whole man that I was forced +to watch, something indomitable and intensely alert, a curious suggestion +of smouldering fires on the point of leaping into flame. + +I feared this man in my heart of hearts. I may as well admit it frankly. +It was not that he was twice my size, for I had the like advantage in +point of years; it was not that I had any reason to distrust the +strength of his bonds or the efficacy of the weapon in my possession. It +was a question of personality, not of material advantage or +disadvantage, or of physical fear at all. It was simply the spirit of +the man that dominated mine. I felt that my mere flesh and blood would +at any moment give a good account of his, as well they might with the +odds that were on my side. Yet that did not lessen the sense of subtle +and essential inferiority, which grew upon my nerves with almost every +minute of that endless morning, and made me long for the relief of +physical contest even on equal terms. I could have set the old ruffian +free, and thrown his revolver out of the window, and then said to him, +"Come on! Your weight against my age, and may the devil take the worse +man!" Instead, I must sit glaring at him to mask my qualms. And after +much thinking about the kind of conflict that could never be, in the end +came one of a less heroic but not less desperate type, before there was +time to think at all. + +Levy had raised his head, ever so little, but yet enough for my +vigilance. I saw him listening. I listened too. And down below in the +core of the tower I heard, or thought I heard, a step like a feather, and +then after some moments another. But I had spent those moments in gazing +instinctively down the stair; it was the least rattle of the handcuffs +that brought my eyes like lightning back to the bunk; and there was Levy +with hollow palms about his mouth, and his mouth wide open for the roar +that my own palms stifled in his throat. + +Indeed, I had leapt upon him once more like a fiend, and for an instant I +enjoyed a shameful advantage; it can hardly have lasted longer. The brute +first bit me through the hand, so that I carry his mark to this day; +then, with his own hands, he took me by the throat, and I thought that my +last moments were come. He squeezed so hard that I thought my windpipe +must burst, thought my eyes must leave their sockets. It was the grip of +a gorilla, and it was accompanied by a spate of curses and the grin of a +devil incarnate. All my dreams of equal combat had not prepared me for +superhuman power on his part, such utter impotence on mine. I tried to +wrench myself from his murderous clasp, and was nearly felled by the top +of the bunk. I hurled myself out sideways, and out he came after me, +tearing down the peg to which his handcuffs were tethered; that only gave +him the better grip upon my throat, and he never relaxed it for an +instant, scrambling to his feet when I staggered to mine, for by them +alone was he fast now to the banisters. + +Meanwhile I was feeling in an empty pocket for his revolver, which had +fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my +starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a +dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the +banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn +afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden +stairs. But what I still remember hearing most distinctly (and feeling +hot upon my face) is the stertorous breathing that was unbroken by a +single syllable after the first few seconds. + +It was a brutal encounter, not short and sharp like the one over-night, +but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one +side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts +in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant +had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against +the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our +united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be +better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. +Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself +over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed +upon the butt of the revolver that I thought had been kicked into the +room below! + +I was too far gone to realise that a miracle had happened--to be so much +as puzzled by it then. But I was not too far gone to use that revolver, +and to use it as I would have done on cool reflection. I thrust it under +my opponent's armpit, and I fired through into space. The report was +deafening. It did its work. Levy let go of me, and staggered back as +though I had really shot him. And that instant I was brandishing his +weapon in his face. + +"You tried to shoot me! You tried to shoot me!" he gasped twice over +through a livid mask. + +"No, I didn't!" I panted. "I tried to frighten you, and I jolly well +succeeded! But I'll shoot you like a dog if you don't get back to your +kennel and lie down." + +He sat and gasped upon the side of the bunk. There was no more fight in +him. His very lips were blue. I put the pistol back in my pocket, and +retracted my threat in a sudden panic. + +"There! It's your own fault if you so much as see it again," I promised +him, in a breathless disorder only second to his own. + +"But you jolly nearly strangled me. And now we're a pretty pair!" + +His hands grasped the edge of the bunk, and he leant his weight on them, +breathing very hard. It might have been an attack of asthma, or it might +have been a more serious seizure, but it was a case for stimulants if +ever I saw one, and in the nick of time I remembered the flask that +Raffles had left with me. It was the work of a very few seconds to pour +out a goodly ration, and of but another for Daniel Levy to toss off the +raw spirit like water. He was begging for more before I had helped +myself. And more I gave him in the end; for it was no small relief to me +to watch the leaden hue disappearing from the flabby face, and the +laboured breathing gradually subside, even if it meant a renewal of our +desperate hostilities. + +But all that was at an end; the man was shaken to the core by his +perfectly legitimate attempt at my destruction. He looked dreadfully old +and hideous as he got bodily back into the bunk of his own accord. There, +when I had yielded to his further importunities, and the flask was empty, +he fell at length into a sleep as genuine as the last was not; and I was +still watching over the poor devil, keeping the flies off him, and +sometimes fanning him with a flag, less perhaps from humane motives than +to keep him quiet as long as possible, when Raffles returned to light up +the tableau like a sinister sunbeam. + +Raffles had had his own adventures in town, and I soon had reason to feel +thankful that I had not gone up instead of him. It seemed he had foreseen +from the first the possibility of trouble at the bank over a large and +absolutely open cheque. So he had gone first to the Chelsea studio in +which he played the painter who never painted but kept a whole wardrobe +of disguises for the models he never hired. Thence he had issued on this +occasion in the living image of a well-known military man about town who +was also well known to be a client of Dan Levy's. Raffles said the +cashier stared at him, but the cheque was cashed without a word. The +unfortunate part of it was that in returning to his cab he had +encountered an acquaintance both of his own and of the spendthrift +soldier, and had been greeted evidently in the latter capacity. + +"It was a jolly difficult little moment, Bunny. I had to say there was +some mistake, and I had to remember to say it in a manner equally unlike +my own and the other beggar's! But all's well that ends well; and if +you'll do exactly what I tell you I think we may flatter ourselves that a +happy issue is at last in sight." + +"What am I to do now?" I asked with some misgiving. + +"Clear out of this, Bunny, and wait for me in town. You've done jolly +well, old fellow, and so have I in my own department of the game. +Everything's in order, down to those fifteen hundred guineas which are +now concealed about my person in as hard cash as I can carry. I've seen +old Garland and given him back his promissory note myself, with Levy's +undertaking about the mortgage. It was a pretty trying interview, as you +can understand; but I couldn't help wondering what the poor old boy would +say if he dreamt what sort of pressure I've been applying on his behalf! +Well, it's all over now except our several exits from the surreptitious +stage. I can't make mine without our sleeping partner, but you would +really simplify matters, Bunny, by not waiting for us." + +There was a good deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a +little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath +in town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably +dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental +relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my +plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front +door in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he +had told the caretaking gardener across the road; but he had borrowed the +gardener's keys as a probable purchaser of the property, who had to meet +his builder and a business friend at the house during the course of the +afternoon. I was to be the builder, and in that capacity to give the +gardener an ingenious message calculated to leave Raffles and Levy in +uninterrupted possession until my return. And of course I was never to +return at all. + +The whole thing seemed to me a super-subtle means to a far simpler end +than the one we had achieved by stealth in the dead of the previous +night. But it was Raffles all over and I ultimately acquiesced, on the +understanding that we were to meet again in the Albany at seven o'clock, +preparatory to dining somewhere in final celebration of the whole affair. + +But much was to happen before seven o'clock, and it began happening. I +shook the dust of that derelict tower from my feet; for one of them trod +on something at the darkest point of the descent; and the thing went +tinkling down ahead on its own account, until it lay shimmering in the +light on a lower landing, where I picked it up. + +Now I had not said much to Raffles about my hitherto inexplicable +experience with the revolver, when I thought it had gone through the +banisters, but found it afterwards in my hand. Raffles said it would not +have gone through, that I must have been all but over the banisters +myself when I grasped the butt as it protruded through them on the level +of the floor. This he said (like many another thing) as though it made an +end of the matter. But it was not the end of the matter in my own mind; +and now I could have told him what the explanation was, or at least to +what conclusion I had jumped. I had half a mind to climb all the way up +again on purpose to put him in the wrong upon the point. Then I +remembered how anxious he had seemed to get rid of me, and for other +reasons also I decided to let him wait a bit for his surprise. + +Meanwhile my own plans were altered, and when I had delivered my +egregious message to the gardener across the road, I sought the nearest +shops on my way to the nearest station; and at one of the shops I got me +a clean collar, at another a tooth-brush; and all I did at the station +was to utilise my purchases in the course of such scanty toilet as the +lavatory accommodation would permit. + +A few minutes later I was inquiring my way to a house which it took me +another twenty or twenty-five to find. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A Secret Service + + +This house also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar +compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to +the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy +stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable +attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback +three seasons out of the four. The wooden gate had not swung home behind +me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, +contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, +and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell. +There was indeed something oppressively and yet prettily Victorian about +the riparian retreat to which Lady Laura Belsize had retired in her +impoverished widowhood. + +It was not for Lady Laura that I asked, however, but for Miss Belsize, +and the almost slatternly maid really couldn't say whether Miss Belsize +was in or whether she wasn't. She might be in the garden, or she might +be on the river. Would I step inside and wait a minute? I would and did, +but it was more minutes than one that I was kept languishing in an +interior as dingy as the outside of the house. I had time to take the +whole thing in. There were massive remnants of deservedly unfashionable +furniture. The sofa I can still see in my mind's eye, and the steel +fire-irons, and the crystal chandelier. An aged and gigantic Broadwood +occupied nearly half the room; and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all +sorts of comparisons and contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of +Camilla Belsize resplendent in contemporary court kit. + +I was still studying that frankly barbaric paraphernalia--the feather, +the necklace, the coiled train--and wondering what noble kinsman had come +to the rescue for the great occasion, and why Camilla should have looked +so bored with her finery, when the door opened and she herself +entered--not even very smartly dressed--and looking anything but bored, +although I say it. + +But she did seem astonished, anxious, indignant, reproachful, and to my +mind still more nervous and distressed, though this hardly showed through +the loopholes of her pride. And as for her white serge coat and skirt, +they looked as though they had seen considerable service on the river, +and I immediately perceived that one of the large enamel buttons was +missing from the coat. + +Up to that moment, I may now confess, I had been suffering from no slight +nervous anxiety of my own. But all qualms were lost in sheer excitement +when I spoke. + +"You may well wonder at this intrusion," I began. "But I thought this +must be yours, Miss Belsize." + +And from my waistcoat pocket I produced the missing button of enamel. + +"Where did you find it?" inquired Miss Belsize, with an admirably slight +increase of astonishment in voice and look. "And how did you know it was +mine?" came quickly in the next breath. + +"I didn't know," I answered. "I guessed. It was the shot of my life!" + +"But you don't say where you found it?" + +"In an empty house not far from here." + +She had held her breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And +quite unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. + +"Well, Mr. Manders? I'm very much obliged to you. But may I have it +back again?" + +I returned her property. We had been staring at each other all the time. +I stared still harder as she repeated her perfunctory thanks. + +"So it was you!" I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely +puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the +rest in those chameleon eyes of hers. + +"Who did you think it was?" she asked me with a frosty little smile. + +"I didn't know if it was anybody at all. I didn't know what to think," +said I, quite candidly. "I simply found his pistol in my hand." + +"Whose pistol?" + +"Dan Levy's." + +"Good!" she said grimly. "That makes it all the better." + +"You saved my life." + +"I thought you had taken his--and I'd collaborated!" + +There was not a tremor in her voice; it was cautious, eager, daring, +intense, but absolutely her own voice now. + +"No," I said, "I didn't shoot the fellow, but I made him think I had." + +"You made me think so too, until I heard what you said to him." + +"Yet you never made a sound yourself." + +"I should think not! I made myself scarce instead." + +"But, Miss Belsize, I shall go perfectly mad if you don't tell me how you +happened to be there at all!" + +"Don't you think it's for you to tell me that about yourself +and--all of you?" + +"Oh, I don't mind which of us fires first!" said I, excitedly. + +"Then I will," she said at once, and took me to the dreadful sofa at the +inner end of the room, and sat down as though it were the most ordinary +experience she had to relate. Nor could I believe the things that had +really happened, and all so recently, as we talked them over in that +commonplace environment of faded gentility. There was a window behind us, +overlooking the ribbon of lawn and the cord of gravel, and the bunch of +willows that hedged them from the Thames. It all looked unreal to me, +unreal in its very realism as the scene of our incredible conversation. + +"You know what happened the other afternoon--I mean the day they +couldn't play," began Miss Belsize, "because you were there; and though +you didn't stay to hear all that came out afterwards, I expect you know +everything now. Mr. Raffles would be sure to tell you; in fact, I heard +poor dear Mr. Garland give him leave. It's a dreadful story from every +point of view. Nobody comes out of it with flying colours, but what nice +person could cope with a horrid money-lender? Mr. Raffles, perhaps--if +you call him nice!" + +I said that was about the worst thing I called him. I mentioned some of +the other things. Miss Belsize listened to them with exemplary patience. + +"Well," she resumed, "he was quite nice about this. I will say that for +him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be +done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be +done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had +been done already at Carlsbad--what exactly that horrid creature meant +when he was talking _at_ Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of course, I +knew what he meant us to think he meant; but was there, could there be, +anything in it?" + +Miss Belsize looked at me as though she expected an answer, only to stop +me the moment I opened my mouth to speak. + +"I don't want to know, Mr. Manders! Of course you know all about Mr. +Raffles"--there was a touch of feeling in this--"but it's nothing to me, +though in this case I should certainly have been on his side. You said +yourself that it could only have been a practical joke, if there was +anything in it at all, and so I tried to think in spite of those horrid +men who were following him about at Lord's, even in spite of the way he +vanished with them after him. But he never came near the match +again--though he had travelled all the way from Carlsbad to see it! Why +had he ever been there? What had he really done there? And what could he +possibly do to rescue anybody from Mr. Levy, if he himself was already in +Levy's power?" + +"You don't know Raffles," said I, promptly enough this time. "He never +was in any man's power for many minutes. I would back him to save the +most desperate situation you could devise." + +"You mean by some desperate deed? That's what I feared," declared Miss +Belsize, rather strenuously. "Something really had happened at Carlsbad; +something worse was by way of happening next. For Teddy's sake," she +whispered, "and his poor father's!" + +I agreed that old Raffles stuck at nothing for his friends, and Miss +Belsize again said that was what she had feared. Her tone had completely +altered about Raffles, as well it might. I thought it would have broken +with gratitude when she spoke of the unlucky father and son. + +"And I was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to +which I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the +match on Saturday--" + +"Though Teddy had done so well!" I was fool enough to interject. + +"I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Raffles," replied Camilla, with a +flash of her frank eyes, "and wondering, and wondering, what had +happened. And then on Sunday I saw him on the river." + +"He didn't tell me." + +"He didn't know I recognised him; he was disguised--absolutely!" said +Camilla Belsize under her breath. "But he couldn't disguise himself from +me," she added as though glorying in her perspicacity. + +"Did you tell him so, Miss Belsize?" + +"Not I, indeed! I didn't speak to him; it was no business of mine. But +there he was, at the bottom of Mr. Levy's garden, having a good look at +the boathouse when nobody was about. Why? What could his object be? And +why disguise himself? I thought of the affair at Carlsbad, and I felt +certain that something of the kind was going to happen again!" + +"Well?" + +"What could I do? Should I do anything at all? Was it any business of +mine? You may imagine the way I cross-questioned myself, and you may +imagine the crooked answers I got! I won't bore you with the psychology +of the thing; it's pretty obvious after all. It was not so much a case +of doing the best as of knowing the worst. All day yesterday there were +no developments of any sort, and there was no sign of Mr. Raffles; +nothing had happened in the night, or we should have heard of it; but +that made me all the more certain that something or other would happen +last night. The week's grace was nearly up--you know what I mean--their +last week at their own house. If anything was to be done, it was about +time, and I knew Mr. Raffles was going to do something. I wanted to know +what--that was all." + +"Quite right, too!" I murmured. But I doubt if Miss Belsize heard me; she +was in no need of my encouragement or my approval. The old light--her own +light--the reckless light--was burning away in her brilliant eyes! + +"The night before," she went on, "I hardly slept a wink; last night I +preferred not to go to bed at all. I told you I sometimes did weird +things that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last +night, if it wasn't early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I +have a canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went +out unbeknowns after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly--I beg +your pardon, Mr. Manders?" + +"I didn't speak." + +"Your face shouted!" + +"I'd rather you went on." + +"But if you know what I'm going to say?" + +Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. The nebulous +white-shirted figure in the canoe, that had skimmed past Dan Levy's +frontage as we were trying to get him aboard his own pleasure-boat, and +again past the empty house when we were in the act of disembarking him +there, that figure was the trim and slim one now at my side. She had seen +us--searched for us--each time. Our voices she had heard and recognised; +only our actions, or rather that midnight deed of ours, had she +misinterpreted. She would not admit it to me, but I still believe she +feared it was a dead body that we had shipped at dead of night to hide +away in that desolate tower. + +Yet I cannot think she thought it in her heart. I rather fancy (what she +indeed averred) that some vague inkling of the truth flashed across her +at least as often as that monstrous hypothesis. But know she must; +therefore, after boldly ascertaining that nothing was known of the +master's whereabouts at Levy's house, but that no uneasiness was +entertained on his account, this young woman, true to the audacity which +I had seen in her eyes from the first, had taken the still bolder step of +landing on the rank lawn and entering the empty tower to discover its +secret, for herself. Her stealthy step upon the spiral stair had been the +signal for my mortal struggle with Dan Levy. She had heard the whole, and +even seen a little of that; in fact, she had gathered enough from Levy's +horrible imprecations to form later a rough but not incorrect impression +of the situation between him and Raffles and me. As for the moneylender's +language, it was with a welcome gleam of humour that Miss Belsize assured +me she had "gone too straight to hounds" in her time to be as completely +paralysed by it as her mother's neighbours might have been. And as for +the revolver, it had fallen at her feet, and first she thought I was +going to follow it over the banisters, and before she could think again +she had restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand! + +"But when you fired I felt a murderess," she said. "So you see I +misjudged you for the second time." + +If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly +declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful +humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can +promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I +was thinking in my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as +these, so bold, so sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had +never listened to such a voice, or come across recklessness and +sentiment so harmonised, save also in her eyes! I was thinking that +there never was a girl to touch Camilla Belsize, or a man either except +A. J. Raffles! And yet-- + +And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, +exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and +sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly +exasperated man. + +"Of course," said Camilla at her garden gate, "of course you won't repeat +a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?" said I, somewhat +taken aback. + +"I mean every single thing we've talked about!" was her sweeping reply. +"Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry +I ever spoke to you." + +As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I +passed that, even if I noticed it at the time. + +"I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That +is--except--I suppose you don't mind--" + +"I do! There must be no exceptions." + +"Not even old Raffles?" + +"Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked +flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the +world who must ever know a single thing." + +"Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and +me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of +each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as +Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to +make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, +adamant heated in some hidden flame. + +"It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get +excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must +have done--unless it's a judgment on me--it's rather hard lines if you +give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!" + +This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage +between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my +very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once. + +"You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully. +"And I never let out a word of that." + +"Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation +that was almost wistful. + +"Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, +much less how keen you were for me to warn him." + +Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. +Then something won--I think it was only her pride--and she was holding +out her hand. + +"He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. +"And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always +shall for the future." + +"I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear +old Raffles!" + +I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I +made my point. + +"I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a +stranger stress she added, "I don't _like_ him either." + +And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why +Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes +away quicker still. + +I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not +an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would +have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and +had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the +platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge +when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight +before it stopped. + +The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met +at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever +since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did +what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him. + +"Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his +cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the +deevil himsel'!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Death of a Sinner + + +What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have +outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab +on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the +detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it +inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was +more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been +talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it +close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when +I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but +I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his +shirt-sleeves from the window. + +"I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I +were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about +Mackenzie in the lobby. + +"So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank +God, I was ready for him again." + +I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his +clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I +had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. +The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag +stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, +and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds. + +"Going away?" I ejaculated. + +"Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after +what you've told me?" + +"But you were packing before you knew!" + +"Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't +ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll +have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight +into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at +five to nine." + +"What platform, Raffles?" + +"Charing Cross. Continental train." + +"But where the deuce do you think of going?" + +"Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe." + +"Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?" + +"Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage +face, as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were +due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then +don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell +you everything in the train, Bunny." + +And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant +on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly +terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until +we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross. + +Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did +he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied +with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment +lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, +that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and +another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had +also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to +make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a +humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced +admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been +drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, +but that the _rencontre_ with Mackenzie had served to sober me. + +"Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where +we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little +dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up +to eat a bite of it!" + +"Didn't _you_?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse as +Raffles shook his head. + +"No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made +me so stuffy when you did turn up." + +Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share +the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he +had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than +going healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not +what I had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he +had merely fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for +our last on British soil. + +This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for +beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his +taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings +than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting +in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, +and whither in all earnest were we to fly? + +"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first +question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too +soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his +friends and his relations.'" + +"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?" + +"So I had, Bunny." + +"What was that?" + +"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he +had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his +last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole +and he destroyed." + +"And did he sign that?" + +"I insisted on it for our protection." + +"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?" + +Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted +platforms of Herne Hill. + +"There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send +him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may +hold his tongue about the last twenty-four hours--I believe he will--but +that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and +night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off +round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be +in the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating +thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing +clouds of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our +_secondes noces_--meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our +elbows when we get them!" + +But I was not convinced. There was something else at the bottom of this +sudden impulse and its inconceivably sudden execution. Why had he never +told me of this plan? Well, because it had never become one until after +the morning's work at Levy's bank, in itself a reason for being out of +the way, as I myself admitted. But he would have told me if only I had +turned up at seven: he had never meant to give me time for much packing, +added Raffles, as he was anxious that neither of us should leave the +impression that we had gone far afield. + +I thought this was childish, and treating me like a child, to which, +however, I was used; but more than ever did I feel that Raffles was not +being frank with me, that he for one was making good his escape from +something or somebody besides Dan Levy. And in the end he admitted that +this was so. But we had not dashed through Sitting-bourne and Faversham +before I wormed my way to about the last discovery that I expected to +make concerning A. J. Raffles. + +"What an inquisitor you are, Bunny!" said he, putting down an evening +paper that he had only just taken up. "Can't you see that this whole show +has been no ordinary one for me? I've been fighting for a crowd I rather +love. Their battle has got on my nerves as none of my own ever did; and +now it's won I honestly funk their gratitude as much as anything." + +That was another hard saying to swallow; and yet, as Raffles said it, I +knew it to be true. He was looking me full in the face in the ample +light of the first-class compartment, which we of course had to +ourselves. Some softening influence seemed to have been at work upon +him; he looked resolute as ever, but full of regret, than which nothing +was rarer in A.J. + +"I suppose," said I, "that poor old Garland has treated you to a pretty +good dose already?" + +"Yes, Bunny; that he has." + +"And well he may, and well may Teddy and Camilla Belsize!" + +"But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter +little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that +rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's +fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his +Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, +getting hold of his evening paper once more. + +"Is that to come off so soon?" + +"The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. + +"You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, +and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always +puzzled me. + +"I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh +at his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they +were both absolutely worthy of each other!" + +"And you don't think they are?" + +"No, I don't." + +"You think such a lot of young Garland?" + +"I'm very fond of him, Bunny." + +"But you see his faults?" + +"I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" + +"Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" + +"Not good enough--she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice +was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words +could have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you +get that idea?" + +"I thought it was yours, A.J." + +"But why?" + +"You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." + +"So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may +as well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, +Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." + +"Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for +them to marry after all!" + +Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me +catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and +I simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed +under no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. + +"Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything +of the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often +take my hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who +brought those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put +them asunder again." + +"It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. + +"More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks +running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before +the first week was over." + +"And yet you didn't cut him out!" + +"My dear Bunny, I should hope not." + +"But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if +you'd tried." + +Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But +neither would he ape an alien humility. + +"It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny--won or lost--Teddy or no Teddy: +And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like a +semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling +you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in +all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'" + +"I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down. + +"Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep +irritation of a half-hearted displeasure. + +"She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your +mate at heart--in pluck--in temperament!" + +"How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and +staring in my guilty face. + +But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind +upon occasion. + +"You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain." + +"Did she talk about me then?" + +"A little." + +"Had she her knife in me, Bunny?" + +"Well--yes--a little!" + +Raffles smiled stoically: it was a smile of duty done and odds +well damned. + +"Up to the hilt, Bunny, up to the hilt is what you mean. I stuck it in +for her. It's easily done, and it needed doing, for my sake if not for +hers. Sooner or later I should have choked her off, so the sooner the +better. You play them false, you cut a dance, you let them down over +something that doesn't matter, and they'll never give you a dog's chance +over anything that does! I got her to write and never answered. What do +you think of that for a cavalier swine? I said I'd call before I went +abroad, and only wired to say sorry I couldn't. I don't say it would or +could have been all right otherwise; but you see it was all right for +Teddy before I got back! Which was as it was to be. She would hardly look +at me at first last week; but, Bunny, she wasn't above looking when that +old Shylock was playing at giving me away before them all. She looked at +him, and she looked at me, and I've got one of the looks she gave him, +and another that she never meant me to see, bottled in my blackguard +heart forever!" + +Raffles looked dim to me across the narrow compartment; but there was +no nonsense in his look or voice. I longed to tell him all I knew, all +that she had said to me and he had unwittingly interpreted; that she +loved him, as now at last I knew she did; but I had given her my word, +and after all it was a word to keep for both their sakes as well as +for its own. + +"You were made for each other, you two!" + +That was all I said, and Raffles only laughed. + +"All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a +dog's chance of our meeting again." + +He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with +flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer +Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." +Raffles let it pass; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in +the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather +silently. Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking +of Camilla Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she +had never meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead +was glistening white and wet in the lamplight. + +"What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?" + +He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a +word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. +This was the item that danced before my eyes: + +TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER + +Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his +residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who +made good his escape. + +I looked up into a ghastly face. + +"It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!" + +"You left him--" + +I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier +thought. + +"As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you +think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?" + +Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the +less; for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under +equal provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were +making with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face +and voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla +Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he +had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done +without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either +any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man. + +"But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?" + +"I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?" + +"And you say you left him at half-past five?" + +"I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is +plumb right." + +"And you heard no shot as you went on?" + +"No--I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And now +I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound +to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what +Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. +There's no going back now." + +"Not for an innocent man?" + +"Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been +up to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours." + +He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human +compassion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile +misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a +much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin +to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and +beyond belief in my reading of his character. But through all there +peeped a conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the +novelty of fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and +yet compatible either with his story or with my own base dread. + +"Nobody need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that +nobody ever would know through the one other who knew already. But +Raffles threw cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and +good hope. + +"It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last +hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes +working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then +identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then +Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my +heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit +by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the +capital charge!" + +"Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact. +That's one thing!" + +"No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push +you out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put +up for the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place +for the likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules +when I'm gone." + +"You're not going without me, A.J." + +"Not even if I did it, Bunny?" + +"No; less than ever then!" + +Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in +his eyes, but a very tender light as well. + +"It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," +said he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that +we were making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat +from sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we +clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the +platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic +flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My God, Bunny!" +cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!" + +"Why? What's the matter now?" + +"A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!" + +"Mackenzie's?" + +"Yes!" + +I had seen it in his face. + +"After us already?" + +"God knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder." + +"Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?" + +Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was +turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat. + +"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." +He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the +cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty +hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it +mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go +upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at +home, we shall give him the slip all right." + +"Do you think he saw you?" + +"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too." + +"But before we started?" + +"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I +remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, +thank God!" + +They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were +already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated +townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I +from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not +Raffles at all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the +war was the observed of all observers about town. + +"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he +went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning +touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with +such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As +for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread +basket, you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But +here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!" + +The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier +platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must +nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and +that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while +the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging +passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I +cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the +nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod. + +"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk. + +"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a +palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law. + +"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with +deferential grin. + +"And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds +my lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my +horror. But it is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not +follow us on board. + +Neither did our disguises accompany our countenances across the Channel. +It was at dead of night on the upper deck (whence all but us had fled) +that Raffles showed me how to doff my beard and still look as though I +had merely buttoned it inside my overcoat; meanwhile his own moustachios +and imperial were disappearing by discreet degrees; and at last he told +me why, though not by any means without pressing. + +"I'm only afraid you'll want to turn straight back from Calais, Bunny!" + +"Oh, no, I shan't." + +"You'll come with me round the world, so to speak?" + +"To its uttermost ends, A. J.!" + +"You do know now who it really is that I don't want to see again +just yet?" + +"Yes. I know. Now tell me what Mackenzie told you." + +"It was all in the wire he showed me," said Raffles. "The wire was to say +that the murderer of Dan Levy had given himself up to the police!" + +Profane expletives flew from my lips; those of much holier men might +have been no less unguardedly emphatic in the self-same circumstances. + +"But who was it?" + +"I could have told you all along if you hadn't suspected me." + +"It wasn't a suspicion, Raffles. It was never more than a dread, and I +didn't even dread it in my heart of hearts. Do tell me now." + +Raffles watched the red end of a ruined Sullivan make a fine trajectory +as it flew to leeward between sea and stars. + +"It was that poor unlucky little alien who was waiting for him the other +morning in Jermyn Street, and again last night near his own garden gate. +That's where he got him in the end. But it wasn't a shooting case at all, +Bunny; that's why I never heard anything. It was a case of stabbing in +accordance with the best traditions of the Latin races." + +"God forgive both poor devils!" said I at last. + +"And other two," said Raffles, "who have rather more to be forgiven." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Apologia + + +On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton +and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the +best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club. +Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts, +and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to +find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath +was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit +me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but +in spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in +a Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite +to a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased +than my own. + +But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages +of physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar, +reddish countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot +to contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot +rooms my glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay +swathed upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine +fresh-faced owner of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache +rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the +shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual +order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong +wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on +Teddy in his turn. + +He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my +Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the +other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials. + +"But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland; +"you don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs +as all that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through +scullery windows--even for the fun of the thing!" he added with +somewhat tardy tact. + +It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there +was something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy +Garland had said it excellently. + +"Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles +and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for +me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see +the sort of chap he really was." + +"I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just +then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay +silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But +this one rose superior to his. + +"Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge +of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four +winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did +for the lot of us!" + +"Perhaps he did more than you ever knew." + +"Put it all in." + +"It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel." + +"Then make a book of it." + +"But I've written my last word about the old boy." + +"Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!" + +This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told +him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but +openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that +first day of the match, when it rained." + +Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home +and changed his face. + +"Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously. + +"No; he wouldn't give you away." + +"Not even to you--his pal?" + +"No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me." + +"What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love +him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all +this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was." + +"I must say it would interest me to know." + +My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you +would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face. + +"I don't suppose I should." + +"No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the +very sofa I was on a minute ago!" + +I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland +sitting on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his +bygone shame; he hurried on before I could find a word. + +"You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky +game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in +thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should," +said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put +me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was +awake before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered +everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again +in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you +won't wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head +was rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't +describe to you if I tried." + +"I've been there," said I, briefly. + +"Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but +to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you +in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in, +and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too. +I had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down +into this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is +finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden +idea that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I +remembered A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in +I came. I had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were +all to have a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should +be in plenty of time for that and Lord's--if only I hadn't boiled all the +cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I +hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a +boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute--and it was well on in the +afternoon when I awoke!" + +Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a +metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to +go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes +and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent. + +"Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot! +I had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight, +you can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on +top of it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't +hear any rain, do you?--It was after three, but I lay till nearly four +simply cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what +the papers had to say about me--who was playing in my place, who'd won +the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one, +and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'--and sudden illness of my poor +old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty +minutes after that we met." + +"And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the +bath, of course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you +sleep so long." + +"How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have +had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to +think of the rain coming on and saving me--for even Raffles couldn't have +done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck--while I was +lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still--for luck +rather than remembrance!" + +The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was +no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles +won my heart as he had never won it in his youth. + +"Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old +devil his due at last." + +"But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?" + +"My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and +wife as much as ever you like." + +"Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?" + +"Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?" + +I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than +I had supposed. + +"Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked. + +"Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted--so long as you change our +names--for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland. + +I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word? + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + +This file should be named 7raff10.txt or 7raff10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 7raff11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 7raff10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Mr. Justice Raffles + +Author: E. W. Hornung + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9806] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 19, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES + + BY E.W. HORNUNG + + 1909 + + + + +CONTENTS + + +Chapter + + + I. An Inaugural Banquet + + II. "His Own Familiar Friend" + + III. Council of War + + IV. "Our Mr. Shylock" + + V. Thin Air + + VI. Camilla Belsize + + VII. In Which We Fail to Score + + VIII. The State of the Case + + IX. A Triple Alliance + + X. "My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + XI. A Dash in the Dark + + XII. A Midsummer Night's Dream + + XIII. Knocked Out + + XIV. Corpus Delicti + + XV. Trial by Raffles + + XVI. Watch and Ward + + XVII. A Secret Service + + XVIII. The Death of a Sinner + + XIX. Apologia + + + + +Mr. Justice Raffles + + + + +CHAPTER I + +An Inaugural Banquet + + +Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no +conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at +Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the 'Varsity +match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The +telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of +course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a +specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my +horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous +caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet. + +"Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!" said he, +in tones as hollow as his cheeks. "No, I'm not going to stop to clear +my baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear +good pal." + +"Any time you like," said I, giving him my arm. "But where shall we dine? +Kellner's? Neapolo's? The Carlton or the Club?" + +But Raffles shook his head at one and all. + +"I don't want to dine at all," he said. "I know what I want!" + +And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the +sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of +the warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its +traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political +palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary +clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall +belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where +white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did +not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about +that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on +seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and +the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as +uncharacteristic of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the +table) as the sigh with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, +and crossed his arms upon the cloth. + +"I didn't know you were a member of this place," said I, feeling really +rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for +me to open than that of his late mysterious movements. + +"There are a good many things you don't know about me, Bunny," said he +wearily. "Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?" + +"Of course I didn't." + +"Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?" + +"You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?" + +"It's only three weeks ago, Bunny." + +"It seems months to me." + +"And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost +tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the +wife with the emerald necklace?" + +"I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise +Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J." + +"Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to +Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his +annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can +sympathise with the poor brute now!" + +"But what on earth took you there, old fellow?" + +"Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their +table when they'd gone, and how _I_ forgot myself and ran after them with +the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?" + +I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a +piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was +prepared for something even more perverse. + +"You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at +the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a +tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like +that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge." + +"You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more +interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale. + +"I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping +to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip +to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him." + +I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in +the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way +Raffles now sided with me against himself. + +"But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that +fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on +purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor +head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I +didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all +round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear +call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for +Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted." + +"Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such +bad form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's +the unkind cut I can't forgive." + +"My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The +cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me." + +"Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him. + +"Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book." + +"But why, in the name of all that's wanton?" + +"You don't know Carlsbad, or you wouldn't ask. The place is squirming +with spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize +humbugs laid down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, +and bowled out myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, +if old man Dante were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of +salubrity for the redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!" + +The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of +fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) +Raffles's only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive +tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we +couldn't drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only +achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. +And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation +as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his. + +"No, Bunny, you couldn't have borne it for half a week; you'd have looked +like that all the time!" quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as +it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. "Cheer up, my man; +that's better," he went on, as I did my best. "But it was no smiling +matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of +humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at +my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no +doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn't much chance of +good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; +mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, +except some aerated muck called Gieshübler. He was allowed to lap that up +an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. +We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked +quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have +known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two +instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks +together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective +that one couldn't get in a word about one's own works edgeways." + +"But there was nothing wrong with your works," I reminded Raffles; he +shook his head as one who was not so sure. + +"Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a +concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. +You see, it's the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for +a doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of +course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the +rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me +from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general +condition. He said I had a liver! I'll swear I hadn't before I went to +Carlsbad, but I shouldn't be a bit surprised if I'd brought one back." + +And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon +the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived. + +"It looks like gold, and it's golden eating," said poor old Raffles. "I +only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve +to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend +the hunting man's that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of +that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of +German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of +the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to +joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in +between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, +Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was +the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion +all the time. And then I didn't mind that part as much as you would, or +as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the doctor's place +one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. +But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala." + +"But did you win those stakes after all?" + +"Of course I did, Bunny," said Raffles below his breath, and with a look +that I remembered later. "But the waiters are listening as it is, and +I'll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought +me back so soon?" + +"Hadn't you finished your cure?" + +"Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the +Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of +fact, if Teddy Garland hadn't got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should +be at Carlsbad still." + +E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one +of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had +made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in +town, where the young fellow's father had a house at which Raffles +became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both +against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son +whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand +the mutual attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed +he was a mere boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a +knowledge of the world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous +spring of sweetness and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could +sensibly pollute. And yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had +been somewhat freely sown, and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and +taken the sower in hand, and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are +made. At least I knew that no one could be sounder friend or saner +counsellor to any young fellow in need of either. And many there must be +to bear me out in their hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I +knew mine; and if they say that was why they thought so much of him, let +them have patience, and at last they shall hear something that need not +make them think the less. + +"I couldn't let poor Teddy keep at Lord's," explained Raffles, "and me +not there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in +those little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly +interest in the child." + +"You must have done him a lot of good," I suggested, "in every way." + +Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was +not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it. + +"Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask +me." + +"I didn't ask you, Bunny, that's just the point!" said Raffles. And I +watched him tip the waiter without the least _arrière-pensée_ on +either side. + +"After all," said I, on our way down the marble stair, "you have told me +a good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot +of debts, for example." + +"So I was afraid," replied Raffles, frankly; "and between ourselves, I +offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn't hear of it; +that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was +perfectly delightful in what he said. So don't jump to rotten +conclusions, Bunny, but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink." + +And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in +the hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place +with Raffles. + +"That," said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, +since I felt at one with all the world, "is certainly the finest +grill in Europe." + +"That's why we went there, Bunny." + +"But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place +where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!" + +I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own +caravanserai. + +"I would go a step further," he remarked, "and make every member show his +badge as they do at Lord's." + +"But surely the porter knows the members by sight?" + +"Not he! There are far too many thousands of them." + +"I should have thought he must." + +"And I know he doesn't." + +"Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you're a member yourself." + +"On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was +one!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +"His Own Familiar Friend" + + +How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been +wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this +was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous +will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London +lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost +theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due +to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I +felt I was the brewers' friend and the vegetarians' foe for life. +Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion's mood, +especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he +had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help +wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that +honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, +such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, to produce. + +So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, +thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was +our good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the +courtyard. + +"There's a gen'leman writing you a letter upstairs," said he to Raffles. +"It's Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up." + +"Teddy!" cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time. + +I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather +critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the +evening was spoilt for me--and God knows I was right! Not till my dying +day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar rooms. I +see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, which +lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a +problem picture itself in flesh and blood. + +Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the +boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had +very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the +sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that was the last of his +natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there +was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to +remind me of the Phoebus in Guido's Aurora, with its healthy pink and +bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our +gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as +if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. +I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each +sunburnt hand. + +"What is it? What are you hiding?" demanded Raffles. His love for the lad +had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular +and genial, but the other's attitude soon strangled that. All this time I +had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned +me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a +guilty face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the +door behind us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk. + +No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no +note young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously +copying into Raffles's cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a +pass-book with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather +back. Raffles had only that year opened a banking account, and I +remembered his telling me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the +instructions on his cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise +the fact. And this was the result. A glance convicted his friend of +criminal intent: a sheet of notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. +Yet Raffles could turn and look with infinite pity upon the miserable +youth who was still looking defiantly on him. + +"My poor chap!" was all he said. + +And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and +quavering old man. + +"Won't you hand me over and be done with it?" he croaked. "Must you +torture me yourself?" + +It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the +fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired +whether he had thought it all out before. + +"God knows I hadn't, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I +did," said Garland with a sudden sob. + +"No need to swear it," returned Raffles, actually smiling. "Your word's +quite good enough for me." + +"God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible +disorder now. + +"It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. + +"Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, +and my refusing it?" + +"Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness +that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter +to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such +conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which +seemed to me rather to aggravate the offence. + +"I have regretted that refusal ever since," young Garland continued very +simply. "It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it's +been a tragedy. Money I must have; I'll tell you why directly. When I got +your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been +answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind +to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet +I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back +to-night; and you weren't here when I came. I telephoned and found that +the train had come in all right, and that there wasn't another until the +morning. Tomorrow morning's my limit, and to-morrow's the match." He +stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. "Don't, Raffles, I don't +deserve it!" he added in fresh distress. + +But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the +corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to +the guilty youth. + +"Drink some," he said, "or I won't listen to another word." + +"I'm going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!" the poor fellow +insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. "And it'll break my +father's heart, and--and--" + +I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; +but either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward +in spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a +further explanation of his conduct. + +"I only came up to leave a line for Raffles," he said to me, "in case he +did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that +bureau. He'll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw +before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your +pass-book bulging with old cheques." + +"And as I wasn't back to write one for you," said Raffles, "you wrote it +for me. And quite right, too!" + +"Don't laugh at me!" cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he +looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the +sprightly sympathy of his friend. + +"I'm not laughing, Teddy," replied Raffles kindly. "I was never more +serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in +your fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my +back rather than let me feel I'd ruined you by not turning up in time. +You may shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a +higher compliment." + +And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less +miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing +really dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor +to accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down +upon himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet +there was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something +that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we +took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he +indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old +story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I +suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of +Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless +extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace +is constitutionally quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. +Suffice it that this one had thrown himself on his father's generosity, +only to find that the father himself was in financial straits. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "with that house on his hands?" + +"I knew it would surprise you," said Teddy Garland. "I can't understand +it myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for +me. I simply couldn't tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a +cheque for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that +I swore I'd never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!" + +The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then +he paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out +between his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde +young face, with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw +Raffles look another way until the match was blown out. + +"But at the time I might have done worse, and did," said Teddy, "a +thousand times! I went to the Jews. That's the whole trouble. There were +more debts--debts of honour--and to square up I went to the Jews. It was +only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you may know, +though I didn't, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the hands of +those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory note for +four hundred and fifty-six." + +"Only fifty per cent!" said Raffles. "You got off cheap if the percentage +was per annum." + +"Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The +four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty +quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. +That was soon after Christmas, when one's always hard up, and for the +first time I was a day or two late--not more, mind you; yet what do you +suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed balance +demanded on the nail!" + +Raffles was following intently, with that complete concentration which +was a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at +anything he heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge +upon the bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been +but for the kink in his nature which had made him what he was. + +"The promissory note was for four-fifty-six," said he, "and this sudden +demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?" + +"That's it." + +"What did you do?" I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp +of the case. + +"Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!" + +"And they?" + +"Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down +on me for--what do you suppose?" + +"Getting on for a thousand," said Raffles after a moment's thought. + +"Nonsense!" I cried. Garland looked astonished too. + +"Raffles knows all about it," said he. "Seven hundred was the actual +figure. I needn't tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since +the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. +And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I'll trouble you, +from the beginning of January down to date!" + +"Had you agreed to that?" + +"Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my +promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above +everything else when the original interest wasn't forthcoming." + +"Printed or written on your note of hand?" + +"Printed--printed small, I needn't tell you--but quite large enough for +me to read when I signed the cursed bond. In fact I believe I did read +it; but a halfpenny a week! Who could ever believe it would mount up like +that? But it does; it's right enough, and the long and short of it is +that unless I pay up by twelve o'clock to-morrow the governor's to be +called in to say whether he'll pay up for me or see me made a bankrupt +under his nose. Twelve o'clock, when the match begins! Of course they +know that, and are trading on it. Only this evening I had the most +insolent ultimatum, saying it was my 'dead and last chance.'" + +"So then you came round here?" + +"I was coming in any case. I wish I'd shot myself first!" + +"My dear fellow, it was doing me proud; don't let us lose our sense of +proportion, Teddy." + +But young Garland had his face upon his hand, and once more he was the +miserable man who had begun brokenly to unfold the history of his shame. +The unconscious animation produced by the mere unloading of his heart, +the natural boyish slang with which his tale had been freely garnished, +had faded from his face, had died upon his lips. Once more he was a soul +in torments of despair and degradation; and yet once more did the absence +of the abject in man and manner redeem him from the depths of either. In +these moments of reaction he was pitiful, but not contemptible, much less +unlovable. Indeed, I could see the qualities that had won the heart of +Raffles as I had never seen them before. There is a native nobility not +to be destroyed by a single descent into the ignoble, an essential +honesty too bright and brilliant to be dimmed by incidental dishonour; +and both remained to the younger man, in the eyes of the other two, who +were even then determining to preserve in him all that they themselves +had lost. The thought came naturally enough to me. And yet I may well +have derived it from a face that for once was easy to read, a clear-cut +face that had never looked so sharp in profile, or, to my knowledge, half +so gentle in expression. + +"And what about these Jews?" asked Raffles at length. + +"There's really only one." + +"Are we to guess his name?" + +"No, I don't mind telling you. It's Dan Levy." + +"Of course it is!" cried Raffles with a nod for me. "Our Mr. Shylock in +all his glory!" + +Teddy snatched his face from his hands. + +"You don't know him, do you?" + +"I might almost say I know him at home," said Raffles. "But as a matter +of fact I met him abroad." + +Teddy was on his feet. + +"But do you know him well enough--" + +"Certainly. I'll see him in the morning. But I ought to have the receipts +for the various instalments you have paid, and perhaps that letter saying +it was your last chance." + +"Here they all are," said Garland, producing a bulky envelope. "But of +course I'll come with you--" + +"Of course you'll do nothing of the kind, Teddy! I won't have your eye +put out for the match by that old ruffian, and I'm not going to let you +sit up all night either. Where are you staying, my man?" + +"Nowhere yet. I left my kit at the club. I was going out home if I'd +caught you early enough." + +"Stout fellow! You stay here." + +"My dear old man, I couldn't think of it," said Teddy gratefully. + +"My dear young man, I don't care whether you think of it or not. Here you +stay, and moreover you turn in at once. I can fix you up with all you +want, and Barraclough shall bring your kit round before you're awake." + +"But you haven't got a bed, Raffles?" + +"You shall have mine. I hardly ever go to bed--do I, Bunny?" + +"I've seldom seen you there," said I. + +"But you were travelling all last night?" + +"And straight through till this evening, and I sleep all the time in a +train," said Raffles. "I hardly opened an eye all day; if I turned in +to-night I shouldn't get a wink." + +"Well, I shan't either," said the other hopelessly. "I've forgotten how +to sleep!" + +"Wait till I learn you!" said Raffles, and went into the inner room and +lit it up. + +"I'm terribly sorry about it all," whispered young Garland, turning to me +as though we were old friends now. + +"And I'm sorry for you," said I from my heart. "I know what it is." + +Garland was still staring when Raffles returned with a tiny bottle from +which he was shaking little round black things into his left palm. + +"Clean sheets yawning for you, Teddy," said he. "And now take two of +these, and one more spot of whisky, and you'll be asleep in ten minutes." + +"What are they?" + +"Somnol. The latest thing out, and quite the best." + +"But won't they give me a frightful head?" + +"Not a bit of it; you'll be as right as rain ten minutes after you wake +up. And you needn't leave this before eleven to-morrow morning, because +you don't want a knock at the nets, do you?" + +"I ought to have one," said Teddy seriously. But Raffles laughed +him to scorn. + +"They're not playing you for runs, my man, and I shouldn't run any risks +with those hands. Remember all the chances they're going to lap up +to-morrow, and all the byes they've not got to let!" + +And Raffles had administered his opiate before the patient knew much more +about it; next minute he was shaking hands with me, and the minute after +that Raffles went in to put out his light. He was gone some little time; +and I remember leaning out of the window in order not to overhear the +conversation in the next room. The night was nearly as fine as ever. The +starry ceiling over the Albany Courtyard was only less beautifully blue +than when Raffles and I had come in a couple of hours ago. The traffic in +Piccadilly came as crisply to the ear as on a winter's night of hard +frost. It was a night of wine, and sparkling wine, and the day at Lord's +must surely be a day of nectar. I could not help wondering whether any +man had ever played in the University match with such a load upon his +soul as E.M. Garland was taking to his forced slumbers; and then whether +any heavy-laden soul had ever hit upon two such brother confessors as +Raffles and myself! + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Council of War + + +Raffles was humming a snatch of something too choice for me to recognise +when I drew in my head from the glorious night. The folding-doors were +shut, and the grandfather's clock on one side of them made it almost +midnight. Raffles would not stop his tune for me, but he pointed to the +syphon and decanter, and I replenished my glass. He had a glass beside +him also, which was less usual, but he did not sit down beside his glass; +he was far too fidgety for that; even bothering about a pair of pictures +which had changed places under some zealous hand in his absence, or +rather two of Mr. Hollyer's fine renderings of Watts and Burne-Jones of +which I had never seen Raffles take the slightest notice before. But it +seemed that they must hang where he had hung them, and for once I saw +them hanging straight. The books had also suffered from good intentions; +he gave them up with a shrug. Archives and arcana he tested or examined, +and so a good many minutes passed without a word. But when he stole back +into the inner room, after waiting a little at the folding-doors, there +was still some faint strain upon his lips; it was only when he returned, +shutting the door none too quietly behind him, that he stopped humming +and spoke out with a grimmer face than he had worn all night. + +"That boy's in a bigger hole than he thinks. But we must pull him out +between us before play begins. It's one clear call for us, Bunny!" + +"Is it a bigger hole than you thought?" I asked, thinking myself of the +conversation which I had managed not to overhear. + +"I don't say that, Bunny, though I never should have dreamt of his old +father being in one too. I own I can't understand that. They live in a +regular country house in the middle of Kensington, and there are only the +two of them. But I've given Teddy my word not to go to the old man for +the money, so it's no use talking about it." + +But apparently it was what they had been talking about behind the +folding-doors; it only surprised me to see how much Raffles took +it to heart. + +"So you have made up your mind to raise the money elsewhere?" + +"Before that lad in there opens his eyes." + +"Is he asleep already?" + +"Like the dead," said Raffles, dropping into his chair and drinking +thoughtfully; "and so he will be till we wake him up. It's a ticklish +experiment, Bunny, but even a splitting head for the first hour's play is +better than a sleepless night; I've tried both, so I ought to know. I +shouldn't even wonder if he did himself more than justice to-morrow; one +often does when just less than fit; it takes off that dangerous edge of +over-keenness which so often cuts one's own throat." + +"But what do you think of it all, A.J.?" + +"Not so much worse than I let him think I thought." + +"But you must have been amazed?" + +"I am past amazement at the worst thing the best of us ever does, and +contrariwise of course. Your rich man proves a pauper, and your honest +man plays the knave; we're all of us capable of every damned thing. But +let us thank our stars and Teddy's that we got back just when we did." + +"Why at that moment?" + +Raffles produced the unfinished cheque, shook his head over it, and sent +it fluttering across to me. + +"Was there ever such a childish attempt? They'd have kept him in the bank +while they sent for the police. If ever you want to play this game, +Bunny, you must let me coach you up a bit." + +"But it was never one of your games, A.J.!" + +"Only incidentally once or twice; it never appealed to me," said Raffles, +sending expanding circlets of smoke to crown the girls on the Golden +Stair that was no longer tilted in a leaning tower. "No, Bunny, an +occasional _exeat_ at school is my modest record as a forger, though I +admit that augured ill. Do you remember how I left my cheque-book about +on purpose for what's happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning, +in all the papers, would have set one up as an honest man for life. I +thought, God forgive me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that +kind. And to think it should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'! +Not that I ever did confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad." + +Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was +speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the +best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty _jeux d'esprit_. +This Raffles only meant half he said--but had generally done the other +half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own _Whitaker_) that +the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that +night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile. + +"I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we +could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the +sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken _ex itinere_. It's a +case for the _testudo_ and all the rest of it. You must remember that +I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if one +may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was as +impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon the +very rock of defence!" + +"You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his +kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there +was no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience +till all hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I +wanted fewer fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual +lantern. And yet these were the very moments that inspired his +pyrotechnic displays. + +"Oh, I shall tell you all right," said Raffles. "But just now the next +few hours are of more importance than the last few weeks. Of course +Shylock's the man for our money; but knowing our tribesmen as I do, I +think we had better begin by borrowing it like simple Christians." + +"Then we have it to pay back again." + +"And that's the psychological moment for raiding our 'miser's sunless +coffers'--if he happens to have any. It will give us time to find out." + +"But he doesn't keep open office all night," I objected. + +"But he opens at nine o'clock in the morning," said Raffles, "to catch +the early stockbroker who would rather be bled than hammered." + +"Who told you that?" + +"Our Mrs. Shylock." + +"You must have made great friends with her?" + +"More in pity than for the sake of secrets." + +"But you went where the secrets were?" + +"And she gave them away wholesale." + +"She would," I said, "to you." + +"She told me a lot about the impending libel action." + +"Shylock _v. Fact?_" + +"Yes; it's coming on before the vacation, you know." + +"So I saw in some paper." + +"But you know what it's all about, Bunny?" + +"No, I don't." + +"Another old rascal, the Maharajah of Hathipur, and his perfectly +fabulous debts. It seems he's been in our Mr. Shylock's clutches for +years, but instead of taking his pound of flesh he's always increasing +the amount. Of course that's the whole duty of money-lenders, but now +they say the figure runs well into six. No one has any sympathy with that +old heathen; he's said to have been a pal of Nana's before the Mutiny, +and in it up to the neck he only saved by turning against his own lot in +time; in any case it's the pot and the kettle so far as moral colour is +concerned. But I believe it's an actual fact that syndicates have been +formed to buy up the black man's debts and take a reasonable interest, +only the dirty white man always gets to windward of the syndicate. +They're on the point of bringing it off, when old Levy inveigles the +nigger into some new Oriental extravagance. _Fact_ has exposed the whole +thing, and printed blackmailing letters which Shylock swears are +forgeries. That's both their cases in a philippine! The leeches told the +Jew he must do his Carlsbad this year before the case came on; and the +tremendous amount it's going to cost may account for his dunning old +clients the moment he gets back." + +"Then why should he lend to you?" + +"I'm a new client, Bunny; that makes all the difference. Then we were +very good pals out there." + +"But you and Mrs. Shylock were better still?" + +"Unbeknowns, Bunny! She used to tell me her troubles when I lent her an +arm and took due care to look a martyr; my hunting friend had coarse +metaphors about heavy-weights and the knacker's yard." + +"And yet you came away with the poor soul's necklace?" + +Raffles was tapping the chronic cigarette on the table at his elbow; he +stood up to light it, as one does stand up to make the dramatic +announcements of one's life, and he spoke through the flame of the match +as it rose and fell between his puffs. + +"No--Bunny--I did not!" + +"But you told me you won the Emerald Stakes!" I cried, jumping up +in my turn. + +"So I did, Bunny, but I gave them back again." + +"You gave yourself away to her, as she'd given him away to you?" + +"Don't be a fool, Bunny," said Raffles, subsiding into his chair. "I +can't tell you the whole thing now, but here are the main heads. They're +at the Savoy Hotel, in Carlsbad I mean. I go to Pupp's. We meet. They +stare. I come out of my British shell as the humble hero of the affair at +the other Savoy. I crab my hotel. They swear by theirs. I go to see their +rooms. I wait till I can get the very same thing immediately overhead on +the second floor--where I can even hear the old swine cursing her from +under his mud-poultice! Both suites have balconies that might have been +made for me. Need I go on?" + +"I wonder you weren't suspected." + +"There's no end to your capacity for wonder, Bunny. I took some sweet old +rags with me on purpose, carefully packed inside a decent suit, and I had +the luck to pick up a foul old German cap that some peasant had cast off +in the woods. I only meant to leave it on them like a card; as it +was--well, I was waiting for the best barber in the place to open his +shop next morning." + +"What had happened?" + +"A whole actful of unrehearsed effects; that's why I think twice before +taking on old Shylock again. I admire him, Bunny, as a steely foeman. I +look forward to another game with him on his own ground. But I must find +out the pace of the wicket before I put myself on." + +"I suppose you had tea with them, and all that sort of thing?" + +"Gieshübler!" said Raffles with a shudder. "But I made it last as long as +tea, and thought I had located the little green lamps before I took my +leave. There was a japanned despatch box in one corner. 'That's the +Emerald Isle,' I thought, 'I'll soon have it out of the sea. The old man +won't trust 'em to the old lady after what happened in town,' I needn't +tell you I knew they were there somewhere; he made her wear them even at +the tragic travesty of a Carlsbad hotel dinner." + +Raffles was forgetting to be laconic now. I believe he had forgotten +the lad in the next room, and everything else but the breathless battle +that he was fighting over again for my benefit. He told me how he +waited for a dark night, and then slid down from his sitting-room +balcony to the one below. And my emeralds were not in the japanned box +after all; and just as he had assured himself of the fact, the +folding-doors opened "as it might be these," and there stood Dan Levy +"in a suit of swagger silk pyjamas." + +"They gave me a sudden respect for him," continued Raffles; "it struck +me, for the first time, that mud baths mightn't be the only ones he ever +took. His face was as evil as ever, but he was utterly unarmed, and I was +not; and yet there he stood and abused me like a pickpocket, as if there +was no chance of my firing, and he didn't care whether I did or not. So I +stuck my revolver nearly in his face, and pulled the hammer up and up. +Good God, Bunny, if I had pulled too hard! But that made him blink a bit, +and I was jolly glad to let it down again. 'Out with those emeralds,' +says I in low German mugged up in case of need. Of course you realise +that I was absolutely unrecognisable, a low blackguard with a blackened +face. 'I don't know what you mean,' says he, 'and I'm damned if I care.' +'_Das halsband_, says I, which means the necklace. 'Go to hell,' says he. +But I struck myself and shook my head and then my fist at him and nodded. +He laughed in my face; and upon my soul we were at a deadlock. So I +pointed to the clock and held up one finger. 'I've one minute to live, +old girl,' says he through the doors, 'if this rotter has the guts to +shoot, and I don't think he has. Why the hell don't you get out the other +way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the +old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left +hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her +and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German +that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be +_ein toter Englander_! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was +meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging +on to him, instead of him to her!" + +I emptied my lungs and my glass too. Raffles took a sip himself. + +"But the rope was fixed to _your_ balcony, A.J.?" + +"But I began by fixing the other end to theirs, and the moment I was +safely up I undid my end and dropped it clear to the ground. They found +it dangling all right when out they rushed together. Of course I'd picked +the right ball in the way of nights; it was bone-dry as well as +pitch-dark, and in five minutes I was helping the rest of the hotel to +search for impossible footprints on the gravel, and to stamp out any +there might conceivably have been." + +"So nobody ever suspected you?" + +"Not a soul, I can safely say; I was the first my victims bored with the +whole yarn." + +"Then why return the swag? It's an old trick of yours, Raffles, but in a +case like this, with a pig like that, I confess I don't see the point." + +"You forget the poor old lady, Bunny. She had a dog's life before; after +that the beans he gave her weren't even fit for a dog. I loved her for +her pluck in standing up to him; it beat his hollow in standing up to me; +there was only one reward for her, and it was in my gift." + +"But how on earth did you manage that?" + +"Not by public presentation, Bunny, nor yet by taking the old dame into +my confidence _more cuniculi!"_ + +"I suppose you returned the necklace anonymously?" + +"As a low-down German burglar would be sure to do! No, Bunny, I planted +it in the woods where I knew it would be found. And then I had to watch +lest it was found by the wrong sort. But luckily Mr. Shylock had sprung a +substantial reward, and all came right in the end. He sent his doctor to +blazes, and had a buck feed and lashings on the night it was recovered. +The hunting man and I were invited to the thanksgiving spread; but I +wouldn't budge from the diet, and he was ashamed to unless I did. It made +a coolness between us, and now I doubt if we shall ever have that +enormous dinner we used to talk about to celebrate our return from a +living tomb." + +But I was not interested in that shadowy fox-hunter. "Dan Levy's a +formidable brute to tackle," said I at length, and none too buoyantly. + +"That's a very true observation, Bunny; it's also exactly why I so looked +forward to tackling him. It ought to be the kind of conflict that the +halfpenny press have learnt to call Homeric." + +"Are you thinking of to-morrow, or of when it comes to robbing Peter to +pay Peter?" + +"Excellent, Bunny!" cried Raffles, as though I had made a shot worthy of +his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains +and displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across +it. "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned +them from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up +o' nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our +methods. What a lot the two old pets must have missed!" + +"You haven't answered my question," said I resignedly. "Nor have you told +me how you propose to go to work to raise this money in the first +instance." + +"If you like to light another Sullivan," said Raffles, "and mix yourself +another very small and final one, I can tell you now, Bunny." + +And tell me he did. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +"Our Mr. Shylock" + + +I have often wondered in what pause or phase of our conversation Raffles +hit upon the plan which we duly carried out; for we had been talking +incessantly, since his arrival about eight o'clock at night, until two in +the morning. Yet that which we discussed between two and three was what +we actually did between nine and ten, with the single exception +necessitated by an altogether unforeseen development, of which the less +said the better until the proper time. The foresight and imagination of a +Raffles are obviously apt to outstrip his spoken words; but even in the +course of speech his ideas would crystallise, quite palpably to the +listener, and the sentence that began by throwing out a shadowy idea +would culminate in a definite project, as the image comes into focus +under the lens, and with as much detail into the bargain. + +Suffice it that after a long night of it at the Albany, and but a bath +and a cup of tea at my own flat, I found Raffles waiting for me in +Piccadilly, and down we went together to the jaws of Jermyn Street. There +we nodded, and I was proceeding down the hill when I turned on my heel as +though I had forgotten something, and entered Jermyn Street not fifty +yards behind Raffles. I had no thought of catching him up. But it so +happened that I was in his wake in time to witness a first _contretemps_ +which did not amount to much at the time; this was merely the violent +exit of another of Dan Levy's early callers into the very arms of +Raffles. There was a heated apology, accepted with courteous composure, +and followed by an excited outpouring which I did not come near enough to +overhear. It was delivered by a little man in an aureole of indigo hair, +who brushed his great sombrero violently as he spoke and Raffles +listened. I could see from their manner that the collision which had just +occurred was not the subject under discussion; but I failed to +distinguish a word, though I listened outside a hatter's until Raffles +had gone in and his new acquaintance had passed me with blazing eyes and +a volley of husky vows in broken English. + +"Another of Mr. Shylock's victims," thought I; and indeed he might have +been bleeding internally from the loss of his pound of flesh; at any rate +there was bloodshed in his eyes. + +I stood a long time outside that hatter's window, and finally went in to +choose a cap. But the light is wicked in those narrow shops, and this +necessitated my carrying several caps to the broad daylight of the +threshold to gauge their shades, and incidentally to achieve a swift +survey of the street. Then they crowned me with an ingenious apparatus +like a typewriter, to get the exact shape and measure of my skull, for I +had intimated that I had no desire to dress it anywhere else for the +future. All this must have taken up the most of twenty minutes, yet after +getting as far as Mr. Shylock's I remembered that I required what one's +hatter (and no one else) calls a "boater," and back I went to order one +in addition to the cap. And as the next tack fetches the buoy, so my next +perambulation (in which, however, I was thinking seriously of a new +bowler) brought me face to face with Raffles once more. + +We shouted and shook hands; our encounter had taken place almost under +the money-lender's windows, and it was so un-English in its cordiality +that between our slaps and grasps Raffles managed deftly to insert a +stout packet in my breast pocket. I cannot think the most critical +pedestrian could have seen it done. But streets have as many eyes as +Argus, and some of them are always on one. + +"They had to send to the bank for it," whispered Raffles. "It barely +passed through their hands. But don't you let Shylock spot his own +envelope!" + +In another second he was saying something very different that anybody +might have heard, and in yet another he was hustling me across Shylock's +threshold. "I'll take you up and introduce you," he cried aloud. "You +couldn't come to a better man, my dear fellow--he's the only honest one +in Europe. Is Mr. Levy disengaged?" + +A stunted young gentleman, who spoke as though he had a hare-lip or was +in liquor, neither calamity having really befallen him, said that he +thought so, but would see, which he proceeded to do through a telephone, +after shifting the indicator from "Through" to "Private." He slid off his +stool at once, and another youth, of similar appearance and still more +similar peculiarity of speech, who entered in a hurry at that moment, was +told to hold on while he showed the gentlemen up-stairs. There were other +clerks behind the mahogany bulwark, and we heard the newcomer greeting +them hoarsely as we climbed up into the presence. + +Dan Levy, as I must try to call him when Raffles is not varnishing my +tale, looked a very big man at his enormous desk, but by no means so +elephantine as at the tiny table in the Savoy Restaurant a month +earlier. His privations had not only reduced his bulk to the naked eye, +but made him look ten years younger. He wore the habiliments of a +gentleman; even as he sat at his desk his well-cut coat and well-tied tie +filled me with that inconsequent respect which the silk pyjamas had +engendered in Raffles. But the great face that greeted us with a shrewd +and rather scornful geniality impressed me yet more powerfully. In its +massive features and its craggy contour it displayed the frank pugnacity +of the pugilist rather than the low cunning of the traditional usurer; +and the nose in particular, while of far healthier appearance than when I +had seen it first and last, was both dominant and menacing in its +immensity. It was a comfort to turn from this formidable countenance to +that of Raffles, who had entered with his own serene unconscious +confidence, and now introduced us with that inimitable air of +light-hearted authority which stamped him in all shades of society. + +"'Appy to meet you, sir. I hope you're well?" said Mr. Levy, dropping one +aspirate but putting in the next with care. "Take a seat, sir, please." + +But I kept my legs, though I felt them near to trembling, and, diving a +hand into a breast pocket, I began working the contents out of the +envelope that Raffles had given me, while I spoke out in a tone +sufficiently rehearsed at the Albany overnight. + +"I'm not so sure about the happiness," said I. "I mean about its lasting, +Mr. Levy. I come from my friend, Mr. Edward Garland." + +"I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much +indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I +could no longer see. + +"I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval +and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well. + +"Who _is_ the little biter?" the money-lender inquired of him with +delightful insolence. + +"An old friend of mine," replied Raffles, in an injured tone that made a +convincing end of the old friendship. "I thought he was hard up, or I +never should have brought him in to introduce to you." + +"I didn't ask you for your introduction, Raffles," said I offensively. "I +simply met you coming out as I was coming in. I thought you damned +officious, if you ask me!" + +Whereupon, with an Anglo-Saxon threat of subsequent violence to my +person, Raffles flung open the door to leave us to our interview. This +was exactly as it had been rehearsed. But Dan Levy called Raffles back. +And that was exactly as we had hoped. + +"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" said the Jew. "Please don't make a cockpit of my +office, gentlemen; and pray, Mr. Raffles, don't leave me to the mercies +of your very dangerous friend." + +"You can be two to one if you like," I gasped valiantly. "_I_ +don't care." + +And my chest heaved in accordance with my stage instructions, as also +with a realism to which it was a relief to give full play. + +"Come now," said Levy. "What did Mr. Garland send you about?" + +"You know well enough," said I: "his debt to you." + +"Don't be rude about it," said Levy. "What about the debt?" + +"It's a damned disgrace!" said I. + +"I quite agree," he chuckled. "It ought to 'ave been settled months ago." + +"Months ago?" I echoed. "It's only twelve months since he borrowed three +hundred pounds from you, and now you're sticking him for seven!" + +"I am," said Levy, opening uncompromising lips that entirely disappeared +again next instant. + +"He borrows three hundred for a year at the outside, and you blackmail +him for eight hundred when the year's up." + +"You said 'seven' just now," interrupted Raffles, but in the voice of a +man who was getting a fright. + +"You also said 'blackmailing,'" added Dan Levy portentously. "Do you want +to be thrown downstairs?" + +"Do _you_ deny the figures?" I retorted. + +"No, I don't; have you got his repayment cards?" + +"Yes, here in my hands, and they shan't leave them. You see, you're not +aware," I added severely, as I turned to Raffles, "that this young fellow +has already paid up one hundred in instalments; that's what makes the +eight; and all this is what'll happen to you if you've been fool enough +to get into the same boat." + +The money-lender had borne with me longer than either of us had expected +that he would; but now he wheeled back his chair and stood up, a pillar +of peril and a mouthful of oaths. + +"Is that all you've come to say?" he thundered. "If so, you young devil, +out you go!" + +"No, it isn't," said I, spreading out a document attached to the cards of +receipt which Raffles had obtained from Teddy Garland; these I had +managed to extract without anything else from the inner pocket in which I +had been trying to empty out Raffles's envelope. "Here," I continued, "is +a letter, written only yesterday, by you to Mr. Garland, in which you +say, among other very insolent things: 'This is final, and absolutely no +excuses of any kind will be tolerated or accepted. You have given ten +times more trouble than your custom is worth, and I shall be glad to get +rid of you. So you had better pay up before twelve o'clock to-morrow, as +you may depend that the above threats will be carried out to the very +letter, and steps will be taken to carry them into effect at that hour. +This is your dead and last chance, and the last time I will write you on +the subject.'" + +"So it is," said Levy with an oath. "This is a very bad case, Mr. +Raffles." + +"I agree," said I. "And may I ask if you propose to 'get rid' of Mr. +Garland by making him 'pay up' in full?" + +"Before twelve o'clock to-day," said Dan Levy, with a snap of his +prize-fighting jaws. + +"Eight hundred, first and last, for the three hundred he borrowed a +year ago?" + +"That's it." + +"Surely that's very hard on the boy," I said, reaching the conciliatory +stage by degrees on which Raffles paid me many compliments later; but at +the time he remarked, "I should say it was his own fault." + +"Of course it is, Mr. Raffles," cried the moneylender, taking a more +conciliatory tone himself. "It was my money; it was my three 'undred +golden sovereigns; and you can sell what's yours for what it'll fetch, +can't you?" + +"Obviously," said Raffles. + +"Very well, then, money's like anything else; if you haven't got it, and +can't beg or earn it, you've got to buy it at a price. I sell my money, +that's all. And I've a right to sell it at a fancy price if I can get a +fancy price for it. A man may be a fool to pay my figure; that depends +'ow much he wants the money at the time, and it's his affair, not mine. +Your gay young friend was all right if he hadn't defaulted, but a +defaulter deserves to pay through the nose, and be damned to him. It +wasn't me let your friend in; he let in himself, with his eyes open. Mr. +Garland knew very well what I was charging him, and what I shouldn't +'esitate to charge over and above if he gave me half a chance. Why should +I? Wasn't it in the bond? What do you all think I run my show for? It's +business, Mr. Raffles, not robbery, my dear sir. All business is +robbery, if you come to that. But you'll find mine is all above-board and +in the bond." + +"A very admirable exposition," said Raffles weightily. + +"Not that it applies to you, Mr. Raffles," the other was adroit enough to +add. "Mr. Garland was no friend of mine, and he was a fool, whereas I +hope I may say that you're the one and not the other." + +"Then it comes to this," said I, "that you mean him to pay up in full +this morning?" + +"By noon, and it's just gone ten." + +"The whole seven hundred pounds?" + +"Sterling," said Mr. Levy "No cheques entertained." + +"Then," said I, with an air of final defeat, "there's nothing for it but +to follow my instructions and pay you now on the nail!" + +I did not look at Levy, but I heard the sudden intake of his breath at +the sight of my bank-notes, and I felt its baleful exhalation on my +forehead as I stooped and began counting them out upon his desk. I had +made some progress before he addressed me in terms of protest. There was +almost a tremor in his voice. I had no call to be so hasty; it looked as +though I had been playing a game with him. Why couldn't I tell him I had +the money with me all the time? The question was asked with a sudden +oath, because I had gone on counting it out regardless of his overtures. +I took as little notice of his anger. + +"And now, Mr. Levy," I concluded, "may I ask you to return me Mr. +Garland's promissory note?" + +"Yes, you may ask and you shall receive!" he snarled, and opened his safe +so violently that the keys fell out. Raffles replaced them with exemplary +promptitude while the note of hand was being found. + +The evil little document was in my possession at last. Levy roared down +the tube, and the young man of the imperfect diction duly appeared. + +"Take that young biter," cried Levy, "and throw him into the street. Call +up Moses to lend you a 'and." + +But the first murderer stood nonplussed, looking from Raffles to me, and +finally inquiring which biter his master meant. + +"That one!" bellowed the money-lender, shaking a lethal fist at me. "Mr. +Raffles is a friend o' mine." + +"But 'e'th a friend of 'ith too," lisped the young man. "Thimeon Markth +come acroth the thtreet to tell me tho. He thaw them thake handth +outthide our plathe, after he'd theen 'em arm-in-arm in Piccadilly, 'an +he come in to thay tho in cathe--" + +But the youth of limited articulation was not allowed to finish his +explanation; he was grasped by the scruff of the neck and kicked and +shaken out of the room, and his collar flung after him. I heard him +blubbering on the stairs as Levy locked the door and put the key in his +pocket. But I did not hear Raffles slip into the swivel chair behind +the desk, or know that he had done so until the usurer and I turned +round together. + +"Out of that!" blustered Levy. + +But Raffles tilted the chair back on its spring and laughed softly +in his face. + +"Not if I know it," said he. "If you don't open the door in about one +minute I shall require this telephone of yours to ring up the police." + +"The police, eh?" said Levy, with a sinister recovery of self-control. +"You'd better leave that to me, you precious pair of swindlers!" + +"Besides," continued Raffles, "of course you keep an _argumentum ad +hominem_ in one of these drawers. Ah, here it is, and just as well in my +hands as in yours!" + +He had opened the top drawer in the right-hand pedestal, and taken +therefrom a big bulldog revolver; it was the work of few moments to empty +its five chambers, and hand the pistol by its barrel to the owner. + +"Curse you!" hissed the latter, hurling it into the fender with a fearful +clatter. "But you'll pay for this, my fine gentlemen; this isn't sharp +practice, but criminal fraud." + +"The burden of proof," said Raffles, "lies with you. Meanwhile, will you +be good enough to open that door instead of looking as sick as a cold +mud-poultice?" + +The money-lender had, indeed, turned as grey as his hair; and his +eyebrows, which were black and looked dyed, stood out like smears of ink. +Nevertheless, the simile which Raffles had employed with his own +unfortunate facility was more picturesque than discreet. I saw it set Mr. +Shylock thinking. Luckily, the evil of the day was sufficient for it and +him; but so far from complying, he set his back to the locked door and +swore a sweet oath never to budge. + +"Oh, very well!" resumed Raffles, and the receiver was at his ear without +more ado. "Is that the Exchange? Give me nine-two-double-three Gerrard, +will you?" + +"It's fraud," reiterated Levy. "And you know it." + +"It's nothing of the sort, and _you_ know it," murmured Raffles, with +the proper pre-occupation of the man at the telephone. + +"You lent the money," I added. "That's your business. It's nothing to do +with you what he chooses to do with it." + +"He's a cursed swindler," hissed Levy. "And you're his damned decoy!" + +I was not sorry to see Raffles's face light up across the desk. + +"Is that Howson, Anstruther and Martin?--they're only my solicitors, Mr. +Levy.... Put me through to Mr. Martin, please.... That you, Charlie? ... +You might come in a cab to Jermyn Street--I forget the number--Dan +Levy's, the money-lender's--thanks, old chap! ... Wait a bit, Charlie--a +constable...." + +But Dan Levy had unlocked his door and flung it open. + +"There you are, you scoundrels! But we'll meet again, my fine +swell-mobsmen!" + +Raffles was frowning at the telephone. + +"I've been cut off," said he. "Wait a bit! Clear call for you, Mr. Levy, +I believe!" + +And they changed places, without exchanging another word until Raffles +and I were on the stairs. + +"Why, the 'phone's not even _through!_" yelled the money-lender, +rushing out. + +"But _we_ are, Mr. Levy!" cried Raffles. And down we ran into the street. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +Thin Air + + +Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised +that he was not coming with me. + +"Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make +him get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in +half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back." + +His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to +escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he +deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which +Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it +as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately +lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of +faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however, +if a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating +over the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious +extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles; +and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we +had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a +species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose +battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his +breakfast, and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab. + +Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was +frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the +morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose. + +"Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out. + +"Of whom, Raffles?" + +"Teddy, of course!" + +"Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?" + +"Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he +is!" + +He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up +to his rooms. + +"But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?" + +"That's what I want to know." + +"Could he have gone out for a paper?" + +"They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed." + +"Or for a shave?" + +"That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour." + +"But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I +understood you left him fast asleep?" + +"That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough +saw him go out ten minutes after me." + +"Could you have disturbed him when you went?" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I +came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave +me a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the +doors after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open +them. I thought something horrible had happened!" + +"You don't think so still?" + +"I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned +out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves +away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up +the enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters, +Bunny; we shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I +should rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in +this rotten way." + +Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his +sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one +that seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind. + +"A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and +sound at Lord's." + +"I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him +then; besides, here's his cricket-bag." + +"He may have been at the club when I fetched it away--I never asked." + +"I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left." + +"Then what about his father's house?" + +"That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but +now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's +there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a +thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the +time it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with +the whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by +Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!" + +We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending +hastily enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man, +and Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we +looked at each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was +out of the room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing. + +"Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add. + +"Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice--in +accents of such acute dismay--that Mr. Garland had my sympathy +before we met. + +"He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute. +Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?" + +The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair +entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected +of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in +retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional +embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder +purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a +gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn +furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my +heart outright. + +"So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're +nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night +or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town +if necessary, and he evidently has." + +There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was +also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles +gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as +distinct from his words and deeds) overnight. + +"And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a +surprise to you, Raffles?" + +Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my +chair. What great news was this? + +"This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my +benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me +here; you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him; +but Miss Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with +us to the match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be +so disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see +very little of each other all day." + +I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this +engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at +night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window. +Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which +extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it +was not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation. +But his face had suddenly lit up. + +"May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you, +Mr. Garland?" + +"It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence." + +"Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?" + +"Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have +had to consult Lady Laura." + +"Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home +while you were on yours into town! How did you come?" + +"In the brougham." + +"Through the Park?" + +"Yes." + +"While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's +how you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight +back you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's." + +Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we +might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a +minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through +Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept +away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and +slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago. +It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all +keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one +side-street to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn +and towering tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more +forcibly (and favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a +house. And yet a double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a +few yards of the steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed. + +Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss +Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature. + +"Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his +books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he +turned to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I +haven't been told, and I insist on knowing what it is." + +"But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving +Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown." + +"What time was that?" + +"Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour." + +"Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?" + +"I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up +rather late." + +"But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you +were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why, +after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not +the first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming +girl; is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?" + +"About his engagement--not that I'm aware." + +"Then he is in some trouble?" + +"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he +isn't now." + +Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair. + +"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you +his confidence, I have no right simply as his father--" + +"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no +right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. +Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it _was_ about some +little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me." + +"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude +and humiliation. + +"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so +serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment." + +"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his +voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right +man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he +muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and +bent his head over his folded arms. + +He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance +in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his +watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour +now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master +recovered his self-control. + +"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's +for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose +it's Miss Belsize again." + +"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you +were not to be disturbed." + +"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of +trouble in his tone. "Listen to this--listen to this," he went on before +the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you +don't turn up in time.--J. S.'" + +"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper." + +"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" + +"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns +out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will +still be too late for him to play." + +"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his +chair with a groan. + +"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way." + +"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned +straight from Lord's--probably within the last few minutes--to a +messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!" + +Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look +ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his +back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a +monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the +adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but +this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well +have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a +panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and +straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with +an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy +fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in +the body of the room. + +"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a +barometer, Mr. Garland?" + +"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket." + +"How often do you set the indicator?" + +"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I +went to bed. It made me anxious." + +"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this +morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!" + +In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and +assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery. + +"Something has happened to my boy!" + +"But not necessarily anything terrible." + +"If I knew what, Raffles--if only I knew what!" + +Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He +himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the +rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute. + +"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, +we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your +help, sir." + +"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles." + +"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are." + +"Where I am?" + +"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential +to my idea." + +"And that is, Raffles?" + +"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up +to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he +shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment." + +"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked. + +"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his +face for the time being, at all events at Lord's." + +"But that's the only place that matters," said I. + +"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as +Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in +the next room now." + +"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself." + +"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I +thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from +her, sir." + +"I?" + +"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil +her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for +an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. +Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them +in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and +the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself." + +"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held +out his hand. + +"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another +five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself +in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may +be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from +me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the +better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark +at this end." + +"Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard +task for me!" + +"It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I +promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind." + +With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that +turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my +leave of him. + +"What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl +and hide my own anxiety?" + +"There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If +either of them is a one-man job, it's mine." + +Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not +but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the +drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an +umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour +into the brougham. + +"I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the +coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, +but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We +should have opened a safe for that seven hundred." + +"But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary +disappearance?" + +"Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land +of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his +insanity." + +"And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you +disapprove of it?" + +"Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged +from under my umbrella into the brougham. + +"Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl +beneath him?" + +Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes. + +"You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to +hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!" + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Camilla Belsize + + +It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the +amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a "country house in +Kensington." There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so +welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the +rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not +the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was +another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and +tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work +to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention +overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. +To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help +feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in +these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me +until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to +Teddy Garland at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping +Raffles to keep the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and +on the point of helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse +still from his daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the +worst of all to be hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me! + +Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out +from the conservatory in a continuous chain--each link with its own +temperature and its individual scent--and not a pane but rattled and +streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing +fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of +the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to +Miss Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face +must have made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the +same smile again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I +really think she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment. + +So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. +Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well +as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but +emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy +with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with +unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really +was a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was +wasting what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I +could suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still. + +"And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under +shelter, Miss Belsize." Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored. + +"But there's plenty of shelter there," said she. + +"Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it +before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know." + +"But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?" + +"They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting." + +That was a rash remark. + +"Then why doesn't Teddy come back?" + +"Oh, well, you know," I hedged, "you can never be quite absolutely sure. +It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. +And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn." + +"I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch," said Miss +Belsize, "even if he had to go back afterwards." + +"I shouldn't wonder if he did come," said I, conceiving the bare +possibility: "and A.J. with him." + +"Do you mean Mr. Raffles?" + +"Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!" + +Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had +confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. +Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been +watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold +profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her +out of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers +dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, +calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental--all that and more as I see them +now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled. + +"So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?" said Miss Belsize, harking +back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us. + +"Rather!" I replied. + +"Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?" + +I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. "Raffles and I were +at school together," I added loftily. + +"Really? I should have thought he was before your time." + +"No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag." + +"And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?" inquired Miss Belsize, +not by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own +devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little +jealousy of Raffles. + +"He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school," said I: +"captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic +champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth." + +"And you worshipped him, I suppose?" + +"Absolutely." + +My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she +looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes. + +"You must be rather disappointed in him now!" + +"Disappointed! Why?" I asked with much outward amusement. But I was +beginning to feel uncomfortable. + +"Of course I don't know much about him," remarked Miss Belsize as though +she cared less. + +"But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?" + +"I do," said I, with injudicious alacrity. + +"Well," said Miss Belsize, "what else is he?" + +"The best fellow in the world, among other things." + +"But what other things?" + +"Ask Teddy!" I said unluckily. + +"I have," replied Miss Belsize. "But Teddy doesn't know. He often +wonders how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing +any work." + +"Does he, indeed!" + +"Many people do." + +"And what do they say about him?" + +Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather +longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been +turned on again, before she answered: + +"More than their prayers, no doubt!" + +"Do you mean," I almost gasped, "as to the way Raffles gets his living?" + +"Yes." + +"You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!" + +"But if there's no truth in them?" + +"I'll soon tell you if there is or not." + +"But suppose I don't care either way?" said Miss Belsize with a +brilliant smile. + +"Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you." + +"Mind, I don't believe it myself, Mr. Manders." + +"You don't believe--" + +"That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and--his cricket!" + +I jumped to my feet. + +"Is that all they say about him?" I cried. + +"Isn't it enough?" asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my +demeanour. + +"Oh, quite enough, quite enough!" said I. "It's only the most +scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got +about--that's all!" + +This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that +one's first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to +discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was +unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth. + +"Yet you seemed to expect something worse," she said at length. + +"What could be worse?" I asked, my back against the wall of my own +indiscretion. "Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal +thing than a paid amateur!" + +"But you haven't told me what he _is_, Mr. Manders." + +"And you haven't told me, Miss Belsize, why you're so interested in A. J. +after all!" I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on +the strength of it. + +But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my +ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite +frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than +she cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was +the only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and +censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. +Mr. Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered +whether he was quite a good friend; and there I had "the whole thing in a +nutshell." + +I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too +often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I +did not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as +jealousy did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved +on that point. + +We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the +rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house +and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite +refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the +still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla's +mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently +impecunious widow reduced to "semi-detachment down the river" and +suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with +vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking +cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction +that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the +uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast +under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not +unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles +himself who had made it known to her. Raffles, whom she did not "know +much about," or consider "quite a good friend" for Teddy Garland! + +I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was +the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland +told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger +earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, +considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a +strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so +far infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon +with far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us +again until the butler with a visitor's card brought about his abrupt +departure from the conservatory. + +Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss +Belsize could have had her way we should all have started for Lord's that +minute. I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, +coldly scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. +Lord's would be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been +abandoned on that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure +about that; why should we not drive over and find out? I said that was +the surest way of missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there +and back in a half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but +said if we went at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, +and that in his own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and +when Miss Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my +ground, I could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the +softened gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss +Belsize took my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, +though with none too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw +what I had been curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path +towards us. And I saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking +hands with him. + +"They've given it up as a bad job at last," said he. "I've just come from +Lord's, and Teddy won't be very long." + +"Why didn't you bring him with you?" asked Miss Belsize pertinently. + +"Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once," said Raffles, +rather lamely for him; "and then a man playing in a 'Varsity match is +never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn't to keep you +waiting much longer." + +It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it +pretty plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had +been waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an +end she must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to +Mr. Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I +believe it took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her +intention, however hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the +conservatory and the library door, while Raffles and I went through into +the hall the other way. + +"I'm afraid I've put my foot in it," said he to me. "But it's just as +well, since I needn't tell you there's no sign of Teddy up at Lord's." + +"Have you been there all day?" I asked him under my breath. + +"Except when I went to the office of this rag," replied Raffles, +brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. "See what +they say about Teddy here." + +And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in +the stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and +Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, "owing +to the serious illness of his father." + +"His father!" I exclaimed. "Why, his father's closeted with somebody or +other at this very moment behind the door you're looking at!" + +"I know, Bunny. I've seen him." + +"But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I +don't wonder you went to the office about it." + +"You'll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the +staff." + +"Of course you made him take it straight out?" + +"On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!" + +And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a +more felonious--but less incomprehensible--exploit. + +"Didn't you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library +this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on +fact. I wonder you don't see the point; as a matter of fact, there are +two points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was +to find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord's. Well, I +haven't actually found him yet; but if he's in the land of the living he +will see this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what +he will do! Meanwhile, there's nothing but sympathy for him at Lord's. +Studley couldn't have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to +the eleventh hour to-morrow. And if that isn't killing two birds with one +stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!" + +"But what will old Garland say, A. J.?" + +"He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note +before lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what +I had done. He doesn't mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save +his face before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look +out, Bunny--here she is!" + +The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it +was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the +hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I +suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal +pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had +taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven +both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago. + +"I didn't go into the library after all," she said, looking askance at +the library door. "I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview +with somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man's face as I hesitated, and +I thought I recognised him." + +"Who was it?" I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather +mysterious visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so +abruptly in the conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in +the hour of so many issues. + +"I believe it's a dreadful man I know by sight down the river," said +Miss Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened +and out came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the +usurer of European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain +enemy for life. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +In Which We Fail to Score + + +Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was +evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we +were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a +terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice +he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of +mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and +delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed +to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue +from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. +Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as +he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; +for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all +knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an +exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an +ordinary guest. + +"You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that +worthy with a certain _aplomb_. "I know you very well by sight, Miss +Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain." + +"Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at +her command. + +"The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not +meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up +with adroit urbanity. + +"I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though +bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the +worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to +repent it." + +It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the +eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the +look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only +interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged +her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in +turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to +himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from +doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the +money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no +longer the sole anxiety. + +"And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the +firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?" + +"Where was that, Miss Belsize?" + +"Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I +know, but I forget the name of the place." + +"Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?" + +I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was +merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair. + +"Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I +remember now." + +"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An +unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a +desperate criminal with a loaded revolver." + +"Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize. + +Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with +the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the +episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a +mind to impart. + +"It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling +it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss +Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came +in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for +me and my wife." + +"Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland. + +Miss Belsize only stared. + +"Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting +Mr. Levy." + +"Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host. +And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the +first he had heard of it. + +"But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles, +"except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back +last night." + +"But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!" + +"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. +"Isn't it, Mr. Levy?" + +"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender. + +They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder +against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring +at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the +three of them by turns from the other side of the hall. + +"But you're the fittest man I know. Raffles," pursued old Garland with +terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?" + +"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there, +Mr. Levy?" + +Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles: + +"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your +wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives +them back again!" + +The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and +myself in his own office that very morning. + +"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her +silence on an eager note. + +Raffles turned to her at once. + +"The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there +everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy +has the better information." + +Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I +followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word. + +"I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the +wilds of Austria," said I. + +"There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman +knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His +'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is +nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was +actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was +marked down at some London theatre--or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?" + +"I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily +as their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you +were one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?" + +"Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no +doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious +from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was +as obvious a mistake. + +"Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and +Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed +that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver." + +"We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might +'ave been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no +error about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye +looking along the barrel into mine--as plainly as I'm looking into yours +now, Mr. Raffles." + +Raffles laughed outright. + +"I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me +that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat." + +"So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have +done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white +as yours are." + +"Any other little point in common?" + +"I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver." + +Raffles held out his hands. + +"Better have a good look at mine." + +"His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or +better kept." + +"Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy." + +"You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles." + +"You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily. + +"I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through +and through. + +"And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly +look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that +maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy. + +For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I +declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest +eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the +two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer +shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert +battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should +accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw +him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was +easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we +might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless +denunciation. + +"Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us +who it was?" + +"Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I +know all about him now!" + +I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set, +her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles +during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the +only entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the +firelit hall. + +Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that +kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed +almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang +up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in +the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst. + +Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a +syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood +gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had +the hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had +put it in? Was there any truth in it at all? + +"None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was +never better in my life." + +"Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I +suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to +lay hands on the joker!" + +His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring +himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the +appearance of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the +contrary, he looked both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his +sudden fit of passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered +so humiliated and abased. + +Raffles came forward from the fireside. + +"There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar +for bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm +the only one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of +you all day." + +Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going +to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had +really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and +then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance +which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance +was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which +was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us +with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report +about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him +the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him +and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were +brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their +friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they +fell upon his bugbear in the background. + +"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly +enough once he had found his voice. + +"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh. + +"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking +about, Teddy?" + +"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost +harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as +well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from +this man." + +"You borrowed from him?" + +It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an +emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy +with new loathing and abhorrence. + +"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars +every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own +fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in +his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last +drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves +me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again, +father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he +threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute +as to come to-day!" + +"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into +Teddy's hands. + +It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from +Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the +hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by +the throat before us all. + +"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely. + +"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy. + +"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?" + +"Every penny that you owed me, certainly." + +"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both +ways--your money and your spite as well!" + +"Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive +shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as +you're 'appy?" + +"No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come +back in time." + +"In time for what?" + +"To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!" + +The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded +his arms with a guttural chuckle. + +"So you mean to chuck me out, do you?" + +"By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the +door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again." + +The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with +his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch; +but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning +twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the +fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the +harmless character of the shot. + +"May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable +chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation. + +"Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy +truculently, "and out you go!" + +"Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with +the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from +Mr. Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words. + +"The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous +scorn--"freehold and everything." + +"The whole place happens to be _mine_--'freehold and everything!'" +replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate syllables. "And as for +clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given you a week to do it +in--the two of you!" + +He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring +on us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all. + +"And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with +a passionate hiss, "like you did the son--_because I know all about +you now_!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The State of the Case + + +Of course I made all decent haste from the distressing scene, and of +course Raffles stayed behind at the solicitation of his unhappy friends. +I was sorry to desert him in view of one aspect of the case; but I was +not sorry to dine quietly at the club after the alarms and excitements +of that disastrous day. The strain had been the greater after sitting up +all night, and I for one could barely realise all that had happened in +the twenty-four hours. It seemed incredible that the same midsummer +night and day should have seen the return of Raffles and our orgy at the +club to which neither of us belonged; the dramatic douche that saluted +us at the Albany; the confessions and conferences of the night, the +overthrow of the money-lender in the morning; and then the untimely +disappearance of Teddy Garland, my day of it at his father's house, and +the rain and the ruse that saved the passing situation, only to +aggravate the crowning catastrophe of the money-lender's triumph over +Raffles and all his friends. + +Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the +nature of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new +risk run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last +word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently +complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no +mere mystery can hold the mind against impending peril; and I was less +exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in +wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. +Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from +downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more +effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my +dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my +corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a +countenance as though the whole world and he were one. + +"My dear Bunny! I've never given the matter another thought," said he in +answer to my nervous queries, "and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has +scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he's not such a fool as to put +himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn't possibly prove. They +wouldn't listen to him at Scotland Yard; it's not their job, in the +first place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. +Shylock that he hasn't a shred of evidence against me." + +"Still," said I, "he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that's half +the battle in a criminal charge." + +"Then it's a battle I should love to fight, if the odds weren't all on +Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property--he's not a +pin the worse off--but because he has a row with me about something else +he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But not in his +heart, Bunny; he's not such a fool as that. Dan Levy's no fool at all, +but the most magnificent knave I've been up against yet. If you want to +hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I'll open your +eyes for you." + +His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed +them since his arrival at Charing Cross the night before. But midnight +was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament are +at theirs; not at Lord's in the light of day, but at dead of night in the +historic chambers to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial +subject in the celebrated Daniel, "a villain after my own black heart, +Bunny! A foeman worthy of Excalibur itself." + +And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger +stake! But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless +head over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating +prowess of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends. + +"They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I +have them in black and white. I've promised to see if there really isn't +a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider's web. +But there isn't, Bunny, I don't mind telling you." + +"What I can't understand," said I, "is how father and son seem to have +walked into the same parlour--and the father a business man!" + +"Just what he never was," replied Raffles; "that's at the bottom of the +whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn't born a +business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years +ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed out into the place +where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was +pretty stiff to start with; you might have a house in most squares and +quite a good place in the country for what you've got to pay for a cross +between the two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good +people; for it was not only in Mrs. Garland's time, but it seems she was +the first to set her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave +it for a better world--poor soul--before the glass was on the last +vinery. And the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone." + +"I wonder he didn't get rid of the whole show," said I, "after that." + +"I've no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don't get rid of a place +like that in five minutes; it's neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary +house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further +out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part +of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the +freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit +for building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a +fine investment, or would have been if he had left more margin for upkeep +and living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on +horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at +a fence that's brought down many a better rider." + +"What was that?" + +"South Africans!" replied Raffles succinctly. "Piles were changing hands +over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip +himself; that finished him off. There's no tiger like an old tiger that +never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer became a reckless +gambler, lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his +losses. They were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. +Thousands were wanted at almost a moment's notice; no time to fix up an +honest mortgage; it was a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! +And old Garland took ten thousand of the best from Dan Levy--and had +another dip!" + +"And lost again?" + +"And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his +house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and +branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy's hands for months +and years." + +"On a sort of mortgage?" + +"On a perfectly nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only +with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is +being bled to the heart for iniquitous interest on the first ten +thousand, and of course he can't meet the call for another fifteen when +it comes; but he thinks it's all right because Levy doesn't press for the +dibs. Of course it's all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to +take possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn't suit him to +have the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate a rising property, +and so poor old Garland is deliberately lulled into a false sense of +security. And there's no saying how long that state of things might have +lasted if we hadn't taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning." + +"Then it's our fault, A.J.?" + +"It's mine," said Raffles remorsefully. "The idea, I believe, was +altogether mine, Bunny; that's why I'd give my bowing hand to take the +old ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!" + +"But how _do_ you account for his getting them both into his toils?" I +asked. "What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father +already owed more than he could pay?" + +"There are so many points," said Raffles. "They love you to owe more than +you can pay; it's not their principal that they care about nearly so much +as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they've got +you. In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland +was about his boy--to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see +what an effort it's become. Levy would find out something about the boy; +that he's getting hard up himself, that he's bound to discover the old +man's secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he +does. 'Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,' says +Levy, 'then they'll both hold their tongues, and I'll have one of 'em +under each thumb till all's blue.' So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, +and finances father and son in watertight compartments until this libel +case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue +enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a +sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small +creditors all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it +all fits in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney +himself; that along with all the rest to scale, will run him into +thousands even if he wins his case." + +"May he lose it!" said I, drinking devoutly, while Raffles lit the +inevitable Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible exposition of Mr. +Levy's tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless +friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly +characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not +remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly +that she had. By putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she +had taken the whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected +from those fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her +on the spot, and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but +when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. +Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between +his reluctance to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious gusto with which +she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was +no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not help +wondering why. + +There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much +more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in +Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of +his sensational disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My +interest in the escapade, however, was considerably quickened by the +prompt refusal of Raffles to tell me a word about it. + +"No, Bunny," said he, "I'm not going to give the boy away. His father +knows, and I know--and that's enough." + +"Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?" + +Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of +his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative. + +"I mustn't talk about it, really, Bunny," was his actual reply. "It +wouldn't be fair." + +"I don't think it's conspicuously fair on me," I retorted, "to set me to +cover up your pal's tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, +and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it +trading on a fellow's good-nature--not that I care a curse!" + +"Then that's all right, Bunny," said Raffles genially. "If you cared I +should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you've been +treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me +if I have another dip at Dan Levy." + +"But you're not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?" + +"I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful murder." + +"You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?" + +"To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I'm spoiling for +another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart +from these poor pals of mine." + +"And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire +the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?" + +One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain +facility in fluent and florid metaphor; and this parody of his lighter +manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak smile of a man +thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was +standing by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that +interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, +to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not +divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay +pugnacity; nay, there was something behind the good Garlands and their +culpably commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext. But could they +be the Cause? + +The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash +might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in +the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, +outside the door. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A Triple Alliance + + +It was the intermittent sound of cautious movements, the creak of a sole +not repeated for a great many seconds, the all but inaudible passing of a +hand over the unseen side of the door leading into the lobby. It may be +that I imagined more than I actually heard of the last detail; +nevertheless I was as sure of what was happening as though the door had +been plate-glass. Yet there was the outer door between lobby and landing +and that I distinctly remembered Raffles shutting behind him when we +entered. Unable to attract his attention now, and never sorry to be the +one to take the other by surprise, I listened without breathing until +assurance was doubly sure, then bounded out of my chair without a word. +And there was a resounding knock at the inner door, even as I flung it +open upon a special evening edition of Mr. Daniel Levy, a resplendent +figure with a great stud blazing in a frilled shirt, white waistcoat and +gloves, opera-hat and cigar, and all the other insignia of a nocturnal +vulgarian about town. + +"May I come in?" said he with unctuous affability. + +"May you!" I took it upon myself to shout. "I like that, seeing that you +came in long ago! I heard you all right--you were listening at the +door--probably looking through the keyhole--and you only knocked when I +jumped up to open it!" + +"My dear Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, a reproving hand upon my shoulder. +And he bade the unbidden guest a jovial welcome. + +"But the outer door was shut," I expostulated. "He must have forced it or +else picked the lock." + +"Why not, Bunny? Love isn't the only thing that laughs at locksmiths," +remarked Raffles with exasperating geniality. + +"Neither are swell mobsmen!" cried Dan Levy, not more ironically than +Raffles, only with a heavier type of irony. + +Raffles conducted him to a chair. Levy stepped behind it and grasped the +back as though prepared to break the furniture on our heads if necessary. +Raffles offered him a drink; it was declined with a crafty grin that made +no secret of a base suspicion. + +"I don't drink with the swell mob," said the money-lender. + +"My dear Mr. Levy," returned Raffles, "you're the very man I wanted to +see, and nobody could possibly be more welcome in my humble quarters; +but that's the fourth time to-day I've heard you make use of an obsolete +expression. You know as well as I do that the slap-bang-here-we-are-again +type of work is a thing of the past. Where are the jolly dogs of the old +song now?" + +"'Ere at the Albany!" said Levy. "Here in your rooms, Mr. A.J. Raffles." + +"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "I suppose we must both plead guilty to a +hair of the jolly dog that bit him--eh?" + +"You know what I mean," our visitor ground out through his teeth. "You're +cracksmen, magsmen, mobsmen, the two of you; so you may as well both own +up to it." + +"Cracksmen? Magsmen? Mobsmen?" repeated Raffles, with his head on one +side. "What does the kind gentleman mean, Bunny? Wait! I have +it--thieves! Common thieves!" + +And he laughed loud and long in the moneylender's face and mine. + +"You may laugh," said Levy. "I'm too old a bird for your chaff; the +only wonder is I didn't spot you right off when we were abroad." He +grinned malevolently. "Shall I tell you when I did tumble to it--Mr. +Ananias J. Raffles?" + +"Daniel in the liars' den," murmured Raffles, wiping the tears from his +eyes. "Oh, yes, do tell us anything you like; this is the best +entertainment we've had for a long time, isn't it, Bunny?" + +"Chalks!" said I. + +"I thought of it this morning," proceeded the money-lender, with a +grim contempt for all our raillery, "when you played your pretty trick +upon me, so glib and smooth, and up to every move, the pair of you! +One borrowing the money, and the other paying me back in my very own +actual coin!" + +"Well," said I, "there was no crime in that." + +"Oh, yes, there was," replied Levy, with a wide wise grin; "there was the +one crime you two ought to know better than ever to commit, if you call +yourselves what I called you just now. The crime that you committed was +the crime of being found out; but for that I should never have suspected +friend Ananias of that other job at Carlsbad; no, not even when I saw his +friends so surprised to hear that he'd been out there--a strapping young +chap like 'im! Yes," cried the money-lender, lifting the chair and +jobbing it down on the floor; "this morning was when I thought of it, but +this afternoon was when I jolly well knew." + +Raffles was no longer smiling; his eyes were like points of steel, his +lips like a steel trap. + +"I saw what you thought," said he, disdainfully. "And you still +seriously think I took your wife's necklace and hid it in the woods?" + +"I know you did." + +"Then what the devil are you doing here alone?" cried Raffles. "Why +didn't you bring along a couple of good men and true from Scotland +Yard? Here I am, Mr. Levy, entirely at your service. Why don't you give +me in charge?" + +Levy chuckled consumedly--ventriloquously--behind his three gold buttons +and his one diamond stud. + +"P'r'aps I'm not such a bad sort as you think," said he. "An' p'r'aps you +two gentlemen are not such bad sorts as _I_ thought." + +"Gentlemen once more, eh?" said Raffles. "Isn't that rather a quick +recovery for swell magsmen, or whatever we were a minute ago?" + +"P'r'aps I never really thought you quite so bad as all that, Mr. +Raffles." + +"Perhaps you never really thought I took the necklace, Mr. Levy?" + +"I know you took it," returned Levy, his new tone of crafty conciliation +softening to a semblance of downright apology. "But I believe you did put +it back where you knew it'd be found. And I begin to think you only took +it for a bit o' fun!" + +"If he took it at all," said I. "Which is absurd." + +"I only wish I had!" exclaimed Raffles, with gratuitous audacity. "I +agree with you, Mr. Levy, it would have been more like a bit of fun than +anything that came my way on the human rubbish-heap we were both +inhabiting for our sins." + +"The kind of fun that appeals to you?" suggested Levy, with a very +shrewd glance. + +"It would," said Raffles, "I feel sure." + +"'Ow would you care for another bit o' fun like it, Mr. Raffles?" + +"Don't say 'another,' please." + +"Well, would you like to try your 'and at the game again?" + +"Not 'again,' Mr. Levy; and my 'prentice' hand, if you don't mind." + +"I beg pardon; my mistake," said Levy, with becoming gravity. + +"How would I like to try my prentice hand on picking and stealing for the +pure fun of the thing? Is that it, Mr. Levy?" + +Raffles was magnificent now; but so was the other in his own way. And +once more I could but admire the tact with which Levy had discarded his +favourite cudgels, and the surprising play that he was making with the +buttoned foil. + +"It'd be more picking than stealing," said he. "Tricky picking too, +Raffles, but innocent enough even for an amatoor." + +"I thank you, Mr. Levy. So you have a definite case in mind?" + +"I have--a case of recovering a man's own property." + +"You being the man, Mr. Levy?" + +"I being the man, Mr. Raffles." + +"Bunny, I begin to see why he didn't bring the police with him!" + +I affected to have seen it for some time; thereupon our friend the enemy +protested that in no circumstances could he have taken such a course. By +the searchlight of the present he might have detected things which had +entirely escaped his notice in the past--incriminating things--things +that would put together into a Case. But, after all, what evidence had he +against Raffles as yet? Mr. Levy himself propounded the question with +unflinching candour. He might inform the Metropolitan Police of his +strong suspicions; and they might communicate with the Austrian police, +and evidence beyond the belated evidence of his own senses be duly +forthcoming; but nothing could be done at once, and if Raffles cared to +endorse his theory of the practical joke, by owning up to that and +nothing more, then, so far as Mr. Levy was concerned, nothing should ever +be done at all. + +"Except this little innocent recovery of your own property," suggested +Raffles. "I suppose that's the condition?" + +"Condition's not the word I should have employed," said Levy, with a +shrug. + +"Preliminary, then?" + +"Indemnity is more the idea. You put me to a lot of trouble by +abstracting Mrs. Levy's jewels for your own amusement--" + +"So you assert, Mr. Levy." + +"Well, I may be wrong; that remains to be seen--or not--as you decide," +rejoined the Jew, lifting his mask for the moment. "At all events you +admit that it's the sort of adventure you would like to try. And so I ask +you to amuse yourself by abstracting something else of mine that 'appens +to have got into the wrong hands; then, I say, we shall be quits." + +"Well," said Raffles, "there's no harm in our hearing what sort of +property it is, and where you think it's to be found." + +The usurer leant forward in his chair; he had long been sitting in the +one which at first he had seemed inclined to wield as a defensive weapon. +We all drew together into a smaller triangle. And I found our visitor +looking specially hard at me for the first time. + +"I've seen you, too, before to-day," said he. "I thought I had, after +you'd gone this morning, and when we met in the afternoon I made sure. It +was at the Savoy when me and my wife were dining there and you gentlemen +were at the next table." There was a crafty twinkle in his eye, but the +natural allusion to the necklace was not made. "I suppose," he continued, +"you are partners in--amusement? Otherwise I should insist on speaking to +Mr. Raffles alone." + +"Bunny and I are one," said Raffles airily. + +"Though two to one--numerically speaking," remarked Levy, with a +disparaging eye on me. "However, if you're both in the job, so much the +more chance of bringing it off, I daresay. But you'll never 'ave to +'andle a lighter swag, gentlemen!" + +"More jewellery?" inquired Raffles, as one thoroughly enjoying the joke. + +"No--lighter than that--a letter!" + +"One little letter?" + +"That's all." + +"Of your own writing, Mr. Levy?" + +"No, sir!" thundered the money-lender, just when I could have sworn his +lips were framing an affirmative. + +"I see; it was written to you, not by you." + +"Wrong again, Raffles!" + +"Then how can the letter be your property, my dear Mr. Levy?" + +There was a pause. The money-lender was at visible grips with some new +difficulty. I watched his heavy but not unhandsome face, and timed the +moment of mastery by the sudden light in his crafty eyes. + +"They think it was written by me," said he. "It's a forgery, +written on my office paper; if that isn't my property, I should +like to know what is?" + +"It certainly ought to be," returned Raffles, sympathetically. "Of course +you're speaking of the crucial letter in your case against _Fact_?" + +"I am," said Levy, rather startled; "but 'ow did you know I was?" + +"I am naturally interested in the case." + +"And you've read about it in the papers; they've had a fat sight too much +to say about it, with the whole case still _sub judice_." + +"I read the original articles in _Fact_" said Raffles. + +"And the letters I'm supposed to have written?" + +"Yes; there was only one of them that struck me as being slap in the +wind's eye." + +"That's the one I want." + +"If it's genuine, Mr. Levy, it might easily form the basis of a more +serious sort of case." + +"But it isn't genuine." + +"Nor would you be the first plaintiff in the High Court of Justice," +pursued Raffles, blowing soft grey rings into the upper air, "who has +been rather rudely transformed into the defendant at the Old Bailey." + +"But it isn't genuine, I'm telling you!" cried Dan Levy with a curse. + +"Then what in the world do you want with the letter? Let the prosecution +love and cherish it, and trump it up in court for all it's worth; the +less it is worth, the more certain to explode and blow their case to +bits. A palpable forgery in the hands of Mr. Attorney!" cried Raffles, +with a wink at me. "It'll be the best fun of its kind since the late +lamented Mr. Pigott; my dear Bunny, we must both be there." + +Mr. Levy's uneasiness was a sight for timid eyes. He had presented his +case to us naked and unashamed; already he was in our hands more surely +than Raffles was in his. But Raffles was the last person to betray his +sense of an advantage a second too soon: he merely gave me another +wink. The usurer was frowning at the carpet. Suddenly he sprang up and +burst out in a bitter tirade upon the popular and even the judicial +prejudice against his own beneficent calling. No money-lender would +ever get justice in a British court of law; easier for the camel to +thread the needle's eye. That flagrant forgery would be accepted at +sight by our vaunted British jury. The only chance was to abstract it +before the case came on. + +"But if it can be proved to be a forgery," urged Raffles, "nothing could +possibly turn the tables on the other side with such complete and +instantaneous effect." + +"I've told you what I reckon my only chance," said Levy fiercely. "Let me +remind you that it's yours as well!" + +"If you talk like that," said Raffles, "I shan't consider it." + +"You won't in any case, I should hope," said I. + +"Oh, yes, I might; but not if he talks like that." + +Levy stopped talking quite like that. + +"Will you do it, Mr. Raffles, or will you not?" + +"Abstract the--forgery?" + +"Yes." + +"Where from?" + +"Wherever it may be; their solicitors' safe, I suppose." + +"Who are the solicitors to _Fact_?" + +"Burroughs and Burroughs." + +"Of Gray's Inn Square?" + +"That's right." + +"The strongest firm in England for a criminal case," said Raffles, with a +grimace at me. "Their strong-room is probably the strongest strong-room!" + +"I said it was a tricky job," rejoined the moneylender. + +Raffles looked more than dubious. + +"Big game for a first shoot, eh, Bunny?" + +"Too big by half." + +"And you merely wish to have their letter--withdrawn, Mr. Levy?" + +"That's the way to put it." + +And the diamond stud sparkled again as it heaved upon the billows of an +intestine chuckle. + +"Withdrawn--and nothing more?" + +"That'll be good enough for me, Mr. Raffles." + +"Even though they miss it the very next morning?" + +"Let them miss it." + +Raffles joined his finger-tips judicially, and shook his head in +serene dissent. + +"It would do you more harm than good, Mr. Levy. I should be inclined to +go one better--if I went into the thing at all," he added, with so much +point that I was thankful to think he was beginning to decide against it. + +"What improvement do you suggest?" inquired Dan Levy, who had evidently +no such premonition. + +"I should take a sheet of your paper with me, and forge the forgery!" +said Raffles, a light in his eye and a gusto in his voice that I knew +only too well. "But I shouldn't do my work as perfectly as--the other +cove--did his. My effort would look the same as yours--_his_--until Mr. +Attorney fixed it with his eyeglass in open court. And then the bottom +would be out of the defence in five minutes!" + +Dan Levy came straight over to Raffles--quivering like a jelly--beaming +at every pore. + +"Shake!" he cried. "I always knew you were a man after my own heart, but +I didn't know you were a man of genius until this minute." + +"It's no use my shaking," replied Raffles, the tips of his sensitive +fingers still together, "until I make up my mind to take on the job. And +I'm a very long way from doing that yet, Mr. Levy." + +I breathed again. + +"But you must, my dear friend, you simply must!" said Levy, in a new tone +of pure persuasion. I was sorry he forgot to threaten instead. Perhaps it +was not forgetfulness; perhaps he was beginning to know his Raffles as I +knew mine; if so, I was sorrier still. + +"It's a case of _quid pro quo_," said Raffles calmly. "You can't expect +me to break out into downright crime--however technical the actual +offence--unless you make it worth my while." + +Levy became the man I wanted him to be again. "I fancy it's worth your +while not to hear anything more about Carlsbad," said he, though still +with less of the old manner than I could have wished. + +"What!" cried Raffles, "when you own yourself that you've no evidence +against me there?" + +"Evidence is to be got that may mean five years to you; don't you make +any mistake about that." + +"Whereas the evidence of this particular letter against yourself has, on +your own showing, already been obtained! It's as you like, of course," +added Raffles, getting up with a shrug. "But if the Old Bailey sees us +both, Mr. Levy, I'll back my chance against yours--and your sentence +against mine!" + +Raffles helped himself to a drink, after a quizzical look at his guest, +decanter in hand; the usurer snatched it from him and splashed out half a +tumbler. Certainly he was beginning to know his Raffles perilously well. + +"There, damn you!" said he, blinking into an empty glass. "I trust you +further than I'd trust any other young blood of your kidney; name your +price, and you shall earn it if you can." + +"You may think it a rather long one, Mr. Levy." + +"Never mind; you say what you want." + +"Leave that money of yours on the mortgage with Mr. Garland; forgive +him his other debt as you hope to be forgiven; and either that letter +shall be in your hands, or I'll be in the hands of the police, before a +week is up!" + +Spoken from man to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a +voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, +the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my +fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a +dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for +Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his +sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first +assault on their oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his +empty tumbler into the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a +volley of abuse as I have seldom heard from human brute. + +"I'm surprised at you, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, contemptuously; "if we +copied your tactics we should throw you through that open window!" + +And I stood by for my share in the deed. + +"Yes! I know it'd pay you to break my neck," retorted Levy. "You'd rather +swing than do time, wouldn't you?" + +"And you prefer the other alternative," said Raffles, "to loosing your +grip upon a man who's done you no harm whatever! In interest alone he's +almost repaid all you lent him in the first instance; you've first-class +security for the rest; yet you must ruin him to revenge yourself upon us. +On us, mark you! It's against us you've got your grievance, not against +old Garland or his son. You've lost sight of that fact. That little trick +this morning was our doing entirely. Why don't you take it out of us? Why +refuse a fair offer to spite people who have done you no harm?" + +"It's not a fair offer," growled Levy. "I made you the fair offer." + +But his rage had moderated; he was beginning to listen to Raffles and to +reason, with however ill a grace. It was the very moment which Raffles +was the very man to improve. + +"Mr. Levy," said he, "do you suppose I care whether you hold your tongue +or not on a matter of mere suspicion, which you can't support by a grain +of evidence? You lose a piece of jewellery abroad; you recover it intact; +and after many days you get the bright idea that I'm the culprit because +I happen to have been staying in your hotel at the time. It never +occurred to you there or then, though you interviewed the gentleman face +to face, as you were constantly interviewing me. But as soon as I borrow +some money from you, here in London in the ordinary way, you say I must +be the man who borrowed Mrs. Levy's necklace in that extraordinary way at +Carlsbad! I should say it to the marines, Mr. Levy, if I were you; +they're the only force that are likely to listen to you." + +"I do say it, all the same; and what's more you don't deny it. If you +weren't the man you wouldn't be so ready for another game like it now." + +"Ready for it?" cried Raffles, more than ready for an undeniable point. +"I'm always your man for a new sensation, Mr. Levy, and for years I've +taken an academic interest in the very fine art of burglary; isn't that +so, Bunny?" + +"I've often heard you say so," I replied without mishap. + +"In these piping times," continued Raffles, "it's about the one exciting +and romantic career open to us. If it were not so infernally dishonest I +should have half a mind to follow it myself. And here you come and put +up a crib for me to crack in the best interests of equity and justice; +not to enrich the wicked cracksman, but to restore his rightful property +to the honest financier; a sort of teetotal felony--the very ginger-ale +of crime! Is that a beverage to refuse--a chance to miss--a temptation to +resist? Yet the risks are just as great as if it were a fine old fruity +felony; you can't expect me to run them for nothing, or even for their +own exciting sake. You know my terms, Mr. Levy; if you don't accept them, +it's already two in the morning, and I should like to get to bed before +it's light." + +"And if I did accept them?" said Levy, after a considerable pause. + +"The letter to which you attach such importance would most probably be in +your possession by the beginning of next week." + +"And I should have to take my hands off a nice little property that has +tumbled into them?" + +"Only for a time," said Raffles. "On the other hand, you would be +permanently out of danger of figuring in the dock on a charge of +blackmail. And you know your profession isn't popular in the courts, Mr. +Levy; it's in nearly as bad odour as the crime of blackmail!" + +A singular docility had descended like a mantle upon Daniel Levy: no +uncommon reaction in the case of very passionate men, and yet in this +case ominous, sinister, and completely unconvincing so far as I +personally was concerned. I longed to tell Raffles what I thought, to put +him on his guard against his obvious superior in low cunning. But Raffles +would not even catch my eye. And already he looked insanely pleased with +himself and his apparent advantage. + +"Will you give me until to-morrow morning?" said Levy, taking up his hat. + +"If you mean the morning; by eleven I must be at Lord's." + +"Say ten o'clock in Jermyn Street?" + +"It's a strange bargain, Mr. Levy. I should prefer to clinch it out of +earshot of your clerks." + +"Then I will come here." + +"I shall be ready for you at ten." + +"And alone?" + +There was a sidelong glance at me with the proviso. + +"You shall search the premises yourself and seal up all the doors." + +"Meanwhile," said Levy, putting on his hat, "I shall think about it, but +that's all. I haven't agreed yet, Mr. Raffles; don't you make too sure +that I ever shall. I shall think about it--but don't you make too sure." + +He was gone like a lamb, this wild beast of five minutes back. Raffles +showed him out, and down into the courtyard, and out again into +Piccadilly. There was no question but that he was gone for good; back +came Raffles, rubbing his hands for joy. + +"A fine night, Bunny! A finer day to follow! But a nice, slow, +wicket-keeper's wicket if ever Teddy had one in his life!" + +I came to my point with all vehemence. + +"Confound Teddy!" I cried from my heart. "I should have thought you had +run risks enough for his sake as it was!" + +"How do you know it's for his sake--or anybody's?" asked Raffles, quite +hotly. "Do you suppose I want to be beaten by a brute like Levy, Garlands +or no Garlands? Besides, there's far less risk in what I mean to do than +in what I've been doing; at all events it's in my line." + +"It's not in your line," I retorted, "to strike a bargain with a swine +who won't dream of keeping his side." + +"I shall make him," said Raffles. "If he won't do what I want he shan't +have what he wants." + +"But how could you trust him to keep his word?" + +"His word!" cried Raffles, in ironical echo. "We shall have to carry +matters far beyond his word, of course; deeds, not words, Bunny, and the +deeds properly prepared by solicitors and executed by Dan Levy before he +lays a finger on his own blackmailing letter. You remember old Mother +Hubbard in our house at school? He's a little solicitor somewhere in the +City; he'll throw the whole thing into legal shape for us, and ask no +questions and tell no tales. You leave Mr. Shylock to me and Mother, and +we'll bring him up to the scratch as he ought to go." + +There was no arguing with Raffles in such a mood; argue I did, but he +paid no attention to what I said. He had unlocked a drawer in the bureau, +and taken out a map that I had never seen before. I looked over his +shoulder as he spread it out in the light of his reading-lamp. And it was +a map of London capriciously sprinkled with wheels and asterisks of red +ink; there was a finished wheel in Bond Street, another in Half-Moon +Street, one on the site of Thornaby House, Park Lane, and others as +remote as St. John's Wood and Peter Street, Campden Hill; the asterisks +were fewer, and I have less reason to remember their latitude and +longitude. + +"What's this, A.J.?" I asked. "It looks exactly like a war-map." + +"It is one, Bunny," said he; "it's the map of one man's war against the +ordered forces of society. The spokes are only the scenes of future +operations, but each finished wheel marks the field of some past +engagement, in which you have usually been the one man's one and only +accomplice." + +And he stooped and drew the neatest of blood-red asterisks at the +southern extremity of Gray's Inn Square. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +"My Raffles Right or Wrong" + + +The historic sward had just been cleared for action when Raffles and I +met at Lord's next day. I blush to own I had been knave and fool enough +to suggest that he should smuggle me into the pavilion; but perhaps the +only laws of man that Raffles really respected were those of the M.C.C., +and it was in Block B. that he joined me a minute or so before eleven. +The sun was as strong and the sky as blue as though the disastrous day +before had been just such another. But its tropical shower-bath had left +the London air as cleanly and as clear as crystal; the neutral tints of +every day were splashes of vivid colour, the waiting umpires animated +snow-men, the heap of sawdust at either end a pyramid of powdered gold +upon an emerald ground. And in the expectant hush before the appearance +of the fielding side, I still recall the Yorkshire accent of the Surrey +Poet, hawking his latest lyric on some "Great Stand by Mr. Webbe and Mr. +Stoddart," and incidentally assuring the crowd that Cambridge was going +to win because everybody said Oxford would. + +"Just in time," said Raffles, as he sat down and the Cambridge men +emerged from the pavilion, capped and sashed in varying shades of light +blue. The captain's colours were bleached by service; but the +wicket-keeper's were the newest and the bluest of the lot, and as a male +historian I shrink from saying how well they suited him. + +"Teddy Garland looks as though nothing had happened," was what I said at +the time, as I peered through my binocular at the padded figure with the +pink face and the gigantic gloves. + +"That's because he knows there's a chance of nothing more happening," was +the reply. "I've seen him and his poor old governor up here since I saw +Dan Levy." + +I eagerly inquired as to the upshot of the earlier interview, but Raffles +looked as though he had not heard. The Oxford captain had come out to +open the innings with a player less known to fame; the first ball of the +match hurtled down the pitch, and the Oxford captain left it severely +alone. Teddy took it charmingly, and almost with the same movement the +ball was back in the bowler's hands. + +"_He's_ all right!" muttered Raffles with a long breath. "So is our Mr. +Shylock, Bunny; we fixed things up in no time after all. But the worst of +it is I shall only be able to stop--" + +He broke off, mouth open as it might have been mine. A ball had been +driven hard to extra cover, and quite well fielded; another had been +taken by Teddy as competently as the first, but not returned to the +bowler. The Oxford captain had played at it, and we heard something even +in Block B. + +"How's that?" came almost simultaneously in Teddy's ringing voice. Up +went the umpire's finger, and down came Raffles's hand upon my thigh. + +"He's caught him, Bunny!" he cried in my ear above the Cambridge cheers. +"The best bat on either side, and Teddy's outed him third ball!" He +stopped to watch the defeated captain's slow return, the demonstration on +the pitch in Teddy's honour; then he touched me on the arm and dropped +his voice. "He's forgotten all his troubles now, Bunny, if you like; +nothing's going to worry him till lunch, unless he misses a sitting +chance. And he won't, you'll see; a good start means even more behind the +sticks than in front of 'em." + +Raffles was quite right. Another wicket fell cheaply in another way; then +came a long spell of plucky cricket, a stand not masterly but dogged and +judicious, in which many a ball outside the off-stump was allowed to pass +unmolested, and a few were unfortunate in just beating the edge of the +bat. On the tricky wicket Teddy's work was cut out for him, and +beautifully he did it. It was a treat to see his lithe form crouching +behind the bails, to rise next instant with the rising ball; his great +gloves were always in the right place, always adhesive. Once only he held +them up prematurely, and a fine ball brushed the wicket on its way for +four byes; it was his sole error all the morning. Raffles sat enchanted; +so in truth did I; but between the overs I endeavoured to obtain +particulars of his latest parley with Dan Levy, and once or twice +extracted a stray detail. + +"The old sinner has a place on the river, Bunny, though I have my +suspicions of a second establishment nearer town. But I'm to find him at +his lawful home all the next few nights, and sitting up for me till two +in the morning." + +"Then you're going to Gray's Inn Square this week?" + +"I'm going there this morning for a peep at the crib; there's no time to +be lost, but on the other hand there's a devil of a lot to learn. I say, +Bunny, there's going to be another change of bowling; the fast stuff, +too, by Jove!" + +A massive youth had taken the ball at the top end, and the wicket-keeper +was retiring to a more respectful distance behind the stumps. + +"You'll let me know when it's to be?" I whispered, but Raffles only +answered, "I wonder Jack Studley didn't wait till there was more of a +crust on the mud pie. That tripe's no use without a fast wicket!" + +The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at +the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent +contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking +thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered +Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into +Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less +reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at +my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit +hard but very late. It was a hit that might have smashed the pavilion +palings. But it never reached them; it stuck in Teddy's left glove +instead, and none of us knew it till we saw him staggering towards +long-leg, and tossing up the ball as he recovered balance. + +"That's the worst ball that ever took a wicket in this match!" vowed a +reverend veteran as the din died down. + +"And the best catch!" cried Raffles. "Come on, Bunny; that's my _nunc +dimittis_ for the day. There would be nothing to compare with it if I +could stop to see every ball bowled, and I mustn't see another." + +"But why?" I asked, as I followed Raffles into the press behind the +carriages. + +"I've already told you why," said he. + +I got as close to him as one could in that crowd. + +"You're not thinking of doing it to-night, A.J.?" + +"I don't know." + +"But you'll let _me_ know?" + +"Not if I can help it, Bunny; didn't I promise not to drag you any +further through this particular mire?" + +"But if _I_ can help _you_?" I whispered, after a momentary separation in +the throng. + +"Oh! if I can't get on without you," said Raffles, not nicely, "I'll let +you know fast enough. But do drop the subject now; here come old Garland +and Camilla Belsize!" + +They did not see us quite so soon as we saw them, and for a moment one +felt a spy; but it was an interesting moment even to a person smarting +from a snub. The ruined man looked haggard, ill, unfit to be about, the +very embodiment of the newspaper report concerning him. But the spirit +beamed through the shrinking flesh, the poor old fellow was alight with +pride and love, exultant in spite of himself and his misfortunes. He had +seen his boy's great catch; he had heard the cheers, he would hear them +till his dying hour. Camilla Belsize had also seen and heard, but not +with the same exquisite appreciation. Cricket was a game to her, it was +not that quintessence and epitome of life it would seem to be to some of +its devotees; and real life was pressing so heavily upon her that the +trivial consolation which had banished her companion's load could not +lighten hers. So at least I thought as they approached, the man so worn +and radiant, the girl so pensive for all her glorious youth and beauty: +his was the old head bowed with sorrow, his also the simpler and the +younger heart. + +"That catch will console me for a lot," I heard him say quite heartily to +Raffles. But Camilla's comment was altogether perfunctory; indeed, I +wondered that so sophisticated a person did not affect some little +enthusiasm. She seemed more interested, however, in the crowd than in the +cricket. And that was usual enough. + +Raffles was already saying he must go, with an explanatory murmur to Mr. +Garland, who clasped his hand with a suddenly clouded countenance. But +Miss Belsize only bowed, and scarcely took her eyes off a couple of +outwardly inferior men, who had attracted my attention through hers, +until they also passed out of the ground. + +Mr. Garland was on tip-toes watching the game again with mercurial +ardour. + +"Mr. Manders will look after me," she said to him, "won't you, Mr. +Manders?" I made some suitable asseveration, and she added: "Mr. +Garland's a member, you know, and dying to go into the Pavilion." + +"Only just to hear what they think of Teddy," the poor old boy confessed; +and when we had arranged where to meet in the interval, away he hurried +with his keen, worn face. + +Miss Belsize turned to me the moment he was gone. + +"I want to speak to you, Mr. Manders," she said quickly but without +embarrassment. "Where can we talk?" + +"And watch as well?" I suggested, thinking of the young man at his best +behind the sticks. + +"I want to speak to you first," she said, "where we shan't be overheard. +It's about Mr. Raffles!" added Miss Belsize as she met my stare. + +About Raffles again! About Raffles, after all that she had learnt the +day before! I did not enjoy the prospect as I led the way past the +ivy-mantled tennis-court of those days to the practice-ground, turned for +the nonce into a tented lawn. + +"And what about Raffles?" I asked as we struck out for ourselves across +the grass. + +"I'm afraid he's in some danger," replied Miss Belsize. And she stopped +in her walk and confronted me as frankly as though we had the animated +scene to ourselves. + +"Danger!" I repeated, guiltily enough, no doubt. "What makes you think +that, Miss Belsize?" + +My companion hesitated for the first time. + +"You won't tell him I told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"Not if you don't want me to," said I, taken aback more by her manner +than by the request itself. + +"You promise me that?" + +"Certainly." + +"Then tell me, did you notice two men who passed close to us just after +we had all met?" + +"There are so many men to notice," said I to gain time. + +"But these were not the sort one expects to see here to-day." + +"Did they wear bowlers and short coats?" + +"You did notice them!" + +"Only because I saw you watching them," said I, recalling the +whole scene. + +"They wanted watching," rejoined Miss Belsize dryly. "They followed Mr. +Raffles out of the ground!" + +"So they did!" I reflected aloud in my alarm. + +"They were following you both when you met us." + +"The dickens they were! Was that the first you saw of them?" + +"No; the first time was over there at the nets before play began. I +noticed those two men behind Teddy's net. They were not watching him; +that called my attention to them. It's my belief they were lying in wait +for Mr. Raffles; at any rate, when he came they moved away. But they +followed us afterwards across the ground." + +"You are sure of that?" + +"I looked round to see," said Miss Belsize, avoiding my eyes for the +first time. + +"Did you think the men--detectives?" + +And I forced a laugh. + +"I was afraid they might be, Mr. Manders, though I have never seen one +off the stage." + +"Still," I pursued, with painfully sustained amusement, "you were +ready to find A.J. Raffles being shadowed here at Lord's of all places +in the world?" + +"I was ready for anything, anywhere," said Miss Belsize, "after all I +heard yesterday afternoon." + +"You mean about poor Mr. Garland and his affairs?" + +It was an ingenuously disingenuous suggestion; it brought my companion's +eyes back to mine, with something of the scorn that I deserved. + +"No, Mr. Manders, I meant after what we all heard between Mr. Levy +and Mr. Raffles; and you knew very well what I meant," added Miss +Belsize severely. + +"But surely you didn't take all that seriously?" said I, without denying +the just impeachment. + +"How could I help it? The insinuation was serious enough, in all +conscience!" exclaimed Camilla Belsize. + +"That is," said I, since she was not to be wilfully misunderstood, "that +poor old Raffles had something to do with this jewel robbery at +Carlsbad?" + +"If it was a robbery." + +She winced at the word. + +"Do you mean it might have been a trick?" said I, recalling the victim's +own make-believe at the Albany. And not only did Camilla appear to +embrace that theory with open arms; she had the nerve to pretend that it +really was what she had meant. + +"Obviously!" says she, with an impromptu superiority worthy of Raffles +himself. "I wonder you never thought of that, Mr. Manders, when you know +what a trick you both played Mr. Levy only yesterday. Mr. Raffles himself +told us all about that; and I'm very grateful to you both; you must know +I am--for Teddy's sake," added Miss Belsize, with one quick remorseful +glance towards the great arena. "Still it only shows what Mr. Raffles +is--and--and it's what I meant when we were talking about him yesterday." + +"I don't remember," said I, remembering fast enough. + +"In the rockery," she reminded me. "When you asked what people said about +him, and I said that about living on his wits." + +"And being a paid amateur!" + +"But the other was the worst." + +"I'm not so sure," said I. "But his wits wouldn't carry him very far if +he only took necklaces and put them back again." + +"But it was all a joke," she reminded us both with a bit of a start. +"It must have been a joke, if Mr. Raffles did it at all. And it would +be dreadful if anything happened to him because of a wretched +practical joke!" + +There was no mistake about her feeling now; she really felt that it would +be "dreadful if anything happened" to the man whom yesterday she had +seemed both to dislike and to distrust. Her voice vibrated with anxiety. +A bright film covered the fine eyes, and they were finer than ever as +they continued to face me unashamed; but I was fool enough to speak my +mind, and at that they flashed themselves dry. + +"I thought you didn't like him?" had been my remark, and "Who says I do?" +was hers. "But he has done a lot for Teddy," she went on, "and never more +than yesterday," with her hand for an instant on my arm, "when you helped +him! I am dreadfully sorry for Mr. Garland, sorrier than I am for poor +Teddy. But Mr. Raffles is more than sorry. I know he means to do what he +can. He seems to think there must be something wrong; he spoke of +bringing that brute to reason--if not to justice. It would be too +dreadful if such a creature could turn the tables on Mr. Raffles by +trumping up any charge against him!" + +There was an absolute echo of my own tone in "trumping up any charge," +and I thought the echo sounded even more insincere. But at least it +showed me where we were. Miss Belsize was not deceived; she only wanted +me to think she was. Miss Belsize had divined what I knew, but neither +of us would admit to the other that the charge against Raffles would be +true enough. + +"But why should these men follow him?" said I, really wondering why they +should. "If there were anything definite against old Raffles, don't you +think he would be arrested?" + +"Oh! I don't know," was the slightly irritable answer. "I only think he +should be warned that he is being followed." + +"Whatever he has done?" I ventured. + +"Yes!" said she. "Whatever he has done--after what he did for Teddy +yesterday!" + +"You want me to warn him?" + +"Yes--but not from me!" + +"And suppose he really did take Mrs. Levy's necklace?" + +"That's just what we are supposing." + +"But suppose it wasn't for a joke at all?" + +I spoke as one playfully plumbing the abysmally absurd; what I did desire +to sound was the loyalty of this new, unexpected, and still captious +ally. And I thought myself strangely successful at the first cast; for +Miss Belsize looked me in the face as I was looking her, and I trusted +her before she spoke. + +"Well, after yesterday," she said, "I should warn him all the same!" + +"You would back your Raffles right or wrong?" I murmured, perceiving that +Camilla Belsize was, after all, like all the rest of us. + +"Against a vulgar extortioner, most decidedly!" she returned, without +repudiating the possessive pronoun. "It doesn't follow that I think +anything of him--apart from what you did between you for Teddy +yesterday." + +We had continued our stroll some time ago, and now it was I who stood +still. I looked at my watch. It still wanted some minutes to the +luncheon interval. + +"If Raffles took a cab to his rooms," I said, "he must be nearly there +and I must telephone to him." + +"Is there a call-office on the ground?" + +"Only in the pavilion, I believe, for the use of the members." + +"Then you must go to the nearest one outside." + +"And what about you?" + +Miss Belsize brightened with her smile of perfect and unconscious +independence. + +"Oh, I shall be all right," she said. "I know where to find Mr. Garland, +even if I don't pick up an escort on the way." + +But it was she who escorted me to the tall turnstile nearest +Wellington Road. + +"And you do see why I want to put Mr. Raffles on his guard?" she said +pointedly as we shook hands. "It's only because you and he have done so +much for Teddy!" + +And because she did not end by reminding me of my promise, I was all the +more reluctantly determined to keep it to the letter, even though Raffles +should think as ill as ever of one who was at least beginning to think +better of him. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A Dash in the Dark + + +In a few lines which I found waiting for me at the club, and have +somewhat imprudently preserved, Raffles professes to have known he was +being shadowed even before we met at Lord's: "but it was no use talking +about it until the foe were in the cart." He goes on to explain the +simple means by which he reduced the gentlemen in billycocks to the pitch +of discomfiture implied in his metaphor. He had taken a hansom to the +Burlington Gardens entrance to the Albany, and kept it waiting while he +went in and changed his clothes; then he had sent Barraclough to pay off +the cab, and himself marched out into Piccadilly, what time the billycock +brims were still shading watchful eyes in Burlington Gardens. There, to +be sure, I myself had spotted one of the precious pair when I drove up +after vain exertions at the call-office outside Lord's; but by that time +his confederate was on guard at the Piccadilly end, and Raffles had not +only shown a clean pair of wings, but left the poor brutes to watch an +empty cage. He dismisses them not unfairly with the epithet +"amateurish." Thus I was the more surprised, but not the less relieved, +to learn that he was "running down into the country for the weekend, to +be out of their way"; but he would be back on the Monday night, "to keep +an engagement you wot of, Bunny. And if you like you may meet me under +the clock at Waterloo (in flannel kit and tennis-shoes for choice) at the +witching hour of twelve sharp." + +If I liked! I had a premature drink in honour of an invitation more +gratifying to my vanity than any compliment old Raffles had paid me yet; +for I could still hear his ironical undertaking to let me know if he +could not do without me, and there was obviously no irony in this +delightfully early intimation of that very flattering fact. It altered my +whole view of the case. I might disapprove of the risks Raffles was +running for his other friends, but the more I was allowed to share in +them the less critical I was inclined to be. Besides I was myself clearly +implicated in the issue as between my own friend and the common enemy; it +was no more palatable to me than it was to Raffles, to be beaten by Dan +Levy after our initial victory over him. So I drank like a man to his +destruction, and subsequently stole forth to spy upon his foolish +myrmidons, who flattered themselves that they were spying on Raffles. The +imbeciles were at it still! The one hanging about Burlington Gardens +looked unutterably bored, but with his blots of whisker and his grimy +jowl, as flagrant a detective officer as ever I saw, even if he had not +so considerately dressed the part. The other bruiser was an equally +distinctive type, with a formidable fighting face and a chest like a +barrel; but in Piccadilly he seemed to me less occupied in taking notice +than in avoiding it. In innocuous futility one could scarcely excel the +other; and between them they raised my spirits to the zenith. + +I spent the rest of the afternoon at their own game, dogging Miss Belsize +about Lord's until at last I had an opportunity of informing her that +Raffles was quite safe. It may be that I made my report with too much +gusto when my chance came; at any rate, it was only the fact that +appeared to interest Miss Belsize; the details, over which I gloated, +seemed to inspire in her a repugnance consistent with the prejudice she +had displayed against Raffles yesterday, but not with her grateful +solicitude on his behalf as revealed to me that very morning. I could +only feel that gratitude was the beginning and the end of her new regard +for him. Raffles had never fascinated this young girl as he did the rest +of us; ordinarily engaged to an ordinary man, she was proof against the +glamour that dazzled us. Nay, though she would not admit it even to me +his friend, though like Levy she pretended to embrace the theory of the +practical joke, making it the pretext for her anxiety, I felt more +certain than ever that she now guessed, and had long suspected, what +manner of man Raffles really was, and that her natural antipathy was +greater even than before. Still more certain was I that she would never +betray him by word or deed; that, whatever harm might come of his present +proceedings, it would not be through Camilla Belsize. + +But I was now determined to do my own utmost to minimise the dangers, to +be a real help to Raffles in the act of altruistic depravity to which he +had committed himself, and not merely a fifth wheel to his dashing +chariot. Accordingly I went into solemn training for the event before us: +a Turkish bath on the Saturday, a quiet Sunday between Mount Street and +the club, and most of Monday lying like a log in cold-blooded preparation +for the night's work. And when night fell I took it upon me to +reconnoitre the ground myself before meeting Raffles at Waterloo. + +Another cool and starry evening seemed to have tempted all the town and +his wife into the streets. The great streams of traffic were busier than +ever, the backwaters emptier, and Gray's Inn a basin drained to the last +dreg of visible humanity. In one moment I passed through gateway and +alley from the voices and lights of Holborn into a perfectly deserted +square of bare ground and bright stars. The contrast was altogether +startling, for I had never been there before; but for the same reason I +had already lost my bearings, believing myself to be in Gray's Inn Square +when I was only in South Square, Gray's Inn. Here I entered upon a +hopeless search for the offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. Door after +door had I tried in vain, and was beginning to realise my mistake, when a +stray molecule of the population drifted in from Holborn as I had done, +but with the quick step of the man who knows his way. I darted from a +doorway to inquire mine, but he was across the square before I could cut +him off, and as he passed through the rays of a lamp beside a second +archway, I fell back thanking Providence and Raffles for my rubber soles. +The man had neither seen nor heard me, but at the last moment I had +recognised him as the burlier of the two blockheads who had shadowed +Raffles three days before. + +He passed under the arch without looking round. I flattened myself +against the wall on my side of the arch; and in so standing I was all +but eye-witness of a sudden encounter in the square beyond. + +The quick steps stopped, and there was a "Here you are!" on one side, +and a "Well! Where is he?" on the other, both very eager and below +the breath. + +"On the job," whispered the first voice. "Up to the neck!" + +"When did 'e go in?" + +"Nearly an hour ago; when I sent the messenger." + +"Which way?" + +"Up through number seventeen." + +"Next door, eh?" + +"That's right." + +"Over the roof?" + +"Can't say; he's left no tracks. I been up to see." + +"I suppose there's the usual ladder and trapdoor?" + +"Yes, but the ladder's hanging in its proper place. He couldn't have put +it back there, could he?" + +The other grunted; presently he expressed a doubt whether Raffles (and it +thrilled me to hear the very name) had succeeded in breaking into the +lawyer's office at all. The first man on the scene, however, was quite +sure of it--and so was I. + +"And we've got to hang about," grumbled the newcomer, "till he comes +out again?" + +"That's it. We can't miss him. He must come back into the square or +through into the gardens, and if he does that he'll have to come over +these here railings into Field Court. We got him either way, and there's +a step just here where we can sit and see both ways as though it had been +made for us. You come and try ... a door into the old hall ..." + +That was all I heard distinctly; first their footsteps, and then the few +extra yards, made the rest unintelligible. But I had heard enough. "The +usual ladder and trap-door!" Those blessed words alone might prove worth +their weight in great letters of solid gold. + +Now I could breathe again; now I relaxed my body and turned my head, and +peered through the arch with impunity, and along the whole western side +of Gray's Inn Square, with its dusky fringe of plane-trees and its vivid +line of lamps, its strip of pavement, and its wall of many-windowed +houses under one unbroken roof. Dim lights smouldered in the column of +landing windows over every door; otherwise there was no break in the +blackness of that gaunt façade. Yet in some dark room or other behind +those walls I seemed to see Raffles at work as plainly as I had just +heard our natural enemies plotting his destruction. I saw him at a safe. +I saw him at a desk. I saw him leaving everything as he had found it, +only to steal down and out into the very arms of the law. And I felt that +even that desperate _dénouement_ was little more than he deserved for +letting me think myself accessory before the fact, when all the time he +meant me to have nothing whatever to do with it! Well, I should have +everything to do with it now; if Raffles was to be saved from the +consequences of his own insanity, I and I alone must save him. It was the +chance of my life to show him my real worth. And yet the difficulty of +the thing might have daunted Raffles himself. + +I knew what to do if only I could gain the house which he had made the +base of his own operations; at least I knew what to attempt, and what +Raffles had done I might do. So far the wily couple within earshot had +helped me out of their own mouths. But they were only just round the +corner that hid them from my view; stray words still reached me; and they +knew me by sight, would recognise me at a glance, might pounce upon me as +I passed. Unless-- + +_I_ had it! + +The crowd in Holborn seemed strange and unreal as I jostled in its midst +once more. I was out of it in a moment, however, and into a 'bus, and out +of the 'bus in a couple of minutes by my watch. One more minute and I was +seeing how far back I could sit in a hansom bound for Gray's Inn Square. + +"I forget the number," I had told the cabman, "but it's three or four +doors beyond Burroughs and Burroughs, the solicitors." + +The gate into Holborn had to be opened for me, but the gate-keeper had +not seen me on my previous entrance and exit afoot through the postern. +It was when we drove under the further arch into the actual square that I +pressed my head hard against the back of the hansom, and turned my face +towards Field Court. The enemy might have abandoned their position, they +might meet me face to face as I landed on the pavement; that was my risk, +and I ran it without disaster. We passed the only house with an outer +door to it in the square (now there is none), and on the plate beside it +I read BURROUGHS AND BURROUGHS with a thrill. Up went my stick; my +shilling (with a peculiarly superfluous sixpence for luck) I thrust +through the trap with the other hand; and I was across the pavement, and +on the stairs four clear doors beyond the lawyer's office, before the +driver had begun to turn his horse. + +They were broad bare stairs, with great office doors right and left on +every landing, and in the middle the landing window looking out into the +square. I waited well within the window on the first floor; and as my +hansom drove out under the arch, the light of its near lamp flashed +across two figures lounging on the steps of that entrance to the hall; +but there was no stopping or challenging the cabman, no sound at all but +those of hoofs and bell, and soon only that of my own heart beating as I +fled up the rest of the stairs in my rubber soles. + +Near the top I paused to thank my kindly stars; sure enough there was a +long step-ladder hanging on a great nail over the last half-landing, and +a square trap-door right over the landing proper! I ran up just to see +the names on the two top doors; one was evidently that of some +pettifogging firm of solicitors, while the other bespoke a private +resident, whom I judged to be out of town by the congestion of postal +matter that met my fingers in his letter-box. Neither had any terrors for +me. The step-ladder was unhooked without another moment's hesitation. +Care alone was necessary to place it in position without making a noise; +then up I went, and up went the trapdoor next, without mishap or +hindrance until I tried to stand up in the loft, and caught my head a +crack against the tiles instead. + +This was disconcerting in more ways than one, for I could not leave the +ladder where it was, and it was nearly twice my height. I struck a match +and lit up a sufficient perspective of lumber and cobwebs to reassure me. +The loft was long enough, and the trap-door plumb under the apex of the +roof, whereas I had stepped sideways off the ladder. It was to be got up, +and I got it up, though not by any means as silently as I could have +wished. I knelt and listened at the open trap-door for a good minute +before closing it with great caution, a squeak and a scuttle in the loft +itself being the only sign that I had disturbed a living creature. + +There was a grimy dormer window, not looking down into the square, but +leading like a companion hatchway into a valley of once red tiles, now +stained blue-black in the starlight. It was great to stand upright here +in the pure night air out of sight of man or beast. Smokeless +chimney-stacks deleted whole pages of stars, but put me more in mind of +pollards rising out of these rigid valleys, and sprouting with telephone +wires that interlaced for foliage. The valley I was in ended fore and +aft in a similar slope to that at either side; the length of it +doubtless tallied with the frontage of a single house; and when I had +clambered over the southern extremity into a precisely similar valley I +saw that this must be the case. I had entered the fourth house beyond +Burroughs and Burroughs's, or was it the fifth? I threaded three +valleys, and then I knew. + +In all three there had been dormer windows on either hand, that on the +square side leading into the loft; the other, or others, forming a sort +of skylight to some top-floor room. Suddenly I struck one of these +standing very wide open, and trod upon a rope's end curled like a snake +on the leads. I stooped down, and at a touch I knew that I had hold of +Raffles's favourite Manila, which united a silken flexibility with the +strength of any hawser. It was tied to the window-post, and it dangled +into a room in which there was a dull red glow of fire: an inhabited room +if ever I put my nose in one! My body must follow, however, where Raffles +had led the way; and when it did I came to ground sooner than I expected +on something less secure. The dying firelight, struggling through the +bars of a kitchen range, showed my tennis-shoes in the middle of the +kitchen table. A cat was stretching itself on the hearth-rug as I made a +step of a wooden chair, and came down like a cat myself. + +I found the kitchen door, found a passage so dark that the window at the +end hung like a picture slashed across the middle. Yet it only looked +into the square, for I peered out when I had crept along the passage, and +even thought I both heard and saw the enemy at their old post. But I was +in another enemy's country now; at every step I stopped to listen for the +thud of feet bounding out of bed. Hearing nothing, I had the temerity at +last to strike a match upon my trousers, and by its light I found the +outer door. This was not bolted nor yet shut; it was merely ajar, and so +I left it. + +The rooms opposite appeared to be an empty set; those on the second and +first floors were only partially shut off by swing doors leading to +different departments of the mighty offices of Burroughs and Burroughs. +There were no lights upon these landings, and I gathered my information +by means of successive matches, whose tell-tale ends I carefully +concealed about my person, and from copious legends painted on the walls. +Thus I had little difficulty in groping my way to the private offices of +Sir John Burroughs, head of the celebrated firm; but I looked in vain for +a layer of light under any of the massive mahogany doors with which this +portion of the premises was glorified. Then I began softly trying doors +that proved to be locked. Only one yielded to my hand; and when it was a +few inches open, all was still black; but the next few brought me to the +end of my quest, and the close of my solitary adventures. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +A Midsummer Night's Work + + +The dense and total darkness was broken in one place, and one only, by a +plateful of light proceeding from a tiny bulb of incandescence in its +centre. This blinding atom of white heat lit up a hand hardly moving, a +pen continually poised, over a disc of snowy paper; and on the other +side, something that lay handy on the table, reflecting the light in its +plated parts. It was Raffles at his latest deviltry. He had not heard me, +and he could not see; but for that matter he never looked up from his +task. Sometimes his face bent over it, and I could watch its absolute +concentration. The brow was furrowed, and the mouth pursed, yet there was +a hint of the same quiet and wary smile with which Raffles would bowl an +over or drill holes in a door. + +I stood for some moments fascinated, entranced, before creeping in to +warn him of my presence in a whisper. But this time he heard my step, +snatched up electric torch and glittering revolver, and covered me with +the one in the other's light. + +"A.J.!" I gasped. + +"Bunny!" he exclaimed in equal amazement and displeasure. "What the devil +do you mean by this?" + +"You're in danger," I whispered. "I came to warn you!" + +"Danger? I'm never out of it. But how did you know where to find me, and +how on God's earth did _you_ get here?" + +"I'll tell you some other time. You know those two brutes you dodged the +other day?" + +"I ought to." + +"They're waiting below for you at this very moment." + +Raffles peered a few moments through the handful of white light between +our faces. + +"Let them wait!" said he, and replaced the torch upon the table and put +down his revolver for his pen. + +"They're detectives!" I urged. + +"Are they, Bunny?" + +"What else could they be?" + +"What, indeed!" murmured Raffles, as he fell to work again with bent head +and deliberate pen. + +"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and +lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my +belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just +to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want +a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" + +"I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't +do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience. Bunny, +and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes +there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the +next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, +or else get out by yourself as you came in." + +I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the +landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my +way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to +surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same +mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not +one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" +I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and +listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to +welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police +behind them. + +Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand +my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. + +"Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. + +"Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" + +"I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" + +"You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would +have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." + +"Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. + +"Rather!" + +"Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." + +"It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that +the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper +in its place." + +"I never heard a sound." + +"I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You +see how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" + +I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the +house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. + +"Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" + +"Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. + +"You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This +is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a +commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come +when he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have +been a shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" + +We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against +Raffles's legs. + +"But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?" + +"Made friends with him when I called on Friday; didn't I tell you I had +an appointment with the bloated head of this notorious firm when I +cleared out of Lord's? I'm about to strengthen his already unrivalled +list of clients; you shall hear all about that later. We had another +interview this afternoon, when I asked my V.C. if he ever went to the +theatre; you see he had spotted Tom Fool, and told me he never had a +chance of getting to Lord's. So I got him tickets for 'Rosemary' instead, +but of course I swore they had just been given to me and I couldn't use +them. You should have seen how the hero beamed! So that's where he is, +he and his wife--or was, until the curtain went down." + +"Good Lord, Raffles, is the piece over?" + +"Nearly ten minutes ago, but it'll take 'em all that unless they come +home in a cab." + +And Raffles had been sitting before the fire, on the kitchen table, +encouraging the cat, when this formidable V.C. and his wife must be +coming every instant nearer Gray's Inn Square! + +"Why, my dear Bunny, I should back myself to swarm up and out without +making a sound or leaving a sign, if I heard our hero's key in the lock +this moment. After you, Bunny." + +I climbed up with trembling knees, Raffles holding the rope taut to make +it easier. Once more I stood upright under the stars and the telephone +wires, and leaned against a chimney-stack to wait for Raffles. But before +I saw him, before I even heard his unnecessarily noiseless movements, I +heard something else that sent a chill all through me. + +It was not the sound of a key in the lock. It was something far worse +than that. It was the sound of voices on the roof, and of footsteps +drawing nearer through the very next valley of leads and tiles. + +I was crouching on the leads outside the dormer window as Raffles +climbed into sight within. + +"They're after us up here!" I whispered in his face. "On the next roof! I +hear them!" + +Up came Raffles with his hands upon the sill, then with his knees between +his hands, and so out on all-fours into the narrow rivulet of lead +between the sloping tiles. Out of the opposite slope, a yard or two on, +rose a stout stack of masonry, a many-headed monster with a chimney-pot +on each, and a full supply of wires for whiskers. Behind this Gorgon of +the house-tops Raffles hustled me without a word, and himself took +shelter as the muffled voices on the next roof grew more distinct. They +were the voices that I had overheard already in the square, the voices +but not the tones. The tones--the words--were those of an enemy divided +against itself. + +"And now we've gone and come too far!" grumbled the one who had been last +to arrive upon the scene below. + +"We did that," the other muttered, "the moment we came in after 'em. We +should've stopped where we were." + +"With that other cove driving up and going in without ever showing a +glim?" + +Raffles nudged me, and I saw what I had done. But the weakling of the +pair still defended the position he had reluctantly abandoned on _terra +firma_; he was all for returning while there was time; and there were +fragments of the broken argument that were beginning to puzzle me when a +soft oath from the man in front proclaimed the discovery of the open +window and the rope. + +"We got 'em," he whispered, stagily, "like rats in a trap!" + +"You forget what it is we've got to get." + +"Well, we must first catch our man, mustn't we? And how d'ye know his pal +hasn't gone in to warn him where we were? If he has, and we'd stopped +there, they'd do us easy." + +"They may do us easier down there in the dark," replied the other, with a +palpable shiver. "They'll hear us and lie in wait. In the dark! We shan't +have a dog's chance." + +"All right! You get out of it and save your skin. I'd rather work alone +than with a blessed funk!" + +The situation was identical with many a one in the past between Raffles +and me. The poor brute in my part resented the charge against his courage +as warmly as I had always done. He was merely for the better part of +valour, and how right he was Raffles and I only knew. I hoped the lesson +was not lost upon Raffles. Dialogue and action alike resembled one of +our own performances far more than ordinary police methods as we knew +them. We heard the squeeze of the leader's clothes and the rattle of his +buttons over the window ledge. "It's like old times," we heard him +mutter; and before many moments the weakling was impulsively whispering +down to know if he should follow. + +I felt for that fellow at every stage of his unwilling proceedings. I was +to feel for him still more. Raffles had stepped down like a cat from +behind our cover; grasping an angle of the stack with either hand, I put +my head round after him. The wretched player of my old part was on his +haunches at the window, stooping forward, more in than out. I saw Raffles +grinning in the starlight, saw his foot poised and the other poor devil +disappear. Then a dull bump, then a double crash and such a cursing as +left no doubt that the second fellow had fallen plumb on top of the +first. Also from his language I fancied he would survive the fall. + +But Raffles took no peep at his handiwork; hardly had the rope whipped +out at my feet than he had untied the other end. + +"Like lamplighters, Bunny!" + +And back we went helter-skelter along the valleys of lead and over the +hills of tile.... The noise in the kitchen died away as we put a roof or +two between us and that of Burroughs and Burroughs. + +"This is where I came out," I called to Raffles as he passed the place. +"There's a ladder here where I left it in the loft!" + +"No time for ladders!" cried Raffles over his shoulder, and not for some +moments did he stop in his stride. Nor was it I who stopped him then; it +was a sudden hubbub somewhere behind us, somewhere below; the blowing of +a police whistle, and the sound of many footsteps in the square. + +"That's for us!" I gasped. "The ladder! The ladder!" + +"Ladder be damned!" returned Raffles, roughly. "It isn't for us at all; +it's my pal the V.C. who has come home and bottled the other blighters." + +"Thinking they're thieves?" + +"Thinking any rot you like! Our course is over the rest of the roofs on +this side, over the whole lot at the top end, and, if possible, down the +last staircase in the corner. Then we only have to show ourselves in the +square for a tick before we're out by way of Verulam Buildings." + +"Is there another gate there?" I asked as he scampered on with me +after him. + +"Yes; but it's closed and the porter leaves at twelve, and it must be +jolly near that now. Wait, Bunny! Some one or other is sure to be looking +out of the top windows across the square; they'll see us if we take our +fences too freely!" + +We had come to one of the transverse tile-slopes, which hitherto we had +run boldly up and down in our helpful and noiseless rubber soles; now, +not to show ourselves against the stars, to a stray pair of eyes on some +other high level, we crept up on all fours and rolled over at full +length. It added considerably to our time over more than a whole side of +the square. Meanwhile the police whistles had stopped, but the company in +the square had swollen audibly. + +It seemed an age, but I suppose it was not many minutes, before we came +to the last of the dormer windows, looking into the last vale of tiles in +the north-east angle of the square. Something gleamed in the starlight, +there was a sharp little sound of splitting wood, and Raffles led me on +hands and knees into just such a loft as I had entered before by ladder. +His electric torch discovered the trapdoor at a gleam. Raffles opened it +and let down the rope, only to whisk it up again so smartly that it +struck my face like a whiplash. + +A door had opened on the top landing. We listened over the open +trap-door, and knew that another stood listening on the invisible +threshold underneath; then we saw him running downstairs, and my heart +leapt for he never once looked up. I can see him still, foreshortened by +our bird's-eye view into a Turkish fez and a fringe of white hair and red +neck, a billow of dressing-gown, and bare heels peeping out of bedroom +slippers at every step that we could follow; but no face all the way +down, because he was a bent old boy who never looked like looking up. + +Raffles threw his rope aside, gave me his hand instead, and dropped me on +the landing like a feather, dropping after me without a moment's pause. +In fact, the old fellow with the fez could hardly have completed his +descent of the stairs when we began ours. Yet through the landing window +we saw him charging diagonally across the square, shouting and +gesticulating in his flight to the gathering crowd near the far corner. + +"He spotted us, Bunny!" exclaimed Raffles, after listening an instant +in the entrance. "Stick to me like my shadow, and do every blessed +thing I do." + +Out he dived, I after him, and round to the left with the speed of +lightning, but apparently not without the lightning's attribute of +attracting attention to itself. There was a hullabaloo across the square +behind us, and I looked round to see the crowd there breaking in our +direction, as I rushed after Raffles under an arch and up the alley in +front of Verulam Buildings. + +It was striking midnight as we made our sprint along this alley, and at +the far end the porter was preparing to depart, but he waited to let us +through the gate into Gray's Inn Road, and not until he had done so can +the hounds have entered the straight. We did not hear them till the gate +had clanged behind us, nor had it opened again before we were high and +dry in a hansom. + +"King's Cross!" roared Raffles for all the street to hear; but before we +reached Clerkenwell Road he said he meant Waterloo, and round we went to +the right along the tram-lines. I was too breathless to ask questions, +and Raffles offered no explanations until he had lit a Sullivan. "That +little bit of wrong way may lose us our train," he said as he puffed the +first cloud. "But it'll shoot the whole field to King's Cross as sure as +scent is scent; and if we do catch our train, Bunny, we shall have it to +ourselves as far as this pack is concerned. Hurrah! Blackfriar's Bridge +and a good five minutes to go!" + +"You're going straight down to Levy's with the letter?" + +"Yes; that's why I wanted you to meet me under the clock at twelve." + +"But why in tennis-shoes?" I asked, recalling the injunctions in his +note, and the meaning that I had naturally read into them. + +"I thought we might possibly finish the night on the river," replied +Raffles, darkly. "I think so still." + +"And _I_ thought you meant me to lend you a hand in Gray's Inn!" + +Raffles laughed. + +"The less you think, my dear old Bunny, the better it always is! +To-night, for example, you have performed prodigies on my account; your +unselfish audacity has only been equalled by your resource; but, my dear +fellow, it was a sadly unnecessary effort." + +"Unnecessary to tell you those brutes were waiting for you down below?" + +"Quite, Bunny. I saw one of them and let him see me. I knew he'd send off +for his pal." + +"Then I don't understand your tactics or theirs." + +"Mine were to walk out the very way we did, you and I. They would never +have seen me from the opposite corner of the square, or dreamt of going +in after me if they hadn't spotted your getting in before them to put me +on my guard. The place would have been left exactly as I found it, and +those two numskulls as much in the lurch as I left them last week outside +the Albany." + +"Perhaps they were beginning to fear that," said I, "and meant ferreting +for you in any case if you didn't show up." + +"Not they," said Raffles. "One of them was against it as it was; it +wasn't their job at all." + +"Not to take you in the act if they could?" + +"No; their job was to take the letter from me as soon as I got back to +earth. That was all. I happen to know. Those were their instructions from +old Levy." + +"Levy!" + +"Did it never occur to you that I was being dogged by his creatures?" + +"His creatures, Raffles?" + +"He set them to shadow me from the hour of our interview on Saturday +morning. Their instructions were to bag the letter from me as soon as I +got it, but to let me go free to the devil!" + +"How can you know, A.J.?" + +"My dear Bunny, where do you suppose I've been spending the week-end? Did +you think I'd go in with a sly dog like old Shylock without watching him +and finding out his real game? I should have thought it hardly necessary +to tell you I've been down the river all the time; down the river," +added Raffles, chuckling, "in a Canadian canoe and a torpedo beard! I was +cruising near the foot of the old brute's garden on Friday evening when +one of the precious pair came down to tell him they had let me slip +already. I landed and heard the whole thing through the window of the +room where we shall find him to-night. It was Levy who set them to watch +the crib since they'd lost the cracksman; he was good enough to reiterate +all his orders for my benefit. You will hear me take him through them +when we get down there, so it's no use going over the same ground twice." + +"Funny orders for a couple of Scotland Yard detectives!" was my puzzled +comment as Raffles produced an inordinate cab-fare. + +"Scotland Yard?" said he. "My good Bunny, those were no limbs of the law; +they're old thieves set to catch a thief, and they've been caught +themselves for their pains!" + +Of course they were! Every detail of their appearance and their behaviour +confirmed the statement in the flash that brought them all before my +mind! And I had never thought of it, never but dreamt that we were doing +battle with the archenemies of our class. But there was no time for +further reflection, nor had I recovered breath enough for another word, +when the hansom clattered up the cobbles into Waterloo Station. And our +last sprint of that athletic night ended in a simultaneous leap into +separate carriages as the platform slid away from the 12:10 train. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Knocked Out + + +But it was hardly likely to be the last excitement of the night, as I saw +for myself before Raffles joined me at Vauxhall. An arch-traitor like +Daniel Levy might at least be trusted to play the game out with loaded +dice; no single sportsman could compete against his callous machinations; +and that was obviously where I was coming in. I only wished I had not +come in before! I saw now the harm that I had done by my rash proceedings +in Gray's Inn, the extra risk entailed already and a worse one still +impending. If the wretches who had shadowed him were really Levy's +mercenaries, and if they really had been taken in their own trap, their +first measure of self-defence would be the denunciation of Raffles to the +real police. Such at least was my idea, and Raffles himself made light +enough of it; he thought they could not expose him without dragging in +Levy, who had probably made it worth their while not to do that on any +consideration. His magnanimity in the matter, which he flatly refused to +take as seriously as I did, made it difficult for me to press old +Raffles, as I otherwise might have done, for an outline of those further +plans in which I hoped to atone for my blunders by being of some use to +him after all. His nonchalant manner convinced me that they were +cut-and-dried; but I was left perhaps deservedly in the dark as to the +details. I merely gathered that he had brought down some document for +Levy to sign in execution of the verbal agreement made between them in +town; not until that agreement was completed by his signature was the +harpy to receive the precious epistle he pretended never to have written. +Raffles, in fine, had the air of a man who has the game in his hands, who +is none the less prepared for foul play on the other side, and by no +means perturbed at the prospect. + +We left the train at a sweet-smelling platform, on which the lights were +being extinguished as we turned into a quiet road where bats flew over +our heads between the lamp-posts, and a policeman was passing a disc of +light over a jerry-built abuse of the name of Queen Anne. Our way led +through quieter roads of larger houses standing further back, until at +last we came to the enemy's gates. They were wooden gates without a +lodge, yet the house set well beyond them, on the river's brim, was a +mansion of considerable size and still greater peculiarity. It was really +two houses, large and small, connected by a spine of white posts and +joists and glimmering glass. In the more substantial building no lights +were to be seen from the gates, but in the annex a large French window +made a lighted square at right angles with the river and the road. We had +set foot in the gravel drive; with a long line of poplars down one side, +and on the other a wide lawn dotted with cedars and small shrubs, when +Raffles strode among these with a smothered exclamation, and a wild +figure started from the ground. + +"What are you doing here?" demanded Raffles, with all the righteous +austerity of a law-abiding citizen. + +"Nutting, sare!" replied an alien tongue, a gleam of good teeth in the +shadow of his great soft hat. "I been see Mistare Le-vie in ze 'ouse, on +ze beezness, shentlemen." + +"Seen him, have you? Then if I were you I should make a decent +departure," said Raffles, "by the gate--" to which he pointed with +increased severity of tone and bearing. + +The weird figure uncovered a shaggy head of hair, made us a grotesque bow +with his right hand melodramatically buried in the folds of a voluminous +cape, and stalked off in the starlight with much dignity. But we heard +him running in the road before the gate had clicked behind him. + +"Isn't that the fellow we saw in Jermyn Street last Thursday?" I asked +Raffles in a whisper. + +"That's the chap," he whispered back. "I wonder if he spotted us, Bunny? +Levy's treated him scandalously, of course; it all came out in a torrent +the other morning. I only hope he hasn't been serving Dan Levy as Jack +Rutter served old Baird! I could swear that was a weapon of sorts he'd +got under his cloak." + +And as we stood together under the stars, listening to the last of the +runaway footfalls, I recalled the killing of another and a less notorious +usurer by a man we both knew, and had even helped to shield from the +consequences of his crime. Yet the memory of our terrible discovery on +that occasion had not the effect of making me shrink from such another +now; nor could I echo the hope of Raffles in my heart of hearts. If Dan +Levy also had come to a bad end--well, it was no more than he deserved, +if only for his treachery to Raffles, and, at any rate, it would put a +stop to our plunging from bad to worse in an adventure of which the +sequel might well be worst of all. I do not say that I was wicked enough +absolutely to desire the death of this sinner for our benefit; but I saw +the benefit at least as plainly as the awful possibility, and it was not +with unalloyed relief that I beheld a great figure stride through the +lighted windows at our nearer approach. + +Though his back was to the light before I saw his face, and the whole man +might have been hacked out of ebony, it was every inch the living Levy +who stood peering in our direction, one hand hollowed at an ear, the +other shading both eyes. + +"Is that you, boys?" he croaked in sepulchral salute. + +"It depends which boys you mean," replied Raffles, marching into the zone +of light. "There are so many of us about to-night!" + +Levy's arms dropped at his sides, and I heard him mutter "Raffles!" with +a malediction. Next moment he was inquiring whether we had come down +alone, yet peering past us into the velvet night for his answer. + +"I brought our friend Bunny," said Raffles, "but that's all." + +"Then what do you mean by saying there are so many of you about?" + +"I was thinking of the gentleman who was here just before us." + +"Here just before you? Why, I haven't seen a soul since my 'ousehold +went to bed." + +"But we met the fellow just this minute within your gates: a little +foreign devil with a head like a mop and the cloak of an operatic +conspirator." + +"That beggar!" cried Levy, flying into a high state of excitement on the +spot. "That blessed little beggar on my tracks down here! I've 'ad him +thrown out of the office in Jermyn Street; he's threatened me by letter +and telegram; so now he thinks he'll come and try it on in person down +'ere. Seen me, eh? I wish I'd seen '_im_! I'm ready for biters like that, +gentlemen. I'm not to be caught on the 'op down here!" + +And a plated revolver twinkled and flashed in the electric light as Levy +drew it from his hip pocket and flourished it in our faces; he would have +gone prowling through the grounds with it if Raffles had not assured him +that the foreign foe had fled on our arrival. As it was the pistol was +not put back in his pocket when Levy at length conducted us indoors; he +placed it on an occasional table beside the glass that he drained on +entering; and forthwith set his back to a fire which seemed in keeping +with the advanced hour, and doubly welcome in an apartment so vast that +the billiard table was a mere item at one end, and sundry trophies of +travel and the chase a far more striking and unforeseen feature. + +"Why, that's a better grisly than the one at Lord's!" exclaimed Raffles, +pausing to admire a glorious fellow near the door, while I mixed myself +the drink he had declined. + +"Yes," said Levy, "the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying +he'd shoot _me_ at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as +a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He +didn't get much show 'ere, _I_ can tell you; that little foreign snipe +won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. +I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, +I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to +your profession, eh, Raffles?" + +"I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy." + +"Oh yes you do!" said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. "How've +you got on with that little bit o' burgling?" + +And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open +windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his +mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy +had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, +in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the +table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions +to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for +the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night. + +"How did you get on?" he repeated when he had given them up for +the present. + +"For a first attempt," replied Raffles, without a twinkle, "I don't think +I've done so badly." + +"Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner," said Levy, catching the +old note in his turn. + +"A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as +easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square." + +"As easy?" + +Raffles recollected his pose. + +"It was enormous fun," said he. "Of course one couldn't know that +there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. +I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. +Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only +took rather longer." + +"What about the caretaker?" asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer +to be concealed. + +"He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre." + +"At your expense?" + +"No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course." + +"So you got in without any difficulty?" + +"Over the roof." + +"And then?" + +"I hit upon the right room." + +"And then, Raffles?" + +"I opened the right safe." + +"Go on, man!" + +But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed +him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all. + +"Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it +a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me." Thus Raffles under +increasing pressure. + +"Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?" + +There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract +the _dénouement_ of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must +have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily +plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of +victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, +and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant +little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This +was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the +living epitome of low cunning and foul play. + +"The next thing that happened," said Raffles, in his most leisurely +manner, "was the descent of Bunny like a bolt from the blue." + +"Had he gone in with you?" + +"No; he came in after me as bold as blazes to say that a couple of +common, low detectives were waiting for me down below in the square!" + +"That was very kind of 'im," snarled Levy, pouring a murderous fire upon +my person from his little black eyes. + +"Kind!" cried Raffles. "It saved the whole show." + +"It did, did it?" + +"I had time to dodge the limbs of the law by getting out another way, and +never letting them know that I had got out at all." + +"Then you left them there?" + +"In their glory!" said Raffles, radiant in his own. + +Though I must confess I could not see them at the time, there were +excellent reasons for not stating there and then the delicious plight in +which we had really left Levy's myrmidons. I myself would have driven +home our triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the +table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, +and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself. + +"And you came away, I suppose," suggested the money-lender, ironically, +"with my original letter in your pocket?" + +"Oh, no, I didn't," replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head. + +"I thought not!" cried Levy in a gust of exultation. + +"I came away," said Raffles, "if you'll pardon the correction, with the +letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!" + +The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the +self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. "You'd better let +me see it," said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of +authority which it took a Raffles to resist. + +Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet +in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. +But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further +from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with +the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a +phylactery. + +"You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, with a slight but +sufficient emphasis on his verb. + +"But I'm not to touch--is that it?" + +"I'm afraid I must ask you to look first," said Raffles, smiling. "I +should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me +that part of your _quid pro quo_ which you have doubtless in readiness; +the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the +three little papers can change hands simultaneously." + +Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the +exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and +unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he +ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the +monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my +side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, +spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles +with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other. + +"Now I'll have a look," he hiccoughed, "an' a good look, unless you want +a lump of lead in your liver!" + +Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile. + +"You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober," said he; +but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was +wondering how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the +nobbler of crude spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, +full in the face of Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and +flung upon the fire, while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, +and before I had struggled to my feet. + +Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was +streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already +crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the +blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first +jumping upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought +him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet +with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the +rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden +head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead +I believe I should have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot. + +I know that I rose exultant from my deed.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +Corpus Delicti + + +Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, +and I heard him saying, "The letter, Bunny, the letter!" in a way that +made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since +the moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been +from the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the +hearth, were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such +store, for which Raffles had risked so much. + +"He's burnt it," said I. "He was too quick for me." + +"And he's nearly burnt my eyes out," returned Raffles, rubbing them +again. "He was too quick for us both." + +"Not altogether," said I, grimly. "I believe I've cracked his skull and +finished him off!" + +Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a +blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the +pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable. + +"No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are +any lights in the other part of the house." + +When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long +glass passage. + +"Not a light!" said I. + +"Nor a sound," he whispered. "We're in better luck than we might have +been; even his revolver didn't go off." Raffles extracted it from under +the prostrate body. "It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, +or one of us." And he put the pistol in his own pocket. + +"But have I killed him, Raffles?" + +"Not yet, Bunny." + +"But do you think he's going to die?" + +I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth +chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body +sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the +parquet floor. + +"He's all right," said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened +again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back +on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the +polished floor. "You'd better leave him to me," he said, looking and +getting up with sudden decision. + +"But what am I to do?" + +"Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat." + +"Where is the boathouse?" + +"You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge. +There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this." + +And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have +handed over a bunch of keys. + +"And what then?" + +"You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand +tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that +windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you +will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, +but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim +for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and +then lie low on board till I come." + +Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken +helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of +Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I +neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me +something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, +what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, +were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about +them. Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, +and I frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as +it seemed to have mattered now. Away from the _corpus delicti_, my horror +was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had quite a +level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter at the +worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing him to +life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go about my +own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of the +normal sensibilities. + +Not much do I remember of that dreamy interval, until the dream became +the nightmare that was still in store. The river ran like a broad road +under the stars, with hardly a glimmer and not a floating thing upon it. +The boathouse stood at the foot of a file of poplars, and I only found it +by stooping low and getting everything over my own height against the +stars. The door was not locked; but the darkness within was such that I +could not see my own hand as it wound the windlass inch by inch. Between +the slow ticking of the cogs I listened jealously for foreign sounds, and +heard at length a gentle dripping across the breadth of the boathouse; +that was the last of the "portcullis," as Raffles called it, rising out +of the river; indeed, I could now see the difference in the stretch of +stream underneath, for the open end of the boathouse was much less dark +than mine; and when the faint band of reflected starlight had broadened +as I thought enough, I ceased winding and groped my way down the steps +into the boat. + +But inaction at such a crisis was an intolerable state, and the last +thing I wanted was time to think. With nothing more to do I must needs +wonder what I was doing in the boat, and then what Raffles could want +with the boat if it was true that Levy was not seriously hurt. I could +see the strategic value of my position if we had been robbing the house, +but Raffles was not out for robbery this time; and I did not believe he +would suddenly change his mind. Gould it be that he had never been quite +confident of the recovery of Levy, but had sent me to prepare this means +of escape from the scene of a tragedy? I cannot have been long in the +boat, for my thwart was still rocking under me, when this suspicion shot +me ashore in a cold sweat. In my haste I went into the river up to one +knee, and ran across the lawn with that boot squelching. Raffles came out +of the lighted room to meet me, and as he stood like Levy against the +electric glare, the first thing I noticed was that he was wearing an +overcoat that did not belong to him, and that the pockets of this +overcoat were bulging grotesquely. But it was the last thing I remembered +in the horror that was to come. + +Levy was lying where I had left him, only straighter, and with a cushion +under his head, as though he were not merely dead, but laid out in his +clothes where he had fallen. + +"I was just coming for you, Bunny," whispered Raffles before I could find +my voice. "I want you to take hold of his boots." + +"His boots!" I gasped, taking Raffles by the sleeve instead. "What on +earth for?" + +"To carry him down to the boat!" + +"But is he--is he still--" + +"Alive?" Raffles was smiling as though I amused him mightily. "Rather, +Bunny! Too full of life to be left, I can tell you; but it'll be daylight +if we stop for explanations now. Are you going to lend a hand, or am I to +drag him through the dew myself?" + +I lent every fibre, and Raffles raised the lifeless trunk, I suppose by +the armpits, and led the way backward into the night, after switching off +the lights within. But the first stage of our revolting journey was a +very short one. We deposited our poor burden as charily as possible on +the gravel, and I watched over it for some of the longest minutes of my +life, while Raffles shut and fastened all the windows, left the room as +Levy himself might have left it, and finally found his way out by one of +the doors. And all the while not a movement or a sound came from the +senseless clay at my feet; but once, when I bent over him, the smell of +whiskey was curiously vital and reassuring. + +We started off again, Raffles with every muscle on the strain, I with +every nerve; this time we staggered across the lawn without a rest, +but at the boathouse we put him down in the dew, until I took off my +coat and we got him lying on that while we debated about the +boathouse, its darkness, and its steps. The combination beat us on a +moment's consideration; and again I was the one to stay, and watch, +and listen to my own heart beating; and then to the water bubbling at +the prow and dripping from the blades as Raffles sculled round to the +edge of the lawn. + +I need dwell no more upon the difficulty and the horror of getting that +inanimate mass on board; both were bad enough, but candour compels me to +admit that the difficulty dwarfed all else until at last we overcame it. +How near we were to swamping our craft, and making sure of our victim by +drowning, I still shudder to remember; but I think it must have prevented +me from shuddering over more remote possibilities at the time. It was a +time, if ever there was one, to trust in Raffles and keep one's powder +dry; and to that extent I may say I played the game. But it was his game, +not mine, and its very object was unknown to me. Never, in fact, had I +followed my inveterate leader quite so implicitly, so blindly, or with +such reckless excitement. And yet, if the worst did happen and our mute +passenger was never to open his eyes again, it seemed to me that we were +well on the road to turn manslaughter into murder in the eyes of any +British jury: the road that might easily lead to destruction at the +hangman's hands. + +But a more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment +of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and +swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank +while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night +was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt +fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between +my shins in the stern-sheets, with his waistcoat open, and _his_ white +shirt catching what light there was as greedily as the other; and his +white face as conspicuous to my guilty mind as though we had rubbed it +with phosphorus. Nor was I the only one to lay this last peril to heart. +Raffles sat silent for several minutes on his thwart; and when he did dip +his sculls it was to muffle his strokes so that even I could scarcely +hear them, and to keep peering behind him down the Stygian stream. + +So long had we been getting under way that nothing surprised me more +than the extreme brevity of our actual voyage. Not many houses and +gardens had slipped behind us on the Middlesex shore, when we turned +into an inlet running under the very windows of a house so near the +river itself that even I might have thrown a stone from any one of them +into Surrey. The inlet was empty and ill-smelling; there was a crazy +landing-stage, and the many windows overlooking us had the black gloss +of empty darkness within. Seen by starlight with a troubled eye, the +house had one salient feature in the shape of a square tower, which +stood out from the facade fronting the river, and rose to nearly twice +the height of the main roof. But this curious excrescence only added to +the forbidding character of as gloomy a mansion as one could wish to +approach by stealth at dead of night. + +"What's this place?" I whispered as Raffles made fast to a post. + +"An unoccupied house, Bunny." + +"Do you mean to occupy it?" + +"I mean our passenger to do so--if we can land him alive or dead!" + +"Hush, Raffles!" + +"It's a case of heels first, this time--" + +"Shut up!" + +Raffles was kneeling on the landing-stage--luckily on a level with our +rowlocks--and reaching down into the boat. + +"Give me his heels," he muttered; "you can look after his business end. +You needn't be afraid of waking the old hound, nor yet hurting him." + +"I'm not," I whispered, though mere words had never made my blood run +colder. "You don't understand me. Listen to that!" + +And as Raffles knelt on the landing-stage, and I crouched in the boat, +with something desperately like a dead man stretched between us, there +was a swish and a dip outside the inlet, and a flutter of white on the +river beyond. + +"Another narrow squeak!" he muttered with grim levity when the sound had +died away. "I wonder who it is paddling his own canoe at dead of night?" + +"I'm wondering how much he saw." + +"Nothing," said Raffles, as though there could be no two opinions on the +point. "What did we see to swear to between a sweater and a +pocket-handkerchief? Only something white, and we were looking out, and +it's far darker in here than out there on the main stream. But it'll +soon be getting light, and we really may be seen unless we land our big +fish first." + +And without more ado he dragged the lifeless Levy ashore by the heels, +while I alternately grasped the landing-stage to steady the boat, and did +my best to protect the limp members and the leaden head from actual +injury. All my efforts could not avert a few hard knocks, however, and +these were sustained with such a horrifying insensibility of body and +limb, that my worst suspicions were renewed before I crawled ashore +myself, and remained kneeling over the prostrate form. + +"Are you certain, Raffles?" I began, and could not finish the +awful question. + +"That he's alive?" said Raffles. "Rather, Bunny, and he'll be kicking +below the belt again in a few more hours!" + +"A few more _hours_, A.J.?" + +"I give him four or five." + +"Then it's concussion of the brain!" + +"It's the brain all right," said Raffles. "But for 'concussion' I should +say 'coma,' if I were you." + +"What have I done!" I murmured, shaking my head over the poor old brute. + +"You?" said Raffles. "Less than you think, perhaps!" + +"But the man's never moved a muscle." + +"Oh, yes, he has, Bunny!" + +"When?" + +"I'll tell you at the next stage," said Raffles. "Up with his heels and +come this way." + +And we trailed across a lawn so woefully neglected that the big body +sagging between us, though it cleared the ground by several inches, swept +the dew from the rank growth until we got it propped up on some steps at +the base of the tower, and Raffles ran up to open the door. More steps +there were within, stone steps allowing so little room for one foot and +so much for the other as to suggest a spiral staircase from top to bottom +of the tower. So it turned out to be; but there were landings +communicating with the house, and on the first of them we laid our man +and sat down to rest. + +"How I love a silent, uncomplaining, stone staircase!" sighed the now +quite invisible Raffles. "So of course we find one thrown away upon an +empty house. Are you there, Bunny?" + +"Rather! Are you quite sure nobody else is here?" I asked, for he was +scarcely troubling to lower his voice. + +"Only Levy, and he won't count till all hours." + +"I'm waiting to hear how you know." + +"Have a Sullivan, first." + +"Are we as safe as all that?" + +"If we're careful to make an ash-tray of our own pockets," said Raffles, +and I heard him tapping his cigarette in the dark. I refused to run any +risks. Next moment his match revealed him sitting at the bottom of one +flight, and me at the top of the flight below; either spiral was lost in +shadow; and all I saw besides was a cloud of smoke from the blood-stained +lips of Raffles, more clouds of cobwebs, and Levy's boots lying over on +their uppers, almost in my lap. Raffles called my attention to them +before he blew out his match. + +"He hasn't turned his toes up yet, you see! It's a hog's sleep, but not +by any means his last." + +"Did you mean just now that he woke up while I was in the boathouse?" + +"Almost as soon as your back was turned, Bunny--if you call it waking up. +You had knocked him out, you know, but only for a few minutes." + +"Do you mean to tell me that he was none the worse?" + +"Very little, Bunny." + +My feeble heart jumped about in my body. + +"Then what knocked him out again, A.J.?" + +"I did." + +"In the same way?" + +"No, Bunny, he asked for a drink and I gave him one." + +"A doctored drink!" I whispered with some horror; it was refreshing to +feel once more horrified at some act not one's own. + +"So to speak," said Raffles, with a gesture that I followed by the red +end of his cigarette; "I certainly touched it up a bit, but I always +meant to touch up his liquor if the beggar went back on his word. He did +a good deal worse--for the second time of asking--and you did better than +I ever knew you do before, Bunny! I simply carried on the good work. Our +friend is full of a judicious blend of his own whiskey and the stuff poor +Teddy had the other night. And when he does come to his senses I believe +we shall find him damned sensible." + +"And if he isn't, I suppose you'll keep him here until he is?" + +"I shall hold him up to ransom," said Raffles, "at the top of this ruddy +tower, until he pays through both nostrils for the privilege of climbing +down alive." + +"You mean until he stands by his side of your bargain?" said I, only +hoping that was his meaning, but not without other apprehensions which +Raffles speedily confirmed. + +"And the rest!" he replied, significantly. "You don't suppose the skunk's +going to get off as lightly as if he'd played the game, do you? I've got +one of my own to play now, Bunny, and I mean to play it for all I'm +worth. I thought it would come to this!" + +In fact, he had foreseen treachery from the first, and the desperate +device of kidnapping the traitor proved to have been as deliberate a move +as Raffles had ever planned to meet a probable contingency. He had +brought down a pair of handcuffs as well as a sufficient supply of +Somnol. My own deed of violence was the one entirely unforeseen effect, +and Raffles vowed it had been a help. But when I inquired whether he had +ever been over this empty house before, an irritable jerk of his +cigarette end foretold the answer. + +"My good Bunny, is this a time for rotten questions? Of course I've been +over the whole place; didn't I tell you I'd been spending the week-end in +these parts? I got an order to view the place, and have bribed the +gardener not to let anybody else see over it till I've made up my mind. +The gardener's cottage is on the other side of the main road, which runs +flush with the front of the house; there's a splendid garden on that +side, but it takes him all his time to keep it up, so he's given up +bothering about this bit here. He only sets foot in the house to show +people over; his wife comes in sometimes to open the downstairs windows; +the ones upstairs are never shut. So you perceive we shall be fairly free +from interruption at the top of this tower, especially when I tell you +that it finishes in a room as sound-proof as old Carlyle's crow's-nest in +Cheyne Row." + +It flashed across me that another great man of letters had made his local +habitation if not his name in this part of the Thames Valley; and when I +asked if this was that celebrity's house, Raffles seemed surprised that +I had not recognised it as such in the dark. He said it would never let +again, as the place was far too good for its position, which was now much +too near London. He also told me that the idea of holding Dan Levy up to +ransom had occurred to him when he found himself being followed about +town by Levy's "mamelukes," and saw what a traitor he had to cope with. + +"And I hope you like the idea, Bunny," he added, "because I was never +caught kidnapping before, and in all London there wasn't a bigger man +to kidnap." + +"I love it," said I (and it was true enough of the abstract idea), "but +don't you think he's just a bit too big? Won't the country ring with his +disappearance?" + +"My dear Bunny, nobody will dream he's disappeared!" said Raffles, +confidently. "I know the habits of the beast; didn't I tell you he ran +another show somewhere? Nobody seems to know where, but when he isn't +here, that's where he's supposed to be, and when he's there he cuts town +for days on end. I suppose you never noticed I've been wearing an +overcoat all this time, Bunny?" + +"Oh, yes, I did," said I. "Of course it's one of his?" + +"The very one he'd have worn to-night, and his soft hat from the same +peg is in one of the pockets; their absence won't look as if he'd come +out feet first, will it, Bunny? I thought his stick might be in the way, +so instead of bringing it too, I stowed it away behind his books. But +these things will serve a second turn when we see our way to letting him +go again like a gentleman." + +The red end of the Sullivan went out sizzling between a moistened thumb +and finger, and no doubt Raffles put it carefully in his pocket as he +rose to resume the ascent. It was still perfectly dark on the tower +stairs; but by the time we reached the sanctum at the top we could see +each other's outlines against certain ovals of wild grey sky and dying +stars. For there was a window more like a porthole in three of the four +walls; in the fourth wall was a cavity like a ship's bunk, into which we +lifted our still unconscious prisoner as gently as we might. Nor was that +the last that was done for him, now that some slight amends were +possible. From an invisible locker Raffles produced bundles of thin, +coarse stuff, one of which he placed as a pillow under the sleeper's +head, while the other was shaken out into a covering for his body. + +"And you asked me if I'd ever been over the place!" said Raffles, +putting a third bundle in my hands. "Why, I slept up here last night, +just to see if it was all as quiet as it looked; these were my +bed-clothes, and I want you to follow my example." + +"I go to sleep?" I cried. "I couldn't and wouldn't for a thousand +pounds, Raffles!" + +"Oh, yes, you could!" said Raffles, and as he spoke there was a horrible +explosion in the tower. Upon my word, I thought one of us was shot, until +there came the smaller sounds of froth pattering on the floor and liquor +bubbling from a bottle. + +"Champagne!" I exclaimed, when he had handed me the metal cap of a flask, +and I had taken a sip. "Did you hide that up here as well?" + +"I hid nothing up here except myself," returned Raffles, laughing. "This +is one of a couple of pints from the cellarette in Levy's billiard den; +take your will of it, Bunny, and perhaps the old man may have the other +when he's a good boy. I fancy we shall find it a stronger card than it +looks. Meanwhile let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep! And you'd be +far more use to me later, Bunny, if only you'd try to do the same." + +I was beginning to feel that I might try, for Raffles was filling up the +metal cup every minute, and also plying me with sandwiches from Levy's +table, brought hence (with the champagne) in Levy's overcoat pocket. It +was still pleasing to reflect that they had been originally intended for +the rival bravos of Gray's Inn. But another idea that did occur to me, I +dismissed at the time, and so justly that I would disabuse any other +suspicious mind of it without delay. Dear old Raffles was scarcely more +skilful and audacious as amateur cracksman than as amateur anaesthetist, +nor was he ever averse from the practice of his uncanny genius at either +game. But, sleepy as I soon found myself at the close of our very long +night's work, I had no subsequent reason to suppose that Raffles had +given _me_ drop or morsel of anything but sandwiches and champagne. + +So I rolled myself up on the locker, just as things were beginning to +take visible shape even without the tower windows behind them, and I was +almost dropping off to sleep when a sudden anxiety smote my mind. + +"What about the boat?" I asked. + +There was no answer. + +"Raffles!" I cried. "What are you going to do about the beggar's boat?" + +"You go to sleep," came the sharp reply, "and leave the boat to me." + +And I fancied from his voice that Raffles also had lain him down, but on +the floor. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Trial by Raffles + + +When I awoke it was dazzling daylight in the tower, and the little scene +was quite a surprise to me. It had felt far larger in the dark. I suppose +the floor-space was about twelve feet square, but it was contracted on +one side by the well and banisters of a wooden staircase from the room +below, on another by the ship's bunk, and opposite that by the locker on +which I lay. Moreover, the four walls, or rather the four triangles of +roof, sloped so sharply to the apex of the tower as to leave an inner +margin in which few grown persons could have stood upright. The port-hole +windows were shrouded with rags of cobweb spotted with dead flies. They +had evidently not been opened for years; it was even more depressingly +obvious that we must not open them. One was thankful for such modicum of +comparatively pure air as came up the open stair from the floor below; +but in the freshness of the morning one trembled to anticipate the +atmosphere of this stale and stuffy eyrie through the heat of a summer's +day. And yet neither the size nor the scent of the place, nor any other +merely scenic feature, was half so disturbing or fantastic as the +appearance of my two companions. + +Raffles, not quite at the top of the stairs, but near enough to loll over +the banisters, and Levy, cumbering the ship's bunk, were indeed startling +figures to an eye still dim with sleep. Raffles had an ugly cut from the +left nostril to the corner of the mouth; he had washed the blood from his +face, but the dark and angry streak remained to heighten his unusual +pallor. Levy looked crumpled and debauched, flabbily and feebly senile, +yet with his vital forces making a last flicker in his fiery eyes. He was +grotesquely swathed in scarlet bunting, from which his doubled fists +protruded in handcuffs; a bit of thin rope attached the handcuffs to a +peg on which his coat and hat were also hanging, and a longer bit was +taken round the banisters from the other end of the bunting, which I now +perceived to be a tattered and torn Red Ensign. This led to the discovery +that I myself had been sleeping in the Union Jack, and it brought my eyes +back to the ghastly face of Raffles, who was already smiling at mine. + +"Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and +present your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be +frightened of him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've +had to clap him in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given +him rope enough; he's got lashings of rope--eh, Bunny?" + +"That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul +play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only +you'd give me that drink." + +And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the +folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne +standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed +it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and +merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering +Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched +for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted +with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without +going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale +remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house. + +"I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The +poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole +in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his +trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other +pint to his own infernal cheek." + +"Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him +up to ransom?" + +"Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of +reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when +he's heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the +tap when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had +after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but +it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case." + +And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting +on the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court. + +"Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had +better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as +a preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and +granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused. +Drink has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that +necessitates your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week +of that chastening experience you come before me without knowing where +you are or how you got here." + +"That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That +was something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was, +and you'll pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of +my whisky." + +"Well," resumed Raffles, "your champagne is on the same high level, and +here's a pint of the best which you can open for yourself if only you +show your sense before I've done with you. But you won't advance that +little millennium by talking about foul play as though it were all on one +side and the foulest of the foul not on yours. You will only retard the +business of the court. You are indicted with extortion and sharp practice +in all your dealings, with cheating and misleading your customers, +attempting to cheat and betray your friends, and breaking all the rules +of civilised crime. You are not invited to plead either way, because this +court would not attach the slightest value to your plea; but presently +you will get an opportunity of addressing the court in mitigation of your +sentence. Or, if you like," continued Raffles, with a wink at me, "you +may be represented by counsel. My learned friend here, I'm sure, will be +proud to undertake your defence as a 'docker'; or--perhaps I should say a +'bunker,' Mr. Bunny?" + +And Raffles laughed as coyly as a real judge at a real judicial joke, +whereupon I joined in so uproariously as to find myself degraded from the +position of leading counsel to that of the general public in a single +flash from the judge's eye. + +"If I hear any more laughter," said Raffles, "I shall clear the court. +It's perfectly monstrous that people should come here to a court of +justice and behave as though they were at a theatre." + +Levy had been reclining with his yellow face twisted and his red eyes +shut; but now these burst open as with flames, and the dry lips spat a +hearty curse at the judge upon the locker. + +"Take care!" said Raffles. "Contempt of court won't do you any good, +you know!" + +"And what good will all this foolery do you? Say what you've got to say +against me, and be damned to you!" + +"I fear you're confusing our functions sadly," said Raffles, with a +compassionate shake of the head. "But so far as your first exhortation +goes, I shall endeavour to take you at your word. You are a money-lender +trading, among other places, in Jermyn Street, St. James's, under the +style and title of Daniel Levy." + +"It 'appens to be my name." + +"That I can well believe," rejoined Raffles; "and if I may say so, Mr. +Levy, I respect you for it. You don't call yourself MacGregor or +Montgomery. You don't sail under false colours at all. You fly the skull +and crossbones of Daniel Levy, and it's one of the points that +distinguish you from the ruck of money-lenders and put you in a class by +yourself. Unfortunately, the other points are not so creditable. If you +are more brazen than most you are also more unscrupulous; if you fly at +higher game, you descend to lower dodges. You may be the biggest man +alive at your job; you are certainly the biggest villain." + +"But I'm up against a bigger now," said Levy, shifting his position and +closing his crimson eyes. + +"Possibly," said Raffles, as he produced a long envelope and unfolded a +sheet of foolscap; "but permit me to remind you of a few of your own +proven villainies before you take any more shots at mine. Last year you +had three of your great bargains set aside by the law as hard and +unconscionable; but every year you have these cases, and at best the +terms are modified in favour of your wretched client. But it's only the +exception who will face the music of the law-courts and the Press, and +you figure on the general run. You prefer people like the Lincolnshire +vicar you hounded into an asylum the year before last. You cherish the +memory of the seven poor devils that you drove to suicide between 1890 +and 1894; that sort pay the uttermost farthing before the debt to nature! +You set great store by the impoverished gentry and nobility who have you +to stay with them when the worst comes to the worst, and secure a respite +in exchange for introductions to their pals. No fish is too large for +your net, and none is too small, from his highness of Hathipur to that +poor little builder at Bromley, who cut the throats--" + +"Stop it!" cried Levy, in a lather of impotent rage. + +"By all means," said Raffles, restoring the paper to its envelope. "It's +an ugly little load for one man's soul, I admit; but you must see it was +about time somebody beat you at your own beastly game." + +"It's a pack of blithering lies," retorted Levy, "and you haven't beaten +me yet. Stick to facts within your own knowledge, and then tell me if +your precious Garlands haven't brought their troubles on themselves?" + +"Certainly they have," said Raffles. "But it isn't your treatment of the +Garlands that has brought you to this pretty pass." + +"What is it, then?" + +"Your treatment of me, Mr. Levy." + +"A cursed crook like you!" + +"A party to a pretty definite bargain, however, and a discredited person +only so far as that bargain is concerned." + +"And the rest!" said the money-lender, jeering feebly. "I know more about +you than you guess." + +"I should have put it the other way round," replied Raffles, smiling. +"But we are both forgetting ourselves, prisoner in the bunk. Kindly note +that your trial is resumed, and further contempt will not be allowed to +go unpurged. You referred a moment ago to my unfortunate friends; you say +they were the engineers of their own misfortunes. That might be said of +all who ever put themselves in your clutches. You squeeze them as hard as +the law will let you, and in this case I don't see how the law is to +interfere. So I interfere myself--in the first instance as disastrously +as you please." + +"You did so!" exclaimed Levy, with a flicker of his inflamed eyes. "You +brought things to a head; that's all _you_ did." + +"On the contrary, you and I came to an agreement which still holds good," +said Raffles, significantly. "You are to return me a certain note of hand +for thirteen thousand and odd pounds, taken in exchange for a loan of ten +thousand, and you are also to give an understanding to leave another +fifteen thousand of yours on mortgage for another year at least, instead +of foreclosing, as you threatened and had a right to do this week. That +was your side of the bargain." + +"Well," said Levy, "and when did I go back on it?" + +"My side," continued Raffles, ignoring the interpolation, "was to get you +by hook or crook a certain letter which you say you never wrote. As a +matter of fact it was only to be got by crook--" + +"Aha!" + +"I got hold of it, nevertheless. I brought it to you at your house last +night. And you instantly destroyed it after as foul an attack as one man +ever made upon another!" + +Raffles had risen in his wrath, was towering over the prostrate prisoner, +forgetful of the mock trial, dead even to the humour which he himself had +infused into a sufficiently lurid situation, but quite terribly alive to +the act of treachery and violence which had brought that situation about. +And I must say that Levy looked no less alive to his own enormity; he +quailed in his bonds with a guilty fearfulness strange to witness in so +truculent a brute; and it was with something near a quaver that his voice +came next. + +"I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, +I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and +the drink together made me mad." + +"So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?" + +"Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl." + +"You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?" + +"Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must +have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down." + +"In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?" + +"That's it--with the letter." + +"You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you +handle it?" + +"Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!" + +Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the +tower, his head and shoulders the butt of a climbing sunbeam full of +fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, +but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled +hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though +it were a bad job. + +"Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment +that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?" + +"_I_ have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should +I? It must have been the police." + +"It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as +if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both classes to be +deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no +difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave +me no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at +Gray's Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe +I have already mentioned to you." + +"You said you left them there in their glory." + +"It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs." + +Levy struggled into a less recumbent posture. + +"And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?" + +"I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know." + +"And how the devil do you know?" + +Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: +"You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!" + +The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked +himself at that and tried one more poser. + +"And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it +wasn't to ensure your safety?" + +"It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down +expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting +the treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea--prisoner in +the bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. +My compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite +colourable image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and +it had been a case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough +which I should let go." + +But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red +Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms. + +"They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his +teeth. "The traitors--the blasted traitors!" + +"It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, +"especially when one's elders and betters themselves succumb to it." + +"But they're such liars!" cried Levy, shifting his ground again. "Don't +you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your +own good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might +'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot +their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' +they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to +blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed +to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game +all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, +Raffles, and--and let me out o' this, like a good feller!" + +"Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the +judicial locker. + +"Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal +of all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those +two jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and +you were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling +you 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's +surely about time to stop treating me like a mad dog." + +"Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?" + +"Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of +doing anything else." + +"Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what +you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?" + +"In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket." + +"In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly +commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me. + +"What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if +only you'll take these damned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for +'em now, you know!" + +Raffles shook his head. + +"I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, +prisoner. But my marshal will produce the note from your person if +it's there." + +It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact +while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples +which he had brought with him for the purpose. + +"It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look +that I intercepted at close quarters. + +"So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine +signature to this little document which is also a part of your bond." + +The little document turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on +parchment, embossed with a ten-shilling stamp, and duly calling itself an +INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up +for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in +existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee +simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and +its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of £15,000 to remain +charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited +Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from--" that +summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and +innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom +Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy +of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. +I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they +had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed +was to be signed! + +Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected +of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was +obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his +ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less +with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform +his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince +us of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he +had succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of +the creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and +I had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma +in which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look +pleasant, or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he +looked as pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the +shadow of a fight for their immediate removal. + +"And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think +I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne." + +"Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only +at the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house +last night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do +of your own free will then." + +Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, +with fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I +told you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very +sorry for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again +from the bottom of my 'eart." + +"I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our +arrival was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last +of those acts of treachery for which you are still on your +trial--prisoner in the bunk!" + +"But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a +palsy of impotent rage and disappointment. + +"You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even +plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've +made, and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a +point by telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your +guilt. Have you nothing better to say why the sentence of the court +should not be passed upon you?" + +A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repetition +of the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower +lip of Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the +inflamed eyelids. + +"I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought--I'd +swindle--you." + +"Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let +me tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by +twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen +hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason." + +Though not unprepared for some such ultimatum, I must own I heard it with +dismay. On all sorts of grounds, some of them as unworthy as itself, this +last demand failed to meet with my approval; and I determined to +expostulate with Raffles before it was too late. Meanwhile I hid my +feelings as best I could, and admired the spirit with which Dan Levy +expressed his. + +"I'll see you damned first!" he cried. "It's blackmail!" + +"Guineas," said Raffles, "for contempt of court." + +And more to my surprise than ever, not a little indeed to my secret +disappointment, our captive speedily collapsed again, whimpering, +moaning, gnashing his teeth, and clutching at the Red Ensign, with closed +eyes and distorted face, so much as though he were about to have a fit +that I caught up the half-bottle of champagne, and began removing the +wire at a nod from Raffles. + +"Don't cut the string just yet," he added, however, with an eye on +Levy--who instantly opened his. + +"I'll pay up!" he whispered, feebly yet eagerly. "It serves me right. I +promise I'll pay up!" + +"Good!" said Raffles. "Here's your own cheque-book from your own room, +and here's my fountain pen." + +"You won't take my word?" + +"It's quite enough to have to take your cheque; it should have been +hard cash." + +"So it shall be, Raffles, if you come up with me to my office!" + +"I dare say." + +"To my bank, then!" + +"I prefer to go alone. You will kindly make it an open cheque payable +to bearer." + +The fountain pen was poised over the chequebook, but only because I had +placed it in Levy's fingers, and was holding the cheque-book under them. + +"And what if I refuse?" he demanded, with a last flash of his +native spirit. + +"We shall say good-bye, and give you until to-night." + +"All day to call for help in!" muttered Levy, all but to himself. + +"Do you happen to know where you are?" Raffles asked him. + +"No, but I can find out." + +"If you knew already you would also know that you might call till you +were black in the face; but to keep you in blissful ignorance you will be +bound a good deal more securely than you are at present. And to spare +your poor voice you will also be very thoroughly gagged." + +Levy took remarkably little notice of either threat or gibe. + +"And if I give in and sign?" said he, after a pause. + +"You will remain exactly as you are, with one of us to keep you company, +while the other goes up to town to cash your cheque. You can't expect me +to give you a chance of stopping it, you know." + +This, again, struck me as a hard condition, if only prudent when one came +to think of it from our point of view; still, it took even me by +surprise, and I expected Levy to fling away the pen in disgust. He +balanced it, however, as though also weighing the two alternatives very +carefully in his mind, and during his deliberations his bloodshot eyes +wandered from Raffles to me and back again to Raffles. In a word, the +latest prospect appeared to disturb Mr. Levy less than, for obvious +reasons, it did me. Certainly for him it was the lesser of the two evils, +and as such he seemed to accept it when he finally wrote out the cheque +for fifteen hundred guineas (Raffles insisting on these), and signed it +firmly before sinking back as though exhausted by the effort. + +Raffles was as good as his word about the champagne now: dram by dram +he poured the whole pint into the cup belonging to his flask, and dram +by dram our prisoner tossed it off, but with closed eyes, like a +delirious invalid, and towards the end, with a head so heavy that +Raffles had to raise it from the rolled flag, though foul talons still +came twitching out for more. It was an unlovely process, I will +confess; but what was a pint, as Raffles said? At any rate I could bear +him out that these potations had not been hocussed, and Raffles +whispered the same for the flask which he handed me with Levy's +revolver at the head of the wooden stairs. + +"I'm coming down," said I, "for a word with you in the room below." + +Raffles looked at me with open eyes, then more narrowly at the red lids +of Levy, and finally at his own watch. + +"Very well, Bunny, but I must cut and run for my train in about a minute. +There's a 9.24 which would get me to the bank before eleven, and back +here by one or two." + +"Why go to the bank at all?" I asked him point-blank in the lower room. + +"To cash his cheque before he has a chance of stopping it. Would you like +to go instead of me, Bunny?" + +"No, thank you!" + +"Well, don't get hot about it; you've got the better billet of the two." + +"The softer one, perhaps." + +"Infinitely, Bunny, with the old bird full of his own champagne, and his +own revolver in your pocket or your hand! The worst he can do is to +start yelling out, and I really do believe that not a soul would hear +him if he did. The gardeners are always at work on the other side of the +main road. A passing boatload is the only danger, and I doubt if even +they would hear." + +"My billet's all right," said I, valiantly. "It's yours that +worries me." + +"Mine!" cried Raffles, with an almost merry laugh. "My dear, good Bunny, +you may make your mind easy about my little bit! Of course, it'll take +some doing at the bank. I don't say it's a straight part there. But trust +me to play it on my head." + +"Raffles," I said, in a low voice that may have trembled, "it's not a +part for you to play at all! I don't mean the little bit at the bank. I +mean this whole blackmailing part of the business. It's not like you, +Raffles. It spoils the whole thing!" + +I had got it off my chest without a hitch. But so far Raffles had not +discouraged me. There was a look on his face which even made me think +that he agreed with me in his heart. Both hardened as he thought it over. + +"It's Levy who's spoilt the whole thing," he rejoined obdurately in +the end. "He's been playing me false all the time, and he's got to +pay for it." + +"But you never meant to make anything out of him, A.J.!" + +"Well, I do now, and I've told you why. Why shouldn't I?" + +"Because it's not your game!" I cried, with all the eager persuasion in +my power. "Because it's the sort of thing Dan Levy would do +himself--it's _his_ game, all right--it simply drags you down to his +level--" + +But there he stopped me with a look, and not the kind of look I often had +from Raffles, It was no new feat of mine to make him angry, scornful, +bitterly cynical or sarcastic. This, however, was a look of pain and even +shame, as though he had suddenly seen himself in a new and peculiarly +unlovely light. + +"Down to it!" he exclaimed, with an irony that was not for me. "As though +there could be a much lower level than mine! Do you know, Bunny, I +sometimes think my moral sense is ahead of yours?" + +I could have laughed outright; but the humour that was the salt of him +seemed suddenly to have gone out of Raffles. + +"I know what I am," said he, "but I'm afraid you're getting a hopeless +villain-worshipper!" + +"It's not the villain I care about," I answered, meaning every word. +"It's the sportsman behind the villain, as you know perfectly well." + +"I know the villain behind the sportsman rather better," replied Raffles, +laughing when I least expected it. "But you're by way of forgetting his +existence altogether. I shouldn't wonder if some day you wrote me up +into a heavy hero, Bunny, and made me turn in my quicklime! Let this +remind you what I always was and shall be to the end." + +And he took my hand, as I fondly hoped in surrender to my appeal to those +better feelings which I knew I had for once succeeded in quickening +within him. + +But it was only to bid me a mischievous goodbye, ere he ran down the +spiral stair, leaving me to listen till I lost his feathery foot-falls in +the base of the tower, and then to mount guard over my tethered, +handcuffed, somnolent, and yet always formidable prisoner at the top. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +Watch and Ward + + +I well remember, as I set reluctant foot upon the wooden stair, taking a +last and somewhat lingering look at the dust and dirt of the lower +chamber, as one who knew not what might happen before he saw it again. +The stain as of red rust in the lavatory basin, the gritty deposit in the +bath, the verdigris on all the taps, the foul opacity of the windows, are +among the trivialities that somehow stamped themselves upon my mind. One +of the windows was open at the top, had been so long open that the +aperture was curtained with cobwebs at each extremity, but in between I +got quite a poignant picture of the Thames as I went upstairs. It was +only a sinuous perspective of sunlit ripples twinkling between wooded +gardens and open meadows, a fisherman or two upon the tow-path, a canoe +in mid-stream, a gaunt church crowning all against the sky. But inset in +such surroundings it was like a flash from a magic-lantern in a +coal-cellar. And very loth was I to exchange that sunny peep for an +indefinite prospect of my prisoner's person at close quarters. + +Yet the first stage of my vigil proved such a sinecure as to give me +some confidence for all the rest. Dan Levy opened neither his lips nor +his eyes at my approach, but lay on his back with the Red Ensign drawn +up to his chin, and the peaceful countenance of profound oblivion. I +remember taking a good look at him, and thinking that his face improved +remarkably in repose, that in death he might look fine. The forehead was +higher and broader than I had realised, the thick lips were firm enough +now, but the closing of the crafty little eyes was the greatest gain of +all. On the whole, not only a better but a stronger face than it had +been all the morning, a more formidable face by far. But the man had +fallen asleep in his bonds, and forgotten them; he would wake up abject +enough; if not, I had the means to reduce him to docility. Meanwhile, I +was in no hurry to show my power, but stole on tiptoe to the locker, and +took my seat by inches. + +Levy did not move a muscle. No sound escaped him either, and somehow or +other I should have expected him to snore; indeed, it might have come as +a relief, for the silence of the tower soon got upon my nerves. It was +not a complete silence; that was (and always is) the worst of it. The +wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint +and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the +house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh +period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every +time. Then I remember a real anxiety over a blue-bottle, that must have +come in through the open window just below, for suddenly it buzzed into +my ken and looked like attacking Levy on the spot. Somehow I slew it with +less noise than the brute itself was making; and not until after that +breathless achievement did I realise how anxious I was to keep my +prisoner asleep. Yet I had the revolver, and he lay handcuffed and bound +down! It was in the next long silence that I became sensitive to another +sound which indeed I had heard at intervals already, only to dismiss it +from my mind as one of the signs of extraneous life which were bound to +penetrate even to the top of my tower. It was a slow and regular beat, as +of a sledge-hammer in a distant forge, or some sort of machinery only +audible when there was absolutely nothing else to be heard. It could +hardly be near at hand, for I could not hear it properly unless I held my +breath. Then, however, it was always there, a sound that never ceased or +altered, so that in the end I sat and listened to it and nothing else. I +was not even looking at Levy when he asked me if I knew what it was. + +His voice was quiet and civil enough, but it undoubtedly made me jump, +and that brought a malicious twinkle into the little eyes that looked as +though they had been studying me at their leisure. They were perhaps less +violently bloodshot than before, the massive features calm and strong as +they had been in slumber or its artful counterfeit. + +"I thought you were asleep?" I snapped, and knew better for certain +before he spoke. + +"You see, that pint o' pop did me prouder than intended," he explained. +"It's made a new man o' me, you'll be sorry to 'ear." + +I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or +anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. +And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was. + +"Do you?" I demanded. + +"Rather!" he replied, with cheerful certitude. "It's the clock, of +course." + +"What clock?" + +"The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road." + +"How do _you_ know?" I demanded, with uneasy credulity. + +"My good young man," said Dan Levy, "I know the face of that clock as +well as I know the inside of this tower." + +"Then you do know where you are!" I cried, in such surprise that Levy +grinned in a way that ill became a captive. + +"Why," said he, "I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse +myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the +neighhour'ood." + +"Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?" I demanded, but my warmth +merely broadened his grin. + +"Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are." + +"It won't in this case," said I through my teeth. But for all my +austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with +quiet but most disquieting amusement. + +"I'm not so sure of that," he observed at length. "It rather paid, to my +way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to +keep an eye on me." + +"Oh, did it!" said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found +comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon. + +"I only mean," he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, "that you +strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend." + +I said nothing to that. + +"On the other 'and," continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though +he really was comparing us in his mind; "on the other _hand_" stooping to +pick up what he had dropped, "you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes +so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he +hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use +hollering before you're out o' the wood." + +I agreed, with more confidence than I felt. + +"Yet I wonder he never thought of it," my prisoner went on as if +to himself. + +"Thought of what?" + +"Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't +tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been +thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen +going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to +be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!" + +"How do you know he didn't?" + +"Because this 'appens to be the day!" + +And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was +beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his +present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles +would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the +satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's +statement. + +"That be blowed for a bluff!" was more or less what I said. "It's too +much of a coincidence to be anything else." + +"The odds are only six to one against it," said Levy, indifferently. "One +of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the +other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you +know your own business best." + +"At all events," I boasted, "I know better than to be bluffed by the most +obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the +man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you." + +"I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run +away from--though he looks as hard as nails--what there is of him," said +Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry +some conviction. "He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; +some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same +trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like." + +"And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that +can possibly have to do with it up here." + +"No," said Levy; "he comes no higher than the floor below." I seemed to +remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. "But that's +near enough." + +"You mean that we shall hear him?" + +"And he us!" added Levy, with unmistakable determination. + +"Look here, Mr. Levy," said I, showing him his own revolver, "if we do +hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I +shall blow out your beastly brains!" + +The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such +deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of +it, and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more +mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if +anything could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the +guttural laugh with which he greeted it. + +"Excuse me," said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red +bunting, "but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to +preserve silence--why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play the +cold-blooded villain--_you_!" + +"I shall play him to some purpose," I hissed, "if you drive me to it. I +laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same +thing again this morning. So now you know." + +"That wasn't in cold blood," said Levy, rolling his head from side to +side; "that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't +count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last +night or this morning--though I can see that you're no brigand or +blackmailer at bottom--and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave +Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar +job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you +ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's +the magsman, you're only the swell. _I_ can see that. But the judge +won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a +thousand shames!" + +He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, +persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his +words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with +meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as +deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to +me with the significance of his altered tone. + +"I can't help it," I muttered. "I must go through with the whole +thing now." + +"Why must you?" demanded Levy. "You've been led into a job that's none of +your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the +job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found +out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?" + +"There's nothing else for it," I answered, with a sulky resignation, +though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming. + +And then it came. + +"Why not get out of the whole thing," suggested Levy, boldly, "before +it's too late?" + +"How can I?" said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition. + +"By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!" + +I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were +actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness +fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging +and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it +was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to +hesitate on quite different grounds. + +"It's all very well," I said, "but are you going to make it worth +my while?" + +"Certainly!" cried he. "Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where +you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll +write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred +before I leave this tower." + +"You really will?" I temporised. + +"I swear it!" he asseverated; and I still believe he might have kept his +word about that. But now I knew where he _had_ been lying to me, and now +was the time to let him know I knew it. + +"Two hundred pounds," said I, "for the liberty you are bound to get for +nothing, as you yourself have pointed out, when the man turns up to wind +the clock? A couple of hundred to save less than a couple of hours?" + +Levy changed colour as he saw his mistake, and his eyes flashed with +sudden fury; otherwise his self-command was only less admirable than his +presence of mind. + +"It wasn't to save time," said he; "it was to save my face in the +neighbourhood. The well-known money-lender found bound and handcuffed in +an empty house! It means the first laugh at my expense, whoever has the +last laugh. But you're quite right; it wasn't worth two hundred golden +sovereigns. Let them laugh! At any rate you and your flash friend'll be +laughing on the wrong side of your mouths before the day's out. So that's +all there is to it, and you'd better start screwing up your courage if +you want to do me in! I did mean to give you another chance in life--but +by God I wouldn't now if you were to go down on your knees for one!" + +Considering that he was bound and I was free, that I was armed and he +defenceless, there was perhaps more humour than the prisoner saw in his +picture of me upon my knees to him. Not that I saw it all at once myself. +I was too busy wondering whether there could be anything in his +clock-winding story after all. Certainly it was inconsistent with the big +bribe offered for his immediate freedom; but it was with something more +than mere adroitness that the money-lender had reconciled the two things. +In his place I should have been no less anxious to keep my humiliating +experience a secret from the world; with his means I could conceive +myself prepared to pay as dearly for such secrecy. On the other hand, if +his idea was to stop the huge cheque already given to Raffles, then there +was indeed no time to be lost, and the only wonder was that Levy should +have waited so long before making overtures to me. + +Raffles had now been gone a very long time, as it seemed to me, but my +watch had run down, and the clock on the tower did not strike. Why they +kept it going at all was a mystery to me; but now that Dan Levy was lying +still again, with set teeth and inexorable eyes, I heard it beating out +the seconds more than ever like a distant sledgehammer, and sixty of +these I counted up into a minute of such portentous duration that what +had seemed many hours to me might easily have been less than one. I only +knew that the sun, which had begun by pouring in at one port-hole and out +at the other, which had bathed the prisoner in his bunk about the time of +his trial by Raffles, now crowned me with fire if I sat upon the locker, +and made its varnish sticky if I did not. The atmosphere of the place was +fast becoming unendurable in its unwholesome heat and sour stagnation. I +sat in my shirt-sleeves at the top of the stairs, where one got such air +as entered by the open window below. Levy had kicked off his covering of +scarlet bunting, with a sudden oath which must have been the only sound +within the tower for an hour at least; all the rest of the time he lay +with fettered fists clenched upon his breast, with fierce eyes fixed upon +the top of the bunk, and something about the whole man that I was forced +to watch, something indomitable and intensely alert, a curious suggestion +of smouldering fires on the point of leaping into flame. + +I feared this man in my heart of hearts. I may as well admit it frankly. +It was not that he was twice my size, for I had the like advantage in +point of years; it was not that I had any reason to distrust the +strength of his bonds or the efficacy of the weapon in my possession. It +was a question of personality, not of material advantage or +disadvantage, or of physical fear at all. It was simply the spirit of +the man that dominated mine. I felt that my mere flesh and blood would +at any moment give a good account of his, as well they might with the +odds that were on my side. Yet that did not lessen the sense of subtle +and essential inferiority, which grew upon my nerves with almost every +minute of that endless morning, and made me long for the relief of +physical contest even on equal terms. I could have set the old ruffian +free, and thrown his revolver out of the window, and then said to him, +"Come on! Your weight against my age, and may the devil take the worse +man!" Instead, I must sit glaring at him to mask my qualms. And after +much thinking about the kind of conflict that could never be, in the end +came one of a less heroic but not less desperate type, before there was +time to think at all. + +Levy had raised his head, ever so little, but yet enough for my +vigilance. I saw him listening. I listened too. And down below in the +core of the tower I heard, or thought I heard, a step like a feather, and +then after some moments another. But I had spent those moments in gazing +instinctively down the stair; it was the least rattle of the handcuffs +that brought my eyes like lightning back to the bunk; and there was Levy +with hollow palms about his mouth, and his mouth wide open for the roar +that my own palms stifled in his throat. + +Indeed, I had leapt upon him once more like a fiend, and for an instant I +enjoyed a shameful advantage; it can hardly have lasted longer. The brute +first bit me through the hand, so that I carry his mark to this day; +then, with his own hands, he took me by the throat, and I thought that my +last moments were come. He squeezed so hard that I thought my windpipe +must burst, thought my eyes must leave their sockets. It was the grip of +a gorilla, and it was accompanied by a spate of curses and the grin of a +devil incarnate. All my dreams of equal combat had not prepared me for +superhuman power on his part, such utter impotence on mine. I tried to +wrench myself from his murderous clasp, and was nearly felled by the top +of the bunk. I hurled myself out sideways, and out he came after me, +tearing down the peg to which his handcuffs were tethered; that only gave +him the better grip upon my throat, and he never relaxed it for an +instant, scrambling to his feet when I staggered to mine, for by them +alone was he fast now to the banisters. + +Meanwhile I was feeling in an empty pocket for his revolver, which had +fallen out as we struggled on the floor. I saw it there now with my +starting eyeballs, kicked about by our shuffling feet. I tried to make a +dive for it, but Levy had seen it also, and he kicked it through the +banisters without relaxing his murderous hold. I could have sworn +afterwards that I heard the weapon fall with a clatter on the wooden +stairs. But what I still remember hearing most distinctly (and feeling +hot upon my face) is the stertorous breathing that was unbroken by a +single syllable after the first few seconds. + +It was a brutal encounter, not short and sharp like the one over-night, +but horribly protracted. Nor was all the brutality by any means on one +side; neither will I pretend that I was getting much more than my deserts +in the defeat that threatened to end in my extinction. Not for an instant +had my enemy loosened his deadly clutch, and now he had me penned against +the banisters, and my one hope was that they would give way before our +united weight, and precipitate us both into the room below. That would be +better than being slowly throttled, even if it were only a better death. +Other chance there was none, and I was actually trying to fling myself +over, beating the air with both hands wildly, when one of them closed +upon the butt of the revolver that I thought had been kicked into the +room below! + +I was too far gone to realise that a miracle had happened--to be so much +as puzzled by it then. But I was not too far gone to use that revolver, +and to use it as I would have done on cool reflection. I thrust it under +my opponent's armpit, and I fired through into space. The report was +deafening. It did its work. Levy let go of me, and staggered back as +though I had really shot him. And that instant I was brandishing his +weapon in his face. + +"You tried to shoot me! You tried to shoot me!" he gasped twice over +through a livid mask. + +"No, I didn't!" I panted. "I tried to frighten you, and I jolly well +succeeded! But I'll shoot you like a dog if you don't get back to your +kennel and lie down." + +He sat and gasped upon the side of the bunk. There was no more fight in +him. His very lips were blue. I put the pistol back in my pocket, and +retracted my threat in a sudden panic. + +"There! It's your own fault if you so much as see it again," I promised +him, in a breathless disorder only second to his own. + +"But you jolly nearly strangled me. And now we're a pretty pair!" + +His hands grasped the edge of the bunk, and he leant his weight on them, +breathing very hard. It might have been an attack of asthma, or it might +have been a more serious seizure, but it was a case for stimulants if +ever I saw one, and in the nick of time I remembered the flask that +Raffles had left with me. It was the work of a very few seconds to pour +out a goodly ration, and of but another for Daniel Levy to toss off the +raw spirit like water. He was begging for more before I had helped +myself. And more I gave him in the end; for it was no small relief to me +to watch the leaden hue disappearing from the flabby face, and the +laboured breathing gradually subside, even if it meant a renewal of our +desperate hostilities. + +But all that was at an end; the man was shaken to the core by his +perfectly legitimate attempt at my destruction. He looked dreadfully old +and hideous as he got bodily back into the bunk of his own accord. There, +when I had yielded to his further importunities, and the flask was empty, +he fell at length into a sleep as genuine as the last was not; and I was +still watching over the poor devil, keeping the flies off him, and +sometimes fanning him with a flag, less perhaps from humane motives than +to keep him quiet as long as possible, when Raffles returned to light up +the tableau like a sinister sunbeam. + +Raffles had had his own adventures in town, and I soon had reason to feel +thankful that I had not gone up instead of him. It seemed he had foreseen +from the first the possibility of trouble at the bank over a large and +absolutely open cheque. So he had gone first to the Chelsea studio in +which he played the painter who never painted but kept a whole wardrobe +of disguises for the models he never hired. Thence he had issued on this +occasion in the living image of a well-known military man about town who +was also well known to be a client of Dan Levy's. Raffles said the +cashier stared at him, but the cheque was cashed without a word. The +unfortunate part of it was that in returning to his cab he had +encountered an acquaintance both of his own and of the spendthrift +soldier, and had been greeted evidently in the latter capacity. + +"It was a jolly difficult little moment, Bunny. I had to say there was +some mistake, and I had to remember to say it in a manner equally unlike +my own and the other beggar's! But all's well that ends well; and if +you'll do exactly what I tell you I think we may flatter ourselves that a +happy issue is at last in sight." + +"What am I to do now?" I asked with some misgiving. + +"Clear out of this, Bunny, and wait for me in town. You've done jolly +well, old fellow, and so have I in my own department of the game. +Everything's in order, down to those fifteen hundred guineas which are +now concealed about my person in as hard cash as I can carry. I've seen +old Garland and given him back his promissory note myself, with Levy's +undertaking about the mortgage. It was a pretty trying interview, as you +can understand; but I couldn't help wondering what the poor old boy would +say if he dreamt what sort of pressure I've been applying on his behalf! +Well, it's all over now except our several exits from the surreptitious +stage. I can't make mine without our sleeping partner, but you would +really simplify matters, Bunny, by not waiting for us." + +There was a good deal to be said for such a course, though it went not a +little against my grain. Raffles had changed his clothes and had a bath +in town, to say nothing of his luncheon. I was by this time indescribably +dirty and dishevelled, besides feeling fairly famished now that mental +relief allowed a thought for one's lower man. Raffles had foreseen my +plight, and had actually prepared a way of escape for me by the front +door in broad daylight. I need not recapitulate the elaborate story he +had told the caretaking gardener across the road; but he had borrowed the +gardener's keys as a probable purchaser of the property, who had to meet +his builder and a business friend at the house during the course of the +afternoon. I was to be the builder, and in that capacity to give the +gardener an ingenious message calculated to leave Raffles and Levy in +uninterrupted possession until my return. And of course I was never to +return at all. + +The whole thing seemed to me a super-subtle means to a far simpler end +than the one we had achieved by stealth in the dead of the previous +night. But it was Raffles all over and I ultimately acquiesced, on the +understanding that we were to meet again in the Albany at seven o'clock, +preparatory to dining somewhere in final celebration of the whole affair. + +But much was to happen before seven o'clock, and it began happening. I +shook the dust of that derelict tower from my feet; for one of them trod +on something at the darkest point of the descent; and the thing went +tinkling down ahead on its own account, until it lay shimmering in the +light on a lower landing, where I picked it up. + +Now I had not said much to Raffles about my hitherto inexplicable +experience with the revolver, when I thought it had gone through the +banisters, but found it afterwards in my hand. Raffles said it would not +have gone through, that I must have been all but over the banisters +myself when I grasped the butt as it protruded through them on the level +of the floor. This he said (like many another thing) as though it made an +end of the matter. But it was not the end of the matter in my own mind; +and now I could have told him what the explanation was, or at least to +what conclusion I had jumped. I had half a mind to climb all the way up +again on purpose to put him in the wrong upon the point. Then I +remembered how anxious he had seemed to get rid of me, and for other +reasons also I decided to let him wait a bit for his surprise. + +Meanwhile my own plans were altered, and when I had delivered my +egregious message to the gardener across the road, I sought the nearest +shops on my way to the nearest station; and at one of the shops I got me +a clean collar, at another a tooth-brush; and all I did at the station +was to utilise my purchases in the course of such scanty toilet as the +lavatory accommodation would permit. + +A few minutes later I was inquiring my way to a house which it took me +another twenty or twenty-five to find. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +A Secret Service + + +This house also was on the river, but it was very small bricks-and-mortar +compared with the other two. One of a semi-detached couple built close to +the road, with narrow strips of garden to the river's brim, its dingy +stucco front and its green Venetian blinds conveyed no conceivable +attraction beyond that of a situation more likely to prove a drawback +three seasons out of the four. The wooden gate had not swung home behind +me before I was at the top of a somewhat dirty flight of steps, +contemplating blistered paint and ground glass fit for a bathroom window, +and listening to the last reverberations of an obsolete type of bell. +There was indeed something oppressively and yet prettily Victorian about +the riparian retreat to which Lady Laura Belsize had retired in her +impoverished widowhood. + +It was not for Lady Laura that I asked, however, but for Miss Belsize, +and the almost slatternly maid really couldn't say whether Miss Belsize +was in or whether she wasn't. She might be in the garden, or she might +be on the river. Would I step inside and wait a minute? I would and did, +but it was more minutes than one that I was kept languishing in an +interior as dingy as the outside of the house. I had time to take the +whole thing in. There were massive remnants of deservedly unfashionable +furniture. The sofa I can still see in my mind's eye, and the steel +fire-irons, and the crystal chandelier. An aged and gigantic Broadwood +occupied nearly half the room; and in a cheap frame thereon, inviting all +sorts of comparisons and contrasts, stood a full-length portrait of +Camilla Belsize resplendent in contemporary court kit. + +I was still studying that frankly barbaric paraphernalia--the feather, +the necklace, the coiled train--and wondering what noble kinsman had come +to the rescue for the great occasion, and why Camilla should have looked +so bored with her finery, when the door opened and she herself +entered--not even very smartly dressed--and looking anything but bored, +although I say it. + +But she did seem astonished, anxious, indignant, reproachful, and to my +mind still more nervous and distressed, though this hardly showed through +the loopholes of her pride. And as for her white serge coat and skirt, +they looked as though they had seen considerable service on the river, +and I immediately perceived that one of the large enamel buttons was +missing from the coat. + +Up to that moment, I may now confess, I had been suffering from no slight +nervous anxiety of my own. But all qualms were lost in sheer excitement +when I spoke. + +"You may well wonder at this intrusion," I began. "But I thought this +must be yours, Miss Belsize." + +And from my waistcoat pocket I produced the missing button of enamel. + +"Where did you find it?" inquired Miss Belsize, with an admirably slight +increase of astonishment in voice and look. "And how did you know it was +mine?" came quickly in the next breath. + +"I didn't know," I answered. "I guessed. It was the shot of my life!" + +"But you don't say where you found it?" + +"In an empty house not far from here." + +She had held her breath; now I felt it like the lightest zephyr. And +quite unconsciously I had retained the enamel button. + +"Well, Mr. Manders? I'm very much obliged to you. But may I have it +back again?" + +I returned her property. We had been staring at each other all the time. +I stared still harder as she repeated her perfunctory thanks. + +"So it was you!" I said, and was sorry to see her looking purposely +puzzled at that, but thankful when the reckless light outshone all the +rest in those chameleon eyes of hers. + +"Who did you think it was?" she asked me with a frosty little smile. + +"I didn't know if it was anybody at all. I didn't know what to think," +said I, quite candidly. "I simply found his pistol in my hand." + +"Whose pistol?" + +"Dan Levy's." + +"Good!" she said grimly. "That makes it all the better." + +"You saved my life." + +"I thought you had taken his--and I'd collaborated!" + +There was not a tremor in her voice; it was cautious, eager, daring, +intense, but absolutely her own voice now. + +"No," I said, "I didn't shoot the fellow, but I made him think I had." + +"You made me think so too, until I heard what you said to him." + +"Yet you never made a sound yourself." + +"I should think not! I made myself scarce instead." + +"But, Miss Belsize, I shall go perfectly mad if you don't tell me how you +happened to be there at all!" + +"Don't you think it's for you to tell me that about yourself +and--all of you?" + +"Oh, I don't mind which of us fires first!" said I, excitedly. + +"Then I will," she said at once, and took me to the dreadful sofa at the +inner end of the room, and sat down as though it were the most ordinary +experience she had to relate. Nor could I believe the things that had +really happened, and all so recently, as we talked them over in that +commonplace environment of faded gentility. There was a window behind us, +overlooking the ribbon of lawn and the cord of gravel, and the bunch of +willows that hedged them from the Thames. It all looked unreal to me, +unreal in its very realism as the scene of our incredible conversation. + +"You know what happened the other afternoon--I mean the day they +couldn't play," began Miss Belsize, "because you were there; and though +you didn't stay to hear all that came out afterwards, I expect you know +everything now. Mr. Raffles would be sure to tell you; in fact, I heard +poor dear Mr. Garland give him leave. It's a dreadful story from every +point of view. Nobody comes out of it with flying colours, but what nice +person could cope with a horrid money-lender? Mr. Raffles, perhaps--if +you call him nice!" + +I said that was about the worst thing I called him. I mentioned some of +the other things. Miss Belsize listened to them with exemplary patience. + +"Well," she resumed, "he was quite nice about this. I will say that for +him. He said he knew Mr. Levy pretty well, and would see what could be +done. But he spoke like an executioner who was going to see what could be +done with the condemned man! And all the time I was wondering what had +been done already at Carlsbad--what exactly that horrid creature meant +when he was talking _at_ Mr. Raffles before us all. Well, of course, I +knew what he meant us to think he meant; but was there, could there be, +anything in it?" + +Miss Belsize looked at me as though she expected an answer, only to stop +me the moment I opened my mouth to speak. + +"I don't want to know, Mr. Manders! Of course you know all about Mr. +Raffles"--there was a touch of feeling in this--"but it's nothing to me, +though in this case I should certainly have been on his side. You said +yourself that it could only have been a practical joke, if there was +anything in it at all, and so I tried to think in spite of those horrid +men who were following him about at Lord's, even in spite of the way he +vanished with them after him. But he never came near the match +again--though he had travelled all the way from Carlsbad to see it! Why +had he ever been there? What had he really done there? And what could he +possibly do to rescue anybody from Mr. Levy, if he himself was already in +Levy's power?" + +"You don't know Raffles," said I, promptly enough this time. "He never +was in any man's power for many minutes. I would back him to save the +most desperate situation you could devise." + +"You mean by some desperate deed? That's what I feared," declared Miss +Belsize, rather strenuously. "Something really had happened at Carlsbad; +something worse was by way of happening next. For Teddy's sake," she +whispered, "and his poor father's!" + +I agreed that old Raffles stuck at nothing for his friends, and Miss +Belsize again said that was what she had feared. Her tone had completely +altered about Raffles, as well it might. I thought it would have broken +with gratitude when she spoke of the unlucky father and son. + +"And I was right!" she exclaimed, with that other kind of feeling to +which I found it harder to put a name. "I came home miserable from the +match on Saturday--" + +"Though Teddy had done so well!" I was fool enough to interject. + +"I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Raffles," replied Camilla, with a +flash of her frank eyes, "and wondering, and wondering, what had +happened. And then on Sunday I saw him on the river." + +"He didn't tell me." + +"He didn't know I recognised him; he was disguised--absolutely!" said +Camilla Belsize under her breath. "But he couldn't disguise himself from +me," she added as though glorying in her perspicacity. + +"Did you tell him so, Miss Belsize?" + +"Not I, indeed! I didn't speak to him; it was no business of mine. But +there he was, at the bottom of Mr. Levy's garden, having a good look at +the boathouse when nobody was about. Why? What could his object be? And +why disguise himself? I thought of the affair at Carlsbad, and I felt +certain that something of the kind was going to happen again!" + +"Well?" + +"What could I do? Should I do anything at all? Was it any business of +mine? You may imagine the way I cross-questioned myself, and you may +imagine the crooked answers I got! I won't bore you with the psychology +of the thing; it's pretty obvious after all. It was not so much a case +of doing the best as of knowing the worst. All day yesterday there were +no developments of any sort, and there was no sign of Mr. Raffles; +nothing had happened in the night, or we should have heard of it; but +that made me all the more certain that something or other would happen +last night. The week's grace was nearly up--you know what I mean--their +last week at their own house. If anything was to be done, it was about +time, and I knew Mr. Raffles was going to do something. I wanted to know +what--that was all." + +"Quite right, too!" I murmured. But I doubt if Miss Belsize heard me; she +was in no need of my encouragement or my approval. The old light--her own +light--the reckless light--was burning away in her brilliant eyes! + +"The night before," she went on, "I hardly slept a wink; last night I +preferred not to go to bed at all. I told you I sometimes did weird +things that astonished the natives of these suburban shores. Well, last +night, if it wasn't early this morning, I made my weirdest effort yet. I +have a canoe, you know; just now I almost live in it. Last night I went +out unbeknowns after midnight, partly to reassure myself, partly--I beg +your pardon, Mr. Manders?" + +"I didn't speak." + +"Your face shouted!" + +"I'd rather you went on." + +"But if you know what I'm going to say?" + +Of course I knew, but I dragged it from her none the less. The nebulous +white-shirted figure in the canoe, that had skimmed past Dan Levy's +frontage as we were trying to get him aboard his own pleasure-boat, and +again past the empty house when we were in the act of disembarking him +there, that figure was the trim and slim one now at my side. She had seen +us--searched for us--each time. Our voices she had heard and recognised; +only our actions, or rather that midnight deed of ours, had she +misinterpreted. She would not admit it to me, but I still believe she +feared it was a dead body that we had shipped at dead of night to hide +away in that desolate tower. + +Yet I cannot think she thought it in her heart. I rather fancy (what she +indeed averred) that some vague inkling of the truth flashed across her +at least as often as that monstrous hypothesis. But know she must; +therefore, after boldly ascertaining that nothing was known of the +master's whereabouts at Levy's house, but that no uneasiness was +entertained on his account, this young woman, true to the audacity which +I had seen in her eyes from the first, had taken the still bolder step of +landing on the rank lawn and entering the empty tower to discover its +secret, for herself. Her stealthy step upon the spiral stair had been the +signal for my mortal struggle with Dan Levy. She had heard the whole, and +even seen a little of that; in fact, she had gathered enough from Levy's +horrible imprecations to form later a rough but not incorrect impression +of the situation between him and Raffles and me. As for the moneylender's +language, it was with a welcome gleam of humour that Miss Belsize assured +me she had "gone too straight to hounds" in her time to be as completely +paralysed by it as her mother's neighbours might have been. And as for +the revolver, it had fallen at her feet, and first she thought I was +going to follow it over the banisters, and before she could think again +she had restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand! + +"But when you fired I felt a murderess," she said. "So you see I +misjudged you for the second time." + +If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly +declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful +humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can +promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I +was thinking in my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as +these, so bold, so sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had +never listened to such a voice, or come across recklessness and +sentiment so harmonised, save also in her eyes! I was thinking that +there never was a girl to touch Camilla Belsize, or a man either except +A. J. Raffles! And yet-- + +And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, +exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and +sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly +exasperated man. + +"Of course," said Camilla at her garden gate, "of course you won't repeat +a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?" + +"You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?" said I, somewhat +taken aback. + +"I mean every single thing we've talked about!" was her sweeping reply. +"Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry +I ever spoke to you." + +As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I +passed that, even if I noticed it at the time. + +"I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That +is--except--I suppose you don't mind--" + +"I do! There must be no exceptions." + +"Not even old Raffles?" + +"Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked +flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the +world who must ever know a single thing." + +"Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and +me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of +each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as +Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to +make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, +adamant heated in some hidden flame. + +"It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get +excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must +have done--unless it's a judgment on me--it's rather hard lines if you +give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!" + +This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage +between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my +very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once. + +"You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully. +"And I never let out a word of that." + +"Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation +that was almost wistful. + +"Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, +much less how keen you were for me to warn him." + +Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. +Then something won--I think it was only her pride--and she was holding +out her hand. + +"He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. +"And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always +shall for the future." + +"I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear +old Raffles!" + +I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I +made my point. + +"I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a +stranger stress she added, "I don't _like_ him either." + +And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why +Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes +away quicker still. + +I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not +an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would +have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and +had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the +platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge +when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight +before it stopped. + +The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met +at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever +since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did +what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him. + +"Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his +cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the +deevil himsel'!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +The Death of a Sinner + + +What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have +outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab +on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the +detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it +inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was +more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been +talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it +close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when +I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but +I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his +shirt-sleeves from the window. + +"I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I +were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about +Mackenzie in the lobby. + +"So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank +God, I was ready for him again." + +I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his +clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I +had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. +The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag +stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, +and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds. + +"Going away?" I ejaculated. + +"Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after +what you've told me?" + +"But you were packing before you knew!" + +"Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't +ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll +have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight +into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at +five to nine." + +"What platform, Raffles?" + +"Charing Cross. Continental train." + +"But where the deuce do you think of going?" + +"Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe." + +"Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?" + +"Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage +face, as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were +due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then +don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell +you everything in the train, Bunny." + +And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant +on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly +terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until +we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross. + +Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did +he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied +with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment +lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, +that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and +another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had +also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to +make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a +humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced +admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been +drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, +but that the _rencontre_ with Mackenzie had served to sober me. + +"Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where +we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little +dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up +to eat a bite of it!" + +"Didn't _you_?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse as +Raffles shook his head. + +"No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made +me so stuffy when you did turn up." + +Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share +the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he +had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than +going healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not +what I had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he +had merely fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for +our last on British soil. + +This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for +beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his +taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings +than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting +in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, +and whither in all earnest were we to fly? + +"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first +question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too +soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his +friends and his relations.'" + +"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?" + +"So I had, Bunny." + +"What was that?" + +"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he +had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his +last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole +and he destroyed." + +"And did he sign that?" + +"I insisted on it for our protection." + +"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?" + +Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted +platforms of Herne Hill. + +"There's no immunity from a clever cove like that, Bunny, unless you send +him to another world or put the thick of this one between you. He may +hold his tongue about the last twenty-four hours--I believe he will--but +that needn't prevent him from setting old Mackenzie to watch us day and +night. So we are not going to stay to be watched. We are starting off +round the world for a change. Before we get very far Mr. Shylock may be +in the jug himself; that accursed letter won't be the only incriminating +thing against him, you take my word. Then we can come back trailing +clouds of glory, and blowing clouds of Sullivan. Then we can have our +_secondes noces_--meaning second knocks, Bunny, and more power to our +elbows when we get them!" + +But I was not convinced. There was something else at the bottom of this +sudden impulse and its inconceivably sudden execution. Why had he never +told me of this plan? Well, because it had never become one until after +the morning's work at Levy's bank, in itself a reason for being out of +the way, as I myself admitted. But he would have told me if only I had +turned up at seven: he had never meant to give me time for much packing, +added Raffles, as he was anxious that neither of us should leave the +impression that we had gone far afield. + +I thought this was childish, and treating me like a child, to which, +however, I was used; but more than ever did I feel that Raffles was not +being frank with me, that he for one was making good his escape from +something or somebody besides Dan Levy. And in the end he admitted that +this was so. But we had not dashed through Sitting-bourne and Faversham +before I wormed my way to about the last discovery that I expected to +make concerning A. J. Raffles. + +"What an inquisitor you are, Bunny!" said he, putting down an evening +paper that he had only just taken up. "Can't you see that this whole show +has been no ordinary one for me? I've been fighting for a crowd I rather +love. Their battle has got on my nerves as none of my own ever did; and +now it's won I honestly funk their gratitude as much as anything." + +That was another hard saying to swallow; and yet, as Raffles said it, I +knew it to be true. He was looking me full in the face in the ample +light of the first-class compartment, which we of course had to +ourselves. Some softening influence seemed to have been at work upon +him; he looked resolute as ever, but full of regret, than which nothing +was rarer in A.J. + +"I suppose," said I, "that poor old Garland has treated you to a pretty +good dose already?" + +"Yes, Bunny; that he has." + +"And well he may, and well may Teddy and Camilla Belsize!" + +"But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter +little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that +rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's +fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his +Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, +getting hold of his evening paper once more. + +"Is that to come off so soon?" + +"The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. + +"You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, +and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always +puzzled me. + +"I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh +at his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they +were both absolutely worthy of each other!" + +"And you don't think they are?" + +"No, I don't." + +"You think such a lot of young Garland?" + +"I'm very fond of him, Bunny." + +"But you see his faults?" + +"I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" + +"Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" + +"Not good enough--she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice +was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words +could have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you +get that idea?" + +"I thought it was yours, A.J." + +"But why?" + +"You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." + +"So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may +as well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, +Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." + +"Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for +them to marry after all!" + +Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me +catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and +I simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed +under no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. + +"Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything +of the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often +take my hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who +brought those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put +them asunder again." + +"It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. + +"More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks +running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before +the first week was over." + +"And yet you didn't cut him out!" + +"My dear Bunny, I should hope not." + +"But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if +you'd tried." + +Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But +neither would he ape an alien humility. + +"It wouldn't have been the game, Bunny--won or lost--Teddy or no Teddy: +And yet," he added, with pensive candour, "we were getting on like a +semi-detached house on fire! I burnt my fingers, I don't mind telling +you; if I hadn't been what I am, Bunny, I might have taken my courage in +all ten of 'em, and 'put it to the touch, to win or lose it all.'" + +"I wish you had," I whispered, as he studied his paper upside down. + +"Why, Bunny? What rot you do talk!" he cried, but only with the skin-deep +irritation of a half-hearted displeasure. + +"She's the only woman I ever met," I went on unguardedly, "who was your +mate at heart--in pluck--in temperament!" + +"How the devil do you know?" cried Raffles, off his own guard now, and +staring in my guilty face. + +But I have never denied that I could emulate his presence of mind +upon occasion. + +"You forget what a lot we saw of each other last Thursday in the rain." + +"Did she talk about me then?" + +"A little." + +"Had she her knife in me, Bunny?" + +"Well--yes--a little!" + +Raffles smiled stoically: it was a smile of duty done and odds +well damned. + +"Up to the hilt, Bunny, up to the hilt is what you mean. I stuck it in +for her. It's easily done, and it needed doing, for my sake if not for +hers. Sooner or later I should have choked her off, so the sooner the +better. You play them false, you cut a dance, you let them down over +something that doesn't matter, and they'll never give you a dog's chance +over anything that does! I got her to write and never answered. What do +you think of that for a cavalier swine? I said I'd call before I went +abroad, and only wired to say sorry I couldn't. I don't say it would or +could have been all right otherwise; but you see it was all right for +Teddy before I got back! Which was as it was to be. She would hardly look +at me at first last week; but, Bunny, she wasn't above looking when that +old Shylock was playing at giving me away before them all. She looked at +him, and she looked at me, and I've got one of the looks she gave him, +and another that she never meant me to see, bottled in my blackguard +heart forever!" + +Raffles looked dim to me across the narrow compartment; but there was +no nonsense in his look or voice. I longed to tell him all I knew, all +that she had said to me and he had unwittingly interpreted; that she +loved him, as now at last I knew she did; but I had given her my word, +and after all it was a word to keep for both their sakes as well as +for its own. + +"You were made for each other, you two!" + +That was all I said, and Raffles only laughed. + +"All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a +dog's chance of our meeting again." + +He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with +flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer +Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." +Raffles let it pass; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in +the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather +silently. Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking +of Camilla Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she +had never meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead +was glistening white and wet in the lamplight. + +"What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?" + +He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a +word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. +This was the item that danced before my eyes: + +TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER + +Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his +residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who +made good his escape. + +I looked up into a ghastly face. + +"It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!" + +"You left him--" + +I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier +thought. + +"As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you +think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?" + +Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the +less; for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under +equal provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were +making with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face +and voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla +Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he +had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done +without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either +any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man. + +"But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?" + +"I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?" + +"And you say you left him at half-past five?" + +"I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is +plumb right." + +"And you heard no shot as you went on?" + +"No--I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And now +I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound +to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what +Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already. +There's no going back now." + +"Not for an innocent man?" + +"Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been +up to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours." + +He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human +compassion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile +misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a +much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin +to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and +beyond belief in my reading of his character. But through all there +peeped a conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the +novelty of fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and +yet compatible either with his story or with my own base dread. + +"Nobody need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that +nobody ever would know through the one other who knew already. But +Raffles threw cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and +good hope. + +"It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last +hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes +working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then +identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then +Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my +heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit +by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the +capital charge!" + +"Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact. +That's one thing!" + +"No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push +you out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put +up for the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place +for the likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules +when I'm gone." + +"You're not going without me, A.J." + +"Not even if I did it, Bunny?" + +"No; less than ever then!" + +Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in +his eyes, but a very tender light as well. + +"It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," +said he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that +we were making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat +from sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we +clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the +platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic +flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My God, Bunny!" +cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!" + +"Why? What's the matter now?" + +"A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!" + +"Mackenzie's?" + +"Yes!" + +I had seen it in his face. + +"After us already?" + +"God knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder." + +"Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?" + +Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was +turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat. + +"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." +He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the +cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty +hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it +mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go +upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at +home, we shall give him the slip all right." + +"Do you think he saw you?" + +"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too." + +"But before we started?" + +"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I +remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, +thank God!" + +They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were +already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated +townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I +from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not +Raffles at all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the +war was the observed of all observers about town. + +"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he +went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning +touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with +such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As +for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread +basket, you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But +here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!" + +The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier +platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must +nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and +that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while +the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging +passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I +cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the +nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod. + +"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk. + +"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a +palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law. + +"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with +deferential grin. + +"And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds +my lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my +horror. But it is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not +follow us on board. + +Neither did our disguises accompany our countenances across the Channel. +It was at dead of night on the upper deck (whence all but us had fled) +that Raffles showed me how to doff my beard and still look as though I +had merely buttoned it inside my overcoat; meanwhile his own moustachios +and imperial were disappearing by discreet degrees; and at last he told +me why, though not by any means without pressing. + +"I'm only afraid you'll want to turn straight back from Calais, Bunny!" + +"Oh, no, I shan't." + +"You'll come with me round the world, so to speak?" + +"To its uttermost ends, A. J.!" + +"You do know now who it really is that I don't want to see again +just yet?" + +"Yes. I know. Now tell me what Mackenzie told you." + +"It was all in the wire he showed me," said Raffles. "The wire was to say +that the murderer of Dan Levy had given himself up to the police!" + +Profane expletives flew from my lips; those of much holier men might +have been no less unguardedly emphatic in the self-same circumstances. + +"But who was it?" + +"I could have told you all along if you hadn't suspected me." + +"It wasn't a suspicion, Raffles. It was never more than a dread, and I +didn't even dread it in my heart of hearts. Do tell me now." + +Raffles watched the red end of a ruined Sullivan make a fine trajectory +as it flew to leeward between sea and stars. + +"It was that poor unlucky little alien who was waiting for him the other +morning in Jermyn Street, and again last night near his own garden gate. +That's where he got him in the end. But it wasn't a shooting case at all, +Bunny; that's why I never heard anything. It was a case of stabbing in +accordance with the best traditions of the Latin races." + +"God forgive both poor devils!" said I at last. + +"And other two," said Raffles, "who have rather more to be forgiven." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Apologia + + +On one of the worst days of last year, to wit the first day of the Eton +and Harrow match, I had turned into the Hamman, in Jermyn Street, as the +best available asylum for wet boots that might no longer enter any club. +Mine had been removed by a little pinchbeck oriental in the outer courts, +and I wandered within unpleasantly conscious of a hole in one sock, to +find myself by no means the only obvious refugee from the rain. The bath +was in fact inconveniently crowded. But at length I found a divan to suit +me in an upstairs alcove. I had the choice indeed of more than one; but +in spite of my antecedents I am fastidious about my cooling companions in +a Turkish bath, and it was by no accident that I hung my clothes opposite +to a newer morning coat and a pair of trousers more decisively creased +than my own. + +But the coincidence in pickle was no less remarkable. In ensuing stages +of physical devastation one had dim glimpses of a not unfamiliar, +reddish countenance; but with the increment of years it has been my lot +to contract short sight as well as incipient obesity, and in the hot +rooms my glasses lose their grip upon my nose. So it was not until I lay +swathed upon my divan that I recognised E.M. Garland in the fine +fresh-faced owner of the nice clothes opposite mine. A tawny moustache +rather spoilt him as Phoebus, and there was a hint of old gold about the +shaven jaw and chin; but I never saw better looks of the unintellectual +order; and the amber eye was as clear as ever, the great strong +wicket-keeper's hand unexpectedly hearty, when recognition dawned on +Teddy in his turn. + +He spoke of Raffles without hesitation or reserve, and of me and my +Raffles writings as though there was nothing reprehensible in one or the +other, displaying indeed a flattering knowledge of those pious memorials. + +"But of course I take them with a grain of salt," said Teddy Garland; +"you don't make me believe you were either of you such desperate dogs +as all that. I can't see you climbing ropes or squirming through +scullery windows--even for the fun of the thing!" he added with +somewhat tardy tact. + +It is certainly rather hard to credit now. I felt that after all there +was something to be said for being too fat at forty, and that Teddy +Garland had said it excellently. + +"Now," he continued, "if only you would give us the row between Raffles +and Dan Levy, I mean the whole battle royal that A.J. fought and won for +me and my poor father, that would be something like! The world would see +the sort of chap he really was." + +"I am afraid it would have to see the sort of chaps we all were just +then," said I, as I still think with exemplary delicacy; but Teddy lay +silent and florid for some time. These athletes have their vanity. But +this one rose superior to his. + +"Manders," said he, leaving his divan and coming and sitting on the edge +of mine, "you have my free leave to give me and mine away to the four +winds, if you will tell the truth about that duel, and what Raffles did +for the lot of us!" + +"Perhaps he did more than you ever knew." + +"Put it all in." + +"It was a longer duel than you think. He once called it a guerilla duel." + +"Then make a book of it." + +"But I've written my last word about the old boy." + +"Then by George I've a good mind to write it myself!" + +This was an awful threat. Happily he lacked the materials, and so I told +him. "I haven't got them all myself," I added, only to be politely but +openly disbelieved. "I don't know where you were," said I, "all that +first day of the match, when it rained." + +Garland was beginning to smile when the surprise of my statement got home +and changed his face. + +"Do you mean to say A.J. never told you?" he cried, still incredulously. + +"No; he wouldn't give you away." + +"Not even to you--his pal?" + +"No. I was naturally curious on the point. But he refused to tell me." + +"What a chap!" murmured Teddy, with a tender enthusiasm that made me love +him. "What a friend for a fellow! Well, Manders, if you don't write all +this I certainly shall. So I may as well tell you where I was." + +"I must say it would interest me to know." + +My companion resumed his smile where he had left it off. "I wonder if you +would ever guess?" he speculated, looking down into my face. + +"I don't suppose I should." + +"No more do I; not in a month of Sundays; for I spent that day on the +very sofa I was on a minute ago!" + +I looked at the striped divan opposite. I looked at Teddy Garland +sitting on mine. His smile was a little wry with the remnant of his +bygone shame; he hurried on before I could find a word. + +"You remember that drug I had? Somnol I think it was. That was a risky +game to play with any head but one's own; still A. J. was right in +thinking I should have been worse without any sleep at all. I should," +said Teddy, "but I should have rolled up at Lord's! The beastly stuff put +me asleep all right, but it didn't keep me asleep long enough! I was +awake before four, heard you both talking in the next room, remembered +everything in a flash! But for that flash I should have dropped off again +in a minute; but if you remember all I had to remember, Manders, you +won't wonder that I lay madly awake all the rest of the night. My head +was rotten with sleep, but my heart was in such hell as I couldn't +describe to you if I tried." + +"I've been there," said I, briefly. + +"Well, then, you can imagine my frightful thoughts. Suicide was one; but +to get out of that came first, to get away without looking either of you +in the face in broad daylight. So I shammed sleep when Raffles looked in, +and when you both went out I dressed in five minutes and slunk out too. +I had no idea where I was going. I don't remember what brought me down +into this street. It may have been my debt to Dan Levy. All I remember is +finding myself opposite this place, my head splitting, and the sudden +idea that a bath might freshen me up and couldn't make me worse. I +remembered A.J. telling me he had once taken six wickets after one. So in +I came. I had my bath, and some tea and toast in the hot-rooms; we were +all to have a late breakfast together, if you recollect. I felt I should +be in plenty of time for that and Lord's--if only I hadn't boiled all the +cricket out of me. So I came up here and lay down there. But what I +hadn't boiled out was that beastly drug. It got back on me like a +boomerang. I closed my eyes for a minute--and it was well on in the +afternoon when I awoke!" + +Here Teddy interrupted himself to order whiskies and soda of a +metropolitan Bashi-Bazouk who happened to pass along the gallery; and to +go stumbling over to his pockets, in his swaddling towels, for cigarettes +and matches. And the rest of his discourse was less coherent. + +"Then I did feel it was a toss-up between my razor and a charge of shot! +I had no idea it was raining; if you look up at that coloured skylight, +you can't say if it's raining now. There's another sort of hatchway on +top of it. Then you hear that fountain tinkling all the time; you don't +hear any rain, do you?--It was after three, but I lay till nearly four +simply cursing my luck; there was no hurry then. At last I wondered what +the papers had to say about me--who was playing in my place, who'd won +the toss and all the rest of it. So I had the nerve to send out for one, +and what should I see? 'No play at Lord's'--and sudden illness of my poor +old father! You know the rest, Manders, because in less than twenty +minutes after that we met." + +"And I remember thinking how fit you looked," said I. "It was the +bath, of course, and the sleep on top of it. But I wonder they let you +sleep so long." + +"How could they know what I'd been up to?" said Teddy. "I mightn't have +had any sleep for a week; it was their business to let me be. But to +think of the rain coming on and saving me--for even Raffles couldn't have +done it without the rain. That was the great slice of luck--while I was +lying right there! And that's why I like to lie there still--for luck +rather than remembrance!" + +The drinks came; we smoked and sipped. I regretted to find that Teddy was +no longer faithful to the only old cigarette. But his loyalty to Raffles +won my heart as he had never won it in his youth. + +"Give us away to your heart's content," said he; "but give the dear old +devil his due at last." + +"But who exactly do you mean by 'us'?" + +"My father not so much, perhaps, because he's dead and gone; but self and +wife as much as ever you like." + +"Are you sure Mrs. Garland won't mind?" + +"Mind! It was for her he did it all; didn't you know that?" + +I didn't know Teddy knew it, and I began to think him a finer fellow than +I had supposed. + +"Am I to say all I know about that too?" I asked. + +"Rather! Camilla and I will both be delighted--so long as you change our +names--for we both loved him!" said Teddy Garland. + +I wonder if they both forgive me for taking him entirely at his word? + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES *** + +This file should be named 8raff10.txt or 8raff10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, 8raff11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, 8raff10a.txt + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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