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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung
+#5 in our series by E. W. Hornung
+
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+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
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** 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 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
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Justice Raffles, by E. W. Hornung
+#5 in our series by E. W. Hornung
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
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+*****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 ***
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