E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (12 page)

"You're certain you've given him the slip?" I said, as we put on
our hats.

"Certain enough; but we can make assurance doubly sure," said
Raffles, and went to my window, where he stood for a moment or
two looking down into the street.

"All right?" I asked him.

"All right," said he; and we went downstairs forthwith, and so to
the Albany arm-in-arm.

But we were both rather silent on our way. I, for my part, was
wondering what Raffles would do about the studio in Chelsea,
whither, at all events, he had been successfully dogged. To me
the point seemed one of immediate importance, but when I
mentioned it he said there was time enough to think about that.
His one other remark was made after we had nodded (in Bond
Street) to a young blood of our acquaintance who happened to be
getting himself a bad name.

"Poor Jack Rutter!" said Raffles, with a sigh. "Nothing's sadder
than to see a fellow going to the bad like that. He's about mad
with drink and debt, poor devil! Did you see his eye? Odd that
we should have met him to-night, by the way; it's old Baird who's
said to have skinned him. By God, but I'd like to skin old
Baird!"

And his tone took a sudden low fury, made the more noticeable by
another long silence, which lasted, indeed, throughout an
admirable dinner at the club, and for some time after we had
settled down in a quiet corner of the smoking-room with our
coffee and cigars. Then at last I saw Raffles looking at me with
his lazy smile, and I knew that the morose fit was at an end.

"I daresay you wonder what I've been thinking about all this
time?" said he. "I've been thinking what rot it is to go doing
things by halves!"

"Well," said I, returning his smile, "that's not a charge that
you can bring against yourself, is it?"

"I'm not so sure," said Raffles, blowing a meditative puff; "as a
matter of fact, I was thinking less of myself than of that poor
devil of a Jack Rutter. There's a fellow who does things by
halves; he's only half gone to the bad; and look at the
difference between him and us! He's under the thumb of a
villainous money-lender; we are solvent citizens. He's taken to
drink; we're as sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning
to cut him; our difficulty is to keep the pal from the door.
Enfin, he begs or borrows, which is stealing by halves; and we
steal outright and are done with it. Obviously ours is the more
honest course. Yet I'm not sure, Bunny, but we're doing the
thing by halves ourselves!"

"Why? What more could we do?" I exclaimed in soft derision,
looking round, however, to make sure that we were not overheard.

"What more," said Raffles. "Well, murder—for one thing."

"Rot!"

"A matter of opinion, my dear Bunny; I don't mean it for rot.
I've told you before that the biggest man alive is the man who's
committed a murder, and not yet been found out; at least he ought
to be, but he so very seldom has the soul to appreciate himself.
Just think of it! Think of coming in here and talking to the
men, very likely about the murder itself; and knowing you've done
it; and wondering how they'd look if THEY knew! Oh, it would be
great, simply great! But, besides all that, when you were caught
there'd be a merciful and dramatic end of you. You'd fill the
bill for a few weeks, and then snuff out with a flourish of
extra-specials; you wouldn't rust with a vile repose for seven or
fourteen years."

"Good old Raffles!" I chuckled. "I begin to forgive you for
being in bad form at dinner."

"But I was never more earnest in my life."

"Go on!"

"I mean it."

"You know very well that you wouldn't commit a murder, whatever
else you might do."

"I know very well I'm going to commit one to-night!"

He had been leaning back in the saddle-bag chair, watching me
with keen eyes sheathed by languid lids; now he started forward,
and his eyes leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard.
They struck home to my slow wits; their meaning was no longer in
doubt. I, who knew the man, read murder in his clenched hands,
and murder in his locked lips, but a hundred murders in those
hard blue eyes.

"Baird?" I faltered, moistening my lips with my tongue.

"Of course."

"But you said it didn't matter about the room in Chelsea?"

"I told a lie."

"Anyway you gave him the slip afterwards!"

"That was another. I didn't. I thought I had when I came up to
you this evening; but when I looked out of your window—you
remember? to make assurance doubly sure—there he was on the
opposite pavement down below."

"And you never said a word about it!"

"I wasn't going to spoil your dinner, Bunny, and I wasn't going
to let you spoil mine. But there he was as large as life, and,
of course, he followed us to the Albany. A fine game for him to
play, a game after his mean old heart: blackmail from me, bribes
from the police, the one bidding against the other; but he
sha'n't play it with me, he sha'n't live to, and the world will
have an extortioner the less. Waiter! Two Scotch whiskeys and
sodas. I'm off at eleven, Bunny; it's the only thing to be
done."

"You know where he lives, then?"

"Yes, out Willesden way, and alone; the fellow's a miser among
other things. I long ago found out all about him."

Again I looked round the room; it was a young man's club, and
young men were laughing, chatting, smoking, drinking, on every
hand. One nodded to me through the smoke. Like a machine I
nodded to him, and turned back to Raffles with a groan.

"Surely you will give him a chance!" I urged. "The very sight of
your pistol should bring him to terms."

"It wouldn't make him keep them."

"But you might try the effect?"

"I probably shall. Here's a drink for you, Bunny. Wish me
luck."

"I'm coming too."

"I don't want you."

"But I must come!"

An ugly gleam shot from the steel blue eyes.

"To interfere?" said Raffles.

"Not I."

"You give me your word?"

"I do."

"Bunny, if you break it—"

"You may shoot me, too!"

"I most certainly should," said Raffles, solemnly. "So you come
at your own peril, my dear man; but, if you are coming—well, the
sooner the better, for I must stop at my rooms on the way."

Five minutes later I was waiting for him at the Piccadilly
entrance to the Albany. I had a reason for remaining outside.
It was the feeling—half hope, half fear—that Angus Baird might
still be on our trail—that some more immediate and less
cold-blooded way of dealing with him might result from a sudden
encounter between the money-lender and myself. I would not warn
him of his danger; but I would avert tragedy at all costs. And
when no such encounter had taken place, and Raffles and I were
fairly on our way to Willesden, that, I think, was still my
honest resolve. I would not break my word if I could help it,
but it was a comfort to feel that I could break it if I liked, on
an understood penalty. Alas! I fear my good intentions were
tainted with a devouring curiosity, and overlaid by the
fascination which goes hand in hand with horror.

I have a poignant recollection of the hour it took us to reach
the house. We walked across St. James's Park (I can see the
lights now, bright on the bridge and blurred in the water), and
we had some minutes to wait for the last train to Willesden. It
left at 11.21, I remember, and Raffles was put out to find it did
not go on to Kensal Rise. We had to get out at Willesden Junction
and walk on through the streets into fairly open country that
happened to be quite new to me. I could never find the house
again. I remember, however, that we were on a dark footpath
between woods and fields when the clocks began striking twelve.

"Surely," said I, "we shall find him in bed and asleep?"

"I hope we do," said Raffles grimly.

"Then you mean to break in?"

"What else did you think?"

I had not thought about it at all; the ultimate crime had
monopolized my mind. Beside it burglary was a bagatelle, but one
to deprecate none the less. I saw obvious objections: the man
was au fait with cracksmen and their ways: he would certainly
have firearms, and might be the first to use them.

"I could wish nothing better," said Raffles. "Then it will be man
to man, and devil take the worst shot. You don't suppose I
prefer foul play to fair, do you? But die he must, by one or the
other, or it's a long stretch for you and me."

"Better that than this!"

"Then stay where you are, my good fellow. I told you I didn't
want you; and this is the house. So good-night."

I could see no house at all, only the angle of a high wall rising
solitary in the night, with the starlight glittering on
battlements of broken glass; and in the wall a tall green gate,
bristling with spikes, and showing a front for battering-rams in
the feeble rays an outlying lamp-post cast across the new-made
road. It seemed to me a road of building-sites, with but this
one house built, all by itself, at one end; but the night was too
dark for more than a mere impression.

Raffles, however, had seen the place by daylight, and had come
prepared for the special obstacles; already he was reaching up
and putting champagne corks on the spikes, and in another moment
he had his folded covert-coat across the corks. I stepped back
as he raised himself, and saw a little pyramid of slates snip the
sky above the gate; as he squirmed over I ran forward, and had my
own weight on the spikes and corks and covert-coat when he gave
the latter a tug.

"Coming after all?"

"Rather!"

"Take care, then; the place is all bell-wires and springs. It's
no soft thing, this! There—stand still while I take off the
corks."

The garden was very small and new, with a grass-plot still in
separate sods, but a quantity of full-grown laurels stuck into
the raw clay beds. "Bells in themselves," as Raffles whispered;
"there's nothing else rustles so—cunning old beast!" And we
gave them a wide berth as we crept across the grass.

"He's gone to bed!"

"I don't think so, Bunny. I believe he's seen us."

"Why?"

"I saw a light."

"Where?"

"Downstairs, for an instant, when I—"

His whisper died away; he had seen the light again; and so had I.

It lay like a golden rod under the front-door—and vanished. It
reappeared like a gold thread under the lintel—and vanished for
good. We heard the stairs creak, creak, and cease, also for
good. We neither saw nor heard any more, though we stood waiting
on the grass till our feet were soaked with the dew.

"I'm going in," said Raffles at last. "I don't believe he saw us
at all. I wish he had. This way."

We trod gingerly on the path, but the gravel stuck to our wet
soles, and grated horribly in a little tiled veranda with a glass
door leading within. It was through this glass that Raffles had
first seen the light; and he now proceeded to take out a pane,
with the diamond, the pot of treacle, and the sheet of brown
paper which were seldom omitted from his impedimenta. Nor did he
dispense with my own assistance, though he may have accepted it
as instinctively as it was proffered. In any case it was these
fingers that helped to spread the treacle on the brown paper, and
pressed the latter to the glass until the diamond had completed
its circuit and the pane fell gently back into our hands.

Raffles now inserted his hand, turned the key in the lock, and,
by making a long arm, succeeded in drawing the bolt at the bottom
of the door; it proved to be the only one, and the door opened,
though not very wide.

"What's that?" said Raffles, as something crunched beneath his
feet on the very threshold.

"A pair of spectacles," I whispered, picking them up. I was
still fingering the broken lenses and the bent rims when Raffles
tripped and almost fell, with a gasping cry that he made no
effort to restrain.

"Hush, man, hush!" I entreated under my breath. "He'll hear
you!"

For answer his teeth chattered—even his—and I heard him
fumbling with his matches. "No, Bunny; he won't hear us,"
whispered Raffles, presently; and he rose from his knees and lit
a gas as the match burnt down.

Angus Baird was lying on his own floor, dead, with his gray hairs
glued together by his blood; near him a poker with the black end
glistening; in a corner his desk, ransacked, littered. A clock
ticked noisily on the chimney-piece; for perhaps a hundred
seconds there was no other sound.

Raffles stood very still, staring down at the dead, as a man
might stare into an abyss after striding blindly to its brink.
His breath came audibly through wide nostrils; he made no other
sign, and his lips seemed sealed.

"That light!" said I, hoarsely; "the light we saw under the
door!"

With a start he turned to me.

"It's true! I had forgotten it. It was in here I saw it first!"

"He must be upstairs still!"

"If he is we'll soon rout him out. Come on!"

Instead I laid a hand upon his arm, imploring him to
reflect—that his enemy was dead now—that we should certainly
be involved—that now or never was our own time to escape. He
shook me off in a sudden fury of impatience, a reckless contempt
in his eyes, and, bidding me save my own skin if I liked, he once
more turned his back upon me, and this time left me half resolved
to take him at his word. Had he forgotten on what errand he
himself was here? Was he determined that this night should end
in black disaster? As I asked myself these questions his match
flared in the hall; in another moment the stairs were creaking
under his feet, even as they had creaked under those of the
murderer; and the humane instinct that inspired him in defiance
of his risk was borne in also upon my slower sensibilities.
Could we let the murderer go? My answer was to bound up the
creaking stairs and to overhaul Raffles on the landing.