E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (11 page)

"Come out of this poisonous air," he said sternly, "and I will
tell you how it has happened."

So we all three gathered together in the hall. But it was
Raffles who stood nearest the street-door, his back to it, his
eyes upon us two. And though it was to me only that he spoke at
first, he would pause from point to point, and translate into
Italian for the benefit of the one-eyed alien to whom he owed his
life.

"You probably don't even know the name, Bunny," he began, "of the
deadliest poison yet known to science. It is cyanide of cacodyl,
and I have carried that small flask of it about with me for
months. Where I got it matters nothing; the whole point is
that a mere sniff reduces flesh to clay. I have never had any
opinion of suicide, as you know, but I always felt it worth
while to be forearmed against the very worst. Well, a bottle
of this stuff is calculated to stiffen an ordinary roomful of
ordinary people within five minutes; and I remembered my flask
when they had me as good as crucified in the small hours of this
morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I begged
them to give me a drink before they left me. And what do you
suppose they did?"

I thought of many things but suggested none, while Raffles
turned this much of his statement into sufficiently fluent
Italian. But when he faced me again his face was still flaming.

"That beast Corbucci!" said he—"how can I pity him? He took the
flask; he would give me none; he flicked me in the face instead.
My idea was that he, at least, should go with me—to sell my
life as dearly as that—and a sniff would have settled us both.
But no, he must tantalize and torment me; he thought it brandy;
he must take it downstairs to drink to my destruction! Can you
have any pity for a hound like that?"

"Let us go," I at last said, hoarsely, as Raffles finished
speaking in Italian, and his second listener stood open-mouthed.

"We will go," said Raffles, "and we will chance being seen; if
the worst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I
have been tied up since one o'clock this morning, and the medical
evidence will decide how long those dogs have been dead."

But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my
unforgotten friend the cabman, who never came forward to say what
manner of men he had driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on
the very day upon which the tragedy was discovered there, or
whence he had driven them. To be sure, they had not behaved
like murderers, whereas the evidence at the inquest all went to
show that the defunct Corbucci was little better. His
reputation, which transpired with his identity, was that of a
libertine and a renegade, while the infernal apparatus upstairs
revealed the fiendish arts of the anarchist to boot. The inquiry
resulted eventually in an open verdict, and was chiefly
instrumental in killing such compassion as is usually felt for
the dead who die in their sins.

But Raffles would not have passed this title for this tale.

Society persons are not likely to have forgotten the series of
audacious robberies by which so many of themselves suffered in
turn during the brief course of a recent season. Raid after
raid was made upon the smartest houses in town, and within a few
weeks more than one exalted head had been shorn of its priceless
tiara. The Duke and Duchess of Dorchester lost half the
portable pieces of their historic plate on the very night of
their Graces' almost equally historic costume ball. The
Kenworthy diamonds were taken in broad daylight, during the
excitement of a charitable meeting on the ground floor, and the
gifts of her belted bridegroom to Lady May Paulton while the
outer air was thick with a prismatic shower of confetti. It was
obvious that all this was the work of no ordinary thief, and
perhaps inevitable that the name of Raffles should have been
dragged from oblivion by callous disrespecters of the departed
and unreasoning apologists for the police. These wiseacres did
not hesitate to bring a dead man back to life because they knew
of no living one capable of such feats; it is their heedless and
inconsequent calumnies that the present paper is partly intended
to refute. As a matter of fact, our joint innocence in this
matter was only exceeded by our common envy, and for a long
time, like the rest of the world, neither of us had the
slightest clew to the identity of the person who was following
in our steps with such irritating results.

"I should mind less," said Raffles, "if the fellow were really
playing my game. But abuse of hospitality was never one of my
strokes, and it seems to me the only shot he's got. When we
took old Lady Melrose's necklace, Bunny, we were not staying with
the Melroses, if you recollect."

We were discussing the robberies for the hundredth time, but for
once under conditions more favorable to animated conversation
than our unique circumstances permitted in the flat. We did
not often dine out. Dr. Theobald was one impediment, the risk
of recognition was another. But there were exceptions, when the
doctor was away or the patient defiant, and on these rare
occasions we frequented a certain unpretentious restaurant in
the Fulham quarter, where the cooking was plain but excellent,
and the cellar a surprise. Our bottle of '89 champagne was
empty to the label when the subject arose, to be touched by
Raffles in the reminiscent manner indicated above. I can see
his clear eye upon me now, reading me, weighing me. But I was
not so sensitive to his scrutiny at the time. His tone was
deliberate, calculating, preparatory; not as I heard it then,
through a head full of wine, but as it floats back to me across
the gulf between that moment and this.

"Excellent fillet!" said I, grossly. "So you think this chap is
as much in society as we were, do you?"

I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for
jealousy without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an
eloquent half-inch.

"As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it;
there's no comparison between us there. Society is in rings like
a target, and we never were in the bull's-eye, however thick you
may lay on the ink! I was asked for my cricket. I haven't
forgotten it yet. But this fellow's one of themselves, with
the right of entre into the houses which we could only 'enter'
in a professional sense. That's obvious unless all these little
exploits are the work of different hands, which they as obviously
are not. And it's why I'd give five hundred pounds to put salt
on him to-night!"

"Not you," said I, as I drained my glass in festive incredulity.

"But I would, my dear Bunny. Waiter! another half-bottle of
this," and Raffles leant across the table as the empty one was
taken away. "I never was more serious in my life," he continued
below his breath. "Whatever else our successor may be, he's not
a dead man like me, or a marked man like you. If there's any
truth in my theory he's one of the last people upon whom
suspicion is ever likely to rest; and oh, Bunny, what a partner
he would make for you and me!"

Under less genial influences the very idea of a third partner
would have filled my soul with offence; but Raffles had chosen
his moment unerringly, and his arguments lost nothing by the
flowing accompaniment of the extra pint. They were, however,
quite strong in themselves. The gist of them was that thus far
we had remarkably little to show for what Raffles would call "our
second innings." This even I could not deny. We had scored a
few "long singles," but our "best shots" had gone "straight to
hand," and we were "playing a deuced slow game." Therefore we
needed a new partner—and the metaphor failed Raffles.

It had served its turn. I already agreed with him. In truth I
was tired of my false position as hireling attendant, and had
long fancied myself an object of suspicion to that other
impostor the doctor. A fresh, untrammelled start was a
fascinating idea to me, though two was company, and three in our
case might be worse than none. But I did not see how we could
hope, with our respective handicaps, to solve a problem which was
already the despair of Scotland Yard.

"Suppose I have solved it," observed Raffles, cracking a walnut
in his palm.

"How could you?" I asked, without believing for an instant that
he had.

"I have been taking the Morning Post for some time now."

"Well?"

"You have got me a good many odd numbers of the less base society
papers."

"I can't for the life of me see what you're driving at."

Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked another nut.

"That's because you've neither observation nor imagination,
Bunny—and yet you try to write! Well, you wouldn't think it,
but I have a fairly complete list of the people who were at the
various functions under cover of which these different little
coups were brought off."

I said very stolidly that I did not see how that could help him.
It was the only answer to his good-humored but self-satisfied
contempt; it happened also to be true.

"Think," said Raffles, in a patient voice.

"When thieves break in and steal," said I, "upstairs, I don't see
much point in discovering who was downstairs at the time."

"Quite," said Raffles—"when they do break in."

"But that's what they have done in all these cases. An upstairs
door found screwed up, when things were at their height below;
thief gone and jewels with him before alarm could be raised.
Why, the trick's so old that I never knew you condescend to play
it."

"Not so old as it looks," said Raffles, choosing the cigars and
handing me mine. "Cognac or Benedictine, Bunny?"

"Brandy," I said, coarsely.

"Besides," he went on, "the rooms were not screwed up; at
Dorchester House, at any rate, the door was only locked, and the
key missing, so that it might have been done on either side."

"But that was where he left his rope-ladder behind him!" I
exclaimed in triumph; but Raffles only shook his head.

"I don't believe in that rope-ladder, Bunny, except as a blind."

"Then what on earth do you believe?"

"That every one of these so-called burglaries has been done from
the inside, by one of the guests; and what's more I'm very much
mistaken if I haven't spotted the right sportsman."

I began to believe that he really had, there was such a wicked
gravity in the eyes that twinkled faintly into mine. I raised
my glass in convivial congratulation, and still remember the
somewhat anxious eye with which Raffles saw it emptied.

"I can only find one likely name," he continued, "that figures in
all these lists, and it is anything but a likely one at first
sight. Lord Ernest Belville was at all those functions. Know
anything about him, Bunny?"

"Not the Rational Drink fanatic?"

"Yes."

"That's all I want to know."

"Quite," said Raffles; "and yet what could be more promising? A
man whose views are so broad and moderate, and so widely held
already (saving your presence, Bunny), does not bore the world
with them without ulterior motives. So far so good. What are
this chap's motives? Does he want to advertise himself? No,
he's somebody already. But is he rich? On the contrary, he's
as poor as a rat for his position, and apparently without the
least ambition to be anything else; certainly he won't enrich
himself by making a public fad of what all sensible people are
agreed upon as it is. Then suddenly one gets one's own old
idea—the alternative profession! My cricket—his Rational
Drink! But it is no use jumping to conclusions. I must know
more than the newspapers can tell me. Our aristocratic friend
is forty, and unmarried. What has he been doing all these
years? How the devil was I to find out?"

"How did you?" I asked, declining to spoil my digestion with a
conundrum, as it was his evident intention that I should.

"Interviewed him!" said Raffles, smiling slowly on my amazement.

"You—interviewed him?" I echoed. "When—and where?"

"Last Thursday night, when, if you remember, we kept early hours,
because I felt done. What was the use of telling you what I had
up my sleeve, Bunny? It might have ended in fizzle, as it still
may. But Lord Ernest Belville was addressing the meeting at
Exeter Hall; I waited for him when the show was over, dogged him
home to King John's Mansions, and interviewed him in his own
rooms there before he turned in."

My journalistic jealousy was piqued to the quick. Affecting a
scepticism I did not feel (for no outrage was beyond the pale of
his impudence), I inquired dryly which journal Raffles had
pretended to represent. It is unnecessary to report his answer.
I could not believe him without further explanation.

"I should have thought," he said, "that even you would have
spotted a practice I never omit upon certain occasions. I always
pay a visit to the drawing-room, and fill my waistcoat pocket
from the card-tray. It is an immense help in any little
temporary impersonation. On Thursday night I sent up the card of
a powerful writer connected with a powerful paper; if Lord Ernest
had known him in the flesh I should have been obliged to confess
to a journalistic ruse; luckily he didn't—and I had been sent by
my editor to get the interview for next morning. What could be
better—for the alternative profession?"

I inquired what the interview had brought forth.

"Everything," said Raffles. "Lord Ernest has been a wanderer
these twenty years. Texas, Fiji, Australia. I suspect him of
wives and families in all three. But his manners are a liberal
education. He gave me some beautiful whiskey, and forgot all
about his fad. He is strong and subtle, but I talked him off his
guard. He is going to the Kirkleathams' to-night—I saw the card
stuck up. I stuck some wax into his keyhole as he was switching
off the lights."