E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (13 page)

It cannot have been longer before Lord Ernest came into his
bedroom. Heavens, but my heart had not forgotten how to thump!
We were standing near the door, and I could swear he touched me;
then his boots creaked, there was a rattle in the fender—and
Raffles switched on the light.

Lord Ernest Belville crouched in its glare with one Indian club
held by the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A
good-looking, well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool
and a weakling at that moment, if he had never been either
before.

"Lord Ernest Belville," said Raffles, "it's no use. This is a
loaded revolver, and if you force me I shall use it on you as I
would on any other desperate criminal. I am here to arrest you
for a series of robberies at the Duke of Dorchester's, Sir John
Kenworthy's, and other noblemen's and gentlemen's houses during
the present season. You'd better drop what you've got in your
hand. It's empty."

Lord Ernest lifted the club an inch or two, and with it his
eyebrows—and after it his stalwart frame as the club crashed
back into the fender. And as he stood at his full height, a
courteous but ironic smile under the cropped moustache, he
looked what he was, criminal or not.

"Scotland Yard?" said he.

"That's our affair, my lord."

"I didn't think they'd got it in them," said Lord Ernest. "Now
I recognize you. You're my interviewer. No, I didn't think any
of you fellows had got all that in you. Come into the other
room, and I'll show you something else. Oh, keep me covered by
all means. But look at this!"

On the antique sideboard, their size doubled by reflection in the
polished mahogany, lay a coruscating cluster of precious stones,
that fell in festoons about Lord Ernest's fingers as he handed
them to Raffles with scarcely a shrug.

"The Kirkleatham diamonds," said he. "Better add 'em to the
bag."

Raffles did so without a smile; with his overcoat buttoned up to
the chin, his tall hat pressed down to his eyes, and between the
two his incisive features and his keen, stern glance, he looked
the ideal detective of fiction and the stage. What
I
looked
God knows, but I did my best to glower and show my teeth at his
side. I had thrown myself into the game, and it was obviously a
winning one.

"Wouldn't take a share, I suppose?" Lord Ernest said casually.

Raffles did not condescend to reply. I rolled back my lips like
a bull-pup.

"Then a drink, at least!"

My mouth watered, but Raffles shook his head impatiently.

"We must be going, my lord, and you will have to come with us."

I wondered what in the world we should do with him when we had
got him.

"Give me time to put some things together? Pair of pyjamas and
tooth-brush, don't you know?"

"I cannot give you many minutes, my lord, but I don't want to
cause a disturbance here, so I'll tell them to call a cab if you
like. But I shall be back in a minute, and you must be ready in
five. Here, inspector, you'd better keep this while I am gone."

And I was left alone with that dangerous criminal! Raffles
nipped my arm as he handed me the revolver, but I got small
comfort out of that.

"'Sea-green Incorruptible?'" inquired Lord Ernest as we stood
face to face.

"You don't corrupt me," I replied through naked teeth.

"Then come into my room. I'll lead the way. Think you can hit
me if I misbehave?"

I put the bed between us without a second's delay. My prisoner
flung a suit-case upon it, and tossed things into it with a
dejected air; suddenly, as he was fitting them in, without
raising his head (which I was watching), his right hand closed
over the barrel with which I covered him.

"You'd better not shoot," he said, a knee upon his side of the
bed; "if you do it may be as bad for you as it will be for me!"

I tried to wrest the revolver from him.

"I will if you force me," I hissed.

"You'd better not," he repeated, smiling; and now I saw that if I
did I should only shoot into the bed or my own legs. His hand
was on the top of mine, bending it down, and the revolver with
it. The strength of it was as the strength of ten of mine; and
now both his knees were on the bed; and suddenly I saw his other
hand, doubled into a fist, coming up slowly over the suit-case.

"Help!" I called feebly.

"Help, forsooth! I begin to believe YOU ARE from the Yard," he
said—and his upper-cut came with the "Yard." It caught me under
the chin.

It lifted me off my legs. I have a dim recollection of the crash
that I made in falling.

Raffles was standing over me when I recovered consciousness. I
lay stretched upon the bed across which that blackguard Belville
had struck his knavish blow. The suit-case was on the floor,
but its dastardly owner had disappeared.

"Is he gone?" was my first faint question.

"Thank God you're not, anyway!" replied Raffles, with what struck
me then as mere flippancy. I managed to raise myself upon one
elbow.

"I meant Lord Ernest Belville," said I, with dignity. "Are you
quite sure that he's cleared out?"

Raffles waved a hand towards the window, which stood wide open to
the summer stars.

"Of course," said he, "and by the route I intended him to take;
he's gone by the iron-ladder, as I hoped he would. What on
earth should we have done with him? My poor, dear Bunny, I
thought you'd take a bribe! But it's really more convincing as
it is, and just as well for Lord Ernest to be convinced for the
time being."

"Are you sure he is?" I questioned, as I found a rather shaky
pair of legs.

"Of course!" cried Raffles again, in the tone to make one blush
for the least misgiving on the point. "Not that it matters one
bit," he added, airily, "for we have him either way; and when he
does tumble to it, as he may any minute, he won't dare to open
his mouth."

"Then the sooner we clear out the better," said I, but I looked
askance at the open window, for my head was spinning still.

"When you feel up to it," returned Raffles, "we shall STROLL out,
and I shall do myself the honor of ringing for the lift. The
force of habit is too strong in you, Bunny. I shall shut the
window and leave everything exactly as we found it. Lord Ernest
will probably tumble before he is badly missed; and then he may
come back to put salt on us; but I should like to know what he
can do even if he succeeds! Come, Bunny, pull yourself together,
and you'll be a different man when you're in the open air."

And for a while I felt one, such was my relief at getting out of
those infernal mansions with unfettered wrists; this we managed
easily enough; but once more Raffles's performance of a small
part was no less perfect than his more ambitious work upstairs,
and something of the successful artist's elation possessed him as
we walked arm-in-arm across St. James's Park. It was long since
I had known him so pleased with himself, and only too long since
he had had such reason.

"I don't think I ever had a brighter idea in my life," he said;
"never thought of it till he was in the next room; never dreamt
of its coming off so ideally even then, and didn't much care,
because we had him all ways up. I'm only sorry you let him knock
you out. I was waiting outside the door all the time, and it
made me sick to hear it. But I once broke my own head, Bunny, if
you remember, and not in half such an excellent cause!"

Raffles touched all his pockets in his turn, the pockets that
contained a small fortune apiece, and he smiled in my face as we
crossed the lighted avenues of the Mall. Next moment he was
hailing a hansom—for I suppose I was still pretty pale—and not
a word would he let me speak until we had alighted as near as was
prudent to the flat.

"What a brute I've been, Bunny!" he whispered then, "but you
take half the swag, old boy, and right well you've earned it.
No, we'll go in by the wrong door and over the roof; it's too
late for old Theobald to be still at the play, and too early for
him to be safely in his cups."

So we climbed the many stairs with cat-like stealth, and like
cats crept out upon the grimy leads. But to-night they were no
blacker than their canopy of sky; not a chimney-stack stood out
against the starless night; one had to feel one's way in order to
avoid tripping over the low parapets of the L-shaped wells that
ran from roof to basement to light the inner rooms. One of these
wells was spanned by a flimsy bridge with iron handrails that
felt warm to the touch as Raffles led the way across! A hotter
and a closer night I have never known.

"The flat will be like an oven," I grumbled, at the head of our
own staircase.

"Then we won't go down," said Raffles, promptly; we'll slack it
up here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are!
I'll fetch you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan't come
down till you feel more fit."

And I let him have his way, I will not say as usual, for I had
even less than my normal power of resistance that night. That
villainous upper-cut! My head still sang and throbbed, as I
seated myself on one of the aforesaid parapets, and buried it in
my hot hands. Nor was the night one to dispel a headache; there
was distinct thunder in the air. Thus I sat in a heap, and
brooded over my misadventure, a pretty figure of a subordinate
villain, until the step came for which I waited; and it never
struck me that it came from the wrong direction.

"You have been quick," said I, simply.

"Yes," hissed a voice I recognized; "and you've got to be quicker
still! Here, out with your wrists; no, one at a time; and if you
utter a syllable you're a dead man."

It was Lord Ernest Belville; his close-cropped, iron-gray
moustache gleamed through the darkness, drawn up over his set
teeth. In his hand glittered a pair of handcuffs, and before I
knew it one had snapped its jaws about my right wrist.

"Now come this way," said Lord Ernest, showing me a revolver
also, "and wait for your friend. And, recollect, a single
syllable of warning will be your death!"

With that the ruffian led me to the very bridge I had just
crossed at Raffles's heels, and handcuffed me to the iron rail
midway across the chasm. It no longer felt warm to my touch, but
icy as the blood in all my veins.

So this high-born hypocrite had beaten us at our game and his,
and Raffles had met his match at last! That was the most
intolerable thought, that Raffles should be down in the flat on
my account, and that I could not warn him of his impending fate;
for how was it possible without making such an outcry as should
bring the mansions about our ears? And there I shivered on that
wretched plank, chained like Andromeda to the rock, with a black
infinity above and below; and before my eyes, now grown familiar
with the peculiar darkness, stood Lord Ernest Belville, waiting
for Raffles to emerge with full hands and unsuspecting heart!
Taken so horribly unawares, even Raffles must fall an easy prey
to a desperado in resource and courage scarcely second to
himself, but one whom he had fatally underrated from the
beginning. Not that I paused to think how the thing had
happened; my one concern was for what was to happen next.

And what did happen was worse than my worst foreboding, for first
a light came flickering into the sort of companion-hatch at the
head of the stairs, and finally Raffles—in his shirt-sleeves!
He was not only carrying a candle to put the finishing touch to
him as a target; he had dispensed with coat and waistcoat
downstairs, and was at once full-handed and unarmed.

"Where are you, old chap?" he cried, softly, himself blinded by
the light he carried; and he advanced a couple of steps towards
Belville. "This isn't you, is it?"

And Raffles stopped, his candle held on high, a folding chair
under the other arm.

"No, I am not your friend," replied Lord Ernest, easily; "but
kindly remain standing exactly where you are, and don't lower
that candle an inch, unless you want your brains blown into the
street."

Raffles said never a word, but for a moment did as he was bid;
and the unshaken flame of the candle was testimony alike to the
stillness of the night and to the finest set of nerves in Europe.

Then, to my horror, he coolly stooped, placing candle and chair
on the leads, and his hands in his pockets, as though it were but
a popgun that covered him.

"Why didn't you shoot?" he asked insolently as he rose.
"Frightened of the noise? I should be, too, with an old-pattern
machine like that. All very well for service in the field—but
on the house-tops at dead of night!"

"I shall shoot, however," replied Lord Ernest, as quietly in his
turn, and with less insolence, "and chance the noise, unless you
instantly restore my property. I am glad you don't dispute the
last word," he continued after a slight pause. "There is no
keener honor than that which subsists, or ought to subsist,
among thieves; and I need hardly say that I soon spotted you as
one of the fraternity. Not in the beginning, mind you! For the
moment I did think you were one of these smart detectives jumped
to life from some sixpenny magazine; but to preserve the
illusion you ought to provide yourself with a worthier
lieutenant. It was he who gave your show away," chuckled the
wretch, dropping for a moment the affected style of speech which
seemed intended to enhance our humiliation; "smart detectives
don't go about with little innocents to assist them. You needn't
be anxious about him, by the way; it wasn't necessary to pitch
him into the street; he is to be seen though not heard, if you
look in the right direction. Nor must you put all the blame upon
your friend; it was not he, but you, who made so sure that I
had got out by the window. You see, I was in my bathroom all the
time—with the door open."