E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (15 page)

were uttered. It was a horrible moment for such a discovery.
Fortunately the enemy was on the pavement, from which he could
scarcely have seen more than the drawing-room ceiling, had he
looked; but he was not many houses distant when a door opened
and a woman gasped so that I heard both across the road. And
never shall I forget the subsequent tableaux in the lighted
room behind the low balcony and the French windows.

Raffles stood confronted by a dark and handsome woman whose
profile, as I saw it first in the electric light, is cut like a
cameo in my memory. It had the undeviating line of brow and
nose, the short upper lip, the perfect chin, that are united in
marble oftener than in the flesh; and like marble she stood, or
rather like some beautiful pale bronze; for that was her
coloring, and she lost none of it that I could see, neither
trembled; but her bosom rose and fell, and that was all. So she
stood without flinching before a masked ruffian, who, I felt,
would be the first to appreciate her courage; to me it was so
superb that I could think of it in this way even then, and
marvel how Raffles himself could stand unabashed before so brave
a figure. He had not to do so long. The woman scorned him, and
he stood unmoved, a framed photograph still in his hand. Then,
with a quick, determined movement she turned, not to the door or
to the bell, but to the open window by which Raffles had
entered; and this with that accursed policeman still in view.
So far no word had passed between the pair. But at this point
Raffles said something, I could not hear what, but at the sound
of his voice the woman wheeled. And Raffles was looking humbly
in her face, the crape mask snatched from his own.

"Arthur!" she cried; and that might have been heard in the middle
of the square garden.

Then they stood gazing at each other, neither unmoved any more,
and while they stood the street-door opened and banged. It was
her husband leaving the house, a fine figure of a man, but a
dissipated face, and a step even now distinguished by the
extreme caution which precedes unsteadiness. He broke the spell.
His wife came to the balcony, then looked back into the room,
and yet again along the road, and this time I saw her face. It
was the face of one glancing indeed from Hyperion to a satyr.
And then I saw the rings flash, as her hand fell gently upon
Raffles's arm.

They disappeared from that window. Their heads showed for an
instant in the next. Then they dipped out of sight, and an inner
ceiling flashed out under a new light; they had gone into the
back drawing-room, beyond my ken. The maid came up with coffee,
her mistress hastily met her at the door, and once more
disappeared. The square was as quiet as ever. I remained some
minutes where I was. Now and then I thought I heard their voices
in the back drawing-room. I was seldom sure.

My state of mind may be imagined by those readers who take an
interest in my personal psychology. It does not amuse me to look
back upon it. But at length I had the sense to put myself in
Raffles's place. He had been recognized at last, he had come to
life. Only one person knew as yet, but that person was a woman,
and a woman who had once been fond of him, if the human face
could speak. Would she keep his secret? Would he tell her
where he lived? It was terrible to think we were such neighbors,
and with the thought that it was terrible came a little
enlightenment as to what could still be done for the best. He
would not tell her where he lived. I knew him too well for that.
He would run for it when he could, and the bath-chair and I must
not be there to give him away. I dragged the infernal vehicle
round the nearer corner. Then I waited—there could be no harm
in that—and at last he came.

He was walking briskly, so I was right, and he had not played the
invalid to her; yet I heard him cry out with pleasure as he
turned the corner, and he flung himself into the chair with a
long-drawn sigh that did me good.

"Well done, Bunny—well done! I am on my way to Earl's Court,
she's capable of following me, but she won't look for me in a
bath-chair. Home, home, home, and not another word till we get
there!"

Capable of following him? She overtook us before we were past
the studios on the south side of the square, the woman herself,
in a hooded opera-cloak. But she never gave us a glance, and we
saw her turn safely in the right direction for Earl's Court, and
the wrong one for our humble mansions. Raffles thanked his gods
in a voice that trembled, and five minutes later we were in the
flat. Then for once it was Raffles who filled the tumblers and
found the cigarettes, and for once (and once only in all my
knowledge of him) did he drain his glass at a draught.

"You didn't see the balcony scene?" he asked at length; and they
were his first words since the woman passed us on his track.

"Do you mean when she came in?"

"No, when I came down."

"I didn't."

"I hope nobody else saw it," said Raffles devoutly. "I don't say
that Romeo and Juliet were brother and sister to us. But you
might have said so, Bunny!"

He was staring at the carpet with as wry a face as lover ever
wore.

"An old flame?" said I, gently.

"A married woman," he groaned.

"So I gathered."

"But she always was one, Bunny," said he, ruefully. "That's the
trouble. It makes all the difference in the world!"

I saw the difference, but said I did not see how it could make
any now. He had eluded the lady, after all; had we not seen her
off upon a scent as false as scent could be? There was occasion
for redoubled caution in the future, but none for immediate
anxiety. I quoted the bedside Theobald, but Raffles did not
smile. His eyes had been downcast all this time, and now, when
he raised them, I perceived that my comfort had been
administered to deaf ears.

"Do you know who she is?" said he.

"Not from Eve."

"Jacques Saillard," he said, as though now I must know.

But the name left me cold and stolid. I had heard it, but that
was all. It was lamentable ignorance, I am aware, but I had
specialized in Letters at the expense of Art.

"You must know her pictures," said Raffles, patiently; "but I
suppose you thought she was a man. They would appeal to you,
Bunny; that festive piece over the sideboard was her work.
Sometimes they risk her at the Academy, sometimes they fight shy.
She has one of those studios in the same square; they used to
live up near Lord's."

My mind was busy brightening a dim memory of nymphs reflected in
woody pools. "Of course!" I exclaimed, and added something
about "a clever woman." Raffles rose at the phrase.

"A clever woman!" he echoed, scornfully; "if she were only that I
should feel safe as houses. Clever women can't forget their
cleverness, they carry it as badly as a boy does his wine, and
are about as dangerous. I don't call Jacques Saillard clever
outside her art, but neither do I call her a woman at all. She
does man's work over a man's name, has the will of any ten men I
ever knew, and I don't mind telling you that I fear her more
than any person on God's earth. I broke with her once," said
Raffles, grimly, "but I know her. If I had been asked to name
the one person in London by whom I was keenest NOT to be bowled
out, I should have named Jacques Saillard."

That he had never before named her to me was as characteristic as
the reticence with which Raffles spoke of their past relations,
and even of their conversation in the back drawing-room that
evening.

It was a question of principle with him, and one that I like to
remember. "Never give a woman away, Bunny," he used to say; and
he said it again to-night, but with a heavy cloud upon him, as
though his chivalry was sorely tried.

"That's all right," said I, "if you're not going to be given away
yourself."

"That's just it, Bunny! That's just—"

The words were out of him, it was too late to recall them. I had
hit the nail upon the head.

"So she threatened you," I said, "did she?"

"I didn't say so," he replied, coldly.

"And she is mated with a clown!" I pursued.

"How she ever married him," he admitted, "is a mystery to me."

"It always is," said I, the wise man for once, and rather
enjoying the role.

"Southern blood?"

"Spanish."

"She'll be pestering you to run off with her, old chap," said I.

Raffles was pacing the room. He stopped in his stride for half
a second. So she had begun pestering him already! It is
wonderful how acute any fool can be in the affairs of his friend.

But Raffles resumed his walk without a syllable, and I
retreated to safer ground.

"So you sent her to Earl's Court," I mused aloud; and at last he
smiled.

"You'll be interested to hear, Bunny," said he, "that I am now
living in Seven Dials, and Bill Sikes couldn't hold a farthing
dip to me. Bless you, she had my old police record at her
fingers' ends, but it was fit to frame compared with the one I
gave her. I had sunk as low as they dig. I divided my nights
between the open parks and a thieves' kitchen in Seven Dials. If
I was decently dressed it was because I had stolen the suit down
the Thames Valley beat the night before last. I was on my way
back when first that sleepy square, and then her open window,
proved too much for me. You should have heard me beg her to let
me push on to the devil in my own way; there I spread myself,
for I meant every word; but I swore the final stage would be a
six-foot drop."

"You did lay it on," said I.

"It was necessary, and that had its effect. She let me go. But
at the last moment she said she didn't believe I was so black as
I painted myself, and then there was the balcony scene you
missed."

So that was all. I could not help telling him that he had got
out of it better than he deserved for ever getting in. Next
moment I regretted the remark.

"If I have got out of it," said Raffles, doubtfully. "We are
dreadfully near neighbors, and I can't move in a minute, with old
Theobald taking a grave view of my case. I suppose I had better
lie low, and thank the gods again for putting her off the scent
for the time being."

No doubt our conversation was carried beyond this point, but it
certainly was not many minutes later, nor had we left the
subject, when the electric bell thrilled us both to a sudden
silence.

"The doctor?" I queried, hope fighting with my horror.

"It was a single ring."

"The last post?"

"You know he knocks, and it's long past his time."

The electric bell rang again, but now as though it never would
stop.

"You go, Bunny," said Raffles, with decision. His eyes were
sparkling. His smile was firm.

"What am I to say?"

"If it's the lady let her in."

It was the lady, still in her evening cloak, with her fine dark
head half-hidden by the hood, and an engaging contempt of
appearances upon her angry face. She was even handsomer than I
had thought, and her beauty of a bolder type, but she was also
angrier than I had anticipated when I came so readily to the
door. The passage into which it opened was an exceedingly narrow
one, as I have often said, but I never dreamt of barring this
woman's way, though not a word did she stoop to say to me. I was
only too glad to flatten myself against the wall, as the rustling
fury strode past me into the lighted room with the open door.

"So this is your thieves' kitchen!" she cried, in high-pitched
scorn.

I was on the threshold myself, and Raffles glanced towards me
with raised eyebrows.

"I have certainly had better quarters in my day," said he, "but
you need not call them absurd names before my man."

"Then send your 'man' about his business," said Jacques Saillard,
with an unpleasant stress upon the word indicated.

But when the door was shut I heard Raffles assuring her that I
knew nothing, that he was a real invalid overcome by a sudden mad
temptation, and all he had told her of his life a lie to hide
his whereabouts, but all he was telling her now she could prove
for herself without leaving that building. It seemed, however,
that she had proved it already by going first to the porter below
stairs. Yet I do not think she cared one atom which story was
the truth.

"So you thought I could pass you in your chair," she said, "or
ever in this world again, without hearing from my heart that it
was you!"

"Bunny," said Raffles, "I'm awfully sorry, old chap, but you've
got to go."

It was some weeks since the first untimely visitation of Jacques
Saillard, but there had been many others at all hours of the day,
while Raffles had been induced to pay at least one to her studio
in the neighboring square. These intrusions he had endured at
first with an air of humorous resignation which imposed upon me
less than he imagined. The woman meant well, he said, after all,
and could be trusted to keep his secret loyally. It was plain
to me, however, that Raffles did not trust her, and that his
pretence upon the point was a deliberate pose to conceal the
extent to which she had him in her power. Otherwise there would
have been little point in hiding anything from the one person in
possession of the cardinal secret of his identity.

But Raffles thought it worth his while to hoodwink Jacques
Saillard in the subsidiary matter of his health, in which Dr.
Theobald lent him unwitting assistance, and, as we have seen, to
impress upon her that I was actually his attendant, and as
ignorant of his past as the doctor himself. "So you're all
right, Bunny," he had assured me; "she thinks you knew nothing
the other night. I told you she wasn't a clever woman outside
her work. But hasn't she a will!" I told Raffles it was very
considerate of him to keep me out of it, but that it seemed to me
like tying up the bag when the cat had escaped. His reply was an
admission that one must be on the defensive with such a woman and
in such a case. Soon after this, Raffles, looking far from
well, fell back upon his own last line of defence, namely, his
bed; and now, as always in the end, I could see some sense in his
subtleties, since it was comparatively easy for me to turn even
Jacques Saillard from the door, with Dr. Theobald's explicit
injunctions, and with my own honesty unquestioned. So for a day
we had peace once more. Then came letters, then the doctor
again and again, and finally my dismissal in the incredible words
which have necessitated these explanations.