E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (17 page)

I rushed within. The doctor's door stood open. I neither
knocked nor rang, but found him in his consulting-room with red
eyes and a blotchy face. Otherwise he was in solemn black from
head to heel.

"Who is dead?" I burst out. "Who is dead?"

The red eyes looked redder than ever as Dr. Theobald opened them
at the unwarrantable sight of me; and he was terribly slow in
answering. But in the end he did answer, and did not kick me out
as he evidently had a mind.

"Mr. Maturin," he said, and sighed like a beaten man.

I said nothing. It was no surprise to me. I had known it all
these minutes. Nay, I had dreaded this from the first, had
divined it at the last, though to the last also I had refused to
entertain my own conviction. Raffles dead! A real invalid after
all! Raffles dead, and on the point of burial!

"What did he die of?" I asked, unconsciously drawing on that fund
of grim self-control which the weakest of us seem to hold in
reserve for real calamity.

"Typhoid," he answered. "Kensington is full of it."

"He was sickening for it when I left, and you knew it, and could
get rid of me then!"

"My good fellow, I was obliged to have a more experienced nurse
for that very reason."

The doctor's tone was so conciliatory that I remembered in an
instant what a humbug the man was, and became suddenly possessed
with the vague conviction that he was imposing upon me now.

"Are you sure it was typhoid at all?" I cried fiercely to his
face. "Are you sure it wasn't suicide—or murder?"

I confess that I can see little point in this speech as I write
it down, but it was what I said in a burst of grief and of wild
suspicion; nor was it without effect upon Dr. Theobald, who
turned bright scarlet from his well-brushed hair to his
immaculate collar.

"Do you want me to throw you out into the street?" he cried; and
all at once I remembered that I had come to Raffles as a perfect
stranger, and for his sake might as well preserve that character
to the last.

"I beg your pardon," I said, brokenly. "He was so good to me—I
became so attached to him. You forget I am originally of his
class."

"I did forget it," replied Theobald, looking relieved at my new
tone, "and I beg YOUR pardon for doing so. Hush! They are
bringing him down. I must have a drink before we start, and
you'd better join me."

There was no pretence about his drink this time, and a pretty
stiff one it was, but I fancy my own must have run it hard. In
my case it cast a merciful haze over much of the next hour, which
I can truthfully describe as one of the most painful of my
whole existence. I can have known very little of what I was
doing. I only remember finding myself in a hansom, suddenly
wondering why it was going so slowly, and once more awaking to
the truth. But it was to the truth itself more than to the
liquor that I must have owed my dazed condition. My next
recollection is of looking down into the open grave, in a sudden
passionate anxiety to see the name for myself. It was not the
name of my friend, of course, but it was the one under which he
had passed for many months.

I was still stupefied by a sense of inconceivable loss, and had
not raised my eyes from that which was slowly forcing me to
realize what had happened, when there was a rustle at my elbow,
and a shower of hothouse flowers passed before them, falling
like huge snowflakes where my gaze had rested. I looked up, and
at my side stood a majestic figure in deep mourning. The face
was carefully veiled, but I was too close not to recognize the
masterful beauty whom the world knew as Jacques Saillard. I had
no sympathy with her; on the contrary, my blood boiled with the
vague conviction that in some way she was responsible for this
death. Yet she was the only woman present—there were not a half
a dozen of us altogether—and her flowers were the only flowers.

The melancholy ceremony was over, and Jacques Saillard had
departed in a funeral brougham, evidently hired for the occasion.
I had watched her drive away, and the sight of my own cabman,
making signs to me through the fog, had suddenly reminded me
that I had bidden him to wait. I was the last to leave, and had
turned my back upon the grave-diggers, already at their final
task, when a hand fell lightly but firmly upon my shoulder.

"I don't want to make a scene in a cemetery," said a voice, in a
not unkindly, almost confidential whisper. "Will you get into
your own cab and come quietly?"

"Who on earth are you?" I exclaimed.

I now remembered having seen the fellow hovering about during the
funeral, and subconsciously taking him for the undertaker's head
man. He had certainly that appearance, and even now I could
scarcely believe that he was anything else.

"My name won't help you," he said, pityingly. "But you will
guess where I come from when I tell you I have a warrant for
your arrest."

My sensations at this announcement may not be believed, but I
solemnly declare that I have seldom experienced so fierce a
satisfaction. Here was a new excitement in which to drown my
grief; here was something to think about; and I should be spared
the intolerable experience of a solitary return to the little
place at Ham. It was as though I had lost a limb and some one
had struck me so hard in the face that the greater agony was
forgotten. I got into the hansom without a word, my captor
following at my heels, and giving his own directions to the
cabman before taking his seat. The word "station" was the only
one I caught, and I wondered whether it was to be Bow Street
again. My companion's next words, however, or rather the tone in
which he uttered them, destroyed my capacity for idle
speculation.

"Mr. Maturin!" said he. "Mr. Maturin indeed!"

"Well," said I, "what about him?"

"Do you think we don't know who he was?"

"Who was he?" I asked, defiantly.

"You ought to know," said he. "You got locked up through him the
other time, too. His favorite name was Raffles then."

"It was his real name," I said, indignantly. "And he has been
dead for years."

My captor simply chuckled.

"He's at the bottom of the sea, I tell you!"

But I do not know why I should have told him with such spirit,
for what could it matter to Raffles now? I did not think;
instinct was still stronger than reason, and, fresh from his
funeral, I had taken up the cudgels for my dead friend as
though he were still alive. Next moment I saw this for myself,
and my tears came nearer the surface than they had been yet; but
the fellow at my side laughed outright.

"Shall I tell you something else?" said he.

"As you like."

"He's not even at the bottom of that grave! He's no more dead
than you or I, and a sham burial is his latest piece of
villainy!"

I doubt whether I could have spoken if I had tried. I did not
try. I had no use for speech. I did not even ask him if he was
sure, I was so sure myself. It was all as plain to me as
riddles usually are when one has the answer. The doctor's
alarms, his unscrupulous venality, the simulated illness, my own
dismissal, each fitted in its obvious place, and not even the
last had power as yet to mar my joy in the one central fact to
which all the rest were as tapers to the sun.

"He is alive!" I cried. "Nothing else matters—he is alive!"

At last I did ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as
I was for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much
care what answer I received. Already I was figuring out how
much we might each get, and how old we should be when we came
out. But my companion tilted his hat to the back of his head,
at the same time putting his face close to mine, and compelling
my scrutiny. And my answer, as you have already guessed, was
the face of Raffles himself, superbly disguised (but less
superbly than his voice), and yet so thinly that I should have
known him in a trice had I not been too miserable in the
beginning to give him a second glance.

Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the
one escape. Raffles had bought the doctor for a thousand pounds,
and the doctor had bought a "nurse" of his own kidney, on his
own account; me, for some reason, he would not trust; he had
insisted upon my dismissal as an essential preliminary to his
part in the conspiracy. Here the details were half-humorous,
half-grewsome, each in turn as Raffles told me the story. At
one period he had been very daringly drugged indeed, and, in his
own words, "as dead as a man need be"; but he had left strict
instructions that nobody but the nurse and "my devoted physician"
should" lay a finger on me" afterwards; and by virtue of this
proviso a library of books (largely acquired for the occasion)
had been impiously interred at Kensal Green. Raffles had
definitely undertaken not to trust me with the secret, and, but
for my untoward appearance at the funeral (which he had attended
for his own final satisfaction), I was assured and am convinced
that he would have kept his promise to the letter. In explaining
this he gave me the one explanation I desired, and in another
moment we turned into Praed Street, Paddington.

"And I thought you said Bow Street!" said I. "Are you coming
straight down to Richmond with me?"

"I may as well," said Raffles, "though I did mean to get my kit
first, so as to start in fair and square as the long-lost
brother from the bush. That's why I hadn't written. The
function was a day later than I calculated. I was going to
write to-night."

"But what are we to do?" said I, hesitating when he had paid the
cab. "I have been playing the colonies for all they are worth!"

"Oh, I've lost my luggage," said he, "or a wave came into my
cabin and spoilt every stitch, or I had nothing fit to bring
ashore. We'll settle that in the train."

My brother Ralph, who now lived with me on the edge of Ham
Common, had come home from Australia with a curious affection of
the eyes, due to long exposure to the glare out there, and
necessitating the use of clouded spectacles in the open air. He
had not the rich complexion of the typical colonist, being indeed
peculiarly pale, but it appeared that he had been confined to his
berth for the greater part of the voyage, while his prematurely
gray hair was sufficient proof that the rigors of bush life had
at last undermined an originally tough constitution. Our
landlady, who spoilt my brother from the first, was much
concerned on his behalf, and wished to call in the local doctor;
but Ralph said dreadful things about the profession, and quite
frightened the good woman by arbitrarily forbidding her ever to
let a doctor inside her door. I had to apologize to her for the
painful prejudices and violent language of "these colonists,"
but the old soul was easily mollified. She had fallen in love
with my brother at first sight, and she never could do too much
for him. It was owing to our landlady that I took to calling him
Ralph, for the first time in our lives, on her beginning to speak
of and to him as "Mr. Raffles."

"This won't do," said he to me. "It's a name that sticks."

"It must be my fault! She must have heard it from me," said I
self-reproachfully.

"You must tell her it's the short for Ralph."

"But it's longer."

"It's the short," said he; "and you've got to tell her so."

Henceforth I heard as much of "Mr. Ralph," his likes and
dislikes, what he would fancy and what he would not, and oh, what
a dear gentleman he was, that I often remembered to say "Ralph,
old chap," myself.

It was an ideal cottage, as I said when I found it, and in it
our delicate man became rapidly robust. Not that the air was
also ideal, for, when it was not raining, we had the same
faithful mist from November to March. But it was something to
Ralph to get any air at all, other than night-air, and the
bicycle did the rest. We taught ourselves, and may I never
forget our earlier rides, through and through Richmond Park when
the afternoons were shortest, upon the incomparable Ripley Road
when we gave a day to it. Raffles rode a Beeston Humber, a
Royal Sunbeam was good enough for me, but he insisted on our both
having Dunlop tires.

"They seem the most popular brand. I had my eye on the road all
the way from Ripley to Cobham, and there were more Dunlop marks
than any other kind. Bless you, yes, they all leave their
special tracks, and we don't want ours to be extra special; the
Dunlop's like a rattlesnake, and the Palmer leaves
telegraph-wires, but surely the serpent is more in our line."

That was the winter when there were so many burglaries in the
Thames Valley from Richmond upward. It was said that the thieves
used bicycles in every case, but what is not said? They were
sometimes on foot to my knowledge, and we took a great interest
in the series, or rather sequence of successful crimes. Raffles
would often get his devoted old lady to read him the latest local
accounts, while I was busy with my writing (much I wrote) in my
own room. We even rode out by night ourselves, to see if we
could not get on the tracks of the thieves, and never did we fail
to find hot coffee on the hob for our return. We had indeed
fallen upon our feet. Also, the misty nights might have been
made for the thieves. But their success was not so consistent,
and never so enormous as people said, especially the sufferers,
who lost more valuables than they had ever been known to possess.
Failure was often the caitiff's portion, and disaster once;
owing, ironically enough, to that very mist which should have
served them. But as I am going to tell the story with some
particularity, and perhaps some gusto, you will see why who
read.

The right house stood on high ground near the river, with quite a
drive (in at one gate and out at the other) sweeping past the
steps. Between the two gates was a half-moon of shrubs, to the
left of the steps a conservatory, and to their right the walk
leading to the tradesmen's entrance and the back premises; here
also was the pantry window, of which more anon. The right house
was the residence of an opulent stockbroker who wore a heavy
watch-chain and seemed fair game. There would have been two
objections to it had I been the stockbroker. The house was one
of a row, though a goodly row, and an army-crammer had
established himself next door. There is a type of such
institutions in the suburbs; the youths go about in
knickerbockers, smoking pipes, except on Saturday nights, when
they lead each other home from the last train. It was none of
our business to spy upon these boys, but their manners and
customs fell within the field of observation. And we did not
choose the night upon which the whole row was likely to be kept
awake.