E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (5 page)

"Oh, it will fill up soon, will it?"

"Any minute now, sir."

"Ah!"

"It isn't often empty as long as this, sir. It's the Jubilee, I
suppose."

"Meanwhile, what if my friend and I had been professional
thieves? Why, we could have over-powered you in an instant, my
good fellow!"

"That you couldn't; leastways, not without bringing the whole
place about your ears."

"Well, I shall write to the Times, all the same. I'm a
connoisseur in all this sort of thing, and I won't have
unnecessary risks run with the nation's property. You said
there was an attendant just outside, but he sounds to me as
though he were at the other end of the corridor. I shall write
to-day!"

For an instant we all three listened; and Raffles was right.
Then I saw two things in one glance. Raffles had stepped a few
inches backward, and stood poised upon the ball of each foot,
his arms half raised, a light in his eyes. And another kind of
light was breaking over the crass features of our friend the
constable.

"Then shall I tell you what I'LL do?" he cried, with a sudden
clutch at the whistle-chain on his chest. The whistle flew out,
but it never reached his lips. There were a couple of sharp
smacks, like double barrels discharged all but simultaneously,
and the man reeled against me so that I could not help catching
him as he fell.

"Well done, Bunny! I've knocked him out—I've knocked him out!
Run you to the door and see if the attendants have heard
anything, and take them on if they have."

Mechanically I did as I was told. There was no time for
thought, still less for remonstrance or reproach, though my
surprise must have been even more complete than that of the
constable before Raffles knocked the sense out of him. Even in
my utter bewilderment, however, the instinctive caution of the
real criminal did not desert me. I ran to the door, but I
sauntered through it, to plant myself before a Pompeiian fresco
in the corridor; and there were the two attendants still
gossiping outside the further door; nor did they hear the dull
crash which I heard even as I watched them out of the corner of
each eye.

It was hot weather, as I have said, but the perspiration on my
body seemed already to have turned into a skin of ice. Then I
caught the faint reflection of my own face in the casing of the
fresco, and it frightened me into some semblance of myself as
Raffles joined me with his hands in his pockets. But my fear
and indignation were redoubled at the sight of him, when a
single glance convinced me that his pockets were as empty as his
hands, and his mad outrage the most wanton and reckless of his
whole career.

"Ah, very interesting, very interesting, but nothing to what
they have in the museum at Naples or in Pompeii itself. You
must go there some day, Bunny. I've a good mind to take you
myself. Meanwhile—slow march! The beggar hasn't moved an
eyelid. We may swing for him if you show indecent haste!"

"We!" I whispered. "We!"

And my knees knocked together as we came up to the chatting
attendants. But Raffles must needs interrupt them to ask the
way to the Prehistoric Saloon.

"At the top of the stairs."

"Thank you. Then we'll work round that way to the Egyptian
part."

And we left them resuming their providential chat.

"I believe you're mad," I said bitterly as we went.

"I believe I was," admitted Raffles; "but I'm not now, and I'll
see you through. A hundred and thirty-nine yards, wasn't it?
Then it can't be more than a hundred and twenty now—not as
much. Steady, Bunny, for God's sake. It's SLOW march—for our
lives."

There was this much management. The rest was our colossal luck.
A hansom was being paid off at the foot of the steps outside,
and in we jumped, Raffles shouting "Charing Cross!" for all
Bloomsbury to hear.

We had turned into Bloomsbury Street without exchanging a
syllable when he struck the trap-door with his fist.

"Where the devil are you driving us?"

"Charing Cross, sir."

"I said King's Cross! Round you spin, and drive like blazes, or
we miss our train! There's one to York at 10:35," added Raffles
as the trap-door slammed; "we'll book there, Bunny, and then
we'll slope through the subway to the Metropolitan, and so to
ground via Baker Street and Earl's Court."

And actually in half an hour he was seated once more in the
hired carrying chair, while the porter and I staggered upstairs
with my decrepit charge, for whose shattered strength even one
hour in Kew Gardens had proved too much! Then, and not until
then, when we had got rid of the porter and were alone at last,
did I tell Raffles, in the most nervous English at my command,
frankly and exactly what I thought of him and of his latest
deed. Once started, moreover, I spoke as I have seldom spoken
to living man; and Raffles, of all men, stood my abuse without a
murmur; or rather he sat it out, too astounded even to take off
his hat, though I thought his eyebrows would have lifted it from
his head.

"But it always was your infernal way," I was savagely
concluding. "You make one plan, and yet you tell me another—"

"Not to-day, Bunny, I swear!"

"You mean to tell me you really did start with the bare idea of
finding a place to hide in for a night?"

"Of course I did."

"It was to be the mere reconnoitre you pretended?"

"There was no pretence about it, Bunny."

"Then why on earth go and do what you did?"

"The reason would be obvious to anyone but you," said Raffles,
still with no unkindly scorn. "It was the temptation of a
minute—the final impulse of the fraction of a second, when
Roberto saw that I was tempted, and let me see that he saw it.
It's not a thing I care to do, and I sha'n't be happy till the
papers tell me the poor devil is alive. But a knock-out shot was
the only chance for us then."

"Why? You don't get run in for being tempted, nor yet for
showing that you are!"

"But I should have deserved running in if I hadn't yielded to
such a temptation as that, Bunny. It was a chance in a hundred
thousand! We might go there every day of our lives, and never
again be the only outsiders in the room, with the
billiard-marking Johnnie practically out of ear-shot at one and
the same time. It was a gift from the gods; not to have taken
it would have been flying in the face of Providence."

"But you didn't take it," said I. "You went and left it
behind."

I wish I had had a Kodak for the little smile with which Raffles
shook his head, for it was one that he kept for those great
moments of which our vocation is not devoid. All this time he
had been wearing his hat, tilted a little over eyebrows no
longer raised. And now at last I knew where the gold cup was.

It stood for days upon his chimney-piece, this costly trophy
whose ancient history and final fate filled newspaper columns
even in these days of Jubilee, and for which the flower of
Scotland Yard was said to be seeking high and low. Our
constable, we learnt, had been stunned only, and, from the
moment that I brought him an evening paper with the news,
Raffles's spirits rose to a height inconsistent with his equable
temperament, and as unusual in him as the sudden impulse upon
which he had acted with such effect. The cup itself appealed to
me no more than it had done before. Exquisite it might be,
handsome it was, but so light in the hand that the mere gold of
it would scarcely have poured three figures out of melting-pot.
And what said Raffles but that he would never melt it at all!

"Taking it was an offence against the laws of the land, Bunny.
That is nothing. But destroying it would be a crime against God
and Art, and may I be spitted on the vane of St. Mary Abbot's
if I commit it!"

Talk such as this was unanswerable; indeed, the whole affair had
passed the pale of useful comment; and the one course left to a
practical person was to shrug his shoulders and enjoy the joke.
This was not a little enhanced by the newspaper reports, which
described Raffles as a handsome youth, and his unwilling
accomplice as an older man of blackguardly appearance and low
type.

"Hits us both off rather neatly, Bunny," said he. "But what
none of them do justice to is my dear cup. Look at it; only
look at it, man! Was ever anything so rich and yet so chaste?
St. Agnes must have had a pretty bad time, but it would be
almost worth it to go down to posterity in such enamel upon such
gold. And then the history of the thing. Do you realize that
it's five hundred years old and has belonged to Henry the
Eighth and to Elizabeth among others? Bunny, when you have me
cremated, you can put my ashes in yonder cup, and lay us in the
deep-delved earth together!"

"And meanwhile?"

"It is the joy of my heart, the light of my life, the delight of
mine eye."

"And suppose other eyes catch sight of it?"

"They never must; they never shall."

Raffles would have been too absurd had he not been thoroughly
alive to his own absurdity; there was nevertheless an underlying
sincerity in his appreciation of any and every form of beauty,
which all his nonsense could not conceal. And his infatuation
for the cup was, as he declared, a very pure passion, since the
circum-stances debarred him from the chief joy of the average
collector, that of showing his treasure to his friends. At last,
however, and at the height of his craze, Raffles and reason
seemed to come together again as suddenly as they had parted
company in the Room of Gold.

"Bunny," he cried, flinging his newspaper across the room, "I've
got an idea after your own heart. I know where I can place it
after all!"

"Do you mean the cup?"

"I do."

"Then I congratulate you."

"Thanks."

"Upon the recovery of your senses."

"Thanks galore. But you've been confoundedly unsympathetic
about this thing, Bunny, and I don't think I shall tell you my
scheme till I've carried it out."

"Quite time enough," said I.

"It will mean your letting me loose for an hour or two under
cloud of this very night. To-morrow's Sunday, the Jubilee's on
Tuesday, and old Theobald's coming back for it."

"It doesn't much matter whether he's back or not if you go late
enough."

"I mustn't be late. They don't keep open. No, it's no use your
asking any questions. Go out and buy me a big box of Huntley &
Palmer's biscuits; any sort you like, only they must be theirs,
and absolutely the biggest box they sell."

"My dear man!"

"No questions, Bunny; you do your part and I'll do mine."

Subtlety and success were in his face. It was enough for me,
and I had done his extraordinary bidding within a quarter of an
hour. In another minute Raffles had opened the box and tumbled
all the biscuits into the nearest chair.

"Now newspapers!"

I fetched a pile. He bid the cup of gold a ridiculous farewell,
wrapped it up in newspaper after newspaper, and finally packed
it in the empty biscuit-box.

"Now some brown paper. I don't want to be taken for the
grocer's young man."

A neat enough parcel it made, when the string had been tied and
the ends cut close; what was more difficult was to wrap up
Raffles himself in such a way that even the porter should not
recognize him if they came face to face at the corner. And the
sun was still up. But Raffles would go, and when he did I
should not have known him myself.

He may have been an hour away. It was barely dusk when he
returned, and my first question referred to our dangerous ally,
the porter. Raffles had passed him unsuspected in going, but
had managed to avoid him altogether on the return journey,
which he had completed by way of the other entrance and the
roof. I breathed again.

"And what have you done with the cup?"

"Placed it!"

"How much for? How much for?"

"Let me think. I had a couple of cabs, and the postage was a
tanner, with another twopence for registration. Yes, it cost me
exactly five-and-eight."

"IT cost YOU! But what did you GET for it, Raffles?"

"Nothing, my boy."

"Nothing!"

"Not a crimson cent."

"I am not surprised. I never thought it had a market value. I
told you so in the beginning," I said, irritably. "But what on
earth have you done with the thing?"

"Sent it to the Queen."

"You haven't!"

Rogue is a word with various meanings, and Raffles had been one
sort of rogue ever since I had known him; but now, for once, he
was the innocent variety, a great gray-haired child, running
over with merriment and mischief.

"Well, I've sent it to Sir Arthur Bigge, to present to her
Majesty, with the loyal respects of the thief, if that will do
for you," said Raffles. "I thought they might take too much
stock of me at the G.P.O. if I addressed it to the Sovereign
her-self. Yes, I drove over to St. Martin's-le-Grand with it,
and I registered the box into the bargain. Do a thing properly
if you do it at all."

"But why on earth," I groaned, "do such a thing at all?"

"My dear Bunny, we have been reigned over for sixty years by
infinitely the finest monarch the world has ever seen. The
world is taking the present opportunity of signifying the fact
for all it is worth. Every nation is laying of its best at her
royal feet; every class in the community is doing its little
level—except ours. All I have done is to remove one reproach
from our fraternity."

At this I came round, was infected with his spirit, called him
the sportsman he always was and would be, and shook his
daredevil hand in mine; but, at the same time, I still had my
qualms.

"Supposing they trace it to us?" said I.

"There's not much to catch hold of in a biscuit-box by Huntley &
Palmer," replied Raffles; "that was why I sent you for one. And
I didn't write a word upon a sheet of paper which could possibly
be traced. I simply printed two or three on a virginal
post-card—another half-penny to the bad—which might have been
bought at any post-office in the kingdom. No, old chap, the
G.P.O. was the one real danger; there was one detective I
spotted for myself; and the sight of him has left me with a
thirst. Whisky and Sullivans for two, Bunny, if you please."