E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (8 page)

"You say 'they,'" I said gently, as he stood in heavy silence,
his back still turned. "I thought Stefano had been left behind?"

Raffles was round in a flash, his face white-hot, his eyes
dancing death.

"He was in the cave!" he shouted. "I saw him—I spotted him—it
was broad twilight after those stairs—and I went for him with my
bare hands. Not fists, Bunny; not fists for a thing like that; I
meant getting my fingers into his vile little heart and tearing
it out by the roots. I was stark mad. But he had the
revolver—hers. He blazed it at arm's length, and missed. And
that steadied me. I had smashed his funny-bone against the rock
before he could blaze again; the revolver fell with a rattle,
but without going off; in an instant I had it tight, and the
little swine at my mercy at last."

"You didn't show him any?"

"Mercy? With Faustina dead at my feet? I should have deserved
none in the next world if I had shown him any in this! No, I
just stood over him, with the revolver in both hands, feeling
the chambers with my thumb; and as I stood he stabbed at me;
but I stepped back to that one, and brought him down with a
bullet in his guts.

"'And I can spare you two or three more,' I said, for my poor
girl could not have fired a shot. 'Take that one to hell with
you—and that—and that!'

"Then I started coughing and wheezing like the Count himself,
for the place was full of smoke. When it cleared my man was very
dead, and I tipped him into the sea, to defile that rather than
Faustina's cave. And then—and then—we were alone for the last
time, she and I, in our own pet haunt; and I could scarcely see
her, yet I would not strike a match, for I knew she would not
have me see her as she was. I could say good-by to her without
that. I said it; and I left her like a man, and up the first
open-air steps with my head in the air and the stars all sharp
in the sky; then suddenly they swam, and back I went like a
lunatic, to see if she was really dead, to bring her back to
life . . . Bunny, I can't tell you any more."

"Not of the Count?" I murmured at last.

"Not even of the Count," said Raffles, turning round with a
sigh. "I left him pretty sorry for himself; but what was the
good of that? I had taken blood for blood, and it was not
Corbucci who had killed Faustina. No, the plan was his, but
that was not part of the plan. They had found out about our
meetings in the cave: nothing simpler than to have me kept hard
at it overhead and to carry off Faustina by brute force in the
boat. It was their only chance, for she had said more to Stefano
than she had admitted to me, and more than I am going to repeat
about myself. No persuasion would have induced her to listen to
him again; so they tried force; and she drew Corbucci's revolver
on them, but they had taken her by surprise, and Stefano stabbed
her before she could fire."

"But how do you know all that?" I asked Raffles, for his tale was
going to pieces in the telling, and the tragic end of poor
Faustina was no ending for me.

"Oh," said he, "I had it from Corbucci at his own revolver's
point. He was waiting at his window, and I could have potted
him at my ease where he stood against the light listening hard
enough but not seeing a thing. So he asked whether it was
Stefano, and I whispered, 'Si, signore'; and then whether he had
finished Arturo, and I brought the same shot off again. He had
let me in before he knew who was finished and who was not."

"And did you finish him?"

"No; that was too good for Corbucci. But I bound and gagged him
about as tight as man was ever gagged or bound, and I left him
in his room with the shutters shut and the house locked up. The
shutters of that old place were six inches thick, and the walls
nearly six feet; that was on the Saturday night, and the Count
wasn't expected at the vineyard before the following Saturday.
Meanwhile he was supposed to be in Rome. But the dead would
doubtless be discovered next day, and I am afraid this would
lead to his own discovery with the life still in him. I believe
he figured on that himself, for he sat threatening me gamely
till the last. You never saw such a sight as he was, with his
head split in two by a ruler tied at the back of it, and his
great moustache pushed up into his bulging eyes. But I locked
him up in the dark without a qualm, and I wished and still wish
him every torment of the damned."

"And then?"

"The night was still young, and within ten miles there was the
best of ports in a storm, and hundreds of holds for the humble
stowaway to choose from. But I didn't want to go further than
Genoa, for by this time my Italian would wash, so I chose the
old Norddeutscher Lloyd, and had an excellent voyage in one of
the boats slung in-board over the bridge. That's better than any
hold, Bunny, and I did splendidly on oranges brought from the
vineyard."

"And at Genoa?"

"At Genoa I took to my wits once more, and have been living on
nothing else ever since. But there I had to begin all over
again, and at the very bottom of the ladder. I slept in the
streets. I begged. I did all manner of terrible things, rather
hoping for a bad end, but never coming to one. Then one day I
saw a white-headed old chap looking at me through a shop-window—
a window I had designs upon—and when I stared at him he stared
at me—and we wore the same rags. So I had come to that! But
one reflection makes many. I had not recognized myself; who on
earth would recognize me? London called me—and here I am.
Italy had broken my heart—and there it stays."

Flippant as a schoolboy one moment, playful even in the
bitterness of the next, and now no longer giving way to the
feeling which had spoilt the climax of his tale, Raffles needed
knowing as I alone knew him for a right appreciation of those
last words. That they were no mere words I know full well.
That, but for the tragedy of his Italian life, that life would
have sufficed him for years, if not for ever, I did and do still
believe. But I alone see him as I saw him then, the lines upon
his face, and the pain behind the lines; how they came to
disappear, and what removed them, you will never guess. It was
the one thing you would have expected to have the opposite
effect, the thing indeed that had forced his confidence, the
organ and the voice once more beneath our very windows:

"Margarita de Parete,
era a' sarta d' e' signore;
se pugneva sempe e ddete
pe penzare a Salvatore!
"Mar—ga—ri,
e perzo e Salvatore!
Mar—ga—ri,
Ma l'ommo e cacciatore!
Mar—ga—ri,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch' e fatto, e fatto, un ne parlammo cchieu!"

I simply stared at Raffles. Instead of deepening, his lines had
vanished. He looked years younger, mischievous and merry and
alert as I remembered him of old in the breathless crisis of
some madcap escapade. He was holding up his finger; he was
stealing to the window; he was peeping through the blind as
though our side street were Scotland Yard itself; he was stealing
back again, all revelry, excitement, and suspense.

"I half thought they were after me before," said he. "That was
why I made you look. I daren't take a proper look myself, but
what a jest if they were! What a jest!"

"Do you mean the police?" said I.

"The police! Bunny, do you know them and me so little that you
can look me in the face and ask such a question? My boy, I'm
dead to them—off their books—a good deal deader than being off
the hooks! Why, if I went to Scotland Yard this minute, to give
myself up, they'd chuck me out for a harmless lunatic. No, I
fear an enemy nowadays, and I go in terror of the sometime
friend, but I have the utmost confidence in the dear police."

"Then whom do you mean?"

"The Camorra!"

I repeated the word with a different intonation. Not that I had
never heard of that most powerful and sinister of secret
societies; but I failed to see on what grounds Raffles should
jump to the conclusion that these everyday organ-grinders
belonged to it.

"It was one of Corbucci's threats," said he. "If I killed him
the Camorra would certainly kill me; he kept on telling me so;
it was like his cunning not to say that he would put them on my
tracks whether or no."

"He is probably a member himself!"

"Obviously, from what he said."

"But why on earth should you think that these fellows are?" I
demanded, as that brazen voice came rasping through a second
verse.

"I don't think. It was only an idea. That thing is so
thoroughly Neapolitan, and I never heard it on a London organ
before. Then again, what should bring them back here?"

I peeped through the blind in my turn; and, to be sure, there
was the fellow with the blue chin and the white teeth watching
our windows, and ours only, as he bawled.

"And why?" cried Raffles, his eyes dancing when I told him.

"Why should they come sneaking back to us? Doesn't that look
suspicious, Bunny; doesn't that promise a lark?"

"Not to me," I said, having the smile for once. "How many
people, should you imagine, toss them five shilling for as many
minutes of their infernal row? You seem to forget that's what
you did an hour ago!"

Raffles had forgotten. His blank face confessed the fact. Then
suddenly he burst outlaughing at himself.

"Bunny," said he, "you've no imagination, and I never knew I had
so much! Of course you're right. I only wish you were not, for
there's nothing I should enjoy more than taking on another
Neapolitan or two. You see, I owe them something still! I
didn't settle in full. I owe them more than ever I shall pay
them on this side Styx!"

He had hardened even as he spoke: the lines and the years had
come again, and his eyes were flint and steel, with an honest
grief behind the glitter.

As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, the pick of our
exploits, from a frankly criminal point of view, are of least
use for the comparatively pure purposes of these papers. They
might be appreciated in a trade journal (if only that want could
be supplied), by skilled manipulators of the jemmy and the large
light bunch; but, as records of unbroken yet insignificant
success, they would be found at once too trivial and too
technical, if not sordid and unprofitable into the bargain. The
latter epithets, and worse, have indeed already been applied, if
not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine upon Raffles,
by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need not
say how heartily I disagree with that truly pious opinion. So
far from admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the
liveliest warning that I am giving to the world. Raffles was a
genius, and he could not make it pay! Raffles had invention,
resource, incomparable audacity, and a nerve in ten thousand.
He was both strategian and tactician, and we all now know the
difference between the two. Yet for months he had been hiding
like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his altered face by
night or day without risk, unless another risk were courted by
three inches of conspicuous crepe. Then thus far our rewards
had oftener than not been no reward at all. Altogether it was
a very different story from the old festive, unsuspected, club
and cricket days, with their noctes ambrosianae at the Albany.

And now, in addition to the eternal peril of recognition, there
was yet another menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no
more of our Neapolitan organ-grinders, though I did often think
of the moving page that they had torn for me out of my friend's
strange life in Italy. Raffles never alluded to the subject
again, and for my part I had entirely forgotten his wild ideas
connecting the organ-grinders with the Camorra, and imagining
them upon his own tracks. I heard no more of it, and thought as
little, as I say. Then one night in the autumn—I shrink from
shocking the susceptible for nothing—but there was a certain
house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffles would
pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in the
windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking
about it. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper
still up Silver Street, a little tacking west and south, a
plunge across High Street, and presently we were home.

"Pyjamas first," said Raffles, with as much authority as though
it mattered. It was a warm night, however, though September,
and I did not mind until I came in clad as he commanded to find
the autocrat himself still booted and capped. He was peeping
through the blind, and the gas was still turned down. But he
said that I could turn it up, as he helped himself to a
cigarette and nothing with it.

"May I mix you one?" said I.

"No, thanks."

"What's the trouble?"

"We were followed."

"Never!"

"You never saw it."

"But YOU never looked round."

"I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny."

I helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have
been the case a minute before.

"So that was why—"

"That was why," said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile, and
I put down my glass untouched.

"They were following us then!"

"All up Palace Gardens."

"I thought you wound about coming back over the hill."

"Nevertheless, one of them's in the street below at this moment."

No, he was not fooling me. He was very grim. And he had not
taken off a thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while.

"Plain clothes?" I sighed, following the sartorial train of
thought, even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person
once already for a little aeon. Next time they would giveme
double. The skilly was in my stomach when I saw Raffles's face.

"Who said it was the police, Bunny?" said he. "It's the
Italians. They're only after me; they won't hurt a hair of YOUR
head, let alone cropping it! Have a drink, and don't mind me.
I shall score them off before I'm done."