E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (10 page)

"I beg your lordship's pardon, but I think your lordship must have
forgotten."

The voice came in rude gasps, but words of reproach could scarcely
have achieved a finer delicacy.

"Forgotten, Leggett! Forgotten what, may I ask?"

"Locking your lordship's dressing-room door behind your lordship,
my lord," stuttered the unfortunate Leggett, in the short spurts of
a winded man, a few stertorous syllables at a time. "Been up myself,
my lord. Bedroom door - dressing-room door - both locked inside!"

But by this time the noble master was in worse case than the man.
His fine forehead was a tangle of livid cords; his baggy jowl filled
out like a balloon. In another second he had abandoned his place
as our host and fled the room; and in yet another we had forgotten
ours as his guests and rushed headlong at his heels.

Raffles was as excited as any of us now: he outstripped us all. The
cherubic little lawyer and I had a fine race for the last place but
one, which I secured, while the panting butler and his satellites
brought up a respectful rear. It was our unconventional author,
however, who was the first to volunteer his assistance and advice.

"No use pushing, Thornaby!" cried he. "If it's been done with a
wedge and gimlet, you may smash the door, but you'll never force it.
Is there a ladder in the place?"

"There's a rope-ladder somewhere, in case of fire, I believe," said
my lord vaguely, as he rolled a critical eye over our faces. "Where
is it kept, Leggett?"

"'William will fetch it, my lord."

And a pair of noble calves went flashing to the upper regions.

"What's the good of bringing it down," cried Parrington, who had
thrown back to the wilds in his excitement. "Let him hang it out
of the window above your own, and let me climb down and do the
rest! I'll undertake to have one or other of these doors open in
two twos!"

The fastened doors were at right angles on the landing which we
filled between us. Lord Thornaby smiled grimly on the rest of us,
when he had nodded and dismissed the author like a hound from the
leash.

"It's a good thing we know something about our friend Parrington,"
said my lord. "He takes more kindly to all. this than I do, I can
tell you."

"It's grist to his mill," said Raffles charitably.

"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in his next book."

"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first," remarked Kingsmill, Q.C.

"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man of action too!"

It was Raffles who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite
for him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my
private ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude
of Parrington, without being seriously suspicious in itself, was
admirably calculated to put a previously suspected person in a
grateful shade. This literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out
of the limelight, and gratitude for the service was what I had
detected in Raffles's voice. No need to say how grateful I felt
myself. But my gratitude was shot with flashes of unwonted insight.
Parrington was one of those who suspected Raffles, or, at all.
events, one who was in the secret of those suspicions. What if he
had traded on the suspect's presence in the house? What if he were
a deep villain himself, and the villain of this particular piece?
I had made up my mind about him, and that in a tithe of the time
I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my man in the
dressing-room. He greeted us with an impudent shout; in a few
moments the door was open, and there stood Parrington, flushed and
dishevelled, with a gimlet in one hand and a wedge in the other.

Within was a scene of eloquent disorder. Drawers had been pulled
out, and now stood on end, their contents heaped upon the carpet.
Wardrobe doors stood open; empty stud-cases strewed the floor; a
clock, tied up in a towel, had been tossed into a chair at the last
moment. But a long tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in one
corner. And one had only to see Lord Thornaby's wry face behind
the lid to guess that it was bent over a somewhat empty tin trunk.

"What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a twitch of humor at the
corners of his canine mouth. "My peer's robes, with coronet
complete!"

We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I thought our scribe
would put in his word. But even he either feigned or felt a proper
awe.

"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord
Thornaby. "But where would you gentlemen stable your white
elephants? And these were elephants as white as snow; by Jove,
I'll job them for the future!"

And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined
the minute before; but the reason dawned on me a little later, when
we all. trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in possession of the
theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led
the way. His step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic; his
very looks had improved. And I divined the load that had been lifted
from the hospitable heart of our host.

"I only wish," said he, "that this brought us any nearer to the
identity of the gentleman we were discussing at dinner, for, of
course, we owe it to all. our instincts to assume that it was he."

"I wonder!" said old Raffles, with a foolhardy glance at me.

"But I'm sure of it, my dear sir," cried my lord. "The audacity is
his and his alone. I look no further than the fact of his honoring
me on the one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain my
brother Criminologists. That's no coincidence, sir, but a
deliberate irony, which would have occurred to no other criminal
mind in England."

"You may be right," Raffles had the sense to say this time, though
I flattered myself it was my face that made him.

"What is still more certain," resumed our host, "is that no other
criminal in the world would have crowned so delicious a conception
with so perfect an achievement. I feel sure the inspector will
agree with us."

The policeman in command had knocked and been admitted to the
library as Lord Thornaby spoke.

"I didn't hear what you said, my lord."

"Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing outrage can be no other
than the swell mobsman who relieved Lady Melrose of her necklace and
poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."

"I believe your lordship has hit the nail on the head."

"The man who took the Thimblely diamonds and returned them to Lord
Thimblely, you know."

"Perhaps he'll treat your lordship the same."

"Not he! I don't mean to cry over my spilt milk. I only wish the
fellow joy of all. he had time to take. Anything fresh up-stain by
the way?"

"Yes, my lord: the robbery took place between a quarter past eight
and the half-hour."

"How on earth do you know?"

"The clock that was tied up in the towel had stopped at twenty past."

"Have you interviewed my man?"

"I have, my lord. He was in your lordship's room until close on
the quarter, and all. was as it should be when he left it."

"Then do you suppose the burglar was in hiding in the house?"

"It's impossible to say, my lord. He's not in the house now, for
he could only be in your lordship's bedroom or dressing-room, and
we have searched every inch of both."

Lord Thornaby turned to us when the inspector had retreated,
caressing his peaked cap.

"I told him to clear up these points first," he explained, jerking
his head toward the door. "I had reason to think my man had been
neglecting his duties up there. I am glad to find myself mistaken."

I ought to have been no less glad to see my own mistake. My
suspicions of our officious author were thus proved to have been as
wild as himself. I owed the man no grudge, and yet in my human
heart I felt vaguely disappointed. My theory had gained color from
his behavior ever since he had admitted us to the dressing-room; it
had changed all. at once from the familiar to the morose; and only
now was I just enough to remember that Lord Thornaby, having
tolerated those familiarities as long as they were connected with
useful service, had administered a relentless snub the moment that
service had been well and truly performed.

But if Parrington was exonerated in my mind, so also was Raffles
reinstated in the regard of those who had entertained a far graver
and more dangerous hypothesis. It was a miracle of good luck, a
coincidence among coincidences, which had white-washed him in their
sight at the very moment when they were straining the expert eye to
sift him through and through. But the miracle had been performed,
and its effect was visible in every face and audible in every voice.
I except Ernest, who could never have been in the secret; moreover,
that gay Criminologist had been palpably shaken by his first little
experience of crime. But the other three vied among themselves to
do honor where they had done injustice. I heard Kingsmill, Q.C.,
telling Raffles the best time to catch him at chambers, and
promising a seat in court for any trial he might ever like to hear.
Parrington spoke of a presentation set of his books, and in doing
homage to Raffles made his peace with our host. As for Lord
Thornaby, I did overhear the name of the Athenaeum Club, a reference
to his friends on the committee, and a whisper (as I thought) of
Rule II.

The police were still in possession when we went our several ways,
and it was all. that I could do to drag Raffles up to my rooms,
though, as I have said, they were just round the corner. He
consented at last as a lesser evil than talking of the burglary in
the street; and in my rooms I told him of his late danger and my
own dilemma, of the few words I had overheard in the beginning, of
the thin ice on which he had cut fancy figures without a crack. It
was all. very well for him. He had never realized his peril. But
let him think of me - listening, watching, yet unable to lift a
finger - unable to say one warning word.

Raffles suffered me to finish, but a weary sigh followed the last
symmetrical whiff of a Sullivan which he flung into my fire before
he spoke.

"No, I won't have another, thank you. I'm going to talk to you,
Bunny. Do you really suppose I didn't see through these wiseacres
from the first?"

I flatly refused to believe he had done so before that evening. Why
had he never mentioned his idea to me? It had been quite the other
way, as I indignantly reminded Raffles. Did he mean me to believe
he was the man to thrust his head into the lion's mouth for fun?
And what point would there be in dragging me there to see the fun?

"I might have wanted you, Bunny. I very nearly did."

"For my face?"

"It has been my fortune before to-night, Bunny. It has also given
me more confidence than you are likely to believe at this time of
day. You stimulate me more than you think."

"Your gallery and your prompter's box in one?"

"Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter with me either, my
dear fellow; it was touch-and-go at the time. I might have called
on you at any moment, and it was something to know I should not
have called in vain."

"But what to do, Raffles?"

"Fight our way out and bolt!" he answered, with a mouth that meant
it, and a fine gay glitter of the eyes.

I shot out of my chair.

"You don't mean to tell me you had a hand in the job?"

"I had the only hand in it, my dear Bunny."

"Nonsense! You were sitting at table at the time. No, but you may
have taken some other fellow into the show. I always thought you
would!"

"One's quite enough, Bunny," said Raffles dryly; he leaned back in
his chair and took out another cigarette. And I accepted of yet
another from his case; for it was no use losing one's temper with
Raffles; and his incredible statement was not, after all., to be
ignored.

"Of course," I went on, "if you really had brought off this thing
on your own, I should be the last to criticise your means of
reaching such an end. You have not only scored off a far superior
force, which had laid itself out to score off you, but you have put
them in the wrong about you, and they'll eat out of your hand for
the rest of their days. But don't ask me to believe that you've
done all. this alone! By George," I cried, in a sudden wave of
enthusiasm, "I don't care how you've done it or who has helped you.
It's the biggest thing you ever did in your life!"

And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more radiant, or better
pleased with the world and himself, or nearer that elation which he
usually left to me.

"Then you shall hear all. about it, Bunny, if you'll do what I ask
you."

"Ask away, old chap, and the thing's done."

"Switch off the electric lights."

"All. of them?"

"I think so."

"There, then."

"Now go to the back window and up with the blind."

"Well?"?"

"I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this.
It's the only window left alight in the house!"

His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and
very much aslant through a long lane of mews to a little square
light like a yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window
and leaned out before I saw it for myself.

"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby House?"

I was not familiar with the view from my back windows.

"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own
race-glass. It has been the most useful thing of all."

But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from
my eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these
last few weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight
o'clock in the evening, and waited at this very window, with these
very glasses at his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The
one lighted window pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the
dark circle of my vision. I could not see into the actual room,
but the shadows of those within were quite distinct on the lowered
blind. I even thought a black thread still dangled against the
square of light. It was, it must be, the window to which the
intrepid Parrington had descended from the one above.