E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (14 page)

"Lucky we weren't staying at Nab's," said Raffles, as he lit a
Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail at its report of the robbery.
"There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird
he always was and will be."

"What was that?"

"The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the
morning, and yet we let them assume that we came out that way. Nab
would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been
nabbed ourselves."

It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had
taken, and, of course, he had resolutely eschewed any and every
form of paper money. He posted his own first contribution of
twenty-five pounds to the Founder's Fund immediately on our return
to town, before rushing off to more first-class cricket, and I
gathered that the rest would follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe.
By an odd coincidence, however, a mysterious but magnificent
donation of a hundred guineas was almost simultaneously received in
notes by the treasurer of the Founder's Fund, from one who simply
signed himself "Old Boy." The treasurer happened to be our late
host, the new man at our old house, and he wrote to congratulate
Raffles on what he was pleased to consider a direct result of the
latter's speech. I did not see the letter that Raffles wrote in
reply, but in due course I heard the name of the mysterious
contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper Nasmyth himself.
I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask old
Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the Varsity match, and
if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen, but I
had the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles
when we encountered our shabby friend in front of the pavilion.

"My dear fellow," cried Raffles, "I hear it was you who gave that
hundred guineas by stealth to the very movement you denounced.
Don't deny it, and don't blush to find it fame. Listen to me.
There was a great lot in what you said; but it's the kind of thing
we ought all. to back, whether we strictly approve of it in our
hearts or not."

"Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is - "

"I know what you're going to say. Don't say it. There's not one
in a thousand who would do as you've done, and not one in a million
who would do it anonymously."

"But what makes you think I did it, Raffles?"

"Everybody is saying so. You will find it all. over the place when
you get back. You will find yourself the most popular man down
there, Nasmyth!"

I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward,
ungainly, cantankerous man: all. his angles seemed to have been
smoothed away: there was something quite human in the flushed,
undecided, wistful face.

"I never was popular in my life," he said. "I don't want to buy
my popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles - "

"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing the bell. But you
shouldn't have been angry with me for saying you were a generous
good chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all. the time. Good-by, old
fellow!"

But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an
end. There was a sudden new light in his face.

"Was I?" he cried. "Then I'll make it two hundred, and damn the
odds!"

Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw
nobody, would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to
the cricket for the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he
eventually invited me to come for a stroll on the practice ground,
where, however, we found two chairs aloof from the fascinating
throng.

"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know," he began. "But I have
been sorry since the interval. I've been sorry for poor old Nipper
Nasmyth. Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for
the first time in his life?"

"I did; but you had nothing to do with that, my dear man."

Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met. "I had everything
to do with it. I tried to make him tell the meanest lie. I made
sure he would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at the
last moment, he saw how to hedge things with his conscience. And
his second hundred will be a real gift."

"You mean under his own name - "

"And with his own free-will. My good Bunny, is it possible you
don't know what I did with the hundred we drew from that bank!"

"I knew what you were going to do with it," said I. "I didn't know
you had actually got further than the twenty-five you told me you
were sending as your own contribution."

Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.

"And you actually thought that came out of his money?"

"Naturally."

"In my name?"

"I thought so."

Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some
more at the great white numbers over the grand-stand.

"We may as well have another look at the cricket," said he. "It's
difficult to see the board from here, but I believe there's another
man out."

There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I
took a surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some
retirement, with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical
brother, in a mellow hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The
bridegroom was a prosperous son of the same suburban soil which
had nourished both families for generations. The wedding presents
were so numerous as to fill several rooms at the pretty retreat
upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value calling for a special
transaction with the Burglary Insurance Company in Cheapside. I
cannot say how Raffles obtained all. this information. I only know
that it proved correct in each particular. I was not indeed deeply
interested before the event, since Raffles assured me that it was
"a one-man job," and naturally intended to be the one man himself.
It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were inverted
by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English team
in the Second Test Match.

In a flash I saw the chance of my criminal career. It was some
years since Raffles had served his country in these encounters; he
had never thought to be called upon again, and his gratification
was only less than his embarrassment. The match was at Old
Trafford, on the third Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in July; the
other affair had been all. arranged for the Thursday night, the night
of the wedding at East Molesey. It was for Raffles to choose
between the two excitements, and for once I helped him to make up
his mind. I duly pointed out to him that in Surrey, at all. events,
I was quite capable of taking his place. Nay, more, I insisted at
once on my prescriptive right and on his patriotic obligation in
the matter. In the country's name and in my own, I implored him
to give it and me a chance; and for once, as I say, my arguments
prevailed. Raffles sent his telegram - it was the day before the
match. We then rushed down to Esher, and over every inch of the
ground by that characteristically circuitous route which he
enjoined on me for the next night. And at six in the evening I
was receiving the last of my many instructions through a window of
the restaurant car.

"Only promise me not to take a revolver," said Raffles in a whisper.
"Here are my keys; there's an old life-preserver somewhere in the
bureau; take that, if you like - though what you take I rather
fear you are the chap to use!"

"Then the rope be round my own neck!" I whispered back. "Whatever
else I may do, Raffles, I shan't give you away; and you'll find I
do better than you think, and am worth trusting with a little more
to do, or I'll know the reason why!"

And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of Euston with raised
eyebrows, and I turned grimly on my heel. I saw his fears for me;
and nothing could have made me more fearless for myself. Raffles
had been wrong about me all. these years; now was my chance to set
him right. It was galling to feel that he had no confidence in my
coolness or my nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch.
I had been loyal to him through rough and smooth. In many an ugly
corner I had stood as firm as Raffles himself. I was his right
hand, and yet he never hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time,
at all. events, I should be neither one nor the other; this time I
was the understudy playing lead at last; and I wish I could think
that Raffles ever realized with what gusto I threw myself into his
part.

Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night,
and first down the stairs into the open air. The night was close
and cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban
builder has marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I
know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of
leaves at midsummer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane
or cranny by the way. Naturally, it was in this blind reach that
I fancied I was being followed. I stopped in my stride; so did the
steps I made sure I had heard not far behind; and when I went on,
they followed suit. I dried my forehead as I walked, but soon
brought myself to repeat the experiment when an exact repetition of
the result went to convince me that it had been my own echo all. the
time. And since I lost it on getting quit of the avenue, and coming
out upon the straight and open road, I was not long in recovering
from my scare. But now I could see my way, and found the rest of
it without mishap, though not without another semblance of adventure.
Over the bridge across the Mole, when about to turn to the left, I
marched straight upon a policeman in rubber soles. I had to call
him "officer" as I passed, and to pass my turning by a couple of
hundred yards, before venturing back another way.

At last I had crept through a garden gate, and round by black
windows to a black lawn drenched with dew. It had been a heating
walk, and I was glad to blunder on a garden seat, most considerately
placed under a cedar which added its own darkness to that of the
night. Here I rested a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep
them dry, untying my shoes to save time, and generally facing the
task before me with a coolness which I strove to make worthy of my
absent chief. But mine was a self-conscious quality, as far removed
from the original as any other deliberate imitation of genius. I
actually struck a match on my trousers, and lit one of the shorter
Sullivans. Raffles himself would not have done such a thing at such
a moment. But I wished to tell him that I had done it; and in truth
I was not more than pleasurably afraid; I had rather that impersonal
curiosity as to the issue which has been the saving of me in still
more precarious situations. I even grew impatient for the fray, and
could not after all sit still as long as I had intended. So it
happened that I was finishing my cigarette on the edge of the wet
lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before stepping across the
gravel to the conservatory door, when a most singular sound arrested
me in the act. It was a muffled gasping somewhere overhead. I stood
like stone; and my listening attitude must have been visible against
the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored voice hailed me sternly
from a window.

"Who on earth are you?" it wheezed.

"A detective officer," I replied, "sent down by the Burglary
Insurance Company."

Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all. been
prepared for me by Raffles, in case of need. I was merely repeating
a lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window
there was pause enough, filled only by the uncanny wheezing of the
man I could not see.

"I don't see why they should have sent you down," he said at length.
"We are being quite well looked after by the local police; they're
giving us a special call every hour."

"I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on my own account. "I met
one of them at the corner just now, and we passed the time of night."

My heart was knocking me to bits. I had started for myself at last.

"Did you get my name from him?" pursued my questioner, in a
suspicious wheeze.

"No; they gave me that before I started," I replied. "But I'm sorry
you saw me, sir; it's a mere matter of routine, and not intended to
annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all. night,
but I own it wasn't necessary to trespass as I've done. I'll take
myself off the actual premises, if you prefer it."

This again was all. my own; and it met with a success that might have
given me confidence.

"Not a bit of it," replied young Medlicott, with a grim geniality.
"I've just woke up with the devil of an attack of asthma, and may
have to sit up in my chair till morning. You'd better come up and
see me through, and kill two birds while you're about it. Stay
where you are, and I'll come down and let you in."

Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had not foreseen! Outside,
in the dark, my audacious part was not hard to play; but to carry
the improvisation in-doors was to double at once the difficulty and
the risk. It was true that I had purposely come down in a true
detective's overcoat and bowler; but my personal appearance was
hardly of the detective type. On the other hand as the soi-disant
guardian of the gifts one might only excite suspicion by refusing to
enter the house where they were. Nor could I forget that it was my
purpose to effect such entry first or last. That was the casting
consideration. I decided to take my dilemma by the horns.

There had been a scraping of matches in the room over the
conservatory; the open window had shown for a moment, like an
empty picture-frame, a gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and
in the next half-minute I remembered to tie my shoes. But the light
was slow to reappear through the leaded glasses of an outer door
farther along the path. And when the door opened, it was a figure
of woe that stood within and held an unsteady candle between our
faces.