E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (16 page)

I scarcely looked up until the good fellow had turned his back upon
the final tableau of watchful officer and prostrate prisoner and
gone out wheezing into the night. But I was at the door to hear
the last of him down the path and round the corner of the house.
And when I rushed back into the room, there was Raffles sitting
cross-legged on the floor, and slowly shaking his broken head as he
stanched the blood.

"Et tu, Bunny!" he groaned. "Mine own familiar friend!"

"Then you weren't even stunned!" I exclaimed. "Thank God for that!"

"Of course I was stunned," he murmured, "and no thanks to you that
I wasn't brained. Not to know me in the kit you've seen scores of
times! You never looked at me, Bunny; you didn't give me time to
open my mouth. I was going to let you run me in so prettily! We'd
have walked off arm-in-arm; now it's as tight a place as ever we
were in, though you did get rid of old blow-pipes rather nicely.
But we shall have the devil's own run for our money!"

Raffles had picked himself up between his mutterings, and I had
followed him to the door into the garden, where he stood busy with
the key in the dark, having blown out his lantern and handed it to
me. But though I followed Raffles, as my nature must, I was far
too embittered to answer him again. And so it was for some minutes
that might furnish forth a thrilling page, but not a novel one to
those who know their Raffles and put up with me. Suffice it that
we left a locked door behind us, and the key on the garden wall,
which was the first of half a dozen that we scaled before dropping
into a lane that led to a foot-bridge higher up the backwater. And
when we paused upon the foot-bridge, the houses along the bank were
still in peace and darkness.

Knowing my Raffles as I did, I was not surprised when he dived
under one end of this bridge, and came up with his Inverness cape
and opera hat, which he had hidden there on his way to the house.
The thick socks were peeled from his patent-leathers, the ragged
trousers stripped from an evening pair, bloodstains and Newgate
fringe removed at the water's edge, and the whole sepulchre whited
in less time than the thing takes to tell. Nor was that enough for
Raffles, but he must alter me as well, by wearing my overcoat under
his cape, and putting his Zingari scarf about my neck.

"And now," said he, "you may be glad to hear there's a 3:12 from
Surbiton, which we could catch on all. fours. If you like we'll go
separately, but I don't think there's the slightest danger now,
and I begin to wonder what's happening to old blow-pipes."

So, indeed, did I, and with no small concern, until I read of his
adventures (and our own) in the newspapers. It seemed that he had
made a gallant spurt into the road, and there paid the penalty of
his rashness by a sudden incapacity to move another inch. It had
eventually taken him twenty minutes to creep back to locked doors,
and another ten to ring up the inmates. His description of my
personal appearance, as reported in the papers, is the only thing
that reconciles me to the thought of his sufferings during that
half-hour.

But at the time I had other thoughts, and they lay too deep for
idle words, for to me also it was a bitter hour. I had not only
failed in my self-sought task; I had nearly killed my comrade into
the bargain. I had meant well by friend and foe in turn, and I had
ended in doing execrably by both. It was not all. my fault, but I
knew how much my weakness had contributed to the sum. And I must
walk with the man whose fault it was, who had travelled two hundred
miles to obtain this last proof of my weakness, to bring it home
to me, and to make our intimacy intolerable from that hour. I must
walk with him to Surbiton, but I need not talk; all. through Thames
Ditton I had ignored his sallies; nor yet when he ran his arm
through mine, on the river front, when we were nearly there, would
I break the seal my pride had set upon my lips.

"Come, Bunny," he said at last, "I have been the one to suffer most,
when all.'s said and done, and I'll be the first to say that I
deserved it. You've broken my head; my hair's all. glued up in my
gore; and what yarn I'm to put up at Manchester, or how I shall take
the field at all., I really don't know. Yet I don't blame you, Bunny,
and I do blame myself. Isn't it rather hard luck if I am to go
unforgiven into the bargain? I admit that I made a mistake; but,
my dear fellow, I made it entirely for your sake."

"For my sake!" I echoed bitterly.

Raffles was more generous; he ignored my tone.

"I was miserable about you - frankly - miserable!" he went on. "I
couldn't get it out of my head that somehow you would be laid by
the heels. It was not your pluck that I distrusted, my dear fellow,
but it was your very pluck that made me tremble for you. I couldn't
get you out of my head. I went in when runs were wanted, but I give
you my word that I was more anxious about you; and no doubt that's
why I helped to put on some runs. Didn't you see it in the paper,
Bunny? It's the innings of my life, so far."

"Yes," I said, "I saw that you were in at close of play. But I
don't believe it was you - I believe you have a double who plays your
cricket for you!"

And at the moment that seemed less incredible than the fact.

"I'm afraid you didn't read your paper very carefully," said Raffles,
with the first trace of pique in his tone. "It was rain that closed
play before five o'clock. I hear it was a sultry day in town, but
at Manchester we got the storm, and the ground was under water in
ten minutes. I never saw such a thing in my life. There was
absolutely not the ghost of a chance of another ball being bowled.
But I had changed before I thought of doing what I did. It was only
when I was on my way back to the hotel, by myself, because I
couldn't talk to a soul for thinking of you, that on the spur of
the moment I made the man take me to the station instead, and was
under way in the restaurant car before I had time to think twice
about it. I am not sure that of all. the mad deeds I have ever done,
this was not the maddest of the lot!"

"It was the finest," I said in a low voice; for now I marvelled
more at the impulse which had prompted his feat, and at the
circumstances surrounding it, than even at the feat itself.

"Heaven knows," he went on, "what they are saying and doing in
Manchester! But what can they say? 'What business is it of
theirs? I was there when play stopped, and I shall be there when
it starts again. We shall be at Waterloo just after half-past
three, and that's going to give me an hour at the Albany on my
way to Euston, and another hour at Old Trafford before play begins.
What's the matter with that? I don't suppose I shall notch any
more, but all. the better if I don't; if we have a hot sun after
the storm, the sooner they get in the better; and may I have
a bowl at them while the ground bites!"

"I'll come up with you," I said, "and see you at it."

"My dear fellow," replied Raffles, "that was my whole feeling about
you. I wanted to 'see you at it' - that was absolutely all. I
wanted to be near enough to lend a hand if you got tied up, as the
best of us will at times. I knew the ground better than you, and
I simply couldn't keep away from it. But I didn't mean you to know
that I was there; if everything had gone as I hoped it might, I
should have sneaked back to town without ever letting you know I
had been up. You should never have dreamt that I had been at your
elbow; you would have believed in yourself, and in my belief in you,
and the rest would have been silence till the grave. So I dodged
you at Waterloo, and I tried not to let you know that I was
following you from Esher station. But you suspected somebody was;
you stopped to listen more than once; after the second time I
dropped behind, but gained on you by taking the short cut by Imber
Court and over the foot-bridge where I left my coat and hat. I was
actually in the garden before you were. I saw you smoke your
Sullivan, and I was rather proud of you for it, though you must
never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word
between you and the poor devil upstairs. And up to a certain point,
Bunny, I really thought you played the scene to perfection."

The station lights were twinkling ahead of us in the fading velvet
of the summer's night. I let them increase and multiply before
I spoke.

"And where," I asked, "did you think I first went wrong?"

"In going in-doors at all.," said Raffles. "If I had done that, I
should have done exactly what you did from that point on. You
couldn't help yourself, with that poor brute in that state. And
I admired you immensely, Bunny, if that's any comfort to you now."

Comfort! It was wine in every vein, for I knew that Raffles meant
what he said, and with his eyes I soon saw myself in braver colors.
I ceased to blush for the vacillations of the night, since he
condoned them. I could even see that I had behaved with a measure
of decency, in a truly trying situation, now that Raffles seemed to
think so. He had changed my whole view of his proceedings and my
own, in every incident of the night but one. There was one thing,
however, which he might forgive me, but which I felt that I could
forgive neither Raffles nor myself. And that was the contused
scalp wound over which I shuddered in the train.

"And to think that I did that," I groaned, "and that you laid
yourself open to it, and that we have neither of us got another
thing to show for our night's work! That poor chap said it was as
bad a night as he had ever had in his life; but I call it the very
worst that you and I ever had in ours."

Raffles was smiling under the double lamps of the first-class
compartment that we had to ourselves.

"I wouldn't say that, Bunny. We have done worse."

"Do you mean to tell me that you did anything at all.?"

"My dear Bunny," replied Raffles, "you should remember how long I
had been maturing felonious little plan, what a blow it was to me
to have to turn it over to you, and how far I had travelled to
see that you did it and yourself as well as might be. You know
what I did see, and how well I understood. I tell you again that
I should have done the same thing myself, in your place. But I
was not in your place, Bunny. My hands were not tied like yours.
Unfortunately, most of the jewels have gone on the honeymoon with
the happy pair; but these emerald links are all. right, and I don't
know what the bride was doing to leave this diamond comb behind.
Here, too, is the old silver skewer I've been wanting for years
- they make the most charming paper-knives in the world - and
this gold cigarette-case will just do for your smaller Sullivans."

Nor were these the only pretty things that Raffles set out in
twinkling array upon the opposite cushions. But I do not pretend
that this was one of our heavy hauls, or deny that its chief
interest still resides in the score of the Second Test Match of
that Australian tour.

I was just putting out my light when the telephone rang a furious
tocsin in the next room. I flounced out of bed more asleep than
awake; in another minute I should have been past ringing up. It
was one o'clock in the morning, and I had been dining with Swigger
Morrison at his club.

"Hulloa!"

"That you, Bunny?"

"Yes - are you Raffles?"

"What's left of me! Bunny, I want you - quick."

And even over the wire his voice was faint with anxiety and
apprehension.

"What on earth has happened?"

"Don't ask! You never know - "

"I'll come at once. Are you there, Raffles?"

"What's that?"

"Are you there, man?"

"Ye - e - es."

"At the Albany?"

"No, no; at Maguire's."

"You never said so. And where's Maguire?"

"In Half-moon Street."

"I know that. Is he there now?"

"No - not come in yet - and I'm caught."

"Caught!"

"In that trap he bragged about. It serves me right. I didn't
believe in it. But I'm caught at last ... caught ... at last!"

"When he told us he set it every night! Oh, Raffles, what sort of
a trap is it? What shall I do? What shall I bring?"

But his voice had grown fainter and wearier with every answer, and
now there was no answer at all. Again and again I asked Raffles if
he was there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low
metallic hum of the live wire between his ear and mine. And then,
as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver
still pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the
dull and dreadful crash of a human body falling in a heap.

In utter panic I rushed back into my bedroom, and flung myself into
the crumpled shirt and evening clothes that lay where I had cast
them off. But I knew no more what I was doing than what to do next
I afterward found that I had taken out a fresh tie, and tied it
rather better than usual; but I can remember thinking of nothing but
Raffles in some diabolical man-trap, and of a grinning monster
stealing in to strike him senseless with one murderous blow. I must
have looked in the glass to array myself as I did; but the mind's
eye was the seeing eye, and it was filled with this frightful
vision of the notorious pugilist known to fame and infamy as Barney
Maguire.

It was only the week before that Raffles and I had been introduced
to him at the Imperial Boxing Club. Heavy-weight champion of the
United States, the fellow was still drunk with his sanguinary
triumphs on that side, and clamoring for fresh conquests on ours.
But his reputation had crossed the Atlantic before Maguire himself;
the grandiose hotels had closed their doors to him; and he had
already taken and sumptuously furnished the house in Half-moon
Street which does not re-let to this day. Raffles had made friends
with the magnificent brute, while I took timid stock of his diamond
studs, his jewelled watch-chain, his eighteen-carat bangle, and his
six-inch lower jaw. I had shuddered to see Raffles admiring the
gewgaws in his turn, in his own brazen fashion, with that air of
the cool connoisseur which had its double meaning for me. I for my
part would as lief have looked a tiger in the teeth. And when we
finally went home with Maguire to see his other trophies, it seemed
to me like entering the tiger's lair. But an astounding lair it
proved, fitted throughout by one eminent firm, and ringing to the
rafters with the last word on fantastic furniture.