E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (17 page)

The trophies were a still greater surprise. They opened my eyes
to the rosier aspect of the noble art, as presently practised on
the right side of the Atlantic. Among other offerings, we were
permitted to handle the jewelled belt presented to the pugilist by
the State of Nevada, a gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento,
and a model of himself in solid silver from the Fisticuff Club in
New York. I still remember waiting with bated breath for Raffles
to ask Maguire if he were not afraid of burglars, and Maguire
replying that he had a trap to catch the cleverest cracksman alive,
but flatly refusing to tell us what it was. I could not at the
moment conceive a more terrible trap than the heavy-weight himself
behind a curtain. Yet it was easy to see that Raffles had accepted
the braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did he deny it later when
I taxed him with his mad resolve; he merely refused to allow me to
implicate myself in its execution. Well, there was a spice of
savage satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had been obliged to
turn to me in the end. And, but for the dreadful thud which I had
heard over the telephone, I might have extracted some genuine
comfort from the unerring sagacity with which he had chosen his
night.

Within the last twenty-four hours Barney Maguire had fought his
first great battle on British soil. Obviously, he would no longer
be the man that he had been in the strict training before the fight;
never, as I gathered, was such a ruffian more off his guard, or
less capable of protecting himself and his possessions, than in
these first hours of relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which
Raffles had waited with characteristic foresight. Nor was the
terrible Barney likely to be more abstemious for signal punishment
sustained in a far from bloodless victory. Then what could be the
meaning of that sickening and most suggestive thud? Could it be
the champion himself who had received the coup de grace in his cups?
Raffles was the very man to administer it - but he had not talked
like that man through the telephone.

And yet - and yet - what else could have happened? I must have
asked myself the question between each and all. of the above
reflections, made partly as I dressed and partly in the hansom on
the way to Half-moon Street. It was as yet the only question in my
mind. You must know what your emergency is before you can decide
how to cope with it; and to this day I sometimes tremble to think
of the rashly direct method by which I set about obtaining the
requisite information. I drove every yard of the way to the
pugilist's very door. You will remember that I had been dining
with Swigger Morrison at his club.

Yet at the last I had a rough idea of what I meant to say when the
door was opened. It seemed almost probable that the tragic end of
our talk over the telephone had been caused by the sudden arrival
and as sudden violence of Barney Maguire. In that case I was
resolved to tell him that Raffles and I had made a bet about his
burglar trap, and that I had come to see who had won. I might or
might not confess that Raffles had rung me out of bed to this end.
If, however, I was wrong about Maguire, and he had not come home
at all., then my action would depend upon the menial who answered
my reckless ring. But it should result in the rescue of Raffles
by hook or crook.

I had the more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang
in vain. The hall, indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped
through the letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from the
back room. That was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies
and set his trap. All. was quiet in the house: could they have
haled the intruder to Vine Street in the short twenty minutes which
it had taken me to dress and to drive to the spot? That was an
awful thought; but even as I hoped against hope, and rang once more,
speculation and suspense were cut short in the last fashion to be
foreseen.

A brougham was coming sedately down the street from Piccadilly; to
my horror, it stopped behind me as I peered once more through the
letter-box, and out tumbled the dishevelled prizefighter and two
companions. I was nicely caught in my turn. There was a lamp-post
right opposite the door, and I can still see the three of them
regarding me in its light. The pugilist had been at least a fine
figure of a bully and a braggart when I saw him before his fight;
now he had a black eye and a bloated lip, hat on the back of his
head, and made-up tie under one ear. His companions were his sallow
little Yankee secretary, whose name I really forget, but whom I met
with Maguire at the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a second
skin of shimmering sequins.

I can neither forget nor report the terms in which Barney Maguire
asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Thanks, however, to
Swigger Morrison's hospitality, I readily reminded him of our former
meeting, and of more that I only recalled as the words were in my
mouth.

"You'll remember Raffles," said I, "if you don't remember me. You
showed us your trophies the other night, and asked us both to look
you up at any hour of the day or night after the fight."

I was going on to add that I had expected to find Raffles there
before me, to settle a wager that we had made about the man-trap.
But the indiscretion was interrupted by Maguire himself, whose
dreadful fist became a hand that gripped mine with brute fervor,
while with the other he clouted me on the back.

"You don't say!" he cried. "I took you for some darned crook, but
now I remember you perfectly. If you hadn't've spoke up slick I'd
have bu'st your face in, sonny. I would, sure! Come right in, and
have a drink to show there's - Jeehoshaphat!"

The secretary had turned the latch-key in the door, only to be
hauled back by the collar as the door stood open, and the light from
the inner room was seen streaming upon the banisters at the foot of
the narrow stairs.

"A light in my den," said Maguire in a mighty whisper, "and the
blamed door open, though the key's in my pocket and we left it
locked! Talk about crooks, eh? Holy smoke, how I hope we've
landed one alive! You ladies and gentlemen, lay round where you
are, while I see."

And the hulking figure advanced on tiptoe, like a performing
elephant, until just at the open door, when for a second we saw his
left revolving like a piston and his head thrown back at its
fighting angle. But in another second his fists were hands again,
and Maguire was rubbing them together as he stood shaking with
laughter in the light of the open door.

"Walk up!" he cried, as he beckoned to us three. "Walk up and see
one o' their blamed British crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet,
and nailed as tight!"

Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow secretary went first;
the sequins glittered at his heels, and I must own that for one base
moment I was on the brink of bolting through the street door. It
had never been shut behind us. I shut it myself in the end. Yet
it was small credit to me that I actually remained on the same side
of the door as Raffles.

"Reel home-grown, low-down, unwashed Whitechapel!" I had heard
Maguire remark within. "Blamed if our Bowery boys ain't cock-angels
to scum like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my knuckles on
your ugly face; but if I had my thick boots on I'd dance the soul
out of your carcass for two cents!"

After this it required less courage to join the others in the inner
room; and for some moments even I failed to identify the truly
repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no
false hair upon the face, but it was as black as any sweep's. The
clothes, on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more
pestiferous in themselves than most worn by Raffles for professional
purposes. And at first, as I say, I was far from sure whether it
was Raffles at all.; but I remembered the crash that cut short our
talk over the telephone; and this inanimate heap of rags was lying
directly underneath a wall instrument, with the receiver dangling
over him.

"Think you know him?" asked the sallow secretary, as I stooped and
peered with my heart in my boots.

"Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead," I explained,
having satisfied myself that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles
was really insensible. "But what on earth has happened?" I asked
in my turn.

"That's what I want to know," whined the person in sequins, who had
contributed various ejaculations unworthy of report, and finally
subsided behind an ostentatious fan.

"I should judge," observed the secretary, "that it's for Mr. Maguire
to say, or not to say, just as he darn pleases."

But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian hearth-rug, beaming
upon us all. in a triumph too delicious for immediate translation
into words. The room was furnished as a study, and most artistically
furnished, if you consider outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic.
There was nothing of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney
Maguire, except his vocabulary and his lower jaw. I had seen over
his house already, and it was fitted and decorated throughout by a
high-art firm which exhibits just such a room as that which was the
scene of our tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening
like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of enormous nails and
tapestry compact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire with
huge hinges of beaten metal. The pugilist's own background
presented an elaborate scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks
green from the joiner, and a china cupboard with leaded panes behind
his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes rolled with rich delight
from the decanter and glasses on the octagonal table to another
decanter in the quaintest and craftiest of revolving spirit tables.

"Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling on us each in
turn, with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated lip. "To
think that I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed
crook to walk right into! You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great
head at me, "you'll recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one
when you come in that night with the other sport? Say, pity he's
not with you now; he was a good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he
wanted to know too much, and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm
liable to tell you now, or else bu'st. See that decanter on the
table?"

"I was just looking at it," said the person in sequins. "You don't
know what a turn I've had, or you'd offer me a little something."

"You shall have a little something in a minute," rejoined Maguire.
"But if you take a little anything out of that decanter, you'll
collapse like our friend upon the floor."

"Good heavens!" I cried out, with involuntary indignation, and his
fell scheme broke upon me in a clap.

"Yes, sir!" said Maguire, fixing me with his bloodshot orbs. "My
trap for crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of hocussed whiskey, and I
guess that's it on the table, with the silver label around its neck.
Now look at this other decanter, without any label at all.; but for
that they're the dead spit of each other. I'll put them side by
side, so you can see. It isn't only the decanters, but the liquor
looks the same in both, and tastes so you wouldn't know the
difference till you woke up in your tracks. I got the poison from
a blamed Indian away west, and it's ruther ticklish stuff. So I
keep the label around the trap-bottle, and only leave it out nights.
That's the idea, and that's all. there is to it," added Maguire,
putting the labelled decanter back in the stand. "But I figure it's
enough for ninety-nine crooks out of a hundred, and nineteen out of
twenty 'll have their liquor before they go to work."

"I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secretary, with a
downward glance as though at the prostrate Raffles. "Have you
looked to see if the trophies are all. safe?"

"Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the pseudo-antique cabinet
in which he kept them. "Then you can save yourself the trouble,"
rejoined the secretary, as he dived under the octagonal table, and
came up with a small black bag that I knew at a glance. It was the
one that Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I had known
him.

The bag was so heavy now that the secretary used both hands to get
it on the table. In another moment he had taken out the jewelled
belt presented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the solid silver
statuette of himself, and the gold brick from the citizens of
Sacramento.

Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost, or the feeling
that the thief had dared to tamper with them after all., suddenly
infuriated Maguire to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple
of brutal kicks upon the senseless form of Raffles before the
secretary and I could interfere.

"Play light, Mr. Maguire!" cried the sallow secretary. "The man's
drugged, as well as down."

"He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!"

"I should judge it about time to telephone for the police."

"Not till I've done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I'll
punch his face into a jam pudding! He shall wash down his teeth
with his blood before the coppers come in for what's left!"

"You make me feel quite ill," complained the grand lady in the
chair. "I wish you'd give me a little something, and not be more
vulgar than you can 'elp."

"Help yourself," said Maguire, ungallantly, "and don't talk through
your hat. Say, what's the matter with the 'phone?"

The secretary had picked up the dangling receiver.

"It looks to me," said he, "as though the crook had rung up somebody
before he went off."

I turned and assisted the grand lady to the refreshment that she
craved.

"Like his cheek!" Maguire thundered. "But who in blazes should
he ring up?"