E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (2 page)

We had reached the Albany, and halted with one accord at the
Piccadilly portico, red cigar to red cigar.

"You wouldn't like to go and see if the answer's in your rooms?" he
asked.

"No. What's the good? Where's the point in giving her up if I'm
going to straighten out when it's too late? It is too late, I have
given her up, and I am coming with you!"

The hand that bowled the most puzzling ball in England (once it
found its length) descended on my shoulder with surprising
promptitude.

"Very well, Bunny! That's finished; but your blood be on your own
pate if evil comes of it. Meanwhile we can't do better than turn
in here till you have finished your cigar as it deserves, and topped
up with such a cup of tea as you must learn to like if you hope to
get on in your new profession. And when the hours are small enough,
Bunny, my boy, I don't mind admitting I shall be very glad to have
you with me."

I have a vivid memory of the interim in his rooms. I think it must
have been the first and last of its kind that I was called upon to
sustain with so much knowledge of what lay before me. I passed the
time with one restless eye upon the clock, and the other on the
Tantalus which Raffles ruthlessly declined to unlock. He admitted
that it was like waiting with one's pads on; and in my slender
experience of the game of which he was a world's master, that was
an ordeal not to be endured without a general quaking of the inner
man. I was, on the other hand, all right when I got to the
metaphorical wicket; and half the surprises that Raffles sprung on
me were doubtless due to his early recognition of the fact.

On this occasion I fell swiftly and hopelessly out of love with the
prospect I had so gratuitously embraced. It was not only my
repugnance to enter that house in that way, which grew upon my
better judgment as the artificial enthusiasm of the evening
evaporated from my veins. Strong as that repugnance became, I had
an even stronger feeling that we were embarking on an important
enterprise far too much upon the spur of the moment. The latter
qualm I had the temerity to confess to Raffles; nor have I often
loved him more than when he freely admitted it to be the most natural
feeling in the world. He assured me, however, that he had had my
Lady Lochmaben and her jewels in his mind for several months; he had
sat behind them at first nights; and long ago determined what to
take or to reject; in fine, he had only been waiting for those
topographical details which it had been my chance privilege to
supply. I now learned that he had numerous houses in a similar
state upon his list; something or other was wanting in each case in
order to complete his plans. In that of the Bond Street jeweller
it was a trusty accomplice; in the present instance, a more intimate
knowledge of the house. And lastly, this was a Wednesday night,
when the tired legislator gets early to his bed.

How I wish I could make the whole world see and hear him, and smell
the smoke of his beloved Sullivan, as he took me into these, the
secrets of his infamous trade! Neither look nor language would
betray the infamy. As a mere talker, I shall never listen to the
like of Raffles on this side of the sod; and his talk was seldom
garnished by an oath, never in my remembrance by the unclean word.
Then he looked like a man who had dressed to dine out, not like
one who had long since dined; for his curly hair, though longer that
another's, was never untidy in its length; and these were the days
when it was still as black as ink. Nor were there many lines as yet
upon the smooth and mobile face; and its frame was still that dear
den of disorder and good taste, with the carved book-case, the
dresser and chests of still older oak, and the Wattses and Rossettis
hung anyhow on the walls.

It must have been one o'clock before we drove in a hansom as far as
Kensington Church, instead of getting down at the gates of our
private road to ruin. Constitutionally shy of the direct approach,
Raffles was further deterred by a ball in full swing at the Empress
Rooms, whence potential witnesses were pouring between dances into
the cool deserted street. Instead he led me a little way up Church
Street, and so through the narrow passage into Palace Gardens. He
knew the house as well as I did. We made our first survey from the
other side of the road. And the house was not quite in darkness;
there was a dim light over the door, a brighter one in the stables,
which stood still farther back from the road.

"That's a bit of a bore," said Raffles. "The ladies have been out
somewhere - trust them to spoil the show! They would get to bed
before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and
our profession. Somebody's not home yet; that will be the son of
the house; but he's a beauty, who may not come home at all."

"Another Alick Carruthers," I murmured, recalling the one I liked
least of all the household, as I remembered it.

"They might be brothers," rejoined Raffles, who knew all the loose
fish about town. "Well, I'm not sure that I shall want you after
all, Bunny."

"Why not?"

"If the front door's only on the latch, and you're right about the
lock, I shall walk in as though I were the son of the house myself."

And he jingled the skeleton bunch that he carried on a chain as
honest men carry their latchkeys.

"You forget the inner doors and the safe."

"True. You might be useful to me there. But I still don't like
leading you in where it isn't absolutely necessary, Bunny."

"Then let me lead you, I answered, and forthwith marched across the
broad, secluded road, with the great houses standing back on either
side in their ample gardens, as though the one opposite belonged to
me. I thought Raffles had stayed behind, for I never heard him at
my heels, yet there he was when I turned round at the gate.

"I must teach you the step," he whispered, shaking his head. "You
shouldn't use your heel at all. Here's a grass border for you: walk
it as you would the plank! Gravel makes a noise, and flower-beds
tell a tale. Wait - I must carry you across this."

It was the sweep of the drive, and in the dim light from above the
door, the soft gravel, ploughed into ridges by the night's wheels,
threatened an alarm at every step. Yet Raffles, with me in his
arms, crossed the zone of peril softly as the pard.

"Shoes in your pocket - that's the beauty of pumps!" he whispered
on the step; his light bunch tinkled faintly; a couple of keys he
stooped and tried, with the touch of a humane dentist; the third
let us into the porch. And as we stood together on the mat, as he
was gradually closing the door, a clock within chimed a half-hour
in fashion so thrillingly familiar to me that I caught Raffles by
the arm. My half-hours of happiness had flown to just such chimes!
I looked wildly about me in the dim light. Hat-stand and oak
settee belonged equally to my past. And Raffles was smiling in my
face as he held the door wide for my escape.

"You told me a lie!" I gasped in whispers.

"I did nothing of the sort," he replied. "The furniture's the
furniture of Hector Carruthers; but the house is the house of Lord
Lochmaben. Look here!"

He had stooped, and was smoothing out the discarded envelope of a
telegram. "Lord Lochmaben," I read in pencil by the dim light;
and the case was plain to me on the spot. My friends had let their
house, furnished, as anybody but Raffles would have explained to me
in the beginning.

"All right," I said. "Shut the door."

And he not only shut it without a sound, but drew a bolt that might
have been sheathed in rubber.

In another minute we were at work upon the study-door, I with the
tiny lantern and the bottle of rock-oil, he with the brace and the
largest bit. The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It was
placed high up in the door, feet above the handle, and the chain of
holes with which Raffles had soon surrounded it were bored on a
level with his eyes. Yet the clock in the hall chimed again, and
two ringing strokes resounded through the silent house before we
gained admittance to the room.

Raffle's next care was to muffle the bell on the shuttered window
(with a silk handkerchief from the hat-stand) and to prepare an
emergency exit by opening first the shutters and then the window
itself. Luckily it was a still night, and very little wind came
in to embarrass us. He then began operations on the safe, revealed
by me behind its folding screen of books, while I stood sentry on
the threshold. I may have stood there for a dozen minutes,
listening to the loud hall clock and to the gentle dentistry of
Raffles in the mouth of the safe behind me, when a third sound
thrilled my every nerve. It was the equally cautious opening of a
door in the gallery overhead.

I moistened my lips to whisper a word of warning to Raffles. But
his ears had been as quick as mine, and something longer. His
lantern darkened as I turned my head; next moment I felt his breath
upon the back of my neck. It was now too late even for a whisper,
and quite out of the question to close the mutilated door. There
we could only stand, I on the threshold, Raffles at my elbow, while
one carrying a candle crept down the stairs.

The study-door was at right angles to the lowest flight, and just
to the right of one alighting in the hall. It was thus impossible
for us to see who it was until the person was close abreast of us;
but by the rustle of the gown we knew that it was one of the ladies,
and dressed just as she had come from theatre or ball. Insensibly
I drew back as the candle swam into our field of vision: it had not
traversed many inches when a hand was clapped firmly but silently
across my mouth.

I could forgive Raffles for that, at any rate! In another breath
I should have cried aloud: for the girl with the candle, the girl
in her ball-dress, at dead of night, the girl with the letter for
the post, was the last girl on God's wide earth whom I should have
chosen thus to encounter - a midnight intruder in the very house
where I had been reluctantly received on her account!

I forgot Raffles. I forgot the new and unforgivable grudge I had
against him now. I forgot his very hand across my mouth, even
before he paid me the compliment of removing it. There was the only
girl in all the world: I had eyes and brains for no one and for
nothing else. She had neither seen nor heard us, had looked neither
to the right hand nor the left. But a small oak table stood on the
opposite side of the hall; it was to this table that she went. On
it was one of those boxes in which one puts one's letters for the
post; and she stooped to read by her candle the times at which this
box was cleared.

The loud clock ticked and ticked. She was standing at her full
height now, her candle on the table, her letter in both hands, and
in her downcast face a sweet and pitiful perplexity that drew the
tears to my eyes. Through a film I saw her open the envelope so
lately sealed and read her letter once more, as though she would
have altered it a little at the last. It was too late for that;
but of a sudden she plucked a rose from her bosom, and was pressing
it in with her letter when I groaned aloud.

How could I help it? The letter was for me: of that I was as sure
as though I had been looking over her shoulder. She was as true as
tempered steel; there were not two of us to whom she wrote and sent
roses at dead of night. It was her one chance of writing to me.
None would know that she had written. And she cared enough to soften
the reproaches I had richly earned, with a red rose warm from her own
warm heart. And there, and there was I, a common thief who had broken
in to steal! Yet I was unaware that I had uttered a sound until she
looked up, startled, and the hands behind me pinned me where I stood.

I think she must have seen us, even in the dim light of the solitary
candle. Yet not a sound escaped her as she peered courageously in
our direction; neither did one of us move; but the hall clock went
on and on, every tick like the beat of a drum to bring the house
about our ears, until a minute must have passed as in some breathless
dream. And then came the awakening - with such a knocking and a
ringing at the front door as brought all three of us to our senses
on the spot.

"The son of the house!" whispered Raffles in my ear, as he dragged
me back to the window he had left open for our escape. But as he
leaped out first a sharp cry stopped me at the sill. "Get back!
Get back! We're trapped!" he cried; and in the single second that
I stood there, I saw him fell one officer to the ground, and dart
across the lawn with another at his heels. A third came running up
to the window. What could I do but double back into the house? And
there in the hall I met my lost love face to face.

Till that moment she had not recognized me. I ran to catch her as
she all but fell. And my touch repelled her into life, so that she
shook me off, and stood gasping: "You, of all men! You, of all men!"
until I could bear it no more, but broke again for the study-window.
"Not that way - not that way!" she cried in an agony at that. Her
hands were upon me now. "In there, in there," she whispered,
pointing and pulling me to a mere cupboard under the stairs, where
hats and coats were hung; and it was she who shut the door on me with
a sob.

Doors were already opening overhead, voices calling, voices
answering, the alarm running like wildfire from room to room. Soft
feet pattered in the gallery and down the stairs about my very ears.
I do not know what made me put on my own shoes as I heard them, but
I think that I was ready and even longing to walk out and give
myself up. I need not say what and who it was that alone restrained
me. I heard her name. I heard them crying to her as though she had
fainted. I recognized the detested voice of my bete noir, Alick
Carruthers, thick as might be expected of the dissipated dog, yet
daring to stutter out her name. And then I heard, without catching,
her low reply; it was in answer to the somewhat stern questioning of
quite another voice; and from what followed I knew that she had never
fainted at all.