E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (8 page)

It was Raffles at his worst, Raffles as I never knew him before or
after - a Raffles mad with pain and rage, and desperate as any other
criminal in the land. Yet he had struck no brutal blow, he had
uttered no disgraceful taunt, and probably not inflicted a tithe of
the pain he had himself to bear. It is true that he was flagrantly
in the wrong, his victim as laudably in the right. Nevertheless,
granting the original sin of the situation, and given this unforeseen
development, even I failed to see how Raffles could have combined
greater humanity with any regard for our joint safety; and had his
barbarities ended here, I for one should not have considered them
an extraordinary aggravation of an otherwise minor offence. But in
the broad daylight of the bathroom, which had a ground-glass window
but no blind, I saw at once the serious nature of his wound and of
its effect upon the man.

"It will maim me for a month," said he; "and if the V.C. comes out
alive, the wound he gave may be identified with the wound I've got"

The V.C.! There, indeed, was an aggravation to one illogical mind.
But to cast a moment's doubt upon the certainty of his coming out
alive!

"Of course he'll come out," said I. "We must make up our minds to
that."

"Did he tell you he was expecting the servants or his wife? If so,
of course we must hurry up."

"No, Raffles, I'm afraid he's not expecting anybody. He told me,
if he hadn't looked in for letters, we should have had the place to
ourselves another week. That's the worst of it."

Raffles smiled as he secured a regular puttee of dust-sheeting.
No blood was coming through.

"I don't agree, Bunny," said he. "It's quite the best of it, if
you ask me."

"What, that he should die the death?"

"Why not?"

And Raffles stared me out with a hard and merciless light in his
clear blue eyes - a light that chilled the blood.

"If it's a choice between his life and our liberty, you're entitled
to your decision and I'm entitled to mine, and I took it before I
bound him as I did," said Raffles. "I'm only sorry I took so much
trouble if you're going to stay behind and put him in the way of
releasing himself before he gives up the ghost. Perhaps you will
go and think it over while I wash my bags and dry 'em at the
gas stove. It will take me at least an hour, which will just give
me time to finish the last volume of Kinglake."

Long before he was ready to go, however, I was waiting in the hall,
clothed indeed, but not in a mind which I care to recall. Once or
twice I peered into the dining-room where Raffles sat before the
stove, without letting him hear me. He, too, was ready for the
street at a moment's notice; but a steam ascended from his left leg,
as he sat immersed in his red volume. Into the study I never went
again; but Raffles did, to restore to its proper shelf this and
every other book he had taken out and so destroy that clew to the
manner of man who had made himself at home in the house. On his
last visit I heard him whisk off the dust-sheet; then he waited a
minute; and when he came out it was to lead the way into the open
air as though the accursed house belonged to him.

"We shall be seen," I whispered at his heels. "Raffles, Raffles,
there's a policeman at the corner!"

"I know him intimately," replied Raffles, turning, however, the
other way. "He accosted me on Monday, when I explained that I was
an old soldier of the colonel's regiment, who came in every few
days to air the place and send on any odd letters. You see, I have
always carried one or two about me, redirected to that address in
Switzerland, and when I showed them to him it was all. right. But
after that it was no use listening at the letter-box for a clear
coast, was it?"

I did not answer; there was too much to exasperate in these prodigies
of cunning which he could never trouble to tell me at the time. And
I knew why he had kept his latest feats to himself: unwilling to
trust me outside the house, he had systematically exaggerated the
dangers of his own walks abroad; and when to these injuries he added
the insult of a patronizing compliment on my late disguise, I again
made no reply.

"What's the good of your coming with me he asked, when I had followed
him across the main stream of Notting Hill.

"We may as well sink or swim together," I answered sullenly.

"Yes? Well, I'm going to swim into the provinces, have a shave on
the way, buy a new kit piecemeal, including a cricket-bag (which I
really want), and come limping back to the Albany with the same old
strain in my bowling leg. I needn't add that I have been playing
country-house cricket for the last month under an alias; it's the
only decent way to do it when one's county has need of one. That's
my itinerary, Bunny, but I really can't see why you should come
with me."

"We may as well swing together!" I growled.

"As you will, my dear fellow," replied Raffles. "But I begin to
dread your company on the drop!"

I shall hold my pen on that provincial tour. Not that I joined
Raffles in any of the little enterprises with which he beguiled
the breaks in our journey; our last deed in London was far too
great a weight upon my soul. I could see that gallant officer in
his chair, see him at every hour of the day and night, now with
his indomitable eyes meeting mine ferociously, now a stark outline
underneath a sheet. The vision darkened my day and gave me
sleepless nights. I was with our victim in all. his agony; my mind
would only leave him for that gallows of which Raffles had said
true things in jest. No, I could not face so vile a death lightly,
but I could meet it, somehow, better than I could endure a guilty
suspense. In the watches of the second night I made up my mind to
meet it halfway, that very morning, while still there might be time
to save the life that we had left in jeopardy. And I got up early
to tell Raffles of my resolve.

His room in the hotel where we were staying was littered with
clothes and luggage new enough for any bridegroom; I lifted the
locked cricket-bag, and found it heavier than a cricket-bag has
any right to be. But in the bed Raffles was sleeping like an
infant, his shaven self once more. And when I shook him he awoke
with a smile.

"Going to confess, eh, Bunny? Well, wait a bit; the local police
won't thank you for knocking them up at this hour. And I bought
a late edition which you ought to see; that must be it on the floor.
You have a look in the stop-press column, Bunny."

I found the place with a sunken heart, and this is what I read:

WEST-END OUTRAGE

Colonel Crutchley, R.E., V.C., has been the victim of a dastardly
outrage at his residence, Peter Street, Campden Hill. Returning
unexpectedly to the house, which had been left untenanted during
the absence of the family abroad, it was found occupied by two
ruffians, who overcame and secured the distinguished officer by
the exercise of considerable violence. When discovered through
the intelligence of the Kensington police, the gallant victim was
gagged and bound hand and foot, and in an advanced stage of
exhaustion.

"Thanks to the Kensington police," observed Raffles, as I read the
last words aloud in my horror. "They can't have gone when they got
my letter."

"Your letter?"

"I printed them a line while we were waiting for our train at Euston.
They must have got it that night, but they can't have paid any
attention to it until yesterday morning. And when they do, they
take all. the credit and give me no more than you did, Bunny!"

I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at the smiling, handsome
face under the curls. And at last I understood.

"So all. the time you never meant it!"

"Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours'
enforced Rest Cure was the worst I wished him."

"'you might have told me, Raffles!"

"That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me!"

"But who are they, Raffles, and where's their house? There's no
such club on the list in Whitaker."

"The Criminologists, my dear Bunny, are too few for a local
habitation, and too select to tell their name in Gath. They are
merely so many solemn students of contemporary crime, who meet and
dine periodically at each other's clubs or houses."

"But why in the world should they ask us to dine with them?"

And I brandished the invitation which had brought me hotfoot to the
Albany: it was from the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G.; and
it requested the honor of my company at dinner, at Thornaby House,
Park Lane, to meet the members of the Criminologists' Club. That
in itself was a disturbing compliment: judge then of my dismay on
learning that Raffles had been invited too!

"They have got it into their heads," said he, "that the gladiatorial
element is the curse of most modern sport. They tremble especially
for the professional gladiator. And they want to know whether my
experience tallies with their theory."

"So they say!"

"They quote the case of a league player, sus per coll., and any
number of suicides. It really is rather in my public line."

"In yours, if you like, but not in mine," said I. "No, Raffles,
they've got their eye on us both, and mean to put us under the
microscope, or they never would have pitched on me."

Raffles smiled on my perturbation.

"I almost wish you were right, Bunny! It would be even better fun
than I mean to make it as it is. But it may console you to hear
that it was I who gave them your name. I told them you were a far
keener criminologist than myself. I am delighted to hear they have
taken my hint, and that we are to meet at their gruesome board."

"If I accept," said I, with the austerity he deserved.

"If you don't," rejoined Raffles, "you will miss some sport after
both our hearts. Think of it, Bunny! These fellows meet to wallow
in all. the latest crimes; we wallow with them as though we knew more
about it than themselves. Perhaps we don't, for few criminologists
have a soul above murder; and I quite expect to have the privilege
of lifting the discussion into our own higher walk. They shall give
their morbid minds to the fine art of burgling, for a change; and
while we're about it, Bunny, we may as well extract their opinion
of our noble selves. As authors, as collaborators, we will sit with
the flower of our critics, and find our own level in the expert eye.
It will be a piquant experience, if not an invaluable one; if we are
sailing too near the wind, we are sure to hear about it, and can
trim our yards accordingly. Moreover, we shall get a very good
dinner into the bargain, or our noble host will belie a European
reputation."

"Do you know him?" I asked.

"We have a pavilion acquaintance, when it suits my lord," replied
Raffles, chuckling. "But I know all. about him. He was president
one year of the M.C.C., and we never had a better. He knows the
game, though I believe he never played cricket in his life. But
then he knows most things, and has never done any of them. He has
never even married, and never opened his lips in the House of Lords.
Yet they say there is no better brain in the August assembly, and
he certainly made us a wonderful speech last time the Australians
were over. He has read everything and (to his credit in these days)
never written a line. All. round he is a whale for theory and a
sprat for practice - but he looks quite capable of both at crime!"

I now longed to behold this remarkable peer, in the flesh, and with
the greater curiosity since another of the things which he evidently
never did was to have his photograph published for the benefit of
the vulgar. I told Raffles that I would dine with him at Lord
Thornaby's, and he nodded as though I had not hesitated for a moment.
I see now how deftly he had disposed of my reluctance. No doubt he
had thought it all. out before: his little speeches look sufficiently
premeditated as I set them down at the dictates of an excellent
memory. Let it, however, be borne in mind that Raffles did not talk
exactly like a Raffles book: he said the things, but he did not say
them in so many consecutive breaths. They were punctuated by puffs
from his eternal cigarette, and the punctuation was often in the
nature of a line of asterisks, while he took a silent turn up and
down his room. Nor was he ever more deliberate than when he seemed
most nonchalant and spontaneous. I came to see it in the end. But
these were early days, in which he was more plausible to me than I
can hope to render him to another human being.

And I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it was, in fact, the one
period at which I can remember his coming round to see me more
frequently than I went round to him. Of course he would come at his
own odd hours, often just as one was dressing to go out and dine,
and I can even remember finding him there when I returned, for I had
long since given him a key of the flat. It was the inhospitable
month of February, and I can recall more than one cosy evening when
we discussed anything and everything but our own malpractices;
indeed, there were none to discuss just then. Raffles, on the
contrary, was showing himself with some industry in the most
respectable society, and by his advice I used the club more than
ever.

"There is nothing like it at this time of year," said he. "In the
summer I have my cricket to provide me with decent employment in
the sight of men. Keep yourself before the public from morning to
night, and they'll never think of you in the still small hours."

Our behavior, in fine, had so long been irreproachable that I rose
without misgiving on the morning of Lord Thornaby's dinner to the
other Criminologists and guests. My chief anxiety was to arrive
under the aegis of my brilliant friend, and I had begged him to pick
me up on his way; but at five minutes to the appointed hour there
was no sign of Raffles or his cab. We were bidden at a quarter to
eight for eight o'clock, so after all. I had to hurry off alone.