E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (9 page)

Fortunately, Thornaby House is almost at the end of my street that
was; and it seemed to me another fortunate circumstance that the
house stood back, as it did and does, in its own August courtyard;
for, as I was about to knock, a hansom came twinkling in behind me,
and I drew back, hoping it was Raffles at the last moment. It was
not, and I knew it in time to melt from the porch, and wait yet
another minute in the shadows, since others were as late as I. And
out jumped these others, chattering in stage whispers as they paid
their cab.

"Thornaby has a bet about it with Freddy Vereker, who can't come,
I hear. Of course, it won t be lost or won to-night. But the dear
man thinks he's been invited as a cricketer!"

"I don't believe he's the other thing," said a voice as brusque as
the first was bland. "I believe it's all. bunkum. I wish I didn't,
but I do!"

"I think you'll find it's more than that," rejoined the other, as
the doors opened and swallowed the pair.

I flung out limp hands and smote the air. Raffles bidden to what
he had well called this "gruesome board," not as a cricketer but,
clearly, as a suspected criminal! Raffles wrong all. the time, and
I right for once in my original apprehension! And still no Raffles
in sight - no Raffles to warn - no Raffles, and the clocks striking
eight!

Well may I shirk the psychology of such a moment, for my belief is
that the striking clocks struck out all. power of thought and feeling,
and that I played my poor part the better for that blessed surcease
of intellectual sensation. On the other hand, I was never more
alive to the purely objective impressions of any hour of my existence,
and of them the memory is startling to this day. I hear my mad knock
at the double doors; they fly open in the middle, and it is like some
sumptuous and solemn rite. A long slice of silken-legged lackey is
seen on either hand; a very prelate of a butler bows a benediction
from the sanctuary steps. I breathe more freely when I reach a
book-lined library where a mere handful of men do not overflow the
Persian rug before the fire. One of them is Raffles, who is talking
to a large man with the brow of a demi-god and the eyes and jowl of
a degenerate bulldog. And this is our noble host.

Lord Thornaby stared at me with inscrutable stolidity as we shook
hands, and at once handed me over to a tall, ungainly man whom he
addressed as Ernest, but whose surname I never learned. Ernest in
turn introduced me, with a shy and clumsy courtesy, to the two
remaining guests. They were the pair who had driven up in the
hansom; one turned out to be Kingsmill, Q.C.; the other I knew at
a glance from his photographs as Parrington, the backwoods novelist.
They were admirable foils to each other, the barrister being plump
and dapper, with a Napoleonic cast of countenance, and the author
one of the shaggiest dogs I have ever seen in evening-clothes.
Neither took much stock of me, but both had an eye on Raffles as I
exchanged a few words with each in turn. Dinner, however, was
immediately announced, and the six of us had soon taken our places
round a brilliant little table stranded in a great dark room.

I had not been prepared for so small a party, and at first I felt
relieved. If the worst came to the worst, I was fool enough to say
in my heart, they were but two to one. But I was soon sighing for
that safety which the adage associates with numbers. We were far
too few for the confidential duologue with one's neighbor in which
I, at least, would have taken refuge from the perils of a general
conversation. And the general conversation soon resolved itself
into an attack, so subtly concerted and so artistically delivered
that I could not conceive how Raffles should ever know it for an
attack, and that against himself, or how to warn him of his peril.
But to this day I am not convinced that I also was honored by the
suspicions of the club; it may have been so, and they may have
ignored me for the bigger game.

It was Lord Thornaby himself who fired the first shot, over the very
sherry. He had Raffles on his right hand, and the backwoodsman of
letters on his left. Raffles was hemmed in by the law on his right,
while I sat between Parrington and Ernest, who took the foot of the
table, and seemed a sort of feudatory cadet of the noble house. But
it was the motley lot of us that my lord addressed, as he sat back
blinking his baggy eyes.

"Mr. Raffles," said he, "has been telling me about that poor fellow
who suffered the extreme penalty last March. A great end, gentlemen,
a great end! It is true that he had been unfortunate enough to
strike a jugular vein, but his own end should take its place among
the most glorious traditions of the gallows. You tell them Mr.
Raffles: it will be as new to my friends as it is to me."

"I tell the tale as I heard it last time I played at Trent Bridge;
it was never in the papers, I believe," said Raffles gravely. "You
may remember the tremendous excitement over the Test Matches out in
Australia at the time: it seems that the result of the crucial game
was expected on the condemned man's last day on earth, and he
couldn't rest until he knew it. We pulled it off, if you recollect,
and he said it would make him swing happy."

"Tell 'em what else he said!" cried Lord Thornaby, rubbing his podgy
hands.

"The chaplain remonstrated with him on his excitement over a game
at such a time, and the convict is said to have replied: 'Why, it's
the first thing they'll ask me at the other end of the drop!'"

The story was new even to me, but I had no time to appreciate its
points. My concern was to watch its effect upon the other members
of the party. Ernest, on my left, doubled up with laughter, and
tittered and shook for several minutes. My other neighbor, more
impressionable by temperament, winced first, and then worked himself
into a state of enthusiasm which culminated in an assault upon his
shirt-cuff with a joiner's pencil. Kingsmill, Q.C., beaming
tranquilly on Raffles, seemed the one least impressed, until he spoke.

"I am glad to hear that," he remarked in a high bland voice. "I
thought that man would die game."

"Did you know anything about him, then?" inquired Lord Thornaby.

"I led for the Crown," replied the barrister, with a twinkle. "You
might almost say that I measured the poor man's neck."

The point must have been quite unpremeditated; it was not the less
effective for that. Lord Thornaby looked askance at the callous silk.
It was some moments before Ernest tittered and Parrington felt for
his pencil; and in the interim I had made short work of my hock,
though it was Johannisberger. As for Raffles, one had but to see
his horror to feel how completely he was off his guard.

"In itself, I have heard, it was not a sympathetic case?" was the
remark with which he broke the general silence.

"Not a bit."

"That must have been a comfort to you," said Raffles dryly.

"It would have been to me," vowed our author, while the barrister
merely smiled. "I should have been very sorry to have had a hand
in hanging Peckham and Solomons the other day."

"Why Peckham and Solomons?" inquired my lord.

"They never meant to kill that old lady."

"But they strangled her in her bed with her own pillow-case!"

"I don't care," said the uncouth scribe. "They didn't break in for
that. They never thought of scragging her. The foolish old person
would make a noise, and one of them tied too tight. I call it jolly
bad luck on them."

"On quiet, harmless, well-behaved thieves," added Lord Thornaby,
"in the unobtrusive exercise of their humble avocation."

And, as he turned to Raffles with his puffy smile, I knew that we
had reached that part of the programme which had undergone rehearsal:
it had been perfectly timed to arrive with the champagne, and I was
not afraid to signify my appreciation of that small mercy. But
Raffles laughed so quickly at his lordship's humor, and yet with such
a natural restraint, as to leave no doubt that he had taken kindly
to my own old part, and was playing the innocent inimitably in his
turn, by reason of his very innocence. It was a poetic judgment on
old Raffles, and in my momentary enjoyment of the novel situation I
was able to enjoy some of the good things of this rich man's table.
The saddle of mutton more than justified its place in the menu; but
it had not spoiled me for my wing of pheasant, and I was even looking
forward to a sweet, when a further remark from the literary light
recalled me from the table to its talk.

"But, I suppose," said he to Kingsmill, "it's many a burglar you've
restored to his friends and his relations'?"

"Let us say many a poor fellow who has been charged with burglary,"
replied the cheery Q.C. "It's not quite the same thing, you know,
nor is 'many' the most accurate word. I never touch criminal work
in town."

"It's the only kind I should care about," said the novelist, eating
jelly with a spoon.

"I quite agree with you," our host chimed in. "And of all. the
criminals one might be called upon to defend, give me the enterprising
burglar."

"It must be the breeziest branch of the business," remarked Raffles,
while I held my breath.

But his touch was as light as gossamer, and his artless manner a
triumph of even his incomparable art. Raffles was alive to the
danger at last. I saw him refuse more champagne, even as I drained
my glass again. But it was not the same danger to us both. Raffles
had no reason to feel surprise or alarm at such a turn in a
conversation frankly devoted to criminology; it must have been as
inevitable to him as it was sinister to me, with my fortuitous
knowledge of the suspicions that were entertained. And there was
little to put him on his guard in the touch of his adversaries,
which was only less light than his own.

"I am not very fond of Mr. Sikes," announced the barrister, like a
man who had got his cue.

"But he was prehistoric," rejoined my lord. "A lot of blood has
flowed under the razor since the days of Sweet William."

"True; we have had Peace," said Parrington, and launched out into
such glowing details of that criminal's last moments that I began
to hope the diversion might prove permanent. But Lord Thornaby
was not to be denied.

"William and Charles are both dead monarchs," said he. "The reigning
king in their department is the fellow who gutted poor Danby's place
in Bond Street."

There was a guilty silence on the part of the three conspirators -
for I had long since persuaded myself that Ernest was not in their
secret - and then my blood froze.

"I know him well," said Raffles, looking up.

Lord Thornaby stared at him in consternation. The smile on the
Napoleonic countenance of the barrister looked forced and frozen for
the first time during the evening. Our author, who was nibbling
cheese from a knife, left a bead of blood upon his beard. The futile
Ernest alone met the occasion with a hearty titter.

"What!" cried my lord. "You know the thief?"

"I wish I did," rejoined Raffles, chuckling. "No, Lord Thornaby,
I only meant the jeweller, Danby. I go to him when I want a wedding
present."

I heard three deep breaths drawn as one before I drew my own.

"Rather a coincidence," observed our host dryly, "for I believe you
also know the Milchester people, where Lady Melrose had her necklace
stolen a few months afterward."

"I was staying there at the time," said Raffles eagerly. No snob
was ever quicker to boast of basking in the smile of the great.

"We believe it to be the same man," said Lord Thornaby, speaking
apparently for the Criminologists' Club, and with much less severity
of voice.

"I only wish I could come across him," continued Raffles heartily.
"He's a criminal much more to my mind than your murderers who swear
on the drop or talk cricket in the condemned cell!"

"He might be in the house now," said Lord Thornaby, looking Raffles
in the face. But his manner was that of an actor in an unconvincing
part and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter end; and he seemed
embittered, as even a rich man may be in the moment of losing a bet.

"What a joke if he were!" cried the Wild West writer.

"Absit omen!" murmured Raffles, in better taste.

"Still, I think you'll find it's a favorite time," argued Kingsmill,
Q.C. "And it would be quite in keeping with the character of this
man, so far as it is known, to pay a little visit to the president
of the Criminologists' Club, and to choose the evening on which he
happens to be entertaining the other members."

There was more conviction in this sally than in that of our noble
host; but this I attributed to the trained and skilled dissimulation
of the bar. Lord Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the
elaboration of his own idea, and it was with some asperity that he
called upon the butler, now solemnly superintending the removal of
the cloth.

"Leggett! Just send up-stairs to see if all. the doors are open and
the rooms in proper order. That's an awful idea of yours, Kingsmill,
or of mine!" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of his order by
an effort that I could follow. "We should look fools. I don't know
which of us it was, by the way, who seduced the rest from the main
stream of blood into this burglarious backwater. Are you familiar
with De Quincey's masterpiece on 'Murder as a Fine Art,' Mr. Raffles?"

"I believe I once read it," replied Raffles doubtfully.

"You must read it again," pursued the earl. "It is the last word
on a great subject; all. we can hope to add is some baleful
illustration or bloodstained footnote, not unworthy of De Quincey's
text. "Well, Leggett?"

The venerable butler stood wheezing at his elbow. I had not hitherto
observed that the man was an asthmatic.