E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (9 page)

"It isn't hopeless," said he, "but it's bad enough. There'll be
no cricket to-day."

Another hour, and most of us were on our way to catch the early
train; between us we filled a compartment almost to suffocation.
And still we talked all together of the night's event; and still
I was a little hero in my way, for having kept my hold of the one
ruffian who had been taken; and my gratification was subtle and
intense. Raffles watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had
we had together; not a word did we have until we had left the
others at Paddington, and were skimming through the streets in a
hansom with noiseless tires and a tinkling bell.

"Well, Bunny," said Raffles, "so the professors have it, eh?"

"Yes," said I. "And I'm jolly glad!"

"That poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest?"

"That you and I have been on the decent side for once."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"You're hopeless, Bunny, quite hopeless! I take it you wouldn't
have refused your share if the boodle had fallen to us? Yet you
positively enjoy coming off second best—for the second time
running! I confess, however, that the professors' methods were
full of interest to me. I, for one, have probably gained as much
in experience as I have lost in other things. That lowering the
jewel-case out of the window was a very simple and effective
expedient; two of them had been waiting below for it for hours."

"How do you know?" I asked.

"I saw them from my own window, which was just above the dear old
lady's. I was fretting for that necklace in particular, when I
went up to turn in for our last night—and I happened to look out
of my window. In point of fact, I wanted to see whether the one
below was open, and whether there was the slightest chance of
working the oracle with my sheet for a rope. Of course I took
the precaution of turning my light off first, and it was a lucky
thing I did. I saw the pros. right down below, and they never
saw me. I saw a little tiny luminous disk just for an instant,
and then again for an instant a few minutes later. Of course I
knew what it was, for I have my own watch-dial daubed with
luminous paint; it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get no
better. But these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern.
They were under the old lady's window. They were watching the
time. The whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside.
Set a thief to catch a thief: in a minute I had guessed what the
whole thing proved to be."

"And you did nothing!" I exclaimed.

"On the contrary, I went downstairs and straight into Lady
Melrose's room—"

"You did?"

"Without a moment's hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was
prepared to yell as much into her ear-trumpet for all the house
to hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her
dinner to wake easily."

"Well?"

"She didn't stir."

"And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take
her jewels, case and all!"

"All but this," said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. "I
would have shown it you before, but really, old fellow, your face
all day has been worth a fortune to the firm!"

And he opened his fist, to shut it next instant on the bunch of
diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen encircling the
neck of Lady Melrose.

That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since
the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just
mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour,
had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the subject.
It was not for want of trying; he would shake his head, and watch
his cigarette smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half
cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were
no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a
fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated
enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb
or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and
infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse
seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so
that I had given the story up long before the night of our return
from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles's
cricket-bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with
the remains of an Orient label still adhering to the leather. My
eyes had been on this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes
had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned
to hear that yarn.

"It's no use," I replied. "You won't spin it. I must imagine it
for myself."

"How can you?"

"Oh, I begin to know your methods."

"You take it I went in with my eyes open, as I do now, eh?"

"I can't imagine your doing otherwise."

"My dear Bunny, it was the most unpremeditated thing I ever did
in my life!"

His chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden
energy. There was quite an indignant glitter in his eyes.

"I can't believe that," said I craftily. "I can't pay you such a
poor compliment!"

"Then you must be a fool—"

He broke off, stared hard at me, and in a trice stood smiling in
his own despite.

"Or a better knave than I thought you, Bunny, and by Jove it's
the knave! Well—I suppose I'm fairly drawn; I give you best, as
they say out there. As a matter of fact I've been thinking of
the thing myself; last night's racket reminds me of it in one or
two respects. I tell you what, though, this is an occasion in
any case, and I'm going to celebrate it by breaking the one good
rule of my life. I'm going to have a second drink!"

The whiskey tinkled, the syphon fizzed, the ice plopped home; and
seated there in his pyjamas, with the inevitable cigarette,
Raffles told me the story that I had given up hoping to hear.
The windows were wide open; the sounds of Piccadilly floated in
at first. Long before he finished, the last wheels had rattled,
the last brawler was removed, we alone broke the quiet of the
summer night.

". . . No, they do you very well, indeed. You pay for nothing but
drinks, so to speak, but I'm afraid mine were of a comprehensive
character. I had started in a hole, I ought really to have
refused the invitation; then we all went to the Melbourne Cup,
and I had the certain winner that didn't win, and that's not the
only way you can play the fool in Melbourne. I wasn't the steady
old stager I am now, Bunny; my analysis was a confession in
itself. But the others didn't know how hard up I was, and I
swore they shouldn't. I tried the Jews, but they're extra fly
out there. Then I thought of a kinsman of sorts, a second cousin
of my father's whom none of us knew anything about, except that
he was supposed to be in one or other of the Colonies. If he was
a rich man, well and good, I would work him; if not there would
be no harm done. I tried to get on his tracks, and, as luck
would have it, I succeeded (or thought I had) at the very moment
when I happened to have a few days to myself. I was cut over on
the hand, just before the big Christmas match, and couldn't have
bowled a ball if they had played me.

"The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask me if I was any
relation of Raffles of the National Bank, and the pure luck of it
almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high official
in one of the banks, who would finance me on my mere name—could
anything be better? I made up my mind that this Raffles was the
man I wanted, and was awfully sold to find next moment that he
wasn't a high official at all. Nor had the doctor so much as met
him, but had merely read of him in connection with a small
sensation at the suburban branch which my namesake managed; an
armed robber had been rather pluckily beaten off, with a bullet
in him, by this Raffles; and the sort of thing was so common out
there that this was the first I had heard of it! A suburban
branch—my financier had faded into some excellent fellow with a
billet to lose if he called his soul his own. Still a manager was
a manager, and I said I would soon see whether this was the
relative I was looking for, if he would be good enough to give me
the name of that branch.

"'I'll do more,' says the doctor. 'I'll get you the name of the
branch he's been promoted to, for I think I heard they'd moved
him up one already.' And the next day he brought me the name of
the township of Yea, some fifty miles north of Melbourne; but,
with the vagueness which characterized all his information, he
was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not.

"'He's a single man, and his initials are W. F.,' said the
doctor, who was certain enough of the immaterial points. 'He
left his old post several days ago, but it appears he's not due
at the new one till the New Year. No doubt he'll go before then
to take things over and settle in. You might find him up there
and you might not. If I were you I should write.'

"'That'll lose two days,' said I, 'and more if he isn't there,'
for I'd grown quite keen on this up-country manager, and I felt
that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on, a
little conviviality might help matters considerably.

"'Then,' said the doctor, 'I should get a quiet horse and ride.
You needn't use that hand.'

"'Can't I go by train?'

"'You can and you can't. You would still have to ride. I
suppose you're a horseman?'

"'Yes.'

"'Then I should certainly ride all the way. It's a delightful
road, through Whittlesea and over the Plenty Ranges. It'll give
you some idea of the bush, Mr. Raffles, and you'll see the
sources of the water supply of this city, sir. You'll see where
every drop of it comes from, the pure Yan Yean! I wish I had time
to ride with you.'

"'But where can I get a horse?'

"The doctor thought a moment.

"'I've a mare of my own that's as fat as butter for want of
work,' said he. 'It would be a charity to me to sit on her back
for a hundred miles or so, and then I should know you'd have no
temptation to use that hand.'

"'You're far too good!' I protested.

"'You're A. J. Raffles,' he said.

"And if ever there was a prettier compliment, or a finer instance
of even Colonial hospitality, I can only say, Bunny, that I never
heard of either."

He sipped his whiskey, threw away the stump of his cigarette,
and lit another before continuing.

"Well, I managed to write a line to W. F. with my own hand,
which, as you will gather, was not very badly wounded; it was
simply this third finger that was split and in splints; and next
morning the doctor packed me off on a bovine beast that would
have done for an ambulance. Half the team came up to see me
start; the rest were rather sick with me for not stopping to see
the match out, as if I could help them to win by watching them.
They little knew the game I'd got on myself, but still less did I
know the game I was going to play.

"It was an interesting ride enough, especially after passing the
place called Whittlesea, a real wild township on the lower slope
of the ranges, where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot
mutton and tea, with the thermometer at three figures in the
shade. The first thirty miles or so was a good metal road, too
good to go half round the world to ride on, but after Whittlesea
it was a mere track over the ranges, a track I often couldn't see
and left entirely to the mare. Now it dipped into a gully and
ran through a creek, and all the time the local color was inches
thick; gum-trees galore and parrots all colors of the rainbow.
In one place a whole forest of gums had been ring-barked, and
were just as though they had been painted white, without a leaf
or a living thing for miles. And the first living thing I did
meet was the sort to give you the creeps; it was a riderless
horse coming full tilt through the bush, with the saddle twisted
round and the stirrup-irons ringing. Without thinking, I had a
shot at heading him with the doctor's mare, and blocked him just
enough to allow a man who came galloping after to do the rest.

"'Thank ye, mister,' growled the man, a huge chap in a red
checked shirt, with a beard like W. G. Grace, but the very devil
of an expression.

"'Been an accident?' said I, reining up.

"'Yes,' said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more.

"'And a nasty one,' I said, 'if that's blood on the saddle!'

"Well, Bunny, I may be a blackguard myself, but I don't think I
ever looked at a fellow as that chap looked at me. But I stared
him out, and forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted
saddle, and after that he became quite tame. He told me exactly
what had happened. A mate of his had been dragged under a
branch, and had his nose smashed, but that was all; had sat tight
after it till he dropped from loss of blood; another mate was
with him back in the bush.

"As I've said already, Bunny, I wasn't the old stager that I am
now—in any respect—and we parted good enough friends. He asked
me which way I was going, and, when I told him, he said I should
save seven miles, and get a good hour earlier to Yea, by striking
off the track and making for a peak that we could see through the
trees, and following a creek that I should see from the peak.
Don't smile, Bunny! I began by saying I was a child in those
days. Of course, the short cut was the long way round; and it
was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single
street of Yea.

"I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran
down from the veranda.

"'Mr. Raffles?' said he.

"'Mr. Raffles,' said I, laughing as I shook his hand.

"'You're late.'

"'I was misdirected.'

"'That all? I'm relieved,' he said. 'Do you know what they are
saying? There are some brand-new bushrangers on the road between
Whittlesea and this—a second Kelly gang! They'd have caught a
Tartar in you, eh?'