E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (18 page)

"It'll all. come out," said the secretary. "They'll tell us at the
central, and we shall find out fast enough."

"It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's have a drink and then
rouse the devil up."

But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this
meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time being, the police
would promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the
burglar, and the fact of my not having said a word about it would
be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate
us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the
Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of
circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of
conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke
up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature
of my whole conduct on this occasion. But any sheep would be
resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.

"I wonder if he rang me up?" I exclaimed, as if inspired.

"You, sonny?" echoed Maguire, decanter in hand. "What in hell could
he know about you?"

"Or what could you know about him?" amended the secretary, fixing
me with eyes like drills.

"Nothing," I admitted, regretting my temerity with all. my heart.
"But some one did ring me up about an hour ago. I thought it was
Raffles. I told you I expected to find him here, if you remember."

"But I don't see what that's got to do with the crook," pursued the
secretary, with his relentless eyes boring deeper and deeper into
mine.

"No more do I," was my miserable reply. But there was a certain
comfort in his words, and some simultaneous promise in the quantity
of spirit which Maguire splashed into his glass.

"Were you cut off sudden?" asked the secretary, reaching for the
decanter, as the three of us sat round the octagonal table.

"So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew who it was who rang me
up. No, thank you - not any for me."

"What!" cried Maguire, raising a depressed head suddenly. "You
won't have a drink in my house? Take care, young man. That's not
being a good boy!"

"But I've been dining out," I expostulated, "and had my whack. I
really have."

Barney Maguire smote the table with terrific

"Say, sonny, I like you a lot," said he. "But I shan't like you
any if you're not a good boy!"

"Very well, very well," I said hurriedly. "One finger, if I must."

And the secretary helped me to not more than two.

"Why should it have been your friend Raffles?" he inquired,
returning remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire roared "Drink
up!" and then drooped once more.

"I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was the first person who
occurred to me. We are both on the telephone, you see. And we had
made a bet - "

The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched.
Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and
beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic
armchair.

"What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary
was blinking as he drained his glass.

"About the very thing we've just had explained to us," said I,
watching my man intently as I spoke. "I made sure it was a man-trap.
Raffles thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous
argument about it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-trap. I said it
was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the
man-trap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was
right - it wasn't a man-trap. But it's every bit as good - every
little bit - and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except
me!"

I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well
have raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over
again to see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary
to open his eyes. It seemed to have had the very opposite effect.
His head fell forward on the table, with never a quiver at the
blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own
sprawling arms. And there sat Maguire bolt upright, but for the
jowl upon his shirt-front, while the sequins twinkled in a regular
rise and fall upon the reclining form of the lady in the fanciful
chair. All. three were sound asleep, by what accident or by whose
design I did not pause to inquire; it was enough to ascertain the
fact beyond all. chance of error.

I turned my attention to Raffles last of all. There was the other
side of the medal. Raffles was still sleeping as sound as the
enemy - or so I feared at first I shook him gently: he made no
sign. I introduced vigor into the process: he muttered incoherently.
I caught and twisted an unresisting wrist - and at that he yelped
profanely. But it was many and many an anxious moment before his
blinking eyes knew mine.

"Bunny!" he yawned, and nothing more until his position came back
to him. "So you came to me," he went on, in a tone that thrilled
me with its affectionate appreciation, "as I knew you would! Have
they turned up yet? They will any minute, you know; there's not
one to lose."

"No, they won't, old man!" I whispered. And he sat up and saw the
comatose trio for himself.

Raffles seemed less amazed at the result than I had been as a
puzzled witness of the process; on the other hand, I had never seen
anything quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his
blackened countenance like a light. It was all. obviously no great
surprise, and no puzzle at all., to Raffles.

"How much did they have, Bunny?" were his first whispered words.

"Maguire a good three fingers, and the others at least two."

"Then we needn't lower our voices, and we needn't walk on our toes.
Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking me in the ribs, and I believe
it must have been true."

He had risen with a hand to his side and a wry look on his sweep's
face.

"You can guess which of them it was," said I. "The beast is jolly
well served!"

And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal
bruiser of his time.

"He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him,"
said Raffles. "I don't suppose we could rouse him now if we tried.
How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose I took? About a
tablespoonful! I guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making
sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the
position of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to
see the fun; but in another minute I could hardly keep my eyes open.
I realized then that I was fairly poisoned with some subtle drug.
If I left the house at all. in that state, I must leave the spoil
behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag
itself. In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and
that might have led to anything."

"So you rang me up!"

"It was my last brilliant inspiration - a sort of flash in the
brain-pan before the end - and I remember very little about it. I
was more asleep than awake at the time."

"You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue."

"I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny."

"You fell in a heap before you came to the end."

"You didn't hear that through the telephone?"

"As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was
Maguire who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out."

I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this
point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in
his.

"You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my
body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn't in it with
you, Bunny!"

"It was no credit to me - it was rather the other thing," said I,
remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath.
"You know old Swigger Morrison?" I added in final explanation. "I
had been dining with him at his club!"

Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes
was still my infinite reward.

"I don't care," said he, "how deeply you had been dining: in vino
veritas, Bunny, and your pluck would always out! I have never
doubted it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to
get us out of this mess."

My face must have fallen, as my heart sank at these words. I had
said to myself that we were out of the mess already - that we had
merely to make a clean escape from the house - now the easiest thing
in the world. But as I looked at Raffles, and as Raffles looked
at me, on the threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept
on without sound or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay
before us. It was twofold; and the funny thing was that I had seen
both horns of the dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his
senses. But with Raffles in his right mind, I had ceased to apply
my own, or to carry my share of our common burden another inch. It
had been an unconscious withdrawal on my part, an instinctive
tribute to my leader; but, I was sufficiently ashamed of it as we
stood and faced the problem in each other's eyes.

"If we simply cleared out," continued Raffles, "you would be
incriminated in the first place as my accomplice, and once they had
you they would have a compass with the needle pointing straight
to me. They mustn't have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us
both. And for my part they may as well!"

I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself in Raffles, but in
my case a mere truism.

"It's easy enough for me," he went on. "I am a common house-breaker,
and I escape. They don't know me from Noah. But they do know you;
and how do you come to let me escape? What has happened to you,
Bunny? That's the crux. What could have happened after they all.
dropped off?" And for a minute Raffles frowned and smiled like a
sensation novelist working out a plot; then the light broke, and
transfigured him through his burnt cork. "I've got it, Bunny!" he
exclaimed. "You took some of the stuff yourself, though of course
not nearly so much as they did.

"Splendid!" I cried. "They really were pressing it upon me at the
end, and I did say it must be very little."

"You dozed off in your turn, but you were naturally the first to
come to yourself. I had flown; so had the gold brick, the jewelled
belt, and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You
couldn't succeed; nor would you if you did try. So what did you do?
What's the only really innocent thing you could do in the
circumstances?"

"Go for the police," I suggested dubiously, little relishing the
prospect.

"There's a telephone installed for the purpose," said Raffles. "I
should ring them up, if I were you. Try not to look blue about it,
Bunny. They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and what you
have to tell them is a mere microbe to the camels I've made them
swallow without a grain of salt. It's really the most convincing
story one could conceive; but unfortunately there's another point
which will take more explaining away."

And even Raffles looked grave enough as I nodded.

"You mean that they'll find out you rang me up?"

"They may," said Raffles. "I see that I managed to replace the
receiver all. right. But still - they may."

"I'm afraid they will," said I, uncomfortably. "I'm very much
afraid I gave something of the kind away. You see, you had not
replaced the receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay.
This very question came up, and the brutes themselves seemed so
quick to see its possibilities that I thought best to take the
bull by the horns and own that I had been rung up by somebody.
To be absolutely honest, I even went so far as to say I thought
it was Raffles!"

"You didn't, Bunny!"

"What could I say? I was obliged to think of somebody, and I saw
they were not going to recognize you. So I put up a yarn about a
wager we had made about this very trap of Maguire's. You see,
Raffles, I've never properly told you how I got in, and there's
no time now; but the first thing I had said was that I half
expected to find you here before me. That was in case they
spotted you at once. But it made all. that part about the telephone
fit in rather well."

"I should think it did, Bunny," murmured Raffles, in a tone that
added sensibly to my reward. "I couldn't have done better myself,
and you will forgive my saying that you have never in your life
done half so well. Talk about that crack you gave me on the head!
You have made it up to me a hundredfold by all. you have done
to-night. But the bother of it is that there's still so much to
do, and to hit upon, and so precious little time for thought as
well as action."

I took out my watch and showed it to Raffles without a word. It
was three o'clock in the morning, and the latter end of March. In
little more than an hour there would be dim daylight in the streets.
Raffles roused himself from a reverie with sudden decision.

"There's only one thing for it, Bunny," said he. "We must trust
each other and divide the labor. You ring up the police,(and leave
the rest to me."

"You haven't hit upon any reason for the sort of burglar they think
you were, ringing up the kind of man they know I am?"

"Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so,
and after all. it isn't for you to give the explanation. It would
be highly suspicious if you did."

"So it would," I agreed.

"Then will you trust me to hit on something - if possible before
morning - in any case by the time it s wanted? I won't fail you,
Bunny. You must see how I can never, never fail you after to-night!"

That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and
remained on guard over the three sleepers while Raffles stole
upstairs. I have since learned that there were servants at the
top of the house, and in the basement a man, who actually heard
some of our proceedings! But he was mercifully too accustomed to
nocturnal orgies, and those of a far more uproarious character, to
appear unless summoned to the scene. I believe he heard Raffles
leave. But no secret was made of his exit: he let himself out
and told me afterward that the first person he encountered in the
street was the constable on the beat. Raffles wished him
good-morning, as well he might; for he had been upstairs to wash
his face and hands; and in the prize-fighter's great hat and fur
coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of
his having the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver
statuette of Maguire in the other, and round his waist the
jewelled belt presented to that worthy by the State of Nevada.