E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (11 page)

"My narrow stair was stone, I tumbled down it with little noise,
and had only to push open the iron door, for I had left the keys
in the safe. As I did so I heard a handle turn overhead, and
thanked my gods that I had shut every single door behind me. You
see, old chap, one's caution doesn't always let one in!

"'Who's that knocking?' said Ewbank up above.

"I could not make out the answer, but it sounded to me like the
irrelevant supplication of a spent man. What I did hear,
plainly, was the cocking of the bank revolver before the bolts
were shot back. Then, a tottering step, a hard, short, shallow
breathing, and Ewbank's voice in horror—

"'My God! Good Lord! What's happened to you? You're bleeding
like a pig!'

"'Not now,' came with a grateful sort of sigh.

"'But you have been! What's done it?'

"'Bushrangers.'

"'Down the road?'

"'This and Whittlesea—tied to tree—cock shots—left me—bleed
to death . . .'

The weak voice failed, and the bare feet bolted. Now was my
time—if the poor devil had fainted. But I could not be sure,
and there I crouched down below in the dark, at the half-shut
iron door, not less spellbound than imprisoned. It was just as
well, for Ewbank wasn't gone a minute.

"'Drink this,' I heard him say, and, when the other spoke again,
his voice was stronger.

"'Now I begin to feel alive . . .'

"'Don't talk!'

"'It does me good. You don't know what it was, all those miles
alone, one an hour at the outside! I never thought I should come
through. You must let me tell you—in case I don't!'

"'Well, have another sip.'

"'Thank you . . . I said bushrangers; of course, there are no
such things nowadays.'

"'What were they, then?'

"'Bank-thieves; the one that had the pot shots was the very brute
I drove out of the bank at Coburg, with a bullet in him!"'

"I knew it!"

"Of course you did, Bunny; so did I, down in that strong-room;
but old Ewbank didn't, and I thought he was never going to speak
again.

"'You're delirious,' he says at last. 'Who in blazes do you
think you are?'

"'The new manager.'

"'The new manager's in bed and asleep upstairs.'

"'When did he arrive?'

"'This evening.'

"'Call himself Raffles?'

"'Yes.'

"'Well, I'm damned!' whispered the real man. 'I thought it was
just revenge, but now I see what it was. My dear sir, the man
upstairs is an imposter—if he's upstairs still! He must be one
of the gang. He's going to rob the bank—if he hasn't done so
already!'

"'If he hasn't done so already,' muttered Ewbank after him; 'if
he's upstairs still! By God, if he is, I'm sorry for him!'

"His tone was quiet enough, but about the nastiest I ever heard.
I tell you, Bunny, I was glad I'd brought that revolver. It
looked as though it must be mine against his, muzzle to muzzle.

"'Better have a look down here, first,' said the new manager.

"'While he gets through his window? No, no, he's not down here.'

"'It's easy to have a look.'

"Bunny, if you ask me what was the most thrilling moment of my
infamous career, I say it was that moment. There I stood at the
bottom of those narrow stone stairs, inside the strong-room, with
the door a good foot open, and I didn't know whether it would
creak or not. The light was coming nearer—and I didn't know! I
had to chance it. And it didn't creak a bit; it was far too
solid and well-hung; and I couldn't have banged it if I tried, it
was too heavy; and it fitted so close that I felt and heard the
air squeeze out in my face. Every shred of light went out,
except the streak underneath, and it brightened. How I blessed
that door!

"'No, he's not down THERE,' I heard, as though through
cotton-wool; then the streak went out too, and in a few seconds I
ventured to open once more, and was in time to hear them creeping
to my room.

"Well, now there was not a fifth of a second to be lost; but I'm
proud to say I came up those stairs on my toes and fingers, and
out of that bank (they'd gone and left the door open) just as
gingerly as though my time had been my own. I didn't even forget
to put on the hat that the doctor's mare was eating her oats out
of, as well as she could with a bit, or it alone would have
landed me. I didn't even gallop away, but just jogged off
quietly in the thick dust at the side of the road (though I own
my heart was galloping), and thanked my stars the bank was at
that end of the township, in which I really hadn't set foot. The
very last thing I heard was the two managers raising Cain and the
coachman. And now, Bunny—"

He stood up and stretched himself, with a smile that ended in a
yawn. The black windows had faded through every shade of indigo;
they now framed their opposite neighbors, stark and livid in the
dawn; and the gas seemed turned to nothing in the globes.

"But that's not all?" I cried.

"I'm sorry to say it is," said Raffles apologetically. "The
thing should have ended with an exciting chase, I know, but
somehow it didn't. I suppose they thought I had got no end of a
start; then they had made up their minds that I belonged to the
gang, which was not so many miles away; and one of them had got
as much as he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn't
to know all that, and I'm bound to say that there was plenty of
excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel
when I got among the trees! Though we must have made it over
fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail's pace; and
those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch
that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By
Jove, it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under
branches with your face in the mane! I told you about the forest
of dead gums? It looked perfectly ghostly in the moonlight. And
I found it as still as I had left it—so still that I pulled up
there, my first halt, and lay with my ear to the ground for two
or three minutes. But I heard nothing—not a thing but the
mare's bellow and my own heart. I'm sorry, Bunny; but if ever
you write my memoirs, you won't have any difficulty in working up
that chase. Play those dead gum-trees for all they're worth, and
let the bullets fly like hail. I'll turn round in my saddle to
see Ewbank coming up hell-to-leather in his white suit, and I'll
duly paint it red. Do it in the third person, and they won't
know how it's going to end."

"But I don't know myself," I complained. "Did the mare carry you
all the way back to Melbourne?"

"Every rod, pole or perch! I had her well seen to at our hotel,
and returned her to the doctor in the evening. He was
tremendously tickled to hear that I had been bushed; next morning
he brought me the paper to show me what I had escaped at Yea!"

"Without suspecting anything?"

"Ah!" said Raffles, as he put out the gas; "that's a point on
which I've never made up my mind. The mare and her color was a
coincidence—luckily she was only a bay—and I fancied the
condition of the beast must have told a tale. The doctor's
manner was certainly different. I'm inclined to think he
suspected something, though not the right thing. I wasn't
expecting him, and I fear my appearance may have increased his
suspicions."

I asked him why.

"I used to have rather a heavy moustache," said Raffles, "but I
lost it the day after I lost my innocence."

Of the various robberies in which we were both concerned, it is
but the few, I find, that will bear telling at any length. Not
that the others contained details which even I would hesitate to
recount; it is, rather, the very absence of untoward incident
which renders them useless for my present purpose. In point of
fact our plans were so craftily laid (by Raffles) that the
chances of a hitch were invariably reduced to a minimum before we
went to work. We might be disappointed in the market value of
our haul; but it was quite the exception for us to find ourselves
confronted by unforeseen impediments, or involved in a really
dramatic dilemma. There was a sameness even in our spoil; for,
of course, only the most precious stones are worth the trouble we
took and the risks we ran. In short, our most successful
escapades would prove the greatest weariness of all in narrative
form; and none more so than the dull affair of the Ardagh
emeralds, some eight or nine weeks after the Milchester cricket
week. The former, however, had a sequel that I would rather
forget than all our burglaries put together.

It was the evening after our return from Ireland, and I was
waiting at my rooms for Raffles, who had gone off as usual to
dispose of the plunder. Raffles had his own method of conducting
this very vital branch of our business, which I was well content
to leave entirely in his hands. He drove the bargains, I
believe, in a thin but subtle disguise of the flashy-seedy order,
and always in the Cockney dialect, of which he had made himself a
master. Moreover, he invariably employed the same "fence," who
was ostensibly a money-lender in a small (but yet notorious) way,
and in reality a rascal as remarkable as Raffles himself. Only
lately I also had been to the man, but in my proper person. We
had needed capital for the getting of these very emeralds, and I
had raised a hundred pounds, on the terms you would expect, from
a soft-spoken graybeard with an ingratiating smile, an incessant
bow, and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to rim of
a pair of spectacles. So the original sinews and the final
spoils of war came in this case from the self-same source—a
circumstance which appealed to us both.

But these same final spoils I was still to see, and I waited and
waited with an impatience that grew upon me with the growing
dusk. At my open window I had played Sister Ann until the faces
in the street below were no longer distinguishable. And now I was
tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible hypotheses—a grip
that tightened when at last the lift-gates opened with a clatter
outside—that held me breathless until a well-known tattoo
followed on my door.

"In the dark!" said Raffles, as I dragged him in. "Why, Bunny,
what's wrong?"

"Nothing—now you've come," said I, shutting the door behind him
in a fever of relief and anxiety. "Well? Well? What did they
fetch?"

"Five hundred."

"Down?"

"Got it in my pocket."

"Good man!" I cried. "You don't know what a stew I've been in.
I'll switch on the light. I've been thinking of you and nothing
else for the last hour. I—I was ass enough to think something
had gone wrong!"

Raffles was smiling when the white light filled the room, but for
the moment I did not perceive the peculiarity of his smile. I
was fatuously full of my own late tremors and present relief; and
my first idiotic act was to spill some whiskey and squirt the
soda-water all over in my anxiety to do instant justice to the
occasion.

"So you thought something had happened?" said Raffles, leaning
back in my chair as he lit a cigarette, and looking much amused.
"What would you say if something had? Sit tight, my dear chap!
It was nothing of the slightest consequence, and it's all over
now. A stern chase and a long one, Bunny, but I think I'm well
to windward this time."

And suddenly I saw that his collar was limp, his hair matted, his
boots thick with dust.

"The police?" I whispered aghast.

"Oh, dear, no; only old Baird."

"Baird! But wasn't it Baird who took the emeralds?"

"It was."

"Then how came he to chase you?"

"My dear fellow, I'll tell you if you give me a chance; it's
really nothing to get in the least excited about. Old Baird has
at last spotted that I'm not quite the common cracksman I would
have him think me. So he's been doing his best to run me to my
burrow."

"And you call that nothing!"

"It would be something if he had succeeded; but he has still to
do that. I admit, however, that he made me sit up for the time
being. It all comes of going on the job so far from home. There
was the old brute with the whole thing in his morning paper. He
KNEW it must have been done by some fellow who could pass himself
off for a gentleman, and I saw his eyebrows go up the moment I
told him I was the man, with the same old twang that you could
cut with a paper-knife. I did my best to get out of it—swore I
had a pal who was a real swell—but I saw very plainly that I had
given myself away. He gave up haggling. He paid my price as
though he enjoyed doing it. But I FELT him following me when I
made tracks; though, of course, I didn't turn round to see."

"Why not?"

"My dear Bunny, it's the very worst thing you can do. As long as
you look unsuspecting they'll keep their distance, and so long as
they keep their distance you stand a chance. Once show that you
know you're being followed, and it's flight or fight for all
you're worth. I never even looked round; and mind you never do
in the same hole. I just hurried up to Blackfriars and booked
for High Street, Kensington, at the top of my voice; and as the
train was leaving Sloane Square out I hopped, and up all those
stairs like a lamplighter, and round to the studio by the back
streets. Well, to be on the safe side, I lay low there all the
afternoon, hearing nothing in the least suspicious, and only
wishing I had a window to look through instead of that beastly
skylight. However, the coast seemed clear enough, and thus far
it was my mere idea that he would follow me; there was nothing to
show he had. So at last I marched out in my proper rig—almost
straight into old Baird's arms!"

"What on earth did you do?"

"Walked past him as though I had never set eyes on him in my
life, and didn't then; took a hansom in the King's Road, and
drove like the deuce to Clapham Junction; rushed on to the
nearest platform, without a ticket, jumped into the first train I
saw, got out at Twickenham, walked full tilt back to Richmond,
took the District to Charing Cross, and here I am! Ready for a
tub and a change, and the best dinner the club can give us. I
came to you first, because I thought you might be getting
anxious. Come round with me, and I won't keep you long."