E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (2 page)

Yet I not only kept my chair with patience, but I acquired an
incongruous equanimity in that half-hour. Insensibly I had
shifted my burden to the broad shoulders of this splendid friend,
and my thoughts wandered with my eyes as the minutes passed. The
room was the good-sized, square one, with the folding doors, the
marble mantel-piece, and the gloomy, old-fashioned distinction
peculiar to the Albany. It was charmingly furnished and
arranged, with the right amount of negligence and the right
amount of taste. What struck me most, however, was the absence
of the usual insignia of a cricketer's den. Instead of the
conventional rack of war-worn bats, a carved oak bookcase, with
every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one wall; and
where I looked for cricketing groups, I found reproductions of
such works as "Love and Death" and "The Blessed Damozel," in
dusty frames and different parallels. The man might have been a
minor poet instead of an athlete of the first water. But there
had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his
complex composition; some of these very pictures I had myself
dusted in his study at school; and they set me thinking of yet
another of his many sides—and of the little incident to which he
had just referred.

Everybody knows how largely the tone of a public school depends
on that of the eleven, and on the character of the captain of
cricket in particular; and I have never heard it denied that in
A. J. Raffles's time our tone was good, or that such influence as
he troubled to exert was on the side of the angels. Yet it was
whispered in the school that he was in the habit of parading the
town at night in loud checks and a false beard. It was
whispered, and disbelieved. I alone knew it for a fact; for
night after night had I pulled the rope up after him when the
rest of the dormitory were asleep, and kept awake by the hour to
let it down again on a given signal. Well, one night he was
over-bold, and within an ace of ignominious expulsion in the
hey-day of his fame. Consummate daring and extraordinary nerve
on his part, aided, doubtless, by some little presence of mind on
mine, averted the untoward result; and no more need be said of a
discreditable incident. But I cannot pretend to have forgotten
it in throwing myself on this man's mercy in my desperation. And
I was wondering how much of his leniency was owing to the fact
that Raffles had not forgotten it either, when he stopped and
stood over my chair once more.

"I've been thinking of that night we had the narrow squeak," he
began. "Why do you start?"

"I was thinking of it too."

He smiled, as though he had read my thoughts.

"Well, you were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny; you
didn't talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no questions and you
told no tales. I wonder if you're like that now?"

"I don't know," said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. "I've made
such a mess of my own affairs that I trust myself about as little
as I'm likely to be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my
life went back on a friend. I will say that, otherwise perhaps I
mightn't be in such a hole to-night."

"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent
to some hidden train of thought; "exactly what I remember of you,
and I'll bet it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't
alter, Bunny. We only develop. I suppose neither you nor I are
really altered since you used to let down that rope and I used to
come up it hand over hand. You would stick at nothing for a
pal—what?"

"At nothing in this world," I was pleased to cry.

"Not even at a crime?" said Raffles, smiling.

I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he
was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever,
and for my part I was in no mood for reservations.

"No, not even at that," I declared; "name your crime, and I'm
your man."

He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in
doubt; then turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and
the little cynical laugh that was all his own.

"You're a nice chap, Bunny! A real desperate character—what?
Suicide one moment, and any crime I like the next! What you want
is a drag, my boy, and you did well to come to a decent
law-abiding citizen with a reputation to lose. None the less we
must have that money to-night—by hook or crook."

"To-night, Raffles?"

"The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock to-morrow
morning is an hour of risk. Let one of those checks get round to
your own bank, and you and it are dishonored together. No, we
must raise the wind to-night and re-open your account first thing
to-morrow. And I rather think I know where the wind can be
raised."

"At two o'clock in the morning?"

"Yes."

"But how—but where—at such an hour?"

"From a friend of mine here in Bond Street."

"He must be a very intimate friend!"

"Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and a
latch-key all to myself."

"You would knock him up at this hour of the night?"

"If he's in bed."

"And it's essential that I should go in with you?"

"Absolutely."

"Then I must; but I'm bound to say I don't like the idea,
Raffles."

"Do you prefer the alternative?" asked my companion, with a
sneer. "No, hang it, that's unfair!" he cried apologetically in
the same breath. "I quite understand. It's a beastly ordeal.
But it would never do for you to stay outside. I tell you what,
you shall have a peg before we start—just one. There's the
whiskey, here's a syphon, and I'll be putting on an overcoat
while you help yourself."

Well, I daresay I did so with some freedom, for this plan of his
was not the less distasteful to me from its apparent
inevitability. I must own, however, that it possessed fewer
terrors before my glass was empty. Meanwhile Raffles rejoined
me, with a covert coat over his blazer, and a soft felt hat set
carelessly on the curly head he shook with a smile as I passed
him the decanter.

"When we come back," said he. "Work first, play afterward. Do
you see what day it is?" he added, tearing a leaflet from a
Shakespearian calendar, as I drained my glass. "March 15th.
'The Ides of March, the Ides of March, remember.' Eh, Bunny, my
boy? You won't forget them, will you?"

And, with a laugh, he threw some coals on the fire before turning
down the gas like a careful householder. So we went out together
as the clock on the chimney-piece was striking two.

Piccadilly was a trench of raw white fog, rimmed with blurred
street-lamps, and lined with a thin coating of adhesive mud. We
met no other wayfarers on the deserted flagstones, and were
ourselves favored with a very hard stare from the constable of
the beat, who, however, touched his helmet on recognizing my
companion.

"You see, I'm known to the police," laughed Raffles as we passed
on. "Poor devils, they've got to keep their weather eye open on
a night like this! A fog may be a bore to you and me, Bunny, but
it's a perfect godsend to the criminal classes, especially so
late in their season. Here we are, though—and I'm hanged if
the beggar isn't in bed and asleep after all!"

We had turned into Bond Street, and had halted on the curb a few
yards down on the right. Raffles was gazing up at some windows
across the road, windows barely discernible through the mist, and
without the glimmer of a light to throw them out. They were over
a jeweller's shop, as I could see by the peep-hole in the shop
door, and the bright light burning within. But the entire "upper
part," with the private street-door next the shop, was black and
blank as the sky itself.

"Better give it up for to-night," I urged. "Surely the morning
will be time enough!"

"Not a bit of it," said Raffles. "I have his key. We'll surprise
him. Come along."

And seizing my right arm, he hurried me across the road, opened
the door with his latch-key, and in another moment had shut it
swiftly but softly behind us. We stood together in the dark.
Outside, a measured step was approaching; we had heard it through
the fog as we crossed the street; now, as it drew nearer, my
companion's fingers tightened on my arm.

"It may be the chap himself," he whispered. "He's the devil of a
night-bird. Not a sound, Bunny! We'll startle the life out of
him. Ah!"

The measured step had passed without a pause. Raffles drew a deep
breath, and his singular grip of me slowly relaxed.

"But still, not a sound," he continued in the same whisper;
"we'll take a rise out of him, wherever he is! Slip off your
shoes and follow me."

Well, you may wonder at my doing so; but you can never have met
A. J. Raffles. Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of
sinking the commander in the leader. And it was impossible not
to follow one who led with such a zest. You might question, but
you followed first. So now, when I heard him kick off his own
shoes, I did the same, and was on the stairs at his heels before
I realized what an extraordinary way was this of approaching a
stranger for money in the dead of night. But obviously Raffles
and he were on exceptional terms of intimacy, and I could not but
infer that they were in the habit of playing practical jokes upon
each other.

We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I had time to make more
than one note before we reached the top. The stair was
uncarpeted. The spread fingers of my right hand encountered
nothing on the damp wall; those of my left trailed through a dust
that could be felt on the banisters. An eerie sensation had been
upon me since we entered the house. It increased with every step
we climbed. What hermit were we going to startle in his cell?

We came to a landing. The banisters led us to the left, and to
the left again. Four steps more, and we were on another and a
longer landing, and suddenly a match blazed from the black. I
never heard it struck. Its flash was blinding. When my eyes
became accustomed to the light, there was Raffles holding up the
match with one hand, and shading it with the other, between bare
boards, stripped walls, and the open doors of empty rooms.

"Where have you brought me?" I cried. "The house is unoccupied!"

"Hush! Wait!" he whispered, and he led the way into one of the
empty rooms. His match went out as we crossed the threshold, and
he struck another without the slightest noise. Then he stood
with his back to me, fumbling with something that I could not
see. But, when he threw the second match away, there was some
other light in its stead, and a slight smell of oil. I stepped
forward to look over his shoulder, but before I could do so he
had turned and flashed a tiny lantern in my face.

"What's this?" I gasped. "What rotten trick are you going to
play?"

"It's played," he answered, with his quiet laugh.

"On me?"

"I am afraid so, Bunny."

"Is there no one in the house, then?"

"No one but ourselves."

"So it was mere chaff about your friend in Bond Street, who could
let us have that money?"

"Not altogether. It's quite true that Danby is a friend of
mine."

"Danby?"

"The jeweller underneath."

"What do you mean?" I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his
meaning dawned upon me. "Are we to get the money from the
jeweller?"

"Well, not exactly."

"What, then?"

"The equivalent—from his shop."

There was no need for another question. I understood everything
but my own density. He had given me a dozen hints, and I had
taken none. And there I stood staring at him, in that empty room;
and there he stood with his dark lantern, laughing at me.

"A burglar!" I gasped. "You—you!"

"I told you I lived by my wits."

"Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why
couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie?" I demanded, piqued to
the quick for all my horror.

"I wanted to tell you," said he. "I was on the point of telling
you more than once. You may remember how I sounded you about
crime, though you have probably forgotten what you said yourself.
I didn't think you meant it at the time, but I thought I'd put
you to the test. Now I see you didn't, and I don't blame you. I
only am to blame. Get out of it, my dear boy, as quick as you
can; leave it to me. You won't give me away, whatever else you
do!"

Oh, his cleverness! His fiendish cleverness! Had he fallen back
on threats, coercion, sneers, all might have been different even
yet. But he set me free to leave him in the lurch. He would not
blame me. He did not even bind me to secrecy; he trusted me. He
knew my weakness and my strength, and was playing on both with
his master's touch.

"Not so fast," said I. "Did I put this into your head, or were
you going to do it in any case?"

"Not in any case," said Raffles. "It's true I've had the key for
days, but when I won to-night I thought of chucking it; for, as a
matter of fact, it's not a one-man job."

"That settles it. I'm your man."

"You mean it?"

"Yes—for to-night."

"Good old Bunny," he murmured, holding the lantern for one moment
to my face; the next he was explaining his plans, and I was
nodding, as though we had been fellow-cracksmen all our days.

"I know the shop," he whispered, "because I've got a few things
there. I know this upper part too; it's been to let for a month,
and I got an order to view, and took a cast of the key before
using it. The one thing I don't know is how to make a connection
between the two; at present there's none. We may make it up here,
though I rather fancy the basement myself. If you wait a minute
I'll tell you."

He set his lantern on the floor, crept to a back window, and
opened it with scarcely a sound: only to return, shaking his
head, after shutting the window with the same care.