E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (4 page)

"Like it?" I cried out. "Not I! It's no life for me. Once is
enough!"

"You wouldn't give me a hand another time?"

"Don't ask me, Raffles. Don't ask me, for God's sake!"

"Yet you said you would do anything for me! You asked me to name
my crime! But I knew at the time you didn't mean it; you didn't
go back on me to-night, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness
knows! I suppose I'm ungrateful, and unreasonable, and all that.
I ought to let it end at this. But you're the very man for me,
Bunny, the—very—man! Just think how we got through to-night.
Not a scratch—not a hitch! There's nothing very terrible in it,
you see; there never would be, while we worked together."

He was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder; he
was smiling as he knew so well how to smile. I turned on my
heel, planted my elbows on the chimney-piece, and my burning head
between my hands. Next instant a still heartier hand had fallen
on my back.

"All right, my boy! You are quite right and I'm worse than
wrong. I'll never ask it again. Go, if you want to, and come
again about mid-day for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of
course, I'll get you out of your scrape—especially after the way
you've stood by me to-night."

I was round again with my blood on fire.

"I'll do it again," I said, through my teeth.

He shook his head. "Not you," he said, smiling quite
good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm.

"I will," I cried with an oath. "I'll lend you a hand as often
as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in it once.
I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go
back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing matters another rap!
When you want me, I'm your man!"

And that is how Raffles and I joined felonious forces on the Ides
of March.

London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name
and nothing more. Reuben Rosenthall had made his millions on the
diamond fields of South Africa, and had come home to enjoy them
according to his lights; how he went to work will scarcely be
forgotten by any reader of the halfpenny evening papers, which
revelled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and
present prodigality, varied with interesting particulars of the
extraordinary establishment which the millionaire set up in St.
John's Wood. Here he kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were
literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous
diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a
prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any
means the worst element in the Rosenthall melange. So said
common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently established by the
interference of the police on at least one occasion, followed by
certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with
justifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid.

And this was all one knew of Reuben Rosenthall up to the time
when the Old Bohemian Club, having fallen on evil days, found it
worth its while to organize a great dinner in honor of so wealthy
an exponent of the club's principles. I was not at the banquet
myself, but a member took Raffles, who told me all about it that
very night.

"Most extraordinary show I ever went to in my life," said he.
"As for the man himself—well, I was prepared for something
grotesque, but the fellow fairly took my breath away. To begin
with, he's the most astounding brute to look at, well over six
feet, with a chest like a barrel, and a great hook-nose, and the
reddest hair and whiskers you ever saw. Drank like a
fire-engine, but only got drunk enough to make us a speech that I
wouldn't have missed for ten pounds. I'm only sorry you weren't
there, too, Bunny, old chap."

I began to be sorry myself, for Raffles was anything but an
excitable person, and never had I seen him so excited before.
Had he been following Rosenthall's example? His coming to my
rooms at midnight, merely to tell me about his dinner, was in
itself enough to excuse a suspicion which was certainly at
variance with my knowledge of A. J. Raffles.

"What did he say?" I inquired mechanically, divining some subtler
explanation of this visit, and wondering what on earth it could
be.

"Say?" cried Raffles. "What did he not say! He boasted of his
rise, he bragged of his riches, and he blackguarded society for
taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer pique
and jealousy because he had so much. He mentioned names, too,
with the most charming freedom, and swore he was as good a man as
the Old Country had to show—PACE the Old Bohemians. To prove it
he pointed to a great diamond in the middle of his shirt-front
with a little finger loaded with another just like it: which of
our bloated princes could show a pair like that? As a matter of
fact, they seemed quite wonderful stones, with a curious purple
gleam to them that must mean a pot of money. But old Rosenthall
swore he wouldn't take fifty thousand pounds for the two, and
wanted to know where the other man was who went about with
twenty-five thousand in his shirt-front and another twenty-five
on his little finger. He didn't exist. If he did, he wouldn't
have the pluck to wear them. But he had—he'd tell us why. And
before you could say Jack Robinson he had whipped out a whacking
great revolver!"

"Not at the table?"

"At the table! In the middle of his speech! But it was nothing
to what he wanted to do. He actually wanted us to let him write
his name in bullets on the opposite wall, to show us why he
wasn't afraid to go about in all his diamonds! That brute
Purvis, the prize-fighter, who is his paid bully, had to bully
his master before he could be persuaded out of it. There was
quite a panic for the moment; one fellow was saying his prayers
under the table, and the waiters bolted to a man."

"What a grotesque scene!"

"Grotesque enough, but I rather wish they had let him go the
whole hog and blaze away. He was as keen as knives to show us
how he could take care of his purple diamonds; and, do you know,
Bunny,
I
was as keen as knives to see."

And Raffles leaned towards me with a sly, slow smile that made
the hidden meaning of his visit only too plain to me at last.

"So you think of having a try for his diamonds yourself?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It is horribly obvious, I admit. But—yes, I have set my heart
upon them! To be quite frank, I have had them on my conscience
for some time; one couldn't hear so much of the man, and his
prize-fighter, and his diamonds, without feeling it a kind of
duty to have a go for them; but when it comes to brandishing a
revolver and practically challenging the world, the thing becomes
inevitable. It is simply thrust upon one. I was fated to hear
that challenge, Bunny, and I, for one, must take it up. I was
only sorry I couldn't get on my hind legs and say so then and
there."

"Well," I said, "I don't see the necessity as things are with us;
but, of course, I'm your man."

My tone may have been half-hearted. I did my best to make it
otherwise. But it was barely a month since our Bond Street
exploit, and we certainly could have afforded to behave ourselves
for some time to come. We had been getting along so nicely: by
his advice I had scribbled a thing or two; inspired by Raffles, I
had even done an article on our own jewel robbery; and for the
moment I was quite satisfied with this sort of adventure. I
thought we ought to know when we were well off, and could see no
point in our running fresh risks before we were obliged. On the
other hand, I was anxious not to show the least disposition to
break the pledge that I had given a month ago. But it was not on
my manifest disinclination that Raffles fastened.

"Necessity, my dear Bunny? Does the writer only write when the
wolf is at the door? Does the painter paint for bread alone?
Must you and I be DRIVEN to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of
Whitechapel? You pain me, my dear chap; you needn't laugh,
because you do. Art for art's sake is a vile catchword, but I
confess it appeals to me. In this case my motives are absolutely
pure, for I doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of such
peculiar stones. But if I don't have a try for them—after
to-night—I shall never be able to hold up my head again."

His eye twinkled, but it glittered, too.

"We shall have our work cut out," was all I said.

"And do you suppose I should be keen on it if we hadn't?" cried
Raffles. "My dear fellow, I would rob St. Paul's Cathedral if I
could, but I could no more scoop a till when the shopwalker
wasn't looking than I could bag the apples out of an old woman's
basket. Even that little business last month was a sordid
affair, but it was necessary, and I think its strategy redeemed
it to some extent. Now there's some credit, and more sport, in
going where they boast they're on their guard against you. The
Bank of England, for example, is the ideal crib; but that would
need half a dozen of us with years to give to the job; and
meanwhile Reuben Rosenthall is high enough game for you and me.
We know he's armed. We know how Billy Purvis can fight. It'll
be no soft thing, I grant you. But what of that, my good
Bunny—what of that? A man's reach must exceed his grasp, dear
boy, or what the dickens is a heaven for?"

"I would rather we didn't exceed ours just yet," I answered
laughing, for his spirit was irresistible, and the plan was
growing upon me, despite my qualms.

"Trust me for that," was his reply; "I'll see you through. After
all I expect to find that the difficulties are nearly all on the
surface. These fellows both drink like the devil, and that
should simplify matters considerably. But we shall see, and we
must take our time. There will probably turn out to be a dozen
different ways in which the thing might be done, and we shall
have to choose between them. It will mean watching the house for
at least a week in any case; it may mean lots of other things
that will take much longer; but give me a week and I will tell
you more. That's to say, if you're really on?"

"Of course I am," I replied indignantly. "But why should I give
you a week? Why shouldn't we watch the house together?"

"Because two eyes are as good as four and take up less room.
Never hunt in couples unless you're obliged. But don't you look
offended, Bunny; there'll be plenty for you to do when the time
comes, that I promise you. You shall have your share of the fun,
never fear, and a purple diamond all to yourself—if we're
lucky."

On the whole, however, this conversation left me less than
lukewarm, and I still remember the depression which came upon me
when Raffles was gone. I saw the folly of the enterprise to
which I had committed myself—the sheer, gratuitous, unnecessary
folly of it. And the paradoxes in which Raffles revelled, and
the frivolous casuistry which was nevertheless half sincere, and
which his mere personality rendered wholly plausible at the
moment of utterance, appealed very little to me when recalled in
cold blood. I admired the spirit of pure mischief in which he
seemed prepared to risk his liberty and his life, but I did not
find it an infectious spirit on calm reflection. Yet the thought
of withdrawal was not to be entertained for a moment. On the
contrary, I was impatient of the delay ordained by Raffles; and,
perhaps, no small part of my secret disaffection came of his
galling determination to do without me until the last moment.

It made it no better that this was characteristic of the man and
of his attitude towards me. For a month we had been, I suppose,
the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was
curiously incomplete. With all his charming frankness, there was
in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible
enough to be very irritating. He had the instinctive
secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make
mysteries of matters of common concern; for example, I never knew
how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels, on the
proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of
hundreds of other young fellows about town. He was consistently
mysterious about that and other details, of which it seemed to me
that I had already earned the right to know everything. I could
not but remember how he had led me into my first felony, by means
of a trick, while yet uncertain whether he could trust me or not.

That I could no longer afford to resent, but I did resent his
want of confidence in me now. I said nothing about it, but it
rankled every day, and never more than in the week that succeeded
the Rosenthall dinner. When I met Raffles at the club he would
tell me nothing; when I went to his rooms he was out, or
pretended to be.

One day he told me he was getting on well, but slowly; it was a
more ticklish game than he had thought; but when I began to ask
questions he would say no more. Then and there, in my annoyance,
I took my own decision. Since he would tell me nothing of the
result of his vigils, I determined to keep one on my own account,
and that very evening found my way to the millionaire's front
gates.

The house he was occupying is, I believe, quite the largest in
the St. John's Wood district. It stands in the angle formed by
two broad thoroughfares, neither of which, as it happens, is a
'bus route, and I doubt if many quieter spots exist within the
four-mile radius. Quiet also was the great square house, in its
garden of grass-plots and shrubs; the lights were low, the
millionaire and his friends obviously spending their evening
elsewhere. The garden walls were only a few feet high. In one
there was a side door opening into a glass passage; in the other
two five-barred, grained-and-varnished gates, one at either end
of the little semi-circular drive, and both wide open. So still
was the place that I had a great mind to walk boldly in and learn
something of the premises; in fact, I was on the point of doing
so, when I heard a quick, shuffling step on the pavement behind
me. I turned round and faced the dark scowl and the dirty
clenched fists of a dilapidated tramp.