E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (8 page)

"It's all up!" I gasped, as he turned up the gas and I shut the
door. "We're being watched. We've been followed down from town.
There's a detective here on the spot!"

"How do YOU know?" asked Raffles, turning upon me quite sharply,
but without the least dismay. And I told him how I knew.

"Of course," I added, "it was the fellow we saw in the inn this
afternoon."

"The detective?" said Raffles. "Do you mean to say you don't
know a detective when you see one, Bunny?"

"If that wasn't the fellow, which is?"

Raffles shook his head.

"To think that you've been talking to him for the last hour in
the billiard-room and couldn't spot what he was!"

"The Scotch photographer—"

I paused aghast.

"Scotch he is," said Raffles, "and photographer he may be. He is
also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard—the very man I sent
the message to that night last April. And you couldn't spot who
he was in a whole hour! O Bunny, Bunny, you were never built for
crime!"

"But," said I, "if that was Mackenzie, who was the fellow you
bolted from at Warbeck?"

"The man he's watching."

"But he's watching us!"

Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye, and shook his head again
before handing me his open cigarette-case.

"I don't know whether smoking's forbidden in one's bedroom, but
you'd better take one of these and stand tight, Bunny, because
I'm going to say something offensive."

I helped myself with a laugh.

"Say what you like, my dear fellow, if it really isn't you and I
that Mackenzie's after."

"Well, then, it isn't, and it couldn't be, and nobody but a born
Bunny would suppose for a moment that it was! Do you seriously
think he would sit there and knowingly watch his man playing pool
under his nose? Well, he might; he's a cool hand, Mackenzie; but
I'm not cool enough to win a pool under such conditions. At
least I don't think I am; it would be interesting to see. The
situation wasn't free from strain as it was, though I knew he
wasn't thinking of us. Crowley told me all about it after
dinner, you see, and then I'd seen one of the men for myself this
afternoon. You thought it was a detective who made me turn tail
at that inn. I really don't know why I didn't tell you at the
time, but it was just the opposite. That loud, red-faced brute is
one of the cleverest thieves in London, and I once had a drink
with him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender from tongue to
toe at the moment, but you will understand that I don't run
unnecessary risks of recognition by a brute like that."

"He's not alone, I hear."

"By no means; there's at least one other man with him; and it's
suggested that there may be an accomplice here in the house."

"Did Lord Crowley tell you so?"

"Crowley and the champagne between them. In confidence, of
course, just as your girl told you; but even in confidence he
never let on about Mackenzie. He told me there was a detective
in the background, but that was all. Putting him up as a guest
is evidently their big secret, to be kept from the other guests
because it might offend them, but more particularly from the
servants whom he's here to watch. That's my reading of the
situation, Bunny, and you will agree with me that it's infinitely
more interesting than we could have imagined it would prove."

"But infinitely more difficult for us," said I, with a sigh of
pusillanimous relief. "Our hands are tied for this week, at all
events."

"Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I admit that the chances
are against us. Yet I'm not so sure of that either. There are
all sorts of possibilities in these three-cornered combinations.
Set A to watch B, and he won't have an eye left for C. That's
the obvious theory, but then Mackenzie's a very big A. I should
be sorry to have any boodle about me with that man in the house.
Yet it would be great to nip in between A and B and score off
them both at once! It would be worth a risk, Bunny, to do that;
it would be worth risking something merely to take on old hands
like B and his men at their own old game! Eh, Bunny? That would
be something like a match. Gentlemen and Players at single
wicket, by Jove!"

His eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day.
They shone with the perverted enthusiasm which was roused in him
only by the contemplation of some new audacity. He kicked off
his shoes and began pacing his room with noiseless rapidity; not
since the night of the Old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall
had Raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence; and I was
not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which
that banquet had been the prelude.

"My dear A. J.," said I in his very own tone, "you're far too
fond of the uphill game; you will eventually fall a victim to the
sporting spirit and nothing else. Take a lesson from our last
escape, and fly lower as you value our skins. Study the house as
much as you like, but do—not—go and shove your head into
Mackenzie's mouth!"

My wealth of metaphor brought him to a stand-still, with his
cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining
eyes.

"You're quite right, Bunny. I won't. I really won't. Yet—you
saw old Lady Melrose's necklace? I've been wanting it for years!
But I'm not going to play the fool; honor bright, I'm not; yet
—by Jove!—to get to windward of the professors and Mackenzie
too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!"

"Well, you mustn't play it this week."

"No, no, I won't. But I wonder how the professors think of going
to work? That's what one wants to know. I wonder if they've
really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their
game! But it's all right, Bunny; don't you be jealous; it shall
be as you wish."

And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed
with an incredibly light heart. I had still enough of the honest
man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to
dread their performance, to deplore their necessity: which is
merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an
incomparably weaker man than Raffles, while every whit as wicked.

I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of
dismissing unpleasant considerations, not intimately connected
with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the
exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous
life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from
it the year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the
long-dreaded cricket-week, I had after all a quite excellent
time.

It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing
disappointment. In the first place, mirabile dictu, there were
one or two even greater duffers than I on the Abbey
cricket-field. Indeed, quite early in the week, when it was of
most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch;
a ball, of which I had merely heard the hum, stuck fast in my
hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public
congratulation. This happy accident was not to be undone even by
me, and, as nothing succeeds like success, and the constant
encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in
itself an immense stimulus, I actually made a run or two in my
very next innings. Miss Melhuish said pretty things to me that
night at the great ball in honor of Viscount Crowley's majority;
she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would
assuredly make their raid, and was full of arch tremors when we
sat out in the garden, though the entire premises were
illuminated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotchman took
countless photographs by day, which he developed by night in a
dark room admirably situated in the servants' part of the house;
and it is my firm belief that only two of his fellow-guests knew
Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard.

The week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday, which
two or three of us intended abandoning early in order to return
to town that night. The match, however, was never played. In
the small hours of the Saturday morning a tragedy took place at
Milchester Abbey.

Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it. My room opened
upon the central gallery, and was not even on the same floor as
that on which Raffles—and I think all the other men—were
quartered. I had been put, in fact, into the dressing-room of
one of the grand suites, and my too near neighbors were old Lady
Melrose and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the
actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first time that
week, I must have been sound asleep since midnight, when all at
once I found myself sitting up breathless. A heavy thud had come
against my door, and now I heard hard breathing and the dull
stamp of muffled feet.

"I've got ye," muttered a voice. "It's no use struggling."

It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear turned me cold.
There was no reply, but the hard breathing grew harder still, and
the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden
panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door. A light burnt
low on the landing, and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying and
staggering in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary.

"Hold this man!" he cried, as I appeared. "Hold the rascal!"

But I stood like a fool until the pair of them backed into me,
when, with a deep breath I flung myself on the fellow, whose face
I had seen at last. He was one of the footmen who waited at
table; and no sooner had I pinned him than the detective loosed
his hold.

"Hang on to him," he cried. "There's more of 'em below."

And he went leaping down the stairs, as other doors opened and
Lord Amersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their
pyjamas. At that my man ceased struggling; but I was still
holding him when Crowley turned up the gas.

"What the devil's all this?" asked Lord Amersteth, blinking.
"Who was that ran downstairs?"

"Mac—Clephane!" said I hastily.

"Aha!" said he, turning to the footman. "So you're the
scoundrel, are you? Well done! Well done! Where was he
caught?"

I had no idea.

"Here's Lady Melrose's door open," said Crowley. "Lady Melrose!
Lady Melrose!"

"You forget she's deaf," said Lord Amersteth. "Ah! that'll be her
maid."

An inner door had opened; next instant there was a little shriek,
and a white figure gesticulated on the threshold.

"Ou donc est l'ecrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenetre est
ouverte. Il a disparu!"

"Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!" exclaimed Lord
Amersteth. "Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Est elle
bien?"

"Oui, milor. Elle dort."

"Sleeps through it all," said my lord. "She's the only one,
then!"

"What made Mackenzie—Clephane—bolt?" young Crowley asked me.

"Said there were more of them below."

"Why the devil couldn't you tell us so before?" he cried, and
went leaping downstairs in his turn.

He was followed by nearly all the cricketers, who now burst upon
the scene in a body, only to desert it for the chase. Raffles
was one of them, and I would gladly have been another, had not
the footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him, and to make a
dash in the direction from which they had come. Lord Amersteth
had him in an instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it
took the two of us to drag him downstairs, amid a terrified
chorus from half-open doors. Eventually we handed him over to
two other footmen who appeared with their nightshirts tucked into
their trousers, and my host was good enough to compliment me as
he led the way outside.

"I thought I heard a shot," he added. "Didn't you?"

"I thought I heard three."

And out we dashed into the darkness.

I remember how the gravel pricked my feet, how the wet grass
numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying
lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers'
midst before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord
Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the
dew.

"Who's this ?" he cried. "What on earth's happened?"

"It's Clephane," said a man who knelt over him. "He's got a
bullet in him somewhere."

"Is he alive?"

"Barely."

"Good God! Where's Crowley?"

"Here I am," called a breathless voice. "It's no good, you
fellows. There's nothing to show which way they've gone. Here's
Raffles; he's chucked it, too." And they ran up panting.

"Well, we've got one of them, at all events," muttered Lord
Amersteth. "The next thing is to get this poor fellow indoors.
Take his shoulders, somebody. Now his middle. Join hands under
him. All together, now; that's the way. Poor fellow! Poor
fellow! His name isn't Clephane at all. He's a Scotland Yard
detective, down here for these very villains!"

Raffles was the first to express surprise; but he had also been
the first to raise the wounded man. Nor had any of them a
stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house.

In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the
library. And there, with ice on his wound and brandy in his
throat, his eyes opened and his lips moved.

Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words.

"Yes, yes," said he; "we've got one of them safe and sound. The
brute you collared upstairs." Lord Amersteth bent lower. "By
Jove! Lowered the jewel-case out of the window, did he? And
they've got clean away with it! Well, well! I only hope we'll
be able to pull this good fellow through. He's off again."

An hour passed: the sun was rising.

It found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the
billiard-room, drinking whiskey and soda-water in their overcoats
and pyjamas, and still talking excitedly in one breath. A
time-table was being passed from hand to hand: the doctor was
still in the library. At last the door opened, and Lord
Amersteth put in his head.