E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (20 page)

"I came down early," said Raffles, "and had a look at the races. I
always prefer to measure my man, Bunny; and you needn't sit in the
front row of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guillemard.
No wonder he doesn't ride his own horses! The steeple-chaser isn't
foaled that would carry him round that course. But he's a fine
monument of a man, and he takes his troubles in a way that makes me
blush to add to them."

"Did he lose a horse?" I inquired cheerfully.

"No, Bunny, but he didn't win a race! His horses were by chalks
the best there, and his pals rode them like the foul fiend, but with
the worst of luck every time. Not that you'd think it, from the row
they're making. I've been listening to them from the road - you
always did say the house stood too near it."

"Then you didn't go in?"

"When it's your show? You should know me better. Not a foot would
I set on the premises behind your back. But here they are, so
perhaps you'll lead the way."

And I led it without a moment's hesitation, through the unpretentious
six-barred gate into the long but shallow crescent of the drive.
There were two such gates, one at each end of the drive, but no lodge
at either, and not a light nearer than those of the house. The shape
and altitude of the lighted windows, the whisper of the laurels on
either hand, the very feel of the gravel underfoot, were at once
familiar to my senses as the sweet, relaxing, immemorial air that
one drank deeper at every breath. Our stealthy advance was to me
like stealing back into one's childhood; and yet I could conduct it
without compunction. I was too excited to feel immediate remorse,
albeit not too lost in excitement to know that remorse for every
step that I was taking would be my portion soon enough. I mean
every word that I have written of my peculiar shame for this night's
work. And it was all. to come over me before the night was out. But
in the garden I never felt it once.

The dining-room windows blazed in the side of the house facing the
road. That was an objection to peeping through the venetian blinds,
as we nevertheless did, at our peril of observation from the road.
Raffles would never have led me into danger so gratuitous and
unnecessary, but he followed me into it without a word. I can only
plead that we both had our reward. There was a sufficient chink in
the obsolete venetians, and through it we saw every inch of the
picturesque board. Mrs. Guillemard was still in her place, but she
really was the only lady, and dressed as quietly as I had prophesied;
round her neck was her rope of pearls, but not the glimmer of an
emerald nor the glint of a diamond, nor yet the flashing
constellation of a tiara in her hair. I gripped Raffles in token
of my triumph, and he nodded as he scanned the overwhelming majority
of flushed fox-hunters. With the exception of one stripling,
evidently the son of the house, they were in evening pink to a man;
and as I say, their faces matched their coats. An enormous fellow,
with a great red face and cropped moustache, occupied my poor
father's place; he it was who had replaced our fruitful vineries
with his stinking stables; but I am bound to own he looked a genial
clod, as he sat in his fat and listened to the young bloods boasting
of their prowess, or elaborately explaining their mishaps. And for
a minute we listened also, before I remembered my responsibilities,
and led Raffles round to the back of the house.

There never was an easier house to enter. I used to feel that
keenly as a boy, when, by a prophetic irony, burglars were my
bugbear, and I looked under my bed every night in life. The
bow-windows on the ground floor finished in inane balconies to the
first-floor windows. These balconies had ornamental iron railings,
to which a less ingenious rope-ladder than ours could have been
hitched with equal ease. Raffles had brought it with him, round
his waist, and he carried the telescopic stick for fixing it in
place. The one was unwound, and the other put together, in a
secluded corner of the red-brick walls, where of old I had played
my own game of squash-rackets in the holidays. I made further
investigations in the starlight, and even found a trace of my
original white line along the red wall.

But it was not until we had effected our entry through the room
which had been my very own, and made our parlous way across the
lighted landing, to the best bedroom of those days and these, that
I really felt myself a worm. Twin brass bedsteads occupied the
site of the old four-poster from which I had first beheld the
light. The doors were the same; my childish hands had grasped
these very handles. And there was Raffles securing the landing
door with wedge and gimlet, the very second after softly closing
it behind us.

"The other leads into the dressing-room, of course? Then you might
be fixing the outer dressing-room door," he whispered at his work,
"but not the middle one Bunny, unless you want to. The stuff will
be in there, you see, if it isn't in here."

My door was done in a moment, being fitted with a powerful bolt;
but now an aching conscience made me busier than I need have been.
I had raised the rope-ladder after us into my own old room, and
while Raffles wedged his door I lowered the ladder from one of the
best bedroom windows, in order to prepare that way of escape which
was a fundamental feature of his own strategy. I meant to show
Raffles that I had not followed in his train for nothing. But I
left it to him to unearth the jewels. I had begun by turning up
the gas; there appeared to be no possible risk in that; and Raffles
went to work with a will in the excellent light. There were some
good pieces in the room, including an ancient tallboy in fruity
mahogany, every drawer of which was turned out on the bed without
avail. A few of the drawers had locks to pick, yet not one triffle
to our taste within. The situation became serious as the minutes
flew. We had left the party at its sweets; the solitary lady might
be free to roam her house at any minute. In the end we turned our
attention to the dressing-room. And no sooner did Raffles behold
the bolted door than up went his hands.

"A bathroom bolt," he cried below his breath, "and no bath in the
room! Why didn't you tell me, Bunny? A bolt like that speaks
volumes; there's none on the bedroom door, remember, and this one's
worthy of a strong room! What if it is their strong room, Bunny!
Oh, Bunny, what if this is their safe?"

Raffles had dropped upon his knees before a carved oak chest of
indisputable antiquity. Its panels were delightfully irregular,
its angles faultlessly faulty, its one modern defilement a strong
lock to the lid. Raffles was smiling as he produced his jimmy.
R - r - r - rip went lock or lid in another ten seconds - I was not
there to see which. I had wandered back into the bedroom in a
paroxysm of excitement and suspense. I must keep busy as well.
as Raffles, and it was not too soon to see whether the rope-ladder
was all. right. In another minute . . .

I stood frozen to the floor. I had hooked the ladder beautifully
to the inner sill of wood, and had also let down the extended rod
for the more expeditious removal of both on our return to terra
firma. Conceive my cold horror on arriving at the open window just
in time to see the last of hooks and bending rod, as they floated
out of sight and reach into the outer darkness of the night, removed
by some silent and invisible hand below!

"Raffles-Raffles - they've spotted us and moved the ladder this very
instant!"

So I panted as I rushed on tiptoe to the dressing-room. Raffles had
the working end of his jimmy under the lid of a leathern jewel case.
It flew open at the vicious twist of his wrist that preceded his reply.

"Did you let them see that you'd spotted that?"

"No."

"Good! Pocket some of these cases - no time to open them. Which
door's nearest the backstairs?"

"The other."

"Come on then?"

"No, no, I'll lead the way. I know every inch of it."

And, as I leaned against the bedroom door, handle in hand, while
Raffles stooped to unscrew the gimlet and withdraw the wedge, I
hit upon the ideal port in the storm that was evidently about to
burst on our devoted heads. It was the last place in which they
would look for a couple of expert cracksmen with no previous
knowledge of the house. If only we could gain my haven unobserved,
there we might lie in unsuspected hiding, and by the hour, if not
for days and nights.

Alas for that sanguine dream! The wedge was out, and Raffles on
his feet behind me. I opened the door, and for a second the pair
of us stood upon the threshold.

Creeping up the stairs before us, each on the tip of his silken
toes, was a serried file of pink barbarians, redder in the face
than anywhere else, and armed with crops carried by the wrong end.
The monumental person with the short moustache led the advance. The
fool stood still upon the top step to let out the loudest and
cheeriest view-holloa that ever smote my ears.

It cost him more than he may know until I tell him. There was the
wide part of the landing between us; we had just that much start
along the narrow part, with the walls and doors upon our left, the
banisters on our right, and the baize door at the end. But if the
great Guillemard had not stopped to live up to his sporting
reputation, he would assuredly have laid one or other of us by the
heels, and either would have been tantamount to both. As I gave
Raffles a headlong lead to the baize door, I glanced down the great
well of stairs, and up came the daft yells of these sporting oafs:

"Gone away - gone away!"

"Yoick - yoick - yoick?"

"Yon-der they go?"

And gone I had, through the baize door to the back landing, with
Raffles at my heels. I held the swing door for him, and heard him
bang it in the face of the spluttering and blustering master of
the house. Other feet were already in the lower flight of the
backstairs; but the upper flight was the one for me, and in an
instant we were racing along the upper corridor with the
chuckle-headed pack at our heels. Here it was all. but dark - they
were the servants' bedrooms that we were passing now - but I knew
what I was doing. Round the last corner to the right, through the
first door to the left and we were in the room underneath the tower.
In our time a long stepladder had led to the tower itself. I
rushed in the dark to the old corner. Thank God, the ladder was
there still! It leaped under us as we rushed aloft like one
quadruped. The breakneck trap-door was still protected by a curved
brass stanchion; this I grasped with one hand, and then Raffles
with the other as I felt my feet firm upon the tower floor. In he
sprawled after me, and down went the trap-door with a bang upon the
leading hound.

I hoped to feel his dead-weight shake the house, as he crashed upon
the floor below; but the fellow must have ducked, and no crash came.
Meanwhile not a word passed between Raffles and me; he had followed
me, as I had led him, without waste of breath upon a single syllable.
But the merry lot below were still yelling and bellowing in full cry.

"Gone to ground? screamed one.

"Where's the terrier?" screeched another.

But their host of the mighty girth - a man like a soda-water bottle,
from my one glimpse of him on his feet - seemed sobered rather than
stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice
no more, but we could feel him straining every thew against the
trap-door upon which Raffles and I stood side by side. At least I
thought Raffles was standing, until he asked me to strike a light,
when I found him on his knees instead of on his feet, busy screwing
down the trap-door with his gimlet. He carried three or four gimlets
for wedging doors, and he drove them all. in to the handle, while I
pulled at the stanchion and pushed with my feet.

But the upward pressure ceased before our efforts. We heard the
ladder creak again under a ponderous and slow descent; and we stood
upright in the dim flicker of a candle-end that I had lit and left
burning on the floor. Raffles glanced at the four small windows in
turn and then at me. "Is there any way out at all.?" he whispered,
as no other being would or could have whispered to the man who had
led him into such a trap. "We've no rope-ladder, you know."

"Thanks to me," I groaned. "The whole thing's my fault?

"Nonsense, Bunny; there was no other way to run. But what about
these windows?"

His magnanimity took me by the throat; without a word I led him to
the one window looking inward upon sloping slates and level leads.
Often as a boy I had clambered over them, for the fearful fun of
risking life and limb, or the fascination of peering through the
great square skylight, down the well of the house into the hall
below. There were, however, several smaller skylights, for the
benefit of the top floor, through any one of which I thought we
might have made a dash. But at a glance I saw we were too late:
one of these skylights became a brilliant square before our eyes;
opened, and admitted a flushed face on flaming shoulders.

"I'll give them a fright!" said Raffles through his teeth. In
an instant he had plucked out his revolver, smashed the window
with its butt, and the slates with a bullet not a yard from the
protruding head. And that, I believe, was the only shot that
Raffles ever fired in his whole career as a midnight marauder.

"You didn't hit him?" I gasped, as the head disappeared, and we
heard a crash in the corridor.

"Of course I didn't, Bunny," he replied, backing into the tower;
"but no one will believe I didn't mean to, and it'll stick on
ten years if we're caught. That's nothing, if it gives us an
extra five minutes now, while they hold a council of war. Is
that a working flag-staff overhead?"