E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (3 page)

"Upstairs, miss, did he? Are you sure?"

I did not hear her answer. I conceive her as simply pointing up the
stairs. In any case, about my very ears once more, there now
followed such a patter and tramp of bare and booted feet as renewed
in me a base fear for my own skin. But voices and feet passed over
my head, went up and up, higher and higher; and I was wondering
whether or not to make a dash for it, when one light pair came
running down again, and in very despair I marched out to meet my
preserver, looking as little as I could like the abject thing I felt.

"Be quick!" she cried in a harsh whisper, and pointed peremptorily
to the porch.

But I stood stubbornly before her, my heart hardened by her hardness,
and perversely indifferent to all else. And as I stood I saw the
letter she had written, in the hand with which she pointed, crushed
into a ball.

"Quickly!" She stamped her foot. "Quickly - if you ever cared!"

This in a whisper, without bitterness, without contempt, but with
a sudden wild entreaty that breathed upon the dying embers of my
poor manhood. I drew myself together for the last time in her
sight. I turned, and left her as she wished - for her sake, not
for mine. And as I went I heard her tearing her letter into little
pieces, and the little pieces falling on the floor.

Then I remembered Raffles, and could have killed him for what he
had done. Doubtless by this time he was safe and snug in the Albany:
what did my fate matter to him? Never mind; this should be the end
between him and me as well; it was the end of everything, this dark
night's work! I would go and tell him so. I would jump into a cab
and drive there and then to his accursed rooms. But first I must
escape from the trap in which he had been so ready to leave me. And
on the very steps I drew back in despair. They were searching the
shrubberies between the drive and the road; a policeman's lantern
kept flashing in and out among the laurels, while a young man in
evening-clothes directed him from the gravel sweep. It was this
young man whom I must dodge, but at my first step in the gravel he
wheeled round, and it was Raffles himself.

"Hulloa!" he cried. "So you've come up to join the dance as well!
Had a look inside, have you? You'll be better employed in helping
to draw the cover in front here. It's all right, officer - only
another gentleman from the Empress Rooms."

And we made a brave show of assisting in the futile search, until
the arrival of more police, and a broad hint from an irritable
sergeant, gave us an excellent excuse for going off arm-in-arm.
But it was Raffles who had thrust his arm through mine. I shook him
off as we left the scene of shame behind.

"My dear Bunny!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what brought me back?"

I answered savagely that I neither knew nor cared.

"I had the very devil of a squeak for it," he went on. "I did the
hurdles over two or three garden-walls, but so did the flyer who
was on my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and down to
High Street like any lamplighter. If he had only had the breath to
sing out it would have been all up with me then; as it was I pulled
off my coat the moment I was round the corner, and took a ticket for
it at the Empress Rooms."

"I suppose you had one for the dance that was going on," I growled.
Nor would it have been a coincidence for Raffles to have had a
ticket for that or any other entertainment of the London season.

"I never asked what the dance was," he returned. "I merely took the
opportunity of revising my toilet, and getting rid of that rather
distinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now. They're not too
particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I
should have seen someone I knew if I had none right in. I might
even have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy about you,
Bunny."

"It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie
to me, and to inveigle me with your lies into that house of all
houses - that was not like you, Raffles - and I never shall forgive
it or you!"

Raffles took my arm again. We were near the High Street gates of
Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.

"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he.
"I did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen
to me."

"If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough," I
retorted. "But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me."

"I cared so much that I came back to see."

"You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been
done. Raffles - Raffles - don't you know who she was?"

It was my hand that gripped his arm once more.

"I guessed," he answered, gravely enough even for me.

"It was she who saved me, not you," I said. "And that is the
bitterest part of all!"

Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had
lost - through him - forever. As I ended we turned into High Street;
in the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the band reached
us from the Empress Rooms; and I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles
turned that way.

"Bunny," said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult
in a case like this - if ever there was or will be such another!
Only believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the
smallest shadow of a suspicion that she was in the house."

And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring
myself to say the words.

"You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country,"
he pursued.

"And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave of bitterness: "that
letter she had written at dead of night, and stolen down to post,
it was the one I have been waiting for all these days! I should
have got it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it, never hear from
her again, nor have another chance in this world or in the next.
I don't say it was all your fault. You no more knew that she was
there than I did. But you told me a deliberate lie about her
people, and that I never shall forgive."

I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The hansom was
waiting at the curb.

"I can say no more than I have said," returned Raffles with a shrug.
"Lie or no lie, I didn't tell it to bring you with me, but to get
you to give me certain information without feeling a beast about it.
But, as a matter of fact, it was no lie about old Hector Carruthers
and Lord Lochmaben, and anybody but you would have guessed the
truth."

"'What is the truth?"

"I as good as told you, Bunny, again and again."

"Then tell me now."

"If you read your paper there would be no need; but if you want to
know, old Carruthers headed the list of the Birthday Honors, and
Lord Lochmaben is the title of his choice."

And this miserable quibble was not a lie! My lip curled, I turned
my back without a word, and drove home to my Mount Street flat in
a new fury of savage scorn. Not a lie, indeed! It was the one
that is half a truth, the meanest lie of all, and the very last to
which I could have dreamt that Raffles would stoop. So far there
had been a degree of honor between us, if only of the kind understood
to obtain between thief and thief. Now all that was at an end.
Raffles had cheated me. Raffles had completed the ruin of my life.
I was done with Raffles, as she who shall not be named was done
with me.

And yet, even while I blamed him most bitterly, and utterly
abominated his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart
that the result was put of all proportion to the intent: he had
never dreamt of doing me this injury, or indeed any injury at all.
Intrinsically the deceit had been quite venial, the reason for it
obviously the reason that Raffles had given me. It was quite true
that he had spoken of this Lochmaben peerage as a new creation,
and of the heir to it in a fashion only applicable to Alick
Carruthers. He had given me hints, which I had been too dense to
take, and he had certainly made more than one attempt to deter me
from accompanying him on this fatal emprise; had he been more
explicit, I might have made it my business to deter him. I could
not say in my heart that Raffles had failed to satisfy such honor
as I might reasonably expect to subsist between us. Yet it seems
to me to require a superhuman sanity always and unerringly to
separate cause from effect, achievement from intent. And I, for
one, was never quite able to do so in this case.

I could not be accused of neglecting my newspaper during the next
few wretched days. I read every word that I could find about the
attempted jewel-robbery in Palace Gardens, and the reports
afforded me my sole comfort. In the first place, it was only an
attempted robbery; nothing had been taken, after all. And then -
and then - the one member of the household who had come nearest to
a personal encounter with either of us was unable to furnish any
description of the man - had even expressed a doubt as to the
likelihood of identification in the event of an arrest!

I will not say with what mingled feelings I read and dwelt on that
announcement It kept a certain faint glow alive within me until the
morning brought me back the only presents I had ever made her. They
were books; jewellery had been tabooed by the authorities. And the
books came back without a word, though the parcel was directed in
her hand.

I had made up my mind not to go near Raffles again, but in my heart
I already regretted my resolve. I had forfeited love, I had
sacrificed honor, and now I must deliberately alienate myself from
the one being whose society might yet be some recompense for all
that I had lost. The situation was aggravated by the state of my
exchequer. I expected an ultimatum from my banker by every post.
Yet this influence was nothing to the other. It was Raffles I loved.
It was not the dark life we led together, still less its base
rewards; it was the man himself, his gayety, his humor, his dazzling
audacity, his incomparable courage and resource. And a very horror
of turning to him again in mere need of greed set the seal on my
first angry resolution. But the anger was soon gone out of me, and
when at length Raffles bridged the gap by coming to me, I rose to
greet him almost with a shout.

He came as though nothing had happened; and, indeed, not very many
days had passed, though they might have been months to me. Yet I
fancied the gaze that watched me through our smoke a trifle less
sunny than it had been before. And it was a relief to me when he
came with few preliminaries to the inevitable point.

"Did you ever hear from her, Bunny?" he asked.

"In a way," I answered. "We won't talk about it, if you don't mind,
Raffles."

"That sort of way!" he exclaimed. He seemed both surprised and
disappointed.

"Yes," I said, "that sort of way. It's finished. What did you
expect?"

"I don't know," said Raffles. "I only thought that the girl who
went so far to get a fellow out of a tight place might go a little
farther to keep him from getting into another."

"I don't see why she should," said I, honestly enough, yet with
the irritation of a less just feeling deep down in my inmost
consciousness.

"Yet you did hear from her?" he persisted.

"She sent me back my poor presents, without a word," I said, "if
you call that hearing."

I could not bring myself to own to Raffles that I had given her
only books. He asked if I was sure that she had sent them back
herself; and that was his last question. My answer was enough for
him. And to this day I cannot say whether it was more in relief
than in regret that he laid a hand upon my shoulder.

"So you are out of Paradise after all!" said Raffles. "I was not
sure, or I should have come round before. Well, Bunny, if they
don't want you there, there's a little Inferno in the Albany where
you will be as welcome as ever

And still, with all the magic mischief of his smile, there was
that touch of sadness which I was yet to read aright.

Like all the tribe of which I held him head, Raffles professed the
liveliest disdain for unwieldy plunder of any description; it might
be old Sheffield, or it might be solid silver or gold, but if the
thing was not to be concealed about the person, he would none
whatever of it. Unlike the rest of us, however, in this as in all
else, Raffles would not infrequently allow the acquisitive spirit
of the mere collector to silence the dictates of professional
prudence. The old oak chests, and even the mahogany wine-cooler,
for which he had doubtless paid like an honest citizen, were thus
immovable with pieces of crested plate, which he had neither the
temerity to use nor the hardihood to melt or sell. He could but
gloat over them behind locked doors, as I used to tell him, and at
last one afternoon I caught him at it. It was in the year after
that of my novitiate, a halcyon period at the Albany, when Raffles
left no crib uncracked, and I played second-murderer every time.
I had called in response to a telegram in which he stated that he
was going out of town, and must say good-by to me before he went.
And I could only think that he was inspired by the same impulse
toward the bronzed salvers and the tarnished teapots with which
I found him surrounded, until my eyes lit upon the enormous
silver-chest into which he was fitting them one by one.

"Allow me, Bunny! I shall take the liberty of locking both doors
behind you and putting the key in my pocket," said Raffles, when
he had let me in. "Not that I mean to take you prisoner, my dear
fellow; but there are those of us who can turn keys from the outside,
though it was never an accomplishment of mine."