E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 (5 page)

Fawcett is unable to furnish any description of his assailant
or assailants, but is of opinion that more than one were engaged
in the commission of the crime. When the unfortunate man
recovered consciousness, no trace of the thieves remained, with
the exception of a single candle which had been left burning on
the flags of the corridor. The strong-room, however, had been
opened, and it is feared the raid on the chests of plate and
other valuables may prove to have been only too successful, in
view of the Easter exodus, which the thieves had evidently taken
into account. The ordinary banking chambers were not even
visited; entry and exit are believed to have been effected
through the coal cellar, which is also situated in the basement.
Up to the present the police have effected no arrest.

I sat practically paralyzed by this appalling news; and I swear that,
even in that incredible temperature, it was a cold perspiration in
which I sweltered from head to heel. Crawshay, of course! Crawshay
once more upon the track of Raffles and his ill-gotten gains! And
once more I blamed Raffles himself: his warning had come too late:
he should have wired to me at once not to take the box to the bank
at all. He was a madman ever to have invested in so obvious and
obtrusive a receptacle for treasure. It would serve Raffles right
if that and no other was the box which had been broken into by the
thieves.

Yet, when I considered the character of his treasure, I fairly
shuddered in my sweat. It was a hoard of criminal relics. Suppose
his chest had indeed been rifled, and emptied of every silver thing
but one; that one remaining piece of silver, seen of men, was quite
enough to cast Raffles into the outer darkness of penal servitude!
And Crawshay was capable of it - of perceiving the insidious revenge
- of taking it without compunction or remorse.

There was only one course for me. I must follow my instructions to
the letter and recover the chest at all hazards, or be taken myself
in the attempt. If only Raffles had left me some address, to which
I could have wired some word of warning! But it was no use thinking
of that; for the rest there was time enough up to four o'clock, and
as yet it was not three. I determined to go through with my bath
and make the most of it. Might it not be my last for years?

But I was past enjoying even a Turkish bath. I had not the patience
for a proper shampoo, or sufficient spirit for the plunge. I
weighed myself automatically, for that was a matter near my heart;
but I forgot to give my man his sixpence until the reproachful
intonation of his adieu recalled me to myself. And my couch in the
cooling gallery - my favorite couch, in my favorite corner, which I
had secured with gusto on coming in - it was a bed of thorns, with
hideous visions of a plank-bed to follow!

I ought to be able to add that I heard the burglary discussed on
adjacent couches before I left I certainly listened for it, and was
rather disappointed more than once when I had held my breath in vain.
But this is the unvarnished record of an odious hour, and it passed
without further aggravation from without; only, as I drove to Sloane
Street, the news was on all the posters, and on one I read of "a
clew" which spelt for me a doom I was grimly resolved to share.

Already there was something in the nature of a "run" up on the
Sloane Street branch of the City and Suburban. A cab drove away
with a chest of reasonable dimensions as mine drove up, while in
the bank itself a lady was making a painful scene. As for the
genial clerk who had roared at my jokes the day before, he was
mercifully in no mood for any more, but, on the contrary, quite rude
to me at sight.

"I've been expecting you all the afternoon," said he. "You needn't
look so pale."

"Is it safe?"

"That Noah's Ark of yours? Yes, so I hear; they'd just got to it
when they were interrupted, and they never went back again."

"Then it wasn't even opened?"

"Only just begun on, I believe."

"Thank God!"

"You may; we don't," growled the clerk. "The manager says he
believes your chest was at the bottom of it all."

"How could it be?" I asked uneasily.

"By being seen on the cab a mile off, and followed," said the clerk.

"Does the manager want to see me?" I asked boldly.

"Not unless you want to see him," was the blunt reply. "He's been
at it with others all. the afternoon, and they haven't all. got off
as cheap as you."

"Then my silver shall not embarrass you any longer," said I grandly.
"I meant to leave it if it was all. right, but after all. you have
said I certainly shall not. Let your man or men bring up the chest
at once. I dare say they also have been 'at it with others all. the
afternoon,' but I shall make this worth their while."

I did not mind driving through the streets with the thing this time.
My present relief was too overwhelming as yet to admit of pangs and
fears for the immediate future. No summer sun had ever shone more
brightly than that rather watery one of early April. There was a
green-and-gold dust of buds and shoots on the trees as we passed the
park. I felt greater things sprouting in my heart. Hansoms passed
with schoolboys just home for the Easter holidays, four-wheelers
outward bound, with bicycles and perambulators atop; none that rode
in them were half so happy as I, with the great load on my cab, but
the greater one off my heart.

At Mount Street it just went into the lift; that was a stroke of
luck; and the lift-man and I between us carried it into my flat.
It seemed a featherweight to me now. I felt a Samson in the
exaltation of that hour. And I will not say what my first act was
when I found myself alone with my white elephant in the middle of
the room; enough that the siphon was still doing its work when the
glass slipped through my fingers to the floor.

"Bunny!"

It was Raffles. Yet for a moment I looked about me quite in vain.
He was not at the window; he was not at the open door. And yet
Raffles it had been, or at all. events his voice, and that bubbling
over with fun and satisfaction, be his body where it might. In the
end I dropped my eyes, and there was his living face in the middle
of the lid of the chest, like that of the saint upon its charger.

But Raffles was alive, Raffles was laughing as though his vocal
cords would snap - there was neither tragedy nor illusion in the
apparition of Raffles. A life-size Jack-in-the-box, he had thrust
his head through a lid within the lid, cut by himself between the
two iron bands that ran round the chest like the straps of a
portmanteau. He must have been busy at it when I found him
pretending to pack, if not far into that night, for it was a very
perfect piece of work; and even as I stared without a word, and he
crouched laughing in my face, an arm came squeezing out, keys in
hand; one was turned in either of the two great padlocks, the whole
lid lifted, and out stepped Raffles like the conjurer he was.

"So you were the burglar!" I exclaimed at last. "Well, I am just
as glad I didn't know."

He had wrung my hand already, but at this he fairly mangled it in
his.

"You dear little brick," he cried, "that's the one thing of all.
things I longed to hear you say! How could you have behaved as
you've done if you had known? How could any living man? How could
you have acted, as the polar star of all. the stages could not have
acted in your place? Remember that I have heard a lot, and as good
as seen as much as I've heard. Bunny, I don't know where you were
greatest: at the Albany, here, or at your bank!"

"I don't know where I was most miserable," I rejoined, beginning to
see the matter in a less perfervid light. "I know you don't credit
me with much finesse, but I would undertake to be in the secret and
to do quite as well; the only difference would be in my own peace of
mind, which, of course, doesn't count."

But Raffles wagged away with his most charming and disarming smile;
he was in old clothes, rather tattered and torn, and more than a
little grimy as to the face and hands, but, on the surface,
wonderfully little the worse for his experience. And, as I say,
his smile was the smile of the Raffles I loved best.

"You would have done your damnedest, Bunny! There is no limit to
your heroism; but you forget the human equation in the pluckiest
of the plucky. I couldn't afford to forget it, Bunny; I couldn't
afford to give a point away. Don't talk as though I hadn't trusted
you! I trusted my very life to your loyal tenacity. What do you
suppose would have happened to me if you had let me rip in that
strong-room? Do you think I would ever have crept out and given
myself up? Yes, I'll have a peg for once; the beauty of all. laws
is in the breaking, even of the kind we make unto ourselves."

I had a Sullivan for him, too; and in another minute he was spread
out on my sofa, stretching his cramped limbs with infinite gusto,
a cigarette between his fingers, a yellow bumper at hand on the
chest of his triumph and my tribulation.

"Never mind when it occurred to me, Bunny; as a matter of fact, it
was only the other day, when I had decided to go away for the real
reasons I have already given you. I may have made more of them to
you than I do in my own mind, but at all. events they exist. And I
really did want the telephone and the electric light."

"But where did you stow the silver before you went?"

"Nowhere; it was my luggage - a portmanteau, cricket-bag, and
suit-case full of very little else - and by the same token I left
the lot at Euston, and one of us must fetch them this evening."

"I can do that," said I. "But did you really go all. the way to
Crewe?"

"Didn't you get my note? I went all. the way to Crewe to post you
those few lines, my dear Bunny! It's no use taking trouble if you
don't take trouble enough; I wanted you to show the proper set of
faces at the bank and elsewhere, and I know you did. Besides, there
was an up-train four minutes after mine got in. I simply posted my
letter in Crewe station, and changed from one train to the other."

"At two in the morning!"

"Nearer three, Bunny. It was after seven when I slung in with the
Daily Mail. The milk had beaten me by a short can. But even so I
had two very good hours before you were due."

"And to think," I murmured, "how you deceived me there!"

"With your own assistance," said Raffles laughing. "If you had
looked it up you would have seen there was no such train in the
morning, and I never said there was. But I meant you to be
deceived, Bunny, and I won't say I didn't - it was all. for the sake
of the side! Well, when you carted me away with such laudable
despatch, I had rather an uncomfortable half-hour, but that was
all. just then. I had my candle, I had matches, and lots to read.
It was quite nice in that strong-room until a very unpleasant
incident occurred."

"Do tell me, my dear fellow!"

"I must have another Sullivan - thank you - and a match. The
unpleasant incident was steps outside and a key in the lock! I
was disporting myself on the lid of the trunk at the time. I had
barely time to knock out my light and slip down behind it. Luckily
it was only another box of sorts; a jewel-case, to be more precise;
you shall see the contents in a moment. The Easter exodus has done
me even better than I dared to hope."

His words reminded me of the Pall Mall Gazette, which I had brought
in my pocket from the Turkish bath. I fished it out, all. wrinkled
and bloated by the heat of the hottest room, and handed it to Raffles
with my thumb upon the leaded paragraphs.

"Delightful!" said he when he had read them. "More thieves than one,
and the coal-cellar of all. places as a way in! I certainly tried to
give it that appearance. I left enough candle-grease there to make
those coals burn bravely. But it looked up into a blind backyard,
Bunny, and a boy of eight couldn't have squeezed through the trap.
Long may that theory keep them happy at Scotland Yard!"

"But what about the fellow you knocked out?" I asked. "That was not
like you, Raffles."

Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa, his black hair
tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against
the light as though slashed out with the scissors.

"I know it wasn't, Bunny," he said regretfully. "But things like
that, as the poet will tell you, are really inseparable from
victories like mine. It had taken me a couple of hours to break
out of that strong-room; I was devoting a third to the harmless
task of simulating the appearance of having broken in; and it was
then I heard the fellow's stealthy step. Some might have stood
their ground and killed him; more would have bolted into a worse
corner than they were in already. I left my candle where it was,
crept to meet the poor devil, flattened myself against the wall,
and let him have it as he passed. I acknowledge the foul blow,
but here's evidence that it was mercifully struck. The victim has
already
told his tale."

As he drained his glass, but shook his head when I wished to
replenish it, Raffles showed me the flask which he had carried in
his pocket: it was still nearly full; and I found that he had
otherwise provisioned himself over the holidays. On either Easter
Day or Bank Holiday, had I failed him, it had been his intention to
make the best escape he could. But the risk must have been enormous,
and it filled my glowing skin to think that he had not relied on me
in vain.

As for his gleanings from such jewel-cases as were spending the
Easter recess in the strong-room of my bank, without going into
rhapsodies or even particulars on the point,) I may mention that
they realized enough for me to join Raffles on his deferred holiday
in Scotland, besides enabling him to play more regularly for
Middlesex in the ensuing summer than had been the case for several
seasons. In fine, this particular exploit entirely justified itself
in my eyes, in spite of the superfluous (but invariable)
secretiveness which I could seldom help resenting in my heart I
never thought less of it than in the present instance; and my one
mild reproach was on the subject of the phantom Crawshay.