"Ask him how many windows along!" shouted the manager in high
excitement.
"Six, he says," said Mackenzie next minute; and he drew in his head and
shoulders. "I should just like to see those rooms, six windows along."
"Mr. Raffles," announced the manager after a mental calculation.
"Is that a fact?" cried Mackenzie. "Then we shall have no difficulty
at all. He's left me his key down below."
The words had a dry, speculative intonation, which even then I found
time to dislike; it was as though the coincidence had already struck
the Scotchman as something more.
"Where is Mr. Raffles?" asked the manager, as we all filed downstairs.
"He's gone out to his dinner," said Mackenzie.
"Are you sure?"
"I saw him go," said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would not
trust myself to speak again. But I wormed my way to a front place in
the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man to cross the
threshold that had been the Rubicon of my life. As I did so I uttered
a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back heavily on my toes; in
another second I saw the reason, and saw it with another and a louder
cry.
A man was lying at full length before the fire on his back, with a
little wound in the white forehead, and the blood draining into his
eyes. And the man was Raffles himself!
"Suicide," said Mackenzie calmly. "No--here's the poker--looks more
like murder." He went on his knees and shook his head quite
cheerfully. "An' it's not even murder," said he, with a shade of
disgust in his matter-of-fact voice; "yon's no more than a flesh-wound,
and I have my doubts whether it felled him; but, sirs, he just stinks
o' chloryform!"
He got up and fixed his keen gray eyes upon me; my own were full of
tears, but they faced him unashamed.
"I understood ye to say ye saw him go out?" said he sternly.
"I saw that long driving-coat; of course, I thought he was inside it."
"And I could ha' sworn it was the same gent when he give me the key!"
It was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background; on
him turned Mackenzie, white to the lips.
"You'd think anything, some of you damned policemen," said he. "What's
your number, you rotter? P 34? You'll be hearing more of this, Mr. P
34! If that gentleman was dead--instead of coming to himself while I'm
talking--do you know what you'd be? Guilty of his manslaughter, you
stuck pig in buttons! Do you know who you've let slip, butter-fingers?
Crawshay--no less--him that broke Dartmoor yesterday. By the God that
made ye, P 34, if I lose him I'll hound ye from the forrce!"
Working face--shaking fist--a calm man on fire. It was a new side of
Mackenzie, and one to mark and to digest. Next moment he had flounced
from our midst.
"Difficult thing to break your own head," said Raffles later;
"infinitely easier to cut your own throat. Chloroform's another
matter; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety.
So you thought I was really gone? Poor old Bunny! But I hope
Mackenzie saw your face?"
"He did," said I. I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have seen,
however.
"That's all right. I wouldn't have had him miss it for worlds; and you
mustn't think me a brute, old boy, for I fear that man, and, know, we
sink or swim together."
"And now we sink or swim with Crawshay, too," said I dolefully.
"Not we!" said Raffles with conviction. "Old Crawshay's a true
sportsman, and he'll do by us as we've done by him; besides, this makes
us quits; and I don't think, Bunny, that we'll take on the professors
again!"