your decision and I'm entitled to mine, and I took it before I bound
him as I did," said Raffles. "I'm only sorry I took so much trouble if
you're going to stay behind and put him in the way of releasing
himself before he gives up the ghost. Perhaps you will go and think it
over while I wash my bags and dry 'em at the gas-stove. It will take
me at least an hour, which will just give me time to finish the last
volume of Kinglake."
Long before he was ready to go, however, I was waiting in the hall,
clothed indeed, but not in a mind which I care to recall. Once or
twice I peered into the dining-room where Raffles sat before the
stove, without letting him hear me. He, too, was ready for the street
at a moment's notice; but a steam ascended from his left leg, as he
sat immersed in his red volume. Into the study I never went again; but
Raffles did, to restore to its proper shelf this and every other book
he had taken out and so destroy that clew to the manner of man who had
made himself at home in the house. On his last visit I heard him whisk
off the dust-sheet; then he waited a minute; and when he came out it
was to lead the way into the open air as though the accursed house
belonged to him.
"We shall be seen," I whispered at his heels. "Raffles, Raffles,
there's a policeman at the corner!"
"I know him intimately," replied Raffles, turning, however, the other
way. "He accosted me on Monday, when I explained that I was an old
soldier of the colonel's regiment, who came in every few days to air
the place and send on any odd letters. You see, I have always carried
one or two about me, redirected to that address in Switzerland, and
when I showed them to him it was all right. But after that it was no
use listening at the letter-box for a clear coast, was it?"
I did not answer; there was too much to exasperate in these prodigies
of cunning which he could never trouble to tell me at the time. And I
knew why he had kept his latest feats to himself: unwilling to trust
me outside the house, he had systematically exaggerated the dangers of
his own walks abroad; and when to these injuries he added the insult
of a patronizing compliment on my late disguise, I again made no
reply.
"What's the good of your coming with me?" he asked, when I had
followed him across the main stream of Notting Hill.
"We may as well sink or swim together," I answered sullenly.
"Yes? Well, I'm going to swim into the provinces, have a shave on the
way, buy a new kit piecemeal, including a cricket-bag (which I really
want), and come limping back to the Albany with the same old strain in
my bowling leg. I needn't add that I have been playing country-house
cricket for the last month under an alias; it's the only decent way to
do it when one's county has need of one. That's my itinerary, Bunny,
but I really can't see why you should come with me."
"We may as well swing together!" I growled.
"As you will, my dear fellow," replied Raffles. "But I begin to dread
your company on the drop!"
I shall hold my pen on that provincial tour. Not that I joined Raffles
in any of the little enterprises with which he beguiled the breaks in
our journey; our last deed in London was far too great a weight upon
my soul. I could see that gallant officer in his chair, see him at
every hour of the day and night, now with his indomitable eyes meeting
mine ferociously, now a stark outline underneath a sheet. The vision
darkened my day and gave me sleepless nights. I was with our victim in
all his agony; my mind would only leave him for that gallows of which
Raffles had said true things in jest. No, I could not face so vile a
death lightly, but I could meet it, somehow, better than I could
endure a guilty suspense. In the watches of the second night I made up
my mind to meet it half-way, that very morning, while still there
might be time to save the life that we had left in jeopardy. And I got
up early to tell Raffles of my resolve.
His room in the hotel where we were staying was littered with clothes
and luggage new enough for any bridegroom; I lifted the locked
cricket-bag, and found it heavier than a cricket-bag has any right to
be. But in the bed Raffles was sleeping like an infant, his shaven
self once more. And when I shook him he awoke with a smile.
"Going to confess, eh, Bunny? Well, wait a bit; the local police won't
thank you for knocking them up at this hour. And I bought a late
edition which you ought to see; that must be it on the floor. You have
a look in the stop-press column, Bunny."
I found the place with a sunken heart, and this is what I read:
WEST-END OUTRAGE
Colonel Crutchley, R.E., V.C., has been the victim of a
dastardly outrage at his residence, Peter Street, Campden
Hill. Returning unexpectedly to the house, which had been
left untenanted during the absence of the family abroad, it
was found occupied by two ruffians, who overcame and secured
the distinguished officer by the exercise of considerable
violence. When discovered through the intelligence of the
Kensington police, the gallant victim was gagged and bound
hand and foot, and in an advanced stage of exhaustion.
"Thanks to the Kensington police," observed Raffles, as I read the
last words aloud in my horror. "They can't have gone when they got my
letter."
"Your letter?"
"I printed them a line while we were waiting for our train at Euston.
They must have got it that night, but they can't have paid any
attention to it until yesterday morning. And when they do, they take
all the credit and give me no more than you did, Bunny!"
I looked at the curly head upon the pillow, at the smiling, handsome
face under the curls. And at last I understood.
"So all the time you never meant it!"
"Slow murder? You should have known me better. A few hours' enforced
Rest Cure was the worst I wished him."
"You might have told me, Raffles!"
"That may be, Bunny, but you ought certainly to have trusted me!"
The Criminologists' Club
"But who are they, Raffles, and where's their house? There's no such
club on the list in Whitaker."
"The Criminologists, my dear Bunny, are too few for a local
habitation, and too select to tell their name in Gath. They are merely
so many solemn students of contemporary crime, who meet and dine
periodically at each other's clubs or houses."
"But why in the world should they ask us to dine with them?"
And I brandished the invitation which had brought me hotfoot to the
Albany: it was from the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G.; and it
requested the honor of my company at dinner, at Thornaby House, Park
Lane, to meet the members of the Criminologists' Club. That in itself
was a disturbing compliment: judge then of my dismay on learning that
Raffles had been invited too!
"They have got it into their heads," said he, "that the gladiatorial
element is the curse of most modern sport. They tremble especially
for the professional gladiator. And they want to know whether my
experience tallies with their theory."
"So they say!"
"They quote the case of a league player, _sus per coll._, and any
number of suicides. It really is rather in my public line."
"In yours, if you like, but not in mine," said I. "No, Raffles,
they've got their eye on us both, and mean to put us under the
microscope, or they never would have pitched on _me_."
Raffles smiled on my perturbation.
"I almost wish you were right, Bunny! It would be even better fun than
I mean to make it as it is. But it may console you to hear that it was
I who gave them your name. I told them you were a far keener
criminologist than myself. I am delighted to hear they have taken my
hint, and that we are to meet at their gruesome board."
"If I accept," said I, with the austerity he deserved.
"If you don't," rejoined Raffles, "you will miss some sport after both
our hearts. Think of it, Bunny! These fellows meet to wallow in all
the latest crimes; we wallow with them as though we knew more about it
than themselves. Perhaps we don't, for few criminologists have a soul
above murder; and I quite expect to have the privilege of lifting the
discussion into our own higher walk. They shall give their morbid
minds to the fine art of burgling, for a change; and while we're about
it, Bunny, we may as well extract their opinion of our noble selves.
As authors, as collaborators, we will sit with the flower of our
critics, and find our own level in the expert eye. It will be a
piquant experience, if not an invaluable one; if we are sailing too
near the wind, we are sure to hear about it, and can trim our yards
accordingly. Moreover, we shall get a very good dinner into the
bargain, or our noble host will belie a European reputation."
"Do you know him?" I asked.
"We have a pavilion acquaintance, when it suits my lord," replied
Raffles, chuckling. "But I know all about him. He was president one
year of the M.C.C., and we never had a better. He knows the game,
though I believe he never played cricket in his life. But then he
knows most things, and has never done any of them. He has never even
married, and never opened his lips in the House of Lords. Yet they say
there is no better brain in the august assembly, and he certainly made
us a wonderful speech last time the Australians were over. He has read
everything and (to his credit in these days) never written a line.
All round he is a whale for theory and a sprat for practice--but he
looks quite capable of both at crime!"
I now longed to behold this remarkable peer in the flesh, and with the
greater curiosity since another of the things which he evidently never
did was to have his photograph published for the benefit of the
vulgar. I told Raffles that I would dine with him at Lord Thornaby's,
and he nodded as though I had not hesitated for a moment. I see now
how deftly he had disposed of my reluctance. No doubt he had thought
it all out before: his little speeches look sufficiently premeditated
as I set them down at the dictates of an excellent memory. Let it,
however, be borne in mind that Raffles did not talk exactly like a
Raffles book: he said the things, but he did not say them in so many
consecutive breaths. They were punctuated by puffs from his eternal
cigarette, and the punctuation was often in the nature of a line of
asterisks, while he took a silent turn up and down his room. Nor was
he ever more deliberate than when he seemed most nonchalant and
spontaneous. I came to see it in the end. But these were early days,
in which he was more plausible to me than I can hope to render him to
another human being.
And I saw a good deal of Raffles just then; it was, in fact, the one
period at which I can remember his coming round to see me more
frequently than I went round to him. Of course he would come at his
own odd hours, often just as one was dressing to go out and dine, and
I can even remember finding him there when I returned, for I had long
since given him a key of the flat. It was the inhospitable month of
February, and I can recall more than one cosy evening when we
discussed anything and everything but our own malpractices; indeed,
there were none to discuss just then. Raffles, on the contrary, was
showing himself with some industry in the most respectable society,
and by his advice I used the club more than ever.
"There is nothing like it at this time of year," said he. "In the
summer I have my cricket to provide me with decent employment in the
sight of men. Keep yourself before the public from morning to night,
and they'll never think of you in the still small hours."
Our behavior, in fine, had so long been irreproachable that I rose
without misgiving on the morning of Lord Thornaby's dinner to the
other Criminologists and guests. My chief anxiety was to arrive under
the aegis of my brilliant friend, and I had begged him to pick me up on
his way; but at five minutes to the appointed hour there was no sign
of Raffles or his cab. We were bidden at a quarter to eight for eight
o'clock, so after all I had to hurry off alone.
Fortunately, Thornaby House is almost at the end of my street that
was; and it seemed to me another fortunate circumstance that the house
stood back, as it did and does, in its own august courtyard; for, as I
was about to knock, a hansom came twinkling in behind me, and I drew
back, hoping it was Raffles at the last moment. It was not, and I knew
it in time to melt from the porch, and wait yet another minute in the
shadows, since others were as late as I. And out jumped these others,
chattering in stage whispers as they paid their cab.
"Thornaby has a bet about it with Freddy Vereker, who can't come, I
hear. Of course, it won't be lost or won to-night. But the dear man
thinks he's been invited as a cricketer!"
"I don't believe he's the other thing," said a voice as brusque as the
first was bland. "I believe it's all bunkum. I wish I didn't, but I
do!"
"I think you'll find it's more than that," rejoined the other, as the
doors opened and swallowed the pair.
I flung out limp hands and smote the air. Raffles bidden to what he
had well called this "gruesome board," not as a cricketer but,
clearly, as a suspected criminal! Raffles wrong all the time, and I
right for once in my original apprehension! And still no Raffles in
sight--no Raffles to warn--no Raffles, and the clocks striking eight!
Well may I shirk the psychology of such a moment, for my belief is
that the striking clocks struck out all power of thought and feeling,
and that I played my poor part the better for that blessed surcease of
intellectual sensation. On the other hand, I was never more alive to
the purely objective impressions of any hour of my existence, and of
them the memory is startling to this day. I hear my mad knock at the
double doors; they fly open in the middle, and it is like some
sumptuous and solemn rite. A long slice of silken-legged lackey is
seen on either hand; a very prelate of a butler bows a benediction
from the sanctuary steps. I breathe more freely when I reach a
book-lined library where a mere handful of men do not overflow the
Persian rug before the fire. One of them is Raffles, who is talking to
a large man with the brow of a demi-god and the eyes and jowl of a
degenerate bulldog. And this is our noble host.
Lord Thornaby stared at me with inscrutable stolidity as we shook
hands, and at once handed me over to a tall, ungainly man whom he
addressed as Ernest, but whose surname I never learned. Ernest in
turn introduced me, with a shy and clumsy courtesy, to the two
remaining guests. They were the pair who had driven up in the hansom;
one turned out to be Kingsmill, Q.C.; the other I knew at a glance
from his photographs as Parrington, the backwoods novelist. They were
admirable foils to each other, the barrister being plump and dapper,
with a Napoleonic cast of countenance, and the author one of the
shaggiest dogs I have ever seen in evening-clothes. Neither took much
stock of me, but both had an eye on Raffles as I exchanged a few words
with each in turn. Dinner, however, was immediately announced, and the
six of us had soon taken our places round a brilliant little table
stranded in a great dark room.
I had not been prepared for so small a party, and at first I felt
relieved. If the worst came to the worst, I was fool enough to say in
my heart, they were but two to one. But I was soon sighing for that
safety which the adage associates with numbers. We were far too few
for the confidential duologue with one's neighbor in which I, at
least, would have taken refuge from the perils of a general
conversation. And the general conversation soon resolved itself into
an attack, so subtly concerted and so artistically delivered that I
could not conceive how Raffles should ever know it for an attack, and
that against himself, or how to warn him of his peril. But to this day
I am not convinced that I also was honored by the suspicions of the
club; it may have been so, and they may have ignored me for the bigger
game.
It was Lord Thornaby himself who fired the first shot, over the very
sherry. He had Raffles on his right hand, and the backwoodsman of
letters on his left. Raffles was hemmed in by the law on his right,
while I sat between Parrington and Ernest, who took the foot of the
table, and seemed a sort of feudatory cadet of the noble house. But it
was the motley lot of us that my lord addressed, as he sat back
blinking his baggy eyes.
"Mr. Raffles," said he, "has been telling me about that poor fellow
who suffered the extreme penalty last March. A great end, gentlemen, a
great end! It is true that he had been unfortunate enough to strike a
jugular vein, but his own end should take its place among the most
glorious traditions of the gallows. You tell them Mr. Raffles: it will
be as new to my friends as it is to me."
"I tell the tale as I heard it last time I played at Trent Bridge; it
was never in the papers, I believe," said Raffles gravely. "You may
remember the tremendous excitement over the Test Matches out in
Australia at the time: it seems that the result of the crucial game
was expected on the condemned man's last day on earth, and he couldn't
rest until he knew it. We pulled it off, if you recollect, and he said
it would make him swing happy."
"Tell 'em what else he said!" cried Lord Thornaby, rubbing his podgy
hands.
"The chaplain remonstrated with him on his excitement over a game at
such a time, and the convict is said to have replied: 'Why, it's the
first thing they'll ask me at the other end of the drop!'"
The story was new even to me, but I had no time to appreciate its
points. My concern was to watch its effect upon the other members of
the party. Ernest, on my left, doubled up with laughter, and tittered
and shook for several minutes. My other neighbor, more impressionable
by temperament, winced first, and then worked himself into a state of
enthusiasm which culminated in an assault upon his shirt-cuff with a
joiner's pencil. Kingsmill, Q.C., beaming tranquilly on Raffles,
seemed the one least impressed, until he spoke.
"I am glad to hear that," he remarked in a high bland voice. "I
thought that man would die game."
"Did you know anything about him, then?" inquired Lord Thornaby.
"I led for the Crown," replied the barrister, with a twinkle. "You
might almost say that I measured the poor man's neck."
The point must have been quite unpremeditated; it was not the less
effective for that. Lord Thornaby looked askance at the callous silk.
It was some moments before Ernest tittered and Parrington felt for his
pencil; and in the interim I had made short work of my hock, though it
was Johannisberger. As for Raffles, one had but to see his horror to
feel how completely he was off his guard.
"In itself, I have heard, it was not a sympathetic case?" was the
remark with which he broke the general silence.
"Not a bit."
"That must have been a comfort to you," said Raffles dryly.
"It would have been to me," vowed our author, while the barrister
merely smiled. "I should have been very sorry to have had a hand in
hanging Peckham and Solomons the other day."
"Why Peckham and Solomons?" inquired my lord.
"They never meant to kill that old lady."
"But they strangled her in her bed with her own pillow-case!"
"I don't care," said the uncouth scribe. "They didn't break in for
that. They never thought of scragging her. The foolish old person
would make a noise, and one of them tied too tight. I call it jolly
bad luck on them."
"On quiet, harmless, well-behaved thieves," added Lord Thornaby, "in
the unobtrusive exercise of their humble avocation."
And, as he turned to Raffles with his puffy smile, I knew that we had
reached that part of the programme which had undergone rehearsal: it
had been perfectly timed to arrive with the champagne, and I was not
afraid to signify my appreciation of that small mercy. But Raffles
laughed so quickly at his lordship's humor, and yet with such a
natural restraint, as to leave no doubt that he had taken kindly to my
own old part, and was playing the innocent inimitably in his turn, by
reason of his very innocence. It was a poetic judgment on old Raffles,
and in my momentary enjoyment of the novel situation I was able to
enjoy some of the good things of this rich man's table. The saddle of
mutton more than justified its place in the menu; but it had not
spoiled me for my wing of pheasant, and I was even looking forward to
a sweet, when a further remark from the literary light recalled me
from the table to its talk.
"But, I suppose," said he to Kingsmill, "it's 'many a burglar _you've_
restored to his friends and his relations'?"
"Let us say many a poor fellow who has been charged with burglary,"
replied the cheery Q.C. "It's not quite the same thing, you know, nor
is 'many' the most accurate word. I never touch criminal work in
town."
"It's the only kind I should care about," said the novelist, eating
jelly with a spoon.
"I quite agree with you," our host chimed in. "And of all the
criminals one might be called upon to defend, give me the enterprising
burglar."
"It must be the breeziest branch of the business," remarked Raffles,
while I held my breath.
But his touch was as light as gossamer, and his artless manner a
triumph of even his incomparable art. Raffles was alive to the danger
at last. I saw him refuse more champagne, even as I drained my glass
again. But it was not the same danger to us both. Raffles had no
reason to feel surprise or alarm at such a turn in a conversation
frankly devoted to criminology; it must have been as inevitable to him
as it was sinister to me, with my fortuitous knowledge of the
suspicions that were entertained. And there was little to put him on
his guard in the touch of his adversaries, which was only less light
than his own.
"I am not very fond of Mr. Sikes," announced the barrister, like a man
who had got his cue.
"But he was prehistoric," rejoined my lord. "A lot of blood has flowed
under the razor since the days of Sweet William."
"True; we have had Peace," said Parrington, and launched out into such
glowing details of that criminal's last moments that I began to hope
the diversion might prove permanent. But Lord Thornaby was not to be
denied.
"William and Charles are both dead monarchs," said he. "The reigning
king in their department is the fellow who gutted poor Danby's place
in Bond Street."
There was a guilty silence on the part of the three conspirators--for
I had long since persuaded myself that Ernest was not in their
secret--and then my blood froze.
"I know him well," said Raffles, looking up.
Lord Thornaby stared at him in consternation. The smile on the
Napoleonic countenance of the barrister looked forced and frozen for
the first time during the evening. Our author, who was nibbling cheese
from a knife, left a bead of blood upon his beard. The futile Ernest
alone met the occasion with a hearty titter.
"What!" cried my lord. "_You know the thief?_"
"I wish I did," rejoined Raffles, chuckling. "No, Lord Thornaby, I
only meant the jeweller, Danby. I go to him when I want a wedding
present."
I heard three deep breaths drawn as one before I drew my own.
"Rather a coincidence," observed our host dryly, "for I believe you
also know the Milchester people, where Lady Melrose had her necklace
stolen a few months afterward."
"I was staying there at the time," said Raffles eagerly. No snob was
ever quicker to boast of basking in the smile of the great.
"We believe it to be the same man," said Lord Thornaby, speaking
apparently for the Criminologists' Club, and with much less severity
of voice.
"I only wish I could come across him," continued Raffles heartily.
"He's a criminal much more to my mind than your murderers who swear on
the drop or talk cricket in the condemned cell!"
"He might be in the house now," said Lord Thornaby, looking Raffles in
the face. But his manner was that of an actor in an unconvincing part
and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter end; and he seemed
embittered, as even a rich man may be in the moment of losing a bet.
"What a joke, if he were!" cried the Wild West writer.
"_Absit omen!_" murmured Raffles, in better taste.
"Still, I think you'll find it's a favorite time," argued Kingsmill,
Q.C. "And it would be quite in keeping with the character of this man,
so far as it is known, to pay a little visit to the president of the
Criminologists' Club, and to choose the evening on which he happens to
be entertaining the other members."
There was more conviction in this sally than in that of our noble
host; but this I attributed to the trained and skilled dissimulation
of the bar. Lord Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the
elaboration of his own idea, and it was with some asperity that he
called upon the butler, now solemnly superintending the removal of the
cloth.