rooms in proper order. That's an awful idea of yours, Kingsmill, or of
mine!" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of his order by an
effort that I could follow. "We should look fools. I don't know which
of us it was, by the way, who seduced the rest from the main stream
of blood into this burglarious backwater. Are you familiar with De
Quincey's masterpiece on 'Murder as a Fine Art,' Mr. Raffles?"
"I believe I once read it," replied Raffles doubtfully.
"You must read it again," pursued the earl. "It is the last word on a
great subject; all we can hope to add is some baleful illustration or
blood-stained footnote, not unworthy of De Quincey's text. Well,
Leggett?"
The venerable butler stood wheezing at his elbow. I had not hitherto
observed that the man was an asthmatic.
"I beg your lordship's pardon, but I think your lordship must have
forgotten."
The voice came in rude gasps, but words of reproach could scarcely
have achieved a finer delicacy.
"Forgotten, Leggett! Forgotten what, may I ask?"
"Locking your lordship's dressing-room door behind your lordship, my
lord," stuttered the unfortunate Leggett, in the short spurts of a
winded man, a few stertorous syllables at a time. "Been up myself, my
lord. Bedroom door--dressing-room door--both locked inside!"
But by this time the noble master was in worse case than the man. His
fine forehead was a tangle of livid cords; his baggy jowl filled out
like a balloon. In another second he had abandoned his place as our
host and fled the room; and in yet another we had forgotten ours as
his guests and rushed headlong at his heels.
Raffles was as excited as any of us now: he outstripped us all. The
cherubic little lawyer and I had a fine race for the last place but
one, which I secured, while the panting butler and his satellites
brought up a respectful rear. It was our unconventional author,
however, who was the first to volunteer his assistance and advice.
"No use pushing, Thornaby!" cried he. "If it's been done with a wedge
and gimlet, you may smash the door, but you'll never force it. Is
there a ladder in the place?"
"There's a rope-ladder somewhere, in case of fire, I believe," said my
lord vaguely, as he rolled a critical eye over our faces. "Where is it
kept, Leggett?"
"William will fetch it, my lord."
And a pair of noble calves went flashing to the upper regions.
"What's the good of bringing it down," cried Parrington, who had
thrown back to the wilds in his excitement. "Let him hang it out of
the window above your own, and let me climb down and do the rest! I'll
undertake to have one or other of these doors open in two twos!"
The fastened doors were at right angles on the landing which we filled
between us. Lord Thornaby smiled grimly on the rest of us, when he had
nodded and dismissed the author like a hound from the leash.
"It's a good thing we know something about our friend Parrington,"
said my lord. "He takes more kindly to all this than I do, I can tell
you."
"It's grist to his mill," said Raffles charitably.
"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in his next book."
"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first," remarked Kingsmill, Q.C.
"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man of action too!"
[Illustration: Raffles was as excited as any of us now; he outstripped
us all.]
It was Raffles who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite for
him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my private
ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude of Parrington,
without being seriously suspicious in itself, was admirably calculated
to put a previously suspected person in a grateful shade. This
literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out of the lime-light, and
gratitude for the service was what I had detected in Raffles's voice.
No need to say how grateful I felt myself. But my gratitude was shot
with flashes of unwonted insight. Parrington was one of those who
suspected Raffles, or, at all events, one who was in the secret of
those suspicions. What if he had traded on the suspect's presence in
the house? What if he were a deep villain himself, and _the_ villain
of this particular piece? I had made up my mind about him, and that in
a tithe of the time I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my
man in the dressing-room. He greeted us with an impudent shout; in a
few moments the door was open, and there stood Parrington, flushed and
dishevelled, with a gimlet in one hand and a wedge in the other.
Within was a scene of eloquent disorder. Drawers had been pulled out,
and now stood on end, their contents heaped upon the carpet. Ward-robe
doors stood open; empty stud-cases strewed the floor; a clock, tied up
in a towel, had been tossed into a chair at the last moment. But a
long tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in one corner. And one
had only to see Lord Thornaby's wry face behind the lid to guess that
it was bent over a somewhat empty tin trunk.
"What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a twitch of humor at the
corners of his canine mouth. "My peer's robes, with coronet complete!"
We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I thought our scribe would
put in his word. But even he either feigned or felt a proper awe.
"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord Thornaby.
"But where would you gentlemen stable your white elephants? And these
were elephants as white as snow; by Jove, I'll job them for the
future!"
And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined
the minute before; but the reason dawned on me a little later, when we
all trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in possession of the
theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led the
way. His step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic; his very
looks had improved. And I divined the load that had been lifted from
the hospitable heart of our host.
"I only wish," said he, "that this brought us any nearer to the
identity of the gentleman we were discussing at dinner, for, of
course, we owe it to all our instincts to assume that it was he."
"I wonder!" said old Raffles, with a foolhardy glance at me.
"But I'm sure of it, my dear sir," cried my lord. "The audacity is
his and his alone. I look no further than the fact of his honoring me
on the one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain my brother
Criminologists. That's no coincidence, sir, but a deliberate irony,
which would have occurred to no other criminal mind in England."
"You may be right," Raffles had the sense to say this time, though I
flattered myself it was my face that made him.
"What is still more certain," resumed our host, "is that no other
criminal in the world would have crowned so delicious a conception
with so perfect an achievement. I feel sure the inspector will agree
with us."
The policeman in command had knocked and been admitted to the library
as Lord Thornaby spoke.
"I didn't hear what you said, my lord."
"Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing outrage can be no other
than the swell mobsman who relieved Lady Melrose of her necklace and
poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."
"I believe your lordship has hit the nail on the head."
"The man who took the Thimblely diamonds and returned them to Lord
Thimblely, you know."
"Perhaps he'll treat your lordship the same."
"Not he! I don't mean to cry over _my_ spilt milk. I only wish the
fellow joy of all he had time to take. Anything fresh upstairs by the
way?"
"Yes, my lord: the robbery took place between a quarter past eight and
the half-hour."
"How on earth do you know?"
"The clock that was tied up in the towel had stopped at twenty past."
"Have you interviewed my man?"
"I have, my lord. He was in your lordship's room until close on the
quarter, and all was as it should be when he left it."
"Then do you suppose the burglar was in hiding in the house?"
"It's impossible to say, my lord. He's not in the house now, for he
could only be in your lordship's bedroom or dressing-room, and we have
searched every inch of both."
Lord Thornaby turned to us when the inspector had retreated, caressing
his peaked cap.
"I told him to clear up these points first," he explained, jerking his
head toward the door. "I had reason to think my man had been
neglecting his duties up there. I am glad to find myself mistaken."
I ought to have been no less glad to see my own mistake. My suspicions
of our officious author were thus proved to have been as wild as
himself. I owed the man no grudge, and yet in my human heart I felt
vaguely disappointed. My theory had gained color from his behavior
ever since he had admitted us to the dressing-room; it had changed all
at once from the familiar to the morose; and only now was I just
enough to remember that Lord Thornaby, having tolerated those
familiarities as long as they were connected with useful service, had
administered a relentless snub the moment that service had been well
and truly performed.
But if Parrington was exonerated in my mind, so also was Raffles
reinstated in the regard of those who had entertained a far graver and
more dangerous hypothesis. It was a miracle of good luck, a
coincidence among coincidences, which had white-washed him in their
sight at the very moment when they were straining the expert eye to
sift him through and through. But the miracle had been performed, and
its effect was visible in every face and audible in every voice. I
except Ernest, who could never have been in the secret; moreover, that
gay Criminologist had been palpably shaken by his first little
experience of crime. But the other three vied among themselves to do
honor where they had done injustice. I heard Kingsmill, Q.C., telling
Raffles the best time to catch him at chambers, and promising a seat
in court for any trial he might ever like to hear. Parrington spoke of
a presentation set of his books, and in doing homage to Raffles made
his peace with our host. As for Lord Thornaby, I did overhear the name
of the Athenaeum Club, a reference to his friends on the committee, and
a whisper (as I thought) of Rule II.
The police were still in possession when we went our several ways, and
it was all that I could do to drag Raffles up to my rooms, though, as
I have said, they were just round the corner. He consented at last as
a lesser evil than talking of the burglary in the street; and in my
rooms I told him of his late danger and my own dilemma, of the few
words I had overheard in the beginning, of the thin ice on which he
had cut fancy figures without a crack. It was all very well for him.
He had never realized his peril. But let him think of me--listening,
watching, yet unable to lift a finger--unable to say one warning word.
Raffles suffered me to finish, but a weary sigh followed the last
symmetrical whiff of a Sullivan which he flung into my fire before he
spoke.
"No, I won't have another, thank you. I'm going to talk to you, Bunny.
Do you really suppose I didn't see through these wiseacres from the
first?"
I flatly refused to believe he had done so before that evening. Why
had he never mentioned his idea to me? It had been quite the other
way, as I indignantly reminded Raffles. Did he mean me to believe he
was the man to thrust his head into the lion's mouth for fun? And what
point would there be in dragging me there to see the fun?
"I might have wanted you, Bunny. I very nearly did."
"For my face?"
"It has been my fortune before to-night, Bunny. It has also given me
more confidence than you are likely to believe at this time of day.
You stimulate me more than you think."
"Your gallery and your prompter's box in one?"
"Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter with, me either, my dear
fellow; it was touch-and-go at the time. I might have called on you at
any moment, and it was something to know I should not have called in
vain."
"But what to do, Raffles?"
"Fight our way out and bolt!" he answered, with a mouth that meant it,
and a fine gay glitter of the eyes.
I shot out of my chair.
"You don't mean to tell me you had a hand in the job?"
"I had the only hand in it, my dear Bunny."
"Nonsense! You were sitting at table at the time. No, but you may have
taken some other fellow into the show. I always thought you would!"
"One's quite enough, Bunny," said Raffles dryly; he leaned back in his
chair and took out another cigarette. And I accepted of yet another
from his case; for it was no use losing one's temper with Raffles; and
his incredible statement was not, after all, to be ignored.
"Of course," I went on, "if you really had brought off this thing on
your own, I should be the last to criticise your means of reaching
such an end. You have not only scored off a far superior force, which
had laid itself out to score off you, but you have put them in the
wrong about you, and they'll eat out of your hand for the rest of
their days. But don't ask me to believe that you've done all this
alone! By George," I cried, in a sudden wave of enthusiasm, "I don't
care how you've done it or who has helped you. It's the biggest thing
you ever did in your life!"
And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more radiant, or better
pleased with the world and himself, or nearer that elation which he
usually left to me.
"Then you shall hear all about it, Bunny, if you'll do what I ask
you."
"Ask away, old chap, and the thing's done."
"Switch off the electric lights."
"All of them?"
"I think so."
"There, then."
"Now go to the back window and up with the blind."
"Well?"
"I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this. It's
the only window left alight in the house!"
His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and very
much aslant through a long lane of mews to a little square light like
a yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window and leaned out
before I saw it for myself.
"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby House?"
I was not familiar with the view from my back windows.
"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own race-glass.
It has been the most useful thing of all."
But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my
eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few
weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in
the evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses
at his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted window
pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my
vision. I could not see into the actual room, but the shadows of those
within were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even thought a
black thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it
must be, the window to which the intrepid Parrington had descended
from the one above.
"Exactly!" said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. "And that's the
window I have been watching these last few weeks. By daylight you can
see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house;
and by good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the
house arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was easily spotted
by watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you
were up! In the evening his valet stays behind to put things straight;
and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to find out
something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her
outside at eight o'clock. Of course he pretends he was at his post at
the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow's work before my
own. I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to
rag the room."
"I wonder you had time!"
"It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen.
By the way, I did that literally, of course, in the case of the clock
they found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but
you must admit that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all
ready to cart away. There was thus any amount of _prima-facie_
evidence of the robbery having taken place when we were all at table.
As a matter of fact, Lord Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute,
his valet followed him the minute after, and I entered the minute
after that."
"Through the window?"
"To be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay for
your garden in town, in more ways than one. You know the wall, of
course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath contempt."
"But what about the window? It's on the first floor, isn't it?"
Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat. It
was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule,
and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes,
exactly like a child's fishing-rod, which I afterward found to have
been their former state. A double hook of steel was now produced and
quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then Raffles undid three
buttons of his waistcoat; and lapped round and round his waist was the
finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of foot-loops at regular
intervals.
"Is it necessary to go any further?" asked Raffles when he had unwound
the rope. "This end is made fast to that end of the hook, the other
half of the hook fits over anything that comes its way, and you leave
your rod dangling while you swarm up your line. Of course, you must
know what you've got to hook on to; but a man who has had a porcelain
bath fixed in his dressing-room is the man for me. The pipes were all
outside, and fixed to the wall in just the right place. You see I had
made a reconnaissance by day in addition to many by night; it would
hardly have been worth while constructing my ladder on chance."
"So you made it on purpose!"
"My dear Bunny," said Raffles, as he wound the hemp girdle round his
waist once more, "I never did care for ladder work, but I always said
that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best of its kind yet
invented. This one may come in useful again."
"But how long did the whole thing take you?"
"From mother earth to mother earth? About five minutes, to-night, and
one of those was spent in doing another man's work."
"What!" I cried. "You mean to tell me you climbed up and down, in and
out, and broke into that cupboard and that big tin box, and wedged up
the doors and cleared out with a peer's robes and all the rest of it
in five minutes?"
"Of course I don't, and of course I didn't."
"Then what do you mean, and what did you do?"
"Made two bites at the cherry, Bunny! I had a dress rehearsal in the
dead of last night, and it was then I took the swag. Our noble friend
was snoring next door all the time, but the effort may still stand
high among my small exploits, for I not only took all I wanted, but
left the whole place exactly as I found it, and shut things after me
like a good little boy. All that took a good deal longer; to-night I
had simply to rag the room a bit, sweep up some studs and links, and
leave ample evidence of having boned those rotten robes _to-night_.
That, if you come to think of it, was what you writing chaps would
call the quintessential Q.E.F. I have not only shown these dear
Criminologists that I couldn't possibly have done this trick, but that
there's some other fellow who could and did, and whom they've been
perfect asses to confuse with me."
You may figure me as gazing on Raffles all this time in mute and rapt
amazement. But I had long been past that pitch. If he had told me now
that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should
not have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with
him to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed. And I took down
my overcoat as he put on his. But Raffles would not hear of my
accompanying him that night.
"No, my dear Bunny, I am short of sleep and fed up with excitement.
You mayn't believe it--you may look upon me as a plaster devil--but
those five minutes you wot of were rather too crowded even for my
taste. The dinner was nominally at a quarter to eight, and I don't
mind telling you now that I counted on twice as long as I had. But no
one came until twelve minutes to, and so our host took his time. I
didn't want to be the last to arrive, and I was in the drawing-room
five minutes before the hour. But it was a quicker thing than I care
about, when all is said."
And his last word on the matter, as he nodded and went his way, may
well be mine; for one need be no criminologist, much less a member of
the Criminologists' Club, to remember what Raffles did with the robes
and coronet of the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G. He did with
them exactly what he might have been expected to do by the gentlemen
with whom he had foregathered; and he did it in a manner so
characteristic of himself as surely to remove from their minds the
last aura of the idea that he and himself were the same person. Carter
Paterson was out of the question, and any labelling or addressing to
be avoided on obvious grounds. But Raffles stabled the white elephants
in the cloak-room at Charing Cross--and sent Lord Thornaby the
ticket.
The Field of Philippi
Nipper Nasmyth had been head of our school when Raffles was captain of
cricket. I believe he owed his nickname entirely to the popular
prejudice against a day-boy; and in view of the special reproach which
the term carried in my time, as also of the fact that his father was
one of the school trustees, partner in a banking firm of four
resounding surnames, and manager of the local branch, there can be
little doubt that the stigma was undeserved. But we did not think so
then, for Nasmyth was unpopular with high and low, and appeared to
glory in the fact. A swollen conscience caused him to see and hear
even more than was warranted by his position, and his uncompromising
nature compelled him to act on whatsoever he heard or saw: a savage
custodian of public morals, he had in addition a perverse enthusiasm
for lost causes, loved a minority for its own sake, and untenable
tenets for theirs. Such, at all events, was my impression of Nipper
Nasmyth, after my first term, which was also his last. I had never
spoken to him, but I had heard him speak with extraordinary force and
fervor in the school debates. I carried a clear picture of his unkempt
hair, his unbrushed coat, his dominant spectacles, his dogmatic jaw.
And it was I who knew the combination at a glance, after years and
years, when the fateful whim seized Raffles to play once more in the
Old Boys' Match, and his will took me down with him to participate in
the milder festivities of Founder's Day.
It was, however, no ordinary occasion. The bicentenary loomed but a
year ahead, and a movement was on foot to mark the epoch with an
adequate statue of our pious founder. A special meeting was to be held
at the school-house, and Raffles had been specially invited by the new
head master, a man of his own standing, who had been in the eleven
with him up at Cambridge. Raffles had not been near the old place for
years; but I had never gone down since the day I left; and I will not
dwell on the emotions which the once familiar journey awakened in my
unworthy bosom. Paddington was alive with Old Boys of all ages--but
very few of ours--if not as lively as we used to make it when we all
landed back for the holidays. More of us had moustaches and cigarettes
and "loud" ties. That was all. Yet of the throng, though two or three
looked twice and thrice at Raffles, neither he nor I knew a soul
until we had to change at the junction near our journey's end, when,
as I say, it was I who recognized Nipper Nasmyth at sight.
The man was own son of the boy we both remembered. He had grown a
ragged beard and a moustache that hung about his face like a neglected
creeper. He was stout and bent and older than his years. But he
spurned the platform with a stamping stride which even I remembered in
an instant, and which was enough for Raffles before he saw the man's
face.
"The Nipper it is!" he cried. "I could swear to that walk in a
pantomime procession! See the independence in every step: that's his
heel on the neck of the oppressor: it's the nonconformist conscience
in baggy breeches. I must speak to him, Bunny. There was a lot of good
in the old Nipper, though he and I did bar each other."
And in a moment he had accosted the man by the boy's nickname,
obviously without thinking of an affront which few would have read in
that hearty open face and hand.
"My name's Nasmyth," snapped the other, standing upright to glare.
"Forgive me," said Raffles undeterred. "One remembers a nickname and
forgets all it never used to mean. Shake hands, my dear fellow! I'm
Raffles. It must be fifteen years since we met."
"At least," replied Nasmyth coldly; but he could no longer refuse
Raffles his hand. "So you are going down," he sneered, "to this great
gathering?" And I stood listening at my distance, as though still in
the middle fourth.