I mean to turn over a new leaf. I suppose that isn't necessary in your
case, Nasmyth?"
He spoke with an enthusiasm rare indeed in him: it had grown upon
Raffles in the train; the spirit of his boyhood had come rushing back
at fifty miles an hour. He might have been following some honorable
calling in town; he might have snatched this brief respite from a
distinguished but exacting career. I am convinced that it was I alone
who remembered at that moment the life we were really leading at that
time. With me there walked this skeleton through every waking hour
that was to follow. I shall endeavor not to refer to it again. Yet it
should not be forgotten that my skeleton was always there.
"It certainly is not necessary in my case," replied Nasmyth, still as
stiff as any poker. "I happen to be a trustee."
"Of the school?"
"Like my father before me."
"I congratulate you, my dear fellow!" cried the hearty Raffles--a
younger Raffles than I had ever known in town.
"I don't know that you need," said Nasmyth sourly.
"But it must be a tremendous interest. And the proof is that you're
going down to this show, like all the rest of us."
"No, I'm not. I live there, you see."
And I think the Nipper recalled that name as he ground his heel upon
an unresponsive flagstone.
"But you're going to this meeting at the school-house, surely?"
"I don't know. If I do there may be squalls. I don't know what you
think about this precious scheme Raffles, but _I_...."
The ragged beard stuck out, set teeth showed through the wild
moustache, and in a sudden out-pouring we had his views. They were
narrow and intemperate and perverse as any I had heard him advocate as
the firebrand of the Debating Society in my first term. But they were
stated with all the old vim and venom. The mind of Nasmyth had not
broadened with the years, but neither had its natural force abated,
nor that of his character either. He spoke with great vigor at the
top of his voice; soon we had a little crowd about us; but the tall
collars and the broad smiles of the younger Old Boys did not deter our
dowdy demagogue. Why spend money on a man who had been dead two
hundred years? What good could it do him or the school? Besides, he
was only technically our founder. He had not founded a great public
school. He had founded a little country grammar school which had
pottered along for a century and a half. The great public school was
the growth of the last fifty years, and no credit to the pillar of
piety. Besides, he was only nominally pious. Nasmyth had made
researches, and he knew. And why throw good money after a bad man?
"Are there many of your opinion?" inquired Raffles, when the agitator
paused for breath. And Nasmyth beamed on us with flashing eyes.
"Not one to my knowledge as yet," said he. "But we shall see after
to-morrow night. I hear it's to be quite an exceptional gathering this
year; let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There are none on the
present staff, and I only know of one among the trustees!"
Raffles refrained from smiling as his dancing eye met mine.
"I can understand your view," he said. "I am not sure that I don't
share it to some extent. But it seems to me a duty to support a
general movement like this even if it doesn't take the direction or
the shape of our own dreams. I suppose you yourself will give
something, Nasmyth?"
"Give something? I? Not a brass farthing!" cried the implacable
banker. "To do so would be to stultify my whole position. I cordially
and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all
my influence against it. No, my good sir, I not only don't subscribe
myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good many
subscriptions in the bud."
I was probably the only one who saw the sudden and yet subtle change
in Raffles--the hard mouth, the harder eye. I, at least, might have
foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet voice betrayed
nothing, as he inquired whether Nasmyth was going to speak at next
night's meeting. Nasmyth said he might, and certainly warned us what
to expect. He was still fulminating when our train came in.
"Then we meet again at Philippi," cried Raffles in gay adieu. "For you
have been very frank with us all, Nasmyth, and I'll be frank enough
in my turn to tell you that I've every intention of speaking on the
other side!"
It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak by his old college
friend, the new head master. Yet it was not at the school-house that
he and I were to stay, but at the house that we had both been in as
boys. It also had changed hands: a wing had been added, and the double
tier of tiny studies made brilliant with electric light. But the quad
and the fives-courts did not look a day older; the ivy was no thicker
round the study windows; and in one boy's castle we found the
traditional print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked about our
studies ever since a son of the contractor first sold it when he left.
Nay, more, there was the bald remnant of a stuffed bird which had been
my own daily care when it and I belonged to Raffles. And when we all
filed in to prayers, through the green baize door which still
separated the master's part of the house from that of the boys, there
was a small boy posted in the passage to give the sign of silence to
the rest assembled in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old
days; the picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only we who were
out of it in body and soul.
On our side of the baize door a fine hospitality and a finer flow of
spirits were the order of the night. There was a sound representative
assortment of quite young Old Boys, to whom ours was a prehistoric
time, and in the trough of their modern chaff and chat we old stagers
might well have been left far astern of the fun. Yet it was Raffles
who was the life and soul of the party, and that not by meretricious
virtue of his cricket. There happened not to be another cricketer
among us, and it was on their own subjects that Raffles laughed with
the lot in turn and in the lump. I never knew him in quite such form.
I will not say he was a boy among them, but he was that rarer being,
the man of the world who can enter absolutely into the fun and fervor
of the salad age. My cares and my regrets had never been more acute,
but Raffles seemed a man without either in his life.
He was not, however, the hero of the Old Boys' Match, and that was
expected of him by all the school. There was a hush when he went in, a
groan when he came out. I had no reason to suppose he was not trying;
these things happen to the cricketer who plays out of his class; but
when the great Raffles went on to bowl, and was hit all over the
field, I was not so sure. It certainly failed to affect his spirits;
he was more brilliant than ever at our hospitable board; and after
dinner came the meeting at which he and Nasmyth were to speak.
It was a somewhat frigid gathering until Nasmyth rose. We had all
dined with our respective hosts, and then repaired to this business in
cold blood. Many were lukewarm about it in their hearts; there was a
certain amount of mild prejudice, and a greater amount of animal
indifference, to be overcome in the opening speech. It is not for me
to say whether this was successfully accomplished. I only know how the
temperature of that meeting rose with Nipper Nasmyth.
And I dare say, in all the circumstances of the case, his really was a
rather vulgar speech. But it was certainly impassioned, and probably
as purely instinctive as his denunciation of all the causes which
appeal to the gullible many without imposing upon the cantankerous
few. His arguments, it is true, were merely an elaboration of those
with which he had favored some of us already; but they were pointed by
a concise exposition of the several definite principles they
represented, and barbed with a caustic rhetoric quite admirable in
itself. In a word, the manner was worthy of the very foundation it
sought to shake, or we had never swallowed such matter without a
murmur. As it was, there was a demonstration in the wilderness when
the voice ceased crying. But we sat in the deeper silence when Raffles
rose to reply.
I leaned forward not to lose a word. I knew my Raffles so well that I
felt almost capable of reporting his speech before I heard it. Never
was I more mistaken, even in him! So far from a gibe for a gibe and a
taunt for a taunt, there never was softer answer than that which A. J.
Raffles returned to Nipper Nasmyth before the staring eyes and
startled ears of all assembled. He courteously but firmly refused to
believe a word his old friend Nasmyth had said--about himself. He had
known Nasmyth for twenty years, and never had he met a dog who barked
so loud and bit so little. The fact was that he had far too kind a
heart to bite at all. Nasmyth might get up and protest as loud as he
liked: the speaker declared he knew him better than Nasmyth knew
himself. He had the necessary defects of his great qualities. He was
only too good a sportsman. He had a perfect passion for the weaker
side. That alone led Nasmyth into such excesses of language as we had
all heard from his lips that night. As for Raffles, he concluded his
far too genial remarks by predicting that, whatever Nasmyth might say
or think of the new fund, he would subscribe to it as handsomely as
any of us, like "the generous good chap" that we all knew him to be.
Even so did Raffles disappoint the Old Boys in the evening as he had
disappointed the school by day. We had looked to him for a noble
raillery, a lofty and loyal disdain, and he had fobbed us off with
friendly personalities not even in impeccable taste. Nevertheless,
this light treatment of a grave offence went far to restore the
natural amenities of the occasion. It was impossible even for Nasmyth
to reply to it as he might to a more earnest onslaught. He could but
smile sardonically, and audibly undertake to prove Raffles a false
prophet; and though subsequent speakers were less merciful the note
was struck, and there was no more bad blood in the debate. There was
plenty, however, in the veins of Nasmyth, as I was to discover for
myself before the night was out.
You might think that in the circumstances he would not have attended
the head master's ball with which the evening ended; but that would be
sadly to misjudge so perverse a creature as the notorious Nipper. He
was probably one of those who protest that there is "nothing personal"
in their most personal attacks. Not that Nasmyth took this tone about
Raffles when he and I found ourselves cheek by jowl against the
ballroom wall; he could forgive his franker critics, but not the
friendly enemy who had treated him so much more gently than he
deserved.
"I seem to have seen you with this great man Raffles," began Nasmyth,
as he overhauled me with his fighting eye. "Do you know him well?"
"Intimately."
"I remember now. You were with him when he forced himself upon me on
the way down yesterday. He had to tell me who he was. Yet he talks as
though we were old friends."
"You were in the upper sixth together," I rejoined, nettled by his
tone.
"What does that matter? I am glad to say I had too much self-respect,
and too little respect for Raffles, ever to be a friend of his then. I
knew too many of the things he did," said Nipper Nasmyth.
His fluent insults had taken my breath. But in a lucky flash I saw my
retort.
"You must have had special opportunities of observation, living in the
town," said I; and drew first blood between the long hair and the
ragged beard; but that was all.
"So he really did get out at nights?" remarked my adversary. "You
certainly give your friend away. What's he doing now?"
I let my eyes follow Raffles round the room before replying. He was
waltzing with a master's wife--waltzing as he did everything else.
Other couples seemed to melt before them. And the woman on his arm
looked a radiant girl.
"I meant in town, or wherever he lives his mysterious life," explained
Nasmyth, when I told him that he could see for himself. But his clever
tone did not trouble me; it was his epithet that caused me to prick my
ears. And I found some difficulty in following Raffles right round the
room.
"I thought everybody knew what he was doing; he's playing cricket most
of his time," was my measured reply; and if it bore an extra touch of
insolence, I can honestly ascribe that to my nerves.
"And is that all he does for a living?" pursued my inquisitor keenly.
"You had better ask Raffles himself," said I to that. "It's a pity you
didn't ask him in public, at the meeting!"
But I was beginning to show temper in my embarrassment, and of course
that made Nasmyth the more imperturbable.
"Really, he might be following some disgraceful calling, by the
mystery you make of it!" he exclaimed. "And for that matter I call
first-class cricket a disgraceful calling, when it's followed by men
who ought to be gentlemen, but are really professionals in gentlemanly
clothing. The present craze for gladiatorial athleticism I regard as
one of the great evils of the age; but the thinly veiled
professionalism of the so-called amateur is the greatest evil of that
craze. Men play for the gentlemen and are paid more than the players
who walk out of another gate. In my time there was none of that.
Amateurs were amateurs and sport was sport; there were no Raffleses in
first-class cricket then. I had forgotten Raffles was a modern
first-class cricketer: that explains him. Rather than see my son such
another, do you know what I'd prefer to see him?"
I neither knew nor cared: yet a wretched premonitory fascination held
me breathless till I was told.
"I'd prefer to see him a thief!" said Nasmyth savagely; and when his
eyes were done with me, he turned upon his heel. So that ended that
stage of my discomfiture.
It was only to give place to a worse. Was all this accident or fell
design? Conscience had made a coward of me, and yet what reason had I
to disbelieve the worst? We were pirouetting on the edge of an abyss;
sooner or later the false step must come and the pit swallow us. I
began to wish myself back in London, and I did get back to my room in
our old house. My dancing days were already over; there I had taken
the one resolution to which I remained as true as better men to better
vows; there the painful association was no mere sense of personal
unworthiness. I fell to thinking in my room of other dances ... and
was still smoking the cigarette which Raffles had taught me to
appreciate when I looked up to find him regarding me from the door. He
had opened it as noiselessly as only Raffles could open doors, and now
he closed it in the same professional fashion.
"I missed Achilles hours ago," said he. "And still he's sulking in his
tent!"
"I have been," I answered, laughing as he could always make me, "but
I'll chuck it if you'll stop and smoke. Our host doesn't mind; there's
an ash-tray provided for the purpose. I ought to be sulking between
the sheets, but I'm ready to sit up with you till morning."
"We might do worse; but, on the other hand, we might do still better,"
rejoined Raffles, and for once he resisted the seductive Sullivan. "As
a matter of fact, it's morning now; in another hour it will be dawn;
and where could day dawn better than in Warfield Woods, or along the
Stockley road, or even on the Upper or the Middle? I don't want to
turn in, any more than you do. I may as well confess that the whole
show down here has exalted me more than anything for years. But if we
can't sleep, Bunny, let's have some fresh air instead."
"Has everybody gone to bed?" I asked.
"Long ago. I was the last in. Why?"
"Only it might sound a little odd, our turning out again, if they were
to hear us."
Raffles stood over me with a smile made of mischief and cunning; but
it was the purest mischief imaginable, the most innocent and comic
cunning.
"They shan't hear us at all, Bunny," said he. "I mean to get out as I
did in the good old nights. I've been spoiling for the chance ever
since I came down. There's not the smallest harm in it now; and if
you'll come with me I'll show you how it used to be done."
"But I know," said I. "Who used to haul up the rope after you, and let
it down again to the minute?"
Raffles looked down on me from lowered lids, over a smile too humorous
to offend.
"My dear good Bunny! And do you suppose that even then I had only one
way of doing a thing? I've had a spare loophole all my life, and when
you're ready I'll show you what it was when I was here. Take off those
boots, and carry your tennis-shoes; slip on another coat; put out your
light; and I'll meet you on the landing in two minutes."
He met me with uplifted finger, and not a syllable; and down-stairs he
led me, stocking soles close against the skirting, two feet to each
particular step. It must have seemed child's play to Raffles; the old
precautions were obviously assumed for my entertainment; but I confess
that to me it was all refreshingly exciting--for once without a risk
of durance if we came to grief! With scarcely a creak we reached the
hall, and could have walked out of the street door without danger or
difficulty. But that would not do for Raffles. He must needs lead me
into the boys' part, through the green baize door. It took a deal of
opening and shutting, but Raffles seemed to enjoy nothing better than
these mock obstacles, and in a few minutes we were resting with sharp
ears in the boys' hall.
"Through these windows?" I whispered, when the clock over the piano
had had matters its own way long enough to make our minds quite easy.
"How else?" whispered Raffles, as he opened the one on whose ledge
our letters used to await us of a morning.
"And then through the quad----"
"And over the gates at the end. No talking, Bunny; there's a dormitory
just overhead; but ours was in front, you remember, and if they had
ever seen me I should have nipped back this way while they were
watching the other."
His finger was on his lips as we got out softly into the starlight. I
remember how the gravel hurt as we left the smooth flagged margin of
the house for the open quad; but the nearer of two long green seats
(whereon you prepared your construe for the second-school in the
summer term) was mercifully handy; and once in our rubber soles we had
no difficulty in scaling the gates beyond the fives-courts. Moreover,
we dropped into a very desert of a country road, nor saw a soul when
we doubled back beneath the outer study windows, nor heard a foot-fall
in the main street of the slumbering town. Our own fell like the
night-dews and the petals of the poet; but Raffles ran his arm through
mine, and would chatter in whispers as we went.
"So you and Nipper had a word--or was it words? I saw you out of the
tail of my eye when I was dancing, and I heard you out of the tail of
my ear. It sounded like words, Bunny, and I thought I caught my name.
He's the most consistent man I know, and the least altered from a boy.
But he'll subscribe all right, you'll see, and be very glad I made
him."
I whispered back that I did not believe it for a moment. Raffles had
not heard all Nasmyth had said of him. And neither would he listen to
the little I meant to repeat to him; he would but reiterate a
conviction so chimerical to my mind that I interrupted in my turn to
ask him what ground he had for it.
"I've told you already," said Raffles. "I mean to make him."
"But how?" I asked. "And when, and where?"
"At Philippi, Bunny, where I said I'd see him. What a rabbit you are
at a quotation!
"'And I think that the field of Philippi
Was where Caesar came to an end;
But who gave old Brutus the tip, I
Can't comprehend!'
"You may have forgotten your Shakespeare, Bunny, but you ought to
remember that."
And I did, vaguely, but had no idea what it or Raffles meant, as I
plainly told him.
"The theatre of war," he answered--"and here we are at the stage
door!"
Raffles had stopped suddenly in his walk. It was the last dark hour of
the summer night, but the light from a neighboring lamp-post showed me
the look on his face as he turned.
"I think you also inquired when," he continued. "Well, then, this
minute--if you will give me a leg up!"
And behind him, scarcely higher than his head, and not even barred,
was a wide window with a wire blind, and the name of Nasmyth among
others lettered in gold upon the wire.
"You're never going to break in?"
"This instant, if you'll help me; in five or ten minutes, if you
won't."
"Surely you didn't bring the--the tools?"
He jingled them gently in his pocket.
"Not the whole outfit, Bunny. But you never know when you mayn't want
one or two. I'm only thankful I didn't leave the lot behind this time.
I very nearly did."
"I must say I thought you would, coming down here," I said
reproachfully.
"But you ought to be glad I didn't," he rejoined with a smile. "It's
going to mean old Nasmyth's subscription to the Founder's Fund, and
that's to be a big one, I promise you! The lucky thing is that I went
so far as to bring my bunch of safe-keys. Now, are you going to help
me use them, or are you not? If so, now's your minute; if not, clear
out and be----"
"Not so fast, Raffles," said I testily. "You must have planned this
before you came down, or you would never have brought all those things
with you."
"My dear Bunny, they're a part of my kit! I take them wherever I take
my evening-clothes. As to this potty bank, I never even thought of it,
much less that it would become a public duty to draw a hundred or so
without signing for it. That's all I shall touch, Bunny--I'm not on
the make to-night. There's no risk in it either. If I am caught I
shall simply sham champagne and stand the racket; it would be an
obvious frolic after what happened at that meeting. And they will
catch me, if I stand talking here: you run away back to bed--unless
you're quite determined to 'give old Brutus the tip!'"
Now we had barely been a minute whispering where we stood, and the
whole street was still as silent as the tomb. To me there seemed least
danger in discussing the matter quietly on the spot. But even as he
gave me my dismissal Raffles turned and caught the sill above him,
first with one hand and then with the other. His legs swung like a
pendulum as he drew himself up with one arm, then shifted the position
of the other hand, and very gradually worked himself waist-high with
the sill. But the sill was too narrow for him; that was as far as he
could get unaided; and it was as much as I could bear to see of a feat
which in itself might have hardened my conscience and softened my
heart. But I had identified his doggerel verse at last. I am ashamed
to say that it was part of a set of my very own writing in the school
magazine of my time. So Raffles knew the stuff better than I did
myself, and yet scorned to press his flattery to win me over! He had
won me: in a second my rounded shoulders were a pedestal for those
dangling feet. And before many more I heard the old metallic snap,
followed by the raising of a sash so slowly and gently as to be almost
inaudible to me listening just below.
Raffles went through hands first, disappeared for an instant, then
leaned out, lowering his hands for me.
"Come on, Bunny! You're safer in than out. Hang on to the sill and let
me get you under the arms. Now all together--quietly does it--and over
you come!"
No need to dwell on our proceedings in the bank. I myself had small
part in the scene, being posted rather in the wings, at the foot of
the stairs leading to the private premises in which the manager had
his domestic being. But I made my mind easy about him, for in the
silence of my watch I soon detected a nasal note overhead, and it was
resonant and aggressive as the man himself. Of Raffles, on the
contrary, I heard nothing, for he had shut the door between us, and I
was to warn him if a single sound came through. I need scarcely add
that no warning was necessary during the twenty minutes we remained in
the bank. Raffles afterward assured me that nineteen of them had been
spent in filing one key; but one of his latest inventions was a little
thick velvet bag in which he carried the keys; and this bag had two
elastic mouths, which closed so tightly about either wrist that he
could file away, inside, and scarcely hear it himself. As for these
keys, they were clever counterfeits of typical patterns by two great
safe-making firms. And Raffles had come by them in a manner all his
own, which the criminal world may discover for itself.