had succeeded to his satisfaction, and by experience better than to
question him on the point. Indeed, the first thing was to get out of
the bank; for the stars were drowning in a sky of ink and water, and
it was a comfort to feel that we could fly straight to our beds. I
said so in whispers as Raffles cautiously opened our window and peeped
out. In an instant his head was in, and for another I feared the
worst.
"What was that, Bunny? No, you don't, my son! There's not a soul in
sight that I can see, but you never know, and we may as well lay a
scent while we're about it. Ready? Then follow me, and never mind the
window."
With that he dropped softly into the street, and I after him, turning
to the right instead of the left, and that at a brisk trot instead of
the innocent walk which had brought us to the bank. Like mice we
scampered past the great schoolroom, with its gable snipping a paler
sky than ever, and the shadows melting even in the colonnade
underneath. Masters' houses flitted by on the left, lesser landmarks
on either side, and presently we were running our heads into the dawn,
one under either hedge of the Stockley road.
"Did you see that light in Nab's just now?" cried Raffles as he led.
"No; why?" I panted, nearly spent.
"It was in Nab's dressing-room."
"Yes?"
"I've seen it there before," continued Raffles. "He never was a good
sleeper, and his ears reach to the street. I wouldn't like to say how
often I was chased by him in the small hours! I believe he knew who it
was toward the end, but Nab was not the man to accuse you of what he
couldn't prove."
I had no breath for comment. And on sped Raffles like a yacht before
the wind, and on I blundered like a wherry at sea, making heavy
weather all the way, and nearer foundering at every stride. Suddenly,
to my deep relief, Raffles halted, but only to tell me to stop my
pipes while he listened.
"It's all right, Bunny," he resumed, showing me a glowing face in the
dawn. "History's on its own tracks once more, and I'll bet you it's
dear old Nab on ours! Come on, Bunny; run to the last gasp, and leave
the rest to me."
I was past arguing, and away he went. There was no help for it but to
follow as best I could. Yet I had vastly preferred to collapse on the
spot, and trust to Raffles's resource, as before very long I must. I
had never enjoyed long wind and the hours that we kept in town may
well have aggravated the deficiency. Raffles, however, was in
first-class training from first-class cricket, and he had no mercy on
Nab or me. But the master himself was an old Oxford miler, who could
still bear it better than I; nay, as I flagged and stumbled, I heard
him pounding steadily behind.
"Come on, come on, or he'll do us!" cried Raffles shrilly over his
shoulder; and a gruff sardonic laugh came back over mine. It was
pearly morning now, but we had run into a shallow mist that took me by
the throat and stabbed me to the lungs. I coughed and coughed, and
stumbled in my stride, until down I went, less by accident than to get
it over, and so lay headlong in my tracks. And old Nab dealt me a
verbal kick as he passed.
"You beast!" he growled, as I have known him growl it in form.
But Raffles himself had abandoned the flight on hearing my downfall,
and I was on hands and knees just in time to see the meeting between
him and old Nab. And there stood Raffles in the silvery mist, laughing
with his whole light heart, leaning back to get the full flavor of his
mirth; and, nearer me, sturdy old Nab, dour and grim, with beads of
dew on the hoary beard that had been lamp-black in our time.
"So I've caught you at last!" said he. "After more years than I mean
to count!"
"Then you're luckier than we are, sir," answered Raffles, "for I fear
our man has given us the slip."
"Your man!" echoed Nab. His bushy eyebrows had shot up: it was as much
as I could do to keep my own in their place.
"We were indulging in the chase ourselves," explained Raffles, "and
one of us has suffered for his zeal, as you can see. It is even
possible that we, too, have been chasing a perfectly innocent man."
"Not to say a reformed character," said our pursuer dryly. "I suppose
you don't mean a member of the school?" he added, pinking his man
suddenly as of yore, with all the old barbed acumen.
But Raffles was now his match.
"That would be carrying reformation rather far, sir. No, as I say, I
may have been mistaken in the first instance; but I had put out my
light and was looking out of the window when I saw a fellow behaving
quite suspiciously. He was carrying his boots and creeping along in
his socks--which must be why you never heard him, sir. They make less
noise than rubber soles even--that is, they must, you know! Well,
Bunny had just left me, so I hauled him out and we both crept down to
play detective. No sign of the fellow! We had a look in the
colonnade--I thought I heard him--and that gave us no end of a hunt
for nothing. But just as we were leaving he came padding past under
our noses, and that's where we took up the chase. Where he'd been in
the meantime I have no idea; very likely he'd done no harm; but it
seemed worth while finding out. He had too good a start, though, and
poor Bunny had too bad a wind."
"You should have gone on and let me rip," said I, climbing to my feet
at last.
"As it is, however, we will all let the other fellow do so," said old
Nab in a genial growl. "And you two had better turn into my house and
have something to keep the morning cold out."
You may imagine with what alacrity we complied; and yet I am bound to
confess that I had never liked Nab at school. I still remember my term
in his form. He had a caustic tongue and a fine assortment of damaging
epithets, most of which were levelled at my devoted skull during those
three months. I now discovered that he also kept a particularly mellow
Scotch whiskey, an excellent cigar, and a fund of anecdote of which a
mordant wit was the worthy bursar. Enough to add that he kept us
laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.
As for Raffles, he appeared to me to feel far more compunction for
the fable which he had been compelled to foist upon one of the old
masters than for the immeasurably graver offence against society and
another Old Boy. This, indeed, did not worry him at all; and the story
was received next day with absolute credulity on all sides. Nasmyth
himself was the first to thank us both for our spirited effort on his
behalf; and the incident had the ironic effect of establishing an
immediate _entente cordiale_ between Raffles and his very latest
victim. I must confess, however, that for my own part I was thoroughly
uneasy during the Old Boys' second innings, when Raffles made a
selfish score, instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his
own way. There was never any knowing with what new detail he was about
to embellish it: and I have still to receive full credit for the tact
that it required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have
I been more thankful than when our train started next morning, and the
poor, unsuspecting Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from the
platform.
"Lucky we weren't staying at Nab's," said Raffles, as he lit a
Sullivan and opened his _Daily Mail_ at its report of the robbery.
"There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he
always was and will be."
"What was that?"
"The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the
morning, and yet we let them assume that we came out that way. Nab
would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been
nabbed ourselves."
It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had taken,
and, of course, he had resolutely eschewed any and every form of paper
money. He posted his own first contribution of twenty-five pounds to
the Founder's Fund immediately on our return to town, before rushing
off to more first-class cricket, and I gathered that the rest would
follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd coincidence, however,
a mysterious but magnificent donation of a hundred guineas was almost
simultaneously received in notes by the treasurer of the Founder's
Fund, from one who simply signed himself "Old Boy." The treasurer
happened to be our late host, the new man at our old house, and he
wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was pleased to consider a
direct result of the latter's speech. I did not see the letter that
Raffles wrote in reply, but in due course I heard the name of the
mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper Nasmyth
himself. I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask
old Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the 'Varsity
match, and if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen,
but I had the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles
when we encountered our shabby friend in front of the pavilion.
[Illustration: He kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells
rang him out.]
"My dear fellow," cried Raffles, "I hear it was you who gave that
hundred guineas by stealth to the very movement you denounced. Don't
deny it, and don't blush to find it fame. Listen to me. There was a
great lot in what you said; but it's the kind of thing we ought all to
back, whether we strictly approve of it in our hearts or not."
"Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is----"
"I know what you're going to say. Don't say it. There's not one in a
thousand who would do as you've done, and not one in a million who
would do it anonymously."
"But what makes you think I did it, Raffles?"
"Everybody is saying so. You will find it all over the place when you
get back. You will find yourself the most popular man down there,
Nasmyth!"
I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward,
ungainly, cantankerous man: all his angles seemed to have been
smoothed away: there was something quite human in the flushed,
undecided, wistful face.
"I never was popular in my life," he said. "I don't want to buy my
popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles----"
"Don't! I can't stop to hear. They're ringing the bell. But you
shouldn't have been angry with me for saying you were a generous good
chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all the time. Good-by, old fellow!"
But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end.
There was a sudden new light in his face.
"Was I?" he cried. "Then I'll make it _two_ hundred, and damn the
odds!"
Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody,
would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for
the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to
come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two
chairs aloof from the fascinating throng.
"I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know," he began. "But I have been
sorry since the interval. I've been sorry for poor old Nipper Nasmyth.
Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for the first time
in his life?"
"I did; but you had nothing to do with that, my dear man."
Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met.
"I had everything to do with it. I tried to make him tell the meanest
lie. I made sure he would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at
the last moment, he saw how to hedge things with his conscience. And
his second hundred will be a real gift."
"You mean under his own name?"
"And with his own free-will. My good Bunny, is it possible you don't
know what I did with the hundred we drew from that bank!"
"I knew what you were going to do with it," said I. "I didn't know you
had actually got further than the twenty-five you told me you were
sending as your own contribution."
Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.
"And you actually thought that came out of his money?"
"Naturally."
"In my name?"
"I thought so."
Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some more
at the great white numbers over the grand-stand.
"We may as well have another look at the cricket," said he. "It's
difficult to see the board from here, but I believe there's another
man out."
A Bad Night
There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a
surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some retirement,
with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow
hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a prosperous
son of the same suburban soil which had nourished both families for
generations. The wedding presents were so numerous as to fill several
rooms at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value
calling for a special transaction with the Burglary Insurance Company
in Cheapside. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all this information.
I only know that it proved correct in each particular. I was not
indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured me
that it was "a one-man job," and naturally intended to be the one man
himself. It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were
inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English
team in the Second Test Match.
In a flash I saw the chance of my criminal career. It was some years
since Raffles had served his country in these encounters; he had never
thought to be called upon again, and his gratification was only less
than his embarrassment. The match was at Old Trafford, on the third
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in July; the other affair had been all
arranged for the Thursday night, the night of the wedding at East
Molesey. It was for Raffles to choose between the two excitements, and
for once I helped him to make up his mind. I duly pointed out to him
that in Surrey, at all events, I was quite capable of taking his
place. Nay, more, I insisted at once on my prescriptive right and on
his patriotic obligation in the matter. In the country's name and in
my own, I implored him to give it and me a chance; and for once, as I
say, my arguments prevailed. Raffles sent his telegram--it was the day
before the match. We then rushed down to Esher, and over every inch of
the ground by that characteristically circuitous route which he
enjoined on me for the next night. And at six in the evening I was
receiving the last of my many instructions through a window of the
restaurant car.
"Only promise me not to take a revolver," said Raffles in a whisper.
"Here are my keys; there's an old life-preserver somewhere in the
bureau; take that, if you like--though what you take I rather fear you
are the chap to use!"
"Then the rope be round my own neck!" I whispered back. "Whatever else
I may do, Raffles, I shan't give _you_ away; and you'll find I do
better than you think, and am worth trusting with a little more to do,
or I'll know the reason why!"
And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of Euston with raised
eyebrows, and I turned grimly on my heel. I saw his fears for me; and
nothing could have made me more fearless for myself. Raffles had been
wrong about me all these years; now was my chance to set him right. It
was galling to feel that he had no confidence in my coolness or my
nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch. I had been loyal
to him through rough and smooth. In many an ugly corner I had stood as
firm as Raffles himself. I was his right hand, and yet he never
hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time, at all events, I should
be neither one nor the other; this time I was the understudy playing
lead at last; and I wish I could think that Raffles ever realized with
what gusto I threw myself into his part.
Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night,
and first down the stairs into the open air. The night was close and
cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban
builder has marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I
know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of leaves
at mid-summer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane or cranny
by the way. Naturally, it was in this blind reach that I fancied I was
being followed. I stopped in my stride; so did the steps I made sure I
had heard not far behind; and when I went on, they followed suit. I
dried my forehead as I walked, but soon brought myself to repeat the
experiment when an exact repetition of the result went to convince me
that it had been my own echo all the time. And since I lost it on
getting quit of the avenue, and coming out upon the straight and open
road, I was not long in recovering from my scare. But now I could see
my way, and found the rest of it without mishap, though not without
another semblance of adventure. Over the bridge across the Mole, when
about to turn to the left, I marched straight upon a policeman in
rubber soles. I had to call him "officer" as I passed, and to pass my
turning by a couple of hundred yards, before venturing back another
way.
At last I had crept through a garden gate, and round by black windows
to a black lawn drenched with dew. It had been a heating walk, and I
was glad to blunder on a garden seat, most considerately placed under
a cedar which added its own darkness to that of the night. Here I
rested a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep them dry, untying my
shoes to save time, and generally facing the task before me with a
coolness which I strove to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine
was a self-conscious quality, as far removed from the original as any
other deliberate imitation of genius. I actually struck a match on my
trousers, and lit one of the shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would
not have done such a thing at such a moment. But I wished to tell him
that I had done it; and in truth I was not more than pleasurably
afraid; I had rather that impersonal curiosity as to the issue which
has been the saving of me in still more precarious situations. I even
grew impatient for the fray, and could not after all sit still as long
as I had intended. So it happened that I was finishing my cigarette on
the edge of the wet lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before
stepping across the gravel to the conservatory door, when a most
singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a muffled gasping
somewhere overhead. I stood like stone; and my listening attitude must
have been visible against the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored
voice hailed me sternly from a window.
"Who on earth are you?" it wheezed.
"A detective officer," I replied, "sent down by the Burglary Insurance
Company."
Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all been
prepared for me by Raffles, in case of need. I was merely repeating a
lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window there
was pause enough, filled only by the uncanny wheezing of the man I
could not see.
"I don't see why they should have sent you down," he said at length.
"We are being quite well looked after by the local police; they're
giving us a special call every hour."
"I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on my own account. "I met one
of them at the corner just now, and we passed the time of night."
My heart was knocking me to bits. I had started for myself at last.
"Did you get my name from him?" pursued my questioner, in a suspicious
wheeze.
"No; they gave me that before I started," I replied. "But I'm sorry
you saw me, sir; it's a mere matter of routine, and not intended to
annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all night, but I
own it wasn't necessary to trespass as I've done. I'll take myself
off the actual premises, if you prefer it."
This again was all my own; and it met with a success that might have
given me confidence.
"Not a bit of it," replied young Medlicott, with a grim geniality.
"I've just woke up with the devil of an attack of asthma, and may have
to sit up in my chair till morning. You'd better come up and see me
through, and kill two birds while you're about it. Stay where you are,
and I'll come down and let you in."
Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had not foreseen! Outside, in
the dark, my audacious part was not hard to play; but to carry the
improvisation in-doors was to double at once the difficulty and the
risk. It was true that I had purposely come down in a true detective's
overcoat and bowler; but my personal appearance was hardly of the
detective type. On the other hand as the _soi-disant_ guardian of the
gifts one might only excite suspicion by refusing to enter the house
where they were. Nor could I forget that it was my purpose to effect
such entry first or last. That was the casting consideration. I
decided to take my dilemma by the horns.
There had been a scraping of matches in the room over the
conservatory; the open window had shown for a moment, like an empty
picture-frame, a gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and in the
next half-minute I remembered to tie my shoes. But the light was slow
to reappear through the leaded glasses of an outer door farther along
the path. And when the door opened, it was a figure of woe that stood
within and held an unsteady candle between our faces.
I have seen old men look half their age, and young men look double
theirs; but never before or since have I seen a beardless boy bent
into a man of eighty, gasping for every breath, shaken by every gasp,
swaying, tottering, and choking, as if about to die upon his feet. Yet
with it all, young Medlicott overhauled me shrewdly, and it was
several moments before he would let me take the candle from him.
"I shouldn't have come down--made me worse," he began whispering in
spurts. "Worse still going up again. You must give me an arm. You will
come up? That's right! Not as bad as I look, you know. Got some good
whiskey, too. Presents are all right; but if they aren't you'll hear
of it in-doors sooner than out. Now I'm ready--thanks! Mustn't make
more noise than we can help--wake my mother."
It must have taken us minutes to climb that single flight of stairs.
There was just room for me to keep his arm in mine; with the other he
hauled on the banisters; and so we mounted, step by step, a panting
pause on each, and a pitched battle for breath on the half-landing. In
the end we gained a cosey library, with an open door leading to a
bedroom beyond. But the effort had deprived my poor companion of all
power of speech; his laboring lungs shrieked like the wind; he could
just point to the door by which we had entered, and which I shut in
obedience to his gestures, and then to the decanter and its
accessories on the table where he had left them overnight. I gave him
nearly half a glassful, and his paroxysm subsided a little as he sat
hunched up in a chair.
"I was a fool ... to turn in," he blurted in more whispers between
longer pauses. "Lying down is the devil ... when you're in for a real
bad night. You might get me the brown cigarettes ... on the table in
there. That's right ... thanks awfully ... and now a match!"
The asthmatic had bitten off either end of the stramonium cigarette,
and was soon choking himself with the crude fumes, which he inhaled in
desperate gulps, to exhale in furious fits of coughing. Never was more
heroic remedy; it seemed a form of lingering suicide; but by degrees
some slight improvement became apparent, and at length the sufferer
was able to sit upright, and to drain his glass with a sigh of rare
relief. I sighed also, for I had witnessed a struggle for dear life by
a man in the flower of his youth, whose looks I liked, whose smile
came like the sun through the first break in his torments, and whose
first words were to thank me for the little I had done in bare
humanity.
That made me feel the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard.
And I was not unready for the remark which followed a more exhaustive
scrutiny than I had hitherto sustained.
"Do you know," said young Medlicott, "that you aren't a bit like the
detective of my dreams?"
"Only to proud to hear it," I replied. "There would be no point in my
being in plain clothes if I looked exactly what I was."
My companion reassured me with a wheezy laugh.
"There's something in that," said he, "although I do congratulate the
insurance people on getting a man of your class to do their dirty
work. And I congratulate myself," he was quick enough to add, "on
having you to see me through as bad a night as I've had for a long
time. You're like flowers in the depths of winter. Got a drink?
That's right! I suppose you didn't happen to bring down an evening
paper?"
I said I had brought one, but had unfortunately left it in the train.
"What about the Test Match?" cried my asthmatic, shooting forward in
his chair.
"I can tell you that," said I. "We went in first----"
"Oh, I know all about that," he interrupted. "I've seen the miserable
score up to lunch. How many did we scrape altogether?"
"We're scraping them still."
"No! How many?"