gave something of the kind away. You see, you had _not_ replaced the
receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay. This very question
came up, and the brutes themselves seemed so quick to see its
possibilities that I thought best to take the bull by the horns and
own that I had been rung up by somebody. To be absolutely honest, I
even went so far as to say I thought it was Raffles!"
"You didn't, Bunny!"
"What could I say? I was obliged to think of somebody, and I saw they
were not going to recognize you. So I put up a yarn about a wager we
had made about this very trap of Maguire's. You see, Raffles, I've
never properly told you how I got in, and there's no time now; but the
first thing I had said was that I half expected to find you here
before me. That was in case they spotted you at once. But it made all
that part about the telephone fit in rather well."
"I should think it did, Bunny," murmured Raffles, in a tone that added
sensibly to my reward. "I couldn't have done better myself, and you
will forgive my saying that you have never in your life done half so
well. Talk about that crack you gave me on the head! You have made it
up to me a hundredfold by all you have done to-night. But the bother
of it is that there's still so much to do, and to hit upon, and so
precious little time for thought as well as action."
I took out my watch and showed it to Raffles without a word. It was
three o'clock in the morning, and the latter end of March. In little
more than an hour there would be dim daylight in the streets. Raffles
roused himself from a reverie with sudden decision.
"There's only one thing for it, Bunny," said he. "We must trust each
other and divide the labor. You ring up the police, and leave the rest
to me."
"You haven't hit upon any reason for the sort of burglar they think
you were, ringing up the kind of man they know I am?"
"Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so,
and after all it isn't for you to give the explanation. It would be
highly suspicious if you did."
"So it would," I agreed.
"Then will you trust me to hit on something--if possible before
morning--in any case by the time it's wanted? I won't fail you, Bunny.
You must see how I can never, never fail you after to-night!"
That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and remained
on guard over the three sleepers while Raffles stole upstairs. I have
since learned that there were servants at the top of the house, and in
the basement a man, who actually heard some of our proceedings! But he
was mercifully too accustomed to nocturnal orgies, and those of a far
more uproarious character, to appear unless summoned to the scene. I
believe he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made of his exit: he
let himself out, and told me afterward that the first person he
encountered in the street was the constable on the beat. Raffles
wished him good-morning, as well he might; for he had been upstairs to
wash his face and hands; and in the prize-fighter's great hat and fur
coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of
his having the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver
statuette of Maguire in the other, and round his waist the jewelled
belt presented to that worthy by the State of Nevada.
My immediate part was a little hard after the excitement of those
small hours. I will only say that we had agreed that it would be
wisest for me to lie like a log among the rest for half an hour,
before staggering to my feet and rousing house and police; and that in
that half-hour Barney Maguire crashed to the floor, without waking
either himself or his companions, though not without bringing my
beating heart into the very roof of my mouth.
It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a
few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics,
irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my
story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But
it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without
that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet
sufficiently recovered to supply. And in the end I was permitted to
retire from the scene until required to give further information, or
to identify the prisoner whom the good police confidently expected to
make before the day was out.
I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my
hansom. His face alarmed me more than any I had left in Half-moon
Street. It alone might have spelled my ruin.
"Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he cried. "The thieves
have taken everything they could lay hands on."
"Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two
incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the Albany.
"The door's been forced with a jimmy," said the porter. "It was the
milkman who found it out. There's a constable up there now."
A constable poking about in my flat of all others! I rushed upstairs
without waiting for the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil
between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no
further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept
_my_ trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah
lock. The lock was broken--the drawer void.
"Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my
heels.
"Yes, indeed--some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true.
But the family was not mine.
And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of
value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the
rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street;
it was his wife who looked after the flat.
"Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going
straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while
I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I
am, this minute!"
And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to
Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Piccadilly on the way.
Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him
fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way.
Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen,
it would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door
in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray, cool and gay and
breezy as incarnate spring.
"What on earth did you do it for?" I asked within.
"It was the only solution," he answered, handing me the cigarettes.
"I saw it the moment I got outside."
"I don't see it yet."
"Why should a burglar call an innocent gentleman away from home?"
"That's what we couldn't make out."
"I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in
order to burgle you too, of course!"
And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his incomparable radiance and
audacity.
"But why me?" I asked. "Why on earth should he burgle _me_?"
"My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the
police. But we will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was
the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at
the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and you meet queer fish at the
Imperial Boxing Club. You may remember that he telephoned to his man
to prepare supper for us, and that you and he discussed telephones and
treasure as we marched through the midnight streets. He was certainly
bucking about his trophies, and for the sake of the argument you will
be good enough to admit that you probably bucked about yours. What
happens? You are overheard; you are followed; you are worked into the
same scheme, and robbed on the same night."
"And you really think this will meet the case?"
"I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far as it rests with us to meet
the case at all."
"Then give me another cigarette, my dear fellow, and let me push on to
Scotland Yard."
Raffles held up both hands in admiring horror.
"Scotland Yard!"
"To give a false description of what you took from that drawer in my
wardrobe."
"A false description! Bunny, you have no more to learn from me. Time
was when I wouldn't have let you go there without me to retrieve a
lost umbrella--let alone a lost cause!"
And for once I was not sorry for Raffles to have the last unworthy
word, as he stood once more at his outer door and gayly waved me down
the stairs.
The Spoils of Sacrilege
There was one deed of those days which deserved a place in our
original annals. It is the deed of which I am personally most ashamed.
I have traced the course of a score of felonies, from their source in
the brain of Raffles to their issue in his hands. I have omitted all
mention of the one which emanated from my own miserable mind. But in
these supplementary memoirs, wherein I pledged myself to extenuate
nothing more that I might have to tell of Raffles, it is only fair
that I should make as clean a breast of my own baseness. It was I,
then, and I alone, who outraged natural sentiment, and trampled the
expiring embers of elementary decency, by proposing and planning the
raid upon my own old home.
I would not accuse myself the more vehemently by making excuses at
this point. Yet I feel bound to state that it was already many years
since the place had passed from our possession into that of an utter
alien, against whom I harbored a prejudice which was some excuse in
itself. He had enlarged and altered the dear old place out of
knowledge; nothing had been good enough for him as it stood in our
day. The man was a hunting maniac, and where my dear father used to
grow prize peaches under glass, this vandal was soon stabling his
hothouse thoroughbreds, which took prizes in their turn at all the
country shows. It was a southern county, and I never went down there
without missing another greenhouse and noting a corresponding
extension to the stables. Not that I ever set foot in the grounds from
the day we left; but for some years I used to visit old friends in the
neighborhood, and could never resist the temptation to reconnoitre the
scenes of my childhood. And so far as could be seen from the
road--which it stood too near--the house itself appeared to be the one
thing that the horsey purchaser had left much as he found it.
My only other excuse may be none at all in any eyes but mine. It was
my passionate desire at this period to "keep up my end" with Raffles
in every department of the game felonious. He would insist upon an
equal division of all proceeds; it was for me to earn my share. So far
I had been useful only at a pinch; the whole credit of any real
success belonged invariably to Raffles. It had always been his idea.
That was the tradition which I sought to end, and no means could
compare with that of my unscrupulous choice. There was the one house
in England of which I knew every inch, and Raffles only what I told
him. For once I must lead, and Raffles follow, whether he liked it or
not. He saw that himself; and I think he liked it better than he liked
me for the desecration in view; but I had hardened my heart, and his
feelings were too fine for actual remonstrance on such a point.
I, in my obduracy, went to foul extremes. I drew plans of all the
floors from memory. I actually descended upon my friends in the
neighborhood, with the sole object of obtaining snapshots over our own
old garden wall. Even Raffles could not keep his eyebrows down when I
showed him the prints one morning in the Albany. But he confined his
open criticisms to the house.
"Built in the late 'sixties, I see," said Raffles, "or else very early
in the 'seventies."
"Exactly when it was built," I replied. "But that's worthy of a
sixpenny detective, Raffles! How on earth did you know?"
"That slate tower bang over the porch, with the dormer windows and the
iron railing and flag-staff atop makes us a present of the period. You
see them on almost every house of a certain size built about thirty
years ago. They are quite the most useless excrescences I know."
"Ours wasn't," I answered, with some warmth. "It was my _sanctum
sanctorum_ in the holidays. I smoked my first pipe up there, and wrote
my first verses!"
Raffles laid a kindly hand upon my shoulder.
"Bunny, Bunny, you can rob the old place, and yet you can't hear a
word against it!"
"That's different," said I relentlessly. "The tower was there in my
time, but the man I mean to rob was not."
"You really do mean to do it, Bunny?"
"By myself, if necessary!" I averred.
"Not again, Bunny, not again," rejoined Raffles, laughing as he shook
his head. "But do you think the man has enough to make it worth our
while to go so far afield?"
"Far afield! It's not forty miles on the London and Brighton."
"Well, that's as bad as a hundred on most lines. And when did you say
it was to be?"
"Friday week."
"I don't much like a Friday, Bunny. Why make it one?"
"It's the night of their Hunt Point-to-Point. They wind up the season
with it every year; and the bloated Guillemard usually sweeps the
board with his fancy flyers."
"You mean the man in your old house?"
"Yes; and he tops up with no end of dinner there," I went on, "to his
hunting pals and the bloods who ride for him. If the festive board
doesn't groan under a new regiment of challenge cups, it will be no
fault of theirs, and old Guillemard will have to do them top-hole all
the same."
"So it's a case of common pot-hunting," remarked Raffles, eyeing me
shrewdly through the cigarette smoke.
"Not for us, my dear fellow," I made answer in his own tone. "I
wouldn't ask you to break into the next set of chambers here in the
Albany for a few pieces of modern silver, Raffles. Not that we need
scorn the cups if we get a chance of lifting them, and if Guillemard
does so in the first instance. It's by no means certain that he will.
But it is pretty certain to be a lively night for him and his
pals--and a vulnerable one for the best bedroom!"
"Capital!" said Raffles, throwing coits of smoke between his smiles.
"Still, if it's a dinner-party, the hostess won't leave her jewels
upstairs. She'll wear them, my boy."
"Not all of them, Raffles; she has far too many for that. Besides, it
isn't an ordinary dinner-party; they say Mrs. Guillemard is generally
the only lady there, and that she's quite charming in herself. Now, no
charming woman would clap on all sail in jewels for a roomful of
fox-hunters."
"It depends what jewels she has."
"Well, she might wear her rope of pearls."
"I should have said so."
"And, of course, her rings."
"Exactly, Bunny."
"But not necessarily her diamond tiara----"
"Has she got one?"
"----and certainly not her emerald and diamond necklace on top of
all!"
Raffles snatched the Sullivan from his lips, and his eyes burned like
its end.
"Bunny, do you mean to tell me there are all these things?"
"Of course I do," said I. "They are rich people, and he's not such a
brute as to spend everything on his stable. Her jewels are as much the
talk as his hunters. My friends told me all about both the other day
when I was down making inquiries. They thought my curiosity as natural
as my wish for a few snapshots of the old place. In their opinion the
emerald necklace alone must be worth thousands of pounds."
Raffles rubbed his hands in playful pantomime.
"I only hope you didn't ask too many questions, Bunny! But if your
friends are such old friends, you will never enter their heads when
they hear what has happened, unless you are seen down there on the
night, which might be fatal. Your approach will require some thought:
if you like I can work out the shot for you. I shall go down
independently, and the best thing may be to meet outside the house
itself on the night of nights. But from that moment I am in your
hands."
And on these refreshing lines our plan of campaign was gradually
developed and elaborated into that finished study on which Raffles
would rely like any artist of the footlights. None were more capable
than he of coping with the occasion as it rose, of rising himself with
the emergency of the moment, of snatching a victory from the very dust
of defeat. Yet, for choice, every detail was premeditated, and an
alternative expedient at each finger's end for as many bare and awful
possibilities. In this case, however, the finished study stopped short
at the garden gate or wall; there I was to assume command; and though
Raffles carried the actual tools of trade of which he alone was
master, it was on the understanding that for once I should control and
direct their use.
I had gone down in evening-clothes by an evening train, but had
carefully overshot old landmarks, and alighted at a small station some
miles south of the one where I was still remembered. This committed me
to a solitary and somewhat lengthy tramp; but the night was mild and
starry, and I marched into it with a high stomach; for this was to be
no costume crime, and yet I should have Raffles at my elbow all the
night. Long before I reached my destination, indeed, he stood in wait
for me on the white highway, and we finished with linked arms.
"I came down early," said Raffles, "and had a look at the races. I
always prefer to measure my man, Bunny; and you needn't sit in the
front row of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guillemard. No
wonder he doesn't ride his own horses! The steeple-chaser isn't foaled
that would carry him round that course. But he's a fine monument of a
man, and he takes his troubles in a way that makes me blush to add to
them."
"Did he lose a horse?" I inquired cheerfully.
"No, Bunny, but he didn't win a race! His horses were by chalks the
best there, and his pals rode them like the foul fiend, but with the
worst of luck every time. Not that you'd think it, from the row
they're making. I've been listening to them from the road--you always
did say the house stood too near it."
"Then you didn't go in?"
"When it's your show? You should know me better. Not a foot would I
set on the premises behind your back. But here they are, so perhaps
you'll lead the way."
And I led it without a moment's hesitation, through the unpretentious
six-barred gate into the long but shallow crescent of the drive. There
were two such gates, one at each end of the drive, but no lodge at
either, and not a light nearer than those of the house. The shape and
altitude of the lighted windows, the whisper of the laurels on either
hand, the very feel of the gravel underfoot, were at once familiar to
my senses as the sweet, relaxing, immemorial air that one drank deeper
at every breath. Our stealthy advance was to me like stealing back
into one's childhood; and yet I could conduct it without compunction.
I was too excited to feel immediate remorse, albeit not too lost in
excitement to know that remorse for every step that I was taking would
be my portion soon enough. I mean every word that I have written of my
peculiar shame for this night's work. And it was all to come over me
before the night was out. But in the garden I never felt it once.
The dining-room windows blazed in the side of the house facing the
road. That was an objection to peeping through the venetian blinds, as
we nevertheless did, at our peril of observation from the road.
Raffles would never have led me into danger so gratuitous and
unnecessary, but he followed me into it without a word. I can only
plead that we both had our reward. There was a sufficient chink in the
obsolete venetians, and through it we saw every inch of the
picturesque board. Mrs. Guillemard was still in her place, but she
really was the only lady, and dressed as quietly as I had prophesied;
round her neck was her rope of pearls, but not the glimmer of an
emerald nor the glint of a diamond, nor yet the flashing constellation
of a tiara in her hair. I gripped Raffles in token of my triumph, and
he nodded as he scanned the overwhelming majority of flushed
fox-hunters. With the exception of one stripling, evidently the son of
the house, they were in evening pink to a man; and as I say, their
faces matched their coats. An enormous fellow, with a great red face
and cropped moustache, occupied my poor father's place; he it was who
had replaced our fruitful vineries with his stinking stables; but I am
bound to own he looked a genial clod, as he sat in his fat and
listened to the young bloods boasting of their prowess, or
elaborately explaining their mishaps. And for a minute we listened
also, before I remembered my responsibilities, and led Raffles round
to the back of the house.
There never was an easier house to enter. I used to feel that keenly
as a boy, when, by a prophetic irony, burglars were my bugbear, and I
looked under my bed every night in life. The bow-windows on the ground
floor finished in inane balconies to the first-floor windows. These
balconies had ornamental iron railings, to which a less ingenious
rope-ladder than ours could have been hitched with equal ease. Raffles
had brought it with him, round his waist, and he carried the
telescopic stick for fixing it in place. The one was unwound, and the
other put together, in a secluded corner of the red-brick walls, where
of old I had played my own game of squash-rackets in the holidays. I
made further investigations in the starlight, and even found a trace
of my original white line along the red wall.
But it was not until we had effected our entry through the room which
had been my very own, and made our parlous way across the lighted
landing, to the best bedroom of those days and these, that I really
felt myself a worm. Twin brass bedsteads occupied the site of the old
four-poster from which I had first beheld the light. The doors were
the same; my childish hands had grasped these very handles. And there
was Raffles securing the landing door with wedge and gimlet, the very
second after softly closing it behind us.
"The other leads into the dressing-room, of course? Then you might be
fixing the outer dressing-room door," he whispered at his work, "but
not the middle one Bunny, unless you want to. The stuff will be in
there, you see, if it isn't in here."
My door was done in a moment, being fitted with a powerful bolt; but
now an aching conscience made me busier than I need have been. I had
raised the rope-ladder after us into my own old room, and while
Raffles wedged his door I lowered the ladder from one of the best
bedroom windows, in order to prepare that way of escape which was a
fundamental feature of his own strategy. I meant to show Raffles that
I had not followed in his train for nothing. But I left it to him to
unearth the jewels. I had begun by turning up the gas; there appeared
to be no possible risk in that; and Raffles went to work with a will
in the excellent light. There were some good pieces in the room,
including an ancient tallboy in fruity mahogany, every drawer of
which was turned out on the bed without avail. A few of the drawers
had locks to pick, yet not one trifle to our taste within. The
situation became serious as the minutes flew. We had left the party at
its sweets; the solitary lady might be free to roam her house at any
minute. In the end we turned our attention to the dressing-room. And
no sooner did Raffles behold the bolted door than up went his hands.
"A bathroom bolt," he cried below his breath, "and no bath in the
room! Why didn't you tell me, Bunny? A bolt like that speaks volumes;
there's none on the bedroom door, remember, and this one's worthy of a
strong room! What if it is their strong room, Bunny! Oh, Bunny, what
if this is their safe!"
Raffles had dropped upon his knees before a carved oak chest of
indisputable antiquity. Its panels were delightfully irregular, its
angles faultlessly faulty, its one modern defilement a strong lock to
the lid. Raffles was smiling as he produced his jimmy. R--r--r--rip
went lock or lid in another ten seconds--I was not there to see which.
I had wandered back into the bedroom in a paroxysm of excitement and
suspense. I must keep busy as well as Raffles, and it was not too
soon to see whether the rope-ladder was all right. In another
minute....
I stood frozen to the floor. I had hooked the ladder beautifully to
the inner sill of wood, and had also let down the extended rod for the
more expeditious removal of both on our return to _terra firma_.
Conceive my cold horror on arriving at the open window just in time to
see the last of hooks and bending rod, as they floated out of sight
and reach into the outer darkness of the night, removed by some silent
and invisible hand below!
"Raffles--Raffles--they've spotted us and moved the ladder this very
instant!"
So I panted as I rushed on tiptoe to the dressing-room. Raffles had
the working end of his jimmy under the lid of a leathern jewel case.
It flew open at the vicious twist of his wrist that preceded his
reply.