I
Society persons are not likely to have forgotten the series of
audacious robberies by which so many of themselves suffered in turn
during the brief course of a recent season. Raid after raid was made
upon the smartest houses in town, and within a few weeks more than one
exalted head had been shorn of its priceless tiara. The Duke and
Duchess of Dorchester lost half the portable pieces of their historic
plate on the very night of their Graces’ almost equally historic
costume ball. The Kenworthy diamonds were taken in broad daylight,
during the excitement of a charitable meeting on the ground floor, and
the gifts of her belted bridegroom to Lady May Paulton while the outer
air was thick with a prismatic shower of _confetti_. It was obvious
that all this was the work of no ordinary thief, and perhaps inevitable
that the name of Raffles should have been dragged from oblivion by
callous disrespecters of the departed and unreasoning apologists for
the police. These wiseacres did not hesitate to bring a dead man back
to life because they knew of no living one capable of such feats; it is
their heedless and inconsequent calumnies that the present paper is
partly intended to refute. As a matter of fact, our joint innocence in
this matter was only exceeded by our common envy, and for a long time,
like the rest of the world, neither of us had the slightest clew to the
identity of the person who was following in our steps with such
irritating results.
“I should mind less,” said Raffles, “if the fellow were really playing
my game. But abuse of hospitality was never one of my strokes, and it
seems to me the only shot he’s got. When we took old Lady Melrose’s
necklace, Bunny, we were not staying with the Melroses, if you
recollect.”
We were discussing the robberies for the hundredth time, but for once
under conditions more favorable to animated conversation than our
unique circumstances permitted in the flat. We did not often dine out.
Dr. Theobald was one impediment, the risk of recognition was another.
But there were exceptions, when the doctor was away or the patient
defiant, and on these rare occasions we frequented a certain
unpretentious restaurant in the Fulham quarter, where the cooking was
plain but excellent, and the cellar a surprise. Our bottle of ’89
champagne was empty to the label when the subject arose, to be touched
by Raffles in the reminiscent manner indicated above. I can see his
clear eye upon me now, reading me, weighing me. But I was not so
sensitive to his scrutiny at the time. His tone was deliberate,
calculating, preparatory; not as I heard it then, through a head full
of wine, but as it floats back to me across the gulf between that
moment and this.
“Excellent fillet!” said I, grossly. “So you think this chap is as much
in society as we were, do you?”
I preferred not to think so myself. We had cause enough for jealousy
without that. But Raffles raised his eyebrows an eloquent half-inch.
“As much, my dear Bunny? He is not only in it, but of it; there’s no
comparison between us there. Society is in rings like a target, and we
never were in the bull’s-eye, however thick you may lay on the ink! I
was asked for my cricket. I haven’t forgotten it yet. But this fellow’s
one of themselves, with the right of entrée into the houses which we
could only ‘enter’ in a professional sense. That’s obvious unless all
these little exploits are the work of different hands, which they as
obviously are not. And it’s why I’d give five hundred pounds to put
salt on him to-night!”
“Not you,” said I, as I drained my glass in festive incredulity.
“But I would, my dear Bunny. Waiter! another half-bottle of this,” and
Raffles leant across the table as the empty one was taken away. “I
never was more serious in my life,” he continued below his breath.
“Whatever else our successor may be, he’s not a dead man like me, or a
marked man like you. If there’s any truth in my theory he’s one of the
last people upon whom suspicion is ever likely to rest; and oh, Bunny,
what a partner he would make for you and me!”
Under less genial influences the very idea of a third partner would
have filled my soul with offence; but Raffles had chosen his moment
unerringly, and his arguments lost nothing by the flowing accompaniment
of the extra pint. They were, however, quite strong in themselves. The
gist of them was that thus far we had remarkably little to show for
what Raffles would call “our second innings.” This even I could not
deny. We had scored a few “long singles,” but our “best shots” had gone
“straight to hand,” and we were “playing a deuced slow game.” Therefore
we needed a new partner—and the metaphor failed Raffles. It had served
its turn. I already agreed with him. In truth I was tired of my false
position as hireling attendant, and had long fancied myself an object
of suspicion to that other impostor the doctor. A fresh, untrammelled
start was a fascinating idea to me, though two was company, and three
in our case might be worse than none. But I did not see how we could
hope, with our respective handicaps, to solve a problem which was
already the despair of Scotland Yard.
“Suppose I have solved it,” observed Raffles, cracking a walnut in his
palm.
“How could you?” I asked, without believing for an instant that he had.
“I have been taking the _Morning Post_ for some time now.”
“Well?”
“You have got me a good many odd numbers of the less base society
papers.”
“I can’t for the life of me see what you’re driving at.”
Raffles smiled indulgently as he cracked another nut.
“That’s because you’ve neither observation nor imagination, Bunny—and
yet you try to write! Well, you wouldn’t think it, but I have a fairly
complete list of the people who were at the various functions under
cover of which these different little coups were brought off.”
I said very stolidly that I did not see how that could help him. It was
the only answer to his good-humored but self-satisfied contempt; it
happened also to be true.
“Think,” said Raffles, in a patient voice.
“When thieves break in and steal,” said I, “upstairs, I don’t see much
point in discovering who was downstairs at the time.”
“Quite,” said Raffles—“when they do break in.”
“But that’s what they have done in all these cases. An upstairs door
found screwed up, when things were at their height below; thief gone
and jewels with him before alarm could be raised. Why, the trick’s so
old that I never knew you condescend to play it.”
“Not so old as it looks,” said Raffles, choosing the cigars and handing
me mine. “Cognac or Benedictine, Bunny?”
“Brandy,” I said, coarsely.
“Besides,” he went on, “the rooms were not screwed up; at Dorchester
House, at any rate, the door was only locked, and the key missing, so
that it might have been done on either side.”
“But that was where he left his rope-ladder behind him!” I exclaimed in
triumph; but Raffles only shook his head.
“I don’t believe in that rope-ladder, Bunny, except as a blind.”
“Then what on earth do you believe?”
“That every one of these so-called burglaries has been done from the
inside, by one of the guests; and what’s more I’m very much mistaken if
I haven’t spotted the right sportsman.”
I began to believe that he really had, there was such a wicked gravity
in the eyes that twinkled faintly into mine. I raised my glass in
convivial congratulation, and still remember the somewhat anxious eye
with which Raffles saw it emptied.
“I can only find one likely name,” he continued, “that figures in all
these lists, and it is anything but a likely one at first sight. Lord
Ernest Belville was at all those functions. Know anything about him,
Bunny?”
“Not the Rational Drink fanatic?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all I want to know.”
“Quite,” said Raffles; “and yet what could be more promising? A man
whose views are so broad and moderate, and so widely held already
(saving your presence, Bunny), does not bore the world with them
without ulterior motives. So far so good. What are this chap’s motives?
Does he want to advertise himself? No, he’s somebody already. But is he
rich? On the contrary, he’s as poor as a rat for his position, and
apparently without the least ambition to be anything else; certainly he
won’t enrich himself by making a public fad of what all sensible people
are agreed upon as it is. Then suddenly one gets one’s own old idea—the
alternative profession! My cricket—his Rational Drink! But it is no use
jumping to conclusions. I must know more than the newspapers can tell
me. Our aristocratic friend is forty, and unmarried. What has he been
doing all these years? How the devil was I to find out?”
“How did you?” I asked, declining to spoil my digestion with a
conundrum, as it was his evident intention that I should.
“Interviewed him!” said Raffles, smiling slowly on my amazement.
“You—interviewed him?” I echoed. “When—and where?”
“Last Thursday night, when, if you remember, we kept early hours,
because I felt done. What was the use of telling you what I had up my
sleeve, Bunny? It might have ended in fizzle, as it still may. But Lord
Ernest Belville was addressing the meeting at Exeter Hall; I waited for
him when the show was over, dogged him home to King John’s Mansions,
and interviewed him in his own rooms there before he turned in.”
My journalistic jealousy was piqued to the quick. Affecting a
scepticism I did not feel (for no outrage was beyond the pale of his
impudence), I inquired dryly which journal Raffles had pretended to
represent. It is unnecessary to report his answer. I could not believe
him without further explanation.
“I should have thought,” he said, “that even you would have spotted a
practice I never omit upon certain occasions. I always pay a visit to
the drawing-room, and fill my waistcoat pocket from the card-tray. It
is an immense help in any little temporary impersonation. On Thursday
night I sent up the card of a powerful writer connected with a powerful
paper; if Lord Ernest had known him in the flesh I should have been
obliged to confess to a journalistic ruse; luckily he didn’t—and I had
been sent by my editor to get the interview for next morning. What
could be better—for the alternative profession?”