King John’s Mansions, as everybody knows, are the oldest, the ugliest,
and the tallest block of flats in all London. But they are built upon a
more generous scale than has since become the rule, and with a less
studious regard for the economy of space. We were about to drive into
the spacious courtyard when the gate-keeper checked us in order to let
another hansom drive out.
It contained a middle-aged man of the military type, like ourselves in
evening dress. That much I saw as his hansom crossed our bows, because
I could not help seeing it, but I should not have given the incident a
second thought if it had not been for his extraordinary effect upon
Raffles. In an instant he was out upon the curb, paying the cabby, and
in another he was leading me across the street, away from the mansions.
“Where on earth are you going?” I naturally exclaimed.
“Into the park,” said he. “We are too early.”
His voice told me more than his words. It was strangely stern.
“Was that him—in the hansom?”
“It was.”
“Well, then, the coast’s clear,” said I, comfortably. I was for turning
back then and there, but Raffles forced me on with a hand that hardened
on my arm.
“It was a nearer thing than I care about,” said he. “This seat will do;
no, the next one’s further from a lamp-post. We will give him a good
half-hour, and I don’t want to talk.”
We had been seated some minutes when Big Ben sent a languid chime over
our heads to the stars. It was half-past ten, and a sultry night.
Eleven had struck before Raffles awoke from his sullen reverie, and
recalled me from mine with a slap on the back. In a couple of minutes
we were in the lighted vestibule at the inner end of the courtyard of
King John’s Mansions.
“Just left Lord Ernest at Lady Kirkleatham’s,” said Raffles. “Gave me
his key and asked us to wait for him in his rooms. Will you send us up
in the lift?”
In a small way, I never knew old Raffles do anything better. There was
not an instant’s demur. Lord Ernest Belville’s rooms were at the top of
the building, but we were in them as quickly as lift could carry and
page-boy conduct us. And there was no need for the skeleton key after
all; the boy opened the outer door with one of his own, and switched on
the lights before leaving us.
“Now that’s interesting,” said Raffles, as soon as we were alone; “they
can come in and clean when he is out. What if he keeps his swag at the
bank? By Jove, that’s an idea for him! I don’t believe he’s getting rid
of it; it’s all lying low somewhere, if I’m not mistaken, and he’s not
a fool.”
While he spoke he was moving about the sitting-room, which was
charmingly furnished in the antique style, and making as many remarks
as though he were an auctioneer’s clerk with an inventory to prepare
and a day to do it in, instead of a cracksman who might be surprised in
his crib at any moment.
“Chippendale of sorts, eh, Bunny? Not genuine, of course; but where can
you get genuine Chippendale now, and who knows it when they see it?
There’s no merit in mere antiquity. Yet the way people pose on the
subject! If a thing’s handsome and useful, and good cabinet-making,
it’s good enough for me.”
“Hadn’t we better explore the whole place?” I suggested nervously. He
had not even bolted the outer door. Nor would he when I called his
attention to the omission.
“If Lord Ernest finds his rooms locked up he’ll raise Cain,” said
Raffles; “we must let him come in and lock up for himself before we
corner him. But he won’t come yet; if he did it might be awkward, for
they’d tell him down below what I told them. A new staff comes on at
midnight. I discovered that the other night.”
“Supposing he does come in before?”
“Well, he can’t have us turned out without first seeing who we are, and
he won’t try it on when I’ve had one word with him. Unless my
suspicions are unfounded, I mean.”
“Isn’t it about time to test them?”
“My good Bunny, what do you suppose I’ve been doing all this while? He
keeps nothing in here. There isn’t a lock to the Chippendale that you
couldn’t pick with a penknife, and not a loose board in the floor, for
I was treading for one before the boy left us. Chimney’s no use in a
place like this where they keep them swept for you. Yes, I’m quite
ready to try his bedroom.”
There was but a bathroom besides; no kitchen, no servant’s room;
neither are necessary in King John’s Mansions. I thought it as well to
put my head inside the bathroom while Raffles went into the bedroom,
for I was tormented by the horrible idea that the man might all this
time be concealed somewhere in the flat. But the bathroom blazed void
in the electric light. I found Raffles hanging out of the starry square
which was the bedroom window, for the room was still in darkness. I
felt for the switch at the door.
“Put it out again!” said Raffles fiercely. He rose from the sill, drew
blind and curtains carefully, then switched on the light himself. It
fell upon a face creased more in pity than in anger, and Raffles only
shook his head as I hung mine.
“It’s all right, old boy,” said he; “but corridors have windows too,
and servants have eyes; and you and I are supposed to be in the other
room, not in this. But cheer up, Bunny! This is _the_ room; look at the
extra bolt on the door; he’s had that put on, and there’s an iron
ladder to his window in case of fire! Way of escape ready against the
hour of need; he’s a better man than I thought him, Bunny, after all.
But you may bet your bottom dollar that if there’s any boodle in the
flat it’s in this room.”
Yet the room was very lightly furnished; and nothing was locked. We
looked everywhere, but we looked in vain. The wardrobe was filled with
hanging coats and trousers in a press, the drawers with the softest
silk and finest linen. It was a camp bedstead that would not have
unsettled an anchorite; there was no place for treasure there. I looked
up the chimney, but Raffles told me not to be a fool, and asked if I
ever listened to what he said. There was no question about his temper
now. I never knew him in a worse.
“Then he has got it in the bank,” he growled. “I’ll swear I’m not
mistaken in my man!”
I had the tact not to differ with him there. But I could not help
suggesting that now was our time to remedy any mistake we might have
made. We were on the right side of midnight still.
“Then we stultify ourselves downstairs,” said Raffles. “No, I’ll be
shot if I do! He may come in with the Kirkleatham diamonds! You do what
you like, Bunny, but I don’t budge.”
“I certainly shan’t leave you,” I retorted, “to be knocked into the
middle of next week by a better man than yourself.”
I had borrowed his own tone, and he did not like it. They never do. I
thought for a moment that Raffles was going to strike me—for the first
and last time in his life. He could if he liked. My blood was up. I was
ready to send him to the devil. And I emphasized my offence by nodding
and shrugging toward a pair of very large Indian clubs that stood in
the fender, on either side of the chimney up which I had presumed to
glance.
In an instant Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them about
his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado which
I should have thought him altogether above.
And suddenly as I watched him his face changed, softened, lit up, and
he swung the clubs gently down upon the bed.
“They’re not heavy enough for their size,” said he rapidly; “and I’ll
take my oath they’re not the same weight!”
He shook one club after the other, with both hands, close to his ear;
then he examined their butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what
he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed
excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable
tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened
the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the
small end under my arm, and presented the other to Raffles.
“Hold him tight,” he whispered, smiling. “He’s not only a better man
than I thought him, Bunny; he’s hit upon a better dodge than ever I
did, of its kind. Only I should have weighted them evenly—to a hair.”
He had screwed the gimlet into the circular butt, close to the edge,
and now we were wrenching in opposite directions. For a moment or more
nothing happened. Then all at once something gave, and Raffles swore an
oath as soft as any prayer. And for the minute after that his hand went
round and round with the gimlet, as though he were grinding a
piano-organ, while the end wormed slowly out on its delicate thread of
fine hard wood.
The clubs were as hollow as drinking-horns, the pair of them, for we
went from one to the other without pausing to undo the padded packets
that poured out upon the bed. These were deliciously heavy to the hand,
yet thickly swathed in cotton-wool, so that some stuck together,
retaining the shape of the cavity, as though they had been run out of a
mould. And when we did open them—but let Raffles speak.
He had deputed me to screw in the ends of the clubs, and to replace the
latter in the fender where we had found them. When I had done the
counterpane was glittering with diamonds where it was not shimmering
with pearls.
“If this isn’t that tiara that Lady May was married in,” said Raffles,
“and that disappeared out of the room she changed in, while it rained
confetti on the steps, I’ll present it to her instead of the one she
lost.... It was stupid to keep these old gold spoons, valuable as they
are; they made the difference in the weight.... Here we have probably
the Kenworthy diamonds.... I don’t know the history of these pearls....
This looks like one family of rings—left on the basin-stand,
perhaps—alas, poor lady! And that’s the lot.”
Our eyes met across the bed.
“What’s it all worth?” I asked, hoarsely.
“Impossible to say. But more than all we ever took in all our lives.
That I’ll swear to.”
“More than all—”
My tongue swelled with the thought.
“But it’ll take some turning into cash, old chap!”
“And—must it be a partnership?” I asked, finding a lugubrious voice at
length.
“Partnership be damned!” cried Raffles, heartily. “Let’s get out
quicker than we came in.”
We pocketed the things between us, cotton-wool and all, not because we
wanted the latter, but to remove all immediate traces of our really
meritorious deed.
“The sinner won’t dare to say a word when he does find out,” remarked
Raffles of Lord Ernest; “but that’s no reason why he should find out
before he must. Everything’s straight in here, I think; no, better
leave the window open as it was, and the blind up. Now out with the
light. One peep at the other room. That’s all right, too. Out with the
passage light, Bunny, while I open—”
His words died away in a whisper. A key was fumbling at the lock
outside.
“Out with it—out with it!” whispered Raffles in an agony; and as I
obeyed he picked me off my feet and swung me bodily but silently into
the bedroom, just as the outer door opened, and a masterful step strode
in.
The next five were horrible minutes. We heard the apostle of Rational
Drink unlock one of the deep drawers in his antique sideboard, and
sounds followed suspiciously like the splash of spirits and the steady
stream from a siphon. Never before or since did I experience such a
thirst as assailed me at that moment, nor do I believe that many
tropical explorers have known its equal. But I had Raffles with me, and
his hand was as steady and as cool as the hand of a trained nurse. That
I know because he turned up the collar of my overcoat for me, for some
reason, and buttoned it at the throat. I afterwards found that he had
done the same to his own, but I did not hear him doing it. The one
thing I heard in the bedroom was a tiny metallic click, muffled and
deadened in his overcoat pocket, and it not only removed my last
tremor, but strung me to a higher pitch of excitement than ever. Yet I
had then no conception of the game that Raffles was deciding to play,
and that I was to play with him in another minute.
It cannot have been longer before Lord Ernest came into his bedroom.
Heavens, but my heart had not forgotten how to thump! We were standing
near the door, and I could swear he touched me; then his boots creaked,
there was a rattle in the fender—and Raffles switched on the light.
Lord Ernest Belville crouched in its glare with one Indian club held by
the end, like a footman with a stolen bottle. A good-looking,
well-built, iron-gray, iron-jawed man; but a fool and a weakling at
that moment, if he had never been either before.
“Lord Ernest Belville,” said Raffles, “it’s no use. This is a loaded
revolver, and if you force me I shall use it on you as I would on any
other desperate criminal. I am here to arrest you for a series of
robberies at the Duke of Dorchester’s, Sir John Kenworthy’s, and other
noblemen’s and gentlemen’s houses during the present season. You’d
better drop what you’ve got in your hand. It’s empty.”
Lord Ernest lifted the club an inch or two, and with it his
eyebrows—and after it his stalwart frame as the club crashed back into
the fender. And as he stood at his full height, a courteous but ironic
smile under the cropped moustache, he looked what he was, criminal or
not.
“Scotland Yard?” said he.
“That’s our affair, my lord.”
“I didn’t think they’d got it in them,” said Lord Ernest. “Now I
recognize you. You’re my interviewer. No, I didn’t think any of you
fellows had got all that in you. Come into the other room, and I’ll
show you something else. Oh, keep me covered by all means. But look at
this!”
On the antique sideboard, their size doubled by reflection in the
polished mahogany, lay a coruscating cluster of precious stones, that
fell in festoons about Lord Ernest’s fingers as he handed them to
Raffles with scarcely a shrug.
“The Kirkleatham diamonds,” said he. “Better add ’em to the bag.”
Raffles did so without a smile; with his overcoat buttoned up to the
chin, his tall hat pressed down to his eyes, and between the two his
incisive features and his keen, stern glance, he looked the ideal
detective of fiction and the stage. What _I_ looked God knows, but I
did my best to glower and show my teeth at his side. I had thrown
myself into the game, and it was obviously a winning one.
“Wouldn’t take a share, I suppose?” Lord Ernest said casually.
Raffles did not condescend to reply. I rolled back my lips like a
bull-pup.
“Then a drink, at least!”
My mouth watered, but Raffles shook his head impatiently.
“We must be going, my lord, and you will have to come with us.”