I rushed within. The doctor’s door stood open. I neither knocked nor
rang, but found him in his consulting-room with red eyes and a blotchy
face. Otherwise he was in solemn black from head to heel.
“Who is dead?” I burst out. “Who is dead?”
The red eyes looked redder than ever as Dr. Theobald opened them at the
unwarrantable sight of me; and he was terribly slow in answering. But
in the end he did answer, and did not kick me out as he evidently had a
mind.
“Mr. Maturin,” he said, and sighed like a beaten man.
I said nothing. It was no surprise to me. I had known it all these
minutes. Nay, I had dreaded this from the first, had divined it at the
last, though to the last also I had refused to entertain my own
conviction. Raffles dead! A real invalid after all! Raffles dead, and
on the point of burial!
“What did he die of?” I asked, unconsciously drawing on that fund of
grim self-control which the weakest of us seem to hold in reserve for
real calamity.
“Typhoid,” he answered. “Kensington is full of it.”
“He was sickening for it when I left, and you knew it, and could get
rid of me then!”
“My good fellow, I was obliged to have a more experienced nurse for
that very reason.”
The doctor’s tone was so conciliatory that I remembered in an instant
what a humbug the man was, and became suddenly possessed with the vague
conviction that he was imposing upon me now.
“Are you sure it was typhoid at all?” I cried fiercely to his face.
“Are you sure it wasn’t suicide—or murder?”
I confess that I can see little point in this speech as I write it
down, but it was what I said in a burst of grief and of wild suspicion;
nor was it without effect upon Dr. Theobald, who turned bright scarlet
from his well-brushed hair to his immaculate collar.
“Do you want me to throw you out into the street?” he cried; and all at
once I remembered that I had come to Raffles as a perfect stranger, and
for his sake might as well preserve that character to the last.
“I beg your pardon,” I said, brokenly. “He was so good to me—I became
so attached to him. You forget I am originally of his class.”
“I did forget it,” replied Theobald, looking relieved at my new tone,
“and I beg _your_ pardon for doing so. Hush! They are bringing him
down. I must have a drink before we start, and you’d better join me.”
There was no pretence about his drink this time, and a pretty stiff one
it was, but I fancy my own must have run it hard. In my case it cast a
merciful haze over much of the next hour, which I can truthfully
describe as one of the most painful of my whole existence. I can have
known very little of what I was doing. I only remember finding myself
in a hansom, suddenly wondering why it was going so slowly, and once
more awaking to the truth. But it was to the truth itself more than to
the liquor that I must have owed my dazed condition. My next
recollection is of looking down into the open grave, in a sudden
passionate anxiety to see the name for myself. It was not the name of
my friend, of course, but it was the one under which he had passed for
many months.
I was still stupefied by a sense of inconceivable loss, and had not
raised my eyes from that which was slowly forcing me to realize what
had happened, when there was a rustle at my elbow, and a shower of
hothouse flowers passed before them, falling like huge snowflakes where
my gaze had rested. I looked up, and at my side stood a majestic figure
in deep mourning. The face was carefully veiled, but I was too close
not to recognize the masterful beauty whom the world knew as Jacques
Saillard. I had no sympathy with her; on the contrary, my blood boiled
with the vague conviction that in some way she was responsible for this
death. Yet she was the only woman present—there were not a half a dozen
of us altogether—and her flowers were the only flowers.
The melancholy ceremony was over, and Jacques Saillard had departed in
a funeral brougham, evidently hired for the occasion. I had watched her
drive away, and the sight of my own cabman, making signs to me through
the fog, had suddenly reminded me that I had bidden him to wait. I was
the last to leave, and had turned my back upon the grave-diggers,
already at their final task, when a hand fell lightly but firmly upon
my shoulder.
“I don’t want to make a scene in a cemetery,” said a voice, in a not
unkindly, almost confidential whisper. “Will you get into your own cab
and come quietly?”
“Who on earth are you?” I exclaimed.
I now remembered having seen the fellow hovering about during the
funeral, and subconsciously taking him for the undertaker’s head man.
He had certainly that appearance, and even now I could scarcely believe
that he was anything else.
“My name won’t help you,” he said, pityingly. “But you will guess where
I come from when I tell you I have a warrant for your arrest.”
My sensations at this announcement may not be believed, but I solemnly
declare that I have seldom experienced so fierce a satisfaction. Here
was a new excitement in which to drown my grief; here was something to
think about; and I should be spared the intolerable experience of a
solitary return to the little place at Ham. It was as though I had lost
a limb and some one had struck me so hard in the face that the greater
agony was forgotten. I got into the hansom without a word, my captor
following at my heels, and giving his own directions to the cabman
before taking his seat. The word “station” was the only one I caught,
and I wondered whether it was to be Bow Street again. My companion’s
next words, however, or rather the tone in which he uttered them,
destroyed my capacity for idle speculation.
“Mr. Maturin!” said he. “Mr. Maturin indeed!”
“Well,” said I, “what about him?”
“Do you think we don’t know who he was?”
“Who was he?” I asked, defiantly.
“You ought to know,” said he. “You got locked up through him the other
time, too. His favorite name was Raffles then.”
“It was his real name,” I said, indignantly. “And he has been dead for
years.”
My captor simply chuckled.
“He’s at the bottom of the sea, I tell you!”
But I do not know why I should have told him with such spirit, for what
could it matter to Raffles now? I did not think; instinct was still
stronger than reason, and, fresh from his funeral, I had taken up the
cudgels for my dead friend as though he were still alive. Next moment I
saw this for myself, and my tears came nearer the surface than they had
been yet; but the fellow at my side laughed outright.
“Shall I tell you something else?” said he.
“As you like.”
“He’s not even at the bottom of that grave! He’s no more dead than you
or I, and a sham burial is his latest piece of villainy!”
I doubt whether I could have spoken if I had tried. I did not try. I
had no use for speech. I did not even ask him if he was sure, I was so
sure myself. It was all as plain to me as riddles usually are when one
has the answer. The doctor’s alarms, his unscrupulous venality, the
simulated illness, my own dismissal, each fitted in its obvious place,
and not even the last had power as yet to mar my joy in the one central
fact to which all the rest were as tapers to the sun.
“He is alive!” I cried. “Nothing else matters—he is alive!”
At last I did ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as I was
for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much care what
answer I received. Already I was figuring out how much we might each
get, and how old we should be when we came out. But my companion tilted
his hat to the back of his head, at the same time putting his face
close to mine, and compelling my scrutiny. And my answer, as you have
already guessed, was the face of Raffles himself, superbly disguised
(but less superbly than his voice), and yet so thinly that I should
have known him in a trice had I not been too miserable in the beginning
to give him a second glance.
Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the one
escape. Raffles had bought the doctor for a thousand pounds, and the
doctor had bought a “nurse” of his own kidney, on his own account; me,
for some reason, he would not trust; he had insisted upon my dismissal
as an essential preliminary to his part in the conspiracy. Here the
details were half-humorous, half-grewsome, each in turn as Raffles told
me the story. At one period he had been very daringly drugged indeed,
and, in his own words, “as dead as a man need be”; but he had left
strict instructions that nobody but the nurse and “my devoted
physician” should “lay a finger on me” afterwards; and by virtue of
this proviso a library of books (largely acquired for the occasion) had
been impiously interred at Kensal Green. Raffles had definitely
undertaken not to trust me with the secret, and, but for my untoward
appearance at the funeral (which he had attended for his own final
satisfaction), I was assured and am convinced that he would have kept
his promise to the letter. In explaining this he gave me the one
explanation I desired, and in another moment we turned into Praed
Street, Paddington.
“And I thought you said Bow Street!” said I. “Are you coming straight
down to Richmond with me?”
“I may as well,” said Raffles, “though I did mean to get my kit first,
so as to start in fair and square as the long-lost brother from the
bush. That’s why I hadn’t written. The function was a day later than I
calculated. I was going to write to-night.”
“But what are we to do?” said I, hesitating when he had paid the cab.
“I have been playing the colonies for all they are worth!”
“Oh, I’ve lost my luggage,” said he, “or a wave came into my cabin and
spoilt every stitch, or I had nothing fit to bring ashore. We’ll settle
that in the train.”