"Rather a coincidence," observed our host dryly, "for I believe you
also know the Milchester people, where Lady Melrose had her necklace
stolen a few months afterward."
"I was staying there at the time," said Raffles eagerly. No snob was
ever quicker to boast of basking in the smile of the great.
"We believe it to be the same man," said Lord Thornaby, speaking
apparently for the Criminologists' Club, and with much less severity of
voice.
"I only wish I could come across him," continued Raffles heartily.
"He's a criminal much more to my mind than your murderers who swear on
the drop or talk cricket in the condemned cell!"
"He might be in the house now," said Lord Thornaby, looking Raffles in
the face. But his manner was that of an actor in an unconvincing part
and a mood to play it gamely to the bitter end; and he seemed
embittered, as even a rich man may be in the moment of losing a bet.
"What a joke if he were!" cried the Wild West writer.
"_Absit omen!_" murmured Raffles, in better taste.
"Still, I think you'll find it's a favorite time," argued Kingsmill,
Q.C. "And it would be quite in keeping with the character of this man,
so far as it is known, to pay a little visit to the president of the
Criminologists' Club, and to choose the evening on which he happens to
be entertaining the other members."
There was more conviction in this sally than in that of our noble host;
but this I attributed to the trained and skilled dissimulation of the
bar. Lord Thornaby, however, was not to be amused by the elaboration
of his own idea, and it was with some asperity that he called upon the
butler, now solemnly superintending the removal of the cloth.
"Leggett! Just send up-stairs to see if all the doors are open and the
rooms in proper order. That's an awful idea of yours, Kingsmill, or of
mine!" added my lord, recovering the courtesy of his order by an effort
that I could follow. "We should look fools. I don't know which of us
it was, by the way, who seduced the rest from the main stream of blood
into this burglarious backwater. Are you familiar with De Quincey's
masterpiece on 'Murder as a Fine Art,' Mr. Raffles?"
"I believe I once read it," replied Raffles doubtfully.
"You must read it again," pursued the earl. "It is the last word on a
great subject; all we can hope to add is some baleful illustration or
bloodstained footnote, not unworthy of De Quincey's text. Well,
Leggett?"
The venerable butler stood wheezing at his elbow. I had not hitherto
observed that the man was an asthmatic.
"I beg your lordship's pardon, but I think your lordship must have
forgotten."
The voice came in rude gasps, but words of reproach could scarcely have
achieved a finer delicacy.
"Forgotten, Leggett! Forgotten what, may I ask?"
"Locking your lordship's dressing-room door behind your lordship, my
lord," stuttered the unfortunate Leggett, in the short spurts of a
winded man, a few stertorous syllables at a time. "Been up myself, my
lord. Bedroom door--dressing-room door--both locked inside!"
But by this time the noble master was in worse case than the man. His
fine forehead was a tangle of livid cords; his baggy jowl filled out
like a balloon. In another second he had abandoned his place as our
host and fled the room; and in yet another we had forgotten ours as his
guests and rushed headlong at his heels.
Raffles was as excited as any of us now: he outstripped us all. The
cherubic little lawyer and I had a fine race for the last place but
one, which I secured, while the panting butler and his satellites
brought up a respectful rear. It was our unconventional author,
however, who was the first to volunteer his assistance and advice.
"No use pushing, Thornaby!" cried he. "If it's been done with a wedge
and gimlet, you may smash the door, but you'll never force it. Is there
a ladder in the place?"
"There's a rope-ladder somewhere, in case of fire, I believe," said my
lord vaguely, as he rolled a critical eye over our faces. "Where is it
kept, Leggett?"
"William will fetch it, my lord."
And a pair of noble calves went flashing to the upper regions.
"What's the good of bringing it down," cried Parrington, who had thrown
back to the wilds in his excitement. "Let him hang it out of the
window above your own, and let me climb down and do the rest! I'll
undertake to have one or other of these doors open in two twos!"
The fastened doors were at right angles on the landing which we filled
between us. Lord Thornaby smiled grimly on the rest of us, when he had
nodded and dismissed the author like a hound from the leash.
"It's a good thing we know something about our friend Parrington," said
my lord. "He takes more kindly to all this than I do, I can tell you."
"It's grist to his mill," said Raffles charitably.
"Exactly! We shall have the whole thing in his next book."
"I hope to have it at the Old Bailey first," remarked Kingsmill, Q.C.
"Refreshing to find a man of letters such a man of action too!"
It was Raffles who said this, and the remark seemed rather trite for
him, but in the tone there was a something that just caught my private
ear. And for once I understood: the officious attitude of Parrington,
without being seriously suspicious in itself, was admirably calculated
to put a previously suspected person in a grateful shade. This
literary adventurer had elbowed Raffles out of the limelight, and
gratitude for the service was what I had detected in Raffles's voice.
No need to say how grateful I felt myself. But my gratitude was shot
with flashes of unwonted insight. Parrington was one of those who
suspected Raffles, or, at all events, one who was in the secret of
those suspicions. What if he had traded on the suspect's presence in
the house? What if he were a deep villain himself, and _the_ villain of
this particular piece? I had made up my mind about him, and that in a
tithe of the time I take to make it up as a rule, when we heard my man
in the dressing-room. He greeted us with an impudent shout; in a few
moments the door was open, and there stood Parrington, flushed and
dishevelled, with a gimlet in one hand and a wedge in the other.
Within was a scene of eloquent disorder. Drawers had been pulled out,
and now stood on end, their contents heaped upon the carpet. Wardrobe
doors stood open; empty stud-cases strewed the floor; a clock, tied up
in a towel, had been tossed into a chair at the last moment. But a
long tin lid protruded from an open cupboard in one corner. And one
had only to see Lord Thornaby's wry face behind the lid to guess that
it was bent over a somewhat empty tin trunk.
"What a rum lot to steal!" said he, with a twitch of humor at the
corners of his canine mouth. "My peer's robes, with coronet complete!"
We rallied round him in a seemly silence. I thought our scribe would
put in his word. But even he either feigned or felt a proper awe.
"You may say it was a rum place to keep 'em," continued Lord Thornaby.
"But where would you gentlemen stable your white elephants? And these
were elephants as white as snow; by Jove, I'll job them for the future!"
And he made merrier over his loss than any of us could have imagined
the minute before; but the reason dawned on me a little later, when we
all trooped down-stairs, leaving the police in possession of the
theatre of crime. Lord Thornaby linked arms with Raffles as he led the
way. His step was lighter, his gayety no longer sardonic; his very
looks had improved. And I divined the load that had been lifted from
the hospitable heart of our host.
"I only wish," said he, "that this brought us any nearer to the
identity of the gentleman we were discussing at dinner, for, of course,
we owe it to all our instincts to assume that it was he."
"I wonder!" said old Raffles, with a foolhardy glance at me.
"But I'm sure of it, my dear sir," cried my lord. "The audacity is his
and his alone. I look no further than the fact of his honoring me on
the one night of the year when I endeavor to entertain my brother
Criminologists. That's no coincidence, sir, but a deliberate irony,
which would have occurred to no other criminal mind in England."
"You may be right," Raffles had the sense to say this time, though I
flattered myself it was my face that made him.
"What is still more certain," resumed our host, "is that no other
criminal in the world would have crowned so delicious a conception with
so perfect an achievement. I feel sure the inspector will agree with
us."
The policeman in command had knocked and been admitted to the library
as Lord Thornaby spoke.
"I didn't hear what you said, my lord."
"Merely that the perpetrator of this amusing outrage can be no other
than the swell mobsman who relieved Lady Melrose of her necklace and
poor Danby of half his stock a year or two ago."
"I believe your lordship has hit the nail on the head."
"The man who took the Thimblely diamonds and returned them to Lord
Thimblely, you know."
"Perhaps he'll treat your lordship the same."
"Not he! I don't mean to cry over _my_ spilt milk. I only wish the
fellow joy of all he had time to take. Anything fresh up-stairs by the
way?"
"Yes, my lord: the robbery took place between a quarter past eight and
the half-hour."
"How on earth do you know?"
"The clock that was tied up in the towel had stopped at twenty past."
"Have you interviewed my man?"
"I have, my lord. He was in your lordship's room until close on the
quarter, and all was as it should be when he left it."
"Then do you suppose the burglar was in hiding in the house?"
"It's impossible to say, my lord. He's not in the house now, for he
could only be in your lordship's bedroom or dressing-room, and we have
searched every inch of both."
Lord Thornaby turned to us when the inspector had retreated, caressing
his peaked cap.
"I told him to clear up these points first," he explained, jerking his
head toward the door. "I had reason to think my man had been
neglecting his duties up there. I am glad to find myself mistaken."
I ought to have been no less glad to see my own mistake. My suspicions
of our officious author were thus proved to have been as wild as
himself. I owed the man no grudge, and yet in my human heart I felt
vaguely disappointed. My theory had gained color from his behavior
ever since he had admitted us to the dressing-room; it had changed all
at once from the familiar to the morose; and only now was I just enough
to remember that Lord Thornaby, having tolerated those familiarities as
long as they were connected with useful service, had administered a
relentless snub the moment that service had been well and truly
performed.
But if Parrington was exonerated in my mind, so also was Raffles
reinstated in the regard of those who had entertained a far graver and
more dangerous hypothesis. It was a miracle of good luck, a
coincidence among coincidences, which had white-washed him in their
sight at the very moment when they were straining the expert eye to
sift him through and through. But the miracle had been performed, and
its effect was visible in every face and audible in every voice. I
except Ernest, who could never have been in the secret; moreover, that
gay Criminologist had been palpably shaken by his first little
experience of crime. But the other three vied among themselves to do
honor where they had done injustice. I heard Kingsmill, Q.C., telling
Raffles the best time to catch him at chambers, and promising a seat in
court for any trial he might ever like to hear. Parrington spoke of a
presentation set of his books, and in doing homage to Raffles made his
peace with our host. As for Lord Thornaby, I did overhear the name of
the Athenæum Club, a reference to his friends on the committee, and a
whisper (as I thought) of Rule II.
The police were still in possession when we went our several ways, and
it was all that I could do to drag Raffles up to my rooms, though, as I
have said, they were just round the corner. He consented at last as a
lesser evil than talking of the burglary in the street; and in my rooms
I told him of his late danger and my own dilemma, of the few words I
had overheard in the beginning, of the thin ice on which he had cut
fancy figures without a crack. It was all very well for him. He had
never realized his peril. But let him think of me--listening,
watching, yet unable to lift a finger--unable to say one warning word.
Raffles suffered me to finish, but a weary sigh followed the last
symmetrical whiff of a Sullivan which he flung into my fire before he
spoke.
"No, I won't have another, thank you. I'm going to talk to you, Bunny.
Do you really suppose I didn't see through these wiseacres from the
first?"
I flatly refused to believe he had done so before that evening. Why
had he never mentioned his idea to me? It had been quite the other
way, as I indignantly reminded Raffles. Did he mean me to believe he
was the man to thrust his head into the lion's mouth for fun? And what
point would there be in dragging me there to see the fun?
"I might have wanted you, Bunny. I very nearly did."
"For my face?"
"It has been my fortune before to-night, Bunny. It has also given me
more confidence than you are likely to believe at this time of day.
You stimulate me more than you think."
"Your gallery and your prompter's box in one?"
"Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter with me either, my dear
fellow; it was touch-and-go at the time. I might have called on you at
any moment, and it was something to know I should not have called in
vain."
"But what to do, Raffles?"
"Fight our way out and bolt!" he answered, with a mouth that meant it,
and a fine gay glitter of the eyes.