There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a
surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some retirement,
with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow
hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a prosperous
son of the same suburban soil which had nourished both families for
generations. The wedding presents were so numerous as to fill several
rooms at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value
calling for a special transaction with the Burglary Insurance Company
in Cheapside. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all this information.
I only know that it proved correct in each particular. I was not
indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured me
that it was "a one-man job," and naturally intended to be the one man
himself. It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were
inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English
team in the Second Test Match.
In a flash I saw the chance of my criminal career. It was some years
since Raffles had served his country in these encounters; he had never
thought to be called upon again, and his gratification was only less
than his embarrassment. The match was at Old Trafford, on the third
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in July; the other affair had been all
arranged for the Thursday night, the night of the wedding at East
Molesey. It was for Raffles to choose between the two excitements, and
for once I helped him to make up his mind. I duly pointed out to him
that in Surrey, at all events, I was quite capable of taking his place.
Nay, more, I insisted at once on my prescriptive right and on his
patriotic obligation in the matter. In the country's name and in my
own, I implored him to give it and me a chance; and for once, as I say,
my arguments prevailed. Raffles sent his telegram--it was the day
before the match. We then rushed down to Esher, and over every inch of
the ground by that characteristically circuitous route which he
enjoined on me for the next night. And at six in the evening I was
receiving the last of my many instructions through a window of the
restaurant car.
"Only promise me not to take a revolver," said Raffles in a whisper.
"Here are my keys; there's an old life-preserver somewhere in the
bureau; take that, if you like--though what you take I rather fear you
are the chap to use!"
"Then the rope be round my own neck!" I whispered back. "Whatever else
I may do, Raffles, I shan't give _you_ away; and you'll find I do better
than you think, and am worth trusting with a little more to do, or I'll
know the reason why!"
And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of Euston with raised
eyebrows, and I turned grimly on my heel. I saw his fears for me; and
nothing could have made me more fearless for myself. Raffles had been
wrong about me all these years; now was my chance to set him right. It
was galling to feel that he had no confidence in my coolness or my
nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch. I had been loyal to
him through rough and smooth. In many an ugly corner I had stood as
firm as Raffles himself. I was his right hand, and yet he never
hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time, at all events, I should
be neither one nor the other; this time I was the understudy playing
lead at last; and I wish I could think that Raffles ever realized with
what gusto I threw myself into his part.
Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night,
and first down the stairs into the open air. The night was close and
cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban
builder has marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I
know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of leaves
at midsummer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane or cranny
by the way. Naturally, it was in this blind reach that I fancied I was
being followed. I stopped in my stride; so did the steps I made sure I
had heard not far behind; and when I went on, they followed suit. I
dried my forehead as I walked, but soon brought myself to repeat the
experiment when an exact repetition of the result went to convince me
that it had been my own echo all the time. And since I lost it on
getting quit of the avenue, and coming out upon the straight and open
road, I was not long in recovering from my scare. But now I could see
my way, and found the rest of it without mishap, though not without
another semblance of adventure. Over the bridge across the Mole, when
about to turn to the left, I marched straight upon a policeman in
rubber soles. I had to call him "officer" as I passed, and to pass my
turning by a couple of hundred yards, before venturing back another way.
At last I had crept through a garden gate, and round by black windows
to a black lawn drenched with dew. It had been a heating walk, and I
was glad to blunder on a garden seat, most considerately placed under a
cedar which added its own darkness to that of the night. Here I rested
a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep them dry, untying my shoes to
save time, and generally facing the task before me with a coolness
which I strove to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine was a
self-conscious quality, as far removed from the original as any other
deliberate imitation of genius. I actually struck a match on my
trousers, and lit one of the shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would
not have done such a thing at such a moment. But I wished to tell him
that I had done it; and in truth I was not more than pleasurably
afraid; I had rather that impersonal curiosity as to the issue which
has been the saving of me in still more precarious situations. I even
grew impatient for the fray, and could not after all sit still as long
as I had intended. So it happened that I was finishing my cigarette on
the edge of the wet lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before
stepping across the gravel to the conservatory door, when a most
singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a muffled gasping
somewhere overhead. I stood like stone; and my listening attitude must
have been visible against the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored
voice hailed me sternly from a window.
"Who on earth are you?" it wheezed.
"A detective officer," I replied, "sent down by the Burglary Insurance
Company."
Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all been
prepared for me by Raffles, in case of need. I was merely repeating a
lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window there
was pause enough, filled only by the uncanny wheezing of the man I
could not see.
"I don't see why they should have sent you down," he said at length.
"We are being quite well looked after by the local police; they're
giving us a special call every hour."
"I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on my own account. "I met one
of them at the corner just now, and we passed the time of night."
My heart was knocking me to bits. I had started for myself at last.
"Did you get my name from him?" pursued my questioner, in a suspicious
wheeze.
"No; they gave me that before I started," I replied. "But I'm sorry
you saw me, sir; it's a mere matter of routine, and not intended to
annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all night, but I
own it wasn't necessary to trespass as I've done. I'll take myself off
the actual premises, if you prefer it."
This again was all my own; and it met with a success that might have
given me confidence.
"Not a bit of it," replied young Medlicott, with a grim geniality.
"I've just woke up with the devil of an attack of asthma, and may have
to sit up in my chair till morning. You'd better come up and see me
through, and kill two birds while you're about it. Stay where you are,
and I'll come down and let you in."
Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had not foreseen! Outside, in
the dark, my audacious part was not hard to play; but to carry the
improvisation in-doors was to double at once the difficulty and the
risk. It was true that I had purposely come down in a true detective's
overcoat and bowler; but my personal appearance was hardly of the
detective type. On the other hand as the _soi-disant_ guardian of the
gifts one might only excite suspicion by refusing to enter the house
where they were. Nor could I forget that it was my purpose to effect
such entry first or last. That was the casting consideration. I
decided to take my dilemma by the horns.
There had been a scraping of matches in the room over the conservatory;
the open window had shown for a moment, like an empty picture-frame, a
gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and in the next half-minute I
remembered to tie my shoes. But the light was slow to reappear through
the leaded glasses of an outer door farther along the path. And when
the door opened, it was a figure of woe that stood within and held an
unsteady candle between our faces.
I have seen old men look half their age, and young men look double
theirs; but never before or since have I seen a beardless boy bent into
a man of eighty, gasping for every breath, shaken by every gasp,
swaying, tottering, and choking, as if about to die upon his feet. Yet
with it all, young Medlicott overhauled me shrewdly, and it was several
moments before he would let me take the candle from him.
"I shouldn't have come down--made me worse," he began whispering in
spurts. "Worse still going up again. You must give me an arm. You
will come up? That's right! Not as bad as I look, you know. Got some
good whiskey, too. Presents are all right; but if they aren't you'll
hear of it in-doors sooner than out. Now I'm ready--thanks! Mustn't
make more noise than we can help--wake my mother."
It must have taken us minutes to climb that single flight of stairs.
There was just room for me to keep his arm in mine; with the other he
hauled on the banisters; and so we mounted, step by step, a panting
pause on each, and a pitched battle for breath on the half-landing. In
the end we gained a cosey library, with an open door leading to a
bedroom beyond. But the effort had deprived my poor companion of all
power of speech; his laboring lungs shrieked like the wind; he could
just point to the door by which we had entered, and which I shut in
obedience to his gestures, and then to the decanter and its accessories
on the table where he had left them overnight. I gave him nearly half
a glassful, and his paroxysm subsided a little as he sat hunched up in
a chair.
"I was a fool ... to turn in," he blurted in more whispers between
longer pauses. "Lying down is the devil ... when you're in for a real
bad night. You might get me the brown cigarettes ... on the table in
there. That's right ... thanks awfully ... and now a match!"
The asthmatic had bitten off either end of the stramonium cigarette,
and was soon choking himself with the crude fumes, which he inhaled in
desperate gulps, to exhale in furious fits of coughing. Never was more
heroic remedy; it seemed a form of lingering suicide; but by degrees
some slight improvement became apparent, and at length the sufferer was
able to sit upright, and to drain his glass with a sigh of rare relief.
I sighed also, for I had witnessed a struggle for dear life by a man in
the flower of his youth, whose looks I liked, whose smile came like the
sun through the first break in his torments, and whose first words were
to thank me for the little I had done in bare humanity.
That made me feel the thing I was. But the feeling put me on my guard.
And I was not unready for the remark which followed a more exhaustive
scrutiny than I had hitherto sustained.
"Do you know," said young Medlicott, "that you aren't a bit like the
detective of my dreams?"
"Only to proud to hear it," I replied. "There would be no point in my
being in plain clothes if I looked exactly what I was."
My companion reassured me with a wheezy laugh.
"There's something in that," said he, "although I do congratulate the
insurance people on getting a man of your class to do their dirty work.
And I congratulate myself," he was quick enough to add, "on having you
to see me through as bad a night as I've had for a long time. You're
like flowers in the depths of winter. Got a drink? That's right! I
suppose you didn't happen to bring down an evening paper?"