I was just putting out my light when the telephone rang a furious
tocsin in the next room. I flounced out of bed more asleep than awake;
in another minute I should have been past ringing up. It was one
o'clock in the morning, and I had been dining with Swigger Morrison at
his club.
"Hulloa!"
"That you, Bunny?"
"Yes--are you Raffles?"
"What's left of me! Bunny, I want you--quick."
And even over the wire his voice was faint with anxiety and
apprehension.
"What on earth has happened?"
"Don't ask! You never know--"
"I'll come at once. Are you there, Raffles?"
"What's that?"
"Are you there, man?"
"Ye--e--es."
"At the Albany?"
"No, no; at Maguire's."
"You never said so. And where's Maguire?"
"In Half-moon Street."
"I know that. Is he there now?"
"No--not come in yet--and I'm caught."
"Caught!"
"In that trap he bragged about. It serves me right. I didn't believe
in it. But I'm caught at last ... caught ... at last!"
"When he told us he set it every night! Oh, Raffles, what sort of a
trap is it? What shall I do? What shall I bring?"
But his voice had grown fainter and wearier with every answer, and now
there was no answer at all. Again and again I asked Raffles if he was
there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of
the live wire between his ear and mine. And then, as I sat gazing
distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still pressed to
my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and dreadful
crash of a human body falling in a heap.
In utter panic I rushed back into my bedroom, and flung myself into the
crumpled shirt and evening clothes that lay where I had cast them off.
But I knew no more what I was doing than what to do next I afterward
found that I had taken out a fresh tie, and tied it rather better than
usual; but I can remember thinking of nothing but Raffles in some
diabolical man-trap, and of a grinning monster stealing in to strike
him senseless with one murderous blow. I must have looked in the glass
to array myself as I did; but the mind's eye was the seeing eye, and it
was filled with this frightful vision of the notorious pugilist known
to fame and infamy as Barney Maguire.
It was only the week before that Raffles and I had been introduced to
him at the Imperial Boxing Club. Heavy-weight champion of the United
States, the fellow was still drunk with his sanguinary triumphs on that
side, and clamoring for fresh conquests on ours. But his reputation had
crossed the Atlantic before Maguire himself; the grandiose hotels had
closed their doors to him; and he had already taken and sumptuously
furnished the house in Half-moon Street which does not re-let to this
day. Raffles had made friends with the magnificent brute, while I took
timid stock of his diamond studs, his jewelled watch-chain, his
eighteen-carat bangle, and his six-inch lower jaw. I had shuddered to
see Raffles admiring the gewgaws in his turn, in his own brazen
fashion, with that air of the cool connoisseur which had its double
meaning for me. I for my part would as lief have looked a tiger in the
teeth. And when we finally went home with Maguire to see his other
trophies, it seemed to me like entering the tiger's lair. But an
astounding lair it proved, fitted throughout by one eminent firm, and
ringing to the rafters with the last word on fantastic furniture.
The trophies were a still greater surprise. They opened my eyes to the
rosier aspect of the noble art, as presently practised on the right
side of the Atlantic. Among other offerings, we were permitted to
handle the jewelled belt presented to the pugilist by the State of
Nevada, a gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento, and a model of
himself in solid silver from the Fisticuff Club in New York. I still
remember waiting with bated breath for Raffles to ask Maguire if he
were not afraid of burglars, and Maguire replying that he had a trap to
catch the cleverest cracksman alive, but flatly refusing to tell us
what it was. I could not at the moment conceive a more terrible trap
than the heavy-weight himself behind a curtain. Yet it was easy to see
that Raffles had accepted the braggart's boast as a challenge. Nor did
he deny it later when I taxed him with his mad resolve; he merely
refused to allow me to implicate myself in its execution. Well, there
was a spice of savage satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had been
obliged to turn to me in the end. And, but for the dreadful thud which
I had heard over the telephone, I might have extracted some genuine
comfort from the unerring sagacity with which he had chosen his night.
Within the last twenty-four hours Barney Maguire had fought his first
great battle on British soil. Obviously, he would no longer be the man
that he had been in the strict training before the fight; never, as I
gathered, was such a ruffian more off his guard, or less capable of
protecting himself and his possessions, than in these first hours of
relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which Raffles had waited with
characteristic foresight. Nor was the terrible Barney likely to be
more abstemious for signal punishment sustained in a far from bloodless
victory. Then what could be the meaning of that sickening and most
suggestive thud? Could it be the champion himself who had received the
_coup de grâce_ in his cups? Raffles was the very man to administer
it--but he had not talked like that man through the telephone.
And yet--and yet--what else could have happened? I must have asked
myself the question between each and all of the above reflections, made
partly as I dressed and partly in the hansom on the way to Half-moon
Street. It was as yet the only question in my mind. You must know
what your emergency is before you can decide how to cope with it; and
to this day I sometimes tremble to think of the rashly direct method by
which I set about obtaining the requisite information. I drove every
yard of the way to the pugilist's very door. You will remember that I
had been dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.
Yet at the last I had a rough idea of what I meant to say when the door
was opened. It seemed almost probable that the tragic end of our talk
over the telephone had been caused by the sudden arrival and as sudden
violence of Barney Maguire. In that case I was resolved to tell him
that Raffles and I had made a bet about his burglar trap, and that I
had come to see who had won. I might or might not confess that Raffles
had rung me out of bed to this end. If, however, I was wrong about
Maguire, and he had not come home at all, then my action would depend
upon the menial who answered my reckless ring. But it should result in
the rescue of Raffles by hook or crook.
I had the more time to come to some decision, since I rang and rang in
vain. The hall, indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped through the
letter-box I could see a faint beam of light from the back room. That
was the room in which Maguire kept his trophies and set his trap. All
was quiet in the house: could they have haled the intruder to Vine
Street in the short twenty minutes which it had taken me to dress and
to drive to the spot? That was an awful thought; but even as I hoped
against hope, and rang once more, speculation and suspense were cut
short in the last fashion to be foreseen.
A brougham was coming sedately down the street from Piccadilly; to my
horror, it stopped behind me as I peered once more through the
letter-box, and out tumbled the dishevelled prizefighter and two
companions. I was nicely caught in my turn. There was a lamp-post
right opposite the door, and I can still see the three of them
regarding me in its light. The pugilist had been at least a fine
figure of a bully and a braggart when I saw him before his fight; now
he had a black eye and a bloated lip, hat on the back of his head, and
made-up tie under one ear. His companions were his sallow little
Yankee secretary, whose name I really forget, but whom I met with
Maguire at the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a second skin of
shimmering sequins.
I can neither forget nor report the terms in which Barney Maguire asked
me who I was and what I was doing there. Thanks, however, to Swigger
Morrison's hospitality, I readily reminded him of our former meeting,
and of more that I only recalled as the words were in my mouth.
"You'll remember Raffles," said I, "if you don't remember me. You
showed us your trophies the other night, and asked us both to look you
up at any hour of the day or night after the fight."
I was going on to add that I had expected to find Raffles there before
me, to settle a wager that we had made about the man-trap. But the
indiscretion was interrupted by Maguire himself, whose dreadful fist
became a hand that gripped mine with brute fervor, while with the other
he clouted me on the back.
"You don't say!" he cried. "I took you for some darned crook, but now
I remember you perfectly. If you hadn't 've spoke up slick I'd have
bu'st your face in, sonny. I would, sure! Come right in, and have a
drink to show there's--Jeehoshaphat!"
The secretary had turned the latch-key in the door, only to be hauled
back by the collar as the door stood open, and the light from the inner
room was seen streaming upon the banisters at the foot of the narrow
stairs.
"A light in my den," said Maguire in a mighty whisper, "and the blamed
door open, though the key's in my pocket and we left it locked! Talk
about crooks, eh? Holy smoke, how I hope we've landed one alive! You
ladies and gentlemen, lay round where you are, while I see."
And the hulking figure advanced on tiptoe, like a performing elephant,
until just at the open door, when for a second we saw his left
revolving like a piston and his head thrown back at its fighting angle.
But in another second his fists were hands again, and Maguire was
rubbing them together as he stood shaking with laughter in the light of
the open door.
"Walk up!" he cried, as he beckoned to us three. "Walk up and see one
o' their blamed British crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet, and
nailed as tight!"
Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow secretary went first; the
sequins glittered at his heels, and I must own that for one base moment
I was on the brink of bolting through the street door. It had never
been shut behind us. I shut it myself in the end. Yet it was small
credit to me that I actually remained on the same side of the door as
Raffles.
"Reel home-grown, low-down, unwashed Whitechapel!" I had heard Maguire
remark within. "Blamed if our Bowery boys ain't cock-angels to scum
like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my knuckles on your ugly
face; but if I had my thick boots on I'd dance the soul out of your
carcass for two cents!"
After this it required less courage to join the others in the inner
room; and for some moments even I failed to identify the truly
repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no false
hair upon the face, but it was as black as any sweep's. The clothes,
on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more pestiferous in
themselves than most worn by Raffles for professional purposes. And at
first, as I say, I was far from sure whether it was Raffles at all; but
I remembered the crash that cut short our talk over the telephone; and
this inanimate heap of rags was lying directly underneath a wall
instrument, with the receiver dangling over him.
"Think you know him?" asked the sallow secretary, as I stooped and
peered with my heart in my boots.
"Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead," I explained,
having satisfied myself that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles
was really insensible. "But what on earth has happened?" I asked in
my turn.
"That's what I want to know," whined the person in sequins, who had
contributed various ejaculations unworthy of report, and finally
subsided behind an ostentatious fan.
"I should judge," observed the secretary, "that it's for Mr. Maguire to
say, or not to say, just as he darn pleases."
But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian hearth-rug, beaming upon
us all in a triumph too delicious for immediate translation into words.
The room was furnished as a study, and most artistically furnished, if
you consider outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic. There was nothing
of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney Maguire, except his
vocabulary and his lower jaw. I had seen over his house already, and
it was fitted and decorated throughout by a high-art firm which
exhibits just such a room as that which was the scene of our
tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening like a landed
salmon in a quaint chair of enormous nails and tapestry compact. The
secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges of beaten
metal. The pugilist's own background presented an elaborate scheme of
oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the joiner, and a china
cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot
eyes rolled with rich delight from the decanter and glasses on the
octagonal table to another decanter in the quaintest and craftiest of
revolving spirit tables.
"Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling on us each in turn,
with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated lip. "To think that
I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to walk
right into! You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great head at me, "you'll
recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one when you come in that
night with the other sport? Say, pity he's not with you now; he was a
good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he wanted to know too much, and I
guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to tell you now, or else bu'st.
See that decanter on the table?"
"I was just looking at it," said the person in sequins. "You don't
know what a turn I've had, or you'd offer me a little something."
"You shall have a little something in a minute," rejoined Maguire. "But
if you take a little anything out of that decanter, you'll collapse
like our friend upon the floor."
"Good heavens!" I cried out, with involuntary indignation, and his fell
scheme broke upon me in a clap.
"Yes, _sir!_" said Maguire, fixing me with his bloodshot orbs. "My trap
for crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of hocussed whiskey, and I guess
that's it on the table, with the silver label around its neck. Now look
at this other decanter, without any label at all; but for that they're
the dead spit of each other. I'll put them side by side, so you can
see. It isn't only the decanters, but the liquor looks the same in
both, and tastes so you wouldn't know the difference till you woke up
in your tracks. I got the poison from a blamed Indian away west, and
it's ruther ticklish stuff. So I keep the label around the
trap-bottle, and only leave it out nights. That's the idea, and that's
all there is to it," added Maguire, putting the labelled decanter back
in the stand. "But I figure it's enough for ninety-nine crooks out of
a hundred, and nineteen out of twenty 'll have their liquor before they
go to work."
"I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secretary, with a downward
glance as though at the prostrate Raffles. "Have you looked to see if
the trophies are all safe?"
"Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the pseudo-antique cabinet in
which he kept them.
"Then you can save yourself the trouble," rejoined the secretary, as he
dived under the octagonal table, and came up with a small black bag
that I knew at a glance. It was the one that Raffles had used for
heavy plunder ever since I had known him.
The bag was so heavy now that the secretary used both hands to get it
on the table. In another moment he had taken out the jewelled belt
presented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the solid silver statuette
of himself, and the gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento.
Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost, or the feeling that
the thief had dared to tamper with them after all, suddenly infuriated
Maguire to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple of brutal kicks
upon the senseless form of Raffles before the secretary and I could
interfere.
"Play light, Mr. Maguire!" cried the sallow secretary. "The man's
drugged, as well as down."
"He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!"
"I should judge it about time to telephone for the police."
"Not till I've done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I'll
punch his face into a jam pudding! He shall wash down his teeth with
his blood before the coppers come in for what's left!"
"You make me feel quite ill," complained the grand lady in the chair.
"I wish you'd give me a little something, and not be more vulgar than
you can 'elp."
"Help yourself," said Maguire, ungallantly, "and don't talk through
your hat. Say, what's the matter with the 'phone?"
The secretary had picked up the dangling receiver.
"It looks to me," said he, "as though the crook had rung up somebody
before he went off."