"Like his cheek!" Maguire thundered. "But who in blazes should _he_ ring
up?"
"It'll all come out," said the secretary. "They'll tell us at the
central, and we shall find out fast enough."
"It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's have a drink and then
rouse the devil up."
But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this
meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time being, the police would
promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the burglar,
and the fact of my not having said a word about it would be directly
damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made
me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present
peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I
could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue
another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution
which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this occasion. But
any sheep would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison
at his club.
"I wonder if he rang _me_ up?" I exclaimed, as if inspired.
"You, sonny?" echoed Maguire, decanter in hand. "What in hell could he
know about you?"
"Or what could you know about him?" amended the secretary, fixing me
with eyes like drills.
"Nothing," I admitted, regretting my temerity with all my heart. "But
some one did ring me up about an hour ago. I thought it was Raffles.
I told you I expected to find him here, if you remember."
"But I don't see what that's got to do with the crook," pursued the
secretary, with his relentless eyes boring deeper and deeper into mine.
"No more do I," was my miserable reply. But there was a certain
comfort in his words, and some simultaneous promise in the quantity of
spirit which Maguire splashed into his glass.
"Were you cut off sudden?" asked the secretary, reaching for the
decanter, as the three of us sat round the octagonal table.
"So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew who it was who rang me up.
No, thank you--not any for me."
"What!" cried Maguire, raising a depressed head suddenly. "You won't
have a drink in my house? Take care, young man. That's not being a
good boy!"
"But I've been dining out," I expostulated, "and had my whack. I
really have."
Barney Maguire smote the table with terrific fist.
"Say, sonny, I like you a lot," said he. "But I shan't like you any if
you're not a good boy!"
"Very well, very well," I said hurriedly. "One finger, if I must."
And the secretary helped me to not more than two.
"Why should it have been your friend Raffles?" he inquired, returning
remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire roared "Drink up!" and then
drooped once more.
"I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was the first person who
occurred to me. We are both on the telephone, you see. And we had
made a bet--"
The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched.
Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and
beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic
armchair.
"What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary was
blinking as he drained his glass.
"About the very thing we've just had explained to us," said I, watching
my man intently as I spoke. "I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles
thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous argument about
it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-trap. I said it was. We had a bet
about it in the end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles put his
upon the other thing. And Raffles was right--it wasn't a man-trap.
But it's every bit as good--every little bit--and the whole boiling of
you are caught in it except me!"
I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well have
raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over again to
see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary to open his
eyes. It seemed to have had the very opposite effect. His head fell
forward on the table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a twitch
when I pillowed it upon one of his own sprawling arms. And there sat
Maguire bolt upright, but for the jowl upon his shirt-front, while the
sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon the reclining form of
the lady in the fanciful chair. All three were sound asleep, by what
accident or by whose design I did not pause to inquire; it was enough
to ascertain the fact beyond all chance of error.
I turned my attention to Raffles last of all. There was the other side
of the medal. Raffles was still sleeping as sound as the enemy--or so
I feared at first I shook him gently: he made no sign. I introduced
vigor into the process: he muttered incoherently. I caught and twisted
an unresisting wrist--and at that he yelped profanely. But it was many
and many an anxious moment before his blinking eyes knew mine.
"Bunny!" he yawned, and nothing more until his position came back to
him. "So you came to me," he went on, in a tone that thrilled me with
its affectionate appreciation, "as I knew you would! Have they turned
up yet? They will any minute, you know; there's not one to lose."
"No, they won't, old man!" I whispered. And he sat up and saw the
comatose trio for himself.
Raffles seemed less amazed at the result than I had been as a puzzled
witness of the process; on the other hand, I had never seen anything
quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his blackened
countenance like a light. It was all obviously no great surprise, and
no puzzle at all, to Raffles.
"How much did they have, Bunny?" were his first whispered words.
"Maguire a good three fingers, and the others at least two."
"Then we needn't lower our voices, and we needn't walk on our toes.
Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking me in the ribs, and I believe it
must have been true."
He had risen with a hand to his side and a wry look on his sweep's face.
"You can guess which of them it was," said I. "The beast is jolly well
served!"
And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of
his time.
"He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him," said
Raffles. "I don't suppose we could rouse him now if we tried. How much
of the fearsome stuff do you suppose _I_ took? About a tablespoonful! I
guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making sure; the minute I was
satisfied, I changed the label and the position of the two decanters,
little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in another minute I
could hardly keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly
poisoned with some subtle drug. If I left the house at all in that
state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in the gutter
with my head on the swag itself. In any case I should have been picked
up and run in, and that might have led to anything."
"So you rang me up!"
"It was my last brilliant inspiration--a sort of flash in the brain-pan
before the end--and I remember very little about it. I was more asleep
than awake at the time."
"You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue."
"I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny."
"You fell in a heap before you came to the end."
"You didn't hear that through the telephone?"
"As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was Maguire
who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out."
I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this
point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in his.
"You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my
body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn't in it with you,
Bunny!"
"It was no credit to me--it was rather the other thing," said I,
remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath.
"You know old Swigger Morrison?" I added in final explanation. "I had
been dining with him at his club!"
Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was
still my infinite reward.
"I don't care," said he, "how deeply you had been dining: _in vino
veritas_, Bunny, and your pluck would always out! I have never doubted
it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to get us out
of this mess."
My face must have fallen, as my heart sank at these words. I had said
to myself that we were out of the mess already--that we had merely to
make a clean escape from the house--now the easiest thing in the world.
But as I looked at Raffles, and as Raffles looked at me, on the
threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept on without sound
or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay before us. It was
twofold; and the funny thing was that I had seen both horns of the
dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his senses. But with
Raffles in his right mind, I had ceased to apply my own, or to carry my
share of our common burden another inch. It had been an unconscious
withdrawal on my part, an instinctive tribute to my leader; but I was
sufficiently ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem in each
other's eyes.
"If we simply cleared out," continued Raffles, "you would be
incriminated in the first place as my accomplice, and once they had you
they would have a compass with the needle pointing straight to me.
They mustn't have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us both. And
for my part they may as well!"
I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself in Raffles, but in my
case a mere truism.
"It's easy enough for me," he went on. "I am a common house-breaker,
and I escape. They don't know me from Noah. But they do know you; and
how do you come to let me escape? What has happened to you, Bunny?
That's the crux. What could have happened after they all dropped off?"
And for a minute Raffles frowned and smiled like a sensation novelist
working out a plot; then the light broke, and transfigured him through
his burnt cork. "I've got it, Bunny!" he exclaimed. "You took some of
the stuff yourself, though of course not nearly so much as they did.
"Splendid!" I cried. "They really were pressing it upon me at the end,
and I did say it must be very little."
"You dozed off in your turn, but you were naturally the first to come
to yourself. I had flown; so had the gold brick, the jewelled belt,
and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You couldn't
succeed; nor would you if you did try. So what did you do? What's the
only really innocent thing you could do in the circumstances?"
"Go for the police," I suggested dubiously, little relishing the
prospect.
"There's a telephone installed for the purpose," said Raffles. "I
should ring them up, if I were you. Try not to look blue about it,
Bunny. They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and what you
have to tell them is a mere microbe to the camels I've made them
swallow without a grain of salt. It's really the most convincing story
one could conceive; but unfortunately there's another point which will
take more explaining away."
And even Raffles looked grave enough as I nodded.
"You mean that they'll find out you rang me up?"
"They may," said Raffles. "I see that I managed to replace the
receiver all right. But still--they may."
"I'm afraid they will," said I, uncomfortably. "I'm very much afraid I
gave something of the kind away. You see, you had _not_ replaced the
receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay. This very question
came up, and the brutes themselves seemed so quick to see its
possibilities that I thought best to take the bull by the horns and own
that I had been rung up by somebody. To be absolutely honest, I even
went so far as to say I thought it was Raffles!"
"You didn't, Bunny!"
"What could I say? I was obliged to think of somebody, and I saw they
were not going to recognize you. So I put up a yarn about a wager we
had made about this very trap of Maguire's. You see, Raffles, I've
never properly told you how I got in, and there's no time now; but the
first thing I had said was that I half expected to find you here before
me. That was in case they spotted you at once. But it made all that
part about the telephone fit in rather well."
"I should think it did, Bunny," murmured Raffles, in a tone that added
sensibly to my reward. "I couldn't have done better myself, and you
will forgive my saying that you have never in your life done half so
well. Talk about that crack you gave me on the head! You have made it
up to me a hundredfold by all you have done to-night. But the bother
of it is that there's still so much to do, and to hit upon, and so
precious little time for thought as well as action."
I took out my watch and showed it to Raffles without a word. It was
three o'clock in the morning, and the latter end of March. In little
more than an hour there would be dim daylight in the streets. Raffles
roused himself from a reverie with sudden decision.
"There's only one thing for it, Bunny," said he. "We must trust each
other and divide the labor. You ring up the police, and leave the rest
to me."
"You haven't hit upon any reason for the sort of burglar they think you
were, ringing up the kind of man they know I am?"
"Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so,
and after all it isn't for you to give the explanation. It would be
highly suspicious if you did."
"So it would," I agreed.
"Then will you trust me to hit on something--if possible before
morning--in any case by the time it's wanted? I won't fail you, Bunny.
You must see how I can never, never fail you after to-night!"
That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and remained
on guard over the three sleepers while Raffles stole upstairs. I have
since learned that there were servants at the top of the house, and in
the basement a man, who actually heard some of our proceedings! But he
was mercifully too accustomed to nocturnal orgies, and those of a far
more uproarious character, to appear unless summoned to the scene. I
believe he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made of his exit: he
let himself out and told me afterward that the first person he
encountered in the street was the constable on the beat. Raffles
wished him good-morning, as well he might; for he had been upstairs to
wash his face and hands; and in the prize-fighter's great hat and fur
coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of his
having the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver
statuette of Maguire in the other, and round his waist the jewelled
belt presented to that worthy by the State of Nevada.
My immediate part was a little hard after the excitement of those small
hours. I will only say that we had agreed that it would be wisest for
me to lie like a log among the rest for half an hour, before staggering
to my feet and rousing house and police; and that in that half-hour
Barney Maguire crashed to the floor, without waking either himself or
his companions, though not without bringing my beating heart into the
very roof of my mouth.
It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a
few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics,
irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my
story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But
it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without
that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet
sufficiently recovered to supply. And in the end I was permitted to
retire from the scene until required to give further information, or to
identify the prisoner whom the good police confidently expected to make
before the day was out.
I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my
hansom. His face alarmed me more than any I had left in Half-moon
Street. It alone might have spelled my ruin.
"Your flat's been entered in the night, sir," he cried. "The thieves
have taken everything they could lay hands on."
"Thieves in my flat!" I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two
incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the Albany.
"The door's been forced with a jimmy," said the porter. "It was the
milkman who found it out. There's a constable up there now."
A constable poking about in my flat of all others! I rushed upstairs
without waiting for the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil
between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no
further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept _my_
trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah lock. The
lock was broken--the drawer void.
"Something valuable, sir?" inquired the intrusive constable at my heels.
"Yes, indeed--some old family silver," I answered. It was quite true.
But the family was not mine.
And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of
value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the
rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street;
it was his wife who looked after the flat.
"Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can," I whispered. "I'm going
straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while
I'm gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I'm going as I
am, this minute!"
And go I did, in the first hansom I could find--but not straight to
Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Picadilly on the way.
Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him
fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way.
Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen, it
would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door in
the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray, cool and gay and
breezy as incarnate spring.
"What on earth did you do it for?" I asked within.
"It was the only solution," he answered, handing me the cigarettes. "I
saw it the moment I got outside."
"I don't see it yet."
"Why should a burglar call an innocent gentleman away from home?"
"That's what we couldn't make out."
"I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in
order to burgle you too, of course!"
And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his incomparable radiance and
audacity.
"But why me?" I asked. "Why on earth should he burgle _me?_"
"My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the
police. But we will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was
the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at
the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and you meet queer fish at the
Imperial Boxing Club. You may remember that he telephoned to his man
to prepare supper for us, and that you and he discussed telephones and
treasure as we marched through the midnight streets. He was certainly
bucking about his trophies, and for the sake of the argument you will
be good enough to admit that you probably bucked about yours. What
happens? You are overheard; you are followed; you are worked into the
same scheme, and robbed on the same night."
"And you really think this will meet the case?"
"I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far as it rests wit us to meet the
case at all."
"Then give me another cigarette, my dear fellow, and let me push on to
Scotland Yard."
Raffles held up both hands in admiring horror.
"Scotland Yard!"
"To give a false description of what you took from that drawer in my
wardrobe."
"A false description! Bunny, you have no more to learn from me. Time
was when I wouldn't have let you go there without me to retrieve a lost
umbrella--let alone a lost cause!"
And for once I was not sorry for Raffles to have the last unworthy
word, as he stood once more at his outer door and gayly waved me down
the stairs.