"And then, pray, how are they going to bring it home to us? Why should
they even suspect us, Bunny? I left early; that's all I did. You took
my departure admirably; you couldn't have said more or less if I had
coached you myself. I relied on you, Bunny, and you never more
completely justified my confidence. The sad thing is that you have
ceased to rely on me. Do you really think that I would leave the place
in such a state that the first person who came in with a duster would
see that there had been a robbery?"
I denied the thought with all energy, though it perished only as I
spoke.
"Have you forgotten the duster that was over these things, Bunny? Have
you forgotten all the other revolvers and life preservers that there
were to choose from? I chose most carefully, and I replaced my relics
with a mixed assortment of other people's which really look just as
well. The rope-ladder that now supplants mine is, of course, no patch
upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really looks much the same. To
be sure, there was no second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with
another quite like it, and I even found an empty cartridge to
understudy the setting of the Polynesian pearl. You see the sort of
fellow they have to show people round: do you think he's the kind to
see the difference next time, or to connect it with us if he does? One
left much the same things, lying much as he left them, under a
dust-sheet which is only taken off for the benefit of the curious, who
often don't turn up for weeks on end."
I admitted that we might be safe for three or four weeks. Raffles held
out his hand.
"Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and smoke the cigarette of
Sullivan and peace! A lot may happen in three or four weeks; and what
should you say if this turned out to be the last as well as the least
of all my crimes? I must own that it seems to me their natural and
fitting end, though I might have stopped more characteristically than
with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I make no promises, Bunny; now I
have got these things, I may be unable to resist using them once more.
But with this war one gets all the excitement one requires--and rather
more than usual may happen in three or four weeks?"
Was he thinking even then of volunteering for the front? Had he
already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his
life--nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and shall
never know. Yet his words were strangely prophetic, even to the three
or four weeks in which those events happened that imperilled the fabric
of our empire, and rallied her sons from the four winds to fight
beneath her banner on the veldt. It all seems very ancient history
now. But I remember nothing better or more vividly than the last words
of Raffles upon his last crime, unless it be the pressure of his hand
as he said them, or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.