Thin Air
Raffles hailed a passing hansom, and had bundled me in before I realised
that he was not coming with me.
"Drive down to the club for Teddy's cricket-bag," said he; "we'll make
him get straight into flannels to save time. Order breakfast for three in
half-an-hour precisely, and I'll tell him everything before you're back."
His eyes were shining with the prospect as I drove away, not sorry to
escape the scene of that young man's awakening to better fortune than he
deserved. For in my heart I could not quite forgive the act in which
Raffles and I had caught him overnight. Raffles might make as light of it
as he pleased; it was impossible for another to take his affectionately
lenient view, not of the moral question involved, but of the breach of
faith between friend and friend. My own feeling in the matter, however,
if a little jaundiced, was not so strong as to prevent me from gloating
over the victory in which I had just assisted. I thought of the notorious
extortioner who had fallen to our unscrupulous but not indictable wiles;
and my heart tinkled with the hansom bell. I thought of the good that we
had done for once, of the undoubted wrong we had contrived to right by a
species of justifiable chicanery. And I forgot all about the youth whose
battle we had fought and won, until I found myself ordering his
breakfast, and having his cricket-bag taken out to my cab.
Raffles was waiting for me in the Albany courtyard. I thought he was
frowning at the sky, which was not what it had been earlier in the
morning, until I remembered how little time there was to lose.
"Haven't you seen anything of him?" he cried as I jumped out.
"Of whom, Raffles?"
"Teddy, of course!"
"Teddy Garland? Has he gone out?"
"Before I got in," said Raffles, grimly. "I wonder where the devil he
is!"
He had paid the cabman and taken down the bag himself. I followed him up
to his rooms.
"But what's the meaning of it, Raffles?"
"That's what I want to know."
"Could he have gone out for a paper?"
"They were all here before I went. I left them on his bed."
"Or for a shave?"
"That's more likely; but he's been out nearly an hour."
"But you can't have been gone much longer yourself, Raffles, and I
understood you left him fast asleep?"
"That's the worst of it, Bunny. He must have been shamming. Barraclough
saw him go out ten minutes after me."
"Could you have disturbed him when you went?"
Raffles shook his head.
"I never shut a door more carefully in my life. I made row enough when I
came back, Bunny, on purpose to wake him up, and I can tell you it gave
me a turn when there wasn't a sound from in there! He'd shut all the
doors after him; it was a second or two before I had the pluck to open
them. I thought something horrible had happened!"
"You don't think so still?"
"I don't know what to think," said Raffles, gloomily; "nothing has panned
out as I thought it would. You must remember that we have given ourselves
away to Dan Levy, whatever else we have done, and without doubt set up
the enemy of our lives in the very next street. It's close quarters,
Bunny; we shall have an expert eye upon us for some time to come. But I
should rather enjoy that than otherwise, if only Teddy hadn't bolted in
this rotten way."
Never had I known Raffles in so pessimistic a mood. I did not share his
sombre view of either matter, though I confined my remarks to the one
that seemed to weigh most heavily on his mind.
"A guinea to a gooseberry," I wagered, "that you find your man safe and
sound at Lord's."
"I rang them up ten minutes ago," said Raffles. "They hadn't heard of him
then; besides, here's his cricket-bag."
"He may have been at the club when I fetched it away--I never asked."
"I did, Bunny. I rang them up as well, just after you had left."
"Then what about his father's house?"
"That's our one chance," said Raffles. "They're not on the telephone, but
now that you're here I've a good mind to drive out and see if Teddy's
there. You know what a state he was in last night, and you know how a
thing can seem worse when you wake and remember it than it did at the
time it happened. I begin to hope he's gone straight to old Garland with
the whole story; in that case he's bound to come back for his kit; and by
Jove, Bunny, there's a step upon the stairs!"
We had left the doors open behind us, and a step it was, ascending
hastily enough to our floor. But it was not the step of a very young man,
and Raffles was the first to recognise the fact; his face fell as we
looked at each other for a single moment of suspense; in another he was
out of the room, and I heard him greeting Mr. Garland on the landing.
"Then you haven't brought Teddy with you?" I heard Raffles add.
"Do you mean to say he isn't here?" replied so pleasant a voice--in
accents of such acute dismay--that Mr. Garland had my sympathy
before we met.
"He has been," said Raffles, "and I'm expecting him back every minute.
Won't you come in and wait, Mr. Garland?"
The pleasant voice made an exclamation of premature relief; the pair
entered, and I was introduced to the last person I should have suspected
of being a retired brewer at all, much less of squandering his money in
retirement as suggested by his son. I was prepared for a conventional
embodiment of reckless prosperity, for a pseudo-military type in louder
purple and finer linen than the real thing. I shook hands instead with a
gentle, elderly man, whose kindly eyes beamed bravely amid careworn
furrows, and whose slightly diffident yet wholly cordial address won my
heart outright.
"So you've lost no time in welcoming the wanderer!" said he. "You're
nearly as bad as my boy, who was quite bent on seeing Raffles last night
or first thing this morning. He told me he should stay the night in town
if necessary, and he evidently has."
There was still a trace of anxiety in the father's manner, but there was
also a twinkle in his eyes, which kindled with genial fires as Raffles
gave a perfectly truthful account of the young man's movements (as
distinct from his words and deeds) overnight.
"And what do you think of his great news?" asked Mr. Garland. "Was it a
surprise to you, Raffles?"
Raffles shook his head with a rather weary smile, and I sat up in my
chair. What great news was this?
"This son of mine has just got engaged," explained Mr. Garland for my
benefit. "And as a matter of fact it's his engagement that brings me
here; you gentlemen mustn't think I want to keep an eagle eye upon him;
but Miss Belsize has just wired to say she is coming up early to go with
us to the match, instead of meeting at Lord's, and I thought she would be
so disappointed not to find Teddy, especially as they are bound to see
very little of each other all day."
I for my part was wondering why I had not heard of Miss Belsize or this
engagement from Raffles. He must himself have heard of it last thing at
night in the next room, while I was star-gazing here at the open window.
Yet in all the small hours he had never told me of a circumstance which
extenuated young Garland's conduct if it did nothing else. Even now it
was not from Raffles that I received either word or look of explanation.
But his face had suddenly lit up.
"May I ask," he exclaimed, "if the telegram was to Teddy or to you,
Mr. Garland?"
"It was addressed to Teddy, but of course I opened it in his absence."
"Could it have been an answer to an invitation or suggestion of his?"
"Very easily. They had lunch together yesterday, and Camilla might have
had to consult Lady Laura."
"Then that's the whole thing!" cried Raffles. "Teddy was on his way home
while you were on yours into town! How did you come?"
"In the brougham."
"Through the Park?"
"Yes."
"While he was in a hansom in Knightsbridge or Kensington Gore! That's
how you missed him," said Raffles confidently. "If you drive straight
back you'll be in time to take him on to Lord's."
Mr. Garland begged us both to drive back with him; and we thought we
might; we decided that we would, and were all three under way in about a
minute. Yet it was considerably after eleven when we bowled through
Kensington to a house that I had never seen before, a house since swept
away by the flowing tide of flats, but I can still see every stone and
slate of it as clearly as on that summer morning more than ten years ago.
It stood just off the thoroughfare, in grounds of its own out of all
keeping with their metropolitan environment; they ran from one
side-street to another, and further back than we could see. Vivid lawn
and towering tree, brilliant beds and crystal vineries, struck one more
forcibly (and favourably) than the mullioned and turreted mansion of a
house. And yet a double stream of omnibuses rattled incessantly within a
few yards of the steps on which the three of us soon stood nonplussed.
Mr. Edward had not been seen or heard of at the house. Neither had Miss
Belsize arrived; that was the one consolatory feature.
"Come into the library," said Mr. Garland; and when we were among his
books, which were somewhat beautifully bound and cased in glass, he
turned to Raffles and added hoarsely: "There's something in all this I
haven't been told, and I insist on knowing what it is."
"But you know as much as I do," protested Raffles. "I went out leaving
Teddy asleep and came back to find him flown."
"What time was that?"
"Between nine and half-past when I went out. I was away nearly an hour."
"Why leave him asleep at that time of morning?"
"I wanted him to have every minute he could get. We had been sitting up
rather late."
"But why, Raffles? What could you have to talk about all night when you
were tired and it was Teddy's business to keep fresh for to-day? Why,
after all, should he want to see you the moment you got back? He's not
the first young fellow who's got rather suddenly engaged to a charming
girl; is he in any trouble about it, Raffles?"
"About his engagement--not that I'm aware."
"Then he is in some trouble?"
"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he
isn't now."
Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair.
"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you
his confidence, I have no right simply as his father--"
"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no
right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr.
Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it _was_ about some
little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me."
"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude
and humiliation.
"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so
serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment."
"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his
voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right
man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he
muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and
bent his head over his folded arms.
He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance
in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his
watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour
now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master
recovered his self-control.
"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's
for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose
it's Miss Belsize again."
"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you
were not to be disturbed."
"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of
trouble in his tone. "Listen to this--listen to this," he went on before
the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you
don't turn up in time.--J. S.'"
"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper."
"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?"
"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns
out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will
still be too late for him to play."
"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his
chair with a groan.
"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way."
"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned
straight from Lord's--probably within the last few minutes--to a
messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!"
Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look
ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his
back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a
monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the
adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but
this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well
have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a
panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and
straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with
an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy
fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in
the body of the room.
"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a
barometer, Mr. Garland?"
"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket."
"How often do you set the indicator?"
"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I
went to bed. It made me anxious."
"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this
morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!"
In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and
assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery.
"Something has happened to my boy!"
"But not necessarily anything terrible."
"If I knew what, Raffles--if only I knew what!"
Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He
himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the
rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute.
"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough,
we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your
help, sir."
"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles."
"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are."
"Where I am?"
"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential
to my idea."
"And that is, Raffles?"
"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up
to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he
shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment."
"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked.
"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his
face for the time being, at all events at Lord's."
"But that's the only place that matters," said I.
"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as
Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in
the next room now."
"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself."
"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I
thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from
her, sir."
"I?"
"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil
her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for
an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't.
Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them
in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and
the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself."
"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held
out his hand.
"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes; another
five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I shall barricade myself
in the telephone-box and ring up every hospital in town! You see, it may
be an accident after all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from
me on the point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the
better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the matter dark
at this end."
"Oh, yes, I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard
task for me!"
"It will, indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I
promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of any kind."
With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that
turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my
leave of him.
"What!" cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl
and hide my own anxiety?"
"There's no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me. "If
either of them is a one-man job, it's mine."
Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not
but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the
drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's _fiancee_, I took an
umbrella from the stand and saw Raffles through the providential downpour
into the brougham.
"I'm sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch and the
coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours,
but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We
should have opened a safe for that seven hundred."
"But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary
disappearance?"
"Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land
of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his
insanity."
"And what about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you
disapprove of it?"
"Why on earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged
from under my umbrella into the brougham.
"Because you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl
beneath him?"
Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes.
"You'd better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman to
hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!"