In Which We Fail to Score
Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was
evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we
were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a
terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice
he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of
mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and
delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed
to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue
from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce.
Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as
he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions;
for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all
knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an
exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an
ordinary guest.
"You must find a better exception than this young lady!" cried that
worthy with a certain _aplomb_. "I know you very well by sight, Miss
Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain."
"Really?" said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at
her command.
"The bargain!" muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not
meant for Levy's ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up
with adroit urbanity.
"I didn't mean to use a trade term," explained the Jew, "though
bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don't often get the
worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to
repent it."
It was said with a laugh for the lady's benefit, but with a gleam of the
eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the
look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only
interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged
her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in
turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to
himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from
doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the
money-lender, gave the impression that his son's whereabouts was no
longer the sole anxiety.
"And yet," remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the
firelight, "you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?"
"Where was that, Miss Belsize?"
"Somewhere on the Continent, wasn't it? It got into the newspapers, I
know, but I forget the name of the place."
"Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?"
I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was
merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair.
"Carlsbad it was!" certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. "I
remember now."
"I don't call that meeting your match," said the money-lender. "An
unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a
desperate criminal with a loaded revolver."
"Was it as bad as all that?" whispered Camilla Belsize.
Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with
the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the
episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a
mind to impart.
"It makes a good tale, I know," said he, "but I shall prefer telling
it when they've got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss
Belsize, you'd better ask Mr. Raffles; 'e was in our hotel, and came
in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for
me and my wife."
"Raffles at Carlsbad?" exclaimed Mr. Garland.
Miss Belsize only stared.
"Yes," said Raffles. "That's where I had the pleasure of meeting
Mr. Levy."
"Didn't you know he was there?" inquired the money-lender of our host.
And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the
first he had heard of it.
"But it's the first we've seen of each other, sir," said Raffles,
"except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back
last night."
"But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!"
"It's a sore subject, you see," said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh.
"Isn't it, Mr. Levy?"
"You seem to find it so," replied the moneylender.
They were standing face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder
against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring
at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the
three of them by turns from the other side of the hall.
"But you're the fittest man I know, Raffles," pursued old Garland with
terrible tact. "What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?"
"The cure," said Raffles. "There's nothing else to do there--is there,
Mr. Levy?"
Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles:
"Unless you've got to cope with a _swell mobsman_ who steals your
wife's jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives
them back again!"
The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and
myself in his own office that very morning.
"Did he give them back again?" asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her
silence on an eager note.
Raffles turned to her at once.
"The jewels were found buried in the woods," said he. "Out there
everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy
has the better information."
Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I
followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word.
"I shouldn't have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the
wilds of Austria," said I.
"There isn't," admitted the money-lender readily. "But your true mobsman
knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His
'ead-quarters are in London, but a week's journey at an hour's notice is
nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy's necklace was
actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was
marked down at some London theatre--or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?"
"I'm afraid I can't offer an expert opinion," said Raffles very merrily
as their eyes met. "But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you
were one, why didn't he bully you in the vulgar tongue?"
"Who told you he didn't?" cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no
doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious
from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was
as obvious a mistake.
"Who told me anything about it," retorted Raffles, "except yourself and
Mrs. Levy? Your gospels clashed a little here and there; but both agreed
that the fellow threatened you in German as well as with a revolver."
"We thought it was German," rejoined Levy, with dexterity. "It might
'ave been 'Industani or 'Eathen Chinee for all I know! But there was no
error about the revolver. I can see it covering me, and his shooting eye
looking along the barrel into mine--as plainly as I'm looking into yours
now, Mr. Raffles."
Raffles laughed outright.
"I hope I'm a pleasanter spectacle, Mr. Levy? I remember your telling me
that the other fellow looked the most colossal cut-throat."
"So he did," said Levy; "he looked a good deal worse than he need to have
done. His face was blackened and disguised, but his teeth were as white
as yours are."
"Any other little point in common?"
"I had a good look at the hand that pointed the revolver."
Raffles held out his hands.
"Better have a good look at mine."
"His were as black as his face, but even yours are no smoother or
better kept."
"Well, I hope you'll clap the bracelets on them yet, Mr. Levy."
"You'll get your wish, I promise you, Mr. Raffles."
"You don't mean to say you've spotted your man?" cried A.J. airily.
"I've got my eye on him!" replied Dan Levy, looking Raffles through
and through.
"And won't you tell us who he is?" asked Raffles, returning that deadly
look with smiling interest, but answering a tone as deadly in one that
maintained the note of persiflage in spite of Daniel Levy.
For Levy alone had changed the key with his last words; to that point I
declare the whole passage might have gone for banter before the keenest
eyes and the sharpest ears in Europe. I alone could know what a duel the
two men were fighting behind their smiles. I alone could follow the finer
shades, the mutual play of glance and gesture, the subtle tide of covert
battle. So now I saw Levy debating with himself as to whether he should
accept this impudent challenge and denounce Raffles there and then. I saw
him hesitate, saw him reflect. The crafty, coarse, emphatic face was
easily read; and when it suddenly lit up with a baleful light, I felt we
might be on our guard against something more malign than mere reckless
denunciation.
"Yes!" whispered a voice I hardly recognised. "Won't you tell us
who it was?"
"Not yet," replied Levy, still looking Raffles full in the eyes. "But I
know all about him now!"
I looked at Miss Belsize; she it was who had spoken, her pale face set,
her pale lips trembling. I remembered her many questions about Raffles
during the morning. And I began to wonder whether after all I was the
only entirely understanding witness of what had passed here in the
firelit hall.
Mr. Garland, at any rate, had no inkling of the truth. Yet even in that
kindly face there was a vague indignation and distress, though it passed
almost as our eyes met. Into his there had come a sudden light; he sprang
up as one alike rejuvenated and transfigured; there was a quick step in
the porch, and next instant the truant Teddy was in our midst.
Mr. Garland met him with outstretched hand but not a question or a
syllable of surprise; it was Teddy who uttered the cry of joy, who stood
gazing at his father and raining questions upon him as though they had
the hall to themselves. What was all this in the evening papers? Who had
put it in? Was there any truth in it at all?
"None, Teddy," said Mr. Garland, with some bitterness; "my health was
never better in my life."
"Then I can't understand it," cried the son, with savage simplicity. "I
suppose it's some rotten practical joke; if so, I would give something to
lay hands on the joker!"
His father was still the only one of us he seemed to see, or could bring
himself to face in his distress. Not that young Garland had the
appearance of one who had been through fresh vicissitudes; on the
contrary, he looked both trimmer and ruddier than overnight; and in his
sudden fit of passionate indignation, twice the man that one remembered
so humiliated and abased.
Raffles came forward from the fireside.
"There are some of us," said he, "who won't be so hard on the beggar
for bringing you back from Lord's at last! You must remember that I'm
the only one here who has been up there at all, or seen anything of
you all day."
Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going
to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had
really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and
then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance
which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance
was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which
was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us
with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report
about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him
the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him
and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were
brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their
friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they
fell upon his bugbear in the background.
"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly
enough once he had found his voice.
"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh.
"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking
about, Teddy?"
"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost
harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as
well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from
this man."
"You borrowed from him?"
It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an
emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy
with new loathing and abhorrence.
"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars
every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own
fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in
his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last
drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves
me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again,
father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he
threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute
as to come to-day!"
"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into
Teddy's hands.
It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from
Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the
hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by
the throat before us all.
"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely.
"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy.
"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?"
"Every penny that you owed me, certainly."
"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both
ways--your money and your spite as well!"
"Put it that way if you like," said Levy, with a shrug of his massive
shoulders. "It isn't the case, but what does that matter so long as
you're 'appy?"
"No," said Teddy through his teeth; "nothing matters now that I've come
back in time."
"In time for what?"
"To turn you out of the house if you don't clear out this instant!"
The great gross man looked upon his athletic young opponent, and folded
his arms with a guttural chuckle.
"So you mean to chuck me out, do you?"
"By all my gods, if you make me, Mr. Levy! Here's your hat; there's the
door; and never you dare to set foot in this house again."
The money-lender took his shiny topper, gave it a meditative polish with
his sleeve, and actually went as bidden to the threshold of the porch;
but I saw the suppression of a grin beneath the pendulous nose, a cunning
twinkle in the inscrutable eyes, and it did not astonish me when the
fellow turned to deliver a Parthian shot. I was only surprised at the
harmless character of the shot.
"May I ask whose house it is?" were his words, in themselves notable
chiefly for the aspirates of undue deliberation.
"Not mine, I know; but I'm the son of the house," returned Teddy
truculently, "and out you go!"
"Are you so sure that it's even your father's house?" inquired Levy with
the deadly suavity of which he was capable when he liked. A groan from
Mr. Garland confirmed the doubt implied in the words.
"The whole place is his," declared the son, with a sort of nervous
scorn--"freehold and everything."
"The whole place happens to be _mine_--'freehold and everything!'"
replied Levy, spitting his iced poison in separate syllables. "And as for
clearing out, that'll be your job, and I've given you a week to do it
in--the two of you!"
He stood a moment in the open doorway, towering in his triumph, glaring
on us all in turn, but at Raffles longest and last of all.
"And you needn't think you're going to save the old man," came with
a passionate hiss, "like you did the son--_because I know all about
you now_!"