Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman
by
E. W. Hornung
Part 3 out of 4
still to lay hands upon your, or our, ill-gotten goods. To shoot
me is not necessarily to do so; to bring either one of us to a
violent end is only to court a yet more violent and infinitely
more disgraceful one for yourself. Family considerations alone
should rule that risk out of your game. Now, an hour or two ago,
when the exact opposite--"
The remainder of Raffles's speech was drowned from my ears by the
belated crash of thunder which the lightning had foretold. So
loud, however, was the crash when it came, that the storm was
evidently approaching us at a high velocity; yet as the last
echo rumbled away, I heard Raffles talking as though he had never
stopped.
"You offered us a share," he was saying; "unless you mean to
murder us both in cold blood, it will be worth your while to
repeat that offer. We should be dangerous enemies; you had far
better make the best of us as friends."
"Lead the way down to your flat," said Lord Ernest, with a
flourish of his service revolver, "and perhaps we may talk about
it. It is for me to make the terms, I imagine, and in the first
place I am not going to get wet to the skin up here."
The rain was beginning in great drops, even as he spoke, and by a
second flash of lightning I saw Raffles pointing to me.
"But what about my friend?" said he.
And then came the second peal.
"Oh, HE'S all right," the great brute replied; "do him good!
You don't catch me letting myself in for two to one!"
"You will find it equally difficult," rejoined Raffles, "to
induce me to leave my friend to the mercy of a night like this.
He has not recovered from the blow you struck him in your own
rooms. I am not such a fool as to blame you for that, but you
are a worse sportsman than I take you for if you think of leaving
him where he is. If he stays, however, so do I."
And, just as it ceased, Raffles's voice seemed distinctly nearer
to me; but in the darkness and the rain, which was now as heavy
as hail, I could see nothing clearly. The rain had already
extinguished the candle. I heard an oath from Belville, a laugh
from Raffles, and for a second that was all. Raffles was coming
to me, and the other could not even see to fire; that was all I
knew in the pitchy interval of invisible rain before the next
crash and the next flash.
And then!
This time they came together, and not till my dying hour shall I
forget the sight that the lightning lit and the thunder
applauded. Raffles was on one of the parapets of the gulf that
my foot-bridge spanned, and in the sudden illumination he
stepped across it as one might across a garden path. The width
was scarcely greater, but the depth! In the sudden flare I saw
to the concrete bottom of the well, and it looked no larger than
the hollow of my hand. Raffles was laughing in my ear; he had
the iron railing fast; it was between us, but his foothold was as
secure as mine. Lord Ernest Belville, on the contrary, was the
fifth of a second late for the light, and half a foot short in
his spring. Something struck our plank bridge so hard as to set
it quivering like a harp-string; there was half a gasp and half a
sob in mid-air beneath our feet; and then a sound far below that
I prefer not to describe. I am not sure that I could hit upon
the perfect simile; it is more than enough for me that I can hear
it still. And with that sickening sound came the loudest clap
of thunder yet, and a great white glare that showed us our
enemy's body far below, with one white hand spread like a
starfish, but the head of him mercifully twisted underneath.
"It was all his own fault, Bunny. Poor devil! May he and all of
us be forgiven; but pull yourself together for your own sake.
Well, you can't fall; stay where you are a minute."
I remember the uproar of the elements while Raffles was gone; no
other sound mingled with it; not the opening of a single window,
not the uplifting of a single voice. Then came Raffles with
soap and water, and the gyve was wheedled from one wrist, as you
withdraw a ring for which the finger has grown too large. Of the
rest, I only remember shivering till morning in a pitch-dark
flat, whose invalid occupier was for once the nurse, and I his
patient.
And that is the true ending of the episode in which we two set
ourselves to catch one of our own kidney, albeit in another place
I have shirked the whole truth. It is not a grateful task to
show Raffles as completely at fault as he really was on that
occasion; nor do I derive any subtle satisfaction from recounting
my own twofold humiliation, or from having assisted never so
indirectly in the death of a not uncongenial sinner. The truth,
however, has after all a merit of its own, and the great
kinsfolk of poor Lord Ernest have but little to lose by its
divulgence. It would seem that they knew more of the real
character of the apostle of Rational Drink than was known at
Exeter Hall. The tragedy was indeed hushed up, as tragedies
only are when they occur in such circles. But the rumor that did
get abroad, as to the class of enterprise which the poor scamp
was pursuing when he met his death, cannot be too soon exploded,
since it breathed upon the fair fame of some of the most
respectable flats in Kensington.
AN OLD FLAME
I
The square shall be nameless, but if you drive due west from
Piccadilly the cab-man will eventually find it on his left, and
he ought to thank you for two shillings. It is not a
fashionable square, but there are few with a finer garden, while
the studios on the south side lend distinction of another sort.
The houses, however, are small and dingy, and about the last to
attract the expert practitioner in search of a crib. Heaven
knows it was with no such thought I trailed Raffles thither, one
unlucky evening at the latter end of that same season, when Dr.
Theobald had at last insisted upon the bath-chair which I had
foreseen in the beginning. Trees whispered in the green garden
aforesaid, and the cool, smooth lawns looked so inviting that I
wondered whether some philanthropic resident could not be induced
to lend us the key. But Raffles would not listen to the
suggestion, when I stopped to make it, and what was worse, I
found him looking wistfully at the little houses instead.
"Such balconies, Bunny! A leg up, and there you would be!"
I expressed a conviction that there would be nothing worth taking
in the square, but took care to have him under way again as I
spoke.
"I daresay you're right," sighed Raffles. "Rings and watches, I
suppose, but it would be hard luck to take them from people who
live in houses like these. I don't know, though. Here's one
with an extra story. Stop, Bunny; if you don't stop I'll hold on
to the railings! This is a good house; look at the knocker and
the electric bell. They've had that put in. There's some money
here, my rabbit! I dare bet there's a silver-table in the
drawing-room; and the windows are wide open. Electric light,
too, by Jove!"
Since stop I must, I had done so on the other side of the road,
in the shadow of the leafy palings, and as Raffles spoke the
ground floor windows opposite had flown alight, showing as pretty
a little dinner-table as one could wish to see, with a man at his
wine at the far end, and the back of a lady in evening dress
toward us. It was like a lantern-picture thrown upon a screen.
There were only the pair of them, but the table was brilliant
with silver and gay with flowers, and the maid waited with the
indefinable air of a good servant. It certainly seemed a good
house.
"She's going to let down the blind!" whispered Raffles, in high
excitement. "No, confound them, they've told her not to. Mark
down her necklace, Bunny, and invoice his stud. What a brute he
looks! But I like the table, and that's her show. She has the
taste; but he must have money. See the festive picture over the
sideboard? Looks to me like a Jacques Saillard. But that
silver-table would be good enough for me."
"Get on," said I. "You're in a bath-chair."
"But the whole square's at dinner! We should have the ball at
our feet. It wouldn't take two twos!"
"With those blinds up, and the cook in the kitchen underneath?"
He nodded, leaning forward in the chair, his hands upon the wraps
about his legs.
"You must be mad," said I, and got back to my handles with the
word, but when I tugged the chair ran light.
"Keep an eye on the rug," came in a whisper from the middle of
the road; and there stood my invalid, his pale face in a quiver
of pure mischief, yet set with his insane resolve. "I'm only
going to see whether that woman has a silver-table--"
"We don't want it--"
"It won't take a minute--"
"It's madness, madness--"
"Then don't you wait!"
It was like him to leave me with that, and this time I had taken
him at his last word had not my own given me an idea. Mad I had
called him, and mad I could declare him upon oath if necessary.
It was not as though the thing had happened far from home. They
could learn all about us at the nearest mansions. I referred
them to Dr. Theobald; this was a Mr. Maturin, one of his
patients, and I was his keeper, and he had never given me the
slip before. I heard myself making these explanations on the
doorstep, and pointing to the deserted bath-chair as the proof,
while the pretty parlor maid ran for the police. It would be a
more serious matter for me than for my charge. I should lose my
place. No, he had never done such a thing before, and I would
answer for it that he never should again.
I saw myself conducting Raffles back to his chair, with a firm
hand and a stern tongue. I heard him thanking me in whispers on
the way home. It would be the first tight place I had ever got
him out of, and I was quite anxious for him to get into it, so
sure was I of every move. My whole position had altered in the
few seconds that it took me to follow this illuminating train of
ideas; it was now so strong that I could watch Raffles without
much anxiety. And he was worth watching.
He had stepped boldly but softly to the front door, and there he
was still waiting, ready to ring if the door opened or a face
appeared in the area, and doubtless to pretend that he had rung
already. But he had not to ring at all; and suddenly I saw his
foot in the letter-box, his left hand on the lintel overhead. It
was thrilling, even to a hardened accomplice with an explanation
up his sleeve! A tight grip with that left hand of his, as he
leant backward with all his weight upon those five fingers; a
right arm stretched outward and upward to its last inch; and the
base of the low, projecting balcony was safely caught.
I looked down and took breath. The maid was removing the crumbs
in the lighted room, and the square was empty as before. What a
blessing it was the end of the season! Many of the houses
remained in darkness. I looked up again, and Raffles was drawing
his left leg over the balcony railing. In another moment he had
disappeared through one of the French windows which opened upon
the balcony, and in yet another he had switched on the electric
light within. This was bad enough, for now I, at least, could
see everything he did; but the crowning folly was still to come.
There was no point in it; the mad thing was done for my benefit,
as I knew at once and he afterward confessed; but the lunatic
reappeared on the balcony, bowing like a mountebank--in his
crape mask!
I set off with the empty chair, but I came back. I could not
desert old Raffles, even when I would, but must try to explain
away his mask as well, if he had not the sense to take it off in
time. It would be difficult, but burglaries are not usually
committed from a bath-chair, and for the rest I put my faith in
Dr. Theobald. Meanwhile Raffles had at least withdrawn from the
balcony, and now I could only see his head as he peered into a
cabinet at the other side of the room. It was like the opera of
Aida, in which two scenes are enacted simultaneously, one in the
dungeon below, the other in the temple above. In the same
fashion my attention now became divided between the picture of
Raffles moving stealthily about the upper room, and that of the
husband and wife at table underneath. And all at once, as the
man replenished his glass with a shrug of the shoulders, the
woman pushed back her chair and sailed to the door.
Raffles was standing before the fireplace upstairs. He had
taken one of the framed photographs from the chimney-piece, and
was scanning it at suicidal length through the eye-holes in the
hideous mask which he still wore. He would need it after all.
The lady had left the room below, opening and shutting the door
for herself; the man was filling his glass once more. I would
have shrieked my warning to Raffles, so fatally engrossed
overhead, but at this moment (of all others) a constable (of all
men) was marching sedately down our side of the square. There
was nothing for it but to turn a melancholy eye upon the
bath-chair, and to ask the constable the time. I was evidently
to be kept there all night, I remarked, and only realized with
the words that they disposed of my other explanations before they
were uttered. It was a horrible moment for such a discovery.
Fortunately the enemy was on the pavement, from which he could
scarcely have seen more than the drawing-room ceiling, had he
looked; but he was not many houses distant when a door opened
and a woman gasped so that I heard both across the road. And
never shall I forget the subsequent tableaux in the lighted
room behind the low balcony and the French windows.
Raffles stood confronted by a dark and handsome woman whose
profile, as I saw it first in the electric light, is cut like a
cameo in my memory. It had the undeviating line of brow and
nose, the short upper lip, the perfect chin, that are united in
marble oftener than in the flesh; and like marble she stood, or
rather like some beautiful pale bronze; for that was her
coloring, and she lost none of it that I could see, neither
trembled; but her bosom rose and fell, and that was all. So she
stood without flinching before a masked ruffian, who, I felt,
would be the first to appreciate her courage; to me it was so
superb that I could think of it in this way even then, and
marvel how Raffles himself could stand unabashed before so brave
a figure. He had not to do so long. The woman scorned him, and
he stood unmoved, a framed photograph still in his hand. Then,
with a quick, determined movement she turned, not to the door or
to the bell, but to the open window by which Raffles had
entered; and this with that accursed policeman still in view.
So far no word had passed between the pair. But at this point
Raffles said something, I could not hear what, but at the sound
of his voice the woman wheeled. And Raffles was looking humbly
in her face, the crape mask snatched from his own.
"Arthur!" she cried; and that might have been heard in the middle
of the square garden.
Then they stood gazing at each other, neither unmoved any more,
and while they stood the street-door opened and banged. It was
her husband leaving the house, a fine figure of a man, but a
dissipated face, and a step even now distinguished by the
extreme caution which precedes unsteadiness. He broke the spell.
His wife came to the balcony, then looked back into the room,
and yet again along the road, and this time I saw her face. It
was the face of one glancing indeed from Hyperion to a satyr.
And then I saw the rings flash, as her hand fell gently upon
Raffles's arm.
They disappeared from that window. Their heads showed for an
instant in the next. Then they dipped out of sight, and an inner
ceiling flashed out under a new light; they had gone into the
back drawing-room, beyond my ken. The maid came up with coffee,
her mistress hastily met her at the door, and once more
disappeared. The square was as quiet as ever. I remained some
minutes where I was. Now and then I thought I heard their voices
in the back drawing-room. I was seldom sure.
My state of mind may be imagined by those readers who take an
interest in my personal psychology. It does not amuse me to look
back upon it. But at length I had the sense to put myself in
Raffles's place. He had been recognized at last, he had come to
life. Only one person knew as yet, but that person was a woman,
and a woman who had once been fond of him, if the human face
could speak. Would she keep his secret? Would he tell her
where he lived? It was terrible to think we were such neighbors,
and with the thought that it was terrible came a little
enlightenment as to what could still be done for the best. He
would not tell her where he lived. I knew him too well for that.
He would run for it when he could, and the bath-chair and I must
not be there to give him away. I dragged the infernal vehicle
round the nearer corner. Then I waited--there could be no harm
in that--and at last he came.
He was walking briskly, so I was right, and he had not played the
invalid to her; yet I heard him cry out with pleasure as he
turned the corner, and he flung himself into the chair with a
long-drawn sigh that did me good.
"Well done, Bunny--well done! I am on my way to Earl's Court,
she's capable of following me, but she won't look for me in a
bath-chair. Home, home, home, and not another word till we get
there!"
Capable of following him? She overtook us before we were past
the studios on the south side of the square, the woman herself,
in a hooded opera-cloak. But she never gave us a glance, and we
saw her turn safely in the right direction for Earl's Court, and
the wrong one for our humble mansions. Raffles thanked his gods
in a voice that trembled, and five minutes later we were in the
flat. Then for once it was Raffles who filled the tumblers and
found the cigarettes, and for once (and once only in all my
knowledge of him) did he drain his glass at a draught.
"You didn't see the balcony scene?" he asked at length; and they
were his first words since the woman passed us on his track.
"Do you mean when she came in?"
"No, when I came down."
"I didn't."
"I hope nobody else saw it," said Raffles devoutly. "I don't say
that Romeo and Juliet were brother and sister to us. But you
might have said so, Bunny!"
He was staring at the carpet with as wry a face as lover ever
wore.
"An old flame?" said I, gently.
"A married woman," he groaned.
"So I gathered."
"But she always was one, Bunny," said he, ruefully. "That's the
trouble. It makes all the difference in the world!"
I saw the difference, but said I did not see how it could make
any now. He had eluded the lady, after all; had we not seen her
off upon a scent as false as scent could be? There was occasion
for redoubled caution in the future, but none for immediate
anxiety. I quoted the bedside Theobald, but Raffles did not
smile. His eyes had been downcast all this time, and now, when
he raised them, I perceived that my comfort had been
administered to deaf ears.
"Do you know who she is?" said he.
"Not from Eve."
"Jacques Saillard," he said, as though now I must know.
But the name left me cold and stolid. I had heard it, but that
was all. It was lamentable ignorance, I am aware, but I had
specialized in Letters at the expense of Art.
"You must know her pictures," said Raffles, patiently; "but I
suppose you thought she was a man. They would appeal to you,
Bunny; that festive piece over the sideboard was her work.
Sometimes they risk her at the Academy, sometimes they fight shy.
She has one of those studios in the same square; they used to
live up near Lord's."
My mind was busy brightening a dim memory of nymphs reflected in
woody pools. "Of course!" I exclaimed, and added something
about "a clever woman." Raffles rose at the phrase.
"A clever woman!" he echoed, scornfully; "if she were only that I
should feel safe as houses. Clever women can't forget their
cleverness, they carry it as badly as a boy does his wine, and
are about as dangerous. I don't call Jacques Saillard clever
outside her art, but neither do I call her a woman at all. She
does man's work over a man's name, has the will of any ten men I
ever knew, and I don't mind telling you that I fear her more
than any person on God's earth. I broke with her once," said
Raffles, grimly, "but I know her. If I had been asked to name
the one person in London by whom I was keenest NOT to be bowled
out, I should have named Jacques Saillard."
That he had never before named her to me was as characteristic as
the reticence with which Raffles spoke of their past relations,
and even of their conversation in the back drawing-room that
evening.
It was a question of principle with him, and one that I like to
remember. "Never give a woman away, Bunny," he used to say; and
he said it again to-night, but with a heavy cloud upon him, as
though his chivalry was sorely tried.
"That's all right," said I, "if you're not going to be given away
yourself."
"That's just it, Bunny! That's just--"
The words were out of him, it was too late to recall them. I had
hit the nail upon the head.
"So she threatened you," I said, "did she?"
"I didn't say so," he replied, coldly.
"And she is mated with a clown!" I pursued.
"How she ever married him," he admitted, "is a mystery to me."
"It always is," said I, the wise man for once, and rather
enjoying the role.
"Southern blood?"
"Spanish."
"She'll be pestering you to run off with her, old chap," said I.
Raffles was pacing the room. He stopped in his stride for half
a second. So she had begun pestering him already! It is
wonderful how acute any fool can be in the affairs of his friend.
But Raffles resumed his walk without a syllable, and I
retreated to safer ground.
"So you sent her to Earl's Court," I mused aloud; and at last he
smiled.
"You'll be interested to hear, Bunny," said he, "that I am now
living in Seven Dials, and Bill Sikes couldn't hold a farthing
dip to me. Bless you, she had my old police record at her
fingers' ends, but it was fit to frame compared with the one I
gave her. I had sunk as low as they dig. I divided my nights
between the open parks and a thieves' kitchen in Seven Dials. If
I was decently dressed it was because I had stolen the suit down
the Thames Valley beat the night before last. I was on my way
back when first that sleepy square, and then her open window,
proved too much for me. You should have heard me beg her to let
me push on to the devil in my own way; there I spread myself,
for I meant every word; but I swore the final stage would be a
six-foot drop."
"You did lay it on," said I.
"It was necessary, and that had its effect. She let me go. But
at the last moment she said she didn't believe I was so black as
I painted myself, and then there was the balcony scene you
missed."
So that was all. I could not help telling him that he had got
out of it better than he deserved for ever getting in. Next
moment I regretted the remark.
"If I have got out of it," said Raffles, doubtfully. "We are
dreadfully near neighbors, and I can't move in a minute, with old
Theobald taking a grave view of my case. I suppose I had better
lie low, and thank the gods again for putting her off the scent
for the time being."
No doubt our conversation was carried beyond this point, but it
certainly was not many minutes later, nor had we left the
subject, when the electric bell thrilled us both to a sudden
silence.
"The doctor?" I queried, hope fighting with my horror.
"It was a single ring."
"The last post?"
"You know he knocks, and it's long past his time."
The electric bell rang again, but now as though it never would
stop.
"You go, Bunny," said Raffles, with decision. His eyes were
sparkling. His smile was firm.
"What am I to say?"
"If it's the lady let her in."
It was the lady, still in her evening cloak, with her fine dark
head half-hidden by the hood, and an engaging contempt of
appearances upon her angry face. She was even handsomer than I
had thought, and her beauty of a bolder type, but she was also
angrier than I had anticipated when I came so readily to the
door. The passage into which it opened was an exceedingly narrow
one, as I have often said, but I never dreamt of barring this
woman's way, though not a word did she stoop to say to me. I was
only too glad to flatten myself against the wall, as the rustling
fury strode past me into the lighted room with the open door.
"So this is your thieves' kitchen!" she cried, in high-pitched
scorn.
I was on the threshold myself, and Raffles glanced towards me
with raised eyebrows.
"I have certainly had better quarters in my day," said he, "but
you need not call them absurd names before my man."
"Then send your 'man' about his business," said Jacques Saillard,
with an unpleasant stress upon the word indicated.
But when the door was shut I heard Raffles assuring her that I
knew nothing, that he was a real invalid overcome by a sudden mad
temptation, and all he had told her of his life a lie to hide
his whereabouts, but all he was telling her now she could prove
for herself without leaving that building. It seemed, however,
that she had proved it already by going first to the porter below
stairs. Yet I do not think she cared one atom which story was
the truth.
"So you thought I could pass you in your chair," she said, "or
ever in this world again, without hearing from my heart that it
was you!"
II
"Bunny," said Raffles, "I'm awfully sorry, old chap, but you've
got to go."
It was some weeks since the first untimely visitation of Jacques
Saillard, but there had been many others at all hours of the day,
while Raffles had been induced to pay at least one to her studio
in the neighboring square. These intrusions he had endured at
first with an air of humorous resignation which imposed upon me
less than he imagined. The woman meant well, he said, after all,
and could be trusted to keep his secret loyally. It was plain
to me, however, that Raffles did not trust her, and that his
pretence upon the point was a deliberate pose to conceal the
extent to which she had him in her power. Otherwise there would
have been little point in hiding anything from the one person in
possession of the cardinal secret of his identity.
But Raffles thought it worth his while to hoodwink Jacques
Saillard in the subsidiary matter of his health, in which Dr.
Theobald lent him unwitting assistance, and, as we have seen, to
impress upon her that I was actually his attendant, and as
ignorant of his past as the doctor himself. "So you're all
right, Bunny," he had assured me; "she thinks you knew nothing
the other night. I told you she wasn't a clever woman outside
her work. But hasn't she a will!" I told Raffles it was very
considerate of him to keep me out of it, but that it seemed to me
like tying up the bag when the cat had escaped. His reply was an
admission that one must be on the defensive with such a woman and
in such a case. Soon after this, Raffles, looking far from
well, fell back upon his own last line of defence, namely, his
bed; and now, as always in the end, I could see some sense in his
subtleties, since it was comparatively easy for me to turn even
Jacques Saillard from the door, with Dr. Theobald's explicit
injunctions, and with my own honesty unquestioned. So for a day
we had peace once more. Then came letters, then the doctor
again and again, and finally my dismissal in the incredible words
which have necessitated these explanations.
"Go?" I echoed. "Go where?"
"It's that ass Theobald," said Raffles. "He insists."
"On my going altogether?"
He nodded.
"And you mean to let him have his way?"
I had no language for my mortification and disgust, though
neither was as yet quite so great as my surprise. I had
foreseen almost every conceivable consequence of the mad act
which brought all this trouble to pass, but a voluntary division
between Raffles and me had certainly never entered my
calculations. Nor could I think that it had occurred to him
before our egregious doctor's last visit, this very morning.
Raffles had looked irritated as he broke the news to me from his
pillow, and now there was some sympathy in the way he sat up in
bed, as though he felt the thing himself.
"I am obliged to give in to the fellow," said he. "He's saving
me from my friend, and I'm bound to humor him. But I can tell
you that we've been arguing about you for the last half hour,
Bunny. It was no use; the idiot has had his knife in you from
the first; and he wouldn't see me through on any other
conditions."
"So he is going to see you through, is he?"
"It tots up to that," said Raffles, looking at me rather hard.
"At all events he has come to my rescue for the time being, and
it's for me to manage the rest. You don't know what it has been,
Bunny, these last few weeks; and gallantry forbids that I
should tell you even now. But would you rather elope against
your will, or have your continued existence made known to the
world in general and the police in particular? That is
practically the problem which I have had to solve, and the
temporary solution was to fall ill. As a matter of fact, I am
ill; and now what do you think? I owe it to you to tell you,
Bunny, though it goes against the grain. She would take me 'to
the dear, warm underworld, where the sun really shines,' and she
would 'nurse me back to life and love!' The artistic temperament
is a fearsome thing, Bunny, in a woman with the devil's own
will!"
Raffles tore up the letter from which he had read these piquant
extracts, and lay back on the pillows with the tired air of the
veritable invalid which he seemed able to assume at will. But
for once he did look as though bed was the best place for him;
and I used the fact as an argument for my own retention in
defiance of Dr. Theobald. The town was full of typhoid, I said,
and certainly that autumnal scourge was in the air. Did he want
me to leave him at the very moment when he might be sickening for
a serious illness?
"You know I don't, my good fellow," said Raffles, wearily; "but
Theobald does, and I can't afford to go against him now. Not
that I really care what happens to me now that that woman knows
I'm in the land of the living; she'll let it out, to a dead
certainty, and at the best there'll be a hue and cry, which is
the very thing I have escaped all these years. Now, what I want
you to do is to go and take some quiet place somewhere, and then
let me know, so that I may have a port in the storm when it
breaks."
"Now you're talking!" I cried, recovering my spirits. "I thought
you meant to go and drop a fellow altogether!"
"Exactly the sort of thing you would think," rejoined Raffles,
with a contempt that was welcome enough after my late alarm.
"No, my dear rabbit, what you've got to do is to make a new
burrow for us both. Try down the Thames, in some quiet nook that
a literary man would naturally select. I've often thought that
more use might be made of a boat, while the family are at dinner,
than there ever has been yet. If Raffles is to come to life, old
chap, he shall go a-Raffling for all he's worth! There's
something to be done with a bicycle, too. Try Ham Common or
Roehampton, or some such sleepy hollow a trifle off the line;
and say you're expecting your brother from the colonies."
Into this arrangement I entered without the slightest hesitation,
for we had funds enough to carry it out on a comfortable scale,
and Raffles placed a sufficient share at my disposal for the
nonce. Moreover, I for one was only too glad to seek fresh
fields and pastures new--a phrase which I determined to
interpret literally in my choice of fresh surroundings. I was
tired of our submerged life in the poky little flat, especially
now that we had money enough for better things. I myself of
late had dark dealings with the receivers, with the result that
poor Lord Ernest Belville's successes were now indeed ours.
Subsequent complications had been the more galling on that
account, while the wanton way in which they had been created
was the most irritating reflection of all. But it had brought
its own punishment upon Raffles, and I fancied the lesson would
prove salutary when we again settled down.
"If ever we do, Bunny!" said he, as I took his hand and told him
how I was already looking forward to the time.
"But of course we will!" I cried, concealing the resentment at
leaving him which his tone and his appearance renewed in my
breast.
"I'm not so sure of it," he said, gloomily. "I'm in somebody's
clutches, and I've got to get out of them first."
"I'll sit tight until you do."
"Well," he said, "if you don't see me in ten days you never
will."
"Only ten days?" I echoed. "That's nothing at all."
"A lot may happen in ten days," replied Raffles, in the same
depressing tone, so very depressing in him; and with that he held
out his hand a second time, and dropped mine suddenly after as
sudden a pressure for farewell.
I left the flat in considerable dejection after all, unable to
decide whether Raffles was really ill, or only worried as I knew
him to be. And at the foot of the stairs the author of my
dismissal, that confounded Theobald, flung open his door and
waylaid me.
"Are you going?" he demanded.
The traps in my hands proclaimed that I was, but I dropped them
at his feet to have it out with him then and there.
"Yes," I answered fiercely, "thanks to you!"
"Well, my good fellow," he said, his full-blooded face lightening
and softening at the same time, as though a load were off his
mind, "it's no pleasure to me to deprive any man of his billet,
but you never were a nurse, and you know that as well as I do."
I began to wonder what he meant, and how much he did know, and my
speculations kept me silent. "But come in here a moment," he
continued, just as I decided that he knew nothing at all. And,
leading me into his minute consulting-room, Dr. Theobald
solemnly presented me with a sovereign by way of compensation,
which I pocketed as solemnly, and with as much gratitude as if I
had not fifty of them distributed over my person as it was. The
good fellow had quite forgotten my social status, about which he
himself had been so particular at our earliest interview; but he
had never accustomed himself to treat me as a gentleman, and I
do not suppose he had been improving his memory by the tall
tumbler which I saw him poke behind a photograph as we entered.
"There's one thing I should like to know before I go," said I,
turning suddenly on the doctor's mat, "and that is whether Mr.
Maturin is really ill or not!"
I meant, of course, at the present moment, but Dr. Theobald
braced himself like a recruit at the drill-sergeant's voice.
"Of course he is," he snapped--"so ill as to need a nurse who can
nurse, by way of a change."
With that his door shut in my face, and I had to go my way, in
the dark as to whether he had mistaken my meaning, and was
telling me a lie, or not.
But for my misgivings upon this point I might have extracted some
very genuine enjoyment out of the next few days. I had decent
clothes to my back, with money, as I say, in most of the pockets,
and more freedom to spend it than was possible in the constant
society of a man whose personal liberty depended on a universal
supposition that he was dead. Raffles was as bold as ever, and
I as fond of him, but whereas he would run any risk in a
professional exploit, there were many innocent recreations still
open to me which would have been sheer madness in him. He could
not even watch a match, from the sixpenny seats, at Lord's
cricket-ground, where the Gentlemen were every year in a worse
way without him. He never travelled by rail, and dining out was
a risk only to be run with some ulterior object in view. In
fact, much as it had changed, Raffles could no longer show his
face with perfect impunity in any quarter or at any hour.
Moreover, after the lesson he had now learnt, I foresaw increased
caution on his part in this respect. But I myself was under no
such perpetual disadvantage, and, while what was good enough for
Raffles was quite good enough for me so long as we were
together, I saw no harm in profiting by the present opportunity
of "doing my-self well."
Such were my reflections on the way to Richmond in a hansom cab.
Richmond had struck us both as the best centre of operations in
search of the suburban retreat which Raffles wanted, and by
road, in a well-appointed, well-selected hansom, was certainly
the most agreeable way of getting there. In a week or ten days
Raffles was to write to me at the Richmond post-office, but for
at least a week I should be "on my own." It was not an
unpleasant sensation as I leant back in the comfortable hansom,
and rather to one side, in order to have a good look at myself in
the bevelled mirror that is almost as great an improvement in
these vehicles as the rubber tires. Really I was not an
ill-looking youth, if one may call one's self such at the age of
thirty. I could lay no claim either to the striking cast of
countenance or to the peculiar charm of expression which made the
face of Raffles like no other in the world. But this very
distinction was in itself a danger, for its impression was
indelible, whereas I might still have been mistaken for a hundred
other young fellows at large in London. Incredible as it may
appear to the moralists, I had sustained no external hallmark by
my term of imprisonment, and I am vain enough to believe that the
evil which I did had not a separate existence in my face. This
afternoon, indeed, I was struck by the purity of my fresh
complexion, and rather depressed by the general innocence of
the visage which peered into mine from the little mirror. My
straw-colored moustache, grown in the flat after a protracted
holiday, again preserved the most disappointing dimensions, and
was still invisible in certain lights without wax. So far from
discerning the desperate criminal who has "done time" once, and
deserved it over and over again, the superior but superficial
observer might have imagined that he detected a certain element
of folly in my face.
At all events it was not the face to shut the doors of a
first-class hotel against me, without accidental evidence of a
more explicit kind, and it was with no little satisfaction that
I directed the man to drive to the Star and Garter. I also told
him to go through Richmond Park, though he warned me that it
would add considerably to the distance and his fare. It was
autumn, and it struck me that the tints would be fine. And I had
learnt from Raffles to appreciate such things, even amid the
excitement of an audacious enterprise.
If I dwell upon my appreciation of this occasion it is because,
like most pleasures, it was exceedingly short-lived. I was very
comfortable at the Star and Garter, which was so empty that I
had a room worthy of a prince, where I could enjoy the finest of
all views (in patriotic opinion) every morning while I shaved. I
walked many miles through the noble park, over the commons of Ham
and Wimbledon, and one day as far as that of Esher, where I was
forcibly reminded of a service we once rendered to a
distinguished resident in this delightful locality. But it was
on Ham Common, one of the places which Raffles had mentioned as
specially desirable, that I actually found an almost ideal
retreat. This was a cottage where I heard, on inquiry, that
rooms were to be let in the summer. The landlady, a motherly
body, of visible excellence, was surprised indeed at receiving
an application for the winter months; but I have generally found
that the title of "author," claimed with an air, explains every
little innocent irregularity of conduct or appearance, and even
requires something of the kind to carry conviction to the lay
intelligence. The present case was one in point, and when I said
that I could only write in a room facing north, on mutton chops
and milk, with a cold ham in the wardrobe in case of nocturnal
inspiration, to which I was liable, my literary character was
established beyond dispute. I secured the rooms, paid a month's
rent in advance at my own request, and moped in them dreadfully
until the week was up and Raffles due any day. I explained that
the inspiration would not come, and asked abruptly if the mutton
was New Zealand.
Thrice had I made fruitless inquiries at the Richmond
post-office; but on the tenth day I was in and out almost every
hour. Not a word was there for me up to th last post at night.
Home I trudged to Ham with horrible forebodings, and back again
to Richmond after breakfast next morning. Still there was
nothing. I could bear it no more. At ten minutes to eleven I
was climbing the station stairs at Earl's Court.
It was a wretched morning there, a weeping mist shrouding the
long, straight street, and clinging to one's face in clammy
caresses. I felt how much better it was down at Ham, as I
turned into our side street, and saw the flats looming like
mountains, the chimney-pots hidden in the mist. At our entrance
stood a nebulous conveyance, that I took at first for a
tradesman's van; to my horror it proved to be a hearse; and all
at once the white breath ceased upon my lips.
I had looked up at our windows and the blinds were down!
I rushed within. The doctor's door stood open. I neither
knocked nor rang, but found him in his consulting-room with red
eyes and a blotchy face. Otherwise he was in solemn black from
head to heel.
"Who is dead?" I burst out. "Who is dead?"
The red eyes looked redder than ever as Dr. Theobald opened them
at the unwarrantable sight of me; and he was terribly slow in
answering. But in the end he did answer, and did not kick me out
as he evidently had a mind.
"Mr. Maturin," he said, and sighed like a beaten man.
I said nothing. It was no surprise to me. I had known it all
these minutes. Nay, I had dreaded this from the first, had
divined it at the last, though to the last also I had refused to
entertain my own conviction. Raffles dead! A real invalid after
all! Raffles dead, and on the point of burial!
"What did he die of?" I asked, unconsciously drawing on that fund
of grim self-control which the weakest of us seem to hold in
reserve for real calamity.
"Typhoid," he answered. "Kensington is full of it."
"He was sickening for it when I left, and you knew it, and could
get rid of me then!"
"My good fellow, I was obliged to have a more experienced nurse
for that very reason."
The doctor's tone was so conciliatory that I remembered in an
instant what a humbug the man was, and became suddenly possessed
with the vague conviction that he was imposing upon me now.
"Are you sure it was typhoid at all?" I cried fiercely to his
face. "Are you sure it wasn't suicide--or murder?"
I confess that I can see little point in this speech as I write
it down, but it was what I said in a burst of grief and of wild
suspicion; nor was it without effect upon Dr. Theobald, who
turned bright scarlet from his well-brushed hair to his
immaculate collar.
"Do you want me to throw you out into the street?" he cried; and
all at once I remembered that I had come to Raffles as a perfect
stranger, and for his sake might as well preserve that character
to the last.
"I beg your pardon," I said, brokenly. "He was so good to me--I
became so attached to him. You forget I am originally of his
class."
"I did forget it," replied Theobald, looking relieved at my new
tone, "and I beg YOUR pardon for doing so. Hush! They are
bringing him down. I must have a drink before we start, and
you'd better join me."
There was no pretence about his drink this time, and a pretty
stiff one it was, but I fancy my own must have run it hard. In
my case it cast a merciful haze over much of the next hour, which
I can truthfully describe as one of the most painful of my
whole existence. I can have known very little of what I was
doing. I only remember finding myself in a hansom, suddenly
wondering why it was going so slowly, and once more awaking to
the truth. But it was to the truth itself more than to the
liquor that I must have owed my dazed condition. My next
recollection is of looking down into the open grave, in a sudden
passionate anxiety to see the name for myself. It was not the
name of my friend, of course, but it was the one under which he
had passed for many months.
I was still stupefied by a sense of inconceivable loss, and had
not raised my eyes from that which was slowly forcing me to
realize what had happened, when there was a rustle at my elbow,
and a shower of hothouse flowers passed before them, falling
like huge snowflakes where my gaze had rested. I looked up, and
at my side stood a majestic figure in deep mourning. The face
was carefully veiled, but I was too close not to recognize the
masterful beauty whom the world knew as Jacques Saillard. I had
no sympathy with her; on the contrary, my blood boiled with the
vague conviction that in some way she was responsible for this
death. Yet she was the only woman present--there were not a half
a dozen of us altogether--and her flowers were the only flowers.
The melancholy ceremony was over, and Jacques Saillard had
departed in a funeral brougham, evidently hired for the occasion.
I had watched her drive away, and the sight of my own cabman,
making signs to me through the fog, had suddenly reminded me
that I had bidden him to wait. I was the last to leave, and had
turned my back upon the grave-diggers, already at their final
task, when a hand fell lightly but firmly upon my shoulder.
"I don't want to make a scene in a cemetery," said a voice, in a
not unkindly, almost confidential whisper. "Will you get into
your own cab and come quietly?"
"Who on earth are you?" I exclaimed.
I now remembered having seen the fellow hovering about during the
funeral, and subconsciously taking him for the undertaker's head
man. He had certainly that appearance, and even now I could
scarcely believe that he was anything else.
"My name won't help you," he said, pityingly. "But you will
guess where I come from when I tell you I have a warrant for
your arrest."
My sensations at this announcement may not be believed, but I
solemnly declare that I have seldom experienced so fierce a
satisfaction. Here was a new excitement in which to drown my
grief; here was something to think about; and I should be spared
the intolerable experience of a solitary return to the little
place at Ham. It was as though I had lost a limb and some one
had struck me so hard in the face that the greater agony was
forgotten. I got into the hansom without a word, my captor
following at my heels, and giving his own directions to the
cabman before taking his seat. The word "station" was the only
one I caught, and I wondered whether it was to be Bow Street
again. My companion's next words, however, or rather the tone in
which he uttered them, destroyed my capacity for idle
speculation.
"Mr. Maturin!" said he. "Mr. Maturin indeed!"
"Well," said I, "what about him?"
"Do you think we don't know who he was?"
"Who was he?" I asked, defiantly.
"You ought to know," said he. "You got locked up through him the
other time, too. His favorite name was Raffles then."
"It was his real name," I said, indignantly. "And he has been
dead for years."
My captor simply chuckled.
"He's at the bottom of the sea, I tell you!"
But I do not know why I should have told him with such spirit,
for what could it matter to Raffles now? I did not think;
instinct was still stronger than reason, and, fresh from his
funeral, I had taken up the cudgels for my dead friend as
though he were still alive. Next moment I saw this for myself,
and my tears came nearer the surface than they had been yet; but
the fellow at my side laughed outright.
"Shall I tell you something else?" said he.
"As you like."
"He's not even at the bottom of that grave! He's no more dead
than you or I, and a sham burial is his latest piece of
villainy!"
I doubt whether I could have spoken if I had tried. I did not
try. I had no use for speech. I did not even ask him if he was
sure, I was so sure myself. It was all as plain to me as
riddles usually are when one has the answer. The doctor's
alarms, his unscrupulous venality, the simulated illness, my own
dismissal, each fitted in its obvious place, and not even the
last had power as yet to mar my joy in the one central fact to
which all the rest were as tapers to the sun.
"He is alive!" I cried. "Nothing else matters--he is alive!"
At last I did ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as
I was for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much
care what answer I received. Already I was figuring out how
much we might each get, and how old we should be when we came
out. But my companion tilted his hat to the back of his head,
at the same time putting his face close to mine, and compelling
my scrutiny. And my answer, as you have already guessed, was
the face of Raffles himself, superbly disguised (but less
superbly than his voice), and yet so thinly that I should have
known him in a trice had I not been too miserable in the
beginning to give him a second glance.
Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the
one escape. Raffles had bought the doctor for a thousand pounds,
and the doctor had bought a "nurse" of his own kidney, on his
own account; me, for some reason, he would not trust; he had
insisted upon my dismissal as an essential preliminary to his
part in the conspiracy. Here the details were half-humorous,
half-grewsome, each in turn as Raffles told me the story. At
one period he had been very daringly drugged indeed, and, in his
own words, "as dead as a man need be"; but he had left strict
instructions that nobody but the nurse and "my devoted physician"
should" lay a finger on me" afterwards; and by virtue of this
proviso a library of books (largely acquired for the occasion)
had been impiously interred at Kensal Green. Raffles had
definitely undertaken not to trust me with the secret, and, but
for my untoward appearance at the funeral (which he had attended
for his own final satisfaction), I was assured and am convinced
that he would have kept his promise to the letter. In explaining
this he gave me the one explanation I desired, and in another
moment we turned into Praed Street, Paddington.
"And I thought you said Bow Street!" said I. "Are you coming
straight down to Richmond with me?"
"I may as well," said Raffles, "though I did mean to get my kit
first, so as to start in fair and square as the long-lost
brother from the bush. That's why I hadn't written. The
function was a day later than I calculated. I was going to
write to-night."
"But what are we to do?" said I, hesitating when he had paid the
cab. "I have been playing the colonies for all they are worth!"
"Oh, I've lost my luggage," said he, "or a wave came into my
cabin and spoilt every stitch, or I had nothing fit to bring
ashore. We'll settle that in the train."
THE WRONG HOUSE
My brother Ralph, who now lived with me on the edge of Ham
Common, had come home from Australia with a curious affection of
the eyes, due to long exposure to the glare out there, and
necessitating the use of clouded spectacles in the open air. He
had not the rich complexion of the typical colonist, being indeed
peculiarly pale, but it appeared that he had been confined to his
berth for the greater part of the voyage, while his prematurely
gray hair was sufficient proof that the rigors of bush life had
at last undermined an originally tough constitution. Our
landlady, who spoilt my brother from the first, was much
concerned on his behalf, and wished to call in the local doctor;
but Ralph said dreadful things about the profession, and quite
frightened the good woman by arbitrarily forbidding her ever to
let a doctor inside her door. I had to apologize to her for the
painful prejudices and violent language of "these colonists,"
but the old soul was easily mollified. She had fallen in love
with my brother at first sight, and she never could do too much
for him. It was owing to our landlady that I took to calling him
Ralph, for the first time in our lives, on her beginning to speak
of and to him as "Mr. Raffles."
"This won't do," said he to me. "It's a name that sticks."
"It must be my fault! She must have heard it from me," said I
self-reproachfully.
"You must tell her it's the short for Ralph."
"But it's longer."
"It's the short," said he; "and you've got to tell her so."
Henceforth I heard as much of "Mr. Ralph," his likes and
dislikes, what he would fancy and what he would not, and oh, what
a dear gentleman he was, that I often remembered to say "Ralph,
old chap," myself.
It was an ideal cottage, as I said when I found it, and in it
our delicate man became rapidly robust. Not that the air was
also ideal, for, when it was not raining, we had the same
faithful mist from November to March. But it was something to
Ralph to get any air at all, other than night-air, and the
bicycle did the rest. We taught ourselves, and may I never
forget our earlier rides, through and through Richmond Park when
the afternoons were shortest, upon the incomparable Ripley Road
when we gave a day to it. Raffles rode a Beeston Humber, a
Royal Sunbeam was good enough for me, but he insisted on our both
having Dunlop tires.
"They seem the most popular brand. I had my eye on the road all
the way from Ripley to Cobham, and there were more Dunlop marks
than any other kind. Bless you, yes, they all leave their
special tracks, and we don't want ours to be extra special; the
Dunlop's like a rattlesnake, and the Palmer leaves
telegraph-wires, but surely the serpent is more in our line."
That was the winter when there were so many burglaries in the
Thames Valley from Richmond upward. It was said that the thieves
used bicycles in every case, but what is not said? They were
sometimes on foot to my knowledge, and we took a great interest
in the series, or rather sequence of successful crimes. Raffles
would often get his devoted old lady to read him the latest local
accounts, while I was busy with my writing (much I wrote) in my
own room. We even rode out by night ourselves, to see if we
could not get on the tracks of the thieves, and never did we fail
to find hot coffee on the hob for our return. We had indeed
fallen upon our feet. Also, the misty nights might have been
made for the thieves. But their success was not so consistent,
and never so enormous as people said, especially the sufferers,
who lost more valuables than they had ever been known to possess.
Failure was often the caitiff's portion, and disaster once;
owing, ironically enough, to that very mist which should have
served them. But as I am going to tell the story with some
particularity, and perhaps some gusto, you will see why who
read.
The right house stood on high ground near the river, with quite a
drive (in at one gate and out at the other) sweeping past the
steps. Between the two gates was a half-moon of shrubs, to the
left of the steps a conservatory, and to their right the walk
leading to the tradesmen's entrance and the back premises; here
also was the pantry window, of which more anon. The right house
was the residence of an opulent stockbroker who wore a heavy
watch-chain and seemed fair game. There would have been two
objections to it had I been the stockbroker. The house was one
of a row, though a goodly row, and an army-crammer had
established himself next door. There is a type of such
institutions in the suburbs; the youths go about in
knickerbockers, smoking pipes, except on Saturday nights, when
they lead each other home from the last train. It was none of
our business to spy upon these boys, but their manners and
customs fell within the field of observation. And we did not
choose the night upon which the whole row was likely to be kept
awake.
The night that we did choose was as misty as even the Thames
Valley is capable of making them. Raffles smeared vaseline upon
the plated parts of his Beeston Humber before starting, and our
dear landlady cosseted us both, and prayed we might see nothing
of the nasty burglars, not denying as the reward would be very
handy to them that got it, to say nothing of the honor and
glory. We had promised her a liberal perquisite in the event of
our success, but she must not give other cyclists our idea by
mentioning it to a soul. It was about midnight when we cycled
through Kingston to Surbiton, having trundled our machines
across Ham Fields, mournful in the mist as those by Acheron, and
so over Teddington Bridge.
I often wonder why the pantry window is the vulnerable point of
nine houses out of ten. This house of ours was almost the
tenth, for the window in question had bars of sorts, but not the
right sort. The only bars that Raffles allowed to beat him were
the kind that are let into the stone outside; those fixed within
are merely screwed to the woodwork, and you can unscrew as many
as necessary if you take the trouble and have the time. Barred
windows are usually devoid of other fasteners worthy the name;
this one was no exception to that foolish rule, and a push with
the pen-knife did its business. I am giving householders some
valuable hints, and perhaps deserving a good mark from the
critics. These, in any case, are the points that I would see to,
were I a rich stockbroker in a riverside suburb. In giving good
advice, however, I should not have omitted to say that we had
left our machines in the semi-circular shrubbery in front, or
that Raffles had most ingeniously fitted our lamps with dark
slides, which enabled us to leave them burning.
It proved sufficient to unscrew the bars at the bottom only, and
then to wrench them to either side. Neither of us had grown
stout with advancing years, and in a few minutes we both had
wormed through into the sink, and thence to the floor. It was
not an absolutely noiseless process, but once in the pantry we
were mice, and no longer blind mice. There was a gas-bracket,
but we did not meddle with that. Raffles went armed these
nights with a better light than gas; if it were not immoral, I
might recommend a dark-lantern which was more or less his
patent. It was that handy invention, the electric torch, fitted
by Raffles with a dark hood to fulfil the functions of a slide.
I had held it through the bars while he undid the screws, and
now he held it to the keyhole, in which a key was turned upon the
other side.
There was a pause for consideration, and in the pause we put on
our masks. It was never known that these Thames Valley robberies
were all com-mitted by miscreants decked in the livery of crime,
but that was because until this night we had never even shown our
masks. It was a point upon which Raffles had insisted on all
feasible occasions since his furtive return to the world.
To-night it twice nearly lost us everything--but you shall hear.
There is a forceps for turning keys from the wrong side of the
door, but the implement is not so easy of manipulation as it
might be. Raffles for one preferred a sharp knife and the corner
of the panel. You go through the panel because that is
thinnest, of course in the corner nearest the key, and you use a
knife when you can, because it makes least noise. But it does
take minutes, and even I can remember shifting the electric torch
from one hand to the other before the aperture was large enough
to receive the hand and wrist of Raffles.
He had at such times a motto of which I might have made earlier
use, but the fact is that I have only once before described a
downright burglary in which I assisted, and that without knowing
it at the time. The most solemn student of these annals cannot
affirm that he has cut through many doors in our company, since
(what was to me) the maiden effort to which I allude. I,
however, have cracked only too many a crib in conjunction with
A. J. Raffles, and at the crucial moment he would whisper
"Victory or Wormwood Scrubbs, Bunny!" or instead of Wormwood
Scrubbs it might be Portland Bill. This time it was neither one
nor the other, for with that very word "victory" upon his lips,
they whitened and parted with the first taste of defeat.
"My hand's held!" gasped Raffles, and the white of his eyes
showed all round the iris, a rarer thing than you may think.
At the same moment I heard the shuffling feet and the low,
excited young voices on the other side of the door, and a faint
light shone round Raffles's wrist.
"Well done, Beefy!"
"Hang on to him!"
"Good old Beefy!"
"Beefy's got him!"
"So have I--so have I!"
And Raffles caught my arm with his one free hand. "They've got
me tight," he whispered. "I'm done."
"Blaze through the door," I urged, and might have done it had I
been armed. But I never was. It was Raffles who monopolized
that risk.
"I can't--it's the boys--the wrong house!" he whispered. "Curse
the fog--it's done me. But you get out, Bunn, while you can;
never mind me; it's my turn, old chap."
His one hand tightened in affectionate farewell. I put the
electric torch in it before I went, trembling in every inch, but
without a word.
Get out! His turn! Yes, I would get out, but only to come in
again, for it was my turn--mine--not his. Would Raffles leave me
held by a hand through a hole in a door? What he would have
done in my place was the thing for me to do now. I began by
diving head-first through the pantry window and coming to earth
upon all fours. But even as I stood up, and brushed the gravel
from the palms of my hands and the knees of my knickerbockers, I
had no notion what to do next. And yet I was halfway to the
front door before I remembered the vile crape mask upon my face,
and tore it off as the door flew open and my feet were on the
steps.
"He's into the next garden," I cried to a bevy of pyjamas with
bare feet and young faces at either end of them.
"Who? Who?" said they, giving way before me.
"Some fellow who came through one of your windows head-first."
"The other Johnny, the other Johnny," the cherubs chorused.
"Biking past--saw the light--why, what have you there?"
Of course it was Raffles's hand that they had, but now I was in
the hall among them. A red-faced barrel of a boy did all the
holding, one hand round the wrist, the other palm to palm, and
his knees braced up against the panel. Another was rendering
ostentatious but ineffectual aid, and three or four others danced
about in their pyjamas. After all, they were not more than four
to one. I had raised my voice, so that Raffles might hear me and
take heart, and now I raised it again. Yet to this day I cannot
account for my inspiration, that proved nothing less.
"Don't talk so loud," they were crying below their breath; "don't
wake 'em upstairs, this is our show."
"Then I see you've got one of them," said I, as desired. "Well,
if you want the other you can have him, too. I believe he's hurt
himself."
"After him, after him!" they exclaimed as one.
"But I think he got over the wall--"
"Come on, you chaps, come on!"
And there was a soft stampede to the hall door.
"Don't all desert me, I say!" gasped the red-faced hero who held
Raffles prisoner.
"We must have them both, Beefy!"
"That's all very well--"
"Look here," I interposed, "I'll stay by you. I've a friend
outside, I'll get him too."
"Thanks awfully," said the valiant Beefy.
The hall was empty now. My heart beat high.
"How did you hear them?" I inquired, my eye running over him.
"We were down having drinks--game o' Nap--in there."
Beefy jerked his great head toward an open door, and the tail of
my eye caught the glint of glasses in the firelight, but the
rest of it was otherwise engaged.
"Let me relieve you," I said, trembling.
"No, I'm all right."
"Then I must insist."
And before he could answer I had him round the neck with such a
will that not a gurgle passed my fingers, for they were almost
buried in his hot, smooth flesh. Oh, I am not proud of it; the
act was as vile as act could be; but I was not going to see
Raffles taken, my one desire was to be the saving of him, and I
tremble even now to think to what lengths I might have gone for
its fulfilment. As it was, I squeezed and tugged until one
strong hand gave way after the other and came feeling round for
me, but feebly because they had held on so long. And what do you
suppose was happening at the same moment? The pinched white hand
of Raffles, reddening with returning blood, and with a clot of
blood upon the wrist, was craning upward and turning the key in
the lock without a moment's loss.
"Steady on, Bunny!"
And I saw that Beefy's ears were blue; but Raffles was feeling in
his pockets as he spoke. "Now let him breathe," said he,
clapping his handkerchief over the poor youth's mouth. An empty
vial was in his other hand, and the first few stertorous breaths
that the poor boy took were the end of him for the time being.
Oh, but it was villainous, my part especially, for he must have
been far gone to go the rest of the way so readily. I began by
saying I was not proud of this deed, but its dastardly character
has come home to me more than ever with the penance of writing it
out. I see in myself, at least my then self, things that I
never saw quite so clearly before. Yet let me be quite sure
that I would not do the same again. I had not the smallest
desire to throttle this innocent lad (nor did I), but only to
extricate Raffles from the most hopeless position he was ever in;
and after all it was better than a blow from behind. On the
whole, I will not alter a word, nor whine about the thing any
more.
We lifted the plucky fellow into Raffles's place in the pantry,
locked the door on him, and put the key through the panel. Now
was the moment for thinking of ourselves, and again that infernal
mask which Raffles swore by came near the undoing of us both. We
had reached the steps when we were hailed by a voice, not from
without but from within, and I had just time to tear the accursed
thing from Raffles's face before he turned.
A stout man with a blonde moustache was on the stairs, in his
pyjamas like the boys.
"What are you doing here?" said he.
"There has been an attempt upon your house," said I, still
spokesman for the night, and still on the wings of inspiration.
"Your sons--"
"My pupils."
"Indeed. Well, they heard it, drove off the thieves, and have
given chase."
"And where do you come in?" inquired the stout man, descending.
"We were bicycling past, and I actually saw one fellow come
head-first through your pantry window. I think he got over the
wall."
Here a breathless boy returned.
"Can't see anything of him," he gasped.
"It's true, then," remarked the crammer.
"Look at that door," said I.
But unfortunately the breathless boy looked also, and now he was
being joined by others equally short of wind.
"Where's Beefy?" he screamed. "What on earth's happened to
Beefy?"
"My good boys," exclaimed the crammer, "will one of you be kind
enough to tell me what you've been doing, and what these
gentlemen have been doing for you? Come in all, before you get
your death. I see lights in the class-room, and more than
lights. Can these be signs of a carouse?"
"A very innocent one, sir," said a well set-up youth with more
moustache than I have yet.
"Well, Olphert, boys will be boys. Suppose you tell me what
happened, before we come to recriminations."
The bad old proverb was my first warning. I caught two of the
youths exchanging glances under raised eyebrows. Yet their
stout, easy-going mentor had given me such a reassuring glance of
side-long humor, as between man of the world and man of the
world, that it was difficult to suspect him of suspicion. I was
nevertheless itching to be gone.
Young Olphert told his story with engaging candor. It was true
that they had come down for an hour's Nap and cigarettes; well,
and there was no denying that there was whiskey in the glasses.
The boys were now all back in their class-room, I think entirely
for the sake of warmth; but Raffles and I were in knickerbockers
and Norfolk jackets, and very naturally remained without, while
the army-crammer (who wore bedroom slippers) stood on the
threshold, with an eye each way. The more I saw of the man the
better I liked and the more I feared him. His chief annoyance
thus far was that they had not called him when they heard the
noise, that they had dreamt of leaving him out of the fun. But
he seemed more hurt than angry about that.
"Well, sir," concluded Olphert, "we left old Beefy Smith hanging
on to his hand, and this gentleman with him, so perhaps he can
tell us what happened next?"
"I wish I could," I cried with all their eyes upon me, for I had
had time to think. "Some of you must have heard me say I'd fetch
my friend in from the road?"
"Yes, I did," piped an innocentfrom within.
"Well, and when I came back with him things were exactly as you
see them now. Evidently the man's strength was too much for the
boy's; but whether he ran upstairs or outside I know no more
than you do."
"It wasn't like that boy to run either way," said the crammer,
cocking a clear blue eye on me.
"But if he gave chase!"
"It wasn't like him even to let go."
"I don't believe Beefy ever would," put in Olphert. "That's why
we gave him the billet."
"He may have followed him through the pantry window," I suggested
wildly.
"But the door's shut," put in a boy.
"I'll have a look at it," said the crammer.
And the key no longer in the lock, and the insensible youth
within! The key would be missed, the door kicked in; nay, with
the man's eye still upon me, I thought I could smell the
chloroform,
I thought I could hear a moan, and prepared for either any
moment. And how he did stare! I have detested blue eyes ever
since, and blonde moustaches, and the whole stout easy-going type
that is not such a fool as it looks. I had brazened it out with
the boys, but the first grown man wa too many for me, and the
blood ran out of my heart as though there was no Raffles at my
back. Indeed, I had forgotten him. I had so longed to put this
thing through by myself! Even in my extremity it was almost a
disappointment to m when his dear, cool voice fell like a
delicious draught upon my ears. But its effect upon the others
is more interesting to recall. Until now the crammer had the
centre of the stage, but at this point Raffles usurped a place
which was always his at will. People would wait for what he had
to say, as these people waited now for the simplest and most
natural thing in the world.
"One moment!" he had begun.
"Well?" said the crammer, relieving me of his eyes at last.
"I don't want to lose any of the fun--"
"Nor must you," said the crammer, with emphasis.
"But we've left our bikes outside, and mine's a Beeston Humber,"
continued Raffles. "If you don't mind, we'll bring 'em in before
these fellows get away on them."
And out he went without a look to see the effect of his words, I
after him with a determined imitation of his self-control. But I
would have given something to turn round. I believe that for
one moment the shrewd instructor was taken in, but as I reached
the steps I heard him asking his pupils whether any of them had
seen any bicycles outside.
That moment, however, made the difference. We were in the
shrubbery, Raffles with his electric torch drawn and blazing,
when we heard the kicking at the pantry door, and in the drive
with our bicycles before man and boys poured pell-mell down the
steps.
We rushed our machines to the nearer gate, for both were shut,
and we got through and swung it home behind us in the nick of
time. Even I could mount before they could reopen the gate,
which Raffles held against them for half an instant with
unnecessary gallantry. But he would see me in front of him, and
so it fell to me to lead the way.
Now, I have said that it was a very misty night (hence the whole
thing), and also that these houses were on a hill. But they were
not nearly on the top of the hill, and I did what I firmly
believe that almost everybody would have done in my place.
Raffles, indeed, said he would have done it himself, but that was
his generosity, and he was the one man who would not. What I did
was to turn in the opposite direction to the other gate, where we
might so easily have been cut off, and to pedal for my
life--up-hill!
"My God!" I shouted when I found it out.
"Can you turn in your own length?" asked Raffles, following
loyally.
"Not certain."
"Then stick to it. You couldn't help it. But it's the devil of
a hill!"
"And here they come!"
"Let them," said Raffles, and brandished his electric torch, our
only light as yet.
A hill seems endless in the dark, for you cannot see the end, and
with the patter of bare feet gaining on us, I thought this one
could have no end at all. Of course the boys could charge up it
quicker than we could pedal, but I even heard the voice of their
stout instructor growing louder through the mist.
"Oh, to think I've let you in for this!" I groaned, my head over
the handle-bars, every ounce of my weight first on one foot and
then on the other. I glanced at Raffles, and in the white light
of his torch he was doing it all with his ankles, exactly as
though he had been riding in a Gymkhana.
"It's the most sporting chase I was ever in," said he.
"All my fault!"
"My dear Bunny, I wouldn't have missed it for the world!"
Nor would he forge ahead of me, though he could have done so in a
moment, he who from his boyhood had done everything of the kind
so much better than anybody else. No, he must ride a wheel's
length behind me, and now we could not only hear the boys
running, but breathing also. And then of a sudden I saw Raffles
on my right striking with his torch; a face flew out of the
darkness to meet the thick glass bulb with the glowing wire
enclosed; it was the face of the boy Olphert, with his enviable
moustache, but it vanished with the crash of glass, and the naked
wire thickened to the eye like a tuning-fork struck red-hot.
I saw no more of that. One of them had crept up on my side also;
as I looked, hearing him pant, he was grabbing at my left handle,
and I nearly sent Raffles into the hedge by the sharp turn I took
to the right. His wheel's length saved him. But my boy could
run, was overhauling me again, seemed certain of me this time,
when all at once the Sunbeam ran easily; every ounce of my weight
with either foot once more, and I was over the crest of the hill,
the gray road reeling out from under me as I felt for my brake.
I looked back at Raffles. He had put up his feet. I screwed my
head round still further, and there were the boys in their
pyjamas, their hands upon their knees, like so many
wicket-keepers, and a big man shaking his fist. There was a
lamp-post on the hill-top, and that was the last I saw.
We sailed down to the river, then on through Thames Ditton as far
as Esher Station, when we turned sharp to the right, and from the
dark stretch by Imber Court came to light in Molesey, and were
soon pedalling like gentlemen of leisure through Bushey Park, our
lights turned up, the broken torch put out and away. The big
gates had long been shut, but you can manoeuvre a bicycle through
the others. We had no further adventures on the way home, and
our coffee was still warm upon the hob.
"But I think it's an occasion for Sullivans," said Raffles, who
now kept them for such. "By all my gods, Bunny, it's been the
most sporting night we ever had in our lives! And do you know
which was the most sporting part of it?"
"That up-hill ride?"
"I wasn't thinking of it."
"Turning your torch into a truncheon?"
"My dear Bunny! A gallant lad--I hated hitting him."
"I know," I said. "The way you got us out of the house!"
"No, Bunny," said Raffles, blowing rings. "It came before that,
you sinner, and you know it!"
"You don't mean anything I did?" said I, self-consciously, for I
began to see that this was what he did mean. And now at latest
it will also be seen why this story has been told with undue and
inexcusable gusto; there is none other like it for me to tell; it
is my one ewe-lamb in all these annals. But Raffles had a ruder
name for it.
"It was the Apotheosis of the Bunny," said he, but in a tone I
never shall forget.
"I hardly knew what I was doing or saying," I said. "The whole
thing was a fluke."
"Then," said Raffles, "it was the kind of fluke I always trusted
you to make when runs were wanted."
And he held out his dear old hand.
THE KNEES OF THE GODS
I
"The worst of this war," said Raffles, "is the way it puts a
fellow off his work."
It was, of course, the winter before last, and we had done
nothing dreadful since the early autumn. Undoubtedly the war was
the cause. Not that we were among the earlier victims of the
fever. I took disgracefully little interest in the
Negotiations, while the Ultimatum appealed to Raffles as a
sporting flutter. Then we gave the whole thing till Christmas.
We still missed the cricket in the papers. But one russet
afternoon we were in Richmond, and a terrible type was shouting
himself hoarse with "'Eavy British lorsses--orful slorter o' the
Bo-wers! Orful slorter! Orful slorter! 'Eavy British
lorsses!" I thought the terrible type had invented it, but
Raffles gave him more than he asked, and then I held the bicycle
while he tried to pronounce Eland's Laagte. We were never again
without our sheaf of evening papers, and Raffles ordered three
morning ones, and I gave up mine in spite of its literary page.
We became strategists. We knew exactly what Buller was to do on
landing, and, still better, what the other Generals should have
done. Our map was the best that could be bought, with flags
that deserved a better fate than standing still. Raffles woke me
to hear "The Absent-Minded Beggar" on the morning it appeared;
he was one of the first substantial subscribers to the fund. By
this time our dear landlady was more excited than we. To our
enthusiasm for Thomas she added a personal bitterness against
the Wild Boars, as she persisted in calling them, each time as
though it were the first. I could linger over our landlady's
attitude in the whole matter. That was her only joke about it,
and the true humorist never smiled at it herself. But you had
only to say a syllable for a venerable gentleman, declared by her
to be at the bottom of it all, to hear what she could do to him
if she caught him. She could put him in a cage and go on tour
with him, and make him howl and dance for his food like a debased
bear before a fresh audience every day. Yet a more kind-hearted
woman I have neverknown. The war did not uplift our landlady as
it did her lodgers.
But presently it ceased to have that precise effect upon us. Bad
was being made worse and worse; and then came more than
Englishmen could endure in that black week across which the names
of three African villages are written forever in letters of
blood. "All three pegs," groaned Raffles on the last morning of
the week; "neck-and-crop, neck-and-crop!" It was his first word
of cricket since the beginning of the war.
We were both depressed. Old school-fellows had fallen, and I
know Raffles envied them; he spoke so wistfully of such an end.
To cheer him up I proposed to break into one of the many more or
less royal residences in our neighborhood; a tough crib was what
he needed; but I will not trouble you with what he said to me.
There was less crime in England that winter than for years past;
there was none at all in Raffles. And yet there were those who
could denounce the war!
So we went on for a few of those dark days, Raffles very glum
and grim, till one fine morning the Yeomanry idea put new heart
into us all. It struck me at once as the glorious scheme it was
to prove, but it did not hit me where it hit others. I was not
a fox-hunter, and the gentlemen of England would scarcely have
owned me as one of them. The case of Raffles was in that respect
still more hopeless (he who had even played for them at Lord's),
and he seemed to feel it. He would not speak to me all the
morning; in the afternoon he went for a walk alone. It was
another man who came home, flourishing a small bottle packed in
white paper.
"Bunny," said he, "I never did lift my elbow; it's the one vice I
never had. It has taken me all these years to find my tipple,
Bunny; but here it is, my panacea, my elixir, my magic philtre!"
I thought he had been at it on the road, and asked him the name
of the stuff.
"Look and see, Bunny."
And if it wasn't a bottle of ladies' hair-dye, warranted to
change any shade into the once fashionable yellow within a given
number of applications!
"What on earth," said I, "are you going to do with this?"
"Dye for my country," he cried, swelling. "Dulce et decorum est,
Bunny, my boy!"
"Do you mean that you are going to the front?"
"If I can without coming to it."
I looked at him as he stood in the firelight, straight as a dart,
spare but wiry, alert, laughing, flushed from his wintry walk;
and as I looked, all the years that I had known him, and more
besides, slipped from him in my eyes. I saw him captain of the
eleven at school. I saw him running with the muddy ball on days
like this, running round the other fifteen as a sheep-dog round a
flock of sheep. He had his cap on still, and but for the gray
hairs underneath--but here I lost him in a sudden mist. It was
not sorrow at his going, for I did not mean to let him go alone.
It was enthusiasm, admiration, affection, and also, I believe, a
sudden regret that he had not always appealed to that part of my
nature to which he was appealing now. It was a little thrill of
penitence. Enough of it.
"I think it great of you," I said, and at first that was all.
How he laughed at me. He had had his innings; there was no
better way of getting out. He had scored off an African
millionaire, the Players, a Queensland Legislator, the Camorra,
the late Lord Ernest Belville, and again and again off Scotland
Yard. What more could one man do in one lifetime? And at the
worst it was the death to die: no bed, no doctor, no
temperature--and Raffles stopped himself.
"No pinioning, no white cap," he added, "if you like that
better."
"I don't like any of it," I cried, cordially; "you've simply got
to come back."
"To what?" he asked, a strange look on him.
And I wondered--for one instant--whether my little thrill had
gone through him. He was not a man of little thrills.
Then for a minute I was in misery. Of course I wanted to go
too--he shook my hand without a word--but how could I? They
would never have me, a branded jailbird, in the Imperial
Yeomanry! Raffles burst out laughing; he had been looking very
hard at me for about three seconds.
"You rabbit," he cried, "even to think of it! We might as well
offer ourselves to the Metropolitan Police Force. No, Bunny, we
go out to the Cape on our own, and that's where we enlist. One
of these regiments of irregular horse is the thing for us; you
spent part of your pretty penny on horse-flesh, I believe, and
you remember how I rode in the bush! We're the very men for
them, Bunny, and they won't ask to see our birthmarks out there.
I don't think even my hoary locks would put them off, but it
would be too conspicuous in the ranks."
Our landlady first wept on hearing our determination, and then
longed to have the pulling of certain whiskers (with the tongs,
and they should be red-hot); but from that day, and for as many
as were left to us, the good soul made more of us than ever. Not
that she was at all surprised; dear brave gentlemen who could
look for burglars on their bicycles at dead of night, it was only
what you might expect of them, bless their lion hearts. I
wanted to wink at Raffles, but he would not catch my eye. He was
a ginger-headed Raffles by the end of January, and it was
extraordinary what a difference it made. His most elaborate
disguises had not been more effectual than this simple
expedient, and, with khaki to complete the subdual of his
individuality, he had every hope of escaping recognition in the
field. The man he dreaded was the officer he had known in old
days; there were ever so many of him at the Front; and it was to
minimize this risk that we went out second-class at the beginning
of February.
It was a weeping day, a day in a shroud, cold as clay, yet for
that very reason an ideal day upon which to leave England for the
sunny Front. Yet my heart was heavy as I looked my last at her;
it was heavy as the raw, thick air, until Raffles came and leant
upon the rail at my side.
"I know what you are thinking, and you've got to stop," said he.
"It's on the knees of the gods, Bunny, whether we do or we
don't, and thinking won't make us see over their shoulders."
II
Now I made as bad a soldier (except at heart) as Raffles made a
good one, and I could not say a harder thing of myself. My
ignorance of matters military was up to that time unfathomable,
and is still profound. I was always a fool with horses, though I
did not think so at one time, and I had never been any good with
a gun. The average Tommy may be my intellectual inferior, but he
must know some part of his work better than I ever knew any of
mine. I never even learnt to be killed. I do not mean that I
ever ran away. The South African Field Force might have been
strengthened if I had.
The foregoing remarks do not express a pose affected out of
superiority to the usual spirit of the conquering hero, for no
man was keener on the war than I, before I went to it. But one
can only write with gusto of events (like that little affair at
Surbiton) in which one has acquitted oneself without discredit,
and I cannot say that of my part in the war, of which I now
loathe the thought for other reasons. The battlefield was no
place for me, and neither was the camp. My ineptitude made me
the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed
the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have
gone hard with me but for Raffles, who was soon the darling
devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. Your
fireside fire-eater does not think of these things. He imagines
all the fighting to be with the enemy. He will probably be
horrified to hear that men can detest each other as cordially in
khaki as in any other wear, and with a virulence seldom inspired
by the bearded dead-shot in the opposite trench. To the
fireside fire-eater, therefore (for you have seen me one myself),
I dedicate the story of Corporal Connal, Captain Bellingham, the
General, Raffles, and myself.
I must be vague, for obvious reasons. The troop is fighting as I
write; you will soon hear why I am not; but neither is Raffles,
nor Corporal Connal. They are fighting as well as ever, those
other hard-living, harder-dying sons of all soils; but I am not
going to say where it was that we fought with them. I believe
that no body of men of equal size has done half so much heroic
work. But they had got themselves a bad name off the field, so
to speak; and I am not going to make it worse by saddling them
before the world with Raffles and myself, and that ruffian
Connal.
The fellow was a mongrel type, a Glasgow Irishman by birth and
upbringing, but he had been in South Africa for years, and he
certainly knew the country very well. This circumstance, coupled
with the fact that he was a very handy man with horses, as all
colonists are, had procured him the first small step from the
ranks which facilitates bullying if a man be a bully by nature,
and is physically fitted to be a successful one. Connal was a
hulking ruffian, and in me had ideal game. The brute was
offensive to me from the hour I joined. The details are of no
importance, but I stood up to him at first in words, and finally
for a few seconds on my feet. Then I went down like an ox, and
Raffles came out of his tent. Their fight lasted twenty minutes,
and Raffles was marked, but the net result was dreadfully
conventional, for the bully was a bully no more.
But I began gradually to suspect that he was something worse.
All this time we were fighting every day, or so it seems when I
look back. Never a great engagement, and yet never a day when we
were wholly out of touch with the enemy. I had thus several
opportunities of watching the other enemy under fire, and had
almost convinced myself of the systematic harmlessness of his own
shooting, when a more glaring incident occurred.
One night three troops of our squadron were ordered to a certain
point whither they had patrolled the previous week; but our own
particular troop was to stay behind, and in charge of no other
than the villanous corporal, both our officer and sergeant having
gone into hospital with enteric. Our detention, however, was
very temporary, and Connal would seem to have received the usual
vague orders to proceed in the early morning to the place where
the other three companies had camped. It appeared that we were
to form an escort to two squadron-wagons containing kits,
provisions, and ammunition.
Before daylight Connal had reported his departure to the
commanding officer, and we passed the outposts at gray dawn.
Now, though I was perhaps the least observant person in the
troop, I was not the least wideawake where Corporal Connal was
concerned, and it struck me at once that we were heading in the
wrong direction. My reasons are not material, but as a matter of
fact our last week's patrol had pushed its khaki tentacles both
east and west; and eastward they had met with resistance so
determined as to compel them to retire; yet it was eastward that
we were travelling now. I at once spurred alongside Raffles, as
he rode, bronzed and bearded, with warworn wide-awake over eyes
grown keen as a hawk's, and a cutty-pipe sticking straight out
from his front teeth. I can see him now, so gaunt and grim and
debonair, yet already with much of the nonsense gone out of him,
though I thought he only smiled on my misgivings.
"Did he get the instructions, Bunny, or did we? Very well, then;
give the devil a chance."
There was nothing further to be said, but I felt more crushed
than convinced; so we jogged along into broad daylight, until
Raffles himself gave a whistle of surprise.
"A white flag, Bunny, by all my gods!"
I could not see it; he had the longest sight in all our squadron;
but in a little the fluttering emblem, which had gained such a
sinister significance in most of our eyes, was patent even to
mine. A little longer, and the shaggy Boer was in our midst upon
his shaggy pony, with a half-scared, half-incredulous look in his
deep-set eyes. He was on his way to our lines with some
missive, and had little enough to say to us, though frivolous and
flippant questions were showered upon him from most saddles.
"Any Boers over there?" asked one, pointing in the direction in
which we were still heading.
"Shut up!" interjected Raffles in crisp rebuke.
The Boer looked stolid but sinister.
"Any of our chaps?" added another.
The Boer rode on with an open grin.
And the incredible conclusion of the matter was that we were
actually within their lines in another hour; saw them as large as
life within a mile and a half on either side of us; and must
every man of us have been taken prisoner had not every man but
Connal refused to go one inch further, and had not the Boers
themselves obviously suspected some subtle ruse as the only
conceivable explanation of so madcap a manoeuvre. They allowed
us to retire without firing a shot; and retire you may be sure
we did, the Kaffirs flogging their teams in a fury of fear, and
our precious corporal sullen but defiant.
I have said this was the conclusion of the matter, and I blush to
repeat that it practically was. Connal was indeed wheeled up
before the colonel, but his instructions were not written
instructions, and he lied his way out with equal hardihood and
tact.
"You said 'over there,' sir," he stoutly reiterated; and the
vagueness with which such orders were undoubtedly given was the
saving of him for the time being.
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