Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman
by
E. W. Hornung
Part 4 out of 4
I need not tell you how indignant I felt, for one.
"The fellow is a spy!" I said to Raffles, with no nursery oath,
as we strolled within the lines that night.
He merely smiled in my face.
"And have you only just found it out, Bunny? I have known it
almost ever since we joined; but this morning I did think we had
him on toast."
"It's disgraceful that we had not," cried I. "He ought to have
been shot like a dog."
"Not so loud, Bunny, though I quite agree; but I don't regret
what has happened as much as you do. Not that I am less
bloodthirsty than you are in this case, but a good deal more so!
Bunny, I'm mad-keen on bowling him out with my own unaided
hand--though I may ask you to take the wicket. Meanwhile, don't
wear all your animosity upon your sleeve; the fellow has friends
who still believe in him; and there is no need for you to be
more openly his enemy than you were before."
Well, I can only vow that I did my best to follow this sound
advice; but who but a Raffles can control his every look? It was
never my forte, as you know, yet to this day I cannot conceive
what I did to excite the treacherous corporal's suspicions. He
was clever enough, however, not to betray them, and lucky enough
to turn the tables on us, as you shall hear.
III
Bloemfontein had fallen since our arrival, but there was plenty
of fight in the Free Staters still, and I will not deny that it
was thes gentry who were showing us the sport for which our
corps came in. Constant skirmishing was our portion, with now
and then an action that you would know at least by name, did I
feel free to mention them. But I do not, and indeed it is better
so. I have not to describe the war even as I saw it, I am
thankful to say, but only the martial story of us two and those
others of whom you wot. Corporal Connal was the dangerous
blackguard you have seen. Captain Bellingham is best known for
his position in the batting averages a year or two ago, and for
his subsequent failure to obtai a place in any of the five Test
Matches. But I only think of him as the officer who recognized
Raffles.
We had taken a village, making quite a little name for it and for
ourselves, and in the village our division was reinforced by a
fresh brigade of the Imperial troops. It was a day of rest, our
first for weeks, but Raffles and I spent no small part of it in
seeking high and low for a worthy means of quenching the kind of
thirst which used to beset Yeomen and others who had left good
cellars for the veldt. The old knack came back to us both,
though I believe that I alone was conscious of it at the time;
and we were leaving the house, splendidly supplied, when we
almost ran into the arms of an infantry officer, with a scowl
upon his red-hot face, and an eye-glass flaming at us in the sun.
"Peter Bellingham!" gasped Raffles under his breath, and then we
saluted and tried to pass on, with the bottles ringing like
church-bells under our khaki. But Captain Bellingham was a hard
man.
"What have you men been doin'?" drawled he.
"Nothing, sir," we protested, like innocence with an injury.
"Lootin' 's forbidden," said he. "You had better let me see
those bottles."
"We are done," whispered Raffles, and straightway we made a
sideboard of the stoop across which he had crept at so
inopportune a moment. I had not the heart to raise my eyes
again, yet it was many moments before the officer broke silence.
"Uam Var!" he murmured reverentially at last. "And Long John of
Ben Nevis! The first drop that's been discovered in the whole
psalm-singing show! What lot do you two belong to?"
I answered.
"I must have your names."
In my agitation I gave my real one. Raffles had turned away, as
though in heart-broken contemplation of our lost loot. I saw the
officer studying his half-profile with an alarming face.
"What's YOUR name?" he rapped out at last.
But his strange, low voice said plainly that he knew, and Raffles
faced him with the monosyllable of confession and assent. I did
not count the seconds until the next word, but it was Captain
Bellingham who uttered it at last.
"I thought you were dead."
"Now you see I am not."
"But you are at your old games!"
"I am not," cried Raffles, and his tone was new to me. I have
seldom heard one more indignant. "Yes," he continued, "this is
loot, and the wrong 'un will out. That's what you're thinking,
Peter--I beg your pardon--sir. But he isn't let out in the
field! We're playing the game as much as you are, old--sir."
The plural number caused the captain to toss me a contemptuous
look. "Is this the fellah who was taken when you swam for it?"
he inquired, relapsing into his drawl. Raffles said I was, and
with that took a passionate oath upon our absolute rectitude as
volunteers. There could be no doubting him; but the officer's
eyes went back at the bottles on the stoop.
"But look at those," said he; and as he looked himself the light
eye melted in his fiery face. "And I've got Sparklets in my
tent," he sighed. "You make it in a minute!"
Not a word from Raffles, and none, you may be sure, from me.
Then suddenly Bellingham told me where his tent was, and, adding
that our case was one for serious consideration, strode in its
direction without another word until some sunlit paces separated
us.
"You can bring that stuff with you," he then flung over a
shoulder-strap, "and I advise you to put it where you had it
before."
A trooper saluted him some yards further on, and looked evilly at
us as we followed with our loot. It was Corporal Connal of ours,
and the thought of him takes my mind off the certainly gallant
captain who only that day had joined our division with the
reinforcements. I could not stand the man myself. He added
soda-water to our whiskey in his tent, and would only keep a
couple of bottles when we came away. Softened by the spirit, to
which disuse made us all a little sensitive, our officer was soon
convinced of the honest part that we were playing for once, and
for fifty minutes of the hour we spent with him he and Raffles
talked cricket without a break. On parting they even shook
hands; that was Long John in the captain's head; but the snob
never addressed a syllable to me.
And now to the gallows-bird who was still corporal of our troop:
it was not long before Raffles was to have his wish and the
traitor's wicket. We had resumed our advance, or rather our
humble part in the great surrounding movement then taking
place, and were under pretty heavy fire once more, when Connal
was shot in the hand. It was a curious casualty in more than one
respect, and nobody seems to have seen it happen. Though a
flesh wound, it was a bloody one, and that may be why the
surgeon did not at once detect those features which afterwards
convinced him that the injury had been self-inflicted. It was
the right hand, and until it healed the man could be of no
further use in the firing line; nor was the case serious enough
for admission to a crowded field-hospital; and Connal himself
offered his services as custodian of a number of our horses which
we were keeping out of harm's way in a donga. They had come
there in the following manner: That morning we had been
heliographed to reinforce the C.M.R., only to find that the enemy
had the range to a nicety when we reached the spot. There were
trenches for us men, but no place of safety for our horses nearer
than this long and narrow donga which ran from within our lines
towards those of the Boers. So some of us galloped them thither,
six-in-hand, amid the whine of shrapnel and the whistle of shot.
I remember the man next me being killed by a shell with all his
team, and the tangle of flying harness, torn horseflesh, and
crimson khaki, that we left behind us on the veldt; also that a
small red flag, ludicrously like those used to indicate a
putting-green, marked the single sloping entrance to the
otherwise precipitous donga, which I for one was duly thankful to
reach alive.
The same evening Connal, with a few other light casualties to
assist him, took over the charge for which he had volunteered and
for which he was so admirably fitted by his knowledge of horses
and his general experience of the country; nevertheless, he
managed to lose three or four fine chargers in the course of the
first night; and, early in the second, Raffles shook me out of a
heavy slumber in the trenches where we had been firing all day.
"I have found the spot, Bunny," he whispered; "we ought to out
him before the night is over."
"Connal?"
Raffles nodded.
"You know what happened to some of his horses last night? Well,
he let them go himself."
"Never!"
"I'm as certain of it," said Raffles, "as though I'd seen him do
it; and if he does it again I shall see him. I can even tell you
how it happened. Connal insisted on having one end of the donga
to himself, and of course his end is the one nearest the Boers.
Well, then, he tells the other fellows to go to sleep at their
end--I have it direct from one of them--and you bet they don't
need a second invitation. The rest I hope to see to-night."
"It seems almost incredible," said I.
"Not more so than the Light Horseman's dodge of poisoning the
troughs; that happened at Ladysmith before Christmas; and two
kind friends did for that blackguard what you and I are going to
do for this one, and a firing-party did the rest. Brutes! A
mounted man's worth a file on foot in this country, and well
they know it. But this beauty goes one better than the poison;
that was wilful waste; but I'll eat my wideawake if our loss
last night wasn't the enemy's double gain! What we've got to
do, Bunny, is to catch him in the act. It may mean watching him
all night, but was ever game so well worth the candle?"
One may say in passing that, at this particular point of contact,
the enemy were in superior force, and for once in a mood as
aggressive as our own. They were led with a dash, and handled
with a skill, which did not always characterize their commanders
at this stage of the war. Their position was very similar to
ours, and indeed we were to spend the whole of next day in trying
with an equal will to turn each other out. The result will
scarcely be forgotten by those who recognize the occasion from
these remarks. Meanwhile it was the eve of battle (most
evenings were), and there was that villain with the horses in
the donga, and here were we two upon his track.
Raffles's plan was to reconnoitre the place, and then take up a
position from which we could watch our man and pounce upon him if
he gave us cause. The spot that we eventually chose and
stealthily occupied was behind some bushes through which we
could see down into the donga; there were the precious horses;
and there sure enough was our wounded corporal, sitting smoking
in his cloak, some glimmering thing in his lap.
"That's his revolver, and it's a Mauser," whispered Raffles. "He
shan't have a chance of using it on us; either we must be on him
before he knows we are anywhere near, or simply report. It's
easily proved once we are sure; but I should like to have the
taking of him too."
There was a setting moon. Shadows were sharp and black. The man
smoked steadily, and the hungry horses did what I never saw
horses do before; they stood and nibbled at each other's tails.
I was used to sleeping in the open, under the jewelled dome that
seems so much vaster and grander in these wide spaces of the
earth. I lay listening to the horses, and to the myriad small
strange voices of the veldt, to which I cannot even now put a
name, while Raffles watched. "One head is better than two," he
said, "when you don't want it to be seen." We were to take watch
and watch about, however, and the other might sleep if he could;
it was not my fault that I did nothing else; it was Raffles who
could trust nobody but himself. Nor was there any time for
recriminations when he did rouse me in the end.
But a moment ago, as it seemed to me, I had been gazing upward at
the stars and listening to the dear, minute sounds of peace; and
in another the great gray slate was clean, and every bone of me
set in plaster of Paris, and sniping beginning between pickets
with the day. It was an occasional crack, not a constant
crackle, but the whistle of a bullet as it passed us by, or a
tiny transitory flame for the one bit of detail on a blue
hill-side, was an unpleasant warning that we two on ours were a
target in ourselves. But Raffles paid no attention to their
fire; he was pointing downward through the bushes to where
Corporal Connal stood with his back to us, shooing a last
charger out of the mouth of the donga towards the Boer trenches.
"That's his third," whispered Raffles, "but it's the first I've
seen distinctly, for he waited for the blind spot before the
dawn. It's enough to land him, I fancy, but we mustn't lose
time. Are you ready for a creep?"
I stretched myself, and said I was; but I devoutly wished it was
not quite so early in the morning.
"Like cats, then, till he hears, and then into him for all we're
worth. He's stowed his iron safe away, but he mustn't have time
even to feel for it. You take his left arm, Bunny, and hang on
to that like a ferret, and I'll do the rest. Ready? Then now!"
And in less time than it would take to tell, we were over the lip
of the donga and had fallen upon the fellow before he could turn
his head; nevertheless, for a few instants he fought like a wild
beast, striking, kicking, and swinging me off my feet as I obeyed
my instructions to the letter, and stuck to his left like a
leech. But he soon gave that up, panting and blaspheming,
demanded explanations in his hybrid tongue that had half a brogue
and half a burr. What were we doing? What had he done?
Raffles at his back, with his right wrist twisted round and
pinned into the small of it, soon told him that, and I think the
words must have been the first intimation that he had as to who
his assailants were.
"So it's you two!" he cried, and a light broke over him. He was
no longer trying to shake us off, and now he dropped his curses
also, and stood chuckling to himself instead. "Well," he went
on, "you're bloody liars both, but I know something else that you
are, so you'd better let go."
A coldness ran through me, and I never saw Raffles so taken
aback. His grip must have relaxed for a fraction of time, for
our captive broke out in a fresh and desperate struggle, but now
we pinned him tighter than ever, and soon I saw him turning
green and yellow with the pain.
"You're breaking my wrist!" he yelled at last.
"Then stand still and tell us who we are."
And he stood still and told us our real names. But Raffles
insisted on hearing how he had found us out, and smiled as though
he had known what was coming when it came. I was dumbfounded.
The accursed hound had followed us that evening to Captain
Bellingham's tent, and his undoubted cleverness in his own
profession of spy had done the rest.
"And now you'd better let me go," said the master of the
situation, as I for one could not help regarding him.
"I'll see you damned," said Raffles, savagely.
"Then you're damned and done for yourself, my cocky criminal.
Raffles the burglar! Raffles the society thief! Not dead after
all, but 'live and 'listed. Send him home and give him fourteen
years, and won't he like 'em, that's all!"
"I shall have the pleasure of hearing you shot first," retorted
Raffles, through his teeth, "and that alone will make them
bearable. Come on, Bunny, let's drive the swine along and get it
over."
And drive him we did, he cursing, cajoling, struggling, gloating,
and blubbering by turns. But Raffles never wavered for an
instant, though his face was tragic, and it went to my heart,
where that look stays still. I remember at the time, though I
never let my hold relax, there was a moment when I added my
entreaties to those of our prisoner. Raffles did not even reply
to me. But I was thinking of him, I swear. I was thinking of
that gray set face that I never saw before or after.
"Your story will be tested," said the commanding officer, when
Connal had been marched to the guard-tent. "Is there any truth
in his?"
"It is perfectly true, sir."
"And the notorious Raffles has been alive all these years, and
you are really he?"
"I am, sir."
"And what are you doing at the front?"
Somehow I thought that Raffles was going to smile, but the grim
set of his mouth never altered, neither was there any change in
the ashy pallor which had come over him in the donga when Connal
mouthed his name. It was only his eyes that lighted up at the
last question.
"I am fighting, sir," said he, as simply as any subaltern in the
army.
The commanding officer inclined a grizzled head perceptibly, and
no more. He was not one of any school, our General; he had his
own ways, and we loved both him and them; and I believe that he
loved the rough but gallant corps that bore his name. He once
told us that he knew something about most of us, and there were
things that Raffles had done of which he must have heard. But he
only moved his grizzled head.
"Did you know he was going to give you away?" he asked at
length, with a jerk of it toward the guard-tent.
"Yes, sir."
"But you thought it worth while, did you?"
"I thought it necessary, sir."
The General paused, drumming on his table, making up his mind.
Then his chin came up with the decision that we loved in him.
"I shall sift all this," said he. "An officer's name was
mentioned, and I shall see him myself. Meanwhile you had better
go on--fighting."
IV
Corporal Connal paid the penalty of his crime before the sun was
far above the hill held by the enemy. There was abundance of
circumstantial evidence against him, besides the direct testimony
of Raffles and myself, and the wretch was shot at last with
little ceremony and less shrift. And that was the one good thing
that happened on the day that broke upon us hiding behind the
bushes overlooking the donga; by noon it was my own turn.
I have avoided speaking of my wound before I need, and from the
preceding pages you would not gather that I am more or less lame
for life. You will soon see now why I was in no hurry to recall
the incident. I used to think of a wound received in one's
country's service as the proudest trophy a man could acquire.
But the sight of mine depresses me every morning of my life; it
was due for one thing to my own slow eye for cover, in taking
which (to aggravate my case) our hardy little corps happened to
excel.
The bullet went clean through my thigh, drilling the bone, but
happily missing the sciatic nerve; thus the mere pain was less
than it might have been, but of course I went over in a
light-brown heap. We were advancing on our stomachs to take the
hill, and thus extend our position, and it was at this point that
the fire became too heavy for us, so that for hours (in the
event) we moved neither forward nor back. But it was not a
minute before Raffles came to me through the whistling scud, and
in another I was on my back behind a shallow rock, with him
kneeling over me and unrolling my bandage in the teeth of that
murderous fire. It was on the knees of the gods, he said, when I
begged him to bend lower, but for the moment I thought his tone
as changed as his face had been earlier in the morning. To
oblige me, however, he took more care; and, when he had done all
that one comrade could for another, he did avail himself of the
cover he had found for me. So there we lay together on the
veldt, under blinding sun and withering fire, and I suppose it is
the veldt that I should describe, as it swims and flickers
before wounded eyes. I shut mine to bring it back, but all that
comes is the keen brown face of Raffles, still a shade paler than
its wont; now bending to sight and fire; now peering to see
results, brows raised, eyes widened; anon turning to me with the
word to set my tight lips grinning. He was talking all the
time, but for my sake, and I knew it. Can you wonder that I
could not see an inch beyond him? He was the battle to me then;
he is the whole war to me as I look back now.
"Feel equal to a cigarette? It will buck you up, Bunny. No,
that one in the silver paper, I've hoarded it for this. Here's a
light; and so Bunny takes the Sullivan! All honor to the
sporting rabbit!"
"At least I went over like one," said I, sending the only clouds
into the blue, and chiefly wishing for their longer endurance.
I was as hot as a cinder from my head to one foot; the other leg
was ceasing to belong to me.
"Wait a bit," says Raffles, puckering; "there's a gray felt hat
at deep long-on, and I want to add it to the bag for vengeance.
. . . Wait--yes--no, no luck! I must pitch 'em up a bit more.
Hallo! Magazine empty. How goes the Sullivan, Bunny? Rum to be
smoking one on the veldt with a hole in your leg!"
"It's doing me good," I said, and I believe it was. But Raffles
lay looking at me as he lightened his bandolier.
"Do you remember," he said softly, "the day we first began to
think about the war? I can see the pink, misty river light, and
feel the first bite there was in the air when one stood about;
don't you wish we had either here! 'Orful slorter, orful
slorter;' that fellow's face, I see it too; and here we have the
thing he cried. Can you believe it's only six months ago?"
"Yes," I sighed, enjoying the thought of that afternoon less than
he did; "yes, we were slow to catch fire at first."
"Too slow," he said quickly.
"But when we did catch," I went on, wishing we never had, "we
soon burnt up."
"And then went out," laughed Raffles gayly. He was loaded up
again. "Another over at the gray felt hat," said he; "by Jove,
though, I believe he's having an over at me!"
"I wish you'd be careful," I urged. "I heard it too."
"My dear Bunny, it's on the knees you wot of. If anything's down
in the specifications surely that is. Besides--that was nearer!"
"To you?"
"No, to him. Poor devil, he has his specifications too; it's
comforting to think that. . . . I can't see where that one
pitched; it may have been a wide; and it's very nearly the end of
the over again. Feeling worse, Bunny?"
"No, I've only closed my eyes. Go on talking."
"It was I who let you in for this," he said, at his bandolier
again.
"No, I'm glad I came out."
And I believe I still was, in a way; for it WAS rather fine to be
wounded, just then, with the pain growing less; but the sensation
was not to last me many minutes, and I can truthfully say that I
have never felt it since.
"Ah, but you haven't had such a good time as I have!"
"Perhaps not."
Had his voice vibrated, or had I imagined it? Pain-waves and
loss of blood were playing tricks with my senses; now they were
quite dull, and my leg alive and throbbing; now I had no leg at
all, but more than all my ordinary senses in every other part of
me. And the devil's orchestra was playing all the time, and all
around me, on every class of fiendish instrument, which you
have been made to hear for yourselves in every newspaper. Yet
all that I heard was Raffles talking.
"I have had a good time, Bunny."
Yes, his voice was sad; but that was all; the vibration must have
been in me.
"I know you have, old chap," said I.
"I am grateful to the General for giving me to-day. It may be
the last. Then I can only say it's been the best--by Jove!"
"What is it?"
And I opened my eyes. His were shining. I can see them now.
"Got him--got the hat! No, I'm hanged if I have; at least he
wasn't in it. The crafty cuss, he must have stuck it up on
purpose. Another over . . . scoring's slow. . . . I wonder if
he's sportsman enough to take a hint? His hat-trick's foolish.
Will he show his face if I show mine?"
I lay with closed ears and eyes. My leg had come to life again,
and the rest of me was numb.
"Bunny!"
His voice sounded higher. He must have been sitting upright.
"Well?"
But it was not well with me; that was all I thought as my lips
made the word.
"It's not only been the best time I ever had, old Bunny, but I'm
not half sure--"
Of what I can but guess; the sentence was not finished, and never
could be in this world.
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