E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (10 page)

"'They would in you,' I retorted, and my tu quoque shut him up
and seemed to puzzle him. Yet there was much more sense in it
than in his compliment to me, which was absolutely pointless.

"'I'm afraid you'll find things pretty rough,' he resumed, when
he had unstrapped my valise, and handed my reins to his man.
'It's lucky you're a bachelor like myself.'

"I could not quite see the point of this remark either, since,
had I been married, I should hardly have sprung my wife upon him
in this free-and-easy fashion. I muttered the conventional sort
of thing, and then he said I should find it all right when I
settled, as though I had come to graze upon him for weeks!
'Well,' thought I, 'these Colonials do take the cake for
hospitality!' And, still marvelling, I let him lead me into the
private part of the bank.

"'Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour,' said he as we
entered. 'I thought you might like a tub first, and you'll find
all ready in the room at the end of the passage. Sing out if
there's anything you want. Your luggage hasn't turned up yet, by
the way, but here's a letter that came this morning.'

"'Not for me?'

"'Yes; didn't you expect one?'

"'I certainly did not!'

"'Well, here it is.'

"And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own superscription of
the previous day—to W. F. Raffles!

"Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I daresay; you
know what that's like? All I can say is that my moral wind was
bagged by that letter as I hope, old chap, I have never yet
bagged yours. I couldn't speak. I could only stand with my own
letter in my hands until he had the good taste to leave me by
myself.

"W. F. Raffles! We had mistaken EACH OTHER for W. F.
Raffles—for the new manager who had not yet arrived! Small
wonder we had conversed at cross-purposes; the only wonder was
that we had not discovered our mutual mistake. How the other man
would have laughed! But I—I could not laugh. By Jove, no, it
was no laughing matter for me! I saw the whole thing in a flash,
without a tremor, but with the direst depression from my own
single point of view. Call it callous if you like, Bunny, but
remember that I was in much the same hole as you've since been in
yourself, and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as
you counted on A. J. I thought of the man with the W. G.
beard—the riderless horse and the bloody saddle—the deliberate
misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the
way—and now the missing manager and the report of bushrangers at
this end. But I simply don't pretend to have felt any personal
pity for a man whom I had never seen; that kind of pity's usually
cant; and besides, all mine was needed for myself.

"I was in as big a hole as ever. What the devil was I to do? I
doubt if I have sufficiently impressed upon you the absolute
necessity of my returning to Melbourne in funds. As a matter of
fact it was less the necessity than my own determination which I
can truthfully ascribe as absolute.

"Money I would have—but how—but how? Would this stranger be
open to persuasion—if I told him the truth? No; that would set
us all scouring the country for the rest of the night. Why
should I tell him? Suppose I left him to find out his mistake .
. . would anything be gained? Bunny, I give you my word that I
went in to dinner without a definite intention in my head, or one
premeditated lie upon my lips. I might do the decent, natural
thing, and explain matters without loss of time; on the other
hand, there was no hurry. I had not opened the letter, and could
always pretend I had not noticed the initials; meanwhile
something might turn up. I could wait a little and see. Tempted
I already was, but as yet the temptation was vague, and its very
vagueness made me tremble.

"'Bad news, I'm afraid?' said the manager, when at last I sat
down at his table.

"'A mere annoyance,' I answered—I do assure you—on the spur of
the moment and nothing else. But my lie was told; my position was
taken; from that moment onward there was no retreat. By
implication, without realizing what I was doing, I had already
declared myself W. F. Raffles. Therefore, W. F. Raffles I would
be, in that bank, for that night. And the devil teach me how to
use my lie!

Again he raised his glass to his lips—I had forgotten mine. His
cigarette-case caught the gas-light as he handed it to me. I
shook my head without taking my eyes from his.

"The devil played up," continued Raffles, with a laugh. "Before
I tasted my soup I had decided what to do. I had determined to
rob that bank instead of going to bed, and to be back in
Melbourne for breakfast if the doctor's mare could do it. I
would tell the old fellow that I had missed my way and been
bushed for hours, as I easily might have been, and had never got
to Yea at all. At Yea, on the other hand, the personation and
robbery would ever after be attributed to a member of the gang
that had waylaid and murdered the new manager with that very
object. You are acquiring some experience in such matters,
Bunny. I ask you, was there ever a better get-out? Last night's
was something like it, only never such a certainty. And I saw it
from the beginning—saw to the end before I had finished my soup!

"To increase my chances, the cashier, who also lived in the bank,
was away over the holidays, had actually gone down to Melbourne
to see us play; and the man who had taken my horse also waited at
table; for he and his wife were the only servants, and they slept
in a separate building. You may depend I ascertained this before
we had finished dinner. Indeed I was by way of asking too many
questions (the most oblique and delicate was that which elicited
my host's name, Ewbank), nor was I careful enough to conceal
their drift.

"'Do you know,' said this fellow Ewbank, who was one of the
downright sort, 'if it wasn't you, I should say you were in a
funk of robbers? Have you lost your nerve?'

"'I hope not,' said I, turning jolly hot, I can tell you;
'but—well, it is not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet
through a fellow!'

"'No?' said he, coolly. 'I should enjoy nothing better, myself;
besides, yours didn't go through.'

"'I wish it had!' I was smart enough to cry.

"'Amen!' said he.

"And I emptied my glass; actually I did not know whether my
wounded bank-robber was in prison, dead, or at large!

"But, now that I had had more than enough of it, Ewbank would
come back to the subject. He admitted that the staff was small;
but as for himself, he had a loaded revolver under his pillow all
night, under the counter all day, and he was only waiting for his
chance.

"'Under the counter eh?' I was ass enough to say.

"'Yes; so had you!'

"He was looking at me in surprise, and something told me that to
say 'of course—I had forgotten!' would have been quite fatal,
considering what I was supposed to have done. So I looked down
my nose and shook my head.

"'But the papers said you had!' he cried.

"'Not under the counter," said I.

"'But it's the regulation!'

"For the moment, Bunny, I felt stumped, though I trust I only
looked more superior than before, and I think I justified my
look.

"'The regulation!' I said at length, in the most offensive tone
at my command. 'Yes, the regulation would have us all dead men!
My dear sir, do you expect your bank robber to let you reach for
your gun in the place where he knows it's kept? I had mine in my
pocket, and I got my chance by retreating from the counter with
all visible reluctance.'

"Ewbank stared at me with open eyes and a five-barred forehead,
then down came his fist on the table.

"'By God! That was smart! Still,' he added, like a man who
would not be in the wrong, 'the papers said the other thing, you
know!'

"'Of course,' I rejoined, 'because they said what I told them.
You wouldn't have had me advertise the fact that I improved upon
the bank's regulations, would you?'

"So that cloud rolled over, and by Jove it was a cloud with a
golden lining. Not silver—real good Australian gold! For old
Ewbank hadn't quite appreciated me till then; he was a hard nut,
a much older man than myself, and I felt pretty sure he thought
me young for the place, and my supposed feat a fluke. But I
never saw a man change his mind more openly. He got out his best
brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking, and opened
a fresh box. He was a convivial-looking party, with a red
moustache, and a very humorous face (not unlike Tom Emmett's),
and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his
convivial flank. But he wasn't a Rosenthall, Bunny; he had a
treble-seamed, hand-sewn head, and could have drunk me under the
table ten times over.

"'All right,' I thought, 'you may go to bed sober, but you'll
sleep like a timber-yard!' And I threw half he gave me through
the open window, when he wasn't looking.

"But he was a good chap, Ewbank, and don't you imagine he was at
all intemperate. Convivial I called him, and I only wish he had
been something more. He did, however, become more and more
genial as the evening advanced, and I had not much difficulty in
getting him to show me round the bank at what was really an
unearthly hour for such a proceeding. It was when he went to
fetch the revolver before turning in. I kept him out of his bed
another twenty minutes, and I knew every inch of the business
premises before I shook hands with Ewbank in my room.

"You won't guess what I did with myself for the next hour. I
undressed and went to bed. The incessant strain involved in even
the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I
know; then how much more so when the impersonation is impromptu!
There's no getting your eye in; the next word may bowl you out;
it's batting in a bad light all through. I haven't told you of
half the tight places I was in during a conversation that ran
into hours and became dangerously intimate towards the end. You
can imagine them for yourself, and then picture me spread out on
my bed, getting my second wind for the big deed of the night.

"Once more I was in luck, for I had not been lying there long
before I heard my dear Ewbank snoring like a harmonium, and the
music never ceased for a moment; it was as loud as ever when I
crept out and closed my door behind me, as regular as ever when I
stopped to listen at his. And I have still to hear the concert
that I shall enjoy much more. The good fellow snored me out of
the bank, and was still snoring when I again stood and listened
under his open window.

"Why did I leave the bank first? To catch and saddle the mare
and tether her in a clump of trees close by: to have the means of
escape nice and handy before I went to work. I have often
wondered at the instinctive wisdom of the precaution;
unconsciously I was acting on what has been one of my guiding
principles ever since. Pains and patience were required: I had
to get my saddle without waking the man, and I was not used to
catching horses in a horse-paddock. Then I distrusted the poor
mare, and I went back to the stables for a hatful of oats, which
I left with her in the clump, hat and all. There was a dog, too,
to reckon with (our very worst enemy, Bunny); but I had been
'cute enough to make immense friends with him during the evening;
and he wagged his tail, not only when I came downstairs, but when
I reappeared at the back-door.

"As the soi-disant new manager, I had been able, in the most
ordinary course, to pump poor Ewbank about anything and
everything connected with the working of the bank, especially in
those twenty last invaluable minutes before turning in. And I
had made a very natural point of asking him where he kept, and
would recommend me to keep, the keys at night. Of course I
thought he would take them with him to his room; but no such
thing; he had a dodge worth two of that. What it was doesn't
much matter, but no outsider would have found those keys in a
month of Sundays.

"I, of course, had them in a few seconds, and in a few more I was
in the strong-room itself. I forgot to say that the moon had
risen and was letting quite a lot of light into the bank. I had,
however, brought a bit of candle with me from my room; and in the
strong-room, which was down some narrow stairs behind the counter
in the banking-chamber, I had no hesitation in lighting it.
There was no window down there, and, though I could no longer
hear old Ewbank snoring, I had not the slightest reason to
anticipate disturbance from that quarter. I did think of locking
myself in while I was at work, but, thank goodness, the iron door
had no keyhole on the inside.

"Well, there were heaps of gold in the safe, but I only took what
I needed and could comfortably carry, not much more than a couple
of hundred altogether. Not a note would I touch, and my native
caution came out also in the way I divided the sovereigns between
all my pockets, and packed them up so that I shouldn't be like
the old woman of Banbury Cross. Well, you think me too cautious
still, but I was insanely cautious then. And so it was that,
just as I was ready to go, whereas I might have been gone ten
minutes, there came a violent knocking at the outer door.

"Bunny, it was the outer door of the banking-chamber! My candle
must have been seen! And there I stood, with the grease running
hot over my fingers, in that brick grave of a strong-room!

"There was only one thing to be done. I must trust to the sound
sleeping of Ewbank upstairs, open the door myself, knock the
visitor down, or shoot him with the revolver I had been new chum
enough to buy before leaving Melbourne, and make a dash for that
clump of trees and the doctor's mare. My mind was made up in an
instant, and I was at the top of the strong-room stairs, the
knocking still continuing, when a second sound drove me back. It
was the sound of bare feet coming along a corridor.