E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (15 page)

"Where shall I find you when I get away?"

"I shall be down at Esher. I hope to catch the 9.55."

"But surely I can see you again this afternoon?" I cried in a
ferment, for his hand was on the door. "I'm not half coached up
yet! I know I shall make a mess of it!"

"Not you," he said again, "but
I
shall if I waste any more
time. I've got a deuce of a lot of rushing about to do yet. You
won't find me at my rooms. Why not come down to Esher yourself
by the last train? That's it—down you come with the latest
news! I'll tell old Debenham to expect you: he shall give us
both a bed. By Jove! he won't be able to do us too well if he's
got his picture."

"If!" I groaned as he nodded his adieu; and he left me limp with
apprehension, sick with fear, in a perfectly pitiable condition
of pure stage-fright.

For, after all, I had only to act my part; unless Raffles failed
where he never did fail, unless Raffles the neat and noiseless
was for once clumsy and inept, all I had to do was indeed to
"smile and smile and be a villain." I practiced that smile half
the afternoon. I rehearsed putative parts in hypothetical
conversations. I got up stories. I dipped in a book on
Queensland at the club. And at last it was 7.45, and I was
making my bow to a somewhat elderly man with a small bald head
and a retreating brow.

"So you're Mr. Raffles's friend?" said he, overhauling me rather
rudely with his light small eyes. "Seen anything of him?
Expected him early to show me something, but he's never come."

No more, evidently, had his telegram, and my troubles were
beginning early. I said I had not seen Raffles since one
o'clock, telling the truth with unction while I could; even as we
spoke there came a knock at the door; it was the telegram at
last, and, after reading it himself, the Queenslander handed it
to me.

"Called out of town!" he grumbled. "Sudden illness of near
relative! What near relatives has he got?"

I knew of none, and for an instant I quailed before the perils of
invention; then I replied that I had never met any of his people,
and again felt fortified by my veracity.

"Thought you were bosom pals?" said he, with (as I imagined) a
gleam of suspicion in his crafty little eyes.

"Only in town," said I. "I've never been to his place."

"Well," he growled, "I suppose it can't be helped. Don't know
why he couldn't come and have his dinner first. Like to see the
death-bed I'D go to without MY dinner; it's a full-skin billet,
if you ask me. Well, must just dine without him, and he'll have
to buy his pig in a poke after all. Mind touching that bell?
Suppose you know what he came to see me about? Sorry I sha'n't
see him again, for his own sake. I liked Raffles—took to him
amazingly. He's a cynic. Like cynics. One myself. Rank bad
form of his mother or his aunt, and I hope she will go and kick
the bucket."

I connect these specimens of his conversation, though they were
doubtless detached at the time, and interspersed with remarks of
mine here and there. They filled the interval until dinner was
served, and they gave me an impression of the man which his every
subsequent utterance confirmed. It was an impression which did
away with all remorse for my treacherous presence at his table.
He was that terrible type, the Silly Cynic, his aim a caustic
commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar
irreverence and unintelligent scorn. Ill-bred and ill-informed,
he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in
land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he
chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less astute
speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much
compunction for my behavior by the Hon. J. M. Craggs, M.L.C.

But never shall I forget the private agonies of the situation,
the listening to my host with one ear and for Raffles with the
other! Once I heard him—though the rooms were not divided by
the old-fashioned folding-doors, and though the door that did
divide them was not only shut but richly curtained, I could have
sworn I heard him once. I spilt my wine and laughed at the top
of my voice at some coarse sally of my host's. And I heard
nothing more, though my ears were on the strain. But later, to my
horror, when the waiter had finally withdrawn, Craggs himself
sprang up and rushed to his bedroom without a word. I sat like
stone till he returned.

"Thought I heard a door go," he said. "Must have been mistaken .
. . imagination . . . gave me quite a turn. Raffles tell you
priceless treasure I got in there?"

It was the picture at last; up to this point I had kept him to
Queensland and the making of his pile. I tried to get him back
there now, but in vain. He was reminded of his great ill-gotten
possession. I said that Raffles had just mentioned it, and that
set him off. With the confidential garrulity of a man who has
dined too well, he plunged into his darling topic, and I looked
past him at the clock. It was only a quarter to ten.

In common decency I could not go yet. So there I sat (we were
still at port) and learnt what had originally fired my host's
ambition to possess what he was pleased to call a "real, genuine,
twin-screw, double-funnelled, copper-bottomed Old Master"; it was
to "go one better" than some rival legislator of pictorial
proclivities. But even an epitome of his monologue would be so
much weariness; suffice it that it ended inevitably in the
invitation I had dreaded all the evening.

"But you must see it. Next room. This way."

"Isn't it packed up?" I inquired hastily.

"Lock and key. That's all."

"Pray don't trouble," I urged.

"Trouble be hanged!" said he. "Come along."

And all at once I saw that to resist him further would be to heap
suspicion upon myself against the moment of impending discovery.
I therefore followed him into his bedroom without further
protest, and suffered him first to show me the iron map-case
which stood in one corner; he took a crafty pride in this
receptacle, and I thought he would never cease descanting on its
innocent appearance and its Chubb's lock. It seemed an
interminable age before the key was in the latter. Then the ward
clicked, and my pulse stood still.

"By Jove!" I cried next instant.

The canvas was in its place among the maps!

"Thought it would knock you," said Craggs, drawing it out and
unrolling it for my benefit. 'Grand thing, ain't it? Wouldn't
think it had been painted two hundred and thirty years? It has,
though, MY word! Old Johnson's face will be a treat when he sees
it; won't go bragging about HIS pictures much more. Why, this
one's worth all the pictures in Colony o' Queensland put
together. Worth fifty thousand pounds, my boy—and I got it for
five!"

He dug me in the ribs, and seemed in the mood for further
confidences. My appearance checked him, and he rubbed his hands.

"If you take it like that," he chuckled, "how will old Johnson
take it? Go out and hang himself to his own picture-rods, I
hope!"

Heaven knows what I contrived to say at last. Struck speechless
first by my relief, I continued silent from a very different
cause. A new tangle of emotions tied my tongue. Raffles had
failed—Raffles had failed! Could I not succeed? Was it too
late? Was there no way?

"So long," he said, taking a last look at the canvas before he
rolled it up—"so long till we get to Brisbane."

The flutter I was in as he closed the case!

"For the last time," he went on, as his keys jingled back into
his pocket. "It goes straight into the strong-room on board."

For the last time! If I could but send him out to Australia with
only its legitimate contents in his precious map-case! If I
could but succeed where Raffles had failed!

We returned to the other room. I have no notion how long he
talked, or what about. Whiskey and soda-water became the order
of the hour. I scarcely touched it, but he drank copiously, and
before eleven I left him incoherent. And the last train for Esher
was the 11.50 out of Waterloo.

I took a hansom to my rooms. I was back at the hotel in thirteen
minutes. I walked upstairs. The corridor was empty; I stood an
instant on the sitting-room threshold, heard a snore within, and
admitted myself softly with my gentleman's own key, which it had
been a very simple matter to take away with me.

Craggs never moved; he was stretched on the sofa fast asleep.
But not fast enough for me. I saturated my handkerchief with the
chloroform I had brought, and laid it gently over his mouth. Two
or three stertorous breaths, and the man was a log.

I removed the handkerchief; I extracted the keys from his pocket.

In less than five minutes I put them back, after winding the
picture about my body beneath my Inverness cape. I took some
whiskey and soda-water before I went.

The train was easily caught—so easily that I trembled for ten
minutes in my first-class smoking carriage—in terror of every
footstep on the platform, in unreasonable terror till the end.
Then at last I sat back and lit a cigarette, and the lights of
Waterloo reeled out behind.

Some men were returning from the theatre. I can recall their
conversation even now. They were disappointed with the piece
they had seen. It was one of the later Savoy operas, and they
spoke wistfully of the days of "Pinafore" and "Patience." One of
them hummed a stave, and there was an argument as to whether the
air was out of "Patience" or the "Mikado." They all got out at
Surbiton, and I was alone with my triumph for a few intoxicating
minutes. To think that I had succeeded where Raffles had failed!

Of all our adventures this was the first in which I had played a
commanding part; and, of them all, this was infinitely the least
discreditable. It left me without a conscientious qualm; I had
but robbed a robber, when all was said. And I had done it
myself, single-handed—ipse egomet!

I pictured Raffles, his surprise, his delight. He would think a
little more of me in future. And that future, it should be
different. We had two thousand pounds apiece—surely enough to
start afresh as honest men—and all through me!

In a glow I sprang out at Esher, and took the one belated cab
that was waiting under the bridge. In a perfect fever I beheld
Broom Hall, with the lower story still lit up, and saw the front
door open as I climbed the steps.

"Thought it was you," said Raffles cheerily. "It's all right.
There's a bed for you. Sir Bernard's sitting up to shake your
hand."

His good spirits disappointed me. But I knew the man: he was one
of those who wear their brightest smile in the blackest hour. I
knew him too well by this time to be deceived.

"I've got it!" I cried in his ear. "I've got it!"

"Got what?" he asked me, stepping back.

"The picture!"

"WHAT?"

"The picture. He showed it me. You had to go without it; I saw
that. So I determined to have it. And here it is."

"Let's see," said Raffles grimly.

I threw off my cape and unwound the canvas from about my body.
While I was doing so an untidy old gentleman made his appearance
in the hall, and stood looking on with raised eyebrows.

"Looks pretty fresh for an Old Master, doesn't she?" said
Raffles.

His tone was strange. I could only suppose that he was jealous
of my success.

"So Craggs said. I hardly looked at it myself."

"Well, look now—look closely. By Jove, I must have faked her
better than I thought!"

"It's a copy!" I cried.

"It's THE copy," he answered. "It's the copy I've been tearing
all over the country to procure. It's the copy I faked back and
front, so that, on your own showing, it imposed upon Craggs, and
might have made him happy for life. And you go and rob him of
that!"

I could not speak.

"How did you manage it?" inquired Sir Bernard Debenham.

"Have you killed him?" asked Raffles sardonically.

I did not look at him; I turned to Sir Bernard Debenham, and to
him I told my story, hoarsely, excitedly, for it was all that I
could do to keep from breaking down. But as I spoke I became
calmer, and I finished in mere bitterness, with the remark that
another time Raffles might tell me what he meant to do.

"Another time!" he cried instantly. "My dear Bunny, you speak as
though we were going to turn burglars for a living!"

"I trust you won't," said Sir Bernard, smiling, "for you are
certainly two very daring young men. Let us hope our friend from
Queensland will do as he said, and not open his map-case till he
gets back there. He will find my check awaiting him, and I shall
be very much surprised if he troubles any of us again."

Raffles and I did not speak till I was in the room which had been
prepared for me. Nor was I anxious to do so then. But he
followed me and took my hand.

"Bunny," said he, "don't you be hard on a fellow! I was in the
deuce of a hurry, and didn't know that I should ever get what I
wanted in time, and that's a fact. But it serves me right that
you should have gone and undone one of the best things I ever
did. As for YOUR handiwork, old chap, you won't mind my saying
that I didn't think you had it in you. In future—"

"Don't talk to me about the future!" I cried. "I hate the whole
thing! I'm going to chuck it up!"

"So am I," said Raffles, "when I've made my pile."

I had turned into Piccadilly, one thick evening in the following
November, when my guilty heart stood still at the sudden grip of
a hand upon my arm. I thought—I was always thinking—that my
inevitable hour was come at last. It was only Raffles, however,
who stood smiling at me through the fog.

"Well met!" said he. "I've been looking for you at the club."