E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (18 page)

"And I could ha' sworn it was the same gent when he give me the
key!"

It was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background;
on him turned Mackenzie, white to the lips.

"You'd think anything, some of you damned policemen," said he.
"What's your number, you rotter? P 34? You'll be hearing more
of this, Mr. P 34! If that gentleman was dead—instead of coming
to himself while I'm talking—do you know what you'd be? Guilty
of his manslaughter, you stuck pig in buttons! Do you know who
you've let slip, butter-fingers? Crawshay—no less—him that
broke Dartmoor yesterday. By the God that made ye, P 34, if I
lose him I'll hound ye from the forrce!"

Working face—shaking fist—a calm man on fire. It was a new
side of Mackenzie, and one to mark and to digest. Next moment he
had flounced from our midst.

"Difficult thing to break your own head," said Raffles later;
"infinitely easier to cut your own throat. Chloroform's another
matter; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a
nicety. So you thought I was really gone? Poor old Bunny! But
I hope Mackenzie saw your face?"

"He did," said I. I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have
seen, however.

"That's all right. I wouldn't have had him miss it for worlds;
and you mustn't think me a brute, old boy, for I fear that man,
and, know, we sink or swim together."

"And now we sink or swim with Crawshay, too," said I dolefully.

"Not we!" said Raffles with conviction. "Old Crawshay's a true
sportsman, and he'll do by us as we've done by him; besides, this
makes us quits; and I don't think, Bunny, that we'll take on the
professors again!"

When the King of the Cannibal Islands made faces at Queen
Victoria, and a European monarch set the cables tingling with his
compliments on the exploit, the indignation in England was not
less than the surprise, for the thing was not so common as it has
since become. But when it transpired that a gift of peculiar
significance was to follow the congratulations, to give them
weight, the inference prevailed that the white potentate and the
black had taken simultaneous leave of their fourteen senses. For
the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled, picked aforetime by
British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and presented by
British royalty to the sovereign who seized this opportunity of
restoring it to its original possessor.

The incident would have been a godsend to the Press a few weeks
later. Even in June there were leaders, letters, large
headlines, leaded type; the Daily Chronicle devoting half its
literary page to a charming drawing of the island capital which
the new Pall Mall, in a leading article headed by a pun, advised
the Government to blow to flinders. I was myself driving a poor
but not dishonest quill at the time, and the topic of the hour
goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better place than
anything I had yet turned out. I had let my flat in town, and
taken inexpensive quarters at Thames Ditton, on the plea of a
disinterested passion for the river.

"First-rate, old boy!" said Raffles (who must needs come and see
me there), lying back in the boat while I sculled and steered.
"I suppose they pay you pretty well for these, eh?"

"Not a penny."

"Nonsense, Bunny! I thought they paid so well? Give them time,
and you'll get your check."

"Oh, no, I sha'n't," said I gloomily. "I've got to be content
with the honor of getting in; the editor wrote to say so, in so
many words," I added. But I gave the gentleman his distinguished
name.

"You don't mean to say you've written for payment already?"

No; it was the last thing I had intended to admit. But I had
done it. The murder was out; there was no sense in further
concealment. I had written for my money because I really needed
it; if he must know, I was cursedly hard up. Raffles nodded as
though he knew already. I warmed to my woes. It was no easy
matter to keep your end up as a raw freelance of letters; for my
part, I was afraid I wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for
success. I suffered from a persistent ineffectual feeling after
style. Verse I could manage; but it did not pay. To personal
paragraphs and the baser journalism I could not and I would not
stoop.

Raffles nodded again, this time with a smile that stayed in his
eyes as he leant back watching me. I knew that he was thinking of
other things I had stooped to, and I thought I knew what he was
going to say. He had said it before so often; he was sure to say
it again. I had my answer ready, but evidently he was tired of
asking the same question. His lids fell, he took up the paper he
had dropped, and I sculled the length of the old red wall of
Hampton Court before he spoke again.

"And they gave you nothing for these! My dear Bunny, they're
capital, not only qua verses but for crystallizing your subject
and putting it in a nutshell. Certainly you've taught ME more
about it than I knew before. But is it really worth fifty
thousand pounds—a single pearl?"

"A hundred, I believe; but that wouldn't scan."

"A hundred thousand pounds!" said Raffles, with his eyes shut.
And again I made certain what was coming, but again I was
mistaken. "If it's worth all that," he cried at last, "there
would be no getting rid of it at all; it's not like a diamond
that you can subdivide. But I beg your pardon, Bunny. I was
forgetting!"

And we said no more about the emperor's gift; for pride thrives
on an empty pocket, and no privation would have drawn from me the
proposal which I had expected Raffles to make. My expectation
had been half a hope, though I only knew it now. But neither did
we touch again on what Raffles professed to have forgotten—my
"apostasy," my "lapse into virtue," as he had been pleased to
call it. We were both a little silent, a little constrained,
each preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was months since we
had met, and, as I saw him off towards eleven o'clock that Sunday
night, I fancied it was for more months that we were saying
good-by.

But as we waited for the train I saw those clear eyes peering at
me under the station lamps, and when I met their glance Raffles
shook his head.

"You don't look well on it, Bunny," said he. "I never did believe
in this Thames Valley. You want a change of air."

I wished I might get it.

"What you really want is a sea voyage."

"And a winter at St. Moritz, or do you recommend Cannes or Cairo?
It's all very well, A. J., but you forget what I told you about
my funds."

"I forget nothing. I merely don't want to hurt your feelings.
But, look here, a sea voyage you shall have. I want a change
myself, and you shall come with me as my guest. We'll spend July
in the Mediterranean."

"But you're playing cricket—"

"Hang the cricket!"

"Well, if I thought you meant it—"

"Of course I mean it. Will you come?"

"Like a shot—if you go."

And I shook his hand, and waved mine in farewell, with the
perfectly good-humored conviction that I should hear no more of
the matter. It was a passing thought, no more, no less. I soon
wished it were more; that week found me wishing myself out of
England for good and all. I was making nothing. I could but
subsist on the difference between the rent I paid for my flat and
the rent at which I had sublet it, furnished, for the season.
And the season was near its end, and creditors awaited me in
town. Was it possible to be entirely honest? I had run no bills
when I had money in my pocket, and the more downright dishonesty
seemed to me the less ignoble.

But from Raffles, of course, I heard nothing more; a week went
by, and half another week; then, late on the second Wednesday
night, I found a telegram from him at my lodgings, after seeking
him vainly in town, and dining with desperation at the solitary
club to which I still belonged.

"Arrange to leave Waterloo by North German Lloyd special," he
wired, "9.25 A. M. Monday next will meet you Southampton aboard
Uhlan with tickets am writing."

And write he did, a light-hearted letter enough, but full of
serious solicitude for me and for my health and prospects; a
letter almost touching in the light of our past relations, in the
twilight of their complete rupture. He said that he had booked
two berths to Naples, that we were bound for Capri, which was
clearly the island of the Lotos-eaters, that we would bask there
together, "and for a while forget." It was a charming letter. I
had never seen Italy; the privilege of initiation should be his.
No mistake was greater than to deem it an impossible country for
the summer. The Bay of Naples was never so divine, and he wrote
of "faery lands forlorn," as though the poetry sprang unbidden to
his pen. To come back to earth and prose, I might think it
unpatriotic of him to choose a German boat, but on no other line
did you receive such attention and accommodation for your money.
There was a hint of better reasons. Raffles wrote, as he had
telegraphed, from Bremen; and I gathered that the personal use of
some little influence with the authorities there had resulted in
a material reduction in our fares.

Imagine my excitement and delight! I managed to pay what I owed
at Thames Ditton, to squeeze a small editor for a very small
check, and my tailors for one more flannel suit. I remember that
I broke my last sovereign to get a box of Sullivan's cigarettes
for Raffles to smoke on the voyage. But my heart was as light as
my purse on the Monday morning, the fairest morning of an unfair
summer, when the special whirled me through the sunshine to the
sea.

A tender awaited us at Southampton. Raffles was not on board,
nor did I really look for him till we reached the liner's side.
And then I looked in vain. His face was not among the many that
fringed the rail; his hand was not of the few that waved to
friends. I climbed aboard in a sudden heaviness. I had no
ticket, nor the money to pay for one. I did not even know the
number of my room. My heart was in my mouth as I waylaid a
steward and asked if a Mr. Raffles was on board. Thank
heaven—he was! But where? The man did not know, was plainly on
some other errand, and a-hunting I must go. But there was no
sign of him on the promenade deck, and none below in the saloon;
the smoking-room was empty but for a little German with a red
moustache twisted into his eyes; nor was Raffles in his own
cabin, whither I inquired my way in desperation, but where the
sight of his own name on the baggage was certainly a further
reassurance. Why he himself kept in the background, however, I
could not conceive, and only sinister reasons would suggest
themselves in explanation.

"So there you are! I've been looking for you all over the ship!"

Despite the graven prohibition, I had tried the bridge as a last
resort; and there, indeed, was A. J. Raffles, seated on a
skylight, and leaning over one of the officers' long chairs, in
which reclined a girl in a white drill coat and skirt—a slip of
a girl with a pale skin, dark hair, and rather remarkable eyes.
So much I noted as he rose and quickly turned; thereupon I could
think of nothing but the swift grimace which preceded a start of
well-feigned astonishment.

"Why—BUNNY?" cried Raffles. "Where have YOU sprung from?"

I stammered something as he pinched my hand.

"And are you coming in this ship? And to Naples, too? Well,
upon my word! Miss Werner, may I introduce him?"

And he did so without a blush, describing me as an old
schoolfellow whom he had not seen for months, with wilful
circumstance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with
confusion, suspicion, and revolt. I felt myself blushing for us
both, and I did not care. My address utterly deserted me, and I
made no effort to recover it, to carry the thing off. All I
would do was to mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my
mouth, and that I doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace.

"So you saw my name in the list of passengers and came in search
of me? Good old Bunny; I say, though, I wish you'd share my
cabin. I've got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they
wouldn't promise to keep me by myself. We ought to see about it
before they shove in some alien. In any case we shall have to
get out of this."

For a quartermaster had entered the wheelhouse, and even while we
had been speaking the pilot had taken possession of the bridge;
as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and
shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to Miss Werner on the promenade
deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and our
voyage had begun.

It did not begin pleasantly between Raffles and me. On deck he
had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though
forceful joviality; in his cabin the gloves were off.

"You idiot," he snarled, "you've given me away again!"

"How have I given you away?"

I ignored the separate insult in his last word.

"How? I should have thought any clod could see that I meant us
to meet by chance!"

"After taking both tickets yourself?"

"They knew nothing about that on board; besides, I hadn't decided
when I took the tickets."

"Then you should have let me know when you did decide. You lay
your plans, and never say a word, and expect me to tumble to them
by light of nature. How was I to know you had anything on?"

I had turned the tables with some effect. Raffles almost hung
his head.

"The fact is, Bunny, I didn't mean you to know. You—you've grown
such a pious rabbit in your old age!"

My nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things
went farther, but I had much to forgive him still.

"If you were afraid of writing," I pursued, "it was your business
to give me the tip the moment I set foot on board. I would have
taken it all right. I am not so virtuous as all that."