E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 01 (19 page)

Was it my imagination, or did Raffles look slightly ashamed? If
so, it was for the first and last time in all the years I knew
him; nor can I swear to it even now.

"That," said he, "was the very thing I meant to do—to lie in
wait in my room and get you as you passed. But—"

"You were better engaged?"

"Say otherwise."

"The charming Miss Werner?"

"She is quite charming."

"Most Australian girls are," said I.

"How did you know she was one?" he cried.

"I heard her speak."

"Brute!" said Raffles, laughing; "she has no more twang than you
have. Her people are German, she has been to school in Dresden,
and is on her way out alone."

"Money?" I inquired.

"Confound you!" he said, and, though he was laughing, I thought
it was a point at which the subject might be changed.

"Well," I said, "it wasn't for Miss Werner you wanted us to play
strangers, was it? You have some deeper game than that, eh?"

"I suppose I have."

"Then hadn't you better tell me what it is?"

Raffles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny that I knew so
well; the very familiarity of it, after all these months, set me
smiling in a way that might have reassured him; for dimly already
I divined his enterprise.

"It won't send you off in the pilot's boat, Bunny?"

"Not quite."

"Then—you remember the pearl you wrote the—"

I did not wait for him to finish his sentence.

"You've got it!" I cried, my face on fire, for I caught sight of
it that moment in the stateroom mirror.

Raffles seemed taken aback.

"Not yet," said he; "but I mean to have it before we get to
Naples."

"Is it on board?"

"Yes."

"But how—where—who's got it?"

"A little German officer, a whipper-snapper with perpendicular
mustaches."

"I saw him in the smoke-room."

"That's the chap; he's always there. Herr Captain Wilhelm von
Heumann, if you look in the list. Well, he's the special envoy
of the emperor, and he's taking the pearl out with him."

"You found this out in Bremen?"

"No, in Berlin, from a newspaper man I know there. I'm ashamed
to tell you, Bunny, that I went there on purpose!"

I burst out laughing.

"You needn't be ashamed. You are doing the very thing I was
rather hoping you were going to propose the other day on the
river."

"You were HOPING it?" said Raffles, with his eyes wide open.
Indeed, it was his turn to show surprise, and mine to be much
more ashamed than I felt.

"Yes," I answered, "I was quite keen on the idea, but I wasn't
going to propose it."

"Yet you would have listened to me the other day?"

Certainly I would, and I told him so without reserve; not
brazenly, you understand; not even now with the gusto of a man
who savors such an adventure for its own sake, but doggedly,
defiantly, through my teeth, as one who had tried to live
honestly and failed. And, while I was about it, I told him much
more. Eloquently enough, I daresay, I gave him chapter and verse
of my hopeless struggle, my inevitable defeat; for hopeless and
inevitable they were to a man with my record, even though that
record was written only in one's own soul. It was the old story
of the thief trying to turn honest man; the thing was against
nature, and there was an end of it.

Raffles entirely disagreed with me. He shook his head over my
conventional view. Human nature was a board of checkers; why not
reconcile one's self to alternate black and white? Why desire to
be all one thing or all the other, like our forefathers on the
stage or in the old-fashioned fiction? For his part, he enjoyed
himself on all squares of the board, and liked the light the
better for the shade. My conclusion he considered absurd.

"But you err in good company, Bunny, for all the cheap moralists
who preach the same twaddle: old Virgil was the first and worst
offender of you all. I back myself to climb out of Avernus any
day I like, and sooner or later I shall climb out for good. I
suppose I can't very well turn myself into a Limited Liability
Company. But I could retire and settle down and live blamelessly
ever after. I'm not sure that it couldn't be done on this pearl
alone!"

"Then you don't still think it too remarkable to sell?"

"We might take a fishery and haul it up with smaller fry. It
would come after months of ill luck, just as we were going to
sell the schooner; by Jove, it would be the talk of the Pacific!"

"Well, we've got to get it first. Is this von What's-his-name a
formidable cuss?"

"More so than he looks; and he has the cheek of the devil!"

As he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the open
state-room door, and I caught a glimpse of an upturned moustache
beyond.

"But is he the chap we have to deal with? Won't the pearl be in
the purser's keeping?"

Raffles stood at the door, frowning out upon the Solent, but for
an instant he turned to me with a sniff.

"My good fellow, do you suppose the whole ship's company knows
there's a gem like that aboard? You said that it was worth a
hundred thousand pounds; in Berlin they say it's priceless. I
doubt if the skipper himself knows that von Heumann has it on
him."

"And he has?"

"Must have."

"Then we have only him to deal with?"

He answered me without a word. Something white was fluttering
past once more, and Raffles, stepping forth, made the promenaders
three.

I do not ask to set foot aboard a finer steamship than the Uhlan
of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, to meet a kindlier gentleman than her
commander, or better fellows than his officers. This much at
least let me have the grace to admit. I hated the voyage. It
was no fault of anybody connected with the ship; it was no fault
of the weather, which was monotonously ideal. Not even in my own
heart did the reason reside; conscience and I were divorced at
last, and the decree made absolute. With my scruples had fled all
fear, and I was ready to revel between bright skies and sparkling
sea with the light-hearted detachment of Raffles himself. It was
Raffles himself who prevented me, but not Raffles alone. It was
Raffles and that Colonial minx on her way home from school.

What he could see in her—but that begs the question. Of course
he saw no more than I did, but to annoy me, or perhaps to punish
me for my long defection, he must turn his back on me and devote
himself to this chit from Southampton to the Mediterranean. They
were always together. It was too absurd. After breakfast they
would begin, and go on until eleven or twelve at night; there was
no intervening hour at which you might not hear her nasal laugh,
or his quiet voice talking soft nonsense into her ear. Of course
it was nonsense! Is it conceivable that a man like Raffles, with
his knowledge of the world, and his experience of women (a side
of his character upon which I have purposely never touched, for
it deserves another volume); is it credible, I ask, that such a
man could find anything but nonsense to talk by the day together
to a giddy young schoolgirl? I would not be unfair for the world.

I think I have admitted that the young person had points. Her
eyes, I suppose, were really fine, and certainly the shape of the
little brown face was charming, so far as mere contour can charm.

I admit also more audacity than I cared about, with enviable
health, mettle, and vitality. I may not have occasion to report
any of this young lady's speeches (they would scarcely bear it),
and am therefore the more anxious to describe her without
injustice. I confess to some little prejudice against her. I
resented her success with Raffles, of whom, in consequence, I saw
less and less each day. It is a mean thing to have to confess,
but there must have been something not unlike jealousy rankling
within me.

Jealousy there was in another quarter—crude, rampant,
undignified jealousy. Captain von Heumann would twirl his
mustaches into twin spires, shoot his white cuffs over his rings,
and stare at me insolently through his rimless eyeglasses; we
ought to have consoled each other, but we never exchanged a
syllable. The captain had a murderous scar across one of his
cheeks, a present from Heidelberg, and I used to think how he
must long to have Raffles there to serve the same. It was not as
though von Heumann never had his innings. Raffles let him go in
several times a day, for the malicious pleasure of bowling him
out as he was "getting set"; those were his words when I taxed
him disingenuously with obnoxious conduct towards a German on a
German boat.

"You'll make yourself disliked on board!"

"By von Heumann merely."

"But is that wise when he's the man we've got to diddle?"

"The wisest thing I ever did. To have chummed up with him would
have been fatal—the common dodge."

I was consoled, encouraged, almost content. I had feared Raffles
was neglecting things, and I told him so in a burst. Here we
were near Gibraltar, and not a word since the Solent. He shook
his head with a smile.

"Plenty of time, Bunny, plenty of time. We can do nothing before
we get to Genoa, and that won't be till Sunday night. The voyage
is still young, and so are we; let's make the most of things
while we can."

It was after dinner on the promenade deck, and as Raffles spoke
he glanced sharply fore and aft, leaving me next moment with a
step full of purpose. I retired to the smoking-room, to smoke
and read in a corner, and to watch von Heumann, who very soon
came to drink beer and to sulk in another.

Few travellers tempt the Red Sea at midsummer; the Uhlan was very
empty indeed. She had, however, but a limited supply of cabins
on the promenade deck, and there was just that excuse for my
sharing Raffles's room. I could have had one to myself
downstairs, but I must be up above. Raffles had insisted that I
should insist on the point. So we were together, I think, without
suspicion, though also without any object that I could see.

On the Sunday afternoon I was asleep in my berth, the lower one,
when the curtains were shaken by Raffles, who was in his
shirt-sleeves on the settee.

"Achilles sulking in his bunk!"

"What else is there to do?" I asked him as I stretched and
yawned. I noted, however, the good-humor of his tone, and did my
best to catch it.

"I have found something else, Bunny."

"I daresay!"

"You misunderstand me. The whipper-snapper's making his century
this afternoon. I've had other fish to fry."

I swung my legs over the side of my berth and sat forward, as he
was sitting, all attention. The inner door, a grating, was shut
and bolted, and curtained like the open porthole.

"We shall be at Genoa before sunset," continued Raffles. "It's
the place where the deed's got to be done."

"So you still mean to do it?"

"Did I ever say I didn't?"

"You have said so little either way."

"Advisedly so, my dear Bunny; why spoil a pleasure trip by
talking unnecessary shop? But now the time has come. It must be
done at Genoa or not at all."

"On land?"

"No, on board, to-morrow night. To-night would do, but to-morrow
is better, in case of mishap. If we were forced to use violence
we could get away by the earliest train, and nothing be known
till the ship was sailing and von Heumann found dead or
drugged—"

"Not dead!" I exclaimed.

"Of course not," assented Raffles, "or there would be no need for
us to bolt; but if we should have to bolt, Tuesday morning is our
time, when this ship has got to sail, whatever happens. But I
don't anticipate any violence. Violence is a confession of
terrible incompetence. In all these years how many blows have
you known me to strike? Not one, I believe; but I have been
quite ready to kill my man every time, if the worst came to the
worst."

I asked him how he proposed to enter von Heumann's state-room
unobserved, and even through the curtained gloom of ours his face
lighted up.

"Climb into my bunk, Bunny, and you shall see."

I did so, but could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and
tapped the ventilator, a sort of trapdoor in the wall above his
bed, some eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened
outwards into the ventilating shaft.

"That," said he, "is our door to fortune. Open it if you like;
you won't see much, because it doesn't open far; but loosening a
couple of screws will set that all right. The shaft, as you may
see, is more or less bottomless; you pass under it whenever you
go to your bath, and the top is a skylight on the bridge. That's
why this thing has to be done while we're at Genoa, because they
keep no watch on the bridge in port. The ventilator opposite
ours is von Heumann's. It again will only mean a couple of
screws, and there's a beam to stand on while you work."

"But if anybody should look up from below?"

"It's extremely unlikely that anybody will be astir below, so
unlikely that we can afford to chance it. No, I can't have you
there to make sure. The great point is that neither of us should
be seen from the time we turn in. A couple of ship's boys do
sentry-go on these decks, and they shall be our witnesses; by
Jove, it'll be the biggest mystery that ever was made!"

"If von Heumann doesn't resist."

"Resist! He won't get the chance. He drinks too much beer to
sleep light, and nothing is so easy as to chloroform a heavy
sleeper; you've even done it yourself on an occasion of which
it's perhaps unfair to remind you. Von Heumann will be past
sensation almost as soon as I get my hand through his ventilator.
I shall crawl in over his body, Bunny, my boy!"

"And I?"

"You will hand me what I want and hold the fort in case of
accidents, and generally lend me the moral support you've made me
require. It's a luxury, Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult
to do without it after you turned pi!"