E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (10 page)

BOOK: E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02
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"Una—quistione—di—vita."

"Or mors, eh?" I shouted, and up went the trap-door over our
heads.

"Avanti, avanti, avanti!" cried the Italian, turning up his
one-eyed face.

"Hell-to-leather," I translated, "and double fare if you do it
by twelve o'clock."

But in the streets of London how is one to know the time? In
the Earl's Court Road it had not been half-past, and at Barker's
in High Street it was but a minute later. A long half-mile a
minute, that was going like the wind, and indeed we had done
much of it at a gallop. But the next hundred yards took us five
minutes by the next clock, and which was one to believe? I fell
back upon my own old watch (it was my own), which made it
eighteen minutes to the hour as we swung across the Serpentine
bridge, and by the quarter we were in the Bayswater Road—not up
for once.

"Presto, presto," my pale guide murmured. "Affretatevi—avanti!"

"Ten bob if you do it," I cried through the trap, without the
slightest notion of what we were to do. But it was "una
quistione di vita," and "vostro amico" must and could only be my
miserable Raffles.

What a very godsend is the perfect hansom to the man or woman in
a hurry! It had been our great good fortune to jump into a
perfect hansom; there was no choice, we had to take the first
upon the rank, but it must have deserved its place with the rest
nowhere. New tires, superb springs, a horse in a thousand, and
a driver up to every trick of his trade! In and out we went
like a fast half-back at the Rugby game, yet where the traffic
was thinnest, there were we. And how he knew his way! At the
Marble Arch he slipped out of the main stream, and so into
Wigmore Street, then up and in and out and on until I saw the
gold tips of the Museum palisade gleaming between the horse's
ears in the sun. Plop, plop, plop; ting, ling, ling; bell and
horse-shoes, horse-shoes and bell, until the colossal figure of
C. J. Fox in a grimy toga spelt Bloomsbury Square with my watch
still wanting three minutes to the hour.

"What number?" cried the good fellow over-head.

"Trentotto, trentotto," said my guide, but he was looking to the
right, and I bundled him out to show the house on foot. I had
not half-a-sovereign after all, but I flung our dear driver a
whole one instead, and only wish that it had been a hundred.

Already the Italian had his latch-key in the door of 38, and in
another moment we were rushing up the narrow stairs of as dingy
a London house as prejudiced countryman can conceive. It was
panelled, but it was dark and evil-smelling, and how we should
have found our way even to the stairs but for an unwholesome jet
of yellow gas in the hall, I cannot myself imagine. However,
up we went pell-mell, to the right-about on the half-landing,
and so like a whirlwind into the drawing-room a few steps
higher. There the gas was also burning behind closed shutters,
and the scene is photographed upon my brain, though I cannot
have looked upon it for a whole instant as I sprang in at my
leader's heels.

This room also was panelled, and in the middle of the wall on
our left, his hands lashed to a ring-bolt high above his head,
his toes barely touching the floor, his neck pinioned by a strap
passing through smaller ring-bolts under either ear, and every
inch of him secured on the same principle, stood, or rather
hung, all that was left of Raffles, for at the first glance I
believed him dead. A black ruler gagged him, the ends lashed
behind his neck, the blood upon it caked to bronze in the
gaslight. And in front of him, ticking like a sledge-hammer,
its only hand upon the stroke of twelve, stood a simple,
old-fashioned, grandfather's clock—but not for half an instant
longer—only until my guide could hurl himself upon it and send
the whole thing crashing into the corner. An ear-splitting
report accompanied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the
fallen clock, and I saw a revolver smoking in a vice screwed
below the dial, an arrangement of wires sprouting from the dial
itself, and the single hand at once at its zenith and in contact
with these.

"Tumble to it, Bunny?"

He was alive; these were his first words; the Italian had the
blood-caked ruler in his hand, and with his knife was reaching
up to cut the thongs that lashed the hands. He was not tall
enough, I seized him and lifted him up, then fell to work with
my own knife upon the straps. And Raffles smiled faintly upon
us through his blood-stains.

"I want you to tumble to it," he whispered; "the neatest thing
in revenge I ever knew, and another minute would have fixed it.
I've been waiting for it twelve hours, watching the clock
round, death at the end of the lap! Electric connection. Simple
enough. Hour-hand only—O Lord!"

We had cut the last strap. He could not stand. We supported him
between us to a horsehair sofa, for the room was furnished, and
I begged him not to speak, while his one-eyed deliverer was at
the door before Raffles recalled him with a sharp word in
Italian.

"He wants to get me a drink, but that can wait," said he, in
firmer voice; "I shall enjoy it the more when I've told you what
happened. Don't let him go, Bunny; put your back against the
door. He's a decent soul, and it's lucky for me I got a word
with him before they trussed me up. I've promised to set him up
in life, and I will, but I don't want him out of my sight for
the moment."

"If you squared him last night," I exclaimed, "why the blazes
didn't he come to me till the eleventh hour?"

"Ah, I knew he'd have to cut it fine though I hoped not quite
so fine as all that. But all's well that ends well, and I
declare I don't feel so much the worse. I shall be sore about
the gills for a bit—and what do you think?"

He pointed to the long black ruler with the bronze stain; it lay
upon the floor; he held out his hand for it, and I gave it to
him.

"The same one I gagged him with," said Raffles, with his still
ghastly smile; "he was a bit of an artist, old Corbucci, after
all!"

"Now let's hear how you fell into his clutches," said I,
briskly, for I was as anxious to hear as he seemed to tell me,
only for my part I could have waited until we were safe in the
flat.

"I do want to get it off my chest, Bunny," old Raffles admitted,
"and yet I hardly can tell you after all. I followed your
friend with the velvet eyes. I followed him all the way here.
Of course I came up to have a good look at the house when he'd
let himself in, and damme if he hadn't left the door ajar! Who
could resist that? I had pushed it half open and had just one
foot on the mat when I got such a crack on the head as I hope
never to get again. When I came to my wits they were hauling me
up to that ring-bolt by the hands, and old Corbucci himself was
bowing to me, but how HE got here I don't know yet."

"I can tell you that," said I, and told how I had seen the Count
for myself on the pavement underneath our windows. "Moreover,"
I continued, "I saw him spot you, and five minutes after in
Earl's Court Road I was told he'd driven off in a cab. He would
see you following his man, drive home ahead, and catch you by
having the door left open in the way you describe."

"Well," said Raffles, "he deserved to catch me somehow, for he'd
come from Naples on purpose, ruler and all, and the ring-bolts
were ready fixed, and even this house taken furnished for nothing
else! He meant catching me before he'd done, and scoring me off
in exactly the same way that I scored off him, only going one
better of course. He told me so himself, sitting where I am
sitting now, at three o'clock this morning, and smoking a most
abominable cigar that I've smelt ever since. It appears he sat
twenty-four hours when I left HIM trussed up, but he said twelve
would content him in my case, as there was certain death at the
end of them, and I mightn't have life enough left to appreciate
my end if he made it longer. But I wouldn't have trusted him if
he could have got the clock to go twice round without firing off
the pistol. He explained the whole mechanism of that to me; he
had thought it all out on the vineyard I told you about; and
then he asked if I remembered what he had promised me in the
name of the Camorra. I only remembered some vague threats, but
he was good enough to give me so many particulars of that
institution that I could make a European reputation by exposing
the whole show if it wasn't for my unfortunate resemblance to
that infernal rascal Raffles. Do you think they would know me
at the Yard, Bunny, after all this time? Upon my soul I've a
good mind to risk it!"

I offered no opinion on the point. How could it interest me
then? But interested I was in Raffles, never more so in my
life. He had been tortured all night and half a day, yet he
could sit and talk like this the moment we cut him down; he had
been within a minute of his death, yet he was as full of life
as ever; ill-treated and defeated at the best, he could still
smile through his blood as though the boot were on the other
leg. I had imagined that I knew my Raffles at last. I was not
likely so to flatter myself again.

"But what has happened to these villains?" I burst out, and my
indignation was not only against them for their cruelty, but
also against their victim for his phlegmatic attitude toward
them. It was difficult to believe that this was Raffles.

"Oh," said he, "they were to go off to Italy INSTANTER; they
should be crossing now. But do listen to what I am telling you;
it's interesting, my dear man. This old sinner Corbucci turns
out to have been no end of a boss in the Camorra—says so
himself. One of the capi paranze, my boy, no less; and the
velvety Johnny a giovano onorato, Anglice, fresher. This fellow
here was also in it, and I've sworn to protect him from them
evermore; and it's just as I said, half the organ-grinders in
London belong, and the whole lot of them were put on my tracks
by secret instructions. This excellent youth manufactures iced
poison on Saffron Hill when he's at home."

"And why on earth didn't he come to me quicker?"

"Because he couldn't talk to you, he could only fetch you, and
it was as much as his life was worth to do that before our
friends had departed. They were going by the eleven o'clock
from Victoria, and that didn't leave much chance, but he
certainly oughtn't to have run it as fine as he did. Still you
must remember that I had to fix things up with him in the fewest
possible words, in a single minute that the other two were
indiscreet enough to leave us alone together."

The ragamuffin in question was watching us with all his solitary
eye, as though he knew that we were discussing him. Suddenly he
broke out in agonized accents, his hands clasped, and a face so
full of fear that every moment I expected to see him on his
knees. But Raffles answered kindly, reassuringly, I could tell
from his tone, and then turned to me with a compassionate shrug.

"He says he couldn't find the mansions, Bunny, and really it's
not to be wondered at. I had only time to tell him to hunt you
up and bring you here by hook or crook before twelve to-day, and
after all he has done that. But now the poor devil thinks you're
riled with him, and that we'll give him away to the Camorra."

"Oh, it's not with him I'm riled," I said frankly, "but with
those other blackguards, and—and with you, old chap, for taking
it all as you do, while such infamous scoundrels have the last
laugh, and are safely on their way to France!"

Raffles looked up at me with a curiously open eye, an eye that I
never saw when he was not in earnest. I fancied he did not like
my last expression but one. After all, it was no laughing matter
to him.

"But are they?" said he. "I'm not so sure."

"You said they were!"

"I said they should be."

"Didn't you hear them go?"

"I heard nothing but the clock all night. It was like Big Ben
striking at the last—striking nine to the fellow on the drop."

And in that open eye I saw at last a deep glimmer of the ordeal
through which he had passed.

"But, my dear old Raffles, if they're still on the premises—"

The thought was too thrilling for a finished sentence.

"I hope they are," he said grimly, going to the door. "There's a
gas on! Was that burning when you came in?"

Now that I thought of it, yes, it had been.

"And there's a frightfully foul smell," I added, as I followed
Raffles down the stairs. He turned to me gravely with his hand
upon the front-room door, and at the same moment I saw a coat
with an astrakhan collar hanging on the pegs.

"They are in here, Bunny," he said, and turned the handle.

The door would only open a few inches. But a detestable odor
came out, with a broad bar of yellow gaslight. Raffles put his
handkerchief to his nose. I followed his example, signing to our
ally to do the same, and in another minute we had all three
squeezed into the room.

The man with the yellow boots was lying against the door, the
Count's great carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance
it was evident that both men had been dead some hours. The old
Camorrist had the stem of a liqueur-glass between his swollen
blue fingers, one of which had been cut in the breakage, and the
livid flesh was also brown with the last blood that it would
ever shed. His face was on the table, the huge moustache
projecting from under either leaden cheek, yet looking itself
strangely alive. Broken bread and scraps of frozen macaroni lay
upon the cloth and at the bottom of two soup-plates and a
tureen; the macaroni had a tinge of tomato; and there was a
crimson dram left in the tumblers, with an empty fiasco to show
whence it came. But near the great gray head upon the table
another liqueur-glass stood, unbroken, and still full of some
white and stinking liquid; and near that a tiny silver flash,
which made me recoil from Raffles as I had not from the dead;
for I knew it to be his.

BOOK: E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02
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