E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 02 (9 page)

"And I'll help you!"

"No, old chap, you won't. This is my own little show. I've
known about it for weeks. I first tumbled to it the day those
Neapolitans came back with their organs, though I didn't
seriously suspect things then; they never came again, those
two, they had done their part. That's the Camorra all over,
from all accounts. The Count I told you about is pretty high up
in it, by the way he spoke, but there will be grades and grades
between him and the organ-grinders. I shouldn't be surprised
if he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-creamer in the town upon
my tracks! The organization's incredible. Then do you remember
the superior foreigner who came to the door a few days
afterwards? You said he had velvet eyes."

"I never connected him with those two!"

"Of course you didn't, Bunny, so you threatened to kick the
fellow downstairs, and only made them keener on the scent. It
was too late to say anything when you told me. But the very
next time I showed my nose outside I heard a camera click as I
passed, and the fiend was a person with velvet eyes. Then there
was a lull—that happened weeks ago. They had sent me to Italy
for identification by Count Corbucci."

"But this is all theory," I exclaimed. "How on earth can you
know?"

"I don't know," said Raffles, "but I should like to bet. Our
friend the bloodhound is hanging about the corner near the
pillar-box; look through my window, it's dark in there, and tell
me who he is."

The man was too far away for me to swear to his face, but he
wore a covert-coat of un-English length, and the lamp across the
road played steadily on his boots; they were very yellow, and
they made no noise when he took a turn. I strained my eyes,
and all at once I remembered the thin-soled, low-heeled, splay
yellow boots of the insidious foreigner, with the soft eyes and
the brown-paper face, whom I had turned from the door as a
palpable fraud. The ring at the bell was the first I had heard
of him, there had been no warning step upon the stairs, and my
suspicious eye had searched his feet for rubber soles.

"It's the fellow," I said, returning to Raffles, and I described
his boots.

Raffles was delighted.

"Well done, Bunny; you're coming on," said he. "Now I wonder if
he's been over here all the time, or if they sent him over
expressly? You did better than you think in spotting those
boots, for they can only have been made in Italy, and that
looks like the special envoy. But it's no use speculating. I
must find out."

"How can you?"

"He won't stay there all night."

"Well?"

"When he gets tired of it I shall return the compliment and
follow HIM."

"Not alone," said I, firmly.

"Well, we'll see. We'll see at once," said Raffles, rising.
"Out with the gas, Bunny, while I take a look. Thank you. Now
wait a bit . . . yes! He's chucked it; he's off already; and so

am I!"

But I slipped to our outer door, and held the passage.

"I don't let you go alone, you know."

"You can't come with me in pyjamas."

"Now I see why you made me put them on!"

"Bunny, if you don't shift I shall have to shift you. This is
my very own private one-man show. But I'll be back in an
hour—there!"

"You swear?"

"By all my gods."

I gave in. How could I help giving in? He did not look the man
that he had been, but you never knew with Raffles, and I could
not have him lay a hand on me. I let him go with a shrug and
my blessing, then ran into his room to see the last of him from
the window.

The creature in the coat and boots had reached the end of our
little street, where he appeared to have hesitated, so that
Raffles was just in time to see which way he turned. And
Raffles was after him at an easy pace, and had himself almost
reached the corner when my attention was distracted from the
alert nonchalance of his gait. I was marvelling that it alone
had not long ago betrayed him, for nothing about him was so
unconsciously characteristic, when suddenly I realized that
Raffles was not the only person in the little lonely street.
Another pedestrian had entered from the other end, a man heavily
built and clad, with an astrakhan collar to his coat on this
warm night, and a black slouch hat that hid his features from
my bird's-eye view. His steps were the short and shuffling ones
of a man advanced in years and in fatty degeneration, but of a
sudden they stopped beneath my very eyes. I could have dropped
a marble into the dinted crown of the black felt hat. Then, at
the same moment, Raffles turned the corner without looking
round, and the big man below raised both his hands and his face.
Of the latter I saw only the huge white moustache, like a
flying gull, as Raffles had described it; for at a glance I
divined that this was his arch-enemy, the Count Corbucci himself.

I did not stop to consider the subtleties of the system by which
the real hunter lagged behind while his subordinate pointed the
quarry like a sporting dog. I left the Count shuffling onward
faster than before, and I jumped into some clothes as though the
flats were on fire. If the Count was going to follow Raffles in
his turn, then I would follow the Count in mine, and there would
be a midnight procession of us through the town. But I found
no sign of him in the empty street, and no sign in the Earl's
Court Road, that looked as empty for all its length, save for a
natural enemy standing like a waxwork figure with a glimmer at
his belt.

"Officer," I gasped, "have you seen anything of an old gentleman
with a big white mustache?"

The unlicked cub of a common constable seemed to eye me the more
suspiciously for the flattering form of my address.

"Took a hansom," said he at length.

A hansom! Then he was not following the others on foot; there
was no guessing his game. But something must be said or done.

"He's a friend of mine," I explained, "and I want to overtake
him. Did you hear where he told the fellow to drive?"

A curt negative was the policeman's reply to that; and if ever I
take part in a night assault-at-arms, revolver versus baton, in
the back kitchen, I know which member of the Metropolitan Police
Force I should like for my opponent.

If there was no overtaking the Count, however,it should be a
comparatively simple matter in the case of the couple on foot,
and I wildly hailed the first hansom that crawled into my ken.
I must tell Raffles who it was that I had seen; the Earl's
Court Road was long, and the time since he vanished in it but a
few short minutes. I drove down the length of that useful
thoroughfare, with an eye apiece on either pavement, sweeping
each as with a brush, but never a Raffles came into the pan.
Then I tried the Fulham Road, first to the west, then to the
east, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I
did not realize my indiscretion until I had paid the man and was
on the stairs. Raffles never dreamt of driving all the way
back; but I was hoping now to find him waiting up above. He had
said an hour. I had remembered it suddenly. And now the hour
was more than up. But the flat was as empty as I had left it;
the very light that had encouraged me, pale though it was, as I
turned the corner in my hansom, was but the light that I myself
had left burning in the desolate passage.

I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of
it I hung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears,
catching every footstep afar off, every hansom bell farther
still, only to gather in some alien whom I seldom even landed
in our street. Then I would listen at the door.

He might come over the roof; and eventually some one did; but
now it was broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the
milkman's face, which whitened at the shock as though I had
ducked him in his own pail.

"You're late," I thundered as the first excuse for my
excitement.

"Beg your pardon," said he, indignantly, "but I'm half an hour
before my usual time."

"Then I beg yours," said I; "but the fact is, Mr. Maturin has had
one of his bad nights, and I seem to have been waiting hours for
milk to make him a cup of tea."

This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it)
earned me not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which
is a branch of the business of the man at the door. The good
fellow said that he could see I had been sitting up all night,
and he left me pluming myself upon the accidental art with which
I had told my very necessary tarra-diddle. On reflection I gave
the credit to instinct, not accident, and then sighed afresh as I
realized how the influence of the master was sinking into me,
and he Heaven knew where! But my punishment was swift to
follow, for within the hour the bell rang imperiously twice, and
there was Dr. Theobald on our mat; in a yellow Jaeger suit, with
a chin as yellow jutting over the flaps that he had turned up to
hide his pyjamas.

"What's this about a bad night?" said he.

"He couldn't sleep, and he wouldn't let me," I whispered, never
loosening my grasp of the door, and standing tight against the
other wall. "But he's sleeping like a baby now."

"I must see him."

"He gave strict orders that you should not."

"I'm his medical man, and I—"

"You know what he is," I said, shrugging; "the least thing wakes
him, and you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be
the last time, I warn you! I know what he said, and you don't."

The doctor cursed me under his fiery moustache.

"I shall come up during the course of the morning," he snarled.

"And I shall tie up the bell," I said, "and if it doesn't ring
he'll be sleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by
coming to the door again."

And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as
Raffles had said; but what would it profit me if some evil had
befallen him? And now I was prepared for the worst. A boy came
up whistling and leaving papers on the mats; it was getting on
for eight o'clock, and the whiskey and soda of half-past twelve
stood untouched and stagnant in the tumbler. If the worst had
happened to Raffles, I felt that I would either never drink
again, or else seldom do anything else.

Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but roamed the flat in
a misery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my
cheeks and chin now tawny from the unwholesome night. How long
would it go on? I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune:
how long could I endure it?

It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance
cannot be measured by the time, for to me every hour of it was
an arctic night. Yet it cannot have been much after eleven when
the ring came at the bell, which I had forgotten to tie up after
all. But this was not the doctor; neither, too well I knew, was
it the wanderer returned. Our bell was the pneumatic one that
tells you if the touch be light or heavy; the hand upon it now
was tentative and shy.

The owner of the hand I had never seen before. He was young and
ragged, with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some fell
excitement. And straightway he burst into a low torrent of
words, of which all I knew was that they were Italian, and
therefore news of Raffles, if only I had known the language!
But dumb-show might help us somewhat, and in I dragged him,
though against his will, a new alarm in his one wild eye.

"Non capite?" he cried when I had him inside and had withstood
the torrent.

"No, I'm bothered if I do!" I answered, guessing his question
from his tone.

"Vostro amico," he repeated over and over again; and then, "Poco
tempo, poco tempo, poco tempo!"

For once in my life the classical education of my public-school
days was of real value. "My pal, my pal, and no time to be
lost!" I translated freely, and flew for my hat.

"Ecco, signore!" cried the fellow, snatching the watch from my
waistcoat pocket, and putting one black thumb-nail on the long
hand, the other on he numeral twelve. "Mezzogiorno—poco tempo
—poco tempo!" And again I seized his meaning, that it was
twenty past eleven, and we must be there by twelve. But where,
but where? It was maddening to be summoned like this, and not to
know what had happened, nor to have any means of finding out.
But my presence of mind stood by me still, I was improving by
seven-league strides, and I crammed my handkerchief between the
drum and hammer of the bell before leaving. The doctor could
ring now till he was black in the face, but I was not coming, and
he need not think it.

I half expected to find a hansom waiting, but there was none, and
we had gone some distance down the Earl's Court Road before we
got one; in fact, we had to run to the stand. Opposite is the
church with the clock upon it, as everybody knows, and at sight
of the dial my companion had wrung his hands; it was close upon
the half-hour.

"Poco tempo—pochissimo!" he wailed. "Bloom-buree Ske-warr," he
then cried to the cabman—"numero trentotto!"

"Bloomsbury Square," I roared on my own account, "I'll show you
the house when we get there, only drive like be-damned!"

My companion lay back gasping in his corner. The small glass
told me that my own face was pretty red.

"A nice show!" I cried; "and not a word can you tell me. Didn't
you bring me a note?"

I might have known by this time that he had not, still I went
through the pantomime of writing with my finger on my cuff. But
he shrugged and shook his head.

"Niente," said he. "Una quistione di vita, di vita!"

"What's that?" I snapped, my early training come in again. "Say
it slowly—andante—rallentando."

Thank Italy for the stage instructions in the songs one used to
murder! The fellow actually understood.