“But there was nothing wrong with your works,” I reminded Raffles; he shook his head as one who was not so sure.
“Perhaps not at first, but the cure soon sees to that! I closed in like a concertina, Bunny, and I only hope I shall be able to pull out like one. You see, it’s the custom of the accursed place for one to telephone for a doctor the moment one arrives. I consulted the hunting man, who of course recommended his own in order to make sure of a companion on the rack. The old arch-humbug was down upon me in ten minutes, examining me from crown to heel, and made the most unblushing report upon my general condition. He said I had a liver! I’ll swear I hadn’t before I went to Carlsbad, but I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if I’d brought one back.”
And he tipped his tankard with a solemn face, before falling to work upon the Welsh rarebit which had just arrived.
“It looks like gold, and it’s golden eating,” said poor old Raffles. “I only wish that sly dog of a doctor could see me at it! He had the nerve to make me write out my own health-warrant, and it was so like my friend the hunting man’s that it dispelled his settled gloom for the whole of that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of the same well-fed band. That wasn’t a joke, Bunny; it’s not a thing to joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was the only game to play for the Emerald Stakes. It kept one above suspicion all the time. And then I didn’t mind that part as much as you would, or as my hunting pal did; he was driven to fainting at the doctor’s place one day, in the forlorn hope of a toothful of brandy to bring him round. But all he got was a glass of cheap Marsala.”
“But did you win those stakes after all?”
“Of course I did, Bunny,” said Raffles below his breath, and with a look that I remembered later. “But the waiters are listening as it is, and I’ll tell you the rest some other time. I suppose you know what brought me back so soon?”
“Hadn’t you finished your cure?”
“Not by three good days. I had the satisfaction of a row royal with the Lord High Humbug to account for my hurried departure. But, as a matter of fact, if Teddy Garland hadn’t got his Blue at the eleventh hour I should be at Carlsbad still.”
E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) was the Cambridge wicketkeeper, and one of the many young cricketers who owed a good deal to Raffles. They had made friends in some country-house week, and foregathered afterward in town, where the young fellow’s father had a house at which Raffles became a constant guest. I am afraid I was a little prejudiced both against the father, a retired brewer whom I had never met, and the son whom I did meet once or twice at the Albany. Yet I could quite understand the mutual attraction between Raffles and this much younger man; indeed he was a mere boy, but like so many of his school he seemed to have a knowledge of the world beyond his years, and withal such a spontaneous spring of sweetness and charm as neither knowledge nor experience could sensibly pollute. And yet I had a shrewd suspicion that wild oats had been somewhat freely sown, and that it was Raffles who had stepped in and taken the sower in hand, and turned him into the stuff of which Blues are made. At least I knew that no one could be sounder friend or saner counsellor to any young fellow in need of either. And many there must be to bear me out in their hearts; but they did not know their Raffles as I knew mine; and if they say that was why they thought so much of him, let them have patience, and at last they shall hear something that need not make them think the less.
“I couldn’t let poor Teddy keep at Lord’s,” explained Raffles, “and me not there to egg him on! You see, Bunny, I taught him a thing or two in those little matches we played together last August. I take a fatherly interest in the child.”
“You must have done him a lot of good,” I suggested, “in every way.”
Raffles looked up from his bill and asked me what I meant. I saw he was not pleased with my remark, but I was not going back on it.
“Well, I should imagine you had straightened him out a bit, if you ask me.”
“I didn’t ask you, Bunny, that’s just the point!” said Raffles. And I watched him tip the waiter without the least arrière-pensée on either side.
“After all,” said I, on our way down the marble stair, “you have told me a good deal about the lad. I remember once hearing you say he had a lot of debts, for example.”
“So I was afraid,” replied Raffles, frankly; “and between ourselves, I offered to finance him before I went abroad. Teddy wouldn’t hear of it; that hot young blood of his was up at the thought, though he was perfectly delightful in what he said. So don’t jump to rotten conclusions, Bunny, but stroll up to the Albany and have a drink.”
And when we had reclaimed our hats and coats, and lit our Sullivans in the hall, out we marched as though I were now part-owner of the place with Raffles.
“That,” said I, to effect a thorough change of conversation, since I felt at one with all the world, “is certainly the finest grill in Europe.”
“That’s why we went there, Bunny.”
“But must I say I was rather surprised to find you a member of a place where you tip the waiter and take a ticket for your hat!”
I was not surprised, however, to hear Raffles defend his own caravanserai.
“I would go a step further,” he remarked, “and make every member show his badge as they do at Lord’s.”
“But surely the porter knows the members by sight?”
“Not he! There are far too many thousands of them.”
“I should have thought he must.”
“And I know he doesn’t.”
“Well, you ought to know, A.J., since you’re a member yourself.”
“On the contrary, my dear Bunny, I happen to know because I never was one!”
CHAPTER II
“His Own Familiar Friend”
How we laughed as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost theatrical blue, he looked another man already. If such a change was due to a few draughts of bitter beer and a few ounces of fillet steak, then I felt I was the brewers’ friend and the vegetarians’ foe for life. Nevertheless I could detect a serious side to my companion’s mood, especially when he spoke once more of Teddy Garland, and told me that he had cabled to him also before leaving Carlsbad. And I could not help wondering, with a discreditable pang, whether his intercourse with that honest lad could have bred in Raffles a remorse for his own misdeeds, such as I myself had often tried, but always failed, to produce.
So we came to the Albany in sober frame, for all our recent levity, thinking at least no evil for once in our lawless lives. And there was our good friend Barraclough, the porter, to salute and welcome us in the courtyard.
“There’s a gen’leman writing you a letter upstairs,” said he to Raffles. “It’s Mr. Garland, sir, so I took him up.”
“Teddy!” cried Raffles, and took the stairs two at a time.
I followed rather heavily. It was not jealousy, but I did feel rather critical of this mushroom intimacy. So I followed up, feeling that the evening was spoilt for me — and God knows I was right! Not till my dying day shall I forget the tableau that awaited me in those familiar rooms. I see it now as plainly as I see the problem picture of the year, which lies in wait for one in all the illustrated papers; indeed, it was a problem picture itself in flesh and blood.
Raffles had opened his door as only Raffles could open doors, with the boyish thought of giving the other boy a fright; and young Garland had very naturally started up from the bureau, where he was writing, at the sudden clap of his own name behind him. But that w
as the last of his natural actions. He did not advance to grasp Raffles by the hand; there was no answering smile of welcome on the fresh young face which used to remind me of the Phoebus in Guido’s Aurora, with its healthy pink and bronze, and its hazel eye like clear amber. The pink faded before our gaze, the bronze turned a sickly sallow; and there stood Teddy Garland as if glued to the bureau behind him, clutching its edge with all his might. I can see his knuckles gleaming like ivory under the back of each sunburnt hand.
“What is it? What are you hiding?” demanded Raffles. His love for the lad had rung out in his first greeting; his puzzled voice was still jocular and genial, but the other’s attitude soon strangled that. All this time I had been standing in vague horror on the threshold; now Raffles beckoned me in and switched on more light. It fell full upon a ghastly and a guilty face, that yet stared bravely in the glare. Raffles locked the door behind us, put the key in his pocket, and strode over to the desk.
No need to report their first broken syllables: enough that it was no note young Garland was writing, but a cheque which he was laboriously copying into Raffles’s cheque-book, from an old cheque abstracted from a pass-book with A. J. RAFFLES in gilt capitals upon its brown leather back. Raffles had only that year opened a banking account, and I remembered his telling me how thoroughly he meant to disregard the instructions on his cheque-book by always leaving it about to advertise the fact. And this was the result. A glance convicted his friend of criminal intent: a sheet of notepaper lay covered with trial signatures. Yet Raffles could turn and look with infinite pity upon the miserable youth who was still looking defiantly on him.
“My poor chap!” was all he said.
And at that the broken boy found the tongue of a hoarse and quavering old man.
“Won’t you hand me over and be done with it?” he croaked. “Must you torture me yourself?”
It was all I could do to refrain from putting in my word, and telling the fellow it was not for him to ask questions. Raffles merely inquired whether he had thought it all out before.
“God knows I hadn’t, A. J.! I came up to write you a note, I swear I did,” said Garland with a sudden sob.
“No need to swear it,” returned Raffles, actually smiling. “Your word’s quite good enough for me.”
“God bless you for that, after this!” the other choked, in terrible disorder now.
“It was pretty obvious,” said Raffles reassuringly.
“Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, and my refusing it?”
“Why, of course I do!” cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter to me at our meal. What I could not see was any reason for such conspicuous relief, or the extenuating quality of a circumstance which seemed to me rather to aggravate the offence.
“I have regretted that refusal ever since,” young Garland continued very simply. “It was a mistake at the time, but this week of all weeks it’s been a tragedy. Money I must have; I’ll tell you why directly. When I got your wire last night it seemed as though my wretched prayers had been answered. I was going to someone else this morning, but I made up my mind to wait for you instead. You were the one I really could turn to, and yet I refused your great offer a month ago. But you said you would be back to-night; and you weren’t here when I came. I telephoned and found that the train had come in all right, and that there wasn’t another until the morning. Tomorrow morning’s my limit, and to-morrow’s the match.” He stopped as he saw what Raffles was doing. “Don’t, Raffles, I don’t deserve it!” he added in fresh distress.
But Raffles had unlocked the tantalus and found a syphon in the corner cupboard, and it was a very yellow bumper that he handed to the guilty youth.
“Drink some,” he said, “or I won’t listen to another word.”
“I’m going to be ruined before the match begins. I am!” the poor fellow insisted, turning to me when Raffles shook his head. “And it’ll break my father’s heart, and — and—”
I thought he had worse still to tell us, he broke off in such despair; but either he changed his mind, or the current of his thoughts set inward in spite of him, for when he spoke again it was to offer us both a further explanation of his conduct.
“I only came up to leave a line for Raffles,” he said to me, “in case he did get back in time. It was the porter himself who fixed me up at that bureau. He’ll tell you how many times I had called before. And then I saw before my nose in one pigeon-hole your cheque-book, Raffles, and your pass-book bulging with old cheques.”
“And as I wasn’t back to write one for you,” said Raffles, “you wrote it for me. And quite right, too!”
“Don’t laugh at me!” cried the boy, his lost colour rushing back. And he looked at me again as though my long face hurt him less than the sprightly sympathy of his friend.
“I’m not laughing, Teddy,” replied Raffles kindly. “I was never more serious in my life. It was playing the friend to come to me at all in your fix, but it was the act of a real good pal to draw on me behind my back rather than let me feel I’d ruined you by not turning up in time. You may shake your head as hard as you like, but I never was paid a higher compliment.”
And the consummate casuist went on working a congenial vein until a less miserable sinner might have been persuaded that he had done nothing really dishonourable; but young Garland had the grace neither to make nor to accept any excuse for his own conduct. I never heard a man more down upon himself, or confession of error couched in stronger terms; and yet there was something so sincere and ingenuous in his remorse, something that Raffles and I had lost so long ago, that in our hearts I am sure we took his follies more seriously than our own crimes. But foolish he indeed had been, if not criminally foolish as he said. It was the old story of the prodigal son of an indulgent father. There had been, as I suspected, a certain amount of youthful riot which the influence of Raffles had already quelled; but there had also been much reckless extravagance, of which Raffles naturally knew less, since your scapegrace is constitutionally quicker to confess himself as such than as a fool. Suffice it that this one had thrown himself on his father’s generosity, only to find that the father himself was in financial straits.
“What!” cried Raffles, “with that house on his hands?”
“I knew it would surprise you,” said Teddy Garland. “I can’t understand it myself; he gave me no particulars, but the mere fact was enough for me. I simply couldn’t tell my father everything after that. He wrote me a cheque for all I did own up to, but I could see it was such a tooth that I swore I’d never come on him to pay another farthing. And I never will!”
The boy took a sip from his glass, for his voice had faltered, and then he paused to light another cigarette, because the last had gone out between his fingers. So sensitive and yet so desperate was the blonde young face, with the creased forehead and the nervous mouth, that I saw Raffles look another way until the match was blown out.
“But at the time I might have done worse, and did,” said Teddy, “a thousand times! I went to the Jews. That’s the whole trouble. There were more debts — debts of honour — and to square up I went to the Jews. It was only a matter of two or three hundred to start with; but you may know, though I didn’t, what a snowball the smallest sum becomes in the hands of those devils. I borrowed three hundred and signed a promissory note for four hundred and fifty-six.”
“Only fifty per cent!” said Raffles. “You got off cheap if the percentage was per annum.”
“Wait a bit! It was by way of being even more reasonable than that. The four hundred and fifty-six was repayable in monthly instalments of twenty quid, and I kept them up religiously until the sixth payment fell due. That was soon after Christmas, when one’s always hard up, and for the first time I was a day or two late — not more, mind you; yet what do you suppose happened? My cheque was returned, and the whole blessed balance demanded on the nail!”
R
affles was following intently, with that complete concentration which was a signal force in his equipment. His face no longer changed at anything he heard; it was as strenuously attentive as that of any judge upon the bench. Never had I clearer vision of the man he might have been but for the kink in his nature which had made him what he was.
“The promissory note was for four-fifty-six,” said he, “and this sudden demand was for the lot less the hundred you had paid?”
“That’s it.”
“What did you do?” I asked, not to seem behind Raffles in my grasp of the case.
“Told them to take my instalment or go to blazes for the rest!”
“And they?”
“Absolutely drop the whole thing until this very week, and then come down on me for — what do you suppose?”
“Getting on for a thousand,” said Raffles after a moment’s thought.
“Nonsense!” I cried. Garland looked astonished too.
“Raffles knows all about it,” said he. “Seven hundred was the actual figure. I needn’t tell you I have given the bounders a wide berth since the day I raised the wind; but I went and had it out with them over this. And half the seven hundred is for default interest, I’ll trouble you, from the beginning of January down to date!”
“Had you agreed to that?”
“Not to my recollection, but there it was as plain as a pikestaff on my promissory note. A halfpenny in the shilling per week over and above everything else when the original interest wasn’t forthcoming.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 297