“Come on, come on, or he’ll do us!” cried Raffles shrilly over his shoulder; and a gruff sardonic laugh came back over mine. It was pearly morning now, but we had run into a shallow mist that took me by the throat and stabbed me to the lungs. I coughed and coughed, and stumbled in my stride, until down I went, less by accident than to get it over, and so lay headlong in my tracks. And old Nab dealt me a verbal kick as he passed.
“You beast!” he growled, as I have known him growl it in form.
But Raffles himself had abandoned the flight on hearing my downfall, and I was on hands and knees just in time to see the meeting between him and old Nab. And there stood Raffles in the silvery mist, laughing with his whole light heart, leaning back to get the full flavor of his mirth; and, nearer me, sturdy old Nab, dour and grim, with beads of dew on the hoary beard that had been lamp-black in our time.
“So I’ve caught you at last!” said he. “After more years than I mean to count!”
“Then you’re luckier than we are, sir,” answered Raffles, “for I fear our man has given us the slip.”
“Your man!” echoed Nab. His bushy eyebrows had shot up: it was as much as I could do to keep my own in their place.
“We were indulging in the chase ourselves,” explained Raffles, “and one of us has suffered for his zeal, as you can see. It is even possible that we, too, have been chasing a perfectly innocent man.”
“Not to say a reformed character,” said our pursuer dryly. “I suppose you don’t mean a member of the school?” he added, pinking his man suddenly as of yore, with all the old barbed acumen.
But Raffles was now his match.
“That would be carrying reformation rather far, sir. No, as I say, I may have been mistaken in the first instance; but I had put out my light and was looking out of the window when I saw a fellow behaving quite suspiciously. He was carrying his boots and creeping along in his socks — which must be why you never heard him, sir. They make less noise than rubber soles even — that is, they must, you know! Well, Bunny had just left me, so I hauled him out and we both crept down to play detective. No sign of the fellow! We had a look in the colonnade — I thought I heard him — and that gave us no end of a hunt for nothing. But just as we were leaving he came padding past under our noses, and that’s where we took up the chase. Where he’d been in the meantime I have no idea; very likely he’d done no harm; but it seemed worth while finding out. He had too good a start, though, and poor Bunny had too bad a wind.”
“You should have gone on and let me rip,” said I, climbing to my feet at last.
“As it is, however, we will all let the other fellow do so,” said old Nab in a genial growl. “And you two had better turn into my house and have something to keep the morning cold out.”
You may imagine with what alacrity we complied; and yet I am bound to confess that I had never liked Nab at school. I still remember my term in his form. He had a caustic tongue and a fine assortment of damaging epithets, most of which were levelled at my devoted skull during those three months. I now discovered that he also kept a particularly mellow Scotch whiskey, an excellent cigar, and a fund of anecdote of which a mordant wit was the worthy bursar. Enough to add that he kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.
As for Raffles, he appeared to me to feel far more compunction for the fable which he had been compelled to foist upon one of the old masters than for the immeasurably graver offence against society and another Old Boy. This, indeed, did not worry him at all; and the story was received next day with absolute credulity on all sides. Nasmyth himself was the first to thank us both for our spirited effort on his behalf; and the incident had the ironic effect of establishing an immediate entente cordiale between Raffles and his very latest victim. I must confess, however, that for my own part I was thoroughly uneasy during the Old Boys’ second innings, when Raffles made a selfish score, instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his own way. There was never any knowing with what new detail he was about to embellish it: and I have still to receive full credit for the tact that it required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have I been more thankful than when our train started next morning, and the poor, unsuspecting Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from the platform.
“Lucky we weren’t staying at Nab’s,” said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail at its report of the robbery. “There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he always was and will be.”
He kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.
“What was that?”
“The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the morning, and yet we let them assume that we came out that way. Nab would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been nabbed ourselves.”
It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had taken, and, of course, he had resolutely eschewed any and every form of paper money. He posted his own first contribution of twenty-five pounds to the Founder’s Fund immediately on our return to town, before rushing off to more first-class cricket, and I gathered that the rest would follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd coincidence, however, a mysterious but magnificent donation of a hundred guineas was almost simultaneously received in notes by the treasurer of the Founder’s Fund, from one who simply signed himself “Old Boy.” The treasurer happened to be our late host, the new man at our old house, and he wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was pleased to consider a direct result of the latter’s speech. I did not see the letter that Raffles wrote in reply, but in due course I heard the name of the mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper Nasmyth himself. I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask old Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the ‘Varsity match, and if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen, but I had the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles when we encountered our shabby friend in front of the pavilion.
“My dear fellow,” cried Raffles, “I hear it was you who gave that hundred guineas by stealth to the very movement you denounced. Don’t deny it, and don’t blush to find it fame. Listen to me. There was a great lot in what you said; but it’s the kind of thing we ought all to back, whether we strictly approve of it in our hearts or not.”
“Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is — —”
“I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it. There’s not one in a thousand who would do as you’ve done, and not one in a million who would do it anonymously.”
“But what makes you think I did it, Raffles?”
“Everybody is saying so. You will find it all over the place when you get back. You will find yourself the most popular man down there, Nasmyth!”
I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward, ungainly, cantankerous man: all his angles seemed to have been smoothed away: there was something quite human in the flushed, undecided, wistful face.
“I never was popular in my life,” he said. “I don’t want to buy my popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles — —”
“Don’t! I can’t stop to hear. They’re ringing the bell. But you shouldn’t have been angry with me for saying you were a generous good chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all the time. Good-by, old fellow!”
But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end. There was a sudden new light in his face.
“Was I?” he cried. “Then I’ll make it two hundred, and damn the odds!”
Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody, would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two chairs aloof from the fascinating throng.
“I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know,” he began. “But I have been sorry since the interval. I’ve been sorry for poor old Nipper Nasmy
th. Did you see the idea of being popular dawn upon him for the first time in his life?”
“I did; but you had nothing to do with that, my dear man.”
Raffles shook his head over me as our eyes met.
“I had everything to do with it. I tried to make him tell the meanest lie. I made sure he would, and for that matter he nearly did. Then, at the last moment, he saw how to hedge things with his conscience. And his second hundred will be a real gift.”
“You mean under his own name?”
“And with his own free-will. My good Bunny, is it possible you don’t know what I did with the hundred we drew from that bank!”
“I knew what you were going to do with it,” said I. “I didn’t know you had actually got further than the twenty-five you told me you were sending as your own contribution.”
Raffles rose abruptly from his chair.
“And you actually thought that came out of his money?”
“Naturally.”
“In my name?”
“I thought so.”
Raffles stared at me inscrutably for some moments, and for some more at the great white numbers over the grand-stand.
“We may as well have another look at the cricket,” said he. “It’s difficult to see the board from here, but I believe there’s another man out.”
A Bad Night
There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some retirement, with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a prosperous son of the same suburban soil which had nourished both families for generations. The wedding presents were so numerous as to fill several rooms at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value calling for a special transaction with the Burglary Insurance Company in Cheapside. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all this information. I only know that it proved correct in each particular. I was not indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured me that it was “a one-man job,” and naturally intended to be the one man himself. It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English team in the Second Test Match.
In a flash I saw the chance of my criminal career. It was some years since Raffles had served his country in these encounters; he had never thought to be called upon again, and his gratification was only less than his embarrassment. The match was at Old Trafford, on the third Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in July; the other affair had been all arranged for the Thursday night, the night of the wedding at East Molesey. It was for Raffles to choose between the two excitements, and for once I helped him to make up his mind. I duly pointed out to him that in Surrey, at all events, I was quite capable of taking his place. Nay, more, I insisted at once on my prescriptive right and on his patriotic obligation in the matter. In the country’s name and in my own, I implored him to give it and me a chance; and for once, as I say, my arguments prevailed. Raffles sent his telegram — it was the day before the match. We then rushed down to Esher, and over every inch of the ground by that characteristically circuitous route which he enjoined on me for the next night. And at six in the evening I was receiving the last of my many instructions through a window of the restaurant car.
“Only promise me not to take a revolver,” said Raffles in a whisper. “Here are my keys; there’s an old life-preserver somewhere in the bureau; take that, if you like — though what you take I rather fear you are the chap to use!”
“Then the rope be round my own neck!” I whispered back. “Whatever else I may do, Raffles, I shan’t give you away; and you’ll find I do better than you think, and am worth trusting with a little more to do, or I’ll know the reason why!”
And I meant to know it, as he was borne out of Euston with raised eyebrows, and I turned grimly on my heel. I saw his fears for me; and nothing could have made me more fearless for myself. Raffles had been wrong about me all these years; now was my chance to set him right. It was galling to feel that he had no confidence in my coolness or my nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch. I had been loyal to him through rough and smooth. In many an ugly corner I had stood as firm as Raffles himself. I was his right hand, and yet he never hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time, at all events, I should be neither one nor the other; this time I was the understudy playing lead at last; and I wish I could think that Raffles ever realized with what gusto I threw myself into his part.
Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night, and first down the stairs into the open air. The night was close and cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban builder has marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of leaves at mid-summer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane or cranny by the way. Naturally, it was in this blind reach that I fancied I was being followed. I stopped in my stride; so did the steps I made sure I had heard not far behind; and when I went on, they followed suit. I dried my forehead as I walked, but soon brought myself to repeat the experiment when an exact repetition of the result went to convince me that it had been my own echo all the time. And since I lost it on getting quit of the avenue, and coming out upon the straight and open road, I was not long in recovering from my scare. But now I could see my way, and found the rest of it without mishap, though not without another semblance of adventure. Over the bridge across the Mole, when about to turn to the left, I marched straight upon a policeman in rubber soles. I had to call him “officer” as I passed, and to pass my turning by a couple of hundred yards, before venturing back another way.
At last I had crept through a garden gate, and round by black windows to a black lawn drenched with dew. It had been a heating walk, and I was glad to blunder on a garden seat, most considerately placed under a cedar which added its own darkness to that of the night. Here I rested a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep them dry, untying my shoes to save time, and generally facing the task before me with a coolness which I strove to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine was a self-conscious quality, as far removed from the original as any other deliberate imitation of genius. I actually struck a match on my trousers, and lit one of the shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would not have done such a thing at such a moment. But I wished to tell him that I had done it; and in truth I was not more than pleasurably afraid; I had rather that impersonal curiosity as to the issue which has been the saving of me in still more precarious situations. I even grew impatient for the fray, and could not after all sit still as long as I had intended. So it happened that I was finishing my cigarette on the edge of the wet lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before stepping across the gravel to the conservatory door, when a most singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a muffled gasping somewhere overhead. I stood like stone; and my listening attitude must have been visible against the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored voice hailed me sternly from a window.
“Who on earth are you?” it wheezed.
“A detective officer,” I replied, “sent down by the Burglary Insurance Company.”
Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all been prepared for me by Raffles, in case of need. I was merely repeating a lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window there was pause enough, filled only by the uncanny wheezing of the man I could not see.
“I don’t see why they should have sent you down,” he said at length. “We are being quite well looked after by the local police; they’re giving us a special call every hour.”
“I know that, Mr. Medlicott,” I rejoined on my own account. “I met one of them at the corner just now, and we passed the time of night.”
My heart was knocking me to bits. I had started for myself at last.
“Did you get my name from him?” pursued my questioner, in a suspicious wheeze.
“No; they gave me that befor
e I started,” I replied. “But I’m sorry you saw me, sir; it’s a mere matter of routine, and not intended to annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all night, but I own it wasn’t necessary to trespass as I’ve done. I’ll take myself off the actual premises, if you prefer it.”
This again was all my own; and it met with a success that might have given me confidence.
“Not a bit of it,” replied young Medlicott, with a grim geniality. “I’ve just woke up with the devil of an attack of asthma, and may have to sit up in my chair till morning. You’d better come up and see me through, and kill two birds while you’re about it. Stay where you are, and I’ll come down and let you in.”
Here was a dilemma which Raffles himself had not foreseen! Outside, in the dark, my audacious part was not hard to play; but to carry the improvisation in-doors was to double at once the difficulty and the risk. It was true that I had purposely come down in a true detective’s overcoat and bowler; but my personal appearance was hardly of the detective type. On the other hand as the soi-disant guardian of the gifts one might only excite suspicion by refusing to enter the house where they were. Nor could I forget that it was my purpose to effect such entry first or last. That was the casting consideration. I decided to take my dilemma by the horns.
There had been a scraping of matches in the room over the conservatory; the open window had shown for a moment, like an empty picture-frame, a gigantic shadow wavering on the ceiling; and in the next half-minute I remembered to tie my shoes. But the light was slow to reappear through the leaded glasses of an outer door farther along the path. And when the door opened, it was a figure of woe that stood within and held an unsteady candle between our faces.
I have seen old men look half their age, and young men look double theirs; but never before or since have I seen a beardless boy bent into a man of eighty, gasping for every breath, shaken by every gasp, swaying, tottering, and choking, as if about to die upon his feet. Yet with it all, young Medlicott overhauled me shrewdly, and it was several moments before he would let me take the candle from him.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 491