A Thief in the Night

by E. W. Hornung

  And the hulking figure advanced on tiptoe, like a performing elephant, until just at the open door, when for a second we saw his left revolving like a piston and his head thrown back at its fighting angle. But in another second his fists were hands again, and Maguire was rubbing them together as he stood shaking with laughter in the light of the open door.

  "Walk up!" he cried, as he beckoned to us three. "Walk up and see one o' their blamed British crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet, and nailed as tight!"

  Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow secretary went first; the sequins glittered at his heels, and I must own that for one base moment I was on the brink of bolting through the street door. It had never been shut behind us. I shut it myself in the end. Yet it was small credit to me that I actually remained on the same side of the door as Raffles.

  "Reel home-grown, low-down, unwashed Whitechapel!" I had heard Maguire remark within. "Blamed if our Bowery boys ain't cock-angels to scum like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my knuckles on your ugly face; but if I had my thick boots on I'd dance the soul out of your carcass for two cents!"

  After this it required less courage to join the others in the inner room; and for some moments even I failed to identify the truly repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no false hair upon the face, but it was as black as any sweep's. The clothes, on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more pestiferous in themselves than most worn by Raffles for professional purposes. And at first, as I say, I was far from sure whether it was Raffles at all.; but I remembered the crash that cut short our talk over the telephone; and this inanimate heap of rags was lying directly underneath a wall instrument, with the receiver dangling over him.

  "Think you know him?" asked the sallow secretary, as I stooped and peered with my heart in my boots.

  "Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead," I explained, having satisfied myself that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles was really insensible. "But what on earth has happened?" I asked in my turn.

  "That's what I want to know," whined the person in sequins, who had contributed various ejaculations unworthy of report, and finally subsided behind an ostentatious fan.

  "I should judge," observed the secretary, "that it's for Mr. Maguire to say, or not to say, just as he darn pleases."

  But the celebrated Barney stood upon a Persian hearth-rug, beaming upon us all. in a triumph too delicious for immediate translation into words. The room was furnished as a study, and most artistically furnished, if you consider outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic. There was nothing of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney Maguire, except his vocabulary and his lower jaw. I had seen over his house already, and it was fitted and decorated throughout by a high-art firm which exhibits just such a room as that which was the scene of our tragedietta. The person in the sequins lay glistening like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of enormous nails and tapestry compact. The secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges of beaten metal. The pugilist's own background presented an elaborate scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the joiner, and a china cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes rolled with rich delight from the decanter and glasses on the octagonal table to another decanter in the quaintest and craftiest of revolving spirit tables.

  "Isn't it bully?" asked the prize-fighter, smiling on us each in turn, with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated lip. "To think that I've only to invent a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to walk right into! You, Mr. Man," and he nodded his great head at me, "you'll recollect me telling you that I'd gotten one when you come in that night with the other sport? Say, pity he's not with you now; he was a good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he wanted to know too much, and I guess he'd got to want. But I'm liable to tell you now, or else bu'st. See that decanter on the table?"

  "I was just looking at it," said the person in sequins. "You don't know what a turn I've had, or you'd offer me a little something."

  "You shall have a little something in a minute," rejoined Maguire. "But if you take a little anything out of that decanter, you'll collapse like our friend upon the floor."

  "Good heavens!" I cried out, with involuntary indignation, and his fell scheme broke upon me in a clap.

  "Yes, sir!" said Maguire, fixing me with his bloodshot orbs. "My trap for crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of hocussed whiskey, and I guess that's it on the table, with the silver label around its neck. Now look at this other decanter, without any label at all.; but for that they're the dead spit of each other. I'll put them side by side, so you can see. It isn't only the decanters, but the liquor looks the same in both, and tastes so you wouldn't know the difference till you woke up in your tracks. I got the poison from a blamed Indian away west, and it's ruther ticklish stuff. So I keep the label around the trap-bottle, and only leave it out nights. That's the idea, and that's all. there is to it," added Maguire, putting the labelled decanter back in the stand. "But I figure it's enough for ninety-nine crooks out of a hundred, and nineteen out of twenty 'll have their liquor before they go to work."

  "I wouldn't figure on that," observed the secretary, with a downward glance as though at the prostrate Raffles. "Have you looked to see if the trophies are all. safe?"

  "Not yet," said Maguire, with a glance at the pseudo-antique cabinet in which he kept them. "Then you can save yourself the trouble," rejoined the secretary, as he dived under the octagonal table, and came up with a small black bag that I knew at a glance. It was the one that Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I had known him.

  The bag was so heavy now that the secretary used both hands to get it on the table. In another moment he had taken out the jewelled belt presented to Maguire by the State of Nevada, the solid silver statuette of himself, and the gold brick from the citizens of Sacramento.

  Either the sight of his treasures, so nearly lost, or the feeling that the thief had dared to tamper with them after all., suddenly infuriated Maguire to such an extent that he had bestowed a couple of brutal kicks upon the senseless form of Raffles before the secretary and I could interfere.

  "Play light, Mr. Maguire!" cried the sallow secretary. "The man's drugged, as well as down."

  "He'll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight and blister him!"

  "I should judge it about time to telephone for the police."

  "Not till I've done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I'll punch his face into a jam pudding! He shall wash down his teeth with his blood before the coppers come in for what's left!"

  "You make me feel quite ill," complained the grand lady in the chair. "I wish you'd give me a little something, and not be more vulgar than you can 'elp."

  "Help yourself," said Maguire, ungallantly, "and don't talk through your hat. Say, what's the matter with the 'phone?"

  The secretary had picked up the dangling receiver.

  "It looks to me," said he, "as though the crook had rung up somebody before he went off."

  I turned and assisted the grand lady to the refreshment that she craved.

  "Like his cheek!" Maguire thundered. "But who in blazes should he ring up?"

  "It'll all. come out," said the secretary. "They'll tell us at the central, and we shall find out fast enough."

  "It don't matter now," said Maguire. "Let's have a drink and then rouse the devil up."

  But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time being, the police would promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the burglar, and the fact of my not having said a word about it would be directly damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another moment. So I spoke up desperately, with the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduc
t on this occasion. But any sheep would be resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.

  "I wonder if he rang me up?" I exclaimed, as if inspired.

  "You, sonny?" echoed Maguire, decanter in hand. "What in hell could he know about you?"

  "Or what could you know about him?" amended the secretary, fixing me with eyes like drills.

  "Nothing," I admitted, regretting my temerity with all. my heart. "But some one did ring me up about an hour ago. I thought it was Raffles. I told you I expected to find him here, if you remember."

  "But I don't see what that's got to do with the crook," pursued the secretary, with his relentless eyes boring deeper and deeper into mine.

  "No more do I," was my miserable reply. But there was a certain comfort in his words, and some simultaneous promise in the quantity of spirit which Maguire splashed into his glass.

  "Were you cut off sudden?" asked the secretary, reaching for the decanter, as the three of us sat round the octagonal table.

  "So suddenly," I replied, "that I never knew who it was who rang me up. No, thank you - not any for me."

  "What!" cried Maguire, raising a depressed head suddenly. "You won't have a drink in my house? Take care, young man. That's not being a good boy!"

  "But I've been dining out," I expostulated, "and had my whack. I really have."

  Barney Maguire smote the table with terrific

  "Say, sonny, I like you a lot," said he. "But I shan't like you any if you're not a good boy!"

  "Very well, very well," I said hurriedly. "One finger, if I must."

  And the secretary helped me to not more than two.

  "Why should it have been your friend Raffles?" he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire roared "Drink up!" and then drooped once more.

  "I was half asleep," I answered, "and he was the first person who occurred to me. We are both on the telephone, you see. And we had made a bet - "

  The glass was at my lips, but I was able to set it down untouched. Maguire's huge jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and beyond him I saw the person in sequins fast asleep in the artistic armchair.

  "What bet?" asked a voice with a sudden start in it. The secretary was blinking as he drained his glass.

  "About the very thing we've just had explained to us," said I, watching my man intently as I spoke. "I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles thought it must be something else. We had a tremendous argument about it. Raffles said it wasn't a man-trap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was right - it wasn't a man-trap. But it's every bit as good - every little bit - and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except me!"

  I sank my voice with the last sentence, but I might just as well have raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over again to see whether the wilful tautology would cause the secretary to open his eyes. It seemed to have had the very opposite effect. His head fell forward on the table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it upon one of his own sprawling arms. And there sat Maguire bolt upright, but for the jowl upon his shirt-front, while the sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon the reclining form of the lady in the fanciful chair. All. three were sound asleep, by what accident or by whose design I did not pause to inquire; it was enough to ascertain the fact beyond all. chance of error.

  I turned my attention to Raffles last of all. There was the other side of the medal. Raffles was still sleeping as sound as the enemy - or so I feared at first I shook him gently: he made no sign. I introduced vigor into the process: he muttered incoherently. I caught and twisted an unresisting wrist - and at that he yelped profanely. But it was many and many an anxious moment before his blinking eyes knew mine.

  "Bunny!" he yawned, and nothing more until his position came back to him. "So you came to me," he went on, in a tone that thrilled me with its affectionate appreciation, "as I knew you would! Have they turned up yet? They will any minute, you know; there's not one to lose."

  "No, they won't, old man!" I whispered. And he sat up and saw the comatose trio for himself.

  Raffles seemed less amazed at the result than I had been as a puzzled witness of the process; on the other hand, I had never seen anything quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his blackened countenance like a light. It was all. obviously no great surprise, and no puzzle at all., to Raffles.

  "How much did they have, Bunny?" were his first whispered words.

  "Maguire a good three fingers, and the others at least two."

  "Then we needn't lower our voices, and we needn't walk on our toes. Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking me in the ribs, and I believe it must have been true."

  He had risen with a hand to his side and a wry look on his sweep's face.

  "You can guess which of them it was," said I. "The beast is jolly well served!"

  And I shook my fist in the paralytic face of the most brutal bruiser of his time.

  "He is safe till the forenoon, unless they bring a doctor to him," said Raffles. "I don't suppose we could rouse him now if we tried. How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose I took? About a tablespoonful! I guessed what it was, and couldn't resist making sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the position of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in another minute I could hardly keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly poisoned with some subtle drug. If I left the house at all. in that state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in the gutter with my head on the swag itself. In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and that might have led to anything."

  "So you rang me up!"

  "It was my last brilliant inspiration - a sort of flash in the brain-pan before the end - and I remember very little about it. I was more asleep than awake at the time."

  "You sounded like it, Raffles, now that one has the clue."

  "I can't remember a word I said, or what was the end of it, Bunny."

  "You fell in a heap before you came to the end."

  "You didn't hear that through the telephone?"

  "As though we had been in the same room: only I thought it was Maguire who had stolen a march on you and knocked you out."

  I had never seen Raffles more interested and impressed; but at this point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I found my hand in his.

  "You thought that, and yet you came like a shot to do battle for my body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn't in it with you, Bunny!"

  "It was no credit to me - it was rather the other thing," said I, remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing both in a breath. "You know old Swigger Morrison?" I added in final explanation. "I had been dining with him at his club!"

  Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was still my infinite reward.

  "I don't care," said he, "how deeply you had been dining: in vino veritas, Bunny, and your pluck would always out! I have never doubted it, and I never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing else to get us out of this mess."

  My face must have fallen, as my heart sank at these words. I had said to myself that we were out of the mess already - that we had merely to make a clean escape from the house - now the easiest thing in the world. But as I looked at Raffles, and as Raffles looked at me, on the threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept on without sound or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay before us. It was twofold; and the funny thing was that I had seen both horns of the dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his senses. But with Raffles in his right mind, I had ceased to apply my own, or to carry my share of our common burden another inch. It had been an unconscious withdrawal on my part, an instinctive tribute to my leader; but, I was sufficiently ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem in each other's eyes.

  "If we simply cleared out," continued Raffles, "you would be incriminated in the first place
as my accomplice, and once they had you they would have a compass with the needle pointing straight to me. They mustn't have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us both. And for my part they may as well!"

  I echoed a sentiment that was generosity itself in Raffles, but in my case a mere truism.

  "It's easy enough for me," he went on. "I am a common house-breaker, and I escape. They don't know me from Noah. But they do know you; and how do you come to let me escape? What has happened to you, Bunny? That's the crux. What could have happened after they all. dropped off?" And for a minute Raffles frowned and smiled like a sensation novelist working out a plot; then the light broke, and transfigured him through his burnt cork. "I've got it, Bunny!" he exclaimed. "You took some of the stuff yourself, though of course not nearly so much as they did.

  "Splendid!" I cried. "They really were pressing it upon me at the end, and I did say it must be very little."

  "You dozed off in your turn, but you were naturally the first to come to yourself. I had flown; so had the gold brick, the jewelled belt, and the silver statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You couldn't succeed; nor would you if you did try. So what did you do? What's the only really innocent thing you could do in the circumstances?"

  "Go for the police," I suggested dubiously, little relishing the prospect.

  "There's a telephone installed for the purpose," said Raffles. "I should ring them up, if I were you. Try not to look blue about it, Bunny. They're quite the nicest fellows in the world, and what you have to tell them is a mere microbe to the camels I've made them swallow without a grain of salt. It's really the most convincing story one could conceive; but unfortunately there's another point which will take more explaining away."

  And even Raffles looked grave enough as I nodded.

  "You mean that they'll find out you rang me up?"

  "They may," said Raffles. "I see that I managed to replace the receiver all. right. But still - they may."