“I might have wanted you, Bunny. I very nearly did.”
“For my face?”
“It has been my fortune before tonight, Bunny. It has also given me more confidence than you are likely to believe at this time of day. You stimulate me more than you think.”
“Your gallery and your prompter’s box in one?”
“Capital, Bunny! But it was no joking matter with me either, my dear fellow; it was touch-and-go at the time. I might have called on you at any moment, and it was something to know I should not have called in vain.”
“But what to do, Raffles?”
“Fight our way out and bolt!” he answered, with a mouth that meant it, and a fine gay glitter of the eyes.
I shot out of my chair.
“You don’t mean to tell me you had a hand in the job?”
“I had the only hand in it, my dear Bunny.”
“Nonsense! You were sitting at table at the time. No, but you may have taken some other fellow into the show. I always thought you would!”
“One’s quite enough, Bunny,” said Raffles dryly; he leaned back in his chair and took out another cigarette. And I accepted of yet another from his case; for it was no use losing one’s temper with Raffles; and his incredible statement was not, after all, to be ignored.
“Of course,” I went on, “if you really had brought off this thing on your own, I should be the last to criticise your means of reaching such an end. You have not only scored off a far superior force, which had laid itself out to score off you, but you have put them in the wrong about you, and they’ll eat out of your hand for the rest of their days. But don’t ask me to believe that you’ve done all this alone! By George,” I cried, in a sudden wave of enthusiasm, “I don’t care how you’ve done it or who has helped you. It’s the biggest thing you ever did in your life!”
And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more radiant, or better pleased with the world and himself, or nearer that elation which he usually left to me.
“Then you shall hear all about it, Bunny, if you’ll do what I ask you.”
“Ask away, old chap, and the thing’s done.”
“Switch off the electric lights.”
“All of them?”
“I think so.”
“There, then.”
“Now go to the back window and up with the blind.”
“Well?”
“I’m coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this. It’s the only window left alight in the house!”
His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and very much aslant through a long lane of mews to a little square light like a yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window and leaned out before I saw it for myself.
“You don’t mean to say that’s Thornaby House?”
I was not familiar with the view from my back windows.
“Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own race-glass. It has been the most useful thing of all.”
But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o’clock in the evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses at his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted window pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my vision. I could not see into the actual room, but the shadows of those within were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even thought a black thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it must be, the window to which the intrepid Parrington had descended from the one above.
“Exactly!” said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. “And that’s the window I have been watching these last few weeks. By daylight you can see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house; and by good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the house arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was easily spotted by watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you were up! In the evening his valet stays behind to put things straight; and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to find out something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her outside at eight o’clock. Of course he pretends he was at his post at the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow’s work before my own. I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to rag the room.”
“I wonder you had time!”
“It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen. By the way, I did that literally, of course, in the case of the clock they found. It’s an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but you must admit that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all ready to cart away. There was thus any amount of prima-fade evidence of the robbery having taken place when we were all at table. As a matter of fact, Lord Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute, his valet followed him the minute after, and I entered the minute after that.”
“Through the window?”
“To be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay for your garden in town, in more ways than one. You know the wall, of course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath contempt.”
“But what about the window? It’s on the first floor, isn’t it?”
Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat. It was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule, and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes, exactly like a child’s fishing-rod, which I afterward found to have been their former state. A double hook of steel was now produced and quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then Raffles undid three buttons of his waistcoat; and lapped round and round his waist was the finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of foot-loops at regular intervals.
“Is it necessary to go any further?” asked Raffles when he had unwound the rope. “This end is made fast to that end of the hook, the other half of the hook fits over anything that comes its way, and you leave your rod dangling while you swarm up your line. Of course, you must know what you’ve got to hook on to; but a man who has had a porcelain bath fixed in his dressing-room is the man for me. The pipes were all outside, and fixed to the wall in just the right place. You see I had made a reconnaissance by day in addition to many by night; it would hardly have been worth while constructing my ladder on chance.”
“So you made it on purpose!”
“My dear Bunny,” said Raffles, as he wound the hemp girdle round his waist once more, “I never did care for ladder work, but I always said that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best of its kind yet invented. This one may come in useful again.”
“But how long did the whole thing take you?”
“From mother earth, to mother earth? About five minutes, tonight, and one of those was spent in doing another man’s work.”
“What!” I cried. “You mean to tell me you climbed up and down, in and out, and broke into that cupboard and that big tin box, and wedged up the doors and cleared out with a peer’s robes and all the rest of it in five minutes?”
“Of course I don’t, and of course I didn’t.”
“Then what do you mean, and what did you do?”
“Made two bites at the cherry, Bunny! I had a dress rehearsal in the dead of last night, and it was then I took the swag. Our noble friend was snoring next door all the time, but the effort may still stand high among my small exploits, for I not only took all I wanted, but left the whole place exactly as I found it, and shut things after me like a good little boy. All that took a good deal longer; tonight I had simply to rag the room a bit, sweep up some studs and links, and leave ample evidence of having boned those rotten robes tonight. That, if you come to think of it, was what you writing chaps would call the quintessential Q.E.F. I have not only shown these dear Criminologists that I couldn’t possibly have done this trick, but that there’s some other fellow who could and did, and whom they’ve been perfect asses to confuse with me.”
You may figure me as gazing on Raffles all this time in mute and rapt amazement. But I had long been past that pitch. If he had told me now that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should not have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with him to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed. And I took down my overcoat as he put on his. But Raffles would not hear of my accompanying him that night.
“No, my dear Bunny, I am short of sleep and fed up with excitement. You mayn’t believe it—you may look upon me as a plaster devil—but those five minutes you wot of were rather too crowded even for my taste. The dinner was nominally at a quarter to eight, and I don’t mind telling you now that I counted on twice as long as I had. But no one came until twelve minutes to, and so our host took his time. I didn’t want to be the last to arrive, and I was in the drawing-room five minutes before the hour. But it was a quicker thing than I care about, when all is said.”
And his last word on the matter, as he nodded and went his way, may well be mine; for one need be no criminologist, much less a member of the Criminologists’ Club, to remember what Raffles did with the robes and coronet of the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G. He did with them exactly what he might have been expected to do by the gentlemen with whom he had foregathered; and he did it in a manner so characteristic of himself as surely to remove from their minds the last aura of the idea that he and himself were the same person. Carter Paterson was out of the question, and any labelling or addressing to be avoided on obvious grounds. But Raffles stabled the white elephants in the cloak-room at Charing Cross—and sent Lord Thornaby the ticket.
THE FIELD OF PHILLIPI
Nipper Nasmyth had been head of our school when Raffles was captain of cricket. I believe he owed his nickname entirely to the popular prejudice against a day-boy; and in view of the special reproach which the term carried in my time, as also of the fact that his father was one of the school trustees, partner in a banking firm of four resounding surnames, and manager of the local branch, there can be little doubt that the stigma was undeserved. But we did not think so then, for Nasmyth was unpopular with high and low, and appeared to glory in the fact. A swollen conscience caused him to see and hear even more than was warranted by his position, and his uncompromising nature compelled him to act on whatsoever he heard or saw: a savage custodian of public morals, he had in addition a perverse enthusiasm for lost causes, loved a minority for its own sake, and untenable tenets for theirs. Such, at all events, was my impression of Nipper Nasmyth, after my first term, which was also his last I had never spoken to him, but I had heard him speak with extraordinary force and fervor in the school debates. I carried a clear picture of his unkempt hair, his unbrushed coat, his dominant spectacles, his dogmatic jaw. And it was I who knew the combination at a glance, after years and years, when the fateful whim seized Raffles to play once more in the Old Boys’ Match, and his will took me down with him to participate in the milder festivities of Founder’s Day.
It was, however, no ordinary occasion. The bicentenary loomed but a year ahead, and a movement was on foot to mark the epoch with an adequate statue of our pious founder. A special meeting was to be held at the school-house, and Raffles had been specially invited by the new head master, a man of his own standing, who had been in the eleven with him up at Cambridge. Raffles had not been near the old place for years; but I had never gone down since the day I left; and I will not dwell on the emotions which the once familiar journey awakened in my unworthy bosom. Paddington was alive with Old Boys of all ages—but very few of ours—if not as lively as we used to make it when we all landed back for the holidays. More of us had moustaches and cigarettes and “loud” ties. That was all. Yet of the throng, though two or three looked twice and thrice at Raffles, neither he nor I knew a soul until we had to change at the junction near our journey’s end, when, as I say, it was I who recognized Nipper Nasmyth at sight.
The man was own son of the boy we both remembered. He had grown a ragged beard and a moustache that hung about his face like a neglected creeper. He was stout and bent and older than his years. But he spurned the platform with a stamping stride which even I remembered in an instant, and which was enough for Raffles before he saw the man’s face.
“The Nipper it is!” he cried. “I could swear to that walk in a pantomime procession! See the independence in every step: that’s his heel on the neck of the oppressor: it’s the nonconformist conscience in baggy breeches. I must speak to him, Bunny. There was a lot of good in the old Nipper, though he and I did bar each other.”
And in a moment he had accosted the man by the boy’s nickname, obviously without thinking of an affront which few would have read in that hearty open face and hand.
“My name’s Nasmyth,” snapped the other, standing upright to glare.
“Forgive me,” said Raffles undeterred. “One remembers a nickname and forgets all it never used to mean. Shake hands, my dear fellow! I’m Raffles. It must be fifteen years since we met.”
“At least,” replied Nasmyth coldly; but he could no longer refuse Raffles his hand. “So you are going down,” he sneered, “to this great gathering?” And I stood listening at my distance, as though still in the middle fourth.
“Rather!” cried Raffles. “I’m afraid I have let myself lose touch, but I mean to turn over a new leaf. I suppose that isn’t necessary in your case, Nasmyth?”
He spoke with an enthusiasm rare indeed in him: it had grown upon Raffles in the train; the spirit of his boyhood had come rushing back at fifty miles an hour. He might have been following some honorable calling in town; he might have snatched this brief respite from a distinguished but exacting career. I am convinced that it was I alone who remembered at that moment the life we were really leading at that time. With me there walked this skeleton through every waking hour that was to follow. I shall endeavor not to refer to it again. Yet it should not be forgotten that my skeleton was always there.
“It certainly is not necessary in my case,” replied Nasmyth, still as stiff as any poker. “I happen to be a trustee.”
“Of the school?”
“Like my father before me.”
“I congratulate you, my dear fellow!” cried the hearty Raffles—a younger Raffles than I had ever known in town.
“I don’t know that you need,” said Nasmyth sourly.
“But it must be a tremendous interest. And the proof is that you’re going down to this show, like all the rest of us.”
“No, I’m not. I live there, you see.”
And I think the Nipper recalled that name as he ground his heel upon an unresponsive flagstone.
“But you’re going to this meeting at the school-house, surely?”
“I don’t know. If I do there may be squalls. I don’t know what you think about this precious scheme Raffles, but I…”
The ragged beard stuck out, set teeth showed through the wild moustache, and in a sudden outpouring we had his views. They were narrow and intemperate and perverse as any I had heard him advocate as the firebrand of the Debating Society in my first term. But they were stated with all the old vim and venom. The mind of Nasmyth had not broadened with the years, but neither had its natural force abated, nor that of his character either. He spoke with great vigor at the top of his voice; soon we had a little crowd about us; but the tall collars and the broad smiles of the younger Old Boys did not deter our dowdy demagogue. Why spend money on a man who had been dead two hundred years? What good could it do him or the school? Besides, he was only technically our founder. He had not founded a great public school. He had founded a little country grammar school which had pottered along for a century and a half. The great public school was the growth of the last fifty years, and no credit to the pillar of piety. Besides, he was only nominally pious. Nasmyth had made researches, and he knew. And why throw good money after a bad man?
“Are there many of your opinion?” inquired Raffles, when the agitator paused for breath. And Nasmyth beam
ed on us with flashing eyes.
“Not one to my knowledge as yet,” said he. “But we shall see after tomorrow night. I hear it’s to be quite an exceptional gathering this year; let us hope it may contain a few sane men. There are none on the present staff, and I only know of one among the trustees!”
Raffles refrained from smiling as his dancing eye met mine.
“I can understand your view,” he said. “I am not sure that I don’t share it to some extent. But it seems to me a duty to support a general movement like this even if it doesn’t take the direction or the shape of our own dreams. I suppose you yourself will give something, Nasmyth?”
“Give something? I? Not a brass farthing!” cried the implacable banker. “To do so would be to stultify my whole position. I cordially and conscientiously disapprove of the whole thing, and shall use all my influence against it. No, my good sir, I not only don’t subscribe myself, but I hope to be the means of nipping a good many subscriptions in the bud.”
I was probably the only one who saw the sudden and yet subtle change in Raffles—the hard mouth, the harder eye. I, at least, might have foreseen the sequel then and there. But his quiet voice betrayed nothing, as he inquired whether Nasmyth was going to speak at next night’s meeting. Nasmyth said he might, and certainly warned us what to expect. He was still fulminating when our train came in.
“Then we meet again at Philippi,” cried Raffles in gay adieu. “For you have been very frank with us all, Nasmyth, and I’ll be frank enough in my turn to tell you that I’ve every intention of speaking on the other side!”
It happened that Raffles had been asked to speak by his old college friend, the new head master. Yet it was not at the school-house that he and I were to stay, but at the house that we had both been in as boys. It also had changed hands: a wing had been added, and the double tier of tiny studies made brilliant with electric light. But the quad and the fives-courts did not look a day older; the ivy was no thicker round the study windows; and in one boy’s castle we found the traditional print of Charing Cross Bridge which had knocked about our studies ever since a son of the contractor first sold it when he left. Nay, more, there was the bald remnant of a stuffed bird which had been my own daily care when it and I belonged to Raffles. And when we all filed in to prayers, through the green baize door which still separated the master’s part of the house from that of the boys, there was a small boy posted in the passage to give the sign of silence to the rest assembled in the hall, quite identically as in the dim old days; the picture was absolutely unchanged; it was only we who were out of it in body and soul.
The Raffles Megapack Page 40