“He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school,” said I: “captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth.”
“And you worshipped him, I suppose?”
“Absolutely.”
My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes.
“You must be rather disappointed in him now!”
“Disappointed! Why?” I asked with much outward amusement. But I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
“Of course I don’t know much about him,” remarked Miss Belsize as though she cared less.
“But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?”
“I do,” said I, with injudicious alacrity.
“Well,” said Miss Belsize, “what else is he?”
“The best fellow in the world, among other things.”
“But what other things?”
“Ask Teddy!” I said unluckily.
“I have,” replied Miss Belsize. “But Teddy doesn’t know. He often wonders how Mr. Raffles can afford to play so much cricket without doing any work.”
“Does he, indeed!”
“Many people do.”
“And what do they say about him?”
Miss Belsize hesitated, watching me for a moment and the goldfish rather longer. The rain sounded louder, and the fountain as though it had been turned on again, before she answered:
“More than their prayers, no doubt!”
“Do you mean,” I almost gasped, “as to the way Raffles gets his living?”
“Yes.”
“You might tell me the kind of things they say, Miss Belsize!”
“But if there’s no truth in them?”
“I’ll soon tell you if there is or not.”
“But suppose I don’t care either way?” said Miss Belsize with a brilliant smile.
“Then I care so much that I should be extremely grateful to you.”
“Mind, I don’t believe it myself, Mr. Manders.”
“You don’t believe—”
“That Mr. Raffles lives by his wits and—his cricket!”
I jumped to my feet.
“Is that all they say about him?” I cried.
“Isn’t it enough?” asked Miss Belsize, astonished in her turn at my demeanour.
“Oh, quite enough, quite enough!” said I. “It’s only the most scandalously unfair and utterly untrue report that ever got about—that’s all!”
This heavy irony was, of course, intended to convey the impression that one’s first explosion of relief had been equally ironical. But I was to discover that Camilla Belsize was never easily deceived; it was unpleasantly apparent in her bold eyes before she opened her firm mouth.
“Yet you seemed to expect something worse,” she said at length.
“What could be worse?” I asked, my back against the wall of my own indiscretion. “Why, a man like A.J. Raffles would rather be any mortal thing than a paid amateur!”
“But you haven’t told me what he is, Mr. Manders.”
“And you haven’t told me, Miss Belsize, why you’re so interested in A. J. after all!” I retorted, getting home for once, and sitting down again on the strength of it.
But Miss Belsize was my superior to the last; in the single moment of my ascendency she made me blush for it and for myself. She would be quite frank with me: my friend Mr. Raffles did interest her rather more than she cared to say. It was because Teddy thought so much of him, that was the only reason, and her one excuse for all inquisitive questions and censorious remarks. I must have thought her very rude; but now I knew. Mr. Raffles had been such a friend to Teddy; sometimes she wondered whether he was quite a good friend; and there I had “the whole thing in a nutshell.”
I had indeed! And I knew the nut, and had tasted its bitter kernel too often to make any mistake about it. Jealousy was its other name. But I did not care how jealous Miss Belsize became of Raffles as long as jealousy did not beget suspicion; and my mind was not entirely relieved on that point.
We dropped the whole subject, however, with some abruptness; and the rest of our conversation in the rockery, and in the steaming orchid-house and further vineries which we proceeded to explore together, was quite refreshingly tame. Yet I think it was on this desultory tour, to the still incessant accompaniment of rain on the glasshouses, that Camilla’s mother took shape in my mind as the Lady Laura Belsize, an apparently impecunious widow reduced to “semi-detachment down the river” and suburban neighbours whose manners and customs my companion hit off with vivacious intolerance. She told me how she had shocked them by smoking cigarettes in the back garden, and pronounced a gratuitous conviction that I of all people would have been no less scandalised! That was in the uttermost vinery, and in another minute two Sullivans were in full blast under the vines. I remember discovering that the great brand was not unfamiliar to Miss Belsize, and even gathering that it was Raffles himself who had made it known to her. Raffles, whom she did not “know much about,” or consider “quite a good friend” for Teddy Garland!
I was becoming curious to see this antagonistic pair together; but it was the middle of the afternoon before Raffles reappeared, though Mr. Garland told me he had received an optimistic note from him by special messenger earlier in the day. I felt I might have been told a little more, considering the intimate part I was already playing as a stranger in a strange house. But I was only too thankful to find that Raffles had so far infected our host with his confidence as to tide us through luncheon with far fewer embarrassments than before; nor did Mr. Garland desert us again until the butler with a visitor’s card brought about his abrupt departure from the conservatory.
Then my troubles began afresh. It stopped raining at last; if Miss Belsize could have had her way we should all have started for Lord’s that minute. I took her into the garden to show her the state of the lawns, coldly scintillant with standing water and rimmed by regular canals. Lord’s would be like them, only fifty times worse; play had no doubt been abandoned on that quagmire for the day. Miss Belsize was not so sure about that; why should we not drive over and find out? I said that was the surest way of missing Teddy. She said a hansom would take us there and back in a half-an-hour. I gained time disputing that statement, but said if we went at all I was sure Mr. Garland would want to go with us, and that in his own brougham. All this on the crown of a sloppy path, and when Miss Belsize asked me how many more times I was going to change my ground, I could not help looking at her absurd shoes sinking into the softened gravel, and saying I thought it was for her to do that. Miss Belsize took my advice to the extent of turning upon a submerged heel, though with none too complimentary a smile; and then it was that I saw what I had been curious to see all day. Raffles was coming down the path towards us. And I saw Miss Belsize hesitate and stiffen before shaking hands with him.
“They’ve given it up as a bad job at last,” said he. “I’ve just come from Lord’s, and Teddy won’t be very long.”
“Why didn’t you bring him with you?” asked Miss Belsize pertinently.
“Well, I thought you ought to know the worst at once,” said Raffles, rather lamely for him; “and then a man playing in a ’Varsity match is never quite his own master, you know. Still, he oughtn’t to keep you waiting much longer.”
It was perhaps unfortunately put; at any rate Miss Belsize took it pretty plainly amiss, and I saw her colour rise as she declared she had been waiting in the hope of seeing some cricket. Since that was at an end she must be thinking of getting home, and would just say good-bye to Mr. Garland. This sudden decision took me as much by surprise as I believe it took Miss Belsize herself; but having announced her intention, however hot-headedly, she proceeded to action by way of the conservatory and the library door, while Raffles and I went through into the hall the other way.
“I’m afraid I’ve put my foot in it,” said
he to me. “But it’s just as well, since I needn’t tell you there’s no sign of Teddy up at Lord’s.”
“Have you been there all day?” I asked him under my breath.
“Except when I went to the office of this rag,” replied Raffles, brandishing an evening paper that ill deserved his epithet. “See what they say about Teddy here.”
And I held my breath while Raffles showed me a stupendous statement in the stop-press column: it was to the effect that E.M. Garland (Eton and Trinity) might be unable to keep wicket for Cambridge after all, “owing to the serious illness of his father.”
“His father!” I exclaimed. “Why, his father’s closeted with somebody or other at this very moment behind the door you’re looking at!”
“I know, Bunny. I’ve seen him.”
“But what an extraordinary fabrication to get into a decent paper! I don’t wonder you went to the office about it.”
“You’ll wonder still less when I tell you I have an old pal on the staff.”
“Of course you made him take it straight out?”
“On the contrary, Bunny, I persuaded him to put it in!”
And Raffles chuckled in my face as I have known him chuckle over many a more felonious—but less incomprehensible—exploit.
“Didn’t you see, Bunny, how bad the poor old boy looked in his library this morning? That gave me my idea; the fiction is at least founded on fact. I wonder you don’t see the point; as a matter of fact, there are two points, just as there were two jobs I took on this morning; one was to find Teddy, and the other was to save his face at Lord’s. Well, I haven’t actually found him yet; but if he’s in the land of the living he will see this statement, and when he does see it even you may guess what he will do! Meanwhile, there’s nothing but sympathy for him at Lord’s. Studley couldn’t have been nicer; a place will be kept for Teddy up to the eleventh hour tomorrow. And if that isn’t killing two birds with one stone, Bunny, may I never perform the feat!”
“But what will old Garland say, A. J.?”
“He has already said, Bunny. I told him what I was doing in a note before lunch, and the moment I arrived just now he came out to hear what I had done. He doesn’t mind what I do so long as I find Teddy and save his face before the world at large and Miss Belsize in particular. Look out, Bunny—here she is!”
The excitement in his whisper was not characteristic of Raffles, but it was less remarkable than the change in Camilla Belsize as she entered the hall through the drawing-room as we had done before her. For one moment I suspected her of eavesdropping; then I saw that all traces of personal pique had vanished from her face, and that some anxiety for another had taken its place. She came up to Raffles and me as though she had forgiven both of us our trespasses of two or three minutes ago.
“I didn’t go into the library after all,” she said, looking askance at the library door. “I am afraid Mr. Garland is having a trying interview with somebody. I had just a glimpse of the man’s face as I hesitated, and I thought I recognised him.”
“Who was it?” I asked, for I myself had wondered who the rather mysterious visitor might be for whom Mr. Garland had deserted us so abruptly in the conservatory, and with whom he was still conferring in the hour of so many issues.
“I believe it’s a dreadful man I know by sight down the river,” said Miss Belsize; and hardly had she spoke before the library door opened and out came the dreadful man in the portentous person of Dan Levy, the usurer of European notoriety, our victim of the morning and our certain enemy for life.
CHAPTER VII
In Which We Fail to Score
Mr. Levy sailed in with frock-coat flying, shiny hat in hand; he was evidently prepared for us, and Raffles for once behaved as though we were prepared for Mr. Levy. Of myself I cannot speak. I was ready for a terrific scene. But Raffles was magnificent, and to do our enemy justice he was quite as good; they faced each other with a nod and a smile of mutual suavity, shot with underlying animosity on the one side and delightful defiance on the other. Not a word was said or a tone employed to betray the true situation between the three of us; for I took my cue from the two protagonists just in time to preserve the triple truce. Meanwhile Mr. Garland, obviously distressed as he was, and really ill as he looked, was not the least successful of us in hiding his emotions; for having expressed a grim satisfaction in the coincidence of our all knowing each other, he added that he supposed Miss Belsize was an exception, and presented Mr. Levy forthwith as though he were an ordinary guest.
“You must find a better exception than this young lady!” cried that worthy with a certain aplomb. “I know you very well by sight, Miss Belsize, and your mother, Lady Laura, into the bargain.”
“Really?” said Miss Belsize, without returning the compliment at her command.
“The bargain!” muttered Raffles to me with sly irony. The echo was not meant for Levy’s ears, but it reached them nevertheless, and was taken up with adroit urbanity.
“I didn’t mean to use a trade term,” explained the Jew, “though bargains, I confess, are somewhat in my line; and I don’t often get the worst of one, Mr. Raffles; when I do, the other fellow usually lives to repent it.”
It was said with a laugh for the lady’s benefit, but with a gleam of the eyes for ours. Raffles answered the laugh with a much heartier one; the look he ignored. I saw Miss Belsize beginning to watch the pair, and only interrupted by the arrival of the tea-tray, over which Mr. Garland begged her to preside. Mr. Garland seemed to have an anxious eye upon us all in turn; at Raffles he looked wistfully as though burning to get him to himself for further consultation; but the fact that he refrained from doing so, coupled with a grimly punctilious manner towards the money-lender, gave the impression that his son’s whereabouts was no longer the sole anxiety.
“And yet,” remarked Miss Belsize, as we formed a group about her in the firelight, “you seem to have met your match the other day, Mr. Levy?”
“Where was that, Miss Belsize?”
“Somewhere on the Continent, wasn’t it? It got into the newspapers, I know, but I forget the name of the place.”
“Do you mean when my wife and I were robbed at Carlsbad?”
I was holding my breath now as I had not held it all day. Raffles was merely smiling into his teacup as one who knew all about the affair.
“Carlsbad it was!” certified Miss Belsize, as though it mattered. “I remember now.”
“I don’t call that meeting your match,” said the money-lender. “An unarmed man with a frightened wife at his elbow is no match for a desperate criminal with a loaded revolver.”
“Was it as bad as all that?” whispered Camilla Belsize.
Up to this point one had felt her to be forcing the unlucky topic with the best of intentions towards us all; now she was interested in the episode for its own sake, and eager for more details than Mr. Levy had a mind to impart.
“It makes a good tale, I know,” said he, “but I shall prefer telling it when they’ve got the man. If you want to know any more, Miss Belsize, you’d better ask Mr. Raffles; ’e was in our hotel, and came in for all the excitement. But it was just a trifle too exciting for me and my wife.”
“Raffles at Carlsbad?” exclaimed Mr. Garland.
Miss Belsize only stared.
“Yes,” said Raffles. “That’s where I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Levy.”
“Didn’t you know he was there?” inquired the money-lender of our host. And he looked sharply at Raffles as Mr. Garland replied that this was the first he had heard of it.
“But it’s the first we’ve seen of each other, sir,” said Raffles, “except those few minutes this morning. And I told you I only got back last night.”
“But you never told me you had been at Carlsbad, Raffles!”
“It’s a sore subject, you see,” said Raffles, with a sigh and a laugh. “Isn’t it, Mr. Levy?”
“You seem to find it so,” replied the moneylender.
They were standing
face to face in the firelight, each with a shoulder against the massive chimney-piece; and Camilla Belsize was still staring at them both from her place behind the tea-tray; and I was watching the three of them by turns from the other side of the hall.
“But you’re the fittest man I know. Raffles,” pursued old Garland with terrible tact. “What on earth were you doing at a place like Carlsbad?”
“The cure,” said Raffles. “There’s nothing else to do there—is there, Mr. Levy?”
Levy replied with his eyes on Raffles:
“Unless you’ve got to cope with a swell mobsman who steals your wife’s jewels and then gets in such a funk that he practically gives them back again!”
The emphasised term was the one that Dan Levy had applied to Raffles and myself in his own office that very morning.
“Did he give them back again?” asked Camilla Belsize, breaking her silence on an eager note.
Raffles turned to her at once.
“The jewels were found buried in the woods,” said he. “Out there everybody thought the thief had simply hidden them. But no doubt Mr. Levy has the better information.”
Mr. Levy smiled sardonically in the firelight. And it was at this point I followed the example of Miss Belsize and put in my one belated word.
“I shouldn’t have thought there was such a thing as a swell mob in the wilds of Austria,” said I.
“There isn’t,” admitted the money-lender readily. “But your true mobsman knows his whole blooming Continent as well as Piccadilly Circus. His ’ead-quarters are in London, but a week’s journey at an hour’s notice is nothing to him if the swag looks worth it. Mrs. Levy’s necklace was actually taken at Carlsbad, for instance, but the odds are that it was marked down at some London theatre—or restaurant, eh, Mr. Raffles?”
“I’m afraid I can’t offer an expert opinion,” said Raffles very merrily as their eyes met. “But if the man was an Englishman and knew that you were one, why didn’t he bully you in the vulgar tongue?”
“Who told you he didn’t?” cried Levy, with a sudden grin that left no doubt about the thought behind it. To me that thought had been obvious from its birth within the last few minutes; but this expression of it was as obvious a mistake.
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