The Raffles Megapack

by E. W. Hornung

  “If they were to find me out,” she said, “I wonder how many years they would give me? I neither know nor care; it would be worth a few. I thought I had lived since I saw you last…but this is the best fun I have ever had…since Yallarook!”

  She stood for a moment before opening the door that he unlocked for her, stood before him in all her flushed and brilliant radiance, and blew a kiss to him before she went.

  The Governor was easily found. He was grieved at her troubling to descend at such an hour, and did not detain her five minutes in all. He thought she was in a fever, but that the fever became her beyond belief. Reassured on every point, Miss Bouverie was back in her room but a very few minutes after she had left it.

  It was empty. She searched all over, first behind the curtains, then between the pedestals of the bureau, but Stingaree was nowhere in the room, and the bedroom door was still locked. It was a second look behind the curtains that revealed an open window and the scratch of a boot upon the white enamel. It was no breakneck drop into the shrubs.

  So he had gone without a word, but also without breaking his word; for, with wet eyes and a white face, between anger and admiration, Hilda Bouverie had already discovered her bundle of notes and her rope of pearls.

  * * * *

  There are no more tales of Stingaree; tongue never answered to the name again, nor was face ever recognized as his. He may have died that night; it is not very likely, since the young married man in the well-appointed bungalow, which had been broken into earlier in the day, missed a suit of clothes indeed, but not his evening clothes, which were found hung up neatly where he had left them; and it is regrettable to add that his opera-glasses were not the only article of a marketable character which could never be found on his return. There is none the less reason to believe that this was the last professional incident in one of the most incredible criminal careers of which there is any record in Australia. Whether he be dead or alive, back in the old country or still in the new, or, what is less likely, in prison under some other name, the gratifying fact remains that neither in Australia nor elsewhere has there been a second series of crimes bearing the stamp of Stingaree.

  RAFFLES PASTICHES

  The Raffles character was continued by Barry Perowne. During the 1930s and early 1940s, his series featured Raffles as a fairly typical contemporary pulp adventure hero and plays the role of detective alongside that of thief. When he picked up the series again in the 1950s, and once again during the 1970s and 1980s, the stories were set closer to the late Victorian-setting of the original stories, featuring a version of Raffles who only ever committed crimes for reasons of compassion.

  In 2011 and 2012 Richard Foreman published a series of six Raffles stories, collected in a single volume, Raffles: The Complete Innings. These stories, contemporaneous with The Amateur Cracksman, begin with “The Gentleman Thief,” in which Raffles and Bunny are hired by Sherlock Holmes to steal a stolen letter. Later stories in the sextet see Raffles and Bunny encounter H.G. Wells and Irene Adler. Foreman’s Raffles is also more moralistic than the original: the gentleman thief often donates part of his ill-gotten gains to various charitable causes.

  John Kendrick Bangs authored a 1906 novel—included in this volume—entitled R. Holmes & Co. (a.k.a. Raffles Holmes & Company) starring Raffles’ grandson (and Sherlock Holmes’s son, by Raffles’ daughter Marjorie), Raffles Holmes. The novel’s second chapter tells the story of Holmes’s pursuit of Raffles and his growing affection for Raffles’s daughter. Bangs also wrote Mrs Raffles, in which Raffles’s sidekick Bunny Manders teams-up in America with the cracksman’s hitherto-unchronicled wife.

  Graham Greene wrote a play called The Return of A. J. Raffles which differs from the Hornung canon on several points, including reinventing Raffles and Bunny as a homosexual couple.

  Peter Tremayne wrote the novel The Return of Raffles in which Raffles becomes involved in a plot between rival spies.

  Philip José Farmer put Raffles and Manders into a science-fictional situation in his story, “The Problem of the Sore Bridge—Among Others,” in which he and Bunny solve three mysteries unsolved by Sherlock Holmes and save humanity from alien invasion.

  The 1977 novel Raffles, by David Fletcher, is a fresh rewrite of many of Hornung’s original stories, deriving from the television series of the same year.

  Adam Corres authored the 2008 novel Raffles and the Match-Fixing Syndicate, a modern crime thriller in which A. J. Raffles, a master of gamesmanship, explores the corrupt world of international cricket match fixing.

  RAFFLES HOLMES & CO., by John Kendrick Bangs

  Being the Remarkable Adventures of Raffles Holmes, Esq., Detective and Amateur Cracksman by Birth

  With Apologies to

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  and Mr. E. W. Hornung

  INTRODUCTION: MEET JOHN KENDRICK BANGS,

  by John Gregory Betancourt

  (Taken from Wildside Press’s paperback version of Raffles Holmes & Company.)

  John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922), an American writer, is best remembered these days for three volumes of his fantasy novels and stories: A Houseboat on the Styx (1895), Pursuit of the Houseboat (1897), and the collection, The Enchanted Type-Writer (1899). All three are classics of modern fantasy, precursors to works by Thorne Smith (Topper), Philip Jose Farmer (The Fabulous Riverboat), and many others.

  And all three feature Sherlock Holmes as a major character.

  Without doubt Bangs used Holmes in his work without Arthur Conan Doyle’s permission. Victorian-era writers often “borrowed” each others’ creations (there are more than 150 known additional “Alice in Wonderland” books from Lewis Carroll’s era, for example). Sherlock Holmes also fell victim, with mixed results, to numerous unauthorized sequels. Luckily, he fared well in Bangs’s hands.

  Bangs should not be classified with other late 19th/early 20th century fantasists like William Morris, Lord Dunsany, or C.S. Lewis. His roots are uniquely American, drawing from the same sources as Mark Twain and Abrose Bierce. Like the best satirists, Bangs was acutely aware of popular culture and drew on everything from the golfing craze to modern music to springboard his fiction. Those same elements are present in his detective fiction, too, exemplified by Raffles Holmes & Company. Here, Bangs also drew on Sherlock Holmes for inspiration—suggesting that Holmes and the daughter of A.J. Raffles (the thief-hero from the works of another contemporary writer, E. W. Hornung) married and produced a son, the titular hero Raffles Holmes. Raffles, of course, shared both his sire and grandsire’s talents…and had a conflicted soul, caught between the impulse to steal and be a detective himself.

  Raffles Holmes & Company (available in paperback from Wildside Press as part of its Classics series, along with several other Bangs books) is not the only other instance of Bangs’s literary Holmes-napping. His collection The Dreamers: A Club also contains a Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

  Readers looking for classics of fantasy and mystery will find that all of Bangs’s work holds up remarkably well. These are not moldering curiosities, but rich and interesting works of fiction which—like the original Sherlock Holmes stories—deserve to be discovered and read by new generations.

  —John Gregory Betancourt

  INTRODUCING MR. RAFFLES HOLMES

  It was a blistering night in August. All day long the mercury in the thermometer had been flirting with the figures at the top of the tube, and the promised shower at night which a mendacious Weather Bureau had been prophesying as a slight mitigation of our sufferings was conspicuous wholly by its absence. I had but one comfort in the sweltering hours of the day, afternoon and evening, and that was that my family were away in the mountains, and there was no law against my sitting around all day clad only in my pajamas, and otherwise concealed from possibly intruding eyes by the wreaths of smoke that I extracted from the nineteen or twenty cigars which, when there is no protesting eye to suggest otherwise, form my daily allowance. I had tried every method known to the resourceful flat-d
weller of modern times to get cool and to stay so, but alas, it was impossible. Even the radiators, which all winter long had never once given forth a spark of heat, now hissed to the touch of my moistened finger. Enough cooling drinks to float an ocean greyhound had passed into my inner man, with no other result than to make me perspire more profusely than ever, and in so far as sensations went, to make me feel hotter than before.

  Finally, as a last resource, along about midnight, its gridiron floor having had a chance to lose some of its stored-up warmth, I climbed out upon the fire-escape at the rear of the Richmere, hitched my hammock from one of the railings thereof to the leader running from the roof to the area, and swung myself therein some eighty feet above the concealed pavement of our backyard—so called, perhaps, because of its dimensions which were just about that square.

  It was a little improvement, though nothing to brag of. What fitful zephyrs there might be, caused no doubt by the rapid passage to and fro on the roof above and fence-tops below of vagrant felines on Cupid’s contentious battles bent, to the disturbance of the still air, soughed softly through the meshes of my hammock and gave some measure of relief, grateful enough for which I ceased the perfervid language I had been using practically since sunrise, and dozed off. And then there entered upon the scene that marvelous man, Raffles Holmes, of whose exploits it is the purpose of these papers to tell.

  I had dozed perhaps for a full hour when the first strange sounds grated upon my ear. Somebody had opened a window in the kitchen of the first-floor apartment below, and with a dark lantern was inspecting the iron platform of the fire escape without. A moment later this somebody crawled out of the window, and with movements that in themselves were a sufficient indication of the questionable character of his proceedings, made for the ladder leading to the floor above, upon which many a time and oft had I too climbed to home and safety when an inconsiderate janitor had locked me out. Every step that he took was stealthy—that much I could see by the dim starlight. His lantern he had turned dark again, evidently lest he should attract attention in the apartments below as he passed their windows in his upward flight.

  “Ha!” thought I to myself. “It’s never too hot for Mr. Sneak to get in his fine work. I wonder whose stuff he is after?”

  Turning over flat on my stomach so that I might the more readily observe the man’s movements, and breathing pianissimo lest he in turn should observe mine, I watched him as he climbed. Up he came as silently as the midnight mouse upon a soft carpet—up past the Jorkins’ apartments on the second floor; up stealthily by the Tinkletons’ abode on the third; up past the fire escape Italian garden of little Mrs. Persimmon on the fourth; up past the windows of the disagreeable Garraways’ kitchen below mine, and then, with the easy grace of a feline, zip! he silently landed within reach of my hand on my own little iron veranda, and craning his neck to one side, peered in through the open window and listened intently for two full minutes.

  “Humph!” whispered my inner consciousness to itself. “He is the coolest thing I’ve seen since last Christmas left town. I wonder what he is up to? There’s nothing in my apartment worth stealing, now that my wife and children are away, unless it be my Jap valet, Nogi, who might make a very excellent cab driver if I could only find words to convey to his mind the idea that he is discharged.”

  And then the visitor, apparently having correctly assured himself that there was no one within, stepped across the window sill and vanished into the darkness of my kitchen. A moment later I too entered the window in pursuit—not so close a one, however, as to acquaint him with my proximity. I wanted to see what the chap was up to; and also being totally unarmed and ignorant as to whether or not he carried dangerous weapons, I determined to go slow for a little while. Moreover, the situation was not wholly devoid of novelty, and it seemed to me that here at last was abundant opportunity for a new sensation.

  As he had entered, so did he walk cautiously along the narrow bowling alley that serves for a hallway connecting my drawing room and library with the dining room, until he came to the library, into which he disappeared. This was not reassuring to me, because, to tell the truth, I value my books more than I do my plate, and if I were to be robbed I should much have preferred his taking my plated plate from the dining room than any one of my editions-deluxe sets of the works of Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, and other standard authors from the library shelves.

  Once in the library, he quietly drew the shades at the windows thereof to bar possible intruding eyes from without, turned on the electric lights, and proceeded to go through my papers as calmly and coolly as though they were his own. In a short time, apparently, he found what he wanted in the shape of a royalty statement recently received by me from my publishers, and, lighting one of my cigars from a bundle of brevas in front of him, took off his coat and sat down to peruse the statement of my returns.

  Simple though it was, this act aroused the first feeling of resentment in my breast, for the relations between the author and his publishers are among the most sacred confidences of life, and the peeping Tom who peers through a keyhole at the courtship of a young man engaged in wooing his fiancée is no worse an intruder than he who would tear aside the veil of secrecy which screens the official returns of a “best seller” from the public eye.

  Feeling, therefore, that I had permitted matters to proceed as far as they might with propriety, I instantly entered the room and confronted my uninvited guest, bracing myself, of course, for the defensive onslaught which I naturally expected to sustain. But nothing of the sort occurred, for the intruder, with a composure that was nothing short of marvelous under the circumstances, instead of rising hurriedly like one caught in some disreputable act, merely leaned farther back in the chair, took the cigar from his mouth, and greeted me with:

  “Howdy do, sir. What can I do for you this beastly hot night?”

  The cold rim of a revolver-barrel placed at my temple could not more effectually have put me out of business than this nonchalant reception. Consequently I gasped out something about its being the sultriest 47th of August in eighteen years, and plumped back into a chair opposite him.

  “I wouldn’t mind a Remsen cooler myself,” he went on, “but the fact is your butler is off for tonight, and I’m hanged if I can find a lemon in the house. Maybe you’ll join me in a smoke?” he added, shoving my own bundle of brevas across the table. “Help yourself.”

  “I guess I know where the lemons are,” said I. “But how did you know my butler was out?”

  “I telephoned him to go to Philadelphia this afternoon to see his brother Yoku, who is ill there,” said my visitor. “You see, I didn’t want him around tonight when I called. I knew I could manage you alone in case you turned up, as you see you have, but two of you, and one a Jap, I was afraid might involve us all in ugly complications. Between you and me, Jenkins, these Orientals are pretty lively fighters, and your man Nogi particularly has got jiu-jitsu down to a pretty fine point, so I had to do something to get rid of him. Our arrangement is a matter for two, not three, anyhow.”

  “So,” said I, coldly. “You and I have an arrangement, have we? I wasn’t aware of it.”

  “Not yet,” he answered. “But there’s a chance that we may have. If I can only satisfy myself that you are the man I’m looking for, there is no earthly reason that I can see why we should not come to terms. Go on out and get the lemons and the gin and soda, and let’s talk this thing over man to man like a couple of good fellows at the club. I mean you no harm, and you certainly don’t wish to do any kind of injury to a chap who, even though appearances are against him, really means to do you a good turn.”

  “Appearances certainly are against you, sir,” said I, a trifle warmly, for the man’s composure was irritating. “A disappearance would be more likely to do you credit at this moment,”

  “Tush, Jenkins!” he answered. “Why waste breath saying self-evident things? Here you are on the verge of a big transaction, and you delay proceedings by making statem
ents of fact, mixed in with a cheap wit which, I must confess, I find surprising, and so obvious as to be visible even to the blind. You don’t talk like an author whose stuff is worth ten cents a word—more like a penny-a-liner, in fact, with whom words are of such small value that no one’s the loser if he throws away a whole dictionary. Go out and mix a couple of your best Remsen coolers, and by the time you get back I’ll have got to the gist of this royalty statement of yours, which is all I’ve come for. Your silver and books and love letters and manuscripts are safe from me. I wouldn’t have ’em as a gift.”

  “What concern have you with my royalties?” I demanded.

  “A vital one,” said he. “Mix the coolers, and when you get back I’ll tell you. Go on. There’s a good chap. It’ll be daylight before long, and I want to close up this job if I can before sunrise.”

  What there was in the man’s manner to persuade me to compliance with his wishes, I am sure I cannot say definitely. There was a cold, steely glitter in his eye, for one thing. With it, however, was a strengthfulness of purpose, a certain pleasant masterfulness, that made me feel that I could trust him, and it was to this aspect of his nature that I yielded. There was something frankly appealing in his long, thin, ascetic looking face, and I found it irresistible.

  “All right,” said I with a smile and a frown to express the conflicting quality of my emotions. “So be it. I’ll get the coolers, but you must remember, my friend, that there are coolers and coolers, just as there are jugs and jugs. The kind of jug that remains for you will depend upon the story you have to tell when I get back, so you’d better see that it’s a good one.”

  “I am not afraid, Jenkins, old chap,” he said with a hearty laugh as I rose. “If this royalty statement can prove to me that you are the literary partner I need in my business, I can prove to you that I’m a good man to tie up to—so go along with you.”