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THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN.....................................................................................................................1

E. W. HORNUNG...................................................................................................................................1

It was halfpast twelve when I returned to the Albany as a last desperate resort. The scene of my disaster was

much as I had left it. The baccaratcounters still strewed the table, with the empty glasses and the loaded

ashtrays. A window had been opened to let the smoke out, and was letting in the fog instead. Raffles himself

had merely discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumerable blazers. Yet he arched his eyebrows as

"No," said I, pushing past him without ceremony. And I led the way into his room with an impudence

"Not come back for your revenge, have you? Because I'm afraid I can't give it to you singlehanded. I was

"Raffles," said I, "you may well be surprised at my coming back in this way and at this hour. I hardly know

you. I was never in your rooms before tonight. But I fagged for you at school, and you said you remembered

In my emotion I had at first to struggle for every word; but his face reassured me as I went on, and I was not

"Certainly, my dear man," said he; "as many minutes as you like. Have a Sullivan and sit down." And he

"No," said I, finding a full voice as I shook my head; "no, I won't smoke, and I won't sit down, thank you.

"Really?" said he, lighting his own cigarette with one clear blue eye upon me. "How do you know?"

"Because you'll probably show me the door," I cried bitterly; "and you will be justified in doing it! But it's no

"Not one of them was worth the paper it was written on, Raffles. I am overdrawn already at my bank!"

"So I did. Three years ago. It has been my curse; now it's all goneevery penny! Yes, I've been a fool; there

never was nor will be such a fool as I've been. . . . Isn't this enough for you? Why don't you turn me out?" He

"Thank God," I cried, "I have no people! I was an only child. I came in for everything there was. My one

I cast myself into a chair and hid my face. Raffles continued to pace the rich carpet that was of a piece with

everything else in his rooms. There was no variation in his soft and even footfalls.

"You used to be a literary little cuss," he said at length; "didn't you edit the mag. before you left? Anyway I

recollect fagging you to do my verses; and literature of all sorts is the very thing nowadays; any fool can

I laughed aloud in my misery. "There's been a bill of sale on every stick for months!"

And at that Raffles stood still, with raised eyebrows and stern eyes that I could meet the better now that he

knew the worst; then, with a shrug, he resumed his walk, and for some minutes neither of us spoke. But in his

handsome, unmoved face I read my fate and deathwarrant; and with every breath I cursed my folly and my

cowardice in coming to him at all. Because he had been kind to me at school, when he was captain of the

eleven, and I his fag, I had dared to look for kindness from him now; because I was ruined, and he rich

enough to play cricket all the summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year, I had fatuously counted on his

mercy, his sympathy, his help! Yes, I had relied on him in my heart, for all my outward diffidence and

humility; and I was rightly served. There was as little of mercy as of sympathy in that curling nostril, that

rigid jaw, that cold blue eye which never glanced my way. I caught up my hat. I blundered to my feet. I

"Can't you guess?" I cried. And for many seconds we stood staring in each other's eyes.

"Have you got the pluck?" said he, breaking the spell in a tone so cynical that it brought my last drop of blood

"You shall see," said I, as I stepped back and whipped the pistol from my overcoat pocket. "Now, will you let

The barrel touched my temple, and my thumb the trigger. Mad with excitement as I was, ruined, dishonored,

and now finally determined to make an end of my misspent life, my only surprise to this day is that I did not

do so then and there. The despicable satisfaction of involving another in one's destruction added its miserable

appeal to my baser egoism; and had fear or horror flown to my companion's face, I shudder to think I might

have died diabolically happy with that look for my last impious consolation. It was the look that came instead

which held my hand. Neither fear nor horror were in it; only wonder, admiration, and such a measure of

"Not quite," was the reply, made with a little start, and a change of color that came too late. "To tell you the

truth, though, I half thought you meant it, and I was never more fascinated in my life. I never dreamt you had

such stuff in you, Bunny! No, I'm hanged if I let you go now. And you'd better not try that game again, for

you won't catch me stand and look on a second time. We must think of some way out of the mess. I had no

One of his hands fell kindly on my shoulder, while the other slipped into my overcoat pocket, and I suffered

him to deprive me of my weapon without a murmur. Nor was this simply because Raffles had the subtle

power of making himself irresistible at will. He was beyond comparison the most masterful man whom I

have ever known; yet my acquiescence was due to more than the mere subjection of the weaker nature to the

stronger. The forlorn hope which had brought me to the Albany was turned as by magic into an almost

staggering sense of safety. Raffles would help me after all! A. J. Raffles would be my friend! It was as though

all the world had come round suddenly to my side; so far therefore from resisting his action, I caught and

clasped his hand with a fervor as uncontrollable as the frenzy which had preceded it.

"God bless you!" I cried. "Forgive me for everything. I will tell you the truth. I DID think you might help me

in my extremity, though I well knew that I had no claim upon you. Stillfor the old school's sakethe sake

of old timesI thought you might give me another chance. If you wouldn't I meant to blow out my

In truth I feared that it was changing, with his expression, even as I spoke, and in spite of his kindly tone and

"What a boy it is for jumping to conclusions! I have my vices, Bunny, but backing and filling is not one of

them. Sit down, my good fellow, and have a cigarette to soothe your nerves. I insist. Whiskey? The worst

thing for you; here's some coffee that I was brewing when you came in. Now listen to me. You speak of

'another chance.' What do you mean? Another chance at baccarat? Not if I know it! You think the luck must

turn; suppose it didn't? We should only have made bad worse. No, my dear chap, you've plunged enough. Do

you put yourself in my hands or do you not? Very well, then you plunge no more, and I undertake not to

present my check. Unfortunately there are the other men; and still more unfortunately, Bunny, I'm as hard up

It was my turn to stare at Raffles. "You?" I vociferated. "You hard up? How am I to sit here and believe

"Did I refuse to believe it of you?" he returned, smiling. "And, with your own experience, do you think that

because a fellow has rooms in this place, and belongs to a club or two, and plays a little cricket, he must

necessarily have a balance at the bank? I tell you, my dear man, that at this moment I'm as hard up as you

ever were. I have nothing but my wits to live onabsolutely nothing else. It was as necessary for me to win

some money this evening as it was for you. We're in the same boat, Bunny; we'd better pull together."

"Together!" I jumped at it. "I'll do anything in this world for you, Raffles," I said, "if you really mean that you

won't give me away. Think of anything you like, and I'll do it! I was a desperate man when I came here, and

I'm just as desperate now. I don't mind what I do if only I can get out of this without a scandal."

Again I see him, leaning back in one of the luxurious chairs with which his room was furnished. I see his

indolent, athletic figure; his pale, sharp, cleanshaven features; his curly black hair; his strong, unscrupulous

mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my

"I wonder if you mean all that!" he said at length. "You do in your present mood; but who can back his mood

to last? Still, there's hope when a chap takes that tone. Now I think of it, too, you were a plucky little devil at

school; you once did me rather a good turn, I recollect. Remember it, Bunny? Well, wait a bit, and perhaps

He got up, lit a fresh cigarette, and fell to pacing the room once more, but with a slower and more thoughtful

step, and for a much longer period than before. Twice he stopped at my chair as though on the point of

speaking, but each time he checked himself and resumed his stride in silence. Once he threw up the window,

which he had shut some time since, and stood for some moments leaning out into the fog which filled the

Albany courtyard. Meanwhile a clock on the chimneypiece struck one, and one again for the halfhour,

Yet I not only kept my chair with patience, but I acquired an incongruous equanimity in that halfhour.

Insensibly I had shifted my burden to the broad shoulders of this splendid friend, and my thoughts wandered

with my eyes as the minutes passed. The room was the goodsized, square one, with the folding doors, the

marble mantelpiece, and the gloomy, oldfashioned distinction peculiar to the Albany. It was charmingly

furnished and arranged, with the right amount of negligence and the right amount of taste. What struck me

most, however, was the absence of the usual insignia of a cricketer's den. Instead of the conventional rack of

warworn bats, a carved oak bookcase, with every shelf in a litter, filled the better part of one wall; and

where I looked for cricketing groups, I found reproductions of such works as "Love and Death" and "The

Blessed Damozel," in dusty frames and different parallels. The man might have been a minor poet instead of

an athlete of the first water. But there had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his complex

composition; some of these very pictures I had myself dusted in his study at school; and they set me thinking

of yet another of his many sidesand of the little incident to which he had just referred.

Everybody knows how largely the tone of a public school depends on that of the eleven, and on the character

of the captain of cricket in particular; and I have never heard it denied that in A. J. Raffles's time our tone was

good, or that such influence as he troubled to exert was on the side of the angels. Yet it was whispered in the

school that he was in the habit of parading the town at night in loud checks and a false beard. It was

whispered, and disbelieved. I alone knew it for a fact; for night after night had I pulled the rope up after him

when the rest of the dormitory were asleep, and kept awake by the hour to let it down again on a given signal.

Well, one night he was overbold, and within an ace of ignominious expulsion in the heyday of his fame.

Consummate daring and extraordinary nerve on his part, aided, doubtless, by some little presence of mind on

mine, averted the untoward result; and no more need be said of a discreditable incident. But I cannot pretend

to have forgotten it in throwing myself on this man's mercy in my desperation. And I was wondering how

much of his leniency was owing to the fact that Raffles had not forgotten it either, when he stopped and stood

"I've been thinking of that night we had the narrow squeak," he began. "Why do you start?"

"Well, you were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny; you didn't talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no

"I don't know," said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. "I've made such a mess of my own affairs that I trust

myself about as little as I'm likely to be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my life went back on a friend.

"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent to some hidden train of thought; "exactly

what I remember of you, and I'll bet it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't alter, Bunny. We only

develop. I suppose neither you nor I are really altered since you used to let down that rope and I used to come

I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much

He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in doubt; then turned the matter off with a

"You're a nice chap, Bunny! A real desperate characterwhat? Suicide one moment, and any crime I like the

next! What you want is a drag, my boy, and you did well to come to a decent lawabiding citizen with a

reputation to lose. None the less we must have that money tonightby hook or crook."

"The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock tomorrow morning is an hour of risk. Let one of those

checks get round to your own bank, and you and it are dishonored together. No, we must raise the wind

tonight and reopen your account first thing tomorrow. And I rather think I know where the wind can be

"Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and a latchkey all to myself."

"Do you prefer the alternative?" asked my companion, with a sneer. "No, hang it, that's unfair!" he cried

apologetically in the same breath. "I quite understand. It's a beastly ordeal. But it would never do for you to

stay outside. I tell you what, you shall have a peg before we startjust one. There's the whiskey, here's a

Well, I daresay I did so with some freedom, for this plan of his was not the less distasteful to me from its

apparent inevitability. I must own, however, that it possessed fewer terrors before my glass was empty.

Meanwhile Raffles rejoined me, with a covert coat over his blazer, and a soft felt hat set carelessly on the

"When we come back," said he. "Work first, play afterward. Do you see what day it is?" he added, tearing a

leaflet from a Shakespearian calendar, as I drained my glass. "March 15th. 'The Ides of March, the Ides of

And, with a laugh, he threw some coals on the fire before turning down the gas like a careful householder. So

Piccadilly was a trench of raw white fog, rimmed with blurred streetlamps, and lined with a thin coating of

adhesive mud. We met no other wayfarers on the deserted flagstones, and were ourselves favored with a very

hard stare from the constable of the beat, who, however, touched his helmet on recognizing my companion.

"You see, I'm known to the police," laughed Raffles as we passed on. "Poor devils, they've got to keep their

weather eye open on a night like this! A fog may be a bore to you and me, Bunny, but it's a perfect godsend

to the criminal classes, especially so late in their season. Here we are, thoughand I'm hanged if the beggar

We had turned into Bond Street, and had halted on the curb a few yards down on the right. Raffles was

gazing up at some windows across the road, windows barely discernible through the mist, and without the

glimmer of a light to throw them out. They were over a jeweller's shop, as I could see by the peephole in the

shop door, and the bright light burning within. But the entire "upper part," with the private streetdoor next

"Better give it up for tonight," I urged. "Surely the morning will be time enough!"

"Not a bit of it," said Raffles. "I have his key. We'll surprise him. Come along."

And seizing my right arm, he hurried me across the road, opened the door with his latchkey, and in another

moment had shut it swiftly but softly behind us. We stood together in the dark. Outside, a measured step was

approaching; we had heard it through the fog as we crossed the street; now, as it drew nearer, my

"It may be the chap himself," he whispered. "He's the devil of a nightbird. Not a sound, Bunny! We'll startle

The measured step had passed without a pause. Raffles drew a deep breath, and his singular grip of me slowly

"But still, not a sound," he continued in the same whisper; "we'll take a rise out of him, wherever he is! Slip

Well, you may wonder at my doing so; but you can never have met A. J. Raffles. Half his power lay in a

conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader. And it was impossible not to follow one who led

with such a zest. You might question, but you followed first. So now, when I heard him kick off his own

shoes, I did the same, and was on the stairs at his heels before I realized what an extraordinary way was this

of approaching a stranger for money in the dead of night. But obviously Raffles and he were on exceptional

terms of intimacy, and I could not but infer that they were in the habit of playing practical jokes upon each

We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I had time to make more than one note before we reached the top.

The stair was uncarpeted. The spread fingers of my right hand encountered nothing on the damp wall; those

of my left trailed through a dust that could be felt on the banisters. An eerie sensation had been upon me since

we entered the house. It increased with every step we climbed. What hermit were we going to startle in his

We came to a landing. The banisters led us to the left, and to the left again. Four steps more, and we were on

another and a longer landing, and suddenly a match blazed from the black. I never heard it struck. Its flash

was blinding. When my eyes became accustomed to the light, there was Raffles holding up the match with

one hand, and shading it with the other, between bare boards, stripped walls, and the open doors of empty

"Hush! Wait!" he whispered, and he led the way into one of the empty rooms. His match went out as we

crossed the threshold, and he struck another without the slightest noise. Then he stood with his back to me,

fumbling with something that I could not see. But, when he threw the second match away, there was some

other light in its stead, and a slight smell of oil. I stepped forward to look over his shoulder, but before I could

"So it was mere chaff about your friend in Bond Street, who could let us have that money?"

"What do you mean?" I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his meaning dawned upon me. "Are we to get the

There was no need for another question. I understood everything but my own density. He had given me a

dozen hints, and I had taken none. And there I stood staring at him, in that empty room; and there he stood

"Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie?" I

"I wanted to tell you," said he. "I was on the point of telling you more than once. You may remember how I

sounded you about crime, though you have probably forgotten what you said yourself. I didn't think you

meant it at the time, but I thought I'd put you to the test. Now I see you didn't, and I don't blame you. I only

am to blame. Get out of it, my dear boy, as quick as you can; leave it to me. You won't give me away,

Oh, his cleverness! His fiendish cleverness! Had he fallen back on threats, coercion, sneers, all might have

been different even yet. But he set me free to leave him in the lurch. He would not blame me. He did not even

bind me to secrecy; he trusted me. He knew my weakness and my strength, and was playing on both with his

"Not so fast," said I. "Did I put this into your head, or were you going to do it in any case?"

"Not in any case," said Raffles. "It's true I've had the key for days, but when I won tonight I thought of

"Good old Bunny," he murmured, holding the lantern for one moment to my face; the next he was explaining

his plans, and I was nodding, as though we had been fellowcracksmen all our days.

"I know the shop," he whispered, "because I've got a few things there. I know this upper part too; it's been to

let for a month, and I got an order to view, and took a cast of the key before using it. The one thing I don't

know is how to make a connection between the two; at present there's none. We may make it up here, though

He set his lantern on the floor, crept to a back window, and opened it with scarcely a sound: only to return,

"That was our one chance," said he; "a back window above a back window; but it's too dark to see anything,

and we daren't show an outside light. Come down after me to the basement; and remember, though there's not

a soul on the premises, you can't make too little noise. Theretherelisten to that!"

It was the measured tread that we had heard before on the flagstones outside. Raffles darkened his lantern,

"Either a policeman," he muttered, "or a watchman that all these jewellers run between them. The watchman's

We crept very gingerly down the stairs, which creaked a bit in spite of us, and we picked up our shoes in the

passage; then down some narrow stone steps, at the foot of which Raffles showed his light, and put on his

shoes once more, bidding me do the same in a rather louder tone than he had permitted himself to employ

overhead. We were now considerably below the level of the street, in a small space with as many doors as it

had sides. Three were ajar, and we saw through them into empty cellars; but in the fourth a key was turned

and a bolt drawn; and this one presently let us out into the bottom of a deep, square well of fog. A similar

door faced it across this area, and Raffles had the lantern close against it, and was hiding the light with his

body, when a short and sudden crash made my heart stand still. Next moment I saw the door wide open, and

"Door number one," he whispered. "Deuce knows how many more there'll be, but I know of two at least. We

We were now at the bottom of the exact fellow to the narrow stone stair which we had just descended: the

yard, or well, being the one part common to both the private and the business premises. But this flight led to

no open passage; instead, a singularly solid mahogany door confronted us at the top.

"I thought so," muttered Raffles, handing me the lantern, and pocketing a bunch of skeleton keys, after

tampering for a few minutes with the lock. "It'll be an hour's work to get through that!"

"No: I know these locks. It's no use trying. We must cut it out, and it'll take us an hour."

It took us fortyseven minutes by my watch; or, rather, it took Raffles; and never in my life have I seen

anything more deliberately done. My part was simply to stand by with the dark lantern in one hand, and a

Raffles had produced a pretty embroidered case, intended obviously for his razors, but filled instead with the

tools of his secret trade, including the rockoil. From this case he selected a "bit," capable of drilling a hole

an inch in diameter, and fitted it to a small but very strong steel "brace." Then he took off his covertcoat and

his blazer, spread them neatly on the top stepknelt on themturned up his shirt cuffsand went to work

with braceandbit near the keyhole. But first he oiled the bit to minimize the noise, and this he did

invariably before beginning a fresh hole, and often in the middle of one. It took thirtytwo separate borings to

I noticed that through the first circular orifice Raffles thrust a forefinger; then, as the circle became an

everlengthening oval, he got his hand through up to the thumb; and I heard him swear softly to himself.

"Pick the lock. But there may be two. In that case they'll be top and bottom, and we shall have two fresh holes

I confess I did not feel sanguine about the lockpicking, seeing that one lock had baffled us already; and my

disappointment and impatience must have been a revelation to me had I stopped to think. The truth is that I

was entering into our nefarious undertaking with an involuntary zeal of which I was myself quite unconscious

at the time. The romance and the peril of the whole proceeding held me spellbound and entranced. My moral

sense and my sense of fear were stricken by a common paralysis. And there I stood, shining my light and

holding my phial with a keener interest than I had ever brought to any honest avocation. And there knelt A. J.

Raffles, with his black hair tumbled, and the same watchful, quiet, determined halfsmile with which I have

At last the chain of holes was complete, the lock wrenched out bodily, and a splendid bare arm plunged up to

the shoulder through the aperture, and through the bars of the iron gate beyond.

"Now," whispered Raffles, "if there's only one lock it'll be in the middle. Joy! Here it is! Only let me pick it,

He withdrew his arm, a skeleton key was selected from the bunch, and then back went his arm to the

shoulder. It was a breathless moment. I heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very watch ticking in my

pocket, and ever and anon the tinkletinkle of the skeleton key. Thenat lastthere came a single

unmistakable click. In another minute the mahogany door and the iron gate yawned behind us; and Raffles

was sitting on an office table, wiping his face, with the lantern throwing a steady beam by his side.

We were now in a bare and roomy lobby behind the shop, but separated therefrom by an iron curtain, the very

sight of which filled me with despair. Raffles, however, did not appear in the least depressed, but hung up his

coat and hat on some pegs in the lobby before examining this curtain with his lantern.

"That's nothing," said he, after a minute's inspection; "we'll be through that in no time, but there's a door on

"Prise it up with the jointed jimmy. The weak point of these iron curtains is the leverage you can get from

below. But it makes a noise, and this is where you're coming in, Bunny; this is where I couldn't do without

you. I must have you overhead to knock through when the street's clear. I'll come with you and show a light."

Well, you may imagine how little I liked the prospect of this lonely vigil; and yet there was something very

stimulating in the vital responsibility which it involved. Hitherto I had been a mere spectator. Now I was to

take part in the game. And the fresh excitement made me more than ever insensible to those considerations of

So I took my post without a murmur in the front room above the shop. The fixtures had been left for the

refusal of the incoming tenant, and fortunately for us they included Venetian blinds which were already

down. It was the simplest matter in the world to stand peeping through the laths into the street, to beat twice

with my foot when anybody was approaching, and once when all was clear again. The noises that even I

could hear below, with the exception of one metallic crash at the beginning, were indeed incredibly slight; but

they ceased altogether at each double rap from my toe; and a policeman passed quite half a dozen times

beneath my eyes, and the man whom I took to be the jeweller's watchman oftener still, during the better part

of an hour that I spent at the window. Once, indeed, my heart was in my mouth, but only once. It was when

the watchman stopped and peered through the peephole into the lighted shop. I waited for his whistleI

waited for the gallows or the gaol! But my signals had been studiously obeyed, and the man passed on in

In the end I had a signal in my turn, and retraced my steps with lighted matches, down the broad stairs, down

the narrow ones, across the area, and up into the lobby where Raffles awaited me with an outstretched hand.

"Well done, my boy!" said he. "You're the same good man in a pinch, and you shall have your reward. I've

got a thousand pounds' worth if I've got a penn'oth. It's all in my pockets. And here's something else I found

in this locker; very decent port and some cigars, meant for poor dear Danby's business friends. Take a pull,

and you shall light up presently. I've found a lavatory, too, and we must have a washandbrushup before

The iron curtain was down, but he insisted on raising it until I could peep through the glass door on the other

side and see his handiwork in the shop beyond. Here two electric lights were left burning all night long, and

in their cold white rays I could at first see nothing amiss. I looked along an orderly lane, an empty glass

counter on my left, glass cupboards of untouched silver on my right, and facing me the filmy black eye of the

peephole that shone like a stage moon on the street. The counter had not been emptied by Raffles; its

contents were in the Chubb's safe, which he had given up at a glance; nor had he looked at the silver, except

to choose a cigarette case for me. He had confined himself entirely to the shop window. This was in three

compartments, each secured for the night by removable panels with separate locks. Raffles had removed them

a few hours before their time, and the electric light shone on a corrugated shutter bare as the ribs of an empty

carcase. Every article of value was gone from the one place which was invisible from the little window in the

door; elsewhere all was as it had been left overnight. And but for a train of mangled doors behind the iron

curtain, a bottle of wine and a cigarbox with which liberties had been taken, a rather black towel in the

lavatory, a burnt match here and there, and our fingermarks on the dusty banisters, not a trace of our visit

"Had it in my head for long?" said Raffles, as we strolled through the streets towards dawn, for all the world

as though we were returning from a dance. "No, Bunny, I never thought of it till I saw that upper part empty

about a month ago, and bought a few things in the shop to get the lie of the land. That reminds me that I never

paid for them; but, by Jove, I will tomorrow, and if that isn't poetic justice, what is? One visit showed me

the possibilities of the place, but a second convinced me of its impossibilities without a pal. So I had

practically given up the idea, when you came along on the very night and in the very plight for it! But here

we are at the Albany, and I hope there's some fire left; for I don't know how you feel, Bunny, but for my part

He could think of Keats on his way from a felony! He could hanker for his fireside like another! Floodgates

were loosed within me, and the plain English of our adventure rushed over me as cold as ice. Raffles was a

burglar. I had helped him to commit one burglary, therefore I was a burglar, too. Yet I could stand and warm

myself by his fire, and watch him empty his pockets, as though we had done nothing wonderful or wicked!

My blood froze. My heart sickened. My brain whirled. How I had liked this villain! How I had admired him!

Now my liking and admiration must turn to loathing and disgust. I waited for the change. I longed to feel it in

I saw that he was emptying his pockets; the table sparkled with their hoard. Rings by the dozen, diamonds by

the score; bracelets, pendants, aigrettes, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires; and diamonds always,

diamonds in everything, flashing bayonets of light, dazzling meblinding memaking me disbelieve

because I could no longer forget. Last of all came no gem, indeed, but my own revolver from an inner pocket.

And that struck a chord. I suppose I said somethingmy hand flew out. I can see Raffles now, as he looked

at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye. I can see him pick out the cartridges with his quiet,

"You mayn't believe it, Bunny," said he, "but I never carried a loaded one before. On the whole I think it

gives one confidence. Yet it would be very awkward if anything went wrong; one might use it, and that's not

the game at all, though I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great

sensations before things get too hot for him. Don't look so distressed, my dear chap. I've never had those

"Before? My dear Bunny, you offend me! Did it look like a first attempt? Of course I have done it before."

"Wellno! Not often enough to destroy the charm, at all events; never, as a matter of fact, unless I'm

cursedly hard up. Did you hear about the Thimbleby diamonds? Well, that was the last timeand a poor lot

of paste they were. Then there was the little business of the Dormer houseboat at Henley last year. That was

mine alsosuch as it was. I've never brought off a really big coup yet; when I do I shall chuck it up."

Yes, I remembered both cases very well. To think that he was their author! It was incredible, outrageous,

inconceivable. Then my eyes would fall upon the table, twinkling and glittering in a hundred places, and

"How came you to begin?" I asked, as curiosity overcame mere wonder, and a fascination for his career

"Ah! that's a long story," said Raffles. "It was in the Colonies, when I was out there playing cricket. It's too

long a story to tell you now, but I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight, and it was my only

way out. I never meant it for anything more; but I'd tasted blood, and it was all over with me. Why should I

work when I could steal? Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, when excitement, romance,

danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it's very wrong, but we can't all be

moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with. Besides, you're not at it all the time. I'm

sick of quoting Gilbert's lines to myself, but they're profoundly true. I only wonder if you'll like the life as

"Yet you said you would do anything for me! You asked me to name my crime! But I knew at the time you

didn't mean it; you didn't go back on me tonight, and that ought to satisfy me, goodness knows! I suppose

I'm ungrateful, and unreasonable, and all that. I ought to let it end at this. But you're the very man for me,

Bunny, theveryman! Just think how we got through tonight. Not a scratchnot a hitch! There's

nothing very terrible in it, you see; there never would be, while we worked together."

He was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder; he was smiling as he knew so well how to

smile. I turned on my heel, planted my elbows on the chimneypiece, and my burning head between my

"All right, my boy! You are quite right and I'm worse than wrong. I'll never ask it again. Go, if you want to,

and come again about midday for the cash. There was no bargain; but, of course, I'll get you out of your

He shook his head. "Not you," he said, smiling quite goodhumoredly on my insane enthusiasm.

"I will," I cried with an oath. "I'll lend you a hand as often as you like! What does it matter now? I've been in

it once. I'll be in it again. I've gone to the devil anyhow. I can't go back, and wouldn't if I could. Nothing

London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name and nothing more. Reuben Rosenthall had

made his millions on the diamond fields of South Africa, and had come home to enjoy them according to his

lights; how he went to work will scarcely be forgotten by any reader of the halfpenny evening papers, which

revelled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and present prodigality, varied with interesting

particulars of the extraordinary establishment which the millionaire set up in St. John's Wood. Here he kept a

retinue of Kaffirs, who were literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous diamonds in his

shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a prizefighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any

means the worst element in the Rosenthall melange. So said common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently

established by the interference of the police on at least one occasion, followed by certain magisterial

proceedings which were reported with justifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid.

And this was all one knew of Reuben Rosenthall up to the time when the Old Bohemian Club, having fallen

on evil days, found it worth its while to organize a great dinner in honor of so wealthy an exponent of the

club's principles. I was not at the banquet myself, but a member took Raffles, who told me all about it that

"Most extraordinary show I ever went to in my life," said he. "As for the man himselfwell, I was prepared

for something grotesque, but the fellow fairly took my breath away. To begin with, he's the most astounding

brute to look at, well over six feet, with a chest like a barrel, and a great hooknose, and the reddest hair and

whiskers you ever saw. Drank like a fireengine, but only got drunk enough to make us a speech that I

wouldn't have missed for ten pounds. I'm only sorry you weren't there, too, Bunny, old chap."

I began to be sorry myself, for Raffles was anything but an excitable person, and never had I seen him so

excited before. Had he been following Rosenthall's example? His coming to my rooms at midnight, merely to

tell me about his dinner, was in itself enough to excuse a suspicion which was certainly at variance with my

"What did he say?" I inquired mechanically, divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and wondering

"Say?" cried Raffles. "What did he not say! He boasted of his rise, he bragged of his riches, and he

blackguarded society for taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer pique and jealousy

because he had so much. He mentioned names, too, with the most charming freedom, and swore he was as

good a man as the Old Country had to showPACE the Old Bohemians. To prove it he pointed to a great

diamond in the middle of his shirtfront with a little finger loaded with another just like it: which of our

bloated princes could show a pair like that? As a matter of fact, they seemed quite wonderful stones, with a

curious purple gleam to them that must mean a pot of money. But old Rosenthall swore he wouldn't take fifty

thousand pounds for the two, and wanted to know where the other man was who went about with twentyfive

thousand in his shirtfront and another twentyfive on his little finger. He didn't exist. If he did, he wouldn't

have the pluck to wear them. But he hadhe'd tell us why. And before you could say Jack Robinson he had

"At the table! In the middle of his speech! But it was nothing to what he wanted to do. He actually wanted us

to let him write his name in bullets on the opposite wall, to show us why he wasn't afraid to go about in all his

diamonds! That brute Purvis, the prizefighter, who is his paid bully, had to bully his master before he could

be persuaded out of it. There was quite a panic for the moment; one fellow was saying his prayers under the

"Grotesque enough, but I rather wish they had let him go the whole hog and blaze away. He was as keen as

knives to show us how he could take care of his purple diamonds; and, do you know, Bunny, _I_ was as keen

And Raffles leaned towards me with a sly, slow smile that made the hidden meaning of his visit only too

"It is horribly obvious, I admit. Butyes, I have set my heart upon them! To be quite frank, I have had them

on my conscience for some time; one couldn't hear so much of the man, and his prizefighter, and his

diamonds, without feeling it a kind of duty to have a go for them; but when it comes to brandishing a revolver

and practically challenging the world, the thing becomes inevitable. It is simply thrust upon one. I was fated

to hear that challenge, Bunny, and I, for one, must take it up. I was only sorry I couldn't get on my hind legs

"Well," I said, "I don't see the necessity as things are with us; but, of course, I'm your man."

My tone may have been halfhearted. I did my best to make it otherwise. But it was barely a month since our

Bond Street exploit, and we certainly could have afforded to behave ourselves for some time to come. We

had been getting along so nicely: by his advice I had scribbled a thing or two; inspired by Raffles, I had even

done an article on our own jewel robbery; and for the moment I was quite satisfied with this sort of

adventure. I thought we ought to know when we were well off, and could see no point in our running fresh

risks before we were obliged. On the other hand, I was anxious not to show the least disposition to break the

pledge that I had given a month ago. But it was not on my manifest disinclination that Raffles fastened.

"Necessity, my dear Bunny? Does the writer only write when the wolf is at the door? Does the painter paint

for bread alone? Must you and I be DRIVEN to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of Whitechapel? You pain

me, my dear chap; you needn't laugh, because you do. Art for art's sake is a vile catchword, but I confess it

appeals to me. In this case my motives are absolutely pure, for I doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of

such peculiar stones. But if I don't have a try for themafter tonightI shall never be able to hold up my

"And do you suppose I should be keen on it if we hadn't?" cried Raffles. "My dear fellow, I would rob St.

Paul's Cathedral if I could, but I could no more scoop a till when the shopwalker wasn't looking than I could

bag the apples out of an old woman's basket. Even that little business last month was a sordid affair, but it

was necessary, and I think its strategy redeemed it to some extent. Now there's some credit, and more sport,

in going where they boast they're on their guard against you. The Bank of England, for example, is the ideal

crib; but that would need half a dozen of us with years to give to the job; and meanwhile Reuben Rosenthall

is high enough game for you and me. We know he's armed. We know how Billy Purvis can fight. It'll be no

soft thing, I grant you. But what of that, my good Bunnywhat of that? A man's reach must exceed his

"I would rather we didn't exceed ours just yet," I answered laughing, for his spirit was irresistible, and the

"Trust me for that," was his reply; "I'll see you through. After all I expect to find that the difficulties are

nearly all on the surface. These fellows both drink like the devil, and that should simplify matters

considerably. But we shall see, and we must take our time. There will probably turn out to be a dozen

different ways in which the thing might be done, and we shall have to choose between them. It will mean

watching the house for at least a week in any case; it may mean lots of other things that will take much

longer; but give me a week and I will tell you more. That's to say, if you're really on?"

"Of course I am," I replied indignantly. "But why should I give you a week? Why shouldn't we watch the

"Because two eyes are as good as four and take up less room. Never hunt in couples unless you're obliged.

But don't you look offended, Bunny; there'll be plenty for you to do when the time comes, that I promise you.

You shall have your share of the fun, never fear, and a purple diamond all to yourselfif we're lucky."

On the whole, however, this conversation left me less than lukewarm, and I still remember the depression

which came upon me when Raffles was gone. I saw the folly of the enterprise to which I had committed

myselfthe sheer, gratuitous, unnecessary folly of it. And the paradoxes in which Raffles revelled, and the

frivolous casuistry which was nevertheless half sincere, and which his mere personality rendered wholly

plausible at the moment of utterance, appealed very little to me when recalled in cold blood. I admired the

spirit of pure mischief in which he seemed prepared to risk his liberty and his life, but I did not find it an

infectious spirit on calm reflection. Yet the thought of withdrawal was not to be entertained for a moment. On

the contrary, I was impatient of the delay ordained by Raffles; and, perhaps, no small part of my secret

disaffection came of his galling determination to do without me until the last moment.

It made it no better that this was characteristic of the man and of his attitude towards me. For a month we had

been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London, and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete. With all

his charming frankness, there was in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible enough to be

very irritating. He had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal. He would make mysteries of

matters of common concern; for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of the Bond Street jewels,

on the proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of hundreds of other young fellows

about town. He was consistently mysterious about that and other details, of which it seemed to me that I had

already earned the right to know everything. I could not but remember how he had led me into my first

felony, by means of a trick, while yet uncertain whether he could trust me or not.

That I could no longer afford to resent, but I did resent his want of confidence in me now. I said nothing

about it, but it rankled every day, and never more than in the week that succeeded the Rosenthall dinner.

When I met Raffles at the club he would tell me nothing; when I went to his rooms he was out, or pretended

One day he told me he was getting on well, but slowly; it was a more ticklish game than he had thought; but

when I began to ask questions he would say no more. Then and there, in my annoyance, I took my own

decision. Since he would tell me nothing of the result of his vigils, I determined to keep one on my own

The house he was occupying is, I believe, quite the largest in the St. John's Wood district. It stands in the

angle formed by two broad thoroughfares, neither of which, as it happens, is a 'bus route, and I doubt if many

quieter spots exist within the fourmile radius. Quiet also was the great square house, in its garden of

grassplots and shrubs; the lights were low, the millionaire and his friends obviously spending their evening

elsewhere. The garden walls were only a few feet high. In one there was a side door opening into a glass

passage; in the other two fivebarred, grainedandvarnished gates, one at either end of the little

semicircular drive, and both wide open. So still was the place that I had a great mind to walk boldly in and

learn something of the premises; in fact, I was on the point of doing so, when I heard a quick, shuffling step

on the pavement behind me. I turned round and faced the dark scowl and the dirty clenched fists of a

"That's it," he whispered savagely; "tell all the neighborhoodgive me away at the top of your voice!"

With that he turned his back upon me, and shambled down the road, shrugging his shoulders and muttering to

himself as though I had refused him alms. A few moments I stood astounded, indignant, at a loss; then I

followed him. His feet trailed, his knees gave, his back was bowed, his head kept nodding; it was the gait of a

man eighty years of age. Presently he waited for me midway between two lampposts. As I came up he was

lighting rank tobacco, in a cutty pipe, with an evilsmelling match, and the flame showed me the suspicion of

"You must forgive my heat, Bunny, but it really was very foolish of you. Here am I trying every

dodgebegging at the door one nighthiding in the shrubs the nextdoing every mortal thing but stand

and stare at the house as you went and did. It's a costume piece, and in you rush in your ordinary clothes. I

tell you they're on the lookout for us night and day. It's the toughest nut I ever tackled!"

"Well," said I, "if you had told me so before I shouldn't have come. You told me nothing."

"You're right," he said at length. "I've been too close. It's become second nature with me when I've anything

on. But here's an end of it, Bunny, so far as you're concerned. I'm going home now, and I want you to follow

me; but for heaven's sake keep your distance, and don't speak to me again till I speak to you. Theregive me

a start." And he was off again, a decrepit vagabond, with his hands in his pockets, his elbows squared, and

I followed him to the Finchley Road. There he took an Atlas omnibus, and I sat some rows behind him on the

top, but not far enough to escape the pest of his vile tobacco. That he could carry his charactersketch to such

a pitchhe who would only smoke one brand of cigarette! It was the last, least touch of the insatiable artist,

and it charmed away what mortification there still remained in me. Once more I felt the fascination of a

comrade who was forever dazzling one with a fresh and unsuspected facet of his character.

As we neared Piccadilly I wondered what he would do. Surely he was not going into the Albany like that?

No, he took another omnibus to Sloane Street, I sitting behind him as before. At Sloane Street we changed

again, and were presently in the long lean artery of the King's Road. I was now all agog to know our

destination, nor was I kept many more minutes in doubt. Raffles got down. I followed. He crossed the road

and disappeared up a dark turning. I pressed after him, and was in time to see his coattails as he plunged

into a still darker flagged alley to the right. He was holding himself up and stepping out like a young man

once more; also, in some subtle way, he already looked less disreputable. But I alone was there to see him,

the alley was absolutely deserted, and desperately dark. At the further end he opened a door with a latchkey,

Instinctively I drew back and heard him chuckle. We could no longer see each other.

"All right, Bunny! There's no hankypanky this time. These are studios, my friend, and I'm one of the lawful

Indeed, in another minute we were in a lofty room with skylight, easels, dressingcupboard, platform, and

every other adjunct save the signs of actual labor. The first thing I saw, as Raffles lit the gas, was its

"Looking for the works of art?" continued Raffles, lighting a cigarette and beginning to divest himself of his

rags. "I'm afraid you won't find any, but there's the canvas I'm always going to make a start upon. I tell them

I'm looking high and low for my ideal model. I have the stove lit on principle twice a week, and look in and

leave a newspaper and a smell of Sullivanshow good they are after shag! Meanwhile I pay my rent and am

a good tenant in every way; and it's a very useful little piedaterrethere's no saying how useful it might

be at a pinch. As it is, the billycock comes in and the topper goes out, and nobody takes the slightest notice

of either; at this time of night the chances are that there's not a soul in the building except ourselves."

"You never told me you went in for disguises," said I, watching him as he cleansed the grime from his face

"No, Bunny, I've treated you very shabbily all round. There was really no reason why I shouldn't have shown

you this place a month ago, and yet there was no point in my doing so, and circumstances are just

conceivable in which it would have suited us both for you to be in genuine ignorance of my whereabouts. I

have something to sleep on, as you perceive, in case of need, and, of course, my name is not Raffles in the

"It is my private pavilion," said Raffles. "Disguises? In some cases they're half the battle, and it's always

pleasant to feel that, if the worst comes to the worst, you needn't necessarily be convicted under your own

name. Then they're indispensable in dealing with the fences. I drive all my bargains in the tongue and raiment

of Shoreditch. If I didn't there'd be the very devil to pay in blackmail. Now, this cupboard's full of all sorts of

toggery. I tell the woman who cleans the room that it's for my models when I find 'em. By the way, I only

hope I've got something that'll fit you, for you'll want a rig for tomorrow night."

"The trick," said Raffles. "I intended writing to you as soon as I got back to my rooms, to ask you to look me

up tomorrow afternoon; then I was going to unfold my plan of campaign, and take you straight into action

then and there. There's nothing like putting the nervous players in first; it's the sitting with their pads on that

upsets their applecart; that was another of my reasons for being so confoundedly close. You must try to

forgive me. I couldn't help remembering how well you played up last trip, without any time to weaken on it

beforehand. All I want is for you to be as cool and smart tomorrow night as you were then; though, by Jove,

"You were right. I have. Mind you, I don't say this will be the tougher job all round; we shall probably get in

without any difficulty at all; it's the getting out again that may flummox us. That's the worst of an irregular

household!" cried Raffles, with quite a burst of virtuous indignation. "I assure you, Bunny, I spent the whole

of Monday night in the shrubbery of the garden next door, looking over the wall, and, if you'll believe me,

somebody was about all night long! I don't mean the Kaffirs. I don't believe they ever get to bed at allpoor

devils! No, I mean Rosenthall himself, and that pastyfaced beast Purvis. They were up and drinking from

midnight, when they came in, to broad daylight, when I cleared out. Even then I left them sober enough to

slang each other. By the way, they very nearly came to blows in the garden, within a few yards of me, and I

heard something that might come in useful and make Rosenthall shoot crooked at a critical moment. You

"Exactly. Well, it seems that Rosenthall was one. He must have let it out to Purvis in his cups. Anyhow, I

heard Purvis taunting him with it, and threatening him with the breakwater at Capetown; and I begin to think

our friends are friend and foe. But about tomorrow night: there's nothing subtle in my plan. It's simply to get

in while these fellows are out on the loose, and to lie low till they come back, and longer. If possible, we must

doctor the whiskey. That would simplify the whole thing, though it's not a very sporting game to play; still,

we must remember Rosenthall's revolver; we don't want him to sign his name on US. With all those Kaffirs

about, however, it's ten to one on the whiskey, and a hundred to one against us if we go looking for it.

A brush with the heathen would spoil everything, if it did no more. Besides, there are the ladies"

"Ladies with an _I_, and the very voices for raising Cain. I fear, I fear the clamor! It would be fatal to us. Au

contraire, if we can manage to stow ourselves away unbeknownst, half the battle will be won. If Rosenthall

turns in drunk, it's a purple diamond apiece. If he sits up sober, it may be a bullet instead. We will hope not,

Bunny; and all the firing wouldn't be on one side; but it's on the knees of the gods."

And so we left it when we shook hands in Picadillynot by any means as much later as I could have wished.

Raffles would not ask me to his rooms that night. He said he made it a rule to have a long night before

playing cricket andother games. His final word to me was framed on the same principle.

"Mind, only one drink tonight, Bunny. Two at the outsideas you value your lifeand mine!"

I remember my abject obedience; and the endless, sleepless night it gave me; and the roofs of the houses

opposite standing out at last against the bluegray London dawn. I wondered whether I should ever see

another, and was very hard on myself for that little expedition which I had made on my own wilful account.

It was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening when we took up our position in the garden adjoining

that of Reuben Rosenthall; the house itself was shut up, thanks to the outrageous libertine next door, who, by

driving away the neighbors, had gone far towards delivering himself into our hands. Practically secure from

surprise on that side, we could watch our house under cover of a wall just high enough to see over, while a

fair margin of shrubs in either garden afforded us additional protection. Thus entrenched, we had stood an

hour, watching a pair of lighted bowwindows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds, and

listening to the drawing of corks, the clink of glasses, and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within. Our

luck seemed to have deserted us: the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue

length. I thought it was a dinnerparty. Raffles differed; in the end he proved right. Wheels grated in the

drive, a carriage and pair stood at the steps; there was a stampede from the diningroom, and the loud voices

Let me make our position perfectly clear. We were over the wall, at the side of the house, but a few feet from

the diningroom windows. On our right, one angle of the building cut the back lawn in two diagonally; on

our left, another angle just permitted us to see the jutting steps and the waiting carriage. We saw Rosenthall

come outsaw the glimmer of his diamonds before anything. Then came the pugilist; then a lady with a

"And that's best of all," said Raffles, standing upright as hoofs and wheels crunched through the gates and

"They'll be clearing away. Yes, here come their shadows. The drawingroom windows open on the lawn.

I produced it with a hand whose trembling I tried in vain to still, and could have died for Raffles when he

made no comment on what he could not fail to notice. His own hands were firm and cool as he adjusted my

"By Jove, old boy," he whispered cheerily, "you look about the greatest ruffian I ever saw! These masks

alone will down a nigger, if we meet one. But I'm glad I remembered to tell you not to shave. You'll pass for

Whitechapel if the worst comes to the worst and you don't forget to talk the lingo. Better sulk like a mule if

you're not sure of it, and leave the dialogue to me; but, please our stars, there will be no need. Now, are you

In an instant we were over the wall, in another on the lawn behind the house. There was no moon. The very

stars in their courses had veiled themselves for our benefit. I crept at my leader's heels to some French

A good score of electric burners glowed red for the fraction of a second, then rained merciless white beams

into our blinded eyes. When we found our sight four revolvers covered us, and between two of them the

colossal frame of Reuben Rosenthall shook with a wheezy laughter from head to foot.

"Goodevening, boys," he hiccoughed. "Glad to see ye at last. Shift foot or finger, you on the left, though,

and you're a dead boy. I mean you, you greaser!" he roared out at Raffles. "I know you. I've been waitin' for

you. I've been WATCHIN' you all this week! Plucky smart you thought yerself, didn't you? One day beggin',

next time shammin' tight, and next one o' them old pals from Kimberley what never come when I'm in. But

you left the same tracks every day, you buggins, an' the same tracks every night, all round the blessed

"All right, guv'nor," drawled Raffles; "don't excite. It's a fair cop. We don't sweat to know 'ow you brung it

"Ah, you're a knowin' one," said Rosenthall, fingering his triggers. "But you've struck a knowin'er."

My eyes had torn themselves from the round black muzzles, from the accursed diamonds that had been our

snare, the pasty pigface of the overfed pugilist, and the flaming cheeks and hook nose of Rosenthall

himself. I was looking beyond them at the doorway filled with quivering silk and plush, black faces, white

eyeballs, woolly pates. But a sudden silence recalled my attention to the millionaire. And only his nose

"What d'ye mean?" he whispered with a hoarse oath. "Spit it out, or, by Christmas, I'll drill you!"

"Where in hell did you get hold o' that ?" asked Rosenthall, with a rattle in his thick neck, meant for mirth.

"You may well arst," says Raffles. "It's all over the plice w'ere _I_ come from."

The gentleman on his left had turned livid with emotion. Guilty conscience never declared itself in plainer

terms. For a moment his small eyes bulged like currants in the suet of his face; the next, he had pocketed his

He was too late. No sooner had the burly pugilist obstructed his fire than Raffles was through the window at a

bound; while I, for standing still and saying nothing, was scientifically felled to the floor.

I cannot have been many moments without my senses. When I recovered them there was a great todo in the

garden, but I had the drawingroom to myself. I sat up. Rosenthall and Purvis were rushing about outside,

"Oh, make sure o' yer skin. That's what you'd better do. Jala, you black hog, if I catch YOU skulkin'. . . ."

I never heard the threat. I was creeping from the drawingroom on my hands and knees, my own revolver

For an instant I thought that the hall also was deserted. I was wrong, and I crept upon a Kaffir on all fours.

Poor devil, I could not bring myself to deal him a base blow, but I threatened him most hideously with my

revolver, and left the white teeth chattering in his black head as I took the stairs three at a time. Why I went

upstairs in that decisive fashion, as though it were my only course, I cannot explain. But garden and ground

I turned into the first room I came to. It was a bedroomempty, though lit up; and never shall I forget how I

started as I entered, on encountering the awful villain that was myself at full length in a pierglass! Masked,

armed, and ragged, I was indeed fit carrion for a bullet or the hangman, and to one or the other I made up my

mind. Nevertheless, I hid myself in the wardrobe behind the mirror; and there I stood shivering and cursing

my fate, my folly, and Raffles most of allRaffles first and lastfor I daresay half an hour. Then the

wardrobe door was flung suddenly open; they had stolen into the room without a sound; and I was hauled

Gross scenes followed in the hall; the ladies were now upon the stage, and at sight of the desperate criminal

they screamed with one accord. In truth I must have given them fair cause, though my mask was now torn

away and hid nothing but my left ear. Rosenthall answered their shrieks with a roar for silence; the woman

with the bathsponge hair swore at him shrilly in return; the place became a Babel impossible to describe. I

remember wondering how long it would be before the police appeared. Purvis and the ladies were for calling

them in and giving me in charge without delay. Rosenthall would not hear of it. He swore that he would shoot

man or woman who left his sight. He had had enough of the police. He was not going to have them coming

there to spoil sport; he was going to deal with me in his own way. With that he dragged me from all other

hands, flung me against a door, and sent a bullet crashing through the wood within an inch of my ear.

"You drunken fool! It'll be murder!" shouted Purvis, getting in the way a second time.

"Wha' do I care? He's armed, isn't he? I shot him in selfdefence. It'll be a warning to others. Will you stand

"You're drunk," said Purvis, still between us. "I saw you take a neat tumblerful since you come in, and it's

made you drunk as a fool. Pull yourself together, old man. You ain't agoing to do what you'll be sorry for."

"Then I won't shoot at him, I'll only shoot roun' an' roun' the beggar. You're quite right, ole feller. Wouldn't

His freckled paw shot up over Purvis's shoulder, mauve lightning came from his ring, a red flash from his

revolver, and shrieks from the women as the reverberations died away. Some splinters lodged in my hair.

Next instant the prizefighter disarmed him; and I was safe from the devil, but finally doomed to the deep

sea. A policeman was in our midst. He had entered through the drawingroom window; he was an officer of

few words and creditable promptitude. In a twinkling he had the handcuffs on my wrists, while the pugilist

explained the situation, and his patron reviled the force and its representative with impotent malignity. A fine

watch they kept; a lot of good they did; coming in when all was over and the whole household might have

been murdered in their sleep. The officer only deigned to notice him as he marched me off.

"We know all about YOU, sir," said he contemptuously, and he refused the sovereign Purvis proffered. "You

"As you please, sir. I rather think the other gentleman requires you more, and I don't fancy this young man

In silence we traversed perhaps a hundred yards. It must have been midnight. We did not meet a soul. At last

"Purely by luck," said Raffles. "I had the luck to get clear away through knowing every brick of those

backgarden walls, and the double luck to have these togs with the rest over at Chelsea. The helmet is one of

a collection I made up at Oxford; here it goes over this wall, and we'd better carry the coat and belt before we

meet a real officer. I got them once for a fancy ballostensiblyand thereby hangs a yarn. I always thought

they might come in useful a second time. My chief crux tonight was getting rid of the hansom that brought

me back. I sent him off to Scotland Yard with ten bob and a special message to good old Mackenzie. The

whole detective department will be at Rosenthall's in about half an hour. Of course, I speculated on our

gentleman's hatred of the policeanother huge slice of luck. If you'd got away, well and good; if not, I felt

he was the man to play with his mouse as long as possible. Yes, Bunny, it's been more of a costume piece

than I intended, and we've come out of it with a good deal less credit. But, by Jove, we're jolly lucky to have

Old Raffles may or may not have been an exceptional criminal, but as a cricketer I dare swear he was unique.

Himself a dangerous bat, a brilliant field, and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade, he took

incredibly little interest in the game at large. He never went up to Lord's without his cricketbag, or showed

the slightest interest in the result of a match in which he was not himself engaged. Nor was this mere hateful

egotism on his part. He professed to have lost all enthusiasm for the game, and to keep it up only from the

"Cricket," said Raffles, "like everything else, is good enough sport until you discover a better. As a source of

excitement it isn't in it with other things you wot of, Bunny, and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore.

What's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons? Still, if you can bowl a bit your

low cunning won't get rusty, and always looking for the weak spot's just the kind of mental exercise one

wants. Yes, perhaps there's some affinity between the two things after all. But I'd chuck up cricket

tomorrow, Bunny, if it wasn't for the glorious protection it affords a person of my proclivities."

"How so?" said I. "It brings you before the public, I should have thought, far more than is either safe or

"My dear Bunny, that's exactly where you make a mistake. To follow Crime with reasonable impunity you

simply MUST have a parallel, ostensible careerthe more public the better. The principle is obvious. Mr.

Peace, of pious memory, disarmed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for playing the fiddle and taming

animals, and it's my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was a really eminent public man, whose

speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities. Fill the bill in some prominent part, and you'll

never be suspected of doubling it with another of equal prominence. That's why I want you to cultivate

journalism, my boy, and sign all you can. And it's the one and only reason why I don't burn my bats for

Nevertheless, when he did play there was no keener performer on the field, nor one more anxious to do well

for his side. I remember how he went to the nets, before the first match of the season, with his pocket full of

sovereigns, which he put on the stumps instead of bails. It was a sight to see the professionals bowling like

demons for the hard cash, for whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another

balanced in its stead, while one man took #3 with a ball that spreadeagled the wicket. Raffles's practice cost

him either eight or nine sovereigns; but he had absolutely firstclass bowling all the time; and he made

It became my pleasure to accompany him to all his matches, to watch every ball he bowled, or played, or

fielded, and to sit chatting with him in the pavilion when he was doing none of these three things. You might

have seen us there, side by side, during the greater part of the Gentlemen's first innings against the Players

(who had lost the toss) on the second Monday in July. We were to be seen, but not heard, for Raffles had

failed to score, and was uncommonly cross for a player who cared so little for the game. Merely taciturn with

me, he was positively rude to more than one member who wanted to know how it had happened, or who

ventured to commiserate him on his luck; there he sat, with a straw hat tilted over his nose and a cigarette

stuck between lips that curled disagreeably at every advance. I was therefore much surprised when a young

fellow of the exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us, and met with a perfectly civil

reception despite the liberty. I did not know the boy by sight, nor did Raffles introduce us; but their

conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lad's part which

combined to puzzle me. Mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father

"Keen cricketer, however. Stopped till he was twenty to get his colors. Governor made him. Keen breed. Oh,

The game was boring me. I only came to see old Raffles perform. Soon I was looking wistfully for his return,

"Want to introduce you to old Amersteth," he whispered, when I joined him. "They've a cricket week next

month, when this boy Crowley comes of age, and we've both got to go down and play."

"Shut up," says Raffles. "Leave that to me. I've been lying for all I'm worth," he added sepulchrally as we

There was a gleam in his eye that I knew well enough elsewhere, but was unprepared for in those healthy,

sane surroundings; and it was with very definite misgivings and surmises that I followed the Zingari blazer

through the vast flowerbed of hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies' awning.

Lord Amersteth was a finelooking man with a short mustache and a double chin. He received me with much

dry courtesy, through which, however, it was not difficult to read a less flattering tale. I was accepted as the

inevitable appendage of the invaluable Raffles, with whom I felt deeply incensed as I made my bow.

"I have been bold enough," said Lord Amersteth, "to ask one of the Gentlemen of England to come down and

play some rustic cricket for us next month. He is kind enough to say that he would have liked nothing better,

but for this little fishing expedition of yours, Mr., Mr.," and Lord Amersteth succeeded in

It was, of course, the first I had ever heard of that fishing expedition, but I made haste to say that it could

easily, and should certainly, be put off. Raffles gleamed approval through his eyelashes. Lord Amersteth

"You're very good, I'm sure," said he. "But I understand you're a cricketer yourself?"

"Well, well, we can't all play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just

scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play. I may even come in myself at a pinch; so you

won't be the only duffer, if you are one, and I shall be very glad if you will come down and help us too. You

"I should be very proud," I was beginning, as the mere prelude to resolute excuses; but the eye of Raffles

"Then that's settled," said Lord Amersteth, with the slightest suspicion of grimness. "It's to be a little week,

you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably

some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it, and Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By

Jove, they're all out! Then I rely on you both." And, with a little nod, Lord Amersteth rose and sidled to the

"What are you thinking of?" I whispered savagely. "I was nowhere near the eleven. I'm no sort of cricketer. I

"Not you," he whispered back. "You needn't play, but come you must. If you wait for me after halfpast six

But I could guess the reason; and I am ashamed to say that it revolted me much less than did the notion of

making a public fool of myself on a cricketfield. My gorge rose at this as it no longer rose at crime, and it

was in no tranquil humor that I strolled about the ground while Raffles disappeared in the pavilion. Nor was

my annoyance lessened by a little meeting I witnessed between young Crowley and his father, who shrugged

as he stopped and stooped to convey some information which made the young man look a little blank. It may

have been pure selfconsciousness on my part, but I could have sworn that the trouble was their inability to

Then the bell rang, and I climbed to the top of the pavilion to watch Raffles bowl. No subtleties are lost up

there; and if ever a bowler was full of them, it was A. J. Raffles on this day, as, indeed, all the cricket world

remembers. One had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break, his

beautifully easy action, which never varied with the varying pace, his great ball on the legstumphis

dropping headballin a word, the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack. It was no mere exhibition of

athletic prowess, it was an intellectual treat, and one with a special significance in my eyes. I saw the "affinity

between the two things," saw it in that afternoon's tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket.

It was not that Raffles took many wickets for few runs; he was too fine a bowler to mind being hit; and time

was short, and the wicket good. What I admired, and what I remember, was the combination of resource and

cunning, of patience and precision, of headwork and handiwork, which made every over an artistic whole. It

"I felt like bowling this afternoon," he told me later in the hansom. "With a pitch to help me, I'd have done

something big; as it is, three for fortyone, out of the four that fell, isn't so bad for a slow bowler on a plumb

wicket against those fellows. But I felt venomous! Nothing riles me more than being asked about for my

"To punish them, andbecause we shall be jolly hard up, Bunny, before the season's over!"

"Of course, it was! It seems they're going to have the very devil of a week of itballsdinner

partiesswagger house partygeneral junketingsand obviously a houseful of diamonds as well.

Diamonds galore! As a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest. I've never done

it, Bunny. But in this case we're engaged like the waiters and the band, and by heaven we'll take our toll!

"It seems rather a vulgar sort of theft," I could not help saying; and to this, my single protest, Raffles instantly

"It is a vulgar sort," said he; "but I can't help that. We're getting vulgarly hard up again, and there's an end on

't. Besides, these people deserve it, and can afford it. And don't you run away with the idea that all will be

plain sailing; nothing will be easier than getting some stuff, and nothing harder than avoiding all suspicion,

as, of course, we must. We may come away with no more than a good working plan of the premises. Who

But with those weeks I will not weary you further than by remarking that the "thinking," was done entirely by

Raffles, who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me. His reticence, however, was no

longer an irritant. I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises. And, after our last

adventure of the kind, more especially after its denouement, my trust in Raffles was much too solid to be

shaken by a want of trust in me, which I still believe to have been more the instinct of the criminal than the

It was on Monday, the tenth of August, that we were due at Milchester Abbey, Dorset; and the beginning of

the month found us cruising about that very county, with flyrods actually in our hands. The idea was that we

should acquire at once a local reputation as decent fishermen, and some knowledge of the countryside, with a

view to further and more deliberate operations in the event of an unprofitable week. There was another idea

which Raffles kept to himself until he had got me down there. Then one day he produced a cricketball in a

meadow we were crossing, and threw me catches for an hour together. More hours he spent in bowling to me

on the nearest green; and, if I was never a cricketer, at least I came nearer to being one, by the end of that

Incident began early on the Monday. We had sallied forth from a desolate little junction within quite a few

miles of Milchester, had been caught in a shower, had run for shelter to a wayside inn. A florid, overdressed

man was drinking in the parlor, and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that Raffles recoiled on the

threshold, and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain. He assured me, however, that

the odor of stale ale had almost knocked him down. And I had to make what I could of his speculative,

Milchester Abbey is a gray, quadrangular pile, deepset in rich woody country, and twinkling with triple

rows of quaint windows, every one of which seemed alight as we drove up just in time to dress for dinner.

The carriage had whirled us under I know not how many triumphal arches in process of construction, and past

the tents and flagpoles of a juicylooking cricketfield, on which Raffles undertook to bowl up to his

reputation. But the chief signs of festival were within, where we found an enormous houseparty assembled,

including more persons of pomp, majesty, and dominion than I had ever encountered in one room before. I

confess I felt overpowered. Our errand and my own presences combined to rob me of an address upon which

I have sometimes plumed myself; and I have a grim recollection of my nervous relief when dinner was at last

I had taken in a much less formidable young lady than might have fallen to my lot. Indeed I began by

blessing my good fortune in this respect. Miss Melhuish was merely the rector's daughter, and she had only

been asked to make an even number. She informed me of both facts before the soup reached us, and her

subsequent conversation was characterized by the same engaging candor. It exposed what was little short of a

mania for imparting information. I had simply to listen, to nod, and to be thankful.

When I confessed to knowing very few of those present, even by sight, my entertaining companion proceeded

to tell me who everybody was, beginning on my left and working conscientiously round to her right. This

lasted quite a long time, and really interested me; but a great deal that followed did not, and, obviously to

recapture my unworthy attention, Miss Melhuish suddenly asked me, in a sensational whisper, whether I

I said I thought I might, whereupon another question followed, in still lower and more thrilling accents:

Burglars! I was roused at last. The word stabbed me. I repeated it in horrified query.

"So I've found something to interest you at last!" said Miss Melhuish, in naive triumph. "Yesburglars! But

don't speak so loud. It's supposed to be kept a great secret. I really oughtn't to tell you at all!"

Two! I looked at Raffles. I had done so often during the evening, envying him his high spirits, his iron nerve,

his buoyant wit, his perfect ease and selfpossession. But now I pitied him; through all my own terror and

consternation, I pitied him as he sat eating and drinking, and laughing and talking, without a cloud of fear or

of embarrassment on his handsome, taking, daredevil face. I caught up my champagne and emptied the glass.

"A detective. They were traced down from town a few days ago. They are believed to have designs on the

"Exactly what I asked papa on the way here this evening; he says there is no warrant out against the men at

"Yes, by a detective who is down here on purpose. And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that they had been

The very place where Raffles and I had been caught in the rain! Our stampede from the inn was now

explained; on the other hand, I was no longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my companion might

"This is really quite exciting, Miss Melhuish," said I. "May I ask how you come to know so much about it?"

"It's papa," was the confidential reply. "Lord Amersteth consulted him, and he consulted me. But for

goodness' sake don't let it get about! I can't think WHAT tempted me to tell you!"

"Not a bit! They won't come to the rectory. There's nothing for them there. But look round the table: look at

The Dowager Marchioness of Melrose was one of the few persons whom it had been unnecessary to point out

to me. She sat on Lord Amersteth's right, flourishing her eartrumpet, and drinking champagne with her

usual notorious freedom, as dissipated and kindly a dame as the world has ever seen. It was a necklace of

"They say it's worth five thousand pounds at least," continued my companion. "Lady Margaret told me so this

morning (that's Lady Margaret next your Mr. Raffles, you know); and the old dear WILL wear them every

night. Think what a haul they would be! No; we don't feel in immediate danger at the rectory."

When the ladies rose, Miss Melhuish bound me to fresh vows of secrecy; and left me, I should think, with

some remorse for her indiscretion, but more satisfaction at the importance which it had undoubtedly given her

in my eyes. The opinion may smack of vanity, though, in reality, the very springs of conversation reside in

that same human, universal itch to thrill the auditor. The peculiarity of Miss Melhuish was that she must be

I spare you my feelings of the next two hours. I tried hard to get a word with Raffles, but again and again I

failed. In the diningroom he and Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match, and had their heads

together all the time. In the drawingroom I had the mortification of hearing him talk interminable nonsense

into the eartrumpet of Lady Melrose, whom he knew in town. Lastly, in the billiardroom, they had a great

and lengthy pool, while I sat aloof and chafed more than ever in the company of a very serious Scotchman,

who had arrived since dinner, and who would talk of nothing but the recent improvements in instantaneous

photography. He had not come to play in the matches (he told me), but to obtain for Lord Amersteth such a

series of cricket photographs as had never been taken before; whether as an amateur or a professional

photographer I was unable to determine. I remember, however, seeking distraction in little bursts of resolute

attention to the conversation of this bore. And so at last the long ordeal ended; glasses were emptied, men

"It's all up!" I gasped, as he turned up the gas and I shut the door. "We're being watched. We've been

"How do YOU know?" asked Raffles, turning upon me quite sharply, but without the least dismay. And I told

"The detective?" said Raffles. "Do you mean to say you don't know a detective when you see one, Bunny?"

"To think that you've been talking to him for the last hour in the billiardroom and couldn't spot what he

"Scotch he is," said Raffles, "and photographer he may be. He is also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland

Yardthe very man I sent the message to that night last April. And you couldn't spot who he was in a whole

"But," said I, "if that was Mackenzie, who was the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck?"

Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye, and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarettecase.

"I don't know whether smoking's forbidden in one's bedroom, but you'd better take one of these and stand

"Say what you like, my dear fellow, if it really isn't you and I that Mackenzie's after."

"Well, then, it isn't, and it couldn't be, and nobody but a born Bunny would suppose for a moment that it was!

Do you seriously think he would sit there and knowingly watch his man playing pool under his nose? Well,

he might; he's a cool hand, Mackenzie; but I'm not cool enough to win a pool under such conditions. At least

I don't think I am; it would be interesting to see. The situation wasn't free from strain as it was, though I knew

he wasn't thinking of us. Crowley told me all about it after dinner, you see, and then I'd seen one of the men

for myself this afternoon. You thought it was a detective who made me turn tail at that inn. I really don't

know why I didn't tell you at the time, but it was just the opposite. That loud, redfaced brute is one of the

cleverest thieves in London, and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence. I was an Eastender from

tongue to toe at the moment, but you will understand that I don't run unnecessary risks of recognition by a

"By no means; there's at least one other man with him; and it's suggested that there may be an accomplice

"Crowley and the champagne between them. In confidence, of course, just as your girl told you; but even in

confidence he never let on about Mackenzie. He told me there was a detective in the background, but that was

all. Putting him up as a guest is evidently their big secret, to be kept from the other guests because it might

offend them, but more particularly from the servants whom he's here to watch. That's my reading of the

situation, Bunny, and you will agree with me that it's infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined

"But infinitely more difficult for us," said I, with a sigh of pusillanimous relief. "Our hands are tied for this

"Not necessarily, my dear Bunny, though I admit that the chances are against us. Yet I'm not so sure of that

either. There are all sorts of possibilities in these threecornered combinations. Set A to watch B, and he

won't have an eye left for C. That's the obvious theory, but then Mackenzie's a very big A. I should be sorry

to have any boodle about me with that man in the house. Yet it would be great to nip in between A and B and

score off them both at once! It would be worth a risk, Bunny, to do that; it would be worth risking something

merely to take on old hands like B and his men at their own old game! Eh, Bunny? That would be something

His eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day. They shone with the perverted enthusiasm

which was roused in him only by the contemplation of some new audacity. He kicked off his shoes and began

pacing his room with noiseless rapidity; not since the night of the Old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthall

had Raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence; and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of

"My dear A. J.," said I in his very own tone, "you're far too fond of the uphill game; you will eventually fall a

victim to the sporting spirit and nothing else. Take a lesson from our last escape, and fly lower as you value

our skins. Study the house as much as you like, but donotgo and shove your head into Mackenzie's

My wealth of metaphor brought him to a standstill, with his cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath

"You're quite right, Bunny. I won't. I really won't. Yetyou saw old Lady Melrose's necklace? I've been

wanting it for years! But I'm not going to play the fool; honor bright, I'm not; yet by Jove!to get to

windward of the professors and Mackenzie too! It would be a great game, Bunny, it would be a great game!"

"No, no, I won't. But I wonder how the professors think of going to work? That's what one wants to know. I

wonder if they've really got an accomplice in the house? How I wish I knew their game! But it's all right,

And with that assurance I went off to my own room, and so to bed with an incredibly light heart. I had still

enough of the honest man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies, to dread their

performance, to deplore their necessity: which is merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was

I had, however, one rather strong point. I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations, not

intimately connected with the passing moment, entirely from my mind. Through the exercise of this faculty I

had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from it the

year before; and similarly, here at Milchester, in the longdreaded cricketweek, I had after all a quite

It is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment. In the first place, mirabile dictu, there

were one or two even greater duffers than I on the Abbey cricketfield. Indeed, quite early in the week, when

it was of most value to me, I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch; a ball, of which I had merely heard

the hum, stuck fast in my hand, which Lord Amersteth himself grasped in public congratulation. This happy

accident was not to be undone even by me, and, as nothing succeeds like success, and the constant

encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in itself an immense stimulus, I actually made a run

or two in my very next innings. Miss Melhuish said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honor of

Viscount Crowley's majority; she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would assuredly make

their raid, and was full of arch tremors when we sat out in the garden, though the entire premises were

illuminated all night long. Meanwhile the quiet Scotchman took countless photographs by day, which he

developed by night in a dark room admirably situated in the servants' part of the house; and it is my firm

belief that only two of his fellowguests knew Mr. Clephane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland

The week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday, which two or three of us intended abandoning

early in order to return to town that night. The match, however, was never played. In the small hours of the

Let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it. My room opened upon the central gallery, and was not even on

the same floor as that on which Rafflesand I think all the other menwere quartered. I had been put, in

fact, into the dressingroom of one of the grand suites, and my too near neighbors were old Lady Melrose

and my host and hostess. Now, by the Friday evening the actual festivities were at an end, and, for the first

time that week, I must have been sound asleep since midnight, when all at once I found myself sitting up

breathless. A heavy thud had come against my door, and now I heard hard breathing and the dull stamp of

It was the Scotch detective, and a new fear turned me cold. There was no reply, but the hard breathing grew

harder still, and the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure. In sudden panic I sprang out of bed and

flung open my door. A light burnt low on the landing, and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying and

But I stood like a fool until the pair of them backed into me, when, with a deep breath I flung myself on the

fellow, whose face I had seen at last. He was one of the footmen who waited at table; and no sooner had I

And he went leaping down the stairs, as other doors opened and Lord Amersteth and his son appeared

simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that my man ceased struggling; but I was still holding him when Crowley

"What the devil's all this?" asked Lord Amersteth, blinking. "Who was that ran downstairs?"

"Aha!" said he, turning to the footman. "So you're the scoundrel, are you? Well done! Well done! Where was

An inner door had opened; next instant there was a little shriek, and a white figure gesticulated on the

"Ou donc est l'ecrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenetre est ouverte. Il a disparu!"

"Window open and jewelcase gone, by Jove!" exclaimed Lord Amersteth. "Mais comment est Madame la

"Why the devil couldn't you tell us so before?" he cried, and went leaping downstairs in his turn.

He was followed by nearly all the cricketers, who now burst upon the scene in a body, only to desert it for the

chase. Raffles was one of them, and I would gladly have been another, had not the footman chosen this

moment to hurl me from him, and to make a dash in the direction from which they had come. Lord Amersteth

had him in an instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it took the two of us to drag him downstairs,

amid a terrified chorus from halfopen doors. Eventually we handed him over to two other footmen who

appeared with their nightshirts tucked into their trousers, and my host was good enough to compliment me as

I remember how the gravel pricked my feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of

voices on an outlying lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers' midst before we saw the

shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew.

"It's Clephane," said a man who knelt over him. "He's got a bullet in him somewhere."

"Here I am," called a breathless voice. "It's no good, you fellows. There's nothing to show which way they've

"Well, we've got one of them, at all events," muttered Lord Amersteth. "The next thing is to get this poor

fellow indoors. Take his shoulders, somebody. Now his middle. Join hands under him. All together, now;

that's the way. Poor fellow! Poor fellow! His name isn't Clephane at all. He's a Scotland Yard detective, down

Raffles was the first to express surprise; but he had also been the first to raise the wounded man. Nor had any

In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library. And there, with ice on his wound and

"Yes, yes," said he; "we've got one of them safe and sound. The brute you collared upstairs." Lord Amersteth

bent lower. "By Jove! Lowered the jewelcase out of the window, did he? And they've got clean away with

it! Well, well! I only hope we'll be able to pull this good fellow through. He's off again."

It found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiardroom, drinking whiskey and sodawater in their

overcoats and pyjamas, and still talking excitedly in one breath. A timetable was being passed from hand to

hand: the doctor was still in the library. At last the door opened, and Lord Amersteth put in his head.

"It isn't hopeless," said he, "but it's bad enough. There'll be no cricket today."

Another hour, and most of us were on our way to catch the early train; between us we filled a compartment

almost to suffocation. And still we talked all together of the night's event; and still I was a little hero in my

way, for having kept my hold of the one ruffian who had been taken; and my gratification was subtle and

intense. Raffles watched me under lowered lids. Not a word had we had together; not a word did we have

until we had left the others at Paddington, and were skimming through the streets in a hansom with noiseless

"You're hopeless, Bunny, quite hopeless! I take it you wouldn't have refused your share if the boodle had

fallen to us? Yet you positively enjoy coming off second bestfor the second time running! I confess,

however, that the professors' methods were full of interest to me. I, for one, have probably gained as much in

experience as I have lost in other things. That lowering the jewelcase out of the window was a very simple

"I saw them from my own window, which was just above the dear old lady's. I was fretting for that necklace

in particular, when I went up to turn in for our last nightand I happened to look out of my window. In point

of fact, I wanted to see whether the one below was open, and whether there was the slightest chance of

working the oracle with my sheet for a rope. Of course I took the precaution of turning my light off first, and

it was a lucky thing I did. I saw the pros. right down below, and they never saw me. I saw a little tiny

luminous disk just for an instant, and then again for an instant a few minutes later. Of course I knew what it

was, for I have my own watchdial daubed with luminous paint; it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get

no better. But these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern. They were under the old lady's window. They

were watching the time. The whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside. Set a thief to catch a

"Without a moment's hesitation. To save her jewels. And I was prepared to yell as much into her eartrumpet

for all the house to hear. But the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily."

"And yet you allowed the professors, as you call them, to take her jewels, case and all!"

"All but this," said Raffles, thrusting his fist into my lap. "I would have shown it you before, but really, old

And he opened his fist, to shut it next instant on the bunch of diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen

That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when

he had just mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word

out of Raffles on the subject. It was not for want of trying; he would shake his head, and watch his cigarette

smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that

were no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the

unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction

beneath those frankly egotistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to

visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before the night of our

return from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles's cricketbag back where he sometimes

kept it, in the fender, with the remains of an Orient label still adhering to the leather. My eyes had been on

this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned

His chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden energy. There was quite an indignant

"I can't believe that," said I craftily. "I can't pay you such a poor compliment!"

He broke off, stared hard at me, and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite.

"Or a better knave than I thought you, Bunny, and by Jove it's the knave! WellI suppose I'm fairly drawn; I

give you best, as they say out there. As a matter of fact I've been thinking of the thing myself; last night's

racket reminds me of it in one or two respects. I tell you what, though, this is an occasion in any case, and I'm

going to celebrate it by breaking the one good rule of my life. I'm going to have a second drink!"

The whiskey tinkled, the syphon fizzed, the ice plopped home; and seated there in his pyjamas, with the

inevitable cigarette, Raffles told me the story that I had given up hoping to hear. The windows were wide

open; the sounds of Piccadilly floated in at first. Long before he finished, the last wheels had rattled, the last

". . . No, they do you very well, indeed. You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, but I'm afraid mine were

of a comprehensive character. I had started in a hole, I ought really to have refused the invitation; then we all

went to the Melbourne Cup, and I had the certain winner that didn't win, and that's not the only way you can

play the fool in Melbourne. I wasn't the steady old stager I am now, Bunny; my analysis was a confession in

itself. But the others didn't know how hard up I was, and I swore they shouldn't. I tried the Jews, but they're

extra fly out there. Then I thought of a kinsman of sorts, a second cousin of my father's whom none of us

knew anything about, except that he was supposed to be in one or other of the Colonies. If he was a rich man,

well and good, I would work him; if not there would be no harm done. I tried to get on his tracks, and, as luck

would have it, I succeeded (or thought I had) at the very moment when I happened to have a few days to

myself. I was cut over on the hand, just before the big Christmas match, and couldn't have bowled a ball if

"The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask me if I was any relation of Raffles of the National Bank, and

the pure luck of it almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high official in one of the banks, who

would finance me on my mere namecould anything be better? I made up my mind that this Raffles was the

man I wanted, and was awfully sold to find next moment that he wasn't a high official at all. Nor had the

doctor so much as met him, but had merely read of him in connection with a small sensation at the suburban

branch which my namesake managed; an armed robber had been rather pluckily beaten off, with a bullet in

him, by this Raffles; and the sort of thing was so common out there that this was the first I had heard of it! A

suburban branchmy financier had faded into some excellent fellow with a billet to lose if he called his soul

his own. Still a manager was a manager, and I said I would soon see whether this was the relative I was

"'I'll do more,' says the doctor. 'I'll get you the name of the branch he's been promoted to, for I think I heard

they'd moved him up one already.' And the next day he brought me the name of the township of Yea, some

fifty miles north of Melbourne; but, with the vagueness which characterized all his information, he was

"'He's a single man, and his initials are W. F.,' said the doctor, who was certain enough of the immaterial

points. 'He left his old post several days ago, but it appears he's not due at the new one till the New Year. No

doubt he'll go before then to take things over and settle in. You might find him up there and you might not. If

"'That'll lose two days,' said I, 'and more if he isn't there,' for I'd grown quite keen on this upcountry

manager, and I felt that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on, a little conviviality might help

"'Then,' said the doctor, 'I should get a quiet horse and ride. You needn't use that hand.'

"'You can and you can't. You would still have to ride. I suppose you're a horseman?'

"'Then I should certainly ride all the way. It's a delightful road, through Whittlesea and over the Plenty

Ranges. It'll give you some idea of the bush, Mr. Raffles, and you'll see the sources of the water supply of this

city, sir. You'll see where every drop of it comes from, the pure Yan Yean! I wish I had time to ride with

"'I've a mare of my own that's as fat as butter for want of work,' said he. 'It would be a charity to me to sit on

her back for a hundred miles or so, and then I should know you'd have no temptation to use that hand.'

"And if ever there was a prettier compliment, or a finer instance of even Colonial hospitality, I can only say,

He sipped his whiskey, threw away the stump of his cigarette, and lit another before continuing.

"Well, I managed to write a line to W. F. with my own hand, which, as you will gather, was not very badly

wounded; it was simply this third finger that was split and in splints; and next morning the doctor packed me

off on a bovine beast that would have done for an ambulance. Half the team came up to see me start; the rest

were rather sick with me for not stopping to see the match out, as if I could help them to win by watching

them. They little knew the game I'd got on myself, but still less did I know the game I was going to play.

"It was an interesting ride enough, especially after passing the place called Whittlesea, a real wild township

on the lower slope of the ranges, where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mutton and tea, with the

thermometer at three figures in the shade. The first thirty miles or so was a good metal road, too good to go

half round the world to ride on, but after Whittlesea it was a mere track over the ranges, a track I often

couldn't see and left entirely to the mare. Now it dipped into a gully and ran through a creek, and all the time

the local color was inches thick; gumtrees galore and parrots all colors of the rainbow. In one place a whole

forest of gums had been ringbarked, and were just as though they had been painted white, without a leaf or a

living thing for miles. And the first living thing I did meet was the sort to give you the creeps; it was a

riderless horse coming full tilt through the bush, with the saddle twisted round and the stirrupirons ringing.

Without thinking, I had a shot at heading him with the doctor's mare, and blocked him just enough to allow a

"'Thank ye, mister,' growled the man, a huge chap in a red checked shirt, with a beard like W. G. Grace, but

"Well, Bunny, I may be a blackguard myself, but I don't think I ever looked at a fellow as that chap looked at

me. But I stared him out, and forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted saddle, and after that he

became quite tame. He told me exactly what had happened. A mate of his had been dragged under a branch,

and had his nose smashed, but that was all; had sat tight after it till he dropped from loss of blood; another

"As I've said already, Bunny, I wasn't the old stager that I am nowin any respectand we parted good

enough friends. He asked me which way I was going, and, when I told him, he said I should save seven miles,

and get a good hour earlier to Yea, by striking off the track and making for a peak that we could see through

the trees, and following a creek that I should see from the peak. Don't smile, Bunny! I began by saying I was

a child in those days. Of course, the short cut was the long way round; and it was nearly dark when that

"I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the veranda.

"'That all? I'm relieved,' he said. 'Do you know what they are saying? There are some brandnew bushrangers

on the road between Whittlesea and thisa second Kelly gang! They'd have caught a Tartar in you, eh?'

"'They would in you,' I retorted, and my tu quoque shut him up and seemed to puzzle him. Yet there was

much more sense in it than in his compliment to me, which was absolutely pointless.

"'I'm afraid you'll find things pretty rough,' he resumed, when he had unstrapped my valise, and handed my

"I could not quite see the point of this remark either, since, had I been married, I should hardly have sprung

my wife upon him in this freeandeasy fashion. I muttered the conventional sort of thing, and then he said I

should find it all right when I settled, as though I had come to graze upon him for weeks! 'Well,' thought I,

'these Colonials do take the cake for hospitality!' And, still marvelling, I let him lead me into the private part

"'Dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour,' said he as we entered. 'I thought you might like a tub first, and

you'll find all ready in the room at the end of the passage. Sing out if there's anything you want. Your luggage

"And, as he lit me to my room, I read my own superscription of the previous dayto W. F. Raffles!

"Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I daresay; you know what that's like? All I can say is that my

moral wind was bagged by that letter as I hope, old chap, I have never yet bagged yours. I couldn't speak. I

could only stand with my own letter in my hands until he had the good taste to leave me by myself.

"W. F. Raffles! We had mistaken EACH OTHER for W. F. Rafflesfor the new manager who had not yet

arrived! Small wonder we had conversed at crosspurposes; the only wonder was that we had not discovered

our mutual mistake. How the other man would have laughed! But II could not laugh. By Jove, no, it was

no laughing matter for me! I saw the whole thing in a flash, without a tremor, but with the direst depression

from my own single point of view. Call it callous if you like, Bunny, but remember that I was in much the

same hole as you've since been in yourself, and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as you counted

on A. J. I thought of the man with the W. G. beardthe riderless horse and the bloody saddlethe

deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the wayand now the missing manager and

the report of bushrangers at this end. But I simply don't pretend to have felt any personal pity for a man

whom I had never seen; that kind of pity's usually cant; and besides, all mine was needed for myself.

"I was in as big a hole as ever. What the devil was I to do? I doubt if I have sufficiently impressed upon you

the absolute necessity of my returning to Melbourne in funds. As a matter of fact it was less the necessity

"Money I would havebut howbut how? Would this stranger be open to persuasionif I told him the

truth? No; that would set us all scouring the country for the rest of the night. Why should I tell him? Suppose

I left him to find out his mistake . . . would anything be gained? Bunny, I give you my word that I went in to

dinner without a definite intention in my head, or one premeditated lie upon my lips. I might do the decent,

natural thing, and explain matters without loss of time; on the other hand, there was no hurry. I had not

opened the letter, and could always pretend I had not noticed the initials; meanwhile something might turn

up. I could wait a little and see. Tempted I already was, but as yet the temptation was vague, and its very

"'Bad news, I'm afraid?' said the manager, when at last I sat down at his table.

"'A mere annoyance,' I answeredI do assure youon the spur of the moment and nothing else. But my lie

was told; my position was taken; from that moment onward there was no retreat. By implication, without

realizing what I was doing, I had already declared myself W. F. Raffles. Therefore, W. F. Raffles I would be,

Again he raised his glass to his lipsI had forgotten mine. His cigarettecase caught the gaslight as he

"The devil played up," continued Raffles, with a laugh. "Before I tasted my soup I had decided what to do. I

had determined to rob that bank instead of going to bed, and to be back in Melbourne for breakfast if the

doctor's mare could do it. I would tell the old fellow that I had missed my way and been bushed for hours, as

I easily might have been, and had never got to Yea at all. At Yea, on the other hand, the personation and

robbery would ever after be attributed to a member of the gang that had waylaid and murdered the new

manager with that very object. You are acquiring some experience in such matters, Bunny. I ask you, was

there ever a better getout? Last night's was something like it, only never such a certainty. And I saw it from

"To increase my chances, the cashier, who also lived in the bank, was away over the holidays, had actually

gone down to Melbourne to see us play; and the man who had taken my horse also waited at table; for he and

his wife were the only servants, and they slept in a separate building. You may depend I ascertained this

before we had finished dinner. Indeed I was by way of asking too many questions (the most oblique and

delicate was that which elicited my host's name, Ewbank), nor was I careful enough to conceal their drift.

"'Do you know,' said this fellow Ewbank, who was one of the downright sort, 'if it wasn't you, I should say

"'I hope not,' said I, turning jolly hot, I can tell you; 'butwell, it is not a pleasant thing to have to put a

"'No?' said he, coolly. 'I should enjoy nothing better, myself; besides, yours didn't go through.'

"And I emptied my glass; actually I did not know whether my wounded bankrobber was in prison, dead, or

"But, now that I had had more than enough of it, Ewbank would come back to the subject. He admitted that

the staff was small; but as for himself, he had a loaded revolver under his pillow all night, under the counter

"He was looking at me in surprise, and something told me that to say 'of courseI had forgotten!' would

have been quite fatal, considering what I was supposed to have done. So I looked down my nose and shook

"For the moment, Bunny, I felt stumped, though I trust I only looked more superior than before, and I think I

"'The regulation!' I said at length, in the most offensive tone at my command. 'Yes, the regulation would have

us all dead men! My dear sir, do you expect your bank robber to let you reach for your gun in the place where

he knows it's kept? I had mine in my pocket, and I got my chance by retreating from the counter with all

"Ewbank stared at me with open eyes and a fivebarred forehead, then down came his fist on the table.

"'By God! That was smart! Still,' he added, like a man who would not be in the wrong, 'the papers said the

"'Of course,' I rejoined, 'because they said what I told them. You wouldn't have had me advertise the fact that

"So that cloud rolled over, and by Jove it was a cloud with a golden lining. Not silverreal good Australian

gold! For old Ewbank hadn't quite appreciated me till then; he was a hard nut, a much older man than myself,

and I felt pretty sure he thought me young for the place, and my supposed feat a fluke. But I never saw a man

change his mind more openly. He got out his best brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking,

and opened a fresh box. He was a conviviallooking party, with a red moustache, and a very humorous face

(not unlike Tom Emmett's), and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank. But

he wasn't a Rosenthall, Bunny; he had a trebleseamed, handsewn head, and could have drunk me under the

"'All right,' I thought, 'you may go to bed sober, but you'll sleep like a timberyard!' And I threw half he gave

"But he was a good chap, Ewbank, and don't you imagine he was at all intemperate. Convivial I called him,

and I only wish he had been something more. He did, however, become more and more genial as the evening

advanced, and I had not much difficulty in getting him to show me round the bank at what was really an

unearthly hour for such a proceeding. It was when he went to fetch the revolver before turning in. I kept him

out of his bed another twenty minutes, and I knew every inch of the business premises before I shook hands

"You won't guess what I did with myself for the next hour. I undressed and went to bed. The incessant strain

involved in even the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know; then how much more

so when the impersonation is impromptu! There's no getting your eye in; the next word may bowl you out;

it's batting in a bad light all through. I haven't told you of half the tight places I was in during a conversation

that ran into hours and became dangerously intimate towards the end. You can imagine them for yourself, and

then picture me spread out on my bed, getting my second wind for the big deed of the night.

"Once more I was in luck, for I had not been lying there long before I heard my dear Ewbank snoring like a

harmonium, and the music never ceased for a moment; it was as loud as ever when I crept out and closed my

door behind me, as regular as ever when I stopped to listen at his. And I have still to hear the concert that I

shall enjoy much more. The good fellow snored me out of the bank, and was still snoring when I again stood

"Why did I leave the bank first? To catch and saddle the mare and tether her in a clump of trees close by: to

have the means of escape nice and handy before I went to work. I have often wondered at the instinctive

wisdom of the precaution; unconsciously I was acting on what has been one of my guiding principles ever

since. Pains and patience were required: I had to get my saddle without waking the man, and I was not used

to catching horses in a horsepaddock. Then I distrusted the poor mare, and I went back to the stables for a

hatful of oats, which I left with her in the clump, hat and all. There was a dog, too, to reckon with (our very

worst enemy, Bunny); but I had been 'cute enough to make immense friends with him during the evening;

and he wagged his tail, not only when I came downstairs, but when I reappeared at the backdoor.

"As the soidisant new manager, I had been able, in the most ordinary course, to pump poor Ewbank about

anything and everything connected with the working of the bank, especially in those twenty last invaluable

minutes before turning in. And I had made a very natural point of asking him where he kept, and would

recommend me to keep, the keys at night. Of course I thought he would take them with him to his room; but

no such thing; he had a dodge worth two of that. What it was doesn't much matter, but no outsider would

"I, of course, had them in a few seconds, and in a few more I was in the strongroom itself. I forgot to say

that the moon had risen and was letting quite a lot of light into the bank. I had, however, brought a bit of

candle with me from my room; and in the strongroom, which was down some narrow stairs behind the

counter in the bankingchamber, I had no hesitation in lighting it. There was no window down there, and,

though I could no longer hear old Ewbank snoring, I had not the slightest reason to anticipate disturbance

from that quarter. I did think of locking myself in while I was at work, but, thank goodness, the iron door had

"Well, there were heaps of gold in the safe, but I only took what I needed and could comfortably carry, not

much more than a couple of hundred altogether. Not a note would I touch, and my native caution came out

also in the way I divided the sovereigns between all my pockets, and packed them up so that I shouldn't be

like the old woman of Banbury Cross. Well, you think me too cautious still, but I was insanely cautious then.

And so it was that, just as I was ready to go, whereas I might have been gone ten minutes, there came a

"Bunny, it was the outer door of the bankingchamber! My candle must have been seen! And there I stood,

with the grease running hot over my fingers, in that brick grave of a strongroom!

"There was only one thing to be done. I must trust to the sound sleeping of Ewbank upstairs, open the door

myself, knock the visitor down, or shoot him with the revolver I had been new chum enough to buy before

leaving Melbourne, and make a dash for that clump of trees and the doctor's mare. My mind was made up in

an instant, and I was at the top of the strongroom stairs, the knocking still continuing, when a second sound

"My narrow stair was stone, I tumbled down it with little noise, and had only to push open the iron door, for I

had left the keys in the safe. As I did so I heard a handle turn overhead, and thanked my gods that I had shut

every single door behind me. You see, old chap, one's caution doesn't always let one in!

"I could not make out the answer, but it sounded to me like the irrelevant supplication of a spent man. What I

did hear, plainly, was the cocking of the bank revolver before the bolts were shot back. Then, a tottering step,

The weak voice failed, and the bare feet bolted. Now was my timeif the poor devil had fainted. But I could

not be sure, and there I crouched down below in the dark, at the halfshut iron door, not less spellbound than

"'Drink this,' I heard him say, and, when the other spoke again, his voice was stronger.

"'It does me good. You don't know what it was, all those miles alone, one an hour at the outside! I never

"'Thank you . . . I said bushrangers; of course, there are no such things nowadays.'

"'Bankthieves; the one that had the pot shots was the very brute I drove out of the bank at Coburg, with a

"Of course you did, Bunny; so did I, down in that strongroom; but old Ewbank didn't, and I thought he was

"'Well, I'm damned!' whispered the real man. 'I thought it was just revenge, but now I see what it was. My

dear sir, the man upstairs is an imposterif he's upstairs still! He must be one of the gang. He's going to rob

"'If he hasn't done so already,' muttered Ewbank after him; 'if he's upstairs still! By God, if he is, I'm sorry for

"His tone was quiet enough, but about the nastiest I ever heard. I tell you, Bunny, I was glad I'd brought that

"Bunny, if you ask me what was the most thrilling moment of my infamous career, I say it was that moment.

There I stood at the bottom of those narrow stone stairs, inside the strongroom, with the door a good foot

open, and I didn't know whether it would creak or not. The light was coming nearerand I didn't know! I

had to chance it. And it didn't creak a bit; it was far too solid and wellhung; and I couldn't have banged it if I

tried, it was too heavy; and it fitted so close that I felt and heard the air squeeze out in my face. Every shred

of light went out, except the streak underneath, and it brightened. How I blessed that door!

"'No, he's not down THERE,' I heard, as though through cottonwool; then the streak went out too, and in a

few seconds I ventured to open once more, and was in time to hear them creeping to my room.

"Well, now there was not a fifth of a second to be lost; but I'm proud to say I came up those stairs on my toes

and fingers, and out of that bank (they'd gone and left the door open) just as gingerly as though my time had

been my own. I didn't even forget to put on the hat that the doctor's mare was eating her oats out of, as well as

she could with a bit, or it alone would have landed me. I didn't even gallop away, but just jogged off quietly

in the thick dust at the side of the road (though I own my heart was galloping), and thanked my stars the bank

was at that end of the township, in which I really hadn't set foot. The very last thing I heard was the two

He stood up and stretched himself, with a smile that ended in a yawn. The black windows had faded through

every shade of indigo; they now framed their opposite neighbors, stark and livid in the dawn; and the gas

"I'm sorry to say it is," said Raffles apologetically. "The thing should have ended with an exciting chase, I

know, but somehow it didn't. I suppose they thought I had got no end of a start; then they had made up their

minds that I belonged to the gang, which was not so many miles away; and one of them had got as much as

he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn't to know all that, and I'm bound to say that there was

plenty of excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though

we must have made it over fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail's pace; and those stolen oats

had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By Jove,

it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under branches with your face in the mane! I told you about

the forest of dead gums? It looked perfectly ghostly in the moonlight. And I found it as still as I had left

itso still that I pulled up there, my first halt, and lay with my ear to the ground for two or three minutes.

But I heard nothingnot a thing but the mare's bellow and my own heart. I'm sorry, Bunny; but if ever you

write my memoirs, you won't have any difficulty in working up that chase. Play those dead gumtrees for all

they're worth, and let the bullets fly like hail. I'll turn round in my saddle to see Ewbank coming up

helltoleather in his white suit, and I'll duly paint it red. Do it in the third person, and they won't know how

"But I don't know myself," I complained. "Did the mare carry you all the way back to Melbourne?"

"Every rod, pole or perch! I had her well seen to at our hotel, and returned her to the doctor in the evening.

He was tremendously tickled to hear that I had been bushed; next morning he brought me the paper to show

"Ah!" said Raffles, as he put out the gas; "that's a point on which I've never made up my mind. The mare and

her color was a coincidenceluckily she was only a bayand I fancied the condition of the beast must have

told a tale. The doctor's manner was certainly different. I'm inclined to think he suspected something, though

not the right thing. I wasn't expecting him, and I fear my appearance may have increased his suspicions."

"I used to have rather a heavy moustache," said Raffles, "but I lost it the day after I lost my innocence."

Of the various robberies in which we were both concerned, it is but the few, I find, that will bear telling at

any length. Not that the others contained details which even I would hesitate to recount; it is, rather, the very

absence of untoward incident which renders them useless for my present purpose. In point of fact our plans

were so craftily laid (by Raffles) that the chances of a hitch were invariably reduced to a minimum before we

went to work. We might be disappointed in the market value of our haul; but it was quite the exception for us

to find ourselves confronted by unforeseen impediments, or involved in a really dramatic dilemma. There was

a sameness even in our spoil; for, of course, only the most precious stones are worth the trouble we took and

the risks we ran. In short, our most successful escapades would prove the greatest weariness of all in narrative

form; and none more so than the dull affair of the Ardagh emeralds, some eight or nine weeks after the

Milchester cricket week. The former, however, had a sequel that I would rather forget than all our burglaries

It was the evening after our return from Ireland, and I was waiting at my rooms for Raffles, who had gone off

as usual to dispose of the plunder. Raffles had his own method of conducting this very vital branch of our

business, which I was well content to leave entirely in his hands. He drove the bargains, I believe, in a thin

but subtle disguise of the flashyseedy order, and always in the Cockney dialect, of which he had made

himself a master. Moreover, he invariably employed the same "fence," who was ostensibly a moneylender

in a small (but yet notorious) way, and in reality a rascal as remarkable as Raffles himself. Only lately I also

had been to the man, but in my proper person. We had needed capital for the getting of these very emeralds,

and I had raised a hundred pounds, on the terms you would expect, from a softspoken graybeard with an

ingratiating smile, an incessant bow, and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to rim of a pair of

spectacles. So the original sinews and the final spoils of war came in this case from the selfsame sourcea

But these same final spoils I was still to see, and I waited and waited with an impatience that grew upon me

with the growing dusk. At my open window I had played Sister Ann until the faces in the street below were

no longer distinguishable. And now I was tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible hypothesesa grip that

tightened when at last the liftgates opened with a clatter outsidethat held me breathless until a

"Nothingnow you've come," said I, shutting the door behind him in a fever of relief and anxiety. "Well?

"Good man!" I cried. "You don't know what a stew I've been in. I'll switch on the light. I've been thinking of

you and nothing else for the last hour. II was ass enough to think something had gone wrong!"

Raffles was smiling when the white light filled the room, but for the moment I did not perceive the

peculiarity of his smile. I was fatuously full of my own late tremors and present relief; and my first idiotic act

was to spill some whiskey and squirt the sodawater all over in my anxiety to do instant justice to the

"So you thought something had happened?" said Raffles, leaning back in my chair as he lit a cigarette, and

looking much amused. "What would you say if something had? Sit tight, my dear chap! It was nothing of the

slightest consequence, and it's all over now. A stern chase and a long one, Bunny, but I think I'm well to

And suddenly I saw that his collar was limp, his hair matted, his boots thick with dust.

"My dear fellow, I'll tell you if you give me a chance; it's really nothing to get in the least excited about. Old

Baird has at last spotted that I'm not quite the common cracksman I would have him think me. So he's been

"It would be something if he had succeeded; but he has still to do that. I admit, however, that he made me sit

up for the time being. It all comes of going on the job so far from home. There was the old brute with the

whole thing in his morning paper. He KNEW it must have been done by some fellow who could pass himself

off for a gentleman, and I saw his eyebrows go up the moment I told him I was the man, with the same old

twang that you could cut with a paperknife. I did my best to get out of itswore I had a pal who was a real

swellbut I saw very plainly that I had given myself away. He gave up haggling. He paid my price as

though he enjoyed doing it. But I FELT him following me when I made tracks; though, of course, I didn't

"My dear Bunny, it's the very worst thing you can do. As long as you look unsuspecting they'll keep their

distance, and so long as they keep their distance you stand a chance. Once show that you know you're being

followed, and it's flight or fight for all you're worth. I never even looked round; and mind you never do in the

same hole. I just hurried up to Blackfriars and booked for High Street, Kensington, at the top of my voice;

and as the train was leaving Sloane Square out I hopped, and up all those stairs like a lamplighter, and round

to the studio by the back streets. Well, to be on the safe side, I lay low there all the afternoon, hearing nothing

in the least suspicious, and only wishing I had a window to look through instead of that beastly skylight.

However, the coast seemed clear enough, and thus far it was my mere idea that he would follow me; there

was nothing to show he had. So at last I marched out in my proper rigalmost straight into old Baird's

"Walked past him as though I had never set eyes on him in my life, and didn't then; took a hansom in the

King's Road, and drove like the deuce to Clapham Junction; rushed on to the nearest platform, without a

ticket, jumped into the first train I saw, got out at Twickenham, walked full tilt back to Richmond, took the

District to Charing Cross, and here I am! Ready for a tub and a change, and the best dinner the club can give

us. I came to you first, because I thought you might be getting anxious. Come round with me, and I won't

"Certain enough; but we can make assurance doubly sure," said Raffles, and went to my window, where he

"All right," said he; and we went downstairs forthwith, and so to the Albany arminarm.

But we were both rather silent on our way. I, for my part, was wondering what Raffles would do about the

studio in Chelsea, whither, at all events, he had been successfully dogged. To me the point seemed one of

immediate importance, but when I mentioned it he said there was time enough to think about that. His one

other remark was made after we had nodded (in Bond Street) to a young blood of our acquaintance who

"Poor Jack Rutter!" said Raffles, with a sigh. "Nothing's sadder than to see a fellow going to the bad like that.

He's about mad with drink and debt, poor devil! Did you see his eye? Odd that we should have met him

tonight, by the way; it's old Baird who's said to have skinned him. By God, but I'd like to skin old Baird!"

And his tone took a sudden low fury, made the more noticeable by another long silence, which lasted, indeed,

throughout an admirable dinner at the club, and for some time after we had settled down in a quiet corner of

the smokingroom with our coffee and cigars. Then at last I saw Raffles looking at me with his lazy smile,

"I daresay you wonder what I've been thinking about all this time?" said he. "I've been thinking what rot it is

"Well," said I, returning his smile, "that's not a charge that you can bring against yourself, is it?"

"I'm not so sure," said Raffles, blowing a meditative puff; "as a matter of fact, I was thinking less of myself

than of that poor devil of a Jack Rutter. There's a fellow who does things by halves; he's only half gone to the

bad; and look at the difference between him and us! He's under the thumb of a villainous moneylender; we

are solvent citizens. He's taken to drink; we're as sober as we are solvent. His pals are beginning to cut him;

our difficulty is to keep the pal from the door. Enfin, he begs or borrows, which is stealing by halves; and we

steal outright and are done with it. Obviously ours is the more honest course. Yet I'm not sure, Bunny, but

"Why? What more could we do?" I exclaimed in soft derision, looking round, however, to make sure that we

"A matter of opinion, my dear Bunny; I don't mean it for rot. I've told you before that the biggest man alive is

the man who's committed a murder, and not yet been found out; at least he ought to be, but he so very seldom

has the soul to appreciate himself. Just think of it! Think of coming in here and talking to the men, very likely

about the murder itself; and knowing you've done it; and wondering how they'd look if THEY knew! Oh, it

would be great, simply great! But, besides all that, when you were caught there'd be a merciful and dramatic

end of you. You'd fill the bill for a few weeks, and then snuff out with a flourish of extraspecials; you

"Good old Raffles!" I chuckled. "I begin to forgive you for being in bad form at dinner."

"You know very well that you wouldn't commit a murder, whatever else you might do."

He had been leaning back in the saddlebag chair, watching me with keen eyes sheathed by languid lids; now

he started forward, and his eyes leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard. They struck home to my slow

wits; their meaning was no longer in doubt. I, who knew the man, read murder in his clenched hands, and

"That was another. I didn't. I thought I had when I came up to you this evening; but when I looked out of your

windowyou remember? to make assurance doubly surethere he was on the opposite pavement down

"I wasn't going to spoil your dinner, Bunny, and I wasn't going to let you spoil mine. But there he was as

large as life, and, of course, he followed us to the Albany. A fine game for him to play, a game after his mean

old heart: blackmail from me, bribes from the police, the one bidding against the other; but he sha'n't play it

with me, he sha'n't live to, and the world will have an extortioner the less. Waiter! Two Scotch whiskeys and

"Yes, out Willesden way, and alone; the fellow's a miser among other things. I long ago found out all about

Again I looked round the room; it was a young man's club, and young men were laughing, chatting, smoking,

drinking, on every hand. One nodded to me through the smoke. Like a machine I nodded to him, and turned

"Surely you will give him a chance!" I urged. "The very sight of your pistol should bring him to terms."

"I most certainly should," said Raffles, solemnly. "So you come at your own peril, my dear man; but, if you

Five minutes later I was waiting for him at the Piccadilly entrance to the Albany. I had a reason for remaining

outside. It was the feelinghalf hope, half fearthat Angus Baird might still be on our trailthat some

more immediate and less coldblooded way of dealing with him might result from a sudden encounter

between the moneylender and myself. I would not warn him of his danger; but I would avert tragedy at all

costs. And when no such encounter had taken place, and Raffles and I were fairly on our way to Willesden,

that, I think, was still my honest resolve. I would not break my word if I could help it, but it was a comfort to

feel that I could break it if I liked, on an understood penalty. Alas! I fear my good intentions were tainted

with a devouring curiosity, and overlaid by the fascination which goes hand in hand with horror.

I have a poignant recollection of the hour it took us to reach the house. We walked across St. James's Park (I

can see the lights now, bright on the bridge and blurred in the water), and we had some minutes to wait for

the last train to Willesden. It left at 11.21, I remember, and Raffles was put out to find it did not go on to

Kensal Rise. We had to get out at Willesden Junction and walk on through the streets into fairly open country

that happened to be quite new to me. I could never find the house again. I remember, however, that we were

on a dark footpath between woods and fields when the clocks began striking twelve.

I had not thought about it at all; the ultimate crime had monopolized my mind. Beside it burglary was a

bagatelle, but one to deprecate none the less. I saw obvious objections: the man was au fait with cracksmen

and their ways: he would certainly have firearms, and might be the first to use them.

"I could wish nothing better," said Raffles. "Then it will be man to man, and devil take the worst shot. You

don't suppose I prefer foul play to fair, do you? But die he must, by one or the other, or it's a long stretch for

"Then stay where you are, my good fellow. I told you I didn't want you; and this is the house. So

I could see no house at all, only the angle of a high wall rising solitary in the night, with the starlight

glittering on battlements of broken glass; and in the wall a tall green gate, bristling with spikes, and showing

a front for batteringrams in the feeble rays an outlying lamppost cast across the newmade road. It seemed

to me a road of buildingsites, with but this one house built, all by itself, at one end; but the night was too

Raffles, however, had seen the place by daylight, and had come prepared for the special obstacles; already he

was reaching up and putting champagne corks on the spikes, and in another moment he had his folded

covertcoat across the corks. I stepped back as he raised himself, and saw a little pyramid of slates snip the

sky above the gate; as he squirmed over I ran forward, and had my own weight on the spikes and corks and

"Take care, then; the place is all bellwires and springs. It's no soft thing, this! Therestand still while I take

The garden was very small and new, with a grassplot still in separate sods, but a quantity of fullgrown

laurels stuck into the raw clay beds. "Bells in themselves," as Raffles whispered; "there's nothing else rustles

socunning old beast!" And we gave them a wide berth as we crept across the grass.

It lay like a golden rod under the frontdoorand vanished. It reappeared like a gold thread under the

linteland vanished for good. We heard the stairs creak, creak, and cease, also for good. We neither saw nor

heard any more, though we stood waiting on the grass till our feet were soaked with the dew.

"I'm going in," said Raffles at last. "I don't believe he saw us at all. I wish he had. This way."

We trod gingerly on the path, but the gravel stuck to our wet soles, and grated horribly in a little tiled veranda

with a glass door leading within. It was through this glass that Raffles had first seen the light; and he now

proceeded to take out a pane, with the diamond, the pot of treacle, and the sheet of brown paper which were

seldom omitted from his impedimenta. Nor did he dispense with my own assistance, though he may have

accepted it as instinctively as it was proffered. In any case it was these fingers that helped to spread the

treacle on the brown paper, and pressed the latter to the glass until the diamond had completed its circuit and

Raffles now inserted his hand, turned the key in the lock, and, by making a long arm, succeeded in drawing

the bolt at the bottom of the door; it proved to be the only one, and the door opened, though not very wide.

"What's that?" said Raffles, as something crunched beneath his feet on the very threshold.

"A pair of spectacles," I whispered, picking them up. I was still fingering the broken lenses and the bent rims

when Raffles tripped and almost fell, with a gasping cry that he made no effort to restrain.

For answer his teeth chatteredeven hisand I heard him fumbling with his matches. "No, Bunny; he won't

hear us," whispered Raffles, presently; and he rose from his knees and lit a gas as the match burnt down.

Angus Baird was lying on his own floor, dead, with his gray hairs glued together by his blood; near him a

poker with the black end glistening; in a corner his desk, ransacked, littered. A clock ticked noisily on the

Raffles stood very still, staring down at the dead, as a man might stare into an abyss after striding blindly to

its brink. His breath came audibly through wide nostrils; he made no other sign, and his lips seemed sealed.

Instead I laid a hand upon his arm, imploring him to reflectthat his enemy was dead nowthat we should

certainly be involvedthat now or never was our own time to escape. He shook me off in a sudden fury of

impatience, a reckless contempt in his eyes, and, bidding me save my own skin if I liked, he once more

turned his back upon me, and this time left me half resolved to take him at his word. Had he forgotten on

what errand he himself was here? Was he determined that this night should end in black disaster? As I asked

myself these questions his match flared in the hall; in another moment the stairs were creaking under his feet,

even as they had creaked under those of the murderer; and the humane instinct that inspired him in defiance

of his risk was borne in also upon my slower sensibilities. Could we let the murderer go? My answer was to

But three doors presented themselves; the first opened into a bedroom with the bed turned down but

undisturbed; the second room was empty in every sense; the third door was locked.

"He's in there," said he, cocking his revolver. "Do you remember how we used to break into the studies at

His flat foot crashed over the keyhole, the lock gave, the door flew open, and in the sudden draught the

landing gas heeled over like a cobble in a squall; as the flame righted itself I saw a fixed bath, two

bathtowels knotted togetheran open windowa cowering figureand Raffles struck aghast on the

The words came thick and slow with horror, and in horror I heard myself repeating them, while the cowering

"It's you!" he whispered, in amazement no less than our own; "it's you two! What's it mean, Raffles? I saw

you get over the gate; a bell rang, the place is full of them. Then you broke in. What's it all mean?"

"We may tell you that, when you tell us what in God's name you've done, Rutter!"

"Done? What have I done?" The unhappy wretch came out into the light with bloodshot, blinking eyes, and a

bloody shirtfront. "You knowyou've seenbut I'll tell you if you like. I've killed a robber; that's all. I've

killed a robber, a usurer, a jackal, a blackmailer, the cleverest and the cruellest villain unhung. I'm ready to

And he looked us fiercely in the face, a fine defiance in his dissipated eyes; his breast heaving, his jaw like a

"Shall I tell you how it happened?" he went passionately on. "He's made my life a hell these weeks and

months past. You may know that. A perfect hell! Well, tonight I met him in Bond Street. Do you remember

when I met you fellows? He wasn't twenty yards behind you; he was on your tracks, Raffles; he saw me nod

to you, and stopped me and asked me who you were. He seemed as keen as knives to know, I couldn't think

why, and didn't care either, for I saw my chance. I said I'd tell him all about you if he'd give me a private

interview. He said he wouldn't. I said he should, and held him by the coat; by the time I let him go you were

out of sight, and I waited where I was till he came back in despair. I had the whiphand of him then. I could

dictate where the interview should be, and I made him take me home with him, still swearing to tell him all

about you when we'd had our talk. Well, when we got here I made him give me something to eat, putting him

off and off; and about ten o'clock I heard the gate shut. I waited a bit, and then asked him if he lived alone.

"I said I'd seen her, but I thought I'd heard her go; if I was mistaken no doubt she would come when she was

called; and I yelled three times at the top of my voice. Of course there was no servant to come. I knew that,

because I came to see him one night last week, and he interviewed me himself through the gate, but wouldn't

open it. Well, when I had done yelling, and not a soul had come near us, he was as white as that ceiling. Then

I told him we could have our chat at last; and I picked the poker out of the fender, and told him how he'd

robbed me, but, by God, he shouldn't rob me any more. I gave him three minutes to write and sign a

settlement of all his iniquitous claims against me, or have his brains beaten out over his own carpet. He

thought a minute, and then went to his desk for pen and paper. In two seconds he was round like lightning

with a revolver, and I went for him baldheaded. He fired two or three times and missed; you can find the

holes if you like; but I hit him every timemy God! I was like a savage till the thing was done. And then I

didn't care. I went through his desk looking for my own bills, and was coming away when you turned up. I

said I didn't care, nor do I; but I was going to give myself up tonight, and shall still; so you see I sha'n't give

He was done; and there we stood on the landing of the lonely house, the low, thick, eager voice still racing

and ringing through our ears; the dead man below, and in front of us his impenitent slayer. I knew to whom

the impenitence would appeal when he had heard the story, and I was not mistaken.

"That's all rot," said Raffles, speaking after a pause; "we sha'n't let you give yourself up."

"You sha'n't stop me! What would be the good? The woman saw me; it would only be a question of time; and

I can't face waiting to be taken. Think of it: waiting for them to touch you on the shoulder! No, no, no; I'll

His speech was changed; he faltered, floundered. It was as though a clearer perception of his position had

"But listen to me," urged Raffles; "We're here at our peril ourselves. We broke in like thieves to enforce

redress for a grievance very like your own. But don't you see? We took out a panedid the thing like regular

"But I don't want to get off scotfree," cried Rutter hysterically. "I've killed him. I know that. But it was in

selfdefence; it wasn't murder. I must own up and take the consequences. I shall go mad if I don't!"

His hands twitched; his lips quivered; the tears were in his eyes. Raffles took him roughly by the shoulder.

"Look here, you fool! If the three of us were caught here now, do you know what those consequences would

be? We should swing in a row at Newgate in six weeks' time! You talk as though we were sitting in a club;

don't you know it's one o'clock in the morning, and the lights on, and a dead man down below? For God's

sake pull yourself together, and do what I tell you, or you're a dead man yourself."

"I wish I was one!" Rutter sobbed. "I wish I had his revolver to blow my own brains out. It's lying under him.

His knees knocked together: the frenzy of reaction was at its height. We had to take him downstairs between

All was still outsideall but the smothered weeping of the unstrung wretch upon our hands. Raffles returned

for a moment to the house; then all was dark as well. The gate opened from within; we closed it carefully

behind us; and so left the starlight shining on broken glass and polished spikes, one and all as we had found

We escaped; no need to dwell on our escape. Our murderer seemed set upon the scaffolddrunk with his

deed, he was more trouble than six men drunk with wine. Again and again we threatened to leave him to his

fate, to wash our hands of him. But incredible and unmerited luck was with the three of us. Not a soul did we

meet between that and Willesden; and of those who saw us later, did one think of the two young men with

crooked white ties, supporting a third in a seemingly unmistakable condition, when the evening papers

We walked to Maida Vale, and thence drove openly to my rooms. But I alone went upstairs; the other two

proceeded to the Albany, and I saw no more of Raffles for fortyeight hours. He was not at his rooms when I

called in the morning; he had left no word. When he reappeared the papers were full of the murder; and the

man who had committed it was on the wide Atlantic, a steerage passenger from Liverpool to New York.

"There was no arguing with him," so Raffles told me; "either he must make a clean breast of it or flee the

country. So I rigged him up at the studio, and we took the first train to Liverpool. Nothing would induce him

to sit tight and enjoy the situation as I should have endeavored to do in his place; and it's just as well! I went

to his diggings to destroy some papers, and what do you think I found. The police in possession; there's a

warrant out against him already! The idiots think that window wasn't genuine, and the warrant's out. It won't

I read the advertisement once more before replying. It was in the last column of the Daily Telegraph, and it

TWO THOUSAND POUNDS REWARDThe above sum may be earned by any one qualified to undertake

delicate mission and prepared to run certain risk.Apply by telegram, Security, London.

"I think," said I, "it's the most extraordinary advertisement that ever got into print!"

"Yes; the combination is frank, to say the least of it. But the really original point is requiring applications by

telegram to a telegraphic address! There's something in the fellow who thought of that, and something in his

game; with one word he chokes off the million who answer an advertisement every daywhen they can

"Wellno, Bunny, I didn't. In point of fact I smell something interesting and illegal, and you know what a

cautious chap I am. I signed myself Glasspool, care of Hickey, 38, Conduit Street; that's my tailor, and after

sending the wire I went round and told him what to expect. He promised to send the reply along the moment

And he was gone before a doubleknock on the outer door had done ringing through the rooms, to return next

"What do you think?" said he. "Security's that fellow Addenbrooke, the policecourt lawyer, and he wants to

"Merely by repute. I only hope he doesn't know me. He's the chap who got six weeks for sailing too close to

the wind in the SuttonWilmer case; everybody wondered why he wasn't struck off the rolls. Instead of that

he's got a firstrate practice on the seamy side, and every blackguard with half a case takes it straight to

Bennett Addenbrooke. He's probably the one man who would have the cheek to put in an advertisement like

that, and the one man who could do it without exciting suspicion. It's simply in his line; but you may be sure

there's something shady at the bottom of it. The odd thing is that I have long made up my mind to go to

"You shall lunch with me when we've seen this fellow. Come on, Bunny, and we'll choose your name on the

Mr. Bennett Addenbrooke occupied substantial offices in Wellington Street, Strand, and was out when we

arrived; but he had only just gone "over the way to the court"; and five minutes sufficed to produce a brisk,

freshcolored, resolutelooking man, with a very confident, rather festive air, and black eyes that opened

"Not up at Lord's, however!" said the other, slyly. "My dear sir, I have seen you take far too many wickets to

For a single moment Raffles looked venomous; then he shrugged and smiled, and the smile grew into a little

"So you have bowled me out in my turn?" said he. "Well, I don't think there's anything to explain. I am harder

up than I wished to admit under my own name, that's all, and I want that thousand pounds reward."

"Two thousand," said the solicitor. "And the man who is not above an alias happens to be just the sort of man

I want; so don't let that worry you, my dear sir. The matter, however, is of a strictly private and confidential

"Then surely three heads will be better than two. I said I wanted that thousand pounds; my friend here wants

the other. We are both cursedly hard up, and we go into this thing together or not at all. Must you have his

Mr. Addenbrooke raised his eyebrows over the card I found for him; then he drummed upon it with his

"The fact is, I find myself in a difficulty," he confessed at last. "Yours is the first reply I have received;

people who can afford to send long telegrams don't rush to the advertisements in the Daily Telegraph; but, on

the other hand, I was not quite prepared to hear from men like yourselves. Candidly, and on consideration, I

am not sure that you ARE the stamp of men for memen who belong to good clubs! I rather intended to

"We are not professional rogues, if that's what you mean," said Raffles, smiling. "But on our beamends we

"I'll tell you what I want you to do. You can but refuse. It's illegal, but it's illegality in a good cause; that's the

risk, and my client is prepared to pay for it. He will pay for the attempt, in case of failure; the money is as

good as yours once you consent to run the risk. My client is Sir Bernard Debenham, of Broom Hall, Esher."

Raffles knew him too, but said nothing, and his eye drooped disapproval in my direction. Bennett

"Then," said he, "you have the privilege of knowing one of the most complete young blackguards about

town, and the fons et origo of the whole trouble. As you know the son, you may know the father too, at all

events by reputation; and in that case I needn't tell you that he is a very peculiar man. He lives alone in a

storehouse of treasures which no eyes but his ever behold. He is said to have the finest collection of pictures

in the south of England, though nobody ever sees them to judge; pictures, fiddles and furniture are his hobby,

and he is undoubtedly very eccentric. Nor can one deny that there has been considerable eccentricity in his

treatment of his son. For years Sir Bernard paid his debts, and the other day, without the slightest warning,

not only refused to do so any more, but absolutely stopped the lad's allowance. Well, I'll tell you what has

happened; but first of all you must know, or you may remember, that I appeared for young Debenham in a

little scrape he got into a year or two ago. I got him off all right, and Sir Bernard paid me handsomely on the

The lawyer drew his chair nearer ours, and leant forward with a hand on either knee.

"On Tuesday of last week I had a telegram from Sir Bernard; I was to go to him at once. I found him waiting

for me in the drive; without a word he led me to the picturegallery, which was locked and darkened, drew

up a blind, and stood simply pointing to an empty pictureframe. It was a long time before I could get a word

out of him. Then at last he told me that that frame had contained one of the rarest and most valuable pictures

in Englandin the worldan original Velasquez. I have checked this," said the lawyer, "and it seems

literally true; the picture was a portrait of the Infanta Maria Teresa, said to be one of the artist's greatest

works, second only to another portrait of one of the Popes in Romeso they told me at the National Gallery,

where they had its history by heart. They say there that the picture is practically priceless. And young

"A Queensland legislator of the name of Craggsthe Hon. John Montagu Craggs, M.L.C., to give him his

full title. Not that we knew anything about him on Tuesday last; we didn't even know for certain that young

Debenham had stolen the picture. But he had gone down for money on the Monday evening, had been

refused, and it was plain enough that he had helped himself in this way; he had threatened revenge, and this

was it. Indeed, when I hunted him up in town on the Tuesday night, he confessed as much in the most brazen

manner imaginable. But he wouldn't tell me who was the purchaser, and finding out took the rest of the week;

but I did find out, and a nice time I've had of it ever since! Backwards and forwards between Esher and the

Metropole, where the Queenslander is staying, sometimes twice a day; threats, offers, prayers, entreaties, not

"But," said Raffles, "surely it's a clear case? The sale was illegal; you can pay him back his money and force

"Exactly; but not without an action and a public scandal, and that my client declines to face. He would rather

lose even his picture than have the whole thing get into the papers; he has disowned his son, but he will not

disgrace him; yet his picture he must have by hook or crook, and there's the rub! I am to get it back by fair

means or foul. He gives me carte blanche in the matter, and, I verily believe, would throw in a blank check if

asked. He offered one to the Queenslander, but Craggs simply tore it in two; the one old boy is as much a

"So you put that advertisement in the paper?" said Raffles, in the dry tones he had adopted throughout the

"I knew you were not the men!" he groaned. "I never thought of men of your stamp! But it's not stealing," he

exclaimed heatedly; "it's recovering stolen property. Besides, Sir Bernard will pay him his five thousand as

soon as he has the picture; and, you'll see, old Craggs will be just as loath to let it come out as Sir Bernard

"But not enough," said Raffles, shaking his head. "My good sir, consider what it means to us. You spoke of

those clubs; we should not only get kicked out of them, but put in prison like common burglars! It's true we're

hard up, but it simply isn't worth it at the price. Double your stakes, and I for one am your man."

Addenbrooke opened his lips, half rose, then sat back in his chair, and looked long and shrewdly at

"I know your bowling," said he reflectively. "I go up to Lord's whenever I want an hour's real rest, and I've

seen you bowl again and againyes, and take the best wickets in England on a plumb pitch. I don't forget

the last Gentleman and Players; I was there. You're up to every trickevery one . . . I'm inclined to think that

if anybody could bowl out this old Australian . . . Damme, I believe you're my very man!"

The bargain was clinched at the Cafe Royal, where Bennett Addenbrooke insisted on playing host at an

extravagant luncheon. I remember that he took his whack of champagne with the nervous freedom of a man

at high pressure, and have no doubt I kept him in countenance by an equal indulgence; but Raffles, ever an

exemplar in such matters, was more abstemious even than his wont, and very poor company to boot. I can see

him now, his eyes in his platethinkingthinking. I can see the solicitor glancing from him to me in an

apprehension of which I did my best to disabuse him by reassuring looks. At the close Raffles apologized for

his preoccupation, called for an A.B.C. timetable, and announced his intention of catching the 3.2 to Esher.

"You must excuse me, Mr. Addenbrooke," said he, "but I have my own idea, and for the moment I should

much prefer to keep it to myself. It may end in fizzle, so I would rather not speak about it to either of you just

yet. But speak to Sir Bernard I must, so will you write me one line to him on your card? Of course, if you

wish, you must come down with me and hear what I say; but I really don't see much point in it."

And as usual Raffles had his way, though Bennett Addenbrooke showed some temper when he was gone, and

I myself shared his annoyance to no small extent. I could only tell him that it was in the nature of Raffles to

be selfwilled and secretive, but that no man of my acquaintance had half his audacity and determination;

that I for my part would trust him through and through, and let him gang his own gait every time. More I

dared not say, even to remove those chill misgivings with which I knew that the lawyer went his way.

That day I saw no more of Raffles, but a telegram reached me when I was dressing for dinner:

So Raffles was back in town; at an earlier stage of our relations I should have hunted him up then and there,

but now I knew better. His telegram meant that he had no desire for my society that night or the following

And see him I did, towards one o'clock next day. I was watching for him from my window in Mount Street,

when he drove up furiously in a hansom, and jumped out without a word to the man. I met him next minute at

"I'm fairly on the rush," he panted; "having the very devil of a time! Not a word till I tell you all I've done. I

settled my plan of campaign yesterday at lunch. The first thing was to get in with this man Craggs; you can't

break into a place like the Metropole, it's got to be done from the inside. Problem one, how to get at the

fellow. Only one sort of pretext would doit must be something to do with this blessed picture, so that I

might see where he'd got it and all that. Well, I couldn't go and ask to see it out of curiosity, and I couldn't go

as a second representative of the other old chap, and it was thinking how I could go that made me such a bear

at lunch. But I saw my way before we got up. If I could only lay hold of a copy of the picture I might ask

leave to go and compare it with the original. So down I went to Esher to find out if there was a copy in

existence, and was at Broom Hall for one hour and a half yesterday afternoon. There was no copy there, but

they must exist, for Sir Bernard himself (there's 'copy' THERE!) has allowed a couple to be made since the

picture has been in his possession. He hunted up the painters' addresses, and the rest of the evening I spent in

hunting up the painters themselves; but their work had been done on commission; one copy had gone out of

"Seen him and made friends with him, and if possible he's the funnier old cuss of the two; but you should

study 'em both. I took the bull by the horns this morning, went in and lied like Ananias, and it was just as well

I didthe old ruffian sails for Australia by tomorrow's boat. I told him a man wanted to sell me a copy of

the celebrated Infanta Maria Teresa of Velasquez, that I'd been down to the supposed owner of the picture,

only to find that he had just sold it to him. You should have seen his face when I told him that! He grinned all

round his wicked old head. 'Did OLD Debenham admit the sale?' says he; and when I said he had he chuckled

to himself for about five minutes. He was so pleased that he did just what I hoped he would do; he showed

me the great pictureluckily it isn't by any means a large onealso the case he's got it in. It's an iron

mapcase in which he brought over the plans of his land in Brisbane; he wants to know who would suspect it

of containing an Old Master, too? But he's had it fitted with a new Chubb's lock, and I managed to take an

interest in the key while he was gloating over the canvas. I had the wax in the palm of my hand, and I shall

Raffles looked at his watch and jumped up saying he had given me a minute too much.

"Yes; don't look so scared. Both of us are invitedI swore you were dining with me. I accepted for us both;

"You will dine in his private sittingroom," said Raffles; "it adjoins his bedroom. You must keep him sitting

"If he does," said Raffles, "there will be a collision, that's all. Revolver would be out of place in the

"But it's ghastly!" I cried. "To sit and talk to an utter stranger and to know that you're at work in the next

"Quarter to eight. There will be a telegram from me saying I can't turn up. He's a terror to talk, you'll have no

difficulty in keeping the ball rolling; but head him off his picture for all you're worth. If he offers to show it

to you, say you must go. He locked up the case elaborately this afternoon, and there's no earthly reason why

"But surely I can see you again this afternoon?" I cried in a ferment, for his hand was on the door. "I'm not

"Not you," he said again, "but _I_ shall if I waste any more time. I've got a deuce of a lot of rushing about to

do yet. You won't find me at my rooms. Why not come down to Esher yourself by the last train? That's

itdown you come with the latest news! I'll tell old Debenham to expect you: he shall give us both a bed. By

"If!" I groaned as he nodded his adieu; and he left me limp with apprehension, sick with fear, in a perfectly

For, after all, I had only to act my part; unless Raffles failed where he never did fail, unless Raffles the neat

and noiseless was for once clumsy and inept, all I had to do was indeed to "smile and smile and be a villain."

I practiced that smile half the afternoon. I rehearsed putative parts in hypothetical conversations. I got up

stories. I dipped in a book on Queensland at the club. And at last it was 7.45, and I was making my bow to a

"So you're Mr. Raffles's friend?" said he, overhauling me rather rudely with his light small eyes. "Seen

No more, evidently, had his telegram, and my troubles were beginning early. I said I had not seen Raffles

since one o'clock, telling the truth with unction while I could; even as we spoke there came a knock at the

door; it was the telegram at last, and, after reading it himself, the Queenslander handed it to me.

"Called out of town!" he grumbled. "Sudden illness of near relative! What near relatives has he got?"

I knew of none, and for an instant I quailed before the perils of invention; then I replied that I had never met

"Thought you were bosom pals?" said he, with (as I imagined) a gleam of suspicion in his crafty little eyes.

"Well," he growled, "I suppose it can't be helped. Don't know why he couldn't come and have his dinner first.

Like to see the deathbed I'D go to without MY dinner; it's a fullskin billet, if you ask me. Well, must just

dine without him, and he'll have to buy his pig in a poke after all. Mind touching that bell? Suppose you

know what he came to see me about? Sorry I sha'n't see him again, for his own sake. I liked Rafflestook to

him amazingly. He's a cynic. Like cynics. One myself. Rank bad form of his mother or his aunt, and I hope

I connect these specimens of his conversation, though they were doubtless detached at the time, and

interspersed with remarks of mine here and there. They filled the interval until dinner was served, and they

gave me an impression of the man which his every subsequent utterance confirmed. It was an impression

which did away with all remorse for my treacherous presence at his table. He was that terrible type, the Silly

Cynic, his aim a caustic commentary on all things and all men, his achievement mere vulgar irreverence and

unintelligent scorn. Illbred and illinformed, he had (on his own showing) fluked into fortune on a rise in

land; yet cunning he possessed, as well as malice, and he chuckled till he choked over the misfortunes of less

astute speculators in the same boom. Even now I cannot feel much compunction for my behavior by the Hon.

But never shall I forget the private agonies of the situation, the listening to my host with one ear and for

Raffles with the other! Once I heard himthough the rooms were not divided by the oldfashioned

foldingdoors, and though the door that did divide them was not only shut but richly curtained, I could have

sworn I heard him once. I spilt my wine and laughed at the top of my voice at some coarse sally of my host's.

And I heard nothing more, though my ears were on the strain. But later, to my horror, when the waiter had

finally withdrawn, Craggs himself sprang up and rushed to his bedroom without a word. I sat like stone till he

"Thought I heard a door go," he said. "Must have been mistaken . . . imagination . . . gave me quite a turn.

It was the picture at last; up to this point I had kept him to Queensland and the making of his pile. I tried to

get him back there now, but in vain. He was reminded of his great illgotten possession. I said that Raffles

had just mentioned it, and that set him off. With the confidential garrulity of a man who has dined too well,

he plunged into his darling topic, and I looked past him at the clock. It was only a quarter to ten.

In common decency I could not go yet. So there I sat (we were still at port) and learnt what had originally

fired my host's ambition to possess what he was pleased to call a "real, genuine, twinscrew,

doublefunnelled, copperbottomed Old Master"; it was to "go one better" than some rival legislator of

pictorial proclivities. But even an epitome of his monologue would be so much weariness; suffice it that it

And all at once I saw that to resist him further would be to heap suspicion upon myself against the moment of

impending discovery. I therefore followed him into his bedroom without further protest, and suffered him

first to show me the iron mapcase which stood in one corner; he took a crafty pride in this receptacle, and I

thought he would never cease descanting on its innocent appearance and its Chubb's lock. It seemed an

interminable age before the key was in the latter. Then the ward clicked, and my pulse stood still.

"Thought it would knock you," said Craggs, drawing it out and unrolling it for my benefit. 'Grand thing, ain't

it? Wouldn't think it had been painted two hundred and thirty years? It has, though, MY word! Old Johnson's

face will be a treat when he sees it; won't go bragging about HIS pictures much more. Why, this one's worth

all the pictures in Colony o' Queensland put together. Worth fifty thousand pounds, my boyand I got it for

He dug me in the ribs, and seemed in the mood for further confidences. My appearance checked him, and he

"If you take it like that," he chuckled, "how will old Johnson take it? Go out and hang himself to his own

Heaven knows what I contrived to say at last. Struck speechless first by my relief, I continued silent from a

very different cause. A new tangle of emotions tied my tongue. Raffles had failedRaffles had failed! Could

"So long," he said, taking a last look at the canvas before he rolled it up"so long till we get to Brisbane."

"For the last time," he went on, as his keys jingled back into his pocket. "It goes straight into the strongroom

For the last time! If I could but send him out to Australia with only its legitimate contents in his precious

We returned to the other room. I have no notion how long he talked, or what about. Whiskey and sodawater

became the order of the hour. I scarcely touched it, but he drank copiously, and before eleven I left him

I took a hansom to my rooms. I was back at the hotel in thirteen minutes. I walked upstairs. The corridor was

empty; I stood an instant on the sittingroom threshold, heard a snore within, and admitted myself softly with

my gentleman's own key, which it had been a very simple matter to take away with me.

Craggs never moved; he was stretched on the sofa fast asleep. But not fast enough for me. I saturated my

handkerchief with the chloroform I had brought, and laid it gently over his mouth. Two or three stertorous

In less than five minutes I put them back, after winding the picture about my body beneath my Inverness

The train was easily caughtso easily that I trembled for ten minutes in my firstclass smoking carriagein

terror of every footstep on the platform, in unreasonable terror till the end. Then at last I sat back and lit a

Some men were returning from the theatre. I can recall their conversation even now. They were disappointed

with the piece they had seen. It was one of the later Savoy operas, and they spoke wistfully of the days of

"Pinafore" and "Patience." One of them hummed a stave, and there was an argument as to whether the air was

out of "Patience" or the "Mikado." They all got out at Surbiton, and I was alone with my triumph for a few

Of all our adventures this was the first in which I had played a commanding part; and, of them all, this was

infinitely the least discreditable. It left me without a conscientious qualm; I had but robbed a robber, when all

I pictured Raffles, his surprise, his delight. He would think a little more of me in future. And that future, it

should be different. We had two thousand pounds apiecesurely enough to start afresh as honest menand

In a glow I sprang out at Esher, and took the one belated cab that was waiting under the bridge. In a perfect

fever I beheld Broom Hall, with the lower story still lit up, and saw the front door open as I climbed the steps.

"Thought it was you," said Raffles cheerily. "It's all right. There's a bed for you. Sir Bernard's sitting up to

His good spirits disappointed me. But I knew the man: he was one of those who wear their brightest smile in

"The picture. He showed it me. You had to go without it; I saw that. So I determined to have it. And here it

I threw off my cape and unwound the canvas from about my body. While I was doing so an untidy old

gentleman made his appearance in the hall, and stood looking on with raised eyebrows.

"Well, look nowlook closely. By Jove, I must have faked her better than I thought!"

"It's THE copy," he answered. "It's the copy I've been tearing all over the country to procure. It's the copy I

faked back and front, so that, on your own showing, it imposed upon Craggs, and might have made him

I did not look at him; I turned to Sir Bernard Debenham, and to him I told my story, hoarsely, excitedly, for it

was all that I could do to keep from breaking down. But as I spoke I became calmer, and I finished in mere

bitterness, with the remark that another time Raffles might tell me what he meant to do.

"Another time!" he cried instantly. "My dear Bunny, you speak as though we were going to turn burglars for

"I trust you won't," said Sir Bernard, smiling, "for you are certainly two very daring young men. Let us hope

our friend from Queensland will do as he said, and not open his mapcase till he gets back there. He will find

my check awaiting him, and I shall be very much surprised if he troubles any of us again."

Raffles and I did not speak till I was in the room which had been prepared for me. Nor was I anxious to do so

"Bunny," said he, "don't you be hard on a fellow! I was in the deuce of a hurry, and didn't know that I should

ever get what I wanted in time, and that's a fact. But it serves me right that you should have gone and undone

one of the best things I ever did. As for YOUR handiwork, old chap, you won't mind my saying that I didn't

"Don't talk to me about the future!" I cried. "I hate the whole thing! I'm going to chuck it up!"

I had turned into Piccadilly, one thick evening in the following November, when my guilty heart stood still at

the sudden grip of a hand upon my arm. I thoughtI was always thinkingthat my inevitable hour was

come at last. It was only Raffles, however, who stood smiling at me through the fog.

"I was just on my way there," I returned, with an attempt to hide my tremors. It was an ineffectual attempt, as

I made excuses, for his tone foretold the kind of amusement, and it was a kind against which I had

successfully set my face for months. I have stated before, however, and I can but reiterate, that to me, at all

events, there was never anybody in the world so irresistible as Raffles when his mind was made up. That we

had both been independent of crime since our little service to Sir Bernard Debenhamthat there had been no

occasion for that masterful mind to be made up in any such direction for many a daywas the undeniable

basis of a longer spell of honesty than I had hitherto enjoyed during the term of our mutual intimacy. Be sure

I would deny it if I could; the very thing I am to tell you would discredit such a boast. I made my excuses, as

But his arm slid through mine, with his little laugh of lighthearted mastery. And even while I argued we

His fire had fallen low. He poked and replenished it after lighting the gas. As for me, I stood by sullenly in

"What a chap you are!" said Raffles, playfully. "One would really think I had proposed to crack another crib

this blessed night! Well, it isn't that, Bunny; so get into that chair, and take one of these Sullivans and sit

He held the match to my cigarette; he brought me a whiskey and soda. Then he went out into the lobby, and,

just as I was beginning to feel happy, I heard a bolt shot home. It cost me an effort to remain in that chair;

next moment he was straddling another and gloating over my discomfiture across his folded arms.

"We had a little match there that wasn't down on the card. Gentlemen and Players, if you recollect?"

"Seeing that you never got an innings, so to speak, I thought you might. Well, the Gentlemen scored pretty

"Don't be too sure. You remember the fellow we saw in the inn? The florid, overdressed chap who I told

"Well, it was certainly the name he was convicted under, so Crawshay let it be. You needn't waste any pity on

"You are perfectly right; it was very well done indeed. I wonder you didn't see it in the paper. In a dense fog

on the moor yesterday good old Crawshay made a bolt for it, and got away without a scratch under heavy

fire. All honor to him, I agree; a fellow with that much grit deserves his liberty. But Crawshay has a good

deal more. They hunted him all night long; couldn't find him for nuts; and that was all you missed in the

"But listen to this; here's an account of the escape, with just the addition which puts the thing on a higher

level. 'The fugitive has been traced to Totnes, where he appears to have committed a peculiarly daring

outrage in the early hours of this morning. He is reported to have entered the lodgings of the Rev. A. H.

Ellingworth, curate of the parish, who missed his clothes on rising at the usual hour; later in the morning

those of the convict were discovered neatly folded at the bottom of a drawer. Meanwhile Crawshay had made

good his second escape, though it is believed that so distinctive a guise will lead to his recapture during the

"He's more," said Raffles, "he's an artist, and I envy him. The curate, of all men! Beautifulbeautiful! But

that's not all. I saw just now on the board at the club that there's been an outrage on the line near Dawlish.

Parson found insensible in the sixfoot way. Our friend again! The telegram doesn't say so, but it's obvious;

he's simply knocked some other fellow out, changed clothes again, and come on gayly to town. Isn't it great?

In an instant the enthusiasm faded from Raffles's face; clearly I had reminded him of some prime anxiety,

forgotten in his impersonal joy over the exploit of a fellowcriminal. He looked over his shoulder towards the

And as he spoke he was himself againquietly amusedcynically unperturbedcharacteristically

"Because, in his way he's very nearly as good a man as I am; because, my dear Bunny, with eyes in his head

and brains behind them, he couldn't help suspecting. He saw me once in town with old Baird. He must have

seen me that day in the pub on the way to Milchester, as well as afterwards on the cricketfield. As a matter

"That he was sorry he had been run in before getting back to town, as he had proposed doing himself the

honor of paying me a call; however, he trusted it was only a pleasure deferred, and he begged me not to go

and get lagged myself before he came out. Of course he knew the Melrose necklace was gone, though he

hadn't got it; and he said that the man who could take that and leave the rest was a man after his own heart.

And so on, with certain little proposals for the far future, which I fear may be the very near future indeed! I'm

He looked again towards the lobby, which he had left in darkness, with the inner door shut as carefully as the

"Let him knockif he gets so far. The porter is to say I'm out of town; it will be true, too, in another hour or

"By the 7.15 from Liverpool Street. I don't say much about my people, Bunny, but I have the best of sisters

married to a country parson in the eastern counties. They always make me welcome, and let me read the

lessons for the sake of getting me to church. I'm sorry you won't be there to hear me on Sunday, Bunny. I've

figured out some of my best schemes in that parish, and I know of no better port in a storm. But I must pack.

I thought I'd just let you know where I was going, and why, in case you cared to follow my example."

He flung the stump of his cigarette into the fire, stretched himself as he rose, and remained so long in the

inelegant attitude that my eyes mounted from his body to his face; a second later they had followed his eyes

across the room, and I also was on my legs. On the threshold of the folding doors that divided bedroom and

sittingroom, a wellbuilt man stood in illfitting broadcloth, and bowed to us until his bullet head presented

Brief as was my survey of this astounding apparition, the interval was long enough for Raffles to recover his

composure; his hands were in his pockets, and a smile upon his face, when my eyes flew back to him.

"Let me introduce you, Bunny," said he, "to our distinguished colleague, Mr. Reginald Crawshay."

The bullet head bobbed up, and there was a wrinkled brow above the coarse, shaven face, crimson also, I

remember, from the grip of a collar several sizes too small. But I noted nothing consciously at the time. I had

"It's a trick!" I cried. "It's another of your cursed tricks! You got him here, and then you got me. You want me

So cold was the stare which met this outburst that I became ashamed of my words while they were yet upon

"Lord love yer," cried Crawshay, "'_E_ knew nothin'. _'E_ didn't expect me; 'E'S all right. And you're the

cool canary, YOU are," he went on to Raffles. "I knoo you were, but, do me proud, you're one after my own

"After that," said Raffles, taking it, "what am I to say? But you must have heard my opinion of you. I am

"Never you mind," said Crawshay, loosening his collar; "let's talk about how I'm to get out. Lord love yer, but

There was a livid ring round his bullneck, that he fingered tenderly. "Didn't know how much longer I might

"Drink whiskey and soda?" inquired Raffles, when the convict was in the chair from which I had leapt.

"No, I drink it neat," replied Crawshay, "but I talk business first. You don't get over me like that, Lor' love

"Clean heels, then; that's what I want to show, and I leaves the way to you. We're brothers in arms, though I

ain't armed this time. It ain't necessary. You've too much sense. But brothers we are, and you'll see a brother

through. Let's put it at that. You'll see me through in yer own way. I leaves it all to you."

His tone was rich with conciliation and concession; he bent over and tore a pair of button boots from his bare

"I hope you take a larger size than them," said he. "I'd have had a see if you'd given me time. I wasn't in long

"Wot's the use? I can't teach YOU nothin'. Besides, I want out. I want out of London, an' England, an'

bloomin' Europe too. That's all I want of you, mister. I don't arst how YOU go on the job. You know w'ere I

come from, 'cos I 'eard you say; you know w'ere I want to 'ead for, 'cos I've just told yer; the details I leaves

"We must," said Mr. Crawshay, and leaned back comfortably, and began twirling his stubby thumbs.

Raffles turned to me with a twinkle in his eye; but his forehead was scored with thought, and resolve mingled

with resignation in the lines of his mouth. And he spoke exactly as though he and I were alone in the room.

"You seize the situation, Bunny? If our friend here is 'copped,' to speak his language, he means to 'blow the

gaff' on you and me. He is considerate enough not to say so in so many words, but it's plain enough, and

natural enough for that matter. I would do the same in his place. We had the bulge before; he has it now; it's

perfectly fair. We must take on this job; we aren't in a position to refuse it; even if we were, I should take it

on! Our friend is a great sportsman; he has got clear away from Dartmoor; it would be a thousand pities to let

"Any way you like," murmured Crawshay, with his eyes shut. "I leaves the 'ole thing to you."

"It was devilish smart of you to know which one; it beats me how you brought it off in daylight, fog or no

"Well, let's hope you are right. I shall reconnoitre and soon find out. And you'd better come too, Bunny, and

As Raffles looked at me, I looked at Crawshay, anticipating trouble; and trouble brewed in his blank, fierce

"No, you don't," he roared, and at a bound had his back to the door. "You don't get round me like that, you

Raffles turned to me with a twitch of the shoulders. "That's the worst of these professors," said he; "they

never will use their heads. They see the pegs, and they mean to hit 'em; but that's all they do see and mean,

"Don't talk through yer neck," snarled the convict. "Talk out straight, curse you!"

"Right," said Raffles. "I'll talk as straight as you like. You say you put yourself in my handsyou leave it all

to meyet you don't trust me an inch! I know what's to happen if I fail. I accept the risk. I take this thing on.

Yet you think I'm going straight out to give you away and make you give me away in my turn. You're a fool,

Mr. Crawshay, though you have broken Dartmoor; you've got to listen to a better man, and obey him. I see

you through in my own way, or not at all. I come and go as I like, and with whom I like, without your

interference; you stay here and lie just as low as you know how, be as wise as your word, and leave the whole

thing to me. If you won'tif you're fool enough not to trust methere's the door. Go out and say what you

"That's talking!" said he. "Lord love yer, I know where I am when you talk like that. I'll trust yer. I know a

man when he gets his tongue between his teeth; you're all right. I don't say so much about this other gent,

though I saw him along with you on the job that time in the provinces; but if he's a pal of yours, Mr. Raffles,

"I only went for their togs," said he. "You never struck two such stonybroke cusses in yer life!"

"That's all right," said Raffles. "We'll see you through properly. Leave it to us, and you sit tight."

"Rightum!" said Crawshay. "And I'll have a sleep time you're gone. But no sperritsno, thank'eenot yet!

Raffles got his overcoat, a long, light drivingcoat, I remember, and even as he put it on our fugitive was

dozing in the chair; we left him murmuring incoherently, with the gas out, and his bare feet toasting.

"Not such a bad chap, that professor," said Raffles on the stairs; "a real genius in his way, too, though his

methods are a little elementary for my taste. But technique isn't everything; to get out of Dartmoor and into

the Albany in the same twentyfour hours is a whole that justifies its parts. Good Lord!"

And before I could remonstrate he had wheeled me round; when I found my voice he merely laughed, and

The detective turned about and scrutinized us keenly; and through the gaslit mist I noticed that his hair was

grizzled at the temples, and his face still cadaverous, from the wound that had nearly been his death.

"I hope you're fit again," said my companion. "My name is Raffles, and we met at Milchester last year."

"Is that a fact?" cried the Scotchman, with quite a start. "Yes, now I remember your face, and yours too, sir.

"Yes, it ended splendidly, but for you," said he. "But what about this escape of the leader of the gang, that

"Good!" cried Raffles. "I was only afraid you might be on his tracks once more!"

Mackenzie shook his head with a dry smile, and wished us good evening as an invisible window was thrown

"We must see this out," whispered Raffles. "Nothing more natural than a little curiosity on our part. After

And we followed the detective into another entrance on the same side as that from which we had emerged,

the lefthand side on one's way to Piccadilly; quite openly we followed him, and at the foot of the stairs met

"Rot!" said Raffles. "That was Mackenzie, the detective. I've just been speaking to him. What's he here for?

Come on, my good fellow; we won't give you away, if you've instructions not to tell."

The man looked quaintly wistful, the temptation of an audience hot upon him; a door shut upstairs, and he

"It's like this," he whispered. "This afternoon a gen'leman comes arfter rooms, and I sent him to the orfice;

one of the clurks, 'e goes round with 'im an' shows 'im the empties, an' the gen'leman's partic'ly struck on the

set the coppers is up in now. So he sends the clurk to fetch the manager, as there was one or two things he

wished to speak about; an' when they come back, blowed if the gent isn't gone! Beg yer pardon, sir, but he's

clean disappeared off the face o' the premises!" And the porter looked at us with shining eyes.

"Well, sir, they looked about, an' looked about, an' at larst they give him up for a bad job; thought he'd

changed his mind an' didn't want to tip the clurk; so they shut up the place an' come away. An' that's all till

about 'alf an hour ago, when I takes the manager his extryspeshul Star; in about ten minutes he comes

running out with a note, an' sends me with it to Scotland Yard in a hansom. An' that's all I know,

sirstraight. The coppers is up there now, and the tec, and the manager, and they think their gent is about the

place somewhere still. Least, I reckon that's their idea; but who he is, or what they want him for, I dunno."

"Jolly interesting!" said Raffles. "I'm going up to inquire. Come on, Bunny; there should be some fun."

"Not I; you're a good fellow. I won't forget it if this leads to sport. Sport!" he whispered as we reached the

And he thundered on the shut door; a policeman opened it. Raffles strode past him with the air of a chief

commissioner, and I followed before the man had recovered from his astonishment. The bare boards rang

under us; in the bedroom we found a knot of officers stooping over the windowledge with a constable's

lantern. Mackenzie was the first to stand upright, and he greeted us with a glare.

"We want to lend a hand," said Raffles briskly. "We lent one once before, and it was my friend here who took

over from you the fellow who split on all the rest, and held him tightly. Surely that entitles him, at all events,

to see any fun that's going? As for myself, well, it's true I only helped to carry you to the house; but for old

acquaintance I do hope, my dear Mr. Mackenzie, that you will permit us to share such sport as there may be. I

"Then ye'll not see much," growled the detective, "for he's not up here. Constable, go you and stand at the

foot o' the stairs, and let no other body come up on any conseederation; these gentlemen may be able to help

"That's kind of you, Mackenzie!" cried Raffles warmly. "But what is it all? I questioned a porter I met

coming down, but could get nothing out of him, except that somebody had been to see these rooms and not

"He's a man we want," said Mackenzie. "He's concealed himself somewhere about these premises, or I'm vera

"Then I may have to search your rooms, sir. I am prepared to search every room in the Albany! Our man

seems to have gone for the leads; but unless he's left more marks outside than in, or we find him up there, I

"I will leave you my key," said Raffles at once. "I am dining out, but I'll leave it with the officer down

I caught my breath in mute amazement. What was the meaning of this insane promise? It was wilful,

gratuitous, suicidal; it made me catch at his sleeve in open horror and disgust; but, with a word of thanks,

Mackenzie had returned to his windowsill, and we sauntered unwatched through the foldingdoors into the

adjoining room. Here the window looked down into the courtyard; it was still open; and as we gazed out in

"It's all right, Bunny; you do what I tell you and leave the rest to me. It's a tight corner, but I don't despair.

What you've got to do is to stick to these chaps, especially if they search my rooms; they mustn't poke about

"If I do, it will be to turn up trumps at the right moment. Besides, there are such things as windows, and

Crawshay's the man to take his risks. You must trust me, Bunny; you've known me long enough."

"There's no time to lose. Stick to them, old chap; don't let them suspect YOU, whatever else you do." His

hand lay an instant on my shoulder; then he left me at the window, and recrossed the room.

"I've got to go now," I heard him say; "but my friend will stay and see this through, and I'll leave the gas on

in my rooms, and my key with the constable downstairs. Good luck, Mackenzie; only wish I could stay."

Mackenzie was still busy at his window, and I remained at mine, a prey to mingled fear and wrath, for all my

knowledge of Raffles and of his infinite resource. By this time I felt that I knew more or less what he would

do in any given emergency; at least I could conjecture a characteristic course of equal cunning and audacity.

He would return to his rooms, put Crawshay on his guard, andstow him away? Nothere were such

things as windows. Then why was Raffles going to desert us all? I thought of many thingslastly of a cab.

These bedroom windows looked into a narrow sidestreet; they were not very high; from them a man might

drop on to the roof of a cabeven as it passedand be driven away even under the noses of the police! I

pictured Raffles driving that cab, unrecognizable in the foggy night; the vision came to me as he passed under

the window, tucking up the collar of his great drivingcoat on the way to his rooms; it was still with me when

"We're on his track," said a voice behind me. "He's got up on the leads, sure enough, though how he managed

it from yon window is a myst'ry to me. We're going to lock up here and try what like it is from the attics. So

The top floor at the Albany, as elsewhere, is devoted to the servantsa congeries of little kitchens and

cubicles, used by many as lumberroomsby Raffles among the many. The annex in this case was, of

course, empty as the rooms below; and that was lucky, for we filled it, what with the manager, who now

joined us, and another tenant whom he brought with him to Mackenzie's undisguised annoyance.

"Better let in all Piccadilly at a crown a head," said he. "Here, my man, out you go on the roof to make one

We crowded to the little window, which Mackenzie took care to fill; and a minute yielded no sound but the

"Sirs," purred Mackenzie, "yon's how he got up from below! He would do it with one o' they telescope sticks,

"Did it hang over a window? Ask him that!" cried the manager. "He can see by leaning over the parapet."

"Six, he says," said Mackenzie next minute; and he drew in his head and shoulders. "I should just like to see

"Is that a fact?" cried Mackenzie. "Then we shall have no difficulty at all. He's left me his key down below."

The words had a dry, speculative intonation, which even then I found time to dislike; it was as though the

"I saw him go," said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would not trust myself to speak again. But I wormed

my way to a front place in the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man to cross the threshold that

had been the Rubicon of my life. As I did so I uttered a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back heavily on

my toes; in another second I saw the reason, and saw it with another and a louder cry.

A man was lying at full length before the fire on his back, with a little wound in the white forehead, and the

"Suicide," said Mackenzie calmly. "Nohere's the pokerlooks more like murder." He went on his knees

and shook his head quite cheerfully. "An' it's not even murder," said he, with a shade of disgust in his

matteroffact voice; "yon's no more than a fleshwound, and I have my doubts whether it felled him; but,

He got up and fixed his keen gray eyes upon me; my own were full of tears, but they faced him unashamed.

It was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background; on him turned Mackenzie, white to the lips.

"You'd think anything, some of you damned policemen," said he. "What's your number, you rotter? P 34?

You'll be hearing more of this, Mr. P 34! If that gentleman was deadinstead of coming to himself while I'm

talkingdo you know what you'd be? Guilty of his manslaughter, you stuck pig in buttons! Do you know

who you've let slip, butterfingers? Crawshayno lesshim that broke Dartmoor yesterday. By the God

Working faceshaking fista calm man on fire. It was a new side of Mackenzie, and one to mark and to

"Difficult thing to break your own head," said Raffles later; "infinitely easier to cut your own throat.

Chloroform's another matter; when you've used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety. So you thought I

"That's all right. I wouldn't have had him miss it for worlds; and you mustn't think me a brute, old boy, for I

"Not we!" said Raffles with conviction. "Old Crawshay's a true sportsman, and he'll do by us as we've done

by him; besides, this makes us quits; and I don't think, Bunny, that we'll take on the professors again!"

When the King of the Cannibal Islands made faces at Queen Victoria, and a European monarch set the cables

tingling with his compliments on the exploit, the indignation in England was not less than the surprise, for the

thing was not so common as it has since become. But when it transpired that a gift of peculiar significance

was to follow the congratulations, to give them weight, the inference prevailed that the white potentate and

the black had taken simultaneous leave of their fourteen senses. For the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled,

picked aforetime by British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and presented by British royalty to the

sovereign who seized this opportunity of restoring it to its original possessor.

The incident would have been a godsend to the Press a few weeks later. Even in June there were leaders,

letters, large headlines, leaded type; the Daily Chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming drawing

of the island capital which the new Pall Mall, in a leading article headed by a pun, advised the Government to

blow to flinders. I was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill at the time, and the topic of the hour

goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better place than anything I had yet turned out. I had let my flat

in town, and taken inexpensive quarters at Thames Ditton, on the plea of a disinterested passion for the river.

"Firstrate, old boy!" said Raffles (who must needs come and see me there), lying back in the boat while I

"Nonsense, Bunny! I thought they paid so well? Give them time, and you'll get your check."

"Oh, no, I sha'n't," said I gloomily. "I've got to be content with the honor of getting in; the editor wrote to say

so, in so many words," I added. But I gave the gentleman his distinguished name.

No; it was the last thing I had intended to admit. But I had done it. The murder was out; there was no sense in

further concealment. I had written for my money because I really needed it; if he must know, I was cursedly

hard up. Raffles nodded as though he knew already. I warmed to my woes. It was no easy matter to keep your

end up as a raw freelance of letters; for my part, I was afraid I wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for

success. I suffered from a persistent ineffectual feeling after style. Verse I could manage; but it did not pay.

To personal paragraphs and the baser journalism I could not and I would not stoop.

Raffles nodded again, this time with a smile that stayed in his eyes as he leant back watching me. I knew that

he was thinking of other things I had stooped to, and I thought I knew what he was going to say. He had said

it before so often; he was sure to say it again. I had my answer ready, but evidently he was tired of asking the

same question. His lids fell, he took up the paper he had dropped, and I sculled the length of the old red wall

"And they gave you nothing for these! My dear Bunny, they're capital, not only qua verses but for

crystallizing your subject and putting it in a nutshell. Certainly you've taught ME more about it than I knew

"A hundred thousand pounds!" said Raffles, with his eyes shut. And again I made certain what was coming,

but again I was mistaken. "If it's worth all that," he cried at last, "there would be no getting rid of it at all; it's

not like a diamond that you can subdivide. But I beg your pardon, Bunny. I was forgetting!"

And we said no more about the emperor's gift; for pride thrives on an empty pocket, and no privation would

have drawn from me the proposal which I had expected Raffles to make. My expectation had been half a

hope, though I only knew it now. But neither did we touch again on what Raffles professed to have

forgottenmy "apostasy," my "lapse into virtue," as he had been pleased to call it. We were both a little

silent, a little constrained, each preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was months since we had met, and, as I

saw him off towards eleven o'clock that Sunday night, I fancied it was for more months that we were saying

But as we waited for the train I saw those clear eyes peering at me under the station lamps, and when I met

"You don't look well on it, Bunny," said he. "I never did believe in this Thames Valley. You want a change of

"And a winter at St. Moritz, or do you recommend Cannes or Cairo? It's all very well, A. J., but you forget

"I forget nothing. I merely don't want to hurt your feelings. But, look here, a sea voyage you shall have. I

want a change myself, and you shall come with me as my guest. We'll spend July in the Mediterranean."

And I shook his hand, and waved mine in farewell, with the perfectly goodhumored conviction that I should

hear no more of the matter. It was a passing thought, no more, no less. I soon wished it were more; that week

found me wishing myself out of England for good and all. I was making nothing. I could but subsist on the

difference between the rent I paid for my flat and the rent at which I had sublet it, furnished, for the season.

And the season was near its end, and creditors awaited me in town. Was it possible to be entirely honest? I

had run no bills when I had money in my pocket, and the more downright dishonesty seemed to me the less

But from Raffles, of course, I heard nothing more; a week went by, and half another week; then, late on the

second Wednesday night, I found a telegram from him at my lodgings, after seeking him vainly in town, and

"Arrange to leave Waterloo by North German Lloyd special," he wired, "9.25 A. M. Monday next will meet

And write he did, a lighthearted letter enough, but full of serious solicitude for me and for my health and

prospects; a letter almost touching in the light of our past relations, in the twilight of their complete rupture.

He said that he had booked two berths to Naples, that we were bound for Capri, which was clearly the island

of the Lotoseaters, that we would bask there together, "and for a while forget." It was a charming letter. I

had never seen Italy; the privilege of initiation should be his. No mistake was greater than to deem it an

impossible country for the summer. The Bay of Naples was never so divine, and he wrote of "faery lands

forlorn," as though the poetry sprang unbidden to his pen. To come back to earth and prose, I might think it

unpatriotic of him to choose a German boat, but on no other line did you receive such attention and

accommodation for your money. There was a hint of better reasons. Raffles wrote, as he had telegraphed,

from Bremen; and I gathered that the personal use of some little influence with the authorities there had

Imagine my excitement and delight! I managed to pay what I owed at Thames Ditton, to squeeze a small

editor for a very small check, and my tailors for one more flannel suit. I remember that I broke my last

sovereign to get a box of Sullivan's cigarettes for Raffles to smoke on the voyage. But my heart was as light

as my purse on the Monday morning, the fairest morning of an unfair summer, when the special whirled me

A tender awaited us at Southampton. Raffles was not on board, nor did I really look for him till we reached

the liner's side. And then I looked in vain. His face was not among the many that fringed the rail; his hand

was not of the few that waved to friends. I climbed aboard in a sudden heaviness. I had no ticket, nor the

money to pay for one. I did not even know the number of my room. My heart was in my mouth as I waylaid a

steward and asked if a Mr. Raffles was on board. Thank heavenhe was! But where? The man did not

know, was plainly on some other errand, and ahunting I must go. But there was no sign of him on the

promenade deck, and none below in the saloon; the smokingroom was empty but for a little German with a

red moustache twisted into his eyes; nor was Raffles in his own cabin, whither I inquired my way in

desperation, but where the sight of his own name on the baggage was certainly a further reassurance. Why he

himself kept in the background, however, I could not conceive, and only sinister reasons would suggest

Despite the graven prohibition, I had tried the bridge as a last resort; and there, indeed, was A. J. Raffles,

seated on a skylight, and leaning over one of the officers' long chairs, in which reclined a girl in a white drill

coat and skirta slip of a girl with a pale skin, dark hair, and rather remarkable eyes. So much I noted as he

rose and quickly turned; thereupon I could think of nothing but the swift grimace which preceded a start of

"And are you coming in this ship? And to Naples, too? Well, upon my word! Miss Werner, may I introduce

And he did so without a blush, describing me as an old schoolfellow whom he had not seen for months, with

wilful circumstance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with confusion, suspicion, and revolt. I felt

myself blushing for us both, and I did not care. My address utterly deserted me, and I made no effort to

recover it, to carry the thing off. All I would do was to mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my

"So you saw my name in the list of passengers and came in search of me? Good old Bunny; I say, though, I

wish you'd share my cabin. I've got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they wouldn't promise to keep me

by myself. We ought to see about it before they shove in some alien. In any case we shall have to get out of

For a quartermaster had entered the wheelhouse, and even while we had been speaking the pilot had taken

possession of the bridge; as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and shrill goodbys;

and as we bowed to Miss Werner on the promenade deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and

It did not begin pleasantly between Raffles and me. On deck he had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint

"How? I should have thought any clod could see that I meant us to meet by chance!"

"They knew nothing about that on board; besides, I hadn't decided when I took the tickets."

"Then you should have let me know when you did decide. You lay your plans, and never say a word, and

expect me to tumble to them by light of nature. How was I to know you had anything on?"

"The fact is, Bunny, I didn't mean you to know. Youyou've grown such a pious rabbit in your old age!"

My nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things went farther, but I had much to forgive him

"If you were afraid of writing," I pursued, "it was your business to give me the tip the moment I set foot on

Was it my imagination, or did Raffles look slightly ashamed? If so, it was for the first and last time in all the

"That," said he, "was the very thing I meant to doto lie in wait in my room and get you as you passed.

"Brute!" said Raffles, laughing; "she has no more twang than you have. Her people are German, she has been

"Confound you!" he said, and, though he was laughing, I thought it was a point at which the subject might be

"Well," I said, "it wasn't for Miss Werner you wanted us to play strangers, was it? You have some deeper

Raffles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny that I knew so well; the very familiarity of it, after all these

months, set me smiling in a way that might have reassured him; for dimly already I divined his enterprise.

"You've got it!" I cried, my face on fire, for I caught sight of it that moment in the stateroom mirror.

"That's the chap; he's always there. Herr Captain Wilhelm von Heumann, if you look in the list. Well, he's the

"No, in Berlin, from a newspaper man I know there. I'm ashamed to tell you, Bunny, that I went there on

"You needn't be ashamed. You are doing the very thing I was rather hoping you were going to propose the

"You were HOPING it?" said Raffles, with his eyes wide open. Indeed, it was his turn to show surprise, and

"Yes," I answered, "I was quite keen on the idea, but I wasn't going to propose it."

Certainly I would, and I told him so without reserve; not brazenly, you understand; not even now with the

gusto of a man who savors such an adventure for its own sake, but doggedly, defiantly, through my teeth, as

one who had tried to live honestly and failed. And, while I was about it, I told him much more. Eloquently

enough, I daresay, I gave him chapter and verse of my hopeless struggle, my inevitable defeat; for hopeless

and inevitable they were to a man with my record, even though that record was written only in one's own

soul. It was the old story of the thief trying to turn honest man; the thing was against nature, and there was an

Raffles entirely disagreed with me. He shook his head over my conventional view. Human nature was a board

of checkers; why not reconcile one's self to alternate black and white? Why desire to be all one thing or all

the other, like our forefathers on the stage or in the oldfashioned fiction? For his part, he enjoyed himself on

all squares of the board, and liked the light the better for the shade. My conclusion he considered absurd.

"But you err in good company, Bunny, for all the cheap moralists who preach the same twaddle: old Virgil

was the first and worst offender of you all. I back myself to climb out of Avernus any day I like, and sooner

or later I shall climb out for good. I suppose I can't very well turn myself into a Limited Liability Company.

But I could retire and settle down and live blamelessly ever after. I'm not sure that it couldn't be done on this

"We might take a fishery and haul it up with smaller fry. It would come after months of ill luck, just as we

As he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the open stateroom door, and I caught a glimpse of an upturned

"But is he the chap we have to deal with? Won't the pearl be in the purser's keeping?"

Raffles stood at the door, frowning out upon the Solent, but for an instant he turned to me with a sniff.

"My good fellow, do you suppose the whole ship's company knows there's a gem like that aboard? You said

that it was worth a hundred thousand pounds; in Berlin they say it's priceless. I doubt if the skipper himself

He answered me without a word. Something white was fluttering past once more, and Raffles, stepping forth,

I do not ask to set foot aboard a finer steamship than the Uhlan of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, to meet a kindlier

gentleman than her commander, or better fellows than his officers. This much at least let me have the grace to

admit. I hated the voyage. It was no fault of anybody connected with the ship; it was no fault of the weather,

which was monotonously ideal. Not even in my own heart did the reason reside; conscience and I were

divorced at last, and the decree made absolute. With my scruples had fled all fear, and I was ready to revel

between bright skies and sparkling sea with the lighthearted detachment of Raffles himself. It was Raffles

himself who prevented me, but not Raffles alone. It was Raffles and that Colonial minx on her way home

What he could see in herbut that begs the question. Of course he saw no more than I did, but to annoy me,

or perhaps to punish me for my long defection, he must turn his back on me and devote himself to this chit

from Southampton to the Mediterranean. They were always together. It was too absurd. After breakfast they

would begin, and go on until eleven or twelve at night; there was no intervening hour at which you might not

hear her nasal laugh, or his quiet voice talking soft nonsense into her ear. Of course it was nonsense! Is it

conceivable that a man like Raffles, with his knowledge of the world, and his experience of women (a side of

his character upon which I have purposely never touched, for it deserves another volume); is it credible, I ask,

that such a man could find anything but nonsense to talk by the day together to a giddy young schoolgirl? I

I think I have admitted that the young person had points. Her eyes, I suppose, were really fine, and certainly

the shape of the little brown face was charming, so far as mere contour can charm.

I admit also more audacity than I cared about, with enviable health, mettle, and vitality. I may not have

occasion to report any of this young lady's speeches (they would scarcely bear it), and am therefore the more

anxious to describe her without injustice. I confess to some little prejudice against her. I resented her success

with Raffles, of whom, in consequence, I saw less and less each day. It is a mean thing to have to confess, but

Jealousy there was in another quartercrude, rampant, undignified jealousy. Captain von Heumann would

twirl his mustaches into twin spires, shoot his white cuffs over his rings, and stare at me insolently through

his rimless eyeglasses; we ought to have consoled each other, but we never exchanged a syllable. The captain

had a murderous scar across one of his cheeks, a present from Heidelberg, and I used to think how he must

long to have Raffles there to serve the same. It was not as though von Heumann never had his innings.

Raffles let him go in several times a day, for the malicious pleasure of bowling him out as he was "getting

set"; those were his words when I taxed him disingenuously with obnoxious conduct towards a German on a

"The wisest thing I ever did. To have chummed up with him would have been fatalthe common dodge."

I was consoled, encouraged, almost content. I had feared Raffles was neglecting things, and I told him so in a

burst. Here we were near Gibraltar, and not a word since the Solent. He shook his head with a smile.

"Plenty of time, Bunny, plenty of time. We can do nothing before we get to Genoa, and that won't be till

Sunday night. The voyage is still young, and so are we; let's make the most of things while we can."

It was after dinner on the promenade deck, and as Raffles spoke he glanced sharply fore and aft, leaving me

next moment with a step full of purpose. I retired to the smokingroom, to smoke and read in a corner, and to

Few travellers tempt the Red Sea at midsummer; the Uhlan was very empty indeed. She had, however, but a

limited supply of cabins on the promenade deck, and there was just that excuse for my sharing Raffles's

room. I could have had one to myself downstairs, but I must be up above. Raffles had insisted that I should

insist on the point. So we were together, I think, without suspicion, though also without any object that I

On the Sunday afternoon I was asleep in my berth, the lower one, when the curtains were shaken by Raffles,

"What else is there to do?" I asked him as I stretched and yawned. I noted, however, the goodhumor of his

"You misunderstand me. The whippersnapper's making his century this afternoon. I've had other fish to fry."

I swung my legs over the side of my berth and sat forward, as he was sitting, all attention. The inner door, a

"We shall be at Genoa before sunset," continued Raffles. "It's the place where the deed's got to be done."

"Advisedly so, my dear Bunny; why spoil a pleasure trip by talking unnecessary shop? But now the time has

"No, on board, tomorrow night. Tonight would do, but tomorrow is better, in case of mishap. If we were

forced to use violence we could get away by the earliest train, and nothing be known till the ship was sailing

"Of course not," assented Raffles, "or there would be no need for us to bolt; but if we should have to bolt,

Tuesday morning is our time, when this ship has got to sail, whatever happens. But I don't anticipate any

violence. Violence is a confession of terrible incompetence. In all these years how many blows have you

known me to strike? Not one, I believe; but I have been quite ready to kill my man every time, if the worst

I asked him how he proposed to enter von Heumann's stateroom unobserved, and even through the curtained

I did so, but could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and tapped the ventilator, a sort of trapdoor in the

wall above his bed, some eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened outwards into the ventilating

"That," said he, "is our door to fortune. Open it if you like; you won't see much, because it doesn't open far;

but loosening a couple of screws will set that all right. The shaft, as you may see, is more or less bottomless;

you pass under it whenever you go to your bath, and the top is a skylight on the bridge. That's why this thing

has to be done while we're at Genoa, because they keep no watch on the bridge in port. The ventilator

opposite ours is von Heumann's. It again will only mean a couple of screws, and there's a beam to stand on

"It's extremely unlikely that anybody will be astir below, so unlikely that we can afford to chance it. No, I

can't have you there to make sure. The great point is that neither of us should be seen from the time we turn

in. A couple of ship's boys do sentrygo on these decks, and they shall be our witnesses; by Jove, it'll be the

"Resist! He won't get the chance. He drinks too much beer to sleep light, and nothing is so easy as to

chloroform a heavy sleeper; you've even done it yourself on an occasion of which it's perhaps unfair to

remind you. Von Heumann will be past sensation almost as soon as I get my hand through his ventilator. I

"You will hand me what I want and hold the fort in case of accidents, and generally lend me the moral

support you've made me require. It's a luxury, Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult to do without it after

He said that Von Heumann was certain to sleep with a bolted door, which he, of course, would leave

unbolted, and spoke of other ways of laying a false scent while rifling the cabin. Not that Raffles anticipated a

tiresome search. The pearl would be about von Heumann's person; in fact, Raffles knew exactly where and in

what he kept it. Naturally I asked how he could have come by such knowledge, and his answer led up to a

"It's a very old story, Bunny. I really forget in what Book it comes; I'm only sure of the Testament. But

And he looked so knowing that I could not be in a moment's doubt as to his meaning.

"Yes, I've forced him to score all the points he could, and that was his great stroke, as I hoped it would be. He

"Nothing of the kind. What makes you think so? I had the greatest trouble in getting it out of her."

His tone should have been a sufficient warning to me. I had not the tact to take it as such. At last I knew the

meaning of his furious flirtation, and stood wagging my head and shaking my finger, blinded to his frowns by

"No; now I understand what has beaten me all the week. I simply couldn't fathom what you saw in that little

"It doesn't occur to you that I might like to draw stumps, start clean, and live happily ever afterin the

"God knows!" he answered. And with that he left me, to marvel at his look and tone, and, more than ever, at

Of all the mere feats of cracksmanship which I have seen Raffles perform, at once the most delicate and most

difficult was that which he accomplished between one and two o'clock on the Tuesday morning, aboard the

Not a hitch occurred. Everything had been foreseen; everything happened as I had been assured everything

must. Nobody was about below, only the ship's boys on deck, and nobody on the bridge. It was twentyfive

minutes past one when Raffles, without a stitch of clothing on his body, but with a glass phial, corked with

cottonwool, between his teeth, and a tiny screwdriver behind his ear, squirmed feet first through the

ventilator over his berth; and it was nineteen minutes to two when he returned, head first, with the phial still

between his teeth, and the cottonwool rammed home to still the rattling of that which lay like a great gray

bean within. He had taken screws out and put them in again; he had unfastened von Heumann's ventilator and

had left it fast as he had found itfast as he instantly proceeded to make his own. As for von Heumann, it

had been enough to place the drenched wad first on his mustache, and then to hold it between his gaping lips;

thereafter the intruder had climbed both ways across his shins without eliciting a groan.

And here was the prizethis pearl as large as a filbertwith a pale pink tinge like a lady's fingernailthis

spoil of a filibustering agethis gift from a European emperor to a South Sea chief. We gloated over it when

all was snug. We toasted it in whiskey and sodawater laid in overnight in view of the great moment. But the

moment was greater, more triumphant, than our most sanguine dreams. All we had now to do was to secrete

the gem (which Raffles had prised from its setting, replacing the latter), so that we could stand the strictest

search and yet take it ashore with us at Naples; and this Raffles was doing when I turned in. I myself would

have landed incontinently, that night, at Genoa and bolted with the spoil; he would not hear of it, for a dozen

On the whole I do not think that anything was discovered or suspected before we weighed anchor; but I

cannot be sure. It is difficult to believe that a man could be chloroformed in his sleep and feel no telltale

effects, sniff no suspicious odor, in the morning. Nevertheless, von Heumann reappeared as though nothing

had happened to him, his German cap over his eyes and his mustaches brushing the peak. And by ten o'clock

we were quit of Genoa; the last lean, bluechinned official had left our decks; the last fruitseller had been

beaten off with bucketsful of water and left cursing us from his boat; the last passenger had come aboard at

the last momenta fussy graybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatman over

half a lira. But at length we were off, the tug was shed, the lighthouse passed, and Raffles and I leaned

together over the rail, watching our shadows on the pale green, liquid, veined marble that again washed the

Von Heumann was having his innings once more; it was part of the design that he should remain in all day,

and so postpone the inevitable hour; and, though the lady looked bored, and was for ever glancing in our

direction, he seemed only too willing to avail himself of his opportunities. But Raffles was moody and

illatease. He had not the air of a successful man. I could but opine that the impending parting at Naples sat

"Nothing; only I shall swim for it if the worst comes to the worst. I suppose you can't swim under water at

I did not answer his question. I scarcely heard it: cold beads were bursting through my skin.

"Why should the worst come to the worst?" I whispered. "We aren't found out, are we?"

I took my handkerchief to my face; now that I thought of it, there had been something familiar in the old

man's gait, as well as something rather youthful for his apparent years; his very beard seemed unconvincing,

now that I recalled it in the light of this horrible revelation. I looked up and down the deck, but the old man

"That's the worst of it," said Raffles. "I saw him go into the captain's cabin twenty minutes ago."

"But what can have brought him?" I cried miserably. "Can it be a coincidenceis it somebody else he's

"What am I to do? I don't want to swim for it before I must. I begin to wish I'd taken your advice, Bunny, and

left the ship at Genoa. But I've not the smallest doubt that Mac was watching both ship and station till the last

"I still don't understand," said I. "Why should he be after you? He couldn't come all this way about a jewel

"Simply that he's been on my track for some time, probably ever since friend Crawshay slipped clean through

his fingers last November. There have been other indications. I am really not unprepared for this. But it can

only be pure suspicion. I'll defy him to bring anything home, and I'll defy him to find the pearl! Theory, my

dear Bunny? I know how he's got here as well as though I'd been inside that Scotchman's skin, and I know

what he'll do next. He found out I'd gone abroad, and looked for a motive; he found out about von Heumann

and his mission, and there was his motive cutanddried. Great chanceto nab me on a new job altogether.

But he won't do it, Bunny; mark my words, he'll search the ship and search us all, when the loss is known; but

he'll search in vain. And there's the skipper beckoning the whippersnapper to his cabin: the fat will be in the

Yet there was no conflagration, no fuss, no searching of the passengers, no whisper of what had happened in

the air; instead of a stir there was portentous peace; and it was clear to me that Raffles was not a little

disturbed at the falsification of all his predictions. There was something sinister in silence under such a loss,

and the silence was sustained for hours during which Mackenzie never reappeared. But he was abroad during

the luncheonhourhe was in our cabin! I had left my book in Raffles's berth, and in taking it after lunch I

touched the quilt. It was warm from the recent pressure of flesh and blood, and on an instinct I sprang to the

He turned on his heel, and at subsequent intervals I saw him making the most of his last afternoon with the

inevitable Miss Werner. I remember that she looked both cool and smart in quite a simple affair of brown

holland, which toned well with her complexion, and was cleverly relieved with touches of scarlet. I quite

admired her that afternoon, for her eyes were really very good, and so were her teeth, yet I had never admired

her more directly in my own despite. For I passed them again and again in order to get a word with Raffles, to

tell him I knew there was danger in the wind; but he would not so much as catch my eye. So at last I gave it

They had summoned him first; he had gone in smiling; and smiling I found him when they summoned me.

The stateroom was spacious, as befitted that of a commander. Mackenzie sat on the settee, his beard in front

of him on the polished table; but a revolver lay in front of the captain; and, when I had entered, the chief

officer, who had summoned me, shut the door and put his back to it. Von Heumann completed the party, his

"This is a great joke!" he cried. "You remember the pearl you were so keen about, Bunny, the emperor's

pearl, the pearl money wouldn't buy? It seems it was entrusted to our little friend here, to take out to

Canoodle Dum, and the poor little chap's gone and lost it; ergo, as we're Britishers, they think we've got it!"

"You will recognize that loyal and patriotic voice," said Raffles. "Mon, 'tis our auld acquaintance Mackenzie,

"Dat is enough," cried the captain. "Have you submid to be searge, or do I vorce you?"

"What you will," said Raffles, "but it will do you no harm to give us fair play first. You accuse us of breaking

into Captain von Heumann's stateroom during the small hours of this morning, and abstracting from it this

confounded pearl. Well, I can prove that I was in my own room all night long, and I have no doubt my friend

"Most certainly I can," said I indignantly. "The ship's boys can bear witness to that."

Mackenzie laughed, and shook his head at his reflection in the polished mahogany.

"That was ver clever," said he, "and like enough it would ha' served ye had I not stepped aboard. But I've just

had a look at they ventilators, and I think I know how ye worrked it. Anyway, captain, it makes no matter. I'll

"By what right?" roared Raffles, in a ringing voice, and I never saw his face in such a blaze. "Search us if you

like; search every scrap and stitch we possess; but you dare to lay a finger on us without a warrant!"

"I wouldna' dare," said Mackenzie, as he fumbled in his breast pocket, and Raffles dived his hand into his

own. "Haud his wrist!" shouted the Scotchman; and the huge Colt that had been with us many a night, but

had never been fired in my hearing, clattered on the table and was raked in by the captain.

"All right," said Raffles savagely to the mate. "You can let go now. I won't try it again. Now, Mackenzie, let's

"What good would that do me? Let me see it," said Raffles, peremptorily, and the detective obeyed. Raffles

raised his eyebrows as he perused the document; his mouth hardened, but suddenly relaxed; and it was with a

"It may. I congratulate you, Mackenzie; it's a strong hand, at any rate. Two burglaries and the Melrose

"An' all easy to prove," said the Scotchman, pocketing the warrant. "I've one o' these for you," he added,

"To think," said the captain reproachfully, "that my shib should be made a den of thiefs! It shall be a very

disagreeable madder, I have been obliged to pud you both in irons until we get to Nables."

"Surely not!" exclaimed Raffles. "Mackenzie, intercede with him; don't give your countrymen away before

all hands! Captain, we can't escape; surely you could hush it up for the night? Look here, here's everything I

have in my pockets; you empty yours, too, Bunny, and they shall strip us stark if they suspect we've weapons

up our sleeves. All I ask is that we are allowed to get out of this without gyves upon our wrists!"

"Webbons you may not have," said the captain; "but wad aboud der bearl dat you were sdealing?"

"You shall have it!" cried Raffles. "You shall have it this minute if you guarantee no public indignity on

"That I'll see to," said Mackenzie, "as long as you behave yourselves. There now, where is't?"

My eyes fell with the rest, but no pearl was there; only the contents of our pocketsour watches,

pocketbooks, pencils, penknives, cigarette caseslay on the shiny table along with the revolvers already

"I'm doing nothing of the sort," laughed Raffles. "I'm testing you. Where's the harm?"

Mackenzie opened the cigarette cases and shook each particular cigarette. Thereupon Raffles prayed to be

allowed to smoke one, and, when his prayer was heard, observed that the pearl had been on the table much

longer than the cigarettes. Mackenzie promptly caught up the Colt and opened the chamber in the butt.

"Not there, not there," said Raffles; "but you're getting hot. Try the cartridges."

Mackenzie emptied them into his palm, and shook each one at his ear without result.

And, in an instant, Raffles had found the right one, had bitten out the bullet, and placed the emperor's pearl

"After that you will perhaps show me such little consideration as is in your power. Captain, I have been a bit

of a villain, as you see, and as such I am ready and willing to lie in irons all night if you deem it requisite for

"Captain, I've done a worse thing aboard your ship than any of you know. I have become engaged to be

I suppose we were all equally amazed; but the only one to express his amazement was von Heumann, whose

deepchested German oath was almost his first contribution to the proceedings. He was not slow to follow it,

however, with a vigorous protest against the proposed farewell; but he was overruled, and the masterful

prisoner had his way. He was to have five minutes with the girl, while the captain and Mackenzie stood

within range (but not earshot), with their revolvers behind their backs. As we were moving from the cabin, in

"So I 've let you in at last, Bunnyat last and after all! If you knew how sorry I am. . . . But you won't get

muchI don't see why you should get anything at all. Can you forgive me? This may be for years, and it

may be for ever, you know! You were a good pal always when it came to the scratch; some day or other you

There was a meaning in his eye that I understood; and my teeth were set, and my nerve strung ready, as I

How that last scene stays with me, and will stay to my death! How I see every detail, every shadow on the

sunlit deck! We were among the islands that dot the course from Genoa to Naples; that was Elba falling back

on our starboard quarter, that purple patch with the hot sun setting over it. The captain's cabin opened to

starboard, and the starboard promenade deck, sheeted with sunshine and scored with shadow, was deserted,

but for the group of which I was one, and for the pale, slim, brown figure further aft with Raffles. Engaged? I

could not believe it, cannot to this day. Yet there they stood together, and we did not hear a word; there they

stood out against the sunset, and the long, dazzling highway of sunlit sea that sparkled from Elba to the

Suddenlyan instantand the thing was donea thing I have never known whether to admire or to detest.

He caught herhe kissed her before us allthen flung her from him so that she almost fell. It was that

action which foretold the next. The mate sprang after him, and I sprang after the mate.

And, as I obeyed that last behest with all my might, without a thought of what I was doing, save that he bade

me do it, I saw his hands shoot up and his head bob down, and his lithe, spare body cut the sunset as cleanly

Of what followed on deck I can tell you nothing, for I was not there. Nor can my final punishment, my long

imprisonment, my everlasting disgrace, concern or profit you, beyond the interest and advantage to be

gleaned from the knowledge that I at least had my deserts. But one thing I must set down, believe it who

It was into a secondclass cabin, on the starboard side, that I was promptly thrust in irons, and the door

locked upon me as though I were another Raffles. Meanwhile a boat was lowered, and the sea scoured to no

purpose, as is doubtless on record elsewhere. But either the setting sun, flashing over the waves, must have

For the boat was back, the screw throbbing, and the prisoner peering through his porthole across the sunlit

waters that he believed had closed for ever over his comrade's head. Suddenly the sun sank behind the Island

of Elba, the lane of dancing sunlight was instantaneously quenched and swallowed in the trackless waste, and

in the middle distance, already miles astern, either my sight deceived me or a black speck bobbed amid the

gray. The bugle had blown for dinner: it may well be that all save myself had ceased to strain an eye. And

now I lost what I had found, now it rose, now sank, and now I gave it up utterly. Yet anon it would rise again,

a mere mote dancing in the dim gray distance, drifting towards a purple island, beneath a fading western sky,

streaked with dead gold and cerise. And night fell before I knew whether it was a human head or not.