 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning To A. C. D. This form of flattery The Ides of March, Part 1 It was half past 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 Baccarat counters still screwed 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 though I had dragged him from his bed. Forgotten something, said he when he saw me on his mat. No, said I, pushing past him without ceremony, and I led the way into his rooms with an impudence amazing to myself. Not come back for your revenge, have you, because I'm afraid I can't give it to you single-handed. I was sorry myself that the others—we were face to face by his fireside and I cut him short. 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 me. Of course, that's no excuse, but will you listen to me for two minutes? 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 mistaken in its expression. Certainly, my dear man, said he, as many minutes as you like, have a Sullivan and sit down, and he handed me his silver cigarette case. 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, nor will you ask me to do either when you've heard what I have to say. 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'll be justified in doing it, but it's no use beating about the bush. You know I dropped over two hundred just now. He nodded. I hadn't the money in my pocket. I remember. But I had my checkbook, and I wrote each of you a check at that desk. Well? Not one of them was worth the paper it was written on, Raffles. I'm overdrawn already at my bank. Surely only for the moment. No, I have spent everything. But somebody told me you were so well off. I heard you had come in for money. So I did three years ago. It has been my curse. Now it's all gone, every 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 was walking up and down with a very long face instead. Couldn't your people do anything? He asked at length. Thank God! I cried. I have no people. I was an only child. I came in for everything there was. My one comfort is that they're gone and will never know. 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 make a living at it. I shook my head. Any fool couldn't write off my debts, said I. Then you have a flat somewhere. He went on. Yes, in Mount Street. Well, what about the furniture? I laughed aloud in my misery. There has 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 death warrant and with every breath I cursed my folly and my cowardness 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 is 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 would have gone without a word but Raffles stood between me and the door. Where are you going? said he. That's my business, I replied. I won't trouble you any more. Then how am I to help you? I didn't ask your help. Then why come to me? Why indeed, I echoed. Will you let me pass? Not until you tell me where you are going and what you mean to do. 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 to the boil. You shall see, said I, as I stepped back and whipped the pistol from my overcoat pocket. Now, will you let me pass or shall I do it here? 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 pleased expectancy has caused me, after all, to pocket my revolver with an oath. You devil, I said, I believe you wanted me to do it. Not quite, was the reply made with a little start and a change of colour 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 will let you go now, and you'd better not try that game again, for you won't catch me standing look on a second time. We must think of some way out of the mass. I had no idea you were a chap of that sort. There, let me have the gun. 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. 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. AJ 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 fervour 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. Still, for the old school's sake, the sake of old times, I thought you might give me another chance. If you wouldn't, I meant to blow out my brains and will still if you change your mind. In truth, I feared that it was changing with his expression even as I spoke and in spite of his kindly tone and kindlier use of my old school nickname, his next words showed me my mistake. 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 Bakkerat. 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 at this moment as you are yourself. It was my turn to stare at raffles. You? I've ossiferated. You? Hard up? How am I to sit here and believe that? 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 on. Absolutely 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, clean-shaven 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 brain, sifting the very secrets of my heart. 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 a rather good turn, I recollect. Remember it, Bunny? Well, wait a bit, and perhaps I'll be able to do you a better one. Give me time to think. 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 chimney-piece struck one, and one again for the half-hour, without a word between us. Yet I not only kept my chair with patience, but I acquired an incongruous equanimity in that half-hour. 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 good-sized square one with the folding doors, the marble mantelpiece, and the gloomy old-fashioned 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 war-worn 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 sides and 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 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 I had 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. Consumant daring, an 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 and 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 over my chair once more. I've been thinking of that night we had the narrow squeak. He began. Why do you start? I was thinking of it too. He smiled as though he had read my thoughts. Well, you were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny. You didn't talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no questions and you told no tales. I wonder if you're like that now. 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. I will say that. Otherwise, perhaps, I mightn't be in such a whole tonight. Exactly, said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though an ascent 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 up it hand over hand. You would stick at nothing for a pal, what? At nothing in this world, I was pleased to cry. Not even at a crime, said Raffles, smiling. I stopped to think, for his tone had changed. And I felt sure he was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever. And for my part I was in no mood for reservations. No, not even at that, I declared. Name your crime and I'm your man. He looked at me one moment in wonder and another moment in doubt, then turned the matter off with a shake of his head and the little cynical laugh that was all his own. You're a nice chap, Bunny. A real desperate character, what? 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 law-abiding citizen with a reputation to lose. Nonetheless, we must have that money tonight by hook or crook. Tonight, Raffles? 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 raised. At two o'clock in the morning? Yes. But how, but where at such an hour? From a friend of mine here in Bond Street. He must be a very intimate friend. Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and the latch key all to myself. And you would knock him up at this hour of the night? If he's in bed. And it's essential that I should go in with you? Absolutely. Then I must. But I'm bound to say I don't like the idea, Raffles. 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 start, just one. There's the whiskey, here's a siphon. I'll be putting on an overcoat while you help yourself. Well, I dare say 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 curly head he shook with a smile as I passed him the decanter. When we come back, said he, work first, play afterward. Do you see what day it is? He added tearing a leaflet from a Shakespearean calendar as I drained my glass. March 15th. The Ides of March, the Ides of March, remember. Hey, Bunny, my boy, you won't forget them, will you? And with a laugh, he threw some coals on the fire before turning down the gas like a careful householder. So we went out together as the clock on the chimney piece was striking two. Part two. Piccadilly was a trench of raw white fog, rimmed with blurred street lamps, and lined with a thin coating of adhesive mud. We met no other wayfarers on the deserted flagstones and were ourselves favoured with a very hard stare from the constable of the beat, who, however, touched his helmet on recognising 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, though I'm hanged if the beggar isn't in bed in the sleep after all. 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 throw them out. They were over a jeweler'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 street door next to the shop, was black and blank as the sky itself. 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 latch key, 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 near, my companion's fingers tightened on my arm. It may be the chap himself, he whispered. He's the devil of a night-bird. Not a sound, Bunny, will startle the life out of him. Ah! The measured step had passed without a pause. Raffles drew a deep breath, and his singular grip of me slowly relaxed. But still, not a sound. He continued in the same whisper. We'll take a rise out of him wherever he is. Slip off your shoes and follow me. Well, you may wonder at my doing so, but you can never have met AJ 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 stare at his heels before I realized what an extraordinary way this was 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 other. We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I had time to make more than one note before we reached the top. The stare 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 cell? We came to a landing. The banister 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 rooms. Where have you brought me? I cried. The house is unoccupied. 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 do so he had turned and flashed a tiny lantern in my face. What's this? I gasped. What rotten trick are you going to play? It's played. He answered with his quiet laugh. On me? I'm afraid so, Bunny. Is there no one in the house, then? No one but ourselves. So it was mere chaff about your friend in Bond Street who could let us have that money? Not altogether. It's quite true that Danby is a friend of mine. Danby? The jeweler underneath. What do you mean? I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his meaning dawned upon me. Are we to get money from the jeweler? Well, not exactly. What, then? The equivalent, from his shop. 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, with his dark lantern laughing at me. A burglar? I gasped, You? You? I told you I lived by my wits. Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie? I demanded peak to the quick for all my horror. 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 out 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, whatever else you do. 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 master's touch. 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 chucking it, for as a matter of fact it's not a one-man job. That settles it. I'm your man. You mean it? Yes, for tonight. 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 fellow cracksmen 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 I rather fancy the basement myself. If you wait a minute I'll tell you. He set his lantern on the floor, crept to a back window, and opened it with scarcely a sound, only to return shaking his head after shutting the window with the same care. 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. There, there, listen to that. It was the measured tread that we had heard before on the flagstone outside. Raffles darkened his lantern, and again we stood motionless till it had passed. Either a policeman, he muttered, or a watchman that all of these jewelers run between them. The watchman's the man for us to watch. He's simply paid to spot this kind of thing. 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 led us out into the bottom of a deep square well of fog. A similar door faced it across this area, and Raffles had lantern close against it and was hiding the light with his body, and the short and sudden crash made my heart stand still. Next moment I saw the door wide open and Raffles standing within beckoning me with a jimmy. Door number one, he whispered. Deuce knows how many more there'll be, but I know of two at least. We won't have to make much noise over them either. Down here there's less risk. We were now at the bottom of the exact fellow to the narrow stone stair on 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. Can't you pick it? 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 forty-seven 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 small bottle of rock oil in the other. Raffles had produced a pretty embroidered case, intended obviously for his razors, but filled instead with the tools of his secret trade, including the rock oil. 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 covert coat and his blazer, spread them neatly on the top step, knelt on them, turned up his shirt cuffs and went to work with brace and bit 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 thirty-two separate borings to cut around that lock. I noticed that through the first circular orifice Raffles thrust a forefinger. Then, as the circle became an ever-lengthening oval, he got his hand through up to the thumb and I heard him swear softly to himself. I was afraid so. What is it? An iron gate on the other side. How on earth are we to get through that? I asked in dismay. Pick the lock, but there may be two. In that case there'll be top and bottom and we shall have two fresh holes to make, as the door opens inwards. It won't open two inches as it is. I confess I did not feel sanguine about the lock-picking, 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 undertakings with an involuntary zeal of which I was myself quite unconscious at the time. The romance and 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 file with a keener interest than I had ever brought to any honest evocation. And there knelt AJ Raffles with his black hair tumbled and the same watchful, quiet, determined half-smile with which I have seen him send down over after over in a county match. 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 and we're through at last. He withdrew his arm, a skeleton key was selected from a 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 in a non the tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key. Then, at last, there 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 there from by an iron curtain the very side 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 the other side which may give us trouble. Another door? I groaned. And how do you mean to tackle this thing? Prize 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 is 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 conscience and of safety which were already as dead nerves in my breast. 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 lathes 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 wrap from my toe and a policeman passed quite half a dozen times beneath my eyes and the man whom I took to be the jeweler'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 whistle. I waited for the gallows or the jail but my signal had been studiously obeyed and the man passed on in undisturbed serenity. 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 peneth. 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 wash and brush up before we go for I'm as black as your boot. 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 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 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 carcass 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 cigar box with which liberties had been taken a rather black towel in the lavatory a burnt match here and there and our finger marks on the dusty banisters not a trace of our visit did we leave. 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 I'm as cold as Keats's owl 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 my heart but I longed and I waited in vain I saw that he was emptying his pockets the tables sparkled with their horde rings by the dozen, diamonds by the score bracelets, pendants, egrets, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires and diamonds always diamonds in everything flashing bayonets of light dazzling me, blinding me making 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 something my hand flew out I can see Raffles now once 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, cynical smile before he would give me my pistol back again you may not 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 sensations and I don't suppose I ever shall but this much you have done before said I hoarsely before my dear Bunny, you offend me did it look like a first attempt? of course I have done it before often? well no 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 Thimbley Diamonds? well that was the last time and a poor lot of paste they were then there was little business of the Dormahouse boat at Henley last year that was mine also, such as it was I 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 incredulity was at an end how came you to begin? I asked as curiosity overcame mere wonder and a fascination for his career gradually wove itself into my fascination for the man 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 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 the confusion 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 much as I do like it! I cried out not I, it's no life for me once is enough you wouldn't give me a hand another time don't ask me Raffles ask me for God's sake 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 the very man just think how we got through tonight not a scratch, not a hitch there's nothing very terrible in it you see there never would be while we work 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 chimney piece and my burning head between my hands next instant a still hardier hand fell on my back 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 scrape especially after the way you've stood by me tonight I was round again with my blood on fire I'll do it again I said through my teeth he shook his head not you he said smiling quite good-humoredly 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 matters another wrap when you want me I'm your man and that is how Raffles and I are the loneliest forces on the Ides of March end of the Ides of March this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning a costume piece London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name and nothing more Reuben Rosenthal 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 Heypenny Evening Papers which reveled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and present prodigality varied with interesting particulars of the extraordinary establishment which the millionaires set up in St. John's Wood here he kept a retinue of kafirs 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 prize fighter of heinous repute who was not however by any means the worst element in the Rosenthal 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 new of Reuben Rosenthal 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 and told me all about it that very night the most extraordinary show I ever went to in my life said he as for the man himself well, 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 hook nose and the reddest hair and whiskers you ever saw drank like a fire engine that 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 Rosenthal'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 knowledge of A.J. Raffles what did he say I inquired mechanically divining some subtler explanation of this visit and wondering what on earth it could be say cried Raffles what did he not say he boasted of his rise he bragged of his riches and he blaggered society for taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer peak in 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 show Pache the old Bohemians to prove it he pointed to a great diamond in the middle of his shirt front 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 Rosenthal swore he wouldn't take fifty thousand pounds for the two and wanted to know where the other man was who went about with twenty five thousand in his shirt front and another twenty five on his little finger he didn't exist if he did he wouldn't have the pluck to wear them but he had he'd tell us why and before you could say Jack Robinson he had whipped out a whacking great revolver not at the table 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 perverse the prize fighter 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 table and the waiters bolted to a man what a grotesque scene 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 as knives to see and raffles leaned towards me with a sly slow smile that made the hidden meaning of his visit only two plain to me at last so you think of having a try for his diamonds yourself he shrugged his shoulders it's horribly obvious I admit but yes I have my heart set 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 prize fighter 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 that 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 and say so then and there 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 half-hearted 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 them after tonight I shall never be able to hold up my head again his eye twinkled but it glittered too we shall have our work cut out was all I said and 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 shop walker 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 Ruben Rosenthal 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 bunny what of that a man's reach must extend his grasp dear boy or what the Dickens is a heaven for I would rather we didn't exceed ours just yet I answered laughing for his spirit was irresistible and the plan was growing upon me despite my qualms 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 house together 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 yourself if 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 myself the sheer, gratuitous, unnecessary folly of it and the paradoxes in which Raffles reveled and the frivolous cashewistry 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 from 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 toward 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 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 Rosenthal dinner when I met Raffles at the club he would tell me nothing when I went to his rooms he was out or pretended to be 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 in 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 account and that very evening found my way to the millionaire's front gates 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 I doubt if many quieter spots exist within the four-mile radius quiet also was the great square house in its garden of grass plots 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 five-barred grained and varnished gates one at either end of the little semi-circular 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 dilapidated tramp you fool said he you utter idiot raffles that's it he whispered savagely tell all the neighborhood give 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 the gate of a man 80 years of age presently he waited for me midway between two lamp posts as I came up he was lighting ranked tobacco in a cutie pipe with an evil smelling match and the flame showed me the suspicion of a smile you must forgive my heat bunny but it really was very foolish of you here I am trying every dodge begging at the door one night hiding in the shrubs the next doing 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 he looked hard at me from under the broken brim of a battered billy cock 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 there give me a start and he was off again a decrepit vagabond with his hands in his pockets his elbows squared and frayed coattails swinging raggedly from side to side I followed him to the Finchley Road 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 character sketch to such a pitch he 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 he 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 Sloan Street I sitting behind him as before at Sloan Street we changed again and were presently in the long lean artery of the King's Road I was now all agogged 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 coat tails 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 latch key and it was darker yet within instinctively I drew back and heard him chuckle we could no longer see each other all right Bunny, there's no hanky-panky this time these are studios my friend and I'm one of the lawful tenants indeed, in another minute we were in a lofty room with skylight, easels dressing cupboard, platform and every other adjunct save the signs of actual labour the first thing I saw as Raffles lit the gas was its reflection in his silk hat on the pegs beside the rest of his normal garments 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 a stove lit on principle twice a week and I look in and leave a newspaper and a smell of solovans how good they are after shag meanwhile I pay my rent and I'm a good tenant in every way and it's a very useful little pied-a-taire there's no saying how useful it might be at a pinch as it is the billy cock 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 and hands 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 king's road so you will see that one might bolt further and fair worse meanwhile you use the place as a dressing-room 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 sure-ditch if I didn't there'd be the very devil to pay in blackmail now this cupboard's full of all sorts of Targary I tell the woman who cleansed the room that it's for my models when I find them by the way I only hope I've got something that'll fit you for you'll want a rig for tomorrow night tomorrow night? I exclaimed why what do you mean to do? 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 apple-cart 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 there's no comparison between the two cases I thought you would find it so 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 cafes I don't believe they ever get to bed at all poor devils no I mean Rosenthal himself and that pasty-faced 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 Rosenthal shoot crooked at a critical moment you know what an IDB is illicit diamond buyer exactly well it seems that Rosenthal 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 Cape Town 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 Rosenthal's revolver we don't want him to sign his name on us with all those cafes 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 the deuce there are ladies with an eye the very voices for raising Cain I fear the clamour it would be fatal to us oh Contraire if we can manage to stow ourselves away unbeknownst half the battle will be won if Rosenthal 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 guards and so we left it when we shook hands in Piccadilly not 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 and other games his final word to me was framed on the same principle mind only one drink tonight Bunny two at the outside as you value your life and mine I remember my abject obedience and the endless sleepless night it gave me of the house's opposite standing out at last against the blue-gray 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 willful account it was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening when we took up our position in the garden adjoining that of Ruben Rosenthal the house itself was shut up thanks to the outrageous Libertine next door who, by driving away the neighbours 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 bow windows 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 dinner party raffles differed in the end he proved right wheels graded in the drive a carriage and pair stood at the steps there was a stampede from the dining room and the loud voices died away to burst forth presently from the porch let me make our position perfectly clear we were over the wall at the side of the house but a few feet from the dining room 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 Rosenthal come out saw the glimmer of his diamonds before anything then came the pugilist then a lady with a head of hair like a bath sponge and another and the party was complete raffles ducked and pulled me down in great excitement the ladies are going with them he whispered this is great that's better still the gardenia the millionaire had bawled and that's the best of all said raffles standing upright as hooves and wheels crunched through the gates and rattled off at a fine speed now what I whisper trembling with excitement they'll be clearing away yes here comes their shadows the drawing room windows open on the lawn bunny it's the psychological moment where's that mask 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 mask for me and then his own by joe volt boy he whispered cheerily look about the greatest ruffian I ever saw these masks alone will down a nigger if we meet one but I'm glad I remember 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 ready quite got your gag yes, shooter yes, then follow me 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 windows opening upon a shallow veranda he pushed, they yielded luck again he whispered nothing but luck now for a light and the light came 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 Ruben Rosenthal shook with a wheezy laughter from head to foot good evening boys he hiccupped glad to see it last shift foot a 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 waiting for you I've been watching you all this week lucky smart you thought yourself, didn't ya one day begging next time shaman tight and next one of them old pals from Kimberley that never come when I'm in but you left the same tracks every day you buggins and the same tracks every night all around the blessed premises all right governor, drawled raffles, don't excite it's a fair cop we don't sweat to know how you brung it off only don't you go for a shoot cause we ain't armed so help me guard ah, you're a no in one said Rosenthal fingering his triggers but you've struck a no in her oh yes, we know all about that set a thief to catch a thief, oh yes my eyes had torn themselves from the brown black muzzles from the accursed diamonds that had been our snare the pasty pig face of the overfed pugilist and the flaming cheeks and hook nose of Rosenthal 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 retained its color what do you mean? he whispered with a horse oath headed out or by Christmas I'll drill ya what price that breakwater drawled Raffles coolly eh? Rosenthal's revolvers were describing widening orbits what price that breakwater, old IDB where in hell did you get hold of that? asked Rosenthal with a rattle in his thick neck meant for mirth you may well arsed, says Raffles it's all over the place where I come from who can have spread such rot? I don't know, says Raffles arse the gentleman on your left perhaps he knows 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 currents in the suit of his face the next he had pocketed his pistols on a professional instinct and was upon us with his fists out of the light, out of the light yelled Rosenthal in a frenzy he was too late no sooner had the burly pugilist obstructed his fire than Raffles was through the window at a bound while I, first 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 to-do in the garden but I had the drawing room to myself I sat up Rosenthal and Purvis were rushing about outside cursing the Kaphirs and nagging at each other over that wall I tell you I tell you it was this one can't you whistle for the police police be damned I've had enough of the blessed police then we better get back and make sure of the other rotter oh make sure of your skin that's what you'd better do Jalla you black hog if I catch you Skulkin I never heard the threat I was creeping from the drawing room on my hands and knees my own revolver swinging by its steel ring from my teeth for an instant I thought that the hall was also deserted I was wrong and I crept upon a kaphir 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 I went upstairs in that decisive fashion as though it were my only course I cannot explain but garden and ground floor seemed alive with men and I might have done worse I turned into the first room I came to it was a bedroom empty 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 pier glass masked armed and ragged I was indeed fit carrying 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 all raffles first and last for I dare say half an hour then the wardrobe door was flung suddenly open they had stolen into the room without a sound and I was hauled downstairs an ignominious captive 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 Rosenthal answered their shrieks with a roar for silence the woman with the bath sponge hair swore at him shrilly in return the place became a babble 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 Rosenthal 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 with an inch of my ear you drunken fool it'll be murder shouted Purvis getting in the way a second time what do I care he's armed isn't he I shot him in self-defense it'll be a warning to others will you stand aside or do you want it yourself 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 going to do what you'll be sorry for then I won't shoot him at all I'll only shoot round and round the beggar you're quite right old feller wouldn't hurt him great mistake round and round there like that his freckled paw shot up over Purvis' 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 prize fighter 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 drawing room window he was an officer of few words and credible pompitude 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 it was all 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 he said contemptuously and he refused the sovereign Purvis offered you will be seeing me again sir at Marleybone shall I come now as you please sir I rather think the other gentleman requires you more and I don't fancy this man means to give much trouble oh I'm coming quietly I said and I went in silence we traversed perhaps a hundred yards it must have been midnight we did not meet a soul at last I whispered how on earth did you manage it purely by luck said raffles I had the luck to get clear away through knowing every brick of those back garden 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 ball ostensibly and thereby hangs a yarn I always thought they might come in useful a second time my chief crux tonight was getting rid of the handsome that brought me back I sent him off to Scotland Yard with ten barb and a special message to good old Mackenzie the whole detective department will be at Brosenthal's in about half an hour of course I speculated on our gentlemen's hatred of the police another 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 would jolly lucky to have come out of it at all end of a costume piece this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning gentlemen and players old raffles may or may not have been an exceptional criminal but as a cricketer I dareswear 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 lords without his cricket bag or showed the slightest interest in the results 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 very lowest motives 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've bought 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 spots just the kind of mental exercise one wants perhaps there's some affinity between the two 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 wise my dear Bunny that's exactly where you make a mistake to follow crime with reasonable impunity you simply must have a parallel ostensible career the 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 it's my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was really an eminent public man whose speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities fill the bill in with 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 firewood 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 Nats before the first match of the season with his pockets full of sovereigns which he put on the stumps instead of bales it was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash and whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead while one man took three pounds with a ball that spread eagle the wicket Raffles practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns but he had absolutely first class bowling all the time and he made 57 runs next day 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 gentleman'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 crossed 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 with 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 same 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 lads part which combined to puzzle me mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father was anxious to meet him and he instantly consented to gratify that whim he's in the ladies enclosure will you come round now with pleasure says Raffles keep a place for me bunny and they were gone young Crowley said some voice further back last year's hero eleven I remember him worst man in the team Keen Cricketer however stopped till he was twenty to get his colours Governor made him Keenbreed oh pretty sir very pretty the game was boring me I only came to see old Raffles perform soon I was looking wistfully for his return and at length I saw him beckoning me from the palings to the right want to introduce you to old Amhersteth 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 both I echoed but I'm no cricketer shut up says Raffles leave that to me I'm lying for all I'm worth he added sepulchrely as we reached the bottom of the steps I trust you not to give the show away 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 Amhersteth was a fine looking 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 Amhersteth 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 Amhersteth succeeded in remembering my name 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 Amhersteth bowed and shrugged you're very good I'm sure said he but I understand you're a cricketer yourself he was one at school said Raffles with infamous readiness not a real cricketer I was stammering meanwhile in the eleven said Lord Amhersteth I'm afraid not said I but only just out of it declared Raffles to my horror well well we can't all play for the gentlemen said Lord Amhersteth 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'll come down and help us too you shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner if you like I should be very proud I was beginning as the mere prelude to resolute excuses but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me and I hesitated weekly to be duly lost then that settled said Lord Amhersteth with the slightest suspicion of grimness it's to be a little weak you know when my son comes of age we play the free foresters the dorsetured 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 with a little nod Lord Amhersteth rose and sidled to the gangway Raffles rose also but I caught the sleeve of his blazer what are you thinking of I whispered savagely I was nowhere near the eleven I'm no sort of cricketer I shall have to get out of this not you he whispered back you needn't play but come you must if you wait for me after half past six I'll tell you why 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 cricket field 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 self-consciousness on my part but I could have sworn that the trouble was their inability to secure the great Raffles without his insignificant friend 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 AJ 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 leg stump his dropping head ball in 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 head work and handiwork which made every over an artistic whole it was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew I felt like bowling this afternoon he told me later in the handsome with a pitch to help me I'd have done something big as it is three for forty one out of the four that fell isn't so bad for a slow bowler on a plum wicket against those fellows but I felt venomous nothing riles me more than being asked about for my cricket as though I were a pro myself then why on earth go to punish them and because we shall be jolly hard up bunny before the season's over ah said I I thought it was that of course it was it seems they're going to have the very devil of a week of it balls dinner parties swagger house party general junketings and obviously a house full 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 will take our toll let's have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it over it seems a rather vulgar sort of theft I could not help saying and to this my single protest raffles instantly assented it is a vulgar sort said he but I can't help that we're getting vulgarly hard up and there's an end on it 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 knows in any case there's weeks of thinking in it for you and me 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 in 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 judgment of the man it was on Monday the 10th of August that we were due at Milchester Abbey Dorset and the beginning of the month found us cruising about that very county with fly rods 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 cricket ball 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 week than ever before or since 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 downcast eyes and knitted brow Milchester Abbey is a gray quadrangle pile deep set in rich woody country and twinkling with triple rows of quaint windows every one of which seemed a light 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 passed the tents and flagpoles of a juicy looking cricket field on which raffles undertook to bowl up to his reputation but the chief signs of festival were within where we found an enormous house party 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 announced I little knew what an ordeal it was to prove 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 Malouche 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 Malouche suddenly asked me in a sensational whisper whether I could keep a secret I said I thought I might where upon another question followed in still lower and more thrilling accents are you afraid of burglars? burglars I was roused at last the word stabbed me I repeated it in horrified query so I found something to interest you at last said Miss Malouche in naive triumph yes burglars but don't speak so loud it's supposed to be kept a great secret I really oughtn't to tell you at all but what is there to tell? I whispered with satisfactory impatience you promised not to speak of it of course well then there are burglars in the neighbourhood have they committed any robberies? not yet then how do you know? they've been seen in the district two well-known London thieves 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 self-possession 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 dare devil face I caught up my champagne and emptied the glass who has seen them? I then asked calmly a detective they were traced down from town a few days ago they are believed to have designs on the abbey but why aren't they run in? exactly what I asked Papa on the way here this evening he says there is no warrant out against the men at present and all that can be done is to watch their movements oh so they are being watched yes by a detective who is down here on purpose and I heard Lord Amistath tell Papa that they have been seen this afternoon at Warbeck Junction 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 have to tell me and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile this is really quite exciting Miss Malouche said I may I ask how you come to know so much about it it's Papa was the confidential reply Lord Amistath 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 you may trust me Miss Malouche but aren't you frightened Miss Malouche giggled not a bit they won't come to the rectory there's nothing for them there but look round the table look at the diamonds look at old lady Melrose's necklace alone 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 Amistath's right flourishing her ear trumpet 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 diamonds and sapphires that Rosen fell about her ample neck 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 to your Mr. Raffles you know and the old deer 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 Malouche 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 a vanity though in reality the very springs of conversation reside in that same human universal itch to thrill the auditor the peculiarity of Miss Malouche was that she must be thrilling at all costs and thrilling she had surely been 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 dining room he and Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match and had their heads together all the time in the drawing room I had the mortification of hearing him talk nonsense into the ear trumpet of Lady Melrose whom he knew in town lastly in the billiard room they had a very 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 Amhersteth 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 said good night and I followed Raffles to his room it's all up I gasped as he turned up the gas and I shut the door I watched we've been followed down from town there's a detective here on the spot how do you know? asked Raffles turning upon me quite sharply but without the least dismay and I told him how I knew of course I added it was the fellow we saw in the inn this afternoon the detective said Raffles do you mean to say you don't know a detective when you see one bunny if that wasn't the fellow which is Raffles shook his head to think that you've been talking to him for the last hour in the billiard room and couldn't spot what he was the scotch photographer I paused aghast scotch he is said Raffles and photographer he may be he is also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard the very man I sent the message to that night last April and you couldn't spot who he was for a whole hour oh bunny bunny you were never built for crime but said I if that was Mackenzie who was the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck the man he's watching but he's watching us Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarette case I don't know whether smoking's forbidden in one's bedroom but you'd better take one of these and stand tight bunny because I'm going to say something offensive I helped myself with a little laugh 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 red-faced brute is one of the cleverest thieves in London and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence I was an East Ender from tongue to toe at the moment but you'll understand that I don't run unnecessary risks of recognition by a brute like that he's not alone I hear by no means there's at least one other man with him and it's suggested that there may be an accomplice here in the house did Lord Crowley tell you so? Crowley in 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'll agree with me that it's infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined it would prove but infinitely more difficult for us said I with a sigh of pusillanimous relief our hands are tied for this week at all events 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 three cornered 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 bootle 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 A Bunny, that would be something like a match gentlemen and players at single wicket by Jove his eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day they shone with the perverted enthusiasm which was browsed 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 Rosenthal had raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which that banquet had been the prelude my dear AJ 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 do not go and shove your head into Mackenzie's mouth my wealth of metaphor brought him to a standstill with his cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining eyes you are quite right Bunny I won't I really won't yet you saw old lady Melrose's necklace I've been wanting it for years but I'm not going to play the fool on a bright I'm not yet by Jove to get to winward of the professors in Mackenzie too it would be a great game Bunny it would be a great game well you mustn't play it this week 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 gotten accomplice in the house how I wish I knew their game but it's all right Bunny don't you be jealous it shall be as you wish 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 an incomparably weaker man than raffles while every wit is wicked 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 long dreaded cricket week I had after all a quite excellent time it is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment in the first place, mirabeli diktu there were one or two even greater duffers than I on the abbey cricket field indeed, quite early in the week when it was 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 Ammersteth 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 Malouche said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honour 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 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 fellow guests knew Mr. Clefane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard 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 Saturday morning a tragedy took place at Milchester Abbey 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 raffles and I think all the other men were quartered I had been put in fact into the dressing room of one of the grand suites and my two near neighbours 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 and 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 muffled feet I've got ye muttered a voice it's no use struggling 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 staggering in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary hold this man he cried as I appeared hold the rascal 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 pinned him than the detective loosed his hold hang on to him he cried there's more of them below and he went leaping down the stairs as other doors opened and Lord Amhersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their pajamas at that my man ceased struggling but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas what the devil's all this? asked Lord Amhersteth blinking that ran downstairs Mack, Clefane said I hastily aha said he turning to the footmen so you're the scoundrel are you well done well done where was he caught I had no idea here's Lady Melrose's door open said Crowley Lady Melrose? Lady Melrose you forget she's deaf said Lord Amhersteth ah that'll be your maid an inner door had opened next instant there was a little shriek and a white figure gesticulated on the threshold where is the door of Lady Lemarkey the window is open where is it window open in jewel case gone by Jove exclaimed Lord Amhersteth but how is Lady Lemarkey est-elle bien? oui me l'eau elle dort sleeps through it all said my lord she's the only one then what made Mackenzie Clefane bolt young Crowley asked me said there were more of them below 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 Amhersteth 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 half open doors eventually we handed him over to two other footmen who appeared with their night-shirts tucked into their trousers and my host was good enough to compliment me as he led the way outside I thought I heard a shot he added didn't you? I thought I heard three and out we dashed into the darkness 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 pajamas and then Lord Amhersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew who's this? he cried what on earth's happened? it's Clefane said a man who knelt over him he's got a bullet in him somewhere is he alive? barely good God, where's Crowley? here I am called a breathless voice good you fellows, there's nothing to show which way they've gone here's Raffles, he's chucked it too and they ran up panting well, we've got one of them at all events muttered Lord Amhersteth the next thing is to get this poor fellow indoors take his shoulder somebody, now his middle join hands under him all together now, that's the way poor fellow, poor fellow his name isn't Clefane at all he's a Scotland Yard detective down here for these very villains Raffles was the first to express surprise but he had also been the first to raise the wounded man nor had any of them a stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house in a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library and there with ice on his wound and brandy in his throat his eyes opened and his lips moved Lord Amhersteth bent down to catch the words yes, yes said he, we've got one of them safe and sound the brute you collared upstairs Lord Amhersteth bent lower by Jove lowered the jewel case 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 an hour passed the sun was rising it found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiard room drinking whiskey and soda water in their overcoats and pajamas 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 Amhersteth 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 a suffocation and still we talked altogether of the night's event and still I was a little hero in my way for having kept 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 handsome with noiseless tires and a tinkling bell well bunny said raffles so the professors have it eh yes said I and I'm jolly glad that poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest that you and I have been on the decent side for once he shrugged his shoulders you're hopeless bunny quite hopeless I take it you wouldn't have refused your share if the bootle had fallen to us yet you positively enjoy coming off second best for the second time running I confess however that the professor's methods were full of interest to me I for one have probably gained as much an experience as I have lost in other things that lowering the jewel case out of the window was a very simple and effective expedient two of them had been waiting below for it for hours how do you know? I asked I saw them from my own window which was just above the dear old ladies I was fretting for that necklace in particular when I went up to turn in for our last night and 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 disc for just an instant and then again for an instant a few minutes later of course I knew what it was for I have my own watch dial dobbed 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 ladies window they were watching the time the whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside set a thief to catch a thief in a minute I had guessed what the whole thing proved to be and you did nothing? I exclaimed on the contrary I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose's room you did? without a moment's hesitation to save her jewels and I was prepared to yell as much into her ear trumpet for all the house to hear but the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily well? she didn't stir 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 to you before but really old fellow your face all day has been worth a fortune to the firm and he opened his fist to shut it next instant on the bunch of diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen in circling the neck of Lady Melrose end of gentlemen and players this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Honing Le premier pas 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 gotistic 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 cricket bag back where he sometimes kept it in the fender with the remains of an oriental 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 to hear that yarn it's no use I replied you won't spin it I must imagine it for myself how can you oh I begin to know your methods you take it I went in with my eyes open as I do now a I can't imagine you're doing otherwise my dear bunny it was the most unpremeditated thing I ever did in my life his chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden energy there was quite an indignant glitter in his eyes I can't believe that said I craftily I can't pay you such a poor compliment then you must be a fool he broke off stared hard at me and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite or a better nave than I thought you bunny and by jove it's the nave well I suppose I'm fairly drawn I'll 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'll 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 siphon fizzled the ice plopped home and seated there in his pajamas 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 brawler was removed we alone broke the quiet of the summer night no they do you very well indeed you pay for nothing but drinks so to speak 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 their 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 the ball if they had played me the surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask 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 name could anything be better? I made up my mind that this raffles was the man I wanted and was awfully sold to find the 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 branch my 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 looking for if he would be good enough to give me the name of that branch 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 moved him up one already and the next day he brought me the name of the township of Yay some fifty miles north of Melbourne but with the vagueness which characterised all his information he was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not he's a single man and his initials are WF 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 I were you I should write that'll lose two days said I and more if he isn't there for I'd grown quite keen on this up-country manager and I felt that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on a little conviviality might help matters considerably then said the doctor I should get a quiet horse and ride you needn't use that hand can't I go by train you can and you can't you would still have to ride I suppose you're a horseman yes then I should certainly ride all the way it's a delightful road through Whittlesey 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 the city sir you'll see where every drop of it comes from the pure yaneen I wish I had the time to ride with you but where can I get a horse the doctor thought a moment I have 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 you're far too good I protested you're AJ Raffles he said and if ever there was a prettier compliment or a finer insistence of even colonial hospitality I can only say Bonnie that I never heard of either he sipped his whiskey threw away the stump of his cigarette and lit another before continuing well I managed to write a line to WF 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 the 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 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 Whittlesey a real wild township on the lower slope of the ranges where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mutton and tea with a 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 after Whittlesey 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 colour was inches thick gum-trees galore and parrots all colours of the rainbow in one place a whole forest of gums had been ring-barked 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 stirrup irons ringing without thinking I had a shot at heading him with the doctor's mare and blocked him just enough to allow a man who came galloping after to do the rest thank you mister growled the man a huge chap and a red checked shirt with a beard like W.G. Grace a very devil of an expression been an accident, said I, raining up yes, said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more and a nasty one, I said, if that's blood on the saddle well, Bunny, I may be a-blagged 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 mate was with him back in the bush as I've said already Bunny I wasn't the old stager that I am now in any respect and 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 yay 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 shortcut was the long way round and it was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single street of yay I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the veranda Mr. Raffles said he Mr. Raffles said I laughing as I shook his hand you're late I was misdirected that all I'm relieved he said do you know what they are saying there are some brand new bush rangers on the road between Whittlesey and this a second Kelly gang they've got a tartar in you a they wouldn't you I retorted and my two cooks 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'd resumed when he had unstrapped my valise and handed my reins to his man it's lucky you're a bachelor like myself 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 free and easy fashion I muttered the conventional sort of thing and then he said I should find it all right when I had 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 of the bank dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour said he as we entered I thought you might like a tub first you'll find already in the room at the end of the passage sing out if there's anything you want your luggage hasn't turned up yet by the way but here's a letter that came this morning not for me yes, didn't you expect one? I certainly did not well, here it is and as he lit me to my room I read my own superscription of the previous day to W. F. Raffles Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I dare say 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 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. Raffles for the new manager who had not yet arrived small wonder we had conversed at cross purposes the only wonder was that we had not discovered our mutual mistake how the other man would have laughed but I I 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 had counted on AJ I thought of the man with the W. G. beard the riderless horse and the bloody saddle the deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the way now the missing manager and the report of bush rangers 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 can't 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 than necessity than my own determination which I can truthfully ascribe as absolute money I would have but how but how would this stranger be open to persuasion if 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 into 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 vagueness made me tremble bad news I'm afraid said the manager when at last I sat down at his table a mere annoyance I answered I do assure you on the spur of the moment 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 in that bank for that night and the devil teach me how to use my lie again he raised his glass to his lips I had forgotten mine his cigarette case caught the gaslight as he handed it to me I shook my head without taking my eyes from his the devil played up continued W. 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 mayor 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 yay at all at yay 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 get-out? last night's was something like it only never such a certainty and I saw it from the beginning saw to the end before I had finished my soup 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 ascertain 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 Eubank nor was I careful enough to conceal their drift do you know said this fellow Eubank who is one of the downright sort if it wasn't you I should say you were in a funk of robbers have you lost your nerve I hope not said I turning jolly-heart I can tell you but well it's not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet through a fellow no said he coolly I should enjoy nothing better myself besides yours didn't go through I wish it had I was smart enough to cry Amen said he and I emptied my glass actually I did not know whether my wounded bank robber was in prison dead or at large but now that I had had more than enough of it Eubank 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 all day and he was only waiting for his chance under the counter eh I was ass enough to say yes so had you he was looking at me in surprise and something told me that to say of course I had forgotten would have been quite fatal considering what I was supposed to have done so I looked down my nose and shook my head but the paper said you had he cried not under the counter said I but it's the regulation for the moment Bunny I felt stumped though I trust I only looked more superior than before and I think I justified my look 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 visible reluctance Eubank stared at me with open eyes and a five barred 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 paper said the other thing you know of course I rejoined because they said what I told them you wouldn't have me advertise the fact that I improved upon the bank's regulations would you so that cloud rolled over and by Jove it was a cloud with a golden lining not silver real good Australian gold for old Eubank 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 feet of 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 convivial looking party with a red mustache and a very humorous face not unlike Tom Emmits and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank but he wasn't a Rosenthal bunny he had a treble-seemed hand-sewn head and could have drunk me under the table ten times over all right I thought you may go to bed sober but you'll sleep like a timber-yard and I threw half he gave me through the open window when he wasn't looking but he was a good chap, Eubank and don't you imagine he was at all intemperate convivial I called him and I only wish he had done 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 with Eubank in my room 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 win 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 Eubank 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 and listened under his open window why did I leave the bank first? to catch and saddle the mare and tether her in a clump of trees close by a means of escape nice and handy before I went to work I have often wondered at the instinct of 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 horse-paddock then I distrusted the poor mare and I went back to the stables for a hat full of oats which I left with her in the clump had and all there was a dog too to reckon with a very worst enemy bunny but I had been acute 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 back door as the Swadizon new manager I had been able in the most ordinary course to pump poor Eubank 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 have found those keys in a month of Sundays I of course had them in a few seconds and in a few more I was in the strong room 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 a candle with me from my room and in the strong room which was down some narrow stairs behind the counter in the banking chamber I had no hesitation in lighting it there was no window down there and though I could no longer hear old Eubank 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 no keyhole on the inside 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 violent knocking at the outer door Bunny it was the outer door of the banking chamber my candle must have been seen there I stood with the grease running hot over my fingers in that brick grave of a strong room there was only one thing to be done I must trust to the sound sleeping of Eubank upstairs open the door myself knock the visitor down as 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 in the doctor's mare my mind was made up in an instant and I was at the top of the strong room stairs the knocking still continued when a second sound drove me back it was the sound of bare feet coming along the corridor 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 guards that I had shut every single door behind me you see old chap one's caution doesn't always let one in who's that knocking? said Eubank up above I could not make out the answer but it sounded to me like the irrelevant supplication of a spent man what I did here plainly was the caulking of the bank revolver before the bolts were shot back then a tottering step, a hard short shallow breathing and Eubank's voice in horror my god good lord what's happened to you you're bleeding like a pig not now came with a grateful sort of sigh but you have been what's done it bush rangers down the road this and widdle sea tied to tree cock shots left me bleed to death the weak voice failed and the bare feet bolted now was my time if the poor devil had fainted but I could not be sure and there I crouched down below in the dark at the half shut iron door not less spellbound than imprisoned it was just as well for Eubank wasn't gone a minute drink this I heard him say and when the other spoke again his voice was stronger now I begin to feel alive don't talk it does me good you don't know what it was all those miles alone one an hour at the outside I never thought I should come through you must let me tell you in case I don't well have another sip thank you I said bush rangers of course there are no such things nowadays what were they then bank thieves the one that had the potcharts was the very brood I drove out of the bank at Coburg with the bullet in him I knew it of course you did bunny so did I down in that strong room but old Eubank didn't and I thought he was never going to speak again you're delirious he says at last who in blazes do you think you are the new manager the new manager is in bed and asleep upstairs when did he arrive this evening call himself raffles yes 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 imposter if he's upstairs still he must be one of the gang he's going to rob the bank if he hasn't done so already if he hasn't done so already muttered Eubank after him if he's upstairs still by God if he is I'm sorry for him his tone was quiet enough but about the nastiest I've ever heard I tell you bunny I was glad I'd brought that revolver it looked as though it must be mine against his muzzle to muzzle better have a look down here first said the new manager while he gets through his window no no he's not down here it's easy to have a look 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 strong room with the door a good foot open and I didn't know whether it would creak or not the light was coming nearer and I didn't know I had a chance at it and it didn't creak a bit it was far too solid and well hung and I couldn't have banged it if I tried it was too heavy 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 carton wool then the streak went out too and in a few seconds I ventured to open once more and wasn't 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 managers raising Kane and the coachman and now Bunny he stood up and stretched himself with a smile that ended in a yarn 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 seemed turned to nothing in the globes but that's not all I cried 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 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 brisk the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turn south by Jove it was no joke in and out among those trees and under branches with your face in the main 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 it so still that I pulled up there my first halt I lay with my ear to the ground for two or three minutes but I heard nothing not a thing but the mare's bellow in 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 lay those dead gum-trees for all their worth and let the bullets fly like hail I'll turn round in my saddle to see Eubank coming up held to leather in his white suit and I'll duly paint it red do it in the third person then they won't know how it's going to end but I don't know myself I complained did the mare carry you all the way back to Melbourne? every rod-polar perch I had a 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 me what I had escaped at yay without suspecting anything 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 colour was a coincidence luckily she was only a bay and 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 asked why I used to have a rather heavy moustache said raffles but I lost it the day after I lost my innocence End of Le Premier Part This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning Willful Murder Of the various robberies in which we are both concerned it is not but the few I find that will bear telling at any length not that the others contain details which even I would hesitate to recount it is rather the very absence of untoward incident which renders them useless for my present purposes 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 Ardog 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 put together 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 flashy seed 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 had also 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 soft spoken grey beard with an ingratiating smile and the shiftiest old eyes that ever flew from rim to rim of a pair of spectacles so the original sinners and the final spoils of war came in this case from the self-same source a circumstance which appealed to us both 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 Anne until the faces in the street below were no longer distinguishable and now I was tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible hypotheses a grip that tightened when at last the lift gates opened with a clatter outside that held me breathless until a well-known tattoo followed on my door in the dark said raffles as I dragged him in why bunny what's wrong nothing now you've come said I shutting the door behind him in a fever of relief and anxiety well well what did they fetch 500 down got it in my pocket 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 I I 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 soda water all over in my anxiety to do instant justice to the occasion so you thought something had happened said raffles leaning back in my chairs 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 windward this time and suddenly I saw that his collar was limp his hair matted his boots thick with dust the police I whispered aghast oh dear no only old Baird Baird but wasn't it Baird who took the emeralds it was then how came he to chase you 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 doing his best to run me to my burrow and you call that nothing it would be something if he had succeeded but he is still to do that I admit however that he made me set 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 with a paper knife I did my best to get out of it so I had a pal who was real swell but I saw very plainly that I had given myself away he gave up haggling he paid my price as though he enjoyed it but I felt him follow me when I made tracks though of course I didn't turn round to see why not 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 your 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 Sloan Square out I hopped and up all those streets like a lamp lighter 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 rig almost straight into old Bard's arms what on earth did you do walked past him as though I'd never set eyes on him in my life and didn't then took a handsome in the King's Road and drove like a deuce to Clapham Junction rushed on to the nearest platform without a ticket jumped on to the first train I saw got out at Twickenham walked full tilt back to Richmond took the district to Charring 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 keep you long you're certain you've given him the slip I said as we put on our hats certain enough but we can make assurance doubly sure said raffles and went to my window where he stood for a moment or two looking down in the street all right I asked him all right said he and we went downstairs forthwith and so to the Albany arm and arm but we're both rather silent on our way I for my part was wondering what raffles would do about the studio in Chelsea wither 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 happened to be getting himself a bad name poor Jack Rutter said raffles with a sigh nothing 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 bad who's said to have skinned him by God but I'd like to skin old bad 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 smoking room with our coffee and cigars then at last I saw raffles looking at me with his lazy smile and I knew that the morose fit was at I dare say you wonder what I've been thinking about all this time said he I've been thinking what rot it is to go doing things by halves 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 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 begging to cut him our difficulty is to keep the pal from the door on fire he begs and borrows which is stealing by halves and we steal outright on our done with it obviously ours is the more honest course yet I'm not sure bunny but we're doing the thing by halves ourselves why what more could we do I exclaimed in soft division looking round however to make sure that we were not overheard what more said raffles well murder for one thing right 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 extra specials you wouldn't rust with a vile repose for seven of fourteen years good old raffles I chuckled I begin to forgive you for being in bad form at dinner but I was never more earnest in my life go on I mean it you know very well that you wouldn't commit a murder whatever else you might do I know very well I'm going to commit one tonight 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 murder in his locked lips but a hundred murders in those hard blue eyes Baird I faltered moistening my lips with my tongue of course but you said it didn't matter about the room in Chelsea I told a lie anyway you gave him the slip afterwards 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 window you remember to make assurance doubly sure there he was on the opposite pavement down below and you never said a word about it I wasn't going to spoil your dinner bunny I wasn't going to let you spoil mine and 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 and one bidding against the other but he shan't play it with me he shan't live to and the world will have an extortion of the less waiter to scotch whiskies and sodas I'm off at 11 bunny it's the only thing to be done you know where he lives then yes out wills didn't weigh and alone the fellows a miser among other things I long ago found out all about him 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 back to raffles with a groan surely will give him a chance I urged the very sight of your pistol should bring him to terms it wouldn't make him keep them but you might try the effect I probably shall here's a drink for you bunny wish me luck I'm coming to I don't want you but I must come an ugly gleam shot from the steel blue eyes to interfere said raffles not I you give me your word I do bunny if you break it you may shoot me too I most certainly should said raffles solemnly so you come at your own peril my dear man but if you are coming well the sooner the better for I must stop at my rooms on the way five minutes later I was waiting for him at the Piccadilly entrance to the Albany I had reason for remaining outside it was the feeling half hope half fear that Angus Baird might still be on our trail that some more immediate and less cold-blooded 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 Wilson 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 Wilson it's left at eleven twenty one I remember and raffles was put out to find it did not go on to Kensal Rise we had to get out at Wilson 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 surely said I we shall find him in bed and asleep I hope we do said raffles grimly then you mean to break in what else did you think I had not doubted at all the ultimate crime had monopolized my mind beside it burglary was a bagatelle but one to depreciate nonetheless I saw obvious objections the man was off-fay with cracksman in 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 you and me better that than this then stay where you are my good fellow I told you I didn't want you and this is the house so good night 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 battering rams in the feeble rays an outlying lamp post cast across the new-made road it seemed to me a road of building sites with but this one house built all by itself at one end but the night was too dark for more than a mere impression 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 covert coat 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 covert coat when he gave the latter a tug coming after all rather take care then this place is all bellwires and springs it's no soft thing this there stand still while I take off the corks the garden was very small and new with a grass plot still in separate sides but a quantity of full grown laurel stuck into the raw clay beds bells in themselves as raffle whispered there's nothing else rustle so cunning old beast and we gave them a wide berth as we crept across the grass he's gone to bed I don't think so bunny I believe he's seen us why I saw a light where downstairs for an instant when I his whisper died away he had seen the light again and so had I it lay like a golden rod under the front door and vanished it reappeared like a golden thread under the lintel and vanished for good we heard the stairs creak creak and cease also for good we neither saw nor heard anymore 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 souls 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 now he proceeded to take out a pain with the diamond the pot of treacle and the sheet of brown paper which was 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 the pain fell gently back into our hands 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 hush man hush I entreated under my breath he'll hear you for answer his teeth chattered even his and 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 grey hairs glued together by his blood near him a poker with the black end glistening in a corner of his desk ransacked littered a clock ticked noisily on the chimneypiece for perhaps a hundred seconds there was no other sound 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 the wide nostrils he made no other sign and his lips seemed sealed that light said I hoarsely the light we saw under the door with a start he turned to me it's true I had forgotten it it was in here I saw it first he must be upstairs still if he is will soon route him out come on instead I laid a hand upon his arm imploring him to reflect that his enemy was dead now that we should certainly be involved that 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 has 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 born in also upon my slower sensibilities could we let the murderer go my answer was to bound up the creaking stairs and overhaul raffles on the landing 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 raffles lit the landing gas he's in there said he cocking his revolver do you remember how we used to break into the studies at school here goes his flat foot crashed the keyhole the lock gave the door flew open and in the sudden draft the landing gas healed over like a cobble in a squall as the flame righted itself I saw a fixed bath two bath towels knotted together an open window a cowering figure and raffles struck a gas on the threshold Jack Rutter the words came thick and slow with horror and in a horror I heard myself repeating them while the cowering figure by the bathroom window rose gradually erect it's you he whispered an amazement no less than our own it's you too what's it mean raffles I saw you get over the gate a bell rang the places 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 what have I done the unhappy wretch came out into the light with bloodshot blinking eyes and a bloody shirt front you know you've seen but I'll tell you if you like I've killed a robber that's all I've killed a robber a user a jackal a blackmailer the cleverest and cruelest villain unhung I'm ready to hang from I'd kill him again and he looked us fiercely in the face a fine defiance in his dissipated eyes his breast heaving his jaw like a rock 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 20 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 whip hand 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 not at all says he did you not see the servant I said I'd seen her but I thought I'd heard her go if I was mistaken I 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 up 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 bald headed he fired two or three times and missed you can find the holes if you like but I hit him every time my 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 shan't give you fellows much trouble 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 shan't let you give yourself up you shan'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 give myself up and get it over his speech was changed he faltered he floundered it was as though a clearer perception of his position had come with the bare idea of escape from it 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 pain did the thing like regular burglars regular burglars will get the credit for all the rest you mean I shan't be suspected I do but I don't want to get off scott free cried rudder hysterically I've killed him I know that but it was in self defense it wasn't murder I must own up and take the consequence 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 rudder sobbed I wish I had his revolver to blow my own brains out it's lying under him oh my god my god his knees knocked together the frenzy of reaction was at its height we had to take him downstairs between us and so through the front door and out into the open air all was still outside all 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 them we escaped no need to dwell on our escape a murderer seemed set upon the scaffold drunk 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 Wilson and of those who saw us later did one think of the two men with crooked white ties supporting a third in a seemingly unmistakable condition when the evening papers apprised the town of a terrible tragedy at Kenzel Rise we walked to made a veil and then strove openly to my rooms but I alone went upstairs the other two proceeded to the Albany and I saw no more of raffles for 48 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'd 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 and destroyed 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 warrants out it won't be my fault if it's ever served nor after all these years can I think it will be mine end of willful murder this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes the amateur cracksmen by EW Horning nine points of the law well said raffles what do you make of it I read the advertisement once more before replying it was in the last column of the Daily Telegraph and it ran two thousand pounds reward the above some may be earned by anyone 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 gotten to print raffles smiled not quite all that bunny still extraordinary enough I grant you look at the figure it is certainly large and the mission and the risk 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 day when they can raise the stamp my answer cost me five Bob but then I prepaid another you don't mean to say that you've applied rather said raffles I want two thousand pounds as much as any man put your own name well no 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 glass pool 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 it came I shouldn't be surprised if that's it and he was gone before a double knock on the outer door had done ringing through the rooms to return next minute with an open telegram full of news what do you think said he security is that fellow adenbrook the police court lawyer and he wants to see me instant a you know him then 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 Sutton Wilmer case everybody wondered why he wasn't struck off the roles instead of that he's got a first rate practice on the seamy side and every blaggard with half a case takes it straight to Bennett adenbrook 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 adenbrook myself if accidents should happen and you're going to him now? this minute? said raffles brushing his hat and so are you but I came in to drag you out to lunch you shall lunch with me when we've seen this fellow come on bunny we'll choose your name on the way mine's glass pool and don't you forget it Mr. Bennett adenbrook 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 suffice to produce a brisk, fresh-colored, resolute-looking man with a very confident, rather festive air and black eyes that opened wide at the side of raffles Mr. Glass Pool exclaimed the lawyer my name said raffles with dry effrontery not up at Lord's, however said the other slyly my dear sir, I have seen you take far too many wickets to make any mistake for a single moment raffles looked venomous then he shrugged and smiled and the smile grew into a cynical little chuckle 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 wish to admit under my own name that's all and I want that thousand pound 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 character and he looked very hard at me quite so, said raffles but there was something about risk a certain risk is involved 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 cursively hard up and we go into this thing together or not at all must you have his name too I should give him my real one bunny Mr. Addenbrook raised his eyebrows over the card I found for him then he drummed upon it with his fingernail and his embarrassment expressed itself in a puzzled smile 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 me men who belong to good clubs I rather intended to appeal to the... er... adventurous classes we are adventurers said Raffles gravely but you respect the law the black eyes gleamed shrewdly we are not professional rogues if that's what you mean said Raffles smiling but on our beam ends we are we would do a good deal for a thousand pounds apiece, eh bunny anything, I murmured the solicitor wrapped his desk I'll tell you what I want you to do you can but refuse it's illegal but it's illegality and 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 Brooke Hall Escher I know his son, I remarked Raffles knew him too but said nothing and his eye drooped disapproval in my direction Bennett Addenbrook turned to me then said he you have the privilege of knowing one of the most complete young blaggards about town and the font 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 anymore but absolutely stopped the lads 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 nail and no more did I hear or see of them until one day last week the lawyer drew his chair nearer ours and leaned 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 picture gallery which was locked and darkened I drew up a blind and stood simply pointing to an empty picture frame 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 England in the world an original Velazquez I have checked this said the lawyer and it seems literally true the picture was a portrait of the unfaunt Maria Theresa one of the artist's greatest works only second to another portrait of one of the popes in Rome so they told me at the National Gallery where they have its history by heart they say there that the picture is practically priceless and young Debenham has sold it for five thousand pounds the deuce he has said Raffles I inquired who had bought it a Queensland legislator of the name of Craig's the honourable John Montague Craig's MLC 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 stole 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 Escher and the Metropole where the Queenslanders staying sometimes twice a day threats, offers, prayers and treaties not one of them a bit of good but said Raffles surely it's a clear case the sale was illegal you can pay him back his money and force him to give the picture up 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 Hooker Crook and there's the rob 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 bank check if asked he offered one to the Queenslander but Craig simply tore it in two the one old boys as much character as the other and between the two of them I met my wit's end so you put that advertisement in the paper said Raffles in the dry tones he had adopted throughout the interview as a last resort I did and you wish us to steal this picture it was magnificently said the lawyer flushed from his hair to his collar 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 Craig's will be just as loathe to let it come out as Sir Bernard himself no no it's an enterprise an adventure if you like but not stealing you yourself mentioned the law murmured Raffles and the risk I added we pay for that he said once more 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 of your man Addenbrook wavered do you think we could bring it off we could try but you have no experience well hardly and you would really run the risk for four thousand pounds Raffles looked at me I nodded we would said he and blow the odds it's more than I can ask my client to pay said Addenbrook growing firm then it's more than you can expect us to risk you are an earnest God what? say three thousand if you succeed four is our figure Mr. Addenbrook then I think it should be nothing if you fail double your quits cried Raffles well that's sporting done Addenbrook opened his lips half rose then sat back in his chair and looked long and shrewdly at Raffles never once at me I know you're bowling he said reflectively I go up to lords whenever I want now as real rest and I've seen you bowl again and again yes and take the best wickets in England on a plum pitch I don't forget the last gentleman in players I was there you're up to every trick everyone I'm inclined to think that if anybody could bowl out this old Australian damn I believe you're my very man the bargain was clinched at the cafe Royal where Bennett Addenbrook 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 absteminius even than his want and very poor company to boot I can see him now his eyes in his plate thinking thinking I can see the solicitor glancing from him to me in an apprehension of which I did my best to disabuse him by my reassuring looks at the close Raffles apologized for his preoccupation called for an ABC timetable and announced his intention of catching the 320 to Escher you must excuse me Mr. Addenbrook 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 Addenbrook 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 self-willed 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 gate 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 be in your rooms tomorrow from noon and keep rest of day clear Raffles it had been sent off from Waterloo at 6.42 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 four noon that when he wanted me I should see him soon enough 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 handsome and jumped out without a word to the man I met him next minute at the lift gates and he fairly pushed me back into my rooms five minutes bunny he cried not a moment more and he tore off his coat before flinging himself into the nearest chair 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 Craig's 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 do it must be something to do with this blessed picture so I might see where he 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 Escher to find out if there was a copy in existence and was at Broomhall for one hour and a half yesterday afternoon there was no copy there but they must exist for Suburnard himself there's copy there has allowed a couple to be made since the picture has been in his possession he hunted up the painter's addresses and the rest of the evening I spent in hunting up the painter's themselves but their work had been done on commission one copy had gone out of the country and I'm still on the track of the other then you haven't seen Craigs yet? seen him and made friends with him and if possible he's the funnier old cuss of the two but you should study him both I took the bull by the horns this morning went in and lied like Ananias and it was just as well I did the old ruffian sails for Australia by tomorrow's boat I told him a man wanted to sell me a copy of the celebrated on Fanta Maria Teresa of Velazquez 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 picture luckily it isn't by any means large one also the case he's got it in it's an iron map case 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 he's had it fitted with a new chubb's lock he 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 make my duplicate this afternoon Raffles looked at his watch and jumped up saying he had given me a minute too much by the way he added you've got to dine with him at the Metropole tonight I? yes don't look so scared both of us are invited I swore you were dining with me for us both but I shan't be there his clear eye was upon me bright with meaning and with mischief I implored him to tell me what his meaning was you will dine in his private sitting room said Raffles it adjoins his bedroom you must keep him sitting as long as possible Bunny and talking all the time in a flash I saw his plan you're going for the picture while we're at dinner I am and if he hears you he shan't but if he does and I fairly trembled at the thought if he does said Raffles there will be a collision that's all Revolver would be out of place in the Metropole but I shall certainly take a life preserver 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 room two thousand apiece said Raffles quietly upon my soul I believe I shall give it away not you Bunny I know you better than you know yourself he put on his coat and hat what time have I to be there I asked him with a groan 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 your 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 he should unlock it again in this hemisphere where shall I find you when I get away I shall be down at Escher hope to catch the nine fifty-five but surely I can see you again this afternoon I cried in affirmant for his hand was on the door I'm not half-coached up yet I know I shall make a mess of it 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 Escher yourself by the last train that's it down you come with the latest news I'll tell old Debenham to expect you he shall give us both a bed by Jove he won't be able to do us too well if he's got his picture if I groaned as he nodded his adieu and then left me limp with apprehension, sick with fear in a perfectly pitiable condition of pure stage fright 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 745 and I was making my bow to a somewhat elderly man with a small bald head and a retreating brow to your Mr. Raffles friend he said overhauling me rather rudely with his light small eyes seen anything of him? expected him early to show me something but he's never come 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 any of his people and again felt fortified by my veracity thought you were bosom pals he said with as I imagined a gleam of suspicion in his crafty little eyes only in town said I I've never been to his place well he growled I suppose it can't be helped don't know why he wouldn't come and have his dinner first like to see the deathbed I'd go to without my dinner it's a full-skinned 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 shan't see him again for his own sake I like raffles took to him amazingly he's a cynic like cynics one myself rank bad form of his mother or his aunt and I hope she will go and kick the bucket I connected 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 our dinner was served and they gave me an impression of the man which is 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 him a caustic commentary on all things and all men his achievement mere vulgar reverence and unintelligent scorn ill-bred and ill-informed 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 until he choked over the misfortunes of less astute spectators in the same boom even now I cannot feel much compunction for my behaviour by the honourable J. M. Craig's M. L. C. 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 him though the rooms were not divided by the old-fashioned folding doors 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 some coarse sally of my hosts and I heard nothing more though my ears were on the strain but later to my horror when the waiter had finally withdrawn Craig's himself sprang up and rushed to his bedroom without a word I sat like stone till he returned thought I heard a door go he said must have been mistaken imagination gave me quite a turn raffles tell you priceless treasure I got in there 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 ill-gotten possession I said that raffles had just mentioned it and that set him off with the confidential grulity 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 learned what had originally fired my hosts ambition to possess what he was pleased to call a real, genuine, twin-screw, double-funneled, copper-bottomed 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 ended inevitably in the invitation that I had dreaded all the evening but you must see it, next room, this way isn't it packed up? I inquired hastily lock and key, that's all pray don't trouble, I urged trouble be hanged, said he, come along 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 map case 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 by Jove! I cried next instant the canvas was in its place among the maps thought it would knock you said Craig's 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 Colonia Queensland put together worth fifty thousand pounds my boy and I got it for five he dug me in the ribs and seemed in the mood for further confidences my appearance checked him and he rubbed his hands if you take it like that he chuckled how will old Johnson take it go out and hang himself to his own picture rods I hope 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 failed raffles had failed could I not succeed was it too late was there no way so long he said taking a last look at the canvas before he rolled it up so long till we get to Brisbane the flutter I was in as he closed the case for the last time he went on as his keys jingled back into his pocket it goes straight into the strong room on board if I could but send him out to Australia with only its legitimate contents in his precious map case if I could but succeed where raffles had failed we returned to the other room I have no notion how long he talked or what about whiskey and soda became the order of the hour I scarcely touched it but he drank copiously and before eleven I left him incoherent and the last train for Escher was the eleven fifty out of Waterloo I took a handsome 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 sitting room 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 Craig's 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 statorious breaths and the man was a log I removed the handkerchief I extracted the keys from his pocket in less than five minutes I put them back after winding the picture about my body beneath my invenous cape I took some whiskey and soda water before I went the train was easily caught so easily that I trembled for ten minutes in my first class smoking carriage in terror of every footstep on the platform in unreasonable terror till the end then at last I sat back and lit a cigarette and the lights of Waterloo reeled out behind some men were returning from the theatre I can recall their conversation even now they were disappointed with the peace 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 Serbeten and I was alone with my triumph for a few intoxicating minutes to think that I had succeeded where raffles had failed adventures this was the first in which I had played a commanding part and of all of them this was infinitely the least discreditable it left me without a conscience qualm I had but robbed a robber when all was said and I had done it myself single-handed ipsay egomet 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 apiece surely enough to start afresh as honest men and all through me in a glow I sprang out at Escher and took the one belated cab that was waiting under the bridge in a perfect fever I beheld Broom Hall with the low 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 so Bernard's sitting up to shake your hand his good spirits disappointed me but I knew the man he was one of those who wear their brightest smile in the blackest hour I knew him too well by this time to be deceived I've got it I cried in his ear I've got it got what? he asked me stepping back the picture what? the picture he showed it me but without it I saw that so I determined to have it and here it is let's see said raffles grimly 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 looks pretty fresh for an old master doesn't she said raffles his tone was strange I could only suppose that he was jealous of my success so Craig said I hardly looked at it myself well look now look closely by jove I must have faked it better than I thought it's a copy? I cried 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 in front so that on your own showing it imposed upon Craig's and might have made him happy for life and you go and rob him of that I could not speak how did you manage it inquired Sir Bernard Debenham have you killed him asked raffles sardonically 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 are going to turn burglars for a living 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 has said and not open his map case 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 then but he followed me and took my hand bunny said he don't you be hard on a fellow I was in the doost 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 handy work old chap you won't mind my saying that I didn't think you had it in you in future don't talk to me about the future I cried I hate the whole thing I'm going to chuck it up so am I said raffles when I've made my pile end of nine points of the law this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E.W. Horning The Return Match 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 thought I was always thinking that my inevitable hour was come at last it was only raffles however who stood smiling at me through the fog well met said he I've been looking for you at the club I was just on my way there I returned with an attempt to hide my tremors it was an ineffectual attempt as I saw from his broader smile and by the indulgent shake of his head come up to my place instead said he I've something amusing to tell you 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 Debenham that there had been no occasion for that masterful mind to be made up in any such direction for many a day was 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 I have said but his arms slid through mine with his little laugh of light-hearted mastery and even while I argued we were on his staircase in the Albany his fire had fallen low he poked and replenished it after lighting the gas as for me I stood by sullenly in my overcoat until he dragged it off my back 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 solvents and sit tight 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 discomforture across his folded arms you remember Milchester bunny old boy his tone was as bland as mine was grim when I answered that I did we had a little match there that wasn't down on the card gentlemen and players if you recollect I don't forget it seeing that you never got an inning so to speak I thought you might well the gentlemen scored pretty freely but the players were all caught poor devils don't be too sure you remember the fellow we saw in the inn the florid overdressed chap who I told you was one of the cleverest thieves in town I remember him crochet his name turned out to be well it certainly was the name he was convicted under so crochet let it be you needn't waste any pity on him old chap he escaped from Dartmoor yesterday afternoon well done Raffles smiled but his eyebrows had gone up and his shoulders followed suit 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 crochet made a bolt for it and got away without a scratch under heavy fire all honour to him I agree a fellow with that much grit deserves his liberty but crochet has a good deal more they hunted him all night couldn't find him for nuts and that was all you missed in the morning papers he unfolded a palmale which he had brought with him 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 Tartneys 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 Reverend 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 crochet had made good his second escape though it is believed that so distinctive a guise will lead to his recapture during the day what do you think of that, Bunny? he is certainly a sportsman, said I, reaching for the paper he's more, said Raffles he's an artist and I envy him the curate of all men beautiful, beautiful but that's not all I saw just now on the board at the club there's been an outrage on the line near Dallish Parson found insensible in the six foot way our friend again the telegram doesn't say so but it's obvious he's simply knocked some other fellow out changed his clothes again and come on gaily to town isn't it great? I do believe it's the best thing of the kind that's ever been done but why should he come to town? in an instant the enthusiasm faded from Raffles face clearly I had reminded him of some private anxiety forgotten in his impersonal joy over the exploit of a fellow criminal he looked over his shoulder towards the lobby before replying I believe, said he, that the beggars on my tracks as he spoke he was himself again quite amused, cynically unperturbed characteristically enjoying the situation and my surprise but look here what do you mean? said I what does Crochet know about you? not much but he suspects why should he? 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 cricket field as a matter of fact I know he did for he wrote and told me so before his trial he wrote to you and you never told me? the old shrug answered the old grievance what was the good my dear fellow? it would only have worried you well what did he say? that he was sorry he had been run in before getting back to town as he had proposed doing himself the honour 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 the fear may be the very near future indeed I'm only surprised he hasn't turned up yet he looked again towards the lobby which he had left in darkness with the inner door shut as carefully as the outer one I asked him what he meant to do let him knock if he gets so far the porter is to say I'm out of town it will be true too in another hour or so you're going off tonight? by the 715 from Liverpool Street I don't say much about my people, Bunny but I have the best of sisters married to a country passing in the East Countries 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 care 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 sitting room a well-built man stood in ill-fitting broadcloth and bowed to us until his bullet head presented an unbroken disc of short red hair 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 Crochet 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 jumped to my own conclusion and I turned on raffles with an oath 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 to join you I suppose I'll see you damned so cold was the stare which met this outburst that I became ashamed of my words while they were yet upon my lips really Bunny said raffles and turned his shoulder with a shrug Lord Lovier cried Crochet he knew nothing he didn't expect me he's all right and you're the cool canary you are he went on to raffles I knew you were but do me proud you're one after my own kidney and he thrust out a shaggy hand after that said raffles taking it what am I to say but you must have heard my opinion of you I am proud to make your acquaintance how the deuce did you get in never you mind said Crochet loosening his collar let's talk about how I'm to get out Lord Lovier but that's better there was a livid ring round his bull neck that he fingered tenderly didn't know how much longer I might have to play the gent he explained didn't know who you'd bring in drink whiskey and soda inquired raffles when the convict was in the chair from which I had leapt no I drink it neat replied Crochet but I talk business first you don't get over me like that Lord Lovier well then what can I do for you you know without me telling you give it a name clean heels then that's what I want to show and I leave 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 your own way I leaves it all to you his tone was rich with conciliation and concession he bent over and tore a pair of buttoned boots from his bare feet which he stretched toward the fire painfully uncurling his toes I hope you take a larger size than them said he I'd have had a sea if you'd given me time I wasn't in longer for you and you won't tell me how you got in what's the use I can't teach you nothing besides I want out I want out of London and England and Bloomin' Europe too that's all I want to you mister I don't harvest how you go on the job you know where I come from because I heard you say you know where I want to head for because I just told you the details I leave entirely to you well said Raffles I'll see what can be done we must said Mr. Crochet 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 him go back nor shall he not if I can think of a way of getting him abroad any way you like Mermit Crochet with his eyes shut I leave the whole thing to you but you'll have to wake up and tell us things all right Mr. but I'm fair on the rocks for a sleep and he stood up blinking think you a trace to town must have been and here not in this fog not with any luck Raffles went into the bedroom lit the gas there and returned next minute so you got in by the window that's about it it was devilish smart of you to know which one it beats me how you brought it off in daylight fog or no but let that pass you don't think you were seen I don't think it sir well let's hope you're right I shall reconnoiter and soon find out and you'd better come to Bunny and have something to eat and talk it over as Raffles looked at me I looked at Crochet anticipating trouble and trouble brood in his blank fierce face in the glitter of his startled eyes in the sudden closing of his fists and what's to become of me he cried out with an oath you wait here 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 cuckoos Raffles turned to me with a twitch of the shoulder that's the worst of these professors said he they never will use their heads they see the pegs and they mean to hit them but that's all they do see and mean and they think we're the same no wonder we licked them last time don't talk through your neck snarled the convict talk out straight curse ya right said Raffles I'll talk as straight as you like you say you put yourself in my hands you leave it all to me yet 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. Crochet though you've 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 as low as you know how and leave the word and leave the whole thing to me if you won't if you're fool enough not to trust me there's the door go out and say what you like and be damned to you Crochet slapped his thigh that's talking said he Lord love ya I know where I am when you talk like that I'll trust ya I know a man when he gets his tongue between his teeth 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 he'll be all right too I only hope you gents ain't too stony and he touched his pockets with a rueful face I only went for their togs said he you never struck two such stony broke cusses in your life that's all right said Raffles we'll see you through properly leave it to us and you sit tight write them said Crochet and I'll have a sleep time you're gone but no spirits no thank you not yet once let me loose on the lush and Lord love ya I'm a gone coon Raffles got his overcoat a long light driving coat 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 those 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 24 hours is a hole that justifies its parts good lord we had passed a man in the foggy courtyard and Raffles had nipped my arm who was it the last man we want to see I hope to heaven he didn't hear me but who is he Raffles our old friend Mackenzie from the yard I stood still with horror do you think he's on Crochet's track I don't know I'll find out and before I could remonstrate he had wheeled me round when I found my voice he merely laughed and whispered that the bold course was the safe one every time but it's madness not it shut up is that you Mr. Mackenzie 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 you have the advantage me sirs said he 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 I onwards about business but attended very well and that's the main thing his native caution had returned to him Raffles pinched my arm yes it ended splendidly but for you said he but what about this escape of the leader of the gang that fellow crochet what do you think of that eh I have no the particulars replied the Scotch 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 up and a whistle blown softly through the fog we must see this out whispered Raffles nothing more natural than a little curiosity on our part after him quick and we followed the detective into another entrance on the same side as that from which we had emerged the left hand side on one's way to Piccadilly quite openly we followed him and at the foot of the stairs met one of the porters of the place Raffles asked him what was wrong nothing sir said the fellow glibly what? 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 fell it's like this he whispered this afternoon a gentleman comes after rooms and I sent him to the orifice one of the clerks he goes round with him and shows him the empties and the gentleman's particularly struck on the sets the coppers is up in now so he sends the clerk to fetch the manager as there was one or two things he wished to speak about and when they come back blowed if the gent isn't gone beg your pardon sir but he's clean disappeared off the face of the premises and the porter looked at us with shining eyes well said raffles well sir they looked about and looked about and at last they give him up for a bad job thought he'd changed his mind and didn't want to tip the clerk so they shut up the place and come away and that's all till about half an hour ago when I takes the manager his extra special star in about ten minutes he comes running out with a note and sends me with it to Scotland Yard in a handsome and that's all I know sir straight the coppers is up there now and the tech 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 don't know jolly interesting said raffles I'm going up to inquire come on bunny there should be some fun beg your pardon mr. raffles but you won't say nothing about me not I you're a good fellow I won't forget it if this leads to sport sport he whispered as we reach the landing it looks like precious poor sport for you and me bunny what are you going to do I don't know there's no time to think this to start with and he thundered on the shut door a policeman opened it raffles strode passed him with the air of a chief commissioner and I followed before the man had recovered from his astonishment the bareboards rang under us in the bedroom we found a knot of officers stooping over the window ledge with the constable's lantern Mackenzie was the first to stand upright and he greeted us with a glare may I ask what you gentlemen want said he 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 help 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 myself can only stop a few minutes in any case then you'll not see much growled the detective shut up here constable go you and stand at the foot of the stairs and let no other body come up on any consideration this gentleman may be able to help us after all 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 since been seen himself he's a man we want said Mackenzie and sealed himself somewhere about these premises or I'm very much mistaken dear as I than the Albany Mr. Raffles I do will your rooms be near these on the next staircase but one you'll just have left them just been in all the afternoon likely not all then I may have to search your room 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 shall have the entire building Taransac I will leave you my key said Raffles at once I am dining out but I'll leave it with the officer down below I caught my breath in mute amazement what was the meaning of this insane promise it was willful gratuitous suicidal it made me catch it asleep in open horror and disgust but with a word of thanks Mackenzie had returned to his window sill and we sauntered unwatched through the folding doors into the adjoining room here the window looked down into the courtyard it was still open and as we gazed out in apparent idleness Raffles reassured me 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 stick to these chaps especially if they search my rooms they mustn't poke about more than necessary and they won't if you're there but where will you be you're never going to leave me to be landed alone if I do it will be to turn up trumps at the right moment besides there are such things as windows and crochet is the man to take his risks you must trust me bunny you've known me long enough are you going now 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 goodbye sir came in a preoccupied voice and many thanks 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 his infinite resources by this time I felt that I knew more or less what he could 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 crochet on his guard and stow him away no there was such things as windows then why was raffles going to desert us all I thought of many things lastly of a cab these bedroom windows looked into a narrow side street they were not very high from them a man might drop onto the roof of a cab even as it passed and 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 driving coat on the way to his rooms it was still with me when he passed again on his way back and stopped to hand the constable his key we're on his truck said a voice behind me he's got up on the lead sure enough though how he managed it from young window is a mystery to me we're going to lock up here and try with like this from the attics so you better come with us if you have a mind the top floor at the Albany as elsewhere is devoted to the servants a conjuries of little kitchens and cubicles used by many as lumber rooms by 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 him all pick a dilly at the crown ahead said he here my man ought to go on the roof to make one less and have your truncheon handy we crowded to the little window which Mackenzie took care to fill and a minute yielded no sound but the crunch and slither of constabulary boots upon sooty slates then came a shout what now? cried Mackenzie a rope we heard hanging from the spout by a hook sirs heard Mackenzie yones how he got up from below he would do it with one of the telescope sticks and I never thought that how long a rope my lad quite short I've got it did it hang over a window ask him that cried the manager he can see by leaning over the parapet the question was repeated by Mackenzie a pause then yes it did ask him how many windows along shouted the manager in high excitement six he said said Mackenzie next minute and he drew in his head and shoulders I should just like to see those rooms six windows along Mr. Raffles announced the manager after mental calculation 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 coincidence had already struck the Scotchman as something more where is Mr. Raffles asked the manager as we all file downstairs he's gone out to his dinner said Mackenzie are you sure 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 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 blood draining into his eyes and the man was Raffles himself suicide said Mackenzie calmly no here's the poker looks more like murder he went on his knees and shook his head quite cheerfully and it's not even murder said he with a shade of disgust in his matter of fact voice yon's no more than a flesh wound and I have my doubts where it felled him but sirs he just thinks a chloroform he got up and fixed his keen gray eyes upon me my own were full of tears but they faced him unashamed I understood ye to say you saw him go out said he sternly I saw that long driving coat of course I thought he was inside it and I could have sworn it was the same gent when he give me the key it was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background on him turned Mackenzie white to the lip I don't think anything some of you damned policemen said he what's your number you rotter pay 34 you'll be hearing more of this Mr. pay 34 if that gentleman was dead instead of coming to himself while I'm talking do you know what you'd be guilty of his manslaughter you stuck pig in buttons do you know who you let slip butterfingers crush a no less him that broke pay 34 if I lose him I'll hold you from the force working face shaking fist a calm man on fire it was a new side of Mackenzie and one to mark and digest next moment he had flounced from our midst difficult thing to break your own head said raffles later infinitely easier to cut your own throat chloroforms another matter when you've used it on others you know the dose to a nicety so you thought I was really gone poor old bunny but I hope Mackenzie saw your face he did said I I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have seen however that's all right I wouldn't have had to miss it for worlds and you mustn't think me a brutal boy for I fear that man and no we sink or swim together and now we sink or swim with crochet too I said dolefully not we said raffles with conviction old crochet is 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 will take on the professors again end of the return match the please visit the reading by the the gift of the emperor part one 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 14 senses for the gift was a pearl of price and paralleled picked a four-time by British cutlaces 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 the daily chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming drawing of the island capital which the new palm all 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 the Thames Ditten on the plea of a disinterested passion for the river first rate old boy said raffles who must needs come and see me there lying back in the boat while I sculled and steered I suppose they pay you pretty well for these eh not a penny none sense bunny I thought they paid so well give them time and you'll get your check oh no I shan't said I gloomily I've got to be content with the honour of getting in the editor wrote to say so in so many words I added but I gave the gentleman his distinguished name you don't mean to say you've written for payment already 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 leaned 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 of Hampton Court before he spoke again 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 before but is it really worth 50,000 pounds a single pearl a hundred I believe but that wouldn't scan 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 profess to have forgotten my 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 11 o'clock that Sunday night I fancied it was for more months that we were saying goodbye but as we waited for the train I saw those clear eyes peering at me under the station lamps and when I met their glance raffles shook his head bunny said he I never did believe in this Thames valley you want a change of air I wished I might get it what you really want is a sea voyage and a winter at San Maritz or do you recommend cans or Cairo it's all very well AJ but you forget what I told you about my funds I forget nothing I merely don't want to hurt your feelings but look here a sea voyage you shall have I want to change myself and you shall come with me as my guest we'll spend July in the Mediterranean but you're playing cricket hang the cricket well if I thought you meant it of course I mean it will you come? like a shot if you go and I shook his hand and waved mine in farewell with the perfectly good humoured conviction that I should hear no more of this 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 subled it furnished for the season and the season was near its end and creditors waited 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 ignoble 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 dining with desperation at the solitary club to which I still belong arranged to leave Waterloo by North German Lloyd Special he wired 9.25 a.m. Monday next we'll meet you South Hampton aboard Ulan with tickets am writing and write he did a light-hearted enough letter 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 births to Naples that we were bound for Capri which was clearly the island of the lotus-eaters 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 ferry lands for Lorne 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 resulted in a material reduction in our fares imagine my excitement and delight I managed to pay what I owed at Thames Ditten 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 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 through the sunshine to the sea a tender awaited us at Southampton raffles was not on board nor did I really look for him till we reached the liner side and then I looked in vain his face was not among the many that fringe the rail his hand was not of the few that waved to friends and a board 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 waylayed a steward and asked if a Mr. Raffles was on board thank heaven he was but where? the man did not know was plainly on some other errand and a hunting I must go but there was no sign of him on the promenade deck the smoking room was empty but for a little German with a red moustache twisted into his eyes nor was Raffles in his own cabin wither 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 themselves in explanation so there you are waiting for you all over the ship despite the grave 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 officer's long chairs in which reclined a girl in a white drill-coat and skirt a slip of a girl with 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 well-famed astonishment why bunny cried Raffles where have you sprung from I stammered something as he pinched my hand and are you coming in the ship and to Naples too well upon my word Miss Verna may I introduce him and he did so without a blush describing me as an old school fellow whom he had not seen for months with willful 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 mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my mouth and that I doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace 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 this 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 goodbyes and as we bowed to Miss Verner on the promenade deck there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot and our voyage had begun it did not begin pleasantly between Raffles and me on deck he had overborn my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though forceful joviality in his cabin the gloves were off you idiot he snarled you've given me away again how have I given you away I ignored the separate insult in his last word how? I should have thought any Claude could see that I meant us to meet by chance after taking both tickets yourself 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 I had turned the tables with some effect Raffles almost hung his head the fact is Bunny I didn't mean you to know you... you'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 still if you were afraid of writing I pursued it was your business to give me the tip the moment I set foot on board I would have taken it all right I'm not so virtuous as all that was it my imagination or did Raffles look slightly ashamed if so it was for the first and last time in all the years I knew him I swear to it even now that said he was the very thing I meant to do to lie and wait in my room and get you as you passed but you were better engaged say otherwise the charming Miss Werner she is quite charming most Australian girls are said I how did you know she was one I heard her speak brute said Raffles laughing she has no more twang than you have her people are German she has been to school in Dresden and is on her way out alone money I inquired confound you he said and though he was laughing I thought it was a point at which the subject might be changed well I said Miss Werner you wanted us to play strangers was it you have some deeper game than that I suppose I have then hadn't you better tell me what it is 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 defined his enterprise it won't send you off in the pilot's boat bunny not quite then you remember the pearl you wrote the I did not wait for him to finish his sentence you've got it I cried my face on fire for I caught sight of it that moment in the state room mirror Raffles seemed taken aback not yet said he but I mean to have it before we get to Naples is it on board yes but how where who's got it a little German officer a whipper snapper with perpendicular mustaches I saw him in the smoke room that's the chap he's always there Captain Wilhelm von Human if you look in the list well he's the special envoy of the emperor and he's taking the pearl out with him you found this out in Bremen? no in Berlin from a newspaper man I know there I'm ashamed to tell you bunny that I went there on purpose I burst out laughing you needn't be ashamed you are doing the very thing I was rather hoping you were going to propose the other day on the river you were hoping it said Raffles with his eyes wide open indeed it was his turn to show surprise and mine to be much more ashamed than I felt yes I answered I was quite keen on the idea but I wasn't going to propose it yet you would have listened to me the other day 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 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 dare say 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 to turn honest man the thing was against nature and there was an end of it raffles entirely disagreed with me he shook his head over my conventional view human nature was a board of checkers why not reconcile oneself to alternative black and white why desire to be all one thing or all the other like our forefathers on the stage or in the old fashioned fiction for his part he enjoyed himself in the chairs of the board and like the light the better for the shade my conclusion he considered absurd but you air 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 a verness 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 could be done on this pearl alone then you don't still think it too remarkable to sell we might take a fishery and haul it up with smaller fry it would come after months of ill luck just as we were going to sell the schooner by jove it would be the talk of the pacific well we've got to get it first is this von what's his name a formidable cuss more so than he looks and he has the cheek of the devil as he spoke a white drill skirt fluttered past the open stateroom door and I caught a glimpse of an upturned mustache beyond but is he the chap we have to deal with won't the pearl be in the pursers keeping raffle 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 knows that von human has it on him and has he must have then we have only him to deal with he answered me without a word something white was fluttering past once more and raffles stepping forth made the promenaders three part two I do not ask to set foot aboard a finer steamship than the ulan of the nor-deutcher 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 who prevented me but not raffles alone it was raffles and that colonial minx on her way home from school what he could see in her but 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 school girl I would not be unfair for the world 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 metal and vitality I may not have occasion to report any of this young lady's speeches they would scarcely bear it and I'm therefore 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 there must have been something not unlike jealousy rankling within me jealousy there was in another quarter crude rampant undignified jealousy captain von human would twirl his mustaches into twin spires shoot his white cuffs over his rings and stare at me insolently through his rimless glasses 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 human 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 toward a German on the German boat you'll make yourself disliked on board by von human merely but is that wise when he's the man you've got to diddle the wisest thing I ever did to have chummed up with him would have been fatal the common dodge I was consoled encouraged almost content but I had feared raffles was neglecting things but 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 for an aft leaving me next moment with a step full of purpose I retired to the smoking room to smoke and read in a corner and to watch von human who very soon came to drink beer and to sulk in another few travellers tempted the red sea at summer the Ulan 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 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 could see on the Sunday afternoon I was asleep in my berth the lower one when the curtains were shaken by raffles who was in his shirt sleeves on the seti Achilles skulking in his bunk what else is there to do I asked him as I stretched and yawned I noted however the good humour of his tone and did my best to catch it I have found something else bunny I dare say you misunderstand me the whipper snappers making his sentry this afternoon I've had another 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 grating was shut and bolted and curtained like the open portal we shall be at Genoa before sunset continued raffles it's the place where the deeds got to be done so you still mean to do it did I ever say I didn't you have said so little either way advisedly so my dear bunny why spoil a pleasure trip by talking a necessary shop but now the time has come it must be done at Genoa and not at all unland? 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 and Von Hümen found dead or drugged not dead I exclaimed of course not a scented raffles although it 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 day and quite ready to kill my man every time if the worst came to the worst I asked him how he proposed to enter Von Hümen's stateroom unobserved and even through the curtained gloom of hours his face lighted up climb into my bunk bunny and you shall see all I did so but could see nothing raffles reached across me and tapped the ventilator a sort of trap door in the wall above his bed fifteen inches long and half that height it opened outwards into the ventilating shaft 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 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 Hümen's it again will only mean a couple of screws and there's a beam to stand on while you work but if anybody should look up from below it's extremely unlikely that anybody will be a stir 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 ships boys do sentry go on these decks and they shall be our witnesses by Jove it'll be the biggest mystery that ever was made if van Hemen doesn't resist 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 van Hemen will be past sensation almost as soon as I can get my hand through his ventilator I shall crawl in over his body buddy my boy and 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've found it devilish difficult to do without it after you turned pie he said that van Hemen 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 when rifling the cabin not that raffles anticipated a tiresome search the pearl would be about van Hemen'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 momentary unpleasantness it's a very old story bunny I really forget in what book it comes I'm only sure of the testament but Samson was the unlucky hero and won Delilah the heroine and he looked so knowing that I could not be in a moment's doubt as to his meaning so the fair Australian has been playing Delilah said I in a very harmless, innocent sort of way she got his mission out of him yes I forced him to score all the points he could and that was his great stroke as I hoped it would be he has even shown Amy the pearl Amy, eh and she promptly told you 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 my own enlightenment wily worm said I now I see through it all how dense I've been sure you're not still no now I understand what has beaten me all the week I simply couldn't fathom what you saw in that little girl I never dreamt it was part of the game so you think it was that and nothing more you deep old dog of course I do you didn't know she was the daughter of a wealthy squatter there are wealthy women by the dozen who would marry you tomorrow and it doesn't occur to you that I might like to draw stumps start clean and live happily ever after in the bush with that voice it certainly does not bunny fiercely that I braced myself for a blow but no more followed do you think you would live happily I made bold to ask him God knows he answered and with that he left me to marvel at his look and tone and more than ever at the insufficiently exciting cause part three of all the mere feats of cracksmanship what 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 north German steamer Ulan lying at anchor in Genoa harbour not a hitch occurred everything had been foreseen everything happened as I had been assured everything must nobody was about below only the ships boys on deck and nobody on the bridge it was 25 minutes past one when raffles without a stitch of clothing on his body but with a glass file corked with cotton wool between his teeth and a tiny screwdriver behind his ear squirmed feet first through the ventilator over his birth and it was 19 minutes to two when he returned head first with the file still between his teeth and the cotton wool rammed home to still the rattling of that which lay like a great grey bean within he had taken screws out and put them in again he had unfastened von human's ventilator and had left it fast as he had found it fast as he had instantly proceeded to make his own as for von human it had been enough to place the drenched wad first on his mustache and then to hold it between his gasping lips thereafter the intruder had climbed both ways across his shins without eliciting a groan and here was the prize this pearl as large as a filbert with a pale pink tinge like a lady's fingernail this spoil of a filibustering age this gift from a European emperor to a south sea chief we gloated over it when all was snug we toasted it in whiskey and soda water 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 jam which raffles had prized 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 good reasons which will be obvious 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 Humann 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 blue-chinned official had left our decks the last fruit seller had been beaten off with buckets full of water and left cursing us from his boat the last passenger had come aboard at the last moment a fussy greybeard who kept the big ship waiting while he haggled with his boatsman for 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 vessel's side von Humann was having his innings once more it was part of the design that he should remain in all day and so postponed the inevitable hour and though the lady looked bored he was forever glancing in our direction he seemed only too willing to avail himself of his opportunities but raffles was moody and ill at ease he had not the air of a successful man I could but opine that the impending parting at Naples sat heavily on his spirit he would neither talk to me nor would he let me go stop where you are bunny I've things to tell you can you swim a bit ten miles ten I burst out laughing not one why do you ask we shall be within ten miles swim of the shore most of the day what on earth are you driving at raffles nothing only I shall swim for it if the worst comes to the worst I suppose you can't swim under water at all 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 no then why speak as though we were we may be an old enemy of ours is on board an old enemy Mackenzie never the man with the beard who came aboard last are you sure sure I was only sorry to see you didn't recognize him too I took my handkerchief to my face now that I thought of it there had been something familiar in the old man's gate 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 was nowhere to be seen 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 coincidence is it somebody else he's after Raffles shook his head hardly this time then you think he's after you I've been afraid of it for some weeks yet there you stand 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 Mack was watching both ship and station till the last moment that's why he ran it so fine he took a cigarette and handed me the case but I shook my head impatiently I still don't understand said I why should he be after you he couldn't come all this way about a jewel which was perfectly safe for all he knew what's your own theory simply that he's been on my track for some time probably ever since friend Crochet 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 Van Hoeman in his mission and there was his motive cut and dried great chance to 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 whipper snapper to his cabin the fat will be in the fire in five minutes 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 a 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 lunch hour he was in our cabin I had left my book in Raffles' birth 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 ventilator as I opened it the ventilator opposite was closed with a snap I waylaid Raffles all right, let him find the pearl have you dumped it overboard? that's a question I shan't condescend to answer 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 up and I saw him next in the captain's cabin they had summoned him first he had gone in smiling and smiling I found him when they summoned me the state room was spacious as befitted that of a commander Kenzie sat on the city his beard in front of him on the polish 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 Van Hoeman completed the party his fingers busy with his mustache Raffles greeted me this is a great joke he cried you remember the pearl you were so keen about 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 dumb and the poor little chap's gone and lost it ergo as we're Britishers they think we've got it but I know ye have put in Mackenzie nodding to his beard you will recognize that loyal and patriotic voice said Raffles Mont is our old acquaintance Mackenzie a Scotland yard and Scotland itself that is enough cried the captain have you submit to be surged or do I force 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 Van Hoeman's state room during the small hours of this morning acting 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 can prove the same most certainly I can I said 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 very clever said he and like enough it would have served you a good step to board but I've just had a look at the ventilators and I think I know how you worked it anyway captain it makes no matter I'll just be clapping the derbies on these young sparks and then 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 if you dare to lay a finger on us warrant I would not dare said Mackenzie as he fumbled in his breast pocket and Raffles dived his hand into his own horde 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 see your warrant you'll no mishandle it what good would that do me let me see it said Raffles preemptorily and the detective obeyed Raffles raised his eyebrows as he perused the document his mouth hardened but suddenly relaxed and it was with a smile and a shrug that he returned the paper will that do for ye inquired Mackenzie it may I congratulate you Mackenzie it's a strong hand at any rate two burglaries and the Melrose necklace bunny and he turned to me with a rueful smile an all easy to prove said the Scotchman pocketing the warrant I have one of these for you he added nodding to me only not such a long one to think said the captain reproachfully that my ship should be made a den of thieves it shall be a very disagreeable matter I have been obliged to put you both in irons until we get to Naples 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 a stock if they suspect we've weapons up our sleeves all I ask is that we are allowed to get out of this without jives upon our wrists the buns you may not have said the captain but what about their bell that you are stealing you shall have it cried Raffles you shall have it this minute if you guarantee no public indignity on board that I'll see to said Mackenzie as long as you behave yourselves there now where's it on the table under your nose my eyes fell with the rest but no pearl was there only the contents of our pockets our watches pocket books pencils pocket knives cigarette cases lay on the shiny table along with the revolvers already mentioned you're humbuggin us said Mackenzie what's the use I'm doing nothing of the sort laughed Raffles I'm testing you where's the harm it's here, joke apart on that table by all my guards Mackenzie opened the cigarette cases and shook each particular cigarette there upon 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 oh give them to me and in an instant Raffles had found the right one had bitten out the bullet and placed the emperor's pearl with a flourish in the center of the table 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 the safety of the ship all I ask is that you do me one favor first that shall depend on what the favor has been Captain, I've done a worse thing aboard your ship than any of you know I have become ill any of you know I have become engaged to be married and I want to say good-bye I suppose we were all equally amazed but the only one to express his amazement was Von Humann whose deep chested 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 in Mackenzie stood within range but not earshot with the revolvers behind their backs as we were moving from the cabin in a body he stopped and gripped my hand so I've let you in at last Bunny at last after all if you knew how sorry I am but you won't get much I don't see why you should get anything at all can you forgive me this may be for years and it may be forever you know you were a good pal always when it came to the scratch some day or other you mayn't be so sorry to remember you were a good pal at the last there was a meaning in his eye that I understood and my teeth were set and my nerves strung ready as I rung that strong and cunning hand 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 a starboard and the starboard promenade deck which he did with sunshine and scored with shadow was deserted but for the group of which I was won 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 Ulan's plates and their shadows reached almost to our feet suddenly an instant and the thing was done a thing I have never known whether to admire or to detest he caught her he kissed her before us all then 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 raffles was on the rail but only just hold him bunny he cried hold him tight and as I obeyed that last behest with all my might without a thought of what I was doing save that he bade me to do it I saw his hands shoot up and his head bob down and his lithe spare body cut the sunset as cleanly and precisely as though he had plunged at his leisure from a diver's board 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 desserts but one thing I must set down believe it who will one more thing only and I am done it was into a second class 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 or the rest of blinded all eyes or else mine were victims of a strange illusion for the boat was back the screw throbbing and the prisoner peering through his portal across the sunlit waters that he believed had closed forever 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 a stern 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 moat dabbled and now I gave it up utterly a mere moat 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 end of the amateur cracksman