by E.W. Hornung
I was just putting out my light when the
telephone rang a furious tocsin in the next room. I flounced out of bed more asleep than awake;
in another minute I should have been past ringing up. It was
“Hulloa!”
“That you, Bunny?’
“Yes---are you Raffles?”
“What’s left of me! Bunny, I want you---quick.”
And even over the wire his voice was faint
with anxiety and apprehension.
“What on earth has happened?”
“Don’t ask! You never know---“
“I’ll come at once. Are you there, Raffles?”
“What’s this?”
“Are
you there, man?”
“Ye---e---es.”
“At the
“No, no; at Maguire’s.”
“You never said so. And where’s Maguire?”
“In
“I know that. Is he there now?”
“No---not come in yet---and I’m caught.”
“Caught!”
“In that trap he bragged about. It serves me right. I didn’t believe in it. But I’m caught at last . . . caught . . . at
last!”
“When he told us he set it every
night! Oh, Raffles, what sort of a trap
is it? What shall I do? What shall I bring?”
But his voice had grown fainter and
wearier with every answer, and now there was no answer at all. Again and again I asked Raffles if he was
there; the only sound to reach me in reply was the low metallic hum of the live
wire between his ear and mine. And then,
as I sat gazing distractedly at my four safe walls, with the receiver still
pressed to my head, there came a single groan, followed by the dull and
dreadful crash of a human body falling in a heap.
In utter panic I rushed back into my
bedroom, and flung myself into the crumpled shirt and
evening clothes that lay where I had cast them off. But I knew no more what I was doing than what
to do next. I afterward found that I had
taken out a fresh tie, and tied it rather better than usual; but I can remember
thinking of nothing but Raffles in some diabolical man-trap, and of a grinning
monster stealing in to strike him senseless with one murderous blow. I must have looked into the glass to array
myself as I did; but the mind’s eye was the seeing eye,
and it was filled with this frightful vision of the notorious pugilist known to
fame and infamy as Barney Maguire.
It was only the week before that Raffles
and I had been introduced to him at the Imperial Boxing Club. Heavy-weight champion of the
have looked a tiger in the teeth. And then we finally went home with Maguire to
see his other trophies, it seemed to me like entering the tiger’s lair. But an astounding liar it proved, fitted
throughout by one eminent firm, and ringing to the rafters with the last word
on fantastic furniture.
The trophies were a still greater
surprise. They opened my eyes to the
rosier aspect of the noble art, as presently practised on the right side of the
Within the last twenty-four hours Barney
Maguire had fought his first great battle on British soil. Obviously, he would no longer be the man that
he had been in strict training before
the fight; never, as I gathered, was such a ruffian more off his guard, or less
capable of protecting himself and his possessions, than in these first hours of
relaxation and inevitable debauchery for which Raffles had waited with
characteristic foresight. Nor was the
terrible Barney likely to be more abstemious for signal punishment sustained in
a far from bloodless victory. Then what
could be the meaning of that sickening and most suggestive thud? Could it be the champion himself who had
received the coup de grace in his cups?
Raffles was the very man to administer it---but he had not talked like
that man through the telephone.
And yet---and yet---what else could have
happened? I must have asked myself the
question between each and all of the above reflections, made partly as I
dressed and partly in the hansom on the way to
Yet, at the last I had a rough idea of
what I meant to say when the door was opened.
It seemed almost probable that the tragic end of our talk over the
telephone had been caused by the sudden arrival and as sudden violence of
Barney Maguire. In that case I was
resolved to tell him that Raffles and I had made a bet about his burglar trap,
and that I had come to see who had won.
I might or might not confess that Raffles had rung me out of bed to this
end. If, however, I was wrong about Maguire,
and he had not come home at all, then my action would depend upon the menial
who answered my reckless ring. But it
should result in the rescue of Raffles by hook or crook.
I had the time to come to some decision,
since I rang and rang in vain. The hall,
indeed, was in darkness; but when I peeped through the letter-box I could see a
faint beam of light from the back room.
That was the room in which Maquire kept his trophies and set his
trap. All was quiet in the house; could
they have haled the intruder to
A brougham was coming sedately down the
street from Piccadilly; to my horror, it stopped behind me as I peered once
more through the letter-box, and out tumbled the disheveled prize-fighter and
two companions. I was nicely caught in
my turn. There was a lamp-post right
opposite the door, and I can still see the three of them regarding me in its
light. The pugilist had been at least a
fine figure of a bully and a braggart when I saw him before his fight; now he
had a black eye and a bloated lip, hat on the back of his head, and made-up tie
under one ear. His companies were his
sallow little Yankee secretary, whose name I really forget, but whom I met with
Maguire at the Boxing Club, and a very grand person in a second skin of
shimmering sequins.
I can neither forget nor report the terms
in which Barney Maquire asked me who I was and what I was doing there. Thanks, however, to Swigger Morrison’s
hospitality, I readily reminded him of our former meeting, and of more that I
only recalled as the words in my mouth.
“You’ll remember Raffles,” said I, “if you
don’t remember me. You showed us your
trophies the other night, and asked us both to look you up at any hour of the
day or night after the fight.”
I was going on to add that I had expected
to find Raffles there before me, to settle a wager that we had made about the
man-trap. But the indiscretion was
interrupted by Maguire himself, whose dreadful fist became a hand that gripped
mine with brute fervor, while with the other he clouted me on the back.
“You don’t say!” he cried. “I took you for some darned crook, but now I
remember you perfectly. If you hadn’t
‘ve spoke up slick I’d have bu’st your face in, sonny. I would sure!
Come right in, and have a drink to show there’s---Jee-
hoshaphat!”
The secretary had turned the
latch-key in the door, only to be hauled back by the collar as the door stood
open, and the light from the inner room was streaming upon the banisters at the
foot of the narrow stairs.
“A light in my den,” said Maguire in a
mighty whisper, “and the blamed door open, though the key’s in my pocket and we
left it locked! Talk about crooks,
eh? Holy smoke, how I hope we’ve landed
one alive! You ladies and gentlemen, lay
round where you are, while I see.”
And the advancing figure advanced on
tiptoe, like a performing elephant, until just at the open door, when for a
second we saw his left revolving like a piston and his head thrown back at its
fighting angle. But in another second
his fists were hands again, and Maquire was rubbing them together as he stood
shaking with laughter in the light of the open door.
“Walk up!” he cried, as he beckoned to us
three. “Walk up and see one o’ their
blamed British crooks laid as low as the blamed carpet, and nailed as tight!”
Imagine my feelings on the mat! The sallow secretary went first; the sequins
glittered at his heels, and I must own that for one base moment I was on the
brink of bolting through the street door.
It had never been shut behind us.
I shut it myself in the end. Yet
it was small credit to me that I actually remained on the same side of the door
as Raffles.
“Reel home-grown, low-down, unwashed
White-chapel!” I had heard Maquire
remark within. “Blamed if our Bowery
boys ain’t cock-angels to scum like this.
Ah, you biter, I wouldn’t soil my knuckles on your ugly face; but if I
had my thick boots on I’d dance the soul out of your carcass for two cents!”
After this it required less courage to
join the others in the inner room; and for some moments even I failed to
identify the truly repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no false hair upon the face, but it
was as black as any sweep’s. The
clothes, on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more pestiferous
in themselves than most worn by Raffles for professional purposes. And at first, as I say, I was far from sure
whether it was Raffles at all; but I remembered the crash that cut short our
talk over the telephone; and this inanimate heap of rags was lying directly
underneath a wall instrument, with the receiver dangling over him.
“Think you know him?” asked the sallow
secretary, as I stooped and peered with my heart in my boots.
“Good Lord, no! I only wanted to see if he was dead,” I
explained, having satisfied myself that it was really Raffles, and that Raffles
was really insensible. “But what on
earth has happened?” I asked in my turn.
“That’s what I want to know,” whined the
person in sequins, who had contributed various ejaculations unworthy of report,
and finally subsided behind an ostentatious fan.
“I should judge,” observed the secretary,
“that its for Mr. Maguire to say, or not to say, just as he darn pleases.”
But the celebrated Barney stood upon a
Persian hearth-rug, beaming upon us all in a triumph too delicious for immediate
translation into words. The room was
furnished as a study, and most artistically furnished, if you consider
outlandish shapes in fumed oak artistic.
There was nothing of the traditional prize-fighter about Barney Maguire,
except his vocabulary and his lower jaw.
I had seen over his house already, and it was fitted and decorated
throughout by a high-art firm which exhibits just such a room as that which was
the scene of our tragedietta. The person
in the sequins lay glistening like a landed salmon in a quaint chair of
enormous nails and tapestry compact. The
secretary leaned against an escritoire with huge hinges of beaten metal. The pugilist’s own background presented an elaborate
scheme of oak and tiles, with inglenooks green from the joiner, and a china
cupboard with leaded panes behind his bullet head. And his bloodshot eyes rolled with rich
delight from the decanter and glasses on the octagonal table to another
decanter in the quaintest and craftiest of revolving spirit tables.
“Isn’t it bully?” asked the prize-fighter,
smiling on us each in turn, with his black and bloodshot eyes and his bloated
lip. “To think that I’ve only to invent
a trap to catch a crook, for a blamed crook to walk right into! You, Mr. Man,” and he nodded his great head
at me, “you’ll recollect me telling you that I’d gotten one when you come in
that night with the other sport? Say,
pity he’s not with you now; he was a good boy, and I liked him a lot; but he
wanted to know too much, and I guess he’d got to want. But I’m liable to tell you now, or else
bu’st. See that decanter on the table?”
“I was just looking at it,” said the
person in sequins. “You don’t know what
a turn I’ve had, or you’d offer me a little something.”
“You shall have a little something in a
minute” rejoined Maguire. “But if you
take a little anything out of that decanter, you’ll collapse like our friend
upon the floor.”
“Good heavens!” I cried out, with
involuntary indignation, and his fell scheme broke upon me in a clap.
“Yes, sir! ” said Maguire, fixing
me with his bloodshot orbs. “My trap for
crooks and cracksmen is a bottle of hocused whiskey, and I guess that’s it on
the table, with the silver label around its neck. Now look at this other decanter, without any
label at all; but for that they’re the dead spirit of each other. I’ll put them side by side, so you can
see. It isn’t only the decanters, but
the liquor looks the same in both, and tastes so you wouldn’t know the
difference till you woke up in your tracks.
I got the poison from a blamed Indian away west, and it’s ruther
ticklish stuff. So I keep the label
around the trap-bottle, and only leave it out nights. That’s the idea, and that’s all there is to
it,” added Maquire, putting the labeled decanter back in the stand. “But I figure it’s enough for ninety-nine
crooks out of a hundred, and nineteen out of twenty ’ll have their liquor
before they go to work.”
“I wouldn’t figure on that,” observed the
secretary, with a downward glance as though at the prostrate Raffles. “Have you looked to see if the trophies are
all safe?”
“Not yet,” said Maguire, with a glance at
the pseudo-antique cabinet in which he kept them.
“Then you can save yourself the trouble,”
rejoined the secretary, as he dived under the octagonal table, and came up with
a small black bag that I knew at a glance.
It was the one that Raffles had used for heavy plunder ever since I had
known him.
The bag was so heavy now that the
secretary used both hands to get it on the table. In another moment he had taken out the
jeweled belt presented to Maguire by the State of
Either the site of his treasurers, so
nearly lost, or the feeling that the thief had dared to tamper with them after
all, suddenly infuriated Maguire to such
an extant that he had bestowed a couple of brutal kicks upon the senseless form
of Raffles before the secretary and I could interfere.
“Play light, Mr. Maguire!” cried the
sallow secretary. “The man’s drugged, as
well as down.”
“He’ll be lucky if he ever gets up, blight
and blister him!”
“I should judge it about time to telephone
for the police.”
“Not till I have done with him. Wait till he comes to! I guess I’ll punch his face into a jam
pudding! He shall wash down his teeth
with his blood before the coppers come in for what’s left!”
“You make me feel quite ill,” complained
the grand lady in the chair. “I wish
you’d give me a little something, and not be more vulgar than you can ‘elp.”
“Help yourself,” said Maguire,
ungallantly, “and don’t talk through your hat.
Say, what’s the matter with the ‘phone?”
The secretary had picked up the dangling
receiver.
“It looks to me,” said he, “as though the
crook had rung up somebody before he went off.”
I turned and assisted the grand lady to
the refreshment that she craved.
“Like his cheek!” Maguire thundered. “But who in blazes should he ring up?”
“It’ll all come out,” said the
secretary. “They’ll tell us at the
central, and we shall find out fast enough.”
“It don’t mater now,” said Maguire. “Let’s have a drink and then rouse the devil
up.”
But now I was shaking in my shoes. I saw quite clearly what this meant. Even if I rescued Raffles for the time being,
the police would promptly ascertain that it was I who had been rung up by the
burglar, and the fact of my not having said a word about it would be directly
damning to me, if in the end it did not incriminate us both. It made me quite faint to feel that we might
escape the Scylla of our present peril and yet split on the Charybdis of
circumstantial evidence. Yet I could see
no middle course of conceivable safety, if I held my tongue another
moment. So I spoke up desperately, with
the rash resolution which was the novel feature of my whole conduct on this
occasion. But any sheep would be as
resolute and rash after dining with Swigger Morrison at his club.
“I wonder if he rang me up?” I
exclaimed, as if inspired.
“You, sonny?” echoed Maguire, decanter in
hand. “What in hell could he know about
you?”
“Or what could you know about him?”
amended the secretary, fixing me with eyes like drills.
“Nothing,” I admitted, regretting my
temerity with all my heart. “But someone
did ring me up about an hour ago. I
thought it was Raffles. I told you I
expected to find him here, if you remember.”
“But I don’t see what that’s got to do
with the crook,” pursued the secretary, with his relentless eyes boring deeper
and deeper into mine.
“No more do I,” was my miserable
reply. But there was a certain comfort
in his words, and some simultaneous promise in the quantity of spirit which
Maguire splashed into his glass.
“Where you cut off sudden?” asked the
secretary, reaching for the decanter, as the three of us sat round the
octagonal table.
“So suddenly,” I replied, “that I never
knew who it was who rang me up. No,
thank you---not any for me.”
“What!” cried Maguire, raising a depressed
head suddenly. “You won’t have a drink
in my house? Take care, young man. That’s not being a good boy!”
“But I’ve been dining out,” I
expostulated,” and had my whack. I
really have.”
Barney Maguire smote the table with
terrific fist.
“Say, Sonny, I like you a lot,” said
he. “But I shan’t like you any if you’re
not a good boy!”
“Very well, very well,” I said
hurriedly. “One finger, if I must.”
And the secretary helped me to not more
than two.
“Why should it have been your friend
Raffles?” he inquired, returning remorselessly to the charge, while Maguire
roared “Drink up!!” and then drooped once more.”
“I was half asleep,” I answered, “and he
was the first person who occurred to me.
We are both on the telephone, you see.
And we had more a bet---“
The glass was at my lips, but I was able
to set it down untouched. Maguire’s huge
jaw had dropped upon his spreading shirt-front, and beyond him I saw the person
in sequins fast asleep in the artistic armchair.
“What bet?” asked a voice with a sudden
start in it. The secretary was blinking
as he drained his glass.
“About the very thing we’ve just had
explained to us,” said I, watching my man intently as I spoke. “I made sure it was a man-trap. Raffles thought it must be something
else. We had a tremendous argument about
it. Raffles said it wasn’t a
man-trap. I said it was. We had a bet about it in the end. I put my money on the man-trap. Raffles put his upon the other thing. And Raffles was right---it wasn’t a
man-trap. But it’s every bit as
good---every little bit---and the whole boiling of you are caught in it except
me!”
I sank my voice with the last sentence,
but I might just as well have raised it instead. I had said the same thing over and over again
to see whether the willful tautology would cause the secretary to open his
eyes. It seemed to have had the very
opposite effect. His head fell forward on
the table, with never a quiver at the blow, never a twitch when I pillowed it
upon one of his own sprawling arms. And
there sat Maguire bolt upright, but for the jowl upon his shirt-front, while
the sequins twinkled in a regular rise and fall upon the reclining form of the
lady in the fanciful chair. All three
were sound asleep, but what accident or by whose design I did not pause to
inquire; it was enough to ascertain the fact beyond all chance of error.
I turned my attention to Raffles last of
all. There was the other side of the
medal. Raffles was still sleeping as sound
as the enemy---or so I feared at first.
I shook him gently; he made no sign.
I introduced vigor into the process; he muttered incoherently. I caught and twisted an unresisting
wrist---and at that he yelped profanely.
But it was many and many an anxious moment before his blinking eyes knew
mine.
“Bunny!” he yawned, and nothing more until
his position came back to him. “So you
came to me,” he went on, in a tone that thrilled me with its affectionate
appreciation, “as I knew you would! Have
they turned up yet? They will any
minute, you know; there’s not one to lose.”
“No, they won’t, old man!” I
whispered. And he sat up and saw the
comatose trio for himself.
Raffles seemed less amazed at the result
then I had been as a puzzled witness of the process; on the other hand, I had
never seen anything quite so exultant as the smile that broke through his
blackened countenance like a light. It
was all obviously no great surprise, and no puzzle at all, to Raffles.
“How much did they have, Bunny?” were his
first whispered words.
“Maguire a good three fingers, and the
others at least two.”
“Then we needn’t lower our voices, and we
needn’t walk on our toes. Eheu! I dreamed somebody was kicking me in the
ribs, and I believe it must have been true.”
He had risen with a hand to his side and a
wry look on his sweep’s face.
“You can guess which of them it was,” said
I. “The beast is jolly well served!”
And I shook my fist in the paralytic face
of the most brutal bruiser of his time.
“He is safe till the forenoon, unless they
bring a doctor to him,” said Raffles. “I
don’t suppose we could rouse him now if we tried. How much of the fearsome stuff do you suppose
‘I’ took? About a tablespoonful! I guessed what it was, and couldn’t resist
making sure; the minute I was satisfied, I changed the label and the position
of the two decanters, little thinking I should stay to see the fun; but in
another minute I could hardly keep my eyes open. I realized then that I was fairly poisoned
with some subtle drug. If I left the
house at all in that state, I must leave the spoil behind, or be found drunk in
the gutter with my head on the swag itself.
In any case I should have been picked up and run in, and that might have
led to anything.”
“So you rang me up!”
“It was my last brilliant inspiration---a
sort of flash in the brain-pan before the end---and I remember very little
about it. I was more asleep than awake
at the time.”
“You sounded like it, Raffles, now that
one has the clue.”
“I can’t remember a word I said, or what
was the end of it, Bunny.”
“You fell in a heap before you came to the
end.”
“You didn’t hear that through the
telephone?”
“As though we had been in
the same room: only I thought it was Maguire who had stolen a march on you and
knocked you out.”
I had never seen Raffles more interested
and impressed; but at this point his smile altered, his eyes softened, and I
found my hand in his.
“You thought that, and yet you came like a
shot to do battle for my body with Barney Maguire! Jack-the-Giant-killer wasn’t in it with you,
Bunny!”
“It was no credit to me---it was rather
the other thing,” said I, remembering my rashness and my luck, and confessing
both in a breath. “You know old Swigger
Morrision?” I added in final explanation.
“I had been dining with him at his club!”
Raffles shook his long old head. And the kindly light in his eyes was still my
infinite reward.
“I don’t care,” said he, “how deeply you
had been dining: in vino veritas, Bunny, and your pluck would always
out! I have never doubted it, and I
never shall. In fact, I rely on nothing
else to get us out of this mess.”
My face must have fallen, as my heart sank
at these words. I had said to myself
that we were out of the mess already---that we had merely to make a clean
escape from the house---now the easiest thing in the world. But as I looked at Raffles, as Raffles looked
at me, on the threshold of the room where the three sleepers slept on without
sound or movement, I grasped the real problem that lay before us. It was twofold; and the funny thing was that
I had seen both horns of the dilemma for myself, before Raffles came to his
senses. But with Raffles in his right
mind, I had ceased to apply my own, or to carry my share of our common burden
another inch. It had been an unconscious
withdrawal on my part, an instinctive tribute to my leader; but I was
sufficiently ashamed of it as we stood and faced the problem in each other’s
eyes.
“If
we simply cleared out,” continued Raffles, “you would be incriminated in the
first place as my accomplice, and once they had you they would have a compass
with the needle pointing straight to me.
They mustn’t have either of us, Bunny, or they will get us both. And for my part they may as well!”
I echoed a sentiment that was generosity
itself in Raffles, but in my case a mere truism.
“It’s easy enough for me,” he went on. “I am a common house-breaker, and I
escape. They don’t know me from Noah. But they do know you; and how do you come to
let me escape? What has happened to you,
Bunny? That’s the crux. What could have happened after they all
dropped off?” And for a minute Raffles
frowned and smiled like a sensation novelist working out a plot; then the light
broke, and transfigured him through his burnt cork. “I’ve got it, Bunny!” he exclaimed. “You took some of the stuff yourself, though
of course not nearly so much as they did.
“Splendid!” I cried. “They really were pressing it upon me at the
end, and I did say it must be very little.”
“You dozed off in your turn, but you were
naturally the first to come to yourself.
I had flown; so had the gold brick, the jeweled belt, and the silver
statuette. You tried to rouse the others. You couldn’t succeed; nor would you if you
did try. So what did you do? What’s the only really innocent thing you
could do in the circumstances?”
“Go for the police,” I suggested
dubiously, little relishing the prospect.
“There’s a telephone installed for the
purpose,” said Raffles. “I should ring
them up, if I were you. Try not to look
blue about it, Bunny. They’re quite the
nicest fellows in the world, and what you have to tell them is a mere microbe
to the camels “I’ve made them swallow without a grain of salt. It’s really the most convincing story one
could conceive; but unfortunately there’s another point which will take more
explaining away.”
And even Raffles looked grave enough as I
nodded.
“You mean that they’ll find out you rang
me up?”
“They may,” said Raffles. “I see that I managed to replace the receiver
all right. But still---they may.”
“I’m afraid they will,” said I,
uncomfortably. “I’m very much afraid I
gave something of the kind away. You
see, you had not replaced the
receiver; it was dangling over you where you lay. This very question came up, and the brutes
themselves seemed so quick to see its possibilities that I thought best to take
the bull by the horns and own that I had been rung up by somebody. To be absolutely honest, I even went so far
as to say I thought it was Raffles!”
“You didn’t, Bunny!”
“What could I say? I was obliged to think of somebody, and I saw
they were not going to recognize you. So
I put up a yarn about a wager we had made about this very trap of
Maguire’s. You see, Raffles, I’ve never
properly told you how I got in, and there’s no time now; but the first thing I
had said was that I half expected to find you here before me. That was in case they spotted you at
once. But it made all that part about
the telephone fit in rather well.”
“I should think it did, Bunny,” murmured
Raffles, in a tone that added sensibly to my reward. “I couldn’t have done it better myself, and
you will forgive my saying that you have never I your life done half so
well. Talk about that crack you gave me
on the head! You have made it up to me a
hundredfold by all you have done to-night.
But the bother of it is that there’s still so much to do, and to hit
upon, and so precious little time for thought as well as action.”
I took out my watch and showed it to
Raffles without a word. It was three
o’clock in the morning, and the latter end of March. In little more than an hour there would be
dim daylight in the streets. Raffles
roused himself from a reverie with sudden decision.
“There’s only one thing for it, Bunny,”
said he. “We must trust each other and
divide the labor. You ring up the
police, and leave the rest to me.”
“You haven’t hit upon any reason for the
sort of burglar they think you were, ringing up the kind of man they know I
am?”
“Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so, and
after all it isn’t for you to give the explanation. It would be highly suspicious if you did.”
“So it would,” I agreed.
“Then will you trust me to hit on
something---if possible before morning---in any case by the time it’s
wanted? I won’t fail you, Bunny. You must see how I can never, never fail you
after to-night!”
That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and
remained on guard over the three sleepers while Raffles stole upstairs. I have since learned that there were servants
at the top of the house, and in the basement a man, who actually heard some of
our proceedings! But he was mercifully
too accustomed to nocturnal orgies, and those of a far more uproarious
character, to appear unless summoned to the scene. I believe he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made of his exit; he let
himself out, and told me afterward that the first person he encountered in the
street was the constable on the beat.
Raffles wished him good-morning, as well he might; for he had been
upstairs to wash his face and hands; and in the great prize-fighter’s great hat
and fur coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of his
having the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver statuette of
Maguire in the other, and round his waist the jeweled belt presented to that
worthy by the State of Nevada.
My immediate part was a little hard after
the excitement of those small hours. I
will only say that we had agreed that it would be wisest for me to lie like a
log among the rest for half an hour, before staggering to me feet and rousing
house and police; and that in that half-hour Barney Maguire crashed on the
floor, without waking either himself or his companions, though not without
bringing my beating heart into the very roof of my mouth.
It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with
bell and telephone. In a few minutes we
had the house congested with disheveled domestics, irascible doctors, and
arbitrary minions of the law. If I told
my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and
consistent tale, even without that confirmation which none of the other victims
was as yet sufficiently recovered to supply.
And in the end I was permitted to retire from the scene until required
to give further information, or to identify the prisoner whom the good police
confidently expected to make before the day was out.
I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my
hansom. His face alarmed me more than
any I had left in
“Your flat’s been entered in the night,
sir,” he cried. “The thieves have taken
everything they could lay hands on.”
“Thieves in my flat!” I ejaculated
aghast. There were one or two
incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the
“The door’s been forced with a jimmy,”
said the porter. “It was the milkman who
found it out. There’s a constable up
there now.”
A constable poking about in my flat of all
others! I rushed upstairs without
waiting for the lift. The invader was
moistening his pencil between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had
penetrated no further than the forced door.
I dashed past him in a fever. I
kept my trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah lock. The lock was broken---the drawer void.
“Something valuable, sir?” inquired the
intrusive constable at my heels.
“Yes, indeed---some old family silver,” I
answered. It was quite true. But the family was not mine.
And not till then did the truth flash
across my mind. Nothing else of value
had been taken. But there was a
meaningless litter in all the rooms. I
turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street; it was his wife
who looked after the flat.
“Get rid of this idiot as quick as you
can,” I whispered. “I’m going straight
to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife
tidy the place while I’m gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I’m going as I am, this minute!”
And go I did, in the first hansom I could
find---but not straight to Scotland Yard.
I stopped the cab in Picadilly on the way.
Old Raffles opened his own door to
me. I cannot remember finding him
fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way. Could I paint a picture of Raffles with
something other than my pen, it would be as I saw him that bright March
morning, at his open door in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray,
cool and gay and breezy as incarnate spring.
“What on earth did you do it for?” I asked
within.
“It was the only solution,” he answered,
handing me the cigarettes. “I saw it the
moment I got outside.”
“I don’t see it yet.”
“Why should a burglar call on an innocent
gentleman away from home?”
“That’s what we couldn’t make out.”
“I tell you I got it directly I had left
you. He called you away in order to burglr you too, of course!”
And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all
his incomparable radiance and audacity.
“But why me?” I asked. “Why on earth should he burgle me?”
“My dear Bunny, we must leave something to
the imagination of the police. But we
will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was the dead of night when Maguire first
took us to his house; it was at the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and you
meet queer fish at the Imperial Boxing Club.
You may remember that he telephoned to his man to prepare supper for us,
and that you and he discussed telephones and treasure as we marched through the
midnight streets. He was certainly
bucking about his trophies, and for the sake of the argument you will be good
enough to admit that you probably bucked about yours. What happens?
You are overheard; you are followed; you are worked into the same
scheme, and robbed on the same night.”
“And you really think this will meet the case?”
“I am quite certain of it, Bunny, so far
as it rests with us to meet the case at all.”
“Then give me another cigarette, my dear
fellow, and let me push on to Scotland Yard.”
Raffles held up both hands in admiring
horror.
“Scotland Yard!”
“To give a false description of what you
took from the drawer in my wardrobe.”
“A false description! Bunny, you have no more to learn from
me. Time was when I wouldn’t have let
you go there without me to retrieve an umbrella---let along a lost cause!”
And for once I was not sorry for Raffles
to have the last unworthy word, as he stood once more at his outer door and
gaily waved me down the stairs.