Chapter 2

"Be quick!" she cried in a harsh whisper, and pointed peremptorily to
the porch.

But I stood stubbornly before her, my heart hardened by her hardness,
and perversely indifferent to all else. And as I stood I saw the
letter she had written, in the hand with which she pointed, crushed
into a ball.

"Quickly!" She stamped her foot. "Quickly--_if you ever cared!_"

This in a whisper, without bitterness, without contempt, but with a
sudden wild entreaty that breathed upon the dying embers of my poor
manhood. I drew myself together for the last time in her sight. I
turned, and left her as she wished--for her sake, not for mine. And as
I went I heard her tearing her letter into little pieces, and the
little pieces falling on the floor.

Then I remembered Raffles, and could have killed him for what he had
done. Doubtless by this time he was safe and snug in the Albany: what
did my fate matter to him? Never mind; this should be the end between
him and me as well; it was the end of everything, this dark night's
work! I would go and tell him so. I would jump into a cab and drive
there and then to his accursed rooms. But first I must escape from the
trap in which he had been so ready to leave me. And on the very steps
I drew back in despair. They were searching the shrubberies between
the drive and the road; a policeman's lantern kept flashing in and out
among the laurels, while a young man in evening-clothes directed him
from the gravel sweep. It was this young man whom I must dodge, but at
my first step in the gravel he wheeled round, and it was Raffles
himself.

"Hulloa!" he cried. "So you've come up to join the dance as well! Had
a look inside, have you? You'll be better employed in helping to draw
the cover in front here. It's all right, officer--only another
gentleman from the Empress Rooms."

And we made a brave show of assisting in the futile search, until the
arrival of more police, and a broad hint from an irritable sergeant,
gave us an excellent excuse for going off arm-in-arm. But it was
Raffles who had thrust his arm through mine. I shook him off as we
left the scene of shame behind.

"My dear Bunny!" he exclaimed. "Do you know what brought me back?"

I answered savagely that I neither knew nor cared.

"I had the very devil of a squeak for it," he went on. "I did the
hurdles over two or three garden-walls, but so did the flyer who was
on my tracks, and he drove me back into the straight and down to High
Street like any lamplighter. If he had only had the breath to sing out
it would have been all up with me then; as it was I pulled off my coat
the moment I was round the corner, and took a ticket for it at the
Empress Rooms."

"I suppose you had one for the dance that was going on," I growled.
Nor would it have been a coincidence for Raffles to have had a ticket
for that or any other entertainment of the London season.

"I never asked what the dance was," he returned. "I merely took the
opportunity of revising my toilet, and getting rid of that rather
distinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now. They're not too
particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I
should have seen someone I knew if I had gone right in. I might even
have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy about you, Bunny."

"It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie to
me, and to inveigle me with your lies into that house of all
houses--that was not like you, Raffles--and I never shall forgive it
or you!"

Raffles took my arm again. We were near the High Street gates of
Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.

"Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he.
"I did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen to
me."

"If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough," I
retorted. "But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me."

"I cared so much that I came back to see."

"You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been done.
Raffles--Raffles--don't you know who she was?"

It was my hand that gripped his arm once more.

"I guessed," he answered, gravely enough even for me.

"It was she who saved me, not you," I said. "And that is the bitterest
part of all!"

Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had
lost--through him--forever. As I ended we turned into High Street; in
the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the band reached us
from the Empress Rooms; and I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles
turned that way.

"Bunny," said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult in
a case like this--if ever there was or will be such another! Only
believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the smallest
shadow of a suspicion that _she_ was in the house."

And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring
myself to say the words.

"You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country," he
pursued.

"And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave of bitterness: "that
letter she had written at dead of night, and stolen down to post, it
was the one I have been waiting for all these days! I should have got
it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it, never hear from her again, nor
have another chance in this world or in the next. I don't say it was
all your fault. You no more knew that she was there than I did. But
you told me a deliberate lie about her people, and that I never shall
forgive."

I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The hansom was
waiting at the curb.

"I can say no more than I have said," returned Raffles with a shrug.
"Lie or no lie, I didn't tell it to bring you with me, but to get you
to give me certain information without feeling a beast about it. But,
as a matter of fact, it was no lie about old Hector Carruthers and
Lord Lochmaben, and anybody but you would have guessed the truth."

"What is the truth?"

"I as good as told you, Bunny, again and again."

"Then tell me now."

"If you read your paper there would be no need; but if you want to
know, old Carruthers headed the list of the Birthday Honors, and Lord
Lochmaben is the title of his choice."

And this miserable quibble was not a lie! My lip curled, I turned my
back without a word, and drove home to my Mount Street flat in a new
fury of savage scorn. Not a lie, indeed! It was the one that is half a
truth, the meanest lie of all, and the very last to which I could
have dreamt that Raffles would stoop. So far there had been a degree
of honor between us, if only of the kind understood to obtain between
thief and thief. Now all that was at an end. Raffles had cheated me.
Raffles had completed the ruin of my life. I was done with Raffles, as
she who shall not be named was done with me.

And yet, even while I blamed him most bitterly, and utterly abominated
his deceitful deed, I could not but admit in my heart that the result
was out of all proportion to the intent: he had never dreamt of doing
me this injury, or indeed any injury at all. Intrinsically the deceit
had been quite venial, the reason for it obviously the reason that
Raffles had given me. It was quite true that he had spoken of this
Lochmaben peerage as a new creation, and of the heir to it in a
fashion only applicable to Alick Carruthers. He had given me hints,
which I had been too dense to take, and he had certainly made more
than one attempt to deter me from accompanying him on this fatal
emprise; had he been more explicit, I might have made it my business
to deter him. I could not say in my heart that Raffles had failed to
satisfy such honor as I might reasonably expect to subsist between us.
Yet it seems to me to require a superhuman sanity always and
unerringly to separate cause from effect, achievement from intent.
And I, for one, was never quite able to do so in this case.

I could not be accused of neglecting my newspaper during the next few
wretched days. I read every word that I could find about the attempted
jewel-robbery in Palace Gardens, and the reports afforded me my sole
comfort. In the first place, it was only an attempted robbery; nothing
had been taken, after all. And then--and then--the one member of the
household who had come nearest to a personal encounter with either of
us was unable to furnish any description of the man--had even
expressed a doubt as to the likelihood of identification in the event
of an arrest!

I will not say with what mingled feelings I read and dwelt on that
announcement. It kept a certain faint glow alive within me until the
morning brought me back the only presents I had ever made her. They
were books; jewellery had been tabooed by the authorities. And the
books came back without a word, though the parcel was directed in her
hand.

I had made up my mind not to go near Raffles again, but in my heart I
already regretted my resolve. I had forfeited love, I had sacrificed
honor, and now I must deliberately alienate myself from the one being
whose society might yet be some recompense for all that I had lost.
The situation was aggravated by the state of my exchequer. I expected
an ultimatum from my banker by every post. Yet this influence was
nothing to the other. It was Raffles I loved. It was not the dark life
we led together, still less its base rewards; it was the man himself,
his gayety, his humor, his dazzling audacity, his incomparable courage
and resource. And a very horror of turning to him again in mere need
of greed set the seal on my first angry resolution. But the anger was
soon gone out of me, and when at length Raffles bridged the gap by
coming to me, I rose to greet him almost with a shout.

He came as though nothing had happened; and, indeed, not very many
days had passed, though they might have been months to me. Yet I
fancied the gaze that watched me through our smoke a trifle less sunny
than it had been before. And it was a relief to me when he came with
few preliminaries to the inevitable point.

"Did you ever hear from her, Bunny?" he asked.

"In a way," I answered. "We won't talk about it, if you don't mind,
Raffles."

"That sort of way!" he exclaimed. He seemed both surprised and
disappointed.

"Yes," I said, "that sort of way. It's finished. What did you expect?"

"I don't know," said Raffles. "I only thought that the girl who went
so far to get a fellow out of a tight place might go a little farther
to keep him from getting into another."

"I don't see why she should," said I, honestly enough, yet with the
irritation of a less just feeling deep down in my inmost
consciousness.

"Yet you did hear from her?" he persisted.

"She sent me back my poor presents, without a word," I said, "if you
call that hearing."

I could not bring myself to own to Raffles that I had given her only
books. He asked if I was sure that she had sent them back herself; and
that was his last question. My answer was enough for him. And to this
day I cannot say whether it was more in relief than in regret that he
laid a hand upon my shoulder.

"So you are out of Paradise after all!" said Raffles. "I was not sure,
or I should have come round before. Well, Bunny, if they don't want
you there, there's a little Inferno in the Albany where you will be as
welcome as ever!"

And still, with all the magic mischief of his smile, there was that
touch of sadness which I was yet to read aright.

The Chest of Silver

Like all the tribe of which I held him head, Raffles professed the
liveliest disdain for unwieldy plunder of any description; it might be
old Sheffield, or it might be solid silver or gold, but if the thing
was not to be concealed about the person, he would have none whatever
of it. Unlike the rest of us, however, in this as in all else, Raffles
would not infrequently allow the acquisitive spirit of the mere
collector to silence the dictates of professional prudence. The old
oak chests, and even the mahogany wine-cooler, for which he had
doubtless paid like an honest citizen, were thus immovable with pieces
of crested plate, which he had neither the temerity to use nor the
hardihood to melt or sell. He could but gloat over them behind locked
doors, as I used to tell him, and at last one afternoon I caught him
at it. It was in the year after that of my novitiate, a halcyon period
at the Albany, when Raffles left no crib uncracked, and I played
second-murderer every time. I had called in response to a telegram in
which he stated that he was going out of town, and must say good-by
to me before he went. And I could only think that he was inspired by
the same impulse toward the bronzed salvers and the tarnished teapots
with which I found him surrounded, until my eyes lit upon the enormous
silver-chest into which he was fitting them one by one.

"Allow me, Bunny! I shall take the liberty of locking both doors
behind you and putting the key in my pocket," said Raffles, when he
had let me in. "Not that I mean to take you prisoner, my dear fellow;
but there are those of us who can turn keys from the outside, though
it was never an accomplishment of mine."

"Not Crawshay again?" I cried, standing still in my hat.

Raffles regarded me with that tantalizing smile of his which might
mean nothing, yet which often meant so much; and in a flash I was
convinced that our most jealous enemy and dangerous rival, the doyen
of an older school, had paid him yet another visit.

"That remains to be seen," was the measured reply; "and I for one have
not set naked eye on the fellow since I saw him off through that
window and left myself for dead on this very spot. In fact, I imagined
him comfortably back in jail."

"Not old Crawshay!" said I. "He's far too good a man to be taken
twice. I should call him the very prince of professional cracksmen."

"Should you?" said Raffles coldly, with as cold an eye looking into
mine. "Then you had better prepare to repel princes when I'm gone."

"But gone where?" I asked, finding a corner for my hat and coat, and
helping myself to the comforts of the venerable dresser which was one
of our friend's greatest treasures. "Where is it you are off to, and
why are you taking this herd of white elephants with you?"

Raffles bestowed the cachet of his smile on my description of his
motley plate. He joined me in one of his favorite cigarettes, only
shaking a superior head at his own decanter.

"One question at a time, Bunny," said he. "In the first place, I am
going to have these rooms freshened up with a potful of paint, the
electric light, and the telephone you've been at me about so long."

"Good!" I cried. "Then we shall be able to talk to each other day and
night!"

"And get overheard and run in for our pains? I shall wait till you
_are_ run in, I think," said Raffles cruelly. "But the rest's a
necessity: not that I love new paint or am pining for electric light,
but for reasons which I will just breathe in your private ear, Bunny.
You must not try to take them too seriously; but the fact is, there is
just the least bit of a twitter against me in this rookery of an
Albany. It must have been started by that tame old bird, Policeman
Mackenzie; it isn't very bad as yet, but it needn't be that to reach
my ears. Well, it was open to me either to clear out altogether, and
so confirm whatever happened to be in the air, or to go off for a
time, under some arrangement which would give the authorities ample
excuse for overhauling every inch of my rooms. Which would you have
done, Bunny?"

"Cleared out, while I could!" said I devoutly.

"So I should have thought," rejoined Raffles. "Yet you see the merit
of my plan. I shall leave every mortal thing unlocked."

"Except that," said I, kicking the huge oak case with the iron bands
and clamps, and the baize lining fast disappearing under heavy
packages bearing the shapes of urns and candelabra.

"That," replied Raffles, "is neither to go with me nor to remain
here."

"Then what do you propose to do with it?"

"You have your banking account, and your banker," he went on. This was
perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one
open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments of emergency.

"Well?"

"Well, pay in this bundle of notes this afternoon, and say you have
had a great week at Liverpool and Lincoln; then ask them if they can
do with your silver while you run over to Paris for a merry Easter. I
should tell them it's rather heavy--a lot of old family stuff that
you've a good mind to leave with them till you marry and settle down."

I winced at this, but consented to the rest after a moment's
consideration. After all, and for more reasons that I need enumerate,
it was a plausible tale enough. And Raffles had no banker; it was
quite impossible for him to explain, across any single counter, the
large sums of hard cash which did sometimes fall into his hands; and
it might well be that he had nursed my small account in view of the
very quandary which had now arisen. On all grounds, it was impossible
for me to refuse him, and I am still glad to remember that my assent
was given, on the whole, ungrudgingly.

"But when will the chest be ready for me?" I merely asked, as I
stuffed the notes into my cigarette case. "And how are we to get it
out of this, in banking hours, without attracting any amount of
attention at this end?"

Raffles gave me an approving nod.

"I'm glad to see you spot the crux so quickly, Bunny. I have thought
of your taking it round to your place first, under cloud of night; but
we are bound to be seen even so, and on the whole it would look far
less suspicious in broad daylight. It will take you some twelve or
fifteen minutes to drive to your bank in a growler, so if you are here
with one at a quarter to ten to-morrow morning, that will exactly meet
the case. But you must have a hansom this minute if you mean to
prepare the way with those notes this afternoon!"

It was only too like the Raffles of those days to dismiss a subject
and myself in the same breath, with a sudden nod, and a brief grasp of
the hand he was already holding out for mine. I had a great mind to
take another of his cigarettes instead, for there were one or two
points on which he had carefully omitted to enlighten me. Thus, I had
still to learn the bare direction of his journey; and it was all that
I could do to drag it from him as I stood buttoning my coat and
gloves.

"Scotland," he vouchsafed at last.

"At Easter," I remarked.

"To learn the language," he explained. "I have no tongue but my own,
you see, but I try to make up for it by cultivating every shade of
that. Some of them have come in useful even to your knowledge, Bunny:
what price my Cockney that night in St. John's Wood? I can keep up my
end in stage Irish, real Devonshire, very fair Norfolk, and three
distinct Yorkshire dialects. But my good Galloway Scots might be
better, and I mean to make it so."

"You still haven't told me where to write to you."

"I'll write to you first, Bunny."

"At least let me see you off," I urged at the door. "I promise not to
look at your ticket if you tell me the train!"

"The eleven-fifty from Euston."

"Then I'll be with you by quarter to ten."

And I left him without further parley, reading his impatience in his
face. Everything, to be sure, seemed clear enough without that fuller
discussion which I loved and Raffles hated. Yet I thought we might at
least have dined together, and in my heart I felt just the least bit
hurt, until it occurred to me as I drove to count the notes in my
cigarette case. Resentment was impossible after that. The sum ran well
into three figures, and it was plain that Raffles meant me to have a
good time in his absence. So I told his lie with unction at my bank,
and made due arrangements for the reception of his chest next
morning. Then I repaired to our club, hoping he would drop in, and
that we might dine together after all. In that I was disappointed. It
was nothing, however, to the disappointment awaiting me at the Albany,
when I arrived in my four-wheeler at the appointed hour next morning.

"Mr. Raffles 'as gawn, sir," said the porter, with a note of reproach
in his confidential undertone. The man was a favorite with Raffles,
who used him and tipped him with consummate tact, and he knew me only
less well.

"Gone!" I echoed aghast. "Where on earth to?"

"Scotland, sir."

"Already?"

"By the eleven-fifty lawst night."

"Last night! I thought he meant eleven-fifty this morning!"

"He knew you did, sir, when you never came, and he told me to tell you
there was no such train."

I could have rent my garments in mortification and annoyance with
myself and Raffles. It was as much his fault as mine. But for his
indecent haste in getting rid of me, his characteristic abruptness at
the end, there would have been no misunderstanding or mistake.

"Any other message?" I inquired morosely.

"Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as you was goin' to take
chawge of it time he's away, and I've a friend ready to lend a 'and in
getting it on the cab. It's a rare 'eavy 'un, but Mr. Raffles an' me
could lift it all right between us, so I dessay me an' my friend can."

For my own part, I must confess that its weight concerned me less than
the vast size of that infernal chest, as I drove with it past club and
park at ten o'clock in the morning. Sit as far back as I might in the
four-wheeler, I could conceal neither myself nor my connection with
the huge iron-clamped case upon the roof: in my heated imagination its
wood was glass through which all the world could see the guilty
contents. Once an officious constable held up the traffic at our
approach, and for a moment I put a blood-curdling construction upon
the simple ceremony. Low boys shouted after us--or if it was not after
us, I thought it was--and that their cry was "Stop thief!" Enough said
of one of the most unpleasant cab-drives I ever had in my life.
_Horresco referens._

At the bank, however, thanks to the foresight and liberality of
Raffles, all was smooth water. I paid my cabman handsomely, gave a
florin to the stout fellow in livery whom he helped with the chest,
and could have pressed gold upon the genial clerk who laughed like a
gentleman at my jokes about the Liverpool winners and the latest
betting on the Family Plate. I was only disconcerted when he informed
me that the bank gave no receipts for deposits of this nature. I am
now aware that few London banks do. But it is pleasing to believe that
at the time I looked--what I felt--as though all I valued upon earth
were in jeopardy.

I should have got through the rest of that day happily enough, such
was the load off my mind and hands, but for an extraordinary and most
disconcerting note received late at night from Raffles himself. He was
a man who telegraphed freely, but seldom wrote a letter. Sometimes,
however, he sent a scribbled line by special messenger; and overnight,
evidently in the train, he had scribbled this one to post in the small
hours at Crewe:

"'Ware Prince of Professors! _He was in the offing when I
left._ If slightest cause for uneasiness about bank, withdraw
at once and keep in own rooms like good chap.

"A. J. R.

"_P. S._--Other reasons, as you shall hear."

There was a nice nightcap for a puzzled head! I had made rather an
evening of it, what with increase of funds and decrease of anxiety,
but this cryptic admonition spoiled the remainder of my night. It had
arrived by a late post, and I only wished that I had left it all night
in my letter-box.

What exactly did it mean? And what exactly must I do? These were
questions that confronted me with fresh force in the morning.

The news of Crawshay did not surprise me. I was quite sure that Raffles
had been given good reason to bear him in mind before his journey, even if
he had not again beheld the ruffian in the flesh. That ruffian and that
journey might be more intimately connected than I had yet supposed.
Raffles never told me all. Yet the solid fact held good--held better than
ever--that I had seen his plunder safely planted in my bank. Crawshay
himself could not follow it _there_. I was certain he had not followed my
cab: in the acute self-consciousness induced by that abominable drive, I
should have known it in my bones if he had. I thought of the porter's
friend who had helped me with the chest. No, I remember him as well as I
remembered Crawshay; they were quite different types.

To remove that vile box from the bank, on top of another cab, with no
stronger pretext and no further instructions, was not to be thought of
for a moment. Yet I did think of it, for hours. I was always anxious
to do my part by Raffles; he had done more than his by me, not once or
twice, to-day or yesterday, but again and again from the very first. I
need not state the obvious reasons I had for fighting shy of the
personal custody of his accursed chest. Yet he had run worse risks for
me, and I wanted him to learn that he, too, could depend on a devotion
not unworthy of his own.

In my dilemma I did what I have often done when at a loss for light
and leading. I took hardly any lunch, but went to Northumberland
Avenue and had a Turkish bath instead. I know nothing so cleansing to
mind as well as body, nothing better calculated to put the finest
possible edge on such judgment as one may happen to possess. Even
Raffles, without an ounce to lose or a nerve to soothe, used to own a
sensuous appreciation of the peace of mind and person to be gained in
this fashion when all others failed. For me, the fun began before the
boots were off one's feet; the muffled foot-falls, the thin sound of
the fountain, even the spent swathed forms upon the couches, and the
whole clean, warm, idle atmosphere, were so much unction to my simpler
soul. The half-hour in the hot-rooms I used to count but a strenuous
step to a divine lassitude of limb and accompanying exaltation of
intellect. And yet--and yet--it was in the hottest room of all, in a
temperature of 270 deg. Fahrenheit, that the bolt fell from the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ which I had bought outside the bath.

I was turning over the hot, crisp pages, and positively revelling in
my fiery furnace, when the following headlines and leaded paragraphs
leapt to my eye with the force of a veritable blow:

BANK ROBBERS IN THE WEST END--DARING
AND MYSTERIOUS CRIME

An audacious burglary and dastardly assault have been
committed on the premises of the City and Suburban Bank in
Sloane Street, W. From the details so far to hand, the
robbery appears to have been deliberately planned and
adroitly executed in the early hours of this morning.