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Rupert Brooke - "The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke"

Booth Tarkington - "The Turmoil, A Novel"

E. Nesbit - "Many Voices"

B. M. Bower - "Good Indian"

A Thief in the Night

E >> E. W. Hornung >> A Thief in the Night




I admitted that we might be safe for three or four weeks. Raffles
held out his hand.

"Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and smoke the cigarette
of Sullivan and peace! A lot may happen in three or four weeks;
and what should you say if this turned out to be the last as well
as the least of all. my crimes? I must own that it seems to me
their natural and fitting end, though I might have stopped more
characteristically than with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I
make no promises, Bunny; now I have got these things, I may be
unable to resist using them once more. But with this war one gets
all. the excitement one requires - and rather more than usual may
happen in three or four weeks?"

Was he thinking even then of volunteering for the front? Had he
already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his
life - nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and
shall never know. Yet his words were strangely prophetic, even to
the three or four weeks in which those events happened that
imperilled the fabric of our empire, and rallied her sons from the
four winds to fight beneath her banner on the veldt. It all. seems
very ancient history now. But I remember nothing better or more
vividly than the last words of Raffles upon his last crime, unless
it be the pressure of his hand as he said them, or the rather sad
twinkle in his tired eyes.




The Last Word


The last of all. these tales of Raffles is from a fresher and a
sweeter pen. I give it exactly as it came to me, in a letter which
meant more to me than it can possibly mean to any other reader.
And yet, it may stand for something with those for whom these pale
reflections have a tithe of the charm that the real man had for me;
and it is to leave such persons thinking yet a little better of him
(and not wasting another thought on me) that I am permitted to
retail the very last word about their hero and mine.

The letter was my first healing after a chance encounter and a
sleepless night; and I print every word of it except the last

"39 CAMPDEN GROVE COURT, W.,
"June 28, 1900.

"DEAR HARRY: You may have wondered at the very few words I could
find to say to you when we met so strangely yesterday. I did not
mean to be unkind. I was grieved to see you so cruelly hurt and
lame. I could not grieve when at last I made you tell me how it
happened. I honor and envy every man of you - every name in those
dreadful lists that fill the papers every day. But I knew about
Mr. Raffles, and I did not know about you, and there was something
I longed to tell you about him, something I could not tell you in
a minute in the street, or indeed by word of mouth at all. That
is why I asked you for your address.

"You said I spoke as if I had known Mr. Raffles. Of course I
have often seen him playing cricket, and heard about him and you.
But I only once met him, and that was the night after you and I
met last. I have always supposed that you knew all. about our
meeting. Yesterday I could see that you knew nothing. So I
have made up my mind to tell you every word.

"That night - I mean the next night - they were all. going out to
several places, but I stayed behind at Palace Gardens. I had
gone up to the drawing-room after dinner, and was just putting on
the lights, when in walked Mr. Raffles from the balcony. I knew
him at once, because I happened to have watched him make his
hundred at Lord's only the day before. He seemed surprised that
no one had told me he was there, but the whole thing was such a
surprise that I hardly thought of that. I am afraid I must say
that it was not a very pleasant surprise. I felt instinctively
that he had come from you, and I confess that for the moment it
made me very angry indeed. Then in a breath he assured me that
you knew nothing of his coming, that you would never have allowed
him to come, but that he had taken it upon himself as your intimate
friend and one who would be mine as well. (I said that I would
tell you every word.)

"Well, we stood looking at each other for some time, and I was never
more convinced of anybody's straightness and sincerity; but he was
straight and sincere with me, and true to you that night, whatever
he may have been before and after. So I asked him why he had come,
and what had happened; and he said it was not what had happened, but
what might happen next; so I asked him if he was thinking of you,
and he just nodded, and told me that I knew very well what you had
done. But I began to wonder whether Mr. Raffles himself knew, and
I tried to get him to tell me what you had done, and he said I knew
as well as he did that you were one of the two men who had come to
the house the night before. I took some time to answer. I was
quite mystified by his manner. At last I asked him how he knew. I
can hear his answer now.

"'Because I was the other man,' he said quite quietly; 'because I
led him blindfold into the whole business, and would rather pay the
shot than see poor Bunny suffer for it.'

"Those were his words, but as he said them he made their meaning
clear by going over to the bell, and waiting with his finger ready
to ring for whatever assistance or protection I desired. Of course
I would not let him ring at all.; in fact, at first I refused to
believe him. Then he led me out into the balcony, and showed me
exactly how he had got up and in. He had broken in for the second
night running, and all. to tell me that the first night he had
brought you with him on false pretences. He had to tell me a
great deal more before I could quite believe him. But before he
went (as he had come) I was the one woman in the world who knew that
A. J. Raffles, the great cricketer, and the so-called 'amateur
cracksman' of equal notoriety, were one and the same person.

"He had told me his secret, thrown himself on my mercy, and put
his liberty if not his life in my hands, but all. for your sake,
Harry, to right you in my eyes at his own expense. And yesterday
I could see that you knew nothing whatever about it, that your
friend had died without telling you of his act of real and yet vain
self-sacrifice! Harry, I can only say that now I understand your
friendship, and the dreadful lengths to which it carried you. How
many in your place would not have gone as far for such a friend?
Since that night, at any rate, I for one have understood. It has
grieved me more than I can tell you, Harry, but I have always
understood.

"He spoke to me quite simply and frankly of his life. It was
wonderful to me then that he should speak of it as he did, and
still more wonderful that I should sit and listen to him as I did.
But I have often thought about it since, and have long ceased to
wonder at myself. There was an absolute magnetism about Mr.
Raffles which neither you nor I could resist. He had the strength
of personality which is a different thing from strength of
character; but when you meet both kinds together, they carry the
ordinary mortal off his or her feet. You must not imagine you are
the only one who would have served and followed him as you did.
When he told me it was all. a game to him, and the one game he knew
that was always exciting, always full of danger and of drama, I
could just then have found it in my heart to try the game myself!
Not that he treated me to any ingenious sophistries or paradoxical
perversities. It was just his natural charm and humor, and a
touch of sadness with it all., that appealed to something deeper
than one's reason and one's sense of right. Glamour, I suppose,
is the word. Yet there was far more in him than that. There were
depths, which called to depths; and you will not misunderstand me
when I say I think it touched him that a woman should listen to
him as I did, and in such circumstances. I know that it touched
me to think of such a life so spent, and that I came to myself and
implored him to give it all. up. I don't think I went on my knees
over it. But I am afraid I did cry; and that was the end. He
pretended not to notice anything, and then in an instant he froze
everything with a flippancy which jarred horribly at the time, but
has ever since touched me more than all. the rest. I remember that
I wanted to shake hands at the end. But Mr. Raffles only shook
his head, and for one instant his face was as sad as it was gallant
and gay all. the rest of the time. Then he went as he had come, in
his own dreadful way, and not a soul in the house knew that he had
been. And even you were never told!

"I didn't mean to write all. this about your own friend, whom you
knew so much better yourself, yet you see that even you did not
know how nobly he tried to undo the wrong he had done you; and now
I think I know why he kept it to himself. It is fearfully late
- or early - I seem to have been writing all. night - and I will
explain the matter in the fewest words. I promised Mr. Raffles
that I would write to you, Harry, and see you if I could. Well,
I did write, and I did mean to see you, but I never had an answer
to what I wrote. It was only one line, and I have long known you
never received it. I could not bring myself to write more, and
even those few words were merely slipped into one of the books
which you had given me. Years afterward these books, with my name
in them, must have been found in your rooms; at any rate they were
returned to me by somebody; and you could never have opened them,
for there was my line where I had left it. Of course you had never
seen it, and that was all. my fault. But it was too late to write
again. Mr. Raffles was supposed to have been drowned, and
everything was known about you both. But I still kept my own
independent knowledge to myself; to this day, no one else knows
that you were one of the two in Palace Gardens; and I still blame
myself more than you may think for nearly everything that has
happened since.

"You said yesterday that your going to the war and getting wounded
wiped out nothing that had gone before. I hope you are not growing
morbid about the past. It is not for me to condone it, and yet I
know that Mr. Raffles was what he was because he loved danger and
adventure, and that you were what you were because you loved Mr.
Raffles. But, even admitting it was all. as bad as bad could be, he
is dead, and you are punished. The world forgives, if it does not
forget. You are young enough to live everything down. Your part
in the war will help you in more ways than one. You were always
fond of writing. You have now enough to write about for a literary
lifetime. You must make a new name for yourself. You must Harry,
and you will!

"I suppose you know that my aunt, Lady Melrose, died some years ago?
She was the best friend I had in the world, and it is thanks to her
that I am living my own life now in the one way after my own heart.
This is a new block of flats, one of those where they do everything
for you; and though mine is tiny, it is more than all. I shall ever
want. One does just exactly what one likes - and you must blame
that habit for all. that is least conventional in what I have said.
Yet I should like you to understand why it is that I have said so
much, and, indeed, left nothing unsaid. It is because I want never
to have to say or hear another word about anything that is past and
over. You may answer that I run no risk! Nevertheless, if you did
care to come and see me some day as an old friend, we might find
one or two new points of contact, for I am rather trying to write
myself! You might almost guess as much from this letter; it is
long enough for anything; but, Harry, if it makes you realize that
one of your oldest friends is glad to have seen you, and will be
gladder still to see you again, and to talk of anything and
everything except the past, I shall cease to be ashamed even of
its length!

"And so good-by for the present from
"____"



I omit her name and nothing else. Did I not say in the beginning
that it should never be sullied by association with mine? And
yet - and yet - even as I write I have a hope in my heart of hearts
which is not quite consistent with that sentiment. It is as faint
a hope as man ever had, and yet its audacity makes the pen tremble
in my fingers. But, if it be ever realized, I shall owe more than
I could deserve in a century of atonement to one who atoned more
nobly than I ever can. And to think that to the end I never heard
one word of it from Raffles!

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