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Laurence Sterne - "A Sentimental Journey"

William Cowper Brann - "*Project Gutenberg's Etext of Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast*"

Henry Drummond - "Addresses"

Alexandre Dumas - "The Count of Monte Cristo"

Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman

E >> E. W. Hornung >> Raffles, Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman




The constable's face had already relaxed, and now a grin peeped
under the limp moustache. "I daresay there's many as feels like
that, sir," said he.

"Exactly; and I say what I feel, that's all," said Raffles
airily. "But seriously, officer, is a valuable thing like this
quite safe in a case like that?"

"Safe enough as long as I'm here," replied the other, between
grim jest and stout earnest. Raffles studied his face; he was
still watching Raffles; and I kept an eye on them both without
putting in my word.

"You appear to be single-handed," observed Raffles. "Is that
wise?"

The note of anxiety was capitally caught; it was at once
personal and public-spirited, that of the enthusiastic savant,
afraid for a national treasure which few appreciated as he did
himself. And, to be sure, the three of us now had this treasury
to ourselves; one or two others had been there when we entered;
but now they were gone.

"I'm not single-handed," said the officer, comfortably. "See
that seat by the door? One of the attendants sits there all day
long."

"Then where is he now?"

"Talking to another attendant just outside. If you listen
you'll hear them for yourself."

We listened, and we did hear them, but not just outside. In my
own mind I even questioned whether they were in the corridor
through which we had come; to me it sounded as though they were
just outside the corridor.

"You mean the fellow with the billiard-cue who was here when we
came in?" pursued Raffles.

"That wasn't a billiard-cue! It was a pointer," the intelligent
officer explained.

"It ought to be a javelin," said Raffles, nervously. "It ought
to be a poleaxe! The public treasure ought to be better guarded
than this. I shall write to the Times about it--you see if I
don't!"

All at once, yet somehow not so suddenly as to excite suspicion,
Raffles had become the elderly busybody with nerves; why, I
could not for the life of me imagine; and the policeman seemed
equally at sea.

"Lor' bless you, sir," said he, "I'm all right; don't you bother
your head about ME."

"But you haven't even got a truncheon!"

"Not likely to want one either. You see, sir, it's early as
yet; in a few minutes these here rooms will fill up; and there's
safety in numbers, as they say."

"Oh, it will fill up soon, will it?"

"Any minute now, sir."

"Ah!"

"It isn't often empty as long as this, sir. It's the Jubilee, I
suppose."

"Meanwhile, what if my friend and I had been professional
thieves? Why, we could have over-powered you in an instant, my
good fellow!"

"That you couldn't; leastways, not without bringing the whole
place about your ears."

"Well, I shall write to the Times, all the same. I'm a
connoisseur in all this sort of thing, and I won't have
unnecessary risks run with the nation's property. You said
there was an attendant just outside, but he sounds to me as
though he were at the other end of the corridor. I shall write
to-day!"

For an instant we all three listened; and Raffles was right.
Then I saw two things in one glance. Raffles had stepped a few
inches backward, and stood poised upon the ball of each foot,
his arms half raised, a light in his eyes. And another kind of
light was breaking over the crass features of our friend the
constable.

"Then shall I tell you what I'LL do?" he cried, with a sudden
clutch at the whistle-chain on his chest. The whistle flew out,
but it never reached his lips. There were a couple of sharp
smacks, like double barrels discharged all but simultaneously,
and the man reeled against me so that I could not help catching
him as he fell.

"Well done, Bunny! I've knocked him out--I've knocked him out!
Run you to the door and see if the attendants have heard
anything, and take them on if they have."

Mechanically I did as I was told. There was no time for
thought, still less for remonstrance or reproach, though my
surprise must have been even more complete than that of the
constable before Raffles knocked the sense out of him. Even in
my utter bewilderment, however, the instinctive caution of the
real criminal did not desert me. I ran to the door, but I
sauntered through it, to plant myself before a Pompeiian fresco
in the corridor; and there were the two attendants still
gossiping outside the further door; nor did they hear the dull
crash which I heard even as I watched them out of the corner of
each eye.

It was hot weather, as I have said, but the perspiration on my
body seemed already to have turned into a skin of ice. Then I
caught the faint reflection of my own face in the casing of the
fresco, and it frightened me into some semblance of myself as
Raffles joined me with his hands in his pockets. But my fear
and indignation were redoubled at the sight of him, when a
single glance convinced me that his pockets were as empty as his
hands, and his mad outrage the most wanton and reckless of his
whole career.

"Ah, very interesting, very interesting, but nothing to what
they have in the museum at Naples or in Pompeii itself. You
must go there some day, Bunny. I've a good mind to take you
myself. Meanwhile--slow march! The beggar hasn't moved an
eyelid. We may swing for him if you show indecent haste!"

"We!" I whispered. "We!"

And my knees knocked together as we came up to the chatting
attendants. But Raffles must needs interrupt them to ask the
way to the Prehistoric Saloon.

"At the top of the stairs."

"Thank you. Then we'll work round that way to the Egyptian
part."

And we left them resuming their providential chat.

"I believe you're mad," I said bitterly as we went.

"I believe I was," admitted Raffles; "but I'm not now, and I'll
see you through. A hundred and thirty-nine yards, wasn't it?
Then it can't be more than a hundred and twenty now--not as
much. Steady, Bunny, for God's sake. It's SLOW march--for our
lives."

There was this much management. The rest was our colossal luck.
A hansom was being paid off at the foot of the steps outside,
and in we jumped, Raffles shouting "Charing Cross!" for all
Bloomsbury to hear.

We had turned into Bloomsbury Street without exchanging a
syllable when he struck the trap-door with his fist.

"Where the devil are you driving us?"

"Charing Cross, sir."

"I said King's Cross! Round you spin, and drive like blazes, or
we miss our train! There's one to York at 10:35," added Raffles
as the trap-door slammed; "we'll book there, Bunny, and then
we'll slope through the subway to the Metropolitan, and so to
ground via Baker Street and Earl's Court."

And actually in half an hour he was seated once more in the
hired carrying chair, while the porter and I staggered upstairs
with my decrepit charge, for whose shattered strength even one
hour in Kew Gardens had proved too much! Then, and not until
then, when we had got rid of the porter and were alone at last,
did I tell Raffles, in the most nervous English at my command,
frankly and exactly what I thought of him and of his latest
deed. Once started, moreover, I spoke as I have seldom spoken
to living man; and Raffles, of all men, stood my abuse without a
murmur; or rather he sat it out, too astounded even to take off
his hat, though I thought his eyebrows would have lifted it from
his head.

"But it always was your infernal way," I was savagely
concluding. "You make one plan, and yet you tell me another--"

"Not to-day, Bunny, I swear!"

"You mean to tell me you really did start with the bare idea of
finding a place to hide in for a night?"

"Of course I did."

"It was to be the mere reconnoitre you pretended?"

"There was no pretence about it, Bunny."

"Then why on earth go and do what you did?"

"The reason would be obvious to anyone but you," said Raffles,
still with no unkindly scorn. "It was the temptation of a
minute--the final impulse of the fraction of a second, when
Roberto saw that I was tempted, and let me see that he saw it.
It's not a thing I care to do, and I sha'n't be happy till the
papers tell me the poor devil is alive. But a knock-out shot was
the only chance for us then."

"Why? You don't get run in for being tempted, nor yet for
showing that you are!"

"But I should have deserved running in if I hadn't yielded to
such a temptation as that, Bunny. It was a chance in a hundred
thousand! We might go there every day of our lives, and never
again be the only outsiders in the room, with the
billiard-marking Johnnie practically out of ear-shot at one and
the same time. It was a gift from the gods; not to have taken
it would have been flying in the face of Providence."

"But you didn't take it," said I. "You went and left it
behind."

I wish I had had a Kodak for the little smile with which Raffles
shook his head, for it was one that he kept for those great
moments of which our vocation is not devoid. All this time he
had been wearing his hat, tilted a little over eyebrows no
longer raised. And now at last I knew where the gold cup was.

It stood for days upon his chimney-piece, this costly trophy
whose ancient history and final fate filled newspaper columns
even in these days of Jubilee, and for which the flower of
Scotland Yard was said to be seeking high and low. Our
constable, we learnt, had been stunned only, and, from the
moment that I brought him an evening paper with the news,
Raffles's spirits rose to a height inconsistent with his equable
temperament, and as unusual in him as the sudden impulse upon
which he had acted with such effect. The cup itself appealed to
me no more than it had done before. Exquisite it might be,
handsome it was, but so light in the hand that the mere gold of
it would scarcely have poured three figures out of melting-pot.
And what said Raffles but that he would never melt it at all!

"Taking it was an offence against the laws of the land, Bunny.
That is nothing. But destroying it would be a crime against God
and Art, and may I be spitted on the vane of St. Mary Abbot's
if I commit it!"

Talk such as this was unanswerable; indeed, the whole affair had
passed the pale of useful comment; and the one course left to a
practical person was to shrug his shoulders and enjoy the joke.
This was not a little enhanced by the newspaper reports, which
described Raffles as a handsome youth, and his unwilling
accomplice as an older man of blackguardly appearance and low
type.

"Hits us both off rather neatly, Bunny," said he. "But what
none of them do justice to is my dear cup. Look at it; only
look at it, man! Was ever anything so rich and yet so chaste?
St. Agnes must have had a pretty bad time, but it would be
almost worth it to go down to posterity in such enamel upon such
gold. And then the history of the thing. Do you realize that
it's five hundred years old and has belonged to Henry the
Eighth and to Elizabeth among others? Bunny, when you have me
cremated, you can put my ashes in yonder cup, and lay us in the
deep-delved earth together!"

"And meanwhile?"

"It is the joy of my heart, the light of my life, the delight of
mine eye."

"And suppose other eyes catch sight of it?"

"They never must; they never shall."

Raffles would have been too absurd had he not been thoroughly
alive to his own absurdity; there was nevertheless an underlying
sincerity in his appreciation of any and every form of beauty,
which all his nonsense could not conceal. And his infatuation
for the cup was, as he declared, a very pure passion, since the
circum-stances debarred him from the chief joy of the average
collector, that of showing his treasure to his friends. At last,
however, and at the height of his craze, Raffles and reason
seemed to come together again as suddenly as they had parted
company in the Room of Gold.

"Bunny," he cried, flinging his newspaper across the room, "I've
got an idea after your own heart. I know where I can place it
after all!"

"Do you mean the cup?"

"I do."

"Then I congratulate you."

"Thanks."

"Upon the recovery of your senses."

"Thanks galore. But you've been confoundedly unsympathetic
about this thing, Bunny, and I don't think I shall tell you my
scheme till I've carried it out."

"Quite time enough," said I.

"It will mean your letting me loose for an hour or two under
cloud of this very night. To-morrow's Sunday, the Jubilee's on
Tuesday, and old Theobald's coming back for it."

"It doesn't much matter whether he's back or not if you go late
enough."

"I mustn't be late. They don't keep open. No, it's no use your
asking any questions. Go out and buy me a big box of Huntley &
Palmer's biscuits; any sort you like, only they must be theirs,
and absolutely the biggest box they sell."

"My dear man!"

"No questions, Bunny; you do your part and I'll do mine."

Subtlety and success were in his face. It was enough for me,
and I had done his extraordinary bidding within a quarter of an
hour. In another minute Raffles had opened the box and tumbled
all the biscuits into the nearest chair.

"Now newspapers!"

I fetched a pile. He bid the cup of gold a ridiculous farewell,
wrapped it up in newspaper after newspaper, and finally packed
it in the empty biscuit-box.

"Now some brown paper. I don't want to be taken for the
grocer's young man."

A neat enough parcel it made, when the string had been tied and
the ends cut close; what was more difficult was to wrap up
Raffles himself in such a way that even the porter should not
recognize him if they came face to face at the corner. And the
sun was still up. But Raffles would go, and when he did I
should not have known him myself.

He may have been an hour away. It was barely dusk when he
returned, and my first question referred to our dangerous ally,
the porter. Raffles had passed him unsuspected in going, but
had managed to avoid him altogether on the return journey,
which he had completed by way of the other entrance and the
roof. I breathed again.

"And what have you done with the cup?"

"Placed it!"

"How much for? How much for?"

"Let me think. I had a couple of cabs, and the postage was a
tanner, with another twopence for registration. Yes, it cost me
exactly five-and-eight."

"IT cost YOU! But what did you GET for it, Raffles?"

"Nothing, my boy."

"Nothing!"

"Not a crimson cent."

"I am not surprised. I never thought it had a market value. I
told you so in the beginning," I said, irritably. "But what on
earth have you done with the thing?"

"Sent it to the Queen."

"You haven't!"

Rogue is a word with various meanings, and Raffles had been one
sort of rogue ever since I had known him; but now, for once, he
was the innocent variety, a great gray-haired child, running
over with merriment and mischief.

"Well, I've sent it to Sir Arthur Bigge, to present to her
Majesty, with the loyal respects of the thief, if that will do
for you," said Raffles. "I thought they might take too much
stock of me at the G.P.O. if I addressed it to the Sovereign
her-self. Yes, I drove over to St. Martin's-le-Grand with it,
and I registered the box into the bargain. Do a thing properly
if you do it at all."

"But why on earth," I groaned, "do such a thing at all?"

"My dear Bunny, we have been reigned over for sixty years by
infinitely the finest monarch the world has ever seen. The
world is taking the present opportunity of signifying the fact
for all it is worth. Every nation is laying of its best at her
royal feet; every class in the community is doing its little
level--except ours. All I have done is to remove one reproach
from our fraternity."

At this I came round, was infected with his spirit, called him
the sportsman he always was and would be, and shook his
daredevil hand in mine; but, at the same time, I still had my
qualms.

"Supposing they trace it to us?" said I.

"There's not much to catch hold of in a biscuit-box by Huntley &
Palmer," replied Raffles; "that was why I sent you for one. And
I didn't write a word upon a sheet of paper which could possibly
be traced. I simply printed two or three on a virginal
post-card--another half-penny to the bad--which might have been
bought at any post-office in the kingdom. No, old chap, the
G.P.O. was the one real danger; there was one detective I
spotted for myself; and the sight of him has left me with a
thirst. Whisky and Sullivans for two, Bunny, if you please."

Raffles was soon clinking his glass against mine.

"The Queen," said he. "God bless her!"



THE FATE OF FAUSTINA

"Mar--ga--ri,
e perzo a Salvatore! Mar--ga--ri,
Ma l'ommo e cacciatore! Mar--ga--ri,
Nun ce aje corpa tu!
Chello ch' e fatto, e fatto, un ne parlammo cchieu!"

A piano-organ was pouring the metallic music through our open
windows, while a voice of brass brayed the words, which I have
since obtained, and print above for identification by such as
know their Italy better than I. They will not thank me for
reminding them of a tune so lately epidemic in that land of
aloes and blue skies; but at least it is unlikely to run in
their heads as the ribald accompaniment to a tragedy; and it
does in mine.

It was in the early heat of August, and the hour that of the
lawful and necessary siesta for such as turn night into day. I
was therefore shutting my window in a rage, and wondering
whether I should not do the same for Raffles, when he appeared
in the silk pajamas to which the chronic solicitude of Dr.
Theobald confined him from morning to night.

"Don't do that, Bunny," said he. "I rather like that thing, and
want to listen. What sort of fellows are they to look at, by
the way?"

I put my head out to see, it being a primary rule of our quaint
establishment that Raffles must never show himself at any of the
windows. I remember now how hot the sill was to my elbows, as
I leant upon it and looked down, in order to satisfy a curiosity
in which I could see no point.

"Dirty-looking beggars," said I over my shoulder: "dark as dark;
blue chins, oleaginous curls, and ear-rings; ragged as they make
them, but nothing picturesque in their rags."

"Neapolitans all over," murmured Raffles behind me; "and that's
a characteristic touch, the one fellow singing while the other
grinds; they always have that out there."

"He's rather a fine chap, the singer," said I, as the song
ended. "My hat, what teeth! He's looking up here, and grinning
all round his head; shall I chuck him anything?"

"Well, I have no reason to love the Neapolitans; but it takes me
back--it takes me back! Yes, here you are, one each."

It was a couple of half-crowns that Raffles put into my hand,
but I had thrown them into the street for pennies before I saw
what they were. Thereupon I left the Italians bowing to the mud,
as well they might, and I turned to protest against such wanton
waste. But Raffles was walking up and down, his head bent, his
eyes troubled; and his one excuse disarmed remonstrance.

"They took me back," he repeated. "My God, how they took me
back!"

Suddenly he stopped in his stride.

"You don't understand, Bunny, old chap; but if you like you
shall. I always meant to tell you some day, but never felt
worked up to it before, and it's not the kind of thing one talks
about for talking's sake. It isn't a nursery story, Bunny, and
there isn't a laugh in it from start to finish; on the contrary,
you have often asked me what turned my hair gray, and now you
are going to hear."

This was promising, but Raffles's manner was something more. It
was unique in my memory of the man. His fine face softened and
set hard by turns. I never knew it so hard. I never knew it
so soft. And the same might be said of his voice, now tender as
any woman's, now flying to the other extreme of equally unwonted
ferocity. But this was toward the end of his tale; the beginning
he treated characteristically enough, though I could have wished
for a less cavalier account of the island of Elba, where, upon
his own showing, he had met with much humanity.

"Deadly, my dear Bunny, is not the word for that glorified snag,
or for the mollusks, its inhabitants. But they started by
wounding my vanity, so perhaps I am prejudiced, after all. I
sprung myself upon them as a shipwrecked sailor--a sole
survivor--stripped in the sea and landed without a stitch--yet
they took no more interest in me than you do in Italian
organ-grinders. They were decent enough. I didn't have to pick
and steal for a square meal and a pair of trousers; it would
have been more exciting if I had. But what a place! Napoleon
couldn't stand it, you remember, but he held on longer than I
did. I put in a few weeks in their infernal mines, simply to
pick up a smattering of Italian; then got across to the
mainland in a little wooden timber-tramp; and ungratefully glad
I was to leave Elba blazing in just such another sunset as the
one you won't forget.

"The tramp was bound for Naples, but first it touched at
Baiae, where I carefully deserted in the night. There are
too many English in Naples itself, though I thought it would
make a first happy hunting-ground when I knew the language
better and had altered myself a bit more. Meanwhile I got a
billet of several sorts on one of the loveliest spots that ever
I struck on all my travels. The place was a vineyard, but it
overhung the sea, and I got taken on as tame sailorman and
emergency bottle-washer. The wages were the noble figure of a
lira and a half, which is just over a bob, a day, but there were
lashings of sound wine for one and all, and better wine to bathe
in. And for eight whole months, my boy, I was an absolutely
honest man. The luxury of it, Bunny! I out-heroded Herod,
wouldn't touch a grape, and went in the most delicious danger of
being knifed for my principles by the thieving crew I had
joined.

"It was the kind of place where every prospect pleases--and all
the rest of it--especially all the rest. But may I see it in my
dreams till I die--as it was in the beginning--before anything
began to happen. It was a wedge of rock sticking out into the
bay, thatched with vines, and with the rummiest old house on the
very edge of all, a devil of a height above the sea: you might
have sat at the windows and dropped your Sullivan-ends plumb
into blue water a hundred and fifty feet below.

"From the garden behind the house--such a garden, Bunny--
oleanders and mimosa, myrtles, rosemarys and red tangles
of fiery, untamed flowers--in a corner of this garden was the top
of a subterranean stair down to the sea; at least there were
nearly two hundred steps tunnelled through the solid rock; then
an iron gate, and another eighty steps in the open air; and last
of all a cave fit for pirates, a-penny-plain-and-two-pence-
colored. This cave gave upon the sweetest little thing in coves,
all deep blue water and honest rocks; and here I looked after the
vineyard shipping, a pot-bellied tub with a brown sail, and a
sort of dingy. The tub took the wine to Naples, and the dingy
was the tub's tender.

"The house above was said to be on the identical site of a
suburban retreat of the admirable Tiberius; there was the old
sinner's private theatre with the tiers cut clean to this day,
the well where he used to fatten his lampreys on his slaves, and
a ruined temple of those ripping old Roman bricks, shallow as
dominoes and ruddier than the cherry. I never was much of an
antiquary, but I could have become one there if I'd had nothing
else to do; but I had lots. When I wasn't busy with the boats
I had to trim the vines, or gather the grapes, or even help make
the wine itself in a cool, dark, musty vault underneath the
temple, that I can see and smell as I jaw. And can't I hear it
and feel it too! Squish, squash, bubble; squash, squish,
guggle; and your feet as though you had been wading through
slaughter to a throne. Yes, Bunny, you mightn't think it, but
this good right foot, that never was on the wrong side of the
crease when the ball left my hand, has also been known to

'crush the lees of pleasure
From sanguine grapes of pain.'"

He made a sudden pause, as though he had stumbled on the truth
in jest. His face filled with lines. We were sitting in the
room that had been bare when first I saw it; there were
basket-chairs and a table in it now, all meant ostensibly for
me; and hence Raffles would slip to his bed, with schoolboy
relish, at every tinkle of the bell. This afternoon we felt
fairly safe, for Theobald had called in the morning, and Mrs.
Theobald still took up much of his time. Through the open
window we could hear the piano-organ and "Mar--gar--ri" a few
hundred yards further on. I fancied Raffles was listening to it
while he paused. He shook his head abstractedly when I handed
him the cigarettes; and his tone hereafter was never just what
it had been.

"I don't know, Bunny, whether you're a believer in transmigration
of souls. I have often thought it easier to believe than lots
of other things, and I have been pretty near believing in it
myself since I had my being on that villa of Tiberius. The
brute who had it in my day, if he isn't still running it with a
whole skin, was or is as cold-blooded a blackguard as the worst
of the emperors, but I have often thought he had a lot in common
with Tiberius. He had the great high sensual Roman nose, eyes
that were sinks of iniquity in themselves, and that swelled with
fat-ness, like the rest of him, so that he wheezed if he walked
a yard; otherwise rather a fine beast to look at, with a huge
gray moustache, like a flying gull, and the most courteous
manners even to his men; but one of the worst, Bunny, one of
the worst that ever was. It was said that the vineyard was only
his hobby; if so, he did his best to make his hobby pay. He
used to come out from Naples for the week-ends--in the tub when
it wasn't too rough for his nerves--and he didn't always come
alone. His very name sounded unhealthy--Corbucci. I suppose I
ought to add that he was a Count, though Counts are two-a-penny
in Naples, and in season all the year round.

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