The Raffles Megapack. E.W. Hornung
among the many. The annex in this case was, of course, empty as the rooms below; and that was lucky, for we filled it, what with the manager, who now joined us, and another tenant whom he brought with him to Mackenzie’s undisguised annoyance.
“Better let in all Piccadilly at a crown a head,” said he. “Here, my man, out you go on the roof to make one less, and have your truncheon handy.”
We crowded to the little window, which Mackenzie took care to fill; and a minute yielded no sound but the crunch and slither of constabulary boots upon sooty slates. Then came a shout.
“What now?” cried Mackenzie.
“A rope,” we heard, “hanging from the spout by a hook!”
“Sirs,” purred Mackenzie, “yon’s how he got up from below! He would do it with one o’ they telescope sticks, an’ I never thocht o’t! How long a rope, my lad?”
“Quite short. I’ve got it.”
“Did it hang over a window? Ask him that!” cried the manager. “He can see by leaning over the parapet.”
The question was repeated by Mackenzie; a pause, then “Yes, it did.”
“Ask him how many windows along!” shouted the manager in high excitement.
“Six, he says,” said Mackenzie next minute; and he drew in his head and shoulders. “I should just like to see those rooms, six windows along.”
“Mr. Raffles,” announced the manager after a mental calculation.
“Is that a fact?” cried Mackenzie. “Then we shall have no difficulty at all. He’s left me his key down below.”
The words had a dry, speculative intonation, which even then I found time to dislike; it was as though the coincidence had already struck the Scotchman as something more.
“Where is Mr. Raffles?” asked the manager, as we all filed downstairs.
“He’s gone out to his dinner,” said Mackenzie.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw him go,” said I. My heart was beating horribly. I would not trust myself to speak again. But I wormed my way to a front place in the little procession, and was, in fact, the second man to cross the threshold that had been the Rubicon of my life. As I did so I uttered a cry of pain, for Mackenzie had trod back heavily on my toes; in another second I saw the reason, and saw it with another and a louder cry.
A man was lying at full length before the fire on his back, with a little wound in the white forehead, and the blood draining into his eyes. And the man was Raffles himself!
“Suicide,” said Mackenzie calmly. “No—here’s the poker—looks more like murder.” He went on his knees and shook his head quite cheerfully. “An’ it’s not even murder,” said he, with a shade of disgust in his matter-of-fact voice; “yon’s no more than a flesh-wound, and I have my doubts whether it felled him; but, sirs, he just stinks o’ chloryform!”
He got up and fixed his keen gray eyes upon me; my own were full of tears, but they faced him unashamed.
“I understood ye to say ye saw him go out?” said he sternly.
“I saw that long driving-coat; of course, I thought he was inside it.”
“And I could ha’ sworn it was the same gent when he give me the key!”
It was the disconsolate voice of the constable in the background; on him turned Mackenzie, white to the lips.
“You’d think anything, some of you damned policemen,” said he. “What’s your number, you rotter? P 34? You’ll be hearing more of this, Mr. P 34! If that gentleman was dead—instead of coming to himself while I’m talking—do you know what you’d be? Guilty of his manslaughter, you stuck pig in buttons! Do you know who you’ve let slip, butter-fingers? Crawshay—no less—him that broke Dartmoor yesterday. By the God that made ye, P 34, if I lose him I’ll hound ye from the forrce!”
Working face—shaking fist—a calm man on fire. It was a new side of Mackenzie, and one to mark and to digest. Next moment he had flounced from our midst.
“Difficult thing to break your own head,” said Raffles later; “infinitely easier to cut your own throat. Chloroform’s another matter; when you’ve used it on others, you know the dose to a nicety. So you thought I was really gone? Poor old Bunny! But I hope Mackenzie saw your face?”
“He did,” said I. I would not tell him all Mackenzie must have seen, however.
“That’s all right. I wouldn’t have had him miss it for worlds; and you mustn’t think me a brute, old boy, for I fear that man, and, know, we sink or swim together.”
“And now we sink or swim with Crawshay, too,” said I dolefully.
“Not we!” said Raffles with conviction. “Old Crawshay’s a true sportsman, and he’ll do by us as we’ve done by him; besides, this makes us quits; and I don’t think, Bunny, that we’ll take on the professors again!”
THE GIFT OF THE EMPEROR
I
When the King of the Cannibal Islands made faces at Queen Victoria, and a European monarch set the cables tingling with his compliments on the exploit, the indignation in England was not less than the surprise, for the thing was not so common as it has since become. But when it transpired that a gift of peculiar significance was to follow the congratulations, to give them weight, the inference prevailed that the white potentate and the black had taken simultaneous leave of their fourteen senses. For the gift was a pearl of price unparalleled, picked aforetime by British cutlasses from a Polynesian setting, and presented by British royalty to the sovereign who seized this opportunity of restoring it to its original possessor.
The incident would have been a godsend to the Press a few weeks later. Even in June there were leaders, letters, large headlines, leaded type; the Daily Chronicle devoting half its literary page to a charming drawing of the island capital which the new Pall Mall, in a leading article headed by a pun, advised the Government to blow to flinders. I was myself driving a poor but not dishonest quill at the time, and the topic of the hour goaded me into satiric verse which obtained a better place than anything I had yet turned out. I had let my flat in town, and taken inexpensive quarters at Thames Ditton, on the plea of a disinterested passion for the river.
“First-rate, old boy!” said Raffles (who must needs come and see me there), lying back in the boat while I sculled and steered. “I suppose they pay you pretty well for these, eh?”
“Not a penny.”
“Nonsense, Bunny! I thought they paid so well? Give them time, and you’ll get your check.”
“Oh, no, I sha’n’t,” said I gloomily. “I’ve got to be content with the honor of getting in; the editor wrote to say so, in so many words,” I added. But I gave the gentleman his distinguished name.
“You don’t mean to say you’ve written for payment already?”
No; it was the last thing I had intended to admit. But I had done it. The murder was out; there was no sense in further concealment. I had written for my money because I really needed it; if he must know, I was cursedly hard up. Raffles nodded as though he knew already. I warmed to my woes. It was no easy matter to keep your end up as a raw freelance of letters; for my part, I was afraid I wrote neither well enough nor ill enough for success. I suffered from a persistent ineffectual feeling after style. Verse I could manage; but it did not pay. To personal paragraphs and the baser journalism I could not and I would not stoop.
Raffles nodded again, this time with a smile that stayed in his eyes as he leant back watching me. I knew that he was thinking of other things I had stooped to, and I thought I knew what he was going to say. He had said it before so often; he was sure to say it again. I had my answer ready, but evidently he was tired of asking the same question. His lids fell, he took