The Black Mask - E. W. Hornung (10 best books of all time txt) 📗

brush, but never a Raffles came into the pan. Then I tried the Fulham Road, first to the west, then to the east, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I did not realize my indiscretion until I had paid the man and was on the stairs. Raffles never dreamt of driving all the way back; but I was hoping now to find him waiting up above. He had said an hour. I had remembered it suddenly. And now the hour was more than up. But the flat was as empty as I had left it; the very light that had encouraged me, pale though it was, as I turned the corner in my hansom, was but the light that I myself had left burning in the desolate passage.

I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of it I hung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears, catching every footstep afar off, every hansom bell farther still, only to gather in some alien whom I seldom even landed in our street. Then I would listen at the door.

He might come over the roof; and eventually someone did; but now it was broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the milkman’s face, which whitened at the shock as though I had ducked him in his own pail.

“You’re late,” I thundered as the first excuse for my excitement.

“Beg your pardon,” said he, indignantly, “but I’m half an hour before my usual time.”

“Then I beg yours,” said I; “but the fact is, Mr. Maturin has had one of his bad nights, and I seem to have been waiting hours for milk to make him a cup of tea.”

This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it) earned me not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch of the business of the man at the door. The good fellow said that he could see I had been sitting up all night, and he left me pluming myself upon the accidental art with which I had told my very necessary tarradiddle. On reflection I gave the credit to instinct, not accident, and then sighed afresh as I realized how the influence of the master was sinking into me, and he heaven knew where! But my punishment was swift to follow, for within the hour the bell rang imperiously twice, and there was Dr. Theobald on our mat; in a yellow Jaeger suit, with a chin as yellow jutting over the flaps that he had turned up to hide his pyjamas.

“What’s this about a bad night?” said he.

“He couldn’t sleep, and he wouldn’t let me,” I whispered, never loosening my grasp of the door, and standing tight against the other wall. “But he’s sleeping like a baby now.”

“I must see him.”

“He gave strict orders that you should not.”

“I’m his medical man, and I⁠—”

“You know what he is,” I said, shrugging; “the least thing wakes him, and you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be the last time, I warn you! I know what he said, and you don’t.”

The doctor cursed me under his fiery moustache.

“I shall come up during the course of the morning,” he snarled.

“And I shall tie up the bell,” I said, “and if it doesn’t ring he’ll be sleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by coming to the door again.”

And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as Raffles had said; but what would it profit me if some evil had befallen him? And now I was prepared for the worst. A boy came up whistling and leaving papers on the mats; it was getting on for eight o’clock, and the whiskey and soda of half-past twelve stood untouched and stagnant in the tumbler. If the worst had happened to Raffles, I felt that I would either never drink again, or else seldom do anything else.

Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but roamed the flat in a misery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my cheeks and chin now tawny from the unwholesome night. How long would it go on? I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune: how long could I endure it?

It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance cannot be measured by the time, for to me every hour of it was an arctic night. Yet it cannot have been much after eleven when the ring came at the bell, which I had forgotten to tie up after all. But this was not the doctor; neither, too well I knew, was it the wanderer returned. Our bell was the pneumatic one that tells you if the touch be light or heavy; the hand upon it now was tentative and shy.

The owner of the hand I had never seen before. He was young and ragged, with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some fell excitement. And straightway he burst into a low torrent of words, of which all I knew was that they were Italian, and therefore news of Raffles, if only I had known the language! But dumb-show might help us somewhat, and in I dragged him, though against his will, a new alarm in his one wild eye.

“Non capite?” he cried when I had him inside and had withstood the torrent.

“No, I’m bothered if I do!” I answered, guessing his question from his tone.

“Vostro amico,” he repeated over and over again; and then, “Poco tempo, poco tempo, poco tempo!”

For once in my life the classical education of my public-school days was of real value. “My pal, my pal, and no time to be lost!” I translated freely, and flew for my hat.

“Ecco, signore!” cried the fellow, snatching the watch from my waistcoat pocket, and putting one black thumbnail on the long hand, the other on the numeral