A Thief in the Night - E. W. Hornung (phonics reader .TXT) 📗

“As it is, however, we will all let the other fellow do so,” said old Nab in a genial growl. “And you two had better turn into my house and have something to keep the morning cold out.”

You may imagine with what alacrity we complied; and yet I am bound to confess that I had never liked Nab at school. I still remember my term in his form. He had a caustic tongue and fine assortment of damaging epithets, most of which were levelled at my devoted skull during those three months. I now discovered that he also kept a particularly mellow Scotch whiskey, an excellent cigar, and a fund of anecdote of which a mordant wit was the worthy bursar. Enough to add that he kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out.

As for Raffles, he appeared to me to feel far more compunction for the fable which he had been compelled to foist upon one of the old masters than for the immeasurably graver offence against society and another Old Boy. This, indeed, did not worry him at all; and the story was received next day with absolute credulity on all sides. Nasmyth himself was the first to thank us both for our spirited effort on his behalf; and the incident had the ironic effect of establishing an immediate entente cordiale between Raffles and his very latest victim. I must confess, however, that for my own part I was thoroughly uneasy during the Old Boys’ second innings, when Raffles made a selfish score, instead of standing by me to tell his own story in his own way. There was never any knowing with what new detail he was about to embellish it: and I have still to receive full credit for the tact that it required to follow his erratic lead convincingly. Seldom have I been more thankful than when our train started next morning, and the poor, unsuspecting Nasmyth himself waved us a last farewell from the platform.

“Lucky we weren’t staying at Nab’s,” said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan and opened his Daily Mail at its report of the robbery. “There was one thing Nab would have spotted like the downy old bird he always was and will be.”

“What was that?”

“The front door must have been found duly barred and bolted in the morning, and yet we let them assume that we came out that way. Nab would have pounced on the point, and by this time we might have been nabbed ourselves.”

It was but a little over a hundred sovereigns that Raffles had taken, and, of course, he had resolutely eschewed any and every form of paper money. He posted his own first contribution of twenty-five pounds to the Founder’s Fund immediately on our return to town, before rushing off to more first-class cricket, and I gathered that the rest would follow piecemeal as he deemed it safe. By an odd coincidence, however, a mysterious but magnificent donation of a hundred guineas was almost simultaneously received in notes by the treasurer of the Founder’s Fund, from one who simply signed himself “Old Boy.” The treasurer happened to be our late host, the new man at our old house, and he wrote to congratulate Raffles on what he was pleased to consider a direct result of the latter’s speech. I did not see the letter that Raffles wrote in reply, but in due course I heard the name of the mysterious contributor. He was said to be no other than Nipper Nasmyth himself. I asked Raffles if it was true. He replied that he would ask old Nipper point-blank if he came up as usual to the Varsity match, and if they had the luck to meet. And not only did this happen, but I had the greater luck to be walking round the ground with Raffles when we encountered our shabby friend in front of the pavilion.

“My dear fellow,” cried Raffles, “I hear it was you who gave that hundred guineas by stealth to the very movement you denounced. Don’t deny it, and don’t blush to find it fame. Listen to me. There was a great lot in what you said; but it’s the kind of thing we ought all to back, whether we strictly approve of it in our hearts or not.”

“Exactly, Raffles, but the fact is⁠—”

“I know what you’re going to say. Don’t say it. There’s not one in a thousand who would do as you’ve done, and not one in a million who would do it anonymously.”

“But what makes you think I did it, Raffles?”

“Everybody is saying so. You will find it all over the place when you get back. You will find yourself the most popular man down there, Nasmyth!”

I never saw a nobler embarrassment than that of this awkward, ungainly, cantankerous man: all his angles seemed to have been smoothed away: there was something quite human in the flushed, undecided, wistful face.

“I never was popular in my life,” he said. “I don’t want to buy my popularity now. To be perfectly candid with you, Raffles⁠—”

“Don’t! I can’t stop to hear. They’re ringing the bell. But you shouldn’t have been angry with me for saying you were a generous good chap, Nasmyth, when you were one all the time. Goodbye, old fellow!”

But Nasmyth detained us a second more. His hesitation was at an end. There was a sudden new light in his face.

“Was I?” he cried. “Then I’ll make it two hundred, and damn the odds!”

Raffles was a thoughtful man as we went to our seats. He saw nobody, would acknowledge no remark. Neither did he attend to the cricket for the first half-hour after lunch; instead, he eventually invited me to come for a stroll on the practice ground, where, however, we found two chairs aloof from the fascinating throng.

“I am not often sorry, Bunny, as you know,” he began. “But I have been sorry since