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

“Who on earth are you?” I exclaimed.

I now remembered having seen the fellow hovering about during the funeral, and subconsciously taking him for the undertaker’s head man. He had certainly that appearance, and even now I could scarcely believe that he was anything else.

“My name won’t help you,” he said, pityingly. “But you will guess where I come from when I tell you I have a warrant for your arrest.”

My sensations at this announcement may not be believed, but I solemnly declare that I have seldom experienced so fierce a satisfaction. Here was a new excitement in which to drown my grief; here was something to think about; and I should be spared the intolerable experience of a solitary return to the little place at Ham. It was as though I had lost a limb and someone had struck me so hard in the face that the greater agony was forgotten. I got into the hansom without a word, my captor following at my heels, and giving his own directions to the cabman before taking his seat. The word “station” was the only one I caught, and I wondered whether it was to be Bow Street again. My companion’s next words, however, or rather the tone in which he uttered them, destroyed my capacity for idle speculation.

“Mr. Maturin!” said he. “Mr. Maturin indeed!”

“Well,” said I, “what about him?”

“Do you think we don’t know who he was?”

“Who was he?” I asked, defiantly.

“You ought to know,” said he. “You got locked up through him the other time, too. His favorite name was Raffles then.”

“It was his real name,” I said, indignantly. “And he has been dead for years.”

My captor simply chuckled.

“He’s at the bottom of the sea, I tell you!”

But I do not know why I should have told him with such spirit, for what could it matter to Raffles now? I did not think; instinct was still stronger than reason, and, fresh from his funeral, I had taken up the cudgels for my dead friend as though he were still alive. Next moment I saw this for myself, and my tears came nearer the surface than they had been yet; but the fellow at my side laughed outright.

“Shall I tell you something else?” said he.

“As you like.”

“He’s not even at the bottom of that grave! He’s no more dead than you or I, and a sham burial is his latest piece of villainy!”

I doubt whether I could have spoken if I had tried. I did not try. I had no use for speech. I did not even ask him if he was sure, I was so sure myself. It was all as plain to me as riddles usually are when one has the answer. The doctor’s alarms, his unscrupulous venality, the simulated illness, my own dismissal, each fitted in its obvious place, and not even the last had power as yet to mar my joy in the one central fact to which all the rest were as tapers to the sun.

“He is alive!” I cried. “Nothing else matters⁠—he is alive!”

At last I did ask whether they had got him too; but thankful as I was for the greater knowledge, I confess that I did not much care what answer I received. Already I was figuring out how much we might each get, and how old we should be when we came out. But my companion tilted his hat to the back of his head, at the same time putting his face close to mine, and compelling my scrutiny. And my answer, as you have already guessed, was the face of Raffles himself, superbly disguised (but less superbly than his voice), and yet so thinly that I should have known him in a trice had I not been too miserable in the beginning to give him a second glance.

Jacques Saillard had made his life impossible, and this was the one escape. Raffles had bought the doctor for a thousand pounds, and the doctor had bought a “nurse” of his own kidney, on his own account; me, for some reason, he would not trust; he had insisted upon my dismissal as an essential preliminary to his part in the conspiracy. Here the details were half-humorous, half-grewsome, each in turn as Raffles told me the story. At one period he had been very daringly drugged indeed, and, in his own words, “as dead as a man need be”; but he had left strict instructions that nobody but the nurse and “my devoted physician” should “lay a finger on me” afterwards; and by virtue of this proviso a library of books (largely acquired for the occasion) had been impiously interred at Kensal Green. Raffles had definitely undertaken not to trust me with the secret, and, but for my untoward appearance at the funeral (which he had attended for his own final satisfaction), I was assured and am convinced that he would have kept his promise to the letter. In explaining this he gave me the one explanation I desired, and in another moment we turned into Praed Street, Paddington.

“And I thought you said Bow Street!” said I. “Are you coming straight down to Richmond with me?”

“I may as well,” said Raffles, “though I did mean to get my kit first, so as to start in fair and square as the long-lost brother from the bush. That’s why I hadn’t written. The function was a day later than I calculated. I was going to write tonight.”

“But what are we to do?” said I, hesitating when he had paid the cab. “I have been playing the colonies for all they are worth!”

“Oh, I’ve lost my luggage,” said he, “or a wave came into my cabin and spoilt every stitch, or I had nothing fit to bring ashore. We’ll settle that in the train.”

My brother Ralph, who now lived with me on the edge of Ham Common, had come home from Australia with a curious affection of the eyes,