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

“You haven’t hit upon any reason for the sort of burglar they think you were, ringing up the kind of man they know I am?”

“Not yet, Bunny, but I shall. It may not be wanted for a day or so, and after all it isn’t for you to give the explanation. It would be highly suspicious if you did.”

“So it would,” I agreed.

“Then will you trust me to hit on something⁠—if possible before morning⁠—in any case by the time it’s wanted? I won’t fail you, Bunny. You must see how I can never, never fail you after tonight!”

That settled it. I gripped his hand without another word, and remained on guard over the three sleepers while Raffles stole upstairs. I have since learned that there were servants at the top of the house, and in the basement a man, who actually heard some of our proceedings! But he was mercifully too accustomed to nocturnal orgies, and those of a far more uproarious character, to appear unless summoned to the scene. I believe he heard Raffles leave. But no secret was made of his exit: he let himself out and told me afterward that the first person he encountered in the street was the constable on the beat. Raffles wished him good morning, as well he might; for he had been upstairs to wash his face and hands; and in the prizefighter’s great hat and fur coat he might have marched round Scotland Yard itself, in spite of his having the gold brick from Sacramento in one pocket, the silver statuette of Maguire in the other, and round his waist the jewelled belt presented to that worthy by the State of Nevada.

My immediate part was a little hard after the excitement of those small hours. I will only say that we had agreed that it would be wisest for me to lie like a log among the rest for half an hour, before staggering to my feet and rousing house and police; and that in that half-hour Barney Maguire crashed to the floor, without waking either himself or his companions, though not without bringing my beating heart into the very roof of my mouth.

It was daybreak when I gave the alarm with bell and telephone. In a few minutes we had the house congested with dishevelled domestics, irascible doctors, and arbitrary minions of the law. If I told my story once, I told it a dozen times, and all on an empty stomach. But it was certainly a most plausible and consistent tale, even without that confirmation which none of the other victims was as yet sufficiently recovered to supply. And in the end I was permitted to retire from the scene until required to give further information, or to identify the prisoner whom the good police confidently expected to make before the day was out.

I drove straight to the flat. The porter flew to help me out of my hansom. His face alarmed me more than any I had left in Half-moon Street. It alone might have spelled my ruin.

“Your flat’s been entered in the night, sir,” he cried. “The thieves have taken everything they could lay hands on.”

“Thieves in my flat!” I ejaculated aghast. There were one or two incriminating possessions up there, as well as at the Albany.

“The door’s been forced with a jimmy,” said the porter. “It was the milkman who found it out. There’s a constable up there now.”

A constable poking about in my flat of all others! I rushed upstairs without waiting for the lift. The invader was moistening his pencil between laborious notes in a fat pocketbook; he had penetrated no further than the forced door. I dashed past him in a fever. I kept my trophies in a wardrobe drawer specially fitted with a Bramah lock. The lock was broken⁠—the drawer void.

“Something valuable, sir?” inquired the intrusive constable at my heels.

“Yes, indeed⁠—some old family silver,” I answered. It was quite true. But the family was not mine.

And not till then did the truth flash across my mind. Nothing else of value had been taken. But there was a meaningless litter in all the rooms. I turned to the porter, who had followed me up from the street; it was his wife who looked after the flat.

“Get rid of this idiot as quick as you can,” I whispered. “I’m going straight to Scotland Yard myself. Let your wife tidy the place while I’m gone, and have the lock mended before she leaves. I’m going as I am, this minute!”

And go I did, in the first hansom I could find⁠—but not straight to Scotland Yard. I stopped the cab in Picadilly on the way.

Old Raffles opened his own door to me. I cannot remember finding him fresher, more immaculate, more delightful to behold in every way. Could I paint a picture of Raffles with something other than my pen, it would be as I saw him that bright March morning, at his open door in the Albany, a trim, slim figure in matutinal gray, cool and gay and breezy as incarnate spring.

“What on earth did you do it for?” I asked within.

“It was the only solution,” he answered, handing me the cigarettes. “I saw it the moment I got outside.”

“I don’t see it yet.”

“Why should a burglar call an innocent gentleman away from home?”

“That’s what we couldn’t make out.”

“I tell you I got it directly I had left you. He called you away in order to burgle you too, of course!”

And Raffles stood smiling upon me in all his incomparable radiance and audacity.

“But why me?” I asked. “Why on earth should he burgle me?”

“My dear Bunny, we must leave something to the imagination of the police. But we will assist them to a fact or two in due season. It was the dead of night when Maguire first took us to his house; it was at the Imperial Boxing Club we met him; and