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

“Well, that’s as bad as a hundred on most lines. And when did you say it was to be?”

“Friday week.”

“I don’t much like a Friday, Bunny. Why make it one?”

“It’s the night of their Hunt Point-to-Point. They wind up the season with it every year; and the bloated Guillemard usually sweeps the board with his fancy flyers.”

“You mean the man in your old house?”

“Yes; and he tops up with no end of dinner there,” I went on, “to his hunting pals and the bloods who ride for him. If the festive board doesn’t groan under a new regiment of challenge cups, it will be no fault of theirs, and old Guillemard will have to do them top-hole all the same.”

“So it’s a case of common pot-hunting,” remarked Raffles, eyeing me shrewdly through the cigarette smoke.

“Not for us, my dear fellow,” I made answer in his own tone. “I wouldn’t ask you to break into the next set of chambers here in the Albany for a few pieces of modern silver, Raffles. Not that we need scorn the cups if we get a chance of lifting them, and if Guillemard does so in the first instance. It’s by no means certain that he will. But it is pretty certain to be a lively night for him and his pals⁠—and a vulnerable one for the best bedroom!”

“Capital!” said Raffles, throwing coils of smoke between his smiles. “Still, if it’s a dinner-party, the hostess won’t leave her jewels upstairs. She’ll wear them, my boy.”

“Not all of them, Raffles; she has far too many for that. Besides, it isn’t an ordinary dinner-party; they say Mrs. Guillemard is generally the only lady there, and that she’s quite charming in herself. Now, no charming woman would clap on all sail in jewels for a roomful of fox-hunters.”

“It depends what jewels she has.”

“Well, she might wear her rope of pearls.”

“I should have said so.”

“And, of course, her rings.”

“Exactly, Bunny.”

“But not necessarily her diamond tiara⁠—”

“Has she got one?”

“⁠—and certainly not her emerald and diamond necklace on top of all!”

Raffles snatched the Sullivan from his lips, and his eyes burned like its end.

“Bunny, do you mean to tell me there are all these things?”

“Of course I do,” said I. “They are rich people, and he’s not such a brute as to spend everything on his stable. Her jewels are as much the talk as his hunters. My friends told me all about both the other day when I was down making inquiries. They thought my curiosity as natural as my wish for a few snapshots of the old place. In their opinion the emerald necklace alone must be worth thousands of pounds.”

Raffles rubbed his hands in playful pantomime.

“I only hope you didn’t ask too many questions, Bunny! But if your friends are such old friends, you will never enter their heads when they hear what has happened, unless you are seen down there on the night, which might be fatal. Your approach will require some thought: if you like I can work out the shot for you. I shall go down independently, and the best thing may be to meet outside the house itself on the night of nights. But from that moment I am in your hands.”

And on these refreshing lines our plan of campaign was gradually developed and elaborated into that finished study on which Raffles would rely like any artist of the footlights. None were more capable than he of coping with the occasion as it rose, of rising himself with the emergency of the moment, of snatching a victory from the very dust of defeat. Yet, for choice, every detail was premeditated, and an alternative expedient at each finger’s end for as many bare and awful possibilities. In this case, however, the finished study stopped short at the garden gate or wall; there I was to assume command; and though Raffles carried the actual tools of trade of which he alone was master, it was on the understanding that for once I should control and direct their use.

I had gone down in evening-clothes by an evening train, but had carefully overshot old landmarks, and alighted at a small station some miles south of the one where I was still remembered. This committed me to a solitary and somewhat lengthy tramp; but the night was mild and starry, and I marched into it with a high stomach; for this was to be no costume crime, and yet I should have Raffles at my elbow all the night. Long before I reached my destination, indeed, he stood in wait for me on the white highway, and we finished with linked arms.

“I came down early,” said Raffles, “and had a look at the races. I always prefer to measure my man, Bunny; and you needn’t sit in the front row of the stalls to take stock of your friend Guillemard. No wonder he doesn’t ride his own horses! The steeplechaser isn’t foaled that would carry him round that course. But he’s a fine monument of a man, and he takes his troubles in a way that makes me blush to add to them.”

“Did he lose a horse?” I inquired cheerfully.

“No, Bunny, but he didn’t win a race! His horses were by chalks the best there, and his pals rode them like the foul fiend, but with the worst of luck every time. Not that you’d think it, from the row they’re making. I’ve been listening to them from the road⁠—you always did say the house stood too near it.”

“Then you didn’t go in?”

“When it’s your show? You should know me better. Not a foot would I set on the premises behind your back. But here they are, so perhaps you’ll lead the way.”

And I led it without a moment’s hesitation, through the unpretentious six-barred gate into the long but shallow crescent of the drive. There were two such gates, one at each end of the drive, but no lodge at either, and not