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

on. This was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments of emergency.

“Well?”

“Well, pay in this bundle of notes this afternoon, and say you have had a great week at Liverpool and Lincoln; then ask them if they can do with your silver while you run over to Paris for a merry Easter. I should tell them it’s rather heavy⁠—a lot of old family stuff that you’ve a good mind to leave with them till you marry and settle down.”

I winced at this, but consented to the rest after a moment’s consideration. After all, and for more reasons that I need enumerate, it was a plausible tale enough. And Raffles had no banker; it was quite impossible for him to explain, across any single counter, the large sums of hard cash which did sometimes fall into his hands; and it might well be that he had nursed my small account in view of the very quandary which had now arisen. On all grounds, it was impossible for me to refuse him, and I am still glad to remember that my assent was given, on the whole, ungrudgingly.

“But when will the chest be ready for me,” I merely asked, as I stuffed the notes into my cigarette case. “And how are we to get it out of this, in banking hours, without attracting any amount of attention at this end?”

Raffles gave me an approving nod.

“I’m glad to see you spot the crux so quickly, Bunny. I have thought of your taking it round to your place first, under cloud of night; but we are bound to be seen even so, and on the whole it would look far less suspicious in broad daylight. It will take you some twelve or fifteen minutes to drive to your bank in a growler, so if you are here with one at a quarter to ten tomorrow morning, that will exactly meet the case. But you must have a hansom this minute if you mean to prepare the way with those notes this afternoon!”

It was only too like the Raffles of those days to dismiss a subject and myself in the same breath, with a sudden nod, and a brief grasp of the hand he was already holding out for mine. I had a great mind to take another of his cigarettes instead, for there were one or two points on which he had carefully omitted to enlighten me. Thus, I had still to learn the bare direction of his journey; and it was all that I could do to drag it from him as I stood buttoning my coat and gloves.

“Scotland,” he vouchsafed at last.

“At Easter,” I remarked.

“To learn the language,” he explained. “I have no tongue but my own, you see, but I try to make up for it by cultivating every shade of that. Some of them have come in useful even to your knowledge, Bunny: what price my Cockney that night in St. John’s Wood? I can keep up my end in stage Irish, real Devonshire, very fair Norfolk, and three distinct Yorkshire dialects. But my good Galloway Scots might be better, and I mean to make it so.”

“You still haven’t told me where to write to you.”

“I’ll write to you first, Bunny.”

“At least let me see you off,” I urged at the door. “I promise not to look at your ticket if you tell me the train!”

“The eleven-fifty from Euston.”

“Then I’ll be with you by quarter to ten.”

And I left him without further parley, reading his impatience in his face. Everything, to be sure, seemed clear enough without that fuller discussion which I loved and Raffles hated. Yet I thought we might at least have dined together, and in my heart I felt just the least bit hurt, until it occurred to me as I drove to count the notes in my cigarette case. Resentment was impossible after that. The sum ran well into three figures, and it was plain that Raffles meant me to have a good time in his absence. So I told his lie with unction at my bank, and made due arrangements for the reception of his chest next morning. Then I repaired to our club, hoping he would drop in, and that we might dine together after all. In that I was disappointed. It was nothing, however, to the disappointment awaiting me at the Albany, when I arrived in my four-wheeler at the appointed hour next morning.

“Mr. Raffles ’as gawn, sir,” said the porter, with a note of reproach in his confidential undertone. The man was a favorite with Raffles, who used him and tipped him with consummate tact, and he knew me only less well.

“Gone!” I echoed aghast. “Where on earth to?”

“Scotland, sir.”

“Already?”

“By the eleven-fifty lawst night.”

“Last night! I thought he meant eleven-fifty this morning!”

“He knew you did, sir, when you never came, and he told me to tell you there was no such train.”

I could have rent my garments in mortification and annoyance with myself and Raffles. It was as much his fault as mine. But for his indecent haste in getting rid of me, his characteristic abruptness at the end, there would have been no misunderstanding or mistake.

“Any other message?” I inquired morosely.

“Only about the box, sir. Mr. Raffles said as you was goin’ to take chawge of it time he’s away, and I’ve a friend ready to lend a ’and in getting it on the cab. It’s a rare ’eavy ’un, but Mr. Raffles an’ me could lift it all right between us, so I dessay me an’ my friend can.”

For my own part, I must confess that its weight concerned me less than the vast size of that infernal chest, as I drove with it past club and park at ten o’clock in the morning. Sit as far back as I might in the four-wheeler, I could conceal neither myself nor my connection with the huge iron-clamped case upon the