This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning To A. C. D. This form of flattery The Ides of March, Part 1 It was half past twelve when I returned to the Albany as a last desperate resort. The scene of my disaster was much as I had left it. The Baccarat counters still screwed the table with the empty glasses and the loaded ashtrays. A window had been opened to let the smoke out and was letting in the fog instead. Raffles himself had merely discarded his dining jacket for one of his innumerable blazers. Yet he arched his eyebrows as though I had dragged him from his bed. Forgotten something, said he when he saw me on his mat. No, said I, pushing past him without ceremony, and I led the way into his rooms with an impudence amazing to myself. Not come back for your revenge, have you, because I'm afraid I can't give it to you single-handed. I was sorry myself that the others—we were face to face by his fireside and I cut him short. Raffles, said I, you may well be surprised at my coming back in this way and at this hour. I hardly know you. I was never in your rooms before tonight, but I fagged for you at school, and you said you remembered me. Of course, that's no excuse, but will you listen to me for two minutes? In my emotion I had at first to struggle for every word, but his face reassured me as I went on, and I was not mistaken in its expression. Certainly, my dear man, said he, as many minutes as you like, have a Sullivan and sit down, and he handed me his silver cigarette case. No, said I, finding a full voice as I shook my head.  Really? said he, lighting his own cigarette with one clear blue eye upon me. How do you know? Because you'll probably show me the door, I cried bitterly, and you'll be justified in doing it, but it's no use beating about the bush. You know I dropped over two hundred just now. He nodded. I hadn't the money in my pocket. I remember. But I had my checkbook, and I wrote each of you a check at that desk. Well? Not one of them was worth the paper it was written on, Raffles. I'm overdrawn already at my bank. Surely only for the moment. No, I have spent everything.  I heard you had come in for money. So I did three years ago. It has been my curse. Now it's all gone, every penny.  There never was, nor will be such a fool as I've been. Isn't this enough for you? Why don't you turn me out? He was walking up and down with a very long face instead. Couldn't your people do anything? He asked at length. Thank God! I cried. I have no people. I was an only child. I came in for everything there was. My one comfort is that they're gone and will never know. I cast myself into a chair and hid my face. Raffles continued to pace the rich carpet that was of a piece with everything else in his rooms. There was no variation in his soft and even footfalls. You used to be a literary little cuss, he said at length.  Anyway, I recollect fagging you to do my verses. And literature of all sorts is the very thing nowadays. Any fool can make a living at it. I shook my head. Any fool couldn't write off my debts, said I. Then you have a flat somewhere. He went on. Yes, in Mount Street. Well, what about the furniture? I laughed aloud in my misery. There has been a bill of sale on every stick for months. And at that, Raffles stood still with raised eyebrows and stern eyes that I could meet the better now that he knew the worst. Then, with a shrug, he resumed his walk and for some minutes neither of us spoke.  Because he had been kind to me at school, when he was captain of the eleven and I his fag.  I had fatuously counted on his mercy, his sympathy, his help. Yes, I had relied on him in my heart for all my outward diffidence and humility and I was rightly served. There is as little of mercy as of sympathy in that curling nostril, that rigid jaw, that cold blue eye which never glanced my way. I caught up my hat. I blundered to my feet. I would have gone without a word but Raffles stood between me and the door. Where are you going? said he. That's my business, I replied. I won't trouble you any more. Then how am I to help you? I didn't ask your help. Then why come to me? Why indeed, I echoed. Will you let me pass? Not until you tell me where you are going and what you mean to do. Can't you guess? I cried and for many seconds we stood staring in each other's eyes. Have you got the pluck? said he, breaking the spell in a tone so cynical that it brought my last drop of blood to the boil. You shall see, said I, as I stepped back and whipped the pistol from my overcoat pocket. Now, will you let me pass or shall I do it here?  My only surprise to this day is that I did not do so then and there. The despicable satisfaction of involving another in one's destruction added its miserable appeal to my baser egoism and had fear or horror flown to my companion's face. I shudder to think I might have died diabolically happy with that look for my last impious consolation. It was the look that came instead which held my hand. Neither fear nor horror were in it. Only wonder, admiration, and such a measure of pleased expectancy has caused me, after all, to pocket my revolver with an oath. You devil, I said, I believe you wanted me to do it. Not quite, was the reply made with a little start and a change of colour that came too late. To tell you the truth, though, I half thought you meant it, and I was never more fascinated in my life. I never dreamt you had such stuff in you, Bunny.  We must think of some way out of the mass. I had no idea you were a chap of that sort. There, let me have the gun. One of his hands fell kindly on my shoulder, while the other slipped into my overcoat pocket, and I suffered him to deprive me of my weapon without a murmur. Nor was this simply because Raffles had the subtle power of making himself irresistible at will. He was beyond comparison the most masterful man whom I have ever known. My acquiescence was due to more than the mere subjection of the weaker nature to the stronger. The forlorn hope which had brought me to the Albany was turned as by magic into an almost staggering sense of safety. Raffles would help me after all. AJ Raffles would be my friend. It was as though all the world had come round suddenly to my side. So far, therefore, from resisting his action, I caught and clasped his hand with a fervour as uncontrollable as the frenzy which had preceded it.  I cried. Forgive me for everything. I will tell you the truth. I did think you might help me in my extremity, though I well knew that I had no claim upon you. Still, for the old school's sake, the sake of old times, I thought you might give me another chance. If you wouldn't, I meant to blow out my brains and will still if you change your mind. In truth, I feared that it was changing with his expression even as I spoke and in spite of his kindly tone and kindlier use of my old school nickname, his next words showed me my mistake. What a boy it is for jumping to conclusions. I have my vices, Bunny, but backing and filling is not one of them. Sit down, my good fellow, and have a cigarette to soothe your nerves. I insist. Whiskey, the worst thing for you. Here's some coffee that I was brewing when you came in. Now listen to me. You speak of another chance. What do you mean? Another chance at Bakkerat. Not if I know it. You think the luck must turn. Suppose it didn't. We should only have made bad worse. No, my dear chap, you've plunged enough. Do you put yourself in my hands, or do you not? Very well. Then you plunge no more, and I undertake not to present my check. Unfortunately, there are the other men. And still more, unfortunately, Bunny, I'm as hard up at this moment as you are yourself. It was my turn to stare at raffles. You? I've ossiferated. You? Hard up? How am I to sit here and believe that? Did I refuse to believe it of you? He returned smiling. And with your own experience, do you think that because a fellow has rooms in this place and belongs to a club or two and plays a little cricket, he must necessarily have a balance at the bank? I tell you, my dear man, that at this moment I'm as hard up as you ever were.  Absolutely nothing else. It was as necessary for me to win some money this evening as it was for you. We're in the same boat, Bunny. We'd better pull together. Together? I jumped at it. I'll do anything in this world for you, raffles. I said, if you really mean that you won't give me away, think of anything you like and I'll do it. I was a desperate man when I came here, and I'm just as desperate now. I don't mind what I do if only I can get out of this without a scandal. Again I see him, leaning back in one of the luxurious chairs with which his room was furnished. I see his indolent, athletic figure, his pale, sharp, clean-shaven features, his curly black hair, his strong, unscrupulous mouth. And again I feel the clear beam of his wonderful eye, cold and luminous as a star, shining into my brain, sifting the very secrets of my heart. I wonder if you mean all that, he said at length. You do in your present mood, but who can back his mood to last? Still, there's hope when a chap takes that tone. Now I think of it too.  You once did me a rather good turn, I recollect. Remember it, Bunny? Well, wait a bit, and perhaps I'll be able to do you a better one. Give me time to think. He got up, lit a fresh cigarette, and fell to pacing the room once more, but with a slower and more thoughtful step, and for a much longer period than before. Twice he stopped at my chair as though on the point of speaking, but each time he checked himself and resumed his stride in silence.  Meanwhile, a clock on the chimney-piece struck one, and one again for the half-hour, without a word between us. Yet I not only kept my chair with patience, but I acquired an incongruous equanimity in that half-hour. Insensibly I had shifted my burden to the broad shoulders of this splendid friend, and my thoughts wandered with my eyes as the minutes passed. The room was the good-sized square one with the folding doors, the marble mantelpiece, and the gloomy old-fashioned distinction peculiar to the Albany. It was charmingly furnished and arranged with the right amount of negligence and the right amount of taste. What struck me most, however, was the absence of the usual insignia of a cricketer's den. Instead of the conventional rack of war-worn bats, a carved oak bookcase with every shelf in a litter filled the better part of one wall, and where I looked for cricketing groups I found reproductions of such works as Love and Death and the Blessed Damozel in dusty frames and different parallels. The man might have been a minor poet instead of an athlete of the first water, but there had always been a fine streak of aestheticism in his complex composition. Some of these very pictures I had myself dusted in his study at school, and they set me thinking of yet another of his many sides and of the little incident to which he had just referred. Everybody knows how largely the tone of a public school depends on that of the eleven and on the character of the captain of Cricket in particular, and I have never heard it denied that in A.J. Raffles time our tone was good, or that such influence as he troubled to exert was on the side of the angels. Yet it was whispered in the school that he was in the habit of parading the town at night in loud checks and a false beard. It was whispered and disbelieved. I alone knew it for a fact. For night after night I had pulled the rope up after him when the rest of the dormitory were asleep, and kept awake by the hour to let it down again on a given signal. Well, one night he was overbold and within an ace of ignominious expulsion in the heyday of his fame. Consumant daring, an extraordinary nerve on his part, aided doubtless by some little presence of mind on mine, averted the untoward result, and no more need be said of a discreditable incident. But I cannot pretend to have forgotten it in throwing myself on this man's mercy and my desperation, and I was wondering how much of his leniency was owing to the fact that Raffles had not forgotten it either when he stopped and stood over my chair once more. I've been thinking of that night we had the narrow squeak. He began. Why do you start? I was thinking of it too. He smiled as though he had read my thoughts. Well, you were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny. You didn't talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no questions and you told no tales. I wonder if you're like that now. I don't know, said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. I've made such a mess of my own affairs that I trust myself about as little as I'm likely to be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my life went back on a friend. I will say that. Otherwise, perhaps, I mightn't be in such a whole tonight. Exactly, said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though an ascent to some hidden train of thought. Exactly what I remember of you. And I'll bet it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't alter, Bunny. We only develop. I suppose neither you nor I are really altered since you used to let down that rope and I used to come up it hand over hand. You would stick at nothing for a pal, what? At nothing in this world, I was pleased to cry. Not even at a crime, said Raffles, smiling. I stopped to think, for his tone had changed. And I felt sure he was chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever. And for my part I was in no mood for reservations. No, not even at that, I declared. Name your crime and I'm your man.   A real desperate character, what? Suicide one moment and any crime I like the next. What you want is a drag, my boy, and you did well to come to a decent law-abiding citizen with a reputation to lose. Nonetheless, we must have that money tonight by hook or crook. Tonight, Raffles? The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock tomorrow morning is an hour of risk. Let one of those checks get round to your own bank and you and it are dishonored together. No, we must raise the wind tonight and reopen your account first thing tomorrow. And I rather think I know where the wind can be raised. At two o'clock in the morning? Yes. But how, but where at such an hour? From a friend of mine here in Bond Street. He must be a very intimate friend. Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and the latch key all to myself. And you would knock him up at this hour of the night? If he's in bed. And it's essential that I should go in with you? Absolutely. Then I must. But I'm bound to say I don't like the idea, Raffles. Do you prefer the alternative? Asked my companion with a sneer. No, hang it, that's unfair. He cried apologetically in the same breath. I quite understand. It's a beastly ordeal. But it would never do for you to stay outside. I tell you what. You shall have a peg before we start, just one. There's the whiskey, here's a siphon. I'll be putting on an overcoat while you help yourself. Well, I dare say I did so with some freedom. For this plan of his was not the less distasteful to me from its apparent inevitability. I must own, however, that it possessed fewer terrors before my glass was empty. Meanwhile, Raffles rejoined me with a covert coat over his blazer and a soft felt hat set carelessly on the curly head he shook with a smile as I passed him the decanter. When we come back, said he, work first, play afterward. Do you see what day it is? He added tearing a leaflet from a Shakespearean calendar as I drained my glass. March 15th. The Ides of March, the Ides of March, remember. Hey, Bunny, my boy, you won't forget them, will you?  So we went out together as the clock on the chimney piece was striking two. Part two. Piccadilly was a trench of raw white fog, rimmed with blurred street lamps, and lined with a thin coating of adhesive mud. We met no other wayfarers on the deserted flagstones and were ourselves favoured with a very hard stare from the constable of the beat, who, however, touched his helmet on recognising my companion. You see, I'm known to the police. Laughed raffles as we passed on. Poor devils, they've got to keep their weather eye open on a night like this. A fog may be a bore to you and me, Bunny, but it's a perfect godsend to the criminal classes, especially so late in their season. Here we are, though I'm hanged if the beggar isn't in bed in the sleep after all. We had turned into Bond Street and had halted on the curb a few yards down on the right. Raffles was gazing up at some windows across the road, windows barely discernible through the mist, and without the glimmer of a light throw them out. They were over a jeweler's shop, as I could see by the peephole in the shop door, and the bright light burning within. But the entire upper part, with the private street door next to the shop, was black and blank as the sky itself. Better give it up for tonight, I urged. Surely the morning will be time enough. Not a bit of it, said Raffles. I have his key. We'll surprise him, come along. And seizing my right arm, he hurried me across the road, opened the door with his latch key, and in another moment had shut it swiftly but softly behind us. We stood together in the dark. Outside a measured step was approaching. We had heard it through the fog as we crossed the street. Now, as it drew near, my companion's fingers tightened on my arm. It may be the chap himself, he whispered. He's the devil of a night-bird. Not a sound, Bunny, will startle the life out of him. Ah! The measured step had passed without a pause. Raffles drew a deep breath, and his singular grip of me slowly relaxed. But still, not a sound. He continued in the same whisper. We'll take a rise out of him wherever he is. Slip off your shoes and follow me. Well, you may wonder at my doing so, but you can never have met AJ Raffles. Half his power lay in a conciliating trick of sinking the commander in the leader, and it was impossible not to follow one who led with such a zest. You might question, but you followed first. So now, when I heard him kick off his own shoes, I did the same, and was on the stare at his heels before I realized what an extraordinary way this was of approaching a stranger for money in the dead of night. But obviously Raffles and he were on exceptional terms of intimacy, and I could not but infer that they were in the habit of playing practical jokes upon each other. We groped our way so slowly upstairs that I had time to make more than one note before we reached the top. The stare was uncarpeted. The spread fingers of my right hand encountered nothing on the damp wall. Those of my left trailed through a dust that could be felt on the banisters. An eerie sensation had been upon me since we entered the house. It increased with every step we climbed. What hermit were we going to startle in his cell? We came to a landing. The banister led us to the left, and to the left again. Four steps more, and we were on another and a longer landing, and suddenly a match blazed from the black. I never heard it struck. Its flash was blinding. When my eyes became accustomed to the light, there was Raffles holding up the match with one hand and shading it with the other, between bare boards, stripped walls, and the open doors of empty rooms. Where have you brought me? I cried. The house is unoccupied. Hush, wait! He whispered, and he led the way into one of the empty rooms. His match went out as we crossed the threshold, and he struck another without the slightest noise. Then he stood with his back to me, fumbling with something that I could not see. But when he threw the second match away, there was some other light in its stead, and a slight smell of oil. I stepped forward to look over his shoulder, but before I could do so he had turned and flashed a tiny lantern in my face. What's this? I gasped. What rotten trick are you going to play? It's played. He answered with his quiet laugh. On me? I'm afraid so, Bunny. Is there no one in the house, then? No one but ourselves. So it was mere chaff about your friend in Bond Street who could let us have that money? Not altogether. It's quite true that Danby is a friend of mine. Danby? The jeweler underneath. What do you mean? I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his meaning dawned upon me. Are we to get money from the jeweler? Well, not exactly. What, then? The equivalent, from his shop. There was no need for another question. I understood everything but my own density. He had given me a dozen hints, and I had taken none. And there I stood, staring at him in that empty room, and there he stood, with his dark lantern laughing at me. A burglar? I gasped, You? You? I told you I lived by my wits. Why couldn't you tell me what you were going to do? Why couldn't you trust me? Why must you lie? I demanded peak to the quick for all my horror. I wanted to tell you, said he. I was on the point of telling you more than once. You may remember how I sounded you out about crime, though you have probably forgotten what you said yourself. I didn't think you meant it at the time, but I thought I'd put you to the test. Now I see you didn't, and I don't blame you. I only am to blame. Get out of it, my dear boy, as quick as you can. Leave it to me.  Oh, his cleverness, his fiendish cleverness! Had he fallen back on threats, coercion, sneers, all might have been different even yet. But he set me free to leave him in the lurch. He would not blame me. He did not even bind me to secrecy. He trusted me. He knew my weakness and my strength, and was playing on both with his master's touch. Not so fast, said I. Did I put this into your head, or were you going to do it in any case? Not in any case, said Raffles. It's true I've had the key for days, but when I won tonight I thought of chucking it, for as a matter of fact it's not a one-man job. That settles it. I'm your man. You mean it? Yes, for tonight. Good old Bunny, he murmured, holding the lantern for one moment to my face. The next he was explaining his plans, and I was nodding, as though we had been fellow cracksmen all our days. I know the shop, he whispered, because I've got a few things there. I know this upper part too. It's been to let for a month, and I got an order to view and took a cast of the key before using it. The one thing I don't know is how to make a connection between the two. At present there's none. We may make it up here, though I rather fancy the basement myself. If you wait a minute I'll tell you. He set his lantern on the floor, crept to a back window, and opened it with scarcely a sound, only to return shaking his head after shutting the window with the same care. That was our one chance, said he. A back window above a back window, but it's too dark to see anything, and we daren't show an outside light. Come down after me to the basement, and remember, though there's not a soul on the premises, you can't make too little noise. There, there, listen to that. It was the measured tread that we had heard before on the flagstone outside. Raffles darkened his lantern, and again we stood motionless till it had passed. Either a policeman, he muttered, or a watchman that all of these jewelers run between them. The watchman's the man for us to watch. He's simply paid to spot this kind of thing. We crept very gingerly down the stairs, which creaked a bit in spite of us, and we picked up our shoes in the passage, then down some narrow stone steps, at the foot of which Raffles showed his light, and put on his shoes once more, bidding me do the same in a rather louder tone than he had permitted himself to employ overhead. We were now considerably below the level of the street, in a small space with as many doors as it had sides. Three were ajar, and we saw through them into empty cellars, but in the fourth a key was turned and a bolt drawn, and this one presently led us out into the bottom of a deep square well of fog. A similar door faced it across this area, and Raffles had lantern close against it and was hiding the light with his body, and the short and sudden crash made my heart stand still. Next moment I saw the door wide open and Raffles standing within beckoning me with a jimmy. Door number one, he whispered. Deuce knows how many more there'll be, but I know of two at least. We won't have to make much noise over them either. Down here there's less risk. We were now at the bottom of the exact fellow to the narrow stone stair on which we had just descended. The yard or well, being the one part common to both the private and the business premises. But this flight led to no open passage. Instead a singularly solid mahogany door confronted us at the top. I thought so, muttered Raffles handing me the lantern and pocketing a bunch of skeleton keys after tampering for a few minutes with the lock. It'll be an hour's work to get through that. Can't you pick it? No, I know these locks. It's no use trying. We must cut it out. And it'll take us an hour. It took us forty-seven minutes by my watch, or rather it took Raffles. And never in my life have I seen anything more deliberately done. My part was simply to stand by with the dark lantern in one hand and a small bottle of rock oil in the other. Raffles had produced a pretty embroidered case, intended obviously for his razors, but filled instead with the tools of his secret trade, including the rock oil. From this case he selected a bit, capable of drilling a hole an inch in diameter and fitted it to a small but very strong steel brace. Then he took off his covert coat and his blazer, spread them neatly on the top step, knelt on them, turned up his shirt cuffs and went to work with brace and bit near the keyhole. But first he oiled the bit to minimize the noise, and this he did invariably before beginning a fresh hole and often in the middle of one. It took thirty-two separate borings to cut around that lock. I noticed that through the first circular orifice Raffles thrust a forefinger. Then, as the circle became an ever-lengthening oval, he got his hand through up to the thumb and I heard him swear softly to himself. I was afraid so. What is it? An iron gate on the other side. How on earth are we to get through that? I asked in dismay. Pick the lock, but there may be two. In that case there'll be top and bottom and we shall have two fresh holes to make, as the door opens inwards. It won't open two inches as it is. I confess I did not feel sanguine about the lock-picking, seeing that one lock had baffled us already and my disappointment and impatience must have been a revelation to me had I stopped to think. The truth is that I was entering into our nefarious undertakings with an involuntary zeal of which I was myself quite unconscious at the time. The romance and peril of the whole proceeding held me spellbound and entranced. My moral sense and my sense of fear were stricken by a common paralysis and there I stood, shining my light and holding my file with a keener interest than I had ever brought to any honest evocation. And there knelt AJ Raffles with his black hair tumbled and the same watchful, quiet, determined half-smile with which I have seen him send down over after over in a county match. At last the chain of holes was complete, the lock wrenched out bodily and a splendid bare arm plunged up to the shoulder through the aperture and through the bars of the iron gate beyond. Now, whispered Raffles, if there's only one lock it'll be in the middle. Joy, here it is. Only let me pick it and we're through at last.  It was a breathless moment. I heard the heart throbbing in my body, the very watch ticking in my pocket and ever in a non the tinkle-tinkle of the skeleton key. Then, at last, there came a single unmistakable click. In another minute the mahogany door and the iron gate yawned behind us and Raffles was sitting on an office table wiping his face with the lantern throwing a steady beam by his side. We were now in a bare and roomy lobby behind the shop but separated there from by an iron curtain the very side of which filled me with despair. Raffles, however, did not appear in the least depressed but hung up his coat and hat on some pegs in the lobby before examining this curtain with his lantern. That's nothing, said he after a minute's inspection. We'll be through that in no time but there's a door on the other side which may give us trouble. Another door? I groaned. And how do you mean to tackle this thing? Prize it up with the jointed Jimmy. The weak point of these iron curtains is the leverage you can get from below but it makes a noise and this is where you're coming in, Bunny. This is where I couldn't do without you. I must have you overhead to knock through when the street is clear. I'll come with you and show a light. Well, you may imagine how little I liked the prospect of this lonely vigil and yet there was something very stimulating in the vital responsibility which it involved. Hitherto I had been a mere spectator. Now I was to take part in the game and the fresh excitement made me more than ever insensible to those considerations of conscience and of safety which were already as dead nerves in my breast. So I took my post without a murmur in the front room above the shop. The fixtures had been left for the refusal of the incoming tenant and fortunately for us they included Venetian blinds which were already down. It was the simplest matter in the world to stand peeping through the lathes into the street to beat twice with my foot when anybody was approaching and once when all was clear again. The noises that even I could hear below with the exception of one metallic crash at the beginning were indeed incredibly slight but they ceased altogether at each double wrap from my toe and a policeman passed quite half a dozen times beneath my eyes and the man whom I took to be the jeweler's watchman oftener still during the better part of an hour that I spent at the window. Once indeed my heart was in my mouth but only once. It was when the watchman stopped and peered through the peephole into the lighted shop. I waited for his whistle. I waited for the gallows or the jail but my signal had been studiously obeyed and the man passed on in undisturbed serenity. In the end I had a signal in my turn and retraced my steps with lighted matches down the broad stairs, down the narrow ones, across the area and up into the lobby where raffles awaited me with an outstretched hand. Well done, my boy, said he.  I've got a thousand pounds worth if I've got a peneth. It's all in my pockets and here's something else I found in this locker very decent port and some cigars meant for poor dear Danby's business friends. Take a pull and you shall light up presently. I've found a lavatory too and we must have a wash and brush up before we go for I'm as black as your boot. The iron curtain was down but he insisted on raising it until I could peep through the glass door on the other side and see his handiwork in the shop beyond. Here two electric lights were left burning all night and in their cold white rays I could at first see nothing amiss. I looked along an orderly lane an empty glass counter on my left glass cupboards of untouched silver on my right and facing me the filmy black eye of the peephole that shone like a stage moon on the street. The counter had not been emptied by raffles its contents were in the chubb safe which he had given up at a glance nor had he looked at the silver except to choose a cigarette case for me. He had confined himself entirely to the shop window this was in three compartments each secured for the night by removable panels with separate locks raffles had removed them a few hours before their time and the electric light shone on a corrugated shutter bare as the ribs of an empty carcass every article of value was gone from the one place which was invisible from the little window in the door elsewhere all was as it had been left overnight and but for a train of mangled doors behind the iron curtain a bottle of wine and a cigar box with which liberties had been taken a rather black towel in the lavatory a burnt match here and there and our finger marks on the dusty banisters not a trace of our visit did we leave. Had it in my head for long said raffles as we strolled through the streets towards dawn for all the world as though we were returning from a dance no bunny I never thought of it till I saw that upper part empty about a month ago and bought a few things in the shop to get the lie of the land that reminds me that I never paid for them but by Jove I will tomorrow and if that isn't poetic justice what is. One visit showed me the possibilities of the place but a second convinced me of its impossibilities without a pal so I had practically given up the idea when you came along on the very night and in the very plight for it but here we are at the Albany and I hope there's some fire left for I don't know how you feel Bunny but for my part I'm as cold as Keats's owl he could think of Keats on his way from a felony he could hanker for his fireside like another floodgates were loosed within me and the plain English of our adventure rushed over me as cold as ice Raffles was a burglar I had helped him to commit one burglary therefore I was a burglar too yet I could stand and warm myself by his fire and watch him empty his pockets as though we had done nothing wonderful or wicked my blood froze, my heart sickened, my brain whirled how I had liked this villain how I had admired him now my liking and admiration must turn to loathing and disgust I waited for the change I longed to feel it in my heart but I longed and I waited in vain I saw that he was emptying his pockets the tables sparkled with their horde rings by the dozen, diamonds by the score bracelets, pendants, egrets, necklaces, pearls, rubies, amethysts, sapphires and diamonds always diamonds in everything flashing bayonets of light dazzling me, blinding me making me disbelieve because I could no longer forget last of all came no gem indeed but my own revolver from an inner pocket and that struck a chord I suppose I said something my hand flew out I can see Raffles now once he looked at me once more with a high arch over each clear eye I can see him pick out the cartridges with his quiet, cynical smile before he would give me my pistol back again you may not believe it, Bunny, said he but I never carried a loaded one before on the whole I think it gives one confidence yet it would be very awkward if anything went wrong one might use it and that's not the game at all though I have often thought that the murderer who has just done the trick must have great sensations before things get too hot for him don't look so distressed, my dear chap I've never had those sensations and I don't suppose I ever shall but this much you have done before said I hoarsely before my dear Bunny, you offend me did it look like a first attempt? of course I have done it before often? well no not often enough to destroy the charm at all events never as a matter of fact unless I'm cursedly hard up did you hear about the Thimbley Diamonds? well that was the last time and a poor lot of paste they were then there was little business of the Dormahouse boat at Henley last year that was mine also, such as it was I never brought off a really big coup yet when I do I shall chuck it up yes I remembered both cases very well to think that he was their author it was incredible, outrageous, inconceivable then my eyes would fall upon the table twinkling and glittering in a hundred places and incredulity was at an end how came you to begin? I asked as curiosity overcame mere wonder and a fascination for his career gradually wove itself into my fascination for the man ah that's a long story said Raffles it was in the colonies when I was out there playing cricket it's too long a story to tell you now but I was in much the same fix that you were in tonight and it was my only way out I never meant it for anything more but I tasted blood and it was all over with me why should I work when I could steal? why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together of course it's very wrong but we can't all be moralists the confusion of wealth is very wrong to begin with besides you're not at it all the time I'm sick of quoting Gilbert's lines to myself but they're profoundly true I only wonder if you'll like the life as much as I do like it! I cried out not I, it's no life for me once is enough you wouldn't give me a hand another time don't ask me Raffles ask me for God's sake yet you said you would do anything for me you asked me to name my crime but I knew at the time you didn't mean it you didn't go back on me tonight and that ought to satisfy me goodness knows I suppose I'm ungrateful and unreasonable and all that I ought to let it end at this but you're the very man for me Bunny the very man just think how we got through tonight not a scratch, not a hitch there's nothing very terrible in it you see there never would be while we work together he was standing in front of me with a hand on either shoulder he was smiling as he knew so well how to smile I turned on my heel planted my elbows on the chimney piece and my burning head between my hands next instant a still hardier hand fell on my back all right my boy you are quite right and I'm worse than wrong I'll never ask it again go if you want to and come again about midday for the cash there was no bargain but of course I'll get you out of your scrape especially after the way you've stood by me tonight I was round again with my blood on fire I'll do it again I said through my teeth he shook his head not you he said smiling quite good-humoredly on my insane enthusiasm I will I cried with an oath I'll lend you a hand as often as you like what does it matter now I've been in it once I'll be in it again I've gone to the devil anyhow I can't go back and wouldn't if I could nothing matters another wrap when you want me I'm your man and that is how Raffles and I are the loneliest forces on the Ides of March end of the Ides of March this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning a costume piece London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name and nothing more Reuben Rosenthal had made his millions on the diamond fields of South Africa and had come home to enjoy them according to his lights how he went to work will scarcely be forgotten by any reader of the Heypenny Evening Papers which reveled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and present prodigality varied with interesting particulars of the extraordinary establishment which the millionaires set up in St. John's Wood here he kept a retinue of kafirs who were literally his slaves and hence he would sally with enormous diamonds in his shirt and on his finger in the convoy of a prize fighter of heinous repute who was not however by any means the worst element in the Rosenthal melange so said Common Gossip but the fact was sufficiently established by the interference of the police on at least one occasion followed by certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with justifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid and this was all one new of Reuben Rosenthal up to the time when the old Bohemian club having fallen on evil days found it worth its while to organize a great dinner in honor of so wealthy an exponent of the club's principles I was not at the banquet myself but a member took raffles and told me all about it that very night the most extraordinary show I ever went to in my life said he as for the man himself well, I was prepared for something grotesque but the fellow fairly took my breath away to begin with he's the most astounding brute to look at well over six feet with a chest like a barrel and a great hook nose and the reddest hair and whiskers you ever saw drank like a fire engine that drunk enough to make us a speech that I wouldn't have missed for ten pounds I'm only sorry you weren't there too, bunny old chap I began to be sorry myself for raffles was anything but an excitable person and never had I seen him so excited before had he been following Rosenthal's example his coming to my rooms at midnight merely to tell me about his dinner was in itself enough to excuse a suspicion which was certainly at variance with my knowledge of A.J. Raffles what did he say I inquired mechanically divining some subtler explanation of this visit and wondering what on earth it could be say cried Raffles what did he not say he boasted of his rise he bragged of his riches and he blaggered society for taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer peak in jealousy because he had so much he mentioned names too with the most charming freedom and swore he was as good a man as the old country had to show Pache the old Bohemians to prove it he pointed to a great diamond in the middle of his shirt front with a little finger loaded with another just like it which of our bloated princes could show a pair like that as a matter of fact they seemed quite wonderful stones with a curious purple gleam to them that must mean a pot of money but old Rosenthal swore he wouldn't take fifty thousand pounds for the two and wanted to know where the other man was who went about with twenty five thousand in his shirt front and another twenty five on his little finger he didn't exist if he did he wouldn't have the pluck to wear them but he had he'd tell us why and before you could say Jack Robinson he had whipped out a whacking great revolver not at the table at the table in the middle of his speech but it was nothing to what he wanted to do he actually wanted us to let him write his name in bullets on the opposite wall to show us why he wasn't afraid to go about in all his diamonds that brute perverse the prize fighter who is his paid bully had to bully his master before he could be persuaded out of it there was quite a panic for the moment one fellow was saying his prayers under the table and the waiters bolted to a man what a grotesque scene grotesque enough but I rather wish they had let him go the whole hog and blaze away he was as keen as knives to show us how he could take care of his purple diamonds and do you know bunny I was as keen as knives to see and raffles leaned towards me with a sly slow smile that made the hidden meaning of his visit only two plain to me at last so you think of having a try for his diamonds yourself he shrugged his shoulders it's horribly obvious I admit but yes I have my heart set upon them to be quite frank I have had them on my conscience for some time one couldn't hear so much of the man and his prize fighter and his diamonds without feeling it a kind of duty to have a go for them but when it comes to brandishing a revolver and practically challenging the world that thing becomes inevitable it is simply thrust upon one I was fated to hear that challenge bunny and I for one must take it up I was only sorry I couldn't get on my hind legs and say so then and there well I said I don't see the necessity as things are with us but of course I'm your man my tone may have been half-hearted I did my best to make it otherwise but it was barely a month since our Bond Street exploit and we certainly could have afforded to behave ourselves for some time to come we had been getting along so nicely by his advice I had scribbled a thing or two inspired by raffles I had even done an article on our own jewel robbery and for the moment I was quite satisfied with this sort of adventure I thought we ought to know when we were well off and could see no point in our running fresh risks before we were obliged on the other hand I was anxious not to show the least disposition to break the pledge that I had given a month ago but it was not on my manifest disinclination that raffles fastened necessity my dear bunny does the writer only write when the wolf is at the door does the painter paint for bread alone must you and I be driven to crime like Tom of Bow and Dick of Whitechapel you pain me my dear chap you needn't laugh because you do art for art's sake is a vile catchword but I confess it appeals to me in this case my motives are absolutely pure for I doubt if we shall ever be able to dispose of such peculiar stones but if I don't have a try for them after tonight I shall never be able to hold up my head again his eye twinkled but it glittered too we shall have our work cut out was all I said and you suppose I should be keen on it if we hadn't cried raffles my dear fellow I would rob St. Paul's Cathedral if I could but I could no more scoop a till when the shop walker wasn't looking than I could bag the apples out of an old woman's basket even that little business last month was a sordid affair but it was necessary and I think its strategy redeemed it to some extent now there's some credit and more sport in going where they boast they're on their guard against you the Bank of England for example is the ideal crib but that would need half a dozen of us with years to give to the job and meanwhile Ruben Rosenthal is high enough game for you and me we know he's armed we know how Billy Purvis can fight it'll be no soft thing I grant you but what of that my good bunny what of that a man's reach must extend his grasp dear boy or what the Dickens is a heaven for I would rather we didn't exceed ours just yet I answered laughing for his spirit was irresistible and the plan was growing upon me despite my qualms trust me for that was his reply I'll see you through after all I expect to find that the difficulties are nearly all on the surface these fellows both drink like the devil and that should simplify matters considerably but we shall see and we must take our time there will probably turn out to be a dozen different ways in which the thing might be done and we shall have to choose between them it will mean watching the house for at least a week in any case it may mean lots of other things that will take much longer but give me a week and I will tell you more that's to say if you're really on of course I am I replied indignantly but why should I give you a week why shouldn't we watch the house together because two eyes are as good as four and take up less room never hunt in couples unless you're obliged but don't you look offended Bunny there'll be plenty for you to do when the time comes that I promise you you shall have your share of the fun, never fear and a purple diamond all to yourself if we're lucky on the whole however this conversation left me less than lukewarm and I still remember the depression which came upon me when Raffles was gone I saw the folly of the enterprise to which I had committed myself the sheer, gratuitous, unnecessary folly of it and the paradoxes in which Raffles reveled and the frivolous cashewistry which was nevertheless half-sincere and which his mere personality rendered wholly plausible at the moment of utterance appealed very little to me when recalled in cold blood I admired the spirit of pure mischief in which he seemed prepared to risk his liberty and his life but I did not find it an infectious spirit on calm reflection yet the thought of withdrawal was not to be entertained for a moment on the contrary I was impatient of the delay ordained by Raffles and perhaps no small part of my secret disaffection came from his galling determination to do without me until the last moment it made it no better that this was characteristic of the man and of his attitude toward me for a month we had been, I suppose, the thickest thieves in all London and yet our intimacy was curiously incomplete with all his charming frankness there was in Raffles a vein of capricious reserve which was perceptible enough to be very irritating he had the instinctive secretiveness of the inveterate criminal he would make mysteries of matters of common concern for example, I never knew how or where he disposed of Bond Street jewels on the proceeds of which we were both still leading the outward lives of hundreds of other young fellows about town he was consistently mysterious about that and other details of which it seemed to me that I had already earned the right to know everything I could not but remember how he had led me into my first felony by means of a trick while yet uncertain whether he could trust me or not that I could no longer afford to resent but I did resent his want of confidence in me now I said nothing about it but it rankled every day and never more than in the week that succeeded the Rosenthal dinner when I met Raffles at the club he would tell me nothing when I went to his rooms he was out or pretended to be one day he told me he was getting on well but slowly it was a more ticklish game than he had thought but when I began to ask questions he would say no more then in there in my annoyance I took my own decision since he would tell me nothing of the result of his vigils I determined to keep one on my own account and that very evening found my way to the millionaire's front gates the house he was occupying is I believe quite the largest in the St. John's Wood District it stands in the angle formed by two broad thoroughfares neither of which as it happens is a bus route I doubt if many quieter spots exist within the four-mile radius quiet also was the great square house in its garden of grass plots and shrubs the lights were low the millionaire and his friends obviously spending their evening elsewhere the garden walls were only a few feet high in one there was a side door opening into a glass passage in the other two five-barred grained and varnished gates one at either end of the little semi-circular drive and both wide open so still was the place that I had a great mind to walk boldly in and learn something of the premises in fact I was on the point of doing so when I heard a quick shuffling step on the pavement behind me I turned round and faced the dark scowl and the dirty clenched fists of a dilapidated tramp you fool said he you utter idiot raffles that's it he whispered savagely tell all the neighborhood give me away at the top of your voice with that he turned his back upon me and shambled down the road shrugging his shoulders and muttering to himself as though I had refused him alms a few moments I stood astounded indignant at a loss then I followed him his feet trailed his knees gave his back was bowed his head kept nodding the gate of a man 80 years of age presently he waited for me midway between two lamp posts as I came up he was lighting ranked tobacco in a cutie pipe with an evil smelling match and the flame showed me the suspicion of a smile you must forgive my heat bunny but it really was very foolish of you here I am trying every dodge begging at the door one night hiding in the shrubs the next doing every mortal thing but stand and stare at the house as you went and did it's a costume piece and in you rush in your ordinary clothes I tell you they're on the lookout for us night and day it's the toughest nut I ever tackled well said I if you had told me so before I shouldn't have come you told me nothing he looked hard at me from under the broken brim of a battered billy cock you're right he said at length I've been too close it's become second nature with me when I've anything on but here's an end of it bunny so far as you're concerned I'm going home now and I want you to follow me but for heaven's sake keep your distance and don't speak to me again till I speak to you there give me a start and he was off again a decrepit vagabond with his hands in his pockets his elbows squared and frayed coattails swinging raggedly from side to side I followed him to the Finchley Road he took an atlas omnibus and I sat some rows behind him on the top but not far enough to escape the pest of his vile tobacco that he could carry his character sketch to such a pitch he who would only smoke one brand of cigarette it was the last, least touch of the insatiable artist and it charmed away what mortification there still remained in me once more I felt the fascination of a comrade he was forever dazzling one with a fresh and unsuspected facet of his character as we neared Piccadilly I wondered what he would do surely he was not going into the Albany like that no, he took another omnibus to Sloan Street I sitting behind him as before at Sloan Street we changed again and were presently in the long lean artery of the King's Road I was now all agogged to know our destination nor was I kept many more minutes in doubt Raffles got down, I followed he crossed the road and disappeared up a dark turning I pressed after him and was in time to see his coat tails as he plunged into a still darker flagged alley to the right he was holding himself up and stepping out like a young man once more also in some subtle way he already looked less disreputable but I alone was there to see him the alley was absolutely deserted and desperately dark at the further end he opened a door with a latch key and it was darker yet within instinctively I drew back and heard him chuckle we could no longer see each other all right Bunny, there's no hanky-panky this time these are studios my friend and I'm one of the lawful tenants indeed, in another minute we were in a lofty room with skylight, easels dressing cupboard, platform and every other adjunct save the signs of actual labour the first thing I saw as Raffles lit the gas was its reflection in his silk hat on the pegs beside the rest of his normal garments looking for the works of art continued Raffles lighting a cigarette and beginning to divest himself of his rags I'm afraid you won't find any but there's the canvas I'm always going to make a start upon I tell them I'm looking high and low for my ideal model a stove lit on principle twice a week and I look in and leave a newspaper and a smell of solovans how good they are after shag meanwhile I pay my rent and I'm a good tenant in every way and it's a very useful little pied-a-taire there's no saying how useful it might be at a pinch as it is the billy cock comes in and the topper goes out and nobody takes the slightest notice of either at this time of night the chances are that there's not a soul in the building except ourselves you never told me you went in for disguises said I watching him as he cleansed the grime from his face and hands no bunny I've treated you very shabbily all round there was really no reason why I shouldn't have shown you this place a month ago and yet there was no point in my doing so and circumstances are just conceivable in which it would have suited us both for you to be in genuine ignorance of my whereabouts I have something to sleep on as you perceive in case of need and of course my name is not raffles in the king's road so you will see that one might bolt further and fair worse meanwhile you use the place as a dressing-room it is my private pavilion, said raffles disguises in some cases they're half the battle and it's always pleasant to feel that if the worst comes to the worst you needn't necessarily be convicted under your own name then they're indispensable in dealing with the fences I drive all my bargains in the tongue and raiment of sure-ditch if I didn't there'd be the very devil to pay in blackmail now this cupboard's full of all sorts of Targary I tell the woman who cleansed the room that it's for my models when I find them by the way I only hope I've got something that'll fit you for you'll want a rig for tomorrow night tomorrow night? I exclaimed why what do you mean to do? the trick, said raffles I intended writing to you as soon as I got back to my rooms to ask you to look me up tomorrow afternoon then I was going to unfold my plan of campaign and take you straight into action then and there there's nothing like putting the nervous players in first it's the sitting with their pads on that upsets their apple-cart that was another of my reasons for being so confoundedly close you must try to forgive me I couldn't help remembering how well you played up last trip without any time to weaken on it beforehand all I want is for you to be as cool and smart tomorrow night as you were then though by Jove there's no comparison between the two cases I thought you would find it so you were right I have mind you I don't say this will be the tougher job all round we shall probably get in without any difficulty at all it's the getting out again that may flummox us that's the worst of an irregular household cried raffles with quite a burst of virtuous indignation I assure you bunny I spent the whole of Monday night in the shrubbery of the garden next door looking over the wall and if you'll believe me somebody was about all night long I don't mean the cafes I don't believe they ever get to bed at all poor devils no I mean Rosenthal himself and that pasty-faced beast Purvis they were up and drinking from midnight when they came in to broad daylight when I cleared out even then I left them sober enough to slang each other by the way they very nearly came to blows in the garden within a few yards of me and I heard something that might come in useful and make Rosenthal shoot crooked at a critical moment you know what an IDB is illicit diamond buyer exactly well it seems that Rosenthal was one he must have let it out to Purvis in his cups anyhow I heard Purvis taunting him with it and threatening him with the breakwater at Cape Town and I begin to think our friends are friend and foe but about tomorrow night there's nothing subtle in my plan it's simply to get in while these fellows are out on the loose and to lie low till they come back and longer if possible we must doctor the whiskey that would simplify the whole thing though it's not a very sporting game to play still we must remember Rosenthal's revolver we don't want him to sign his name on us with all those cafes about however it's ten to one on the whiskey and a hundred to one against us if we go looking for it a brush with the heathen would spoil everything if it did no more besides there are the ladies the deuce there are ladies with an eye the very voices for raising Cain I fear the clamour it would be fatal to us oh Contraire if we can manage to stow ourselves away unbeknownst half the battle will be won if Rosenthal turns in drunk it's a purple diamond apiece if he sits up sober it may be a bullet instead we will hope not Bunny and all the firing wouldn't be on one side but it's on the knees of the guards and so we left it when we shook hands in Piccadilly not by any means as much later as I could have wished Raffles would not ask me to his rooms that night he said he made it a rule to have a long night before playing cricket and other games his final word to me was framed on the same principle mind only one drink tonight Bunny two at the outside as you value your life and mine I remember my abject obedience and the endless sleepless night it gave me of the house's opposite standing out at last against the blue-gray London dawn I wondered whether I should ever see another and was very hard on myself for that little expedition which I had made on my own willful account it was between eight and nine o'clock in the evening when we took up our position in the garden adjoining that of Ruben Rosenthal the house itself was shut up thanks to the outrageous Libertine next door who, by driving away the neighbours had gone far towards delivering himself into our hands practically secure from surprise on that side we could watch our house under cover of a wall just high enough to see over while a fair margin of shrubs in either garden afforded us additional protection thus entrenched we had stood an hour watching a pair of lighted bow windows with vague shadows flitting continually across the blinds and listening to the drawing of corks the clink of glasses and a gradual crescendo of coarse voices within our luck seemed to have deserted us the owner of the purple diamonds was dining at home and dining at undue length I thought it was a dinner party raffles differed in the end he proved right wheels graded in the drive a carriage and pair stood at the steps there was a stampede from the dining room and the loud voices died away to burst forth presently from the porch let me make our position perfectly clear we were over the wall at the side of the house but a few feet from the dining room windows on our right one angle of the building cut the back lawn in two diagonally on our left another angle just permitted us to see the jutting steps and the waiting carriage we saw Rosenthal come out saw the glimmer of his diamonds before anything then came the pugilist then a lady with a head of hair like a bath sponge and another and the party was complete raffles ducked and pulled me down in great excitement the ladies are going with them he whispered this is great that's better still the gardenia the millionaire had bawled and that's the best of all said raffles standing upright as hooves and wheels crunched through the gates and rattled off at a fine speed now what I whisper trembling with excitement they'll be clearing away yes here comes their shadows the drawing room windows open on the lawn bunny it's the psychological moment where's that mask I produced it with a hand whose trembling I tried in vain to still and could have died for raffles when he made no comment on what he could not fail to notice his own hands were firm and cool as he adjusted my mask for me and then his own by joe volt boy he whispered cheerily look about the greatest ruffian I ever saw these masks alone will down a nigger if we meet one but I'm glad I remember to tell you not to shave you'll pass for whitechapel if the worst comes to the worst and you don't forget to talk the lingo better sulk like a mule if you're not sure of it and leave the dialogue to me but please our stars there will be no need now are you ready quite got your gag yes, shooter yes, then follow me in an instant we were over the wall in another on the lawn behind the house there was no moon the very stars in their courses had veiled themselves for our benefit I crept at my leader's heels to some French windows opening upon a shallow veranda he pushed, they yielded luck again he whispered nothing but luck now for a light and the light came a good score of electric burners glowed red for the fraction of a second then rained merciless white beams into our blinded eyes when we found our sight four revolvers covered us and between two of them the colossal frame of Ruben Rosenthal shook with a wheezy laughter from head to foot good evening boys he hiccupped glad to see it last shift foot a finger, you on the left though and you're a dead boy I mean you, you greaser he roared out at raffles I know you I've been waiting for you I've been watching you all this week lucky smart you thought yourself, didn't ya one day begging next time shaman tight and next one of them old pals from Kimberley that never come when I'm in but you left the same tracks every day you buggins and the same tracks every night all around the blessed premises all right governor, drawled raffles, don't excite it's a fair cop we don't sweat to know how you brung it off only don't you go for a shoot cause we ain't armed so help me guard ah, you're a no in one said Rosenthal fingering his triggers but you've struck a no in her oh yes, we know all about that set a thief to catch a thief, oh yes my eyes had torn themselves from the brown black muzzles from the accursed diamonds that had been our snare the pasty pig face of the overfed pugilist and the flaming cheeks and hook nose of Rosenthal himself I was looking beyond them at the doorway filled with quivering silk and plush black faces, white eyeballs, woolly pates but a sudden silence recalled my attention to the millionaire and only his nose retained its color what do you mean? he whispered with a horse oath headed out or by Christmas I'll drill ya what price that breakwater drawled Raffles coolly eh? Rosenthal's revolvers were describing widening orbits what price that breakwater, old IDB where in hell did you get hold of that? asked Rosenthal with a rattle in his thick neck meant for mirth you may well arsed, says Raffles it's all over the place where I come from who can have spread such rot? I don't know, says Raffles arse the gentleman on your left perhaps he knows the gentleman on his left had turned livid with emotion guilty conscience never declared itself in plainer terms for a moment his small eyes bulged like currents in the suit of his face the next he had pocketed his pistols on a professional instinct and was upon us with his fists out of the light, out of the light yelled Rosenthal in a frenzy he was too late no sooner had the burly pugilist obstructed his fire than Raffles was through the window at a bound while I, first standing still and saying nothing was scientifically felled to the floor I cannot have been many moments without my senses when I recovered them there was a great to-do in the garden but I had the drawing room to myself I sat up Rosenthal and Purvis were rushing about outside cursing the Kaphirs and nagging at each other over that wall I tell you I tell you it was this one can't you whistle for the police police be damned I've had enough of the blessed police then we better get back and make sure of the other rotter oh make sure of your skin that's what you'd better do Jalla you black hog if I catch you Skulkin I never heard the threat I was creeping from the drawing room on my hands and knees my own revolver swinging by its steel ring from my teeth for an instant I thought that the hall was also deserted I was wrong and I crept upon a kaphir on all fours poor devil I could not bring myself to deal him a base blow but I threatened him most hideously with my revolver and left the white teeth chattering in his black head as I took the stairs three at a time I went upstairs in that decisive fashion as though it were my only course I cannot explain but garden and ground floor seemed alive with men and I might have done worse I turned into the first room I came to it was a bedroom empty though lit up and never shall I forget how I started as I entered on encountering the awful villain that was myself at full length in a pier glass masked armed and ragged I was indeed fit carrying for a bullet or the hangman and to one or the other I made up my mind nevertheless I hid myself in the wardrobe behind the mirror and there I stood shivering and cursing my fate my folly and raffles most of all raffles first and last for I dare say half an hour then the wardrobe door was flung suddenly open they had stolen into the room without a sound and I was hauled downstairs an ignominious captive gross scenes followed in the hall the ladies were now upon the stage and at sight of the desperate criminal they screamed with one accord in truth I must have given them fair cause though my mask was now torn away and hid nothing but my left ear Rosenthal answered their shrieks with a roar for silence the woman with the bath sponge hair swore at him shrilly in return the place became a babble impossible to describe I remember wondering how long it would be before the police appeared Purvis and the ladies were for calling them in and giving me in charge without delay Rosenthal would not hear of it he swore that he would shoot man or woman who left his sight he had had enough of the police he was not going to have them coming there to spoil sport he was going to deal with me in his own way with that he dragged me from all other hands flung me against a door and sent a bullet crashing through the wood with an inch of my ear you drunken fool it'll be murder shouted Purvis getting in the way a second time what do I care he's armed isn't he I shot him in self-defense it'll be a warning to others will you stand aside or do you want it yourself you're drunk said Purvis still between us I saw you take a neat tumblerful since you come in and it's made you drunk as a fool pull yourself together old man you ain't going to do what you'll be sorry for then I won't shoot him at all I'll only shoot round and round the beggar you're quite right old feller wouldn't hurt him great mistake round and round there like that his freckled paw shot up over Purvis' shoulder mauve lightning came from his ring a red flash from his revolver and shrieks from the women as the reverberations died away some splinters lodged in my hair next instant the prize fighter disarmed him and I was safe from the devil but finally doomed to the deep sea a policeman was in our midst he had entered through the drawing room window he was an officer of few words and credible pompitude in a twinkling he had the handcuffs on my wrists while the pugilist explained the situation and his patron reviled the force and its representative with impotent malignity a fine watch they kept a lot of good they did coming in when it was all over and the whole household might have been murdered in their sleep the officer only deigned to notice him as he marched me off we know all about you sir he said contemptuously and he refused the sovereign Purvis offered you will be seeing me again sir at Marleybone shall I come now as you please sir I rather think the other gentleman requires you more and I don't fancy this man means to give much trouble oh I'm coming quietly I said and I went in silence we traversed perhaps a hundred yards it must have been midnight we did not meet a soul at last I whispered how on earth did you manage it purely by luck said raffles I had the luck to get clear away through knowing every brick of those back garden walls and the double luck to have these togs with the rest over at Chelsea the helmet is one of a collection I made up at Oxford here it goes over this wall and we'd better carry the coat and belt before we meet a real officer I got them once for a fancy ball ostensibly and thereby hangs a yarn I always thought they might come in useful a second time my chief crux tonight was getting rid of the handsome that brought me back I sent him off to Scotland Yard with ten barb and a special message to good old Mackenzie the whole detective department will be at Brosenthal's in about half an hour of course I speculated on our gentlemen's hatred of the police another huge slice of luck if you'd got away well and good if not I felt he was the man to play with his mouse as long as possible yes bunny it's been more of a costume piece than I intended and we've come out of it with a good deal less credit but by jove would jolly lucky to have come out of it at all end of a costume piece this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Horning gentlemen and players old raffles may or may not have been an exceptional criminal but as a cricketer I dareswear he was unique himself a dangerous bat a brilliant field and perhaps the very finest slow bowler of his decade he took incredibly little interest in the game at large he never went up to lords without his cricket bag or showed the slightest interest in the results of a match in which he was not himself engaged nor was this mere hateful egotism on his part he professed to have lost all enthusiasm for the game and to keep it up only from the very lowest motives cricket, said raffles like everything else is good enough sport until you discover a better as a source of excitement it isn't in it with other things you've bought of Bunny and the involuntary comparison becomes a bore what's the satisfaction of taking a man's wicket when you want his spoons still if you can bowl a bit your low cunning won't get rusty and always looking for the weak spots just the kind of mental exercise one wants perhaps there's some affinity between the two after all but I'd chuck up cricket tomorrow Bunny if it wasn't for the glorious protection it affords a person of my proclivities how so, said I it brings you before the public I should have thought far more than is either safe or wise my dear Bunny that's exactly where you make a mistake to follow crime with reasonable impunity you simply must have a parallel ostensible career the more public the better the principle is obvious Mr. Peace, of pious memory disarmed suspicion by acquiring a local reputation for playing the fiddle and taming animals it's my profound conviction that Jack the Ripper was really an eminent public man whose speeches were very likely reported alongside his atrocities fill the bill in with some prominent part and you'll never be suspected of doubling it with another of equal prominence that's why I want you to cultivate journalism my boy and sign all you can and it's the one and only reason why I don't burn my bats for firewood nevertheless, when he did play there was no Keener performer on the field nor one more anxious to do well for his side I remember how he went to the Nats before the first match of the season with his pockets full of sovereigns which he put on the stumps instead of bales it was a sight to see the professionals bowling like demons for the hard cash and whenever a stump was hit a pound was tossed to the bowler and another balanced in its stead while one man took three pounds with a ball that spread eagle the wicket Raffles practice cost him either eight or nine sovereigns but he had absolutely first class bowling all the time and he made 57 runs next day it became my pleasure to accompany him to all his matches to watch every ball he bowled or played or fielded and to sit chatting with him in the pavilion when he was doing none of these three things you might have seen us there side by side during the greater part of the gentleman's first innings against the players who had lost the toss on the second Monday in July we were to be seen but not heard for Raffles had failed to score and was uncommonly crossed for a player who cared so little for the game merely taciturn with me he was positively rude to more than one member who wanted to know how it had happened or who ventured to commiserate with him on his luck there he sat with a straw hat tilted over his nose and a cigarette stuck between lips that curled disagreeably at every advance I was therefore much surprised when a young fellow of the same exquisite type came and squeezed himself in between us and met with a perfectly civil reception despite the liberty I did not know the boy by sight nor did Raffles introduce us but their conversation proclaimed at once a slightness of acquaintanceship and a license on the lads part which combined to puzzle me mystification reached its height when Raffles was informed that the other's father was anxious to meet him and he instantly consented to gratify that whim he's in the ladies enclosure will you come round now with pleasure says Raffles keep a place for me bunny and they were gone young Crowley said some voice further back last year's hero eleven I remember him worst man in the team Keen Cricketer however stopped till he was twenty to get his colours Governor made him Keenbreed oh pretty sir very pretty the game was boring me I only came to see old Raffles perform soon I was looking wistfully for his return and at length I saw him beckoning me from the palings to the right want to introduce you to old Amhersteth he whispered when I joined him they've a cricket week next month when this boy Crowley comes of age and we've both got to go down and play both I echoed but I'm no cricketer shut up says Raffles leave that to me I'm lying for all I'm worth he added sepulchrely as we reached the bottom of the steps I trust you not to give the show away there was a gleam in his eye that I knew well enough elsewhere but was unprepared for in those healthy sane surroundings and it was with very definite misgivings and surmises that I followed the Zingari Blazer through the vast flowerbed of hats and bonnets that bloomed beneath the ladies awning Lord Amhersteth was a fine looking man with a short mustache and a double chin he received me with much dry courtesy through which however it was not difficult to read a less flattering tale I was accepted as the inevitable appendage of the invaluable Raffles with whom I felt deeply incensed as I made my bow I have been bold enough said Lord Amhersteth to ask one of the gentlemen of England to come down and play some rustic cricket for us next month he is kind enough to say that he would have liked nothing better but for this little fishing expedition of yours, Mr. Mr. and Lord Amhersteth succeeded in remembering my name it was of course the first I had ever heard of that fishing expedition but I made haste to say that it could easily and should certainly be put off Raffles gleamed approval through his eyelashes Lord Amhersteth bowed and shrugged you're very good I'm sure said he but I understand you're a cricketer yourself he was one at school said Raffles with infamous readiness not a real cricketer I was stammering meanwhile in the eleven said Lord Amhersteth I'm afraid not said I but only just out of it declared Raffles to my horror well well we can't all play for the gentlemen said Lord Amhersteth slyly my son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow and he's going to play I may even come in myself at a pinch so you won't be the only duffer if you are one and I shall be very glad if you'll come down and help us too you shall flog a stream before breakfast and after dinner if you like I should be very proud I was beginning as the mere prelude to resolute excuses but the eye of Raffles opened wide upon me and I hesitated weekly to be duly lost then that settled said Lord Amhersteth with the slightest suspicion of grimness it's to be a little weak you know when my son comes of age we play the free foresters the dorsetured gentlemen and probably some local lot as well but Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it and Crowley shall write another wicket by Jove they're all out then I rely on you both with a little nod Lord Amhersteth rose and sidled to the gangway Raffles rose also but I caught the sleeve of his blazer what are you thinking of I whispered savagely I was nowhere near the eleven I'm no sort of cricketer I shall have to get out of this not you he whispered back you needn't play but come you must if you wait for me after half past six I'll tell you why but I could guess the reason and I am ashamed to say that it revolted me much less than did the notion of making a public fool of myself on a cricket field my gorge rose at this as it no longer rose at crime and it was in no tranquil humor that I strolled about the ground while Raffles disappeared in the pavilion nor was my annoyance lessened by a little meeting I witnessed between young Crowley and his father who shrugged as he stopped and stooped to convey some information which made the young man look a little blank it may have been pure self-consciousness on my part but I could have sworn that the trouble was their inability to secure the great Raffles without his insignificant friend then the bell rang and I climbed to the top of the pavilion to watch Raffles bowl no subtleties are lost up there and if ever a bowler was full of them it was AJ Raffles on this day as indeed all the cricket world remembers one had not to be a cricketer oneself to appreciate his perfect command of pitch and break his beautifully easy action which never varied with the varying pace his great ball on the leg stump his dropping head ball in a word the infinite ingenuity of that versatile attack it was no mere exhibition of athletic prowess it was an intellectual treat and one with a special significance in my eyes I saw the affinity between the two things saw it in that afternoon's tireless warfare against the flower of professional cricket it was not that Raffles took many wickets for few runs he was too fine a bowler to mind being hit and time was short and the wicket good what I admired and what I remember was the combination of resource and cunning of patience and precision of head work and handiwork which made every over an artistic whole it was all so characteristic of that other Raffles whom I alone knew I felt like bowling this afternoon he told me later in the handsome with a pitch to help me I'd have done something big as it is three for forty one out of the four that fell isn't so bad for a slow bowler on a plum wicket against those fellows but I felt venomous nothing riles me more than being asked about for my cricket as though I were a pro myself then why on earth go to punish them and because we shall be jolly hard up bunny before the season's over ah said I I thought it was that of course it was it seems they're going to have the very devil of a week of it balls dinner parties swagger house party general junketings and obviously a house full of diamonds as well diamonds galore as a general rule nothing would induce me to abuse my position as a guest I've never done it bunny but in this case we're engaged like the waiters and the band and by heaven will take our toll let's have a quiet dinner somewhere and talk it over it seems a rather vulgar sort of theft I could not help saying and to this my single protest raffles instantly assented it is a vulgar sort said he but I can't help that we're getting vulgarly hard up and there's an end on it besides these people deserve it and can afford it and don't you run away with the idea that all will be plain sailing nothing will be easier than getting some stuff and nothing harder than avoiding all suspicion as of course we must we may come away with no more than a good working plan of the premises who knows in any case there's weeks of thinking in it for you and me but with those weeks I will not weary you further than by remarking that the thinking was done entirely by raffles who did not always trouble to communicate his thoughts to me his reticence however was no longer in irritant I began to accept it as a necessary convention of these little enterprises and after our last adventure of the kind more especially after its denouement my trust in raffles was much too solid to be shaken by a want of trust in me which I still believe to have been more the instinct of the criminal than the judgment of the man it was on Monday the 10th of August that we were due at Milchester Abbey Dorset and the beginning of the month found us cruising about that very county with fly rods actually in our hands the idea was that we should acquire at once a local reputation as decent fishermen and some knowledge of the countryside with a view to further and more deliberate operations in the event of an unprofitable week there was another idea which raffles kept to himself until he had got me down there then one day he produced a cricket ball in a meadow we were crossing and threw me catches for an hour together more hours he spent in bowling to me on the nearest green and if I was never a cricketer at least I came nearer to being one by the end of that week than ever before or since incident began early on the Monday we had sallied forth from a desolate little junction within quite a few miles of Milchester had been caught in a shower had run for shelter to a wayside inn a florid overdressed man was drinking in the parlor and I could have sworn it was at the sight of him that raffles recoiled on the threshold and afterwards insisted on returning to the station through the rain he assured me however that the odor of stale ale had almost knocked him down and I had to make what I could of his speculative downcast eyes and knitted brow Milchester Abbey is a gray quadrangle pile deep set in rich woody country and twinkling with triple rows of quaint windows every one of which seemed a light as we drove up just in time to dress for dinner the carriage had whirled us under I know not how many triumphal arches in process of construction and passed the tents and flagpoles of a juicy looking cricket field on which raffles undertook to bowl up to his reputation but the chief signs of festival were within where we found an enormous house party assembled including more persons of pomp, majesty and dominion than I had ever encountered in one room before I confess I felt overpowered our errand and my own presences combined to rob me of an address upon which I have sometimes plumed myself and I have a grim recollection of my nervous relief when dinner was at last announced I little knew what an ordeal it was to prove I had taken in a much less formidable young lady than might have fallen to my lot indeed I began by blessing my good fortune in this respect Miss Malouche was merely the rector's daughter and she had only been asked to make an even number she informed me of both facts before the soup reached us and her subsequent conversation was characterized by the same engaging candor it exposed what was little short of a mania for imparting information I had simply to listen to nod and to be thankful when I confessed to knowing very few of those present even by sight my entertaining companion proceeded to tell me who everybody was beginning on my left and working conscientiously round to her right this lasted quite a long time and really interested me but a great deal that followed did not and obviously to recapture my unworthy attention Miss Malouche suddenly asked me in a sensational whisper whether I could keep a secret I said I thought I might where upon another question followed in still lower and more thrilling accents are you afraid of burglars? burglars I was roused at last the word stabbed me I repeated it in horrified query so I found something to interest you at last said Miss Malouche in naive triumph yes burglars but don't speak so loud it's supposed to be kept a great secret I really oughtn't to tell you at all but what is there to tell? I whispered with satisfactory impatience you promised not to speak of it of course well then there are burglars in the neighbourhood have they committed any robberies? not yet then how do you know? they've been seen in the district two well-known London thieves two I looked at raffles I had done so often during the evening envying him his high spirits his iron nerve his buoyant wit his perfect ease and self-possession but now I pitied him through all my own terror and consternation I pitied him as he sat eating and drinking and laughing and talking without a cloud of fear or of embarrassment on his handsome taking dare devil face I caught up my champagne and emptied the glass who has seen them? I then asked calmly a detective they were traced down from town a few days ago they are believed to have designs on the abbey but why aren't they run in? exactly what I asked Papa on the way here this evening he says there is no warrant out against the men at present and all that can be done is to watch their movements oh so they are being watched yes by a detective who is down here on purpose and I heard Lord Amistath tell Papa that they have been seen this afternoon at Warbeck Junction the very place where raffles and I had been caught in the rain our stampede from the inn was now explained on the other hand I was no longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my companion might have to tell me and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile this is really quite exciting Miss Malouche said I may I ask how you come to know so much about it it's Papa was the confidential reply Lord Amistath consulted him and he consulted me but for goodness sake don't let it get about I can't think what tempted me to tell you you may trust me Miss Malouche but aren't you frightened Miss Malouche giggled not a bit they won't come to the rectory there's nothing for them there but look round the table look at the diamonds look at old lady Melrose's necklace alone the dowager Marchioness of Melrose was one of the few persons whom it had been unnecessary to point out to me she sat on Lord Amistath's right flourishing her ear trumpet and drinking champagne with her usual notorious freedom as dissipated and kindly a dame as the world has ever seen it was a necklace of diamonds and sapphires that Rosen fell about her ample neck they say it's worth five thousand pounds at least continued my companion Lady Margaret told me so this morning that's Lady Margaret next to your Mr. Raffles you know and the old deer will wear them every night think what a haul they would be no we don't feel in immediate danger at the rectory when the ladies rose Miss Malouche bound me to fresh vows of secrecy and left me I should think with some remorse for her indiscretion but more satisfaction at the importance which it had undoubtedly given her in my eyes the opinion may smack a vanity though in reality the very springs of conversation reside in that same human universal itch to thrill the auditor the peculiarity of Miss Malouche was that she must be thrilling at all costs and thrilling she had surely been I spare you my feelings of the next two hours I tried hard to get a word with Raffles but again and again I failed in the dining room he and Crowley lit their cigarettes with the same match and had their heads together all the time in the drawing room I had the mortification of hearing him talk nonsense into the ear trumpet of Lady Melrose whom he knew in town lastly in the billiard room they had a very great and lengthy pool while I sat aloof and chafed more than ever in the company of a very serious scotchman who had arrived since dinner and who would talk of nothing but the recent improvements in instantaneous photography he had not come to play in the matches he told me but to obtain for Lord Amhersteth such a series of cricket photographs as had never been taken before whether as an amateur or a professional photographer I was unable to determine I remember however seeking distraction in little bursts of resolute attention to the conversation of this bore and so at last the long ordeal ended glasses were emptied men said good night and I followed Raffles to his room it's all up I gasped as he turned up the gas and I shut the door I watched we've been followed down from town there's a detective here on the spot how do you know? asked Raffles turning upon me quite sharply but without the least dismay and I told him how I knew of course I added it was the fellow we saw in the inn this afternoon the detective said Raffles do you mean to say you don't know a detective when you see one bunny if that wasn't the fellow which is Raffles shook his head to think that you've been talking to him for the last hour in the billiard room and couldn't spot what he was the scotch photographer I paused aghast scotch he is said Raffles and photographer he may be he is also Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard the very man I sent the message to that night last April and you couldn't spot who he was for a whole hour oh bunny bunny you were never built for crime but said I if that was Mackenzie who was the fellow you bolted from at Warbeck the man he's watching but he's watching us Raffles looked at me with a pitying eye and shook his head again before handing me his open cigarette case I don't know whether smoking's forbidden in one's bedroom but you'd better take one of these and stand tight bunny because I'm going to say something offensive I helped myself with a little laugh say what you like my dear fellow if it really isn't you and I that Mackenzie's after well then it isn't and it couldn't be and nobody but a born bunny would suppose for a moment that it was do you seriously think he would sit there and knowingly watch his man playing pool under his nose well he might he's a cool hand Mackenzie but I'm not cool enough to win a pool under such conditions at least I don't think I am it would be interesting to see the situation wasn't free from strain as it was though I knew he wasn't thinking of us Crowley told me all about it after dinner you see and then I'd seen one of the men for myself this afternoon you thought it was a detective who made me turn tail at that inn I really don't know why I didn't tell you at the time but it was just the opposite that loud red-faced brute is one of the cleverest thieves in London and I once had a drink with him and our mutual fence I was an East Ender from tongue to toe at the moment but you'll understand that I don't run unnecessary risks of recognition by a brute like that he's not alone I hear by no means there's at least one other man with him and it's suggested that there may be an accomplice here in the house did Lord Crowley tell you so? Crowley in the champagne between them in confidence of course just as your girl told you but even in confidence he never let on about Mackenzie he told me there was a detective in the background but that was all putting him up as a guest is evidently their big secret to be kept from the other guests because it might offend them but more particularly from the servants whom he's here to watch that's my reading of the situation Bunny and you'll agree with me that it's infinitely more interesting than we could have imagined it would prove but infinitely more difficult for us said I with a sigh of pusillanimous relief our hands are tied for this week at all events not necessarily my dear Bunny though I admit that the chances are against us yet I'm not so sure of that either there are all sorts of possibilities in these three cornered combinations set A to watch B and he won't have an eye left for C that's the obvious theory but then Mackenzie's a very big A I should be sorry to have any bootle about me with that man in the house yet it would be great to nip in between A and B and score off them both at once it would be worth a risk Bunny to do that it would be worth risking something merely to take on old hands like B and his men at their own old game A Bunny, that would be something like a match gentlemen and players at single wicket by Jove his eyes were brighter than I had known them for many a day they shone with the perverted enthusiasm which was browsed in him only by the contemplation of some new audacity he kicked off his shoes and began pacing his room with noiseless rapidity not since the night of the old Bohemian dinner to Reuben Rosenthal had raffles exhibited such excitement in my presence and I was not sorry at the moment to be reminded of the fiasco to which that banquet had been the prelude my dear AJ said I in his very own tone you're far too fond of the uphill game you will eventually fall a victim to the sporting spirit and nothing else take a lesson from our last escape and fly lower as you value our skins study the house as much as you like but do not go and shove your head into Mackenzie's mouth my wealth of metaphor brought him to a standstill with his cigarette between his fingers and a grin beneath his shining eyes you are quite right Bunny I won't I really won't yet you saw old lady Melrose's necklace I've been wanting it for years but I'm not going to play the fool on a bright I'm not yet by Jove to get to winward of the professors in Mackenzie too it would be a great game Bunny it would be a great game well you mustn't play it this week no no I won't but I wonder how the professors think of going to work that's what one wants to know I wonder if they've really gotten accomplice in the house how I wish I knew their game but it's all right Bunny don't you be jealous it shall be as you wish and with that assurance I went off to my own room and so to bed with an incredibly light heart I had still enough of the honest man in me to welcome the postponement of our actual felonies to dread their performance to deplore their necessity which is merely another way of stating the too patent fact that I was an incomparably weaker man than raffles while every wit is wicked I had however one rather strong point I possessed the gift of dismissing unpleasant considerations not intimately connected with the passing moment entirely from my mind through the exercise of this faculty I had lately been living my frivolous life in town with as much ignoble enjoyment as I had derived from it the year before and similarly, here at Milchester in the long dreaded cricket week I had after all a quite excellent time it is true that there were other factors in this pleasing disappointment in the first place, mirabeli diktu there were one or two even greater duffers than I on the abbey cricket field indeed, quite early in the week when it was most value to me I gained considerable kudos for a lucky catch a ball of which I had merely heard the hum stuck fast in my hand which Lord Ammersteth himself grasped in public congratulation this happy accident was not to be undone even by me and as nothing succeeds like success and the constant encouragement of the one great cricketer on the field was in itself an immense stimulus I actually made a run or two in my very next innings Miss Malouche said pretty things to me that night at the great ball in honour of Viscount Crowley's majority she also told me that was the night on which the robbers would assuredly make their raid and was full of arch-tremors when we sat out in the garden though the entire premises were illuminated all night meanwhile, the quiet scotchman took countless photographs by day which he developed by night in a dark room admirably situated in the servants part of the house and it is my firm belief that only two of his fellow guests knew Mr. Clefane of Dundee for Inspector Mackenzie of Scotland Yard the week was to end with a trumpery match on the Saturday which two or three of us intended abandoning early in order to return to town that night the match, however, was never played in the small hours of the Saturday morning a tragedy took place at Milchester Abbey let me tell of the thing as I saw and heard it my room opened upon the central gallery and was not even on the same floor as that on which raffles and I think all the other men were quartered I had been put in fact into the dressing room of one of the grand suites and my two near neighbours were old lady Melrose and my host and hostess now by the Friday evening the actual festivities were at an end and for the first time that week I must have been sound asleep since midnight and all at once I found myself sitting up breathless a heavy thud had come against my door and now I heard hard breathing and the dull stamp of muffled feet I've got ye muttered a voice it's no use struggling it was the scotch detective and a new fear turned me cold there was no reply but the hard breathing grew harder still and the muffled feet beat the floor to a quicker measure in sudden panic I sprang out of bed and flung open my door a light burnt low on the landing and by it I could see Mackenzie swaying and staggering in a silent tussle with some powerful adversary hold this man he cried as I appeared hold the rascal but I stood like a fool until the pair of them backed into me when with a deep breath I flung myself on the fellow whose face I had seen at last he was one of the footmen who waited at table and no sooner had I pinned him than the detective loosed his hold hang on to him he cried there's more of them below and he went leaping down the stairs as other doors opened and Lord Amhersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their pajamas at that my man ceased struggling but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas what the devil's all this? asked Lord Amhersteth blinking that ran downstairs Mack, Clefane said I hastily aha said he turning to the footmen so you're the scoundrel are you well done well done where was he caught I had no idea here's Lady Melrose's door open said Crowley Lady Melrose? Lady Melrose you forget she's deaf said Lord Amhersteth ah that'll be your maid an inner door had opened next instant there was a little shriek and a white figure gesticulated on the threshold where is the door of Lady Lemarkey the window is open where is it window open in jewel case gone by Jove exclaimed Lord Amhersteth but how is Lady Lemarkey est-elle bien? oui me l'eau elle dort sleeps through it all said my lord she's the only one then what made Mackenzie Clefane bolt young Crowley asked me said there were more of them below why the devil couldn't you tell us so before he cried and went leaping downstairs in his turn he was followed by nearly all the cricketers who now burst upon the scene in a body only to desert it for the chase Raffles was one of them and I would gladly have been another had not the footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him and to make a dash in the direction from which they had come Lord Amhersteth had him in an instant but the fellow fought desperately and it took the two of us to drag him downstairs amid a terrified chorus from half open doors eventually we handed him over to two other footmen who appeared with their night-shirts tucked into their trousers and my host was good enough to compliment me as he led the way outside I thought I heard a shot he added didn't you? I thought I heard three and out we dashed into the darkness I remember how the gravel pricked my feet how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying lawn so dark was the night that we were in the cricketers midst before we saw the shimmer of their pajamas and then Lord Amhersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew who's this? he cried what on earth's happened? it's Clefane said a man who knelt over him he's got a bullet in him somewhere is he alive? barely good God, where's Crowley? here I am called a breathless voice good you fellows, there's nothing to show which way they've gone here's Raffles, he's chucked it too and they ran up panting well, we've got one of them at all events muttered Lord Amhersteth the next thing is to get this poor fellow indoors take his shoulder somebody, now his middle join hands under him all together now, that's the way poor fellow, poor fellow his name isn't Clefane at all he's a Scotland Yard detective down here for these very villains Raffles was the first to express surprise but he had also been the first to raise the wounded man nor had any of them a stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house in a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library and there with ice on his wound and brandy in his throat his eyes opened and his lips moved Lord Amhersteth bent down to catch the words yes, yes said he, we've got one of them safe and sound the brute you collared upstairs Lord Amhersteth bent lower by Jove lowered the jewel case out of the window, did he and they've got clean away with it well, well I only hope we'll be able to pull this good fellow through he's off again an hour passed the sun was rising it found a dozen young fellows on the settees in the billiard room drinking whiskey and soda water in their overcoats and pajamas and still talking excitedly in one breath a timetable was being passed from hand to hand the doctor was still in the library at last the door opened and Lord Amhersteth put in his head it isn't hopeless said he but it's bad enough there'll be no cricket today another hour and most of us were on our way to catch the early train between us we filled a compartment almost a suffocation and still we talked altogether of the night's event and still I was a little hero in my way for having kept hold of the one Ruffian who had been taken and my gratification was subtle and intense raffles watched me under lowered lids not a word had we had together not a word did we have until we had left the others at Paddington and were skimming through the streets in a handsome with noiseless tires and a tinkling bell well bunny said raffles so the professors have it eh yes said I and I'm jolly glad that poor Mackenzie has a ball in his chest that you and I have been on the decent side for once he shrugged his shoulders you're hopeless bunny quite hopeless I take it you wouldn't have refused your share if the bootle had fallen to us yet you positively enjoy coming off second best for the second time running I confess however that the professor's methods were full of interest to me I for one have probably gained as much an experience as I have lost in other things that lowering the jewel case out of the window was a very simple and effective expedient two of them had been waiting below for it for hours how do you know? I asked I saw them from my own window which was just above the dear old ladies I was fretting for that necklace in particular when I went up to turn in for our last night and I happened to look out of my window in point of fact I wanted to see whether the one below was open and whether there was the slightest chance of working the oracle with my sheet for a rope of course I took the precaution of turning my light off first and it was a lucky thing I did I saw the pros right down below and they never saw me I saw a little tiny luminous disc for just an instant and then again for an instant a few minutes later of course I knew what it was for I have my own watch dial dobbed with luminous paint it makes a lantern of sorts when you can get no better but these fellows were not using theirs as a lantern they were under the old ladies window they were watching the time the whole thing was arranged with their accomplice inside set a thief to catch a thief in a minute I had guessed what the whole thing proved to be and you did nothing? I exclaimed on the contrary I went downstairs and straight into Lady Melrose's room you did? without a moment's hesitation to save her jewels and I was prepared to yell as much into her ear trumpet for all the house to hear but the dear lady is too deaf and too fond of her dinner to wake easily well? she didn't stir and yet you allowed the professors as you call them to take her jewels case and all all but this said Raffles thrusting his fist into my lap I would have shown it to you before but really old fellow your face all day has been worth a fortune to the firm and he opened his fist to shut it next instant on the bunch of diamonds and of sapphires that I had last seen in circling the neck of Lady Melrose end of gentlemen and players this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org reading by Kristen Hughes The Amateur Cracksman by E. W. Honing Le premier pas that night he told me the story of his earliest crime not since the fateful morning of the Ides of March when he had just mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the subject it was not for want of trying he would shake his head and watch his cigarette smoke thoughtfully a subtle look in his eyes half cynical half wistful as though the decent honest days that were no more had had their merits after all Raffles would plan a fresh enormity or glory in the last with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist it was impossible to imagine one throb or Twitter of compunction beneath those frankly gotistic and infectious transports and yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony so that I had given the story up long before the night of our return from Milchester cricket however was in the air and Raffles cricket bag back where he sometimes kept it in the fender with the remains of an oriental label still adhering to the leather my eyes had been on this label for some time and I suppose his eyes had been on mine for all at once he asked me if I still burned to hear that yarn it's no use I replied you won't spin it I must imagine it for myself how can you oh I begin to know your methods you take it I went in with my eyes open as I do now a I can't imagine you're doing otherwise my dear bunny it was the most unpremeditated thing I ever did in my life his chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden energy there was quite an indignant glitter in his eyes I can't believe that said I craftily I can't pay you such a poor compliment then you must be a fool he broke off stared hard at me and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite or a better nave than I thought you bunny and by jove it's the nave well I suppose I'm fairly drawn I'll give you best as they say out there as a matter of fact I've been thinking of the thing myself last night's racket reminds me of it in one or two respects I'll tell you what though this is an occasion in any case and I'm going to celebrate it by breaking the one good rule of my life I'm going to have a second drink the whiskey tinkled siphon fizzled the ice plopped home and seated there in his pajamas with the inevitable cigarette raffles told me the story that I had given up hoping to hear the windows were wide open the sounds of Piccadilly floated in at first long before he finished the last wheels had rattled the last brawler was removed we alone broke the quiet of the summer night no they do you very well indeed you pay for nothing but drinks so to speak I'm afraid mine were of a comprehensive character I had started in a hole I ought really to have refused the invitation then we all went to the Melbourne Cup and I had the certain winner that didn't win and that's not the only way you can play the fool in Melbourne I wasn't the steady old stager I am now Bunny my analysis was a confession in itself but the others didn't know how hard up I was and I swore they shouldn't I tried the Jews but their extra fly out there then I thought of a kinsman of sorts a second cousin of my father's whom none of us knew anything about except that he was supposed to be in one or other of the colonies if he was a rich man well and good I would work him if not there would be no harm done I tried to get on his tracks and as luck would have it I succeeded or thought I had at the very moment when I happened to have a few days to myself I was cut over on the hand just before the big Christmas match and couldn't have bowled the ball if they had played me the surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask if I was any relation of raffles of the National Bank and the pure luck of it almost took my breath away a relation who was a high official in one of the banks who would finance me on my mere name could anything be better? I made up my mind that this raffles was the man I wanted and was awfully sold to find the next moment that he wasn't a high official at all nor had the doctor so much as met him but had merely read of him in connection with a small sensation at the suburban branch which my namesake managed an armed robber had been rather pluckily beaten off with a bullet in him by this raffles and the sort of thing was so common out there that this was the first I had heard of it a suburban branch my financier had faded into some excellent fellow with a billet to lose if he called his soul his own still a manager was a manager and I said I would soon see whether this was the relative I was looking for if he would be good enough to give me the name of that branch I'll do more says the doctor I'll get you the name of the branch he's been promoted to for I think I heard they moved him up one already and the next day he brought me the name of the township of Yay some fifty miles north of Melbourne but with the vagueness which characterised all his information he was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not he's a single man and his initials are WF said the doctor who was certain enough of the immaterial points he left his old post several days ago but it appears he's not due at the new one till the new year no doubt he'll go before then to take things over and settle in you might find him up there and you might not if I were you I should write that'll lose two days said I and more if he isn't there for I'd grown quite keen on this up-country manager and I felt that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on a little conviviality might help matters considerably then said the doctor I should get a quiet horse and ride you needn't use that hand can't I go by train you can and you can't you would still have to ride I suppose you're a horseman yes then I should certainly ride all the way it's a delightful road through Whittlesey and over the plenty ranges it'll give you some idea of the bush Mr. Raffles and you'll see the sources of the water supply of the city sir you'll see where every drop of it comes from the pure yaneen I wish I had the time to ride with you but where can I get a horse the doctor thought a moment I have a mare of my own that's as fat as butter for want of work said he it would be a charity to me to sit on her back for a hundred miles or so and then I should know you'd have no temptation to use that hand you're far too good I protested you're AJ Raffles he said and if ever there was a prettier compliment or a finer insistence of even colonial hospitality I can only say Bonnie that I never heard of either he sipped his whiskey threw away the stump of his cigarette and lit another before continuing well I managed to write a line to WF with my own hand which, as you will gather, was not very badly wounded it was simply this third finger that was split and in splints the next morning the doctor packed me off on a bovine beast that would have done for an ambulance half the team came up to see me start the rest were rather sick with me for not stopping to see the match out as if I could help them to win by watching them they little knew the game I got on myself but still less did I know the game I was going to play it was an interesting ride enough especially after passing the place called Whittlesey a real wild township on the lower slope of the ranges where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mutton and tea with a thermometer at three figures in the shade the first thirty miles or so was a good metal road too good to go half round the world to ride on after Whittlesey it was a mere track over the ranges a track I often couldn't see and left entirely to the mare now it dipped into a gully and ran through a creek and all the time the local colour was inches thick gum-trees galore and parrots all colours of the rainbow in one place a whole forest of gums had been ring-barked and were just as though they had been painted white without a leaf or a living thing for miles and the first living thing I did meet was the sort to give you the creeps it was a riderless horse coming full tilt through the bush with the saddle twisted round and the stirrup irons ringing without thinking I had a shot at heading him with the doctor's mare and blocked him just enough to allow a man who came galloping after to do the rest thank you mister growled the man a huge chap and a red checked shirt with a beard like W.G. Grace a very devil of an expression been an accident, said I, raining up yes, said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more and a nasty one, I said, if that's blood on the saddle well, Bunny, I may be a-blagged myself but I don't think I ever looked at a fellow as that chap looked at me but I stared him out and forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted saddle and after that he became quite tame he told me exactly what had happened a mate of his had been dragged under a branch and had his nose smashed but that was all had sat tight after it till he dropped from loss of blood another mate was with him back in the bush as I've said already Bunny I wasn't the old stager that I am now in any respect and we parted good enough friends he asked me which way I was going and when I told him he said I should save seven miles and get a good hour earlier to yay by striking off the track and making for a peak that we could see through the trees and following a creek that I should see from the peak don't smile Bunny I began by saying I was a child in those days of course the shortcut was the long way round and it was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single street of yay I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the veranda Mr. Raffles said he Mr. Raffles said I laughing as I shook his hand you're late I was misdirected that all I'm relieved he said do you know what they are saying there are some brand new bush rangers on the road between Whittlesey and this a second Kelly gang they've got a tartar in you a they wouldn't you I retorted and my two cooks shut him up and seemed to puzzle him yet there was much more sense in it than in his compliment to me which was absolutely pointless I'm afraid you'll find things pretty rough he'd resumed when he had unstrapped my valise and handed my reins to his man it's lucky you're a bachelor like myself I could not quite see the point of this remark either since had I been married I should hardly have sprung my wife upon him in this free and easy fashion I muttered the conventional sort of thing and then he said I should find it all right when I had settled as though I had come to graze upon him for weeks well, thought I these colonials do take the cake for hospitality and still marvelling I let him lead me into the private part of the bank dinner will be ready in a quarter of an hour said he as we entered I thought you might like a tub first you'll find already in the room at the end of the passage sing out if there's anything you want your luggage hasn't turned up yet by the way but here's a letter that came this morning not for me yes, didn't you expect one? I certainly did not well, here it is and as he lit me to my room I read my own superscription of the previous day to W. F. Raffles Bunny, you've had your wind bagged at footer, I dare say you know what that's like all I can say is that my moral wind was bagged by that letter as I hope, old chap, I have never yet bagged yours I couldn't speak I could only stand with my letter in my hands until he had the good taste to leave me by myself W. F. Raffles we had mistaken each other for W. F. Raffles for the new manager who had not yet arrived small wonder we had conversed at cross purposes the only wonder was that we had not discovered our mutual mistake how the other man would have laughed but I I could not laugh by Jove, no, it was no laughing matter for me I saw the whole thing in a flash without a tremor but with the direst depression from my own single point of view call it callous if you like Bunny but remember that I was in much the same hole as you've since been in yourself and that I had counted on this W. F. Raffles even as you had counted on AJ I thought of the man with the W. G. beard the riderless horse and the bloody saddle the deliberate misdirection that had put me off the track and out of the way now the missing manager and the report of bush rangers at this end but I simply don't pretend to have felt any personal pity for a man whom I had never seen that kind of pity's usually can't and besides all mine was needed for myself I was in as big a hole as ever what the devil was I to do I doubt if I have sufficiently impressed upon you the absolute necessity of my returning to Melbourne in funds as a matter of fact it was less than necessity than my own determination which I can truthfully ascribe as absolute money I would have but how but how would this stranger be open to persuasion if I told him the truth no that would set us all scouring the country for the rest of the night why should I tell him suppose I left him to find out his mistake would anything be gained Bunny I give you my word that I went into dinner without a definite intention in my head or one premeditated lie upon my lips I might do the decent natural thing and explain matters without loss of time on the other hand there was no hurry I had not opened the letter and could always pretend I had not noticed the initials meanwhile something might turn up I could wait a little and see tempted I already was but as yet the temptation was vague and its very vagueness made me tremble bad news I'm afraid said the manager when at last I sat down at his table a mere annoyance I answered I do assure you on the spur of the moment nothing else but my lie was told my position was taken from that moment onward there was no retreat by implication without realizing what I was doing I had already declared myself W. F. Raffles therefore W. F. Raffles I would be in that bank for that night and the devil teach me how to use my lie again he raised his glass to his lips I had forgotten mine his cigarette case caught the gaslight as he handed it to me I shook my head without taking my eyes from his the devil played up continued W. Raffles with a laugh before I tasted my soup I had decided what to do I had determined to rob that bank instead of going to bed and to be back in Melbourne for breakfast if the doctor's mayor could do it I would tell the old fellow that I had missed my way and been bushed for hours as I easily might have been and had never got to yay at all at yay on the other hand the personation and robbery would ever after be attributed to a member of the gang that had waylaid and murdered the new manager with that very object you are acquiring some experience in such matters Bunny I ask you, was there ever a better get-out? last night's was something like it only never such a certainty and I saw it from the beginning saw to the end before I had finished my soup to increase my chances the cashier who also lived in the bank was away over the holidays had actually gone down to Melbourne to see us play and the man who had taken my horse also waited at table for he and his wife were the only servants and they slept in a separate building you may depend I ascertain this before we had finished dinner indeed I was by way of asking too many questions the most oblique and delicate was that which elicited my host's name Eubank nor was I careful enough to conceal their drift do you know said this fellow Eubank who is one of the downright sort if it wasn't you I should say you were in a funk of robbers have you lost your nerve I hope not said I turning jolly-heart I can tell you but well it's not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet through a fellow no said he coolly I should enjoy nothing better myself besides yours didn't go through I wish it had I was smart enough to cry Amen said he and I emptied my glass actually I did not know whether my wounded bank robber was in prison dead or at large but now that I had had more than enough of it Eubank would come back to the subject he admitted that the staff was small but as for himself he had a loaded revolver under his pillow all night under the counter all day and he was only waiting for his chance under the counter eh I was ass enough to say yes so had you he was looking at me in surprise and something told me that to say of course I had forgotten would have been quite fatal considering what I was supposed to have done so I looked down my nose and shook my head but the paper said you had he cried not under the counter said I but it's the regulation for the moment Bunny I felt stumped though I trust I only looked more superior than before and I think I justified my look the regulation I said at length in the most offensive tone at my command yes the regulation would have us all dead men my dear sir do you expect your bank robber to let you reach for your gun in the place where he knows it's kept I had mine in my pocket and I got my chance by retreating from the counter with all visible reluctance Eubank stared at me with open eyes and a five barred forehead then down came his fist on the table by God that was smart still he added like a man who would not be in the wrong the paper said the other thing you know of course I rejoined because they said what I told them you wouldn't have me advertise the fact that I improved upon the bank's regulations would you so that cloud rolled over and by Jove it was a cloud with a golden lining not silver real good Australian gold for old Eubank hadn't quite appreciated me till then he was a hard nut a much older man than myself and I felt pretty sure he thought me young for the place and my supposed feet of fluke but I never saw a man change his mind more openly he got out his best brandy he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking and opened a fresh box he was a convivial looking party with a red mustache and a very humorous face not unlike Tom Emmits and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank but he wasn't a Rosenthal bunny he had a treble-seemed hand-sewn head and could have drunk me under the table ten times over all right I thought you may go to bed sober but you'll sleep like a timber-yard and I threw half he gave me through the open window when he wasn't looking but he was a good chap, Eubank and don't you imagine he was at all intemperate convivial I called him and I only wish he had done something more he did however become more and more genial as the evening advanced and I had not much difficulty in getting him to show me round the bank at what was really an unearthly hour for such a proceeding it was when he went to fetch the revolver before turning in I kept him out of his bed another twenty minutes and I knew every inch of the business premises before I shook hands with Eubank in my room you won't guess what I did with myself for the next hour I undressed and went to bed the incessant strain involved in even the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know then how much more so when the impersonation is impromptu there's no getting your eye in the next word may bowl you out it's batting in a bad light all through I haven't told you of half the tight places I was in during a conversation that ran into hours and became dangerously intimate towards the end you can imagine them for yourself and then picture me spread out on my bed getting my second win for the big deed of the night once more I was in luck for I had not been lying there long before I heard my dear Eubank snoring like a harmonium and the music never ceased for a moment it was as loud as ever when I crept out and closed my door behind me as regular as ever when I stopped to listen at his and I have still to hear the concert that I shall enjoy much more the good fellow snored me out of the bank and was still snoring when I again stood and listened under his open window why did I leave the bank first? to catch and saddle the mare and tether her in a clump of trees close by a means of escape nice and handy before I went to work I have often wondered at the instinct of wisdom of the precaution unconsciously I was acting on what has been one of my guiding principles ever since pains and patience were required I had to get my saddle without waking the man and I was not used to catching horses in a horse-paddock then I distrusted the poor mare and I went back to the stables for a hat full of oats which I left with her in the clump had and all there was a dog too to reckon with a very worst enemy bunny but I had been acute enough to make immense friends with him during the evening and he wagged his tail not only when I came downstairs but when I reappeared at the back door as