<SPAN name="relics"></SPAN>
<h3> The Raffles Relics </h3>
<p>It was in one of the magazines for December, 1899, that an article
appeared which afforded our minds a brief respite from the then
consuming excitement of the war in South Africa. These were the days
when Raffles really had white hair, and when he and I were nearing the
end of our surreptitious second innings, as professional cracksmen of
the deadliest dye. Piccadilly and the Albany knew us no more. But we
still operated, as the spirit tempted us, from our latest and most
idyllic base, on the borders of Ham Common. Recreation was our
greatest want; and though we had both descended to the humble bicycle,
a lot of reading was forced upon us in the winter evenings. Thus the
war came as a boon to us both. It not only provided us with an honest
interest in life, but gave point and zest to innumerable spins across
Richmond Park, to the nearest paper shop; and it was from such an
expedition that I returned with inflammatory matter unconnected with
the war. The magazine was one of those that are read (and sold) by the
million; the article was rudely illustrated on every other page. Its
subject was the so-called Black Museum at Scotland Yard; and from the
catchpenny text we first learned that the gruesome show was now
enriched by a special and elaborate exhibit known as the Raffles Relics.</p>
<p>"Bunny," said Raffles, "this is fame at last! It is no longer
notoriety; it lifts one out of the ruck of robbers into the society of
the big brass gods, whose little delinquencies are written in water by
the finger of time. The Napoleon Relics we know, the Nelson Relics
we've heard about, and here are mine!"</p>
<p>"Which I wish to goodness we could see," I added, longingly. Next
moment I was sorry I had spoken. Raffles was looking at me across the
magazine. There was a smile on his lips that I knew too well, a light
in his eyes that I had kindled.</p>
<p>"What an excellent idea? he exclaimed, quite softly, as though working
it out already in his brain.</p>
<p>"I didn't mean it for one," I answered, "and no more do you."</p>
<p>"Certainly I do," said Raffles. "I was never more serious in my life."</p>
<p>"You would march into Scotland Yard in broad daylight?"</p>
<p>"In broad lime-light," he answered, studying the magazine again, "to
set eyes on my own once more. Why here they all are, Bunny—you never
told me there was an illustration. That's the chest you took to your
bank with me inside, and those must be my own rope-ladder and things on
top. They produce so badly in the baser magazines that it's impossible
to swear to them; there's nothing for it but a visit of inspection."</p>
<p>"Then you can pay it alone," said I grimly. "You may have altered, but
they'd know me at a glance."</p>
<p>"By all means, Bunny, if you'll get me the pass."</p>
<p>"A pass?" I cried triumphantly. "Of course we should have to get one,
and of course that puts an end to the whole idea. Who on earth would
give a pass for this show, of all others, to an old prisoner like me?"</p>
<p>Raffles addressed himself to the reading of the magazine with a shrug
that showed some temper.</p>
<p>"The fellow who wrote this article got one," said he shortly. "He got
it from his editor, and you can get one from yours if you tried. But
pray don't try, Bunny: it would be too terrible for you to risk a
moment's embarrassment to gratify a mere whim of mine. And if I went
instead of you and got spotted, which is so likely with this head of
hair, and the general belief in my demise, the consequences to you
would be too awful to contemplate! Don't contemplate them, my dear
fellow. And do let me read my magazine."</p>
<p>Need I add that I set about the rash endeavor without further
expostulation? I was used to such ebullitions from the altered Raffles
of these later days, and I could well understand them. All the
inconvenience of the new conditions fell on him. I had purged my known
offences by imprisonment, whereas Raffles was merely supposed to have
escaped punishment in death. The result was that I could rush in where
Raffles feared to tread, and was his plenipotentiary in all honest
dealings with the outer world. It could not but gall him to be so
dependent upon me, and it was for me to minimize the humiliation by
scrupulously avoiding the least semblance of an abuse of that power
which I now had over him. Accordingly, though with much misgiving, I
did his ticklish behest in Fleet Street, where, despite my past, I was
already making a certain lowly footing for myself. Success followed as
it will when one longs to fail; and one fine evening I returned to Ham
Common with a card from the Convict Supervision Office, New Scotland
Yard, which I treasure to this day. I am surprised to see that it was
undated, and might still almost "Admit Bearer to see the Museum," to
say nothing of the bearer's friends, since my editor's name "and party"
is scrawled beneath the legend.</p>
<p>"But he doesn't want to come," as I explained to Raffles. "And it
means that we can both go, if we both like."</p>
<p>Raffles looked at me with a wry smile; he was in good enough humor now.</p>
<p>"It would be rather dangerous, Bunny. If they spotted you, they might
think of me."</p>
<p>"But you say they'll never know you now."</p>
<p>"I don't believe they will. I don't believe there's the slightest
risk; but we shall soon see. I've set my heart on seeing, Bunny, but
there's no earthly reason why I should drag you into it."</p>
<p>"You do that when you present this card," I pointed out. "I shall hear
of it fast enough if anything happens."</p>
<p>"Then you may as well be there to see the fun?"</p>
<p>"It will make no difference if the worst comes to the worst."</p>
<p>"And the ticket is for a party, isn't it?"</p>
<p>"It is."</p>
<p>"It might even look peculiar if only one person made use of it?"</p>
<p>"It might."</p>
<p>"Then we're both going, Bunny! And I give you my word," cried Raffles,
"that no real harm shall come of it. But you mustn't ask to see the
Relics, and you mustn't take too much interest in them when you do see
them. Leave the questioning to me: it really will be a chance of
finding out whether they've any suspicion of one's resurrection at
Scotland Yard. Still I think I can promise you a certain amount of
fun, old fellow, as some little compensation for your pangs and fears?"</p>
<p>The early afternoon was mild and hazy, and unlike winter but for the
prematurely low sun struggling through the haze, as Raffles and I
emerged from the nether regions at Westminster Bridge, and stood for
one moment to admire the infirm silhouettes of Abbey and Houses in flat
gray against a golden mist. Raffles murmured of Whistler and of Arthur
Severn, and threw away a good Sullivan because the smoke would curl
between him and the picture. It is perhaps the picture that I can now
see clearest of all the set scenes of our lawless life. But at the
time I was filled with gloomy speculation as to whether Raffles would
keep his promise of providing an entirely harmless entertainment for my
benefit at the Black Museum.</p>
<p>We entered the forbidding precincts; we looked relentless officers in
the face, and they almost yawned in ours as they directed us through
swing doors and up stone stairs. There was something even sinister in
the casual character of our reception. We had an arctic landing to
ourselves for several minutes, which Raffles spent in an instinctive
survey of the premises, while I cooled my heels before the portrait of
a late commissioner.</p>
<p>"Dear old gentleman!" exclaimed Raffles, joining me. "I have met him
at dinner, and discussed my own case with him, in the old days. But we
can't know too little about ourselves in the Black Museum, Bunny. I
remember going to the old place in Whitehall, years ago, and being
shown round by one of the tip-top 'tecs. And this may be another."</p>
<p>But even I could see at a glance that there was nothing of the
detective and everything of the clerk about the very young man who had
joined us at last upon the landing. His collar was the tallest I have
ever seen, and his face was as pallid as his collar. He carried a
loose key, with which he unlocked a door a little way along the
passage, and so ushered us into that dreadful repository which perhaps
has fewer visitors than any other of equal interest in the world. The
place was cold as the inviolate vault; blinds had to be drawn up, and
glass cases uncovered, before we could see a thing except the row of
murderers' death-masks—the placid faces with the swollen necks—that
stood out on their shelves to give us ghostly greeting.</p>
<p>"This fellow isn't formidable," whispered Raffles, as the blinds went
up; "still, we can't be too careful. My little lot are round the
corner, in the sort of recess; don't look till we come to them in their
turn."</p>
<p>So we began at the beginning, with the glass case nearest the door; and
in a moment I discovered that I knew far more about its contents than
our pallid guide. He had some enthusiasm, but the most inaccurate
smattering of his subject. He mixed up the first murderer with quite
the wrong murder, and capped his mistake in the next breath with an
intolerable libel on the very pearl of our particular tribe.</p>
<p>"This revawlver," he began, "belonged to the celebrited burgular,
Chawles Peace. These are his spectacles, that's his jimmy, and this
here knife's the one that Chawley killed the policeman with."</p>
<p>Now I like accuracy for its own sake, strive after it myself, and am
sometimes guilty of forcing it upon others. So this was more than I
could pass.</p>
<p>"That's not quite right," I put in mildly. "He never made use of the
knife."</p>
<p>The young clerk twisted his head round in its vase of starch.</p>
<p>"Chawley Peace killed two policemen," said he.</p>
<p>"No, he didn't; only one of them was a policeman; and he never killed
anybody with a knife."</p>
<p>The clerk took the correction like a lamb. I could not have refrained
from making it, to save my skin. But Raffles rewarded me with as
vicious a little kick as he could administer unobserved. "Who was
Charles Peace?" he inquired, with the bland effrontery of any judge
upon the bench.</p>
<p>The clerk's reply came pat and unexpected. "The greatest burgular we
ever had," said he, "till good old Raffles knocked him out!"</p>
<p>"The greatest of the pre-Raffleites," the master murmured, as we passed
on to the safer memorials of mere murder. There were misshapen bullets
and stained knives that had taken human life; there were lithe, lean
ropes which had retaliated after the live letter of the Mosaic law.
There was one bristling broadside of revolvers under the longest shelf
of closed eyes and swollen throats. There were festoons of
rope-ladders—none so ingenious as ours—and then at last there was
something that the clerk knew all about. It was a small tin
cigarette-box, and the name upon the gaudy wrapper was not the name of
Sullivan. Yet Raffles and I knew even more about this exhibit than the
clerk.</p>
<p>"There, now," said our guide, "you'll never guess the history of that!
I'll give you twenty guesses, and the twentieth will be no nearer than
the first."</p>
<p>"I'm sure of it, my good fellow," rejoined Raffles, a discreet twinkle
in his eye. "Tell us about it, to save time."</p>
<p>And he opened, as he spoke, his own old twenty-five tin of purely
popular cigarettes; there were a few in it still, but between the
cigarettes were jammed lumps of sugar wadded with cotton-wool. I saw
Raffles weighing the lot in his hand with subtle satisfaction. But the
clerk saw merely the mystification which he desired to create.</p>
<p>"I thought that'd beat you, sir," said he. "It was an American dodge.
Two smart Yankees got a jeweller to take a lot of stuff to a private
room at Keliner's, where they were dining, for them to choose from.
When it came to paying, there was some bother about a remittance; but
they soon made that all right, for they were far too clever to suggest
taking away what they'd chosen but couldn't pay for. No, all they
wanted was that what they'd chosen might be locked up in the safe and
considered theirs until their money came for them to pay for it. All
they asked was to seal the stuff up in something; the jeweller was to
take it away and not meddle with it, nor yet break the seals, for a
week or two. It seemed a fair enough thing, now, didn't it, sir?"</p>
<p>"Eminently fair," said Raffles sententiously.</p>
<p>"So the jeweller thought," crowed the clerk. "You see, it wasn't as if
the Yanks had chosen out the half of what he'd brought on appro.;
they'd gone slow on purpose, and they'd paid for all they could on the
nail, just for a blind. Well, I suppose you can guess what happened in
the end? The jeweller never heard of those Americans again; and these
few cigarettes and lumps of sugar were all he found."</p>
<p>"Duplicate boxes? I cried, perhaps a thought too promptly.</p>
<p>"Duplicate boxes!" murmured Raffles, as profoundly impressed as a
second Mr. Pickwick.</p>
<p>"Duplicate boxes!" echoed the triumphant clerk. "Artful beggars, these
Americans, sir! You've got to crawss the 'Erring Pond to learn a trick
worth one o' that?"</p>
<p>"I suppose so," assented the grave gentleman wit the silver hair.
"Unless," he added, as if suddenly inspired, "unless it was that man
Raffles."</p>
<p>"It couldn't 've bin," jerked the clerk from his conning-tower of a
collar. "He'd gone to Davy Jones long before."</p>
<p>"Are you sure?" asked Raffles. "Was his body ever found?"</p>
<p>"Found and buried," replied our imaginative friend. "Malter, I think
it was; or it may have been Giberaltar. I forget which."</p>
<p>"Besides," I put in, rather annoyed at all this wilful work, yet not
indisposed to make a late contribution—"besides, Raffles would never
have smoked those cigarettes. There was only one brand for him. It
was—let me see—"</p>
<p>"Sullivans?" cried the clerk, right for once. "It's all a matter of
'abit," he went on, as he replaced the twenty-five tin box with the
vulgar wrapper. "I tried them once, and I didn't like 'em myself.
It's all a question of taste. Now, if you want a good smoke, and
cheaper, give me a Golden Gem at quarter of the price."</p>
<p>"What we really do want," remarked Raffles mildly, "is to see something
else as clever as that last."</p>
<p>"Then come this way," said the clerk, and led us into a recess almost
monopolized by the iron-clamped chest of thrilling memory, now a mere
platform for the collection of mysterious objects under a dust-sheet on
the lid. "These," he continued, unveiling them with an air, "are the
Raffles Relics, taken from his rooms in the Albany after his death and
burial, and the most complete set we've got. That's his centre-bit,
and this is the bottle of rock-oil he's supposed to have kept dipping
it in to prevent making a noise. Here's the revawlver he used when he
shot at a gentleman on the roof down Horsham way; it was afterward
taken from him on the P. & O. boat before he jumped overboard."</p>
<p>I could not help saying I understood that Raffles had never shot at
anybody. I was standing with my back to the nearest window, my hat
jammed over my brows and my overcoat collar up to my ears.</p>
<p>"That's the only time we know about," the clerk admitted; "and it
couldn't be brought 'ome, or his precious pal would have got more than
he did. This empty cawtridge is the one he 'id the Emperor's pearl in,
on the Peninsular and Orient. These gimlets and wedges were what he
used for fixin' doors. This is his rope-ladder, with the telescope
walking-stick he used to hook it up with; he's said to have 'ad it with
him the night he dined with the Earl of Thornaby, and robbed the house
before dinner. That's his life-preserver; but no one can make out what
this little thick velvet bag's for, with the two holes and the elawstic
round each. Perhaps you can give a guess, sir?"</p>
<p>Raffles had taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless
filing of keys. Now he handled it as though it were a tobacco-pouch,
putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a
delicious face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel filing
as the result of his investigations, and murmured in my ear, "These
sweet police! I, for my part, could not but examine the life-preserver
with which I had once smitten Raffles himself to the ground: actually,
there was his blood upon it still; and seeing my horror, the clerk
plunged into a characteristically garbled version of that incident
also. It happened to have come to light among others at the Old
Bailey, and perhaps had its share in promoting the quality of mercy
which had undoubtedly been exercised on my behalf. But the present
recital was unduly trying, and Raffles created a noble diversion by
calling attention to an early photograph of himself, which may still
hang on the wall over the historic chest, but which I had carefully
ignored. It shows him in flannels, after some great feat upon the
tented field. I am afraid there is a Sullivan between his lips, a look
of lazy insolence in the half-shut eyes. I have since possessed myself
of a copy, and it is not Raffles at his best; but the features are
clean-cut and regular; and I often wish that I had lent it to the
artistic gentlemen who have battered the statue out of all likeness to
the man.</p>
<p>"You wouldn't think it of him, would you?" quoth the clerk. "It makes
you understand how no one ever did think it of him at the time."</p>
<p>The youth was looking full at Raffles, with the watery eyes of
unsuspecting innocence. I itched to emulate the fine bravado of my
friend.</p>
<p>"You said he had a pal," I observed, sinking deeper into the collar of
my coat. "Haven't you got a photograph of him?"</p>
<p>The pale clerk gave such a sickly smile, I could have smacked some
blood into his pasty face.</p>
<p>"You mean Bunny?" said the familiar fellow. "No, sir, he'd be out of
place; we've only room for real criminals here. Bunny was neither one
thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles, but that's all he could
do. He was no good on his own. Even when he put up the low-down job
of robbing his old 'ome, it's believed he hadn't the 'eart to take the
stuff away, and Raffles had to break in a second time for it. No, sir,
we don't bother our heads about Bunny; we shall never hear no more of
'im. He was a harmless sort of rotter, if you awsk me."</p>
<p>I had not asked him, and I was almost foaming under the respirator that
I was making of my overcoat collar. I only hoped that Raffles would
say something, and he did.</p>
<p>"The only case I remember anything about," he remarked, tapping the
clamped chest with his umbrella, "was this; and that time, at all
events, the man outside must have had quite as much to do as the one
inside. May I ask what you keep in it?"</p>
<p>"Nothing, sir.</p>
<p>"I imagined more relics inside. Hadn't he some dodge of getting in and
out without opening the lid?"</p>
<p>"Of putting his head out, you mean," returned the clerk, whose
knowledge of Raffles and his Relics was really most comprehensive on
the whole. He moved some of the minor memorials and with his penknife
raised the trap-door in the lid.</p>
<p>"Only a skylight," remarked Raffles, deliciously unimpressed.</p>
<p>"Why, what else did you expect?" asked the clerk, letting the trap-door
down again, and looking sorry that he had taken so much trouble.</p>
<p>"A backdoor, at least!" replied Raffles, with such a sly look at me
that I had to turn aside to smile. It was the last time I smiled that
day.</p>
<p>The door had opened as I turned, and an unmistakable detective had
entered with two more sight-seers like ourselves. He wore the hard,
round hat and the dark, thick overcoat which one knows at a glance as
the uniform of his grade; and for one awful moment his steely eye was
upon us in a flash of cold inquiry. Then the clerk emerged from the
recess devoted to the Raffles Relics, and the alarming interloper
conducted his party to the window opposite the door.</p>
<p>"Inspector Druce," the clerk informed us in impressive whispers, "who
had the Chalk Farm case in hand. He'd be the man for Raffles, if
Raffles was alive to-day!"</p>
<p>"I'm sure he would," was the grave reply. "I should be very sorry to
have a man like that after me. But what a run there seems to be upon
your Black Museum!"</p>
<p>"There isn't reelly, sir," whispered the clerk. "We sometimes go weeks
on end without having regular visitors like you two gentlemen. I think
those are friends of the Inspector's, come to see the Chalk Farm
photographs, that helped to hang his man. We've a lot of interesting
photographs, sir, if you like to have a look at them."</p>
<p>"If it won't take long," said Raffles, taking out his watch; and as the
clerk left our side for an instant he gripped my arm. "This is a bit
too hot," he whispered, "but we mustn't cut and run like rabbits. That
might be fatal. Hide your face in the photographs, and leave
everything to me. I'll have a train to catch as soon as ever I dare."</p>
<p>I obeyed without a word, and with the less uneasiness as I had time to
consider the situation. It even struck me that Raffles was for once
inclined to exaggerate the undeniable risk that we ran by remaining in
the same room with an officer whom both he and I knew only too well by
name and repute. Raffles, after all, had aged and altered out of
knowledge; but he had not lost the nerve that was equal to a far more
direct encounter than was at all likely to be forced upon us. On the
other hand, it was most improbable that a distinguished detective would
know by sight an obscure delinquent like myself; besides, this one had
come to the front since my day. Yet a risk it was, and I certainly did
not smile as I bent over the album of horrors produced by our guide. I
could still take an interest in the dreadful photographs of murderous
and murdered men; they appealed to the morbid element in my nature; and
it was doubtless with degenerate unction that I called Raffles's
attention to a certain scene of notorious slaughter. There was no
response. I looked round. There was no Raffles to respond. We had all
three been examining the photographs at one of the windows; at another
three newcomers were similarly engrossed; and without one word, or a
single sound, Raffles had decamped behind all our backs.</p>
<p>Fortunately the clerk was himself very busy gloating over the horrors
of the album; before he looked round I had hidden my astonishment, but
not my wrath, of which I had the instinctive sense to make no secret.</p>
<p>"My friend's the most impatient man on earth!" I exclaimed. "He said
he was going to catch a train, and now he's gone without a word!"</p>
<p>"I never heard him," said the clerk, looking puzzled.</p>
<p>"No more did I; but he did touch me on the shoulder," I lied, "and say
something or other. I was too deep in this beastly book to pay much
attention. He must have meant that he was off. Well, let him be off!
I mean to see all that's to be seen."</p>
<p>And in my nervous anxiety to allay any suspicions aroused by my
companion's extraordinary behavior, I outstayed even the eminent
detective and his friends, saw them examine the Raffles Relics, heard
them discuss me under my own nose, and at last was alone with the
anemic clerk. I put my hand in my pocket, and measured him with a
sidelong eye. The tipping system is nothing less than a minor bane of
my existence. Not that one is a grudging giver, but simply because in
so many cases it is so hard to know whom to tip and what to tip him. I
know what it is to be the parting guest who has not parted freely
enough, and that not from stinginess but the want of a fine instinct on
the point. I made no mistake, however, in the case of the clerk, who
accepted my pieces of silver without demur, and expressed a hope of
seeing the article which I had assured him I was about to write. He
has had some years to wait for it, but I flatter myself that these
belated pages will occasion more interest than offense if they ever do
meet those watery eyes.</p>
<p>Twilight was falling when I reached the street; the sky behind St.
Stephen's had flushed and blackened like an angry face; the lamps were
lit, and under every one I was unreasonable enough to look for Raffles.
Then I made foolishly sure that I should find him hanging about the
station, and hung thereabouts myself until one Richmond train had gone
without me. In the end I walked over the bridge to Waterloo, and took
the first train to Teddington instead. That made a shorter walk of it,
but I had to grope my way through a white fog from the river to Ham
Common, and it was the hour of our cosy dinner when I reached our place
of retirement. There was only a flicker of firelight on the blinds: I
was the first to return after all. It was nearly four hours since
Raffles had stolen away from my side in the ominous precincts of
Scotland Yard. Where could he be? Our landlady wrung her hands over
him; she had cooked a dinner after her favorite's heart, and I let it
spoil before making one of the most melancholy meals of my life.</p>
<p>Up to midnight there was no sign of him; but long before this time I
had reassured our landlady with a voice and face that must have given
my words the lie. I told her that Mr. Ralph (as she used to call him)
had said something about going to the theatre; that I thought he had
given up the idea, but I must have been mistaken, and should certainly
sit up for him. The attentive soul brought in a plate of sandwiches
before she retired; and I prepared to make a night of it in a chair by
the sitting-room fire. Darkness and bed I could not face in my
anxiety. In a way I felt as though duty and loyalty called me out into
the winter's night; and yet whither should I turn to look for Raffles?
I could think of but one place, and to seek him there would be to
destroy myself without aiding him. It was my growing conviction that
he had been recognized when leaving Scotland Yard, and either taken
then and there, or else hunted into some new place of hiding. It would
all be in the morning papers; and it was all his own fault. He had
thrust his head into the lion's mouth, and the lion's jaws had snapped.
Had he managed to withdraw his head in time?</p>
<p>There was a bottle at my elbow, and that night I say deliberately that
it was not my enemy but my friend. It procured me at last some
surcease from my suspense. I fell fast asleep in my chair before the
fire. The lamp was still burning, and the fire red, when I awoke; but
I sat very stiff in the iron clutch of a wintry morning. Suddenly I
slued round in my chair. And there was Raffles in a chair behind me,
with the door open behind him, quietly taking off his boots.</p>
<p>"Sorry to wake you, Bunny," said he. "I thought I was behaving like a
mouse; but after a three hours' tramp one's feet are all heels."</p>
<p>I did not get up and fall upon his neck. I sat back in my chair and
blinked with bitterness upon his selfish insensibility. He should not
know what I had been through on his account.</p>
<p>"Walk out from town?" I inquired, as indifferently as though he were in
the habit of doing so.</p>
<p>"From Scotland Yard," he answered, stretching himself before the fire
in his stocking soles.</p>
<p>"Scotland Yard?" I echoed. "Then I was right; that's where you were
all the time; and yet you managed to escape!"</p>
<p>I had risen excitedly in my turn.</p>
<p>"Of course I did," replied Raffles. "I never thought there would be
much difficulty about that, but there was even less than I anticipated.
I did once find myself on one side of a sort of counter, and an officer
dozing at his desk at the other side. I thought it safest to wake him
up and make inquiries about a mythical purse left in a phantom hansom
outside the Carlton. And the way the fellow fired me out of that was
another credit to the Metropolitan Police: it's only in the savage
countries that they would have troubled to ask how one had got in."</p>
<p>"And how did you?" I asked. "And in the Lord's name, Raffles, when and
why?"</p>
<p>Raffles looked down on me under raised eyebrows, as he stood with his
coat tails to the dying fire.</p>
<p>"How and when, Bunny, you know as well as I do," said he, cryptically.
"And at last you shall hear the honest why and wherefore. I had more
reasons for going to Scotland Yard, my dear fellow, than I had the face
to tell you at the time."</p>
<p>"I don't care why you went there!" I cried. "I want to know why you
stayed, or went back, or whatever it was you may have done. I thought
they had got you, and you had given them the slip!"</p>
<p>Raffles smiled as he shook his head.</p>
<p>"No, no, Bunny; I prolonged the visit, as I paid it, of my own accord.
As for my reasons, they are far too many for me to tell you them all;
they rather weighed upon me as I walked out; but you'll see them for
yourself if you turn round."</p>
<p>I was standing with my back to the chair in which I had been asleep;
behind the chair was the round lodging-house table; and there, reposing
on the cloth with the whiskey and sandwiches, was the whole collection
of Raffles Relics which had occupied the lid of the silver-chest in the
Black Museum at Scotland Yard! The chest alone was missing. There was
the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and there the
blood-stained life-preserver, brace-and-bit, bottle of rock-oil, velvet
bag, rope-ladder, walking-stick, gimlets, wedges, and even the empty
cartridge-case which had once concealed the gift of a civilized monarch
to a potentate of color.</p>
<p>"I was a real Father Christmas," said Raffles, "when I arrived. It's a
pity you weren't awake to appreciate the scene. It was more edifying
than the one I found. You never caught me asleep in my chair, Bunny!"</p>
<p>He thought I had merely fallen asleep in my chair! He could not see
that I had been sitting up for him all night long! The hint of a
temperance homily, on top of all I had borne, and from Raffles of all
mortal men, tried my temper to its last limit—but a flash of late
enlightenment enabled me just to keep it.</p>
<p>"Where did you hide?" I asked grimly.</p>
<p>"At the Yard itself."</p>
<p>"So I gather; but whereabouts at the Yard?"</p>
<p>"Can you ask, Bunny?"</p>
<p>"I am asking."</p>
<p>"It's where I once hid before."</p>
<p>"You don't mean in the chest?"</p>
<p>"I do."</p>
<p>Our eyes met for a minute.</p>
<p>"You may have ended up there," I conceded. "But where did you go first
when you slipped out behind my back, and how the devil did you know
where to go?"</p>
<p>"I never did slip out," said Raffles, "behind your back. I slipped in."</p>
<p>"Into the chest?"</p>
<p>"Exactly."</p>
<p>I burst out laughing in his face.</p>
<p>"My dear fellow, I saw all these things on the lid just afterward. Not
one of them was moved. I watched that detective show them to his
friends."</p>
<p>"And I heard him."</p>
<p>"But not from the inside of the chest?"</p>
<p>"From the inside of the chest, Bunny. Don't look like that—it's
foolish. Try to recall a few words that went before, between the idiot
in the collar and me. Don't you remember my asking him if there was
anything in the chest?"</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"One had to be sure it was empty, you see. Then I asked if there was a
backdoor to the chest as well as a skylight."</p>
<p>"I remember."</p>
<p>"I suppose you thought all that meant nothing?"</p>
<p>"I didn't look for a meaning."</p>
<p>"You wouldn't; it would never occur to you that I might want to find
out whether anybody at the Yard had found out that there was something
precisely in the nature of a sidedoor—it isn't a backdoor—to that
chest. Well, there is one; there was one soon after I took the chest
back from your rooms to mine, in the good old days. You push one of
the handles down—which no one ever does—and the whole of that end
opens like the front of a doll's house. I saw that was what I ought to
have done at first: it's so much simpler than the trap at the top; and
one likes to get a thing perfect for its own sake. Besides, the trick
had not been spotted at the bank, and I thought I might bring it off
again some day; meanwhile, in one's bedroom, with lots of things on
top, what a port in a sudden squall!"</p>
<p>I asked why I had never heard of the improvement before, not so much at
the time it was made, but in these later days, when there were fewer
secrets between us, and this one could avail him no more. But I did not
put the question out of pique. I put it out of sheer obstinate
incredulity. And Raffles looked at me without replying, until I read
the explanation in his look.</p>
<p>"I see," I said. "You used to get into it to hide from me!"</p>
<p>"My dear Bunny, I am not always a very genial man," he answered; "but
when you let me have a key of your rooms I could not very well refuse
you one of mine, although I picked your pocket of it in the end. I
will only say that when I had no wish to see you, Bunny, I must have
been quite unfit for human society, and it was the act of a friend to
deny you mine. I don't think it happened more than once or twice. You
can afford to forgive a fellow after all these years?</p>
<p>"That, yes," I replied bitterly; "but not this, Raffles."</p>
<p>"Why not? I really hadn't made up my mind to do what I did. I had
merely thought of it. It was that smart officer in the same room that
made me do it without thinking twice."</p>
<p>"And we never even heard you!" I murmured, in a voice of involuntary
admiration which vexed me with myself. "But we might just as well!" I
was as quick to add in my former tone.</p>
<p>"Why, Bunny?"</p>
<p>"We shall be traced in no time through our ticket of admission."</p>
<p>"Did they collect it?"</p>
<p>"No; but you heard how very few are issued."</p>
<p>"Exactly. They sometimes go weeks on end without a regular visitor. It
was I who extracted that piece of information, Bunny, and I did nothing
rash until I had. Don't you see that with any luck it will be two or
three weeks before they are likely to discover their loss?"</p>
<p>I was beginning to see.</p>
<p>"And then, pray, how are they going to bring it home to us? Why should
they even suspect us, Bunny? I left early; that's all I did. You took
my departure admirably; you couldn't have said more or less if I had
coached you myself. I relied on you, Bunny, and you never more
completely justified my confidence. The sad thing is that you have
ceased to rely on me. Do you really think that I would leave the place
in such a state that the first person who came in with a duster would
see that there had been a robbery?"</p>
<p>I denied the thought with all energy, though it perished only as I
spoke.</p>
<p>"Have you forgotten the duster that was over these things, Bunny? Have
you forgotten all the other revolvers and life preservers that there
were to choose from? I chose most carefully, and I replaced my relics
with a mixed assortment of other people's which really look just as
well. The rope-ladder that now supplants mine is, of course, no patch
upon it, but coiled up on the chest it really looks much the same. To
be sure, there was no second velvet bag; but I replaced my stick with
another quite like it, and I even found an empty cartridge to
understudy the setting of the Polynesian pearl. You see the sort of
fellow they have to show people round: do you think he's the kind to
see the difference next time, or to connect it with us if he does? One
left much the same things, lying much as he left them, under a
dust-sheet which is only taken off for the benefit of the curious, who
often don't turn up for weeks on end."</p>
<p>I admitted that we might be safe for three or four weeks. Raffles held
out his hand.</p>
<p>"Then let us be friends about it, Bunny, and smoke the cigarette of
Sullivan and peace! A lot may happen in three or four weeks; and what
should you say if this turned out to be the last as well as the least
of all my crimes? I must own that it seems to me their natural and
fitting end, though I might have stopped more characteristically than
with a mere crime of sentiment. No, I make no promises, Bunny; now I
have got these things, I may be unable to resist using them once more.
But with this war one gets all the excitement one requires—and rather
more than usual may happen in three or four weeks?"</p>
<p>Was he thinking even then of volunteering for the front? Had he
already set his heart on the one chance of some atonement for his
life—nay, on the very death he was to die? I never knew, and shall
never know. Yet his words were strangely prophetic, even to the three
or four weeks in which those events happened that imperilled the fabric
of our empire, and rallied her sons from the four winds to fight
beneath her banner on the veldt. It all seems very ancient history
now. But I remember nothing better or more vividly than the last words
of Raffles upon his last crime, unless it be the pressure of his hand
as he said them, or the rather sad twinkle in his tired eyes.</p>
<br/><br/><br/>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />