THE LAST LAUGH
As I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, the pick of our exploits,from a frankly criminal point of view, are of least use for thecomparatively pure purposes of these papers. They might be appreciatedin a trade journal (if only that want could be supplied), by skilledmanipulators of the jemmy and the large light bunch; but, as records ofunbroken yet insignificant success, they would be found at once tootrivial and too technical, if not sordid and unprofitable into thebargain. The latter epithets, and worse, have indeed already beenapplied, if not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine uponRaffles, by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need notsay how heartily I disagree with that truly pious opinion. So farfrom admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the liveliestwarning that I am giving to the world. Raffles was a genius, and hecould not make it pay! Raffles had invention, resource, incomparableaudacity, and a nerve in ten thousand. He was both strategian andtactician, and we all now know the difference between the two. Yet formonths he had been hiding like a rat in a hole, unable to show even hisaltered face by night or day without risk, unless another risk werecourted by three inches of conspicuous crepe. Then thus far ourrewards had oftener than not been no reward at all. Altogether it wasa very different story from the old festive, unsuspected, club andcricket days, with their noctes ambrosianae at the Albany.
And now, in addition to the eternal peril of recognition, there was yetanother menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no more of ourNeapolitan organ-grinders, though I did often think of the moving pagethat they had torn for me out of my friend's strange life in Italy.Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I hadentirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the organ-grinders withthe Camorra, and imagining them upon his own tracks. I heard no moreof it, and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in theautumn--I shrink from shocking the susceptible for nothing--but therewas a certain house in Palace Gardens, and when we got there Raffleswould pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer in thewindows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went without talking aboutit. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still upSilver Street, a little tacking west and south, a plunge across HighStreet, and presently we were home.
"Pyjamas first," said Raffles, with as much authority as though itmattered. It was a warm night, however, though September, and I didnot mind until I came in clad as he commanded to find the autocrathimself still booted and capped. He was peeping through the blind, andthe gas was still turned down. But he said that I could turn it up, ashe helped himself to a cigarette and nothing with it.
"May I mix you one?" said I.
"No, thanks."
"What's the trouble?"
"We were followed."
"Never!"
"You never saw it."
"But YOU never looked round."
"I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny."
I helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have beenthe case a minute before.
"So that was why--"
"That was why," said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile, and I putdown my glass untouched.
"They were following us then!"
"All up Palace Gardens."
"I thought you wound about coming back over the hill."
"Nevertheless, one of them's in the street below at this moment."
No, he was not fooling me. He was very grim. And he had not taken offa thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while.
"Plain clothes?" I sighed, following the sartorial train of thought,even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person once alreadyfor a little aeon. Next time they would give me double. The skillywas in my stomach when I saw Raffles's face.
"Who said it was the police, Bunny?" said he. "It's the Italians.They're only after me; they won't hurt a hair of YOUR head, let alonecropping it! Have a drink, and don't mind me. I shall score them offbefore I'm done."
"And I'll help you!"
"No, old chap, you won't. This is my own little show. I've knownabout it for weeks. I first tumbled to it the day those Neapolitanscame back with their organs, though I didn't seriously suspect thingsthen; they never came again, those two, they had done their part.That's the Camorra all over, from all accounts. The Count I told youabout is pretty high up in it, by the way he spoke, but there will begrades and grades between him and the organ-grinders. I shouldn't besurprised if he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-creamer in the townupon my tracks! The organization's incredible. Then do you rememberthe superior foreigner who came to the door a few days afterwards? Yousaid he had velvet eyes."
"I never connected him with those two!"
"Of course you didn't, Bunny, so you threatened to kick the fellowdownstairs, and only made them keener on the scent. It was too late tosay anything when you told me. But the very next time I showed my noseoutside I heard a camera click as I passed, and the fiend was a personwith velvet eyes. Then there was a lull--that happened weeks ago.They had sent me to Italy for identification by Count Corbucci."
"But this is all theory," I exclaimed. "How on earth can you know?"
"I don't know," said Raffles, "but I should like to bet. Our friendthe bloodhound is hanging about the corner near the pillar-box; lookthrough my window, it's dark in there, and tell me who he is."
The man was too far away for me to swear to his face, but he wore acovert-coat of un-English length, and the lamp across the road playedsteadily on his boots; they were very yellow, and they made no noisewhen he took a turn. I strained my eyes, and all at once I rememberedthe thin-soled, low-heeled, splay yellow boots of the insidiousforeigner, with the soft eyes and the brown-paper face, whom I hadturned from the door as a palpable fraud. The ring at the bell was thefirst I had heard of him, there had been no warning step upon thestairs, and my suspicious eye had searched his feet for rubber soles.
"It's the fellow," I said, returning to Raffles, and I described hisboots.
Raffles was delighted.
"Well done, Bunny; you're coming on," said he. "Now I wonder if he'sbeen over here all the time, or if they sent him over expressly? Youdid better than you think in spotting those boots, for they can onlyhave been made in Italy, and that looks like the special envoy. Butit's no use speculating. I must find out."
"How can you?"
"He won't stay there all night."
"Well?"
"When he gets tired of it I shall return the compliment and follow HIM."
"Not alone," said I, firmly.
"Well, we'll see. We'll see at once," said Raffles, rising. "Out withthe gas, Bunny, while I take a look. Thank you. Now wait a bit ... yes!He's chucked it; he's off already; and so am I!"
But I slipped to our outer door, and held the passage.
"I don't let you go alone, you know."
"You can't come with me in pyjamas."
"Now I see why you made me put them on!"
"Bunny, if you don't shift I shall have to shift you. This is my veryown private one-man show. But I'll be back in an hour--there!"
"You swear?"
"By all my gods."
I gave in. How could I help giving in? He did not look the man thathe had been, but you never knew with Raffles, and I could not have himlay a hand on me. I let him go with a shrug and my blessing, then raninto his room to see the last of him from the window.
The creature in the coat and boots had reached the end of our littlestreet, where he appeared to have hesitated, so that Raffles was justin time to see which way he turned. And Raffles was after him at aneasy pace, and had himself almost reached the corner when my attentionwas distracted from the alert nonchalance of his gait. I wasmarvelling that it alone had not long ago betrayed him, for nothingabout him was so unconsciously characteristic, when suddenly I realizedthat Raffles was not the only person in the little lonely street.Another pedestrian had entered from the other end, a man heavily builtand clad, with an ast
rakhan collar to his coat on this warm night, anda black slouch hat that hid his features from my bird's-eye view. Hissteps were the short and shuffling ones of a man advanced in years andin fatty degeneration, but of a sudden they stopped beneath my veryeyes. I could have dropped a marble into the dinted crown of theblack felt hat. Then, at the same moment, Raffles turned the cornerwithout looking round, and the big man below raised both his hands andhis face. Of the latter I saw only the huge white moustache, like aflying gull, as Raffles had described it; for at a glance I divinedthat this was his arch-enemy, the Count Corbucci himself.
I did not stop to consider the subtleties of the system by which thereal hunter lagged behind while his subordinate pointed the quarry likea sporting dog. I left the Count shuffling onward faster than before,and I jumped into some clothes as though the flats were on fire. Ifthe Count was going to follow Raffles in his turn, then I would followthe Count in mine, and there would be a midnight procession of usthrough the town. But I found no sign of him in the empty street, andno sign in the Earl's Court Road, that looked as empty for all itslength, save for a natural enemy standing like a waxwork figure with aglimmer at his belt.
"Officer," I gasped, "have you seen anything of an old gentleman with abig white mustache?"
The unlicked cub of a common constable seemed to eye me the moresuspiciously for the flattering form of my address.
"Took a hansom," said he at length.
A hansom! Then he was not following the others on foot; there was noguessing his game. But something must be said or done.
"He's a friend of mine," I explained, "and I want to overtake him. Didyou hear where he told the fellow to drive?"
A curt negative was the policeman's reply to that; and if ever I takepart in a night assault-at-arms, revolver versus baton, in the backkitchen, I know which member of the Metropolitan Police Force I shouldlike for my opponent.
If there was no overtaking the Count, however, it should be acomparatively simple matter in the case of the couple on foot, and Iwildly hailed the first hansom that crawled into my ken. I must tellRaffles who it was that I had seen; the Earl's Court Road was long, andthe time since he vanished in it but a few short minutes. I drove downthe length of that useful thoroughfare, with an eye apiece on eitherpavement, sweeping each as with a brush, but never a Raffles came intothe pan. Then I tried the Fulham Road, first to the west, then to theeast, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I didnot realize my indiscretion until I had paid the man and was on thestairs. Raffles never dreamt of driving all the way back; but I washoping now to find him waiting up above. He had said an hour. I hadremembered it suddenly. And now the hour was more than up. But theflat was as empty as I had left it; the very light that had encouragedme, pale though it was, as I turned the corner in my hansom, was butthe light that I myself had left burning in the desolate passage.
I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of it Ihung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears, catching everyfootstep afar off, every hansom bell farther still, only to gather insome alien whom I seldom even landed in our street. Then I wouldlisten at the door.
He might come over the roof; and eventually some one did; but now itwas broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the milkman's face,which whitened at the shock as though I had ducked him in his ownpail.
"You're late," I thundered as the first excuse for my excitement.
"Beg your pardon," said he, indignantly, "but I'm half an hour beforemy usual time."
"Then I beg yours," said I; "but the fact is, Mr. Maturin has had oneof his bad nights, and I seem to have been waiting hours for milk tomake him a cup of tea."
This little fib (ready enough for Raffles, though I say it) earned menot only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch ofthe business of the man at the door. The good fellow said that hecould see I had been sitting up all night, and he left me plumingmyself upon the accidental art with which I had told my very necessarytarra-diddle. On reflection I gave the credit to instinct, notaccident, and then sighed afresh as I realized how the influence of themaster was sinking into me, and he Heaven knew where! But mypunishment was swift to follow, for within the hour the bell rangimperiously twice, and there was Dr. Theobald on our mat; in a yellowJaeger suit, with a chin as yellow jutting over the flaps that he hadturned up to hide his pyjamas.
"What's this about a bad night?" said he.
"He couldn't sleep, and he wouldn't let me," I whispered, neverloosening my grasp of the door, and standing tight against the otherwall. "But he's sleeping like a baby now."
"I must see him."
"He gave strict orders that you should not."
"I'm his medical man, and I--"
"You know what he is," I said, shrugging; "the least thing wakes him,and you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be the lasttime, I warn you! I know what he said, and you don't."
The doctor cursed me under his fiery moustache.
"I shall come up during the course of the morning," he snarled.
"And I shall tie up the bell," I said, "and if it doesn't ring he'll besleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by coming to the dooragain."
And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as Raffles hadsaid; but what would it profit me if some evil had befallen him? Andnow I was prepared for the worst. A boy came up whistling and leavingpapers on the mats; it was getting on for eight o'clock, and thewhiskey and soda of half-past twelve stood untouched and stagnant inthe tumbler. If the worst had happened to Raffles, I felt that I wouldeither never drink again, or else seldom do anything else.
Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but roamed the flat in amisery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my cheeksand chin now tawny from the unwholesome night. How long would it goon? I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune: how long could Iendure it?
It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance cannot bemeasured by the time, for to me every hour of it was an arctic night.Yet it cannot have been much after eleven when the ring came at thebell, which I had forgotten to tie up after all. But this was not thedoctor; neither, too well I knew, was it the wanderer returned. Ourbell was the pneumatic one that tells you if the touch be light orheavy; the hand upon it now was tentative and shy.
The owner of the hand I had never seen before. He was young andragged, with one eye blank, but the other ablaze with some fellexcitement. And straightway he burst into a low torrent of words, ofwhich all I knew was that they were Italian, and therefore news ofRaffles, if only I had known the language! But dumb-show might help ussomewhat, and in I dragged him, though against his will, a new alarm inhis one wild eye.
"Non capite?" he cried when I had him inside and had withstood thetorrent.
"No, I'm bothered if I do!" I answered, guessing his question from histone.
"Vostro amico," he repeated over and over again; and then, "Poco tempo,poco tempo, poco tempo!"
For once in my life the classical education of my public-school dayswas of real value. "My pal, my pal, and no time to be lost!" Itranslated freely, and flew for my hat.
"Ecco, signore!" cried the fellow, snatching the watch from mywaistcoat pocket, and putting one black thumb-nail on the long hand,the other on he numeral twelve. "Mezzogiorno--poco tempo--pocotempo!" And again I seized his meaning, that it was twenty pasteleven, and we must be there by twelve. But where, but where? It wasmaddening to be summoned like this, and not to know what had happened,nor to have any means of finding out. But my presence of mind stood byme still, I was improving by seven-league strides, and I crammed myhandkerchief between the drum and hammer of the bell before leaving.The doctor could ring now till he was black in the face, but I was notcoming, and he need not think it.
I half expected to find a hansom waiting, but there was none, and wehad gone some distance down the Earl's Court Road before we got one; infact, we had t
o run to the stand. Opposite is the church with theclock upon it, as everybody knows, and at sight of the dial mycompanion had wrung his hands; it was close upon the half-hour.
"Poco tempo--pochissimo!" he wailed. "Bloom-buree Ske-warr," he thencried to the cabman--"numero trentotto!"
"Bloomsbury Square," I roared on my own account, "I'll show you thehouse when we get there, only drive like be-damned!"
My companion lay back gasping in his corner. The small glass told methat my own face was pretty red.
"A nice show!" I cried; "and not a word can you tell me. Didn't youbring me a note?"
I might have known by this time that he had not, still I went throughthe pantomime of writing with my finger on my cuff. But he shruggedand shook his head.
"Niente," said he. "Una quistione di vita, di vita!"
"What's that?" I snapped, my early training come in again. "Say itslowly--andante--rallentando."
Thank Italy for the stage instructions in the songs one used to murder!The fellow actually understood.
"Una--quistione--di--vita."
"Or mors, eh?" I shouted, and up went the trap-door over our heads.
"Avanti, avanti, avanti!" cried the Italian, turning up his one-eyedface.
"Hell-to-leather," I translated, "and double fare if you do it bytwelve o'clock."
But in the streets of London how is one to know the time? In theEarl's Court Road it had not been half-past, and at Barker's in HighStreet it was but a minute later. A long half-mile a minute, that wasgoing like the wind, and indeed we had done much of it at a gallop.But the next hundred yards took us five minutes by the next clock, andwhich was one to believe? I fell back upon my own old watch (it was myown), which made it eighteen minutes to the hour as we swung across theSerpentine bridge, and by the quarter we were in the BayswaterRoad--not up for once.
"Presto, presto," my pale guide murmured. "Affretatevi--avanti!"
"Ten bob if you do it," I cried through the trap, without the slightestnotion of what we were to do. But it was "una quistione di vita," and"vostro amico" must and could only be my miserable Raffles.
What a very godsend is the perfect hansom to the man or woman in ahurry! It had been our great good fortune to jump into a perfecthansom; there was no choice, we had to take the first upon the rank,but it must have deserved its place with the rest nowhere. New tires,superb springs, a horse in a thousand, and a driver up to every trickof his trade! In and out we went like a fast half-back at the Rugbygame, yet where the traffic was thinnest, there were we. And how heknew his way! At the Marble Arch he slipped out of the main stream,and so into Wigmore Street, then up and in and out and on until I sawthe gold tips of the Museum palisade gleaming between the horse's earsin the sun. Plop, plop, plop; ting, ling, ling; bell and horse-shoes,horse-shoes and bell, until the colossal figure of C. J. Fox in a grimytoga spelt Bloomsbury Square with my watch still wanting three minutesto the hour.
"What number?" cried the good fellow over-head.
"Trentotto, trentotto," said my guide, but he was looking to the right,and I bundled him out to show the house on foot. I had nothalf-a-sovereign after all, but I flung our dear driver a whole oneinstead, and only wish that it had been a hundred.
Already the Italian had his latch-key in the door of 38, and in anothermoment we were rushing up the narrow stairs of as dingy a London houseas prejudiced countryman can conceive. It was panelled, but it wasdark and evil-smelling, and how we should have found our way even tothe stairs but for an unwholesome jet of yellow gas in the hall, Icannot myself imagine. However, up we went pell-mell, to theright-about on the half-landing, and so like a whirlwind into thedrawing-room a few steps higher. There the gas was also burning behindclosed shutters, and the scene is photographed upon my brain, though Icannot have looked upon it for a whole instant as I sprang in at myleader's heels.
This room also was panelled, and in the middle of the wall on our left,his hands lashed to a ring-bolt high above his head, his toes barelytouching the floor, his neck pinioned by a strap passing throughsmaller ring-bolts under either ear, and every inch of him secured onthe same principle, stood, or rather hung, all that was left ofRaffles, for at the first glance I believed him dead. A black rulergagged him, the ends lashed behind his neck, the blood upon it caked tobronze in the gaslight. And in front of him, ticking like asledge-hammer, its only hand upon the stroke of twelve, stood asimple, old-fashioned, grandfather's clock--but not for half an instantlonger--only until my guide could hurl himself upon it and send thewhole thing crashing into the corner. An ear-splitting reportaccompanied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the fallen clock, andI saw a revolver smoking in a vice screwed below the dial, anarrangement of wires sprouting from the dial itself, and the singlehand at once at its zenith and in contact with these.
"Tumble to it, Bunny?"
He was alive; these were his first words; the Italian had theblood-caked ruler in his hand, and with his knife was reaching up tocut the thongs that lashed the hands. He was not tall enough, I seizedhim and lifted him up, then fell to work with my own knife upon thestraps. And Raffles smiled faintly upon us through his blood-stains.
"I want you to tumble to it," he whispered; "the neatest thing inrevenge I ever knew, and another minute would have fixed it. I've beenwaiting for it twelve hours, watching the clock round, death at the endof the lap! Electric connection. Simple enough. Hour-hand only--OLord!"
We had cut the last strap. He could not stand. We supported himbetween us to a horsehair sofa, for the room was furnished, and Ibegged him not to speak, while his one-eyed deliverer was at the doorbefore Raffles recalled him with a sharp word in Italian.
"He wants to get me a drink, but that can wait," said he, in firmervoice; "I shall enjoy it the more when I've told you what happened.Don't let him go, Bunny; put your back against the door. He's adecent soul, and it's lucky for me I got a word with him before theytrussed me up. I've promised to set him up in life, and I will, but Idon't want him out of my sight for the moment."
"If you squared him last night," I exclaimed, "why the blazes didn't hecome to me till the eleventh hour?"
"Ah, I knew he'd have to cut it fine though I hoped not quite so fineas all that. But all's well that ends well, and I declare I don't feelso much the worse. I shall be sore about the gills for a bit--and whatdo you think?"
He pointed to the long black ruler with the bronze stain; it lay uponthe floor; he held out his hand for it, and I gave it to him.
"The same one I gagged him with," said Raffles, with his still ghastlysmile; "he was a bit of an artist, old Corbucci, after all!"
"Now let's hear how you fell into his clutches," said I, briskly, for Iwas as anxious to hear as he seemed to tell me, only for my part Icould have waited until we were safe in the flat.
"I do want to get it off my chest, Bunny," old Raffles admitted, "andyet I hardly can tell you after all. I followed your friend with thevelvet eyes. I followed him all the way here. Of course I came up tohave a good look at the house when he'd let himself in, and damme if hehadn't left the door ajar! Who could resist that? I had pushed ithalf open and had just one foot on the mat when I got such a crack onthe head as I hope never to get again. When I came to my wits theywere hauling me up to that ring-bolt by the hands, and old Corbuccihimself was bowing to me, but how HE got here I don't know yet."
"I can tell you that," said I, and told how I had seen the Count formyself on the pavement underneath our windows. "Moreover," Icontinued, "I saw him spot you, and five minutes after in Earl's CourtRoad I was told he'd driven off in a cab. He would see you followinghis man, drive home ahead, and catch you by having the door left openin the way you describe."
"Well," said Raffles, "he deserved to catch me somehow, for he'd comefrom Naples on purpose, ruler and all, and the ring-bolts were readyfixed, and even this house taken furnished for nothing else! He meantcatching me before he'd done, and scoring me off in exactly the sameway that I s
cored off him, only going one better of course. He told meso himself, sitting where I am sitting now, at three o'clock thismorning, and smoking a most abominable cigar that I've smelt eversince. It appears he sat twenty-four hours when I left HIM trussed up,but he said twelve would content him in my case, as there was certaindeath at the end of them, and I mightn't have life enough left toappreciate my end if he made it longer. But I wouldn't have trustedhim if he could have got the clock to go twice round without firing offthe pistol. He explained the whole mechanism of that to me; he hadthought it all out on the vineyard I told you about; and then he askedif I remembered what he had promised me in the name of the Camorra. Ionly remembered some vague threats, but he was good enough to give meso many particulars of that institution that I could make a Europeanreputation by exposing the whole show if it wasn't for my unfortunateresemblance to that infernal rascal Raffles. Do you think they wouldknow me at the Yard, Bunny, after all this time? Upon my soul I've agood mind to risk it!"
I offered no opinion on the point. How could it interest me then? Butinterested I was in Raffles, never more so in my life. He had beentortured all night and half a day, yet he could sit and talk like thisthe moment we cut him down; he had been within a minute of his death,yet he was as full of life as ever; ill-treated and defeated at thebest, he could still smile through his blood as though the boot were onthe other leg. I had imagined that I knew my Raffles at last. I wasnot likely so to flatter myself again.
"But what has happened to these villains?" I burst out, and myindignation was not only against them for their cruelty, but alsoagainst their victim for his phlegmatic attitude toward them. It wasdifficult to believe that this was Raffles.
"Oh," said he, "they were to go off to Italy INSTANTER; they should becrossing now. But do listen to what I am telling you; it'sinteresting, my dear man. This old sinner Corbucci turns out to havebeen no end of a boss in the Camorra--says so himself. One of the capiparanze, my boy, no less; and the velvety Johnny a giovano onorato,Anglice, fresher. This fellow here was also in it, and I've sworn toprotect him from them evermore; and it's just as I said, half theorgan-grinders in London belong, and the whole lot of them were put onmy tracks by secret instructions. This excellent youth manufacturesiced poison on Saffron Hill when he's at home."
"And why on earth didn't he come to me quicker?"
"Because he couldn't talk to you, he could only fetch you, and it wasas much as his life was worth to do that before our friends haddeparted. They were going by the eleven o'clock from Victoria, andthat didn't leave much chance, but he certainly oughtn't to have runit as fine as he did. Still you must remember that I had to fix thingsup with him in the fewest possible words, in a single minute that theother two were indiscreet enough to leave us alone together."
The ragamuffin in question was watching us with all his solitary eye,as though he knew that we were discussing him. Suddenly he broke outin agonized accents, his hands clasped, and a face so full of fear thatevery moment I expected to see him on his knees. But Raffles answeredkindly, reassuringly, I could tell from his tone, and then turned to mewith a compassionate shrug.
"He says he couldn't find the mansions, Bunny, and really it's not tobe wondered at. I had only time to tell him to hunt you up and bringyou here by hook or crook before twelve to-day, and after all he hasdone that. But now the poor devil thinks you're riled with him, andthat we'll give him away to the Camorra."
"Oh, it's not with him I'm riled," I said frankly, "but with thoseother blackguards, and--and with you, old chap, for taking it all asyou do, while such infamous scoundrels have the last laugh, and aresafely on their way to France!"
Raffles looked up at me with a curiously open eye, an eye that I neversaw when he was not in earnest. I fancied he did not like my lastexpression but one. After all, it was no laughing matter to him.
"But are they?" said he. "I'm not so sure."
"You said they were!"
"I said they should be."
"Didn't you hear them go?"
"I heard nothing but the clock all night. It was like Big Ben strikingat the last--striking nine to the fellow on the drop."
And in that open eye I saw at last a deep glimmer of the ordeal throughwhich he had passed.
"But, my dear old Raffles, if they're still on the premises--"
The thought was too thrilling for a finished sentence.
"I hope they are," he said grimly, going to the door. "There's a gason! Was that burning when you came in?"
Now that I thought of it, yes, it had been.
"And there's a frightfully foul smell," I added, as I followed Rafflesdown the stairs. He turned to me gravely with his hand upon thefront-room door, and at the same moment I saw a coat with an astrakhancollar hanging on the pegs.
"They are in here, Bunny," he said, and turned the handle.
The door would only open a few inches. But a detestable odor came out,with a broad bar of yellow gaslight. Raffles put his handkerchief tohis nose. I followed his example, signing to our ally to do the same,and in another minute we had all three squeezed into the room.
The man with the yellow boots was lying against the door, the Count'sgreat carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance it was evidentthat both men had been dead some hours. The old Camorrist had the stemof a liqueur-glass between his swollen blue fingers, one of which hadbeen cut in the breakage, and the livid flesh was also brown with thelast blood that it would ever shed. His face was on the table, thehuge moustache projecting from under either leaden cheek, yet lookingitself strangely alive. Broken bread and scraps of frozen macaroni layupon the cloth and at the bottom of two soup-plates and a tureen; themacaroni had a tinge of tomato; and there was a crimson dram left inthe tumblers, with an empty fiasco to show whence it came. But nearthe great gray head upon the table another liqueur-glass stood,unbroken, and still full of some white and stinking liquid; and nearthat a tiny silver flask, which made me recoil from Raffles as I hadnot from the dead; for I knew it to be his.
"Come out of this poisonous air," he said sternly, "and I will tell youhow it has happened."
So we all three gathered together in the hall. But it was Raffles whostood nearest the street-door, his back to it, his eyes upon us two.And though it was to me only that he spoke at first, he would pausefrom point to point, and translate into Italian for the benefit of theone-eyed alien to whom he owed his life.
"You probably don't even know the name, Bunny," he began, "of thedeadliest poison yet known to science. It is cyanide of cacodyl, and Ihave carried that small flask of it about with me for months. Where Igot it matters nothing; the whole point is that a mere sniff reducesflesh to clay. I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know,but I always felt it worth while to be forearmed against the veryworst. Well, a bottle of this stuff is calculated to stiffen anordinary roomful of ordinary people within five minutes; and Iremembered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the smallhours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. Ibegged them to give me a drink before they left me. And what do yousuppose they did?"
I thought of many things but suggested none, while Raffles turned thismuch of his statement into sufficiently fluent Italian. But when hefaced me again his face was still flaming.
"That beast Corbucci!" said he--"how can I pity him? He took theflask; he would give me none; he flicked me in the face instead. Myidea was that he, at least, should go with me--to sell my life asdearly as that--and a sniff would have settled us both. But no, he musttantalize and torment me; he thought it brandy; he must take itdownstairs to drink to my destruction! Can you have any pity for ahound like that?"
"Let us go," I at last said, hoarsely, as Raffles finished speaking inItalian, and his second listener stood open-mouthed.
"We will go," said Raffles, "and we will chance being seen; if theworst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I have beentied up since one o'clock this morning, and
the medical evidence willdecide how long those dogs have been dead."
But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my unforgottenfriend the cabman, who never came forward to say what manner of men hehad driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on the very day upon whichthe tragedy was discovered there, or whence he had driven them. To besure, they had not behaved like murderers, whereas the evidence at theinquest all went to show that the defunct Corbucci was little better.His reputation, which transpired with his identity, was that of alibertine and a renegade, while the infernal apparatus upstairsrevealed the fiendish arts of the anarchist to boot. The inquiryresulted eventually in an open verdict, and was chiefly instrumentalin killing such compassion as is usually felt for the dead who die intheir sins.
But Raffles would not have passed this title for this tale.