



Produced by Judith Boss.  HTML version by Al Haines.









THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN


BY

E. W. HORNUNG



  TO
  A. C. D.
  THIS FORM OF FLATTERY





THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN



CONTENTS

  THE IDES OF MARCH
  A COSTUME PIECE
  GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS
  LE PREMIER PAS
  WILFUL MURDER
  NINE POINTS OF THE LAW
  THE RETURN MATCH
  THE GIFT OF THE EMPEROR




THE IDES OF MARCH

I

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 strewed the table, with the empty glasses
and the loaded ash-trays.  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 room 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 to-night.  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; "no, I won't
smoke, and I won't sit down, thank you.  Nor will you ask me to do
either when you've heard what I have to say."

"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
will 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 check-book, 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 am
overdrawn already at my bank!"

"Surely only for the moment?"

"No.  I have spent everything."

"But somebody told me you were so well off. 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!  Yes, I've been a fool; 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; "didn't you
edit the mag. before you left?  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's 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.
But in his handsome, unmoved face I read my fate and death-warrant; and
with every breath I cursed my folly and my cowardice in coming to him
at all.  Because he had been kind to me at school, when he was captain
of the eleven, and I his fag, I had dared to look for kindness from him
now; because I was ruined, and he rich enough to play cricket all the
summer, and do nothing for the rest of the year, 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 was 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?"

The barrel touched my temple, and my thumb the trigger.  Mad with
excitement as I was, ruined, dishonored, and now finally determined to
make an end of my misspent life, 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 as 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
color 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!  No, I'm hanged if I let
you go now.  And you'd better not try that game again, for you won't
catch me stand and look on a second time.  We must think of some way
out of the mess.  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; yet 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!  A. J. 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 fervor as uncontrollable as the frenzy which had preceded it.

"God bless you!" 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 baccarat?  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 vociferated.  "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.  I have
nothing but my wits to live on--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 were a plucky
little devil at school; you once did me rather a 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.  Once he threw up the window, which he had shut some
time since, and stood for some moments leaning out into the fog which
filled the Albany courtyard.  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
mantel-piece, 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's
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 had I 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 over-bold, and
within an ace of ignominious expulsion in the hey-day of his fame.
Consummate daring and 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 in 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 hole to-night."

"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent 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."

He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in doubt; then
turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and the little cynical
laugh that was all his own.

"You're a nice chap, Bunny!  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.  None the less we must have that money to-night--by
hook or crook."

"To-night, Raffles?"

"The sooner the better.  Every hour after ten o'clock to-morrow 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 to-night and re-open your account first thing to-morrow.  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 a latch-key
all to myself."

"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 syphon,
and I'll be putting on an overcoat while you help yourself."

Well, I daresay 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 Shakespearian
calendar, as I drained my glass.  "March 15th.  'The Ides of March, the
Ides of March, remember.' Eh, Bunny, my boy?  You won't forget them,
will you?"

And, with a laugh, he threw some coals on the fire before turning down
the gas like a careful householder.  So we went out together as the
clock on the chimney-piece was striking two.


II

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 favored
with a very hard stare from the constable of the beat, who, however,
touched his helmet on recognizing 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--and I'm hanged if the beggar isn't in bed
and asleep 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 to throw them out. They were over a jeweller's shop,
as I could see by the peep-hole in the shop door, and the bright light
burning within.  But the entire "upper part," with the private
street-door next the shop, was black and blank as the sky itself.

"Better give it up for to-night," 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 nearer, 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!  We'll 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 A. J.
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 stairs at his heels before I realized what an extraordinary way
was this 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 stair 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 banisters 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 am 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 jeweller underneath."

"What do you mean?" I whispered, trembling like a leaf as his meaning
dawned upon me.  "Are we to get the money from the jeweller?"

"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, piqued 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 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