Mr. Justice Raffles Part 33

"All the more reason to hook it round the world, Bunny, before there's a dog's chance of our meeting again."

He opened his paper the proper way up at last. The train rushed on with flying sparks, and flying lights along the line. We were getting nearer Dover now. My next brilliant remark was that I could "smell the sea." Raffles let it pa.s.s; he had been talking of the close-of-play scores in the stop-press column, and I thought he was studying them rather silently. Or perhaps he was not studying them at all, but still thinking of Camilla Belsize, and the look from those brave bright eyes that she had never meant him to see. Then, suddenly, I perceived that his forehead was glistening white and wet in the lamplight.

"What is it, Raffles? What's the matter?"

He reversed his paper with a shaky hand, and thrust it upon me without a word, merely pointing out four or five ill-printed lines of latest news. This was the item that danced before my eyes:

TRAGIC DEATH OF FAMOUS MONEYLENDER

Mr. Daniel Levy, the financier, reported shot dead at front gates of his residence in Thames Valley at 5.30 this afternoon, by unknown man who made good his escape.

I looked up into a ghastly face.

"It was half-past five when I left him, Bunny!"

"You left him-"

I could not ask it. But the ghastly face had given me a ghastlier thought.

"As well as you are, Bunny!" so Raffles completed my sentence. "Do you think I'd leave him for dead at his own gates?"

Of course I denied the thought; but it had come to haunt me none the less; for if I had sailed so near such a deed, what about Raffles under equal provocation? And what such motive for the very flight that we were making with but a moment's preparation? It all fitted in, except the face and voice of Raffles as they had been while he was speaking of Camilla Belsize; but again, the fatal act would indeed have made him feel that he had lost her, and loosened his tongue upon his loss as something had done without doubt; and as for voice and face, there was no longer in either any lack of the mad excitement of the hunted man.

"But what were you doing at his gates, A.J.?"

"I saw him home. It was on my way. Why not?"

"And you say you left him at half-past five?"

"I swear it. I looked at my watch, thinking of my train, and my watch is plumb right."

"And you heard no shot as you went on?"

"No-I was hurrying. I even ran. I must have been seen running! And now I'm like Charley's Aunt," he went on with his sardonic laugh, "and bound to stick to it until they catch me by the leg. Now you know what Mackenzie was doing down there! The old hound may be on my track already.

There's no going back now."

"Not for an innocent man?"

"Not for such dubious innocence as mine, Bunny! Remember all we've been up to with poor old Levy for the last twenty-four hours."

He paused, remembering everything himself, as I could see; and the human compa.s.sion in his face should have been sufficient answer to my vile misgivings. But there was contrition in his look as well, and that was a much rarer sign in Raffles. Rarer still was a glance of alarm almost akin to panic, alike without precedent in my experience of my friend and beyond belief in my reading of his character. But through all there peeped a conscious enjoyment of these new sensations, a very zest in the novelty of fear, which I knew to be at once signally characteristic, and yet compatible either with his story or with my own base dread.

"n.o.body need ever know about that," said I, with the certainty that n.o.body ever would know through the one other who knew already. But Raffles threw cold water upon that poor little flicker of confidence and good hope.

"It's bound to come out, Bunny. They'll start accounting for his last hours on earth, and they'll stick ominously in the first five minutes working backwards. Then I am described as bolting from the scene, then identified with myself, then found to have fled the country! Then Carlsbad, then our first row with him, then yesterday's big cheque; my heavy double finds he was impersonated at the bank; it all comes out bit by bit, and if I'm caught it means that dingy Old Bailey dock on the capital charge!"

"Then I'll be with you," said I, "as accessory before and after the fact.

That's one thing!"

"No, no, Bunny! You must shake me off and get back to town. I'll push you out as we slow down through the streets of Dover, and you can put up for the night at the Lord Warden. That's the sort of public place for the likes of us to lie low in, Bunny. Don't forget all my rules when I'm gone."

"You're not going without me, A.J."

"Not even if I did it, Bunny?"

"No; less than ever then!"

Raffles leant across and took my hand. There was a flash of mischief in his eyes, but a very tender light as well.

"It makes me almost wish I were what I do believe you thought I was," said he, "to see you stick to me all the same! But it's about time that we were making the lights of Dover," he added, beating an abrupt retreat from sentiment, even to the length of getting up and looking out as we clattered through a country station. His head was in again before the platform was left behind, a pale face peering into mine, real panic flaring in those altered eyes, like blue lights at sea. "My G.o.d, Bunny!" cried Raffles. "I believe Dover's as far as I shall ever get!"

"Why? What's the matter now?"

"A head sticking out of the next compartment but one!"

"Mackenzie's?"

"Yes!"

I had seen it in his face.

"After us already?"

"G.o.d knows! Not necessarily; they watch the ports after a big murder."

"Swagger detectives from Scotland Yard?"

Raffles did not answer; he had something else to do. Already he was turning his pockets inside out. A false beard rolled off the seat.

"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up." He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at home, we shall give him the slip all right."

"Do you think he saw you?"

"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too."

"But before we started?"

"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down, thank G.o.d!"

They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not Raffles at all, but another n.o.ble scamp who even in those days before the war was the observed of all observers about town.

"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread basket, you ought to pa.s.s for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!"

The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging pa.s.sengers with both. Whether we should have pa.s.sed him un.o.bserved I cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod.

"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk.

"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law.

"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with deferential grin.