Raffles is a gentleman
thief, but he seems more like Shrelock Holmes than someone
on the shady side of the law.
Excerpt:
"I shall account for it all right," said
Raffles darkly. "I can save his face for the time being, at
all events at Lord's."
"But
that's the only place that matters," said I.
"On the
contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long
as Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged,
and that she's in the next room now."
"Good
God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself."
"She is
the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with,
I thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who
can keep it from her, sir."
"I?"
"Miss
Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only
spoil her things, and you may tell her from me that there
would be no play for an hour after this, even if it stopped
this minute, which it won't. Meanwhile let her think that
Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them in the pavilion;
but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and the
best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself."
"And when
may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held out
his hand.
"Let me
see. I shall be at Lord's in less than twenty minutes;
another five or ten should polish off Studley; and then I
shall barricade myself in the telephone-box and ring up
every hospital in town! You see, it may be an accident after
all, though I don't think so. You won't hear from me on the
point unless it is; the fewer messengers flying about the
better, if you agree with me as to the wisdom of keeping the
matter dark at this end."
"Oh, yes,
I agree with you, Raffles; but it will be a terribly hard
task for me!"
"It will,
indeed, Mr. Garland. Yet no news is always good news, and I
promise to come straight to you the moment I have news of
any kind."
With that
they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that
turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to
take my leave of him.
"What!"
cried he, "am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor
girl and hide my own anxiety?"
"There's
no reason why you should come, Bunny," said Raffles to me.
"If either of them is a one-man job, it's mine."
Our host
said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could
not but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at
length the drawing-room door had closed upon him and his
son's _fiancee_, I took an umbrella from the stand and saw
Raffles through the providential downpour into the brougham.
"I'm
sorry, Bunny," he muttered between the butler in the porch
and the coachman on the box. "This sort of thing is neither
in my line nor yours, but it serves us right for straying
from the path of candid crime. We should have opened a safe
for that seven hundred."
"But what
do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary
disappearance?"
"Some
madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in
the land of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes
down on his insanity."
"And what
about this engagement of his?" I pursued. "Do you disapprove
of it?"
"Why on
earth should I?" asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he
plunged from under my umbrella into the brougham.
"Because
you never told me when he told you," I replied. "Is the girl
beneath him?"
Raffles
looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes.
"You'd
better find out for yourself," said he. "Tell the coachman
to hurry up to Lord's--and pray that this rain may last!"
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