"I won't tell a soul, of course," I said, and fidgeted. "That is-except-I suppose you don't mind-"

"I do! There must be no exceptions."

"Not even old Raffles?"

"Mr. Raffles least of all!" cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked flash from those masterful eyes. "Mr. Raffles is the last person in the world who must ever know a single thing."

"Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and me?" I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, adamant heated in some hidden flame.

"It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get excited, and twist off a b.u.t.ton in my excitement, as I suppose I must have done-unless it's a judgment on me-it's rather hard lines if you give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!"

This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former pa.s.sage between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once.

"You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right," said I, cheerfully.

"And I never let out a word of that."

"Not even to Mr. Raffles?" she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation that was almost wistful.

"Not a word," was my reply. "Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, much less how keen you were for me to warn him."

Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. Then something won-I think it was only her pride-and she was holding out her hand.

"He must never know a word of this either," said she, firmly as at first. "And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always shall for the future."

"I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear old Raffles!"

I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I made my point.

"I don't dislike him," she answered in a strange tone; but with a stranger stress she added, "I don't like him either."

And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and s.n.a.t.c.h her eyes away quicker still.

I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight before it stopped.

The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him.

"Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?" I heard him babble to his cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. "Then drive there, mon, like the deevil himsel'!"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Death of a Sinner

What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his shirt-sleeves from the window.

"I thought you were dead, Bunny!" he muttered down as though he wished I were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about Mackenzie in the lobby.

"So soon!" says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. "Well, thank G.o.d, I was ready for him again."

I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. The bed was c.u.mbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds.

"Going away?" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

"Rather!" said he, folding a smoking jacket. "Isn't it about time after what you've told me?"

"But you were packing before you knew!"

"Then for G.o.d's sake go and do the same yourself!" he cried, "and don't ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at five to nine."

"What platform, Raffles?"

"Charing Cross. Continental train."

"But where the deuce do you think of going?"

"Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe."

"Our flight!" I repeated. "What has happened since I left you, Raffles?"

"Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!" was all my answer from a savage face, as I was fairly driven to the door. "Do you realise that you were due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell you everything in the train, Bunny."

And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant on my shoulder as I pa.s.sed out, were my only consolation for his truly terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and rea.s.surance of any kind, until we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross.

Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, but that the rencontre with Mackenzie had served to sober me.

"Poor Bunny! We won't pursue the matter any further; but I do know where we both should have been between seven and eight. It was as nice a little dinner as I ever ordered in my life. And to think that we never turned up to eat a bite of it!"

"Didn't you?" I queried, and my sense of guilt deepened to remorse as Raffles shook his head.

"No fear, Bunny! I wanted to see you safe and sound. That was what made me so stuffy when you did turn up."

Loud were my lamentations, and earnest my entreaties to Raffles to share the contents of my paper bag; but not he. To replace such a feast as he had ordered with sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs would be worse than going healthily hungry for once; it was all very well for me who knew not what I had missed. Not that Raffles was hungry by his own accounts; he had merely fancied a little dinner, more after my heart than his, for our last on British soil.

This, and the way he said it, brought me back to the heart of things; for beneath his frothy phrases I felt that the wine of life was bitter to his taste. His gayety now afforded no truer criterion to his real feelings than had his petulance at the Albany. What had happened since our parting in that fatal tower, to make this wild flight necessary without my news, and whither in all earnest were we to fly?

"Oh, nothing!" said Raffles, in unsatisfactory answer to my first question. "I thought you would have seen that we couldn't clear out too soon after restoring poor Shylock, like our brethren in the song, 'to his friends and his relations.'"

"But I thought you had something else for him to sign?"

"So I had, Bunny."

"What was that?"

"A plain statement of all he had suborned me to do for him, and what he had given me for doing it," said Raffles, as he lit a Sullivan from his last easeful. "One might almost call it a receipt for the letter I stole and he destroyed."

"And did he sign that?"

"I insisted on it for our protection."

"Then we are protected, and yet we cut and run?"

Raffles shrugged his shoulders as we hurtled between the lighted platforms of Herne Hill.