Yes, Catherine was good to look at; there was no doubt of it; and this time she was not wearing any hat. Discoursing of the lad, she was animated, eager, for once as exclamatory as her pen, with light and life in every look of the thin intellectual face, in every glance of the large, intellectual eyes, and in every intonation of the keen dry voice. A sweet woman; a young woman; a woman with a full heart of love and sympathy and tenderness — for Bob! Yet, when she thanked me at the end, either upon an impulse, or because she thought she must, her eyes fell, and again I detected that slight embarrassment which was none the less a revelation, to me, in Catherine Evers, of all women in the world.
“We won’t speak of that,” I said, “if you don’t mind. I am not proud of it.”
Catherine scanned me more narrowly. I knew her better with that look. “Then tell me about yourself, and do sit down,” she said, drawing a chair near the fire, but sitting on the other side of it herself. “I needn’t ask you how you are. I never saw you looking so well. That comes of going right away and not hurrying back. I think you were so wise! But, Duncan, I am sorry to see both sticks still! Have you seen your man since you came back?”
“I have.”
“Well?”
“I’m afraid there’s no more soldiering for me.”
Catherine seemed more than sorry and disappointed; she looked quite indignant with the eminent specialist who had finally pronounced this opinion. Was I sure he was the very best man for that kind of thing? She would have a second opinion, if she were me. Very well, then, a third and fourth! If there was one man she pitied from the bottom of her heart, it was the man without a profession or an occupation of some kind. Catherine looked, however, as though her pity were almost akin to horror.
“I have a trifle, luckily,” I said. “I must try something else.”
Catherine stared into the fire, as though thinking of something else for me to try. She seemed full of apprehension on my account.
“Don’t you worry about me,” I went on. “I came here to talk about somebody else, of course.”
Catherine almost started.
“I’ve told you about Bob,” she said, with a suspicious upward glance from the fire.
“I don’t mean Bob,” said I, “or anything you may think I did for him or you. I said just now that I didn’t want to speak of it and no more I do. Yet, as a matter of fact, I do want to speak to you about the lady in that case.”
Catherine’s face betrayed the mixed emotions of relief and fresh alarm.
“You don’t mean to say the creature — ? But it’s impossible. I heard from Bob only this morning. He wrote so happily!”
I could not help smiling at the nature and quality of the alarm.
“They have seen nothing more of each other, if that’s what you fear,” said I. “But what I do want to speak about is this creature, as you call her, and no one else. She has done nothing to deserve quite so much contempt. I want you to be just to her, Catherine.”
I was serious. I may have been ridiculous. Catherine evidently found me so, for, after gauging me with that wry but humourous look which I knew so well of old, for which I had been waiting this afternoon, she went off into the decorous little fit of laughter in which it had invariably ended.
“Forgive me, Duncan dear! But you do look so serious, and you are so dreadfully broad! I never was. I hope you remember that? Broad minds and easy principles — the combination is inevitable. But, really though, Duncan, is there anything to be said for her? Was she a possible person, in any sense of the word?”
“Quite a probable person,” I assured Catherine.
“But I have heard all sorts of things about her!”
“From Bob?”
“No, he never mentioned her.”
“Nor me, perhaps?”
“Nor you, Duncan. I am afraid there may be just a drop of bad blood there! You see, he looked upon you as a successful rival. You wrote and told me so, if you remember, from some place on your way down from the mountains. Your letter and Bob arrived the same night.”
I nodded.
“It was so clever of you!” pursued Catherine. “Quite brilliant; but I don’t quite know what to say to your letting my baby climb that awful Matterhorn; in a fog, too!”
And there was real though momentary reproach in the firelit face.
“I couldn’t very well stop him, you know. Besides,” I added, “it was such a chance.”
“Of what?”
“Of getting rid of Mrs. Lascelles. I thought you would think it worth the risk.”
“I do,” declared Catherine, on due consultation with the fire. “I really do! Bob is all I have — all I want — in this world, Duncan; and it may seem a dreadful thing to say, and you mayn’t believe it when I’ve said it, but — yes! — I’d rather he had never come home at all than come home married, at his age, and to an Indian widow, whose first husband had divorced her! I mean it, Duncan; I do indeed!”
“I am sure you do,” said I. “It was just what I said to myself.”
“To think of my Bob being Number Three!” murmured Catherine, with that plaintive drollery of hers which I had found irresistible in the days of old.
I was able to resist it now. “So those were the things you heard?” I remarked.
“Yes,” said Catherine; “haven’t you heard them?”
“I didn’t need. I knew her in India years ago.”
Catherine’s eyes opened.
“You knew this Mrs. Lascelles?”
“Before that was her name. I have also met her original husband. If you had known him, you would be less hard on her.”
Catherine’s eyes were still wide open. They were rather hard eyes, after all. “Why did you not tell me you had known her, when you wrote?” she asked.
“It wouldn’t have done any good. I did what you wanted done, you know. I thought that was enough.”
“It was enough,” echoed Catherine, with a quick return of grace. She looked into the fire. “I don’t want to be hard upon the poor thing, Duncan! I know you think we women always are, upon each other. But to have come back married — at his age — to even the nicest woman in the world! It would have been madness ... ruination ... Duncan, T’m going to say something else that may shock you.”
“Say away,” said I.
Her voice had fallen. She was looking at me very narrowly, as if to measure the effect of her unspoken words.
“I am not so very sure about marriage,” she went on, “at any age! Don’t misunderstand me ... I was very happy ... but I for one could never marry again ... and I am not sure that I ever want to see Bob....”
Catherine had spoken very gently, looking once more in the fire; when she ceased there was a space of utter silence in the little room. Then her eyes came back furtively to mine; and presently they were twinkling with their old staid merriment.
“But to be Number Three!” she said again. “My poor old Bob!”
And she smiled upon me, tenderly, from the depths of her alter-egoism.
“Well,” I said, “he never will be.”
“God forbid!” cried Catherine.
“He has forbidden. It will never happen.”
“Is she dead?” asked Catherine, but not too quickly for common decency. She was not one to pass such bounds.
“Not that I know of.”
It was hard to repress a sneer.
“Then what makes you so sure — that he never could?”
“Well, he never will in my time!”
“You are good to me,” said Catherine, gratefully.
“Not a bit good,” said I, “or — only to myself ... I have been good to no one else in this whole matter. That’s what it all amounts to, and that’s what I really came to tell you. Catherine ... I am married to her myself!”
THE END
MR. JUSTICE RAFFLES
First published in 1909 by Smith, Elder & Co., this novel features Hornung’s most famous creation, the character A. J. Raffles, who is
presented as a well-known cricketer and gentleman thief. Mr. Justice Raffles was the fourth and last in his series of Raffles books, the other three titles being story collections, which had begun with The Amateur Cracksman in 1899.
The full-length novel features darker elements than the earlier collections of short stories, as Raffles appears jaded and increasingly cynical about British high society. He encounters Dan Levy, an unscrupulous moneylender, who manages to entrap a number of young men, mostly sons of the wealthy, by giving them loans and then charging huge amounts of interest. Raffles takes it upon himself to teach Levy a lesson.
At the end of Hornung’s second Raffles short story collection, The Black Mask, Raffles and his companion Bunny Manders volunteer for service in the Second Boer War in 1899. Hornung had intended a patriotic finale to his hero’s story and so during the conflict Raffles is killed at the hands of the Boers. However, there was great popular demand for the return of the character and after a number of generous publishing offers, Hornung agreed to write another book.
The decision is similar to Arthur Conan Doyle’s choice to resurrect Sherlock Holmes after he had been killed falling over the Reichenbach Falls. Doyle had managed this by revealing that Holmes had actually survived the falls, while Hornung sets Mr. Justice Raffles before the events of the Boer War. The comparison between the resurrections of Holmes and Raffles is made interesting by the fact that Doyle and Hornung were brothers-in-law. Prior to resurrecting Holmes, Doyle had used much the same technique as Hornung, when demand had called for another Holmes story and he chose to set The Hound of the Baskervilles prior to Holmes’ “demise”.
The critical reception of Mr. Justice Raffles was mixed, with some fans lamenting the loss of the carefree gentlemen thief of the early stories. It was the last Raffles work written by Hornung, although a number of continuations have been written by other authors, including Graham Greene, in a range of parody and homage.
The first edition
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER I
An Inaugural Banquet
Raffles had vanished from the face of the town, and even I had no conception of his whereabouts until he cabled to me to meet the 7.31 at Charing Cross next night. That was on the Tuesday before the ‘Varsity match, or a full fortnight after his mysterious disappearance. The telegram was from Carlsbad, of all places for Raffles of all men! Of course there was only one thing that could possibly have taken so rare a specimen of physical fitness to any such pernicious spot. But to my horror he emerged from the train, on the Wednesday evening, a cadaverous caricature of the splendid person I had gone to meet.
“Not a word, my dear Bunny, till I have bitten British beef!” said he, in tones as hollow as his cheeks. “No, I’m not going to stop to clear my baggage now. You can do that for me to-morrow, Bunny, like a dear good pal.”
“Any time you like,” said I, giving him my arm. “But where shall we dine? Kellner’s? Neapolo’s? The Carlton or the Club?”
But Raffles shook his head at one and all.
“I don’t want to dine at all,” he said. “I know what I want!”
And he led the way from the station, stopping once to gloat over the sunset across Trafalgar Square, and again to inhale the tarry scent of the warm wood-paving, which was perfume to his nostrils as the din of its traffic was music to his ears, before we came to one of those political palaces which permit themselves to be included in the list of ordinary clubs. Raffles, to my surprise, walked in as though the marble hall belonged to him, and as straight as might be to the grill-room where white-capped cooks were making things hiss upon a silver grill. He did not consult me as to what we were to have. He had made up his mind about that in the train. But he chose the fillet steaks himself, he insisted on seeing the kidneys, and had a word to say about the fried potatoes, and the Welsh rarebit that was to follow. And all this was as uncharacteristic of the normal Raffles (who was least fastidious at the table) as the sigh with which he dropped into the chair opposite mine, and crossed his arms upon the cloth.
“I didn’t know you were a member of this place,” said I, feeling really rather shocked at the discovery, but also that it was a safer subject for me to open than that of his late mysterious movements.
“There are a good many things you don’t know about me, Bunny,” said he wearily. “Did you know I was in Carlsbad, for instance?”
“Of course I didn’t.”
“Yet you remember the last time we sat down together?”
“You mean that night we had supper at the Savoy?”
“It’s only three weeks ago, Bunny.”
“It seems months to me.”
“And years to me!” cried Raffles. “But surely you remember that lost tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the wife with the emerald necklace?”
“I should think I did,” said I; “you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J.”
“Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man’s last orgy before his annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can sympathise with the poor brute now!”
“But what on earth took you there, old fellow?”
“Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their table when they’d gone, and how I forgot myself and ran after them with the best necklace I’d handled since the days of Lady Melrose?”
I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was prepared for something even more perverse.
“You were quite right,” continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at the time; “it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like that couldn’t have dropped off without the wearer’s knowledge.”
“You don’t mean to say she dropped it on purpose?” I exclaimed with more interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale.
“I do,” said Raffles. “The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him.”
I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way Raffles now sided with me against himself.
“But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up,” said he, “and heard that fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she’d done it on purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I didn’t need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I’d been all round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted.”
“Admirable!” said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such bad form as he looked. “But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that’s the unkind cut I can’t forgive.”
“My dear Bunny, you couldn’t have borne it,” said Raffles solemnly. “The cure would have killed you; look what it’s done to me.”
“Don’t tell me you went through with it!” I rallied him.
“Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a pr
ayer-book.”
“But why, in the name of all that’s wanton?”
“You don’t know Carlsbad, or you wouldn’t ask. The place is squirming with spies and humbugs. If I had broken the rules one of the prize humbugs laid down for me I should have been spotted in a tick by a spy, and bowled out myself for a spy and a humbug rolled into one. Oh, Bunny, if old man Dante were alive to-day I should commend him to that sink of salubrity for the redraw material of another and a worse Inferno!”
The steaks had arrived, smoking hot, with a kidney apiece and lashings of fried potatoes. And for a divine interval (as it must have been to him) Raffles’s only words were to the waiter, and referred to successive tankards of bitter, with the superfluous rider that the man who said we couldn’t drink beer was a liar. But indeed I never could myself, and only achieved the impossible in this case out of sheer sympathy with Raffles. And eventually I had my reward, in such a recital of malignant privation as I cannot trust myself to set down in any words but his.
“No, Bunny, you couldn’t have borne it for half a week; you’d have looked like that all the time!” quoth Raffles. I suppose my face had fallen (as it does too easily) at his aspersion on my endurance. “Cheer up, my man; that’s better,” he went on, as I did my best. “But it was no smiling matter out there. No one does smile after the first week; your sense of humour is the first thing the cure eradicates. There was a hunting man at my hotel, getting his weight down to ride a special thoroughbred, and no doubt a cheery dog at home; but, poor devil, he hadn’t much chance of good cheer there! Miles and miles on his poor feet before breakfast; mud-poultices all the morning; and not the semblance of a drink all day, except some aerated muck called Gieshübler. He was allowed to lap that up an hour after meals, when his tongue would be hanging out of his mouth. We went to the same weighing machine at cock-crow, and though he looked quite good-natured once when I caught him asleep in his chair, I have known him tear up his weight ticket when he had gained an ounce or two instead of losing one or two pounds. We began by taking our walks together, but his conversation used to get so physically introspective that one couldn’t get in a word about one’s own works edgeways.”
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 296
