The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Take up your bags as quietly as possible,” he said, “and lower them one by one into the water, but take care that they don’t get entangled in the propeller. When you’ve done that, slip the rings at the other end of the lines through your belt, and buckle the latter tightly.”

  Belton did as he was ordered, and in a few moments the six bags were lying at the bottom of the sea.

  “Now off with these wigs and things, and say when you’re ready for a swim.”

  Their disguises having been discarded and thrown overboard, Carne and Belton clambered over the rails of the gallery and lowered themselves until their feet touched the water. Next moment they had both let go, and were swimming in the direction of Carne’s own yacht.

  It was at this period of their adventure that the darkness proved of such real service to them. By the time they had swum half a dozen strokes it would have needed a sharp pair of eyes to distinguish them as they rose and fell among the foam-crested waves. If, however, the storm had done them a good turn in saving them from notice, it came within an ace of doing them an ill service in another direction. Good swimmers though both Carne and Belton were, and they had proved it to each other’s satisfaction in the seas of almost every known quarter of the globe, they soon found that it took all their strength to make headway now. By the time they reached their own craft, they were both completely exhausted. As Belton declared afterwards, he felt as if he could not have managed another twenty strokes even had his life depended on it.

  At last, however, they reached the yacht’s stern and clutched at the rope ladder which Carne had himself placed there before he had set out on the evening’s excursion. In less time than it takes to tell, he had mounted it and gained the deck, followed by his faithful servant. They presented a sorry spectacle as they stood side by side at the taffrail, the water dripping from their clothes and pattering upon the deck.

  “Thank goodness we are here at last,” said Carne, as soon as he had recovered his breath sufficiently to speak. “Now slip off your belt, and hang it over this cleat with mine.”

  Belton did as he was directed, and then followed his master to the saloon companion ladder. Once below, they changed their clothes as quickly as possible, and having donned mackintoshes, returned to the deck, where it was still raining hard.

  “Now,” said Carne, “for the last and most important part of our evening’s work. Let us hope the lines will prove equal to the demands we are about to make upon them.”

  As he said this, he took one of the belts from the cleat upon which he had placed it, and, having detached a line, began to pull it in, Belton following his example with another. Their hopes that they would prove equal to the confidence placed in them proved well founded, for, in something less than a quarter of an hour, the six bags, containing the Emperor of Westphalia’s magnificent gold plate, were lying upon the deck, ready to be carried below and stowed away in the secret place in which Carne had arranged to hide his treasure.

  “Now, Belton,” said Carne, as he pushed the panel back into its place, and pressed the secret spring that locked it, “I hope you’re satisfied with what we have done. We’ve made a splendid haul, and you shall have your share of it. In the meantime, just get me to bed as quickly as you can, for I’m dead tired. When you’ve done so, be off to your own. To-morrow morning you will have to go up to town to arrange with the bank authorities about my account.”

  Belton did as he was ordered, and half an hour later his master was safely in bed and asleep.

  It was late next morning when he woke. He had scarcely breakfasted before the Earl of Amberley and Lord Orpington made their appearance over the side. To carry out the part he had arranged to play, he received them seated in his deck chair, his swaddled up right foot reclining on a cushion before him. On seeing his guests, he made as if he would rise, but they begged him to remain seated.

  “I hope your ankle is better this morning,” said Lord Orpington politely, as he took a chair beside his friend.

  “Much better, thank you,” Carne replied. “It was not nearly so serious as I feared. I hope to be able to hobble about a little this afternoon. And now tell me the news, if there is any.”

  “Do you mean to say that you have not heard the great news?” asked Lord Amberley, in a tone of astonishment.

  “I have heard nothing,” Carne replied. “Remember, I have not been ashore this morning, and I have been so busily engaged with the preparations for my departure tomorrow that I have not had time to look at my papers. Pray what is this news of which you speak with such bated breath?”

  “Listen, and I’ll tell you,” Lord Orpington answered. “As you are aware, last night his Imperial Majesty the Emperor of Westphalia dined ashore, taking with him his aide-de-camp, Count Von Walzburg. They had not been gone from the launch more than half an hour when, to all intents and purposes, they reappeared, and the Emperor, who seemed much perturbed about something, gave the order to return to the yacht with all possible speed. It was very dark and raining hard at the time, and whoever the men may have been who did the thing, they were, at any rate, past masters in the art of disguise.

  “Reaching the yacht, their arrival gave rise to no suspicion, for the officers are accustomed, as you know, to his Majesty’s rapid comings and goings. The first lieutenant met them at the gangway, and declares that he had no sort of doubt but that it was his Sovereign. Face, voice, and manner were alike perfect. From his Majesty’s behaviour he surmised that there was some sort of trouble brewing for somebody, and, as if to carry this impression still further, the Emperor bade him send the chief steward to him at once, and, at the same time, place the sentry, who had hitherto been guarding the treasure chamber, at the end of the great saloon, with instructions to allow no one to pass him, on any pretext whatever, until the chief steward had been examined and the Emperor himself gave permission. Then he went below to his cabin.

  “Soon after this the steward arrived, and was admitted. Something seems to have excited the latter’s suspicions, however, and he was about to give the alarm when he was seized from behind, thrown upon the floor, and afterwards gagged and bound. It soon became apparent what object the rascals had in view. They had caused the sentry at the door of the treasure chamber to be removed and placed where not only he could not hinder them in their work, but would prevent them from being disturbed. Having obtained the key of the room and safe from the chief steward’s pocket, they set off to the cabin, ransacked it completely, and stole all that was heaviest and most valuable of his Majesty’s wonderful plate from the safe.”

  “Good gracious!” said Carne. “I never heard of such a thing. Surely it’s the most impudent robbery that has taken place for many years past. To represent the Emperor of Westphalia and his aide-de-camp so closely that they could deceive even the officers of his own yacht, and to take a sentry off one post and place him in such a position as to protect them while at their own nefarious work, seems to me the very height of audacity. But how did they get their booty and themselves away again? Gold plate, under the most favourable circumstances, is by no means an easy thing to carry.”

  As he asked this question, Carne lit another cigar with a hand as steady as a rock.

  “They must have escaped in a boat that, it is supposed, was lying under the shelter of the stern gallery,” replied Lord Amberley.

  “And is the chief steward able to furnish the police with no clue as to their identity?”

  “None whatever,” replied Orpington. “He opines to the belief, however, that they are Frenchmen, One of them, the man who impersonated the Emperor, seems to have uttered an exclamation in that tongue.”

  “And when was the robbery discovered?”

  “Only when the real Emperor returned to the vessel shortly after midnight. There was no launch to meet him, and he had to get Tremorden to take him off. You can easily imagine the surprise his
arrival occasioned. It was intensified when they went below to find his Majesty’s cabin turned upside down, the chief steward lying bound and gagged upon the sofa, and all that was most valuable of the gold plate missing.”

  “What an extraordinary story!”

  “And now, having told you the news with which the place is ringing, we must be off about our business,” said Orpington. “Is it quite certain that you are going to leave us to-morrow?”

  “Quite, I am sorry to say,” answered Carne. “I am going to ask as many of my friends as possible to do me the honour of lunching with me at one o’clock, and at five I shall weigh anchor and bid England good-bye. I shall have the pleasure of your company, I hope.”

  “I shall have much pleasure,” said Orpington.

  “And I also,” replied Amberley.

  “Then good-bye for the present. It’s just possible I may see you again during the afternoon.”

  The luncheon next day was as brilliant a social gathering as the most fastidious in such matters could have desired. Every one then in Cowes who had any claim to distinction was present, and several had undertaken the journey from town in order to say farewell to one who had made himself so popular during his brief stay in England. When Carne rose to reply to the toast of his health, proposed by the Prime Minister, it was observable that he was genuinely moved, as, indeed, were most of his hearers.

  For the remainder of the afternoon his yacht’s deck was crowded with his friends, all of whom expressed the hope that it might not be very long before he was amongst them once more.

  To these kind speeches Carne invariably offered a smiling reply.

  “I also trust it will not be long,” he answered. “I have enjoyed my visit immensely, and you may be sure I shall never forget it as long as I live.”

  An hour later the anchor was weighed, and his yacht was steaming out of the harbour amid a scene of intense enthusiasm. As the Prime Minister had that afternoon informed him, in the public interest, the excitement of his departure was dividing the honours with the burglary of the Emperor of Westphalia’s gold plate.

  Carne stood beside his captain on the bridge, watching the little fleet of yachts until his eyes could no longer distinguish them. Then he turned to Belton, who had just joined him, and, placing his hand upon his shoulder, said:

  “So much for our life in England, Belton, my friend. It has been glorious fun, and no one can deny that from a business point of view it has been eminently satisfactory. You, at least, should have no regrets.”

  “None whatever,” answered Belton. “But I must confess I should like to know what they will say when the truth comes out.”

  Carne smiled sweetly as he answered:

  “I think they’ll say that, all things considered, I have won the right to call myself ‘A Prince of Swindlers.’”

  ABOUT A.J. RAFFLES

  Arthur J. Raffles is a character created in the 1890s by E. W. Hornung, a brother-in-law to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Raffles is, in many ways, a deliberate inversion of Holmes—he is a “gentleman thief,” living in the Albany, a prestigious address in London, playing cricket for the Gentlemen of England and supporting himself by carrying out ingenious burglaries. He is called the “Amateur Cracksman,” and often, at first, differentiates between himself and the “professors”—professional criminals from the lower classes.

  As Holmes has Dr. Watson to chronicle his adventures, Raffles has Harry “Bunny” Manders—a former schoolmate saved from disgrace and suicide by Raffles, whom Raffles persuaded to accompany him on a burglary. While Raffles often takes advantage of Manders’ relative innocence, and sometimes treats him with a certain amount of contempt, he knows that Manders’ bravery and loyalty are to be relied on utterly. In several stories, Manders saves the day for the two of them after Raffles gets into situations he cannot get out of on his own.

  One of the things that Raffles has in common with Holmes is a mastery of disguise—during his days as an ostensible man-about-town, he maintains a studio apartment in another name in which he keeps the components of various disguises. He can imitate the regional speech of many parts of Britain flawlessly, and is fluent in Italian.

  The complete adventures of A.J. Raffles are included in The Raffles Megapack. For this volume, we have chosen to sample only one Raffles story, “A Costume Piece,” since no volume of Victorian Villains would be complete with A.J. Raffles!

  A.J. Raffles in A COSTUME PIECE, by E.W. Hornung

  London was just then talking of one whose name is already a name and nothing more. Reuben Rosenthall had made his millions on the diamond fields of South Africa, and had come home to enjoy them according to his lights; how he went to work will scarcely be forgotten by any reader of the halfpenny evening papers, which revelled in endless anecdotes of his original indigence and present prodigality, varied with interesting particulars of the extraordinary establishment which the millionaire set up in St. John’s Wood. Here he kept a retinue of Kaffirs, who were literally his slaves; and hence he would sally, with enormous diamonds in his shirt and on his finger, in the convoy of a prize-fighter of heinous repute, who was not, however, by any means the worst element in the Rosenthall melange. So said common gossip; but the fact was sufficiently established by the interference of the police on at least one occasion, followed by certain magisterial proceedings which were reported with justifiable gusto and huge headlines in the newspapers aforesaid.

  And this was all one knew of Reuben Rosenthall up to the time when the Old Bohemian Club, having fallen on evil days, found it worth its while to organize a great dinner in honor of so wealthy an exponent of the club’s principles. I was not at the banquet myself, but a member took Raffles, who told me all about it that very night.

  “Most extraordinary show I ever went to in my life,” said he. “As for the man himself—well, I was prepared for something grotesque, but the fellow fairly took my breath away. To begin with, he’s the most astounding brute to look at, well over six feet, with a chest like a barrel, and a great hook-nose, and the reddest hair and whiskers you ever saw. Drank like a fire-engine, but only got drunk enough to make us a speech that I wouldn’t have missed for ten pounds. I’m only sorry you weren’t there, too, Bunny, old chap.”

  I began to be sorry myself, for Raffles was anything but an excitable person, and never had I seen him so excited before. Had he been following Rosenthall’s example? His coming to my rooms at midnight, merely to tell me about his dinner, was in itself enough to excuse a suspicion which was certainly at variance with my knowledge of A. J. Raffles.

  “What did he say?” I inquired mechanically, divining some subtler explanation of this visit, and wondering what on earth it could be.

  “Say?” cried Raffles. “What did he not say! He boasted of his rise, he bragged of his riches, and he blackguarded society for taking him up for his money and dropping him out of sheer pique and jealousy because he had so much. He mentioned names, too, with the most charming freedom, and swore he was as good a man as the Old Country had to show—pace the Old Bohemians. To prove it he pointed to a great diamond in the middle of his shirt-front with a little finger loaded with another just like it: which of our bloated princes could show a pair like that? As a matter of fact, they seemed quite wonderful stones, with a curious purple gleam to them that must mean a pot of money. But old Rosenthall swore he wouldn’t take fifty thousand pounds for the two, and wanted to know where the other man was who went about with twenty-five thousand in his shirt-front and another twenty-five on his little finger. He didn’t exist. If he did, he wouldn’t have the pluck to wear them. But he had—he’d tell us why. And before you could say Jack Robinson he had whipped out a whacking great revolver!”

  “Not at the table?”

  “At the table! In the middle of his speech! But it was nothing to what he wanted to do. He actually wante
d us to let him write his name in bullets on the opposite wall, to show us why he wasn’t afraid to go about in all his diamonds! That brute Purvis, the prize-fighter, who is his paid bully, had to bully his master before he could be persuaded out of it. There was quite a panic for the moment; one fellow was saying his prayers under the table, and the waiters bolted to a man.”

  “What a grotesque scene!”

  “Grotesque enough, but I rather wish they had let him go the whole hog and blaze away. He was as keen as knives to show us how he could take care of his purple diamonds; and, do you know, Bunny, I was as keen as knives to see.”

  And Raffles leaned towards me with a sly, slow smile that made the hidden meaning of his visit only too plain to me at last.

  “So you think of having a try for his diamonds yourself?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “It is horribly obvious, I admit. But—yes, I have set my heart upon them! To be quite frank, I have had them on my conscience for some time; one couldn’t hear so much of the man, and his prize-fighter, and his diamonds, without feeling it a kind of duty to have a go for them; but when it comes to brandishing a revolver and practically challenging the world, the thing becomes inevitable. It is simply thrust upon one. I was fated to hear that challenge, Bunny, and I, for one, must take it up. I was only sorry I couldn’t get on my hind legs and say so then and there.”

  “Well,” I said, “I don’t see the necessity as things are with us; but, of course, I’m your man.”

  My tone may have been half-hearted. I did my best to make it otherwise. But it was barely a month since our Bond Street exploit, and we certainly could have afforded to behave ourselves for some time to come. We had been getting along so nicely: by his advice I had scribbled a thing or two; inspired by Raffles, I had even done an article on our own jewel robbery; and for the moment I was quite satisfied with this sort of adventure. I thought we ought to know when we were well off, and could see no point in our running fresh risks before we were obliged. On the other hand, I was anxious not to show the least disposition to break the pledge that I had given a month ago. But it was not on my manifest disinclination that Raffles fastened.