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"That," replied Raffles, "is neither to go with me nor to remain here." "Then what do you propose to do with it?" "You have your banking account, and your banker," he went on. This was perfectly true, though it was Raffles alone who had kept the one open, and enabled me to propitiate the other in moments of emergency. "Well?"
"I'll do anything in this world for you, Raffles," I said, "if you really mean that you won't give me away. Think of anything you like, and I'll do it! I was a desperate man when I came here, and I'm just as desperate now. I don't mind what I do if only I can get out of this without a scandal." Again I see him, leaning back in one of the luxurious chairs with which his room was furnished.
The technical slang of the modern cricket-field is ever a weariness; at the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into Garland's gloves like a round-shot.
Edward Garland." "I thought you came to borrow money!" interposed Raffles with much indignation. The moneylender was watching me with bright eyes and lips I could no longer see. "I never said so," I rapped out at Raffles; and I thought I saw approval and encouragement behind his stare like truth at the bottom of the well.
But I had Raffles with me, and his hand was as steady and as cool as the hand of a trained nurse. That I know because he turned up the collar of my overcoat for me, for some reason, and buttoned it at the throat. I afterwards found that he had done the same to his own, but I did not hear him doing it.
"Then," said Raffles, "it was the kind of fluke I always trusted you to make when runs were wanted." And he held out his dear old hand. "The worst of this war," said Raffles, "is the way it puts a fellow off his work." It was, of course, the winter before last, and we had done nothing dreadful since the early autumn. Undoubtedly the war was the cause.
We were both a little silent, a little constrained, each preoccupied with his own thoughts. It was months since we had met, and, as I saw him off towards eleven o'clock that Sunday night, I fancied it was for more months that we were saying good-by. But as we waited for the train I saw those clear eyes peering at me under the station lamps, and when I met their glance Raffles shook his head.
"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?" "And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will still be too late for him to play." "Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his chair with a groan. "But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way."
Captain Barker had not long before been removed from Port Raffles, on the northern coast, where he had had much intercourse with the natives, and had frequently trusted himself wholly in their hands.
I had not seen Raffles for a month or more, and I was sadly in need of his advice. My life was being made a burden to me by a wretch who had obtained a bill of sale over the furniture in Mount Street, and it was only by living elsewhere that I could keep the vulpine villain from my door. This cost ready money, and my balance at the bank was sorely in need of another lift from Raffles.