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And, with a little nod, Lord Amersteth rose and sidled to the gangway. Raffles rose also, but I caught the sleeve of his blazer. "What are you thinking of?" I whispered savagely. "I was nowhere near the eleven. I'm no sort of cricketer. I shall have to get out of this!" "Not you," he whispered back. "You needn't play, but come you must. If you wait for me after half-past six I'll tell you why."
"Then that's settled," said Lord Amersteth, with the slightest suspicion of grimness. "It's to be a little week, you know, when my son comes of age. We play the Free Foresters, the Dorsetshire Gentlemen, and probably some local lot as well. But Mr. Raffles will tell you all about it, and Crowley shall write. Another wicket! By Jove, they're all out! Then I rely on you both."
I remember how the gravel pricked my feet, how the wet grass numbed them as we made for the sound of voices on an outlying lawn. So dark was the night that we were in the cricketers' midst before we saw the shimmer of their pyjamas; and then Lord Amersteth almost trod on Mackenzie as he lay prostrate in the dew. "Who's this?" he cried. "What on earth's happened?"
Nor had any of them a stronger or more tender hand in the slow procession to the house. In a little we had the senseless man stretched on a sofa in the library. And there, with ice on his wound and brandy in his throat, his eyes opened and his lips moved. Lord Amersteth bent down to catch the words. "Yes, yes," said he; "we've got one of them safe and sound. The brute you collared upstairs."
"Not a real cricketer," I was stammering meanwhile. "In the eleven?" said Lord Amersteth. "I'm afraid not," said I. "But only just out of it," declared Raffles, to my horror. "Well, well, we can't all play for the Gentlemen," said Lord Amersteth slyly. "My son Crowley only just scraped into the eleven at Harrow, and HE'S going to play.
"Ou donc est l'ecrin de Madame la Marquise? La fenetre est ouverte. Il a disparu!" "Window open and jewel-case gone, by Jove!" exclaimed Lord Amersteth. "Mais comment est Madame la Marquise? Est elle bien?" "Oui, milor. Elle dort." "Sleeps through it all," said my lord. "She's the only one, then!" "What made Mackenzie Clephane bolt?" young Crowley asked me. "Said there were more of them below."
And he went leaping down the stairs, as other doors opened and Lord Amersteth and his son appeared simultaneously in their pyjamas. At that my man ceased struggling; but I was still holding him when Crowley turned up the gas. "What the devil's all this?" asked Lord Amersteth, blinking. "Who was that ran downstairs?" "Mac Clephane!" said I hastily. "Aha!" said he, turning to the footman.
Lord Amersteth bent lower. "By Jove! Lowered the jewel-case out of the window, did he? And they've got clean away with it! Well, well! I only hope we'll be able to pull this good fellow through. He's off again." An hour passed: the sun was rising.
Raffles was one of them, and I would gladly have been another, had not the footman chosen this moment to hurl me from him, and to make a dash in the direction from which they had come. Lord Amersteth had him in an instant; but the fellow fought desperately, and it took the two of us to drag him downstairs, amid a terrified chorus from half-open doors.
And I heard Lord Amersteth tell papa that they had been seen this afternoon at Warbeck Junction!" The very place where Raffles and I had been caught in the rain! Our stampede from the inn was now explained; on the other hand, I was no longer to be taken by surprise by anything that my companion might have to tell me; and I succeeded in looking her in the face with a smile.
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