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One of them had crept up on my side also; as I looked, hearing him pant, he was grabbing at my left handle, and I nearly sent Raffles into the hedge by the sharp turn I took to the right. His wheel's length saved him.
"God bless you for that, after this!" the other choked, in terrible disorder now. "It was pretty obvious," said Raffles reassuringly. "Was it? Are you sure? You do remember offering me a cheque last month, and my refusing it?" "Why, of course I do!" cried Raffles, with such spontaneous heartiness that I could see he had never thought of it since mentioning the matter to me at our meal.
But I did stay a matter of ten years; it didn't suit me to stay any longer. And I'm not going again, Nick." Here Mr. Raffles winked slowly as he looked at Mr. Bulstrode. "Do you wish to be settled in any business? What is your calling now?" "Thank you, my calling is to enjoy myself as much as I can. I don't care about working any more.
In the end I had a signal in my turn, and retraced my steps with lighted matches, down the broad stairs, down the narrow ones, across the area, and up into the lobby where Raffles awaited me with an outstretched hand. "Well done, my boy!" said he. "You're the same good man in a pinch, and you shall have your reward. I've got a thousand pounds' worth if I've got a penn'oth. It's all in my pockets.
We all three put our heads together over them, myself without the slightest clew as to what was coming, but not unprepared for violent crime. One does not do eighteen months for nothing. "Right away," Raffles was saying. "We'll choose for her, and you'll change anything she don't like. Is that the idea?" "That was my suggestion, sir." "Then come on, Ezra. I guess you know Sadie's taste.
I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly that she had.
The youth was looking full at Raffles, with the watery eyes of unsuspecting innocence. I itched to emulate the fine bravado of my friend. "You said he had a pal," I observed, sinking deeper into the collar of my coat. "Haven't you got a photograph of him?" The pale clerk gave such a sickly smile, I could have smacked some blood into his pasty face. "You mean Bunny?" said the familiar fellow.
"But how should we know you'd hold up your end of the string, and mail us the same articles we've selected to-night?" The visitor stiffened in his chair. The name of his firm should be sufficient guarantee for that. "I guess I'm no better acquainted with their name than they are with mine," remarked Raffles, laughing. "See here, though! I got a scheme. You pack 'em in this!"
And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering Levy at all.
Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the nature of a retrospect to reverse the order of things, and it was the new risk run by Raffles that now loomed largest in my mind, and Levy's last word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me.
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