A Thief in the Night: Further adventures of A. J. Raffles, Cricketer and Cracksman. E. W. Hornung

Читать онлайн книгу.

A Thief in the Night: Further adventures of A. J. Raffles, Cricketer and Cracksman - E. W. Hornung


Скачать книгу
tion>

       E. W. Hornung

      A Thief in the Night: Further adventures of A. J. Raffles, Cricketer and Cracksman

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664610218

       ILLUSTRATIONS

       A Thief in the Night

       Out of Paradise

       The Chest of Silver

       The Rest Cure

       The Criminologists' Club

       The Field of Philippi

       A Bad Night

       A Trap to Catch a Cracksman

       The Spoils of Sacrilege

       The Raffles Relics

       The Last Word

       THE END

       Table of Contents

I think she must have seen us, even in the dim light Frontispiece
Facing Page
Raffles in the strong-room 54
It was the fire-eating and prison-inspecting colonel himself. He was ready for me, a revolver in his hand 76
Raffles was as excited as any of us now; he outstripped us all 106
He kept us laughing in his study until the chapel bells rang him out 152
The ragged trousers stripped from an evening pair 176
Down went the trap-door with a bang 232
No one can make out what this little thick velvet bag's for 260

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      f I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but go back to our earliest days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles was a villain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to gloze the fact; yet I have done so myself before to-day. I have omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side. And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant glamour that made my villain more to me than any hero. But at least there shall be no more reservations, and as an earnest I shall make no further secret of the greatest wrong that even Raffles ever did me.

      I pick my words with care and pain, loyal as I still would be to my friend, and yet remembering as I must those Ides of March when he led me blindfold into temptation and crime. That was an ugly office, if you will. It was a moral bagatelle to the treacherous trick he was to play me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other hand, was to prove the less serious of the two against society, and might in itself have been published to the world years ago. There have been private reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only too intimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other was involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name shall not even now be sullied by association with ours.

      Suffice it that I had been engaged to her before that mad March deed. True, her people called it "an understanding," and frowned even upon that, as well they might. But their authority was not direct; we bowed to it as an act of politic grace; between us, all was well but my unworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess that this was how the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses at baccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in my need. Even after that I saw her sometimes. But I let her guess that there was more upon my soul than she must ever share, and at last I had written to end it all. I remember that week so well! It was the close of such a May as we had never had since, and I was too miserable even to follow the heavy scoring in the papers. Raffles was the only man who could get a wicket up at Lord's, and I never once went to see him play. Against Yorkshire, however, he helped himself to a hundred runs as well; and that brought Raffles round to me, on his way home to the Albany.

      "We must dine and celebrate the rare event," said he. "A century takes it out of one at my time of life; and you, Bunny, you look quite as much in need of your end of a worthy bottle. Suppose we make it the Café Royal, and eight sharp? I'll be there first to fix up the table and the wine."

      And at the Café Royal I incontinently told him of the trouble I was in. It was the first he had ever heard of my affair, and I told him all, though not before our bottle had been succeeded by a pint of the same exemplary brand. Raffles heard me out with grave


Скачать книгу