Raffles: The Amateur Cracksman | Page 4

that he was in
the habit of parading the town at night in loud checks and a false beard.
It was whispered, and disbelieved. I alone knew it for a fact; for night
after night had I pulled the rope up after him when the rest of the
dormitory were asleep, and kept awake by the hour to let it down again
on a given signal. Well, one night he was over-bold, and within an ace
of ignominious expulsion in the hey-day of his fame. Consummate
daring and extraordinary nerve on his part, aided, doubtless, by some
little presence of mind on mine, averted the untoward result; and no
more need be said of a discreditable incident. But I cannot pretend to
have forgotten it in throwing myself on this man's mercy in my
desperation. And I was wondering how much of his leniency was
owing to the fact that Raffles had not forgotten it either, when he
stopped and stood over my chair once more.
"I've been thinking of that night we had the narrow squeak," he began.
"Why do you start?"
"I was thinking of it too."
He smiled, as though he had read my thoughts.
"Well, you were the right sort of little beggar then, Bunny; you didn't
talk and you didn't flinch. You asked no questions and you told no tales.
I wonder if you're like that now?"
"I don't know," said I, slightly puzzled by his tone. "I've made such a
mess of my own affairs that I trust myself about as little as I'm likely to
be trusted by anybody else. Yet I never in my life went back on a friend.

I will say that, otherwise perhaps I mightn't be in such a hole to-night."
"Exactly," said Raffles, nodding to himself, as though in assent to some
hidden train of thought; "exactly what I remember of you, and I'll bet
it's as true now as it was ten years ago. We don't alter, Bunny. We only
develop. I suppose neither you nor I are really altered since you used to
let down that rope and I used to come up it hand over hand. You would
stick at nothing for a pal--what?"
"At nothing in this world," I was pleased to cry.
"Not even at a crime?" said Raffles, smiling.
I stopped to think, for his tone had changed, and I felt sure he was
chaffing me. Yet his eye seemed as much in earnest as ever, and for my
part I was in no mood for reservations.
"No, not even at that," I declared; "name your crime, and I'm your
man."
He looked at me one moment in wonder, and another moment in doubt;
then turned the matter off with a shake of his head, and the little cynical
laugh that was all his own.
"You're a nice chap, Bunny! A real desperate character--what? Suicide
one moment, and any crime I like the next! What you want is a drag,
my boy, and you did well to come to a decent law-abiding citizen with
a reputation to lose. None the less we must have that money
to-night--by hook or crook."
"To-night, Raffles?"
"The sooner the better. Every hour after ten o'clock to-morrow morning
is an hour of risk. Let one of those checks get round to your own bank,
and you and it are dishonored together. No, we must raise the wind
to-night and re-open your account first thing to-morrow. And I rather
think I know where the wind can be raised."

"At two o'clock in the morning?"
"Yes."
"But how--but where--at such an hour?"
"From a friend of mine here in Bond Street."
"He must be a very intimate friend!"
"Intimate's not the word. I have the run of his place and a latch-key all
to myself."
"You would knock him up at this hour of the night?"
"If he's in bed."
"And it's essential that I should go in with you?"
"Absolutely."
"Then I must; but I'm bound to say I don't like the idea, Raffles."
"Do you prefer the alternative?" asked my companion, with a sneer.
"No, hang it, that's unfair!" he cried apologetically in the same breath.
"I quite understand. It's a beastly ordeal. But it would never do for you
to stay outside. I tell you what, you shall have a peg before we
start--just one. There's the whiskey, here's a syphon, and I'll be putting
on an overcoat while you help yourself."
Well, I daresay I did so with some freedom, for this plan of his was not
the less distasteful to me from its apparent inevitability. I must own,
however, that it possessed fewer terrors before my glass was empty.
Meanwhile Raffles rejoined me, with a covert coat over his blazer, and
a soft felt hat set