Raffles | Page 3

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RAFFLES
FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN
BY E. W. HORNUNG

RAFFLES
NO SINECURE

I
I am still uncertain which surprised me more, the telegram calling my
attention to the advertisement, or the advertisement itself. The telegram

is before me as I write. It would appear to have been handed in at Vere
Street at eight o'clock in the morning of May 11, 1897, and received
before half-past at Holloway B.O. And in that drab region it duly found
me, unwashen but at work before the day grew hot and my attic
insupportable.
"See Mr. Maturin's advertisement Daily Mail might suit you earnestly
beg try will speak if necessary ---- ----"
I transcribe the thing as I see it before me, all in one breath that took
away mine; but I leave out the initials at the end, which completed the
surprise. They stood very obviously for the knighted specialist whose
consulting-room is within a cab-whistle of Vere Street, and who once
called me kinsman for his sins. More recently he had called me other
names. I was a disgrace, qualified by an adjective which seemed to me
another. I had made my bed, and I could go and lie and die in it. If I
ever again had the insolence to show my nose in that house, I should go
out quicker than I came in. All this, and more, my least distant relative
could tell a poor devil to his face; could ring for his man, and give him
his brutal instructions on the spot; and then relent to the tune of this
telegram! I have no phrase for my amazement. I literally could not
believe my eyes. Yet their evidence was more and more conclusive: a
very epistle could not have been more characteristic of its sender.
Meanly elliptical, ludicrously precise, saving half-pence at the expense
of sense, yet paying like a man for "Mr." Maturin, that was my
distinguished relative from his bald patch to his corns. Nor was all the
rest unlike him, upon second thoughts. He had a reputation for charity;
he was going to live up to it after all. Either that, or it was the sudden
impulse of which the most calculating are capable at times; the
morning papers with the early cup of tea, this advertisement seen by
chance, and the rest upon the spur of a guilty conscience.
Well, I must see it for myself, and the sooner the better, though work
pressed. I was writing a series of articles upon prison life, and had my
nib into the whole System; a literary and philanthropical daily was
parading my "charges," the graver ones with the more gusto; and the
terms, if unhandsome for creative work, were temporary wealth to me.

It so happened that my first check had just arrived by the eight o'clock
post; and my position should be appreciated when I say that I had to
cash it to obtain a Daily Mail.
Of the advertisement itself, what is to be said? It should speak for itself
if I could find it, but I cannot, and only remember that it was a "male
nurse and constant attendant" that was "wanted for an elderly
gentleman in feeble health." A male nurse! An absurd tag was
appended, offering "liberal salary to University or public-school man";
and of a sudden I saw that I should get this thing if I applied for it.
What other "University or public-school man" would dream of doing so?
Was any other in such straits as I? And then my relenting relative; he
not only promised to speak for me, but was the very man to do so.
Could any recommendation compete with his in the matter of a male
nurse? And need the duties of such be necessarily loathsome and
repellent? Certainly the surroundings would be better than those of my
common lodging-house and own particular garret; and the food; and
every other condition of life that I could think of on my way back to
that unsavory asylum. So I dived into a pawnbroker's shop, where I was
a stranger only upon my present errand, and within the hour was airing
a decent if antiquated suit,