Raffles | Page 7

hypochondriac of the first water; but that young man will go far if he
keeps on the wicket. He has spent half his nights up here, at guineas
apiece."
"Guineas must be plentiful, old chap!"
"They have been, Bunny. I can't say more. But I don't see why they
shouldn't be again."
I was not going to inquire where the guineas came from. As if I cared!
But I did ask old Raffles how in the world he had got upon my tracks;
and thereby drew the sort of smile with which old gentlemen rub their
hands, and old ladies nod their noses. Raffles merely produced a perfect
oval of blue smoke before replying.
"I was waiting for you to ask that, Bunny; it's a long time since I did
anything upon which I plume myself more. Of course, in the first place,
I spotted you at once by these prison articles; they were not signed, but
the fist was the fist of my sitting rabbit!"
"But who gave you my address?"
"I wheedled it out of your excellent editor; called on him at dead of
night, when I occasionally go afield like other ghosts, and wept it out of
him in five minutes. I was your only relative; your name was not your
own name; if he insisted I would give him mine. He didn't insist,
Bunny, and I danced down his stairs with your address in my pocket."
"Last night?"

"No, last week."
"And so the advertisement was yours, as well as the telegram!"
I had, of course, forgotten both in the high excitement of the hour, or I
should scarcely have announced my belated discovery with such an air.
As it was I made Raffles look at me as I had known him look before,
and the droop of his eyelids began to sting.
"Why all this subtlety?" I petulantly exclaimed. "Why couldn't you
come straight away to me in a cab?"
He did not inform me that I was hopeless as ever. He did not address
me as his good rabbit.
He was silent for a time, and then spoke in a tone which made me
ashamed of mine.
"You see, there are two or three of me now, Bunny: one's at the bottom
of the Mediterranean, and one's an old Australian desirous of dying in
the old country, but in no immediate danger of dying anywhere. The
old Australian doesn't know a soul in town; he's got to be consistent, or
he's done. This sitter Theobald is his only friend, and has seen rather
too much of him; ordinary dust won't do for his eyes. Begin to see? To
pick you out of a crowd, that was the game; to let old Theobald help to
pick you, better still! To start with, he was dead against my having
anybody at all; wanted me all to himself, naturally; but anything rather
than kill the goose! So he is to have a fiver a week while he keeps me
alive, and he's going to be married next month. That's a pity in some
ways, but a good thing in others; he will want more money than he
foresees, and he may always be of use to us at a pinch. Meanwhile he
eats out of my hand."
I complimented Raffles on the mere composition of his telegram, with
half the characteristics of my distinguished kinsman squeezed into a
dozen odd words; and let him know how the old ruffian had really
treated me. Raffles was not surprised; we had dined together at my
relative's in the old days, and filed for reference a professional

valuation of his household gods. I now learnt that the telegram had
been posted, with the hour marked for its despatch, at the pillar nearest
Vere Street, on the night before the advertisement was due to appear in
the Daily Mail. This also had been carefully prearranged; and Raffles's
only fear had been lest it might be held over despite his explicit
instructions, and so drive me to the doctor for an explanation of his
telegram. But the adverse chances had been weeded out and weeded
out to the irreducible minimum of risk.
His greatest risk, according to Raffles, lay nearest home: bedridden
invalid that he was supposed to be, his nightly terror was of running
into Theobald's arms in the immediate neighborhood of the flat. But
Raffles had characteristic methods of minimizing even that danger, of
which something anon; meanwhile he recounted more than one of his
nocturnal adventures, all, however, of a singularly innocent type; and
one thing I noticed while he talked. His room was the first as you
entered the flat. The long inner wall divided the room not merely from
the passage but from the outer landing as well. Thus