moment I have news of any kind.'
With that they shook hands, our host with an obvious reluctance that turned to a less understandable dismay as I also prepared to take my leave of him.
'What!' cried he, 'am I to be left quite alone to hoodwink that poor girl and hide my own anxiety?'
'There's no reason why you should come, Bunny,' said Raffles to me. 'If either of them is a one-man job, it's mine.'
Our host said no more, but he looked at me so wistfully that I could not but offer to stay with him if he wished it; and when at length the drawing-room door had closed upon him and his son's
'I'm sorry, Bunny,' he muttered between the butler in the porch and the coachman on the box. 'This sort of thing is neither in my line nor yours, but it serves us right for straying from the path of candid crime. We should have opened a safe for that seven hundred.'
'But what do you really think is at the bottom of this extraordinary disappearance?'
'Some madness or other, I'm afraid; but if that boy is still in the land of the living, I shall have him before the sun goes down on his insanity.'
'And what about this engagement of his?' I pursued. 'Do you disapprove of it?'
'Why on earth should I?' asked Raffles, rather sharply, as he plunged from under my umbrella into the brougham.
'Because you never told me when he told you,' I replied. 'Is the girl beneath him?'
Raffles looked at me inscrutably with his clear blue eyes.
'You'd better find out for yourself,' said he. 'Tell the coachman to hurry up to Lord's—and pray that this rain may last!'
CHAPTER VI
Camilla Belsize
It would be hard to find a better refuge on a rainy day than the amphibious retreat described by Raffles as a 'country house in Kensington.' There was a good square hall, full of the club comforts so welcome in a home, such as magazines and cigarettes, and a fire when the rain set in. The usual rooms opened off the hall, and the library was not the only one that led on into the conservatory; the drawing-room was another, in which I heard voices as I lit a cigarette among the palms and tree-ferns. It struck me that poor Mr. Garland was finding it hard work to propitiate the lady whom Raffles had deemed unworthy of mention overnight. But I own I was in no hurry to take over the invidious task. To me it need prove nothing more; to him, anguish; but I could not help feeling that even as matters stood I was quite sufficiently embroiled in these people's affairs. Their name had been little more than a name to me until the last few hours. Only yesterday I might have hesitated to nod to Teddy Garland at the club, so seldom had we met. Yet here was I helping Raffles to keep the worst about the son from the father's knowledge, and on the point of helping that father to keep what might easily prove worse still from his daughter-in-law to be. And all the time there was the worst of all to be hidden from everybody concerning Raffles and me!
Meanwhile I explored a system of flower-houses and vineries that ran out from the conservatory in a continuous chain—each link with its own temperature and its individual scent—and not a pane but rattled and streamed beneath the timely torrent. It was in a fernery where a playing fountain added its tuneful drop to the noisy deluge that the voices of the drawing-room sounded suddenly at my elbow, and I was introduced to Miss Belsize before I could recover from my surprise. My foolish face must have made her smile in spite of herself, for I did not see quite the same smile again all day; but it made me her admirer on the spot, and I really think she warmed to me for amusing her even for a moment.
So we began rather well; and that was a mercy in the light of poor Mr. Garland's cynically prompt departure; but we did not go on quite as well as we had begun. I do not say that Miss Belsize was in a bad temper, but emphatically she was not pleased, and I for one had the utmost sympathy with her displeasure. She was simply but exquisitely dressed, with unostentatious touches of Cambridge blue and a picture hat that really was a picture. Yet on a perfect stranger in a humid rockery she was wasting what had been meant for mankind at Lord's. The only consolation I could suggest was that by this time Lord's would be more humid still.
'And so there's something to be said for being bored to tears under shelter, Miss Belsize.' Miss Belsize did not deny that she was bored.
'But there's plenty of shelter there,' said she.
'Packed with draggled dresses and squelching shoes! You might swim for it before they admitted you to that Pavilion, you know.'
'But if the ground's under water, how can they play to-day?'
'They can't, Miss Belsize, I don't mind betting.'
That was a rash remark.
'Then why doesn't Teddy come back?'
'Oh, well, you know,' I hedged, 'you can never be quite absolutely sure. It might clear up. They're bound to give it a chance until the afternoon. And the players can't leave till stumps are drawn.'
'I should have thought Teddy could have come home to lunch,' said Miss Belsize, 'even if he had to go back afterwards.'
'I shouldn't wonder if he did come,' said I, conceiving the bare possibility: 'and A.J. with him.'
'Do you mean Mr. Raffles?'
'Yes, Miss Belsize; he's the only A.J. that counts!'
Camilla Belsize turned slightly in the basket-chair to which she had confided her delicate frock, and our eyes met almost for the first time. Certainly we had not exchanged so long a look before, for she had been watching the torpid goldfish in the rockery pool, and I admiring her bold profile and the querulous poise of a fine head as I tried to argue her out of all desire for Lord's. Suddenly our eyes met, as I say, and hers dazzled me; they were soft and yet brilliant, tender and yet cynical, calmly reckless, audaciously sentimental—all that and more as I see them now on looking back; but at the time I was merely dazzled.
'So you and Mr. Raffles are great friends?' said Miss Belsize, harking back to a remark of Mr. Garland's in introducing us.
'Rather!' I replied.
'Are you as great a friend of his as Teddy is?'
I liked that, but simply said I was an older friend. 'Raffles and I were at school together,' I added loftily.
'Really? I should have thought he was before your time.'
'No, only senior to me. I happened to be his fag.'
'And what sort of a schoolboy was Mr. Raffles?' inquired Miss Belsize, not by any means in the tone of a devotee. But I reflected that her own devotion was bespoke, and not improbably tainted with some little jealousy of Raffles.
'He was the most Admirable Crichton who was ever at the school,' said I: 'captain of the eleven, the fastest man in the fifteen, athletic champion, and an ornament of the Upper Sixth.'
'And you worshipped him, I suppose?'
'Absolutely.'
My companion had been taking renewed interest in the goldfish; now she looked at me again with the cynical light full on in her eyes.
'You must be rather disappointed in him now!'
'Disappointed! Why?' I asked with much outward amusement. But I was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
'Of course I don't know much about him,' remarked Miss Belsize as though she cared less.
'But does anybody know anything of Mr. Raffles except as a cricketer?'
'I do,' said I, with injudicious alacrity.
'Well,' said Miss Belsize, 'what else is he?'
