Mr. Justice Raffles

I should have been sorrier to believe it, but I did not say so, or anything else just then. The dull and distant beat came back to the ear. And Levy again inquired if I knew what it was.

'Do you?' I demanded.

'Rather!' he replied, with cheerful certitude. 'It's the clock, of course.'

'What clock?'

'The one on the tower, a bit lower down, facing the road.'

'How do you know?' I demanded, with uneasy credulity.

'My good young man,' said Dan Levy, 'I know the face of that clock as well as I know the inside of this tower.'

'Then you do know where you are!' I cried, in such surprise that Levy grinned in a way that ill became a captive.

'Why,' said he, 'I sold the last tenant up, and nearly took the 'ouse myself instead o' the place I got. It was what first attracted me to the neighhour'ood.'

'Why couldn't you tell us the truth before?' I demanded, but my warmth merely broadened his grin.

'Why should I? It sometimes pays to seem more at a loss than you are.'

'It won't in this case,' said I through my teeth. But for all my austerity, and all his bonds, the prisoner continued to regard me with quiet but most disquieting amusement.

'I'm not so sure of that,' he observed at length. 'It rather paid, to my way of thinking, when Raffles went off to cash my cheque, and left you to keep an eye on me.'

'Oh, did it!' said I, with pregnant emphasis, and my right hand found comfort in my jacket pocket, on the butt of the old brute's own weapon.

'I only mean,' he rejoined, in a more conciliatory voice, 'that you strike me as being more open to reason than your flash friend.'

I said nothing to that.

'On the other 'and,' continued Levy, still more deliberately, as though he really was comparing us in his mind; 'on the other hand' stooping to pick up what he had dropped, 'you don't take so many risks. Raffles takes so many that he's bound to land you both in the jug some day, if he hasn't done it this time. I believe he has, myself. But it's no use hollering before you're out o' the wood.'

I agreed, with more confidence than I felt.

'Yet I wonder he never thought of it,' my prisoner went on as if to himself.

'Thought of what?'

'Only the clock. He must've seen it before, if you never did; you don't tell me this little bit o' kidnapping was a sudden idea! It's all been thought out and the ground gone over, and the clock seen, as I say. Seen going. Yet it never strikes our flash friend that a going clock's got to be wound up once a week, and it might be as well to find out which day!'

'How do you know he didn't?'

'Because this 'appens to be the day!'

And Levy lay back in the bunk with the internal chuckle that I was beginning to know so well, but had little thought to hear from him in his present predicament. It galled me the more because I felt that Raffles would certainly not have heard it in my place. But at least I had the satisfaction of flatly and profanely refusing to believe the prisoner's statement.

'That be blowed for a bluff!' was more or less what I said. 'It's too much of a coincidence to be anything else.'

'The odds are only six to one against it,' said Levy, indifferently. 'One of you takes them with his eyes open. It seems rather a pity that the other should feel bound to follow him to certain ruin. But I suppose you know your own business best.'

'At all events,' I boasted, 'I know better than to be bluffed by the most obvious lie I ever heard in my life. You tell me how you know about the man coming to wind the clock, and I may listen to you.'

'I know because I know the man; little Scotchman he is, nothing to run away from—though he looks as hard as nails—what there is of him,' said Levy, in a circumstantial and impartial flow that could not but carry some conviction. 'He comes over from Kingston every Tuesday on his bike; some time before lunch he comes, and sees to my own clocks on the same trip. That's how I know. But you needn't believe me if you don't like.'

'And where exactly does he come to wind this clock? I see nothing that can possibly have to do with it up here.'

'No,' said Levy; 'he comes no higher than the floor below.' I seemed to remember a kind of cupboard at the head of the spiral stair. 'But that's near enough.'

'You mean that we shall hear him?'

'And he us!' added Levy, with unmistakable determination.

'Look here, Mr. Levy,' said I, showing him his own revolver, 'if we do hear anybody, I shall hold this to your head, and if he does hear us I shall blow out your beastly brains!'

The mere feeling that I was, perhaps, the last person capable of any such deed enabled me to grind out this shocking threat in a voice worthy of it, and with a face, I hoped, not less in keeping. It was all the more mortifying when Dan Levy treated my tragedy as farce; in fact, if anything could have made me as bad as my word, it would have been the guttural laugh with which he greeted it.

'Excuse me,' said he, dabbing his red eyes with the edge of the red bunting, 'but the thought of your letting that thing off in order to preserve silence—why, it's as droll as your whole attempt to play the cold-blooded villain —you!'

'I shall play him to some purpose,' I hissed, 'if you drive me to it. I laid you out last night, remember, and for two pins I'll do the same thing again this morning. So now you know.'

'That wasn't in cold blood,' said Levy, rolling his head from side to side; 'that was when the lot of us were brawling in our cups. I don't count that. You're in a false position, my dear sir. I don't mean last night or this morning—though I can see that you're no brigand or blackmailer at bottom—and I shouldn't wonder if you never forgave Raffles for letting you in for this partic'lar part of this partic'lar job. But that isn't what I mean. You've got in with a villain, but you ain't one yourself; that's where you're in the false position. He's the magsman, you're only the swell. I can see that. But the judge won't. You'll both get served the same, and in your case it'll be a thousand shames!'

He had propped himself on one elbow, and was speaking eagerly, persuasively, with almost a fatherly solicitude; yet I felt that both his words and their effect on me were being weighed and measured with meticulous discretion. And I encouraged him with a countenance as deliberately rueful and depressed, to an end which had only occurred to me with the significance of his altered tone.

'I can't help it,' I muttered. 'I must go through with the whole thing now.'

'Why must you?' demanded Levy. 'You've been led into a job that's none of your business, on be'alf of folks who're no friends of yours, and the job's developed into a serious crime, and the crime's going to be found out before you're an hour older. Why go through with it to certain quod?'

'There's nothing else for it,' I answered, with a sulky resignation, though my pulse was quick with eagerness for what I felt was coming.

And then it came.

'Why not get out of the whole thing,' suggested Levy, boldly, 'before it's too late?'

'How can I?' said I, to lead him on with a more explicit proposition.

'By first releasing me, and then clearing out yourself!'

I looked at him as though this was certainly an idea, as though I were actually considering it in spite of myself and Raffles; and his eagerness fed upon my apparent indecision. He held up his fettered hands, begging and cajoling me to remove his handcuffs, and I, instead of telling him it was not in my power to do so until Raffles returned, pretended to hesitate on quite different grounds.

'It's all very well,' I said, 'but are you going to make it worth my while?'

'Certainly!' cried he. 'Give me my chequebook out of my own pocket, where you were good enough to stow it before that blackguard left, and I'll write you one cheque for a hundred now, and another for another hundred before I leave this tower.'

'You really will?' I temporised.