banisters, and before she could think again she had restored the weapon to my wildly clutching hand!
'But when you fired I felt a murderess,' she said. 'So you see I misjudged you for the second time.'
If I am conveying a dash of flippancy in our talk, let me earnestly declare that it was hardly even a dash. It was but a wry and rueful humour on the girl's part, and that only towards the end, but I can promise my worst critic that I was never less facetious in my life. I was thinking in my heavy way that I had never looked into such eyes as these, so bold, so sad, so merry with it all! I was thinking that I had never listened to such a voice, or come across recklessness and sentiment so harmonised, save also in her eyes! I was thinking that there never was a girl to touch Camilla Belsize, or a man either except A. J. Raffles! And yet—
And yet it was over Raffles that she took all the wind from my sails, exactly as she had done at Lord's, only now she did it at parting, and sent me off into the dusk a slightly puzzled and exceedingly exasperated man.
'Of course,' said Camilla at her garden gate, 'of course you won't repeat a word of what I've told you, Mr. Manders?'
'You mean about your adventures last night and to-day?' said I, somewhat taken aback.
'I mean every single thing we've talked about!' was her sweeping reply. 'Not a syllable must go an inch further; otherwise I shall be very sorry I ever spoke to you.'
As though she had come and confided in me of her own accord! But I passed that, even if I noticed it at the time.
'I won't tell a soul, of course,' I said, and fidgeted. 'That is—except—I suppose you don't mind—'
'I do! There must be no exceptions.'
'Not even old Raffles?'
'Mr. Raffles least of all!' cried Camilla Belsize, with almost a forked flash from those masterful eyes. 'Mr. Raffles is the last person in the world who must ever know a single thing.'
'Not even that it was you who absolutely saved the situation for him and me?' I asked, wistfully; for I much wanted these two to think better of each other; and it had begun to look as though I had my wish, so far as Camilla was concerned, while I had only to tell Raffles everything to make him her slave for life. But now she was adamant on the point, adamant heated in some hidden flame.
'It's rather hard lines on me, Mr. Manders, if because I go and get excited, and twist off a button in my excitement, as I suppose I must have done—unless it's a judgment on me—it's rather hard lines if you give me away when I never should have given myself away to you!'
This was unkind. It was still more unfair in view of the former passage between us to the same tune. I was evidently getting no credit for my very irksome fidelity. I helped myself to some at once.
'You gave yourself away to me at Lord's all right,' said I, cheerfully. 'And I never let out a word of that.'
'Not even to Mr. Raffles?' she asked, with a quick unguarded intonation that was almost wistful.
'Not a word,' was my reply. 'Raffles has no idea you noticed anything, much less how keen you were for me to warn him.'
Miss Belsize looked at me a moment with civil war in her splendid eyes. Then something won—I think it was only her pride—and she was holding out her hand.
'He must never know a word of this either,' said she, firmly as at first. 'And I hope you'll forgive me for not trusting you quite as I always shall for the future.'
'I'll forgive you everything, Miss Belsize, except your dislike of dear old Raffles!'
I had spoken quite earnestly, keeping her hand; she drew it away as I made my point.
'I don't dislike him,' she answered in a strange tone; but with a stranger stress she added, 'I don't
And even then I could not see what the verb should have been, or why Miss Belsize should turn away so quickly in the end, and snatch her eyes away quicker still.
I saw them, and thought of her, all the way back to the station, but not an inch further. So I need no sympathy on that score. If I did, it would have been just the same that July evening, for I saw somebody else and had something else to think about from the moment I set foot upon the platform. It was the wrong platform. I was about to cross by the bridge when a down train came rattling in, and out jumped a man I knew by sight before it stopped.
The man was Mackenzie, the incorrigibly Scotch detective whom we had met at Milchester Abbey, who I always thought had kept an eye on Raffles ever since. He was across the platform before the train pulled up, and I did what Raffles would have done in my place. I ran after him.
'Ye ken Dan Levy's hoose by the river?' I heard him babble to his cabman, with wilful breadth of speech. 'Then drive there, mon, like the deevil himsel'!'
CHAPTER XVIII
The Death of a Sinner
What was I to do? I knew what Raffles would have done; he would have outstripped Mackenzie in his descent upon the moneylender, beaten the cab on foot most probably, and dared Dan Levy to denounce him to the detective. I could see a delicious situation, and Raffles conducting it inimitably to a triumphant issue. But I was not Raffles, and what was more I was due already at his chambers in the Albany. I must have been talking to Miss Belsize by the hour together; to my horror I found it close upon seven by the station clock; and it was some minutes past when I plunged into the first up train. Waterloo was reached before eight, but I was a good hour late at the Albany, and Raffles let me know it in his shirt-sleeves from the window.
'I thought you were dead, Bunny!' he muttered down as though he wished I were. I scaled his staircase at two or three bounds, and began all about Mackenzie in the lobby.
'So soon!' says Raffles, with a mere lift of the eyebrows. 'Well, thank God, I was ready for him again.'
I now saw that Raffles was not dressing, though he had changed his clothes, and this surprised me for all my breathless preoccupation. But I had the reason at a glance through the folding-doors into his bedroom. The bed was cumbered with clothes and an open suit-case. A Gladstone bag stood strapped and bulging; a travelling rug lay ready for rolling up, and Raffles himself looked out of training in his travelling tweeds.
'Going away?' I ejaculated.
'Rather!' said he, folding a smoking jacket. 'Isn't it about time after what you've told me?'
'But you were packing before you knew!'
'Then for God's sake go and do the same yourself!' he cried, 'and don't ask questions now. I was beginning to pack enough for us both, but you'll have time to shove in a shirt and collar of your own if you jump straight into a hansom. I'll take the tickets, and we'll meet on the platform at five to nine.'
'What platform, Raffles?'
'Charing Cross. Continental train.'
'But where the deuce do you think of going?'
'Australia, if you like! We'll discuss it in our flight across Europe.'
'Our flight!' I repeated. 'What has happened since I left you, Raffles?'
'Look here, Bunny, you go and pack!' was all my answer from a savage face, as I was fairly driven to the door. 'Do you realise that you were due here one golden hour ago, and have I asked what happened to you? Then don't you ask rotten questions that there's no time to answer. I'll tell you everything in the train, Bunny.'
And my name at the end in a different voice, and his hand for an instant on my shoulder as I passed out, were my only consolation for his truly terrifying behaviour, my only comfort and reassurance of any kind, until we really were off by the night mail from Charing Cross.
Raffles was himself again by that time, I was thankful to find, nor did he betray that dread or expectation of pursuit which would have tallied with his previous manner. He merely looked relieved when the Embankment lights ran right and left in our wake. I remember one of his remarks, that they made the finest necklace in the world when all was said, and another that Big Ben was the Koh-i-noor of the London lights. But he had also a quizzical eye upon the paper bag from which I was endeavouring to make a meal at last. And more than once he wagged his head with a humorous admixture of reproof and sympathy; for with shamefaced admissions and downcast pauses I was allowing him to suppose I had been drinking at some riverside public-house instead of hurrying up to town, but that
