The young clerk twisted his head round in its vase of starch.
'Chawley Peace killed two policemen,' said he.
'No, he didn't; only one of them was a policeman; and he never killed anybody with a knife.'
The clerk took the correction like a lamb. I could not have refrained from making it, to save my skin. But Raffles rewarded me with as vicious a little kick as he could administer unobserved. 'Who was Charles Peace?' he inquired, with the bland effrontery of any judge upon the bench.
The clerk's reply came pat and unexpected. 'The greatest burgular we ever had,' said he, 'till good old Raffles knocked him out!' 'The greatest of the pre-Raffleites,' the master murmured, as we passed on to the safer memorials of mere murder. There were misshapen bullets and stained knives that had taken human life; there were lithe, lean ropes which had retaliated after the live letter of the Mosaic law. There was one bristling broadside of revolvers under the longest shelf of closed eyes and swollen throats. There were festoons of rope-ladders - none so ingenious as ours - and then at last there was something that the clerk knew all. about. It was a small tin cigarette-box, and the name upon the gaudy wrapper was not the name of Sullivan. Yet Raffles and I knew even more about this exhibit than the clerk.
'There, now,' said our guide, 'you'll never guess the history of that! I'll give you twenty guesses, and the twentieth will be no nearer than the first'
'I'm sure of it, my good fellow,' rejoined Raffles, a discreet twinkle in his eye. 'Tell us about it, to save time.'
And he opened, as he spoke, his own old twenty-five tin of purely popular cigarettes; there were a few in it still, but between the cigarettes were jammed lumps of sugar wadded with cotton-wool. I saw Raffles weighing the lot in his hand with subtle satisfaction. But the clerk saw merely the mystification which he desired to create.
'I thought that'd beat you, sir,' said he. 'It was an American dodge. Two smart Yankees got a jeweller to take a lot of stuff to a private room at Keliner's, where they were dining, for them to choose from. When it came to paying, there was some bother about a remittance; but they soon made that all. right, for they were far too clever to suggest taking away what they'd chosen but couldn't pay for. No, all. they wanted was that what they'd chosen might be locked up in the safe and considered theirs until their money came for them to pay for it. All. they asked was to seal the stuff up in something; the jeweller was to take it away and not meddle with it, nor yet break the seals, for a week or two. It seemed a fair enough thing, now, didn't it, sir?'
'Eminently fair,' said Raffles sententiously.
'So the jeweller thought,' crowed the clerk. 'You see, it wasn't as if the Yanks had chosen out the half of what he'd brought on appro.; they'd gone slow on purpose, and they'd paid for all. they could on the nail, just for a blind. Well, I suppose you can guess what happened in the end? The jeweller never heard of those Americans again; and these few cigarettes and lumps of sugar were all. he found.'
'Duplicate boxes? I cried, perhaps a thought too promptly.
'Duplicate boxes!' murmured Raffles, as profoundly impressed as a second Mr. Pickwick.
'Duplicate boxes!' echoed the triumphant clerk. 'Artful beggars, these Americans, sir! You've got to crawss the 'Erring Pond to learn a trick worth one o' that?'
'I suppose so,' assented the grave gentleman wit the silver hair. 'Unless,' he added, as if suddenly inspired, 'unless it was that man Raffles.'
'It couldn't 've bin,' jerked the clerk from his conning-tower of a collar. 'He'd gone to Davy Jones long before.'
'Are you sure?' asked Raffles. 'Was his body ever found?'
'Found and buried,' replied our imaginative friend. 'Malter, I think it was; or it may have been Giberaltar. I forget which.'
'Besides,' I put in, rather annoyed at all. this wilful work, yet not indisposed to make a late contribution - 'besides, Raffles would never have smoked those cigarettes. There was only one brand for him. It was - let me see - '
'Sullivans? cried the clerk, right for once. 'It's all. a matter of 'abit,' he went on, as he replaced the twenty- five tin box with the vulgar wrapper. 'I tried them once, and I didn't like 'em myself. It's all. a question of taste. Now, if you want a good smoke, and cheaper, give me a Golden Gem at quarter of the price.'
'What we really do want,' remarked Raffles mildly, 'is to see something else as clever as that last.'
'Then come this way,' said the clerk, and led us into a recess almost monopolized by the iron-clamped chest of thrilling memory, now a mere platform for the collection of mysterious objects under a dust-sheet on the lid. 'These,' he continued, unveiling them with an air, are the Raffles Relics, taken from his rooms in the Albany after his death and burial, and the most complete set we've got. That's his centre-bit, and this is the bottle of rock-oil he's supposed to have kept dipping it in to prevent making a noise. Here's the revawlver he used when he shot at a gentleman on the roof down Horsham way; it was afterward taken from him on the P. & 0. boat before he jumped overboard.'
I could not help saying I understood that Raffles had never shot at anybody. I was standing with my back to the nearest window, my hat jammed over my brows and my overcoat collar up to my ears.
'That's the only time we know about,' the clerk admitted; 'and it couldn't be brought 'ome, or his precious pal would have got more than he did. This empty cawtridge is the one he 'id the Emperor's pearl in, on the Peninsular and Orient. These gimlets and wedges were what he used for fixin' doors. This is his rope-ladder, with the telescope walking-stick he used to hook it up with; he's said to have 'ad it with him the night he dined with the Earl of Thornaby, and robbed the house before dinner. That's his life-preserver; but no one can make out what this little thick velvet bag's for, with the two holes and the elawstic round each. Perhaps you can give a guess, sir?'
Raffles had taken up the bag that he had invented for the noiseless filing of keys. Now he handled it as though it were a tobacco-pouch, putting in finger and thumb, and shrugging over the puzzle with a delicious face; nevertheless, he showed me a few grains of steel filing as the result of his investigations, and murmured in my ear, 'These sweet police! I, for my part, could not but examine the life-preserver with which I had once smitten Raffles himself to the ground: actually, there was his blood upon it still; and seeing my horror, the clerk plunged into a characteristically garbled version of that incident also. It happened to have come to light among others at the Old Bailey, and perhaps had its share in promoting the quality of mercy which had undoubtedly been exercised on my behalf. But the present recital was unduly trying, and Raffles created a noble diversion by calling attention to an early photograph of himself, which may still hang on the wall over the historic chest, but which I had carefully ignored. It shows him in flannels, after some great feat upon the tented field. I am afraid there is a Sullivan between his lips, a look of lazy insolence in the half-shut eyes. I have since possessed myself of a copy, and it is not Raffles at his best; but the features are clean-cut and regular; and I often wish that I had lent it to the artistic gentlemen who have battered the statue out of all. likeness to the man.
'You wouldn't think it of him, would you?' quoth the clerk. 'It makes you understand how no one ever did think it of him at the time.'
The youth was looking full at Raffles, with the watery eyes of unsuspecting innocence. I itched to emulate the fine bravado of my friend.
'You said he had a pal,' I observed, sinking deeper into the collar of my coat. 'Haven't you got a photograph of him?'
The pale clerk gave such a sickly smile, I could have smacked some blood into his pasty face.
'You mean Bunny?' said the familiar fellow. 'No, sir, he'd be out of place; we've only room for real criminals here. Bunny was neither one thing nor the other. He could follow Raffles, but that's all. he could do. He was no good on his own. Even when he put up the low-down job of robbing his old 'ome, it's believed he hadn't the 'eart to take the stuff away, and Raffles had to break in a second time for it. No, sir, we don't bother our heads about Bunny; we shall never hear no more of 'im. He was a harmless sort of rotter, if you awsk me.'
I had not asked him, and I was almost foaming under the respirator that I was making of my overcoat collar. I only hoped that Raffles would say something, and he did.
'The only case I remember anything about,' he remarked, tapping the clamped chest with his umbrella, 'was this; and that time, at all. events, the man outside must have had quite as much to do as the one inside. May I ask what you keep in it?'
'Nothing, sir.
'I imagined more relics inside. Hadn't he some dodge of getting in and out without opening the lid?'
