Mr. Justice Raffles

triumph and his treachery by throwing our winning cards upon the table and simultaneously exposing his false play. But Raffles was right, and I should have been wrong, as I was soon enough to see for myself.

'And you came away, I suppose,' suggested the money-lender, ironically, 'with my original letter in your pocket?'

'Oh, no, I didn't,' replied Raffles, with a reproving shake of the head.

'I thought not!' cried Levy in a gust of exultation.

'I came away,' said Raffles, 'if you'll pardon the correction, with the letter you never dreamt of writing, Mr. Levy!'

The Jew turned a deeper shade of yellow; but he had the wisdom and the self-control otherwise to ignore the point against him. 'You'd better let me see it,' said he, and flung out his open hand with a gesture of authority which it took a Raffles to resist.

Levy was still standing with his back to the fire, and I was at his feet in a saddle-bag chair, with my yellow beaker on the table at my elbow. But Raffles remained aloof upon his legs, and he withdrew still further from the fire as he unfolded a large sheet of office paper, stamped with the notorious address in Jermyn Street, and displayed it on high like a phylactery.

'You may see, by all means, Mr. Levy,' said Raffles, with a slight but sufficient emphasis on his verb.

'But I'm not to touch—is that it?'

'I'm afraid I must ask you to look first,' said Raffles, smiling. 'I should suggest, however, that you exercise the same caution in showing me that part of your quid pro quo which you have doubtless in readiness; the other part is in my pocket ready for you to sign; and after that, the three little papers can change hands simultaneously.'

Nothing could have excelled the firmness of this intimation, except the exggravating delicacy with which it was conveyed. I saw Levy clench and unclench his great fists, and his canine jaw working protuberantly as he ground his teeth. But not a word escaped him, and I was admiring the monster's self-control when of a sudden he swooped upon the table at my side, completely filled his empty glass with neat whiskey, and, spluttering and blinking from an enormous gulp, made a lurch for Raffles with his drink in one hand and his plated pistol in the other.

'Now I'll have a look,' he hiccoughed, 'an' a good look, unless you want a lump of lead in your liver!'

Raffles awaited his uncertain advance with a contemptuous smile.

'You're not such a fool as all that, Mr. Levy, drunk or sober,' said he; but his eye was on the waving weapon, and so was mine; and I was wondering how a man could have got so very suddenly drunk, when the nobbler of crude spirit was hurled with most sober aim, glass and all, full in the face of Raffles, and the letter plucked from his grasp and flung upon the fire, while Raffles was still reeling in his blindness, and before I had struggled to my feet.

Raffles, for the moment, was absolutely blinded; as I say, his face was streaming with blood and whiskey, and the prince of traitors already crowing over his vile handiwork. But that was only for a moment, too; the blackguard had been fool enough to turn his back on me; and, first jumping upon my chair, I sprang upon him like any leopard, and brought him down with my ten fingers in his neck, and such a crack on the parquet with his skull as left it a deadweight on my hands. I remember the rasping of his bristles as I disengaged my fingers and let the leaden head fall back; it fell sideways now, and if it had but looked less dead I believe I should have stamped the life out of the reptile on the spot.

I know that I rose exultant from my deed….

CHAPTER XIV

Corpus Delicti

Raffles was still stamping and staggering with his knuckles in his eyes, and I heard him saying, 'The letter, Bunny, the letter!' in a way that made me realise all at once that he had been saying nothing else since the moment of the foul assault. It was too late now and must have been from the first; a few filmy scraps of blackened paper, stirring on the hearth, were all that remained of the letter by which Levy had set such store, for which Raffles had risked so much.

'He's burnt it,' said I. 'He was too quick for me.'

'And he's nearly burnt my eyes out,' returned Raffles, rubbing them again. 'He was too quick for us both.'

'Not altogether,' said I, grimly. 'I believe I've cracked his skull and finished him off!'

Raffles rubbed and rubbed until his bloodshot eyes were blinking out of a blood-stained face into that of the fallen man. He found and felt the pulse in a wrist like a ship's cable.

'No, Bunny, there's some life in him yet! Run out and see if there are any lights in the other part of the house.'

When I came back Raffles was listening at the door leading into the long glass passage.

'Not a light!' said I.

'Nor a sound,' he whispered. 'We're in better luck than we might have been; even his revolver didn't go off.' Raffles extracted it from under the prostrate body. 'It might just as easily have gone off and shot him, or one of us.' And he put the pistol in his own pocket.

'But have I killed him, Raffles?'

'Not yet, Bunny.'

'But do you think he's going to die?'

I was overcome by reaction now; my knees knocked together, my teeth chattered in my head; nor could I look any longer upon the great body sprawling prone, or the insensate head twisted sideways on the parquet floor.

'He's all right,' said Raffles, when he had knelt and felt and listened again. I whimpered a pious but inconsistent ejaculation. Raffles sat back on his heels, and meditatively wiped a smear of his own blood from the polished floor. 'You'd better leave him to me,' he said, looking and getting up with sudden decision.

'But what am I to do?'

'Go down to the boathouse and wait in the boat.'

'Where is the boathouse?'

'You can't miss it if you follow the lawn down to the water's edge.

There's a door on this side; if it isn't open, force it with this.'

And he passed me his pocket jimmy as naturally as another would have handed over a bunch of keys.

'And what then?'

'You'll find yourself on the top step leading down to the water; stand tight, and lash out all round until you find a windlass. Wind that windlass as gingerly as though it were a watch with a weak heart; you will be raising a kind of portcullis at the other end of the boathouse, but if you're heard doing it at dead of night we may have to run or swim for it. Raise the thing just high enough to let us under in the boat, and then lie low on board till I come.'

Reluctant to leave that ghastly form upon the floor, but now stricken helpless in its presence, I was softer wax than ever in the hands of Raffles, and soon found myself alone in the dew upon an errand in which I neither saw nor sought for any point. Enough that Raffles had given me something to do for our salvation; what part he had assigned to himself, what he was about indoors already, and the nature of his ultimate design, were questions quite beyond me for the moment. I did not worry about them. Had I killed my man? That was the one thing that mattered to me, and I frankly doubt whether even it mattered at the time so supremely as it seemed to have mattered now. Away from the corpus delicti, my horror was already less of the deed than of the consequences, and I had quite a level view of those. What I had done was barely even manslaughter at the worst. But at the best the man was not dead. Raffles was bringing him to life again. Alive or dead, I could trust him to Raffles, and go about my own part of the business, as indeed I did in a kind of torpor of the normal