Mr. Justice Raffles Part 26

"I know that was wrong," the poor devil owned. "I'm very sorry for it, I'm sure! But you wouldn't trust me with my own property, and that and the drink together made me mad."

"So you acknowledge the alcoholic influence at last?"

"Oh, yes! I must have been as drunk as an owl."

"You know you've been suggesting that we drugged you?"

"Not seriously, Mr. Raffles. I knew the old stale taste too well. It must have been the best part of a bottle I had before you got down."

"In your anxiety to see me safe and sound?"

"That's it-with the letter."

"You never dreamt of playing me false until I hesitated to let you handle it?"

"Never for one moment, my dear Raffles!"

Raffles was still standing up to his last inch under the apex of the tower, his head and shoulders the b.u.t.t of a climbing sunbeam full of fretful motes. I could not see his expression from the banisters, but only its effect upon Dan Levy, who first held up his manacled hands in hypocritical protestation, and then dropped them as though it were a bad job.

"Then why," said Raffles, "did you have me watched almost from the moment that we parted company at the Albany last Friday morning?"

"I have you watched!" exclaimed the other in real horror. "Why should I? It must have been the police."

"It was not the police, though the blackguards did their best to look as if they were. I happen to be too familiar with both cla.s.ses to be deceived. Your fellows were waiting for me up at Lord's, but I had no difficulty in shaking them off when I got back to the Albany. They gave me no further trouble until last night, when they got on my tracks at Gray's Inn in the guise of the two common, low detectives whom I believe I have already mentioned to you."

"You said you left them there in their glory."

"It was glorious from my point of view rather than theirs."

Levy struggled into a less rec.u.mbent posture.

"And what makes you think," said he, "that I set this watch upon you?"

"I don't think," returned Raffles. "I know."

"And how the devil do you know?"

Raffles answered with a slow smile, and a still slower shake of the head: "You really mustn't ask me to give everybody away, Mr. Levy!"

The money-lender swore an oath of sheer incredulous surprise, but checked himself at that and tried one more poser.

"And what do you suppose was my object in having you watched, if it wasn't to ensure your safety?"

"It might have been to make doubly sure of the letter, and to cut down expenses at the same swoop, by knocking me on the head and abstracting the treasure from my person. It was a jolly cunning idea-prisoner in the bunk! I shouldn't be upset about it just because it didn't come off. My compliments especially on making up your varlets in the quite colourable image of the true detective. If they had fallen upon me, and it had been a case of my liberty or your letter, you know well enough which I should let go."

But Levy had fallen back upon his pillow of folded flag, and the Red Ensign over him bubbled and heaved with his impotent paroxysms.

"They told you! They must have told you!" he ground out through his teeth. "The traitors-the blasted traitors!"

"It's a catching complaint, you see, Mr. Levy," said Raffles, "especially when one's elders and betters themselves succ.u.mb to it."

"But they're such liars!" cried Levy, s.h.i.+fting his ground again. "Don't you see what liars they are? I did set them to watch you, but for your own good, as I've just been telling you. I was so afraid something might 'appen to you; they were there to see that nothing did. Now do you spot their game? I'd got to take the skunks into the secret, more or less, an' they've played it double on us both. Meant bagging the letter from you to blackmail me with it; that's what they meant! Of course, when they failed to bring it off, they'd pitch any yarn to you. But that was their game all right. You must see for yourself it could never have been mine, Raffles, and-and let me out o' this, like a good feller!"

"Is this your defence?" asked Raffles as he resumed his seat on the judicial locker.

"Isn't it your own?" the other asked in his turn, with an eager removal of all resentment from his manner. "'Aven't we both been got at by those two jackets? Of course I was sorry ever to 'ave trusted 'em an inch, and you were quite right to serve me as you did if what they'd been telling you 'ad been the truth; but, now you see it was all a pack of lies it's surely about time to stop treating me like a mad dog."

"Then you really mean to stand by your side of the original arrangement?"

"Always did," declared our captive; "never 'ad the slightest intention of doing anything else."

"Then where's the first thing you promised me in fair exchange for what you destroyed last night? Where's Mr. Garland's note of hand?"

"In my pocket-book, and that's in my pocket."

"In case the worst comes to the worst," murmured Raffles in sly commentary, and with a sidelong glance at me.

"What's that? Don't you believe me? I'll 'and it over this minute, if only you'll take these d.a.m.ned things off my wrists. There's no excuse for 'em now, you know!"

Raffles shook his head.

"I'd rather not trust myself within reach of your raw fists yet, prisoner. But my marshal will produce the note from your person if it's there."

It was there, in a swollen pocket-book which I replaced otherwise intact while Raffles compared the signature on the note of hand with samples which he had brought with him for the purpose.

"It's genuine enough," said Levy, with a sudden snarl and a lethal look that I intercepted at close quarters.

"So I perceive," said Raffles. "And now I require an equally genuine signature to this little doc.u.ment which is also a part of your bond."

The little doc.u.ment turned out to be a veritable Deed, engrossed on parchment, embossed with a ten-s.h.i.+lling stamp, and duly calling itself an INDENTURE, in fourteenth century capitals. So much I saw as I held it up for the prisoner to read over. The illegally legal instrument is still in existence, with its unpunctuated jargon about "hereditaments" and "fee simple," its "and whereas the said Daniel Levy" in every other line, and its eventual plain provision for "the said sum of 15,000 to remain charged upon the security of the hereditaments in the said recited Indenture ... until the expiration of one year computed from-" that summer's day in that empty tower! The whole thing had been properly and innocently prepared by old Mother Hubbard, the "little solicitor" whom Raffles had mentioned as having been in our house at school, from a copy of the original mortgage deed supplied in equal innocence by Mr. Garland. I sometimes wonder what those worthy citizens would have said, if they had dreamt for a moment under what conditions of acute duress their deed was to be signed!

Signed it was, however, and with less demur than might have been expected of so inveterate a fighter as Dan Levy. But his one remaining course was obviously the line of least resistance; no other would square with his ingenious repudiation of the charge of treachery to Raffles, much less with his repeated protestations that he had always intended to perform his part of their agreement. It was to his immediate interest to convince us of his good faith, and up to this point he might well have thought he had succeeded in so doing. Raffles had concealed his full knowledge of the creature's duplicity, had enjoyed leading him on from lie to lie, and I had enjoyed listening almost as much as I now delighted in the dilemma in which Levy had landed himself; for either he must sign and look pleasant, or else abandon his innocent posture altogether; and so he looked as pleasant as he could, and signed in his handcuffs, with but the shadow of a fight for their immediate removal.

"And now," said Levy, when I had duly witnessed his signature, "I think I've about earned that little drop of my own champagne."

"Not quite yet," replied Raffles, in a tone like thin ice. "We are only at the point we should have reached the moment I arrived at your house last night; you have now done under compulsion what you had agreed to do of your own free will then."

Levy lay back in the bunk, plunged in billows of incongruous bunting, with fallen jaw and fiery eyes, an equal blend of anger and alarm. "But I told you I wasn't myself last night," he whined. "I've said I was very sorry for all I done, but can't 'ardly remember doing. I say it again from the bottom of my 'eart."

"I've no doubt you do," said Raffles. "But what you did after our arrival was nothing to what you had already done; it was only the last of those acts of treachery for which you are still on your trial-prisoner in the bunk!"

"But I thought I'd explained all the rest?" cried the prisoner, in a palsy of impotent rage and disappointment.

"You have," said Raffles, "in the sense of making your perfidy even plainer than it was before. Come, Mr. Levy! I know every move you've made, and the game's been up longer than you think; you won't score a point by telling lies that contradict each other and aggravate your guilt. Have you nothing better to say why the sentence of the court should not be pa.s.sed upon you?"

A sullen silence was broken by a more precise and staccato repet.i.tion of the question. And then to my amazement, I beheld the gross lower lip of Levy actually trembling, and a distressing flicker of the inflamed eyelids.

"I felt you'd swindled me," he quavered out "And I thought-I'd swindle-you."

"Bravo!" cried Raffles. "That's the first honest thing you've said; let me tell you, for your encouragement, that it reduces your punishment by twenty-five per cent. You will, nevertheless, pay a fine of fifteen hundred pounds for your latest little effort in low treason."