Mr. Justice RafflesHornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
General
Mr. Justice Raffles
Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
Criminals -- England -- Fiction; Raffles (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"That's for you," he said as I picked it up. "I'll finish making you up."
He was busy on himself in one of the oblong mirrors, kneeling on the
cushions to be near his work. "If it's a scent at all it must be a pretty
hot one, Bunny, to have landed him in the very train and coach! But it
mayn't be as bad as it looked at first sight. He can't have much to go
upon yet. If he's only going to shadow us while they find out more at
home, we shall give him the slip all right."
"Do you think he saw you?"
"Looking out? No, thank goodness, he was looking toward Dover too."
"But before we started?"
"No, Bunny, I don't believe he came aboard before Cannon Street. I
remember hearing a bit of a fuss there. But our blinds were down,
thank God!"
They were all down now, but by our decreasing speed I felt that we were
already gliding over level crossings to the admiration of belated
townsfolk waiting at the gates. Raffles turned from his mirror, and I
from mine, simultaneously; and even to my initiated eye it was not
Raffles at all, but another noble scamp who even in those days before the
war was the observed of all observers about town.
"It's ever so much better than anonymous disguises," said Raffles, as he
went to work upon me with his pocket make-up box and his lightning
touch. "I was always rather like him, and I tried him on yesterday with
such success at the bank that I certainly can't do better to-night. As
for you, Bunny, if you slouch your hat and stick your beard in your bread
basket, you ought to pass for a poor relation or a disreputable dun. But
here we are, my lad, and now for Meester Mackenzie o' Scoteland Yarrd!"
The gaunt detective was in fact the first person we beheld upon the pier
platform; raw-boned, stiff-jointed, and more than middle-aged, he must
nevertheless have jumped out once again before the train stopped, and
that almost on top of a diminutive telegraph boy, who was waiting while
the old hound read his telegram with one eye and watched emerging
passengers with both. Whether we should have passed him unobserved I
cannot say. We could but have tried; but Raffles preferred to grasp the
nettle and salute Mackenzie with a pleasant nod.
"Good evening, my lord!" says the Scotchman with a canny smirk.
"I can guess why you're down here," says Raffles, actually producing a
palpable Sullivan under the nose of the law.
"Is that a fact?" inquires the other, oiling the rebuff with
deferential grin.
"And I mustn't stand between you and poor Dan Levy's murderer," adds
my lord, nodding finally, when Mackenzie steps after him to my
horror. But it is only to show Raffles his telegram. And he does not
follow us on board.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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