Mr. Justice RafflesHornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
General
Mr. Justice Raffles
Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
Criminals -- England -- Fiction; Raffles (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Their eyes met; and for one moment I thought that Teddy Garland was going
to repudiate this cool _suggestio falsi_, and tell us all where he had
really been; but that was now impossible without giving Raffles away, and
then there was his Camilla in evident ignorance of the disappearance
which he had expected to find common property. The double circumstance
was too strong for him; he took her hand with a confused apology which
was not even necessary. Anybody could see that the boy had burst among us
with eyes for his father only, and thoughts of nothing but the report
about his health; as for Miss Belsize, she looked as though she liked him
the better for it, or it may have been for an excitability rare in him
and rarely becoming. His pink face burnt like a flame. His eyes were
brilliant; they met mine at last, and I was warmly greeted; but their
friendly light burst into a blaze of wrath as almost simultaneously they
fell upon his bugbear in the background.
"So you've kept your threat, Mr. Levy!" said young Garland, quietly
enough once he had found his voice.
"I generally do," remarked the money-lender, with a malevolent laugh.
"His threat!" cried Mr. Garland sharply. "What are you talking
about, Teddy?"
"I will tell you," said the young man. "And you, too!" he added almost
harshly, as Camilla Belsize rose as though about to withdraw. "You may as
well know what I am--while there's time. I got into debt--I borrowed from
this man."
"You borrowed from him?"
It was Mr. Garland speaking in a voice hard to recognise, with an
emphasis harder still to understand; and as he spoke he glared at Levy
with new loathing and abhorrence.
"Yes," said Teddy; "he had been pestering me with his beastly circulars
every week of my first year at Cambridge. He even wrote to me in his own
fist. It was as though he knew something about me and meant getting me in
his clutches; and he got me all right in the end, and bled me to the last
drop as I deserved. I don't complain so far as I'm concerned. It serves
me right. But I did mean to get through without coming to you again,
father! I was fool enough to tell him so the other day; that was when he
threatened to come to you himself. But I didn't think he was such a brute
as to come to-day!"
"Or such a fool?" suggested Raffles, as he put a piece of paper into
Teddy's hands.
It was his own original promissory note, the one we had recovered from
Dan Levy in the morning. Teddy glanced at it, clutched Raffles by the
hand, and went up to the money-lender as though he meant to take him by
the throat before us all.
"Does this mean that we're square?" he asked hoarsely.
"It means that you are," replied Dan Levy.
"In fact it amounts to your receipt for every penny I ever owed you?"
"Every penny that you owed me, certainly."
"Yet you must come to my father all the same; you must have it both
ways--your money and your spite as well!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account