Mr. Justice RafflesHornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
General
Mr. Justice Raffles
Hornung, E. W. (Ernest William)
Criminals -- England -- Fiction; Raffles (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
"Enjoyed your night under canvas, Bunny? Then you might get up and
present your colours to the prisoner in the bunk. You needn't be
frightened of him, Bunny; he's such a devilish tough customer that I've
had to clap him in irons, as you see. Yet he can't say I haven't given
him rope enough; he's got lashings of rope--eh, Bunny?"
"That's right!" said Levy, with a bitter snarl. "Get a man down by foul
play, and then wipe your boots on him! I'd stick it like a lamb if only
you'd give me that drink."
And then it was, as I got to my feet, and shook myself free from the
folds of the Union Jack, that I saw the unopened pint of champagne
standing against the banisters in full view of the bunk. I confess I eyed
it wistfully myself; but Raffles was adamant alike to friend and foe, and
merely beckoned me to follow him down the wooden stair, without answering
Levy at all. I certainly thought it a risk to leave that worthy unwatched
for a moment, but it was scarcely for more. The room below was fitted
with a bath and a lavatory basin, which Raffles pointed out to me without
going all the way down himself. At the same time he handed me a stale
remnant of the sandwiches removed with Levy from his house.
"I'm afraid you'll have to wash these down at that tap," said he. "The
poor devil has finished what you left at daybreak, besides making a hole
in my flask; but he can't or won't eat a bite, and if only he stands his
trial and takes his sentence like a man, I think he might have the other
pint to his own infernal cheek."
"Trial and sentence!" I exclaimed. "I thought you were going to hold him
up to ransom?"
"Not without a fair trial, my dear Bunny," said Raffles in the accents of
reproof. "We must hear what the old swab has to say for himself, when
he's heard what I've got to say to him. So you stick your head under the
tap when you've had your snack, Bunny; it won't come up to the swim I had
after I'd taken the boat back, when you and Shylock were fast asleep, but
it's all you've time for if you want to hear me open my case."
And open it he did before himself, as judge and counsel in one, sitting
on the locker as on the bench, the very moment I reappeared in court.
"Prisoner in the bunk, before we formulate the charge against you we had
better deal with your last request for drink, made in the same breath as
a preposterous complaint about foul play. The request has been made and
granted more than once already this morning. This time it's refused.
Drink has been your undoing, prisoner in the bunk; it is drink that
necessitates your annual purification at Carlsbad, and yet within a week
of that chastening experience you come before me without knowing where
you are or how you got here."
"That wasn't the whisky," muttered Levy with a tortured brow. "That
was something else, which you'll hear more about; foul play it was,
and you'll pay for it yet. There's not a headache in a hogshead of
my whisky."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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