Mr. Justice Raffles by E. W. Hornung (the reading list TXT) 📕

"About his engagement—not that I'm aware."

"Then he is in some trouble?"

"He was, Mr. Garland," answered Raffles. "I give you my word that he isn't now."

Mr. Garland grasped the back of a chair.

"Was it some money trouble, Raffles? Of course, if my boy has given you his confidence, I have no right simply as his father—"

"It is hardly that, sir," said Raffles, gently; "it is I who have no right to give him away. But if you don't mind leaving it at that, Mr. Garland, there is perhaps no harm in my saying that it was about some little temporary embarrassment that Teddy was so anxious to see me."

"And you helped him?" cried the poor man, plainly torn between gratitude and humiliation.

"Not out of my pocket," replied Raffles, smiling. "The matter was not so serious as Teddy thought; it only required adjustment."

"God bless you, Raffles!" murmured Mr. Garland, with a catch in his voice. "I won't ask for a single detail. My poor boy went to the right man; he knew better than to come to me. Like father, like son!" he muttered to himself, and dropped into the chair he had been handling, and bent his head over his folded arms.

He seemed to have forgotten the untoward effect of Teddy's disappearance in the peculiar humiliation of its first cause. Raffles took out his watch, and held up the dial for me to see. It was after the half-hour now; but at this moment a servant entered with a missive, and the master recovered his self-control.

"This'll be from Teddy!" he cried, fumbling with his glasses. "No; it's for him, and by special messenger. I'd better open it. I don't suppose it's Miss Belsize again."

"Miss Belsize is in the drawing-room, sir," said the man. "She said you were not to be disturbed."

"Oh, tell her we shan't be long," said Mr. Garland, with a new strain of trouble in his tone. "Listen to this—listen to this," he went on before the door was shut: "'What has happened? Lost toss. Whipham plays if you don't turn up in time.—J. S.'"

"Jack Studley," said Raffles, "the Cambridge skipper."

"I know! I know! And Whipham's reserve man, isn't he?"

"And another wicket-keeper, worse luck!" exclaimed Raffles. "If he turns out and takes a single ball, and Teddy is only one over late, it will still be too late for him to play."

"Then it's too late already," said Mr. Garland, sinking back into his chair with a groan.

"But that note from Studley may have been half-an-hour on the way."

"No, Raffles, it's not an ordinary note; it's a message telephoned straight from Lord's—probably within the last few minutes—to a messenger office not a hundred yards from this door!"

Mr. Garland sat staring miserably at the carpet; he was beginning to look ill with perplexity and suspense. Raffles himself, who had turned his back upon us with a shrug of acquiescence in the inevitable, was a monument of discomfiture as he stood gazing through a glass door into the adjoining conservatory. There was no actual window in the library, but this door was a single sheet of plate-glass into which a man might well have walked, and I can still see Raffles in full-length silhouette upon a panel of palms and tree-ferns. I see the silhouette grow tall and straight again before my eyes, the door open, and Raffles listening with an alert lift of the head. I, too, hear something, an elfin hiss, a fairy fusillade, and then the sudden laugh with which Raffles rejoined us in the body of the room.

"It's raining!" he cried, waving a hand above his head. "Have you a barometer, Mr. Garland?"

"That's an aneroid under the lamp-bracket."

"How often do you set the indicator?"

"Last thing every night. I remember it was between Fair and Change when I went to bed. It made me anxious."

"It may make you thankful now. It's between Change and Rain this morning. And the rain's begun, and while there's rain there's hope!"

In a twinkling Raffles had regained all his own irresistible buoyancy and assurance. But the older man was not capable of so prompt a recovery.

"Something has happened to my boy!"

"But not necessarily anything terrible."

"If I knew what, Raffles—if only I knew what!"

Raffles eyed the pale and twitching face with sidelong solicitude. He himself had the confident expression which always gave me confidence; the rattle on the conservatory roof was growing louder every minute.

"I intend to find out," said he; "and if the rain goes on long enough, we may still see Teddy playing when it stops. But I shall want your help, sir."

"I am ready to go with you anywhere, Raffles."

"You can only help me, Mr. Garland, by staying where you are."

"Where I am?"

"In the house all day," said Raffles firmly. "It is absolutely essential to my idea."

"And that is, Raffles?"

"To save Teddy's face, in the first instance. I shall drive straight up to Lord's, in your brougham if I may. I know Studley rather well; he shall keep Teddy's place open till the last possible moment."

"But how shall you account for his absence?" I asked.

"I shall account for it all right," said Raffles darkly. "I can save his face for the time being, at all events at Lord's."

"But that's the only place that matters," said I.

"On the contrary, Bunny, this very house matters even more as long as Miss Belsize is here. You forget that they're engaged, and that she's in the next room now."

"Good God!" whispered Mr. Garland. "I had forgotten that myself."

"She is the last who must know of this affair," said Raffles, with, I thought, undue authority. "And you are the only one who can keep it from her, sir."

"Miss Belsize mustn't go up to Lord's this morning. She would only spoil her things, and you may tell her from me that there would be no play for an hour after this, even if it stopped this minute, which it won't. Meanwhile let her think that Teddy's weatherbound with the rest of them in the pavilion; but she mustn't come until you hear from me again; and the best way to keep her here is to stay with her yourself."

"And when may I expect to hear?" asked Mr. Garland as Raffles held out his hand.

"Let me see. I shall be at Lord's in less than