The Black Mask by E. W. Hornung (read after .TXT) 📕

the electric lamps above. We all three put our heads together over them, myself without the slightest clue as to what was coming, but not unprepared for violent crime. One does not do eighteen months for nothing.

“Right away,” Raffles was saying. “We’ll choose for her, and you’ll change anything she don’t like. Is that the idea?”

“That was my suggestion, sir.”

“Then come on, Ezra. I guess you know Sadie’s taste. You help me choose.”

And we chose⁠—lord! What did we not choose? There was her ring, a diamond half-hoop. It cost £95, and there was no attempt to get it for £90. Then there was a diamond necklet⁠—two hundred guineas, but pounds accepted. That was to be the gift of the bridegroom. The wedding was evidently imminent. It behooved me to play a brotherly part. I therefore rose to the occasion; calculated she would like a diamond star (£116), but reckoned it was more than I could afford; and sustained a vicious kick under the table for either verb. I was afraid to open my mouth on finally obtaining the star for the round hundred. And then the fat fell in the fire; for pay we could not; though a remittance (said Raffles) was “overdo from Noo York.”

“But I don’t know you, gentlemen,” the jeweller exclaimed. “I haven’t even the name of your hotel!”

“I told you we was stoppin’ with friends,” said Raffles, who was not angry, though thwarted and crushed. “But that’s right, sir! Oh, that’s dead right, and I’m the last man to ask you to take quixotic risks. I’m tryin’ to figure a way out. Yes, sir, that’s what I’m tryin’ to do.”

“I wish you could, sir,” the jeweller said, with feeling. “It isn’t as if we hadn’t seen the color of your money. But certain rules I’m sworn to observe; it isn’t as if I was in business for myself; and⁠—you say you start for Paris in the morning!”

“On the 9 a.m. train,” mused Raffles; “and I’ve heard no-end yarns about the joolers’ stores in Parrus. But that ain’t fair; don’t you take no notice o’ that. I’m tryin’ to figure a way out. Yes, sir!”

He was smoking cigarettes out of a twenty-five box; the tradesman and I had cigars. Raffles sat frowning with a pregnant eye, and it was only too clear to me that his plans had miscarried. I could not help thinking, however, that they deserved to do so, if he had counted upon buying credit for all but £400 by a single payment of some ten percent. That again seemed unworthy of Raffles, and I, for my part, still sat prepared to spring any moment at our visitor’s throat.

“We could mail you the money from Parrus,” drawled Raffles at length. “But how should we know you’d hold up your end of the string, and mail us the same articles we’ve selected tonight?”

The visitor stiffened in his chair. The name of his firm should be sufficient guarantee for that.

“I guess I’m no better acquainted with their name than they are with mine,” remarked Raffles, laughing. “See here, though! I got a scheme. You pack ’em in this!”

He turned the cigarettes out of the tin box, while the jeweller and I joined wondering eyes.

“Pack ’em in this,” repeated Raffles, “the three things we want, and never mind the boxes; you can pack ’em in cotton-wool. Then we’ll ring for string and sealing wax, seal up the lot right here, and you can take ’em away in your grip. Within three days we’ll have our remittance, and mail you the money, and you’ll mail us this darned box with my seal unbroken! It’s no use you lookin’ so sick, Mr. Jooler; you won’t trust us any, and yet we’re goin’ to trust you some. Ring the bell, Ezra, and we’ll see if they’ve gotten any sealing-wax and string.”

They had; and the thing was done. The tradesman did not like it; the precaution was absolutely unnecessary; but since he was taking all his goods away with him, the sold with the unsold, his sentimental objections soon fell to the ground. He packed necklet, ring, and star, with his own hands, in cotton-wool; and the cigarette-box held them so easily that at the last moment, when the box was closed, and the string ready, Raffles very nearly added a diamond bee-brooch at £51 10s. This temptation, however, he ultimately overcame, to the other’s chagrin. The cigarette-box was tied up, and the string sealed, oddly enough, with the diamond of the ring that had been bought and paid for.

“I’ll chance you having another ring in the store the dead spit of mine,” laughed Raffles, as he relinquished the box, and it disappeared into the tradesman’s bag. “And now, Mr. Robinson, I hope you’ll appreciate my true hospitality in not offering you anything to drink while business was in progress. That’s Château Margaux, sir, and I should judge it’s what you’d call an eighteen-carat article.”

In the cab which we took to the vicinity of the flat, I was instantly snubbed for asking questions which the driver might easily overhear, and took the repulse just a little to heart. I could make neither head nor tail of Raffles’s dealings with the man from Regent Street, and was naturally inquisitive as to the meaning of it all. But I held my tongue until we had regained the flat in the cautious manner of our exit, and even there until Raffles rallied me with a hand on either shoulder and an old smile upon his face.

“You rabbit!” said he. “Why couldn’t you wait till we got home?”

“Why couldn’t you tell me what you were going to do?” I retorted as of yore.

“Because your dear old phiz is still worth its weight in innocence, and because you never could act for nuts! You looked as puzzled as the other poor devil; but you wouldn’t if you had known what my game really was.”

“And pray what was it?”

“That,” said Raffles, and he smacked the cigarette-box down