The Amateur Cracksman E. W. Hornung (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

word that I went in to dinner without a definite intention in my head, or one premeditated lie upon my lips. I might do the decent, natural thing, and explain matters without loss of time; on the other hand, there was no hurry. I had not opened the letter, and could always pretend I had not noticed the initials; meanwhile something might turn up. I could wait a little and see. Tempted I already was, but as yet the temptation was vague, and its very vagueness made me tremble.

“ ‘Bad news, I’m afraid?’ said the manager, when at last I sat down at his table.

“ ‘A mere annoyance,’ I answered⁠—I do assure you⁠—on the spur of the moment and nothing else. But my lie was told; my position was taken; from that moment onward there was no retreat. By implication, without realizing what I was doing, I had already declared myself W. F. Raffles. Therefore, W. F. Raffles I would be, in that bank, for that night. And the devil teach me how to use my lie!”

Again he raised his glass to his lips⁠—I had forgotten mine. His cigarette-case caught the gaslight as he handed it to me. I shook my head without taking my eyes from his.

“The devil played up,” continued Raffles, with a laugh. “Before I tasted my soup I had decided what to do. I had determined to rob that bank instead of going to bed, and to be back in Melbourne for breakfast if the doctor’s mare could do it. I would tell the old fellow that I had missed my way and been bushed for hours, as I easily might have been, and had never got to Yea at all. At Yea, on the other hand, the personation and robbery would ever after be attributed to a member of the gang that had waylaid and murdered the new manager with that very object. You are acquiring some experience in such matters, Bunny. I ask you, was there ever a better get-out? Last night’s was something like it, only never such a certainty. And I saw it from the beginning⁠—saw to the end before I had finished my soup!

“To increase my chances, the cashier, who also lived in the bank, was away over the holidays, had actually gone down to Melbourne to see us play; and the man who had taken my horse also waited at table; for he and his wife were the only servants, and they slept in a separate building. You may depend I ascertained this before we had finished dinner. Indeed I was by way of asking too many questions (the most oblique and delicate was that which elicited my host’s name, Ewbank), nor was I careful enough to conceal their drift.

“ ‘Do you know,’ said this fellow Ewbank, who was one of the downright sort, ‘if it wasn’t you, I should say you were in a funk of robbers? Have you lost your nerve?’

“ ‘I hope not,’ said I, turning jolly hot, I can tell you; ‘but⁠—well, it is not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet through a fellow!’

“ ‘No?’ said he, coolly. ‘I should enjoy nothing better, myself; besides, yours didn’t go through.’

“ ‘I wish it had!’ I was smart enough to cry.

“ ‘Amen!’ said he.

“And I emptied my glass; actually I did not know whether my wounded bank-robber was in prison, dead, or at large!

“But, now that I had had more than enough of it, Ewbank would come back to the subject. He admitted that the staff was small; but as for himself, he had a loaded revolver under his pillow all night, under the counter all day, and he was only waiting for his chance.

“ ‘Under the counter eh?’ I was ass enough to say.

“ ‘Yes; so had you!’

“He was looking at me in surprise, and something told me that to say ‘of course⁠—I had forgotten!’ would have been quite fatal, considering what I was supposed to have done. So I looked down my nose and shook my head.

“ ‘But the papers said you had!’ he cried.

“ ‘Not under the counter,’ said I.

“ ‘But it’s the regulation!’

“For the moment, Bunny, I felt stumped, though I trust I only looked more superior than before, and I think I justified my look.

“ ‘The regulation!’ I said at length, in the most offensive tone at my command. ‘Yes, the regulation would have us all dead men! My dear sir, do you expect your bank robber to let you reach for your gun in the place where he knows it’s kept? I had mine in my pocket, and I got my chance by retreating from the counter with all visible reluctance.’

“Ewbank stared at me with open eyes and a five-barred forehead, then down came his fist on the table.

“ ‘By God! That was smart! Still,’ he added, like a man who would not be in the wrong, ‘the papers said the other thing, you know!’

“ ‘Of course,’ I rejoined, ‘because they said what I told them. You wouldn’t have had me advertise the fact that I improved upon the bank’s regulations, would you?’

“So that cloud rolled over, and by Jove it was a cloud with a golden lining. Not silver⁠—real good Australian gold! For old Ewbank hadn’t quite appreciated me till then; he was a hard nut, a much older man than myself, and I felt pretty sure he thought me young for the place, and my supposed feat a fluke. But I never saw a man change his mind more openly. He got out his best brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking, and opened a fresh box. He was a convivial-looking party, with a red moustache, and a very humorous face (not unlike Tom Emmett’s), and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank. But he wasn’t a Rosenthall, Bunny; he had a treble-seamed, hand-sewn head, and could have drunk me under the table ten times over.

“ ‘All right,’ I thought, ‘you may go to bed sober, but you’ll sleep like