Out of Paradise
The Chest of Silver
The Rest Cure
The Criminologists' Club
The Field of Phillipi
A Bad Night
A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
The Spoils of Sacrilege
The Raffles Relics
The Last Word
If I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but back to our earliestdays together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existingannals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an infinitelygreater blank, across which you may conceive me to have stretched mycanvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The whole truthcannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles was avillain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to glazethe fact; yet I have done so myself before to-day. I have omittedwhole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming side.And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant glamourthat made my villain more to me than any hero. But at least thereshall be no more reservations, and as an earnest I shall make nofurther secret of the greatest wrong that even Raffles ever did me.
I pick my words with care and pain, loyal as I still would be to myfriend, and yet remembering as I must those Ides of March when he ledme blindfold into temptation and crime. That was an ugly office, ifyou will. It was a moral bagatelle to the treacherous trick he was toplay me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other hand, wasto prove the less serious of the two against society, and might initself have been published to the world years ago. There have beenprivate reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only toointimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other wasinvolved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose nameshall not even now be sullied by association with ours.
Suffice it that I had been engaged to her before that mad March deed.True, her people called it "an understanding," and frowned even uponthat, as well they might. But their authority was not direct; we bowedto it as an act of politic grace; between us, all was well but myunworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess that this was how thematter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses atbaccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in my need. Even after thatI saw her sometimes. But I let her guess that there was more upon mysoul than she must ever share, and at last I had written to end it all.I remember that week so well! It was the close of such a May as we hadnever had since, and I was too miserable even to follow the heavyscoring in the papers. Raffles was the only man who could get a wicketup at Lord's, and I never once went to see him play. AgainstYorkshire, however, he helped himself to a hundred runs as well; andthat brought Raffles round to me, on his way home to the Albany.
"We must dine and celebrate the rare event," said he. "A century takesit out of one at my time of life; and you, Bunny, you look quite asmuch in need of your end of a worthy bottle. Suppose we make it theCafé Royal, and eight sharp? I'll be there first to fix up the tableand the wine."
And at the Café Royal I incontinently told him of the trouble I w