The evening world. Newspaper, June 3, 1905, Page 11

Fourth rth Adventure, WILFUL ° MURDER. By E. W. Hornung. (COPYRIGHT. 180% BY CITARLE oRIBNER'S BONS.) F the various robberies in which we were both c cerned, it is but the few, I find, that will bear telling at any length. Not that the others contained de- tails which even I would hesitate to recount; it is, rather, the very absence of untoward inpident which renders them use- less for my present purpose. In point of fact our plans were so craftily laid (by Raffles) that the chances of a hitch were invariab! reduced to a min- imum before we went to work. We might be dis- appointed in the market value ur haul; but it was quite the exception for. us to find ourselves confronted by unforeseen impediments or involved in a really dramatic dilemma, There was a same- ness even in our spoil, for, of course, only the most precious stones are worth the trouble we took and \ the risks we ran, In short, our most successful escapades would prove the greatest weariness of all in narrative form; and none more so than the dull | affair of the Ardagh emeralds, some eight or nine weeks after the Milchester cricket week, The s former, however, had a sequel that 1 would rather forget than all our burglaries put together. | It was the evening after our return from Ire- land, ‘and | was wailing at my rooms for Raffles, who had gone off as usual to dispose of the plunder: Raffles had his own method of conducting this very vital branch of our business, which I was well con- tent to leave entirely in his hands. He drove the argains, I believe, in a thin but subtle disguise of the flashy-seedy order and always in the Cockney dialect, of which he had made himself a master, Moreover, he invari employed the same “fence,” who was ostensibly a money-lender in a small (but yet notorious) way, and in reality a rascal ‘as re- markable as Raflles himself. Only lately 1 also had been to the man, but in my proper person, We had needed cy r the getting of these very emeralds, and I had raised a hundred pounds, on the terms you would expect, from a soft-spoken graybeard with an ingratiating smile, an incessant bow, and the shiftiest f old Cyps that ever flew from rim to rim of a pair of spoils of war cami Souree-—a circumstange, able. And now I was tearing to and fro in the grip of horrible } hypothesis—a grip that ‘tightened when at last the lift-gates opened with a clatter outside—that held me breathless until a well-known tattoo followed on my doo “In the dark! said Raffles, as 1 dragged him in, “Why, Bunny, what’s wrong?” hing—now you've come,” said I, shutting the door behind him in a fever ; iz WF 5 B of relief and anxiety. “Well? Well? | What did they fetch?” “Five hundred,” “Down?” “Got it in my pocket.” “Good man!" I cried. “You don’t know what a stew I’ve been in. I'll switch on the light. I’ve been thinking of you and nothing else for the last hour, eeuEl to think something had gone wrong!” S Wi ili es the white light filled the room, but for memsit I did not perceive the peculiarity of his smile. 1 was ia ar ey own late tremors and present relief; and my first idiotic was to syfitpsome whisly and squirt the soda water all over in my anx- ty to do instant justice to the occasion, sl. What should omething had? Sit tight, my dear chap! It was nothing of the slightest consequence, and it’s all over now. A stern chase and a long one, ‘Bunny, but 1 think I’m well to windward this time.” And suddenly | saw that his collar ¥ imp, his hair matted, his boots Fk with Ae “The police?” | whispered, ag! “Oh, dear, no; only old Baird, “Baird! But wasn’t it Baird who took the emeralds?” “It was.” “Then how came he to chase you?” “My dear fellow, I'll tell you if you give me a chance; it's really nothing to get in the least d about. Old Baird has at last spotted that I’m not quite the common cracks man I would have him think me. So he’s been doing his best to run me to my burrow.” “And you call that nothing “It would be something if he had si ; but he has still to do that. I nit, however, that he made me sit up for the time being. It all comes of going on the job so far from home. There was the old brute with the whole thing in his morning paper. He knew it must have been done by some fellow who could pass himself off for a gentleman, and I saw his eyebrows go up iNext Saturday—‘‘Nine Points of the Law,’’ the Fifth Adventure of “RAFFLES, THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN’”’ There will be Thirteen Adventures in this new series, a complete story every Saturday.