The evening world. Newspaper, July 15, 1905, Page 10

- ding tight against the other wall. “T must see him.” “He gave strict orders that you should not,’ “I’m his medical man and I"—— | “You know what he is," I said, shrugging; “the least thing wakes him, Gnd you will if you insist on seeing him now. It will be the last time, I Warn you! I know what he sald and you don’t.” The doctor cursed me under his fiery mustache. “T shall come up during the course of the morning,” he snarled “Ahd I shall tie up the bell,” I said, “and if it doesn’t ring he'll be ) sleeping still, but I will not risk waking him by coming to the door again.” And with that I shut it in his face. I was improving, as Raffles had Veaid, but what would it profit me if some evil had befallen him? And now I was prepared for the worst. A toy came up whistling and leaving papers on the mats. It was getting on for 8 o'clock, and the whiskey and soda of half-past 12 stood untouched and stagnant in the tumbler. If the worst had happen Raffles I felt that I woula either never drink again or else seldom do anything else. Meanwhile I could not even break my fast, but fopgmed the flat in a misery not to be described, my very linen still unchanged, my cheeks and chin now tawny S from the unwholesome night. How long would it go on? I wondered for a time. Then I changed my tune: how long could I endure it? It went on actually until the forenoon only, but my endurance cannot be measured by the time, for to me every hour of it was an arctic night. Yet it cannot have been much after 11 when the ring came at the bell, which I had forgotten to tie up after all. But this was Snot the doctor; neither, too well I know, was it the © wanderer returned. Our bell was the pneumatic one F that tells you if the touch be light or heavy; the hand upon it now was tentative and shy. The owner of the hand I had never seen before. ) He was young and ragged, with one eye blank, but the i) other ablaze with some fell excitement. And straight- 7) way he burst into a low torrent of words, of which all | I knew was that they were Italian, and therefore news of Raffles, if only I had known the language! But | dumb show might help us somewhat, and in I dragged Phim, though against his will, a new alarm in his one f wild eye. “Non capite?” he cried when I had him inside and had withstood the torrent. “No, I'm bothered if I do!” I answered, guessing his © question from his tone. | “Vostro amico,” he repeated over and over again; and then, “Poco tempo, poco tempo, poco tempo!" a For once in my life the classical education of my © public-school days was of real value. } and no time to be lost ) my hat. |} “Ecco, signore!” cried the fellow, snatching the |} watch from my waistcoat pocket and putting one black ) thumb nail on the long hand, the other on the numeral 12, “Mezzogiorne—poco tempo—poco tempo!" And again I seized his meaning that it was twenty past 11 and we must be there ty 12, But where, but where? Tt was maddening to be summoned like this and not to know what had happened nor to have any means of ) finding out. But my presence of mind stood by me still, Z was improving by seven-league strides, and I crammed my handkerchief between the drum and hammer of the bell before leaving. The doctor coulc ring now till he was black in the face, but I was not coming, and he need not think it. 4 I half expected to find a hansom waiting, but there ‘was none, and we had gone some distance down the H Barl's Court road before we got one: in fact, we had to run to the stand. jf Opposite is the church with the clock upon it, as everybody knows, and at i ae the dial my companion had wrung his hands. It was close upon e hatf hour. i "Hoco tempo—poch! 441m “Bloom)are2 Ske-warr,” he y) then cried to the cabman—"nuimer-o trentotio!" i “Bloomsbury Square,” I roared on my own account, “I'll show you the i 4 i ; “Rut he’s sleeping like a baty now. 1 to “My pal, my pal, I translated freely and flew for f : “Poco t wailed, house when we get there, only drive like be-damned!" My companion lay back gasping in his corner. me that my own face was pretty red. “A nice show 9 bring me a note?” i I might have known by this time that he hac not, still I went through the pantomime of writing with my finger on my cuff. But he shrugged and shook his head. The small glass told I cried; “and not a word can you tell me. Didn't you “Niente,” said he, ‘Una quistione di vita, di vita!” “What's that?” I snapped, my early training come in again “Say it ip slowly—andante—rallentando,” : Thank Italy for the stage in- |} structions in the songs one used to murder! The fellow actually under stood. “Una—quistione—di—vita.” “Or mors, eh?" I shouted, and up went the trapdoor over our heads, 4 “Avanti, avanti, avanti!” cried the Italian, turning up his one-eyed face. “Hell-to-leather,” I | “and double i | o'clock.” But in the streets of London i how is one to know the time? In Wf the Earl's Court road it had not ~been half-past, and at Barker's in High street it was but a minute Tater. A long half mile a minute, that was going like the wind, and if indeed we had done much of it at Wa gallop. But the next hundred |B yards took us five minutes by the i@ next clock, and which was one to believe? I fell back upon my own old watch (it was my own), which fF made it eighteen minutes to the i bour as we swung across the Ser- i pentine bridge, and by the quarter i we were in the Bayswater road—not mp for once. “Presto, presto,” my pale guide ‘murmured. “Affretateyi—avanti!" "Ten bob if you do it.” I cried through the trap, without the slight- ) eat notion of what we were to do, But Mt was “una quistione di vita,” and ‘ jostro amico” must and could only be my miserable Raffles, | What a very godsend is the perfect hansom to the man or woman in a wry! It hud been our great good fortune to jump into 4 perfect hansom, we was no choice; we had to take the first upon the rank, but it must \Meserved its place with the rest nowhere. in a thousand and a driver up to it we went like a fast half-buck at the Rugly game, yet where the traffic jtiiinnest there were we, And how he knew his way! At the Marble c ) he slipped out of the main stream, Med so into Wigmore street, then vy 4m and out and on until I saw the gold tips of the Museum Palisade ny Metween the horse's ears in the eun. Plop, plop, plop; ting, ling, translated, fare if you do it by 12 y tires, superb springs, trick of hist e! In and } » Pil Mal: ot Malet THE WORLD: SATURDAY ling; bell and horseshoes, horseshoes and bell, until the colossal figure of C. J. Fox in a grimy toga spelled Bloomsbury Square, with my watch still wanting three minutes to the hour, What number?” cried the good fellow overhead sald my guide, but he looking to the right, “Trentotte. trentotty.” ed him out to show the house on foot all, but T flung our dear driver a whole one instead, and only t had been a hundred. and T bun I had not half a sov- ereign afte wish that Already the Italian had his latehkey in the door of 38, and in another moment we were rushing up the narrow stairs of as dingy a London house as prejudiced countryman can conceive. It was panelled, but it was dark and evil-smelling, and how we should have found our way even to the stairs but for an unwholesome jet of yellow gas in the hall I cannot myself im- agine. However, up we went pell-mell to the right about on the half landing, and so like a whirl wind into the drawing-room a few steps higher. There the gas was also burning behind closed shut- ters, and the scene is photographed upon my brain, though I cannot have looked upor. it for a whole instant as I sprang in at my leader's heels. This room was also panelled, and in the middle of the wall on our left, his hands lashed to a ring-bolt high above his head, his toes barely touch- ing the floor, his neck pinioned by a strap passing through smaller ring- bolts under either ear and every inch of him secured on the same principle, stood, or rather hung, all that was left of Raffles, for at the first glance I believed him dead. A black ruler gagged him, the ends lashed behind his neck, the blood upon it caked to bronze in the gaslight. And in front of him, ticking like a sledge-hammer, its only hand upon the stroke of 12, stood a simple, old-fashioned grand- father’s clock—but not for half an in- stant longer—only until my guide could hurl himself upon it and send the whole thing crashing into the corner. An ear-splitting report ac- companied the crash, a white cloud lifted from the fallen clock, and I saw a revolver smoking in a vise screwed below the dial, an arrangement of wires sprouting from the dial itself, and the single hand at once at its zenith and in contact with these. “Tumble to it, Bunny?" He was alive; these were his Words; the Italian had the blood- caked ruler in his hand, and with his knife was reaching up to cut the thongs that lashed the hands. He was not tall enough. I seized and lifted him up, then fell to work with my own knife on the straps. And Raffles smiled faintly upon us through his blood-stains. “I want you to tumble to it,” h2 whispered; ‘‘the neatest thing in re- venge I ever knew, and another min- ute would have fixed it. I've been waiting for it twelve hours, watching the clock round, death at the en‘ of the lap! Electric connection. Sim- 5 hand only—O em o tem yey ple enough. Hour PO, poc po Lord!" We had cut the last strap. He could not stand. We supported him be- tween us to a horsehair sofa, for the room was furnished, and I begged him not to speak, while his one-eyed deliverer was at the door before Raffles recalled him with a sharp word in Italian. “Te wants to get me a drink, but that can wait,” said he in firmer voice. “I shall enjoy it the more when I've told yon what happened. Don't let He's a decent soul, and I've him go, Bunny; put your back age it's lucky for me I got a word with him before they trussed me up Promised to set him up in life, and I will, but I don’t want him out of my sight for the moment.” inst the door If you squared him last night,” I exclaimed, “why the blazes didn't he come to me till the eleventh hour?” \h, I] knew he'd have to cnt it fine, though I hoped not quite so fine all that, But alls well that ends well, and I declare I don't feel so much the we I shall be sore about the gills for a bit—and what do you think?” He pointe to the long black ruler with the bronze stain; it lay upon the floor, He held ont his hand for it and I gave it to him. es psy abe Dette The Count’s great carcass sprawled-upon the table, “The ne one I gagged him with,” sald Raffles, with his still ghastly emile, “Ile was a bit of an artist, old Corbucel, after all!" “Now let's hear how you fell into his clutches,” said 1 briskly, for I Was a8 anxious to hear at he seemed to tell me, only for my part I could have waited uotil we were safe in the flat, “I do want to get it off my chest, Bunny,” old Raffles admitted, ‘and yet I hardly can tell you after all. I followed your friend with the velvet eyes. | followed him all the way here. Of course I came up to have a good look at the house when he'd let himself in, and damme if he hadn't left the door ajar! Who could resist that? I had pushed it half open, and had just one foot on the mat when I got such a crack on the head as I hope never to get again. When | came to my wits they were hauling me up to that ty ey 4 “ty Kee torte abpinict EVENING, JULY 15, 1905. ring-bolt by the how he got here “LE can tell you that T don't know yet.” said I, and told how myself on the ment underneath our windows. “Moreover,” [ con- tinued, “1 saw kim spot you, and five minntes after in Eurt’s Court roatt f was told he'd driven off in cab. He would you following his m: drive home ahead and cateh you having the door left open in the way you describe.” “We aid Raffles, “he deserved to catch me somehow, for he'd come from Naples on purpose, rier and all, and the ring-bolts were ready fixed, and even this house taken fur- nished for nothing else! He meant catching me before he'd done and scoring me off in exactly the same way that I scored off him, only going one better, of course. He told me so himself, sitting where I am sitting now, at 3 o'clock this morning, and smoking a most abominable cigar that I've smelled ever since. It .ap- pears he sat twenty-four hours when I left him trussed up, but he td twelve would content him in my case, as there was certain death at the end of them, and I mightn't have life enough left to appreciate my end if he made it longer. sat I wouldn't have trusted him if he could have got the clock to go twice round without firing off the pistol. He explained the whole mechanism of that to ma, He had thought it all out on the vine- yard I told you about, and then he asked if I remembered what he had promised me in the name of the Camorra. I only remembered some vague threats, but he w good enough to give me so many particu- lars of that institution that I could make «& European reputation by ex- posing the whole show if it wasn’t for my unfortunate resemblance to that infernal rascal*Raffles. Do you think they would know me at the Yard, Bunny, after all this time? Upon my soul, e a good mind to risk jt!” I offered no opinion on the point. How could it interest me then? But interested I was in Raffles: never more so in my life. He had been tor- tured all night and half a day, yet he could sit and talk like this the mo- ment we cut him down. He had been within a minute of his death, yet he was as full of life as ever; ill-treated and defeated at the best, he could still smile through his blood as though the boot were on the other leg. I had imagined that I knew my Raffles at last. I was not likely so to flatter myself again “But what has happered to these villains?” I burst out, and my indig- uation was not only a; victim for his phic that this was Raflles. “Oh,” said he, “they were to crossing now. But do listen to w dear man. ‘This old sinner Corbucci turns out to have been no end of a boss in the Camorra—says so himsetf. One of the capi paranze, my boy, 1 ess: and the velvety Johnny a giovano onorato, Anglice, fresher. ‘This fellow here was aiso in it, and I've sworn to protect him from them ever- Pore; and it’s just ns I said, half the organ-grinders in London belong, and the whole lot of them Were put on my cracks by secret instructions. This paeeeent youth roanufaetures iced poison on Saffron HM when he's at “And why “Because simatic attitude toward ther. &¢ off to Italy instanter; they should be hat I am telling you; it’s interesting, my on earth didn’t he come to me quicker?” he couldn't talk to yon; he could only fetch you, and it was as much as his life was worth to do that before our friends had departed. They were going by the 11 o'clock from Victoria, and that didn't leave much chance, tut he certainly oughtu't to have run it as fine as he did. Still You must remember that 1 had to fix things up with him in the fewest pos. ple words, in a single minute that the vo were in’ te ieanends. in a single minute that the other two were Indisereet enough The ragamufin in question was watching us with as though he knew that we were discussing him. all his solitary eye, Suddenly he broke out in agonized accents, his hands clasped face so full of fear that every moment I expected to sec him on his knecs. But Kaffles answered kindly, reagsur T could tel! fram his tone, n and then turned to me with a com- lonate shri Ie says he couldn't find the mansions, Bunny, an be wondered I had only time to te! him to hunt here by hook or crock before 12 to-day, and after now the poor devil thinks you're riled with him Ny it's not to you up and bring you all he has done that, But and that we'll give him away to the Camorra” “Oh, it's not with him I'm riled,” 1 said frankly, “but with those other Ulgekgeua and--and with you, old chap, for taking it all_as you do, while such infamou to Franc Raffles looked up at me with a curiously open eye saw when he was not in earnest. I fanciod he did not sion but one. After all it waa no laughing mat “But are they?" said he, “I'm not so sure. “You said they were! “L said they should be. “Didn't you hear them go?” scoundrels ave the last laugh and safely on their way in eye that I never like my last expr. r to him “T heard nothing but the clock all night. It was like Big Ben striking ‘t the last—striking 9 to the fellow en the drop.” in that open eye I saw at last deep glimmer of the ordeal through which he had passed “But, my dear old Raffles, if they're till on the premis ‘The thought was too thrilling for a finished sentence I hope they are," he said grimly going to the dooi There's a gas on! Was that burning when n Now that had been, “Snd there's a smell,” I added you I thought of it, y it frightfully foul I followed Raffles down the stairs, He turned to me gravely, with his hand upon the front room door, and at the same moment I saw a coat with an astrakhan collar hanging on the pegs, “They are in here, Bunny,” he said and turned the handle. The door would only open a few inches. But a detestable odor came out, with a broad bar of yellow gas- light. Raffles put his handkerchief to his nose. 1 followed his example, signing to our ally to do the same, and in another minute we had all three squeezed into the room, The man with the yellow boots was lying against the door, the Count’'s great carcass sprawled upon the table, and at a glance It was evident that both men had been dead some hours. The old Camorrist had the stem of a liqueur glass between his swollen blue fingers, one of which had been cut in the breakage, and the livid flesh was also brown with the last bjood that it would ever shed, His face was on the table, the huge mustache project- ing from under either leaden cheek, yet looking itself strangely alive, Broken bread and seraps of frozen maccaroni lay upon the eloth and at the bottom of two soup plates and a tureen, The maccaroni had a tinge of tomato, and there was a crimson dram left in the tumblers, with an empty flasco to show whence it came, Kut near che great gray head upon the tabla another liqueur glass stood, unbroken, and still full of some white ana stinking liquid, and nevr that a tiny sliver flask, which made me recoil from Raffles as I had not from the dead, for I knew it to be his, “Come out of this poisonous air,” he said sternly, “and T will tell you how it has happened.” * So we all three gathered together in the hall, But it was Raffles who tcod nearest the street door, his back to it, his eyes upon us two, And. UPOSED BY KYRLE BELLEW, ARRANGEMENT “I got a crack on the head, gainst them for their erfielty, but also against their arts of {he Anarchist to boot. nds, and old Corbueet himself was bowing to me, but though it was to me only that he spoke at first te would pause from point to point ant tanslate into Italian for the benefit of the one-eyed alien to T had seen the Count for whor he owed his life “You probably don't even know the name, Bunny,” he began, “of the Jeadliest fhoison yet known to setence. LIEBLER Ce . It is cyanide of cacodyl, and I have tarried that small flask of it alout th me for months. Where I pot it matters nothing; the whole point is a mere sniff reduces flesh to I have never had any opinion of suicide, as you know, but 1 always felt it worth while to be foreirmod against the very worst. Well, a be tle of this stuff is calculated to stiff: an ordinary roomful of ordinary peo- ple within five minutes; and I re- membered my flask when they had me as good as crucified in the small hours of this morning. I asked them to take it out of my pocket. I begged them to give me a drink before th-y left me. And what do you supros they did?” I thought of many things, by‘ gested none, while Raffles turned this much of his statement into suf- ciently fluent Italian. But when he faced me again his face was still flaming. “That beast Corbucei!' “how can I pity him? flask; he would give me none; flicked me in the face instead idea was that he at least should with me—to sell my life as dearly said he; He took the he My that—and a sniff weld hove settled us both, But no, he must tditalize and torment me. He thought it y; he must take it ¢ ink to my destruction! “Let us go, as Raffles finishe last said hoars' speaking in Ital- fan, and his second listener stood open-r~ithed “We will go,” said Raffles, ‘and we will chance being seen. If the worst comes to the worst this good chap will prove that I have been tied up since 1 o'clock this morning, and the medical evidence will decide how long those dogs have been dead.” But the worst did not come to the worst, more power to my unforgotten friend the cabman, who never came forward to say what manner of men he had driven to Bloomsbury Square at top speed on the very day upon which the tragedy discovered there, or whence he had driven them. To be sure, they had not behaved like murderers, whereas the evidence at the inquest all went to show that the defunct Cortbucci was little better. His reputation, which transpired with his identity, was that of a libertine and a renegade, while the infernal ap- paratus upstairs revealed the fiendish The inquiry resulted eventually in an open lt wes difficult to believe verdict and was chiefly instrumenta! in killing such compassion as is usually felt for the dead who die in their sins. But Raffles wovld pot have passed this title for this tale. (THE END.) {NEXT SATURDAY _ “To Catch a Thief,’”} the Eleventh Adventure of “RAFFLES, THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN”’ There will be Thirteen Adventures 1n this new series, a complete story every Saturday, i O eat candle ends, all, might s trick to perform, but you really will not mind it at all If you use the right kind of candles, Take some few pieces le as p wicks and ‘ge apples and cut out a near the shape of a can- Ma, making them flit at the top. New cut a few slips from sweet almonds, shaping them like a candle wick, ag shown in figure B. Stick one hem in each apple pI and put one r two of the Iatter in candlesticks on 4 small tray. the others in a pile, says the Chicago Inter-Ocean. They should look as nearly as po sible like figure A, or, in other words, like the real article, Light the wiek, and let it burn for a few seconds to make it dark, and then set the stick aside until vou are ready to use it, which must be in a few minutes. for if deft too long the apple may darken Now tell your friends that you pro- e to eat the candles, as during your ‘ayely in the Russian empire’ you learned to like them, as the Russians do, Then ght the almond wicks, and having allowed them to burn a moment, which they will readily do, blow them out, and put the ‘candles" into your mouth, one after the other, and eat them, Whbn this trick has been shown, amuse and mystify your friends w'th (io magic rings, Por this you will have to get @ blacksmith to make you a number of iron rings six or seven inches in diamvter, and about as thick ‘as a lead pencil, at shown in the illus tration. A 1s made with @ spring opening at ‘one point, H represents two ef the rings forked pe:manentty within each ather; C le a mt of throw rings forged in the same are manner as B, and D D ings. one on the other, and YY wil lonk like separate rings. At the bottom place C, on them put A, then B, and on top D and D. Pass the top ring, D, around for inspection. If my other is w let the other D be passed around, When they have been returned to you grasp all the rings firmly and tell the company that you koing to weave them together. Cl. them together, Say some words made up nd, and bring out B. They will t ‘ou have linked these two. Hand them around for examination, and when they come back mix some confusing bring out C. Now take A in your hand, ing it so that no in it, pas rin, of C. together, are them all up. westures, making and then and hold- one can see the spring through it one of the outer You now have Hold the: four rings ‘m up and wave them a py a then quickly and dexter- ously pick up D and slip it id oslip it through the spring. Show the five rings, Z Mix them all up : ein. and while dos ing so, slip off D and substitute 3B, Which will give you six rings joined Hefore the company has re {ts astonishment, into a box, and lways wovered from sweep the whole lot 1 turn to another trick keep y mur thumb over the ring In A. so that the spectators cane vt see it, If you use mos rings, which you to do, designs, but to keep one a litte practice will enable you can weave all sorts you must always ma: ring, D, at Mberty, iz Is one of the simplest and at the same time one of the cleverest tricks, and never falls to excite wonder If neat. Iv done. Practice Js all you need to ac- quire the necessary skill —_ Cows and Diamond S ver AFRICA'S first Mamonds Were paid for in cows. The story 1s told by Joseph B, Robinson, one of the wealthy pioneers of that coun- try, In 1819 he gave eight oxen and a wagon loaded with sugar and tobacco to 4 native in exchange for a twenty. three-carat gem. ‘Tho news spread uke wildfire through the countryside that a white man was giving away ons and oxen for bits of stone,” he says, “I set all the natives who camo to work tv seek for diamonds on one side of the Vaal River and I brought up my own fifty men to hunt for dia- monds among the bushes and scrub on the other side of ‘the stream. “On thom found a diamond of wood sige; they ull came to see what 1 would do with it, ‘What will ypu give me for it? waid the Minder. ‘4 wh give you ten caws,’ I replied, an@ @en the man into the herd to take his pick, He marked ton of the best cows as his own, ‘The men had never dreamed of making puch a bargain, ‘Yen cows for nd found’ diamonds every fay. They Docume: ten and T jaccums s slore @t precious #tones,””