The evening world. Newspaper, July 15, 1905, Page 9

7 ip ERS Price 1 Cent, Including Fiction Supplement ni Tenth Adventure. ME Last & 2 LAUGH. By E, W. HORNUNG. Copyright, 1899, by Charles Scribner's Sons ) € S I have had occasion to remark elsewhere, the pick of our exploits, from a frankly criminal point of view are of least use for the comparatively pure purposes of these Papers. They might be appreciated in a trade Journal (if only taat want could be supplied) by skilled manipulators of the jimmy and the large light bunch, but as records of unbroken yet insignificant success they would be found at once too trivial and too technical if not fitable into the bargain, The latter epithets and worse have indeed already been ap- plied, if not to Raffles and all his works, at least to mine upon Raffles by more than one worthy wielder of a virtuous pen. I need not say how heartily J disagree with that truly pious opinion. So far from admitting a single word of it, I maintain it is the liveliest warning that I am giving to the world Raffles was a genius, and he could not make it pay! Raffles had invention, resource, incomparable au dacity and a nerve in ten thousand. He was both strategian and tactician, and we all now know the difference between the two. Yet for months he had sordid and unp been hiding like a rat in a hole, unable to show even his altered face by night or day without ris unless another risk were courted by three inches of conspicuous crape. ‘Then thus far our rewards had oftener than not been no reward at all, Altogether it was a very different story from the old festive, unsuspe ambras. ed club and cricket days, with th auae at tne Albany. And now, in addition to the eternal peril of rec= ognition there was yet another menace of which I knew nothing. I thought no more of our Neapoli- tan organ-grinders, though I did often think of the moving page that they had torn for me out of my friend's strange life in Italy. Raffles never alluded to the subject again, and for my part I had entirely forgotten his wild ideas connecting the crgan-grinders with the Camorra and imagining them upon his own tracks. {heard no more of it and thought as little, as I say. Then one night in the autumn—I shrink from shocking the su:- ceptitle for nothing—ut there nad when we got there Raflles would pass on. I could see no soul in sight, no glimmer In the windows. But Raffles had my arm, and on we went with- Out talking about it. Sharp to the left on the Notting Hill side, sharper still up Silver strect and p “Pajama Tr noctes a certain house in Palace Gardens treet, a little tacking west and south, a plunge across High sently we were home. first,” said Raffles with as much authority as though it mat- tered. It was a warm night, however, though September, and I did not mind till I came in clad as he commanded to find the autocrat himself still booted and cupped. He was peeping through the blind and the gas was sull turned down, But he said that I could turn it up as he helped himself to a cigarette and nothing with it. y I mix you-one?” said I, No, thanks.” “What's the trouble?” We were followed.” Never!” “You never saw it.” “But you never looked round,” “I have an eye at the back of each ear, Bunny,” T helped myself and I fear with less moderation than might have been the case 1 minute before, “So that was why”"—— “That was why," said Raffles, nodding; but he did not smile and I put down my glass untouched. “They were following us then!" “All up Palace Garden “I thought you wound about coming back over the hill.” “Nevertheless one of them’s in the strect below at this moment.” No. he was not flooling me. He was ver m. And he had not taken off a thing; perhaps he did not think it worth while. “Plain clothes?" I sighed, following the sartorial train of thought even to the loathly arrows that had decorated my person once already for a little geon, Next time they would give me double. The skilly was in my stom- ach when I saw Raffles's face. “Who said it was the police, Bunny?” said he. “It’s the Italians, They're only after me; they won't hurt a hair of your head, let alone crop- ping it! Have a drink and don't mind me, 1 shall score them off before I'm dene.” “And I'll help you!” “No, old chap, you won't. This is my own little show. I've known about it for weeks, I first tumbled to it the day those Neapolitans came back with their organs, though I didn’t seriously suspect things then; they Bever came again, those two, they had done their part. That's the Ca- morra all over, from all accounts. The Count I told you about is pretty high up in it by the way he spoke, but there will be grades and grades between him ang the organ-grinders, I shouldn't be surprised if he had every low-down Neapolitan ice-creamer in the town upon my tracks! The organization's ineredible. Then do you remember the superior foreigner who came to the door a few days afterward? You said he had velvet eyes,” “I never connected him with those two!” “Of course you didn't, Bunny, so you threatened to kick the fellow downstairs, and only made them keener on the scent, It was too late to Say anything when you told mg, But the very next time J showed my nosa Outside I heard » camera click ae 1 passed, and the lend was # person with . ‘eid, GA ie eae nae: ws FICTION SUPPLEMENT, NEW YORK, SATURDAY. JULY 15 1905. (Copyright 1905, by the Prevs Publishing Company.) velvet eyes. Then there was a lull. That happened weeks ago. They had sent me to Italy for identification by Count Corbucci.” “But this is all theory,” T exclaimed. ‘How on earth can you know?” “I don't know,” said Raffles, “but I sheuld like to bet. Our friend the bloodhound is hanging about the corner near the pillar box. Look through my window, it's dark in there, and tell me who he i. The man was too far away for me to swear to his face, but he wore a covert coat of un-English length, and the lamp across the road played steadily on his boots. They were very yéllow and they made no nolse when he took a turn. I strained my eyes, and all at once I remembered the thin- soled, low-heeled, splay yellow boots of the insidious foreigner with thc soft eyes and the brown-paper face whom I had turned from the door as a palpable fraud. The ring at the bell was the first I had heard of him, there had been no warning step upen the stairs and my suspicious eye had searched his feet for rubber soles, “It's the fellow,” I said, returning to Raffles, and I described his Soots. Raffles was delighted. “Well done, Bunny; you're coming on,” said he. ‘Now I wonder if he's been over here ail the time or if they sent him over expressly? You did better than you think in spotting those boots, for they can only have been made in Italy, and that looks like the special envoy. But it’s no use speculating. I must find out.” “How can you?" “He won't stay there all night.” “Well?” “When he gets tired of it I shall return the compliment and follow him." “Not alone.” said I firmly. “Well, we'll sec: we'll see at once” said Raffles, rising. “Ont with the gas, Bunny, while I take a look. Thank you. Now wait a bit * - 8 yes! He's chucked it; he's off already. and so am I!" But J slipped to our outer door and held the passage. “I don’t let you go alone, you know.” “You can’t come with me in pajamas.” low I see why you made me put them on!" “Bunny, if you don’t shift I shall have to shift you. This is my very private one-man show. But I'll be back in an hour—there!” “You swear?” “By all my sods.” I gave in. How could I help giving in? He did not look the man that he had been, but you never knew with Raffles, and I could not have him Jay a hand on me. I let him go with a shrug and my blessing, then ran into his room to see the last of him from the window. The creature in the coat and boots had reache the end of our little street, where he appeared to have hesitated, so that Raffles was just in time to see which way he turned. And Raffles was after him at an easy pace, and had himself almost reached the corner when my attention was is- tracted from the alert monchalamce of his gait. I was marvelling that it alone had net long ago betrayed him, fer nothing about him was 5) uncon sciously characteristic when suddenly I realized ‘nat Ratios was net the only person in the little lonely etreet. Amoihor pedestrian hud entered from the other end a man heavily bullt and clad with 1 astrakhan collar to his coat on this warm night and a black slouch hat thai hid his features from my bird's-eye view. ‘His steps were the shert and shuffling ones of a man advanced in years and in fatty degenerativn, Lut of a sudden they stopped beneath my very eyes. I could have drepped a marble into the dented crown of the black felt hat, Then at the same moment Raffles turned the corner without looking round, amd the bir man below raised both his bands and his face, Of the latter J saw, only the huge white mus- tache, Uke # fying gull, as Ra@les had described tt, ror at a glance | dined that this was his arch-enemy. the Count Corbucei himself. I did not stop to consider the subtleness of the systam by which the real hunter lagged behind while his subordinate pointed the quarry like a sporting dog. I left the Count shuffling onward faster than before. and I jumped into some clothes as though the flats were on fire. If the Count was going to follow Raffles in his turn then I would follow the Count in mine. and there would be a midnight p: town, Rut I found no sign of him in the empty Earl's Court road. ession of us through the treet and no sign {n the that looked as empty for all its length save for a natural enemy standing like a waxwork with a glimmer at his belt “Officer.” I g: ed “have you seen avything of an old gentlerian itl, a big white mustache?" The unlicked cub of a common constable seemed to eye me the more suspiciously fer the flattering form of my address. “Took a hansom,” said he at length. A hansom! Then he was not following the others on foot: th no guessing his game. But something must be sald or done. “He's a friend of mine,” I explained, “and I want to overtake him. Did you hear where he told the fellow to drive? ere was A curt negative was the policeman’s reply to that, and if ever I take part in a night assault-at-arms. revolver versus baton In the back kitchen, I knew which member of the Metropolitan Police Force I should like for My opponent If there was no overtaking the Count however, it should be a com- paratively simple matter in the case of the couple on foot. and I wildly hailed the first hansom that crawled into my ken, I must tell Raffles who it was that I had seen. The Earl's Court read was long and the time since he vanished in it but a few short minutes. I drove down the length of that useful thoroughfare with an eye apiece on either pavement, sweeping each as with a brush, but never a Raffles came into the pan. Then I tried the Fulham road. first to the west, then to the east, and in the end drove home to the flat as bold as brass. I did not realize my indiscretion until I had Daid the man and was on the stairs. Raffles never dreamed of driving all the way back, but I was hoping now to find him waiting up above, He had said an hour. I had remembered it suddenly. And now the hour was more than up, But the flat was as empty as I had left it. Tho very light that had encouraged me, pale though it was, as I turned the corner in my han- som, was but the light that 1 myself had left burning in the desolate pas Sage. I can give you no conception of the night that I spent. Most of it 1 ung across the sill, throwing a wide net with my ears, catching every footstep afar off, every hansem bell further still, only to gather in some alien whom | seldom even landed in our street. Then I would listen at the door. He might come over the roof, and eventually some one did, but mow it was broad daylight, and I flung the door open in the milkman’s face, which whitened at the shock as though I had ducked him in his own pail “You're late,” 1 thundered as the first excuse for my excitement to have been waiting hours for milk to make him a cup of tea.” This little fib (ready enough for a Raffles, though I say it,) earned me not only forgiveness but that obliging sympathy which is a branch of the business of the man at the door jutting over’ the flaps tha? he had turned up to hide his pajamas. “What's this about a bac night?" said he. "He couldn't sleep and he wouldn't let me,” 1 whispered, never loosening my grasp on the door and The Adventuses of RAFFLES. No. 10. eg your pardon,” said he indignantly, “but I'm half an hour Lefore my usual tit “Then I beg yours,” said I, “but the fact is Mr, Maturin has had one of his | so0d fellow said that he could see I had been sitting up all night, and he left me pluming myself upon the accidental art with which I had told my very necessary tarradiddle, On reflection I gaye the credit to fnstinet, and then sighed afresh as I realized how the influence of the master was sinking into me, and he heaven knew where! But my punishment was swift to follow, for within the hour the bell rang imperiously fwice, and there was Dr. Theobald on our mabin a yellow Jaeger suit, with a chin as yellow a