E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 Read Online Free

breath to
sing out it would have been all up with me then; as it was I pulled
off my coat the moment I was round the corner, and took a ticket for
it at the Empress Rooms."
    "I suppose you had one for the dance that was going on," I growled.
Nor would it have been a coincidence for Raffles to have had a
ticket for that or any other entertainment of the London season.
    "I never asked what the dance was," he returned. "I merely took the
opportunity of revising my toilet, and getting rid of that rather
distinctive overcoat, which I shall call for now. They're not too
particular at such stages of such proceedings, but I've no doubt I
should have seen someone I knew if I had none right in. I might
even have had a turn, if only I had been less uneasy about you,
Bunny."
    "It was like you to come back to help me out," said I. "But to lie
to me, and to inveigle me with your lies into that house of all
houses - that was not like you, Raffles - and I never shall forgive
it or you!"
    Raffles took my arm again. We were near the High Street gates of
Palace Gardens, and I was too miserable to resist an advance which I
meant never to give him an opportunity to repeat.
    "Come, come, Bunny, there wasn't much inveigling about it," said he.
"I did my level best to leave you behind, but you wouldn't listen
to me."
    "If you had told me the truth I should have listened fast enough," I
retorted. "But what's the use of talking? You can boast of your own
adventures after you bolted. You don't care what happened to me."
    "I cared so much that I came back to see."
    "You might have spared yourself the trouble! The wrong had been
done. Raffles - Raffles - don't you know who she was?"
    It was my hand that gripped his arm once more.
    "I guessed," he answered, gravely enough even for me.
    "It was she who saved me, not you," I said. "And that is the
bitterest part of all!"
    Yet I told him that part with a strange sad pride in her whom I had
lost - through him - forever. As I ended we turned into High Street;
in the prevailing stillness, the faint strains of the band reached
us from the Empress Rooms; and I hailed a crawling hansom as Raffles
turned that way.
    "Bunny," said he, "it's no use saying I'm sorry. Sorrow adds insult
in a case like this - if ever there was or will be such another!
Only believe me, Bunny, when I swear to you that I had not the
smallest shadow of a suspicion that she was in the house."
    And in my heart of hearts I did believe him; but I could not bring
myself to say the words.
    "You told me yourself that you had written to her in the country,"
he pursued.
    "And that letter!" I rejoined, in a fresh wave of bitterness: "that
letter she had written at dead of night, and stolen down to post,
it was the one I have been waiting for all these days! I should
have got it to-morrow. Now I shall never get it, never hear from
her again, nor have another chance in this world or in the next.
I don't say it was all your fault. You no more knew that she was
there than I did. But you told me a deliberate lie about her
people, and that I never shall forgive."
    I spoke as vehemently as I could under my breath. The hansom was
waiting at the curb.
    "I can say no more than I have said," returned Raffles with a shrug.
"Lie or no lie, I didn't tell it to bring you with me, but to get
you to give me certain information without feeling a beast about it.
But, as a matter of fact, it was no lie about old Hector Carruthers
and Lord Lochmaben, and anybody but you would have guessed the
truth."
    "'What is the truth?"
    "I as good as told you, Bunny, again and again."
    "Then tell me now."
    "If you read your paper there would be no need; but if you want to
know, old Carruthers headed the list of the Birthday Honors, and
Lord Lochmaben is the title of his choice."
    And this miserable quibble was not a lie! My lip curled, I turned
my back without a word, and drove home to my Mount Street flat in
a new fury of savage scorn. Not a lie, indeed! It was the one
that is half a