Ellery Queen’s Anthology. Volume 38, Fall/Winter 1979

Barry Perowne The Raffles Bombshell

Another adventure of Mr. A. J. Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman and Cricketer... Raffles is the most famous Gentleman Burglar in the annals of English crime-writing — his name is perhaps better known around the world than even that of his French peer, Arsène Lupin, and no early American thief or con man — not Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford or The Gray Seal or Jimmy Valentine or Jeff Peters or The Phantom Crook or the Infallible Godahl — has reached the pinnacle of international fame to stand beside Raffles and Lupin. In this period piece about Raffles, faithful in every detail to its turn-of-the-century tone and background, the great A. J. adds an unusual crime (unusual for him) to his usual second-story work — and adds it with his customary style, which is an appealing kind of English élan.

It so happened that A. J. Raffles was batting when the open carriage with the four portly gentlemen in it entered Lord’s Cricket Ground.

A sibilance of whispers ran around the stands, gay with parasols, blazers, and boaters in the heat-shimmer, and from where I was sitting, on a bench on the pavilion terrace, I heard some woman behind me ask:

“Who are they?”

“The one with the beard and the white Homburg hat,” a man’s voice answered, “is the King.”

“Oh, how exciting! Who’s that sitting beside him?”

“That’s John L. Sullivan, the great prize-fighter.”

“Fancy the King going about with prize-fighters!”

“There’s only one John L. Sullivan, my dear,” the man said tolerantly. “He’s in London on a visit, and the King’s very taken with him. I expect he wants to show Mr. Sullivan something of our summer game. Americans don’t play it, you know.”

“How strange of them! Oh, look, there’s a different flag going up the flagstaff!”

The carriage, with its two tophatted coachmen on the box, and its two fine black horses arching their proud necks against the bearing-reins, was standing now just to the right of the pavilion terrace, in a good position to watch the game.

As the Royal Standard shimmered red-and-gold at the summit of the flagstaff, the crowd rose to its feet with a rustle, and the white-flannelled players in their various positions on the great circle of emerald turf faced the carriage and doffed their cricket caps.

The interruption was brief. King Edward VII was a great sportsman, his visit was informal, and with a genial gesture he intimated that play should be resumed.

“There seem to be a lot of policemen about, all of a sudden,” said the woman sitting behind me.

“When the King appears, the bobbies pop up everywhere,” explained her companion. “Oh, good shot! Well hit, sir!”

Raffles had struck a ball from Kortright, the fastest bowler in the world, firmly to the boundary.

“The King’s talking to Mr. Sullivan about something,” said the chatterbox.

“He’s probably explaining to Mr. Sullivan the technique of that shot A. J. Raffles just made.”

“They’re lighting cigars,” said the chatterbox. “Mr. Sullivan has a diamond ring and stickpin.”

“My dear, I beg you,” said her companion, “stop staring at the royal carriage. It’s simply not done.”

“Those poor horses! Why don’t the coachmen put nosebags on them to munch in?”

“Evidently the King doesn’t intend to stay long — probably just till the Tea Interval, which is due at four o’clock. Now, please, do pay attention to the game.”

It was at an interesting stage. Raffles had scored 73, so there was a good chance of his reaching his hundred by teatime. The sun blazed down. Except for the sound of bat meeting ball, and an occasional ripple of handclapping, an increasingly tense hush brooded over the ground as the hands of the pavilion clock crept toward the hour of four.

Suddenly, just as the burly Kortright was making his run up to the wicket to launch one of his thunderbolts at Raffles, a wild scream pierced the silence. Kortright almost fell. Recovering himself, he glared off to his left, towards the stand on the side opposite the royal carriage.

“Oh!” gasped the woman behind me. “Whatever’s happening?”

From a swirling of the crowd in the stand over there, I saw a lithe, lightly-built figure break free, vault the low rail, and run out onto the turf. The interloper wore white flannel trousers and a pink blazer. I glimpsed dark glasses under the floppy brim of a white linen hat, but it was the globular object in the interloper’s hand which wrenched a concerted gasp of horror from the crowd.

“Oh, my God!” muttered a man sitting beside me. “A nihilist!”

From the globular object, considerably larger than a cricket ball, dangled a length of fuse from which, as the interloper hurled the object, overarm, high through the air toward the wicket, trailed a thin feather of smoke.

The bomb landed in midwicket, between the two batsmen. The interloper came running on towards the King’s carriage. Bobbies raced out to head the interloper off. Seeing them coming, the interloper whipped off the floppy linen hat and dark glasses. Long hair, of a honey colour in the sunshine, rippled down over the interloper’s shoulders as, flinging up her hands, she cried out, “Your Majesty—”

Her further words were lost to me, for the bobbies were on her. Crowd and players alike were struck to immobility — all save one. Raffles, his bat raised, was running toward the bomb, which lay with its fuse smoking and rapidly sputtering on the turf.

“Leave it, Raffles!” I was on my feet, shouting at him, in panic. “Don’t touch it! Stand back!”

But Raffles slammed down his bat on the fuse. It must have been quickmatch, for it still sputtered fiercely. Raffles threw aside his bat, snatched up the bomb with one batting-gloved hand, jerked the fuse right out of it with the other.

Dropping the little that remained of the fuse, Raffles trod it out with his nailed cricket boot, and, seeing a bobby approaching at the double, lobbed the now harmless bomb to him as casually as if it had been a cricket ball.

A collective sigh of relief went up from the crowd.

“What was she shouting about?” asked the chatterbox behind me, as a group of bobbies hustled the bomb-thrower, quite a young woman, away to some waiting Black Maria. “It sounded like ‘Women of England’ and ‘concubinage.’ What’s concubinage?”

“It’s a form of... uh... subjugation,” replied the chatterbox’s escort, sounding embarrassed. “By God, though, that was quick thinking by Raffles — a jolly good show! Listen to the people clapping for him!”

“There’s a gentleman from the King’s carriage gone over to speak to him,” said the chatterbox. “Oh, look, the gentleman’s taking him to meet the King! D’you think Mr. Raffles will be knighted or something?”

“Hardly that,” replied her escort. “Still, congratulations are in order — though, of course, Raffles may merely have been thinking that he didn’t want a hole blown in the turf before he’d scored his hundred.”

“Sir,” I said, turning my head to look the fellow in the eye, “as a personal friend of A. J. Raffles, I resent that remark. No such thought would have entered his head. His action was instinctive — and typical of him.”

“I beg your pardon,” the young fellow said, with a flush. “I confess the remark was unwarranted. I gladly withdraw it. Uh, come, Daisy dear, I think perhaps we’d better go to tea now.”

The couple sidled off, the fellow shamefaced, his chatterbox companion looking back at me curiously.

I glanced across at the royal carriage. Raffles, standing beside it, still wearing his batting-pads, doffed his cap as the King shook hands with him and introduced him to John L. Sullivan. Knowing Raffles as I did, I knew he would not fail to note, as he shook hands with the great pugilist, Mr. Sullivan’s diamond ring and stickpin; but I also knew that, King Edward himself having made the introduction, Mr. Sullivan’s belongings would remain taboo as far as Raffles was concerned.

A hand gripped my arm. It was the man who had been sitting beside me.

“Did I hear you say, sir,” he asked, “that you’re a personal friend of A. J. Raffles?”

“I am indeed, sir.”

“In that case, I should appreciate it if you would introduce me to him. I see that His Majesty’s carriage is departing and the Tea Interval is now upon us. If you could arrange for me to meet Mr. Raffles during the interval, I should be most grateful. I have a proposal to make to him.”

Though he had been sitting beside me all afternoon, I had not until now taken much note of the man. Impeccably dressed in grey cutaway and grey topper, he was tall and thin, with a sallow, haughty face and a ribboned monocle.

“A proposal?” I said cautiously.

“I am Lord Pollexfen, of the Pollexfen Press. Sir, just listen to this crowd!”

As umpires and players were coming to the pavilion, which Raffles already had entered by a side door, the crowd in the stands was chanting, to rhythmic handclaps, “We — want — A. J. Raffles! We — want — A. J. Raffles!”

“You are hearing, sir,” said Lord Pollexfen, “the Voice of Britain! Within an hour, newsboys will be crying on the London streets the name of A. J. Raffles — a name already well-known as standing for all that is finest in English sporting life. To-morrow he will be the subject of laudatory editorials in every newspaper in the land. For some time I’ve been seeking a name for a project I have in mind. Sir, I have found that name!”

His monocle glittered compellingly at me.

“The iron is hot,” said Lord Pollexfen. “Will you please tell your friend Mr. Raffles that I should like to discuss with him immediately the launching of a magazine — a monthly magazine of the highest class — a magazine, edited by himself, to be called A. J. Raffles’ Magazine of Sport.”

To cricketers the world over, the Long Room at Lord’s is little short of a shrine. And it was in this historic chamber, with the sunshine from its open windows mellow on panelled walls and priceless trophies, that the foundations of Raffles’ Magazine were laid.

He himself determined my own role in the project. Keen of face, his dark hair crisp, his blazer and muffler sporting the colours of the noted I Zingari Club, he put a hand on my shoulder.

“I’d like to point out, Lord Pollexfen,” he said, “that my friend here, Bunny Manders, is himself a skilful journalist. While I’m prepared to figure as Editor of the proposed magazine, my sporting engagements occupy most of my time. I should need the practical conduct of the magazine, under my general guidance as regards policy, to be in capable hands — and I can think of no more capable Assistant Editor than Bunny Manders here. How d’you feel about that, Bunny?”

It was true that, on Raffles’ advice, I dabbled in freelance journalism as a cover for the more lucrative activities in which I was his confederate.

“I shall be happy to cooperate,” I said.

To this, Lord Pollexfen made no objection, and he proceeded to suggest that an honorarium for Raffles would be appropriate, and for my own services an emolument in the nature of a salary. Though delicately enough phrased, the actual sums mentioned by the Press baron were nothing to write home about, but Raffles accepted them with casual inconsequence.

When the peer had gone off to arrange about office space and staff for us in the Pollexfen Press Building in Covent Garden I said that I felt we might have made a better bargain.

“Why strain at sprats, Bunny,” Raffles said, “when there may be mackerel in the offing?”

“You have some idea, Raffles?”

“That depends, Bunny.”

“On what?”

“On the girl who threw the bomb. You heard what she was shouting about. It may have possibilities.” Raffles’ grey eyes danced as he offered me a Sullivan from his cigarette-case. “She’ll be up in front of the magistrate at Marlborough Street to-morrow morning. We’ll be there.”

In addition to her honey-coloured hair, the girl in the dock at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court next morning proved to have other attractions. She had spent the night in a cell, but evidently someone, possibly her solicitor, had wisely brought her more appropriate attire in which to appear before the magistrate than the trousers she had worn at Lord’s.

Her name was Mirabel Renny, and she was a fine figure of a girl, standing there in the dock, though her proud bearing and defiant expression were at variance with the moving plea which her solicitor, quite a young man, made on her behalf.

“My client, Your Honour,” he said, “as the only girl in a family dominated by her father and five large, athletic brothers, naturally occupied a subordinate place. As Your Honour is doubtless aware, pernicious literature about the social and political status of the female sex has been filtering into this country from the United States. Some of it chanced to fall into the hands of my client, who, in her girlish simplicity, was so unduly moved by it as to leave her country home and come to London. Here she lodged at a Ladies’ Hostel in Fulham, where she fell in with some elder persons of her sex who likewise had been infected by these imported fallacies.”

The girl opened her mouth, as though about to rebut her own solicitor’s statement, but the young lawyer continued hastily, to forestall her.

“No doubt in a pathetic attempt to emulate her brothers’ athletic prowess,” he said, “my client has acquired, Your Honour, a taste and aptitude for outdoor pastimes — golf, croquet, tennis, archery, horseback-riding, to name but a few. Taking advantage of these admittedly hoydenish proclivities of my client, the elder persons at the Ladies’ Hostel prevailed upon her to be the instrument of yesterday’s lamentable demonstration at Lord’s Cricket Ground — a demonstration which she now deeply regrets.”

I saw the girl’s hands, lightly sun-tanned, clench hard on the rail of the dock. Again she opened her mouth, but her solicitor hastened on.

“If Your Honour pleases,” he said, “any actual damage to the turf at Lord’s, the immemorial headquarters of our summer game, would have been viewed with repugnance by my client, with her sporting inclinations, however little they may become her in other respects. Indeed, as Inspector Harrigan has stated in evidence, the bomb-casing could not possibly have been fragmented by the detonation of its contents, consisting as these did merely of small fireworks — Chinese crackers or squibs.”

This was news to Raffles and myself, who had arrived while the hearing was in progress, and we exchanged a surprised glance.

“In view of the fact, Your Honour,” pleaded the solicitor, “that the bomb was designed only as a means of attracting attention, and that my client now bitterly regrets the incident, I ask Your Honour to exercise leniency in this case.”

The magistrate, after addressing some stern remarks to the defendant in the dock, said, “The fine will be ten guineas, with two guineas costs. Next case!”

“Come on, Bunny,” said Raffles.

To my astonishment, he sought out the functionary who collected fines and paid the girl’s fine. As he returned his wallet to his pocket, Miss Mirabel Renny and her attendant solicitor came to the desk, and the functionary, indicating Raffles, said that the fine had been paid.

Though Raffles was now wearing an immaculate town suit, with a pearl in his cravat, the girl immediately recognized him.

“Why, you’re the man who was batting at Lord’s when I—” She broke off. Her fine eyes flashed. “How dare you,” she said hotly, “presume to pay my fine? I’m not in need of charity from men!”

“No charity is involved,” Raffles assured her. “The amount will be deducted from your first month’s salary.”

“Salary?” she exclaimed. “What d’you mean? What are you talking about?”

“The post of Contributing Editor on a magazine now in the fruitful planning stage,” said Raffles. “If such a post, with the opportunity it provides for the dissemination of opinion, should happen to appeal to you, Miss Renny—”

No question about it. She jumped at it. And, as the next few weeks proved, Raffles could not have made a happier choice of young sportswoman to help in carrying out the editorial policy on which he had decided.

As he explained to Mirabel Renny and myself, before he went off to join cricketing house parties at some of the stately homes of the country, “Sport is in the English blood — which biologically, as far as I know, is no different in women from what it is in men. So we want to produce a well-balanced magazine which will equitably represent the interests and views of those of both sexes who have a taste for active pastimes.”

Mirabel’s enthusiasm knew no bounds. She threw herself heart and soul into executing the role he assigned to her. She was a dynamo of activity. Our office in the Pollexfen Press Building looked out on Covent Garden, from which rose the clip-clopping hoofbeats of the horses drawing tumbrils ablaze with flowers, while market porters bustled about with tall, round towers of fruit-baskets balanced on their heads in the sunshine.

We were untroubled by Lord Pollexfen, as Raffles had insisted on full editorial control. Raffles himself was active in the background on our behalf and, thanks to his influence, marvellous literary material came in, for merely token fees, from some of the greatest names in the world of sport.

What with this, and with Mirabel’s aptitude and energy, my own task in putting together our first issue was far from onerous. Usually, at about noon, I would suggest that I take her to lunch, for she looked charming in the blue skirt and white shirtwaist, crisp and businesslike, which she wore to the office. But it was rarely that she would leave her work.

“You go ahead, Mr. Manders,” she said. “I shall just have a sandwich and a cigarette.”

She made out that she smoked Sullivans, like Raffles, but I knew this was just a gesture of emancipation, as cigarettes made her cough. But I would leave her to it and saunter across the Strand, bustling with hansoms in the sunshine, for a leisurely lunch and a few rubbers of whist at my club in the Adelphi, dropping back to the office at about four o’clock for a last supervisory look round before returning to my Mount Street flat to take a tub and dress for dinner. It was not a bad life, the editorial life.

I sent Raffles a card, care of the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, whose guest he was while playing cricket there, to let him know when the foundry proofs, the final proofs of our first issue fully made-up, were due from the printers, the McWhirter Printing & Engraving Company, in Long Acre. He turned up, looking tanned and fit, the same morning as the proofs arrived and was very pleased with them.

“A great job, Bunny! You and Mirabel have done wonders. Our first issue’s a corker. It’ll open a new era in sporting journalism.”

There was a knock on the door. Lord Pollexfen strode in.

“Ah, good morning, Raffles,” he said. “Good morning, Manders. Mr. McWhirter, the Master Printer, tells me he’s delivered your foundry proofs. I’d like a look at them before deciding how many thousands of copies to venture on as a printing order.”

Raffles handed him the proofs, and I offered him a sherry-and-bitters, which Raffles and I were drinking as a mid-morning refreshment. The peer shook his head, pushed his silk hat to the back of it, and, still standing, screwed his monocle into his eye to examine the proofs.

“A splendid Contents page, gentlemen,” he said. “Such names! John L. Sullivan — Lord Lonsdale of the Lonsdale Belts — Sir Harry Preston on the subject of Tod Sloan, the great jockey — Vardon on golf — Prince Ranjisinjhi on tiger-shooting! Excellent! Outstanding!”

“We owe those contributions to our Editor,” I said, indicating Raffles, who was sitting on the edge of my desk, swinging a leg idly.

“I foresaw something of this, of course, when I approached him,” said the Press baron. “I knew what I was doing. I always do.” He turned the pages. His smile faded. “What’s this? What are these interpolated effusions by women?”

“Those are articles,” Raffles said, “obtained by our Contributing Editor from various eminent ladies with active tastes.”

“But good God, man! John L. Sullivan’s article on boxing followed by some female whining about the exclusion of her sex from witnessing the bouts staged at the National Sporting Club? This is monstrously out of place, Raffles!”

“I’m sorry to hear you say that, Pollexfen,” said Raffles.

“And here again — the great Harry Vardon on golf immediately followed by some woman bleating about the need for a more socially acceptable kind of garment as a first step to eradicating the insult to her sex in their being obliged to drive off more favoured tees than the men. What provocative nonsense! What does the idiotic woman mean — ‘a more socially acceptable kind of garment’?”

“It’s shown there in the illustrations,” Raffles said. “One illustration depicts the hampering effect on the golf swing of ankle-length skirt and petticoats in a high wind. The contrasting illustration shows the healthful freedom, both physical and psychological, provided by a garment, a form of trousering, specially designed by our own Contributing Editor.”

“This disgraceful illustration,” the peer said angrily, “appears to have been posed for by that young woman in the other office. I’ve seen her before somewhere. Isn’t she the one who threw the bomb at Lord’s?”

“Indeed yes,” said Raffles. “Our Contributing Editor.”

Lord Pollexfen threw the proof down on my desk. “I will not publish a magazine polluted through and through with this kind of subversive stuff. It’s entirely contrary to the policy of the Pollexfen Press, which is to keep women contented in their homes. I’m deeply disappointed, Raffles. This issue will have to be remade, omitting the offensive material. And call that young woman in. I intend to dismiss her instantly.”

“I’m sorry, Pollexfen,” Raffles said quietly. “I engaged Miss Renny. As a matter of principle, I will neither dismiss her nor alter one word of this first issue of my magazine.”

“Then, by God, you must look elsewhere for a publisher!”

“In that case, Manders and I will publish the magazine from our own resources. Shall we not, Bunny?”

“Certainly, Raffles,” I said, wondering uneasily what resources he was talking about, as we both were overdrawn at the bank.

“I warn you,” said the Press peer, glaring haughtily through his monocle. “A. J. Raffles is not the only name to conjure with on the sports horizon. I shall seek a superior name for my sports magazine — and use the entire financial resources of the Pollexfen Press to crush any amateurish attempt at a rival publication.”

“That is your privilege,” Raffles said courteously.

“I also decline,” barked the peer, “to be responsible for expenses incurred to date, including McWhirter’s bill, and I shall require vacant possession of this office by six p.m. today.”

He stalked out, slamming the door.

Raffles chuckled. “In chivalric terms, Bunny, there goes a male rampant, mounted on a prejudice, in a field ensanguined. Of course, this was inevitable.”

“You expected it?” I said, astonished.

“I counted on it, Bunny.” He offered me a cigarette from his case. “Well, now, first things first. We’re without premises. We’re overdrawn at the bank, but the manager’s a cricketer and a good friend. He won’t mind our using the bank as an accommodation address. Got a pencil handy? Take down this announcement.”

Lighting my cigarette and his own, he paced thoughtfully.

“ ‘Owing,’ ” he dictated, “ ‘to the refusal of the original publisher to permit the expression of female opinion, and therefore withdrawing financial support, prospective contributors to A. J. Raffles’ Magazine, which hopes soon to publish under less prejudiced auspices, are notified that unsolicited contributions should be submitted to The Editor, Raffles’ Magazine, care of County and Confidential Bank, Berkeley Square, London, accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return if unsuitable.’ That’s the conventional wording, I think, Bunny?”

“Well, more or less,” I said.

“Good,” said Raffles. “Run it in the Personal columns of all evening and daily newspapers till further notice. Now, another thing: as eligible bachelors, we both get plenty of invitations to dine out—”

“You in the best houses,” I said, “myself at the second best.”

“Comparisons are invidious,” said Raffles. “Accept all the invitations you get. I shall do the same. And we owe no duty to Pollexfen, so there’s no need to make it a secret, in mixed company, that we’ve parted from him, and the reason for it, and are trying to get out the magazine by using our private means. Now, let’s call Mirabel in and see if she’s prepared to stand by us in this crisis.”

One flash from Mirabel’s eyes, when she heard that we were now to go it alone, made it plain where she stood. So, for better or worse, I rented a bleak little office for us just off Drury Lane.

Money being tight, I was glad enough to dine out frequently, and it seemed to me, when I recounted our trouble with Lord Pollexfen, that the mirth of the men at the table was offensively raucous, but that some of the ladies looked at me sympathetically as they withdrew to the drawing-room and whatever ladies talk about there, and left us men to our port.

My leg was pulled unmercifully by some of these hearties, but my real worry was the Master Printer, Mr. McWhirter. We were in a galling position. We had a fine magazine made up and ready to print, but there was not a hope of a single copy coming off the presses of that canny Scotsman until his bill for services to date was paid.

“We shall have to call on somebody, Bunny,” Raffles said.

“Who, for instance?” I asked gloomily.

“A certain barrister who’s a member of one of my clubs, Bunny. His name’s Sir Geoffrey Cullimore, K.C. He’s a blustering brute who makes at least fifty thousand a year by reducing men to jelly in the witness-box, and women to tears.”

“Then what’s the use of calling on a man like that?” I said.

Raffles gave me a wicked look. “His wife has a valuable necklace, Bunny.”

My heart lurched.

The Cullimore mansion was in Eaton Square, and Raffles, masked, shinned up the porch pillar to pay his call, by way of the window of the master bedroom, at two a.m. on a moonless night. I myself waited below on the porch ready to reel out, in evening-dress and opera hat, and, enacting the role of a gentleman who had dined too extensively, confuse with maudlin inquiries the bobby on the beat if he should make an inopportune appearance.

Fortunately, he did not show up at all, and when Raffles rejoined me, removing his mask, he had the necklace-case in his pocket.

“It’s locked,” he told me. “I’ll pick the lock at Kern’s place.”

Ivor Kern, the fence we did business with, a young-old man with a perpetual, cynical half-smile, had an antique shop in King’s Road, which was not far off. Under the flaring gaslight in Kern’s cluttered sitting-room over the shop, Raffles picked the lock of the necklace-case and threw it open.

It was empty.

Raffles was as shocked as I was, but Kern’s smirk widened.

“ ‘Emmeline Cullimore,’ ” he said, reading the name embossed on the leather necklace-case. “Well, as it happens, I can tell you where that necklace is. It’s just across the road in the very secure safe of a pawnbroker friend of mine.”

“How d’you know?” Raffles said grimly.

“Because jewellery offered to him in pledge,” Kern said, “he usually brings over to me for an expert valuation before making an advance. A lady wanted to pledge a necklace with him this morning. She wore a veil and said her name was Doris Stevens, but he recognized her because she lives nearby, in Eaton Square. She was Lady Cullimore. I valued the necklace at two-thousand-and-seventy pounds. He gives ten per cent of value on pledges, so he let her have two-hundred-and-seven pounds on it. Bad luck, Raffles — you can’t win every time.”

We parted in silence, I to my flat in Mount Street, Raffles to his set of rooms in The Albany, just off Piccadilly.

To my surprise, he showed up at the office in Drury Lane next morning, and seemed to be in very good spirits.

“I have news for you, Bunny,” he said, as he poured himself a sherry-and-bitters. “I dropped in at the bank on my way here. Yesterday afternoon, just before closing-time, a lady made a deposit to the credit of A. J. Raffles’ Magazine. She wore a veil, and signed the paying-in slip in the name of Doris Stevens. It was a cash deposit, in five-pound notes, with two sovereigns, of exactly two-hundred-and-seven pounds.”

“Good God!” I said. “What d’you make of this, Raffles?”

His grey eyes danced. “One wonders, Bunny.” He took out his wallet. “I cashed a cheque for a hundred for incidental expenses — to keep our announcement running in the Personal columns, and to pay Mirabel’s salary, and so on, with a little ready money for ourselves. We shan’t need much, as we’re dining out so frequently nowadays.”

I accepted my share, and. was glad of it. But the McWhirter problem remained. He was badgering for his bill to be paid, and it obviously was quite useless to offer him, on account, the mere £107 remaining to the magazine’s credit, and expect him to print thousands of copies of our first issue on the strength of it.

I pointed this out to Raffles one morning about a week after the curious incident of the veiled lady.

He nodded regretfully. “We’re stymied, Bunny. The only thing we can do is go and see Lord Pollexfen. It’s no use prevaricating. We must be realistic. Come on, let’s go and take our medicine.”

“A damned bitter draught,” I said, as we put on our hats and walked round to Covent Garden, ablaze with the flower-barrows in the lovely sunshine. “If he does agree to take over the magazine again, it’ll be on his conditions — no female opinion, Mirabel to be sacked.”

Significantly, we were kept waiting for some time in the antechamber of the Pollexfen Press Building before we were admitted to Lord Pollexfen’s sanctum, which was almost as large as the Long Room at Lord’s.

The peer, without rising from his massive desk or inviting us to be seated, screwed his monocle into his eye.

“Well?” he said haughtily.

“I hear rumours in Fleet Street,” Raffles said, “that you’re going ahead with your plans for a sports magazine.”

“I informed you of my intention of doing so. I’ve found a suitable name for its bannerhead. What I say I will do, Raffles, I do.”

“Frankly, Pollexfen,” Raffles said, “we’ve run into certain difficulties — McWhirter and one thing and another. We’ve found the business side of producing a magazine a considerable encroachment on our time and — candidly — on our personal resources.”

“I warned you,” the peer said coldly. “Publishing is not for amateurs. If you’re here to seek a return to our former relationship, I’m not interested. My alternative plans are afoot. Now—”

“You expressed some interest,” Raffles said quickly, “in the literary material I obtained from personal acquaintances — Mr. John L. Sullivan — Prince Ranjisinjhi—”

The peer, his monocle fixedly regarding Raffles, withdrew his hand slowly from the bell on his desk.

“I could, I think,” Raffles said, “persuade those gentlemen, as a personal favour to me, to allow the transfer of their material to your own magazine, if you — oh, the devil! Manders and I aren’t business men. We’ve sunk more than we can afford into the magazine. If you’d care to consider acquiring its literary assets for a reasonable sum—”

“What d’you call a reasonable sum?” snapped the peer.

“Well, if you’d take over McWhirter’s bill to date,” Raffles said, “and... well, we’d like to get back a crumb or two of what we’ve spent. We could, of course, go to the City for finance — I have friends there — if we decide we must go on. But—”

“It interferes with your hedonistic way of life,” Lord Pollexfen said sarcastically.

Raffles shrugged. “I don’t know what we have left of the funds we personally put into the magazine’s bank account, Pollexfen, but if you care to pay a sum equal to the current balance, you can take over the magazine’s literary assets and all the work done so far — lock, stock, and barrel — and we’ll be free of the whole thing,” he added, with a gesture of weary disgust.

The Press baron hesitated. But he knew our present balance could not possibly be greater than the amount of McWhirter’s bill, and he said, with abrupt decision, “Very well. I’ll do that. Naturally, I shall require your bank manager to vouch for the amount currently standing to your magazine’s credit.”

“Won’t you take my word for it?” Raffles said coldly.

“I’m afraid not.” The peer struck a bell on his desk. The door opened. “Call my brougham,” said the peer, with hauteur. “Where’s your bank, Raffles?”

“In Berkeley Square.”

“Then let’s get the matter over and done with.”

As, to the clip-clopping of the horse, the three of us rode in the brougham through the turmoil of the sunny streets, I knew Raffles must be inwardly raging, as I was myself. If only Lord Pollexfen had accepted Raffles’ word for what stood to the magazine’s credit, then Raffles might have named a reasonably substantial sum. As it was, we were about to be humiliated, and the Press peer’s whole attitude betrayed his awareness of the fact.

“This is Lord Pollexfen,” Raffles told the bank manager, when we were shown into his office. “He’s acquiring the literary assets and so forth of Raffles’ Magazine, Mr. Harper, for a sum equal to the magazine account’s present balance — are you not, Pollexfen?”

“That is the agreement,” the peer said haughtily.

“I can tell you the balance in a trice,” said the bank manager, opening a large ledger.

I could have told him in less than a trice. Our balance was £107.

“At the conclusion of yesterday’s business,” said the manager, running a finger down the page, “the sum standing to the credit of A. J. Raffles’ Magazine of Sport was precisely seven-thousand-five-hundred pounds, sixteen shillings and—”

My knees felt weak. The room spun round me. There seemed to be long silence. Then there was a scratching sound. It was made by Lord Pollexfen’s pen. He was writing a cheque. He tore it out and threw it on the desk.

At the door, he turned, lean and tall, his monocle glittering.

“The name of A. J. Raffles,” he said, “will never again be mentioned in any periodical published by the Pollexfen Press.”

The door slammed.

A few minutes later, as Raffles and I were leaving the bank, I noticed a heavily veiled lady at the counter. Raffles gripped my arm, checking me. The lady pushed a sheaf of banknotes across the mahogany to the attentive clerk.

“To be placed,” said the veiled lady, in a voice so low, almost furtive, as scarcely to be audible, “to the credit of A. J. Raffles’ Magazine.”

We walked on out into the sunshine.

That night, we took Mirabel Renny and a friend of hers called Margaret, a fine, forthright type of girl, like Mirabel herself, to dine at Frascati’s palatial restaurant in Oxford Street.

“I’m afraid, Mirabel,” Raffles said, as the wine waiter brought champagne bottles in a silver ice-bucket to our table, “that you won’t be entirely pleased by the reason for this dinner. Perhaps we’d better admit the truth right away. The fact is, we’ve sold the magazine.”

“Sold it?” she said incredulously.

“For seven-thousand-five-hundred pounds,” Raffles said. “To Lord Pollexfen.”

“Pollexfen? But — but that means—”

“It means you’re sacked, I’m sorry to say,” Raffles admitted. “So this cheque I’m handing you is — in lieu of notice.”

Mirabel’s fine eyes flashed. “Men!” she said. “I might have known this would happen, Margaret. The moment things get difficult, men think only of themselves. They’re selfish, through and—” She looked again at the cheque. “But... but this is for seven-thousand-six-hundred pounds!”

“Bunny and I owed the magazine account a hundred,” Raffles explained. “I’ve already apologised to Bunny for omitting to tell him that I’ve kept in close touch with the bank all along regarding the state of the magazine’s account.”

“The privilege of an Editor-in-Chief,” I said, a shade wryly.

“But, of course,” said Raffles, “Bunny shares equally with me the seven-thousand-five-hundred from Pollexfen — which has nothing whatever to do with this cheque, Mirabel. This money came from other sources. What marital injustices or male insensitivities may explain this money, I just don’t know. But you need have no hesitation in using it to start a magazine of your own, Mirabel, to further the Cause you have at heart. This money came entirely from women — unknown women in this country, Mirabel — that their voice, at last, may be heard in the land.”

She gazed at him. She blinked. Tears came into her eyes.

They were the tears of sheer, incredulous happiness, but Raffles, embarrassed by them, quickly unwired a champagne bottle. The cork popped.

“We must admit,” he said, as he poured the bubbly fizzing into our glasses, “that we owe much to Mr. John L. Sullivan, Prince Ranjisinjhi, and those other great names who provided priceless literary material. But let’s drink now, above all, to those anonymous others, those nameless ones who so hopefully submitted,” said A. J. Raffles, raising his glass, “unsolicited contributions!”

Though Mr. Manders’ account of the above adventure makes no mention of the fact, it may be of journalistic interest to note that Lord Pollexfen’s plans for a sports magazine excluding the name of A. J. Raffles were forestalled shortly thereafter by the appearance, from a rival publishing house, of C. B. Fry’s Magazine of Sport, which flourished in the golden years of the Edwardian heyday.

Mr. C. B. Fry, perhaps the most famous of A. J. Raffles’ cricketing contemporaries, and also at that time holder of the world’s record for the broad jump, was ably assisted in his Editorship by young Mr. Bertram Atkey, whose later tales of the Exploits of Winnie O’Wynn, long-running in The Saturday Evening Post of the 1920’s, were dramatized by the eminent actor, Mr. William Gillette, the theatre’s greatest Sherlock Holmes.

And finally, Barry Perowne’s real name is Philip Atkey, and Philip Atkey-Barry Perowne is Bertram Atkey’s nephew.