Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 27, No. 3. Whole No. 148, March 1956

Jack of Diamonds by Barry Perowne

A new romantic adventure of A. J. Raffles, the celebrated cricketer and cracksman, with the authentic spirit flavor, and derring-do of E. W. Hornung’s original tales...

His excellency the Governor of Gibraltar had been at the same school as Raffles and myself. As an unexpected consequence, I was occupying a corner seat in a First Class compartment of a train about to depart from a London station to connect with the liner Karoo Star at Southampton.

It was a bright autumn morning. Raffles had strolled along the platform to watch for our friend Ivor Kern, antique-dealer, receiver of stolen property, and ingenious artificer in woods and metals, who was to travel with us on the ship. The warmth of the sun shining through the open door of the compartment was pleasantly relaxing after the bustle of our arrival at the station in a hansom. It was not every day that we set forth to be the guests of a Governor and, in an expansive mood, I felt that the occasion warranted a particularly fine cigar.

I was just lighting one when a figure came between me and the sun. Glancing over the match-flame, I saw standing on the platform, gazing at me with eyes of as nearly a true violet as I ever had seen, a girl dressed all in white, with a violet sash. The breeze that lightly stirred the ribbons of the hat in her hand, and toyed attractively with her shining, soft, blue-black hair, added to her appearance of pretty fluster.

“Please,” she said breathlessly, “are all the seats taken in here or could you keep me one till the porter brings my luggage?”

“Certainly! I’ll put something on it,” I said, and, springing to my feet, I took down Raffles’s green baize cricket bag and placed it on the vacant seat at my side.

The girl rewarded me with a slightly distracted smile, turned away, seemed to hesitate, then impulsively turned back. “Pray excuse me,” she said, “but do you know London well? I wonder if you could tell me — I’ve been here so few weeks, a visitor from Capetown — if a big shop called Paradix, in Piccadilly, is all right? I mean, honest — reliable?”

“As a Londoner myself,” I said, “I can confidently reassure you on that point. Paradix of Piccadilly, one of the most famous of our ladies’ apparel shops, is quite above reproach.”

“You greatly relieve me,” said the girl. “You see, it’s getting so near train time, and they promised faithfully to send a page boy here to the station this morning with my new dresses that I’ve bought and already paid for. But they had to be altered and, unfortunately, as there are seven of them, they weren’t quite ready when the shop closed yesterday. So they told me to look for their page boy here, bringing the dresses in bandboxes, and I just haven’t seen a sign of any page boy, and — Oh!” She broke off. “Pray excuse me!”

She was gone. Smiling indulgently as I puffed at my cigar, I leaned from the doorway watching her until, a flutter of white and violet in the sunshine, she vanished among the passengers thronging the platform. How very like a girl, I reflected, to get herself in a fluster about dresses! A quite needless fluster, too, for a firm like Paradix of Piccadilly were, of course, the acme of merchandising honour. However, on spotting the girl returning, I felt a twinge of anxiety for the good repute of London in the eyes of a charming young overseas visitor. For she was accompanied by no pert page boy flourishing bandboxes, but was alone and dejected.

“What,” I said with concern as she approached, “no luck?”

“The boy’s come, sure enough,” she said, “but he’s so stupid — he won’t let me have them. He says there’s an additional charge for the alterations — nine pounds fourteen shillings — and I’ve nothing left but a silly letter of credit for a hundred pounds, which the Purser on the ship will cash for me. The boy just refuses to come to Southampton with me to get the money there. He says his instructions are to get it at the station here, or he’ll have to take the dresses back. I don’t know how any boy can be so stupid! I shan’t have a stitch to wear on the ship!”

“The main thing is,” I said, relieved that a London firm had not failed in their promise to a visitor, “your bandboxes have arrived. Now, you’ll of course permit me to make you a small advance, which you can repay to me on the ship. No, I won’t hear a word! I insist!” I thrilled to the touch of her slim, cool fingers as I stopped her protests by pressing ten sovereigns into her palm. “Now, hurry and catch the boy before he leaves,” I said, “and I’ll hold your seat for you.” The deep look she gave me as she hurried off was a promising augury for the coming days at sea. In fact, as I reseated myself, I wondered if there might not be a chance of persuading her to break her voyage at Gibraltar. It might help, I fancied, if I were to choose a good moment to let fall the information that Raffles and I were to be guests of the Governor.

We were not on intimate terms with His Excellency, as he had been at the school a good many years before our time; but he was a keen cricketer and had followed Raffles’s career in that sport with special interest. So that when His Excellency had found himself sponsoring a Gala Cricket Week in Gibraltar, and had decided to invite a few good amateurs to come and stiffen the Government House side against some strong Army and Navy teams, the first person he had thought of was Raffles. In inviting him to come and to bring someone along with him, the Governor had added, “There’s also an important service which you’re the very man to carry out for me.”

Intrigued by this, Raffles had accepted the invitation, saying he was bringing me. When Ivor Kern had heard where we were going, he had expressed his envy, and Raffles had said, “By all means desert this shop of yours and come along with us for the trip, Ivor. We go in the Karoo Star, which calls at Gibraltar on its way to Capetown, and return eight days later in the sister ship, the Karoo Queen, which calls at Gibraltar on its way from Capetown.”

As I leaned back in my corner seat, admiring the length of my cigar ash, the thought of escorting the girl with violet eyes to Government House garden parties enticed my mind to halcyon daydreams.

“Look at him, Ivor!” said a voice. “Purring away to himself like a cat that’s swallowed a canary!” In light raglan overcoat and grey bowler, his keen face tanned, a pearl stickpin in his cravat, Raffles stepped into the compartment. “Hullo, what’s my cricket bag hogging that seat beside you for, Bunny?”

“I’m reserving the seat for a young lady,” I said. “She’ll be here in a moment. Kindly remember that I saw her first.”

“The point is well taken,” Raffles conceded. “On the other hand, have you noticed that the train’s beginning to move?”

Startled, I glanced from the window. It was true. The platform was streaming backward at a quickening tempo. Leaping up, to the ruin of my cigar ash, I thrust my head into the sunshine. Nowhere along the platform, now rapidly receding, could I see the girl.

“She seems to have missed the train,” Raffles said.

“She couldn’t have!” I exclaimed. “I just lent her ten pounds.”

“Note the non sequitur, Ivor,” said Raffles. “But tell us, Bunny, what were the circumstances of this accommodation?”

I explained the girl’s predicament. And smiles broadened slowly over Raffles’s face and the pale, young-old, cynically intelligent face of Ivor Kern, until it seemed to me that they were grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, my dear chap!” said Raffles.

“What do you imply?” I shouted angrily.

But, with a stab of horrified understanding, it flashed upon me what their amusement implied. They thought I had fallen victim to the wiles of a confidence trickstress! I sank into my seat, appalled.

“But a girl like that!” I said. I was reluctant to believe the worst of her; I simply could not believe it. “If you’d only seen her, Raffles! Violet eyes, white dress, and—”

“Violet eyes?” He gave me an odd look. “Eyes of true violet are very rare, Bunny. I knew a girl once—” He broke off, turned to Ivor Kern. “Ivor, do you remember a clandestine client you had a couple of years ago — something of a nine-day wonder — a fellow the newspapers dubbed ‘Jack of Diamonds’?”

“Phil Benedict,” Kern said. “For about six months, he was the most sensational safe-cracker in London. He pulled off job after job, all on diamond merchants of Hatton Garden. I fenced some of the stuff for him. He was a young fellow, about twenty-two — perhaps a year or two younger than you, Raffles. Why, I remember introducing the two of you in the room over my antique shop — I even proposed that you join forces to do a job on a certain safe that needed two pairs of hands. You both turned it down. Pick-and-choose amateurs, the pair of you. Gentlemen type. Same kind of background.” The receiver smiled cynically. “Yes, Phil was a nine-day wonder, all right, then he just vanished. I wonder what happened to him?”

“He was a strange case,” Raffles said. “In one respect only was he a criminal — he had a kink against Hatton Garden diamond merchants. I’ve often thought it was a significant that he was the son of a domineering tight-fisted father who not only was a domestic Caligula of the worst kind but a Hatton Garden diamond merchant!”

“How did you know that?” Kern asked.

“He told me,” said Raffles. “I saw quite a bit of him after that first meeting at your place. In fact, I was best man at his wedding. That’s all that happened to him — he got married. It seemed to me a rather quaint romance — and a rather touching one. He married a girl called Eugenie — Ginnie, he called her. Her background was — well, uncommon. There was a kind of essential innocence about Ginnie — a real innocence of heart — yet, you know, she’d been brought up by a guardian who had the whitest hair, the most frail and patrician face, the most courtly and beguiling manners of any confidence trickster in London. And he’d spared no pains, from her childhood up, in coaching her to one end — to excel in his own profession.”

Excited, I opened my mouth to speak; but Raffles’s grey eyes quelled me.

“When Ginnie and Phil got married.” he said, “each of them took me aside in the vestry to confide to me, privately, that they were determined to go straight and to keep each other straight. Do you know, they were such a charming young couple, and so desperately in love and so earnest, that I’d have staked my life on their sincerity. They went abroad on their honeymoon, and that was the last I saw or heard of them. Ginnie’s favourite colour was white. Her eyes were the only truly violet eyes I’ve ever seen.” He looked at me grimly as he took a Sullivan from his cigarette case. “If Ginnie Benedict is now working adroit little confidence tricks round the London railway stations, it’s the saddest news I’ve heard for a long time. What in the world can have happened to the two of them?”

I had never seen him so depressed. Though we were on our way to be the personal guests of the Governor of Gibraltar, we were a silent trio as we sat over our coffee in the Pompeian Lounge of the ship that night. Arms folded, Raffles stared unseeingly at his cup, faintly vibrant on its saucer to the throb of the engines below. I knew what he was brooding about, and so did Ivor Kern; but Kern grew impatient.

“Hang it all, Raffles,” he burst out, at last, “all this gloom over a—”

He checked as a figure glided out from behind a potted palm nearby. A white arm reached between us. Slim fingers placed on the table before me a neat, small tower of gold, and a voice said softly, “Your loan, Mr. Manders.”

I gaped for an instant at the ten sovereigns, then looked up incredulously into eyes deeply violet, with dark, long lashes.

“Ginnie!” Raffles sprang to his feet. “Ginnie! Why?”

“May I sit down?” she said.

She took the chair he placed for her, glanced round as though to assure herself that there were no other passengers within earshot.

“A.J.,” she said, then. “May I still call you A.J.? Phil always does. I had two reasons for what I did, A.J. One of them was to find out whether I altogether had lost the — the opportunism, the approach and timing taught to me by my guardian.” She glanced at me. “I didn’t know your name, Mr. Manders, until I asked your dining-room steward just now. But I saw you and A.J. walk on to the station platform this morning. Him, of course, I recognized at once. You passed my compartment together, then A.J. came back along the platform alone. I thought that probably he was going to the bookstall and that in his absence I’d just have time to — to make the little test of myself that I needed so very much to make.”

She turned to Raffles.

“My second reason, A.J.,” she said, “was to make yet another test — a test of you! You see, I thought that Mr. Manders here, when he imagined he’d been victimized, would probably describe the — the harpy to you and that you might guess my identity. I wanted to watch you, see how you took it. I’ve been watching you — on deck this afternoon, in the dining-room just now, in this room here. I’ve been trying to read from your expression whether the thought that Ginnie Benedict had fallen so far from the high resolves she told you of, the day you were Phil’s best man, weighed on you at all. I wanted to try to judge — oh, A.J.,” she said, with sudden passion, “I wanted to know whether Phil and I really meant anything to you any more!”

Her hands, on the table, were tightly clasped. Raffles’s brown hand covered them. And he said gently, “It was that important, Ginnie?”

“Very, very important,” she whispered, and I heard the tremor in her breath as she drew it in. “A.J., you knew, didn’t you — you knew that just once, during that mad, spendthrift Jack-of-Diamonds period in his life, Phil had a narrow escape from being caught red-handed and that he knew his face had been seen? Well, that was why, when we went to Rome for our honeymoon, we decided to stay there, out of England — for safety’s sake. Truly, A.J., in Rome we went absolutely straight. And it was — well, hard at times. So few jobs for Phil, a foreigner, and all of them were dead end and didn’t last. When our baby, Philippa, was born, Phil said that we simply had to do better for her, somehow. And about four months ago, by sheer luck, the chance of a good job in Capetown came his way. He jumped at it. He went off there, and was to have sent for us as soon as he was settled in. Instead — he’s been arrested!”

“He met a diamond merchant,” said Ivor Kern cynically, “and the old kink—”

She turned on him. “Yes, Mr. Kern, he did meet a diamond merchant. Or, rather, he was seen by one — the one from Hatton Garden who had seen the face of Jack of Diamonds! That’s what happened, Mr. Kern — the man recognized Phil. He kept quiet at the time but, when he got back to London, he went to Scotland Yard. Oh, how discreetly they handled it! Not a word in the papers. What I know I know from a letter Phil somehow was able to send me. At this moment, he’s in the Karoo Queen, the sister ship of this one, being brought back to England by a Scotland Yard man.”

The lamps in the Pompeian Lounge seemed to burn with an increased and sinister brightness. The cups vibrated slightly to the throb of the engines. Our own return bookings were in the Karoo Queen. I dared not look at Raffles.

“The moment I had the news,” Ginnie said, “I left Philippa with the Italian family we were living with in Rome. I came to England. I booked in this ship as far as Gibraltar, using a false surname. I’ve booked back in the Karoo Queen. I shall be at least near Phil for the last stage of his journey to — to ten or fifteen years behind bars. A lifetime! A.J., am I mad to dream of trying to use the — the wiles I was taught? Of using them to try to get Phil out of the hands of that Scotland Yard man long enough to jump overboard, to swim and swim and swim in the hope that by some miracle a fishing-boat will pick him up? Oh, it is mad — I know! But — I felt I had to do something! And then — A.J., when I was sitting in that train, thinking such wild thoughts, you walked onto the platform! If you knew how my heart leaped! Raffles, who stood by us at our wedding, and was the one man, the one cracksman, who might conceivably — if only he still cared enough to stand by us again — steal Phil back for me out of his prison on that ship!”

Raffles took a cigarette slowly from his case.

Ivor Kern leaned forward. “Ginnie, I’m sorry,” he said, “but, girl alive, face the facts! Gibraltar’s the last port of call for the ship Phil’s in. These ships, when they call there, stay twelve hours, no more. They don’t even dock dammit — they lie out in the bay. Phil’s certainly locked in the cells, deep down, below the waterline. As Jack of Diamonds, he was clever with locks, and elusive as a shadow; and you can bet your life, knowing what he knows about him, the Scotland Yard man will have an eye on the door of Phil’s cell every minute the ship’s at anchor, especially since it’s the last port of call and Phil will be at his most desperate. What could Raffles do? He permits himself to carry no weapon, to use not the slightest violence. No, Ginnie, I’m sorry for you, but you must face it. Jack of Diamonds is beyond help — he’s in the box.”

Raffles was looking at the match he had just struck. I saw his eyes, with a sudden grey gleam in them, go for an instant to Ivor’s face, then return to contemplation of the match-flame. A queer half-smile came to his lips.

“As to that, Ivor,” he murmured, “we shall see...”

The day we passed Cape San Vicente, where the long Atlantic rollers broke in high-flung flashes of white against the rust-red cliffs of Portugal, I was standing beside Ginnie at the promenade-deck rail. Raffles was absent, having taken to spending much time getting himself shown about the nether regions of the ship.

I glanced uneasily at Ginnie. She was watching the passing headland and, such was her faith in Raffles, I knew that at this very moment she was seeing herself and Phil, with their child Philippa, making a safe, fresh start in some distant country. It worried me intensely, for in my heart I believed her vision to be more than a mirage. At that moment she turned her head and saw me looking at her. She smiled and put a hand impulsively on mine.

“Have you forgiven me the ten pound trick, Bunny?” she said.

“Now, Ginnie!” I said. My heart ached for that girl.

But Raffles, that night, in the three-berth cabin we shared with Ivor Kern, said, “All that can be done for her up to the moment, Bunny, has been done. The ships being sister ships, I now have the geography and routine of both at my fingertips. I know the precise location of the cells and the strong-room, and—”

“The strong-room?” In my upper bunk, I heaved myself up on an elbow to get a better look at him.

“The Karoo Queen,” he said, “will certainly be carrying South African gold and diamonds. The presence of plunder has a tactical relevance.” Raffles was reclining in his bunk, a hand behind his head. Flicking ash from his cigarette, he glanced across at Kern. “Tell me again about this man in Gibraltar whom you mentioned, Ivor.”

“Osmanazar?” Kern said. “As I told you, I don’t know him personally, but I’ve heard of him, just as he’ll have heard of me. He’s the biggest handler of stolen property in the Western Mediterranean. He works under cover of a shop in Gibraltar called Osmanazar’s Bazaar. I feel pretty sure he’ll let me use some back room in his place to carry out the work you want done.”

“So far, so good,” Raffles said. “One thing bothers me a bit, because of its total unpredictability. You remember, Bunny? I mean ‘the important personal service’ which the Governor was good enough to say I was ‘the very man’ to carry out for him. There’s a possible source of complication there. I wonder what His Excellency can want of me?”

The Governor was not at the dock in person — we had scarcely expected as much — when the tender chugged us ashore next day. In the noonday heat, the multi-hued flat-roofed houses which jostled in terraces up the precipitous side of the Rock sweltered visibly. As we set foot on the wharf, a young officer approached us. He wore a pipe-clayed helmet, scarlet tunic, skin-tight bottle-green trousers strapped under the instep, and small silver spurs. His hand was outstretched

“Raffles, welcome!” he exclaimed. “Delighted to see you. You remember me, at school? Yorick Hope-Jenyns. I was in old Motley’s house. I got my colours from you in your last year as Captain of Cricket. And, Manders, old fellow — how do you do? This is simply capital! His Excellency has placed you both in my hands. I’ve good billets for you, and a very full programme.” He glanced round. “Orderly!”

“Sir!”

While the brawny ranker took charge of our luggage, Raffles presented Yorick Hope-Jenyns to Ginnie, under the false surname she was using, and introduced Ivor Kern as Ginnie’s uncle.

“Friends met on the ship, Yorick,” Raffles explained. “I see you have a gharri here. You could perhaps suggest a suitable hotel for them, on our way to the billets?”

“Delighted,” said Hope-Jenyns, with an ardent look at Ginnie. And as we set off at a spanking trot in the high-slung, yellow carriage with its red-tasselled white canopy, he continued to look frequently into Ginnie’s eyes under the pretence of drawing her attention to such places of interest as the Casemates, the old Water Gate, and the Moorish Tower. “We are now going up Main Street,” he presently announced. “Yonder is a shop, Miss Ginnie, where I must advise you always to beat them down if you give them your custom — Osmanazar’s Bazaar.”

Between the throngs of Garrison ladies in their bustled summer gowns, twirling parasols languidly as they sauntered by with their escorts in Navy white-and-gold and military scarlet, with here and there a kilt of Highland tartan, I glimpsed, through a doorway hung about with tarbushes, Moorish slippers, camel harness, children’s sailor suits, castanets, and bullfighter’s hats, the shadowy, enigmatic interior of Osmanazar’s Bazaar.

It looked as hot as an oven. And in the gala days that followed I did not envy that ingenious artificer in woods and metals, Ivor Kern, for I knew that the mysterious task Raffles had set him was keeping him occupied for long hours in some shuttered little room in Osmanazar’s rear regions.

As for me, Raffles told me nothing, as usual. He and I shared good billets in Bombhouse Lane with some cricketers who included that graceful batsman, the young Jam-Sahib of Kushghir, who had been at school with us. A non-player myself, I had no other task but the pleasant one of calling each morning for Ginnie at her hotel to escort her to the matches.

Twice we saw the Governor. Each time, it was on the parched brown cricket ground overlooked on one side by the high bastion lined with date-palms, and open on the other to the harbour dazzling with the brass-work and white awnings of the dreadnoughts at anchor, against the background of the bay and the distant white buildings of Algeciras on the Spanish side. The first time we saw the Governor was when he looked in at the pavilion for a moment to shake hands with Raffles and myself and bid us welcome.

“Don’t forget, Raffles,” he said, “I have an important job for you.”

The second time we saw him was later in the week, as he was taking his seat to watch the cricket match in the company of the Port Admiral. He spotted me, where I stood beside Ginnie’s deck-chair, and lifted a hand to us graciously. The game went well, but we were no nearer knowing what His Excellency had in store for Raffles; and as the golden days passed, and the nights brilliant with Balls aboard one or another of the dreadnoughts succeeded each other, I knew Raffles was getting more and more anxious. For each day brought the Karoo Queen, with its prisoner, closer to Gibraltar.

Before we knew where we were, the culminating night was upon us — the night of the Governor’s Ball.

“And still we don’t know what he wants done!” Raffles said grimly, as in full evening dress and opera-hats, scarlet-lined capes over our arms, we walked up the narrow Bombhouse Lane and turned left under the bracket lamp at the corner into the raucous uproar of the fleet at liberty in the grog-shops of Main Street.

Ginnie was waiting for us in the foyer of her hotel. She was a picture in white, a cape of lavender velvet over her arm, her hair smoothly raven, her shoulders ivory. The funereal Ivor Kern stood beside her chair. Raffles dissembled the anxiety I knew he felt, but he was brisk and kept his voice low as he said, “All ready, Ivor?”

“All ready,” said the antique-dealer. “The Karoo Queen s been reported. She’ll be in about midnight. She’ll start discharging and taking in cargo as soon as she’s anchored. Our box is already down at the cargo sheds. It’s consigned as from a Mr. Pascarella to a London firm. Neither exists. The origin of the box will be quite untraceable. It’s marked for the strongroom and will go out to the ship, in the first cargo lighter, as soon as the anchor’s down. Osmanazar’s arranged the other detail, as you asked, and the name of the man concerned is Ibañez. The Karoo Queen is due to sail again at noon tomorrow.”

“Right,” Raffles said. “We shall see you, then, Ivor, a bit before noon tomorrow, when you come out to the ship in the last passenger tender.” He turned to the girl. “Now, Ginnie—”

“Yes, A.J.?” She was keyed to the highest tension. In her shining eyes and quickened breathing was betrayed her excitement at the knowledge of how close the ship bearing her young husband now was, and how few miles of starlit sea still separated them.

“You know what you’re to do?” Raffles said. “Tomorrow morning Ivor will take you to La Linea, the Spanish frontier, and put you on the diligence to Algeciras. From there you will take train to Madrid, go to the address you’ve been given, and wait there. Right? Then, as there may not be time for goodbyes later this evening—” He held out his hand. “Ginnie, my dear, godspeed.”

She looked at him with her eyes of misted violet. She took his hand in both of hers, and pressed her lips to his.

Then we went to the Ball.

Only I, who knew so little else, knew the secret anxiety that gnawed at Raffles’s mind, the anxiety which made him, under the chandeliers of that glittering ballroom, glance so frequently at the ramrod-backed, white-haired figure of the Governor, in his splendour of scarlet mess-jacket and decorations.

The Governor and his lady danced with this guest and with that. There was gaiety in the lilt of the violins. Ginnie waltzed in the arms of the Jam-Sahib. But I stood by the tall windows, open to the purple night where the palm-trees in the grounds were darkly silhouetted against the sky of stars, and I watched Raffles. He smiled as he talked to his dance partner; he had, seemingly, not a care in the world. But he could not keep from glancing at the Governor.

It must have been nigh on midnight when, a dance ending, wide doors were flung open by footmen, disclosing in an adjoining room the silver and crystal of long buffet tables. It was the refreshment interval. A buzz of chatter arose. There was a drift away from the ballroom. The Governor beckoned to a person here, a person there; and, left as by a receding tide, there remained upon the shining floor a small group composed of the Governor himself, his lady, Ginnie, the Jam-Sahib, Raffles, and Hope-Jenyns.

The sultry thumping in my chest deepened. The Governor said something to Hope-Jenyns, and the aide-de-camp went from the room. I had an uncomfortable feeling that I had no business to be here; but just then the Governor spotted me. He came across to me, where I stood by the windows, and the whole group followed.

“Ah, Manders, my friend,” said the Governor, “you’re in this, too, you know. The ladies as a very special privilege, but you fellows by right of having been at the old school.” He rubbed his hands together briskly. “Now, where’s young Hope-Jenyns? Ah, there you are, Yorick! You have it, I see. Put it on the window-seat.”

The aide-de-camp placed on the window-seat a large box of polished walnut. That it was in some way connected with the task the Governor had for Raffles, I could not doubt. My palms were moist. I dreaded what fatal complication this box might prove to be in Raffles’s plans. I gritted my teeth as the Governor stroked the box affectionately.

“Any of you guess what this is?” he asked, smiling. “Or why I consider that A. J. Raffles — and Yorick entirely agrees with me — is the very man to entrust with this important mission? What, no guesses? Very well!”

He threw back the hinged lid. On a lining of white satin lay a great gold cup.

“ ‘The Governor’s Challenge Cup,’ ” said His Excellency, reading the engraved legend, “ ‘Presented to His Old School, by the Governor of Gibraltar, as an Inter-House Cricket Trophy.’ Think that’s all right? Such a trophy’s been needed for a long time. Now, then, Raffles, I’m appointing you my Special Envoy, to deliver the Cup to the school, and read a bit of speech on my behalf, at the next Prizegiving. Give him the script, Yorick. Good. Well, Raffles, what do you say?”

With his invincible ease of manner, Raffles said just the right things, in just the right way. And I saw in his eyes, not only relief, but a dancing exultation, as he added, “And for the honour, Your Excellency, of acting as your personal envoy, I’m more grateful than I can possibly—”

His voice was drowned by the far-carrying, ominous note of a ship’s siren. Ginnie’s hands flew involuntarily to her throat. We all looked from the window — to see, moving in slowly across the dark waters of the bay below, the innumerable lighted portholes of the Karoo Queen.

The Governor now suggested that those of us who were sailing on the Karoo Queen might have some packing to do and wish to take our leave. Availing ourselves of his thoughtfulness, we escorted Ginnie back to her hotel, then hurried to our billets. Without bothering to change, we strapped up our luggage.

“A wonderful stroke of luck, Bunny!” Raffles exulted, patting the box containing the Cup. “The thing I dreaded most proves to be the best thing that could possibly have happened! The Cup gives us a better excuse than any of the half-dozen I’d invented to go aboard right away. More! I had a word with Yorick Hope-Jenyns. I told him I wouldn’t know a minute’s peace till I’d seen the Cup safely deposited in the ship’s strongroom, and he’s arranging for us to go out in Government House’s own launch. So, instead of a hired bumboat, we’ll be arriving in such style as will put us utterly above suspicion as regards — imminent events. Your bags ready? Good. There’s a gharri waiting.”

So it was that, as a small cargo lighter was drawing away from the liner’s side an hour later, the stentorian hail of a Navy coxswain rang across the starlit water: “Karoo Queen, ahoy! Government House launch coming alongside!”

Stepping on deck as His Excellency’s Envoy, in full evening dress, cape, and opera-hat, a Sullivan between his fingers, Raffles with his air of casual authority dimmed even the magnificence of Hope-Jenyns’s scarlet and gold. And the Captain and the Purser, on being apprized of Raffles’s requirements, personally conducted us to the strong-room to deposit the Governor’s box. Shadows cast by the Purser’s safety-lantern wheeled about the strong-room, with its rows of metal shelves lining reinforced bulkheads. Raffles glanced about him with tolerant interest.

“Quite a Golconda you have here,” he remarked, with a smile.

“Golconda’s right, sir,” said the gratified Purser. “In the safe there, South African diamonds. In those small sacks on the shelves, gold dust. As for those small wooden boxes, their weight would surprise you — that’s bar gold!”

But I could not take my own eyes from a much larger box, a black wooden box which stood in a corner and which I knew must just have been brought aboard from the lighter we had seen. For its front was labelled: Porcelain & Benares Ware. Consigned by J. PASCARELLA, Gibraltar.

“Well, Yorick,” said Raffles, turning to Hope-Jenyns, “I think we’ll see you off, and then — if the Purser, when he’s secured his treasure-chamber here, will be good enough to send us a steward to show us to our cabin — speaking for myself, I shall be very ready to retire to my bunk.”

But no sooner were we alone in our cabin than his whole manner changed.

“Now, then, Bunny!” He opened his cricket bag, fished out from among the bats and pads a coil of manila rope and a collection of curious metal objects attached to a ring. “Skeleton keys,” he said. “What’s known to the professional fraternity as ‘a large, light hunch.’ Ivor got them from Osmanazar for me. What time is it?”

My hands shook so that I scarcely could get out my half-hunter. “Quarter to two,” I said, with parched lips.

“Three o’clock is the vital hour,” said Raffles, “unless Ivor’s computations are sadly astray. To be on the safe side, we’ll get to our action stations now. Keep close behind me and watch the rear.”

He opened the door a crack, peered out, stepped quickly from the cabin. The alleyway was deserted, dimly lit by the blue glimmer of the safety-lamps. About us was the uncanny silence of a ship at anchor, her engines stopped. Raffles moved with the swift certainty of a man who knew his way. Only twice were there checks in our descent into the depths of the vessel. One check was when we had to skirt on tiptoe a white-jacketted night steward dozing with folded arms on a laundry hamper in a break of the companion stairs; the other was when we had to duck into a recess to let the ship’s corporal, on his rounds with lantern and truncheon, go past us.

Deeper still in the ship, we stole down an iron ladder into a narrow, faintly blue-lit alleyway. Just to the left was a shallow recess in which hung red fire-buckets filled with sand. Ducking under the buckets, we had just room to stand upright, side by side, behind them. Obliquely ahead, along the alleyway on the right, were three iron doors with small grilles in them, showing them to be cells. Opposite them, from a door standing open, shone a rather stronger, yellowish light.

“The Scotland Yard man’s observation post,” Raffles breathed in my ear.

The man was alert. I heard the rustle of a newspaper. I saw a faint curl of smoke from that open door, could even smell shag tobacco. A glass chinked and I heard the glug-glug-glug of beer poured from a bottle. The slow thump in my chest measured the minutes. They stretched to eternity. For what we waited I had no notion. It was intensely hot. Perspiration poured from me. My eyes glazed, my mind wandered — to be brought sharply back by Raffles’s iron grip on my arm. 1 held my breath, listened, heard running footsteps. They came closer, grew louder. Startlingly, they came clattering down the ladder.

“Sergeant Teemer!” A young ship’s officer darted past our recess. “Detective-Sergeant Teemer!” he shouted.

A burly man, collarless, in shirtsleeves but wearing both a leather belt and braces, lumbered out into the alleyway, a revolver clamped in one huge hand.

“Mr. Jessup!” he exclaimed. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“You’re wanted at the strong-room instantly!” Jessup seemed beside himself with excitement. “Captain’s orders! Your prisoner’s loose, Sergeant! He’s slipped you! They have him cornered, by sheer luck, but he’s armed and liable to start shooting any minute. Strong-room — fast as you can! Come on, man!”

The detective’s jaw fell. He stammered, “Impossible! Slipped me? Armed? Not possible, Mr. Jessup! He’s in the middle cell there — asleep!”

“Damnation, man,” roared Jessup, “ain’t I telling you the sly fox is in the strong-room? In among the boodle, his hands right in the perishing till! Purser heard something knocked over in the strong-room with the deuce of a clang. He got a lantern, unlocked the door, and strike me pink, there he was, in hat and cloak, with a revolver in his mitt! Your prisoner, Jack of Diamonds — Purser saw his face clear as day! Purser slammed the door on him before he could shoot, and cornered him in there!”

The detective shook the grille of the cell door. The door stood firm. He twisted his neck to peer through the grille, but this act got him into his own light, and there was a hint of panic in his voice as he roared, “Benedict!”

From the dark cell came nothing but utter silence.

The detective turned upon Jessup a face of utter consternation. “My keys,” he said. “I’ll get my keys — I’ll get a lamp—”

“You’ll get ’tarnation well hung,” shouted Jessup, “if you dither about here while Jack of Diamonds starts shooting! He can only have got into the strong-room by cutting through one of the bulkheads somehow, and he may come out the same way any second — and come out with bullets! Come on, man, come on!”

Jessup darted away toward the ladder. The detective seemed to stand poised for a second in demoralized irresolution, then something broke in him and with a great shout he went thundering up the ladder after Jessup.

Instantly, Raffles ducked out from under the fire-buckets and stepped to the door of the cell. The skeleton keys were in his hand and as he went to work on the lock, he called sharply, “Phil?”

At once, a drawn, pale, handsome young face appeared behind the bars of the grille. “A. J.?” Phil Benedict said. “A. J. Raffles? Ye gods! I heard all that shouting. I listened. Last port of call — I thought Ginnie might have schemed some fantastic attempt. It seemed I was believed to be in the strong-room, so I ducked down behind the door here — out of sight—”

“Thank heaven for your quick wits,” Raffles said. “I counted on ’em. The only way of getting you a message telling you to do just what you did was to make them shout it to you.”

He jerked the door open. Phil Benedict, barefoot, in shirt and trousers, stood there blinking. Raffles thrust the coil of rope into his hand.

“Topside now, Phil,” Raffles said, “fast as you can go! Tie this rope to the rail, slide down it so that you enter the water without a splash. Swim straight for the lights of Algeciras on the Spanish side. Before you’ve gone far, a boat will pick you up. There’s a man called Ibañez in it — a Spanish smuggler. He has clothes, disguise, and money for you, and will give you an address in Madrid where you’ll find Ginnie waiting. Don’t talk! Hook it! Goodbye forever, Jack of Diamonds. And good luck, Phil!”

With one swift handshake, Phil was gone, gone like a wraith, barefoot up the iron ladder, gripping the coil of rope. And by rapid stages, now walking fast along the dimlit alleyways, now darting aside into brief concealment, Raffles and I regained our cabin. He hurled his hat onto the bunk, thrust his head from the open porthole, remained there for what seemed to me many minutes. At last, he turned, jerking loose the knot of his white tie, a grey gleam in his eyes.

“Clothes off and into our bunks quick, Bunny! I’ve dropped the skeleton keys into the water. No suspicion is likely to attach to the Governor’s Envoy, but we’d better be in our bunks — just in case. Phil’s well away, or we’d have heard a boat being lowered by now. They’re probably still cordoning that strong-room, trying to decide whether to chance the odds and open the door.”

“In heaven’s name,” I panted, as I tore off my clothes, “who have they got cornered in there?”

“Not ‘who,’ Bunny,” he said, “but ‘what’! The lid of the Pascarella box was held in place by a thin wire hook on the inside. The wire was treated with an acid, the corrosive action of which was carefully timed by Ivor. When the wire snapped, the lid shot back with a deuce of a clang. Up popped, on a powerful spring, a life-size dummy figure, cloaked and hatted, with a wax face fashioned in a pretty good likeness of Phil’s, and a dummy revolver jutting from the cloak. Swaying a little on its spring, to the slight movement of the ship at anchor, it must have made, upon an alarmed and puzzled man seeing it suddenly among the shadows cast by his lantern, a pretty poignant impression! Remember Ivor’s remark to Ginnie that Jack of Diamonds was caught — that he was in the box? For some reason, the fruitful thought crossed my mind that some might think it the proper place for a Jack — in the box!”

He turned out the lamp and in the darkness I heard him chuckling.

Yet when, in the sunset light of the following evening, we once more — homeward bound, this time — passed Cape San Vicente, and I stood with Raffles and Ivor Kern at the promenade-deck rail, we were all three strangely silent. Far inland, beyond the blue mountains of Portugal, lay Spain. And I knew that somewhere there, alone in a train bound for Madrid, Ginnie with her violet eyes, filled with an infinite anxiety and an infinite hope, must be gazing out at the fading sunset. And I wondered how it would be for her, in the outcome — for Ginnie, and the husband and the child who were all her little world.

“They’ll be all right,” Raffles said. It was as though he had read my thought. And he said, “You know, Bunny, unredeemed sinner that I am, and seldom as I delve into such deep matters, there’s something about Ginnie Benedict, the ex man-made confidence trick girl with the innocent heart, which makes me believe that a certain plea will be remembered in her behalf — and, through her, in Phil’s.”

I glanced at him. He was gazing thoughtfully across the water at the distant white flashes where the long Atlantic rollers flung high their spray against the red cliffs of the lonely Cape.

“Plea?” I said, puzzled. “What plea?”

“ ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ ” said A. J. Raffles.