The Raffles Special by Barry Perowne[5]

A new Raffles adventure by Barry Perowne

Perhaps the most distinctive quality of E. W. Hornung’s original Raffles stories was the aura of decadent charm that emanated from the writing and the characterizations. Well, that is exactly the appeal Barry Perowne has infused into his new stories about A. J. Raffles, amateur cracksman-and-cricketer — into the writing, the characters, and the authentic turn-of-the-century background and color. And this newest Raffles exploit has an extra and special charm — as you will learn for yourself...

“Shh!” said A. J. Raffles suddenly. “Listen, Bunny!”

Tense beside him in the concealment of a thicket of wait-a-bit thorn, I held my breath.

Far off on the veldt, desolate and illimitable in the moonlight, a jackal howled. Twenty paces from us, a water-tank elevated on iron supports cast a long shadow across the glinting tracks of a single-line railway.

I heard a faint humming from the rails.

“A train,” I said

“At last!” said Raffles.

His grey eyes gleamed. His keen face was beard-stubbled. Any resemblance which either of us bore now to gentlemen, in this war which many people were predicting would be the last of the gentleman’s wars, was purely coincidental.

Our uniforms as subalterns, the rank in which we had been called up from the Reserve for active service with a Yeomanry regiment, were in tatters. We had had the bad luck to get captured, but had escaped from the crowded P.O.W. camp, and for many days now we had been on the run.

The humming from the rails was growing louder.

“A goods train, probably,” said Raffles.

I swallowed with a parched throat. We still were deep inside Boer territory.

“What if it’s a troop train,” I said, “crammed with Oom Paul’s sharpshooters?”

I had developed a considerable respect for grim old President Kruger and his fighting farmers.

“We’ll soon know,” said Raffles. “There’s the smoke!” Distant puffs of it, flame-tinted, billowed up against the vast sky limpid with stars. The locomotive came into view, the respirations from its smokestack becoming less frequent as it approached.

“Slowing down,” said Raffles. “Yes, they’re going to take on water here, Bunny.”

I could make out now the gleam of the locomotive’s piston-rods. They were beginning to idle. It was a train of half-a-dozen goods trucks, tarpaulin-covered, with the guard’s small van at the rear. The rails of the track vibrated, a jet of exhaust-steam hissed out between the wheels, and I felt the slight tremor of the earth under my feet as the locomotive came to a standstill abreast of the water-tower.

From the firelit interior of the cab a man jumped down, evidently the fireman, for his face, overalls, and railwayman’s cap were black with coal-dust. He had in his hand a long rod of iron with a hook at the end. The driver, an older, bearded man in overalls and peaked cap, with a short clay pipe in his mouth, clambered down after the fireman.

“And here comes the guard,” Raffles whispered.

The guard’s shadow, with widebrimmed hat, bandolier, and slung rifle, flickered over the sides of the goods trucks as he approached from the rear of the train.

Raffles breathed, “Ignore the old driver, Bunny. Keep the fireman occupied while I get that guard’s rifle. Right? Off we go!”

We darted out from the shadow of the bush, Raffles making for the guard, myself for the fireman, who was reaching up with the rod, his back to me, to unhook the cumbersome hose of the water-tank.

The driver, lighting his pipe, saw me and shouted a warning as I raced past him. The fireman turned quickly. I was almost upon him. He aimed an almighty sideswipe at me with the iron rod. I heard it whistle over my head as I butted him in the belly and we went down together, locked and wrestling, rolling over and over in the dust.

The man was all muscle and sinew, from stoking engines. I never had felt anything like it. I could not hold him. He got on top. His knee drove into my chest. His hands clamped on my throat. His eyes glared down at me from his mask of coal-dust. I clutched at his arms. They were like iron bars, but suddenly, blindingly, a solid deluge of water descended upon the pair of us. It was as though the heavens had opened. We rolled apart, gasping and spluttering, from the shock of it.

As I staggered to my feet, I saw that in our fight we had rolled right under the hose, from which the deluge was coming. Raffles had started it. He had one hand on the small wheel of the water-cock. In the other he held the rifle, menacing the driver and guard with it. They had their hands up, and the fireman, drenched like myself, his face washed almost white, also put up his hands rather sullenly.

“Now then,” said Raffles, as he turned off the downpour. “This train is from Pretoria, of course, and is bound for Beira, in neutral Portuguese territory. It just so happens that my friend and I are going that way ourselves, so we’ll gladly take the train there for you. There’s just one small point. When we steam across the frontier, we shall need to look less like a pair of tramps and more like a driver and fireman. So I’m afraid we must trouble you for your overalls and caps.”

Mutely glowering, the driver and fireman surrendered the garments, and Raffles and I, taking turns holding the rifle, put them on. Raffles found a clasp-knife in the pocket of his overalls. He told me to cut lengths from the rope that held down the tarpaulin on the nearest of the goods trucks. With the lengths of rope I bound the men’s wrists behind them and hobbled their ankles, not too tightly.

“You’ll soon be able to free yourselves,” Raffles told the captives. “It’s a pity trains are so rare on this line. You have a long walk ahead of you. But my friend and I have already done our share of walking, as you can see from the state our boots are in. Ah, well, fortunes of war! Ready, Bunny? Then come on!”

In overalls, mine soaking wet, and railwaymen’s caps, we clambered up into the locomotive cab.

“Can you drive this thing?” I asked anxiously, as Raffles examined the controls.

“I begged many a ride on the footplate when I was a kid, Bunny. I was train mad,” said Raffles. “This is an old London and South-Western Railway locomotive — ‘Brockenhurst’ class. I recognised it as soon as I saw it.”

He manipulated various levers. Steam hissed, and with a chugging and rumbling, and a clank of couplings from the goods trucks, the locomotive began to move.

“Get busy with that shovel!” Raffles shouted to me, above the din. “D’you want to find us back in Pretoria, behind barbed wire again? Stoke up! Give me a head of steam!”

A wild exhilaration filled me as, with the shovel, I opened the door to the red glare and hellish heat of the firebox.

“Steam for the Raffles Special!” I shouted, and went to work shovelling coals from the bunker as the first train we had ever stolen began to gather speed.


The veldt was streaking past at a great rate when at last dawn broke over the endless expanse. My overalls had long since dried, my face and hands were black, my muscles ached.

As the crystalline early light gave way to a shimmer of heat-currents, I glimpsed an isolated Boer farmhouse or two, and once we passed a distant wagon drawn by a plodding line of yoked oxen.

Hunger gnawing as the day wore on, I foraged in the locomotive toolbox, where I found the driver’s and fireman’s lunch-cans. As we gratefully munched black bread and biltong, and washed it down with good Dutch beer, I asked Raffles what he thought was in the goods trucks.

“Nothing of much value, Bunny,” he said, his face as black and oily as my own, “or there’d have been more than one guard on the train.”

Only once, in the great loneliness under the sun, did we see armed men — a group of horsemen, with bandoliers and slung rifles, who were near enough for me to see their stem, heavily-bearded faces.

“A Boer kommando,” said Raffles.

He pulled the dangling cord of the steam-whistle to give them a cheery salute, but they made no acknowledgement, not so much as a wave.

“I’m afraid we’ll find more of those fellows when we get to the Boer frontier station,” Raffles said.

“So we crash through at speed?” I suggested.

“And get fired at?” said Raffles. “No, Bunny. Firing would alert the Portuguese over on their side, make them wonder what was wrong, and try to stop us to find out.”

“But they’re neutral, Raffles!”

“Would they take a neutral view of train-robbers, Bunny? We can’t be sure, and I don’t much like the. possibility of internment in Portuguese East for the duration.”

“Oh, dear God!” I said.

Repeatedly, after that, I stopped shovelling coal, wiped sweat from my eyes with a bit of cotton-waste, and peered ahead anxiously through one of the two small round windows of the locomotive cab.

When at last I spotted, far ahead along the rails, a cluster of sheds come into view, my throat went dry. I saw the small figures of men, some of them on horseback. There seemed quite a lot of them — most of them armed, I noted, as Raffles slowed down our rate of approach and pulled the steam-whistle cord, loosing off three short blasts of greeting.

“Behave naturally!” Raffles shouted to me. “Stick your black face out with an affable smile, and wave as we pass through!”

“If we pass through!” I shouted back.

My heart thumped as I peered ahead through the round window. There was no barrier across the line. It stretched straight ahead, between the sheds and the waiting men, into no-man’s-land, as the locomotive chugged slowly, hissing exhaust-steam, into the little station — and kept moving.

I leaned out from the footplate, with a smile and a wave to the men as they watched the locomotive steam slowly past them, followed by the clanking goods trucks. I could see that the men were expecting the train to stop, but it was not until the guard’s little van at the rear was gliding past them that I heard from one of the men a shout of surprised inquiry.

“They’re shouting,” I called to Raffles.

“Acknowledge,” he called back.

I leaned out, looking back at the men, and nodding as though with vigorous understanding, at the same time waving to them in reassurance — and farewell.

None of them moved. They just seemed surprised. Their figures dwindled as Raffles opened the throttle a little and our speed discreetly increased.

“Now for the Portuguese, Bunny!”

Again our speed decreased, as we steamed, chugging sturdily, towards a cluster of small buildings with whitewashed walls, typically Portuguese. Raffles sounded our whistle, and I saw men emerging from the buildings — short, dark men in dusty green uniforms, with white cross-belts. and slung rifles.

As we steamed slowly past the soldiers, Raffles and I, from our respective sides of the locomotive cab, protruded our grimy faces, showing our teeth affably as we waved our greetings. One or two of the men waved back, amiably enough. But as the goods trucks went on clanking slowly past them, and the guard’s little van followed, I was dreading an outburst of shouts — and, possibly, of shots.

Nothing of the kind happened. I could hardly believe my eyes as I looked back at the soldiers gazing after us in mild surprise as they receded behind us. I gave them a final wave and turned to Raffles.

“By God,” I shouted, exultant, “we’re through! We’ve done it!”

“Now for Beira,” said Raffles, with a grin, “We’ll take no risks of internment, When we get near town, we’ll abandon this train for someone else to find and take in. Well sneak down to the dock area under cover of night and try smuggling ourselves aboard some ship, outward bound. Come on, now, stoke up! Give me steam!”

“Farewell to Oom Paul!” I yelled, as I seized the shovel again and the locomotive began to pound along, with quickening respirations and blasts of the whistle, on our journey to freedom.


When we finally reached London, after many delays, difficulties, and enforced wanderings, we learned that the hostilities in South Africa were virtually over. Pausing only long enough to report at the Yeomanry depot, and to visit our civilian tailor in Savile Row, we went north at the invitation of a chap we had been at school with, a young Argyllshire laird called Kenneth Mackail, for a week’s fishing.

“Ye bonnie banks and braes,” Raffles remarked, as, his dark hair crisp, his tweeds immaculate, a pearl in his cravat, he leaned with me beside him on the rail of the little side-wheeler steamer plying up Loch Long from Glasgow to Dunoon, where Ken was to meet us. “How do they look to you, Bunny?”

“After all we’ve been through,” I said, contemplating the northern sunshine mellow over the tranquil waters of the loch, and breathing the air redolent of the heather on the distant moors, “they look enchantingly peaceful to me.”

“They’ll be ringing with gunfire soon,” Raffles reminded me. “It’ll be the twelfth of August in a few days — the ‘Glorious Twelfth,’ when everybody comes north for the opening of grouse-shooting.”

“I’m glad Ken Mackail doesn’t own a moor,” I said. “My war-worn nerves are only equal to a little quiet fishing.”

Ken was waiting for us on the jetty at Dunoon. A slightly-built, wiry chap with sandy hair, he wore the kilt, with a dirk in his stocking. He had brought his dogcart, and the cob in the shafts trotted off with us sturdily on the long, jolting ride to Mackail Lodge, which was up among the moors.

“There’s one thing,” Ken said presently, as we clattered along, “which I feel I should mention. You chaps are just back from active service in South Africa, whereas I was out there — as you know — as correspondent for a newspaper with a strongly anti-war policy.”

“Different people, different views,” said Raffles, tolerantly. “In the main, Bunny Manders and I go through shot and shell with judiciously open minds.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“I’m relieved to hear that,” Ken said, in his rather serious way. “The fact is, I’m involved in a bye-election, down in Glasgow. I’m standing for Parliament on a platform of generous peace terms for the Boers. Polling will be on the fourteenth, so I’m afraid I shall be busy on the hustings, down in Glasgow, most of the time you’re here. My ghillie Macpherson and his wife, my housekeeper, will look after you very well.”

“We have no fears on that score, Ken,” said Raffles.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

The road, a rutted track corkscrewing up over the moors, was traversing now the edge of a gorge where, deep down on our left, a stream out of the highlands tumbled merrily over falls, foamed among rocks, and broadened out here and there into fishworthy pools. I was mentally reviewing the salmon and trout lures in my fly-case when I saw another dogcart bowling down the track towards us with the horse at a rapid trot.

Narrow as the track was, the oncoming cart showed no sign of slowing down, and Ken said, “Quick! We shall have to get out!”

This we did, and Ken, going to the cob’s head, backed his cart up, precariously tilting, on to the steep heather slope on the right, just in time for the other cart to pass. A ramrod, hawk-nosed man in tweeds held the reins, at his side an attractive girl in a tam-o’-shanter.

As they clattered past with a wheel of their cart about an inch from the gorge-edge, we all three stood with our hats raised, but, for all the acknowledgment we got, we might just as well have kept them on.

“That was General Finlayson and his daughter Janet,” Ken said with a hint of bitterness, as we climbed back into his dogcart. “The General’s not long back from South Africa. He’s been put on the Retired List, and he’s standing against me, in this bye-election, on a platform of punitive peace terms to be imposed in Pretoria.”

“Bunny and I heard of him, out there,” Raffles said. “A real fire-eater!”

“He owns the Castle Crissaig moors, up above my little place,” said Ken. “He’s on his way now to catch the steamer to Glasgow, with Janet to see him off. He’s due to harangue shipyard workers tomorrow, along Clydeside. What did you think of Janet?”

“Conspicuously bonnie,” said Raffles.

“I hoped to marry her,” Ken said gloomily, “but the war ruined my chances. I wrote critically, in dispatches to the newspaper I represented, about the General’s harsh methods in the field. The result is, he regards me as a pacifist traitor, and it’s ruined me with Janet. But damn it, a man must stand by his beliefs — or what is he?”

“He’s certainly not a Scotsman,” Raffles said, “fit to wear the trousers — or, rather, the kilt — in his own house.”

Ken Mackail’s house was a typical old moorland lodge, hard by the brawling stream, which Raffles and I, next day, Ken having gone off early, to catch the steamer to Glasgow and the hustings, fished in the company of Ken’s ghillie, Macpherson, a gaunt man with an old retriever called Shoona perpetually at his heel.

“Well, Macpherson,” said Raffles, when, having caught nothing but a couple of small brown trout all morning, we sat in the heather to eat the sandwiches and drink the whisky put up for us by Mrs. Macpherson, “I’m afraid Mr. Manders and I seem to be a bit out of practice.”

“Ye canna tak’ fish, sir,” said Macpherson, “if there’s ower few fish in the watter.”

“So the fault’s not entirely ours?” said Raffles. “You set our minds at rest. But tell us, Macpherson, how d’you fancy Mr. Mackail’s chances in this bye-election?”

“ ’Deed, sir,” said Macpherson gloomily, “wi’out the Lunnon politeecian coming up to support him on the hustings makes awfu’ persuasive speeches to yon Glesga folk, I wouldnae gie a bawbee for the young laird’s chances. General Finlayson’s a dour opponent, an’ a gleg one, forbye, which is why there’s ower few fish in our watter.”

Raffles asked what General Finlayson had to do with the paucity of fish, and Macpherson said grimly that, if we were so minded, he would show us — after dark.

As it turned out, the night was far from dark. In fact, when we reached the high moor after a long, rough trudge alongside the tumbling stream, the moon was almost as bright as we has seen it over the South African veldt.

We now were on the Castle Crissaig grouse-moor, General Finlayson’s property, and Macpherson, with Shoona at his heel, warned us to watch out for the General’s gamekeeper, James Fraser, who, with the Glorious Twelfth not far off, was apt to be on the prowl.

“Wi’ a gun for poachers,” said Macpherson. “Bluidy James Fraser!”

Near a small corrie of rowan trees, a little old stone bridge cast a humpbacked shadow over the stream, which here flowed deep and fish worthy. Macpherson led us furtively on to the bridge and showed us a small iron wheel secured by a chain and a massive padlock. He explained that the wheel was used to raise and lower a fine-mesh metal grille. When the grille was lowered, as it was now, fish which had spanned in the upper waters of the stream, were unable to return downstream, through Ken’s water, to the loch.

“And this is General Finlayson’s little pleasantry?” Raffles asked.

“Aye,” said Macpherson. “He’s awfu’ grudgesome against Mr. Mackail.”

“Well,” said Raffles, examining the padlock, “I happen to have in my pocket a small implement that might, just possibly —”

“Hist!” said Macpherson. “Bluidy James Fraser! Quick, mak’ for yon rowans!”

The three of us, with the wise old Shoona at Macpherson, incredulous. “ ’Tis the and into the tree-shadowed come. Peering out, I saw in the moonlight a figure on a bicycle, lampless, approaching along the rough track through the heather.

“Och!” whispered Macpherson, incredulous. “ ’Tis the young leddy from Castle Crissaig!”

Reaching the bridge, the girl in the tam-o’-shanter laid down her bicycle, looked quickly around her over the moor, then ran on to the bridge. Taking from her skirt-pocket what must have been a key, she unfastened the padlock. Through the chortling of the stream as it flowed fast under the bridge, I heard the jingle of the padlock-chain, then a grinding sound as she began, exerting considerable effort, to turn the iron wheel.

“She’s raising the grille,” I whispered.

“Letting many a fine fish through into Ken’s water,” Raffles murmured.

“Gowd help the lassie,” Macpherson whispered, “if bluidy James Fraser comes roarin’ on her like a wild man an’ tells her feyther!”

For an hour Janet Finlayson remained on the bridge, glancing continually about her over the moonlit moor; then she wound the grille down again into the water, refastened the chain and padlock, and pedalled off on her bicycle.

“Now we know where her heart is,” said Raffles. “This’ll be good news for Ken!”

As we stepped out, elated, into the moonlight, we were all grinning, and I fancied that even Shoona was baring her canines with sly amusement.

Our fishing next day, on Ken’s water, was unbelievable. Macpherson was bent under the weight of our creels. And in the evening, just in time for dinner, Ken turned up on a quick visit to see if we were enjoying ourselves. As buxom Mrs. Macpherson set a superb dish of salmon on the table, Raffles and I were waiting for Ken to comment on it, so that we could tell him to whose significant action we owed the noble repast.

But Ken seemed scarcely aware of what he was eating. He looked preoccupied, worried, and Raffles asked him if the election was not going well.

“A spectre’s arisen for me,” Ken admitted, “but I’m not going to depress you chaps with it — you’re here to enjoy yourselves.”

“We might enjoy a romp with a spectre,” said Raffles. “Tell us about it.”

It was the spectre of the written word. In one of his dispatches from South Africa to the anti-war newspaper he had represented, Ken had accused General Finlayson of ordering an entire Boer family, caught sniping from a farmhouse, to be severely flogged with a rhino-hide whip, a sjambok.

“I’d sent off the dispatch, written in my own hand,” Ken told us, “by a route that bypassed the censor, when I found out that the story, though it seemed quite in character for General Finlay-son, wasn’t true. Luckily, I was able to stop my dispatch from being published.”

“Then what’s the trouble?” Raffles asked.

The trouble, Ken explained, was that his manuscript on the sjambok atrocity had not been destroyed by his newspaper, but filed; and he had now received a warning from a colleague on the newspaper that the manuscript had vanished from the files and somehow fallen into the hands of a newspaper that supported General Finlayson’s candidature.

“According to my colleague,” Ken said, “that newspapers sending one of its staff men up to Glasgow to confer with General Finlayson’s election agent. That agent’s as crafty as a fox. I wouldn’t put it past him to have my story printed in pamphlets that seem to emanate from my own Election H.Q., and flood the constituency with them.”

“And plant people at your meetings,” Raffles said, “to ask you why, if the story were true, you suppressed it at the time?”

“Exactly! I couldn’t deny I’d written the story. They have the evidence — my own manuscript,” Ken said. “But it could be make to look that I’d raked it up now — a story I know to be false — to blackguard my political opponent. It could ruin my chances. Lesser things than this, just before a poll, have swung many an election.”

“And polling’s on the fourteenth?” Raffles said. “H’m! What’s this journalist chap’s name and when is he expected in Glasgow?”

“I don’t know his name,” Ken said, “but my colleague’s pretty sure the chap’ll be coming up to-morrow on the London-Glasgow express.”

“The Cock o’ the North,” Raffles said thoughtfully. “And to-morrow being the tenth, a lot of important Londoners will be on that train, bound for the grouse-moors. As I recall, the Cock o’ the North steams into Glasgow at eleven p.m. and most of the visitors on it put up for the night at that huge old hotel right alongside the station. H’m!”

He said no more on the matter, but next morning, when I went down to breakfast, Ken had already left to catch the steamer from Dunoon back to Glasgow, and I heard Raffles’s voice from the kitchen. I was buttering a bannock hot from the oven when he came into the breakfast-room.

“What were you talking to Mrs. Macpherson about?” I asked.

“I was taking a look at her game larder, Bunny.”

“Grouse-shooting doesn’t start till day after to-morrow, Raffles. There can’t be much in the larder yet.”

“Only ground game,” Raffles said, unfolding his napkin. “After you with the teapot, Bunny.”


I was at a loss to divine his intentions when, on the steamer from Dunoon, we arrived that evening in Glasgow and booked in at the hotel adjoining the station. Familiar to every dedicated grouse-shooter, the huge old warren of a hotel was virtually deserted. We had the echoing dining-room almost to ourselves. But at eleven o’clock, when we heard the Cock o’ the North, dead on time, steam into the station next door, what a change came over the scene!

We were sitting, with our coffee and liqueur whisky, in saddlebag chairs loomed over by a castor-oil plant, in the vast gas-lit mausoleum of a hall, when suddenly the rank and fashion of London came streaming in, all talking in loud, confident voices, all tweed-clad, the ladies looking about them through their lorgnettes in search of old friends in the crowd, the men with their guncases and shooting-sticks and their setters, pointers, retrievers, and spaniels, all of which looked as if they had pedigrees at least as long as those of their owners.

“Keep an eye open for anyone who looks like a journalist,” Raffles instructed me, through the din that was going on, the barking of dogs, the shrill yapping of a solitary Pekinese, the cries of well-bred delight as ladies kissed each other through their veils, and men with bluff shouts shook one another’s hands heartily.

“As a social occasion,” Raffles remarked, “only a Buckingham Palace garden party can compare with this, Bunny!”

“You’ve seen it before,” I said, “but it’s all new to me.”

I was impressed, recognising many a face familiar to high Society.

With trains or steamers to catch at an early hour, bound for the moors further north and the sacred rites of the Glorious Twelfth on the day after, the distinguished Londoners soon started going upstairs in loud converse to their rooms, while venerable pageboys, each with the leashes of half-a-dozen dogs in either hand, hobbled downstairs with them to the basement kennels.

“I didn’t notice anyone who looked particularly like a journalist,” I said, as peace reigned once more in the hall.

“I’ll see what I can find out at the desk, Bunny. Order us a couple of nightcaps.”

When Raffles returned to me, there was a grey gleam in his eyes. “He’s here, Bunny! There’s a journalist in Room Three-o-one. That’ll be our man. He’s probably arranged to meet with General Finlayson’s election agent first thing in the morning.”

With a flash of enlightenment, I exclaimed, “But he’s going to lose Ken’s fatal manuscript during the night?”

“Shh!” said Raffles. “Come on, we’ll take these drinks up to my room.”

In his room, when he turned up the gaslight, I saw that his valise had been unpacked by the chambermaid, his nightshirt laid out neatly on the bed, a box of Sullivans and his favorite bedtime reading, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, placed conveniently to hand.

“These doors have bolts, Bunny,” he said. “People in hotels are apt to bolt their doors, and bolts can be awkward to deal with. So, as conspirators seem to have started a hare in this election, I thought we might as well take a leaf out of their books.” He unlocked a small grip he had brought from Mackail Lodge. “This is from Mrs. Macpherson’s game larder,” he said, and held up, dangling by its ears, a fine hare.

“It’s been paunched,” he said, “and very well hung. Now, while we finish these drinks, the hotel will be settling down for the night. I’ll leave you then for a short while. Wait for me here.”

He was gone for about fifteen minutes, returning so suddenly that, with my nerves still on edge from our South African hardships, I sprang to my feet with a racing heart.

“Now then, Bunny,” he said, “I’ve tried the door of Room Three-o-one, and it’s bolted, as I thought it would be. So I’ve laid a good scent of hare on the carpets of all the stairs, landings, and corridors. There’s only the night porter on duty, down in the lobby, and he’s asleep already. Here’s my dressing gown. Put it on over your clothes, slip down to the basement, and release the dogs. When turmoil ensues and people come out of their rooms to find out what’s going on, I shall be watching my chance to slip into Room Three-o-one. Off you go, and I’ll see you at breakfast — all being well.”

“Oh, dear God!” I breathed.

On the stairs and in the broad corridors only an occasional gaslight had been left burning, dimly blue, as I stole down to the lobby. Most of the lights there had been turned off. The night porter was sound asleep in one of the saddlebag chairs. I tiptoed across the lobby and down stone stairs to the basement. I opened the kennels door.

Dimly I made out, in faint light filtering down from the lobby, the well-bred heads of setters, pointers, retrievers, and spaniels as they thrust them out between the bars of their cages to sniff at me in friendly inquiry.

“Good dogs, clever dogs,” I whispered to them, as I opened cage after cage. “Go find the hare, dogs! Push him out! Hie on! Go seek!”

The Pekinese, waking with a startled snuffle, hurled scandalized yaps at me and, when I released him, immediately attacked my trouser-cuffs with sharp teeth and bloodcurdling snarls. But then he spotted the procession of hunting dogs, led by a fine Gordon setter, streaming up the stairs to the lobby, and immediately rushed with indignant yaps to take his rightful place, as oriental royalty, at the head of the exodus.

Normally mute in the chase, the well-trained hunting dogs, excited by their unfamiliar surroundings and the hysterical yapping of the Pekinese, so far forgot themselves, when they picked up the scent of the hare, as to give tongue — especially the Cocker, Springer, and Welsh water spaniels — with a fearful clamor. Through the din I heard the wild shouting of the night porter.

When I reached the lobby, I saw the porter chasing the pack up the main staircase and whacking vainly at the tail-end dogs with a rolled-up newspaper. I followed unobtrusively.

In the dim-lit corridors, bedroom doors were opening on all sides. People were coming out in disarray and alarm, some carrying candlesticks, and all shouting at each other to know what was happening.

“Keep calm!” I called to them, as I hurried along the corridor. “There’s nothing to fear, ladies! You’ll be taken care of. Arrangements are being made!”

“What kind of arrangements?” demanded a man wearing a nightcap and carrying a candlestick.

“Adequate ones, m’lud, adequate ones,” I assured him, recognising his fine, judicial features as those of a famous judge at the Old Bailey. “Calm the ladies, m’lud!”

I hurried on up to the next floor, where my own room was located. On this floor, too, though the shouting and barking of the main chase was now coming from the floor above, the third floor, confusion reigned.

Twisting and turning through the seething throng, I gained the refuge of my own room. I closed and bolted the door and, holding my breath, stood listening to the Uproar going on all over the hotel, but particularly, it seemed to me, on the floor above — the third floor.

Shaken and appalled, I wondered if Raffles could have been trapped, red-handed, in Room 301.


Not until long after the disturbance had died down did I fall at last into an exhausted slumber. I slept so heavily that, when I went down to breakfast, the grouse-shooting crowd had left to catch their trains and steamers northward to the various moors, and the great dining-room seemed deserted.

My heart sank. I feared the worst. But then I saw him. His tweeds immaculate, a pearl in his cravat, Raffles was breakfasting at a comer table — in the company, to my surprise, of Ken Mackail, wearing the kilt and a smiling face. I wondered uneasily what his presence portended.

“Ah, here’s Bunny Manders,” Ken said. “ ’Morning, Bunny. I’m here at the hotel to meet with a political chap who’s come up from London to speak in my support on the hustings today. I. ran into Raffles in the lobby here. He tells me you chaps came down from Mackail Lodge last night to see the Harry Lauder show at the theatre. How was the show?”

“The show?” I said. “Oh — most amusing — pawky, I believe is the word.”

“I’ve just been telling Raffles,” Ken said, “I’ve got great news. General Finlayson called on me last night at the place I’m lodging at during the election campaign. He came to see me in case I’d heard any rumour of a conspiracy to make use against me of a certain war dispatch of mine — a dispatch which, as the General put it, he understood I’d had the decency to suppress when I realised it was untrue. He wanted me to know that, the moment he got wind of the conspiracy, he told his election agent that, unless he stopped the journalist who’d got hold of my manuscript from coming to Glasgow, and make him destroy the unfortunate dispatch, the General would take a horsewhip to the pair of them.”

I swallowed with a dry throat. “The journalist — never came?” I faltered, with a furtive glance at Raffles. Meditatively buttering a finnan haddie, he did not meet my eyes.

“The fellow didn’t dare come,” Ken laughed. “God, what a fine man General Finlayson is, at heart! He’s so ashamed of his election agent that he’s suggested we call a truce to the election campaign just for to-morrow, the Glorious Twelfth, and celebrate the rites on his Castle Crissaig moor. He’s invited me to bring my guests, too — that’s you chaps. You’ll come, of course, and stay over at Mackail Lodge until after the declaration of the poll, on the fourteenth. I insist!”

“We’ll be delighted, Ken,” Raffles said, “Now, Bunny, if we’re to catch the next steamer back to Mackail Lodge and cast a fly or two—”

“Go ahead,” said Ken. “Enjoy yourselves. I must wait here for the political chap from London who’s come to help me.”

I reached for the teapot with a palsied hand. But later my tone was grim when I demanded of Raffles, as we clattered in a hansom along Sauchiehall Street to the steamer dock, what had happened in Room 301.

“Something that gave me food for thought, Bunny,” he said, in a strange tone. “I’ll tell you about it when I’ve had time to think over its implications.”

His withdrawn manner and knitted brows warned me not to pursue the matter with questions. I felt very uneasy. Even so, and despite the fact that we had not anticipated doing any shooting when we came north, the following day lived — for me — wholly up to its reputation as the Glorious Twelfth.

The sky was cloudless over the high moors of Castle Crissaig, the grouse were plentiful and strong on the wing. As a host, General Finlayson turned out to be surprisingly genial, and I noticed that the charming Janet made a point of acting as gun-loader for Ken Mackail. With Macpherson performing a like office for Raffles, and bluidy James Fraser for myself, while Shoona retrieved faultlessly to hand, I added my quota of bangs to the gunfire resounding all over Scotland, on this great day, from the corries of Ben Lomond to the screes of John o’ Groats.

With the thaw that had set in between Mackail Lodge and Castle Crissaig likely to be permanent, and Janet now as good as his, Ken was not noticeably depressed when, on the declaration of the poll on the fourteenth, a third candidate was elected to Parliament over the heads of Ken and General Finlayson.

In fact, it was as happy a young laird as ever wore the kilt whom Raffles and I left waving to us from the jetty at Dunoon when we went off on the steamer to Glasgow to catch the Cock o’ the North express back to London.

“So, in any case,” I remarked to Raffles, as we paced the deck of the little steamer, “that political chap who came up from London to speak for Ken made no great difference to the election result.”

“Evidently not,” Raffles agreed. “But something I learned gave me the shock of my life, Bunny!”

He offered me a Sullivan from his cigarette-case and, lighting up, we leaned with our arms on the rail, alongside the paddle-wheel rumbling and splashing in its housing.

“As you know, Bunny,” Raffles said, “they told me at the hotel desk that the man in Room Three-o-one was reputed to be a journalist. Well, when you released the dogs in your clever way, the chap came out in his nightshirt to see what was happening. I was able to slip into his room for a few uninterrupted minutes. There were various documents littered on the bedside table. Ken’s manuscript was not among them, so it wasn’t the man we were looking for — he was Ken’s political chap. But I did find a newspaper article ringed round in blue pencil. I skimmed through it hastily, and realised at once that it was about the occupant of the room himself.”

“The occupant?” I said.

Raffles nodded. “He was a journalist, right enough, Bunny. The article said he’d been a war correspondent in South Africa, was captured by the Boers, and, because he also held a cavalry commission, was put in the P.O.W. camp at Pretoria. That’s the same camp as we were in, with several thousand others, and he evidently escaped a few days after us. The article said he hid among empty coal-sacks in the tarpaulin-covered goods truck of a train on the Pretoria-Beira line.”

My heart began to thump.

“He was in dread,” said Raffles, “that the train would be stopped and searched for him at the Boer frontier station, but, as he peered from his hiding-place, he saw that the train was passing through slowly, first the Boer station, then the Portuguese station, without stopping!”

My scalp tingled. “The Raffles Special!” I breathed.

“The evidence, I think, is conclusive,” Raffles said. “We had a clandestine passenger, Bunny, who was on board when we stole that train. Evidently he didn’t see what happened at the water-tower, but when the train went through into Portuguese East without stopping, he was convinced — according to the newspaper article — that Providence was watching over him, especially as the Boer High Command had offered a reward for his recapture.”

“A reward?” I said. “Oom Paul offered a reward?”

“He didn’t offer a reward for you and me, Bunny,” Raffles said, with a wry smile, “but the Boers offered twenty-five pounds for our passenger’s recapture, dead or alive.”

“Only twenty-five pounds?” I exclaimed. “He can’t have been particularly important!”

“As to that, Bunny, the newspaper article refers to him as a young statesman with a brilliant future before him. One can never tell, of course. Such things are on the knees of the gods.”

He dropped his cigarette over the side and looked thoughtfully across the waters of Loch Long at the banks and braes gliding by, bonnie in the mellow northern sunshine.

“Who knows, Bunny?” said A. J. Raffles. “Perhaps you and I will prove to have been on the knees of the gods when we stole, you stoked, and I drove the train that carried young Mr. Winston Spencer Churchill to safety.”


Загрузка...