I had the tact not to differ with him there. But I could not help suggesting that now was our time to remedy any mistake we might have made. We were on the right side of midnight still.
"Then we stultify ourselves downstairs," said Raffles. "No, I'll be shot if I do! He may come in with the Kirkleatham diamonds!
You do what you like, Bunny, but I don't budge."
"I certainly shan't leave you," I retorted, "to be knocked into the middle of next week by a better man than yourself."
I had borrowed his own tone, and he did not like it. They never do. I thought for a moment that Raffles was going to strike me--for the first and last time in his life. He could if he liked. My blood was up. I was ready to send him to the devil.
And I emphasized my offence by nodding and shrugging toward a pair of very large Indian clubs that stood in the fender, on either side of the chimney up which I had presumed to glance.
In an instant Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them about his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado which I should have thought him altogether above.
And suddenly as I watched him his face changed, softened, lit up, and he swung the clubs gently down upon the bed.
"They're not heavy enough for their size," said he rapidly; "and I'll take my oath they're not the same weight!"
He shook one club after the other, with both hands, close to his ear; then he examined their butt-ends under the electric light.
I saw what he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the portable tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he opened the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I tucked the small end under my arm, and presented the other to Raffles.
"Hold him tight," he whispered, smiling. "He's not only a better man than I thought him, Bunny; he's hit upon a better dodge than ever I did, of its kind. Only I should have weighted them evenly--to a hair."
He had screwed the gimlet into the circular butt, close to the edge, and now we were wrenching in opposite directions. For a moment or more nothing happened. Then all at once something gave, and Raffles swore an oath as soft as any prayer. And for the minute after that his hand went round and round with the gimlet, as though he were grinding a piano-organ, while the end wormed slowly out on its delicate thread of fine hard wood.
The clubs were as hollow as drinking-horns, the pair of them, for we went from one to the other without pausing to undo the padded packets that poured out upon the bed. These were deliciously heavy to the hand, yet thickly swathed in cotton-wool, so that some stuck together, retaining the shape of the cavity, as though they had been run out of a mould. And when we did open them--but let Raffles speak.
He had deputed me to screw in the ends of the clubs, and to replace the latter in the fender where we had found them. When I had done the counterpane was glittering with diamonds where it was not shimmering with pearls.
"If this isn't that tiara that Lady May was married in," said Raffles, "and that disappeared out of the room she changed in, while it rained confetti on the steps, I'll present it to her instead of the one she lost. . . . It was stupid to keep these old gold spoons, valuable as they are; they made the difference in the weight. . . . Here we have probably the Kenworthy diamonds. . . . I don't know the history of these pearls. . . .
This looks like one family of rings--left on the basin-stand, perhaps--alas, poor lady! And that's the lot."
Our eyes met across the bed.
"What's it all worth?" I asked, hoarsely.
"Impossible to say. But more than all we ever took in all our lives. That I'll swear to."
"More than all--"
My tongue swelled with the thought.
"But it'll take some turning into cash, old chap!"
"And--must it be a partnership?" I asked, finding a lugubrious voice at length.
"Partnership be damned!" cried Raffles, heartily. "Let's get out quicker than we came in."
We pocketed the things between us, cotton-wool and all, not because we wanted the latter, but to remove all immediate traces of our really meritorious deed.
"The sinner won't dare to say a word when he does find out," remarked Raffles of Lord Ernest; "but that's no reason why he should find out before he must. Everything's straight in here, I think; no, better leave the window open as it was, and the blind up. Now out with the light. One peep at the other room. That's all right, too. Out with the passage light, Bunny, while I open--"
His words died away in a whisper. A key was fumbling at the lock outside.
"Out with it--out with it!" whispered Raffles in an agony; and as I obeyed he picked me off my feet and swung me bodily but silently into the bedroom, just as the outer door opened, and a masterful step strode in.
