Already a bewildering sequence to look back upon; but it is in the nature of a retrospect12 to reverse the order of things, and it was the new risk run by Raffles that now loomed13 largest in my mind, and Levy14’s last word of warning to him that rang the loudest in my ears. The apparently15 complete ruin of the Garlands was still a profound mystery to me. But no mere16 mystery can hold the mind against impending17 peril18; and I was less exercised to account for the downfall of these poor people than in wondering whether it would be followed by that of their friend and mine. Had his Carlsbad crime really found him out? Had Levy only refrained from downright denunciation of Raffles in order to denounce him more effectually to the police? These were the doubts that dogged me at my dinner, and on through the evening until Raffles himself appeared in my corner of the smoking-room, with as brisk a step and as buoyant a countenance19 as though the whole world and he were one.
“My dear Bunny! I’ve never given the matter another thought,” said he in answer to my nervous queries20, “and why the deuce should Dan Levy? He has scored us off quite handsomely as it is; he’s not such a fool as to put himself in the wrong by stating what he couldn’t possibly prove. They wouldn’t listen to him at Scotland Yard; it’s not their job, in the first place. And even if it were, no one knows better than our Mr. Shylock that he hasn’t a shred21 of evidence against me.”
“Still,” said I, “he happens to have hit upon the truth, and that’s half the battle in a criminal charge.”
“Then it’s a battle I should love to fight, if the odds22 weren’t all on Number One! What happens, after all? He recovers his property — he’s not a pin the worse off — but because he has a row with me about something else he thinks he can identify me with the Teutonic thief! But not in his heart, Bunny; he’s not such a fool as that. Dan Levy’s no fool at all, but the most magnificent knave23 I’ve been up against yet. If you want to hear all about his tactics, come round to the Albany and I’ll open your eyes for you.”
His own were radiant with light and life, though he could not have closed them since his arrival at Charing24 Cross the night before. But midnight was his hour. Raffles was at his best when the stars of the firmament25 are at theirs; not at Lord’s in the light of day, but at dead of night in the historic chambers26 to which we now repaired. Certainly he had a congenial subject in the celebrated27 Daniel, “a villain28 after my own black heart, Bunny! A foeman worthy29 of Excalibur itself.”
And how he longed for the fierce joy of further combat for a bigger stake! But the stake was big enough for even Raffles to shake a hopeless head over it. And his face grew grave as he passed from the fascinating prowess of his enemy to the pitiful position of his friends.
“They said I might tell you, Bunny, but the figures must keep until I have them in black and white. I’ve promised to see if there really isn’t a forlorn hope of getting these poor Garlands out of the spider’s web. But there isn’t, Bunny, I don’t mind telling you.”
“What I can’t understand,” said I, “is how father and son seem to have walked into the same parlour — and the father a business man!”
“Just what he never was,” replied Raffles; “that’s at the bottom of the whole thing. He was born into a big business, but he wasn’t born a business man. So his partners were jolly glad to buy him out some years ago; and then it was that poor old Garland lashed30 out into the place where you spent the day, Bunny. It has been his ruin. The price was pretty stiff to start with; you might have a house in most squares and quite a good place in the country for what you’ve got to pay for a cross between the two. But the mixture was exactly what attracted these good people; for it was not only in Mrs. Garland’s time, but it seems she was the first to set her heart upon the place. So she was the first to leave it for a better world — poor soul — before the glass was on the last vinery. And the poor old boy was left to pay the shot alone.”
“I wonder he didn’t get rid of the whole show,” said I, “after that.”
“I’ve no doubt he felt like it, Bunny, but you don’t get rid of a place like that in five minutes; it’s neither fish nor flesh; the ordinary house-hunter, with the money to spend, wants to be nearer in or further out. On the other hand there was a good reason for holding on. That part of Kensington is being gradually rebuilt; old Garland had bought the freehold, and sooner or later it was safe to sell at a handsome profit for building sites. That was the one excuse for his dip; it was really a fine investment, or would have been if he had left more margin31 for upkeep and living expenses. As it was he soon found himself a bit of a beggar on horseback. And instead of selling his horse at a sacrifice, he put him at a fence that’s brought down many a better rider.”
“What was that?”
“South Africans!” replied Raffles succinctly32. “Piles were changing hands over them at the time, and poor old Garland began with a lucky dip himself; that finished him off. There’s no tiger like an old tiger that never tasted blood before. Our respected brewer33 became a reckless gambler, lashed at everything, and in due course omitted to cover his losses. They were big enough to ruin him, without being enormous. Thousands were wanted at almost a moment’s notice; no time to fix up an honest mortgage; it was a case of pay, fail, or borrow through the nose! And old Garland took ten thousand of the best from Dan Levy — and had another dip!”
“And lost again?”
“And lost again, and borrowed again, this time on the security of his house; and the long and short of it is that he and every stick, brick and branch he is supposed to possess have been in Dan Levy’s hands for months and years.”
“On a sort of mortgage?”
“On a perfectly34 nice and normal mortgage so far as interest went, only with a power to call in the money after six months. But old Garland is being bled to the heart for iniquitous35 interest on the first ten thousand, and of course he can’t meet the call for another fifteen when it comes; but he thinks it’s all right because Levy doesn’t press for the dibs. Of course it’s all wrong from that moment. Levy has the right to take possession whenever he jolly well likes; but it doesn’t suit him to have the place empty on his hands, it might depreciate36 a rising property, and so poor old Garland is deliberately37 lulled38 into a false sense of security. And there’s no saying how long that state of things might have lasted if we hadn’t taken a rise out of old Shylock this morning.”
“Then it’s our fault, A.J.?”
“It’s mine,” said Raffles remorsefully39. “The idea, I believe, was altogether mine, Bunny; that’s why I’d give my bowing hand to take the old ruffian at his word, and save the governor as we did the boy!”
“But how do you account for his getting them both into his toils40?” I asked. “What was the point of lending heavily to the son when the father already owed more than he could pay?”
“There are so many points,” said Raffles. “They love you to owe more than you can pay; it’s not their principal that they care about nearly so much as your interest; what they hate is to lose you when once they’ve got you. In this case Levy would see how frightfully keen poor old Garland was about his boy — to do him properly and, above all, not to let him see what an effort it’s become. Levy would find out something about the boy; that he’s getting hard up himself, that he’s bound to discover the old man’s secret, and capable of making trouble and spoiling things when he does. ‘Better give him the same sort of secret of his own to keep,’ says Levy, ‘then they’ll both hold their tongues, and I’ll have one of ’em under each thumb till all’s blue.’ So he goes for Teddy till he gets him, and finances father and son in watertight compartments41 until this libel case comes along and does make things look a bit blue for once. Not blue enough, mind you, to compel the sale of a big rising property at a sacrifice; but the sort of thing to make a man squeeze his small creditors42 all round, while still nursing his top class. So you see how it all fits in. They say the old blackguard is briefing Mr. Attorney himself; that along with all the rest to scale, will run him into thousands even if he wins his case.”
“May he lose it!” said I, drinking devoutly43, while Raffles lit the inevitable44 Egyptian. I gathered that this plausible45 exposition of Mr. Levy’s tactics had some foundation in the disclosures of his hapless friends; but his ready grasp of an alien subject was highly characteristic of Raffles. I said I supposed Miss Belsize had not remained to hear the whole humiliating story, but Raffles replied briefly46 that she had. By putting the words into his mouth, I now learnt that she had taken the whole trouble as finely as I should somehow have expected from those fearless eyes of hers; that Teddy had offered to release her on the spot, and that Camilla Belsize had refused to be released; but when I applauded her spirit, Raffles was ostentatiously irresponsive. Nothing, indeed, could have been more marked than the contrast between his reluctance47 to discuss Miss Belsize and the captious48 gusto with which she had discussed him. But in each case the inference was that there was no love lost between the pair; and in each case I could not help wondering why.
There was, however, another subject upon which Raffles exercised a much more vexatious reserve. Had I been more sympathetically interested in Teddy Garland, no doubt I should have sought an earlier explanation of his sensational49 disappearance, instead of leaving it to the last. My interest in the escapade, however, was considerably50 quickened by the prompt refusal of Raffles to tell me a word about it.
“No, Bunny,” said he, “I’m not going to give the boy away. His father knows, and I know — and that’s enough.”
“Was it your paragraph in the papers that brought him back?”
Raffles paused, cigarette between fingers, in a leonine perambulation of his cage; and his smile was a sufficient affirmative.
“I mustn’t talk about it, really, Bunny,” was his actual reply. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I don’t think it’s conspicuously51 fair on me,” I retorted, “to set me to cover up your pal’s tracks, to give me a lie like that to act all day, and then not to take one into the secret when he does turn up. I call it trading on a fellow’s good-nature — not that I care a curse!”
“Then that’s all right, Bunny,” said Raffles genially52. “If you cared I should feel bound to apologise to you for the very rotten way you’ve been treated all round; as it is I give you my word not to take you in with me if I have another dip at Dan Levy.”
“But you’re not seriously thinking of it, Raffles?”
“I am if I see half a chance of squaring him short of wilful53 murder.”
“You mean a chance of settling his account against the Garlands?”
“To say nothing of my own account against Dan Levy! I’m spoiling for another round with that sportsman, Bunny, for its own sake quite apart from these poor pals54 of mine.”
“And you really think the game would be worth a candle that might fire the secret mine of your life and blow your character to blazes?”
One could not fraternise with Raffles without contracting a certain facility in fluent and florid metaphor55; and this parody56 of his lighter57 manner drew a smile from my model. But it was the bleak58 smile of a man thinking of other things, and I thought he nodded rather sadly. He was standing59 by the open window; he turned and leant out as I had done that interminable twenty-four hours ago; and I longed to know his thoughts, to guess what it was that I knew he had not told me, that I could not divine for myself. There was something behind his mask of gay pugnacity60; nay61, there was something behind the good Garlands and their culpably62 commonplace misfortunes. They were the pretext63. But could they be the Cause?
The night was as still as the night before. In another moment a flash might have enlightened me. But, in the complete cessation of sound in the room, I suddenly heard one, soft and stealthy but quite distinct, outside the door.
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1
distressing
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| a.使人痛苦的 | |
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raffles
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| n.抽彩售物( raffle的名词复数 )v.以抽彩方式售（物）( raffle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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solicitation
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| n.诱惑；揽货；恳切地要求；游说 | |
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disastrous
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| adj.灾难性的，造成灾害的；极坏的，很糟的 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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6
confessions
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| n.承认( confession的名词复数 )；自首；声明；（向神父的）忏悔 | |
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overthrow
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| v.推翻，打倒，颠覆；n.推翻，瓦解，颠覆 | |
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disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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ruse
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| n.诡计，计策；诡计 | |
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aggravate
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| vt.加重(剧)，使恶化；激怒，使恼火 | |
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catastrophe
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| n.大灾难，大祸 | |
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retrospect
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| n.回顾，追溯；v.回顾，回想，追溯 | |
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13
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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levy
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| n.征收税或其他款项，征收额 | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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21
shred
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| v.撕成碎片，变成碎片；n.碎布条，细片，些少 | |
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odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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knave
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| n.流氓；（纸牌中的）杰克 | |
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charing
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| n.炭化v.把…烧成炭，把…烧焦( char的现在分词 )；烧成炭，烧焦；做杂役女佣 | |
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firmament
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| n.苍穹；最高层 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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villain
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| n.反派演员，反面人物；恶棍；问题的起因 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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margin
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| n.页边空白；差额；余地，余裕；边，边缘 | |
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succinctly
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| adv.简洁地；简洁地，简便地 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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iniquitous
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| adj.不公正的；邪恶的；高得出奇的 | |
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depreciate
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| v.降价，贬值，折旧 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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38
lulled
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| vt.使镇静，使安静（lull的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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remorsefully
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| adv.极为懊悔地 | |
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40
toils
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| 网 | |
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compartments
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| n.间隔( compartment的名词复数 )；（列车车厢的）隔间；（家具或设备等的）分隔间；隔层 | |
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42
creditors
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| n.债权人，债主( creditor的名词复数 ) | |
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43
devoutly
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| adv.虔诚地，虔敬地，衷心地 | |
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44
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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45
plausible
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| adj.似真实的，似乎有理的，似乎可信的 | |
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46
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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47
reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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48
captious
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| adj.难讨好的，吹毛求疵的 | |
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sensational
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| adj.使人感动的，非常好的，轰动的，耸人听闻的 | |
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50
considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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51
conspicuously
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| ad.明显地，惹人注目地 | |
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52
genially
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| adv.亲切地，和蔼地；快活地 | |
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53
wilful
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| adj.任性的，故意的 | |
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54
pals
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| n.朋友( pal的名词复数 )；老兄；小子；（对男子的不友好的称呼）家伙 | |
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55
metaphor
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| n.隐喻，暗喻 | |
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56
parody
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| n.打油诗文，诙谐的改编诗文，拙劣的模仿；v.拙劣模仿，作模仿诗文 | |
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57
lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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58
bleak
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| adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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pugnacity
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| n.好斗，好战 | |
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nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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culpably
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| adv.该罚地，可恶地 | |
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pretext
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| n.借口，托词 | |
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