With a splitting headache, for I had not had much sleep, I had walked round from my Mount Street flat to Raffles’ chambers in the renowned Albany, just off Piccadilly. I had found him, looking enviably fresh and rested, wearing a grey suit, a pearl in his cravat, breakfasting in his comfortable living-room.
Frowning over the news I had brought, he told me to help myself to coffee, and he asked, “Was it me this Mr. Jay was watching, or was it the lady I was with?”
“The lady with the rubies?” I said. “I can’t be sure.”
“Let’s get one thing clear, Bunny,” Raffles said. “I wouldn’t lay a finger on that lady’s rubies.” He took a Sullivan from the cigarette-box on the table. “You and I don’t, as a rule, discuss our respective lady friends. But you acted promptly and sensibly last night. You’ve alerted me to a possible danger. So we’ll make an exception. I’ll tell you who the lady is.”
He told me that a few months previously, at midsummer, he had been invited to join a Cricket Week house party at Castle Cleeve, one of the great country homes in the beautiful Cotswold area of Gloucestershire.
“It was a big party,” Raffles said. “There were a lot of important people there — the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the First Lord of the Admiralty — people of that calibre. At these very big parties, it sometimes happens that there aren’t enough bedrooms for all the guests. In that case, it’s the custom for the married couples to be allotted the bedrooms, and the bachelor guests are billeted, for sleeping purposes, at largish houses in the immediate neighbourhood. I was billeted at a lovely old Elizabethan manor house called Winchcombe Glebe, where my hostess was a Mrs. Diana Rivenhurst, the lady you saw me with last night. We got along very well together.”
Mrs. Rivenhurst, Raffles told me, had inherited a large fortune — and Winchcombe Glebe — from her late husband, a man much older than herself.
“Diana’s not quite thirty,” Raffles said. “Her husband made his pile out of cotton. He owned spinning-mills in Lancashire and was known as a shrewd buyer of the raw material auctioned at the Cotton Exchange, Atlanta, Georgia, where Diana used often to go with him on his business visits, and where, I gather, she received from Southern society a welcome she’s never had from such circles in this country.”
I understood. Because her late husband had been “in trade,” certain doors were closed to Diana Rivenhurst, for all her wealth, that were open to A. J. Raffles. I fancied that to be asked by the bigwigs of Castle Cleeve if she could receive for a week at her lovely home one of their guests, who happened to be England’s cricket captain, would not likely have induced hesitation on the part of the beautiful owner of Winchcombe Glebe.
“She was awfully kind to me,” Raffles said. “She couldn’t have been more considerate. For instance, she owns a motor-car. It’s a this year’s, 1907, Darracq landaulette. I can’t tell you, Bunny, how keenly I came to look forward, every evening, to the moment when the Castle butler would whisper in my ear, ‘The chauffeur with the Winchcombe Glebe motor-car has come for you, Mr. Raffles.’ Believe me, it was a relief to get away from the endless political and foxhuntin’ and pheasant-shootin’ gossip, at the Castle, and have an hour or two more or less tête-à-tête with Diana. I say ‘more or less’ because, naturally, there was the usual domestic staff at the Glebe, and of course, with a male guest in the house, a meek aunt also was staying there, by way of chaperone for Diana.”
“The chaste Diana,” I murmured, vaguely recalling classical studies from my schooldays.
Actually, Raffles told me, it was only once or twice that he had been alone with Diana — just for a nightcap on the terrace, the midsummer nights so magical, the gardens of Winchcombe Glebe spellbound in the moonlight, and the warm air fragrant with the scent of roses.
“She wore one,” said Raffles, “in her hair.”
His grey eyes remembered how. And, after a moment, he drew in his breath, deeply.
“The week,” he said, “came to an end, and we parted — with a regret that, I think I can say, Bunny, was wholly mutual.”
“But you were with her last night,” I said, “at the Café Royal.” He nodded.
“The London debut of Luisa Tetrazzini,” he said, “gave me an opportunity for some small gesture to show my appreciation of Diana’s hospitality. I obtained, not without difficulty, three Grand Circle tickets for La Traviata, and I wrote to Diana inviting her and her aunt to be my guests for the occasion. They accepted. They motored up to London yesterday in the Darracq landaulette. They’re staying at the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street. The motor journey gave the aunt a migraine, which prostrated her, but Diana didn’t want to disappoint me, which is why I had her to myself at the Opera — and at the Café Royal for supper.”
“What you’ve told me, Raffles,” I said, “perhaps puts a different complexion on what happened last night. The man George H. Jay is a rather impressive figure — in a military kind of way. Could it be that he knows Diana and has aspirations concerning her?”
“And sees in me a possible rival?” Raffles said. He gave me a grim look. “I’ll make a point of finding out.”
He always had told me that he would never marry. He held that to do so, when any day he might be exposed as a criminal, would be an act of treachery to the woman. It could cause her great unhappiness. But I was worried. I never had known him so attracted by a woman as he evidently was by Diana Rivenhurst. Personally, what surprised me about her was that, with her beauty and her wealth, she was not already married again.
Almost unconsciously, troubled by the situation, I was drawn to Jermyn Street next afternoon — vaguely hoping, perhaps, to catch another glimpse of the woman who attracted Raffles. I did not see her. But, as I strolled along Jermyn Street, I saw what I knew must be her Darracq landaulette, for it was standing at the kerb before the dignified entrance of the Cavendish Hotel. The chauffeur was at the wheel, reading a newspaper. A hansom also was standing there.
I strolled on by, on the sidewalk opposite the hotel. About fifty yards on, I paused and, affecting an interest in the cravats in a haberdasher’s window, looked back at the hotel, hoping to see Diana come out. She did not, but somebody else did. It was George H. Jay.
Tall, ramrod-backed, perfectly dressed, vigorous, he stepped into the hansom, which jingled away, right past me, toward St. James’s Street.
I went straight round to Piccadilly, just a few minutes walk away, and found Raffles in his living-room in the Albany. The table was laid for tea, with three cups.
“Raffles,” I said, “I’ve just seen that man Jay again!”
“Have you now,” said Raffles. “Well, I’ve learned a thing or two about him, Bunny. I lunched at my favourite club yesterday, and, oddly enough, I was buttonholed by a fellow member, a stockbroker in the City, who said he felt he should tell me that George H. Jay had been inquiring around, very delicately, trying to find out how much I was worth and in what my capital was invested.”
“Your ‘capital’?” I said.
“Don’t worry,” said Raffles. “My tracks are pretty well covered. I don’t think Jay’s likely to find out anything to my discredit. All the same, as he seems to be spying on me, I’ve returned the compliment. I’ve had our friend and invaluable ‘fence,’ Ivor Kern, put one of his snoops on to doing a little spying on Mr. Jay.”
“But, Raffles — what is Jay?”
“A very confidential person — unique, in fact,” Raffles said. “He’s a secret agent — for the aristocracy.”
I was appalled.
“He seems,” Raffles said, “to have invented his own profession. I gather, from my clubman friend, that George Jay was an Army man, a regular, with Captain’s rank in a socially-good regiment. Apparently, he got younger officers, sprigs of the nobility, out of scrapes from time to time — scrapes over women, cards, money lenders, the usual sort of thing. The word went around, among gilded youth in trouble: ‘Get Jay to handle it.’ Their aristocratic families got to hear of Jay — with gratitude. Some of our great families, Bunny, have secrets — skeletons in the cupboard — disgraces of a kind that their family lawyers are neither competent nor would wish to handle.”