“There’s a gentleman from the King’s carriage gone over to speak to him,” said the chatterbox. “Oh, look, the gentleman’s taking him to meet the King! D’you think Mr. Raffles will be knighted or something?”
“Hardly that,” replied her escort. “Still, congratulations are in order — though, of course, Raffles may merely have been thinking that he didn’t want a hole blown in the turf before he’d scored his hundred.”
“Sir,” I said, turning my head to look the fellow in the eye, “as a personal friend of A. J. Raffles, I resent that remark. No such thought would have entered his head. His action was instinctive — and typical of him.”
”I beg your pardon,” the young fellow said, with a flush. “I confess the remark was unwarranted. I gladly withdraw it. Uh, come, Daisy dear, I think perhaps we’d better go to tea now.”
The couple sidled off, the fellow shamefaced, his chatterbox companion looking back at me curiously.
I glanced across at the royal carriage. Raffles, standing beside it, still wearing his batting-pads, doffed his cap as the King shook hands with him and introduced him to John L. Sullivan. Knowing Raffles as I did, I knew he would not fail to note, as he shook hands with the great pugilist, Mr. Sullivan’s diamond ring and stickpin; but I also knew that, King Edward himself having made the introduction, Mr. Sullivan’s belongings would remain taboo as far as Raffles was concerned.
A hand gripped my arm. It was the man who had been sitting beside me.
“Did I hear you say, sir,” he asked, “that you’re a personal friend of A. J. Raffles?”
“I am indeed, sir.”
“In that case, I should appreciate it if you would introduce me to him. I see that His Majesty’s carriage is departing and the Tea Interval is now upon us. If you could arrange for me to meet Mr. Raffles during the interval, I should be most grateful. I have a proposal to make to him.”
Though he had been sitting beside me all afternoon, I had not until now taken much note of the man. Impeccably dressed in grey cutaway and grey topper, he was tall and thin, with a sallow, haughty face and a ribboned monocle.
“A proposal?” I said cautiously.
“I am Lord Pollexfen, of the Pollexfen Press. Sir, just listen to this crowd!”
As umpires and players were coming to the pavilion, which Raffles already had entered by a side door, the crowd in the stands was chanting, to rhythmic handclaps, “We — want — A. J. Raffles! We — want — A. J. Raffles!”
“You are hearing, sir,” said Lord Pollexfen, “the Voice of Britain! Within an hour, newsboys will be crying on the London streets the name of A. J. Raffles — a name already well-known as standing for all that is finest in English sporting life. To-morrow he will be the subject of laudatory editorials in every newspaper in the land. For some time I’ve been seeking a name for a project I have in mind. Sir, I have found that name!”
His monocle glittered compellingly at me.
“The iron is hot,” said Lord Pollexfen. “Will you please tell your friend Mr. Raffles that I should like to discuss with him immediately the launching of a magazine — a monthly magazine of the highest class a magazine, edited by himself, to be called A. J. Raffles’ Magazine of Sport.”
To cricketers the world over, the Long Room at Lord’s is little short of a shrine. And it was in this historic chamber, with the sunshine from its open windows mellow on panelled walls and priceless trophies, that the foundations of Raffles’ Magazine were laid.
He himself determined my own role in the project. Keen of face, his dark hair crisp, his blazer and muffler sporting the colours of the noted I Zingari Club, he put a hand on my shoulder.
“I’d like to point out, Lord Pollexfen,” he said, “that my friend here. Bunny Manders, is himself a skilful journalist. While I’m prepared to figure as Editor of the proposed magazine, my sporting engagements occupy most of my time. I should need the practical conduct of the magazine, under my general guidance as regards policy, to be in capable hands — and I can think of no more capable Assistant Editor than Bunny Manders here. How d’you feel about that, Bunny?”
It was true that, on Raffles’ advice, I dabbled in freelance journalism as a cover for the more lucrative activities in which I was his confederate.
“I shall be happy to cooperate,” I said.
To this, Lord Pollexfen made no objection, and he proceeded to suggest that an honorarium for Raffles would be appropriate, and for my own services an emolument in the nature of a salary. Though delicately enough phrased, the actual sums mentioned by the Press baron were nothing to write home about, but Raffles accepted them with casual inconsequence.
When the peer had gone off to arrange about office space and staff for us in the Pollexfen Press Building in Covent Garden I said that I felt we might have made a better bargain.
“Why strain at sprats, Bunny,” Raffles said, “when there may be mackerel in the offing?”
“You have some idea, Raffles?”
“That depends, Bunny.”
“On what?”
“On the girl who threw the bomb. You heard what she was shouting about. It may have possibilities.” Raffles’ grey eyes danced as he offered me a Sullivan from his cigarette-case. “She’ll be up in front of the magistrate at Marlborough Street to-morrow morning. We’ll be there.”
In addition to her honey-coloured hair, the girl in the dock at Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court next morning proved to have other attractions. She had spent the night in a cell, but evidently someone, possibly her solicitor, had wisely brought her more appropriate attire in which to appear before the magistrate than the trousers she had worn at Lord’s.
Her name was Mirabel Renny, and she was a fine figure of a girl, standing there in the dock, though her proud bearing and defiant expression were at variance with the moving plea which her solicitor, quite a young man, made on her behalf.
“My client. Your Honour,” he said, “as the only girl in a family dominated by her father and five large, athletic brothers, naturally occupied a subordinate place. As Your Honour is doubtless aware, pernicious literature about the social and political status of the female sex has been filtering into this country from the United States. Some of it chanced to fall into the hands of my client, who, in her girlish simplicity, was so unduly moved by it as to leave her country home and come to London. Here she lodged at a Ladies’ Hostel in Fulham, where she fell in with some elder persons of her sex who likewise had been infected by these imported fallacies.”
The girl opened her mouth, as though about to rebut her own solicitor’s statement, but the young lawyer continued hastily, to forestall her.
“No doubt in a pathetic attempt to emulate her brothers’ athletic prowess,” he said, “my client has acquired. Your Honour, a taste and aptitude for outdoor pastimes — golf, croquet, tennis, archery, horseback-riding, to name but a few. Taking advantage of these admittedly hoydenish proclivities of my client, the elder persons at the Ladies’ Hostel prevailed upon her to be the instrument of yesterday’s lamentable demonstration at Lord’s Cricket Ground — a demonstration which she now deeply regrets.”
I saw the girl’s hands, lightly sun-tanned, clench hard on the rail of the dock. Again she opened her mouth, but her solicitor hastened on.
“If Your Honour pleases,” he said, “any actual damage to the turf at Lord’s, the immemorial headquarters of our summer game, would have been viewed with repugnance by my client, with her sporting inclinations, however little they may become her in other respects. Indeed, as Inspector Harrigan has stated in evidence, the bomb-casing could not possibly have been fragmented by the detonation of its contents, consisting as these did merely of small fireworks — Chinese crackers or squibs.”