The whisky tinkled, the syphon fizzed, and ice plopped home; and seated there in his pyjamas, with the inevitable cigarette, Raffles told me the story that I had given up hoping to hear. The windows were wide open; the sounds of Piccadilly floated in at first. Long before he finished, the last wheels had rattled, the last brawler was removed, we alone broke the quiet of the summer night.
‘… No, they do you very well indeed. You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, but I’m afraid mine were of a comprehensive character. I had started in a hole; I ought really to have refused the invitation. Then we all went to the Melbourne Cup, and I had the certain winner that didn’t win, and that’s not the only way you can play the fool in Melbourne. I wasn’t the steady old stager I am now, Bunny. My analysis was a confession in itself. But the others didn’t know how hard up I was, and I swore they shouldn’t. I tried the Jews, but they’re extra fly out there. Then I thought of a kinsman of sorts, a second cousin of my father’s whom none of us knew anything about, except that he was supposed to be in one or other of the Colonies. If he were a rich man, well and good, I would work him. If not there would be no harm done. I tried to get on his tracks, and as luck would have it, I succeeded (or thought I had) at the very moment when I happened to have a few days to myself. I was cut over on the hand just before the big Christmas match, and couldn’t have bowled a ball if they had played me.
‘The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask me if I was any relation of Raffles of the National Bank, and the pure luck of it almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high official in one of the banks, who would finance me on my mere name – could anything be better? I made up my mind that this Raffles was the man I wanted, and was awfully sold to find next moment that he wasn’t a high official at all. Nor had the doctor so much as met him, but had merely read of him in connection with a small sensation at the suburban branch which my namesake managed. An armed robber had been rather pluckily beaten off with a bullet in him by this Raffles; and the sort of thing was so common out there that this was the first I had heard of it! A suburban branch – my financier had faded into some excellent fellow with a billet to lose if he called his soul his own. Still a manager was a manager, and I said I would soon see whether this was the relative I was looking for, if he would be good enough to give me the name of that branch.
‘I’ll do more,’ says the doctor. ‘I’ll give you the name of the branch he’s been promoted to, for I think I heard they’d moved him up already.’ And the next day he brought me the name of the township of Yea, some fifty miles north of Melbourne; but, with the vagueness which characterised all his information, he was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not.
‘He’s a single man and his initials are W.F.,’ said the doctor, who was certain enough of the immaterial points. ‘He left his old post several days ago, but it appears he’s not due at the new one till the New Year. No doubt he’ll go before then to take things over and settle in. You might find him up there and you might not. If I were you I should write.’
‘That’ll lose two days,’ said I, ‘and more if he isn’t there,’ for I’d grown quite keen on this up-country manager, and I felt that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on, a little conviviality might help matters considerably.
‘Then,’ said the doctor, ‘I should get a quiet horse and ride. You needn’t use that hand.’
‘Can’t I go by train?’
‘You can and you can’t. You would still have to ride. I suppose you’re a horseman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I should certainly ride all the way. It’s a delightful road, through Whittlesea and over the Plenty Ranges. It’ll give you some idea of the bush, Mr. Raffles, and you’ll see the sources of the water supply of this city, sir. You’ll see where every drop of it comes from, the pure Yan Yean! I wish I had time to ride with you.’
‘But where can I get a horse?’
‘The doctor thought a moment.’
‘I’ve a mare of my own that’s as fat as butter for want of work,’ said he. ‘It would be a charity to me to sit on her back for a hundred miles or so, and then I should know you’d have no temptation to use that hand.’
‘You’re far too good,’ I protested.
‘You’re A.J. Raffles,’ he said.
‘And if ever there was a prettier compliment, or a finer instance of even Colonial hospitality, I can only say, Bunny, that I never heard of either.’
He sipped his whisky, threw away the stump of his cigarette, and lit another before continuing.
‘Well, I managed to write a line to W.F. with my own hand, which, as you will gather, was not very badly wounded. It was simply this third finger that was split and in splints. The next morning the doctor packed me off on a bovine beast that would have done for an ambulance. Half the team came up to see me start the rest were rather sick with me for not stopping to see the match out, as if I could help them to win by watching them. They little knew the game I’d got on myself, but still less did I know the game I was going to play.
‘It was an interesting ride enough, especially after passing the place called Whittlesea, a real wild township on the lower slopes of the ranges, where I recollect having a deadly meal of hot mutton and tea with the thermometer at three figures in the shade. The first thirty miles or so was a good metal road, too good to go half round the world to ride on, but after Whittlesea, it was a mere track over the ranges, a track I often couldn’t see and left entirely to the mare. Now it dipped into a gully and ran through a creek, and all the time the local colour was inches thick, gum trees galore and parrots all colours of the rainbow. In one place a whole forest of gums had been ringbarked and were just as though they had been painted white, without a leaf or a living thing for miles. And the first living thing I did meet was the sort to give you the creeps. It was a riderless horse coming full tilt through the bush, with the saddle twisted round and the stirrup irons ringing. Without thinking, I had a shot at heading him with the doctor’s mare, and blocked him just enough to allow a man who came galloping after to do the rest.
‘Thank ye, mister,’ growled the man, a huge chap in a red checked shirt, with a beard like W.G. Grace, but the very devil of an expression.
‘Been an accident?’ said I, reining up.
‘Yes,’ said he, scowling as though he defied me to ask any more.
‘And a nasty one,’ I said, ‘if that’s blood on the saddle!’
‘Well, Bunny, I may be a blackguard myself, but I don’t think I ever looked at a fellow as that chap looked at me. But I stared him out and forced him to admit that it was blood on the twisted saddle, and after that he became quite tame. He told me exactly what had happened. A mate of his had been dragged under a branch and had his nose smashed, but that was all; had sat tight after it till he dropped from loss of blood. Another mate was with him back in the bush.
‘As I’ve said already, Bunny, I wasn’t the old stager that I am now – in any respect – and we parted good enough friends. He asked me which way I was going, and when I told him, he said I should save seven miles, and get a good hour earlier to Yea, by striking off the track and making for a peak that we could see through the trees, and following a creek that I should see from the peak. Don’t smile, Bunny! I began by saying I was a child in those days. Of course, the short cut was the long way round, and it was nearly dark when that unlucky mare and I saw the single street of Yea.
‘I was looking for the bank when a fellow in a white suit ran down from the verandah.
‘Mr Raffles?’ said he.
‘Mr Raffles!’ said I, laughing, as I shook his hand.
‘You’re late.’
‘I was misdirected.’
‘That all? I’m relieved,’ he said, ‘Do you know what they are saying? There are some brand-new bushrangers on the road between Whittlesea and this – a second Kelly gang! They’d have caught a Tartar in you, eh?’