‘So that cloud rolled over, and by Jove it was a cloud with a golden lining! Not silver – real good Australian gold! For old Ewbank hadn’t quite appreciated me till then. He was a hard nut, a much older man than myself, and I felt pretty sure he thought me young for the place and my supposed feat a fluke. But I never saw a man change his mind more openly. He got out his best brandy, he made me throw away the cigar I was smoking and opened a fresh box. He was a convivial-looking party, with a red moustache, and a very humorous face (not unlike Tom Emmett’s), and from that moment I laid myself out to attack him on his convivial flank. But he wasn’t a Rosenthall, Bunny. He had a treble-seamed, hand-sewn head and could have drunk me under the table ten times over.
‘All right,’ I thought, ‘you may go to bed sober, but you’ll sleep like a timber yard!’ And I threw half he gave me through the open window when he wasn’t looking.
‘But he was a good chap, Ewbank, and don’t you imagine he was at all intemperate. Convivial I called him, and I only wish he had been something more. He did, however, become more and more genial as the evening advanced, and I had not much difficulty in getting him to show me round the bank at what was really an unearthly hour for such a proceeding. It was when he went to fetch the revolver before turning in. I kept him out of his bed another twenty minutes, and I knew every inch of the business premises before I shook hands with Ewbank in my room.
‘You won’t guess what I did with myself for the next hour. I undressed and went to bed. The incessant strain involved in even the most deliberate impersonation is the most wearing thing I know; then how much more so when the impersonation is impromptu! There’s no getting your eye in; the next word may bowl you out. It’s batting in a bad light all through. I haven’t told you of half the tight places I was in during a conversation that ran into hours and became dangerously intimate towards the end. You can imagine them for yourself, and then picture me spread out on my bed, getting my second wind for the big deed of the night.
‘Once more I was in luck, for I had not been lying there long before I heard my dear Ewbank snoring like a harmonium, and the music never ceased for a moment. It was as loud as ever when I crept out and closed my door behind me, as regular as ever when I stopped to listen at his. And I have still to hear the concert that I shall enjoy much more. The good fellow snored me out of the bank, and was still snoring when I again stood and listened under his open window.
‘Why did I leave the bank first? To catch and saddle the mare and tether her in a clump of trees close by: to have the means of escape nice and handy before I went to work. I have often wondered at the instinctive wisdom of the precaution. Unconsciously I was acting on what has been one of my guiding principles ever since. Pains and patience were required. I had to get my saddle without waking the man, and I was not used to catching horses in a horse paddock. Then I distrusted the poor mare, and I went back to the stables for a hatful of oats, which I left with her in the clump, hat and all. There was a dog, too, to reckon with (our very worst enemy, Bunny), but I had been cute enough to make immense friends with him during the evening, and he wagged his tail, not only when I came downstairs, but when I reappeared at the back door.
‘As the soi-disant new manager, I had been able in the most ordinary course to pump poor Ewbank about anything and everything connected with the working of the bank, especially in those twenty last invaluable minutes before turning in. And I had made a very natural point of asking him where he kept, and would recommend me to keep, the keys at night. Of course, I thought he would take them with him to his room, but no such thing. He had a dodge worth two of that. What it was doesn’t much matter, but no outsider would have found those keys in a month of Sundays.
‘I, of course, had them in a few seconds, and in a few more I was in the strongroom itself. I forgot to say that the moon had risen and was letting quite a lot of light into the bank. I had, however, brought a bit of candle with me from my room, and in the strongroom which was down some narrow stairs behind the counter in the banking chamber, I had no hesitation in lighting it. There was no window down there, and though I could no longer hear old Ewbank snoring, I had not the slightest reason to anticipate disturbance from that quarter. I did think of locking myself in while I was at work, but, thank goodness, the iron door had no keyhole on the inside.
‘Well, there was heaps of gold in the safe, but I only took what I needed and could comfortably carry, not much more than a couple of hundred altogether. Not a note would I touch, and my native caution came out also in the way I divided the sovereigns between all my pockets and packed them up so that I shouldn’t be like the old woman of Banbury Cross. Well you think me too cautious still, but I was insanely cautious then. And so it was that, just as I was ready to go, whereas I might have been gone ten minutes, there came a violent knocking at the outer door.
‘Bunny, it was the outer door of the banking chamber! My candle must have been seen! And there I stood, with the grease running hot over my fingers in that brick grave of a strong room!
‘There was only one thing to be done. I must trust to the sound sleeping of Ewbank upstairs, open the door myself, knock the visitor down, or shoot him with the revolver I had been new chum enough to buy before leaving Melbourne, and make a dash for that clump of trees and the doctor’s mare. My mind was made up in an instant, and I was at the top of the strongroom stairs, the knocking still continuing, when a second sound drove me back. It was the sound of bare feet coming along a corridor.
‘My narrow stair was stone I tumbled down it with little noise and had only to push open the iron door, for I had left the keys in the safe. As I did so I heard a handle turn overhead, and thanked my gods that I had shut every single door behind me. You see, old chap, one’s caution doesn’t always let one in!
‘Who’s that knocking?’ said Ewbank, up above.
‘I could not make out the answer, but it sounded to me like the irrelevant supplication of a spent man. What I did hear plainly was the cocking of the bank revolver before the bolts were shot back. Then, a tottering step, a hard, short, shallow breathing, and Ewbank’s voice in horror:
‘Good Lord! What’s happened to you? You’re bleeding like a Pig!’
‘Not now,’ came with a grateful sort of sigh.
‘But you have been! What’s done it?’
‘Bushrangers.’
‘Down the road?’
‘This and Whittlesea – tied to tree – cock-shots – left me – bleed to death.
‘The weak voice failed, and the bare feet bolted. Now was my time – if the poor devil had fainted. But I could not be sure, and there I crouched down below in the dark at the half-shut iron door, not less spellbound than imprisoned. It was just as well, for Ewbank wasn’t gone a minute.
‘Drink this,’ I heard him say, and, when the other spoke again his voice was stronger.
‘Now I begin to feel alive.’
‘Don’t talk!’
‘It does me good. You don’t know what it was, all those miles alone, one an hour at the outside! I never thought I should come through. You must let me tell you – in case I don’t!
‘Well, have another sip,’
‘Thank you… I said bushrangers. Of course there are no such things nowadays.’
‘What were they, then?’
‘Bank thieves; the one that had the pot-shots was the very brute I drove out of the bank at Coburg with a bullet in him!’
‘I knew it!’
‘Of course you did, Bunny. So did I down in that strongroom but old Ewbank didn’t, and I thought he was never going to speak again.
‘You’re delirious,’ he says at last. ‘Who in blazes do you think you are?’
‘The new manager.’
‘The new manager’s in bed and asleep upstairs!’
‘When did he arrive?’
‘This evening.’
‘Call himself Raffles?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’m damned!’ whispered the real man. ‘I thought it was just revenge, but now I see what it was. My dear sir, the man upstairs is an impostor – if he’s upstairs still! He must be one of the gang. He’s going to rob the bank – if he hasn’t done so already!’
‘If he hasn’t done so already,’ muttered Ewbank after him, ‘if he’s upstairs still! By God, if he is I’m sorry for him!’
‘His tone was quiet enough, but about the nastiest I ever heard. I tell you, Bunny, I was glad I’d brought that revolver. It looked as though it must be mine against his, muzzle to muzzle.’
‘Better have a look down here, first,’ said the new manager.
‘While he gets through his window? No, no, he’s not down here.’
‘It’s easy to have a look.’
‘Bunny, if you ask me what was the most thrilling moment of my infamous career, I say it was that moment. There I stood at the bottom of those narrow stairs; inside the strongroom, with the door a good foot open; and I didn’t know whether it would creak or not. The light was coming nearer – and I didn’t know! I had to chance it. And it didn’t creak a bit; it was far too solid and well-hung; and I couldn’t have banged it if I’d tried, it was too heavy; and it fitted so close that I felt and heard the air squeeze out in my face. Every shred of light went out, except the streak underneath, and it brightened. How I blessed that door!
‘No, he’s not down there,’ I heard, as though through cotton wool. Then the streak went out too, and in a few seconds I ventured to open once more and was in time to hear them creeping to my room.
‘Well, now, there was not a fifth of a second to be lost but I’m proud to say I came up those stairs on my toes and fingers, and out of that bank (they’d gone and left the door open) just as gingerly as though my time had been my own. I didn’t even forget to put on the hat that the doctor’s mare was eating her oats out of, as well as she could with a bit, or it alone would have landed me. I didn’t even gallop away, but just jogged off quietly in the thick dust at the side of the road (though I own my heart was galloping), and thanked my stars the bank was at that end of the township in which I really hadn’t set foot. The very last thing I heard was the two managers raising Cain and the coachman. And now, Bunny -’
He stood up and stretched himself, with a smile that ended in a yawn. The black windows had faded through every shade of indigo. They now framed their opposite neighbours, stark and livid in the dawn, and the gas seemed turned to nothing in the globes.
‘But that’s not all?’ I cried.
‘I’m sorry to say it is,’ said Raffles apologetically.
‘The thing should have ended with an exciting chase, I know, but somehow it didn’t. I suppose they thought I had got no end of a start. Then they had made up their minds that I belonged to the gang which was not so many miles away, and one of them had got as much as he could carry from that gang as it was. But I wasn’t to know all that, and I’m bound to say that there was plenty of excitement left for me. Lord, how I made that poor brute travel when I got among the trees! Though we must have been well over fifty miles from Melbourne, we had done it at a snail’s pace, and those stolen oats had brisked the old girl up to such a pitch that she fairly bolted when she felt her nose turned south. By Jove, it was no joke, in and out among those trees, and under branches with your face in the mane! I told you about the forest of dead gums? It looked perfectly ghostly in the moonlight. And I found it as still as I had left it – so still that I pulled up there, my first halt, and lay with my ear to the ground for two or three minutes. But I heard nothing – not a thing but the mare’s bellows and my own heart. I’m sorry, Bunny, but if ever you write my memoirs, you won’t have any difficulty in working up that chase. Play those dead gum trees for all they’re worth and let the bullets fly like hail. I’ll turn round in my saddle to see Ewbank coming up hell-for-leather in his white suit, and I’ll duly paint it red. Do it in the third person, and they won’t know how it’s going to end.’
‘But I don’t know myself,’ I complained. ‘Did the mare carry you all the way back to Melbourne?’
‘Every rod, pole, or perch! I had her well seen to at our hotel, and returned her to the doctor in the evening. He was tremendously tickled to hear I had been bushed. Next morning he brought me the paper to show me what I had escaped at Yea!’
‘Without suspecting anything?’
‘Ah!’ said Raffles, as he put out the gas. ‘That’s a point on which I’ve never made up my mind. The mare and her colour was a coincidence – luckily she was only a bay – and I fancy the condition of the beast must have told a tale. The doctor’s manner was certainly different. I’m inclined to think he suspected something, though not the right thing. I wasn’t expecting him, and I fear my appearance may have increased his suspicions.’
I asked him why.
‘I used to have rather a heavy moustache,’ said Raffles, ‘but I lost it the day after I lost my innocence.’