"Arrange to leave Waterloo by North German Lloyd special," he wired, " 9.25 A . M. Monday next will meet you Southampton aboard Uhlan with tickets am writing."
And write he did, a light-hearted letter enough, but full of serious solicitude for me and for my health and prospects; a letter almost touching in the light of our past relations, in the twilight of their complete rupture. He said that he had booked two berths to Naples , that we were bound for Capri , which was clearly the island of the Lotos-eaters, that we would bask there together, "and for a while forget." It was a charming letter. I had never seen Italy ; the privilege of initiation should be his. No mistake was greater than to deem it an impossible country for the summer. The Bay of Naples was never so divine, and he wrote of "faery lands forlorn," as though the poetry sprang unbidden to his pen. To come back to earth and prose, I might think it unpatriotic of him to choose a German boat, but on no other line did you receive such attention and accommodation for your money. There was a hint of better reasons. Raffles wrote, as he had telegraphed, from Bremen ; and I gathered that the personal use of some little influence with the authorities there had resulted in a material reduction in our fares.
Imagine my excitement and delight! I managed to pay what I owed at Thames Ditton, to squeeze a small editor for a very small check, and my tailors for one more flannel suit. I remember that I broke my last sovereign to get a box of Sullivan's cigarettes for Raffles to smoke on the voyage. But my heart was as light as my purse on the Monday morning, the fairest morning of an unfair summer, when the special whirled me through the sunshine to the sea.
A tender awaited us at Southampton . Raffles was not on board, nor did I really look for him till we reached the liner's side. And then I looked in vain. His face was not among the many that fringed the rail; his hand was not of the few that waved to friends. I climbed aboard in a sudden heaviness. I had no ticket, nor the money to pay for one. I did not even know the number of my room. My heart was in my mouth as I waylaid a steward and asked if a Mr. Raffles was on board. Thank heaven—he was! But where? The man did not know, was plainly on some other errand, and a-hunting I must go. But there was no sign of him on the promenade deck, and none below in the saloon; the smoking-room was empty but for a little German with a red moustache twisted into his eyes; nor was Raffles in his own cabin, whither I inquired my way in desperation, but where the sight of his own name on the baggage was certainly a further reassurance. Why he himself kept in the background, however, I could not conceive, and only sinister reasons would suggest themselves in explanation.
"So there you are! I've been looking for you all over the ship!"
Despite the graven prohibition, I had tried the bridge as a last resort; and there, indeed, was A. J. Raffles, seated on a skylight, and leaning over one of the officers' long chairs, in which reclined a girl in a white drill coat and skirt—a slip of a girl with a pale skin, dark hair, and rather remarkable eyes. So much I noted as he rose and quickly turned; thereupon I could think of nothing but the swift grimace which preceded a start of well-feigned astonishment.
"Why—BUNNY?" cried Raffles. "Where have YOU sprung from?"
I stammered something as he pinched my hand.
"And are you coming in this ship? And to Naples , too? Well, upon my word! Miss Werner, may I introduce him?"
And he did so without a blush, describing me as an old schoolfellow whom he had not seen for months, with wilful circumstance and gratuitous detail that filled me at once with confusion, suspicion, and revolt. I felt myself blushing for us both, and I did not care. My address utterly deserted me, and I made no effort to recover it, to carry the thing off. All I would do was to mumble such words as Raffles actually put into my mouth, and that I doubt not with a thoroughly evil grace.
"So you saw my name in the list of passengers and came in search of me? Good old Bunny; I say, though, I wish you'd share my cabin. I've got a beauty on the promenade deck, but they wouldn't promise to keep me by myself. We ought to see about it before they shove in some alien. In any case we shall have to get out of this."
For a quartermaster had entered the wheelhouse, and even while we had been speaking the pilot had taken possession of the bridge; as we descended, the tender left us with flying handkerchiefs and shrill good-bys; and as we bowed to Miss Werner on the promenade deck, there came a deep, slow throbbing underfoot, and our voyage had begun.
It did not begin pleasantly between Raffles and me. On deck he had overborne my stubborn perplexity by dint of a forced though forceful joviality; in his cabin the gloves were off.
"You idiot," he snarled, "you've given me away again!"
"How have I given you away?"
I ignored the separate insult in his last word.
"How? I should have thought any clod could see that I meant us to meet by chance!"
"After taking both tickets yourself?"
"They knew nothing about that on board; besides, I hadn't decided when I took the tickets."
"Then you should have let me know when you did decide. You lay your plans, and never say a word, and expect me to tumble to them by light of nature. How was I to know you had anything on?"
I had turned the tables with some effect. Raffles almost hung his head.
"The fact is, Bunny, I didn't mean you to know. You—you've grown such a pious rabbit in your old age!"
My nickname and his tone went far to mollify me, other things went farther, but I had much to forgive him still.
"If you were afraid of writing," I pursued, "it was your business to give me the tip the moment I set foot on board. I would have taken it all right. I am not so virtuous as all that."
Was it my imagination, or did Raffles look slightly ashamed? If so, it was for the first and last time in all the years I knew him; nor can I swear to it even now.
"That," said he, "was the very thing I meant to do—to lie in wait in my room and get you as you passed. But—"
"You were better engaged?"
"Say otherwise."
"The charming Miss Werner?"
"She is quite charming."
"Most Australian girls are," said I.
"How did you know she was one?" he cried.
"I heard her speak."
"Brute!" said Raffles, laughing; "she has no more twang than you have. Her people are German, she has been to school in Dresden , and is on her way out alone."
"Money?" I inquired.
"Confound you!" he said, and, though he was laughing, I thought it was a point at which the subject might be changed.
"Well," I said, "it wasn't for Miss Werner you wanted us to play strangers, was it? You have some deeper game than that, eh?"
"I suppose I have."
"Then hadn't you better tell me what it is?"
Raffles treated me to the old cautious scrutiny that I knew so well; the very familiarity of it, after all these months, set me smiling in a way that might have reassured him; for dimly already I divined his enterprise.
"It won't send you off in the pilot's boat, Bunny?"
"Not quite."
"Then—you remember the pearl you wrote the—"
I did not wait for him to finish his sentence.
"You've got it!" I cried, my face on fire, for I caught sight of it that moment in the stateroom mirror.
Raffles seemed taken aback.
"Not yet," said he; "but I mean to have it before we get to Naples ."
"Is it on board?"
"Yes."
"But how—where—who's got it?"
"A little German officer, a whipper-snapper with perpendicular mustaches."
"I saw him in the smoke-room."