Part 22 (1/2)
”Yes,” said Levy, ”the man that shot all this lot used to go about saying he'd shoot me at one time; but I need 'ardly tell you he gave it up as a bad job, and went an' did what some folks call a worse instead. He didn't get much show 'ere, I can tell you; that little foreign snipe won't either, nor yet any other carrion that think they want my blood. I'd empty this shooter o' mine into their in'ards as soon as look at 'em, I don't give a curse who they are! Just as well I wasn't brought up to your profession, eh, Raffles?”
”I don't quite follow you, Mr. Levy.”
”Oh yes you do!” said the money-lender, with his gastric chuckle. ”How've you got on with that little bit o' burgling?”
And I saw him screw up his bright eyes, and glance through the open windows into the outer darkness, as though there was still a hope in his mind that we had not come down alone. I formed the impression that Levy had returned by a fairly late train himself, for he was in morning dress, in dusty boots, and there was an abundant supply of sandwiches on the table with the drinks. But he seemed to have confined his own attentions to the bottle, and I liked to think that the sandwiches had been cut for the two emissaries for whom he was welcome to look out for all night.
”How did you get on?” he repeated when he had given them up for the present.
”For a first attempt,” replied Raffles, without a twinkle, ”I don't think I've done so badly.”
”Ah! I keep forgetting you're a young beginner,” said Levy, catching the old note in his turn.
”A beginner who's scarcely likely to go on, Mr. Levy, if all cribs are as easy to crack as that lawyers' office of yours in Gray's Inn Square.”
”As easy?”
Raffles recollected his pose.
”It was enormous fun,” said he. ”Of course one couldn't know that there would be no hitch. There was an exciting moment towards the end. I have to thank you for quite a new thrill of sorts. But, my dear Mr. Levy, it was as easy as ringing the bell and being shown in; it only took rather longer.”
”What about the caretaker?” asked the usurer, with a curiosity no longer to be concealed.
”He obliged me by taking his wife to the theatre.”
”At your expense?”
”No, Mr. Levy, the item will be debited to you in due course.”
”So you got in without any difficulty?”
”Over the roof.”
”And then?”
”I hit upon the right room.”
”And then, Raffles?”
”I opened the right safe.”
”Go on, man!”
But the man was only going on at his own rate, and the more Levy pressed him, the greater his apparent reluctance to go on at all.
”Well, I found the letter all right. Oh, yes, I made a copy of it. Was it a good copy? Almost too good, if you ask me.” Thus Raffles under increasing pressure.
”Well? Well? You left that one there, I suppose? What happened next?”
There was no longer any masking the moneylender's eagerness to extract the denouement of Raffles's adventure; that it required extracting must have seemed a sufficient earnest of the ultimate misadventure so craftily plotted by Levy himself. His great nose glowed with the imminence of victory. His strong lips loosened their habitual hold upon each other, and there was an impressionist daub of yellow fang between. The brilliant little eyes were reduced to sparkling pinheads of malevolent glee. This was not the fighting face I knew better and despised less, it was the living epitome of low cunning and foul play.