E. W. Hornung
A Thief in the Night
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Table of contents
Out of Paradise
The Chest of Silver
The Rest Cure
The Criminologists' Club
The Field of Philippi
A Bad Night
A Trap to Catch a Cracksman
The Spoils of Sacrilege
The Raffles Relics
The Last Word
Out of Paradise
If
I must tell more tales of Raffles, I can but go back to our earliest
days together, and fill in the blanks left by discretion in existing
annals. In so doing I may indeed fill some small part of an
infinitely greater blank, across which you may conceive me to have
stretched my canvas for the first frank portrait of my friend. The
whole truth cannot harm him now. I shall paint in every wart. Raffles
was a villain, when all is written; it is no service to his memory to
gloze the fact; yet I have done so myself before to–day. I have
omitted whole heinous episodes. I have dwelt unduly on the redeeming
side. And this I may do again, blinded even as I write by the gallant
glamour that made my villain more to me than any hero. But at least
there shall be no more reservations, and as an earnest I shall make
no further secret of the greatest wrong that even Raffles ever did
me.I
pick my words with care and pain, loyal as I still would be to my
friend, and yet remembering as I must those Ides of March when he led
me blindfold into temptation and crime. That was an ugly office, if
you will. It was a moral bagatelle to the treacherous trick he was to
play me a few weeks later. The second offence, on the other hand, was
to prove the less serious of the two against society, and might in
itself have been published to the world years ago. There have been
private reasons for my reticence. The affair was not only too
intimately mine, and too discreditable to Raffles. One other was
involved in it, one dearer to me than Raffles himself, one whose name
shall not even now be sullied by association with ours.Suffice
it that I had been engaged to her before that mad March deed. True,
her people called it "an understanding," and frowned even
upon that, as well they might. But their authority was not direct; we
bowed to it as an act of politic grace; between us, all was well but
my unworthiness. That may be gauged when I confess that this was how
the matter stood on the night I gave a worthless check for my losses
at baccarat, and afterward turned to Raffles in my need. Even after
that I saw her sometimes. But I let her guess that there was more
upon my soul than she must ever share, and at last I had written to
end it all. I remember that week so well! It was the close of such a
May as we had never had since, and I was too miserable even to follow
the heavy scoring in the papers. Raffles was the only man who could
get a wicket up at Lord's, and I never once went to see him play.
Against Yorkshire, however, he helped himself to a hundred runs as
well; and that brought Raffles round to me, on his way home to the
Albany.
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!