I blushed for myself, now. My pen had proved a broken reed. I had been obliged to move from my pleasant flat in Mount Street to a hideous garret near Tattersall’s. On the one or two occasions when I had seen Raffles since our rupture, he had been his usual friendly self. But he had made no suggestion that I rejoin him, and I had lacked the effrontery to propose it myself. Today, however, I was desperate, down to my last five-pence, hungry enough to eat the words I had flung at him. My garret was a litter of bills, sordid rejection slips, and pawn-tickets. There was no one but Raffles to whom I could turn. And I could not find him. I had been to the Albany; he was not there. I had been to Lord’s Cricket Ground; he was not playing. I was convinced he was, or had been, somewhere among the crowd in the Mall, planning some coup; and the thought that I might be with him, lining my pockets, galled me.
I jammed on my silk hat, quit the balcony and the club, and strode again up St. James’s Street to Piccadilly — and the Albany. By now, surely, Raffles must have returned.
The porter shook his head.
“Sorry, Mr. Manders — haven’t seen Mr. Raffles all day.”
What was he doing?
Evening came. Eight o’clock. Nine o’clock. The white globes of gas-lamps shone in the purple dusk after the day’s heat. I had been to all his usual haunts; I still had not found him. I was down to my last penny. I was at my wit’s end. The West End was crowded, en fête for a night of kings. The sidewalks were thronged; hansoms and four-wheelers plied a roaring trade. Actual physical weakness compelled me to turn my footsteps toward my garret overlooking Tattersall’s, scene of many a famous horse auction.
I abominated that garret. It reeked of the stables. My sleep in it, troubled enough, heaven knew, by dreams of Raffles’ silk hat and black mask, his deft hands now busy with jemmy and skeleton key, now clamped by manacles, was made a mockery by the clinking of restless hooves in the stalls below, by sudden kicks and midnight munchings. I loathed the garret for these night alarms, for its meanness and mouse-droppings, and the sense it gave me of my degrading inability to gain a living without working.
Reluctantly, now, I walked past the grey-arched doors of Tattersall’s, turned into the mean street where I had this garret. On the near corner was a baker’s small shop, still open. On the opposite corner was a pub, jammed with redcoats roaring a chorus over their pots, while their admirers, seductive in ostrich-plumed hats, fastidiously sipped port-and-lemon.
I paused, fingering my penny, to peer into the baker’s window. Here a broken gas-mantel, roaring bluely amid festoons of flypaper, lit a display of halfpenny rolls and Sally Lunns. I knew I ought to save my penny to put in my gas-meter. The light would be necessary if I were to write a description, scintillant with fancy and apt allusion, of the day’s royal doings, to hawk round the Fleet Street editors tomorrow. But I was tempted by the baker’s. I was torn between the claims of an appetite and a gas-meter, and as I stood there irresolute, a hand fell on my shoulder.
My heart gave a sick heave and sank to my boots. I awaited the long-dreaded formula, “I have to warn you, Manders, that anything you may say—” But this convention of doom remained unuttered. Instead, a voice said cheerfully:
“All alone, Bunny?”
I spun round. Tall, faultlessly frock-coated, a pearl in his cravat, his face clean-cut, handsome, his eyes grey and keen, A. J. Raffles stood smiling at me. I seized his hand. My spirits soared. The very silk hat he wore thrilled me with a memory of the unforgettable occasion when he had walked blandly out of the British Museum with, balanced on his head under that same topper, the priceless gold cup from the Etrurian Collection.
“This is a warm welcome, Bunny,” he said now, smilingly, as I wrung his hand.
“I’ve been hunting you all day long,” I explained.
“Really?” He gave me a shrewd glance, but asked no question. Instead, he nodded at a dog which he was leading by means of a white handkerchief knotted to its collar. “Recognize him, Bunny?”
The dog, an elderly black spaniel, panted a sedate welcome at me.
“Surely,” I said, “it’s old J. Benjamin’s dog?”
“Just so,” said Raffles — “his dog named Captain. I had a fancy for a chat with old Benjamin, J., this evening, so I looked in at Florian’s for a welsh rarebit and a tankard. They told me Mr. Benjamin had been in earlier, and gone. As I was leaving, I found Captain whining round the door, evidently on the stray. I thought I’d better take him in tow before some demon hansom bowled him over. They didn’t know Mr. Benjamin’s address, at Florian’s, but I thought you might know, so I was coming to your lodgings. You’re a particular friend of his—”
This was quite true. I was. But at his first mention of J. Benjamin, there had flashed into my mind a vivid vignette from the day’s magnificence — an emperor with a grey face set in a rigour of arrogance, a withered arm thrust in his tunic, a jet moustache twisted up to his eyes, and two ramrod generals with spiked helmets for his grim, inseparable shadows.
I looked at Raffles with a sudden, excited conjecture. For between the emperor in the Mall and Florian’s Restaurant round the corner there was a link, and a strange one...
Florian’s Restaurant, opposite Knightsbridge Barracks, was a dim little panelled place with leather-padded settles, a wealth of sporting prints from Pickwick and Jorrocks, and a pewter-laden sideboard. Since my decline and fall from Mount Street, I had been a frequent diner at Florian’s, for its economy and its convenience to my garret.
Another regular at Florian’s was a neat little man with a leathery, snub, wrinkled face, a severe upper lip, grey mutton-chop whiskers, and very blue eyes under bristly hair brushed straight down in a bang across his forehead. He wore always a square, brown, hard hat, a suit of covert cloth cut tight in the leg, and a heavy watch-chain embellished with small silver whips. Intuitively, I had associated him with horses.
He always came into Florian’s in company with a sedate black spaniel — the very spaniel Raffles was now leading.
The old man and the oldish dog were a self-sufficient couple. Watching them in their booth at Florian’s, the spaniel with flopping ears looking up unwinkingly at his master as he divided their joint dinner into two exact parts, to hand down the dog’s share on a special plate, I had felt a liking for them. When the dog had licked the plate clean, groomed his chops with a connoisseur’s tongue, and reflected upon the repast with the detached air of a bewigged judge savouring a redolent tit-bit of evidence, he always arose and gave the old man a prod of thanks by way of grace after eating.
I had not spoken to them until one night when, running into Raffles soon after our dissolution of partnership, I had taken him into Florian’s to demonstrate a solvency in literature by buying him supper. The place chancing to be full, we had shared a booth with the old man with the dog. Perhaps because he was lonely, the old man had been communicative about himself, had introduced himself as Mr. Benjamin.
“Benjamin, J.,” he had said. “I’ve got a younger brother — Benjamin, T.”
The difference in age, it had transpired, between him and his “younger” brother was barely a year. And they were as like as “two peas in a pod.” This happy circumstance had gained them employment in the stables of a sporting Duke, who, proud of his “spanking turnouts,” liked the touch of uniformity provided by the brothers Benjamin on the jehu’s box, in their white whipcord breeches, bottle-green livery coats, white stocks, and grey tophats with yellow cockades.