“Then we won’t go down,” said Raffles, promptly; “we’ll slack it up here for a bit instead. No, Bunny, you stay where you are! I’ll fetch you a drink and a deck-chair, and you shan’t come down till you feel more fit.”
And I let him have his way, I will not say as usual, for I had even less than my normal power of resistance that night. That villainous upper-cut! My head still sang and throbbed, as I seated myself on one of the aforesaid parapets, and buried it in my hot hands. Nor was the night one to dispel a headache; there was distinct thunder in the air. Thus I sat in a heap, and brooded over my misadventure, a pretty figure of a subordinate villain, until the step came for which I waited; and it never struck me that it came from the wrong direction.
“You have been quick,” said I, simply.
“Yes,” hissed a voice I recognized; “and you’ve got to be quicker still! Here, out with your wrists; no, one at a time; and if you utter a syllable you’re a dead man.”
It was Lord Ernest Belville; his close-cropped, iron-gray moustache gleamed through the darkness, drawn up over his set teeth. In his hand glittered a pair of handcuffs, and before I knew it one had snapped its jaws about my right wrist.
“Now come this way,” said Lord Ernest, showing me a revolver also, “and wait for your friend. And, recollect, a single syllable of warning will be your death!”
With that the ruffian led me to the very bridge I had just crossed at Raffles’s heels, and handcuffed me to the iron rail midway across the chasm. It no longer felt warm to my touch, but icy as the blood in all my veins.
So this high-born hypocrite had beaten us at our game and his, and Raffles had met his match at last! That was the most intolerable thought, that Raffles should be down in the flat on my account, and that I could not warn him of his impending fate; for how was it possible without making such an outcry as should bring the mansions about our ears? And there I shivered on that wretched plank, chained like Andromeda to the rock, with a black infinity above and below; and before my eyes, now grown familiar with the peculiar darkness, stood Lord Ernest Belville, waiting for Raffles to emerge with full hands and unsuspecting heart! Taken so horribly unawares, even Raffles must fall an easy prey to a desperado in resource and courage scarcely second to himself, but one whom he had fatally underrated from the beginning. Not that I paused to think how the thing had happened; my one concern was for what was to happen next.
And what did happen was worse than my worst foreboding, for first a light came flickering into the sort of companion-hatch at the head of the stairs, and finally Raffles—in his shirt-sleeves! He was not only carrying a candle to put the finishing touch to him as a target; he had dispensed with coat and waistcoat downstairs, and was at once full-handed and unarmed.
“Where are you, old chap?” he cried, softly, himself blinded by the light he carried; and he advanced a couple of steps towards Belville. “This isn’t you, is it?”