R.W. VI - Riverworld and Other Stories

  Schweinhund! I'll rendezvous with you some other time!'

  He sped from the hangar as fast as a seventy-nine-year-old Spad could go. Though he needed a breather, he had no time for it. Get back to base before The Baroness intercepted him. The worst of it was that his Vickers hadn't used the second load. It was sticking out from his pyjamas like a 7.7mm Lewis in the nose of a Handley Page 0/400 bomber. He was proud that it had an independent life. But he wished at that moment that he could control it.

  Puffing, he banked left and shot down the runway and into his hangar. He just had time to take the scene in before his wheels slid out from under him and he ground-looped. A roommate, Tyson, was standing there, his stick hanging out, a puddle of piss on the floor before him. And there was The Bloody Baroness, cursing and on her hands and knees. She must have run in to check on him and slipped on the mess.

  Collision course. He slammed onto her back and her nose went down. Thump! She didn't get up or even move. She stayed in the same position, her nose on the ground, her wings and undercarriage under her fuselage, her tail up.

  'Aha! Gotcha!'

  Why not? He was done for. There was going to be one hell of a court-martial. He'd be grounded, strapped, jailed, confined, incarcerated. No more dawn patrols. Ever.

  It was the first time he'd used such an unorthodox tactic. But ramming your Vickers up the enemy's exhaust pipe was a sure way to make a kill, even if the authorities frowned on it. Though it meant he would go down, too, make the final fall from the big blue, he would add the ace of aces to his list.

  He reached under and seized her huge cowlings – they must weigh half a ton apiece – and began the series of manoeuvres, Immelmanns, chandelles, virages, you name it, that would end in his victory. The only distraction was from Tyson. His usually leaden eyes brightened, and he sneered.

  'You filthy buggerer!'

  But he' walked to his bed and lay down and soon was snoring.

  Just before he emptied all of his 7.65mms, she groaned and showed signs of coming to. Then she began panting and moaning. Maybe she was half unconscious, in a fantasy. Like the Fokker and the Hannover, she was only partly in this, to them, disappointing world. Maybe she really didn't know what was going on. Whatever the case, the Vickers was in her exhaust pipe, and that's where she wanted it. She'd wanted it all her life but had been too inhibited to bring it up from the unconscious and tell her husbands that's what she wanted.

  It was this that The Black Eagle, whose daughter was a psychology major, had been hinting at.

  He didn't care. Psychology-shmychology. Though his Hispano was straining so hard it was about to tear itself loose, he was shooting her down. Let the aftermath be an afterbirth for all he cared, let...

  •••

  The Black Eagle came in as Henry Miller, the crazy old ace, the last of the fighter pilots of the Big One to engage the Hun, fell off The Baroness. Henry was dead, no mistaking those glazed eyes and that blue-grey colour of skin.

  Mrs Stoss was on all fours, her big bare ass sticking up, her anus pulsing and dripping. She was muttering something.

  Was it 'More! More! Please! Please!'?

  Then she was fully awake, and she was screaming as she heaved herself up, and The Black Eagle was laughing hysterically.

  The Lone Eagle's smile was broader than his.

  THE PROBLEM

  OF THE SORE BRIDGE

  – AMONG OTHERS

  Foreword

  * * *

  This is another of my fictional-author stories, originally published in a magazine under the byline of 'Harry Manders.' Manders was the one who was supposed to have narrated the history of his partnership with A.J. Raffles, the famous gentleman burglar. After Raffles' death he became a journalist. When I said 'famous' above, I should perhaps have said once-famous. Any devoted reader of detective and mystery fiction of both the past and present will recognise the names of Harry 'Bunny' Manders and Arthur J. Raffles. In the earlier part of this century Raffles was as well known as Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer are today. In fact, Raffles was used in English literature as a synonym of a 'gentleman burglar.' It was, I believe, even in the dictionaries, but the dictionaries and encyclopedias in my library, the earliest of which is a 1939 issue, fail to list the word. Too bad.

  Sherlock Holmes fans will recognise the story, the title of which is paraphrased by mine. They will also know Inspector Hopkins, though a few of them may not be aware of Inspector Mackenzie. He appeared in the Raffles stories and was the one who finally collared Manders.

  I got a big kick out of making the trails of Holmes and Raffles cross, however briefly, and having Raffles solve three crimes which Holmes couldn't.

  Editorial Preface:

  * * *

  Harry 'Bunny' Manders was an English writer whose other profession was that of gentleman burglar, circa 1890-1900. Manders' adored senior partner and mentor, Arthur J. Raffles, was a cricket player rated on a par with Lord Peter Wimsey or W. G. Grace. Privately, he was a second-story man, a cracksman, a quick-change artist and confidence man whose only peer was Arsene Lupin. Manders' narratives have appeared in four volumes titled (in America) The Amateur Cracksman, Raffles, A Thief in the Night, and Mr Justice Raffles. 'Raffles' has become incorporated in the English language (and a number of others) as a term for a gentleman burglar or dashing upper-crust Jimmy Valentine. Mystery story aficionados, of course, are thoroughly acquainted with the incomparable, though tragically flawed, Raffles and his sidekick Manders.

  After Raffles' death in the Boer War, Harry Manders gave up crime and became a respectable journalist and author. He married, had children, and died in 1924. His earliest works were agented by E.W. Hornung, Arthur Conan Doyle's brother-in-law. A number of Manders' posthumous works have been agented by Barry Perowne. One of his tales, however, was forbidden by his will to be printed until fifty years after his death. The stipulated time has passed, and now the public may learn how the world was saved without knowing that it was in the gravest peril. It will also discover that the paths of the great Raffles and the great Holmes did cross at least once.

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  The Boer bullet that pierced my thigh in 1900 lamed me for the rest of my life, but I was quite able to cope with its effects. However, at the age of sixty-one, I suddenly find that a killer that has felled far more men than bullets has lodged within me. The doctor, my kinsman, gives me six months at the most, six months which he frankly says will be very painful. He knows of my crimes, of course, and it may be that he thinks that my suffering will be poetic justice. I'm not sure. But I'll swear that this is the meaning of the slight smile which accompanied his declaration of my doom.

  Be that as it may, I have little time left. But I have determined to write down that adventure of which Raffles and I once swore we would never breathe a word. It happened; it really happened. But the world would not have believed it then. It would have been convinced that I was a liar or insane.

  I am writing this, nevertheless, because fifty years from now the world may have progressed to the stage where such things as I tell of are credible. Man may even have landed on the moon by then, if he has perfected a propeller which works in the ether as well as in the air. Or if he discovers the same sort of drive that brought... well, I anticipate.

  I must hope that the world of 1974 will believe this adventure. Then the world will know that, whatever crimes Raffles and I committed, we paid for them a thousandfold by what we did that week in the May of 1895. And, in fact, the world is and always will be immeasurably in our debt. Yes, my dear doctor, my scornful kinsman, who hopes that I will suffer pain as punishment, I long ago paid off my debt. I only wish that you could be alive to read these words. And, who knows, you may live to be a hundred and may read this account of what you owe me. I hope so.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  I was nodding in my chair in my room at Mount Street

  when the clanging of the lift gates in the yar
d startled me. A moment later, a familiar tattoo sounded on my door. I opened it to find, as I expected, A.J. Raffles himself. He slipped in, his bright blue eyes merry, and he removed his Sullivan from his lips to point it at my whiskey and soda.

  'Bored, Bunny?'

  'Rather,' I replied. 'It's been almost a year since we stirred our stumps. The voyage around the world after the Levy affair was stimulating. But that ended four months ago. And since then...'

  'Ennui and bile!' Raffles cried. 'Well, Bunny, that's all over! Tonight we make the blood run hot and cold and burn up all green biliousness!'

  'And the swag?' I said.

  'Jewels, Bunny! To be exact, star sapphires, or blue corundum, cut en cabochon. That is, round with a flat underside. And large, Bunny, vulgarly large, almost the size of a hen's egg, if my informant was not exaggerating. There's a mystery about them, Bunny, a mystery my fence has been whispering with his Cockney speech into my ear for some time. They're dispensed by a Mr James Phillimore of Kensal Rise. But where he gets them, from whom he lifts them, no one knows. My fence has hinted that they may not come from manorial strongboxes or milady's throat but are smuggled from Southeast Asia or South Africa or Brazil, directly from the mine. In any event, we are going to do some reconnoitring tonight, and if the opportunity should arise...'

  'Come now, A.J.,' I said bitterly. 'You have done all the needed reconnoitring. Be honest! Tonight we suddenly find that the moment is propitious, and we strike? Right?'

  I had always been somewhat piqued that Raffles chose to do all the preliminary work, the casing, as the underworld says, himself. For some reason, he did not trust me to scout the layout.

  Raffles blew a huge and perfect smoke ring from his Sullivan, and he clapped me on the shoulder. 'You see through me, Bunny! Yes, I've examined the grounds and checked out Mr Phillimore's schedule.'

  I was unable to say anything to the most masterful man I have ever met. I meekly donned dark clothes, downed the rest of the whiskey, and left with Raffles. We strolled for some distance, making sure that no policemen were shadowing us, though we had no reason to believe they would be. We then took the last train to Willesden at 11:21, On the way I said, 'Does Phillimore live near old Baird's house?'

  I was referring to the money lender killed by Jack Rutter, the details of which case are written in Wilful Murder.

  'As a matter of fact,' Raffles said, watching me with his keen steel-grey eyes, 'it's the same house. Phillimore took it when Baird's estate was finally settled and it became available to renters. It's a curious coincidence, Bunny, but then all coincidences are curious. To man, that is. Nature is indifferent.'

  (Yes, I know I stated before that his eyes were blue. And so they were. I've been criticized for saying in one story that his eyes were blue and in another that they were grey. But he has, as any idiot should have guessed, grey-blue eyes which are one colour in one light and another in another.)

  'That was January, 1895,' Raffles said. 'We are in deep waters, Bunny. My investigations have unearthed no evidence that Mr Phillimore existed before November, 1894. Until he took the lodgings in the East End, no one seems to have heard of or even seen him. He came out of nowhere, rented his third-story lodgings – a terrible place, Bunny – until January. Then he rented the house where bad old Baird gave up the ghost. Since then he's been living a quiet-enough life, excepting the visits he makes once a month to several East End fences. He has a cook and a housekeeper, but these do not live in with him.'

  At this late hour, the train went no farther than Willesden Junction. We walked from there toward Kensal Rise. Once more, I was dependent on Raffles to lead me through unfamiliar country. However, this time the moon was up, and the country was not quite as open as it had been the last time I was here. A number of cottages and small villas, some only partially built, occupied the empty fields I had passed through that fateful night. We walked down a footpath between a woods and a field, and we came out on the tarred woodblock road that had been laid only four years before. It now had the curb that had been lacking then, but there was still only one pale lamppost across the road from the house.

  Before us rose the corner of a high wall with the moonlight shining on the broken glass on top of the wall. It also outlined the sharp spikes on top of the tall green gate. We slipped on our masks. As before, Raffles reached up and placed champagne corks on the spikes. He then put his covert-coat over the corks. We slipped over quietly, Raffles removed the corks, and we stood by the wall in a bed of laurels. I admit I felt apprehensive, even more so than the last time. Old Baird's ghost seemed to hover about the place. The shadows were thicker than they should have been.

  I started toward the gravel path leading to the house, which was unlit. Raffles seized my coattails. 'Quiet!' he said. 'I see somebody – something, anyway – in the bushes at the far end of the garden. Down there, at the angle of the wall.'

  I could see nothing, but I trusted Raffles, whose eyesight was as keen as a Red Indian's. We moved slowly alongside the wall, stopping frequently to peer into the darkness of the bushes at the angle of the wall. About twenty yards from it, I saw something shapeless move in the shrubbery. I was all for clearing out then, but Raffles fiercely whispered that we could not permit a competitor to scare us away. After a quick conference, we moved in very slowly but surely, slightly more solid shadows in the shadow of the wall. And in a few very long and perspiration-drenched minutes, the stranger fell with one blow from Raffles' fist upon his jaw.

  Raffles dragged the snoring man out from the bushes so we could get a look at him by moonlight. 'What have we here, Bunny?' he said. 'Those long curly locks, that high arching nose, the overly thick eyebrows, and the odour of expensive Parisian perfume? Don't you recognise him?'

  I had to confess that I did not.

  'What, that is the famous journalist and infamous duellist, Isadora Persano!' he said. 'Now tell me you have never heard of him, or her, as the case may be?'

  'Of course!' I said. 'The reporter for the Daily Telegraph!'

  'No more,' Raffles said. 'He's a free-lancer now. But what the devil is he doing here?'

  'Do you suppose,' I said slowly, 'that he, too, is one thing by day and quite another at night?'

  'Perhaps,' Raffles said. 'But he may be here in his capacity of journalist. He's also heard things about Mr James Phillimore. The devil take it! If the press is here, you may be sure that the Yard is not far behind!'

  Mr Persano's features curiously combined a rugged masculinity with an offensive effeminacy. Yet the latter characteristic was not really his fault. His father, an Italian diplomat, had died before he was born. His English mother had longed for a girl, been bitterly disappointed when her only-born was a boy, and, unhindered by a husband or conscience, had named him Isadora and raised him as a girl. Until he entered a public school, he wore dresses. In school, his long hair and certain feminine actions made him the object of an especially vicious persecution by the boys. It was there that he developed his abilities to defend himself with his fists. When he became an adult, he lived on the continent for several years. During this time, he earned a reputation as a dangerous man to insult. It was said that he had wounded half a dozen men with sword or pistol.

  From the little bag in which he carried the tools of the trade, Raffles brought a length of rope and a gag. After tying and gagging Persano, Raffles went through his pockets. The only object that aroused his curiosity was a very large matchbox in an inner pocket of his cloak. Opening this, he brought out something that shone in the moonlight.

  'By all that's holy!' he said. 'It's one of the sapphires!'

  'Is Persano a rich man?' I said.

  'He doesn't have to work for a living, Bunny. And since he hasn't been in the house yet, I assume he got this from a fence. I also assume that he put the sapphire in the matchbox because a pickpocket isn't likely to steal a box of matches. As it was, I was about to ignore it!'

  'Let's get out of here,' I said. But he crouched staring down at the
journalist with an occasional glance at the jewel. This, by the way, was only about a quarter of the size of a hen's egg. Presently, Persano stirred, and he moaned under the gag. Raffles whispered into his ear, and he nodded. Raffles, saying to me, 'Cosh him if he looks like he's going to yell,' undid the gag.

  Persano, as requested, kept his voice low. He confessed that he had heard rumours from his underworld contacts about the precious stones. Having tracked down our fence, he had contrived easily enough to buy one of Mr Phillimore's jewels. In fact, he said, it was the first one that Mr Phillimore had brought in to fence. Curious, wondering where the stones came from, since there were no reported thefts of these, he had come here to spy on Phillimore.

  'There's a great story here,' he said. 'But just what, I haven't the foggiest. However, I must warn you that...'

  His warning was not heeded. Both Raffles and I heard the low voices outside the gate and the scraping of shoes against gravel.

  'Don't leave me tied up here, boys,' Persano said. 'I might have a little trouble explaining satisfactorily just what I'm doing here. And then there's the jewel...'

  Raffles slipped the stone back into the matchbox and put it into Persano's pocket. If we were to be caught, we would not have the gem on us. He untied the journalist's wrists and ankles and said, 'Good luck!

  A moment later, after throwing our coats over the broken glass, Raffles and I went over the rear rail. We ran crouching into a dense woods about twenty yards back of the house. At the other side at some distance was a newly built house and a newly laid road. A moment later, we saw Persano come over the wall. He ran by, not seeing us, and disappeared down the road, trailing a heavy cloud of perfume.