A Thief in the Night

By E. W. Hornung

The third installment in the irresistible adventures of A. J. Raffles, the thief who gives crime a good name

For weeks, Bunny Manders has scoured the sporting papers, looking for word of his vanished friend—the cricketer, playboy, and gentleman thief A. J. Raffles. A mysterious message lures Bunny to a darkened side street, where he finds Raffles in filthy clothes, with an unkempt beard. The amateur cracksman has been lying low in the empty townhouse of a vacationing colonel—what better place to take a Rest Cure? He invites Bunny to stay with him, but when the colonel returns unexpectedly, the public school duo is forced to contemplate a crime beyond reason: murder.
 
Pushed to the very brink of disaster, the quick-footed Raffles recovers in style. In these classic stories, England’s most honorable thief and his loyal companion elude criminologists, cops, and ruthless professional villains, stealing whatever they want—and doing it with flair.
 
This ebook features a new introduction by Otto Penzler and has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480403055

E. W. Hornung

Ernest William Hornung (1866 –1921) was a prolific English poet and novelist, famed for his A. J. Raffles series of novels about a gentleman thief in late 19th century London. Hornung spent most of his life in England and France, but in 1883 he traveled to Australia where he lived for three years, his experiences there shaping many of his novels and short stories. On returning to England he worked as a journalist, and also published many of his poems and short stories in newspapers and magazines. A few years after his return, he married Constance Aimée Doyle, sister of his friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, with whom he had a son. During WWI he followed the troops in French trenches and later gave a detailed account of his encounters in Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front. Ernest Hornung died in 1921.

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Introduction

It has been speculated that E. W. Hornung (1866–1921), Arthur Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law, created Raffles, the greatest rogue in literature, to tweak the nose of the creator of the greatest detective in literature. Whatever impelled Hornung to turn his pen to the production of these Victorian and Edwardian classics has long been forgotten, but the gentleman cracksman lives on, having given his name to the English language; all successful burglars who bring elegance to their nefarious crimes are likened to Raffles—both in real life and in fiction.

Born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, Hornung suffered from poor health and, at eighteen, moved to Australia in the hope that the climate would be beneficial. He remained there less than three years but absorbed the physical surroundings and atmosphere, using them as the background for many books. When he returned to England, he married Constance Doyle, the sister of Arthur Conan Doyle. He never enjoyed full health but served in World War I anyway, going to France to organize a library and rest hut under the auspices of the YMCA. His combat-zone adventures are described in Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front (1919). Hornung’s only son, called Oscar (his real name was Arthur, for his uncle and godfather), served in France and was killed by a shell. Shortly after the war, Hornung accompanied his wife to Saint-Jean-de-Luz and contracted a fatal chill.

Hornung was an authority on cricket and, despite poor eyesight and health, was an excellent player, as was his most famous creation, Raffles. The exploits of the amateur cracksman, the subjects of Hornung’s best and most famous books, are not, however, his only contribution to the literature of crime and detection.

Because of the circumstances of the colonization of Australia, stories of nineteenth-century life there often deal with crime, convicts, and bushranging, and Hornung’s are some of the best of the kind. The Boss of Taroomba (1894) is the story of a girl who, together with a German piano tuner, defends her ranch against an attack by bushrangers (escaped convicts living in the bush). The Rogue’s March (1896) is a serious novel about convicts in a chain gang in New South Wales. Cole, a gold miner on Black Hill Flats, performs some detective work in Dead Men Tell No Tales (1899). The Belle of Toorak (1900; US title: The Shadow of a Man), describes how a former convict is protected by a young man who believes the felon to be his father. Stingaree (1905) is a collection of ten stories about Tom Erichsen, a cultivated New South Wales bushranger who has some of Raffles’s characteristics. He is a man of birth and mystery, with an ostentatious passion for music, and as romantic a method as that of any highwayman of the Old World. Other romantic novels of crime and adventure in Australia are A Bride from the Bush (1890), Under Two Skies (1892), Tiny Luttrell (1893), Irralie’s Bushranger (1896), My Lord Duke (1897), Some Persons Unknown (short stories; 1898), and At Large (1902).

In the more civilized setting of England, Hornung’s best-known non-Raffles book is The Crime Doctor (1914), a collection of stories about Dr. John Dollar, one of the first detectives to solve crimes using psychological means. Max Marcin created a psychiatrist-detective for radio in 1940. Also known as the Crime Doctor, Robert Ordway has no connection with Hornung’s Dr. Dollar (see Crime Doctor, The).

The hero of Young Blood (1898) comes into conflict with a villain and a swindler as he tries to live down his father’s disgrace. The English clergyman in Peccavi (1900) has committed a crime and endures a tragic penance. Although a man believes the woman guilty of murdering her first husband, he marries the heroine of The Shadow of the Rope (1902), only to fall under suspicion for the crime. The Camera Fiend (1911) concerns a precocious seventeen-year-old asthmatic schoolboy who discusses psychophotography with the title character (the camera fiend) and is forced to deal with a series of intricate crimes, aided in his solutions by Mr. Eugene Thrush. Old Offenders and a Few Old Scores (1923), a posthumous collection with an introduction by Conan Doyle, contains various kinds of crime tales.

Raffles

There is great affection for Robin Hood and the notion of taking wealth from the rich and redistributing it to the poor (much like a socialistic government). There is an even greater fantasy of the gentleman jewel thief—an urban sophisticate (idealized in evening clothes) who is a handsome, dashing, charming member of society by day and a fearless safecracker at night, ice water in his veins.

No character, living or fictional, has ever fulfilled this role as exquisitely as A.J. Raffles, the greatest cracksman in the literature of roguery. Raffles could have succeeded at any career, but he chose a life of crime. Once, penniless and desperate in Australia, he realized that his only salvation was to steal. He had intended the robbery, forced on him by necessity, to be his only such experience, but he had tasted blood and loved it. Why settle down to some humdrum uncongenial billet, he once asks Bunny Manders, his devoted companion, when excitement, romance, danger and a decent living were all going begging together? Of course it’s very wrong, but we can’t all be moralists, and the distribution of wealth is very wrong to begin with.

In England, his fame as one of the finest cricket players in the world, combined with his charming personality, brilliant wit, and remarkably handsome appearance, makes him a welcome guest at the homes of the country’s wealthiest families. He is comfortable in these surroundings, wearing evening clothes as if he had been born in them, and is delighted to make the acquaintance of owners of fabulous fortunes.

No criminal can match Raffles for courage and the ability to stay cool under the most difficult circumstances. In fact, he seems to relish situations that would unnerve many men, enjoying the thrill of the sport as much as the reward that waits behind the door of a safe. He plans most of his escapades down to the finest detail, but he is also capable of acting on the spur of the moment and pulling off a crime almost as a joke. Although he sometimes steals merely for sport, he usually has a motive—to help a needy friend, to keep the creditors from his door, or to right a wrong that the law was unable to handle.

He lives alone in expensive rooms in the Albany, with his friend Bunny just a short distance away, and has other expensive tastes, such as smoking Sullivan cigarettes. Living by his wits and skill as a thief, he seems quite happy with his hedonistic life of absolute luxury.

This is the Raffles who appeared in three short story collections and one novel by Hornung. Hornung and Eugene Presbrey also collaborated on a successful drama, Raffle, the Amateur Cracksman: A Play in Four Acts, produced in London with Sir Gerald du Maurier in the title role; in the United States, in 1903, a handsome matinee idol, Kyrle Bellew, played Raffles.

A somewhat different character, also named Raffles, appeared on the scene in 1932, when Barry Perowne revived the gentleman jewel thief as a contemporary, two-fisted adventurer in a long series for The Thriller. World War II ended the life of the magazine and, temporarily, of Raffles. Beginning in 1950 Perowne again wrote tales about the amateur cracksman (for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and the Saint Mystery Magazine), but this time the adventures occur in the late Victorian and early Edwardian times in which they belong. Here too, Raffles pursues a hedonistic way of life, but he is now more socially aware; he commits crimes primarily to correct injustices, and personal profit is a secondary motivation. His ethical standards are a little higher than they were when Hornung recounted his exploits. Fourteen of the best tales were collected in Raffles Revisited, with an introduction by Otto Penzler.

The fixed point in all the stories is Bunny, Raffles’s former schoolmate who, in those days, had idolized A.J. When he and Raffles meet again as adults, Bunny has attempted suicide to avoid financial disgrace. Raffles saves his life and steals enough to get Bunny out of debt, earning his undying devotion in the process. Bunny hates the illegal life and often tries to dissuade his friend from committing crimes, but, once involved, he is fearless and loyal. Bunny is typically English in appearance and is less than brilliant, but his journalistic background enables him to chronicle Raffles’s adventures in a lively style.

Checklist

By E.W. Hornung:

1899 The Amateur Cracksman (short stories)

1901 The Black Mask (short stories; US title: Raffles: Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman)

1905 A Thief in the Night (short stories)

1901 Mr. Justice Raffles

By Barry Perowne:

1933 Raffles after Dark (US title: The Return of Raffles)

1934 Raffles in Pursuit

1936 Raffles under Sentence (short stories)

1936 She Married Raffles

1937 Raffles vs. Sexton Blake

1939 The A.R.P. Mystery

1939 They Hang Them in Gibraltar

1940 Raffles and the Key Man

1974 Raffles Revisited: New Adventures of a Famous Gentleman Crook (short stories)

Films

Raffles appeared in a short American film as early as 1905 and was featured in an Italian serial by 1911. In 1917 John Barrymore starred in Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman (Hiller-Wilk), and in 1925 another film with the same title (released by Universal) featured House Peters as the daring thief, a gentleman by birth, who takes only from the rich.

Raffles. United Artists, 1930. Ronald Colman, Kay Francis, Bramwell Fletcher, David Torrence, Alison Skipworth.Raffles promises to reform, but a dear friend comes to him for aid. He needs a large amount of money in a hurry, and the only answer is for Raffles to steal a necklace during a country weekend party.

The Return of Raffles. Williams and Pritchard (British), 1932. George Barraud, Camilla Horn, Claud Allister (Bunny). Directed by Mansfield Markham.Again reformed, Raffles attends a house party, where he is framed for the theft of a necklace actually stolen by a gang.

Raffles. United Artists, 1939.David Niven, Olivia de Havilland, Douglas Walton, Dame May Whitty, Dudley Digges. Directed by Sam Wood.At the now-familiar weekend party, Raffles agrees to steal a necklace to help the brother of the girl he loves, but a gang beats him to it.

Television

In 1973 England’s Hammer Film Studios announced that its entry into television production would include a series based on Raffles and set at the turn of the century.

Play

The Return of A.J. Raffles, a comedy by Graham Greene, was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It opened in London in December 1975.

Otto Penzler

Out of Paradise

IF I MUST TELL more tales of Raffles, I can but 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 glaze 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.

We must dine and celebrate the rare event, said he. A century takes it out of one at my time of life; and you, Bunny, you look quite as much in need of your end of a worthy bottle. Suppose we make it the Café Royal, and eight sharp? I’ll be there first to fix up the table and the wine.

And at the Café Royal I incontinently told him of the trouble I was in. It was the first he had ever heard of my affair, and I told him all, though not before our bottle had been succeeded by a pint of the same exemplary brand. Raffles heard me out with grave attention. His sympathy was the more grateful for the tactful brevity with which it was indicated rather than expressed. He only wished that I had told him of this complication in the beginning; as I had not, he agreed with me that the only course was a candid and complete renunciation. It was not as though my divinity had a penny of her own, or I could earn an honest one. I had explained to Raffles that she was an orphan, who spent most of her time with an aristocratic aunt in the country, and the remainder under the repressive roof of a pompous politician in Palace Gardens. The aunt had, I believed, still a sneaking softness for me, but her illustrious brother had set his face against me from the first.

Hector Carruthers! murmured Raffles, repeating the detested name with his clear, cold eye on mine. I suppose you haven’t seen much of him?

Not a thing for ages, I replied. I was at the house two or three days last year, but they’ve neither asked me since nor been at home to me when I’ve called. The old beast seems a judge of men.

And I laughed bitterly in my glass.

Nice house? said Raffles, glancing at himself in his silver cigarette-case.

Top shelf, said I. You know the houses in Palace Gardens, don’t you?

Not so well as I should like to know them, Bunny.

Well, it’s about the most palatial of the lot. The old ruffian is as rich as Croesus. It’s a country-place in town.

What about the window-fastenings? asked Raffles casually.

I recoiled from the open cigarette-case that he proffered as he spoke. Our eyes met; and in his there was that starry twinkle of mirth and mischief, that sunny beam of audacious devilment, which had been my undoing two months before, which was to undo me as often as he chose until the chapter’s end. Yet for once I withstood its glamour; for once I turned aside that luminous glance with front of steel. There was no need for Raffles to voice his plans. I read them all between the strong lines of his smiling, eager face. And I pushed back my chair in the equal eagerness of my own resolve.

Not if I know it! said I. A house I’ve dined in—a house I’ve seen her in—a house where she stays by the month together! Don’t put it into words, Raffles, or I’ll get up and go.

You mustn’t do that before the coffee and liqueur, said Raffles laughing. Have a small Sullivan first: it’s the royal road to a cigar. And now let me observe that your scruples would do you honor if old Carruthers still lived in the house in question.

Do you mean to say he doesn’t?

Raffles struck a match, and handed it first to me. I mean to say, my dear Bunny, that Palace Gardens knows the very name no more. You began by telling me you had heard nothing of these people all this year. That’s quite enough to account for our little misunderstanding. I was thinking of the house, and you were thinking of the people in the house.

But who are they, Raffles? Who has taken the house, if old Carruthers has moved, and how do you know that it is still worth a visit?

In answer to your first question—Lord Lochmaben, replied Raffles, blowing bracelets of smoke toward the ceiling. You look as though you had never heard of him; but as the cricket and racing are the only part of your paper that you condescend to read, you can’t be expected to keep track of all the peers created in your time. Your other question is not worth answering. How do you suppose that I know these things? It’s my business to get to know them, and that’s all there is to it. As a matter of fact, Lady Lochmaben has just as good diamonds as Mrs. Carruthers ever had; and the chances are that she keeps them where Mrs. Carruthers kept hers, if you could enlighten me on that point.

As it happened, I could, since I knew from his niece that it was one on which Mr. Carruthers had been a faddist in his time. He had made quite a study of the cracksman’s craft, in a resolve to circumvent it with his own. I remembered myself how the ground-floor windows were elaborately bolted and shuttered, and how the doors of all the rooms opening upon the square inner hall were fitted with extra Yale locks, at an unlikely height, not to be discovered by one within the room. It had been the butler’s business to turn and to collect all these keys before retiring for the night. But the key of the safe in the study was supposed to be in the jealous keeping of the master of the house himself. That safe was in its turn so ingeniously hidden that I never should have found it for myself. I well remember how one who showed it to me (in the innocence of her heart) laughed as she assured me that even her little trinkets were solemnly locked up in it every night. It had been