The Best of Sisters, Part Four
There was a great deal of the performer in Raffles, as anyone who had seen him impersonate an East End thief or an indignant constable might have attested; and when his sister, as was her custom, gave him the lesson to read at morning services he threw himself into that role, too, and did it most affectingly. I had earlier noticed that the Reverend Mr. Combe was a bit dubious of his brother-in-law; but even that gentleman’s wary expression softened as Raffles read, while the rest of us were brought to the brink of tears by the mellifluous, throbbing note in his voice.
Fortunately, the resultant impulse to repent at once and lead a better life was, in my case at least, very short-lived.
When services were over, in fact, I was the first through the church door, where Raffles met me in the churchyard, immediately lit a cigarette, and let out a long breath of relief.
“Let’s hope our letter arrives before another Sunday comes, shall we?” he murmured.
Grinning, I said, “I don’t know; I thought you were rather enjoying yourself up there in the pulpit.”
Raffles shivered. “I don’t know how Sophy does it,” he said. “She’s no more a believer than I. Of course, she claims it makes her life as a vicar’s wife just that much easier, as she can simply say whatever her listener most wants to hear without being hindered by scripture, or proper doctrine. Let one of the faithful come to her for consolation after suffering some personal disaster, and she assesses in a moment whether he wants most to believe that his troubles are a judgment of God, a trial of his faith, or the work of the devil; and in no time at all she sends him away comforted, having confirmed that the situation is just as he supposed. I always feel somehow as though I ought to believe any prayer I make.”
These remarks left me momentarily speechless. Hitherto I had judged the charming Mrs. Combe the very model of a vicar’s wife.
In my shock, I stood staring blankly without knowing what I saw until Raffles murmured to me quietly, “I see you’ve noticed him, too. Who is he? Do you know?”
I had unconsciously been following with my eyes the movements of a man at the far edge of the churchyard. He wore a brown hat and an ulster, and appeared at that moment to be intently reading a gravestone.
“No,” I said.
Just then the man looked up; and as his gaze met mine, I gasped.
“Wait- ” I blurted. “Yes, I do know him! He’s the man who was watching in Burlington Gardens! But- how has he found us here?” I asked.
Raffles’s mouth compressed into a grim line. “This is bad,” he said.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Let me think.”
He was thinking still, one eye on the ulster-clad stranger, when Sophronia Combe walked up, trailed by one of her small sons.
“Duty done for another week!” she said cheerfully. “You read beautifully, as always, Dear.” Then, abruptly, she stopped, and her eye followed her brother’s.
“Is that a friend of yours, Arthur?” she asked. “He doesn’t seem your type.”
Raffles turned, a hastily-assumed smile lighting his face.
“Who? Him? No, no. I’ve never seen that man before in my life.” This remark had the virtue, at least, of being perfectly true. “He’s just somebody searching for some old family tomb, most likely.”
Something in the sharp sidelong glance Mrs. Combe gave her brother suggested to me that she had guessed a great deal more of our situation than we had ever told her.
“He looks- furtive, somehow,” she said thoughtfully. “I think he does, anyway.”
Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. “Little Artie’s tired, Darling,” she said. “Would one of you give him a horsy ride home? He’d like that. - Only, as it’s the Lord’s day, remember to try not to look as though you’re having too much fun!”
That evening, after our cold, teetotal Sunday supper (the Reverend Mr. Combe was regrettably strict in his Sabbath-day observances), Raffles and I met in my room.
“What are we going to do?” I moaned. “If Moriarty’s men tracked us here, I should think they could track us anywhere. And anyway, I don’t know where else we’d go. At this point we’re dashed short of funds.”
“I can get a little money from Sophy, I suppose,” Raffles said miserably. I knew how much he disliked to borrow from friends or family. “I’ll find out how much she might be able to spare us out of the housekeeping, and then we can decide our next move. It might be better if we split up. We stand a better chance of one of us getting away if they have to follow two.”
As he said this, there was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Combe called softly for her brother. Both of us jumped to our feet at once, of course.
When Raffles had let her in, Mrs. Combe - careless of propriety - closed the door behind her firmly and then immediately said, “I want you to tell me what’s going on, Arthur. I already know you’ve gotten yourself into some kind of trouble. You always do. I want to know what it is.”
To Raffles’s hasty assurances that all was well, she only repeated that she insisted upon knowing his true situation. “Naturally, I’d run any risk for you,” she said, “but I have the safety of my children to consider.”
An appeal of this nature could not be ignored, of course. Raffles and I exchanged glances.
“That man in the churchyard:” Mrs. Combe continued. “Do you owe him money?”
Had she not asked this, I doubt that Raffles would have told her more than that we intended to leave her house immediately. But rather than have his sister imagine that he had been so stupid as to become enmeshed in the trammels of a money-lender, A. J. immediately confessed all.
In his own way, of course.
I sat lost in wonder and admiration at the performance, as Raffles recounted the story in such a way as to tell his sister not a single outright lie, and yet manage somehow to convey the impression that it was in no way our own faults that we happened to be in possession of a wallet belonging to a total stranger. He even gave our situation a slightly heroic gloss, I thought, by maintaining that we would unfailingly have returned his property to the unfortunate albino already, had we not detected that - for some reason totally unknown to us, of course - Mr. Griffin was being closely shadowed by several unsavory characters.
“To have just gone up and handed the thing to him might have put him in danger,” Raffles stoutly maintained.
To which Mrs. Combe responded dryly, “So you two are, in fact, this unlucky man’s good angels.”
Raffles agreed that we were. Then he added, with perfect sincerity, “I never meant, by coming here, to involve you in this in the least, Sophy. You know me better than that.”
To my indignation, I sensed that Mrs. Combe slightly doubted this, the one absolutely reliable statement Raffles had made so far.
Wanting to help him, I put in eagerly, “It’s true: We came because we thought that, from here, we could ensure Mr. Griffin’s safety by sending his wallet back to him in such a way that Moriarty would never know he’d received it. We honestly never dreamt we’d be followed.”
To my surprise, Raffles gave me a glance in which I detected annoyance.
At once, Mrs. Combe pounced. “So you know nothing about why this Mr. Griffin is being so persecuted- ”
“No idea at all,” I assured her.
“-yet you do know that the man who is persecuting him is named Moriarty? How is that?” she asked.
I looked hastily at Raffles, who looked away.
“Was that man in the cemetery this morning ‘Moriarty’, then?” Mrs. Combe wondered.
Admitted Raffles reluctantly, “We don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” his sister repeated.
“Dash it, Sophy!” exclaimed Raffles, beginning, somewhat unwillingly, to laugh. “We haven’t been formally introduced! Anyway, what does it matter whether it was Moriarty, or another man? Somebody doesn’t want Mr. Griffin’s wallet returned to him- but it’s not us.”
Persisted Mrs. Combe, “If you haven’t, as you say, been introduced, where did you learn Mr. Moriarty’s name?”
Despite Raffles’ best efforts, his sister would not be distracted. Inexorably, bit by bit, she extracted the whole story - the real one - from him.
When he had finished, she said, “We may assume, I think, that the wallet, and not Mr. Griffin himself, then, is this Moriarty’s quarry. -May I see it?”
“What? The wallet?”
“Yes.”
Reluctantly, Raffles handed it over.
After a glance into it, Mrs. Combe asked, her eyebrows rising, “No money?”
“We’re going to put it back,” Raffles hastily assured her.
As her brother had done days before, Mrs. Combe smoothed Mr. Griffin’s papers one by one in her lap, and then examined each in turn.
“We think he’s an optician,” I explained, as she studied them. “-Or maybe a chemist. Something of that nature, anyway.”
Mrs. Combe shook her head. “Not an optician,” she replied decidedly. “That’s the index of refraction of water, isn’t it?” (Here she pointed to some long mathematical string of no meaning whatever to me.) “An optician would be interested in the index of refraction of glass, I should think. And then, what’s this?” She looked more closely. “I believe this might constitute the index of refraction of something else altogether,” she said, “-though I don’t know what. -Don’t you think it is, Arthur?”
Raffles, smiling wryly, did not commit himself to any position on the point; while I stood entirely baffled by the whole conversation.
“You said Mr. Griffin was engaged in some sort of research, didn’t you?” his sister asked us. “I think we can assume from these computations that optics - but not lenses - are the subject of his studies. Can’t we?”
“Ah- very likely,” Raffles agreed.
Turning another page, his sister’s face became grave. “I don’t like the look of this,” she said, indicating what I recognized - barely - as a chemical formula. “This is some sort of opiate, I believe.”
When she had looked her fill, Mrs. Combe refolded the papers carefully and replaced them in the wallet. Then, looking up at the two of us, she said briskly, “Now: What are we to do about your situation? Would a little money help?”
“Money always helps,” Raffles said; adding, “Can you spare us ten shillings, do you think?”
“Don’t be silly,” replied his sister. “That’s not enough.”
“Ten shillings apiece, I meant.”
“Ten pounds apiece, you mean,” Mrs. Combe insisted. “No- no arguments, Arthur. You’re gentlemen, and you must keep yourselves like gentlemen.”
When Raffles continued to demur, ignoring my frantic signals to just please shut up and accept whatever he could get, Mrs. Combe added cheerfully, “If it makes you feel better, Dear, we’ll call it a loan and I’ll demand an absolutely usurious rate of interest on it. -I’ll give you twenty pounds the day after tomorrow. Unless you need more, perhaps?”
“Oh, twenty pounds will be ample; ample,” I ardently assured her. “More than generous.”
“We can’t take it,” said Raffles stubbornly.
“Of course you can,” Mrs. Combe replied. “-I’d give it to you right now, in fact; but I have to be somewhere tomorrow, and I need you here. You don’t mind looking after the children for me, I hope? Their father never has any idea what to do with them; and it’s just the one day.”
Twenty pounds, I reflected, would be enough for us actually to enjoy ourselves a bit while eluding Moriarty’s minions.
“Of course we don’t mind,” I told her quickly, all but clapping my hand over Raffles’s mouth to stop him stubbornly repeating that he would accept no more than ten shillings at most from his sister. “We’d love to look after the little br- that is, the little nippers, for you,” I said. “By any chance, do they want to learn to play whist?”
“Oh, dear, no!” laughed Mrs. Combe, patting her brother’s cheek consolingly. “Edwin would suffer an apoplexy if he saw them with cards. Have a nice game of cricket instead, why don’t you?”
Raffles faintly brightened at this suggestion; and for the sake of the twenty pounds, I made myself say heartily, “Cricket it is. -But this time, I want to be on Miss Edwina’s team.”
You may take my word on it that it’s very difficult to play good cricket when one fears that at any moment a fellow in an ulster and a brown bowler hat may leap suddenly from the bushes and demand one hand over any and all wallets one might have about one’s person. In fact, Miss Edwina had to chastise me several times for my evident distraction. Even Raffles’ game was a bit off, I thought. However, as he kindly remembered to bowl to me in a way that ensured my scoring a respectable half-century before retiring, and as afterwards I managed to satisfy Nanny with my mannerly behavior at the tea-table, on the whole the day went pretty well. True, I jumped like a cat on hot bricks at every untoward sight or sound; but by exerting myself to call each of the four Combe boys by his proper name, I managed to make myself more popular with the nursery set, at least. (The boys were denominated Georgie, Freddie, Charlie and Artie; but due to the fact that - except in their relative heights, not easily judged at any distance - the four were as alike in appearance as the identical sailor-suits in which they were invariably clothed, I had not previously troubled to distinguish one from another.)
Despite these little successes on my part, however, I was far from sorry when, near dinner-time, Mrs. Combe arrived home at last, and the children rushed from the cricket-field to meet her.
To my regret, Raffles refused to consider my suggestion that we take the banknotes that Mrs. Combe pressed upon us and start at once across the fields. Instead, not until the next morning, following tear-stained good-byes from the Combe children (one of whom - Freddie, I think, blast him - advised Raffles in a hoarse whisper to return soon with “that man you brought last time” instead of me), and a farewell on the part of their father that bespoke entire satisfaction at our going, did we climb quite openly with Mrs. Combe into the family carriage and drive off toward Tunbridge Wells.
“For heaven’s sake, sit still, Bunny!” exclaimed Raffles impatiently, as we rolled past the last High Street shop. “What are you looking for? You’re twisting around like a weather-cock!”
“What do you think I’m looking for? I want to see if we’re followed,” I replied nervously.
Mrs. Combe laughed. “Oh, your friend is still asleep at the inn,” she said cheerfully. “I made sure he would be when we left.”
Asked I dubiously, “You won’t mind if I look back now and then to see for certain, will you?”
“Not at all,” replied the good lady; though Raffles said irritably, “Don’t you dare!”
“I have a lot to tell you,” Mrs. Combe told us then. “But I’ll wait until we’re on the train to discuss it. For now, what did you think of the children, Arthur darling? Isn’t the boys’ Latin coming along well?”
The accomplishments of the Combe children entirely engrossed both mother and uncle all the way to the train-station, where we embarked (me with a sigh of relief to see that we’d gotten away cleanly, no one following) for London.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three // Part Five