Bunny.
I awoke the next morning with a pounding headache and a bruise the size of a goose egg over my eyebrow. Propping myself up on my elbows, I blinked at my surroundings. The space appeared strangely alien to me; in my half-awake state I'd expected to find myself in my own bed. But unfamiliar windows, ceilings, and furniture slowly twisted back into the comfortably familiar upon the realisation that I was, of course, still in A. J.'s rooms.
A. J. himself, omniscient as he always seemed to be, stuck his head around the door mere seconds after I woke, wearing a fresh brown suit and a solicitous smile. 'Awake, Bunny, mine? How are you feeling? Bad as you look?'
'Mm,' I half-groaned, finding my throat dry and croaky, reaching for the glass of water left considerately on the bedside table. 'Like I've gone three rounds with a prizefighter. What time is it?'
'Just gone half-past two.'
'In the afternoon?'
'Yes, in the afternoon,' he chuckled, nodding toward the light streaming in through the half-drawn curtains.
I swore.
'You let me stay abed until this hour! I need to get up!'
Gentle hands descended upon my shoulders and pushed me back down into the pillows. 'You'll do no such thing. Coffee, first.'
'I'm not an invalid, Raffles,' I scowled, nevertheless letting him put me back in my place and tuck the blankets more firmly around me, secretly pleased to be the recipient of his attentive, commandeering care.
'I know you're not, Bunny, and that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself; but you did have a nasty—a nasty whack on the head, last night. I know from personal experience how unpleasant that can be, and usually it's worse the morning after. Now be a good little rabbit, and let me fetch you something hot to drink.'
'A. J.,' I said, hesitantly, after I'd drained the last of my coffee (and finished the four biscuits he had given me), uncertain of how to broach the topic, knowing only that I needed to; 'can we—talk about what I asked you last night?'
Raffles continued to move restlessly around his rooms, as he had been doing for the past fifteen minutes, walking in and out of doors, opening drawers, and poking behind cabinets. 'Do you know where I put that canvas bag of mine, Bunny? I was going to nip over to your flat and pick up some fresh clothes for you. Is there anything else you'd like me to bring back whilst I'm there?'
'Raffles...'
'Not that I intend on holding you hostage here, but I doubt you'll want to go anywhere, not even back across to your own flat, in the evening clothes you've slept in. And if you don't object I would rather keep you here for a day or two, just to keep an eye on that poor cracked skull of yours. Head injuries can be tricky devils in the healing, and if you won't let me send for a doctor, I'd at least like to keep my own weather eye on you for a while. Make sure you don't start talking to people who aren't there, or anything like that.'
'I feel fine,' I insisted, not entirely truthfully. 'I'll be fine. But A. J., please,' I pressed as firmly as I could manage, 'we really need to talk. About—last night. About how we're going to deal with—this.'
Raffles hesitated, glancing in my direction only briefly. 'Later, Bunny,' he said. 'I've things to do. Be a sport and don't keep on at me about it.' A cloud passed over him as he spoke, but almost immediately the bright smile was back on his face once again. 'Now, there's plenty of hot water, so do take a bath if you like, and help yourself to—well, to whatever you like, really. You know where everything's kept, and what's mine is yours, my dear Bunny! I'll be back in an hour or so. You'll be all right on your own until then, won't you?'
I nodded, resigned to the fact that I'd get nothing out of him just then. It would be better to save my words and my energy for a concerted attack, later. Raffles walked to the bedroom door, but upon reaching it he paused and looked back at me; I thought for a moment that he was going to speak, but if he had been about to, evidently he changed his mind. He left with the flash of a smile but without a word, carrying an air of unease about him.
For my part, I found myself strangely calm. I bathed and changed out of the sweat-soaked clothing I'd been wearing since the night before, and into a pair of A. J.'s pyjamas, draping one of his innumerable blazers—far too large for me—round my shoulders to fend off the chill. I made myself another cup of coffee (helping myself to some more biscuits too, my ever-increasing weight be damned), and sat tailor-fashion on the sopha before the fire Raffles had lit for me before he had left.
I sat and I thought.
I found that I was no longer worried. That was a strange sensation in itself, habituated as I had become to that constant background noise of nervousness following me around night and day, assiduously ignored. But I realised, as I sat and thought alone in Raffles' sitting room, that the reason I was no longer worried was because I no longer had need to doubt. There was no back and forth argument in my mind, no push and pull, no fors and againsts, no undermining maybes: Raffles and I were in new and immediate danger, no ifs or buts about it. And this wasn't merely the always possible, often distant, by now almost normalised danger inherent to our life of crime—that particular ever-present sword of Damocles had been long since relegated almost to the status of room decoration in my mind, so used had I become to its constant, sickening threat always looming over my head. Nor was it the more urgent danger found in our criminal adventures themselves, immediate and thrilling and over almost as soon as it arose. This danger was different. This danger was a storm cloud on the horizon; a pack of wolves on a scent; a pacing, patient, prowling inevitability drawing ever nearer. It was a crowd of people watching a tidal wave surging through the sea, standing on the shore, waiting for their world to be swept away.
I did not intend to watch and wait.
And so instead, I sat on Raffles' sopha and settled myself to thinking long and hard about our situation—and what might best be done to avoid its impending crash. The danger was far more immediate than even I had feared: the thread had snapped, and the sword was plummeting at last, falling straight toward my heart. Falling straight toward Raffles' weak point.
That the police in general, and Mackenzie in particular, had long since harboured suspicions against Raffles was no surprise to me; Raffles himself had admitted as much on several occasions. But the Inspector never had anything concrete; Raffles had always made sure of that. Mackenzie never had real evidence, only vague circumstance and coincidence; nothing upon which any sort of a case could be built. I knew this not only because Raffles had reassured me of it, but because the facts spoke for themselves: had they a shred of evidence upon which they could arrest us, they would have done so already—as they hadn't, they clearly didn't. But whilst that fact had in the past lent me some confidence, it soon came to deeply unsettle me. Raffles might be careful enough to avoid being caught for burglary, but now it was quite evident that he—that we—had not been careful enough about something else which posed just as much of a threat.
He had not been careful about me.
Mackenzie would never have stooped to such low accusations of his own accord, of that I have little doubt. The Inspector was many things, most of them bad in my view, but he was a sportsman and, importantly, he was clearly hell-bent on beating Raffles at his own game. Even Raffles harboured a grudging respect for the man on that account, and had on occasion made overtures to the effect that the Scot was the only man at the Yard anywhere near worthy of taking him in. But Bradford? Bradford despised Raffles; anyone who had seen the pair of them engaged in a verbal tangle would know as much. Raffles was the young sergeant's better in every way except, perhaps, in blood, and a certain type of man will always resent rather than admire their superiors. Sebastian Bradford struck me as just that type; and fair play was not a word in his lexicon.
There was more than one way a man might be ruined. He might keep his integrity, but lose his freedom. He might keep his liberty, but lose his reputation. He might keep his life, but lose everything else.
...He might lose his life, but win the game. Some men would willingly throw it all away, for that. For honour. For victory. For love.
Men like Raffles.
"I'll kill him," he'd said. "I'll kill him before he lays a finger on you."
I'd seen that look on A. J.'s face before, the look he'd worn when he'd spoken those words the night prior. That barely controlled rage, the icy fury of his demons unleashed flaring up in his clear, bright eyes… it seemed to me at once out of place in a man I knew to be so soft and great-hearted, and yet somehow, too, completely natural; and especially so when I was threatened. I had last seen that look, that darker side of Raffles' nature, at close hand when one of our more quiet, pleasant adventures had suddenly taken a turn toward the worst, and I'd unexpectedly found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. But even then Raffles had shown mercy. The man who had threatened me, and badly injured Raffles himself, had been let go, shaken but mostly unscathed. A. J. had proven to me time and again that in spite of his blustering words, he was not a violent man. Or—not unless he had no other choice. And no matter what he said, I knew he could never kill anyone—not unless he needed to. Not unless it was him or them. Not unless it was them or me.
But what if now he did need to—or thought he did? What if, finally, he believed he had cause to act upon those rationalisations he'd made in the past justifying wilful murder? What if he did have cause?
I didn't want Raffles to be driven to that. For all he insisted he was a villain, I knew that my Raffles was a good man—in his own way. I knew how kind, how peaceful, how sweet he could be. How judicious, how generous, how noble... But if pushed? All men have their limits. This wasn't like being hounded for burglary; that was fair game and all part of the sport of the thing. But Bradford's insinuations, made as Mackenzie stood by and allowed it? His threats against mine and Raffles' personal affairs? That wasn't in the rules. That wasn't sporting. And if the police weren't going to be sporting, why should Raffles? If they were going to stoop to such low means of victory, what could he do but fight back in kind? If it was a war they wanted, by Jove, a war they would get!
...These were the thoughts I imagined running through Raffles' head as I sat, and I wondered, and I worried. And the longer I sat, and the longer I thought, and the more that I feared, the more I came to take Raffles at his word: he could kill that police officer. And he very well might if, in his calculated, morally complicated mind, he deemed it necessary in order to keep his freedom. If he deemed it necessary in order to keep me safe.
Raffles had come close to it before, with Dan Levy, with Colonel Crutchely, with Angus Baird; with men who affronted his keen, if peculiar, sense of justice. Men who threatened those he cared for. Men who didn't play fair. And nothing about our present situation was fair. Raffles had said as much himself: Bradford's words had been unsporting, and Mackenzie letting him say them had been unsporting, too—and to Raffles there were few crimes more heinous. Raffles had sworn to kill Bradford after the man had merely used his low insinuations to rile us: what might he do if the man acted upon those threats? Those threats that had been so pointedly levelled at me? It didn't bear thinking about.
I didn't want to be the cause of Raffles' downfall. He'd already taken a shot at a man on a job thanks to me; I couldn't let him go any further. I didn't want to be the reason or the excuse for him crossing that uncrossable line and losing himself. But equally, I didn't want to be the reason for him losing his liberty. I didn't want to be the crack in his armor through which he might finally be pierced. His weak point. But I would be, if we stayed where we were, and as we were. Either the police sergeant would have him, or Raffles would have the police sergeant—either way, the Raffles I loved would be taken from me. Either way spelled disaster. And either way, the fault wasn't in Raffles' stars; it was in mine.
The only solution was to leave the field. There was no winning it, for even victory—the only victory I could see—would be unbearably Pyrrhic. We had to leave. I had to convince him. If I didn't, I'd lose him; worse, he'd lose himself. And it would be all my fault.
We had to leave.
