The Doings of Raffles Haw, Arthur Conan Doyle [best large ebook reader .TXT] 📗

box of a place this, Mr. Haw” said old McIntyre. “I should think you must feel quite stifled in it after your grand mansion, of which my son tells me such wonders. But we were not always accustomed to this sort of thing, Mr. Haw. Humble as I stand here, there was a time, and not so long ago, when I could write as many figures on a cheque as any gunmaker in Birmingham. It was—”

“He is a dear discontented old papa,” cried Laura, throwing her arm round him in a caressing manner. He gave a sharp squeak and a grimace of pain, which he endeavoured to hide by an outbreak of painfully artificial coughing.

“Shall we go upstairs?” said Robert hurriedly, anxious to divert his guest’s attention from this little domestic incident. “My studio is the real atelier, for it is right up under the tiles. I shall lead the way, if you will have the kindness to follow me.”

Leaving Laura and Mr. McIntyre, they went up together to the workroom. Mr. Haw stood long in front of the “Signing of Magna Charta,” and the “Murder of Thomas a Becket,” screwing up his eyes and twitching nervously at his beard, while Robert stood by in anxious expectancy.

“And how much are these?” asked Raffles Haw at last.

“I priced them at a hundred apiece when I sent them to London.”

“Then the best I can wish you is that the day may come when you would gladly give ten times the sum to have them back again. I am sure that there are great possibilities in you, and I see that in grouping and in boldness of design you have already achieved much. But your drawing, if you will excuse my saying so, is just a little crude, and your colouring perhaps a trifle thin. Now, I will make a bargain with you, Mr. McIntyre, if you will consent to it. I know that money has no charms for you, but still, as you said when I first met you, a man must live. I shall buy these two canvases from you at the price which you name, subject to the condition that you may always have them back again by repaying the same sum.”

“You are really very kind.” Robert hardly knew whether to be delighted at having sold his pictures or humiliated at the frank criticism of the buyer.

“May I write a cheque at once?” said Raffles Haw. “Here is pen and ink. So! I shall send a couple of footmen down for them in the afternoon. Well, I shall keep them in trust for you. I dare say that when you are famous they will be of value as specimens of your early manner.”

“I am sure that I am extremely obliged to you, Mr. Haw,” said the young artist, placing the cheque in his notebook. He glanced at it as he folded it up, in the vague hope that perhaps this man of whims had assessed his pictures at a higher rate than he had named. The figures, however, were exact. Robert began dimly to perceive that there were drawbacks as well as advantages to the reputation of a money-scorner, which he had gained by a few chance words, prompted rather by the reaction against his father’s than by his own real convictions.

“I hope, Miss McIntyre,” said Raffles Haw, when they had descended to the sitting-room once more, “that you will do me the honour of coming to see the little curiosities which I have gathered together. Your brother will, I am sure, escort you up; or perhaps Mr. McIntyre would care to come?”

“I shall be delighted to come, Mr. Haw” cried Laura, with her sweetest smile. “A good deal of my time just now is taken up in looking after the poor people, who find the cold weather very trying.” Robert raised his eyebrows, for it was the first he had heard of his sister’s missions of mercy, but Mr. Raffles Haw nodded approvingly. “Robert was telling us of your wonderful hot-houses. I am sure I wish I could transport the whole parish into one of them, and give them a good warm.”

“Nothing would be easier, but I am afraid that they might find it a little trying when they came out again. I have one house which is only just finished. Your brother has not seen it yet, but I think it is the best of them all. It represents an Indian jungle, and is hot enough in all conscience.”

“I shall so look forward to seeing it,” cried Laura, clasping her hands. “It has been one of the dreams of my life to see India. I have read so much of it, the temples, the forests, the great rivers, and the tigers. Why, you would hardly believe it, but I have never seen a tiger except in a picture.”

“That can easily be set right,” said Raffles Haw, with his quiet smile. “Would you care to see one?”

“Oh, immensely.”

“I will have one sent down. Let me see, it is nearly twelve o’clock. I can get a wire to Liverpool by one. There is a man there who deals in such things. I should think he would be due to-morrow morning. Well, I shall look forward to seeing you all before very long. I have rather outstayed my time, for I am a man of routine, and I always put in a certain number of hours in my laboratory.” He shook hands cordially with them all, and lighting his pipe at the doorstep, strolled off upon his way.

“Well, what do you think of him now?” asked Robert, as they watched his black figure against the white snow.

“I think that he is no more fit to be trusted with all that money than a child,” cried the old man. “It made me positively sick to hear him talk of moving hills and buying tigers, and such-like nonsense, when there are honest men without a business, and great businesses starving for a little capital. It’s unchristian—that’s what I call it.”

“I think he is most delightful, Robert,” said Laura. “Remember, you have promised to take us up to the Hall. And he evidently wishes us to go soon. Don’t you think we might go this afternoon?”

“I hardly think that, Laura. You leave it in my hands, and I will arrange it all. And now I must get to work, for the light is so very short on these winter days.”

That night Robert McIntyre had gone to bed, and was dozing off when a hand plucked at his shoulder, and he started up to find his sister in some white drapery, with a shawl thrown over her shoulders, standing beside him in the moonlight.

“Robert, dear,” she whispered, stooping over him, “there was something I wanted to ask you, but papa was always in the way. You will do something to please me, won’t you, Robert?”

“Of course, Laura. What is it?”

“I do so hate having my affairs talked over, dear. If Mr. Raffles Haw says anything to you about me, or asks any questions, please don’t say anything about Hector. You won’t, will you, Robert, for the sake of your little sister?”

“No; not unless you wish it.”

“There is a dear good brother.” She stooped over him and kissed him tenderly.

It was a rare thing for Laura to show any emotion, and her brother marvelled sleepily over it until he relapsed into his interrupted doze.

 

CHAPTER VI.

A STRANGE VISITOR.

 

The McIntyre family was seated at breakfast on the morning which followed the first visit of Raffles Haw, when they were surprised to hear the buzz and hum of a multitude of voices in the village street. Nearer and nearer came the tumult, and then, of a sudden, two maddened horses reared themselves up on the other side of the garden hedge, prancing and pawing, with ears laid back and eyes ever glancing at some horror behind them. Two men hung shouting to their bridles, while a third came rushing up the curved gravel path. Before the McIntyres could realise the situation, their maid, Mary, darted into the sitting-room with terror in her round freckled face:

“If you please, miss,” she screamed, “your tiger has arrove.”

“Good heavens!” cried Robert, rushing to the door with his half-filled teacup in his hand. “This is too much. Here is an iron cage on a trolly with a great ramping tiger, and the whole village with their mouths open.”

“Mad as a hatter!” shrieked old Mr. McIntyre. “I could see it in his eye. He spent enough on this beast to start me in business. Whoever heard of such a thing? Tell the driver to take it to the police-station.”

“Nothing of the sort, papa,” said Laura, rising with dignity and wrapping a shawl about her shoulders. Her eyes were shining, her cheeks flushed, and she carried herself like a triumphant queen.

Robert, with his teacup in his hand, allowed his attention to be diverted from their strange visitor while he gazed at his beautiful sister.

“Mr. Raffles Haw has done this out of kindness to me,” she said, sweeping towards the door. “I look upon it as a great attention on his part. I shall certainly go out and look at it.”

“If you please, sir,” said the carman, reappearing at the door, “it’s all as we can do to ‘old in the ‘osses.”

“Let us all go out together then,” suggested Robert.

They went as far as the garden fence and stared over, while the whole village, from the school-children to the old grey-haired men from the almshouses, gathered round in mute astonishment. The tiger, a long, lithe, venomous-looking creature, with two blazing green eyes, paced stealthily round the little cage, lashing its sides with its tail, and rubbing its muzzle against the bars.

“What were your orders?” asked Robert of the carman.

“It came through by special express from Liverpool, sir, and the train is drawn up at the Tamfield siding all ready to take it back. If it ‘ad been royalty the railway folk couldn’t ha’ shown it more respec’. We are to take it back when you’re done with it. It’s been a cruel job, sir, for our arms is pulled clean out of the sockets a-‘olding in of the ‘osses.”

“What a dear, sweet creature it is,” cried Laura. “How sleek and how graceful! I cannot understand how people could be afraid of anything so beautiful.”

“If you please, marm,” said the carman, touching his skin cap, “he out with his paw between the bars as we stood in the station yard, and if I ‘adn’t pulled my mate Bill back it would ha’ been a case of kingdom come. It was a proper near squeak, I can tell ye.”

“I never saw anything more lovely,” continued Laura, loftily overlooking the remarks of the driver. “It has been a very great pleasure to me to see it, and I hope that you will tell Mr. Haw so if you see him, Robert.”

“The horses are very restive,” said her brother. “Perhaps, Laura, if you have seen enough, it would be as well to let them go.”

She bowed in the regal fashion which she had so suddenly adopted. Robert shouted the order, the driver sprang up, his comrades let the horses go, and away rattled the waggon and the trolly with half the Tamfielders streaming vainly behind it.

“Is it not wonderful what money can do?” Laura remarked, as they knocked the snow from their shoes within the porch. “There seems to be no wish which Mr. Haw could not at once gratify.”

“No wish of yours, you mean,” broke in her father. “It’s different when he is dealing with a wrinkled old man who has spent himself in working for his children. A plainer