The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [28]
Aside from their vivid evocation of Victorian England, the primary similarity between the Holmes and Raffles stories is their narration by a dim-witted sidekick who exhibits canine devotion. As his Watson, Raffles has the adoring Bunny. Raffles is neither always a gentleman nor always successful. Although he invokes “art for art’s sake” as his motto, he is a small-time crook who steals mostly when desperate for cash. Sometimes he resorts to fisticuffs, especially when his adversary is a member of the lower classes.
To forestall public outcry against this depraved antihero, the Raffles stories appeared under the series title “In the Chains of Crime,” complete with a melodramatic illustration—of Bunny rather than Raffles chained to a cowled skeletal figure of death. The recurring description before each story foretold the miscreant’s doom: “Being the confessions of a late prisoner of the crown, and sometime accomplice of the more notorious A. J. Raffles, cricketer and criminal, whose fate is unknown.”
The first story appeared in Cassell’s in June 1898. When the book version was published the next year, the Spectator remarked that moralists must inevitably denounce the stories as “new, ingenious, artistic, but most reprehensible.” After Hornung’s death, Conan Doyle said in his autobiography, “I think there are few finer examples of short story writing in our language than these”—although he couldn’t resist adding, “You must not make the criminal a hero.” In real life the moral tables were turned; Hornung deeply disapproved of Conan Doyle’s illicit affair during his wife’s terminal illness and also found his brother-in-law’s vocal support of spiritualist charlatans unworthy.
The first round of these stories ends with Raffles, to escape capture on a ship, leaping overboard and abandoning the loyal Bunny to suffer in prison—yet, upon his release, Bunny is eager to play dogsbody again. The second volume finds Raffles dying in the Boer War, unmasking a spy even though doing so means his own arrest. Hornung would return to Raffles in later stories, but he would be careful to describe them as new accounts of old adventures. The thief also appears in a single novel, Mr. Justice Raffles.
“Nine Points of the Law” was first published in Cassell’s in September 1898, as the fourth story in the series. The next year it appeared as the sixth story in The Amateur Cracksman. It may have been inspired partly by one of Grant Allen’s Colonel Clay stories, “The Episode of the Old Master.”
NINE POINTS OF THE LAW
“Well,” said Raffles, “what do you make of it?”
I read the advertisement once more before replying. It was in the last column of the Daily Telegraph, and it ran:—
Two THOUSAND POUNDS REWARD.—The above sum may be earned by anyone qualified to undertake delicate mission and prepared to run certain risk.—Apply by telegram, Security, London.
“I think,” said I, “it’s the most extraordinary advertisement that ever got into print!”
Raffles smiled.
“Not quite all that, Bunny; still, extraordinary enough, I grant you.”
“Look at the figure!”
“It is certainly large.”
“And the mission—and the risk!”
“Yes; the combination is frank; to say the least of it. But the really original point is requiring applications by telegram to a telegraphic address! There’s something in the fellow who thought of that, and something in his game; with one word he chokes off the million who answer an advertisement every day—when they can raise the stamp. My answer cost me five bob; but then I prepaid another.”
“You don’t mean to say that you’ve applied?”
“Rather,” said Raffles. “I want two thousand pounds as much as any man.”
“Put your own name?”
“Well—no, Bunny, I didn’t. In point of fact, I smell something interesting and illegal, and you know what a cautious chap I am. I signed myself Saumarez, care of Hickey, 28, Conduit Street; that’s my tailor, and after sending the wire I went round and told him what to expect. He promised to send the reply along the moment it came—and, by Jove, that