A Bad Night

A Bad Night by E.W. Hornung (1897)

Raffles and Bunny plan to rob wedding presents from a house on the Mole, but a late call-up sends Raffles to play cricket for England at Old Trafford, so Bunny insists on carrying out the "one-man job" alone. Walking from Esher station toward the house at night, Bunny imagines he is being followed but decides it is only an echo, then narrowly avoids a policeman near the bridge over the Mole. Settling on a garden seat under a cedar to steady his nerves before entering, he is startled by a wheezing voice from an upstairs window: young Medlicott, the bride's asthmatic brother, has woken with a severe attack and spotted him on the lawn. Bunny improvises, claiming to be a detective sent by the Burglary Insurance Company to watch over the presents, a cover story Raffles had actually prepared for such a contingency. Medlicott, struggling for breath, insists Bunny come inside and sit with him through the night. Reluctantly Bunny helps him upstairs to his library, where Medlicott dulls his suffering with stramonium cigarettes, whiskey, and finally a crushed amyl nitrite capsule that briefly eases his breathing. Through their vigil the two talk, and Medlicott, an admirer of Raffles's cricket, presses Bunny for Test Match news; Bunny reports that Raffles was 62 not out at the close of play, feeling an odd pang of jealousy at how naturally Raffles's name arises in conversation. Medlicott half-jokingly voices, then withdraws, suspicion that Bunny might be a burglar rather than a guard, and in the exchange Bunny finds himself genuinely liking and pitying the sick young man, which curdles his resolve to go through with the robbery. During another attack, both men hear a footstep and see a light in the room below where the presents are kept. Convinced now that stopping this intruder is the honest and only course left to him, Bunny leaves the breathless Medlicott behind and creeps downstairs with Raffles's life-preserver in hand. He surprises a lantern-carrying figure in the room and strikes him down in a single blow. Turning the body over, he discovers with horror that he has struck Raffles himself, in disguise, having secretly followed and preceded Bunny into the house. Medlicott, who overheard the struggle from above, is delighted and volunteers to go find the local policeman himself, giving Bunny a chance to be alone with Raffles. Left together, a still-dazed Raffles reproaches Bunny for not recognizing him, and the two flee through the garden, over walls and a footbridge, where Raffles retrieves his hidden evening clothes and opera hat and they disguise themselves anew before catching a train back toward London. On the journey, Raffles explains himself: worried for Bunny's safety, and with play at Old Trafford stopped early by a storm after his innings closed at 62, he had impulsively caught a train south to watch over Bunny's burglary in secret, intending to slip away unnoticed and let Bunny believe entirely in his own success. He had watched and overheard much of the house scene through the window and praises Bunny's conduct up to the point of going indoors at all, which he says he could not fault since he would have done the same in Medlicott's presence. Bunny, ashamed of having wounded his friend and of accomplishing nothing himself, laments the ruined night, but Raffles reveals he did not come away empty-handed: he lays out emerald links, a diamond comb, a silver skewer, and a gold cigarette case taken from the house, ending the account with a wry note that the night's chief trophy remains the score of the Test Match rather than the haul of jewels.

By E.W. Hornung · First published 1897 · Genre: Crime Fiction, Adventure, Mystery · 7,594 words

First lines

There was to be a certain little wedding in which Raffles and I took a surreptitious interest. The bride-elect was living in some retirement, with a recently widowed mother and an asthmatical brother, in a mellow hermitage on the banks of the Mole. The bridegroom was a prosperous son of the same suburban soil which had nourished both families for generations. The wedding presents were so numerous as to fill several rooms at the pretty retreat upon the Mole, and of an intrinsic value calling for a special transaction with the Burglary Insurance Company in Cheapside. I cannot say how Raffles obtained all this information. I only know that it proved correct in each particular. I was not indeed deeply interested before the event, since Raffles assured me that it was "a one-man job," and naturally intended to be the one man himself. It was only at the eleventh hour that our positions were inverted by the wholly unexpected selection of Raffles for the English team in the Second Test Match.

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A Bad Night is listed on Textopian as a short story by E.W. Hornung, dated 1897 CE.

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mystery · crime · suspense · thriller · detective · short story · literature · fiction · plot twist · narrative · character study · dark humor

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