Chapter 4 The End Of A Marriage By Calculation

It was already dawn when Raffles and Charly Brand arrived home.

The secretary wondered at his friend's silence. He sat quietly, lost in thought, before the fire, and made no apparent move to go to bed.

Charly Brand did not bother him. He sat down opposite him and half an hour passed before Raffles looked up and looked at him in surprise.

“Are you still awake?”

Charly Brand put a hand on his arm.

"You are so strangely quiet, Edward. So different from before. I don't know you any more. Has something unpleasant happened to you?"

Lord Lister laughed bitterly.

"As one takes it, Charly. I myself have not yet decided whether I am in for a good or bad time. This woman is delightfully beautiful!"

Charly Brand was very shocked.

John Raffles' last words suddenly revealed his thoughts to him.

“You love Mrs. Hundley?” he asked softly.

Raffles looked at him with a sad face.

"It would be useless to talk about it, old boy. No young woman belongs in the path I have taken in life. It would make her and me unhappy."

“Why? I believe you have all the qualities to make a woman who loves you happy.”

Raffles laughed bitterly.

His hand gripped the chair with a firm grip, as if he wanted to press his fingers into the wood.

"You forget, dear Charly, that I am a piece of game, hunted by all existing police stations, and that this hunt will only end with my death. Yes, if such an opportunity had presented itself a few years ago, then perhaps everything would have been different, but now?"

Charly Brand looked at his friend with pity.

“I do not agree with you, Edward, you would be living somewhere in the West under another name— —”

Lord Lister interrupted him.

"Build a hut somewhere on an Eskimo island, in Greenland, or at the South Pole, don't you think? But boy, I am an Englishman, that is to say, from London, and a Londoner has had big-city fire in his veins from his earliest youth. I shall never feel happy anywhere else than in our smoky, misty, and yet so strangely beautiful London.

" No, let us not discuss that. I should not be suited to an Eskimo island, not even at the side of a woman. Besides— " he made a gesture as if he were striking the air with a sword, "let us leave that subject. I am Raffles, and I shall remain Raffles."

“May I know what Mrs. Hundley wanted of you?”

“Well,” replied Raffles, “I was commissioned by her to do a little work for her husband.

" This person, by threats to her father, forced her to become his wife, and she begged me to set her free. For this purpose I searched through Mr. Hundley's secret drawers last night, and found two very interesting things.

“ First of all, this document.”

Raffles took out his briefcase and handed Charly Brand the document.

The secretary read the strange contents with curiosity.

Shaking his head, he stared at the lines.

“Curiously,” he said, “what can this mean? This story is inexplicable to me .”

“Not at all,” replied Raffles, “and I hope to solve this riddle with you in the next few days.” unload. Then I found something much heavier.”

With these words he took the four banknotes he had brought with him from his wallet and handed them to Charly Brand.

He looked at it in amazement and didn't know what to do with it.

“You can exchange them for me,” laughed Lord Lister, “but first take a good look at them.”

Charly Brand examined them for several minutes, but he could find nothing remarkable about them.

“You don't see anything special about it?”