LE PREMIER PAS
That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since
the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just
mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour,
had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the subject.
It was not for want of trying; he would shake his head, and watch
his cigarette smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half
cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were
no more had had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a
fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated
enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb
or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egotistic and
infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse
seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so
that I had given the story up long before the night of our return
from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffles's
cricket-bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with
the remains of an Orient label still adhering to the leather. My
eyes had been on this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes
had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned
to hear that yarn.
"It's no use," I replied. "You won't spin it. I must imagine it
for myself.
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