Episode Details

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A European monarch has sent Queen Victoria a gift: a pearl of quite extraordinary value, travelling home by steamer under discreet guard. The whole affair has been managed with enormous care and almost no publicity.

Which is, of course, precisely the sort of thing that reaches the ears of a gentleman in the Albany with a taste for the impossible.

So Raffles and Bunny take passage on the same ship. And what begins as the most audacious theft of Raffles's career turns into something quite different, because a liner at sea offers nothing a burglar can use. No back-garden wall to go over. No cab waiting at the corner. Nowhere at all to go.

This is the story that closes The Amateur Cracksman, the book that invented the gentleman thief, and it is the one every reader remembers. Conan Doyle disapproved of the whole enterprise on principle — a criminal hero struck him as a bad idea. Hornung's answer, in effect, was to make the reader care about one, and then take him away.

If you have been following the Archive's run from “The Ides of March,” with a ruined young man climbing the stairs at the Albany with a revolver in his coat pocket, this is where that arc arrives.

ℹ️ FOR LISTENERS
This is a complete, unabridged reading of The Gift of the Emperor by E. W. Hornung, collected in The Amateur Cracksman (1899) and now in the public domain. Every word is the author's own. Part of The Midnight Archive: three nights of classics every week, alongside four original Nocturnal Tales mysteries.

🗳️ YOU CHOOSE WHAT'S NEXT
The Archive is deep — more A. J. Raffles? Max Carrados? Loveday Brooke? Violet Strange? Sherlock Holmes? Father Brown? Lady Molly? Raffles? Dr Thorndyke? Arsène Lupin? Vote in the poll attached to this episode, or tell us in the comments which classic you want to hear by lamplight.

💬 QUESTION FOR THE COMMENTS
Bunny watches the sunlit water from a porthole and believes it has closed over his friend for ever. Do you believe it? 🕵️

🕒 CHAPTERS
00:00 - Introduction
02:05 - Part One
15:20 - Part Two
28:52 - Part Three
41:00 - Part Four

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🧾 CREDITS
Narrated and produced by Nocturnal Tales. Story by E. W. Hornung (public domain).

🔖 TAGS / KEYWORDS
e w hornung audiobook, raffles audiobook, the gift of the emperor audiobook, the amateur cracksman 1899, gentleman thief mystery, gentleman burglar story, pearl theft mystery, ocean liner crime story, raffles and bunny, classic crime story audiobook, public domain audiobook, unabridged classic mystery

🏷️ HASHTAGS
#NocturnalTales #MidnightArchive #Raffles #EWHornung #GentlemanThief #ClassicMystery #FullAudiobook #Unabridged #VictorianCrime #PublicDomain