Mrs. Raffles / R. Holmes Co.
Date: 1898-12-31T15:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Wit and Humor; Parody and Pastiche; Detective and mystery stories; Jewel thieves; Sherlock Holmes Parody; A. J. Raffles parody
Description: MRS. RAFFLES — The widow of A. J. Raffles (the gentleman thief conceived by E. W. Hornung), continues the family legacy of crime—but in America. Her adventures are narrated by her confederate and former suitor, Harry “Bunny” Manders, the devoted friend and accomplice of her late husband. * * * * R. HOLMES & CO. — If a master detective sired a son with the daughter of a gentleman thief… The story begins by pitting Sherlock Holmes against criminal mastermind A. J. Raffles. Holmes falls in love with Raffles’ daughter, and their son Raffles Holmes, now grown, possesses the talents and tendencies o
Publisher: MobileRead
Rights: Public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

Mrs. Raffles
•  •  •
R. Holmes & Co.

JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

Contents:

… Titlepage
… About This eBook
MRS. RAFFLES
R. HOLMES & CO.
APPENDIX
… Editing Notes

About this eBook

Mrs. Raffles

R. Holmes & Co.

• AND •
Four Bonus Stories
PRESENTED IN THE APPENDIX

BY
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
(1862–1922)

Mrs. Raffles The widow of A. J. Raffles (the gentleman thief conceived by E. W. Hornung), continues the family legacy of crime—but in America. Her adventures are narrated by her confederate and former suitor, Harry “Bunny” Manders, the devoted friend and accomplice of her late husband.

R. Holmes & Co. If a master detective sired a son with the daughter of a gentleman thief… The story begins by pitting Sherlock Holmes against criminal mastermind A. J. Raffles. Holmes falls in love with Raffles’ daughter, and their son Raffles Holmes, now grown, possesses the talents and tendencies of both sides of the family tree.

Editor’s Appendix For readers whose appetites have been whetted for more Holmes parody: three stories taken from other Bangs books, and a brief extract from a newspaper piece.

John Kendrick Bangs (May 27, 1862 – January 21, 1922) was an American author, humorist, satirist, editor, and lecturer. Between 1884 and 1906, he worked as editor at a number of magazines, among them Life, Munsey’s, The New Metropolitan, the Harper’s magazines, and the foremost humor magazine of its day, Puck. A highly popular and prolific writer, he had more than sixty books published.

He wrote extensively in the genre of “Bangsian fantasy,” which sets the plot wholly or partially in the afterlife, with important fictional and historical personalities humorously portrayed as characters.

This ebook was created by ECM for MobileRead.com, February 2019, and may be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

The contents of this book were first published 1899 through 1908. Text is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is “Life+90” or less, and in the USA.

Click here for editing notes.

Mrs. Raffles

Being the Adventures
of an Amateur Crackswoman.

Narrated by Bunny

CONTENTS:

1 … The Adventure of the Herald Personal
2 … The Adventure of the Newport Villa
3 … The Adventure of Mrs. Gaster’s Maid
4 … The Pearl Rope of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews
5 … The Adventure of the Steel Bonds
6 … The Adventure of the Fresh-Air Fund
7 … The Adventure of Mrs. Rockerbilt’s Tiara
8 … The Adventure of the Carnegie Library
9 … The Adventure of the Hold-Up
10 … The Adventure of Mrs. Shadd’s Musicale
11 … The Adventure of Mrs. Innitt’s Cook
12 … The Last Adventure

I

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE HERALD PERSONAL

That I was in a hard case is best attested by the fact that when I had paid for my Sunday Herald there was left in my purse just one tuppence-ha’penny stamp and two copper cents, one dated 1873, the other 1894. The mere fact that at this hour eighteen months later I can recall the dates of these coins should be proof, if any were needed, of the importance of the coppers in my eyes, and therefore of the relative scarcity of funds in my possession. Raffles was dead—killed as you may remember at the battle of Spion Kop—and I, his companion, who had never known want while his deft fingers were able to carry out the plans of that insinuating and marvellous mind of his, was now, in the vernacular of the American, up against it. I had come to the United States, not because I had any liking for that country or its people, who, to tell the truth, are too sharp for an ordinary burglar like myself, but because with the war at an end I had to go somewhere, and English soil was not safely to be trod by one who was required for professional reasons to evade the eagle eye of Scotland Yard until the Statute of Limitations began to have some bearing upon his case. That last affair of Raffles and mine, wherein we had successfully got away with the diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, was still a live matter in British detective circles, and the very audacity of the crime had definitely fastened the responsibility for it upon our shoulders. Hence it was America for me, where one could be as English as one pleased without being subject to the laws of his Majesty, King Edward VII., of Great Britain and Ireland and sundry other possessions upon which the sun rarely if ever sets.

For two years I had led a precarious existence, not finding in the land of silk and money quite as many of those opportunities to add to the sum of my prosperity as the American War Correspondent I had met in the Transvaal led me to expect. Indeed, after six months of successful lecturing on the subject of the Boers before various lyceums in the country, I was reduced to a state of penury which actually drove me to thievery of the pettiest and most vulgar sort. There was little in the way of mean theft that I did not commit. During the coal famine, for instance, every day passing the coal-yards to and fro, I would appropriate a single piece of the precious anthracite until I had come into possession of a scuttle-full, and this I would sell to the suffering poor at prices varying from three shillings to two dollars and a half—a precarious living indeed.

The only respite I received for six months was in the rape of the hansom-cab, which I successfully carried through one bitter cold night in January. I hired the vehicle at Madison Square and drove to a small tavern on the Boston Post Road, where the icy cold of the day gave me an excuse for getting my cabby drunk in the guise of kindness. Him safely disposed of in a drunken stupor, I drove his jaded steed back to town, earned fifteen dollars with him before daybreak, and then, leaving the cab in the Central Park, sold the horse for eighteen dollars to a snow-removal contractor over on the East Side. It was humiliating to me, a gentleman born, and a partner of so illustrious a person as the late A. J. Raffles, to have to stoop to such miserable doings to keep body and soul together, but I was forced to confess that, whatever Raffles had left to me in the way of example, I was not his equal either in the conception of crime or in the nerve to carry a great enterprise through. My biggest coups had a way of failing at their very beginning—which was about the only blessing I enjoyed, since none of them progressed far enough to imperil my freedom, and, lacking confederates, I was of course unable to carry through the profitable series of abductions in the world of High Finance that I had contemplated. Hence my misfortunes, and now on this beautiful Sunday morning, penniless but for the coppers and the postage-stamp, with no breakfast in sight, and, fortunately enough, not even an appetite, I turned to my morning paper for my solace.

Running my eye up and down the personal column, which has for years been my favourite reading of Sunday mornings, I found the usual assortment of matrimonial enterprises recorded: pathetic appeals from P. D. to meet Q. on the corner of Twenty-third Street at three; imploring requests from J. A. K. to return at once to “His Only Mother,” who promises to ask no questions; and finally—could I believe my eyes now riveted upon the word?—my own sobriquet, printed as boldly and as plainly as though I were some patent cure for all known human ailments. It seemed incredible, but there it was beyond all peradventure:

“Wanted.—A Butler. BUNNY preferred. Apply to Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles, Bolivar Lodge, Newport, R.I.”

To whom could that refer if not to myself, and what could it mean? Who was this Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles?—a name so like that of my dead friend that it seemed almost identical. My curiosity was roused to concert pitch. If this strange advertiser should be—But no, she would not send for me after that stormy interview in which she cast me over to take the hand of Raffles: the brilliant, fascinating Raffles, who would have won his Isabella from Ferdinand, Chloe from her Corydon, Pierrette from Pierrot—ay, even Heloise from Abelard. I never could find it in my heart to blame Henriette for losing her heart to him, even though she had already promised it to me, for I myself could not resist the fascination of the man at whose side I faithfully worked even after he had stolen from me this dearest treasure of my heart. And yet who else could it be if not the lovely Henriette? Surely the combination of Raffles, with or without the Van, and Bunny was not so usual as to permit of so remarkable a coincidence.

“I will go to Newport at once,” I cried, rising and pacing the floor excitedly, for I had many times, in cursing my loneliness, dreamed of Henriette, and had oftener and oftener of late found myself wondering what had become of her, and then the helplessness of my position burst upon me with full force. How should I, the penniless wanderer in New York, get to Bolivar Lodge at Newport? It takes money in this sordid country to get about, even as it does in Britain—in sorry truth, things in detail differ little whether one lives under a king or a president; poverty is quite as hard to bear, and free passes on the railroad are just as scarce.

“Curses on these plutocrats!” I muttered, as I thought of the railway directors rolling in wealth, running trains filled with empty seats to and from the spot that might contain my fortune, and I unable to avail myself of them for the lack of a paltry dollar or two. But suddenly the thought flashed over me—telegraph collect. If it is she, she will respond at once.

And so it was that an hour later the following message was ticked over the wires:

PERSONAL TODAY’S HERALD RECEIVED. TELEGRAPH RAILWAY FARE AND I WILL GO TO YOU INSTANTLY.

(SIGNED),   BUNNY

For three mortal hours I paced the streets feverishly awaiting the reply, and at two-thirty it came, disconcerting enough in all conscience:

IF YOU ARE NOT A BOGUS BUNNY YOU WILL KNOW HOW TO RAISE THE CASH. IF YOU ARE A BOGUS BUNNY I DON’T WANT YOU.

It was simple, direct, and convincing, and my heart fluttered like the drumbeat’s morning call to action the moment I read it.

“By Jove!” I cried. “The woman is right, of course. It must be Henriette, and I’ll go to her if I have to rob a nickel-in-the-slot machine.”

It was as of old. Faint-hearted I always was until someone gave me a bit of encouragement. A word of praise or cheer from Raffles in the old days and I was ready to batter down Gibraltar, a bit of discouragement and a rag was armour-plate beside me.

“‘If you are not a bogus Bunny you will know,’” I read, spreading the message out before me. “That is to say, she believes that if I am really myself I can surmount the insurmountable. Gad! I’ll do it.” And I set off hotfoot up Fifth Avenue, hoping to discover, or by cogitation in the balmy air of the springtime afternoon, to conceive of some plan to relieve my necessities. But, somehow or other, it wouldn’t come. There were no pockets about to be picked in the ordinary way. I hadn’t the fare for a ride on the surface or elevated cars, where I might have found an opportunity to relieve some traveller of his purse, and as for snatching such a thing from some shopper, it was Sunday and the women who would have been an easy prey on a bargain-day carried neither purse nor side-bag with them. I was in despair, and then the pealing bells of St. Jondy’s, the spiritual home of the multimillionaires of New York, rang out the call to afternoon service. It was like an invitation—the way was clear. My plan was laid in an instant, and it worked beyond my most hopeful anticipations. Entering the church, I was ushered to a pew about halfway up the centre aisle—despite my poverty, I had managed to keep myself always well-groomed, and no one would have guessed, to look at my faultless frock-coat and neatly creased trousers, at my finely gloved hand and polished top-hat, that my pockets held scarcely a brass farthing. The service proceeded. A good sermon on the Vanity of Riches found lodgment in my ears, and then the supreme moment came. The collection-plate was passed, and, gripping my two pennies in my hand, I made as if to place them in the salver, but with studied awkwardness I knocked the alms-platter from the hands of the gentleman who passed it. The whole contents and the platter as well fell at my feet, and from my lips in reverent whispers poured forth no end of most abject apologies.

Of course I assisted in recovering the fallen bills and coins, and in less time than it takes to tell it the vestryman was proceeding on his way up the aisle, gathering in the contributions from other generously disposed persons as he went, as unconsciously as though the contretemps had never occurred, and happily unaware that out of the moneys cast to the floor by my awkward act two yellow-backed fifty-dollar bills, five half-dollars, and a dime remained behind under the hassock at my feet, whither I had managed to push them with my toe while offering my apologies.

An hour later, having dined heartily at Delsherrico’s, I was comfortably napping in a Pullman car on my way to the Social Capital of the United States.

II

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE NEWPORT VILLA

There is little need for me to describe in detail the story of my railway journey from New York to Newport. It was uneventful and unproductive save as to the latter end of it, when, on the arrival of the train at Wickford, observing that the prosperous-looking gentleman bound for Boston who occupied the seat next mine in the Pullman car was sleeping soundly, I exchanged my well-worn covert coat for his richly made, sable-lined surtout, and made off as well with his suitcase on the chance of its holding something that might later serve some one of my many purposes. I mention this in passing only because the suitcase, containing as it did all the essential features of a gentleman’s evening attire, even to three superb pearl studs in the bosom of an immaculately white shirt, all of them, marvellously enough, as perfectly fitting as though they had been made for me, with a hundred unregistered first-mortgage bonds of the United States Steel Company—of which securities there will be more anon—enabled me later to appear before Mrs. Van Raffles in a guise so prosperous as to win an immediate renewal of her favour.

“We shall be almost as great a combination as the original, Bunny,” she cried, enthusiastically, when I told her of this coup. “With my brains and your blind luck nothing can stop us.”

My own feelings as I drove up to Bolivar Lodge were mixed. I still loved Henriette madly, but the contrast between her present luxury and my recent misery grated harshly upon me. I could not rid myself of the notion that Raffles had told her of the secret hiding-place of the diamond stomacher of the duchess of Herringdale, and that she had appropriated to her own use all the proceeds of its sale, leaving me, who had risked my liberty to obtain it, without a penny’s worth of dividend for my pains. It did not seem quite a level thing to do, and I must confess that I greeted the lady in a reproachful spirit. It was, indeed, she, and more radiantly beautiful than ever—a trifle thinner perhaps, and her eyes more coldly piercing than seductively winning as of yore, but still Henriette whom I had once so madly loved and who had jilted me for a better man.

“Dear old Bunny!” she murmured, holding out both hands in welcome. “Just to think that after all these years and in a strange land and under such circumstances we should meet again!”

“It is strange,” said I, my eye roving about the drawing-room, which from the point of view of its appointments and decoration was about the richest thing I had ever seen either by light of day or in the mysterious glimpses one gets with a dark lantern of the houses of the moneyed classes. “It seems more than strange,” I added, significantly, “to see you surrounded by such luxury. A so-called lodge built of the finest grade of Italian marble; gardens fit for the palace of a king; a retinue of servants such as one scarcely finds on the ducal estates of the proudest families of England and a mansion that is furnished with treasures of art, any one of which is worth a queen’s ransom.”

“I do not wonder you are surprised,” she replied, looking about the room with a smile of satisfaction that did little to soothe my growing wrath.

“It certainly leaves room for explanation,” I retorted, coldly. “Of course, if Raffles told you where the Herringdale jewels were hid and you have disposed of them, some of all this could be accounted for; but what of me? Did it ever occur to you that I was entitled to some part of the swag?”

“Oh, you poor, suspicious old Bunny,” she rippled. “Haven’t I sent for you to give you some share of this—although truly you don’t deserve it, for this is all mine. I haven’t any more notion what became of the Herringdale jewels than the duchess of Herringdale herself.”

“What?” I cried. “Then these surroundings—”

“Are self-furnishing,” she said, with a merry little laugh, “and all through a plan of my own, Bunny. This house, as you may not be aware, is the late residence of Mr. and Mrs. Constant Scrappe—”

“Who are suing each other for divorce,” I put in, for I knew of the Constant Scrappes in social life, as who did not, since a good third of the society items of the day concerned themselves with the matrimonial difficulties of this notable couple.

“Precisely,” said Henriette. “Now Mrs. Scrappe is in South Dakota establishing a residence, and Colonel Scrappe is at Monte Carlo circulating his money with the aid of a wheel and a small ball. Bolivar Lodge, with its fine collection of old furniture, its splendid jades, its marvellous Oriental potteries, paintings, and innumerable small silver articles, is left here at Newport and for rent. What more natural, dear, than that I, needing a residence whose occupancy would in itself be an assurance of my social position, should snap it up with an eagerness which in this Newport atmosphere amounted nearly to a betrayal of plebeian origin?”

“But it must cost a fortune!” I cried, gazing about me at the splendours of the room, which even to a cursory inspection revealed themselves as of priceless value. “That cloisonné jar over by the fireplace is worth two hundred pounds alone.”

“That is just the reason why I wanted this particular house, Bunny. It is also why I need your assistance in maintaining it,” Mrs. Raffles returned.

“Woman is ever a mystery,” I responded, with a harsh laugh. “Why in Heaven’s name you think I can help you to pay your rent—”

“It is only twenty-five hundred dollars a month, Bunny,” she said.

My answer was a roar of derisive laughter.

“Hear her!” I cried, addressing the empty air. “Only twenty-five hundred dollars a month! Why, my dear Henriette, if it were twenty-five hundred clam-shells a century I couldn’t help you pay a day’s rental, I am that strapped. Until this afternoon I hadn’t seen thirty cents all at once for nigh on to six months. I have been so poor that I’ve had to take my morning coffee at midnight from the coffee-wagons of the New York, Boston, and Chicago sporting papers. In eight months I have not tasted a table-d’hôte dinner that an expert would value at fifteen cents net, and yet you ask me to help you pay twenty-five hundred dollars a month rent for a Newport palace! You must be mad.”

“You are the same loquacious old Bunny that you used to be,” said Mrs. Raffles, sharply, yet with a touch of affection in her voice. “You can’t keep your trap shut for a second, can you? Do you know, Bunny, what dear old A. J. said to me just before he went to South Africa? It was that if you were as devoted to business as you were to words you’d be a wonder. His exact remark was that we would both have to look out for you for fear you would queer the whole business. Raffles estimated that your habit of writing-up full accounts of his various burglaries for the London magazines had made the risks one hundred percent bigger and the available swag a thousand percent harder to get hold of. ‘Harry,’ said he the night before he sailed, ‘if I die over in the Transvaal and you decide to continue the business, get along as long as you can without a press-agent. If you go on the stage, surround yourself with ’em, but in the burglary trade they are a nuisance.’”

My answer was a sulky shrug of the shoulders.

“You haven’t given me a chance to explain how you are to help me. I don’t ask you for money, Bunny. Four dollars’ worth of obedience is all I want,” she continued. “The portable property in this mansion is worth about half a million dollars, my lad, and I want you to be—well, my official porter. I took immediate possession of this house, and my first month’s rent was paid with the proceeds of a sale of three old bedsteads I found on the top floor, six pieces of Sèvres china from the southeast bedroom on the floor above this, and a Satsuma vase which I discovered in a hall-closet on the third floor.”

A light began to dawn on me.

“Before coming here I eked out a miserable existence in New York as buyer for an antique dealer on Fourth Avenue,” she explained. “He thinks I am still working for him, travelling about the country in search of bargains in highboys, mahogany desks, antique tables, wardrobes, bedsteads—in short, valuable junk generally. Now do you see?”

“As Mrs. Raffles—or Van Raffles, as you have it now?” I demanded.

“Oh, Bunny, Bunny, Bunny! What a stupid you are! Never! As Miss Pratt-Robinson,” she replied. “From this I earn fifteen dollars a week. The sources of the material I send him—well—do you see now, Bunny?”

“It is growing clearer,” said I. “You contemplate paying the rent of this house with its contents, is that it?”

“What beautiful intelligence you have, Bunny!” she laughed, airily. “You know a hawk from a handsaw. Nobody can pass a motorcar off on you for a horse, can they, Bunny dear? Not while you have that eagle eye of yours wide open. Yes, sir. That is the scheme. I am going to pay the rental of this mansion with its contents. Half a million dollars’ worth of contents means how long at twenty-five hundred dollars a month? Eh?”

“Gad! Henriette,” I cried. “You are worthy of Raffles, I swear it. You can be easy about your rent for sixteen years.”

“That is about the size of it, as these Newport people have it,” said Mrs. Raffles, beaming upon me.

“I’m still in the dark as to where I come in,” said I.

“Promise to obey my directions implicitly,” said Henriette “and you will receive your share of the booty.”

“Henriette—” I cried, passionately, seizing her hand.

“No—Bunny—not now,” she remonstrated, gently. “This is no time for sentiment. Just promise to obey, the love and honour business may come later.”

“I will,” said I.

“Well, then,” she resumed, her colour mounting high, and speaking rapidly, “you are to return at once to New York, taking with you three trunks which I have already packed, containing one of the most beautiful collections of jade ornaments that has ever been gathered together. You will rent a furnished apartment in some aristocratic quarter. Spread these articles throughout your rooms as though you were a connoisseur, and on Thursday next when Mr. Harold Van Gilt calls upon you to see your collection you will sell it to him for not less than eight thousand dollars.”

“Aha!” said I. “I see the scheme.”

“This you will immediately remit to me here,” she continued, excitedly. “Mr. Van Gilt will pay cash.”

I laughed. “Why eight thousand?” I demanded. “Are you living beyond your—ah—income?”

“No,” she answered, “but next month’s rent is due Tuesday, and I owe my servants and tradesmen twenty-five hundred dollars more.”

“Even then there will be three thousand dollars over,” I put in.

“True, Bunny, true. But I shall need it all, dear. I am invited to the P. J. D. Gasters on Sunday afternoon to play bridge,” Henriette explained. “We must prepare for emergencies.”

I returned to New York on the boat that night, and by Wednesday was safely ensconced in very beautifully furnished bachelor quarters near Gramercy Square, where on Thursday Mr. Harold Van Gilt called to see my collection of jades which I was selling because of a contemplated five-year journey into the East. On Friday Mr. Van Gilt took possession of the collection, and that night a check for eight thousand dollars went to Mrs. Van Raffles at Newport. Incidentally, I passed two thousand dollars to my own credit. As I figured it out, if Van Gilt was willing to pay ten thousand dollars for the stuff, and Henriette was willing to take eight thousand dollars for it, nobody was the loser by my pocketing two thousand dollars—unless, perhaps, it was Mr. and Mrs. Constant Scrappe who owned the goods. But that was none of my affair. I played straight with the others, and that was all there was to it as far as I was concerned.

III

THE ADVENTURE
OF MRS. GASTER’S MAID

Two days after my bargain with Mr. Harold Van Gilt, in which he acquired possession of the Scrappe jades and Mrs. Van Raffles and I shared the proceeds of the ten thousand dollars check, I was installed at Bolivar Lodge as head-butler and steward, my salary to consist of what I could make out of it on the side, plus ten percent of the winnings of my mistress. It was not long before I discovered that the job was a lucrative one. From various tradesmen of the town I received presents of no little value in the form sometimes of diamond scarf-pins, gold link sleeve-buttons, cases of fine wines for my own use, and in one or two instances checks of substantial value. There was also what was called a steward’s rebate on the monthly bills, which in circles where lavish entertainment is the order of the day amounted to a tidy little income in itself. My only embarrassment lay in the contact into which I was necessarily brought with other butlers, with whom I was perforce required to associate. This went very much against the grain at first, for, although I am scarcely more than a thief after all, I am an artistic one, and still retain the prejudice against inferior associations which an English gentleman whatever the vicissitudes of his career can never quite rid himself of. I had to join their club—an exclusive organization of butlers and “gentlemen’s gentlemen”—otherwise valets—and in order to quiet all suspicion of my real status in the Van Raffles household I was compelled to act the part in a fashion which revolted me. Otherwise the position was pleasant, and, as I have intimated, more than lucrative.

It did not take me many days to discover that Henriette was a worthy successor to her late husband. Few opportunities for personal profit escaped her eye, and I was able to observe as time went on and I noted the accumulation of spoons, forks, nutcrackers, and gimcracks generally that she brought home with her after her calls upon or dinners with ladies of fashion that she had that quality of true genius which never overlooks the smallest details.

The first big coup after my arrival, as the result of her genius, was in the affair of Mrs. Gaster’s maid. Henriette had been to a bridge afternoon at Mrs. Gaster’s and upon her return manifested an extraordinary degree of excitement. Her colour was high, and when she spoke her voice was tremulous. Her disturbed condition was so evident that my heart sank into my boots, for in our business nerve is a sine qua non of success, and it looked to me as if Henriette was losing hers. She has probably lost at cards today, I thought, and it has affected her usual calmness. I must do something to warn her against this momentary weakness. With this idea in mind, when the opportunity presented itself later I spoke.

“You lost at bridge today, Henriette,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied. “Twenty-five hundred dollars in two hours. How did you guess?”

“By your manner,” said I. “You are as nervous as a young girl at a commencement celebration. This won’t do, Henriette. Nerves will prove your ruin, and if you can’t stand your losses at bridge, what will you do in the face of the greater crisis which in our profession is likely to confront us in the shape of an unexpected visit of police at any moment?”

Her answer was a ringing laugh.

“You absurd old rabbit,” she murmured. “As if I cared about my losses at bridge! Why, my dear Bunny, I lost that money on purpose. You don’t suppose that I am going to risk my popularity with these Newport ladies by winning, do you? Not I, my boy. I plan too far ahead for that. For the good of our cause it is my task to lose steadily and with good grace. This establishes my credit, proves my amiability, and confirms my popularity.”

“But you are very much excited by something, Henriette,” said I. “You cannot deny that.”

“I don’t—but it is the prospect of future gain, not the reality of present losses, that has taken me off my poise,” she said. “Whom do you suppose I saw at Mrs. Gaster’s today?”

“No detectives, I hope,” I replied, paling at the thought.

“No, sir,” she laughed. “Mrs. Gaster’s maid. We must get her, Bunny.”

“Oh, tush!” I ejaculated. “All this powwow over another woman’s maid!”

“You don’t understand,” said Henriette. “It wasn’t the maid so much as the woman that startled me, Bunny. You can’t guess who she was.”

“How should I?” I demanded.

“She was Fiametta de Belleville, one of the most expert hands in our business. Poor old Raffles used to say that she diminished his income a good ten thousand pounds a year by getting in her fine work ahead of his,” explained Henriette. “He pointed her out to me in Piccadilly once and I have never forgotten her face.”

“I hope she did not recognize you,” I observed.

“No, indeed—she never saw me before, so how could she? But I knew her the minute she took my cloak,” said Henriette. “She’s dyed her hair, but her eyes were the same as ever, and that peculiar twist of the lip that Raffles had spoken of as constituting one of her fascinations remained unchanged. Moreover, just to prove myself right, I left my lace handkerchief and a five hundred dollar bill in the cloak pocket. When I got the cloak back both were gone. Oh, she’s Fiametta de Belleville all right, and we must get her.”

“What for—to rob you?”

“No,” returned Henrietta, “rather that we—but there, there, Bunny, I’ll manage this little thing myself. It’s a trifle too subtle for a man’s intellect—especially when that man is you.”

“What do you suppose she is doing here?” I asked.

“You silly boy,” laughed Henriette.

“Doing? Why, Mrs. Gaster, of course. She is after the Gaster jewels.”

“Humph!” I said, gloomily. “That cuts us out, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” asked Henriette, enigmatically.

It was about ten weeks later that the newspapers of the whole country were ringing with the startling news of the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Gaster’s jewels. The lady had been robbed of three hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars worth of gems, and there was apparently no clue even to the thief. Henriette and I, of course, knew that Fiametta de Belleville had accomplished her mission, but apparently no one else knew it. True, she had been accused, and had been subjected to a most rigid examination by the Newport police and the New York Central Office, but no proof of any kind establishing her guilt could be adduced, and after a week of suspicion she was to all intents and purposes relieved of all odium.

“She’ll skip now,” said I.

“Not she,” said Henriette. “To disappear now would be a confession of guilt. If Fiametta de Belleville is the woman I take her for she’ll stay right here as if nothing had happened, but of course not at Mrs. Gaster’s.”

“Where then?” I asked.

“With Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles,” replied Henriette. “The fact is,” she added, “I have already engaged her. She has acted her part well, and has seemed so prostrated by the unjust suspicion of the world that even Mrs. Gaster is disturbed over her condition. She has asked her to remain, but Fiametta has refused. ‘I couldn’t, madam,’ she said when Mrs. Gaster asked her to stay. ‘You have accused me of a fearful crime—a crime of which I am innocent—and—I’d rather work in a factory, or become a shop-girl in a department store, than stay longer in a house where such painful things have happened.’ Result, next Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville comes to me as my maid.”

“Well, Henriette,” said I, “I presume you know your own business, but why you lay yourself open to being robbed yourself and to having the profits of your own business diminished I can’t see. Please remember that I warned you against this foolish act.”

“All right, Bunny, I’ll remember,” smiled Mrs. Van Raffles, and there the matter was dropped for the moment.

The following Tuesday Fiametta de Belleville was installed in the Van Raffles household as the maid of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles. To her eagle eye it was another promising field for profit, for Henriette had spared neither pains nor money to impress Fiametta with the idea that next to Mrs. Gaster she was about as lavish and financially capable a householder as could be found in the Social Capital of the United States. As for me, I was the picture of gloom. The woman’s presence in our household could not be but a source of danger to our peace of mind as well as to our profits, and for the life of me I could not see why Henriette should want her there. But I was not long in finding out.

A week after Fiametta’s arrival Mrs. Raffles rang hurriedly for me.

“Yes, madam,” I said, responding immediately to her call.

“Bunny,” she said, her hand trembling a little, “the hour for action has arrived. I have just sent Fiametta on an errand to Providence. She will be gone three hours.”

“Yes!” said I. “What of it?”

“I want you during her absence to go with me to her room—”

The situation began to dawn on me.

“Yes!” I cried, breathlessly. “And search her trunks?”

“No, Bunny, no—the eaves,” whispered Henriette. “I gave her that room in the wing because it has so many odd cubby-holes where she could conceal things. I am inclined to think—well, the moment she leaves the city let me know. Follow her to the station, and don’t return till you know she is safely out of town and on her way to Providence. Then our turn will come.”

Oh, that woman! If I had not adored her before I—but enough. This is no place for sentiment. The story is the thing, and I must tell it briefly.

I followed out Henriette’s instructions to the letter, and an hour later returned with the information that Fiametta was, indeed, safely on her way.

“Good,” said Mrs. Raffles. “And now, Bunny, for the Gaster jewels.”

Mounting the stairs rapidly, taking care, of course, that there were none of the other servants about to spy upon us, we came to the maid’s room. Everything in it betokened a high mind and a good character. There were religious pictures upon the bureau, prayer-books, and some volumes of essays of a spiritual nature were scattered about—nothing was there to indicate that the occupant was anything but a simple, sweet child of innocence, except—

Well, Henriette was right—except the Gaster jewels. Even as my mistress had suspected, they were cached under the eaves, snuggled close against the huge dormer-window looking out upon the gardens; laid by for a convenient moment to get them out of Newport, and then—back to England for Fiametta. And what a gorgeous collection they were! Dog-collars of diamonds, yards of pearl rope, necklaces of rubies of the most lustrous colour and of the size of pigeons’ eggs, rings, brooches, tiaras—everything in the way of jewelled ornament the soul of woman could desire—all packed closely away in a tin box that I now remembered Fiametta had brought with her in her hand the day of her arrival. And now all these things were ours—Henriette’s and mine—without our having had to stir out-of-doors to get them. An hour later they were in the safety-deposit vault of Mrs. A. J. Van Raffles in the sturdy cellars of the Tiverton Trust Company, as secure against intrusion as though they were locked in the heart of Gibraltar itself.

And Fiametta? Well—a week later she left Newport suddenly, her eyes red with weeping and her slight little figure convulsed with grief. Her favourite aunt had just died, she said, and she was going back to England to bury her.

IV

THE PEARL ROPE
OF MRS. GUSHINGTON-ANDREWS

“Bunny,” said Henrietta one morning, shortly after we had come into possession of the Gaster jewels, “how is your nerve? Are you ready for a coup requiring a lot of it?”

“Well,” I replied, pluming myself a bit, “I don’t wish to boast, Henriette, but I think it is pretty good. I managed to raise twenty-seven hundred dollars on my own account by the use of it last night.”

“Indeed?” said Henriette, with a slight frown. “How, Bunny? You know you are likely to complicate matters for all of us if you work on the side. What, pray, did you do last night?”

And then I unfolded to her the incidents of the night before when, by assuming at a moment’s notice the position of valet to young Robertson de Pelt, the frisky young favourite of the inner set, I had relieved that high-flying young bachelor of fifteen hundred dollars in cash and some twelve hundred dollars worth of jewels as well.

“I was spending the evening at the Gentlemen’s Gentlemen’s Club,” I explained, “when word came over the telephone to Digby, Mr. de Pelt’s valet, that Mr. de Pelt was at the Rockerbilts’ and in no condition to go home alone. It happened that it was I who took the message, and observing that Digby was engaged in a game of billiards, and likely to remain so for some time to come, I decided to go after the gentleman myself without saying anything to Digby about it. Muffling myself up so that no one could recognize me, I hired a cab and drove out to the Rockerbilt mansion, sent in word that Mr. de Pelt’s man was waiting for him, and in ten minutes had the young gentleman in my possession. I took him to his apartment, dismissed the cab, and, letting ourselves into his room with his own latch-key, put him to bed. His clothes I took, as a well-ordered valet should, from his bed-chamber into an adjoining room, where, after removing the contents of his pockets, I hung them neatly over a chair and departed, taking with me, of course, everything of value the young gentleman had about him, even down to the two brilliant rubies he wore in his garter buckles. This consisted of two handfuls of crumpled twenty-dollar bills from his trousers, three rolls of one-hundred-dollar bills from his waistcoat, and sundry other lots of currency, both paper and specie, that I found stowed away in his overcoat and dinner-coat pockets. There were also ten twenty-dollar gold pieces in a little silver chain-bag he carried on his wrist. As I say, there was about fifteen hundred dollars of this loose change, and I reckon up the value of his studs, garter rubies, and finger-rings at about twelve hundred dollars more, or a twenty-seven hundred dollars pull in all. Eh?”

“Mercy, Bunny, that was a terribly risky thing. Suppose he had recognized you?” cried Henriette.

“Oh, he did—or at least he thought he did,” I replied, smiling broadly at the recollection. “On the way home in the cab he wept on my shoulder and said I was the best friend he ever had, and told me he loved me like a brother. There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for me, and if ever I wanted an automobile or a grand-piano all I had to do was to ask him for it. He was very genial.”

“Well, Bunny,” said Henriette, “you are very clever at times, but do be careful. I am delighted to have you show your nerve now and then, but please don’t take any serious chances. If Mr. de Pelt ever recognizes you—and he dines here next Wednesday—you’ll get us both into awful trouble.”

Again I laughed. “He won’t,” said I, with a conviction born of experience. “His geniality was of the kind that leaves the mind a blank the following morning. I don’t believe Mr. de Pelt remembers now that he was at the Rockerbilts’ last night, and even if he does, you know that I was in this house at eleven o’clock.”

“I, Bunny? Why, I haven’t seen you since dinner,” she demurred.

“Nevertheless, Henriette, you know that I was in the house at eleven o’clock last night—or, rather, you will know it if you are ever questioned on the subject, which you won’t be,” said I. “So, now that I have shown you in just what shape my nerve is, what is the demand you are going to put upon it?”

“You will have to bring to the enterprise all that ability which used to characterize your efforts as an amateur actor, Bunny,” she replied. “Summon all your sang-froid to your aid; act with deliberation, courtesy, and, above all, without the slightest manifestation of nervousness, and we should win, not a petty little twenty-seven hundred dollars, but as many thousands. You know Mrs. Gushington-Andrews?”

“Yes,” said I. “She is the lady who asked me for the olives at your last dinner.”

“Precisely,” observed Henriette. “You possibly observed also that wherever she goes she wears about sixty-nine yards of pearl rope upon her person.”

“Rope?” I laughed. “I shouldn’t call that rope. Cable, yes—frankly, when she came into the dining-room the other night I thought it was a feather-boa she had on.”

“All pearls, Bunny, of the finest water,” said Henriette, enthusiastically. “There isn’t one of the thousands that isn’t worth anywhere from five hundred to twenty-five hundred.”

“And I am to land a yard or two of the stuff for you in some mysterious way?” I demanded. “How is it to be—by kidnapping the lady, the snatch and run game, or how?”

“Sarcasm does not suit your complexion, Bunny,” retorted Henriette. “Your best method is to follow implicitly the directions of wiser brains. You are a first-class tool, but as a principal—well—well, never mind. You do what I tell you and some of those pearls will be ours. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, as you may have noticed, is one of those exceedingly effusive ladies who go into ecstasies over everything and everybody. She is what Raffles used to call a palaverer. Where most people nod she describes a complete circle with her head. When a cold, formal handshake is necessary she perpetrates an embrace, and that is where we come in. At my next Tuesday tea she will be present. She will wear her pearls—she’ll be strung with them from head to foot. A rope-walk won’t be in it with her, and every single little jewel will be worth a small fortune. You, Bunny, will be in the room to announce her when she arrives. She will rush to my arms, throw her own about my neck, the ornaments of my corsage will catch the rope at two or more points, sever the thread in several places, pearls will rain down upon the floor by dozens, and then—”

“I’m to snatch ’em and dive through the window, eh?” I interrupted.

“No, Bunny—you will behave like a gentleman, that is all,” she responded, haughtily; “or rather like a butler with the instincts of a gentleman. At my cry of dismay over the accident—”

“Better call it the incident,” I put in.

“Hush! At my cry of dismay over the accident,” Henriette repeated, “you will spring forward, go down upon your knees, and gather up the jewels by the handful. You will pour them back into Mrs. Gushington-Andrews’s hands and retire. Now, do you see?”

“H’m—yes,” said I. “But how do you get the pearls if I pour them back into her hands? Am I to slide some of them under the rugs, or flick them with my thumbnail under the piano—or what?”

“Nothing of the sort, Bunny; just do as I tell you—only bring your gloves to me just before the guests arrive, that is all,” said Henriette. “Instinct will carry you through the rest of it.”

And then the conspiracy stopped for the moment.

The following Tuesday at five the second of Mrs. Van Raffles’s Tuesday afternoons began. Fortune favoured us in that it was a beautiful day and the number of guests was large. Henriette was charming in her new gown specially imported from Paris—a gown of Oriental design with row upon row of brilliantly shining, crescent-shaped ornaments firmly affixed to the front of it and every one of them as sharp as a steel knife. I could see at a glance that even if so little as one of these fastened its talons upon the pearl rope of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews nothing under heaven could save it from laceration.

What a marvellous mind there lay behind those exquisite, childlike eyes of the wonderful Henriette!

“Remember, Bunny—calm deliberation—your gloves now,” were her last words to me.

“Count on me, Henriette; but I still don’t see—” I began.

“Hush! Just watch me,” she replied.

Whereupon this wonderful creature, taking my white gloves, deliberately smeared their palms and inner sides of the fingers with a milk-hued paste of her own making, composed of talcum powder and liquid honey. Nothing more innocent-appearing yet more villainously sticky have I ever before encountered.

“There!” she said—and at last I understood.

An hour later our victim arrived and scarce an inch of her but shone like a snow-clad hill with the pearls she wore. I stood at the portière and announced Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in my most blasé but butlerian tones. The lady fairly rushed by me, and in a moment her arms were about Henriette’s neck.

“You dear, sweet thing!” cried Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. “And you look so exquisitely charming today—”

And then there came a ripping sound. The two women started to draw away from each other; five of the crescents catching in the rope, in the impulsive jerking back of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews in order that she might gaze into Henrietta’s eyes, cut through the marvellous cords of the exquisite jewels. There was a cry of dismay both from Henriette and her guest, and the rug beneath their feet was simply white with riches. In a moment I was upon my knees scooping them up by the handful.

“Oh, dear, how very unfortunate!” cried Henriette. “Here, dear,” she added, holding out a pair of teacups. “Let James pour them into this,” and James, otherwise myself, did so to the extent of five teacups full of them and then he discreetly retired.

•    •    •

“Well, Bunny,” said Henriette, breathlessly, two hours later when her last guest had gone. “Tell me quickly—what was the result?”

“These, madam,” said I, handing her a small plush bag into which I had poured the “salvage” taken from my sticky palms. “A good afternoon’s work,” I added.

And, egad, it was: seventeen pearls of a value of twelve hundred dollars each, fifteen worth scarcely less than nine hundred dollars apiece, and some twenty-seven or eight smaller ones that we held to be worth in the neighbourhood of five hundred dollars each.

“Splendid!” cried Henrietta “Roughly speaking, Bunny, we’ve pulled in between forty and fifty thousand dollars today.”

“About that,” said I, with an inward chuckle, for I, of course, did not tell Henriette of eight beauties I had kept out of the returns for myself. “But what are we going to do when Mrs. Gushington-Andrews finds out that they are gone?”

“I shall provide for that,” said this wonderful woman. “I shall throw her off the scent by sending you over to her at once with sixteen of these assorted. I hate to give them up, but I think it advisable to pay that much as a sort of insurance against suspicion. Even then we’ll be thirty-five thousand dollars to the good. And, by-the-way, Bunny, I want to congratulate you on one thing.”

“Ah! What’s that—my sang-froid, my nerve?” I asked, airily.

“No, the size of your hands,” said Henriette. “The superficial area of those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars to us today.”

V

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE STEEL BONDS

“Excuse me, Henriette,” said I one morning, after I had been in Mrs. Van Raffles’s employ for about three months and had begun to calculate as to my share of the profits. “What are you doing with all this money we are gradually accumulating? There must be pretty near a million in hand by this time—eh?”

“One million two hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents,” replied Henriette instantly. “It’s a tidy little sum.”

“Almost enough to retire on,” I suggested.

“Now, Bunny, stop that!” retorted Henriette. “Either stop it or else retire yourself. I am not what they call a quitter in this country, and I do not propose at the very height of my career to give up a business which I have struggled for years to establish.”

“That is all very well, Henriette,” said I. “But the pitcher that goes to the bat too often strikes out at last.” (I had become a baseball fiend during my sojourn in the States.) “A million dollars is a pot of money, and it’s my advice to you to get away with it as soon as you can.”

“Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ you to give advice?” demanded Henriette. “It is quite evident that you don’t understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woeful misconception of the purposes which actuate an artist.”

“You certainly are an artist, Henriette,” I answered, desirous of placating her.

“Then you should know better than to intimate that I am in this business for the sordid dollars and cents there are to be got out of it,” pouted my mistress. “Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn’t chase the aniseseed bag because he loves to shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of food. He does it for the excitement of the hunt; because he loves to feel the movement of the hunter that he sits so well between his knees; because he is enamoured of the baying of the hounds, the winding of the horn, and welcomes the element of personal danger that enters into the sport when he and his charger have to take an unusual fence or an extra broad watercourse. So with me. In separating these people here from their money and their jewels, it is not the money and the jewels that I care for so much as the delicious risks I incur in getting them. What the high fence is to the hunter, the barriers separating me from Mrs. Gaster’s jewel-case are to me; what the watchful farmer armed with a shotgun for the protection of his crops is to the master of the hounds, the police are to me. The game of circumventing the latter and surmounting the former are the joy of my life, and while my eyes flash and sparkle with appetite every time I see a necklace or a tiara or a roll of hundred-dollar bills in the course of my social duties, it is not avarice that makes them glitter, but the call to action which they sound.”

I felt like saying that if that were the case I should esteem it a privilege to be made permanent custodian of the balance in hand, but it was quite evident from Henriette’s manner that she was in no mood for badinage, so I held my peace.

“To prove to you that I am not out for the money, Bunny, I’ll give you a check this morning for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay you for those steel bonds you picked up on the train when you came up here from New York. That’s two-and-a-half times what they are worth,” said Henriette. “Is it a bargain?”

“Certainly, ma’am,” I replied, delighted with the proposition. “But what are you going to do with the bonds?”

“Borrow a million and a half on ’em,” said Henriette.

“What!” I cried. “A million and a half on a hundred thousand security?”

“Certainly,” replied Henriette, “only it will require a little manipulation. For the past six months I have been depositing the moneys I have received in seventeen national banks in Ohio, each account being opened in a different name. The balances in each bank have averaged about three hundred thousand dollars, thanks to a circular system of checks in an endless chain that I have devised. Naturally the size of these accounts has hugely interested the bank officials, and they all regard me as a most desirable customer, and I think I can manage matters so that two or three of them, anyhow, will lend me all the money I want on those bonds and this certificate of trust which I shall ask you to sign.”

“Me?” I laughed. “Surely you are joking. What value will my signature have?”

“It will be good as gold after you have deposited that check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in your New York bank,” said Henriette. “I shall go to the president of the Ohoolihan National Bank at Oshkosh, Ohio, where I have at present three hundred and sixty-eight thousand three hundred and forty-three dollars and eighteen cents on deposit and tell him that the Hon. John Warrington Bunny, of New York, is my trustee for an estate of thirteen million dollars in funds set apart for me by a famous relative of mine who is not proud of the connection. He will communicate with you and ask you if this is true. You will respond by sending him a certified copy of the trust certificate, and refer him as to your own responsibility to the New York bank where our two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is on deposit. I will then swap checks with you for three hundred thousand dollars, mine to you going into your New York account and yours to me as trustee going into my account with the Ohoolihan National. The New York bank will naturally speak well of your balance, and the Ohoolihan people, finding the three-hundred-thousand-dollar check good, will never think of questioning your credit. This arranged, we will start in to wash those steel bonds up to the limit.”

“That’s a very simple little plan of yours, Henriette,” said I, “and the first part of it will work easily I have no doubt; but how the deuce are you going to wash those bonds up to fifteen times their value?”

“Easiest thing in the world, Bunny,” laughed Henriette. “There will be two million dollars of the bonds before I get through.”

“Heavens—no counterfeiting, I hope?” I cried.

“Nothing so vulgar,” said Henriette. “Just a little management—that’s all. And, by-the-way, Bunny, when you get a chance, please hire twenty safe-deposit boxes for me in as many different trust companies here and in New York—and don’t have ’em too near together. That’s all for the present.”

•    •    •

Three weeks later, having followed out Henriette’s instructions to the letter, I received at my New York office a communication from the president of the Ohoolihan National Bank, of Oshkosh, Ohio, inquiring as to the Van Raffles trust fund. I replied with a certified copy of the original which Henriette had already placed in the president’s hands. I incidentally referred the inquirer as to my own standing to the Delancy Trust Company, of New York. The three-hundred-thousand-dollar checks were exchanged by Henriette and myself—hers, by-the-way, was on the Seventy-Sixth National Bank, of Brookline, Massachusetts, and was signed by a fictitious male name, which shows how carefully she had covered her tracks. Both went through without question, and then the steel bonds came into play. Henriette applied for a loan of one million five hundred thousand dollars, offering the trust certificate for security. The president of the Ohoolihan National wished to see some of her other securities, if she had any, to which Henriette cordially replied that if he would come to New York she would gladly show them to him, and intimated that if the loan went through she wouldn’t mind paying the bank a bonus of one hundred thousand dollars for the accommodation. The response was immediate. Mr. Bolivar would come on at once, and he did.

“Now, Bunny,” said Mrs. Van Raffles on the morning of his arrival, “all you have to do is to put the one hundred bonds first in the vault of the Amalgamated Trust Company, of West Virginia, on Wall Street. Mr. Bolivar and I will go there and I will show them to him. We will then depart. Immediately after our departure you will get the bonds and take them to the vaults of the Trans-Missouri and Continental Trust Company, of New Jersey, on Broadway. You will go on foot, we in a hansom, so that you will get there first. I will take Mr. Bolivar in and show him the bonds again. Then you will take them to the vaults of the Riverside Coal Trust Company, of Pennsylvania, on Broad Street, where five minutes later I will show them for the third time to Mr. Bolivar—and so on. We will repeat this operation eighteen times in New York so that our visitor will fancy he has seen one million eight hundred thousand dollars’ worth of bonds in all, after which he will come to Newport, where I will show them to him twice more—making a two-million-dollar showdown. See?”

I toppled back into a chair in sheer amazement.

“By Jingo! but you are a wonder,” I cried. “If it only works.”

•    •    •

It worked. Mr. Bolivar was duly impressed with the extent of Henriette’s fortune in tangible assets, not to mention her evident standing in the community of her residence.

He was charmingly entertained and never for an instant guessed when at dinner where Henriette had no less personages than the Rockerbilts, Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Tommy Dare, and various other social lights to meet him, that the butler who passed him his soup and helped him liberally to wine was the Hon. John Warrington Bunny, trustee.

“Well,” said Henriette, as she gazed delightedly at the president’s certified check for one million four hundred thousand dollars—the amount of the loan less the bonus—“that was the best sport yet. Even aside from the size of the check, Bunny, it was great chasing the old man to cover. What do you think he said to me when he left, the poor, dear old innocent?”

“Give it up—what?”

“He said that I ought to be very careful in my dealings with men, who might impose upon my simplicity,” laughed Henriette.

“Simplicity?” I roared. “What ever gave him the idea that you were simple?”

“Oh—I don’t know,” said Henriette, demurely. “I guess it was because I told him I kept those bonds in twenty safe-deposit vaults instead of in one, to protect myself in case of loss by fire—I didn’t want to have too many eggs in one basket.”

“H’m!” said I. “What did he say to that?”

Henriette laughed long and loud at the recollection of the aged bank president’s reply.

“He squeezed my hand and answered, ‘What a child it is, indeed!’” said Henriette.

VI

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE FRESH-AIR FUND

It was a bright, sunny morning in the early summer when Henriette, gazing out of the dining-room windows across the lawns adjoining the Rockerbilt place, caught sight of a number of ragamuffins at play there.

“Who are those little tatterdemalions, Bunny?” she asked, with a suggestion of a frown upon her brow. “They have been playing on the lawns since seven o’clock this morning, and I’ve lost quite two hours’ sleep because of their chatter.”

“They are children from Mrs. Rockerbilt’s Fresh-Air Society,” I explained, for I, too, had been annoyed by the loud pranks of the youngsters and had made inquiries as to their identity. “Every summer, Digby, Mr. de Pelt’s valet, tells me, Mrs. Rockerbilt gives a tea for the benefit of the Fresh-Air Fund, and she always has a dozen of the children from town for a week beforehand so as to get them in shape for the function.”

“Get them in shape for the function, Bunny?” asked Henriette.

“Yes; one of the features of the tea is the presence of the youngsters, and they have to be pretty well rehearsed before Mrs. Rockerbilt dares let them loose among her guests,” said I, for Digby had explained the scheme in detail to me. “You see, their ideas of fun are rather primitive, and if they were suddenly introduced into polite society without any previous training the results might prove unpleasant.”

“Ah!” said Henriette, gazing abstractedly out of the window in the manner of one suddenly seized with an idea.

“Yes,” I went on. “You see, the street gamin loves nothing better in the way of diversion than throwing things at somebody, particularly if that somebody is what is known to his vernacular as a Willie-boy. As between eating an over-ripe peach and throwing it at the pot-hat of a Willie-boy, the ragamuffin would deny even the cravings of his stomach for that tender morsel. It is his delight, too, to heave tin cans, wash-boilers, flat-irons, pies—anything he can lay his hands on—at the automobilly-boys, if I may use the term, of all of which, before he is turned loose in the highest social circles of the land, it is desirable that he shall be cured.”

“I see,” said Henriette. “And so Mrs. Rockerbilt has them here on a ten days’ probation during which time they acquire that degree of savoir-faire and veneer of etiquette which alone makes it possible for her to exhibit them at her tea.”

“Precisely,” said I. “She lets them sleep in the big box-stalls of her stable where the extra coach-horses were kept before the motorcar craze came in. They receive four square meals a day, are rubbed down and curry-combed before each meal, and are bathed night and morning in violet water until the fateful occasion, after which they are returned to New York cleaner if not wiser children.”

“It is a great charity,” said Henrietta dreamily. “Does Mrs. Rockerbilt make any charge for admission to these teas—you say they are for the benefit of the Fresh-Air Fund?”

“Oh no, indeed,” said I. “It is purely a private charity. The youngsters get their ten days in the country, learn good manners, and Newport society has a pleasant afternoon—all at Mrs. Rockerbilt’s expense.”

“H’m!” said Henriette, pensively. “H’m! I think there is a better method. Ah—I want you to run down to New York for a few days shortly, Bunny. I have a letter I wish you to mail.”

Nothing more was said on the subject until the following Tuesday, when I was despatched to New York with instructions to organize myself into a Winter Fresh-Air Society, to have letter-heads printed, with the names of some of the most prominent ladies in society as patronesses—Henriette had secured permission from Mrs. Gaster, Mrs. Sloyd-Jinks, Mrs. Rockerbilt, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, Mrs. R. U. Innitt, the duchess of Snarleyow, Mrs. Willie K. Van Pelt, and numerous others to use their names in connection with the new enterprise—and to write her a letter asking if she would not interest herself and her friends in the needs of the new society.

“It is quite as important,” the letter ran, “that there should be a fund to take the little sufferers of our dreadful winters away from the sleet and snow-burdened streets of the freezing city as it is to give them their summer outing. This society is in great need of twenty-five thousand dollars properly to prosecute its work during the coming winter, and we appeal to you for aid.”

Henriette’s personal response to this request was a check for ten thousand dollars, which as secretary and treasurer of the fund I acknowledged, and then, of course, returned to her, whereupon her campaign began in earnest. Her own enthusiasm for the project, backed up by her most generous contribution, proved contagious, and inside of two weeks, not counting Henriette’s check, we were in possession of over seventeen thousand dollars, one lady going so far as to give us all her bridge winnings for a week.

“And now for the grand coup, Bunny,” said Mrs. Van Raffles, when I had returned with the spoil.

“Great Scot!” I cried. “Haven’t you got enough?”

“No, Bunny. Not a quarter enough,” she replied. “These winter resorts are very expensive places, and while seventeen thousand dollars would do very nicely for running a farm in summer, we shall need quite a hundred thousand to send our beneficiaries to Palm Beach in proper style.”

“Phe-e-w!” I whistled, in amazement. “Palm Beach, eh?”

“Yes,” said Henriette. “Palm Beach. I have always wanted to go there.”

“And the one hundred thousand dollars—how do you propose to get that?” I demanded.

“I shall give a lawn-fête and bazaar for the benefit of the fund. It will differ from Mrs. Rockerbilt’s tea in that I shall charge ten dollars admission, ten dollars to get out, and we shall sell things besides. I have already spoken to Mrs. Gaster about it and she is delighted with the idea. She has promised to stock the flower table with the cream of her conservatories. Mrs. Rockerbilt has volunteered to take charge of the refreshments. The duchess of Snarleyow is dressing a doll that is to be named by Senator Defew and raffled at five dollars a guess. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews is to take entire control of the fancy knick-knack table, where we shall sell gold match-boxes, solid silver automobile headlights, cigar-cutters, cocktail-shakers, and other necessities of life among the select. I don’t see how the thing can fail, do you?”

“Not so far,” said I.

“Each of the twelve lady patronesses has promised to be responsible for the sale of a hundred tickets of admission at ten dollars apiece—that makes twelve thousand dollars in admissions. It will cost each person ten dollars more to get out, which, if only half of the tickets are used, will be six thousand dollars—or eighteen thousand dollars in entrance and exit fees alone.”

“Henriette!” I cried, enthusiastically, “Madam Humbert was an amateur alongside of you.”

Mrs. Van Raffles smiled. “Thank you, Bunny,” said she. “If I’d only been a man—”

“Gad!” I ejaculated. “Wall Street would have been an infant in your hands.”

Well, the fateful day came. Henriette, to do her justice, had herself spared no pains or expense to make the thing a success. I doubt if the gardens of the Constant-Scrappes ever looked so beautiful. There were flowers everywhere, and hanging from tree to tree from one end of their twenty acres to the other were long and graceful garlands of multicoloured electric lights that when night came down upon the fête made the scene appear like a veritable glimpse of fairyland. Everybody that is anybody was there, with a multitude of others who may always be counted upon to pay well to see their names in print or to get a view of society at close range. Of course there was music of an entrancing sort, the numbers being especially designed to touch the flintiest of hearts, and Henriette was everywhere. No one, great or small, in that vast gathering but received one of her gracious smiles, and it is no exaggeration to say that half of the flowers purchased at rates that would make a Fifth Avenue tailor hang his head in shame, were bought by the gallant gentlemen of Newport for presentation to the hostess of the day. These were immediately placed on sale again so that on the flower account the receipts were perceptibly swelled.

A more festal occasion has never been known even in this festal environment. The richest of the land vied with one another in making the affair a vast financial success. The ever gallant Tommy Dare left the scene twenty times for the mere privilege of paying his way in and out that many times over at ten dollars each way. The doll which Senator Defew had named was also the cause of much merriment, since when all was over and some thirteen thousand five hundred dollars had been taken in for guesses, it was found that the senator had forgotten the name he had given it. When the laughter over this incident had subsided, Henriette suggested that it be put up at auction, which plan was immediately followed out, with the result that the handiwork of the duchess of Snarleyow was knocked down for eight thousand six hundred and seventy-five dollars to a Cincinnati brewer who had been trying for eight years to get his name into the Social Register.

•    •    •

“Thank goodness, that’s over,” said Henriette when the last guest had gone and the lights were out. “It has been a very delightful affair, but towards the end it began to get on my nerves. I am really appalled, Bunny, at the amount of money we have taken in.”

“Did you get the full one hundred thousand dollars?” I asked.

“Full hundred thousand?” she cried, hysterically. “Listen to this.” And she read the following memorandum of the day’s receipts:

Flower Table | | $36,000.00
Doll | | 22,175.00
Admissions | | 19,260.00
Exits | | 17,500.00
Candy Table | | 12,350.00
Supper Table | | 43,060.00
Knick-Knacks | | 17,380.00
Book Table | | 123.30
Coat Checks | | 3,340.00
TOTAL: | | $171,188.30

“Great Heavens, what a haul!” I cried. “But how much did you spend yourself?”

“Oh—about twenty thousand dollars, Bunny—I really felt I could afford it. We’ll net not less than one hundred and fifty thousand.”

I was suddenly seized with a chill.

“The thing scares me, Henriette,” I murmured. “Suppose these people ask you next winter for a report?”

“Oh,” laughed Henriette, “I shall immediately turn the money over to the fund. You can send me a receipt and that will let us out. Later on you can return the money to me.”

“Even then—” I began.

“Tush, Bunny,” said she. “There isn’t going to be any even then. Six months from now these people will have forgotten all about it. It’s a little way they have. Their memory for faces and the money they spend is shorter than the purse of a bankrupt. Have no fear.”

And, as usual, Henriette was right, for the next February when the beneficiaries of the Winter Fresh-Air Fund spent a month at Palm Beach, enjoying the best that favoured spot afforded in the way of entertainment and diversion, not a word of criticism was advanced by anybody, although the party consisted solely of Mrs. Van Raffles, her maid, and Bunny, her butler. In fact, the contrary was the truth. The people we met while there, many of whom had contributed most largely to the fund, welcomed us with open arms, little suspecting how intimately connected they were with our sources of supply.

Mrs. Gaster, it is true, did ask Henriette how the Winter Fresh-Air Fund was doing and was told the truth—that it was doing very well.

“The beneficiaries did very well here,” said Henriette.

“I have seen nothing of them,” observed Mrs. Gaster.

“Well—no,” said Henriette. “The managers thought it was better to send them here before the season was at its height. The moral influences of Palm Beach at the top of the season are—well—a trifle strong for the young—don’t you think?” she explained.

The tin-type I hand you will give you some idea of how much one of the beneficiaries enjoyed himself. There is nothing finer in the world than surf bathing in winter.

VII

THE ADVENTURE
OF MRS. ROCKERBILT’S TIARA

Henriette had been unwontedly reserved for a whole week, a fact which was beginning to get sadly on my nerves when she broke an almost Sphinxlike silence with the extraordinary remark:

“Bunny, I am sorry, but I don’t see any other way out of it. You must get married.”

To say that I was shocked by the observation is putting it mildly. As you must by this time have realized yourself, there was only one woman in the world that I could possibly bring myself to think fondly of, and that woman was none other than Henriette herself. I could not believe, however, that this was at all the notion she had in mind, and what little poise I had was completely shattered by the suggestion.

I drew myself up with dignity, however, in a moment and answered her.

“Very well, dear,” I said. “Whenever you are ready I am. You must have banked enough by this time to be able to support me in the style to which I am accustomed.”

“That is not what I meant, Bunny,” she retorted, coldly, frowning at me.

“Well, it’s what I mean,” said I. “You are the only woman I ever loved—”

“But, Bunny dear, that can come later,” said she, with a charming little blush. “What I meant, my dear boy, was not a permanent affair but one of these Newport marriages. Not necessarily for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith,” she explained.

“I don’t understand,” said I, affecting denseness, for I understood only too well.

“Stupid!” cried Henriette. “I need a confidential maid, Bunny, to help us in our business, and I don’t want to take a third party in at random. If you had a wife I could trust her. You could stay married as long as we needed her, and then, following the Newport plan, you could get rid of her and marry me later—that is—er—provided I was willing to marry you at all, and I am not so sure that I shall not be someday, when I am old and toothless.”

“I fail to see the necessity for a maid of that kind,” said I.

“That’s because you are a man, Bunny,” said Henriette. “There are splendid opportunities for acquiring the gems these Newport ladies wear by one who may be stationed in the dressing-room. There is Mrs. Rockerbilt’s tiara, for instance. It is at present the finest thing of its kind in existence and of priceless value. When she isn’t wearing it it is kept in the vaults of the Tiverton Trust Company, and how on earth we are to get it without the assistance of a maid we can trust I don’t see—except in the vulgar, commonplace way of sandbagging the lady and brutally stealing it, and Newport society hasn’t quite got to the point where you can do a thing like that to a woman without causing talk, unless you are married to her.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Henriette,” I returned, with more positiveness than I commonly show, “I will not marry a lady’s maid, and that’s all there is about it. You forget that I am a gentleman.”

“It’s only a temporary arrangement, Bunny,” she pleaded. “It’s done all the time in the smart set.”

“Well, the morals of the smart set are not my morals,” I retorted. “My father was a clergyman, Henriette, and I’m something of a churchman myself, and I won’t stoop to such baseness. Besides, what’s to prevent my wife from blabbing when we try to ship her?”

“H’m!” mused Henriette. “I hadn’t thought of that—it would be dangerous, wouldn’t it?”

“Very,” said I. “The only safe way out of it would be to kill the young woman, and my religious scruples are strongly against anything of the sort. You must remember, Henriette, that there are one or two of the commandments that I hold in too high esteem to break them.”

“Then what shall we do, Bunny?” demanded Mrs. Van Raffles. “I must have that tiara.”

“Well, there’s the old amateur theatrical method,” said I. “Have a little play here, reproduce Mrs. Rockerbilt’s tiara in paste for one of the characters to wear, substitute the spurious for the real, and there you are.”

“That is a good idea,” said Henriette; “only I hate amateur theatricals. I’ll think it over.”

A few days later my mistress summoned me again.

“Bunny, you used to make fairly good sketches, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Pretty good,” said I. “Chiefly architectural drawings, however—details of façades and ornamental designs.”

“Just the thing!” cried Henriette. “Tonight Mrs. Rockerbilt gives a moonlight reception on her lawns. They adjoin ours. She will wear her tiara, and I want you when she is in the gardens to hide behind some convenient bit of shrubbery and make an exact detail sketch of the tiara. Understand?”

“I do,” said I.

“Don’t you miss a ruby or a diamond or the teeniest bit of filigree, Bunny. Get the whole thing to a carat,” she commanded.

“And then?” I asked, excitedly.

“Bring it to me; I’ll attend to the rest,” said she.

You may be sure that when night came I went at the work in hand with alacrity. It was not always easy to get the right light on the lady’s tiara, but in several different quarters of the garden I got her sufficiently well, though unconsciously, posed to accomplish my purpose. Once I nearly yielded to the temptation to reach my hand through the shrubbery and snatch the superb ornament from Mrs. Rockerbilt’s head, for she was quite close enough to make this possible, but the vulgarity of such an operation was so very evident that I put it aside almost as soon as thought of. And I have always remembered dear old Raffles’s remark, “Take everything in sight, Bunny,” he used to say; “but, damn it, do it like a gentleman, not a professional.”

The sketch made, I took it to my room and coloured it, so that that night, when Henriette returned, I had ready for her a perfect pictorial representation of the much-coveted bauble.

“It is simply perfect, Bunny,” she cried, delightedly, as she looked at it. “You have even got the sparkle of that incomparable ruby in the front.”

Next morning we went to New York, and Henriette, taking my design to a theatrical property-man we knew on Union Square, left an order for its exact reproduction in gilt and paste.

“I am going to a little fancy-dress dance, Mr. Sikes,” she explained, “as Queen Catharine of Russia, and this tiara is a copy of the very famous lost negligée crown of that unhappy queen. Do you think you can let me have it by Tuesday next?”

“Easily, madam,” said Sikes. “It is a beautiful thing and it will give me real pleasure to reproduce it. I’ll guarantee it will be so like the original that the queen herself couldn’t tell ’em apart. It will cost you forty-eight dollars.”

“Agreed,” said Henriette.

And Sikes was true to his word. The following Tuesday afternoon brought to my New York apartment—for of course Mrs. Raffles did not give Sikes her right name—an absolutely faultless copy of Mrs. Rockerbilt’s chiefest glory. It was so like that none but an expert in gems could have told the copy from the original, and when I bore the package back to Newport and displayed its contents to my mistress she flew into an ecstasy of delight.

“We’ll have the original in a week if you keep your nerve, Bunny,” she cried.

“Theatricals?” said I.

“No, indeed,” said Henriette. “If Mrs. Rockerbilt knew this copy was in existence she’d never wear the other in public again as long as she lived without bringing a dozen detectives along with her. No, indeed—a dinner. I want you to connect the electric lights of the dining-room with the push-button at my foot, so that at any moment I can throw the dining-room into darkness. Mrs. Rockerbilt will sit at my left—Tommy Dare to the right. She will wear her famous coiffure surmounted by the tiara. At the moment you are passing the poisson I will throw the room into darkness, and you—”

“I positively decline, Henriette, to substitute one tiara for another in the dark. Why, darn it all, she’d scream the minute I tried it,” I protested.

“Of course she would,” said she, impatiently. “And that is why I don’t propose any such idiotic performance. You will merely stumble in the dark and manage your elbow so awkwardly that Mrs. Rockerbilt’s coiffure will be entirely disarranged by it. She will scream, of course, and I will instantly restore the light, after which I will attend to the substitution. Now don’t fail me and the tiara will be ours.”

I stand ready with affidavits to prove that that dinner was the most exciting affair of my life. At one time it seemed to me that I could not possibly perform my share of the conspiracy without detection, but a glance at Henriette, sitting calmly and coolly, and beautiful too, by gad, at the head of the table, chatting as affably with the duke of Snarleyow and Tommy Dare as though there was nothing in the wind, nerved me to action. The moment came, and instantly as I leaned over Mrs. Rockerbilt’s side with the fish platter in my hand out went the light; crash went my elbow into the lady’s stunning coiffure; her little, well-modulated scream of surprise rent the air, and, flash, back came the lights again.

All was as Henriette had foretold, Mrs. Rockerbilt’s lovely blond locks were frightfully demoralized, and the famous tiara with it had slid aslant athwart her cheek.

“Dear me!” cried Henriette, rising hurriedly and full of warm sympathy. “How very awkward!”

“Oh, don’t speak of it,” laughed Mrs. Rockerbilt, amiably. “It is nothing, dear Mrs. Van Raffles. These electric lights are so very uncertain these days, and I am sure James is not at all to blame for hitting me as he has done; it’s the most natural thing in the world, only—may I please run upstairs and fix my hair again?”

“You most certainly shall,” said Henriette. “And I will go with you, my dear Emily. I am so mortified that if you will let me do penance in that way I will myself restore order out of this lovely chaos.”

The little speech was received with the usual hilarious appreciation which follows anything out of the usual course of events in high social circles. Tommy Dare gave three cheers for Mrs. Van Raffles, and Mrs. Gramercy Van Pelt, clad in a gorgeous red costume, stood up on a chair and toasted me in a bumper of champagne. Meanwhile Henriette and Mrs. Rockerbilt had gone above.

•    •    •

“Isn’t it a beauty, Bunny,” said Henriette the next morning, as she held up the tiara to my admiring gaze, a flashing, coruscating bit of the jeweller’s art that, I verily believe, would have tempted the soul of honour itself into rascally ways.

“Magnificent!” I asserted. “But—which is this, the forty-eight-dollar one or the original?”

“The original,” said Henriette, caressing the bauble. “You see, when we got to my room last night and I had Mrs. Rockerbilt sitting before the mirror, and despite her protestations was fixing her dishevelled locks with my own fair hands, I arranged to have the lights go out again just as the tiara was laid on the dressing-table. The copy was in the table drawer, and while my right hand was apparently engaged in manipulating the refractory light, and my voice was laughingly calling down maledictions upon the electric lighting company for its wretched service, my left hand was occupied with the busiest effort of its career in substituting the spurious tiara for the other.”

“And Mrs. Rockerbilt never even suspected?”

“No,” said Henriette. “In fact, she placed the bogus affair in her hair herself. As far as her knowledge goes, I never even touched the original.”

“Well, you’re a wonder, Henriette,” said I, with a sigh. “Still, if Mrs. Rockerbilt should ever discover—”

“She won’t, Bunny,” said Henriette. “She’ll never have occasion to test the genuineness of her tiara. These Newport people have other sources of income than the vulgar pawnshops.”

But, alas! later on Henriette made a discovery herself that for the time being turned her eyes red with weeping. The Rockerbilt tiara itself was as bogus as our own copy. There wasn’t a real stone in the whole outfit, and the worst part of it was that under the circumstances Henriette could not tell anybody over the teacups that Mrs. Rockerbilt was, in vulgar parlance, “putting up a shine” on high society.

VIII

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE CARNEGIE LIBRARY

“Merciful Midas, Bunny,” said Henriette one morning as I was removing the breakfast-tray from her apartment. “Did you see the extent of Mr. Carnegie’s benefactions in the published list this morning?”

“I have not received my paper yet,” said I. “Moreover, I doubt if it will contain any reference to such matters when it does come. You know I read only the London Times, Mrs. Van Raffles. I haven’t been able to go the American newspapers.”

“More fool you, then, Bunny,” laughed my mistress. “Any man who wants to pursue crime as a polite diversion and does not read the American newspapers fails to avail himself of one of the most potent instruments for the attainment of the highest artistic results. You cannot pick up a newspaper in any part of the land without discovering somewhere in its columns some reference to a new variety of house-breaking, some new and highly artistic method of writing another man’s autograph so that when appended to a check and presented at his bank it will bear the closest scrutiny to which the paying-teller will subject it, some truly Napoleonic method of entirely novel design for the sudden parting of the rich from their possessions. Any university which attempted to add a School of Peculation to its curriculum and ignored the daily papers as a positive source of inspiration to the highest artistry in the profession would fail as ignobly as though it should forget to teach the fundamental principles of high finance.”

“I was not aware of their proficiency in that direction,” said I.

“You never will get on, Bunny,” sighed Henriette, “because you are not quick to seize opportunities that lie directly under your nose. How do you suppose I first learned of all this graft at Newport? Why, by reading the newspaper accounts of their jewels in the Sunday and daily newspapers. How do I know that if I want to sandbag Mr. Rockerbilt and rifle his pockets all I have to do is to station myself outside the Crackerbaker Club any dark opera night after twelve and catch him on his way home with his fortune sticking out all over him? Because the newspapers tell me that he is a regular habitué of the Crackerbaker and plays bridge there every night after the opera. How do I know just how to walk from my hall bedroom in my little East Side tenement up Fifth Avenue into Mrs. Gaster’s dining-room, where she has a million in plate on her buffet, with my eyes shut, without fear of stumbling over a step or a chair or even a footstool? Because the newspapers have so repeatedly printed diagrams of the interior of the lady’s residence that its halls, passages, doorways, exits, twists, turns, and culs-de-sac are indelibly engraved upon my mind. How did I acquire my wonderful knowledge of the exact number of pearls, rubies, diamonds, opals, tiaras, bracelets, necklaces, stomachers, and other gorgeous jewels now in the possession of the smart set? Only by an assiduous devotion to the contents of the daily newspapers in their reports of the doings of the socially elect. I have a scrapbook, Bunny, that has been two years in the making, and there hasn’t been a novel burglary reported in all that time that is not recorded in my book, not a gem that has appeared at the opera, the theatre, the Charity Ball, the Horse Show, or a monkey dinner that has not been duly noted in this vademecum of mine, fully described and in a sense located. If it wasn’t for that knowledge I could not hope for success any more than you could if you went hunting mountain-lions in the Desert of Sahara, or tried to lure speckled-trout from the depths of an empty goldfish globe.”

“I see,” said I, meekly. “I have missed a great opportunity. I will subscribe to the Tribune and Evening Post right away.”

I have never understood why Henriette greeted this observation with a peal of silvery laughter that fairly made the welkin ring. All I know is that it so irritated me that I left the room to keep from making a retort that might seriously have disturbed our friendship. Later in the day, Mrs. Van Raffles rang for me and I attended upon her orders.

“Bunny,” said she, “I’ve made up my mind to it—I must have a Carnegie library, that is all there is about it, and you must help. The iron-master has already spent thirty-nine million dollars on that sort of thing, and I don’t see why if other people can get ’em we can’t.”

“Possibly because we are not a city, town, or hamlet,” I suggested, for I had been looking over the daily papers since my morning’s talk with the lady, and had observed just who had been the beneficiaries of Mr. Carnegie’s benefactions. “He don’t give ’em to individuals, but to communities.”

“Of course not,” she responded, quickly. “But what is to prevent our becoming a municipality?”

My answer was an amazed silence, for frankly I could not for the life of me guess how we were to do any such thing.

“It’s the easiest thing in the world,” she continued. “All you have to do is to buy an abandoned farm on Long Island with a bleak seafront, divide it up into corner lots, advertise the lots for sale on the instalment plan, elect your mayor, and Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea, swept by ocean breezes, fifteen cents from the Battery, is a living, breathing reality.”

“By the jumping Disraeli, Henriette, but you are a marvel!” I cried, with enthusiasm. “But,” I added, my ardour cooling a little, “won’t it cost money?”

“About fifteen hundred dollars,” said Henriette. “I can win that at bridge in an hour.”

“Well,” said I, “you know you can command my services, Henriette. What shall I do?”

“Organize the city,” she replied. “Here is fifty dollars. That will do for a starter. Go down to Long Island, buy the farm, put up a few signs calling on people to own their own homes; advertise the place in big capital letters in the Sunday papers as likely to be the port of the future, consider yourself duly elected mayor, stop in at some photograph shop in New York on your way back and get a few dozen pictures of street scenes in Binghamton, Oberlin, Kalamazoo, and other well-populated cities, and then come back here for further instructions. Meanwhile I will work out the other details of the scheme.”

According to my habit I followed Henriette’s instructions to the letter. A farm of five hundred acres was secured within a week, the bleakest, coldest spot ever swept by ocean breezes anywhere. It cost six hundred dollars in cash, with immediate possession. Three days later, with the use of a ruler, I had mapped out about twelve thousand corner lots on the thing, and, thanks to my knack at draughtsmanship, had all ready for anybody’s inspection as fine a ground-plan of Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea as ever was got up by a land-booming company in this or any other country. I then secured the photographs desired by my mistress, advertised Raffleshurst in three Sunday newspapers to the tune of a half-page each, and returned to Newport. I flattered myself that the thing was well done, for on reading the advertisement nothing would do but that Henriette should visit the place in person. The ads were so phrased, she said, as to be irresistible.

“It’s fine, Bunny,” she cried, with an enthusiastic laugh as she gazed out over the broad acres of Raffleshurst and noted how well I had fulfilled her orders. “Under proper direction you are a most able workman. Nothing could be better. Nothing—absolutely nothing. And now for Mr. Carnegie.”

I still did not see how the thing was coming out, but such was my confidence in my leader that I had no misgivings.

“Here is a letter from Mrs. Gaster introducing the Hon. Henry Higginbotham, mayor of Raffleshurst, to Mr. Carnegie,” said Henriette. “You will call at once on the iron-master. Present this letter, keeping in mind of course that you are yourself the Hon. Henry Higginbotham. Show him these photographs of the City Hall at Binghamton, of the public park at Oberlin, the high school at Oswego, the battery walk at Charleston and other public improvements of various other cities, when he asks you what sort of a place Raffleshurst is; then frankly and fearlessly put in your application for a one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar library. One picture—this beautiful photograph of the music-hall at the St. Louis Exhibition—you must seem to overlook always, only contrive matters so that he will inquire what it is. You must then modestly remark that it is nothing but a little two-hundred-thousand-dollar art gallery you have yourself presented to the town. See?”

“H’m—yes, I see,” said I. “But it is pretty risky business, Henriette. Suppose Mrs. Gaster asks for further information about Mayor Higginbotham? I think it was unwise of you to connect her with the enterprise.”

“Don’t bother about that, Bunny. I wrote that letter of introduction—I haven’t studied penmanship for nothing, you know. Mrs. Gaster will never know. So just put on your boldest front, remember your name, and don’t forget to be modest about your own two-hundred-thousand-dollar art gallery. That will inspire him, I think.”

It took me a week to get at the iron-master; but finally, thanks to Mrs. Gaster’s letter of introduction, I succeeded. Mr. Carnegie was, as always, in a most amiable frame of mind, and received me cordially, even when he discovered my real business with him.

“I hadn’t intended to give any more libraries this year,” he said, as he glanced over the pictures. “I am giving away lakes now,” he added. “If you wanted a lake, Mr. Higginbotham, I—”

“We have such a large water-front already, Mr. Carnegie,” said I, “and most of our residents are young married couples with children not over three and five. I am afraid they would regard a lake as a source of danger.”

“That’s a pretty playground,” he suggested, glancing at the Oberlin Park. “Somehow or other, it reminds me of something.”

I thought it quite likely, but, of course, I didn’t say so. I may be a fool but I have some tact.

“It’s at the far corner of the park that we propose to put the library if you are good enough to let us have it,” was all I ventured.

“H’m!” he mused. “Well, do you know, I like to help people who help themselves—that’s my system.”

I assured him that we of Raffleshurst were accustomed to helping ourselves to everything we could lay our hands on, a jest which even though it was only too true seemed to strike him pleasantly.

“What is that handsome structure you always pass over?” he asked, as I contrived to push the music-hall photograph aside for the fifth time.

I laughed deprecatingly. “Oh, that,” I said, modestly—“that’s only a little two-hundred-thousand-dollar music-hall and art gallery I have built for the town myself.”

Oh, that wonderful Henriette! How did she know that generosity even among the overgenerous was infectious?

“Indeed!” said Mr. Carnegie, his face lighting up with real pleasure. “Well, Mr. Higginbotham, I guess—I guess I’ll do it. I can’t be outdone in generosity by you, sir, and—er—I guess you can count on the library. Do you think one hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be enough?”

“Well, of course—” I began.

“Why not make my contribution equal to yours and call it an even two hundred thousand dollars?” he interrupted.

“You overwhelm me,” said I. “Of course, if you wish to—”

“And the Raffleshurst common council will appropriate five percent of that amount annually for its maintenance?” he inquired.

“Such a resolution has already been passed,” said I, taking a paper from my pocket. “Here is the ordinance, duly signed by myself as mayor and by the secretary of the council.”

Again that extraordinary woman, to provide me with so necessary a document!

The millionaire rose with alacrity and with his own hand drew me the required check.

“Mr. Mayor,” said he, “I like the quick, businesslike way in which you do things. Pray present my compliments to the citizens of Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea, and tell them I am only too glad to help them. If you ever want a lake, sir, don’t fail to call upon me.” With which gracious words the millionaire bowed me out.

•    •    •

“Two hundred thousand dollars, Bunny?” cried Henriette when I handed her the check.

“Yep,” said I.

“Well, that is a good day’s sport!” she said, gazing at the slip. “Twice as much as I expected.”

“Yes,” said I. “But see here, Henrietta, suppose Mr. Carnegie should go down to Raffleshurst to see the new building and find out what a bunco game we have played on him?”

“He’s not likely to do that for two reasons, Bunny,” she replied. “In the first place he suffers acutely from lumbago in winter and can’t travel, and in the second place he’d have to find Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea before he could make the discovery that somebody’d put up a game on him. I think by the time he is ready to start we can arrange matters to have Raffleshurst taken off the map.”

“Well, I think this is the cleverest trick you’ve turned yet, Henriette,” said I.

“Nonsense, Bunny, nonsense,” she replied. “Any idiot can get a Carnegie library these days. That’s why I put you on the job, dear,” she added, affectionately.

IX

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE HOLDUP

Now that it is all over, I do not know whether she was really worn-out or by the expert use of powder gave to her cheeks the pallid look which bore out Mrs. Van Raffles’s statement to me that she needed a rest. At any rate, one morning in mid-August, when the Newport season was in full feather, Henriette, looking very pale and wan, tearfully confessed to me that business had got on her nerves and that she was going away to a rest-cure on the Hudson for ten days.

“I just can’t stand it for another minute, Bunny,” she faltered, real tears coursing down her cheeks. “I haven’t slept a wink of natural sleep for five days, and yet when night comes it is all I can do to keep my eyes open. At the Rockerbilt ball last night I dozed off four times while talking with the Duchess of Snarleyow, and when the Chinese Ambassador asked me to sit out the gavotte with him I’m told I actually snored in his face. A woman who can’t keep awake all night and sleep properly by day is not fit for Newport society, and I’ve simply got to go away and get my nerve back again.”

“You are very wise,” I replied, “and I wholly approve of your course. There is no use of trying to do too much and you have begun to show the strain to which you have been subjecting yourself. Your failure last Friday night to land Mrs. Gollet’s ruby dog-collar when her French poodle sat in your lap all through the Gaster musicale is evidence to me that your mind is not as alert as usual. By all means, go away and rest up. I’ll take care of things around here.”

“Thank you, dear,” said she, with a grateful smile. “You need a change too, Bunny. What would you say if I sent all the servants away too, so that you could have a week of absolute tranquillity? It must be awful for a man of your refined sensibilities to have to associate so constantly with the housemaids, the under-butlers and the footmen.”

“Nothing would please me better,” I returned with alacrity; for, to tell the truth, society below stairs was rapidly becoming caviare to my taste. The housemaids were all right, and the under-butlers, being properly subject to my control, I could wither when they grew too familiar, but the footmen were intolerable guyers. On more than one occasion their quick Irish wit had put me to my trumps to maintain my dignity, and I had noticed of late that their alleged fun at my expense had made even the parlourmaid giggle in a most irritating fashion. Henriette’s suggestion promised at least a week’s immunity from this sort of thing, and as far as remaining alone in the beautiful Bolivar Lodge was concerned, to a man of my literary and artistic tastes nothing could be more desirable.

“I can put in a week of solitude here very comfortably,” said I. “The Constant-Scrappes have a very excellent library and a line of reading in Abstract Morals in full calf that I should very much like to get at.”

“So be it then,” said Henriette, with a sigh of relief. “I will take my departure next Saturday after the Innitt’s clam-bake on Honk Island. The servants can go Saturday afternoon after the house has been put in order. You can order a fresh supply of champagne and cigars for yourself, and as for your meals—”

“Don’t you bother about that,” said I, with a laugh. “I lived for months on the chafing-dish before I found you again. And I rather think the change from game birds and pâté de foie gras to simple eggs and bread and butter will do me good.”

And so the matter was arranged. The servants were notified that, owing to Mrs. Van Raffles’s illness, they might take a vacation on full pay for ten days, and Henriette herself prepared society for her departure by fainting twice at the Innit’s clam-bake on Honk Island.

No less a person than Mrs. Gaster herself brought her home at four o’clock in the morning and her last words were an exhortation to her “dear Mrs. Van Raffles” to be careful of herself “for all our sakes.” Saturday morning Henriette departed. Saturday afternoon the servants followed suit, and I was alone in my glory—and oh, how I revelled in it! The beauties of Bolivar Lodge had never so revealed themselves to me as then; the house as dark as the tomb without, thanks to the closing of the shutters and the drawing to of all the heavy portières before the windows, but a blaze of light within from cellar to roof. I spent whole hours gloating over the treasures of that Monte-Cristan treasure-house, and all day Sunday and Monday I spent poring over the books in the library, a marvellous collection, though for the most part wholly uncut.

Everything moved along serenely until Wednesday afternoon, when I thought I heard a noise in the cellar, but investigation revealed the presence of no one but a stray cat which meowed up the cellar steps to me in response to my call of “Who’s there.” True, I did not go down to see if anyone were there, not caring to involve myself in a personal encounter with a chance tramp who might have wandered in, in search of food. The sudden materialization of the cat satisfactorily explained the noises, and I returned to the library to resume my reading of The Origin of the Decalogue where I had left off at the moment of the interruption. That evening I cooked myself a welsh-rabbit and at eight o’clock, arrayed in my pyjamas, I returned to the library with a book, a bottle of champagne and a box of Vencedoras, prepared for a quiet evening of absolute luxury. I read in the waning light of the dying midsummer day for a little while, and then, as darkness came on, I turned to the switch-board to light the electric lamp.

The lamp would not light.

I pressed and pressed every button in the room, but with no better results; and then, going through the house I tried every other button I could find, but everywhere conditions were the same. Apparently there was something the matter with the electrical service, a fact which I cursed, but not deeply, for it was a beautiful moonlight night and while of course I was disappointed in my reading, I realized that after all nothing could be pleasanter than to sit in the moonlight and smoke and quaff bumpers of champagne until the crack of doom. This I immediately proceeded to do, and kept at it pretty steadily until I should say about eleven o’clock, when I heard unmistakable signs of a large automobile coming up the drive. It chugged as far as the front door and then stood panting like an impatient steam-engine, while the chauffeur, a person of medium height, well muffled in his automobile coat, his features concealed behind his goggles, and his mouth covered by his collar, rapped loudly on the front door, once, then a second time.

“Who the devil can this be at this hour of the night, I wonder,” I muttered, as I responded to the summons.

If I sought the name I was not to be gratified, for the moment I opened the door I found two pistols levelled upon me, and two very determined eyes peering at me from behind the goggles.

“Not a word, or I shoot,” said the intruder in a gruff voice, evidently assumed, before I could get a word from my already somewhat champagne-twisted tongue. “Lead me to the dining-room.”

Well, there I was. Defenceless, taken by surprise, unarmed, not too wide awake, comfortably filled with champagne and in no particularly fighting mood. What could I do but yield? To call for help would have brought at least two bullets crashing into my brain, even if anyone could have heard my cries. To assault a scoundrel so well-armed would have been the height of folly, and to tell the truth so imbued was I with the politer spirit of the gentle art of house-breaking that this sudden confrontation with the ruder, rough-house methods of the highwayman left me entirely unable to cope with the situation.

“Certainly,” said I, turning and ushering him down the hall to the great dining-room where the marvellous plate of the Constant-Scrappes shone effulgently upon the sideboard—or at least such of it as there was no room for in the massive safe.

“Get me some rope,” commanded the intruder. Still under the range of those dreadful pistols, I obeyed.

“Sit down in that chair, and, by the leaping Gladstone, if you move an inch I’ll blow your face off feature by feature,” growled the intruder.

“Who’s moving?” I retorted, angrily.

“Well, see that whoever else is you are not,” he retorted, winding the rope three times around my waist and fastening me securely to the back of the chair. “Now hold out your hands.”

I obeyed, and he bound them as tightly as though they were fastened together with rods of iron. A moment later my feet and knees were similarly bound and I was as fast in the toils as Gulliver, when the Lilliputians fell upon him in his sleep and bound him to the earth.

And then I was a mute witness to as keen and high-handed a performance as I ever witnessed. One by one every item of the Constant-Scrappe’s silver service, valued at ninety thousand dollars, was removed from the sideboard and taken along the hall and placed in the tonneau of the automobile. Next the safe in which lay not only the famous gold service used only at the very swellest functions, said to have cost one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars for the gold alone, to say nothing of the exquisite workmanship, but—it made me gnash my teeth in impotent rage to see it—Henriette’s own jewel-box containing a hundred thousand dollars worth of her own gems and some thirty thousand dollars in cash, was rifled of its contents and disposed of similarly to the silver in the gaping maw of that damned automobile tonneau.

“Now,” said the intruder, loosening my feet and releasing me from the chair, “take me to my lady’s boudoir. There is room in the car for a few more objects of virtu.”

I obeyed on the instant and a few moments later the scene of below-stairs was repeated, with me powerless to resist. Pictures, bric-à-brac, and other things to the tune of twenty thousand dollars more were removed, as calmly and as coolly as though there were no law against that sort of thing in the world.

“There!” cried the highwayman, as he returned after the last item of his loot had been stowed away in the vehicle. “That’ll make an interesting tale for Friday morning’s papers. It’s the biggest haul I’ve made in forty-eight years. Good night, sir. When I am safely out of town I’ll telegraph the police to come and rescue you from your present awkward position. And let me tell you, if you give them the slightest hint of my personal appearance, by the hopping Harcourt, I’ll come back and kill you. See?”

And with that he made off, closing the door behind him, and a moment later I heard his infernal automobile chugging down the drive at full speed. Twelve hours later, in response to a long-distance telephone message from New York, the police came bounding around to the house, and found me tied up and unconscious. The highwayman had at least been true to his word, and, as he had prophesied, the morning papers on Friday were full of the story of the most daring robbery of the century. Accurate stories in detail under huge scare-type headlines appeared in all the papers, narrating the losses of the Constant-Scrappes, as well as the rape of the jewels and money of Mrs. Van Raffles. The whole country rang with it, and the afternoon train brought not only detectives by the score, but the representative of the Constant-Scrappes and Henriette herself. She was highly hysterical over the loss not only of her own property but that of her landlord as well, but nobody blamed me. The testimony of the police as to my condition when found fully substantiated my story and was accepted as ample evidence that I had no criminal connection with the robbery. This was a great relief to me, but it was greater when Henriette stroked my hand and called me “poor old Bunny,” for I must say I was worried as to what she would think of me for having proven so poor a guardian of her property.

Since then months have passed and not a vestige of the stolen property has been recovered. The Constant-Scrappes bore their loss with equanimity, as became them, since no one could have foreseen such a misfortune as overtook them; and as for Mrs. Van Raffles, she never mentioned the matter again to me, save once, and that set me to thinking.

“He was a clever rascal you say, Bunny?” she asked one morning.

“Yes,” said I. “One of the best in the business, I fancy.”

“A big fellow?” She grinned with a queer smile.

“Oh, about your height,” said I.

“Well, by the hopping Harcourt,” she retorted, quizzically, “if you give them the slightest hint of my personal appearance, I’ll come back and kill you. See?”

The man’s very words! And then she laughed.

“What?” I cried. “It was—you!”

“Was it?” she returned, airily.

“Why the devil you should go to all that trouble, when you had the stuff right here is what puzzles me,” said I.

“Oh, it wasn’t any trouble,” she replied. “Just sport—you looked so funny sitting up there in your pyjamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that holdup is apt to be more convincing to the police, to say nothing of the Constant-Scrappes, than any mere story we could invent.”

“Well, you’d better be careful, Henriette,” I said with a shiver. “The detectives are clever—”

“True, Bunny,” she answered, gravely. “But you see the highwayman was a man and—well, I’m a woman, dear. I can prove an alibi. By-the-way, you left the cellar door unlocked that Wednesday. I found it open when I sneaked in to cut off the electric lights. You mustn’t be so careless, dear, or we may have to divvy up our spoil with others.”

Marvellous woman, that Henriette!

X

THE ADVENTURE
OF MRS. SHADD’S MUSICALE

Henriette was visibly angry the other morning when I took to her the early mail and she discovered that Mrs. Van Varick Shadd had got ahead of her in the matter of Jockobinski, the monkey virtuoso. Society had been very much interested in the reported arrival in America of this wonderfully talented simian who could play the violin as well as Ysaye, and who as a performer on the piano was vastly the superior of Paderewski, because, taken in his infancy and specially trained for the purpose, he could play with his feet and tail as well as with his hands. It had been reported by Tommy Dare, the leading Newport authority on monkeys, that he had heard him play Brahm’s “Variations on Paganini” with his paws on a piano, “Hiawatha” on a xylophone with his feet, and “Home, Sweet Home” with his tail on a harp simultaneously, in Paris a year ago, and that alongside of Jockobinski all other musical prodigies of the age became mere strummers.

“He’s a whole orchestra in himself,” said Tommy enthusiastically, “and is the only living creature that I know of who can tackle a whole symphony without the aid of a hired man.”

Of course society was on the qui vive for a genius of so riotous an order as this, and all the wealthy families of Newport vied with one another for the privilege of being first to welcome him to our shores, not because he was a freak, mind you, but “for art’s sweet sake.” Mrs. Gushington-Andrews offered twenty-five hundred dollars for him as a week-end guest, and Mrs. Gaster immediately went her bid a hundred percent better. Henriette, in order to outdo everyone else, promptly put in a bid of ten thousand dollars for a single evening, and had supposed the bargain closed when along came Mrs. Shadd’s cards announcing that she would be pleased to have Mrs. Van Raffles at Onyx House on Friday evening, August 27th, to meet Herr Jockobinski, the eminent virtuoso.

“It’s very annoying,” said Henriette, as she opened and read the invitation. “I had quite set my heart on having Jockobinski here. Not that I care particularly about the music end of it, but because there is nothing that gives a woman so assured a social position as being the hostess of an animal of his particular kind. You remember, Bunny, how completely Mrs. Shadd wrested the leadership from Mrs. Gaster two seasons ago with her orang outang dinner, don’t you?”

I confessed to having read something about such an incident in high society.

“Well,” said Henriette, “this would have thrown that little episode wholly in the shade. Of course Mrs. Shadd is doing this to retain her grip, but it irritates me more than I can say to have her get it just the same. Heaven knows I was willing to pay for it if I had to abscond with a national bank to get the money.”

“It isn’t too late, is it?” I queried.

“Not too late?” echoed Henriette. “Not too late with Mrs. Shadd’s cards out and the whole thing published in the papers?”

“It’s never too late for a woman of your resources to do anything she has a mind to do,” said I. “It seems to me that a person who could swipe a Carnegie library the way you did should have little difficulty in lifting a musicale. Of course I don’t know how you could do it, but with your mind—well, I should be surprised and disappointed if you couldn’t devise some plan to accomplish your desires.”

Henriette was silent for a moment, and then her face lit up with one of her most charming smiles.

“Bunny, do you know that at times, in spite of your supreme stupidity, you are a source of positive inspiration to me?” she said, looking at me, fondly, I ventured to think.

“I am glad if it is so,” said I. “Sometimes, dear Henriette, you will find the most beautiful flowers growing out of the blackest mud. Perhaps hid in the dull residuum of my poor but honest grey matter lies the seed of real genius that will sprout the loveliest blossoms of achievement.”

“Well, anyhow, dear, you have started me thinking, and maybe we’ll have Jockobinski at Bolivar Lodge yet,” she murmured. “I want to have him first, of course, or not at all. To be second in doing a thing of that kind is worse than never doing it at all.”

Days went by and not another word was spoken on the subject of Jockobinski and the musicale, and I began to feel that at last Henriette had reached the end of her ingenuity—though for my own part I could not blame her if she failed to find some plausible way out of her disappointment. Wednesday night came, and, consumed by curiosity to learn just how the matter stood, I attempted to sound Henriette on the subject.

“I should like Friday evening off, Mrs. Van Raffles,” said I. “If you are going to Mrs. Shadd’s musicale you will have no use for me.”

“Shut up, Bunny,” she returned, abruptly. “I shall need you Friday night more than ever before. Just take this note over to Mrs. Shadd this evening and leave it—mind you, don’t wait for an answer but just leave it, that’s all.”

She arose from the table and handed me a daintily scented missive addressed to Mrs. Shadd, and I faithfully executed her errand. Bunderby, the Shadd’s butler, endeavoured to persuade me to wait for an answer, but assuring him that I wasn’t aware that an answer was expected I returned to Bolivar Lodge. An hour later Bunderby appeared at the back door and handed me a note addressed to my mistress, which I immediately delivered.

“Is Bunderby waiting?” asked Henriette as she read the note.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Tell him to hand this to Mrs. Shadd the very first thing upon her return tomorrow evening,” she said, hastily scribbling off a note and putting it in an envelope, which by chance she left unsealed, so that on my way back below-stairs I was able to read it. What it said was that she would be only too happy to oblige Mrs. Shadd, and was very sorry indeed to hear that her son had been injured in an automobile accident while running into Boston from Bar Harbor. It closed with the line, “you must know, my dear Pauline, that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you, come weal or come woe.”

This I handed to Bunderby and he made off. On my return Henriette was dressed for travel.

“I must take the first train for New York,” she said, excitedly. “You will have the music-room prepared at once, Bunny. Mrs. Shadd’s musicale will be given here. I am going myself to make all the necessary arrangements at the New York end. All you have to do is to get things ready and rely on your ignorance for everything else. See?”

I could only reflect that if a successful issue were dependent upon my ignorance I had a plentiful supply of it to fall back on. Henriette made off at once for Providence by motorcar, and got the midnight train out of Boston for the city where, from what I learned afterwards, she must have put in a strenuous day on Thursday. At any rate, a great sensation was sprung on Newport on Friday morning. Every member of the smart set in the ten-o’clock mail received a little engraved card stating that owing to sudden illness in the Shadd family the Shadd musicale for that evening would be held at Bolivar Lodge instead of in the Onyx House ballroom. Friday afternoon Jockobinski’s private and particular piano arrived at the Lodge and was set up promptly in the music-room, and later when the caterers arrived with the supper for the four hundred odd guests bidden to the feast all was in readiness for them. Everything was running smoothly, and, although Henriette had not yet arrived, I felt easy and secure of mind until nearing five-thirty o’clock when Mrs. Shadd herself drove up to the front door. Her colour was unusually high, and had she been any but a lady of the grande monde I should have said that she was flustered.

She demanded rather than asked to see my mistress, with a hauteur born of the arctic snow.

“Mrs. Van Raffles went to New York Wednesday evening,” said I, “and has not yet returned. I am expecting her every minute, madame. She must be here for the musicale. Won’t you wait?”

“Indeed I will,” said she, abruptly. “The musicale, indeed! Humph!” And she plumped herself down in one of the drawing-room chairs so hard that it was as much as I could do to keep from showing some very unbutlerian concern for the safety of the furniture.

I must say I did not envy Henriette the meeting that was in prospect, for it was quite evident that Mrs. Shadd was mad all through. In spite of my stupidity I rather thought I could divine the cause too. She was not kept long in waiting, for ten minutes later the automobile, with Henriette in it, came thundering up the drive. I tried as I let her in to give her a hint of what awaited her, but Mrs. Shadd forestalled me, only however to be forestalled herself.

“Oh, my dear Pauline!” Henriette cried, as she espied her waiting visitor. “It is so good of you to come over. I’m pretty well fagged out with all the arrangements for the night and I do hope your son is better.”

“My son is not ill, Mrs. Van Raffles,” said Mrs. Shadd, coldly. “I have come to ask you what—”

“Not ill?” cried Henriette, interrupting her. “Not ill, Pauline? Why,”—breathlessly—“that’s the most extraordinary thing I ever heard of. Why am I giving the musicale tonight then, instead of you?”

“That is precisely what I have come to find out,” said Mrs. Shadd.

“Why—well, of all queer things,” said Henriette, flopping down in a chair. “Surely, you got my note saying that I would let Jockobinski play here tonight instead of—”

“I did receive a very peculiar note from you saying that you would gladly do as I wished,” said Mrs. Shadd, beginning herself to look less angry and more puzzled.

“In reply to your note of Wednesday evening,” said Henriette. “Certainly you wrote to me Wednesday evening? It was delivered by your own man, Blunderby I think his name is? About half-past seven o’clock it was—Wednesday.”

“Yes, Bunderby did carry a note to you from me on Wednesday,” said Mrs. Shadd. “But—”

“And in it you said that you were called to Boston by an accident to your son Willie in his automobile: that you might not be able to get back in time for tonight’s affair and wouldn’t I take it over,” protested Mrs. Van Raffles, vehemently.

“I?” said Mrs. Shadd, showing more surprise than was compatible with her high social position.

“And attend to all the details—your very words, my dear Pauline,” said Henriette, with an admirably timed break in her voice. “And I did, and I told you I would. I immediately put on my travelling gown, motored to Providence, had an all-night ride to New York on a very uncomfortable sleeper, went at once to Herr Jockobinski’s agent and arranged the change, notified Sherry to send the supper to my house instead of yours, drove to Tiffany’s and had the cards rushed through and mailed to everybody on your list—you know you kindly gave me your list when I first came to Newport—and attended to the whole thing, and now I come back to find it all a—er—a mistake! Why, Pauline, it’s positively awful! What can we do?”

Henriette was a perfect picture of despair. “I don’t suppose we can do anything now,” said Mrs. Shadd, ruefully. “It’s too late. The cards have gone to everybody. You have all the supper—not a sandwich has come to my house—and I presume all of Mr. Jockobinski’s instruments as well have come here.”

Henriette turned to me.

“All, madame,” said I, briefly.

“Well,” said Mrs. Shadd, tapping the floor nervously with her toe. “I don’t understand it. I never wrote that note.”

“Oh, but Mrs. Shadd—I have it here,” said Henriette, opening her purse and extracting the paper. “You can read it for yourself. What else could I do after that?”

Innocence on a monument could have appeared no freer of guile than Henriette at that moment. She handed the note to Mrs. Shadd, who perused it with growing amazement.

“Isn’t that your handwriting—and your crest and your paper?” asked Henriette, appealingly.

“It certainly looks like it,” said Mrs. Shadd. “If I didn’t know I hadn’t written it I would have sworn I had. Where could it have come from?”

“I supposed it came from Onyx House,” said Henriette simply, glancing at the envelope.

“Well—it’s a very mysterious affair,” said Mrs. Shadd, rising, “and I—oh, well, my dear woman, I—I can’t blame you—indeed, after all you have done I ought to be—and really am—very much obliged to you. Only—”

“Whom did you have at dinner Wednesday night, dear?” asked Henriette.

“Only the Duke and Duchess of Snarleyow and—mercy! I wonder if he could have done it!”

“Who?” asked Henriette.

“Tommy Dare!” ejaculated Mrs. Shadd, her eyes beginning to twinkle. “Do you suppose this is one of Tommy Dare’s jokes?”

“H’m!” mused Henriette, and then she laughed. “It wouldn’t be unlike him, would it?”

“Not a bit, the naughty boy!” cried Mrs. Shadd. “That’s it, Mrs. Van Raffles, as certainly as we stand here. Suppose, just to worry him, we never let on that anything out of the ordinary has happened, eh?”

“Splendid!” said Henriette, with enthusiasm. “Let’s act as if all turned out just as we expected, and, best of all, never even mention it to him, or to Bunderby his confederate, neither of us, eh?”

“Never!” said Mrs. Shadd, rising and kissing Henriette goodbye. “That’s the best way out of it. If we did we’d be the laughing-stock of all Newport. But someday in the distant future Tommy Dare would better look out for Pauline Shadd, Mrs. Van Raffles.”

And so it was agreed, and Henriette successfully landed Mrs. Shadd’s musicale.

Incidentally, Jockobinski was very affable and the function went off well. Everybody was there and no one would for a moment have thought that there was anything strange in the transfer of the scene from Onyx House to Bolivar Lodge.

“Who wrote that letter, Henriette?” I asked late in the evening when the last guest had gone.

“Who do you suppose, Bunny, my boy?” she asked with a grin. “Bunderby?”

“No,” said I.

“You’ve guessed right,” said Henriette.

As a postscript let me say that until he reads this I don’t believe Tommy Dare ever guessed what a successful joke he perpetrated upon Mrs. Shadd and the fair Henriette. Even then I doubt if he realizes what a good one it was on—everybody.

XI

THE ADVENTURE
OF MRS. INNITT’S COOK

“It is curious, Bunny,” said Henriette the other morning after an unusually late breakfast, “to observe by what qualities certain of these Newport families have arrived, as the saying is. The Gasters of course belong at the top by patent right. Having invented American society, or at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability to give bonds to keep it up. The Van Varick Shadds flowed in through their unquestioned affiliation with the ever-popular Delaware Shadds and the Roe-Shadds of the Hudson, two of the oldest and most respected families of the United States, reinforced by the Napoleonic qualities of the present Mrs. Shadd in the doing of unexpected things. The Gullets, thanks to the fact that Mrs. Gullet is the acknowledged mother-in-law of three British dukes, two Italian counts, and a French marquis, are safely anchored in the social haven where they would be, and the rumour that Mrs. Gushington-Andrews has written a book that is a trifle risque fixes her firmly in the social constellation—but the Innitts with only eighty thousand dollars per annum, the Dedbroke-Hickses with nothing a year, the Oliver-Sloshingtons with an income of judgments, the study of their arrival is mighty interesting.”

“It doesn’t interest me much,” quoth I. “Indeed, this American smart set don’t appeal to me either for its smartness or its setness.”

“Bunny!” cried Henriette, with a silvery ripple of laughter. “Do be careful. An epigram from you? My dear boy, you’ll be down with brain-fever if you don’t watch out.”

“Humph!” said I, with a shrug of my shoulders. “Neither you nor my dear old friend Raffles ever gave me credit for any brains. I have a few, however, which I use when occasion demands,” I drawled.

“Well, don’t waste them here, Bunny,” laughed Henriette. “Save ’em for some place where they’ll be appreciated. Maybe in your old age you’ll be back in dear old London contributing to Punch if you are careful of your wits. But how do you suppose the Oliver-Sloshingtons ever got in here?”

“He holds the divorce record I believe,” said I. “He’s been married to four social leaders already, hasn’t he?”

“Yes—”

“Well, he got into the swim with each marriage—so he’s got a four-ply grip,” said I.

“And the Dedbroke-Hickses?” asked Henriette. “How do you account for them?”

“Most attractive diners and weekenders,” said I. “They got all the laughs at your dinner to the Archbishop of Decanterbury, and their man Smathers tells me they’re the swellest things going at week-end parties because of his ingenuity at cotillion leading and her undeniable charms as a flirt. By Jove! she’s that easy with men that even I tremble with anxiety whenever she comes into the house.”

“But how do they live?—they haven’t a cent to their names,” said Henriette.

“Simplicity itself,” said I. “He is dressed by his tailors and she by her dressmaker; and as for food, they take home a suitcase full of it from every house-party they attend. They’re so gracious to the servants that they don’t have to think of tips; and as for Smathers, and Mrs. Dedbroke-Hicks’s maid, they’re paid reporters on the staff of The Town Tattler and are willing to serve for nothing for the opportunities for items the connection gives them.”

“Well—I don’t envy them in the least,” said Henriette. “Poor things—to be always taking and never giving must be an awful strain, though to be sure their little trolley party out to Tiverton and back was delightful—”

“Exactly; and with carfare and sandwiches, and the champagne supplied free by the importers, for the advertisement, it cost them exactly twelve dollars and was set down as the jolliest affair of the season,” said I. “I call that genius of a pretty high order. I wouldn’t pity them if I were you. They’re happy.”

“Mrs. Innitt, though—I envy her,” said Henriette; “that is, in a way. She has no conversation at all, but her little dinners are the swellest things of the season. Never more than ten people at a time and everything cooked to a turn.”

“That’s just it,” said I. “I hear enough at the club to know just what cinches Mrs. Innitt’s position. It’s her cook, that’s what does it. If she lost her cook she’d be Mrs. Outofit. There never were such pancakes, such purées, such made dishes as that woman gets up. She turns hash into a confection and liver and bacon into a delicacy. Corned-beef in her hands is a discovery and her sauces are such that a bit of roast rhinoceros hide tastes like the tenderest of squab when served by her. No wonder Mrs. Innitt holds her own. A woman with a cook like Norah Sullivan could rule an empire.”

A moment later I was sorry I had spoken, for my words electrified her.

“I must have her!” cried Henriette.

“What, Mrs. Innitt?” I asked.

“No—her cook,” said Henriette.

I stood aghast. Full of sympathy as I had always been with the projects of Mrs. Van Raffles, and never in the least objecting on moral grounds to any of her schemes of acquisition, I could not but think that this time she proposed to go too far. To rob a millionaire of his bonds, a national bank of its surplus, a philanthropist of a library, or a Metropolitan Boxholder of a diamond stomacher, all that seemed reasonable to me and proper according to my way of looking at it, but to rob a neighbour of her cook—if there is any worse social crime than that I don’t know what it is.

“You’d better think twice on that proposition, Henriette,” I advised with a gloomy shake of the head. “It is not only a mean crime, but a dangerous one to boot. Success would in itself bring ruin. Mrs. Innitt would never forgive you, and society at large—”

“Society at large would dine with me instead of with Mrs. Innitt, that’s all,” said Henriette. “I mean to have her before the season’s over.”

“Well, I draw the line at stealing a cook,” said I, coldly. “I’ve robbed churches and I’ve made way with fresh-air funds, and I’ve helped you in many another legitimate scheme, but in this, Mrs. Van Raffles, you’ll have to go it alone.”

“Oh, don’t you be afraid, Bunny,” she answered. “I’m not going to use your charms as a bait to lure this culinary Phyllis into the Arcadia in which you with your Strephonlike form disport yourself.”

“You oughtn’t to do it at all,” said I, gruffly. “It’s worse than murder, for it is prohibited twice in the decalogue, while murder is only mentioned once.”

“What!” cried Henrietta “What, pray, does the decalogue say about cooks, I’d like to know?”

“First, thou shalt not steal. You propose to steal this woman. Second, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s maid-servant. How many times does that make?” I asked.

“Dear me, Bunny,” said Henriette, “but you are a little tuppenny Puritan, aren’t you? Anybody’d know you were the son of a clergyman! Well, let me tell you, I shan’t steal the woman, and I shan’t covet her. I’m just going to get her, that’s all.”

It was two weeks later that Norah Sullivan left the employ of Mrs. Innitt and was installed in our kitchen; and, strange to relate, she came as a matter of charity on Henriette’s part—having been discharged by Mrs. Innitt.

The Friday before Norah’s arrival Henriette requested me to get her a rusty nail, a piece of gravel from the drive, two hairpins, and a steel nut from the automobile.

“What on earth—” I began, but she shut me off with an imperious gesture.

“Do as I tell you,” she commanded. “You are not in on this venture.” And then apparently she relented. “But I’m willing to tell you just one thing, Bunny”—here her eyes began to twinkle joyously—“I’m going to Mrs. Innitt’s to dinner tomorrow night—so look out for Norah by Monday.”

I turned sulkily away.

“You know how I feel on that subject,” said I. “This business of going into another person’s house as a guest and inducing their servants to leave is an infraction of the laws of hospitality. How would you like it if Mrs. Gaster stole me away from you?”

Henriette’s answer was a puzzling smile. “You are free to better your condition, Bunny,” she said. “But I am not going to rob Mrs. Innitt, as I told you once before. She will discharge Norah and I will take her, that’s all; so do be a good boy and bring me the nail and gravel and the hairpins and the automobile nut.”

I secured the desired articles for my mistress, and the next evening she went to Mrs. Innitt’s little dinner to Miss Gullet and her fiancé, Lord Dullpate, eldest son of the Duke of Lackshingles, who had come over to America to avoid the scrutiny of the Bankruptcy Court, taking the absurd objects with her. Upon her return at two a.m. she was radiant and triumphant.

“I won out, Bunny—I won out!” she cried.

“How?” I inquired.

“Mrs. Innitt has discharged Norah, though I begged her not to,” she fairly sang.

“On what grounds?”

“Several,” said Henriette, unfastening her glove. “To begin with, there was a rusty nail in my clam cocktail, and it nearly choked me to death. I tried hard to keep Mrs. Innitt from seeing what had happened, but she is watchful if not brainy, and all my efforts went for naught. She was much mortified of course and apologized profusely. All went well until the fish, when one of the two hairpins turned up in the pompano to the supreme disgust of my hostess, who was now beginning to look worried. Hairpin number two made its début in my timbale. This was too much for the watchful Mrs. Innitt, self-poised though she always is, and despite my remonstrances she excused herself from the table for a moment, and I judge from the flushed appearance of her cheeks when she returned five minutes later that somebody had had the riot act read to her somewhere.

“‘I don’t understand it at all, Mrs. Van Raffles,’ she said with a sheepish smile. ‘Cook’s perfectly sober. If anything of the kind ever happens again she shall go.’”

“Even as Mrs. Innitt spoke I conveyed a luscious morsel of filet mignon with mushrooms to my mouth and nearly broke my tooth on a piece of gravel that went with it, and Norah was doomed, for although we all laughed heartily, the thing had come to be such a joke, it was plain from the expression of Mrs. Innitt’s countenance that she was very, very angry.

“‘Forgive her this time for my sake, Mrs. Innitt,’ I pleaded. ‘After all it is the little surprises that give zest to life.’”

“And you didn’t have to use the automobile nut?” I asked, deeply impressed with the woman’s ingenuity.

“Oh yes,” said Henriette. “As dinner progressed I thought it wise to use it to keep Mrs. Innitt from weakening; so when the salad was passed I managed, without anybody’s observing it, to drop the automobile nut into the bowl. The Duke of Snarleyow got it and the climax was capped. Mrs. Innitt burst into a flood of tears and—well, tomorrow, Bunny, Norah leaves. You will take her this ten-dollar bill from me, and tell her that I am sorry she got into so much trouble on my account. Say that if I can be of any assistance to her all she has to do is to call here and I will do what I can to get her another place.”

With this Henriette retired and the next morning on her way to early church I waylaid Norah. Her eyes were red with weeping, but a more indignant woman never lived. Her discharge was unrighteous; Mrs. Innitt was no lady; the butler was in a conspiracy to ruin her—and all that; indeed, her mood was most receptive to the furtherance of Henriette’s plans. The ten-dollar bill was soothing, and indicated that my mistress was a “foine woman” and “surely Norah would come ’round in the evening to ask her aid.”

“It’s ruined I am unless somebody’ll be good to me and give me a riference, which Mrs. Innitt, bad cess to her, won’t do, at all, at all,” she wailed, and then I left her.

She called that night, and two days later was installed in the Van Raffles’s kitchen.

A new treasure was added to the stores of our loot, but somehow or other I have never been happy over the successful issue of the enterprise. I can’t quite make up my mind that it was a lady-like thing for Henriette to do even in Newport.

XII

THE LAST ADVENTURE

I am bathed in tears. I have tried to write of my sensations, to tell the story of the Last Adventure of Mrs. Van Raffles, in lucid terms, but though my pen runs fast over the paper the ink makes no record of the facts. My woe is so great and so deep that my tears, falling into the ink-pot, turn it into a fluid so thin it will not mark the paper, and when I try the pencil the words are scarce put down before they’re blotted out. And yet with all this woe I find myself a multimillionaire—possessed of sums so far beyond my wildest dreams of fortune that my eye can scarce take in the breadth of all the figures. My dollars coined into silver, placed on top of one another, would form a bullion tower that would reach higher into the air than fifteen superimposed domes of St. Peter’s placed on top of seventeen spires of Trinity on the summit of Mont Blanc. In five-pound notes laid side by side they’d suffice to paper every scrap of bedroom wall in all the Astor houses in the world, and invested in Amalgamated Copper they would turn the system green with envy—and yet I am not happy. My well-beloved Henriette’s last adventure has turned my fortune into bitterest gall, and plain unvarnished wormwood forms the finish of my interior, for she is gone! I, amid the splendour of my new-found possessions, able to keep not one but a hundred motorcars, and to pay the chauffeur’s fines, to endow chairs in universities, to build libraries in every hamlet in the land from Podunk to Richard Mansfield, to eat three meals a day and lodge at the St. Regicide, and to evade my taxes without exciting suspicion, am desolate and forlorn, for, I repeat, Henriette has gone! The very nature of her last adventure by a successful issue has blown out the light of my life.

She has stolen Constant-Scrappe!

If I could be light of heart in this tragic hour I would call this story the Adventure of the Lifted Fiancé, but that would be so out of key with my emotions that I cannot bring myself to do it. I must content myself with a narration of the simple facts of the lengths to which my beloved’s ambition led her, without frivolity and with a heavy heart.

Of course you know what all Newport has known for months, that the Constant-Scrappes were seeking divorce, not that they loved one another less, but that both parties to the South Dakota suit loved someone else more. Colonel Scrappe had long been the most ardent admirer of Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, and Mrs. Constant-Scrappe’s devotion to young Harry de Lakwitz had been at least for two seasons evident to any observer with half an eye. Gushington-Andrews had considerately taken himself out of the way by eloping to South Africa with Tottie Dimpleton of the Frivolity Burlesquers, and Harry de Lakwitz’s only recorded marriage had been annulled by the courts because at the time of his wedding to the forty-year-old housemaid of the Belleville Boarding-School for Boys at Skidgeway, Rhode Island, he was only fifteen years of age. Consequently, they both were eligible, and provided the Constant-Scrappes could be so operated on by the laws of South Dakota as to free them from one another, there were no valid reasons why the yearnings of these ardent souls should not all be gratified. Indeed, both engagements had been announced tentatively, and only the signing of the decree releasing the Constant-Scrappes from their obligations to one another now stood in the way of two nuptial ceremonies which would make four hearts beat as one. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews’s trousseau was ready, and that of the future Mrs. de Lakwitz had been ordered; both ladies had received their engagement rings when that inscrutable Henriette marked Constant-Scrappe for her own. Colonel Scrappe had returned from Monte Carlo, having broken the bank twice, and Henriette had met him at a little dinner given in his honour by Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. He turned out to be a most charming man, and it didn’t require a much more keen perception than my own to take in the fact that he had made a great impression upon Henriette, though she never mentioned it to me until the final blow came. I merely noticed a growing preoccupation in her manner and in her attitude towards me, which changed perceptibly.

“I think, Bunny,” she said to me one morning as I brought her marmalade and toast, “that considering our relations to each other you should not call me Henrietta. After all, you know, you are here primarily as my butler, and there are some proprieties that should be observed even in this Newport atmosphere.”

“But,” I protested, “am I no more than that? I am your partner, am I not?”

“You are my business partner—not my social partner, Bunny,” she said. “We must not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the situation; you are the butler—that is the precise condition, and I think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in New York or elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. Let it be Mrs. Van Raffles hereafter.”

“And is it to be Mr. Bunny?” I inquired, sarcastically.

Her response was a cold glance of the eye and a majestic sweep from the room.

That evening Colonel Scrappe called, ostensibly to look over the house and as landlord to see if there was anything he could do to make it more comfortable, and I, blind fool that I was for the moment, believed that that was his real errand, and ventured to remind Henriette of the leak in the roof, at which they both, I thought, exchanged amused glances, and he gravely mounted the stairs to the top of the house to look at it. On our return, Henriette dismissed me and told me that she would not require my services again during the evening. Even then my suspicions were not aroused, although there was a dull, disturbed feeling about my heart whose precise causes I could not define. I went to the club and put in a miserable evening, returning home about midnight to discover that Colonel Scrappe was still there. He was apparently giving the house and its contents a thorough inspection, for when I arrived, Henriette was testing the fifty-thousand-dollar piano in the drawing-room for him with a brilliant rendering of “O Promise Me.” What decision they reached as to its tone and quality I never knew, for in spite of my hints on the subject, Henriette never spoke of the matter to me.

I suppose I should have begun to guess what was happening under my very nose then, but thank Heaven I am not of a suspicious nature, and although I didn’t like the looks of things, the inevitable meaning of their strange behaviour never even dawned upon my mind. Even when two nights later Colonel Scrappe escorted Henriette home at midnight from a lecture on the Inscrutability of Sartor Resartus at Mrs. Gushington-Andrews’s it did not strike me as unusual, although, instead of going home immediately, as most escorts do under the circumstances, he remained about two hours testing that infernal piano again, and with the same old tune.

Then the automobile rides began, and pretty nearly every morning, long before polite society was awake, Colonel Scrappe and Henriette took long runs together through the country in her Mercedes machine, for what purpose I never knew, for whatever interest the colonel might have had in our welfare as a landlord I could not for the life of me guess how it could be extended to our automobiles. One thing I did notice, however, was a growing coldness between Henriette and Mrs. Gushington-Andrews. The latter came to a card-party at Bolivar Lodge one afternoon about two weeks after Colonel Scrappe’s return, and her greeting to her hostess instead of having the old-time effusiveness was frigid to a degree. In fact, when they clasped hands I doubt if more than the tips of their fingers touched. Moreover, Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, hitherto considered one of the best fists at bridge or hearts in the 400, actually won the booby prize, which I saw her throw into the street when she departed. It was evident something had happened to disturb her equanimity.

My eyes were finally opened by a remark made at the club by Digby, Reggie de Pelt’s valet, who asked me how I liked my new boss, and whose explanation of the question led to a complete revelation of the true facts in the case. Everybody knew, he said, that from the moment she had met him Mrs. Van Raffles had set her cap for Colonel Scrappe, and that meeting her for the first time he had fallen head over heels in love with her even in the presence of his fiancée. Of course I hotly denied Digby’s insinuations, and we got so warm over the discussion that when I returned home that night I had two badly discoloured eyes, and Digby—well, Digby didn’t go home at all. Both of us were suspended from the Gentleman’s Gentleman’s Club for four weeks for ungentleman’s ungentlemanly behaviour in consequence. Black as my eyes were, however, I was on hand at the breakfast-table the following morning, and of course Henriette observed my injuries.

“Why, Bunny!” she cried. “What is the meaning of this? Have you been fighting?”

“Oh no, Mrs. Van Raffles,” I returned, sarcastically, “I’ve just strained my eyes reading the divorce news from South Dakota.”

She gave a sudden start.

“What do you mean?” she demanded, her face flushing hotly.

“You know well enough what I mean,” I retorted, angrily. “Your goings on with Colonel Scrappe are the talk of the town, and I got these eyes in a little discussion of your matrimonial intentions. That’s all.”

“Leave the room instantly!” she cried, rising and haughtily pointing to the door. “You are insufferable.”

But the colour in her cheeks showed that I had hit home far harder than she was willing to admit. There was nothing for me to do but to obey meekly, but my blood was up, and instead of moping in my room I started out to see if I could find Constant-Scrappe. My love for Henriette was too deep to permit of my sitting quietly by and seeing another walk away with the one truly coveted prize of my life, and I was ready on sight to take the colonel by the collar—he was only a governor’s-staff colonel anyhow, and, consequently no great shakes as a fighter—and throw him into the harbour, but my quest was a vain one. He was to be found in none of his familiar haunts, and I returned to Bolivar Lodge. And then came the shock. As I approached the house, I saw the colonel assisting Henriette into the motorcar, and in response to the chauffeur’s “Where to, sir,” I heard Scrappe reply in an excited undertone:

“To New York—and damn the speed laws.”

In a moment they had rushed by me like the flash of a lightning express, and Henriette was gone!

You must know the rest. The papers the next day were full of the elopement in high life. They told how the Scrappe divorce had been granted at five o’clock in the afternoon the day before, how Colonel Scrappe and Mrs. Van Raffles had sped to New York in the automobile and been quietly married at the Little Church Around the Corner, and were now sailing down the bay on the Hydrostatic, bound for foreign climes. They likewise intimated that a very attractive lady of more than usual effusiveness of manner, whose nuptials were expected soon to be published for the second time, had gone to a sanitarium in Philadelphia to be treated for a sudden and overwhelming attack of nervous hysteria.

It was all too true, that tale. Henriette’s final coup had been successful, and she had at one stroke stolen her landlord, her landlady’s husband, and her neighbour’s fiancé. To console me she left this note, written on board of the steamer and mailed by the pilot.

On Board the Hydrostatic
Off Sandy Hook,
September 10, 1904

Dear Bunny,—I couldn’t help it. The minute I saw him I felt that I must have him. It’s the most successful haul yet and is the last adventure I shall ever have. He’s worth forty million dollars. I’m sorry for you, dear, but it’s all in the line of business. To console you I have left in your name all that we have won together in our partnership at Newport—fourteen millions five hundred and sixty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars in cash, and about three million dollars in jewels, which you must negotiate carefully. Goodbye, dear Bunny, I shall never forget you, and I wish you all the happiness in the world. With the funds now in your possession why not retire—go home to England and renew your studies for the ministry? The Church is a noble profession.

Sincerely yours,

Henriette Van Raffles-Scrappe

I have gathered together these meagre possessions—rich in bullion value, but meagre in happiness, considering all that might have been, and tomorrow I sail for London. There, following Henriette’s advice, I shall enter the study of the ministry, and when I am ordained shall buy a living somewhere and settle down to the serene existence of the preacher, the pastor of a flock of human sheep.

My misery is deep but I am buoyed up by one great hope in every thought.

These Newport marriages are so seldom for life that I yet have hope that someday Henriette will be restored to me without its necessarily involving any serious accident to her husband the colonel.

THE END

R. Holmes & Co.

Being the Remarkable Adventures
of Raffles Holmes, Esq.,
Detective and Amateur Cracksman by Birth.

CONTENTS:

1 … Introducing Mr. Raffles Holmes

2 … The Adventure of the Dorrington Ruby Seal

3 … The Adventure of Mrs. Burlingame’s Diamond Stomacher

4 … The Adventure of the Missing Pendants
5 … The Adventure of the Brass Check
6 … The Adventure of the Hired Burglar
7 … The Redemption of Young Billington Rand
8 … “The Nostalgia of Nervy Jim the Snatcher”
9 … The Adventure of Room 407
10 … The Major-General’s Pepperpots

I

INTRODUCING
MR. RAFFLES HOLMES

It was a blistering night in August. All day long the mercury in the thermometer had been flirting with the figures at the top of the tube, and the promised shower at night which a mendacious Weather Bureau had been prophesying as a slight mitigation of our sufferings was conspicuous wholly by its absence. I had but one comfort in the sweltering hours of the day, afternoon and evening, and that was that my family were away in the mountains, and there was no law against my sitting around all day clad only in my pajamas, and otherwise concealed from possibly intruding eyes by the wreaths of smoke that I extracted from the nineteen or twenty cigars which, when there is no protesting eye to suggest otherwise, form my daily allowance. I had tried every method known to the resourceful flat-dweller of modern times to get cool and to stay so, but alas, it was impossible. Even the radiators, which all winter long had never once given forth a spark of heat, now hissed to the touch of my moistened finger. Enough cooling drinks to float an ocean greyhound had passed into my inner man, with no other result than to make me perspire more profusely than ever, and in so far as sensations went, to make me feel hotter than before. Finally, as a last resource, along about midnight, its gridiron floor having had a chance to lose some of its stored-up warmth, I climbed out upon the fire-escape at the rear of the Richmere, hitched my hammock from one of the railings thereof to the leader running from the roof to the area, and swung myself therein some eighty feet above the concealed pavement of our backyard—so called, perhaps, because of its dimensions which were just about that square. It was a little improvement, though nothing to brag of. What fitful zephyrs there might be, caused no doubt by the rapid passage to and fro on the roof above and fence-tops below of vagrant felines on Cupid’s contentious battles bent, to the disturbance of the still air, soughed softly through the meshes of my hammock and gave some measure of relief, grateful enough for which I ceased the perfervid language I had been using practically since sunrise, and dozed off. And then there entered upon the scene that marvelous man, Raffles Holmes, of whose exploits it is the purpose of these papers to tell.

I had dozed perhaps for a full hour when the first strange sounds grated upon my ear. Somebody had opened a window in the kitchen of the first-floor apartment below, and with a dark lantern was inspecting the iron platform of the fire-escape without. A moment later this somebody crawled out of the window, and with movements that in themselves were a sufficient indication of the questionable character of his proceedings, made for the ladder leading to the floor above, upon which many a time and oft had I too climbed to home and safety when an inconsiderate janitor had locked me out. Every step that he took was stealthy—that much I could see by the dim starlight. His lantern he had turned dark again, evidently lest he should attract attention in the apartments below as he passed their windows in his upward flight.

“Ha! ha!” thought I to myself. “It’s never too hot for Mr. Sneak to get in his fine work. I wonder whose stuff he is after?”

Turning over flat on my stomach so that I might the more readily observe the man’s movements, and breathing pianissimo lest he in turn should observe mine, I watched him as he climbed. Up he came as silently as the midnight mouse upon a soft carpet—up past the Jorkins apartments on the second floor; up stealthily by the Tinkletons’ abode on the third; up past the fire-escape Italian garden of little Mrs. Persimmon on the fourth; up past the windows of the disagreeable Garraways’ kitchen below mine, and then, with the easy grace of a feline, zip! he silently landed within reach of my hand on my own little iron veranda, and craning his neck to one side, peered in through the open window and listened intently for two full minutes.

“Humph!” whispered my inner consciousness to itself. “He is the coolest thing I’ve seen since last Christmas left town. I wonder what he is up to? There’s nothing in my apartment worth stealing, now that my wife and children are away, unless it be my Jap valet, Nogi, who might make a very excellent cab driver if I could only find words to convey to his mind the idea that he is discharged.”

And then the visitor, apparently having correctly assured himself that there was no one within, stepped across the windowsill and vanished into the darkness of my kitchen. A moment later I too entered the window in pursuit, not so close a one, however, as to acquaint him with my proximity. I wanted to see what the chap was up to; and also being totally unarmed and ignorant as to whether or not he carried dangerous weapons, I determined to go slow for a little while. Moreover, the situation was not wholly devoid of novelty, and it seemed to me that here at last was abundant opportunity for a new sensation. As he had entered, so did he walk cautiously along the narrow bowling alley that serves for a hallway connecting my drawing-room and library with the dining-room, until he came to the library, into which he disappeared. This was not reassuring to me, because, to tell the truth, I value my books more than I do my plate, and if I were to be robbed I should much have preferred his taking my plated plate from the dining-room than any one of my editions-deluxe sets of the works of Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, and other standard authors from the library shelves. Once in the library, he quietly drew the shades at the windows thereof to bar possible intruding eyes from without, turned on the electric lights, and proceeded to go through my papers as calmly and coolly as though they were his own. In a short time, apparently, he found what he wanted in the shape of a royalty statement recently received by me from my publishers, and, lighting one of my cigars from a bundle of brevas in front of him, took off his coat and sat down to peruse the statement of my returns. Simple though it was, this act aroused the first feeling of resentment in my breast, for the relations between the author and his publishers are among the most sacred confidences of life, and the peeping Tom who peers through a keyhole at the courtship of a young man engaged in wooing his fiancée is no worse an intruder than he who would tear aside the veil of secrecy which screens the official returns of a “best seller” from the public eye. Feeling, therefore, that I had permitted matters to proceed as far as they might with propriety, I instantly entered the room and confronted my uninvited guest, bracing myself, of course, for the defensive onslaught which I naturally expected to sustain. But nothing of the sort occurred, for the intruder, with a composure that was nothing short of marvelous under the circumstances, instead of rising hurriedly like one caught in some disreputable act, merely leaned farther back in the chair, took the cigar from his mouth, and greeted me with:

“Howdy do, sir. What can I do for you this beastly hot night?”

The cold rim of a revolver-barrel placed at my temple could not more effectually have put me out of business than this nonchalant reception. Consequently I gasped out something about its being the sultriest 47th of August in eighteen years, and plumped back into a chair opposite him. “I wouldn’t mind a Remsen cooler myself,” he went on, “but the fact is your butler is off for tonight, and I’m hanged if I can find a lemon in the house. Maybe you’ll join me in a smoke?” he added, shoving my own bundle of brevas across the table. “Help yourself.”

“I guess I know where the lemons are,” said I. “But how did you know my butler was out?”

“I telephoned him to go to Philadelphia this afternoon to see his brother Yoku, who is ill there,” said my visitor. “You see, I didn’t want him around tonight when I called. I knew I could manage you alone in case you turned up, as you see you have, but two of you, and one a Jap, I was afraid might involve us all in ugly complications. Between you and me, Jenkins, these Orientals are pretty lively fighters, and your man Nogi particularly has got jujitsu down to a pretty fine point, so I had to do something to get rid of him. Our arrangement is a matter for two, not three, anyhow.”

“So,” said I, coldly. “You and I have an arrangement, have we? I wasn’t aware of it.”

“Not yet,” he answered. “But there’s a chance that we may have. If I can only satisfy myself that you are the man I’m looking for, there is no earthly reason that I can see why we should not come to terms. Go on out and get the lemons and the gin and soda, and let’s talk this thing over man to man like a couple of good fellows at the club. I mean you no harm, and you certainly don’t wish to do any kind of injury to a chap who, even though appearances are against him, really means to do you a good turn.”

“Appearances certainly are against you, sir,” said I, a trifle warmly, for the man’s composure was irritating. “A disappearance would be more likely to do you credit at this moment.”

“Tush, Jenkins!” he answered. “Why waste breath saying self-evident things? Here you are on the verge of a big transaction, and you delay proceedings by making statements of fact, mixed in with a cheap wit which, I must confess, I find surprising, and so obvious as to be visible even to the blind. You don’t talk like an author whose stuff is worth ten cents a word—more like a penny-a-liner, in fact, with whom words are of such small value that no one’s the loser if he throws away a whole dictionary. Go out and mix a couple of your best Remsen coolers, and by the time you get back I’ll have got to the gist of this royalty statement of yours, which is all I’ve come for. Your silver and books and love letters and manuscripts are safe from me. I wouldn’t have ’em as a gift.”

“What concern have you with my royalties?” I demanded.

“A vital one,” said he. “Mix the coolers, and when you get back I’ll tell you. Go on. There’s a good chap. It’ll be daylight before long, and I want to close up this job if I can before sunrise.”

What there was in the man’s manner to persuade me to compliance with his wishes, I am sure I cannot say definitely. There was a cold, steely glitter in his eye, for one thing. With it, however, was a strengthfulness of purpose, a certain pleasant masterfulness, that made me feel that I could trust him, and it was to this aspect of his nature that I yielded. There was something frankly appealing in his long, thin, ascetic looking face, and I found it irresistible.

“All right,” said I with a smile and a frown to express the conflicting quality of my emotions. “So be it. I’ll get the coolers, but you must remember, my friend, that there are coolers and coolers, just as there are jugs and jugs. The kind of jug that remains for you will depend upon the story you have to tell when I get back, so you’d better see that it’s a good one.”

“I am not afraid, Jenkins, old chap,” he said with a hearty laugh as I rose. “If this royalty statement can prove to me that you are the literary partner I need in my business, I can prove to you that I’m a good man to tie up to—so go along with you.”

With this he lighted a fresh cigar and turned to a perusal of my statement, which, I am glad to say, was a good one, owing to the great success of my book, Wild Animals I Have Never Met—the seventh-best seller at Rochester, Watertown, and Miami in June and July, 1905—while I went out into the dining-room and mixed the coolers. As you may imagine, I was not long at it, for my curiosity over my visitor lent wings to my corkscrew, and in five minutes I was back with the tempting beverages in the tall glasses, the lemon curl giving it the vertebrate appearance that all stiff drinks should have, and the ice tinkling refreshingly upon the sultry air.

“There,” said I, placing his glass before him. “Drink hearty, and then to business. Who are you?”

“There is my card,” he replied, swallowing a goodly half of the cooler and smacking his lips appreciatively, and tossing a visiting card across to me on the other side of the table. I picked up the card and read as follows: “Mr. Raffles Holmes, London and New York.”

“Raffles Holmes?” I cried in amazement.

“The same, Mr. Jenkins,” said he. “I am the son of Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective, and grandson of A. J. Raffles, the distinguished—er—ah—cricketer, sir.”

I gazed at him, dumb with astonishment.

“You’ve heard of my father, Sherlock Holmes?” asked my visitor.

I confessed that the name of the gentleman was not unfamiliar to me.

“And Mr. Raffles, my grandfather?” he persisted.

“If there ever was a story of that fascinating man that I have not read, Mr. Holmes,” said I, “I beg you will let me have it.”

“Well, then,” said he with that quick, nervous manner which proved him a true son of Sherlock Holmes, “did it never occur to you as an extraordinary happening, as you read of my father’s wonderful powers as a detective, and of Raffles’ equally wonderful prowess as a—er—well, let us not mince words—as a thief, Mr. Jenkins, the two men operating in England at the same time, that no story ever appeared in which Sherlock Holmes’s genius was pitted against the subtly planned misdeeds of Mr. Raffles? Is it not surprising that with two such men as they were, working out their destinies in almost identical grooves of daily action, they should never have crossed each other’s paths as far as the public is the wiser, and in the very nature of the conflicting interests of their respective lines of action as foemen, the one pursuing, the other pursued, they should to the public’s knowledge never have clashed?”

“Now that you speak of it,” said I, “it was rather extraordinary that nothing of the sort happened. One would think that the sufferers from the depredations of Raffles would immediately have gone to Holmes for assistance in bringing the other to justice. Truly, as you intimate, it was strange that they never did.”

“Pardon me, Jenkins,” put in my visitor. “I never intimated anything of the sort. What I intimated was that no story of any such conflict ever came to light. As a matter of fact, Sherlock Holmes was put upon a Raffles case in 1883, and while success attended upon every step of it, and my grandfather was run to earth by him as easily as was ever any other criminal in Holmes’s grip, a little naked god called Cupid stepped in, saved Raffles from jail, and wrote the word failure across Holmes’s docket of the case. I, sir, am the only tangible result of Lord Dorrington’s retainers to Sherlock Holmes.”

“You speak enigmatically, after the occasional fashion of your illustrious father,” said I. “The Dorrington case is unfamiliar to me.”

“Naturally so,” said my vis-à-vis. “Because, save to my father, my grandfather, and myself, the details are unknown to anybody. Not even my mother knew of the incident, and as for Dr. Watson and Bunny, the scribes through whose industry the adventures of those two great men were respectively narrated to an absorbed world, they didn’t even know there had ever been a Dorrington case, because Sherlock Holmes never told Watson and Raffles never told Bunny. But they both told me, and now that I am satisfied that there is a demand for your books, I am willing to tell it to you with the understanding that we share and share alike in the profits if perchance you think well enough of it to write it up.”

“Go on!” I said. “I’ll whack up with you square and honest.”

“Which is more than either Watson or Bunny ever did with my father or my grandfather, else I should not be in the business which now occupies my time and attention,” said Raffles Holmes with a cold snap to his eyes which I took as an admonition to hew strictly to the line of honor, or to subject myself to terrible consequences. “With that understanding, Jenkins, I’ll tell you the story of the Dorrington Ruby Seal, in which some crime, a good deal of romance, and my ancestry are involved.”

II

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE DORRINGTON RUBY SEAL

Lord Dorrington, as you may have heard, (said Raffles Holmes, leaning back in my easy-chair and gazing reflectively up at the ceiling) was chiefly famous in England as a sporting peer. His vast estates, in five counties, were always open to any sportsman of renown, or otherwise, as long as he was a true sportsman. So open, indeed, was the house that he kept that, whether he was there or not, little week-end parties of members of the sporting fraternity used to be got up at a moment’s notice to run down to Dorrington Castle, Devonshire; to Dorrington Lodge on the Isle of Wight; to Dorrington Hall, near Dublin, or to any other country place for over Sunday.

Sometimes there’d be a lot of turf people: sometimes a dozen or more devotes of the prize-ring; not infrequently a gathering of the best-known cricketers of the time, among whom, of course, my grandfather, A. J. Raffles, was conspicuous. For the most part, the cricketers never partook of Dorrington’s hospitality save when his lordship was present, for your cricket-player is a bit more punctilious in such matters than your turfmen or ring-side habitués. It so happened one year, however, that his lordship was absent from England for the better part of eight months, and, when the time came for the annual cricket gathering at his Devonshire place, he cabled his London representative to see to it that everything was carried on just as if he were present, and that everyone should be invited for the usual week’s play and pleasure at Dorrington Castle. His instructions were carried out to the letter, and, save for the fact that the genial host was absent, the house-party went through to perfection. My grandfather, as usual, was the life of the occasion, and all went merry as a marriage-bell. Seven months later, Lord Dorrington returned, and a week after that, the loss of the Dorrington jewels from the Devonshire strongboxes was a matter of common knowledge. When, or by whom, they had been taken was an absolute mystery. As far as anybody could find out, they might have been taken the night before his return, or the night after his departure. The only fact in sight was that they were gone—Lady Dorrington’s diamonds, a half-dozen valuable jeweled rings belonging to his lordship, and, most irremediable of losses, the famous ruby seal which George IV had given to Dorrington’s grandfather, Sir Arthur Deering, as a token of his personal esteem during the period of the Regency. This was a flawless ruby, valued at some six or seven thousand pounds sterling, in which had been cut the Deering arms surrounded by a garter upon which were engraved the words, “Deering Ton,” which the family, upon Sir Arthur’s elevation to the peerage in 1836, took as its title, or Dorrington. His lordship was almost prostrated by the loss. The diamonds and the rings, although valued at thirty thousand pounds, he could easily replace, but the personal associations of the seal were such that nothing, no amount of money, could duplicate the lost ruby.

“So that his first act,” I broke in, breathlessly, “was to send for—”

“Sherlock Holmes, my father,” said Raffles Holmes.

Yes, Mr. Jenkins, the first thing Lord Dorrington did was to telegraph to London for Sherlock Holmes, requesting him to come immediately to Dorrington Castle and assume charge of the case. Needless to say, Mr. Holmes dropped everything else and came. He inspected the gardens, measured the road from the railway station to the castle, questioned all the servants; was particularly insistent upon knowing where the parlor-maid was on the 13th of January; secured accurate information as to the personal habits of his lordship’s dachshund Nicholas; subjected the chef to a cross-examination that covered every point of his life, from his remote ancestry to his receipt for baking apples; gathered up three suitcases of sweeping from his lordship’s private apartment, and two boxes containing three each of every variety of cigars that Lord Dorrington had laid down in his cellar. As you are aware, Sherlock Holmes, in his prime, was a great master of detail. He then departed for London, taking with him an impression in wax of the missing seal, which Lord Dorrington happened to have preserved in his escritoire.

On his return to London, Holmes inspected the seal carefully under a magnifying-glass, and was instantly impressed with the fact that it was not unfamiliar to him. He had seen it somewhere before, but where? That was now the question uppermost in his mind. Prior to this, he had never had any communication with Lord Dorrington, so that, if it was in his correspondence that the seal had formerly come to him, most assuredly the person who had used it had come by it dishonestly. Fortunately, at that time, it was a habit of my father’s never to destroy papers of any sort. Every letter that he ever received was classified and filed, envelope and all. The thing to do, then, was manifestly to run over the files and find the letter, if indeed it was in or on a letter that the seal had first come to his attention. It was a herculean job, but that never fazed Sherlock Holmes, and he went at it tooth and nail. Finally his effort was rewarded. Under “Applications for Autograph” he found a daintily-scented little missive from a young girl living at Goring-Streatley on the Thames, the daughter, she said, of a retired missionary—the Reverend James Tattersby—asking him if he would not kindly write his autograph upon the enclosed slip for her collection. It was the regular stock application that truly distinguished men receive in every mail. The only thing to distinguish it from other applications was the beauty of the seal on the fly of the envelope, which attracted his passing notice and was then filed away with the other letters of similar import.

“Ho! ho!” quoth Holmes, as he compared the two impressions and discovered that they were identical. “An innocent little maiden who collects autographs, and a retired missionary in possession of the Dorrington seal, eh? Well, that is interesting. I think I shall run down to Goring-Streatley over Sunday and meets Miss Marjorie Tattersby and her reverend father. I’d like to see to what style of people I have intrusted my autograph.”

To decide was to act with Sherlock Holmes, and the following Saturday, hiring a canoe at Windsor, he made his way up the river until he came to the pretty little hamlet, snuggling in the Thames Valley, if such it may be called, where the young lady and her good father were dwelling. Fortune favored him in that his prey was still there—both much respected by the whole community; the father a fine looking, really splendid specimen of a man whose presence alone carried a conviction of integrity and a lofty man; the daughter—well, to see her was to love her, and the moment the eyes of Sherlock fell upon her face that great heart of his, that had ever been adamant to beauty, a very Gibraltar against the wiles of the other sex, went down in the chaos of a first and overwhelming passion. So hard hit was he by Miss Tattersby’s beauty that his chief thought now was to avert rather than to direct suspicion towards her. After all, she might have come into possession of the jewel honestly, though how the daughter of a retired missionary, considering its intrinsic value, could manage such a thing, was pretty hard to understand, and he fled back to London to think it over. Arrived there, he found an invitation to visit Dorrington Castle again incog. Lord Dorrington was to have a mixed week-end party over the following Sunday, and this, he thought, would give Holmes an opportunity to observe the characteristics of Dorrington’s visitors and possibly gain therefore some clue as to the light-fingered person from whose depredations his lordship had suffered. The idea commended itself to Holmes, and in the disguise of a young American clergyman, whom Dorrington had met in the States, the following Friday found him at Dorrington Castle.

Well, to make a long story short, the young clergyman was introduced to many of the leading sportsmen of the hour, and, for the most part, they passed muster, but one of them did not, and that was the well-known cricketer A. J. Raffles, for the moment Raffles entered the room, jovially greeting everybody about him, and was presented to Lord Dorrington’s new guest, Sherlock Holmes recognized in him no less a person that the Reverend James Tattersby, retired missionary of Goring-Streatley-on-Thames, and the father of the woman who had filled his soul with love and yearning of the truest sort. The problem was solved. Raffles was, to all intents and purposes, caught with the goods on. Holmes could have exposed him then and there had he chosen to do so, but every time it came to the point the lovely face of Marjorie Tattersby came between him and his purpose. How could he inflict the pain and shame which the exposure of her father’s misconduct would certainly entail upon that fair woman, whose beauty and fresh innocence had taken so strong a hold upon his heart? No—that was out of the question. The thing to do, clearly was to visit Miss Tattersby during her father’s absence, and, if possible, ascertain from just how she had come into possession of the seal, before taking further steps in the matter. This he did.

Making sure, to begin with, that Raffles was to remain at Dorrington Hall for the coming ten days, Holmes had himself telegraphed for and returned to London. There he wrote himself a letter of introduction to the Reverend James Tattersby, on the paper of the Anglo-American Missionary Society, a sheet of which he secured in the public writing-room of that institution, armed with which he returned to the beautiful little spot on the Thames where the Tattersbys abode. He spent the night at the inn, and, in conversation with the landlord and boatmen, learned much that was interesting concerning the Reverend James. Among other things, he discovered that this gentleman and his daughter had been respected residents of the place for three years; that Tattersby was rarely seen in the daytime about the place; that he was unusually fond of canoeing at night, which, he said, gave him the quiet and solitude necessary for that reflection which is so essential to the spiritual being of a minister of grace; that he frequently indulged in long absences, during which time it was supposed that he was engaged in the work of his calling. He appeared to be a man of some, but not lavish, means. The most notable and suggestive thing, however, that Holmes ascertained in his conversation with the boatmen was that, at the time of the famous Cliveden robbery, when several thousand pounds’ worth of plate had been taken from the great hall, that later fell into the possession of a well-known American hotel-keeper, Tattersby, who happened to be on the river late that night, was, according to his own statement, the unconscious witness of the escape of the thieves on board a mysterious steam-launch, which the police were never able afterwards to locate. They had nearly upset his canoe with the wash of their rapidly moving craft as they sped past him after having stowed their loot safely on board. Tattersby had supposed them to be employees of the estate, and never gave the matter another thought until three days later, when the news of the robbery was published to the world. He had immediately communicated the news of what he had seen to the police, and had done all that lay in his power to aid them in locating the robbers, but all to no purpose. From that day to this the mystery of the Cliveden plot had never been solved.

The following day Holmes called at the Tattersby cottage, and was fortunate enough to find Miss Tattersby at home. His previous impression as to her marvellous beauty was more than confirmed, and each moment that he talked to her she revealed new graces of manner that completed the capture of his hitherto unsusceptible heart. Miss Tattersby regretted her father’s absence. He had gone, she said, to attend a secret missionary conference at Pentwllycod in Wales, and was not expected back for a week, all of which quite suited Sherlock Holmes. Convinced that, after years of waiting, his affinity had at last crossed his path, he was in no hurry for the return of that parent, who would put an instant quietus upon this affair of the heart. Manifestly the thing for him to do was to win the daughter’s hand, and then intercept the father, acquaint him with his aspirations, and compel acquiescence by the force of his knowledge of Raffles’s misdeed. Hence, instead of taking his departure immediately, he remained at the Goring-Streatley Inn, taking care each day to encounter Miss Tattersby on one pretext or another, hoping that their acquaintance would ripen into friendship, and then into something warmer. Nor was the hope a vain one, for when the fair Marjorie learned that it was the visitor’s intention to remain in the neighborhood until her father’s return, she herself bade him to make use of the old gentleman’s library, to regard himself always as a welcome daytime guest. She even suggested pleasant walks through the neighboring country, little canoe trips up and down the Thames, which they might take together, of all of which Holmes promptly availed himself, with the result that, at the end of six days, both realized that they were designed for each other, and a passionate declaration followed which opened new vistas of happiness for both.

Hence it was that, when the Reverend James Tattersby arrived at Goring-Streatley the following Monday night, unexpectedly, he was astounded to find sitting together in the moonlight, in the charming little English garden at the rear of his dwelling, two persons, one of whom was his daughter Marjorie and the other a young American curate to whom he had already been introduced as A. J. Raffles.

“We have met before, I think,” said Raffles, coldly, as his eye fell upon Holmes.

“I—er—do not recall the fact,” replied Holmes, meeting the steely stare of the home-comer with one of his own flinty glances.

“H’m!” ejaculated Raffles, nonplussed at the other’s failure to recognize him. Then he shivered slightly. “Suppose we go indoors, it is a trifle chilly out here in the night air.”

The whole thing, the greeting, the meeting, Holmes’s demeanor and all, was so admirably handled that Marjorie Tattersby never guessed the truth, never even suspected the intense dramatic quality of the scene she had just gazed upon.

“Yes, let us go indoors,” she acquiesced. “Mr. Dutton has something to say to you, papa.”

“So I presumed,” said Raffles, dryly. “And something that were better said to me alone, I fancy, eh?” he added.

“Quite so,” said Holmes, calmly. And indoors they went. Marjorie immediately retired to the drawing-room, and Holmes and Raffles went at once to Tattersby’s study.

“Well?” said Raffles, impatiently, when they were seated. “I suppose you have come to get the Dorrington seal, Mr. Holmes.”

“Ah—you know me, then, Mr. Raffles?” said Holmes, with a pleasant smile.

“Perfectly,” said Raffles. “I knew you at Dorrington Hall the moment I set eyes on you, and, if I hadn’t, I should have known later, for the night after your departure Lord Dorrington took me into his confidence and revealed your identity to me.”

“I am glad,” said Holmes. “It saves me a great deal of unnecessary explanation. If you admit that you have the seal—”

“But I don’t,” said Raffles. “I mentioned it a moment ago, because Dorrington told me that was what you were after. I haven’t got it, Mr. Holmes.”

“I know that,” observed Holmes, quietly. “It is in the possession of Miss Tattersby, your daughter, Mr. Raffles.”

“She showed it to you, eh?” demanded Raffles, paling.

“No. She sealed a note to me with it, however,” Holmes replied.

“A note to you?” cried Raffles.

“Yes. One asking for my autograph. I have it in my possession,” said Holmes.

“And how do you know that she is the person from whom that note really came?” Raffles asked.

“Because I have seen the autograph which was sent in response to that request in your daughter’s collection, Mr. Raffles,” said Holmes.

“So that you conclude—?” Raffles put in, hoarsely.

“I do not conclude; I begin by surmising, sir, that the missing seal of Lord Dorrington was stolen by one of two persons—yourself or Miss Marjorie Tattersby,” said Holmes, calmly.

“Sir!” roared Raffles, springing to his feet menacingly.

“Sit down, please,” said Holmes. “You did not let me finish. I was going to add, Dr. Tattersby, that a week’s acquaintance with that lovely woman, a full knowledge of her peculiarly exalted character and guileless nature, makes the alternative of guilt that affects her integrity clearly preposterous, which, by a very simple process of elimination, fastens the guilt, beyond all peradventure, on your shoulders. At any rate, the presence of the seal in this house will involve you in difficult explanations. Why is it here? How did it come here? Why are you known as the Reverend James Tattersby, the missionary, at Goring-Streatley, and as Mr. A. J. Raffles, the cricketer and man of the world, at Dorrington Hall, to say nothing of the Cliveden plate—”

“Damnation!” roared the Reverend James Tattersby again, springing to his feet and glancing instinctively at the long low book-shelves behind him.

“To say nothing,” continued Holmes, calmly lighting a cigarette, “of the Cliveden plate now lying concealed behind those dusty theological tomes of yours which you never allow to be touched by any other hand than your own.”

“How did you know?” cried Raffles, hoarsely.

“I didn’t,” laughed Holmes. “You have only this moment informed me of the fact!”

There was a long pause, during which Raffles paced the floor like a caged tiger.

“I’m a dangerous man to trifle with, Mr. Holmes,” he said, finally. “I can shoot you down in cold blood in a second.”

“Very likely,” said Holmes. “But you won’t. It would add to the difficulties in which the Reverend James Tattersby is already deeply immersed. Your troubles are sufficient, as matters stand, without your having to explain to the world why you have killed a defenceless guest in your own study in cold blood.”

“Well—what do you propose to do?” demanded Raffles, after another pause.

“Marry your daughter, Mr. Raffles, or Tattersby, whatever your permanent name is—I guess it’s Tattersby in this case,” said Holmes. “I love her and she loves me. Perhaps I should apologize for having wooed and won her without due notice to you, but you doubtless will forgive that. It’s a little formality you sometimes overlook yourself when you happen to want something that belongs to somebody else.”

What Raffles would have answered no one knows. He had no chance to reply, for at that moment Marjorie herself put her radiantly lovely little head in at the door with a “May I come in?” and a moment later she was gathered in Holmes’s arms, and the happy lovers received the Reverend James Tattersby’s blessing. They were married a week later, and, as far as the world is concerned, the mystery of the Dorrington seal and that of the Cliveden plate was never solved.

“It is compounding a felony, Raffles,” said Holmes, after the wedding, “but for a wife like that, hanged if I wouldn’t compound the ten commandments!”

“I hope,” I ventured to put in at that point, “that the marriage ceremony was not performed by the Reverend James Tattersby.”

“Not on your life!” retorted Raffles Holmes. “My father was too fond of my mother to permit of any flaw in his title. A year later I was born, and—well, here I am—son of one, grandson of the other, with hereditary traits from both strongly developed and ready for business. I want a literary partner—a man who will write me up as Bunny did Raffles, and Watson did Holmes, so that I may get a percentage on that part of the swag. I offer you the job, Jenkins. Those royalty statements show me that you are the man, and your books prove to me that you need a few fresh ideas. Come, what do you say? Will you do it?”

“My boy,” said I, enthusiastically, “don’t say another word. Will I? Well, just try me!”

And so it was that Raffles Holmes and I struck a bargain and became partners.

III

THE ADVENTURE
OF MRS. BURLINGAME’S DIAMOND STOMACHER

I had seen the marvellous creation very often at the opera, and in many ways resented it. Not that I was in the least degree a victim to envy, hatred, and malice towards those who are possessed of a superabundance of this world’s good things—far from it. I rejoice in the great fortunes of earth because, with every dollar corralled by the superior energies of the multimillionaires, the fewer there are for other men to seek, and until we stop seeking dollars and turn our minds to other, finer things, there will be no hope of peace and sweet content upon this little green ball we inhabit. My resentment of Mrs. Burlingame’s diamond stomacher was not then based on envy of its possession, but merely upon the twofold nuisance which it created at the opera-house, as the lady who wore it sat and listened to the strains of Wagner, Bizet, or Gounod, mixed in with the small-talk of Reggie Stockson, Tommie de Coupon, and other lights of the social firmament. In the first place, it caused the people sitting about me in the high seats of the opera-house to chatter about it and discuss its probable worth every time the lady made her appearance in it, and I had fled from the standee part of the house to the top gallery just to escape the talkers, and, if possible, to get my music straight, without interruptions of any sort whatsoever on the side. In the second place, the confounded thing glittered so that, from where I sat, it was as dazzling as so many small mirrors flashing in the light of the sun. It seemed as if every electric light in the house found some kind of a refractor in the thousands of gems of which it was composed, and many of the brilliant light effects of the stage were dimmed in their luster by the persistent intrusion of Mrs. Burlingame’s glory upon my line of vision.

Hence in was that, when I picked up my morning paper and read in great flaring head-lines on the front page that Mrs. Burlingame’s diamond stomacher had been stolen from her at her Onyx Cottage at Newport, I smiled broadly, and slapped the breakfast-table so hard in my satisfaction that even the shredded-wheat biscuits flew up into the air and caught in the chandelier.

“Thank Heaven for that!” I said. “Next season I shall be able to enjoy my opera undisturbed.”

I little thought, at that blissful moment, how closely indeed were my own fortunes to be connected with that wonderful specimen of the jeweler’s handicraft, but an hour later I was made aware of the first link in the chain that, in a measure, bound me to it. Breakfast over, I went to my desk to put the finishing touches to a novel I had written the week before, when word came up on the telephone from below that a gentleman from Busybody’s Magazine wished to see me on an important matter of business.

“Tell him I’m already a subscriber,” I called down, supposing the visitor to be merely an agent. “I took the magazine, and a set of Chaucer in a revolving bookcase, from one of their agents last month and have paid my dollar.”

In a moment another message came over the wire.

“The gentleman says he wants to see you about writing a couple of full-page sonnets for the Christmas number,” the office man ‘phoned up.

“Show him up,” I replied, instantly.

Two minutes later a rather handsome man, with a fine eye and a long, flowing gray beard, was ushered into my apartment.

“I am Mr. Stikes, of Busybody’s, Mr. Jenkins,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “We thought you might like to contribute to our Christmas issue. We want two sonnets, one on the old Christmas and the other on the new. We can’t offer you more than a thousand dollars apiece for them, but—”

Something caught in my throat, but I managed to reply. “I might shade my terms a trifle since you want as many as two,” I gurgled. “And I assume you will pay on acceptance?”

“Certainly,” he said, gravely. “Could you let me have them, say—this afternoon?”

I turned away so that he would not see the expression of joy on my face, and then there came from behind me a deep chuckle and the observation in a familiar voice:

“You might throw in a couple of those Remsen coolers, too, while you’re about it, Jenkins.”

I whirled about as if struck, and there, in place of the gray-bearded editor, stood—Raffles Holmes.

“Bully disguise, eh!” he said, folding up his beard and putting it in his pocket.

“Ye-e-es,” said I, ruefully, as I thought of the vanished two thousand. “I think I preferred you in disguise, though, old man,” I added.

“You won’t when you hear what I’ve come for,” said he. “There’s $5,000 apiece in this job for us.”

“To what job do you refer?” I asked.

“The Burlingame case,” he replied. “I suppose you read in the papers this morning how Mrs. Burlingame’s diamond stomacher has turned up missing.”

“Yes,” said I, “and I’m glad of it.”

“You ought to be,” said Holmes, “since it will put $5,000 in your pocket. You haven’t heard yet that there is a reward of $10,000 offered for its recovery. The public announcement has not yet been made, but it will be in tonight’s papers, and we are the chaps that are going to get the reward.”

“But how?” I demanded.

“Leave that to me,” said he. “By-the-way, I wish you’d let me leave this suitcase of mine in your room for about ten days. It holds some important papers, and my shop is turned topsy-turvy just now with the painters.”

“Very well,” said I. “I’ll shove it under my bed.”

I took the suitcase as Holmes had requested, and hid it away in my bedroom, immediately returning to the library, where he sat smoking one of my cigars as cool as a cucumber. There was something in his eye, however, that aroused my suspicion as soon as I entered.

“See here, Holmes,” said I. “I can’t afford to be mixed up in any shady business like this, you know. Have you got that stomacher?”

“No, I haven’t,” said he. “Honor bright—I haven’t.”

I eyed him narrowly.

“I think I understand the evasion,” I went on. “You haven’t got it because I have got it—it’s in that suitcase under my bed.”

“Open it and see for yourself,” said he. “It isn’t there.”

“But you know where it is?” I demanded.

“How else could I be sure of that $10,000 reward?” he asked.

“Where is it?” I demanded.

“It—er—it isn’t located yet—that is, not finally,” said he. “And it won’t be for ten days. Ten days from now Mrs. Burlingame will find it herself and we’ll divvy on the reward, my boy, and not a trace of dishonesty in the whole business.”

And with that Raffles Holmes filled his pockets with cigars from my stores, and bidding me be patient went his way.

The effect of his visit upon my nerves was such that any more work that day was impossible. The fear of possible complications to follow upset me wholly, and, despite his assurance that the suitcase was innocent of surreptitiously acquired stomachers, I could not rid my mind of the suspicion that he made of my apartment a fence for the concealment of his booty. The more I thought of it the more was I inclined to send for him and request him to remove the bag forthwith, and yet, if it should so happen that he had spoken the truth, I should by that act endanger our friendship and possibly break the pact, which bade fair to be profitable. Suddenly I remembered his injunction to me to look for myself and see if the stomacher really was concealed there, and I hastened to act upon it. It might have been pure bluff on his part, and I resolved not to be bluffed.

The case opened easily, and the moment I glanced into it my suspicions were allayed. It contained nothing but bundle after bundle of letters tied together with pink and blue ribbons, one or two old daguerreotypes, some locks of hair, and an ivory miniature of Raffles Holmes himself as an infant. Not a stomacher, diamond or otherwise, was hid in the case, nor any other suspicious object, and I closed it with a sheepish feeling of shame for having intruded upon the sacred correspondence and relics of the happy childhood days of my new friend.

That night, as Holmes had asserted, a reward of $10,000 was offered for the recovery of the Burlingame stomacher, and the newspapers for the next ten days were full of the theories of detectives of all sorts, amateur, professional, and reportorial. Central Office was after it in one place, others sought it elsewhere. The editor of one New York paper printed a full list of the names of the guests at Mrs. Burlingame’s dinner the night the treasure was stolen, and, whether they ever discovered it for themselves or not, several bearers of highly honored social names were shadowed by reporters and others everywhere they went for the next week. At the end of five days the reward was increased to $20,000, and then Raffles Holmes’s name began to appear in connection with the case. Mrs. Burlingame herself had sent for him, and, without taking it out of the hands of others, had personally requested him to look into the matter. He had gone to Newport and looked the situation over there. He had questioned all the servants in her two establishments at Newport and New York, and had finally assured the lady that, on the following Tuesday morning, he would advise her by wire of the definite location of her missing jewel.

During all this time Holmes had not communicated with me at all, and I began to fear that, offended by my behavior at our last meeting, he had cut me out of his calculations altogether, when, just as I was about to retire on Sunday night, he reappeared as he had first come to me—stealing up the fire-escape; and this time he wore a mask, and carried unquestionably a burglar’s kit and a dark lantern. He started nervously as he caught sight of me reaching up to turn off the light in the library.

“Hang it call, Jenkins!” he cried. “I thought you’d gone off to the country for the week-end.”

“No,” said I. “I meant to go, but I was detained. What’s up?”

“Oh, well—I may as well out with it,” he answered. “I didn’t want you to know, but—well, watch and see.”

With this Raffles Holmes strode directly to my bookcase, removed my extra-illustrated set of Fox’s Book of Martyrs, in five volumes, from the shelves, and there, resting upon the shelf behind them, glittered nothing less than the missing stomacher!

“Great Heavens, Holmes!” I said, “what does this mean? How did those diamonds get there?”

“I put them there myself while you were shoving my suitcase under your bed the other night,” said he.

“You told me you didn’t have them,” I said, reproachfully.

“I didn’t when I spoke—you had them,” said he.

“You told me they had not been finally located,” I persisted, angrily.

“I told you the truth. They were only temporarily located,” he answered. “I’m going to locate them definitely tonight, and tomorrow Mrs. Burlingame will find them—”

“Where?” I cried.

“In her own safe in her New York house!” said Raffles Holmes.

“You—”

“Yes—I took them from Newport myself—very easy job, too,” said Raffles Holmes. “Ever since I saw them at the opera last winter I have had this in mind, so when Mrs. Burlingame gave her dinner I served as an extra butler from Delmonico’s—drugged the regular chap up on the train on his way up from New York—took his clothes, and went in his place. That night I rifled the Newport safe of the stomacher, and the next day brought it here.

“Tonight I take it to the Burlingame house on Fifth Avenue, secure entrance through a basement door, to which, in my capacity of detective, I have obtained the key, and, while the caretakers sleep, Mrs. Burlingame’s diamond stomacher will be placed in the safe on the first floor back.

“Tomorrow morning I shall send Mrs. Burlingame this message: ‘Have you looked in your New York safe? [Signed] Raffles Holmes,’” he continued. “She will come to town by the first train to find out what I mean; we will go to her residence; she will open the safe, and—$20,000 for us.”

“By Jove! Holmes, you are a wonder,” said I. “This stomacher is worth $250,000 at the least,” I added, as I took the creation in my hand. “Pot of money that!”

“Yes,” said he, with a sigh, taking the stomacher from me and fondling it. “The Raffles in me tells me that, but the Sherlock Holmes in my veins—well, I can’t keep it, Jenkins, if that is what you mean.”

I blushed at the intimation conveyed by his words, and was silent; and Holmes, gathering up his tools and stuffing the stomacher in the capacious bosom of his coat, bade me au revoir, and went out into the night.

•    •    •

The rest is already public property. All the morning papers were full of the strange recovery of the Burlingame stomacher the following Tuesday morning, and the name of Raffles Holmes was in every mouth. That night, the very essence of promptitude, Holmes appeared at my apartment and handed me a check for my share in the transaction.

“Why—what does this mean?” I cried, as I took in the figures; “$12,500—I thought it was to be only $10,000.”

“It was,” said Raffles Holmes, “but Mrs. Burlingame was so overjoyed at getting the thing back she made the check for $25,000 instead of for $20,000.”

“You’re the soul of honor, Holmes!” I murmured.

“On my father’s side,” he said, with a sigh. “On my mother’s side it comes hard.”

“And Mrs. Burlingame—didn’t she ask you how you ferreted the thing out?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “But I told her that that was my secret, that my secret was my profession, and that my profession was my bread and butter.”

“But she must have asked you who was the guilty person?” I persisted.

“Yes,” said Holmes, “she did, and I took her for a little gallop through the social register, in search of the guilty party; that got on her nerves, so that when it came down to an absolute question of identity she begged me to forget it.”

“I am dull of comprehension, Raffles,” said I. “Tell me exactly what you mean.”

“Simply this,” said Raffles Holmes. “The present four hundred consists of about 19,250 people, of whom about twenty-five percent go to Newport at one time or another—say, 4812. Of these 4812 about ten percent are eligible for invitations to the Burlingame dinners, or 480. Now whom of the 480 possibilities having access to the Burlingame cottage would we naturally suspect? Surely only those who were in the vicinity the night of the robbery. By a process of elimination we narrowed them down to just ten persons exclusive of Mrs. Burlingame herself and her husband, old Billie Burlingame. We took the lot and canvassed them. There were Mr. and Mrs. Willington Bodfish—they left early and the stomacher was known to be safe at the time of their departure. There were Bishop and Mrs. Pounderby, neither of whom would be at all likely to come back in the dead of night and remove property that did not belong to them. There were Senator and Mrs. Jorrocks. The Senator is after bigger game than diamond stomachers, and Mrs. Jorrocks is known to be honest. There were Harry Gaddsby and his wife. Harry doesn’t know enough to go in when it rains, and is too timid to call even his soul his own, so he couldn’t have taken it; and Mrs. Gaddsby is long on stomachers, having at least five, and therefore would not be likely to try to land a sixth by questionable means. In that way we practically cleared eight possibilities of suspicion.

“‘Now, Mrs. Burlingame,’ said I, ‘that leaves four persons still in the ring—yourself, your husband, your daughter, and the Duke of Snarleyow, your daughter’s newly acquired fiancé, in whose honor the dinner was given. Of these four, you are naturally yourself the first to be acquitted. Your husband comes next, and is not likely to be the guilty party, because if he wants a diamond stomacher he needn’t steal it, having money enough to buy a dozen of them if he wishes. The third, your daughter, should be regarded as equally innocent, because if she was really desirous of possessing the jewel all she had to do was to borrow it from you. That brings us down to the Duke of—”

“‘Hush! I beg of you, Mr. Raffles Holmes!’ she cried, in great agitation. ‘Not another word, I beseech you! If anyone should overhear us—The subject, after all, is an unprofitable one, and I’d—I’d rather drop it, and it—it—er—it has just occurred to me that possibly I—er—possibly I—’

“‘Put the jewel in the safe yourself?’ I suggested.

“‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Burlingame,’ with a grateful glance and a tremendous sigh of relief. ‘Now that I think of it, Mr. Raffles Holmes—that was it. I—er—I remember perfectly that—er—that I didn’t wear it at all the night of my little dinner, and that I did leave it behind me when I left town.’”

“Humph!” said I. “That may account for the extra $5,000—”

“It may,” said Raffles Holmes, pursing his lips into a deprecatory smile.

IV

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE MISSING PENDANTS

“I think,” said Raffles Holmes, as he ran over his expense account while sitting in my library one night some months ago, “that in view of the present condition of my exchequer, my dear Jenkins, it behooveth me to get busy. Owning a motorcar is a demned expensive piece of business, and my balance at the bank has shrunk to about $1,683.59, thanks to my bills for cogs, clutches, and gasoline, plus the chauffeur’s fines.”

“In what capacity shall you work, Raffles or Holmes?” I asked, pausing in my writing and regarding him with that affectionate interest which contact with him had inspired in me.

“Play the combination always, Jenkins,” he replied. “If I did the Raffles act alone, I should become the billionaire in this land of silk and money, your rich are so careless of their wealth—but where would my conscience be? On the other hand, if I stuck to the Holmes act exclusively, I’d starve to death; but the combination—ah—there is moderate fortune, my boy, with peace of mind thrown in.”

Here he rose up, buttoned his coat about his spare figure, and reached out for his hat.

“I guess I’ll tackle that case of the missing pendants tomorrow,” he continued, flicking the ash from his cigar and gazing up at the ceiling with that strange twist in his eye which I had learned to regard as the harbinger of a dawning idea in his mind. “There’s ten thousand dollars for somebody in that job, and you and I might as well have it as anyone else.”

“I’m ready,” said I, as well I might be, for all I had to do in the matter was to record the adventure and take my half of the profits—no very difficult proceeding in either case.

“Good,” quoth he. “I’ll go to Gaffany & Co. tomorrow and offer my services.”

“You have a clue?” I asked.

“I have an idea,” he answered. “As for the lost diamonds, I know no more of their whereabouts than you do, but I shall be able beyond all question to restore to Gaffany & Co. two pendants just as good as those they have lost, and if I do that I am entitled to the reward, I fancy, am I not?”

“Most certainly,” said I. “But where the dickens will you find two such stones? They are worth $50,000 apiece, and they must match perfectly the two remaining jewels which Gaffany & Co. have in their safe.”

“I’ll match ‘em so closely that their own mother couldn’t tell ‘em apart,” said Holmes, with a chuckle.

“Then the report that they are of such rarity of cut and luster is untrue?” I asked.

“It’s perfectly true,” said Holmes, “but that makes no difference. The two stones that I shall return two weeks from today to Gaffany & Co. will be as like the two they have as they are themselves. Ta-ta, Jenkins—you can count on your half of that ten thousand as surely as though it is jingled now in your pockets.”

And with that Raffles Holmes left me to my own devices.

I presume that most readers of the daily newspapers are tolerably familiar with the case of the missing pendants to which Holmes referred, and on the quest for which he was now about to embark. There may be some of you, however, who have never heard of the mysterious robbery of Gaffany & Co., by which two diamonds of almost matchless purity—half of a quartet of these stones—pear-shaped and valued at $50,000 each, had disappeared almost as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up. They were a part of the famous Gloria Diamond, found last year at Kimberley, a huge, uncut gem of such value that no single purchaser for it could be found in the world. By a syndicate arrangement Gaffany & Co. had assumed charge of it, and were in the process of making for a customer a bar with four pendants cut from the original, when two of them disappeared. They had been last seen in the hands of a trusted employee of many years’ standing, to whom they had been intrusted for mounting, and he had been seen to replace them, at the end of the day’s work, in the little cage-like office of the custodian of the safe in which jewels of great value were kept at night. This was the last seen of them, and although five weeks had elapsed since the discovery of their loss and Holmes’s decision to look into the matter, no clue of the slightest description had been discovered by the thousands of sleuths, professional or amateur, who had interested themselves in the case.

“He had such assurance!” I muttered. “To hear him talk one would almost believe that they were already in his possession.”

I did not see Raffles Holmes again for five days, and then I met him only by chance, nor should I have known it was he had he not made himself known to me. I was on my way uptown, a little after six o’clock, and as I passed Gaffany’s an aged man emerged from the employees’ entrance, carrying a small bag in his hand. He was apparently very near-sighted, for he most unceremoniously bumped into me as he came out of the door on to the sidewalk.

Deference to age has always been a weakness of mine, and I apologized, although it was he that was at fault.

“Don’t mention it, Jenkins,” he whispered. “You are just the man I want to see. Café Panhard—tonight—eleven o’clock. Just happen in, and if a foreign-looking person with a red beard speaks to you don’t throw him down, but act as if you were not annoyed by his mistake.”

“You know me?” I asked.

“Tush, man—I’m Raffles Holmes!” and with that he was off.

His make-up was perfect, and as he hobbled his way along Broadway through the maze of cars, trucks, and hansoms, there was not in any part of him a hint or a suggestion that brought to mind my alert partner.

Of course my excitement was intense. I could hardly wait for eleven o’clock to come, and at 9:30 I found myself in front of the Café Panhard a full hour and a half ahead of time, and never were there more minutes in that period of waiting than there seemed to be then as I paced Broadway until the appointed hour. It seemed ages before the clock down in front of the Whirald Building pointed to 10:55, but at last the moment arrived, and I entered the café, taking one of the little tables in the farther corner, where the light was not unduly strong and where the turmoil of the Hungarian band was reduced by distance from moltofortissimo to a moderate approach to a pianissimo, which would admit of conversation. Again I had to wait, but not for so long a time. It was twenty minutes past eleven when a fine-looking man of military bearing, wearing a full red beard, entered, and after looking the café over, sauntered up to where I sat.

“Good evening, Mr. Jenkins,” said he, with a slight foreign accent. “Are you alone?”

“Yes,” said I.

“If you don’t mind, I should like to sit here for a few moments,” he observed, pulling out the chair opposite me. “I have your permission?”

“Certainly, Mr.—er—”

“Robinstein is my name,” said he, sitting down, and producing a letter from his pocket. “I have here a note from my old friend Raffles Holmes—a note of introduction to you. I am a manufacturer of paste jewels—or rather was. I have had one or two misfortunes in my business, and find myself here in America practically stranded.”

“Your place of business was—”

“In the Rue de l’Echelle in Paris,” he explained. “I lost everything in unfortunate speculation, and have come here to see if I could not get a new start. Mr. Holmes thinks you can use your influence with Markoo & Co., the theatrical costumers, who, I believe, manufacture themselves all the stage jewelry they use in their business, to give me something to do. It was said in Paris that the gems which I made were of such quality that they would deceive, for a time anyhow, the most expert lapidaries, and if I can only get an opening with Markoo & Co. I am quite confident that you will not repent having exerted your good offices in my behalf.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Robinstein,” said I. “Any friend of Raffles Holmes may command my services. I know Tommy Markoo very well, and as this is a pretty busy time with him, getting his stuff out for the fall productions, I have little doubt I shall be able to help you. By Jove!” I added, as I glanced over the café, “that’s a singular coincidence—there is Markoo himself just coming in the doorway.”

“Really?” said Mr. Robinstein, turning and gazing towards the door. “He’s a different-looking chap from what I had imagined. Perhaps, Mr. Jenkins, it would—er—expedite matters if you—”

“Of course,” I interrupted. “Tommy is alone—we’ll have him over.”

And I beckoned to Markoo and invited him to join us.

“Good!” said he, in his whole-souled way. “Glad to have a chance to see you—I’m so confoundedly busy these days—just think of it, I’ve been at the shop ever since eight o’clock this morning.”

“Tommy, I want to introduce you to my friend Mr. Robinstein,” said I.

“Not Isidore Robinstein, of Paris?” said Markoo.

“I have that misfortune, Mr. Markoo,” said Robinstein.

“Misfortune? Gad, Mr. Robinstein, we look at things through different glasses,” returned Markoo. “The man who can do your work ought never to suffer misfortune—”

“If he only stays out of the stock-market,” said Robinstein.

“Aha,” laughed Tommy. “Et tu, Brute?”

We all laughed, and if there was any ice to be broken after that it was along the line of business of the café. We got along famously together, and when we parted company, two hours later, all the necessary arrangements had been made for Mr. Robinstein to begin at once with Markoo—the following day, in fact.

Four nights later Holmes turned up at my apartment.

“Well,” said I, “have you come to report progress?”

“Yes,” he said. “The reward will arrive on time, but it’s been the de’il’s own job. Pretty, aren’t they!” he added, taking a small package wrapped in tissue-paper out of his pocket, and disclosing its contents.

“Gee-rusalem, what beauties!” I cried, as my eyes fell on two such diamonds as I had never before seen. They sparkled on the paper like bits of sunshine, and that their value was quite $100,000 it did not take one like myself, who knew little of gems, to see at a glance. “You have found them, have you?”

“Found what?” asked Raffles Holmes.

“The missing pendants,” said I.

“Well—not exactly,” said Raffles Holmes. “I think I’m on the track of them, though. There’s an old chap who works beside me down at Gaffany’s who spends so much of his time drinking ice-water that I’m getting to be suspicious of him.”

I roared with laughter.

“The ice-water habit is evidence of a criminal nature, eh?” I queried.

“Not per se,” said Holmes, gravely, “but in conjunctibus—if my Latin is weak, please correct me—it is a very suspicious habit. When I see a man drink ten glasses of water in two hours it indicates to my mind that there is something in the water-cooler that takes his mind off his business. It is not likely to be either the ice or the water, on the doctrine of probabilities. Hence it must be something else. I caught him yesterday with his hand in it.”

“His hand? In the water-cooler?” I demanded.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “He said he was fishing around for a little piece of ice to cool his head, which ached, but I think differently. He got as pale as a ghost when I started in to fish for a piece for myself because my head ached too. I think he took the diamonds and has hid them there, but I’m not sure yet, and in my business I can’t afford to make mistakes. If my suspicions are correct, he is merely awaiting his opportunity to fish them out and light out with them.”

“Then these,” I said, “are—are they paste?”

“No, indeed, they’re the real thing,” said Raffles Holmes, holding up one of the gems to the light, where it fairly coruscated with brilliance. “These are the other two of the original quartet.”

“Great Heavens, Holmes—do you mean to say that Gaffany & Co. permit you to go about with things like this in your pocket?” I demanded.

“Not they,” laughed Holmes. “They’d have a fit if they knew I had ’em, only they don’t know it.”

“But how have you concealed the fact from them?” I persisted.

“Robinstein made me a pair exactly like them,” said Holmes. “The paste ones are now lying in the Gaffany safe, where I saw them placed before leaving the shop tonight.”

“You’re too deep for me, Holmes,” said I. “What’s the game?”

“Now don’t say game, Jenkins,” he protested. “I never indulge in games. My quarry is not a game, but a scheme. For the past two weeks, with three days off, I have been acting as a workman in the Gaffany ship, with the ostensible purpose of keeping my eye on certain employees who are under suspicion. Each day the remaining two pendant-stones—these—have been handed to me to work on, merely to carry out the illusion. The first day, in odd moments, I made sketches of them, and on the night of the second I had ’em down in such detail as to cut and color, that Robinstein had no difficulty in reproducing them in the materials at his disposal in Markoo’s shop. And tonight all I had to do to get them was to keep them and hand in the Robinstein substitutes when the hour of closing came.”

“So that now, in place of four $50,000 diamonds, Gaffany & Co. are in possession of—”

“Two paste pendants, worth about $40 apiece,” said Holmes. “If I fail to find the originals I shall have to use the paste ones to carry the scheme through, but I hate to do it. It’s so confoundly inartistic and as old a trick as the pyramids.”

“And tomorrow—”

Raffles Holmes got up and paced the floor nervously.

“Ah, Jenkins,” he said, with a heart-rending sigh, “that is the point. Tomorrow! Heavens! what will tomorrow’s story be? I—I cannot tell.”

“What’s the matter, Holmes?” said. “Are you in danger?”

“Physically, no—morally, my God! Jenkins, yes. I shall need all of your help,” he cried.

“What can I do?” I asked. “You know you have only to command me.”

“Don’t leave me this night for a minute,” he groaned. “If you do, I am lost. The Raffles in me is rampant when I look at those jewels and think of what they will mean if I keep them. An independent fortune forever. All I have to do is to get aboard a ship and go to Japan and live in comfort the rest of my days with the wealth in my possession, and all the instincts of honesty that I possess, through the father in me, will be powerless to prevent my indulgence in this crime. Keep me in sight, and if I show the slightest inclination to give you the slip, knock me over the head, will you, for my own good?”

I promised faithfully that I would do as he asked, but, as an easier way out of an unpleasant situation, I drugged his Remsen cooler with a sleeping-powder, and an hour later he was lying off on my divan lost to the world for eight hours at least. As a further precaution I put the jewels in my own safe.

The night’s sleep had the desired effect, and with the returning day Holmes’s better nature asserted itself. Raffles was subdued, and he returned to Gaffany’s to put the finishing touches to his work.

•    •    •

“Here’s your check, Jenkins,” said Raffles Holmes, handing me a draft for $5,000. “The gems were found today in the water-cooler in the workroom, and Gaffany & Co. paid up like gentlemen.”

“And the thief?” I asked.

“Under arrest,” said Raffles Holmes. “We caught him fishing for them.”

“And your paste jewels, where are they?”

“I wish I knew,” he answered, his face clouding over. “In the excitement of the moment of the arrest I got ’em mixed with the originals I had last night, and they didn’t give me time or opportunity to pick ’em out. The four were mounted immediately and sent under guard to the purchaser. Gaffany & Co. didn’t want to keep them a minute longer than was necessary. But the purchaser is so rich he will never have to sell ’em—so, you see, Jenkins, we’re as safe as a church.”

“Your friend Robinstein was a character, Holmes,” said I.

“Yes,” sighed Holmes. “Poor chap—he was a great loss to his friends. He taught me the art of making paste gems when I was in Paris. I miss him like the dickens.”

“Miss him!” said I, getting anxious for Robinstein. “What happened? He isn’t—”

“Dead,” said Holmes. “Two years ago—dear old chap.”

“Oh, come now, Holmes,” I said. “What new game is this you are rigging on me? I met him only five nights ago—and you know it.”

“Oh—that one,” said Raffles Holmes, with a laugh. “I was that Robinstein.”

“You?” I cried.

“Yes, me,” said Holmes. “You don’t suppose I’d let a third party into our secret, do you?”

And then he gave me one of those sweet, wistful smiles that made the wonder of the man all the greater.

“I wish to the dickens I knew whether these were real or paste!” he muttered, taking the extra pendants from his wallet as he spoke. “I don’t dare ask anybody, and I haven’t got any means of telling myself.”

“Give them to me,” said I, sternly, noting a glitter in his eye that suggested the domination for the moment of the Raffles in him.

“Tush, Jenkins,” he began, uneasily.

“Give them to me, or I’ll brain you, Holmes,” said I, standing over him with a soda-water bottle gripped in my right hand, “for your own good. Come, give up.”

He meekly obeyed.

“Come now, get on your hat,” said I. “I want you to go out with me.”

“What for, Jenkins?” he almost snarled.

“You’ll see what for,” said I.

And Raffles Holmes obeying, we walked down to the river’s edge, where I stood for a moment, and then hurled the remaining stones far out into the waters.

Holmes gave a gasp and then a sigh of relief.

“There,” I said. “It doesn’t matter much to us now whether the confounded things were real or not.”

V

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE BRASS CHECK

“Jenkins,” said Raffles Holmes to me the other night as we sat in my den looking over the criminal news in the evening papers, in search of some interesting material for him to work on, “this paper says that Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has gone to Atlantic City for a week, and will lend her gracious presence to the social functions of the Hotel Garrymore, at that interesting city by the sea, until Monday, the 27th, when she will depart for Chicago, where her sister is to be married on the 29th. How would you like to spend the week with me at the Garrymore?”

“It all depends upon what we are going for,” said I. “Also, what in thunder has Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe got to do with us, or we with her?”

“Nothing at all,” said Holmes. “That is, nothing much.”

“Who is she?” I asked, eying him suspiciously.

“All I know is what I have seen in the papers,” said Holmes. “She came in on the Altruria two weeks ago, and attracted considerable attention by declaring $130,000 worth of pearl rope that she bought in Paris, instead of, woman-like, trying to smuggle it through the custom-house. It broke the heart of pretty nearly every inspector in the service. She’d been watched very carefully by the detective bureau in Paris, and when she purchased the rope there, the news of it was cabled over in cipher, so that they’d all be on the lookout for it when she came in. The whole force on the pier was on the qui vive, and one of the most expert women searchers on the payroll was detailed to give her special attention the minute she set foot on shore; but instead of doing as they all believed she would do, and giving the inspectors a chance to catch her at trying to evade the duties, to their very great profit, she calmly and coolly declared the stuff, paid her little sixty-five percent like a major, and drove off to the Castoria in full possession of her jewels. The Collector of the Port had all he could do to keep ’em from draping the custom-house for thirty days, they were all so grief-stricken. She’ll probably take the rope to Atlantic City with her.”

“Aha!” said I. “That’s the milk in the coconut, is it? You’re after that pearl rope, are you, Raffles?”

“On my honor as a Holmes,” said he, “I am not. I shall not touch the pearl rope, although I have no doubt that I shall have some unhappy moments during the week that I am in the same hotel with it. That’s one reason why I’d like to have you go along, Jenkins—just to keep me out of temptation. Raffles may need more than Holmes to keep him out of mischief. I am confident, however, that with you to watch out for me, I shall be able to suppress the strong tendency towards evil which at times besets me.”

“We’d better keep out of it altogether, Holmes,” said I, not liking the weight of responsibility for his good behavior that more than once he had placed on my shoulders. “You don’t deny, I suppose, that the pearl rope is a factor in your intentions, whatever they may be.”

“Of course I don’t, Jenkins,” was his response. “If it were not for her pearl rope, Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe could go anywhere she pleased without attracting any more attention from me than a passing motorcar. It would be futile for me to deny that, as a matter of fact, the pearl rope is an essential part of my scheme, and, even if it were not futile to do so, I should still not deny it, because neither my father nor my grandfather, Holmes nor Raffles, ever forgot that a gentleman does not lie.”

“Then count me out,” said I.

“Even if there is $7,500 in it for you?” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.

“If it were $107,500 you could still count me out,” I retorted. “I don’t like the business.”

“Very well,” said he, with a sight. “I shall have to go alone and endeavor to fight the terrible temptation unaided, with a strong probability that I shall fail, and, yielding to it, commit my first real act of crime, and in that event, with the possibility of a term at Trenton prison, if I am caught.”

“Give it up, Raffles,” I pleaded.

“And all because, in the hour of my need, my best friend, whose aid I begged, refused me,” he went on, absolutely ignoring my plea.

“Oh, well, if you put it on that score,” I said, “I’ll go—but you must promise me not to touch the pearls.”

“I’ll do my best not to,” he replied. “As usual, you have carte-blanche to put me out of business if you catch me trying it.”

With this understanding I accompanied Raffles Holmes to Atlantic City the following afternoon, and the following evening we were registered at the Hotel Garrymore.

Holmes was not mistaken in his belief that Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe would take her famous pearl rope to Atlantic City with her. That very evening, while we were sitting at dinner, the lady entered, and draped about her stately neck and shoulders was the thing itself, and a more beautiful decoration was never worn by woman from the days of the Queen of Sheba to this day of lavish display in jewels. It was a marvel, indeed, but the moment I saw it I ceased to give the lady credit for superior virtue in failing to smuggle it through the custom-house, for its very size would have precluded the possibility of a successful issue to any such attempted evasion of the law. It was too bulky to have been secreted in any of the ordinary ways known to smugglers. Hence her candid acknowledgment of its possession was less an evidence of the lady’s superiority to the majority of her sex in the matter of “beating the government” than of her having been confronted with the proverbial choice of the unidentified Hobson.

“By Jove! Jenkins,” Raffles Holmes muttered, hoarsely, as Mrs. Ward-Smythe paraded the length of the dining-room, as fairly corruscating with her rich possessions as though she were a jeweler’s window incarnate, “it’s a positive crime for a woman to appear in a place like this arrayed like that. What right has she to subject poor weak humanity to such temptation as now confronts every servant in this hotel, to say nothing of guests, who, like ourselves, are made breathless with such lavish display? There’s poor old Tommie Bankson over there, for instance. See how he gloats over those pearls. He’s fairly red-eyed over them.”

I glanced across the dining-room, and sure enough, there sat Tommie Bankson, and even from where we were placed we could see his hands tremble with the itch for possession, and his lips go dry with excitement as he thought of the material assets in full view under the glare of the dining-room electric lights.

“I happen to know on the inside,” continued Holmes, “that Tommie is not only a virtual bankrupt through stock speculation, but is actually face to face with criminal disgrace for misuse of trust funds, all of which he could escape if he could lay his hands upon half the stuff that woman is so carelessly wearing tonight. Do you think it’s fair to wear, for the mere gratification of one’s vanity, things that arouse in the hearts of less fortunate beings such passionate reflections and such dire temptations as those which are now besetting that man?”

“I guess we’ve got enough to do looking after Raffles tonight, old man, without wasting any of our nerve-tissue on Tommie Bankson,” I replied. “Come on—let’s get out of this. We’ll go over to the Pentagon for the night, and tomorrow we’ll shake the sands of Atlantic City from our feet and hie ourselves back to New York, where the temptations are not so strong.”

“It’s too late,” said Raffles Holmes. “I’ve set out on this adventure and I’m going to put it through. I wouldn’t give up in the middle of an enterprise of this sort any more than I would let a balky horse refuse to take a fence I’d put him to. It’s going to be harder than I thought, but we’re in it, and I shall stay to the end.”

“What the devil is the adventure, anyhow?” I demanded, impatiently. “You vowed you wouldn’t touch the rope.”

“I hope not to,” was his response. “It is up to you to see that I don’t. My plan does not involve my laying hands upon even the shadow of it.”

So we stayed on at the Garrymore, and a worse week I never had anywhere. With every glimpse of that infernal jewel the Raffles in Holmes became harder and harder to control. In the daytime he was all right, but when night came on he was feverish with the desire to acquire possession of the pearls. Twice in the middle of the night I caught him endeavoring to sneak out of our room, and upon each occasion, when I rushed after him and forced him back, he made no denial of my charge that he was going after the jewel.

The last time it involved us both in such a terrible struggle that I vowed then and there that the following morning should see my departure.

“I can’t stand the strain, Holmes,” said I.

“Well, if you can’t stand your strain,” said Raffles Holmes, “what do you think of mine?”

“The thing to do is to get out, that’s all,” I retorted. “I won’t have a nerve left in twenty-four hours. For four nights now I haven’t had a minute’s normal sleep, and this fight you’ve just put up has regularly knocked me out.”

“One more day Jenkins,” he pleaded. “She goes day after tomorrow, and so do we.”

“We?” I cried. “After her?”

“Nope—she to Chicago—we to New York,” said Holmes. “Stick it out, there’s a good fellow,” and of course I yielded.

The next day—Sunday—was one of feverish excitement, but we got through it without mishap, and on Monday morning it was with a sigh of relief that I saw Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe pull out of the Philadelphia station en route for Chicago, while Raffles Holmes and I returned to New York.

“Well, Raffles,” said I, as we sped on our homeward way, “we’ve had our trouble for our pains.”

He laughed crisply. “Have we?” said he. “I guess not—not unless you have lost the trunk check the porter gave you.”

“What, this brass thing?” I demanded, taking the check from my pocket and flicking it in the air like a penny.

“That very brass thing,” said Holmes.

“You haven’t lifted that damned rope and put it in my trunk!” I roared.

“Hush, Jenkins! For Heaven’s sake don’t make a scene. I haven’t done anything of the sort,” he whispered, looking about him anxiously to make sure that we had not been overheard. “Those pearls are as innocent of my touch as the top of the Himalaya Mountains is of yours.”

“Then what have you done?” I demanded, sulkily.

“Just changed a couple of trunk checks, that’s all,” said Raffles Holmes. “That bit of brass you have in your hand, which was handed to you in the station by the porter of the Garrymore, when presented at Jersey City will put you in possession of Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe’s trunk, containing the bulk of her jewels. She’s a trifle careless about her possessions, as anyone could see who watched the nonchalant way in which she paraded the board walk with a small fortune on her neck and fingers. Most women would carry such things in a small hand-satchel, or at least have the trunk sent by registered express, but not Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe; and, thanks to her loud voice, listening outside of her door last night, I heard her directing her maid where she wished the gems packed.”

“And where the dickens is my trunk?” I asked.

“On the way to Chicago,” said Raffles Holmes, calmly. “Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has the check for it.”

“Safe business!” I sneered. “Bribed the porter, I presume?”

“Jenkins, you are exceedingly uncomplimentary at times,” said Raffles Holmes, showing more resentment than I had ever given him credit for. “Perhaps you observed that I didn’t go to the station in the omnibus.”

“No, you went over to the drugstore after some phenacetine for your headache,” said I.

“Precisely,” said Holmes, “and after purchasing the phenacetine I jumped aboard the Garrymore express-wagon and got a lift over to the station. It was during that ride that I transferred Mrs. Ward-Smythe’s check from her trunk to yours, and vice versa. It’s one of the easiest jobs in the Raffles business, especially at this season of the year, when travel is heavy and porters are overworked.”

“I’ll see the trunk in the Hudson River, pearl rope and all, before I’ll claim it at Jersey City or anywhere else,” said I.

“Perfectly right,” Holmes returned. “We’ll hand the check to the expressman when he comes through the train, and neither of us need appear further in the matter. It will merely be delivered at your apartment.”

“Why not yours?” said I.

“Raffles!” said he, laconically, and I understood.

“And then what?” I asked.

“Let it alone, unopened, safe as a church, until Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe discovers her loss, which will be tomorrow afternoon, and then—”

“Well?”

“Mr. Holmes will step in, unravel the mystery, prove it to be a mere innocent mistake, collect about ten or fifteen thousand dollars reward, divvy up with you, and the decks will be cleared for what turns up next,” said this wonderful player of dangerous games. “And, as a beginning, Jenkins, please sign this,” he added.

Holmes handed me a typewritten-letter which read as follows.

THE RICHMORE,
June 30, 1905.

Raffles Holmes, Esq.

Dear Sir,—I enclose herewith my check for $1,000 as a retainer for your services in locating for me a missing trunk, which contains articles which I value at $10,000. This trunk was checked through to New York from Atlantic City on Monday last, 9:40 train, and has not since been found. Whether or not it has been stolen, or has gone astray in some wholly innocent manner, is not as yet clear. I know of no one better equipped for the task of finding it for me than yourself, who, I am given to understand, are the son of the famous Sherlock Holmes of England. The check represents the ten percent commission on the value of the lost articles, which I believe is the customary fee for services such as I seek.

Very truly yours.

“What are you going to do with this?” I demanded.

“Send it as an enclosure to Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe, showing my credentials as your agent, in asking her if by any mischance your trunk has got mixed in with her luggage,” observed Holmes. “For form’s sake, I shall send it to twenty or thirty other people known to have left Atlantic City the same day. Moreover, it will suggest the idea to Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe that I am a good man to locate her trunk also, and the delicate intimation of my terms will—”

“Aha! I see,” said I. “And my thousand-dollar check to you?”

“I shall, of course, keep,” observed Holmes. “You want the whole business to be bona fide, don’t you? It would be unscrupulous for you to ask for its return.”

I didn’t exactly like the idea, but, after all, there was much in what Holmes said, and the actual risk of my own capital relieved my conscience of the suspicion that by signing the letter I should become a partner in a confidence game. Hence I signed the note, mailed it to Raffles Holmes, enclosing my check for $1,000 with it.

Three days later Holmes entered my room with a broad grin on his face.

“How’s this for business?” said he, handing me a letter he had received that morning from Chicago.

Dear Sir,—I am perfectly delighted to receive your letter of July 1. I think I have Mr. Jenkins’s missing trunk. What pleases me most, however, is the possibility of your recovering mine, which also went astray at the same time. It contained articles of even greater value than Mr. Jenkins’s—my pearl rope, among other things, which is appraised at $130,000. Do you think there is any chance of your recovering it for me? I enclose my check for $5,000 as a retainer. The balance of your ten percent fee I shall gladly pay on receipt of my missing luggage.

Most sincerely yours,

Maude Ward-Smythe.

“I rather think, my dear Jenkins,” observed Raffles Holmes, “that we have that $13,000 reward cinched.”

•    •    •

“There’s $7,000 for you, Jenkins,” said Holmes, a week later, handing me his check for that amount. “Easy money that. It only took two weeks to turn the trick, and $14,000 for fourteen days’ work is pretty fair pay. If we could count on that for a steady income I think I’d be able to hold Raffles down without your assistance.”

“You got fourteen thousand, eh?” said I. “I thought it was only to be $13,000.”

“It was fourteen thousand counting in your $1,000,” said Raffles Holmes. “You see, I’m playing on the square, old man. Half and half in everything.”

I squeezed his hand affectionately.

“But—he-ew!” I ejaculated, with a great feeling of relief. “I’m glad the thing’s over with.”

“So am I,” said Holmes, with a glitter in his eye. “If we’d kept that trunk in this apartment another day there’d have been trouble. I had a piece of lead-pipe up my sleeve when I called here Tuesday night.”

“What for?” I asked.

“You!” said Raffles Holmes. “If you hadn’t had that poker-party with you I’d have knocked you out and gone to China with the Ward-Smythe jewels. Sherlock Holmes stock was ’way below par Tuesday night.”

VI

THE ADVENTURE
OF THE HIRED BURGLAR

I had not seen Raffles Holmes for some weeks, nor had I heard from him, although I had faithfully remitted to his address his share of the literary proceeds of his adventures as promptly as circumstances permitted—$600 on the first tale, $920 on the second, and no less than $1,800 on the third, showing a constantly growing profit on our combination from my side of the venture. These checks had not even been presented for payment at the bank. Fearing from this that he might be ill, I called at Holmes’s lodgings in the Rexmere, a well-established bachelor apartment hotel, on Forty-fourth Street, to inquire as to the state of his health. The clerk behind the desk greeted my cordially as I entered, and bade me go at once to Holmes’s apartment on the eighteenth floor, which I immediately proceeded to do.

“Here is Mr. Holmes’s latch-key, sir,” said the clerk. “He told me you were to have access to his apartment at any time.”

“He is in, is he?” I asked.

“I really don’t know, sir. I will call up and inquire, if you wish,” replied the clerk.

“Oh, never mind,” said I. “I’ll go up, anyhow, and if he is out, I’ll wait.”

So up I went, and a few moments later had entered the apartment. As the door opened, the little private hallway leading to his den at the rear burst into a flood of light, and from an inner room, the entrance to which was closed, I could hear Holmes’s voice cheerily caroling out snatches of such popular airs as “Tammany” and “Ef Yo’ Habn’t Got No Money Yo’ Needn’t Bodder Me.”

I laughed quietly and at the same time breathed a sigh of relief. It was very evident from the tone of his voice that there was nothing serious the matter with my friend and partner.

“Hullo, Raffles!” I called out, knocking on the door to the inner room.

“Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee;

Swampum, swampum,

Get their wampum,

Tam-ma-nee,”

was the sole answer, and in such fortissimo tones that I was not surprised that he did not hear me.

“Oh, I say, Raffles,” I hallooed, rapping on the door again, this time with the head of my cane. “It’s Jenkins, old man. Came to look you up. Was afraid something had happened to you.”

“’Way down upon the Suwanee River,

Far, far away,

Dere’s whar my heart am turnin’ ever,

Dere’s whar de ole folks stay,”

was the reply.

Again I laughed.

“He’s suffering from a bad attack of coonitis this evening,” I observed to myself. “Looks to me as if I’d have to let it run its course.”

Whereupon I retired to a very comfortable couch near the window and sat down to await the termination of the musical.

Five minutes later the singing having shown no signs of abatement I became impatient, and a third assault on the door followed, this time with cane, hands, and toes in unison.

“I’ll have him out this time or die!” I ejaculated, filled with resolve, and then began such a pounding upon the door as should have sufficed to awake a dead Raffles, not to mention a living one.

“Hi, there, Jenkins!” cried a voice behind me, in the midst of this operation, identically the same voice, too, as that still going on in the room in front of me. “What the dickens are you trying to do—batter the house down?”

I whirled about like a flash, and was deeply startled to see Raffles himself standing by the divan I had just vacated, divesting himself of his gloves and light overcoat.

“You—Raffles?” I roared in astonishment.

“Yep,” said he. “Who else?”

“But the—the other chap—in the room there?”

“Oh,” laughed Raffles. “That’s my alibi-prover—hold on a minute and I’ll show you.”

Whereupon he unlocked the door into the bedroom, whence had come the tuneful lyrics, threw it wide open, and revealed to my astonished gaze no less an object than a large talking-machine still engaged in the strenuous fulfilment of its noisy mission.

“What the dickens!” I said.

“It’s attached to my front door,” said Raffles, silencing the machine. “The minute the door is opened it begins to sing like the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”

“But what good is it?” said I.

“Oh, well—it keeps the servants from spending too much time in my apartment, snooping among my papers, perhaps; and it may someday come in useful in establishing an alibi if things go wrong with me. You’d have sworn I was in there just now, wouldn’t you?”

“I would indeed,” said I.

“Well—you see, I wasn’t, so there you are,” said Raffles Holmes. “By-the-way, you’ve come at an interesting moment. There’ll be things doing before the evening is over. I’ve had an anxious caller here five times already today. I’ve been standing in the barbershop opposite getting a line on him. His card name is Grouch, his real name is—”

Here Raffles Holmes leaned forward and whispered in my ear a name of such eminent respectability that I fairly gasped.

“You don’t mean the Mr. ———”

“Nobody else,” said Raffles Holmes. “Only he don’t know I know who he is. The third time Grouch called I trailed him to Blank’s house, and then recognized him as Blank himself.”

“And what does he want with you?” I asked.

“That remains to be seen,” said Raffles Holmes. “All I know is that next Tuesday he will be required to turn over $100,000 unregistered bonds to a young man about to come of age, for whom he has been a trustee.”

“Aha!” said I. “And you think—”

“I don’t think, Jenkins, until the time comes. Gray matter is scarce these times, and I’m not wasting any of mine on unnecessary speculation,” said Raffles Holmes.

At this point the telephone-bell rang and Raffles answered the summons.

“Yes, I’ll see Mr. Grouch. Show him up,” he said. “It would be mighty interesting reading if some newspaper showed him up,” he added, with a grin, as he returned. “By-the-way, Jenkins, I think you’d better go in there and have a half-hour’s chat with the talking-machine. I have an idea old man Grouch won’t have much to say with a third party present. Listen all you want to, but don’t breathe too loud or you’ll frighten him away.”

I immediately retired, and a moment later Mr. Grouch entered Raffles Holmes’s den.

“Glad to see you,” said Raffles Holmes, cordially. “I was wondering how soon you’d be here.”

“You expected me, then?” asked the visitor, in surprise.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “Next Tuesday is young Wilbraham’s twenty-first birthday, and—”

Peering through a crack in the door I could see Grouch stagger.

“You—you know my errand, then?” he gasped out.

“Only roughly, Mr. Grouch,” said Holmes, coolly. “Only roughly. But I am very much afraid that I can’t do what you want me to. Those bonds are doubtless in some broker’s box in a safe-deposit company, and I don’t propose to try to borrow them surreptitiously, even temporarily, from an incorporated institution. It is not only a dangerous but a criminal operation. Does your employer know that you have taken them?”

“My employer?” stammered Grouch, taken off his guard.

“Yes. Aren’t you the confidential secretary of Mr. ———?” Here Holmes mentioned the name of the eminent financier and philanthropist. No one would have suspected, from the tone of his voice, that Holmes was perfectly aware that Grouch and the eminent financier were one and the same person. The idea seemed to please and steady the visitor.

“Why—ah—yes—I am Mr. Blank’s confidential secretary,” he blurted out. “And—ah—of course Mr. Blank does not know that I have speculated with the bonds and lost them.”

“The bonds are—”

“In the hands of Bunker & Burke. I had hoped you would be able to suggest some way in which I could get hold of them long enough to turn them over to young Wilbraham, and then, in some other way, to restore them later to Bunker & Burke.”

“That is impossible,” said Raffles Holmes. “For the reasons stated, I cannot be party to a criminal operation.”

“It will mean ruin for me if it cannot be done,” moaned Grouch. “For Mr. Blank as well, Mr. Holmes; he is so deep in the market he can’t possibly pull out. I thought possibly you knew of some reformed cracksman who would do this one favor for me just to tide things over. All we need is three weeks’ time—three miserable little weeks.”

“Can’t be done with a safe-deposit company at the other end of the line,” said Raffles Holmes. “If it were Mr. Blank’s own private vault at his home it would be different. That would be a matter between gentlemen, between Mr. Blank and myself, but the other would put a corporation on the trail of the safe-breaker—an uncompromising situation.”

Grouch’s eye glistened.

“You know a man who, for a consideration and with a guarantee against prosecution, would break open my—I mean Mr. Blank’s private vault?” he cried.

“I think so,” said Raffles Holmes, noncommittally. “Not as a crime, however, merely as a favor, and with the lofty purpose of saving an honored name from ruin. My advice to you would be to put a dummy package, supposed to contain the missing bonds, along with about $30,000 worth of other securities in that vault, and so arrange matters that on the night preceding the date of young Wilbraham’s majority, the man I will send you shall have the opportunity to crack it open and get away with the stuff unmolested and unseen. Next day young Wilbraham will see for himself why it is that Mr. Blank cannot turn over the trust. That is the only secure and I may say decently honest way out of your trouble.”

“Mr. Raffles Holmes, you are a genius!” cried Grouch, ecstatically. And then he calmed down again as an unpleasant thought flashed across his mind. “Why is it necessary to put $30,000 additional in the safe, Mr. Holmes?”

“Simply as a blind,” said Holmes. “Young Wilbraham would be suspicious if the burglar got away with nothing but his property, wouldn’t he?”

“Quite so,” said Grouch. “And now, Mr. Holmes, what will this service cost me?”

“Five thousand dollars,” said Holmes.

“Phe-e-e-w!” whistled Grouch. “Isn’t that pretty steep?”

“No, Mr. Grouch. I save two reputations—yours and Mr. Blank’s. Twenty-five hundred dollars is not much to pay for a reputation these days—I mean a real one, of course, such as yours is up to date,” said Holmes, coldly.

“Payable by certified check?” said Grouch.

“Not much,” laughed Holmes. “In twenty-dollar bills, Mr. Grouch. You may leave them in the safe along with the other valuables.”

“Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” said Grouch, rising. “It shall be as you say. Before I go, sir, may I ask how you knew me and by what principle of deduction you came to guess my business so accurately?”

“It was simple enough,” said Holmes. “I knew, in the first place, that so eminent a person as Mr. Blank would not come to me in the guise of a Mr. Grouch if he hadn’t some very serious trouble on his mind. I knew, from reading the society items in the Whirald, that Mr. Bobby Wilbraham would celebrate the attainment of his majority by a big fête on the 17th of next month. Everybody knows that Mr. Blank is Mr. Wilbraham’s trustee until he comes of age. It was easy enough to surmise from that what the nature of the trouble was. Two and two almost invariably make four, Mr. Grouch.”

“And how the devil,” demanded Grouch, angrily—“how the devil did you know I was Blank?”

“Mr. Blank passes the plate at the church I go to every Sunday,” said Holmes, laughing, “and it would take a great sight more than a two-dollar wig and a pair of fifty-cent whiskers to conceal that pompous manner of his.”

“Tush! You would better not make me angry, Mr. Holmes,” said Grouch, reddening.

“You can get as angry as you think you can afford to, for all I care, Mr. Blank,” said Holmes. “It’s none of my funeral, you know.”

And so the matter was settled. The unmasked Blank, seeing that wrath was useless, calmed down and accepted Holmes’s terms and method for his relief.

“I’ll have my man there at four a.m., October seventeenth, Mr. Blank,” said Holmes. “See that your end of it is ready. The coast must be kept clear or the scheme falls through.”

Grouch went heavily out, and Holmes called me back into the room.

“Jenkins,” said he, “that man is one of the biggest scoundrels in creation, and I’m going to give him a jolt.”

“Where are you going to get the retired burglar?” I asked.

“Sir,” returned Raffles Holmes, “this is to be a personally conducted enterprise. It’s a job worthy of my grandsire on my mother’s side. Raffles will turn the trick.”

And it turned out so to be, for the affair went through without a hitch. The night of October 16th I spend at Raffles’s apartments. He was as calm as though nothing unusual were on hand. He sang songs, played the piano, and up to midnight was as gay and skittish as a schoolboy on vacation. As twelve o’clock struck, however, he sobered down, put on his hat and coat, and, bidding me remain where I was, departed by means of the fire-escape.

“Keep up the talk, Jenkins,” he said. “The walls are thin here, and it’s just as well, in matters of this sort, that our neighbors should have the impression that I have not gone out. I’ve filled the machine up with a choice lot of songs and small-talk to take care of my end of it. A consolidated gas company, like yourself, should have no difficulty in filling in the gaps.”

And with that he left me to as merry and withal as nervous a three hours as I ever spent in my life. Raffles had indeed filled that talking-machine—thirteen full cylinders of it—with as choice an assortment of causeries and humorous anecdotes as anyone could have wished to hear. Now and again it would bid me cheer up and not worry about him. Once, along about two a.m., it cried out: “You ought to see me now, Jenkins. I’m right in the middle of this Grouch job, and it’s a dandy. I’ll teach him a lesson.” The effect of all this was most uncanny. It was as if Raffles Holmes himself spoke to me from the depths of that dark room in the Blank household, where he was engaged in an enterprise of dreadful risk merely to save the good name of one who no longer deserved to bear such a thing. In spite of all this, however, as the hours passed I began to grow more and more nervous. The talking-machine sang and chattered, but when four o’clock came and Holmes had not yet returned, I became almost frenzied with excitement—and then at the climax of the tension came the flash of his dark-lantern on the fire-escape, and he climbed heavily into the room.

“Thank Heaven you’re back,” I cried.

“You have reason to,” said Holmes, sinking into a chair. “Give me some whiskey. That man Blank is a worse scoundrel than I took him for.”

“What’s happened?” I asked. “Didn’t he play square?”

“No,” said Holmes, breathing heavily. “He waited until I had busted the thing open and was on my way out in the dark hall, and then pounced on me with his butler and valet. I bowled the butler down the kitchen stairs, and sent the valet howling into the dining-room with an appendicitis jab in the stomach and had the pleasure of blacking both of Mr. Blank’s eyes.”

“And the stuff?”

“Right here,” said Holmes, tapping his chest. “I was afraid something might happen on the way out and I kept both hands free. I haven’t much confidence in philanthropists like Blank. Fortunately the scrimmage was in the dark, so Blank will never know who hit him.”

“What are you going to do with the $35,000?” I queried, as we went over the booty later and found it all there.

“Don’t know—haven’t made up my mind,” said Holmes, laconically. “I’m too tired to think about that now. It’s me for bed.” And with that he turned in.

Two days later, about nine o’clock in the evening, Mr. Grouch again called, and Holmes received him courteously.

“Well, Mr. Holmes,” Grouch observed, unctuously, rubbing his hands together, “it was a nice job, neatly done. It saved the day for me. Wilbraham was satisfied, and has given me a whole year to make good the loss. My reputation is saved, and—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Blank—or Grouch—er—to what do you refer?” asked Holmes.

“Why, our little transaction of Monday night—or was it Tuesday morning?” said Grouch.

“Oh—that!” said Holmes. “Well, I’m glad to hear you managed to pull it off satisfactorily. I was a little worried about it. I was afraid you were done for.”

“Done for?” said Grouch. “No, indeed. The little plan when off without a hitch.”

“Good,” said Holmes. “I congratulate you. Whom did you get to do the job?”

“Who—what—what—why, what do you mean, Mr. Holmes?” gasped Grouch.

“Precisely what I say—or maybe you don’t like to tell me—such things are apt to be on a confidential basis. Anyhow, I’m glad you’re safe, Mr. Grouch, and I hope your troubles are over.”

“They will be when you give me back my $30,000,” said Grouch.

“Your what?” demanded Holmes, with well-feigned surprise.

“My $30,000,” repeated Blank, his voice rising to a shout.

“My dear Mr. Grouch,” said Holmes, “how should I know anything about your $30,000?”

“Didn’t your—your man take it?” demanded Grouch, huskily.

“My man? Really, Mr. Grouch, you speak in riddles this evening. Pray make yourself more clear.”

“Your reformed burglar, who broke open my safe, and—” Grouch went on.

“I have no such man, Mr. Grouch.”

“Didn’t you send a man to my house, Mr. Raffles, to break open my safe, and take certain specified parcels of negotiable property therefrom?” said Grouch, rising and pounding the table with his fists.

“I did not!” returned Holmes, with equal emphasis. “I have never in my life sent anybody to your house, sir.”

“Then who in the name of Heaven did?” roared Grouch. “The stuff is gone.”

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

“I am willing,” said he, calmly, “to undertake to find out who did it, if anybody, if that is what you mean, Mr. Grouch. Ferreting out crime is my profession. Otherwise, I beg to assure you that my interest in the case ceases at this moment.”

Here Holmes rose with quiet dignity and walked to the door.

“You will find me at my office in the morning, Mr. Grouch.” he remarked, “in case you wish to consult me professionally.”

“Hah!” sneered Grouch. “You think you can put me off this way, do you?”

“I think so,” said Holmes, with a glittering eye. “No gentleman or other person may try to raise a disturbance in my private apartments and remain there.”

“We’ll see what the police have to say about this, Mr. Raffles Holmes,” Grouch shrieked, as he made for the door.

“Very well,” said Holmes. “I’ve no doubt they will find our discussion of the other sinners very interesting. They are welcome to the whole story as far as I am concerned.”

And he closed the door on the ashen face of the suffering Mr. Grouch.

•    •    •

“What shall I do with your share of the $30,000, Jenkins?” said Raffles Holmes a week later.

“Anything you please,” said I. “Only don’t offer any of it to me. I can’t question the abstract justice of your mulcting old Blank for the amount, but, somehow or other, I don’t want any of it myself. Send it to the Board of Foreign Missions.”

“Good!” said Holmes. “That’s what I’ve done with my share. See!”

And he showed me an evening paper in which the board conveyed its acknowledgment of the generosity of an unknown donor of the princely sum of $15,000.

VII

THE REDEMPTION
OF YOUNG BILLINGTON RAND

“Jenkins,” said Raffles Holmes, lighting his pipe and throwing himself down upon my couch, “don’t you sometimes pine for those good old days of Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin? Hang it all—I’m getting blisteringly tired of the modern refinements in crime, and yearn for the period when the highwayman met you on the road and made you stand and deliver at the point of the pistol.”

“Indeed I don’t!” I ejaculated. “I’m not chicken-livered, Raffles, but I’m mighty glad my lines are cast in less strenuous scenes. When a book-agent comes in here, for instance, and holds me up for nineteen dollars a volume for a set of Kipling in words of one syllable, illustrated by his aunt, and every volume autographed by his uncle’s stepsister, it’s a game of wits between us as to whether I shall buy or not buy, and if he gets away with my signature to a contract it is because he has legitimately outwitted me. But your ancient Turpin overcame you by brute force; you hadn’t a run for your money from the moment he got his eye on you, and no percentage of the swag was ever returned to you as in the case of the Double-Cross Edition of Kipling, in which you get at least fifty cents worth of paper and print for every nineteen dollars you give up.”

“That is merely the commercial way of looking at it,” protested Holmes. “You reckon up the situation on a basis of mere dollars, strike a balance and charge the thing up to profit and loss. But the romance of it all, the element of the picturesque, the delicious, tingling sense of adventure which was inseparable from a road experience with a commanding personality like Turpin—these things are all lost in your prosaic book-agent methods of our day. No man writing his memoirs for the enlightenment of posterity would ever dream of setting down upon paper the story of how a book-agent robbed him of two-hundred dollars, but the chap who has been held up in the dark recesses of a forest on a foggy night by a Jack Sheppard would always find breathless and eager listeners to or readers of the tale he had to tell, even if he lost only a nickel by the transaction.”

“Well, old man,” said I, “I’m satisfied with the prosaic methods of the gas companies, the book-agents, and the riggers of the stock-market. Give me Wall Street and you take Dick Turpin and all his crew. But what has set your mind to working on the Dick Turpin end of it anyhow? Thinking of going in for that sort of thing yourself?”

“M-m-m yes,” replied Holmes, hesitatingly. “I am. Not that I pine to become one of the Broom Squires myself, but because I—well, I may be forced into it.”

“Take my advice, Raffles,” I interrupted, earnestly. “Let firearms and highways alone. There’s too much of battle, murder, and sudden death in loaded guns, and surplus of publicity in street work.”

“You mustn’t take me so literally, Jenkins,” he retorted. “I’m not going to follow precisely in the steps of Turpin, but a holdup on the public highway seems to be the only way out of a problem which I have been employed to settle. Do you know young Billington Rand?”

“By sight,” said I, with a laugh. “And by reputation. You’re not going to hold him up, are you?” I added, contemptuously.

“Why not?” said Holmes.

“It’s like breaking into an empty house in search of antique furniture,” I explained. “Common report has it that Billington Rand has already been skinned by about every skinning agency in town. He’s posted at all his clubs. Every gambler in town, professional as well as social, has his I.O.U.’s for bridge, poker, and faro debts. Everybody knows it except those fatuous people down in the Kenesaw National Bank, where he’s employed, and the Fidelity Company that’s on his bond. He wouldn’t last five minutes in either place if his uncle wasn’t a director in both concerns.”

“I see that you have a pretty fair idea of Billington Rand’s financial condition,” said Holmes.

“It’s rather common talk in the clubs, so why shouldn’t I?” I put in. “Holding him up would be at most an act of petit larceny, if you measure a crime by what you get out of it. It’s a great shame, though, for at heart Rand is one of the best fellows in the world. He’s a man who has all the modern false notions of what a fellow ought to do to keep up what he calls his end. He plays cards and sustains ruinous losses because he thinks he won’t be considered a good fellow if he stays out. He plays bridge with ladies and pays up when he loses and doesn’t collect when he wins. Win or lose he’s doomed to be on the wrong side of the market just because of those very qualities that make him a lovable person—kind to everybody but himself, and weak as dish-water. For Heaven’s sake, Raffles, if the poor devil has anything left don’t take it from him.”

“Your sympathy for Rand does you credit,” said Holmes. “But I have just as much of that as you have, and that is why, at half-past five o’clock tomorrow afternoon, I’m going to hold him up, in the public eye, and incontinently rob him of $25,000.”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars? Billington Rand?” I gasped.

“Twenty-five thousand dollars. Billington Rand,” repeated Holmes, firmly. “If you don’t believe it come along and see. He doesn’t know you, does he?”

“Not from Adam,” said I.

“Very good—then you’ll be safe as a church. Meet me in the Fifth Avenue Hotel corridor at five tomorrow afternoon and I’ll show you as pretty a holdup as you ever dreamed of,” said Holmes.

“But—I can’t take part in a criminal proceeding like that, Holmes,” I protested.

“You won’t have to—even if it were a criminal proceeding, which it is not,” he returned. “Nobody outside of you and me will know anything about it but Rand himself, and the chances that he will peach are less than a millionth part of a half percent Anyhow, all you need be is a witness.”

There was a long and uneasy silence. I was far from liking the job, but after all, so far, Holmes had not led me into any difficulties of a serious nature, and, knowing him as I had come to know him, I had a hearty belief that any wrong he did was temporary and was sure to be rectified in the long run.

“I’ve a decent motive in all this, Jenkins,” he resumed in a few moments. “Don’t forget that. This holdup is going to result in a reformation that will be for the good of everybody, so don’t have any scruples on that score.”

“All right, Raffles,” said I. “You’ve always played straight with me, so far, and I don’t doubt your word—only I hate the highway end of it.”

“Tutt, Jenkins!” he ejaculated, with a laugh and giving me a whack on the shoulders that nearly toppled me over into the fireplace. “Don’t be a rabbit. The thing will be as easy as cutting calf’s-foot jelly with a razor.”

Thus did I permit myself to be persuaded, and the next afternoon at five, Holmes and I met in the corridor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

“Come on,” he said, after the first salutations were over. “Rand will be at the Thirty-third Street subway at 5:15, and it is important that we should catch him before he gets to Fifth Avenue.”

“I’m glad it’s to be on a side street,” I remarked, my heart beating rapidly with excitement over the work in hand, for the more I thought of the venture the less I liked it.

“Oh, I don’t know that it will be,” said Holmes, carelessly. “I may pull it off in the corridors of the Powhatan.”

The pumps in my heart reversed their action and for a moment I feared I should drop with dismay.

“In the Powhatan—” I began.

“Shut up, Jenkins!” said Holmes, imperatively. “This is no time for protests. We’re in it now and there’s no drawing back.”

Ten minutes later we stood at the intersection of Thirty-third Street and Fifth Avenue. Holmes’s eyes flashed and his whole nervous system quivered as with the joy of the chase.

“Keep your mouth shut, Jenkins, and you’ll see a pretty sight,” he whispered, “for here comes our man.”

Sure enough, there was Billington Rand on the other side of the street, walking along nervously and clutching an oblong package, wrapped in brown paper, firmly in his right hand.

“Now for it,” said Holmes, and we crossed the street, scarcely reaching the opposite curb before Rand was upon us. Rand eyed us closely and shied off to one side as Holmes blocked his progress.

“I’ll trouble you for that package, Mr. Rand,” said Holmes, quietly.

The man’s face went white and he caught his breath.

“Who the devil are you?” he demanded, angrily.

“That has nothing to do with the case.” retorted Holmes. “I want that package or—”

“Get out of my way!” cried Rand, with a justifiable show of resentment. “Or I’ll call an officer.”

“Will you?” said Holmes, quietly. “Will you call an officer and so make known to the authorities that you are in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars worth of securities that belong to other people, which are supposed at this moment to be safely locked up in the vaults of the Kenesaw National Back along with other collateral?”

Rand staggered back against the newel-post of a brownstone stoop, and stood there gazing wildly into Holmes’s face.

“Of course, if you prefer having the facts made known in that way,” Holmes continued, coolly, “you have the option. I am not going to use physical force to persuade you to hand the package over to me, but you are a greater fool than I take you for if you choose that alternative. To use an expressive modern phrase, Mr. Billington Rand, you will be caught with the goods on, and unless you have a far better explanation of how those securities happen in your possession at this moment than I think you have, there is no power on earth can keep you from landing in state prison.”

The unfortunate victim of Holmes’s adventure fairly gasped in his combined rage and fright. Twice he attempted to speak, but only inarticulate sounds issued from his lips.

“You are, of course, very much disturbed at the moment,” Holmes went on, “and I am really very sorry if anything I have done has disarranged any honorable enterprise in which you have embarked. I don’t wish to hurry you into a snap decision, which you may repent later, only either the police or I must have that package within an hour. It is for you to say which of us is to get it. Suppose we run over to the Powhatan and discuss the matter calmly over a bottle of Glengarry? Possibly I can convince you that it will be for your own good to do precisely as I tell you and very much to your disadvantage to do otherwise.”

Rand, stupefied by this sudden intrusion upon his secret by an utter stranger, lost what little fight there was left in him, and at least seemed to assent to Holmes’s proposition. The latter linked arms with him, and in a few minutes we walked into the famous hostelry just as if we were three friends, bent only upon having a pleasant chat over a café table.

“What’ll you have, Mr. Rand?” asked Holmes, suavely. “I’m elected for the Glengarry special, with a little carbonic on the side.”

“Same,” said Rand, laconically.

“Sandwich with it?” asked Holmes. “You’d better.”

“Oh, I can’t eat anything,” began Rand. “I—”

“Bring us some sandwiches, waiter,” said Holmes. “Two Glengarry special, a syphon of carbonic, and—Jenkins, what’s yours?”

The calmness and the cheek of the fellow!

“I’m not in on this at all,” I retorted, angered by Holmes’s use of my name. “And I want Mr. Rand to understand—”

“Oh, tutt!” ejaculated Holmes. “He knows that. Mr. Rand, my friend Jenkins has no connection with this enterprise of mine, and he’s done his level best to dissuade me from holding you up so summarily. All he’s along for is to write the thing up for—”

“The newspapers?” cried Rand, now thoroughly frightened.

“No,” laughed Holmes. “Nothing so useful—the magazines.”

Holmes winked at me as he spoke, and I gathered that there was method in his apparent madness.

“That’s one of the points you want to consider, though, Mr. Rand,” he said, leaning upon the table with his elbows. “Think of the newspapers tomorrow morning if you call the police rather than hand that package over to me. It’ll be a big sensation for Wall Street and upper Fifth Avenue, to say nothing of what the yellows will make of the story for the rest of hoi polloi. The newsboys will be yelling extras all over town, printed in great, red letters, ‘A Club-man Held-Up in Broad Daylight, For $25,000 In Securities That Didn’t Belong to Him. Billington Rand Has Something To Explain. Where Did He Get It?—”

“For Heavens sake, man! don’t!” pleased the unfortunate Billington. “God! I never thought of that.”

“Of course you didn’t think of that,” said Holmes. “That’s why I’m telling you about it now. You don’t dispute my facts, do you?”

“No, I—” Rand began.

“Of course not,” said Holmes. “You might as well dispute the existence of the Flat-iron Building. If you don’t want tomorrow’s papers to be full of this thing you’ll hand that package over to me.”

“But,” protested Rand, “I’m only taking them up to—to a—er—to a broker.” Here he gathered himself together and spoke with greater assurance. “I am delivering them, sir, to a broker, on behalf of one of our depositors who—”

“Who has been speculating with what little money he had left, has lost his margins, and is now forced into an act of crime to protect his speculation,” said Holmes. “The broker is the notorious William C. Gallagher, who runs an uptown bucket-shop for speculative ladies to lose their pin-money and bridge winnings in, and your depositor’s name is Billington Rand, Esq.—otherwise yourself.”

“How do you know all this?” gasped Rand.

“Oh—maybe I read it on the ticker,” laughed Holmes. “Or, what is more likely, possibly I overheard Gallagher recommending you to dip into the bank’s collateral to save your investment, at Green’s chop-house last night.”

“You were at Green’s chop-house last night?” cried Rand.

“In the booth adjoining your own, and I heard every word you said,” said Holmes.

“Well, I don’t see why I should give the stuff to you anyhow,” growled Rand.

“Chiefly because I happen to be long on information which would be of interest, not only to the police, but to the president and board of directors of the Kenesaw National Back, Mr. Rand,” said Holmes. “It will be a simple matter for me to telephone Mr. Horace Huntington, the president of your institution, and put him wise to this transaction of yours, and that is the second thing I shall do immediately you have decided not to part with that package.”

“The second thing?” Rand whimpered. “What will you do first?”

“Communicate with the first policeman we meet when we leave here,” said Holmes. “But take your time, Mr. Rand—take your time. Don’t let me hurry you into a decision. Try a little of this Glengarry and we’ll drink hearty to a sensible conclusion.”

“I—I’ll put them back in the vaults tomorrow,” pleaded Rand.

“Can’t trust you, my boy,” said Holmes. “Not with a persuasive crook like old Bucket-shop Gallagher on your trail. They’re safer with me.”

Rand’s answer was a muttered oath as he tossed the package across the table and started to leave us.

“One word more, Mr. Rand,” said Holmes, detaining him. “Don’t do anything rash. There’s a lot of good-fellowship between criminals, and I’ll stand by you all right. So far nobody knows you took these things, and even when they turn up missing, if you go about your work as if nothing had happened, while you may be suspected, nobody can prove that you got the goods.”

Rand’s face brightened at this remark.

“By Jove!—that’s true enough,” said he. “Excepting Gallagher,” he added, his face falling.

“Pah for Gallagher!” cried Holmes, snapping his fingers contemptuously. “If he as much as peeped we could put him in jail, and if he sells you out you tell him for me that I’ll land him in Sing Sing for a term of years. He led you into this—”

“He certainly did,” moaned Rand.

“And he’s got to get you out,” said Holmes. “Now, goodbye, old man. The worst that can happen to you is a few judgments instead of penal servitude for eight or ten years, unless you are foolish enough to try another turn of this sort, and then you may not happen on a good-natured highwayman like myself to get you out of your troubles. By-the-way, what is the combination of the big safe in the outer office of the Kenesaw National?”

“One-eight-nine-seven,” said Rand.

“Thanks,” said Holmes, jotting it down coolly in his memorandum-book. “That’s a good thing to know.”

•    •    •

That night, shortly before midnight, Holmes left me. “I’ve got to finish this job,” said he. “The most ticklish part of the business is yet to come.”

“Great Scott, Holmes!” I cried. “Isn’t the thing done?”

“No—of course not,” he replied. “I’ve got to bust open the Kenesaw safe.”

“Now, my dear Raffles,” I began, “why aren’t you satisfied with what you’ve done already. Why must you—”

“Shut up, Jenkins,” he interrupted, with a laugh. “If you knew what I was going to do you wouldn’t kick—that is, unless you’ve turned crook too?”

“Not I,” said I, indignantly.

“You don’t expect me to keep these bonds, do you?” he asked.

“But what are you going to do with them?” I retorted.

“Put ’em back in the Kenesaw Bank, where they belong, so that they’ll be found there tomorrow morning. As sure as I don’t, Billington Rand is doomed,” said he. “It’s a tough job, but I’ve been paid a thousand dollars by his family, to find out what he’s up to, and by thunder, after following his trail for three weeks, I’ve got such a liking for the boy that I’m going to save him if it can be done, and if there’s any Raffles left in me, such a simple proposition as cracking a bank and putting the stuff back where it belongs, in a safe of which I have the combination, isn’t going to stand in my way. Don’t fret, old man, it’s as good as done. Good night.”

And Raffles Holmes was off. I passed a feverish night, but at five o’clock the following morning a telephone message set all my misgivings at rest.

“Hello, Jenkins!” came Raffles’s voice over the wire.

“Hello,” I replied.

“Just rang you up to let you know that it’s all right. The stuff’s replaced. Easiest job ever—like opening oysters. Pleasant dreams to you,” he said, and, click, the connection was broken.

Two weeks later Billington Rand resigned from the Kenesaw Bank and went West, where he is now leading the simple life on a sheep-ranch. His resignation was accepted with regret, and the board of directors, as a special mark of their liking, voted him a gift of $2,500 for faithful services.

“And the best part of it was,” said Holmes, when he told me of the young man’s good fortune, “that his accounts were as straight as a string.”

“Holmes, you are a bully chap!” I cried, in a sudden excess of enthusiasm. “You do things for nothing sometimes—”

“Nothing!” echoed Holmes—“nothing! Why, that job was worth a million dollars to me, Jenkins—but not in coin. Just in good solid satisfaction in saving a fine young chap like Billington Rand from the clutches of a sharper and sneaking skinflint like old Bucket-shop Gallagher.”

VIII

“THE NOSTALGIA
OF NERVY JIM THE SNATCHER”

Raffles Holmes was unusually thoughtful the other night when he entered my apartment, and for a long time I could get nothing out of him save an occasional grunt of assent or dissent from propositions advanced by myself. It was quite evident that he was cogitating deeply over some problem that was more than ordinarily vexatious, so I finally gave up all efforts at conversation, pushed the cigars closer to him, poured him out a stiff dose of his favorite Glengarry, and returned to my own work. It was a full hour before he volunteered an observation of any kind, and then he plunged rapidly into a very remarkable tale.

“I had a singular adventure today, Jenkins,” he said. “Do you happen to have in your set of my father’s adventures a portrait of Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yes, I have,” I replied. “But you don’t need anything of the kind to refresh your memory of him. All you have to do is to look at yourself in the glass, and you’ve got the photograph before you.”

“I am so like him then?” he queried.

“Most of the time, old man, I am glad to say,” said I. “There are days when you are the living image of your grandfather Raffles, but that is only when you are planning some scheme of villainy. I can almost invariably detect the trend of your thoughts by a glance at your face—you are Holmes himself in your honest moments, Raffles at others. For the past week it has delighted me more than I can say to find you a facsimile of your splendid father, with naught to suggest your fascinating but vicious granddad.”

“That’s what I wanted to find out. I had evidence of it this afternoon on Broadway,” said he. “It was bitterly cold up around Fortieth Street, snowing like the devil, and such winds as you’d expect to find nowhere this side of Greenland’s icy mountains. I came out of a Broadway chop-house and started north, when I was stopped by an ill-clad, downtrodden specimen of humanity, who begged me, for the love of Heaven to give him a drink. The poor chap’s condition was such that it would have been manslaughter to refuse him, and a moment later I had him before the Skidmore bar, gurgling down a tumblerful of raw brandy as though it were water. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and turned to thank me, when a look of recognition came into his face, and he staggered back half in fear and half in amazement.

“‘Sherlock Holmes!’ he cried.

“‘Am I?’ said I, calmly, my curiosity much excited.

“‘Him or his twin!’ said he.

“‘How should you know me?’ I asked.

“‘Good reason enough,’ he muttered. “’Twas Sherlock Holmes as landed me for ten years in Reading gaol.’

“‘Well, my friend,’ I answered, ‘I’ve no doubt you deserved it if he did it. I am not Sherlock Holmes, however, but his son.’

“‘Will you let me take you by the hand, governor?’ he whispered, hoarsely. ‘Not for the kindness you’ve shown me here, but for the service your old man did me. I am Nervy Jim the Snatcher.’

“‘Service?’ said I, with a laugh. ‘You consider it a service to be landed in Reading gaol?’

“‘They was the only happy years I ever had, sir,’ he answered, impetuously. ‘The keepers was good to me. I was well fed; kept workin’ hard at an honest job, pickin’ oakum; the gaol was warm, and I never went to bed by night or got up o’ mornin’s worried over the question o’ how I was goin’ to get the swag to pay my rent. Compared to this’—with a wave of his hand at the raging of the elements along Broadway—‘Reading gaol was heaven, sir; and since I was discharged I’ve been a helpless, hopeless wanderer, sleepin’ in doorways, chilled to the bone, half-starved, with not a friendly eye in sight, and nothin’ to do all day long and all night long but move on when the Bobbies tell me to, and think about the happiness I’d left behind me when I left Reading. Was you ever homesick, governor?’

“I confessed to an occasional feeling of nostalgia for old Piccadilly and the Thames.

“‘Then you know, says he, ‘how I feels now in a strange land, dreamin’ of my comfortable little cell at Reading; the good meals, the pleasant keepers, and a steady job with nothin’ to worry about for ten short years. I want to go back, governor—I want to go back!’

“Well,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I was pretty nearly floored, but when the door of the saloon blew open and a blast of sharp air and a furry of snow came in, I couldn’t blame the poor beggar—certainly any place in the world, even a jail, was more comfortable than Broadway at that moment. I explained to him, however, that as far as Reading gaol was concerned, I was powerless to help him.

“‘But there’s just as good prisons here, ain’t there, governor?’ he pleaded.

“‘Oh yes,’ said I, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. ‘Sing Sing is a first-class, up-to-date penitentiary, with all modern improvements, and a pretty select clientele.’

“‘Couldn’t you put me in there, governor?’ he asked, wistfully. ‘I’ll do anything you ask, short o’ murder, governor, if you only will.’

“‘Why don’t you get yourself arrested as a vagrant?’ I asked. ‘That’ll give you three months on Blackwell’s Island and will tide you over the winter.’

“‘’Tain’t permanent, governor,’ he objected. ‘At the end o’ three months I’d be out and have to begin all over again. What I want is something I can count on for ten or twenty years. Besides, I has some pride, governor, and for Nervy Jim to do three months’ time—Lor’, sir, I couldn’t bring myself to nothin’ so small!’

“There was no resisting the poor cuss, Jenkins, and I promised to do what I could for him.”

“That’s a nice job,” said I. “What can you do?”

“That’s what stumps me,” said Raffles Holmes, scratching his head in perplexity. “I’ve set him up in a small tenement down on East Houston Street temporarily, and meanwhile, it’s up to me to land him in Sing Sing, where he can live comfortably for a decade or so, and I’m hanged if I know how to do it. He used to be a first-class second-story man, and in his day was an A-1 snatcher, as his name signifies and my father’s diaries attest, but I’m afraid his hand is out for a nice job such as I would care to have anything to do with myself.”

“Better let him slide, Raffles,” said I. “He introduces the third party element into our arrangement, and that’s mighty dangerous.”

“True—but consider the literary value of a chap that’s homesick for jail,” he answered, persuasively. “I don’t know, but I think he’s new.”

Ah, the insidious appeal of that man! He knew the crack in my armor, and with neatness and despatch he pierced it, and I fell.

“Well—” I demurred.

“Good,” said he. “We’ll consider it arranged. I’ll fix him out in a week.”

Holmes left me at this point, and for two days I heard nothing from him. On the morning of the third day he telephoned me to meet him at the stage-door of the Metropolitan Opera-House at four o’clock. “Bring your voice with you,” said he, enigmatically, “we may need it.” An immediate explanation of his meaning was impossible, for hardly were the words out of his mouth when he hung up the receiver and cut the connection.

“I wanted to excite your curiosity so that you would be sure to come,” he laughed, when I asked his meaning later. “You and I are going to join Mr. Conried’s selected chorus of educated persons who want to earn their grand opera instead of paying five dollars a performance for it.”

And so we did, although I objected a little at first.

“I can’t sing,” said I.

“Of course you can’t,” said he. “If you could you wouldn’t go into the chorus. But don’t bother about that, I have a slight pull here and we can get in all right as long as we are moderately intelligent, and able-bodied enough to carry a spear. By-the-way, in musical circles my name is Dickson. Don’t forget that.”

That Holmes had a pull was shortly proven, for although neither of us was more than ordinarily gifted vocally, we proved acceptable and in a short time found ourselves enrolled among the supernumeraries who make of “Lohengrin” a splendid spectacle to the eye. I found real zest in life carrying that spear, and entered into the spirit of what I presumed to be a mere frolic with enthusiasm, merely for the experience of it, to say nothing of the delight I took in the superb music, which I have always loved.

And then the eventful night came. It was Monday and the house was packed. On both sides of the curtain everything was brilliant. The cast was one of the best and the audience all that the New York audience is noted for in wealth, beauty, and social prestige, and, in the matter of jewels, of lavish display. Conspicuous in respect to the last was the ever-popular, though somewhat eccentric Mrs. Robinson-Jones, who in her grand-tier box fairly scintillated with those marvellous gems which gave her, as a musical critic, whose notes on the opera were chiefly confined to observations on its social aspects, put it, “the appearance of being lit up by electricity.” Even from where I stood, as a part and parcel of the mock king’s court on the stage, I could see the rubies and sapphires and diamonds loom large upon the horizon as the read, white, and blue emblem of our national greatness to the truly patriotic soul. Little did I dream, as I stood in the rear line of the court, clad in all the gorgeous regalia of a vocal supernumerary, and swelling the noisy welcome to the advancing Lohengrin, with my apology for a voice, how intimately associated with these lustrous headlights I was soon to be, and as Raffles Holmes and I poured out our souls in song not even his illustrious father would have guessed that he was there upon any other business than that of Mr. Conried. As far as I could see, Raffles was wrapt in the music of the moment, and not once, to my knowledge, did he seem to be aware that there was such a thing as an audience, much less one individual member of it, on the other side of the footlights. Like a member of the Old Choral Guard, he went through the work in hand as nonchalantly as though it were his regular business in life. It was during the intermission between the first and second acts that I began to suspect that there was something in the wind beside music, for Holmes’s face became set, and the resemblance to his honorable father, which had of late been so marked, seemed to dissolve itself into an unpleasant suggestion of his other forbear, the acquisitive Raffles. My own enthusiasm for our operatic experience, which I took no pains to conceal, found no response in him, and from the fall of the curtain on the first act it seemed to me as if he were trying to avoid me. So marked indeed did this desire to hold himself aloof become that I resolved to humor him in it, and instead of clinging to his side as had been my wont, I let him go his own way, and, at the beginning of the second act, he disappeared. I did not see him again until the long passage between Ortrud and Telrammund was on, when, in the semi-darkness of the stage, I caught sight of him hovering in the vicinity of the electric switch-board by which the lights of the house are controlled. Suddenly I saw him reach out his hand quickly, and a moment later every box-light went out, leaving the auditorium in darkness, relieved only by the lighting of the stage. Almost immediately there came a succession of shrieks from the grand-tier in the immediate vicinity of the Robinson-Jones box, and I knew that something was afoot. Only a slight commotion in the audience was manifest to us upon the stage, but there was a hurrying and scurrying of ushers and others of greater or less authority, until finally the box-lights flashed out again in all their silk-tasseled illumination. The progress of the opera was not interrupted for a moment, but in that brief interval of blackness at the rear of the house, someone had had time to force his way into the Robinson-Jones box and snatch from the neck of its fair occupant that wondrous hundred-thousand-dollar necklace of matchless rubies that had won the admiring regard of many beholders, and the envious interest of not a few.

Three hours later Raffles Holmes and I returned from the days and dress of Lohengrin’s time to affairs of today, and when we were seated in my apartment along about two o’clock in the morning, Holmes lit a cigar, poured himself out a liberal dose of Glengarry, and with a quiet smile, leaned back in his chair.

“Well,” he said, “what about it?”

“You have the floor, Raffles,” I answered. “Was that your work?”

“One end of it,” said he. “It went off like clockwork. Poor old Nervy has won his board and lodging for twenty years all right.”

“But—he’s got away with it,” I put in.

“As far as East Houston Street,” Holmes observed, quietly. “Tomorrow I shall take up the case, track Nervy to his lair, secure Mrs. Robinson-Jones’ necklace, return it to the lady, and within three weeks the Snatcher will take up his abode on the banks of the Hudson, the only banks the ordinary cracksman is anxious to avoid.”

“But how the dickens did you manage to put a crook like that on the grand-tier floor?” I demanded.

“Jenkins, what a child you are!” laughed Holmes. “How did I get him there? Why, I set him up with a box of his own, directly above the Robinson-Jones box—you can always get one for a single performance if you are willing to pay for it—and with a fair expanse of shirt-front, a claw-hammer and a crush hat almost any man who has any style to him at all these days can pass for a gentleman. All he had to do was to go to the opera-house, present his ticket, walk in and await the signal. I gave the man his music cue, and two minutes before the lights went out he sauntered down the broad staircase to the door of the Robinson-Jones box, and was ready to turn the trick. He was under cover of darkness long enough to get away with the necklace, and when the lights came back, if you had known enough to look out into the auditorium you would have seen him back there in his box above, taking in the situation as calmly as though he had himself had nothing whatever to do with it.”

“And how shall you trace him?” I demanded. “Isn’t that going to be a little dangerous?”

“Not if he followed out my instructions,” said Holmes. “If he dropped a letter addressed to himself in his own hand-writing at his East Houston Street lair, in the little anteroom of the box, as I told him to do, we’ll have all the clues we need to run him to earth.”

“But suppose the police find it?” I asked.

“They won’t,” laughed Holmes. “They’ll spend their time looking for some impecunious member of the smart set who might have done the job. They always try to find the sensational clue first, and by day after tomorrow morning four or five poor but honest members of the four-hundred will find when they read the morning papers that they are under surveillance, while I, knowing exactly what has happened will have all the start I need. I have already offered my services, and by ten o’clock tomorrow morning they will be accepted, as will also those of half a hundred other detectives, professional and amateur. At eleven I will visit the opera-house, where I expect to find the incriminating letter on the floor, or if the cleaning women have already done their work, which is very doubtful, I will find it later among the sweepings of waste paper in the cellar of the opera-house. Accompanied by two plain-clothes men from headquarters I will then proceed to Nervy’s quarters, and, if he is really sincere in his desire to go to jail for a protracted period, we shall find him there giving an imitation of a gloat over his booty.”

“And suppose the incriminating letter is not there?” I asked. “He may have changed his mind.”

“I have arranged for that,” said Holmes, with a quick, steely glance at me. “I’ve got a duplicate letter in my pocket now. If he didn’t drop it, I will.”

But Nervy Jim was honest at least in his desire for a permanent residence in an up-to-date penitentiary, for, even as the deed itself had been accomplished with a precision that was almost automatic, so did the work yet to be done go off with the nicety of a well-regulated schedule. Everything came about as Holmes had predicted, even to the action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social dangler, whose only ambition in life was to lead a cotillion well, and whose sole idea of how to get money under false pretenses was to make some over-rich old maid believe that he loved her for herself alone and in his heart scorned her wealth. Even he profited by this, since he later sued the editor who printed his picture with the label “A Social Highwayman” for libel, claiming damages of $50,000, and then settled the case out of court for $15,000, spot cash. The letter was found on the floor of the box where Nervy Jim had dropped it; Holmes and his plain-clothes men paid an early visit at the East Houston Street lodging-house, and found the happy Snatcher snoring away in his cot with a smile on his face that seemed to indicate that he was dreaming he was back in a nice comfortable jail once more; and as if to make assurance doubly sure, the missing necklace hung about his swarthy neck! Short work was made of the arrest; Nervy Him, almost embarrassingly grateful, was railroaded to Sing Sing in ten days’ time, for fifteen years, and Raffles Holmes had the present pleasure and personal satisfaction of restoring the lost necklace to the fair hands of Mrs. Robinson-Jones herself.

•    •    •

“Look at that, Jenkins!” He said, gleefully, when the thing was all over. “A check for $10,000.”

“Well—that isn’t so much, considering the value of the necklace,” said I.

“That’s the funny part of it,” laughed Holmes. “Every stone in it was paste, but Mrs. Robinson-Jones never let on for a minute. She paid her little ten thousand rather than have it known.”

“Great Heavens!—really?” I said.

“Yes,” said Holmes, replacing the check in his pocket-book. “She’s almost as nervy as Nervy Jim himself. She’s what I call a dead-game sport.”

IX

THE ADVENTURE
OF ROOM 407

Raffles Holmes and I had walked uptown together. It was a beastly cold night, and when we reached the Hotel Powhatan my companion suggested that we stop in for a moment to thaw out our frozen cheeks, and incidentally, warm up the inner man with some one of the spirituous concoctions for which that hostelry is deservedly famous. I naturally acquiesced, and in a moment we sat at one of the small tables in the combination reading-room and café of the hotel.

“Queer place, this,” said Holmes, gazing about him at the motley company of guests. “It is the gathering place of the noted and the notorious. That handsome six-footer, who has just left the room, is the Reverend Dr. Harkaway, possibly the most eloquent preacher they have in Boston. At the table over in the corner, talking to that gold-haired lady with a roasted pheasant on her head in place of a hat, is Jack McBride, the light-weight champion of the Northwest, and—by thunder, Jenkins, look at that!”

A heavy-browed, sharp-eyed Englishman appeared in the doorway, stood a moment, glanced about him eagerly, and, with a gesture of impatience, turned away and disappeared in the throngs of the corridor without.

“There’s something doing to bring ‘Lord Baskingford’ here,” muttered Holmes.

“Lord Baskingford?” said I. “Who’s he?”

“He’s the most expert diamond lifter in London,” answered Holmes. “His appearance on Piccadilly was a signal always to Scotland Yard to wake up, and to the jewelers of Bond Street to lock up. My old daddy used to say that Baskingford could scent a Kohinoor quicker than a hound a fox. I wonder what his game is.”

“Is he a real lord?” I asked.

“Real?” laughed Holmes. “Yes—he’s a real Lord of the Lifters, if that’s what you mean, but if you mean does he belong to the peerage, no. His real name is Bob Hollister. He has served two terms in Pentonville, escaped once from a Russian prison, and is still in the ring. He’s never idle, and if he comes to the Powhatan you can gamble your last dollar on it that he has a good, big stake somewhere in the neighborhood. We must look over the list of arrivals.”

We finished our drink and settled the score. Holmes sauntered, in leisurely fashion, out into the office, and, leaning easily over the counter, inspected the register.

“Got any real live dukes in the house tonight, Mr. Sommers?” he asked of the clerk.

“Not tonight, Mr. Holmes,” laughed the clerk. “We’re rather shy on the nobility tonight. The nearest we come to anything worth while in that line is a baronet—Sir Henry Darlington of Dorsetshire, England. We can show you a nice line of Captains of Industry, however.”

“Thank you, Sommers,” said Holmes, returning the laugh. “I shan’t trouble you. Fact is, I’m long on Captains of Industry and was just a bit hungry tonight for a dash of the British nobility. Who is Sir Henry Darlington of Dorsetshire, England?”

“You can search me,” said the clerk. “I’m too busy to study genealogy—but there’s a man here who knows who he is, all right, all right—at least I judge so from his manner.”

“Who’s that?” asked Holmes.

“Himself,” said Sommers, with a chuckle. “Now’s your chance to ask him—for there he goes into the Palm Room.”

We glanced over in the direction indicated, and again our eyes fell upon the muscular form of “Lord Baskingford.”

“Oh!” said Holmes. “Well—he is a pretty fair specimen, isn’t he! Little too large for my special purpose, though, Sommers,” he added, “so you needn’t wrap him up and send him home.”

“All right, Mr. Holmes,” grinned the clerk. “Come in again sometime when we have a few fresh importations in and maybe we can fix you out.”

With a swift glance at the open page of the register, Holmes bade the clerk good night and we walked away.

“Room 407,” he said, as we moved along the corridor. “Room 407—we mustn’t forget that. His lordship is evidently expecting someone, and I think I’ll fool around for a while and see what’s in the wind.”

A moment or two later we came face to face with the baronet, and watched him as he passed along the great hall, scanning every face in the place, and on to the steps leading down to the barbershop, which he descended.

“He’s anxious, all right,” said Holmes, as we sauntered along. “How would you like to take a bite, Jenkins? I’d like to stay here and see this out.”

“Very good,” said I. “I find it interesting.”

So we proceeded towards the Palm Room and sat down to order our repast. Scarcely were we seated when one of the hotel boys, resplendent in brass buttons, strutted through between the tables, calling aloud in a shrill voice:

“Telegram for four-oh-seven. Four hundred and seven, telegram.”

“That’s the number, Raffles,” I whispered, excitedly.

“I know it,” he said, quietly. “Give him another chance—”

“Telegram for number four hundred and seven,” called the buttons.

“Here, boy,” said Holmes, nerving himself up. “Give me that.”

“Four hundred and seven, sir?” asked the boy.

“Certainly,” said Holmes, coolly. “Hand it over—any charge?”

“No, sir,” said the boy, giving Raffles the yellow covered message.

“Thank you,” said Holmes, tearing the flap open carelessly as the boy departed.

And just then the fictitious baronet entered the room, and, as Holmes read his telegram, passed by us, still apparently in search of the unattainable, little dreaming how close at hand was the explanation of his troubles. I was on the edge of nervous prostration, but Holmes never turned a hair, and, save for a slight tremor of his hand, no one would have even guessed that there was anything in the wind. Sir Henry Darlington took a seat in the far corner of the room.

“That accounts for his uneasiness,” said Holmes, tossing the telegram across the table.

I read: “Slight delay. Will meet you at eight with the goods.” The message was signed: “Cato.”

“Let’s see,” said Holmes. It is now six-forty-five. Here—lend me your fountain-pen, Jenkins.

I produced the desired article and Holmes, in an admirably feigned hand, added to the message the words: “at the Abbey, Lafayette Boulevard. Safer,” restored it in amended form to its envelope.

“Call one of the bellboys, please,” he said to the waiter.

A moment later, a second buttons appeared.

“This isn’t for me, boy,” said Holmes, handing the message back to him. “Better take it to the office.”

“Very good, sir,” said the lad, and off he went.

A few minutes after this incident, Sir Henry again rose impatiently and left the room, and, at a proper distance to the rear, Holmes followed him. Darlington stopped at the desk, and, observing the telegram in his box, called for it and opened it. His face flushed as he tore it into scraps and made for the elevator, into which he disappeared.

“He’s nibbling the bait all right,” said Holmes, gleefully. “We’ll just wait around here until he starts, and then we’ll see what we can do with Cato. This is quite an adventure.”

“What do you suppose it’s all about?” I asked.

“I don’t know any more than you do, Jenkins,” said Holmes, “save this, that old Bob Hollister isn’t playing penny-ante. When he goes on to a job as elaborately as all this, you can bet your last dollar that the game runs into five figures, and, like a loyal subject of his Gracious Majesty King Edward VII, whom may the Lord save, he reckons not in dollars but in pounds sterling.”

“Who can Cato be, I wonder?” I asked.

“We’ll know at eight o’clock,” said Holmes. “I intend to have him up.”

“Up? Up where?” I asked.

“In Darlington’s rooms—where else?” demanded Holmes.

“In four hundred and seven?” I gasped.

“Certainly—that’s our headquarters, isn’t it?” he grinned.

“Now see here, Raffles,” I began.

“Shut up Jenkins,” he answered. “Just hang on to your nerve—”

“But suppose Darlington turns up?”

“My dear boy, the Abbey is six miles from here and he won’t by any living chance, get back before ten o’clock tonight. We shall have a good two hours and a half to do up old Cato without any interference from him,” said Holmes. “Suppose he does come—what then? I rather doubt if Sir Henry Darlington, of the Hotel Powhatan, New York, or Dorsetshire, England, would find it altogether pleasant to hear a few reminiscences of Bob Hollister of Pentonville prison, which I have on tap.”

“He’ll kick up the deuce of a row,” I protested.

“Very doubtful, Jenkins,” said Raffles. “I sort of believe he’ll be as gentle as a lamb when he finds out what I know—but, if he isn’t, well, don’t I represent law and order?” and Holmes displayed a detective’s badge, which he wore for use in emergency cases, pinned to the inner side of his suspenders.

As he spoke, Darlington reappeared, and, leaving his key at the office, went out through the revolving doorway, and jumped into a hansom.

“Where to, sir?” asked the cabman.

“The Abbey,” said Darlington.

“They’re off!” whispered Holmes, with a laugh. “And now for Mr. Cato.”

We walked back through the office, and, as we passed the bench upon which the bellboys sat, Raffles stopped before the lad who had delivered the telegram to him.

“Here, son,” he said, handing him a quarter, “run over to the news-stand and get me a copy of this month’s Salmagundi—I’ll be in the smoking-room.”

The boy went off on his errand, and in a few minutes returned with a magazine.

“Thanks,” said Holmes. “Now get me my key and we’ll call it square.”

“Four hundred and seven, sir?” said the boy, with a smile of recognition.

“Yep,” said Holmes, laconically, as he leaned back in his chair and pretended to read.

“Gad, Holmes, what a nerve!” I muttered.

“We need it in this business,” said he.

The buttons returned and delivered the key of Sir Henry Darlington’s apartment into the hands of Raffles Holmes.

Ten minutes later we sat in room 407—I in a blue funk from sheer nervousness, Raffles Holmes as imperturbable as the rock of Gibraltar from sheer nerve. It was the usual style of hotel room, with bath, pictures, telephone, whatnots, wardrobes, and center-table. The last proved to be the main point of interest upon our arrival. It was littered up with papers of one sort and another: letters, bills receipted and otherwise, and a large assortment of railway and steamship folders. “He knows how to get away,” was Holmes’s comment on the latter. Most of the letters were addressed to Sir Henry Darlington, in care of Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., bankers.

“Same old game,” laughed Holmes, as he read the superscription. “The most conservative banking-house in New York! It’s amazing how such institutions issue letters indiscriminately to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who comes along and planks down his cash. They don’t seem to realize that they thereby unconsciously lend the glamor of their own respectability and credit to people who, instead of traveling abroad, should be locked up in the most convenient penitentiary at home. Aha!” Holmes added, as he ran his eye over some of the other documents and came upon a receipted bill. “We’re getting close to it, Jenkins. Here’s a receipted bill from Bar, LeDuc & Co., of Fifth Avenue, for $15,000—three rings, one diamond necklace, a ruby stickpin, and a set of pearl shirt-studs.”

“Yes,” said I, “but what is there suspicious about that? If the things are paid for—”

“Precisely,” laughed Holmes. “They’re paid for. Sir Henry Darlington has enough working capital to buy all the credit he needs with Messrs. Bar, LeDuc & Co. There isn’t a house in this town that, after a cash transaction of that kind, conducted through Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., wouldn’t send its own soul up on approval to a nice, clean-cut member of the British aristocracy like Sir Henry Darlington. We’re on the trail, Jenkins—we’re on the trail. Here’s a letter from Bar, LeDuc & Co.—let’s see what light that sheds on the matter.”

Holmes took a letter from an envelope and read, rapidly:

“Sir Henry Darlington—care of Bruce, Watkins and so forth—dear Sir Henry—We are having some difficulty matching the pearls—they are of unusual quality, but we hope to have the necklace ready for delivery as requested on Wednesday afternoon at the office of Messrs. Bruce, Watkins and so forth, between five and six o’clock. Trusting the delay will not—and so forth—and hoping to merit a continuance of your valued favors, we beg to remain, and so forth, and so forth.

“That’s it,” said Holmes. “It’s a necklace that Mr. Cato is bringing up to Sir Henry Darlington—and, once in his possession—it’s Sir Henry for some place on one of these folders.”

“Why don’t they send them directly here?” I inquired.

“It is better for Darlington to emphasize Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., and not to bank too much on the Hotel Powhatan, that’s why,” said Holmes. “What’s the good of having bankers like that back of you if you don’t underscore their endorsement? Anyhow, we’ve discovered the job, Jenkins; today is Wednesday, and the ‘goods’ Cato has to deliver and referred to in his telegram is the pearl necklace of unusual quality—hence not less than a $50,000 stake.”

At this point the telephone bell rang.

“Hello,” said Holmes, answering immediately, and in a voice entirely unlike his own. “Yes—what? Oh yes. Ask him to come up.”

He hung up the receiver, put a cigar in his mouth, lit it, and turned to me.

“It’s Cato—just called. Coming up,” said he.

“I wish to Heavens I was going down,” I ejaculated.

“You’re a queer duck, Jenkins,” grinned Holmes. “Here you are with a front seat at what promises to be one of the greatest shows on earth, a real live melodrama, and all you can think of is home and mother. Brace up—for here he is.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” said Holmes, cheerily.

A tall cadaverous-looking man opened the door and entered. As his eye fell upon us, he paused on the threshold.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I—I’m afraid I’m in the wrong—”

“Not at all—come in and sit down,” said Holmes, cordially. “That is if you are our friend and partner, Cato—Darlington couldn’t wait—”

“Couldn’t wait?” said Cato.

“Nope,” said Holmes. “He was very much annoyed by the delay, Cato. You see he’s on bigger jobs than this puny little affair of Bar, LeDuc’s, and your failure to appear on schedule time threw him out. Pearls aren’t the only chips in Darlington’s game, my boy.”

“Well—I couldn’t help it,” said Cato. “Bar, LeDuc’s messenger didn’t get down there until five minutes of six.”

“Why should that have kept you until eight?” said Holmes.

“I’ve got a few side jobs of my own,” growled Cato.

“That’s what Darlington imagined,” said Holmes, “and I don’t envy you your meeting with him when he comes in. He’s a cyclone when he’s mad and if you’ve got a cellar handy I’d advise you to get it ready for occupancy. Where’s the stuff?”

“In here,” said Cato, tapping his chest.

“Well,” observed Holmes, quietly, “we’d better make ourselves easy until the Chief returns. You don’t mind if I write a letter, do you?”

“Go ahead,” said Cato. “Don’t mind me.”

“Light up,” said Holmes, tossing him a cigar, and turning to the table where he busied himself for the next five minutes, apparently in writing.

Cato smoked away in silence, and picked up Holmes’s copy of the Salmagundi Magazine which lay on the bureau, and shortly became absorbed in its contents. As for me, I had to grip both sides of my chair to conceal my nervousness. My legs fairly shook with terror. The silence, broken only by the scratching of Holmes’s pen, was becoming unendurable and I think I should have given way and screamed had not Holmes suddenly risen and walked to the telephone, directly back of where Cato was sitting.

“I must ring for stamps,” he said. “There don’t seem to be any here. Darlington’s getting stingy in his old age. Hello,” he called, but without removing the receiver from the hook. “Hello—send me up a dollar’s worth of two-cent stamps—thank you. Goodbye.”

Cato read on, but, in a moment, the magazine dropped from his hand to the floor. Holmes was at his side and the cold muzzle of a revolver pressed uncomfortably against his right temple.

“That bureau cover—quick,” Raffles cried, sharply, to me.

“What are you doing?” gasped Cato, his face turning a greenish-yellow with fear.

“Another sound from you and you’re a dead one,” said Holmes. “You’ll see what I’m doing quickly enough. Twist it into a rope, Jim,” he added, addressing me. I did as I was bade with the linen cover, snatching it from the bureau, and a second later we had Cato gagged. “Now tie his hands and feet with those curtain cords,” Holmes went on.

Heavens! how I hated the job, but there was no drawing back now! We had gone too far for that.

“There!” said Holmes, as we laid our victim out on the floor, tied hand and foot and as powerless to speak as though he had been born deaf and dumb. “We’ll just rifle your chest, Cato, and stow you away in the bathtub with a sofa-cushion under your head to make you comfortable, and bid you farewell—not au revoir, Cato, but just plain farewell forever.”

The words were hardly spoken before the deed was accomplished. Tearing aside poor Cato’s vest and shirt-front, Raffles placed himself in possession of the treasure from Bar, LeDuc & Co., after which we lay Darlington’s unhappy confederate at full length in the porcelain-lined tub, placed a sofa-cushion under his head to mitigate his sufferings, locked him in, and started for the elevator.

“Great Heavens, Raffles!” I chattered, as we emerged upon the street. “What will be the end of this? It’s awful. When Sir Henry returns—”

“I wish I could be there to see,” said he, with a chuckle.

“I guess we’ll see, quick enough. I leave town tomorrow,” said I.

“Nonsense,” said Holmes. “Don’t you worry. I put a quietus on Sir Henry Darlington. He’ll leave town tonight, and we’ll never hear from him again—that is, not in this matter.”

“But how?” I demanded, far from convinced.

“I wrote him a letter in which I said: ‘You will find your treasure in the bathtub,’” laughed Holmes.

“And that will drive him from New York, and close his mouth forever!” I observed, sarcastically. “So very likely!”

“No, Jenkins, not that, but the address, my dear boy, the address. I put that message in an envelope, and left it on his table where he’ll surely see it the first thing when he gets back tonight, addressed to ‘Bob Hollister,’ Diamond Merchant, Cell No. 99, Pentonville Prison.”

“Aha!” said I, my doubts clearing.

“Likewise—Ho-ho,” said Holmes. “It is a delicate intimation to Sir Henry Darlington that somebody is on to his little game, and he’ll evaporate before dawn.”

•    •    •

A week later, Holmes brought me a magnificent pearl scarf-pin.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Your share of the swag,” he answered. “I returned the pearl necklace to Bar, LeDuc & Co., with a full statement of how it came into my possession. They rewarded me with this ruby ring and that stickpin.”

Holmes held up his right hand, on the fourth finger of which glistened a brilliant blood-red stone worth not less than fifteen hundred dollars.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I wondered what you were going to do with the necklace,” I said.

“So did I—for three days,” said Holmes, “and then, when I realized that I was a single man, I decided to give it up. If I’d had a wife to wear a necklace—well, I’m a little afraid the Raffles side of my nature would have won out.”

“I wonder whatever became of Darlington,” said I.

“I don’t know. Sommers says he left town suddenly that same Wednesday night, without paying his bill,” Holmes answered.

“And Cato?”

“I didn’t inquire, but, from what I know of Bob Hollister, I am rather inclined to believe that Cato left the Powhatan by way of the front window, or possibly out through the plumbing, in some way,” laughed Holmes. “Either way would be the most comfortable under the circumstances.”

X

THE MAJOR-GENERAL’S
PEPPERPOTS

I had often wondered during the winter whether or no it would be quite the proper thing for me to take my friend Raffles Holmes into the sacred precincts of my club. By some men—and I am one of them—the club, despite the bad name that clubs in general have as being antagonistic to the home, is looked upon as an institution that should be guarded almost as carefully against the intrusion of improper persons as is one’s own habitat, and while I should never have admitted for a moment that Raffles was an undesirable chap to have around, I could not deny that in view of certain characteristics which I knew him to possess, the propriety of taking him into “The Heraclean” was seriously open to question. My doubts were set at rest, however, on that point one day in January last, when I observed seated at one of our luncheon-tables the Reverend Dr. Mulligatawnny, Rector of Saint Mammon-in-the-Fields, a highly esteemed member of the organization, who had with him no less a person than Mr. E. H. Merryman, the railway magnate, whose exploits in Wall Street have done much to give to that golden highway the particular kind of perfume which it now exudes to the nostrils of people of sensitive honor. Surely, if Dr. Mulligatawnny was within his rights in having Mr. Merryman present, I need have no misgivings as to mine in having Raffles Holmes at the same table. The predatory instinct in his nature was as a drop of water in the sea to that ocean of known acquisitiveness which has floated Mr. Merryman into his high place in the world of finance, and as far as the moral side of the two men was considered respectively, I felt tolerably confident that the Recording Angel’s account-books would show a larger balance on the right side to the credit of Raffles than to that of his more famous contemporary. Hence it was that I decided the question in my friend’s favor, and a week or two later had him in at “The Heraclean” for luncheon. The dining-room was filled with the usual assortment of interesting men—men who had really done something in life and who suffered from none of that selfish modesty which leads some of us to hide our light under the bushel of silence. There was the Honorable Poultry Tickletoe, the historian, whose articles on the shoddy quality of the modern Panama hat have created such a stir throughout the hat trade; Mr. William Darlington Ponkapog, the poet, whose epic on the “Reign of Gold” is one of the longest, and some writers say the thickest, in the English language; James Whistleton Potts, the eminent portraitist, whose limnings of his patients have won him a high place among the caricaturists of the age, Robert Dozyphrase, the expatriated American novelist, now of London, whose latest volume of sketches, entitled Intricacies, has been equally the delight of his followers and the despair of students of the occult; and, what is more to the purpose of our story, Major-General Carrington Cox, U.S.A., retired. These gentlemen, with others of equal distinction whom I have not the space to name, were discussing with some degree of simultaneity their own achievements in the various fields of endeavor to which their lives had been devoted. They occupied the large center-table which has for many a year been the point of contact for the distinguished minds of which the membership of “The Heraclean” is made up; the tennis-net, as it were, over which the verbal balls of discussion have for so many years volleyed to the delight of countless listeners.

Raffles and I sat apart at one of the smaller tables by the window, where we could hear as much of the conversation at the larger board as we wished—so many members of “The Heraclean” are deaf that to talk loud has become quite de rigueur there—and at the same time hold converse with each other in tones best suited to the confidential quality of our communications. We had enjoyed the first two courses of our repast when we became aware that General Carrington Cox had succeeded in getting to the floor, and as he proceeded with what he had to say, I observed, in spite of his efforts to conceal the fact, that Raffles Holmes was rather more deeply interested in the story the General was telling than in such chance observations as I was making. Hence I finished the luncheon in silence and even as did Holmes, listened to the General’s periods—and they were as usual worth listening to.

“It was in the early eighties,” said General Cox. “I was informally attached to the Spanish legation at Madrid. The King of Spain, Alphonso XII, was about to be married to the highly esteemed lady who is now the Queen-Mother of that very interesting youth, Alphonso XIII. In anticipation of the event the city was in a fever of gaiety and excitement that always attends upon a royal function of that nature. Madrid was crowded with visitors of all sorts, some of them not as desirable as they might be, and here and there, in the necessary laxity of the hour, one or two perhaps that were most inimical to the personal safety and general welfare of the King. Alphonso, like many another royal personage, was given to the old Haroun Al Raschid habit of traveling about at night in a more or less impenetrable incognito, much to the distaste of his ministers and to the apprehension of the police, who did not view with any too much satisfaction the possibility of disaster to the royal person and the consequent blame that would rest upon their shoulders should anything of a serious nature befall. To all of this, however, the King was oblivious, and it so happened one night that in the course of his wanderings he met with the long dreaded mix-up. He and his two companions fell in with a party of cutthroats who promptly proceeded to hold them up. The companions were speedily put out of business by the attacking party, and the King found himself in the midst of a very serious misadventure, the least issue from which bade fair to be a thorough beating, if not an attempt on his life. It was at the moment when his chances of escape were not one in a million, when, on my way home from the Legation, where I had been detained to a very late hour, I came upon him struggling in the hands of four as nasty ruffians as you will find this side of the gallows. One of them held him by the arms, another was giving him a fairly expert imitation of how it feels to be garroted, which the other two were rifling his pockets. This was too much for me. I was in pretty fit physical condition at that time and felt myself to be quite the equal in a good old Anglo-Saxon fist fight of any dozen ordinary Castilians, so I plunged into the fray, heart and soul, not for an instant dreaming, however, what was the quality of the person to whose assistance I had come. My first step was to bowl over the garroter. Expecting no interference in his nefarious pursuit and unwarned by his companions, who were to busily engaged in their adventure of loot to observe my approach, he was easy prey, and the good, hard whack that I gave him just under his right ear sent him flying, an unconscious mass of villainous clay, into the gutter. The surprise of the onslaught was such that the other three jumped backward, thereby releasing the King’s arms so that we were now two to three, which in a moment became two to two, for I lost no time in knocking out my second man with as pretty a solar plexus as you ever saw. There is nothing in the world more demoralizing than a good, solid blow straight from the shoulder to chaps whose idea of fighting is to sneak up behind you and choke you to death, or to stick a knife into the small of your back, and had I been far less expert with my fists, I should still have had an incalculable moral advantage over such riffraff. Once the odds in the matter of numbers were even, the King and I had no further difficulty in handling the others. His Majesty’s quarry got away by the simple act of taking to his heels, and mine, turning to do likewise, received a salute from my right toe which, if I am any judge, must have driven the upper end of his spine up through the top of his head. Left alone, his Majesty held out his hand and thanked me profusely from my timely aid, and asked my name. We thereupon bade each other good night, and I went on to my lodging, little dreaming of the service I had rendered to the nation.

“The following day I was astonished to receive at the Legation a communication bearing the royal seal, commanding me to appear at the palace at once. The summons was obeyed, and, upon entering the palace, I was immediately ushered into the presence of the King. He received me most graciously, dismissing, however, all his attendants.

“‘Colonel Cox,’ he said, after the first formal greetings were over, ‘you rendered me a great service last night.’

“‘I, your majesty?’ said I. ‘In what way?’

“‘By putting those ruffians to flight,’ said he.

“‘Ah!’ said I. ‘Then the gentleman attacked was one of your Majesty’s friends?’

“‘I would have it so appear,’ said the King. ‘For a great many reasons I should prefer that it were not known that it was I—’

“‘You, your Majesty?’ I cried, really astonished. ‘I had no idea—”

“‘You are discretion itself, Colonel Cox,’ laughed the King, ‘and to assure you of my appreciation of the fact, I beg that you will accept a small gift which you will someday shortly receive anonymously. It will not be at all commensurate to the service you have rendered me, nor to the discretion which you have already so kindly observed regarding the principals involved in last night’s affair, but in the spirit of friendly interest and appreciation back of it, it will be of a value inestimable.’

“I began to try to tell his Majesty that my government did not permit me to accept gifts of any kind from persons royal or otherwise, but it was not possible to do so, and twenty minutes later my audience was over and I returned to the Legation with the uncomfortable sense of having placed myself in a position where I must either violate the King’s confidence to acquire the permission of Congress to accept his gift, or break the laws by which all who are connected with the diplomatic service, directly or indirectly, are strictly governed. I assure you it was not in the least degree in the hope of personal profit that I chose the latter course. Ten days later a pair of massive golden pepper-pots came to me, and, as the King had intimated would be the case, there was nothing about them to show whence they had come. Taken altogether, they were the most exquisitely wrought specimens of the goldsmith’s artistry that I had ever seen, and upon their under side was inscribed in a cipher which no one unfamiliar with the affair of that midnight fracas would even have observed—‘A.R. to C.C.’—Alphonso Rex to Carrington Cox being, of course, the significance thereof. They were put away with my other belongings, and two years later, when my activities were transferred to London, I took them away with me.

“In London I chose to live in chambers, and was soon established at No. 7 Park Place, St. James’s, a more than comfortable and centrally located apartment-house where I found pretty much everything in the way of convenience that a man situated as I was could reasonably ask for. I had not been there more than six months, however, when something happened that made the ease of apartment life seem somewhat less desirable. That is, my rooms were broken open during my absence, over night on a little canoeing trip to Henley, and about everything valuable in my possession was removed, including the truly regal pepper-pots sent me by his Majesty the King of Spain, that I had carelessly left standing upon my sideboard.

“Until last week,” the General continued, “nor hide nor hair of any of my stolen possessions was every discovered, but last Thursday night I accepted the invitation of a gentleman well known in this country as a leader of finance, a veritable Captain of Industry, the soul of honor and one of the most genial hosts imaginable. I sat down at his table at eight o’clock, and, will you believe me, gentlemen, one of the first objects to greet my eye upon the brilliantly set napery was nothing less than one of my lost pepper-pots. There was no mistaking it. Unique in pattern, it was certain of identification anyhow, but what made it the more certain was the cipher ‘A.R. to C.C.’”

“And of course you claimed it?” asked Dozyphrase.

“Of course I did nothing of the sort,” retorted the General. “I trust I am not so lacking in manners. I merely remarked its beauty and quaintness and massiveness and general artistry. My host expressed pleasure at my appreciation of its qualities and volunteered the information that it was a little thing he had picked up in a curio shop on Regent Street, London, last summer. He had acquired it in perfect good faith. What its history had been from the time I lost it until then, I am not aware, but there it was, and under circumstances of such a character that although it was indubitably my property, a strong sense of the proprieties prevented me from regaining its possession.”

“Who was your host, General?” asked Tickletoe.

The General laughed. “That’s telling,” said he. “I don’t care to go into any further details, because some of you well-meaning friends of mine might suggest to Mr.—ahem—ha—well, never mind his name—that he should return the pepper-pot, and I know that that is what he would do if he were familiar with the facts that I have just narrated.”

It was at about this point that the gathering broke up, and, after our cigars, Holmes and I left the club.

“Come up to my rooms a moment,” said Raffles, as we emerged upon the street. “I want to show you something.”

“All right,” said I. “I’ve nothing in particular to do this afternoon. That was a rather interesting tale of the General’s, wasn’t it?” I added.

“Very,” said Holmes. “I guess it’s not an uncommon experience, however, in these days, for the well-to-do and well-meaning to be in possession of stolen property. The fact of its turning up again under the General’s very nose, so many years later, however, that is unusual. The case will appear even more so before the day is over if I am right in one of my conjectures.”

What Raffles Holmes’s conjecture was, was soon to be made clear. In a few minutes we had reached his apartment, and there unlocking a huge iron-bound chest in his bedroom, he produced from its capacious depths another gold pepper-pot. This he handed to me.

“There’s the mate!” he observed, quietly.

“By Jove, Raffles—it must be!” I cried, for beyond all question, in the woof of the design on the base of the pepper-pot was the cipher “A.R. to C.C.” “Where the dickens did you get it?”

“That was a wedding-present to my mother,” he explained. “That’s why I have never sold it, not even when I’ve been on the edge of starvation.”

“From whom—do you happen to know?” I inquired.

“Yes,” he replied. “I do know. It was a wedding-present to the daughter of Raffles by her father, my grandfather, Raffles himself.”

“Great Heavens!” I cried. “Then it was Raffles who—well, you know. That London flat job?”

“Precisely,” said Raffles Holmes. “We’ve caught the old gentleman red-handed.”

“Well, I’ll be jiggered!” said I. “Doesn’t it beat creation how small the world is.”

“It does indeed. I wonder who the chap is who has the other,” Raffles observed.

“Pretty square of the old General to keep quiet about it,” said I.

“Yes,” said Holmes. “That’s why I’m going to restore this one. I wish I could give ’em both back. I don’t think my old grandfather would have taken the stuff if he’d known what a dead-game sport the old General was, and I sort of feel myself under an obligation to make amends.”

“You can send him the one you’ve got through the express companies, anonymously,” said I.

“No,” said Holmes. “The General left them on his sideboard, and on his sideboard he must find them. If we could only find out the name of his host last Thursday—”

“I tell you—look in the Sunday Gazoo supplement,” said I. “They frequently publish short paragraphs of the social doings of the week. You might get a clue there.”

“Good idea,” said Holmes. “I happen to have it here, too. There was an article in it last Sunday, giving a diagram of Howard Vandergould’s new house at Nippon’s Point, Long Island, which I meant to cut out for future reference.”

Holmes secured the Gazoo, and between us, we made a pretty thorough search of its contents, especially “The Doings of Society” columns, and at last we found it, as follows:

“A small dinner of thirty was given on Thursday evening last in honor of Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Rattington, of Boston, by Mrs. Rattington’s brother, John D. Bruce, of Bruce, Watkins & Co., at the latter’s residence, 74– Fifth Avenue. Among Mr. Bruce’s guests were Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Dandervelt, Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Scroog, Jr., Major-General Carrington Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson Scovill, and Signor Caruso.”

“Old Bruce, eh?” laughed Holmes. “Sans peur et sans reproche. Well, that is interesting. One of the few honest railroad bankers in the country, a pillar of the church, a leading reformer and—a stolen pepper-pot on his table! Gee!”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked. “Write to Bruce and tell him the facts?”

Holmes’s answer was a glance.

“Oh cream-cakes!” he ejaculated, with profane emphasis.

A week after the incidents just described he walked into my room with a small package under his arm.

“There’s the pair!” he observed, unwrapping the parcel and displaying its contents—two superb, golden pepper-pots, both inscribed “A.R. to C.C.” “Beauties, aren’t they?”

“They are, indeed. Did Bruce give it up willingly?” I asked.

“He never said a word,” laughed Holmes. “Fact is, he snored all the time I was there.”

“Snored?” said I.

“Yes—you see, it was at 3:30 this morning,” said Holmes, “and I went in the back way. Climbed up to the extension roof, in through Bruce’s bedroom window, downstairs to the dining-room, while Bruce slept unconscious of my arrival. The house next to his is vacant, you know, and it was easy traveling.”

“You—you—” I began.

“Yes—that’s it,” said he. “Just a plain vulgar bit of second-story business, and I got it. There were a lot of other good things lying around,” he added, with a gulp, “but—well, I was righting a wrong this time, so I let ’em alone, and, barring this, I didn’t deprive old Bruce of a blooming thing, not even a wink of sleep.”

“And now what?” I demanded.

“It’s me for Cedarhurst—that’s where the General lives,” said he. “I’ll get there about 11:30 tonight, and as soon as all is quiet, Jenkins, your old pal, Raffles Holmes, will climb easily up to the piazza, gently slide back the bolts of the French windows in the General’s dining-room, proceed cautiously to the sideboard, and replace thereon these two souvenirs of a brave act by a good old sport, whence they never would have been taken had my grandfather known his man.”

“You are taking a terrible risk, Raffles,” said I, “you can just as easily send the things to the General by express, anonymously.”

“Jenkins,” he replied, “that suggestion does you little credit and appeals neither to the Raffles nor to the Holmes in me. Pusillanimity was a word which neither of my forebears could ever learn to use. It was too long, for one thing, and besides that it was never needed in their business.”

And with that he left me.

•    •    •

“Well, General,” said I to General Cox, a week later at the club, “heard anything further about your pepper-pots yet?”

“Most singular thing, Jenkins,” said he. “The damned things turned up again one morning last week, and where the devil they came from, I can’t imagine. One of them, however, had a piece of paper in it on which was written ‘Returned with thanks for their use and apologies for having kept them so long.’”

The General opened his wallet and handed me a slip which he took from it.

“There it is. What in thunder do you make out of it?” he asked.

It was in Raffles Holmes’s hand-writing.

“Looks to me as though Bruce also had been robbed,” I laughed.

“Bruce? Who the devil said anything about Bruce?” demanded the General.

“Why, didn’t you tell us he had one of ’em on his table?” said I, reddening.

“Did I?” frowned the General. “Well, if I did, I must be a confounded ass. I thought I took particular pains not to mention Bruce’s name in the matter.”

And then he laughed.

“I shall have to be careful when Bruce comes to dine with me not to have those pepper-pots in evidence,” he said. “He might ask embarrassing questions.”

And thus it was that Raffles Holmes atoned for at least one of the offenses of his illustrious grandsire.

THE END

Appendix

CONTENTS:

1 … Sherlock Holmes Again
2 … The Mystery of Pinkham’s Diamond Stud
3 … A Pragmatic Enigma
4 … Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

•  1  •

SHERLOCK HOLMES AGAIN

I had intended asking Boswell what had become of my copy of the Baedeker’s Hades when he next returned, but the output of the machine that evening so interested me that the handbook was entirely forgotten. If there ever was a hero in this world who could compare with D’Artagnan in my estimation for sheer ability in a given line that hero was Sherlock Holmes. With D’Artagnan and Holmes for my companions I think I could pass the balance of my days in absolute contentment, no matter what woeful things might befall me. So it was that, when I next heard the tapping keys and dulcet bell of my Enchanted Type-writer, and, after listening intently for a moment, realized that my friend Boswell was making a copy of a Sherlock Holmes Memoir thereon for his next Sunday’s paper, all thought of the interesting little red book of the last meeting flew out of my head. I rose quickly from my couch at the first sounding of the gong.

“Got a Holmes story, eh?” I said, walking to his side, and gazing eagerly over the spot where his shoulder should have been.

“I have that, and it’s a winner,” he replied, enthusiastically. “If you don’t believe it, read it. I’ll have it copied in about two minutes.”

“I’ll do both,” I said. “I believe all the Sherlock Holmes stories I read. It is so much pleasanter to believe them true. If they weren’t true they wouldn’t be so wonderful.”

With this I picked up the first page of the manuscript and shortly after Boswell presented me with the balance, whereon I read the following extraordinary tale:

A MYSTERY SOLVED

A WONDERFUL ACHIEVEMENT IN FERRETING

From Advance Sheets of

MEMOIRS I REMEMBER

BY

SHERLOCK HOLMES, ESQ.

Ferreter Extraordinary by Special Appointment
to his Majesty Apollyon

WHO THE LADY WAS!

It was not many days after my solution of the Missing Diamond of the Nizam of Jigamaree Mystery that I was called upon to take up a case which has baffled at least one person for some ten or eleven centuries. The reader will remember the mystery of the missing diamond—the largest known in all history, which the Nizam of Jigamaree brought from India to present to the Queen of England, on the occasion of her diamond jubilee. I had been dead three years at the time, but, by a special dispensation of his Imperial Highness Apollyon, was permitted to return incog to London for the jubilee season, where it so happened that I put up at the same lodging-house as that occupied by the Nizam and his suite. We sat opposite each other at table d’hote, and for at least three weeks previous to the losing of his treasure the Indian prince was very morose, and it was very difficult to get him to speak. I was not supposed to know, nor, indeed, was anyone else, for that matter, at the lodging-house, that the Nizam was so exalted a personage. He, like myself, was travelling incog and was known to the world as Mr. Wilkins, of Calcutta—a very wise precaution, inasmuch as he had in his possession a gem valued at a million and a half of dollars. I recognized him at once, however, by his unlikeness to a wood-cut that had been appearing in the American Sunday newspapers, labelled with his name, as well as by the extraordinary lantern which he had on his bicycle, a lantern which to the uneducated eye was no more than an ordinary lamp, but which to an eye like mine, familiar with gems, had for its crystal lens nothing more nor less than the famous stone which he had brought for her Majesty the Queen, his imperial sovereign. There are few people who can tell diamonds from plate-glass under any circumstances, and Mr. Wilkins, otherwise the Nizam, realizing this fact, had taken this bold method of secreting his treasure. Of course, the moment I perceived the quality of the man’s lamp I knew at once who Mr. Wilkins was, and I determined to have a little innocent diversion at his expense.

“It has been a fine day, Mr. Wilkins,” said I, one evening over the paté.

“Yes,” he replied, wearily. “Very—but somehow or other I’m depressed tonight.”

“Too bad,” I said, lightly, “but there are others. There’s that poor Nizam of Jigamaree, for instance—poor devil, he must be the bluest brown man that ever lived.”

Wilkins started nervously as I mentioned the prince by name.

“Wh-why do you think that?” he asked, nervously fingering his butter-knife.

“It’s tough luck to have to give away a diamond that’s worth three or four times as much as the Koh-i-noor,” I said. “Suppose you owned a stone like that. Would you care to give it away?”

“Not by a damn sight!” cried Wilkins, forcibly, and I noticed great tears gathering in his eyes.

“Still, he can’t help himself, I suppose,” I said, gazing abruptly at his scarf-pin. “That is, he doesn’t know that he can. The Queen expects it. It’s been announced, and now the poor devil can’t get out of it—though I’ll tell you, Mr. Wilkins, if I were the Nizam of Jigamaree, I’d get out of it in ten seconds.”

I winked at him significantly. He looked at me blankly.

“Yes, sir,” I added, merely to arouse him, “in just ten seconds! Ten short, beautiful seconds.”

“Mr. Postlethwaite,” said the Nizam—Postlethwaite was the name I was travelling under—“Mr. Postlethwaite,” said the Nizam—otherwise Wilkins—“your remarks interest me greatly.” His face wreathed with a smile that I had never before seen there. “I have thought as you do in regard to this poor Indian prince, but I must confess I don’t see how he can get out of giving the Queen that diamond. Have a cigar, Mr. Postlethwaite, and, waiter, bring us a triple magnum of champagne. Do you really think, Mr. Postlethwaite, that there is a way out of it? If you would like a ticket to Westminster for the ceremony, there are a half-dozen.”

He tossed six tickets for seats among the crowned heads across the table to me. His eagerness was almost too painful to witness.

“Thank you,” said I, calmly pocketing the tickets, for they were of rare value at that time. “The way out of it is very simple.”

“Indeed, Mr. Postlethwaite,” said he, trying to keep cool. “Ah—are you interested in rubies, sir? There are a few which I should be pleased to have you accept”—and with that over came a handful of precious stones each worth a fortune. These also I pocketed as I replied:

“Why, certainly; if I were the Nizam,” said I, “I’d lose that diamond.”

A shade of disappointment came over Mr. Wilkins’s face.

“Lose it? How? Where?” he asked, with a frown.

“Yes. Lose it. Any way I could. As for the place where it should be lost, any old place will do as long as it is where he can find it again when he gets back home. He might leave it in his other clothes, or—”

“Make that two triple magnums, waiter,” cried Mr. Wilkins, excitedly, interrupting me. “Postlethwaite, you’re a genius, and if you ever want a house and lot in Calcutta, just let me know and they’re yours.”

You never saw such a change come over a man in all your life. Where he had been all gloom before, he was now all smiles and jollity, and from that time on to his return to India Mr. Wilkins was as happy as a school-boy at the beginning of vacation. The next day the diamond was lost, and whoever may have it at this moment, the British Crown is not in possession of the Jigamaree gem.

But, as my friend Terence Mulvaney says, that is another story. It is of the mystery immediately following this concerning which I have set out to write.

•    •    •

I was sitting one day in my office on Apollyon Square opposite the Alexandrian library, smoking an absinthe cigarette, which I had rolled myself from my special mixture consisting of two parts tobacco, one part hasheesh, one part of opium dampened with a liqueur glass of absinthe, when an excited knock sounded upon my door.

“Come in,” I cried, adopting the usual formula.

The door opened and a beautiful woman stood before me clad in most regal garments, robust of figure, yet extremely pale. It seemed to me that I had seen her somewhere before, yet for a time I could not place her.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” said she, in deliciously musical tones, which, singular to relate, she emitted in a fashion suggestive of a recitative passage in an opera.

“The same,” said I, bowing with my accustomed courtesy.

“The ferret?” she sang, in staccato tones which were ravishing to my musical soul.

I laughed. “That term has been applied to me, madame,” said I, chanting my answer as best I could. “For myself, however, I prefer to assume the more modest title of detective. I can work with or without clues, and have never yet been baffled. I know who wrote the Junius letters, and upon occasions have been known to see through a stone wall with my naked eye. What can I do for you?”

“Tell me who I am!” she cried, tragically, taking the centre of the room and gesticulating wildly.

“Well—really, madame,” I replied. “You didn’t send up any card—”

“Ah!” she sneered. “This is what your vaunted prowess amounts to, eh? Ha! Do you suppose if I had a card with my name on it I’d have come to you to inquire who I am? I can read a card as well as you can, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.”

“Then, as I understand it, madame,” I put in, “you have suddenly forgotten your identity and wish me to—”

“Nothing of the sort. I have forgotten nothing. I never knew for certain who I am. I have an impression, but it is based only on hearsay evidence,” she interrupted.

For a moment I was fairly puzzled. Still I did not wish to let her know this, and so going behind my screen and taking a capsule full of cocaine to steady my nerves, I gained a moment to think. Returning, I said:

“This really is child’s play for me, madame. It won’t take more than a week to find out who you are, and possibly, if you have any clews at all to your identity, I may be able to solve this mystery in a day.”

“I have only three,” she answered, and taking a piece of swan’s-down, a lock of golden hair, and a pair of silver-tinsel tights from her portmanteau she handed them over to me.

My first impulse was to ask the lady if she remembered the name of the asylum from which she had escaped, but I fortunately refrained from doing so, and she shortly left me, promising to return at the end of the week.

For three days I puzzled over the clews. Swan’s-down, yellow hair, and a pair of silver-tinsel tights, while very interesting no doubt at times, do not form a very solid basis for a theory establishing the identity of so regal a person as my visitor. My first impression was that she was a vaudeville artist, and that the exhibits she had left me were a part of her make-up. This I was forced to abandon shortly, because no woman with the voice of my visitor would sing in vaudeville. The more ambitious stage was her legitimate field, if not grand opera itself.

At this point she returned to my office, and I of course reported progress. That is one of the most valuable things I learned while on earth—when you have done nothing, report progress.

“I haven’t quite succeeded as yet,” said I, “but I am getting at it slowly. I do not, however, think it wise to acquaint you with my present notions until they are verified beyond peradventure. It might help me somewhat if you were to tell me who it is you think you are. I could work either forward or backward on that hypothesis, as seemed best, and so arrive at a hypothetical truth anyhow.”

“That’s just what I don’t want to do,” said she. “That information might bias your final judgment. If, however, acting on the clews which you have, you confirm my impression that I am such and such a person, as well as the views which other people have, then will my status be well defined and I can institute my suit against my husband for a judicial separation, with back alimony, with some assurance of a successful issue.”

I was more puzzled than ever.

“Well,” said I, slowly, “I of course can see how a bit of swan’s-down and a lock of yellow hair backed up by a pair of silver-tinsel tights might constitute reasonable evidence in a suit for separation, but wouldn’t it—ah—be more to your purpose if I should use these data as establishing the identity of—er—somebody else?”

“How very dense you are,” she replied, impatiently. “That’s precisely what I want you to do.”

“But you told me it was your identity you wished proven,” I put in, irritably.

“Precisely,” said she.

“Then these bits of evidence are—yours?” I asked, hesitatingly. One does not like to accuse a lady of an undue liking for tinsel.

“They are all I have left of my husband,” she answered with a sob.

“Hum!” said I, my perplexity increasing. “Was the—ah—the gentleman blown up by dynamite?”

“Excuse me, Mr. Holmes,” she retorted, rising and running the scales. “I think, after all, I have come to the wrong shop. Have you Hawkshaw’s address handy? You are too obtuse for a detective.”

My reputation was at stake, so I said, significantly:

“Good! Good! I was merely trying one of my disguises on you, madame, and you were completely taken in. Of course no one would ever know me for Sherlock Holmes if I manifested such dullness.”

“Ah!” she said, her face lighting up. “You were merely deceiving me by appearing to be obtuse?”

“Of course,” said I. “I see the whole thing in a nutshell. You married an adventurer; he told you who he was, but you’ve never been able to prove it; and suddenly you are deserted by him, and on going over his wardrobe you find he has left nothing but these articles: and now you wish to sue him for a separation on the ground of desertion, and secure alimony if possible.”

It was a magnificent guess.

“That is it precisely,” said the lady. “Except as to the extent of his ‘leavings.’ In addition to the things you have he gave my small brother a brass bugle and a tin sword.”

“We may need to see them later,” said I. “At present I will do all I can for you on the evidence in hand. I have got my eye on a gentleman who wears silver-tinsel tights now, but I am afraid he is not the man we are after, because his hair is black, and, as far as I have been able to learn from his valet, he is utterly unacquainted with swan’s-down.”

We separated again and I went to the club to think. Never in my life before had I had so baffling a case. As I sat in the café sipping a cocaine cobbler, who should walk in but Hamlet, strangely enough picking particles of swan’s-down from his black doublet, which was literally covered with it.

“Hello, Sherlock!” he said, drawing up a chair and sitting down beside me. “What you up to?”

“Trying to make out where you have been,” I replied. “I judge from the swan’s-down on your doublet that you have been escorting Ophelia to the opera in the regulation cloak.”

“You’re mistaken for once,” he laughed. “I’ve been driving with Lohengrin. He’s got a pair of swans that can do a mile in 2.10—but it makes them moult like the devil.”

“Pair of what?” I cried.

“Swans,” said Hamlet. “He’s an eccentric sort of a duffer, that Lohengrin. Afraid of horses, I fancy.”

“And so drives swans instead?” said I, incredulously.

“The same,” replied Hamlet. “Do I look as if he drove squab?”

“He must be queer,” said I. “I’d like to meet him. He’d make quite an addition to my collection of freaks.”

“Very well,” observed Hamlet. “He’ll be here tomorrow to take luncheon with me, and if you’ll come, too, you’ll be most welcome. He’s collecting freaks, too, and I haven’t a doubt would be pleased to know you.”

We parted and I sauntered homeward, cogitating over my strange client, and now and then laughing over the idiosyncrasies of Hamlet’s friend the swan-driver. It never occurred to me at the moment however to connect the two, in spite of the link of swan’s-down. I regarded it merely as a coincidence. The next day, however, on going to the club and meeting Hamlet’s strange guest, I was struck by the further coincidence that his hair was of precisely the same shade of yellow as that in my possession. It was of a hue that I had never seen before except at performances of grand opera, or on the heads of fool detectives in musical burlesques. Here, however, was the real thing growing luxuriantly from the man’s head.

“Ho-ho!” thought I to myself. “Here is a fortunate encounter; there may be something in it,” and then I tried to lead him on.

“I understand, Mr. Lohengrin,” I said, “that you have a fine span of swans.”

“Yes,” he said, and I was astonished to note that he, like my client, spoke in musical numbers. “Very. They’re much finer than horses, in my opinion. More peaceful, quite as rapid, and amphibious. If I go out for a drive and come to a lake they trot quite as well across its surface as on the highways.”

“How interesting!” said I. “And so gentle, the swan. Your wife, I presume—”

Hamlet kicked my shins under the table.

“I think it will rain tomorrow,” he said, giving me a glance which if it said anything said shut up.

“I think so, too,” said Lohengrin, a lowering look on his face. “If it doesn’t, it will either snow, or hail, or be clear.” And he gazed abstractedly out of the window.

The kick and the man’s confusion were sufficient proof. I was on the right track at last. Yet the evidence was unsatisfactory because merely circumstantial. My piece of down might have come from an opera cloak and not from a well-broken swan, the hair might equally clearly have come from some other head than Lohengrin’s, and other men have had trouble with their wives. The circumstantial evidence lying in the coincidences was strong but not conclusive, so I resolved to pursue the matter and invite the strange individual to a luncheon with me, at which I proposed to wear the tinsel tights. Seeing them, he might be forced into betraying himself.

This I did, and while my impressions were confirmed by his demeanour, no positive evidence grew out of it.

“I’m hungry as a bear!” he said, as I entered the club, clad in a long, heavy ulster, reaching from my shoulders to the ground, so that the tights were not visible.

“Good,” said I. “I like a hearty eater,” and I ordered a luncheon of ten courses before removing my overcoat; but not one morsel could the man eat, for on the removal of my coat his eye fell upon my silver garments, and with a gasp he well-nigh fainted. It was clear. He recognized them and was afraid, and in consequence lost his appetite. But he was game, and tried to laugh it off.

“Silver man, I see,” he said, nervously, smiling.

“No,” said I, taking the lock of golden hair from my pocket and dangling it before him. “Bimetallist.”

His jaw dropped in dismay, but recovering himself instantly he put up a fairly good fight.

“It is strange, Mr. Lohengrin,” said I, “that in the three years I have been here I’ve never seen you before.”

“I’ve been very quiet,” he said. “Fact is, I have had my reasons, Mr. Holmes, for preferring the life of a hermit. A youthful indiscretion, sir, has made me fear to face the world. There was nothing wrong about it, save that it was a folly, and I have been anxious in these days of newspapers to avoid any possible revival of what might in some eyes seem scandalous.”

I felt sorry for him, but my duty was clear. Here was my man—but how to gain direct proof was still beyond me. No further admissions could be got out of him, and we soon parted.

Two days later the lady called and again I reported progress.

“It needs but one thing, madame, to convince me that I have found your husband,” said I. “I have found a man who might be connected with swan’s-down, from whose luxuriant curls might have come this tow-coloured lock, and who might have worn the silver-tinsel tights—yet it is all might and no certainty.”

“I will bring my small brother’s bugle and the tin sword,” said she. “The sword has certain properties which may induce him to confess. My brother tells me that if he simply shakes it at a cat the cat falls dead.”

“Do so,” said I, “and I will try it on him. If he recognizes the sword and remembers its properties when I attempt to brandish it at him, he’ll be forced to confess, though it would be awkward if he is the wrong man and the sword should work on him as it does on the cat.”

The next day I was in possession of the famous toy. It was not very long, and rather more suggestive of a pancake-turner than a sword, but it was a terror. I tested its qualities on a swarm of gnats in my room, and the moment I shook it at them they fluttered to the ground as dead as door-nails.

“I’ll have to be careful of this weapon,” I thought. “It would be terrible if I should brandish it at a motor-man trying to get one of the Gehenna Traction Company’s cable-cars to stop and he should drop dead at his post.”

All was now ready for the demonstration. Fortunately the following Saturday night was club night at the House-Boat, and we were all expected to come in costume. For dramatic effect I wore a yellow wig, a helmet, the silver-tinsel tights, and a doublet to match, with the brass bugle and the tin sword properly slung about my person. I looked stunning, even if I do say it, and much to my surprise several people mistook me for the man I was after. Another link in the chain! Even the public unconsciously recognized the value of my deductions. They called me Lohengrin!

And of course it all happened as I expected. It always does. Lohengrin came into the assembly-room five minutes after I did and was visibly annoyed at my make-up.

“This is a great liberty,” said he, grasping the hilt of his sword; but I answered by blowing the bugle at him, at which he turned livid and fell back. He had recognized its soft cadence. I then hauled the sword from my belt, shook it at a fly on the wall, which immediately died, and made as if to do the same at Lohengrin, whereupon he cried for mercy and fell upon his knees.

“Turn that infernal thing the other way!” he shrieked.

“Ah!” said I, lowering my arm. “Then you know its properties?”

“I do—I do!” he cried. “It used to be mine—I confess it!”

“Then,” said I, calmly putting the horrid bit of zinc back into my belt, “that’s all I wanted to know. If you’ll come up to my office some morning next week I’ll introduce you to your wife,” and I turned from him.

My mission accomplished, I left the festivities and returned to my quarters where my fair client was awaiting me.

“Well?” she said.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Lohengrin,” I said, and the lady cried aloud with joy at the name, for it was the very one she had hoped it would be. “My man turns out to be your man, and I turn him over therefore to you, only deal gently with him. He’s a pretty decent chap and sings like a bird.”

Whereon I presented her with my bill for 5000 oboli, which she paid without a murmur, as was entirely proper that she should, for upon the evidence which I had secured the fair plaintiff, in the suit for separation of Elsa vs. Lohengrin on the ground of desertion and non-support, obtained her decree, with back alimony of twenty-five percent of Lohengrin’s income for a trifle over fifteen hundred years.

How much that amounted to I really do not know, but that it was a large sum I am sure, for Lohengrin must have been very wealthy. He couldn’t have afforded to dress in solid silver-tinsel tights if he had been otherwise. I had the tights assayed before returning them to their owner, and even in a country where free coinage of tights is looked upon askance they could not be duplicated for less than $850 at a ratio of 32 to 1.

From The Enchanted Type-writer (1899)

•  2  •

THE MYSTERY OF
PINKHAM’S DIAMOND STUD

“It is the little things that tell in detective work, my dear Watson,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat over our walnuts and coffee one bitter winter night shortly before his unfortunate departure to Switzerland, whence he never returned.

“I suppose that is so,” said I, pulling away upon the very excellent stogie which mine host had provided—one made in Pittsburgh in 1885, and purchased by Holmes, whose fine taste in tobacco had induced him to lay a thousand of these down in his cigar-cellar for three years, and then keep them in a refrigerator, overlaid with a cloth soaked in Chateau Yquem wine for ten. The result may be better imagined than described. Suffice it to say that my head did not recover for three days, and the ash had to be cut off the stogie with a knife. “I suppose so, my dear Holmes,” I repeated, taking my knife and cutting three inches of the stogie off and casting it aside, furtively, lest he should think I did not appreciate the excellence of the tobacco, “but it is not given to all of us to see the little things. Is it, now?”

“Yes,” he said, rising and picking up the rejected portion of the stogie. “We all see everything that goes on, but we don’t all know it. We all hear everything that goes on, but we are not conscious of the fact. For instance, at this present moment there is somewhere in this world a man being set upon by assassins and yelling lustily for help. Now his yells create a certain atmospheric disturbance. Sound is merely vibration, and, once set going, these vibrations will ran on and on and on in ripples into the infinite—that is, they will never stop, and sooner or later these vibrations must reach our ears. We may not know it when they do, but they will do so none the less. If the man is in the next room, we will hear the yells almost simultaneously—not quite, but almost—with their utterance. If the man is in Timbuctoo, the vibrations may not reach us for a little time, according to the speed with which they travel. So with sight. Sight seems limited, but in reality it is not. Vox populi, vox Dei. If vox, why not oculus? It is a simple proposition, then, that the eye of the people being the eye of God, the eye of God being all-seeing, therefore the eye of the people is all-seeing—Q.E.D.”

I gasped, and Holmes, cracking a walnut, gazed into the fire for a moment.

“It all comes down, then,” I said, “to the question, who are the people?”

Holmes smiled grimly. “All men,” he replied, shortly; “and when I say all men, I mean all creatures who can reason.”

“Does that include women?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he said. “Indubitably. The fact that women don’t reason does not prove that they can’t. I can go up in a balloon if I wish to, but I don’t. I can read an American newspaper comic supplement, but I don’t. So it is with women. Women can reason, and therefore they have a right to be included in the classification whether they do or don’t.”

“Quite so,” was all I could think of to say at the moment. The extraordinary logic of the man staggered me, and I again began to believe that the famous mathematician who said that if Sherlock Holmes attempted to prove that five apples plus three peaches made four pears, he would not venture to dispute his conclusions, was wise. (This was the famous Professor Zoggenhoffer, of the Leipsic School of Moral Philosophy and Stenography.—Ed.)

“Now you agree, my dear Watson,” he said, “that I have proved that we see everything?”

“Well—” I began.

“Whether we are conscious of it or not?” he added, lighting the gas-log, for the cold was becoming intense.

“From that point of view, I suppose so—yes,” I replied, desperately.

“Well, then, this being granted, consciousness is all that is needed to make us fully informed on any point.”

“No,” I said, with some positiveness. “The American people are very conscious, but I can’t say that generally they are well-informed.”

I had an idea this would knock him out, as the Bostonians say, but counted without my host. He merely laughed.

“The American is only self-conscious. Therefore he is well-informed only as to self,” he said.

“You’ve proved your point, Sherlock,” I said. “Go on. What else have you proved?”

“That it is the little things that tell,” he replied. “Which all men would realize in a moment if they could see the little things—and when I say ‘if they could see,’ I of course mean if they could be conscious of them.”

“Very true,” said I.

“And I have the gift of consciousness,” he added.

I thought he had, and I said so. “But,” I added, “give me a concrete example.” It had been some weeks since I had listened to any of his detective stories, and I was athirst for another.

He rose up and walked over to his pigeon-holes, each labelled with a letter, in alphabetical sequence.

“I have only to refer to any of these to do so,” he said. “Choose your letter.”

“Really, Holmes,” said I, “I don’t need to do that. I’ll believe all you say. In fact, I’ll write it up and sign my name to any statement you choose to make.”

“Choose your letter, Watson,” he retorted. “You and I are on terms that make flattery impossible. Is it F, J, P, Q, or Z?”

He fixed his eye penetratingly upon me. It seemed for the moment as if I were hypnotized, and as his gaze fairly stabbed me with its intensity, through my mind there ran the suggestion “Choose J, choose J, choose J.” To choose J became an obsession. To relieve my mind, I turned my eye from his and looked at the fire. Each flame took on the form of the letter J. I left my chair and walked to the window and looked out. The lamp-posts were twisted into the shape of the letter J.

I returned, sat down, gulped down my brandy-and-soda, and looked up at the portraits of Holmes’s ancestors on the wall. They were all J’s. But I was resolved never to yield, and I gasped out, desperately,

“Z!”

“Thanks,” he said, calmly. “Z be it. I thought you would. Reflex hypnotism, my dear Watson, is my forte. If I wish a man to choose Q, B takes hold upon him, If I wish him to choose K, A fills his mind. Have you ever observed how the mind of man repels a suggestion and flees to something else, merely that it may demonstrate its independence of another mind? Now I have been suggesting J to you, and you have chosen Z—”

“You misunderstood me,” I cried, desperately. “I did not say Z; I said P.”

“Quite so,” said he, with an inward chuckle. “P was the letter I wished you to choose. If you had insisted upon Z, I should really have been embarrassed. See!” he added. He removed the green-ended box that rested in the pigeon-hole marked Z, and, opening it, disclosed an emptiness.

“I’ve never had a Z case. But P,” he observed, quietly, “is another thing altogether.”

Here he took out the box marked P from the pigeon-hole, and, opening it, removed the contents—a single paper which was carefully endorsed, in his own handwriting, “The Mystery of Pinkham’s Diamond Stud.”

“You could not have selected a better case, Watson,” he said, as he unfolded the paper and scanned it closely. “One would almost think you had some prevision of the fact.”

“I am not aware,” said I, “that you ever told the story of Pinkham’s diamond stud. Who was Pinkham, and what kind of a diamond stud was it—first-water or Rhine?”

“Pinkham,” Holmes rejoined, “was an American millionaire, living during business hours at Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, where he had to wear a brilliant stud to light him on his way through the streets, which are so dark and sooty that an ordinary search-light would not suffice. In his leisure hours, however, he lived at the Hotel Walledup-Hysteria, in New York, where he likewise had to wear the same diamond stud to keep him from being a marked man. Have you ever visited New York, Watson?”

“No,” said I.

“Well, when you do, spend a little of your time at the Walledup-Hysteria. It is a hotel with a population larger than that of most cities, with streets running to and from all points of the compass; where men and women eat under conditions that Lucullus knew nothing of; where there is a carpeted boulevard on which walk all sorts and conditions of men; where one pays one’s bill to the dulcet strains of a string orchestra that woo him into a blissful forgetfulness of its size; and where, by pressing a button in the wall, you may summon a grand opera, or a porter who on request will lend you enough money to enable you and your family to live the balance of your days in comfort. In America men have been known to toil for years to amass a fortune for the one cherished object of spending a week in this Olympian spot, and then to be content to return to their toil and begin life anew, rich only in the memory of its luxuries. It was here that I spent my time when, some years ago, I went to the United States to solve the now famous Piano Case. You will remember how sneak thieves stole a grand piano from the residence of one of New York’s first families, while the family was dining in the adjoining room. While in the city, and indeed at the very hotel in which I stopped, and which I have described, Pinkham’s diamond stud disappeared, and, hearing that I was a guest at the Walledup-Hysteria, the owner appealed to me to recover it for him. I immediately took the case in hand. Drastic questioning of Pinkham showed that beyond all question he had lost the stud in his own apartment. He had gone down to dinner, leaving it on the centre-table, following the usual course of most millionaires, to whom diamonds are of no particular importance. Pinkham wanted this one only because of its associations. Its value, $80,000, was a mere bagatelle in his eyes.

“Now of course, if he positively left it on the table, it must have been taken by someone who had entered the room. Investigation proved that the maid, a valet, a fellow-millionaire from Chicago, and Pinkham’s children had been the only ones to do this. The maid and the valet were above suspicion. Their fees from guests were large enough to place them beyond the reach of temptation. I questioned them closely, and they convinced me at once of their innocence by conducting me through the apartments of other guests wherein tiaras of diamonds and necklaces of pearls—ropes in very truth—rubies, turquoise, and emerald ornaments of priceless value, were scattered about in reckless profusion.

“‘D’ yez t’ink oi’d waste me toime on an eighty-t’ousand-dollar shtood, wid all dhis in soight and moine for the thrubble uv swipin’ ut?’ said the French maid.

“I acquitted her at once, and the valet similarly proved his innocence, only with less of an accent, for he was supposed to be English, and not French, as was the maid, although they both came from Dublin. This narrowed the suspects down to Mr. Jedediah Wattles, of Chicago, and the children. Naturally I turned my attention to Wattles. A six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl could hardly be suspected of stealing a diamond stud. So drawing on Pinkham for five thousand dollars to pay expenses, I hired a room in a tenement-house in Rivington Street—a squalid place it was—disguised myself with an oily, black, burglarious moustache, and dressed like a comic-paper gambler. Then I wrote a note to Wattles, asking him to call, saying that I could tell him something to his advantage. He came, and I greeted him like a pal.

“‘Wattles,’ said I, ‘you’ve been working this game for a long time, and I know all about you. You are an ornament to the profession, but we diamond-thieves have got to combine. Understand?’ ‘No, I don’t,’ said he. ‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said I. ‘You’re a man of good appearance, and I ain’t, but I know where the diamonds are. If we work together, there’s millions in it. I’ll spot the diamonds, and you lift ’em, eh? You can do it,’ I added, as he began to get mad. ‘The ease with which you got away with old Pinky’s stud, that I’ve been trying to pull for myself for years, shows me that.’

“I was not allowed to go further. Wattles’s indignation was great enough to prove that it was not he who had done the deed, and after he had thrashed me out of my disguise, I pulled myself together and said, ‘Mr. Wattles, I am convinced that you are innocent.’ As soon as he recognized me and realized my object in sending for him, he forgave me, and, I must say, treated me with great consideration.

“But my last clew was gone. The maid, the valet, and Wattles were proved innocent. The children alone remained, but I could not suspect them. Nevertheless, on my way back to the hotel I bought some rock-candy, and, after reporting to Pinkham, I asked casually after the children.

“‘They’re pretty well,’ said Pinkham. ‘Billie’s complaining a little, and the doctor fears appendicitis, but Polly’s all right. I guess Billie’s all right too. The seventeen-course dinners they serve in the children’s dining-room here aren’t calculated to agree with Billie’s digestion, I reckon.’

“‘I’d like to see ’em,’ said I. ‘I’m very fond of children.’

“Pinkham immediately called the youngsters in from the nursery. ‘Guess what I’ve got,’ I said, opening the package of rock-candy. ‘Gee!’ cried Billie, as it caught his eye. ‘Gimmie some!’ ‘Who gets first piece?’ said I. ‘Me!’ cried both. ‘Anybody ever had any before?’ I asked. ‘He has,’ said Polly, pointing to Billie. The boy immediately flushed up. ‘Ain’t, neither!’ he retorted. ‘Yes you did, too,’ said Polly. ‘You swallered that piece pop left on the centre-table the other night!’ ‘Well, anyhow, it was only a little piece,’ said Billie. ‘An’ it tasted like glass,’ he added. Handing the candy to Polly, I picked Billie up and carried him to his father.

“‘Mr. Pinkham,’ said I, handing the boy over, ‘here is your diamond. It has not been stolen; it has merely been swallowed.’ ‘What?’ he cried. And I explained. The stud mystery was explained. Mr. Pinkham’s boy had eaten it.”

Holmes paused.

“Well, I don’t see how that proves your point,” said I. “You said that it was the little things that told—”

“So it was,” said Holmes. “If Polly hadn’t told—”

“Enough,” I cried; “it’s on me, old man. We will go down to Willis’s and have some Russian caviare and a bottle of Burgundy.”

Holmes put on his hat and we went out together. It is to get the money to pay Willis’s bill that I have written this story of “The Mystery of Pinkham’s Diamond Stud.”

From The Dreamers (1899)

•  3  •

A PRAGMATIC ENIGMA

BEING A CHAPTER FROM “THE FAILURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES,” BY A. CONAN WATSON, M. D.

It was a drizzly morning in November. Holmes and I had just arrived at Boston, where he was to lecture that night on “The Relation of Cigar Stumps to Crime” before the Browning Club of the Back Bay, and he was playfully indulging in some deductive pranks at my expense.

“You are a doctor by profession, with a slight leaning toward literature,” he observed, rolling up a small pill for his opium pipe and placing it in the bowl. “You have just come on a long journey over the ocean and have finished up with a five hour trip on the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad. You were brushed off by a coloured porter and rewarded him with a sixpence taken from your right-hand vest pocket before leaving the train. You came from the station in a cab, accompanied by a very handsome and famous Englishman; ate a lunch of baked beans and brown bread, opening with a Martini cocktail, and you are now wondering which one of the Boston newspapers pays the highest rates for press notices.”

“Marvellous! Marvellous!” I cried. “How on earth do you know all this?”—for it was every bit of it true.

“It is the thing that we see the most clearly that we perceive the more quickly, my dear Watson,” he replied, with a deprecatory gesture. “To begin with, I know you are a doctor because I have been a patient of yours for many years. That you have an inclination toward literature is shown by the fact that the nails on the fingers of your right hand are broken off short by persistent banging on the keys of a typewriting machine, which you carry with you wherever you go and with which you keep me awake every night, whether we are at a hotel or travelling on a sleeping car. If this were not enough to prove it I can clinch the fact by calling your attention to the other fact that I pay you a salary to write me up and can produce signed receipts on demand.”

“Wonderful,” said I; “but how did you know I had come on a long journey, partly by sea and partly by rail on a road which you specify?”

“It is simplicity itself,” returned Holmes wearily. “I crossed on the steamer with you. As for the railroad, the soot that still remains in your ears and mottles your nose is identical with that which decorates my own features. Having got mine on the New Haven and Hartford, I deduce that you got yours there also. As for the coloured porter, they have only coloured porters on those trains for the reason that they show the effects of dust and soot less than white porters would. That he brushed you off is shown by the streaks of grey on your white vest where his brush left its marks. Over your vest pocket is the mark of your thumb, showing that you reached into that pocket for the only bit of coin you possessed, a sixpence.”

“You are a marvel,” I murmured. “And the cab?”

“The top of your beaver hat is ruffed the wrong way where you rubbed it on the curtain roller as you entered the cab.” said Holmes. “The handsome and famous Englishman who accompanied you is obvious. I am he, and am therefore sure of my deduction.”

“But the lunch, Holmes, the lunch, with the beans and the cocktail,” I cried.

“Can you deny them?” he demanded.

“No, I cannot,” I replied, for to tell the truth his statement of the items was absolutely correct. “But how, how, my dear fellow, can you have deduced a bean? That’s what stumps me.”

Holmes laughed.

“You are not observant, my dear Watson,” he said. “How could I help knowing when I paid the bill?”

In proof he tossed me the luncheon cheque, and there it was, itemised in full.

“Aha!” I cried, “but how do you know that I am wondering which one of the Boston papers pays the best rates for press notices?”

“That,” said he, “is merely a guess, my dear Watson. I don’t know it, but I do know you.”

And this was the man they had said was losing his powers!

At this moment there came a timid knock on our door.

“A would-be client,” said Holmes. “The timidity of his knock shows that he is not a reporter. If it were the chambermaid, knowing that there were gentlemen in the room she would have entered without knocking. He is a distinguished man, also, who does not wish it known that he is calling, for if it were otherwise he would have been announced on the telephone from the office—a Harvard professor, I take it, for no other kind of living creature in Boston would admit that there was anything he did not know, and therefore no other kind of a Bostonian would seek my assistance. Come in.”

The door opened and a rather distinguished-looking old gentleman carrying a suitcase and an umbrella entered.

“Good morning, professor,” said Holmes, rising and holding out his right hand in genial fashion and taking his visitor’s hat with his left. “How are things out at Cambridge this morning?”

“Marvellous! Marvellous!” ejaculated the visitor, infringing somewhat on my copyright, in fact taking the very words out of my mouth. “How did you know I was a professor at Harvard?”

“By the matriculation mark on your right forefinger,” said Holmes, “and also by the way in which you carry your umbrella, which you hold not as if it were a walking stick, but as if it were a pointer with which you were about to demonstrate something on a chart, for the benefit of a number of football players taking a four years course in Life, at an institution of learning. Moreover, your address is pasted in your hat, which I have just taken from you and placed on the table. You have come to me for assistance, and your entanglement is purely intellectual, not spiritual. You have not committed a crime nor are you the victim of one—I can tell that by looking at your eyes, which are red, not with weeping, but from reading and writing. The tear ducts have not been used for years. Hence I judge that you have written a book, and after having published it, you suddenly discover that you don’t know what it means yourself, and inasmuch as the critics over the country are beginning to ask you to explain it you are in a most embarrassing position. You must either keep silent, which is a great trial to a college professor, especially a Harvard professor, or you must acknowledge that you cannot explain—a dreadful alternative. In that bag you have the original manuscript of the book, which you desire to leave with me, in order that I may read it and if possible detect the thought, tell you what it is, and thus rid you of your dilemma.”

“You are a wonderful man, Mr. Holmes,” began our visitor, “but if you will let me—”

“One moment, please,” said Holmes, eying the other closely. “Let us deduce next, if possible, just who you are. First let us admit that you are the author of a recently published book which nobody understands. Now, what is that book? It cannot be ‘Six Months’ by Helinor Quinn, for you are a gentleman, and no gentleman would have written a book of that character. Moreover, everybody knows just what that book means. The book we are after is one that cannot be understood without the assistance of a master like myself. Who writes such books? You may safely assert that the only books that nobody can understand these days are written by one James—Henry James. So far so good. But you are not Henry James, for Henry James is now in London translating his earlier works into Esperanto. Now, a man cannot be in London and in Boston at one and the same time. What is the inevitable conclusion? You must be some other James!”

The hand of our visitor trembled slightly as the marvellous deductive powers of Holmes unfolded themselves.

“Murmarvellulous!” he stammered.

“Now, what James can you be if you are not Henry?” said Holmes, “and what book have you written that defies the interpretation of the ordinary mind hitherto fed on the classic output of Hall Caine, Laura Jean Libbey and Gertrude Atherton? A search of the Six Best Sellers fails to reveal the answer Therefore the work is not fiction. I do not recall seeing it on the table of the reading room downstairs, and it is not likely, then, to be statistical. It was not handed me to read in the barber shop while having my hair cut and my chin manicured, from which I deduce that it is not humour. It is likely, then, that it is a volume either of history or philosophy. Now, in this country today people are too busy taking care of the large consignments of history in the making that come every day from Washington in the form of newspaper dispatches to devote any time to the history that was made in the past, and it is therefore not at all probable that you would go to the expense of publishing a book dealing with it. What, then, must we conclude? To me it is clear that you are therefore a man named James who has written a book on philosophy which nobody understands but yourself, and even you—”

“Say no more!” cried our visitor, rising and walking excitedly about the room. “You are the most amazingly astonishing bit of stupefying dumfounderment that I have ever stared at!”

“In short,” continued Holmes, pointing his finger sternly at the other, “you are the man who wrote that airy trifle called ‘Pragmatism’!”

There was silence for a moment, and then the Professor spoke up.

“I do not understand it at all,” he said.

“What, pragmatism?” asked Holmes with a chuckle.

“No, you,” returned the Professor coldly.

“Oh, it’s all simple enough,” said Holmes. “You were pointed out to me in the dining-room at luncheon time by the head waiter, and, besides, your name is painted on the end of your suit case. How could your identity escape me?”

“Nevertheless,” said the Professor, with a puzzled look on his face, “granted that you could deduce all these things as to my name, vocation, and so on, what could have given you the idea that I do not myself know what I meant when I wrote my book? Can you explain that?”

“That, my dear Professor, is the simplest of my deductions,” said Holmes. “I have read the book.”

Here the great man threw himself back in his chair and closed his eyes, and I, realising that I was about to be a witness of a memorable adventure, retired to an escritoire over by the window to take down in shorthand what Holmes said. The Professor, on the other hand, was walking nervously up and down the room.

“Well,” said he, “even if you have read it, what does that prove?”

“I will tell you,” said Holmes, going into one of his trances. “I read it first as a man should read a book, from first page to last, and when I got through I could not for the life of me detect your drift. A second reading in the same way left me more mystified than before, so I decided to read it backward. Inverted it was somewhat clarified but not convincing, so I tried to read it standing on my head, skipping alternate pages as I read forward, and taking in the omitted ones on the return trip. The only result of this was a nervous headache. But my blood was up. I vowed to detect your thought if it cost me my life. Removing the covers of the book, I cut the pages up into slips, each the size of a playing card, pasted these upon four packs of cards, shuffled them three times, cut them twice, dealt them to three imaginary friends seated about a circular table and played an equally imaginary game of muggins with them, at the end of which I placed the four packs one on top of the other, shuffled them twice again, and sat down to read the pages in the resulting sequence. Still the meaning of pragmatism eluded me.”

There was a prolonged pause, interrupted only by the heavy breathing of the Professor.

“Go on,” he said hoarsely.

“Well,” said Holmes, “as a last resort I sent the book to a young friend of mine who runs a printing shop and had him set the whole thing in type, which I afterward pied, sweeping up the remains in a barrel and then drawing them out letter by letter, arranging them in the order in which they came. Of the result I drew galley proofs, and would you believe it, Professor, when I again proceeded to read your words the thing meant even less than it did before. From all of which I deduce that you did not know what pragmatism was, for if you had known the chances are you would have told us. Eh?”

I awaited the answer, looking out of the window, for the demolition of another man is not a pleasant thing to witness, even though it involves a triumph for one of our most respected and profitable heroes. Strange to say the answer did not come, and on turning to see the reason why I observed to my astonishment that Holmes and I were alone, and, what was worse, our visitor had vanished with both our suitcases and my overcoat as well.

Holmes, opening his eyes at the same moment, took in the situation as soon as I did and sprang immediately to the phone, but even as he took down the receiver the instrument rang of itself.

“Hello,” said he, impatiently.

“Is this Mr. Holmes?” came a voice.

“Yes,” replied the detective, irritably. “Hurry up and get off the wire. I want to call the police. I’ve been robbed.”

“Yes, I know,” said the voice. “I’m the thief, Mr. Holmes. I wanted to tell you not to worry. Your stuff will be returned to you as soon as we have had it photographed for the illustration of an article in tonight’s Boston Gazoozle. It will be on the news-stands in about an hour. Better read it; it’s a corker; and much obliged to you for the material.”

“Well, I’ll be blanked!” cried Holmes, the phone receiver dropping from his nerveless fingers. “I fear, my dear Watson, that, in the language of this abominable country, I’ve been stung!”

•    •    •

Two hours later the streets of Boston were ringing with the cries of newsboys selling copies of the five o clock extra of the Evening Gazoozle, containing a most offensive article, with the following headlines:

DO DETECTIVES DETECT?

A GAZOOZLE REPORTER DISGUISED AS A HARVARD PROFESSOR

Calls on Sherlock Holmes, Esq.
And Gets Away with Two Suitcases
Full of the Great Detective’s
Personal Effects, While
Dr. Watson’s Hero
Tells What He Does Not Know About

PRAGMATISM

From Potted Fiction (1908)

•  4  •

MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES

Extract from
THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF OLD FATHER TIME
More Memories of Lovely Women

I have been somewhat surprised, says Father Time in a chapter on “The Unknown Wives of Great Men,” to find how infrequently the memoirs of certain illustrious personages make mention of the wives of these individuals—women who in many instances give actual vertebrate qualities to their much heralded lords and masters.

Very little appears in print, for instance, concerning the Baroness Munchausen, a woman as viciously addicted to truth as her husband was supposed to be given to unveracity; nor from the beginning to end of his very entertaining memoirs have I found any allusion whatsoever to Mrs. Sherlock Holmes née Hawkshaw, a daughter of a once eminent detective who in his day was quite as much in the public eye as is Holmes at the present moment.

That this clever woman should have been kept in the background so persistently can be accounted for only on the assumption that her husband and his biographers have been afraid to exploit that very cleverness lest Holmes himself should be cast in the shade by it. Wonderful, indeed, as were the great detective’s analysis of knotty problems, even more so were those of his wife.

In fact, I happen to know that this great ferret, who so easily outwitted others, was a mere child in her hands. I shall never forget one Sunday evening, when Holmes and I had returned from an automobile spin to the Star and Garter at Richmond, for some reason or other the detective assured Mrs. Holmes that he had been to church at St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“Really,” said she, as she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon him, “and who was the officiating chauffeur?”

“What do you mean?” demanded Holmes.

“Nothing, dear,” she replied, sweetly, “but the slight odour of gasoline on your gloves, and the fact that you have forgotten to remove your goggles from your nose, led me to believe that you yourself had conducted the service. Was the whitebait good?”

“Whitebait?” roared Holmes guiltily.

“Yes, my love,” she replied. “When you kissed me, I tasted the red pepper on your lips.”

“You are a wizard, my dear,” laughed Holmes.

“Maybe—but I never knew they had moved St. Paul’s to Richmond, even if I am,” she replied.

“How in thunder”—began Holmes.

“Never mind, my darling,” smiled the lady. “And the next time you go there be sure to leave the bill of fare of the Star and Garter in the pew where it belongs,” she added, pointing to Holmes’ otter-skin overcoat pocket, out of the top of which one of the said menus projected far enough to prove the alibi.

“You see now,” said Holmes to me confidentially over the whiskey and soda that night, after Mrs. Holmes had retired, “why I keep seven bachelor apartments in London under as many aliases.”

I assured him that I did, and I do, although I must acknowledge that that is no reason why all mention of this keen-witted lady should have been omitted from all accounts of Holmes’ life hitherto published.

Saint Paul Globe, 29 May 1904

Editing Notes

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Texts were obtained from the Internet Archive:

mrsrafflesbeinga00bangiala
holmesbeing00bangrich
enchantedtypewri00banguoft
dreamersclubbein00banguoft
pottedfiction00bangrich
and the Library of Congress:

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ lccn/sn90059523/1904-05-29

OCR and printer’s errors were silently corrected; punctuation, diacritics, and italics formatted; some spelling and punctuation normalized.

Story headers are cross-linked to individual Tables of Contents.

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