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 to-day, 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 villany. 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 fac-simile 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, down-trodden 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 Picadilly 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-tasselled 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 some one 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 to-day, 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 clock-work. 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. "To-morrow 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 clews 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 clew first, and by day after to-morrow 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 to-morrow 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 pretences 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 up-town 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 jewellers 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 to-night, Mr. Sommers?" he asked of the clerk.
"Not to-night, Mr. Holmes," laughed the clerk. "We're rather shy on the nobility to-night. 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 sha'n't trouble you. Fact is, I'm long on Captains of Industry and was just a bit hungry to-night 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 some time 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 some one, 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 barber-shop, 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 bell-boys, 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 to-night. 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 bell-boys 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 months 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, what-nots, wardrobes, and centre-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 glamour of their own respectability and credit to people who, instead of travelling 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 stick- pin, 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 to 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; to- day 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. Good-bye."
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 bath-tub 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 to-morrow," said I.
"Nonsense," said Holmes. "Don't you worry. I put a quietus on Sir Henry Darlington. He'll leave town to-night, 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 bath-tub,'" 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 to-night, 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 stick-pin."
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 centre-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 gayety 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 travelling 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 cut-throats 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 villanous 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 some day 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 it 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 clew 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, down-stairs to the dining-room, while Bruce slept unconscious of my arrival. The house next to his is vacant, you know, and it was easy travelling."
"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 to-night, 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 tings 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 d——d 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 the 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 offences of his illustrious grandsire.