Mrs. Raffles - John Kendrick Bangs (books like beach read .TXT) 📗

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 miaowed up the cellar steps to me in response to my call of "Who's there." True, I did not go down to see if any one 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 pajamas, 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 any one 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 Liliputians 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-a-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 pajamas; and, besides, a material fact such as that hold-up 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 per cent. better. Henriette, in order to outdo every one else, promptly put in a bid of ten thousand dollars for a single evening, and had supposed the bargain closed