R. Holmes & Co. - John Kendrick Bangs (classic fiction TXT) 📗

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