R. Holmes & Co. - John Kendrick Bangs (classic books to read TXT) 📗

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 suit-case 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 to-night, and to-morrow 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. To- night 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.

"To-morrow 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 per cent. go to Newport at one time or another--say, 4812. Of these 4812 about ten per cent. 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 fiance, 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 any one 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 $5000--"

"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 motor-car is a demned expensive piece of business, and my balance at the back has shrunk to about $1683.59, 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 to-morrow," 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