“Send it as an enclosure to Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe, showing my credentials as your agent, in asking her if by any mischance your trunk has got mixed in with her luggage,” observed Holmes. “For form’s sake, I shall send it to twenty or thirty other people known to have left Atlantic City the same day. Moreover, it will suggest the idea to Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe that I am a good man to locate her trunk also, and the delicate intimation of my terms will—”
“Aha! I see,” said I. “And my thousand-dollar check to you?”
“I shall, of course, keep,” observed Holmes. “You want the whole business to be bona fide, don’t you? It would be unscrupulous for you to ask for its return.”
I didn’t exactly like the idea but, after all, there was much in what Holmes said, and the actual risk of my own capital relieved my conscience of the suspicion that by signing the letter I should become a partner in a confidence game. Hence I signed the note, mailed it to Raffles Holmes, enclosing my check for $1,000 with it.
Three days later Holmes entered my room with a broad grin on his face.
“How’s this for business?” said he, handing me a letter he had received that morning from Chicago.
Dear Sir,
I am perfectly delighted to receive your letter of July 1. I think I have Mr, Jenkins’s missing trunk. What pleases me most, however, is the possibility of your recovering mine, which also went astray at the same time. It contained articles of even greater value than Mr. Jenkins’s—my pearl rope, among other things, which is appraised at $130,000. Do you think there is any chance of your recovering it for me? I enclose my check for $5000 as a retainer. The balance of your ten percent, fee I shall gladly pay on receipt of my missing luggage.
Most sincerely yours,
Maude Ward-Smythe
“I rather think, my dear Jenkins,” observed Raffles Holmes, “that we have that $13,000 reward cinched.”
“There’s $7000 for you, Jenkins,” said Holmes, a week later, handing me his check for that amount. “Easy money that. It only took two weeks to turn the trick, and $14,000 for fourteen days’ work is pretty fair pay. If we could count on that for a steady income I think I’d be able to hold Raffles down without your assistance.”
“You got fourteen thousand, eh?” said I. “I thought it was only to be $13,000.”
“It was fourteen thousand counting in your $1000,” said Raffles Holmes. “You see, I’m playing on the square, old man. Half and half in everything.”
I squeezed his hand affectionately.
“But—he-ew!” I said, greatly relieved. “I’m glad the thing’s over with.”
“So am I,” said Holmes with a glitter in his eye. “If we’d kept that trunk in this apartment another day, there’d have been trouble. I had a piece of lead pipe up my sleeve when I called here Tuesday night.”
“What for?” I asked.
“You!” said Raffles Holmes. “If you hadn’t had that poker party with you, I’d have knocked you out and gone to China with the Ward-Smythe jewels. Sherlock Holmes stock was way below par Tuesday night.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE HIRED BURGLAR
I had not seen Raffles Holmes for some weeks, nor had I heard from him, although I had faithfully remitted to his address his share of the literary proceeds of his adventures as promptly as circumstances permitted—$600 on the first tale, $920 on the second, and no less than $1,800 on the third, showing a constantly growing profit on our combination from my side of the venture. These checks had not even been presented for payment at the bank. Fearing from this that he might be ill, I called at Holmes’s lodgings in the Rexmere, a well-established bachelor apartment hotel, on Forty-fourth Street, to inquire as to the state of his health. The clerk behind the desk greeted me cordially as I entered and bade me go at once to Holmes’s apartment on the eighteenth floor, which I immediately proceeded to do.
“Here is Mr. Holmes’s latchkey, sir,” said the clerk. “He told me you were to have access to his apartment at any time.”
“He is in, is he?” I asked.
“I really don’t know, sir. I will call up and inquire, if you wish,” replied the clerk.
“Oh, never mind,” said I. “I’ll go up, anyhow, and if he is out, I’ll wait.”
So up I went, and a few moments later had entered the apartment. As the door opened, the little private hallway leading to his den at the rear burst into a flood of light, and from an inner room, the entrance to which was closed, I could hear Holmes’s voice cheerily caroling out snatches of “Tammany.”
I laughed quietly and at the same time breathed a sigh of relief. It was very evident from the tone of his voice that there was nothing serious the matter with my friend and partner.
“Hullo, Raffles!” I called out, knocking on the door to the inner room.
“Tam-ma-nee, Tam-ma-nee;
Swampum, swampum,
Get their wampum,
Tam-ma-nee”
was the sole answer, and in such fortissimo tones that I was not surprised that he did not hear me.
“Oh, I say, Raffles,” I hallooed, rapping on the door again, this time with the head of my cane. “It’s Jenkins, old man. Came to look you up. Was afraid something had happened to you.”
“‘Way down upon the Suwanee River,
Far, far away,
Dere’s whar my heart am turnin’ ever,
Dere’s whar de ole folks stay!”
was the reply.
Again I laughed.
“He’s suffering from a bad attack of antisocialitis this evening,” I observed to myself. “Looks to me as if I’d have to let it run its course.”
Whereupon I retired to a very comfortable couch near the window and sat down to await the termination of the musical.
Five minutes later, when the singing showed no signs of abatementm I became impatient and made a third assault on the door, this time with cane, hands, and toes in unison.
“I’ll have him out this time or die!” I said, filled with resolve, and then began such a pounding upon the door as should have sufficed to awake a dead Raffles, not to mention a living one.
“Hi, there, Jenkins!” cried a voice behind me, in the midst of this operation, identically the same voice, too, as that still going on in the room in front of me. “What the dickens are you trying to do—batter the house down?”
I whirled about like a flash and was deeply startled to see Raffles himself standing by the divan I had just vacated, divesting himself of his gloves and light overcoat.
“You—Raffles?” I roared in astonishment.
“Yep,” said he. “Who else?”
“But the—the other chap—in the room there?”
“Oh,” laughed Raffles. “That’s my alibi-prover—hold on a minute and I’ll show you.”
Whereupon he unlocked the door into the bedroom, whence had come the tuneful lyrics, threw it wide open, and revealed to my astonished gaze no less an object than a large talking-machine still engaged in the strenuous fulfilment of its noisy mission.
“What the dickens!” I said.
“It’s attached to my front door,” said Raffles, silencing the machine. “The minute the door is opened it begins to sing like the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.”
“But what good is it?” said I.
“Oh, well—it keeps the servants from spending too much time in my apartment, snooping among my papers, perhaps; and it may some day come in useful in establishing an alibi if things go wrong with me. You’d have sworn I was in there just now, wouldn’t you?”
“I would indeed,” said I.
“Well—you see, I wasn’t, so there you are,” said Raffles Holmes. “By the way, you’ve come at an interesting moment. There’ll be things doing before the evening is over. I’ve had an anxious caller here five times already today. I’ve been standing in the barbershop opposite getting a line on him. His card name is Grouch, his real name is—”
Here Raffles Holmes leaned forward and whispered
in my ear a name of such eminent respectability that I fairly gasped.
“You don’t mean the Mr.—”
“Nobody else,” said Raffles Holmes. “Only he don’t know I know who he is. The third time Grouch called I trailed him to his house and then recognized him as Blank himself.”
“And what does he want with you?” I asked.
“That remains to be seen,” said Raffles Holmes. “All I know is that next Tuesday he will be required to turn over $100,000 unregistered bonds to a young man about to come of age, for whom he has been a trustee.”
“Aha!” said I. “And you think—”
“I don’t think, Jenkins, until the time comes. Gray matter is scarce these days, and I’m not wasting any of mine on unnecessary speculation,” said Raffles Holmes.
At this point the telephone rang and Raffles answered the summons.
“Yes, I’ll see Mr. Grouch. Show him up,” he said. “It would be mighty interesting reading if some newspaper showed him up,” he added with a grin, as he returned. “By the way, Jenkins, I think you’d better go in there and have a half hour’s chat with the talking-machine. I have an idea old man Grouch won’t have much to say with a third party present. Listen all you want to, but don’t breathe too loud or you’ll frighten him away.”
I immediately retired, and a moment later Mr. Grouch entered Raffles Holmes’s den.
“Glad to see you,” said Raffles Holmes cordially. “I was wondering how soon you’d be here.”
“You expected me, then?” asked the visitor in surprise.
“Yes,” said Holmes. “Next Tuesday is young Wilbraham’s twenty-first birthday, and—”
Peering through a crack in the door I could see Grouch stagger.
“You—you know my errand, then?” he gasped out.
“Only roughly, Mr. Grouch,” said Holmes, coolly. “Only roughly. But I am very much afraid that I can’t do what you want me to. Those bonds are doubtless in some broker’s box in a safe-deposit company, and I don’t propose to try to borrow them surreptitiously, even temporarily, from an incorporated institution. It is not only a dangerous but a criminal operation. Does your employer know that you have taken them?”
“My employer?” stammered Grouch, taken off his guard.
“Yes. Aren’t you the confidential secretary of Mr. Blank, the eminent financier and philanthropist?” No one would have suspected, from the tone of his voice, that Holmes was perfectly aware that Grouch and the eminent financier were one and the same person. The idea seemed to please and steady the visitor.
“Why—ah—yes—I am Mr. Blank’s confidential secretary,” he blurted out. “And—ah—of course Mr. Blank does not know that I have speculated with the bonds and lost them.”
“The bonds are—”
“In the hands of Bunker & Burke. I had hoped you would be able to suggest some way in which I could get hold of them long enough to turn them over to young Wilbraham, and then, in some other way, to restore them later to Bunker & Burke.”
“That is impossible,” said Raffles Holmes. “For the reasons stated, I cannot be a party to a criminal operation.”
“It will mean ruin for me if it cannot be done,” moaned Grouch. “For my employer as well, Mr. Holmes; he is so deep in the market he can’t possibly pull out. I thought possibly you knew of some reformed cracksman who would do this one favor for me just to tide things over. All we need is three weeks’ time—three miserable little weeks.”
“Can’t be done with a safe-deposit company at the other end of the line,” said Raffles Holmes. “If it were your employer’s own private vault at his home, it would be different. That would be a matter between gentlemen, between him and myself, but the other would put a corporation on the trail of the safe-breaker—an uncompromising situation.”
Grouch’s eye glistened.
“You know a man who, for a consideration and with a guarantee against prosecution, would break open my—I mean my employer’s private vault?” he cried.
“I think so,” said Raffles Holmes noncommittally. “Not as a crime, however, merely as a favor, and with the lofty purpose of saving an honored name from ruin. My advice to you would be to put a dummy package, supposed to contain the missing bonds, along with about $30,000 worth of other securities in that vault, and so arrange matters that on the night preceding the date of young Wilbraham’s majority, the man I will send you shall have the opportunity to crack it open and get away with the stuff unmolested and unseen. Next day young Wilbraham will see for himself why it is that Mr. Blank cannot turn over his trust. That is the only secure and I may say decently honest way out of your trouble.”
“Mr. Raffles Holmes, you are a genius!” cried Grouch, ecstatically. And then he calmed down again as an unpleasant thought flashed across his mind. “Why is it necessary to put $30,000 additional in the safe, Mr. Holmes?”
“Simply as a blind,” said Holmes. “Young Wilbraham would be suspicious if the burglar got away with nothing but his property, wouldn’t he?”
“Quite so,” said Grouch. “And now, Mr. Holmes, what will this service cost me?”
“Five thousand dollars,’’ said Holmes.
“Phe-e-e-w!” whistled Grouch. “Isn’t that pretty steep?”
“No, Mr. Grouch. I save two reputations—yours and your employer’s. Twenty-five hundred dollars is not much to pay for a reputation these days—I mean a real one, of course, such as yours is up to date,” said Holmes coldly.
“Payable by certified check?” said Grouch.
“Not much,” laughed Holmes. “In twenty-dollar bills, Mr. Grouch. You may leave them in the safe along with the other valuables.”
“Thank you, Mr. Holmes,” said Grouch, rising. “It shall be as you say. Before I go, sir, may I ask how you knew me and by what principle of deduction you came to guess my business so accurately?”
“It was simple enough,” said Holmes. “I knew, in the first place, that so eminent a person would not come to me in the guise of a Mr. Grouch if he hadn’t some very serious trouble on his mind. I knew, from reading the society items in the Herald, that Mr. Bobby Wilbraham would celebrate the attainment of his majority by a big fête on the 17th of next month. Everybody knows that Mr. Blank is Mr. Wilbraham’s trustee until he comes of age. It was easy enough to surmise from that what the nature of the trouble was. Two and two almost invariably make four, Mr. Grouch.”
“And how the devil,” demanded Grouch, angrily—“how the devil did you know I was he?”
“You pass the plate at the church I go to every Sunday,” said Holmes, laughing, “and it would take a great sight more than a two-dollar wig and a pair of fifty-cent whiskers to conceal that pompous manner of yours.”
“Tush! You would better not make me angry, Mr. Holmes,” said Grouch, reddening.
“You can get as angry as you think you can afford to, for all I care,” said Holmes. “It’s none of my funeral, you know.”
And so the matter was settled. The unmasked Blank, seeing that wrath was useless, calmed down and accepted Holmes’s terms and method for his relief.
“I’ll have my man there at 4 A.M., October 17th,” said Holmes. “See that your end of it is ready. The coast must be kept clear or the scheme falls through.”
Grouch went heavily out, and Holmes called me back into the room.
“Jenkins,” said he, “that man is one of the biggest scoundrels in creation, and I’m going to give him a jolt.”
“Where are you going to get the retired burglar?” I asked.
“Sir,” returned Raffles Holmes, “this is to be a personally conducted enterprise. It’s a job worthy of my grandsire on my mother’s side. Raffles will turn the trick.”
* * * *
And it turned out so to be, for the affair went through without a hitch. The night of October 16th I spent at Raffles’s apartments. He was as calm as though nothing unusual were on hand. He sang songs, played the piano, and up to midnight was as gay and skittish as a schoolboy on
vacation. As twelve o’clock struck, however, he sobered down, put on his hat and coat, and, bidding me remain where I was, departed by means of the fire escape.
“Keep up the talk, Jenkins,” he said. “The walls are thin here, and it’s just as well, in matters of this sort, that our neighbors should have the impression that I have not gone out. I’ve filled the machine up with a choice lot of songs and small-talk to take care of my end of it. A consolidated gas company, like yourself, should have no difficulty in filling in the gaps.”
And with that he left me to as merry and withal as nervous a three hours as I ever spent in my life. Raffles had indeed filled that talking-machine—thirteen full cylinders of it—with as choice an assortment of causerie and humorous anecdotes as any one could have wished to hear. Now and again it would bid me cheer up and not worry about him. Once, along about two A.M., it cried out: “You ought to see me now, Jenkins. I’m right in the middle of this Grouch job, and it’s a dandy. Ill teach him a lesson.” The effect of all this was most uncanny. It was as if Raffles Holmes himself spoke to me from the depths of that dark room in the household where he was engaged in an enterprise of dreadful risk merely to save the good name of one who no longer deserved to bear such a thing. In spite of all this, however, as the hours passed I began to grow more and more nervous. The talking-machine sang and chattered, but when four o’clock came and Holmes had not yet returned, I became almost frenzied with excitement—and then at the climax of the tension came the flash of his dark lantern on the fire escape, and he climbed heavily into the room.
“Thank Heaven you’re back,” I cried.
“You have reason to,” said Holmes, sinking into a chair. “Give me some whiskey. That man is a worse scoundrel than I took him for.”
“What’s happened?” I asked. “Didn’t he play square?”
“No,” said Holmes, breathing heavily. “He waited until I had busted the thing open and was on my way out in the dark hall, and then pounced on me with his butler and valet. I bowled the butler down the kitchen stairs, and sent the valet howling into the dining room with an appendicitis jab in the stomach, and had the pleasure of blacking both of Mr. Blank’s eyes.”
The Raffles Megapack Page 93