“Until last week,” the General continued, “nor hide nor hair of any of my stolen possessions was ever 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 Dozyphase.
“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.
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. 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 its 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 clue 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. Brace, of Brace, Watkins & Co., at the latter’s residence, 74 Fifth Avenue. Among Mr. Brace’s guests were Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Danderveldt, Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Scroog, Jr., Major-General Carrington Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson Scovill, and Signer 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!”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked. “Write to Bruce and tell him the facts?”
Holmes’s sole answer was a dismissive glance.
* * * *
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 Brace give it up willingly?” I asked.
“He never said a word,” laughed Holmes. “Fact is, he snored all the time I was there.”
“Snored?”
“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, and downstairs to the dining room. Bruce slept the whole while, 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 tonight, 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 things 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 wee
k later at the club, “heard anything further about your pepper-pots yet?”
“Most singular thing, Jenkins,” said he. “The damned 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 the 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’ handwriting.
“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 them 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 to 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.
The Raffles Megapack Page 98