“Ah, Jenkins,” he said with a heart-rending sigh, “that is the point. Tomorrow! Heavens! What will tomorrow’s story be? I—I cannot tell.”
“What’s the matter, Holmes?” said I. “Are you in danger?”
“Physically, no—morally, my God! Jenkins, yes. I shall need all of your help,” he cried.
“What can I do?” I asked. “You know you have only to command me,”
“Don’t leave me this night for a minute,” he groaned. “If you do, I am lost. The Raffles in me is rampant when I look at those jewels and think of what they will mean if I keep them. An independent fortune forever. All I have to do is to get aboard a ship and go to Japan and live in comfort the rest of my days with this wealth in my possession, and all the instincts of honesty that I possess, through the father in me, will be powerless to prevent my indulgence in this crime. Keep me in sight, and if I show the slightest inclination to give you the slip, knock me over the head will you, for my own good?”
I promised faithfully that I would do as he asked, but, as an easier way out of an unpleasant situation, I drugged his Remsen cooler with a sleeping-powder, and an hour later he was lying off on my divan lost to the world for eight hours at least. As a further precaution I put the jewels in my own safe.
The night’s sleep had the desired effect, and with the returning day Holmes’s better nature asserted itself. Raffles was subdued, and he returned to Gaffany’s to put the finishing touches to his work.
* * * *
“Here’s your check, Jenkins,” said Raffles Holmes, handing me a draft for $5,000. “The gems were found today in the water cooler in the workroom, and Gaffany & Co. paid up like gentlemen.”
“And the thief?” I asked.
“Under arrest,” said Raffles Holmes. “We caught him fishing for them.”
“And your paste jewels, where are they?”
“I wish I knew,” he answered, his face clouding over. “In the excitement of the moment of the arrest, I got ’em mixed with the originals I had last night, and they didn’t give me time or opportunity to pick ’em out. The four were mounted immediately and sent under guard to the purchaser. Gaffany & Co. didn’t want to keep them a minute longer than was necessary. But the purchaser is so rich he will never have to sell ’em—so, you see, Jenkins, we’re as safe as a church.”
“Your friend Robinstein was a character, Holmes,” said I.
“Yes,” sighed Holmes. “Poor chap—he was a great loss to his friends. He taught me the art of making paste gems when I was in Paris. I miss him like the dickens.”
“Miss him!” said I, getting anxious for Robinstein. “What’s happened? He isn’t—”
“Dead,” said Holmes. “Two years ago—dear old chap.”
“Oh, come now, Holmes,” I said.
“What new game is this you are rigging on me? I met him only five nights ago—and you know it.”
“Oh—that one,” said Raffles Holmes with a laugh. “I was that Robinstein.”
“You?” I cried.
“Yes, me,” said Holmes. “You don’t suppose I’d let a third party into our secret, do you?”
And then he gave me one of those sweet, wistful smiles that made the wonder of the man all the greater.
“I wish to the dickens I knew whether these were real or paste!” he muttered, taking the extra pendants from his wallet as he spoke. “I don’t dare ask anybody, and I haven’t got any means of telling myself.”
“Give them to me,” said I, sternly, noting a glitter in his eye that suggested the domination for the moment of the Raffles in him.
“Tush, Jenkins,” he began, uneasily.
“Give them to me, or I’ll brain you, Holmes,” said I, standing over him with a soda-water bottle gripped in my right hand, “for your own good. Come, give up.”
He meekly obeyed.
“Come now, get on your hat,” said I. “I want you to go out with me.”
“What for, Jenkins?” he almost snarled.
“You’ll see what for,” said I.
Raffles Holmes obeyed. We walked down to the river’s edge, where I stood for a moment and then hurled the remaining stones far out into the waters.
Holmes gave a gasp and then a sigh of relief.
“There,” I said. “It doesn’t matter much to us now whether the confounded things were real or not.”
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRASS CHECK
“Jenkins,” said Raffles Holmes to me the other night as we sat in my den looking over the criminal news in the evening papers, in search of some interesting material for him to work on, “this paper says that Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has gone to Atlantic City for a week and will lend her gracious presence to the social functions of the Hotel Garrymore, at that interesting city by the sea, until Monday, the 27th, when she will depart for Chicago, where her sister is to be married on the 29th. How would you like to spend the week with me at the Garrymore?”
“It all depends upon what we are going for,” said I. “Also, what in thunder has Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe got to do with us, or we with her?”
“Nothing at all,” said Holmes. “That is, nothing much.”
“Who is she?” I asked, eying him suspiciously.
“All I know is what I have seen in the papers,” said Holmes. “She came in on the Altruria two weeks ago and attracted considerable attention by declaring $130,000 worth of pearl rope that she bought in Paris, instead of, woman-like, trying to smuggle it through the custom house. It broke the heart of pretty nearly every inspector in the service. She’d been watched very carefully by the detective bureau in Paris, and when she purchased the rope there, the news of it was cabled over in cipher, so that they’d all be on the lookout for it when she came in. The whole force on the pier was on the qui vive, and one of the most expert women searchers on the payroll was detailed to give her special attention the minute she set foot on shore; but instead of doing as they all believed she would do, and giving the inspectors a chance to catch her at trying to evade the duties, to their very great profit, she calmly and coolly declared the stuff, paid her little sixty-five percent, like a major, and drove off to the Castoria in full possession of her jewels. The Collector of the Port had all he could do to keep ’em from draping the custom house for thirty days, they were all so grief-stricken. She’ll probably take the rope to Atlantic City with her.”
“Aha!” said I. “That’s the milk in the cocoanut, is it? You’re after that pearl rope, are you, Raffles?”
“On my honor as a Holmes,” said he, “I am not. I shall not touch the pearl rope, although I have no doubt that I shall have some unhappy moments during the week that I am in the same hotel with it. That’s one reason why I’d like to have you go along, Jenkins—just to keep me out of temptation. Raffles may need more than Holmes to keep him out of mischief. I am confident, however, that with you to watch out for me, I shall be able to suppress the strong tendency towards evil which at times besets me.”
“We’d better keep out of it altogether, Holmes,” said I, not liking the weight of responsibility for his good behavior that more than once he had placed on my shoulders. “You don’t deny, I suppose, that the pearl rope is a factor in your intentions, whatever they may be.”
“Of course I don’t, Jenkins,” was his response. “If it were not for her pearl rope, Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe could go anywhere she pleased without attracting any more attention from me than a passing motor-car. It would be futile for me to deny that, as a matter of fact, the pearl rope is an essential part of my scheme, and, even if it were not futile to do so, I should still not deny it, because neither my father nor my grandfather, Holmes nor Raffles, ever forgot that a gentleman does not lie.”
“Then count me out,” said I.
“Even if there is $7500 in it for you?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
“If it were $107,500 you could still count me out,” I retorted. “I don’t like the business.”
“Very well,” said he with a sigh. “I shall h
ave to go alone and endeavor to fight the terrible temptation unaided and with a strong probability that I shall fail—and, yielding to it, commit my first real act of crime and, in that event, with the possibility of a term at Trenton prison, if I am caught.”
“Give it up, Raffles,” I pleaded.
“And all because, in the hour of my need, my best friend, whose aid I begged, refused me,” he went on, absolutely ignoring my plea.
“Oh, well, if you put it on that score,” I said, “I’ll go—but you must promise me not to touch the pearls.”
“I’ll do my best not to,” he replied. “As usual, you have carte-blanche to put me out of business if you catch me trying it.”
With this understanding I accompanied Raffles Holmes to Atlantic City the following afternoon, and the following evening we were registered at the Hotel Garrymore.
Holmes was not mistaken in his belief that Mrs. Wilbra-ham Ward-Smythe would take her famous pearl rope to Atlantic City with her. That very evening, while we were sitting at dinner, the lady entered, and draped about her stately neck and shoulders was the thing itself, and a more beautiful decoration was never worn by woman from the days of the Queen of Sheba to this day of lavish display in jewels. It was a marvel, indeed, but the moment I saw it I ceased to give the lady credit for superior virtue in failing to smuggle it through the custom house, for its very size would have precluded the possibility of a successful issue to any such attempted evasion of the law. It was too bulky to have been secreted in any of the ordinary ways known to smugglers. Hence her candid acknowledgment of its possession was less an evidence of the lady’s superiority in the matter of “beating the government” than of her having been confronted with the proverbial choice of the unidentified Hobson.
“By Jove! Jenkins,” Raffles Holmes muttered hoarsely as Mrs. Ward-Smythe paraded the length of the dining room, as fairly coruscating with her rich possessions as though she were a jeweler’s window incarnate, “it’s a positive crime for a woman to appear in a place like this arrayed like that. What right has she to subject poor weak humanity to such temptation as now confronts every servant in this hotel, to say nothing of guests, who, like ourselves, are made breathless with such lavish display? There’s poor old Tommie Bankson over there, for instance. See how he gloats over those pearls. He’s fairly red-eyed over them.”
I glanced across the dining room, and sure enough, there sat Tommie Bankson, and even from where we were placed we could see his hands tremble with the itch for possession, and his lips go dry with excitement as he thought of the material assets in full view under the glare of the dining room electric lights.
“I happen to know on the inside,” continued Holmes, “that Tommie is not only a virtual bankrupt through stock speculation, but is actually face to face with criminal disgrace for misuse of trust funds, all of which he could escape if he could lay his hands upon half the stuff that woman is so carelessly wearing tonight. Do you think it’s fair to wear, for the mere gratification of one’s vanity, things that arouse in the hearts of less fortunate beings such passionate reflections and such dire temptations as those which are now besetting that man?”
“I guess we’ve got enough to do looking after Raffles tonight, old man, without wasting any of our nerve-tissue on Tommie Bankson,” I replied. “Come on—let’s get out of this. We’ll go over to the Pentagon for the night, and tomorrow we’ll shake the sands of Atlantic City from our feet and hie ourselves back to New York, where the temptations are not so strong.”
“It’s too late,” said Raffles Holmes. “I’ve set out on this adventure and I’m going to put it through. I wouldn’t give up in the middle of an enterprise of this sort any more than I would let a balky horse refuse to take a fence I’d put him to. It’s going to be harder than I thought, but we’re in it, and I shall stay to the end.”
“What the devil is the adventure, anyhow?” I demanded impatiently. “You vowed you wouldn’t touch the rope.”
“I hope not to,” was his response. “It is up to you to see that I don’t. My plan does not involve my laying hands upon even the shadow of it.”
So we stayed on at the Garrymore, and a worse week I never had anywhere. With every glimpse of that infernal jewel the Raffles in Holmes became harder and harder to control. In the daytime he was all right, but when night came on he was feverish with the desire to acquire possession of the pearls. Twice in the middle of the night I caught him endeavoring to sneak out of our room, and upon each occasion, when I rushed after him and forced him back, he made no denial of my charge that he was going after the jewel. The last time it involved us both in such a terrible struggle that I vowed then and there that the following morning should see my departure.
“I can’t stand the strain, Holmes,” said I.
“Well, if you can’t stand your strain,” said Raffles Holmes, “what do you think of mine?”
“The thing to do is to get out, that’s all,” I retorted. “I won’t have a nerve left in twenty-four hours. For four nights now I haven’t had a minute’s normal sleep, and this fight you’ve just put up has regularly knocked me out.”
“One more day Jenkins,” he pleaded. “She goes day after tomorrow, and so do we.”
“We?” I cried. “After her?”
“Nope—she to Chicago—we to New York,” said Holmes. “Stick it out, there’s a good fellow,” and of course I yielded.
* * * *
The next day—Sunday—was one of feverish excitement, but we got through it without mishap, and on Monday morning it was with a sigh of relief that I saw Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe pull out of the Philadelphia station en route for Chicago, while Raffles Holmes and I returned to New York.
“Well, Raffles,” said I, as we sped on our homeward way, “we’ve had our trouble for our pains.”
He laughed crisply. “Have we?” said he. “I guess not—not unless you have lost the trunk check the porter gave you.”
“What, this brass thing?” I demanded, taking the check from my pocket and flicking it in the air like a penny.
“That very brass thing,” said Holmes.
“You haven’t lifted that damned rope and put it in my trunk!” I roared.
“Hush, Jenkins! For Heaven’s sake don’t make a scene. I haven’t done anything of the sort,” he whispered, looking about him anxiously to make sure that we had not been overheard. “Those pearls are as innocent of my touch as the top of the Himalaya Mountains is of yours.”
“Then what have you done?” I demanded, sulkily.
“Just changed a couple of trunk checks, that’s all,” said Raffles Holmes. “That bit of brass you have in your hand, which was handed to you in the station by the porter of the Garrymore, when presented at Jersey City will put you in possession of Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe’s trunk, containing the bulk of her jewels. She’s a trifle careless about her possessions, as any one could see who watched the nonchalant way in which she paraded the board walk with a small fortune on her neck and fingers. Most women would carry such things in a small satchel, or at least have the trunk sent by registered express, but not Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe; and, thanks to her loud voice, listening outside of her door last night, I heard her directing her maid where she wished the gems packed.”
“And where the dickens is my trunk?” I asked.
“On the way to Chicago,” said Raffles Holmes, calmly. “Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has the check for it.”
“Safe business!” I sneered. “Bribed the porter, I presume?”
“Jenkins, you are exceedingly uncomplimentary at times,” said Raffles Holmes, showing more resentment than I had ever given him credit for. “Perhaps you observed that I didn’t go to the station in the omnibus.”
“No, you went over to the drugstore after some Phenacetine for your headache,” said I.
“Precisely,” said Holmes, “and after purchasing the phenacetine I jumped aboard the Garrymore express-wagon and got a lift over to the station. It was during that ride
that I transferred Mrs. Ward-Smythe’s check from her trunk to yours, and vice versa. It’s one of the easiest jobs in the Raffles business, especially at this season of the year, when travel is heavy and porters are overworked.”
“I’ll see the trunk in the Hudson River, pearl rope and all, before I’ll claim it at Jersey City or anywhere else,” said I.
“Perfectly right,” Holmes returned. “We’ll hand the check to the expressman when he comes through the train, and neither of us need appear further in the matter. It will merely be delivered at your apartment.”
“Why not yours?” said I.
“Raffles!” said he, and I understood.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Let it alone, unopened, safe as a church, until Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe discovers her loss, which will be tomorrow afternoon, and then—”
“Well?”
“Mr. Holmes will step in, unravel the mystery, prove it to be a mere innocent mistake, collect about ten or fifteen thousand dollars reward, divvy up with you, and the decks will be cleared for what turns up next,” said this wonderful player of dangerous games. “And as a beginning, Jenkins, please sign this,” he added.
Holmes handed me a typewritten letter, which read as follows:
THE RICHMORE
June 30, 1905
Raffles Holmes, Esq.
Dear Sir,
I enclose herewith my check for $1,000 as a retainer for your services in locating for me a missing trunk, which contains articles which I value at $10,000. This trunk was checked through to New York from Atlantic City on Monday last, 9:40 train and has not since been found. Whether or not it has been stolen, or has gone astray in some wholly innocent manner, is not as yet clear. I know of no one better equipped for the task of finding it for me than yourself, who, I am given to understand, are the son of the famous Sherlock Holmes of England. The check represents the ten percent commission on the value of the lost articles, which I believe is the customary fee for services such as I seek.
Very truly yours.
“What are you going to do with this?” I demanded.
The Raffles Megapack Page 92
