"I think I understand the evasion," I went on. "_You_ haven't got it because
I have got it--it's in that suit-case under my bed."
"Open it and see for yourself," said he. "It isn't there."
"But you know where it is?" I demanded.
"How else could I be sure of that $10,000 reward?" he asked.
"Where is it?" I demanded.
"It--er--it isn't located yet--that is, not finally," said he. "And it won't
be for ten days. Ten days from now Mrs. Burlingame will find it herself and
we'll divvy on the reward, my boy, and not a trace of dishonesty in the
whole business."
And with that Raffles Holmes filled his pockets with cigars from my stores,
and bidding me be patient went his way.
The effect of his visit upon my nerves was such that any more work that day
was impossible. The fear of possible complications to follow upset me
wholly, and, despite his assurance that the suit-case was innocent of
surreptitiously acquired stomachers, I could not rid my mind of the
suspicion that he made of my apartment a fence for the concealment of his
booty. The more I thought of it the more was I inclined to send for him and
request him to remove the bag forthwith, and yet, if it should so happen
that he had spoken the truth, I 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 fiancé, 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 bank 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
that job, and you and I might as well have it as any one else."
"I'm ready," said I, as well I might be, for all I had to do in the matter
was to record the adventure and take my half of the profits--no very
difficult proceeding in either case.
"Good," quoth he. "I'll go to Gaffany & Co. to-morrow and offer my
services."
"You have a clew?" I asked.
"I have an idea," he answered. "As for the lost diamonds, I know no more of
their whereabouts than you do, but I shall be able beyond all question to
restore to Gaffany & Co. two pendants just as good as those they have lost,
and if I do that I am entitled to the reward, I fancy, am I not?"
"Most certainly," said I. "But where the dickens will you find two such
stones? They are worth $50,000 apiece, and they must match perfectly the two
remaining jewels which Gaffany & Co. have in their safe."
"I'll match 'em so closely that their own mother couldn't tell 'em apart,"
said Holmes, with a chuckle.
"Then the report that they are of such rarity of cut and lustre is untrue?"
I asked.
"It's perfectly true," said Holmes, "but that makes no difference. The two
stones that I shall return two weeks from to-day to Gaffany & Co. will be as
like the two they have as they are themselves. Ta-ta, Jenkins--you can count
on your half of that ten thousand as surely as though it is jingled now in
your pockets."
And with that Raffles Holmes left me to my own devices.
I presume that most readers of the daily newspapers are tolerably familiar
with the case of the missing pendants to which Holmes referred, and on the
quest for which he was now about to embark. There may be some of you,
however, who have never heard of the mysterious robbery of Gaffany & Co., by
which two diamonds of almost matchless purity--half of a quartet of these
stones--pear-shaped and valued at $50,000 each, had disappeared almost as if
the earth had opened and swallowed them up. They were a part of the famous
Gloria Diamond, found last year at Kimberley, a huge, uncut gem of such
value that no single purchaser for it could be found in the world. By a
syndicate arrangement Gaffany & Co. had assumed charge of it, and were in
the process of making for a customer a bar with four pendants cut from the
original, when two of them disappeared. They had been last seen in the hands
of a trusted employé of many years' standing, to whom they had been intrusted
for mounting, and he had been seen to replace them, at the end of the day's
work, in the little cage-like office of the custodian of the safe in which
jewels of great value were kept at night. This was the last seen of them,
and although five weeks had elapsed since the discovery of their loss and
Holmes's decision to look into the matter, no clew of the slightest
description had been discovered by the thousands of sleuths, professional or
amateur, who had interested themselves in the case.
"He had such assurance!" I muttered. "To hear him talk one would almost
believe that they were already in his possession."
I did not see Raffles Holmes again for five days, and then I met him only by
chance, nor should I have known it was he had he not made himself known to
me. I was on my way uptown, a little after six o'clock, and as I passed
Gaffany's an aged man emerged from the employés' entrance, carrying a small
bag in his hand. He was apparently very near-sighted, for he most
unceremoniously bumped into me as he came out of the door on to the
sidewalk.
Deference to age has always been a weakness of mine, and I apologized,
although it was he that was at fault.
"Don't mention it, Jenkins," he whispered. "You are just the man I want to
see. Café Panhard--to-night--eleven o'clock. Just happen in, and if a
foreign-looking person with a red beard speaks to you don't throw him down,
but act as if you were not annoyed by his mistake."
"You know me?" I asked.
"Tush, man--I'm Raffles Holmes!" and with that he was off.
His make-up was perfect, and as he hobbled his way along Broadway through
the maze of cars, trucks, and hansoms, there was not in any part of him a
hint or a suggestion that brought to mind my alert partner.
Of course my excitement was intense. I could hardly wait for eleven o'clock
to come, and at 9.30 I found myself in front of the Café Panhard a full hour
and a half ahead of time, and never were there more minutes in that period
of waiting than there seemed to be then as I paced Broadway until the
appointed hour. It seemed ages before the clock down in front of the Whirald
Building pointed to 10.55, but at last the moment arrived, and I entered the
café, taking one of the little tables in the farther corner, where the light
was not unduly strong and where the turmoil of the Hungarian band was
reduced by distance from moltofortissimo to a moderate approach to a
pianissimo, which would admit of conversation. Again I had to wait, but not
for so long a time. It was twenty minutes past eleven when a fine-looking
man of military bearing, wearing a full red beard, entered, and after
looking the café over, sauntered up to where I sat.
"Good-evening, Mr. Jenkins," said he, with a slight foreign accent. "Are you
alone?"
"Yes," said I.
"If you don't mind, I should like to sit here for a few moments," he
observed, pulling out the chair opposite me. "I have your permission?"
"Certainly, Mr.--er--"
"Robinstein is my name," said he, sitting down, and producing a letter from
his pocket. "I have here a note from my old friend Raffles Holmes--a note of
introduction to you. I am a manufacturer of paste jewels--or rather was. I
have had one or two misfortunes in my business, and find myself here in
America practically stranded."
"Your place of business was--"
"In the Rue de l'Echelle in Paris," he explained. "I lost everything in
unfortunate speculation, and have come here to see if I could not get a new
start. Mr. Holmes thinks you can use your influence with Markoo & Co., the
theatrical costumers, who, I believe, manufacture themselves all the stage
jewelry they use in their business, to give me something to do. It was said
in Paris that the gems which I made were of such quality that they would
deceive, for a time anyhow, the most expert lapidaries, and if I can only
get an opening with Markoo & Co. I am quite confident that you will not
repent having exerted your good offices in my behalf."
"Why, certainly, Mr. Robinstein," said I. "Any friend of Raffles Holmes may
command my services. I know Tommy Markoo very well, and as this is a pretty
busy time with him, getting his stuff out for the fall productions, I have
little doubt I shall be able to help you. By Jove!" I added, as I glanced
over the café, "that's a singular coincidence--there is Markoo himself just
coming in the doorway."
"Really?" said Mr. Robinstein, turning and gazing towards the door. "He's a
different-looking chap from what I had imagined. Perhaps, Mr. Jenkins, it
would--er--expedite matters if you--"
"Of course," I interrupted. "Tommy is alone--we'll have him over."
And I beckoned to Markoo and invited him to join us.
"Good!" said he, in his whole-souled way. "Glad to have a chance to see
you--I'm so confoundedly busy these days--just think of it, I've been at
the shop ever since eight o'clock this morning."
"Tommy, I want to introduce you to my friend Mr. Robinstein," said I.
"Not Isidore Robinstein, of Paris?" said Markoo.
"I have that misfortune, Mr. Markoo," said Robinstein.
"Misfortune? Gad, Mr. Robinstein, we look at things through different
glasses," returned Markoo. "The man who can do your work ought never to
suffer misfortune--"
"If he only stays out of the stock-market," said Robinstein.
"Aha," laughed Tommy. "Et tu, Brute?"
We all laughed, and if there was any ice to be broken after that it was
along the line of business of the café. We got along famously together, and
when we parted company, two hours later, all the necessary arrangements had
been made for Mr. Robinstein to begin at once with Markoo--the following
day, in fact.
Four nights later Holmes turned up at my apartment.
"Well," said I, "have you come to report progress?"
"Yes," he said. "The reward will arrive on time, but it's been the de'il's
own job. Pretty, aren't they!" he added, taking a small package wrapped in
tissue-paper out of his pocket, and disclosing its contents.
"Gee-rusalem, what beauties!" I cried, as my eyes fell on two such diamonds
as I had never before seen. They sparkled on the paper like bits of
sunshine, and that their value was quite $100,000 it did not take one like
myself, who knew little of gems, to see at a glance. "You have found them,
have you?"
"Found what?" asked Raffles Holmes.
"The missing pendants," said I.
"Well--not exactly," said Raffles Holmes. "I think I'm on the track of them,
though. There's an old chap who works beside me down at Gaffany's who spends
so much of his time drinking ice-water that I'm getting to be suspicious of
him."