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. ——?" Here Holmes mentioned the name of 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 party to a criminal operation."

"It will mean ruin for me if it cannot be done," moaned Grouch. "For Mr. Blank 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 Mr. Blank's own private vault at his home it would be different. That would be a matter between gentlemen, between Mr. Blank 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 Mr. Blank'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 the 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 Mr. Blank'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 as Mr. Blank 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 Whirald, that Mr. Bobby Wilbraham would celebrate the attainment of his majority by a big fete 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 Blank?"

"Mr. Blank passes 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 his."

"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, Mr. Blank," 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, Mr. Blank," 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 may 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 spend 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 school-boy 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, life 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 causeries 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 2 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. I'll 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 Blank 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 Blank 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 holing into the dining-room with an appendicitis jab in the stomach and had the pleasure of blacking both of Mr. Blank's eyes."

"And the stuff?"

"Right here," said Holmes, tapping his chest. "I was afraid something might happen on the way out and I kept both hands free. I haven't much confidence in philanthropists like Blank. Fortunately the scrimmage was in the dark, so Blank will never know who hit him."

"What are you going to do with the $35,000?" I queried, as we went over the booty later and found it all there.

"Don't know—haven't made up my mind," said Holmes, laconically. "I'm too tired to think about that now. It's me for bed." And with that he turned in.

Two days later, about nine o'clock in the evening, Mr. Grouch again called, and Holmes received him courteously.

"Well, Mr. Holmes," Grouch observed, unctuously, rubbing his hands together, "it was a nice job, neatly done. It saved the day for me. Wilbraham was satisfied, and has given me a whole year to make good the loss. My reputation is saved, and—"

"Excuse me, Mr. Blank—or Grouch—er—to what do you refer?" asked Holmes.

"Why, our little transaction of Monday night—or was it Tuesday morning?" said Grouch.

"Oh—that!" said Holmes. "Well, I'm glad to hear you managed to pull it off satisfactorily. I was a little worried about it. I was afraid you were done for."

"Done for?" said Grouch. "No, indeed. The little plan when off without a hitch."

"Good," said Holmes. "I congratulate you. Whom did you get to do the job?"

"Who—what—what—why, what do you mean, Mr. Holmes?" gasped Grouch.

"Precisely what I say—or maybe you don't like to tell me—such things are apt to be on a confidential basis. Anyhow, I'm glad you're safe, Mr. Grouch, and I hope your troubles are over."

"They will be when you give me back my $30,000," said Grouch.

"Your what?" demanded Holmes, with well-feigned surprise.

"My $30,000," repeated Blank, his voice rising to a shout.

"My dear Mr. Grouch," said Holmes, "how should I know anything about your $30,000?"

"Didn't your—your man take it?" demanded Grouch, huskily.

"My man? Really, Mr. Grouch, you speak in riddles this evening. Pray make yourself more clear."

"Your reformed burglar, who broke open my safe, and—" Grouch went on.

"I have no such man, Mr. Grouch."

"Didn't you send a man to my house, Mr. Raffles, to break open my safe, and take certain specified parcels of negotiable property therefrom?" said Grouch, rising and pounding the table with his fists.

"I did not!" returned Holmes, with equal emphasis. "I have never in my life sent anybody to your house, sir."

"Then who in the name of Heaven did?" roared Grouch. "The stuff is gone."

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

"I am willing," said he, calmly, "to undertake to find out who did it, if anybody, if that is what you mean, Mr. Grouch. Ferreting out crime is my profession. Otherwise, I beg to assure you that my interest in the case ceases at this moment."

Here Holmes rose with quiet dignity and walked to the door.

"You will find me at my office in the morning, Mr. Grouch." he remarked, "in case you wish to consult me professionally."

"Hah!" sneered Grouch. "You think you can put me off this way, do you?"

"I think so," said Holmes, with a glittering eye. "No gentleman or other person may try to raise a disturbance in my private apartments and remain there."

"We'll see what the police have to say about this, Mr. Raffles Holmes," Grouch shrieked, as he made for the door.

"Very well," said Holmes. "I've no doubt they will find our discussion of the other sinners very interesting. They are welcome to the whole story as far as I am concerned."

And he closed the door on the ashen face of the suffering Mr. Grouch.



"What shall I do with your share of the $30,000, Jenkins?" said Raffles Holmes a week later.

"Anything you please," said I. "Only don't offer any of it to me. I can't question the abstract justice of your mulcting old Blank for the amount, but, somehow or other, I don't want any of it myself. Send it to the Board of Foreign Missions."

"Good!" said Holmes. "That's what I've done with my share. See!"

And he showed me an evening paper in which the board conveyed its acknowledgment of the generosity of an unknown donor of the princely sum of $15,000.



VII THE REDEMPTION OF YOUNG BILLINGTON RAND

"Jenkins," said Raffles Holmes, lighting his pipe and throwing himself down upon my couch, "don't you sometimes pine for those good old days of Jack Sheppard and Dick Turpin? Hang it all—I'm getting blisteringly tired of the modern refinements in crime, and yearn for the period when the highwayman met you on the road and made you stand and deliver at the point of the pistol."

"Indeed I don't!" I ejaculated. "I'm not chicken-livered, Raffles, but I'm mighty glad my lines are cast in less strenuous scenes. When a book-agent comes in here, for instance, and holds me up for nineteen dollars a volume for a set of Kipling in words of one syllable, illustrated by his aunt, and every volume autographed by his uncle's step-sister, it's a game of wits between us as to whether I shall buy or not buy, and if he gets away with my signature to a contract it is because he has legitimately outwitted me. But your ancient Turpin overcame you by brute force; you hadn't a run for your money from the moment he got his eye on you, and no percentage of the swag was ever returned to you has in the case of the Double-Cross Edition of Kipling, in which you get at least fifty cents worth of paper and print for every nineteen dollars you give up."

"That is merely the commercial way of looking at it," protested Holmes. "You reckon up the situation on a basis of mere dollars, strike a balance and charge the thing up to profit and loss. But the romance of it all, the element of the picturesque, the delicious, tingling sense of adventure which was inseparable from a road experience with a commanding personality like Turpin—these things are all lost in your prosaic book-agent methods of our day. No man writing his memoirs for the enlightenment of posterity would ever dream of setting down upon paper the story of how a book-agent robbed him of two-hundred dollars, but the chap who has been held up in the dark recesses of a forest on a foggy night by a Jack Sheppard would always find breathless and eager listeners to or readers of the tale he had to tell, even if he lost only a nickel by the transaction."

"Well, old man," said I, "I'm satisfied with the prosaic methods of the gas companies, the book-agents, and the riggers of the stock-market. Give me Wall Street and you take Dick Turpin and all his crew. But what has set your mind to working on the Dick Turpin end of it anyhow? Thinking of going in for that sort of thing yourself?"

"M-m-m yes," replied Holmes, hesitatingly. "I am. Not that I pine to become one of the Broom Squires myself, but because I—well, I may be forced into it."

"Take my advice, Raffles," I interrupted, earnestly. "Let fire-arms and highways alone. There's too much of battle, murder, and sudden death in loaded guns, and surplus of publicity in street work."

"You mustn't take me so literally, Jenkins," he retorted. "I'm not going to follow precisely in the steps of Turpin, but a hold-up on the public highway seems to be the only way out of a problem which I have been employed to settle. Do you know young Billington Rand?"

"By sight," said I, with a laugh. "And by reputation. You're not going to hold him up, are you?" I added, contemptuously.

"Why not?" said Holmes.

"It's like breaking into an empty house in search of antique furniture," I explained. "Common report has it that Billington Rand has already been skinned by about every skinning agency in town. He's posted at all his clubs. Every gambler in town, professional as well as social, has his I.O.U.'s for bridge, poker, and faro debts. Everybody knows it except those fatuous people down in the Kenesaw National Bank, where he's employed, and the Fidelity Company that's on his bond. He wouldn't last five minutes in either place if his uncle wasn't a director in both concerns."

"I see that you have a pretty fair idea of Billington Rand's financial condition," said Holmes.

"It's rather common talk in the clubs, so why shouldn't I?" I put in. "Holding him up would be at most an act of petit larceny, if you measure a crime by what you get out of it. It's a great shame, though, for at heart Rand is one of the best fellows in the world. He's a man who has all the modern false notions of what a fellow ought to do to keep up what he calls his end. He plays cards and sustains ruinous losses because he thinks he won't be considered a good-fellow if he stays out. He plays bridge with ladies and pays up when he loses and doesn't collect when he wins. Win or lose he's doomed to be on the wrong side of the market just because of those very qualities that make him a lovable person—kind to everybody but himself, and weak as dish-water. For Heaven's sake, Raffles, if the poor devil has anything left don't take it from him."

"Your sympathy for Rand does you credit," said Holmes. "But I have just as much of that as you have, and that is why, at half-past five o'clock to- morrow afternoon, I'm going to hold him up, in the public eye, and incontinently rob him of $25,000."

"Twenty-five thousand dollars? Billington Rand?" I gasped.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars. Billington Rand," repeated Holmes, firmly. "If you don't believe it come along and see. He doesn't know you, does he?"

"Not from Adam," said I.

"Very good—then you'll be safe as a church. Meet me in the Fifth Avenue Hotel corridor at five to-morrow afternoon and I'll show you as pretty a hold-up as you ever dreamed of," said Holmes.

"But—I can't take part in a criminal proceeding like that, Holmes," I protested.

"You won't have to—even if it were a criminal proceeding, which it is not," he returned. "Nobody outside of you and me will know anything about it but Rand himself, and the chances that he will peach are less than a millionth part of a half per cent. Anyhow, all you need be is a witness."

There was a long and uneasy silence. I was far from liking the job, but after all, so far, Holmes had not led me into any difficulties of a serious nature, and, knowing him as I had come to know him, I had a hearty belief that any wrong he did was temporary and was sure to be rectified in the long run.

"I've a decent motive in all this, Jenkins," he resumed in a few moments. "Don't forget that. This hold-up is going to result in a reformation that will be for the good of everybody, so don't have any scruples on that score."

"All right, Raffles," said I. "You've always played straight with me, so far, and I don't doubt your word—only I hate the highway end of it."

"Tutt, Jenkins!" he ejaculated, with a laugh and giving me a whack on the shoulders that nearly toppled me over into the fire-place. "Don't be a rabbit. The thing will be as easy as cutting calve's-foot jelly with a razor."

Thus did I permit myself to be persuaded, and the next afternoon at five, Holmes and I met in the corridor of the Fifth Avenue Hotel.

"Come on," he said, after the first salutations were over. "Rand will be at the Thirty-third Street subway at 5.15, and it is important that we should catch him before he gets to Fifth Avenue."

"I'm glad it's to be on a side street," I remarked, my heart beating rapidly with excitement over the work in hand, for the more I thought of the venture the less I liked it.

"Oh, I don't know that it will be," said Holmes, carelessly. "I may pull it off in the corridors of the Powhatan."

The pumps in my heart reversed their action and for a moment I feared I should drop with dismay.

"In the Powhatan—" I began.

"Shut up, Jenkins!" said Holmes, imperatively. "This is no time for protests. We're in it now and there's no drawing back."

Ten minutes later we stood at the intersection of Thirty-third Street and Fifth Avenue. Holmes's eyes flashed and his whole nervous system quivered as with the joy of the chase.

"Keep your mouth shut, Jenkins, and you'll see a pretty sight," he whispered, "for here comes our man."

Sure enough, there was Billington Rand on the other side of the street, walking along nervously and clutching an oblong package, wrapped in brown paper, firmly in his right hand.

"Now for it," said Holmes, and we crossed the street, scarcely reaching the opposite curb before Rand was upon us. Rand eyed us closely and shied off to one side as Holmes blocked his progress.

"I'll trouble you for that package, Mr. Rand," said Holmes, quietly.

The man's face went white and he caught his breath.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded, angrily.

"That has nothing to do with the case." retorted Holmes. "I want that package or—"

"Get out of my way!" cried Rand, with a justifiable show of resentment. "Or I'll call an officer."

"Will you?" said Holmes, quietly. "Will you call an officer and so make known to the authorities that you are in possession of twenty-five thousand dollars worth of securities that belong to other people, which are supposed at this moment to be safely locked up in the vaults of the Kenesaw National Back along with other collateral?"

Rand staggered back against the newel-post of a brown-stone stoop, and stood there gazing wildly into Holmes's face.

"Of course, if you prefer having the facts made known in that way," Holmes continued, coolly, "you have the option. I am not going to use physical force to persuade you to hand the package over to me, but you are a greater fool than I take you for if you choose that alternative. To use an expressive modern phrase, Mr. Billington Rand, you will be caught with the goods on, and unless you have a far better explanation of how those securities happen in your possession at this moment than I think you have, there is no power on earth can keep you from landing in state-prison."

The unfortunate victim of Holmes's adventure fairly gasped in his combined rage and fright. Twice he attempted to speak, but only inarticulate sounds issued from his lips.

"You are, of course, very much disturbed at the moment," Holmes went on, "and I am really very sorry if anything I have done has disarranged any honorable enterprise in which you have embarked. I don't wish to hurry you into a snap decision, which you may repent later, only either the police or I must have that package within an hour. It is for you to say which of us is to get it. Suppose we run over to the Powhatan and discuss the matter calmly over a bottle of Glengarry? Possibly I can convince you that it will be for your own good to do precisely as I tell you and very much to your disadvantage to do otherwise."

Rand, stupefied by this sudden intrusion upon his secret by an utter stranger, lost what little fight there was left in him, and at least seemed to assent to Holmes's proposition. The latter linked arms with him, and in a few minutes we walked into the famous hostelry just as if we were three friends, bent only upon having a pleasant chat over a cafe table.

"What'll you have, Mr. Rand?" asked Holmes, suavely. "I'm elected for the Glengarry special, with a little carbonic on the side."

"Same," said Rand, laconically.

"Sandwich with it?" asked Holmes. "You'd better."

"Oh, I can't eat anything," began Rand. "I—"

"Bring us some sandwiches, waiter," said Holmes. "Two Glengarry special, a syphon of carbonic, and—Jenkins, what's yours?"

The calmness and the cheek of the fellow!

"I'm not in on this at all," I retorted, angered by Holmes's use of my name. "And I want Mr. Rand to understand—"

"Oh, tutt!" ejaculated Holmes. "He knows that. Mr. Rand, my friend Jenkins has no connection with this enterprise of mine, and he's done his level best to dissuade me from holding you up so summarily. All he's along for is to write the thing up for—"

"The newspapers?" cried Rand, now thoroughly frightened.

"No," laughed Holmes. "Nothing so useful—the magazines."

Holmes winked at me as he spoke, and I gathered that there was method in his apparent madness.

"That's one of the points you want to consider, though, Mr. Rand," he said, leaning upon the table with his elbows. "Think of the newspapers to-morrow morning if you call the police rather than hand that package over to me. It'll be a big sensation for Wall Street and upper Fifth Avenue, to say nothing of what the yellows will make of the story for the rest of hoi polloi. The newsboys will be yelling extras all over town, printed in great, red letters, 'A Club-man Held-Up in Broad Daylight, For $25,000 In Securities That Didn't Belong to Him. Billington Rand Has Something To Explain. Where Did He Get It?—"

"For Heavens sake, man! don't!" pleased the unfortunate Billington. "God! I never thought of that."

"Of course you didn't think of that," said Holmes. "That's why I'm telling you about it now. You don't dispute my facts, do you?"

"No, I—" Rand began.

"Of course not," said Holmes. "You might as well dispute the existence of the Flat-iron Building. If you don't want to-morrow's papers to be full of this thing you'll hand that package over to me."

"But," protested Rand, "I'm only taking them up to—to a—er—to a broker." Here he gathered himself together and spoke with greater assurance. "I am delivering them, sir, to a broker, on behalf of one of our depositors who—"

"Who has been speculating with what little money he had left, has lost his margins, and is now forced into an act of crime to protect his speculation," said Holmes. "The broker is the notorious William C. Gallagher, who runs an up-town bucket-shop for speculative ladies to lose their pin-money and bridge winnings in, and your depositor's name is Billington Rand, Esq.— otherwise yourself."

"How do you know all this?" gasped Rand.

"Oh—maybe I read it on the ticker," laughed Holmes. "Or, what is more likely, possibly I overheard Gallagher recommending you to dip into the bank's collateral to save your investment, at Green's chop-house last night."

"You were at Green's chop-house last night?" cried Rand.

"In the booth adjoining your own, and I heard every word you said," said Holmes.

"Well, I don't see why I should give the stuff to you anyhow," growled Rand.

"Chiefly because I happen to be long on information which would be of interest, not only to the police, but to the president and board of directors of the Kenesaw National Back, Mr. Rand," said Holmes. "It will be a simple matter for me to telephone Mr. Horace Huntington, the president of your institution, and put him wise to this transaction of yours, and that is the second thing I shall do immediately you have decided not to part with that package."

"The second thing?" Rand whimpered. "What will you do first?"

"Communicate with the first policeman we meet when we leave here," said Holmes. "But take your time, Mr. Rand—take your time. Don't let me hurry you into a decision. Try a little of this Glengarry and we'll drink hearty to a sensible conclusion."

"I—I'll put them back in the vaults to-morrow," pleaded Rand.

"Can't trust you, my boy," said Holmes. "Not with a persuasive crook like old Bucket-ship Gallagher on your trail. They're safer with me."

Rand's answer was a muttered oath as he tossed the package across the table and started to leave us.

"One word more, Mr. Rand," said Holmes, detaining him. "Don't do anything rash. There's a lot of good-fellowship between criminals, and I'll stand by you all right. So far nobody knows you took these things, and even when they turn up missing, if you go about your work as if nothing had happened, while you may be suspected, nobody can prove that you got the goods."

Rand's face brightened at this remark.

"By Jove!—that's true enough," said he. "Excepting Gallagher," he added, his face falling.

"Pah for Gallagher!" cried Holmes, snapping his fingers contemptuously. "If he as much as peeped we could put him in jail, and if he sells you out you tell him for me that I'll land him in Sing Sing for a term of years. He led you into this—"

"He certainly did," moaned Rand.

"And he's got to get you out," said Holmes. "Now, good-bye, old man. The worst that can happen to you is a few judgments instead of penal servitude for eight or ten years, unless you are foolish enough to try another turn of this sort, and then you may not happen on a good-natured highwayman like myself to get you out of your troubles. By-the-way, what is the combination of the big safe in the outer office of the Kenesaw National?"

"One-eight-nine-seven," said Rand.

"Thanks," said Holmes, jotting it down coolly in his memorandum-book. "That's a good thing to know."



That night, shortly before midnight, Holmes left me. "I've got to finish this job," said he. "The most ticklish part of the business is yet to come."

"Great Scott, Holmes!" I cried. "Isn't the thing done?"

"No—of course not," he replied. "I've got to bust open the Kenesaw safe."

"Now, my dear Raffles," I began, "why aren't you satisfied with what you've done already. Why must you—"

"Shut up, Jenkins," he interrupted, with a laugh. "If you knew what I was going to do you wouldn't kick—that is, unless you've turned crook too?"

"Not I," said I, indignantly.

"You don't expect me to keep these bonds, do you?" he asked.

"But what are you going to do with them?" I retorted.

"Put 'em back in the Kenesaw Bank, where they belong, so that they'll be found there to-morrow morning. As sure as I don't, Billington Rand is doomed," said he. "It's a tough job, but I've been paid a thousand dollars by his family, to find out what he's up to, and by thunder, after following his trail for three weeks, I've got such a liking for the boy that I'm going to save him if it can be done, and if there's any Raffles left in me, such a simple proposition as cracking a bank and puting the stuff back where it belongs, in a safe of which I have the combination, isn't going to stand in my way. Don't fret, old man, it's as good as done. Good-night."

And Raffles Holmes was off. I passed a feverish night, but at five o'clock the following morning a telephone message set all my misgivings at rest.

"Hello, Jenkins!" came Raffles's voice over the wire.

"Hello," I replied.

"Just rang you up to let you know that it's all right. The stuff's replaced. Easiest job ever—like opening oysters. Pleasant dreams to you," he said, and, click, the connection was broken.

Two weeks later Billington Rand resigned from the Kenesaw Bank and went West, where he is now leading the simple life on a sheep-ranch. His resignation was accepted with regret, and the board of directors, as a special mark of their liking, voted him a gift of $2500 for faithful services.

"And the best part of it was," said Holmes, when he told me of the young man's good fortune, "that his accounts were as straight as a string."

"Holmes, you are a bully chap!" I cried, in a sudden excess of enthusiasm. "You do things for nothing sometimes—"

"Nothing!" echoed Holmes—"nothing! Why, that job was worth a million dollars to me, Jenkins—but not in coin. Just in good solid satisfaction in saving a fine young chap like Billington Rand from the clutches of a sharper and sneaking skinflint like old Bucket-shop Gallagher."



VIII "THE NOSTALGIA OF NERVY JIM THE SNATCHER"

Raffles Holmes was unusually thoughtful the other night when he entered my apartment, and for a long time I could get nothing out of him save an occasional grunt of assent or dissent from propositions advanced by myself. It was quite evident that he was cogitating deeply over some problem that was more than ordinarily vexatious, so I finally gave up all efforts at conversation, pushed the cigars closer to him, poured him out a stiff dose of his favorite Glengarry, and returned to my own work. It was a full hour before he volunteered an observation of any kind, and then he plunged rapidly into a very remarkable tale.

"I had a singular adventure to-day, Jenkins," he said. "Do you happen to have in your set of my father's adventures a portrait of Sherlock Holmes?"

"Yes, I have," I replied. "But you don't need anything of the kind to refresh your memory of him. All you have to do is to look at yourself in the glass, and you've got the photograph before you."

"I am so like him then?" he queried.

"Most of the time, old man, I am glad to say," said I. "There are days when you are the living image of your grandfather Raffles, but that is only when you are planning some scheme of villany. I can almost invariably detect the trend of your thoughts by a glance at your face—you are Holmes himself in your honest moments, Raffles at others. For the past week it has delighted me more than I can say to find you a fac-simile of your splendid father, with naught to suggest your fascinating but vicious granddad."

"That's what I wanted to find out. I had evidence of it this afternoon on Broadway," said he. "It was bitterly cold up around Fortieth Street, snowing like the devil, and such winds as you'd expect to find nowhere this side of Greenland's icy mountains. I came out of a Broadway chop-house and started north, when I was stopped by an ill-clad, down-trodden specimen of humanity, who begged me, for the love of Heaven to give him a drink. The poor chap's condition was such that it would have been manslaughter to refuse him, and a moment later I had him before the Skidmore bar, gurgling down a tumblerful of raw brandy as though it were water. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and turned to thank me, when a look of recognition came into his face, and he staggered back half in fear and half in amazement.

"'Sherlock Holmes!' he cried.

"'Am I?' said I, calmly, my curiosity much excited.

"'Him or his twin!' said he.

"'How should you know me?' I asked.

"'Good reason enough,' he muttered. ''Twas Sherlock Holmes as landed me for ten years in Reading gaol.'

"'Well, my friend,' I answered, 'I've no doubt you deserved it if he did it. I am not Sherlock Holmes, however, but his son.'

"'Will you let me take you by the hand, governor?' he whispered, hoarsely. 'Not for the kindness you've shown me here, but for the service your old man did me. I am Nervy Jim the Snatcher.'

"'Service?' said I, with a laugh. 'You consider it a service to be landed in Reading gaol?'

"'They was the only happy years I ever had, sir,' he answered, impetuously. 'The keepers was good to me. I was well fed; kept workin' hard at an honest job, pickin' oakum; the gaol was warm, and I never went to bed by night or got up o' mornin's worried over the question o' how I was goin' to get the swag to pay my rent. Compared to this'—with a wave of his hand at the raging of the elements along Broadway—'Reading gaol was heaven, sir; and since I was discharged I've been a helpless, hopeless wanderer, sleepin' in doorways, chilled to the bone, half-starved, with not a friendly eye in sight, and nothin' to do all day long and all night long but move on when the Bobbies tell me to, and think about the happiness I'd left behind me when I left Reading. Was you ever homesick, governor?'

"I confessed to an occasional feeling of nostalgia for old Picadilly and the Thames.

"'Then you know, says he, 'how I feels now in a strange land, dreamin' of my comfortable little cell at Reading; the good meals, the pleasant keepers, and a steady job with nothin' to worry about for ten short years. I want to go back, governor—I want to go back!'

"Well," said Holmes, lighting a cigar, "I was pretty nearly floored, but when the door of the saloon blew open and a blast of sharp air and a furry of snow came in, I couldn't blame the poor beggar—certainly any place in the world, even a jail, was more comfortable than Broadway at that moment. I explained to him, however, that as far as Reading gaol was concerned, I was powerless to help him.

"'But there's just as good prisons here, ain't there, governor?' he pleaded.

"'Oh yes,' said I, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. 'Sing Sing is a first-class, up-to-date penitentiary, with all modern improvements, and a pretty select clientele.'

"'Couldn't you put me in there, governor?' he asked, wistfully. 'I'll do anything you ask, short o' murder, governor, if you only will.'

"'Why don't you get yourself arrested as a vagrant?' I asked. 'That'll give you three months on Blackwell's Island and will tide you over the winter.'

"'Tain't permanent, governor,' he objected. 'At the end o' three months I'd be out and have to begin all over again. What I want is something I can count on for ten or twenty years. Besides, I has some pride, governor, and for Nervy Jim to do three months' time—Lor', sir, I couldn't bring myself to nothin' so small!'

"There was no resisting the poor cuss, Jenkins, and I promised to do what I could for him."

"That's a nice job," said I. "What can you do?"

"That's what stumps me," said Raffles Holmes, scratching his head in perplexity. "I've set him up in a small tenement down on East Houston Street temporarily, and meanwhile, it's up to me to land him in Sing Sing, where he can live comfortably for a decade or so, and I'm hanged if I know how to do it. He used to be a first-class second-story man, and in his day was an A-1 snatcher, as his name signifies and my father's diaries attest, but I'm afraid his hand is out for a nice job such as I would care to have anything to do with myself."

"Better let him slide, Raffles," said I. "He introduces the third party element into our arrangement, and that's mighty dangerous."

"True—but consider the literary value of a chap that's homesick for jail," he answered, persuasively. "I don't know, but I think he's new."

Ah, the insidious appeal of that man! He knew the crack in my armor, and with neatness and despatch he pierced it, and I fell.

"Well—" I demurred.

"Good," said he. "We'll consider it arranged. I'll fix him out in a week."

Holmes left me at this point, and for two days I heard nothing from him. On the morning of the third day he telephoned me to meet him at the stage-door of the Metropolitan Opera-House at four o'clock. "Bring your voice with you," said he, enigmatically, "we may need it." An immediate explanation of his meaning was impossible, for hardly were the words out of his mouth when he hung up the receiver and cut the connection.

"I wanted to excite your curiosity so that you would be sure to come," he laughed, when I asked his meaning later. "You and I are going to join Mr. Conried's selected chorus of educated persons who want to earn their grand opera instead of paying five dollars a performance for it."

And so we did, although I objected a little at first.

"I can't sing," said I.

"Of course you can't," said he. "If you could you wouldn't go into the chorus. But don't bother about that, I have a slight pull here and we can get in all right as long as we are moderately intelligent, and able-bodied enough to carry a spear. By-the-way, in musical circles my name is Dickson. Don't forget that."

That Holmes had a pull was shortly proven, for although neither of us was more than ordinarily gifted vocally, we proved acceptable and in a short time found ourselves enrolled among the supernumeraries who make of "Lohengrin" a splendid spectacle to the eye. I found real zest in life carrying that spear, and entered into the spirit of what I presumed to be a mere frolic with enthusiasm, merely for the experience of it, to say nothing of the delight I took in the superb music, which I have always loved.

And then the eventful night came. It was Monday and the house was packed. On both sides of the curtain everything was brilliant. The cast was one of the best and the audience all that the New York audience is noted for in wealth, beauty, and social prestige, and, in the matter of jewels, of lavish display. Conspicuous in respect to the last was the ever-popular, though somewhat eccentric Mrs. Robinson-Jones, who in her grand-tier box fairly scintillated with those marvellous gems which gave her, as a musical critic, whose notes on the opera were chiefly confined to observations on its social aspects, put it, "the appearance of being lit up by electricity." Even from where I stood, as a part and parcel of the mock king's court on the stage, I could see the rubies and sapphires and diamonds loom large upon the horizon as the read, white, and blue emblem of our national greatness to the truly patriotic soul. Little did I dream, as I stood in the rear line of the court, clad in all the gorgeous regalia of a vocal supernumerary, and swelling the noisy welcome to the advancing Lohengrin, with my apology for a voice, how intimately associated with these lustrous headlights I was soon to be, and as Raffles Holmes and I poured out our souls in song not even his illustrious father would have guessed that he was there upon any other business than that of Mr. Conried. As far as I could see, Raffles was wrapt in the music of the moment, and not once, to my knowledge, did he seem to be aware that there was such a thing as an audience, much less one individual member of it, on the other side of the footlights. Like a member of the Old Choral Guard, he went through the work in hand as nonchalantly as though it were his regular business in life. It was during the intermission between the first and second acts that I began to suspect that there was something in the wind beside music, for Holmes's face became set, and the resemblance to his honorable father, which had of late been so marked, seemed to dissolve itself into an unpleasant suggestion of his other forbear, the acquisitive Raffles. My own enthusiasm for our operatic experience, which I took no pains to conceal, found no response in him, and from the fall of the curtain on the first act it seemed to me as if he were trying to avoid me. So marked indeed did this desire to hold himself aloof become that I resolved to humor him in it, and instead of clinging to his side as had been my wont, I let him go his own way, and, at the beginning of the second act, he disappeared. I did not see him again until the long passage between Ortrud and Telrammund was on, when, in the semi-darkness of the stage, I caught sight of him hovering in the vicinity of the electric switch-board by which the lights of the house are controlled. Suddenly I saw him reach out his hand quickly, and a moment later every box-light went out, leaving the auditorium in darkness, relieved only by the lighting of the stage. Almost immediately there came a succession of shrieks from the grand-tier in the immediate vicinity of the Robinson-Jones box, and I knew that something was afoot. Only a slight commotion in the audience was manifest to us upon the stage, but there was a hurrying and scurrying of ushers and others of greater or less authority, until finally the box-lights flashed out again in all their silk-tasselled illumination. The progress of the opera was not interrupted for a moment, but in that brief interval of blackness at the rear of the house some one had had time to force his way into the Robinson- Jones box and snatch from the neck of its fair occupant that wondrous hundred-thousand-dollar necklace of matchless rubies that had won the admiring regard of many beholders, and the envious interest of not a few.

Three hours later Raffles Holmes and I returned from the days and dress of Lohengrin's time to affairs of to-day, and when we were seated in my apartment along about two o'clock in the morning, Holmes lit a cigar, poured himself out a liberal dose of Glengarry, and with a quiet smile, leaned back in his chair.

"Well," he said, "what about it?"

"You have the floor, Raffles," I answered. "Was that your work?"

"One end of it," said he. "It went off like clock-work. Poor old Nervy has won his board and lodging for twenty years all right."

"But—he's got away with it," I put in.

"As far as East Houston Street," Holmes observed, quietly. "To-morrow I shall take up the case, track Nervy to his lair, secure Mrs. Robinson-Jones' necklace, return it to the lady, and within three weeks the Snatcher will take up his abode on the banks of the Hudson, the only banks the ordinary cracksman is anxious to avoid."

"But how the dickens did you manage to put a crook like that on the grand- tier floor?" I demanded.

"Jenkins, what a child you are!" laughed Holmes. "How did I get him there? Why, I set him up with a box of his own, directly above the Robinson-Jones box—you can always get one for a single performance if you are willing to pay for it—and with a fair expanse of shirt-front, a claw-hammer and a crush hat almost any man who has any style to him at all these days can pass for a gentleman. All he had to do was to go to the opera-house, present his ticket, walk in and await the signal. I gave the man his music cue, and two minutes before the lights went out he sauntered down the broad staircase to the door of the Robinson-Jones box, and was ready to turn the trick. He was under cover of darkness long enough to get away with the necklace, and when the lights came back, if you had known enough to look out into the auditorium you would have seen him back there in his box above, taking in the situation as calmly as though he had himself had nothing whatever to do with it."

"And how shall you trace him?" I demanded. "Isn't that going to be a little dangerous?"

"Not if he followed out my instructions," said Holmes. "If he dropped a letter addressed to himself in his own hand-writing at his East Houston Street lair, in the little anteroom of the box, as I told him to do, we'll have all the clews we need to run him to earth."

"But suppose the police find it?" I asked.

"They won't," laughed Holmes. "They'll spend their time looking for some impecunious member of the smart set who might have done the job. They always try to find the sensational clew first, and by day after to-morrow morning four or five poor but honest members of the four-hundred will find when they read the morning papers that they are under surveillance, while I, knowing exactly what has happened will have all the start I need. I have already offered my services, and by ten o'clock to-morrow morning they will be accepted, as will also those of half a hundred other detectives, professional and amateur. At eleven I will visit the opera-house, where I expect to find the incriminating letter on the floor, or if the cleaning women have already done their work, which is very doubtful, I will find it later among the sweepings of waste paper in the cellar of the opera-house. Accompanied by two plain-clothes men from headquarters I will then proceed to Nervy's quarters, and, if he is really sincere in his desire to go to jail for a protracted period, we shall find him there giving an imitation of a gloat over his booty."

"And suppose the incriminating letter is not there?" I asked. "He may have changed his mind."

"I have arranged for that," said Holmes, with a quick, steely glance at me. "I've got a duplicate letter in my pocket now. If he didn't drop it, I will."

But Nervy Jim was honest at least in his desire for a permanent residence in an up-to-date penitentiary, for, even as the deed itself had been accomplished with a precision that was almost automatic, so did the work yet to be done go off with the nicety of a well-regulated schedule. Everything came about as Holmes had predicted, even to the action of the police in endeavoring to fasten the crime upon an inoffensive and somewhat impecunious social dangler, whose only ambition in life was to lead a cotillion well, and whose sole idea of how to get money under false pretences was to make some over-rich old maid believe that he loved her for herself alone and in his heart scorned her wealth. Even he profited by this, since he later sued the editor who printed his picture with the label "A Social Highwayman" for libel, claiming damages of $50,000, and then settled the case out of court for $15,000, spot cash. The letter was found on the floor of the box where Nervy Jim had dropped it; Holmes and his plain-clothes men paid an early visit at the East Houston Street lodging-house, and found the happy Snatcher snoring away in his cot with a smile on his face that seemed to indicate that he was dreaming he was back in a nice comfortable jail once more; and as if to make assurance doubly sure, the missing necklace hung about his swarthy neck! Short work was made of the arrest; Nervy Him, almost embarrassingly grateful, was railroaded to Sing Sing in ten days' time, for fifteen years, and Raffles Holmes had the present pleasure and personal satisfaction of restoring the lost necklace to the fair hands of Mrs. Robinson-Jones herself.



"Look at that, Jenkins!" He said, gleefully, when the thing was all over. "A check for $10,000."

"Well—that isn't so much, considering the value of the necklace," said I.

"That's the funny part of it," laughed Holmes. "Every stone in it was paste, but Mrs. Robinson-Jones never let on for a minute. She paid her little ten thousand rather than have it known."

"Great Heavens!—really?" I said.

"Yes," said Holmes, replacing the check in his pocket-book. "She's almost as nervy as Nervy Jim himself. She's what I call a dead-game sport."



IX THE ADVENTURE OF ROOM 407

Raffles Holmes and I had walked up-town together. It was a beastly cold night, and when we reached the Hotel Powhatan my companion suggested that we stop in for a moment to thaw out our frozen cheeks, and incidentally, warm up the inner man with some one of the spirituous concoctions for which that hostelry is deservedly famous. I naturally acquiesced, and in a moment we sat at one of the small tables in the combination reading-room and cafe of the hotel.

"Queer place, this," said Holmes, gazing about him at the motley company of guests. "It is the gathering place of the noted and the notorious. That handsome six-footer, who has just left the room, is the Reverend Dr. Harkaway, possibly the most eloquent preacher they have in Boston. At the table over in the corner, talking to that gold-haired lady with a roasted pheasant on her head in place of a hat, is Jack McBride, the light-weight champion of the Northwest, and—by thunder, Jenkins, look at that!"

A heavy-browed, sharp-eyed Englishman appeared in the doorway, stood a moment, glanced about him eagerly, and, with a gesture of impatience, turned away and disappeared in the throngs of the corridor without.

"There's something doing to bring 'Lord Baskingford' here," muttered Holmes.

"Lord Baskingford?" said I. "Who's he?"

"He's the most expert diamond lifter in London," answered Holmes. "His appearance on Piccadilly was a signal always to Scotland Yard to wake up, and to the jewellers of Bond Street to lock up. My old daddy used to say that Baskingford could scent a Kohinoor quicker than a hound a fox. I wonder what his game is."

"Is he a real lord?" I asked.

"Real?" laughed Holmes. "Yes—he's a real Lord of the Lifters, if that's what you mean, but if you mean does he belong to the peerage, no. His real name is Bob Hollister. He has served two terms in Pentonville, escaped once from a Russian prison, and is still in the ring. He's never idle, and if he comes to the Powhatan you can gamble your last dollar on it that he has a good, big stake somewhere in the neighborhood. We must look over the list of arrivals."

We finished our drink and settled the score. Holmes sauntered, in leisurely fashion, out into the office, and, leaning easily over the counter, inspected the register.

"Got any real live dukes in the house to-night, Mr. Sommers?" he asked of the clerk.

"Not to-night, Mr. Holmes," laughed the clerk. "We're rather shy on the nobility to-night. The nearest we come to anything worth while in that line is a baronet—Sir Henry Darlington of Dorsetshire, England. We can show you a nice line of Captains of Industry, however."

"Thank you, Sommers," said Holmes, returning the laugh. "I sha'n't trouble you. Fact is, I'm long on Captains of Industry and was just a bit hungry to- night for a dash of the British nobility. Who is Sir Henry Darlington of Dorsetshire, England?"

"You can search me," said the clerk. "I'm too busy to study genealogy—but there's a man here who knows who he is, all right, all right—at least I judge so from his manner."

"Who's that?" asked Holmes.

"Himself," said Sommers, with a chuckle. "Now's your chance to ask him—for there he goes into the Palm Room."

We glanced over in the direction indicated, and again our eyes fell upon the muscular form of "Lord Baskingford."

"Oh!" said Holmes. "Well—he is a pretty fair specimen, isn't he! Little too large for my special purpose, though, Sommers," he added, "so you needn't wrap him up and send him home."

"All right, Mr. Holmes," grinned the clerk. "Come in again some time when we have a few fresh importations in and maybe we can fix you out."

With a swift glance at the open page of the register, Holmes bade the clerk good-night and we walked away.

"Room 407," he said, as we moved along the corridor. "Room 407—we mustn't forget that. His lordship is evidently expecting some one, and I think I'll fool around for a while and see what's in the wind."

A moment or two later we came face to face with the baronet, and watched him as he passed along the great hall, scanning every face in the place, and on to the steps leading down to the barber-shop, which he descended.

"He's anxious, all right," said Holmes, as we sauntered along. "How would you like to take a bite, Jenkins? I'd like to stay here and see this out."

"Very good," said I. "I find it interesting."

So we proceeded towards the Palm Room and sat down to order our repast. Scarcely were we seated when one of the hotel boys, resplendent in brass buttons, strutted through between the tables, calling aloud in a shrill voice:

"Telegram for four-oh-seven. Four hundred and seven, telegram."

"That's the number, Raffles," I whispered, excitedly.

"I know it," he said, quietly. "Give him another chance—"

"Telegram for number four hundred and seven," called the buttons.

"Here, boy," said Holmes, nerving himself up. "Give me that."

"Four hundred and seven, sir?" asked the boy.

"Certainly," said Holmes, coolly. "Hand it over—any charge?"

"No, sir," said the boy, giving Raffles the yellow covered message.

"Thank you," said Holmes, tearing the flap open carelessly as the boy departed.

And just then the fictitious baronet entered the room, and, as Holmes read his telegram, passed by us, still apparently in search of the unattainable, little dreaming how close at hand was the explanation of his troubles. I was on the edge of nervous prostration, but Holmes never turned a hair, and, save for a slight tremor of his hand, no one would have even guessed that there was anything in the wind. Sir Henry Darlington took a seat in the far corner of the room.

"That accounts for his uneasiness," said Holmes, tossing the telegram across the table.

I read: "Slight delay. Will meet you at eight with the goods." The message was signed: "Cato."

"Let's see," said Holmes. It is now six-forty-five. Here—lend me your fountain-pen, Jenkins.

I produced the desired article and Holmes, in an admirably feigned hand, added to the message the words: "at the Abbey, Lafayette Boulevard. Safer," restored it in amended form to its envelope.

"Call one of the bell-boys, please," he said to the waiter.

A moment later, a second buttons appeared.

"This isn't for me, boy," said Holmes, handing the message back to him. "Better take it to the office."

"Very good, sir," said the lad, and off he went.

A few minutes after this incident, Sir Henry again rose impatiently and left the room, and, at a proper distance to the rear, Holmes followed him. Darlington stopped at the desk, and, observing the telegram in his box, called for it and opened it. His face flushed as he tore it into scraps and made for the elevator, into which he disappeared.

"He's nibbling the bait all right," said Holmes, gleefully. "We'll just wait around here until he starts, and then we'll see what we can do with Cato. This is quite an adventure."

"What do you suppose it's all about?" I asked.

"I don't know any more than you do, Jenkins," said Holmes, "save this, that old Bob Hollister isn't playing penny-ante. When he goes on to a job as elaborately as all this, you can bet your last dollar that the game runs into five figures, and, like a loyal subject of his Gracious Majesty King Edward VII, whom may the Lord save, he reckons not in dollars but in pounds sterling."

"Who can Cato be, I wonder?" I asked.

"We'll know at eight o'clock," said Holmes. "I intend to have him up."

"Up? Up where?" I asked.

"In Darlington's rooms—where else?" demanded Holmes.

"In four hundred and seven?" I gasped.

"Certainly—that's our headquarters, isn't it?" he grinned.

"Now see here, Raffles," I began.

"Shut up Jenkins," he answered. "Just hang on to your nerve—"

"But suppose Darlington turns up?"

"My dear boy, the Abbey is six miles from here and he won't by any living chance, get back before ten o'clock to-night. We shall have a good two hours and a half to do up old Cato without any interference from him," said Holmes. "Suppose he does come—what then? I rather doubt if Sir Henry Darlington, of the Hotel Powhatan, New York, or Dorsetshire, England, would find it altogether pleasant to hear a few reminiscences of Bob Hollister of Pentonville prison, which I have on tap."

"He'll kick up the deuce of a row," I protested.

"Very doubtful, Jenkins," said Raffles. "I sort of believe he'll be as gentle as a lamb when he finds out what I know—but, if he isn't, well, don't I represent law and order?" and Holmes displayed a detective's badge, which he wore for use in emergency cases, pinned to the inner side of his suspenders.

As he spoke, Darlington reappeared, and, leaving his key at the office, went out through the revolving doorway, and jumped into a hansom.

"Where to, sir?" asked the cabman.

"The Abbey," said Darlington.

"They're off!" whispered Holmes, with a laugh. "And now for Mr. Cato."

We walked back through the office, and, as we passed the bench upon which the bell-boys sat, Raffles stopped before the lad who had delivered the telegram to him.

"Here, son," he said, handing him a quarter, "run over to the news-stand and get me a copy of this months Salmagundi—I'll be in the smoking-room."

The boy went off on his errand, and in a few minutes returned with a magazine.

"Thanks," said Holmes. "Now get me my key and we'll call it square."

"Four hundred and seven, sir?" said the boy, with a smile of recognition.

"Yep," said Holmes, laconically, as he leaned back in his chair and pretended to read.

"Gad, Holmes, what a nerve!" I muttered.

"We need it in this business," said he.

The buttons returned and delivered the key of Sir Henry Darlington's apartment into the hands of Raffles Holmes.

Ten minutes later we sat in room 407—I in a blue funk from sheer nervousness, Raffles Holmes as imperturbable as the rock of Gibraltar from sheer nerve. It was the usual style of hotel room, with bath, pictures, telephone, what-nots, wardrobes, and centre-table. The last proved to be the main point of interest upon our arrival. It was littered up with papers of one sort and another: letters, bills receipted and otherwise, and a large assortment of railway and steamship folders. "He knows how to get away," was Holmes's comment on the latter. Most of the letters were addressed to Sir Henry Darlington, in care of Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., bankers.

"Same old game," laughed Holmes, as he read the superscription. "The most conservative banking-house in New York! It's amazing how such institutions issue letters indiscriminately to any Tom, Dick, or Harry who comes along and planks down his cash. They don't seem to realize that they thereby unconsciously lend the glamour of their own respectability and credit to people who, instead of travelling abroad, should be locked up in the most convenient penitentiary at home. Aha!" Holmes added, as he ran his eye over some of the other documents and came upon a receipted bill. "We're getting close to it, Jenkins. Here's a receipted bill from Bar, LeDuc & Co., of Fifth Avenue, for $15,000—three rings, one diamond necklace, a ruby stick- pin, and a set of pearl shirt-studs."

"Yes," said I, "but what is there suspicious about that? If the things are paid for—"

"Precisely," laughed Holmes. "They're paid for. Sir Henry Darlington has enough working capital to buy all the credit he needs with Messrs. Bar, LeDuc & Co. There isn't a house in this town that, after a cash transaction of that kind, conducted through Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., wouldn't send its own soul up on approval to a nice, clean-cut member of the British aristocracy like Sir Henry Darlington. We're on the trail, Jenkins—we're on the trail. Here's a letter from Bar, LeDuc & Co.—let's see what light that sheds on the matter."

Holmes took a letter from an envelope and read, rapidly:

Sir Henry Darlington—care of Bruce, Watkins and so forth—dear Sir Henry— We are having some difficulty matching the pearls—they are of unusual quality, but we hope to have the necklace ready for delivery as requested on Wednesday afternoon at the office of Messrs. Bruce, Watkins and so forth, between five and six o'clock. Trusting the delay will not—and so forth—and hoping to merit a continuance of your valued favors, we beg to remain, and so forth, and so forth.

"That's it," said Holmes. "It's a necklace that Mr. Cato is bringing up to Sir Henry Darlington—and, once in his possession—it's Sir Henry for some place on one of these folders."

"Why don't they send them directly here?" I inquired.

"It is better for Darlington to emphasize Bruce, Watkins, Brownleigh & Co., and not to bank to much on the Hotel Powhatan, that's why," said Holmes. "What's the good of having bankers like that back of you if you don't underscore their endorsement? Anyhow, we've discovered the job, Jenkins; to- day is Wednesday, and the 'goods' Cato has to deliver and referred to in his telegram is the pearl necklace of unusual quality—hence not less than a $50,000 stake."

At this point the telephone bell rang.

"Hello," said Holmes, answering immediately, and in a voice entirely unlike his own. "Yes—what? Oh yes. Ask him to come up."

He hung up the receiver, put a cigar in his mouth, lit it, and turned to me.

"It's Cato—just called. Coming up," said he.

"I wish to Heavens I was going down," I ejaculated.

"You're a queer duck, Jenkins," grinned Holmes. "Here you are with a front seat at what promises to be one of the greatest shows on earth, a real live melodrama, and all you can think of is home and mother. Brace up—for here he is."

There was a knock on the door.

"Come in," said Holmes, cheerily.

A tall cadaverous-looking man opened the door and entered. As his eye fell upon us, he paused on the threshold.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "I—I'm afraid I'm in the wrong—"

"Not at all—come in and sit down," said Holmes, cordially. "That is if you are our friend and partner, Cato—Darlington couldn't wait—"

"Couldn't wait?" said Cato.

"Nope," said Holmes. "He was very much annoyed by the delay, Cato. You see he's on bigger jobs than this puny little affair of Bar, LeDuc's, and your failure to appear on schedule time threw him out. Pearls aren't the only chips in Darlington's game, my boy."

"Well—I couldn't help it," said Cato. "Bar, LeDuc's messenger didn't get down there until five minutes of six."

"Why should that have kept you until eight?" said Holmes.

"I've got a few side jobs of my own," growled Cato.

"That's what Darlington imagined," said Holmes, "and I don't envy you your meeting with him when he comes in. He's a cyclone when he's mad and if you've got a cellar handy I'd advise you to get it ready for occupancy. Where's the stuff?"

"In here, said Cato, tapping his chest.

"Well," observed Holmes, quietly, "we'd better make ourselves easy until the Chief returns. You don't mind if I write a letter, do you?"

"Go ahead," said Cato. "Don't mind me."

"Light up," said Holmes, tossing him a cigar, and turning to the table where he busied himself for the next five minutes, apparently in writing.

Cato smoked away in silence, and picked up Holmes's copy of the Salmagundi Magazine which lay on the bureau, and shortly became absorbed in its contents. As for me, I had to grip both sides of my chair to conceal my nervousness. My legs fairly shook with terror. The silence, broken only by the scratching of Holmes's pen, was becoming unendurable and I think I should have given way and screamed had not Holmes suddenly risen and walked to the telephone, directly back of where Cato was sitting.

"I must ring for stamps," he said. "There don't seem to be any here. Darlington's getting stingy in his old age. Hello," he called, but without removing the receiver from the hook. "Hello—send me up a dollar's worth of two-cent stamps—thank you. Good-bye."

Cato read on, but, in a moment, the magazine dropped from his hand to the floor. Holmes was at his side and the cold muzzle of a revolver pressed uncomfortably against his right temple.

"That bureau cover—quick," Raffles cried, sharply, to me.

"What are you doing?" gasped Cato, his face turning a greenish-yellow with fear.

"Another sound from you and you're a dead one," said Holmes. "You'll see what I'm doing quickly enough. Twist it into a rope, Jim," he added, addressing me. I did as I was bade with the linen cover, snatching it from the bureau, and a second later we had Cato gagged. "Now tie his hands and feet with those curtain cords," Holmes went on.

Heavens! how I hated the job, but there was no drawing back now! We had gone too far for that.

"There!" said Holmes, as we laid our victim out on the floor, tied hand and foot and as powerless to speak as though he had been born deaf and dumb. "We'll just rifle your chest, Cato, and stow you away in the bath-tub with a sofa-cushion under your head to make you comfortable, and bid you farewell— not au revoir, Cato, but just plain farewell forever."

The words were hardly spoken before the deed was accomplished. Tearing aside poor Cato's vest and shirt-front, Raffles placed himself in possession of the treasure from Bar, LeDuc & Co., after which we lay Darlington's unhappy confederate at full length in the porcelain-lined tub, placed a sofa-cushion under his head to mitigate his sufferings, locked him in, and started for the elevator.

"Great Heavens, Raffles!" I chattered, as we emerged upon the street. "What will be the end of this? It's awful. When Sir Henry returns—"

"I wish I could be there to see," said he, with a chuckle.

"I guess we'll see, quick enough. I leave town to-morrow," said I.

"Nonsense," said Holmes. "Don't you worry. I put a quietus on Sir Henry Darlington. He'll leave town to-night, and we'll never hear from him again—that is, not in this matter."

"But how?" I demanded, far from convinced.

"I wrote him a letter in which I said: 'You will find your treasure in the bath-tub,'" laughed Holmes.

"And that will drive him from New York, and close his mouth forever!" I observed, sarcastically. "So very likely!"

"No, Jenkins, not that, but the address, my dear boy, the address. I put that message in an envelope, and left it on his table where he'll surely see it the first thing when he gets back to-night, addressed to 'Bob Hollister,' Diamond Merchant, Cell No. 99, Pentonville Prison."

"Aha!" said I, my doubts clearing.

"Likewise—Ho-ho," said Holmes. "It is a delicate intimation to Sir Henry Darlington that somebody is on to his little game, and he'll evaporate before dawn."



A week later, Holmes brought me a magnificent pearl scarf-pin.

"What's that?" I asked.

"Your share of the swag," he answered. "I returned the pearl necklace to Bar, LeDuc & Co., with a full statement of how it came into my possession. They rewarded me with this ruby ring and that stick-pin."

Holmes held up his right hand, on the fourth finger of which glistened a brilliant blood-red stone worth not less than fifteen hundred dollars.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"I wondered what you were going to do with the necklace," I said.

"So did I—for three days," said Holmes, "and then, when I realized that I was a single man, I decided to give it up. If I'd had a wife to wear a necklace—well, I'm a little afraid the Raffles side of my nature would have won out."

"I wonder whatever became of Darlington," said I.

"I don't know. Sommers says he left town suddenly that same Wednesday night, without paying his bill," Holmes answered.

"And Cato?"

"I didn't inquire, but, from what I know of Bob Hollister, I am rather inclined to believe that Cato left the Powhatan by way of the front window, or possibly out through the plumbing, in some way," laughed Holmes. "Either way would be the most comfortable under the circumstances."



X THE MAJOR-GENERAL'S PEPPERPOTS

I had often wondered during the winter whether or no it would be quite the proper thing for me to take my friend Raffles Holmes into the sacred precincts of my club. By some men—and I am one of them—the club, despite the bad name that clubs in general have as being antagonistic to the home, is looked upon as an institution that should be guarded almost as carefully against the intrusion of improper persons as is one's own habitat, and while I should never have admitted for a moment that Raffles was an undesirable chap to have around, I could not deny that in view of certain characteristics which I knew him to possess, the propriety of taking him into "The Heraclean" was seriously open to question. My doubts were set at rest, however, on that point one day in January last, when I observed seated at one of our luncheon-tables the Reverend Dr. Mulligatawnny, Rector of Saint Mammon-in-the-Fields, a highly esteemed member of the organization, who had with him no less a person than Mr. E. H. Merryman, the railway magnate, whose exploits in Wall Street have done much to give to that golden highway the particular kind of perfume which it now exudes to the nostrils of people of sensitive honor. Surely, if Dr. Mulligatawnny was within his rights in having Mr. Merryman present, I need have no misgivings as to mine in having Raffles Holmes at the same table. The predatory instinct in his nature was as a drop of water in the sea to that ocean of known acquisitiveness which has floated Mr. Merryman into his high place in the world of finance, and as far as the moral side of the two men was considered respectively, I felt tolerably confident that the Recording Angel's account- books would show a larger balance on the right side to the credit of Raffles than to that of his more famous contemporary. Hence it was that I decided the question in my friend's favor, and a week or two later had him in at "The Heraclean" for luncheon. The dining-room was filled with the usual assortment of interesting men—men who had really done something in life and who suffered from none of that selfish modesty which leads some of us to hide our light under the bushel of silence. There was the Honorable Poultry Tickletoe, the historian, whose articles on the shoddy quality of the modern Panama hat have created such a stir throughout the hat trade; Mr. William Darlington Ponkapog, the poet, whose epic on the "Reign of Gold" is one of the longest, and some writers say the thickest, in the English language; James Whistleton Potts, the eminent portraitist, whose limnings of his patients have won him a high place among the caricaturists of the age, Robert Dozyphrase, the expatriated American novelist, now of London, whose latest volume of sketches, entitled Intricacies, has been equally the delight of his followers and the despair of students of the occult; and, what is more to the purpose of our story, Major-General Carrington Cox, U.S.A., retired. These gentlemen, with others of equal distinction whom I have not the space to name, were discussing with some degree of simultaneity their own achievements in the various fields of endeavor to which their lives had been devoted. They occupied the large centre-table which has for many a year been the point of contact for the distinguished minds of which the membership of "The Heraclean" is made up; the tennis-net, as it were, over which the verbal balls of discussion have for so many years volleyed to the delight of countless listeners.

Raffles and I sat apart at one of the smaller tables by the window, where we could hear as much of the conversation at the larger board as we wished—so many members of "The Heraclean" are deaf that to talk loud has become quite de rigueur there—and at the same time hold converse with each other in tones best suited to the confidential quality of our communications. We had enjoyed the first two courses of our repast when we became aware that General Carrington Cox had succeeded in getting to the floor, and as he proceeded with what he had to say, I observed, in spite of his efforts to conceal the fact, that Raffles Holmes was rather more deeply interested in the story the General was telling than in such chance observations as I was making. Hence I finished the luncheon in silence and even as did Holmes, listened to the General's periods—and they were as usual worth listening to.

"It was in the early eighties," said General Cox. "I was informally attached to the Spanish legation at Madrid. The King of Spain, Alphonso XII, was about to be married to the highly esteemed lady who is now the Queen-Mother of that very interesting youth, Alphonso XIII. In anticipation of the event the city was in a fever of gayety and excitement that always attends upon a royal function of that nature. Madrid was crowded with visitors of all sorts, some of them not as desirable as they might be, and here and there, in the necessary laxity of the hour, one or two perhaps that were most inimical to the personal safety and general welfare of the King. Alphonso, like many another royal personage, was given to the old Haroun Al Raschid habit of travelling about at night in a more or less impenetrable incognito, much to the distaste of his ministers and to the apprehension of the police, who did not view with any too much satisfaction the possibility of disaster to the royal person and the consequent blame that would rest upon their shoulders should anything of a serious nature befall. To all of this, however, the King was oblivious, and it so happened one night that in the course of his wanderings he met with the long dreaded mix-up. He and his two companions fell in with a party of cut-throats who promptly proceeded to hold them up. The companions were speedily put out of business by the attacking party, and the King found himself in the midst of a very serious misadventure, the least issue from which bade fair to be a thorough beating, if not an attempt on his life. It was at the moment when his chances of escape were not one in a million, when, on my way home from the Legation, where I had been detained to a very late hour, I came upon him struggling in the hands of four as nasty ruffians as you will find this side of the gallows. One of them held him by the arms, another was giving him a fairly expert imitation of how it feels to be garroted, which the other two were rifling his pockets. This was too much for me. I was in pretty fit physical condition at that time and felt myself to be quite the equal in a good old Anglo-Saxon fist fight of any dozen ordinary Castilians, so I plunged into the fray, heart and soul, not for an instant dreaming, however, what was the quality of the person to whose assistance I had come. My first step was to bowl over the garroter. Expecting no interference in his nefarious pursuit and unwarned by his companions, who were to busily engaged in their adventure of loot to observe my approach, he was easy prey, and the good, hard whack that I gave him just under his right ear sent him flying, an unconscious mass of villanous clay, into the gutter. The surprise of the onslaught was such that the other three jumped backward, thereby releasing the King's arms so that we were now two to three, which in a moment became two to two, for I lost no time in knocking out my second man with as pretty a solar plexus as you ever saw. There is nothing in the world more demoralizing than a good, solid blow straight from the shoulder to chaps whose idea of fighting is to sneak up behind you and choke you to death, or to stick a knife into the small of your back, and had I been far less expert with my fists, I should still have had an incalculable moral advantage over such riffraff. Once the odds in the matter of numbers were even, the King and I had no further difficulty in handling the others. His Majesty's quarry got away by the simple act of taking to his heels, and mine, turning to do likewise, received a salute from my right toe which, if I am any judge, must have driven the upper end of his spine up through the top of his head. Left alone, his Majesty held out his hand and thanked me profusely from my timely aid, and asked my name. We thereupon bade each other good-night, and I went on to my lodging, little dreaming of the service I had rendered to the nation.

"The following day I was astonished to receive at the Legation a communication bearing the royal seal, commanding me to appear at the palace at once. The summons was obeyed, and, upon entering the palace, I was immediately ushered into the presence of the King. He received me most graciously, dismissing, however, all his attendants.

"'Colonel Cox,' he said, after the first formal greetings were over, 'you rendered me a great service last night.'

"'I, your majesty?' said I. 'In what way?'

"'By putting those ruffians to flight,' said he.

"'Ah!' said I. 'Then the gentleman attacked was one of your Majesty's friends?'

"'I would have it so appear,' said the King. 'For a great many reasons I should prefer that it were not known that it was I—'

"'You, your Majesty?' I cried, really astonished. 'I had no idea—"

"'You are discretion itself, Colonel Cox,' laughed the King, 'and to assure you of my appreciation of the fact, I beg that you will accept a small gift which you will some day shortly receive anonymously. It will not be at all commensurate to the service you have rendered me, nor to the discretion which you have already so kindly observed regarding the principals involved in last night's affair, but in the spirit of friendly interest and appreciation back of it, it will be of a value inestimable.'

"I began to try to tell his Majesty that my government did not permit me to accept gifts of any kind from persons royal or otherwise, but it was not possible to do so, and twenty minutes later my audience was over and I returned to the Legation with the uncomfortable sense of having placed myself in a position where I must either violate the King's confidence to acquire the permission of Congress to accept his gift, or break the laws by which all who are connected with the diplomatic service, directly or indirectly, are strictly governed. I assure you it was not in the least degree in the hope of personal profit that I chose the latter course. Ten days later a pair of massive golden pepper-pots came to me, and, as the King had intimated would be the case, there was nothing about them to show whence they had come. Taken altogether, they were the most exquisitely wrought specimens of the goldsmith's artistry that I had ever seen, and upon their under side was inscribed in a cipher which no one unfamiliar with the affair of that midnight fracas would even have observed—'A.R. to C.C.'—Alphonso Rex to Carrington Cox being, of course, the significance thereof. They were put away with my other belongings, and two years later, when my activities were transferred to London, I took them away with me.

"In London I chose to live in chambers, and was soon established at No. 7 Park Place, St. James's, a more than comfortable and centrally located apartment-house where I found pretty much everything in the way of convenience that a man situated as I was could reasonably ask for. I had not been there more than six months, however, when something happened that made the ease of apartment life seem somewhat less desirable. That is, my rooms were broken open during my absence, over night on a little canoeing trip to Henley, and about everything valuable in my possession was removed, including the truly regal pepper-pots sent me by his Majesty the King of Spain, that I had carelessly left standing upon my sideboard.

"Until last week," the General continued, "nor hide nor hair of any of my stolen possessions was every 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 Dozyphrase.

"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.

The 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, and, 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 it 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 clew 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. Bruce, of Bruce, Watkins & Co., at the latter's residence, 74— Fifth Avenue. Among Mr. Bruce's guests were Mr. and Mrs. W. K. Dandervelt, Mr. and Mrs. Elisha Scroog, Jr., Major-General Carrington Cox, Mr. and Mrs. Henderson Scovill, and Signor Caruso."

THE END