Kitabı oku: «R. Holmes & Co.», sayfa 5

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 as 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 café 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.