R. Holmes and Co Part 11

"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 s.n.a.t.c.hER"

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 a.s.sent 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 gla.s.s, 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, hoa.r.s.ely. 'Not for the kindness you've shown me here, but for the service your old man did me. I am Nervy Jim the s.n.a.t.c.her.'

"'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' oak.u.m; 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-cla.s.s, 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-cla.s.s second-story man, and in his day was an A-1 s.n.a.t.c.her, 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 d.i.c.kson. 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 a.s.sociated with these l.u.s.trous headlights I was soon to be, and as Raffles Holmes and I poured out our souls in song not even his ill.u.s.trious 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 pa.s.sage 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-ta.s.selled 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 s.n.a.t.c.her will take up his abode on the banks of the Hudson, the only banks the ordinary cracksman is anxious to avoid."

"But how the d.i.c.kens 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 pa.s.s 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?"