The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (27 page)

(Writing as Arth_r C_n_n D_yle and E. W. H_rn_ng)

THE ENGLISH AUTHOR
, journalist, parodist, biographer, anthologist, and literary critic Hugh Kingsmill Lunn (1889–1949) dropped his last name as a partial pseudonym for what he described as professional reasons, perhaps in order not to be confused with his brothers, Arnold Lunn and Brian Lunn.

Although Kingsmill is described in numerous reference books as a mystery writer, among his other literary accomplishments, he did not, in fact, write a single crime novel, though he wrote some short stories in the genre, several of which were collected in a book of parodies,
The Table of Truth
(1933), which he has identified as one of his favorite books. Several of his biographies are notable, especially
The Return of William Shakespeare
(1929),
Frank Harris
(1932),
Samuel Johnson
(1933), and
D. H. Lawrence
(1938).

The dual byline on this story reflects the fame of the now somewhat-forgotten E. W. Hornung, the creator of Raffles, the notorious gentleman jewel thief. Although he appeared in only four books between 1899 and 1909, Raffles short stories vied with Sherlock Holmes in popularity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and it was not uncommon for parodists to match the nearly infallible detective against the equally successful safecracker.

“The Ruby of Khitmandu” was first published in the April 1932 issue of
The Bookman
; it was first collected in book form in the author's
The Table of Truth
(London, Jarrolds, 1933).

(Synopsis—The Maharajah of Khitmandu, who is staying at Claridge's, is robbed of the famous Ruby of Khitmandu. Sherlock Holmes traces the theft to Raffles, who agrees to hand over the ruby to Holmes, on condition that he and his confederate Bunny are not proceeded against. Raffles has just explained the situation to Bunny. They are in the rooms of Raffles in the Albany.)

(
Bunny's Narrative
)

MY HEART FROZE
at the incredible words which told me that Raffles, of all men, was throwing up the sponge without a struggle, was tamely handing over the most splendid of all the splendid trophies of his skill and daring to this imitation detective, after outwitting all the finest brains of the finest crime-investigating organization in the world. Suddenly the ice turned to fire, and I was on my feet, speaking as I had never spoken to living man before. What I said I cannot remember. If I could, I would not record it. I believe I wept. I know I went down on my knees. And Raffles sat there with never a word! I see him still, leaning back in a luxurious armchair, watching me with steady eyes sheathed by drooping lids. There was a faint smile on the handsome dare-devil face, and the hands were raised as if in deprecation; nor can I give my readers a more complete idea of the frenzy which had me in its grip than by recording the plain fact that I was utterly oblivious to the strangeness of the spectacle before me. Raffles apologetic, Raffles condescending to conciliate me—at any other time such a reversal of our natural rôles had filled me with unworthy exultation for myself, and bitter shame for him. But I was past caring now.

And then, still holding his palms towards me, he crossed them. I have said that during the telling of his monstrous decision he had the ruby between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. Now the left hand was where the right had been, and the ruby was in it. I suppose I should have guessed at once, I suppose I should have read in his smile what it needed my own eyes to tell me, that there was a ruby in his right hand too! So that was the meaning of the upraised hands! I swear that my first sensation was a pang of pure relief that Raffles had not stooped to conciliate me, my second a hot shame that I had been idiot enough even for one moment to believe him capable of doing so. Then the full significance of the two rubies flashed across me.

“An imitation?” I gasped, falling back into my chair.

“An exact replica.”

“For Holmes?”

He nodded.

“But supposing he—”

“That's a risk I have to take.”

“Then I go with you.”

A savage gleam lit up the steel-blue eyes.

“I don't want you.”

“Holmes may spot it. I must share the risk.”

“You fool, you'd double it!”

“Raffles!” The cry of pain was wrung from me before I could check it, but if there was weakness in my self-betrayal, I could not regret it when I saw the softening in his wonderful eyes.

“I didn't mean it, Bunny,” he said.

“Then you'll take me!” I cried, and held my breath through an endless half-minute, until a consenting nod brought me to my feet again. The hand that shot out to grasp his was met halfway, and a twinkling eye belied the doleful resignation in his “What an obstinate rabbit it is!”

Our appointment with Holmes was for the following evening at nine. The clocks of London were striking the half-hour after eight when I entered the Albany. My dear villain, in evening dress, worn as only he could wear it, was standing by the table; but there was that in his attitude which struck the greeting dumb upon my lips. My eyes followed the direction of his, and I saw the two rubies side by side in their open cases.

“What is it, Raffles?” I cried. “Has anything happened?”

“It's no good, Bunny,” he said, looking up. “I can't risk it. With anyone else I'd chance it, and be damned to the consequences, too. But Holmes—no, Bunny! I was a fool ever to play with the idea.”

I could not speak. The bitterness of my disappointment, the depth of my disillusion, took me by the throat and choked me. That Raffles should be knocked out I could have borne, that he should let the fight go by default—there was the shame to which I could fit no words.

“He'd spot it, Bunny. He'd spot it.” Raffles picked up one of the cases. “See this nick?” he asked lightly, for all the world as if blazing eyes and a scarlet face were an invitation to confidences. “I've marked this case because it holds the one and only Ruby of Khitmandu, and on my life I don't believe I could tell which ruby was which, if I once got the cases mixed.”

“And yet,” I croaked from a dry throat, “you think Holmes can do what you can't!”

“My dear rabbit, precious stones are one of his hobbies. The fellow's written a monograph on them, as I discovered only to-day. I'm not saying he'd spot my imitation, but I am most certainly not going to give him the chance,” and he turned on his heel and strode into his bedroom for his overcoat.

The patient readers of these unworthy chronicles do not need to be reminded that I am not normally distinguished for rapidity of either thought or action. But for once brain and hand worked as surely and swiftly as though they had been Raffles's own, and the rubies had changed places a full half-minute before Raffles returned to find me on my feet, my hat clapped to my head, and a look in my eyes which opened his own in enquiry.

“I'm coming with you,” I cried.

Raffles stopped dead, with an ugly glare.

“Haven't you grasped, my good fool, that I'm handing Holmes the real stone?”

“He may play you false.”

“I refuse to take you.”

“Then I follow you.”

Raffles picked up the marked case, snapped it to, and slipped it into his overcoat pocket. I was outwitting him for his own good, yet a pang shot through me at the sight, with another to follow when the safe closed on the real ruby in the dummy's case. And the eyes that strove to meet his fell most shamefully as he asked if I still proposed to thrust my company upon him. Through teeth which I could hardly keep from chattering I muttered that it was a trap, that Holmes would take the stone and then call in the police, that I must share the danger as I would have shared the profits. A contemptuous shrug of the splendid shoulders, and a quick spin on his heel, were all the answer he vouchsafed me, and not a word broke the silence between us as we strode northwards through the night.

There was no tremor in the lean strong hand which raised the knocker on a door in Baker Street. He might have been going to a triumph instead of to the bitterest of humiliations. And it might be a triumph, after all! And he would owe it to me! But there was little enough of exultation
in the heart which pounded savagely as I followed him upstairs, my fingers gripped tightly round the life-preserver in my pocket.

“Two gentlemen to see you, sir,” wheezed the woman who had admitted us. “And one of them,” drawled an insufferably affected voice, as we walked in, “is very considerately advertising the presence of a medium-sized life-preserver in his right overcoat pocket. My dear Watson, if you must wave a loaded revolver about, might I suggest that you do so in the passage? Thank you. It is certainly safer in your pocket. Well, Mr. Raffles, have you brought it?”

Without a word, Raffles took the case out, and handed it across to Holmes. As Holmes opened it, the fellow whom he had addressed as Watson leaned forward, breathing noisily. Criminals though we were, I could not repress a thrill of pride as I contrasted the keen bronze face of my companion with the yellow cadaverous countenance of Holmes, and reflected that my own alas indisputably undistinguished appearance could challenge a more than merely favourable comparison with the mottled complexion, bleared eyes, and ragged moustache of the detective's jackal.

“A beautiful stone, eh, Watson?” Holmes remarked, in the same maddening drawl, as he held the ruby to the light. “Well, Mr. Raffles, you have saved me a good deal of unnecessary trouble. The promptitude with which you have bowed to the inevitable does credit to your quite exceptional intelligence. I presume that you will have no objection to my submitting this stone to a brief examination?”

“I should not consider that you were fulfilling your duty to your client if you neglected such an elementary precaution.”

It was perfectly said, but then was it not Raffles who said it? And said it from the middle of the shabby bear-skin rug, his legs apart and his back to the fire. Now, as always, the center of the stage was his at will, and I could have laughed at the discomfited snarl with which Holmes rose, and picking his way through an abominable litter of papers disappeared into the adjoining room. Three minutes, which seemed to me like twice as many hours, had passed by the clock on the mantelpiece, when the door opened again. Teeth set, and nerves strung ready, I was yet, even in this supreme moment, conscious of a tension in Raffles which puzzled me, for what had he, who believed the stone to be the original ruby, to fear? The menacing face of the detective brought my life-preserver half out of my pocket, and the revolver of the man Watson wholly out of his. Then, to my unutterable relief, Holmes said, “I need not detain you any longer, Mr. Raffles. But one word in parting. Let this be your last visit to these rooms.”

There was a threat in the slow-dropping syllables which I did not understand, and would have resented, had I had room in my heart for any other emotion than an overwhelming exultation. Through a mist I saw Raffles incline his head with a faintly contemptuous smile. And I remember nothing more, till we were in the open street, and the last sound I expected startled me back into my senses. For Raffles was chuckling.

“I'm disappointed in the man, Bunny,” he murmured with a laugh. “I was convinced he would spot it. But I was ready for him.”

“Spot it?” I gasped, fighting an impossible suspicion.

“Yes, spot the dummy which my innocent rabbit was so insultingly sure was the one and only Ruby of Khitmandu.”

“What!” My voice rose to a shriek. “Do you mean it was the dummy which was in the marked case?”

He spun round with a savage “Of course!”

“But you said it was the real one.”

“And again, of course!”

Suddenly I saw it all. It was the old, old wretched story. He would trust no one but himself. He alone could bluff Holmes with a dummy stone. So he had tried to shake me off with the lie about restoring the real stone. And my unwitting hand had turned the lie to truth! As I reeled, he caught my arm.

“You fool! You infernal, you unutterable fool!” He swung me round to face his blazing eyes. “What have you done?”

“I swapped them over. And be damned to you!”

“You swapped them over?” The words came slowly through clenched teeth.

“When you were in your bedroom. So it
was
the one and only ruby you gave him after all,” and the hand that was raised to strike me closed on my mouth as I struggled to release the wild laughter which was choking in my throat.

(
Dr. Watson's Narrative
)

I must confess that as the door closed on Raffles and his pitiful confederate I felt myself completely at a loss to account for the unexpected turn which events had taken. There was no mistaking the meaning of the stern expression on the face of Holmes when he rejoined us after examining the stone. I saw at once that his surmise had proved correct, and that Raffles had substituted an imitation ruby for the original. The almost laughable agitation with which the lesser villain pulled out his life-preserver at my friend's entrance confirmed me in this supposition. It was clear to me that he was as bewildered as myself when Holmes dismissed Raffles instead of denouncing him. Indeed, his gasp of relief as he preceded Raffles out of the room was so marked as to bring me to my feet with an ill-defined impulse to rectify the extraordinary error into which, as it seemed to me, Holmes had been betrayed.

“Sit down!” Holmes snapped, with more than his usual asperity.

“But Holmes!” I cried. “Is it possible you do not realize—”

“I realize that, as usual, you realize nothing. Take this stone. Guard it as you would guard the apple of your eye. And bring it to me here at eight to-morrow morning.”

“But Holmes, I don't understand—”

“I have no time to discuss the limitations of your intelligence.” I have always been willing to make allowances for my friend's natural impatience with a less active intelligence than his own. Nevertheless, I could not repress a feeling of mortification as he thrust the case into my hand, and propelled me into the passage. But the night air, and the brisk pace at which I set out down Baker Street, soon served to restore my equanimity. A long experience of my friend's extraordinary powers had taught me that he often saw clearly when all was darkness to myself. I reflected that he had no doubt some excellent reason for letting the villains go. No man could strike more swiftly and with more deadly effect than Holmes, but equally no man knew better how to bide his time, or could wait more patiently to enmesh his catch beyond the possibility of escape. While these thoughts were passing through my mind, I had been vaguely conscious of two men walking ahead of me, at a distance of about a hundred yards. Suddenly one of them reeled, and would have fallen had not his companion caught his arm. My first impression was that I was witnessing the spectacle, alas only too common a one in all great cities, of two drunken men assisting each other homewards. But as I observed the couple in pity mingled with repulsion, the one who had caught the other's arm raised his hand as if to deliver a blow. I felt for my revolver, and was about to utter a warning shout, when I perceived that they were the very men who had just been occupying my thoughts. The need for caution instantly asserted itself. Halting, I drew out my pipe, filled it, and applied a match. This simple stratagem enabled me to collect my thoughts. It was plain that these rascals had quarrelled. I recalled the familiar adage that when thieves fall out honest men come by their own, and I summoned all my powers to imagine what Holmes would do in my place. To follow the rogues at a safe distance, and act as the development of the situation required, seemed to me the course of action which he would pursue. But I could not conceal from myself that his view of what the situation might require would probably differ materially from my own. For an instant I was tempted to hasten back to him with the news of this fresh development. But a moment's
reflection convinced me that to do so would be to risk the almost certain loss of my quarry. I had another, and I fear a less excusable, motive for not returning. The brusquerie of my dismissal still rankled a little. It would be gratifying if I could, this once, show my imperious friend that I was capable of making an independent contribution to the unravelling of a problem. I therefore quickened my steps, and soon diminished the distance between myself and my quarry to about fifty yards. It was obvious that the dispute was still in progress. Raffles himself maintained a sullen silence, but the excitable voice and gestures of his accomplice testified that the quarrel, whatever its nature, was raging with unabated vehemence.