The Misadventure of Shelrock Holmes (40 page)

stones, with possible scarf pins in mind, when the dealer came forward with a package that he had taken from his safe, and removing its wrappings said: 'Perhaps, sir, you would be interested in this?'

"It was a curious bit of antique workmanship — a gold bar bearing the figure of a boy catching a mouse, the whole richly set about with diamonds and rubies, with a large and costly pearl as a pendant. Even in the dingy light of the shop it sparkled with a sense of value.

" 'It is from the personal collection of the Countess of Warrington,' said the dealer. 'It belonged originally to the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots, and there is an accompanying paper of authentication, showing its descent through various hands for the past three hundred and forty years. You will see engraved here, in the setting, the arms of Mary.'"

Holmes, a past master in the science of heraldry, his voice exhibiting a degree of interest with which I was quite familiar, here broke in:

"Or, a lion rampant within a double tressure flory and counter flory, gules. Mary, as Queen of Scotland and daughter of James I, would bear the arms of Scotland. I know the jewel you are describing — indeed, I saw it one time when visiting at the country seat of the Countess, following a daring attempt at burglary there. You know the particulars, Watson. I have heard that since the death of the Countess, the family being straitened financially, some of her jewels have been put into discreet hands for negotiation."

"So the dealer explained," the visitor continued, "and he added, that as the jewels were so well known in England, they could be sold only to go abroad, hence the value of a prospective American customer. I confess that the jewel interested me. I had a newly married niece in mind for whom I had not yet found just the wedding gift that suited me, and this appeared to fit into the situation.

" 'What is the price?' I asked.

" 'We think one thousand pounds very cheap for it, sir,' said the dealer, in the easy manner with which your shopkeepers price their wares to Americans.

"After some further talk, our time being run out, my friend and I returned to the Langham and dressed for dinner. It was while dressing that a knock came at my room door. Opening it, I found a messenger from the curio dealer's, who, handing me a small package,

explained that it was the jewel, which the dealer desired me to retain for more convenient examination. In the embarrassment of the moment I neglected to do the proper thing and return the package to the messenger, who indeed had touched his cap and gone while

yet stood in the door.

'"Look at this, Fuller,' I called, and stepped into his room-is our traveling custom to have rooms connecting. 'Isn't this quite like an English shopkeeper, entrusting his property to a comparative stranger? It's a dangerous thing to have credit with these confiding

tradesmen.'

"My friend's reply very clearly framed the situation.

" 'It's a more dangerous thing,' he said, 'to be chosen as the safe-deposit of priceless heirlooms. It is scarcely the sort of ^thing one would seek to be made the custodian of in a strange city.'

"This was true. The dinner hour was close on our heels, a taxi was in waiting, there was no time to arrange with the office, and 1 dropped the package into my inner pocket. After all, it seemed a secure enough place. I could feel its gentle pressure against my side, which would be a constant guarantee of safety.

" We were received by Lord and Lady M - - with the open-handed cordiality that they always accord to visitors from our country. The company at table was not so large but that the conversation could be for the most part general, running at the first to topics chiefly American, with that charming exhibition of English naivete and ignorance-you will pardon me-in affairs across the water. From this point the talk trailed off to themes quite unrelated but always interesting-the Great War, in which his Lordship had played a conspicuous part; the delicious flavor of wall-grown peaches; the health of the King; of her ladyship's recipe for barleywater; the recent disposal of the library and personal effects of the notorious Lord Earlbank. This by natural steps led to a discussion of family heirlooms, which speedily brought out the jewel, whose insistent pressure I had felt all through the courses, and which was soon passing from hand to hand, accompanied by feminine expressions of delight. "The interest in the jewel appeared to get into the air. Even the servants became affected by it. I noticed the under butler, while filling the glass of Captain Pole-Carew, who was holding the trinket up to catch the varying angles of light, in which it flashed amazingly,

fasten his eyes upon it. For an instant he breathed heavily and almost leaned upon the captain's shoulder, forgetting the wine he was in the act of decanting, and which, overflowing the glass, ran down upon the cloth. The jewel continued its circuit of the table and returned to my inner pocket.

" 'A not over-safe repository, if I may venture the opinion,' said the captain, with a smile. I had occasion later to recall the cynical remark.

"We returned to our hotel at a late hour, and fatigued with the long day went directly to bed. Our rooms, as I have said, adjoined, and it is a habit in our travels at the day's end to be back and forth, talking as we disrobe. I allude to this fact as it bears upon the case. I was first in bed, and remember hearing Mr. Fuller put up the window before his light went out. For myself, I dropped off at once and must have slept soundly. I was awakened by hearing my name called loudly. It was Fuller's voice and I rushed at once into his room, hastily switching on the electric light. Fuller sat on the edge of the bed, in his pajamas — and as this part of the story is his, perhaps he would best tell it."

The visitor in the Pickwickian spectacles, thus appealed to, took up the narrative.

"I also had gone instantly to sleep," he said, "but by-and-by came broad awake, startled, with no sense of time, but a stifled feeling of alarm. I dimly saw near the side of my bed a figure, which on my suddenly sitting up made a hurried movement. With no clear idea of what I was doing, I made a hasty clutch in the dark and fastened my hand on the breast of a man's coat. I think my grip was a frenzied one, for as the man snatched himself away, I felt the cloth tear. In a second of time the man had crossed the room and I heard the window rattle as he struck the sash in passing through it. It was then I cried out, and Mr. Richardson came running in."

"We made a hasty examination of the room," the first speaker resumed. "My evening coat lay on the floor, and I remembered that when taking it off I had hung it on the post of Fuller's bed. It is to prolong an already somewhat lengthy story not to say at once that the jewel was gone. We stared at each other with rueful faces.

" 'The man has gone through that window with it!' cried Fuller. He pointed with a clenched hand. Then he brought his hand back,

with a conscious air, and opened it. 'This is a souvenir of him,' he said, and he held out a button — this button."

Sherlock Holmes reached quickly for the little article that the speaker held out and carefully examined it through his lens.

"A dark horn button," he said, "of German manufacture and recent importation. A few strands of thread pulled out with it. This may be helpful." Then he turned to his callers. "And what else?"

"Well — that is about all we can tell you. We did the obvious thing — rang for the night clerk and watchman and made what examination was possible. The burglar had plainly come along a narrow iron balcony, opening from one of the hotel corridors and skirting the row of windows that gave upon an inner courtyard, escaping by the same channel. The night watchman could advance only a feeble conjecture as to how this might be done successfully. The burglar, he opined, could have made off through the servants' quarters, or possibly was himself a guest of the house, familiar with its passages and now snugly locked in his room and beyond apprehension."

"Did you speak of your loss?" asked Holmes.

"No; that did not appear to be necessary. We treated the incident at the moment as only an invasion."

"Exceedingly clever," approved Holmes. "You Americans can usually be trusted not to drive in too far."

"We breakfasted early, decided that you were our only resource and — in short," concluded the visitor, with an outward gesture of the hands, "that is the whole story. The loss is considerable and we wish to entrust the matter to the discreet hands of Mr. Sherlock Holmes."

My friend lay back in his chair, intently regarding the button poised between his forefingers.

"What became of that under butler?" he asked abruptly.

A little look of surprise slipped into the countenance of the visitor. "Why, now that you call attention to it," he returned, after a moment's reflection, "I remember seeing the head butler putting a spoonful of salt upon the red splotch the spilled wine had made, then turning his awkward assistant from the room. It was so quietly done as to attract no special notice. Afterward, over our cigars in the library, I recall his lordship making some joking allusion to Watkins — so he

284 THE MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS JEWEL

called the man —being something of a connoisseur in jewelry — a collector in a small way. His Lordship laughingly conjectured that the sight of so rare a jewel had unnerved him. Beyond regarding the allusion in the way of a quiet apology for a servitor's awkwardness, I gave it no particular thought."

Sherlock Holmes continued to direct his gaze upon the button.

"Your story is interesting," he said after some moments of silence. "It will please me to give it further thought. Perhaps you will let me look in on you later at your hotel. It is possible that in the course of the day I shall be able to give you some news."

The visitors hereupon courteously taking their leave, Holmes and I were left alone.

"Well, Watson," he began, "what do you make of it?"

"There is an under butler to be reckoned up," I replied.

"You also observed the under butler, did you?" said Holmes abstractedly. After a pause he added: "Do you happen to know the address of Lord M 's tailor?"

I confessed that this lay outside the circle of my knowledge of the nobility. Holmes put on his cap and raincoat.

"I am going out on my own, Watson," he said, "for a stroll among the fashionable West End tailor shops. Perhaps you will do me the honor to lunch with me at the Club. I may want to discuss matters

with you."

Sherlock Holmes went out and I returned home. It was a dull day for patients, for which I was glad, and the lunch hour found me promptly at the Athenaeum, waiting at our accustomed corner table — impatiently waiting, for it was long past the lunch hour when Holmes came in.

"A busy morning, Watson," was his brief remark as he took his

chair.

"And successful?"

To this Holmes made no reply, taking his soup with profound abstraction and apparently oblivious of his guest across the table. While I was accustomed to this attitude of preoccupation, it piqued me to be left so entirely out of his consideration. A review of his morning investigations seemed, under the circumstances, to be quite

my due. "I am going to ask you," began Holmes, when the meal had gone

on to its close in silence, "to get tickets for the Alhambra tonight — four tickets. In the middle of the house, with an aisle seat. Then kindly drop around to the hotel and arrange with our friends to go with us. Or, rather, for us to go with them —in their motorcar, Watson. Request diem to pick us up at Baker Street. You will undertake this? Very good, Watson. Then —till I see you at my rooms!" And tossing off his coffee in the manner of a toast, Sherlock Holmes abruptly arose and left me, waving his cap as he went through the door.

It was useless to demur at this cavalier treatment. I had to content myself with the reflection that, as my friend mounted into the atmosphere of criminal detection, the smaller obligations fell away from him. During what was left of the day I was busy in executing the commissions which he had entrusted to me, and night found me at Baker Street, where I discovered Holmes in evening clothes.

"I was just speculating, Watson," he began, in an airy manner, "upon the extraordinary range and variety of the seemingly insignificant and lowly article of commerce known as the button. It is a device common in one form or another to every country. Its origin we should need to seek back of the dimmest borders of recorded history. Its uses and application are beyond calculation. Do you happen to know, my dear Doctor, the figures representing the imports into England for a single year of this ornamental, and at times highly useful, little article ? Of horn buttons, for example — it were curious to speculate upon the astonishing number of substances that masquerade under that distinguishing appellation. Indeed, the real horn button when found — if I may quote from our friend Captain Cuttle — is easily made a note of."

It was in this bantering vein that Holmes ran on, not suffering interruption, until the arrival of our callers of die morning, in their motorcar, which speedily conveyed us to the Alhambra, that gorgeous home of refined vaudeville. The theater was crowded as usual. A few moments after our arrival, one of the boxes filled with a fashionable party, among whom our American friends recognized some of their dinner acquaintances of the previous evening. Later I perceived Captain Pole-Carew, as he looked over the house, bow to our companions. Then his glance ranged to Sherlock Holmes, where I may have imagined it rested a moment, passing thence to a distant part

of the galleries. Why we had been brought to this public amusement hall it was impossible to conjecture. That in some manner it bore upon the commission Holmes had undertaken I was fain to believe, but beyond that conclusion it was idle to speculate. At one time during the evening Holmes, who had taken the aisle seat, suddenly got up and retired to the lobby, but was soon back again and apparently engrossed in what went on upon the stage.

At the end of the performance we made our way through the slowly moving audience, visibly helped along by Holmes. In the lobby we chanced to encounter Captain Pole-Carew, who had separated from the box party. He greeted the Americans with some reserve, but moved along with us to the exit, near which our motorcar already waited. The captain had distantly acknowledged the introduction to Holmes and myself, and knowing how my friend resented these cool conventionalities, I was unprepared for the warmth with which he seconded the suggestion that the captain make one of our party in the drive home.