The Big Book of Sherlock Holmes Stories (58 page)

“ ‘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 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 them 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 the 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.

“Sit here in the tonneau,” he said cordially, “and let me take the seat with the chauffeur. It will be a pleasure, I assure you.”

The captain's manifest reluctance to join our party was quite overcome by Holmes's polite insistence. His natural breeding asserted itself against whatever desire he may have entertained for other engagements, and in a short time the car had reached his door in Burleigh Street.

Sherlock Holmes quickly dismounted. “We have just time for a cigar and a cocktail with the captain,” he proposed.

“Yes, to be sure,” said Captain Pole-Carew, but with no excess of heartiness. “Do me the honor, gentlemen, of walking into my bachelor home. I—I shall be charmed.”

It was Sherlock Holmes who carried the thing off; otherwise I think none of us would have felt that the invitation was other than the sort that is perfunctorily made and expected to be declined, with a proper show of politeness on both sides. But Holmes moved gayly to the street door, maintaining a brisk patter of small talk as Pole-Carew got out his latchkey. We were ushered into a dimly lighted hall and passed thence into a large apartment, handsomely furnished, the living room of a man of taste.

“Pray be seated, gentlemen,” said our host. “I expected my valet here before me—he also was at the theater tonight—but your motorcar outstripped him. However, I daresay we can manage,” and the captain busied himself setting forth inviting decanters and cigars.

We had but just engaged in the polite enjoyment of Captain Pole-Carew's hospitality when Sherlock Holmes suddenly clapped his handkerchief to his nose, with a slight exclamation of annoyance.

“It is nothing,” he said, “a trifling nose-bleed to which I am often subject after the theater.” He held his head forward, his face covered with the handkerchief.

“It is most annoying,” he added apologetically. “Cold water—er—could I step into your dressing room, Captain?”

“Certainly—certainly,” our host assented; “through that door, Mr. Holmes.”

Holmes quickly vanished through the indicated door, whence presently came the sound of running water from a tap. We had scarcely resumed our interrupted train of conversation when he reappeared in the door, bearing in his hand a jacket.

“Thank you, Captain Pole-Carew,” he said, coming forward, “my nose is quite better. It has led me, I find, to a singular discovery. May I ask, without being regarded as impolite, if this is your jacket?”

I saw that Captain Pole-Carew had gone pale as he answered haughtily: “It is my valet's jacket, Mr. Holmes. He must have forgotten it. Why do you ask?”

“I was noticing the buttons,” returned Holmes; “they are exactly like this one in my
pocket,” and he held the dark horn button up to view.

“What of that?” retorted our host quickly; “could there not be many such?”

“Yes,” Holmes acknowledged, “but this button of mine was violently torn from its fastening—as it might have been from this jacket.”

“Mr. Holmes,” returned Captain Pole-Carew with a sneer, “your jest is neither timely nor a brilliant one. The jacket has no button missing.”

“No, but it had,” returned Holmes coolly; “here, you will see, it has been sewn on, not as a tailor sews it, with the thread concealed, but through and through the cloth, leaving the thread visible. As a man unskilled, or in some haste, might sew it on. You get my meaning, Captain?”

Sherlock Holmes as he spoke had crossed the room to where Captain Pole-Carew, his face dark with passion, was standing on the hearthrug. Holmes made an exaggerated gesture in holding up the jacket, stumbled upon the captain in doing so, and fell violently against the mantel. In an effort to recover himself his arm dislodged a handsome vase, which fell to the floor and shivered into fragments. There was a cry from Captain Pole-Carew, who flung himself amid the fractured pieces of glass. Swift as his action was, Sherlock Holmes was quicker, and snatched from the floor an object that glittered among the broken fragments.

“I think, Mr. Richardson,” he said calmly, recovering himself, “that, as a judge of jewelry, this is something you will take particular interest in.”

Before any one of us was over the surprise of the thing, Captain Pole-Carew had quite regained his poise, and stood lighting his cigar.

“A very pretty play, Mr. Sherlock Holmes,” he said. “I am indebted to you and your itinerant friends for a charming evening. May I suggest, however, that the hour is now late, and Baker Street, even for a motorcar, something of a distance?”