Part 5

"Only roughly, Mr. Grouch," said Holmes, coolly. "Only roughly. But I am very much afraid that I can't do what you want me to. Those bonds are doubtless in some broker's box in a safe-deposit company, and I don't propose to try to borrow them surreptitiously, even temporarily, from an incorporated institution. It is not only a dangerous but a criminal operation. Does your employer know that you have taken them?"

"My employer?" stammered Grouch, taken off his guard.

"Yes. Aren't you the confidential secretary of Mr. ----?" Here Holmes mentioned the name of the eminent financier and philanthropist. No one would have suspected, from the tone of his voice, that Holmes was perfectly aware that Grouch and the eminent financier were one and the same person. The idea seemed to please and steady the visitor.

"Why--ah--yes--I am Mr. Blank's confidential secretary," he blurted out. "And--ah--of course Mr. Blank does not know that I have speculated with the bonds and lost them."

"The bonds are--"

"In the hands of Bunker & Burke. I had hoped you would be able to suggest some way in which I could get hold of them long enough to turn them over to young Wilbraham, and then, in some other way, to restore them later to Bunker & Burke."

"That is impossible," said Raffles Holmes. "For the reasons stated, I cannot be party to a criminal operation."

"It will mean ruin for me if it cannot be done," moaned Grouch. "For Mr. Blank as well, Mr. Holmes; he is so deep in the market he can't possibly pull out. I thought possibly you knew of some reformed cracksman who would do this one favor for me just to tide things over. All we need is three weeks' time--three miserable little weeks."

"Can't be done with a safe-deposit company at the other end of the line," said Raffles Holmes. "If it were Mr. Blank's own private vault at his home it would be different. That would be a matter between gentlemen, between Mr. Blank and myself, but the other would put a corporation on the trail of the safe-breaker--an uncompromising situation."

Grouch's eye glistened.

"You know a man who, for a consideration and with a guarantee against prosecution, would break open my--I mean Mr. Blank's private vault?" he cried.

"I think so," said Raffles Holmes, noncommittally. "Not as a crime, however, merely as a favor, and with the lofty purpose of saving an honored name from ruin. My advice to you would be to put a dummy package, supposed to contain the missing bonds, along with about $30,000 worth of other securities in that vault, and so arrange matters that on the night preceding the date of young Wilbraham's majority, the man I will send you shall have the opportunity to crack it open and get away with the stuff unmolested and unseen. Next day young Wilbraham will see for himself why it is that Mr. Blank cannot turn over the trust. That is the only secure and I may say decently honest way out of your trouble."

"Mr. Raffles Holmes, you are a genius!" cried Grouch, ecstatically. And then he calmed down again as an unpleasant thought flashed across his mind. "Why is it necessary to put $30,000 additional in the safe, Mr. Holmes?"

"Simply as a blind," said Holmes. "Young Wilbraham would be suspicious if the burglar got away with nothing but his property, wouldn't he?"

"Quite so," said Grouch. "And now, Mr. Holmes, what will this service cost me?"

"Five thousand dollars," said Holmes.

"Phe-e-e-w!" whistled Grouch. "Isn't that pretty steep?"

"No, Mr. Grouch. I save two reputations--yours and Mr. Blank's. Twenty-five hundred dollars is not much to pay for a reputation these days--I mean a real one, of course, such as yours is up to date," said Holmes, coldly.

"Payable by certified check?" said Grouch.

"Not much," laughed Holmes. "In twenty-dollar bills, Mr. Grouch. You may leave them in the safe along with the other valuables."

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes," said Grouch, rising. "It shall be as you say. Before I go, sir, may I ask how you knew me and by what principle of deduction you came to guess my business so accurately?"

"It was simple enough," said Holmes. "I knew, in the first place, that so eminent a person as Mr. Blank would not come to me in the guise of a Mr. Grouch if he hadn't some very serious trouble on his mind. I knew, from reading the society items in the _Whirald_, that Mr. Bobby Wilbraham would celebrate the attainment of his majority by a big fête on the 17th of next month. Everybody knows that Mr. Blank is Mr. Wilbraham's trustee until he comes of age. It was easy enough to surmise from that what the nature of the trouble was. Two and two almost invariably make four, Mr. Grouch."

"And how the devil," demanded Grouch, angrily--"how the devil did you know I was Blank?"

"Mr. Blank passes the plate at the church I go to every Sunday," said Holmes, laughing, "and it would take a great sight more than a two-dollar wig and a pair of fifty-cent whiskers to conceal that pompous manner of his."

"Tush! You would better not make me angry, Mr. Holmes," said Grouch, reddening.

"You can get as angry as you think you can afford to, for all I care, Mr. Blank," said Holmes. "It's none of my funeral, you know."

And so the matter was settled. The unmasked Blank, seeing that wrath was useless, calmed down and accepted Holmes's terms and method for his relief.

"I'll have my man there at 4 A.M., October 17th, Mr. Blank," said Holmes. "See that your end of it is ready. The coast must be kept clear or the scheme falls through."

Grouch went heavily out, and Holmes called me back into the room.

"Jenkins," said he, "that man is one of the biggest scoundrels in creation, and I'm going to give him a jolt."

"Where are you going to get the retired burglar?" I asked.

"Sir," returned Raffles Holmes, "this is to be a personally conducted enterprise. It's a job worthy of my grandsire on my mother's side. Raffles will turn the trick."

And it turned out so to be, for the affair went through without a hitch. The night of October 16th I spend at Raffles's apartments. He was as calm as though nothing unusual were on hand. He sang songs, played the piano, and up to midnight was as gay and skittish as a school-boy on vacation. As twelve o'clock struck, however, he sobered down, put on his hat and coat, and, bidding me remain where I was, departed by means of the fire-escape.

"Keep up the talk, Jenkins," he said. "The walls are thin here, and it's just as well, in matters of this sort, that our neighbors should have the impression that I have _not_ gone out. I've filled the machine up with a choice lot of songs and small-talk to take care of my end of it. A consolidated gas company, like yourself, should have no difficulty in filling in the gaps."

And with that he left me to as merry and withal as nervous a three hours as I ever spent in my life. Raffles had indeed filled that talking-machine-- thirteen full cylinders of it--with as choice an assortment of causeries and humorous anecdotes as any one could have wished to hear. Now and again it would bid me cheer up and not worry about him. Once, along about 2 A.M., it cried out: "You ought to see me now, Jenkins. I'm right in the middle of this Grouch job, and it's a dandy. I'll teach _him_ a lesson." The effect of all this was most uncanny. It was as if Raffles Holmes himself spoke to me from the depths of that dark room in the Blank household, where he was engaged in an enterprise of dreadful risk merely to save the good name of one who no longer deserved to bear such a thing. In spite of all this, however, as the hours passed I began to grow more and more nervous. The talking-machine sang and chattered, but when four o'clock came and Holmes had not yet returned, I became almost frenzied with excitement--and then at the climax of the tension came the flash of his dark-lantern on the fire-escape, and he climbed heavily into the room.

"Thank Heaven you're back," I cried.

"You have reason to," said Holmes, sinking into a chair. "Give me some whiskey. That man Blank is a worse scoundrel than I took him for."

"What's happened?" I asked. "Didn't he play square?"

"No," said Holmes, breathing heavily. "He waited until I had busted the thing open and was on my way out in the dark hall, and then pounced on me with his butler and valet. I bowled the butler down the kitchen stairs, and sent the valet howling into the dining-room with an appendicitis jab in the stomach and had the pleasure of blacking both of Mr. Blank's eyes."

"And the stuff?"

"Right here," said Holmes, tapping his chest. "I was afraid something might happen on the way out and I kept both hands free. I haven't much confidence in philanthropists like Blank. Fortunately the scrimmage was in the dark, so Blank will never know who hit him."

"What are you going to do with the $35,000?" I queried, as we went over the booty later and found it all there.

"Don't know--haven't made up my mind," said Holmes, laconically. "I'm too tired to think about that now. It's me for bed." And with that he turned in.

Two days later, about nine o'clock in the evening, Mr. Grouch again called, and Holmes received him courteously.

"Well, Mr. Holmes," Grouch observed, unctuously, rubbing his hands together, "it was a nice job, neatly done. It saved the day for me. Wilbraham was satisfied, and has given me a whole year to make good the loss. My reputation is saved, and--"

"Excuse me, Mr. Blank--or Grouch--er--to what do you refer?" asked Holmes.

"Why, our little transaction of Monday night--or was it Tuesday morning?" said Grouch.

"Oh--that!" said Holmes. "Well, I'm glad to hear you managed to pull it off satisfactorily. I was a little worried about it. I was afraid you were done for."

"Done for?" said Grouch. "No, indeed. The little plan when off without a hitch."

"Good," said Holmes. "I congratulate you. _Whom did you get to do the job?_"

"Who--what--what--why, what do you mean, Mr. Holmes?" gasped Grouch.

"Precisely what I say--or maybe you don't like to tell me--such things are apt to be on a confidential basis. Anyhow, I'm glad you're safe, Mr. Grouch, and I hope your troubles are over."

"They will be when you give me back my $30,000," said Grouch.

"Your what?" demanded Holmes, with well-feigned surprise.

"My $30,000," repeated Blank, his voice rising to a shout.

"My dear Mr. Grouch," said Holmes, "how should I know anything about your $30,000?"

"Didn't your--your man take it?" demanded Grouch, huskily.

"My man? Really, Mr. Grouch, you speak in riddles this evening. Pray make yourself more clear."

"Your reformed burglar, who broke open my safe, and--" Grouch went on.

"I have no such man, Mr. Grouch."

"Didn't you send a man to my house, Mr. Raffles, to break open my safe, and take certain specified parcels of negotiable property therefrom?" said Grouch, rising and pounding the table with his fists.

"_I did not!_" returned Holmes, with equal emphasis. "I have never in my life sent anybody to your house, sir."

"Then who in the name of Heaven did?" roared Grouch. "The stuff is gone."

Holmes shrugged his shoulders.

"I am willing," said he, calmly, "to undertake to find out who did it, if anybody, if that is what you mean, Mr. Grouch. Ferreting out crime is my profession. Otherwise, I beg to assure you that my interest in the case ceases at this moment."

Here Holmes rose with quiet dignity and walked to the door.

"You will find me at my office in the morning, Mr. Grouch." he remarked, "in case you wish to consult me professionally."

"Hah!" sneered Grouch. "You think you can put me off this way, do you?"

"I think so," said Holmes, with a glittering eye. "No gentleman or other person may try to raise a disturbance in my private apartments and remain there."

"We'll see what the police have to say about this, Mr. Raffles Holmes," Grouch shrieked, as he made for the door.

"Very well," said Holmes. "I've no doubt they will find our discussion of the other sinners very interesting. They are welcome to the whole story as far as I am concerned."

And he closed the door on the ashen face of the suffering Mr. Grouch.

"What shall I do with your share of the $30,000, Jenkins?" said Raffles Holmes a week later.

"Anything you please," said I. "Only don't offer any of it to me. I can't question the abstract justice of your mulcting old Blank for the amount, but, somehow or other, I don't want any of it myself. Send it to the Board of Foreign Missions."

"Good!" said Holmes. "That's what I've done with my share. See!"

And he showed me an evening paper in which the board conveyed its acknowledgment of the generosity of an unknown donor of the princely sum of $15,000.

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!