III – Mr. Shylock Homes Foils a Conspiracy and Gains a Fortune

Welcome to the third installment of “The Adventures of Shylock Homes” by John Kendrick Bangs. (Read the first one here, and the second one here.) Bangs wrote 10 of these installments of Shylock’s adventures in the underworld for American newspapers in 1903. In this episode, he meets the Arthurian knight Lohengrin, who needs Homes’ help evading alimony.

Hardly had I got myself settled at the hotel, when in response to the announcement of my arrival callers in large numbers besieged my doors. Some of them were on mere social courtesies bent; others came to consult me professionally.

First among the latter was a gentleman in a gorgeous costume of silver, who drove up in a curious little wagon that looked for all the world like a circus cart and drawn by a handsome pair of swans of remarkable action. I happened to be looking out of my window at the moment of his coming, at the ever varying scene of activity in the street below, and while there was much else that interested me in the throngs of passersby, nothing quite like this had yet greeted my eye.

“I judge from his tow-head and his equipage,” said I to myself, “that this person is Lohengrin, though it may be it is only the delivery wagon of an alert bird-fancier. If it really is Lohengrin, I wonder what he is after.”

I had not long to wait to find out, for a knock sounded upon my door, and in response to my immediate “Come in,” the hotel buttons entered, bearing a card upon a silver tray.

“This gentleman wants to see you immediately,” said he, handing me a card and standing at attention like the well-bred imp he was. It was handsomely engraved, and bore the simple name, “Lohengrin,” upon it, while in the lower corner was his address, “The Walhalla Club.”

“Show him up,” said I, and the boy departed. “Why should Lohengrin call on me?” thinking about it, “I’m not musical.”

In a few moments the boy returned, and in his train walked the knightly person I had seen upon the street a moment before. He carried a package in his hand, which he fingered nervously.

“Mr. Shylock Homes?” he asked, as I rose to greet him.

“The same, at your service,” I replied, eyeing him keenly, for I could tell at once from his deep bass voice that he was an imposter, despite his rich garments and eccentric equipage. “Herr Lohengrin, I believe.”

“Precisely,” he rejoined, his voice quavering, “but how did you know?”

“Your card stated the fact,” I replied, amused by his manner, and resolved to watch him closely, lest he turn out to be a sneak-thief.

He smiled complacently at me as much as to say that after all I was an easy mark, little reckoning that I was in no wise deceived by his pretensions.

“It is a simple means of identification,” I added, resolved to lull him into a sense of security. “You see, in the first place you drive up in an operatic vehicle. In the second place you wear the garments and the hirsute of Lohengrin, and in the third place you send up a card revealing your identity. The three incidents taken together form a chain of proof by which I could not fail to be convinced.”

“You are a wonderful man, Mr. Shylock Homes,” he said. “Can you see through a brick wall?”

“No, sir,” said I.

“Then how do you know that I drove up in an operatic vehicle?” he demanded.

“Simplicity itself,” I explained. “I was looking out of the window and saw you.”

“Marvellous,” he said. “After all, your system then is not complex, but —”

“Essentially simplicitas,” said I. “To what may I attribute the honor of this
call?”

“I need assistance in a rather delicate matter,” he replied, holding up the package significantly, and I noticed that his hand trembled violently as he did so. “I have in this package a number of gems of priceless value that I cannot afford to lose, and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, to keep them I must lose them. Do you understand?”

“Not quite,” said I, understanding perfectly well all the time, but desiring to gain a few moments to reason out the case. The man’s real face, to differentiate it from his assumed one, was familiar to me, but I could not quite place it. He was not Lohengrin — that was clear from his voice alone — but it was rather who he really was than who he was not that I needed to know. “You see, I have just arrived after a strenuous experience, and my powers of penetration are somewhat impaired.”

“Naturally,” said he, drily — so drily that the word seemed cutting. It was as if Moriarty, or some other rival in my profession, had slapped me in the face. “I was not aware that any experience, however strenuous, could impair the penetration of Mr. Shylock Homes, yet,” he hastened to add, cautiously. “I might have known that even the best of us are sometimes not up to the requirements of an emergent situation.”

“Thank you,” said I, noting, however, his use of the word “us.” “Will you please explain?”

“With pleasure,” he replied, removing his helmet and placing it on the table that stood between us.

“A very pretty hat,” said I, taking it up, and with my pen-knife, surreptitiously marking it for identification later, a movement which, in his fancied security, he failed to notice.

“Isn’t it?” he replied, “rather becoming, too, eh?” he added.

“Very,” said I, “very becoming — and good for this climate, I presume.” I wanted to add that, in my own experience only sardines fitted comfortably into tins, but I refrained. “I can quite conceive, however, Mein Herr, that you did not come here to talk of hats, but rather to discuss more important matters. Pray resume your explanation.”

“Well, Mr. Homes,” he said, “to make a long story short —”

“And thus prove that you are not a literary man,” I put in.

“I beg your pardon,” said he.

“No literary man would make a long story short, you know,” I said, “at least not at present rates of payment of five cents a word.”

Lohengrin Seeks Help

“Ah — yes, I didn’t quite catch the point,” Lohengrin observed. “Very good indeed. You are certainly regaining your penetration, Mr. Shylock Homes. But to make a long story short, I am in grievous trouble. You may remember that I — ah — deserted my wife within an hour of our wedding.”

“Yes,” said I, “and if you will excuse me for saying so, with very little reason. The lady had a right to know whom she had married.”

“Well, whatever the rights of the case, she has sued me for divorce on the ground of desertion, and won her cause and her claim for alimony has been allowed by the courts. Under ordinary circumstances I could pay the alimony, but I am required by the decree to give her back pay for something like ten centuries, with interest. ”

“Which would ruin you even if you were to go back to earth and receive the rewards of a New York opera season,” I interjected.

“You have hit the nail on the head,” said Lohengrin. “To obey the courts I must give up all I have and a billion more. Elsa is relentless, and I am ruined unless some one like yourself helps me out. To save a pittance for myself. I must resort to methods which are described as underhanded, yet are not really so.”

“I see your position,” said I.

“It is a horrid one,” said he. “I have tried, and tried, and tried to find some means of escape. What are the ordinary means of escape? The first is to leave the country. We can’t do that here. The second is to decline to pay. We can’t do that here, where supplementary proceedings are superseded by summary punishment, in which vitriol and various other pleasing penitential coercings are in vogue. The third is to be robbed of the means of payment, and plead the inability of actual misfortune. This is the only possible refuge of the afflicted. I am willing to give up much for the indiscretion of my youth, but not everything. I must be robbed by some thief who will pay me an income from his own profits.”

“That’s an easy proposition,” said I. “Get hold of some chap like Dick Turpin or Jack Sheppard to rob you, with the understanding that out of his swag he must pay you back a certain percentage, upon which you may maintain your position in society and keep up your racing aviary.”

“My racing what?” he demanded.

“Aviary,” said I, “most horsemen keep a stable, Herr Lohengrin. You drive birds — therefore —”

“Oh, yes,” said he. “Clever term. But the scheme isn’t as easy as you seem to think, Mr. Shylock Homes. We have detectives here who are cleverer than you think. Messrs. Sleuth, Hawkshaw & LeCoq are geniuses of a rare order. Indeed,” he added, with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted, “they are the cleverest men in their profession that ever drew the breath of life. Singly omniscient, as a combination they are invincible. Any device I, in my own poor way, might invent for the sequestration of my property would be at their mercy from the moment of its inception. No matter by whom it was stolen, or where concealed, the eagle eyes of that marvellous trio would soon be upon it, and I should be lost.”

“True,” said I, resolved to humor him, “very true, Herr Lohengrin, why do you not then retain their services in your hour of need?”

“That had occurred to me,” he replied uneasily, “but the objection immediately arose in my mind that the greater the number of my advisers the greater the risk to my secret. Some day, Sleuth, Hawkshaw, and LeCoq might quarrel among themselves, and if the firm broke up, the outgoing members, knowing the secrets of the old concern, might undertake to reveal the presence of my jewels. With only one person in the secret, the risk is reduced threefold.”

“Good,” said I. “You want me then to conceive of a ferret-proof robbery from which you may profit, a kind of crime which would baffle the most astute of detective minds —”

“Even your own,” he interrupted, wishing to clinch me with a compliment.

“Let me see the jewels first,” said I, taking the package from his hands.

I cut the string and a dazzling array of priceless gems fell out upon the table — all uncut, diamonds, rubies, sapphires without number; emeralds, turquoises and pearls in handfuls, and other species of precious stones, to enumerate which merely by name would take too much of my time and space. Suffice it to say that here was a fortune beyond the wildest dreams of avarice and I was tempted, for I had entered the Shady land with nothing but my talents and my good name to back me up.

“It’s a tempting treasure,” said I.

“Yes,” replied Lohengrin, looking at me with a squint that revealed his identity on the instant. It was LeCoq! And his nefarious plan was made clear in the twinkling of an eye. Two birds were to be killed with one stone. Somewhere a great robbery had been perpetrated; the thief had employed LeCoq to cover up his tracks, a portion of the swag was to be found in my possession, and a possible rival in the science of detection was to be removed from the scene.

It was an infernally clever scheme.

“Will you leave these with me overnight, Herr Lohengrin?” said I, knowing that this was precisely what he wished me to do.

“Certainly,” said he, “and I shall hear from you when?” he queried, picking up his helmet.

“To-morrow morning,” said I.

He rose and departed with a grim look of triumph in his eye.

Homes Is Suspicious

That night, when all was still and Hades was sleeping, I put the jewels in
the coal scuttle which, before retiring, I hid in plain view of everybody by leaving it where it had always stood by the open grate, taking the precaution, however, to gather up the paper which had covered LeCoq’s package, and to make another package of it, precisely similar to the original, differing from the original however in that there lay within, not a priceless fund of glittering gems but a copy of my Memoirs, which I happened to have with me. This I left on the table.

Three hours after, bordering upon midnight, there came a loud knocking upon my door — as I had expected. I immediately opened it, and there entered a squad of police headed by LeCoq himself.

“Seize him!” he cried.

“What have I done?” I asked, calmly.

“Let this tell the story!” he cried again, triumphantly, as he literally grabbed the telltale package from the table. “Here, gentlemen, are the stolen jewels!”

“Run to earth at last,” I moaned, in mock grief, as I submitted to the indignity of arrest.

“You’re a great detective,” sneered LeCoq as we marched out of the room.

“Yes, I think I am,” said I. “Wait until to-morrow and maybe you’ll think so
too.”

The next day I was arraigned in court. I declared my innocence. The package was produced. I acknowledged its possession. The Court ordered it opened and LeCoq fainted when the contents of the package stood revealed.

“Another scheme to advertise a book, eh?” roared the Justice, as my Memoirs were passed up to the bench, rapping loudly, meanwhile, for order, for the audience in the courtroom laughed unmercifully. “I fine you, sir, $500 for contempt of court. It is time the dignity of the bench asserted itself against you yellow persons of the press.”

I cheerfully paid the amount of my fine, and left the court a free man. hastily returning to my rooms at the hotel, where I found the contents of my coal-scuttle undisturbed.

M. LeCoq has called upon me several times since, in a vain endeavor to recover the jewels, but while I have received him always with an unvarying courtesy, I have never seemed able to understand what he was driving at.

“You have never called upon me, M. LeCoq,” I have repeatedly said to him. “So how can you have left jewels in my possession?”

“But, Mr. Sherlock Homes,” he has answered. “You must remember a visit from Lohengrin — he drove up in an operatic vehicle drawn by swans, and —”

“Ah — but you are M. LeCoq. If Herr Lohengrin returns to reclaim any property he may have left with me —”

And LeCoq has retired in confusion.

Even the helmet, which I once marked with my own penknife for identification later has failed to convince me that I should make restoration, and, as for the morals of it — well, if the actual owner of the jewels returns to claim them he will receive them. Until then I shall keep them, for I find them very convenient in convincing my creditors that I am worthy of their confidence.