John Kendrick Bangs

“ Henriette. "Either stop it or else retire yourself. I am not what they call a quitter in this country, and I do not propose at the very height of my career to give up a business which I have struggled for years to establish."
"That is all very well, Henriette," said I. "But the pitcher that goes to the bat too often strikes out at last." (I had become a baseball fiend during my sojourn in the States.) "A million dollars is a pot of money, and it's my advice to you to get away with it as soon as you can."
"Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ you to give advice?" demanded Henriette. ”

“ I'm sorry for you, dear, but it's all in the line of business. To console you I have left in your name all that we have won together in our partnership at Newport—fourteen millions five hundred and sixty-three thousand nine hundred and seventy-seven dollars in cash, and about three million dollars in jewels, which you must negotiate carefully. Good-bye, dear Bunny, I shall never forget you, and I wish you all the happiness in the world. With the funds now in your possession why not retire—go home to England and renew your studies for the ministry? The Church is a noble profession. ”

“ You cannot pick up a newspaper in any part of the land without discovering somewhere in its columns some reference to a new variety of house-breaking, some new and highly artistic method of writing another man's autograph so that when appended to a check and presented at his bank it will bear the closest scrutiny to which the paying-teller will subject it, some truly Napoleonic method of entirely novel design for the sudden parting of the rich from their possessions. ”

“ I have been so poor that I've had to take my morning coffee at midnight from the coffee-wagons of the New York, Boston, and Chicago sporting papers. In eight months I have not tasted a table-d'hôte dinner that an expert would value at fifteen cents net, and yet you ask me to help you pay twenty-five hundred dollars a month rent for a Newport palace! You must be mad."
"You are the same loquacious old Bunny that you used to be," said Mrs. Raffles, sharply, yet with a touch of affection in her voice. "You can't keep your trap shut for a second, can you? ”

“ I then secured the photographs desired by my mistress, advertised Raffleshurst in three Sunday newspapers to the tune of a half-page each, and returned to Newport. I flattered myself that the thing was well done, for on reading the advertisement nothing would do but that Henriette should visit the place in person. The ads were so phrased, she said, as to be irresistible.
"It's fine, Bunny," she cried, with an enthusiastic laugh as she gazed out over the broad acres of Raffleshurst and noted how well I had fulfilled her orders. "Under proper direction you are a most able workman. ”

“ Of course there was music of an entrancing sort, the numbers being especially designed to touch the flintiest of hearts, and Henriette was everywhere. No one, great or small, in that vast gathering but received one of her gracious smiles, and it is no exaggeration to say that half of the flowers purchased at rates that would make a Fifth Avenue tailor hang his head in shame, were bought by the gallant gentlemen of Newport for presentation to the hostess of the day. ”

“ The millionaire rose with alacrity and with his own hand drew me the required check.
"Mr. Mayor," said he, "I like the quick, business-like way in which you do things. Pray present my compliments to the citizens of Raffleshurst-by-the-Sea, and tell them I am only too glad to help them. If you ever want a lake, sir, don't fail to call upon me." With which gracious words the millionaire bowed me out.
"Two hundred thousand dollars, Bunny?" cried Henriette when I handed her the check. ”

“ I demanded. "How is it to be—by kidnapping the lady, the snatch and run game, or how?"
"Sarcasm does not suit your complexion, Bunny," retorted Henriette. "Your best method is to follow implicitly the directions of wiser brains. You are a first-class tool, but as a principal—well—well, never mind. You do what I tell you and some of those pearls will be ours. Mrs. Gushington-Andrews, as you may have noticed, is one of those exceedingly effusive ladies who go into ecstasies over everything and everybody. ”

“ I haven't any more notion what became of the Herringdale jewels than the duchess of Herringdale herself."
"What?" I cried. "Then these surroundings—"
"Are self-furnishing," she said, with a merry little laugh, "and all through a plan of my own, Bunny. ”

“ I am your partner, am I not?"
"You are my business partner—not my social, Bunny," she said. "We must not mix society and business. In this house I am mistress of the situation; you are the butler—that is the precise condition, and I think it well that hereafter you should recognize the real truth and avoid over-familiarity by addressing me as Mrs. Van Raffles. If we should ever open an office for our Burglary Company in [Pg 171] New York or elsewhere you may call me anything you please there. Here, however, you must be governed by the etiquette of your environment. ”

“ XI THE ADVENTURE OF MRS. INNITT'S COOK
"It is curious, Bunny," said Henriette the other morning after an unusually late breakfast, "to observe by what qualities certain of these Newport families have arrived, as the saying is. The Gasters of course belong at the top by patent right. Having invented American society, or at least the machine that at present controls it, they are entitled to all the royalties it brings in. The Rockerbilts got there all of a sudden by the sheer lavishness of their entertainment and their ability to give bonds to keep it up. ”

“ Innitt, though—I envy her," said Henriette; "that is, in a way. She has no conversation at all, but her little dinners are the swellest things of the season. Never more than ten people at a time and everything cooked to a turn."
"That's just it," said I. "I hear enough at the club to know just what cinches Mrs. Innitt's position. It's her cook, that's what does it. If she lost her cook she'd be Mrs. Outofit. There never were such pancakes, such purées, such made dishes as that woman gets up. She turns hash into a confection and liver and bacon into a delicacy. ”

“ A so-called lodge built of the finest grade of Italian marble; gardens fit for the palace of a king; a retinue of servants such as one scarcely finds on the ducal estates of the proudest families of England and a mansion that is furnished with treasures of art, any one of which is worth a queen's ransom. ”

“ Raffles was dead—killed as you may remember at the battle of Spion Kop—and I, his companion, who had never known want while his deft fingers were able to carry out the plans of that insinuating and marvellous mind of his, was now, in the vernacular of the American, up against it. ”

“ To rob a millionaire of his bonds, a national bank of its surplus, a philanthropist of a library, or a Metropolitan Boxholder of a diamond stomacher, all that seemed reasonable to me and proper according to my way of looking at it, but to rob a neighbor of her cook—if there is any worse social crime than that I don't know what it is.
"You'd better think twice on that proposition, Henriette," I advised with a gloomy shake of the head. "It [Pg 157] is not only a mean crime, but a dangerous one to boot. Success would in itself bring ruin. ”

“ Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woful misconception of the purposes which actuate an artist."
"You certainly are an artist, Henriette," [Pg 58] I answered, desirous of placating her.
"Then you should know better than to intimate that I am in this business for the sordid dollars and cents there are to be got out of it," pouted my mistress. "Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn't chase the aniseseed bag because he loves to shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of food. ”

“ Oh, she's Fiametta de Belleville all right, and we must get her."
"What for—to rob you?"
"No," returned Henrietta, "rather that we—but there, there, Bunny, I'll manage this little thing myself. It's a trifle too subtle for a man's intellect—especially when that man is you."
"What do you suppose she is doing here?" I asked.
"You silly boy," laughed Henriette. [Pg 35]
"Doing? Why, Mrs. Gaster, of course. She is after the Gaster jewels."
"Humph!" I said, gloomily. "That cuts us out, doesn't it?"
"Does it?" asked Henriette, enigmatically. ”

“ Bunny," said Mrs. Van Raffles, when I had returned with the spoil.
"Great Scot!" I cried. "Haven't you got enough?"
"No, Bunny. Not a quarter enough," she replied. "These winter resorts are very expensive places, and while seventeen thousand dollars would do very nicely for running a farm in summer, we shall need quite a hundred thousand to send our beneficiaries to Palm Beach in proper style."
"Phe-e-w!" I whistled, in amazement. "Palm Beach, eh?"
"Yes," said Henriette. "Palm Beach. I have always wanted to go there." ”

“ Everything was running smoothly, and, although Henriette had not yet arrived, I felt easy and secure of mind until nearing five-thirty o'clock when Mrs. Shadd herself drove up to the front-door. Her color was unusually high, and had she been any but a lady of the grande monde I should have said that she was flustered.
She demanded rather than asked to see my mistress, with a hauteur born of the arctic snow.
"Mrs. Van Raffles went to New York Wednesday evening," said I, "and has not yet returned. I am expecting her every minute, madame. She must be here for the musicale. Won't you wait?" ”

“ Van Raffles's illness, they might take a vacation on full pay for ten days, and Henriette herself prepared society for her departure by fainting twice at the Innit's clam-bake on Honk Island.
No less a person than Mrs. Gaster herself brought her home at four o'clock in the morning and her last words were an exhortation to her "dear Mrs. Van Raffles" to be careful of herself "for all our sakes." Saturday morning Henriette departed. ”

“ It will cost each person ten dollars more to get out, which, if only half of the tickets are used, will be six thousand dollars—or eighteen thousand dollars in entrance and exit fees alone."
"Henriette!" I cried, enthusiastically, "Madam Humbert was an amateur alongside of you."
Mrs. Van Raffles smiled. "Thank you, Bunny," said she. "If I'd only been a man—"
"Gad!" I ejaculated. "Wall Street would have been an infant in your hands." ”

“ Gaster's dining-room, where she has a million in plate on her buffet, with my eyes shut, without fear of stumbling over a step or a chair or even a footstool? Because the newspapers have so repeatedly printed diagrams of the interior of the lady's residence that its halls, passages, doorways, exits, twists, turns, and culs-de-sac are indelibly engraved upon my mind. How did I acquire my wonderful knowledge of the exact number of pearls, rubies, diamonds, opals, tiaras, bracelets, necklaces, stomachers, and other gorgeous jewels now in the possession of the smart set? ”

“ When a cold, formal handshake is necessary she perpetrates an embrace, and that is where we come in. At my next Tuesday tea she will be present. She will wear her pearls—she'll be strung with them from head to foot. A rope-walk won't be in it with her, and every single little jewel will be worth a small fortune. You, Bunny, will be in the room to announce her when she arrives. ”

“ What do you think he said to me when he left, the poor, dear old innocent?"
"Give it up—what?"
"He said that I ought to be very careful in my dealings with men, who [Pg 68] might impose upon my simplicity," laughed Henriette.
"Simplicity?" I roared. "What ever gave him the idea that you were simple?"
"Oh—I don't know," said Henriette, demurely. "I guess it was because I told him I kept those bonds in twenty safe-deposit vaults instead of in one, to protect myself in case of loss by fire—I didn't want to have too many eggs in one basket." ”

“ It is at present the finest thing of its kind in existence and of priceless value. When she isn't wearing it it is kept in the vaults of the Tiverton Trust Company, and how on earth we are to get it without the assistance of a maid we can trust I don't see—except in the vulgar, commonplace way of sandbagging the lady and brutally stealing it, and Newport society hasn't quite got to the point where you can do a thing like that to a woman without causing talk, unless you are married to her. ”

“ Rockerbilt should ever discover—"
"She won't, Bunny," said Henriette. "She'll never have occasion to test the genuineness of her tiara. These Newport people have other sources of income than the vulgar pawnshops." ”