“They may do that,” murmured Van Bibber to himself, with a smile of grim contentment; “they probably will.”
Then he said to the waiter, “Oh, I don’t know. Some bacon and eggs and green things and buttered rolls and coffee.”
Quite a few years ago Dr. Norbert Lederer, one-time collaborator of S. S. Van Dine, showed us a German anthology of detective-crime short stories. We don’t remember the title of the volume, or when it was published, or even the editor s name. Indeed, the only specific thing we do recall about it was the fact that the book contained “Van Bibber’s Burglar” — a choice that struck us at the time as exceedingly odd.
Just why did the German editor select “Van Bibber’s Burglar” as a representative American crime story? Was it because the German editor felt that in an historical sense the story revealed the nostalgia of a bygone American era? Or was the German editor under the impression that the background of “Van Bibber’s Burglar” portrayed a contemporary view of the American scene, and under this mistaken impression wanted to expose that faint aura of decadence which also characterizes the Raffles tales of approximately the same period? Or did the German editor merely succumb to the sentimentality of Mr. Davis’s story?
Of course, we simply don’t know. But we are again struck by something odd. Perhaps times do not change as much as we think — even in half a century or more. Surely you will agree that “Van Bibber’s Burglar” is a surprisingly modern-sounding story, especially its writing style — remember, the tale first appeared in book form in 1891. Is Van Bibber, young man-about-town of the Delmonico era, so enormously different from today’s men-about-town? Delmonico’s may be gone, but The Stork Club and Twenty One and the dawn patrol of uppercrust society are still very much alive. Is Van Bibber’s fight night in Jersey City so colossally different (except for today’s home television version) from a fight night anywhere in the United States in the year of our Lord 1956? We wonder...
And is life in New York, of this or any other year, still not an eternal search for romance? — the wish for the strange and the picturesque rather than the commonplace and the everyday... Maybe that German editor wasn’t so far from wrong after all.
Jack of Diamonds
by Barry Perowne
A new romantic adventure of A. J. Raffles, the celebrated cricketer and cracksman, with the authentic spirit flavor, and derring-do of E. W. Hornung’s original tales...
His excellency the Governor of Gibraltar had been at the same school as Raffles and myself. As an unexpected consequence, I was occupying a corner seat in a First Class compartment of a train about to depart from a London station to connect with the liner Karoo Star at Southampton.
It was a bright autumn morning. Raffles had strolled along the platform to watch for our friend Ivor Kern, antique-dealer, receiver of stolen property, and ingenious artificer in woods and metals, who was to travel with us on the ship. The warmth of the sun shining through the open door of the compartment was pleasantly relaxing after the bustle of our arrival at the station in a hansom. It was not every day that we set forth to be the guests of a Governor and, in an expansive mood, I felt that the occasion warranted a particularly fine cigar.
I was just lighting one when a figure came between me and the sun. Glancing over the match-flame, I saw standing on the platform, gazing at me with eyes of as nearly a true violet as I ever had seen, a girl dressed all in white, with a violet sash. The breeze that lightly stirred the ribbons of the hat in her hand, and toyed attractively with her shining, soft, blue-black hair, added to her appearance of pretty fluster.
“Please,” she said breathlessly, “are all the seats taken in here or could you keep me one till the porter brings my luggage?”
“Certainly! I’ll put something on it,” I said, and, springing to my feet, I took down Raffles’s green baize cricket bag and placed it on the vacant seat at my side.
The girl rewarded me with a slightly distracted smile, turned away, seemed to hesitate, then impulsively turned back. “Pray excuse me,” she said, “but do you know London well? I wonder if you could tell me — I’ve been here so few weeks, a visitor from Capetown — if a big shop called Paradix, in Piccadilly, is all right? I mean, honest — reliable?”
“As a Londoner myself,” I said, “I can confidently reassure you on that point. Paradix of Piccadilly, one of the most famous of our ladies’ apparel shops, is quite above reproach.”
“You greatly relieve me,” said the girl. “You see, it’s getting so near train time, and they promised faithfully to send a page boy here to the station this morning with my new dresses that I’ve bought and already paid for. But they had to be altered and, unfortunately, as there are seven of them, they weren’t quite ready when the shop closed yesterday. So they told me to look for their page boy here, bringing the dresses in bandboxes, and I just haven’t seen a sign of any page boy, and — Oh!” She broke off. “Pray excuse me!”
She was gone. Smiling indulgently as I puffed at my cigar, I leaned from the doorway watching her until, a flutter of white and violet in the sunshine, she vanished among the passengers thronging the platform. How very like a girl, I reflected, to get herself in a fluster about dresses! A quite needless fluster, too, for a firm like Paradix of Piccadilly were, of course, the acme of merchandising honour. However, on spotting the girl returning, I felt a twinge of anxiety for the good repute of London in the eyes of a charming young overseas visitor. For she was accompanied by no pert page boy flourishing bandboxes, but was alone and dejected.
“What,” I said with concern as she approached, “no luck?”
“The boy’s come, sure enough,” she said, “but he’s so stupid — he won’t let me have them. He says there’s an additional charge for the alterations — nine pounds fourteen shillings — and I’ve nothing left but a silly letter of credit for a hundred pounds, which the Purser on the ship will cash for me. The boy just refuses to come to Southampton with me to get the money there. He says his instructions are to get it at the station here, or he’ll have to take the dresses back. I don’t know how any boy can be so stupid! I shan’t have a stitch to wear on the ship!”
“The main thing is,” I said, relieved that a London firm had not failed in their promise to a visitor, “your bandboxes have arrived. Now, you’ll of course permit me to make you a small advance, which you can repay to me on the ship. No, I won’t hear a word! I insist!” I thrilled to the touch of her slim, cool fingers as I stopped her protests by pressing ten sovereigns into her palm. “Now, hurry and catch the boy before he leaves,” I said, “and I’ll hold your seat for you.” The deep look she gave me as she hurried off was a promising augury for the coming days at sea. In fact, as I reseated myself, I wondered if there might not be a chance of persuading her to break her voyage at Gibraltar. It might help, I fancied, if I were to choose a good moment to let fall the information that Raffles and I were to be guests of the Governor.