Robert Barr - Vintage Mysteries - 70+ Stories in One Volume (Thriller Classics Collection)

Robert Barr

The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower, The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs, The Great Pegram Mystery

Published by

Books

Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting

musaicumbooks@okpublishing.info2017 OK Publishing ISBN 978-80-7583-278-8

The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds

The Siamese Twin of a Bomb-Thrower

The Clue of the Silver Spoons

Lord Chizelrigg's Missing Fortune

The Absent-Minded Coterie

The Ghost with the Club-Foot

The Liberation of Wyoming Ed

Lady Alicia's Emeralds

The Adventures of Sherlaw Kombs

The Adventure of the Second Swag

An Alpine Divorce

Which Was The Murderer?

A Dynamite Explosion

An Electrical Slip

The Vengeance of the Dead

Over The Stelvio Pass

The Hour and the Man

"And the Rigour of the Game"

The Bromley Gibberts Story

Not According to the Code

A Modern Samson

A Deal on 'Change

Transformation

The Shadow of the Greenback

The Understudy

"Out Of Thun"

A Dramatic Point

Two Florentine Balconies

The Exposure of Lord Stansford

Purification

The Woman of Stone

The Chemistry of Anarchy

The Fear of It

The Metamorphoses of Johnson

The Reclamation of Joe Hollends

The Type-Written Letter

The Doom of London

The Predicament of De Plonville

A New Explosive

The Great Pegram Mystery

Death Cometh Soon or Late

High Stakes

"Where Ignorance Is Bliss"

The Departure of Cub Mclean

Old Number Eighty-Six

Playing With Marked Cards

The Bruiser's Courtship

The Raid On Mellish

Striking Back

Crandall's Choice

The Failure of Bradley

Ringamy's Convert

A Slippery Customer

The Sixth Bench

The Count's Apology

Converted

An Invitation

The Archbishop's Gift

Count Konrad's Courtship

The Long Ladder

"Gentlemen: The King!"

The Hour-Glass

The Warrior Maid of San Carlos

The Ambassador's Pigeons

In a Steamer Chair

Mrs. Tremain

Share and Share Alike

An International Row

A Ladies' Man

A Society for the Reformation of Poker Players

The Man Who was Not on the Passenger List

The Terrible Experience of Plodkins

A Case of Fever

How the Captain Got His Steamer Out

My Stowaway

The Purser's Story

Miss McMillan

“How Finley McGillis Held the Pier”

How to Write a Short Story: A Symposium

One Day's Courtship

The Herald’s of Fame

The Strong Arm

Literary Article

"Canadian literature"

Table of Contents

When I say I am called Valmont, the name will convey no impression to the reader, one way or another. My occupation is that of private detective in London, but if you ask any policeman in Paris who Valmont was he will likely be able to tell you, unless he is a recent recruit. If you ask him where Valmont is now, he may not know, yet I have a good deal to do with the Parisian police.

For a period of seven years I was chief detective to the Government of France, and if I am unable to prove myself a great crime hunter, it is because the record of my career is in the secret archives of Paris.

I may admit at the outset that I have no grievances to air. The French Government considered itself justified in dismissing me, and it did so. In this action it was quite within its right, and I should be the last to dispute that right; but, on the other hand, I consider myself justified in publishing the following account of what actually occurred, especially as so many false rumours have been put abroad concerning the case. However, as I said at the beginning, I hold no grievance, because my worldly affairs are now much more prosperous than they were in Paris, my intimate knowledge of that city and the country of which it is the capital bringing to me many cases with which I have dealt more or less successfully since I established myself in London.

Without further preliminary I shall at once plunge into an account of the case which riveted the attention of the whole world a little more than a decade ago.

The year 1893 was a prosperous twelve months for France. The weather was good, the harvest excellent, and the wine of that vintage is celebrated to this day. Everyone was well off and reasonably happy, a marked contrast to the state of things a few years later, when dissension over the Dreyfus case rent the country in twain.

Newspaper readers may remember that in 1893 the Government of France fell heir to an unexpected treasure which set the civilised world agog, especially those inhabitants of it who are interested in historical relics. This was the finding of the diamond necklace in the Château de Chaumont, where it had rested undiscovered for a century in a rubbish heap of an attic. I believe it has not been questioned that this was the veritable necklace which the court jeweller, Boehmer, hoped to sell to Marie Antoinette, although how it came to be in the Château de Chaumont no one has been able to form even a conjecture. For a hundred years it was supposed that the necklace had been broken up in London, and its half a thousand stones, great and small, sold separately. It has always seemed strange to me that the Countess de Lamotte-Valois, who was thought to have profited by the sale of these jewels, should not have abandoned France if she possessed money to leave that country, for exposure was inevitable if she remained. Indeed, the unfortunate woman was branded and imprisoned, and afterwards was dashed to death from the third storey of a London house, when, in the direst poverty, she sought escape from the consequences of the debts she had incurred.

I am not superstitious in the least, yet this celebrated piece of treasure-trove seems actually to have exerted a malign influence over everyone who had the misfortune to be connected with it. Indeed, in a small way, I who write these words suffered dismissal and disgrace, though I caught but one glimpse of this dazzling scintillation of jewels. The jeweller who made the necklace met financial ruin; the Queen for whom it was constructed was beheaded; that high-born Prince Louis René Edouard, Cardinal de Rohan, who purchased it, was flung into prison; the unfortunate Countess, who said she acted as go-between until the transfer was concluded, clung for five awful minutes to a London window-sill before dropping to her death to the flags below; and now, a hundred and eight years later, up comes this devil's display of fireworks to the light again!

Droulliard, the working man who found the ancient box, seems to have prised it open, and ignorant though he was—he had probably never seen a diamond in his life before—realised that a fortune was in his grasp. The baleful glitter from the combination must have sent madness into his brain, working havoc therein as though the shafts of brightness were those mysterious rays which scientists have recently discovered. He might quite easily have walked through the main gate of the Château unsuspected and unquestioned with the diamonds concealed about his person, but instead of this he crept from the attic window on to the steep roof, slipped to the eaves, fell to the ground, and lay dead with a broken neck, while the necklace, intact, shimmered in the sunlight beside his body. No matter where these jewels had been found the Government would have insisted that they belonged to the Treasury of the Republic; but as the Château de Chaumont was a historical monument, and the property of France, there could be no question regarding the ownership of the necklace. The Government at once claimed it, and ordered it to be sent by a trustworthy military man to Paris. It was carried safely and delivered promptly to the authorities by Alfred Dreyfus, a young captain of artillery, to whom its custody had been entrusted.