The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [36]
Raffles and I did not speak till I was in the room which had been prepared for me. Nor was I anxious to do so then. But he followed me and took my hand.
“Bunny,” said he, “don’t you be hard on a fellow! I was in the deuce of a hurry, and didn’t know that I should ever get what I wanted in time, and that’s a fact. But it serves me right that you should have gone and undone one of the best things I ever did. As for your handiwork, old chap, you won’t mind my saying that I didn’t think you had it in you? In future——”
“For God’s sake, don’t talk about the future!” I cried. “I hate the whole thing; I’m going to give it up!”
“So shall I,” said Raffles, “when I’ve made my pile.”
ROBERT BARR
“The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds” is the only story in this book to feature a detective. That is, a detective narrates it, but his every move is in response to a clever thief who remains offstage throughout. Therefore the story seems to get along just fine with its unsavory neighbors. As much as any tale in this volume, it brings to mind G. K. Chesterton’s remark that the detective serves primarily as after-the-fact critic of the true artist, the criminal.
History has demoted Barr’s French detective, Eugene Valmont, to ancestor status. In other Valmont stories—there are only eight—he seems a predecessor to Agatha Christie’s vainglorious Hercule Poirot. But Valmont, while not as vivid as Poirot and lacking his staying power, has virtues of his own, including a glib narrative pace with just the right amount of detail. Although he isn’t precisely a satirical writer, Barr has fun mocking the English, the French, and some of the already hoary traditions of the genre. Many critics rate the Valmont story “The Absent-Minded Coterie” as one of the great detective stories of the early days. The following adventure is Valmont’s debut and takes place in Paris. Later he retires from the official police and moves to London, where he becomes an illustrious private detective. (In 1920, in Agatha Christie’s debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Poirot would settle into unofficial detection in England after retiring from the Belgian police.)
Like many of the authors in this book, Robert Barr was a nomad. He was born in Glasgow but grew up in Toronto. Early on he began writing facetious squibs under the pen name Luke Short—which he also used when he invented Sherlaw Kombs, his shot at the parody-magnet of Baker Street. One of his earliest published works was a comic account of a boating mishap on Lake Erie. After five years as reporter and columnist at the Detroit Free Press, which at the time provided entertainment as much as news, he moved to London in 1881 to found a British offshoot.
Eleven years later, with the popular humorist Jerome K. Jerome (famous for the comic novel Three Men in a Boat), he founded The Idler. Until it folded in 1911, this esteemed glossy monthly magazine serialized novels and ran short stories by such luminaries as Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, and Arthur Conan Doyle. A popular wit and socialite, Barr was friends with some of the more eminent authors in the present volume, including H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett. Just as Conan Doyle completed Grant Allen’s last novel, so did Barr finish The O’Ruddy: A Romance after the death of his friend Stephen Crane.
Barr’s numerous novels include Jennie Baxter, Journalist and The Speculations of John Steele. Several of his short story collections, such as The Face and the Mask, deal with crime and detection. “The Mystery of the Five Hundred Diamonds” first appeared in the November 1904 issue of The Windsor Magazine and was reprinted in Barr’s 1906 collection The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont—although, despite the title, not every case leaves the detective triumphant.
THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE HUNDRED DIAMONDS
When I say I am called Valmont, the name will convey no impression to the reader, one way or another. My profession is that of private detective in London, and my professional name