Holmes was of the firm conviction that Thursgood’s decision was an open invitation to an act of venality, an irresistible temptation to anyone, so minded, to make an attempt to steal the cuff-links. “I should,” Holmes muttered to me, “warn the fellow, if it were not for the fact that his obtuse vanity far outstrips any sense of ordinary prudence and discretion, not to say good taste, that he might be expected to possess. It is futile to try and get anything past and through that concrete skull of his. Well, well, when the blow falls, as it surely must, one can only hope he will be prepared for it.” That there was trouble waiting in the wings was soon confirmed by a message, wafted on the air as such messages are wont to be, that de Mornay would register his view of Thursgood’s questionable taste for publicity-mongering in making an open spectacle of his family heirloom: The means to the end would be the seizing of the cuff-links at the tea-party. It was as if a challenge had been issued and accepted.
We assembled at the common room the following evening for Thursgood’s do. The sandwiches and muffins and cake and tea were put away with the appetite that is known only to healthy and hungry young undergraduates. We were then asked to line up against the wall for a view of the evening’s pièce de résistance. A table was called for and placed in the centre of the hall, and a glass-case with the cuff-links in it was placed on the table, for a close-range viewing of it by the assembled guests, one after the other. Sherlock Holmes and I politely declined the invitation to gawp at the piece of jewellery. Not so Thursgood’s friends, who feasted their eyes upon the cuff-links in sycophantic and slack-jawed wonder.
At last it was de Mornay’s turn to advance to the table. Nine pairs of eyes were fixed on him with morbid curiosity as he limped his way slowly toward the glass case and its contents. Arriving at the table, he stood motionless for a moment in front of the Blackburn heirloom. He then dropped a large silk handkerchief over the glass case, covering it entirely with the cloth, and proceeded to make wafting, wavy movements with his left hand, as if to coax the cuff-links in the case out of it and toward the aluminium crutch which he had rested against the side of the table, with his right hand held loosely over it. Soon, it appeared as if coloured vapours were emanating from de Mornay’s left hand, and crystallizing into something solid in his right palm. Quite suddenly, he appeared to transfer something from his right hand into a cavity in the crutch, concealed in a small sliding panel which he opened and quickly closed. Immediately after the transfer seemed to have been effected, de Mornay broke into an awkward hobbling run toward the open door of the hall, which looked out upon the College Quadrangle.
It was de Mornay’s abrupt bolt that broke the thralldom in which his spectators were held. “Stop him and get that crutch!” yelled Thursgood. His friends rushed after de Mornay, and just as they were about to bring him down in a diving tackle at the hall’s doorway, he swung it back and, with all his might, flung it into the quadrangle with the cry: “Grab it and run like the devil!” The crutch was caught in its flight by a friend of de Mornay’s who was waiting on the lawn of the quad. Clutching it to himself, he ran like a madman for the College gates, and out through them into the lane toward the main thoroughfare leading to High Street. Eight men, including me, rushed after de Mornay’s friend and gave him chase. On the way out into the quad I looked back, for a moment, into the hall. It had only two occupants – de Mornay, who was lying sprawled near the doorway and, behind him, half-hidden in the shadow of the wall, Sherlock Holmes. Before resuming the chase, I rapidly registered the strange fact that Holmes was not watching any of the action that had just unfolded. Instead, he seemed to have his eyes fixed in fascination upon a window of the hall. On the window-sill stood the hall’s feline mascot, a straggly ginger which rejoiced in the name of Sir Tobias Caterwauler. At that moment, Sir Tobias presented the comical picture of a cat that has been given the slip by a wall lizard that had entered through the window by mistake and made good its escape through the same aperture when, by rights, it should have been in the cat’s possession.
De Mornay had chosen the right accomplice for the job. Faraday, the associate waiting in the quad for the crutch, was the Varsity’s representative in the marathon. He led us a merry chase through the winding lanes, and it was an hour before we could lay him by the heels. And when we did, and when Thursgood located and opened the hidden panel in the aluminium crutch, all that the cavity revealed, as if to mock him, was a pair of pebbles! While I myself was able to see the comical side of the thing, it appeared that I was in a minority of one: Thursgood and his friends returned to the common room of our hall of residence in a mood of great chagrin.
A further shock awaited the Rt. Hon. Frederick Thursgood and his associates at the hall. The silken handkerchief with which de Mornay had covered the glass case was
