likely to be the guilty party, because if he wants a diamond stomacher he needn't steal it, having money enough to buy a dozen of them if he wishes. The third, your daughter, should be regarded as equally innocent, because if she was really desirous of possessing the jewel all she had to do was to borrow it from you. That brings us down to the Duke of—"

"'Hush! I beg of you, Mr. Raffles Holmes!' she cried, in great agitation. 'Not another word, I beseech you! If any one should overhear us—The subject, after all, is an unprofitable one, and I'd—I'd rather drop it, and it—it—er—it has just occurred to me that possibly I—er—possibly I—'

"'Put the jewel in the safe yourself?' I suggested.

"'Yes,' said Mrs. Burlingame,' with a grateful glance and a tremendous sigh of relief. 'Now that I think of it, Mr. Raffles Holmes—that was it. I— er—I remember perfectly that—er—that I didn't wear it at all the night of my little dinner, and that I did leave it behind me when I left town.'"

"Humph!" said I. "That may account for the extra $5000—"

"It may," said Raffles Holmes, pursing his lips into a deprecatory smile.

IV THE ADVENTURE OF THE MISSING PENDANTS

"I think," said Raffles Holmes, as he ran over his expense account while sitting in my library one night some months ago, "that in view of the present condition of my exchequer, my dear Jenkins, it behooveth me to get busy. Owning a motor-car is a demned expensive piece of business, and my balance at the bank has shrunk to about $1683.59, thanks to my bills for cogs, clutches, and gasoline, plus the chauffeur's fines."

"In what capacity shall you work, Raffles or Holmes?" I asked, pausing in my writing and regarding him with that affectionate interest which contact with him had inspired in me.

"Play the combination always, Jenkins," he replied. "If I did the Raffles act alone, I should become the billionaire in this land of silk and money, your rich are so careless of their wealth—but where would my conscience be? On the other hand, if I stuck to the Holmes act exclusively, I'd starve to death; but the combination—ah—there is moderate fortune, my boy, with peace of mind thrown in."

Here he rose up, buttoned his coat about his spare figure, and reached out for his hat.

"I guess I'll tackle that case of the missing pendants to-morrow," he continued, flicking the ash from his cigar and gazing up at the ceiling with that strange twist in his eye which I had learned to regard as the harbinger of a dawning idea in his mind. "There's ten thousand dollars for somebody in that job, and you and I might as well have it as any one else."

"I'm ready," said I, as well I might be, for all I had to do in the matter was to record the adventure and take my half of the profits—no very difficult proceeding in either case.

"Good," quoth he. "I'll go to Gaffany & Co. to-morrow and offer my services."

"You have a clew?" I asked.

"I have an idea," he answered. "As for the lost diamonds, I know no more of their whereabouts than you do, but I shall be able beyond all question to restore to Gaffany & Co. two pendants just as good as those they have lost, and if I do that I am entitled to the reward, I fancy, am I not?"

"Most certainly," said I. "But where the dickens will you find two such stones? They are worth $50,000 apiece, and they must match perfectly the two remaining jewels which Gaffany & Co. have in their safe."

"I'll match 'em so closely that their own mother couldn't tell 'em apart," said Holmes, with a chuckle.

"Then the report that they are of such rarity of cut and lustre is untrue?"
I asked.

"It's perfectly true," said Holmes, "but that makes no difference. The two stones that I shall return two weeks from to-day to Gaffany & Co. will be as like the two they have as they are themselves. Ta-ta, Jenkins—you can count on your half of that ten thousand as surely as though it is jingled now in your pockets."

And with that Raffles Holmes left me to my own devices.

I presume that most readers of the daily newspapers are tolerably familiar with the case of the missing pendants to which Holmes referred, and on the quest for which he was now about to embark. There may be some of you, however, who have never heard of the mysterious robbery of Gaffany & Co., by which two diamonds of almost matchless purity—half of a quartet of these stones—pear-shaped and valued at $50,000 each, had disappeared almost as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up. They were a part of the famous Gloria Diamond, found last year at Kimberley, a huge, uncut gem of such value that no single purchaser for it could be found in the world. By a syndicate arrangement Gaffany & Co. had assumed charge of it, and were in the process of making for a customer a bar with four pendants cut from the original, when two of them disappeared. They had been last seen in the hands of a trusted employé of many years' standing, to whom they had been intrusted for mounting, and he had been seen to replace them, at the end of the day's work, in the little cage-like office of the custodian of the safe in which jewels of great value were kept at night. This was the last seen of them, and although five weeks had elapsed since the discovery of their loss and Holmes's decision to look into the matter, no clew of the slightest description had been discovered by the thousands of sleuths, professional or amateur, who had interested themselves in the case.

"He had such assurance!" I muttered. "To hear him talk one would almost believe that they were already in his possession."

I did not see Raffles Holmes again for five days, and then I met him only by chance, nor should I have known it was he had he not made himself known to me. I was on my way uptown, a little after six o'clock, and as I passed Gaffany's an aged man emerged from the employés' entrance, carrying a small bag in his hand. He was apparently very near-sighted, for he most unceremoniously bumped into me as he came out of the door on to the sidewalk.

Deference to age has always been a weakness of mine, and I apologized, although it was he that was at fault.

"Don't mention it, Jenkins," he whispered. "You are just the man I want to see. Café Panhard—to-night—eleven o'clock. Just happen in, and if a foreign-looking person with a red beard speaks to you don't throw him down, but act as if you were not annoyed by his mistake."

"You know me?" I asked.

"Tush, man—I'm Raffles Holmes!" and with that he was off.

His make-up was perfect, and as he hobbled his way along Broadway through the maze of cars, trucks, and hansoms, there was not in any part of him a hint or a suggestion that brought to mind my alert partner.

Of course my excitement was intense. I could hardly wait for eleven o'clock to come, and at 9.30 I found myself in front of the Café Panhard a full hour and a half ahead of time, and never were there more minutes in that period of waiting than there seemed to be then as I paced Broadway until the appointed hour. It seemed ages before the clock down in front of the Whirald Building pointed to 10.55, but at last the moment arrived, and I entered the café, taking one of the little tables in the farther corner, where the light was not unduly strong and where the turmoil of the Hungarian band was reduced by distance from moltofortissimo to a moderate approach to a pianissimo, which would admit of conversation. Again I had to wait, but not for so long a time. It was twenty minutes past