"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.