"His hand? In the water-cooler?" I demanded.
"Yes," said Holmes. "He said he was fishing around for a little piece of ice to cool his head, which ached, but I think differently. He got as pale as a ghost when I started in to fish for a piece for myself because my head ached too. I think he took the diamonds and has hid them there, but I'm not sure yet, and in my business I can't afford to make mistakes. If my suspicions are correct, he is merely awaiting his opportunity to fish them out and light out with them."
"Then these," I said, "are—are they paste?"
"No, indeed, they're the real thing," said Raffles Holmes, holding up one of the gems to the light, where it fairly coruscated with brilliance. "These are the other two of the original quartet."
"Great Heavens, Holmes—do you mean to say that Gaffany & Co. permit you to go about with things like this in your pocket?" I demanded.
"Not they," laughed Holmes. "They'd have a fit if they knew I had 'em, only they don't know it."
"But how have you concealed the fact from them?" I persisted.
"Robinstein made me a pair exactly like them," said Holmes. "The paste ones are now lying in the Gaffany safe, where I saw them placed before leaving the shop to-night."
"You're too deep for me, Holmes," said I. "What's the game?"
"Now don't say game, Jenkins," he protested. "I never indulge in games. My quarry is not a game, but a scheme. For the past two weeks, with three days off, I have been acting as a workman in the Gaffany ship, with the ostensible purpose of keeping my eye on certain employés who are under suspicion. Each day the remaining two pendant-stones—these—have been handed to me to work on, merely to carry out the illusion. The first day, in odd moments, I made sketches of them, and on the night of the second I had 'em down in such detail as to cut and color, that Robinstein had no difficulty in reproducing them in the materials at his disposal in Markoo's shop. And to-night all I had to do to get them was to keep them and hand in the Robinstein substitutes when the hour of closing came."