Three days later Holmes entered my room with a broad grin on his face.
"How's this for business?" said he, handing me a letter he had received that morning from Chicago.
"DEAR SIR,—I am perfectly delighted to receive your letter of July 1. I think I have Mr. Jenkins's missing trunk. What pleases me most, however, is the possibility of your recovering mine, which also went astray at the same time. It contained articles of even greater value than Mr. Jenkins's—my pearl rope, among other things, which is appraised at $130,000. Do you think there is any chance of your recovering it for me? I enclose my check for $5000 as a retainer. The balance of your ten per cent. fee I shall gladly pay on receipt of my missing luggage. "Most sincerely yours, "MAUDE WARD-SMYTHE."
"I rather think, my dear Jenkins," observed Raffles Holmes, "that we have that $13,000 reward cinched."
"There's $7000 for you, Jenkins," said Holmes, a week later, handing me his check for that amount. "Easy money that. It only took two weeks to turn the trick, and $14,000 for fourteen days' work is pretty fair pay. If we could count on that for a steady income I think I'd be able to hold Raffles down without your assistance."
"You got fourteen thousand, eh?" said I. "I thought it was only to be $13,000."
"It was fourteen thousand counting in your $1000," said Raffles Holmes. "You see, I'm playing on the square, old man. Half and half in everything."
I squeezed his hand affectionately.
"But—he-ew!" I ejaculated, with a great feeling of relief. "I'm glad the thing's over with.
"So am I," said Holmes, with a glitter in his eye. "If we'd kept that trunk in this apartment another day there'd have been trouble. I had a piece of lead-pipe up my sleeve when I called here Tuesday night."