"It's me for Cedarhurst—that's where the General lives," said he. "I'll get there about 11.30 to-night, and as soon as all is quiet, Jenkins, your old pal, Raffles Holmes, will climb easily up to the piazza, gently slide back the bolts of the French windows in the General's dining-room, proceed cautiously to the sideboard, and replace thereon these two souvenirs of a brave act by a good old sport, whence they never would have been taken had my grandfather known his man."
"You are taking a terrible risk, Raffles," said I, "you can just as easily send the tings to the General by express, anonymously."
"Jenkins," he replied, "that suggestion does you little credit and appeals neither to the Raffles nor to the Holmes in me. Pusillanimity was a word which neither of my forebears could ever learn to use. It was too long, for one thing, and besides that it was never needed in their business."
And with that he left me.
"Well, General," said I to General Cox, a week later at the club, "heard anything further about your pepper-pots yet?"
"Most singular thing, Jenkins," said he. "The d——d things turned up again one morning last week, and where the devil they came from, I can't imagine. One of them, however, had a piece of paper in it on which was written 'Returned with thanks for their use and apologies for having kept them so long.'"
The General opened his wallet and handed me a slip which he took from it.
"There it is. What in thunder do you make out of it?" he asked.
It was in Raffles Holmes's hand-writing.
"Looks to me as though Bruce also had been robbed," I laughed.