at I began to suspect that there was something
in the wind beside music, for Holmes's face became set, and the resemblance
to his honorable father, which had of late been so marked, seemed to
dissolve itself into an unpleasant suggestion of his other forbear, the
acquisitive Raffles. My own enthusiasm for our operatic experience, which I
took no pains to conceal, found no response in him, and from the fall of the
curtain on the first act it seemed to me as if he were trying to avoid me.
So marked indeed did this desire to hold himself aloof become that I
resolved to humor him in it, and instead of clinging to his side as had been
my wont, I let him go his own way, and, at the beginning of the second act,
he disappeared. I did not see him again until the long passage between
Ortrud and Telrammund was on, when, in the semi-darkness of the stage, I
caught sight of him hovering in the vicinity of the electric switch-board by
which the lights of the house are controlled. Suddenly I saw him reach out
his hand quickly, and a moment later every box-light went out, leaving the
auditorium in darkness, relieved only by the lighting of the stage. Almost
immediately there came a succession of shrieks from the grand-tier in the
immediate vicinity of the Robinson-Jones box, and I knew that something was
afoot. Only a slight commotion in the audience was manifest to us upon the
stage, but there was a hurrying and scurrying of ushers and others of
greater or less authority, until finally the box-lights flashed out again in
all their silk-tasselled illumination. The progress of the opera was not
interrupted for a moment, but in that brief interval of blackness at the
rear of the house some one had had time to force his way into the Robinson-
Jones box and snatch from the neck of its fair occupant that wondrous
hundred-thousand-dollar necklace of matchless rubies that had won the
admiring regard of many beholders, and the envious interest of not a few.

Three hours later Raffles Holmes and I returned from the days and dress of
Lohengrin's time to affairs of to-day, and when we were seated in my
apartment along about two o'clock in the morning, Holmes lit a cigar, poured
himself out a liberal dose of Glengarry, and with a quiet smile, leaned back
in his chair.

"Well," he said, "what about it?"

"You have the floor, Raffles," I answered. "Was that your work?"

"One end of it," said he. "It went off like clock-work. Poor old Nervy has
won