brilliant blood-red stone worth not less than fifteen hundred dollars.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
"I wondered what you were going to do with the necklace," I said.
"So did I--for three days," said Holmes, "and then, when I realized that I
was a single man, I decided to give it up. If I'd had a wife to wear a
necklace--well, I'm a little afraid the Raffles side of my nature would have
won out."
"I wonder whatever became of Darlington," said I.
"I don't know. Sommers says he left town suddenly that same Wednesday night,
without paying his bill," Holmes answered.
"And Cato?"
"I didn't inquire, but, from what I know of Bob Hollister, I am rather
inclined to believe that Cato left the Powhatan by way of the front window,
or possibly out through the plumbing, in some way," laughed Holmes. "Either
way would be the most comfortable under the circumstances."
X
THE MAJOR-GENERAL'S PEPPERPOTS
I had often wondered during the winter whether or no it would be quite the
proper thing for me to take my friend Raffles Holmes into the sacred
precincts of my club. By some men--and I am one of them--the club, despite
the bad name that clubs in general have as being antagonistic to the home,
is looked upon as an institution that should be guarded almost as carefully
against the intrusion of improper persons as is one's own habitat, and while
I should never have admitted for a moment that Raffles was an undesirable
chap to have around, I could not deny that in view of certain
characteristics which I knew him to possess, the propriety of taking him
into "The Heraclean" was seriously open to question. My doubts were set at
rest, however, on that point one day in January last, when I observed seated
at one of our luncheon-tables the Reverend Dr. Mulligatawnny, Rector of
Saint Mammon-in-the-Fields, a highly esteemed member of the organization,
who had with him no less a person than Mr. E. H. Merryman, the railway
magnate, whose exploits in Wall Street have done much to give to that golden
highway the particular kind of perfume which it now exudes to the nostrils
of people of sensitive honor. Surely, if Dr. Mulligatawnny was within his
rights in having Mr. Merryman present, I need have no misgivings as to mine
in having Raffles Holmes at the same table. The predatory instinct in his
nature was as a drop of water in the sea to that ocean of known
acquisitiveness which has floated Mr. Merryman into his high place in the
worl
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