beyond all question to
restore to Gaffany & Co. two pendants just as good as those they have lost,
and if I do that I am entitled to the reward, I fancy, am I not?"

"Most certainly," said I. "But where the dickens will you find two such
stones? They are worth $50,000 apiece, and they must match perfectly the two
remaining jewels which Gaffany & Co. have in their safe."

"I'll match 'em so closely that their own mother couldn't tell 'em apart,"
said Holmes, with a chuckle.

"Then the report that they are of such rarity of cut and lustre is untrue?"
I asked.

"It's perfectly true," said Holmes, "but that makes no difference. The two
stones that I shall return two weeks from to-day to Gaffany & Co. will be as
like the two they have as they are themselves. Ta-ta, Jenkins--you can count
on your half of that ten thousand as surely as though it is jingled now in
your pockets."

And with that Raffles Holmes left me to my own devices.

I presume that most readers of the daily newspapers are tolerably familiar
with the case of the missing pendants to which Holmes referred, and on the
quest for which he was now about to embark. There may be some of you,
however, who have never heard of the mysterious robbery of Gaffany & Co., by
which two diamonds of almost matchless purity--half of a quartet of these
stones--pear-shaped and valued at $50,000 each, had disappeared almost as if
the earth had opened and swallowed them up. They were a part of the famous
Gloria Diamond, found last year at Kimberley, a huge, uncut gem of such
value that no single purchaser for it could be found in the world. By a
syndicate arrangement Gaffany & Co. had assumed charge of it, and were in
the process of making for a customer a bar with four pendants cut from the
original, when two of them disappeared. They had been last seen in the hands
of trusted employe of many years' standing, to whom they had been intrusted
for mounting, and he had been seen to replace them, at the end of the day's
work, in the little cage-like office of the custodian of the safe in which
jewels of great value were kept at night. This was the last seen of them,
and although five weeks had elapsed since the discovery of their loss and
Holmes's decision to look into the matter, no clew of the slightest
description had been discovered by the thousands of sleuths, professional or
amateur, who had interested themselves in the case.

"He had such assurance!" I muttered. "To hear him