from his wallet as he spoke. "I don't
dare ask anybody, and I haven't got any means of telling myself."

"Give them to me," said I, sternly, noting a glitter in his eye that
suggested the domination for the moment of the Raffles in him.

"Tush, Jenkins," he began, uneasily.

"Give them to me, or I'll brain you, Holmes," said I, standing over him with
a soda-water bottle gripped in my right hand, "for your own good. Come, give
up."

He meekly obeyed.

"Come now, get on your hat," said I. "I want you to go out with me."

"What for, Jenkins?" he almost snarled.

"You'll see what for," said I.

And Raffles Holmes obeying, we walked down to the river's edge, where I
stood for a moment, and then hurled the remaining stones far out into the
waters.

Holmes gave a gasp and then a sigh of relief.

"There," I said. "It doesn't matter much to us now whether the confounded
things were real or not."

V
THE ADVENTURE OF THE BRASS CHECK

"Jenkins," said Raffles Holmes to me the other night as we sat in my den
looking over the criminal news in the evening papers, in search of some
interesting material for him to work on, "this paper says that Mrs.
Wilbraham Ward-Smythe has gone to Atlantic City for a week, and will lend
her gracious presence to the social functions of the Hotel Garrymore, at
that interesting city by the sea, until Monday, the 27th, when she will
depart for Chicago, where her sister is to be married on the 29th. How would
you like to spend the week with me at the Garrymore?"

"It all depends upon what we are going for," said I. "Also, what in thunder
has Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe got to do with us, or we with her?"

"Nothing at all," said Holmes. "That is, nothing much."

"Who is she?" I asked, eying him suspiciously.

"All I know is what I have seen in the papers," said Holmes. "She came in on
the _Altruria_ two weeks ago, and attracted considerable attention by
declaring $130,000 worth of pearl rope that she bought in Paris, instead of,
woman-like, trying to smuggle it through the custom-house. It broke the
heart of pretty nearly every inspector in the service. She'd been watched
very carefully by the detective bureau in Paris, and when she purchased the
rope there, the news of it was cabled over in cipher, so that they'd all be
on the lookout for it when she came in. The whole force on the pier was on
the qui vive, and one of the most expert women searchers on the pay-roll was
detailed to giv