I am
caught."

"Give it up, Raffles," I pleaded.

"And all because, in the hour of my need, my best friend, whose aid I
begged, refused me," he went on, absolutely ignoring my plea.

"Oh, well, if you put it on that score," I said, "I'll go--but you must
promise me not to touch the pearls."

"I'll do my best not to," he replied. "As usual, you have carte-blanche to
put me out of business if you catch me trying it."

With this understanding I accompanied Raffles Holmes to Atlantic City the
following afternoon, and the following evening we were registered at the
Hotel Garrymore.

Holmes was not mistaken in his belief that Mrs. Wilbraham Ward-Smythe would
take her famous pearl rope to Atlantic City with her. That very evening,
while we were sitting at dinner, the lady entered, and draped about her
stately neck and shoulders was the thing itself, and a more beautiful
decoration was never worn by woman from the days of the Queen of Sheba to
this day of lavish display in jewels. It was a marvel, indeed, but the
moment I saw it I ceased to give the lady credit for superior virtue in
failing to smuggle it through the custom-house, for its very size would have
precluded the possibility of a successful issue to any such attempted
evasion of the law. It was too bulky to have been secreted in any of the
ordinary ways known to smugglers. Hence her candid acknowledgment of its
possession was less an evidence of the lady's superiority to the majority of
her sex in the matter of "beating the government" than of her having been
confronted with the proverbial choice of the unidentified Hobson.

"By Jove! Jenkins," Raffles Holmes muttered, hoarsely, as Mr. Ward-Smythe
paraded the length of the dining-room, as fairly corruscating with her rich
possessions as though she were a jeweller's window incarnate, "it's a
positive crime for a woman to appear in a place like this arrayed like that.
What right has she to subject poor weak humanity to such temptation as now
confronts every servant in this hotel, to say nothing of guests, who, like
ourselves, are made breathless with such lavish display? There's poor old
Tommie Bankson over there, for instance. See how he gloats over those
pearls. He's fairly red-eyed over them."

I glanced across the dining-room, and sure enough, there sat Tommie Bankson,
and even from where we were placed we could see his hands tremble with the
itch for possession, and his lips go dry with excitement as he th