ndeford. But I have named
that price, so I intend to stick to it."

"Well, it is very handsome of you, Mr. Holmes. I brought the bust up
with me, as you asked me to do. Here it is!" He opened his bag, and at
last we saw placed upon our table a complete specimen of that bust which
we had already seen more than once in fragments.

Holmes took a paper from his pocket and laid a ten-pound note upon the
table.

"You will kindly sign that paper, Mr. Sandeford, in the presence of
these witnesses. It is simply to say that you transfer every possible
right that you ever had in the bust to me. I am a methodical man, you
see, and you never know what turn events might take afterwards. Thank
you, Mr. Sandeford; here is your money, and I wish you a very good
evening."

When our visitor had disappeared Sherlock Holmes's movements were such
as to rivet our attention. He began by taking a clean white cloth from
a drawer and laying it over the table. Then he placed his newly-acquired
bust in the centre of the cloth. Finally, he picked up his hunting-crop
and struck Napoleon a sharp blow on the top of the head. The figure
broke into fragments, and Holmes bent eagerly over the shattered
remains. Next instant, with a loud shout of triumph, he held up one
splinter, in which a round, dark object was fixed like a plum in a
pudding.

"Gentlemen," he cried, "let me introduce you to the famous black pearl
of the Borgias."

Lestrade and I sat silent for a moment, and then, with a spontaneous
impulse, we both broke out clapping as at the well-wrought crisis of a
play. A flush of colour sprang to Holmes's pale cheeks, and he bowed to
us like the master dramatist who receives the homage of his audience.
It was at such moments that for an instant he ceased to be a reasoning
machine, and betrayed his human love for admiration and applause. The
same singularly proud and reserved nature which turned away with disdain
from popular notoriety was capable of being moved to its depths by
spontaneous wonder and praise from a friend.

"Yes, gentlemen," said he, "it is the most famous pearl now existing
in the world, and it has been my good fortune, by a connected chain of
inductive reasoning, to trace it from the Prince of Colonna's bedroom at
the Dacre Hotel, where it was lost, to the interior of this, the last of
the six busts of Napoleon which were manufactured by Gelder and Co.,
of Stepney. You will remember, Lestrade, the sensation caused by the