ve discerned my wretched secret at one glance.

"It is no use my giving them to you," I said. "They are empty also."

"When did you look into them?"

"In the tower."

"Well, let me see for myself."

"As you like."

"My dear Bunny, this one must have contained the necklace you boasted
about."

"Very likely."

"And this one the tiara."

"I dare say."

"Yet she was wearing neither, as you prophesied, and as we both saw
for ourselves!"

I had not taken my eyes from his.

"Raffles," I said, "I'll be frank with you after all. I meant you
never to know, but it's easier than telling you a lie. I left both
things behind me in the tower. I won't attempt to explain or defend
myself; it was probably the influence of the tower, and nothing else;
but the whole thing came over me at the last moment, when you had gone
and I was going. I felt that I should very probably break my neck,
that I cared very little whether I did or not, but that it would be
frightful to break it at that house with those things in my pocket.
You may say I ought to have thought of all that before! you may say
what you like, and you won't say more than I deserve. It was
hysterical, and it was mean, for I kept the cases to impose on you."

"You were always a bad liar, Bunny," said Raffles, smiling. "Will you
think me one when I tell you that I can understand what you felt, and
even what you did? As a matter of fact, I have understood for several
hours now."

"You mean what I felt, Raffles?"

"And what you did. I guessed it in the boat-house. I knew that
something must have happened or been discovered to disperse that
truculent party of sportsmen so soon and on such good terms with
themselves. They had not got us; they might have got something better
worth having; and your phlegmatic attitude suggested what. As luck
would have it, the cases that I personally had collared were the empty
ones; the two prizes had fallen to you. Well, to allay my horrid
suspicion, I went and had another peep through the lighted venetians.
And what do you think I saw?"

I shook my head. I had no idea, nor was I very eager for
enlightenment.

"The two poor people whom it was your own idea to despoil," quoth
Raffles, "prematurely gloating over these two pretty things!"

He withdrew a hand from either pocket of his crumpled dinner-jacket,
and opened the pair under my nose. In one was a diamond tiara, and in
the other a necklace of fine emeralds set in clusters of