g tale of the General's, wasn't it?" I added.

"Very," said Holmes. "I guess it's not an uncommon experience, however, in
these days, for the well-to-do and well-meaning to be in possession of
stolen property. The fact of its turning up again under the General's very
nose, so many years later, however, that is unusual. The case will appear
even more so before the day is over if I am right in one of my conjectures."

What Raffles Holmes's conjecture was was soon to be made clear. In a few
minutes we had reached his apartment, and there unlocking a huge iron-bound
chest in his bedroom, he produced from it capacious depths another gold
pepper-pot. This he handed to me.

"There's the mate!" he observed, quietly.

"By Jove, Raffles--it must be!" I cried, for beyond all question, in the
woof of the design on the base of the pepper-pot was the cipher "A.R. to
C.C." "Where the dickens did you get it?"

"That was a wedding-present to my mother," he explained. "That's why I have
never sold it, not even when I've been on the edge of starvation."

"From whom--do you happen to know?" I inquired.

"Yes," he replied. "I do know. It was a wedding-present to the daughter of
Raffles by her father, my grandfather, Raffles himself."

"Great Heavens!" I cried. "Then it was Raffles who--well, you know. That
London flat job?"

"Precisely," said Raffles Holmes. "We've caught the old gentleman red-
handed."

"Well, I'll be jiggered!" said I. "Doesn't it beat creation how small the
world is."

"It does indeed. I wonder who the chap is who has the other," Raffles
observed.

"Pretty square of the old General to keep quiet about it," said I.

"Yes," said Holmes. "That's why I'm going to restore this one. I wish I
could give 'em both back. I don't think my old grandfather would have taken
the stuff if he'd known what a dead-game sport the old General was, and I
sort of feel myself under an obligation to make amends."

"You can send him the one you've got through the express companies,
anonymously," said I.

"No," said Holmes. "The General left them on his sideboard, and on his
sideboard he must find them. If we could only find out the name of his host
last Thursday--"

"I tell you--look in the _Sunday Gazoo_ supplement," said I. "They
frequently publish short paragraphs of the social doings of the week. You
might get a clew there."

"Good idea," said Holmes. "I happen to have it here, too. There was an
article in it last Sunday,