others, had
personally requested him to look into the matter. He had gone to Newport and
looked the situation over there. He had questioned all the servants in her
two establishments at Newport and New York, and had finally assured the lady
that, on the following Tuesday morning, he would advise her by wire of the
definite location of her missing jewel.

During all this time Holmes had not communicated with me at all, and I began
to fear that, offended by my behavior at our last meeting, he had cut me out
of his calculations altogether, when, just as I was about to retire on
Sunday night, he reappeared as he had first come to me--stealing up the
fire-escape; and this time he wore a mask, and carried unquestionably a
burglar's kit and a dark lantern. He started nervously as he caught sight of
me reaching up to turn off the light in the library.

"Hang it call, Jenkins!" he cried. "I thought you'd gone off to the country
for the week-end."

"No," said I. "I meant to go, but I was detained. What's up?"

"Oh, well--I may as well out with it," he answered. "I didn't want you to
know, but--well, watch and see."

With this Raffles Holmes strode directly to my bookcase, removed my extra-
illustrated set of Fox's _Book of Martyrs,_ in five volumes, from the
shelves, and there, resting upon the shelf behind them, glittered nothing
less than the missing stomacher!

"Great Heavens, Holmes!" I said, "what does this mean? How did those
diamonds get there?"

"I put them there myself while you were shoving my suit-case under your bed
the other night," said he.

"You told me you didn't have them," I said, reproachfully.

"I didn't when I spoke--_you_ had them," said he.

"You told me they had not been finally located," I persisted, angrily.

"I told you the truth. They were only temporarily located," he answered.
"I'm going to locate them definitely to-night, and to-morrow Mrs. Burlingame
will find them--"

"Where?" I cried.

"_In her own safe in her New York house!_" said Raffles Holmes.

"You--"

"Yes--I took them from Newport myself--very easy job, too," said Raffles
Holmes. "Ever since I saw them at the opera last winter I have had this in
mind, so when Mrs. Burlingame gave her dinner I served as an extra butler
from Delmonico's--drugged the regular chap up on the train on his way up
from New York--took his clothes, and went in his place. That night I rifled
the Newport safe of the stomacher, and the next day broug