presumed to glance.

In an instant Raffles had seized the clubs, and was whirling them
about his gray head in a mixture of childish pique and puerile bravado
which I should have thought him altogether above.

And suddenly as I watched him his face changed, softened, lit up, and
he swung the clubs gently down upon the bed.

"They're not heavy enough for their size," said he rapidly; "and I'll
take my oath they're not the same weight!"

He shook one club after the other, with both hands, close to his ear;
then he examined their butt-ends under the electric light. I saw what
he suspected now, and caught the contagion of his suppressed
excitement. Neither of us spoke. But Raffles had taken out the
portable tool-box that he called a knife, and always carried, and as he
opened the gimlet he handed me the club he held. Instinctively I
tucked the small end under my arm, and presented the other to Raffles.

"Hold him tight," he whispered, smiling. "He's not only a better man
than I thought him, Bunny; he's hit upon a better dodge than ever I
did, of its kind. Only I should have weighted them evenly--to a hair."

He had screwed the gimlet into the circular butt, close to the edge,
and now we were wrenching in opposite directions. For a moment or more
nothing happened. Then all at once something gave, and Raffles swore
an oath as soft as any prayer. And for the minute after that his hand
went round and round with the gimlet, as though he were grinding a
piano-organ, while the end wormed slowly out on its delicate thread of
fine hard wood.

The clubs were as hollow as drinking-horns, the pair of them, for we
went from one to the other without pausing to undo the padded packets
that poured out upon the bed. These were deliciously heavy to the
hand, yet thickly swathed in cotton-wool, so that some stuck together,
retaining the shape of the cavity, as though they had been run out of a
mould. And when we did open them--but let Raffles speak.

He had deputed me to screw in the ends of the clubs, and to replace the
latter in the fender where we had found them. When I had done the
counterpane was glittering with diamonds where it was not shimmering
with pearls.

"If this isn't that tiara that Lady May was married in," said Raffles,
"and that disappeared out of the room she changed in, while it rained
confetti on the steps, I'll present it to her instead of the one she
lost.... It was stupid to keep these old gold