must ask you for a further advance of five hundred pounds. I will not
trust it to the post, nor will I take anything but gold or notes. I
would come to you abroad, but it would excite remark if I left the
country at present. Therefore I shall expect to meet you in the
smoking-room of the Charing Cross Hotel at noon on Saturday. Remember
that only English notes, or gold, will be taken.

"That will do very well. I shall be very much surprised if it does not
fetch our man."

And it did! It is a matter of history--that secret history of a nation
which is often so much more intimate and interesting than its public
chronicles--that Oberstein, eager to complete the coup of his lifetime,
came to the lure and was safely engulfed for fifteen years in a British
prison. In his trunk were found the invaluable Bruce-Partington plans,
which he had put up for auction in all the naval centres of Europe.

Colonel Walter died in prison towards the end of the second year of his
sentence. As to Holmes, he returned refreshed to his monograph upon
the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus, which has since been printed for
private circulation, and is said by experts to be the last word upon
the subject. Some weeks afterwards I learned incidentally that my
friend spent a day at Windsor, whence he returned with a remarkably
fine emerald tie-pin. When I asked him if he had bought it, he
answered that it was a present from a certain gracious lady in whose
interests he had once been fortunate enough to carry out a small
commission. He said no more; but I fancy that I could guess at that
lady's august name, and I have little doubt that the emerald pin will
forever recall to my friend's memory the adventure of the
Bruce-Partington plans.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington
Plans, by Arthur Conan Doyle

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