"And years to me!" cried Raffles. "But surely you remember that lost
tribesman at the next table, with the nose like the village pump, and the
wife with the emerald necklace?"

"I should think I did," said I; "you mean the great Dan Levy, otherwise
Mr. Shylock? Why, you told me all about him, A. J."

"Did I? Then you may possibly recollect that the Shylocks were off to
Carlsbad the very next day. It was the old man's last orgy before his
annual cure, and he let the whole room know it. Ah, Bunny, I can
sympathise with the poor brute now!"

"But what on earth took you there, old fellow?"

"Can you ask? Have you forgotten how you saw the emeralds under their
table when they'd gone, and how _I_ forgot myself and ran after them with
the best necklace I'd handled since the days of Lady Melrose?"

I shook my head, partly in answer to his question, but partly also over a
piece of perversity which still rankled in my recollection. But now I was
prepared for something even more perverse.

"You were quite right," continued Raffles, recalling my recriminations at
the time; "it was a rotten thing to do. It was also the action of a
tactless idiot, since anybody could have seen that a heavy necklace like
that couldn't have dropped off without the wearer's knowledge."

"You don't mean to say she dropped it on purpose?" I exclaimed with more
interest, for I suddenly foresaw the remainder of his tale.