"I do," said Raffles. "The poor old pet did it deliberately when stooping
to pick up something else; and all to get it stolen and delay their trip
to Carlsbad, where her swab of a husband makes her do the cure with him."

I said I always felt that we had failed to fulfil an obvious destiny in
the matter of those emeralds; and there was something touching in the way
Raffles now sided with me against himself.

"But I saw it the moment I had yanked them up," said he, "and heard that
fat swine curse his wife for dropping them. He told her she'd done it on
purpose, too; he hit the nail on the head all right; but it was her poor
head, and that showed me my unworthy impulse in its true light, Bunny. I
didn't need your reproaches to make me realise what a skunk I'd been all
round. I saw that the necklace was morally yours, and there was one clear
call for me to restore it to you by hook, crook, or barrel. I left for
Carlsbad as soon after its wrongful owners as prudence permitted."

"Admirable!" said I, overjoyed to find old Raffles by no means in such
bad form as he looked. "But not to have taken me with you, A. J., that's
the unkind cut I can't forgive."

"My dear Bunny, you couldn't have borne it," said Raffles solemnly. "The
cure would have killed you; look what it's done to me."

"Don't tell me you went through with it!" I rallied him.

"Of course I did, Bunny. I played the game like a prayer-book."

"But why, in the name of all that's wanton?"