"Oh, dear, how very unfortunate!" cried Henriette. "Here, dear," she added, holding out a pair of teacups. "Let James pour them into this," and James, otherwise myself, did so to the extent of five teacups full of them and then he discreetly retired. * * * * * "Well, Bunny," said Henriette, breathlessly, two hours later when her last guest had gone. "Tell me quickly--what was the result?" "These, madam," said I, handing her a small plush bag into which I had poured the "salvage" taken from my sticky palms. "A good afternoon's work," I added. And, egad, it was: seventeen pearls of a value of twelve hundred dollars each, fifteen worth scarcely less than nine hundred dollars apiece, and some twenty-seven or eight smaller ones that we held to be worth in the neighborhood of five hundred dollars each. "Splendid!" cried Henrietta "Roughly speaking, Bunny, we've pulled in between forty and fifty thousand dollars to-day." [Illustration: "I, OF COURSE, DID NOT TELL HENRIETTE OF EIGHT BEAUTIES I HAD KEPT OUT"] "About that," said I, with an inward chuckle, for I, of course, did not tell Henriette of eight beauties I had kept out of the returns for myself. "But what are we going to do when Mrs. Gushington-Andrews finds out that they are gone?" "I shall provide for that," said this wonderful woman. "I shall throw her off the scent by sending you over to her at once with sixteen of these assorted. I hate to give them up, but I think it advisable to pay that much as a sort of insurance against suspicion. Even then we'll be thirty-five thousand dollars to the good. And, by-the-way, Bunny, I want to congratulate you on one thing." "Ah! What's that--my sang-froid, my nerve?" I asked, airily. "No, the size of your hands," said Henriette. "The superficial area of those palms of yours has been worth ten thousand dollars to us to-day." V THE ADVENTURE OF THE STEEL BONDS "Excuse me, Henriette," said I one morning, after I had been in Mrs. Van Raffles's employ for about three months and had begun to calculate as to my share of the profits. "What are you doing with all this money we are gradually accumulating? There must be pretty near a million in hand by this time--eh?" "One million two hundred and eighty-seven thousand five hundred and twenty-eight dollars and thirty-six cents," replied Henriette instantly. "It's a tidy little sum." "Almost enough to retire on," I suggested. "Now, Bunny, stop that!" retorted Henriette. "Either stop it or else retire yourself. I am not what they call a quitter in this country, and I do not propose at the very height of my career to give up a business which I have struggled for years to establish." "That is all very well, Henriette," said I. "But the pitcher that goes to the bat too often strikes out at last." (I had become a baseball fiend during my sojourn in the States.) "A million dollars is a pot of money, and it's my advice to you to get away with it as soon as you can."