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The Adventure of the
Eleven Cuff-Buttons
BEING ONE OF THE EXCITING EPISODES IN THE CAREER OF THE FAMOUS
DETECTIVE HEMLOCK HOLMES, AS RECORDED BY HIS FRIEND DR. WATSON
BY
JAMES FRANCIS THIERRY
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
MCMXVIII
Copyright, 1918, by
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
THE ADVENTURES OF THE ELEVEN CUFF-BUTTONS
CHAPTER I
Well, you see, it was like this:
After my illustrious friend, Hemlock Holmes, champion unofficial
detective of the world, had doped out "The Adventure of the Second
Stain,"--the last one to be pulled off after his return to
life,--thereby narrowly averting a great war, he got sick of London
life and hiked over to the United States. He prevailed upon me to
accompany him to that remarkable country; and we stayed there for
three years, living in New York City all the time. There, on many
occasions, Holmes displayed to great advantage his marvelous powers,
and helped the New York police to clear up many a mystery that they
had been unable to solve; for we found the police of that city to be
just as stupid and chuckle-headed as those of London.
While in New York Holmes and I both learned to use American slang, and
in case this little book should happen to be read by any of London
society's "upper crust," I humbly beg their pardon for any examples of
slang that may have crept into its pages.
Upon the death of King Edward in May, 1910, Hemlock Holmes was called
back to London by the Scotland Yard officials to solve the mysterious
disappearance of the British royal crown, which somebody had swiped
the same day that Ed kicked the bucket; and of course I had to trail
along with him! Well, to cover up a "narsty" scandal, my unerring
friend, Hemlock Holmes, detected the guilty wretch within two days,
but the culprit was so highly placed in society that the cops couldn't
do a thing to him. In fact, he was one of the dukes, and after King
George, Ed's successor, had recovered the crown,--which was found in
an old battered valise in a corner of the duke's garage,--and had got
a written confession out of him in Holmes's old rooms in Baker Street,
in the presence of myself and Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed, we all
swore a solemn oath, on a bound volume of Alfred Austin's poems, that
we would never, never tell who it was that had stolen the English
crown in the year 1910! Wild horses shall not drag from me the name of
that ducal scoundrel, and, besides, there might be a German spy
looking over your shoulder as you read this.
Holmes and I decided to stay back in the tight little isle for a while
after that episode, and there in the same old den, at 221-B Baker
Street, in the city of London, we were domiciled on that eventful
April morning in 1912 that saw us introduced to what turned out to be
positively the dog-gonedest, most mixed-up, perplexing, and mysterious
case we ever bumped up against in all our long and varied career in
Arthur Conan Doyle's dream-pipe. It completely laid over "The Sign of
the Four" and "The Study in Scarlet," and had "The Adventure of the
Blue Carbuncle" all beaten to a frazzle.
To be painfully precise about it, it was just twenty minutes after
nine, Monday morning, April the eighth, 1912, the day after Easter,
and it was raining something fierce outside. The whirling raindrops
pattered against our second-story windows, and occasional thunder and
lightning varied the scene.
Holmes was sitting, or, rather, sprawling in a Morris chair, wrapped
in his old lavender dressing-gown, and was wearing the red Turkish
slippers King George had given him for Christmas a few months before.
He had his little old bottle of cocaine on the table beside him, and
his dope-needle, which he had just filled, in his hand. I was sitting
on the opposite side of the littered-up table, engaged in rolling a
pill, that is to say, a coffin-nail. I had just poured out the tobacco
into the rice-paper, and Hemlock Holmes had pulled back his left cuff,
baring his tattooed but muscular wrist, just ready to take his fifth
shot in the arm since breakfast, when all of a sudden there was a
terrible clatter and racket down at our front door; we heard the door
jerked open and then slammed shut; somebody rushed up the stairway
three steps at a time; our own door was kicked open, and a tall,
bald-headed man, about forty years old, wearing a monocle in his right
eye, and with a derby hat in one hand, and a wet, streaming umbrella
in the other, stood before us.
"Say! The cuff-buttons are gone,--the cuff-buttons are gone! One pair
of them, anyhow. Come quick! The earl is nearly wild about it. Money's
no object to him!" the apparition yelled at us.
I was so completely taken aback by the way that chump had burst in on
us that I spilled all the beautiful tobacco off the cigarette-paper
onto the floor. Holmes, however, like the cold-blooded old cuss that
he always was, didn't even bat an eye, but calmly proceeded to squirt
the cocaine into his wrist, and then, with the usual deep sigh of
contentment, he stretched out full length in the chair, with his arms
above his head, and yawned.
"Well, my hasty friend from Hedge-gutheridge, so you haven't got all
your buttons, eh?" he drawled. "I congratulate you upon your frankness,
as it isn't everybody who will admit it. But sit down, anyhow, and make
yourself at home. Watson has the 'makings' over there; I've got a
cocaine-squirter here you can use, if you wish, and you will find a
nice dish of red winter apples up on the mantelpiece. Beyond the mere
facts that you are a bachelor, live at Hedge-gutheridge in County
Surrey, do a great deal of writing, belong to the Fraternal Order of
Zebras, and shaved yourself very quickly this morning, I know nothing
whatever about you."
Of course, I knew that was the cue for _my_ little song and dance.
"Marvelous! marvelous!" I shouted.
But our visitor was a long ways more surprised than I was. He flopped
down in a chair, stared at Holmes as if he were a ghost, and said:
"Good Lord! How in thunder did you get onto all that?"
My eminent friend smiled his old crafty smile, as he waved his hands,
and replied:
"Why, you poor simp, it's all as plain as that little round
window-pane called a monocle that you've got stuck in your eye there.
I knew right away that you were a bachelor, because there is a general
air of seediness about you and two buttons are missing from your vest;
I knew that you live at Hedge-gutheridge, because you've got a ticket
marked to that place sticking out of your vest-pocket; I knew that you
do lots of writing, for the perfectly obvious reason that you have ink
smeared over the thumb and first two fingers of your right hand; I
knew that you belong to the Fraternal Order of Zebras, because I can
see an F. O. Z. watch-charm on your pocket; and, finally, I knew that
you scraped the incipient spinach off your mug very rapidly this
morning because I can see three large recent razor-cuts on your chin
and jaws! Perfectly easy when you know how!" And old Hemlock winked at
me. "So spill out your little story to me, one mouthful at a time, and
don't get all balled up while you're telling it either,--or eyether."
Our visitor gasped again in amazement, handed Holmes his card, and
began:
"Well, my name is Eustace Thorneycroft, private secretary to George
Arthur Percival Chauncey Dunderhaugh, the ninth Earl of Puddingham,
who lives at Normanstow Towers, near Hedge-gutheridge, over in Surrey.
As you are probably aware, the Earl's most precious treasure is,--or,
rather, are the six pairs of fancy, diamond-studded, gold cuff-buttons
that His Majesty King George I presented to his ancestor, Reginald
Bertram Dunderhaugh, the second Earl of Puddingham, upon King George's
accession to the British throne in the year 1714.
"It is an historical fact that King George paid twenty-four hundred
pounds for the six pairs of cuff-buttons,--their value being
considerably greater now,--and the diamond in each one is as large as
the end of a man's thumb; so you can see at once how very valuable
they are, to say nothing of the sentimental value of having been a
present from a king to the Earl's ancestor two centuries ago."
"Oh, yes; I have heard about the Puddingham cuff-buttons," said
Holmes, as he reached over, and grabbing the cigarette I had just
rolled, calmly stuck it in his own mouth, and lit it. "Old King George
I had no more taste than a Pittsburg millionaire! But go on with your
little yarn."
Thorneycroft continued, occasionally taking a bite out of one of the
apples Holmes had offered him:
"Well, just this Easter Monday morning, when the Earl was being
dressed by his valet, an Italian named Luigi Vermicelli, he noticed
with horror that his nice pink-and-green silk shirt, lying over the
back of the mahogany arm-chair beside his bed, had the ancestral
cuff-buttons missing from the cuffs!
"He is absolutely sure that they were in the cuffs when he took the
shirt off last night, since he remembers distinctly having polished
them up a bit with his handkerchief when he retired, and he cannot
account for their mysterious disappearance. He has a large and
ferocious bulldog on guard outside the castle every night, so he is
sure no burglar got in, as the dog made no noise during the night.
"As for any possible suspicion attaching to the Earl's servants, I
will say that they have all been with him for several years, all came
highly recommended, and he would not presume to suspect any of them of
having stolen the heirlooms."
"Which apparently reduces us to the two interesting hypotheses that
either the cuff-buttons flew away by themselves or else the Earl hid
them while he was drunk," interrupted Holmes, as he thoughtfully
rubbed his left ear.
At this, the secretary stared, but went on:
"The constables from the village of Hedge-gutheridge, a half a mile
from the castle, to whom the Earl telephoned immediately upon
discovering his loss, and who came up there within twenty minutes
after, were not so confident of the servants' innocence, however, as
they insisted on lining up all fourteen of them in the main corridor
and searching them in a very ungentlemanly manner! As an
after-thought, the constables even had the temerity to search _me_, as
if I would dream of doing such a thing as that,--me, Eustace
Thorneycroft!
"But they couldn't find the precious pair of diamond cuff-buttons on
them at all; so the Earl had me beat it right into London on the next
train, and engage you to ferret out the scoundrels responsible for
this dastardly outrage! His Lordship didn't even give me time to
finish my breakfast, he was so worked up about it, and compelled me to
catch the eight-fourteen train out of Hedge-gutheridge, with a rasher
of bacon and a half-empty cup of coffee on the dining table behind me.
So that's why you see me tearing into these red apples so voraciously,
Mr. Holmes! I reckon the swift ride through the Surrey downs on a
rainy morning sharpened my appetite, too.
"So that's all there is to tell you, except that here's a hundred gold
sovereigns for your retaining fee, and the Earl will positively pay
you a reward of ten thousand pounds more when you recover the lost
pair of cuff-buttons."
And Thorneycroft threw a chamois bag, full of coins, across the table.
"Ah, ha! Five hundred cold bucks in Yankee money!" cried Hemlock
Holmes, as he rubbed his hands with pleasure. "Gather up this mazuma,
Watson, and give His Nibs a receipt for it, as we are both after the
coin, only you haven't got the nerve to admit it. Well, Mr.
Wormyloft,--er, I mean Thorneycroft,--tell the Earl of Puddingham that
I and my bone-headed assistant here will guarantee to give him a run
for his money, and that if we don't find the ancestral cuff-buttons,
at least we'll tear up half of County Surrey looking for them!"
Our bald-headed visitor here took up his hat and umbrella and opened
the door, about to depart.
"Gosh, it's raining worse than ever now!" he said. "Well, I've got to
shovel dust,--or, rather, mud,--back to Normanstow Towers, anyhow, or
the Earl will raise the deuce with me! Be sure to come out on the next
train after this, Mr. Holmes, which leaves London at one-twenty-two,
as the Earl will be expecting you, and what's more, he'll have a
coach-and-four waiting for you at the Hedge-gutheridge station. So
long!"
And the Earl's secretary stepped out, closed the door after him, and
was gone.
As we heard him going down the stairs, and then leaving by the outer
door, Holmes got up, shook himself, stretched out his lanky arms, and
yawned.
"Well, we've got a hundred pounds in gold here, Watson," he said. "Now
it's up to us to scare up a good bluff at earning it! Let's see,--it's
ten o'clock now, and we must leave the rooms at one o'clock to get to
the station for the one-twenty-two train. So we'll have luncheon,--or
lunch, just as you prefer,--at twelve-thirty. That leaves me two hours
and a half to read 'Old Nick Carter.'"
Hemlock got out several yellow-back dime-novels from the book-rack in
the corner, pulled the Morris chair over to the window, and started in
on his light literature.
"What! Aren't you worrying about the Puddingham cuff-buttons at all?
Aren't you going to try to dope out an explanation of their
disappearance?" I inquired anxiously.
"There you go again, Watson, you old boob!" my friend replied. "How
many times must I tell you that it is a capital mistake to theorize in
advance of the facts! Keep your shirt on till we get out to the
castle, Doc; and in the meantime _ich kebibble_ who swiped the
cuff-buttons!"
I knew from long experience that it was useless to argue with him, so
I just sat there like a bump on a log for the rest of the morning,
wondering why the Sam Hill it was that I still continued to swallow
such talk as that, when I knew it was my duty to rise up and paste him
one in the eye for his sarcasms.