_Thud--thud--thud! Biff! Rattle! Bang!_ came a noise from below.
I sat bolt upright in bed, and hollered through the pitch-darkness at
the top of my voice:
"Help! Police! Burglars! Robbers! Wake up, Holmes, and catch 'em!"
Despite the racket I made, which was increased by my jumping out of
bed and falling head-first over a chair, upsetting the latter, the
hardened old cuss slept on. When I yelled again, and shook him by the
shoulder, he half opened his eyes and said:
"Well, what's eating you, Watson? Got the nightmare? I told you that
you took too much mince-pie last night!"
"For Heaven's sake, didn't you hear the noise downstairs, Holmes?" I
shouted. "Somebody is breaking in, trying to steal the Earl's last
pair of diamond cuff-buttons!"
Holmes yawned lazily, rolled over in bed, and said, as he settled
himself to sleep again:
"Well, I can't help it, Watson. I was hired to work in the daytime,
not at night. I guess the excitement will keep till morning."
And,--would you believe it?--I couldn't get another word out of him! I
looked at my watch by the moonlight, and found that it was thirteen
minutes after two a. m. Then, thinking I might get a sight of the
burglar from our bedroom window, I drew the heavy, old-fashioned
curtains aside, and peered out over the silent landscape thirty feet
below. But I couldn't see a blamed thing but trees and grass, and a
moss-covered stone wall out by the road; the Earl's bulldog not being
in evidence anywhere.
I knelt down by the window, put my elbows on the sill, and resolved to
wait there awhile, to see if the nocturnal disturber would hike out
again.
Apparently I fell asleep in this attitude, for the next thing I knew,
Holmes, fully dressed, was bending over me with a grin on his face,
and it was broad daylight.
"Well, why don't you wake up yourself, Doc? It's eight o'clock," he
said. Then I arose sheepishly, and dressed.
After our ablutions in the lavatory next door,--where we helped
ourselves to a bottle of whiskey we found in a medicine cabinet on the
wall,--we descended the two flights of stairs to the main floor.
Finding nobody around, we walked through the different rooms on an
exploring tour, seeking evidences of the disturbance the night before.
"Say, they evidently don't use alarm-clocks in this shack, Watson. Not
a thing stirring yet," said Holmes, as we came to a room with the door
slightly ajar.
"Hello, what's this?" he exclaimed, as we entered the room. "His
Lordship must have retired in a rather submerged condition! Look at
him there!"
I was surprised to see the noble heir of all the Puddinghams lying on
the floor of his bedroom, flat on his back, his eyes closed, and with
one foot resting on an overturned chair; and horrified, as I came
closer, to see a large purple bruise on his forehead, and a heavy iron
poker lying on the floor beside him. The diamond cuff-button was also
gone from his right cuff, but the rays of the morning sun, coming
through the east windows, shone on the other glittering bauble, still
in his left cuff.
Holmes very unconcernedly took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit
it, his eyes meanwhile glancing about the room; but I dropped on my
knees beside the Earl and placed my ear over his chest. To my horror,
I could not hear even the faintest heart-beat. My face paled as I
looked up at my companion.
"Holmes," I said solemnly, "the Earl is dead! Murder has been added to
robbery here!"
"That so, Doc?" queried the cold-blooded old cuss, blowing out a
cloud of cigarette-smoke and yawning. "Well, what'll I do
first,--magnifying-glass or tape-measure?"
"Holmes," I remonstrated sharply, unable to contain myself at his
manner, "if you had come down here six hours ago when we heard that
noise, we might have caught the criminals! Now it's too late."
And I turned to examine the bruise on the Earl's forehead.
"Oh, keep your shirt on, Watson," retorted Holmes, "I'm not the Earl's
private bodyguard, and what's more, I'm not concerned with what might
be, but with what _is_. Are you sure he's dead, or are you only making
another awkward mistake? 'Twould be rather embarrassing, I should
think, to have the Earl wake up in a minute and tell us he's not
dead!"
At this insult to my professional ability as a physician, I got on my
ear, and said with a grouch:
"Well, if you don't think he's dead, just see whether _you_ can detect
any heart-beat there,--smart as you are."
Holmes was bending down over the apparent corpse, when we heard some
one walking along the corridor outside.
"Quick, Watson, sneak into this closet here, and observe
developments!" whispered Holmes, as he gripped me by the arm, and
hustled me into the closet, the door of which stood slightly ajar.
In a moment more Her Ladyship, Annabelle, Countess of Puddingham,
appeared in the Earl's room, took one look at her husband's recumbent
form on the floor, and let out a scream that might have been heard in
the next county, before she toppled over in a dead faint.
Holmes rushed out of the closet, seized her just in time to prevent
her falling over the Earl's body, and whispered to me, as he placed
her propped up in a chair, and as various people were heard running
through the other rooms toward us, attracted by the Countess's scream:
"Well, _she_ didn't have a hand in this, Doc. That scream was genuine,
and she didn't know we were listening, either."
A small crowd of servants, all gaping in amazement, now filled the
doorway, and Holmes asked authoritatively:
"Which one of you people is the Earl's valet?" Adding: "You had better
lay your master on the bed there."
One of the men stepped forward, and answered:
"I am the Earl's valet, sir. Is His Lordship dead?"
"Well, Dr. Watson says he is. But lay him out on the bed, anyhow,--he
will look more respectable there than on the floor," said Holmes, as
Vermicelli, the valet, assisted by another man, who said he was Peter
Van Damm, valet to Lord Launcelot, picked up the Earl's body and
deposited it, or him, on the bed.
Launcelot, Uncle Tooter, Budd, Hicks and Thorneycroft here crowded
themselves into the room and, on seeing what had happened, added to
the general buzz of excited exclamations; but Holmes took command of
the situation, like the old hand that he was, entirely used to such
gruesome sights, and stepped to the telephone on a small table in one
corner of the Earl's room.
"Give me the village constables,--any of them,--at Hedge-gutheridge,
quick!" he called through the instrument. "This one of the
constables?"--after a moment. "This is Normanstow Towers. The Earl of
Puddingham has apparently been murdered by some one attempting to
steal the last of his diamond cuff-buttons.... Hemlock Holmes, from
London, talking. Have all your men come up here at once and surround
the place, letting no one in or out!... Whom do I suspect? Never mind
whom I suspect. I'd never suspect you constables of having too much
brains after the way you left here yesterday noon, with the castle
unguarded,--that's a cinch!... Now don't take all day getting here.
Good-by!"
And Holmes slammed the receiver back on the hook, whirled around on
the chair, and faced the gaping crowd of people in the room.
"Well, what are you looking at?" he demanded. "Get together there,
some of you, and bring order out of chaos. You there, with the vacant
look on your face, are you the Countess's maid?"--addressing one of
the three woman servants. "Take care of your mistress there in that
chair. Can't you see she's coming out of her faint? If the cook is
among you, he'd better get back to the kitchen and prepare breakfast.
Watson, you take this revolver here,"--fishing a six-shooter out of
his pocket and handing it to me,--"go to the rear entrance of the
castle, and stand guard there till those tortoise-like constables
arrive. Let no one in or out; and I will do the same at the front
entrance. Do you get me, Steve?"
And Holmes jumped up, full of renewed "pep," and boldly pushed those
of the friends and servants of the deceased Earl who didn't move
quickly right out of the room into the corridor, the Countess having
been assisted in the meantime up to her own room on the second floor
by her Spanish maid.
"I say there, Holmes, don't you think you're going it pretty strong?"
protested Billie Budd, the man from Australia, as he was shoved along
with the rest of them by the masterful detective.
"Just keep your shirt on, Mr. Budd," said the latter, as he locked the
door of the Earl's room behind him and put the key in his pocket. "I'm
running this show, not you. I was sent here to get results, and I'm
going to get 'em,--see?"
"I guess the old cocaine is beginning to work on him again," I
muttered.
Then I started with the gun to the rear door of the castle, while
Holmes, after overawing the others, stationed himself at the front
door, with another loaded and cocked revolver in his hand.
After about fifteen minutes of tiresome waiting, while several of the
servants peeped out at me from the rear rooms as I stood sentinel at
the end of the corridor, just inside the great iron barred door, I
heard Holmes's welcome shout from the front of the building:
"All right, Watson; the constables are here!"
In a moment a wooden-faced gink appeared, who said he had come to
relieve me. I put the revolver in my pocket and rejoined Holmes in the
drawing-room, where I found him with Lord Launcelot and the others.
"Well, boys, I've got four constables completely surrounding the
castle now,--one on each side,--so we'll sit down to breakfast. It's
nearly nine o'clock now."
And Holmes moved toward the dining-room.
"All right, old top," said Launcelot, smiling at the detective. "As
long as George Arthur,--the Earl, you know,--is disabled or dead, I am
the master of the house, and I'll back you up in everything you do."
"Even if I should happen to arrest you for stealing some of the
cuff-buttons yourself, eh?" queried Holmes with a grin, as we sat down
to our delayed breakfast.
Launcelot sort of choked at this, stared at the speaker, and said:
"What queer things you _do_ get off, Mr. Holmes! Your idea of a joke,
I suppose."