After we had all imbibed freely of the blood of the grape the Earl
then led the way out to the front door. Inspector Letstrayed seemed to
have something in his noodle, and after much cogitation he finally
came out with it.
"Er, Hi say, Mr. 'Olmes," he blurted out, "you have forgotten to
search any of the servants, to see whether or not they have the
diamond cuff-buttons concealed about their persons, doncherknow."
"Say, Letstrayed, for the love of Mike, don't interrupt me again with
your well-meant but rattle-headed advice, or I'll be liable to forget
myself and commit murder on the premises. I'm running this show, not
you,--gol darn it!" And Holmes ground his teeth as he added: "The idea
of Letstrayed being chump enough to think that the servants, if they
have stolen the diamonds, would risk discovery so boldly as to carry
them around with them!--and besides, the village constables searched
them yesterday. It's a cinch he owes his appointment as Inspector at
Scotland Yard to a political pull, and not to his merit!"
The sky looked rather changeable as we all passed out by the great
main entrance of Normanstow Towers, and went down the broad stone
stairway to the lawn, alternately clouding over and then letting the
fugitive April sun shine through.
"Ah, fickle Springtime, it's just like a woman!" said Uncle Tooter,
with a deep-drawn sigh that must have come all the way up from his
boots.
"Well, what's eating _him_, the old duffer, I wonder?" growled Holmes.
"Is he falling in love, at his age?"
"He's dippy over that Spanish maid, Teresa Olivano, and I hear that
she has refused him twice," whispered the Earl so that only Holmes and
myself could hear him.
"For Heaven's sake, don't mention it in the Countess's hearing,
because she's simply wild over her bachelor uncle being in love with a
servant, both on account of the social disgrace, and because, if Uncle
Tooter married Teresa, she and I would lose a large part of the
inheritance that we expect when the old boy finally cashes in. He's
worth over forty million dollars, or eight million pounds, all made in
the tea and spice business in India and Ceylon."
"Well, what gets _me_ is why this Teresa ever turned him down, then,
instead of jumping at the offer the first time he proposed," said
Holmes, with a grin. "Forty million cold bones don't grow on _every_
bush, you know."
"Teresa is a rather peculiar girl, Holmes, and what would attract
others doesn't attract _her_," replied the Earl.
"Very, very peculiar, I'll say," commented Holmes cynically, as the
Countess, Tooter, Hicks, Budd, Letstrayed, Lord Launcelot, and
Thorneycroft stopped at the edge of the wide-spreading lawn on
observing its wetness.
"Come on, everybody, let's take a little stroll around these beautiful
ancestral acres. A few rain-drops won't hurt you."
And, so saying, the masterful detective grabbed the Earl and me by the
arm and signalled to the others to accompany us.
"I have a motive for doing this, Earl," whispered Holmes to the
latter, as the rest of the party reluctantly followed us, "which I
will let you in on later."
I consented to be hauled around over the drenched grass by my
domineering partner, as I knew from long experience that he was liable
to do almost anything while on a mystery-hunt, and I accordingly kept
my mouth closed. Billie Budd had his hat knocked off by a low-hanging
limb of a tree that we passed under, and he let out a few choice
Australian cuss-words that he had learned at the Ballarat gold mines,
as he scowled at Hemlock Holmes, the author of this unaccountable
promenade in the wet grass.
"Say, what do you think you're doing, anyhow, Mr. Smart-Alec from
London,--adopting the Kneipp cure?" he growled.
"Don't you worry, Budd old boy, maybe I'll find the lost diamond
cuff-buttons out here in the grass. The robbers may have dropped them
here as they fled," answered Holmes smilingly, as he slapped the Earl
on the back.
"Yes, and, then, again, they may not. I'll just bet you a five-pound
note, Holmes, that you don't recover a single one of the eleven
cuff-buttons to-day," said Budd.
"Done!" shouted my partner. "Doc Watson, you hold the stakes," he
added, turning to me; "here's my five."
"And here's _my_ five," said Budd, with a smile, as he handed me a
five-pound note to match Holmes's.
"That's it. I'm always the goat," I grumbled, as I shoved the kale in
my pocket. "Here I am with the responsibility of keeping ten pounds of
other people's money safely, while Holmes cops all the limelight!"
"Cheer up, Watson, old boy," said Holmes. "Here,--have a cigarette!
Now, I think we've seen about enough of this lovely Puddingham lawn,"
he added as he calmly surveyed the wide green expanse that stretched
for four hundred feet out from the front of the castle to the road and
for three hundred feet on each side of the massive pile, dotted here
and there with trees and incipient flower-beds, on the latter of which
Heinrich Blumenroth had been exercising his skill, planting spring
flowers. "So I guess we'll go back inside, and consider the case of
the lost jewels further," continued Holmes.
And the whole nine of us obligingly trudged after him like sheep after
the bellwether, and reentered the castle.
It was now after eleven o'clock, and nothing in the shape of a diamond
cuff-button had turned up yet, but I was not surprised, because I knew
that Hemlock Holmes had not yet put in his best licks,--that is to
say, had not yet pulled off any of his deepest cogitations and
deductions. Just as I happened to see him slipping his little old
cocaine-squirter back in his pocket after a surreptitious shot in the
arm (while our party was entering the drawing-room on the left side of
the front corridor), Lord Launcelot evidently thought it incumbent
upon him to kid Holmes for the lack of results so far; but he hadn't
spoken more than a few words of his would-be witty remarks when Holmes
turned and barked at him like a terrier.
"Say, you, lord or no lord, you'll have to chop out the funny remarks
on my method of handling this case, or else I'll drop the whole thing
right here," he flung at the surprised Launcelot. "I can't stand this
eternal butting-in while I'm trying to think!"
The Earl warned Launcelot to cease the comedy, and then Holmes
motioned all of them except me out of the room, saying that he had
some deep thought on hand that would take up at least two hours, and
that we shouldn't be called to luncheon until a quarter after one. My
stomach rebelled at this, but my head knew better than to oppose the
old boy when he had a thought-tantrum on.
Billie Hicks,--he from Canada,--was the last one to go, and as he was
leaving he hurled this Parthian shot at Holmes:
"Now go ahead and try to think, Holmes. Maybe you'll succeed in the
attempt!"
Holmes threw a book at him, which narrowly missed Hicks as he banged
the door shut behind him, and my partner immediately locked the door,
put the key in his pocket, pulled a couple of cushions off a couch,
placed them on the piano, perched himself up on top of the improvised
seat, with his feet on the ivory keys, and then calmly proceeded to
fill his well-worn pipe with some of that strong-smelling shag tobacco
that he generally used when he started a meditation, or pipe-dream,
just as you prefer to call it.
I knew what was coming, so I opened one of the windows all the way up,
to let out the terrific fumes of the uncivilized stuff that he smoked,
while he curled himself up comfortably in his strange position on top
of the piano, with his chin resting on one hand, and his elbow on some
sheet-music, and then smoked away like a steam-engine, as immovable as
a bronze statue, while he thought and pondered and meditated, and then
thought some more, about the stolen diamond cuff-buttons,--with me all
the time sitting on the couch like a bump on a log, trying my best to
figure out the conflicting testimony advanced by the fourteen
different servants and the seven other persons.
Time rolled on, and the clock on the marble mantel struck half-past
eleven,--twelve,--half-past twelve,--one,--and at length came to a
quarter past one, while I couldn't dope out who swiped the
cuff-buttons to save my neck!
"I've got it!" shouted Holmes suddenly, as he jumped off the piano,
scattering the sheet-music right and left, and paced up and down in
front of the mantel, while I heaved a sigh of relief.
"Time for luncheon, ain't it, Holmesy, old boy?" I questioned.
"Yes. Sure, Watson. I'm hungry, too, after all that heavy thought.
We'll go in and have luncheon now, and then we'll get some swift
action."
Thereupon Holmes led the way to the dining-room, where the others
awaited us.
And so we did get some swift action, but not exactly what Holmes had
expected, sad to relate. To all adroit inquiries on the part of the
Earl as to what he had deduced, Holmes returned a smiling and evasive
answer during the elaborate luncheon, which proceeded to the
end,--when the finger-bowls were brought on,--without untoward
incident.
As my partner deftly massaged his long tapering digits in the perfumed
water, he leaned over and whispered to Inspector Letstrayed, who sat
next to him. Letstrayed's eyes bulged out, and Holmes then arose,
pushed his chair back, inserted his left thumb in the left armhole of
his vest, expanded his chest, cleared his throat, and pointed his
right fore-finger dramatically at Billie Budd at the other end of the
table, as he said:
"Inspector Letstrayed, do your duty! There stands the guilty wretch!"