As Holmes finished, the man from Scotland Yard quietly got up, also
cleared his throat, waddled around the table in a very pompous manner,
placed his fat left hand on Budd's shoulder, and said solemnly, in
that sepulchral tone of voice that he generally adopted for such
occasions:
"William X. Budd, it now becomes my painful duty to arrest you in the
Queen's name--er, no, I mean the King's (that's right, old Vic is dead
now),--to arrest you in the King's name for the following high crimes
and misdemeanors, contrary to the statutes made and in such cases
provided, to wit: Burglary, Robbery, Conspiracy, Assault and Battery,
and Attempted Murder! It is also my duty to inform you that anything
you may say will be used against you, as usual, you know! Now come
with me quietly!"
"Aw, what the Sam Hill are you giving us, you old dub? I never did
anything to you to have you call me names like that!" shouted Budd,
and he instantly wrenched himself loose from Letstrayed's none too
muscular grasp, and ran at top speed out of the room and down the long
corridor outside, upsetting the contents of his finger-bowl all over
the leather seat of his fancy chair.
The Countess promptly had hysterics, and then fainted in the arms of
her gaping brother-in-law, Lord Launcelot, while everybody else,
except Holmes, myself, and the Earl, grew red and white by turns; and
Uncle Tooter, in attempting to arise suddenly, fell out of his chair
and tumbled on the floor in a very undignified manner.
"Holy smoke! Don't let him get away like that, you pack of rummies!
Get up and chase him!" shouted Holmes in great excitement, as he
pulled a revolver out of his hip-pocket and dashed madly out of the
room after the fleeing and recreant Budd, while the rest of us,
galvanized back to life by the sudden developments, took after the
great detective down the corridor, in the way that they generally do
in the movies, all hollering: "Stop--thief!" at the top of our voices.
_Bang! Bang!_ Holmes shot twice at Budd, but the bullets went wild,
and we all continued the chase through the kitchen, down the rear
stairway, and out through the wide gardens between the castle and the
stables, while Louis La Violette, the French cook, cursed us volubly
in his best Parisian for disturbing him.
Budd was a pretty good runner, so he was about a hundred feet ahead of
us when Holmes dashed up to the open front door of the Earl's great
stone stable-building. He took another shot at Budd as the latter fled
up the stairs to the hay-loft, and then disappeared suddenly, thus
frightening the eight horses in their stalls at the rear, who neighed
loudly, while Holmes and the rest of us piled up the stairs after him,
like a pack of dogs after a rabbit!
When we got up to the loft we found that it covered the entire upper
floor of the building; was at least two hundred feet long by a hundred
and fifty feet wide, and except for a small space just around the head
of the stairs, was filled up eight feet deep with odorous hay and
piles of straw.
Of course, not a trace of that scoundrel Budd was to be seen. He was
evidently somewhere under the hay, because the shuttered windows were
too high up for him to have made his escape through them in the short
time that had elapsed; and the pigeons that roosted around on the
rafters cooed their darned heads off just as if they didn't know that
a desperate crook was concealed somewhere beneath the wide-spreading
piles of hay.
Holmes ground his teeth with rage as he recognized his temporary
defeat by the resourceful guy from Australia, and it was a good thing
the Countess was still back in the castle being assisted out of her
fainting-spell by her Spanish maid Teresa, because the language that
Hemlock Holmes used as he called down imprecations on the head of the
hay-hidden Budd was frightful to hear!
"Gol darn it!" he said, when he had somewhat recovered his usual
equanimity; "this is certainly the first and only time in my life that
I've been held up and stalled by such a common thing as a load of hay!
What in thunder did you ever get in such an enormous lot of the darned
stuff for, anyhow?" he demanded, turning to the Earl. "I should think
there was enough hay in here to feed a regiment of horses for three
years!"
"Well, you don't need to take it out on me, Holmes," returned the Earl
with some asperity. "How could I foresee that some one would steal my
cuff-buttons and then run up here and hide in the hay? I bought the
hay two months ago, when prices were lower than they are now, so I got
a lot of it, anticipating the rise in prices that has followed since
then; and I also bought a large lot of corn, oats, bran, and so on,
which I keep downstairs. You're getting to be rather unreasonable,
don't you think?"
Holmes didn't reply, but stood there contemplating the great piles of
hay and straw in silent wrath, while the hidden Budd was probably
smiling to himself somewhere underneath. Lord Launcelot, who was
watching the chagrined expression on Holmes's face, leaned back
against the wall and said:
"Oh, Gee! I have to laugh! This is the funniest thing I've seen for a
long time!"
"It is, eh?" shouted Holmes, dashing at Launcelot. "Now, you beat it!
You've been warned before not to interrupt while I'm thinking."
And he grabbed Launcelot by the arm and hustled him down the stairs,
then returned and faced the Earl.
"Well, it would certainly be an endless job to try to dig Budd out of
all this hay, Your Lordship," he said, "so we'll adopt some strategy,
and starve him out. We'll have Inspector Letstrayed watch the loft
here at the head of the stairs, as I see this is the only way out,
have his dinner brought to him this evening, while he stands guard,
and then I'll stand guard through the night, for I can keep awake
better than Fatty can. Then we'll keep up the sentinel business all
day to-morrow, if necessary, Letstrayed and I relieving each other,
till we finally force that robber to come out and beg for food,--when
we'll nab him! How does that sound for a scheme?"
"It listens well, Holmes,--that is, if Letstrayed doesn't make a mess
of it," said the Earl musingly.
"Woe to him if he does, I can tell you." And Holmes glared at the
obese inspector, who sat on the top step trying to get his breath back
after the hard race out from the castle. "But then, I don't see how he
can. Right here is the only place where Budd could get out, and I'll
give Letstrayed my revolver to use instead of his own, since mine is a
little bit quicker on the trigger. Here, Barney," he added as he
turned to the Inspector, "take my six-shooter, and I'll take yours.
Now see that you don't spill the beans, like you've done before, and
stand guard faithfully this afternoon till six o'clock, when we'll
bring your dinner out to you, and if William X. Budd tries to break
away from under the horse-feed, why, you know what to do with your
little cannon there!"
"Well, all right, fellows, I'll be the goat if you'll send down to the
village and telegraph in to headquarters in London now, telling them
where I am. Say, Earl, haven't you got a pack of cigarettes about your
person that isn't working?" asked Letstrayed, as he took up his
station on a particularly soft pile of hay nearby, and stretched his
fat legs over it comfortably.
"What! Smoke cigarettes up here in the hay, and burn down my ancestral
stables for me!" shouted the Earl in surprise. "Good night! You've got
about as much brains as Holmes says you have, Letstrayed. But here, I
realize that it'll be pretty lonesome up here watching for a hidden
crook with nobody but a lot of pigeons for company, so you can take
this package of fine-cut, and chew to your heart's content. Good-by,
now."
Barnabas took the proffered pack of chewing tobacco, and sighed
deeply.
"Well, good-by. If you hear any shooting, you'll know it's me," he
said, as he took a big mouthful of the fine-cut.
And so we left him to his afternoon vigil, after Holmes had taken a
look at the bulldog chained up near the horses downstairs,--and
returning to the castle we all entered the library, where the Earl
called the butler, and said:
"Harrigan, you may pour us out each a glass of wine."
Harrigan smilingly agreed, and after we had all imbibed, the Earl and
Uncle Tooter played chess on the great mahogany table in the center of
the room; Holmes and Thorneycroft started a game of checkers, as did
Lord Launcelot and myself, sitting on the leather-covered divans in
the broad bay-window, while Billie Hicks sprawled himself out in a
comfortable arm-chair at one side. The Countess did not appear, being
still upstairs in her own room with her maid Teresa, and the various
servants were scattered through the numerous rooms of the castle
engaged in their various duties.
So the afternoon passed,--from a little after two o'clock, when we
returned from the stables, until ten minutes after five, when suddenly
two loud shots split the silence, coming from the direction of the
rear of the castle.
"Ha! There he is now!" yelled Holmes, as he jumped up instantly,
knocking the checkerboard and all the pieces into the lap of the
astonished Thorneycroft, and ran out into the corridor, shouting to us
to accompany him. Holmes had pretty long legs, and he distanced the
rest of us while we did another Marathon out to the stables, with the
servants staring at us out of the back windows. I hate to have to tell
it, but the sight that met our eyes in the hay-loft was honestly
enough to make an archangel swear!
There, stretched out flat on his back on the hay-littered floor near
the top of the stairs, bound and gagged, and snoring in the deepest
slumber, lay our luckless friend, Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed!
Holmes turned pale with rage, and then he roared:
"Asleep at the switch! And Billie Budd far away by this time! Grab me,
fellows, quick, before I forget myself and murder him where he lies!
Oh, horrors!"
And he began to swear in French, which, as I have remarked in one of
our previous adventures, was his mother's native tongue, to which he
resorted when so excited that he couldn't express himself further in
English.
The Earl and I untied the ropes that bound the sleeping Letstrayed,
removed the gag from his mouth, which consisted of another piece of
rope, and shook him to his feet, where he stood blinking in surprise,
while Holmes leaned against the nearest wall and shook his fists in
the air, while he made the air blue with variegated French cuss-words.
"Let's leave them alone, boys, and return to the castle, while the
master-mind and his faithless guard have it out between themselves,"
suggested the Earl.
Whereupon we all followed him quietly back to the library, filled with
mixed emotions. When we were back again in the seats from which we had
recently been so sharply disturbed, the Earl said to me:
"Well, Doctor Watson, what do you make of it? You've had a good deal
of experience with the great detective. Tell us what you think."
"What I think of Inspector Letstrayed wouldn't look very well in
print," I began; "but it's easy enough to see what happened. The old
dope fell asleep, so, of course, as soon as Budd heard those
elephantine snores, he sneaked out from his hiding-place under the hay
and tied him up with the ropes while he slept, took his revolver away
from him, shot it off twice out of pure bravado, and then beat it for
parts unknown. If he's as good a runner yet as he was this noon, he
must be over in the next county by this time! Of course, it couldn't
have been Letstrayed who shot the revolver off, because we found him
still asleep and snoring; and he couldn't have shot first at Budd and
then have been overpowered by the latter, because he didn't have time
enough in the short minute between our hearing the shots and racing
out there to have fallen asleep again, especially when he was tied up
so tightly. I think you will find that I am right,--when Holmes
returns with the information he has pried out of the Inspector."
Holmes returned soon afterward, still fuming and growling over his
second setback of the day, with Letstrayed trailing along behind him,
looking like a flour-sack that had been stepped on! The latter sat
down quietly, without a word, and Holmes corroborated my deductions.
He said Letstrayed told him he didn't know a thing about what had
taken place until we untied the ropes from him; for he had fallen
asleep in his too comfortable position on the pile of hay, and had not
been awakened even by the shots.
"I'm so mad I could chew nails," said Holmes. "The only thing I can do
now is to send a telegram down to the village to be dispatched to the
authorities in all the surrounding towns, asking them to apprehend
Budd when he shows up. Can your secretary here be trusted to send the
messages right, Earl?"
He sized up the bald-headed Thorneycroft with a critical eye, as he
spoke, and suddenly changed his mind.
"No. I'll go down to Hedge-gutheridge myself and send the telegrams.
Then I know it'll be done right, without a third balling-up. Ta, ta!
I'll be back in half an hour."
And my erratic partner was out of the building before we hardly knew
what had happened.
At a quarter of six he returned, somewhat out of breath, and announced
that we might as well sit down to dinner, since he would not resume
operations until morning. The Earl quietly accepted his tacit
assumption of mastery of the castle, since he recognized by this time
that Hemlock Holmes simply had to have his own way while on a case, or
else he wouldn't play,--that's all!
The dinner as prepared by Louis La Violette,--and served by Joe
Harrigan the butler,--was fully as scrumptious and all to the mustard
as the one we had partaken of the evening before, and so was the wine
served afterwards. We passed the evening in the library smoking and
swapping lies, while Her Ladyship the Countess pleaded a severe
headache and remained in her room, her dinner being served up there by
her maid. At about half-past ten we retired; that is, the others
retired, but Holmes grabbed me by the arm as soon as we had entered
our room upstairs, and whispered:
"I'm going to pull off something now, Watson. We'll have to wait here
until they're all asleep, as Letstrayed was out in the hayloft this
afternoon, and then I'm going to get some evidence."