"Er, er,--oh, this is terrible! Billie Budd stole 'em, not me. He came
into my room early Monday morning, while I was dressing, and showed me
the pair of cuff-buttons he said he had stolen during Sunday night,
and gave me one to keep for him until he had a good chance to dispose
of it. Then, right after I returned from calling on you to inform you
of their loss, which was about half-past ten, he and I went out to the
stables and he gave the other one to Olaf here to hide for him. Here's
the one I have been keeping, Mr. Holmes," stammered Thorneycroft, as
he took the second sparkling cuff-button out of his vest-pocket and
laid it on the table beside the one recovered from Olaf. "When the
village constables came up here to search us, I simply slipped the
thing into the upper edge of my shoe until they had gone, and I've
been carrying it here in my vest-pocket ever since."
And Eustace paused as he drew out his handkerchief and mopped his
perspiring face.
"Then you had it right with you when you burst into my office in Baker
Street to tell me of the loss, and your nervous excitement at the time
was a fake,--you big stiff?" Holmes asked, blowing out a cloud of
cigarette-smoke.
"Yes. I acknowledge with shame that I did. But it was that scoundrel
Budd that burglarized His Lordship's room and stole the jewels
originally, and the coachman and myself are both simply receivers of
stolen goods, not robbers. O Your Lordship, this is awful," Eustace
added, turning to the Earl. "I am a graduate and an honor man of
Oxford University, as you know, and I surely must have been
intoxicated when I let Budd entice me into his damnable scheme! The
reason he took the jewels was because he had been losing heavily at
cards in London recently, as he told me, and wanted to sell them to
recoup his losses. I'll swear I didn't have a thing to do with the
disappearance of the other nine cuff-buttons, because if I did, I'd
tell you. That's all."
The Earl looked at Holmes sitting there puffing out smoke in a very
_degage_ attitude, with the smile of triumph still on his eagle-like
face, in spite of his absurd disguise, then he looked at the confused
and embarrassed Thorneycroft standing at one side of the table,
anxiously rubbing his hands, then he looked at the red-faced Olaf
standing near him, and finally he looked at me sitting in another
chair, furnishing the calm and sober background for all this
sensationalism,--as usual.
"Well, by Jove, I hardly know _what_ to say, and that's the truth,
Holmes," he remarked at length; "but the fact that my recreant
secretary has just now voluntarily coughed up the second cuff-button
without trying to hide it again in his shoe, as he might have done,
inclines me to let him live this time. So I'll forgive you, Eustace,
but don't you ever let it happen again, or I might forget myself so
far as to have you blackballed from all of the London clubs you belong
to," added the Earl, shaking his finger at Eustace.
"Thank you, Your Lordship, thank you!" cried the latter profusely, "I
shall endeavor to deserve your consideration by doing my best to help
you find the other cuff-buttons still missing."
"Keep the change, Eustace," said the Earl dryly. "Now, Holmes, what'll
we do with this little stiff over here?"
And he pointed to the still trembling coachman, who stood fumbling his
cap in his hands.
"Why, he looks harmless enough," commented Holmes; "I knew he didn't
have brains sufficient to plan the robbery, but was merely Billie
Budd's tool. So I think you might as well forgive him, too, Your
Lordship, and thus get all the states' evidence they can turn for us.
Thorneycroft," he added, turning to the secretary, "you accused Luigi
Vermicelli, the Earl's valet, of having stolen the cuff-buttons, and
you there, Olaf, accused your stable-partner, Carol Linescu, of the
theft. I shall give your statements due consideration, and lay for the
accused parties accordingly. Now, Watson, we'll get busy and see if we
can't recover some more of the cuff-buttons before luncheon. It's only
a little after nine now," looking at his watch, "and we have nearly
three hours left. And, by the way, I believe I made a bet of five
pounds with Billie Budd yesterday morning that I would find some of
the cuff-buttons that same day. He won the bet, since I didn't find
the heirlooms until to-day, but inasmuch as the aforesaid Budd is a
fugitive from justice, I'll just confiscate the stakes and call myself
the winner! Doc, hand over those ten pounds you've been keeping
there."
I did so at once, glad to be relieved of the responsibility, and old
Hemlock Holmes was about twenty-five dollars ahead by Budd's
disappearance, although still nine diamond cuff-buttons behind!
"You may go back to the stables now, Olaf," said the Earl to the
coachman; who beat it immediately, glad to get out of any further
arraignment. "And you, Eustace, can get busy again with these darned
bills we were auditing when Holmes came in with his news."
He took up the two glittering baubles, put them in his pocket, and
drew up his chair again to the table, while Eustace resumed his former
seat.
"Oh, say! I nearly forgot. We must celebrate a little on this!" the
Earl suddenly cried, as he pounded his fist on the table.
"Harrigan," he called out, "bring up a bottle of my very best
Burgundy, and set 'em up to Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson, in honor of
the glad return of my ancestor's historic cuff-buttons!"
The jovial butler seemed always to be within earshot whenever the Earl
wanted him, and in a moment entered the library and ventured:
"The best Burgundy you have is the 1874 Beaune, Your Lordship. Shall I
bring that?"
"Sure! P. D. Q.! I'm feeling a little dry again, anyhow," said the
Earl, as he winked at us, while the still somewhat embarrassed
Thorneycroft looked out of the window at the birds singing their
spring songs among the trees.
Harrigan left the room, and in a few minutes returned from the cellar
with a long dark bottle that seemed to hold the ruby-red sparkles of
the sunset on the hills of eastern France imprisoned in its depths. He
uncorked it, and deftly poured out three glasses of the ancient wine,
one of which the Earl took up in his hand while Holmes and I each took
one of the remaining two.
"Eustace, I'll have to cut you out of this, I'm sorry to say. Holmes,
I drink to your swift and happy recovery of the other nine
cuff-buttons. Prosit!"
At the welcome word of cheer we each put ourselves outside of the
finest fermented grape-juice that had ever tickled my throat.
"Thanks. Now we'll get down to business again," said Holmes, full of
renewed "pep," as he set down his glass on the table and turned to me.
"Doc, let's go up to our room while I get this horrible suit of
clothes off of me, and wash the red grease-paint off my face. Ta, ta,
Your Lordship; see you later, with some more cuff-buttons, I expect."
And we both left the library and went upstairs, where Holmes rapidly
changed his clothes and washed off the make-up in the lavatory nearby.
When he stood before me again in civilized habiliments, he began:
"Doc, I'm going to jump onto this man Vermicelli, the valet. My
deductions lead me to believe that he has another one of the jewels
stowed away somewhere, and it's up to me to find it."
So we left our room and went down the stairway, hot on the trail of
the slippery valet from Venice. As we rounded the foot of the stairway
at the second floor, halfway down to the main scene of operations,
Holmes's quick ear detected the sound of voices in a room nearby,
though my slower ears couldn't hear a thing.
He put his finger to his lips, took me by the arm, and quietly stole
along the corridor with me to the half-open door whence the subdued
voices proceeded. Arriving there, we halted, while Holmes cautiously
listened a moment, then put his head in at the door and coughed. He
pushed the door open immediately and walked in, with me at his heels,
determined not to miss any of it, whatever it was.
Seated in a rocking-chair by the window was the elderly figure of the
Countess's bachelor uncle, J. Edmund Tooter, the retired tea and spice
merchant from Hyderabad, India, holding his niece's Spanish maid,
Teresa Olivano, on his lap. As we entered so unceremoniously the two
of them ceased their billing and cooing, hastily relaxed the
half-Nelson grip they had on each other, and faced us with
considerable resentment showing in their faces, though Teresa didn't
get off Tooter's lap, as I thought she would.
"Well, what do you mean by this impudent intrusion, Holmes?" demanded
Tooter angrily. "I guess a man can hold his affianced wife in his lap
if he feels like it, without having a cheeky detective walk in on
him."
"Your what?" asked Holmes, with surprise.
"My affianced wife, I said. And it's none of your business, either,
any more than it is my niece's, or the Earl's. We had planned to elope
and get married in London this afternoon, but I suppose now you'll run
around and tell everybody in sight what you know."
Tooter whispered something to Teresa, whereupon she gave him a parting
kiss, flounced off his lap, and passed out of the room, with her head
high in the air, her black eyes snapping, and saying something that
sounded like: "Impertinent loafers!" as she passed us.
Uncle Tooter arose from the rocker and stood by the window, where he
seemed to be trying to slide something from his left hand into his
left trousers-pocket, his right side being turned to us.
Holmes noticed the act, as did I, but said nothing of it for the
moment.
"Well, Tooter, by George, I'm surprised at you," he commented
sarcastically; "to think that at your advanced age,--and you
must be pretty well up in the fifties,--you'd fall for the
sweet-love-in-the-springtime stuff that gets the younger people,
and that you'd engage yourself in marriage with a servant, too,
and one who had previously refused you a couple of times. Of
course, as you say, it's none of my business, but I'm used to
having people tell me that; and furthermore, it comes within the
line of my duty to intrude my nose into other people's business
whenever I judge it to be warranted by the circumstances. Teresa
has been accused by Natalie, the first chambermaid, of having
stolen the diamond cuff-buttons----"
"Which is an infernal lie, and I can prove it!" shouted Tooter.
"And you have been accused inferentially by the Earl of possible guilt
in connection with the theft also, owing to your occasional lapses
from sobriety, which is rather a polite way of putting it," went on
the unperturbed Holmes. "By the way, I'll just trouble you for that
little package you slid into your left trousers-pocket there."
Tooter flushed with embarrassment, and refused point-blank.
"Watson, lock the door, and put the key in your pocket!" yelled
Holmes.