"Stop right where you are, MacTavish!" Holmes shouted commandingly,
"and show me your left paw so I can see what you are trying to carry
away with you. Something more valuable than the tinfoil off a
wine-bottle top, I'll warrant!"
The footman looked around at me, then at Louis and Ivan, and finally
at Holmes, whose threatening expression cowed him, and he shambled
over and, with a deep-drawn sigh, gave up the eighth diamond
cuff-button.
"Well, I was afraid that sooner or later something like this would
happen," he remarked with downcast eyes, "and I would be jerked up
sharp and the darned thing taken away from me. Blast that man Weelum
Budd, anyhow! He came to me last Monday and talked me into hiding the
shiner for him, so he could play it safe up in the drawing-room and I
would have to take the blame for it if it was captured by you before
he could get back!"
With undisguised pleasure my partner took the gem, holding it up so
that Louis could view it plainly, and said: "But where has your base
tempter been keeping himself these past two days, Donald? Have you had
any secret communications with him? Better 'fess up, or it may go hard
with you."
"Why, he came sneaking around here last night about nine-o'clock while
you people were in the music room listening to Lord Launcelot play the
mandolin, and he said he was boarding at the village inn under an
assumed name----"
"And those rabbit-headed constables there couldn't recognize him!"
growled Holmes, shaking his fist. "But did Budd tell you when he
expects to collect the cuff-buttons from his dupes here and make a
get-away!"
"Yes," replied Donald, "he said he would come for them to-morrow,
Friday, morning, and he didn't seem to mind it when I told him that
Mr. Hemlock Holmes had gotten back the first seven cuff-buttons,
either; for he claimed he could swipe 'em all again, anyhow. Said that
you were only a big bluff."
"Oh, I am, am I! Well, I can tell you that Mr. W. X. Budd, of
Melbourne, Australia, will find to-morrow to be a darned unlucky
Friday for him, all right. Now we'll just go into the library, where
the Earl is probably indulging his great taste for literature by
reading the labels on the wine-bottles, and we'll tell him how his
good man Donald fell from grace through the wiles of an Australian
thief. So, front and center, Scotty; forward, march!"
With these words Holmes waved smilingly to Louis, the chef, as a sign
of what his friend Hicks could expect when Holmes the detective should
collar him for the ninth cuff-button, and then he and I accompanied
the scared footman into the presence of the Earl.
"Well, now what?" inquired the noble master of the castle, putting
down a copy of London _Punch_ on the library table, and turning to
inspect the arrivals. "Don't tell me that that little cuss from
Balmoral Palace there has been caught with any of my ancestral gems on
him!"
"But I _will_ tell you, anyhow, George, because it's the sad and
undoubted truth," answered Holmes, as he handed over the eighth
missing bauble to His Lordship, took out a cigarette, and lit it. "The
time is now 9:15 a. m., and I herewith present you with
eight-elevenths of your stolen property, trusting to have the other
three-elevenths recovered for you before the sun goes down. As the old
Roman Emperor Titus, or somebody, used to say:
"Count that day lost whose low descending sun
Views from thy hand no diamond-capture done!"
"Eh, what? Well, by thunder, this is getting to be something fierce!"
commented the Earl as he took the cuff-button from Holmes and stowed
it away in his vest-pocket, "not the recovery of them, which I
welcome, but the melancholy fact that I have been betrayed now by no
less than, seven different people in whom I have reposed
confidence,--my own wife, my secretary, my coachman, my second cook,
my second gardener, and now by both my footmen! I wonder who is going
to be the next guilty miscreant!"
And the Earl scratched his head with perplexity.
"Who did you think took them, anyhow? The horses out in the stables,
huh?" inquired Holmes humorously. "But where is the rest of our recent
little promenade party by this time? Watson and I got lost in the
woods back there, and we lost sight of the others."
"Oh, they're up in the billiard-room, shoving the ivories around on
the green tables," answered the Earl, rising and stretching himself.
"And with their heads containing about as much ivory as the
billiard-balls, I suppose. Honestly, I never saw such a pack of gilded
loafers in my life! Don't they ever try to improve their minds! It
seems that you have some faint glimmerings of literary appreciation,
since you read London _Punch_ there, but those other ginks don't even
read _that_ much! Let's go up and inspect their playing, especially
that of Mr. Hicks," Holmes concluded, winking meaningly at me, as we
left the library and mounted the stairs.
Up on the fourth floor we entered the billiard-room where so much time
was killed, and found Lord Launcelot, Hicks, Tooter, and Thorneycroft
shooting a game of billiards, with old man Letstrayed, the so-called
police inspector, fast asleep in one of the splint-bottomed chairs, as
usual. Holmes picked up a cue, and playfully poked Letstrayed in the
ribs with it.
"Wake up, Barney, and hear the birds sing!" he called out.
The sleepy inspector jumped up in surprise, while the other four men
laughed and continued their game, and the Earl and I sat down as
Holmes walked over and butted into the playing.
"Say, I don't think that Hicks is holding his cue just right,
fellows," said he, grabbing that worthy's cue away from him and
leaning over the table to try a shot himself. "Look,--this is the way
to do it!"
"Aw, you're not holding it right yourself, Holmes," said Launcelot,
who prided himself on his knowledge of billiards.
"Sneeze, kid, your brains are dusty. I guess I could shoot pool and
billiards along with the world's experts when you were studying your
A, B, C's! You see, I'm forty-nine years old, while you're barely
thirty," replied the old boy, as sassy as ever.
"Hicks, I'm astonished at your playing," he continued in an
authoritative tone; "why, a man so smart as to keep a diamond
cuff-button hidden for three days while he confides in the Earl's chef
down in the pantry should be able to play this intellectual game
better than that!"
The Canadian's mouth opened, and his eyes bulged out with fright as he
heard his recent deeds thus published to the assembled crowd, while
all his audience showed astonishment as great as Hicks's.
"Now, look me in the eye, William Hicks!" Holmes went on, pointing his
finger at his victim, "and tell His Lordship the Earl if that isn't
the actual truth I just spoke."
"Er--er, ah,--I guess it is. I can't see how you ever found it out,
but that crook of a Budd he came to me with one of the gems, and
induced me to keep it for him till he called for it," was the
admission of the confused Hicks, who, with reddened face, sheepishly
fished out the stolen cuff-button and handed it to the astonished
Earl.
"And now Billie Hicks is a thief, too!" said the latter. "How the Sam
Hill did you ascertain _that_, Holmes?"
"Well, if Mr. Hicks hadn't been so careless as to stand around in the
spilled flour on the pantry-floor when he was foolishly confiding his
little game to the chef, perhaps I wouldn't have been able to
apprehend him now," replied Holmes, clearing his throat. "Are you
awake there, Letstrayed? You see that's how it's done, examining the
incriminating stains on the soles of the shoes. Not the daintiest job
in the world, perhaps, but it brings the results, and that's the main
thing. This now makes a total of nine of the Puddingham cuff-buttons I
have unearthed, and I have promised myself that I shall bag the other
two by to-night."
"Do you always keep the promises you make to yourself, Holmes?" said
Launcelot, with a grin.
"You just bet your life I do,--every time! But as His Lordship has
evidently filed a _nolle_ in the case of The State vs. Hicks, we'll go
on with the billiards, with that Canadian gentleman remaining still
unhanged. Now shoot 'em up, fellows."
So saying, the cold-blooded old sleuth sailed into the game with the
other four men, and I sat tight in one of the chairs and talked about
the weather with Letstrayed, which was about the extent of the
latter's conversational abilities, although every once in a while I
could hear him say to himself under his breath: "Nine down--two to
come!"
They played on at the billiard-table for over two hours, and then it
was noontime, and the still abashed MacTavish, the footman, came in
and announced luncheon.
The Earl led the way down to the dining-room, and after we had been
seated, Holmes told Harrigan to pass the word out to La Violette in
the kitchen that his Canadian friend had confessed his share in the
diamond robbery, but that Louis shouldn't worry about any possible
indictment as an accomplice, and that he trusted that the green peas
would be as good as ever, prepared under his able direction.
"Won't you try some of the Ceylon tea I brought in, Holmes?" asked
Tooter. "I may as well advertise it all I can, now that you have
exposed my secret salesmanship in the castle."
"No, thanks," said Holmes crisply, "I always prefer coffee,
anyhow,--the stronger the better; and moreover, I am still more
interested in what I thought that tea-packet was that you had upstairs
when I intruded on your love-making."
"All right, suit yourself then, you old crab! I'm going right ahead
with my plans for marrying Teresa Olivano anyhow, in spite of you and
the Earl and your dodgasted cuff-buttons."
And Uncle J. Edmund Tooter said no more for the remainder of the
luncheon.
When the meal was over, and Inspector Letstrayed seemed somewhat more
overcome than usual, the party dispersed, and Holmes and I took a walk
through the rooms on the first floor,--"just for fun," as he put it.
It was then a little after one o'clock. As we were going through the
kitchen, where the now subdued La Violette greeted us with a silent
bow, Holmes's eagle eye caught sight of Uncle Tooter's coat-tail just
disappearing behind the cellar-door. With a whispered warning to me
and a quiet seizure of my arm, Holmes tiptoed after him, softly opened
the cellar-door, and as Tooter's steps died away along the cement
floor of the cellar, we went inside, locked the door, and I stationed
myself on the top step, while Holmes went down.