Holmes quietly hid behind a large beer-barrel at the foot of the
stairs, while I could hear old man Tooter rattling several bottles at
the other end of the cellar, and talking to himself the while.
"Let's see: Here's the beautiful Amontillado wine from that lovely
Spain that gave me my Teresa," muttered the aged dotard.
Then I heard the sound of something gurgling in his throat, evidently
the Spanish wine that he had poured out, as there was always a good
supply of glasses alongside the wine-bins.
"Now where in thunder did I put that diamond cuff-button?" came the
voice of Tooter again, while I sat still on the top step of the
cellar-stairs, just inside the door, from which point I could see the
tip of Holmes's long, lean, aquiline nose peering out from behind the
barrel below me.
"It isn't under the Muenchener barrel,--it must be under the
Dortmunder," continued Tooter to himself, as I heard him laboriously
heave over the barrel and paw around on the cement floor under it, in
the space between the head of the barrel and the raised ends of the
staves, "Ah! here it is,--the cute little diamond that that nutty
George has been after, which I have been keeping since last Monday to
oblige a fellow-sport, Billie Budd, but which I have decided must be
taken out of the vulgar crude cuff-button and reset in an engagement
ring for Teresa, since she is so dippy after historical relics!"
Then I heard a long-drawn sigh of relief, as Tooter drew himself a
foaming stein-ful of the Dortmunder beer.
In a minute more he started back toward the stairs, and as he passed
the barrel there at the foot of the stairs, Holmes suddenly jumped out
and grabbed him with both hands, seizing the diamond cuff-button from
him at the same instant.
"Ah! I've got you now, old wine-bibber! old diamond-thief! Look thou
not upon the German beer when it is light yellow, or it shall surely
get thee, sooner or later!" shouted Holmes in triumph, while Tooter
was so surprised and scared he could hardly speak. "Watson, you can
unlock the door up there now, and we'll proceed to the Earl's usual
place of business and disburse unto him his tenth stolen cuff-button.
You fooled me all right yesterday morning, Tooter, but,--by the
brainless cranium of Barnabas Letstrayed, I've certainly got the goods
on you now!"
I unlocked the cellar-door and stepped out into the kitchen, where the
French and Russian pancake-tossers stared in astonishment as Hemlock
Holmes came marching up the cellar-stairs with a firm hand on Uncle
Tooter's shoulder, and then columned left in a parade through the
dining-room on the way to the library.
"At-ten-_shun_!" called out my partner. "Present cuff-button! Salute!
Most noble Earl of Puddingham, here is your tenth and second last
stolen gem!"
Thereupon Holmes laid the glittering thing in the Earl's hand, while
that worthy fell back weakly in his chair and stammered:
"What? Is Uncle Tooter guilty too? Ye gods and little fishes! Up to
the very last I had hoped that none of the disgrace of this robbery
would rest upon his sturdy shoulders, but now I see that it has,
anyhow. And I suppose he claims that Billie Budd made him do it,
against his better nature, like all the other simps you have jerked
up, eh?"
"Yes, Billie Budd was in on this too," replied Holmes, as he
carelessly lit another coffin-nail and turning around, calmly blew the
smoke in the face of Thorneycroft, who had just come in; "but the old
gent didn't have to tell me that. I overheard him conversing to
himself about it down in your worshipful wine-cellar, where he had the
cuff-button hidden under a beer-barrel. If Tooter ever expects to get
along well in the diamond-swiping business, he will certainly have to
cut out the highly reprehensible habit of talking to himself,
particularly when somebody else might be listening. I guess that's
all, Earl, for the present, although if I were you I would keep these
ten recovered cuff-buttons in some safer place than that dinky little
jewel cabinet on your dresser, since a little bird recently informed
me that the desperate William X. Budd, the author of all these
atrocities, is about to visit Normanstow Towers to-morrow morning, and
attempt to carry them all off for good. Be advised in time now,
George."
And Holmes quietly pushed Uncle Tooter into a Turkish rocker back of
him, and walked serenely out of the room, his cocky old head in the
air, and with me trailing humbly along behind him, because it had
become the usual thing with me.
"Watson," said he, when he had led me out through a side entrance onto
the noble castle lawn, "something tells me that we should take a
little stroll around these lovely flower-beds that Herr Blumenroth has
been so assiduously taking care of. See, there's the old boy now,
kneeling down by that geranium bed over there, while his bone-headed
assistant, Demetrius What's-his-name, wheels the barrowful of
fertilizer down from the shed behind the stables. Let's go over."
We joined the elderly and phlegmatic gardener, and after joshing him a
little about the beauty of the plants he was growing, Holmes began to
ask him some leading questions about whether Lord Launcelot hadn't
been loafing around the flower-beds on the previous Easter Monday at a
time when he naturally would be expected to be up in the billiard
room, shooting his head off at his favorite indoor game.
Heinrich was not at all backward about informing on the Earl's junior
brother, and I gathered from his very frank remarks that he, Heinrich,
did not hold a very high opinion of the said Launcelot's intellectual
abilities. It seems that the latter had been loafing around Blumenroth
most of the day Monday, and several times the gardener had caught him
monkeying with his trowel, trying to dig up one of the flower-beds in
a very unscientific manner, which same monkeying had greatly
exacerbated Heinrich's none too admirable temper.
"It looked as if he was trying to hide something under the ground, Mr.
Holmes, like a dog burying a bone," said the gardener to us; "and
after he had kept it up awhile, interfering with my work all the time,
I could stand it no longer and told him loudly to beat it, which he
did. As soon as he was gone, I quickly turned over all the earth in
the flower-bed with my trowel, but couldn't find a thing, so I suppose
the simp must have taken it away with him, whatever it was."
"Not caring at all whether it was one of the diamond cuff-buttons we
have been after or not, eh? My, but aren't you the independent cuss,
Heinie? Why didn't you tell me this last Tuesday morning, when I
interrogated you, among all the servants, huh?"
"Because you simply asked me then what I knew about the stolen
diamonds, and I told you quite truthfully that I didn't know who stole
them, though I might have added, just as truthfully, that I didn't
care a darn _who_ stole them! Sufficient unto the job is the regular
labor thereof, without helping quasi-detectives from London to do
their work for them. I'm being paid by the Earl to take care of the
gardens, and that only; while you're the guy that he's paying to find
his cussed old cuff-buttons for him. I wouldn't give a nickel for the
whole lot of them, anyhow!"
And the gardener calmly turned his back on us, and went ahead with his
spading up, while Demetrius spread the fertilizer.
"Gosh, that guy takes my breath away, he's so fresh! But then, we've
got all the information out of him that we need, so come along,
Watson."
Holmes then led me back to the castle, where we entered and proceeded
along till we met Lord Launcelot idly fingering the keys of the piano
in the music-room.
"Ah, good afternoon, Your Lordship," said Holmes suavely, as we
entered the room and Launcelot faced about on the piano-stool toward
us. "This thing called music is indeed a delightful surcease from the
dull cares of the day, but finer still would be the resolution in
young men of noble lineage to keep their lily-white hands off of
property that is not listed on the tax-duplicate in their name, and to
refrain from dishonest and secret contact with uncouth crooks from
Australia, who induce them to forget their family pride and to conceal
valuable gems from the eye of the law! In other words, to come right
down to brass tacks, you stole one of the diamond cuff-buttons,--gol
darn it!--and I want you to hand it back to me before I become so
brutal as to seize you and take it away from you!"
Launcelot, however, did not avow his probable guilt so readily as his
brother's revered uncle-in-law had done, but laughed right in Holmes's
face as the latter concluded his little speech of accusation.
"Why, you old false alarm you,--do you think for a minute that you can
bluff me like that? I didn't take any of the cuff-buttons. Go on and
guess again. Maybe the cat took 'em, or maybe George walked in his
sleep and threw them away down the road!" said he.
But his pleasantry was lost on Hemlock Holmes, who advanced a step
toward him and, in menacing tones, demanded the instant return of the
final cuff-button. At this point the door from the corridor opened,
and old Uncle Tooter came in, without any present contrition for his
recently confessed share in the robbery showing in his face.
"What's this stiff of a Holmes trying to hand you now, Launcie my
boy?" he inquired, as Holmes turned and faced him angrily at the
interruption and I held myself ready for an emergency.
"Why, the old magnifying-glass-peeker says that I stole one of the
Earl's cuff-buttons! Wouldn't that frost you? I've been trying to get
it into his head that he's struck a snag here, but he can't see it
that way," replied Launcelot, rising from the piano-stool and brushing
off his trouser-legs.
"Well, he'll have to, anyhow--that's all," said Tooter, and he added,
as he grabbed Holmes around the body with both arms: "Run like h----
now, Launcie, and I'll hold him until you're safe!"
Launcelot instantly ran out of the room at top speed, while Holmes and
Tooter wrestled around for a moment; then the former jerked himself
away and chased out into the corridor after me, and up the stairway,
where I had started to pursue the recreant Launcelot.
"Here, get out of the way, Watson, and let somebody run that _can_
run!" he yelled, as he overtook me, legging it up four steps at a
time.
The two of us then chased Launcelot up flight after flight of the
green-carpeted stairs, to the second, third, fourth, and fifth
stories, while I nearly lost my breath as we came to the fifth and top
floor and saw Launcelot disappearing through a trapdoor leading to the
castle roof. Up the narrow little wooden ladder we bounced after him,
through the trapdoor, and out onto the broad spreading roof of the
ancient and venerable Normanstow Towers.
"Oh, gee! first down in the cellar, and then up on the roof! This
detective business is getting my goat!" I panted, leaning against a
chimney-top where I stood gasping for breath, while the indomitable
Holmes pursued the fleeing Launcelot across the stone roof to the
opposite side, and there cornered him finally in an angle formed by
the battlemented wall surrounding the roof and a small tower about ten
feet in diameter at its edge.
Launcelot was squeezed up against the gray stone embrasure at that
place by Holmes, who quickly forced the eleventh and last diamond
cuff-button out of his nerveless grasp, then turned triumphantly to
me, his faithful but out-of-breath squire, while the spring breezes
ruffled the sparse hair on his uncovered head, and the gentle
afternoon sun shone down on as queer a scene as had ever taken place
during our association,--crying:
"Well, here we are at last, Watson. We've got each and every one of
the Earl's diamonds now, and our labors are over, with a large part of
County Surrey as the smiling audience for the finale of our little
detective drama, as we stand up here sixty feet or more above the
ground! Now let's go down and acquaint His Honor the Earl with the
glad tidings before the wind blows all my hair off!"
He led the way back to the trapdoor, and down through it to the
stairs, with Lord Launcelot following after us like a whipped cur.