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Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons

<h2 class="caps">Chapter XVI</h2> "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 [Pg 157] 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 [Pg 158] 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: <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> "Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no diamond-capture done!" </div> </div> "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 [Pg 159] 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 [Pg 160] 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 [Pg 161] 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 [Pg 162] 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 [Pg 163] 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 [Pg 164] 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. <hr class="chapbreak" /> [Pg 165] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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