The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons

"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.

Chapter XVII

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.

Chapter XVIII

When we got down to the library, which seemed to be the Earl's usual hang-out, we found His Lordship sitting in a chair, with a book in his lap, but with his somewhat gloomy eyes gazing on the floor, and old Uncle Tooter, with his back turned to him, looking out of the window, as if they had just had a quarrel, – which was the case.

"Two o'clock on Thursday afternoon in Easter week and all is well, Your Lordship!" said Holmes triumphantly, with a smile over his mobile face that spread from ear to ear as he advanced and politely tendered the final diamond cuff-button to the Earl. "I have now the very great pleasure of presenting you with the last remaining stolen heirloom of the ancient House of Puddingham, thus recovering all the articles stolen from you on Easter Sunday night and throughout Easter Monday, which recovery is due to my herculean efforts, ably assisted from time to time by my old side-kicker, Doctor Watson. The only thing now remaining to be done is to seize Billie Budd when he comes up here in disguise to-morrow morning, and ship him into London with a ball and chain around his ankles."

The Earl arose and feelingly congratulated Holmes on the recovery of the gems, shaking hands with him warmly, and added:

"You will pardon me for not seeming more enthused over the event than I am, but Uncle Tooter and I have just had some words, the result of which is that he will leave this castle Friday afternoon with his bride-to-be, Teresa Olivano; and my six good pairs of diamond cuff-buttons will be sent in by express to the Bank of England, there to be placed in an iron-bound, steel-doored safety deposit vault, where no Billie Budds can break in and hypothecate them!"

"Yes, that's right," said Tooter, facing around in Holmes's direction; "and I can add that I am darned glad that I am not to be shadowed and dogged around by such a long-legged piece of impudence as you any longer. If a gentleman decides to play a trick on his nephew-in-law by hiding a worthless bauble for a few days, it's none of your business, and he should not be treated as if he was a hardened criminal for it. I am worth eight million pounds, and I don't have to take your sass, or the Earl's either, if I don't feel like it."

And the speaker cleared his throat and looked defiantly at me, as if I were responsible for all of Holmes's actions.