The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons

"I have a motive for doing this, Earl," whispered Holmes to the latter, as the rest of the party reluctantly followed us, "which I will let you in on later."

I consented to be hauled around over the drenched grass by my domineering partner, as I knew from long experience that he was liable to do almost anything while on a mystery-hunt, and I accordingly kept my mouth closed. Billie Budd had his hat knocked off by a low-hanging limb of a tree that we passed under, and he let out a few choice Australian cuss-words that he had learned at the Ballarat gold mines, as he scowled at Hemlock Holmes, the author of this unaccountable promenade in the wet grass.

"Say, what do you think you're doing, anyhow, Mr. Smart-Alec from London, – adopting the Kneipp cure?" he growled.

"Don't you worry, Budd old boy, maybe I'll find the lost diamond cuff-buttons out here in the grass. The robbers may have dropped them here as they fled," answered Holmes smilingly, as he slapped the Earl on the back.

"Yes, and, then, again, they may not. I'll just bet you a five-pound note, Holmes, that you don't recover a single one of the eleven cuff-buttons to-day," said Budd.

"Done!" shouted my partner. "Doc Watson, you hold the stakes," he added, turning to me; "here's my five."

"And here's my five," said Budd, with a smile, as he handed me a five-pound note to match Holmes's.

"That's it. I'm always the goat," I grumbled, as I shoved the kale in my pocket. "Here I am with the responsibility of keeping ten pounds of other people's money safely, while Holmes cops all the limelight!"

"Cheer up, Watson, old boy," said Holmes. "Here, – have a cigarette! Now, I think we've seen about enough of this lovely Puddingham lawn," he added as he calmly surveyed the wide green expanse that stretched for four hundred feet out from the front of the castle to the road and for three hundred feet on each side of the massive pile, dotted here and there with trees and incipient flower-beds, on the latter of which Heinrich Blumenroth had been exercising his skill, planting spring flowers. "So I guess we'll go back inside, and consider the case of the lost jewels further," continued Holmes.

And the whole nine of us obligingly trudged after him like sheep after the bellwether, and reëntered the castle.

It was now after eleven o'clock, and nothing in the shape of a diamond cuff-button had turned up yet, but I was not surprised, because I knew that Hemlock Holmes had not yet put in his best licks, – that is to say, had not yet pulled off any of his deepest cogitations and deductions. Just as I happened to see him slipping his little old cocaine-squirter back in his pocket after a surreptitious shot in the arm (while our party was entering the drawing-room on the left side of the front corridor), Lord Launcelot evidently thought it incumbent upon him to kid Holmes for the lack of results so far; but he hadn't spoken more than a few words of his would-be witty remarks when Holmes turned and barked at him like a terrier.

"Say, you, lord or no lord, you'll have to chop out the funny remarks on my method of handling this case, or else I'll drop the whole thing right here," he flung at the surprised Launcelot. "I can't stand this eternal butting-in while I'm trying to think!"

The Earl warned Launcelot to cease the comedy, and then Holmes motioned all of them except me out of the room, saying that he had some deep thought on hand that would take up at least two hours, and that we shouldn't be called to luncheon until a quarter after one. My stomach rebelled at this, but my head knew better than to oppose the old boy when he had a thought-tantrum on.

Billie Hicks, – he from Canada, – was the last one to go, and as he was leaving he hurled this Parthian shot at Holmes:

"Now go ahead and try to think, Holmes. Maybe you'll succeed in the attempt!"

Holmes threw a book at him, which narrowly missed Hicks as he banged the door shut behind him, and my partner immediately locked the door, put the key in his pocket, pulled a couple of cushions off a couch, placed them on the piano, perched himself up on top of the improvised seat, with his feet on the ivory keys, and then calmly proceeded to fill his well-worn pipe with some of that strong-smelling shag tobacco that he generally used when he started a meditation, or pipe-dream, just as you prefer to call it.

I knew what was coming, so I opened one of the windows all the way up, to let out the terrific fumes of the uncivilized stuff that he smoked, while he curled himself up comfortably in his strange position on top of the piano, with his chin resting on one hand, and his elbow on some sheet-music, and then smoked away like a steam-engine, as immovable as a bronze statue, while he thought and pondered and meditated, and then thought some more, about the stolen diamond cuff-buttons, – with me all the time sitting on the couch like a bump on a log, trying my best to figure out the conflicting testimony advanced by the fourteen different servants and the seven other persons.

Time rolled on, and the clock on the marble mantel struck half-past eleven, – twelve, – half-past twelve, – one, – and at length came to a quarter past one, while I couldn't dope out who swiped the cuff-buttons to save my neck!

"I've got it!" shouted Holmes suddenly, as he jumped off the piano, scattering the sheet-music right and left, and paced up and down in front of the mantel, while I heaved a sigh of relief.

"Time for luncheon, ain't it, Holmesy, old boy?" I questioned.

"Yes. Sure, Watson. I'm hungry, too, after all that heavy thought. We'll go in and have luncheon now, and then we'll get some swift action."

Thereupon Holmes led the way to the dining-room, where the others awaited us.

And so we did get some swift action, but not exactly what Holmes had expected, sad to relate. To all adroit inquiries on the part of the Earl as to what he had deduced, Holmes returned a smiling and evasive answer during the elaborate luncheon, which proceeded to the end, – when the finger-bowls were brought on, – without untoward incident.

As my partner deftly massaged his long tapering digits in the perfumed water, he leaned over and whispered to Inspector Letstrayed, who sat next to him. Letstrayed's eyes bulged out, and Holmes then arose, pushed his chair back, inserted his left thumb in the left armhole of his vest, expanded his chest, cleared his throat, and pointed his right fore-finger dramatically at Billie Budd at the other end of the table, as he said:

"Inspector Letstrayed, do your duty! There stands the guilty wretch!"

Chapter VIII

As Holmes finished, the man from Scotland Yard quietly got up, also cleared his throat, waddled around the table in a very pompous manner, placed his fat left hand on Budd's shoulder, and said solemnly, in that sepulchral tone of voice that he generally adopted for such occasions:

"William X. Budd, it now becomes my painful duty to arrest you in the Queen's name – er, no, I mean the King's (that's right, old Vic is dead now), – to arrest you in the King's name for the following high crimes and misdemeanors, contrary to the statutes made and in such cases provided, to wit: Burglary, Robbery, Conspiracy, Assault and Battery, and Attempted Murder! It is also my duty to inform you that anything you may say will be used against you, as usual, you know! Now come with me quietly!"

"Aw, what the Sam Hill are you giving us, you old dub? I never did anything to you to have you call me names like that!" shouted Budd, and he instantly wrenched himself loose from Letstrayed's none too muscular grasp, and ran at top speed out of the room and down the long corridor outside, upsetting the contents of his finger-bowl all over the leather seat of his fancy chair.

The Countess promptly had hysterics, and then fainted in the arms of her gaping brother-in-law, Lord Launcelot, while everybody else, except Holmes, myself, and the Earl, grew red and white by turns; and Uncle Tooter, in attempting to arise suddenly, fell out of his chair and tumbled on the floor in a very undignified manner.

"Holy smoke! Don't let him get away like that, you pack of rummies! Get up and chase him!" shouted Holmes in great excitement, as he pulled a revolver out of his hip-pocket and dashed madly out of the room after the fleeing and recreant Budd, while the rest of us, galvanized back to life by the sudden developments, took after the great detective down the corridor, in the way that they generally do in the movies, all hollering: "Stop – thief!" at the top of our voices.

Bang! Bang! Holmes shot twice at Budd, but the bullets went wild, and we all continued the chase through the kitchen, down the rear stairway, and out through the wide gardens between the castle and the stables, while Louis La Violette, the French cook, cursed us volubly in his best Parisian for disturbing him.

Budd was a pretty good runner, so he was about a hundred feet ahead of us when Holmes dashed up to the open front door of the Earl's great stone stable-building. He took another shot at Budd as the latter fled up the stairs to the hay-loft, and then disappeared suddenly, thus frightening the eight horses in their stalls at the rear, who neighed loudly, while Holmes and the rest of us piled up the stairs after him, like a pack of dogs after a rabbit!

When we got up to the loft we found that it covered the entire upper floor of the building; was at least two hundred feet long by a hundred and fifty feet wide, and except for a small space just around the head of the stairs, was filled up eight feet deep with odorous hay and piles of straw.

Of course, not a trace of that scoundrel Budd was to be seen. He was evidently somewhere under the hay, because the shuttered windows were too high up for him to have made his escape through them in the short time that had elapsed; and the pigeons that roosted around on the rafters cooed their darned heads off just as if they didn't know that a desperate crook was concealed somewhere beneath the wide-spreading piles of hay.

Holmes ground his teeth with rage as he recognized his temporary defeat by the resourceful guy from Australia, and it was a good thing the Countess was still back in the castle being assisted out of her fainting-spell by her Spanish maid Teresa, because the language that Hemlock Holmes used as he called down imprecations on the head of the hay-hidden Budd was frightful to hear!

"Gol darn it!" he said, when he had somewhat recovered his usual equanimity; "this is certainly the first and only time in my life that I've been held up and stalled by such a common thing as a load of hay! What in thunder did you ever get in such an enormous lot of the darned stuff for, anyhow?" he demanded, turning to the Earl. "I should think there was enough hay in here to feed a regiment of horses for three years!"

"Well, you don't need to take it out on me, Holmes," returned the Earl with some asperity. "How could I foresee that some one would steal my cuff-buttons and then run up here and hide in the hay? I bought the hay two months ago, when prices were lower than they are now, so I got a lot of it, anticipating the rise in prices that has followed since then; and I also bought a large lot of corn, oats, bran, and so on, which I keep downstairs. You're getting to be rather unreasonable, don't you think?"

Holmes didn't reply, but stood there contemplating the great piles of hay and straw in silent wrath, while the hidden Budd was probably smiling to himself somewhere underneath. Lord Launcelot, who was watching the chagrined expression on Holmes's face, leaned back against the wall and said:

"Oh, Gee! I have to laugh! This is the funniest thing I've seen for a long time!"

"It is, eh?" shouted Holmes, dashing at Launcelot. "Now, you beat it! You've been warned before not to interrupt while I'm thinking."

And he grabbed Launcelot by the arm and hustled him down the stairs, then returned and faced the Earl.

"Well, it would certainly be an endless job to try to dig Budd out of all this hay, Your Lordship," he said, "so we'll adopt some strategy, and starve him out. We'll have Inspector Letstrayed watch the loft here at the head of the stairs, as I see this is the only way out, have his dinner brought to him this evening, while he stands guard, and then I'll stand guard through the night, for I can keep awake better than Fatty can. Then we'll keep up the sentinel business all day to-morrow, if necessary, Letstrayed and I relieving each other, till we finally force that robber to come out and beg for food, – when we'll nab him! How does that sound for a scheme?"

"It listens well, Holmes, – that is, if Letstrayed doesn't make a mess of it," said the Earl musingly.

"Woe to him if he does, I can tell you." And Holmes glared at the obese inspector, who sat on the top step trying to get his breath back after the hard race out from the castle. "But then, I don't see how he can. Right here is the only place where Budd could get out, and I'll give Letstrayed my revolver to use instead of his own, since mine is a little bit quicker on the trigger. Here, Barney," he added as he turned to the Inspector, "take my six-shooter, and I'll take yours. Now see that you don't spill the beans, like you've done before, and stand guard faithfully this afternoon till six o'clock, when we'll bring your dinner out to you, and if William X. Budd tries to break away from under the horse-feed, why, you know what to do with your little cannon there!"

"Well, all right, fellows, I'll be the goat if you'll send down to the village and telegraph in to headquarters in London now, telling them where I am. Say, Earl, haven't you got a pack of cigarettes about your person that isn't working?" asked Letstrayed, as he took up his station on a particularly soft pile of hay nearby, and stretched his fat legs over it comfortably.

"What! Smoke cigarettes up here in the hay, and burn down my ancestral stables for me!" shouted the Earl in surprise. "Good night! You've got about as much brains as Holmes says you have, Letstrayed. But here, I realize that it'll be pretty lonesome up here watching for a hidden crook with nobody but a lot of pigeons for company, so you can take this package of fine-cut, and chew to your heart's content. Good-by, now."

Barnabas took the proffered pack of chewing tobacco, and sighed deeply.

"Well, good-by. If you hear any shooting, you'll know it's me," he said, as he took a big mouthful of the fine-cut.

And so we left him to his afternoon vigil, after Holmes had taken a look at the bulldog chained up near the horses downstairs, – and returning to the castle we all entered the library, where the Earl called the butler, and said: