The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons Part 14

The voice grew inaudible to me as Holmes bent down and whispered the name into the Earl's ears.

At the shock of the revelation the Earl slid down in his chair until he seemed to be sitting on his shoulder-blades, feebly put one hand up to his brow, and exclaimed:

"What? My wife? Good Heavens! I say there, Harrigan, you may pour me out a gla.s.s of wine,--I mean a stiff bracer of brandy!"

In a moment the butler came running in with a bottle of the fire-water, and poured out a gla.s.s of it for the Earl, who grabbed it, and downed it at one gulp, then said:

"Now I feel somewhat restored, Holmes. Tell me how on earth you found out that she took it."

My marvelous partner told the gaping quintette,--composed of the Earl, Tooter, Thorneycroft, Launcelot, and Hicks,--how he had pried the third cuff-b.u.t.ton out of Her Ladys.h.i.+p, and when he had finished the Earl rang for Donald MacTavish, the second footman, and sent him after the Countess. In a few minutes, Scotty had bowed the mistress of the castle into our presence, and she stood in the doorway, very cold and reserved.

"Well, Annabelle, what have you got to say for yourself?" demanded the Earl. "I've been robbed by my coachman, robbed by my secretary, and now, by thunder, I've even been robbed by my wife! And Holmes says that you claim that William X. Budd of Australia put you up to it! How about it, eh?"

"Well, George, you know I never did like those diamond cuff-b.u.t.tons, and when Billie Budd came to me Monday morning with one of them, I thought it would be a good chance to play a trick on you. I didn't know that the others were going to be stolen too, and I thought you would have enough left. You have any number of regular pearl cuff-links, anyhow, that can be worn to society functions, and not as if you were an end-man in a minstrel show, which is all that those big, glaring diamond things are fit for! Mr. Holmes told me he had replaced all the shoes that disappeared last night, as he took them for the purpose of finding out where the stolen cuff-b.u.t.tons were by his peculiar hocus-pocus methods, so you can't accuse me of having taken them too. I found _my_ pair of shoes in a corner of my room when I returned there after breakfast. Now will you forgive me? Billie Budd is gone, so I don't suppose there will be any further trouble," the Countess concluded, gazing appealingly at her husband.

The others all looked up with surprise as she mentioned the return of the shoes, and then turned their eyes toward Holmes with mixed admiration and perplexity, while the Earl replied:

"Well, you may thank your lucky stars, Annabelle, that I am such an easy-going fellow as I am known to be, or else high life in London would be aroused by gossip of another divorce. I'll forgive you; but don't let it happen again."

"All right, George, thank you; but I still think that Launcelot is responsible for the disappearance of the other eight cuff-b.u.t.tons."

With which Parthian shot, the Countess of Puddingham left the room.

"Still got it in for Brother Launcie, eh?" grinned Holmes, as the Earl put the third gem in his vest-pocket. "Look here, I want to know the reason for this prejudice on her part."

"Well, I don't mind telling you," returned the Earl with a smile, as the accused Launcelot got very embarra.s.sed. "My brother was greatly opposed to my marrying Annabelle, for social reasons, because of her proximity to the tea and spice business,--as I suppose you have become aware,--so naturally after we were married she hasn't looked on him with very much favor, to say the least. But _ich kebibble_," he added, as he straightened up in his chair.

"We've got back three out of the lost eleven gems, anyhow, so we'll all go down to the wine-cellar, and celebrate a little. Thorneycroft, I guess we have all those bills audited for payment, and checks made out for them, so I'll declare a holiday for you, and invite you down to share the drinks, since you didn't steal the third gem. Come along, gentlemen."

To which invitation we all responded by following the genial Earl down the corridor, through the kitchen,--where Louis and Ivan were quarreling about something or other, as usual,--and down the cellar-stairs to that mysterious region where Harrigan the butler held forth.

CHAPTER XIV

"Well, what'll you have, gentlemen?" asked Joseph the butler, always appearing at just the right moment. "We have Chateau Margaux, Chambertin, Beaune, Veuve Clicquot, Pommery, Amontillado, Chianti, Johannisberger, Tokay, and a number of others in the wines; Muenchener, Culmbacher, and Dortmunder in the imported beers; Coleraine whiskey, and----"

"Say, hold on a minute, till I get my breath, will you?" pleaded Holmes. "I think you may crack me a bottle of that Tokay over there. I have a weakness for the Hungarian wine."

Harrigan administered the Tokay to Holmes, and then turned to me:

"What'll you have, Doctor Watson?"

"Well, they all look alike to me," I replied, as I stood there rubbing my chin and sizing up the immense array of wet goods in bottles and casks that stretched along this part of the cellar,--on shelves and on the cement floor; "I guess I'll take a little of each."

"Shame on you, Doc, both for your indiscriminate taste and your too great thirst," chided Holmes, as everybody else laughed.

Harrigan was kept busy for a while uncorking and pouring out the libations, while we all drank to the recovery of the three cuff-b.u.t.tons, and wished the old boy from Baker Street good luck in getting back the rest of them.

Uncle Tooter was just lifting up a gla.s.s of madeira to propose a new toast, when all of a sudden there came a terrible noise from the kitchen above us, a clatter of pots and pans, the overturning of a table, and the sound of angry voices.

"I guess Louis and Ivan must be breaking up housekeeping. Let's go up and see what the difficulty is," said the Earl.

And we all beat it upstairs to the kitchen. Arriving there, we found that the excitable French chef had treed his Russian a.s.sistant on top of a tall cupboard that ran along one side of the room, while various kitchen utensils strewn over the floor testified to a preliminary skirmish. As we entered the door leading from the cellar stairs Ivan jumped down and ran out the rear door, while La Violette grabbed up a butcher-knife from a table and gave chase to him.

"For the love of Mike, now what?" exclaimed Holmes.

Following our leader we piled out the rear door after the two cooks.

Running down the flight of stone steps to the rear lawn, the two started a grand chase along the brick walk leading to the stables; but Holmes's long legs were too much for them, and in a trice he had captured Louis and disarmed him, while Ivan hid behind a tree.

Blumenroth, the gardener, digging up a flower-bed with a trowel nearby, put down his implement, and stared at the two cooks sardonically.

"O that miserable barbarian! I'll kill him yet!" shouted the enraged Louis, as we gathered round him. "He had the audacity to take my very best kettle to boil onions in, after I had told him repeatedly not to do so. I hate onions, anyhow; and besides, I was just going to use that kettle to prepare some peas in!"

"Oh, is that all? I thought maybe he tried to murder you," ventured Holmes, coolly testing the edge of the butcher-knife with his finger.

"Is that all? I should think it was enough," cried Louis. "What are you doing with Luigi's clothes on, by the way? Don't think that such a ridiculous disguise could fool _me_."

"Far be it from me to attempt to put over anything on such an astute person as yourself," replied Holmes suavely, while his observant eyes caught every movement of the recreant Galetchkoff, who dodged behind the tree every time the great detective looked in that direction. "Do you think it probable that your friend Ivan could be implicated in the theft of the diamond cuff-b.u.t.tons, in addition to his crime with the onions?"

"Mr. Holmes," replied Louis earnestly, "that fellow Ivan is capable of anything. If I were you I'd search him right now. I remember now that I saw him put something back in his pocket very hastily a little while ago, when we were in the kitchen,--and he noticed me looking at him."

"Hum, this sounds interesting," muttered Holmes musingly. Then he called aloud: "Ivan, come over here, and Louis will forgive you for spoiling his best kettle with onions!"

The unsuspecting Ivan joined our little group there near an apple tree, about halfway from the castle to the stables; and Holmes instantly pulled out his revolver, covered him with it, and bade me search him.

I did so, and in the Russian's hip pocket found the fourth cuff-b.u.t.ton, glistening and s.h.i.+ning as brilliantly as ever!

"Well, here you are, Holmes," I said, handing it to him. "This one was found in between finds, I guess."

The seven of us collared Ivan immediately, and I feared the Earl was about to do him bodily harm, when Holmes interposed with a plea for leniency, and for permission to let the a.s.sistant cook tell his story.

"That man William Budd, he took the cuff-b.u.t.ton, and he gave it to me to hide for him," claimed Ivan; "so I am not the original thief; and I don't know a thing about the others."

The Earl eyed his second hash-mixer sardonically, while we gathered round him there under the apple tree, and said with a snort: "This stuff about Billie Budd and not yourself being the culprit is getting to be kind of a chestnut. You're the fourth person who has handed in that alibi so far, and I guess the Australian sport didn't have to get down on his knees to make you keep the stolen cuff-b.u.t.ton for him, either. But inasmuch as the gem has been recovered in good condition, I suppose I can let you off, instead of having Monsieur La Violette chop you up for Hamburg steak,--a fate you richly deserve. Now beat it back into the kitchen, and don't let your boss there catch you using his favorite kettles again, to say nothing of keeping your hands off the ancestral cuff-b.u.t.tons."

Ivan was released and Heinie Blumenroth went back to his gardening disgustedly; while we returned to the wine-cellar for a few more drinks, while the Earl lovingly patted his vest-pocket, where he had stowed away the four gems, all recovered that morning by my lucky as well as resourceful partner.

It was now half-past ten, and after we had helped to decrease for a quarter of an hour longer the visible supply of vinous, malt, and spirituous liquors in Normanstow Towers, Holmes suggested we go up to the fourth floor and shoot a few games of pool before luncheon.

Everybody readily agreed, and in a little while we were engaged in a game up there in the s.p.a.cious billiard room, Letstrayed evidently having wandered away from his sleeping-quarters on top of one of the tables. Holmes "bust," and put three b.a.l.l.s in the pockets. As he reached into the third pocket to take out the pool-ball, his jaw dropped, and his face showed great surprise.

"Well, what do you know about that, fellows! Darned if here ain't the fifth diamond cuff-b.u.t.ton!" And he held it up to view. "Now how in Tophet did that get into a pocket of the pool-table? I must freely confess that I hadn't expected it. Wait a moment, here comes somebody along the corridor."

In a minute more, the reddened and anxious face of Egbert Bunbury, the first footman, appeared in the doorway.

"Well, what's on your mind, Eggie? Nothing but hair, as usual!"

inquired Holmes, as sarcastic as ever.