The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons Part 16

"Yes, yes, I know that already," I hastened to say; "but what about your seizing Galetchkoff, Bunbury, and Xanthopoulos? You didn't seem to have any shoe-sole clues by which to follow there."

"Doc, when I can't get 'em any other way I pull off my feminine intuition, which I have inherited in large measure from my French mother, and I can always run 'em down with that! Now when we were chasing that Russian hash-mixer or biscuit-shooter out of the kitchen door closely pursued by Louis with the butcher-knife, your old Uncle Hemlock's intuition told him that there was another one of the guilty wretches who had cabbaged the cuff-b.u.t.tons! Similarly with the egregious Egbert when he put his retreating forehead in at the door of the billiard-room, just after I had picked the fifth diamond treasure out of the pool-table pocket; and also with the Mephistophelian valet Luigi, when I decided to pull the strong-arm stuff on him and search him for a note from an accomplice. Little old Intuition,--with a capital I,--told me that they were the ginks I was after."

And the accomplished old poser calmly whittled away at the sliver of wood in his hand.

"Aw, come off!" I replied. "I really thought you could hand me something more plausible than that, Holmes. Unquestionably you do show flashes of genius sometimes in recovering articles or in spotting criminals guilty of murder and so on, but at other times you're simply playing to blind, dumb luck, only your vanity is so enormous that you won't admit it. You want everybody to believe that you dope out all your problems with that wonderful deductive reasoning power that you get from injecting 'c.o.ke' into your arm, and sitting still with a pipe in your mouth! 'Intuition,' my eye! You might be able to tell that to Barney Letstrayed, but you can't tell it to me!"

And I disgustedly threw away another little sliver of wood I had picked off the tree-trunk.

Holmes merely laughed and said:

"I guess you're simply sore because I dumped you into the creek accidentally yesterday, Doc. The old saying has it that no man is a hero to his valet, but I guess I'm not a hero to my physician either.

Cheer up though, Watson; when we get back to the little old rooms in Baker Street after this cuff-b.u.t.ton fever is over, why I'll split up with you fifty-fifty on the reward I get from the Earl. How's that, eh?"

"Pretty good, I guess. But I would like some information on your deductions from the remaining four pairs of shoes,--Tooter's, Hicks's, Lord Launcelot's, and most important of all, Billie Budd's, the last of whom you publicly bawled out as a robber and thief at luncheon on Tuesday. How are you going to account for them,--huh?" I inquired.

"Now, Doc, you betray a reprehensible desire to antic.i.p.ate the prescience of the Almighty in thus seeking to ascertain the future while we are still in the present tense, similar to the people who go to call on fortune-tellers, and the girls who always read the last page of a novel first, to see how it comes out! But suffice it to say that I found both Pampango cigar ashes and the toilet-powder that the Earl uses on Budd's shoes; wine-stains on Uncle Tooter's shoes; flour on Hicks's shoes, and garden earth on Launcelot's shoes. I'll tell you more later."

Having given forth this cryptic information, Holmes arose, brushed off his trousers, and added that we'd better be getting back to the castle, or the Earl would be sending out a general alarm for us. And that's all I could possibly get out of him.

At the edge of the woods there was a considerable stretch of bare pebbly ground before we came to the rear lawn, and I stumbled over a fair-sized pebble, which gave me an idea.

"Holmes," I said, "I think I know the derivation of the name of the n.o.ble castle out in front there,--Normanstow Towers. You see they claim that the oldest part of the castle dates from the Norman Conquest, though the rest of it only goes back to about 1400, and if all these pebbles were here at the time of William the Norman, then this is the place where probably William the Norman stubbed his toe, as he was chasing around inspecting the castles he had set up to keep the Saxons in subjection, hence, Norman's toe,--Normanstow! How's that for etymology?"

"Watson, you ought to be shot for a joke like that,--darned if you oughtn't," replied Holmes with a smile.

We then continued our walk to the castle, where we turned in at the kitchen door at his request, all the rest of our party having reentered the castle by the front door.

"Now here is where I will have a difficult job ahead of me, handling the touchy and sensitive supervisor of this hash-foundry, Watson,"

Holmes remarked as we entered the kitchen and said "Good morning" to Louis La Violette the chef; "for I have good reason to believe that he knows where a certain party has hidden one of the remaining cuff-b.u.t.tons."

"Louis," he began, turning to that worthy, who was putting away the breakfast dishes, while Ivan, his a.s.sistant, sat in a corner picking out the stems from some hothouse strawberries; "I called to congratulate you on the uniform excellence of the repasts you have prepared since I have been an honored guest in this castle, and to say that I consider them absolutely Lucullan, not to say Apician, in their delicious sumptuousness. Here, have a cigarette on me." And Holmes politely proffered to the chef his silver cigarette case,--the one that the Sultan of Zanzibar had given him three years before as a reward on a certain case.

La Violette swelled up like a pouter pigeon on hearing this taffy from the great detective, and bowed profoundly, his black eyes gleaming, as he took a cigarette and lit it.

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes. I always endeavor to do my best in the culinary line, with the help of Monsieur Harrigan, who serves the wines at the end of the dinners I prepare," replied he.

"You are both geniuses in your line," agreed Holmes, as we settled down in a couple of kitchen chairs, and I listened while he tried to pull the chef's leg for some cuff-b.u.t.ton information; "and I can appreciate your cookery all the more, since I am half a fellow-country-man of yours. My mother was French, as Doctor Watson informed the world in one of my very first adventures."

"Ah! You don't say so! Why in the world didn't you tell me about it before? May I ask what your mother's maiden name was?" queried the pleased Louis.

"Le Sage. She was a direct descendant of the family of the great French author of the seventeenth century, Alain Rene Le Sage,"

answered Holmes.

"Well, well, well! I must treat on that," returned Louis, and he bustled around into the pantry, and got out a bottle of Bordeaux wine he had hidden there by the flour-bin for contingencies. "Here, just try some of this elegant wine from my native province of Guienne," he added, filling three gla.s.ses, which he offered one each to Holmes and myself.

"Fine, fine!" commended Holmes, as he smacked his lips. "By the way, Louis, what do you think about the four remaining diamond cuff-b.u.t.tons still floating around? I have reason to believe they are still inside the castle, and that Billie Budd did not get away with them."

Louis put down his gla.s.s, and regarded Holmes peculiarly.

"Those cuff-b.u.t.tons are not worrying me one single bit, and if I had taken any of the worthless gewgaws, which are hardly fit for a Latin Quarter masquerade ball, I would have a.s.suredly soon become ashamed of having them in my possession and have returned them to the Earl.

However," and Louis seemed to hesitate a moment, "if anybody else in Normanstow Towers still holds the gems, there is no telling what may happen to them. I wish I could help you find the things; but when a Canadian gentleman who tells you he is half French, and used to live in that beautiful city of Quebec, comes and--and----"

Here Louis happened to notice Holmes watching him narrowly, and instantly realizing the horrible break he had made, got terribly embarra.s.sed, and stammered out:

"Er, no, I mean, er--that is----"

But Holmes jumped up and didn't give him a chance to finish it.

"Ha, ha! The only Canadian in this neck of the woods is Mr. William Q.

Hicks, of Saskatoon. I knew before that he stole one of the cuff-b.u.t.tons, but now that you give yourself away and admit that _you_ know of his theft also, you are in duty bound to tell me where he has hidden the darned thing. Come, Monsieur La Violette, I am more French than Hicks is, as my mother was born in France itself, while his was just a French-Canadian; so come across with your confidence, and rest a.s.sured that I will not misplace it by ever telling Hicks that you informed on him. The deadly flour-marks on the soles of his shoes indicated to my eagle eye, ably a.s.sisted by the magnifying gla.s.s, that Hicks had been loafing around in the pantry; which could only mean that he was having confidential relations with you, since the guests of an earl, from a far-off country, do not commonly come down from the drawing-room and a.s.sociate with the chef in the pantry unless they have something very ulterior up their sleeve,--_n'est-ce pas_?"

Louis got more confused and embarra.s.sed than ever, and was about to make some kind of answer when Donald MacTavish appeared in the doorway leading from the cellar, wiping his lips, and with a fatuous grin on his face.

"Oh, Scotty, Scotty! I am sure you'll never get to be a member of the W. C. T. U. when you carry on like that," said Holmes, noticing the footman's caught-with-the-goods expression. "Down in the Earl's wine-cellar again, sampling 'em up, eh?"

The second footman bowed awkwardly, and was about to pa.s.s into the dining-room when Holmes caught the glint of something sparkling in his left hand.

CHAPTER XVI

"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-b.u.t.ton.

"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 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 a.s.sumed 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-b.u.t.tons 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-b.u.t.tons, 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 Louis, the chef, as a sign of what his friend Hicks could expect when Holmes the detective should collar him for the ninth cuff-b.u.t.ton, and then he and I accompanied the scared footman into the presence of the Earl.

"Well, now what?" inquired the n.o.ble 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 t.i.tus, or somebody, used to say:

"Count that day lost whose low descending sun Views from thy hand no diamond-capture done!"