The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons Part 3

"Just keep your shirt on, Mr. Budd," said the latter, as he locked the door of the Earl's room behind him and put the key in his pocket. "I'm running this show, not you. I was sent here to get results, and I'm going to get 'em,--see?"

"I guess the old cocaine is beginning to work on him again," I muttered.

Then I started with the gun to the rear door of the castle, while Holmes, after overawing the others, stationed himself at the front door, with another loaded and c.o.c.ked revolver in his hand.

After about fifteen minutes of tiresome waiting, while several of the servants peeped out at me from the rear rooms as I stood sentinel at the end of the corridor, just inside the great iron barred door, I heard Holmes's welcome shout from the front of the building:

"All right, Watson; the constables are here!"

In a moment a wooden-faced gink appeared, who said he had come to relieve me. I put the revolver in my pocket and rejoined Holmes in the drawing-room, where I found him with Lord Launcelot and the others.

"Well, boys, I've got four constables completely surrounding the castle now,--one on each side,--so we'll sit down to breakfast. It's nearly nine o'clock now."

And Holmes moved toward the dining-room.

"All right, old top," said Launcelot, smiling at the detective. "As long as George Arthur,--the Earl, you know,--is disabled or dead, I am the master of the house, and I'll back you up in everything you do."

"Even if I should happen to arrest you for stealing some of the cuff-b.u.t.tons yourself, eh?" queried Holmes with a grin, as we sat down to our delayed breakfast.

Launcelot sort of choked at this, stared at the speaker, and said:

"What queer things you _do_ get off, Mr. Holmes! Your idea of a joke, I suppose."

CHAPTER IV

The ever-smiling butler we had met the day before, whose spirits did not seem dampened by the tragedies that had lately occurred, moved around the table silently and quickly as he waited on us seven men partaking of breakfast, with a dead man in the other room.

As I watched them there, I noticed that the five habitues of the castle all seemed rather embarra.s.sed when Holmes looked at them, and would then look the other way, evidently on account of his brutal remark to the Earl's brother.

Harrigan had just brought me a second cup of coffee, holding it poised over the edge of the table, when the door opened, and His Lordship, the deceased Earl of Puddingham, walked in on us, looking very pale, with one hand pressed to his forehead.

I felt cold chills creep over me, as Harrigan dropped the cup of coffee crash-_splash_ on the floor, yelling:

"Good-night! A ghost!"

Every one else in the room was so surprised that he sat speechless, except Holmes. Billie Budd swallowed a peach-stone in his astonishment, and coughed and spluttered for quite a while.

"What, aren't you dead, George?" Launcelot finally managed to gasp, as the Earl walked over to his vacant chair at the head of the table and sat down in it.

"Why, no; of course not. You're a fine bunch of rumdums, though, I must say, to leave a man like that, after he's been a.s.saulted and robbed!" said the Earl, as he motioned to Harrigan to bring him some breakfast.

Holmes turned to me, with his customary irritating grin, and said: "Well, Doc; what did I tell you? Never count your coroner's fees before they're hatched!"

The Earl bade Harrigan summon one of the footmen and tell him to carry the news of his sudden return to life to the Countess in her room upstairs. Then he proceeded with his breakfast, just as much alive as ever.

"For the benefit of you who do not know, I will say that I have a very peculiar heart," he volunteered after a pause, "and it sometimes stops beating entirely for a while. All that I remember since I retired last night,--with my clothes on, after tossing off a few more gla.s.ses in the library,--was being awakened in the middle of the night by some one opening the door, darting over to me, and jerking the diamond cuff-b.u.t.ton out of my right cuff, which was on the side nearest the door, and my rising up out of bed to hit him a crack, when I was knocked unconscious in my struggles by the iron poker, which the intruder seized from the fireplace. He hit me on the forehead, and I didn't know anything more until just a moment ago, when I woke up with a headache, and only one cuff-b.u.t.ton left. If Mr. Holmes can lay hands on the unholy miscreant who is guilty of this and the previous outrages, he will have earned my everlasting grat.i.tude, also a reward of twenty thousand pounds,--double what I had Thorneycroft offer him yesterday."

"That sounds like business," said Holmes, as he jumped up, the Earl and all of us being finished by this time. "Watson, you can put it down in your little red notebook that at precisely"--here he glanced up at the ornate clock on the mantelpiece--"twenty minutes after nine, Tuesday morning, April the ninth, 1912, the burglar-hunt began; just exactly twenty-four hours, by the way, since we were first informed of the Earl's loss."

"All right, go to it, Holmes," said the Earl. "I guess you know how. I give you _carte blanche_ to go as far as you like."

We at once adjourned to the drawing-room, at the right side of the front of the first floor of the castle, and Hemlock Holmes issued his orders.

"Your Lordship, the first thing I will pull off is an examination of every one on the place,--your relatives, friends, servants and all,--no one is exempt. Your own story I have heard. Now, then----"

Here we were interrupted by the constable whom Holmes had set to guard the front of the castle, who came in and said:

"Hi beg pahdon, Mr. 'Olmes, but here is Inspector Bahnabas Letstrayed, just arrived from London, to see that everything is hall right."

"I don't see how it could be, when he ain't right himself!" snapped Holmes, with a frown, as the bulky form of our old friend in previous adventures loomed up in the doorway. "Well, come in, you old nuisance," he added, as he motioned him to one end of the room. "It's enough to make a man bite a piece out of the wall when he has to contend with two such rummies as you and Doc Watson around him, particularly when he has a job on hand that requires close and attentive brain-work."

Inspector Letstrayed removed his tweed cap and joined us over by the mantel, with a fatuous smile on his large face.

"As I was about to say, when Barnaby b.u.t.ted in, the first man who noticed any of the cuff-b.u.t.tons stolen, next to the Earl himself, was Luigi Vermicelli, his Italian valet. Call him in," ordered Holmes.

On a motion from the Earl, his secretary Thorneycroft went out to the corridor and brought in the more or less scared valet.

"What's your full name?" demanded Holmes.

"Luigi Vittorio Vermicelli."

"Where were you born?"

"At Brescia, in the north of Italy."

"How old are you,--and where did you work before you gave the Earl the benefit of your services?"

"Thirty-two. I was valet to a prominent banker in Venice."

"Ever been in jail?"

"Why, er,--yes," and the Italian became embarra.s.sed. "I was arrested for intoxication once just before I left Venice; but I was imprisoned for only ten days."

"So you fell off the water-wagon, eh,--even in the watery city?"

commented Holmes. "Well, were you sober when you put away the Earl's shirt last night, with the diamond cuff-b.u.t.tons in it,--that is, sober enough to notice that the b.u.t.tons were really there in the cuffs?"

"Oh, yes, sir. I am quite sure that the cuff-b.u.t.tons must have been stolen during the night."

"Did you hear any noise Sunday night to indicate that burglars were getting in?"

"No, sir; not a thing. I didn't even hear the dog bark, as he usually does. I think that the cuff-b.u.t.tons were stolen by somebody inside the castle."

"Ah, ha! This is getting interesting," said Holmes, with animation.

"And whom do you suspect? Anybody in particular?"