"Home, Olaf! And get a move on!" This to the fat little coachman who drove the ancestral chariot.
"Ay bane get there pooty qvick, Your Lordship," said that Norwegian worthy, as he whipped up the horses, and in five minutes' time we had dashed up to a large and imposing stone castle with round towers at each corner, – apparently about five hundred years old and five stories high, – surrounded by an extensive garden and park, with a small woods in the rear: just the kind you read about, with green gobs of ivy hanging down over the gray walls.
"Well, here we are, my friends," said the Earl, as he stepped out; while two footmen in light green livery assisted us to alight. "Let's see if I've still got the sixth and last pair of my diamond cuff-buttons safe here."
He fumbled with his cuffs a moment, and added:
"Yes, they're still here. What with Lloyd-George soaking all the British nobility with his preposterous income-tax, and everything going to the demnition bow-wows generally, you can't tell but that you'll be beaten out of your eye-teeth the next minute!"
As Holmes stepped out of the Puddingham coach and started up the broad stone stairway leading to the main entrance of the five-story castle, he stumbled over a good-sized rock lying on the graveled road at the foot of the stairs, and would have landed on his revered nose if I had not caught him.
"I fear that this is a bad omen," said the Earl, frowning; "but I trust it may not prevent the success of our undertaking."
"Don't worry! I wasn't hurt," answered Holmes.
And we went up the stairway together.
The great bronze door opened, and a lady dressed in the latest London style (or maybe it was Paris) greeted us with:
"Welcome to Normanstow Towers, Mr. Holmes, and Dr. Watson, also. I am sure that my husband the Earl and all of us will be more than glad if you recover the lost diamond cuff-buttons for us."
"I hope so, madame," said Holmes, as the Earl formally introduced us. "We will certainly do our best."
The butler, standing beside the Countess Annabelle, winked at us as she went into the drawing-room on one side of the corridor, and beckoned to us to enter the library on the other side.
"Well, Harrigan, you may pour us out each a glass of wine," said the Earl, as Holmes, Lord Launcelot, and I followed him into the room.
The library was a very handsomely furnished library, but it looked as if the noble master of Normanstow Towers did more drinking than reading in its luxurious interior, as three trays with at least a dozen empty glasses stood on the broad mahogany table, while a decanter of whiskey, a siphon of seltzer-water, and five quart bottles of wine decorated a smaller table at one side.
The butler filled four glasses with some excellent Burgundy, and as we finished them, the Earl said:
"Where are Uncle Tooter, Mr. Hicks, and Mr. Budd, – and Thorneycroft, too, Harrigan?"
"They're all up in the billiard room, trying to forget the unseemly tragedy that has marred the tranquil tenor of our lives here," replied Harrigan, winking at us again.
"Well, I only wish I, too, could forget it; but how can I? King George will never receive me again if those precious cuff-buttons aren't coughed up."
And the Earl started up the stairs to the second floor. "Come on up and join them, Mr. Holmes, before you begin your usual tape-measuring, snooping around with a magnifying-glass, and analyzing cigar ashes! You see, I'm on to all your little tricks."
"Well, say, hold on a minute, Puddy, – er, I mean Your Lordship. I don't mind stalling awhile before I begin pulling off my historic stunts, as this detective business is only a graft anyhow. But as my long suit has always been to criticize the regular police force, I must ask you why in thunder those constables from the village aren't here on guard, considering that three successive thefts have occurred here in the same day," remonstrated my friend.
"Oh, they went back to Hedge-gutheridge at noon," replied the Earl, shrugging his shoulders, "telling me they would wait till all six pairs of cuff-buttons were stolen before they would do anything more, as they would then probably have more clues to follow!"
"Can you beat it, Watson?" said Holmes to me as we ascended the elegant stairway to the fourth floor. "These guys are just about as brainy as the average American cop I bumped into on the other side of the Big Pond."
On the fourth floor we entered a large room with a billiard table and a pool table in it, where four men were busily engaged in killing time, – two at each table.
"Put up your cues a minute, Uncle Tooter and the rest of you, while I introduce you to Mr. Hemlock Holmes, the celebrated butter-in on other people's business, whom I have hired at an exorbitant price to run down the depraved scoundrels who cabbaged my diamond cuff-buttons. If he can't catch 'em, nobody can, I guess. Mr. Holmes, meet the Countess's uncle, Mr. J. Edmund Tooter, of Hyderabad, India; my friend, Mr. William Q. Hicks, of Saskatoon, Canada; and Mr. William X. Budd, of Melbourne, Australia." The Earl had us shake hands with the three. "My secretary, Eustace Thorneycroft, you have already met."
"Hello, Holmes, old fellow," was the smiling greeting of this worthy. "I'll shoot you a game of pool. Billiards is too intricate a game for my limited intellect to follow."
"All right," agreed Holmes with a grin.
The Earl stepped to a speaking-tube on the wall and called downstairs to the butler:
"Say, Harrigan, hurry us up a box of Havanas, – will you?"
In a minute the jovial master of refreshments came running up the stairs with a box of cigars under each arm.
"I thought I might as well bring two, Your Lordship," he explained.
"Sure, Harrigan; hand 'em around. Now, smoke up, gents," said the Earl. "'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.' As long as I've still got the last pair of those blarsted cuff-buttons in my cuffs," – here he took off his coat and displayed to full view the famous heirlooms, which gleamed like a pair of locomotive headlights, – "we'll wait till to-morrow before tearing up the foundations of the castle looking for the others!"
So they played on, at pool and billiards, for the rest of that Monday afternoon, Hemlock Holmes and the six gilded loafers, while I sat idly in a chair at one side, smoking several good cigars, my job being that of an innocent looker-on, trying to figure out who was the biggest fool in the place, – the easy-going Earl of Puddingham, for shoveling out good money to my grafting partner, or Holmes himself, for frittering away his brilliant talents in such piffle pastimes.
At six o'clock we were served a delectable dinner in the great oak-paneled dining-room of the castle, prepared by the Earl's French chef, Louis La Violette; and we passed the evening in the library, sipping away several more bottles of the Earl's best vintages and listening to the more or less improbable tales of their adventures in the three faraway realms of the world by Messrs. Tooter, Hicks, and Budd, while Holmes managed to pump Harrigan on the Q. T., and found out from him that the Earl was rated at two million pounds, in the form of several thousand acres of valuable land up in Yorkshire, including one or two good-sized towns.
At half-past ten Holmes and I retired for the night, having been assigned to one of the spacious guest-rooms on the third floor; and soon we were wrapped in slumber.
Chapter III
Thud – thud – thud! Biff! Rattle! Bang! came a noise from below.
I sat bolt upright in bed, and hollered through the pitch-darkness at the top of my voice:
"Help! Police! Burglars! Robbers! Wake up, Holmes, and catch 'em!"
Despite the racket I made, which was increased by my jumping out of bed and falling head-first over a chair, upsetting the latter, the hardened old cuss slept on. When I yelled again, and shook him by the shoulder, he half opened his eyes and said:
"Well, what's eating you, Watson? Got the nightmare? I told you that you took too much mince-pie last night!"
"For