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 atthe 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 ofbed and falling head-first over a chair, upsetting the latter, thehardened old cuss slept on. When I yelled again, and shook him by theshoulder, he half opened his eyes and said:
"Well, what's eating you, Watson? Got the nightmare? I told you thatyou took too much mince-pie last night!"
"For Heaven's sake, didn't you hear the noise downstairs, Holmes?" Ishouted. "Somebody is breaking in, trying to steal the Earl's lastpair of diamond cuff-buttons!"
Holmes yawned lazily, rolled over in bed, and said, as he settledhimself to sleep again:
"Well, I can't help it, Watson. I was hired to work in the daytime,not at night. I guess the excitement will keep till morning."
And,--would you believe it?--I couldn't get another word out of him! Ilooked at my watch by the moonlight, and found that it was thirteenminutes after two a. m. Then, thinking I might get a sight of theburglar from our bedroom window, I drew the heavy, old-fashionedcurtains aside, and peered out over the silent landscape thirty feetbelow. But I couldn't see a blamed thing but trees and grass, and amoss-covered stone wall out by the road; the Earl's bulldog not beingin evidence anywhere.
I knelt down by the window, put my elbows on the sill, and resolved towait there awhile, to see if the nocturnal disturber would hike outagain.
Apparently I fell asleep in this attitude, for the next thing I knew,Holmes, fully dressed, was bending over me with a grin on his face,and it was broad daylight.
"Well, why don't you wake up yourself, Doc? It's eight o'clock," hesaid. Then I arose sheepishly, and dressed.
After our ablutions in the lavatory next door,--where we helpedourselves to a bottle of whiskey we found in a medicine cabinet on thewall,--we descended the two flights of stairs to the main floor.Finding nobody around, we walked through the different rooms on anexploring tour, seeking evidences of the disturbance the night before.
"Say, they evidently don't use alarm-clocks in this shack, Watson. Nota thing stirring yet," said Holmes, as we came to a room with the doorslightly ajar.
"Hello, what's this?" he exclaimed, as we entered the room. "HisLordship must have retired in a rather submerged condition! Look athim there!"
I was surprised to see the noble heir of all the Puddinghams lying onthe floor of his bedroom, flat on his back, his eyes closed, and withone foot resting on an overturned chair; and horrified, as I camecloser, to see a large purple bruise on his forehead, and a heavy ironpoker lying on the floor beside him. The diamond cuff-button was alsogone from his right cuff, but the rays of the morning sun, comingthrough the east windows, shone on the other glittering bauble, stillin his left cuff.
Holmes very unconcernedly took a cigarette out of his pocket and litit, his eyes meanwhile glancing about the room; but I dropped on myknees beside the Earl and placed my ear over his chest. To my horror,I could not hear even the faintest heart-beat. My face paled as Ilooked up at my companion.
"Holmes," I said solemnly, "the Earl is dead! Murder has been added torobbery here!"
"That so, Doc?" queried the cold-blooded old cuss, blowing out acloud of cigarette-smoke and yawning. "Well, what'll I dofirst,--magnifying-glass or tape-measure?"
"Holmes," I remonstrated sharply, unable to contain myself at hismanner, "if you had come down here six hours ago when we heard thatnoise, we might have caught the criminals! Now it's too late."
And I turned to examine the bruise on the Earl's forehead.
"Oh, keep your shirt on, Watson," retorted Holmes, "I'm not the Earl'sprivate bodyguard, and what's more, I'm not concerned with what mightbe, but with what _is_. Are you sure he's dead, or are you only makinganother awkward mistake? 'Twould be rather embarrassing, I shouldthink, to have the Earl wake up in a minute and tell us he's notdead!"
At this insult to my professional ability as a physician, I got on myear, and said with a grouch:
"Well, if you don't think he's dead, just see whether _you_ can detectany heart-beat there,--smart as you are."
Holmes was bending down over the apparent corpse, when we heard someone walking along the corridor outside.
"Quick, Watson, sneak into this closet here, and observedevelopments!" whispered Holmes, as he gripped me by the arm, andhustled me into the closet, the door of which stood slightly ajar.
In a moment more Her Ladyship, Annabelle, Countess of Puddingham,appeared in the Earl's room, took one look at her husband's recumbentform on the floor, and let out a scream that might have been heard inthe next county, before she toppled over in a dead faint.
Holmes rushed out of the closet, seized her just in time to preventher falling over the Earl's body, and whispered to me, as he placedher propped up in a chair, and as various people were heard runningthrough the other rooms toward us, attracted by the Countess's scream:
"Well, _she_ didn't have a hand in this, Doc. That scream was genuine,and she didn't know we were listening, either."
A small crowd of servants, all gaping in amazement, now filled thedoorway, and Holmes asked authoritatively:
"Which one of you people is the Earl's valet?" Adding: "You had betterlay your master on the bed there."
One of the men stepped forward, and answered:
"I am the Earl's valet, sir. Is His Lordship dead?"
"Well, Dr. Watson says he is. But lay him out on the bed, anyhow,--hewill look more respectable there than on the floor," said Holmes, asVermicelli, the valet, assisted by another man, who said he was PeterVan Damm, valet to Lord Launcelot, picked up the Earl's body anddeposited it, or him, on the bed.
Launcelot, Uncle Tooter, Budd, Hicks and Thorneycroft here crowdedthemselves into the room and, on seeing what had happened, added tothe general buzz of excited exclamations; but Holmes took command ofthe situation, like the old hand that he was, entirely used to suchgruesome sights, and stepped to the telephone on a small table in onecorner of the Earl's room.
"Give me the village constables,--any of them,--at Hedge-gutheridge,quick!" he called through the instrument. "This one of theconstables?"--after a moment. "This is Normanstow Towers. The Earl ofPuddingham has apparently been murdered by some one attempting tosteal the last of his diamond cuff-buttons.... Hemlock Holmes, fromLondon, talking. Have all your men come up here at once and surroundthe place, letting no one in or out!... Whom do I suspect? Never mindwhom I suspect. I'd never suspect you constables of having too muchbrains after the way you left here yesterday noon, with the castleunguarded,--that's a cinch!... Now don't take all day getting here.Good-by!"
And Holmes slammed the receiver back on the hook, whirled around onthe chair, and faced the gaping crowd of people in the room.
"Well, what are you looking at?" he demanded. "Get together there,some of you, and bring order out of chaos. You there, with the vacantlook on your face, are you the Countess's maid?"--addressing one ofthe three woman servants. "Take care of your mistress there in thatchair. Can't you see she's coming out of her faint? If the cook isamong you, he'd better get back to the kitchen and prepare breakfast.Watson, you take this revolver here,"--fishing a six-shooter out ofhis pocket and handing it to me,--"go to the rear entrance of thecastle, and stand guard there till those tortoise-like constablesarrive. Let no one in or out; and I will do the same at the frontentrance. Do you get me, Steve?"
And Holmes jumped up, full of renewed "pep," and boldly pushed thoseof the friends and servants of the deceased Earl who didn't movequickly right out of the room into the corridor, the Countess havingbeen assisted in the meantime up to her own room on the second floorby her Spanish maid.
"I say there, Holmes, don't you think you're going it pretty strong?"protested Billie Budd, the man from Australia, as he was shoved alongwit
h the rest of them by the masterful detective.
"Just keep your shirt on, Mr. Budd," said the latter, as he locked thedoor of the Earl's room behind him and put the key in his pocket. "I'mrunning this show, not you. I was sent here to get results, and I'mgoing to get 'em,--see?"
"I guess the old cocaine is beginning to work on him again," Imuttered.
Then I started with the gun to the rear door of the castle, whileHolmes, after overawing the others, stationed himself at the frontdoor, with another loaded and cocked revolver in his hand.
After about fifteen minutes of tiresome waiting, while several of theservants peeped out at me from the rear rooms as I stood sentinel atthe end of the corridor, just inside the great iron barred door, Iheard 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 torelieve me. I put the revolver in my pocket and rejoined Holmes in thedrawing-room, where I found him with Lord Launcelot and the others.
"Well, boys, I've got four constables completely surrounding thecastle now,--one on each side,--so we'll sit down to breakfast. It'snearly nine o'clock now."
And Holmes moved toward the dining-room.
"All right, old top," said Launcelot, smiling at the detective. "Aslong as George Arthur,--the Earl, you know,--is disabled or dead, I amthe 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 thecuff-buttons yourself, eh?" queried Holmes with a grin, as we sat downto 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."
The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons Page 3
