The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons
Page 9
CHAPTER IX
Well, the two of us sat up in our room for an hour, and when his watchpointed to half-past eleven, my partner said:
"Hist! Here we go now. Take off your shoes."
Grumblingly I complied, and he did the same. Then Holmes led me downthe corridor to Thorneycroft's room, and noiselessly opened the door.
"I'm going to steal his shoes," he whispered.
"Steal his shoes! What the----" I began under my breath; but Isubsided as Holmes tightened his warning grip on my arm and tiptoedquietly into the bedchamber of the sleeping secretary. He took thepair of shoes under the chair beside the bed, and then just as quietlypassed out, closing the door behind us.
Only a dimly flickering gas-light on the wall of the corridorilluminated the strange scene as we left Thorneycroft's room, andHolmes tiptoed along in his stocking feet to the next room, inhabitedby Lord Launcelot, the Earl's brother.
"Say, are you going to swipe all their shoes, Holmes?" I whispered inhis ear, as we softly opened Launcelot's door. "If you don't look out,there'll be another detective from London sent down here toinvestigate their disappearance!"
"Oh, shut up, you old duffer!" he answered irritably. "Can't you everlearn anything after all your long association with me? If you can'tdo anything else right, at least keep still, and don't arouse thesesleeping dummies."
I obeyed, and so the two of us gradually worked our way around to thefour other rooms, taking the shoes we found beside the bed in eachroom, until we had six pairs of them--Thorneycroft's, LordLauncelot's, Uncle Tooter's, Billie Hicks's, Billie Budd's (who,fortunately for Holmes's purposes, had left a pair of shoes in hisroom, and had escaped that afternoon in another pair) and even theCountess's. I demurred considerably at burglarizing her room andstealing her dainty high-heeled shoes; but the cold-blooded Holmeswould stop at nothing, and took her shoes along with the rest. And theworst part of it was that he made me carry them all! Toting around alarge and awkward collection of six pairs of shoes in my arms, throughthe dark corridors of an ancient castle in the middle of the night,was certainly something new in my sleuthing experience, and I soexpressed myself when we finally got back to our own room, and Holmeshad closed the door behind us. I laid down the pile of shoes on thefloor in one corner of the room, and grumbled:
"I've done a good many funny things since I took up this job of beingyour side-partner, Holmes, but I never thought I'd sink so low as togo sneaking around into people's rooms while they're asleep and stealtheir shoes!"
"Oh, forget it, Doc. I'll tell you more about it in the morning," wasall that my tyrannical partner would reply.
And in a short time we were both in bed, with the light out,--at last.
I was rather tired by this time, and was just dozing off when Holmessuddenly jumped up to a sitting posture, and said:
"By the great horn spoon, I almost forgot that Letstrayed still has myperfectly good revolver and I have his, since we exchanged thisafternoon out in the hay-loft. I must go and get it back, or there'sno telling what may happen to it in his incompetent keeping!"
Then, before I could say a word, Holmes bounced over me with his longlegs, went over to his coat-pocket, took out the Inspector's revolver,opened the door, and started down the corridor, in his flappingnightgown.
In a minute or so I heard a loud noise as of some one falling over achair in the dark, and I knew it must be Holmes in Letstrayed's room,exchanging the guns. I had to stuff a corner of the pillow into mymouth to keep from laughing. Holmes soon returned, with his ownrevolver in his hand, and fire in his eye, so I knew it wouldn't besafe to kid him about it. All I said was:
"What did you find?"
"Nothing," he answered. "Go to sleep."
I did so with alacrity.
_Zing-g-g-g-g!_ went the alarm-clock, which Holmes had placed on thechair beside our bed. Jumping up to turn it off, I saw with vexationthat it was only six o'clock.
"What in thunder did you set it so early for, Holmes?" I demanded."They don't blow any early factory-whistle around here."
"Well, I have some work to do,--scientific work that admits of nodelay. You can lay in bed till they call you for breakfast, if youwant to," was Holmes's reply, piling out of bed and jerking hisclothes on as if he were a fireman answering a fire. Then he took outthe magnifying glass that he always carried in his pocket, and amicroscope out of our suit-case, pulled a chair over to one of thewindows, and began to go over the twelve shoes one by one, first withthe magnifying glass and then with the microscope, which was arrangedso that objects as large as the shoes could be inspected through it,all the time taking down notes in his little notebook.
I couldn't for the life of me see what he was up to nor what heexpected to find from the shoes; and still less could I figure out whyhe had insisted on our all walking out in the wet grass the morningbefore.
Every once in a while his eyes would light up with a subdued gleam oftriumph, and I knew he was on the trail of something or other.Suddenly he jumped up and jerked the window-shade so that it flew upto the top of the window, then dragged his chair closer to the window,and continued examining the shoes through his two instruments. Atlength, after more than an hour had passed, he put them down with adeep-drawn sigh of relief, after hastily scribbling a few more notes,and turned to me.
"Well, Doc, what would you say as to the shoes from a cursoryexamination, without the instruments?" he inquired with a smile.
By this time I, having arisen and dressed, was kind of anxious to seewhat was going to happen next. I picked up one of the shoes that wehad pilfered from Thorneycroft's room, and turned it over in my hands.
"All I can say about it is that this particular shoe ought to be sentto the cobbler's. There's a small hole in the middle of the sole," Isaid, "and it should also have this smear of red clay wiped off," Iadded, as I pointed to the stain along the outer side of the shoe.
"Oh, use your bean, Doc, use your bean!" cried Holmes. "Is that allyou can detect?"
"Well, that's all there is to detect without your magnifying glass andmicroscope there," I replied.
"Honestly, Watson, I think you're getting dumber and dumber every day!Think, man, think! Where in this immediate vicinity did you see redclay like that before?" said Holmes. I scratched my head withperplexity, and after a moment it came to me:
"Oh, yes; out behind the stables, near where the horses' stalls are. Iremember now having seen the clay there when we were out after BillieBudd yesterday afternoon."
"Well, that shows that Eustace Thorneycroft, the owner of the shoe,was out behind the stable some time recently," said Holmes; "a ratherincongruous place for a private secretary, and one of such sedentaryand scholarly appearance too. Putting two and two together, it is nota very violent assumption to say that Eustace went out to the stablesfor a very special purpose, and what more special purpose could hehave than to hide the diamond cuff-buttons, or at least some of them,which he probably stole! _Comprends-tu cela, tu imbecile?_" Then mypartner added: "Of course, I couldn't exactly swear to it yet thatEustace is the guilty gink we are after, but I'm going to disguisemyself as a race-track follower and go out and talk 'horses' to thetwo coachmen, Yensen and Linescu, and we'll probably learn some more.I've found a good many other clues on the other shoes, which I willnot divulge into your capacious ears until later. Suffice it to say,however, that the reason I made you people walk out on the wet grassyesterday was not because I own stock in a cough-and-cold medicinecompany, as you might think, but because I wanted whatever telltalestains there might be on the six pairs of shoes (indicating to mytrained eye where their owner had been recently) to become moistenedand to stick more firmly to the shoes, so they wouldn't dry up and getknocked off before I could grab the shoes and inspect them. You see,Watson, there are more ways of killing a cat than by choking it todeath with butter!"
As the sarcastic old cuss continued his lecture, he shoved all thetwelve shoes he had examined into the lower drawer of the dresser inthe room, locking it and put
ting the key in his pocket.
"I guess breakfast must be about ready now," said Holmes, as heglanced at his watch; "it's twenty minutes after seven. If there's anyof that whiskey left that we found on the shelf in the lavatoryyesterday morning, I'm going to help myself to some more of it. I feelkind of chilly after sitting up for an hour inspecting the shoes."
We washed, after Holmes had taken the chill-remedy, and were passingdown the front stairway to the lower hall on our way to thedining-room when I suddenly thought of the consequences of ournocturnal escapade.
"Say, Holmes," I whispered anxiously, "what'll we do when all thesepeople report the loss of their footgear to the Earl?"
"What'll we do, you chump? Why, sit tight and say nothing, of course.Just leave it to your revered Uncle Dudley to deal with the situation.I'll handle 'em, all right; and if you forget yourself so far as toblab out where the shoes are, by Gosh, I'll decapitate you! Now,remember!"
And Holmes squeezed my arm warningly.
Nobody else was in the dining-room yet, but just as we entered, therotund figure of Egbert Bunbury obtruded itself upon the otherwisepleasant scene, and Egbert stammered:
"Oh, er,--ah, Mister 'Olmes, Hi was just going hupstairs to call you."
"Oh, you _were_, were you, Eggie," said Holmes cuttingly. "Well, Ifound my way down here, and Doctor Watson also, without your kindassistance. If I were you, I'd have him prescribe for you, as I'mafraid you're walking in your sleep!"
In a moment His Lordship and the others,--including the Countess thistime,--came in, and we all sat down to breakfast. As Harrigan waspouring out a cup of coffee for Thorneycroft, the latter said to theEarl: "Do you know that to-day is the tenth of the month,--Wednesday,April the tenth?"
"Well, what of it, Eustace? _Ich kebibble_ about the date, just so Mr.Holmes here recovers my diamond cuff-buttons for me," replied theEarl, as he smiled at my partner.
"Why, on the tenth of each month you have to send a check for tenpounds to the treasurer of the Society for the Amelioration ofIndigent Pearl-Divers of the Andaman Islands, in London, according tothe promise you signed last fall," said Eustace.
"Do I?" said the Earl, stirring his oatmeal. "Well, I fell for it inthe fall all right--haw! haw!"
Everybody laughed, as in duty bound when the boss cracks a joke, nomatter how punk it is; and then Holmes put his oar in.
"I say, Thorneycroft, is the pearl-diving business out there in theAndamans as good as the diamond-swiping industry in this country?"