by Bill Peschel
Our visitor gasped again in amazement, handed Holmes his card, and began:
“Well, my name is Eustace Thorneycroft, private secretary to George Arthur Percival Chauncey Dunderhaugh, the ninth Earl of Puddingham, who lives at Normanstow Towers, near Hedge-gutheridge, over in Surrey. As you are probably aware, the Earl’s most precious treasure is—or, rather, are the six pairs of fancy, diamond-studded, gold cuff-buttons that His Majesty King George I presented to his ancestor, Reginald Bertram Dunderhaugh, the second Earl of Puddingham, upon King George’s accession to the British throne in the year 1714.
“It is an historical fact that King George paid twenty-four hundred pounds for the six pairs of cuff-buttons—their value being considerably greater now—and the diamond in each one is as large as the end of a man’s thumb; so you can see at once how very valuable they are, to say nothing of the sentimental value of having been a present from a king to the Earl’s ancestor two centuries ago.”
“Oh, yes; I have heard about the Puddingham cuff-buttons,” said Holmes, as he reached over, and grabbing the cigarette I had just rolled, calmly stuck it in his own mouth, and lit it. “Old King George I had no more taste than a Pittsburgh millionaire! But go on with your little yarn.”
Thorneycroft continued, occasionally taking a bite out of one of the apples Holmes had offered him:
“Well, just this Easter Monday morning, when the Earl was being dressed by his valet, an Italian named Luigi Vermicelli, he noticed with horror that his nice pink-and-green silk shirt, lying over the back of the mahogany arm-chair beside his bed, had the ancestral cuff-buttons missing from the cuffs!
“He is absolutely sure that they were in the cuffs when he took the shirt off last night, since he remembers distinctly having polished them up a bit with his handkerchief when he retired, and he cannot account for their mysterious disappearance. He has a large and ferocious bulldog on guard outside the castle every night, so he is sure no burglar got in, as the dog made no noise during the night.
“As for any possible suspicion attaching to the Earl’s servants, I will say that they have all been with him for several years, all came highly recommended, and he would not presume to suspect any of them of having stolen the heirlooms.”
“Which apparently reduces us to the two interesting hypotheses that either the cuff-buttons flew away by themselves or else the Earl hid them while he was drunk,” interrupted Holmes, as he thoughtfully rubbed his left ear.
At this, the secretary stared, but went on:
“The constables from the village of Hedge-gutheridge, a half a mile from the castle, to whom the Earl telephoned immediately upon discovering his loss, and who came up there within twenty minutes after, were not so confident of the servants’ innocence, however, as they insisted on lining up all fourteen of them in the main corridor and searching them in a very ungentlemanly manner! As an after-thought, the constables even had the temerity to search me, as if I would dream of doing such a thing as that—me, Eustace Thorneycroft!
“But they couldn’t find the precious pair of diamond cuff-buttons on them at all; so the Earl had me beat it right into London on the next train, and engage you to ferret out the scoundrels responsible for this dastardly outrage! His Lordship didn’t even give me time to finish my breakfast, he was so worked up about it, and compelled me to catch the eight-fourteen train out of Hedge-gutheridge, with a rasher of bacon and a half-empty cup of coffee on the dining table behind me. So that’s why you see me tearing into these red apples so voraciously, Mr. Holmes! I reckon the swift ride through the Surrey downs on a rainy morning sharpened my appetite, too.
“So that’s all there is to tell you, except that here’s a hundred gold sovereigns for your retaining fee, and the Earl will positively pay you a reward of ten thousand pounds more when you recover the lost pair of cuff-buttons.”
And Thorneycroft threw a chamois bag, full of coins, across the table.
“Ah, ha! Five hundred cold bucks in Yankee money!” cried Hemlock Holmes, as he rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Gather up this mazuma, Watson, and give His Nibs a receipt for it, as we are both after the coin, only you haven’t got the nerve to admit it. Well, Mr. Wormyloft—er, I mean Thorneycroft—tell the Earl of Puddingham that I and my bone-headed assistant here will guarantee to give him a run for his money, and that if we don’t find the ancestral cuff-buttons, at least we’ll tear up half of County Surrey looking for them!”
Our bald-headed visitor here took up his hat and umbrella and opened the door, about to depart.
“Gosh, it’s raining worse than ever now!” he said. “Well, I’ve got to shovel dust—or, rather, mud—back to Normanstow Towers, anyhow, or the Earl will raise the deuce with me! Be sure to come out on the next train after this, Mr. Holmes, which leaves London at one-twenty-two, as the Earl will be expecting you, and what’s more, he’ll have a coach-and-four waiting for you at the Hedge-gutheridge station. So long!”
And the Earl’s secretary stepped out, closed the door after him, and was gone.
As we heard him going down the stairs, and then leaving by the outer door, Holmes got up, shook himself, stretched out his lanky arms, and yawned.
“Well, we’ve got a hundred pounds in gold here, Watson,” he said. “Now it’s up to us to scare up a good bluff at earning it! Let’s see—it’s ten o’clock now, and we must leave the rooms at one o’clock to get to the station for the one-twenty-two train. So we’ll have luncheon—or lunch, just as you prefer—at twelve-thirty. That leaves me two hours and a half to read ‘Old Nick Carter.’”
Hemlock got out several yellow-back dime-novels from the book-rack in the corner, pulled the Morris chair over to the window, and started in on his light literature.
“What! Aren’t you worrying about the Puddingham cuff-buttons at all? Aren’t you going to try to dope out an explanation of their disappearance?” I inquired anxiously.
“There you go again, Watson, you old boob!” my friend replied. “How many times must I tell you that it is a capital mistake to theorize in advance of the facts! Keep your shirt on till we get out to the castle, Doc; and in the meantime ich kebibble who swiped the cuff-buttons!”
I knew from long experience that it was useless to argue with him, so I just sat there like a bump on a log for the rest of the morning, wondering why the Sam Hill it was that I still continued to swallow such talk as that, when I knew it was my duty to rise up and paste him one in the eye for his sarcasms.
Chapter II
As Holmes and I were sitting down to luncheon at twelve-thirty that noon, and Mrs. Hudson, our old reliable landlady, was placing a fried pork-chop on my plate, we were again startled at hearing a terrific banging at the front door. The rain had died down somewhat, but it was still cloudy and disagreeable outside. In a moment more our own door was thrust open, and another visitor—a young man of about thirty—butted in on our privacy.
“Oh, I’m sure I beg your pardon, gentlemen,” said this guy as he entered, “but I am Lord Launcelot Dunderhaugh, younger brother of the Earl of Puddingham, whose secretary, Mr. Thorneycroft, was here this morning. I came to tell you that since his return, two more pairs of those historic cuff-buttons have been stolen, and to see that you come out to the castle on the one-twenty-two train without fail!”
“Hum, that’s hard lines, ain’t it, Launcelot?” said Holmes, as he waved him to a chair; “you’ll excuse us if Watson and I go on with our luncheon while you talk. Got any idea who lifted the second and third pair—any clues at all to the guilty wretches?”
“No, Mr. Holmes; I really haven’t,” replied Lord Launcelot, as he sat down. “It’s quite annoying to have to think about such a disconcerting event, so much out of my usual line, doncherknow.”
And the Earl’s brother contemplated the floor in gloomy silence for the next twenty-five minutes, while H. H. and I were feeding our faces.
When we had finished and had lit a couple of cigarettes, Holmes, handing one to Launcelot, said:
“Well, it’s just one o’clock. Time to beat it, boys!”
“All right, Mr. Holmes, I’m your man,” said our visitor.
And, the rain having stopped now, we left the house together, after hurriedly packing a few things in our suit-case.
We soon arrived at the station, where we boarded the Surrey train. No further word could be got out of our noble companion as we sped through the southern London suburbs and along the country landscape—not even after the April sun had straggled through the clouds and begun to brighten up the scene.
“Ax-gibberish!” yelled the guard—or words to that effect—as he slammed open the door of our compartment, and the train slowed down and at length stopped in front of a dinky little two-by-four station, with a cluster of worm-eaten old houses and a couple of sloppy-looking store buildings near it that looked as if they had all been erected prior to the Norman Conquest, or even possibly antedated the Christian era.
“Well, I guess this must be Hedge-gutheridge all right, in spite of the guard’s mispronunciation of its euphonious name,” remarked Holmes, stepping off the train onto the decayed platform, which sagged perilously under his athletic tread.
As Launcelot and I followed suit, a short, nervous-looking man of about thirty-five, with a florid countenance, rushed out of the ancient station toward us, and shouted:
“O Launcie, Launcie, misfortune has followed misfortune upon our venerable family of Dunderhaugh this miserable day! Two more pairs of those cuff-buttons have been abstracted during your absence, making five pairs in all that are gone! I suppose this is the eminent Mr. Holmes?”
And the noble Earl of Puddingham hurriedly shook hands with my boss.
“Right you are, Your Lordship,” said Holmes, “and here is the egregious Dr. Watson, also at your service. You see, he’s my old side-kicker, and I couldn’t think of entering upon a crook-chase without him tagging along after me to write it up in well-chosen language. Do you get me, Steve? And, say, don’t worry about the cuff-buttons. We’ll find ’em all right.”
“Assuredly, Mr. Holmes,” said the Earl, as we all stepped into a coach that was waiting back of the station, with Launcelot more gloomy and depressed than ever.
“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.
