by Bill Peschel
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 Heaven’s sake, didn’t you hear the noise downstairs, Holmes?” I shouted. “Somebody is breaking in, trying to steal the Earl’s last pair of diamond cuff-buttons!”
Holmes yawned lazily, rolled over in bed, and said, as he settled himself 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! I looked at my watch by the moonlight, and found that it was thirteen minutes after two a. m. Then, thinking I might get a sight of the burglar from our bedroom window, I drew the heavy, old-fashioned curtains aside, and peered out over the silent landscape thirty feet below. But I couldn’t see a blamed thing but trees and grass, and a moss-covered stone wall out by the road; the Earl’s bulldog not being in evidence anywhere.
I knelt down by the window, put my elbows on the sill, and resolved to wait there awhile, to see if the nocturnal disturber would hike out again.
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,” he said. Then I arose sheepishly, and dressed.
After our ablutions in the lavatory next door—where we helped ourselves to a bottle of whiskey we found in a medicine cabinet on the wall—we descended the two flights of stairs to the main floor. Finding nobody around, we walked through the different rooms on an exploring tour, seeking evidences of the disturbance the night before.
“Say, they evidently don’t use alarm-clocks in this shack, Watson. Not a thing stirring yet,” said Holmes, as we came to a room with the door slightly ajar.
“Hello, what’s this?” he exclaimed, as we entered the room. “His Lordship must have retired in a rather submerged condition! Look at him there!”
I was surprised to see the noble heir of all the Puddinghams lying on the floor of his bedroom, flat on his back, his eyes closed, and with one foot resting on an overturned chair; and horrified, as I came closer, to see a large purple bruise on his forehead, and a heavy iron poker lying on the floor beside him. The diamond cuff-button was also gone from his right cuff, but the rays of the morning sun, coming through the east windows, shone on the other glittering bauble, still in his left cuff.
Holmes very unconcernedly took a cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, his eyes meanwhile glancing about the room; but I dropped on my knees 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 I looked up at my companion.
“Holmes,” I said solemnly, “the Earl is dead! Murder has been added to robbery here!”
“That so, Doc?” queried the cold-blooded old cuss, blowing out a cloud of cigarette-smoke and yawning. “Well, what’ll I do first—magnifying-glass or tape-measure?”
“Holmes,” I remonstrated sharply, unable to contain myself at his manner, “if you had come down here six hours ago when we heard that noise, 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’s private bodyguard, and what’s more, I’m not concerned with what might be, but with what is. Are you sure he’s dead, or are you only making another awkward mistake? ’Twould be rather embarrassing, I should think, to have the Earl wake up in a minute and tell us he’s not dead!”
At this insult to my professional ability as a physician, I got on my ear, and said with a grouch:
“Well, if you don’t think he’s dead, just see whether you can detect any heart-beat there—smart as you are.”
Holmes was bending down over the apparent corpse, when we heard some one walking along the corridor outside.
“Quick, Watson, sneak into this closet here, and observe developments!” whispered Holmes, as he gripped me by the arm, and hustled 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 recumbent form on the floor, and let out a scream that might have been heard in the next county, before she toppled over in a dead faint.
Holmes rushed out of the closet, seized her just in time to prevent her falling over the Earl’s body, and whispered to me, as he placed her propped up in a chair, and as various people were heard running through 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 the doorway, and Holmes asked authoritatively:
“Which one of you people is the Earl’s valet?” Adding: “You had better lay 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—he will look more respectable there than on the floor,” said Holmes, as Vermicelli, the valet, assisted by another man, who said he was Peter Van Damm, valet to Lord Launcelot, picked up the Earl’s body and deposited it, or him, on the bed.
Launcelot, Uncle Tooter, Budd, Hicks and Thorneycroft here crowded themselves into the room and, on seeing what had happened, added to the general buzz of excited exclamations; but Holmes took command of the situation, like the old hand that he was, entirely used to such gruesome sights, and stepped to the telephone on a small table in one corner 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 the constables?”—after a moment. “This is Normanstow Towers. The Earl of Puddingham has apparently been murdered by some one attempting to steal the last of his diamond cuff-buttons…. Hemlock Holmes, from London, talking. Have all your men come up here at once and surround the place, letting no one in or out!… Whom do I suspect? Never mind whom I suspect. I’d never suspect you constables of having too much brains after the way you left here yesterday noon, with the castle unguarded—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 on the 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 vacant look on your face, are you the Countess’s maid?”—addressing one of the three woman servants. “Take care of your mistress there in that chair. Can’t you see she’s coming out of her faint? If the cook is among you, he’d better get back to the kitchen and prepare breakfast. Watson, you take this revolver here,”—fishing a six-shooter out of his pocket and handing it to me—“go to the rear entrance of the castle, and stand guard there till those tortoise-like constables arrive. Let no one in or out; and I will do the same at the front entrance. Do you get me, Steve?”
And Holmes jumped up, full of renewed “pep,” and boldly pushed those of the friends and servants of the deceased Earl who didn’t move quickly right out of the room into the corridor, the Countess having been assisted in the meantime up to her own room on t
he second floor by 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 along with the rest of them by the masterful detective.
“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 cocked 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-buttons 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 habitués of the castle all seemed rather embarrassed 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 assaulted 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 to 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 glasses 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-button 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-button 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 gratitude, 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 three 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 butted in, the first man who noticed any of the cuff-buttons 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 embarrassed. “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-buttons in it—that is, sober enough to notice that the buttons were really there in the cuffs?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I am quite sure that the cuff-buttons 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-buttons 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?”
“Yes, sir. I suspect Donald MacTavish, the second footman. I saw him with something shiny in his hand last night, which he hastily concealed when he saw me coming.”
“That will be all, Luigi,” said Holmes; “you are excused.”
The valet looked like Mephistopheles, as he glanced around with a triumphant expression on his swarthy face, and left the room.
“Bring in Lord Launcelot’s valet next, Thorneycroft,” said Holmes. “And we may as well sit down, as the examination of this crowd will take some time.”
The Earl and the rest of us found chairs in the drawing-room as Thorneycroft, looking very important, hustled out in the corridor to rope in the next victim. The constables had the servants all considerably frightened, and they stood around on one foot with mixed expressions on their faces. In a moment the other valet confronted us.
“State your name, age, previous place of employment, and whether you have ever been arrested,” commanded Holmes, who seemed to be speeding up a little on his inquisition.
I wondered at my friend’s somewhat more nervous manner as he questioned the second servant, until I noticed his old cocaine-squirter being shoved gently back into his pocket with his left hand, as he pointed his right forefinger at the servant. Holmes had evidently just sneaked in an extra shot in the arm without any one’s getting wise, and I, who knew him of old, was sure that he would have a fit on for several hours.
“Peter Adrian Van Damm. Twenty-nine. Pretorius Brothers’ diamond-importing house in Amsterdam, Holland. No, sir,” replied the valet, just as quickly as Holmes had questioned him.
“I see that you are not to be flustered,” nodded Holmes approvingly; “also that you are familiar with diamonds. What would you think of a man who would steal the Earl’s diamond cuff-buttons?”
“I would say that he didn’t show very good taste. They are too large and crude. Not fit to be worn to a prize-fight,” answered Van Damm calmly.
