"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-b.u.t.tons 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.signed to one of the s.p.a.cious 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 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-b.u.t.tons!"
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 gra.s.s, 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 att.i.tude, 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 n.o.body 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.
"h.e.l.lo, 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 n.o.ble 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-b.u.t.ton 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-gla.s.s 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 embarra.s.sing, 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 rec.u.mbent 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, a.s.sisted 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-b.u.t.tons.... 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 a.s.sisted in the meantime up to her own room on the 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.