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  The Adventure of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons

  BEING ONE OF THE EXCITING EPISODES IN THE CAREER OF THE FAMOUS DETECTIVE HEMLOCK HOLMES, AS RECORDED BY HIS FRIEND DR. WATSON

  BY

  JAMES FRANCIS THIERRY

  THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 440 FOURTH AVENUE, NEW YORK MCMXVIII

  Copyright, 1918, by THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE ELEVEN CUFF-BUTTONS

  CHAPTER I

  Well, you see, it was like this:

  After my illustrious friend, Hemlock Holmes, champion unofficialdetective of the world, had doped out "The Adventure of the SecondStain,"--the last one to be pulled off after his return tolife,--thereby narrowly averting a great war, he got sick of Londonlife and hiked over to the United States. He prevailed upon me toaccompany him to that remarkable country; and we stayed there forthree years, living in New York City all the time. There, on manyoccasions, Holmes displayed to great advantage his marvelous powers,and helped the New York police to clear up many a mystery that theyhad been unable to solve; for we found the police of that city to bejust as stupid and chuckle-headed as those of London.

  While in New York Holmes and I both learned to use American slang, andin case this little book should happen to be read by any of Londonsociety's "upper crust," I humbly beg their pardon for any examples ofslang that may have crept into its pages.

  Upon the death of King Edward in May, 1910, Hemlock Holmes was calledback to London by the Scotland Yard officials to solve the mysteriousdisappearance of the British royal crown, which somebody had swipedthe same day that Ed kicked the bucket; and of course I had to trailalong with him! Well, to cover up a "narsty" scandal, my unerringfriend, Hemlock Holmes, detected the guilty wretch within two days,but the culprit was so highly placed in society that the cops couldn'tdo a thing to him. In fact, he was one of the dukes, and after KingGeorge, Ed's successor, had recovered the crown,--which was found inan old battered valise in a corner of the duke's garage,--and had gota written confession out of him in Holmes's old rooms in Baker Street,in the presence of myself and Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed, we allswore a solemn oath, on a bound volume of Alfred Austin's poems, thatwe would never, never tell who it was that had stolen the Englishcrown in the year 1910! Wild horses shall not drag from me the name ofthat ducal scoundrel, and, besides, there might be a German spylooking over your shoulder as you read this.

  Holmes and I decided to stay back in the tight little isle for a whileafter that episode, and there in the same old den, at 221-B BakerStreet, in the city of London, we were domiciled on that eventfulApril morning in 1912 that saw us introduced to what turned out to bepositively the dog-gonedest, most mixed-up, perplexing, and mysteriouscase we ever bumped up against in all our long and varied career inArthur Conan Doyle's dream-pipe. It completely laid over "The Sign ofthe Four" and "The Study in Scarlet," and had "The Adventure of theBlue Carbuncle" all beaten to a frazzle.

  To be painfully precise about it, it was just twenty minutes afternine, Monday morning, April the eighth, 1912, the day after Easter,and it was raining something fierce outside. The whirling raindropspattered against our second-story windows, and occasional thunder andlightning varied the scene.

  Holmes was sitting, or, rather, sprawling in a Morris chair, wrappedin his old lavender dressing-gown, and was wearing the red Turkishslippers King George had given him for Christmas a few months before.He had his little old bottle of cocaine on the table beside him, andhis dope-needle, which he had just filled, in his hand. I was sittingon the opposite side of the littered-up table, engaged in rolling apill, that is to say, a coffin-nail. I had just poured out the tobaccointo the rice-paper, and Hemlock Holmes had pulled back his left cuff,baring his tattooed but muscular wrist, just ready to take his fifthshot in the arm since breakfast, when all of a sudden there was aterrible clatter and racket down at our front door; we heard the doorjerked open and then slammed shut; somebody rushed up the stairwaythree steps at a time; our own door was kicked open, and a tall,bald-headed man, about forty years old, wearing a monocle in his righteye, and with a derby hat in one hand, and a wet, streaming umbrellain the other, stood before us.

  "Say! The cuff-buttons are gone,--the cuff-buttons are gone! One pairof them, anyhow. Come quick! The earl is nearly wild about it. Money'sno object to him!" the apparition yelled at us.

  I was so completely taken aback by the way that chump had burst in onus that I spilled all the beautiful tobacco off the cigarette-paperonto the floor. Holmes, however, like the cold-blooded old cuss thathe always was, didn't even bat an eye, but calmly proceeded to squirtthe cocaine into his wrist, and then, with the usual deep sigh ofcontentment, he stretched out full length in the chair, with his armsabove his head, and yawned.

  "Well, my hasty friend from Hedge-gutheridge, so you haven't got allyour buttons, eh?" he drawled. "I congratulate you upon your frankness,as it isn't everybody who will admit it. But sit down, anyhow, and makeyourself at home. Watson has the 'makings' over there; I've got acocaine-squirter here you can use, if you wish, and you will find anice dish of red winter apples up on the mantelpiece. Beyond the merefacts that you are a bachelor, live at Hedge-gutheridge in CountySurrey, do a great deal of writing, belong to the Fraternal Order ofZebras, and shaved yourself very quickly this morning, I know nothingwhatever about you."

  Of course, I knew that was the cue for _my_ little song and dance.

  "Marvelous! marvelous!" I shouted.

  But our visitor was a long ways more surprised than I was. He floppeddown in a chair, stared at Holmes as if he were a ghost, and said:

  "Good Lord! How in thunder did you get onto all that?"

  My eminent friend smiled his old crafty smile, as he waved his hands,and replied:

  "Why, you poor simp, it's all as plain as that little roundwindow-pane called a monocle that you've got stuck in your eye there.I knew right away that you were a bachelor, because there is a generalair of seediness about you and two buttons are missing from your vest;I knew that you live at Hedge-gutheridge, because you've got a ticketmarked to that place sticking out of your vest-pocket; I knew that youdo lots of writing, for the perfectly obvious reason that you have inksmeared over the thumb and first two fingers of your right hand; Iknew that you belong to the Fraternal Order of Zebras, because I cansee an F. O. Z. watch-charm on your pocket; and, finally, I knew thatyou scraped the incipient spinach off your mug very rapidly thismorning because I can see three large recent razor-cuts on your chinand jaws! Perfectly easy when you know how!" And old Hemlock winked atme. "So spill out your little story to me, one mouthful at a time, anddon't get all balled up while you're telling it either,--or eyether."

  Our visitor gasped again in amazement, handed Holmes his card, andbegan:

  "Well, my name is Eustace Thorneycroft, private secretary to GeorgeArthur 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-buttonsthat His Majesty King George I presented to his ancestor, ReginaldBertram Dunderhaugh, the second Earl of Puddingham, upon King George'saccession to the British throne in the year 1714.

  "It is an historical fact that King George paid twenty-four hundredpounds for the six pairs of cuff-buttons,--their value beingconsiderably greater now,--and the diamond in each one is as large asthe end of a man's thumb; so you can see at once how very valuablethey are, to say nothing of the sentimental value of having been apr
esent from a king to the Earl's ancestor two centuries ago."

  "Oh, yes; I have heard about the Puddingham cuff-buttons," saidHolmes, as he reached over, and grabbing the cigarette I had justrolled, calmly stuck it in his own mouth, and lit it. "Old King GeorgeI had no more taste than a Pittsburg millionaire! But go on with yourlittle yarn."

  Thorneycroft continued, occasionally taking a bite out of one of theapples Holmes had offered him:

  "Well, just this Easter Monday morning, when the Earl was beingdressed by his valet, an Italian named Luigi Vermicelli, he noticedwith horror that his nice pink-and-green silk shirt, lying over theback of the mahogany arm-chair beside his bed, had the ancestralcuff-buttons missing from the cuffs!

  "He is absolutely sure that they were in the cuffs when he took theshirt off last night, since he remembers distinctly having polishedthem up a bit with his handkerchief when he retired, and he cannotaccount for their mysterious disappearance. He has a large andferocious bulldog on guard outside the castle every night, so he issure no burglar got in, as the dog made no noise during the night.

  "As for any possible suspicion attaching to the Earl's servants, Iwill say that they have all been with him for several years, all camehighly recommended, and he would not presume to suspect any of them ofhaving stolen the heirlooms."

  "Which apparently reduces us to the two interesting hypotheses thateither the cuff-buttons flew away by themselves or else the Earl hidthem while he was drunk," interrupted Holmes, as he thoughtfullyrubbed his left ear.

  At this, the secretary stared, but went on:

  "The constables from the village of Hedge-gutheridge, a half a milefrom the castle, to whom the Earl telephoned immediately upondiscovering his loss, and who came up there within twenty minutesafter, were not so confident of the servants' innocence, however, asthey insisted on lining up all fourteen of them in the main corridorand searching them in a very ungentlemanly manner! As anafter-thought, the constables even had the temerity to search _me_, asif I would dream of doing such a thing as that,--me, EustaceThorneycroft!

  "But they couldn't find the precious pair of diamond cuff-buttons onthem at all; so the Earl had me beat it right into London on the nexttrain, and engage you to ferret out the scoundrels responsible forthis dastardly outrage! His Lordship didn't even give me time tofinish my breakfast, he was so worked up about it, and compelled me tocatch the eight-fourteen train out of Hedge-gutheridge, with a rasherof 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 arainy morning sharpened my appetite, too.

  "So that's all there is to tell you, except that here's a hundred goldsovereigns for your retaining fee, and the Earl will positively payyou a reward of ten thousand pounds more when you recover the lostpair 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 HemlockHolmes, 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 thecoin, only you haven't got the nerve to admit it. Well, Mr.Wormyloft,--er, I mean Thorneycroft,--tell the Earl of Puddingham thatI and my bone-headed assistant here will guarantee to give him a runfor 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 openedthe door, about to depart.

  "Gosh, it's raining worse than ever now!" he said. "Well, I've got toshovel dust,--or, rather, mud,--back to Normanstow Towers, anyhow, orthe Earl will raise the deuce with me! Be sure to come out on the nexttrain 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 acoach-and-four waiting for you at the Hedge-gutheridge station. Solong!"

  And the Earl's secretary stepped out, closed the door after him, andwas gone.

  As we heard him going down the stairs, and then leaving by the outerdoor, Holmes got up, shook himself, stretched out his lanky arms, andyawned.

  "Well, we've got a hundred pounds in gold here, Watson," he said. "Nowit's up to us to scare up a good bluff at earning it! Let's see,--it'sten o'clock now, and we must leave the rooms at one o'clock to get tothe station for the one-twenty-two train. So we'll have luncheon,--orlunch, just as you prefer,--at twelve-thirty. That leaves me two hoursand a half to read 'Old Nick Carter.'"

  Hemlock got out several yellow-back dime-novels from the book-rack inthe corner, pulled the Morris chair over to the window, and started inon 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 theirdisappearance?" I inquired anxiously.

  "There you go again, Watson, you old boob!" my friend replied. "Howmany times must I tell you that it is a capital mistake to theorize inadvance of the facts! Keep your shirt on till we get out to thecastle, Doc; and in the meantime _ich kebibble_ who swiped thecuff-buttons!"

  I knew from long experience that it was useless to argue with him, soI 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 swallowsuch talk as that, when I knew it was my duty to rise up and paste himone in the eye for his sarcasms.