Part 1 (1/2)
The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-buttons
by James Francis Thierry
CHAPTER I
Well, you see, it was like this:
After my illustrious friend, Hemlock Holmes, champion unofficial detective of the world, had doped out ”The Adventure of the Second Stain,”--the last one to be pulled off after his return to life,--thereby narrowly averting a great war, he got sick of London life and hiked over to the United States He prevailed upon me to accompany him to that re in New York City all the tireat advantage his marvelous powers, and helped the New York police to clear up many a mystery that they had been unable to solve; for we found the police of that city to be just as stupid and chuckle-headed as those of London
While in New York Hol, and in case this little book should happen to be read by any of London society's ”upper crust,” I hu thatEdward in May, 1910, Hemlock Holmes was called back to London by the Scotland Yard officials to solve the mysterious disappearance of the British royal crohich somebody had swiped the same day that Ed kicked the bucket; and of course I had to trail along with hi friend, Heuilty wretch within two days, but the culprit was so highly placed in society that the cops couldn't do a thing to hie, Ed's successor, had recovered the crohich was found in an old battered valise in a corner of the duke's garage,--and had got a written confession out of him in Holmes's old rooms in Baker Street, in the presence of myself and Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed, we all swore a solemn oath, on a bound volume of Alfred Austin's poems, that ould never, never tell who it was that had stolen the English crown in the year 1910! Wild horses shall not drag froht be a Ger over your shoulder as you read this
Holht little isle for a while after that episode, and there in the same old den, at 221-B Baker Street, in the city of London, ere do in 1912 that saw us introduced to what turned out to be positively the dog-gonedest, , andand varied career in Arthur Conan Doyle's drean of the Four” and ”The Study in Scarlet,” and had ”The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” all beaten to a frazzle
To be painfully precise about it, it was just twenty hth, 1912, the day after Easter, and it was raining soainst our second-story s, and occasional thunder and lightning varied the scene
Hol in a Morris chair, wrapped in his old lavender dressing-gown, and earing the red Turkish slippers King George had given him for Christmas a few months before
He had his little old bottle of cocaine on the table beside him, and his dope-needle, which he had just filled, in his hand I was sitting on the opposite side of the littered-up table, engaged in rolling a pill, that is to say, a coffin-nail I had just poured out the tobacco into the rice-paper, and He his tattooed but muscular wrist, just ready to take his fifth shot in the arm since breakfast, when all of a sudden there was a terrible clatter and racket down at our front door; we heard the door jerked open and then slammed shut; somebody rushed up the stairway three steps at a time; our own door was kicked open, and a tall, bald-headed ht eye, and with a derby hat in one hand, and a wet, strea umbrella in the other, stood before us
”Say! The cuff-buttons are gone,--the cuff-buttons are gone! One pair of them, anyhow Come quick! The earl is nearly wild about it Money's no object to him!” the apparition yelled at us
I was so completely taken aback by the way that chump had burst in on us that I spilled all the beautiful tobacco off the cigarette-paper onto the floor Holmes, however, like the cold-blooded old cuss that he alas, didn't even bat an eye, but calmly proceeded to squirt the cocaine into his wrist, and then, with the usual deep sigh of contentth in the chair, with his arms above his head, and yawned
”Well, ot all your buttons, eh?” he drawled ”I congratulate you upon your frankness, as it isn't everybody ill admit it But sit down, anyhow, and s' over there; I've got a cocaine-squirter here you can use, if you wish, and you will find a nice dish of red winter apples up on the mantelpiece Beyond the e in County Surrey, do a great deal of writing, belong to the Fraternal Order of Zebras, and shaved yourself very quickly thiswhatever about you”
Of course, I knew that was the cue for _ and dance
”Marvelous!ways more surprised than I was He flopped down in a chair, stared at Holhost, 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 round -pane called a ot stuck in your eye there
I knew right away that you were a bachelor, because there is a general air of seediness about you and two buttons are utheridge, because you've got a ticketout of your vest-pocket; I knew that you do lots of writing, for the perfectly obvious reason that you have ink sht hand; I knew that you belong to the Fraternal Order of Zebras, because I can see an F O Z watch-charm on your pocket; and, finally, I knew that you scraped the incipient spinach off your e recent razor-cuts on your chin and jaws! Perfectly easy when you kno!” And old Hemlock winked at me ”So spill out your little story to et all balled up while you're telling it either,--or eyether”
Our visitor gasped again in aan:
”Well, e Arthur Percival Chauncey Dunderhaugh, the ninth Earl of Puddinghae, over in Surrey