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As we marched along the garden-paths, Holmes demanded of his victim: "Say, wasn't Thorneycroft out here at the stable to see you along with Billie Budd, Olaf?" "Yes, he was, Mr. Holmes," answered the cowering Olaf. "And they both made it up with you to hide the cuff-button, eh? Now tell me how you came to put it in such an outlandish place! Talk quick, now!" said Holmes.
Gertrude was tired with the trip and went up to bed very soon. I made up my mind to tell them nothing; until the next day, and then to make as light of our excitement as possible. After all, what had I to tell? An inquisitive face peering in at a window; a crash in the night; a scratch or two on the stairs, and half a cuff-button!
"Hicks, I'm astonished at your playing," he continued in an authoritative tone; "why, a man so smart as to keep a diamond cuff-button hidden for three days while he confides in the Earl's chef down in the pantry should be able to play this intellectual game better than that!"
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."
I can't see how you ever found it out, but that crook of a Budd he came to me with one of the gems, and induced me to keep it for him till he called for it," was the admission of the confused Hicks, who, with reddened face, sheepishly fished out the stolen cuff-button and handed it to the astonished Earl. "And now Billie Hicks is a thief, too!" said the latter.
"Your coachman is not really the thief, only a receiver of stolen goods. Thorneycroft," he added, as he turned to the latter, "the game is up! I'm onto you! You stole the cuff-button and gave it to Olaf to hide for you, and William X. Budd knows where the rest are, and you probably do, too. Now make a clean breast of it, and avoid further trouble."
The man from Balmoral brightened up, as he answered: "I am inclined to believe that my partner, Egbert Bunbury, stole them, sir. When he went to propose to Miss Olivano, the Countess's maid, yesterday afternoon, I saw something sparkling in his hand." "Think he intended to give her a diamond cuff-button, instead of a diamond ring, Donald?" queried Holmes. "Well, who can say?
Well, by thunder, this is getting to be something fierce!" commented the Earl as he took the cuff-button from Holmes and stowed it away in his vest-pocket, "not the recovery of them, which I welcome, but the melancholy fact that I have been betrayed now by no less than, seven different people in whom I have reposed confidence, my own wife, my secretary, my coachman, my second cook, my second gardener, and now by both my footmen!
But Hi didn't mean any 'arm by it, Your Lordship, er, Mr. 'Olmes. The reason Hi lost the cuff-button in 'ere was because Hi was shooting a little game of pool by myself just now, with the thing in my 'and, so Hi could hadmire it, and when Hi made the last shot, it rolled away. Hi didn't know which pocket it went into, and just then Hi 'eard some one coming, so Hi beat it."
Then, right after I returned from calling on you to inform you of their loss, which was about half-past ten, he and I went out to the stables and he gave the other one to Olaf here to hide for him. Here's the one I have been keeping, Mr. Holmes," stammered Thorneycroft, as he took the second sparkling cuff-button out of his vest-pocket and laid it on the table beside the one recovered from Olaf.
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