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De Casimir caught the gleam of jewellery, and went hurriedly downstairs. "What are you doing there, my friend?" he asked, and the words were scarcely out of his mouth, when Barlasch extinguished his candle. There followed a dead silence, such as comes when a rodent is disturbed at his work. The two men on the cellar-stairs were conscious of the gaze of the bright, rat-like eyes below.
In my blind embarrassment I mistook them; and the next moment the whole company were startled by a loud bump bumping, a crash, and a woman's scream. There was a barrel of soft-soap at the foot of the cellar-stairs, and I fell, head first, into that. Susie was Mrs. Todd before I recovered from the effects of my involuntary soap-bath.
To which invitation we all responded by following the genial Earl down the corridor, through the kitchen, where Louis and Ivan were quarreling about something or other, as usual, and down the cellar-stairs to that mysterious region where Harrigan the butler held forth. "Well, what'll you have, gentlemen?" asked Joseph the butler, always appearing at just the right moment.
“Well, if that isn’t successful,” Laura said, “there’s another way of finding out who your husband or wife’s going to be. You must walk down the cellar-stairs backwards with a candle in one hand and a mirror in the other. You must look in the mirror all the time and, when you get to the foot of the stairs, you will see, reflected in it, the face of your husband or wife.”
Turning, I saw under the broad-brimmed hat in the clear gray eyes a sudden sparkle of excitement as he ran hastily up the cellar-stairs. Seeing that something unusual was afloat, I followed him quickly out on to the wharf, where presently the cause of his movement was made plain. Beside the wharf was a large ship, with two planks running down from her decks to the wharf.
Scepticism and incredulity gave place to excitement and unbounded enthusiasm. The old King embraced the Countess; Baron de Becasse attempted to kiss me; Sir Peter Grebe made a handsome apology for his folly and vowed that he would do open penance for his sins. The poor Crown-Prince, who was of a nervous temperament, sat on the cellar-stairs and wept like a child.
"Now where in thunder did I put that diamond cuff-button?" came the voice of Tooter again, while I sat still on the top step of the cellar-stairs, just inside the door, from which point I could see the tip of Holmes's long, lean, aquiline nose peering out from behind the barrel below me.
"I will be more careful in future, my love," returned my father. "'What do you want me to do? said Kate. "'Only to hold the candle for me, I answered, restored to my seven senses at last; and, taking it from her, I led the way, and she followed, till we had passed through the kitchen and reached the cellar-stairs. These were steep and awkward, and she let me help her down."
"We are nearly out of it," I said exultantly. "I see the cellar-stairs on ahead. If only those doors are open!" "Heaven is merciful to the fool, and we are a pair," she replied, sighing gratefully. "It seems strange that nobody should be in the cellar on a night like this. Hark! They are playing again up stairs in the ball-room."
I unlocked the cellar-door and stepped out into the kitchen, where the French and Russian pancake-tossers stared in astonishment as Hemlock Holmes came marching up the cellar-stairs with a firm hand on Uncle Tooter's shoulder, and then columned left in a parade through the dining-room on the way to the library. "At-ten-shun!" called out my partner. "Present cuff-button! Salute!
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