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With these words Holmes waved smilingly to Louis, the chef, as a sign of what his friend Hicks could expect when Holmes the detective should collar him for the ninth cuff-button, and then he and I accompanied the scared footman into the presence of the Earl.
"Would you mind telling me just where this diamond cuff-button is hidden, now?" Olaf put his tongue in his cheek, and winking at the false race-track follower, replied: "Vat you want to know for? Ay bane taking no chances mit it, so Mr. Budd, ven he comes back, vill get it safe, und pay me das big reward he promised me."
"That man William Budd, he took the cuff-button, and he gave it to me to hide for him," claimed Ivan; "so I am not the original thief; and I don't know a thing about the others."
Launcelot was squeezed up against the gray stone embrasure at that place by Holmes, who quickly forced the eleventh and last diamond cuff-button out of his nerveless grasp, then turned triumphantly to me, his faithful but out-of-breath squire, while the spring breezes ruffled the sparse hair on his uncovered head, and the gentle afternoon sun shone down on as queer a scene as had ever taken place during our association, crying: "Well, here we are at last, Watson.
I merely felt that all I had heard about politics and political parties from Argentine Rachael and from other people was the product of untutored brains that looked at things from the special viewpoint of the gutter Presently, however, the screaming discrepancy between Cuff-Button Leary's rule and "Jeffersonian ideals" did occur to me. I conveyed my thoughts to Bender as well as I could
All that I remember since I retired last night, with my clothes on, after tossing off a few more glasses in the library, was being awakened in the middle of the night by some one opening the door, darting over to me, and jerking the diamond cuff-button out of my right cuff, which was on the side nearest the door, and my rising up out of bed to hit him a crack, when I was knocked unconscious in my struggles by the iron poker, which the intruder seized from the fireplace.
Maybe the cat took 'em, or maybe George walked in his sleep and threw them away down the road!" said he. But his pleasantry was lost on Hemlock Holmes, who advanced a step toward him and, in menacing tones, demanded the instant return of the final cuff-button.
"He's bes' joke yet," Strong remarked through Rex's fingers. "He's go'n' kill himself," and he kissed the restraining hand gallantly. The two sober citizens turned and stared at the gentlemen. He looked it. He looked as if there could be no step deeper into the gloom which enveloped him, except suicide. He nodded darkly as the two regarded him. "Uh-huh. Life's failure. Lost cuff-button.
"Well, by Jove, I hardly know what to say, and that's the truth, Holmes," he remarked at length; "but the fact that my recreant secretary has just now voluntarily coughed up the second cuff-button without trying to hide it again in his shoe, as he might have done, inclines me to let him live this time.
"It isn't under the Muenchener barrel, it must be under the Dortmunder," continued Tooter to himself, as I heard him laboriously heave over the barrel and paw around on the cement floor under it, in the space between the head of the barrel and the raised ends of the staves, "Ah! here it is, the cute little diamond that that nutty George has been after, which I have been keeping since last Monday to oblige a fellow-sport, Billie Budd, but which I have decided must be taken out of the vulgar crude cuff-button and reset in an engagement ring for Teresa, since she is so dippy after historical relics!"
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