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Updated: May 25, 2025
I hate to have to tell it, but the sight that met our eyes in the hay-loft was honestly enough to make an archangel swear! There, stretched out flat on his back on the hay-littered floor near the top of the stairs, bound and gagged, and snoring in the deepest slumber, lay our luckless friend, Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed! Holmes turned pale with rage, and then he roared: "Asleep at the switch!
"Old who, did you say?" inquired Thorneycroft with a smile. "Why, old Chief Sleepy-eye, that lethargic and comatose old piece of cheese that you call Letstrayed, of course. I suppose his ancestor must have got the name Letstrayed because he was let stray away from some asylum for the feeble-minded. Look, here he is now! Speak of the devil and he appears, darned if he don't!"
And the infuriated Gaul launched a blow with his fist at Letstrayed that knocked that astonished person out of his chair and tumbled him flat on the floor, with the chair upside down on top of him. "Here, don't let's have another attempted murder in the castle, La Violette," remonstrated Holmes, as he pulled back the enraged cook from a further assault on Letstrayed; "contain yourself.
"How the Sam Hill did you ascertain that, Holmes?" "Well, if Mr. Hicks hadn't been so careless as to stand around in the spilled flour on the pantry-floor when he was foolishly confiding his little game to the chef, perhaps I wouldn't have been able to apprehend him now," replied Holmes, clearing his throat. "Are you awake there, Letstrayed?
Here we were interrupted by the constable whom Holmes had set to guard the front of the castle, who came in and said: "Hi beg pahdon, Mr. 'Olmes, but here is Inspector Bahnabas Letstrayed, just arrived from London, to see that everything is hall right."
He hurriedly scrawled a reply, which he gave to the waiting messenger outside the front door, while Letstrayed fumed and stammered in protest. No, of course not. How could he, when I grabbed them all? Now roll over and go to sleep again.
Upon being told that Holmes had recovered two of the cuff-buttons from Yensen and Thorneycroft, and was in a fair way to recover a third one from Xanthopoulos, they were greatly surprised. "We left Inspector Letstrayed asleep on one of the billiard tables," said Launcelot, with a grin; "but I guess Holmes was able to get along pretty well without him.
Holmes snatched it out of his hand, tore it open, and hastily read it to the crowd: INSPECTOR BARNABAS LETSTRAYED, NORMANSTOW TOWERS, SURREY, Have you found Puddingham's cuff-buttons yet? Answer. "Wouldn't that knock the specs off your grandmother's nose?" sneered Holmes.
Letstrayed's eyes bulged out, and Holmes then arose, pushed his chair back, inserted his left thumb in the left armhole of his vest, expanded his chest, cleared his throat, and pointed his right fore-finger dramatically at Billie Budd at the other end of the table, as he said: "Inspector Letstrayed, do your duty! There stands the guilty wretch!"
And Holmes ground his teeth as he added: "The idea of Letstrayed being chump enough to think that the servants, if they have stolen the diamonds, would risk discovery so boldly as to carry them around with them! and besides, the village constables searched them yesterday. It's a cinch he owes his appointment as Inspector at Scotland Yard to a political pull, and not to his merit!"
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