CHAPTER VIII
As Holmes finished, the man from Scotland Yard quietly got up, alsocleared his throat, waddled around the table in a very pompous manner,placed his fat left hand on Budd's shoulder, and said solemnly, inthat sepulchral tone of voice that he generally adopted for suchoccasions:
"William X. Budd, it now becomes my painful duty to arrest you in theQueen's name--er, no, I mean the King's (that's right, old Vic is deadnow),--to arrest you in the King's name for the following high crimesand misdemeanors, contrary to the statutes made and in such casesprovided, to wit: Burglary, Robbery, Conspiracy, Assault and Battery,and Attempted Murder! It is also my duty to inform you that anythingyou may say will be used against you, as usual, you know! Now comewith me quietly!"
"Aw, what the Sam Hill are you giving us, you old dub? I never didanything to you to have you call me names like that!" shouted Budd,and he instantly wrenched himself loose from Letstrayed's none toomuscular grasp, and ran at top speed out of the room and down the longcorridor outside, upsetting the contents of his finger-bowl all overthe leather seat of his fancy chair.
The Countess promptly had hysterics, and then fainted in the arms ofher gaping brother-in-law, Lord Launcelot, while everybody else,except Holmes, myself, and the Earl, grew red and white by turns; andUncle Tooter, in attempting to arise suddenly, fell out of his chairand tumbled on the floor in a very undignified manner.
"Holy smoke! Don't let him get away like that, you pack of rummies!Get up and chase him!" shouted Holmes in great excitement, as hepulled a revolver out of his hip-pocket and dashed madly out of theroom after the fleeing and recreant Budd, while the rest of us,galvanized back to life by the sudden developments, took after thegreat detective down the corridor, in the way that they generally doin the movies, all hollering: "Stop--thief!" at the top of our voices.
_Bang! Bang!_ Holmes shot twice at Budd, but the bullets went wild,and we all continued the chase through the kitchen, down the rearstairway, and out through the wide gardens between the castle and thestables, while Louis La Violette, the French cook, cursed us volublyin his best Parisian for disturbing him.
Budd was a pretty good runner, so he was about a hundred feet ahead ofus when Holmes dashed up to the open front door of the Earl's greatstone stable-building. He took another shot at Budd as the latter fledup the stairs to the hay-loft, and then disappeared suddenly, thusfrightening the eight horses in their stalls at the rear, who neighedloudly, while Holmes and the rest of us piled up the stairs after him,like a pack of dogs after a rabbit!
When we got up to the loft we found that it covered the entire upperfloor of the building; was at least two hundred feet long by a hundredand fifty feet wide, and except for a small space just around the headof the stairs, was filled up eight feet deep with odorous hay andpiles of straw.
Of course, not a trace of that scoundrel Budd was to be seen. He wasevidently somewhere under the hay, because the shuttered windows weretoo high up for him to have made his escape through them in the shorttime that had elapsed; and the pigeons that roosted around on therafters cooed their darned heads off just as if they didn't know thata desperate crook was concealed somewhere beneath the wide-spreadingpiles of hay.
Holmes ground his teeth with rage as he recognized his temporarydefeat by the resourceful guy from Australia, and it was a good thingthe Countess was still back in the castle being assisted out of herfainting-spell by her Spanish maid Teresa, because the language thatHemlock Holmes used as he called down imprecations on the head of thehay-hidden Budd was frightful to hear!
"Gol darn it!" he said, when he had somewhat recovered his usualequanimity; "this is certainly the first and only time in my life thatI've been held up and stalled by such a common thing as a load of hay!What in thunder did you ever get in such an enormous lot of the darnedstuff for, anyhow?" he demanded, turning to the Earl. "I should thinkthere was enough hay in here to feed a regiment of horses for threeyears!"
"Well, you don't need to take it out on me, Holmes," returned the Earlwith some asperity. "How could I foresee that some one would steal mycuff-buttons and then run up here and hide in the hay? I bought thehay two months ago, when prices were lower than they are now, so I gota lot of it, anticipating the rise in prices that has followed sincethen; and I also bought a large lot of corn, oats, bran, and so on,which I keep downstairs. You're getting to be rather unreasonable,don't you think?"
Holmes didn't reply, but stood there contemplating the great piles ofhay and straw in silent wrath, while the hidden Budd was probablysmiling to himself somewhere underneath. Lord Launcelot, who waswatching the chagrined expression on Holmes's face, leaned backagainst the wall and said:
"Oh, Gee! I have to laugh! This is the funniest thing I've seen for along time!"
"It is, eh?" shouted Holmes, dashing at Launcelot. "Now, you beat it!You've been warned before not to interrupt while I'm thinking."
And he grabbed Launcelot by the arm and hustled him down the stairs,then returned and faced the Earl.
"Well, it would certainly be an endless job to try to dig Budd out ofall this hay, Your Lordship," he said, "so we'll adopt some strategy,and starve him out. We'll have Inspector Letstrayed watch the lofthere at the head of the stairs, as I see this is the only way out,have his dinner brought to him this evening, while he stands guard,and then I'll stand guard through the night, for I can keep awakebetter than Fatty can. Then we'll keep up the sentinel business allday to-morrow, if necessary, Letstrayed and I relieving each other,till we finally force that robber to come out and beg for food,--whenwe'll nab him! How does that sound for a scheme?"
"It listens well, Holmes,--that is, if Letstrayed doesn't make a messof it," said the Earl musingly.
"Woe to him if he does, I can tell you." And Holmes glared at theobese inspector, who sat on the top step trying to get his breath backafter the hard race out from the castle. "But then, I don't see how hecan. Right here is the only place where Budd could get out, and I'llgive Letstrayed my revolver to use instead of his own, since mine is alittle bit quicker on the trigger. Here, Barney," he added as heturned to the Inspector, "take my six-shooter, and I'll take yours.Now see that you don't spill the beans, like you've done before, andstand guard faithfully this afternoon till six o'clock, when we'llbring your dinner out to you, and if William X. Budd tries to breakaway from under the horse-feed, why, you know what to do with yourlittle cannon there!"
"Well, all right, fellows, I'll be the goat if you'll send down to thevillage and telegraph in to headquarters in London now, telling themwhere I am. Say, Earl, haven't you got a pack of cigarettes about yourperson that isn't working?" asked Letstrayed, as he took up hisstation on a particularly soft pile of hay nearby, and stretched hisfat legs over it comfortably.
"What! Smoke cigarettes up here in the hay, and burn down my ancestralstables for me!" shouted the Earl in surprise. "Good night! You've gotabout as much brains as Holmes says you have, Letstrayed. But here, Irealize that it'll be pretty lonesome up here watching for a hiddencrook with nobody but a lot of pigeons for company, so you can takethis package of fine-cut, and chew to your heart's content. Good-by,now."
Barnabas took the proffered pack of chewing tobacco, and sigheddeeply.
"Well, good-by. If you hear any shooting, you'll know it's me," hesaid, as he took a big mouthful of the fine-cut.
And so we left him to his afternoon vigil, after Holmes had taken alook at the bulldog chained up near the horses downstairs,--andreturning to the castle we all entered the library, where the Earlcalled the butler, and said:
"Harrigan, you may pour us out each a glass of wine."
Harrigan smilingly agreed, and after we had all imbibed, the Earl andUncle Tooter played chess on the great mahogany table in the center ofthe room; Holmes and Thorneycroft started a game of checkers, as didLord Launcelot and myself, sitting on the leather-covered divans inthe broad bay-window, while Billie Hicks sprawled himself out in acomfortable arm-chair at one side. The Countess did not appear, b
eingstill upstairs in her own room with her maid Teresa, and the variousservants were scattered through the numerous rooms of the castleengaged in their various duties.
So the afternoon passed,--from a little after two o'clock, when wereturned from the stables, until ten minutes after five, when suddenlytwo loud shots split the silence, coming from the direction of therear of the castle.
"Ha! There he is now!" yelled Holmes, as he jumped up instantly,knocking the checkerboard and all the pieces into the lap of theastonished Thorneycroft, and ran out into the corridor, shouting to usto accompany him. Holmes had pretty long legs, and he distanced therest of us while we did another Marathon out to the stables, with theservants staring at us out of the back windows. I hate to have to tellit, but the sight that met our eyes in the hay-loft was honestlyenough to make an archangel swear!
There, stretched out flat on his back on the hay-littered floor nearthe top of the stairs, bound and gagged, and snoring in the deepestslumber, lay our luckless friend, Inspector Barnabas Letstrayed!
Holmes turned pale with rage, and then he roared:
"Asleep at the switch! And Billie Budd far away by this time! Grab me,fellows, quick, before I forget myself and murder him where he lies!Oh, horrors!"
And he began to swear in French, which, as I have remarked in one ofour previous adventures, was his mother's native tongue, to which heresorted when so excited that he couldn't express himself further inEnglish.
The Earl and I untied the ropes that bound the sleeping Letstrayed,removed the gag from his mouth, which consisted of another piece ofrope, and shook him to his feet, where he stood blinking in surprise,while Holmes leaned against the nearest wall and shook his fists inthe air, while he made the air blue with variegated French cuss-words.
"Let's leave them alone, boys, and return to the castle, while themaster-mind and his faithless guard have it out between themselves,"suggested the Earl.
Whereupon we all followed him quietly back to the library, filled withmixed emotions. When we were back again in the seats from which we hadrecently been so sharply disturbed, the Earl said to me:
"Well, Doctor Watson, what do you make of it? You've had a good dealof experience with the great detective. Tell us what you think."
"What I think of Inspector Letstrayed wouldn't look very well inprint," I began; "but it's easy enough to see what happened. The olddope fell asleep, so, of course, as soon as Budd heard thoseelephantine snores, he sneaked out from his hiding-place under the hayand tied him up with the ropes while he slept, took his revolver awayfrom him, shot it off twice out of pure bravado, and then beat it forparts unknown. If he's as good a runner yet as he was this noon, hemust be over in the next county by this time! Of course, it couldn'thave been Letstrayed who shot the revolver off, because we found himstill asleep and snoring; and he couldn't have shot first at Budd andthen have been overpowered by the latter, because he didn't have timeenough in the short minute between our hearing the shots and racingout there to have fallen asleep again, especially when he was tied upso tightly. I think you will find that I am right,--when Holmesreturns with the information he has pried out of the Inspector."
Holmes returned soon afterward, still fuming and growling over hissecond setback of the day, with Letstrayed trailing along behind him,looking like a flour-sack that had been stepped on! The latter satdown quietly, without a word, and Holmes corroborated my deductions.He said Letstrayed told him he didn't know a thing about what hadtaken place until we untied the ropes from him; for he had fallenasleep in his too comfortable position on the pile of hay, and had notbeen awakened even by the shots.
"I'm so mad I could chew nails," said Holmes. "The only thing I can donow is to send a telegram down to the village to be dispatched to theauthorities in all the surrounding towns, asking them to apprehendBudd when he shows up. Can your secretary here be trusted to send themessages right, Earl?"
He sized up the bald-headed Thorneycroft with a critical eye, as hespoke, and suddenly changed his mind.
"No. I'll go down to Hedge-gutheridge myself and send the telegrams.Then I know it'll be done right, without a third balling-up. Ta, ta!I'll be back in half an hour."
And my erratic partner was out of the building before we hardly knewwhat had happened.
At a quarter of six he returned, somewhat out of breath, and announcedthat we might as well sit down to dinner, since he would not resumeoperations until morning. The Earl quietly accepted his tacitassumption of mastery of the castle, since he recognized by this timethat Hemlock Holmes simply had to have his own way while on a case, orelse he wouldn't play,--that's all!
The dinner as prepared by Louis La Violette,--and served by JoeHarrigan the butler,--was fully as scrumptious and all to the mustardas the one we had partaken of the evening before, and so was the wineserved afterwards. We passed the evening in the library smoking andswapping lies, while Her Ladyship the Countess pleaded a severeheadache and remained in her room, her dinner being served up there byher maid. At about half-past ten we retired; that is, the othersretired, but Holmes grabbed me by the arm as soon as we had enteredour room upstairs, and whispered:
"I'm going to pull off something now, Watson. We'll have to wait hereuntil they're all asleep, as Letstrayed was out in the hayloft thisafternoon, and then I'm going to get some evidence."