e him anything he wants!--only
for the love of Mike let me try to forget that the ancient honor of
our noble House of Dunderhaugh and Puddingham has gone to pot in the
unwelcome fact that my only brother and sole heir to the title, that
shrimp of a Launcelot, has been mixed up in the robbery!"

The Earl yammered away at the butler for some time, while yours truly
did not forget to help himself to the drinks while they were passing
around, although I knew as a physician that they were not exactly the
best thing for the lining of my stomach.

"Now then, Your Lordship, if you are sufficiently revived to talk
business again, I would suggest that you give all those eleven
recovered cuff-buttons, together with the twelfth and last one that
the thieves didn't get, to me," said Holmes, "and I will keep them
safely in my coat-pocket for you until you are ready to send them in
to the bank in the city, protected the while by the revolver in my
hip-pocket. I suppose you might as well forgive Launcelot as you
forgave the others for their thefts, or rather for their receipt of
stolen goods from Budd, as the main thing now will be to nab him, the
author of the crime, when he comes to-morrow."

"Yes, I suppose so, Holmes," replied the Earl. "Come over to my room
and I'll give you all the gems for safe keeping. Launcelot, you
rummie, I'll forgive you, although I shouldn't; and I warn you and
Uncle Tooter both not to interfere when Holmes arrests Budd
to-morrow."

"All right, George. Thanks!" murmured Launcelot with downcast eyes,
and Tooter also nodded assent.

When Holmes had got all the twelve gems stowed away in his right-hand
coat-pocket, the Earl spoke of writing out a check for the twenty
thousand pounds' reward he had promised him, but Holmes unexpectedly
demurred,--saying he would wait until Billie Budd was captured
first,--instead of grabbing feverishly for the coin, as I naturally
thought he would.

"Well, there's nothing to do now but kill time until to-morrow when
that scoundrel shows up in a spurious disguise," said Holmes, as he
moved toward the door. "I move that we shoot several games of pool
upstairs for the rest of this eventful afternoon.

"It ought to be about time now for old Chief Sleepy-eye to waddle in
and ask about the stolen gems, after I've dug them all up, I guess."

"Old who, did you say?" inquired Thorneycroft with a smile.

"Why, old Chief Sleepy-eye,--that lethargic and comatose old piece of
c