ed, 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! 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 of
our previous adventures, was his mother's native tongue, to which he
resorted when so excited that he couldn't express himself further in
English.

The Earl and I untied the ropes that bound the sleeping Letstrayed,
removed the gag from his mouth, which consisted of another piece of
rope, and shook him to his feet, where he stood blinking in surprise,
while Holmes leaned against the nearest wall and shook his fists in
the air, while he made the air blue with variegated French cuss-words.

"Let's leave them alone, boys, and return to the castle, while the
master-mind and his faithless guard have it out between themselves,"
suggested the Earl.

Whereupon we all followed him quietly back to the library, filled with
mixed emotions. When we were back again in the seats from which we had
recently been so sharply disturbed, the Earl said to me:

"Well, Doctor Watson, what do you make of it? You've had a good deal
of experience with the great detective. Tell us what you think."

"What I think of Inspector Letstrayed wouldn't look very well in
print," I began; "but it's easy enough to see what happened. The old
dope fell asleep, so, of course, as soon as Budd heard those
elephantine snores, he sneaked out from his hiding-place under the hay
and tied him up with the ropes while he slept, took his revolver away
from him, shot it off twice out of pure bravado, and then beat it for
parts unknown. If he's as good a runner yet as he was this noon, he
must be over in the next county by this time! Of course, it couldn't
have been Letstrayed who shot the revolver off, because we found him
still asleep and snoring; and he couldn't have shot first at Budd and
then have been overpowered by the latter, because he didn't have time
enough in the short minute between our hearing the shots and racing
out there to have fallen asleep again, especially when he was tied up
so tightly. I think you will find that I am right,--when Holmes
returns with the information he has pried out of the Inspector."

Holmes returned soon afterward, still fuming and growling over his
second