As Launcelot and I followed suit, a short, nervous-looking man of about thirty-five, with a florid countenance, rushed out of the ancient station toward us, and shouted:
"O Launcie, Launcie, misfortune has followed misfortune upon our venerable family of Dunderhaugh this miserable day! Two more pairs of those cuff-buttons have been abstracted during your absence, making five pairs in all that are gone! I suppose this is the eminent Mr. Holmes?"
And the noble Earl of Puddingham hurriedly shook hands with my boss.
"Right you are, Your Lordship," said Holmes, "and here is the egregious Dr. Watson, also at your service. You see, he's my old side-kicker, and I couldn't think of entering upon a crook-chase without him tagging along after me to write it up in well-chosen language. Do you get me, Steve? And, say, don't worry about the cuff-buttons. We'll find 'em all right."
"Assuredly, Mr. Holmes," said the Earl, as we all stepped into a coach that was waiting back of the station, with Launcelot more gloomy and depressed than ever.
"Home, Olaf! And get a move on!" This to the fat little coachman who drove the ancestral chariot.
"Ay bane get there pooty qvick, Your Lordship," said that Norwegian worthy, as he whipped up the horses, and in five minutes' time we had dashed up to a large and imposing stone castle with round towers at each corner,—apparently about five hundred years old and five stories high,—surrounded by an extensive garden and park, with a small woods in the rear: just the kind you read about, with green gobs of ivy hanging down over the gray walls.
"Well, here we are, my friends," said the Earl, as he stepped out; while two footmen in light green livery assisted us to alight. "Let's see if I've still got the sixth and last pair of my diamond cuff-buttons safe here."
He fumbled with his cuffs a moment, and added:
"Yes, they're still here. What with Lloyd-George soaking all the British nobility with his preposterous income-tax, and everything going to the demnition bow-wows generally, you can't tell but that you'll be beaten out of your eye-teeth the next minute!"