ven gems, anyhow, so we'll
all go down to the wine-cellar, and celebrate a little. Thorneycroft,
I guess we have all those bills audited for payment, and checks made
out for them, so I'll declare a holiday for you, and invite you down
to share the drinks, since you didn't steal the third gem. Come along,
gentlemen."

To which invitation we all responded by following the genial Earl down
the corridor, through the kitchen,--where Louis and Ivan were
quarreling about something or other, as usual,--and down the
cellar-stairs to that mysterious region where Harrigan the butler held
forth.

CHAPTER XIV

"Well, what'll you have, gentlemen?" asked Joseph the butler, always
appearing at just the right moment. "We have Chateau Margaux,
Chambertin, Beaune, Veuve Clicquot, Pommery, Amontillado, Chianti,
Johannisberger, Tokay, and a number of others in the wines;
Muenchener, Culmbacher, and Dortmunder in the imported beers;
Coleraine whiskey, and----"

"Say, hold on a minute, till I get my breath, will you?" pleaded
Holmes. "I think you may crack me a bottle of that Tokay over there. I
have a weakness for the Hungarian wine."

Harrigan administered the Tokay to Holmes, and then turned to me:

"What'll you have, Doctor Watson?"

"Well, they all look alike to me," I replied, as I stood there rubbing
my chin and sizing up the immense array of wet goods in bottles and
casks that stretched along this part of the cellar,--on shelves and on
the cement floor; "I guess I'll take a little of each."

"Shame on you, Doc, both for your indiscriminate taste and your too
great thirst," chided Holmes, as everybody else laughed.

Harrigan was kept busy for a while uncorking and pouring out the
libations, while we all drank to the recovery of the three
cuff-buttons, and wished the old boy from Baker Street good luck in
getting back the rest of them.

Uncle Tooter was just lifting up a glass of madeira to propose a new
toast, when all of a sudden there came a terrible noise from the
kitchen above us, a clatter of pots and pans, the overturning of a
table, and the sound of angry voices.

"I guess Louis and Ivan must be breaking up housekeeping. Let's go up
and see what the difficulty is," said the Earl.

And we all beat it upstairs to the kitchen. Arriving there, we found
that the excitable French chef had treed his Russian assistant on top
of a tall cupboard that ran along one side of the room, while various
kitchen utensils s