at least one of the stolen gems. He had also been down in the
wine-cellar, on the theory that some of the servants might have gone
down there to get drunk, and while in that condition might have
dropped the gems, but there also he was doomed to disappointment.

"Cheer up, Barney, old boy; maybe I'll let you stand beside me when I
nab the next thief, and you can thus share in the honor of
apprehending him," said Holmes. Letstrayed, however, seemed to think
that my partner was unjustly putting something over on him in getting
back so many of the cuff-buttons when he, Letstrayed, couldn't find
one. After breakfast the Earl suggested that we take a walk about the
grounds, which proved to be a pleasanter jaunt than the one we took at
Holmes's insistence on Tuesday morning; for the grass had been dried
by this time by the sunshine that had followed Monday's rain.

The nine of us, including the Countess, rambled around the
wide-spreading lawn by twos and threes, and I contrived to draw Holmes
past the stables and gardens back to the small patch of woods that
adjoined the castle grounds at the rear, where we seated ourselves on
a fallen tree-trunk.

"Now, look here, Holmes, I've just been thinking----" I began.

"What! Again?" interrupted Holmes, with a grin.

"Don't interrupt me, please," I said seriously. "I want you to dope
out for me the process of reasoning you went through yesterday noon in
the music room behind the locked doors. Some of the moves you have
made are too many for me, and I seek enlightenment."

"Well, Doc," said Holmes, as he took out his pocket-knife, pulled a
sliver of wood off the tree-trunk we were sitting on, and began to
whittle it, "the red clay I found on Eustace Thorneycroft's shoes was
pretty good evidence that he had been around the stable, where the
only red clay in the neighborhood is located; so I disguised myself as
the race-track loafer and pried his secret out of the none too bright
Olaf Yensen, the coachman. Then I found cigar ashes of the peculiar
Pampango brand, which I can always spot with a microscope, on the
Countess's shoes, which proved that she had been in the Earl's rooms
just after he had smoked a Pampango and before the room had been swept
out, so I was able to nail _her_ as one of the kleptomaniacs----"

"Yes, yes, I know that already," I hastened to say; "but what about
your seizing Galetchkoff, Bunbury, and Xanthopoulos? You didn't seem
to have any shoe-sole clues by