which to follow there."

"Doc, when I can't get 'em any other way I pull off my feminine
intuition, which I have inherited in large measure from my French
mother, and I can always run 'em down with that! Now when we were
chasing that Russian hash-mixer or biscuit-shooter out of the kitchen
door closely pursued by Louis with the butcher-knife, your old Uncle
Hemlock's intuition told him that there was another one of the guilty
wretches who had cabbaged the cuff-buttons! Similarly with the
egregious Egbert when he put his retreating forehead in at the door of
the billiard-room, just after I had picked the fifth diamond treasure
out of the pool-table pocket; and also with the Mephistophelian valet
Luigi, when I decided to pull the strong-arm stuff on him and search
him for a note from an accomplice. Little old Intuition,--with a
capital I,--told me that they were the ginks I was after."

And the accomplished old poser calmly whittled away at the sliver of
wood in his hand.

"Aw, come off!" I replied. "I really thought you could hand me
something more plausible than that, Holmes. Unquestionably you do show
flashes of genius sometimes in recovering articles or in spotting
criminals guilty of murder and so on, but at other times you're simply
playing to blind, dumb luck, only your vanity is so enormous that you
won't admit it. You want everybody to believe that you dope out all
your problems with that wonderful deductive reasoning power that you
get from injecting 'coke' into your arm, and sitting still with a pipe
in your mouth! 'Intuition,' my eye! You might be able to tell that to
Barney Letstrayed, but you can't tell it to me!"

And I disgustedly threw away another little sliver of wood I had
picked off the tree-trunk.

Holmes merely laughed and said:

"I guess you're simply sore because I dumped you into the creek
accidentally yesterday, Doc. The old saying has it that no man is a
hero to his valet, but I guess I'm not a hero to my physician either.
Cheer up though, Watson; when we get back to the little old rooms in
Baker Street after this cuff-button fever is over, why I'll split up
with you fifty-fifty on the reward I get from the Earl. How's that,
eh?"

"Pretty good, I guess. But I would like some information on your
deductions from the remaining four pairs of shoes,--Tooter's, Hicks's,
Lord Launcelot's, and most important of all, Billie Budd's, the last
of whom you publicly bawled out as a robber and thief