le top, I'll warrant!"

The footman looked around at me, then at Louis and Ivan, and finally
at Holmes, whose threatening expression cowed him, and he shambled
over and, with a deep-drawn sigh, gave up the eighth diamond
cuff-button.

"Well, I was afraid that sooner or later something like this would
happen," he remarked with downcast eyes, "and I would be jerked up
sharp and the darned thing taken away from me. Blast that man Weelum
Budd, anyhow! He came to me last Monday and talked me into hiding the
shiner for him, so he could play it safe up in the drawing-room and I
would have to take the blame for it if it was captured by you before
he could get back!"

With undisguised pleasure my partner took the gem, holding it up so
that Louis could view it plainly, and said: "But where has your base
tempter been keeping himself these past two days, Donald? Have you had
any secret communications with him? Better 'fess up, or it may go hard
with you."

"Why, he came sneaking around here last night about nine-o'clock while
you people were in the music room listening to Lord Launcelot play the
mandolin, and he said he was boarding at the village inn under an
assumed name----"

"And those rabbit-headed constables there couldn't recognize him!"
growled Holmes, shaking his fist. "But did Budd tell you when he
expects to collect the cuff-buttons from his dupes here and make a
get-away!"

"Yes," replied Donald, "he said he would come for them to-morrow,
Friday, morning, and he didn't seem to mind it when I told him that
Mr. Hemlock Holmes had gotten back the first seven cuff-buttons,
either; for he claimed he could swipe 'em all again, anyhow. Said that
you were only a big bluff."

"Oh, I am, am I! Well, I can tell you that Mr. W. X. Budd, of
Melbourne, Australia, will find to-morrow to be a darned unlucky
Friday for him, all right. Now we'll just go into the library, where
the Earl is probably indulging his great taste for literature by
reading the labels on the wine-bottles, and we'll tell him how his
good man Donald fell from grace through the wiles of an Australian
thief. So, front and center, Scotty; forward, march!"

With these words Holmes waved smilingly to Louis, the chef, as a sign
of what his friend Hicks could expect when Holmes the detective should
collar him for the ninth cuff-button, and then he and I accompanied
the scared footman into the presence of the Earl.

"Well, now what?" inquired the noble master