and with me trailing humbly along behind him, because it had
become the usual thing with me.

"Watson," said he, when he had led me out through a side entrance onto
the noble castle lawn, "something tells me that we should take a
little stroll around these lovely flower-beds that Herr Blumenroth has
been so assiduously taking care of. See, there's the old boy now,
kneeling down by that geranium bed over there, while his bone-headed
assistant, Demetrius What's-his-name, wheels the barrowful of
fertilizer down from the shed behind the stables. Let's go over."

We joined the elderly and phlegmatic gardener, and after joshing him a
little about the beauty of the plants he was growing, Holmes began to
ask him some leading questions about whether Lord Launcelot hadn't
been loafing around the flower-beds on the previous Easter Monday at a
time when he naturally would be expected to be up in the billiard
room, shooting his head off at his favorite indoor game.

Heinrich was not at all backward about informing on the Earl's junior
brother, and I gathered from his very frank remarks that he, Heinrich,
did not hold a very high opinion of the said Launcelot's intellectual
abilities. It seems that the latter had been loafing around Blumenroth
most of the day Monday, and several times the gardener had caught him
monkeying with his trowel, trying to dig up one of the flower-beds in
a very unscientific manner, which same monkeying had greatly
exacerbated Heinrich's none too admirable temper.

"It looked as if he was trying to hide something under the ground, Mr.
Holmes, like a dog burying a bone," said the gardener to us; "and
after he had kept it up awhile, interfering with my work all the time,
I could stand it no longer and told him loudly to beat it, which he
did. As soon as he was gone, I quickly turned over all the earth in
the flower-bed with my trowel, but couldn't find a thing, so I suppose
the simp must have taken it away with him, whatever it was."

"Not caring at all whether it was one of the diamond cuff-buttons we
have been after or not, eh? My, but aren't you the independent cuss,
Heinie? Why didn't you tell me this last Tuesday morning, when I
interrogated you, among all the servants, huh?"

"Because you simply asked me then what I knew about the stolen
diamonds, and I told you quite truthfully that I didn't know who stole
them, though I might have added, just as truthfully, that I didn't
care a darn _who_ stole