igan had just brought me a second cup of coffee, holding it poised
over the edge of the table, when the door opened, and His Lordship,
the deceased Earl of Puddingham, walked in on us, looking very pale,
with one hand pressed to his forehead.

I felt cold chills creep over me, as Harrigan dropped the cup of
coffee crash-_splash_ on the floor, yelling:

"Good-night! A ghost!"

Every one else in the room was so surprised that he sat speechless,
except Holmes. Billie Budd swallowed a peach-stone in his
astonishment, and coughed and spluttered for quite a while.

"What, aren't you dead, George?" Launcelot finally managed to gasp, as
the Earl walked over to his vacant chair at the head of the table and
sat down in it.

"Why, no; of course not. You're a fine bunch of rumdums, though, I
must say, to leave a man like that, after he's been assaulted and
robbed!" said the Earl, as he motioned to Harrigan to bring him some
breakfast.

Holmes turned to me, with his customary irritating grin, and said:
"Well, Doc; what did I tell you? Never count your coroner's fees
before they're hatched!"

The Earl bade Harrigan summon one of the footmen and tell him to carry
the news of his sudden return to life to the Countess in her room
upstairs. Then he proceeded with his breakfast, just as much alive as
ever.

"For the benefit of you who do not know, I will say that I have a very
peculiar heart," he volunteered after a pause, "and it sometimes stops
beating entirely for a while. All that I remember since I retired last
night,--with my clothes on, after tossing off a few more glasses in
the library,--was being awakened in the middle of the night by some
one opening the door, darting over to me, and jerking the diamond
cuff-button out of my right cuff, which was on the side nearest the
door, and my rising up out of bed to hit him a crack, when I was
knocked unconscious in my struggles by the iron poker, which the
intruder seized from the fireplace. He hit me on the forehead, and I
didn't know anything more until just a moment ago, when I woke up with
a headache, and only one cuff-button left. If Mr. Holmes can lay hands
on the unholy miscreant who is guilty of this and the previous
outrages, he will have earned my everlasting gratitude, also a reward
of twenty thousand pounds,--double what I had Thorneycroft offer him
yesterday."

"That sounds like business," said Holmes, as he jumped up, the Earl
and all of us being finished by t