boot in one of his hands. "Seems to me they are playing me for a
sucker in this hotel," he cried. "They'll find they've started in to
monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that
chap can't find my missing boot there'll be trouble. I can take a joke
with the best, but they've gone a bit over the mark this time."
We thought he was still looking for the new brown boot he had lost, but
now it was an old black boot that had disappeared, and he was threatening
an agitated German waiter that he would see the manager and leave the
hotel unless it was found before sundown, calling the place "a den of
thieves." Holmes suddenly took the matter very seriously and declared that,
taken in conjuction with Sir Charles's death, he was not sure that of all
the five hundred cases of capital importance that he professed to have
handled there was one which cut so deep. But he felt confident
