“With my knife—­that paper cutter dagger I was giving as a present to—­to my wife?” King’s voice was sobering more now.

“That’s the idea, Harry.”

“But I brought that knife to Darcy to have him engrave it.”

“That may be.  It was used to cut the old lady, though, and laid back on Darcy’s work-table.  Come now—­brace up, and tell us all you know about it.”

“Oh, I—­I can brace up all right.  So the old lady’s dead, is she?  Killed—­stabbed!  Too bad!  Many’s the trinket I’ve bought of her for—­for—­well, some of the girls, you know,” and he winked suggestively at the detectives.  “Old lady Darcy’s dead!  Say, look here, boys!” he exclaimed with a sudden change of manner, as something seemed to penetrate to his sodden brain, “you—­you don’t for a minute think I did this—­do you?” and he sat up straight for the first time.

“Never mind what we think,” said Carroll.  “We’re not paid for telling it—­like the reporters,” and he grinned at Daley of the Times.  “We want to get at the facts.  Are you in condition to talk?”

“Not here!” interrupted Thong quickly, with a glance at the newspaper men, which they were quick to interpret.  “Oh, it’s all right, boys,” went on the detective.  “We’ll let you in for anything that’s going as soon as we can—­you know that.”

“Sure,” agreed Daley.  “But don’t keep us waiting all day.  The presses are like animals—­they have to be fed, you know.  First editions don’t wait for gum-shoe men, even if they’re of the first water.  And I’ve got a city editor who has a temper like a bear with a sore nose in huckleberry time.  So loosen up as soon as you can.”

They took King and Darcy to police headquarters in a taxicab which King, with still half-drunken gravity, insisted on paying for.

Colonel Ashley—­or Colonel Brentnall as he had registered at the hotel—­having, by means of a more or less adroit bit of camouflage, obtained possession of the newspaper containing an account of the murder of Mrs. Darcy, and of the holding of her cousin and Harry King on suspicion, tossed the journal on the bed beside his well-worn copy of the “Complete Angler.”  Then, to demonstrate his complete mastery over himself, he picked up the book, never so much as glancing at the black headlines, and read: 

“. . .  I have found it to be a real truth that the very sitting by the river’s side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will invite the angler to it; . . .”

“I’m a fool!” exploded the colonel.  “I came here to fish, and, first click of the reel, I go nosing around on the trail of a murder, when I vowed I wouldn’t even dream of a case.  I won’t either,—­that’s flat!  I’ll get my rods in shape to go fishing to-morrow.  It may clear.  Then Shag and I—­”

Slowly the book slipped from his hand.  It fell on the bed with a soft thud, and a breeze from the partly opened window ruffled a page of the newspaper.  The colonel, looking guiltily around the room, walked nearer to the bed, and then, as stealthily as though committing a theft, he picked up the Times.  Softly he exclaimed: