His clerk handed him a telegram.  Tearing it open the detective read a message from one of his agents in a distant western city:  It said: 

“Spotty Morgan arrested here to-day.  Big diamond cross found on him.  Do you want him?”

“Do I want him?” fairly yelled the colonel.  “I should say I did!  Here, get me Blake on the long distance.  This is no time for a wire.  I’ve got to telephone!” And he hurried to a private booth in a back office, leaving Grafton to himself.

After he had telephoned.  Colonel Ashley sat in silence in the booth, musing.

“Now I wonder,” he said to himself, “if Grafton is telling me the truth.  Almost any one would believe his story—­it sounds straight enough—­and yet I can’t take any chances.  I guess I mustn’t lose sight of you, Aaron Grafton.

“And perhaps Larch isn’t so bad a chap as you’d have me believe.  Trust a disgruntled lover for saying the worst about the other chap.  Yes, I can’t afford to take any chances.  You may know a bit more about this murder than you’re telling me, even considering the latest from my friend Spotty.  Yes, you may be playing a double game, Mr. Aaron Grafton.”

CHAPTER IX

INDICTED

“Well, Spotty, I’ve got to hand it to you!  Certainly you did put one over on me!”

“Not intentional, Colonel.  So help me—­not intentional!”

“Well, maybe not, but I’ve got to hand it to you.  If I didn’t know that slip of mine in front of the truck was pure accident, I’d say you staged it just to make a good get-away.”

“I couldn’t do that, Colonel.”

“I don’t know, Spotty.  You’re a clever kid.”

“But I couldn’t do that.  I was on the level in saving you.  You’ve got to give me credit for that,” pleaded the gunman.

“I know you were, Spotty.  And that’s why I gave you a chance to get away.  But I never thought it was for a job like this—­murder.”

“And it wasn’t, Colonel—­it wasn’t!  So help me, I never laid eyes on the old lady—­dead or alive!  Murder?  I should say not!”

“Then how did you get that diamond cross?  Answer me!”

Colonel Ashley, with a dramatic gesture, pointed to the glittering ornament that lay on the table between him and the New York crook.  The stones glittered in the electric lights of police headquarters, for it was there, in the distant city, that this talk took place.

Confirming over the long distance telephone the news given in his agent’s telegram, Colonel Ashley, without having revealed to Grafton what new development had occurred, had made a quick trip to Lango, where Spotty, in response to a quiet but general alarm sent out, had been arrested.

A diamond cross had been found in his possession, and was bent and flattened—­crushed by some heavy foot—­though all the stones were intact.