“And in the dead man’s hand was a ticking watch,” read the colonel.

For a moment he stared at the words.  Then a light seemed to come over his face.  He crushed the paper in his hand, and then spread it out to read again the startling news, while he murmured: 

“The watch of death!”

CHAPTER XI

NO ALIMONY

“Shag!” exclaimed the colonel.

“Yes, sah!”

“We’re going fishing tomorrow!”

“Is we, Colonel?  Den I s’pects yo’ll want t’ git—­”

“Get everything ready, yes.  We’ll go again to that place where Miss Mason found me.  There’s as good fish in that stream as any I didn’t catch, and I want to try my luck.”

“Yes, sah, Colonel.  But, scuse me, didn’t yo, figger on doin’ some detectin’ an’ give up fishin’?” and Shag, with the freedom of an old servant, stood looking at his master as if not quite understanding the new twist the affairs had taken.

“That’s all right, Shag.  You do as I tell you.  I’m going off fishing.  I may not catch anything—­I may not want to after I get there.  But for a quiet place to think, give me a fishing excursion every time!  And I’ve got to do some tall thinking now.  Get ready, Shag!”

“Yes, sah, Colonel!”

And, having put himself in a fair way, as he hoped, to solve some of the problems connected with the Darcy case, Colonel Ashley went down to police headquarters to learn more facts in connection with the murder of the East Indian.

Carroll and Thong were there, and if they did not exactly welcome the colonel as a kindred spirit they at least accorded him the respect due a fellow craftsman in the peculiar line where talent may be found most unexpectedly.  And Carroll and Thong who, with other headquarters men, now knew the colonel’s identity, were not above learning a trick or two, even if they had to take them from the book of their rival.  For they recognized that the colonel would be against them and the prosecutor’s detectives when it came to the trial of James Darcy.

“Well, boys, what’s this I hear about another murder?” asked Colonel Ashley when he had passed over some of his cigars, the flavor of which the two headquarters men had been longing to taste again.

“Some Dago had his head busted in,” remarked Thong.  “It isn’t our case, so we don’t know much about it.”

“No?  Who has it?”

“Pinkus and Donovan; haven’t they, Carroll?”

“Yep.”  Carroll was too much engaged in watching the blue smoke curl lazily upward from his cigar just then to say more.

“Like to talk with ’em about it?” went on Thong, in friendlier tones.

“If they’re here, yes.”

“I think they just came in,” said Thong, bringing his feet down with a bang from the table on which he had had them elevated.  “Are you going to work on that case, Colonel?”