“No, he isn’t, Colonel.”

“He isn’t?” cried the old detective, and there was surprise in his voice.

“No.  He was bailed out to-day.  I thought you knew it.”

“I didn’t.  I’m glad you told me, though.  So King got bail!  Who put it up?  It was high!”

“Larch!”

“The hotel keeper?”

“So I understand.  They took Harry away a while ago.  I wish I had been in his shoes.”

“I’m glad you’re not.  I don’t imagine, for a moment, that fool King had a hand in this affair.  In fact I know he didn’t.  But his are pretty uncertain shoes to be in just the same.  Now cheer up!  This setting him free on bail has given me a new angle to work on.  So cheer up, and I’ll do the best I can for you.  Any message you want to send to Miss Mason?”

“Only that I—­” Darcy hesitated and grew red.

“I guess I understand,” said the colonel with a laugh.  “I’ll tell her!”

The colonel spent that evening in the grill room of the Homestead.  Though it was not the same as it had been, and though patronage of the better sort had fallen off considerably, it was still a jolly enough sort of place of its character to be in.  A number of “men about town,” as they liked to be called, were in, and Colonel Ashley was sipping his julep when there entered Mr. Kettridge, the relative of Mrs. Darcy, whose jewelry shop he was managing pending a settlement of her estate.

“Good evening, Colonel,” he called genially.  “Will you join me in a Welsh rabbit?”

“Thank you, no.  I’m afraid my digestion isn’t quite up to that, as I’ve had to cut out my fishing of late.  But what do you say to a julep?”

“Delighted, I’m sure,” and they sat down at one of the half-enclosed tables in the grill and ordered food and drink.  They had become friends since the colonel’s first visit to the store, and the friendship had grown as they found they had congenial tastes.

The evening passed pleasantly for them.  They talked of much, including the murder, and the colonel was more than pleased to find that the jeweler had no very strong suspicion against young Darcy.

“I’ve known him from a boy,” said Mr. Kettridge, “and, though he has his faults, a crime such as this would be almost impossible to him, no matter what motive, such as the dispute over money or his sweetheart.  He may be guilty, but I doubt it.”

“My idea, exactly,” returned the colonel.  “Now as to certain matters in the store on the morning of the murder.  The stopped clocks, for instance.  Have you any theory—­”

Came, at that instant, fairly bursting into the quiet grill room, some “jolly good fellows,” to take them at their own valuation.  There were three of them, the center figure being that of Harry King, and he was very much intoxicated.

“Hello, Harry!  Where have you been?” some one called.

King regarded his questioner gravely, as though deeply pondering over the matter.  It was often characteristic of him that, though he became very much intoxicated, yet, at times, under such conditions, Harry King’s language approached the cultured, rather than degenerated into the common talk of the ordinary drunk.  That is not always, but sometimes.  It happened to be so now.