“No, hang it all!  Kedge has that bank case to look after.  Anyhow, I don’t believe he’d figure this out right.  Oh, well, I suppose there’s no help for it, I’ve got to keep on now that I’ve started.  But it’s my last case!  Positively my last case!” and once more he banged his hand down on the table.

Again the waiter glided up.  He looked at the colonel expectantly, and the latter stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment.

“Oh, yes,” went on the detective.  “You may bring me—­er—­just a small glass of claret—­a very small one.”

Mr. Kettridge gave his order, and then looked relieved.  The colonel had seemed very much in earnest.

“Do you suppose,” asked the jeweler, “that Harry King could have had anything to do with this case?”

“Of course it’s possible, but, even so, we can easily make sure of him and arrest him when we want him.  To approach him now would only be to defeat your own plan, that is if you have one.  I confess this startles me.  I don’t know what to make of it, and there’s no use pretending that I do.  After all, detective work is the outcome of common sense plus a sort of special intuition and knowledge.  I have gotten to a certain point, and now some of my theories are shattered.  That is they would be if I had been foolish enough to have formed arbitrary theories that could not be changed.  As it is, that’s just what I have not done.  I am still open to argument and conviction, and this coin, which you say belonged to Mrs. Darcy a few days before her death, and which now makes its appearance in the hands of a drunken man who has been under suspicion, makes cause for question.

“But, my dear Mr. Kettridge, let us be reasonable.  King will not run away, and in his present condition he is likely to pick a quarrel with you if you mention the murder to him.  Consider, also, that it may be he came into possession of this coin honestly.”

“How?”

“He may have received it in change—­here.  He’s spent enough money in the place I suppose.”

“But if he got it here—­ Great Scott! you don’t suppose that Larch—­”

“I don’t suppose anything yet, least of all regarding Larch.  But consider.  This is a public place.  A hundred persons—­yes, two or three hundred—­come in here every day, spend money and receive change.  Now this coin, though to you and me it shows itself at once to be of great antiquity, might easily be passed, in a hurry, or to one who had not the full possession of his senses, as a silver half dollar, which it somewhat resembles.  In fact, I think I can persuade King that it was a half dollar he dropped.”

And, somewhat to the surprise of Mr. Kettridge, the colonel, who had been watching King as the latter sought on the floor for his fallen coins, walked up to the wastral and handed him a fifty-cent piece.

“You dropped that, I believe,” said Colonel Ashley, genially enough.