“Do you—­do you think you can get over it, Colonel?”

“By gad, sir!  I will!  That’s all there is to it! I will!”

The silence of the colonel’s room was broken by a peculiar scratching at the door, interrupting his perusal of this passage: 

“I told you angling is an art, either by practice or long observation or both.  But take this for a rule—­”

“Come in!” invited the colonel, thinking it might be Shag, who sometimes, for the lesser disturbance of his master’s thoughts or reading, thus announced himself.

But there entered no black and smiling Shag, nor one of the hotel employees, but a little dog which wagged its tail both in greeting to the colonel, seated before a gas log in his room, and also as a sort of applause for the dog itself, because it had succeeded in pushing open the door which was left ajar, but which, nevertheless, was rather stiff on the hinges.  And Chet, the dog in question, was rather proud of his achievement.  Thus his wagged tail had a double meaning, so to speak.

“Ah, Chet, you’ve come in for another talk, have you?” asked the colonel as he leaned over to pat the dog’s head.

More wagging of the tail to indicate pleasure, satisfaction, and whatever else dogs thus express.

“Glad to see you,” went on the colonel, as though talking to a human, and, with more gyrations of the tail, which constituted Chet’s side of the talk with the colonel, the little creature sought a warm spot near the gas log, stretched out and sighed long in contentment.

Chet was the pet of a man—­a permanent resident of the hotel—­who had the suite next Colonel Ashley’s, and, early in his stay at the hostelry, the detective had made friends with the little animal, which, when Mr. Bland, its own master, was out, often came in to visit the fisherman, just as he had done now.

The colonel was thoroughly enjoying himself, for he had put aside, in the perusal of Walton, all thoughts of the murder and its many complications, when there came another interruption.  This time it was a ring of his room telephone.

“There’s a gentleman downstairs asking for you,” came the word in response to his answer to the summons.

“Who is it?

“Says I’m to tell you he’s Mr. Young.”

“Oh, yes, Jack Young—­send him up.”  The colonel closed the book with a sigh of regret.

“No use trying to read Izaak now,” he murmured.  “It would be a sacrilege.  I’ll have to wait a bit.  Wonder what Jack wants.  Ah, come in!” he called, as a discreet knock sounded on the half-opened door.  “Trouble?”

“Not yet, Colonel, though there may be.  Do you want me to follow King out of town?”

“Of course.  Wherever he goes.  Stick to him like a leech,” and the detective indicated a chair to his visitor.  Jack Young was one of the Ashley Agency’s most trusted lieutenants.

“I sent for you to have you shadow King,” said the detective in a low voice, seeing to it that the door was closed, “because I think we can get something out of him.”