“What’s the matter—­’fraid of soiling your hands?” asked Jack with a laugh.

“Well, yes, in a way—­”

“Look at the dog’s mouth!  It’s bleeding!” cried Jack, pointing.

“I was afraid it would be,” said the colonel, quietly.  “Don’t go near him, Jack, for, unless I’m much mistaken—­”

The two men gazed at the dog.  The little animal suddenly looked up at them in a peculiar manner.  It whined and its body was shaken as with a cold shiver.  A little blood was running down the lips which were now foam-flecked.

“The dog’s going mad!” cried Jack.  “Look out, Colonel, or—­”

“You needn’t be afraid,” was the calm answer, as the other turned toward the door.  “He’ll never hurt any one.  Ah, I thought so!”

And, as the colonel spoke, Chet gave a shudder, fell over on his side and, with a long sigh, lay very still.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COLONEL WONDERS

“What did that, Colonel?  What devilish thing did that?” and with a trembling finger Jack Young pointed to the body of the dead dog on the floor of the detective’s room.  “What killed the poor brute?”

“Unless I’m very much mistaken this did,” was the answer in a low voice, and the colonel, with the watch still wrapped carefully in the wad of tissue paper, placed it on the table.

“That ticker killed the dog?  Nonsense!  He didn’t swallow it!  He had it in his mouth, but he got it out!  That couldn’t have killed him!”

“I think it did though, Jack, just as it killed Shere Ali and just as—­”

“Do you mean—­that’s what killed Mrs. Darcy—­that watch?”

“I don’t know yet, Jack.”

“But how could it?  How could—­”

The visitor ceased his questions to watch the colonel, who had gone to a closet and taken out a pair of rubber gloves.  Putting them on, he took the watch from its tissue paper wrappings, and then, holding it under the gleaming light on his table, he gave a twist to the case, pressed on a certain point in the rim with the end of his lead pencil and a tiny needle shot out into view.

“Look!” said the colonel to Jack Young.

“Good Lord!  An infernal machine in a watch!”

“Not exactly an infernal machine, but a poisoned needle which only required pressure on the rim of the case to shoot it out into the hand, or whatever part of a person or animal was near it.  Poor Chet, gnawing the watch which he was playing with—­worrying it as he would a bone—­must have bitten on the right place.  The needle shot out, pierced his tongue or lips and—­the deadly poison did the rest!”

“But, Colonel—­this—­this is the watch Mrs. Darcy had in her hand when she was found dead!”

“Yes,” was the cool response.

“And its the same one Shere Ali had in his hand when he was found dead!”

“Yes.”