preshent. Thatsh me--sure thash mine!" and carefully trying to balance
himself, he reached forward as though to take the stained dagger from
the hand of the detective.

"You got Pearl's name 'graved on it, Darcy, ole man?" asked King,
thickly, licking his hot and feverish lips.

"No," answered the jewelry worker, hollowly.

Then Harry King, seemingly for the first time, became aware that all
was not well in the place he had entered. He turned and saw the body
of the murdered woman as the men from the morgue Started out with it.
He started back as though some one had struck him a blow.

"Is she--is she dead?" he gasped. "Dead--Mrs. Darcy?"

"Looks that way," said Carroll in cool tones. "You'd better come in
here and sit down a while, Harry," he went on, and he led the unsteady
young man to the rear room, while the men from the morgue carried out
the lifeless body.




CHAPTER III

THE FISHERMAN

From a little green book, which, from the evidence of its worn covers,
seemed to have been much read, the tall, military-appearing occupant of
a middle seat in the parlor car of the express to Colchester scanned
again this passage:

"And if you rove for perch with a minnow, then it is best to be alive,
you sticking your hook through his back fin, or a minnow with the hook
in his upper lip, and letting him swim up and down about mid-water, or
a little lower, and you still keeping him about that depth with a cork,
which ought to be a very little one; and the way you are to fish for
perch with a small frog--"

"Ah-a-a-a!"

It was a long-drawn exclamation of anticipatory delight, and into the
eyes of the military-looking traveler there appeared a soft and gentle
light, as though, in fancy, he could look off across sunlit meadows to
a stream sparkling beneath a blue sky, white-studded with fleecy
clouds, where there was a soft carpet of green grass, shaded by a noble
oak under which he might lounge and listen to the wind rustling the
newly-born leaves.

"Ah-a-a-a!"

"Beg pardon, sir, but I--"

"What?"

The military-appearing man sat up with a jerk into sudden stiffness,
while the soft light died out of his eyes.

"New York papers?"

"Don't want the New York papers--any of them!"

The man, after a swift glance from his green-covered book, again let
his eyes seek its pages. The ghost of a smile flickered around his
lips.

"Chicago, then. The latest--"

". . . your hook being fastened through the skin of his leg, toward the
upper part of it; and lastly I will give you--"

"Something livelier in the way of reading, sir, if you wish it!" broke
in the voice of the newsboy who had stopped beside the parlor-car chair
of the military-looking traveler, interrupting the reading of the
little green-covered book. "I have a new detective story--"

"Look here! If you interrupt me again when I'm reading my Izaak Walton
I'll have you put off the train! Gad! I will, sir, if I have to do it
myself!"

The military-appearing traveler snapped the green book against the palm
of one hand with a report like that of a pistol, thereby causing an old
lady, asleep in a chair across the aisle, to awaken with a start.

"Are we in? Have we arrived? Is this Colchester?" she asked, sitting
up and looking about in startled surprise, her bonnet very much askew.
The newsboy, with an abashed air, slid down the aisle.

"Madam, I sincerely beg your pardon," said the tall man who had caused
the commotion. He arose, his green book in one hand, and bowed his
apologies. "I regret exceedingly that I startled you. But that
insufferable young puppy had the extreme audacity to inflict himself on
me when I was reading, and I lost my temper. I am sorry but I--"

"You didn't strike him, did you?" asked the old lady, reproachfully.

"No, madam. Though such conduct would have been justified on my part,
I merely spoke to him. It was this--this book that I used rather
roughly and which awakened you."


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