"Yes. But don't jump at conclusions. You know he was working on an
electric lathe he hoped to patent. Those wires may be merely part of
his equipment,"

"Yes, and they may--wait a minute!" suddenly exclaimed the manager. "I
wonder--"

From his private office, into which he had ushered the colonel, he
looked down the store. It was almost deserted now, save for a few
customers and the clerks.

"It's the same place!" murmured the manager,

"What is?" asked the detective.

"Miss Brill was shocked, and fell at the very spot where the dead body
of Mrs. Darcy was found!" said Mr. Kettridge in a low, intense voice.
"Except for the fact that she fell behind the showcase and Mrs. Darcy
in front of it, the place is the same!"

With a muttered exclamation the colonel got to his feet and also looked
out from the private office.

"You're right," he admitted. "I wonder if that is a coincidence
or--something else. I must go to see Darcy."

The prisoner was measurably startled when the detective told him the
latest development at the jewelry store.

"Those were never my wires in the showcase!" cried the young man. "I
knew some were there, for we did have an antiquated burglar alarm
system when I first came to work for my cousin. I had another one put
in, and I supposed they had ripped out the old wires. But the wires I
used for my lathe experiments had no connection with those, I'm sure.
What is your theory?"

"I have so many I don't know at which one to begin," admitted Colonel
Ashley. "But I was wondering if it was possible that the showcase
wires, which when I tested them were dead, could have, in some manner,
become charged, and have given Mrs. Darcy a shock that might have sent
her reeling to the floor, toppling the heavy statue over on her head,
and so killing her."

"By _accident_ do you mean?" asked Darcy, his face lighting up with
hope.

"Yes. This young lady received a severe blow on her head by her fall,
and your cousin--"

"You forget the stab wound, Colonel."

"No, I didn't exactly _forget_ it. I was wondering how we could
account for that if we accepted the shock theory. I guess we can't.
I'm still up against it. I've struck a snag--maybe a stone wall,
Darcy!"

"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


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