“Have a drink, Colonel?”
“Eh?”
“I said—Here, boy! A Scotch high and a mint julep.”
Colonel Ashley, roused from his reverie as he sat in his club, gazing out on the busy, fashionable, hurrying, jostling, worried, happy, sad, and otherwise throngs that swept past the big Fifth avenue windows, shifted himself in the comfortable leather chair, and looked at his cigar. It had gone out, and he decided that it was not worth relighting.
“Cigars, too!” ordered Bruce Garrigan.
“Oh, were you speaking to me?” and the colonel seemed wholly awake now.
“Not only to you, but in your interests,” went on Garrigan, with a smile. “Hope I didn't disturb your nap, but—”
“Oh, no,” the colonel hastened to assure his companion with his usual affability. “I had finished sleeping.”
“So I inferred. Do you know how many hours, minutes and seconds the average human being has passed in sleep when he reaches the age of forty-five years?” and Garrigan smiled quizzically.
“No, sir,” answered Colonel Ashley, “I do not.”
“Neither do I,” confessed Mr. Garrigan as he sank down in a chair beside the colonel and accepted the glass from a tray which the much-buttoned club attendant held out to him. “I don't know, and I don't much care.”
Then, when cigars were glowing and the smoke arose in graceful clouds, an aroma as of incense shrouding the two as they gazed out on the afternoon throngs, Garrigan remarked:
“I didn't know you were here. In fact, I didn't know you were a member of this club.”
“You wouldn't know it if my attendance here were needed to prove it,” said the colonel with a smile. “I don't get here very often, but I had to run up on some business, and I found this the most convenient stopping place.”
“Are you going back to Lakeside?”
“Oh, yes!” There was prompt decision in the answer.
“Then you haven't finished that unfortunate affair? You haven't found out what caused the death of Mr. Carwell?”
“Oh, yes, I know what killed him.”
“But not who?”
“Not yet.”
“Do you hold to the suicide theory?”
“I don't hold to anything, my dear Mr. Garrigan,” answered the colonel, who was in a sufficiently mellow mood to be amused by the rather vapid talk of his host—for such he had constituted himself on the ordering of the drinks and cigars. “That is I haven't such a hold on any theory that I can't let go and take a new one if occasion warrants it.”
“I see. And so you came up to get away from the rather gruesome atmosphere down there?”
“Not exactly. I came up on business—I have a business in New York you know, in spite of the fact that I am here,” and the colonel smiled as he looked about the room where were gathered men of wealth and leisure, who did not seem to have a care or worry in the world.
“Oh, yes, I know that,” agreed Garrigan. “Well, has your trip been satisfactory?”
“I can't say that it has. In fact it's pretty poor fishing around here, and I'm thinking of going back. I want to hear the click of the reel and the music of the brook. I wasn't cut out for a city man, and the longer I stay here the worse I hate the place, even if I do have a business here.”
“Then you don't care for—this,” and Garrigan waved his hand at the congestion of automobiles and stages which had come to a halt opposite the big windows of the exclusive and fashionable club.
It was four in the afternoon, just when traffic both of automobiles and pedestrians is at its height on the avenue. Of horse-drawn equipages they were so few as to be a novelty.
“I care so little for it that I am going back to-night,” the detective responded.
“Then you have found what you came looking for?”
“I told you the fishing was very poor,” said the colonel with a smile. “My friend Mr. Walton, were he alive now, would never forgive me for deserting the place I left to come here. When did you come up?”
“Last night. They insisted I had to put in an appearance at the office merely to take away the salary that's been accumulating for me—said it cluttered up the place. So I obliged. Do you know how many automobiles pass this window every twenty-four hours?” Garrigan asked suddenly.
“I do not.”
“Neither do I. It would be interesting to know, however. I think I shall count them, when I have nothing else to do. I understand there is a checking or tabulating machine made for such purposes. But perhaps I am keeping you from—”
“You are merely keeping me from ordering another portion of liquid refreshment,” interrupted the colonel with a smile. “Boy!”
And once again there was diffused the aroma of mint and the more pronounced odor of the Scotch.
“Yes, it's pretty poor fishing,” mused the colonel, when Garrigan had gone off to engage in a game of billiards with some insistent friends, whose advent the detective was thankful for, as he wanted to be alone. He was gregarious by nature, but there were times when he had to be alone, and it was because of this trait in his nature that he had taken up with the rod and reel, becoming a disciple of Izaak Walton.
Until dusk began to fall, changing the character of the throngs on the avenue, the colonel lingered in his easy chair before the broad, plate windows. And then, as the electric lights began to sparkle, as had the diamonds on some of the over-dressed women in the afternoon, he arose and started out.
“Will you be dining here, sir?” asked one of the stewards.
“Mr. Garrigan asked me to inquire, sir, and, if you were, to say that he would appreciate it if you would be his guest.”
“Thank him for me, and tell him I can't stay.” And the colonel, tossing aside the cigar which had gone out and been frequently relighted, soon found himself making a part of the avenue's night throng.
It was a warm summer evening-altogether too warm to be in New York when one had the inclination and means to be elsewhere, but the colonel, in spite of the fact that he had been in a hurry to leave the club, seemed to find no occasion for haste now.
He sauntered along, seemingly without an object, though the rather frequent consultations he made of his watch appeared to indicate otherwise. Finally, he seemed either to have come to a sudden decision or to have noted the demise of the time he was trying to kill, for with a last quick glance at his timepiece he put it back into his pocket, and, turning a corner where there was a taxicab stand, he entered one of the vehicles and gave an order to the chauffeur.
“Columbia College-yes, sir!” and the driver looked rather oddly at the figure of the colonel.
“Wonder what he teaches, and what he's going up there this time of night for?” was the mental comment of the chauffeur. “Maybe they have evening classes, but this guy looks as though he could give em a post-graduate course in poker.”
Colonel Ashley sat back in the corner of the cab, glad of the rather long ride before him. He scarcely moved, save when the sway or jolt of the vehicle tossed him about, and he sat with an unlighted cigar between his teeth.
“Yes,” he murmured once, “pretty poor fishing. I might better have stayed where I was. Well, I'll go back to-morrow.”
Leaving the taxicab, the colonel made his way along the raised plaza on which some of the college buildings front, and turned into the faculty club, where he stayed for some time. When he came out, having told his man to wait, he bore under his arm a package which, even to the casual observer, contained books.
“Pennsylvania station,” was the order he gave, and again he sat back in the corner of the cab, scarcely glancing out of the window to note the busy scenes all about him.
It was not until he had purchased his ticket and was about to board the last Jersey Shore train, to take him back to the scene of the death of Horace Carwell, that Colonel Ashley, as he caught sight of a figure in the crowd ahead of him, seemed galvanized into new life.
For a moment he gazed at a certain man, taking care to keep some women with large hats between the object of his attention and himself. And then, as he made sure of the identity, the colonel murmured:
“Poor fishing did I say? Well, it seems to me it's getting better.”
He looked at his watch, made a rapid calculation that showed him he had about five minutes before the train's departure, and then he hurried off to his right and down the stairs that led to the lavatories.
It was Colonel Robert Lee Ashley, as Bruce Garrigan had seen him at the Fifth Avenue club, who entered one of the pay compartments where so many in-coming and out-going travelers may, for the modest sum of ten cents, enjoy in the railroad station a freshening up by means of soap, towels and plenty of hot water.
But it was a typical Southern politician, with slouch hat, long frock coat, a moustache and goatee, who emerged from the same private wash-room a little later, carrying a small, black valise.
“I don't like to do this,” said Colonel Ashley, making sure the spirit gum had set, so his moustache and goatee would not come off prematurely, “but I have to. This fishing is getting better, and I don't want any of the fish to see me.”
Then he went down the steps to the train that soon would be whirling him under the Hudson river, along the Jersey meadows, and down to the cool shore. He passed through the string of coaches until he came to one where he found a seat behind a certain man. Into this vantage point the colonel, looking more the part than ever, slumped himself and opened his paper.
“Yes, the fishing is getting better—decidedly better,” he mused. “I shouldn't wonder but what I got a bite soon.”
When Jean Forette, whose month was not quite up and who had not yet completed arrangements for his new position, alighted from the Shore Express at Lakeside and made his way-afoot and not in a machine—to the Three Pines, the picturesque figure of the Southern gentleman followed.
“I wonder,” mused Colonel Ashley, “whether he takes Scotch Highballs or absinthe, and what dope he mixes with it? Absinthe is rather hard to get out here, I should imagine, but they might have a green brand of whiskey they'd sell for it. But that Frenchman ought to know the genuine stuff. However, we'll see.”
Carrying his limp, leather bag, which had served him in such good stead when he entered the lavatory, the colonel slouched silently along the road. It was close to midnight, and there would be no other trains to the shore that day.
The lights of the Three Pines glowed in pleasant and inviting fashion across the sandy highway. Out in front stood several cars, for the tavern was one much patronized by summer visitors, and was a haven of refuge, a “life-saving station,” as it had been dubbed by those who fancied they were much in need of alcoholic refreshment.
Jean Forette entered, and Colonel Ashley, waiting a little and making sure that the “tap room,” as it was ostentatiously called, was sufficiently filled to enable him to mingle with the patrons without attracting undue notice, followed.
He looked about for a sight of the chauffeur, and saw him leaning up against the bar, sipping a glass of beer, and, between imbibitions, talking earnestly to the white-aproned bartender.
“I'd like to hear what they're saying,” mused the colonel. “I wonder if I can get a bit nearer.”
He ordered some rye, and, having disposed of it, took out a cigar, and began searching in his pockets as though for a match.
“Here you are!” observed a bartender, as he held out a lighted taper.
The colonel had anticipated this, and quickly moved down the mahogany rail toward the end where Jean Forette was standing. At that end was a little gas jet kept burning as a convenience to smokers.
“I'll use that,” said the colonel. “I don't like the flavor of burnt wood in my smoke.”
“Fussy old duck,” murmured the barkeeper as he let the flame he had ignited die out, flicking the blackened end to the floor.
And, being careful to keep his face as much as possible in the shadow of his big, slouch hat, Colonel Ashley lighted his cigar at the gas flame.
And, somehow or other, that cigar required a long and most careful lighting. The smoker got the tip glowing, and then inspected it critically. It was not to his satisfaction, as he drew a few puffs on it, and again he applied the end to the flame.
He sent forth a perfect cloud of smoke this time, and it seemed to veil him as the fog, blowing in from the sea, veils the tumbling billows. Once more there was a look at the end, but the “fussy old duck” was not satisfied, and, again had recourse to the flame.
All this while Colonel Ashley was straining his ears to catch what Jean Forette was saying to the attendant who had drawn the frothing glass of beer for him.
But the men talked in too low a tone, or the colonel had been a bit too late, for all he heard was a murmur of automobile talk. Jean seemed to be telling something about a particularly fast car he had formerly driven.
“The fishing isn't as good as I hoped,” mused the colonel.
Then, as he turned to go out, he heard distinctly:
“Sure I remember you paying for the drink. I can prove that if you want me to. Are they tryin' to double-cross you?”
“Something like that, yes.”
“Well, you leave it to me, see? I'll square you all right.”
“Thanks,” murmured Jean, and then he, too, turned aside.
“There may be something in it after all,” was the colonel's thought, and then he, too, hurried from the Three Pines, passing beneath the big trees, with their sighing branches, which gave the name to the inn.
On toward The Haven, through the silence and darkness of the night, went the detective. And at a particularly dark and lonely place he stopped. The pungent, clean smell of grain alcohol filled the air, and a little later a man, devoid of goatee and moustache, passing out into the starlight, while a black, slouch hat went into the bag, and a Panama, so flexible that it had not suffered from having been thrust rather ruthlessly into the valise, came out.
“I don't like that sort of detective work,” mused the colonel, “but it has its uses.”
Viola Carwell, alone in her room, sat with a bundle of letters on a table before her. They were letters she had found in a small drawer of the private safe—a drawer she had, at first, thought contained nothing. The discovery of the letters had been made in a peculiar manner.
Viola and Miss Carwell, going over the documents, had sorted them into two piles—one to be submitted to the lawyer, the other being made up of obviously personal matters that could have no interest for any but members of the family.
Then Miss Carwell had been called away to attend to some household matters, and Viola had started to return to the safe such of the papers as were not to go to the lawyer.
She opened a small drawer, to slip back into it a bundle of letters her mother had written to Mr. Carwell years before. Then Viola became aware of something else in the drawer. It was something that caught on the end of her finger nail, and she was stung by a little prick-like that of a pin.
“A sliver-under my nail!” exclaimed Viola. “The bottom of the wooden drawer must be loose.”
It was loose, as she discovered as soon as she looked in the compartment. But it was a looseness that meant nothing else than that the drawer had a false bottom.
It was not such a false bottom as would have been made use of in the moving pictures. That is to say it was very poorly made, and an almost casual glance would have revealed it. All that had been done was to take a piece of wood the exact size and shape of the bottom of the drawer, and fit it in. This extra piece of wood covered anything that might be put in the drawer under it, and then, on top of the false bottom other things might be placed so that when they were taken out, and the person doing it saw bare wood, the conclusion would naturally follow that all the contents of the drawer had been removed.
But such was not the case. Beneath the smooth-fitting piece of wood, which had sprung loose and been the means of driving a splinter under Viola's nail, thus apprising her of the fact that there was something in the drawer she had not seen, had been found some letters. And Viola had not told her aunt about them.
“I want to see what they are myself, first,” the girl decided.
Now they were spread out on her dressing table in front of her. She sat with her glorious blue-black hair unbound, and falling over her shoulders, which gleamed pink through the filmy thinness of her robe.
“I wonder if I shall be shocked when I read them?” she mused.
That was what Viola had been living in continual fear of since her father's death—that some disclosure would shock her—that she might come upon some phase of his past life which would not bear the full light of day. For Horace Carwell had not stinted himself of the pleasures of life as he saw them. He had eaten and drunk and he had made merry. And he was a gregarious man—one who did not like to take his pleasures alone.
And so Viola was afraid.
The letters were held together with an elastic band, and this gave some hope.
“If they were from a woman, he wouldn't have used a rubber band on them,” reasoned Viola. “He was too sentimental for that. They can't be mother's letters—they were in another compartment. I wonder—”
Viola had done much wondering since her mother's death, and considerable of it had been due to the life her father led. That he would marry again she doubted, but he was fond of the society of the men, and particularly the women of their own set, and some sets with which Viola preferred to have nothing to do.
And if Mr. Carwell had no intentions of marrying again, then his interest in women—
But here Viola ceased wondering.
With a more resolute air she reached forth hand to the bundle of letters and took one out. There was distinct relief in her manner as she quickly turned to the signature and read: “Gerry Poland.”
And then, quickly, she ascertained that all the letters comprised correspondence between her father and the yacht club captain.
“But why did he hide these letters away?” mused Viola. “They seem to be about business, as the others were—the others showing that Captain Poland perhaps saved my father from financial ruin. Why should they be under the false bottom of the drawer?”
She could not answer that question.
“I must read them all,” she murmured, and she went through the entire correspondence. There were several letters, sharp in tone, from both men, and the subject was as Greek to Viola. But there was one note from the captain to her father that brought a more vivid color to her dark cheeks, for Captain Poland had written:
“You care little for what I have done for you, otherwise you would not so oppose my attentions to your daughter. They are most honorable, as you well know, yet you are strangely against me. I can not understand it.”
“Oh!” murmured Viola. “It is as if I were being bargained for! How I hate him!”
Almost blinded by her tears she read another letter. It was another appeal to her father to use his influence in assisting the captain's suit.
But this letter—or at least that portion of it relating to Viola—had been torn, and all that remained was:
“As members of the same lo—”
“What can that have meant?” she mused. “Is it the word 'lodge'?”
She read on, where the letter was whole again:
“I must ask you to reconsider your actions. Let me hear from you by the twenty-third or—”
Again was that mystifying and tantalizing tear. Viola hastily searched among the other letters, hoping the missing pieces might be found.
“I simply must see what it meant,” she said. “I wonder if they can be in another part of the safe? I'm going to look!”
She started for her bath robe, and, at that moment, with a suddenness that unnerved her, there came a knock on her door.
Viola's first movement was of concealment—to toss over the scattered letters on her desk a lace shawl she had been wearing earlier in the evening. Then satisfied that should the unknown knocker prove to be some one whom she might admit—her Aunt Mary or one of the maids—satisfied that no one would, at first glance, see the letters which might mean nothing or much, Viola asked in a voice that slightly trembled:
“Who is it?”
“I did not mean to disturb you,” came the answer, and with a sense of relief Viola recognized the voice of Colonel Ashley. “But I have just returned from New York, and, seeing a light under your door, I thought I would-report, as it were.”
“Oh, thank you-thank you!” the girl exclaimed, relief evident in her voice.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” the colonel went on, as he stood outside the closed door. “Has anything happened since I went away?”
“No—no,” said Viola, rather hesitatingly. “There is nothing new to tell you. I was sitting up—reading.”
Her glance went to the desk where the letters were scattered.
“Oh,” answered the colonel. “Well, don't sit up too late. It is getting on toward morning.”
“Have you anything to tell me, Colonel Ashley?” asked Viola. “Did you discover anything?”
There was silence on the other side of the door for a moment, and then came the answer, given slowly:
“No, nothing to report. I will have a talk with you in the morning.”
And then the footsteps of the detective were heard, lessening in their sound, as he made his way to his room.
Viola, perplexed, puzzled, and bewildered, went back to her desk. She took up the letters again. The torn one with its strange reference: “As members of the same—”
What could it be? Was it some secret society to which her father and Gerry Poland belonged, the violation of the secrets of which carried a death penalty?
No, it could not be anything as sensational as that. Clearly the captain was in love with her—he had frankly confessed as much, and Viola knew it anyhow. She was not at all sure whether he loved her for her position or because she was good to look upon and desirable in every way.
As for her own heart, she was sure of that. In spite of the fact that she had tried to pique him that fatal day, merely to “stir him up,” as she phrased it, Viola was deeply and earnestly in love with Harry Bartlett, and she was sure enough of his feeling toward her to find in it a glow of delight.
Then there was in the letter the hint of a threat. “Let me hear from you by the twenty-third, or—”
“Oh, what does it mean? What does it mean?” and Viola bent her weary head down on the letters and her tears stained them. Puzzled as she was over the contents of the letters—torn and otherwise—which she had found hidden in the drawer of the private safe, Viola Carwell was not yet ready to share her secret with her Aunt Mary or Colonel Ashley. These two were her nearest and most natural confidants under the circumstances.
“I would like to tell Harry, but I can't,” she reasoned, when she had awakened after a night of not very refreshing slumber. “Of course Captain Poland could explain—if he would. But I'll keep this a secret a little longer. But, oh! I wonder what it means?”
And so, when she greeted Colonel Ashley at the breakfast table she smiled and tried to appear her usual self.
“I did not hear you come in,” said Miss Carwell, as she poured the coffee.
“No, I did not want to disturb any one,” answered the colonel. “I saw a light under Miss Viola's door, and reported myself to her,” he went on. “But I don't imagine you slept much more than I did, for your eyes are not as bright as usual,” and he smiled at the girl.
“Aren't they?” countered Viola. “Well, I did read later than I should. But tell me, Colonel Ashley, are you making any progress at all?”
He did not answer for a moment. He seemed very much occupied in buttering a piece of roll—trying to get the little dab of yellow in the exact center of the white portion. Then, when it was arranged to his satisfaction, he said:
“I am making progress, that is all I can say now.”
“And does that progress carry with it any hope that Harry Bartlett will be proved innocent?” asked Viola eagerly.
“That I can not say—now. I hope it will, though.”
“Thank you for that!” exclaimed Viola earnestly.
Miss Carwell said nothing. She had her own opinion, and was going to hold to it, detectives or no detectives.
“Will you send Shag to me?” the colonel requested a maid, as he arose from the table. “Tell him we are going fishing.”
“Isn't there anything you can do—I mean toward—toward the—case?” faltered Viola. “Not that I mean—of course I don't want to seem—”
“I understand, my dear,” said the colonel gently. “And I am not going fishing merely to shirk a responsibility. But I have to think some of these puzzles out quietly, and fishing is the quietest pastime I know.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” Viola hastened to add. “I shouldn't have said anything. I wish I could get quiet myself. I'm almost tempted to take your recipe.”
“Why don't you?” urged the colonel. “Come along with me. I can soon teach you the rudiments, though to become a finished angler, so that you would be not ashamed to meet Mr. Walton, takes years. But I think it would rest you to come. Shall I tell Shag to fit you out with one of my rods?”
Viola hesitated a moment. This might give her an opportunity for talking with the colonel in secret and confidence. But she put it aside.
“No, thank you,” she answered. “I'll go another time. I must stop at the office and leave some bills that have come here to the house. Mr. Blossom attends to the payment.”
“Let me leave them for you,” offered the colonel. “I have to go into town for some bait, and I can easily stop at the office for you.”
“If you will be so good,” returned Viola, and she got the bundle of bills—some relating to Mr. Carwell's funeral and others that had been mailed to the house instead of to the office.
The colonel might have sent Shag to purchase the shedder crabs he was going to use for bait that day in fishing in the inlet, and the colored servant might have left the bills. But the colonel was particular about his bait, and would let none select it but himself. Consequently he had Jean Forette drive him in, telling Shag to meet him at a certain dock where they would drop down the inlet and try for “snappers,” young bluefish, elusive, gamy and delicious eating.
“You have not yet found a place?” asked the colonel of the chauffeur, as they rolled along.
“No, monsieur—none to my satisfaction, though I have been offered many. One I could have I refused yesterday.”
“You liked it with Mr. Carwell, then?”
“Truly the situation was in itself delightful. But I could not manage the big car as he liked, and we had to part. There was no other way.”
The detective narrowly observed the driver beside whom he sat. Jean did not look well. He had much of the appearance of the “morning after the night before,” and his hand was not very steady as he shifted the gear lever.
“How much longer have you to stay here, Jean?”
“About two weeks. My month will be up then.”
“And then you go—”
“I do not know, monsieur. Probably to New York. That is a great headquarters.”
“So I believe.”
“If monsieur should hear of a family that—”
“Yes, I'll bear you in mind, Jean. You are steady and reliable, I presume?” and the colonel smiled.
“I have most excellent letters!” he boasted, and for the moment he seemed to rouse himself from the sluggishness that marked him that morning.
“I'll bear it in mind,” said the colonel again.
But as they drove on, and Colonel Ashley noted with what exaggerated care Jean Forette passed other cars—giving them such a wide berth that often his own machine was almost in the ditch—the impression grew on the detective that the Frenchman was not as skillful as he would have it believed.
“He drives Like an amateur, or a woman out alone in her machine for the first time,” mused the colonel. “He'd never do for a smart car. Wonder what ails him. He wasn't drunk last night by any means, and yet—”
They reached the town, and paused at the only place where there was any congestion of traffic—where two main seashore highways crossed in the center of Lakeside. Jean held the runabout there so long, waiting for other traffic to pass, that the officer who was on duty called:
“What's the matter—going to sleep there?”
Then Jean, with a start, threw in the clutch and shot ahead.
“That's queer,” mused the colonel. “He seems afraid.”
The purchase of the shedder crabs was gone into carefully, and having questioned the bait-seller as to the best location in the inlet, the detective again got into the machine and was driven to the office of the late Horace Carwell. It was a branch of the New York office, and thither, every summer, came LeGrand Blossom and a corps of clerks to manage affairs for their employer.
Colonel Ashley, who by this time was known to the office boy at the outer gate, was admitted at once.
“Mr. Blossom is at the telephone,” said the lad, “but you can go right in and wait for him.”
This the colonel did, having left Jean outside in the car.
The telephone in LeGrand Blossom's private office was in a booth, put there to get it away from the noise of traffic in the street outside. And, as the boy had said, Blossom was in this booth as Colonel Ashley entered.
It so happened that the chief clerk was standing in the booth with his back turned to the main door, and did not see the colonel enter. And the latter, coming in with easy steps, as he always went everywhere, heard a snatch of the talk over the telephone that made him wonder.
Though the little booth was meant to keep sounds from entering, as well as coming out, the door was not tightly closed and as LeGrand Blossom spoke rather loudly Colonel Ashley heard distinctly.
“Yes,” said the head clerk over the wire, “I'll pay the money tonight sure. Yes, positive.” There was a period of waiting, while he listened, and then he went on: “Yes, on the Allawanda. I'll be there. Yes, sure! Now don't bother me any more.”
Colonel Ashley, through the glass door of the telephone booth, saw LeGrand Blossom make a move as though to hang up the receiver. And then the detective turned suddenly, and swung back, as though he had entered the room at the moment Blossom had emerged from the booth.
“Oh!” exclaimed the head clerk, and, for a second, he seemed nonplused. But Colonel Ashley took up the talk instantly.
“I will keep you but a minute,” he said. “Miss Viola asked me to leave these bills for you. I came in to town to buy some bait. There they are. I'm going fishing,” and before LeGrand Blossom could answer the colonel was saying good-bye and making his way out.
“I wonder,” mused the colonel, as he started for the car where Jean awaited him, “what or who or where the Allawanda is? I must find out.”
He found further cause for wonder as he started off in the car with the French chauffeur for the boat dock, at the conduct of Jean himself.
For the man appeared to be a wholly different person. His face was all smiles, and there was a jaunty air about him as though he had received good news. His management of the car, too, left nothing to be desired. He started off swiftly, but with a smoothness that told of perfect mastery of the clutch and gears. He took chances, too, as he dashed through town, cutting corners, darting before this car, back of the other until, used as the colonel was to taxicabs in New York, he held his breath more than once.
“What's the matter—in a hurry?” he asked Jean, as they narrowly escaped a collision.
“Oh, no, monsieur, but this is the way I like to drive. It is much more—what you call pep!”
“Yes,” mused the colonel to himself, “it's pep all right. But I wonder what put the pep into you? You didn't have it when we started out. Some French dope you take, I'll wager. Well, it may put pep into you now, but it'll take the starch out of you later on.”
Jean left the colonel at the dock, whither Shag had already made his way, coming in a more prosaic trolley car from The Haven, and soon they were ready to row down the inlet in a boat.
“Shall I call for you?” asked Jean, as he prepared to drive back.
“No,” answered the colonel, “I can't tell what luck I'll have. We'll come home when it suits us.”
“Very good, monsieur.”
And so the colonel went fishing, and his thoughts were rather more on the telephone talk he had overheard than on his rod and line.
Contrary to the poor luck that had held all week, so the dockman said, the colonel's good luck was exceptional. Shag had a goodly string of snappers of large size to carry back with him.
“How'd you do it?” asked the boatman, as he made fast the skiff.
“Oh, they just bit and I hauled 'em in,” said the colonel. “By the way,” he went on, “is there a place around here called Allawanda?”
“Yes, there's a little village named that, about ten miles back in the country,” said the boatman.
“Nothing there, though, but a few houses and one store.”
“Oh, I thought it might be quite a place.”
“No, and nobody'd know it was there if there wasn't a boat around here named after it.”
“Is there a boat called that?” asked the colonel, and he tried to keep the eagerness out of his voice.
“Yes. The ferryboat that runs from Lakeside to Loch Elarbor is named that. Seems that one of the men in the company that owns it used to live at Allawanda when he was a boy, and he called the boat that. It's an old tub of a ferry, though, about like the town itself, I guess. Well, you sure did have good luck!”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed the colonel, and his luck was better than the boatman guessed, and of a different kind.
It was in pursuance of this same luck that caused the colonel, later that day, when the shadows of evening were falling, to take his limp satchel and slip out of the house. He went afoot to the ferry dock, and when the Allawanda floundered in like a porpoise he went on board. It was his first visit to this part of the inlet that separated Lakeside from Loch Harbor, and this means of getting to the yachting center was seldom used by any guests of The Haven. They went around by the highway in automobiles.
“Well,” mused the colonel, as he went to the men's cabin with his limp valise, “I hope Mr. Blossom keeps his promise and comes here to-night. I shall be interested in noting to whom he pays the money.”
Then, seeing that the little cabin of the ramshackle boat was deserted at that hour, the colonel went to a dark corner, and from it emerged, a little later, with a beard on that would have done credit to the most orthodox inhabitant of New York's Ghetto.
Still the colonel did not look like a Jew, and he was not going to attempt that character. He made his way to the stern of the craft, where he could watch all who came aboard, and finding a deck hand who was sweeping, said:
“I'm not feeling very well. Thought maybe a ride back and forth across the inlet would do me good if I stayed out in the air. So if you see me here don't think I'm trying to beat my fare. Here's a dollar, you may keep the change.”
“Thanks—ride all you like,” said the man. At five cents a trip, with the boat stopping at midnight, there would still be a good tip in it for him. The colonel ensconced himself in a dark corner and waited.
The first two trips over and back were fruitless as far as his object was concerned. But just as the Allawanda was about to pull out for her third voyage across the inlet, there came on board a woman, with a shawl so closely wrapped about her that her features were completely hidden. There were only a few oil lamps on the old-fashioned craft, and the illumination was poor.
The colonel thought there was something vaguely familiar about the figure, but he was not certain. He tried to get near enough to her, in a casual walk up and down the deck, to view her countenance, but, either by accident or design, she turned away and looked over the rail. He was close enough, however, to note that the shawl was of fine texture and of a peculiar pattern.
Retiring again to his corner in the stern of the boat, and noting that the woman kept her place there, Colonel Ashley waited in patience. And he had his reward.
The Allawanrda was whistling to tell the deck hands to cast off the mooring ropes, when LeGrand Blossom came running down the inclined gangway and got on board. He seemed in a hurry and excited, and, apparently unaware of the presence of the detective in the dark corner, he went directly to the woman in the shawl. The boat began to move from her slip.
“Did you think I was never coming?” asked LeGrand Blossom.
“No, I was detained,” the woman answered, and at the sound of her voice Colonel Ashley started and uttered a smothered exclamation. “I but just arrived,” the woman went on. “Did you bring it?”
“Hush! Yes. Not so loud. Some one may hear you.”
“There is no one here. One man, with a heavy beard, passed by me as I came on board. At first I thought it was you, disguised, but when I saw it was not I kept to myself. There is no one here.”
“I hope not,” murmured LeGrand Blossom, as he looked cautiously around. The after deck was but dimly lighted.
For a time the woman and man talked in tones so low that the detective could hear nothing, and he dared not leave his hidden corner to come closer.
But, just as the Allawanda was nearing her slip on the other side, the man spoke in louder tones. “And so we come to the end!” he said.
“No, please don't say that!” begged the woman.
“I must,” Blossom answered. “We can't go on this way any longer. Here is what I promised you. It is all I can raise, and I had a hard time doing that. Every one is suspicious, and that detective is all eyes and ears. It is the best I can do. You must not bother me any more.”
The lights from a passing boat fell on the couple as they stood close to the rail, and, from his vantage point in the darkness, the colonel saw LeGrand Blossom hand the woman in the shawl a package. She took it eagerly, and thrust it into her bosom. Then, turning to the man, she said reproachfully:
“You say this is the end. Then you don't love me any more?”
LeGrand Blossom did not answer for a moment.
“You don't—do you?” the woman insisted.
“No,” was the slow reply. “I might as well be brutally frank about it, and say I don't. And you don't care either.”
“Oh, I do! I do!” she eagerly protested.
“No, you only think you do. It is better for both of us to have it end this way. But let us make sure that it is an end. There must be no more of it. I have given you all I can. You must go away as you promised.”
“Yes, I suppose I must,” and her voice was broken. “Oh, I wish I had never met you!”
“Perhaps it would have been better that way,” was Blossom's cold response. “However, it's too late for that now. Good-bye,” he added, as the boat was grating her way along the Loch Harbor slip. “I'm not going to get off. Don't telephone me again. This is all I can ever give you.”
“Oh, yes, I suppose, now you've finished, you can get rid of me. Well, let it be so,” she said bitterly. And then, as the boat bumped to a landing she cried: “If I could only find—”
But the rattle of the chains and the clatter of the wheels on the ferry bridge drowned her voice. She rushed away from LeGrand Blossoms's side and, clutching her shawl close around her as if to make sure of the package the man had given her, she disappeared into the interior of the ferryboat.
Colonel Ashley started to follow, but as LeGrand Blossom remained on board he decided to watch him instead of the woman, though he was vaguely disquieted trying to remember where he had heard her voice before.