Part 45 (2/2)

”What's that?”

”Well, what made all the clocks stop at different times? I thought I knew something of the jewelry business, but this puzzles me.”

”Just because it's so simple,” laughed the detective. ”Larch stopped those of the clocks that didn't run down and stop themselves. He figured out, crazily enough in his fear and drunken frenzy, that if no clocks or watches were going no one would know exactly what time the killing took place. So, after Mrs. Darcy was dead, he hurried about the store, with no one in the wet and deserted street to watch him, and, stopping the timepieces, moved the hands of many of them to suit his fancy. But he forgot the ticking watch.”

”It was simple,” murmured Darcy. ”No wonder I didn't think of it.

Have you so simple a theory regarding the queer state I was in that night--I mean awakening and going to sleep again after feeling something brush my face?”

”Not unless Larch tried to chloroform you after he had killed Mrs.

Darcy, and was afraid you might come down and discover what had happened,” answered the detective. ”That will remain a mystery, but its solution is not important.”

”Not as long as you have cleared Jimmie boy!” laughed Amy, and yet there was a look of sadness on her face, for it had been an ordeal for all of them.

”Oh, well, he'd have been cleared anyhow, if the worst had come to the worst,” said the colonel. ”However, now that it's all over, I can give proper attention to my fis.h.i.+ng.”

”And I,” murmured James Darcy, ”can--”

But a soft hand over his lips prevented further utterance.

Lightly as a feather the colonel flicked a fly over the quiet pool where the waters swirled in a lazy eddy. There was a splash in the sun, a shrill song of the reel, and a fish leaped high in the air, trying to shake the barb from its mouth.

”No, you don't!” laughed the old detective. ”I've hooked you this time!”

”As you hooked Langford Larch,” murmured Jack Young, who sat on the bank in the shade, while the colonel fished and s.h.a.g was setting out lunch under the trees.

”This _is_ my last case!” exclaimed the detective as he slipped his prize into the gra.s.s-lined creel. ”Positively my _last_! I never would have gone on with this, even after I started, except for the pleading of Miss Mason. But I'm through! No more detective cases for me! I've retired!”

Jack looked at the trim and upright figure and keen, handsome face, neither of which showed the old colonel's age. Then the younger detective glanced at s.h.a.g, winked an eye, and murmured:

”Through until the next time; eh s.h.a.g?”

”Yo' done said it!” exclaimed the colored man with a grin. ”Now, sah, Colonel, lunch am served!”

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