A WATER HAZARD
"Isn't there some place where you can take her for a few days - some relative's where she can rest and forget, as much as possible, the scenes here?""Yes, there is," replied Miss Mary Carwell to Colonel Ashley's question."I'll go with her myself to Pentonville.I have a cousin there, and it's the quietest place I know of, outside of Philadelphia," and she smiled faintly at the detective.
"Good!" he announced."Then get her away from here.It will do you both good.""But what about the case - solving the mystery? Won't you want either Viola or me here to help you?""I shall do very well by myself for a few days.Indeed I shall need the help of both of you, but you will be all the better fitted to render it when you return.So take her away - go yourself, and try to forget as much of your grief as possible.""And you will stay - "
"I'll stay here, yes.Shag and I will manage very nicely, thank you.I'm glad you have colored help.I can always get along with that kind.I've been used to them since a boy in the South."And so Viola and Miss Carwell went away.
It was after the sufficiently imposingly somber funeral of Horace Carwell, for since the adjourned inquest - adjourned at the request of the prosecutor - it was not considered necessary to keep the poor, maimed body out of its last resting place any longer.It had been sufficiently viewed and examined.In fact, parts of it were still in the hands of the chemists.
"And now, Shag, that we're left to ourselves - " said Colonel Ashley, when Viola and Miss Carwell had departed the day following the funeral, "now that we are by ourselves - ""I reckon as how you'll fix up as to who it were whut done killed degen'man, an' hab him `rested, won't yo', Colonel, sah?" asked Shag, with the kindly concern and freedom of an old and loved servant.
"Indeed I'll do nothing of the sort!" exclaimed Colonel Ashley."I'm going fishing, Shag, and I'll be obliged to you if you'll lay out my Kennebec rod and the sixteen line.I think there are some fighting fish in that little river that runs along at the end of the golf course.Get everything ready and then let me know," and the colonel, smoking his after-breakfast cigar, sat on the shady porch of The Haven and read:
"0, Sir, doubt not that angling is an art: is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for afriend's breakfast.""Um," mused the colonel."Too bad it isn't the trout season.That passage from Walton just naturally makes me hungry for the speckled beauties.But I can wait.Meanwhile we'll see what else the stream holds.Shag, are you coming?""Yes, sah! Comm' right d'rectly, sah! Yes, sah, Colonel!" and Shag shuffled along the porch with the fishing tackle.
And so Colonel Ashley sat and fished, and as he fished he thought, for the sport was not so good that it took up his whole attention.In fact he was rather glad that the fish were not rising well, for he had entered into this golf course mystery with a zest he seldom brought to any case, and he was anxious to get to the bottom.
"I didn't want to get into that diamond cross affair, but I was dragged in by the heels," he mused."And now, just because some years ago Horace Carwell did me a favor and enabled me to make money in the copper market, I am trying to find out who killed him, or if, in a fit of despondency, he killed himself.""And yet, if it was despondency, he disguised it marvelously well.And if it was an accident it was a most skillful and fateful one.How he could swallow poison and not know it is beyond me.And now to consider who might have given it to him, arguing that it was not an accident"The colonel had walked up and down the stream at the turn of the Maraposa golf course, Shag following at a discreet distance, and, after trying out several places had settled down under a shady tree at an eddy where the waters, after rushing down the bed of the small river, met with an obstruction and turned upon themselves.Here they had worn out a place under an overhanging bank, making a deep pool where, if ever, fish might he expected to lurk.
And there the colonel threw in his bait and waited.
And now, that I am waiting," he mused, "let me consider, as my friend Walton would, matters in their sequence.Horace Carwell is dead.Let us argue that some one gave him the poison.Who was it?"And then, like some file index, the colonel began to pass over in his mind the various persons who had come under his observation, as possible perpetrators of the crime.
"Let us begin with one the law already suspects," mused the fisherman."Not that that is any criterion, but that it disposes of him in a certain order- disposes of him or - involves him more deeply," and the colonel looked to where a ground spider had woven a web in which a small but helpless grass hopper was then struggling.
"Could Harry Bartlett have given the poison?" the colonel asked himself.And the answer, naturally, was that such could have been the case.
Then came the question: "Why?"
"Had he an object? What was the quarrel about, concerning which he refuses to speak? Why is Viola so sure Harry could not have done it? I think I can see a reason for the last.She loves him as much as he does her.That's natural.She's a sweet girl!"And, being unable to decide definitely as to the status of Harry Bartlett, Colonel Ashley mentally passed that card in his file and took up another, bearing the name Captain Gerry Poland.
