There was considerable excitement when it became known to the crowd, as it speedily did, that Harry Bartlett, almost universally accepted as the fiance of Viola Carwell, had been held as having vital knowledge of her father's death. Indeed there were not a few wild rumors which insisted that he had been held on a charge of murder.
“Oh, I can't believe it! I can't believe it!” exclaimed Viola, when they told her. “It can't be possible that they can hold him on such a charge. It's unfair!”
“Perhaps,” gently admitted Dr. Lambert. “The law is not always fair; but it seeks to know the truth.”
Viola and her aunt were again in the room where Viola had been revived from her indisposition caused by the shock of Bartlett's testimony. Colonel Ashley, who, truth to tell, had been expecting some such summons, went with Dr. Lambert.
“Oh, isn't it terrible, Colonel?” began Viola. “Have they a right to—to lock him up on this charge?”
“It isn't exactly a charge, Viola, my dear, and they have, I am sorry to say, a right to lock him up. But it will not be in a cell.”
“Not in a—a cell?”
“No, as a witness, merely, he has a right to better quarters; and I understand that he will be given them on the order of the prosecutor.”
“He'll be in jail, though, won't he?”
“Yes; but in very decent quarters. The witness rooms are not at all like cells, though they have barred windows.”
“But why can't he get out on bail?” asked Viola, rather petulantly. “I'm sure the charge, absurd as it is, is not such as would make them keep him locked up without being allowed to get bail. I thought only murder cases were not bailable.”
“That is usually the case,” said Colonel Ashley. “But if this is not a suicide case it is a murder case, and though Harry is not accused of murder, in law the distinction is so fine that the prosecutor, doubtless, feels justified in refusing bail.”
“But we could give it—I could—I have money!” cried Viola. “Aunt Mary has money, too. You'd go his bail, wouldn't you?” and the girl appealed to her father's sister.
“Well, Viola, I—of course I'd do anything for you in the world. You know that, dearie. But if the law feels that Harry must be locked up I wouldn't like to interfere.”
“Oh, Aunt Mary!”
“Besides, he says he did quarrel with your father,” went on Miss Carwell. “And he won't say what it was about. I don't want to talk about any one, Vi, but it does look suspicious for Mr. Bartlett.”
“Oh, Aunt Mary! Oh, I'll never forgive you for that!” and poor Viola broke into tears.
They left the courtroom and returned to The Haven. Harry Bartlett sent a hastily written note to Viola, asking her to suspend judgment and trust in him, and then he was taken to the county jail by the sheriff—being assured that he would be treated with every consideration and lodged in one of the witness rooms.
“Isn't there some process by which we could free him?” asked Viola. “Seems to me I've heard of some process—a habeas corpus writ, or something like that.”
“Often persons, who can not be gotten out of the custody of the law in any other way, may be temporarily freed by habeas corpus proceedings,” said Colonel Ashley. “In brief that means an order from the court, calling on the sheriff, or whoever has the custody of a prisoner, to produce his body in court. Of course a live body is understood in such cases.
“But such an expedient is only temporary. Its use is resorted to in order to bring out certain testimony that might be the means of freeing the accused. In this case, if Harry persisted in his refusal not to tell about the quarrel, the judge would have no other course open but to return him to jail. So I can't see that a habeas corpus would be of any service.”
“In that case, no,” sighed Viola. “But, oh, Colonel Ashley, I am sure something can be done. You must solve this mystery!”
“I am going to try, my dear Viola. I'll try both for your sake and that of the memory of your father. I loved him very much.”
The day passed, and night settled down on the house of death. Throughout Lakeside and Loch Harbor, as well as the neighboring seaside places, talk of the death of Mr. Carwell under suspicious circumstances multiplied with the evening editions of many newspapers.
Colonel Ashley in his pleasant room at The Haven—more pleasant it would have been except for the dark chamber with its silent occupant—was putting his fishing rod together. There came a knock on the door, and Shag entered.
“Oh!” he exclaimed at the sight of the familiar equipment. “Is we—is yo' done on dish yeah case, Colonel?”
“No, Shag. I haven't even begun yet.”
“But—”
“Yes, I know. I've just heard that there's pretty good fishing at one end of the golf course that's so intimately mixed up in this mystery, and I don't see why I shouldn't keep my hand in. Come here, you black rascal, and see if you can make this joint fit any better. Seems to me the ferrule is loose.”
“Yes, sah, Colonel, I'll 'tend to it immejite. I—er I done brung in—you ain't no 'jections to lookin' at papers now, has you?” he asked hesitatingly. For when he went fishing the mere sight of a newspaper sometimes set Shag's master wild.
“No,” was the answer. “In fact I was going to send you out for the latest editions, Shag.”
“I'se done got 'em,” was the chuckling answer, and Shag pulled out from under his coat a bundle of papers that he had been hiding until he saw that it was safe to display them.
And while Shag was occupied with the rod, the colonel read the papers, which contained little he did not already know.
The next day he went fishing.
It was on his return from a successful day of sport, which was added to by some quiet and intensive thinking, that Viola spoke to him in the library. The colonel laid aside a paper he had been reading, and looked up.
In lieu of other news one of the reporters had written an interview with Dr. Baird, in which that physician discoursed learnedly on various poisons and the tests for them, such as might be made to determine what caused the death of Mr. Carwell. The young doctor went very much into details, even so far as giving the various chemical symbols of poison, dwelling long on arsenious acid, whose symbol, he told the reporter, was As2O5, while if one desired to test the organs for traces of strychnine, it would be necessary to use “sodium and potassium hydroxide, ammonia and alkaline carbonate, to precipitate the free base strychnine from aqueous solutions of its salts as a white, crystalline solid,” while this imposing formula was given:
“C21H22 + NaOH C21H22 + H20 + NaNO3.”
And so on for a column and a half.
“Oh, Colonel! Have you found out anything yet?” the girl besought.
“Nothing of importance, I am sorry to say.”
“But you are working on it?”
“Oh, yes. Have you anything to tell me?”
“No; except that I am perfectly miserable. It is all so terrible. And we can't even put poor father's body in the grave, where he might rest.”
“No, the coroner is waiting for permission from the prosecutor. It seems they are trying to find some one who knows about the quarrel between Harry and your father.”
“I don't believe there was a quarrel—at least not a serious one. Harry isn't that kind. I'm sure he is not guilty. Harry Bartlett had nothing to do with his death. If my father was not a suicide—”
“But if he was not a suicide, for the sake of justice and to prove Harry Bartlett innocent, we must find out who did kill your father,” said the colonel.
“You don't believe Harry did it, do you?” Viola asked appealingly.
Colonel Ashley did not answer for a moment. Then he said slowly:
“My dear Viola, if some one were ill of a desperate disease, in which the crisis had not yet been passed, you would not expect a physician to say for certainty that such a person was to recover, would you?”
“No.”
“Well, I am in much the same predicament. I am a sort of physician in this mystery case. It has only begun. The crisis is still far off, and nothing can be said with certainty. I prefer not to express an opinion.”
“I'm not afraid!” cried Viola. “I know Harry Bartlett is not guilty!”
“If he is not—who then?” asked the colonel.
“Oh, I don't know! I don't know what to think! I suspect—No, I mustn't say that—Oh, I'm almost distracted!” And, with sobs shaking her frame, Viola Carwell rushed from the room.
Colonel Ashley looked after her for a moment, as though half of a mind to follow, and then, slowly shaking his head, he again picked up the paper he had been reading, delving through a maze of technical poisoning detection formulae, from Vortmann's nitroprusside test to a consideration of the best method of estimating the toxicity of chemical compounds by blood hemolysis. The reporter and young Dr. Baird certainly left little to the imagination.
Colonel Ashley read until rather late that evening, and his reading was not altogether from Izaak Walton's “Compleat Angler.” He delved into several books, and again read, very carefully, the article on the effects of various poisons as it appeared in the paper he had been glancing over when Viola talked with him.
As the colonel was getting ready to retire a servant brought him a note. It was damp, as though it had been splashed with water, and when the detective had read it and had noted Viola's signature, he knew that her tears had blurred the writing.
“Please excuse my impulsiveness,” she penned. “I am distracted. I know Harry is not guilty. Please do something!”
“I am trying to,” mused the colonel as he got into bed, and turned his thoughts to a passage he had read in Walton just before switching off his light. It was an old rhyme, the source of which was not given, but which seemed wonderfully comforting under the circumstances. It was a bit of advice given by our friend Izaak, and as part of what a good fisherman should provide specified:
“My rod and my line, my float and my lead,
My hook and my plummet, my whetstone and knife.
My basket, my baits, both living and dead,
My net and my meat (for that is the chief):
Then I must have thread, and hairs green and small,
With mine angling purse—and so you have all.”
“And,” reflected Colonel Ashley, as he dozed off, “I guess I'll need all that and more to solve this mystery.”
The detective was up betimes the next morning, as he would have said had he been discoursing in the talk of Mr. Walton, and on going to the window to fill his lungs with fresh air, he saw a letter slipped under his door.
“From Viola, I imagine,” he mused, as he picked it up. “Unless it's from Shag, telling me the fish are biting unusually well. I hope they're not, for I must do considerable to-day, and I don't want to be tempted to stray to the fields.
“It isn't from Shag, though. He never could muster as neat a pen as this. Nor yet is it from Viola. Printed, too! The old device to prevent detection of the handwriting. Well, mysterious missive, what have you to say this fine morning?”
He opened the envelope carefully, preserving it and not tearing the address, which, as he had said, was printed, not written. It bore his name, and nothing else.
Within the envelope was a small piece of paper on which was printed this:
“Ask Miss Viola what this means. 58 C. H.—161*.”
Colonel Ashley read the message through three times without saying a word. Then he held the paper and envelope up to the light to see if they bore a water mark. Neither did, and the paper was of a cheap, common variety which might be come upon in almost any stationery store. The colonel read the message again, looked at the back and front of the envelope, and then, placing both in his pocket, went down to breakfast, the bell for which he heard just as he finished his simple breathing exercises.
The morning papers were at his place, which was the only one at the table. Either Viola and her aunt had already breakfasted, or would do so later. The colonel ate and read.
There was not much new in the papers. Harry Bartlett was still held as a witness, and the prosecutor's detectives were still working on the case. As yet no one had connected Colonel Ashley officially with the matter. The reporters seemed to have missed noting that a celebrated—not to say successful—detective was the guest of Viola Carwell. It was an hour after the morning meal, and the colonel was in the library, rather idly glancing over the titles of the books, which included a goodly number on yachting and golfing, when Viola entered.
“Oh, I didn't know you were here!” she exclaimed, drawing back.
“Oh, come in! Come in!” invited the colonel. “I am just going out. I was wondering if there happened to be a book on chemistry here—or one on poisons.”
“Poisons!” exclaimed the girl, half drawing back.
“Yes. I have one, but I left it in New York. If there happened to be one—Or perhaps you can tell me. Did you ever study chemistry?”
“As a girl in school, yes. But I'm afraid I've forgotten all I ever knew.”
“My case, too,” said the colonel with a laugh. “Then there isn't a book giving the different symbols of chemicals?”
“Not that I know of,” Viola answered. “Still I might help you out if it wasn't too complicated. I remember that water is H two O and that sulphuric acid is H two S O four. But that's about all.”
“Would you know what fifty-eight C H one sixty-one, with a period after the C, a dash after the H and a star after the last number was?” the colonel asked casually.
Viola shook her head.
“I'm afraid I wouldn't,” she answered. “That is too complicated for me. Isn't it a shame we learn so much that we forget?'
“Still it may have its uses,” said the colonel. “I'll have to get a book on chemistry, I think.”
He turned to go out.
“Have you learned anything more?” Viola asked timidly.
“Nothing to speak about,” was the answer.
“Oh, I wish you would find out something—and soon,” she murmured. “This suspense is terrible!” and she shuddered as the detective went out.
It was late that afternoon when Colonel Ashley, having seen Miss Mary Carwell and Viola walking at the far end of the garden, went softly up the stairs to the room of the girl who had summoned him to The Haven. With a skill of which he was master he looked quickly but carefully through Viola's desk, which was littered with many letters and telegrams of condolence that had been answered.
Colonel Ashley worked quickly and silently, and he was about to give up, a look of disappointment on his face, when he found a slip of paper in one of the pigeon holes. And the slip bore this, written in pencil:
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg