do them right away. Which shall I
tackle first? I wonder if it won't be best to have Kettridge come here
and perform the autopsy on that watch," and he looked toward the closet
where he had placed the one that had belonged to Singa Phut. "If I can
look inside that, and see whether or not the mechanism is so obvious
that Darcy must have stumbled on it when he started to repair it--if he
did--then, well, that complicates matters. Yes, I think I must see
Kettridge."

Once more the colonel started toward his room telephone, intending to
summon the jeweler, who was living over the store in Mrs. Darcy's rooms.

The colonel paused at the instrument, recalling that, as he had been
about to use it before there had come in a call for him--the call
announcing the department-store keeper.

But this time the instrument was mute, and the colonel had soon asked
central for the telephone in the apartments now occupied by Mr.
Kettridge. There was a period of waiting.

"I am ringing Marcy 5426," announced the pleasant voice of the girl in
the central office.

"Thank you," responded the detective.

Another period of waiting, and again the announcement of the girl,
though the colonel had not manifested any impatience.

"Very well," he responded. "There may be no one at home."

It was evident, a little later, that at least no one intended to answer
the telephone, and the colonel hung up he receiver.

"Well, Kettridge can wait," he murmured, as he carefully put away the
watch, thinking, with a sigh of regret, of poor little Chet. The dog
was a friendly animal and had made many friends in the hotel.

"And so Miss Ratchford--to use her maiden name--has the diamond cross
back again," mused the colonel. "But how in the world could she get
it, when Spotty had it, and the police that are holding him have that,
and he's resisting extradition? Say, I wish I could go fishing!" and
the colonel shook his head in dogged impatience at the tangle into
which the affair had snarled itself.

"Spotty must have robbed the jewelry store in spite of what he says
about it," mused the Colonel. "But if he did, and got the cross, even
if he didn't kill Mrs. Darcy, how in the world could he get the cross
back to her when the police took it away from him and when the last I
saw of it it was in the police headquarters safe?

"This certainly gets me! Oh Shag! is that you?" called the colonel as
he heard some one moving out in the hall near his d