"Thank you, no. I'm afraid my digestion isn't quite up to that, as I've had to cut out my fishing of late. But what do you say to a julep?"
"Delighted, I'm sure," and they sat down at one of the half-enclosed tables in the grill and ordered food and drink. They had become friends since the colonel's first visit to the store, and the friendship had grown as they found they had congenial tastes.
The evening passed pleasantly for them. They talked of much, including the murder, and the colonel was more than pleased to find that the jeweler had no very strong suspicion against young Darcy.
"I've known him from a boy," said Mr. Kettridge, "and, though he has his faults, a crime such as this would be almost impossible to him, no matter what motive, such as the dispute over money or his sweetheart. He may be guilty, but I doubt it."
"My idea, exactly," returned the colonel. "Now as to certain matters in the store on the morning of the murder. The stopped clocks, for instance. Have you any theory—"
Came, at that instant, fairly bursting into the quiet grill room, some "jolly good fellows," to take them at their own valuation. There were three of them, the center figure being that of Harry King, and he was very much intoxicated.
"Hello, Harry! Where have you been?" some one called.
King regarded his questioner gravely, as though deeply pondering over the matter. It was often characteristic of him that, though he became very much intoxicated, yet, at times, under such conditions, Harry King's language approached the cultured, rather than degenerated into the common talk of the ordinary drunk. That is not always, but sometimes. It happened to be so now.
"I beg your pardon?" he said, in the cultured tones he knew so well how to use, yet of which he made so little use of late.
"I said, where have you been?" remarked the other. "We've missed you."