The young people, turning, saw the two men, and Amy waved her hand.
Slowly she and her lover approached.
"What luck, Colonel?" she asked gaily.
"The very best! You didn't exaggerate when you spoke of your trout stream."
"I'm glad you like it. Jimmie and I were just talking about you."
"I wondered why my ears burned," and the old detective laughed.
"Colonel Ashley," put in Darcy, "there's just one thing I can't seem to clear up in all this business."
"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?"