“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: