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: