Chapter Thirteen.

I Practise a New Profession.

“Why, the Colonel—Colonel Chetwode!” the man answered excitedly.

“Colonel Chetwode!” I gasped. “Impossible!”

“It’s a fact,” he declared. “The whole thing’s a deep mystery. They found him at five o’clock this morning.”

“Tell me all about it,” I urged.

“Mr Plummer, sergeant of police, was in here half an hour ago, and he told me all about it. According to what he says, it seems that a workman going across the park to Twickenham early this morning, saw the body of a man on the edge of the lake, half in the water. He rushed forward, and to his horror found it was the Colonel, quite dead.”

“Drowned?”

“No; he wasn’t drowned. That’s the curious part of it. He was murdered.”

“How?”