"What--what's this?" snarled the man, struggling to retain his balance.

"What's this? Who the devil are you, to come between me and my--"

"Don't dare profane that name!" warned the woman. "I--I-- Oh, Aaron! where are you?"

It was very dark now, under the trees.

"Ha! So _that's_ who he is! Your old lover, Grafton! Well, I'll soon finish him! I'll make him wish he hadn't come between us with his protecting ways, and his diamond cross that he goes so secretly to have mended. Bah! A pretty lover! Take that, you sneaking fool!"

There was a sliver of flame in the darkness, and mingled with the report came a cry of anguish and a woman's scream, as a heavy stick in the hands of Colonel Ashley broke the hand that held the revolver.

A little thud among the bushes told where the weapon had fallen, its bullet cutting the tree branches overhead.

"Oh--who--who are _you_?" gasped the woman, as the colonel stepped between her and the man he had maimed. "I thought Mr. Grafton was--"

"I think that is he coming now," said the old detective quietly, as the sound of some one running up the path was borne to their strained senses.

"Look here!" snarled the man with the broken wrist, as he clasped it with his other hand, "aren't you--" he started back as a last flicker of the waning light fell across the colonel's face. "Who in the name of all the devils in hades are you?" he cried. "What right have you--"

"The right of the law," was the quiet answer. The colonel's hand slipped into his pocket, where something metallic clicked. "The right of the law. Langford Larch, I arrest you for the murder of Mrs. Amelia Darcy!"

It was so still for a moment that the rustle of a bird's wings in the tree overhead sounded like the rushing of wind. Colonel Ashley, drawing something from his pocket, took a step nearer the maimed man.

As he did so Larch laughed wildly.

"Ah, so that's the game, is it?" he cried. "You have betrayed me, Cynthia, you she-devil! You put up this little game with your lover Grafton, did you? Well you--"

"Langford, I never--!"

"Bah! Well, I'll fool you all! Arrest me for murdering the old woman, will you? Like h.e.l.l you will!"

He stepped back a pace, Colonel Ashley following.

"Keep back!" cried Larch. "If you touch me--! I'm not afraid of you.

Yes, I did kill her! I didn't mean to, but I did. The game's up! I can see that. But you'll never get me to the chair. I'll fool you all! I'm not afraid to die!"

Before the colonel or Aaron Grafton, who just then burst through the bushes fringing the path, could make a move to prevent him, Langford Larch, with a cry like that of a stricken beast, threw himself over the edge of the rocky precipice, and his body went crashing down a hundred feet into the swirling waters below.

CHAPTER XXII

HIS LAST CASE

Slowly the bruised and cut lips moved. Faintly came from the maimed throat a hoa.r.s.e whisper.

"I--did--it! I know this is the end. I'll confess everything!"

Before his death, which followed soon after he had been taken from the swirling waters, Langford Larch made a complete confession, telling how he had killed Mrs. Darcy.

Swiftly went the news to the jail, and later to the courthouse, whence, after a conference between the grave judge and a somewhat disappointed, though perhaps gladly so, prosecutor of the pleas, James Darcy walked forth a free man, honorably discharged from the custody of the court, the indictment against him for murder quashed.

Amy Mason was the first to greet her lover when he stepped away from the bench of the judge, before which he stood to hear himself cleared of the charge.

"Oh, Jimmie boy! I'm so glad!" and her eyes beamed.

"And so am I, Amy. If you knew what I have gone through--"

"As if I didn't know, Jimmie boy! The colonel told me some of it."'

"Did he? Isn't he a trump? Where is he now?"

"Oh, dad carried him off for some long-delayed fishing," answered Amy, as she and James Darcy left the courtroom before a throng, that could not be restrained from cheering, despite the cries of "Silence!" on the part of the constable.

"But how did he know that Larch killed her?" asked Darcy, as he and Amy rode away in her car, amid the cheers of the throng outside the county building.

"By the process of elimination, so he told dad. He never for an instant really believed you guilty, Jimmie boy, even after the discovery of the electric wires, though he let those two detectives think he did."

"And what about Singa Phut and Harry King?"

"Oh, they were only incidents, so Colonel Ashley says," went on the happy girl, as the automobile rolled along. "Even that funny Spotty was 'eliminated', as our dear old fisherman calls it, when he explained about the diamond cross. And as for Mr. Grafton, though he was mixed up in the jewel part of the mystery, he was only acting to help Miss Ratchford, as she wants to be called. Poor girl, she's had a hard time, too! I hope she finds as much happiness as--"

"As who?" asked Darcy, as Amy hesitated.

"As I have," came the gentle answer, as Amy gazed with shining eyes at the man beside her.

Langford Larch told everything in the brief time left him between his fatal leap and the pa.s.sing of his soul to a higher judgment than that of the county courts. Some time before the events leading to the separation, a meeting between his wife and Grafton had been witnessed by one of Larch's hotel employees, who told of it, magnifying its importance. Larch's jealous disposition was inflamed, and there was a stormy scene between him and his wife. He knocked her down, and that was the end, as far as she was concerned. She told him she would leave him. She admitted that she still cared for Grafton, but denied any intimacy with him. Then came the legal separation.

Before this, however, Larch had missed his wife's diamond cross, and charged her with having disposed of it. During their final interview she told the truth, of how it had been stepped on, and that Grafton had taken it to be repaired. It was then that Larch saw his opportunity for getting possession of the valuable stones, for his debts were pressing, and, though it was suspected by few, he needed a large sum in cash.

One night, partly intoxicated, which was unusual for him, and perhaps on this occasion done in desperation, Larch called at the jewelry store. Mrs. Darcy happened to come downstairs as he arrived, and, knowing him well, admitted him, though the store had long been closed.

In one hand she held the Indian watch, perhaps picked up idly from the repair table. In the other hand was the diamond cross.

This ornament Larch instantly demanded, but Mrs. Darcy refused to give it up, not only on account of his condition, but because she did not consider that he had any claim to it, knowing that it had been his wife's before their marriage.

Larch was insistent in his demands, and tried to take the diamond cross from Mrs. Darcy. She resisted him in the dimly-lighted and deserted store, and he caught up the paper-cutter dagger and threatened her.

She backed away from him, toward the open safe, intending, it would seem, to put the valuable ornament in there and lock it up, when Larch struck at her. As he did so, he knocked down the heavy statue of the hunter. It struck her on the head, inflicting what would have proved a mortal blow, even without the knife thrust.

As the statue fell Larch leaned forward to grasp it, he said, but he slipped and the knife in his hand entered her side, and she fell on it, driving it deeper in. Larch declared he never meant to kill, or even seriously hurt, Mrs. Darcy. But he did kill her.

Seeing her lying, as he then thought, only perhaps seriously wounded, Larch, taking the diamond cross, staggered around the jewelry shop, and then fled panic-stricken, went to the Homestead, and drank himself into a stupor.

Incidentally Larch's confession cleared up other matters, and shifted certain responsibilities from various persons. The Indian watch, though impregnated with poison, had nothing to do with the death of Mrs. Darcy, though she might have been slightly scratched by the hidden needle. And the money Harry King went out and got the night of the murder was given him, as he boasted at the time, by a woman. He refused to name her, but she was named later, when King's wife filed a pet.i.tion for a divorce--not her first by the way.

"Well, Colonel," remarked Mr. Mason, as together they strolled toward a trout stream, several days after the clearing up of the diamond cross mystery, "I'm glad to know you had the same faith in young Darcy that I had."

"Oh, yes, there couldn't be any other way out. Jimmie boy, as your Amy calls him--bless her heart--was a bit careless, but that was all. Some of his wires that he rigged up for his electric lathe, secretly, did get tangled with the heavily-charged conductors of the lighting system, though he didn't know that. It may be they were responsible for the shocks given. I didn't go into that deeply. And Darcy didn't repair Singa Phut's watch when he said he would. It was in getting up early to do this and have the timepiece ready when promised, that he discovered his relative's dead body."