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"No, please don't say that!" begged the woman.

"I must," Blossom answered. "We can't go on this way any longer. Here is what I promised you. It is all I can raise, and I had a hard time doing that. Every one is suspicious, and that detective is all eyes and ears. It is the best I can do. You must not bother me any more."

The lights from a passing boat fell on the couple as they stood close to the rail, and, from his vantage point in the darkness, the colonel saw LeGrand Blossom hand the woman in the shawl a package. She took it eagerly, and thrust it into her bosom. Then, turning to the man, she saidreproachfully:

"You say this is the end. Then you don't love me any more?"

LeGrand Blossom did not answer for a moment.

"You don't - do you?" the woman insisted.

"No," was the slow reply. "I might as well be brutally frank about it, and say I don't. And you don't care either."

"Oh, I do! I do!" she eagerly protested.

"No, you only think you do. It is better for both of us to have it end this way. But let us make sure that it is an end. There must be no more of it. I have given you all I can. You must go away as you promised."

"Yes, I suppose I must," and her voice was broken. "Oh, I wish I had never met you!"

"Perhaps it would have been better that way," was Blossom's cold response. "However, it's too late for that now. Good-bye," he added, as the boat was grating her way along the Loch Harbor slip. "I'm not going to get off. Don't telephone me again. This is all I can ever give you."

"Oh, yes, I suppose, now you've finished, you can get rid of me. Well, let it be so," she said bitterly. And then, as the boat bumped to a landing she cried: "If I could only find - "

But the rattle of the chains and the clatter of the wheels on the ferry bridge drowned her voice. She rushed away from LeGrand Blossoms's side and, clutching her shawl close around her as if to make sure of the package the man had given her, she disappeared into the interior of the ferryboat.

Colonel Ashley started to follow, but as LeGrand Blossom remained on board he decided to watch him instead of the woman, though he was vaguely disquieted trying to remember where he had heard her voice before.

CHAPTER XVIII

A LARGE BLONDE LADY

Reaching The Haven, Colonel Ashley, who had trailed LeGrand Blossom to the latter's boarding place without anything having developed, was met by Shag, who was up later than usual, for it was now close to midnight.

"What now, Shag!" exclaimed the colonel. "Don't tell me there are any more detective cases for me to work on. I simply won't listen. I wish I hadn't to this one. It's getting more and more tangled every minute, and the fish are biting well. Hang it all, Shag, why did you let me take up this golf course mystery?"

"I didn't do it, Colonel, no, sah!"

"What's the use of talking that way, Shag! You know you did!"

"Yes, sah, Colonel. Dat's whut I did!" confessed Shag with a grin. When the colonel was in this mood there was nothing for it but to agree with him.

"And it's the worst tangle you ever got me into!" went on Shag's master. "There's no head or tail to it."

"Den it ain't laik a fish; am it?" asked Shag, with the freedom of long years of faithful service.

"No, it isn't - worse luck!" stormed the colonel. "I never saw such a case. The diamond cross mystery was nothing like it."

"But I thought, Colonel, sah, dat de mo' of a puzzle it were, de bettah yo' laiked it!" ventured Shag.

Colonel Ashley tried to repress a smile.

"Get to bed, you black rascal!" he said with an affectionate pat on Shag's back. "Get to bed! What are you staying up so late for, anyhow?"

"To gib yo' a message, Colonel, sah," answered Shag. "Miss Viola done say I was t' wait up, an', when yo' come in, t' tell yo' dat she wants t' see you."

"Oh, all right. Where is she?"

"In de liberry, Colonel, sah!"

The detective made his way through the dimly-lighted hall, and, on tapping at the library door, was bidden by Viola