l saw a dirty slip of
paper under the door of his room.

"Ha!" he ejaculated. "Another printed message. The writer is getting
impatient. I think it's time to act."

And he read:

"Why does not the great detective arrest the poisoner of her father? If
he will look behind the book case he will find something that will prove
everything--the poison book and--something else."

The printed scrawl was signed: "Justice."

"Well, 'Justice,' I'll do as you say, for once," said the colonel
softly, and there was a grim smile on his face.

And so it came about that after his bath and a breakfast Colonel Ashley,
winking mysteriously to Jack Young, indicated to his helper that he was
wanted in the library.

"What is it?" asked Jack, when they were alone in the room. "A new
clew?"

"No, just a blind trail, but I want to clean it up. Help me move out
some of the bookcases."

"Good night! Some job! Are you looking for a secret passage, or is there
a body concealed here?" and Jack laughed as he took hold of some of the
heavy furniture and helped the colonel move it.

Not until they had lifted out the third massive case of volumes was
their search successful. There was a little thud, as though something
had fallen to the floor, and, looking, the colonel said:

"I have it."

He reached in and brought out a thin volume. Its title page was
inscribed "The Poisonous Plants of New Jersey."

Something was in the book--something more bulky than a mere marker; and,
opening the slender volume at page 4, a spray of dried leaves and some
thin, whitish roots were disclosed.

"Somebody trying to press wild flowers?" asked Jack. "Why all this
trouble for that? Hum! Doesn't smell like violets," he added, as he
picked up the spray of leaves and roots.

"No, it doesn't," agreed the colonel. "But if you are not a little
careful in handling it you'll be a fit subject for a bunch of
violets--tied with crepe."

"You mean--"

Jack was startled, and he dropped the dried leaves on the library floor.

"A specimen of the water hemlock," went on the colonel. "One of the
deadliest poisons of the plant world. And as we don't want any one else
to suffer the fate of Socrates, I'll put this away."

He looked at the compound leaves, the dried flowers, small, but growing
in the characteristic large umbels, and at the cluster of fleshy roots,
though now pressed flat, and noted the hollow stems of the plant itself.
The bunch of what had been verdure