“What I did?” He blinked his eyes rapidly, to rid them of the water which poured forth in an effort to assuage their drink-inflamed condition, and regarded those about him with half-drunken gravity.  “What I did?  You want to know—­what—­what I did?”

“Yes.  Where were you, and what did you do?” asked Carroll easily.

“Hu!  Got drunk, thash what I did.  Can’t you see?  I’m drunk yet, but I don’t care!  Ha!  Had one swell time, thash what I did!  One whale of a good time!  It was some night—­a wet night—­believe me—­a wet night—­awful wet.  Never had so mush fun—­never!  We got ole Doc Harrison stewed to the gills—­hones’ we did—­stewed like—­like prunes—­apricots!  Ho!  Thash what we did!”

“Guess he wasn’t the only one,” observed Carroll grimly.  “Now, look here, King.  You’re pretty drunk yet, but maybe you can get this through your noodle.  There’s been some nasty business, and you may, or may not, know something about it, though I don’t believe you do, for you’re so pickled now that you must have been loading up ever since last week.  But you’ve got to answer some questions—­when you’re able—­and it’s a question of holding you here or—­taking you with us.  How about it?”

“Look here!” snarled King, and his voice rang out with sudden energy.  “Who you talkin’ to?”

“Now take it easy, Harry,” advised Thong.  “We’re talking to you, of course.”

Harry King seemed to begin the process of sobering up.  His eyes lost something of their bleary, misunderstanding look, and took on a dangerous glint.  The detectives knew him for a spendthrift, who had been in more than one questionable escapade.  He had a violent temper, drunk or sober, once it was roused, and it did not take much liquor to make him a veritable devil.  Though after his first wild burst he became maudlin and silly.  King came of a good family, but his relatives had cast him off after his midnight marriage to an actress of questionable morals, with whom it was not a first offense, and he now lived, after his own peculiar fashion, on the income of an estate settled on him in his better days by an aunt.  Now and then he managed to get larger advances than the stipulated sum from a rascally lawyer, who took a chance of reimbursing himself a hundred per cent. when Harry King should come to the end of his rope—­a time which seemed not far off, if the present were any indication.  He was to inherit the bulk of his fortune when he became thirty-five years of age.  He was now thirty-three, but the pace he was going and keeping made his chances of living out the stated allotment seem meager.

“I’m talking to you, Harry, my boy,” went on the detective, “and I advise you, for your own good, to keep a civil tongue in your head.  If you don’t, you may get into trouble.  There’s been a murder—­”

“A murder!” King’s voice was more certain now.

“Yes.  You saw the body carried out—­or are you still so drunk you can’t remember?  It was Mrs. Darcy—­the lady who owned this jewelry store, you know.  Now pull yourself together.  You’ve got to come with us and explain a little about this knife of yours.  She was stabbed with that.”