The Social Gangster Part 35

"But a.s.suming it entered the front, there is no exit in the back," the sheriff put in quickly, "and no bullet has been found."

"Well, if he wasn't shot," I persisted, "it must have been a blow, and it seems impossible that a blow could have produced such an effect."

The sheriff said nothing, evidently preferring to gain with silence a reputation for superior wisdom. Kennedy had nothing better than silence to offer, either, though he continued for a long time examining the wounds on the body.

Our last visit in town was to Fraser Ferris himself, to whom the sheriff agreed to conduct us. Ferris was confined in the grim, dark, stone, vine-clad county jail.

We had scarcely entered the forbidding door of the place when we heard a step behind us. We turned to see Mrs. Ferris again. She seemed very much excited, and together we four, with a keeper, mounted the steps.

As she caught sight of her son, behind the bars, she seemed to gasp, then nerve herself up to face the ordeal of seeing a Ferris in such a place.

"Fraser," she cried, running forward.

He was tall, sunburned, and looked like a good sportsman, a clean-cut fellow. It was hard to think of him as a murderer, especially after the affecting meeting of the mother and son.

"Do you know what I've just heard?" she asked at length, then scarcely pausing for a word of encouragement from him, she went on. "Why, they say that Benson was in town early that evening, drinking heavily and that that might account--"

"There--there you are," he cried earnestly. "I don't know what happened.

But why should I do anything to him? Perhaps someone waylaid him. That's plausible."

"Of course," warned Kennedy a few minutes later, "you know that anything you say may be used against you. But--"

"I _will_ talk," interrupted the young man pa.s.sionately, "although my lawyer tells me not to. Why, it's all so silly. As for Irving Evans, I can't see how I could have hit him hard enough, while, as for poor Benson,--well, that's even sillier yet. How should I know anything of that? Besides, they were all at the Club late that night, all except me, talking over the--the accident. Why don't they suspect Wyndham? He was there. Why don't they suspect--some of the others?"

Mrs. Ferris was trying to keep a brave face and her son was more eager to encourage her than to do anything else.

"Keep up a good heart, Mother," he called, as we finally left, after his thanking Kennedy most heartily. "They haven't indicted me yet, and the grand jury won't meet for a couple of weeks. Lots of things may turn up before then."

It was evident that, next to the disgrace of the arrest, his mother feared even more the shame of an indictment and trial, even though it might end in an acquittal. Yet so far we had found no one, as far as I knew, who had been able to give us a fact that contradicted the deductions of the authorities in the case.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SOLAR PLEXUS

It was after the dinner hour that we found ourselves at the Country Club again. Wyndham had not come back from the city, but Allison was there and had gathered together all the Club help so that Kennedy might question them.

He did question them down in the locker-room, I thought perhaps for the moral effect. The chef, whom I had suspected of knowing something, was there, but proved to be unenlightening. In fact, no one seemed to have anything to contribute. Quite the contrary. They could not even suggest a way in which the trunk might have been taken from the steward's room.

"That's not very difficult," smiled Kennedy, as one after another the servants a.s.serted that it would be impossible to get it around the turns in the stairs without making a noise. "Where was Benson's room?"

The chef led the way to the door, that by which we had gone out before when we had seen the rubbish barrels.

"Up there," he pointed, "on the third floor."

There was no fire escape, nor were there any outside balconies, and I wondered how Craig would account for it.

"Someone might have lowered the trunk from the window by a rope, might they not?" he asked simply.

"Yes," returned the chef, unconvinced. "But his door was locked and he had his keys in his pocket. How about that?"

"It doesn't follow that he was killed in his room, does it?" asked Craig. "In fact it is altogether impossible that he could have been.

Suppose he was killed outside. Might not someone have taken the keys from his pocket, gone up to the room without making any noise and let the trunk down here by a rope? Then if he had dropped the rope, locked the door, and returned the keys to Benson's pockets--how about that?"

It was so simple and feasible that no one could deny it. Yet I could not see that it furthered us in solving the greater mystery.

We went up to the steward's room and searched his belongings, without finding anything that merited even that expenditure of time.

However, Craig was confident now, although he did not say much, and by a late train we returned to the city in preference to using Mrs. Ferris's car.

All the next day, Kennedy was engaged, either in his laboratory or on an errand that took him downtown during most of the middle of the day.

When he returned, I could tell by the look on his face that his quest, whatever it had been, had been successful.

"I found Wyndham--had a long talk with him," was all he would say in answer to my questions, before he went back to whatever he was studying at the laboratory.

I had made some inquiries myself in the meantime, especially about Wyndham. As nearly as I could make out, the young men at Briar Lake were afflicted with a disease which is very prevalent--the desire to get rich quick. In that respect Fraser Ferris was no better than the rest.

Nor was Irving Evans. Allan Wyndham had been a plunger almost from boyhood, and only the tight rein that his conservative father held over him had checked him. Sometimes the young men succeeded, and that had served only to whet their appet.i.tes for more easy money. But more often they had failed. In most cases, it seemed, Dean Allison's firm had been the brokers through whom they dealt, particularly Wyndham.

In fact, with more time on my hands during the day than I knew what to do with, in the absence of Kennedy I had evolved several very pretty little theories of the case which involved the recouping of dissipated fortunes by marriage with the popular young heiress.

It was late in the afternoon that the telephone rang, and, as Craig was busy, I answered it.

"Oh, Mr. Jameson," I heard Mrs. Ferris's voice calling over long distance from Briar Lake anxiously, "is Mr. Kennedy there? Please let me speak to him."

I hastened to hand over the receiver to Kennedy and waited impatiently until he finished.

"A special grand jury has been empanelled for ten o'clock tomorrow morning," he said as he turned from the wire and faced me, "and unless we can do something immediately, they are sure to find an indictment."

Kennedy scowled and shook his head. "It looks to me as if someone were mighty anxious to railroad young Ferris along," he remarked, hurrying across to the laboratory table, where he had been at work, and flinging off his stained smock.

"Well, are you ready for them?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied quickly. "Call up and find out about the trains to Briar Lake, Walter."

I found that we could easily get a train that would have us at the Country Club not later than eight o'clock, and as I turned to tell Kennedy, I saw him carefully packing into a case a peculiar shaped flask which he had been using in some of his experiments. Outside it had a felt jacket, and as we hurried over to the station Kennedy carried it carefully in the case by a handle.

The ride out to Briar Lake seemed interminable, but it was better than going up in a car at night, and Mrs. Ferris met us anxiously at the station.

Thus, early in the evening, in the little reception room of the Country Club, there gathered a large party, not the largest it had seen, but certainly the most interested. In fact no one, except young Ferris, had any legitimate reason for staying away.

"Dead men tell no tales," remarked Kennedy sententiously, as he faced us, having whispered to me that he wanted me to take a position near the door and stay there, no matter what happened. "But," he added, "science opens their mute mouths. Science has become the greatest detective in the world.

"Once upon a time, it is true, many a murderer was acquitted and perhaps many an innocent man hanged because of appearances. But today the a.s.sa.s.sin has to reckon with the chemist, the physicist, the X-ray expert, and a host of others. They start on his track and force him to face d.a.m.ning, dispa.s.sionate scientific facts.

"And," he went on, raising his voice a trifle, "science, with equal zeal, brings facts to clear an innocent man protesting his innocence, but condemned by circ.u.mstantial evidence."