t 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 passionately, "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 asserted 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