With Kennedy on one side and myself on the other, all three of us on the alert, we hurried out and into a taxicab to go down to the station.
As we jolted along Kennedy plied the lawyer with a rapid fire of questions. Even he could furnish no clue as to who had fired the shot at him or why.
II
THE SECRET SERVICE
Half an hour later we were on our way by train to Westport with Hastings. As the train whisked us along Craig leaned back in his chair and surveyed the glimpses of water and countryside through the window. Now and then, as we got farther out from the city, through a break in the trees one could catch glimpses of the deep-blue salt water of bay and Sound, and the dazzling whiteness of sand.
Now and then Kennedy would break in with a question to Hastings, showing that his mind was actively at work on the case, but by his manner I could see that he was eager to get on the spot before all that he considered important had been messed up by others.
Hastings hurried us directly from the train to the little undertaking establishment to which the body of Marshall Maddox had been taken.
A crowd of the curious had already gathered, and we pushed our way in through them.
There lay the body. It had a peculiar, bloated appearance and the face was cyanosed and blue. Maddox had been a large man and well set up. In death he was still a striking figure. What was the secret behind those saturnine features?
“Not a scratch or a bruise on him, except those made in handling the body,” remarked the coroner, who was also a doctor, as he greeted Kennedy.