With the little package for Kennedy safely in my pocket I hurried out again into the sweltering heat beneath the glass of the big studio, and to the side of Kennedy and Mackay in the banquet-hall set.
"You have a sample of each article of food now?" he was asking the district attorney. "You are sure you have missed nothing?"
"As far as possible I took my samples from the table where Werner sat," Mackay explained. "When the prop. boy gets here with an empty bottle and cork I'll have a sample of the wine. I think it's the wine," he added.
Kennedy turned to me. "You've got—"
"In my pocket!" I interrupted. Then, rather breathlessly, I repeated the conversation I had overheard.
"Good Lord!" Mackay flushed. "There it is! Shirley's the man, and I'll take him now, quick, without waiting for a warrant."
"See!" I ejaculated, to Kennedy. "He killed Stella because she made a fool of him and then, when Werner discovered that and followed him to Tarrytown the other night, it probably put him in a panic of fear, and so, to keep Werner from talking—"
"Easy, Walter! Not so fast! What you overheard is insufficient ground for Shirley's conviction, unless you could make him confess, and I doubt you could make him do that."
"Why?" This was Mackay.
"Because I don't think he's guilty. At least"—Kennedy, as always, was cautious in his statements, "not so far as anything we now know would indicate."