"Well, we know the victim. There wasn't any difficulty about identifying him. We know it wasn't really a Black Hand crime, although everything seems to have been done to make it look like one, and the body was left in the most lonely part of the country.
"And then the trunk. We have traced it easily to the Club House. It was Benson's own trunk—had been up in his own room, which was locked."
"His own trunk?" repeated Craig, suddenly becoming interested. "How could anyone take it out, without being seen? Didn't anyone hear anything?"
"No. Apparently not. None of the other servants seem to have heard a thing. I don't know how it could have been got out, especially as his door was locked and we found the keys on him. But—well, it was. That's all."
We had reached the undertaker's.
The body of Benson was horribly mangled about the head and chest, particularly the mouth. It seemed as if a great hole had been torn in him, and he must have died instantly. Kennedy examined the grewsome remains most carefully.
What had done it, I wondered? Could the man have been drugged, perhaps, and then shot?
"Maybe it was a dum-dum bullet," I suggested, "one of those that mushrooms out and produces such frightful wounds."
"But assuming 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."