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.