“I wonder,” said Irene turning to Grace, “whether we could reach John Moore.”
“There’s no one better!” Grace eagerly assented. “We could telephone him at his boarding house.”
Trenton asked a few questions about Moore and began instructing Craig as to the persons he was to call by telephone; first a physician, who was also an intimate friend of the Kemps and two of Kemp’s neighbors, well known to Trenton.
“Kemp and I had been to The Shack for dinner—alone—Jerry and the cateress must be taken care of as to that. Tommy was driving home. Something went wrong with the car and it ran off into the ditch. How about that, Craig?”
“I wouldn’t say, Mr. Trenton, that Mr. Kemp was driving. The driver in such accidents is seldom hurt. We’d better say the car simply struck a stone and swerved.”
Craig hurriedly suggested possible explanations of a deflection that would ditch a car at this point.
“Yes; that’s better,” Trenton agreed.
“If the young ladies could go into town on an interurban car that would help,” said Craig. “It’s only a little way to a stop on the crossroad back yonder. There’ll be a car passing at half-past twelve.”
These matters hastily determined, Craig hurried away, the quick patter of his feet on the macadam suggesting the flight of a malevolent fate that had struck its blow and was flying from the scene.
Tommy Kemp was dead. There was no question but that he had died instantly, either from the violent blow on the head or from a failure of the heart due to the shock of his precipitation against the windshield.