were there any outside balconies, and I
wondered how Craig would account for it.

"Someone might have lowered the trunk from the window by a rope, might
they not?" he asked simply.

"Yes," returned the chef, unconvinced. "But his door was locked and he
had his keys in his pocket. How about that?"

"It doesn't follow that he was killed in his room, does it?" asked
Craig. "In fact it is altogether impossible that he could have been.
Suppose he was killed outside. Might not someone have taken the keys
from his pocket, gone up to the room without making any noise and let
the trunk down here by a rope? Then if he had dropped the rope, locked
the door, and returned the keys to Benson's pockets--how about that?"

It was so simple and feasible that no one could deny it. Yet I could not
see that it furthered us in solving the greater mystery.

We went up to the steward's room and searched his belongings, without
finding anything that merited even that expenditure of time.

However, Craig was confident now, although he did not say much, and by a
late train we returned to the city in preference to using Mrs. Ferris's
car.

All the next day, Kennedy was engaged, either in his laboratory or on an
errand that took him downtown during most of the middle of the day.

When he returned, I could tell by the look on his face that his quest,
whatever it had been, had been successful.

"I found Wyndham--had a long talk with him," was all he would say in
answer to my questions, before he went back to whatever he was studying
at the laboratory.

I had made some inquiries myself in the meantime, especially about
Wyndham. As nearly as I could make out, the young men at Briar Lake
were afflicted with a disease which is very prevalent--the desire to get
rich quick. In that respect Fraser Ferris was no better than the rest.
Nor was Irving Evans. Allan Wyndham had been a plunger almost from
boyhood, and only the tight rein that his conservative father held over
him had checked him. Sometimes the young men succeeded, and that had
served only to whet their appetites for more easy money. But more often
they had failed. In most cases, it seemed, Dean Allison's firm had been
the brokers through whom they dealt, particularly Wyndham.

In fact, with more time on my hands during the day than I knew what to
do with, in the absence of Kennedy I had evolved several very pretty
little theories of the case which involved the recouping of dissipated