w about Benson, the steward?" spoke up a voice.

We turned. It was the Coroner, loath even yet to give up the official
theory.

"That was a pure accident," returned Kennedy. "The club, as you know, is
a temperance club. But the members, or at least some of them, keep
drinks in their lockers. The steward, Benson, knew this. It has been
shown that Benson had been in town that evening, had imbibed
considerably.

"He had observed one of the members of the club take from his locker
something which he thought was to revive young Evans. What more natural,
then, than for him to visit that locker when he returned from town, open
it?

"He found a thermos bottle. Instead of the regular cork, it had a light
cotton stopper. In his muddled state, the steward did not stop to
think--even if he had, he would have seen no reason for carefully
corking something that was not designed to keep in a thermos bottle.

"But instead of whiskey, the bottle contained what had not yet
evaporated of the liquid air. You may not know it, but liquid air can be
easily preserved in open vessels with a stopper which allows the
passage of the evaporated air. However paradoxical it may seem, it
cannot be kept in closed vessels, for enormous pressures are at once
brought into play.

"Benson opened the bottle and poured out some of the contents in the
metal cup-cap of the bottle. He raised it to his lips--swallowed it--or
that much of it that did not paralyze him. It expanded, boiled,
exploded--producing the ghastly wound by almost literally blowing him
up.

"The owner of the liquid air, who must have had it there waiting a
chance to use it, was probably waiting up in the club rooms now, for a
chance to get rid of it as evidence. He must have heard a noise down in
the locker-room. What if he had been observed and someone were down
there investigating?

"He hurried down there. To his horror, in the darkness, he found Benson,
already dead, the locker open, the thermos bottle broken and the cup
smashed.

"It was a terrible clew. He must get that body away from the
locker-room. He could throw the bottle out; no one could suspect
anything when the air had evaporated, as it soon would, now. But the
body--that was different. The method he employed in getting rid of the
body, I think you all must already know."

I had been watching Wyndham's face keenly. As Craig proceeded, I fancied
that I saw in it a look of startled surprise.

"_Was_ it one of Anita