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I hastened to hand over the receiver to Kennedy and waited impatiently until he finished.

“A special grand jury has been empanelled for ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said as he turned from the wire and faced me, “and unless we can do something immediately, they are sure to find an indictment.”

Kennedy scowled and shook his head. “It looks to me as if someone were mighty anxious to railroad young Ferris along,” he remarked, hurrying across to the laboratory table, where he had been at work, and flinging off his stained smock.

“Well, are you ready for them?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied quickly. “Call up and find out about the trains to Briar Lake, Walter.”

I found that we could easily get a train that would have us at the Country Club not later than eight o’clock, and as I turned to tell Kennedy, I saw him carefully packing into a case a peculiar shaped flask which he had been using in some of his experiments. Outside it had a felt jacket, and as we hurried over to the station Kennedy carried it carefully in the case by a handle.

The ride out to Briar Lake seemed interminable, but it was better than going up in a car at night, and Mrs. Ferris met us anxiously at the station.

Thus, early in the evening, in the little reception room of the Country Club, there gathered a large party, not the largest it had seen, but certainly the most interested. In fact no one, except young Ferris, had any legitimate reason for staying away.

“Dead men tell no tales,” remarked Kennedy sententiously, as he faced us, having whispered to me that he wanted me to take a position near the door and stay there, no matter what happened. “But,” he added, “science opens their mute mouths. Science has become the greatest detective in the world.

“Once upon a time, it is true, many a murderer was acquitted and perhaps many an innocent man hanged because of appearances. But today the assassin has to reckon with the chemist, the physicist, the X-ray expert, and a host of others. They start on his track and force him to face damning, dispassionate scientific facts.

“And,” he went on, raising his voice a trifle, “science, with equal zeal, brings facts to clear an innocent man protesting his innocence, but condemned by circumstantial evidence.”

For a moment he paused, and when he began again it was evident that he was going straight to the point at issue in the case.

“Various theories have been confidently proposed in this unfortunate affair which resulted in the death of Irving Evans,” he proceeded. “One thing I want clear at the start. The fact is, and I am not running counter to it, that we have what might very well be called two brains. One is in the head, does the thinking. The other is a sort of abdominal brain, controls nutrition and a host of other functions, automatically. It is the solar plexus–the epigastric, sympathetic nervous system.

“It is true that the knot of life is situated at the base of the cranial brain. One jab of a needle and it might be quickly extinguished. Yet derangement of the so-called abdominal brain destroys life as effectually, though perhaps not so quickly. A shock to the abdominal brain of young Evans has been administered–in a most remarkable manner.”

I could see Mrs. Ferris watching him with staring eyes, for Kennedy was doing just what many a lawyer does–stating first the bad side of one’s case, and seeming to establish the contention of the opposite side.

“It was an unfortunate blow,” he admitted, “perhaps even dangerous. But it was not deadly. What happened downstairs in the gymnasium must be taken into account with what happened afterwards in the locker and both considered in the light of the death of the steward, Benson, later.

“The mark on the stomach of Irving Evans was due to something else than the blow. Everyone has noticed that. It was a peculiar mark and no mere blow could have produced it.