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The Vacuum Bottle
by
We had scarcely entered the forbidding door of the place when we heard a step behind us. We turned to see Mrs. Ferris again. She seemed very much excited, and together we four, with a keeper, mounted the steps.
As she caught sight of her son, behind the bars, she seemed to gasp, then nerve herself up to face the ordeal of seeing a Ferris in such a place.
“Fraser,” she cried, running forward.
He was tall, sunburned, and looked like a good sportsman, a clean-cut fellow. It was hard to think of him as a murderer, especially after the affecting meeting of the mother and son.
“Do you know what I’ve just heard?” she asked at length, then scarcely pausing for a word of encouragement from him, she went on. “Why, they say that Benson was in town early that evening, drinking heavily and that that might account–“
“There–there you are,” he cried earnestly. “I don’t know what happened. But why should I do anything to him? Perhaps someone waylaid him. That’s plausible.”
“Of course,” warned Kennedy a few minutes later, “you know that anything you say may be used against you. But–“
“I will talk,” interrupted the young man passionately, “although my lawyer tells me not to. Why, it’s all so silly. As for Irving Evans, I can’t see how I could have hit him hard enough, while, as for poor Benson,–well, that’s even sillier yet. How should I know anything of that? Besides, they were all at the Club late that night, all except me, talking over the–the accident. Why don’t they suspect Wyndham? He was there. Why don’t they suspect–some of the others?”
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.