THE LAST STRAW

Some hypotheses are rational—
if not logical—but,
by their nature,
aren't exactly open
to controlled experiment!

by WILLIAM J. SMITH

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE SCHELLING

"There's absolutely nothing we can pin it down to with any real certainty," Kessler said. "No mechanical defects that we're sure of, no sabotage we can put our finger on, no murder or suicide schemes, nothing! We've put that plane back together so perfectly that it could almost fly again! We've got dossiers an inch thick on practically everybody who was aboard, crew and passengers. We've done six months' work and we don't have one single positive answer. The newspapers were yelling about the number of insurance policies issued for the flight but none of them looks really phony."

He stood at the huge window of Senator Brogan's office, looking out at the shimmering sunlight on one of Washington's green malls. Over the treetops he could catch a glimpse of the Capitol dome.

Brogan sat comfortably in the big chair behind his desk. "But weren't there an unusually large number of policies issued?" he asked. His big hands toyed with a little silver airplane propeller, a souvenir of his long-standing interest in the problems of commercial aviation. "You know," he went on, leaning forward on his elbows and replacing the propeller neatly on the base of his fountain pen stand, "this is a matter of interest to me in more than an official sense. Eileen Bennett was one of my wife's best friends. She was on her way to Washington to visit us after a stopover in New York."

Kessler nodded. "I know that's one of the reasons you wanted to compare notes." He stood with his back to the window now, a stocky man with a jaw to match and short-cropped graying hair. "The newspapers were quite right, of course. There were an unusually large number of insurance policies issued for the flight but nearly all were for the minimum amount."

"What about Pearlow?"

Kessler frowned. "Pearlow had reason to be nervous. You know he survived a crash just three years ago. But anyway, the fact remains that we've looked into the backgrounds of every one of those people. None of them was facing any real financial difficulties!"

"That sounds odd in itself," George Brogan said, smiling slightly.

Kessler ran his hand over his hair and returned to sit in a leather chair beside the senator's desk. He smiled in response. "I know it sounds odd but it's true. Their troubles were all run-of-the-mill—getting taxes paid, the mortgage, a new car, a long-overdue raise in salary—that sort of thing. Nothing that anybody in his right mind would kill or commit suicide over."

Brogan lifted a bushy eyebrow in question. "Maybe you've put your finger on it there?"

Kessler ticked off his reply, holding up one hand. "One former mental patient, pronounced cured ten years ago and apparently perfectly normal; a well-established businessman; a used-car dealer; three currently under psychoanalysis; a college girl twenty-one; a housewife with four children; an injured veteran just out of service. None showed any violent tendencies according to their doctors."

"Any criminals?"

Kessler regarded him wryly from beneath his eyebrows. "Don't kid me, senator. I know you've done your own investigation on this. But to answer your question: Evan Prewitt's your man—only one who could qualify. Tried on a manslaughter charge for killing his brother-in-law while they were out hunting. He said it was an accident and the jury agreed. He was acquitted. True, he had one of the large insurance policies, but then I'm sure you know Miss Bennett had one, too."

The senator nodded. "I knew that. But I know very little of Eileen's financial situation otherwise. Not," he added hastily, "that I would for a moment suspect Eileen Bennett of harming a fly. She's one person I could rule out. It would be just like her to fall down the steps getting off the plane, but as for her planning her own death or anyone else's, that's out of the question. She was much too scatterbrained. I hope that's not speaking ill of the dead."

Kessler frowned. "You'll forgive me, senator, in that regard, if I ask you a question? Miss Bennett didn't drink, did she?"

"Eileen? Heavens, no! Oh, she'd have a drink to be sociable, but it was usually a sherry and half the time she wouldn't finish that. I don't suppose you were envisaging the possibility that she highjacked the plane from four officers and two stewardesses and then wrecked it?" This time he smiled the broad toothy smile that made him a favorite with Washington news photographers.

"Hardly. The thing is, I've gotten so I feel I knew every one of those seventy-three people personally. You know, I've interviewed almost two thousand friends and acquaintances of those people and I'm not quite finished yet, just hoping I'll run across something that makes sense. I could have told you Miss Bennett's habits with a glass of sherry, that's why I was a little surprised."

Senator Brogan shook his head. "Oh, no, I didn't mean to suggest anything like that. It's just that Eileen was ... well, clumsy is an unkind word ... unco-ordinated I guess, though she tried to make a joke of it. She was always bumping into things, spilling her glass of water and things like that, but not because she had been drinking too much."

"As for drinking," Kessler said, "there were quite a few real guzzlers on the plane. I don't mean that actor, who was notorious. He'd just lost a part because of his drinking and he was sober for a change. But it's amazing what you'll turn up about respectable people when you start investigating."

"I'm very interested in that aspect, as you may know," Brogan said. "We periodically get bills which would outlaw drinking aboard planes. What are your ideas on that subject?"

"Well, I don't mind a drink aboard a plane myself. Helps me relax. But I have seen some pretty unpleasant things develop during a flight when you get a nasty drunk riled up."

"Did you find any suggestion of that?"

"Not really. The plane took off from Chicago just after lunch time and a good many of the people who got on there had had a drink or two, but there wasn't really enough time to make trouble. The plane had hardly cleared the runway. All the passengers, except one, had their seat belts fastened."

"Now there is something I didn't know! Who was this?"

"Preston, a lawyer from New Jersey. You know how tentative any reconstruction of events must be under the circumstances, but we're pretty sure of this, especially since there was no fire. Preston apparently broke a fingernail trying to fasten his seat belt and one of the stewardesses had brought him a little first-aid kit. He had torn open a Band-Aid and was trying to fasten it around his finger. Obviously this was just before the crash."

"But how do you know he did it with the seat belt?"

"Guesswork, except that it wasn't fastened and we think maybe it just got overlooked after he hurt himself."

"Was he one of the drinkers?"

"No, not at all. Never touched it. In point of fact, nobody was really drunk at the time of the take-off. The flight engineer however had had two drinks at lunch."

Brogan raised his eyebrows. "You were thorough. You're sure?"

Kessler nodded. "Brown was a problem drinker though it didn't seem to interfere with his work. The two drinks are all he had that day so far as we can determine. He showed up for lunch at a girl friend's apartment with a black eye. Made some joke about walking into a door and wouldn't tell her anything else about it. She gave him the drinks at his request, and a big lunch, and put a little makeup on his eye because he'd been pulled from a flight a few months before when he showed up looking as though he'd been in a scrap."

"How did he