The Last Straw

The book is The Last Straw. It has a mystery book. 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. Eileen Bennett was one of my wife's best friends. Oh, it's no great mystery, senator. Robert J. Spencer, of Keokuk, Iowa. We know quite a bit about him, actually, but it's all third hand. He was a retired court stenographer, seventy-three years old, going to New York for his sister's funeral at the time of the crash. He boarded the plane at Chicago. Senator Brogan shook his head, smiling. I have to admire you, Kessler. But may I express some little reservation? Do you really think looking up an acquaintance of Mr. Spencer's from twenty-five years ago is going to help materially in solving the mystery of a plane crash that occurred just last February? Or that the taxpayers could be very happy at this sort of expenditure of their money.