"He was in love with Sylvia Hesketh, if you call that sort of thing love. Anyway, instead of being simply what you might describe as a beau of hers, he was mad about her. I fancy even she, poor girl, didn't realize the passion she'd kindled, but was like a child playing with a dynamite bomb. It appears she saw more of him than anybody guessed. After the first flirtation at Bar Harbor, he came down to Cokesbury Lodge nearly every Sunday and used to meet her in the woods and on the side roads, and make dates with her for theaters and concerts in town. He kept it quiet for he knew without being told that the Doctor wouldn't stand for it. His hope was that, willful and unstable as he knew her to be, he'd eventually win her by his persistence and devotion.
"It was one of those situations that may end in nothing or may end as this one did in a tragedy. The girl was foolhardy and flirtatious; the man infatuated. Very quickly he got on to the fact that he was not the only victim of her beauty and her wiles. He watched and questioned and found out about the other men. Of them he soon saw that Reddy was the favored one and a deadly jealousy seized him, for Reddy might have attracted any woman.
"When he tried to find out from her how she stood with Reddy he could get no satisfaction. She'd tell him one thing one day and another the next. She kept them all guessing, but it didn't mean to any of the others what it meant to Cokesbury. All through October he spied and queried, and learnt that she was meeting Reddy in his car and going off for long jaunts with him. He says he was half mad with jealousy and fear, but he hid it from her.
"That's the way things were when he sent the phone message that you caught. You sized him up just right. When she told him she had a date that was a secret, he got a premonition of the truth, the way a man does when his reason is under the dominion of his emotions. He felt certain she was going off with Reddy, and the brakes that he'd kept down till then were lifted. He determined he'd find out and if it was true stop them if the skies fell.
"And now here comes the queer part of the story. If anybody'd guessed it a lot of things that were dark would have been as clear as daylight. He did keep the date you heard him make on the phone."
"How could he? He had no car, or horse, or anything."
"Only part of that's true—he had no car, or horse, but he did have something."
"What?"
"An aeroplane."
I fell back staring at him.