The Doctor dropped Reddy, tore the instrument out of Gilsey's hand and took the rest of the message.
Reddy turned the color of ashes. There wasn't any need to hold him. He fell back against the door with his jaw dropped and his eyes staring like a man in a trance. Gilsey thought he was going to die and was for running to him, crying out, "Oh, Mr. Jack, don't look that way." But Mills caught the old servant by the arm and held him back, watching Reddy as sharp as a ferret.
The Doctor turned from the phone and said: "It's true. Miss Hesketh's been murdered."
There was a dead silence. The click of the receiver falling into its hook was the only sound. The three other men—the Doctor as white as death, too—stood staring at Reddy. And then, seeing those three faces, he burst out like he was crazy:
"No—she's not—she can't be! I was there; I went the moment I got her message. I was on the turnpike where she said she'd be. I was up and down there most of the night. And—and——" he stopped suddenly and put his hands over his face, groaning, "Oh, my God, Sylvia—why didn't you tell me?"
He lurched forward and dropped into a chair, his hands over his face, moaning like an animal in pain.
[VI]
Longwood was stunned. By noon everybody knew it and there was no more business that day. The people stood in groups, talking in whispers as if they were at a funeral. And in the afternoon it was like a funeral, the body coming back by train and being taken from the depot to Mapleshade in one of the Doctor's farm wagons. It lay under a sheet and as the wagon passed through the crowd you couldn't hear a sound, except for a woman crying here and there.
Then it was as if a spring that held the people dumb and still was loosed and the excitement burst up. I never saw anything like it. It seemed like every village up and down the line had emptied itself into Longwood. Farmers and laborers and loafers swarmed along the streets, the rich came in motors, tearing to Mapleshade, and the police were everywhere, as if they'd sprung out of the ground.
By afternoon the reporters came pouring in from town. The Inn was full up with them and they were buzzing round my exchange like flies. Some of them tried to get hold of me and that night had the nerve to come knocking at Mrs. Galway's side door, demanding the telephone girl. But, believe me, I sat tight and said nothing—nothing to them. The police were after me mighty quick, and there was a séance over Corwin's Drug Store when I felt like I was being put to the third degree. I told them all I knew, job or no job, for I guessed right off that that talk I'd overheard on the phone might be an important clew. They kept it close. It wasn't till after the inquest that the press got it.