I didn't say a word, looking straight before me at the lights of Longwood through the trees. Babbitts, with his hands in his pockets swinging along beside me, went on:
"That's what's made me think of Jasper's hypothetical case. Do you remember? He said Reddy'd come down to the meeting place, found Miss Hesketh with the other man and got into a Berserker rage. Say what you like, it does work out."
When he bid me good night at Mrs. Galway's side door he wanted to know why I was so silent? Even if I'd wanted to give a reason I hadn't one to give. Don't you believe for a minute I was really worried—it was just that I hated anyone even to yarn that way about Jack Reddy. Poor—me—if I'd known then what was coming!
It began to come two days later, the first shadow that was going to darken and spread till—but I'm going on too quick.
I'd just had my lunch, put away my box and swept off the crumbs, when I got a call for the depot from the Rifle Run Camp. That's a summer resort, way up in the hills beyond Hochalaga Lake. The voice, with a brogue on it as rich as butter, was Pat Donahue's, Jim's eldest son, a sort of idle scamp, who'd gone up to the camp to work last summer and had stayed on because there was nothing to do—at least that's what Jim said.
I made the connection and listened in, not because I was expecting anything worth hearing, but because I wasn't taking any chances. I guess Pat Donahue was the last person anyone would expect to come jumping into the middle of the Hesketh mystery—but that's what he did, with both feet, hard.
I didn't pay much attention at first and then a sentence caught my ear and I grew still as a statue, my eyes staring straight in front, even breathing carefully as if they could hear.
It was Pat's voice, the voice answering Jim's at the Depot:
"Me and Bridger was in to Hochalaga Lake yesterday forenoon, fishin' through the ice. Can you hear me, Paw?"
"Fine. Are you payin' for a call to tell me you're that idle you have to play at fishin'?"