"That paper."
"A nickel cause it's a extra."
I must go home. He folded the paper almost stealthily and strode across the yard, neither looking to the right or to the left. Get home before anyone speaks to me. How hideous if anyone should speak to me. Professor Walpole, grey beard and narrow, steelrimmed glasses, was coming down the boardwalk; he stopped and smiled benignantly at Fanshaw:
"You've heard the news, haven't you, Mr. Macdougan?"
"What news?" asked Fanshaw, his hands quaking, his tongue dry in his mouth from horror.
"Why we are going to have a Velasquez for two months...."
"How wonderful!... Pardon me, won't you, I've got a pressing engagement."
Fanshaw had shoved the paper into the pocket of his raincoat. He darted across Massachusetts Avenue in front of a trolley car. At last he was on Holyoke Street. O it was raining again. The drops danced in the puddle in front of his door. Green door, yellow house, here he was. He walked slowly up the stairs, locked and bolted his door on the inside. There he unfolded the paper carefully and began to read:
Body of Harvard Graduate Student Found Floating in Charles.
David Wendell, Washington, D. C., Boy, Shot Through Head; Was He Murdered on the East Cambridge Bridge? Police Completely Baffled.
At eighty twenty this morning ...
For a moment Fanshaw could not read the bleary print. The bitter smell of the newspaper filled his nostrils. Of course it's a mistake, a beastly mistake, he said aloud.