At eight twenty this morning Patrolman John H. Higgs of the seventh precinct observed an object that he took to be an old coat floating among cakes of ice near the Esplanade below the East Cambridge Bridge. Upon investigating, however, he decided that it must be the body of a drowned man and summoned assistance. When the body was recovered it was identified through a seaman's union card and a receipted bill from the Bursar of Harvard University as that of ...
Fanshaw let the paper fall to the ground. He was sitting, breathing deeply on the edge of the bed. He took off his coat and overshoes. Seaman's union card. So Wenny really was trying to go to sea? Wenny tugging at a frozen rope, his curly hair clotted and briny, the rope tearing the skin off his hands. Fanshaw picked up the paper again feverishly.
... According to the medical examiner at the Morgue where the body was immediately placed, death was not caused by drowning. The young man, Dr. Swanson alleged, had been shot through the jaw by a pistol of small calibre held close to the neck. The bullet had penetrated to the brain and death had resulted instantaneously. The hypothesis has been advanced that the young man might have been waylaid and robbed at some time during the phenomenally violent blizzard that swept this city last night and afterwards murdered and the body thrown into the Charles River Basin, perhaps from the East Cambridge Bridge...
How horrible! Of course it's true, something had to happen to Wenny; he was too reckless, too beautifully alive.
He crumpled the paper up. I must get Nan. We must go to see him at the morgue to make sure. O these filthy newspapers. He dropped the paper in the grate and set a match to it. The flame roared a moment in the chimney, then the black ash collapsed into flakes.
There was a knock at the door. Fanshaw stood a moment with his fists clenched. I suppose I must see who it is. He drew the bolt and stepped back, very pale, with compressed lips. "Come in," he said. A short youngish man with fat cheeks that showed a trace of black beard opened the door and came towards him holding out a hand effusively.
"Mr. Macdougan, I believe."
"My name is Macdougan."
"I have information that you could give me details of the life of that unfortunate young man; you see I'm a reporter from the American. My name is Rogers. I'm on special articles mostly." He looked up at Fanshaw sideways with a smile.
"Thank you... I know er ... nothing except what I just read in your paper... I'm afraid I can't talk to you now..." Fanshaw was desperately trying to think: These beasts'll try to get up a scandal. There's nothing they'll stick at. Nan and I must keep out of it... If I were to lose my instructorship...