"More than an hour ago."
Jean let the coffee go cold and crumbled her toast untasted. How could she endure this passivity! Must she forever be the spectator? Amidst these drab reveries her eyes rested for some minutes upon the topmost of the morning papers, which the maid had brought as usual with the breakfast, before one of its by no means modest head-lines resolved itself into the words,—
MURDERED IN CENTRAL PARK
Then a familiar name and a familiar address leaped from the context, and she seized breathlessly upon the brief double-leaded paragraph and read it twice from end to end.
"The northern extremity of Central Park," ran the account, "became last night the scene of a tragedy which its loneliness and insufficient lighting have long invited. Shortly after midnight the body of Frederic Chapman, a commercial traveler in the employ of Webster, Cassell & Co., residing in the Lorna Doone apartments, not ten blocks from the spot where he met his death, was found with a bullet through the heart. Up to the time of going to press, no trace of the murderer or weapon had been discovered, although the physician summoned by Officer Burns, who came upon the body in his regular rounds, was of the opinion that life had been extinct less than an hour. Both precinct and central office detectives are at work upon the case. Mr. Chapman leaves a young widow, who is prostrated by the blow."
Jean sprang to her feet, her own woes forgotten in her horrified perception of Amy's dire need. Tearing out the paragraph, she penciled across its head-lines, "I have gone to her," and enclosing it in an envelope addressed to Atwood, set it conspicuously on his desk.
XXIX
Early as she reached the Lorna Doone, Jean found others before her, drawn by the morbid lure of sudden death. The hawkers of "extras" already filled the street with their cries; open-mouthed children swarmed about the entrance of the apartment-house as if this, not the park, were the historic ground; while Amy's narrow hall was choked with reporters, amidst whom Amy herself, colorless, bright-eyed, babbled wearilessly of the drummer's virtues.
"He was the best salesman they ever had," she was saying. "Put that in the paper, won't you? In another year he'd most likely have had an interest in the business. They couldn't get along without him, they said. He was the best salesman they ever had. People just had to buy when Fred called. He seemed to hypnotize customers. One man—" and she rambled into the story of a conquest, beginning nowhere and ending in fatuity with the unceasing refrain, "He was the best salesman they ever had."