"Just wait a minute, Dr. Fowler. Maybe when Mr. Reddy sees that we understand the situation, he’ll be willing to explain." Then he turned to Reddy: "There’s no good prevaricating. Your letter to Miss Hesketh has been found. Now we’re all agreed that we don’t want any talk or scandal about this. If you want to get out of the affair without trouble to yourself and others you’d better tell the truth. Where is she?" "Who the devil are you?" Reddy cried out suddenly, as mad as the Doctor, and before Mills could answer, the branch telephone on the desk rang. Reddy gave a loud exclamation and made a jump for it. But Mills got before him and caught him. He struggled to get away till the Doctor seized him on the other side. They fought for a moment, and then got him back against the door, all the time the telephone ringing like mad. As they wrestled with him Mills called over his shoulder to Gilsey: "Answer that telephone, quick." Gilsey, scared most out of his wits, ran to the phone and took down the receiver. Anne Hennessey was at the other end with her awful message. When he got it Gilsey gave a cry like he was stabbed, and turned to Mr. Reddy, pinioned against the door. "Good Lord, have mercy, Mr. Jack," he gasped out. "Miss Hesketh’s dead. She’s murdered—on the turnpike—murdered last night!" 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.