Detective and mystery stories; New Jersey -- Fiction; Telephone operators -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction
"Oh, no," he said careless, "but, you see, I’ve been on a number of
cases like this and a fellow gets observant. It’s queer—the whole thing.
If that French woman’s evidence is to be trusted Miss Hesketh _did_
leave the house early to keep that date with the Voice Man."
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’?"
"Jest you listen close and hear me before you come back. I seen in the
papers that Miss Hesketh that was murdered had one glove lost. Do you
mind what the one that wasn’t lost looked like?"
"Sure I do—why shouldn’t I? Didn’t I see it at the inquest?"
"Will you be answering me instead of tellin’ me what you saw?"
"Ain’t I doin’ it? It was a left-hand glove, light gray with three pearl
buttons and a furrener’s name stamped in the inside."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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