All the factory entrances were now clogged with gesticulating figures. Those who remained inside lined the open windows. From the shops and tenements and the Hampton House beyond, people were streaming across the tracks to where the two men were lying. Around Berardelli they gathered ten deep. Fred Loring, who had run out with the others from the lower factory, saw a dark cloth cap lying a foot or so from the guard’s body. He picked it up and tucked it into his pocket. McGlone kept pushing the crowd back from the groaning Parmenter. Then he and his brother and Bostock carried the paymaster into the Colbert house, just behind the excavation. Crowds swarmed into Pearl Street: men in shirtsleeves, women in work aprons, small boys underfoot pushing their way through the others. The roadway was soon blocked from the factories to the railroad crossing. The voices of the men and women mingled, a collective murmur of incredulity that a thing such as they might have read about in newspaper headlines could actually have happened in South Braintree. Shelley Neal arrived with his special police badge pinned on his coat and his Colt in his pocket just as they were carrying Parmenter into the Colbert house. The paymaster looked almost gone. As soon as Neal saw him in the blanket his one thought was to get back to the office and call the man’s wife. It took him five minutes, bucking the crowd, to reach the Hampton House and once there he found all the telephone lines busy. After trying several times to get central, he hurried down the steps to his harnessed wagon and headed for the telephone exchange. Police Chief Jeremiah Gallivan, driving up in his Ford, passed the careening wagon, Neal with his feet braced against the dashboard and slashing at his galloping horse. By the time Gallivan covered the mile and a half from his home to Rice & Hutchins, Parmenter had been taken inside and Berardelli was dead. The chief shouldered his way through the crowd until he stood looking down at the familiar body with the unfamiliar glazed eyes. The mill workers pressed about him, their voices clamorous as they pointed out where the shots had been fired and the route of the car. Fire Chief Fred Tenney, already on the spot, told him it was a touring car with a green body. Its motor was acting up, Tenney said. He thought there might still be a chance to catch the gunman. Gallivan was willing to try. Together they started off in the red department runabout, forcing their way up Pearl Street, Tenney sounding the brass bell mounted on the radiator. After a left turn onto Washington Street they had to stop to brush away the scattered tacks, but after that they were in the clear. At the Plain Street railroad crossing Gallivan shouted at Joe Buckley, the gate-tender, that there had been a killing. Had he seen a car pass? Buckley had not. Gallivan and Tenney continued straight south toward Holbrook, two miles away.