I recall
someone behind me saying, 'Here, boy, take all these papers off the
table and carry them into my office before they get lost in the
excitement.' I think it was Bruce's voice. The next moment I heard
someone say, 'Stand back, Mrs. Parker has fainted.' But I didn't pay
much attention, for I was calling to someone not to get a doctor over
the telephone, but to go down to the fifth floor where one has an
office. I made Mr. Parker as comfortable as I could. There wasn't much
I could do. He seemed to want to say something to me, but he couldn't
talk. He was paralyzed, at least his throat was. But I did manage to
make out finally what sounded to me like, 'Tell her I don't believe
the scandal, I don't believe it.' But before he could say whom to tell
he had again become unconscious, and by the time the doctor arrived he
was dead. I guess you know everything else as well as I do."
"You didn't hear the shot fired from any particular direction?" asked
Kennedy.
"No, sir."
"Well, where do you think it came from?"
"That's what puzzles me, sir. The only thing I can figure out is that
it was fired from the outside office--perhaps by some customer who had
lost money and sought revenge. But no one out there heard it either,
any more than, they did in the directors' room or the ladies'
department."
"About that message," asked Kennedy, ignoring what to me seemed to
be the most important feature of the case, the mystery of the silent
bullet. "Didn't you see it after all was over?"
"No, sir; in fact I had forgotten about it till this moment when you
asked me to reconstruct the circumstances exactly.
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