★ IX ★
Car after car arrived at Absalom’s, bringing newspaper men from Washington and Baltimore, and later from more distant cities—Norfolk, Richmond, Philadelphia, and even New York. The reporters spread around, asking questions. They were full of professional enthusiasm. This murder, they said, had everything. To Neill it sounded ghoulish.
Other cars brought curiosity-seekers from all the adjacent counties and even from the city. Motor-boats from across the bay were coming into the harbor as if for a regatta. Neill wondered angrily what these people did for a living. The villagers gave up their usual occupations and took up good points of vantage to watch the arrivals and to pass the latest news. All this hullabaloo made Neill feel pretty grim. The whole world, it seemed, was arous
