Colonel Freeleigh?" said Douglas softly. There was something in his silence that...

Colonel Freeleigh?" said Douglas softly. There was something in his silence that made them all shut up their mouths. They approached, almost on tiptoe. Douglas, bent down, disengaged the phone from the old man's now quite cold fingers.
Douglas lifted the receiver to his own ear, listened. Above the static he heard a strange, a far, a final sound. Two thousand miles away, the closing of a window.