“How will you manage it? It will look rather suspicious for you or me to leave our work and go down to the Y with a message.”
“Give Morton our dispatch and cipher book, and he will attend to it better than you or I, for he is an expert operator.”
“By George! that’s so, I had forgotten it; he learned telegraphy there at college just to amuse himself, and had a battery in his room; well, that’s fortunate, he will be just the one for us.”
“It is nearly noon,” said Houston, consulting his watch, “we will see Morton at the house, and arrange the message between us, and he will send it immediately.”
After dinner, there was a brief consultation in Houston’s room with the result that the following dispatch was formulated, written in cipher, and addressed to Mr. Whitney, at Chicago, the attorney from New York, accompanying Mr. Cameron:
“Come at once, no delay; go to Arlington Hotel, Silver City; keep dark, do not register. Van Dorn will meet you at hotel.”
Houston realized that they were now rapidly approaching the final denouement,––the closing act of the drama which might yet prove a tragedy,––and as he placed the folded slip of paper in Morton Rutherford’s hand, he said with a sigh:
“This is the beginning of the end.”