“Long-distance ’phone wires here temporarily out of order. Will call you as soon as they are repaired; on chance your train may not yet have gone.”
“Here’s your party, sir,” reported the operator.
Curiously sick and dazed, even while his colder reason assured him the whole affair was probably a fraud, Conover caught up the receiver.
“That Magdeburg?” he shouted, “Magdeburg Hotel? This is Conover. Caleb Conover. Lady named Shevlin there? Is she hurt?”
“Yes,” came the answer, droned with maddening indistinctness through a babel of buzzing sounds. “Lady’s hurt pretty bad. If she ain’t dead already. I just come on duty five minutes ago. So I don’t—Wait a second. Gentleman wants to speak to you.”
Then, through the buzz and whirr, spoke another voice. Unmistakably Jack Hawarden’s.
“Mr. Conover?” it called.
“Yes!” yelled Caleb, driving the words by sheer force through the horror that sanded his throat, “Go ahead!”
“You haven’t even started?” cried the boy, a break in his voice. “For God’s sake, come! Come now!”
As no reply could be heard, Jack’s tones droned on; their despair twisted by distance into a grotesque, semi-audible squeak: