“Just came!” announced the clerk, handing Conover the dispatch. “I thought you were still in the hotel. Lucky I caught you before you started!”
Caleb made no reply. He was reading, and re-reading, the telegram. Caine, watching him impatiently, saw the Fighter’s face turn a muddy gray.
Then, shouting to the driver: “Union Station! Go like Hell!” Conover was in the carriage. Caine, all at a loss, had barely time to scramble in after him before Caleb had slammed shut the door. The horses were off at full speed; the wheels dashing a cascade of mud blotches through the vehicle’s lowered sash.
“What is the matter?” insisted Caine, as Conover huddled—inert, bulky, wordless—in one corner; “whom are you to meet at the station? I thought all the Assemblymen—”
“I’m goin’ to catch the 9.32 to Granite if we can make it,” growled Conover. “Shut up an’ let me think. Here!”
He shoved the tight-squeezed ball of yellow paper toward Caine. The latter, as he took the telegram, noted the sudden clammy chill of the Fighter’s hand and saw that his lips were dry as a fever-patient’s. Never before had Caine seen him nervous, and he turned with redoubled interest to the unfolding of the crumpled dispatch. It bore a woman’s signature—that of Desirée’s aunt—and Caine, marveling, ran his eyes over the body of the message:
“Dey taken dangerously ill last night. Delirious. Calls for you all time. Come if can.”
The banal wording, the crude phrasing for the sake of saving expense—every detail of the telegram jarred upon Caine’s fastidious taste. But a new thought made him turn, incredulous, upon Conover.
“I’m awfully, awfully sorry to hear this,” said he. “But—but of course you can’t think of leaving everything at the State House to-day and—”
“State House?” muttered Conover, dully.