A few minutes later, she took the stylus that was in the lower box. Hastily across the blank paper she wrote the words, "We are ready."
Mackenzie was too fascinated to ask questions. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw something in the upper box move, as if of itself. It was a similar, self-inking stylus.
"Watch!" exclaimed Constance.
"Do you get this?" wrote the spirit hand.
"Perfectly," she scrawled in turn. "Go ahead, as you promised."
The upper stylus was now moving freely at the ends of its two rigid arms, counterparts of those holding the lower stylus.
"We promise," it wrote, "that in consideration of the return..."
"What is it?" interrupted Graeme, as the meaning of the words even now began to dawn on him.
"A telautograph," she replied simply, "a long distance writer which I have had installed over a leased wire from the hotel room of Wickham to meet the demands of you two. With it you write over wires just as with the telephone you talk over wires. It is as though you took one of the old pantagraphs, split it in half, and had each half connected only by the telephone wires. While you write on this transmitter, their receiver records for them what you write. Look!"
"... of $500,000," it continued to write, "in cash, stocks and bonds, with interest to date, all proceedings against Graeme Mackenzie will be dropped and the indictment quashed.