Kennedy looked frankly at Winifred Walcott.
“You will trust me?” he asked in a low tone.
“Yes,” she said, simply, meeting his eyes in turn.
“Then when the nurse arrives,” he directed, “get some rest. I shall need you to-morrow.”
XXIII
THE CURB MARKET
“It’s impossible to trace all the telephone lines back,” considered Kennedy, thinking still of the eavesdropping, as we met Burke again down-stairs. “Perhaps if we begin at the other end, and follow the wires from the point where they enter the building to the switchboard, we may find something. If we don’t, then we shall have to work harder, that’s all.”
With the aid of Burke, who had ways of getting what he wanted from the management of anything, from a bank to a hotel, we succeeded in getting down into the cellar quietly.
Kennedy began by locating the point in the huge cellar of the Lodge where the wires of the two telephones, 100 and 101 Main, entered underground, that system having been adopted so as to avoid unsightly wires outside the hotel.
Carefully Craig began a systematic search as he followed the two lines to the point underneath the switchboard up-stairs. So far nothing irregular had been apparent.