Craig looked up perplexed, and I feared that he was about to say that the search must be continued wherever the wires led through the house, a gigantic and almost impossible task.
Instead, he was looking at a little dark store-room that was near the point where we were standing. He walked over to it curiously and peered in. Then he struck a match. In the flickering light we could see a telephone receiver and a little switchboard standing beside it.
For a moment his hand hesitated on the receiver, as though he were afraid that by taking it off the hook it might call or alarm somebody. Finally he seemed to decide that unless something were risked nothing would be gained. He took the receiver deliberately and held it up to his ear.
“Do you hear anything?” I asked.
He shook his head as if to discourage conversation. Then he changed the plugs and listened again. Several times he repeated it. At last he kept the plugs in for some time, while we waited in the darkness, in silence.
“Evidently some one has tapped the regular telephone wires,” he said to us at length, “and has run extensions to this little switchboard in the store-room, prepared to overhear almost anything that goes on over either set of wires that come in. And they have done more. They must have tampered with the switchboard up-stairs. Just now I heard the girl call Shelby’s room. The doctor answered. That trained nurse has arrived and Miss Walcott has gone to her room as she promised. We can’t take the time to trace out how it is done, and besides it is too dark at night to do it, anyhow. Shelby was right.”
For a moment Kennedy tried to puzzle the thing out, as though determining what was the best course to pursue. Then he stooped down and began picking up even the burnt matches he had dropped.
“Don’t disturb a thing,” he said to Burke. “We must circumvent this scheme. Has the last train back to the city gone?”
Burke looked at his watch. “Yes, unfortunately,” he nodded.
“Then I’ll have to send some one back to the city to my laboratory by automobile,” continued Kennedy. “I can’t wait until morning, for we shall have to go to the city then. There’s that student of mine—but he’s pretty tired.”