Tired though we were, I do not think we slept very much as we waited for the return of the car from New York. Still, we were at least resting, although to me the hours seemed to pass as a shifting phantasmagoria of fire-balls and explosions strangely blended with the faces of the two beautiful women who had become the chief actresses in the little drama. From one very realistic dream in which I saw Winifred, Paquita, Irene Maddox, and Frances Walcott all fantastically seated as telephone operators and furiously ringing Shelby’s bell, I woke with a start to find that it was our own bell ringing and that Kennedy was answering it.
“The car is back from the city,” he said to me. “You needn’t get up. I can do this job alone.”
There was no sleep for me, however, I knew, and with a final yawn I pulled myself together and joined Craig and Burke in the hall as we went down-stairs as quietly as we could.
Riley had left a hastily scribbled report in the letter-box for Burke, saying that Sanchez had done nothing further suspicious, but had gone to bed. Paquita was in her room. Winifred, Mr. and Mrs. Walcott, Irene Maddox, and all the rest were present and accounted for, and he had decided on resting, too.
Kennedy sent Watkins off to bed, after taking from him the things he had brought back from the city, and the early morning, just as it was beginning to lighten a bit, found us three again in the cellar.
Kennedy carefully reconnoitered the store-room where the telephone outfit had been placed. It was deserted, and he set to work quickly. First he located the wires that represented the number 100 Main and connected them with what looked very much like a seamless iron tube, perhaps six inches long and three inches in diameter. Then he connected in a similar manner the other end of the tube with the wires of Main 101.
“This is a special repeating coil of high efficiency,” he explained to Burke, whom he was instructing, as it occurred to him, just what he wanted done later. “It is absolutely balanced as to resistance, number of turns, everything. I shall run this third line from the coil itself outside and up-stairs through Shelby’s window. Before I go to the city I want you to see that the local telephone company keeps a couple of wires to the city clear for us. I’ll get them on the wire and explain the thing, if you’ll use your authority at this end of the line.”
In spite of the risk of disturbing Shelby Maddox, Kennedy finished leading the wires from the coil up to his room and placed a telephone set on a table near the bed. Then he carefully concealed the tube in the cellar so that under ordinary circumstances no one could find it or even guess that anything had been done with the two trunk lines.
Shelby was resting quietly under an opiate and the nurse was watching faithfully. I did not hear Kennedy’s instructions entirely, but I remember he said that Burke was to be allowed into the outer room and that Shelby Maddox and Winifred were to talk only over the new line as he would later direct.
Again we retired to our rooms, and I fell asleep listening to Kennedy instruct Burke minutely in something which I think was just as much Greek to the Secret Service man as it was to me. Kennedy saw that it was and wrote down what he had already said, to make doubly sure.