Our telephone rang insistently and Kennedy answered it. It was from Dexter. They were feeling shaky and worried.
Our door opened and a clerk from the Merrill & Moore firm entered. He was suave and polite. But back of it all could be discovered the eagerness to stand from under a possible crash.
“You will readily understand,” the broker hinted, “that under the circumstances we cannot continue to take Mr. Maddox’s orders over the telephone indefinitely. Suppose he should repudiate some of them? Where would we find ourselves?”
Kennedy glanced at the two telephone men, one of whom had straightened up and was watching the other.
“I understand,” he said, simply, a grim smile flickering about his mouth. “Just a moment, sir. Walter—keep Dexter on this wire.”
Below on the street I could hear the babel of voices. I knew what it meant. At both ends of Shelby’s telephone line were traitors. A panic in the stock was not only threatened. It was here.
Maddox Munitions was on the verge of collapse!
XXIV
THE PHANTOM CIRCUIT
I looked at Kennedy in despair. He was not even perturbed. It was for just this moment that he had hurried to New York and had worked so intensely.