I could not make it out.
Kennedy impatiently worked the receiver up and down, repeating the number. "Hello—hello," he repeated, "Yes—hello. Is Miss—oh—good morning, Miss Dodge."
He was hurrying along as if to give her no chance to cut him off. "I have just received a letter, Miss Dodge, telling me that you don't want me to continue investigating your father's death, and not to try to see you again about—"
He stopped. I could hear the reply, as sometimes one can when the telephone wire conditions are a certain way and the quality of the voice of the speaker a certain kind.
"Why—no—Mr. Kennedy, I have written you no letter."
The look of mingled relief and surprise that crossed Craig's face spoke volumes.
"Miss Dodge," he almost shouted, "this is a new trick of the Clutching
Hand. I—I'll be right over."
Craig hung up the receiver and turned from the telephone. Evidently he was thinking deeply. Suddenly his face seemed to light up. He made up his mind to something and a moment later he opened the cabinet—that inexhaustible storehouse from which he seemed to draw weird and curious instruments that met the ever new problems which his strange profession brought to him.
I watched curiously. He took out a bottle and what looked like a little hypodermic syringe, thrust them into his pocket and, for once, oblivious to my very existence, deliberately walked out of the laboratory.
I did not propose to be thus cavalierly dismissed. I suppose it would have looked ridiculous to a third party but I followed him as hastily as if he had tried to shut the door on his own shadow.