“That’s Corcoran, same old slob as ever!” And still again he chuckled, a little contemptuously, with the disdain of the expert for the slovenly sender. He remembered, with a touch of pride, his own sending three years before at the Kansas City Telegraphers’ Convention, and the little cheer that broke from the audience in the great hall as he left the test table. It was not at his mere speed they had cheered, for he could do little more than forty-five words a minute, but because, as the chairman had later said, it was so clean-cut and neat and incisive—“as pure as a Rocky Mountain trout stream!”
“There they are!” said Mackenzie.
The four silent figures leaned a little closer over the clicking instrument of insensate brass—leaned intent and motionless, with quickened breathing and dilated nostrils and strangely altering faces, as though they were far from a quiet little back sewing-room, and were indeed beholding vast issues and participating in great efforts.
“We’ve got ’em, at last!” said MacNutt, quietly, mopping his face and pacing the little room with feverish steps.
“Yes, we’ve got ’em!” echoed Mackenzie, jubilantly.
Frances Candler, the woman, said nothing. But Durkin could feel her breath playing on the back of his neck; and when he turned to her he could see by her quick breathing and widened pupils that she, too, had been reading the wire. And again he wondered, as he looked at her wide forehead and those warm yet firm lips in which he could see impulsiveness still waywardly lurking, how she ever came to such a place. To Durkin—who had heard of woman bookies and sheet-writers and touts in his day—she seemed so soft, so flower-like, in her pale womanhood, that she still remained to him one of the mysteries of a mysterious day.
The woman saw the play of the quicker thought on his face, and the impetuous warmth in his eyes as he gazed up at her, still half-timidly. And seeing it, she looked quickly away.
“No goo-gooin’ there, you folks,” broke in MacNutt, brusquely. As he was turning hurriedly away he looked back for a hesitating moment, from Durkin to the woman, and from the woman to Durkin again. If he was about to say anything further on the point to them, he changed his mind before speaking, and addressed himself once more to Mackenzie.
“Now, Mack, we’ve got to get a move on! Get some of that grime off, and your clothes on, quick!” Then he turned back to the other two at the operating table.
“I’ve certainly got a couple o’ good-lookers in you two, all right, all right!” he said, Durkin thought half mockingly. “But I want you to get groomed up, Durkin, so’s to do justice to that Fifth Avenue face o’ yours! Better get rigged out complete, before trouble begins, for you’re goin’ to move among some lot o’ swell people. And you two’ve got to put on a lot o’ face, to carry this thing through.”