“Yes; what is it, Mack?” she asked back, calmly enough, but with quaking knees.
“Doogan’s men are watching me here—they’ve got on to something or other. Cut this wire loose from outside, and get your ’phone out of sight. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t cut in on Penfield’s wire. I’ve just tipped off MacNutt—he’s off his dip, about it all. Look out for yourself, old girl!” he added, in a different tone of voice.
She rang off, feverishly, and vowed passionately that she would look out for herself. Catching up a pair of pliers, she cut the telephone wire from the open window, leaving two hundred feet of it to dangle forlornly over the little back house-courts. Then she ran to the door and locked and bolted it, listening all the while for the wire to speak out to her.
A minute later MacNutt himself rang up, and asked for Durkin. She made a movement as though to drop the receiver, and leave her presence unbetrayed; but the other had already heard her mellow “Hello?” of inquiry.
“What are you doing there?” he demanded, with a startled unsavory oath.
She tried to stammer out an adequate excuse, but he repeated his challenge. There was a moment’s pregnant pause. Then he hissed one ugly word over the wire to the listening woman. Mackenzie had been hinting to him of certain things; now, he knew.
He did not wait even to replace the receiver. While she still stood there, in the little sewing-room, white and dazed, he was in a swaying taxi, rattling and pounding nearer her, block by block.
He let himself in with his own pass-key, and raced up the long stairs, his face drawn, and a dull claret tinge. He found the door closed and bolted; he could hear nothing from within but the muffled clicking of the sounder as it ticked out the later New Orleans returns.
He paused for a moment, panting, but no answer came to his pound on the panels. He could spell out, in the dead silence, the names of the horses going over the wire.
“Open this door, by God, or I’ll kill you!” he cried, in a frenzy, throwing the weight of his huge body against it in vain.