“I come from Siemens & Halske; I was to ask whether the other man—”
“Has been here already?” interrupted Franz, adding in an irritated tone, “No, he hasn’t been here at all.”
“Well, I guess he didn’t get through at the other place in time. I’ll see what the trouble is,” said the stranger, whom Franz naturally supposed to be the electrician, he opened the gate and asked the other to come in, leading him into the house. Under a cloudy sky the day was fading rapidly. Muller knew that it would not occur to the real electrician to begin any work as late as this, and that he was perfectly safe in the examination he wanted to make.
“Well, what’s the trouble here? Why did you write to our firm?” asked the supposed electrician.
“The wires must cross somewhere, or there’s something wrong with the bells. When the housekeeper touches the button in her room to ring for the cook or the upstairs girl, the bell rings in Mr. Thorne’s room. It starts ringing and it keeps up with a deuce of a noise. Fortunately the family are away.”
“Well, we’ll fix it all right for you. First of all I want to look at the button in the housekeeper’s room.”
“I’ll take you up there,” said Franz.
They walked through the wide corridor, then turned into a shorter, darker hall and went up a narrow winding stairway. Franz halted before a door in the second story. It was the last of the three doors in the hall. Muller took off his hat as the door opened and murmured a “good-evening.”
“There’s no one there; Mrs. Bernauer’s out.”
“Has she gone away, too?” asked the electrician hastily.