It was not to be written that night, however. His statement was punctuated by the telephone bell, and, shoving the desk instrument toward the stenographer, he said:
"Talk for me." Without such aid, he was shorn of this device's convenience in long-distance communication.
The stenographer presently announced that Mr. McCaleb desired to talk with Captain Converse.
"What does he want?" sharply demanded the latter.
It required a minute's maltreatment of the telephone to elicit the further information that Captain Converse's presence at the Westbrook home was urgently desired.
Wondering much what this summons might portend, he donned his hat and overcoat, and strode forth to intercept a street-car.
At the same time Mr. William Slade, wrapped in a dingy and much frayed dressing-gown, with a ghoulish light of exultation smouldering in his mouse-like eyes, sat in his dingy hole of a room, and went over again in his mind a recent conversation between himself and Mr. Merkel. What he had told the Coroner that evening had caused the worthy official to stare in speechless amazement—a feeling which rapidly grew into one of eminent satisfaction after Mr. Slade, with much precision and circumstantiality, had embodied his statements in a written affidavit.
So Mr. Slade now reviews this colloquy.
"What's twenty-five dollars!" he mutters, laughing noiselessly and without mirth, and cracking his knuckly fingers. "What is any money to this! You may have defeated one purpose, my dear; but, to a man of talent and resource, there exist an infinite variety of ways. To be sure, what's twenty-five dollars to this!" And he glances at an open paper displayed conspicuously on the table.
"GEN. PEYTON WESTBROOK THE
VICTIM OF AN ASSASSIN."