This is an old, old plea. The doctor is thoroughly inured to it. He would have to be twenty men instead of one to respond to it at all times. He answers cheerfully, “All right,” and Mary takes alarm. That tone means sometime in the next few hours. She feels sure he ought to go now. Somebody else can wait better than this patient. There was a kind of hesitancy in that voice that Mary had heard before. A woman's intuitions are much safer guides than a man's slow reasoning. She must speak to John. She rings the office.
“Hello.”
“Say, John,” she says in a low voice, “I came to the 'phone thinking you were out and heard that message. I think you ought to go out there right away.”
“Well, I'm going after a little.”
“But I don't think you ought to wait. I'm sure it's—you know.”
“Well,—maybe I had better go right out.”
“I wish you would. I know they'll be looking for you every minute.”
A few minutes later Mary saw him drive past and was glad. Half an hour later the office ring sounded. She did not wait for the second peal. True, John had not said, “Watch the 'phone,” today, but that was understood. Occasionally he got an old man who lived next door to the office to come in and stay during his absence. Possibly he might have done so today. But even if he were there the telephone and its ways were a dark mystery to him and besides, his deafness made him of little use in that direction.
Mary took down the receiver and put it to her ear. A lady's voice was asking, “Who is this?”
Mary knew from her inflection that she had asked something before and was not satisfied with the reply.