Crumweather thought that over for a minute. “All right, I’ll take the call.”
He picked up the telephone on his desk. His face was without expression. Only his eyes gave evidence of extreme mental concentration. After a while I heard a click and Crumweather said, “Hello... Yes, this is Crumweather. What do you want?”
I couldn’t hear anything coming in over the wire, but I could watch his face. I saw him frown, then the eyebrows raise just a bit. The mouth tightened. He glanced at me as though afraid that, through some psychic eavesdropping, I might be hearing what was reaching his left ear through the receiver. My expression reassured him, but the tendency to furtive secrecy was strong in the man. He cupped the palm of his right hand over the mouthpiece as though that would bottle up the telephone.
After a few seconds Crumweather moved his hand from the mouthpiece long enough to say, “You have to be absolutely certain you aren’t making any mistakes about this,” and then slid his hand back quickly.
Again he listened, and slowly nodded. “All right. Keep me posted.”
He listened a little while longer, then said, “All right, good-by,” and hung up. He looked at me speculatively, doubled his left fist, wrapped the fingers of his right hand around the knuckles, and squeezed until the knuckles popped. He picked up the telephone, and said to his secretary, “Let me have an outside line.” He dialed a number, taking pains to see that I couldn’t watch what number he was calling. He said, “Hello, this is Crumweather — all right. Now listen, get this straight. I want the operations reversed. Where you’ve been selling, you’ll have to buy. Quit selling immediately and buy back what you’ve sold. That’s right — I can’t explain — not right now. Do what I say. Well, suppose there was more of a foundation of fact than you’d thought — everything was just the way you — well, let’s look at it this way. Suppose a man was making a three-minute talk, and suppose everything he said in that three minutes happened to be not only true but true on a bigger scale than he’d even dared to dream — that’s right — you haven’t any time to waste. This thing is going to leak out. Call in all the men and get busy.”
He hung up the telephone and turned to me. It took him a minute to pick up the thread of the conversation.
“Esther Clarde,” I reminded him.
“Oh, yes,” he said, and his face once more settled into that fixed, frozen smile. “You know you made a most remarkable impression on that young woman, Donald.”
“Did I?”