“I am afraid I will have to confess,” the voice was saying. “My opponent, Mr. Hammond, has been the victim of a conspiracy. The closing words of his speech which led you to condemn him just now were not his own, but the artful interpolation of an impostor clever at disguising his voice. If you will go to the woodland near the home of Mr. Hammond, just outside the city, through which the telephone line passes that brought his speech this morning from his bedroom to the broadcasting station, you will find still dangling from one of the poles a wire which the impostor had cut into the telephone line. It was a simple thing for him to attach a telephone to the end of that wire and listen in while Mr. Hammond read his speech. When my opponent reached his long-waited-for conclusion regarding State water power, the impostor cut him out of the line, and cleverly imitating Mr. Hammond’s voice, he delivered the false statement which you heard with so much consternation. What Mr. Hammond actually read, and you can prove it by getting his manuscript, was in substance as follows:”
The simulated voice of Forsythe then gave a close approximation of what Hammond had intended them to hear.
“That is all I have to say,” concluded the pseudo Forsythe.
The real Forsythe, still deathly pale, whirled away from the radio.
“That damned little rat of a Neenan! He double crossed me because I wouldn’t bribe him! He played the same trick on me that he did on Hammond. Down to his room quick!”
The group rushed pell-mell down the hall and burst into the room which Neenan had occupied. But Mr. Neenan had gone, taking with him the sweet flavor of his revenge.
Over the window sill dangled a wire attached to a telephone instrument. It ran out along the ledge and connected with the special wire that had been installed in Forsythe’s suite.
The crafty Neenan had lately feared that his service to Forsythe would be repudiated, and had prepared the instrument of his revenge beforehand.
And in the convention hall at this moment the uproar had subsided to the point where one of Forsythe’s former adherents could make himself heard.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I move that we dispense with the roll call and instruct the secretary of the convention to cast one ballot for Mr. Warren Hammond as our candidate for Governor.”