“No. Promise you will wait on the links for me. You have my word you wont be pinched.”
His packing of the two kit-bags in his room at the club took no longer than fifteen minutes. He paid his bill, left his bags with a porter, and went out on the links.
Golfers, a fair gallery, and caddies were scattered over the green. He sat down at a table and pulled out his watch. The California sun was sinking over the Coast Range when a taxi churned through the dust, swung under the _porte-cochère_ and discharged Saidee Isaacs.
She crossed the turf with her face as inscrutable as ever. Her hand darted over the table. Shading her eyes with her parasol, she whispered:
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Chester, but we found the sucker-list. Part was in that spool. Marway’s assistant found it ten minutes ago.”
“How?”
“By experimentation. I told Marway what I had seen ‘The Black Cougar’ doing at his desk. You remember he ran the wire through a ticker-machine and the tape came out printed with dots and dashes?”
“I didn’t know they were dots and dashes.”
“Yes. He’s a telegraph operator—an old Phillips code man. His stenographers could read Morse like print.”
Fay began to see the purpose of the wire.