"Give me long distance, Coaldale Number—"
With a quick movement he snapped the connecting wire from the instrument, and the receiver was free in her hand.
"Doris, you are mad!" he protested. "Wait a minute, my dear girl— just a minute."
"I don't care! I will know!"
Mr. Wynne turned and picked up a heavy cane from the hall-stand, and brought it down on the transmitter with all his strength. The delicate mechanism jangled and tingled, then the front fell off at their feet. The diaphragm dropped and rolled away.
"Doris, you must not!" he commanded again gravely. "We will find another way, dear."
"How dare you?" she demanded violently. "It was cowardly."
"You don't understand—"
"I understand it all," she broke in. "I understand that this might lead to the failure of the thing you are trying to do. But I don't care. I understand that already I have lost my father and my brother in this; that my grandmother and my mother were nearly starved to death while it was all being planned; all for these hideous diamonds. Diamonds! Diamonds! Diamonds! I've heard nothing all my life but that. As a child it was dinned into me, and now I am sick and weary of it all. I know—I know something has happened to him now. I hate them! I hate them!"
She stopped, glared at him with scornful eyes for an instant, then ran up the stairs again. Mr. Wynne touched a button in the wall, and the maid appeared.