This was her all-sufficient punishment: to have done what she had done, to be about to do what she contemplated. For she had set her hand to the plow: there must now be no drawing back, however hateful might prove her task….
The voice of the cabby dropping through the trap, roused her. "This is the Martha Washington, ma'am."
Mechanically she descended from the hansom and paid her fare; then, summoning up all her strength and resolution, passed into the lobby of the hotel and paused at the telephone switchboard.
VIII
DANCE OF THE HOURS
Four P. M.
The old clock in a corner of the study chimed resonantly and with deliberation: four double strokes; and while yet the deep-throated music was dying into silence the telephone bell shrieked impertinently.
Maitland bit savagely on the gag and knotted his brows, trying to bear it. The effect was that of a coarse file rasped across raw quivering nerves. And he lay helpless, able to do no more toward endurance than to dig nails deep into his palms.
Again and again the fiendish clamor shattered the echoes. Blinding flashes of agony danced down the white-hot wires strung through his head, taut from temple to temple.
Would the fool at the other end never be satisfied that he could get no answer? Evidently not: the racket continued mercilessly, short series of shrill calls alternating with imperative rolls prolonged until one thought that the tortured metal sounding-cups would crack. Thought! nay, prayed that either such would be the case, or else that one's head might at once mercifully be rent asunder….