“About an hour, I should say. The roads were new to me and the rain made it bad driving.”
“You wanted to send a telegram?”
If Jim Gainsay was surprised, he gave no sign of it.
“Yes,” he said quietly. I don’t know what it was in the tightening of his mouth and the quality of his voice that made me quite sure that the question had, in some manner, put him on his guard.
“What was the telegram?”
“A matter of business,” replied Gainsay smoothly.
At this point Lance O’Leary reached over the coroner’s table and pushed something across it to the coroner. The coroner took it in his hands, a slip of yellow paper, and adjusted his spectacles. After reading what was written there, he glanced disapprovingly over his glasses at Gainsay, deliberately read the message again and finally spoke.
“Was this the message you sent?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Jim Gainsay, good-naturedly, though there was a wary look in his half-closed eyes.
A little gust of laughter was frowned upon by the coroner, who poised his spectacles again to read in a measured way: “ ‘Delayed owing to unexpected development stop cannot make the Tuscania stop may not get away soon signed J. Gainsay.’ That yours, huh?”