“That’s what I said.” Cleaver was matter of fact about it. “A man’s voice. Otherwise I’d have rung the bell.”
“Could you identify the voice?”
“Hardly. It was very indistinct; and it sounded a little hoarse. It wasn’t any one’s voice I was familiar with; but I’d be inclined to say it was the same one that answered me over the phone.”
“Could you make out anything that was said?”
Cleaver frowned and looked past Markham through the open window.
“I know what the words sounded like,” he said slowly. “I didn’t think anything of them at the time. But after reading the papers the next day, those words came back to me——”
“What were the words?” Markham cut in impatiently.
“Well, as near as I could make out, they were: ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’—repeated two or three times.”
This statement seemed to bring a sense of horror into the dreary old office—a horror all the more potent because of the casual, phlegmatic way in which Cleaver repeated that cry of anguish. After a brief pause Markham asked:
“When you heard this man’s voice, what did you do?”