“What’s all that—the telephone?” I asked.
“Yes, I have put one instrument in already, and I have the batteries and the instrument for your end. We’ll put that in later. I’m a bit of an electrician and the job was an easy one. As for my own instrument, I’m going to keep it in my clothes closet and keep the closet locked, you see. It will have a buzzer, but not a loud one, so that you can get me when I’m here, but mostly I imagine I’ll be calling you up. You see, I’ll have to have a fashionable studio or something somewhere, to carry out my part of the dilettante lounge lizard. This place would never do as my official residence from a social point of view. But it ought to be handy as an ‘earth’ perhaps.”
“What’s the idea of keeping it in the closet?” I asked.
“Well, some one will have to clean the room, and I don’t want some estimable cleaning woman messing about with it. Trust nobody is our motto, old boy.”
“And my end of it?”
“Oh, that doesn’t matter so much. You can trust Larry, can’t you? We’ll put it in your bedroom, and you can tell Larry not to let any one else in there. How’s that?”
“That’s all right I should think,” I told him. “Now, suppose we go over to my rooms and finish the job on the other instrument, and then we can do the wiring later, when all’s quiet?”
“Right,” he said; “and, Clayton! I forgot to tell you that you have an account with the Guaranty Trust on which you can draw up to any amount not out of bounds of reason. Don’t forget that, because you may need it. You won’t need to itemize your expenses. I fixed that up with the Chief. Now let’s go.”
We spent an insane sort of a night. First of all we installed the other instrument, batteries and induction coil in my bedroom, with an additional buzzer in Larry’s room for safety. We had no trouble in getting the thing into working order.
But we decided that it was too early for the wiring, so Moore and I sat talking and smoking until about 2 a.m. I also called in Larry, and told him that if the buzzer rang at any time in my absence he was to drop everything else and answer it, and to follow Moore’s instructions to the limit.