Luckily for us a rain-pipe ran straight down alongside the fire-escape to the ground. Moore had bought thousands of brads, and with these we fastened the double wire to the brickwork, getting the wire as nearly as possible behind the pipe and out of sight. But it was awkward work, leaning far out from the fire-escape and nailing the wire in behind like that.
This was not the worst of it, however. For we had to work in pitch darkness and without making a sound. We dared not flash a light, for fear we might be seen from one of the houses near by. And the tiny noise we made with the hammer kept us on the qui vive most of the time.
There was a funny side to it too. As we clambered lower and lower on the iron structure, we passed window after window of respectable apartment owners, now lost in slumber and “little dreaming” of the fell deeds that were going on just outside their windows. Once Larry slipped and swore under his breath in the most approved style, and I grabbed for him, shaking with laughter, and bade him keep quiet. Somehow, working with Moore lent the whole business a spice of melodramatic comedy that stood out in striking relief against the dark background of what came after. But our work that night, arduous as it was, was glamored with a humorous good-fellowship very welcome after six months of despairing anxiety.
We reached the ground without mishap, unrolling and tacking up the wire as we went. There we ran it along the base of the building against the ground and up to a wooden fence that divided the yard of the apartment house from the one next door. We covered it as well as we could with dirt so that it would not show.
We had little difficulty with the wire. The fence was a high affair made of wooden palings dovetailed together and finished off at the top with a flat board, about two inches wide, which extended out beyond the palings a little on either side. Larry ran the wires along the top of this fence, under the eave of this top board, where it could not be seen, until he reached the back fence. We climbed this and ran the wire along the side fence of the yard of Moore’s house and up to the house itself. But here we stuck. For while there was a rain-pipe near his bedroom window, there was no fire-escape to help us reach it. But Moore solved this problem. He went back the way we had come, climbed the fire-escape again to the eighth floor and let himself quietly out the front door of my apartment, shutting the door after him. Then he went round the block to the front door of his new abode, let himself in with his key and went up to his own rooms. He had an ordinary telephone here, and on this he called up the young doctor who lived on the floor below, begging that infuriated young man to hurry around to my apartment.
In the meantime I hurried back up the fire-escape and prepared to receive him.
As soon as the doctor had dressed and started on his visit, Moore descended and opened his front door with a skeleton key. He made his way to the doctor’s back windows, and, with the aid of Larry from below, managed to run the wire up to where it could be reached from his own window. At the same time Larry made a burglarious entry into the doctor’s rooms through the window, and after shutting the windows and leaving all tidy, he and Moore closed the doctor’s front door again and went on up to Moore’s rooms, where, with his drill, Larry brought the wire through the house wall and along under the footboard to the closet, connected it up and made a finished job of our telephone.
In the meantime I had hastily got out of my coat and vest, changed my canvas shoes for bedroom slippers, and had climbed into a dressing-gown and mussed up my hair. When the sleepy young doctor got there I was looking pale and interesting and suffering from a variety of afflictions obviously beyond his simple powers of diagnosis. I think he vacillated between appendicitis, galloping consumption and epileptic fits, but I must admit my descriptions of my symptoms was both confused and confusing. Finally, however, he gave it up, mentally washed his hands of the case, and prescribed a simple remedy which I recognized as something in the nature of a faith cure. He then advised me to consult a specialist and took his annoyed and sleepy departure. But I had kept him there for nearly an hour, and I knew that Moore and Larry must have finished their job.
Moore had insisted upon a bona-fide call, as otherwise, if we had sent the young doctor on a wild-goose chase, he would have become suspicious and looked for and possibly found traces of Moore’s presence in his rooms, which might have led to all sorts of complications. Anyhow, I never paid a doctor’s bill with a stronger sense of value received than when I paid his a little later.
Larry returned about dawn and, as the doorman knew him, got back to the flat again without difficulty.