“Then you can’t tell me anything else?” I asked disappointedly.
“No. I’m sorry I can’t,” replied the girl.
I was about to place the receiver on its hook when a sudden thought occurred to me, and again I addressed her.
“This matter is a most urgent one,” I said. “Can’t you ask at the call-office for a description of the man who has just been speaking?”
“There’s no one there. It is merely an instrument placed in a passage leading to some offices,” was the reply.
I hung up the receiver, and turning to Patterson repeated the conversation.
“Extraordinary,” he ejaculated, when I had concluded. “We must keep that appointment. The inquiry is plain proof that murder has been committed, and further, that more than one person is in the secret.”
“But is it not strange that this person, whoever he is, should dare to telephone in that manner?”
“It certainly is a bold move,” my companion answered, “but from his conversation it is evident that the assassin promised to telephone to him, and was either disturbed in his work and compelled to escape hurriedly, or else forgot it altogether. Again, it’s plain that to avoid detection the unknown man went from one call-office to another, always ringing up to this house, and never obtaining a response until you answered.”
“His inquiry was certainly a guarded one.”