"Yes, yes!" he called, in a low, guarded, hasty way, into the
mouthpiece. "Hello! What is it?" And then one hand, resting on the desk,
closed around the edge, and tightened until the skin over the knuckles
grew ivory white. It was--SHE! She! It was HER voice--he had only heard
it once in all his life--that night, two nights before, in a silvery
laugh from the limousine as it had sped away from him down the road--but
he knew! It thrilled him now with a mad rhapsody, robbing him for the
moment of every thought save that she was living, real, existent--that
it was HER voice. "It's you--YOU!" he said hoarsely.
"Oh, Jimmie--you at last!"--it came in a little gasping cry of relief.
"The letter--"
"Yes, I've got it--it's all right--it's all right"--the words would
not seem to come fast enough in his desperate haste. "But it's you now.
Listen! Listen!" he pleaded. "Tell me who you are! My God! how I've
tried to find you, and--"
That rippling, silvery laugh again, but now, too, it seemed to his eager
ear, with just the faintest note of wistfulness in it.
"Some day, Jimmie. That letter now. It--"
Jimmie Dale straightened up suddenly--Jason's steps, running, sounded
outside the room along the corridor--there was not an instant to lose.
"Hang up! Good-bye! Danger! Don't ring again!" he whispered hurriedly,
and, with a miserable smile, replacing the receiver bitterly on the
hook, he jumped for the curtain.
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