"Is Mr. Cokesbury home?"
"Who is it?"
"That doesn't matter. I want to know if he's home."
"I don't know, ma'am. Will you please give me your name?"
"Say, you're not taking the census or compiling a new directory, you're
answering the phone. Tell Mr. Cokesbury a party wants to see him on
business."
"I have orders, ma'am, not to bother Mr. Cokesbury with messages unless
I know who they're from," said the voice, and then I knew he _was_
there.
"I'm sure he'll come if you say it's a _lady_," I said, sort of coaxing
and sweet.
"I'll try, ma'am," said the voice, and I could hear the echo of his feet
as he walked off.
Presently he was back.
"Beg pardon, ma'am, but Mr. Cokesbury says he can't possibly come and
please to give me the message."
By that time I was getting mad.
"You ought to get double pay, for you seem to be a District Messenger
boy as well as a butler. If it's not too much trouble would you mind
telling me what Mr. Cokesbury's friends do when they want a word with
him over the phone?"
"They tell the butler who they are and what they want, ma'am. That's the
orders in this house. Good-bye."
When Babbitts and I were sitting at a table in a little dago joint near
Broadway, I couldn't help but tell him what I'd been doing.
He looked at me with his eyes as big as half-dollars and then began to
laugh.
"Well, what do you make of that? Spending your holiday and your nickels
rounding up a lot of men that rounded themselves up weeks ago."
"I want to get that voice."
"But everyone of them have proved that voice couldn't be theirs."
"Maybe they did," said I, "but I want to know it myself."
"Listen to her," he said, looking round the table as if a crowd was
collected, "calmly brushing aside the police, the detectives, the might
of the law and the strong arm of the press."
"And anything else that stands round trying to discourage me."
"Far be it from me to discourage you in any eccentricity that may
develop. But there's no need in following up Cokesbury, for we know that
he was marooned in Cokesbury Lodge."
"I don't care what we know. The only things I believe are the things I
see myself."
"Thomas!" he said, laughing, and I didn't see any sense in his calling
me that, but he often said things I wasn't on to. "Do you intend to camp
on his trail all night?"
"I do," I answered. "As soon as you get through lapping up that red ink
I'm going to go to the nearest pay station and ring up Edward L.,
residence."
"I'll toddle along," he said. "Anything goes with me that adds to the
entertainment of Mary McKenna Morganthau."
He held up his glass as if he was drinking a toast, and something about
the look of him--I don't know what--made me get all embarrassed. It
never happened before and it took me so by surprise I blushed and was
glad I'd dropped my gloves on the floor so I could bend down and hide
how red my face was.
I tried Edward L., residence, at a drug store on Broadway and again I
drew that butler gink, who was sort of sassy and hung up quick. Then we
walked along and I could see that Babbitts was getting interested.
"Tell you what," he said, "that servant knows you. I'll make the
connection, say I want to see Cokesbury on business, and if I get him,
hand on the receiver to you."
We fixed it that way, went into a hotel, and I stood at the door of the
booth while Babbitts got the house. Standing at his elbow I could see he
was up against the same proposition as I had been. He finally had to say
he wanted to see Mr. Cokesbury about renting Cokesbury Lodge.
He turned to me with his hand over the mouthpiece and said:
"He's there and he won't come."
"Has the servant gone to get him?"
"Yes. He wouldn't say whether his boss was home or not, but his
willingness to take the message gave him away. Now stand close and if
it's a new voice I won't say a word, just get up and let you slide into
my place." He started and turned back to the instrument. "Yes. What?" I
could see a look of surprise come over his face. "Soon? You don't
know--in a few days. Hasn't any idea of renting. Thanks. That's
all--good-bye."
He hung up and turned to me:
"It was the servant. Cokesbury hasn't any intention of renting and is
leaving for Europe."
"For Europe!" I cried out. "_When?_"
"The man didn't know exactly. He said he thought in a few days."
We walked down the street silent and thoughtful. The only feeling I had
at first was disappointment. I didn't get the whole thing clear as
Babbitts did. It came on him all in a minute, he told me afterward.
We were on Broadway as light as day with the signs and people walking by
us and crowding in between us as if they were hurrying to catch trains.
I felt Babbitts' hand go round my arm, steering me into a side street.
It was darker there and there were only a few passers-by. We slackened
up and still with his hand around my arm, he bent his face down toward
my ear and said low, as if he was afraid someone was listening:
"Kiddo, are you on?"
"To what?"
"Cokesbury. Don't you get it? He won't answer the phone."
"Do you mean he won't answer at all?"
"Not unless it's someone he knows. He's got his clerks in the office
holding the fort and his servants at home."
We were just under a lamp and I stopped with my mouth falling open, for
sudden, like a flash of light, it came to me.
"Soapy!" I gasped and wheeled round on him. His face bent down toward
me, was intent like a hunting dog's when it sees a bird, his eyes,
bright and fixed, looking straight into mine.
"You've made the first real discovery in this case, Molly Morganthau.
Cokesbury's scared, d----d scared, so scared he's lost his nerve and is
lighting out to Europe."
We walked round into Bryant Park and sat down on a bench. We were so
excited we didn't notice anything--that I'd grabbed Babbitt's hand and
kept hold of it, that it was freezing cold, that we'd got on a bench
with a drunk all huddled up on the other end. We were as certain as if
he'd confessed it that Cokesbury was the Unknown Voice and that he'd
killed Sylvia Hesketh. We just brushed his alibi aside as if he'd never
made one and planned how I was to hear him before he got away to Europe.
We laid plots there in the dark, sitting close together to keep warm,
with the drunk all lopped over and muttering to himself on the seat
beside us.
When Babbitts left me at the Ferry we'd fixed it that he was to call me
up the next day and tell me what he'd done in town and I was to tell him
what I'd accomplished at my end of the line.
The next morning I tried Cokesbury's office with the same results. At
one Babbitts called me and said he'd tried twice to get him as a test
and been told that Mr. Cokesbury wasn't down to-day and his whereabouts
were unknown. By inquiries at the steamship offices he'd found that Our
Suspect--that's what we called him on the wire--had taken passage on the
_Caronia_ for the following Saturday. That was four days off--four days
to hear the man who wouldn't answer the phone.
That afternoon I had an idea, called up Anne Hennessey and asked her to
meet me at the Gilt Edge for supper. She came and afterward in my room
at Galway's I told her--I had to, but she's true-blue and I knew it--and
she agreed to help. She was to come to the Exchange the next morning,
call up Cokesbury and say she was Mrs. Fowler, who wanted to bid him
good-bye before he left. While she spoke--imitating Mrs. Fowler--I was
to listen. We did it--though she'd have lost her job if she'd been found
out--and I heard the clerk tell her that Mr. Cokesbury wasn't in his
office, that he didn't know where she could find him, and that it was
very little use trying to get him on the phone as he was so much
occupied prior to his departure.
When Anne came out of the booth I was crying. I guess I never before in
my life had my nerves as strung up as they were then.
It wasn't long after that that I had a call from Babbitts. He'd been
able to do nothing. When he heard of my last attempt he said:
"He's not answering any calls at all now. His own mother couldn't get
him. It's no use trying that line any more. We've got to think up some
other way."
That was Wednesday--I had only three days. Three days and I hadn't an
idea how to do it. Three days and Jack Reddy was waiting indictment in
Bloomington jail. We couldn't stop Cokesbury going or get anybody else
to stop him unless we could light on something more definite than a
hello girl's suspicions.