“Who is it?”
“Jim Warner. Come just as—”
A click in the receiver.
The doctor waits a minute. Then he says “Hello.” No answer. He waits another minute. “Hell-o!!”
Silence. “Damn that girl—she's cut us off.” He hangs up the receiver and rings the bell sharply. He takes it down and hears a voice say leisurely, “D'ye get them?”
“Yes! What in h-ll did you cut us off for?”
“Wait a minute—I'll ring 'em again,” says the voice, hasty and obliging, so potent a thing is a man's unveiled wrath. She rings 'em again. Soon the same voice says, “Are you there yet, Doctor?”
“Yes, now what is it!”
The voice proceeds and the doctor listens putting in an occasional “Yes” or “No.” Then he says, “All right—I'll be out there in a little bit.” He hangs up the receiver and his wife falls asleep again. The doctor dresses and goes out. The house is in darkness. All is still. In about five minutes Mary is suddenly, sharply awake. A slight noise in the adjoining room! She listens with accelerated heart-beats. The doctor has failed to put on the night latch. Some thief has been lying in wait watching for his opportunity, and now he has entered. What can she do. Muffled footsteps! she pulls the sheet over her head, her heart beating to suffocation. The footsteps grope their way toward her room! Great Heaven! A hand fumbles at the door knob. She shrieks aloud.
“What on earth is the matter!”
O, brusque and blessed is that voice!
“John, you have nearly scared me to death,” she says, sitting up in bed, half laughing and half crying. “But I heard you tell that man you were coming out there.”
“Yes. I told him I was.”
“Well, why didn't you go?”
“I did go.”
“You don't mean to tell me you have been a mile and back in five minutes.”
The doctor flashed on the light and looked at his watch,—“Just an hour since I left home,” he said. Mary gasped. “Well, it only proves how soundly I can sleep when I get a chance,” she said.
Ting-a-ling-ling-ling. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling.
It is the office ring but Mary hurries at once to answer it.
“Is this Dr. Blank's office?”
“This is Mrs. Blank. But the doctor telephoned me about twenty minutes ago that he would be out for half an hour. Call him again in ten or fifteen minutes and I think you will find him.”
In about fifteen minutes the call is repeated. Mary would feel better satisfied to know that the doctor received the message so she goes to the 'phone and listens. Silence. She waits a minute. Shall she speak? She hesitates. Struggle as she will against the feeling, she can't quite overcome it—it seems like “butting in.” But that long silence with the listening ear at the other end of it is too much for her. Very pleasantly, almost apologetically she asks, “What is it?”
“The doctor hasn't come yet?” says a plainly disappointed voice.
“No—not yet. There are often unexpected things to delay him—if you will give me your number or your name I will have him call you.”
“No, I'll just wait and call him again.” The inflection says plainly, “I don't care to admit the doctor's wife into my confidences.”
“Very well. I am sure it can't be long now till he returns.”
Mary goes back to her chair and ponders a little. Of what avail to multiply words. No use to tell the woman 'phoning that she was willing to take the waiting and the watching, the seeing that the doctor received the message upon herself rather than that the other should be again troubled by it. No use to let her gently understand that she doesn't care for any confidences which belong only to her husband, but Fate has placed her in a position where she has oftentimes to seem unduly interested. That these messages which are only occasional with the one calling are constant with her and that she is only mindful of them when she must be.
“Watch the 'phone.” How thoroughly instilled into Mary's consciousness that admonition was! She did not heed the office ring when it came, but if it came a second time she always went to explain that the doctor had just stepped over to the drug store probably and would be back in a very few minutes. Often, as she stood explaining, the doctor himself would break into the conversation, having been in another room when the first call came, and getting there a little tardily for the second. But occasions sometimes arose which made Mary feel very thankful that she had been at the 'phone. One winter morning as she stood explaining to some woman that the doctor would be in in a few minutes, her husband's “Hello” was heard.
“There he is now,” she said. Usually after this announcement she would hang up the receiver and go about her work. Today a friendly interest in this pleasant voice kept it in her hand a moment. Mary would not have admitted idle curiosity, and perhaps she had as little of it as falls to the lot of women, but sometimes she lingered a moment for the message, to know if the doctor was to be called away, so that she might make her plans for dinner accordingly. The pleasant voice spoke again, “This is Dr. Blank, is it?”
“Yes.”
“We want you to come out to Henry Ogden's.”
“That's about five miles out, isn't it. Who's sick out there?”
“Mrs. Ogden.”
“What's the matter?”
No reply.
“How long has she been sick?”
“She began complaining last night.”
“All right—I'll be out some time today.”
“Come right away, please, if you can.”
This is an old, old plea. The doctor is thoroughly inured to it. He would have to be twenty men instead of one to respond to it at all times. He answers cheerfully, “All right,” and Mary takes alarm. That tone means sometime in the next few hours. She feels sure he ought to go now. Somebody else can wait better than this patient. There was a kind of hesitancy in that voice that Mary had heard before. A woman's intuitions are much safer guides than a man's slow reasoning. She must speak to John. She rings the office.
“Hello.”
“Say, John,” she says in a low voice, “I came to the 'phone thinking you were out and heard that message. I think you ought to go out there right away.”
“Well, I'm going after a little.”
“But I don't think you ought to wait. I'm sure it's—you know.”
“Well,—maybe I had better go right out.”
“I wish you would. I know they'll be looking for you every minute.”
A few minutes later Mary saw him drive past and was glad. Half an hour later the office ring sounded. She did not wait for the second peal. True, John had not said, “Watch the 'phone,” today, but that was understood. Occasionally he got an old man who lived next door to the office to come in and stay during his absence. Possibly he might have done so today. But even if he were there the telephone and its ways were a dark mystery to him and besides, his deafness made him of little use in that direction.
Mary took down the receiver and put it to her ear. A lady's voice was asking, “Who is this?”
Mary knew from her inflection that she had asked something before and was not satisfied with the reply.
“This is Dr. Blank's office?” announced the old man in a sort of interrogative.
“Well,