Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/285

 the muffling pilot-cloth coat. At last the man at the far end of the line appeared to comprehend the situation.

"Kestner, is it you? Yes—yes—go on!"

"I want help, and I want it quick!"

As never before there flashed home to the whispering man the miracle of the telephone, the renewed mystery of a human voice being projected along its tenuous nervous system of countless wires. He suddenly reawakened to the magic of thus bringing a far-distant voice winging along its rivulet of metal, of guarding and conserving and directing that voice through all the beleaguering uproars of a great city and leading it safely home to his own waiting ear.

"Where are you?"

"On the Saltus Pier in South Brooklyn. I can't talk. I'm shut in here with Lambert. His friends are cutting their way into the other end of the pier."

"I understand."

"Get here quick!"

That was all Kestner needed to say. The ever dependable Wilsnach, he knew, would be away from that telephone before the musty-smelling pilot-cloth coat could be thrown aside from his own head.