'phone; only a minute to cut those wires—and in so doing advertise to these fiends the fact that he had discovered their trick; admit, as though in so many words, that their suspicions of him were justified; lay himself open to some new move that he could not hope to foresee; and, paramount to all else, rob her and himself of this master trump the Crime Club had placed in his hands, by means of which there was a chance that he could hoist them with their own petard!
The telephone rang again—imperatively, insistently.
"Listen, Jason." Jimmie Dale was speaking rapidly, earnestly. "Say that I've come in and have gone to bed—in a vile humour. That you told me a lady had been calling, but that I said if she called again I wasn't to be disturbed if it was the Queen of Sheba herself—that I wouldn't answer any 'phone to-night for anybody. Do you understand? No argument with her—just that. Now, answer!"
Jason lifted the receiver from the hook.
"Yes—hello!" he said. "Yes, ma'am, Mr. Dale has come in, but he has retired. . . . Yes, I told him; but, begging your pardon, ma'am, he was in what I might say was a bit of a temper, and said he wasn't to be disturbed by any one."
Jimmie Dale snatched the receiver from Jason, and put it to his own ear.
"Kindly tell Mr. Dale that unless he comes to the 'phone now," a feminine voice, her voice, in well-simulated indignation, was saying, "it will be a very long day before I shall trouble myself to"
Jimmie Dale clapped his hand firmly over the mouthpiece of the instrument. Thank God for that clever brain of hers! She understood!
"Repeat what you said before, Jason," he instructed hurriedly. "Then say 'good-night.'"
He removed his hand from the mouthpiece.
"It's quite useless, ma'am," said Jason apologetically. "In the rare temper he was in, he wouldn't come, to use his own words, ma'am, not for the Queen of Sheba herself, ma'am. Good-night, ma'am."
