Political fiction; Radio broadcasting -- Fiction; Short stories; United States -- Fiction
“Another word from you and I’ll ring for a cop and have you arrested for
conspiracy. Remember I know who broke Hammond’s legs.”
Neenan stared back at him for a moment with eyes turned to steel
gimlets, white hot at the points. Then without a word he left the room
and the suite and hurried down the corridor to his own apartment.
A few minutes later the eloquent voice of Forsythe was being poured into
the convention hall. He was surpassing himself in his flights of
oratory.
He wound up, deprecating his opponent’s position on the water power
question, and pledging himself to continue a safe and sane policy of
watchful waiting until the time was ripe for the State to act.
Forsythe laid down his manuscript and turned to receive the plaudits of
the group around him.
“Stop! Just a moment, Mr. Forsythe!” came an unfamiliar voice of thunder
from the amplifier of the convention hall, and from the radio horn in
the Forsythe suite. “You have something to confess, Mr. Forsythe. Do it
now, before I’m compelled not only to confess it for you, but to make a
further statement that will make you a fugitive from justice.”
The booming voice ceased, and for a moment there was absolute silence.
Then another voice came from the radio. Forsythe started, and turned
deadly pale. He had not spoken a word, but the voice that he was hearing
was seemingly his own.
“I am afraid I will have to confess,” the voice was saying. “My
opponent, Mr. Hammond, has been the victim of a conspiracy. The closing
words of his speech which led you to condemn him just now were not his
own, but the artful interpolation of an impostor clever at disguising
his voice. If you will go to the woodland near the home of Mr. Hammond,
just outside the city, through which the telephone line passes that
brought his speech this morning from his bedroom to the broadcasting
station, you will find still dangling from one of the poles a wire which
the impostor had cut into the telephone line. It was a simple thing for
him to attach a telephone to the end of that wire and listen in while
Mr. Hammond read his speech. When my opponent reached his
long-waited-for conclusion regarding State water power, the impostor cut
him out of the line, and cleverly imitating Mr. Hammond’s voice, he
delivered the false statement which you heard with so much
consternation. What Mr. Hammond actually read, and you can prove it by
getting his manuscript, was in substance as follows:”
The simulated voice of Forsythe then gave a close approximation of what
Hammond had intended them to hear.
“That is all I have to say,” concluded the pseudo Forsythe.
The real Forsythe, still deathly pale, whirled away from the radio.
“That damned little rat of a Neenan! He double crossed me because I
wouldn’t bribe him! He played the same trick on me that he did on
Hammond. Down to his room quick!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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