“That Magdeburg?” he shouted, “Magdeburg _Ho_tel? This is Conover. Caleb Conover. Lady named Shevlin there? Is she hurt?” “Yes,” came the answer, droned with maddening indistinctness through a babel of buzzing sounds. “Lady’s hurt pretty bad. If she ain’t dead already. I just come on duty five minutes ago. So I don’t--Wait a second. Gentleman wants to speak to you.” Then, through the buzz and whirr, spoke another voice. Unmistakably Jack Hawarden’s. “Mr. Conover?” it called. “Yes!” yelled Caleb, driving the words by sheer force through the horror that sanded his throat, “Go ahead!” “You haven’t even started?” cried the boy, a break in his voice. “For God’s sake, come! Come _now_!” As no reply could be heard, Jack’s tones droned on; their despair twisted by distance into a grotesque, semi-audible squeak: “She may not live through the night, the doctor says. You see,” he rambled along, incoherently talkative in his panic, “we were called away from the Antlers, suddenly, by a letter telling my mother her sister in Hampden was ill. So we all left, two weeks earlier than we had meant. When we got to Hampden my mother stayed there and I started back to Granite with Miss Shevlin. We took the branch road; and just outside of Magdeburg--” “Party’s rung off long ago,” put in the operator. Caleb, at Jack’s second sentence, had dropped the receiver, bolted from the hotel and hailed a night-hawk hansom. Already he was galloping through the empty streets toward the station; scribbling with unsteady hand on envelope-backs a series of orders and dispatches that should assure him a clear track and a record-breaking journey from the Capital to Magdeburg. This detail arranged, his brain ceased to act. Sense of time was wiped out. So, mercifully, was realization of pain. In the cab of the road’s fastest engine he crouched through the long hours of darkness; while the wheels jolted out an irritating, meaningless sing-song refrain that ran: “_Haven’t--you--started?--For--God’s--sake,--come!_” * * * * * To still the hateful iteration and to rouse himself to some semblance of calm, Caleb pulled from his side pocket a bunch of letters brought on from his office at Granite that same afternoon, by his secretary. He had been busy when the package arrived and had thrust it into his coat. Now he drew it forth and mechanically began to glance over the envelopes. It was personal mail and had been accumulating for days. Desirée always addressed her letters to his hotel at the Capital; and his secretary attended to official mail. So Caleb had not ordered the forwarding of such personal letters as might come to the office. In fact he had been mildly annoyed at the secretary’s well meant act in bringing them to him.