“Telegraph or telephone?” inquired Baines, who was four or five years younger than his friend. “We were using both--to make sure.” “So were we. It was a rattling good story--the robbery was mysterious, to say the least--but we didn’t get more than half of it. Something’s wrong with the line, evidently,” Baines said. “If it were not such a perfect autumn morning, I should be inclined to think there’d been a storm somewhere.” “Yes--funny, wasn’t it?” remarked the other. “A shame we haven’t the whole story, for it was a first-class one, and we wanted something. Did you put it on the contents-bill?” “No, because we couldn’t get the finish. I tried in every way--rang up the Central News, P.A., Exchange Telegraph Company, tried to get through to Yarmouth on the trunk, and spent half an hour or so pottering about, but the reply from all the agencies, from everywhere in fact, was the same--the line was interrupted.” “Just our case. I telephoned to the Post Office, but the reply came back that the lines were evidently down.” “Well, it certainly looks as though there’d been a storm, but----” and Baines glanced at the bright, clear sky overhead, just flushed by the bursting sun--“there are certainly no traces of it.” “There’s often a storm on the coast when it’s quite still in London, my dear fellow,” remarked his friend wisely. “That’s all very well. But when all communication with a big place like Yarmouth is suddenly cut off, as it has been, I can’t help suspecting that something has happened which we ought to know.” “You’re perhaps right after all,” Fergusson said. “I wonder if anything _has_ happened. We don’t want to be called back to the office, either of us. My assistant, Henderson, whom I’ve left in charge, rings me up over any mare’s nest. The trunk telephones all come into the Post Office exchange up in Carter Lane. Why not look in there before we go home? It won’t take us a quarter of an hour, and we have several trains home from Ludgate Hill.” Baines looked at his watch. Like his companion, he had no desire to be called back to his office after getting out to Dulwich, and yet he was in no mood to go making reporter’s inquiries. “I don’t think I’ll go. It’s sure to be nothing, my dear fellow,” he said. “Besides, I have a beastly headache. I had a heavy night’s work. One of my men is away ill.” “Well, at any rate, I think I’ll go,” Fergusson said. “Don’t blame me if you get called back for a special edition with a terrible storm, great loss of life, and all that sort of thing. So long.” And, smiling, he waved his hand and parted from his friend in the booking-office of Ludgate Hill Station. Quickening his pace, he hurried through the office and, passing out by the back, ascended the steep, narrow street until he reached the Post Office telephone exchange in Carter Lane, where, presenting his card, he asked to see the superintendent-in-charge.