While he waited he struggled for a closer control on the rage that possessed him. He had decided what he would say and he cleared his throat for a free passage of the words that were to carry deliverance to one he longed to kill. He had expected a wait--the man, confidant in his security, would be sleeping--but almost on top of his request for Mr. Mayer came a voice, wide-awake and incisive: "Hello, who is it?" His answer was very low, the deep tones hoarse despite his effort. "Is this Mr. Boye Mayer?" "Yes. What do you want? Who are you?" The voice fitted his conception of the man, hard, commanding, with something sharply imperious in its cultivated accents. He thought he detected fear in it. "It don't matter who I am. I got somethin' to say to you that matters. It's time for you to skip." There was a momentary pause, then the word was repeated, seemed to be ejected quickly as if delivered on a rising breath: "Skip?" "Yes--get out. You've got time--till tomorrow afternoon. They'll be lookin' for you then." Again there was that slight pause. When the voice answered, trepidation was plain in it. "Who's looking for me? What are you talking about ?" It was Garland's turn to pause. For a considering moment he sought his words, then he gave them in short, telegraphic sentences: "End of August. The tules--opposite the Ariel Club. Twelve thousand. Whatcheer House, Sacramento. Harry Romaine." The pause was longer, then the voice came breathless, shaken: "What in hell do you mean by this gibberish?" "I guess that's all right. You don't need to play any baby business. You know now and _I_ know, and by tomorrow evening the Express company and the police'll know." A stammering of oaths came along the wire, a burst of maledictions, interspersed by threats. Garland cut into it with: "That don't help any. You ain't got time to waste that way. You want to make the Mexican border by tomorrow night and to do that you got to go quick." The man's anger seemed to rise to a pitch of furious incoherence. His words, shot out in a storm of passion and fear, were transmitted in a stuttering jumble of sound, from which phrases broke, here and there rising into clearness. Garland caught one: "Who's turned you loose on this? Who's behind it?" and the restraint he had put on himself gave way. He laid his hand on the shelf before him as something to seize and wrenched at it. "If _I_ was there you'd know--I'd make it plain. And maybe you guess. You thought you'd struck someone who was helpless. But she could pay you back and she _has_."