. . No, we'll do this together. I'll hold the receiver and
hear what he says. You'll do the talking and you'll answer just what I
tell you to, and you'll keep your hand tight over the mouthpiece while
I'm giving you your orders. You two"--to Barney and Old Jimmie, with a
significant movement of Barney's automatic--"you'd better behave while
this telephone business is going on."
The next moment Larry was hearing, or rather witnessing, the strangest
telephone conversation of his experience. Maggie was holding the
transmitter, and Joe had the receiver at his ears, grimly covering the
two men with the automatic. Maggie obediently kept her palm tight over
the mouthpiece during Joe's brief whispered directions, and no one in
the room except Joe, not even Maggie, had the slightest idea of what
was really passing over the wires.
What Larry heard was no more than a dozen most commonplace words in
the world, transformed into the most absorbing words in the language.
Joe ordered Maggie to answer with "hello" in her usual tone, which she
did, and Joe, after a startled expression at the first words that came
over the wire, listened with immobile face for four or five seconds.
Then he nodded imperatively to Maggie and she put her hand over the
mouthpiece.
"Ask him how much, and when he wanted it to be paid," he ordered.
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