The West Virginia News

The Alarm Over the Phone
By MARY B. WOODSON
(©, 1925, Western Newspaper Union.)

IT had all been like a bad dream, somehow, to Victoria standing there panting and shaking at the phone waiting for her sister's voice to answer again. Like one of those things we think could happen to us.

They had finished dinner as usual, and Nelson had told her he was waiting for the telegram that would settle whether he should go West that night or not. And he had told her that, pending the message, he had to bring all that money home in his brief case.

And afterwards, he had gotten some papers out of the case at the living-room table, and then had leaned the case, with all that money, against its leg on the floor, while he looked over the evening paper.

And she had gone to the alcove back of the portieres to call Louise and see if she could come and stay with her while Nelson was gone. If he had to go. And the line had been busy, and while she waited to try again, Nelson had called out to her from back of his paper:

"Bandits again! By George, and near here. The Causeland's this time. About $5,000 worth of loot, too."

And then Victoria had tried to get Louise again. And just as Louise answered, the doorbell had rung. Victoria remembered how, as she had chattered with Louise, she had peered around the portiere and seen Nelson shuffling to the door in his house slippers.

"I guess I got my wish. I suppose it's the telegram," he was saying. And she had cried out with a sudden premonition:

"Well, find out first, before you open the door."

So Nelson had called out "Who is it," and a young voice had answered "a message for you." And, reassured, Nelson intent on his business, had opened the door wide. And there the bandits—

The bandits had leveled revolvers at Nelson. They backed him, swearing softly, toward the table, his arms up. And there in the brief case in the shadow down on the floor by the table, was all that money that didn't belong to Nelson!

The bandits hadn't seen Victoria yet. They didn't know she was there, and Nelson was evidently not wanting them to. But Victoria remembered how, shivering with terror, she had suddenly come to her senses, had suddenly realized that temporarily she held the whip hand if she died for it, that she could defeat the robbers.

She remembered how her voice, calm and collected, had suddenly seemed to boom out in the surcharged silence of the room.

"Louise! Call the police! We're being held up!" she said sharply.

The next instant the portiere was down and the phone snatched from her and she was staggering across the room in the direction she had been hurled. The bandit put the receiver back on the hook very softly. The money in the brief case, the money that didn't belong to Nelson, they had not found yet, but she knew it was only a question of time. But one of them went close to the table for something and his toe hit the case. He stooped to see what it was and sharply Victoria's voice spoke out again in a sort of desperate calm:

"That was not a fake call. I warn you the-the station is only a few blocks away. I was talking to the wife of the chief—" which happened to be true.

And just then the pop-popping of a motorcycle came in through the open door, faint but approaching, and suddenly dropping everything, the bandits ran. And in running, the one by the table stumbled over the brief case and kicked at it viciously and sent it, scattering all that money across the room. He saw it and stopped. His eyes gleamed, but finally he fled after the others through the back door as the motorcycle stopped at the front.

And after all, it wasn't the police! It was the telegram! The telegram that had miraculously told Nelson he didn't have to go that night. And here they were, miraculously safe, with little or no loss. And there was Nelson now, out in the middle of the street, telling the neighbors and looking for the police who would surely be coming, and here she was shivering with reaction and calling Louise again.

"Oh, my dear, what on earth would we have done if I-I hadn't been talking to you," she half-sobbed hysterically, when Louise had come to the phone. "How can I ever thank you— Did you call the police right away? Are they coming—"

"The police!" Louise's voice was shrill with amazement.

"Didn't you—didn't you call them—"

"Call them—what for?"

"Why—I—I told you to call them—I—I told you we were being held up"

"Held up!" Louise's voice was shriller with terror. "I didn't call any police. I'm coming right over. Why, just before you—you hung up I heard you say—something—but I didn't at all know what—"