"You may recall that you sent a couple of messages out for me this afternoon," he finally began.
McKinnon recalled the fact of the two despatches.
"Maybe you happen to remember the wording of those two particular messages?"
McKinnon, with wrinkled brow, turned to his "send-hook." He found the two sheets, and straightened them out on his knee. Then he looked up to say: "We never hold these things in our head, you know. We can't, any more than a wire can."
He let his gaze run over the sheets of paper before him. The other man sat watching him as he read. For just a moment, as he made note of what seemed the operator's half-forbearing, half-cynical indifference, a shadow of disappointment flitted across his face, typifying, apparently, some passing regret for a reconnaissance at last recognised as unnecessary. But he pulled himself together at once, as though determined to face the problem immediately before him.
"Would you mind reading that first despatch out to me?" he asked with the placid authority of a prestidigitateur sure of his trick.
McKinnon rattled through the message at a breath: "Varrel, sixty Wall Street, New York.
