51.

"If you do not return this forenoon we shall not wait for you.

"FRANCIS VENNOR."

The operator took it, and the President glanced at his watch.

"Can you catch that train at Beaver Brook?" he inquired.

"Yes, just about."

"Do it, then, at once. Excuse me--" to the gadfly--"this is very
important, and you have all day for your business."

The brusque interruption started the fountain of protests afresh, but
the operator turned away and sat down to his instrument. Beaver Brook
answered its call promptly, and the message to Miss Vennor clicked
swiftly through the sounder.

For a quarter of an hour or more, Brockway's friend in the Golden office
had been neglecting his work and listening intently to the irrelevant
chattering of his sounder. He heard Denver call Beaver Brook, and when
the station in the canyon answered, he promptly grounded the wire and
caught up his pen. The effect of this manoeuvre was to short-circuit
that particular wire at Golden, cutting off all stations beyond; but
this the Denver operator could not know. As a result, the President's
telegram got no farther than Golden, and Brockway's friend took it down
as it was sent. At the final word he opened the wire again in time to
hear Beaver Brook swear at the prolonged "break," and ask Denver what
was wanted.

Thereupon followed a smart quarrel in telegraphic shorthand, in which
Denver accused Beaver Brook of going to sleep over his instrument, and
Beaver Brook intimated that Denver was intoxicated. All of which gave
the obstructionist at Golden a clear minute in which to determine what
to do.

"If I only knew what Fred wants to have happen," he mused, "I might be
able to fix it up right for him. As I don't, I'll just have to make hash
of it--no, I won't, either; I'll just trim it down a bit and make it
talk backward--that's the idea! and three words dropped will do it, by
jing! Wonder if I can get the switchboard down fine enough to cut them
out? Here she comes again."

The quarrel was concluded and Denver began to repeat the message.
Brockway's friend bent over his table with his soul in his ears and his
finger-tips. Denver was impatient, and the preliminaries chattered
through the sounder as one long word. At the final letter in the
address, the Golden man's switch-key flicked to the right and then back
again; and at the tenth word in the message the movement was repeated.

"O. K.," said Beaver Brook.

"Repeat," clicked