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The table upon which the telephone rested was set immediately under this mysterious window, the window was provided with a green blind, and the switchboard controlling the complicated lighting scheme was also within reach of anyone seated at the table.
"It's for you, Steve. From Washington. I plugged it in on the library extension." Steve excused himself. A few moments later he returned. "Hartson, I just took the liberty of ordering a scrambler placed on your phone switchboard, in case we need to hold any classified conversations between here and my offices. The phone man will install it today, if you have no objection."
Business propositions, political deals, scientific talks, and words of comfort to the troubled, cross and recross each other over the black switchboard. The wonder is that each message reaches the ear it was meant for, and that all complications, no matter how knotty, are immediately unravelled. In the cities the telephone is a necessity.
He shaved carefully; a stubble of beard on his chin might betray the fact that he was worried. Then he dressed, put his monocle in his eye, and called the headquarters that had been set up in Sid Harrington's now his office. A girl at the switchboard appeared on his screen, and gave place to Paula Quinton, who had been up for the past two hours.
He stood for a moment gazing in wonder, his heart beating swiftly, his eyes upon the instrument on the wall. It was a house phone; he knew that it could only be rung from the switchboard in the hall below. "I'm going mad already," he remarked, and took down the receiver. A blur of talk, an electric muttering, a click, and all was still. Mr. Magee opened the door and stepped out into the shadows.
If there had been at first two separate companies, one owning the telephone and the other the switchboard, neither could have done the business. Several years before the telephone got a switchboard of its own, it made use of the boards that had been designed for the telegraph. These were as simple as wheelbarrows, and became absurdly inadequate as soon as the telephone business began to grow.
And yet if salesmanship really were a science, Mitchell reasoned, there must be some way in which even a switchboard operator could profit by acquiring it. What if he were buckled to the end of a wire? Human nature is the same, face to face or voice to voice; surely then, if he set his mind to the task, he could make himself more than a mere string of words over a telephone.
There sits an operator, controlling an electric switchboard provided with one button for each floor member. When one of these buttons is pressed a flap swings down on the great wall blackboards and a white number flashes into sight. It stands for a while, then twinkles again into blackness, but in the meantime it has summoned its man to telephone communication with his office.
Alten had announced his intention of using the stern torpedo tube after his failure in the morning, and the crew of this tube were crouched at their stations like a gun's crew in the last few seconds preparatory to opening fire. The switchboard attendants gripped the regulating rheostatts as if by their personal efforts they could urge the boat on faster.
"And now," he concluded, "I have kept to my bargain. Will you kindly open the door?" A muttered German imprecation, like a snarl of baffled chagrin, was his only answer. But a moment later the door to his booth swung open, and he was free. As he stepped out, he found the lights in the room turned on, and the man at the switchboard gone.
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