It was along in the afternoon that the telephone began acting strangely, as it will do sometimes when a long distance connection is being made.  Twice Kennedy answered, without getting any response.

“Confound that central,” he muttered.  “What do you suppose is the matter?”

Again the bell rang.

“Hello,” shouted Kennedy, exasperated.  “Who’s this?”

There was a pause.  “Just a minute,” he replied.

Quickly he jammed the receiver down on a little metal base which he had placed near the instrument.  Three prongs reaching upward from the base engaged the receiver tightly, fitting closely about it.

Then he took up a watch-case receiver to listen through in place of the regular receiver.

“Who is it?” he answered.

Apparently the voice at the other end of the wire replied rather peevishly, for Kennedy endeavoured to smooth over the delay.  I wondered what was going on, why he was so careful.  His face showed that, whatever it was, it was most important.

As he restored the telephone to its normal condition, he looked at me puzzled.

“I wonder whether that was a frame-up!” he exclaimed, pulling a little cylinder off the instrument into which he had inserted the telephone receiver.  “I thought it might be and I have preserved the voice.  This is what is known as the telescribe—­a recent invention of Edison which records on a specially prepared phonograph cylinder all that is said—­both ways—­over a telephone wire.”

“What was it about?” I asked eagerly.

He shoved the cylinder on a phonograph and started the instrument.

“Professor Kennedy?” called an unfamiliar voice.

“Yes,” answered a voice that I recognized as Craig’s.

“This is the detective agency employed by Mr. Whitney.  He has instructed us to inform you that he has obtained the Peruvian dagger for which you have been searching.  That’s all.  Good-bye.”

I looked at Kennedy in blank surprise.

“They rang off before I could ask them a question,” said Craig.  “Central tells me it was a pay station call.  There doesn’t seem to be any way of tracing it.  But, at least I have a record of the voice.”

“What are you going to do?” I queried.  “It may be a fake.”

“Yes, but I’m going to investigate it.  Do you feel strong enough to go down to Whitney’s with me?”

The startling news had been like a tonic.  “Of course,” I replied, seizing my hat.

Kennedy paused only long enough to call Norton.  The archaeologist was out, and we hurried on downtown to Whitney’s.

Whitney was not there and his clerk was just about to close the office.  All the books were put away in the safe and the desks were closed.  Now and then there echoed up the hall the clang of an elevator door.

“Where is Mr. Whitney?” demanded Craig of the clerk.

“I can’t say.  He went out a couple of hours ago.”