Hello! Hello! Is that you, O'Connor?" he shouted.

I watched him in amazement. Was the man crazy? Had the blow
affected his brain? Here he was, trying to talk into a camera. A
little signalling-bell in the box commenced to ring, as if by spirit
hands.

"Shut up in that room," growled a voice from outside the door. "By
God, they've barricaded the door. Come on, pals, we'll kill the
spies."

A smile of triumph lighted up Kennedy's pale face. "It works, it
works," he cried as the little bell continued to buzz. " This is
a wireless telephone you perhaps have seen announced recently -=20
good for several hundred feet - through walls and everything. The
inventor placed it in a box easily carried by a man, including a
battery, and mounted on an ordinary camera tripod so that the user
might well be taken for a travelling photographer. It is good in
one direction only, but I have a signalling-bell here that can be
rung from the other end by Hertzian waves. Thank Heaven, it's
compact and simple.

"O'Connor," he went on, "it is as I told you. It was Pitts Slim.
He left here ten or fifteen minutes ago - I don't know by what exit,
but I heard them say they would meet at the Central freightyards at
midnight. Start your plain-clothes men out and send some one here,
quick, to release us. We are locked in a room in the fourth or fifth
house from the corner. There's a secret passage to the yegg-house.
The Gay Cat is still unconscious, Jameson is groggy, and I have a
bad scalp wound. They are trying to beat in our barricade. Hurry."