the register with a shriek of dismay, and is about to close it.
"That wretch has been listening, and has heard every word!"

HE, preventing her: "What wretch? Where?"

SHE: "Don't you hear him, mumbling and grumbling there?"

GRINNIDGE: "Well, I swear! Cash value of twenty-five dollars, and
untold toil in coloring it!"

RANSOM, listening with an air of mystification: "Who's that?"

SHE: "Gummidge, Grimmidge--whatever you called him. Oh!" She
arrests herself in consternation. "Now I HAVE done it!"

HE: "Done what?"

SHE: "Oh--nothing!"

HE: "I don't understand. Do you mean to say that my friend
Grinnidge's room is on the other aide of the wall, and that you can
hear him talk through the register?"

SHE preserves the silence of abject terror. He stoops over the
register, and calls down it. "Grinnidge! Hallo!"

GRINNIDGE: "Hallo, yourself!"

RANSOM, to Miss Reed: "Sounds like the ghostly squeak of the
phonograph." To Grinnidge: "What's the trouble?"