At the great house beyond the town the Prime Minister lay at death's door: in the Murcester telegraph gallery we sat, we dozen telegraphists, waiting for the news that should bid us tell the world how a stormy soul had passed where courts and kings and cabinets are not. And as, between midnight and slow dawn, we waited, weary-eyed and idle, the heavy tempest-drops hammered hard upon the glass roof of the gallery; frequent lightning forked; and clouds clashed together, thunderously at war.
A blue flame sparkled in the periscope of a double-current sounder; the needles of the instruments on the sub-office circuit swung in sudden unison so that they stood a-row like compasses and pointed, each one of them at the selfsame angle, no longer northwards but north-west by north. And then the electric current sparkled on the sounders themselves, and the lights died swiftly out, leaving us in darkness and dismay.
Old Shayler, grey-bearded and grey-moustached, the doyen of us all, jumped away from the instruments and pulled his chair into the open space in the middle of the gallery.
"Come away, boys!" he shouted. "Come away from the sounders. I'm not taking any risks!"
There came a rush and scrape of chairs across the wood-block floor; the old man had done what we were too cowardly to do: in a second or two we sat, ringed round him, huddling close and fearful. The storm had raged since eight o'clock; for four hours we had terrified ourselves with tales of crime and horror.
"What a night!" gasped Wollen of the race-staff. "I've never known such a night before. Not in twenty years' service!"
Then, once more, the lightning forked across the hall, reflected in a glass roof above, footing, as it seemed, some danse macabre upon the gallery floor. The needles of the instruments at the sub-office circuit almost seemed to pirouette before they swung back again to their fixed position: long after the flash had passed the periscopes belatedly gleamed: the heavy sounders moved, as if driven by some strange force to babble in a code unknown to man of the mysterious power which set the elements at strife.
I drew my chair an inch closer to the man on my right; on my left hand I felt Beechcroft shudder and do the like. He was a poor creature at the best of times; to-night he was almost beside himself with fear.
"I knew just such another night," said old Shayler presently. "The night that Jacky Soames was killed at Bromyard and the office ransacked. But it wasn't lightning that killed him. Lightning seldom hurts people indoors, they say. It was a man that killed Jacky Soames!"
The chairs moved again, a full dozen of them, till we sat, huddled closer than ever, cold and fearful for all the night's midsummer heat.
"Tell us about it, Shayler!" I cried. "Tell us what happened. Did they ever catch the murderer? "
And three or four voices echoed what I asked; for indeed it seemed better to hear of man's work than God's that night. One or two indeed cried "No!" but they were in the minority, and, sitting there in the middle of us, old Shayler began. And as the thunder, clamorous and insistent, growled above us, louder and more near, I felt Beechcroft shudder beside me and his fingers, unconsciously, met on my wrist and stayed there. But I let the poor devil keep his grip, for I could hear his teeth chatter and his breath come and go in the darkness.
Then old Shayler cleared his throat and began. "It was fifteen years ago, to this very night, and Jacky was sent in charge of the Bromyard office. It was a small enough place in those days and a one-man show. But Jacky was nearly off his head with joy. He had just got a girl and it seemed like promotion coming, and he went about the place singing and whistling till it wasn't big enough to hold him. I remember seeing him off from Murcester station after having a drink with him at the Old Dun Cow. It was the post-office house then, just as it is to-day."
"Was that the last you saw of him ?" interrupted little Teddy Saunders—he was only a boy and couldn't let the old man tell the tale in his own way—"I mean did he die—was he murdered the same night?"
Old Shayler frowned and sat silent and seemed to dry up.
"Go on!" said some one sharply—"go on, and, Teddy, if you interrupt again, I'll put you in contact with the wires!"
The old man, somewhat appeased, cleared his throat again.
"It was the last I saw of him," he said slowly. "But it wasn't the last I heard of him. I was on night duty and at about half-past eleven we had a chat over the wires. He told me how lonely he was in that house all by himself and how he couldn't sleep for the sense of responsibility, and I joked a bit to cheer him up and told him to go to bed. But he said he couldn't sleep and that he would sit up in the office all night. And then, as there was nothing doing here, I began to sleep.
Then old Shayler paused.
"Has anybody got a cigarette?" he asked. "Telling it makes it all come back again, and I shall talk easier if I smoke."
Some one leaned across and fumbled for the old man's hand and thrust a cigarette into his groping fingers. He lighted it, and at every puff I could see the white faces round me and I felt that my own was whiter than them all. But no one spoke.
"About midnight," went on the old man, " I woke up with a start, in a cold shiver. Something was happening to Jacky—I didn't know what—I only knew that he was in danger and it seemed as if I had been dreaming, and that though I couldn't remember my dream I had waked up to find it was true.
"Then the Bromyard needle began to click, and though the sending was jumpy and uneven I knew it for Jacky Soames—I should have known his touch on the keys anywhere."
"What did it say?" cried Teddy Saunders, almost beside himself. "What did it say?"
And this time no one chided him for an interruption which seemed to come from us all, even though it was only Teddy that spoke. Even old Shayler showed no annoyance, for he knew that Teddy couldn't help but speak.
"It said," he answered slowly, "it said, 'I am being murdered by ...'"
He stopped short and puffed at his cigarette.
"Yes! Yes! What more did it say?" we clamoured.
Old Shayler puffed hugely, so that the glowing tobacco, before it sank into hidden greyness, shed a bright light on the faces round him.
"It said nothing more!" he answered in slow tones. "But I rushed out to the police station (there were no telephones in those days) and when the storm was finished I got the sergeant to drive out to Bromyard; for I couldn't leave the office myself, for any length of time. And when he got there he found poor Jacky's body on the floor by a parcel hamper and his head hammered in with the poker and the safe open and all the cash and registered letters gone."
"But was there no clue to the murderer?"
"None at all. There were all sorts of theories, though. And I had mine!"
"What was it?" asked Beechcroft shudderingly, at my side. It was the first time that he had spoken, and his fingers on my wrist were wringing wet.
"Yes, what was it ?" I echoed.
"Have any of you young fellows another cigarette?" came the question, with aggravating lack of haste.
I thrust a packet into his hand. He took one, lit it, and then went on, between great puffs.
"The police thought it was a skilled burglar, because the safe was opened with skeleton keys. But I think it was one of Jacky's own colleagues."
"Good God!" cried some one. " You don't mean—"
"I mean," went on old Shayler, "that it was some one who knew Jacky, and whom Jacky was glad to see. And then when the fight began he was able to hold the brute off with one hand while he sent the message with the other. And then the burglar must have hit him on the head and stunned him, which would have been easy, for Jacky was a small man and no bigger than little Teddy here."
"But why did he have to kill Jacky if he was stunned?"
"That's what makes me think it was some one that Jacky knew. And dead men tell no tales!"
The lightning lit up our faces again; the rain had grown to hail, and the thunder still rumbled across the glass roof. Beechcroft at my side looked almost moribund with fear. I tried to loose his fingers from my wrist but it was useless. And before I could remonstrate Teddy broke in.
"So Jacky Soames was killed before he could signal the murderer's name. But it was a pretty near thing!"
For the first time that night old Shayler answered a question swift and direct.
"I believe he did signal the name!" he said.
"But how—if he was overpowered—and if before, why didn't you hear it?"
"Because the wires were broken," said the old man triumphantly. "Because the lightning struck a tree on the high-road and a branch fell and broke the wires. That's why I never got the name!"
"Nor never will!" put in Beechcroft, in his high-pitched voice.
"I'm not so sure," cried Shayler. "The word was sent and the word is floating about yet, and some day or other it will find the wires again and tell the murderer's name."
He fell silent.
"I've had enough of this!" said Teddy Saunders. "It's giving me the horrors. I can see the whole thing quite plain."
"Strikes me we shall be here this time tomorrow," put in somebody gloomily. "The Prime Minister's a long time pegging out."
As he spoke, an instrument in the far corner of the gallery began to vibrate. M.R., M.R., M.R. it clicked, in Morse code. M.R. was the call for Murcester.
"He's dead!" cried Teddy Saunders. "They're calling us from the Towers. And how are we going to manage without the light? "
I leaned forward and listened hard.
"It isn't from the Towers at all!" I shouted. "The Towers' wire is on the other side. It sounds like Bromyard. But it can't be !"
Old Shayler leapt to his feet.
"It's Jacky Soames!" he cried. "I should know his touch among a million!"
None of us spoke: none of us dared to move. If we doubted, it was only because we dared not believe. And the nails of the fingers that held my wrist dug and twisted and tore into the flesh.
M.R., M.R., M.R. clicked the key and then spelled out a word.
"My God!" cried Shayler, "Beechcroft!"
The fingers on my wrist relaxed; the man at my side fell to the floor in a heap: old Shayler had been right. The word that for twenty years had floated in the void had found the wires again. Earlier in the story, Shayler indicated it had been fifteen years.
Also collected in Austin Philips, Red Tape (1910) as "The Act of God", and in Mike Ashley (Editor), Glimpses of the Unknown (2018) as "The Missing Word".
Transcribed from the Red Tape version.
Annotation by Nina Zumel