“What is it?” I asked in amazement, gazing at the wonderful little instrument before us.

“A vocaphone,” he explained, moving the switch and cutting off the sound instantly, “an improved detectaphone—­something that can be used both in practical business, professional, and home affairs as a loud speaking telephone, and, as I expect to use it here, for special cases of detective work.  You remember the detectaphone instruments which we have used?”

Indeed I did.  It had helped us out of several very tight situations—­and seemed now to have been used to get the organization into a very tight political place.

“Well, the vocaphone,” went on Kennedy, “does even more than the detectaphone.  You see, it talks right out.  Those little apertures in the face act like megaphone horns increasing the volume of sound.”  He indicated the switch with his finger and then another point to which it could be moved.  “Besides,” he went on enthusiastically, “this machine talks both ways.  I have only to turn the switch to that point and a voice will speak out in the conservatory just as if we were there instead of talking here.”

He turned the switch so that it carried the sounds only in our direction.  The last strains of the dance music were being followed by the hearty applause of the dancers.

As the encore struck up again, a voice, almost as if it were in the little room alongside us, said, “Why, hello, Maty, why aren’t you dancing?”

There was an unmistakable air of familiarity about it and about the reply, “Why aren’t you, Hartley?”

“Because I’ve been looking for a chance to have a quiet word with you,” the man rejoined.

“Langhorne and Mrs. Ogleby,” cried Craig excitedly.

“Sh!” I cautioned, “they might hear us.”

He laughed.  “Not unless I turn the switch further.”

“I saw you down at the Criminal Courts Building this morning,” went on the man, “but you didn’t see me.  What did you think of Carton?”

I fancied there was a trace of sarcasm or jealousy in his tone.  At any rate, woman-like, she did not answer that question, but went on to the one which it implied.

“I didn’t go to see Carton.  He is nothing to me, has not been for months.  I was only amusing myself when I knew him—­leading him on, playing with him, then.”  She paused, then turned the attack on him.  “What did you think of Miss Ashton?  You thought I didn’t see you, but you hardly took your eyes off her while I was in the hallway waiting to hear the verdict.”

It was Langhorne’s turn to defend himself.  “It wasn’t so much Margaret Ashton as that fellow Carton I was watching,” he answered hastily.

“Then you—­you haven’t forgotten poor little me?” she inquired with a sincere plaintiveness in her voice.

“Mary,” he said, lowering his voice, “I have tried to forget you—­ tried, because I had no right to remember you in the old way—­not while you and Martin remained together.  Margaret and I had always been friends—­but I think Carton and this sort of thing,”—­he waved his hand I imagined at the suffrage dancers—­“have brought us to the parting of the ways.  Perhaps it is better.  I’m not so sure that it isn’t best.”