test-doc.edited.txt

Hermann Housmann, and was informed that
he had left Geneva at the end of May and proceeded
to Naples and thence to New York.
Yet once more the secretary repeated his
tapping, and elicited the same peculiar sound
from the sleeper.
----
" Forty, North, seventy-four West," he
repeated several times, and finally a voice with
a strong American accent replied. News of
Hermann Housmann was again demanded, and
this time obtained.
" He came here early in June by the White
Star liner Cedric[, ]and got in touch with the
Tammany bosses. We sent him a summons to
attend Lodge, and he got in a panic and started
West. Then it was decided to send him an order
of execution by means of the Dark Ray of
Destruction."
The men round the table stirred uneasily and
looked at one another.
" With what results ? " asked the interrogator.
" He stopped off at Buffalo, took the cars to
Niagara, and went over the suspension bridge."
" Over into Canada ? "
" No, over into the river," replied the sleeper,
his expressionless countenance strangely contradicted
by the challenging note in his voice.
The men in the dimly-lit room looked at each
other. The mechanic covered his mouth with his
hand to hide a nervous smile ; the journalist
shrugged his shoulders; the lawyer fidgeted with
pens and paper, and the pupils of the secretary's
eyes opened and shut like those of a cat. It
was the patriarch on the chairman's left who
broke the silence.