Murder in the Telephone Exchange (21 page)

“Just a shade too quick, Miss Byrnes. We don't like amateurs in the field. They invariably cause accidents and often get injured themselves. That is a friendly warning.”

“Thank you,” I said, getting up. “I will bear it in mind. May I go to work now, please?”

Sergeant Matheson rose to open the door.

“Wait one moment,” called the Inspector. I turned back from the threshold inquiringly. “I'd like to go along with you. I have never seen the inside of a Telephone Exchange. I daresay Mr. Clarkson will not mind if you show us around.”

“You can ask him,” I answered, not relishing the idea of becoming a further butt for my facetious fellow telephonists.

As we walked down the corridor, our footsteps echoing dully on the polished linoleum, I buckled on my apparatus in the forlorn hope that I might be given a position to work instead of the job of escorting two policemen around the trunkroom. Clark was talking on the Senior Traffic Officer's telephone as we entered, but he turned around quickly with a frown between his eyes. I approached the desk, and waited until he had finished what he was saying.

“Hurry, Maggie,” he said, banging down the receiver and coming round the desk. “Take off that headset and patrol the Sydney boards.”

Buzzers were shrilling on the inquiry posts, and a couple of monitors tried vainly to cope with the numerous lights calling for their attention.

“These two gentlemen,” I said, unclipping my neckband and dumping the apparatus on the table, “want someone to show them around the trunkroom.”

I thought I heard Clark mutter something under his breath as he turned towards them. “I am sorry, Inspector, but l really can't spare any of my staff any longer. Just one minute.” He broke off to lift one of the ringing telephones on the desk, calling at the same time to a monitor, “Another half-hour on Sydney, please, Miss Marks. Is that the Sydney traffic officer?” he asked into the mouthpiece, turning his back to us.

I glanced at the two policemen, and shrugged helplessly. “You'd better wander around at your own sweet will,” I advised. “I'll be patrolling the floor, so you can ask me anything you want to know. You'll have to excuse me now.”

I dashed over to the nearest light that I saw shining on the boards. These were operated by telephonists when they required assistance from higher beings than themselves.

“Yes, what is it?” I asked quickly.

“Is that the new boy-friend, Maggie?” the telephonist asked, closing her key. “Take this down to the Tasmanian board, and tell them that I will release Sydney 10 line right away. I don't admire your taste, sweetheart. He's fearfully plain.”

“Shut up,” I said coldly. “I'm acting monitor to-night, so I can report you if you don't get on with your work.”

“You and who else?” she asked scornfully. I made a mental resolve not to go near that girl again that night: not even if she flashed for assistance a dozen times. The cheeky little devil!

Inspector Coleman had been speaking to Clark, who was looking annoyed and throwing me reproachful glances. I made appealing faces at him, endeavouring to make him understand that it was not my fault, and that I found them as great a nuisance as he did. Presently the Inspector strolled leisurely down the room among all the darting figures to one of the inquiry posts. When I came up to answer a buzzer, he was turning over the inquiry pads on the table top of the position.

“Excuse me,” I said, pushing him aside without any ceremony to get to the telephone. “Trunk Inquiry,” I announced into the mouthpiece. I felt a touch on my shoulder, and glanced up at the Inspector. He was holding out a sheet from a pad. As I was listening to a long and involved story from an irate subscriber, it was rather difficult to hear what he was asking me.

“Just one moment,” I cut in on the subscriber's story. I covered the mouthpiece with one hand. “What did you say, Inspector?” I asked with exasperated calm. I realized that I was in for a night of it, so I considered it as well not to lose my patience at the beginning.

“Is this what was used?” he repeated.

I frowned, trying to get his meaning and remember the details of the inquiry that I had just taken. “The anonymous letters?” I asked quickly. “Yes, that's the paper. I'll be back in a jiffy.” I hurried over to the main Sydney board to thumb through the pile of dockets.

“Did you tell them?” someone whispered in my car. I looked round into Dulcie Gordon's anxious eyes.

“Tell whom what?” I asked, continuing my search. “W M number to Petersham. Has anyone seen it?”

“About the letter,” Gordon said softly, marking off a docket.

“Yes,” I answered, “but don't worry me now, I'm too busy. Mavis, have you got W M to Petersham?”

A telephonist farther along the boards glanced up. “Tell them to hang up,” she said impatiently. “I've been trying to get the caller for the last ten minutes. They've been continually C.B.Y.”

“Silly fools!” I remarked. “It's all right, Dulcie. There's nothing to worry about.”

“I didn't write it, really, Maggie,” she insisted in a low voice.

“Forget it until after work,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder as I passed her to return to the inquiry post.

“Your number is waiting,” I told the subscriber. “Will you hang up and we'll connect you right away.” I planked the receiver down viciously. “They've been C.B.Y. for I don't know how long,” I told the Inspector, who was standing aside looking amused.

“More code?” he inquired.

“It means that the calling subscriber's line is busy,” I explained, taking up the receiver again. “Wait until I've cleared this post, and I'll give you an idea where things are. Trunk Inquiry!”

“You girls certainly earn your bread,” I heard him remark. I gave him a grateful smile. A word of commendation now and then works wonders with telephonists. Unfortunately they are few and far between. The majority of subscribers suffer under the delusion that our chief occupations are knitting and reading. Indeed, an acquaintance of mine, while commenting once on the number of pullovers that I possessed, suggested in all seriousness that I had ample time to make them at work.

Presently, the traffic became a little easier. I led Inspector Coleman around the room with Sergeant Matheson bringing up the rear, notebook and blunt pencil in hand. I had often acted as a guide at a time when visitors were permitted to look over the Exchange, and it has always been my private opinion that anyone who possesses a telephone should first be initiated into the workings of the whole telephonic system. They would leave the Exchange enlightened and more tolerant if that was the rule. As a matter of fact, Sarah Compton had put forward a similar suggestion a few years previously, but it had been dismissed as being too immense a proposal to be practicable. It was the only matter with which I had been in complete accord with Compton.

Inspector Coleman proved so interested that I asked John Clarkson if I might use the Senior Traffic Officer's buttinsky to let him listen in on a board or two. Clark went through the deep drawers of Bertie's desk in unenthusiastic silence.

“It's not here,” he said. “Have a look on top of the booking positions.”

“Never mind,” I replied, picking up my own telephone set from the table. “They can use this.”

“Sorry,” I said, returning to my protégés, “but we can't find the one and only buttinsky anywhere.” Certain that I would be asked what a buttinsky was, I hastened to explain, while helping Inspector Coleman adjust
my telephone to suit his bulk. I always think that it is a ludicrous sight to see a middle-aged male in telephonists' gear; rather like a necklace hung about a hippopotamus. Headsets are built for purely feminine use, or at the very most lads of seventeen or eighteen who are sometimes employed in the Exchange for the dog-watch shifts. It is a strange, but true, fact that the stronger sex invariably makes poor telephonists; perhaps because the work calls for a mind that can deal with several things at once, and that is a feminine trait only.

Quite unintentionally I took Inspector Coleman to listen in on Dulcie Gordon's board. The poor girl became so terribly nervous that I could have kicked myself for making such a mistake. Perversely, the Inspector chose to stay there for quite some time, now and then asking Dulcie a question. I hoped that he did not realize who she was. Presently I persuaded him to leave and to go on to one of the Tasmanian boards, where I explained the working of a M.X. call—“that is one that passes through more than one switching station—for example a call from a country town in Tasmania to a country town in New South Wales.”

I was trying to bore them, so I droned on, using technical terms in the hope that they would become tired and leave. But the Inspector, in an annoying fashion, remained interested; especially when I talked in telephonic code. He asked many questions.

Finally I relieved him of my headset and took him to see the delay board and the sortagraph position where Mac was working. We walked down the room, the Inspector sidestepping to avoid a rushing monitor and thereby colliding with her as she did the same.

“Where were you working last night, Miss Byrnes?”

“On Sydney 1 position. Where you were listening in just now. After 10.30 p.m. I moved up a few boards and coupled them together, so as to take all the interstate lines.”

The Inspector stopped, and turned around to survey the room. “And Miss MacIntyre? Where was she?”

“On the other side,” I said, pointing to the country boards. She closed up her own position at 9.50 p.m. and—went to give a hand,” I finished lamely. I had nearly let out about Mac's relief; not that it would matter now that they had Gloria tabbed, but I knew that Mac did not want me to tell them. ‘Mine not to reason why etc.,' I quoted inwardly.

“This is the sortagraph,” I went on, as we came up to Mac. She barely looked up from her work, and not once did I see her tiny hands falter as she received, dispatched and filed dockets after a brief, casual glance at each. I had never known Mac to make a mistake for all her careless appearance while working. That was her chief charm: being able to get
through an extraordinary amount of work without becoming hot and bothered like the majority of telephonists did in times of stress. As I explained the system of the air-pressure pipes bearing the dockets to the sortagraph, and the filing and dispatching, I noticed for the first time that the Inspector did not seem frightfully keen on my monotonous discourse. He ran his hand over the file at the side of the sortagraph absentmindedly.

“Miss MacIntyre,” he asked suddenly, “was this where Miss Compton came last night?”

Mac glanced over her shoulder casually, nodded and returned her attention to the board. Inspector Coleman approached her right side. so as to be able to speak in her uncovered ear.

“What was it that she said to you?”

Mac looked him over for a moment. “You have my statement,” she replied coolly. “You'll find what she said in that. Anyway, I doubt if Miss Compton spoke to me at all.”

The Inspector remained undampened. “It was something like ‘that'll fix it,' wasn't it?”

Mac shrugged, and frowned over a docket. “Maggie, take this back to Adelaide, and ask them to complete it. ‘Time disconnected' is missing. I don't suppose that silly fool that they've got switching there will know what it is all about if I send it back by the tubes.”

‘Oh, yeah?' I thought to myself. ‘I can take a hint, my love.' I hurried to the interstate boards, keeping one eye on Mac as she turned to speak to Inspector Coleman. He nodded in a satisfied way, and gestured to Sergeant Matheson to take notes. I got held up by a blazing inquiry post, which required my attention until the Inspector came sauntering back with his hands clasped behind him; looking, in my opinion, like the cat that had swallowed the canary. I was feeling more than a little hurt that Mac had dismissed me so perfunctorily, and longed to know what it was that made the Inspector appear so satisfied.

“Will you show me Country Board 14?” he requested. “Miss MacIntyre says that she was working there last night.”

Obediently, I led the way across the room, explaining the slightly different operating needed for the toll calls.

“I see,” he said, pivoting slowly to survey the distant interstate boards. “Miss MacIntyre was working more or less on a line with you, although with the space of the room between you, while Mr. Clarkson was at the Senior Traffic Officer's table near your board.”

“That's correct. When Mr. Clarkson saw that I was so busy, he came to help me until the all-night girls arrived.”

“Did Mr. Clarkson use the handset that you were looking for to-night?”
asked the Inspector quickly.

“No, just an ordinary outfit. As a rule, he uses the buttinsky. I suppose that Mr. Scott must have put it away somewhere before he left the Exchange.”

“Is that usual?”

“Yes, I think so,” I said in some surprise. “Certainly not unusual anyway. The buttinsky is officially Mr. Scott's, so he can do what he likes with it.”

“Has he done so before?”