The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1907-05-05

II home all the evening" said Billy. cautiously
And who Gamer"
Nobody
Nobody"
Nobody at ALL"
There was pause IT said I was nobody" re.
minded the voice. gently.
Billy hung up with slam and went back to bed.
He tried to sleep but could not Il said
body" repeated the voice, insistently. Stuff"
growled Billy. and turned his other side.
This was the beginning of Billy Miller's courtship
siege laid to his heart by intangible. bodess
voice that said the most amazing things, and then
clicked of into silence. two three
GAYS. sometimes in the morning. sometimes in the
evening. and very often in Billys absence Lokar
could have testified
At first Billy was annoyed, later became resign
ed and then interested that at last he found him
self listening eagerly for the telephone bell, he
cursed certain male friends who called him and
aroused vain expectations. He relinquished the
joke theory It did not probable that any one
would persist in a joke for six weeks. when there
satisfaction to be gained. The owner Of the
voice told him that she had wanted to know him
and could ind other way. Billy began to believe
her. but he was not a vain man, and wondered He
and popular concert piansts but he had been
anything noted than the captain of college
football team four years before. There was
why a woman should seek him out with such
batantly fattering He felt the force OF
the fattery though he succumbed less to that than
to the personality in that soft feminine voice.
At the end of three months Billy was in love-
1t was maddening to make love to an inanimate in
srument of wood and metal and he rebelled fercely
During thirty odd telephone interviews he had
discovered nothing concerning the unknown but that
she had cared enough for him to make him ten
times much for her. At this stage in the affair
he began to realize. in measure. his utter help
lessness The girl held every trump and the key
to the whole situation, which her identity
She guarded that with the utmost care. and Billy
die succeed in gaining the smallest clue. Some
times he wrested worldly with Central" and found
that her call had come from of the hotels
avenue pay station the upper West Side
but this knowledge did help him ali. He felt
that his position ludicrous. She knew how he
looked, knew where he lived knew everything about
him. He knew her voice-and that all. He
grew nervous and restless He often flushed and
started when a touched him in a crowd or
when he the eyes of girl passing along the
stree.
II you to-day" she told him he stood
glaring hepIessly into the receiver. you
your club and drove south in cab. 1t was about
four o'clock"
"Just about that said Billy with miserable
laugh. Where were your"
Crossing the avenue half block above
viii you be there tomorrow a the same hour?"
She gave the negative he expected: You know l
can't"
81 know you won't he said bitterly.
Their interviews had OF late lost the more imper-
sonal tone that had existed in the beginning There
had been time when the theaters, current events
and the weather had furnished a topic for
conversation Billy put such subjects aside with
angry mpatience. He argued hotly for his rights,
and at times there something that sounded like
in the voice at the other end of the wire Then
the affair crisis suddenly day in early
winter almost year after that first night when Bill
~ had waited vain for his unknown guest
She had laughingly reproached him for not
ognized her in passing.
1T was Broadway" she said The girl was
very pretty"
What girl?"
"The girl with whom you were walking