How the case begins
The Maddox County exchange is four positions of switchboard in the back of the telephone company's brick office, and after ten at night it is one position: Marion Voss, the night operator, alone with the board until six. In a war year the wires never really sleep. Long-distance to army camps, the operator two counties over with news she is not supposed to pass, the doctor's line, the depot's line, and the small hours full of calls that people would rather nobody remembered placing. In October, the phone company's district office receives a note with no signature: YOUR NIGHT GIRL LISTENS IN. Mr. Speece drives down from the city with the note in his breast pocket and the company's rulebook in his case, and a town wired tight by three years of telegrams and ration books starts asking out loud what, exactly, Marion Voss has been hearing at two in the morning. The answer is in the board itself, in the cords and the toll records, and it is not what the note thinks it is. It is stranger, and kinder, and against the rules all the same.
- 1Block Capitals
- 2Both Ears
- 3The Worn Pairs
- 4The Quiet Jacks
- 5The Missing Tickets
- 6Operator to Operator
- 7Where the Calls Went
- 8A Day Behind the Wire
- 9The Night Before
- 10The Town Answersbring your clues
Each chapter is a short scene and a puzzle, and every puzzle leaves you one clue. Keep all nine. The finale needs them. Your clues keep themselves on this device.
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The whole case as one large-print booklet: every chapter and its puzzle, a clue ledger to fill in, and the ending sealed on the last page.
The people of the case
- Marion Voss. The night operator, seven years. Steady voice, steady hands, a brother in the Pacific nobody has heard from since spring.
- Mrs. Deel. A soldier's wife on the county's east road. Placed one call in September that the toll records cannot explain, and will not say more.
- Chief Operator Gantry. Runs the day board and the discipline. Trained Marion herself and defends her exactly as far as the rulebook allows, which is not far enough.
- Mr. Speece. The phone company's district man, down from the city with the note in his pocket. Fair-minded, rule-bound, and slowly discovering the difference.
- Doc Whitfield. The county doctor, whose line runs through the night board more than anyone's. Knows what the small hours sound like, and who keeps them company.
- Junior Pyle. The delivery boy, seventeen, sharp-eyed and lovesick. Wrote something in October he would give a year of his life to take back.
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