Giving Up the Ghost by Max McCoy

straight-backed chair was a man of about forty years of age, with a high forehead, dark hair slicked back, and a graying beard that reached down to his stomach.
    â€œYes?” the bearded man asked, impatiently.
    â€œMr. Strong,” the young man said. “May I present—”
    â€œMiss Wylde,” I said. “Ophelia Wylde.”
    â€œThere was some confusion on the part of Garrity the fireman,” the young man said. “But it was Miss Wylde who was involved in flagging us down.”
    â€œA woman,” Strong said.
    â€œSince birth,” I said.
    I held out my hand, and he took it cautiously. He pressed it, in that odd way some men have, but did not shake it.
    â€œWould you like a cup of tea?” Delaney asked.
    Thinking of the tea I had abandoned earlier, I accepted. The young man disappeared toward the rear of the car.
    â€œForgive me if I dispense with the usual courtesies,” Strong said. “Pull up a chair, please, and tell me why you felt compelled to stop the Ginery Twitchell .”
    As concisely as I could, I related the events of the night, beginning with Mackie asking for help in the middle of the street. But I omitted the part about how I had convinced Skeen to yield.
    â€œThat is all very curious,” Strong said.
    â€œIt was more than curious,” I said. “It was otherworldly, uncanny, and downright weird.”
    â€œYes, I imagine it would seem that way.”
    â€œOf course it was that way,” I said.
    The men who had attached the jumpers to the telegraph line came inside the car.
    â€œPardon me a moment,” Strong said to me. Then he turned to his pair of employees. “Are we tapped in, gentlemen?”
    The man in the denim said the connection had been made.
    â€œThen let us close the circuit,” Strong said, and moved a blade on the base of the telegraph key. A puff of blue smoke emanated from the apparatus, and the sounder began to chatter, much like the one at the Dodge City depot had.
    â€œHow odd,” the man in denim said. “So many messages at once.”
    â€œI believe I can pick something out,” the man in the vest and shirtsleeves said, and sat down at the table and began to copy the code with a pencil. He wrote out a few more lines, but then frowned.
    â€œThis can’t be.”
    â€œAnd yet,” Strong said. “Tell me.”
    â€œIt’s a message to John Pemberton, the Confederate general in command of Vicksburg during the siege,” he said. “It says, ‘Expect no help from this side of the river.’”
    â€œRidiculous,” Strong said.
    â€œThere’s another message, a Bible verse—”
    â€œThe one about lightnings and ‘here we are’?” I asked.
    â€œThe very one.”
    â€œNonsense, Lawson,” Strong said. “It is just noise on the wires.”
    The key began furiously tapping, amid a great ball of blue sparks. Smoke began to curl up.
    â€œIt might ruin the batteries,” Lawson said.
    â€œIt’s about to set the desk on fire,” the man in denim said.
    â€œDisconnect it, Mr. Salisbury,” the general manager said.
    The man in denim, Salisbury, unscrewed the wires, and burned his thumb in the process. He put the smarting digit to his lips. The cacophony of tapping and chattering slowly died away.
    Both Lawson and Salisbury expressed relief.
    Then, improbably, just as it had back in Dodge, the sounder began to vibrate and the key to click again. This time, however, the racket was louder.
    â€œThere is no rational explanation for it,” Lawson declared.
    â€œIt might be the end of the world,” Salisbury said.
    â€œThat’s what Mackie thought,” I said. “But we’re still here.”
    Strong looked out the window at the odd lights in the northern sky.
    â€œOf course, there is an explanation,” he said. “There always is. The natural world jealously guards her secrets, but