The telephone call

"He had gathered his feet under him preparatory to getting up when his telephone rang.  In other places in the world, one understands, telephones are made to ring in outer offices, where a minion answers the thing and asks your business and says that  if you will be good enough to wait just a moment she will 'put you through', and you are then connected with the person you want to speak to.  But not in Milford.  Nothing like that would be tolerated in Milford.  In Milford if you call John Smith on the telephone you expect John Smith to answer in person.  So when the telephone rang on that spring evening in Blair, Hayward, and Bennet's it rang on Robert's brass-and-mahogany desk.

Always, afterwards, Robert was to wonder what would have happened if that telephone call had been one minute later.  In one minute, sixty worthless seconds, he would have taken his coat from the peg in the hall, popped his head into the opposite room to tell Mr Heseltine that he was departing for the day, stepped out into the pale sunlight, and been away down the street.  Mr Heseltine would have answered his telephone when it rang and told the woman that he had gone.  And she would have hung up and tried someone else.  And all that followed would have had only academic interest for him.

But the telephone rang in time; and Robert put out his hand and picked up the receiver."

The Franchise Affair  Josephine Tey