The walnut alcove rattled like the inside of a snare drum.
Across the face of the Western Electric switchboard, all fourteen white eyeball shutters along the trunk row dropped.
They did not drop once. They chattered open and shut in violent, mechanical spasms.
CLACK-CLACK-CLACK-CLACK.
The sound was like hundreds of dry bone teeth clicking in the dark.
Underneath the wood casing, the heavy copper bus-bars groaned.
One thousand and eighty volts of alternating current pulsed through the frame.
Clara Vance slumped sideways in her leather-backed operator chair.
