He had only intermittent use of it.

As he phrased it, the wires were like the stock market, now up, now down.

Occasionally the wires were up and he spoke as well as ever, though slowly and heavily.

Then speech would suddenly desert him, in the middle of a sentence perhaps, and for hours, sometimes, we would wait for the connection to be re-established.

He complained of great pain in his head, and it was during this period that he arranged a system of communication against the time when speech should leave him altogether--one pressure of the hand for "yes," two for "no." It was well that it was arranged, for by evening his voice had gone from him.