“He was there for peaceful negotiation,” said Munaza Hashmi, a local lawyer. “Not agitation.”

With hundreds of lawyers and human rights activists already in jail, protests were smaller on Tuesday than on the previous day. At least 2,000 people have been rounded up by the authorities, among them 500 to 700 or more lawyers, according to lawyers and political officials.

It was unclear how Mr. Chaudhry, who was fired on Saturday and is under house arrest, was able to gain access to a cellphone. In addition to the call to the lawyers, he has been surreptitiously calling Pakistani newspaper journalists, who are defying an emergency order that prohibits coverage that “brings into ridicule or disrepute” General Musharraf and other officials.

Mr. Chaudhry and other lawyers said they hoped to re-create the protest campaign they carried out this spring when the lawyers mounted rallies in major cities after General Musharraf removed Mr. Chaudhry from the Supreme Court bench the first time. General Musharraf’s popularity dropped, and Mr. Chaudhry was reinstated after four months, invigorating the Supreme Court and the general’s opponents.

On Saturday, days before the Supreme Court was expected to declare him ineligible for another term in office, General Musharraf suspended the Constitution, dissolved the Supreme Court, and blacked out all independent and international television news channels in Pakistan. Supreme Court judges, like Mr. Chaudhry, who refused to declare the general’s move legal were placed under house arrest.

On Monday, President Bush personally urged General Musharraf to end emergency rule and carry out nationwide elections, previously scheduled for mid-January. On Tuesday, a close aide to General Musharraf said no decision had been made.

Image Riot police outside the Lahore High Court as protests continued today. Credit... Rahat Dar/European Pressphoto Agency

Anne W. Patterson, the American ambassador to Pakistan, visited the country’s election commission on Tuesday and urged it to announce elections for Jan. 15, as had been planned.