IV
From Richards & Tuttle's office Robison went to the nearest Western Union office and gave a letter to the manager.
“Send this at once! City editor, Evening World, Park Row. No answer. How much?”
The manager told him. Robison paid him and then went to the Postal-Telegraph office and sent a message to the city editor, Evening Journal. Inside of each envelope was a letter. Both read alike, as follows:
Dear Sir,—Three years ago one of your reporters did me a good turn. In return I promised to tip him off if ever I came across a big piece of news. He saved me from being wrongly sent to state prison. Things looked pretty black for me, though I was not guilty. I've forgotten his name. He looked to be twenty-eight or thirty years old, about five foot ten, not very heavy-built, smooth-shaven, dark-brown hair, and wore eyeglasses. He had on a dark-blue serge suit and was always smoking cigarettes. It happened on Chambers Street, not far from the Irving Bank. Ask him if he remembers my promise to pay him back for being good to me. Here is where I do it. Mr. W. H. Garrettson, the banker and promoter, is going to be kidnapped. The plans are all made. He will be held for one hundred million dollars ransom, and no harm will come to him, because he will be sure to pay.
Don't warn the police of this, because the other papers would get it and you would lose your scoop. You can warn Garrettson if you wish, but it will be useless, as in that event we should wait until vigilance relaxes, as it will surely do. Please do not think this is a crazy yan! Don't print anything now. Simply be ready, with photographs of Garrettson, his home, art-gallery, bank, list of his promotions, and corporations controlled by him, and so on. Keep this letter for reference, and just before you throw it into the waste-basket remember this: It costs you nothing; it commits you to nothing, involves no expense; there is no concealed dynamite and no fool joke. Remember my writing and my signature, and wait for the tip I shall send you if I possibly can, so that you alone publish the news.
Grateful Friend.
The city editors thought it was a crank's letter and threw it away, but each made a mental note—in case! Also they did not “tip off” anybody. They afterward stated that they said nothing to Garrettson, because if they acted on every freak missive they received half the city would not sleep. They thus were ready for the kidnapping of the great Garrettson.
At nine-forty-five on Tuesday morning Mr. James B. Robison, accompanied by an office-boy and an order-pad on which was printed “From J. B. R., for Richards & Tuttle,” went to the Broad Street entrance of the New York Stock Exchange. His gaze was fixed steadily on the Subtreasury, or so it seemed to the office-boy. At nine-fifty-two he exclaimed: “There he is!”
The office-boy, Sweeney, looking in the same direction, saw nothing but hurrying pedestrians and a carriage or two. Robison seemed so disappointed that the office-boy out of kindness asked, sympathetically, “Who, sir?”
“Nobody!” answered Mr. Robison, shortly. “Go back to the office and tell Mr. Richards to send me the clerk he promised me—the clerk with the ticker deafness, tell him. I'll wait here.”
The boy left and presently returned with one of the bookkeepers.
“Here is Mr. Manley,” the office-boy told Mr. Robison.
“Thank you. Here is something for you, my boy. Go back to the office.”
The office-boy put the five-dollar bill in his pocket, said “Thank you” in a voice celestial, and hurried away before the crazy Frenchman with the Cape Cod voice discovered the size of the tip. To Manley, the clerk, Mr. Robison said:
“Look across the street—W. H. Garrettson & Co. You can see Mr. Garrettson by the window. See him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, just you stay here and watch him; and if you see him do anything unusual or if anything happens in Garrettson's office that you think strange, run to our office and let me know. I'll be waiting for you. Don't be afraid to say so if you think something unusual is going on, because I tell you now that Mr. Garrettson never does anything unusual.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now what would you call unusual?”
“What would you?”
“If a bareheaded man came out of the office, stood at the head of the steps and threw an egg into the middle of the street, I'd call it unusual.”
“So would I.”
“Especially if I went up to the smashed egg and found the insides were of ink. It might be red ink or black.”
“That would be queer!”
“Exactly. You watch. Go to lunch at twelve-thirty and be back at one. Remember! Watch closely, and if anything unusual happens look carefully and then come and tell me. Here's ten dollars for you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“It's only a beginning,” smiled Mr. Robison, promisingly.
Manley, the clerk, put the money in his pocket and began to think he might be able to buy the motorboat next spring if this business kept up.
Between what Sweeney, the office-boy, suspected aloud and what Manley, the clerk, confirmed the office force of Richards & Tuttle discussed Mr. Robison with the zest of the deciding baseball game.
Richards had confided to his intimates some of his experiences, and Amos Kidder, the Evening Planet man, was as interested in the mystery as if he had not been the man who first let loose the flood of surmise by introducing Robison to the brokers.
Nothing happened on Tuesday more exciting than keeping tally on the telegrams and cables received by Mr. Robison, which amounted to thirty-seven in all. The object of so much conjecture—and hero of the office-boy's improvised dime novel—spent the day in an arm-chair looking at the blackboard, making elaborate calculations that convinced other customers he must be a “chart fiend.” At three o'clock sharp he went home.
He stopped long enough to send by messenger-boy a letter to the city editor of the Evening World and another to the city editor of the Evening Journal. They bore the same message and said:
Refer to my letter of yesterday. To-night W. H. Garrettson goes to the opera to see “The Jewels of the Madonna.” He will leave the Metropolitan in his automobile. In it will be his wife, his daughter, and his friend, Harry Willett. And he will not arrive at his house—Lexington Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street. Somewhere between the Opera House and his residence he will vanish! It will be the most mysterious kidnapping on record. Follow the Garrettson motor and have your reporters watch carefully.
Grateful Friend.
Whatever the city editors may have intended to do in the matter is of no consequence, because at seven o'clock messages were received as follows:
Kidnapping of W. H. G. postponed. Will keep you posted.
Grateful Friend.