“Ask Pauling,” replied Mr. Henderson. “He’s the next witness.”
“Here’s my exhibit A,” said Mr. Pauling, as he drew a creased paper from an inside pocket and placed it before the assembled officials.
“H-m-m, another threat, eh?” remarked the first one who examined it.
“Yes, commanding me to drop investigation of that hold-up gang that the police nabbed on West 16th St. last week. Nothing was said while the police were at it, but as soon as I took hold I received this.”
“And written with the same old machine!” exclaimed Selwin. “All right, Pauling, I may be
from Missouri, but you and Henderson have shown me. Now let’s plan a campaign.”
“If these two notes were sent by the same man, as they appear to have been,” remarked a quiet man who heretofore had said nothing but had been steadily consuming one black cigar after another by the process of chewing them between his strong white teeth, “then our game is right underfoot, so to speak—right in little old Manhattan probably.”
“Bully for you, Meredith!” cried a small, wiry, nervous man, clapping the other familiarly on the back. “‘The mills of the gods,’ etc., you know. Where did you fish that idea from?”
“From some place you lack—a brain,” retorted Meredith continuing to bite savagely at his cigar. “But, fooling aside,” he went on, “it’s a cinch he is. Henderson and Pauling get their notes only two days apart and, what’s more, Pauling gets his within twenty-four hours after he starts that investigation. No time for word to get any other place and have a bit of typewritten paper get back.”
“Huh! Then, according to you, all this red rubbish is also written right in the old home-town, eh?” snorted the thin man.