“You just wait for their next instruction. If they are sincere in this offer, if they really have Miss Betty and are really ready to negotiate, they must tell you what to do next. And, Mrs Varian, I advise you to do it. It may be a wrong principle, but your case is exceptional,—and, since you’ve showed me this letter, I can’t help feeling it’s the real thing. For one thing, you can see it’s written by at least a fairly well educated man. I mean, not by the common, ignorant class. Moreover, the very audacity of demanding such enormous ransom, indicates to my mind that the writer can perform his part of the bargain. A mere crook, writing a fake letter, would never dream of asking such a sum. How are you going to manage the payment?”
“If you mean the method of handing it over, I don’t know. I shall do as I’m directed. If you mean how shall I obtain the cash, I’ve asked Mr Granniss to bring it up from New York for me.”
“Is he going to travel home with that sum on his person!”
“Yes, he said he had no fear in that direction.”
“Oh, no; since no one knows of it, he runs little risk.”
Meantime, Rodney Granniss, in New York, was putting through his errands in record time.
He attended to the money matter, and by the aid of some influential friends of the Varian family, he obtained the desired sum in cash and unregistered bonds.
Then he went to see Pennington Wise.
That astute detective declared himself too busy to accept any new commission. But after Granniss had personally told the astonishing details of the case, Wise was unable to resist the temptation to undertake its investigation.
“The way you put it, Mr Granniss,” he said, “it sounds like an impossible condition. I can’t see any explanation at all, but, as we know, there must be one. The obvious solution is a secret passage, but since you tell me there is none, I feel I must go up there and see for myself what could have happened.”