He had said that the partners were to gather the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in cash and securities, place it in a suitcase, and appoint one of their number to sally forth along Broadway with it at the exact hour of eleven, when he, the Invisible Master, would take possession of it. Unless one went forth with it at that hour, he would enter and their lives would pay the forfeit.
Allen said that when the note was brought in by an excited secretary they had ignored its threat entirely and had gone on with their accounts, thinking the thing the work of joking friends, or a crude attempt to cash in on the dread the Invisible Master had stirred. They had forgotten its menace by the time the hour of eleven came. At that hour Van Duyck and Jackson and Sunetti had been seated on one side of a table with Allen on the other, facing the door. Allen had looked up, and had, he said, seen the door fly suddenly open and then shut without anyone entering that he could see!
The Remembered Threat
In an instant he had remembered the Invisible Master's threat but before he had been able to cry out three shots had crashed out and his three partners had slumped dead with bullets through their skulls from behind. In the next instant another shot had crashed out of empty air and a bullet had buried itself beside Allen in the wall, but as that shot came he had cried out and there had come cries from all in the building who had heard. The door instantly had flown open and shut as the Invisible Master had fled without stopping to grasp at the cash and securities, and those who rushed in had found Allen standing still beside the wall, and unable for minutes to speak. The unheeded threat of the Invisible Master lay crumpled on the table by the dead men.
With that tragedy the chill fear that held New York dissolved into stark terror, and as Carton pushed his way north to find Wade and Grantham there was all about him a wild confusion of panic.
Great crowds were forming and rolling toward the City Hall to be held back by the police and troops drawn up to guard it, where they shouted their wild demand to the city's officials that the Invisible Master be captured or killed or bought off at any price. There were wild rumors of even more terrible crimes the Invisible Master had committed, rumors of men done to death in the seething East Side, rumors of martial law to be declared and troops brought to the city.
Had the great crowds that bellowed their terror but known it, the city's officials were even then face to face with the Invisible Master's purpose. For in an inner room at City Hall, with Grantham and Wade there, and Carton too, they were reading the letter that had come but minutes before to them.
To the Mayor and Officials of New York:
Having shown in these last few days what the rule of the Invisible Master means to your city, I am ready now without fear of disbelief on your part to state the terms on which my reign of terror over this city will end. Those terms are—the immediate payment of five million dollars in assorted denominations. This money, in a steel box of moderate size, is to be placed in the following spot: Two miles north of the village of Pernview, on Long Island, on the west road, is a milestone. In the forest three hundred yards east of this milestone is a large oak. You will place the box on the boulder beneath this tree on tomorrow night, between eleven and twelve o'clock. You are at liberty to attempt to prevent me from getting the box, but it will only result disastrously for yourselves.