One day he received three photographs. One showed the great Garrettson in the act of emerging from a coal-hole. His clothes were a sight and his face was much more! Another showed Garrettson dusting himself of cobwebs and wisps of stable litter. The photographs explained why Garrettson had not told the reporters where he had spent that fateful forenoon—and why he had not tried to learn to whom he was indebted for his misadventure. Accompanying the photographs was this letter:
Sir,—We send you herewith photographs of the great Mogul of Wall Street in the act of leaving the house whither he was taken on a certain morning. The house number Was removed so he could not identify the house. We are sure you can reconstruct the story of the famous forenoon by what you know and by what you can guess. This syndicate of ours was formed to reduce the tainted wealth of our compatriots, and is still operating successfully. If we ever send you a telegram in code, read it by taking the first two letters of each word—except only the first word, which is always the abbreviation of a name. We take the trouble to tell you this because your paper was of great use to us, as we intended it should be, and because we expect to use you again very shortly. You might compare notes with Mr. Boon, the jeweler. Once more thanking you for your benevolence, we remain,
Respectfully,
The Plunder Recovery Syndicate.
Kidder showed this letter to Richards. “Let us see,” said Richards, “whether we can now read the cablegram that Robison left with the office-boys, with a reward for the successful translator.”
He rang the bell, sent for the message, and applied the test; it worked!
“Mogulgar must stand for Garrettson, the great Mogul of Wall Street,” said Richards. He was one of those men who always are glad to discover the obvious.
“Yes. 'Will vanish two hours Wed.' Well, he certainly did. It proves it really was planned. But I am not sure this was a bona-fide cablegram. Possibly Robison himself faked it.”
“Why don't you find out?” suggested the broker. “I will,” said Kidder, and he did. He learned that neither the telegraph nor the cable companies had any record of the deluge of messages received by Robison in the brokers' office.
“They were fakes, probably to carry out the appearance of reality,” said Richards, with a Sherlock Holmes nod of explanation.