"There you go again," Nick interrupted. "Now, Mantell, unless——”
"Wait! I’ll tell you."
"Do so, then."
"It began three weeks ago, Nick, with a placard pinned on the side door of our residence," Mantell said, more calmly. "It was a rudely scrawled threat on a scrap of brown paper. It bore no signature and contained only these words: Your money or your wife!"
"Wife, eh?" queried Nick. "Are you sure you did not misread it? Was not the word life, instead of wife?"
"No, indeed, as since has appeared," Mantell said quickly. "Naturally, of course, that first threatening placard did not alarm us. I thought it might be a joke, a very bad one, of course, or the work of some foolish or malicious persons bent only upon annoying us. Two days later, however, a second was tacked on the trunk of a tree directly opposite the windows of my wife’s sleeping room."
"A similar treat?"
"Yes. It read: ‘You’ve got my money. I’m going to get your wife.’"
"H’m, I see!" Nick remarked. "Was it on paper like the other?"
"Yes. It was a piece of ordinary manila paper, such as one might obtain in a grocery store."