“I know that the Brown Robin puzzled and mystified the police of Chicago two winters ago. I was appealed to then to go to Chicago, take up the case, and ferret out the mystery, but then I was engaged in an important matter here and could not go.
“Suddenly the Brown Robin disappeared from Chicago and turned up in Boston, where the police were put at their wits’ end in an endeavor to detect the person.
“As suddenly he, she or it flitted to Philadelphia, with a like result, and then back again to Chicago. Now it would seem that the Brown Robin is making New York its roosting place.”
“But who is the Brown Robin, and what does it do?”
“As I said, who the Brown Robin is—whether a he, she, or it—is a mystery. What the Brown Robin does is to extort money from various kinds of people, and most successfully, by blackmail.
“The Brown Robin moves about so skillfully and shows up in so many guises, that he, she or it has always escaped detection, and has left the police of each place where it has operated in doubt whether it is a man, or a woman, or a lot of men and women, moving under the directions of a very skillful person.
“That is all I can tell you, for I have not looked deeply into the matter.”
“This is a direct challenge to you.”
“Yes, but I shall not accept it, unless I am retained by a victim of the Brown Robin’s arts, and then only if the victim will consent to be guided wholly by me in the matter.”
He tossed the letter aside and finished his breakfast. He had hardly time to open his morning paper, when the servant entered with a note, which, she said, had been brought by a messenger boy.