He was talking on the phone to the jeweler to whom Weems' watch had been sent.
"What did you do to that watch?" the jeweler was saying irritably.
"Why?" parried Keane.
"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. And yet it simply won't go. And I can't make it go."
"There's nothing wrong with it at all?"
"As far as I can find out—no."
Keane hung up. He had been studying for the dozenth time the demand note Doctor Satan had written the officials:
"Gentlemen of the Blue Bay Development: This is to request that you pay me the sum of one million, eight hundred and two thousand, five hundred and forty dollars and forty-eight cents at a time and place to be specified later. As a sample of what will happen if you disregard this note, I shall strike at one of your guests, Mathew Weems, within a few minutes after you read this. I guarantee that disaster and horror shall be the chief, though uninvited, guests at your opening unless you comply with my request. Mathew Weems shall be only the first if you do not signify by one a. m. whether or not you will meet my demand. Doctor Satan."
Keane gave the note back to Blue Bay's police chief, who fumbled uncertainly with it for a moment and then stuck it in his pocket. Normally a competent man, he was completely out of his depth here.