Stock in Broadway Safe Deposit vaults. Drawer nine hundred seven. Mailed you ten days ago key and legal papers. Make what you can, and we will share even.
Steele.
“Oh, I was wondering where I had seen the name Man-son before!” cried the Consul. “Were those papers you signed in my office a week or two since the documents referred to?”
“Yes.”
“That’s very strange. You sent them across ten days before you got the request for them.”
“Exactly. Those shares had rested for years in the Safe Deposit Vaults. Manson had never referred to them in his letters to me and I had never referred to them in my letters to him, yet I suddenly made up my mind to throw them on the market.”
“Why, that almost makes a person believe there is something in this thought-wave theory—telepathy, or whatever they call it.”
“I am afraid it has a much more prosaic origin. A fortnight since you told me there had been a tremendous rise in Northern Pacific stock. That set me thinking, and I remembered I had a number of shares hidden away in Drawer 907. The stock was of no use to me, so I thought I might as well discover how badly some other fellow wanted it. Thus I threw the onus of selling on my friend Manson.”
“You must have a good deal of confidence in him to give him a free hand like that. What’s to hinder him from bolting with the money?”
“Nothing at all, except that he won’t do it.”