“Then we should have taken the letters which lie between the holes?”
“No. The letters don’t count. It’s the punctures. Force your eyes to consider those alone, and you will see that the holes themselves form letters and words. Read through it carefully, as Robins directed.”
He held the paper up to the light. Bertram made out in straggling characters, formed in skeleton the perforations, this legend:
ALL POINTS TO
YOU TAKE THE
SHORT CUT DEATH
IS EASIER THAN
SOME THINGS.
“Whew! That’s a cheery little greeting,” remarked Bertram. “But why didn’t friend Robinson point it out definitely in his letter?”
“Wanted to test my capacity perhaps. Or, it may have been simply that he was too frightened and rattled to know just what he was writing.”
“Know anything of him?”
“Only what the directory tells, and directories don’t deal in really intimate details of biography, you know. There’s quite an assortment of William H. Robinsons, but the one who lives at the Caronia appears to be a commission merchant on Pearl Street. As the Caronia is one of the most elegant and quite the most enormous of those small cities within themselves which we call apartment houses, I take it that Mr. Robinson is well-to-do, and probably married. You can ask him, yourself, if you like. He’s due any moment, now.”
Promptly, as befitted a business man, Mr. William H. Robinson arrived on the stroke of twelve. He was a well-made, well-dressed citizen of forty-five, who would have been wholly ordinary save for one peculiarity. In a room more than temperately cool he was sweating profusely, and that, despite the fact that his light overcoat was on his arm. Not polite perspiration, be it noted, such as would have been excusable in a gentleman of his pale and sleek plumpness, but soul-wrung sweat, the globules whereof gathered in the grayish hollows under his eyes and assailed, not without effect, the glistening expanse of his tall white collar. He darted a glance at Bertram, then turned to Average Jones.
“I had hoped for a private interview,” he said in a high piping voice.