"March 11. I have had a talk with Louis, the janitor, about the Barowsky 'affairs.' Three men found dead in the big chair that faces the centre-table in my living-room. The date in every case was the 21st of March. If not an extraordinary coincidence there is food for reflection in this plain statement. It gives me ten clear days, and I can eat my dinner to-night in comparative comfort.
"March 12. I have assumed that the psychological moment is scheduled for March 21st, but both the direction and the nature of the blow are still unknown. I have made a minute examination of the rooms and all that they contain, but can discover nothing in the nature of a trap. There are no secret doors, no collapsing walls, no hidden tubes for the dissemination of poisonous vapors. My windows are not overlooked from any outside point of vantage, thus eliminating the silent bullet of the air-gun. In a word, the machinery of the melodrama seems to be entirely non-existent. And yet I know that unless I can get the end of the clew before the 21st of March I shall sit dead in the big chair over there, just as the three who have gone before me.
"March 18. Still no answer from Chivers. I have sent him a final communication fixing my price at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and saying that unless the proposition is accepted within three days further negotiations will be broken off.
"March 19. The offer is accepted. At noon on Friday, the 21st, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in negotiable securities will be placed in my hands, and I am to give in return an order on the safe-deposit company for the phonographic plates. But there is one paragraph in the letter that puzzles me. It reads:
"'My client will come in person on Friday to conclude the business, but only in the event of the day being bright and sunny. If rainy or cloudy you may expect him at a somewhat earlier hour on Saturday or the next clear day whichever it may be.'
"Now what does this mean? On the face of it, a disinclination on the part of an elderly gentleman to expose himself to these chill March winds. But Magnus is not very old, and he does not look in the least rheumatic.
"I have forgotten to mention the one peculiarity that I discovered in the furniture of my living-room. The big chair is immovably fixed to the floor, its heavy pivot-base being riveted down to an iron bed-plate. And the chair itself is not made of mahogany, as I had supposed, but of an unknown metallic alloy that simulates the wood very closely. Well, I was prepared for something like this.
"Another interesting point. The windows in the living-room face in a southerly direction, and the sun is now every day getting a little farther round, penetrating a little deeper, at every noon hour, into the room. On the 21st it will cross the line, and at least one ray will illumine a spot that for several months has not been touched by the direct sunlight. What spot?
"It is nearing twelve o'clock, and as I sit in the big chair I can see the bar of golden light creeping steadily onward. It reaches the chair, and half-way around the pivot-base. Then the heavenly clock begins its retrograde movement, and the ray of sunlight is forced to retreat. But to-morrow it will come a little farther, and so again on the day after.
"Around the sash in the big window the architect has inserted a row of glass bull's-eyes, a style of ornamentation suited to the semi-Oriental tastes of William H. Seward Square. I go up and examine them closely. They seem ordinary enough—but stop! The third from the bottom; it has a peculiar depth and clearness. It might very well be a lens—a burning-glass, to use the old-fashioned term. How close has the sun drawn to this particular bull's-eye? To-morrow I will take note.