Capitalists and financiers -- Fiction; Criminals -- Fiction; Wall Street (New York, N.Y.) -- Fiction
_Don't warn the police of this, because the other papers would get it
and you would lose your scoop. You can warn Garrettson if you wish,
but it will be useless, as in that event we should wait until vigilance
relaxes, as it will surely do. Please do not think this is a crazy
yan! Don't print anything now. Simply be ready, with photographs of
Garrettson, his home, art-gallery, bank, list of his promotions,
and corporations controlled by him, and so on. Keep this letter for
reference, and just before you throw it into the waste-basket remember
this: It costs you nothing; it commits you to nothing, involves no
expense; there is no concealed dynamite and no fool joke. Remember my
writing and my signature, and wait for the tip I shall send you if I
possibly can, so that you alone publish the news._
_Grateful Friend._
The city editors thought it was a crank's letter and threw it away, but
each made a mental note--in case! Also they did not “tip off” anybody.
They afterward stated that they said nothing to Garrettson, because if
they acted on every freak missive they received half the city would not
sleep. They thus were ready for the kidnapping of the great Garrettson.
At nine-forty-five on Tuesday morning Mr. James B. Robison, accompanied
by an office-boy and an order-pad on which was printed “From J. B. R.,
for Richards & Tuttle,” went to the Broad Street entrance of the New
York Stock Exchange. His gaze was fixed steadily on the Subtreasury, or
so it seemed to the office-boy. At nine-fifty-two he exclaimed: “There
he is!”
The office-boy, Sweeney, looking in the same direction, saw nothing
but hurrying pedestrians and a carriage or two. Robison seemed so
disappointed that the office-boy out of kindness asked, sympathetically,
“Who, sir?”
“Nobody!” answered Mr. Robison, shortly. “Go back to the office and tell
Mr. Richards to send me the clerk he promised me--the clerk with the
ticker deafness, tell him. I'll wait here.”
The boy left and presently returned with one of the bookkeepers.
“Here is Mr. Manley,” the office-boy told Mr. Robison.
“Thank you. Here is something for you, my boy. Go back to the office.”
The office-boy put the five-dollar bill in his pocket, said “Thank you”
in a voice celestial, and hurried away before the crazy Frenchman with
the Cape Cod voice discovered the size of the tip. To Manley, the clerk,
Mr. Robison said:
“Look across the street--W. H. Garrettson & Co. You can see Mr.
Garrettson by the window. See him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, just you stay here and watch him; and if you see him do anything
unusual or if anything happens in Garrettson's office that you think
strange, run to our office and let me know. I'll be waiting for you.
Don't be afraid to say so if you think something unusual is going on,
because I tell you now that Mr. Garrettson never does anything unusual.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now what would you call unusual?”
“What would you?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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