"Your well-wisher, "Silas Gyde." Under a date two years later the letter was resumed: "I have opened this to add a warning. When you inherit my money, you are bound to inherit my cares also. Ever since I became rich enough to be notorious, I have been a target for men's envy and hate. I expected it. Indeed, I enjoyed it in a way. I gloated over my books of clippings. Their hatred gave me a sense of being somebody in the world. "In my daily mail I received, and still receive, hundreds of letters, appealing, threatening, abusive; letters from every kind of crank. I ignore them. But lately a real danger has begun to threaten me in the spread of anarchistic doctrines among the people. And there are not lacking those to turn the justifiable discontent of the people to their own blackguardly advantage. My threatening missives now have an organized hatred behind them. "The culmination was reached a month ago in the shocking death of Ames Benton, the first tragedy of the kind that has occurred in America--but not the last I fear. I knew the man; I did business with him; I had talked to him the day before his death. What brought it closer home to me was the fact that Benton was what you'd call a popular man; openhanded, affable, of a kindly nature. If they did this to him, what will my fate be! "The affair may be forgotten by the time you read this, so I will say Benton was a prominent and wealthy man--though not so rich as I--president and director in many corporations. He was blown to pieces in his bed at night by an anarchist's bomb. The man that threw it likewise lost his life in the explosion. How he succeeded in reaching Mr. Benton's bedroom will always remain a mystery. Among Mr. Benton's effects were found threatening letters similar to those I have received. The assassin's accomplices--it is believed that he must have had accomplices--have never been found. "This affair has not helped me to sleep better of nights. My courage is of the daylight variety. So long as I can have my eyes open and my wits about me, I am willing to take my chances, but at the thought of being attacked in my bed I confess my heart turns to water. So I have taken my measures. "The Madagascar Hotel which I was building was all but complete. To secure light and air on the West I had already bought the adjoining dwelling on Forty ----th street. I got it cheap because it had been a private insane asylum and was in bad odor in the neighborhood. The transaction had been effected through agents, and it was not known that I was the owner.