"I had an opening cut between the hotel and this dwelling. By distributing the work among many hands I was able to conceal my eventual purpose from all. The people who put in the steel doors thought that the rear door was to give on a shallow cupboard in the wall. When the doors were in I knocked out this cupboard myself and had a clear way through. Nobody who knew thought it at all out of the way that Silas Gyde should put in a steel vault in connection with his suite in the hotel. "I have installed myself in a rear room of the old dwelling. The front of the house which has been boarded up for years I was careful not to disturb. Here I can sleep in peace. If the ghosts of the poor insane patients stalk through the halls, they do not trouble me. "But they may get me yet, of course, and I am writing to put you in possession of all the particulars. I am sure now, that there is a devilishly able brain using the anarchistic agitation to further a blackmailing scheme on a gigantic scale. "For instance, immediately after poor Benton's death I received a letter threatening me with the same fate, and I have reason to believe that many other rich men received similar letters. I promptly put mine in the hands of the police, as did others, with what result? None, except that I instantly received another letter apprising me that my act was known, and that if I did not immediately cease all dealings with the police I would be shot down in the street. "I ignored this letter, and three days later I got a bullet through my hat in City Hall Square. The newspapers seemed to take the attitude that it was no more than my due. But the other rich men appreciated the significance of the act, and I have no doubt the blackmailing business was much stimulated thereby. Still the police did nothing, and I resolved to have no more to do with those gentry, but to protect myself. "Now observe. A week after the attack on me I was called upon in my office by a polite young man who handed me the card of the 'Eureka Protective Association.' His proposition in brief was, that for a stated sum paid every month (four hundred dollars was the amount named) his organization would guarantee to protect me against all threats from Anarchists, and would warn me in advance of any plans that were laid to attempt my life. Since the police had failed to suppress the Reds, he said, his people had succeeded in placing their agents in every circle of anarchists, to take note of and report on all their activities.