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.
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