d over such
a preposterous communication? The idea, we could not but grant, was well
conceived, but it was too grotesque to be taken seriously. Mr. Hale said
he would preserve it as a literary curiosity, and shoved it away in a
pigeonhole. Then we promptly forgot its existence. And as promptly, on
the 1st of October, going over the morning mail, we read the following:

OFFICE OF THE M. OF M., October 1, 1899.

MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:

Dear Sir,--Your victim has met his fate. An hour ago, on East
Thirty-ninth Street, a workingman was thrust through the heart with a
knife. Ere you read this his body will be lying at the Morgue. Go and
look upon your handiwork.

On October 14th, in token of our earnestness in this matter, and in case
you do not relent, we shall kill a policeman on or near the corner of
Polk Street and Clermont Avenue.

Very cordially,

THE MINIONS OF MIDAS.

Again Mr. Hale laughed. His mind was full of a prospective deal with a
Chicago syndicate for the sale of all his street railways in that city,
and so he went on dictating to the stenographer, never giving it a
second thought. But somehow, I know not why, a heavy depression
fell upon me. What if it were not a joke, I asked myself, and turned
involuntarily to the morning paper. There it was, as befitted an obscure
person of the lower classes, a paltry half-dozen lines tucked away in a
corner, next a patent medicine advertisement:

Shortly after five o'clock this morning, on East Thirty-ninth Street,
a laborer named Pete Lascalle, while on his way to work, was stabbed to
the heart by an unknown assailant, who escaped by running. The police
have been unable to discover any motive for the murder.

"Impossible!" was Mr. Hale's rejoinder, when I had read the item aloud;
but the incident evidently weighed upon his mind, for late in the
afternoon, with many epithets denunciatory of his foolishness, he asked
me to acquaint the police with the affair. I had the pleasure of being
laughed at in the Inspector's private office, although I went away with
the assurance that they would look into it and that the vicinity of Polk
and Clermont would be doubly patrolled on the night mentioned. There it
dropped, till the two weeks had sped by, when the following note came to
us through the mail:

OFFICE OF THE M. OF M. October 15, 1899.

MR. EBEN HALE, Money Baron:

Dear Sir,--Your second victim has fallen on schedule time. We are in no
hurry; but to incr