ore subtle.

"I have just written to Chivers that two hundred thousand dollars will
now be necessary if he wants those phonographic records.

"March 11. I have had a talk with Louis, the janitor, about the
Barowsky 'affairs.' Three men found dead in the big chair that faces
the centre-table in my living-room. The date in every case was the 21st
of March. If not an extraordinary coincidence there is food for
reflection in this plain statement. It gives me ten clear days, and I
can eat my dinner to-night in comparative comfort.

"March 12. I have assumed that the psychological moment is scheduled
for March 21st, but both the direction and the nature of the blow are
still unknown. 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. If rainy or cloudy
you may expect him at a somewhat earlier hour on Saturday or the next
clear day whichever it may be.'

"Now what does this mean? On the face of it, a disinclination on the
part of an elderly gentleman to expose himself to these chill March
winds. But Magnus is not very old, and he does not look in the least
rheumatic.

"I have forgotten to mention the one peculiarity that I discovered in
the furniture of my living-room. The big chair is immovably fixed to
t