Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
"Jameson, here's a story I wish you'd follow up," remarked the managingeditor of the Star to me one evening after I had turned in anassignment of the late afternoon.
He handed me a clipping from the evening edition of the Star and Iquickly ran my eye over the headline:
"Here's this murder of Fletcher, the retired banker and trustee of theUniversity," he explained. "Not a clue—except a warning letter signedwith this mysterious clutching fist. Last week it was the robbery ofthe Haxworth jewels and the killing of old Haxworth. Again that curioussign of the hand. Then there was the dastardly attempt on Sherburne,the steel magnate. Not a trace of the assailant except this sameclutching fist. So it has gone, Jameson—the most alarming and mostinexplicable series of murders that has ever happened in this country.And nothing but this uncanny hand to trace them by."
The editor paused a moment, then exclaimed, "Why, this fellow seems totake a diabolical—I might almost say pathological—pleasure in crimesof violence, revenge, avarice and self-protection. Sometimes it seemsas if he delights in the pure deviltry of the thing. It is weird."
He leaned over and spoke in a low, tense tone. "Strangest of all, thetip has just come to us that Fletcher, Haxworth, Sherburne and all therest of those wealthy men were insured in the Consolidated Mutual Life.Now, Jameson, I want you to find Taylor Dodge, the president, andinterview him. Get what you can, at any cost."
I had naturally thought first of Kennedy, but there was no time now tocall him up and, besides, I must see Dodge immediately.
Dodge, I discovered over the telephone, was not at home, nor at any ofthe clubs to which he belonged. Late though it was I concluded that hewas at his office. No amount of persuasion could get me past the door,and, though I found out later and shall tell soon what was going onthere, I determined, about nine o'clock, that the best way to get atDodge was to go to his house on Fifth Avenue, if I had to camp on hisfront doorstep until morning. The harder I found the story to get, themore I wanted it.
With some misgivings about being admitted, I rang the bell of thesplendid, though not very modern, Dodge residence. An English butler,with a nose that must have been his fortune, opened