Mr. Hale, our interests dictate us to demand of you twenty millions of dollars.  While we are considerate enough to give you reasonable time in which to carry out your share of the transaction, please do not delay too long.  When you have agreed to our terms, insert a suitable notice in the agony column of the “Morning Blazer.”  We shall then acquaint you with our plan for transferring the sum mentioned.  You had better do this some time prior to October 1st.  If you do not, in order to show that we are in earnest we shall on that date kill a man on East Thirty-ninth Street.  He will be a workingman.  This man you do not know; nor do we.  You represent a force in modern society; we also represent a force—­a new force.  Without anger or malice, we have closed in battle.  As you will readily discern, we are simply a business proposition.  You are the upper, and we the nether, millstone; this man’s life shall be ground out between.  You may save him if you agree to our conditions and act in time.

There was once a king cursed with a golden touch.  His name we have taken to do duty as our official seal.  Some day, to protect ourselves against competitors, we shall copyright it.

We beg to remain,

The minions of Midas.

I leave it to you, dear John, why should we not have laughed 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.