The city editors thought it was a crank's letter and threw it away, but each made a mental note--in case! Also they did not "tip off" anybody. They afterward stated that they said nothing to Garrettson, because if they acted on every freak missive they received half the city would not sleep. They thus were ready for the kidnapping of the great Garrettson.
At nine-forty-five on Tuesday morning Mr. James B. Robison, accompanied by an office-boy and an order-pad on which was printed "From J. B. R., for Richards & Tuttle," went to the Broad Street entrance of the New York Stock Exchange. His gaze was fixed steadily on the Subtreasury, or so it seemed to the office-boy. At nine-fifty-two he exclaimed: "There he is!"
The office-boy, Sweeney, looking in the same direction, saw nothing but hurrying pedestrians and a carriage or two. Robison seemed so disappointed that the office-boy out of kindness asked, sympathetically, "Who, sir?"
"Nobody!" answered Mr. Robison, shortly. "Go back to the office and tell Mr. Richards to send me the clerk he promised me--the clerk with the ticker deafness, tell him. I'll wait here."
The boy left and presently returned with one of the bookkeepers.
"Here is Mr. Manley," the office-boy told Mr. Robison.
"Thank you. Here is something for you, my boy. Go back to the office."
The office-boy put the five-dollar bill in his pocket, said "Thank you" in a voice celestial, and hurried away before the crazy Frenchman with the Cape Cod voice discovered the size of the tip. To Manley, the clerk, Mr. Robison said:
"Look across the street--W. H. Garrettson & Co. You can see Mr. Garrettson by the window. See him?"
"Well, just you stay here and watch him; and if you see him do anything unusual or if anything happens in Garrettson's office that you think strange, run to our office and let me know. I'll be waiting for you. Don't be afraid to say so if you think something unusual is going on, because I tell you now that Mr. Garrettson never does anything unusual."
"If a bareheaded man came out of the office, stood at the head of the steps and threw an egg into the middle of the street, I'd call it unusual."
"Especially if I went up to the smashed egg and found the insides were of ink. It might be red ink or black."