the office, find out who gave him the note; get his description.
Then meet me at Delmonico's."

Rumson called up that restaurant and had Wharton come to the phone.
He asked his chief to wait until a letter he believed to be of
great importance was delivered to him. He explained, but, of
necessity, somewhat sketchily. "It sounds to me," commented his
chief, "like a plot of yours to get a lunch up- town."

"Invitation!" cried Rumson. "I'll be with you in ten minutes."

After Rumson had joined Wharton and Bissell the note arrived. It
was brought to the restaurant by a messenger-boy, who said that in
answer to a call from a saloon on Sixth Avenue he had received it
from a young man in ready-to-wear clothes and a green hat. When
Hewitt, the detective, asked what the young man looked like, the
boy said he looked like a young man in ready-to-wear clothes and a
green hat. But when the note was read the identity of the man who
delivered it ceased to be of importance. The paper on which it was
written was without stamped address or monogram, and carried with
it the mixed odors of the drug-store at which it had been
purchased. The handwriting was that of a woman, and what she had
written was: "If the district attorney will come at once, and
alone, to Kessler's Cafe, on the Boston Post Road, near the city
line, he will be told who killed Hermann Banf. If he don't come in
an hour, it will be too late. If he brings anybody with him, he
won't be told anything. Leave your car in the road and walk up the
drive. Ida Earle."

Hewitt, who had sent away the messenger-boy and had been called in