The yellow letter Author:William Johnston Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III THE SECOND CLUE CAN'T do it, Harding. You are asking an impossibility." I was sitting in Inspector Davis' room in the post-office building. ... more »The first thing in the morning I had gone there to enlist his aid in clearing up the mystery that hung over the Farrish home. With the confidence based on a friendship that had its beginnings in boyhood association I felt sure he would do all he could to help me. I wanted, if possible, to learn through him whence had come the yellow letter. Miller Davis, though only a year older than I, already had become one of the government's most trusted secret agents. His rise in the service had been phenomenally rapid. The robbery of the post- office where he was employed had given him his start. A little later, with the merest thread to follow, he had run to earth a skilful band of stamp counterfeiters, and three of its members were now serving long terms. Only a year ago, when all the other inspectors had failed to find the flaw in the registry service that permitted a red-striped sack with two hundred thousand dollars' worth of registered mail to disappear, Davis, putting his keen, analytical mind on the case, within a week had discovered the flaw in the system and only a few days later had arrested the ex-convict who had profited by it. With the natural interest of an old friend I had followed his career and was familiar with most of his brilliant achievements. Even though the scrap which was puzzling me had no envelope and bore no postmark, so confident was I in his far-reaching powers I would hardly have been amazed if he had told me all about it as soon as I showed it to him. Imagine, then, my disappointment at his absolute refusal to take up the matter at all. "Don't you see how important it is?" I cried. "This littl...« less