The Rector and the Rogue [antikvár]

chapter i INTIMATIONS OF ROGUERY If the Reverend Dr. Morgan Dix, rector of Trinity Parish in New York City, had been so benighted as to believe in pixies, he would have sworn they were abroad on that otherwise pleasant Wednesday, February 18, 1880. The most mysterious and appalling visitation that ever befell him was foreshadowed by a cloud no bigger than a small child's hand. In his mail that morning he received one letter that puzzled him. It was from the Acme Safe Company in downtown Manhattan, whose manager thanked him for his inquiry, enclosed a price list along with literature describing a complete line of office safes and said that a representative would call. Although his parish property was valued in the millions, the rector left the husbanding of it to others. He needed no safe and had addressed no such inquiry. He had his secretary write the Acme manager explaining that an error had been made and asking him not to bother sending a salesman on a useless errand. The letter was hardly mailed before the Acme man, sporting splendid mutton-chop