New York City, 1920

Friday, February 6th, 1920. The blizzard had besieged New York for a third day, and there seemed no end in sight. The city was draped in a dirty, gray-white pall, with horse carts and automobiles crawling the streets like streams of worker ants. 

At Penn Station, I followed Mr. Wilde’s meticulous instructions to the letter, but the foul weather impeded my progress. I found myself picking through banks of packed snow along Sixth Avenue, piled waist high by muttering road men to keep the traffic moving, until at last I arrived at a nondescript premises on Bleecker Street. Up a set of rickety stairs, at the end of a narrow corridor, the door had been left ajar. I quietly slipped inside. 

“Were you followed?”

“No. I doubled back at Washington Square Park by the new Lethal Chamber, just to be sure.”

“I’m surprised you could see anything in this squall, Stuyvesant’s statue has been all but erased by the snow. Now, Mr. Bardin, tell me all.”

Silence crept over the office once I'd finished, until all that could be heard was Mr. Wilde’s ragged breaths in time with the hammer’s tinkle from the workshop below us. Somewhere, a cat mewled.

Finally, Mr. Wilde produced an ancient, cracked leather wallet.

"For expenses, Mr. Bardin. Ten thousand await the Yellow Sign, and more will follow."