Twenty minutes have passed. I’ve waited for you to come home, Charles, and now at last you’re here, and I’ve told you everything. I’m sorry I had to keep this little gun pointed at you all the while, but without it I hardly think you’d have agreed to listen to me.
No. I thought not.
I expect you hate me now for having cuckolded you, but that doesn’t matter. The horn I have placed on your forehead is a feather compared to the more weighty problems of the moment.
Margo’s confession, by the by, is in the envelope on the table beside you. Ill wait, if you’d care to read it and verify my tale.
Am I going to obey Margo’s command? Is it my intention to murder you?
Well. I had thought, at first, of an alternate solution, one both complex and satisfactory. If you’ll look once more at the confession. Charles, you’ll see that, read a certain way, it could also be construed as a suicide note. Do you follow me?
Of course. I would hit Margo on the head with something hard — the butt of this little gun, say — and wait for you to come home, as I have. Whereupon I would shoot you — if Margo was to have committed suicide in remorse at having murdered you, it followed that you would have to be murdered — then throw Margo out the window, hurry to Central Park to rid myself of the gun, and be safe from both of you forever.
In her office, behind her as she sat at the desk, I raised the gun above her...
And couldn’t do it.
No. I am too weak a creature for such blood-letting. Margo, in her talk of morality, forgot one thing: cowardice is far stronger a moral force than conscience. And if I could not kill her, whom I hate and fear, how less likely that I could kill you.
No, Charles, you won’t die at my hand. But perhaps you will die at someone’s — and I at Margo’s if you yourself do not take the offensive.
This is my solution: just as Margo flung me at your head, I now fling you at hers. You are, I believe, stronger than I and more likely to succeed. If you weren’t, Margo would surely have dispatched you herself. I wish you, most earnestly, bon chance.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must run.
Sniff
Albert felt the sniffles first on Monday, which was Post Office Day, but he didn’t worry about them very much. In his experience, the sniffles came and went with the changing of the seasons, never serious enough even to need a call on the family doctor; how should he have known that these sniffles were the harbinger of more than spring? There was no reason to think that this time...
Well. Monday, at any rate, was Post Office Day, as every Monday had been for well over a year now. Sniffles or no sniffles, Albert went through his normal Post Office Day routine just the same as ever. That is, at five minutes before noon he took a business-size white envelope from the top left drawer of his desk, placed it in the typewriter, and addressed it to himself, thusly:
Albert White
c/o General Delivery
Monequois, N.Y.
Then, after looking around cautiously to be absolutely certain Mr. Clement was nowhere in sight, he put a return address in the upper left-hand corner, like so:
After five days return to:
Bob Harrington
Monequois Herald-Statesman
Monequois, N.Y.
Finally, taking the envelope from the typewriter, Albert affixed a five-cent stamp to it from his middle desk drawer and tucked the still-empty envelope away in the inside pocket of his jacket. (It was one of his small but intense and very secret pleasures that Mr. Clement himself, all unknowing, was actually supplying the stamps to keep the system in operation.)
Typing the two addresses on the envelope had taken most of the final five minutes till noon, and putting his desk in order consumed- the last several seconds, so that at exactly twelve o’clock Albert could stand, turn to the right, walk to the door, and leave the office for lunch, closing behind himself the door on which was painted the legend JASON CLEMENT, Attorney-at-Law.
His first stop, this and every Monday lunchtime, was in the Post Office, where he claimed the bulky white envelope waiting for him in General Delivery. “Here we are, Mr. White!” cried Tom the Postal Clerk, as usual. “The weekly scandal!”
Albert and Tom the Postal Clerk had come to know one another fairly well in the course of the last fifteen months, what with Albert dropping in every Monday for his General Delivery letter. In order to allay any suspicion that might have entered Tom the Postal Clerk’s mind, Albert had early on explained that Bob Harrington, the well-known crusading reporter on the Monequois newspaper, had employed Albert as a son of legman to check out leads and tips and confidential information that had been sent in by the newspaper’s readers. “It’s a part-time job,” Albert had explained, “in addition to my regular work for Mr. Clement, and it’s very hush-hush. That’s why Bob sends me the material care of General Delivery. And why we make believe we don’t even know one another.”
Tom the Postal Clerk had grinned and winked and cried, “Mum’s the word!”
But later on Tom the Postal Clerk apparently did some thinking, because one Monday he said to Albert, “Why is it you let this stuff sit around here so long? Almost a week, most times.”
“I’m supposed to pick up mail on Monday,” Albert answered, “no matter when Bob may send it out to me. If I were to come in here every day of the year it might cause suspicion.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Tom the Postal Clerk, and nodded wisely. But then he said, “You know, you don’t want to miss. You see this up here in the corner, this ‘After five days return to—’ Well, that means exactly what it says. If you don’t pick one of these up in the five days, well, that’s it.”
Albert said, “Would you really send it back?”
“Well, we’d have to,” said Tom the Postal Clerk. “That’s the regulations, Mr. White.”
“I’m glad,” said Albert. “I know Bob wouldn’t want information like this sitting around too long. If I ever let a letter stay more than five days, you go ahead and send it back. Bob and I will both thank you.”
“Check,” said Tom the Postal Clerk.
“And you won’t ever give one of these letters to somebody who says he’s from me.”
“Definitely not, Mr. White. It’s you or nobody.”
“I mean, even if you got a phone call from somebody who said he was me and he was sending a friend to pick up the letter in my place.”
Tom the Postal Clerk winked and said, “I know what you’re getting at, Mr. White. I know what you mean. And don’t you worry. The U.S. Mails won’t let you down. No one will ever get delivery on any of these letters but you or Mr. Harrington, and that’s guaranteed.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Albert said, and meant every word of it.
In the months since then, Tom the Postal Clerk had had no more questions, and life had gone along sunnily. Of course, it was necessary these days for Albert to read Bob Harrington’s column in the Herald-Statesman, since from time to time Tom the Postal Clerk would mention some one of the incredible scandals Bob Harrington was incessantly digging up and want to know if Albert had had anything to do with that particular case. In most instances, Albert said no, explaining that the majority of leads he was given turned out to be worthless. When he did from time to time admit that yes, such-and-such a ruined reputation or exposed misdeed had been a part of his undercover work for Bob Harrington, Tom the Postal Clerk beamed like a quiz-show winner. (Tom the Postal Clerk was obviously a born conspirator who had never — till now — found an outlet for his natural bent.)