“You need an envelope to mail that,” Vera pointed out.
He looked at it in surprise. “No time for another envelope! I’ll put it in the first one. I have to send my broker another ten thousand.”
“Can’t,” Vera said simply. “The first one’s been mailed.”
“It’s still here, isn’t it?”
“Well, yes.”
“Then I’ll add this to it. It’s my own envelope. These people are witnesses.” He turned to us for support, and Vera turned to Sheriff Lens.
“Don’t you have some sort of form he can fill out to retrieve an envelope he’s mailed?” the sheriff asked.
“Well, yes,” Vera Brock admitted.
“Then have him fill it out, give him the envelope so’s he can add to it, and then take it back again.”
“All right,” she agreed, turning toward the desk. “Except—”
“Except what?” the banker wanted to know.
“Except where in heck is that registered envelope?”
“You put it right on your desk,” I said. “I saw you do it.”
“I know I did, and I didn’t move it off of there.” She bent to peer under the desk, then straightened up. Her face was white as chalk. “It’s gone!” she said, her voice breaking.
“Now wait a minute,” I said, trying to calm everybody down. “If it is gone it’s not gone very far because nobody’s left this post office since you mailed it, Mr. Waters.” I turned to look at April and Miranda and Vera and Hume and the sheriff and Waters. “There are seven of us here. Either the envelope got misplaced somehow or one of us has it.”
“I was never anywhere near it,” Miranda protested. “You certainly can’t include me as a suspect, Sam.”
“None of us are suspects,” Sheriff Lens decided as Vera filled him in about the missing envelope. “It’s gotta be here someplace.”
The rest of us just stood there while Vera and the sheriff conducted a careful search, but the missing envelope was nowhere to be found. Anson Waters watched it all with growing impatience, glancing from time to time at the big clock on the wall. “Now it’s noon — I’m probably ruined by now! You can be darned sure the Post Office Department owes me ten thousand dollars!”
“It’ll turn up,” Vera said, though she didn’t sound too certain.
Finally Sheriff Lens turned to me. “Doc, what do you think?”
“We have to go about this systematically,” I decided. “The envelope was either stolen or misplaced. What was the size of it, Mr. Waters?”
“About nine by twelve inches, I think. It contained a bearer bond just like this one, with a covering letter. I wanted to send them flat, so I used a big envelope.”
“So it’s too big to have fallen into a drawer or behind the desk without being seen. The floor is covered with brand-new linoleum, so it couldn’t have fallen through a crack or anything like that. We’ve just finished searching for it without turning it up anywhere. I think we can conclude that it wasn’t misplaced. It was stolen.”
“The purloined letter!” Miranda exclaimed, though I could see the reference meant nothing to the others.
“That’s right,” I agreed. “In the Poe story the letter was in plain view all the time, only nobody noticed it. If, as Chesterton wrote, a wise man hides a leaf in a forest and a pebble on a beach, what better place to hide a stolen letter than in a post office?”
“Look here,” Vera said, “only the sheriff and I were behind the counter with that letter. Are you saying one of us must have stolen it?”
“You were sorting the morning’s mail, Vera. It would have been a simple task for you to slide the letter into one of those pigeonholes, to be retrieved later.”
April unwrapped a stick of chewing gum and popped it into her mouth. It was her one bad habit, but I usually let it pass. “You really think that’s where the missing letter is, Dr. Sam?”
“I think it’s worth a look.”
So we looked.
But we didn’t find the letter. It wasn’t with any of the other mail, either in the pigeonholes or the incoming and outgoing sacks.
“I told you so,” Vera announced, restored to grace. “I wouldn’t steal my own letter.”
“It’s my letter, not yours!” Anson Waters insisted.
“While it’s in this post office it’s mine,” Vera responded. “Even if I don’t know where it is.”
“All right, Sheriff,” I said. “You’re next.”
“What? Me?”
“Vera’s right, you know. You were the only other one to step behind that counter, and none of us could have reached the desk from this side.”
“But how could I have—”
“With that box. I read somewhere that the police in New York caught a shoplifter using a special box with a false bottom. You set your box on that desk, right on top of where the letter was.”
“I didn’t see no letter!”
“Nevertheless, I’m going to have to ask you to unwrap your box.”
“Come on, Doc!”
“Look, Sheriff, we’ve been friends a long time. But you’re a suspect like everyone else this time. I’m sorry about it.”
Sheriff Lens continued to grumble but he unwrapped the package. A close examination showed there was no false bottom, and nothing inside but some carefully wrapped jars that had contained moonshine liquor. There was no envelope.
“What does that do to your theory?” Waters asked, growing impatient. “You’ve offered two solutions but I haven’t seen you produce my missing envelope yet.”
I was still young and cocky in those days, and very sure of myself. “Don’t worry, Mr. Waters. There are seven of us here, and I can offer seven solutions. If Vera and Sheriff Lens didn’t steal your envelope we’ll have to look further afield.”
“But they were the only ones behind the counter,” Hume Baxter protested.
“But not the only ones who could have stolen the envelope. Let’s take you next, Hume. Suppose the sheriff pulled that envelope onto the floor when Vera yelled at him and he retreated a few steps with his box. It could have fallen just outside the counter opening, onto your drop cloths.”
“I didn’t—”
“And it could be hidden in one of the folds of those drop cloths right this minute. Suppose we have a look.”
So we searched the drop cloths, and just for good measure we had a careful look at his brushes and paint bucket too.
There was no envelope.
“This gets more impossible all the time,” April observed. “You think I might have stolen it too, Dr. Sam?”
“I’m afraid you’re a suspect with the rest of us, April. Once again, if the envelope fell just outside the counter opening, you might have picked it up while our attention was distracted by the sheriff and Vera.”
“And did what with it?”
“You’re chewing gum, April. You might have stuck the envelope to the underside of the counter with a wad of gum.”
It was such a likely explanation that they all bent down to look at once. But there was no envelope under the counter. There was nothing under the counter.
The little banker snorted. “You’re striking out every time, Hawthorne. Who’s next — your girl friend?”
I’d avoided looking at Miranda till now, but there was no way out of it now. “You could have picked it up and hidden it under your skirt, Miranda,” I said very quietly.
“Sam, the very idea! What do you intend to do, search me?”
“I want April and Vera to search you.”
“Sam!” She seemed close to tears. “Sam Hawthorne, if you make me do this I’ll never speak to you again!”
“I’m sorry, Miranda. I have to rule out every possibility.”
“Come on,” Vera suggested. “The three of us womenfolk will search each other. Then it won’t be so bad. You men turn your backs!”