Approximately a week went by. A week made up of five torturing years, not days.
He kept watching his coat, kept watching his coat.
He saw his chance, one day.
Wise had left it over the chair, gone outside for something for a minute. Maybe to the washroom, or to smoke a cigarette in the hall (they weren’t allowed to do that in the office). It was a warm day, anyway, they were all working without their coats.
There wasn’t much time. He had to improvise rapidly. I’ll say I... I needed a pencil, if he catches me. He could see one there, peering from the inside pocket. He took his own, pressed it point-down against his desk a minute until the weight broke off the point, then flung it aside, got up and went swiftly over to the coat.
No one was paying any attention. In boldness lay his greatest safety, except insofar as the coat’s owner himself was concerned. Just a man stepping to a fellow worker’s desk for a moment. He took it by the lapel and widened it from the semi-rounded position the chair back gave it.
The label would have been the first revelation, but this had already been imparted by Wise’s own admission to him, robbed of any intrinsic value. “Saks and Co., New York.” He already knew Wise came from there.
His fingers clawed down into the pocket. An envelope came up between them, sealed and addressed for mailing but not yet stamped. He unsheathed it only part of the way, just high enough for the address to clear the pocket’s mouth.
William MacDonald
372 Broadway
New York, N. Y.
He let it fall back. He could hear Wise’s steps outside returning to the door.
Wise’s eye would have caught him still in motion — on the way back to his own desk — had it rested on him at the first moment of opening the door. But it was cast in a different direction first, and by the time it had glanced desultorily over where he was, he was already settled and still.
Wise picked up the coat and started out with it once more.
One of the others pointed up the act — though to Marshall it needed no pointing up — by calling out to him ribaldly:
“Hey, Wise, do you always take your coat with you when you go to the can?”
“Any objections?” Wise answered drily, and went on out with it.
He remembered just in time that that letter was in the pocket of it, Marshall said to himself. He’s writing to someone in New York. And he doesn’t want anyone to see what he’s writing, or get hold of it.
I should have taken it out of the pocket; I had time. I didn’t have enough nerve. That was my one chance. Now it’s gone beyond recovery.
If it’s a report, I wonder how often he sends one? He must send them in at regular intervals. Once a month? Too far apart? Once a week? That would be about right. Today was Wednesday. I’ll try again next Wednesday — if I last that long.
Wednesday came. He thought it never could, but it did.
He watched Wise closely; eyes never once directly on him, but not missing a move, a stir, he made. He waited to see if Wise would get up again and leave the room. He didn’t. Things like that don’t repeat themselves. Life doesn’t repeat itself. He’d just been fidgety, wanted a cigarette; or else he’d been uncomfortable, wanted to leave the room. Today he didn’t want a cigarette, he didn’t want to leave the room.
Marshall tried to think of ways of getting him out of the room; couldn’t. They were on an equality, on a par, he couldn’t send him on an errand, send him with a message. He would have refused to go. Marshall could have invited him to step outside with him for a smoke, or downstairs for a coke, and that probably would have worked, but that would have defeated its own object, for then they would both have been out of the room together. And the coat, and the pocket, would have been even more out of reach than now.
He did no work at all, he sat there dully pondering. Now with his cheek pressed against the upturn of his hand, now with his forehead braced by both hands, interfolded. And it was getting late, and within another half hour it would be time for Wise to leave for the day, and if there was anything waiting in his pocket, it would go into the mailbox downstairs, beyond recall.
Suddenly, somewhere outside the windows, in the street below, some sort of blurred commotion became noticeable. Everyone in the office became aware of it at approximately the same time, as is the way with such things, after it had already been going on for some time and slowly but steadily mounting in intensity. Within moments of its discovery it had erupted into a climax of onrushing apparatus and shrilly clanging fire-engine bells. They all rushed to the windows pell-mell, and in an instant a line of headless rumps, three to a sill, was all that could be seen of them.
All but Marshall. He wouldn’t have cared if the building itself were burning around him. He too jumped from his seat. But it was only as far as Wise’s coat on the adjoining chair back that he went. And it was into the refuge of its inner breast pocket that his hand fled like a frightened bird fluttering to cover.
It was even riskier than the effort of the week before had been. Wise was right there not six feet away from him, all he had to do was turn his head. But Marshall, with the desperation almost of insanity, wouldn’t let himself be deterred. And that was what he was, if only for those few fleeting seconds, insane to consequences.
His fingers found it, and they pulled it clear of the sheath-like lining. There it was again all but identical to the one before.
William MacDonald
372 Broadway
New York City
And yet he could be sure that it was a second, succeeding one, and not the original one that he’d glimpsed the week before, and which perhaps had been left unmailed and carried forgotten in Wise’s pocket ever since then, because of a variation in the city address which had crept in: “New York, N. Y.” and “New York City.” New York was the only city in the country so great that it would overshadow its own namesake-state like that and keep the face of an envelope all to itself.
It must be a report. A man didn’t write to another man once a week; not even to a male relative. Only in or on business. And his, Wise’s, business was supposedly here where he was writing from, and not there where he was writing to.
The distance from where he held it now, back to where he had just taken it from, was a fraction of an inch, was less. The distance from where he held it now, out and over and around to concealment on his own person, was many inches, a whole foot and more, of circuitous, involved motion.
Again he was saved by something that, if it was not blind luck, must have been sheer genius of instinct. A psychic ability to guess an impending intention, even before it had been carried out.
Look out, something warned him, he’s going to turn around. Here comes his head!
He had to jerk his hand back unaccompanied, even then he escaped detection only by the blink of an eye. The added length the letter would have given his whisked-back arm would have ensured betrayal in itself. There would have been that much more to put from sight. The whiteness of its color would have caught the eye that much quicker.
“False alarm,” Wise was saying to him. “That little haberdashery across the street, know the one? They’re already coming out again.”
He took one added look for good measure, to make sure he wasn’t missing anything, before he finally abandoned the window sill altogether. But by that time Marshall was already back at his own seat.
10
The name had branded itself behind his forehead. He couldn’t have forgotten it if he’d wanted to. And, oh, he didn’t want to, above all else he didn’t want to do that! It burned and ached fully as much as a literal, physically applied brand would have, even though the searing was from inside out and not from outside in.