‘Crickford’s,’ said Mr Salisbury, ‘agreed to make inquiries of their branches. They did. This package was delivered yesterday evening at their Balham Receiving Office. The customer, who did not give his name, paid the proper rate for delivery, asked when that delivery would be made, and …’ Mr Salisbury shrugged his plump shoulders despairingly, ‘… just went.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘According to what Crickford’s managing director told me on the phone, the clerk said that the sender was a “tall, foreign-looking gentleman.” Little beard, broken English, rather exaggerated clothes—that sort of thing. Came in a car.’
‘Car, did he?’ said Mr Mitchell. ‘Now did they …’
Mr Salisbury shook his head sadly. ‘Mitchell, they did not. They couldn’t tell me whether that car was blue or green, open or closed, English or American. They couldn’t tell anything. After all, poor devils, why should they?’
Mr Thurston Mitchell paced the Presidential room with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, and a frown drawing his eyebrows together into a rigid bar across his high-bridged nose. He said:
‘And there wasn’t anything, Salisbury? Nothing in those sacks except money?’
‘Nothing,’ said the President. ‘Nothing, Mitchell, of any description—except one grain of corn which I have here upon my desk. I thought I’d better keep it as a souvenir.’
‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the Vice-President.
‘Quite,’ said the President, ‘probably … Yes, Miss Winter, what is it?’
Miss Winter came to the Presidential desk. There was about her a certain excitement, intensely restrained, but discernible nevertheless. She bore, rather in the manner of an inexperienced but imaginative recruit carrying a bomb, a small, oblong brown-paper parcel. She placed it upon the Presidential table. She said:
‘This has just come, Mr Salisbury. By registered post. I thought I’d better let you have it at once because … well, because I fancy that the printing on it is the same as the printing on the sack label.’
The President stared. The Vice-President came to his shoulder and did the same thing.
‘By Jove!’ said the President. ‘It is! Here, Mitchell, you open it. You haven’t had a thrill today.’
The Vice-President, having borrowed Miss Winter’s penknife, cut the parcel string, unwrapped three separate coverings of brown paper and found at last a stout, small, deal box. It had a sliding lid like a child’s pencil-box. The Vice-President slid away the lid. He looked, and put the box down before the President. He said:
‘Look here, Salisbury, if any more of this goes on, I shall go and see a doctor. Look at that!’
Mr Salisbury looked at that. What he saw was a sheet of white paper, and in the centre of the sheet of white paper a new halfpenny …
‘Don’t,’ said the Vice-President, ‘look like that, Salisbury. Damn it, you don’t want any more money!’
The President removed the halfpenny and the sheet of paper. ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, ‘whether I want it or not!’
Underneath the sheet of paper were, in three lines of little round stacks, forty-six new pennies. They were counted, with a composure really terrific, by Miss Winter. And underneath them was another piece of plain white paper. But this piece of plain white paper bore in its centre—neatly printed with a thick pen and in thick black ink:
‘THIS IS THE BALANCE. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
Total: £287,499 3s. 10½d …
(Two hundred and eighty-seven thousand, four hundred and ninety-nine pounds, three shillings and tenpence halfpenny.)
N.B.—Not for Personal Use. For the coffers of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation.’
The President looked at the Vice-President. Both looked at Miss Winter.
‘Miss Winter,’ said the President, ‘would you be so very kind as to leave the room? I’m sure that in one moment Mr Mitchell will say something which it would be better for you not to hear.’
END OF EPILOGUE
Thursday, 28th March, 193— 9 a.m. to 12 noon
ENTWHISTLE, the Fordfield postman, pushed his bicycle up the steep hill into Little Ockleton. The sack upon his back was heavy and grew heavier. The March sun, even at half-past eight this morning, seemed to carry the heat of July. Entwhistle stopped, puffed and mopped his head. He thought, as he thought every morning, that something ought to be done by the authorities about this hill. He pushed on again and at last was able to mount.
It was so rarely that he had a letter for Pond Cottage that he was nearly a hundred yards past it when he remembered that not only did he have a letter for Pond Cottage but that he had an unstamped letter for Pond Cottage. That meant collecting no less than threepence from Pond Cottage’s occupier. The extra hundred yards which he had given himself was alleviated by the thought that at last—if indeed Mr Marsh were at home—he would see Mr Marsh and talk to Mr Marsh. He had heard so many stories about Mr Marsh and never had occasion to add one of his own to the many, that the prospect was almost pleasing. He dismounted, rested his bicycle against the little green paling and went through the gate and up the untidy, overgrown, flagged path.
Mr Marsh, it seemed, was at home. In any event, the leaded windows of the room upstairs stood wide.
Entwhistle knocked with his knuckles upon the door … No reply. He fumbled in his satchel until he found the offending, stampless letter … He knocked again. Again no answer came. Perhaps after all he was not going to see and talk with the exciting Mr Marsh. Still, one more knock couldn’t do any harm! He gave it and this time an answer did come—from above his head. An answer in a deep guttural voice which seemed to have a curious and foreign and throaty trouble with its r’s.
‘Put the dratted letters down!’ said the voice. ‘Leave ’em on the step. I’ll fetch ’em.’
Entwhistle bent back, tilting his head until from under the peak of his hat he could see peering down at him from that open window the dark-spectacled, dark-complexioned and somewhat uncomfortable face of Mr Marsh. Mr Marsh’s grey moustache and little pointed grey beard seemed, as Entwhistle had so often heard they did, to bristle with fury.
He coughed, clearing his throat. ‘Carn’ do that, sir,’ he said. ‘Letter ’ere without a stamp. I’ll ’ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’
‘You’ll have to trouble me for … What the hell are you talking about? Put the damn letters down, I say, and get your ugly face out of here. Standing there! You look like a … Put the letters down and be off.’
Very savage, the voice was.
Entwhistle began to experience a doubt as to whether it would be quite as amusing to see and talk to Mr Marsh as he had supposed. But he stuck to his guns.
‘Carn’ do that, sir. Letter ’ere unstamped. ’Ave to trouble you for threepence, sir.’
‘Dios!’ said the voice at the window, or some sound like that. The window shut with a slam. Involuntarily Entwhistle took a backward step. He half-expected, so violent had been the sound, to have a pane of glass upon his hat. He stood back a little from the doorstep. He could hear quite distinctly steps coming down the creaking staircase and then the door was flung open. In the doorway stood a tall,