To a reporter, who, two or three years ago and in some manner as yet unknown to me, found and seized the opportunity to slice herself a piece of very rich cake. It’s one of those things that happens almost every day, somewhere in the world. I am forced to compliment the clever reporter on her astute handling of the reins. If she hadn’t once been in love with a nosey, second-rate detective named Charles Horne she might still be in the driver’s seat.
It was pointed out to me that the smashing of the honest-to-God love between Leonore and Harry Evans, over a delicate thing like an unborn child, could only have been a woman’s trick. A man would have been more direct, would have used a simple and sure method, a bullet. I had mistakenly credited Elizabeth Saari for that womanly trick.
It was also pointed out to me that someone was aware of every move I made. I
Uncle Jack, the City Hall porter, lost his job after I mentioned in my letter to you that I used him as a contact man. My visit to Eleanor in the Croyden apartment was known only after I told you about it. Eleanor, you see, was in no personal danger that night at the farmhouse because you hadn’t yet received my letter in which she figured. But the next day she was shot in the shoulder and that elaborate double-cross set up.
And there is the matter of Ashley having my photograph. There are but two recent pictures of me in existence. Mother Hubbard has one on her mantelpiece. Where is the one I gave you, Louise?
Thompson is trying to reach me on the phone as I write this, wanting me to explain those time lapses. I’m not going to answer it now, not tonight. I don’t want to tell him tonight that I’ve been writing you letters, enabling you to keep up with my every move, but from six to twenty-four hours behind me.
If, that night at the farmhouse, you
If you are a clever girl, Louise, you will have never received these final letters. You will have packed and vanished when they first hinted the game was in its last stages.
If you aren’t as smart as I’ve believed, then this is all I can do for you. This will be put on the southbound train an hour or so from now, it will be a special delivery. If you are still in Capitol City you’ll be reading these lines shortly after sunrise. And I promise you, Louise, that Don Thompson won’t find me — anywhere — until noon, at least.
I owe you that much.
I owe it to you because you are my wife, and I love you. It does no good to say we should have tried harder to make a success of our marriage; and it’s equally useless for me to remind you that I never liked this experiment of five years’ separation to determine whether we should live together again, or call it quits and divorce. I’m only sorry that we were separated for those three years that can never be recaptured.
So long, darling. I offer you my apologies for being the man who pulled your house of cards down around you. We’ve had a lot of good times together.
And Louise... I hope they never catch you.
Dr. Elizabeth Saari pushed open the door without knocking and stood on his threshold.
“Chuck,” she asked him, “will you carry the suitcases down to the car for me? Mother stuffed everything she won’t need for the next two months into them. She just called me at this hour of the night! She wants me to bring them over to the hotel.”
He stood up, pulled a sheet of paper from the typewriter, scribbled his signature on it, and placed it in an envelope.
“That I will,” he answered wearily, “if you’ll do me a favor in return.”
“Name it.”
“Drive me down to the train. I want this to go out tonight.”
“Gladly. Oh, Chuck — hadn’t you better open that telegram? It might be important.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t, now. It’s from Rothman, the detective in Croyden. It will tell me that he has checked on you all the way back to your kindergarten days, and has found you perfectly wonderful.”
