100 Malicious Little Mysteries

The Prisoner by Edward Wellen

He absently brushed a few specks of dust from the desk but did not really feel in the mood to get down to work. He looked around the cluttered office. There was so much to do. And, God knew, he desperately wanted nothing to go wrong.

But on impulse he quietly — any sudden loud noise would bring a guard running — opened the bottom right drawer and took out his binoculars. The binoculars were a way of escape. He kept to one side of the window, out of sight of the guard he heard coughing and shifting below the window, and peered out beyond the gate.

It was just past dawn, and traffic was light in the streets outside his prison. He focused the binoculars. At the nearest intersection came the young paper boy riding his bike no-handedly. He could not hear, of course, but from the cant of the head he knew the boy was whistling or singing.

Suddenly a car shot into sight, taking the turn too swiftly, too sharply. It struck the bike, toppling the boy and his basket of papers. The car slammed to a shivering stop.

Instinctively he burned the license-plate number into his mind.

The driver’s door opened. The driver got out and with the exaggerated sobriety of the truly drunken walked back to the still form, looked down at it, then with a shock into true sobriety looked wildly around, hurried back into his seat, and drove off.

Watching it all, he himself felt a shock into something beyond sobriety. He should have recognized the car on sight, for he had seen it before, had more than once from this same window seen Pardee breeze by with the top down. And each time he had smiled a twisted smile knowing the thought that must have gone through Pardee’s mind as he passed by: by God, he was inside these walls of gray sandstone painted white and Pardee was outside.

He started guiltily from his trance, hearing the siren of an ambulance, nearing, nearing, then on the spot and moaning into silence. He had known instantly, by the terrible fling and the ragdoll fall, and by the mangled bike, that the boy was past saving. Still he felt thankful someone had quickly sent for help. It was now out of his hands.

Grimly he put back the binoculars and started to work. Someone else must have seen Pardee, just as someone else had seen the still form in the street and summoned the ambulance.

But no. As the day wore on, he managed to listen to the local news broadcasts and learned the police had no leads to the hit-and-run driver.

His mouth tightened. He could not remain silent. But it would be impossible for him to speak out. He thought wryly how much easier it would’ve been for him to identify Pardee. The man was someone he didn’t know.

He could not go into court and permit a clever defense lawyer to cross-examine him and make capital of the dislike he and Pardee had for each other.

“Isn’t it a fact that you and Mr. Pardee have been known to be enemies for years?”

He would have to say yes. It was the truth.

But even if he got off with merely giving a deposition, the shadow of suspicion would linger — more than a shadow, a stain — the suspicion that private spite had lurked behind public spirit.

He looked around in frustration at the walls that closed him in.

Then voices broke in on him, voices from the yard outside. He had forgotten. It was a Visitors Day.

The people passing in through the gate were usually a distraction, but now their hushed intensity was a convicing reminder of where he was.

He eyed the phones on the desk ruefully. One disguised call to the local police would suffice; but he could hardly make an anonymous call from here.

Then he had it. The least he could do — and the most — was to write an anonymous note. The time was now, while he thought of it and had this rare chance.

He stepped back to the desk, drew a piece of stationery toward him, stood leaning over it, and picked up a pen to begin. No. First things first. He took up a ruler, covered the letterhead, then lifted the bottom of the sheet to tear it off below the letterhead. But as he did so, light passed through the paper, outlining the watermark. He let the sheet fall flat. All the stationery on the desk bore that revealing letterhead and watermark.

The scratch pad. He took up the ballpoint pen again and printed his message painstakingly in characterless block letters. No one would ever find out he had written it or that it had come from within these walls.

But what now? Even if he found a plain envelope he would never be able to smuggle the letter out. He might manage to pass through the mail room, but how could he slip the envelope into the outgoing mail without someone noticing? He was always being watched.

Cross that bridge when he came to it. He was wasting time. He whirled his glance around the room and saw a book on a shelf in a plain dust wrapper. He grabbed the book and pulled. It was tightly wedged in and pulling it out caused a book alongside to fall to the floor.

The thump of the book on the carpet had an echoing thump in his heart. He waited frozen for a guard to rush in. No one came. He let out his breath slowly. The carpet had a deep pile and the thump had seemed louder to him than it really was.

He took off the dust wrapper and spread it out on the desk. He found a used envelope stuffed with some news clippings, dumped the clippings into the wastebasket, and pulled the side and bottom flaps of the envelope unstuck. Using the spreadeagled envelope as a pattern, he cut the dust wrapper to its shape and matched the folds. Now he had a plain envelope. He shoved the letter inside, sealed all the flaps with dabs from a small stick of glue, then printed an address on the envelope.

All that had taken only a few minutes. The group of visitors was off to one side still admiring the garden. Now to distract the guard under the window.

He tossed a pen — there were lots of pens — into a bush off to the right. The alert guard whipped around, reaching for his gun in the same motion, and headed for the bush.

Quickly now, while the guard’s back was turned. He sailed the envelope out to the left. He agonized over its flight — rather, its fall; watched it tilt and plummet like a broken-winged bird until a swirl of wind carried it out into the open near the path.

The guard came back to his post, shaking his head.

Time passed. The sky darkened. It was clouding up to rain, and rain would beat the address on the envelope into soggy illegibility. The guard had still not noticed it.

Then the man coming on to relieve the guard saw it and picked it up.

“What’s this?”

“Dunno. Let’s have a look.”

They frowned over the address.

“Guess one of the visitors left it there. I better take it right in.”

Listening to them he smiled. Then a thought struck him and he stepped quickly away from the window and went to the desk.

He could barely make out the shadow-edged imprint of his message on the top sheet of the scratch pad.

The message ended with the car’s license-plate number.

Hurriedly he tore off the top half-dozen sheets, made a spill of them, lit a match, and burned the sheets to char in the ashtray.

Just in time. There was a buzz. He pressed a switch.

“Yes?” he said, his voice calm.

“Sorry to break in on you, Mr. President, but something politically touchy has just come up—”

Politically touchy, yes. They had done a quick check on the license number. But no one — not even Senator Pardee — could reproach him for forwarding an anonymous letter to the Chief of Police for the District of Columbia.