The Second Confesion

I admit I tried to catch up. For instance, when he was up in the plant rooms Friday morning I did a thorough check of the photographs in his desk drawer, but they were all there. Not one gone. I made a couple of other well-intentioned efforts to get a line on his script, and not a glimmer. By Monday I was grabbing the mail each time a delivery came for a quick look, and hoping it was a telegram whenever the doorbell rang, and answering the phone in a hurry, because I had decided that the articles were just a gob of bait on a hook and we were merely sitting on the bank, hoping against hope for a bite. But if the bite was expected in the form of a letter or telegram or phone call, no fish.

Then Monday evening, in the office right after dinner, Wolfe handed me a sheet from his memo pad covered with his handwriting, and asked, “Can you read that, Archie?” The question was rhetorical, since his writing is almost as easy to read as print. I read it and told him, “Yes, sir, I can make it out.” “Type it on a Gazette letterhead, including the signature as indicated. Then I want to look at it. Address a Gazette envelope to Mr Albert Enright, Communist Party of the USA, thirty-five East Twelfth Street. One carbon, single-space.” “With a mistake or two, maybe?” “Not necessarily. You are not the only one in New York who can type well.” I pulled the machine around, got the paper out and put it in, and hit die keys.

When I took it out I read it over: June 27,1949.

Dear Mr Enright: I send this to you because I met you once and have heard you speak at meetings twice. You wouldn't know me if you saw me, and you wouldn't know my name.

I work at the Gazette. Of course you have seen the series that started on Sunday. I am not a Communist, but I approve of many things they stand for and I think they are getting a raw deal, and anyway I don't like traitors, and the man who is giving the Gazette the material for those articles is certainly a traitor. I think you have a right to know who he is. I have never seen him and I don't think he has ever come to the office, but I know the man here who is working with him on the articles, and I had a chance to get something which I believe will help you, and I am enclosing it in this letter. I have reason to know that it was in the folder that was sent to one of the executives to show him that the articles are authentic. If I told you more than that it might give you a hint of my identity, and I don't want you to know who I am.