"Yes."
That would be like Mary Lockwood, I remembered. She would always want to be something more than just; she would want to be merciful—with others. I was the only one guilty of an offense which could not be overlooked!
"But why Mary Lockwood?" I asked, for something to say.
"She seemed to think I ought to be given a chance." Criswell spoke with listless heaviness, as though Mary Lockwood's pity, as though any one's pity, were a thing of repugnance to him.
"A matter of thumbs down," I murmured. He looked at me blankly; the idiom had not reached his intelligence. I crossed to the table and poured him out another glass of Bristol Milk.
"You say you did things to show you weren't coordinating properly," I went on. "Now, going back to possibilities, mightn't there have been a touch of aphasia? Mightn't you have done something with that letter and had no memory of what it was?"
"It's not aphasia—it never was that," calmly retorted the unhappy-eyed young man. "You couldn't dignify it with a name like that. And it never amounted to anything serious. I carried on all my office work without a hitch, without one mistake. But, as I told you before, I was working under pressure, and I hadn't been sleeping well. I did the bigger things without a mistake, but I often found I was doing them automatically."
"Then let's go back once more to those possibilities. Could the letter have been misdirected, absent-mindedly? Could it have gone to one of Carlton's addresses?"
"Every address has been canvassed. The thing's been verified through the local post-office, and through the Montreal office. That part of it's as clear as daylight. A letter came to this office of Lockwood's addressed to Carlton. It held six thousand dollars in cash. I received it and signed for it. The man to whom it was addressed never received it. Neither the money nor the letter was ever seen again. And the last record of it ends with me. Is it any wonder they've got that gum-shoe man trailing me about every move I make?"
"Wait," I cried, still conjecturing along the field of possibilities. "Why mightn't that letter have come in a second envelope which you removed after its receipt? Why mightn't it have come addressed to Lockwood or the firm?"