Dear Cousin George:
Now that you have identified me by referring to my signature on the last page (which I had just done) you will no doubt wonder at the occasion for this rather effusive letter from one so long silent as I have been. The fact of the matter is that you are the only male relative with whom I can communicate at this time. My nephew, Ralph, is first officer of a freighter somewhere in the Caribbean, and Alfred Hutton, your mother’s first cousin, has not been heard from since he embarked on that colonizing scheme in New Guinea, nearly a year ago.
I must do all in my power to prevent the bungling metropolitan police from implicating Howard Marsden in my disappearance. It would take no great stretch of the imagination to do just that, and were the State to require Marsden’s life as forfeit for my own, then my carefully planned revenge would be utterly frustrated. I have been cultivating the village postmaster for some weeks, ever since this plan began to shape definitely in my mind. I am mailing this letter at three o’clock this afternoon, for I have noticed that at that hour the postal section of the store is generally deserted. I shall ask him if his clock is correct, thus fixing the time in his mind. Please remember these points. Then I shall register this letter, taking care to exhibit the unusual collection of seals on the back. I shall manage to inform him also that I stamped the seals with my ring and will show him the coat-of-arms, explaining its meaning in detail. These villagers are a curiosity-ridden lot. Upon returning home, I shall drop this same ring into the inkwell which stands upon my desk. Finally I shall proffer my friend the postmaster a fifty-dollar bill in paying for my registry. The registry slip itself will be found within the hatband of my brown hat, which I shall place in the wall safe of my study.
You are becoming more amazed as you proceed, no doubt asking yourself if this letter is the product of a madman or a faker. Before you have finished you will probably be assured that both assumptions are correct. It matters little, for I will at least have firmly established the fact that this letter was mailed by no one else but me. As for the rest, Howard Marsden will corroborate what follows.
To begin at the beginning. As you know, or perhaps you do not know, for I forget that our correspondence has been negligible of late, five years ago I accompanied the Rodgers expedition into Afghanistan. We were officially booked as a geological mission, but were actually in search of radium, among other things. When I left, I was practically engaged to Venice Potter, a distant relation of the Long Island Potters, of whom you have perhaps heard. I say “practically” engaged because the outcome of this expedition was to furnish me with the standing and position necessary for a formal demand for her hand. As I said, that was nearly five years ago.
Four months after my departure her letters ceased coming and mine were returned to me unopened. Two months later I received an announcement of her betrothal to Howard Marsden. Received it out there in Afghanistan, when I had returned to the coast for supplies. We’ll skip that next year, during which I stuck with the expedition. We were successful. I returned.
Then I found out where the Marsdens were living, here in Eastport. I’d met Marsden once or twice in the old days, but paid him little attention at the time. He seemed but another of the moneyed idlers; had a comfortable income from his father’s estate and was interested in “gentleman farming,”—blooded stock and the rest. I decided that it was useless to dig into dead ashes for the time being, at least until I could determine the lay of the land, so to speak. Meanwhile I had my researches to make, a theory I had evolved as a sort of backfire to fill that awful void of Venice’s loss,—out there on the edge of the world. Countless sleepless nights I had spent in a feverish attempt to lose myself in scientific speculation. At last I believed I had struck a clue to conclusions until now entirely overlooked by eager searchers. I decided to establish my laboratory here in Eastport, perhaps devoting any leisure hours to an unravelling of that mystery of my sudden jilting. With a two-year-old beard and sunbaked complexion there were few who would have recognized me under my real name, and none in my assumed role of “Professor Walters.”
Thus it was that I leased an old house not half a mile from Marsden’s pretentious “farm.” I converted the entire ground floor into a laboratory, living in solitary state upon the upper floor. I was used to caring for myself, and the nature of my experiment being of such potentialities, I felt that I wanted no prying servants about me. Indeed, it has turned out to be of such international importance that I feel no compunction whatever in utilizing it for my own selfish ends. It could be a boon to humanity, yet its possibilities for evil in the hands of any individual or group is so great as to render it most dangerous to the happiness of the human kind on this small globe.
One day, some three months after I had taken up my residence in Eastport, I had a visitor. It was Marsden. He had been attracted by the sight of my novel aerial, just completed. By his own admission he was an ardent “radio fan,” as they are popularly termed, I believe, and he spent the better part of an afternoon bragging of stations he had “logged” with his latest model radio set. Aside from my vague suspicions of his complicity in the alienation of my beloved Venice, I must admit that even then I felt an indefinable repulsion towards him. There was something intangibly unwholesome about him, a narrowness between the eyes which repelled me. Yet, although at that time I had no plan in mind, nevertheless I encouraged him in my most hospitable manner, for even thus early I felt, that at some time not far distant, I might be called upon to utilize this acquaintanceship to my own advantage.
This first visit was followed by others, and we discussed radio in all its phases, for the man had more than a smattering of technical knowledge on the subject and was eager to learn more. At last, one day, I yielded to his insistence that I inspect his set and agreed to dine at his house the following evening. By now I felt secure in my disguise, and although I dreaded the moment when I should actually confront my lost love once more, yet I longed for the sweet pain of it with an intensity which a hard-shelled bachelor like you will never understand. Enough. I arrived at the Marsden’s the next evening and was duly presented to my hostess as “Thomas Walters.” In spite of my private rehearsals I felt a wave of giddiness sweep over me as I clasped that small white hand in my own after the lapse of almost five years, for she was, if possible, lovelier than ever. I noted when my vision cleared that her eyes had widened as they met mine. I realized that my perturbation had been more apparent than I imagined and managed to mutter something about my alleged “weak heart,” a grimmer jest by far than I intended. Frantically I fortified myself with remembrances of those barren days in Afghanistan, where I stayed on and on, impotent to raise a hand in the salvage of my heart’s wreckage.