What he ought to do was take the letter to the post office—Mr. Gross would be the one to see—and let them decide whether this Hesterson was using the mails to defraud. Let Mr. Gross and his department try to find 746 in the six-story Ochterlonie Building. As a faithful employee for 35 years, it was Sam's plain duty.
But then it would be out of his hands forever; he'd never even find out what happened. And he'd be back in the dull morass that retirement was turning out to be.
"Sam!" Mollie yelled outside the locked door. "Aren't you ever coming out of there?"
"I'm coming, I'm coming!" He put the letter and its enclosure back in the envelope and placed them in a pocket.
Time enough to decide that afternoon what he was going to do.
He escaped after lunch to what was becoming his refuge on a park bench. There he read the letter for the fourth time. For a long while he sat ruminating. About three o'clock he walked to the General Post Office—walking had become a habit hard to break—and hunted up the man who now had his old route, a youngster not more than 30 named Flanagan.
From the letter Sam extracted the return envelope.
"You been delivering any like this?" he asked.
Flanagan peered at it.
"Yeah," he said. "Plenty." He looked worried. "Gee, Wilson, I'm glad you came in. There's something funny about those deliveries, and I don't want to get in Dutch."