“Yes. A good deal.”
But he was not listening. “I would read about pirates and cowboys, and I would be the head pirate or cowboy — me, a durn little tyke that never saw the ocean except at Coney Island or a tree except in Washington Square day in and out. But I read them, believing like every boy, that some day . . . that living wouldn’t play a trick on him like getting him alive and then. . . .
When I went home that morning to get ready to take the train, Martha says, ‘You’re just as good as any of them Van Dymings, for all they get into the papers. If all the folks that deserved it got into the papers, Park Avenue wouldn’t hold them, or even Brooklyn,’ she says.” He drew his hand from the wallet. This time it was only a clipping, one column wide, which he handed me, yellow and faded too, and not long:
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
Wilfred Middleton, New York Architect, Disappears From Millionaire’s Country House
POSSE SEEKS BODY OF ARCHITECT BELIEVED SLAIN BY
MADMAN IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS
May Be Coupled With Mysterious Attack
On Mrs. Van Dyming
Mountain Neighborhood In State Of Terror
. . . . . . . . . ., Va. April 8, . . . . . Wilfred Middleton, 56, architect, of New York City, mysteriously disappeared sometime on April 6th, while en route to the country house of Mr. Carleton Van Dyming near here. He had in his possession some valuable drawings which were found this morning near the Van Dyming estate, thus furnishing the first clue. Chief of Police Elmer Harris has taken charge of the case, and is now awaiting the arrival of a squad of New York detectives, when he promises a speedy solution if it is in the power of skilled criminologists to do so.
MOST BAFFLING IN ALL HIS EXPERIENCE
“When I solve this disappearance,” Chief Harris is quoted, “I will also solve the attack on Mrs. Van Dyming on the same date.”
Middleton leaves a wife, Mrs. Martha Middleton, . . . . . . . . . . . . . .st., Brooklyn.
He was watching my face. “Only it’s one mistake in it,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “They got your name wrong.”
“I was wondering if you’d see that. But that’s not the mistake. . . .” He had in his hand a second clipping which he now extended. It was like the other two; yellow, faint. I looked at it, the fading, peaceful print through which, like a thin, rotting net, the old violence had somehow escaped, leaving less than the dead gesture fallen to quiet dust. “Read this one.
Only that’s not the mistake I was thinking about. But then, they couldn’t have known at that time. . . .”
I was reading, not listening to him. This was a reprinted letter, an ‘agony column’ letter:
New Orleans, La.
April 10, . . . .
To the Editor, New York Times
New York, N. Y.
Dear Sir
In your issue of April 8, this year you got the name of the party wrong. The name is Midgleston not Middleton. Would thank you to correct this error in local and metropolitan columns as the press a weapon of good & evil into every American home. And a power of that weight cannot afford mistakes even about people as good as any man or woman even if they dont get into the papers every day.
Thanking you again, beg to remain
A Friend
“Oh,” I said. “I see. You corrected it.”
“Yes. But that’s not the mistake. I just did that for her. You know how women are. Like as not she would rather not see it in the papers at all than to see it spelled wrong.”
“She?”
“My wife. Martha. The mistake was, if she got them or not.”
“I dont — Maybe you’d better tell me.”
“That’s what I am doing. I got two of the first one, the one about the disappearance, but I waited until the letter come out. Then I put them both into a piece of paper with A Friend on it, and put them into a envelope and mailed them to her. But I dont know if she got them or not. That was the mistake.”
“The mistake?”
“Yes. She moved. She moved to Park Avenue when the insurance was paid. I saw that in a paper after I come down here. It told about how Mrs. Martha Midgleston of Park Avenue was married to a young fellow he used to be associated with the Maison Payot on Fifth Avenue. It didn’t say when she moved, so I dont know if she got them or not.”
“Oh,” I said. He was putting the clippings carefully back into the canvas wallet.
“Yes, sir. Women are like that. It dont cost a man much to humor them now and then. Because they deserve it; they have a hard time. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t mind how they spelled it. What’s a name to a man that’s done and been something outside the lot and plan for mortal human man to do and be?”
The End
