Regards,
Forthcue:
Ninety thousand is it! Final! By midnight tomorrow in the Carver mailbox, or Pure Rotten will be disposed of. You are keeping us in an uncomfortable position and we don’t like it. We are not killers, but we can be.
Snatchers, Inc.
May 30
Dear Mr. Snatcher:
Free after many years of the agonizing pain of my ulcer, I can think quite objectively on this matter. Though my wife demands that I pay some ransom, ninety thousand dollars is out of the question. I suggest you dispose of the commodity under discussion as you earlier intimated you might. After proof of this action, twenty thousand dollars will accompany my next letter in the Garver mailbox. Since I have been honest with you and have not contacted the authorities, no one, including my wife, need know the final arrangements of our transaction.
Cordially,
Forthcue:
Are you crazy? This is a human life. We are not killers. But you are right about one thing — no amount of money is worth more than your health. Suppose we return Pure Rotten unharmed tomorrow night? Five thousand dollars for our trouble and silence will be plenty.
Snatchers, Inc.
May 31
Dear Mr. Snatcher:
After due reflection I must unequivocally reject your last suggestion and repeat my own suggestion that you dispose of the matter at hand in your own fashion. I see no need for further correspondence in this matter.
Snatchers, Inc.
June 1
Clark Forthcue:
There has been a take over of the bord of Snatchers, Inc. and my too vise presidents who haven’t got a choice agree with me, the new president. I have all the carbon copys of Snatchers, Inc. letters to you and all your letters back to us. The law is very seveer with kidnappers and even more seveer with people who want to kill kids.
But the law is not so seveer with kids, in fact will forgive them for almost anything if it is there first ofense. If you don’t want these letters given to the police you will leave 500,000 dollars tomorrow night in Carvers old mailbox. I meen it. Small bils is what we want but some fiftys and hundreds will be o.k.
Sincerely,
Grounds for Divorce
by James Holding
The power failure lasted less than five minutes — but it came at an awkward time.
John Marcy, soup spoon in hand, was seated at the dining table ready to start his dinner. He was hungry.
Angela, his wife, who had just carried the filled soup plates in from the kitchen and taken her own seat across the table, was reaching out a hand toward the cracker dish when the house lights flickered once, then winked out.
“Oh, dear!” Angela said, startled. “Now what? Look out the front window in the living room, John, and see if the neighbors’ lights are out, too. Maybe it’s just ours.”
John put down his soup spoon obediently, groped his way into the living room, and looked out the front window. “Even the street lights are out,” he reported over his shoulder. “It’s a general power failure, I guess.”
He could hear Angela moving in the darkness of the dining room behind him. “I’ve got candles,” she said in a moment, “if you’ll get the matches from the coffee table in there.”
John cautiously located the coffee table in the blackness and explored its surface for the book of matches always kept near the ashtray. As his hand closed on it, a match flared in the dining room, and a second later two candles set in silver candlesticks on the table were dissipating the darkness.
“Never mind, John,” Angela called, “I found a match in the buffet drawer. Come on and eat your soup now. It’ll get cold.”
Before John got back to his chair at the table, the electric lights came on again.
“Ah,” said Angela with relief. “That’s better.” She didn’t blow out the candles.
John picked up his soup spoon and then, with a distraught air, put it down again. He looked across the table at Angela whose gentle blue eyes were regarding him anxiously. “Is the soup cold, dear?” she asked. She took a sip of her own. “Mine isn’t.”
He shook his head. How lovely she is, he thought, and what a heel I’ve been to go running after those other women. His conscience was suddenly tender. An unaccustomed pang of shame caused him to lower his eyes.
“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it’s cold, darling, but I’m not very hungry tonight.”
“It’s yellow pea soup, John. You love it.”
“I know.” He raised his head. “And I love you, too, Angela. You know that, don’t you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Let’s not go into that again,” she said, trembling.
John said, “I’m an All-American heel, Angela, I admit it. A woman-crazy, middle-aged wolf who ought to know better. And I’m genuinely sorry for it.”
Angela brushed aside her tears with the back of a flexed wrist, a somehow pathetic gesture. She stood up. “Now you’ve spoiled my appetite,” she said. She picked up the two soup plates and carried them out to the kitchen.
“So I want to divorce her,” John Marcy told his lawyer quietly the next day.
Bartley, the lawyer, aimed a faintly disapproving glance at his client and friend. “Divorce her?” he echoed. “You want to divorce her?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t make me laugh, John. It’s common gossip in town that she ought to divorce you. And I know the score, John, so don’t try to kid me. I haven’t forgotten those breach-of-promise suits and the paternity action I had to settle for you, John.”
“I’m not forgetting them either. I just want to divorce Angela, that’s all. And I need your advice on how to go about it. That’s simple, isn’t it?”
“Not all that simple, no. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to divorce her all of a sudden after letting things drift along like this for years?”
“Because she won’t divorce me, that’s why. And I want to be free of her.”
“Yes, but why won’t she divorce you? Some foolish idea that this way she can punish you for your past peccadillos?”
“No. You’ll think I’m even more insufferable than you do now if I tell you the true reason.”
“Try me and see.”
John hesitated. Then he said, “Well, it’s my considered opinion, knowing Angela as I do, that she won’t divorce me because she still loves me.”
“That’s no reason,” Hartley said.
“It is if she doesn’t want another woman to get her hooks into me permanently,” John said. “She knows how vulnerable and — uh — undiscriminating I am.” He paused. “You realize it isn’t easy for me to talk like this, Bart.”
“Go on,” Bartley said, and with the privileged candor of long friendship he added, “Everybody knows you’re a heel, John. No need to be embarrassed in front of me.”
Marcy flushed and plowed on doggedly. “Angela has decided that if she can’t enjoy my full-time love and loyalty, no other woman will get a chance at it, either.”
“Is that what Angela says?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I’m positive it’s how she feels.”
“How can you be positive about a thing like that?”