package, and asked if she knew what it might be.
"She said at once, and with great conviction, 'It's a bomb.' Naturally, I laughed at this. We are all getting ridiculously terrorist-conscious. It seemed to me too small to hold a bomb and yet I didn't have the nerve to attempt to open it. After considerable indecision, listening to it for some telltale tick, although I don't know if bombs tick these days, and smelling it, and not having quite enough courage to shake it, I called the police. They told us to put it in the center of our largest room and leave the apartment. Down came a bomb squad in virtually no time, with a portable X-ray unit, and, well ... it wasn't a bomb.
"They opened it for us, and when they called us back into the apartment, they showed us the contents. Damned if it wasn't what had been stolen from my wife two days before. Everything! The package contained all the papers, including the credit cards, all the junk. It even contained every last bit of money down to the little cache of quarters she kept for public transportation and even a few smaller coins. She counted it in amazement and it was all there. They had taken nothing. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I consider that mystifying. Presumably, it was a thief with an attack of conscience."
Gonzalo, who had listened with close attention, seemed disappointed. "Is that the end of it?"
"The absolute end," said Teller. "But then I told you there was nothing much to it, so you mustn't feel annoyed with me."
Gonzalo shook his head, obviously baffled.
Henry, however, said quietly, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Teller, but may I have your permission to ask a question?"
"Well, of course, if you want to, but I don't see what there is to question."
"It's just that you mentioned all the contents, sir, but you didn't mention the purse itself. Was that returned as well?"
Teller looked astonished. "No, it wasn't. I'm glad you asked. It was the only thing that didn't come back. My wife was annoyed about that, actually. She said that the purse was valuable to her and they might have returned that, too. My own feeling was that it was simply too bulky to fit into a neat little package. Of course, I pointed out that since her scheme of carrying an old purse hadn't worked, it was no great loss, and, equally of course, she gave me the exasperated look that wives always give husbands who descend into mere logic. Anyway, that's it. They returned everything but the purse."
Halsted said, "That is mystifying. They could easily have made a somewhat bigger package. If the thief were sufficiently conscience-stricken to return every last penny, he would certainly have been sufficiently conscience-stricken to return the purse."
Rubin said, "Maybe it fell apart, and he felt it was useless to return the tatters."
"No, no, no," interposed Teller. "It was a staunch leather purse. It was old, and weatherbeaten, and looked like hell, but it wasn't going to fall apart."
Trumbull said, "Do you suppose there was a purpose in keeping it? I mean maybe the purse was what they wanted, so they returned everything else."
"Ridiculous," said Rubin. "If they wanted the purse, they could just dump the contents, at least those parts of it they couldn't use."
Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said in his softly hoarse voice, "You can't have it both ways, Manny. Either the thief was not troubled by a conscience and would return nothing, just dumping whatever he didn't want, as you suggest. Or else, he had a conscience and would return everything except what he absolutely needed. The way I see it is that he was reluctantly stealing something he wanted desperately, and he had no intention of stealing anything else."
"You mean," said Avalon, "he was an honest man who had no choice but to steal something he had to have, but not another item was going to sully his tender and gentlemanly soul."
"That's right," said Drake. "Now if that's the case, think it out a bit. He wants to steal a purse in order to get some specific object it contains. But he only sees the purse and nothing else. He doesn't see what's in it. If he wants something that it contains, he couldn't be sure that this particular purse actually contained it. He might have to steal half a dozen purses, examine each, and then, disappointed of his wish,