agent dismissing something wrongfully would probably be accused of being a spy himself, or a card-carrying member of the Communist party."
"Yes," said MacShannon. "The FBI has to investigate anything brought to it even in easygoing times, but at the height of the McCarthy mania - Then, too, it turned out that Benham, this neighbor of mine, had a post in the infant computer industry and was in a position to know a few things the Pentagon distinctly wanted to have kept secret. In fact, it was my eventual understanding of this that roused my own interest in computers, so that I owe my present career to Benham, in a sense. In any case, I was listened to and the letter was taken from me. I was given a receipt, even though it wasn't my letter."
"It was in your possession," said Rubin, "and it belonged to you, since its previous owner had thrown it away and abandoned it, making it the property of anyone who picked it up."
"In a way," said MacShannon, "I entered into a distant partnership with the FBI, for I was asked to keep an eye on Benham and report anything further I thought unusual or suspicious. It made a common spy out of me, which, looking back on it, makes me feel a little awkward, but I honestly thought I might be dealing with an enemy agent, and I was a bit of a romantic in those days."
"And you might have been infected by the times," said Avalon.
"I wouldn't be surprised," said MacShannon agreeably. "At the time, of course, I didn't know exactly what the FBI was doing, but eventually I became friendly with the agent I had first spoken to, especially as it slowly turned out that Benham was indeed more than he seemed, so that the agent couldn't help but think highly of me."
Rubin said, "Then the hidden envelope turned out to be important, I suppose."
"Let me tell you how things worked out in order," said MacShannon. "They investigated the letter I gave them for some sort of code. What seemed nonsignificant to me might contain a hidden meaning. They could find none. Nor could they find hidden writing, or anything technically advanced, and that just made my story the more persuasive, since I, of course, had stressed the importance of the envelope from the beginning.
"They took to intercepting Benham's mail and opening it, reading it, resealing it, and sending it on. I watched the process on one occasion and it gave me a grisly feeling. It seemed so un-American. There was no way of telling at the conclusion that the letter had been opened, or in any way tampered with, and I have never been able to trust my own mail entirely since then. Who knows who might be studying it without my knowledge?"
Rubin said dryly, "For that matter, phone calls can be listened to, rooms can be bugged, conversations in the open can be overheard. We live in a world devoid of privacy."
"I'm sure you're right," said MacShannon. "In any case, they were particularly interested in any letters that Benham got from the young woman whose letter I had myself picked up. These had their own points of interest to a nosybody, for, as I was eventually told by my friend the agent, it was plain that there was a burgeoning love affair going on there. The letters grew more impassioned and devoted, but the woman's letters, at least, were always scrawled, brief, and continued to show no great intellectual capacity."
Drake grinned. "Intellectual capacity is not necessarily what a man might be after."
Halsted asked, "How long did the investigation go on?"
"Months," said MacShannon. "It was an on-and-off affair."
"Say," said Gonzalo, "if this was a love affair, the letter might not be significant in any case. If agents are in the business of collecting and transmitting information, they're not going to fall in love."
"Why not?" said Avalon sententiously. "Love comes as it pleases, sometimes to the most unlikely participants in the most unlikely situations. That's why Eros, the god of love, is often pictured as blind."
"That's not what I mean," said Gonzalo. "Of course they can fall in love, but they wouldn't use their official communications, if I may call them that, as a vehicle. They'd make love on their own time, so to speak, in their own way, and leave the important messages alone."
MacShannon said, "Not if the real messages were on the envelope. The more immaterial the letter itself, the better. Why