The Second Coming

“That way you do two things, get rid of the garbage and beat the Ayrabs—you like killing two birds with one stone, don’t you?”
    Yes. Again snapping his fingers softly, he sat down at his desk, a fine colonial pine piece his wife had given him and where he had never sat before. He smiled again. It was a pleasure to sit at a proper desk, take out stationery and pen, hatch out a plan, and write the necessary documents to bring it to pass.
    The “documents” were two letters, one to Lewis Peckham, the other to Dr. Sutter Vaught.
    Dear Lewis:
    This letter is a simple precaution. When you receive it, you can destroy it without reading further, for I intend in fact to see you today before you receive this letter tomorrow.
    I take the precaution upon your own advice. In our spelunking days you told me never to enter a cave alone without telling someone where I was going.
    In a word I am accepting your invitation to visit you this afternoon and I shall walk down to your farmhouse via Lost Cove cave, entering by the upper Confederate “escape hole” you showed me when I sliced out-of-bounds and exiting at the main entrance near your house in the valley below. Though I am not familiar with the upper reaches of the cave, there is only one way to go, down, and I remember the lower part, the “commercial” cave, very well.
    For one thing, I have a sudden hankering to visit the haunt of the saber-tooth tyger you discovered.
    Mentioning the “tyger” lair is an essential part of the plan, he thought with a smile. First, it would tickle Lewis’s literary fancy. Tyger Tyger and Lewis would have them off in a Blakean exploration of mythic depths. Second, and more important, it would establish a destination, a place in the vast, still not wholly explored, cavern.
    The prospect of bourbon and Beethoven is irresistible.
    This was the only lie in the letter. The prospect of having a tad of bourbon and branch water, as Lewis would say, and listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was not only not irresistible, it was horrendous. The mere thought of it was enough to make him grimace and shiver like a bird dog with the squats.
    If I haven’t turned up by the time you receive this, send out the St. Bernard with a cask of Wild Turkey.
    Take care,
Will
    He addressed the envelope, licked the flap, sealed it, stamped it, felt and admired the heavy creamy embossed stationery, which Marion had given him and which he had never used. Why was it no longer possible to sit at a desk and write a proper letter like a character in an old-fashioned novel who as a matter of course might write any number of such letters to friends, members of family? If his daughter should receive such a letter from him, or he from her, each would faint.
    It is only possible to write a letter now, he reflected, if it is part of a larger plan which could settle things once and for all, for himself, his daughter—and everyone else, for that matter.
    The second letter was addressed, on a larger envelope, to Dr. Sutter Vaught, 2203 Los Floras Boulevard, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
    Dear Sutter,
    I have a favor to ask of you. One reason I ask you is that there is no one else I would trust to do it. Another reason is that the nature of the favor is such that, though somewhat burdensome, I am confident you will grant it.
    Knowing you perhaps better than you think, I have reason to believe that aside from the urgency of my appeal it is the very strangeness of my request which will insure its being carried out.
    You told me once that nowadays no one knew anything with sufficient certitude that he could tell anyone anything, and that if a man ever came along who really knew and could speak with authority—do this, do that—millions would follow him.
    I tell you, not millions, to do this one thing for me. I do not ask you, I tell you: do this.
    I am enclosing a stamped sealed envelope addressed to one Lewis Peckham of Linwood, North Carolina. Do this. After you receive this letter, wait three weeks. If by this time you have not heard to the contrary from me, proceed as follows: Come to Linwood, North Carolina. Go to the post office, fold and soil the letter to Lewis Peckham, and drop it in the mail slot marked “local.” It will be assumed by the addressee that the letter was mislaid by a postal employee, dropped behind a radiator, kicked under a table, belatedly discovered, sneaked into the