Think Of a Number (2010) by John Verdon Read Free Book Online Page B

the desk drawer and removed the sequence of messages Mellery had given him. He shut down the computer and pushed the keyboard to the side of the desk so he could arrange the messages in order—beginning with the first note.
    Do you believe in Fate? I do, because I thought I’d never see you again—and then one day, there you were. It all came back: how you sound, how you move—most of all, how you think. If someone told you to think of a number, I know what number you’d think of. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. Think of any number up to a thousand—the first number that comes to your mind. Picture it. Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope
.
    Although he’d done so earlier, he examined the outer envelope, inside and out, as well as the notepaper on which the message was written to be sure there was no faint trace anywhere of the number 658—not even a watermark—that could have suggested the number that seemed to come spontaneously to Mellery’s mind. There was no such trace. More definitive tests could be conducted later, but he was satisfied for now that whatever it was that enabled the writerto know that Mellery would choose 658, it wasn’t a subtle imprint in the paper.
    The content of the message comprised a number of claims that Gurney enumerated on a lined yellow notepad:
I knew you in the past but lost contact with you.
I encountered you again, recently.
I recall a great deal about you.
I can prove I know your secrets by writing down and sealing in the enclosed envelope the next number that will enter your mind.
    The tone struck him as creepily playful, and the reference to knowing Mellery’s “secrets” could be read as a threat—reinforced by the request for money in the smaller envelope.
    Does it shock you that I knew you would pick 658?

Who knows you that well? If you want the answer
,
you must first repay me the $289.87 it cost me to find you
.
Send that exact amount to

P.O. Box 49449, Wycherly, CT 61010
.
Send me CASH or a PERSONAL CHECK
.
Make it out to X. Arybdis
.
(That was not always my name.)
    In addition to the inexplicable number prediction, the smaller note reiterated the claim of close personal knowledge and specified $289.87 as a cost incurred in locating Mellery (although the first half of the message made it sound like a chance encounter) and as a precondition to the writer’s revealing his identity; it offered a choice of paying the amount by check or cash; it gave the name for the check as “X. Arybdis,” offered an explanation of why Mellery would not recognize the name, and provided a Wycherly P.O. box address to send the money to. Gurney jotted all these facts down on his yellow pad, finding it helpful in organizing his thoughts.
    Those thoughts centered on four questions: How could the number prediction be explained without hypothesizing some sort of
Manchurian Candidate
hypnosis or ESP? Did the other specific number in the note, $289.87, have any significance beyond the stated “cost to find you”? Why the cash-or-check option, which sounded like a parody of a direct-marketing ad? And what was it about that name, Arybdis, that kept tickling a dark corner of Gurney’s memory? He wrote these questions down alongside his other notes.
    Next he laid out the three poems in the sequence of their envelope postmarks.
    How many bright angels

can dance on a pin?

How many hopes drown in

a bottle of gin?

Did the thought ever come

that your glass was a gun

and one day you’d wonder
,
God, what have I done?
    What you took you will give

when you get what you gave
.
I know what you think
,
when you blink
,
where you’ve been
,
where you’ll be
.
You and I have a date
,
Mr. 658
.
    I do what I’ve done

not for money or fun

but for debts to be paid
,
amends to be made
.
For blood that’s as red

as a painted rose
.
So every man knows

he reaps what he sows
.
    The first thing that struck him was the change in attitude. The toying tone of