Samuel Reed Kept an Old Wooden Bat Behind the Pantry Door for Twenty Years

“It would pay the registry fees, and the taxes, and the hay loan.”

“It would pay him to stop,” I said.

She looked at the check.

“If it’s real.”

That was the question.

So I called Arthur’s office from the kitchen phone.

Arthur had us at his desk by two.

He polished his wire-rimmed spectacles with a silk handkerchief before he touched the check.