If he’d identified his correspondent correctly they were looking for someone who, when travelling from A to Z, wasn’t scared to skip B—Y. His cryptic response should be spot on. Granted, it was a lie, but that was only an issue for someone not already far from God’s favour. His way out was made easy for him. On the envelope there was, in another, more clerkish, hand, a return address: one of the myriad numbered postal ‘caches’ serving every Government purpose from the sublime to the sinister. To interfere with anything so sanctioned was a capital offence (like almost everything else in Conventionary France). Dumped in the Messengers’ office ‘out’ sack for tomorrow, alongside many others, a missive thus addressed would not invite notice or scrutiny.Julius rejoiced and reached for another glass of wine—even the sour stuff they served at the Mausoleum. He’d found a conduit to the outside world through which news of his continued existence might crawl! Would he take it? He most certainly would!By contrast, any reply to Ada’s plea needed subtle gymnastics (surely a contradiction in terms...) to reach her.
