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notes isn’t enough. She wants me to dispose of the box. With the fifty thousand yen, its ownership has already passed to her. If I intend to respect her will, I suppose I shall have to dispose of it as I promised. Even so, I don’t understand. Who in heaven’s name would stand to gain by my doing such a thing? Fifty thousand yen just to throw the box into the sea-it’s too much money. Am I so offensive? I must not flatter myself; by rights the motive must be something more practical. Some more matter of fact reason so that she should not feel she has lost something even in paying fifty thousand yen.
    I don’t understand it at all. It is just as well that I’m in a fog. I wonder, should I insist on returning the fifty thousand? She is sorely mistaken if she thinks I’m not capable of doing it.
    But such an interpretation doesn’t hold. It’s a plan she divised so the doctor wouldn’t get the box. For some reason he wanted it very much. Perhaps at first she too fell in with his plan. Or else was pretending to. But as the time to carry it out at last drew nearer, her doubts began to grow. Whatever she thinks, she can’t believe anything good will come of it. But no matter how she remonstrated with him, the doctor turned a completely deaf ear, and in the end she could do nothing but oppose him. Fortunately the box man seems to have an uncommon affection for her. If she leaves the disposal of the box up to the box man himself and he disappears, whatever the doctor may think up, she will be able to contain him before he does anything.
    Indeed … somehow I feel it makes sense … the box may perhaps be worth fifty thousand yen, depending on the doctor’s reason for acquiring it. The circumstances are totally different, depending on whether her motive for interfering stems from her own selfishness or from a desire to protect the doctor. But I recognize that at least there is a conflict between them. And if that’s true, then it’s not a bad sign.
    However, I do not fancy disposing of the box as she wishes. I still know too little about her to trust her. At least I had better put off disposing of the box until I check her real motives once more. I have the right to do that much. And then, frankly speaking, I am dissatisfied. It’s fine that she herself put in an appearance, but it was altogether too businesslike. She didn’t even come down the embankment. When she had sped past the “No Playing in the Water” sign, mounted on a bicycle made of some light alloy and equipped with five speed gears-illuminated by the lights of a freighter, her raincoat gleamed as if gilded … through the fabric the outline of her body was clearly visible… and then the movement of those calves and knees which so disarmed me-she had gone out on the provincial highway, ignoring the frantic signals I flashed with my flashlight. After a while a trembling circle of light came slipping over the surface of the ground about two yards ahead of me. It was the beam of her flashlight shining between the balustrades of the bridge, I couldn’t very well look up, it is too awkward for a box man. Then there was a sound, and not far from the trembling circle of light something fell. It was a vinyl bag weighted with a stone. In it were the letter in question and five ten thousand yen bills rolled up. She went off without doing anything else, While she had come as close to me as could be, she had gone off without saying a word. The movement of her calves disappeared into the darkness, the glitter of the wet raincoat vanished, and last of all the red taillight of the bicycle faded away. When I had read the letter and counted the bills, I suddenly began to hear the sound of drizzle, which should not have been audible. Perhaps it was the blood coursing in my head.
    Fifty thousand yen. I should like to tell her alone that for the person paying out perhaps it is an extravagance, but for a box man it is a paltry sum not worth accepting. Generally people know