RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32604, 12 May 1971, Page 22

RANDOM REMINDER

MYSTERY ENVELOPE

Most of us like a bit of a mystery now and then, don’t we; even those who have to switch off the set at the very’ mention of Alfred Hitchcock. Well, here’s one for you; a small one, perhaps not an important one; certainly not one to compare with stories of espionage, etc. It came to us from a woman in North Canterbury. She is by no means the only person to express mild surprise and irritation at the amount of unsought mail dropped into her letter box each day. Nor the only one to mention the arrival in the mail of an invitation to accept part of an encyclo-. pedia, without charge. This one came in a fairly substantial sealed envelope, and it bore on it one of those “postage paid” notices, quoting Auckland as the origin.

and a permit number. Inside the main envelope another, postage paid, for reply and several sheets of coloured, printed material extolling the virtues of the encyclopedia. Nothing mysterious about that, you might say, though most modest people give an occasional wondering thought about how they happened to be among the chosen. But this bundle of interesting information was a bundle with a difference. For among all the advertising there was another envelope, a smaller one, with a window, and the address it carried was not the address of our informant at all. It was that of a stranger, a man living in another part of North Canterbury. And it was an account sent out for payment. And it too had one of those little notices about being post-

age paid. But this one had Christchurch as its origin and, of course, a very different permit number. Mystery: How did it get into the sealed envelope originating from the Auckland firm? Has the poor man been sued for non-pavment of a bill he did not receive? Does he really exist? Is ’.here some deep-dyed advertising gimmick tied up in the business somewhere? We lean towards the belief that the man with the bill does exist. We are so firmly of this opinion that we don’t propose to have anything to do with the firm sending out the account. We feel it would be a far more prudent measure to send the account on to the address in the window, in the hope that the man does exist