[Two letters, clipped together in McCausland's file. The first is a carbon of McCausland's letter, sent February 1927. The second is Dannemeyer's reply.]
Letter I — McCausland to Dannemeyer
Port Hume Clarion 7 Ironside Street Port Hume, N.Y. 7 February 1927
Dear Klaus,
You told me in 1917, when you left, that if I ever needed San Francisco to write you at the address on this envelope. I need San Francisco.
I am writing the Iphigenia story. I have the log. I have Ostermann's file. I have the Timmons deposition from the morgue. What I do not have is Timmons himself, on the record, in his own voice, willing to be named.
You have been out there six years. If he is there I think you can find him. If you can find him I think he will talk to you before he will talk to a stranger. And if he will talk to you I think you can bring him to talk to me.
I am asking this because Miss Harriss asked me to, and because my father wrote it down in a flour tin and it has been in a flour tin long enough.
Yours, T. McCausland
Letter II — Dannemeyer to McCausland
[San Francisco postmark, 24 February 1927. In Dannemeyer's hand, on plain paper.]
Thomas —
I found him in four days. He is working at a hotel on Powell Street — a porter's position, the same work he had before the Iphigenia, and I think that is not a coincidence. His name is still Timmons; he never went by Thompson. He is forty-two years old. His hair is white.
I told him I was from Port Hume. He did not say anything for a long moment. He said: is this about the ship. I said yes. He said: I have been waiting for this since January of 1913.
He will speak to you. He would prefer to speak in person. He says he wants to see who he is trusting before he trusts them. I told him that was fair and that you would come.
He told me one thing while we were talking that I will pass on without comment, because it is not mine to give but it needs to travel with this letter. He said: The thing I have been carrying is not just what I saw. It is that they made me sign a piece of paper. And I signed it. I was twenty-three years old and I signed it and they paid me and I got on a train and I have thought about it every day since. He said this to me calmly, the way a man says something he has said to himself a thousand times.
Come out. I will have him there.
Klaus
[In McCausland's hand at the foot:] Booked passage, 4 March. Harriss approved the travel.