Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 35, No. 10, October 1990

The first step, Charley decided, was to get into that locked room, the study where his father spent most of his time.

“I keep the room locked to avoid having my papers disturbed,” his father said one night at dinner. He was always very courteous about answering his son’s questions. “Every housekeeper we’ve ever had has insisted on straightening out the papers on my desk. But then I can’t find anything. I am a creature of routine.” He let a smile play around the corners of his mouth, wondering if Charley as yet had developed a sense of humor. “I am quite capable of dusting my own desk if it ever needs dusting. Someday you too may discover that you prefer to have your work left alone by people whose goals are different from your own.”

His father did tend to speak in rather formal sentences, Charley thought, but as he mulled over this conversation in his room later that night, he realized that he had stumbled on the key to the whole spy situation. “I am a creature of routine,” his father had said, and that of course was the problem. No wonder Charley had recognized his father as a spy. Spies were not supposed to be creatures of routine! They were supposed to vary their activities, and never, never, never were they to become creatures of habit. Of course a fourth grader, with a full knowledge of espionage techniques, could recognize a faulty spy when he saw one. Obviously the thing to do was to get his father to vary his routines, avoid his habits, present an image unlike his usual self. Charley was quite sure he couldn’t discuss such actions with his father. It was too personal a subject, and he had already learned that personal matters were best kept to oneself. Not that his father was ever cruel, Charley hastened to reassure himself, but he was not a truly friendly person, not at all like his mother had been when she was in the middle of one of the stories he loved.

Getting into the locked study shouldn’t present any great difficulty to someone versed in the techniques of spying. All one had to do was to pick out the correct key from the key board in the housekeeper’s pantry off the kitchen. A quick check showed all the keys were labeled with little tags. The study key had a note pinned directly above it: Do not use. Charley felt no compunctions about taking the key. The note was for the housekeeper, after all. It was not that Charley was going against his father’s dictates. The subject had simply never come up. “I do not want the servants in the study,” his father had said. Well, even Charley knew that he wasn’t a servant, so he could go in the study any old time. This was undoubtedly sophism, but Charley wouldn’t know that word until he got into college. In the meantime, he took advantage of his chance while he could, and that afternoon when Mrs. Hilton, the housekeeper, was doing her thing in the kitchen, Charley lifted the key, let himself into the study, and closed the door behind him. Quietly. Very quietly. The way spies were supposed to do it.