Flying home from San Francisco last July one of his two checked suitcases — the one holding his wife's expensive couturier dresses — was lost by the airline; at two in the morning he revised the loss by feeling the bag in his hands, and two days later an anonymous letter signed "The Phantom" arrived from San Francisco with a key to Box 524, where the ransacked but complete suitcase was found and flown back to him, the airline afterwards making him and his wife their guests.