The man corresponding with himself (having finally mailed the letter from Las Vegas) returns home from California to the jackpot in his mailbox. meanwhile, on his long drive from CA he develops an intense suspicion of his mailman and decides to use carrier pigeons for his 'correspondence' his neighbors say that since returning from war he's been behaving strangely; knocking on their doors at odd hours, talking excitedly about the internal compassing abilities of homing pigeons and that cells containing magnetite, or lodestone, are found in migratory birds and even in trace amounts in humans. another says he started spending inordinate amounts of time on his rooftop, and several times witnessed him flapping his arms like a bird. she says that he'd erected a mass of wire and radio equipment on the roof, and that he told her that with it he was trying to predict the occurrence of magnetic storms, in which flocks of homing birds have been known to become irretrievably lost: he was hoping to capture a flock for himself next