Diligent readers will recall our post of Oct. 6 (A Mysterious Package) that recounted the finding, in one of the 700-odd boxes of files and books of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research and the Institute of Public Administration and their longtime czar Luther Gulick, of an ominous white powder.

Oh No! we thought. Will we have to blow the whistle on our late friend, innovator of scientific government and confidant of Presidents? 

Before jumping to any conclusion, we knew we had to have the powder tested. We did, and here’s the intriguing solution to the mystery:

But first, to recap: the substance was found in an envelope in a chaotic box of miscellaneous material of the late 1920s and early 30s that offered no clues to any context. The envelope, apparently unsealed and torn, bore the embossed return address of the Mount Vernon Heights Congregational Church on South Columbus Avenue in Westchester County. No connection could be found between the church and the Gulicks. It had been sent to Leeds Gulick, Luther’s younger brother, at 14 Sussex Avenue, Bronxville, a posh suburb not far away, but for some reason the name was misspelled “Guilick.” Unlikely  that a family member would make that error, although Luther was prone to typos and their father, Sidney, then 80, might also have had a slip of the finger on the keys, if indeed he typed at all. No letter or other information was found inside.  A postmark showed the envelope had been stamped at the Mount Vernon post office on Dec. 20, 1940, at precisely 8:30 p.m. The postage: 3 cents.

We arranged to have the powder tested at  an organic chemistry lab at Baruch College, courtesy of Chemistry Professor Keith Ramig and Biology Assistant Professor Pablo Peixoto. It looked like a serious place with complicated diagrams scrawled on a whiteboard. If this mystery could be solved anywhere, we felt, this was the place.

First Dr. Ramig eyeballed our substance. It looked brownish, probably from bits of paper from the envelope that migrated in over the many years. That could affect the result.

“The quickest test would be a taste test,” Dr. Ramig said. “But none of us are brave enough.”

The next best was a flame test, he decided. Because it resembled salt, Dr. Ramig set up a control experiment. He put a small measure of common sodium chloride (table salt) in a watch glass, added a few drops of methyl alcohol and touched a match to it. After a moment, the flame burned orange.

“There’s the sodium ions being excited,” Dr. Ramig said.

OK, the salt was salt. But what about our mystery substance?

He then repeated the experiment with our material, lifting out  a small sample with a thin spatula. “It sure feels like salt,” he said. “But sugar feels like salt.”

For comparison’s sake, Dr. Peixoto first examined some grains of table salt under a microscope of 40X magnification.

The salt crystals were cubical, like tiny dice, with rounded edges.

Then he looked at our sample. It had similar cubical crystals, but with sharp edges.

They looked similar, Dr. Ramig said. Perhaps our crystals had lain unused for so long they were still unworn.

Sugar crystals had a different shape entirely, more elongated and hexagonal, Dr. Peixoto said. So we had evidently not brought in an envelope of sugar. But just to make sure, Dr. Ramig repeated the flame test with our substance.  If it had been sugar, it would have caramelized and turned black.

But — aha! — an orange flame!

Salt?

Maybe.

“We do know it’s not explosive,” Dr. Peixoto said.

“So, a positive test for sodium,” Dr. Ramig said. But sodium came in many compounds, although he added reassuringly, “I’m not aware of any drug with a sodium base.”

But was it necessarily sodium chloride — or a variant?

So, another test.

A negative test by Dr. Peixoto to rule out sugar using Benedict’s reagent and hydrochloric acid was inconclusive so we moved on.

Lastly, Dr. Ramig did a test for chloride. A control test tube was prepared with distilled water, nitric acid and “honest to goodness” sodium chloride. Then another test tube, marked with a star — the same distilled water and nitric acid, and our mystery substance. Both turned cloudy upon addition of silver nitrate solution, denoting chloride.

.

Then Dr. Ramig called for a few drops of ammonium hydroxide. If the mystery substance was sodium chloride, he said, “all the white will dissolve.”

“Drum roll,” intoned Dr. Ramig. He could have said (but didn’t), “May I have the envelope, please?”

Salt!

Call off the D.E.A.

“99.9% it’s sodium chloride,” Dr. Ramig announced. “It can’t really be anything else.”

Of course, that left intact the mystery of why anyone would send salt to Leeds Gulick or anyone else in 1940. Salt was rationed in World War II but not until after Pearl Harbor.

http://www.ameshistory.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm

But what if the salt hadn’t been sent in that envelope? What if it was put there later, perhaps after rationing? Or maybe a salt shaker tumbled over with the spill scooped into the nearest receptacle, a stray envelope to Leeds “Guilick” from the Mount Vernon Heights Congregational Church?

Some mysteries will remain forever mysteries.