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- At the beginning of the novel, Archie notes that Paul Chapin had "slick and thrifty notions about getting revenge wholesale without paying for it". Initially, and throughout the novel, given Chapin's clear positioning as the villain the interpretation of this seems straightforward: he's trying to "get revenge wholesale" by murdering his friends "without paying for it" by being imprisoned for murder. The climax of the novel, however, reveals that Chapin was never the murderer at all, and simply played on the paranoia of his friends by writing them threatening poems and acting all sinister. This completely changes the meaning of the sentence; he actually tried to "get revenge wholesale" by pretending that he'd murdered his friends to make them paranoid "without paying for it" by actually committing any murders and thus risking punishment.
