"Only a manner of speaking, sir. We are interested in your literary problem. Would you care to tell us about it in whatever way you please? We will ask questions when that seems advisable, if you don't mind."
"Oh, I won't mind," said Atwood cheerfully. His eyes darted from one to the other. "I warn you that it isn't much of a mystery-except that I don't know what to make of it."
"Well, we might not know, either," said Gonzalo, touching his brandy to his lips.
Drake, who was nursing the remains of a cold and who had to cut down on his smoking in consequence, stubbed out a half-finished cigarette morosely, and said, "We'll never know if we don't hear what it is." He blew his nose into a bright red handkerchief and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
"Won't you go on, Mr. Atwood?" said Trumbull. "And let's have some silence from the rest of you."
Atwood folded his hands on the edge of the table almost as though he were back in grade school, and a formal intonation colored his words. He was reciting.
"This all involves my friend Lyon Sanders, who was, like myself, a retired civil engineer. We had never actually worked together but we had been neighbors for a quarter-century and were very close. I am a bachelor; he was a childless widower; and we both led lives that might, superficially, have seemed lonely. Neither of us was, however, for we had each carved out a comfortable niche.
"I myself have written a text on civil engineering which has had some success and for some years I have been preparing a rather elaborate, if informal, tale of my experiences in the field. I doubt that it will ever be published but, of course, if it is-
"But that's beside the point. Sanders was a more aggressive person by far than ever 1 was; louder; more raucous; with a rather coarse sense of humor. He was a games person-"
Rubin interrupted. "A sports enthusiast?"
"No, no. Indoor games. I believe he knew and could play well every card game ever invented. He could play anything else, too, that used counters, pointers, dice boards, cups, anything. He was a master at Chinese checkers, parcheesi, backgammon, Monopoly, checkers, chess, go, three-dimensional ticktacktoe. 1 couldn't even tell you the names of most of the games he played.
"He read books on the subject and he invented games himself. Some were clever and I would suggest he patent them and place them on the market. But that was not what he wanted at all. It was only his own amusement that interested him. That was where I came in, you see. I was what he sharpened his analyses on."
Trumbull said, "In what way?"
"Well," said Atwood, "when I say he played those games, I do not mean in the ordinary sense of the word. He analyzed them carefully, almost as though they involved engineering principles-"
"They do," said Rubin suddenly. "Any decent game can be analyzed mathematically. There's a whole field of recreational mathematics."
"I know this," Atwood managed to interpose gently, "but I don't know that Sanders went at it in any orthodox manner. He never offered to explain it to me and I never bothered to ask.
"Our routine over the last twenty years was to spend the weekend at the games, applying what had been learned over the week, for often he would spend time teaching me. Not out of any urge to educate, you understand, but merely to make the game more interesting for
himself by improving the opposition. We might play bridge ten weeks running, then switch to gin rummy, then to something in which I had to match numbers he thought of. Naturally, he almost always won."
Drake looked at an unlit cigarette as though he wished it would light itself and said, "Didn't that depress you?"
"Not really. It was fun trying to beat him and sometimes I did. I beat him just often enough to keep up my interest."
"Do you suppose he let you win?" said Gonzalo.
"I doubt it. My victories would always either enrage or chagrin him and they would send him into a fury of further analyses. 1 think he enjoyed it a little, too, for when he had too long a string of unbroken victories he would start educating me. It was a strange relationship but it worked. We were very fond of each other."
"Were?" asked Avalon.
"Yes," sighed Atwood. "He died six months ago. It was no great shock. We both saw it coming. Of course, I miss him dreadfully. The weekends are quite empty now. I even miss the rowdy way in which he poked fun at me. He bullied me constantly. He never wearied of making fun of me for being a teetotaler and he never stopped teasing me about my religion."
"He was an atheist?" asked Gonzalo.
"Not particularly. In fact, neither of us went to church often. It's just that he was brought up one brand of Protestant and I another. He called mine high-church and found nothing so humorous as to tease me over the elaborateness of the worship I skipped every Sunday in comparison to the simplicity of the worship he skipped every Sunday."
Trumbull frowned. "I should think that would annoy you. Didn't you ever feel like taking a poke at him?"
"Never. It was just his way," said Atwood. "Nor need you think that poor Lyon's death was in the least suspicious. You needn't search for any motives of that kind. He died at the age of sixty-eight of complications from a mi!d but long-standing case of diabetes.
"He had said that he was going to leave me something in his will. He expected to die before I did, you see, and he said it was to compensate me for my patience in accepting defeat. Actually, I'm sure it was out of affection, but he would be the last to admit that.
"It was only in the last year before his death, when he knew he was failing, that this began to enter into our conversations. Naturally I protested that this was no fit subject for talk and that he merely made me uncomfortable. But he laughed one time and said, 'I won't make it easy for you, you genuflecting idol worshipper.' You see, just thinking about him makes me fall into his way of talking. I don't know that that's exactly what he called me at this time, but it was something. Anyway, leaving out the epithets, he said, 'I won't make it easy for you. We'll be playing games to the end.'
"He said that on what turned out to be his deathbed. I was all he had, except for the various hospital personnel that hovered about impersonally. He had distant relatives, but none of them visited. Then late in the evening, when I wondered if I ought to leave and return the next morning, he turned his head to me and said in a voice that seemed almost normal, The curious omission in Alice.'
"Naturally, I said, 'What?'
"But he laughed very weakly and said, That's all you get, old friend, all you get.' And his eyes closed, and he was dead."
Rubin said, "A dying hint!"
Avalon said, "You say his voice was clear?"
"Quite clear," said Atwood.
"And you heard him plainly?"
"Quite plainly," said Atwood.
"You sure he didn't say, The curious admission of Wallace'?"
Gonzalo said, "Or The furious decision in Dallas.' "
Atwood said, "Please, I haven't finished the story. I was at the reading of the will. I was asked to be. Also present were several of the distant relatives who hadn't visited poor Lyon. There were cousins and a young grand-niece. Lyon wasn't a really rich man, but he left bequests to each of them, and one to an old servant, and one to his school. I came last. I received ten thousand dollars which had been placed in a safe-deposit box for me and for which I would be given the key on request.
"When the will was read and done with, I asked the lawyer for the key to the safe-deposit box. There is no use denying that I can find perfectly good use for ten thousand dollars. The lawyer said that I must apply to the bank in which the box was to be found. If I failed to do so in one year from that date, the bequest was revoked and was to be otherwise disposed of.
"Naturally, I asked where the bank was located and the lawyer said that except for the fact that it was located somewhere in the United States he could not say. He had no further information except for one envelope which he had been instructed to hand to me and which he hoped would be useful. He had one other envelope for himself which was to be opened
at the end of one year if I had not, by then, claimed the money.
"I accepted my envelope and found inside only the words I had heard from my friend's dying lips. 'The curious omission in Alice.' . . . And that's where the matter now stands."
Trumbull said, "You mean you haven't got your ten thousand dollars?"
"I mean I haven't located the bank. Six months have passed and I have six months more."
Gonzalo said, "The phrase might be an anagram. Maybe if you rearrange the letters you will get the name of the bank."
Atwood shrugged. "It's a possibility I've thought of. I can't remember Sanders ever playing anagrams, but I've tried that sort of thing. I haven't come up with anything hopeful."
Drake, who blew his nose again and looked as though he had no patience at the moment with careful reasoning, said, "Why don't you just go into every bank in White Plains and ask if there is a key to a safe-deposit box put away in your name?"
Avalon shook his head. "Scarcely playing the game, Jim," he said severely.
"Ten thousand dollars is no game," said Gonzalo.
Atwood said, "I admit that I would feel as though I were cheating if 1 simply tried to solve it by hit-or-miss, but I must also admit that I cheated. I tried the banks in several neighboring communities as well as in White Plains. I drew a blank. I'm not surprised at that, though. It's unlikely he would place it near home. He had the whole country to choose from."
"Did he make any trips out of town the last year of his life-during the time he started talking will to you?" asked Halsted.
"I don't think so," said Atwood. "But then he wouldn't have to. His lawyer could attend to that part."
"Well," said Trumbull, "let's try it this way. You've had six months to think about it. What conclusions have you come to?"
"Nothing on the message itself," said Atwood, "but I knew my friend well. He once told me that the best way to hide something was to make use of modern technology. Any document, any record, any set of directions could be converted into microfilm, and a tiny piece of material on which that was recorded could be hidden anywhere and never be uncovered by anything but blind luck. I suppose that the message tells me where to find the microfilm."
Rubin shrugged. "That only switches the focus of the problem. Instead of having the message tell us the location of the bank, it tells us the location of the microfilm. That still leaves us with the curious omission."
"I don't think it's quite the same," said Atwood thoughtfully. "The bank may be thousands of miles away, but the piece of microfilm, or just an ordinary piece of very thin paper, for all I know, might be close at hand. But no matter how close at hand, it might as well be a thousand miles away." He sighed. "Poor Lyon will win this game, too, I'm afraid."
Trumbull said, "If we tackled the problem for you, and managed to solve it, Mr. Atwood, would you feel you had been cheating?"
"Oh, yes," said Mr. Atwood, "but I would accept the ten thousand gladly just the same."
Halsted said curiously, "Have you got some idea as to the moaning of the message, Tom?"
"No," said Trumbull, "but if, as Mr. Atwood says, we're looking for a tiny message in a nearby and accessible place, and if we assumed that Mr. Sanders played fair, then maybe we could carry through some eliminations. . . . To whom did he leave his own house, Mr. Atwood?" "To a cousin, who has since sold it." "What was done to the contents? Surely Sanders had books, games of all sorts, furniture." "Most of it was sold at auction." "Did anything go to you?"
"The cousin was kind enough to offer me whatever I wanted of such material as was not intrinsically valuable. I didn't take anything. I am not the collecting type myself."
"Would your old friend have known this of you?" "Oh, yes." Atwood stirred resdessly. "Gentlemen, I have had six months to think of this. I realize that Sanders would not have hidden the fihn in his own house since he left it to someone else and knew I would have no opportunity to search it. He had ample opportunity to hide it in my house, which he visited as often as I visited his, and it is in my house that I think it exists."
Trumbull said, "Not necessarily. He might have felt certain that there would be some favorite books, some certain memento, you would have asked for."
"No," said Atwood. "How could he be certain I would? He would have left such an item to me in his will."
"That would give it away," said Avalon. "Are you sure he never hinted that you ought to take something? Or that he didn't give you something casually?"
"No," said Atwood, smiling. "You have no idea how unlike Sanders that would be. ... I tell you. I have thought that since he gave me a year to find it, he must have been pretty confident that it would stay in place for
that length of time. It wouldn't be likely to be part of something I might throw away, sell, or easily lose."
There was a murmur of agreement.
Atwood said, "He might very likely have pasted it over the molding of a wall, somewhere on the undersurface of a heavy piece of furniture, inside the refrigerator-you see what I mean."
"Have you looked?" said Gonzalo.
"Oh, yes," said Atwood. "This little game has kept me busy. I've spent considerable spare time going over moldings and under-surfaces and drawers and various insides. I've even spent time in the cellar and the attic."
"Obviously," said Trumbull, "you haven't found anything or we wouldn't be talking about it now."
"No, I haven't-but that doesn't mean anything. The thing I'm after might be so small as to be barely visible. Probably is. I could look right at it and miss it, unless I knew I was in the right place and was somehow prepared to see it, if you know what I mean."
"Which brings us back," said Avalon heavily, "to the message. If you understood it, you would know where to look and you would see it."
"Ah," said Atwood, "if I understood."
"Well, it seems to me," said Avalon, "that the key word is 'Alice.' Does that name have any personal significance to you? Is it the name of someone you both knew? Is it the name of Sanders' dead wife, for instance? The nickname of some object? Some private joke you shared?"
"No. No to all of that."
Avalon smiled, showing his even teeth beneath his neatly trimmed, ever so slightly graying mustache. "Then I would say that 'Alice' must refer to far and away the most famous Alice in the minds of men-Alice in Wonderland."
"Of course," said Atwood, in clear surprise. "That's what makes it a literary puzzle and that's why I turned to my nephew who teaches English literature. I assumed at the start it was a reference to the Lewis Carroll classic.
Sanders was an Alice enthusiast. He had a collection of various editions of the book, and he had reproductions of the Tenniel illustrations all over the house."
"You never told us that," said Avalon in hurt tones.
Atwood said, "Haven't I? I'm sorry. It's one of those things I know so well, I somehow expect everyone to know it."
"We might have expected it," said Trumbull, the corners of his mouth twisting down. "Alice involves herself with a deck of cards in the book."
"It always helps to have all pertinent information," said Avalon stiffly.
"Well, then," said Trumbull, "that brings us to the curious omission in Alice in Wonderland. . . . And what curious omission is that? Have you any thoughts in that direction, Mr. Atwood?"
"No," said Atwood. "I read Alice as a child and have never returned to it-until the bequest, of course. I must admit I've never seen its charm."
"Good Lord," muttered Drake under his breath. Atwood heard him, for he turned his head sharply in Drake's direction. "I don't deny there may be charm for others but I have never seen the fun in word play. I'm not surprised Sanders enjoyed the book, though. His sense of humor was rather raucous and primitive. In any case, my dislike was compounded by my annoyance at having to detect an omission. I did not wish to have to study the book that closely. I hoped my nephew would help." "A teacher of literature!" said Rubin derisively. "Shut up, Manny," said Trumbull. "What did your nephew s
ay, Mr. Atwood?"
"As it happens," said Atwood, "Mr. Rubin is right. My nephew was entirely at sea. He said there were a few passages in the original version of the story that Lewis Carroll had himself written in long hand that did not appear in the final published version. As it happens, an edition of the prepublished version is available now. I obtained a copy and checked through it. I found nothing that seemed significant to me."
Gonzalo said, "Listen! Where we go wrong, Henry always tells us, is in getting too damned complex. Why don't we look at the message? It says, 'The curious omission in Alice.' Maybe we don't have to look at the book. There is a curious omission in the message itself. The name of the book isn't Alice. It's Alice in Wonderland.
Avalon emerged from his wounded silence long enough to say, "It's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, if you wish to be accurate."
"All right," said Gonzalo, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Then we ought to concentrate on the rest of the title, which is omitted in the message. . . . Isn't that right, Henry?"
Henry, standing quietly by the sideboard, said, "It is certainly an interesting point, Mr. Gonzalo."
"Interesting, hell," said Trumbull. "What's curious about it? It's an omission of convenience. Lots of people would say Alice."
Halsted said, "Quite apart from that, I don't see what Adventures in Wonderland would mean. It's no more helpful than the original message. Here's my idea. Alice in Wonderland-beg pardon, Jeff, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland-contains verses, most of which are parodies of well-established poems of the day-"
"Poor ones," said Rubin.
"Beside the point," said Halsted. "They are not perfect parodies, however. Some verses are omitted. For instance, Alice recites a poem beginning 'How doth the little crocodile,' which is a parody of Isaac Watts's dreadful poem 'How doth 'the little busy bee,' though I don't think that's the actual title of the poem. Alice recites only two stanzas and I'm sure Watts's poem has at least four. Maybe the answer lies in the missing verses of the original."
"Is that a curious omission?" said Trumbull.
"I don't know. I don't remember the original version except for the first line, but it should be looked up. . . . The other originals to the parodies should be studied, too."