Wild OatsIt was a sweltering day in August. There was no fire in the grate, but there was a fire of a personal nature that needed putting out...."Cryptic messages," said William Blackstone Wildman, "were rare in my experience, Winston." "Yes, but surely you must have come across a few good ones in your career?" "Why do you ask?" "Well," I ventured hesitantly, "to be frank, I have a problem of this sort myself. It concerns by brother, who absconded a few days ago." He chuckled. "It's been thirty years since I handled a case. I gave it up, the detection business. It finally struck me as a waste of time, and besides, I had earned enough money from it to retire comfortably." "I'm aware of that, Mr Wildman. But all I want is some advice. Not an investigation." "All right. Anything I can do for my Boswell. If you'd be so good as to decant some port -- no, this is a gin and tonic day -- I shall hear you out." "Thank you, sir. You won't regret it. It's an intriguing problem." I filled our glasses. ****************************** "My brother Nathan Hale Winston," I began, "disappeared three days ago, under shadowy circumstances." "Yes, go on." "We think he left the country to escape his creditors. Ordinarily, I should say it was none of my business what he does. He's old enough to look after himself, and we in my family made up our minds long ago that he is an incorrigible wastrel, more power to him. His debts are no longer our concern, although we would never wish him to come to grief over them. "Unfortunately, it seems certain now that he is a thief as well as a prodigal. I always thought him good-natured and honourable according to his own standards, but now ... Well, at first we thought it was a burglary -- that is, theft by an outsider, but Mother saw right to the point, so the police have not been called in, nor will they be. I hinted of her suspicions in a note shortly before he went away and offered him a chance to redeem himself with no repercussions. For some reason he took offense. Here is his reply." I reached into my pocket. "Just a moment," Wildman said. "What was stolen?" "Oh, sorry. It was a golden statuette of ancient Roman origin. A naked athlete, about ten inches tall, with a discus. My father purchased it for about ten thousand twenty years ago, and it's now worth about eight times that. Let's say 80,000 pounds." "Good lord! What sort of debts did your brother have? Surely he didn't owe that much?" "Hardly. I would guess about ten thousand, mostly in gaming debts. We aren't really sure." "Where did he get the credit?" "Undoubtedly his prospects of inheritance. I should think the crisis began when Father tied that up in a trust fund shortly before he died last year. Nate cannot touch the capital for twenty years." "Yes, that would upset his creditors considerably. So he took the statuette in lieu of his inheritance and absconded to safer climes." "It looks that way, Wildman. Anyway, here is his reply to my letter." I read it aloud:
Having cashed in my inheritance in the only way left open to me, I fully intended to make it known to you where to recover Father's precious toy. Now I think I'll make a sporting proposition of it as I sit here on a tropical island savouring nectar and ambrosia. Give you a taste of that delectable gamble that makes life worth living. Maybe you will be more sympathetic in the future to one who sows his wild oats. So go out and reap the resulting crop yourself, my lad -- go and look for the damned thing! Your ultimate well-wisher, Natty PS. For Mother's sake, and all of the Bostonian aunts, I suggest you make the proper arrangements with the lawyer-swine about garnisheeing my legacy and call off any police hounds you might have sent sniffing: there must be no scandal! You won't be seeing me for a few years. "Yes, I understand," he said. "Where is your cryptic message, your sporting chance?" "I'm not sure. It's just that Nate would certainly leave me a clue to work on. I've searched his flat and gone through all his belongings and discovered nothing -- no hints at all. Not even any communications from his bookmakers or money-lenders, which he must have destroyed. The place had been cleaned out of all personal papers to avoid any traces as to what he could have done, so I am at a loss." "It's an interesting mystery, Winston. You will have to do my legwork for me. I'm too old and decrepit to leave the house any longer. Let me see the letter." I gave it to him. He studied it closely with his magnifying glass (the old man's eyesight needed the aid of this enormous object in his later years, but I'm sure he also recognized the dramatic effect). He held it up to the light; he read it through letter by letter; he grunted and sat thinking for several minutes. I impatiently drank another gin and tonic and filled his own glass to the brim. Finally, he cleared his throat and asked: "Who are your brother's favourite authors?" "I don't know." "Ambrose Bierce, for example?" He downed most of his drink rather quickly then very slowly stood up and shuffled over to his bookcase, which covered one wall of the study. With maddening slowness he peered along the shelves, his eyes just an inch or so from the spines of the books. If I hadn't been so impatient, I could have laughed at his comic display of infirmity. "Ah," he said, taking down a dusty little book and holding it up close to his nose. "Hmmm." He went through its table of contents. "Dumdum." He leafed through the pages. "Ah, ha!" Reading. "Oh yes." Turning a page. "Oh, ho!" Snapping the book shut. He shuffled back to his chair, sat down, and finished his gin. "Well, Winston, I have an assignment for you. Go back to London, to your brother's flat. On the dining room table, or possibly the kitchen table, or if not there some other table, you will find an ornament -- a centre-piece, a bowl of flowers, candlesticks, something of the sort. Whatever you find, look it over very carefully. Look inside. Break it if necessary. Memorize every detail, save any scrap of paper, and come back here." The next day, I went to Nathan's flat. There was a large canape bowl on the dining room table and two candlesticks. I inspected the bowl carefully and found nothing. Nor was there anything in the candlesticks (except candles). In the kitchen, I emptied all the salt and pepper shakers into the sink -- nothing. In the sitting room I removed the contents from vases, cigarette boxes, magazine racks -- nothing. Back to the dining room. The canape bowl had a felt cover on the bottom, which I peeled off. Under the felt there was a pawn ticket. "Here it is, Wildman," I said breathlessly, as I entered his study. "A pawn ticket. This must be it." "A pawnbroker named Timothy Oates, I fancy?" "How could you guess that?" "I looked him up in the tradesmen's directory." "You know I didn't mean that, Wildman. Tell me how you solved the mystery." "The case is not yet complete, Winston. I suggest that you go to this Mr Oates and bring him here to me -- with the statuette. You may threaten him with receiving stolen property, if you have to." But that was not necessary. Notice of the recovered pawn ticket did the trick. Mere hours later, Mr Oates, a short fat man, giggled over his gin and tonic and said, "One takes a chance when the stakes are high. I doubt whether I've lost anything in the long run." He opened his valise and removed an object wrapped up in greasy rags. "A shame to dress him so," he said, "but it was part of the bargain." Wildman stripped off the wrappings. "'A man though naked may be in rags'. Sit back down, Mr Oates. Will you have another drink? Yes? Good. Now tell Mr Winston here how much he must pay you to redeem this object." The golden marvel of antiquity sat there on the coffee table. So familiar to my sight, so newly impressive having been taken for granted for so many years. "Sixty thousand pounds." "God, this is extortion!" I said. "You won't get a penny from me, Oates. That's stolen property." "I think," said Wildman, "you are enough of a sportsman, Winston, to pay the man. I'll explain your brother's scheme to you. First, Mr Oates, what were the terms of your agreement?" "Nathan Winston brought me this statue a week ago. After I had ascertained its value and authenticity, I put it to him that it was not his property to dispose of. I could not advance him any money on its security, but as a favor to an old sporting friend I should not say a word about his possession of it to anybody. "He told me he was to inherit some 100,000 pounds (which I knew) but that he could not touch the money because of some trust arrangement. I expressed sympathy with him on this point, and said it was hardly fair. He agreed, and put to me the following proposition. I was to give him 50,000 for the statue; he would pay his debts, and with the rest of the money leave the country. He would inform the family where to redeem the statue on the provision that I be repaid in full and no steps taken to prosecute me. The police would be kept in the dark to avoid a scandal. And there you have it. I take it, Mr Winston, that you will not be so dishonourable as to go back on your brother's word?" "I made no promise to Nathan. He never mentioned it to me." "But surely..." "Wait, Mr Oates," said Wildman. "There is a misunderstanding. Nathan Winston changed his plans." "He wouldn't be so base as to leave a trusted friend in the lurch," I said. "No? Then I put it to you, Mr Oates, that you have not been perfectly frank with us. After all, what's in it for you? You pay him fifty, you ask for sixty but will receive no more than the fifty you paid for it from his family -- for you would be very fortunate to get even that rather than a fare-thee-well thank you for restoring their property. No, you too are a gambler. I suggest that the proposition was to play your luck against the Winston family's. Nathan would leave a clue for tracing the statue. If they found it, they would probably pay off your expenses to avoid scandal; you would gain nothing in that case (and only bear the slight risk of prosecution or non-payment). "On the other hand, if they did not find it, you would be free after a discrete lapse of time to sell the statue to a collector, for perhaps most of its full value -- say 75,000 pounds, a profit to you of 25,000. In any case, the family would be able to recover their losses from Nathan's inheritance, so in effect Nathan had given you a nice little sure shot for your pains, with the added spice of an illegality thrown in. A nice little scheme, don't you think?" Oates was silent. Wildman continued: "There is some indication, also, though no proof, that Nathan's flat had been searched and all personal documents removed. Probably by Nathan, but who's to say it wasn't yourself? The pawn ticket was well-hidden, but there could have been other leads...." "The executors will never pay him, Wildman," I said. "I think they will," Oates said. "I know Nathan's present whereabouts -- not that he is aware of that, of course. The police would be interested to know, in spite of your family's feelings. No, I'll risk prosecution as a receiver of stolen goods on the assumption that they will do anything to prevent a public scandal." "You're taking a mighty risk, Oates. But I'll see you get your money. Now, get out." "The statue goes with me." "All right for now, but you will sign a statement and my solicitor will be calling on you. We shall hang on to this redemption certificate until then." When that had been settled and Oates had left, I poured a couple of stiff ones and asked Wildman what had put him on to the solution. "The letter," he said. "If, as you seemed to think, there was a cryptic message, the metaphor at the end seemed the most likely source of it. One sows his wild oats, another reaps them. Rather ambiguous. Then the words 'find the damned thing yourself', in association with wild oats, rang a bell in my mind. A slight tinkle to be sure, but I was on my guard. There is a macabre story by the American author Ambrose Bierce (hence the reference to ambrosia) called The Damned Thing. As I recalled, its section headings were in a grotesque ironic vein. "I looked them up. The first heading, referring to a dead body on a coroner's table, is 'One does not always eat what is on the table'. What else, besides a human corpse, is put on the table but not eaten? I sent you, Winston, to find out. The second heading, referring to an attack by a monster, is 'What may happen in a field of wild oats'. Another connection. I had suspected that the statuette had been pawned in some way, and was amused to discover our Mr Oates in the directory. The third heading, referring to the condition of the body on the table, is 'A man though naked may be in rags'. The swaddling of the naked athlete was an artistic flourish of Nathan's. The final heading is 'An explanation from the tomb'. I think I have given that on behalf of your brother who is now dead and buried so far as his past identity is concerned." And that is the story of William Blackstone Wildman's final case, and also the last one has ever heard of one Nathan Hale Winston. (But I think some day he will come back to claim what's left of his inheritance. Mother has long since forgiven him now that she has her golden boy back again.) From the William Blackstone Wildman Collection by Grobius Shortling[Unfair! This is based on a literary allusion. How many people are familiar with an obscure story by Ambrose Bierce? Well, tough; if you have never read it, there is something missing from your experience. (This story also illustrates the difficulty of utilizing predefined directives and trying to fit the plot around them: one can easily concoct a martini around an olive, but Baked Alaska is another matter.) --Grobius]ALERT: Ambrose Bierce's wonderful
The Devil's Dictionary is Online -- thanks to Erik Max Francis.
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