Collected Stories

I. The Purloined Letter

“Yes,” the fat man said, “I’ve spent the last 17 years in this pursuit. More armagnac, Mr. Staid?”

“Nice booze,” Staid admitted. Adding a splash of Fresca, he said, “What is this dingus anyway, this purloined letter?”

“Ah,” the fat man said. “It’s quite a story, Mr. Staid. I have you ever heard of the Barony of Ueltenplotz?”

Staid sucked on his stogie. “Thuringian, isn’t it? One of the prizes in the Carpathian succession, not settled till MCCLXIV.”

“Very good, Mr. Staid! I like a man who knows his dates.”

“These onions aren’t bad either,” Staid allowed.

“Well, sir,” the fat man said, “if you know the history of the Barons Ueltenplotz, you know they’ve been the renegades of Mitteleuropa for a thousand years.”

“Maupers and gapes.” Staid grated.

“Exactly. And arrogant to a fault. What would you say, sir, if I told you the seventh Baron Ueltenplotz stole a letter from the European alphabet?”

“I’d say your brain was all funny.”

“And yet, sir, that is precisely what happened. Yes, sir. The family name was originally one letter longer, beginning with that missing letter.”

“Which letter was it?”

“No one knows,” the fat man said. “In MXXIX, the seventh Baron, Helmut the Homicidal, having seen one of his personal monogrammed polo shirts being used as a horsewipe, determined to commandeer his initial letter for his own personal use. The Barony was wealthy in those days — carrots had been discovered in the territory — and so monks, scribes, delineators, transvestites and other civil servants were dispatched across Europe to excise that letter wherever it might appear. Illuminated manuscripts developed sudden unexplained fly specks and pen smears. Literate men — and they were few in the CMth century, Mr. Staid. I assure you — were bribed or threatened to forget that letter. The alphabet, which had been 27 letters in length — ‘Thrice nine’ was a saying of the time, Mr. Staid, long since forgotten — was reduced to 26. The letter between K and L had been stolen! And what do you say to that, sir?”

“I say you’ve been staring at the light too long,” Staid said. He puffed on his pipe.

“And yet these are facts, sir, facts. I first came across this remarkable story 17 years ago, in MCMLVIII, in conversation with a retired harpsichord tuner in Potsdam. The letter had been removed everywhere, Mr. Staid, except from the face of one shield, sir, one shield maintained for centuries in the deepest recesses of Schloss Ueltenplotz. During the Second World War, a Technical Sergeant from Bismarck, North Dakota, stumbling across the shield and mistaking it for a beer tray, sent it home to his father, an official in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. But the shield never arrived, sir, and what do you think of that?”

“Not much,” Staid admitted, and dragged on his cigarette.

“It had been stolen, sir, yet again, by a Jugoslav General in Istanbul, one Brigadier Ueltehmitt. But he didn’t know what he had, sir. He thought the mark on the shield was a typographical error, and believed it to be a Yield sign from the Hungarian Highway Department.”

“What’s this dingus look like, anyway?”

“No one knows for certain,” the fat man said. “Some think it’s a Φ, some say a Λ.”

“Φ seems more likely,” Staid said. “What’s it supposed to sound like?” Staid said.

“No one has pronounced that letter,” the fat man said, “in over a thousand years. Some think it’s the sound in a man’s throat on the third day of Asian flu when watching a rock record commercial during the 6 o’clock news.”

“Guttural,” said Staid.

The fat man, whose real name was Guttural, frowned at Staid through narrowed eyes. “It seems I’ve underestimated you,” he said.

“Looks like,” admitted Staid.

“Well, sir,” the fat man said, “we’ll put our cards on the table. I want that letter. Will you join me?”

“Where is this dingus, anyway?”

“Come along, sir!”

II. The Shield of Ueltenplotz

The Ueltehmitt Caper ran without a hitch. First, the three helicopters descended over the Bahnhof Boogie in Dusseldorf. released their grappling hooks and removed the building to Schwartzvogel Island in Lake Liebfraumilch, w here the demolition team with the laser sliced through the sides of the vault. Eliminating the alarm system by squirting Redi-Whip into the air-conditioning ducts, they sprayed the guards with a sleep-inducing gas disguised as pocket packs of Propa PH, and lowered ropes to one another until exactly 6:27. Removing the lead-lined box containing the priceless Shield of Ueltenplotz, they placed it in the speedboat and sped away to the innocent-appearing minesweeper dawdling in the current. Waterline gates in the minesweeper yawned open, the speedboat entered, and before the minesweeper sank the lead-lined box had been transferred to the catapult plane and launched skyward. Two hours later, the pilot parachuted over Loch Ness and was driven swiftly to Scotswa Hay, the ancestral retreat of Guttural’s co-conspirator Hart in the highlands.

Staid, Guttural, Hart, Wilmer, Obloquy and the beauteous Laurinda synchronized their watches and crowded around the table where lay the package, now wrapped in yesterday’s Dortmunder Zeitung Geblatt. Ripping off the wrappings, the fat man opened the box and took out the precious shield.

“Ahhhh.” said the beauteous Wilmer.

“At last,” commented Obloquy, and choked to death on his Russian cigarette.

The fat man turned over the shield. “No!” he cried. “No!”

Staid frowned at the shield. Rounder than most, it bore the figure π.

“It’s a Frisbee!” cried the fat man.

“You fool!” shrieked Laurinda, stamping her foot with a dater. “Ueltehmitt tricked you!”

“Wrong dingus, huh?” Staid asked, and lit up a corncob.

“Seventeen years,” the fat man said. “Well, I’ll give it 17 more if need be.” He flung the false shield out the window. “On to Istanbul! Will you join us. Staid?”

“No, thanks, fat man.” Staid watched the Frisbee sail over the heath cliff, “π in the sky,” he said.