Dory smiled. “For a time I thought you would never learn! I know you regarded me as a stubborn old bat for making you memorize all the dynasties, but really, if you don’t know your dynasties, you don’t know your Chinese history, and for sure you don’t know your Chinese antiques.”
“Not so. I never thought you were a stubborn old bat, and furthermore, I like to think I’m your most accomplished student,” I said, and she actually laughed, something I hadn’t heard her do much lately.
“I think you may well be,” she said.
I looked at it a little longer. “Beautiful workmanship,” I said. “I’ve never seen anything remotely like it. But what is it exactly you want me to do, Dory?”
Rather than answering me directly, she slowly and painfully reached for something in a magazine rack to one side of her chair, and set in front of me the catalog for the annual Oriental auction at Molesworth Cox in New York. A yellow sticky marked a page on which was shown another silver box.
“You’re selling it,” I said. “No, just a minute.” I eyed the box in front of me. It was about six inches long, four inches wide, and maybe six or seven inches high measured to the top of the domed lid. “The one for sale looks very similar, but I think it’s slightly smaller all ‘round.”
“Very observant,” Dory said. “And you are quite right. They are almost identical, although I believe the text inside is different, the scene depicted on the outside is as well, and mine is larger. I think there is a series of boxes designed to fit inside each other, like those Russian dolls. There will be a third in silver even bigger than this one, and possibly a fourth box in wood rather than silver—the largest, at least that is what my stepfather said—but of course the wood is unlikely to have survived. The silver, in the proper circumstances, would have.”
“You want me to go to New York next week to bid on this box for you,” I said. My heart soared. I’d still be staying in a hotel, of course, but it would be a different hotel. Even better, I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder for gangsters every time I left it, nor would I trip over Rob’s feet every time I turned around.
“Would you consider doing just that? I would pay your expenses of course, plus something for your time, and I would pay you a commission if we get it.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll see if Alex will come into the shop to help Clive out for a few days. I’d like to go early and get a good look at this at the preview to make sure it’s authentic before we buy it.”
“You should go right away,” Dory said. “But is it authentic? Almost certainly. You see, this silver box in front of us is one of three that my stepfather smuggled to Hong Kong, and thence to North America where they were auctioned off one at a time in the mid—nineteen seventies. I expect my stepfather believed that he could get a better price if he sold them separately, although I’m not so sure he was right. George, my husband, bought it at auction about ten years ago. Have I ever showed you his collection? Please, have a look in the next room.”
The room was lined with built-in shelving divided into twelve-inch squares and fronted by glass doors. In each of the squares was a single object, lit from above. On one wall, which was dark, the objects were in sealed display cases, and the humidity and temperature in each was being monitored. “May I turn on the light on the end wall?” I called out to Dory, and did so when she agreed. These objects were really, really old, some old silver bowls, a couple of gold boxes, and a number of puzzling objects I couldn’t identify. It took me several minutes to figure out what this collection was all about. “Medical equipment of some kind,” I said finally.
“Correct,” Dory said from the next room. “My husband, as you know, is head of an international pharmaceutical company, and he collects objects related to that business. There are molds for pills, very old syringes, beakers, and boxes that would have been used for medicinal herbs. It is quite an extensive and unusual collection. Some of the objects there are over two thousand years old.”
“Maybe these should be in a museum,” I said.
“George has finally agreed that when he dies they will, indeed, go to a museum.”
“I hope you have a good security system.”
“Oh, yes. I turned it off just for you to see the collection. The door here is usually closed and locked.”
“So does this box have something to do with medicine, or did it just come in a lot with something your husband wanted?”
“Inside the box is a process for making something,” Dory said. “It tells you to heat the ingredients, unspecified, in a sealed container for thirty-six hours, and then to partake of the resulting substance for seven days. George interpreted it as a process for making drugs, and that is why he acquired it. It’s Chinese, so he didn’t discuss it with me for reasons I have already explained, I recognized it as soon as I set eyes on it, however. I saw the three boxes when my stepfather got them. I fell in love with them, but he sold them, over my protests. George found this one, a second has turned up in New York that I plan through you to purchase, and I hope to find the third before I die. George and I may be the only people, along with you now, who know that this is part of a nesting set. When I find all three of them, I plan to give them to the Shaanxi History Museum in Xi’an, China. I want them to go home.”
“That is very generous of you. This will not come cheap. You have to think about how much you’ll pay for it. We’ll get you registered as an absentee bidder and establish your credit worthiness through Molesworth and Cox here, and I’ll also arrange to be on the telephone with you for the bidding. I’ll book my flight as soon as I get back to the shop.”
She nodded. “Thank you, but I don’t want to register as a bidder, absentee or otherwise. I am going to transfer a great deal of money to your account, and you are going to be the bidder. I don’t want anyone to know I am attempting to purchase this.”
“I could head for Brazil with your money,” I said.
“You could, but I know that you won’t. It is possible, by the way, that Burton Haldimand, representing the Cottingham Museum, may be after this as well. I hope to outbid them. I would most particularly not want Dr. Haldimand to know of my involvement in this.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but then decided against it. What I wanted to ask was if this last stipulation was what her request was really about. You see, when Major Cottingham died and control of the board of directors went to his trophy wife, Courtney, a decision was made that new blood was required at the museum. In the case of Dory’s job as curator of the Asian galleries, that new blood came in the form of Burton Haldimand. It was all done rather lavishly, of course, in true Cottingham style, with an elaborate farewell dinner for Dory, and the gift of a watercolor by one of China’s leading nineteenth-century artists. There were hosts of speeches, including a very gracious one by Dory welcoming Burton to the position she was leaving. Only those of us who knew her well were aware that Dory was devastated. To her credit, none of us had ever heard her criticize the museum, or for that matter, Burton Haldimand for getting her job.
It took her awhile to get her equilibrium back, if she really ever did. At first, she would come and just sit in a chair at McClintoch Swain, chatting away to my neighbor and sometimes employee Alex Stewart, who is getting along in years himself. Clive and I were glad to have their company, and it certainly didn’t bother the customers. In fact, the only member of the McClintoch Swain team who seemed less than enthusiastic about Dory was Diesel, the orange cat who guards the store for us. That was undoubtedly because Dory insisted upon making a fuss over Diesel and kept trying to pet him, something this particular cat abhors. The minute Dory came through the door, Diesel would turn his full attention and his considerable talent for spotting shoplifters to the back room.