He discovered that he had no wish to do the sensible thing, and it took only a moment of self-analysis for him to find the reason: he would see Lara tomorrow, and he wanted to be able to tell her all about this crate and whatever was in it. He most definitely did not want to have to tell her he had been unable to get it open. What would Lara think of a man who could not open a simple wooden crate?
He went into the kitchen and equipped himself with the screwdriver he had mentioned to Tina and a big utility knife that had come with the set from Chef’s Shape-Up. Studying its cruel curve, he tried to remember whether he had ever used it before. Probably not; it seemed intended for butchering large hairy animals that were not quite dead. He could hardly start stabbing and slashing at the crate with it until Tina was safely out of the way.
“Tina!” he called. “Are you okay in there?”
There was no answer. He put his ear over the opening and listened, feeling sure that if Tina was moving around inside he would hear her. After a few seconds he could make out the whir of the electric clock and the faint noises of someone preparing for bed in the next apartment, but there was no sound from the opening; it was as silent as a grave.
“Tina, are you playing a joke on me?”
He grabbed another board and tried to pull it off. Whether because it was more tightly secured or because he had exhausted himself on the first, it yielded not the smallest fraction of an inch.
Yet it was slightly cracked. He jammed the big blade into the crack and worked it back and forth. The crack enlarged in a satisfying way and soon reached the edge of the board, depriving one end of the strength of one nail. He drove the blade under that end and pried—he had heard that you were not supposed to pry with the blade of a knife, but he found that he did not give a damn. If the blade broke, he would pry with what was left.
The remaining nail gave instead, shrieking and bending. He threw down the knife, grabbed the board, and tore it off.
The opening was doubled, so that the light from the table lamp he had positioned for Tina shone into it more effectively. The rough dark surface, which he had imagined to be that of the object contained, was revealed to be only some sort of packing material or wrapping. He felt it and pushed against it; the object beneath seemed smooth and unyielding. There was no sign of Tina.
With the knife, he started to work on the third board, then realized he was neglecting a more powerful tool. He slipped the narrow end of the board he had just pulled loose under the third board and threw his weight on the opposite end, using the edge of the crate as a fulcrum. Though its nails complained like the rest, it came up fairly easily. So did the next, and only the board on which the table lamp stood remained.
He tried to grasp the rough packing material and tear it, but it was too tough to tear and too tightly stretched to afford him an effective grip. The big utility knife would cut it, he felt sure. But the knife might also damage whatever the packing sheet was protecting, might even harm Tina. He called to her again, softly, and tried to tell her how worried he was. There was no response.
When he had replaced the lamp on the end table, he tried to pry again with the detached board, but the mechanical advantage it had possessed was gone.
There was no convenient crack into which he could force his knife. He worked it beneath the end of the remaining board and wedged the tip of his screwdriver into the opening he had made; as soon as he tried to pry with the screwdriver, it bent like a coat hanger.
He discovered that he did not want to pry with the utility knife because he was afraid it might break. Earlier he had not cared about it and would have thrown it away any time he needed more space in the utensil drawer. Now it was truly his, like his order book and the silver pen whose writing element he had replaced so many times.
He wedged the blade under the other end of the board and made himself work the handle up and down, gently at first, with increasing force as the nails resisted. When he had enlarged the opening between the board and the top of the crate to about an eighth of an inch, he withdrew the blade and pulled up the end of the board, heaving backward again and again, so that one side of the crate was lifted from the floor.
With the top of the crate gone, he could see inside better than he had when the lamp had stood beside the opening. The rough, gray-brown sheet seemed to have been added when the crate was complete except for its top—draped over the rectangular object inside, its margins shoved down into the crate. Yellow mats of shredded wood had been pushed down around it to give extra protection to the sides. He pulled them out, and when the last was gone lifted off the rough sheet, which was only a kind of heavy cardboard, easily enough.
The rectangular object he had felt was the top of the desk, a single dark panel of tropical hardwood. He knew it at once, knew each scratch and honorable mark of service. The fold-down writing board was folded, the drawers taped shut; but it was the desk, his desk.
Somehow, he felt, the sides of the crate should simply fall away now. They did not; he was forced to pry the boards of one side off one at a time and pile them in a corner. It was only when he had removed the last and paused sweating to search once more through the heap of packing materials for Tina, and admire the desk, that he noticed that the masking tape meant to hold the writing board in place hung free. For a second or two he wondered whether Tina could have done it—whether she possessed the needed strength. She probably could, he decided; her tiny fingers could have loosened a corner easily, and with a corner up, she could peel the tape back. He tugged experimentally at the loose end and found the tape had not adhered well; the desk had been waxed.
Mentally, he traced Tina’s path. Finding herself on the thick cardboard sheet, she would have crawled across it just below the remaining boards. The mats of shredded wood would have blocked her at the sides, but she could have—must have —gone down one of the corners. Originally, the cardboard sheet had been flat; it had been bent to fit around the desk fairly tightly, but there had necessarily been a good deal of extra material at the corners. Tina could not have climbed the waxed legs of the desk, but the loose folds of rough cardboard at the corners would have offered her a choice of several easily scaled pipes.
He pulled away the piece of tape. Its makers had provided the desk with a brass lock; but the key had been lost, perhaps for a century or more.
“Here you are, Tina, I’ve found you,” he said as he opened the board.
She was not there. There were eight pigeon holes in the top row behind the board, six larger ones in the bottom row—he had counted them often at the store—and they were empty, all empty except for a single ivory-colored envelope of note-paper size. Thinking that Tina might somehow have secreted herself behind it, he pulled it out. She had not, and as soon as the envelope was out he realized that it would have been impossible. The fourteen empty pigeon holes stared blandly at him; he seemed to hear Tina’s delighted laughter.
Sitting in the old brown chair with the cigarette burn in its arm, he tore open the envelope.
Dear Mr. Green:
Mother gave me an antique doll when I was twelve, and I have been a collector ever since. That’s more than fifty years now. Do you know Kipling’s poem?