What's So Funny?

"Tell him to sit down. There."

The voice sounded as though it were coming from a bicycle tire with a slow leak, and at first Dortmunder thought Mr. Hemlow had pointed at the sofa to his left with a chicken foot, but no, that was his hand.

Speaking of hands, Eppick finally released Dortmunder's and gestured for him to get to that sofa by walking around behind Mr. Hemlow in his wheelchair, which Dortmunder did, while Eppick went away to take up a lot of the other sofa, crossing one leg over the other as though he wanted to show how relaxed he was, but not succeeding.

Dortmunder sat to Mr. Hemlow's left, leaned forward, rested his forearms on his thighs, looked eye-to-eye with Mr. Hemlow, and said, "Harya doin?"

"I've been better," grated the bicycle tire.

Dortmunder was sure of that. Seen up close, Mr. Hemlow was seven or eight different kinds of mess. He had a little clear plastic hose draped over his ears and inserted into his nostrils to give him oxygen. His face and neck and apparently everything but those chicken-foot hands were bloated and stuffed looking, as though he'd been filled up by a bicycle pump trying to solve the tire leak. His eyes were small and mean-looking, their pupils a very wet blue, so that, under the red beret, he looked like a more than usually homicidal hawk. What could be seen of his skin was a raw-looking red, as though he were originally a very pale person who'd been left out in the sun too long. His posture sucked; he sat on his shoulder blades with his wattles on his torso, which seemed to be shaped more or less like a medicine ball. His right knee twitched constantly, as though remembering an earlier life as a dance band drummer.

While Dortmunder sat absorbing these unlovely details, Mr. Hemlow's watery eyes studied him in return; until all at once Mr. Hemlow said, "What do you know about the First World War?"

Dortmunder thought. "We won," he guessed.

"Who lost?"

"The other people. I don't know, I wasn't there."

"Nor was I," Mr. Hemlow said, and gargled out something that was either a laugh or a death rattle, though probably a laugh, because he went on living, saying, "But my father was. He was there. He told me all about it."

"That musta been nice."

"Illuminating. My father was still fighting in that war two years after it was over, what do you think of that?"

"Well, I guess he must of been a real gung ho type."

"No, he was under orders. And you know who he was fighting?"

"With the war over?" Dortmunder shook his head. "I don't think you're supposed to do that," he said.

"In 1917," Mr. Hemlow said, "the United States entered the war. It had been going on in Europe for three years already. That was the same year as the Russian Revolution. The czar was thrown out, the Communists came in."

"Busy year," Dortmunder suggested.

"The British," Mr. Hemlow said, and apparently spat, though nothing seemed to come out. "The British," he repeated, "kept a great pile of munitions at Murmansk, a deep-water port on the Russian coast of the Barents Sea, north of the Arctic Circle."

"Cold up there," Dortmunder suggested.

"Didn't matter," Mr. Hemlow told him. "All that mattered, after the Revolution, they had to keep those munitions away from the Red Army. So that's why — there's no war declared here, nothing legal about this at all — my father and several hundred other US Army and US Navy perso

"I never even heard about it," Dortmunder said.

"Most haven't."

Eppick said, "It was news to me, too, and I thought I knew some history."

"American soldiers," Mr. Hemlow said, with what sounded like satisfaction, possibly even pride, "are a light-fingered group, always have been. Over many a mantel in America hangs stolen goods."

"Spoils of war," Eppick explained.

"That's what they call it," Mr. Hemlow said. "Now, near the end of the invasion, a platoon of American soldiers, nine lads including my father, and their sergeant, Alfred X. Northwood, came across a surprising item in a port warehouse in Murmansk. It was a chess set, a gift for the czar, from I don't know whom, which had been shipped in by sea just in time to meet the Bolshevik Revolution, and it was the most valuable thing those boys had ever seen in their lives."

Dortmunder said, "A chess set."

"The pieces were gold, inlaid with jewels. It was too heavy for one man to lift."

"Oh," Dortmunder said. "That kind of chess set."

"Exactly. It was worth millions. In the chaos of war and revolution, nobody even knew it existed, packed away in a wooden crate."

"Pretty good," Dortmunder said.

"Most of the boys in that expeditionary force," Mr. Hemlow said, "were from Ohio and Missouri, so they made an agreement. They would take that chess set back to the States and use it to finance a dream they'd been sharing, to open a chain of radio stations across the Midwest. If they'd done it, they would've died rich men."

"Uh huh," Dortmunder said, noticing that "if."

"Sgt. Northwood," Mr. Hemlow went on, "took the ivory-and-ebony chessboard. One of the lads took the teak box that held the pieces. The other eight, including my father, took four chessmen each, knowing each of them could smuggle that much home."

"Sounds good," Dortmunder agreed.

"Back in the States," Mr. Hemlow said, "out of the army at last, they met with ex-Sgt. Northwood in Chicago, and all gave him their part of the loot, for him to convert into the loans they needed."

"Uh huh," Dortmunder said.

"They never saw Northwood or the chess set again."

"You know," Dortmunder said, "I kinda saw that coming."

"They searched for him, for a long while," Mr. Hemlow said. "Fewer and fewer of them over the years. Finally just my father and three of his friends. Their sons all were told the story, and when we seven boys were grown we took what time we could from our regular lives to look for Northwood and the chess set. But we never found either one." Mr. Hemlow shrugged, which was more like a generalized tremor. "The generation after us didn't care," he said. "It was all ancient history. Two of the boys from my generation are still alive, but none of us is in any condition to go on with the search."

Delicately, Dortmunder said, "This Sgt. Northwood, he probably isn't around any more either."

"The chess set is," Mr. Hemlow said. "The boys were going to call their company Chess King Broadcasting. One of them drew up a very nice logo for it."

"Uh huh," Dortmunder said, hoping Mr. Hemlow wasn't about to show him the logo.

He wasn't. Instead, he lowered his head, those watery eyes now turning to ice, and he said, "I am a wealthy man. I am not in this for the money. Those boys were robbed of their dreams."

"Yeah, I get that," Dortmunder agreed.

"Now, unexpectedly," Mr. Hemlow said, "I seem to have an opportunity, if I live long enough for it, to right that wrong."

"You know where the chess set is," Dortmunder suggested.

"Possibly," Mr. Hemlow said, and sat back in his wheelchair to fold his chicken feet over his paunch. "But for a moment," he said, "let us talk about you. What did you say your name was?"