Abraham Surd

by Muppy Heingardt

eyes for a moment, as if the next step was written on the back of her eyelids. Abraham had invited her over for this game. He was supposed to be solving a crime, and here he was, with her, watching her struggle for an answer. He was playing with her, but what was he playing at?

  “You must have already solved this mystery.”

  “I assure you I have no idea who the culprit is.” Another sip from his tea stated clearly that he had no more to say on that subject.

  Despite the pleasures of the guest chair, Margaret found herself puzzled to discomfort. She snatched the letter from the table once more and read each sentence carefully.

  “‘The great Abraham Surd,’ it says. It’s someone who respects your talent. A theft...and everything you need to solve this case can be found in the letter...” now she was talking to herself. “‘Should you fail’...this thief wasn’t sure...”

  Abraham stood and went to the fireplace. “It’s going to be pretty cool tonight. I’ll get the fire going.”

  “Whoever this is wants to humiliate you, Abraham. They aren’t sure, and you are here in your home instead of trying to solve the case. I don’t think it’s possible from this letter alone. I don’t think it is at all. But here you are, lighting a fire, and this thief is uncertain, and there is nothing in this letter that gives me even a small clue.”

  Abraham nonchalantly nudged the firewood with a bronze poker.

  “And that means you’ve figured it out. You don’t know who it is, but you’ve figured it out.”

  The fire lit, Abraham returned to his chair and somehow made himself comfortable. Margaret didn’t understand how Abraham could sit there and talk for hours without even shifting, but she did know that she was quite annoyed with the look she was receiving. He was smiling, like a six year-old boy that had called the magician’s hand. “Your observational skills are quite good, Margaret. They are quite good. But you are wrong on that point. I haven’t figured it out. Not yet.”

  “You think you will, then?”

  Abraham shook his head. “I have no idea if I will. You see, Margaret,” Abraham leaned forward, holding his arm above the table, “what you have observed is correct in almost every facet. You are still looking for an answer, though. Answers aren’t always...well, answers.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, suppose I told you that, in a moment, forearm will supinate. Do you know what that means?”

  Margaret shook her head.

  “Right. You’ve never heard the word before, and you have no idea what my arm will do. You can arrive at no answer, is that correct?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Do you think you can guess right with one chance?” The look on her face gave Abraham his answer.

  “No. No, I guess not. I know not. What is it you’re getting at?”

  “Think, Margaret. What is it you know about arms? What do you know about the word ‘supinate’?”

  Margaret frowned. “I don’t know anything about that word.”

  “Really?”

  Now Margaret paused, and the ticking of the clock settled itself deep inside her mind. This moment of silence, this genuine comfort–she’d have to find a chair like this one day–, it all set the mind to work, pushing her cognizance beyond everyday limits. It was so easy to think in this chair, in this room, in this mess that shouldn’t work but does...

  And yet no answer came to her. Perhaps she was too comfortable. Perhaps that was Abraham’s secret. While she sat in contemplative paradise, was his discomfort the key to his roundabout solutions? Perhaps it was something like that. Perhaps deep in the recesses of the human mind, there is need to be reminded of the world outside for those inner workings to find real answers.

  She gave up. “I know it sounds like a stupid word to use in everyday conversation.”

  “Yes. I found it in the dictionary yesterday. And?”

  “It’s a word. You’re going to do something with your hand. I don’t know what. It’s just some kind of action--”

  “A verb, yes. And what do you know about verbs?”

  Oh. That was the game, was it? So this was the big test. How much could she observe of this word to determine what he would do? In her own mind, she rolled up her sleeves and put on her fighting face.

  “Verbs...You’re going to do something with your arm. It’s going to supinate. I don’t know what supinate is, but it has to be an action. It could mean that you will do nothing. Yes, this could be a trick question, no doubt, with someone like you doing the asking. Perhaps supinate means ‘remain motionless’. But when I picture ‘supine’–maybe that’s not a word, I don’t know–I think movement. It almost sounds graceful, like a waltz or something, but hands don’t waltz...”

  Abraham nodded and urged her on.

  “So now I have a fifty-fifty chance of being correct. You will do something or nothing. I doubt that it is nothing, so I have to go further. From your chair, you are limited in the things your hand will do. I will assume you don’t have to stand to do this. There is a table in front of you. You could pick something up. I doubt you will strike anything, because there is very little to strike in here besides myself, and you would regret that. No, no...your forearm, you said? You don’t really need your forearm to pick things up--the definition would place the hand as the focus. Forearms don’t strike well. You could flex the muscle. You could move it in some random way. I doubt it means ‘break’. You could scratch it. Perhaps not, because you said ‘my forearm will supinate’, and I doubt it can scratch itself...”

  At this point Abraham stopped her. Unbeknownst to Margaret, she was very frightening when she was trying to figure something out. She spoke aloud, went through every possibility that came to mind, and made corrections as she went along. Her eyes sometimes glazed over, or she closed them entirely in concentration. Her partners at the station had all found her disconcerting to work with. At any rate, Abraham wasn’t certain she knew when, or even how, to stop.

  He said, “Now watch.”

  But for the ticking of the clock, there was only silence in the room as he gently rotated his entire forearm to bring his palm face-up.

  Margaret remained unimpressed. “But what does that prove? I didn’t know.. I didn’t solve the puzzle.”

  “That is true,” conceded Abraham, “but neither did I solve this case.”

  He sat back, satisfied with himself. Margaret was at a loss. She saw no way for his process to allow him to solve this mystery. It still left him with a thief who would strike somewhere completely unknown.

  She gave in. “What is it you’ve figured out, exactly?”

  Abraham seemed as though he’d waited the whole evening for this. The fire gave a few sharp crackles, the clock ticked, and the shadows on the wall were playing out their own mysteries, but those were background to Abraham Surd as he sat in his chair with his smile unfading as he spoke.

  “Your detective skills have played one up on you, Margaret. The answer was very simple. It just had to be read in the right way. The letter gives all the clues I need, right? But what exactly did it give me?”

  “A warning, a challenge, an insult...and nothing else. Nothing that I saw. What did you see, Abraham Surd? What did you read in this that I couldn’t?”

  “Nothing.” Abraham paused, just in case Margaret would add anything. She just sat there, drilling into him with those sharp, all-encompassing hazel eyes. She was probably fed up with this mystery by now.

  Abraham quickly went on. “The letter tells me nothing. What can you do with nothing? Absolutely nothing. It is possible to solve the crime, but there is nothing to go on. What would happen at the station? They would be out seeking answers, trying to prevent things before they happened. Everyone would be spread thin trying to find some clue.”

  “They would probably assume it was a prank, actually.”

  “Yes, all right,” he conceded, “but follow me here.
Where would I go if I had no clue where to begin?”

  “Well,” Margaret paused thoughtfully, “I’d say...”

  She felt herself sinking into the comfort of the chair as the obvious struck her. She shook her head and leaned on one hand, closing her eyes.

  “Nowhere. You would go nowhere because you have the answer in front of you. If there is nothing to go on, then there is nothing else to be done. By doing nothing you have effectively solved the crime because the only place where the theft could take place, if not out in the city, would be right here.”

  Abraham clapped his hands together. “That is exactly what I believe the case to be.”

  “And so,” added Margaret, “you don’t know the culprit, nor do you know if you are correct, but it is the only reasonable solution. You narrowed hundreds of possibilities down to fifty-fifty chance.”

  “Precisely, Margaret.”

  “But it’s already late in the evening. Shouldn’t something have happened by now? And shouldn’t you have called the police?”

  “I called you,” was his answer.

  Even Margaret gave a laugh at this. “I’m off-duty, Abraham.”

  “A detective is never off-duty.”

  She nodded. If Abraham had felt threatened, he would have prepared a surprise of his own for the thief. He had probably assumed that, whatever personality it took to play such a game, it wasn’t a personality that was particularly dangerous. It would simply be a matter of waiting now.

  They played cards, and Margaret became almost