WASHINGTON — It didn't begin as an ethical puzzle, of course. It began as a simple question: "Baby, have you seen my briefcase?"We'd arrived late the night before in a van from Baltimore/Washington International Airport. I remembered lugging our two big suitcases up the steps and into the house, and I remembered my wife taking her own small carry-on, with her keys inside, to unlock the door. But my briefcase: What had I done with it?

Could I have left it on the retaining wall out front while I wrestled with the big bags? Well, by mid-morning, it certainly wasn't there, and, though it had my name and phone number on it, I wasn't likely to see it or its contents again.

Oh, God, the contents! It had the usual accumulation of plunder, though, mercifully, no laptop. But it did contain my new digital camera. And my Palm Pilot. And a tape recorder. And my cell phone.

The scope of the loss was coming at me in waves, each upsetting in its own way. Oh no, my reporter's notes from the trip from which we were returning, stuff I'd never be able to recover. And my house keys, and car keys. And credit cards I seldom used and should have cancelled years ago. Oh, and keys to my offices at The Washington Post and at Duke University. And the key to the car I keep at Duke, together with a remote for the car alarm. Didn't I have a spare set for the car? Yeah, it was in the briefcase, too.

And about $500 in cash. We'd just been to Cuba, where American credit cards aren't accepted, so we'd taken cash, my remaining portion of which was in that briefcase.

I was desperate for a reed to cling to. Maybe I left it in the airport van. So I'll just call them and — "Honey, what was the name of the van company?" "Well, it had a lot of big writing on the side."

For the next few hours we busied ourselves with trying to identify and chase down the driver, though it was perfectly obvious that if he'd wanted to reach me he could easily have done so. I called the airport police and the lost-and-found. My wife drove back to the airport to see if she could recognize the van company we'd used. She did, but the calls to the appropriate numbers got us nowhere.

And so I changed the lock on the front door, cancelled my credit cards, suspended service on my cell phone and did the things you're supposed to do when a big chunk of your life has fallen into alien hands. And I hoped: Maybe whoever took the bag from my front wall will only take the cash and other easy-to-dispose-of things, and maybe he'll throw the bag into the dumpster, and maybe someone will see it there with my name on it and...

Indeed, I said more than once, anybody who found the briefcase was welcome to the cash. Just give me back the stuff that's irreplaceable.

I lost the bag on a Wednesday. On Saturday, after I'd had a locksmith make a new key for the car at Duke and cut the alarm wire, I got a call from my wife. The van driver had just returned my briefcase, its contents intact. She had, she told me, given him a $100 tip. Perhaps I'd like to do more.

How much more has been the subject of a spirited ethical debate around our house. One daughter thinks another $100. Another, reminding me of my alleged lack of interest in the cash, says I ought to give it all to the driver. My son agrees with the second, though he would deduct the money I paid to locksmiths, etc., during the delay.

And I think: If the driver had brought the bag back — or phoned — immediately, $100 would have been a quite generous tip. Why should he get double or treble that amount for delaying? What is the tip for? His honesty? My relief? Did he merely overlook the bag, left in a back seat of the van, for all those days, or had he spent the time agonizing over what to do? If the latter, should he get a greater reward for successfully resisting temptation than for never having been tempted to start with? What is the lesson I'd like to enforce?

Do I really have an ethical dilemma? Or am I just being cheap?

William Raspberry's e-mail address is willrasp(at symbol)washpost.com.

(c) 2002, Washington Post Writers Group