THE FOURTH HOMONYM "Homonyms!" said Nicholas Brant. He was Thomas Trumbull's guest at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers. He was rather tall, and had surprisingly prominent bags under his eyes, despite the comparative youthfulness of his appearance otherwise. His face was thin and smooth-shaven, and his brown hair showed, as yet, no signs of gray. "Homonyms," he said. "What?" said Mario Gonzalo blankly. "The words you call "sound-alikes." The proper name for them is "homonyms." " "That so?" said Gonzalo. "How do you spell it?" Brant spelled it. Emmanuel Rubin looked at Brant owlishly through the thick lenses of his glasses. He said, "You'll have to excuse Mario, Mr. Brant. He is a stranger to our lan- guage." Gonzalo brushed some specks of dust from his jacket sleeve and said, "Manny is corroded with envy because I've invented a word game. He knows the words but he lacks any spark of inventiveness, and that kills him." "Surely Mr. Rubin does not lack inventiveness," said Brant, soothingly. "I've read some of his books." "I rest my case," said Gonzalo. "Anyway, I'm willing to call my game "homonyms" instead of "sound-alikes." The thing is to make up some short situation which can be described by two words that are sound-alikes-that are homonyms. I'll give you an example: If the sky is perfectly clear, it is easy to decide to go on a picnic in the open. If it is raining cats and dogs, it is easy to decide not to go on a picnic. But what if it is cloudy, and the fore- cast is for possible showers, but there seem to be patches of blue here and there, so you can't make up your mind about the picnic. What would you call that?" "A stupid story," said Trumbull tartly, passing his hand over his crisply waved white hair. "Come on," said Gonzalo, "play the game. The answer is two words that sound alike." There was a general silence and Gonzalo said, "The answer is "whether weather." It's the kind of weather where you wonder whether to go on a picnic or not. "Whether Weather," don't you get it?" James Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, "We get it. The question is, how do we get rid of it?" Roger Halsted said, in his soft voice, "Pay no attention, Mario. It's a reasonable parlor game, except that there don't seem to be many combinations you can use." Geoffrey Avalon looked down austerely from his sev- enty-four-inch height and said, "More than you might think. Suppose you owned a castrated ram that was frisky on clear days and miserable on rainy days. If it were merely cloudy, however, you might wonder whether that ram would be frisky or miserable. That would be "whether wether weather."" There came a chorus of outraged "at!s. Avalon said, ponderously. "The first word is w-b-e-t-b-e-r, meaning if. The last word is w-e-a-t-b-e-r, which refers to atmospheric conditions. The middle word is w-e-t-b-e-r, meaning a castrated ram. Look it up if you don't believe me." "Don't bother," said Rubin. "He's right." "I repeat," growled Trumbull, "this is a stupid game." "It doesn't have to be a game," said Brant. "Lawyers are but too aware of the ambiguities built into the lan- guage, and homonyms can cause trouble." The gentle voice of Henry, that waiter for all seasons, made itself heard over the hubbub by some alchemy that worked only for him. "Gentlemen," he said. "I regret the necessity of inter- rupting a warm discussion, but dinner is being served." "Here's another one," said Gonzalo over the smoked trout. "Someone has written down all the digits and on all of them but one he has drawn a very clever face. A child watching this is delighted, but dissatisfied with the incompleteness of the project. What does he say?" Halsted, who was spreading the horseradish sauce daintily over his trout, said, "The child says, "Do that to two, too." " Gonzalo said in an aggrieved manner, "Have you heard that somewhere before?" "No," said Halsted, "but it's a mathematical instance of the game. What's the use of teaching mathematics at junior high school, if I can't solve problems involving the number two?" Gonzalo frowned. "You're trying to be funny, aren't you, Roger?" "Who? Me?" Trumbull said, "As host of the evening, I would like to recommend that we change the subject." No one gave any sign of hearing. Avalon said, "Hom- onyms are usually the result of the accidents of language history. For instance, "night," by which I mean the oppo- site of day, is cognate to the German Nacht, while "knight," by which I mean a warrior of the Table Round, is cognate with the German Knecht. In English, the vow- els changed and the k is invariably silent in an initial kn, so you end up with two words pronounced in identical fashion." "The initial kn does not invariably have a silent k, " said Rubin. "There are some words not yet sufficiently Angli- cized. I have a Jewish friend who married a young lady of the Gentile persuasion. Anxious to please her new husband, she bought some ethnic delicacies for him, which she displayed proudly. Listing her purchases, she said, finally, "And I also bought you this nish," and was quite puzzled when he broke into hysterical laughter." Drake said, "I don't get it." Rubin said with a touch of impatience, "The word is "knish'-with the k heavily pronounced. It is a ball of dough in whose interior one places spiced mashed pota- toes, or possibly some other filling, with the whole then being fried or baked. Any New Yorker should know that." Trumbull sighed and said, "Well, if you can't lick them, join them. Can anyone give me a group of four homonyms, four,words all pronounced alike, with spell- ing and meaning different in each case? I'll give you five minutes in which I expect blessed silence." The five minutes passed pleasantly enough, with only the sound of cracking lobster shells impinging upon the eardrums, and then Trumbull said, "I'll give you one of the words: "right," meaning the opposite of left. What are the other three?" Halsted said, his mouth fairly full of lobster claw, "There's "write," meaning to inscribe words, and "rite," meaning a fixed religious procedure, but I don't think there's a fourth." Avalon said, "Yes, there is. It's "Wright," w-r-i-g-b-t, meaning a mechanic." "That's archaic," protested Gonzalo. "Not entirely," said Avalon, "We still speak of a "play- wright," who would be someone who constructs plays." Brant said, "My friend Tom mentioned "right," defin- ing it as the opposite of left. What about "right" meaning the opposite of wrong, and "right" meaning perpendicu- lar? Would that be a fifth and sixth homonym?" "No," said Gonzalo, "the spelling has to be different for the words to be homonyms, at least as this game of mine is played." Avalon said, "Not always, Mario. Two words can be spelled the same but have different meanings and have different etymological origins; they would count as hom- onyms. For instance, "hear" meaning the animal, and "hear" meaning to carry, have the same spelling and pro- nunciation but have different origins, so I would call them homonyms; along with "bare" meaning unclothed, of course. The different uses of "right," however, as in "right hand," "right answer," and "right angle," all stem from the same root with the same meaning, so they would not be homonyms." There were fifteen additional minutes before Trum- bull felt justified in rattling his spoon against the water glass and bringing the conversation to a halt. "I have never been so glad," he said, "at any of the banquets of the Black Widowers to put an end to a con- versation. If I had absolute power as a host, I would fine Mario five dollars for starting it." "You took part in it, Tom," said Gonzalo. "In self-defense-and shut up," said Trumbull. "I would like to present my guest, Nicholas Brant, and Jeff, you seem civilized even if you were more homonymized than anyone else, so would you do the honors and begin the grilling?" Avalon's formidable eyebrows lifted, and he said, "I scarcely think that "homonymized" is English, Tom." Then, turning to the guest, he said, "Mr. Brant, how do you justify your existence?" Brant smiled ruefully. "As a lawyer, I don't think I can. You know the old joke, perhaps, of the time God threatened to sue Satan, and Satan answered, "How can you? I've got all the lawyers." In my defense, however, I'm not the kind of lawyer who plays tricks in front of a judge and jury. Mostly I sit in my office and try to write documents that actually mean what they are supposed to mean." Avalon said, "I'm a patent lawyer myself, so I ask the following question without evil intent. Do you ever try to write them so that they don't mean what they're sup- posed to mean? Do you try to build in loopholes?" Brant said, "Naturally, I try to draw up a document that leaves my client as much freedom of action as possi- ble, and the other side as little freedom of action as possi- ble. However, the other side has a lawyer, too, who is working hard for the reverse, and the usual result is that the contract ends up reasonably ironbound in both direc- tions." Avalon paused, then said, "In the earlier discussion on homonyms, you said, if I remember correctly, that hom- onyms are ambiguities that could cause trouble. Does that mean you ran into a homonym professionally, in your preparation of contracts, that brought about unex- pected complications?" Brant raised both hands. "No, no, nothing like that. What I had in mind when I made that statement was completely irrelevant to the subject now under discus- sion." Avalon ran his finger around the rim of his water glass. "You must understand, Mr. Brant, that this is not a legal cross-examination. There is no particular subject under discussion, and nothing is irrelevant. I repeat my ques- tion." Brant remained silent for a moment, then he said, "It's something that took place a little over twenty years ago, and that I have thought about only very occasionally since then. Mr. Gonzalo's game of homonyms brought it to mind, but it's . . . nothing. It doesn't involve any le- gal problems or any complications whatever. It's just a . . . puzzle. It's an insoluble matter that isn't worth dis- cussing." "Is it confidential?" put in Gonzalo. "Because if it is-" "Nothing confidential about it," said Brant. "Nothing secret, nothing sensitive-and therefore nothing interest- ing." Gonzalo said, "Anything that's insoluble is interesting. Don't you agree, Henry?" Henry, who was filling the brandy glasses, said, "I find it so when there is at least room for speculation, Mr. Gonzalo." Gonzalo began, "Well, then, if-" Avalon said, "Mario, let me continue, please. -Mr. Brant, I wonder if you could give us the details of this insoluble puzzle of yours. We would greatly appreciate hearing it." "You'll be very disappointed." "That's a chance we will take." "Well, then," said Brant, "if you'll just give me a chance to think back-" He rested his face in one hand, thinking, while the six Black Widowers watched him expectantly, and Henry took his usual place by the sideboard. Brant said, "Let me begin with Alfred Hunzinger. He was a poor boy of an immigrant family, and he had no education worth mentioning. I'm pretty sure he never went to high school. By the time he was fourteen, he was working. Those were the decades before World War I and education was by no means considered one's birthright, or even particularly desirable for what used to be called workingmen. "Hunzinger wasn't your usual workingman, however. He was incredibly industrious and incredibly intelligent. Intelligence and education don't necessarily go hand in hand, you know." Rubin said forcefully, "Indeed, they don't. I've known some very thoroughly educated jackasses." "Hunzinger was the reverse," said Brant. "He was a very thoroughly uneducated business genius. He had a green thumb, but, it was the green of dollar bills. What- ever he touched prospered, and he built a formidable business before he died. "Nor was this enough for him. He always felt keenly his lack of education, and he embarked in a program of home study. It wasn't continuous, for his business was his first preoccupation and there were periods when he had little time. And it was spotty, for he read promiscu- ously and without outside, guidance. Conversation with him was an exposure to a curious mixture of pedantry and nalvet" Avalon said, "You knew him personally, ta e it. Brant said, "Not really. Not intimately. I did some work for him. Mainly, I prepared his will. This, when properly done, and when there are complex business matters to consider, takes a long time and produces a long document. Periodically, it must be updated or re- vised, and the wording considered carefully in the light of continually changing tax laws. Believe me, it was vir- tually a career in itself and I was forced to spend many hours in conference with him and to engage in extensive correspondence, too. However, it was a very limited and specialized relationship. I got to know the nature of his finances rather thoroughly, but to know him as a person only superficially." "Did he have children?" asked Halsted. "Yes, he did," said Brant. "He married late in life; at the age of forty-two, if I remember correctly. His wife was considerably younger. The marriage, while not idyl- lically happy, was a successful one. There was no di- vorce, nor any prospect of one at any time, and Mrs. Hunzinger died only about five years ago. They had four children, three boys and a girl. The girl married well; she's still alive, still married, has children of her own, and is, and has been, very comfortably off. She scarcely figured in the will. Some investments were turned over to her during Hunzinger's lifetime, and that was it. "The business was left on an equal basis, one-third each, to the three sons, whose names were Frank, Mark, and Luke." "In that order of age?" asked Drake. "Yes. The oldest is, to use his legal signature, B Frank- lin Hunzinger. The middle son is Mark David Hun- zinger. The youngest son is Luke Lynn Hunzinger. Nat- urally, I pointed out to Hunzinger that to leave his busi- ness in equal shares to his three sons was asking for trou- ble. The income might be divided equally, but the directing power, the decision-making power, had to be placed in the hands of one. "He was very stubbornly resistant to that, however. He said he had brought up his sons in accordance with the ideals of the old Roman republic; that they were all faithful to him, the paterfamilias-he actually used the term, to my intense surprise-and to each other. There would be no trouble at all, he said. "I took the liberty of pointing out that they might well be ideal sons while he was alive and with his forceful personality directing affairs. After he was gone, however, hidden rivalries might show up. Never, he insisted, never. I thought him blind, and wondered how anyone so alive to any hint of chicanery in business affairs, so realistic in matters of the world, could be so foolishly romantic where his own family was concerned." Drake said, "What was the daughter's name?" "Claudia Jane," said Brant. "I don't remember her married name at the moment. Why do you ask?" "Just curious. " She might have had ambitions, too, mightn't she?" "I don't think so. At least not with respect to the busi- ness. She made it quite clear she neither expected nor wanted any share in it. Her husband was rich--old money-social position-that sort of thing. The last thing she wanted was to be identified with what was-in a manner of speaking-a giant hardware store." "Well, I see that," said Drake. "I must admit that the family seemed entirely harmo- nious," said Brant. "I met the sons at one time or an- other, singly and together, and they seemed fine young men, much at ease with one another, and obviously fond of their father. What with one thing and another, I reached the stage where it seemed to them appropriate to invite me to the festivities celebrating the old man's eightieth birthday. It was on that occasion that Hunz- inger had the heart attack that carried him off. It was not entirely unexpected. He'd had a heart condition for years, but it was totally unfortunate for it to happen on his birthday. "The party broke up, of course. He was laid, gently, on the nearest couch and doctors were called in. There was a kind of hushed pandemonium. The confusion was suffi- cient for me to be able to stay on. It may sound ghoulish, but I conceived myself to have a job to do. He had not yet assigned any son to be the head of the firm. It was too late to have anything in writing; but if he would say some- thing, it might have some force. "The sons, I suppose, did not know what I had in mind. They were there, of course. Their mother, half in shock, had been led away. No one seemed to notice I was present. I leaned across to the old man's ear and said, "Which of your sons is to be the head of the firm, Mr. Hunzinger?" "It was too late. His eyes were closed, his breathing was stertorous. I wondered if he had heard me. A doctor approached and I knew he would stop me, so I tried again quickly. This time, the dying man's eyelids flut- tered, and his lips moved as though he were trying to speak. However, only one sound came out. It seemed to be the word "to." I heard nothing else. He lingered on for another hour but never said another word, and died, without regaining consciousness, on the couch on which he had been laid. -And that's it." Gonzalo said, "What happened to the business?" "Nothing," said Brant, with what seemed the resid- uum of a vast surprise. "The old man was right. The three sons get along famously. It's a sort of triumvirate. When a decision must be made, they get together and come to one quickly. It's really an amazing thing and if that sort of thing should become infectious, lawyers would all starve to death." "Then it doesn't matter what the old man said, does it?" said Gonzalo. "Not in the least, except that for a while it roused my curiosity. What was he trying to say? You see the diffi- culty, I suppose?" "Of course," said Drake, fingering his small gray mus- tache. "You can't do much with the word "to."" "It's worse than that," said Brant. "Which homonym? Was it t-o, or t-o-o, or t-w-o?,There are tbree to's in the English language. Incidentally, how do you write that last sentence? I've often wondered. You can say "three to's," since all three are pronounced alike, but how do you write it, since each one of the homonyms is spelled differently?" Avalon said, "I would say, "There are three words pro- nounced t-o-o." The double-o is the most unambiguous way of indicating the pronunciation that all three share, and you spell it out." "Well, in any case, even if I knew which t-o-o it was, it wouldn't help me." Trumbull said, "Might it not have been a word, Nick? Suppose he was saying a longer word such as "constitu- tion." That's four syllables, and he managed to sound only the third. All you'd have would be t-o-o. " "Maybe," said Brant. "I can't prove that that's not so. just the same, at the time, I got the impression that it was a word, one of the three t-o-o's, however you want to spell it. I suppose I was desperately trying to read his lips and he might have said "Headship to so-and-so" and all I got was the "to." Which leaves me with nothing. Of course, as I said, it doesn't matter. The sons are doing well. Still-" Brant shook his head. "I'm a lawyer. It bothers me that I came so close to having it done right. Even if he was refusing to choose anyone. Even if he was saying'Not to anyone," he would have been expressing his last wish and that would have been better than just falling into a situa- tion by default. So for a while I kept wondering, and now you've put it back in my head, and I'll keep on won- dering for another while. -And getting nowhere be- cause there's nowhere to be gotten." A heavy silence descended about the table, one which was finally broken by Gonzalo, who said, "At least it's an interesting version of the game of homonyms. Which of the soundalikes was it?" Trumbull said, "What's the difference? Not one of the three would help us make sense of what the old man was trying to say." "I told you," said Brant glumly. "It's an insoluble problem. There just isn't enough information." "We don't have to solve it," said Halsted, "since there's no crisis that has to be eased, or criminal on whom we must visit retribution. All we have to do is point out a reasonable possibility to ease your mind. For instance, suppose he was saying t-w-o. " "Well, suppose he was," said Avalon. "Then it may be that he was saying something like, "Give it to son number two."" Brant shook his head and said, "The impression I got was that the t-o I heard was in the middle of the message. His lips moved before and after I heard the t-o. " Rubin said, "I'm not sure you can go by that. His lips were scarcely under control. Some of what appeared to be movement might have been only trembling." :,Which makes it all the worse," said Brant. "Now wait awhile," said Halsted. "My idea works even with the word in the middle of the message. It could have been something like "Give it to number two son," or "Number two son gets it."" Trumbull growled, "Charlie Chan might say it, but was Hunzinger likely to do so? -Al, did you ever hear this man refer to his children by number?" "No," said Brant. "I don't think I ever did." "Well, then," said Trumbull, "why on earth should he start doing so on his deathbed?" "I wonder," said Rubin. "Consider this. His second son is named Mark, which is also the name of the writer of the second gospel. His third son is named Luke, which is the name of the writer of the third gospel. I'll bet that if he had had a fourth son, that son's name would have been John." "What's the good of a bet like that?" said Gonzalo. "We can't ever settle it and decide on a winner." "Why wasn't the first son's name Matthew, then?" asked Avalon. Rubin said, "Maybe old Hunzinger didn't think of it till after the first son was born. Maybe he simply didn't like "Matthew." Anyway, it strikes me that if the word was t-w-o, it would have a double meaning. It would refer to the second son and the second gospel, and it would mean Mark in either case." Trumbull said, "There could be a million reasons why the number two might point to Mark, but put them all together and they wouldn't be any more likely to get him to refer to "my number two son" than just one reason would. Why wouldn't he just say "Mark," if he meant Mark?" Brant said, "Well, he might have said "to Mark" at that, and all I heard was "to."" Avalon said, "Mr. Brant, I wonder if you at any time noted that old Mr. Hunzinger trusted one of his sons more than another, valued more highly the business acu- men of a particular son, loved one more." Brant bent his head in thought. Then he shook it. "I can't say I did. I have no recollection of anything of the sort. Of course, as I said, my relationship with the family was not a matter of warm personal friendship. It was business, entirely. The old man never confided family matters beyond anything that was relevant to the will." Gonzalo said, "We keep talking about the sons. How do you know the old man didn't give some thought to his daughter? Suppose he left the business to his three sons, in thirds, but wanted his daughter to make crucial deci- sions. He might have thought she had the best business sense and should run the show even though she wouldn't want to be connected with the business in any open Way-19 "What gives you that idea, Mario?" asked Avalon. "Suppose the word was t-o-o. He might have been say- ing, My daughter, too, should be involved." Something like that." "I don't think so," said Brant. "Mr. Hunzinger never mentioned his daughter in connection with the business. Remember, too, that his prejudices are pre-World War I, when women couldn't even vote. In no way was he a feminist. His wife was strictly a homebody, and that's the way he liked it. He took care to have his daughter marry a rich man, and as far as he was concerned, that was the limit of his responsibility toward her. At least, I am forced to that conclusion as I think of our various discussions of the will." Again there fell a silence around the table, and finally Avalon said, with a rather theatrical sigh, "It doesn't mat- ter what hypotheses we set forward. No matter how clever and ingenious they might be, there's no way in which we can show that they are true. I'm afraid that this once we have to decide that our guest is correct and that the problem, by its very nature, is insoluble." Gonzalo said, "Not until we ask Henry." "Henry?" said Brant in surprise. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Do you mean the waiter?" Trumbull said, "No need to whisper, Nick. He's a member of the club." "So I'll ask him," said Gonzalo. "Henry, do you have any ideas about this?" From his place at the sideboard, Henry smiled very slightly and said, "I must admit, Mr. Gonzalo, that I've been wondering what the first name of the eldest son might be." Gonzalo said, "Frank. Don't you remember?" "I beg your pardon, Mr. Gonzalo, but I seem to recall the oldest son is B Franklin Hunzinger. I wondered what the B stood for." All eyes turned to Brant, who shrugged and said, "He's identified as B Franklin even in his father's will. That's the legal form of his signature. I always assumed, however, that the B stood for Benjamin." "It's a natural assumption," said Henry. "Any Ameri- can named B Franklin, it would seem, would be bound to be a Benjamin. But did you ever hear any member of the family-or anyone, for that matter-address him as Benjamin or Ben?" Slowly, Brant shook his head. "I don't recall any such incident, but it was over twenty years ago and I was not really part of the family circle." "Or since the death of the elder Hunzinger?" "Oh, well, I've rarely had any contact with them at all since then, not even with respect to legal matters." Trumbull said, "What's all this about, Henry?" "Why, it occurred to me that there are, in a manner of speaking, four homonyms with the sound t-o-o. " Avalon said in an astonished voice, "Four? You mean that one of the homonyms has two meanings of unrelated derivation, as in the case of b-e-a-r?" "No, Mr. Avalon. I am referring to four homonyms with four different spellings." Avalon thought briefly. "Impossible, Henry. Manny, can you think of a fourth homonym beyond t-o, t-o-o, and t-W-o?" "No," said Rubin flatly, "there is no fourth homo- nym.)l Henry said, "I said "in a manner of speaking." It all depends on the first name of B Franklin." Drake said, "Henry, you're being mysterious and you've got us all confused. Now explain. " "Yes, Dr. Drake. Mr. Brant had said that the elder Hunzinger was self-educated, and he had indicated that he was particularly interested in Roman history. He raised his children in what he thought was the Roman tradition. He used terms such as "paterfamilias," and so on. And he gave his children traditional Roman names. His daughter he named Claudia; one son is Mark, from the Roman Marcus; another is Luke from the Roman Lu- cius. "It is possible, in fact, that the original names were indeed Marcus and Lucius, and that the youngsters found Mark and Luke more palatable to their peers. Now what if the eldest had a Roman name also, which had no common Anglicized form? He might not have used it at all, but stayed with Franklin, which becomes the very common and acceptable Frank. 440ne common Roman name beginning with B is Bru- tus, and that has no Anglicized form that is likely to be acceptable." "Aha," said Rubin. "Yes, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "If the elder Mr. Hunz- inger had picked up scraps of Latin, undoubtedly Julius Caesar's last words, one of the most famous of all Latin phrases, would be known to him. It contains the word "tu," which is Latin for the familiar form of "you," and is so well known among educated English-speaking people -if only from this phrase-that it might almost rank as a fourth homonym. "Asked about which of his sons should head the firm, the dying man thought of the oldest, remembered the name he had given him as a child, and may have said something like "all my sons share, and you, Brutus, will lead." The phrase "and you, Brutus" becomes the mut- tered Caesarian exclamation of "et tu, Brute," and only the "tu" was loud enough to hear." "Good God," muttered Brant, "who could possibly think of something like that?" "But it's most ingenious," said Avalon. "I hope you're right, Henry. I'd hate to see that reasoning wasted. I sup- pose we could call Hunzinger and try to persuade him to give us his first name." Gonzalo said excitedly, "Wait, Jeff, wouldn't it be in "o's Who in America? They usually include business- men." Avalon said, "They might well have only the legal ver- sion of his name-B. Franklin Hunzinger. Of course, they sometimes include the name beyond the period in parentheses to indicate it exists but is not to be used." "Let's see," said Gonzalo. He took down the first vol- ume of the tome and for a few moments there was the sound of flipping pages. Then it stopped and Gonzalo cried out in triumph, "Brutus Franklin Hunzinger, the r- u-t-u-s in parentheses." Brant buried his head in his hands. "Twenty years, on and off, this has bothered me, and if I had looked him up in Whose Who- But why would it occur to me to look him up?" He shook his head. "I must tell them. They will have to know." Henry said, "I don't think that would be wise, Mr. Brant. They get along well as it is, but if they find out that their father had chosen one of them to head the firm war might break out. Surely one shouldn"t attempt to fix what isn't broken." AFTERWORD num er o my ack Widowers puzzles depend on the vagaries of the English language. I can't help this because I have a great interest in and admiration for the language. I must admit, though, that I am uneasily aware that whenever too much depends on English, I throw barriers in the way of translators and may diminish my chances of getting foreign editions. It's not just that foreign editions bring in money (it is well-known that my charac- ter is entirely too refined and noble for me to be interested in money), but that they introduce my work to audiences that would otherwise be unable to read me. And being widely read does interest me. However, I must admit that when a point of language strikes me as being a useful gimmick, as in the story you have just read, I can never resist. The story first appeared in the March 1985 issue of Ellery Qyeen Mystery Magazine. UNIQUE IS WHERE YOU FIND IT Emmanuel Rubin would have fought to the death rather than admit that the smile on his face was a fatuous one. It was, though. Try as he might, he could not conceal the pride in his voice or the pleased gleam in his eye. "Fellow Widowers," he said, "now that even Tom Trumbull is here, let me introduce my guest of the eve- ning. This is my nephew, Horace Rubin, eldest son of my younger brother and the shining light of the new generation." Horace smiled weakly at this. He was a full head taller than his uncle and a bit thinner. He had dark, crisply curled hair, a prominent, well-beaked nose, and a wide mouth. He was definitely not , handsome and Mario Gon- zalo, the artist of the Black Widowers, was fighting hard not to exaggerate the features. Photographic accuracy was caricature enough. What didn't get into the drawing, of course, was the unmistakable light of quick intelli- gence in the young man's eyes. "My nephew," said Rubin, "is working toward his Ph.D. at Columbia. In chemistry. And he's doing it now, Jim, not in 1900 as you did." James Drake, the only Black Widower with a legiti- mate doctorate (although all were entitled to be ad- dressed as "Doctor" by the club rules), said, "Good for him-and my own degree was earned just before the war; World War II, that is." He smiled reminiscently through the thin column of smoke curling upward from his cigarette. Thomas Trumbull, who had, as usual, arrived at the preprandial cocktail hour late, scowled over his drink and said, "Am I dreaming, Manny, or is it customary to elicit these details during the grilling session after din- ner? Why are you jumping the gun?" He waved his hand petulantly at the cigarette smoke, and stepped away from Drake in a marked manner. "Just laying the foundation," said Rubin indignantly. "What I expect you to grill Horace about is the subject of his coming dissertation. There's no reason the Black Widowers can't gain a little education." Gonzalo said, "Are you going to make us laugh, Manny, by telling us you understand what your nephew is doing in his laboratory?" Rubin's scanty beard bristled. "I understand a lot more about chemistry than you think." "You're bound to, because I think you understand zero." Gonzalo turned to Roger Halsted and said, "I hap- pen to know that Manny majored in Babylonian pottery at some correspondence college." "Not true," said Rubin, "but still a step above your major in beer and pretzels." Geoffrey Avalon, who listened with disdain to this ex- change, detached his attention, and said to the young stu- dent, "How old are you, Mr. Rubin?" "You'd better call me Horace," said the young man, in an unexpected baritone, "or Uncle Manny will answer and I'll never get a word in edgewise." Avalon smiled grimly. "He is indeed our conversa- tional monopolist when we allow him to be. But how old are you, Horace?" "Twenty-two, Sir." "Isn't that rather on the young side for a doctoral can- didate, or are you just beginning?" "No. I should be starting my dissertation about now and I expect to be through in half a year. I'm rather young, but not unusually so. Robert Woodward got his Ph.D. in chemistry when he was twenty. Of course, he nearly got kicked out of school at seventeen." "Twenty-two isn't had, though." "I'll be twenty-three next month. I'll be getting it at that age-or never." He shrugged and looked despon- dent. The soft voice of Henry, the perennial and irreplace- able waiter at all the Black Widower banquets, made it- self heard. "Gentlemen, dinner is served. We are going to have curried lamb and our chef, I'm afraid, believes that curry was made to be tasted, so if any of you would pre- fer something rather on the blander side, tell me now and I will see to it that you are obliged." Halsted said, "If any faint-heart would rather have scrambled eggs, Henry, just bring me his helping of cur- ried lamb in addition to my own. We must not waste it." "Nor must we contribute to your overweight problem, Roger," growled Trumbull. "We'll all have the curry, Henry, and bring in the accompanying condiments, es- pecially the chutney and coconut. I intend to be heavy- handed myself " "And keep the bicarbonate handy, too, Henry," said Gonzalo. "Tom's eyes are more optimistic than his stom- ach lining is." Henry was serving the brandy when Rubin clattered his spoon against the water glass and said, "To business, gentlemen, to business. My nephew, I have observed, has wreaked havoc on the comestibles and it is time that he be made to pay for that in the grilling session. -Jim, you'd be the natural grill-master, since you're a chemist of sorts yourself, but I don't want you and Horace to get into a private discussion of chemical minutiae. Roger, you're a mere mathematician, which puts you sufficiently off the mark. Would you do the honors?" "Gladly," said Halsted, sipping gently at his curaao. "Young Rubin-or Horace, if you prefer-how do you justify your existence?" Horace said, "Once I get my degree and find myself a position on a decent faculty, I'm sure that the work I do will be ample justification. Otherwise-" He shrugged. "You seem doubtful, young man. Do you expect to have trouble finding a job?" "It's not something one can be certain about, Sir, but I've been interviewed here and there, and, if all goes well, it seems to me that something desirable should so- lidify." "If all goes well, you say. Is there some hitch in your research?" "No, not at all. I had enough good sense to pick a fail- safe problem. Yes, no, or maybe-any of the three possi- ble answers-would earn me a degree. As it happens, the answer is yes, which is the best of the alternatives, and I consider myself set." Drake said suddenly, "Whom are you working for, Horace?" "Dr. Kendall, Sir." "The kinetics man?" "Yes, Sir. I'm working on the kinetics of DNA replica- tion. It's not something to which physical chemical tech- niques have hitherto been rigorously applied, and I am now able to build computerized graphics of the process, which-" Halsted interrupted. "We'll get to that, Horace. Later. For now, I'm still trying to find out what's bugging you. You have the prospect of a job. Your research has gone well. What about your coursework?" "Never any problem there. Except-" Halsted endured the pause for a moment, then said, "Except what?" "I wasn't that good in my lab courses. Especially or- ganic lab. I'm not . . . deft. I'm a theoretician." "Did you fail?" "No, of course not. I just didn't cover myself with glory." "Well, then, what is bugging you? During dinner I overheard you tell Jeff that you'd be getting your Ph.D. when you're twenty-three-or never. Why never? Where does that possibility come in?" The young man hesitated. "It's not the sort of thing-" Rubin, clearly flustered, frowned and said, "Horace, you've never told me you were having problems." Horace looked about as though searching for some hole through which he could crawl. "Well, Uncle Manny, you've got your troubles and you don't come to me with them. I'll fight this out on my own-or not." "Fight What out?" said Rubin, his voice growing louder. "It's not the sort of thing-" began Horace again. "Number one," said Rubin vigorously, "anything you say here is completely, totally confidential. Number two, I told you that at the grilling session you would be ex- pected to answer all questions. Number three, if you don't stop playing games, I'll kick your behind into rasp- berry gelatin." Horace sighed. "Yes, Uncle Manny. -I just want to say," he looked about the table, "that he's threatened me like this since I was two and he's never laid a hand on me. My mother would take him apart if he did." "There's always a first time, and I'm not afraid of your mother. I can handle her, " said Rubin. "Yes, Uncle Manny. -All right, then. My problem is Professor Richard Youngerlea." "Uh-oh," said Drake softly. "Do you know him, Dr. Drake?" "Well, yes." "Is he a friend of yours?" "Well, no. He's a good chemist but, as a matter of fact, I despise him." Horace's homely face broke into a wide smile, and he said, "Then I can speak freely?" "You could anyway," said Drake. "Here it is," said Horace. "I'm sure Youngerlea is go- ing to e on my examining board. He wouldn't miss the chance and he swings enough weight to get on if he wants to." Avalon said in his deep voice, "I take it, Horace, that you dislike him." "Very much," said Horace in a heartfelt voice. "And I imagine he dislikes you." "I'm afraid so. I had my organic lab under him and, as I said, I didn't shine." Avalon said, "I imagine a certain number of students don't shine. Does he dislike them all?" "Well, he doesn't like them." "I gather you suspect that he wants to be on your ex- amining board in order to cut you down. Is that the way he reacts to every student who doesn't shine in his labo- ratory?" "Well, he does seem to think that lab work is mother- hood and apple pandowdy and everything that's good and noble, but no, it's not just that I didn't shine." "Well, then," said Halsted, taking over the grilling again, "we're getting to it. I teach in a junior high school and I know all about obnoxious students. I am sure that the professor found you obnoxious. -In what way?" Horace frowned. "I am not obnoxious. Youngerlea is. Look, he's a bully. There are always some teachers who take advantage of the fact that they are in an unassailable position. They excoriate students; they brutalize them verbally; they hold them up to ridicule. They do this although they know full well that the students are reluc- tant to defend themselves for fear of getting a poor mark. Who's to argue with Youngerlea if he hands out a C, or, for that matter, an F? Who's to argue with him if he expresses his very influential opinion at a faculty confer- ence that such and such a student doesn't have what it takes to make a good chemist?" "Did he hold you up to ridicule?" asked Halsted. "He held everybody up to ridicule. There was one poor guy who was British, and when he referred to aluminum chloride, which is used as a catalyst in the Friedel-Crafts reaction, he referred to it as "aluminium" chloride, with the accent on the third syllable and the first u as "yoo" instead of "00." It was just the British pronunciation, after all, but Youngerlea chewed him out. He denounced all this crap-his expression-of having an unnecessary ex- tra syllable, five instead of four, and so on, and the stu- pidity of making any chemical name longer than neces- sary, and so on. It was notbing and yet he bumiliated the poor man, who didn't dare say a word in his own de- fense. And all the damned sycophants in the class laughed." "So what makes you worse than the rest?" Horace flushed, but there was a note of pride in his voice as he replied. "I answer back. When he starts on me, I don't just sit there and take it. In fact, I interrupted him in this aluminum-aluminium business. I said in a good, loud voice, "The name of an element is a human convention, professor, and not a law of nature." That stopped him, but he did say in his sneering way, "Ah, Rubin, been dropping any beakers lately?"" "And the class laughed, I suppose?" said Halsted. "Sure they did, the pimple-heads. I dropped one beaker all course. One! And that was only because some- one jostled me. -And then, once, I came across Youngerlea in the chem library looking up some com- pound in Beilstein-" Gonzalo asked, "What's Beilstein?" "It's a reference book of about seventy-five volumes, listing many thousands of organic compounds, with ref- erences to the work done on each, all of them listed in order according to some logical but very complicated sys- tem. Youngerlea had a couple of volumes on his desk and was leafing through first one, then the other. I was curi- ous, and asked him what compound he was searching for. He told me and I was overcome with ecstasy when I realized he was looking in the wrong volumes altogether. I moved quietly to the Beilstein shelves, took down a volume, found the compound Youngerlea wanted-it took me thirty seconds-came back to his table, and put the volume in front of him, open to the correct page." "I suppose he didn't thank you," said Drake. "No, he didn't," said Horace, "but at that, he might have if I didn't have the world's biggest grin on my face. At the moment, though, I would rather have had my revenge than my Ph.D. -And that may be the way it will work out." Rubin said, "I've never considered you the most tactful person in the world, Horace." "No, Uncle Manny," said Horace sadly, "my mother says I take after you-but she only says that when she's really annoyed with me." Even Avalon laughed at that, and Rubin muttered something under his breath. Gonzalo said, "Well, what can he do to you? If your marks are all right, and your research is all right, and you do all right on the exam, they've got to pass you." "It's not that easy, Sir," said'Horace. "In the first place, it's an oral exam and the pressures are intense. A guy like Youngerlea is a past master at intensifying the pressure, and he can just possibly reduce me to incoherence, or get me into a furious, slanging match with him. Either way he can maintain I don't have the emotional stability to make a good chemist. He's a powerful figure in the de- partment and he might swing the committee. Even if I pass and get my degree, he has enough influence in chemical circles to blackball me in some very important places." There was silence around the table. Drake said, "What are you going to do?" "Well . . . I tried to make peace with the old bastard. I thought about it and thought about it, and finally asked for an appointment so that I could eat a little crow. I said I knew we had not gotten along, but that I hoped he didn't think I would make a had chemist-that really, chemistry was my life-well, you know what I mean." Drake nodded. "What did be say?" "He enjoyed himself. He had me where he wanted me. He did his best to make me crawl; told me I was a wise guy with an ungovernable temper, and a few other things designed to make me go out of control. I held on, though, and said, "But, granted I've got my peculiarities, would you say that necessarily makes me a had chemist?" "And he said, "Well, let's see if you're a good chemist. I'm thinking of the name of a unique chemical element. You tell me what the element is, and why it's unique, and why I should think of it, and I'll admit you're a good chemist." "I said, "But what would that have to do with my being a good chemist?" He said, "The fact that you don't see that is a point against you. You ought to be able to reason it out, and reasoning is the prime tool of a chemist, or of any scientist. A person like you who talks about being a theoretical scientist and who therefore scorns little things like manual dexterity should have no trouble agreeing with this. Well, use your reason and tell me which element I am thinking of You have one week from this moment; say, five P.m. next Monday; and you only have one chance. If your choice of element is wrong, there's no second guess." "I said, "Professor Youngerlea, there are over a hun- dred elements. Are you going to give me any hints?" " "I already have," he said. "I told you it's unique, and that's all you're going to get." And he gave me the same kind of grin I gave him at the time of the Beilstein inci- dent." Avalon said, "Well, young man, what happened the next Monday? Did you work out the problem?" "It isn't next Monday yet, sir. That's coming three days from now, and I'm stuck. There's no possible way of answering. One element out of over a hundred, and the only hint is that it's unique." Trumbull said, "Is the man honest? Granted that he is a bully and a rotter, do you suppose he is really thinking an element and that he'll accept a right answer from you? He wouldn't declare you wrong no matter what you say, would he, and then use that as a weapon against you?" Horace made a face. "Well, I can't read his mind, but as a scientist, he's the real thing. He's actually a great chem- ist and, as far as I know, he's completely ethical in his profession. What's more, his papers are marvelously well written-concise, clear. He uses no jargon, never a long word when a shorter one will do, never a complicated sentence when a simpler one will do. You have to admire him for that. So if he asks a scientific question, I think he will be honest about it." "And you're really stuck?" asked Halsted. "Nothing comes to you." "On the contrary, a great deal comes to me, but too much is as had as nothing. For instance, the first thought I had was that the element had to be hydrogen. It's the simplest atom, the lightest atom, atom number one. It's the only atom that has a nucleus made of a single particle -just a proton. It's the only atom with a nucleus that contains no neutrons, and that certainly makes it unique.v Drake said, "You're talking about hydrogen-I." "That's right, " said Horace. "Hydrogen is found in na- ture in three varieties, or isotopes: hydrogen-1, hydro- gen-2, and hydrogen-3. The nucleus of hydrogen-I is just a proton, but hydrogen-2 has a nucleus composed of a proton and a neutron, and hydrogen-3 has one composed of a proton and two neutrons. Of course, almost all hy- drogen atoms are hydrogen-1, but Youngerlea asked for an element, not an isotope, and if I say that the element hydrogen is the only one with a nucleus containing no neutrons, I'd be wrong. just wrong." Drake said, "It's still the lightest and simplest ele- ment." "Sure, but that's so obvious. And there are other pos- sibilities. Helium, which is element number two, is the most inert of all the elements. It has the lowest boiling point and doesn't freeze solid even at absolute zero. At very low temperatures, it becomes helium-II, which has properties like no other substance in the Universe." "Does it come in different varieties?" asked Gonzalo. "Two isotopes occur in nature, helium-3 and helium-4, but all those unique properties apply to both." "Don't forget," said Drake, "that helium is the only element to be discovered in space before being discov- ered on Earth." "I know, Sir. It was discovered in the Sun. Helium can be considered unique in a number of different ways, but it's so obvious too. I don't think Youngerlea would have anything obvious in mind." Drake said, after blowing a smoke ring and regarding it with some satisfaction, "I suppose if you're ingenious enough, you can think up something unique about each element." "Absolutely," said Horace, "and I think I've just about done it. For instance, lithium, which is element number three, is the least dense of all the metals. Cesium, element number fifty-five, is the most active of all the stable met- als. Fluorine, element number nine, is the most active of all the nonmetals. Carbon, element number six, is the basis of all organic molecules, including those that make up living tissue. It is probably the only atom capable of playing such a role, so that it is the unique element of life." "It seems to me," said Avalon, "that an element that is uniquely related to life is unique enough-" "No," said Horace violently, "it's the answer least likely to be true. Youngerlea is an organic chemist, which means he deals with carbon compounds only. It would be impossibly obvious for him. Then there's mercury, ele- ment number eighty " Gonzalo said, "Do you know all the elements by num- her?" "I didn't before last Monday. Since then, I've been por- ing over the list of elements. See?" He pulled a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. "This is the periodic table of elements. I've just about memorized it." Trumbull said,, "But it doesn't help, I gather." "Not so far. As I was saying, mercury, element num- her eighty, has the lowest melting point of any metal, so that it is the only metal that is a liquid at ordinary tem- peratures. That's certainly unique." Rubin said, "Gold is the most beautiful element, if you want to get into aesthetics, and is the most valued." "Gold is element number seventy-nine," said Horace. "It's possible to argue, though, that it's neither the most beautiful nor the most valued. Many people would say a properly cut diamond is more beautiful than gold, and, weight for weight, it would certainly be worth more money-and a diamond is pure carbon. "The densest metal is osmium, element number sev- enty-six, and the least active metal is iridium, element number seventy-seven. The highest melting metal is tungsten, element number seventy-four, and the most magnetic metal is iron, element number twenty-six. Technetium, element number forty-three, is the lightest element that has no stable isotopes. It is radioactive in all its varieties, and it is the first element to be produced in the laboratory. Uranium, element number ninety-two, is the most complicated atom to occur in substantial quanti- ties in the Earth's crust. Iodine, element number fifty- three, is the most complicated of those elements essential to human life, while bismuth, element number eighty- three, is the most complicated element that has at least one isotope that is stable and not radioactive. "You can go on and on and on and, as Dr. Drake said, if you're ingenious enough, you can tag each and every ele- ment with a unique characteristic. The trouble is that there's nothing to say which one Youngerlea is thinking of, which uniqueness is bis uniqueness, and if I don't come up with the right something, he's going to say that that proves I don't have the capacity to think clearly." Drake said, "If we put our minds together right now-" Trumbull interrupted, "Would that be legitimate? If the young man gets the answer from others-" "What are the rules of the game, Horace?" Avalon said. "Did Professor Youngerlea tell you that you could not consult anyone else?" Horace shook his head emphatically. "Nothing was said about that. I've been using this periodic table. I've been using reference books. I see no reason why I can't ask other human beings. Books are just the words of hu- man beings, words that have been frozen into print. Be- sides, whatever you may suggest, it's I who will have to decide whether the suggestion is good or had, and take the risk on the basis of that decision of mine. -But will you be able to help me?" "We might," said Drake. "If Youngerlea is an honest scientist, he wouldn't give you a problem that contains within it no possibility of reaching a solution. There must be some way of reasoning out an answer. After all, if you can't solve the problem, you could challenge him to give you the right answer. If he can't do that, or if he makes use of an obviously ridiculous path of reasoning, you could complain loudly to everyone in the school. I would." "I'm willing to try, then. Is there anyone here, besides Dr. Drake, who is a chemist?", Rubin said, "You don't have to be a professional chem- ist at the Ph.D. level to know something about the ele- ments." "All right, Uncle Manny," said Horace. "What's the , then?" Rubin said, "Personally, I'm stuck on carbon. It's the chemical of life and, in the form of diamond, it has an- other type of uniqueness. Is there any other element that, in its pure form, has an unusual aspect-" "Allotrope it's called, Uncle." "Don't fling your jargon at me, pip-squeak. Is there any other element that has an allotrope as unusual as diamond?" "No. And aside from human judgments concerning its beauty and value, the diamond happens to be the hardest substance in existence, under normal conditions." "Well, then?" "I've already said that it's too obvious for an organic c emist to set up carbon as a solution to the problem." "Sure," said Rubin. "He chose the obvious because he thinks you'll dismiss it because it's obvious." "There speaks the mystery writer," grumbled Trum- bull. "Just the same, I reject that solution," said Horace. "You can advise me, any of you, but I'm the one to make the decision to accept or reject. Any other ideas?" There was complete silence about the table. "In that case," said Horace, "I'd better tell you one of my thoughts. I'm getting desperate, you see. Youngerlea said, "I'm thinking of the name of a unique chemical ele- ment." He didn't say he was thinking of the element, but of the name of the element." "Are you sure you remember that correctly?" said Ava- lon. "You didn't tape the conversation, and memory can be a tricky thing." "No, no. I remember it clearly. I'm not the least uncer- tain. Not the least. -So yesterday I got to thinking that it's not the physical or chemical properties of the element that count. That's just a red herring. It's the name that counts." "Have you got a unique name?" asked Halsted. "Unfortunately," said Horace, "the names give you as much oversupply as the properties of the elements do. If you consider an alphabetical listing of the elements, ac- tinium, element number eighty-nine, is first on the list, and zirconium, element number forty, is the last on the list. Dysprosium, which is element number sixty-six, is the only element with a name that begins with a D. Krypton, element number thirty-six, is the only one with a name that begins with a K. Uranium, Vanadium, and Xenon, which are elements numbers ninety-two, twenty- three, and fifty-four, respectively, are the only elements to begin with a U, V, or X. How do I choose among these five? U is the only vowel, but that seems weak." Gonzalo said, "Is there any letter that doesn't start the name of any element at all?" "Three. There is no element that starts withJ, Q, or W -but what good is that? You can't claim an element is unique just because it doesn't exist. You can argue that there are an infinite number of elements that don't ex- ist." Drake said, "Mercury has, as an alternative name, "quicksilver." That starts with a Q. " "I know, but that's feeble," said Horace. "In German, I and J are not distinguished in print. The chemical sym- bol of iodine is I, but I've seen" German papers in Latin print, in which the symbol of the element is given asJ, but that's even feebler. "Speaking of the chemical symbols, there are thirteen elements with symbols that are single letters. Almost al- ways that letter is the initial of the name of the element. Thus, carbon has the symbol C; oxygen, O; nitrogen, N; phosphorus, P; sulfur, S; and so on. However, the ele- ment potassium has the symbol K." "Why?" asked Gonzalo. "Because that's the initial of the German name, Ka- lium. If potassium were the only case, I might consider it, but tungsten has the symbol W, for the German name, Rofram, so neither is unique. Strontium has a name that starts with three consonants, but so do chlorine and chro- mium. Iodine has a name that starts with two vowels, but so do einsteinium and europium. I'm stopped at every turn." Gonzalo said, "is there anything about the spelling of the element names that is the same in almost all of them?" "Almost all of them end in ium. "Really?" said Gonzalo, snapping his fingers in an ag- ony of thought. "How about the element the British pro- nounce differently. They call it "aluminium" with the ium ending, but we say "aluminum" so that it has only a um ending, and the professor made a fuss about it. Maybe it's aluminum that's unique, then." "A good thought," said Horace, "but there's lantha- num, molybdenum, and platinum, each with a um end- ing. There are also endings of ine, en, and "on, but always more than one of each. Nothing unique. Nothing unique." Avalon said, "And yet there must be something!" "Then tell me what it is. Rhenium was the last stable element to be discovered in nature; promethium is the only radioactive rare earth metal; gadolinium is the only stable element to be named after a human being. Noth- ing works. Nothing is convincing." Horace shook his head dolefully. "Well, it's not the end of the world. I'll go to Youngerlea with my best guess and, if that's wrong, let him do his worst. If I write a crackerjack dissertation, it may be so good they couldn't possibly flunk me, and if Youngerlea keeps me from get- ting a place at Cal Tech or M.I.T., I'll get in somewhere else and work my way up. I'm not going to let him stop me." Drake nodded. "That's the right attitude, son." Henry said softly, "Mr. Rubin?" Rubin said, "Yes, Henry." "I beg your pardon, Sir. I was addressing your nephew, the younger Mr. Rubin." Horace looked up. "Yes, waiter. Is there something else to order?" "No, Sir. I wonder if I might discuss the matter of the unique element." Horace frowned, then said, "Are you a chemist, waiter?" Gonzalo said, "He's not a chemist, but he's Henry and you had better listen to him. He's brighter than anyone in the room." "Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry, in soft deprecation. "It's so, Henry," insisted Gonzalo. "Go ahead. What do you have to say?" "Only that in weighing a question that seems to have no answer, it might help to consider the person asking the question. Perhaps Professor Youngerlea has some quirk that would lead him to attach some importance to a particular uniqueness, which, to others, might be barely noticed." "You mean," said Halsted, "uniqueness is where you find it)" "Exactly," said Henry, "as is almost everything that allows for an element of human judgment. If we consider Professor Youngerlea, we know this about him. He uses the English language carefully and concisely. He does not use a complicated sentence when a simpler one will do, or a long word where a shorter word will do. What's more, he was furious with a student for using a perfectly acceptable name for aluminum, but a name which added a letter and a syllable. Am I correct in all this, Mr. Rubin?" "Yes," said Horace, "I've said all that." "Well, then, on the club's reference shelf, there is the World Almanac, which lists all the elements, and we have the Unabridged, of course, which gives the pronuncia- tions. I've taken the liberty of studying the material dur- ing the course of the discussion that has been taking place." "And?" "It occurs to me that the element praseodymium, which is number fifty-nine, is uniquely designed to rouse Professor Youngerlea's ire. Praseodymium is the only name with six syllables. All other names have five sylla- bles or less. Surely, to Professor Youngerlea, praseodym- ium is bound to seem unbearably long and unwieldy; the most irritating name in all the list, and unique in that respect. If he had to use that element in his work, he would probably complain loudly and at length, and there would be no mistake in the matter. Perhaps, though, he does not use the element?" Horace's eyes were gleaming. "No, it's a rare earth element and I doubt that Youngerlea, as an organic chem- ist, has ever had to refer to it. That would be the only reason we haven't heard him on the subject. But you're right, Henry. Its mere existence would be a constant irri- tant to him. I accept that suggestion, and I'll go to him with it on Monday. If it's wrong, it's wrong. But"-and he was suddenly jubilant-"I'll bet it's right. I'll bet any- thing it's right." "If it should be wrong," said Henry, "I trust you will keep your resolve to work your way through in any case." "Don't worry, I will, but praseodymium is the answer. I know it is. -However, I wish I had gotten it on my own, Henry. You got it." "That's a small item, Sir," said Henry, smiling pater- nally. "You were considering names and, in a very short time, I'm sure the oddity of praseodymium would have struck you. I got to it first only because your labors had already eliminated so many false trails." AFTERWORD "Unique Is Where You Find It" and the following story, "The Lucky Piece," were both written, by request, for a magazine that was to be devoted to mystery short stories. Both stories were paid for gener- ously, and then, as sometimes happens in publishing, something went wrong and the magazine never appeared. I therefore placed "Unique Is Where You Find It" in a collection containing both my science fiction and my science essays in alterna- tion (thus encouraging readers to read both and, if they were only acquainted with me in one of my incarnations, to rush out and buy the other with mad abandon). "Unique Is Where You Find It" repre- sented the only brand-new item in the book, which is entitled The Edge of Tomorrow and was published by Tor Books in 1985. This is one of the not-so-rare cases where something in the story is based on an actual event in my life. When I was in graduate school, I had a professor much like Youngerlea, and my own reaction to him was very much like Horace Rubin's. The Beilstein incident, described in the story, really happened exactly as described and I really seized the opportunity to humiliate the professor even at the risk of damage to my grades and considered the opportunity well worth the risk. THE LUCKY PIECE "Mr. Silverstein," said Thomas Trumbull, "how do you justify your existence?" Albert Silverstein was the guest of James Drake at that month's banquet of the Black Widowers. He was a rather shriveled-looking gentleman, small of body, with a good- natured, gnomelike face, a tanned complexion to the bald dome of his head, and an easy smile. He was smiling now as he said, "I suppose you might say that I add to the feeling of security of many people." "Indeed?" said Trumbull, creasing his own tanned forehead into a washboard effect. "And how do you do that?" "Well," said Silverstein, "I own a chain of novelty scores-perfectly innocent novelties, you understand, though some tend to be in questionable taste-" Mario Gonzalo straightened his delicately striped jacket and said, with a touch of sarcasm, "Like the clay representations of dog excrement that you carefully place on your host's living-room carpet when you've brought your hound with you on a visit?" Silverstein laughed. "No, we've never handled that. However, one popular item in my father's time was the upset ink bottle and the apparently spreading ink stain in hard rubber that you put on your friend's best tablecloth. Of course, the coming of the ballpoint pen wiped out ink bottles and that particular novelty. Our industry has to keep up with technological change." "Where does the feeling of security come in?" asked rumbull doggedly. "The point there is that one of our biggest perennials is the sale of lucky pieces-like this one." He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a small plastic square. Embedded in it was a four-leaf clover. "One of our steady sellers," he said. "We sell thousands each year." Geoffrey Avalon, who sat next to Silverstein, took the object from him and stared at it with a mixture of puzzle- ment and contempt on his stiffly aristocratic face. He said disapprovingly, "Do you really mean that thousands of people believe that a clover mutation will affect the Universe in their favor, and are willing to pay money for something like this?" "Of course," said Silverstein cheerfully. "Thousands every year, year in and year out. These days, of course, they hesitate to admit their superstition. They buy it for their children, supposedly, or as a gift, or as a curio, but they buy it and hang it up in their ear or keep it on their key ring. That thing sells for up to five dollars." "That's revolting," said Trumbull. "You make money out of their folly." Silverstein's smile vanished. "Not at all," he said seri- ously. "It is not that object I sell, but a feeling of security, as I said, and that is a very valuable commodity which I sell for far less than it is worth. For as long as someone owns that four-leaf clover, a weight of fear is lifted from his or her mind and soul. There is less fear of crossing the street, of encountering a mugger, of hearing had news. There is less concern if it should happen that a black cat ran across one's path, or if one should carelessly walk beneath a ladder." "But the sense of security they get is a false one." "It is not, Sir. The sense of security they experience is very real. The cause may be unreal, but it brings the de- sired result. Consider, too, that most fears that people have are unreal in the sense that they do not tend to happen. You do not get mugged every time you take a walk. You do not get had news every time you pick up a letter. You do not break a leg every time you fall. Misad- ventures are, in fact, quite rare. If my lucky pieces re- move, or at least lessen, these unnecessary fears, and lighten the load of apprehension each of us carries about, then I perform a useful service. The price of that four- leaf clover, which will soothe you for as long as you own it, would buy you only five minutes or less of a psychia- trist's time." Roger Halsted was now regarding the lucky piece. As he passed it to Emmanuel Rubin, he said, "Where do you find thousands of four-leaf clovers every year? Do you pay an army of assistants to comb the clover patches of the world?" "Of course not," said Silverstein. "That thing would cost a couple of thousand dollars if I had to pay an army, and I doubt that anyone would be superstitious enough to submit to that kind of financial sacrifice. What those are-" He paused, and said, "Jim Drake told me that ev- erything said at these meetings was strictly under the rose. " "Absolutely, Al," said Drake in his softly hoarse ciga- rette voice. Silverstein's eyes drifted to the waiter and Halsted in- tervened quickly. "Our waiter, Henry, is a member of the Black Widowers, Sir, and as quiet about anything he hears as a mummy would be." "In that case," said Silverstein, "four three-leaf clovers, which are almost as common as sand grains, make three four-leaf clovers. What you're holding is a three-leaf clo- ver with an added leaf held in place by the plastic. You'll see the join-point under a magnifying glass, but no one has ever returned it on that account." "What if someone did?" asked Gonzalo. "We'd explain that sometimes a leaf breaks off in the plastic-embedding process, and give him his money back." "But this is fraud," said Trumbull violently. "You're not really selling them lucky pieces." Silverstein said, "Think of what you're saying, Mr. Trumbull. There are no lucky pieces outside the mind of the owner. A four-leaf clover does not really bring luck, and a three-leaf clover, with a fourth leaf added, can do no worse. If the owner believes it to be a lucky piece, that is all that counts. "We can argue similarly," he went on, "for the alumi- num horseshoes we sell, and the cat's-fur rabbit's feet, and the cheap rings with lover's knots twined around them, which are said to insure the fidelity of a loved one. We never guarantee anything, or say that anything will do something. Nothing can stop us, however, from say- ing that something is said to do something, because that's true. "One big item in my grandfather's day was a cheap brass coin with a swastika on it and the words "Good Luck" on the other side. The swastika was a good luck symbol since ancient times, you know. My grandfather stopped selling them in 1928, however, for obvious rea- sons. The industry has to keep up with social change, too, and I suppose the swastika will never again be used as a good luck symbol." For a moment there was silence in the room and Silverstein's generally sunny expression turned solemn and unhappy. -But then he shrugged and said, "Well, we can only hope that nothing like that ever happens again. -And meanwhile, I am reminded of a peculiar example of the force of a good luck piece. I'm not refer- ring to its force as a bringer of good luck, but it's force in inspiring belief However, I mustn't forget that this is a grilling, and a long-winded story might not fit in with the occasion." "Wait," said Gonzalo in sudden urgency. "How pecu- liar was the peculiar example?" "In my opinion, very peculiar." "In that case, would you tell us about it?" "Oh, for the love of Mike," said Trumbull, grimacing. "I want to find out about additional aspects of the nov- elty business. "No," said Gonzalo, managing a frown worthy of Trumbull himself. "Mine is a legitimate question. Am I a Black Widower or am I not? -Jim?" Drake stared thoughtfully through the smoke of his cigarette and, as host, made the decision. "Mario has put the question and deserves a response. Tell us about it, Al. I'm curious, too." Silverstein said, "Gladly. It was-let's see-nine years ago. The wife and I were at a small summer resort and she had gone off to see some summer-stock performance in which I was totally uninterested. Fortunately, she didn't mind going alone, so I was spared. "I spent the evening in the living room of the place, with about a dozen others who were likewise not caught up in the stampede to see a third-rate play just because, like Mount Everest, it was there. Besides me, there was a man, his wife, and their son, who figured in what was about to happen. The man was a rather stiff, unsociable fellow, his wife was passive and quiet, and his son was about twelve years old, well-behaved, and clearly very bright. Their name was Winters. "Then there was a woman who my wife and I referred to, in private, as "the Tongue." Her name, if I remember correctly, was Mrs. Freed. She seemed a good-natured woman and had a rather lively mind, but what was most noticeable about her was her perpetual stream of talk. She never seemed to stop except when someone else managed to insert a remark by main force. Hers wasn't an unpleasant voice; it wasn't rasping, or shrill, or hec- toring. It might even have been considered a pleasant voice, if there had been less of it. "Her husband walked with a slight stoop, I remember, as though he were forever breasting the wind of that unceasing vocal current. Needless to say, he rarely spoke. "There were six other people, if I remember correctly, two couples and two spare men who were either single or, like me, with their wives at the play. I don't remem- her which. "The Tongue was knitting skillfully, and I sat watch- ing her fingers as they kept time with her words, and between the two I was hypnotized into a semi-coma that was not at all unpleasant. Periodically, as she pulled at her yarn, her large ball of wool rolled to the floor, and each time she scrambled after it. One time it rolled in the direction of the Winterses, and the young boy leapt for it and returned it to her. She thanked him effusively and patted him and smiled. It occurred to me at the time that she had no children of her own and that her heart yearned when she saw those of others. "Then at one point she reached into her purse for a mint-I suspect she needed a steady supply to keep her tongue lubricated-and the zipper on the purse opened with a rasp. There were, in fact, several rasps, for it was a multicompartment purse and, of course, she had to find which compartment contained the mints. "One of the other women managed to insert a state- ment of marvel at what an unusual purse it was. It was, too, for it was quite thick. The Tongue said, as near as I can get across her way of speaking, "Unusual indeed I bought it in a little store in New Orleans and now the store is gone and the company that made it is out of business and really whenever I find something I like they stop making it at once you see this purse has seven zip- pers and seven compartments three of the zippers are inside a bit and I can have a different compartment for my lipsticks and my money and my papers and my let- ters I have to mail and so on they're all lined with slick material so I can empty any or all the compartments when I have to and nothing ever stays behind when I change purses though heaven knows I never want to change this one I'll show you, let's see-" "That's the way she spoke, you understand, making no use of punctuation. Then, in her effort to show how her purse worked, she started rasping the zippers again, look- ing for a compartment she could empty without creating too much trouble for herself, I suppose. "When she finally decided, she turned the purse upside down, gave it a shake, and out came flying a small shower of coins and costume jewelry. ""Nothing left behind," she said triumphantly, spread- ing the opening apart and showing it to the woman who had asked. She then put everything back, and again there was the rasp of zippers as she tried to decide on another compartment to empty, but apparently thought the bet- ter of it. She put the purse down and continued talking. "I remember this incident well and repeated it to show you that in the novelty business, we have to keep our ears and eyes open. Listening to her talk about her purse gave me an idea for a novelty I called "the bottomless purse." It was a real purse, with three zippers above and a hidden zipper below. Two zippers above were straightforward and opened into two compartments, but they were unob- trusive. The middle zipper above had a very noticeable handle in colored glass and was usually the only one the victim saw. "The owner of the purse would fill it with unimpor- tant objects and would then give it to some innocent and easily embarrassed man or woman at a party. "Would you hold this for me for a moment?" Then, a while later, she would say, "Would you reach into my purse for my com- pact? It's right on top." The victim would, of course, pull the noticeable zipper and that would activate the hidden zipper below. With both compartments open, everything would drop out all over the floor, to the utter confusion and horror of the victim." Avalon said disapprovingly, "And another old friend- ship would come to an end." "Not at all," said Silverstein. "Once the joke became obvious, the victim usually laughed harder than anyone, especially since he or she had the pleasure of sitting back while the perpetrator had to go through the trouble of collecting everything that had fallen. "We had it on the market the next spring and it did pretty well. It wasn't a world-beater but it did pretty well. It was a woman's item, of course, but it's a mistake to think women are not interested in novelties. You have to-" Trumbull interrupted. "Was that the peculiar event? Emptying the purse?" Silverstein seemed to have been brought up with a jerk. He flushed, then laughed in an embarrassed way. "Well, no. Actually, I haven't come to that part yet. -I'm afraid I have a little of the Tongue in me, especially when it comes to a discussion of my profession. "It was some time after the purse incident that the Winters boy caught my eye. He had been watching and listening to everything with a look of deep interest, but now he suddenly seemed concerned. He seemed to hesi- tate a moment and then turned to his father and spoke rapidly in a very low voice. As he listened, the father stiffened and his face went a dead white. He muttered something to his wife, and then all three began to peer about the floor, to move their chairs and look beneath. They looked very anxious, the father particularly so. "I did what anyone would do. I said, "Have you folks lost something?" "The father looked up, seemed for a moment to be lost in thought, then, as though he had come to a difficult decision, rose to his feet and said in a stiff and pedantic way, "I'm afraid that my son has lost a lucky piece that he greatly valued, though of course it has no intrinsic worth. It looks like a rather large coin with good luck symbols of various kinds on each side. It may have rolled somewhere. If anyone sees it-" "We were all moved by the same kindly impulse or, if you wish to be cynical about it, each of us thought it would be fun to look for something that was lost when we were in no personal agony at the loss. Either way, the room was at once put under an unsystematic, but thor- ough search. Two men moved the couch, searched amid the dust beneath, then put it back in place. The material in the unused fireplace was looked through. The carpet was lifted all around the edges. It was all to no avail. "I felt rather guilty. The lucky piece, as described, was certainly not one of ours, but I felt somehow responsible. I said to the boy softly, "You know, son, these lucky pieces don't really bring good luck. If it doesn't show up, that doesn't mean you're in for trouble." "The boy looked at me in his quick, intelligent way and said, "I know that. I just hate to lose anything." "But he looked very troubled just the same and it's an axiom in my business that to deny superstition doesn't mean a thing. The deniers are quite as likely to believe as the admitters are. "We were all taking our seats again. Someone said to the boy, "Maybe you lost it before you came into the room, sonny." "Mr. Winters turned to the son. "Is that possible, Mau- rice?" "Maurice looked more frightened than ever, but his high-pitched voice was firm. He said, "No, Father, I had the lucky piece when I entered this room, I'm sure of that." "Winters clearly accepted his son's word as putting the matter beyond dispute. He cleared his throat and looked, somehow, both embarrassed and determined. He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, it may be that one of you has picked up this valueless object a little while ago and put it away without thinking and that you are now reluctant to admit it. Please don't let embarrassment stand in the way. This means a great deal to my little Maurice." "No one said a word. Each one looked from neighbor to neighbor as though expecting someone to produce the lucky piece and curious to see who would. Winters, face red with mortification, allowed his eyes to rest for a mo- ment on the Tongue's thick purse. As they did so, I couldn't help remembering the coins that had rolled out of it when she demonstrated how it might be emptied. "The Tongue had participated in the search and had been unusually quiet since. She caught the look and had no trouble interpreting it. Her lips tightened a bit, but she showed no open sign of offense. She said, "Well I don't suppose it would be convincing if I told you I didn't have the thing in my purse you would really want to see for yourself so let's just empty the whole thing on the table." tilt was really quite an mpressive and convincing per- formance. She put the purse on the table before her and said, slowly, "One-two-three-four-five-six- seven." With each count, there was the sound of a zipper being rasped open. She then turned the purse upside down and a cascade of items tumbled out upon the table. You wouldn't believe one woman could have so many items of so many different kinds in one purse. Some items rolled off the table, but she didn't try to stop them. She shook the purse to show nothing else was falling out and then tossed it to one side. "She said kindly, and with no trace of ill temper, "Sonny, you know what your lucky piece looks like so just rummage through everything on the table and look at whatever rolled on the floor. Go ahead, you can look through my wallet, and any envelope you see. I know you won't take anything but what is yours." "The boy took her at her word and looked through and at everything thoroughly, while his father remained at his side, watching the process sharply. Finally, the boy said, "Father, it isn't here." "Winters nodded gloomily and the Tongue began put- ting the objects back into her purse, carefully choosing which of the seven compartments was the correct one for each item, and carrying on a running commentary as she did so. The boy picked up the items on the floor for her. "After that, of course, the other two ladies had to fol- low suit and empty their purses, but with less good grace than the Tongue had. I was the first man to turn out my pockets and then the other men did the same. "The good luck piece was nowhere to be found-not in any purse, not in any pocket. And still Winters stood there, clearly unwilling to give up but uncertain as to the next step. "I still felt a bit of responsibility, but I also felt irri- tated, so I said, "If it will make you feel any better, Mr. Winter, you and I can step into the library, lock the door, and pull down the blinds. I'll take off my clothes and you can search them for hidden pockets and lucky pieces. You can also see if I have it glued to my skin." "I didn't think for one moment that he'd take me up on it, but damned if he didn't. I had a most embarrassed and uncomfortable five minutes as I stood there totally bare while he went over my clothes and studied me narrowly front, side, and back. "I was beginning to worry that he'd suggest inspecting my various apertures, but the lucky piece was undoubt- edly too large to make them reasonable hiding places. "One by one, the other men followed my lead. One made as though he were going to refuse, but when every eye turned on him with clear suspicion, he gave in. But he left in a fury as soon as the search was completed. Perhaps he was wearing dirty underwear. "When that was done, the Tongue rose to her feet and said, "Well if Mrs. Winters will do the honors I'll stand still to be searched after all I might have slipped it into my bra there'd be plenty of room there and it wouldn't show through this dress the way I drape my shawl over it." "Off she marched and, ev entually, back she came, and the other two women had to agree to be searched as well." Silverstein paused in his tale to sip at his neglected brandy, and Halsted said, "I take it the lucky piece wasn't found on anyone." "That's right," said Silverstein, "it wasn't. Apparently, though, Winters didn't give up easily. He got in touch with the manager of the hotel and persuaded him to de- tail two employees to help Winters look through the room even more carefully, to say nothing of the passages adjoining, the grounds outside the windows, and so on. At least, that's the story that went round the next day." "And did they find it?" asked Halsted. "No," said Silverstein. "Winters looked like death warmed over the next day. In the evening, he took what I was sure was an early departure, and I myself heard the manager feverishly assuring him that the search would continue and that as soon as the lucky piece was found it would be forwarded to him." "And was it found thereafter?" "No, it wasn't. At least, no word reached us to that effect up to the time my wife and I left a week later. -But you see the peculiar angle, don't you?" Gonzalo said, "Sure. The thing disappeared into noth- ingness." "Of course not," said Avalon sharply. "What evidence do we have that the lucky piece existed in the first place? The whole thing may have been a charade." "To what end?" said Drake, making a face. Avalon said, "To demonstrate that it was gone, of course." "But why?" said Drake again. "If it were something intrinsically valuable, I can see that Winters might be laying the groundwork for an insurance claim-but a lucky piece worth, what? seventy-five cents?" "I don't know the motive," said Avalon in exaspera- tion, "but I can only suppose that Winters had one. I'd certainly sooner believe in the existence of an unknown motive than in the total disappearance of a material Oh- ject." Silverstein shook his head. "I don't think it was a cha- rade, Mr. Avalon. If Winters was playing an elaborate game, it was one in which his wife and son were part. About the wife I can't say for certain, but that boy, Mau- rice, was not acting. I cannot doubt for a moment that he was really scared. "Then, too, if it were really all play-acting, why would Mr. Winters feel it necessary to go to such extremes? A much simpler search would have been sufficient to estab- lish that the lucky piece was missing, if that were all he wanted to do. That was the peculiar thing to me. Why should Winters have searched with such extreme assidu- ity, and why should young Maurice have look frightened rather than merely unhappy? Don't you see the explana- tion? It seems obvious to me." There was silence among the Black Widowers for a few moments and then Rubin said, "Suppose you tell us your explanation, Mr. Silverstein, and I'll then tell you if it is correct or not." Silverstein smiled. "Oh, you'll agree with me. Once the matter is explained, it will seem as obvious to you as it does to me. -That was not the boy's lucky piece, it was his father's. Winters had allowed his son to have it for a while and the boy had lost it. I'm sure the boy knew how intensely his father valued the lucky piece, so he looked scared, very scared, and I don't blame him. And it is only by realizing that Winters was looking for his own lucky piece that you can rationalize the nature of his search." Halsted said, "He insisted it was his son's lucky piece." "Of course! People are quite apt to deny their supersti- tions, as I told you earlier-especially if they are intelli- gent and educated and in the presence of other educated people-and most especially if the grip of the supersti- tion is pathologically strong. They are intelligent enough to be bitterly ashamed of their madness and yet still be helpless in its grip. I'm a professional in such matters and I tell you it's so.,Of course, he would pretend the lucky piece was his son's and I believed that, at first. However, as I watched Winters I eventually recognized his emo- tions to be those of someone terrorized in the belief that his luck had vanished forever. He was as much a victim of an irresistible craving for that vanished security as a drug addict would be for the heroin he lacked." Trumbull said, "And yet you sell this druglike thing to people.11 Silverstein shook his head. "A vanishingly small per- centage are affected so extremely. Is a manufacture of penicillin to be blamed for the death of a few who de- velop a fatal sensitivity to it? -Well, Mr. Rubin, am I right or wrong?" He smiled confidently. Rubin said, "Wrong, I'm afraid. You're having Winters behave in two irreconcilable ways. If he is so in the grip of the lucky piece mania that he would carry on a psychotically intense search for it, then, surely, he would never have given it to his boy to play with. No, I find it impossible to believe in the lucky piece story either for the son or the father." Silverstein said, in the offended tone of one whose clever idea, triumphantly produced, is cavalierly dis- missed, "I would like to hear an alternate explanation that makes any sense." "No problem," said Rubin. "I would suggest that the so-called lucky piece was, in actual fact, a very valuable item." "Do you mean it was actually a piece of gold, or con- tained real jewels, or was a work of art?" said Silverstein, with what was almost a sneer. "If so, the objection you raised still stands. Why give it to the boy to play with? And, for that matter, why call it a lucky piece? If Winters had mentioned its value, we'd have looked harder and submitted to a search with better grace." "It might be," said Rubin, "that the value rested in something unmentionable. Suppose it was a device of some sort, or carried a message-a coded carving, or mi- crofilm in a tiny inner compartment-" Silverstein frowned. "Do you mean Winters was a SPY " "Consider it as a hypothesis," said Rubin. "Winters, having reason to feel there were others on his track and that an effort would be made to relieve him of the object he carried, had his son carry it instead, feeling that boy would go unsuspected." Avalon harrumphed disapprovingly. "A rather heart- less thing for a father to do." "Not at all," said Rubin. "Winters himself would still be the one liable to be attacked, if there were danger of that sort of thing. But then they wouldn't find the object upon him. If they failed to suspect the boy of being the carrier, the youngster would not be in danger at any time. At least, that must have been his hope. And if there was danger for the boy, it might be that he was the sort of patriot who felt that his country and his task came first. "When the object turned out to be missing, Winters" first thought must have been that it had been accidentally dropped, but when it was not found at once, Winters would have come to the frightening conclusion that it had been stolen by an enemy. He then carried through a major search in the hope that his adversary, whoever it might prove to be, would be uncovered at the same time the object was found. Naturally, he had to pretend it was something trivial he was searching for. But since it wasn't found, he was forced to leave, his mission de- stroyed, his own cover blown, his enemy secure. I don't envy him his situation. And I don't wonder his son was frightened, if he was intelligent enough to have an in- kling of what was going on." The Black Widowers showed no particular enthusiasm over this. Drake shook his head solemnly. Rubin said indignantly, "What do you think, Tom? This is your kind of baby." Trumbull shrugged. "I don't know everything that goes on. This happened nine years ago, you say, Silver- stein?" "Yes, Sir." "It may be that there was something, then, that in- volved South Africa and its attempts to develop a nuclear bomb- The American government was not involved in that, though, in any way." "It didn't have to be," said Rubin, "from anything we heard. But I take it, Tom, that my interpretation is possi- ble." "Possible, sure, but I don't commit myself to more than that." Gonzalo said, "You're all missing the point. You're talking about motivations, and why a kid should look frightened, and why a guy should search madly. No one seems to be the least interested in the real puzzle. What's the difference whether it's a lucky piece or a key to a nuclear bomb? What happened to it? Where did it go?" Avalon said heavily, "I see no mystery there. The only way the object could disappear into nothingness was for it not to have been brought into the place to begin with. Despite the young man's denial, he must have lost it be- fore he ever entered the room and was afraid to admit it -assuming it existed in the first place. After all, intelli- gent or not, he was twelve years old. He couldn't resist playing with it and he may have dropped it somewhere irretrievable, perhaps. He would then have been afraid to say anything about it, for he knows it is important to his father. In the room, later, his father asks him if it is safe, and he has to admit it's gone, but can't possibly say he lost it some time before and dared not own up to it." "No!" said Silverstein violently. "He just wasn't that kind of youngster. You could see he had been brought up to meet rigid grown-up standards. The father didn't ask him for the lucky piece. The boy went up to him to vol- unteer the information that it was gone. If he had lost it earlier, he would have reported it earlier. I'm sure of that." Drake said, "Suppose the loss were accidental. He might have pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket an hour earlier somewhere else and the object might have come out and fallen in the grass, let us say. He may never have noted the loss till he was in the room." "No!" said Silverstein again. "The boy said he had it when he came into the room and his father believed him and didn't question the matter. He knew his son." Avalon said, "Well, Mr. Silverstein, if you insist the object really existed and was really lost in the room, do you have any idea where it went to?" Silverstein shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe it fell through a crack into the cellar. Maybe it was in some perfectly ordinary place and for some reason everyone overlooked it. Many a time Ive scoured my apartment for something that seemed to have vanished, and then, when I found it, it proved to be in plain sight all along." "Yes, after you found it," said Avalon. "One always finds it, even without a search as prolonged and intense as Winters" search." A momentary silence fell and then Trumbull said, "We seem to be at an impasse. The puzzle is an interesting one, but I don't see that it's anything that can be solved. We just don't have enough information." Gonzalo said, "Well, wait. We haven't heard from Henry." Trumbull said, "Don't wish it on Henry. If a puzzle is inherently insoluble, it is insoluble even for Henry." Gonzalo said, "Is that a fact? Well, I want to hear Henry say that. -Henry?" Henry, who from the sideboard had listened carefully to all the proceedings, smiled a small smile in an avuncu- lar fashion, and said, "As a matter of fact, Mr. Gonzalo, I can't help but think that a solution may be suggested. The object need not be considered to have vanished mys- teriously." Trumbull's eyebrows climbed. "Really, Henry? What do you suggest?" "Well, sir, consider Mr. Silverstein's comment to the effect that he had designed a trick purse through the in- spiration of the one belonging to Mrs. Freed, the woman who talked a great deal." Silverstein stared. "Do you mean the Tongue had a trick purse?" "No, sir. But it did occur to me that tricks could be done with even a legitimate purse if it had seven zippers and seven compartments." "You had better explain, Henry," said Drake. Henry said, "This is all supposition, gentlemen, but suppose Mrs. Freed talked endlessly for a purpose. One who earns the sobriquet "Tongue" is bound to seem silly to anyone less penetrating than Mr. Silverstein, and is sure to be underestimated-which is an advantage for a spy. "Suppose she had learned of the existence of the object and, for some reason, suspected it was in the possession of the boy, Maurice. Her ball of yarn fell to the floor several times, and at least once, according to Mr. Silver- stein, it rolled in the direction of Maurice. He sprang to help her; she petted him and, in this way, distracted him by touching him-an old pickpocket's trick. A moment later, the object was not in the boy's pocket but in Mrs. Freed's hand. "Next she reached for a mint. In doing so, the object was dropped into a compartment that was already open and contained nothing. She had to fiddle with the zip- pers, searching for the mints, and when she was done, all the compartments were closed, including the one with the object. "She then displayed how easily and surely the purse might be emptied by opening one compartment and turning the purse upside down. Having made that dem- onstration, intended to impress everyone, she fiddled with the zippers again, according to Mr. Silverstein, as though she were searching for another compartment with which to demonstrate, but apparently deciding against it. When she was done fiddling, however, all the compartments were closed, except the one with the Oh- ject. That was open. She had then only to wait. If the object was not noticed to have been lost, fine. If the loss were noticed, she was ready. " "The loss was noticed and Winters" eye fell on her purse. She at once volunteered to empty it, and pulled every zipper, counting ostentatiously from one to seven as she did so. When she was done, the six compartments which had been closed were open, and the one compart- ment, with the object and nothing else inside, which had been open, was closed. "She then upended the purse and out of it dropped every last thing it contained but the object. And because she had worked very hard to seem nothing but a chatter- box, because she had laid such a careful background, and because she had complied cheerfully with the search, no one gave any thought to investigating the apparently empty purse. In the end, therefore, the object seemed to have vanished into thin air." Mr. Silverstein, whose mouth had dropped open as Henry had talked, closed it with what seemed to be an effort, then said, "It might have happened exactly like that. It seems to fit perfectly what I saw, and I've told the story so many times in the past nine years, there is no question of my having forgotten what I saw. Still, I don't suppose we can ever know for sure." "No," said Trumbull, "but I'll bet on Henry, and from now on, I think my people will be on the watch for harmless chatterboxes with intricate purses." "Only if they are zippered, sir," said Henry. "Purses with catches and clasps open quietly, but close with a loud snap, whereas the sounds of a zipper opening and of a zipper closing are indistinguishable." AFTERWORD As explained in the previous Afterword, "The Lucky Piece" was bought and paid for, but the magazine that was to publish it never appeared. The story therefore makes its first appearance in this book. That doesn't bother me. In each of my Black Widowers collections, I have managed to include some stories that have not appeared else- where. I consider it a bonus to those who are generous enough to buy these books. Incidentally, it is necessary for me occasionally to include some graphic details of some facet of the human experience as part of the background to these stories. In "The Lucky Piece," for instance, I discuss the novelty business to some extent. You may have admired the neatness of my research into the matter, but please don't. I am far too lazy (and far too busy writing a million other things) to waste time on research. When I need details on the novelty business, I just make them up out of my ever-fevered imagination. Consequently, if you run a novelty business yourself and feel I have made a mistake, write and enlighten me. TRIPLE DEVIL It was not surprising that at this particular banquet of the Black Widowers, the conversatio n turned on the sub- ject of self-made men. After all, Mario Gonzalo, host of the evening, was bringing as his guest the well-known retired owner of a chain of bookstores, Benjamin Manfred. It was also well known that Manfred had delivered newspapers as a young lad, more than half a century before, and was the son of poor but honest parents-very honest, and very, very poor. And now here he was, not exactly a Getty or an Onas- sis, but very comfortably situated. And with four chil- dren and a number of grandchildren all engaged in deal- ing with one portion or another of the chain, he was even the founder of a dynasty. Since Manfred had phoned to say, with many regrets, that he would be a little delayed, but would certainly be there before the actual banquet was begun, it meant that the cocktail hour was taking place in his absence and the conversation could continue freely without the inhibi- tion produced by the very presence of one of those who was the subject of discussion. Nor was it surprising that the loudest of the pontifi- cators was Emmanuel Rubin. "There is no such thing as a self-made man-or woman, for that matter-anymore," said Rubin with pas- sion, and when he spoke with passion, there was no choice but to listen. If his sixty-four inches made him the shortest of the Black Widowers, his voice was undoubt- edly the loudest. Add to that the bristling of his sparse gray beard, and the flashing of his eyes through the thick lenses that served to magnify them almost frighteningly, and he was not to be ignored. "Ben Manfred is a self-made man," said Gonzalo de- fensively. "Maybe he is," said Rubin, reluctant to make any ex- ceptions to any generalization he had launched, "but he self-made himself in the 1920s and 1930s. I'm talking about now-post-World War Two America, which is prosperous and welfare-minded. You can always find help making your way through school, tiding yourself over unemployment, getting grants of some sort to help you get started. Sure you can make it, but not by your- self, never by yourself. There's a whole set of govern- ment apparatuses helping you." "Perhaps there is something in what you say, Manny," said Geoffrey Avalon, looking down with a somewhat distant amusement. His seventy-four inches made him the tallest of the Black Widowers. "Nevertheless, wouldn't you consider yourself a self-made man? I never heard that you inherited or married wealth, and I don't see you, somehow, accepting government handouts." "Well, I haven't gotten anything the easy way," said Rubin, "but you can't be a self-made man until you're made. If I didn't have a rich father, and don't have a rich wife, neither am I exactly rich myself. I can afford some of the niceties of life, but I'm not ricb. What we have to do is define the self-made man. It's not enough that he's not starving. It's not enough that he's better off than he used to be. A self-made man is someone who starts off poor, without any money above the subsistence level. Then, without getting large slabs of money from the out- side, he manages, through hard work and shrewd busi- ness acumen, or through enormous talent, to become a millionaire." "How about luck?" growled Thomas Trumbull. "Sup- pose someone enters a sweepstakes and wins a million dollars, or suppose he consistently backs winners at a racetrack." Rubin said, "You know that doesn't count. You're just a luck-made man then. That goes if you pull an old man from under a hackney coach and he calls down heaven's blessing on you and gives you a million dollars. And I'm not counting those people who get rich by illegal activ- ity. Al Capone, from a standing start, was making sixty million dollars a year before he was thirty, at a time when the dollar was worth a dollar and not twenty-two cents. He paid no taxes on it, either. You can call him self-made, but not by my definition." "The trouble with you, Manny," said Roger Halsted, "is that you want to restrict the term to people you ap- prove of morally. Andrew Carnegie was a self-made man and he was a great philanthropist after he had made his millions, and, as far as I know, he was never put in jail. Still, on his way up, I'll bet he engaged in questionable business activities and that he managed to grind the faces of the poor when that was necessary." Rubin said, "Within the law is all I ask for. I don't expect people to be saints." Gonzalo said, with a totally unconvincing air of in- nocence, "What about your friend, Isaac Asimov, Manny-" And, of course, Rubin rose to the bait at once. "My friend? Just because I lend him a few bucks now and then to help him pay the rent, money that I don't ever expect to see again, he goes around telling everyone he's my friend." "Come on, Manny. No one's going to believe that libel. He's well-heeled. And according to his autobiography, he started with nothing. He worked in his father's candy store, and he delivered newspapers, too. He's a self-made man." "Is that so?" said Rubin. "Well, if he's a self-made man, all I can say is that he certainly worships his creator." There was no telling how long Rubin would have gone on to improvise variations on this theme, but it was at this moment that Benjamin Manfred arrived, and con- versation stopped at once while Gonzalo made the intro- ductions. Manfred was of average height, quite thin, with a lined but good-natured face. His hair was sparse and white, his clothing neat and old-fashioned. He wore a vest, for in- stance, and one was surprised that the chain of a pocket watch was not looped from one side to the other. He wore a wristwatch instead, but it was so old-fashioned that it had a stem-winder. He acknowledged the introductions with a pleasant smile, and when he shook hands with Rubin, said, "I'm so pleased to meet you, Mr. Rubin. I read your mysteries with such pleasure." "Thank you, Sir," said Rubin, trying manfully to be modest. 'In my stores, I can always count on good sales for your books. You almost match Asimov." And he turned away to greet James Drake, while Rubin slowly turned a furious magenta, and the five other Black Widowers suffered substantial internal pain in their desperate efforts not to laugh. Henry, the perennial waiter of the Black Widowers, having seen to it that the old man was supplied with a generous dry martini, announced that dinner was served. Drake stubbed out his cigarette and looked at the small mound of caviar on his plate with pleasure. He helped himself to the condiments being passed around by Henry, hesitating at the chopped onion and then firmly taking two helpings. He whispered to Gonzalo, "How come you can afford caviar, Mario?" Mario whispered back, "Old man Manfred is paying me very nicely for a portrait he's sitting for. That's how I know him, and I might as well show him a bit of a good time with his money." "It's nice to know people still want their portraits painted." "Some people still have good taste," said Gonzalo. Drake grinned. "Would you care to repeat that loudly enough for Manny to hear it?" "No, thanks," said Gonzalo. "I'm host and I'm respon- sible for the decorum of the table." The table, as it happened, was perfectly decorous. Rubin seemed subdued and let pass a dozen opportuni- ties to tell Manfred what was wrong with the bookselling business and how it contributed to the impoverishment of worthy young authors. If the Black Widowers were quieter for Rubin's with- drawal from the fray, they were happy enough, and loud in their praise of the courses as they passed-the turtle soup, the roast goose with the potato pancakes and red cabbage, the baked Alaska-and perhaps just a trifle less than tactful in their clear surprise that a dinner hosted by Gonzalo should have such Lucullan overtones. Gonzalo bore it with good humor and, when it was time to tinkle the water glass melodiously with his spoon, he even made a noble attempt to mollify Rubin. He said, "Manny, you're the book person here and, as we all agree, the best in your class, bar none. Would you please do the honors in grilling Mr. Manfred?" Rubin snorted loudly, and said with only his normal supply of grumpiness, "I might as well. I doubt that any of the rest of you are literate enough." He turned to Manfred and said, "Mr. Manfred, how do you justify your existence?" Manfred did not seem surprised at the question. He said, "If there's one person who shouldn't have trouble justifying his existence, it is someone whose business it is to purvey books. Books, gentlemen, hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, in- deed, all of life. Life without books is empty." Halsted muttered, "These days there's movies and TV." Manfred heard. He said, with a smile, "I watch televi- sion also. Sometimes I will see a movie. just because I appreciate a meal such as the one we have just had doesn't mean that I may not eat a hot dog now and then. But I don't confuse the two. No matter how splendid movies and television may seem, they are junk food for the mind, amusement for the illiterate, a bit of diversion for those who are momentarily in the mood for nothing more." "Unfortunately," said Avalon, looking solemn, "Holly- wood is where the money is." "Of course," said Manfred, "but what does that mean? Undoubtedly, a chain of hamburger joints will make more money than a four-star restaurant, but that doesn't convert hamburger to Peking duck." "Still," said Rubin, "since we are discussing money, may I ask if you consider yourself a self-made man?" Manfred's eyebrows lifted. "That is rather an old-fash- ioned phrase, is it not?" "Right," said Rubin, with a stir of enthusiasm. "I maintained exactly that over the cocktails. It is my opin- ion that nowadays it is impossible for anyone to be a truly self-made man. There is too much routine govern- ment help." Manfred shook with silent laughter. "Before the New Deal, that was not so. The government in those days was a highly moral and neutral referee. If a large corporation had an argument with a small employee, the govern- ment's job was to see that both sides had only the help they could afford. What could be fairer than that? Of course the rich always won, but that was just a coinci- dence, and if the poor man didn't see that, the govern- ment sent in the National Guard to explain things to him. Those were great days." "Nevertheless, the point is that you were poor when you were young, were you not?" "Very poor. My parents arrived in the United States from Germany in 1907 and brought me with them. I was three at the time. My father was employed at a tailor shop and made five dollars a week to begin with. I was the only child then, but you can imagine how it im- proved his economic position when he later had three daughters one after the other. He was a Socialist, and a vocal one, and as soon as he became a citizen he voted for Eugene V. Debs. This made some people, whose views on freedom of speech were strictly limited to freedom of their speech, feel he ought to be deported. "My mother helped out by part-time work in between babies. From the age of nine, I delivered papers in the morning before school and had odd jobs after school. Somehow my father managed to accumulate enough money to make a down payment on a small tailor shop of his own, and I worked with him after school. Once I turned sixteen, I didn't have to stay in school anymore, so I quit at once to work in the shop full-time. I never finished high school." Rubin said, "You don't Sound like an uneducated man." "It depends on how you define education. If you are willing to allow the kind of education you pick up for yourself in books, then I'm educated, thanks to old Mr. Lineweaver." "This Mr. Lineweaver gave you books?" "Only one, actually. But he got me interested in books. In fact, I owe nearly everything to him. I couldn't have gotten my start without him, so that maybe I'm not a self- made man. And yet, he didn't give me anything. I had to work it out for myself, so maybe I am a self-made man. You know, I'm honestly not sure." Drake said, "You've got me confused, Mr. Manfred. What was it you had to work out for yourself? A puzzle of some sort?" "In a way." "Is it a well-known episode in your life?" Manfred said, "There was some mention in newspa- pers at the time, but it was a long time ago and it has been forgotten. Sometimes, though, I wonder how fair the whole thing was. Did I take advantage? I was accused of undue influence and who knows what, but I won out." Rubin said, "I'm afraid, Mr. Manfred, I must ask you to tell us the story in detail. Whatever you say will be held completely confidential." Manfred said, "So Mr. Gonzalo told me, Sir, and I ac- cept that." But, for a moment, Manfred's eyes rested on Henry, who stood, with his usual air of respectful atten- tion, at the sideboard. Trumbull caught the glance and said, "Our waiter, whose name is Henry, is a member of the club." "In that case," said Manfred, "I will tell you the story. And if you find it dull, you have only yourselves to blame." "But wait," interjected Gonzalo eagerly, "if there's some kind of puzzle or mystery involved, I figure you solved it. Right?" "Oh, yes. There is no mystery waiting to be solved." He waved his hands, as though in erasure. "No puzzle." "In that case," said Gonzalo, "when you tell the story about Mr. Lineweaver, don't tell us the answer to the puzzle. Let us guess." Manfred chuckled. "You won't guess. Not correctly." "Good," said Rubin, "please continue with the story, and we will try not to interrupt." Manfred said, "The story starts when I was not quite fifteen, just after the end of the war-the first one, World War I. It was Saturday, no school, but I still had papers to deliver, and the last stop on the route was an old man- sion. I left the paper in a little hook on the side of the door, and once a week, I rang the hell and a servant came out and gave me the money for the papers and would hand me a quarter as a tip. The general payment was a dime, so I was always grateful to this particular place. "Saturday was collection day, so I rang the hell, and this time, for the first time I could remember, out came old Mr. Lineweaver himself. Maybe he just happened to be near the door when I rang the hell. He was about seventy and I thought he was just another servant-I had never seen him before. "It was a bitterly cold day in January-1919, it was- and I was inadequately dressed. I wore the only coat I had and it was rather thin. My hands and face were blue and I was shivering. I wasn't particularly sorry for my- self, because I had delivered papers on many cold days and that was the way it was, that's all. What could I do about it? "Mr. Lineweaver was perturbed, however. He said, "Come inside, boy. I'll pay you where it's warm." His air of authority made me realize he was the owner of the house, and that seared me. "Then, when he paid me, he gave me a dollar as a tip. I had never heard of a dollar tip. Next he brought me into his library-a large room, with bookshelves from floor to ceiling on every wall, and a balcony with additional books. He had a servant bring me hot cocoa, and he kept me there for almost an hour, asking me questions. "I tried to be very polite, but I finally told him I had to go home or my parents would think I was run over. I couldn't call to reassure them, for, in 1919, very few peo- ple had telephones. "When I came home, my parents were very impressed, especially with the dollar tip, which my father took and put away. It wasn't cruelty on his part; it was merely that there was a common coffer for the earnings of the entire family, and none of us could hold out any of it for them- selves. My allowance for the week was exactly zero. "The next Saturday, old Mr. Lineweaver was waiting for me. It wasn't nearly as cold as the week before, but he invited me in for hot cocoa again. When he offered me another dollar, I followed my father's instructions and told him that it was too much, and that a quarter would be enough. My father, I'm afraid, had learned from life to distrust unexplained generosity. Mr. Lineweaver laughed and said he had nothing smaller and that I must take it. "I suspect he noticed the curious looks I was giving the books, for he asked if I had any books at home. I said my father had a couple, but they were in German. He asked if I went to school and, of course, I said yes, but that as soon as I was sixteen I would have to quit. He asked if I went to the public library, and I said that I did some- times, but what with the newspaper delivery and the tai- lor shop, I didn't really have much chance to do so. ""Would you like to look at these books?" he asked, waving his hands toward the walls. ""I might get them dirty, Mr. Lineweaver," I said diffi- dently, looking at my hands, which were black with newspaper ink, of course. "He said, J tell you what. On Sundays, when you have no school and the tailor shop is closed, you come here after you've delivered your papers and you can wash your hands and stay in the library as long as you want and read some of those books. Would you like that?" ""Oh, yes," I said. ""Good," he said. "Then you tell your parents you'll be spending the time here." "I did and, for ten years, I was there faithfully every Sunday except when I was sick or he was away. Eventu- ally, when I grew older, I came by on Saturday after- noons, and even on a few weekday evenings. "He had a wonderfully wide variety of books for me to choose from, and was strong on British fiction. I read Thackeray and Trollope and puzzled over Tristram Sbandy. I remember being fascinated by Warren's Ten Tbousand a Year. It was a mixture of humor and incredi- bly reactionary politics. The antihero was Tittlebat Tit- mouse and there was a very effective villain named Oily Gammon. I eventually learned, from my reading, that Igammon" was a slang term equivalent to our present slang term of "boloney." "I read Pope, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, Cole- ridge-didn't like Wordsworth or Browning, for some reason. There was lots of Shakespeare, naturally. I wasn't strong on nonfiction, but I remember trying to read Dar- win's Origin of Species and not getting very far. There was a new book, Outline of History by H. G. Wells, that fasci- nated me. I read some American writers, too. Mark Twain and Hawthorne, but I couldn't stay with Moby Dick. I read some of Walter Scott. All this was spread out over years, to be sure." Trumbull, at this point, stirred in his seat and said, "Mr. Manfred, I take it this Lineweaver was a wealthy man." "Quite well-to-do, yes." "Did he have children?" "Two grown sons. A grown daughter." "Grandchildren?" "Several." "Why did he make a surrogate son of you, then?" Manfred considered. "I don't know. The house was empty except for servants. He was a widower. His chil- dren and grandchildren rarely came to visit. He was lonely, I suppose, and liked having a youngster in the house, now and then. I'm under the impression he thou ht I was bright and he certainly enjoyed my plea- 9 sure in the books. He would occasionally sit and talk to me about them, ask me what I thought of this book or that, and suggest new ones I might read." "Did he ever give you any money?" asked Trumbull. "Only that dollar a week, which he handed me without fail each Saturday. Eventually, I dropped the paper route, but he didn't know that. I kept on delivering his paper every day. I'd buy it myself and deliver it." "Did he feed you?" "The hot cocoa. When I stayed through lunch, a ser- vant would bring me a ham sandwich and milk, or the equivalent." "Did he give you books?" Manfred shook his head slowly. "Not while he was alive. Never. He wouldn't give me one, or let me borrow one. I could read whatever I liked, but only as long as I sat in the library. I had to wash my hands before I walked into the library and I had to put each book back on the shelf in the place where I had got it before taking another." Avalon said, "I should think Mr. Lineweaver's chil- dren would resent you." "I think they did," said Manfred, "but I never saw them while the old man was alive. Once he said to me, with a little chuckle, "One of my sons said I must keep an eye on you, or you'll take some of my books." I must have looked horrified at the insult to my parents. Would that be the kind of son they would bring up? He laughed and tousled my hair and said, "I told him he didn't know what he was talking about."" Rubin said, "Were his books valuable?" "At the time, it never occurred to me that they might be. I had no idea what books cost, or that some might be worth more than others. I found out, eventually, though. He was proud of them, you see. He told me he had bought every one of them himself. I said that some of them looked so old he must have bought them when he was a little boy. "He laughed, and said, "No, I bought many of them in secondhand bookstores. They were old when I got them, you see. If you do that, sometimes you can pick up some very valuable books for almost nothing. Triple devil," he said. "Triple devil." "I thought he was referring to himself and how clever he was to find these valuable books. Of course, I didn't know which ones might be the valuable ones. "As the years passed, I developed an ambition. What I wanted was to own a bookstore someday. I wanted to be surrounded by books and sell them till I had made enough money to build a library of my own, a collection of books I wouldn't have to sell and that I could read to my heart's content. "I told this to Mr. Lineweaver once, when he ques- tioned me. I said I was going to work in the tailor shop and save every cent till I had enough to buy a bookstore --or maybe an empty store and then buy the books. "Lineweaver shook his head. "That will take a long time, Bennie. The trouble is I've got children of my own to take care of, even though they're a selfish lot. Still, there's no reason I can't help you out in some sneaky way that they won't be able to do anything about. Just re- member I own a very valuable book." "I said, "I hope it's hidden away, Mr. Lineweaver." " "In the best place in the world," he said. "Do you re- member your Chesterton? What's the best place to hide a pebble?" "I grinned. The Father Brown stories were new then, and I loved them. "On the beach," I said, "and the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest." " "Exactly right," said Mr. Lineweaver, "and my book is hidden in my library." "I looked about curiously. "Which one?" I asked, and was instantly sorry, for he might have thought I would want to take it. "He shook his head. "I won't tell you. Triple devil! Tri- ple devil!" Again, I felt he was referring to his own sly- ness in not revealing his secret. 'In early 1929, ten years almost to the day after I had first met him, he died, and I received a call from the lawyers to attend a reading of the will. That astonished me, but my mother was in seventh heaven. She felt I would inherit a great deal of money. My father frowned and worried that the money belonged to the family, and that I would be a thief to take it from them. He was that kind of person. "I attended, dressed in my best clothes, and felt incred- ibly ill at ease and out of place. I was surrounded by the family, the children and grandchildren I had never be- fore seen, and their looks at me were the reverse of lov- ing. I think they, too, thought I would get a great deal of money. "But they didn't have to worry. I was left one book- one-from his library. Any book I wished. It was to be my free choice. I knew he wanted me to have the valu- able one, but he had never told me which one that was. "The bequest did not satisfy the family. You would think they could spare one book out of perhaps ten thou- sand, but they apparently resented my even being men- tioned in the will. The lawyer told me I could make my choice as soon as the will was probated. "I asked if I might go into the library and study the books in order to make that choice. The lawyer seemed to think that was reasonable, but this was objected to at once by the family, who pointed out that the will said nothing about my going into the library. ""You have been in the library often enough and long enough," said the older son. "Just make your choice and you can have it when the will is probated." "The lawyer wasn't exactly pleased by that and he said that he would seal the library till probation, and no one could go in. That made me feel better, because I thought that perhaps the family knew which book was valuable and would remove it themselves. "It took time for the will to be probated, so I refused to make the choice immediately. The family grumbled at that, but the lawyer held his ground there. I spent the time thinking. Had old Mr. Lineweaver ever said any- thing to me that was puzzling and that might have been intended as a hint? I could think of nothing but the "tri- ple devil" he used to call himself when he wanted to praise his own slyness. -But he only said that when he discussed the valuable book. Could the phrase refer to the book, and not to himself? "I was twenty-four now, and far from the innocent child I had been ten years before. I had a vast miscellany of information at my fingertips, thanks to my reading, and when the time came for me to make my choice, I did not have to walk into the library. I named the book I wanted and explained exactly where it would be on the shelves, for I had read it, of course, though I had never dreamed it was valuable. "The lawyer himself went in and got it for me, and it was the right book. As a book dealer, I now know why it was valuable, but never mind that. The point is that I had the lawyer-a good man-arrange to have it ap- praised, and then to have it sold at a public auction. It brought in seventy thousand dollars, a true fortune in those days. If it were offered for sale now it would bring in a quarter of a million, but I needed the money then. "The family was furious, of course, but there was nothing they could do. They brought suit, but the fact they had not let me enter the library and study the books lost them a great deal of sympathy. In any case, after the legal hassle was over, I bought a bookstore, made it pay through the Depression, when books were one form of relatively cheap amusement, and built things up to where they now are. -So am I a self-made man " Rubin said, "In my opinion, this doesn't come under the heading of luck. You had to pick one book out of ten thousand on the basis of a small and obscure hint, and you did. That's ingenuity, and, therefore, you earned the money. just out of curiosity, what was the book?" "Hey," said Gonzalo angrily. Manfred said, "Mr. Gonzalo asked me not to give you the solution. He said you might want to work on it your- selves." The smoke from Drake's cigarette curled up toward the ceiling. He said, in his softly hoarse voice, "One out of ten thousand on the basis of "triple devil." We never saw the library and you did. You knew what books were present and we don't. It's scarcely a fair test." "I admit that," said Manfred, "so I'll tell you if you wish." "No," said Gonzalo. "We've got to have a chance. The book must have had "devil" in the title. It might have been "The Devil and Daniel Webster," for instance." "That's a short story by Stephen Vincent Ben6t," said Manfred, "and wasn't published till 1937." Halsted said, "The usual image of the devil, with horns, hooves and a tail, is drawn, actually, from the Greek nature god, Pan. Was ita book about Pan, or with the word "Pan" in the title?" "Actually," said Manfred, "I can't think of one." Avalon said, "The witch goddess, Hecate, is often thought of as triple-maid, matron, and crone-because she was a Moon'goddess, too, and those were the phases -first quarter, full, and last quarter. As a witch goddess, she might be looked at as a triple devil. Memoirs of Hecate County was published too late to be the solution, but is there something earlier with Hecate in the title?" "Not that I know of," said Manfred. There was a silence about the table, and Rubin said, "We just don't have enough information. I think the story was interesting in itself, and that Mr. Manfred can now tell us the solution." Gonzalo said, "Henry hasn't had his chance. Henry- have you any idea what the book might be?" Henry smiled. "I have a small notion." Manfred smiled, too. "I don't think you will be cor- rect." Henry said, "Perhaps not. In any case, people are often afraid to mention the devil by name, lest they call him up in the process, so they use numerous nicknames or eu- phemisms for him. Very frequently, they use the diminu- tive of some common masculine name as a kind of friendly gesture that might serve to placate him. "Old Nick" springs to mind." Manfred half rose from his seat, but Henry paid no attention. "Once one thinks of that, it is simple to go on to think of Nicholas Nickleby which, so to speak, is old Nick twice, and is therefore "double devil."" "But we want "triple devil," Henry," said Gonzalo. "The diminutive of Richard gives us "dickens," a very well known euphemism for "devil," as in "What the dick- ens?" and the author of Nicholas Nicklaby is, of course, Charles Dickens, and there is the "triple devil." Am I right, Mr. Manfred?" Manfred said, "You're completely right, Henry. I'm afraid I wasn't as ingenious as I've thought these past fifty-five years. You did it in far less time than I did, and without even seeing the library." Henry said, "No, Mr. Manfred. I deserve far less credit than you. You see, you gave the solution away in your account of events." "When?" said Manfred, frowning. "I was careful not to say anything at all that would give you a hint." "Exactly, Sir. You mentioned so many authors and never once mentioned the outstanding English novelist of the nineteenth century, or probably any other cen- tury, or even, perhaps, any other language. Your failure to mention him made me think at once there was particu- lar significance to the name Charles Dickens, and "triple devil" then had no mystery to me." AFTERWORD lou may have noticed that in this story, Isaac Asimov is mentioned as a friend of Emmanuel Rubin, who instantly seizes the opportunity to revile and libel poor Asimov. I do that about once every ten stories or so because I enjoy doing it, but, of course, it is poor Rubin I am being unfair to and not myself. Rubin in his real-life incarnation is Lester del Rey, who is a good friend of mine and has been for nearly fifty years. We squabble lov- ingly in public (which is what gave me the idea of having Rubin act as he does) but, in actual fact, we are each ready to give the other the shirt off our backs, if necessary. Lester is, in fact, one of the straight- arrows I have been fortunate enough to know, absolutely honest and absolutely reliable-but idiosyncratic, as I am. Lester consistently denies there is any resemblance between him- self and Rubin, even though I assure him that strangers often stop me in the street and say, "Hey, that guy Rubin in your stories-he's an awful lot like Lester del Rey." This story first appeared in the August 1985 issue of Ellery Qyeens Mystery Magazine. SUNSET ON THE WATER It didn't take much to make Emmanuel Rubin indignant so that his beard (what there was of it) bristled. It didn't take much more to make him furious and have his eyes flash behind his thick-lensed spectacles. He was somewhere between indignation and rage now, and the upstairs room at the Milano, where the Black Widowers met for their monthly banquets, rang with his voice. "I get this fan letter from California," he said, "and after the usual bosh about how good my books are-" "Bosh is right," said Mario Gonzalo, staring compla- cently at the sketch he was making of the banquet guest, a sketch that seemed all eyebrows. Rubin went right on with his sentence, not bothering to stop to demolish the other-unusual for him and in- dicative of the concentrated nature of his anger. "-he writes to me that, if I'm ever on the Coast, I should drop in and he'll put me up." "Kindly meant, I'm sure," said Roger Halsted, nib- bling at a sausage roll-one of the hot appetizers that the inestimable Henry had put out this time as an accompa- niment to the drinks. "No one can be kind and stupid at the same time," said Rubin, inventing a cosmic law on the spot. "I wrote back and said, "I am already on the Coast, thank you." "Good Lord," said Thomas Trumbull, who had ar- rived three minutes before and had accepted a scotch and soda from Henry with his usual affectation of having just returned from Death Valley and being in the last extrem- ity of thirst. "Is that what you're furious about? So what if Californians talk about their coast as though it were the only one in the world? It's just a way of speaking." "As a matter of fact," said James Drake, who was born in Alaska, "the West Coasters, if you'll excuse that ex- pression, are not the only offenders. As soon as an East Coaster has been in California for five minutes, he begins saying, "Here on the Coast-" In the same way, you can get a guy from Ohio who has called his native land "the United States" all his life, put him in Europe for five minutes, and he begins to talk about the "States." Geoffrey Avalon, host of the banquet on this occasion, and noted for his annoying ability to see both sides of a question, said, "Provincialism is not the monopoly of anyone. There is the story of the two Boston dowagers who found themselves in Los Angeles early in October, with the temperature at one hundred and five degrees. Said one, "My goodness, Prudence, it is certainly hot here." Said the other, "What do you expect, Hepzibah? We are, after all, nearly three thousand miles from the ocean." Avalon then took a sip of his drink in his usual grave way and said, "Tom, you haven't had a chance to meet my guest, Chester Dunhill. Chester, this is Tom Trum- bull, who has some sort of sensitive job with the govern- ment. He's never specific about it." Trumbull said, "Glad to meet you, Mr. Dunhill. If our doings here puzzle you, I must explain that it is custom- ary for the Black Widowers to debate furiously over tri- fles." Dunhill was a tall man with a thick head of white hair and eyebrows of a startling and bushy black. He said, in a booming bass voice, "We can survive catastrophes. It's the trifles that kill us." Gonzalo looked startled and seemed about to say some- thing, but Henry announced, with quiet finality, "Gen- tlemen, dinner is served." Rubin did well with the ham and pea soup, and wreaked havoc on the broiled sole, and on the rather plain salad. He drew up short, however, at the individual pies handed out in all the pride of their crisp, golden crust. "Henry," said Rubin in a slow rumble, "what exists under this crust?" Henry said, "I fear, Mr. Rubin, that Mr. Avalon, in a British mood, has asked that we serve steak and kidney pie.11 I "Kidney Kidney?" Rubin looked outraged. "That's liver squared. Jeff, I wouldn't have thought you capable of such, a lapse in taste." Avalon looked pained. He said, "Steak and kidney pie, properly prepared, is a great delicacy-" "For whom? Vultures?" "For every one of us at this table. Why don't you try it, Manny?" Rubin said intransigently. "Kidney tastes like urine." Gonzalo said, "So does your favorite brand of beer, Manny, but you guzzle it down." "For God's sake," said Trumbull, "what kind of dinner conversation is this? Manny, if you can't eat what's set before you, then I'm sure Henry can get you scrambled eggs.97 Rubin sneered and said, "I'll eat the steak," and sat sulkily through the main course, the treacle tart, the sar- dine-on-toast savory, and the strong tea. It made for a quiet dinner and, as Gonzalo pointed out in dumb show, Rubin did manage to eat the entire pie, kidney included. Eventually, Avalon rang his spoon against the water glass and said, "Gentlemen, I call on Mario to grill our honored guest, my good friend, Chester Dunhill. I've ex- plained the rules of the game to him and he is quite pre- pared to answer truthfully and completely." Gonzalo said, "Mr. Dunhill, how do you justify your existence. Dunhill blinked, then said, "Well, I try to keep the past alive for the general public. Considering that we can't possibly order the present intelligently unless we learn the lessons of the past, I think I earn my place on Earth." Gonzalo said, "How do you keep the past alive?" "By writing about it. I suppose I could call myself a historian for the layman." "Can you make a living from that?" asked Gonzalo. Halsted put in at once, "Will Durant did, and Barbara Tuchman still does." Dunhill smiled, with an air of diffidence that did not sit comfortably upon him. "I don't exactly put myself in their class. Still, I do make a living." Avalon cleared his throat with vehemence. "May I in- terrupt? My friend, Charles, is being needlessly modest. In addition to his histories, he also writes historical novels for teenagers, mostly set in the Greece of the Pelo- ponnesian War and the Rome of the Second Punic War. These are both critical and popular successes." Gonzalo said, "Why those periods in particular, Mr. Dunhill?" Dunhill said, "Both were periods of epic conflict be- tween two nearly equally matched powers: Athens and Sparta in one case; Rome and Carthage in the other. Both wars are well documented; both were filled with great battles, with dramatic triumphs and disasters, with gen- erals and politicians, some brilliant and some idiotic. Both periods, in short, are dead ringers for the period we're living in now. We can understand, sympathize, and see the lessons I try to make plain. What's more, we can't even draw an overall conclusion, because in one case the adversary we admire won out over the other, Rome de- feating Carthage. In the other, the adversary we admire lost, Athens succumbing to Sparta. Of course, I've al- ways had a personal soft spot in my heart for the Cartha- ginian general, Hannibal. He's one of three great gener- als in history who ended a loser without that in the least tarnishing his reputation." Rubin said, "Napoleon was a second. Who was the third?" , "Robert E. Lee, of course," said Dunhill, his voice booming again. Rubin looked discomfited but recovered and said, "I thought you were going to say Charles XII of Sweden, and that would have been wrong." "That's right," said Dunhill, "it would have been wrong. Charles XII lacked prudence." "How about generals who never lost?" asked Drake. "There are quite a few of them," said Dunhill. "Genghis Khan, Cromwell, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the Duke of Marlborough, and so on. Their repu- tations depend on the manner of their victories and the quality of their adversaries. At least two generals I can think of almost always lost but remained great consider- ing what they did with what they had. There's George Washington, of course, and General Giap of North Viet- nam." Gonzalo said, "I suppose that in your history books and novels, you deal with the catastrophes that people survive. What are the trifles that can kill you?" Everyone turned to look at Gonzalo, who grew restive under the communal stare. "What's wrong with the question? Mr. Dunhill said that catastrophes could be survived, but trifles kill you." "Did Y" said Dunhill, frowning. "Yes, you did. You said it to Tom Trumbull." He turned to Trumbull, who was nursing his brandy. "Tom, didn't he say that?" Trumbull nodded. "You said that, Mr. Dunhill." "Well, then," said Gonzalo. "What trifles did you have in mind?" "Actually," put in Avalon, "every defeat suffered by a competent general might be blamed on some trifle. In fact, in War and Peace Tolstoy argued, in what I found to be tedious detail, the thesis that no general controls a battle, but that trivialities decide it all." Gonzalo said, "Come on, Jeff, you're trying to get your guest off the hook, and that's unethical. I don't think Mr. Dunhill was thinking about big battles. I think he had something personal in mind. That's the way it sounded to me and that's what I want to know about." Dunhill shook his head. "It was just a remark. We all make remarks." Gonzalo said, "Remarks aren't made out of nothing. You must have had something in your mind." Dunhill shook his head again. Trumbull sighed and said, "It seemed to me, too, Mr. Dunhill, that when you made that remark something was tearing at you. Jeff said he explained the game to you. You've agreed to answer all questions and we agree, in return, to hold everything you say absolutely confiden- tial. If you're willing to state flatly that the statement had no personal meaning to you then and that you spoke idly, we will have to accept that, but please don't say that unless it is the truth." Avalon said, in a tone of deep discomfort, "I did tell you that this would all be confidential, Chet." Dunhill said, with a touch of anger in his voice, "There's nothing involved here but a deep personal dis- appointment that I can hardly hear to think of, let alone discuss. The trouble is that it is a matter of no moment to anyone but me, and others will only laugh at the whole thing. It involves a ridiculous, trifle that places all the blame squarely on me. That's the unbearable part. If I could blame it on the government, on Fate, on the Uni- verse, it wouldn't be so-" He stopped, broodingly. "May we hear about it?" said Gonzalo stubbornly. "I warn you," said Dunhill. "It's a long story of no interest whatever except to me." "That's beside the point," said Gonzalo. "Very well, but you asked for it. -During World War I was a young chap who missed actual army service (for a few years, anyway) because I was working for the Navy as a chemist. This was in Philadelphia. I was rather an unsocial creature in those days and my chief amuse- ment lay in making my way out to the main branch of the Free Library and reading whatever I came across. And one of the things I came across was The Historians" History of the World in twenty-four volumes. It was pub- lished in 1902, with a second edition in 1907, with two supplementary volumes carrying things through World War I, and an index volume-twenty-seven altogether. Did any of you ever hear of it?" There was silence. Dunhill went on, "I'm not sur- prised. To most people, it would be a deadly work. It was long out of print even at the time I came across it forty years ago, and now-" He shrugged, and went on. "The volumes are a cut- and-paste job. Sections from the Greek and Roman his- torians and from the modern historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were included in the proper order in a series of histories dealing with the various na- tions separately. Volumes three and four were on Greece; volumes five and six were on Rome; and so on. There is a great deal of overlapping, of course, but that just meant that the same events are described from the viewpoints of different historians, possibly of different nationalities. "The general editor, Henry Smith Williams, filled in gaps with essays of his own. He was a humane person of liberal views and almost every time I read what I thought was a particularly telling passage, it proved to be one of his. You must understand that it was edited to read as connectedly as possible. There was just an occasional unobtrusive superscript which guided you to the end of the volume, where you found out that you were reading Gibbon or Prescott or Bury or Macaulay or Thucydides or whoever. "The library had the set in double volumes and I picked them out one and by one and quickly found I could not hear to stop reading them for anything as dull as my daily work. I took them to the lab with me and read them during lunch or through a partially open desk while I had something boiling slowly under a reflex con- denser. My memories of that entire period are vague ex- cept for those volumes. "I had always been interested in history, but it was those volumes that converted that interest into an obses- sion. The volumes were all terribly old-fashioned, of course, for prior to the twentieth century, history was almost exclusively a matter of battles and court intrigue. Still, that was what I loved and my own histories are just as old-fashioned. I dwell very little on social and eco- nomic issues." Rubin said, "The social and economic issues would make your histories more valuable." "And more dull, perhaps," said Dunhill. "I don't omit such things altogether but I always remember I am writ- ing for the general public, not for scholars. In any case, by the late 1950s, nearly ten years after I had held those library books in my hands for the last time, I abandoned chemistry and began to spend my full time on histories and historical novels." Dunhill paused and seemed to brood awhile. Drake chuckled as he stubbed out a cigarette. He said, "Unless you're telling the story with a total absence of art, which I cannot believe of a novelist, that Historians" History is going to turn up again." Dunhill nodded vigorously. "You are quite correct. A few years ago, I made a new acquaintance, and my wife and I visited his house and had dinner there with several other couples. After dinner, I wandered over to his book- shelves and studied them-a had habit that exasperates my wife but of which even she cannot cure me. "And there, filling an entire shelf, was the Historians" History. I hadn't thought of it in years, had all but forgot- ten it. The instant I saw it, however, everything flooded back. The memory of reading those volumes at a terrible time in modern history, memories gilded and made more wonderful by the passage of years, were achingly sweet and intense. "I was no longer the impecunious lad of decades ago. I am quite well off now and can afford to cater to my whims. I approached my host at once, therefore, and of- fered to buy his set. I couldn't believe that it had any attraction to anyone but myself and I was ready to pay far more than it was worth. Unfortunately, my host, for some reason he never explained, would not sell. He was quite emphatic about it. "I tell you, gentlemen, if there were a million dollars on this table, and I knew I could take it without danger of detection, I would not touch it, out of a simple sense of honesty. But I actually thought of stealing those volumes that my friend would not sell me. It was only the thought of being caught if I tried breaking and entering that held me back. My sense of ethics simply shattered under the strain and I ended the new friendship rather than expose myself to the bitterness of seeing those volumes in some- one else's possession. "I began visiting such secondhand bookstores as I could reach, and calling those I could not reach, asking them if they had or could get a set of the volumes. I even advertised in the New York Times Book Review, in general magazines, and in periodicals of interest to history buffs. The longer I waited the more I was willing to pay if I had to. -And this brings me down to the present." Halsted said, "I hope you're not going to tell us you drew a complete blank and that that's the end of the story." Dunhill frowned at him, his eyebrows hunching low. He said bitterly, "How I wish I could tell you exactly that. I gave a box number in the advertisement and the booksellers all had my home address, but I got nothing in either case. Nothing. Nil. Zilch. "One week ago, however, I picked up a letter at my publisher's. I see them once a week and they usually hold any letters for me that are written care of them. They're never important, and usually they're from people who nitpick some historical point I make, something that must be dealt with, but always depresses me. , "I was holding the letter in my hand as I left my pub- lisher's and walked down the street to Grand Central. Idly, I glanced at the envelope and noted that it was ad- dressed in pen and ink in a spidery hand, which I ac- cepted as a had sign. I decided it was from an elderly man who would raise some faint and querulous point con- cerning some pet theory of his. In a had temper, I ripped open the envelope and removed the sheet of paper inside. At that point, I passed a garbage truck and tossed the envelope into its yawning maw, like a good citizen. But then I had to cross the street, which takes all one's con- centration in Manhattan, and shoved the note into my pocket. "I didn't remember it till I was in my commuter train and, taking out the note, I read it and a sudden rush of ecstasy filled me. -Here, I have the letter. Let me read it to YOU." Dunhill unfolded a letter and read its crabbed hand- writing aloud and with ease, as though he had memo- rized it. Dear Mr. Dunhill, I am a great fan of your books and I read your ad and would like to tell you that I have a complete set of "The Historians" History of the World" that I would be de- lighted to let you have. My father bought it for me when I was quite young and I enjoyed it greatly. It is still in very good shape and if you are willing to pay me a rea- sonable price plus all mailing costs, I would have it sent to you by insured express mail. I would never dream of selling the set but I am quite old now and will be moving to a little place near my daughter's home, and there will be no room for the set there. I am a widower and I'm afraid I cannot live alone any longer. I just can't cope with the harsh winters. It means having to live in a small town instead of in a sizable city. It also means giving up my apartment on the shore where, on clear evenings, I have often watched the sun set into the endless stretch of water so that I almost imagined I could hear it hiss. Still, if I must give up these books, I can't think of anyone I'd rather give it up to than you. I hope you have many years of pleasure with it. Please let me hear from you soon. Sincerely, Ludovic Broadbottom Rubin said, "Congratulations, Mr. Dunhill. Is every- thing arranged, or is that where the trivialities come in?" Dunhill said grimly, "That is where the trivialities come in. Here, take this letter and look at it and tell me where to write." Rubin took the letter, and glanced over the writing which filled one side of the sheet. He turned it over and looked at the totally blank other side. He said, "There's no return address on it." "No, there isn't," said Dunhill indignantly. "Can you imagine the stupidity of people who don't put return addresses on their letters and then expect an answer?" Avalon said, "People who don't put return addresses on their letters usually do put it on their envelopes-oh," he concluded, remembering. "That's right," said Dunhill. "I threw the damned en- velope away. There are your trifles. Here's a guy who reads an ad that clearly has a box number attached, yet he writes in care of my publisher instead. That not only means a delay of several days, but deprives me of the chance of knowing at once that the letter is important. "Then I decide, of all things, to open the letter on the street and to discard the envelope into a handy garbage truck without really looking at it. If I had only just noted the name of the city and nothing more, I could have got his address from the city directory. There can't be more than one Ludovic, Broadbottom in any one city. And to top it all off, he doesn't include his return address in the body of the letter. What's the result of all these triviali- ties? I have an offer of my Historians" History and I can't reach out and take it." Gonzalo said, "Is there a bright side, Mr. Dunhill? Can you get other reference books for your histories and novels." Dunhill said, with real anguish, "Get other books? I bave other books. I have two large rooms crammed with historical reference material of the finest sort, to say nothing of the resources of the New York Public Library and of Columbia University. You don't get the point. I want a copy of Historians'History for mysef, for sentimen- tal reasons, for what it's done for me, for what it's meant to me. And I bave it, and can't get it." For a moment, what was almost a child's whine en- tered his deep voice. He must have recognized that him- self, if belatedly, for he threw himself back in his chair, took a deep breath, and said, "Pardon me, gentlemen, I don't mean to rail uselessly at Fate." "Why not?" said Avalon. "We all do it from time to time. But look here, we usually see more than we think we do. You glanced at the envelope long enough to see that it was addressed to you and to note that it was an old man's handwriting-" "Yes," said Dunhill vehemently, "another trifle. The handwriting threw me off, too, and added to my convic- tion the letter was unimportant. If he had only typed my address on the envelope, I would surely have treated it with more respect." "Yes," said Avalon, ploughing on, "but the point is that you must have glanced at the return address, too. If you concentrate quietly, you may remember something about it." "No," said Dunhill hopelessly. "I've been trying for days. It's useless." Trumbull said, "Why don't we work from what he says in his letter? He lives in a sizable city on the shore, and sees the sunset over the ocean. That means he's on the West Coast, or "the Coast," to quote Manny's fan. Here in New York, we can see sunrise out of the water, but never sunset into the water. Can we make a start with that?" Dunhill seemed to have recovered his self-control. He said quietly, "Gentlemen, I have been a chemist, and I am a historian. I am used to the process of reasoning. Please note, however, that he talks of the harsh winters he experiences and that he can no longer endure. Neither Los Angeles nor San Francisco can possibly be consid- ered as having harsh winters. No city on the West Coast can." Gonzalo said, "Seattle is pretty damned rainy. I was there once, and you can believe me. That might sicken anyone." "Then he would speak of rainy weather. No one speaks of harsh winters unless they mean cold and snow. That eliminates the West Coast, and Hawaii, too, but-" "Wait," said Rubin, "how do you know it was from the United States? The letter is written in English, but it could be from Canada, Scotland, Australia. For that mat- ter, almost any educated, non-Anglophone foreigner can write in English these days." Dunhill flushed. "Well, then, I did notice sometbing about the envelope. It had an American stamp. I know because I save foreign stamps for a friend of mine and I automatically watch for one on all envelopes. Had there been a foreign stamp on the envelope I would have torn it off and discarded the rest. I think I would even have noticed a foreign postal-meter mark. -As I say, then, we can eliminate California, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. That leaves Alaska." "I wouldn't have thought of Alaska," muttered Gon- zalo. "I would," said Drake, smiling. "I was born there." "In any case," said Dunhill, "the only town in Alaska that even an Alaskan would think of as sizable is Anchorage. It's on the coast but not on the open ocean. It's on Cook Inlet. The inlet is to the west of Anchorage, however, and perhaps you can see the sun set into it. Perhaps. I didn't take chances. I called the Anchorage phone exchange and the post office. There's no Ludovic Broadbottom in the city. In fact, just to play it safe, I called Juneau and Sitka. Juneau is on another inlet far- ther south, and Sitka has a population of less than ten thousand. But I called them-and nothing doing." Halsted said thoughtfully, "If you're going to count cities on inlets, what about the East Coast? The ocean may be to the east, but there may be inlets to the west." "I know," said Dunhill. "Florida has a long western coast and someone living on the shore in Tampa or Key West could watch the sunset on the water as the sun dives into the Gulf of Mexico. However, where would the harsh winters come in? "There's a long peninsula that forms the eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay. The largest city on the western shore of that peninsula is Cambridge. It has a population of about eleven or twelve thousand, but from it you can watch the sunset on the water, since Chesapeake Bay is a broad stretch. So I called the town and drew a blank there,too. "Besides, the only harsh winters on the East Coast would be from Philadelphia northward-New England particularly. Any city on the northeast coast, however, faces an ocean on the east or south. Even Provincetown, at the tip of Cape Cod, which could face west to the ocean, faces south. Falmouth faces west but it is a small town. Absolutely no town that could conceivably be con- sidered sizable has a western exposure to the ocean." Gonzalo said, more to himself than to anyone else, "From Manhattan you can see the Sun tumble into the Hudson." "No, you can't," said Drake. "It squats down on New Jersey." Halsted rubbed his high, pinkish forehead and said, "You don't suppose your letter writer got his directions twisted, do you? Not long ago an American delegate to the United Nations invited any nation which was dissat- isfied with American hospitality to leave. He said he would be delighted to wave farewell to them as they sailed off into the sunset. He didn't bother to explain how one can sail into the sunset from New York." Dunhill snorted loudly. "I remember that incident. He was simply using a metaphor stupidly. Besides, we're not talking about any member of the present administration. We're talking about an average American of, presumably, average intelligence." "Besides," pointed out Avalon, "a man can mistake east and west, but if he's describing solar motions there is no way in which he can confuse sunset and sunrise. No, we need a sizable city with the ocean to the west and with a harsh winter. I confess I can't think of one that fills the bill." Gonzalo said, "How about American islands that arenit part of states? Puerto Rico, Guam. They would still use American stamps, wouldn't they?" "Yes, they would," said Dunhill, "and they're all tropi- cal islands, too. -Believe me, gentlemen, I'm at the end of my rope." Halsted said, "You don't think this whole thing might be a gag, do you? Maybe Ludovic Broadbottom is a made- up name, and he deliberately sent you clues that lead nowhere. Maybe there was no return address on the en- velope, either. Or a fake one." Slowly, Dunhill said, "Why should anyone bother? I'm a harmless person and my request is harmless, too. What would be the point of a practical joke of this nature?" "The confirmed practical joker," said Avalon, "doesn't have to have a point-except on top of his head, of course." Halsted said, "Do you have any friends who are practi- cal jokers?" "Not that I know of," said Dunhill. "I select my friends with reasonable care." Gonzalo said, "Maybe Henry has some idea." He turned in his seat and said, puzzled, "Where's Henry? He was here a moment ago, listening to us." He raised his voice. "Henry!" Henry emerged from the cloakroom and said, imper- turbably, "I am here, gentlemen. I was merely engaged in a small task. -Mr. Dunhill, I have Mr. Ludovic Broadbottom on the telephone. He is anxious to speak to you.17 Dunhill's eyes bulged. He said in a choked voice, "Mr. Ludovic- Are you serious?" "Quite," said Henry, with a bland smile. "Perhaps you had better not delay. And I might advise you to offer a generous sum. He's moving next week, and there will be no time to bargain." Dunhill rose, appearing dazed, and vanished into the cloakroom toward the phone booth located there. The Black Widowers sat in shocked silence for a few moments, and then Rubin said, "All right, Henry, what kind of magic did you use?" Henry said, "No magic, gentlemen. It was Mr. Rubin who gave me the idea when he initiated the discussion of provincial attitudes toward coasts-the manner in which Americans on one coast sometimes forget, or ignore, the other. "It seems to me that Americans on all three seacoasts- the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Gulf, too, if you want to count that separately-tend altogether to ignore Ameri- ca's fourth coast, which is quite a long one, too." "The fourth coast?" said Avalon, frowning. "Of course," said Rubin, shaking his head in disgust. "Yes, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "I'm thinking of the Great Lakes. We don't think of it as a coastline but Mr. Broadbottom didn't refer to it as that. He spoke of the "shore," and the Great Lakes certainly have a shore. We very commonly speak of a lakeshore. And anyone living in a place on the shore of any one of the Great Lakes would perceive the same effect as would be obtained if one were overlooking an ocean. Those are large lakes, gentlemen. "However, all the sizable cities on the lakeshores have their lakes to the east, south, or north. We can even in- clude the Canadian cities, if we wish. Duluth has Lake Superior on the east. Milwaukee and Chicago have Lake Michigan on the east. Gary has Lake Michigan on the north. Detroit has Lake St. Clair on the east-tiny by Great Lake standards but large enough to give the effect of sunrise out of the water. Toledo has Lake Erie on the east. Cleveland and Erie have Lake Erie on the north, though Erie gets some western view. Hamilton has Lake Ontario on the east, while Toronto has that lake on the south and east, and Rochester has it on the north. "The only really sizable city that looks west to a Great Lake is Buffalo, New York. It has Lake Erie to the west. From a proper location in Buffalo one can see the Sun set into Lake Erie-and Buffalo is notorious for its snowy winters. So I tried that first. I phoned Buffalo, obtained Mr. Broadbottom's number, called it, and he answered at once. He was quite concerned at not having heard from Mr. Dunhill. He is as anxious to sell as Mr. Dun- hill-" At this point, Dunhill emerged from the cloakroom, his face alight with joy. "All arranged," he said. "I will pay five hundred dollars plus shipping costs and I hope to have it in just a matter of days." He reached for his wallet before a horrified Avalon could stop him. "Henry, you deserve a ten percent find- er's fee for this," Dunhill said. "How did you do it?" Henry raised his hand in a gentle gesture of rejection. "Mr. Dunhill," he said with quiet firmness, "as a mem- her of the Black Widowers, I cannot accept a fee in con- nection with my club duties." Dunhill hesitated, then replaced his wallet in his pocket. "But how did you do it, man?" Henry said, "Just a matter of thinking of the Great Lakes as small oceans. It's not worth discussing. The im- portant thing is that you'll have your books." AFTERWORD Notice that Dunhill lusted for The Historians" History of the World. It was I that lusted for it. It was I who had read it as a youngster, taking it volume by volume from the public library, and it was I who noticed it in a friend's library. And it was I who would have stolen it if I had been able to think of a way. It was the only thing that I was ever tempted to steal. However, my own story ended quite happily. I tried to find a copy that I could buy legitimately for money, and failed. My friend, how- ever, managed to get another copy and presented it to me. After long persuasion, I managed to get him to accept a pittance in exchange. I still own the set and it is one of the apples of my eye. But as a matter of conscience, I must make a confession to you. My friend's set was missing a volume. The set he presented to me was not. For a while I tried to persuade myself to offer him the volume he was missing-but Ijust could not make mysetrdo it. How's that for being a mean bum? This story first appeared in the January 1986 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. WHERE IS HE? When Roger Halsted introduced his guest as his invest- ment broker, the members of the Black Widowers, as- sembled at their monthly banquet, responded at first with a stunned silence. Halsted ignored that, and went about the room, intro- ducing the members methodically. "As I said, this is W. Bradford Hume, folks. -Brad, I want you to meet Emmanuel Rubin, who writes myster- It's; Mario Gonzalo, who will be doing your portrait soon; James Drake, who's coughing over his cigarette, and was a chemist before he retired; Geoffrey Avalon, a patent attorney, though I've never found out what they do; and Thomas Trumbull, who works for a hush-hush branch of the government. -And this is our waiter, Henry, who's also a member, and who has just brought you your drink." Hume acknowledged all the introductions with grace and a smile. He took his martini with a "Thank you, Henry," and by that time the assemblage had recovered. Rubin, his eyes wide behind his thick glasses, said, "Are you telling us this is your investment broker?" "That's exactly what I'm telling you," said Halsted, haughtily. "Have they given you a raise in salary? Quintupled it?" Halsted said, "No need to assume I'm a beggar, Manny, just because I teach mathematics at a junior high school. I've got seniority, security, and a reasonable sal- ary; neither rich nor gaudy, but reasonable. Besides, Al- ice works also and makes more than I do, and I have a small inheritance from my mother, rest her soul-so Brad takes care of a few bucks for me, and very well, too." Hume smiled appreciatively, and said, "Not that I'm trying to drum up business, gentlemen. It's my under- standing that this is a purely social evening." "Purely!" growled Trumbull. Avalon cleared his throat. "I should think, Mr. Hume, that being a financial adviser in these unsettled times makes for a tense life." "So it does, Mr. Avalon, but all times are unsettled, and that makes it particularly difficult for a financial ad- viser, since he is expected to see the future-the immedi- ate future, at any rate." "What stocks go up? What stocks go down?" mur- mured Gonzalo. He was already working at Hume's cari- cature and had put in the shock of dark hair under which he intended to hang an almost cherubic face. "That, certainly," said Hume, "but a little more than that, too. You have to be able to judge what will be useful as a long-term investment, to anticipate changes in tax-" At this point, Halsted put his hand on Hume's arm. "Don't talk about it now, Brad. They're going to grill you after the meal, and until then you have a right to relax." "That suits me," said Hume. "What's on the menu for tonight, or am I not supposed to ask;" "Why shouldn't you ask?" said Halsted. "Henry, what's on?" Henry's smooth, sixtyish face crinkled slightly. "There will be grilled salmon tonight, Mr. Halsted, and I think you will find it most unusual. The lobster sauce is a pri- vate recipe of the chef's." "Trying it out on us, is he?" said Drake, in his hoarse voice. "You will not be disappointed, Dr. Drake. It will be preceded by a Portuguese fish chowder, which you may find a bit spicy." "That won't bother me, " said Avalon, his bushy eye- brows hunching low and giving his face an amiably Sa- tanic look. As it turned out, Henry was quite right. From soup through the rum chocolate cake, there were sounds of approval. Even Rubin's stout assertion that the "now- fashionable exercise of futurism" was empty of content did not rouse much in the way of clamorous opposition. "All you have to do," said Rubin, "is to go back and read the predictions for the present time handed out by the charlatans of half a century ago. You'll find that they saw a million things that didn't happen, saw almost noth- ing of what did happen." Hume listened gravely to the discussion that followed, but said nothing. Gonzalo said, with obvious mischief in his eyes, "Your good friend, Asimov, is a futurist, isn't he?" "He?" said Rubin, every hair in his sparse beard seem- ing to bristle. "He describes the future in what he calls science fiction, but the only points he gets right are those that are painfully obvious to anyone. And I wouldn't call him my friend. I just help him with the plot of a story now and then, when he's stuck." Halsted patted his stomach with a satisfied smile and tapped his water glass with his spoon. "Gentlemen, it is time for Brad to pay for his excellent meal by facing a grilling. Manny, since you have so low an opinion of futurism, would you serve as grill-master? And please remember to maintain an elementary level of courtesy to one who is our honored guest." Rubin snorted. "I'll let you know, Roger, when I need lessons in manners. -Mr. Hume, how do you justify your existence?" "If you expect me to say," said Hume, "that I justify it by making people rich through clever investments, you'll be disappointed. The justification comes from my skill as an after-dinner speaker." "It does, does it? I take it you consider yourself good at it?" "Yes, I do. I've been doing it for fifteen years and by now I've reached a routine fee of seventy-five hundred dollars for an hour talk. I think that's an adequate mea- sure of my skill." "Huh," said Rubin, seeing no immediate opportunity for a riposte. "Why do you bother doing anything else?" Hume shrugged. "I don't particularly like to travel, so I want to be in a position to be able to pick and choose- to turn down any talk, regardless of fee. I can do that best if I have a regular job as a financial cushion. And that's why I don't have an agent. They put pressure on you- and they take thirty percent." Rubin said, "If you don't have an agent, how do you get speaking engagements?" "Word of mouth. If you can give a good talk, the world will beat a path to your door." "What's your subject?" "Futurism, Mr. Rubin-which you don't think much of. Despite your comments on the subject, everyone seems interested these days in what the future holds. What's the future of education? Of robots? Of interna- tional relations? Of space exploration? You name it- they're interested." "And you speak on all of thatF" "I do." "How many different talks do you have prepared?" "None. If I had to prepare my talks, I'd have to neglect my brokerage work, and I can't do that. I speak extempo- raneously and I don't need preparation. Call out your subject and I'll stand up and talk for an hour-but you'll have to pay me my fee." Halsted said, "Listen, I've heard him speak. He is good." Gonzalo said, "Have you had any funny experiences in your speaking career, Mr. Hume?" "Funny?" said Hume, leaning back in his chair, and looking completely comfortable. "I've had some memora- ble introductions, which I didn't think were funny, though others might laugh. I once had someone object to my fee and write me a letter saying that it was four times as much as they had ever paid anyone. I wrote back and said, "I'm four times as good-at least." In introducing me, he read the correspondence, and the audience, a pro- fessional engineers organization, suddenly realized they were being soaked four times the usual by an arrogant bum. I could feel the north wind blow as I rose and it took me half the talk to win them over. "Another time, a woman introduced me in a thor- oughly pedestrian way-which I'm used to. Mild ap- plause came and I rose, in order to begin right after it had peaked so that I could start with the audience's self- hypnosis in my favor. Except that the woman who intro- duced me-and may she have a special place in hell some- day-began to call out to latecomers that there were seats on the side. She kept it up till the applause died, and I had to rise and address a dead audience. I never did quite liven them up. "Then there's the funny man. I had one give a fifteen- minute talk as an introduction. Fifteen minutes! I timed it on my watch. And he was funny, really funny. He had the audience rolling and he wasn't charging a penny. I had to follow him, and I knew that the audience was going to consider me far less funny-and at an exorbitant price. I was considering forfeiting the money and leav- ing, when my introducer concluded by saying, "But don't let me give you the impression that Mr. Hume can do anytbing. I happen to know that he has never sung the role of the Duke in Rigoletto, "and sat down to loud laugh- ter. "What he didn't know was that he had handed it to me on a plate. I got up, waited for the routine applause to die all the way down, and in the dead silence I belted out, in my best tenor voice, "Bellafiglia dell'amore,'the first notes of the Duke's contribution to the famous Quartet, and the audience rocked with the loudest laugh of the eve- ning, and I had them. "I had to give a talk twelve hours before I had a heart attack, and then another twelve hours after the attack. Fortunately, I didn't know it was a heart attack at the time. The second talk was to a bunch of cardiologists, and not one of them-" Gonzalo said, "Hold on for a minute. Hold on!" Hume rather skidded to a halt, and looked surprised. "I beg your pardon." Gonzalo said, "I believe you when you say you can speak for an hour extemporaneously without notice, but you didn't get my question." "You asked me if I had had any funny experiences, didn't you?" "Yes, but I didn't mean funny-humorous. I meant funny-odd or puzzling. I meantfunny. " Hume rubbed his nose and said, "Could you explain that at greater depth, Mr. Gonzalo?" "I meant something you couldn't explain. A puzzle. A mystery. I Avalon brought the palm of his hand down on the ta- ble with a loud slap. "Mario, I move we eject you from membership." "You can't," said Gonzalo angrily. "There are no re- strictions on the questions we ask." "Except the canons of good taste, for heaven's sake." "What's in had taste about asking for a mystery? I like mysteries. If he doesn't have any, he can say so." He turned to Hume, frowning, and, in a distinctly self-righ- teous voice, said, "Well, have you had any kind of mys- tery in connection with your speaking engagements He then brushed the sleeves of his red velvet jacket, as though sweeping away all petty objections to the ques- tion. Hume was smiling delightedly. "Well, yes! As a matter of fact, I did have. How odd that you should ask. It was years ago, of course, but it was a real mystery. We didn't have the slightest idea where the fellow had gone. -Do you want to hear it?" Gonzalo rose from his seat and said, "I do, but I'll be glad to put it to a vote. Is there anyone here who doesn't want to hear it?" There wasn't a sound, and then Avalon said, "Well, Mario, we'll listen." Gonzalo nodded his head emphatically. "All right, then. Mr. Hume, you have the floor." Hume said mildly, "I'll be glad to. But are you going to stop me midway, or will I be allowed to talk freely?" Avalon said, "I assure you, Mr. Hume. You will be allowed to talk. Roger as host will have absolute control over the conversation and when he sayeth "Speak" we will speak, and when he sayeth "Speak not," we will re- main silent. -Right, Roger?" "Right," said Halsted. "I will begin," said Hume, "and take my chance." The story begins [said Hume] some years ago when I was invited to give a talk in Seattle. It meant I would have to fly, obviously, and I'm not keen on flying. I never do it voluntarily; certainly not in January. What's more, the fee offered was considerably less than I liked. So, to put it all into one tightly crumpled ball, I said no. And it was a good thing I said no, because, as it hap- pened, the Northwest was visited by a tenacious fog on just the day I would have arrived. Even assuming I would have landed safely, very few planes left Seattle for a week thereafter, and I would have been stranded. That would have annoyed me, since I had work to do at home, and it would have annoyed my employer, too. The firm doesn't mind my speaking, since I generally give it a plug or two, and it looks good for them to be concerned with, and involved in, the future. Still, my staying away a week would have been pushing them a little far. All that is irrelevant, however. The important thing is that the gentleman at the other end didn't accept my no. He and his associates took advantage of the miracle of modern communication and came back at me with the suggestion that I sit right in New York and submit to a twenty-minute interview on television. The interview would be taped and eventually played for a presumably eager audience in Seattle. The fee was still less than I would have liked, but I was flattered at their persistence. Then, too, I wouldn't have to travel. The interview would take place at a midtown location within walking distance of my apartment, if the weather was passable, which is, of course, by no means a foregone conclusion in December. Anyway, I accepted. The gentleman inviting me-I forget his name, but that's immaterial, so I'll call him Smith-sensed a residium of unenthusiasm about me and tried to reassure me that all would be made as simple as possible for me. He told me that he would come and get me in a taxi at nine-twenty A.M. in order to get me there at nine-thirty. The cameraman, scheduled to get there shortly after nine A.M., would be all set up and ready when I arrived. That was an important point to me. I'd done television work-cameras being set up for an interview in some hotel room, for instance-and let me tell you that there's no easier way to be driven crazy. Television has been around for forty years and the cameramen still haven't worked out a system for setting up lights in such a way that the subject is well-illuminated and with no distract- ing shadows. Besides, they all consider themselves artists and there's some sort of law, apparently, that compels artists never to be satisfied. Every adjustment here throws out some- thing there. It takes hours for them to reach a point of near-satisfaction, and then when you sit down, they be- come aware for the first time that you wear glasses, and that those glasses cast an undesirable reflection-and so all the weary work must be gone through again. I said, "Are you sure the cameraman will be ready, that all I'll have to do will be to sit down?" "Positive," he said, and that swung it. Came the day. Smith pulled up in his taxi on time and off we went. We arrived at the proper place within ten minutes, and, as we went up, Smith said to me, "He'll be all ready for us." I tried not to let my cynicism show. I'm convinced that cameramen are not ready for anything at any time for anyone. "Fine," I said. We rose to one of the upper floors and swung into the office just before nine-thirty A.M. We had entered the of- fices of quite a large law firm, in which an old army buddy of Smith's was a senior partner. Let's call him Jones, because I don't remember his name, either. They were lending us the use of a conference room. Smith said jovially to the receptionist, "Hello, I'm Smith and this is Mr. Hume. We're here for the television taping. I suppose the cameraman has arrived and is set up." The receptionist said, rather indifferently, "I didn't see any cameraman, Sir." "What? No cameraman?" "No, Sir." Smith frowned but decided to be invincibly optimist. "It can't be," he said. "He's waiting for us." But he wasn't. We walked into the conference room and it was as bare as a Shakespearean stage. "Where is he?" I asked. "I don't know," said Smith. Down came Smith's buddy, Jones, who shook hands with me, and said to Smith, "Well, where is h0" "I don't know," said Smith again. I said, "Better call his office." Smith said, "His office is in Indianapolis." Whereupon I said, rather nonplussed, "Aren't there any cameramen in New York? Why send in one from Indianapolis?" Smith shrugged. "It's a firm we always work with." Jones pointed to a telephone in the corner. He said to Smith, "Push any button at the bottom that's not lit up, then push 8 and wait for another dial tone, push I, the area code, and the number." I waited patiently. It's an amazing thing. Usually, the one thing that brings out the fury in me is having to wait. All sorts of things can go wrong and I am patience itself. Everyone remarks on what a sweet fellow I am. But if someone doesn't appear at the agreed-upon in- stant, a frown creases my brow. Let five minutes pass, and smoke is curling out of my ears. But time was pass- ing and it was almost the moment at which I was count- Ing on havingfinisbed the interview, and the cameraman hadn't even showed up, and I wasn't in the least per- turbed. There was a mystery about it, and I was inter- ested. Smith had returned from the telephone. "He left yes- terday," he said, "and the manager says he had the right name, the right address, and everything was as it should be. What's more, the manager says the cameraman as- signed to us is known as "Old Reliable." He's worked all over the world, and he never misses an appointment." I said, "He's missed this one. Where's he supposed to be today, then, if he left yesterday?" "At a hotel," said Smith. "Did he ever get there?" I asked. It was back to the telephone and, after a while, Smith said, "He registered last night." Jones said, "All right, then. He took a taxi and the taxi driver spotted him for an out-of-towner and took him to this place by way of Yonkers. Taxi drivers have been known to do that." "That's impossible," said Smith with intense irrita- tion. "He's staying at the New York Hilton. Isn't that right in the neighborhood?" "The New York Hilton?" Jones sounded nonplussed. "Yes, it is. It's right across the street. All he has to do is cross Fifty-fourth Street." "Yes. So he wouldn't take a taxi, would he?" "I guess not. The hotel's address is 1335 Sixth and we"re at 1345 Sixth. The biggest greenhorn in the world wouldn't take a taxi to go ten numbers along a particular street, and this guy is a world traveler who's called Old Reliable." I felt cynicism rising as high as my nostrils and said, "So Old Reliable is here in the big city. He's gone on a toot, brought home an amiable young woman, and he's sleeping it off." Smith looked indignant. "Come on, the manager said he's forty-eight years old. He's no wild kid." "He's no dead hulk, either," I said. "I'm older than he is and I could do it easily. I mean, I don't, but I could if I wanted to." "Well, he wouldn't do it, if he had a date to keep in the morning. He's a professional man." "All right," I said. "You're talking me into wondering if he didn't have a heart attack in the night; if he might not be lying in that hotel bed right now, dying, or maybe dead." Smith and Jones both looked uneasy. Smith said uncer- tainly, "Do you think we ought to call the police?" Jones said, "Not before we have someone look into his room." Jones went to the phone this time. He spoke crisply into it, then hung up. We all maintained a worried si- lence for a while. Smith said, "Do you suppose he came to this building and couldn't get in? I imagine the security is tight, and he may be wandering about the lobby right now." "Security is tight, sure," said Jones, "but a pass was delivered to him last night. He should have had no trou- ble getting in." "Maybe it never got to him," I said, ever the pessimist, "and he never got past the lobby." Jones said, "I'll send someone to the lobby to look." By that time the phone was ringing, Jones answered it, talked awhile, and came back to say, "Hotel security went into his room. His baggage is there, but he isn't. And there's no camera equipment. So he left with his cameras." "Then where is he?" I asked. There was no answer, of course. Jones thought awhile and said" "I suppose they looked in the bathroom." Smith shrugged. "I assume the security people know their business." By now I had been there nearly an hour and word came up that there was no sign of any cameraman wan- dering about the lobby. Obviously, if he was carrying camera equipment about with him, he would be easily spotted. For that matter, the security man downstairs had not seen anyone with such equipment come in, with or without a pass. I said, "Did they check as to whether he had signed in?" Jones shook his head. "He wouldn't have to sign in, if he had a pass. They'd just wave him through." Smith said, "You don't suppose he got off the elevator on the wrong floor, do you? He couldn't be wandering about helplessly?" Jones looked at his watch. "He was due here an hour and a half ago. How could he be wandering around on the wrong floor for an hour and a half? There's not a floor in this building which doesn't have security guards. No one would be allowed to wander about anywhere. -And he wouldn't, anyway. He'd ask. After all, he knew the name of this firm. For that matter, he knew the cor- rect floor." There was a sticky silence and we all took turns look- ing at our watches. Finally, Jones muttered an "Excuse me" and left. He was back in three minutes and said, "I just talked to Josie-" "Who's she?" I asked. "The receptionist. She swears no cameraman came in. In fact, no one, no one came in who wasn't a member of the firm, except you, Smith, and you, Mr. Hume." Smith said, "Was she at her desk the whole time?" "The receptionist insists she was." "You mean she didn't go out to powder her nose, or whatever?" "She says she didn't. She says she was on the job and alert all morning, and she says no one could possibly have gotten into the place without her seeing him." I said, "Is she a truthful woman?" Jones frowned at me. "We can trust her. We've had her on the job nearly five years now and if she says no one got in, no one got in." Smith said, "Then where is he? How could he have gotten lost just crossing the street?" I said, "We're eliminating everything, except the possi- bility that he might have had an accident crossing the street. ) Smith said shakily, "You mean he might have been hit by a ear?" "It's been known to happen," I said. "It would have to be pretty serious," said Jones. "Be- ing a professional, he would call us, or the home office. Even if he were immobilized he would tell someone else to call us." I said, "If he were conscious. If he were alive." Jones said, "If it was a really serious accident in the street just outside, they'd known about it downstairs." I said, "Did anyone ask?" Jones hesitated about two seconds and called down- stairs. It didn't take long. He shook his head. "No one down there knows anything about any accident." Smith said, "Call the police. They would have to have a record." Jones didn't seem to want to, but he did. That took longer, but the result was the same. He said, "The police say there is no record of any accident at any time this A.m. at Fifty-fourth Street and Sixth Avenue." Smith said, "Then where is he?" I got up. "Gentlemen," I said, "I don't know where he is, but I can wait no longer. I've got other appointments to meet, other work to do. I'm terribly sorry but I have to leave now. Still, I would like to know the answer to this. If at any time you find out, please phone me. If you're kind enough to do this, then I'll come back a second time to complete the taping." SO I left. -Within an hour, Smith did call me and explained the situation. A week later, I returned and did the job. There's your mystery. The Black Widowers stared dubiously at their guest. Halsted spoke for all, finally, when he said, "Did that really happen, Brad? Or are you having a bit of fun with us?" "No, no," said Hume. "It's all true. Every word. Scout's honor. It happened exactly as I described it." "Well, then, tell us what happened to the cameraman." Hume shook his head, still smiling. "You wanted a mystery and I gave it to you. You tell me what happened. You have all the facts. I'll give you two hints. No one was lying. It wasn't a setup of any kind. The second hint is that it's no tragedy. The cameraman was in no way harmed. Now, where was he?" Gonzalo said, "Did he have a temporary bout of amne- sia and go wandering off?" Hume said, "No, he was in no way harmed. Neither physically nor mentally." "See here," said Avalon rather heavily. "You don't re- ally know he was in the hotel at all-or in New York, even. No one saw him there that morning. The pass was sent over the night before, but I'll bet it was just left at the desk for him. Who knows Who might have been in the room?" Hume said, "It was someone who signed the camera- man's name in the register." "Anyone could do that if he knew the name," said Ava- lon. "The cameraman had a reservation at the hotel and someone knew of it. The someone delayed the camera- man somehow, registered in his name, and had a room for a night at a very posh hotel at someone else's expense. Hotel service found baggage there in the morning, when our imposter had gone about his own business, but no camera equipment. That might just mean that there was no camera equipment in the first place." Hume said, "Why should anyone do this?" Avalon said, "I don't know. I could invent motives by the score, perhaps, but I couldn't prove any of them." Trumbull said, "Someone on the run needed a false name and a secure room just for the night-a spy-" Drake said, with a tone that showed clearly he was not serious, "A bomb outrage. Needed a room in which to plant a bomb." "Gentlemen," said Hume,'brushing back his mane of hair. "You are inventing things. As a matter of fact, it never occurred to us to locate the bellhop who took the cameraman's baggage to the room, but if we had, that bellhop would have told us he had brought up some items that looked as though they might be camera equip- ment. No, no, it's absolutely certain that the right man registered in the hotel." "In that case," said Rubin, "he was himself up to funny stuff. He had a girl he had to see, some money matter he had to attend to, something or other in the great city he wanted to do. When he got down to the lobby of the hotel, he checked his equipment, grabbed a taxi, and dashed off. Maybe he thought he'd be back in half an hour and that you would wait that long for him without much fuss. But perhaps it took two hours, because he may have underestimated New York traffic, or gotten into a minor tangle of some sort that delayed him." Hume said, "I wouldn't think he'd do that. Surely, a job would come first with Old Reliable." Now there was a long, dank silence, as every face fur- rowed, and every pair of lips pursed themselves. So it seemed to Hume, until he noticed the exception. He said, "Henry's the only one smiling. -Henry, what are you grinning about?" Henry said, "I beg your pardon, Sir. I mean no disre- spect, but you did say it was no tragedy, and it occurs to me that it was a farce, and so I can't help but smile." Avalon said, in his rolling baritone, "Do you have a solution, Henry? If so, out with it." Henry said, "If I have your permission, gentlemen?" The chorus was immediate and unanimous. Henry said, "Mr. Hume made it clear that the camera- man was an old, reliable professional who had worked all over the world, and who had, presumably, always given satisfaction. Since he was not found dead in the room, and the police had no report of any accident, we can only assume that in the morning he had gotten ready to do his work, had crossed the street to the office building as he had been instructed to do, and, going to the proper place, had set up his television equipment." "No," said Avalon. "The receptionist swears he never came in and Mr. Hume has told us the receptionist didn't lie. That means- Mr. Hume, please forgive me the ques- tion I am forced to ask. It is merely a matter of the search for a solution? When you told us the receptionist did not lie, may I take it that you did not lie?" "I did not lie," said Hume with equanimity. "In that case, Henry," said Avalon, "your assumption is wrong." "Perhaps not, Mr. Avalon," said Henry. "Mr. Hume was supposed to arrive at nine-thirty A.m. and the cam- eraman was supposed to come at about 9 A.M. in order to be ready by nine-thirty. Isn't that right, Mr. Hume?" "That's right." "And the receptionist would have been a very curious receptionist if she had arrived much before nine A.M., which would be the opening of the business day. The cameraman, however, was so reliable, efficient, and pro- fessional, that it is quite likely he arrive at eight-thirty A.M. That would account for the fact that the receptionist never saw him. What's more, I expect a new shift came on in the lobby at nine A.m. and that's why no one who is in the next shift down there saw him come in." "And the door would have been locked," said Avalon, "and he would have had to wait for her." "Would he, Sir? It was a large legal firm, we were told, so there would be many lawyers working there. At least one would have been at work early. He would answer the door, see the cameraman's pass, let him in, go back to his own work, and then forget the whole thing." Avalon said, "And what happened to the cameraman thereafter? Did he drop through a hole in the floor? Where was he? No one saw him." "Mr. Hume," said Henry, "may I ask you one more question?" "Go ahead, Henry." "Considering that it was a large legal firm, did it pos- sess more than one conference room?" Hume leaned his head back and laughed in sheer en- loyment. "Two, it turned out, Henry. Two!" "I thought so," said Henry. "The lawyer who let him in took him to the wrong conference room. The camera- man waited in one, and you waited in the other the whole morning, and neither knew where the other was." "No," said Avalon. "How would that be possible? Wouldn't the cameraman come out and say, "Where is everybody?" " "In a way, he did," said Hume, choking down his laughter. "He used the phone in his room to call Jones. Jones's secretary answered and said that Jones was away from his desk-which he was, being down in our confer- ence room, wondering where the cameraman was. The cameraman said he had to tape someone, and the secre- tary said she would tell Jones just as soon as he returned, only Jones didn't return until after I had left. -How did you get it, Henry?" "In the usual way," said Henry. "Once you and the other two gentlemen in the conference room, and my fellow members of the Black Widowers, too, had cut away all the complexity, the only thing left was some- thing very simple and I just pointed it out." AFTERWORD Of all the Black Widowers stories I have written, this one made the least demand on my imagination. It really bappened. It happened ex- actly as I have described it in the story. I must say that it made me realize how much less clever I am than Henry. I was completely lost for a solution when it happened to me. Incidentally, I was very amused at the fact that this story received more reader flak than any other Black Widowers I had written. A surprising number of people wrote to object to this or that facet of the story as improbable. Some even criticized my street addresses, al- though I gave the actual addresses that the buildings did have. The conclusion is that in my fiction I am careful to make every- thing probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations. The story first appeared in the October 1986 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. THE OLD PURSE "William Teller!" said Thomas Trumbull, host for that month's banquet of the Black Widowers, announcing the guest of the evening. He did so, however, with a certain trepidation. His frowning glance fixed itself particularly on Mario Gonzalo. Gonzalo, gorgeously arrayed as usual, this time in his brown velvet jacket, ignored it. "William Teller," he said delightedly. "Are you a descendant of William Tell, per- haps?" "Not at all," said Teller agreeably. He had an olive complexion, thick black hair, and a thick black mustache as well. "Actually, William Tell is simply a legend and probably never really existed. However, I'm of Swiss ex- traction and the first name runs in the family, perhaps in homage to the old fraud. Actually, Teller is an ordinary German word and means "plate."" Geoffrey Avalon, looking down from his seventy-four inches, said, "Parents are often insensitive to the plight of a youngster. I was saved from serious scapegoating by the fact that I always used Jeff as my name. At that I was lucky, since the name alternates with Broderick, and it is my eldest son, not I, who must cope with that. Fortu- nately, he has always been a muscular youth, as I never was." "Names can be an inspiration, too," said Teller. "When I was young I dreamed of being a superlative archer. I wanted people to say, "William Tell was good, but William Teller is better." I was an assiduous archer at summer camp for that reason." "Did you make it?" asked James Drake with interest, lighting up the inevitable cigarette. "No. I was remarkably untalented. The only time I ever hit the target, let alone the bull's-eye, was when I deliberately aimed at something else. Too had. If I could have won the national archery contest with my name, I would have made every newspaper in the United States; also the "Believe It or Not" columns, if any exist now." "You'd have done even better," said Emmanuel Rubin judiciously, "if your name had been Robin Hood." Roger Halsted said eagerly, "A great many so-called coincidences are manufactured in this way. Someone named Robin Hood would be bound to try his hand at archery and if he were good, saying "Believe It or Not" misses the point. It would be a natural consequence. In fact, I have a suspicion that the queer things that happen to everybody aren't mystical, but natural. For in- stance " No one ever found out the instance that Halsted was about to give, for Henry, that waiter supreme, chose that moment to announce in his quietly effective manner that dinner was served. All sat down to tripe madeleine, followed by crisp roast duck in cherry brandy sauce with wild rice and truffles, something that effectively muffled conversation. In fact the dinner pursued a kind of satisfied quiet, in which even Rubin's occasional comments were given out with hushed equanimity, until Trumbull, over the coffee, rattled his spoon against the water glass and appointed Avalon as griller-in-chief. "Mr. Teller," said Avalon, "how do you justify your existence?" Teller did not seem to be perturbed by the question. "By making people think." "And how do you do that?" "I have a newspaper column called "On the Contrary." It does not appear in any of the New York newspapers but it does in one hundred and two papers of moderate size elsewhere in the nation. In my column, I present the unpopular side of any controversy, not necessarily be- cause I passionately support that side but because I think it is apt to be inadequately presented to the public. The public may, after all, be misled, even sometimes danger- ously misled, by hearing only one side of a question. Many might not even know that another view exists." "Can you give us an example of that?" asked Avalon. "Certainly. In a recent column I presented the view that so-called terrorists have of themselves." "So-called?" said Drake, in gentle interrogation. "Yes, indeed. So-called," said Teller. "They don't think of themselves as terrorists, any more than we think of terrorists as such when they are on our side. When we approve their aims, we call them freedom fighters and compare them favorably with George Washington." "Then you defend terrorism?" said Avalon. "Not necessarily. I merely try to penetrate the reason- ing for the defense. For instance, the United States thinks all conflicts should either take place with missiles, planes, tanks, and all the paraphernalia of war; or by votes, resolutions, arguments, debates, and all the para- phernalia of politics. However, what if there are people who feel they have a just cause, but who lack the para- phernalia of war and are denied the paraphernalia of pol- itics? What do they then do? Surely, they must fight with the weapons they have. Our cry, then, is that they are cowards who strike without warning, and kill innocent civilians at random. But then, is it brave of us to "fight fair" against forces that are infinitely smaller than our own?" "I see your point," said Rubin, "but terrorism can be argued against on pragmatic grounds even if you aban- don the high moral stand. It simply won't work. Random bombings make headlines and cause private pain and public frustration, but they don't achieve their ends." "Sure they do, on occasion," said Teller. "The Iranian capture of the American Embassy held the United States up to worldwide ridicule, made Khomeini the hero of the Arab radicals throughout Islam, and destroyed the ear- ter presidency. And they didn't even kill anybody." "Yes," said Rubin, "but that was self-defeating, for it led to the Reagan presidency, which has taken a much harder antiterrorist line, and,brought about the bombing of Libya, for instance, as punishment for its support of terrorism." "Yes, but we have yet to see what that will lead to on the other side. To continue my argument, during war, terrorists are called guerrillas or resistance forces or raid- ers or commandos, or anything but terrorists, and during World War II such irregular forces in every supposedly conquered nation, notably in Yugoslavia, did much to help defeat the Nazis. Similarly, the guerrillas of Spain did much to defeat Napoleon." "Perhaps," said Avalon, "you would not be so cold- blooded about it if you had suffered directly at terrorist hands." "I imagine not, but the argument would exist even if I, out of personal pique, were to refuse to advance it." Drake chuckled. "You know, Tom, I assume that Mr. Teller is a friend of yours since you've brought him as a guest. Isn't he, with his views, a dangerous friend, con- sidering your government employment?" "Not at all," said Trumbull. "He's just a professional devil's advocate. He often supports the government strongly, provided it has happened to do something un- popular." Teller said, "True enough." He stopped and frowned, as though a sudden thought had struck him. Then he said slowly, "You know, this wouldn't have occurred to me if there hadn't been that talk before dinner about odd con- nections such as that between me and archery, but there's a connection here in the terrorism matter." "May I ask what connection you are thinking of?" said Avalon. "Mr. Rubin had pointed out that my views might change if I were a victim. To be sure, I haven't been, but my wife has, and that might be considered close enough. On the very day my column on terrorism appeared-the very day-my wife was the victim of a mild sort of ter- rorism. She had her purse snatched. Of course, that was the purest of coincidences. However-" He stopped again. "Yes, Mr. Teller?" said Avalon. "Nothing apropos. I was just thinking of the sequel to the incident that was really humorous and even mystify- ing. But never mind that; let's go back to our discussion of my justification for existence. At the time of our mis- adventure in Lebanon-" "Wait, wait," said Gonzalo, rattling his spoon on his water glass. "Back up, Mr. Teller. I want to hear about the humorous and mystifying sequel to the purse snatch- ing.17 Teller looked surprised and he turned automatically to Trumbull. "Tom-" Trumbull shrugged. "Go ahead, tell us about the mys- tifying sequel. If not, Mario will make life hideous for all of us." "Wait," said Gonzalo. "Wait one minute. Henry isn't here." "Henry?" said Teller. "Our waiter." And Gonzalo raised his voice, "Henry!" Henry entered the dining room. "Yes, Mr. Gonzalo." "Don't disappear like that," said Gonzalo peevishly. "Where were you?" "Disposing of dishes and cutlery, Mr. Gonzalo, but I am at your service now." "Good. I want you to hear this. Mr. Teller, please start at the beginning." Teller was staring in surprise. He said, "There really isn't much. My wife was in Grand Central Station and on a crowded escalator her purse vanished. She had it slung over her left shoulder, for she was carrying some- thing in each hand, and our guess is that someone behind her carefully cut the strap, held the bag steady till they reached the bottom of the escalator, and then walked rap- idly away, with the purse under his arm. She didn't see a thing, she didn't feel a thing. She knows she had the purse in her possession at the top of the escalator, for she shoved it toward her back for greater convenience, and she didn't have it when she was at the bottom. That's all there is to the story. She wasn't hurt, she wasn't shoved, she wasn't threatened. It was a very professional job." "You don't seem annoyed," said Gonzalo. "Well, I was, of course, and so was my wife. Such a loss is always inconvenient. She didn't have much money in it-a few dollars-but she had several credit cards, her driver's license, her automobile registration, some per- sonal papers and photographs, and so on. It meant that she had to report the loss of the credit cards and face a few weeks of doing without, or using mine. It meant negotiating with City Hall over her automobile items, and apparently saying good-bye to all the junk she had in the purse. "Mostly, though, it was her pride that was hurt. The purse was an old one, old and decrepit and on its last legs. This was on purpose. She had any number of new and fancy purses that she used on dress occasions, but this was the battered thing she used on her shopping trips, when she expected to be in crowds. She claimed that no self-respecting thief would dream of taking a purse so disreputable. They would know there was noth- ing worthwhile in it. Well, they did take it, and even though I was careful to make no reference to her earlier statements-she had always been very smug about her cleverness in this respect-she watched me closely and probably knew what I was thinking." "And what was the mystifying sequel?" asked Gon- zalo. "Well, yesterday, two days after the snatch, I opened the door of my apartment in order to take the rubbish to the compacter-I work at home-and virtually stumbled over a package which had my wife's name on it in strag- gling letters. I assumed, at first, it was something the mailman had left, even though he perfectly well knew he wasn't supposed to do that without ringing the hell. But when I picked it up I found it had no address and no stamps on it. So it must have been hand-delivered and that rather infuriated me. "After all, our apartment house is supposed to have tight security and no one should be able to get into the elevator without passing inspection by the doormen and having us called on the intercom to get our consent to have him, or her, sent up. Naturally, this doesn't always work. Someone comes in when the doormen are busy with something else, or tails someone who belongs in the house so that he seems to be a guest- But it still infuri- ated me. "I was angry enough to inspect the length of the hall and look into the two stairwells and the compacter room, which wasn't exactly intelligent of me, and found no one. I then called my wife, showed her the package, and asked if she knew what it might be. "She said at once, and with great conviction, "It's a bomb." Naturally, I laughed at this. We are all getting ridiculously terrorist-conscious. It seemed to me too small to hold a bomb and yet I didn't have the nerve to attempt to open it. After considerable indecision, listen- ing to it for some telltale tick, although I don't know if bombs tick these days, and smelling it, and not having quite enough courage to shake it, I called the police. They told us to put it in the center of our largest room and leave the apartment. Down came a bomb squad in virtually no time, with a portable X-ray unit, and, well . . . it wasn't a bomb. "They opened it for us, and when they called us back into the apartment, they showed us the contents. Damned if it wasn't what had been stolen from my wife two days before. Everything! The package contained all the papers, including the credit cards, all the junk. It even contained every last bit of money down to the little cache of quarters she kept for public transportation and even a few smaller coins. She counted it in amazement and it was all there. They had taken nothing. Did you ever hear of such a thing? I consider that mystifying. Presumably, it was a thief with an attack of conscience." Gonzalo, who had listened with close attention, seemed disappointed. "Is that the end of it?" "The absolute end," said Teller. "But then I told you there was nothing much to it, so you mustn't feel an- noyed with me." Gonzalo shook his head, obviously baffled. Henry, however, said quietly, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Teller, but may I have your permission to ask a ques- tion?" "Well, of course, if you want to, but I don't see what there is to question." "It's just that you mentioned all the contents, Sir, but you didn't mention the purse itself. Was that returned as well?" Teller looked astonished. "No, it wasn't. I'm glad you asked. It was the only thing that didn't come back. My wife was annoyed about that, actually. She said that the purse was valuable to her and they might have returned that, too. My own feeling was that it was simply too bulky to fit into a neat little package. Of course, I pointed out that since her scheme of carrying an old purse hadn't worked, it was no great loss, and, equally of course, she gave me the exasperated look that wives always give hus- hands who descend into mere logic. Anyway, that's it. They returned everything but the purse." a Ste Sal , at is mysti ing. ey cou easi y have made a somewhat bigger package. If the thief were sufficiently conscience-stricken to return every last penny, he would certainly have been sufficiently con- science-stricken to return the purse." Rubin said, "Maybe it fell apart, and he felt it was useless to return the tatters." "No, no, no," interposed Teller. "It was a staunch leather purse. It was old, and weatherbeaten, and looked like hell, but it wasn't going to fall apart." Trumbull said, "Do you suppose there was a purpose in keeping it? I mean maybe the purse was what they wanted, so they returned everything else." "Ridiculous," said Rubin. "If they wanted the purse, they could just dump the contents, at least those parts of it they couldn't use." Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said in his softly hoarse voice, "You can't have it both ways, Manny. Ei- ther the thief was not troubled by a conscience and would return nothing, just dumping whatever he didn't want, as you suggest. Or else, he had a conscience and would return everything except what he absolutely needed. The way I see it is that he was reluctantly steal- ing something he wanted desperately, and he had no in- tention of stealing anything else." "You mean," said Avalon, "he was an honest man who had no choice but to steal something he had to have, but not another item was going to sully his tender and gen- tlemanly soul." "That's right," said Drake. "Now if that's the case, think it out a bit. He wants to steal a purse in order to get some specific object it contains. But he only sees the purse and nothing else. He doesn't see what's in it. If he wants something that it contains, he couldn't be sure that this particular purse actually contained it. He might have to steal half a dozen purses, examine each, and then, dis- appointed of his wish, return everything to its owner; or if he finally found a purse with what he wanted inside, he would remove the wanted object and return every- thing else. "I don't think an honest man, a man so honest that he would be driven to make a package of what he had taken and run the risk of returning it personally, would steal in so wholesale and cavalier a fashion. If we allow that-" "Wait," said Rubin. "We don't necessarily allow that. He might be after what any purse might be thought to contain-money, credit cards-" "Or," said Trumbull, "he might have happened to see Mrs. Teller open her purse and happened to spy some- thing in it that he wanted, and thereafter followed her in order to seize the chance of grasping it." "Or for some reason," said Gonzalo, "all he wanted was her identification. He just wanted to know her name and address." Drake considered matters a moment, humming under his breath, then he said, "I don't think so. If he wanted money or credit cards, he would have kept them, but he returned them. If he had spied something in it that he wanted but that wasn't intrinsically valuable, he wouldn't have returned that, but he did." "Wait," said Gonzalo, "how can we be sure he re- turned everything? There might be some little item that Mrs. Teller didn't notice was gone. Perhaps there was something in the purse that even Mrs. Teller didn't know was there, or had forgotten was there." "I don't think so," said Teller dubiously. "I can't speak for my wife altogether, but she is a very methodical per- son with an orderly brain. If she says everything was returned, I'm ready to bet on it." Avalon cleared his throat and said, "You understand, Mr. Teller, this is a game we're playing. We're trying to work out the implications of this odd event. Please do not be offended, then, when I suggest, merely as a remote possibility, that your wife had, let us say, a letter in her purse that she wanted no one to see. If the thief now has it, and if your wife dare not admit it's gone-" Teller said grimly, "You are suggesting that the thief now intends to blackmail her. Gentlemen, you'll have to assume I know my wife. She would sooner see the black- mailer-and herself-in hell than pay a penny. Please put blackmail right out of your mind." Halsted said, "He might return the credit cards but keep a record of the number for later forgery. Or of the ear registration." Teller said, "Useless. My wife has already canceled all those things and will eventually have new ones. The forgeries would be unusable." "What about the identification?" insisted Gonzalo. "He had her name and address, and he didn't have to keep the physical "Objects that gave him the information." "Why on Earth," said Trumbull, "would he run the risk of purse snatching for that? He might simply have followed her home. He might have struck up an acquain- tanceship with her somehow. And why would he want to know the name and address of a woman unknown to him? You'll excuse me, Bill, if I say that she's not a raving beauty. Teller smiled. "She's beautiful to me, but to anyone else she is merely a rather ordinary-looking middle-aged woman, I dare say." Drake was looking from one to another as each spoke, and he finally said, "If we've eliminated all the various reasons for stealing a purse and returning the contents, may I be allowed to finish my thought?" "Go ahead, Jim," said Avalon. "Very well, then. You've all played about with com- plexities and, like Henry, I'm going for simplicity. The thief returned everything but the purse. What's more, all he could see at the time he decided to steal something from Mrs. Teller was the purse, not its contents. Conclu- sion: He was after the purse itself, nothing more, so he returned all it contained." Rubin said, "But Jim, that just substitutes one problem for another. Why on Earth should the thief want the purse? -Mr. Teller, are you sure the purse had no intrin- sic value?" "None," said Teller emphatically. "It wasn't an antique of some sort, was it?" Teller thought a moment. "I'm not an expert on an- tiques. My wife bought the purse at least twenty years ago, but it's my impression she picked it up in Klein's. Nothing Klein's sells would become an antique, would it?" Gonzalo said, "Mickey Mouse watches, which sold for a dollar apiece to begin with, are now valuable antiques." "Yes," said Avalon, "but if the man were a collector and recognized that an object might be worth, say, ten thousand dollars, wouldn't he say, "Pardon me, madam, but your purse reminds me of one my dear, dead wife once had. Would you be willing to sell it to me for ten dollars so that I can have it for its sentimental value?" Even if he were driven to theft, he would try to get it legally first." Drake said, "It looks as though we're driven to the conclusion that he wanted an old, beat-up purse for its own sake." "Why?" said Avalon. "Because he couldn't buy one. All those for sale are new ones. Even if he went to a secondhand store, the purses would be furbished to look as good as possible. He had to find one that was already old and beaten up and looked it." Gonzalo said, "Wouldn't he try to buy it first? "Hey, lady, you wouldn't sell me that old beat-up, worthless purse for ten dollars, would you, lady?"" "Besides," said Trumbull, "why would anybody want an old, beat-up purse?" Halsted said, "In the story of Aladdin, the wicked sor- cerer went about offering to give new lamps for old, be- cause he wanted Aladdin's old wishing lamp." Avalon favored Halsted with a haughty stare. "I think we can eliminate the possibility that Mrs. Teller owned a wishing purse." "Just joking," said Halsted. "Maybe the thief was a theatrical director who needed an old purse for a play he was doing," said Gonzalo. "Nuts," said Rubin with contempt. "They would buy a new purse and scuff it up." Trumbull said, "That eliminates the whole need for an old, beat-up purse. Whatever use one might have, couldn't one buy a new purse, or a good-looking second- hand one and scuff it up and stamp on it and scrape it? Why steal one?" The conversation came to a dead halt. Finally, Avalon said, "I think we've beaten this to death. There's no logi- cal explanation, and we may simply have to admit that people do illogical things sometimes, and let it go." "Oh, no," said Gonzalo, "not until Henry has his say. -Henry, what do you make of all this?" Henry smiled gently and said, "I think, as Mr. Avalon does, that people sometimes do illogical things. However, if we want to continue to play the game, there is one occasion when stealing an old purse is more effective than buying a purse and scuffing it up." "When is that, Henry?" asked Teller. "When the thief wants to make sure he is not identi- fied. If the purse is bought, then it is conceivable that something about it can lead investigators to the place where it is purchased, and the seller can then, conceiv- ably, identify the person who bought it. In this case, the thief was not seen and cannot conceivably be identified. Even if it is traced back to Mrs. Teller, she cannot make an identification. He may be so honest a man that he takes the risk of returning everything else, but if he is careful to use a nondescript box and paper for a package, wearing gloves at the time, scrawls a simple name on it, and quietly delivers it without being seen, he is still not likely to be identified." "But in that case," said Teller, "he would want the purse for a criminal purpose." "One would suppose so," said Henry. "Like what?" "Still playing the game," said Henry, "I can invent a purpose-farfetched, but making a weird kind of sense. The purse was stolen in Grand Central Station and it is well known that there are homeless people who live in the station and who are generally left alone by a society that is too callous to go too far out of its way to help them, but not so callous as to evict them from a warm and secure place. "No one pays much attention to these derelicts, in fact. The average person tends to avert his or her eyes from these sad individuals, if only because they look dirty and miserable so that the onlooker feels either uncomfortably repelled or uncomfortably conscience-stricken. It would be easy for someone to assume the dirt, the old clothes, and the wretched appearance of a homeless person and count on not being interfered with, or even noticed. Sup- pose, then, a woman were made up as what is called a bag lady and needs a purse to carry off the deception-" Gonzalo interrupted. "Hold on, you call them bag la- dies because they carry their personal belongings in brown paper bags." "I'm sure that is the origin of the term, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry, "but it has become a generic word for such derelicts. I am sure that a homeless woman with a purse would still be considered a bag lady. However, the purse could scarcely be a new one. A bag lady, carrying a new purse, would surely attract attention. It would have to be an old beat-up purse that would fit in with the rest of the costume." Teller laughed. "Very clever tale-spinning, Henry, but I don't think my wife would take to the notion that she carries a purse suitable for a bag lady. Why would this disguised bag lady need a purse anyway? Why not a brown paper bag " "Perhaps," said Henry, "because a paper bag would not be strong enough to contain whatever the bag lady was carrying; only a sturdy, but old purse would do. For instance-and this thought occurs to me only because of the earlier discussion of terrorism-what if the supposed bag lady were carrying an explosive device which she planned to place in the station so as to do a great deal of damage? As Mr. Teller has pointed out, terrorists may look upon themselves as lofty and noble patriots. They would steal a purse that was absolutely essential to their needs, if stealing were the safest way to obtain it, but they would scorn to keep the contents. They are not tbieves, but patriots. In their own eyes, at least." Gonzalo said admiringly, "Good Lord, Henry, how nicely you make it all fit." "Simply a game, Sir. Dr. Drake did the real work." Trumbull said, frowning darkly as he passed his hand over his tightly waved white hair, "You make it all fit too nicely, Henry. Is there a chance this is what really hap- " pened. "I scarcely think so, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry. "There has been no report of an explosion anywhere in the city." "It7s only three days since the purse was stolen," said Trumbull. He turned to Teller. "I don't suppose your wife reported the theft, did she?" "No, of course not. She couldn't make any identifica- tion, not the slightest. She might as well say the purse had disappeared by the wave of an enchanter's wand." "Even if she had," said Avalon, "what could the police do about it, Tom? And why should they think anything like the story Henry has dreamed up? That only arose out of the fact that everything was returned yesterday." "And I don't suppose you reported that, either, did you, Bill?" asked Trumbull. "No, of course not," said Teller. "Well," said Trumbull, rising heavily to his feet. "This may be crazy, but I'm going to call someone I know. And if"-he looked at his watch-"I catch him watching tele- vision or getting ready for bed, that's just too had." "He might not be home, Tom," said Avalon. "I'll get someone," said Trumbull grimly. He left for the telephone in the next room, while the remaining Black Widowers and their guest remained in an uneasy silence. Only Henry seemed unperturbed. Finally, Gonzalo said, "Do you really think there might be something to what you've thought up, Henry?" Henry said, "We had better simply wait for Mr. Trum- bull to return." He did, eventually. He sat down and for perhaps fif- teen seconds simply stared at Henry. "Well, Tom?" said Avalon. Tom said, "It amounts to this. If ever this gets out, Henry is going to be indicted for witchcraft." Henry's eyebrows lifted slightly. "If you mean by that, Sir, that there was a bomb, I think it would be more ap- propriate to give the credit to the logical minds of the Black Widowers." "Of you, Henry," said Trumbull. "There was indeed a bomb. It was placed in a spot where it would perhaps not have caused very much in the way of casualties, but it would certainly have disrupted train service for weeks. -What's more, it was contained in an old leather purse." "But," said Henry, "there was no explosion, I take it." "No, because the purse was spotted, quite by accident, and because the person who did the spotting lifted it and was surprised by its weight. Then, because these are troubled times, it occurred to him to do precisely the right thing. He called the bomb squad-as you did, Bill." "That's luck," said Gonzalo. "If it hadn't been found, Henry's analysis would have come too late." "It's not too late for everything. I'm afraid I told them enough of the story so that your wife is going to have to go there and identify her purse. If it is her purse, and I'm ready to bet my last year's salary it is, then they know something important the terrorists don't know they know. They'll start looking at the derelicts in the station and they might well find something. Thank you, Henry." Teller looked perturbed. "I don't think Jenny is going to enjoy getting involved with this." Trumbull said, "She has no choice. just tell her she's got to. " "Yes, that's easy for you to say," said the troubled Teller. Henry said, "Take heart, Mr. Teller. I'm sure that your professional ability to uphold unpopular points of view in a convincing manner will make it possible for you to accomplish this task with ease." AFTERWORD People ask me where I get my ideas, and the answer is: From any place I can. For the most part I have to think and think before something occurs to me, and that's hard work. (Try it, if you don't believe me.) There- fore, when something comes my way that can be twisted into a story witbout my having to knock myself out thinking, I grab it at once. A woman told me that her purse had once been stolen, and then returned, rather in the fashion I described in this story. I asked why it was returned, and she said, "I don't know." Saying "I don't know" sets my antennae to quivering at once. After all, Henry would know. All I have to do is make up a story around the incident. In this case, that was exactly what I did. The story first appeared in the March 1987 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. THE QUIET PLACE Emmanuel Rubin, who was host of the Black Widowers banquet that evening, had been at his loudest and most quarrelsome. He had insisted on the unimportance of algebra to Roger Halsted, who taught the subject in a junior high school; denounced the patent system to Geoffrey Avalon, who was a patent lawyer; denied the validity of quantum theory in connection with molecular structure to James Drake, the chemist; pointed out the uselessness of espio- nage in modern warfare to Thomas Trumbull, the cipher expert; and finally placed the cherry on the sundae by watching Mario Gonzalo as, with consummate ease and skill, he drew a cartoon of that evening's guest, and tell- ing him he knew nothing at all about caricature. Trumbull, who, of all the Black Widowers, was least likely to be amused by Rubin in his wilder moments, finally said, "What the devil is wrong with you, Manny? We're used to having you wrong at the top of your voice, and taking on one or another of us with some indefen- sible point of view, but this time you're tackling us all." It was Rubin's guest who answered Trumbull in a quiet voice and, at that, it was almost the first time he had spoken that evening. He was a young man, not far gone into his thirties, it would appear, with thin blond hair, light blue eyes, a face that was wide across the cheek- bones, and a smile that seemed to come easily and yet had something sad about it. His name was Theodore Jarvik. "I'm afraid, gentlemen, the fault is mine, if it be a fault to follow professional procedure. I have recently become Manny's editor and I was forced to hand back his latest manuscript with requests for revision." "For eviscerative revision," muttered Rubin. "I did offer to cancel out the invitation for this eve- ning," said Jarvik, with his sad smile, "on the supposition that Manny would just as soon not look at me right now." Gonzalo raised his eyebrows and said, "Manny doesn't mind this sort of thing. We've all heard him say about a thousand times that the true professional writer takes re- visions and even rejections in stride. He says that one way you can tell an amateur or a beginner is by noting that he considers his every word sac-" "Oh, shut up, Mario," -said Rubin, clearly chafing. "You don't know the details." "Actually," said Jarvik, "Manny and I will work it out.91 I Avalon, from his seventy-four inches of height, said in his grave baritone, "I'm curious, Manny, have you called Mr. Jarvik a "young punk" yet?" "Oh, for God's sake," said Rubin, reddening. "No, he hasn't, Mr. Avalon," said Jarvik, "but he's tbougbt it very loudly." "That is not true, " shouted Rubin at the top of his con- siderable decibel rating. "Let's wash out this night," said Drake in resignation. "You're going to be in such a foul humor, Manny, that-" "When have I ever been in a foul-" began Rubin, and then Henry, the pearl-beyond-price of waiters, inter- rupted. "Gentlemen, please be seated," he said. "Dinner is served." To do Rubin justice, he did his best to control himself during the dinner. His eyes, behind his thick glasses, flashed; his sparse beard bristled; and he snarled unceas- ingly; but he managed to say little and leave the conver- sation to the others. Gonzalo, who sat next to Jarvik, said to him, "Pardon me, but you keep humming." Jarvik flushed again, something his fair skin made easy. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb you." "It doesn't exactly disturb me. It's just that I don't rec- ognize the tune." "I don't know. I'm just improvising, I suppose." "Is that so?" And Gonzalo was quiet for the remainder of the dinner until the rattle of spoon on glass marked the beginning of the questioning of the guest. Gonzalo said, "May I volunteer to do the grilling?" "You can, for all of me," growled Rubin, who, as host, had the task of appointing the griller. "Just don't ask him to justify his existence. The editor doesn't live who can do that." "On the contrary," said Gonzalo, "any editor who has handed back a manuscript of yours has already justified his existence a hundred times over." Halsted said, "May I suggest we go ahead with grilling our guest and not needling each other?" Gonzalo brushed some imaginary dust off the sleeve of his loudly checked jacket and said, "Exactly. Mr. Jarvik, during the course of the dinner I asked you what tune you were humming and you said you were improvising. I don't think that's quite right. Once or twice you hummed again after that and it was always the same tune. Now that you are being grilled, you are forced to give full and honest answers, as I hope Manny has ex- plained to you. I therefore repeat: What was the tune you were humming?" Trumbull intervened. "What kind of stupid question is that?" Gonzalo turned a haughty face on Trumbull. "As the griller, I am under the impression I can ask any question I choose consistent with human dignity. Host's deci- sion." "Go ahead, Manny," said Rubin, thus appealed to. "Ask away. -And leave him alone, Tom." Gonzalo said, "Answer the question, Mr. Jarvik." And when Jarvik still hesitated, Gonzalo said, "I'll help you out. This is the tune." And he hummed a few bars. Avalon said at once, "I know what that is. It's "The Lost Chord." The music is by Arthur Sullivan of the Gil- bert and Sullivan operettas. Except for those operettas, Sullivan is known only for the music to two songs. One is "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and the other is the afore- mentioned "The Lost Chord."" "Is that what you were humming, Jarvik?" "I suppose so. You know how a song gets trapped in your mind and won't get out." There was a chorus of agreement from the others and Avalon said sententiously, "It's a universal complaint." "Well, whenever I'm trapped in some sort of loud- ness," said Jarvik, "that song keeps going through my head." Drake chuckled. "If you're going to be dealing with Manny, you'll be humming it till either you or he dies." Gonzalo said, "Does it have some significance in that connection? What are the words?" "I only know a few words, actually." "I know the words," said Avalon. "Don't sing them," cried out Trumbull in sudden alarm. Avalon, whose singing voice was well known to resem- ble the sound of an alligator in heat, said with dignity, "I shall recite them. The words are by a lady named Ade- laide Anne Procter, concerning whom I know nothing, and the poem goes as follows:" (He cleared his throat.) Seated one day at the organ, I was weary and ill at ease And my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys. I don't know what I was playing, or what I was dream- ing then; But I struck one chord of music, like the sound of a great Amen. It flooded the crimson twilight, like the close of an an- gel's psalm, And it lay on my fevered spirit with a touch of infinite calm. It quieted pain and sorrow, like love overcoming strife; It seemed like the harmonious echo from our discor- dant life. It linked all perplexed meanings into one perfect peace, And trembled away into silence as if it were loth to cease. I have sought, but I seek it vainly, that one lost chord divine, Which came from the soul of the organ, and entered into mine. It may be that Death's bright angel will speak in that chord again, may be that only in Heaven shall I hear that grand Amen. There was a short silence and then Halsted said, "You know, I wonder about that. I don't know how many dif- ferent chords you can strike on a large organ, consider- ing all the different stops you can push and pull and the things you do with your feet. I suppose it is a very large number indeed and you're not likely to find a particular chord just by fooling around at random." Rubin said testily, "We'll leave it to your mathematical bent to work out the total number of chords, Roger. As for you, Ted Jarvik, we can at least see why you hum that song when things are noisy. All that talk about infinite calm and one perfect peace and trembling away into si- lence. Naturally, your mind reverts to the song." "No," said Jarvik quietly, shaking his head, "that's not it." "Hah," shouted Gonzalo in triumph. "I knew it. I knew it. I have a sixth sense about these things. What is it? What does that song mean to you?" "Quiet, Mario," said Avalon. "Now, Mr. Jarvik, if Ma- rio has managed to touch a sore point, something about which you do not like to speak, please do so anyway. I assure you nothing you say will ever leave this room." Jarvik looked about at the assembled Black Widowers in bewilderment and said, "How did this ever manage to come up? It's a sore point, certainly, but I can talk about it without trouble. It's just something that's totally unin- teresting to anyone but me." "You can never tell," said Gonzalo, grinning. Henry refilled the brandy glasses, and Jarvik sighed and began: I'm a quiet man [said Jarvik] as perhaps you can tell. I'm told it shows. There's something ironic in the fact that I have to live and work in Manhattan, but a man must earn a living. Still, I'm a single man; I don't have a wife and children to support-not yet, anyway-and I can indulge myself now and then. So, two or three times a year I take a week off and go to a resort up the Hudson River. It's a large rambling mansion, with a Victorian atmosphere. The cli- entele is composed largely of people who are middle-aged or older and everything about the place is staid and re- spectable. Even the young people who happen to come there are impressed, or perhaps oppressed, by the atmo- sphere and behave themselves. It means that it is quiet to some degree and, at night, particularly, it is very quiet. Soothing. I love it and, natu- rally, I try to escape even the noise that exists. People will talk after all and since there are hundreds in the house at all times, the talk can mount up. There are also vehicles-trucks, lawn mowers, and so on. However, the place is set in an estate of thousands of acres of hilly woodland laced by roads and pathways, Some of which are very rough indeed. It's my particular pleasure to walk those pathways, looking for someplace where I can see only trees and huge glacier-brought rocks, seat myself in one of the gazebos that dot the roads, and look at the wildness of the scenery and listen to the silence. There are, of course, the calling of the birds, the rustling of the leaves-but that is no bother. Such natural sounds simply punctuate and emphasize the silence. But no matter where I go, where I sit, sooner or later, usually sooner, I can hear human voices. There are groups, tramping on nearby trails, or following along the one I just took. I always found it irritating and would feel invaded. It's silly, I know. After all, I was only one of hundreds, but I felt I ought to be undisturbed. I would get up and keep on wandering, looking always for a quiet place, a really quiet place-and never finding it. One time, as I was sitting in one of my favorite gaze- bos, a man passed, looked at me, hesitated a moment, and said in half a whisper, "May I join you?" I nodded. I couldn't refuse, though I resented him at once; and I couldn't rise and immediately leave without being unbearably discourteous. After we had been there, in utter silence, some five minutes, the inevitable sound of conversation came from up the road, and there was an explosion of feminine laughter. My newfound companion grimaced and said, "Isn't that annoying?" My heart warmed to him at once. I shook my head. "You can't get away from it." He said, "In one place you can," then stopped short as though he had been trapped into saying too much. But I waited with an inquiring look on my face, and didn't say anything, and he said, "There's a place I discovered three, four years ago. -Would you like to see it?" "Quiet?" "Oh, yes." "That would be nice." "Come with me." He rose, and looked about as if he were taking his bearings. It was a beautifully sunny day, clear blue sky, unclouded, not too warm at all, so when he set off, I followed gladly. I didn't like to speak, but finally I had to say, "I haven't seen you about." "I'm usually out on the trails." "So am I," I said, my heart warming further. "Ted Jarvik is my name," I said, putting out my hand. He took it and shook it heartily. "Call me Dark Horse," he said. And at this point, he suddenly walked right into the Woods and began scrambling through and around the un- derbrush. I was glad I had on a pair of slacks. Had it been warmer, I might have been in shorts and I would un- doubtedly have been plant-scratched and insect-bitten. As it was, I followed dutifully. I couldn't make out where he was going. There was no path and we were clambering over boulders as though we were mountain climbing. Despite the coolness of the day, I was puffing, hot, and sweaty before long. Finally, we stopped for a bit under the hemlocks and my compan- ion said, "I usually stop here to catch my breath. It takes me longer these days." I panted a bit, welcoming the break, and said, "How do you know where you're going?" "Landmarks. A tree that looks just so. A rock with a particular pattern of moss. I notice these things automat- ically and don't forget them. It's just a knack, but I never get lost." I said ruefully, "You're lucky. I have no sense of direc- tion at all. I get irretrievably lost in hotel corridors. Maids have to take me by the hand and lead me to my room." My companion laughed and said, "I'm sure you have many talents. My inability to get lost is the only one I've got.11 "You said your name is Dark Horse. You're not an In- dian, are you? A Native American?" I was staring at him. He looked as little an Indian as I did. "Not at all. It's not my name. I just said to call me that. You see, I believe if you really want to come out on a vacation, you should shuck all the paraphernalia of your ordinary life. I have to give my real name to the hotel, because I have to make a reservation and I have to use my credit card, but while I'm here, I won't be called by my name. Nor will I talk about my business. I simply won't recognize any part of my ordinary self. Whatever I am, officially, is back in Manhattan. It isn't here." I was struck by that. "Interesting idea. I ought to do the same. Not that I'm very social when I come up here." He said, "Rested a bit? Let's go, then. We don't have much farther." I tried to watch where he turned and to observe land- marks, but it was no use. I'm not a noticing man. To me, a tree is a tree and a rock is a rock. -But then we half slid downward into a hollow and Dark Horse whispered, "This is it." I looked about. The rocks enclosed us on almost every side. There were trees growing between them here and there. Ferns flourished. It was cool, very cool, welcom- ingly cool. Above all else, it was quiet. There was not a sound. A rustle of leaves now and then. A faint insect stridulation. Once a brief bird call. But it was quiet, a healing silence in a world which was one large, long, eternal cacophony of noise. There was a rocky ledge at a convenient height and my companion indicated it silently. We sat down and I let the silence flow into me. What did the poem say? "It lay on my fevered spirit with a touch of infinite calm." We sat there half an hour, and in all that time I said nothing, and my companion said nothing, and there was not a human sound of any kind. No distant laughter, no crackle of far-off conversation, no vibration of any inter- nal combustion engine. Nothing. I had never experi- enced anything like it. Finally, my companion rose and without saying any- thing asked the question as to whether we ought to go now. Reluctantly, and without saying anything, I an- swered that we might. Out we went. We were a quarter mile away before I dared speak. "How did you find the quiet place?" I asked. "Accident at first. Since then, I've gone back half a dozen times at least. I love it. It's somewhere out of reach of all the traits and, as far as I know, it's not on any of the hotel maps and it's just a hidden undiscovered nook, known only to me, I think-and now you." "Thanks for showing me. Really," I said, with infinite gratitude. "You wouldn't think there would be a spot untrodden by human feet in a place like this." "Why not?" said Dark Horse. "I imagine that all over the world there are little areas undisturbed by humanity, sometimes in places that are very busy and crowded overall. There are fewer than there used to be, I'm sure, and perhaps someday they'll be all gone-but not yet, not yet. " He led me back to one of the main trails without hesi- tation. We scrambled over rocks and roots and through the underbrush again, and to me it seemed it was uphill both ways-but he got us back. I said good-bye and thanked him again and we shook hands. I went back to the room, got cleaned up, and was eventually ready for dinner. I didn't see him at dinner, though I looked, and, in fact, I didn't see him again during the remainder of the stay. To put it baldly, I have never seen him again from that day to this. The day after he had taken me to the quiet place, I tried to return on my own. I took a book with me and some sandwiches I had begged at the kitchen, and it was my intention to stay there most of the day if the weather held, but of course I never made it. I had no luck at all. I was wrong from the first turning, I believe. I didn't give up, though. After I returned to the city, I kept dreaming of the quiet place and as soon as I could manage, I returned to the resort, studied the map, and marked off the area that I felt must contain it. I could make my way to the gazebo where I met Dark Horse and, from there, I set about a systematic course of explo- ration. It did me no good whatever. I could never find the place. No matter how I tried to remember the twists and turns, no matter how I kidded myself into believing I recognized one of those blasted trees or rocks, no matter what bogs I slogged through, what crags I stumbled over, I ended up nowhere. I had bites, and scratches, and bruises, and contusions, and sprains. What I didn't have was the place. I think it's become an obsession with me. I happened to know that passage of "The Lost Chord" and I suppose I began to hear it go through my head with appropriate changes in words: "I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That one lost place divine, From which came the spirit of silence that entered into me." And I suppose I hum it when things grow loud and chaotic- There was a pronounced pause when jarvik con- cluded. Finally, Halsted said, "I suppose you simply need this fellow who took you there to take you there again so that you can mark off each twist and turn on the map as best you can." Gonzalo said hesitantly, "I suppose the fellow really existed. You didn't dream it, did you?" jarvik frowned. "Believe me, I didn't dream it. And he wasn't an elf leading me into fairyland, either. It hap- pened exactly as I told you. The problem is that he had a precise sense of direction and I have none at all." "Then you ought to find him," said Rubin flatly, "if you're that stuck on being in the middle of nowhere." "Fine," said jarvik. "I agree. I ought to find him. Now tell me how. I didn't know his room number. I didn't know his name. It didn't occur to me to try to identify him at the front desk that evening or the next day." He shook his head and seemed to debate with himself whether to go on or not. Then he shrugged and said, "I might as well tell you how obsessed I've become. The last time I was at the resort, I spent half the day with the various desk employees trying to get a list of the people who had been at the hotel the day on which I was taken to the quiet place. "It took a lot of negotiating and a lot of scurrying through records, and then they were kind enough to make me up an alphabetized list containing two hundred forty-nine names. They did it for me because I was a regular customer and because I spread fifty dollars among them. "They didn't include addresses because they said that was against policy and if they were caught doing that they would be fired and blacklisted and who knows what else. I had to make do with the list of names. I made one last effort to find the place the next dayand failed, of course, and then spent the remainder of the stay study- ing the list of names. "And you know, I've memorized them. Not on pur- pose, of course. I just memorized them. I can rattle them off in the alphabetical order in which they were ar- ranged. I happen to have one of those memories." He brooded a little. "If my sense of direction were as good as my memory for trivial items on a list-that is, if my sense of observation could give me small variations I could then remember-I suppose I wouldn't be in the fix I am now." Drake said, frowning through the smoke of his ciga- rette, "How would the list of names help you?" Jarvik said, "The first thing that occurred to me was that the false name he used must have some reason be- hind it. Why would anyone call himself Dark Horse? Possibly because the initials were the same as those of his real name. So I went through the list and there was only one D.H. and the name was Dora Harboard. Well, what- ever my friend was, he was not a woman, so that was out. "Then I thought that perhaps the initials were re- versed. So I looked for an H.D. and there was none. Then I looked for unattached males. A great many peo- ple were listed as, let us say, Ira and Hortense Abel, to take the first names on the list. It seemed to me I ought to eliminate them, especially if they had children with them. That left me with seventeen unattached males and at first I thought that that was a big advancement. "But then I realized that Dark Horse gave me no indi- cation that he was unattached. He might well have had a wife and child back in his room, or out attending the mah-jongg game that was being played in the lounge that afternoon." Trumbull said, "You could tryforce majeure. Follow up every male name on the list and see if one of them is Dark Horse. Who knows, you may strike it lucky the first name you try. And you know he lives in Manhattan. He said so. Try the phone book to begin with." Jarvik said, "One of the people listed is S. Smith. I dread the thought of how many Smiths there are in the phone book with S as the first initial. Besides, if I recall correctly, he said that whatever he was officially was back in Manhattan. It seems to me that meant he worked in Manhattan but not necessarily that he lived there. He could live in any of the five boroughs, or in New Jersey, or Connecticut, or Westchester. "Listen, I've thought offorce majeure. just to show you, I thought that I might hire someone at some small nearby airfield to fly me over the resort so that I could see the spot from above, but I know I wouldn't recognize it. Not from above, in a hurried pass. And even if I did, they'd have to land me back at the airport and if I then tried to reach the quiet place from the ground I'd fail again. "Then I thought that perhaps I could hire a helicopter and if I recognized the spot, I could have myself lowered by some sort of rope while the helicopter hovered over- head. That's ridiculous, though. I wouldn't have the nerve to dangle from a helicopter even if I recognized the place, and then, after I left it, what if I still couldn't find my way back? I couldn't very well use a helicopter every time, could I?" Gonzalo said, "Dark Horse! Isn't that a racing term?" "Originally, yes," said Avalon. "It refers to some horse of unknown potential that might have an outside chance to win, especially if it enters a race in which all the other horses are known quantities." "Why dark horse, then?" said Halsted. "I presume," said Avalon, "as an indication of how minimal the information is. After all, most horses are dark in coloring. Besides, "dark" gives the impression of mystery, of the unknown." "Well," said Gonzalo, "perhaps this fellow has some connection with the racing game." Jarvik said bitterly, "Fine. Suppose he does. How does that help me find him?" "Besides," said Trumbull, "it seems to me that "dark horse" has spread out to mean anyone who enters a con- test without being a known item. In boxing, tennis; in politics, even." "And how does that help me find him?" said Jarvik. Avalon sighed heavily and said, "Mr. Jarvik, why don't we look at "The Lost Chord" from another angle? Roger Halsted pointed out that a complex organ might have many, many varieties of chords and that one chord could be easily lost among the quantity. But that is surely a way of looking at it that is rather too simplistic, "Any sensation consists of the sensation itself, objec- tively, and of the person receiving the sensation, subjec- tively. The same chord is always the same chord if it is measured by an instrument that analyzes its wave func- tion. However, the chord one bears may well vary with the mood and immediate circumstances of the listener. "The person playing the organ in the poem was "weary and ill at ease." For that reason, the chord had a particular effect on him. "It quieted pain and sorrow" which he may have been feeling. From then on, when he sought the chord again, his mood would be one of anxious expecta- tion, of careful attention. Even if he heard the same chord again, the same chord precisely, it would not strike him in the same way and he would not consider it to be the same chord. No wonder he sought it vainly. He was seeking to duplicate not only the chord but himself as he a een." Jarvik said, "You are saying?" "I am saying, Mr. Jarvik," said Avalon, "that perhaps you ought to attach less importance to the place. You found it on a perfect day. You found it when someone else was guiding you there so that you were, in a sense, carefree. If you find it again a second time, it may be on a less desirable day-when it is hotter, or colder, or cloud- ier. You yourself will be seeking anxiously, you will not be at ease. The result is that it may not be the same place you remember. You will be bitterly disappointed. Would it not be better to remain with the memory and let it go at that?" Jarvik's head bent, and for a few moments he seemed lost in thought. Then he said, "Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I think you're right. If I fail to find the place, I will cer- tainly try to follow your advice and find solace in it. However . . . I would like, if I can, to find it once more, just to make sure. After all, Dark Horse found it a num- her of times, and enjoyed it each time." "Dark Horse knew how to get there," said Avalon. "His own mood was fairly constant, and it might be he always chose days of particularly favorable weather to go there." "Even so," said Jarvik stubbornly, "I would like to find it once more, if there were only a way of finding it." "But apparently there isn't," said Avalon. "You must admit that." "I don't know," said Mario. "No one has asked Henry." "In this case," said Avalon stubbornly, "even Henry can do nothing. There is nothing to seize on." "What have we to lose?" demanded Mario. "Henry, what can you tell us?" Jarvik, who had been listening in astonishment, now turned to Rubin and, jerking his thumb over his shoul- der, mouthed silently: The waiter? Rubin put a finger to his lips and shook his head slightly. Henry, who had been listening with absorption, said, "I must say that I agree fully with Mr. Avalon with re- spect to the subjective nature of the charms of the place and would hate to have Mr. Jarvik spoil an idyllic mem- ory. Nevertheless-" "Aha," said Gonzalo. "Go on, Henry." Henry smiled in his avuncular fashion and said, "Nev- ertheless, the one thing to seize upon is the phrase "dark horse," which everyone has been seizing upon, as it hap- pens. May I ask, Mr. Jarvik, if, by any chance, there was anyone on the list named Polk-not a very common name. A James Polk, perhaps." Jarvik's eyes opened wide. "You're kidding." "Not at all. May I take it there was such a name?" "There's a J. Polk, certainly. It could be James." "Then perhaps that is your man." "But why?" "Mr. Trumbull mentioned, I believe, that'dark horse" is used in politics. That, I suspect, is its most common use these days. A dark horse is some politician who is never thought of in connection with nomination by a major party, but who is nevertheless nominated as a way of breaking what otherwise seems an intransigent dead- lock. Nowadays, dark horses rarely show up because the nomination is decided by primary contests. However, as recently as 1940, Wendell Willkie was a dark horse named by the Republican party. "However, the name is most often used in American history for the very first party nominee who was a dark horse. In 1844, the Democrats were all set to nominate ex-President Martin Van Buren, but he needed a two- thirds majority and intransigent Southern opposition prevented that. Out of sheer weariness, the convention switched to Tennessee's Senator James Knox Polk, whom no one had thought of in connection with the nomination. He was the first dark horse candidate, and went on to win the election. He made a pretty good one- term President." "He's right," said Rubin. "You do know everything, Henry." "No, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, "but I had a dim mem- ory of it and while the discussion was going on, I checked our reference shelf. It may be that the J. Polk on Mr. Jarvik's list is a lineal or collateral descendant, which is why he took the name of Dark Horse." "Amazing," muttered Jarvik. "However," said Henry, "you may still have trouble finding him, Mr. Jarvik, and even if you find him, he may still be the wrong person, and even if he is the right person, you may still end up disappointed in the quiet place. However-may good luck be with you." AFTERWORD My dear wife, Janet, and I have as our favorite resort Mohonk Moun- tain House, which is located about ninety-two miles from our home, in New Paltz, New York. It has wide acres through which we can wander. Janet does so because she loves to be in the wilderness, and I do so because I love to be with Janet. And one time we found a place where we appeared to be thor- oughly isolated and where, it seemed for a few magic minutes, hu- manity had not yet been invented. But there's the difference between Janet and myself Janet loved that place and those moments for itself and themselves alone, with a pure and holy love that lacked all alloy. I, on the other hand, thought, "I'll bet I can make a Black Widowers out of this." -And I did, and you've just read it. This story first appeared in the March 1988 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. THE FOUR-LEAF CLOVER Considering the circumstances, it might have been pre- dicted that when the Black Widowers met at the Milano Restaurant for their monthly banquet, the sole topic of conversation would be the Iran-Contra hearings. Each of the Black Widowers had something to say, one about Oliver North's hurt-little-boy look and his appeal to middle-aged women; another of John Poindexter's sievelike memory. James Drake, who was host of the ban- quet, pointed out that, between them, North and Poindexter had badly tarnished the Reagan presidency, something all the Democrats in combination had failed to as much as scratch. Why, then, he wanted to know, was the Republican right making heroes out of that Laurel-and-Hardy team It was Emmanuel Rubin who, not unexpectedly, brought the discussion down to the matter of hostages and principle. "The thing is," he said, "how does one deal with loss of life, or potential loss of life, or even just a matter of im- prisonment? Must the national interest come second to the rescue of hostages? If that is the case, how would we ever dare carry out any armed strike? In any such move, even one as simple and safe as attacking the mighty army of Grenada, or bombing the mighty fortress of Tripoli, we suffer casualties and run the risk of having prisoners taken." Geoffrey Avalon, staring down at Rubin's sixty-four inches from the height of his own seventy-four, said, "You're talking military action. The hostages are civil- ians, pursuing a peaceful life, taken without cause by gangsters and thugs. Wouldn't you pay any price and abandon any principle to gain the freedom of someone you loved? Wouldn't you pay a ransom to kidnappers if that would keep them from killing your wife?" "Yes, of course, I would," said Rubin, his eyes flashing through his thick spectacles. "I would, as an individual. But would I expect two hundred and thirty million Americans to suffer a weakening of the national interest because I am suffering? Not even an American president has the right to do that, and that was Reagan's mistake. And don't think that hostage-taking is an aberration of peace. It isn't. We're at war with terrorism and the hos- tages are prisoners of war. We wouldn't think of giving an enemy arms to buy back our prisoners of war. It would have been treason to do that in any other war we've fought." "Terrorism isn't like any other war," growled Thomas Trumbull, "and you can't make a point-by-point anal- ogy." "Actually," said Roger Halsted, "all this talk about na- tional interest is irrelevant. Surely, terrorism is a global problem which will yield only to global action." Mario Gonzalo said, "Oh, sure. Global! How do you manage a global solution when each nation is willing to make a deal with the terrorists, hoping that it will be left alone and to hell with its neighbors?" "That's what's got to stop," said Halsted earnestly. "Trying to buy off the terrorists only points out to them how they might make a profit. If hostages sell at a pre- mium, they will take more hostages whenever they run short of funds." "Of course, and our proper answer to the taking of hostages is making the procedure expensive for the hos- tage takers. You inflict casualties on them," said Gonzalo. "Provided you know who the enemy is," protested Av- alon. "You can't simply kill people at random." "Why not? We do that in every war. When we bombed German and Japanese cities during World War 11, didn't we know that uncounted thousands of totally innocent people would be killed, including babies? Did we think our bombs were selective enough to kill only villains?" "All of Germany and Japan was fighting us, even if only by passively supporting the German and Japanese governments," said Avalon. "And do you think that terrorism can survive without at least the passive approval or acquiescence of the soci- ety in which it exists?" demanded Rubin. At that point, James Drake, who had been listening to the exchange with manifest unease, said, "Gentlemen, my guest is coming up the stairs. Could we suspend the argument for now, and not return to it, either? Please!" He then said hurriedly, "Henry, my guest isn't a drinker. Would you get him a large diet cola? Not much ice." Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widower banquets, nodded his head slightly just as the guest en- tered the banquet room. He was a tall man, darkly tanned, with a large curved nose, and blue eyes that stood out startlingly against his dark coloring. His hair, still copious, was graying and he looked fiftyish. "Sorry I'm late, Jim," he said, grasping Drake's hand. "The train did not feel at all bound by the timetable." "Not too late, Sandy," said Drake. "Let me introduce you to the Black Widowers. This is Alexander Mountjoy, gentlemen." One by one, the Black Widowers advanced to shake his hand. Last came Henry with his tall drink. Mountjoy sniffed at it, then grinned. "You warned the waiter, I see." Drake nodded. "And I should add that our waiter is Henry, and that he is a particularly valued member of our club." The dinner was a hearty one. Melon, followed by a thick vegetable soup, a prime rib roast with baked potato and broccoli, and apple pie with cheese for dessert. Rubin, having abandoned topical references, chose to point out Charles Dickens's contribution to the evolution of the modern detective story with a stern disquisition on Bleak House, which only he, of those at the table, had read. Drake, who was quite openly relieved at this new direc- tion of the conversation, pointed out that Dickens's detective had come a generation after Edgar Allan Poe and that, if Rubin's descriptions were correct, Dickens had not at all benefited by Poe's work. This elicited only a snarl of contempt from Rubin, who turned to Wilkie Collins and tmile Gaboriau. At a crucial moment, Drake mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle, at which point Mountjoy plunged in joyously and con- versation grew general. Over the coffee, Drake gave his water glass its ritual tinkle and said, "Manny has done his whole evening's share of talking by now, so if you don't mind, Mario, you take over the grilling. I know I can rely on you to keep Manny quiet." Gonzalo adjusted his jacket with its subdued green stripe, made sure his tie was seated properly, sat back, and said, "Just how do you justify your existence, Mr. Mountjoy?" Mountjoy looked satisfyingly replete as he watched Henry pour the brandy, and said, "I'm a Sherlock Holmes enthusiast and a member of the Baker Street Ir- regulars, which should be justification enough for this crowd, eh)" Gonzalo said, "I don't know about that. Actually, Manny is the only one really interested in mysteries be- cause he writes them, or does something he calls writing them, and makes a living of sorts out of it." He raised his hand, palm held imperiously in the direction of Rubin, who shifted in his seat and gave all the signs of wanting to burst into speech. "Try something else." "In that case," said Mountjoy, "I might mention that I'm a college president, but I don't know if any percepti- ble fraction of the world's population would consider that as justifying my existence." "We are all academic personalities, one way or an- other," said Avalon, "and we might be willing to con- sider the matter moot." Mountjoy grinned. "If college has taught you to speak in that fashion, that's a black mark against me." Gonzalo said, with clear disappointment, "A college president? Is that all?" Mountjoy's eyebrows went up. "Well, the post may not justify my existence, but I would scarcely think of it as trivial. Dealing with students and faculty and trustees and potential donors and the general public is quite a bit more than enough. What do you mean, "Is that all"?" Gonzalo said, "I mean do you work for the govern- ment in any way?" "No, I'm spared that." "You haven't been involved in any government investi- gations?" "No, of course not." "Well, then," said Gonzalo, "why is it that Drake asked us not to discuss the matter of hostages in front of you " "Oh, for God's sake," exploded Drake. "If I asked you not to, why do you bring the matter up?" It was impossible for Mountjoy to turn pale, but he took on a rigid look and said angrily, "Jim!l) Drake shook his head. "I'm sorry, Sandy. The conver- sation was on hostages before you came. It was bound to be, considering what the nation has been going through. But I did ask them to drop it." "And I want to know why," said Gonzalo stubbornly. "I can't say why," said Drake. "But I put the matter out of bounds. As host-" "Even as host you can't do that," said Gonzalo. "The whole point of the club dinners is that there are no holds barred at the grilling. Even the host can't limit the mat- ter. It's-it's unconstitutional." Avalon, turning the brandy glass in his hand, said thoughtfully, "Mario has a point there. Mr. Mountjoy, may I assure you that nothing said within these walls is ever repeated outside them. The habit of confidentiality is strong and it includes our excellent waiter, Henry. Does that help?" "No, it doesn't," said Mountjoy. "I have no secrets, but the government does. I am fully satisfied of the honor and honesty of every person here, but the government is not satisfied as easily as I am." "You said you don't work for the government," said Gonzalo. "Nor do I, but I have managed to get entangled with it just the same, and through no deliberate desire of my own." Thomas Trumbull said gently, "I am employed by the government and I have been entrusted with secrets in my time. I vouch for these gentlemen, too. It would have been more convenient all around if we had avoided this matter, but in a free-for-all grilling it would have arisen sooner or later, and perhaps it would have been better if Jim had brought you as guest at another time. But here you are, and Mario's question puts us face-to-face with it. If you feel you cannot discuss the matter, then the rules of the club put an end to the dinner, which we would all regret. Is there anything you can tell us? If we decide that it would count as a satisfactory answer to the question we can drop the matter and go on to other subjects." "The question is this," said Gonzalo. "Why can't we discuss the matter of hostages in front of you? That's just to remind you." Mountjoy thought for a while, head bent, chin touch- ing his chest. When he looked up, his eyes were friendly and his appearance seemed normal. "I'll tell you this much, if you'll be kind enough not to ask me names and places and details, which I am not allowed to give you, in any case. I told you I was presi- dent of a college. Well, some members of the faculty were kidnapped some months ago by terrorists." "But there's no secret to that," broke in Rubin. "It was in all the papers. Obviously, you're president of the-" "Please!" said Mountjoy. "I don't care how certain you are that you know the details of the case. Please realize you may not have them all and that I can't confirm or deny anything. Just listen to what I say. Some faculty members were kidnapped. They are held as hostages. One hostage who was being held, and I am specifically refraining from saying whether he was one of the faculty members or not, was killed. Presumably, he was tortured first. "Now, then, the subject of hostages is bothersome to me personally since the hostages are known to me, and it is bothersome to me officially since I have been exten- sively interviewed by government agencies on various aspects of the event. Does that satisfy you, gentlemen? Can we go on to other matters?" "No," said Gonzalo. "Why were you extensively inter- viewed? What had you to do with it?" "With the hostage-taking? Absolutely nothing." "With anything at all. You said you were interviewed on various aspects of the event. What aspects? Why limit it to hostage-taking?" "I don't know what you mean." "What's so hard about the question? I mean why were you extensively interviewed? If not about the hostage- taking, then about what?" "I can't answer that question." "Then I'm not satisfied." Drake said, "Come on, Mario. Don't be a pigheaded fool." "I'm not being pigheaded. I have an idea. There's something involved besides the hostage-taking. Mountjoy said the interviews had nothing to do with that, but cov- ered various aspects of the matter. That means aspects besides the hostage-taking. I think there must be some sort of unfinished business in all of this or it wouldn't be so hush-hush. I'll bet there's a problem here of some kind, some puzzle, some mystery. How about it, Mr. Mount- joy?" "I have nothing to say on the matter," said Mountjoy woodenly. "It so happens," said Gonzalo, "that this club has solved a number of puzzles in the past. We could help you now." Mountjoy looked toward Drake questioningly. Drake smashed his cigarette to death and said, "That's true enough, but we can't guarantee we can solve any particular mystery." Mountjoy muttered, "I wish you could solve this one." "Ah," said Gonzalo, "then there is one. -Hey, Tom, tell him we can help out, and tell him we can be trusted to the death." Trumbull said, "I've already told him we can all be trusted. -If there's a problem; Mountjoy, and if you're in trouble over it, then Mario is right. Maybe we can help." Mountjoy said, "Well, let's see what I can tell you." He stared at the Black Widowers, who, in turn, re- mained silent. Indeed, they scarcely moved. Finally, Mountjoy said, "The hostage who was killed was not exactly innocent, at least in the eyes of the ter- rorists. Usually, the hostages that are taken are simply newsmen, or businessmen, or professors-people whose only value to the terrorists is as pawns. They were handy and the American government and people want them back so they are bargaining points. "The hostage who was killed-and I can't name him or tell you anything about him-was working for the gov- ernment, and to the terrorists he could be considered a spy or a secret agent or something like that. They killed him, either because they considered that a just punish- ment for his crime of being on the other side, or they did so accidentally in the process of torturing him in order to elicit information. "The question is, how did they know he was worth torturing? They don't torture all their hostages as a mat- ter of course. In fact, they treat them as well as they reasonably can, for a dead hostage has no value to them, and in fact any hostage that is in anything but good con- dition merely inflames American public opinion and may encourage the United States to more violent repri- sals, something for which they are obviously not eager. "The feeling is that someone fingered him. In short, a traitor of some sort is involved. The dead hostage had confided his true role to someone for some reason, or let it slip inadvertently, and that someone betrayed him. The question, of course, is who? Naturally, the govern- ment wants to know, not simply in order to avenge the death by punishing the traitor, but because if the traitor is left at large, he is in a position in which his treason can continue, you understand. "I come into it because the circumstances of the kid- napping of the faculty members-those particular ones and no others-make it seem clear that the traitor is also a member of the faculty. There is good reasoning behind that, but I can't pass it on to you. I simply say that that is the conclusion-that we have a traitor on the faculty. "I was interviewed extensively on the matter, and so were others, and it seems that the conclusion come to is that the traitor is one of four members of the faculty, but which of the four- Ah, that's the rub." Rubin said, "The only safe thing to do is to remove all four from their posts, put them where they can do no harm, and keep them all under surveillance while you continue the investigation." "And that has been done," said Mountjoy, "but does it occur to you that a great deal of unjustified harm is being done to three innocent people who are loyal Americans and do not deserve such treatment?" "Casualties of war," said Rubin. Halsted said, "You're being very callous tonight, Man- nie. Are you having trouble with your current novel?" "That has nothing to do with it," said Rubin. "I say what I think." "Well, what I think," said Mountjoy, "is that it is much more important to absolve the three innocents than to catch the guilty. And there's a way of doing it if only we were clever enough. We assume, for instance, that the dead hostage knew who the traitor was. He would know, after all, to whom he had confided, or let slip, the matter. Now, then, he was forced to write a letter which the kidnappers then released. You know the kind." The Black Widowers nodded, and Halsted said, "The hostage admits he's a member of the CIA and that he spied on the poor mistreated groups to which the kidnap- pers belong. He goes on to confess to all sorts of other misdemeanors and then denounces the American govern- ment for not giving in to the simple demands of the cap- tors so that he might be released." "Exactly," said Mountjoy. "Exactly. By then, he had undoubtedly been subject to some torture, so that they wouldn't release a photograph of him as they did in the case of other hostages. Even so, he might not have con- sented to sign that letter-and it was definitely his signa- ture-were it not that the hostage we're speaking of was hoping to give us information under the nose of his cap- tors. He added at the end of the letter that he hoped he would be lucky enough to have the government arrange his release and drew a four-leaf clover at the end. Very carefully drawn. It was some time after that that he was killed." Avalon said, "Do you think the four-leaf clover had anything to do with that, Mr. Mountjoy?" "The government thinks so. He had to choose some sign that would indicate the traitor, yet do so in a suffi- ciently subtle manner to escape the kidnappers. Unfortu- nately, it was sufficiently subtle to escape us as well. The government has not been able to work out the signifi- cance of the four-leaf clover. However, it may be that the traitor did-that the traitor saw the letter reproduced on television and realized that the four-leaf clover was pointing straight at him. He managed to get a message to the kidnappers, who then tortured their victim further and killed him." "Well," said Avalon, "a four-leaf clover is a well-known symbol of good luck. Might it not be that the poor hos- tage really wanted to have the good luck of being freed and drew a four-leaf clover as a piece of sympathetic magic?" "It's possible," said Mountjoy. "Anything is possible. The government doesn't give that credence, however. The hostage was an outspoken rationalist, utterly con- temptuous of anything that smacked of mysticism or su- perstition. The people who knew him best say that it is unthinkable that he would draw a four-leaf clover in the expectation of deriving good luck from it." "Desperation will have people clutching at straws," muttered Avalon. Trumbull said, "It's an Irish symbol. Are any of the four suspects Irish, or of Irish descent? The traitor could be a member of the Irish Republican Army and be sym- pathetic to other struggling underground groups." Mountjoy shook his head violently. "In the first place, the four-leaf clover is not an Irish symbol. The three-leaf clover is. It was plucked up by Saint Patrick, according to legend, to explain to an Irish king how the Trinity could exist-one God in three personifications. The Irish king was converted and the three-leaf clover became the Shamrock. And in any case, none of the four suspects are in any way Irish." Trumbull said, "What can you tell us about the four suspects, then? We can't figure out at whom the four-leaf clover is pointing if we know nothing about them." "I can't help that," said Mountjoy despairingly. "I can't give you their names or trell you who they are." "Can you give us their fields of specialty?" asked Ava- lon. "I'm not sure. -Maybe I can take the chance." Mount- joy held up his fingers one by one: "One is a historian, one is an entomologist, one is an astronomer, and one is a mathematician. Does that help? It didn't help us." Halsted said, "Are you sure what he drew was a four- leaf clover. "Well, of course it was. What else could it be?" Halsted shrugged. "I don't know. I didn't see it. But it was something with four things sticking out of it. Right?" "Yes." "Then could he have been trying to draw a star? A point with rays of light coming from it? That might indi- cate the astronomer." Mountjoy shook his head. "It might be the astronomer, for all I know, but not for that reason. He didn't draw radiating lines, he drew four recognizable clover leaves. The drawing also had a stem. Stars wouldn't have stems." Drake said, "What kind of mathematician is the mathe- matician?" Mountjoy said, "I couldn't tell you. I'm in political sci- ence myself and all the mathematics I know barely suf- fices to enable me to balance my checkbook." "Could he have done papers on probability?" "I suppose I could find out, but I don't know it off the cuff." "Because the thing about four-leaf clovers is that they are rare. I don't know what the chances are of finding one if you look through clover patches at random, but it must be very small. When I was a youngster, I remember lying down in a field of clover and spending hours going over them one by one. I never found a four-leaf clover. So to find one is remarkable and it's the sort of thing that might interest a mathematician who specializes in proba- bility." Halsted, who was himself a mathematician, said, "That doesn't sound likely at all. What kind of a historian was the historian?" "Ah," said Mountjoy. "That I can tell you. He wrote a rather well-known book entitled- Well, no, obviously I can't tell you that. It would identify him. Let's say," he added feebly, "that he's a medievalist." "He specializes in medieval history?" "Yes. Byzantine Empire. Fatimids. Things like that." "Anything to do with four-leaf clovers?" "Not that I know of." "And what about the entomologist, who obviously studies insects." "Yes." "What kind of insects? Bees?" Gonzalo put in, "Why bees, Roger?" "Why not? Bees fly from clover blossom to clover blos- som collecting honey and spreading pollen. Don't you know Emily Dickinson's quatrain: "The pedigree of honey / Does not concern the bee. / A clover any time to him / Is aristocracy"? Well, then, a four-leaf clover might easily signify a bee, which would signify our entomolo- gist." Avalon said, "Why a four-leaf clover in that case? A three-leaf clover would do as well and would be simpler to draw." Mountjoy said, "It doesn't matter which. The entomol- ogist didn't work with bees. He worked with smaller bugs and I couldn't even give you the name. He told me once and I thought it sounded as though it came straight out of Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors, but I couldn't repeat it." "Well," said Rubin, "where does it put us? The four- leaf clover doesn't point to anyone. Frankly, I find myself looking with favor on Jeff's original idea that it was just a good luck symbol and nothing more. The poor guy needed luck and didn't have it." "Poor guy " said Halsted. "Just a casualty of war, Manny." Rubin looked annoyed. "I was just speaking theoreti- cally. When we get down to individuals, I'm not any more callous than the rest of you, and you know it." Drake said, "Well, we chivied and tortured poor Sandy into telling us more than he should have, probably, and putting him under the nervous tension of fearing the government may somehow find out he did, and we haven't been able to help him at all. -I'm sorry, Sandy." "Hold on," said Gonzalo, teetering his chair back on two legs. "We're not through yet. I notice that Henry is poking his way through the reference shelf." "Oh, really," said Trumbull. "We'll ask him just as soon as he gets back." "Whom are we talking about?" said Mountjoy, frown- ing. "The waiter?" "We're talking about Henry. The best of the Black Widowers." Henry returned and resumed his usual place by the service table. Gonzalo said, "Well, Henry, can you help us?" "I have had a thought, Mr. Gonzalo, concerning four- leaf clovers." "Tell us." "Clovers almost always have three leaves. Occasion- ally, a clover grows from a seed that is slightly abnormal and it develops four leaves in consequence. Such a sud- den change between parent and offspring is called a mu- tation," said Henry politely. :,So it is," said Halsted. "Mutations take place now and then in all species. You can get a white blackbird, or a two-headed calf, or a baby with six fingers. I daresay the list is endless." "Probably," murmured Avalon. "For the most part, mutations are unfavorable and are viewed as deformities and monstrous distortions. The four-leaf clover is an example of a mutation, however, that not only does not strike people as a deformity but is valued and treasured by them-by almost all of them-as something very desirable, as a symbol and bringer of good luck. That makes it very unusual as a mutation and it is one mutation that can be easily drawn without repel- ling people and can be made to seem as nothing more than a natural way of calling down good fortune. It can therefore symbolize the idea of mutation unmistakably and yet escape detection by people without a certain de- gree of education. However, to those who know the hos- tage's strong rationality, they would-or should--dis- miss the good luck and cling to the symbolization of a mutation." "Where does all that get us, Henry?" asked Trumbull. "To change the subject slightly, Mr. Mountjoy men- tioned Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors. There are two characters in it named Antipholus. They are twin broth- ers, one from the city of Syracuse in Sicily and one from Ephesus in Asia Minor. Does the name Antipholus bring anything to your mind, Mr. Mountjoy?" "Yes," said Mountjoy. "The insects the entomologist was working with,. I still can't give you the exact name, though." "Was it Drosophila?" "Yes! By God, yes." "It is more commonly known as the fruit fly and it is the classic insect used for the study of mutations. It seems to me, then, that the four-leaf clover may have been drawn to signify mutations and that that was meant to point rather precisely to the entomologist as the trai- tor. At least, it seems so to me." "Heavens!" said Mountjoy. "It seems so to me, too. -I'll get in touch with-with some people in Washing- ton first thing in the morning and suggest it. Drosophila. Drosophila. I'll have to remember the name." "Fruit fly will be sufficient, Sir," said Henry, "and if the suggestion is accepted, I would suggest you allow it to remain understood that it occurred to you quite inde- pendently. No need to admit you spoke of the matter to the Black Widowers." AFTERWORD Sometimes, if I feel really lazy, I think of some one thing and see if I can't build a story around it. Thus, I was in a grassy place at Mohonk (see the previous Afterword) and I noted that it was rich in three-leaf clovers. As is my wont, I looked about to see if there was a four-leaf clover and after about two and a half seconds I decided there wasn't. (I have never found a four-leaf clover in my life, but I have had enough good luck even without it.) So I thought: Let's write a story about a four-leaf clover, and I did. This time, though, Eleanor Sullivan, the beautiful editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, turned it down. She thought the point of the story was sufficiently arcane to be unfair to the reader. I didn't agree (I never agree with a rejection) but the editor's word is law, and I present the story here as the second in this collection to make its first- time appearance. THE ENVELOPE Emmanuel Rubin arrived at the Black Widowers ban- quet in a foul mood. This was not much worse than his usual attitude, to be sure, but his eyes, magnified behind the thick lenses of his spectacles, flashed dangerously. "Uh-oh," said Mario Gonzalo, host of the occasion, "someone has received a well-deserved rejection." "I have not received a rejection," snapped Rubin, "well-deserved or otherwise. It's much worse than that." Geoffrey Avalon stared down from his seventy-four- inch height at the diminutive Rubin and said in his stately baritone, "Much worse than a rejection? For a free-lance writer like you, Manny? Come now." "Listen," said Rubin furiously, "I walked into the local post office this morning and asked for a roll of twenty- five cent stamps. That irks me to begin with. I can re- member when it cost two cents to mail a letter, but the price keeps going up and up without seeming to affect the eternal deficit-" "At least," said Roger Halsted, "the service gets worse to balance the increase in rates." "You say that because you think it's funny, Roger," said Rubin, "but you happen to be dead right. -Thank you, Henry." Henry, the unsurpassable waiter of the Black Widower banquets, recognizing the demands being made on Rubin by his passion, had brought him a refill of his drink. James Drake, lighting his perennial cigarette, said, "I remember when stamps were two cents, too, and the morning newspaper was two cents, and a pack of ciga- rettes was thirteen cents-and my weekly salary was fif- teen dollars. So what?" "I haven't finished," said Rubin. "So I asked for a roll of twenty-five-cent stamps and the confounded idiot at the window looked me right in the eye and said, "We don't have any." I was stunned. It was a post office, damn it. I said, "Why not?" And he just shrugged and shouted, "Next!" I mean, no sign of regret or embarrassment. They might have put up a sign to say the rolls were temporar- ily out. I had to wait half an hour in line to be told I couldn't have one." Gonzalo said, "Suppose we cool you down to your usual state of semi-sanity, Manny, so that I can introduce my guest-Francis MacShannon. He's a good friend of mine." Rubin shook hands loftily. "Any good friend of Mario's, Mr. MacShannon, is highly suspect in my eyes." "Which is what you'd expect," said Gonzalo, "from someone who falls into a tirade over a roll of twenty-five- cent stamps. -I'jl give you a few to tide you over, Manny. No charge." "No, thanks," said Rubin. "I got my roll later in the day. It's a matter of principle." "I apologize for Manny's dubious principles, Frank," said Gonzalo. "He makes one up whenever he can't get his way." Francis MacShannon laughed. He appeared sixtyish, with a round and jolly face above a short, plump body. He had a ruddy complexion and a gray chin-beard, giv- ing him the appearance of a semi-shaven Santa Claus. "I'm on your side, Mr. Rubin," he said in a high- pitched voice that rather spoiled the Santa Claus image. "I have complaints about the post office, too." "Doesn't everyone," growled Thomas Trumbull, who had arrived a moment before and who had seized upon the scotch and soda that Henry held out for him. There was a pause while MacShannon was introduced to the final newcomer, and then he said, "My own com- plaint is with the matter of postmarks. Nowadays, they are only dirty smudges, but when I was young, post- marks were legible and beautifully clear. They were ge- ography lessons. In fact, I built up a huge collection of postmarks." Avalon's formidable eyebrows raised. "How does one do that, Mr. MacShannon?" "To begin with, my parents gave me the envelopes they received in the mail. So did the neighbors up and down the street, once they learned how serious I was about it. The best part of it, though, was finding dis- carded envelopes in the street, in backyards, under bushes. You'd be surprised how many envelopes it was possible to find. Each new postmark I had never before encountered was a treasure and I'd look it up carefully in the atlas. I made lists of them by states and nations and pasted the envelopes into notebooks in organized fashion. I became an aficionado of envelopes such as you could scarcely imagine. In fact, it was my interest in envelopes that led to my-" It was at this point that Henry's softly authoritative voice said, "Dinner is served, gentlemen." They sat down to their melon prosciutto, followed by cream of asparagus soup and a mixed green salad. The conversation dealt with the new Russian probe designed to study the Martian satellite, Phobos, and over the roast capon, the discussion grew heated over whether a joint Soviet-American Mars expedition was desirable or not. The post office and its manifold sins dwindled and van- ished in the fire of the new controversy. Down went the chocolate almond pie and the coffee and, over the brandy, Gonzalo called for the grilling. "Manny," he said, "you be the griller, and I invoke host's privilege and tell you that the subject of the post office must not be mentioned." Rubin scowled and said, "Mr. MacShannon, how do you justify your existence?" MacShannon said amiably, "I'm a computer program- mer and designer. These days I think that speaks for it- self." "Maybe," said Rubin. "We might get back to that later. Obviously, your present labors have nothing to do with your activities as a child-I mean your postmark collec- tion. You had said-" "Manny," said Gonzalo abruptly, "I ruled out the post office." "Fire and brimstone," exploded Rubin. "Who's talking post office? I'm talking postmark collection. I appeal to the membership." "All right. Go ahead," said Gonzalo resignedly. "Now, then," said Rubin, after an unnecessarily pro- tracted glare at Gonzalo, "you said that it was your inter- est in envelopes that led you to your- And then, before you could finish your sentence, you were interrupted by the announcement that dinner was ready. Now, then, I would like to have the sentence finished. What did your interest in envelopes lead to?" MacShannon frowned thoughtfully. "Did I say that?" Then his brow cleared and a look of almost comic self- satisfaction crossed his face. "Oh, yes, of course. Back in 1953, it was through my interest in envelopes that I caught a spy. A real honest-to-Pete spy." "In 1953?" said Avalon, frowning suddenly. "Don't tell me you were one of the young men working for Senator Joseph McCarthy." "Who? Me?" said MacShannon, clearly astonished at the suggestion. "Never! I never had any use for McCar- thy at all. Of course-" he pondered the matter a mo- ment, "he did make the nation spy-conscious and traitor- conscious, and that couldn't help but affect me, I sup- pose. You couldn't help thinking in that direction even if you disapproved of McCarthy's tactics, as I did." "National paranoia, I call it," said Rubin seriously. "Maybe," said MacShannon, "but anyway, whatever you call it, I suppose that that's what put the whole melo- drama in my mind. In a quieter, less frenetic time, I would have seen that envelope and never given it a thought." "Tell us about it," said Rubin. "Certainly, if you wish. After thirty-six years, it can't be sensitive. Besides, I don't know the details, only the general outline. I was just starting out in the world, had my engineering degree, had a small job, was living by myself for the first time. I was twenty-four years old, though, and still a little uncertain of myself. "There was another person, living across the hall from me-Benham was his name. I don't remember his first name. He was about thirty, I think, and I would occa- sionally see him going in or out. He was a scowler, if you know what I mean, unfriendly, never addressed me. I said hello once or twice, in passing, but he would give me the curtest possible nod and freeze me with his expres- sion. I grew to dislike him intensely, of course, and since I was a great reader of thrillers in those days, I fantasized that he was something villainous-a criminal, a hitman, or, best of all, a spy. "Then, one day, as we were both waiting for an eleva- tor to take us to our two apartments on the eighth floor, he tore open an envelope he was carrying, which I as- sumed he had just picked up from his letter box. I had checked mine earlier and it was empty, as it almost al- ways was in those days, except when my mother wrote me. I watched my neighbor out of the corner of my eye, partly because I would naturally watch someone I was fantasizing to be a mysterious villain, partly because I envied anyone who got a letter, and even partly because I never quite got over my childhood fascination with enve- lopes. "Having torn open the envelope, he extracted the let- ter, unfolded it, read it without the slightest expression on his face, then crumpled it and tossed it into the trash basket that stood by the elevators in the hall. He then, Still without expression, placed the empty envelope in- side his inner jacket pocket. He did it very carefully and patted the front of his jacket as though to assure himself it was well-seated." Trumbull interrupted. "How did you know it was an empty envelope? There could have been an enclosure along with the letter. A check, for instance." MacShannon shook his head amiably. "I told you I had this quasi-professional attitude concerning envelopes. It was a flimsy kind, semi-transparent. He had held it in the hand near me while he scanned the letter and I could tell it was empty. No mistake was possible." "Odd," said Halsted. "The odd thing about it," said MacShannon, "was that at first I didn't think it was odd. After all, people fre- quently discard envelopes and keep letters, but I had never seen anyone discard a letter and keep an empty envelope and yet I didn't think it was odd. I said to my- self, "Gee, he's collecting postmarks," and for a moment I was a ten-year-old again and remembering the thrill of the chase. In fact, for a little while I recognized this Ben- ham as a fellow postmarker and I could feel myself warming to him. "Maybe it was just as well, for if I hadn't had the post- mark thought, I might not have kept the envelope in mind. But as it was, I did keep it in mind, and by the time I reached the eighth floor, I had other thoughts. As usual, my neighbor had not addressed a word to me, or cast me a glance, and my heart hardened toward him again. He couldn't be a postmarker, I decided, because postmarks had already deteriorated past the point where collecting could be profitable. Already, one never saw a clear postmark except on the occasional commemorative envelope. "Why, then, did he save the envelope? It took me only ten seconds to convert the matter into a spy thriller and I had it. He had received a casual, meaningless message anyone could see and dismiss, but the real message was on the envelope where no one would look for it, and which he therefore kept for later study. "By the time I had thought of that, I was in my apart- ment. I waited there for about half a minute, then peered out into the hall to make sure my neighbor wasn't linger- ing there. He wasn't, so I got back into the elevator, went down to the lobby, and retrieved that crumpled letter." Rubin said, "Which, I suppose, turned out to be com- pletely uninteresting." "Well," said MacShannon, "at least it seemed to show Benham in a more human light. The letter was in a femi- nine handwriting, but by no means a cultivated one-a semi-legible scrawl." Avalon said with a sigh, "That is about the best you can expect in these degenerate days." MacShannon smiled. "I suppose so. In any case, I stud- ied that letter so closely over the next few days that I still remember it thirty-six years later-not that there was much to remember. It wasn't dated and it just started, "Dear Mr. Benham, I had a very good time and it was kind of you to promise to check the matter of the job opening. Please let me know, and thank you." "I see what you mean," said Halsted. "This neighbor might freeze you out, but his female correspondent thought him a kindly man." Trumbull said, "Many a curmudgeon will unbend to a young woman to achieve the usual end." MacShannon sa " id, "I didn't think of anything like that. All it seemed to me was that the letter seemed totally innocuous, as I had thought it would have to be. The whole thing about job openings and kindness might just be a matter of writing at random, so to speak. To me, it meant that the envelope was all the more likely to be the important item. The question was, what ought I to do about it? I dithered for several days, and then finally took action. -Please remember that I was young and naive in those days, because in the end I went to the local office of the FBI." Drake smiled and fingered the ashtray before him. "You risked making a fool of yourself." "Even I knew that much," said MacShannon. "In fact, I remember that as I told my story to an apparently po- litely bored functionary, I felt more and more foolish, as I sounded less and less convincing in my own ears. I had several things on my side, though. Senator McCarthy had made it impossible for any agent to ignore any tale of spies. After all, it would be his neck if he let one go that he should not have." "I can see that," said Halsted. "An agent dismissing something wrongfully would probably be accused of be- ing a spy himself, or a card-carrying member of the Com- munist party." "Yes," said MacShannon. "The FBI has to investigate anything brought to it even in easygoing times, but at the height of the McCarthy mania- Then, too, it turned out that Benham, this neighbor of mine, had a post in the infant computer industry and was in a position to know a few things the Pentagon distinctly wanted to have kept secret. In fact, it was my eventual understanding of this that roused my own interest in computers, so that I owe my present career to Benham, in a sense. In any case, I was listened to and the letter was taken from me. I was given a receipt, even though it wasn't my letter." "It was in your possession," said Rubin, "and it be- longed to you, since its previous owner had thrown it away and abandoned it, making it the property of anyone who picked it up." "In a way," said MacShannon, "I entered into a distant partnership with the FBI, for I was asked to keep an eye on Benham and report anything further I thought un- usual or suspicious. It made a common spy out of me, which, looking back on it, makes me feel a little awk- ward, but I honestly thought I might be dealing with an enemy agent, and I was a bit of a romantic in those days." "And you might have been infected by the times," said Avalon. "I wouldn't be surprised," said MacShannon agree- ably. "At the time, of course, I didn't know exactly what the FBI was doing, but eventually I became friendly with the agent I had first spoken to, especially as it slowly turned out that Benham was indeed more than he seemed, so that the agent couldn't help but think highly of me. " Rubin said, "Then the hidden envelope turned out to be important, I suppose." "Let me tell you how things worked out in order," said MacShannon. "They investigated the letter I gave them for some sort of code. What seemed nonsignificant to me might contain a hidden meaning. They could find none. Nor could they find hidden writing, or anything techni- cally advanced, and that just made my story the more persuasive, since I, of course, had stressed the importance of the envelope from the beginning. "They took to intercepting Benham's mail and open- ing it, reading it, resealing it, and sending it on. I watched the process on one occasion and it gave me a grisly feeling. It seemed so un-American. There was no way of telling at the conclusion that the letter had been opened, or in any way tampered with, and I have never been able to trust my own mail entirely since then. Who knows who might be studying it without my knowl- edge?" Rubin said dryly, "For that matter, phone calls can be listened to, rooms can be bugged, conversations in the open can be overheard. We live in a world devoid of pri- vacy." iTin sure you're right," said MacShannon. "In any case, they were particularly interested in any letters that Benham got from the young woman whose letter I had myself picked up. These had their own points of interest to a nosybody, for, as I was eventually told by my friend the agent, it was plain that there was a burgeoning love affair going on there. The letters grew more impassioned and devoted, but the woman's letters, at least, were al- ways scrawled, brief, and continued to show no great intellectual capacity." Drake grinned. "Intellectual capacity is not necessarily what a man might be after." Halsted asked, "How long did the investigation go on?" "Months," said MacShannon. "It was an on-and-off af- fair." "Say," said Gonzalo, "if this was a love affair, the letter might not be significant in any case. If agents are in the business of collecting and transmitting information, they're not going to fall in love." "Why not?" said Avalon sententiously. "Love comes as it pleases, sometimes to the most unlikely participants in the most unlikely situations. That's why Eros, the god of love, is often pictured as blind." "That's not what I mean," said Gonzalo. "Of course they can fall in love, but they wouldn't use their official communications, if I may call them that, as a vehicle. They'd make love on their own time, so to speak, in their own way, and leave the important messages alone." MacShannon said, "Not if the real messages were on the envelope. The more immaterial the letter itself, the better. Why not carry on a love affair, even a sincere love affair, in the letter itself? Who would think of looking at the envelopes in cases where the letter itself seems so all- important to the writer and reader? If I hadn't seen him save that first envelope-" "Well," said Trumbull, a little impatiently, "get on with it. I have some connection with counterintelligence myself and I'm sure they investigated the envelopes." "They did, indeed," said MacShannon. "Every one of them, whether they were from the young lady or not. At least, the agent told me they did, and I had no reason to think he was lying. Of course, I wondered, at the time if what they were doing was legal. It seemed un-American to me, as I have already said." "Undoubtedly it was illegal," said Trumbull. "They had no evidence of wrongdoing. Saving an empty enve- lope may be puzzling, but it is'not a crime. Still, national security purifies a multitude of sins and a bit of illegality here and there is winked at." "had in principle," growled Rubin. "A bit of illegality leads to a lot, and in no time we'd be at the Gestapo level." "We aren't yet," said Trumbull, "and there's a tight rein placed on these organizations." "Yes, when they're caught," said Rubin. "And they're caught often enough to be kept within bounds. Come on, Manny, let's let MacShannon proceed. You were telling us they inspected the envelopes." "Yes, they did," said MacShannon. "They removed the stamps to see what might be underneath. They studied every bit of writing on the envelope to the last detail and they subjected the paper to every known test. They even substituted new envelopes which they made just like the old except that they made small nonsignificant changes. They wanted to see if the new envelope had something distorted that would reduce its message to nonsense." Drake said, "That's a lot of trouble to take for anything as thin as your story. "You can thank McCarthy," said MacShannon briefly. "But they never did find anything either in the letters or on the envelopes." Rubin said, "Hold on, Mr. MacShannon, when you started this story, you said that as a result of your interest in envelopes, you caught an honest-to-Pete spy. Did you or didn't you?" "I did," said MacShannon urgently, "I did. "Are you going to tell us," said Rubin, "that as a result of the investigation, a different person altogether was trapped as the spy?" "No, no. It was Benham. Benbam. "But you said the letters and the envelopes showed nothing. You did say that, didn't you?" "I didn't quite say they showed nothing, but I did say the FBI found nothing in the correspondence. However, they didn't confine themselves to that. They worked at the other end-his job. They inspected his work record, kept him under hidden surveillance, and eventually found out what he was doing and with whom. I gathered that quite a substantial spy ring was broken and I got some nice words from the bureau. Nothing official, of course, but it was the big excitement of my life and I owed it all, in a way, to my having collected postmarks as a boy." There was perhaps less satisfaction on the faces of the assembled Black Widowers than there was on MacShan- non's. Avalon said, "What about the young woman? Ben- ham's light o" love? Was she picked up, too?" For a moment, MacShannon looked uncertain. "I'm not dead sure," he said. "I was never told. My impression at the time was that there was insufficient evidence in her case, since they got nothing out of the letters or enve- lopes. -But that's the one thing that bothers me. I got Benham because he had saved that envelope. Why couldn't they find anything on the envelopes, then? If Benham and company had some secret communication system that the FBI didn't penetrate, who knows what damage has been done since then by its means." Halsted said, "Maybe the FBI found nothing on the envelope because there was nothing to find there. Even spies can't be spies every minute of the day. Maybe the love affair was only a love affair." MacShannon's good humor, until then unfailing, be- gan to evaporate. He looked a little grim as he said, "But then why did he save that envelope? It always comes down to that. We're not talking about an ordinary per- son, but about a spy, a real spy. Why should he discard a letter so casually that anyone could pick it up, and save an empty envelope. There has to be a reason. If there's an innocent reason that has nothing to do with his profes- sion, what is it?" Avalon said gently, "I take it that you yourself have never thought of an adequate reason, Mr. MacShannon." "None, except that the envelope bore a message of some sort," said MacShannon. "I suspect," said Rubin, "that you haven't tried think- ing of what we have been calling an innocent explana- tion, Mr. MacShannon. Perhaps you have been too satis- fied with your message theory." "In that case, you think of an alternate reason, Mr. Rubin," said MacShannon defiantly. "Now wait," said Halsted, "the spy thing was not Mr. MacShannon's original assumption. At first he thought that Benham was collecting postmarks-or possibly stamps, for that matter. Suppose that very first thought was correct." MacShannon said, "Don't underestimate the FBI. I had mentioned my original thought and, on one occa- sion, they managed to search his apartment. There were no signs of any collecting mania of any kind. Certainly, there were no envelope collections. They told me so." "You might have told us that," said Rubin. "I just have," said MacShannon, "but it's not impor- tant. The chance of his saving the envelope for collecting purposes was so small that it made no sense to dwell on it. -Well, then, have you come up with some other ex- planation for saving the envelope, Mr. Rubin? Or any of you?" Drake said, "It could have been a thoughtless action. People do things out of habit, all sorts of silly things. Your Mr. Benham meant to save the letter and discard the envelope and, without thinking, he did the reverse." "I can't believe that," said MacShannon. "Why not? It's called being absentminded," said Drake. "Later, when he found he had saved the envelope, he may have gone downstairs to recover the letter and found it gone." MacShannon said, "A man whose career is espionage is surely not absentminded. He wouldn't last long if he were. Besides, he knew what he was doing. He read the letter and crumpled it at once and discarded it. Then he looked at the envelope thoughtfully and put it away care- fully. He knew what he was doing." "Are you sure?" said Drake. "It happened thirty-six years ago. With all due respect, you may be honestly re- membering what you want to remember." "Not at all," said MacShannon frigidly. "It was the big excitement of my life and I spent a lot of time thinking about it. My memory is accurate." Drake shrugged. "If you insist, it's impossible to argue, of course." MacShannon looked about the table from face to face. "Now, then, who has an alternate explanation? No col- lection. No absentmindedness. What else? -And no sen- timental attachment for the writer. There might have been a love affair afterward, but that letter Benham dis- carded was clearly the first one he had received. He had just met her. And even if it was love at first sight, some- thing he didn't strike me as subject to, he would have kept the letter, not the envelope." There was silence around the table and MacShannon said, "There you are! It's bothered me for all these years. What was there about the envelope that defeated the FBI? I guess I'll just have to keep on wondering for the rest of my life." "Wait," said Avalon, "the communication, if there was indeed one, may have been on the first envelope only, the one he saved and the one that the FBI presumably never saw. All the others may have been clean and irrelevant." MacShannon's little beard quivered at that. "I'll leave it to Mr. Trumbull," he said. "He said he was with counterintelligence. Does a conspirator of some sort give up a method of communication once it has been proven successful?" Trumbull said, "It's not a cosmic law, but successful gambits are not lightly abandoned, it's true. However, it might no longer have been particularly successful. That envelope he kept may have just happened to be the last of a line of such things that was using a technique that had grown risky. It could then have been abandoned." "Might! May have! Could have been!" said MacShan- non, his voice rising to a squeak. "We have two actual facts. The man was a spy. The man did keep an empty envelope. Let's find an explanation as to why a spy should keep an empty envelope, an explanation that isn't pure speculation." Again there was silence about the table and MacShan- non smiled sardonically and said, "There is no such ex- planation, except that it bore a message." At this point, Henry, from his post at the sideboard, said mildly, "May I offer a suggestion?" MacShannon whirled at this unexpected entry into the conversation and said in annoyed fashion, "What is it you want, waiter?" Gonzalo immediately held up his hand in a stop ges- ture and said, "Henry is a member of the club, Frank. He's expected to contribute." "I see," said MacShannon, without any noticeable eas- ing of his manner. "What is it you wish to say, then, my man?" "Only, Sir, that saving an empty envelope is something so reasonable that any of us might do it and that each of us may, in fact, have done so at some time or another." :"I deny that," said MacShannon. "Consider, Sir," said Henry quietly, "that the letter you obtained from the trash can was, as you yourself have said, the first between them. They had been out together on a date or, perhaps, as the result of a casual meeting. They talked. She told him of her difficulties in locating a suitable job, and he offered to help her. Since he was not an agreeable character from your description of him, Mr. MacShannon, he must have been attracted to her and strove to be agreeable against his natural bent. We don't know if she was young and pretty, but that's a reasonable assumption. She must have been attracted to him, too. Certainly the letter expressed gratitude and en- couraged a continuation of the correspondence. She said, "Please let me know." And, in fact, there was further cor- respondence and there is apparently no question but that a certain romance eventually began between them. Would you judge me correct in all this?" "Yes," said MacShannon, "but what of it?" "We might further reason," said Henry, "that Mr. Ben- ham would want to continue the correspondence with a woman who may have been young and pretty and was certainly being grateful and inviting. Now you told us the contents of the letter, Mr. MacShannon, and said you remembered it word for word. It was not a long letter and I accept your memory. It was the letter of a pleasant, but not well-organized, young woman, for you said it was undated, and almost anyone with any sense of order would date a letter." LCY6s," said MacShannon. "It was undated, but I still don't get what you're driving at." Henry said, "Someone casual enough to leave a letter undated may well have omitted other things as well. You said it started, without preamble, with a "Dear Mr. Ben- ham." I take it then that there was no return address in- cluded on the letter sheet." MacShannon's frown smoothed out and he said, with a note of surprise, "No, there wasn't." "Then," said Henry, "since the letter was not a love letter and Benham was not the type, perhaps, to place even a love letter next to his heart, he crumpled it and threw it away. However, he did want to answer it and perhaps encourage a relationship he suspected might be sexually satisfying. People who don't put the return ad- dress on the letter itself often do place it on the envelope. So Mr. Benham looked at the envelope, noted that it ear- ried the return address, and naturally saved it so that he could answer the young lady. Surely that is a reasonable explanation." A wave of brief applause swept the table, and Henry, flushing slightly, said, "Thank you, gentlemen." MacShannon, clearly taken aback, said, "But in that case the envelope had nothing to do with Benham's espi- onage." "As Mr. Halsted said earlier," said Henry, "a spy needn't be a spy every second. There are bound to be intervals of normality. However, he did break a cardinal rule of the profession, I think." "What was that, Henry?" asked Trumbull. "It seems to me that anyone engaged in the difficult profession of espionage must, above all, refrain from at- tracting attention of any kind. The envelope should not have been saved and the letter discarded in front of a witness. It should not even have been opened and read in front of a witness. -Of course, Mr. Benham had no way of knowing that the young man he always studiously ig- nored had once collected postmarks and was therefore sensitized to envelopes. AFTERWORD My favorite time for writing Black Widowers stories is when I'm on vacation. Every once in a while, Janet and I go on a cruise to her- muda. For seven days, I'm away from my typewriter, my word processor, and my reference library. What I do, under such abysmal conditions, is smuggle a pad of paper and some ballpoint pens into my luggage, and then I write fiction. This story and the following one were written on the Bermuda trip in July of 1988, together with a third story that was not a Black Widowers, so the vacation was not entirely a waste of time. Incidentally, it was not till I was putting the stories together for this collection that I noticed that the central point of "The Envelope" was used as a subsidiary point in "Sunset on the Water." That sort of thing is bound to happen once in a while, especially when one writes as much and as assiduously as I do, but it makes me feel had just the same. This story first appeared in the April 1989 issue of Ellery Qyeen Mystery Magazine. THE ALIBI Emmanuel Rubin was in an uncharacteristically mild mood during the cocktail hour preceding the Black Wid- owers" banquet. And uncharacteristically thoughtful, too. -But characteristically didactic. He was saying to Geoffrey Avalon (though his voice was loud enough to reach all corners of the room), "I don't know how many mystery stories-or suspense sto- ries, as they tend to call them these days-have been written, but the number is approaching the astronomical and I certainly haven't read them all. "Of course, the old-fashioned puzzle story is pass6, though I like to write one now and then, but even the modern psychological story in which the crime is merely mentioned in passing, but the inner workings of the criminal's tortured soul occupies thousands of tortured words, may have its puzzle aspects. "What it amounts to is that I'm trying to think up a new kind of alibi that is broken in a new kind of way, and I wonder-what are the odds of my thinking one up that has never been used before? And no matter how ingenious I am, how can I possibly know that someone long ago, in some obscure volume I never read, did not use precisely the same bit of ingenuity? I envy the early practitioners in the field. Almost anything they made up had never been used before." Avalon said, "What's the odds, Manny? If you haven't read all the suspense stories written, neither has any reader. just make up something. If it's a repeat of some obscure device that appeared in a novel published fifty- two years ago, who will know?" Rubin said bitterly, "Somewhere someone will have read that early novel and he'll write to me, very likely sarcastically." Mario Gonzalo, from the other end of the room, called out, "In your case, it won't matter, Manny. There are so many other things to criticize in your stories that proba- bly no one will bother pointing out that your gimmicks are old hat." "There speaks a man," said Rubin, "who in a lifetime of portraiture has produced only caricature." "Caricature is a difficult art," said Gonzalo, "as you would know if you knew anything about art." Gonzalo was sketching the evening's guest in order that the sketch might be added to those that marched along the wall of the room at the Milano Restaurant in which the banquets took place. He had what seemed an easy task this time, for the guest, brought in by Avalon, who was host of the eve- ning, had a magnificent mane of white hair, thick and lightly waved, shining like spun silver in the lamplight. His regular features and spontaneous, even-toothed smile made it quite certain that he was one of those men who grew statelier and more handsome with age. His name was Leonard Koenig and Avalon had introduced him merely as "my friend." Koenig said, "You are making me look something like a superannuated movie star, Mr. Gonzalo." "You can't fool an artist's eye, Mr. Koenig," said Gon- zalo. "Are you one, by any chance?" "No," said Koenig without further elaboration, and Rubin laughed. "Mario is right, Mr. Koenig," said Rubin. "You can't fool an artist eye." With that the conversation grew more general, break- ing off temporarily only when the soft voice of that peer- less waiter, Henry, announced, "Please take your seats, gentlemen. Dinner is being served." -And they sat down to their turtle soup, which Roger Halsted, as the club gourmet, sipped carefully before giving it the bene- diction of a broad smile. Over the brandy, Thomas Trumbull, whose crisply waved white hair lost caste, somehow, against the brighter, softer hair of the guest, took up the task of grill- ing. "Mr. Koenig, how do you justify your existence?" he asked. Koenig smiled broadly. "In view of Mr. Rubin's prob- lems with the invention of alibis, I suppose I can most easily justify my existence by pointing out that in my time I have been a breaker of alibis." "Your profession has not been announced by Jeff," said Trumbull. "May I take it, then, that you are on the police force?" "Not quite. Not on an ordinary police force. I am in counterespionage, or, to put it more accurately, I was. I retired early and moved into the law, which is how I met Jeff Avalon." Trumbull's eyebrows shot up. "Counterespionage?" Koenig smiled again. "I read your mind, Mr. Trum- bull. I know of your position with the government and you're wondering why you don't know my name. I as- sure you I was a minor cog, who, except for one case, never did anything notable. Besides, as you know, it's not department policy to publicize its members. We do our work best in obscurity. And, as I said, I retired early, and have been forgotten in any case." Gonzalo said eagerly, "That alibi you broke. How did you do that?" "It's a long story," said Koenig, "and not something I should talk about in detail." "You can trust us," said Gonzalo. "Nothing that's said at any Black Widowers meeting is ever mentioned out- side. That includes our waiter, Henry, who's himself a member of the club. Tom, tell him." "Well, it's true," said Trumbull reluctantly. "We are all souls of discretion. Even so, though, I can't urge you to talk about matters that should not be talked of." Avalon pursed his lips judiciously. "I'm not sure we can take that attitude, Tom. The conditions of the ban- quet are that the guest must answer all questions and rely on our discretion." Gonzalo said, "Well, look, Mr. Koenig, you can leave out anything you think is too sensitive to talk about. just describe the alibi and don't tell us how you broke it, and we'll break it for you." James Drake chuckled. "Don't make rash promises, Mario." "We can try, anyway," said Gonzalo. Koenig said thoughtfully, "Do you mean you want to make a game of this?" "Why not, Mr. Koenig?" said Gonzalo. "And Tom Trumbull can disqualify himself if it turns out he re- members the case." "I doubt that he will. The whole thing was on a "need to know" basis and he was not part of the same organiza- tion I was." Koenig paused to think for a moment. "I suppose it's possible to play the game, but it was almost thirty years ago. I hope I remember all the details." He cleared his throat and began. "It's interesting," said Koenig, "that Mr. Rubin men- tioned the tales that talk about the psychology of the criminal, because in my old business a lot depended on the psychology of the spy. There were people who be- trayed their country for money, or for spite, or out of sexual infatuation. These are easy to handle, in a way, because they have no strong underpinning of conviction and, if caught, give way easily." "Greed is the thing," said Halsted feelingly, "and you don't have to be a spy. The corrupt politician, the tax- finagling businessman, the industrialist who defrauds the armed forces with overcharges and shoddy work, can damage the country as badly as any spy." "Yes," said Rubin, "but these guys will shout patrio- tism all over the place. They can steal the government and the people blind, but as long as they hang out the flag on Memorial Day, and vilify foreigners and anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, they're great guys." "That's why," said Avalon, "Samuel Johnson pointed out that patriotism was the last refuge of the scoundrel." "Undoubtedly," said Koenig, "but we're veering from the point. I was going on to say that there are also spies who do their job out of a strong ideological feeling. ey may do so out of admiration for the ideals of another nation, or because they feel they are serving the cause of world peace, or in some other way are behaving nobly in their own eyes. We can't really complain about this, for we have people in foreign countries who work for us for similar idealistic reasons and, in fact, we have more of these than our enemies have. In any case, these ideo- logues are the really dangerous spies, for they plan more carefully, are willing to take greater risks, and are far more resolute when caught. A man of that sort was Ste- phen. Notice that I'm using only his first name, and Ste- phen is not the true first name, either." Stephen lived a quiet life [Koenig began]; he did not draw attention to himself. He did not make the mistake of trying to cover his true purposes by an unrealistic profession of patriotism. It's just that he had available to him, in the way of his work and of circumstances, a great many items we did not want the enemy to have. Still, there are many people who know matters that had best be confidential, and the vast majority of them are thor- oughly dependable. There was no reason to suppose that Stephen wasn't as dependable as any of them. However, there were certain data that the enemy would particularly want to have, data to which Stephen had access. He could easily pass it along to the enemy, but if he did, circumstances were such that he would surely be suspected. In fact, there would be what would amount to a moral certainty that he was the culprit. Yet such was the importance of the information that he had to obtain it. Notice, by the way, that I don't tell you anything at all about the nature of the data in question, about the man- ner in which he had access, or the manner in which he would make the transfer. All that is irrelevant to the lit- tle game we are playing. Now let me try to put myself into Stephen's mind- He knew he had to perform the task, and he knew he would instantly be suspected, strongly suspected. He felt that he had to protect himself somehow. It was not so much that he feared imprisonment, for he might be ex- changed. Nor, I imagine, did he fear death, since the cir- cumstances of his life were such that he must have known that he lived with the possibility of death, even unpleasant death, every day. Nevertheless, as a patriot-I suppose he could be con- sidered that if viewed through his own eyes-he did not want to be caught because he knew he could not easily be replaced. Furthermore, if he could somehow be absolved of suspicion, our department would have to look else- where. That would waste our energies and place any number of innocent people under suspicion, all of which would work to our disadvantage. But how could he avoid being caught when he was, of necessity, the obvious culprit? Clearly, he would have to be in two places-in the city, where he could carry through his task, and, at the same time, in a far away place so that it would seem he could not possibly have had anything to do with the task. The only way he could achieve this was to be two people. Here is the way he managed it, as we eventually found out. The country Stephen worked for provided a look- alike, whom we might call Stephen Two. I imagine that if Stephen and Stephen Two stood next to each other it would be easy to distinguish between them, but if some- one saw Stephen Two and then, a few days later, Ste- phen himself, it would seem that he had seen the same person. It also seems logical to suppose that Stephen Two's resemblance to Stephen was reinforced. He would be given Stephen's hairstyling, would cultivate Stephen's thin mustache, would practice Stephen's voice as given on recordings, and his signature as recorded on docu- ments. He would even have learned to make use of some of Stephen's favorite expressions. Naturally, he would have to be someone who spoke English and understood the culture as well as Stephen did. All this must have taken considerable time and effort, but it is a measure of the importance of what the enemy country was after that the time and effort was spent. We eventually pieced together what it was Stephen did and are satisfied that the account is essentially correct. As the time approached, Stephen let it be known, in as ca- sual a manner as seemed appropriate, that he would be going to Bermuda for a week's vacation by way of a cruise ship. When the time came, he went into hiding and changed his appearance slightly, so that he would not readily be recognized while he carried out the theft and transmission of the data as quietly and as obscurely as possible. It was Stephen Two, of course, who took the ship to Bermuda. Stephen himself, as it happened, had never been to Bermuda, and that struck him as a useful fact. Having been there but once would account for the fact that be might not know all there was to know about the island. He had, however, to know what he himself had done on the island, and for that purpose, he had Stephen Two send him, by way of a simple code and a secure accom- modation address, a condensed but detailed account of what he did and saw on Bermuda. In particular, Stephen Two must do a number of unimportant things that he would have to recount in detail, so that Stephen could use them as proof of having been in Bermuda. A casual reference to the unimportant could be made to seem con- vincing evidence. We are quite certain that Stephen ordered Stephen Two to make friends with some reasonably attractive woman on the ship and get along with her well enough so that she would be certain to remember him-yet not so well that she could detect some difference between the two Stephens. In particular, he did not want Stephen Two to get inti- mate and start a romance. I imagine that Stephen did not want to be handed a situation that might make him un- comfortable, and a woman who imagined they had been lovers, when that was something he would not be able to deny without great danger to himself, would certainly represent something uncomfortable. The week during which Stephen Two was in Bermuda must have been a period of great suspense for Stephen. He carried through his own task, but what if the cruise ship foundered, or Stephen Two fell overboard, or had an accident in Bermuda and was hospitalized, crippled, or even killed? Or suppose Stephen Two were finger- printed for some reason, or had turned traitor (or had, from our point of view, defected). Anything like that would have ruined Stephen's alibi and made his jailing certain. In actual fact, of course, none of these things took place. Stephen Two sent his letters faithfully, numbering each so that Stephen could be certain that none had been lost. Stephen carefully memorized each letter as well as he might. Eventually, Stephen Two returned from Bermuda, and with quiet skill faded out and went back to his own country, while Stephen resumed his identity. It was two weeks after the end of the Bermuda trip that we had reason to suspect that the data Stephen had been after had been tampered with. A quick investiga- tion proved the case, and the finger of suspicion pointed forcefully and without question at Stephen. A group of us descended upon him. He was quite admirable in his way. His distress at the loss of the information seemed quite sincere and he ad- mitted ruefully that he was the logical suspect, and in- deed the only one. "But," he said with gentle patience, "I was on the Is- land Duchess from the ninth to the sixteenth, and I was in Bermuda between the eleventh and the fourteenth. If the loss took place during that period, I simply couldn't have done it." He gave us full details and, of course, had ample records to the effect that he had bought tickets, em- barked, disembarked, paid his bar bill and some other expenses, and so on. All seemed in order. It didn't even seem suspicious that he could produce this all on de- mand. He said, "I'm going to claim part of this as a busi- ness expense, so I'll need records for the IRS." There seemed to be a disposition among my confreres to accept this and to wonder if there might be other sus- pects after all. I held off. Stephen seemed, for some rea- son, to be too smooth to me, and I insisted on continuing to question him while others tackled other angles of the case. That was my big achievement as a spy catcher, of course. If I had had one or two more like that, the depart- ment might not have been so willing to let me go when I asked for retirement, but I didn't. This was my one and only. In a second interview, I said to him, "Were you on the ship or on Bermuda every moment from embarkation to disembarkation?" "Yes, of course," he said, "I was at the mercy of the ship." "Not entirely, Sir." He frowned a bit, as though trying to penetrate my meaning, then said, "Do you mean that I might have flown from the ship to here and then back to the ship and, in that way, have been here for the job and there for an alibi?" :,Something like that," I said grimly. "I couldn't get on a plane without identifying myself." "There are such things as deliberate misidentifica- tions." "I understand that," he said, "but I suppose you can check as to whether any helicopter encountered the ship at any time. I suppose you can check every passenger on every plane between here and Bermuda during the time I was on the island and see whether any passenger is unac- counted for, or is anything but a real person distinct from myself " I didn't bother to tell Stephen that such checks were actually under way-and in the end, they uncovered nothing. Our interviews were recorded, of course, with Ste- phen's permission. We had read him his rights, but he said he was perfectly willing to talk and required no law- yer. He was the very model of an innocent citizen confi- dent of his innocence, and that simply raised my suspi- cions somehow. He seemed too good to be true, and too confident. It was about then that I began to wonder if he had a twin brother so that he could seem to be in her- muda even while he was at home. That was checked out, too, and it was established he was a single birth and, indeed, an only son-but the idea of a look-alike re- mained in my mind. I said, in a later interview, "Did you stay on the ship while in Bermuda? Or at a hotel?" "On the ship." "Had you ever been to Bermuda before? Are you a well-known figure there in any way?" "It was my first trip to Bermuda ever." "Is there anyone who can vouch for your presence on the ship each day? Is there anyone who can vouch that you were indeed in Bermuda at those times you were off the ship?" He hesitated. "I was on the cruise alone. I didn't go with any friends. After all, I had no idea, no faintest notion-how could P-that I would have to prove I was on the ship." I half smiled. That seemed a hair too ingenuous. "You're not going to tell me," I said, "that you were a recluse, skulking in corners and speaking to no one." "No," he said, looking a little uncomfortable. "As a matter of fact, I was friendly enough, but I can't guaran- tee that any of the people I interacted with casually would remember me. Except-" "Go on! What is the exception?" "There was a certain young woman I grew friendly with at the start of the cruise. She became my steady companion, so to speak, at ship's meals, and for much of the time on Bermuda. -Don't get me wrong, Mr. Koe- nig. There was nothing improper about the relationship. I'm not a married man, but even so it was just a casual friendship. I think she might remember me. We danced on board ship and, in Bermuda, we visited the aquarium, went on the glass-bottom boat together, took tours, ate at the Princess Hotel. Things like that. She went to the beach alone, though. I tend to avoid the sun." "Did you see her every day?" He thought a moment. "Yes, every day. Not all day, of course. And not at night. She was never in my room and I was never in hers." "We're not concerned with your morals, Sir." "17m sure you're not, but I don't want to say anything that would unfairly reflect on her morals." "That's very considerate of you. What was the young woman's name?" "Artemis." "Artemis?" I said, rather in disbelief. "That's what she told me her name was, and that's what I heard others call her. She was a very pretty woman, in her early thirties I should judge, with dark blond hair and blue eyes. About five feet six in height." "And her last name?" He hesitated. "I don't remember. She may not even have mentioned it. It was shipboard, you know, very in- formal. She called me Stephen. I don't think I ever men- tioned my own last name." "Her address?" "I don't know. She spoke as though she were a New Yorker, but I don't know. You can always look at the ship's records for the week. She'd be listed, and I'd say the chances were virtually zero that there would be two Artemis's. They would surely have her last name and her home address." I turned off the recording device at that and warned him that, as had been established, he would continue to be confined to his apartment for the duration of the ques- tioning, but that anything necessary would be brought to him, and any reasonable errands would be run for him. I was determined to prove if I could that whoever had been on Bermuda, it was not Stephen, but for that I would clearly need the woman. It took three days to arrange matters, and each day was an annoyance. Obviously, I could not keep Stephen un- der wraps indefinitely, and once he began to complain loudly enough, we would have to come up with some- thing definite or let him go. But he did not complain. He continued to be a model citizen and once I had Artemis in tow, I arranged to have her see him when he did not know she was looking at him. She said, "It certainly looks like Stephen." "Let's meet him, then. just act naturally, but please keep your eyes open and let me know if, for any reason, you think it's not the man you met on the ship." I brought her into the room and Stephen looked at her, smiled, and said without hesitation, "Hello, Artemis." She said, a little hesitantly, "Hello, Stephen." She was no actress. She looked at him anxiously, and Stephen would have had to be far less intelligent than he clearly was not to guess that, under instructions, she was trying to tell whether he might not be an imposter. Finally, she said, "He certainly looks like Stephen, ex- cept Stephen had little tufts of hair on the back of the rear end of his fingers. I thought that was so virile. I don't see them now." Stephen didn't seem to mind being discussed in the third person, or to be offended that the woman searched for difference. He merely smiled and held up his hands. "The hair is there." She said, "It should be darker." She didn't sound defi- nite about it, though. Stephen said, "Remember the time when I tripped over my own two left feet while we were dancing and my hand slipped out of yours and you said it was because they were so smooth? That doesn't sound as though you were so terribly impressed over their hairiness, does it?" Artemis's face lit up. She turned to me and said, "Yes, that did happen." "And you remember I apologized for being a clumsy dancer, and you kept saying I was a good dancer, but I knew you were just being sweet, and trying to make me feel better. Remember, Artemis?" She said happily, "Yes, I remember. Hello, Stephen. I'm glad it's you." He said, "Thanks for recognizing me, Artemis. I'd have been in considerable trouble if you hadn't." I interrupted a,bit irritably, I suppose. "Wait, Miss Ca- taldo. Don't rush to conclusions." He said, "Is that your last name, Artemis? They asked me, but I didn't know. You'd never told me." I waved him quiet. I said, "Ask him some questions, Miss Cataldo; little things that he ought to get right." Artemis flushed. "Did you ever kiss me, Stephen?" Stephen looked a little embarrassed. "I did once-just once. In the taxi, Artemis. Remember?" I didn't give the woman a chance to reply. I said sharply, "The details, Stephen. And no hesitation." He shrugged. "We were in the taxi being driven to a place called Spittal Pond, a bird refuge that Artemis wanted to see. Artemis teased me because I said how pleasant it was to be going with a young woman who wanted to see bird refuges and not nightclubs and she said that by the next week, I would have forgotten her completely, and I wouldn't even remember her name. So I said gallantly, "What? Forget Artemis, the chaste hunt- ress?" I reached over her and wrote the name on the ear window on the left. It was a humid day and there was a thin film of moisture on it." "Where does the kiss come in?" I demanded. "Well, I was seated on her right," said Stephen, "and I reached across her chest with my right arm to write her name. My left arm was on the back of the seat." He showed me how it was, stretching his left arm behind an imaginary companion, and then pushing his right hand across in front, so that his arms nearly enclosed that com- panion. "I had just finished writing her name when the taxi lurched, for some reason. My elbow nearly collided with the driver's head so I grabbed Artemis's shoulder to steady myself-pure reflex-and there I was embracing her." He was still demonstrating. "I found the position so irresistible that I kissed her. Only on the cheek, I am sorry to say." I looked at the woman. "Well?" Her eyes were shining. She said, "That's exactly how it happened, Mr. Koenig. This is Stephen, all right. There is just no question about it." She added dramati- cally, "I identify this man as the man on the ship and in Bermuda." Stephen smiled with just a touch of triumph, it seemed to me, and I said, "Very well. You can leave now, Miss Cataldo." And that's it. Koenig stopped talking and looked at the Black Wid- owers with his eyebrows raised. Gonzalo said explosively, "That's it? I thought you said you cracked his alibi." "So I did. But you wanted me simply to tell you about the alibi and that you would then break it down." "And you haven't left out anything?" "Nothing essential," said Koenig. Avalon cleared his throat and said, "I presume you found Stephen Two. That would break the alibi." "So it would," said Koenig cheerfully, "but we never found Stephen Two, I'm sorry to say." Halsted said, "Is it possible that Miss Whatsername was paid off? That she was lying?" "If she was," said Koenig, "we found no evidence to back it. In any case, the alibi was broken quite apart from anything she said or didn't say. -Have any of you gen- tlemen visited Bermuda?" There was a general silence and finally Gonzalo said, "I was taken there when I was four years old or so. I don't remember anything." Trumbull said, "Are you hinting that Stephen got some of the places in Bermuda wrong? Was it that there was no bird refuge of the kind he mentioned or no Prin- cess Hotel or something like that?" "No, he got all the places correct. No mistake that we could find as far as the geography or sights of the place were concerned." Again there was a silence and Drake finally said, "Henry, is there anything about this that strikes you as making sense?" Henry, who was just returning from the reference shelf, said thoughtfully, "I can't speak through firsthand knowledge because I, too, have never been on Bermuda, but it's possible that what Mr. Stephen said may have proved that he was never on Bermuda, either." Drake said in surprise, "Why, what did he say?" Henry said, "Mr. Koenig ended his tale with the ac- count of the kiss in the taxi, so I thought that perhaps something about that account broke the alibi. Now, her- muda is a British crown colony and it strikes me that it may follow British custom as far as traffic is concerned. I have just checked the Columbia Encyclopedia on the ref- erence shelf and it says nothing about that, but it is a possibility. "If, in Bermuda, traffic is always on the left, as it is in Great Britain, the automobiles must have the steering wheel, and, therefore, the driver, on the right side of the front seat as in Great Britain; whereas in the United States, with traffic on the right, steering wheel and driver are on the left. If Mr. Stephen was sitting to the young woman's right and reaching over her to write her name on the left window as he said, he could scarcely have nearly struck the driver when the taxi lurched. The driver would have been on the other side. "I imagine Stephen Two told Mr. Stephen about the kissing incident, but neglected to mention the matter of the steering wheel or the driver, taking that for granted. Mr. Stephen added the matter of the driver for added verisimilitude and that was his great mistake, for, un- doubtedly, Mr. Koenig saw the point at once." Koenig sat back in his chair and smiled admiringly. "That's very good, Henry." "Not at all. The praise is yours, Mr. Koenig," said Henry. "I knew you had broken the alibi; I knew you had done it by reason; and I knew that the reasoning had to be deduced from the facts you gave us. You, in break- ing the alibi, did not have the advantage of that special knowledge." AFTERWORD The influence of my having been on my Bermuda vacation (see the previous Afterword) shows itself clearly in this story, which first ap- peared in the September 1989 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. THE RECIPE Roger Halsted said in a whisper to Geoffrey Avalon, "He's my plumber." Avalon stared at him for a moment or two, more in incredulity than in disapproval. "Your plumber?" "Used to be, actually. He's retired and moved to the suburbs. He's a nice fellow, and if you want to judge by the usual criterion of American success, he has always made a lot more money than I have." "I'm not at all surprised," said Avalon. "A master plumber-" "He was that. And I just teach algebra at a junior high school. No comparison. But, you know, Jeff, we always get professional men as guests at these Black Widower banquets and I thought it would be rather refreshing to have someone who works with his hands." Avalon said, rather unconvincingly, "Far be it from me to indulge in social snobbery, Roger, but he may find us uncomfortable." "You can't tell. -And it may give us a chance to find out about plumbing." In another part of the room, Thomas Trumbull nursed his scotch and soda and said, "I've just read The Third Bullet by John Dickson Carr, Jim." James Drake squinted at Trumbull and said, "That's an oldie." "It's about half a century old, according to the copy- right notice. I read it decades ago, as a matter of fact, but I didn't remember it well enough to spoil my fun. It's one of those locked-room mysteries, you know." "I know. That was Carr's specialty. No one did them as consistently, or as well, as he did." "And yet-" Trumbull shook his head. "Something bothered me." Emmanuel Rubin had gravitated toward the pair at the first mention of a mystery. He said, "Let me guess what's bothering you, Tom. Carr is terrific, but he has his faults. For one thing, his writing tends to be overdramatic so that the reader is always uncomfortably aware that he is reading fiction. Then, when Carr finally gets to the solu- tion, he has devised one that takes at least twenty pages. What's more, it is so intricate that the reader can't follow it without reading it several times, which he never does. And that means that it's all unconvincing." "That's the point," said Trumbull. "That last bit. It's unconvincing. A locked-room mystery is usually so tor- tured in its construction and in its solution that you just can't accept it. I mean, has there ever been a locked-room mystery in real life? Somehow I doubt it." Drake said, "We'd have to ask someone who is a con- noisseur of real-life mysteries. Manny?" "Don't look at me. I confine myself strictly to the fic- tional variety. I've never tried a locked-room mystery be- cause, frankly, I think Carr killed the market for them. I can't bring myself to undertake thinking up a new varia- tion." Mario Gonzalo joined the group at this point. He said, "That reminds me of a game you can try sometimes. It7s called, "What's the greatest not by."" "What does that mean?" said Rubin suspiciously. "As- suming you know." "Easy. It's asking a question like, what's the greatest Elizabethan tragedy not by Shakespeare?" "The usual answer to that," said Rubin, "is Webster's The Duchess of Mafl, though I never liked it." "All right. What's the best waltz not by Johann Strauss?" ""The Merry Widow Waltz" by Franz Lehir, I would say," said Rubin. "What about "The Skater's Waltz"?" demanded Gon- zalo. "A matter of taste," said Rubin. "What's the greatest comic opera not by Gilbert and Sullivan?" "How about Strauss's Die Fledermaus?" said Rubin. "Or anything by Offenbach?" suggested Drake. "And now," said Gonzalo, "what's the greatest locked- room mystery story not written by John Dickson Carr?" There was a tremendous silence, followed by three people beginning to talk at once and others joining. In the increasing babble, Henry, that imperturbable waiter, announced that dinner was served. Halsted's guest, the plumber, was Myron Dynast. His aging had not been entirely graceful. His hair was mostly gone, he had pouches under his eyes, a corrugated neck, and a pronounced paunch. His eyes, however, were sharp, his voice was not harsh, and his vocabulary was reasonably good. Avalon consequently said in a whisper to Halsted, "He doesn't sound like a plumber." Halsted said, "What you really mean, Jeff, is that he doesn't sound like your mental stereotype of a plumber." Avalon drew himself to his full height and brought his formidable eyebrows downward to affix Halsted with an offended glare. But then he thought better of it and said mildly, "Perhaps you're right, Roger." Dynast, however, did not talk a great deal. Whether he was abashed at finding himself in intellectual company, or whether he was simply interested in the topics of con- versation that enlivened the meal, he listened quietly, for the most part, his quick eyes darting from speaker to speaker. Finally, over the brandy, Halsted rattled his spoon against his water glass and said, "Jeff, will you do the honors with respect to our guest." "Gladly," said Avalon. With a somewhat exaggerated courtesy, he turned to Dynast and said, "It is customary at these, our banquets, to begin by asking our guest to justify his existence. How do you justify your existence, Mr. Dynast, or, in other words-" "I don't need other words, Mr. Avalon," said Dynast. "Just being a good plumber is all the justification I need. Has anyone ever awakened in the middle of the night and realized that he suddenly needed a hotshot nuclear physicist? Think of all the emergencies in which you would be a lot happier if you lived next door to a plumber like me than to a professor like-like-" "Like any of us," said Avalon, and cleared his throat. "You are quite right, Mr. Dynast. I accept your answer. Tell me, how long have you been a plumber?" Dynast suddenly looked anxious. "Is this what it's go- ing to be? Are you going to ask me all about plumbing?" "Possibly, Mr. Dynast, we might." Halsted interrupted in his soft voice. "I told you, Mike, that the conditions of the banquet are that you must an- swer all the questions we ask." "I will, Rog, but I've got something more interesting to say-if you'll let me." Avalon paused thoughtfully for a moment, then said, "It is not our intention to hamper you unduly, Mr. Dy- nast. You may tell us what it is you want to say, but if we go back to plumbing, you must accede to that. That is-" "I know what you said, Mr. Avalon, and it's okay with me," said Dynast. "What I want to say is that before the banquet I heard you talking about locked-room myster- It's. I heard you say you didn't know if a locked-room mystery could happen in real life. The thing is that I have one." That brought the table to a frozen moment of immobil- ity. Even Henry, who was quietly and efficiently clearing the last remnants of the banquet, looked up in thoughtful surprise. Finally, Trumbull said in what was almost a hushed tone, "Do you mean you've heard of one, or that you've experienced one? Are you saying that you yourself have been involved in one?" "Not me. My wife. Sbe was." Mario Gonzalo, at the other end of the table, was lean- ing forward in his seat, a look of unholy glee on his face. "Wait awhile, now, Mr. Dynast, are you going to tell us there was a locked room and someone was killed inside and it wasn't suicide and there was no murderer inside and your wife was there and knows all about it?" Dynast stared in horror at that. "Murder? I'm not talk- ing about murder. Good Lord, there was no murder. Nothing like that. " Gonzalo deflated visibly. "Then what are you talking about?" Dynast said, "There was this room that was locked. And something happened that couldn't happen, that's all. And it involved my wife. It doesn't have to be murder to be a locked-room, does i0" Avalon raised his hand and said in his deepest baritone, "I am doing the grilling, gentlemen, so let's have order. This may well be interesting and it may supersede our probing of the plumbing profession, at least temporarily, but let's go about it reasonably." He waited, frowning, for silence, then said, "Mr. Dy- nast, exactly what happened in the locked room that couldn't have happened?" "Something was stolen." "Something of value?" "To my wife, it had a great deal of value. Can I ex- plain? I can't really talk about it without some explain- ing.l Avalon looked about the table. "Are there any objec- tions to our listening to Mr. Dynast?" Gonzalo said, "I have objections to not listening to him." "Yes, Mario, I should suppose you have. Very well, Mr. Dynast, but you must understand we will interrupt with questions at such times as we have any." "Sure, go ahead." Dynast turned to Henry, who had taken up his accustomed position at the sideboard. "Waiter, could I have more coffee?" Henry obliged, and Dynast said, "My wife, gentlemen, was born in a small town. She married me when she was thirty-three and, as it happened, we never had children. We spent some twenty years in the city, but she never got over being a small-town girl. Old-fashioned, too, if you know what I mean." "I'm not sure we do," said Avalon. "What do you mean?" "I mean she went out for church socials, and picnics, and all kinds of neighborhood activities. You couldn't re- ally do much of that in the city, you know, but once I retired and we moved out of town, and bought a nice little house with some land, she went right back into the swim. It was as though she were trying to be a girl again. With no children, and no money problems, she could spend all her time at that sort of thing. And I'm willing -as long as she doesn't drag me into it." "I take it, then, you're not a small-town boy," said Rubin. "Definitely not. I'm a boy out of the concrete can- yons." "Don't you find it rather dull in the suburbs, then?" "Oh, sure, but in the first place, I'm not so far from the city that I can't come in, now and then, to fill my lungs with the foul air. Ginny-that" my wife-doesn't mind. And then, too, I'm not entirely retired. I take on plumb- ing jobs when someone needs it, and that fills some of my time. You know, each plumbing job is different, each one is a challenge, especially if you want to do it well. And the plumbing in the suburbs is just different enough from that in the city to be interesting. Besides-" He paused and flushed a little. "Besides, Ginny has been a good wife. She stuck it out in the city when things weren't so hot sometimes and didn't complain any more than she had to. Now it's her turn and she's happy-or was happyand I wasn't about to spoil it for her. "She keeps busy. Not having children, she sort of makes up for it by always being ready to do some baby- sitting. Half the time, the house has kids in it, running around and making noise. She loves it." "Do you love it?" asked Trumbull, scowling. "No, I don't, but it's her job. She doesn't ask me to help out. I know nothing a out i s. "Does your wife? If she has none of her own-" said Avalon. "Oh, Lord. She just hasn't had anyuh-biologically, but she was the oldest of six. She spent practically all her life till she married me being a kind of assistant mother. Me, I had one big brother and we never got along. Kids are a closed book to me, but I don't miss them. Once we talked about adopting, but I was sort of against it, and she didn't force it on me." Gonzalo said, with a touch of impatience, "Are we get- ting to the locked room?" "There's one more point I have to explain. What makes my wife popular at these church socials is that she's a great cook. I can't explain it myself. I'm just an eater and I don't know what makes food special, but hers is special and I spent my whole life trying not to get fat on her food." He looked down at his abdomen with some chagrin as he said that. "Listen, if she were a had wife, I'd still stand her for the sake of her cooking-but she's a good wife. I don't say her cooking is fancy. She doesn't turn out the kind of food you get in fancy restaurants. Hers is plain stuff, but it melts in the mouth. just to show you, her specialty is blueberry muffins. That doesn't sound like much because you can get them anywhere, but once you taste Ginny's blueberry muffins, you'll never buy them again. Com- pared to hers everything else is trash. "She's got dozens of little things she does better than anyone else. I don't know how. Maybe it's spices, or how she mixes them, or how long she cooks, or who knows- She's just a genius at it, like I'm pretty good at plumbing. When she brings in her creations to one of these socials or picnics she goes to, everyone stands around with their tongues hanging out. And she loves it. It's her passport to fame and success. But what she's proudest of, what's nearest her heart, are those blueberry muffins. "No one can get any recipes out of her. She doesn't have them except in her head, and that's where she keeps them. Secret! They're her crown jewels. She never lets anyone into her kitchen when she's cooking except me, because she knows I don't know what's going on." Drake said, "I remember my mother used to be a bit like that. When cooking is your expertise, you don't want anyone competing with you by making use of your own discoveries." "That's right," said Dynast. "But you know, people kept talking to her about writing down all the recipes and making a book out of it. One of the ladies brought in a friend who worked at a publishing house and she talked to Ginny and said that cookbooks made money, and that a good cookbook of plain food could be a gold mine. She also said that someday Ginny would pass on and it wouldn't be right that her cooking secrets should die with her. She flattered Ginny right out of her shoes, and I could see Ginny was beginning to think there was something to it. "To tell you the truth, I was sort of in favor, too. I would have liked to have her known far and wide for her cooking. I would be proud. So I pushed her, and she began thinking about it even more. "Not that it was easy, you know. She talked about it and she would say things like, "I just cook. I do things without even thinking about it. I add and mix and it's all in my fingertips, not in my brain. If I sit down to write a recipe, I would have to figure each one out." ""Do it anyway," I said. "Even if it's hard, you do it. Writing any kind of book is hard. Why shouldn't a cook- book be hard, too?" "So she started to work at it now and then, and she'd keep all the recipes she worked out in a little fireproof box, which locked up with a key, and she would say to me, "I just can't include the blueberry muffin recipe. That's my secret." I would say, "Come on, Ginny, no secrets," but I knew what she meant. "Those blueberry muffins were the one thing that cre- ated hard feelings against Ginny. They were so good and all the husbands loved them so much that all the wives had their noses out of joint. The other things lots of them could do almost as well, but Ginny's muffins were just out of reach. There was a lot of sentiment that she ought to put the recipe up on the church u etin oar an that it was a lack of Christian charity to hog it like that. But Ginny wouldn't be moved. "Anyway, now you have the explanation. One day, they were having some meeting at the church and, for a wonder, Ginny didn't feel she had to attend. She ex- plained she wanted to stay home and work on her recipes and she said she would take care of some of the younger kids for those who attended the meeting to make up for not going. She ended up with five kids in the house for about three hours. In those three hours, the house was locked up, even the windows, because we had air-condi- tioning. There was no one in the house but Ginny and five little kids. That was it." "Where were you, Mr. Dynast?" asked Avalon. "I was in the city. To tell you the truth, I always try to be elsewhere when the kids get too thick. Ginny doesn't mind. Glad not to have me underfoot, I suppose." Gonzalo said, "Is this the locked room you're talking about, Mr. Dynast? Your house locked up with just your wife and the five children in it?" "That's right." "I should have thought," said Avalon, "that Mrs. Dy- nast would get very little work done with five children underfoot." "It wasn't had," said Dynast. "Four of the children were old-timers, so to speak, who'd been in the house lots of times. They knew Ginny and Ginny knew them. They were all three or four years old and they had cook- It's and milk, and toys, and games. One of the children was new, but he was the best one. He belonged to a cousin of one of the regular mothers. The cousin and her husband were both going to the meeting with the mother, and Ginny was glad to take on the new child. His name was Harold and he was maybe almost five, very well-behaved and good-natured, according to Ginny. He helped take care of the other children, in fact. He was very good with them. "So Ginny kept working on her recipes and, for the first time, she actually wrote down the recipe for her blueberry muffins. She hated to do it, she said, so she wrote it down in pencil, lightly, as though that were equivalent to only half writing it down. Even so, she lost heart because just before it was all over and the children were taken away, she tore the card into confetti. "That was what was so impossible to explain. She had written down the recipe near the start of her babysitting stint; she had torn it up near the end. It had existed maybe two and a half hours in that closed house, with no one inside but her and the five children, and during that two-and-a-half-hour period the recipe was stolen. -Wouldn't you call that a locked-room mystery?" Trumbull said, "The recipe was stolen? I thought you said she tore it up." "I didn't say the piece of paper was stolen. The recipe on it was stolen. The next day that recipe was on the church bulletin board, word for word, as she had written it. Poor Ginny. She was devastated. Since then, she's just been a different woman. She's not going to do the cook- book now, and she's not going to have anything to do with the church anymore." "She's angry with the whole church?" said Gonzalo. "Who did the stealing?" "She doesn't know, and I don't know. We don't know who stole it and we don't know how it was stolen. If we did know, she might get over it. She might have some specific person to be enraged with. She might see it was her own carelessness. As it is " He shook his head. "That's why I was so interested when someone said there were no locked-room mysteries in real life. What do you call this?" There was a silence, and Rubin said, "You were away the whole time? You saw none of this?" "Almost the whole time, Mr. Rubin. I came home just as everything was breaking up. The others were milling about, taking their kids, and thanking Ginny. There was the cousin and her husband, the parents of little Harold. They were both quite short-about five feet tall each- but friendly and pleasant. I saw their boy for a moment. He was introduced to me and shook hands like a little man. It was all the height of pleasantness but, by that time, Ginny had already torn up the recipe and it had already, somehow, been stolen." Halsted leaned back in his chair, hands clasped across his abdomen. "How sure can you be, Mike, that the house was really the equivalent of a locked room, that there was no window open and no way of getting in?" Dynast shook his head. "That really doesn't matter, does it? All the doors and windows were locked, because Ginny is very careful, and as long as the kids are in her care, she wants none of them falling out a window or wandering out of the house. But never mind that. The fact is that she and the recipe were in this particular room and no one entered that room during all the time the recipe existed. It's just not possible that someone might have gotten in without her noticing." "Even if she was absorbed in her recipes?" demanded Rubin. "She wouldn't be that absorbed. The children came first. She would be on the alert at all times." Gonzalo said, "And she never left the room at any time? She didn't go to the bathroom?" "Listen," said Dynast. "We talked about this and I asked her that particular question. No, she didn't have to go to the bathroom, but she did leave the room. She left the house, in fact." "Ah," said Gonzalo. "Why?" "She remembered she had promised to deliver some- thing to the neighbors who lived across the way, and she was afraid she would continue to forget if she didn't bring it over right then. It was only a matter of fifty feet and it would only take a minute. So she ran over, rang the hell, the husband came out, she shoved it into his hands with an explanation-his wife was at the meeting -exchanged two sentences, and dashed back. The whole thing took two minutes at the most." Gonzalo said, "You weren't there, Mr. Dynast. A woman may feel she took only two minutes, and actually take twenty." "Never," said Dynast indignantly. " he had a houseful of kids to take care of. She wouldn't take more than two minutes. She had no reason to take more than two min- utes." "Did she lock the door when she left?" asked Gonzalo. "No, she didn't like to. Without being there, she was afraid that if something happened to her, and then some- thing happened to the children, and there was a locked door to delay people getting in, well- But that doesn't matter. She had the front door under observation at all times. No one approached it. No one came anywhere near it. When she got back, and locked the door again, she asked little Harold if anything at all had happened when she was gone and he said nothing had. Certainly nothing was disturbed and the children seemed perfectly contented." Gonzalo said, "Just the same, it's not really a locked room if it was open at some point." "Let's not be legalistic, Mario," said Avalon. "If the story is accurate, then the house is still the equivalent of a locked room. I must admit, though, that the story is secondhand. I wish we could interview Mrs. Dynast first- hand." "Well, we can't," said Rubin. Trumbull said, "Now wait awhile. If we were talking about something material that was stolen, then the house might be considered a locked room. However, nothing material was stolen. The card on which the recipe was written was destroyed by Mrs. Dynast herself. All that was stolen was the information on the card, and that makes the situation different. -Mr. Dynast, I believe that you implied that Mrs. Dynast's friends, her church- social associates, knew that she was preparing recipes." "Oh, yes, it was big news." "And would they know that she was working on those recipes at this particular time, when the rest attended the church meeting?" "Yes, I believe I mentioned that she had told them so, as her excuse for not going." "And in preparing the recipes, she would label each and identify it, wouldn't she?" "Certainly. In fact, the blueberry muffin recipe would be labeled "Grandma's Blueberry Muffins" because that's how she always referred to them to me and to everyone else. Her grandmother had apparently taught her the recipe and she had then improved on it." "And I presume the room in which she worked had windows." "Yes, of course." "In that case," said Trumbull, you certainly didn't have a locked room. People might not have been able to reach into it physically to steal a recipe card, but they could surely look through a window and read what was on the recipe card, couldn't they?" "No, I don't think so, Mr. Trumbull," said Dynast. "The front of our house was street level, but the ground slanted downward as one moved away from the street. That left room for a basement and garage with openings at ground level in the backyard and with a driveway go- ing back there. But the back rooms, in which Ginny was working and had the kids, was one story high. You couldn't very well look into the windows unless you were ten or eleven feet high, or unless you used a ladder. And I rather think Ginny would have noticed in either case." Trumbull wouldn't let go. "He might have been in a tree, if the room faced a backyard." "He might have been-or she-but there was no tree within twenty feet of those windows. Besides, as I had said, Ginny had been irresolute and had written the rec- ipe very lightly in pencil. I don't think anyone could have read it even if his or her nose had been pressed right up against the glass of the window. And then, to make matters worse, in order to keep it even more secure, Ginny had slipped the recipe under a book after she had written it. It was still under the book when her heart failed her and she took it out to tear it up." Drake said, "Was that the only time the recipe was written down?" "The only time." "And was it really quoted word for word? It couldn't have been a merely similar recipe that someone else had independently invented, could it? After all, I must tell you that even the greatest scientific discoveries are some- times independently thought up by two different scien- tists at more or less the same time. These things do hap- pen.71 "The same words," said Dynast intransigently. "Ginny swears to it and I believe her. At one point, she said, "Stir furiously till your hand is in danger of falling off. Then count ten rapid breaths and-" All that was right there. That's the way she talks about cooking when she talks to me. No one else is likely to talk that same exact way.yl There was silence around the table and Avalon said, "I'm afraid, Mr. Dynast, that I don't see how it could have been done. You're not making this up as a joke, I suppose." Dynast shook his head. "I wish I were, Mr. Avalon, but it's no joke to Ginny, and if we don't find out how it's done, I wouldn't be surprised if, in the end, we'll have to sell our house and move away. Ginny can't hear the thought of living near the people who did this to her." Drake said, "Would you say that your wife has really told the entire truth?" "I'd stake my life on it," said Dynast. "Then with a room containing one woman and five young children you have to conclude that the woman herself stole her own recipe. Do you suppose it is possi- ble that Mrs. Dynast arranged the whole thing herself as an excuse to be able to move away?" Dynast said, "If she wanted'to move, she would just have to say so. She wouldn't have to arrange a big, fancy trick. And if you knew Ginny, you'd know how impossi- ble it would have been for her to play tricks with her blueberry muffins. You can't imagine what they meant to her." Rubin said, "Well, it's the damnedest locked-room mys- tery I've ever heard. There's no solution." At this point, Henry said half apologetically, "Gentle- men?" Rubin looked up. "Come on, Henry, are you trying to tell us there is a solution?" "I can't guarantee it, but I would like to ask Mr. Dy- nast a question." Avalon said, "Would that be all right with you, Mr. Dynast? Henry is a valued member of our organization." "I suppose so," said Dynast. "Sure." "In that case, the oldest child-Harold." "Yes?" "How old did you say Harold was?" "Five at the most." "How do you know, Mr. Dynast?" "Ginny said so." "How did she know, Mr. Dynast?" "I suppose she asked him." "Did she say she had asked him?" "N-no. -But I saw him myself when I came home. I told you. He was a little fellow. Five at the outside." "But, Mr. Dynast, you also said that you saw Harold's parents and that each was five feet tall. You wouldn't say that because they were each five feet tall they were teen- agers." "No. They were just short." "Exactly. And short parents may well have short chil- dren. It is possible that Harold may look five, judging by his height and size, and yet be eight years old. And, for all we may know, he may be uncommonly bright for eight." "Good Lord," said Avalon. "Do you really think that could be so, Henry?" "Consider the consequences, Mr. Avalon, if it is so. One of the women of the neighborhood desperately wants the recipe. She has a short sister who has married a short man, and the two have an uncommonly small boy, who happens to be a prodigy. He is a bright eight-year- old who can easily pass for an unremarkable five-year- old. This bright boy is placed in your house, Mr. Dynast, and told what to look for. "Mrs. Dynast would feel no concern if this little boy were watching her, or staring curiously at what she is writing. He is, after all, to all appearances, a preschool youngster who cannot read. He might see her do a recipe for "Grandma's Blueberry Muffins" and place it under a book. Then, when she leaves on her errand, even if it is only for two minutes, the boy can take the recipe out from under the book, read it, memorize it, and put it back. It would not be a terribly long thing to memorize, and particularly bright children can pick up such things as though their minds were blotting paper. I remember that well from my own childhood." Gonzalo said triumphantly, "Sure. That explains it, and there's no other explanation possible." Henry said, "It is merely a possibility. However, if you can find out the name of the cousin and her husband, it would be simple to find out how old the boy is, what school he is going to, what grade he is in, and how well he is doing. If the woman refuses to give you any infor- mation about her cousin and her nephew, then that in itself would strongly imply that our theory is correct." "Who'd have thought it?" said Dynast blankly. Henry murmured, "There must be a rational explana- tion to everything, Sir, and, as usual, the Black Widowers had carefully eliminated all possible explanations and left me to point out what remained." AFTERWORD I was reading The Tbird Bullet by John Dickson Carr, as Trumbull did in the story, and it occurred to me that I had never written a Black Widowers story involving a locked-room mystery. Naturally, I was at once overwhelmed with a desire to do so, but it didn't seem possible to me to think up a new gimmick involving a locked room. John Dickson Carr had simply done it all, and other writers had filled in what inconsiderable gaps might remain. However, I hated to give up. Could I possibly think of some new way of explaining a locked-room mystery? And to my astonishment, I found I could. In great excitement, I sat down and wrote "The Recipe" in one sitting-the whole thing. I don't think I ever enjoyed writing a story more. The Cross of Lorraine. Emmanuel Rubin did not, as a general rule, ever allow a look of relief to cross his face. Had one done so, it would have argued a prior feeling of uncertainty or apprehension, sensations he might feel but would certainly never admit to. This time, however, the relief was unmistakable. It was monthly banquet time for the Black Widowers; Rubin was the host, and it was he who was supplying the guest; and here it was about twenty minutes after seven and only now-with but ten minutes left before the banquet was to start only now did his guest arrive. Rubin bounded toward him, careful, however, not to spill a drop of his second drink. "Gentlemen," he said, clutching the arm of the newcomer, "my guest, the Amazing Larri-spelled L-A-R-R-I." And in a lowered voice, over the hum of pleased-to-mect-yous, "Where the hell were you?" Larri muttered, "The subway train stalled." Then returned smiles and greetings. "Pardon me," said Henry, the perennial-and nonpareil-waiter at the Black Widower banquets, "but there is not much time for the guest to have his drink before dinner begins. Would you state your preference, sir?" "A good notion, that," said Larri, gratefully. "Thank you, waiter, and let me have a dry martini, but not too darned dry-a little damp, so to speak." "Certainly, sir," said Henry. Rubin said, "I've told you, Larri, that we members all have our ex officio doctorates, so now let me introduce them in nauseating detail. This tall gentleman with the neat mustache, black eyebrows, and straight back is Dr. Geoffrey Avalon. He's a lawyer and he never smiles. The last time he tried, he was fined for contempt of court." Avalon smiled as broadly as he could and said, "You undoubtedly know Manny well enough, sir, not to take him seriously." "Undoubtedly," said Larri. As he and Rubin stood together, they looked remarkably alike. Both were of a height-about five feet, five-both had active, inquisitive faces, both had straggly beards, though Larri's was longer and was accompanied by a fringe of hair down either side of his face as well. Rubin said, "And here, dressed fit to kill anyone with a real taste for clothing, is our scribble expert, Dr. Mario Gonzalo, who will insist on producing a caricature of you in which he will claim to see a resemblance. Dr. Roger Halsted inflicts pain on junior-high students under the guise of teaching them what little he knows of mathematics. Dr. James Drake is a superannuated chemist who once conned someone into granting him a Ph.D. And finally, Dr. Thomas Trumbull, who works for the government in an unnamed job as code expert and who spends most of his time hoping Congress doesn't find out." "Manny," said Trumbull wearily, "if it were possible to cast a retroactive blackball, I think you could count on five." And Henry said, "Gentlemen, dinner is served." It was one of those rare Black Widower occasions when the entr6e was lobster, rarer now than ever because of the increase in prices. Rubin, who as host bore the cost, shrugged it off. "I made a good paperback sale last month and we can call this a celebration." "We can celebrate," said Avalon, "but lobster tends to kill conversation. The cracking of claws and shells, the extraction of meat, the dipping in melted butter, takes one's full concentration."- And he grimaced with the effort he was putting into the compression of the nutcracker. "In that case," said the Amazing Larri, "I shall have a monopoly on the conversation," and he grinned with satisfaction as a large platter of primerib roast was dexterously placed before him by Henry. "Larri is allergic to seafood," said Rubin. Conversation was indeed subdued as Avalon had predicted until the various lobsters had been clearly worsted in culinary battle, and then, finally, Halsted asked, "What makes you Amazing, Larri?" "Stage name," said Larri. "I am a prestidigitator, an escapist extraordinaire, and the greatest living exposeur." Trumbull, who was sitting to Larri's right, formed ridges on his bronzed forehead. "What the devil do you mean by exposeur?" Rubin beat a tattoo on his water glass at this point and said, "No grilling till we've had our coffee." "For God's sake," said Trumbull, "I'm just asking the definition of a word. "Host's decision is final," said Rubin. Trumbull scowled blackly in Rubin's direction. "Then I'll guess the answer. An exposeur is one who exposes fakes; people who, using trickery of one sort or another, pretend to produce effects they attribute to supernatural or paranatural forces." Larri thrust out his lower lip, raised his eyebrows, and nodded his head. "Pretty good for a guess. I couldn't have put it better." Gonzalo said, "You mean that whatever someone did by what he claimed was real magic, you could do by stage magic." "Exactly," said Larri. "For instance, suppose that some mystic claimed he had the capacity to bend spoons by means of unknown forces. I can do the same by using natural force, this way." He lifted his spoon and, holding it by its two ends, he bent it half an inch out of true. Trumbull said, "That scarcely counts. Anyone can do it that way." "Ah," said Larri, "but this spoon you saw me bend is not the amazing effect at all. That spoon you were watching merely served to trap and focus the ethereal rays that did the real work. Those rays acted to bend your spoon, Dr. Trumbull." Trumbull looked down and picked up his spoon, which was bent nearly at right angles. "Hom, did you do this?" Larri shrugged. "Would you believe ethereal forces?" Drake laughed and, pushing his dismantled lobster toward the center of the table, lit a cigarette. He said, "Larri did it a few minutes ago, with his hands, when you weren't looking." Larri seemed unperturbed by exposure. "When Manny banged his glass, Dr. Trumbull, you looked away. I had rather hoped you all would." Drake said, "I know better than to pay attention to Manny." "But," said Larri, "if no one had seen me do it, would you have accepted the ethereal forces?" "Not a chance," said Trumbull. "Even if there had been no way in which you could explain the effect? Here, let me show you something. Suppose you wanted to flip a coin . . ." He fell silent for a moment while Henry passed out the strawberry shortcake, pushed his own out of the way, and said, "Suppose you wanted to flip a coin, without actually lifting it and turning it-this penny, for instance. There are a number of ways it could be done. The simplest would be simply to touch it quickly, because, as you all know, a finger is always slightly sticky, especially so at mealtime, so that the coin lifts up slightly as the finger is removed and can be made to flip over. It is tails now, you see. Touch it again and it is heads." Gonzalo said, "No prestidigitation there, though. We see it flip." "Exactly," said Larri, "and that's why I won't- do it that way. Let's put something over it so that it can't be touched or flipped. Suppose we.use a " He looked about the table for a moment and seized a salt shaker. "Suppose we use this." He placed the salt shaker over the coin and said, "Now it is showing heads? . . ." "Hold on," said Gonzalo. "How do we know it's showing heads? It could be tails and then, when you reveal it later, you'll say it flipped, when it was tails all along." "You're perfectly right," said Larri, "and I'm glad you raised the point. Dr. Drake, you've got eyes that caught me before. Would you check this on behalf of the assembled company? I'll lift the salt shaker and you tell me what the coin shows." Drake looked and said, "Heads!" in his softly hoarse voice. "You'll all take Dr. Drake's word, I hope, gentlemen? Please, watch me place the salt shaker back on the coin and make sure it doesn't flip in the process. . . ." "It didn't," said Drake. "Now to keep my fingers from slipping while performing this trick, I will put this paper napkin over the salt shaker." Larri molded the paper napkin neatly and carefully over the salt shaker, then said, "But, in manipulating this napkin, I caused you all to divert your attention from the penny and you may think I have flipped it in the process." He lifted the salt shaker with the paper about it and said, "Dr. Drake, will you check the coin again?" Drake leaned toward it. "Still heads," he said. Very carefully and gently, Larri put back th-e salt shaker, the paper napkin still molded about it, and said, "The coin remained as is?" "Still heads," said Drake. "In that case, I now perform the magic." Larri pushed down on the salt shaker, and the paper collapsed. There was nothing inside. There was a moment of shock, and then Gonzalo said, "Where's the salt shaker?" "In another plane of existence," said Larri airily. "But you said you were going to flip the coin." "I lied." Avalon said, "There's no mystery. He had us all concentrating on the coin as a diversion tactic. When he picked up the salt shaker with the napkin around it to let Jim look at the coin, he just dropped the salt shaker into his hand and placed the empty, molded napkin over the coin." "Did you see me do that, Dr. Avalon?" asked Larri. "No. I was looking at.the-coin, too." "Then you're just guessing," said Larri. Rubin, who had not participated in the demonstration at all, but who had eaten his strawberry shortcake instead and now waited for the others to catch up, said, "The tendency is to argue these things out logically and that's impossible. Scientists and other rationalists; are used to dealing with the universe, which fights fair. Faced with a mystic who does not, they find themselves maneuvered into believing nonsense and, in the end, making fools of themselves. "Magicians, on the other hand," Rubin went on, "know what to watch for, are experienced enough not to be misdirected, and are not impressed by the apparently supernatural. That's why mystics generally won't perform if they know magicians are in the audience." Coffee had been served and was being sipped at, and Henry was quietly ar ng the brandy, when Rubin sounded the water glass and said, ntliemen, it is time for the official grilling, assuming you idiots have left anything to grill. Geoff, will you do the honors today?" Avalon cleared his throat portentously and frowned down upon the Amazing Larri from under his dark and luxuriant eyebrows. Using his voice in the deepest of its naturally deep register, Avalon said, "It is customary to ask our guests to justify their existences, but if today's guest exposes phony mystics even now and then, 1, for one, consider his existence justified and will pass on. "The temptation is to ask you how you performed your little disappearing trick of a moment ago, but I quite understand that the ethics of your profession preclude your telling us. Even though everything said here is considered under the rose, and though nothing has ever leaked, I will refrain from such questions. "Let me instead, then, ask after your failures. Sir, you describe yourself as an exposeur. Have there been any supposedly mystical demonstrations you have not been able to duplicate in prestidigitous manner and have not been able to account for by natural means?" Larri said, "I have not attempted to explain all the effects I have ever encountered or heard of, but where I have studied an effect and made an attempt to duplicate it, I have succeeded in every case." "No failures?" "None!" Avalon considered that, but as he prepared for the next question, Gonzalo broke in. His head was leaning on one palm, but the fingers of that hand were carefully disposed in such a way as not to disarray his hair. He said, "Now, wait, Larri, would it be right to suggest that you tackled only easy cases? The really puzzling cases you might have made no attempts on." "You mean," said Larri, "that I shied away from anything that might spoil my perfect record or that might upset my belief in the rational order of the universe? If so, you're quite wrong, Dr. Gonzalo. Most reports of apparent mystical powers are dull and unimportant, are crude and patently false. I ignore those. The cases I do take on are precisely the puzzling ones that have attracted attention because of their unusual nature and their apparent divorce from the rational. So you see, the ones I take on are precisely those you suspect I avoid." Gonzalo subsided and Avalon said, "Larri, the mere fact that you can duplicate a trick by prestidigitation doesn't mean that it couldn't have been performed by the mystic through supernatural means. The fact that human beings can build machines that fly doesn't mean that birds are man-made machines." "Quite right," said Larri, "but mystics lay their claims to supernatural powers on the notion, either expressed or implicit, that there is no other way of producing the effect. If I show that the same effect can be produced by natural means, the burden of proof then shifts to them to show that the effect can be produced after the natural means I have used are made impossible. I don't know of any mystic who has accepted the conditions set by professional magicians to guard against trickery and who then succeeded." "And nothing has ever puzzled you? Not even the tricks other magicians have developed?" "Oh yes, there are effects produced by some magicians that puzzle me in the sense that I don't know quite how they do it. I might duplicate it but perhaps using a different method. In any case, that's not the point. As long as an effect is produced by natural means, it doesn't matter whether I can reproduce it or not. I am not the best magician in the world. I am just a better magician than any mystic is." Halsted, his high forehead flushed with anxiety, and stuttering slightly in his eagerness to speak, said, "But then nothing would startle you? No disappearance like that you carried through on the salt shaker? . . ." "You mean that one?" asked Larri, pointing. There was a salt shaker in the middle of the table, but no one had seen it placed there. Halsted, thrown off a moment, recovered and said, "Have you ever been startled by any disappearance? I heard once that magicians have made elephants disappear." "Actually, making elephants disappear is childishly simple. I assure you there's nothing puzzling about disappearances in a magic act." And then a peculiar look crossed Larri's face, a flash of sadness and frustration. "Not in a magic act. just. -- .". "Yes?" said Halsted. "Just what?" "Just in real life," said Urri, smiling and attempting to toss off the remark lightheartedly. "Just a minute," said Trumbull, "butwe don't let that pass. If there has been a disappearance in real life you can't explain, we want to hear about it." Larri shook his head, "No, no, Dr. Trumbull. It is not a mysterious disappearance or an inexplicable one. Nothing like that at all. I just lostsomething, and can't find it and it-saddens me." "The details," said Trumbull." "It wouldn't be worth it," said Larri. "It's a-silly story and. somewhat ." He fell into silence. "Goddamn it," thundered Trumbull, "we all sit here and voluntarily refrain from asking anything that might result in your being tempted to violate your ethics. Would it violate the ethics of the magician's art for you to tell this story?" "It's not that at all. "Well, then, sir, I repeat what Geoff has told you. Everything said here is in confidence and the agreement surrounding these monthly dinners is that all questions must be answered. Manny?" Rubin shrugged. "That's the way it is, Larri. If you don't want to answer the question, we'll have to declare the meeting at an end." Larri sat back in his chair and looked depressed. "I can't very well allow that to happen, considering the fine hospitality I've been shown. I will tell you the story and you'll find there's nothing to it. I met a woman quite accidentally; I lost touch with her; I can't locate her. That's all there is." "No," said Trumbull, "that's not all there is. Where and how did you meet her? Where and how did you lose touch with her? Why can't you find her again? We want to know the details." Gonzalo said, "In fact, if you tell us the details, we may be able to help YOU. Pf Larri laughed sardonically, "I think not." "You'd be surprised," said Gonzalo. "In the past. Avalon said, "Quiet, Mario. Don't make promises we might not be able to keep. Would you give us the details, sir? I assure you we'll do our best to help." Larri smiled wearily. "I appreciate your offer, but you will see that there is nothing you can do sitting here." He adjusted himself in his seat and said, "I was done with my performance in an upstate town-I'll give you the details when and if you insist, but for the moment they don't matter, except that this happened about a month ago. I had to get to another small town some hundred fifty miles away for a morning show and that meant a little transportation problem. "My magic, unfortunately, is not the kind that can transport me a hundred fift y miles in a twinkling, or even conjure up a pair of seven-league boots. I did not have my ear with me-just as well, for I don't like to travel the lesser roads at night when I am sleepy-and the net result was that I would have to take a bus that would make more stops than a t.elegram and would take nearly four hours to make the journey. I planned to catch some sleep while on wheels and make it serve a purpose anyway. "But when things go wrong, they go wrong in battalions, so you can guess that I missed my bus and that the next one would not come along for two more hours. There was an enclosed station in which I could wait , one that was as dreary as you could imagine-with no reading matter ex cept for some fly-blown posters on the wall-no place to buy a paper or a cup of coffee. I thought grimly that it was fortunate it wasn't raining, and settled down to drowse, vhen my luck changed. "A woman walked in. I've never been married, gentlemen, and I've never even had what young people today call a "meaningful relationship." Some casual attachments, perhaps, but on the whole, though it seems trite to say so, I am married to my art and find it much more satisfying than women, generally. "I had no reason to think that this woman was an improvement on others, but she had a pleasant appearance. She was something over thirty, and was just plump enough to have a warm, comfortable look about her, and she wasn't too tall. "She looked about and said, smiling, "Well, I've missed my bus, I see." "I smiled with her. I liked the way she said it. She didn't fret or whine or act annoyed at the universe. It was a flat, good-humored statement of fact, and just hearing it cheered me up tremendously because actually I myself was in the mood to fret and whine and act annoyed. Now I could be as good-natured as she and say, "Two of us, madam, so you don't even have the satisfaction of being unique." ""So much the better," she said, "We can talk and pass the time that much faster." "I was astonished. She did not treat me as a potential rapist or as a possible thief. God knows I am not handsome or even particularly respectable in appearance, but it was as though she had casually penetrated to my inmost character and found it satisfactory. You have no idea how flattered I was. If I were ten times as sleepy as I was, I would have stayed up to talk to her. "And we did talk. Ins ,ide of fifteen minutes, I knew I was having the pleasantest conversation in my life-in a crummy bus station at not much before midnight. I can't tell you all we talked about, but 1 can tell you what we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about magic. "I can interest anyone by doing tricks, but then it isn't me they're interested in; it's the flying fingers and the patter they like. And while I'm willing to buy attention in that way, you don't know how pleasant it is to get the attention without purchase. She apparently just liked to listen to me, and I know I just liked to listen to her. "Fortunately, my trip was not an all-out effort, so I didn't have my large trunk with the show-business advertising all over it, just two rather large valises. I told her nothing personal about myself, and asked nothing about her. I gathered briefly that she was heading for her brother's place; that he was right on the road; that she would have to wake him up because she had carelessly let herself be late-but she only told me that in order to say that she was glad it had happened. She would buy my company at the price of inconveniencing her brother. I liked that. "We didn't talk politics or world affairs or religion or theater. We talked people-all the funny and odd and peculiar things we had observed about people. We laughed for two hours, during which not one other person came to join us. I had never had anything like that happen to me, had never felt so alive and happy, and when the bus finally came at 1: 50 A.M., it was amazing how sorry I was. I didn't want the bus to come; I didn't want the night to end. "When we got onto the bus, of course, it was no longer quite the same thing, even though it was sufficiently nonfull for us to find a double seat we could share. After all, we had been alone in the station and there we could talk loudly and laugh. On the bus we had to whisper; people were sleeping. "Of course, it wasn't all had. It was a nice feeling to have her so close to me; to be making contact. Despite the fact that I'm rather an old horse, I felt like a teen-ager. Enough like a teen-ager, in fact, to be embarrassed at beipg watched. ,Immediately across the way were a woman and her young son. He was about eight years old, I should judge, and he was awake. , He kept watching me with his sharp little eyes. I could see those eyes fixed on us every time a street light shone into the bus and it was very inhibiting. I wished he were asleep but, of course, the excitement of being on a bus, Perhaps, was keeping him awake. ,"The motion of the bus, the occasional whisper, the feeling of being quite out of reality, the pressure of her body against mine-it was like confusing dream and fact, and the boundary between sleep and wakefulness just vanished. I didn't intend to sleep, and I started awake once or twice, but then finally, when I started awake one more time, it was clear that there had been a considerable period of sleep, and the seat next to me was empty." Halsted said, "I take it she had gotten off." "I didn't think she had disappeared into thin air," said Larri. "Naturally, I looked about. I couldn't call her name, because I didn't know her name. She wasn't in the rest room, because its door was swinging open. "The little boy across the aisle spoke in a rapid high treble-in French. I can understand French reasonably well, but I didn't have to make any effort, because his mother was now awake and she translated. She spoke English quite well. "She said, "Pardon me, sir, but is it that you are looking for the woman that was with you?" ""Yes," I said. "Did you see where she got off?" ""Not I, sir. I was sleeping. By my son says that she descended at the place of the Cross of Lorraine." ""At the what?" "She repeated it, and so did the child, in French. "She said, "You must excuse my son, sir. He is a great hero-worshiper of President Charles de Gaulle, and though be is younj he knows the tale of the Free French forces in the war very well. He would not miss a sight like a Cross of Lorraine. If he said he saw it, he did." "I thanked them and then went forward to the bus driver and asked him, but at that time of night, the bus stops wherever a passenger would like to get off, or get on. He had made numerous stops and let numerous people on and off, and he didn't know for sure where he had stopped and whom he had left off. He was rather churlish, in fact." Avalon cleared his throat. "He may have thought you were up to no good and was deliberately withholding information to protect the passenger. "Maybe," said Larri despondently, "but what it amounted to was that I. had lost her. When I came back to my seat, I found a little note tucked into the pocket of the jacket I had placed in the rack above. I managed to read it by a street light at the next stop, where the French mother and son got off. It said, "Thank you so much for a delightful time. Gwendolyn."" Gonzalo said, "You have her first name, anyway." Larri said, "I would appreciate having had her last name, her address, her telephone number. A first name is useless." "You know," said Rubin, "she may deliberately have withheld information because she wasn't interested in continuing the acquaintanceship. A romantic little interlude is one thing; a continuing danger is another. She may be a married woman." "Or she may have been offended at your failing asleep," said Gonzalo. "Maybe," said Larri. "But if I found her, I could apologize if she were offended, or I could reassure her if she feared me; or I might cultivate her friendship if she were neither offended nor afraid. Rather that than spend the rest of my life wondering." "Have you done anything about it?" asked Gonzalo. "Certainly," said Larri, sardonically. "If a magician is faced with a disappearing woman be must understand what has happened. I have gone over the bus route twice by ear, looking for a Cross of Lorraine. If I had found it, I would have gone in and asked if anyone there knew a woman by the name of Gwendolyn. I'd have described her. I'd have gone to the local post office or the local police station, if necessary." "But you have not found a Cross of Lorraine I take it," said Trumbull. "I have not." Halsted said, "Mathematically speaking, it's a finite problem. You could try every post office along the whole route." Larri sighed. "If I get desperate enough, I'll try. But, mathematically speaking, that would be so inelegant. Why can't I find the Cross of Lorraine?" "The youngster might have made a mistake," said Trumbull. "Not a chance," said Larri. "An adult, yes, but a child, riding a bobby? Never. Adults have accumulated enough irrationality to be very unreliable eyewitnesses. A bright eight-year-old is different. Don't try to pull any trick on a bright kid; he'll see through it. "Just the same," he went on, "nowhere on the route is there a restaurant, a department store, or anything else with the name Cross of Lorraine. I think I've checked every st of yellow pages along the entire route.) "Now wait a while," said Avalon, "that's wrong. The child wouldn't have seen the words because they would have meant nothing to him. If he spoke and read only French, as I suppose he did, he would know the phrase as Croix de Lorraine. The English would have never caught his eyes. He must have seen the symbol, the cross with the two horizontal bars, like this." He reached out and Henry obligingly handed him a menu. Avalon turned it over and on the blank back drew the following: "Actually," he said, "it is more properly called the Patriarchal Cross or the Archiepiscopal Cross, since it symbolized the high office of patriarchs and archbishops by doubling the bars. You will not be surprised to hear that the Papal Cross has three bars. The Patriarchal Cross was used as a symbol by Godfrey of Bouillon, who was one of the leaders of the First Cru- sade, and since he was Duke of Lorraine, it came to be called the Cros of Lorraine. As we all know, it was adopted as the emblem of the ree French during the Hitlerian War." He coughed slightly and tried to look modest. Larri said, a little impatiently, "I understand about the symbol, Dr. Avalon, and I didn't expect the youngster to note words. I think you'll agree, though, that any establishment calling itself the Cross of Lorraine would surely display the symbol along with the name. I looked for the name in the yellow pages, but for the symbol on the road." "And you didn't find it?" said Gonzalo. "As I've already said, I didn't. I was desperate enough to consider things I didn't think the kid could possibly have seen at night. I thought, who knows how sharp young eyes are and how readily they may see something that represents an overriding interest. So I looked at signs in windows, at street signs-even at graffiti, damn it." "If it were a graffito," said Trumbull, "then, of course, it could have been erased between the time the child saw it, and the time you came to look for it." "I'm not sure of that," said Rubin. "It's my experience that graffiti are never erased. We've got some on the outside of our apartment house . . . ... "That's New York," said Trumbull. "In smaller towns, there's less tolerance for these evidences of anarchy." "Hold on," said Gonzalo. "What makes you think graffiti are necessarily signs of anarchy? As a matter of fact . . ." "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" And as always, when Avalon's voice was raised to its full baritone splendor, a silence fell. "We are not here to argue the merits and demerits of graffiti. The question is: How can we find this woman who disappeared? Larri has found no restaurant or other establishment with the name of Cross of Lorraine; he has found no evidence of the symbol along the route taken. Can we help?" Drake held up his hand and squinted through the curling smoke of his cigarette. "Hold on, there's no problem. Have you ever seen a Russian Orthodox Church? Do you know what its cross is like?" He made quick marks on the back of the menu and shoved it toward the center of the table. "Here. . . ." He said, "The kid, being hipped on the Free French, would take a quick look at that and see it as the Cross of Lorraine. So what you have to do, Larri, is look for some Russian Orthodox Church en route. I doubt that there would be more than one." Larri thought about it, but did not seem overjoyed. "The cross with that Second bar set at an angle would be on the top of the spire, wouldn't it?" "And it wouldn't be floodlighted, would it? How would the child be able to see it at four o'clock in the morning?" Drake stubbed out his cigarette. "Well, now, churches usually have bulletin board affairs near the entrance. I don't know, there could have been a Russian Orthodox cross on the . "I would have seen it," said Larri firmly. "Could it have been a Red Cross?" asked Gonzalo feebly. "You know, there might be a Red Cross headquarters along the route." "The Red Cross," said Rubin, "is a Greek Cross with all four arms equal. I don't see how that could possibly be mistaken for a Cross of Lorraine by a Free French enthusiast. Look at it. Halsted said, "The logical thing, I suppose, is that you simply missed it, Larri. If you insist that, as a magician, you're such a trained observer that you couldn't have missed it, which sounds impossible to me, then maybe it was a symbol on something movable-on a truck in a driveway, for instance-and it moved on after sunrise." "The boy made it quite clear that it was at the place of the Cross of Lorraine," said Larri. "I suppose even an eight-year-old can tell the difference between a place and a movable object." "He spoke French. Maybe you mistranslated." "I'm not that had at the language," said Larri, "and his mother translated and French is her native tongue." "But English isn't. She might have gotten it wrong. The kid might have said something else. He might not eve have said the Cross of Lorraine." Avalon raised his hand for silence and said, "One moment, gentlemen, I see Henry, our esteemed waiter, smiling. What is it, Henry?" Henry, from his place at the sideboard, said, "Tin afraid that I am amused at your doubting the child's evidence. It is quite certain, in my opinion, that he did see the Cross of Lorraine." There was a moment's silence and Larri said,, "How can you tell that, Henry?" "By not being oversubtle, sir." Avalon's voice boomed out. "I knew it. We're being too complicated. Henry, how is it possible to gain greater simplicity?" "Why, Mr. Avalon, the incident took place at night. Instead of looking at all signs, all places, all varieties of cross, why not begin by asking our- selves what very few things can be easily seen on a highway at night?" "A Cross of Lorraine?" asked Gonzalo incredulously. "Certainly," said Henry, "among other things. Especially if we don't call it a Cross of Lorraine. What the youngster saw as a Cross of Lorraine, out of his special interest, we would see as something else so clearly that its relationship to the Cross of Lorraine would be invisible. What has been happening just now has been precisely what happened earlier with Mr. Larri's trick with the coin and salt shaker. We concentrated on the coin and didn't watch the salt shaker, and now we concentrate on the Cross of Lorraine and don't look for the alternative." Trumbull said, "Henry, if you don't stop talking in riddles, you're fired. What the hell is the Cross of Lorraine, if it isn't the Cross of Lorraine?" Henry said gravely, "What is this?" and carefully he drew on the back of the menu . . . Trumbull said, "A Cross of Lorraine-tilted." "No, sir, you would never have thought so, if we hadn't been talking about the Cross. Those are English letters and a very common symbol on highways if you add something to it. . . . He wrote quickly and the tilted Cross became: "The one thing," said Henry, "that is designed to be seen, without trouble, day or night, on any highway is a gas-station sign. The child saw the Cross of Lorraine in this one, but Mr. Larri, retracing the route, sees only a double X, since he reads the entire word as Exxon. All signs showing this name, whether on the highway, in advertisements, or on credit cards, show the name in this fashion." Now Larri caught fire. "You mean, Henry, that if I go into the Exxon stations en route and ask for Gwendolyn . . ." "The proprietor of one of them is likely to be her brother, and there would not be more than five or six at most to inquire at." "Good God, Henry," said Larri, "you're a magician." "Merely simpleminded," said Henry, "though perhaps in the nonpejorative sense." "The Cross of Lorraine"-Afterword Eleanor Sullivan, the delightful managing editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, who was the first to see th story after I had written it, was struck by the fact that although she had seen the sign "Exxon" any number of times, she had never noticed the Cross of Lorraine it incorporated. She decided to try an experiment. Not long after she had read the story, she was driving her ear with a friend as passenger. She said, "There's a prominent Cross of Lorraine on some of the signs of the highway. Can you point it out to me?" The passenger knew what a Cross of Lorraine was and began to look. (it must have" acted as a damper on conversation, I suspect, though Eleanor did not say so.) Eleanor even made it easier by deliberately driving into an Exxon gasoline station in order to tank up, but the passenger never saw it. In the end Eleanor had to explain. It's not surprising, really. You don't necessarily see what there is to see; you see what you expect to see. You know there are two x's in Exxon and that's all you expect to see and all you do see. "The Cross of Lorraine" appeared in the May 1976 EQMM. The Family Man Mario Gonzalo, the artist member of the Black Widowers, seemed oddly disheveled as he said vehemently, "I cannot teach what I do because I don't know what I do, but that doesn't mean I can't do it." And Emmanuel Rubin, his straggly beard seeming to shoot sparks out of each gray bristle, bent his eyes, magnified through the thick lenses before"them, at Gonzalo and said, "If you don't know what you're doing, you re a paint dauber and not an artist." "You're a madman, Manny. If knowing were everything, Michelangelo could teach you to be Michelangelo, but the fact is that Michelangelo couldn't teach anyone to be Michelangelo. For that matter, no one could have taught Michelangelo to be Michelangelo either. He was born Michelangelo." "You miss the entire point. Teaching doesn't necessarily imply the making of an equal. Michelangelo could give the kind of instruction from which others might profit. If he couldn't create equals, he could create somewhat less miserable marble tappers. You bet he knew what be was doing even if he could only pound a limited amount into the heads of mere mortals." "Ah," said Gonzalo gleefully. "Mere mortals! And what made them mere mortals? The lack of genius. And what were the components of that genius? Could Michelangelo himself know?" Thomas Trumbull, staring over his scotch and soda, and apparently irritated at being excluded from a conversati ion that the loud voices of Gonzalo and Rubin had made into a private dialog, scowled and said, "Since Michelangelo is dead and can't be consulted on the subject, why don't we drop this foolish argument?" "No," said Gonzalo passionately, "I appeal from the sublime to the ridiculous and ask Manny. You're a writer, Manny-after a fashion. Can you teach what you do?" 1 not only can," said Rubin, "I have. I've written articles for The Writer and I've lectured at writers" conferences." "And you've told them about query letters, and the necessity of rewriting, I suppose. Do you tell them how you know where you start your story, just which incident you put after which, how you break up your dialog, how you make the denouement inevitable without giving it away?" "I could do that." "Then do it right now. Explain it to me!" Roger Halsted, flushing to the roots of his receding line of hair, said, in his soft voice, "Don't do it, Manny. We'll be sitting here all night and none of us is interested. Not even Mario." "I won't-but I can." "You can't," said Gonzalo, "because you can't describe the intuition involved. Enough intuition is talent, and a hell of a lot of it is genius, and intuition can't be taught." Geoffrey Avalon, standing tall, said in his solemn baritone, "You stand with the Greeks, Mario. They were quite certain that any outstanding ability was the result of divine inspiration, the working of a god who possessed the person. The word "enthusiasm," expressing this process, means "the god within" in Greek. Naturally, one can't explain the workings of a god to a mere mortal, and that, I take it, is your position, Mario." "Bull!" said Rubin. "Bull to you, Geoff, and to Mario and to the Greeks. There is nothing mysterious about intuition at all." "If you can understand it," said Mario, "explain it." "I will," said Rubin. "All a man knows is what he observes and learns. There is nothing innate except a few biological instincts-certainly nothing cultural. It may be that with experience-with experience, damn you, Mario-a person learns to interpret, very rapidly, what he observes, or to draw inferences, or to do something based on deduction or induction from those observations and his past experience. He does it so rapidly that he generally doesn't bother to isolate the steps in the procedure or even to be aware they exist, so he calls it intuition. Yes, Henry?" Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers" monthly dinner meetings, his bland and uncreased sixtyish face displaying no emotion, said, gently, "Dinner is served, Mr. Rubin. If you will sit down, I am sure the rest will follow." Rubin said, "I suppose I am the natural leader." "No," said James Drake, stubbing out his cigarette, "as host today, I'm the leader. However, the rest of us are naturally afraid you'll eat everything in sight if we don't all sit down to protect our rights." "That depends," said Rubin, "on what we are having today. Henry?" Henry said, "The chef is in an Old English mood today and it will be rib roast and Yorkshire pudding, preceded by a seafood quiche." "That's not Old English," said Rubin. "The chef is rarely entirely consistent," said Henry, "and I'm afraid his judgment of what will constitute a success for dinner is largely intuitive." "And largely right, too," said Gonzalo, approving. "Whatever you say intuition is, Manny, some people have more of it than others, and why is that?" ;ome people have more talent than . "Ahal" said Gonzalo. Rubin looked haughty and said with stiff politeness, "If I am to be allowed to finish my sentence, I will go on to explain that talent is the capacity for such fast thought, plus, perhaps, muscular deftness, and undoubtedly depends on the physiology of the brain and on nothing more mysterious than that." "That's mysterious enough, said Drake. "Mysterious now, but not necessarily forever," said Rubin, "and when we learn enough about the brain, talent and genius will be as nonmysterious as eye color." "That's just your intuitive guess," shot back Gonzalo. Rubin's reply was lost in quiche, and the dinner conversation grew more general. Throuszh all the ariz ment, the guest of the evening had maintained a gu steady and clearly amused silence. Quietly, he listened and as quietly, he sipped at his martini. His name was Simon Alexander. His black hair and black mustache, each thick and luxuriant enough to give him a Satanic appearance, or, failing that, a Levantine one, were his most prominent features. The small and persistent smile on his face seemed to accentuate the Satanism. When the coffee was served, however, and Drake tapped his spoon against the water glass, Alexander, as though in anticipation, grew serious. Drake said, "Gentlemen, it is time to grill our esteemed guest, and Manny, since you've been clattering away more insupportably even than usual, suppose you supervise the grilling." Rubin said, "I'm sorry you find mental stimulation insupportable, Jim, but I'm not surprised." He took a quick sip at his coffee, signaled Henry for a bit of a freshener, then said, "Well, Mr. Alexander, or, if you prefer, Simon, how do you justify your existence?" Alexander's smile returned. "By seeing to it that the American people pay their legal taxes in full and on time." There was a stir about the table, and even Henry was betrayed into pausing in the precise performance of his duties long enough to cast a penetrating glance at the guest. Trumbulrsaid, with a distinct suggestion of outrage, "Are you in the employ of the IRS?" "I am," said Alexander. "I'm in the Division of Fraud." "Good God," said Trumbull, 41 and you offer that as justification for your existence? Horse-whipping with barbed wire is what it justifies." He cast a lowering glance at Drake. Drake said, "Give him a chance, Tom. It takes all kinds to make a world and, aside from his profession, Simon is one of Nature's noblemen." Alexander waved his hand. "It's all right, Jim. Tax collectors have always been the favorite villains of humanity from the moment they first appeared on scene in ancient Sumeria five thousand years ago and invented writing in order to keep score. Besides, I think Mr. Trumbull was merely expressing himself colorfully and didn't really mean it." "The hell I didn't," muttered Trumbull. Rubin, who had held his peace in a markedly aggrieved manner, now raised his voice, "Since I'm grilling today, may I continue? Do you mind keeping quiet, Tom?" Trumbull said, "Circumstances moved me." Rubin waited for silence and said, "Mr. Alexander-I withdraw the Simon, since through the common law of humanity, you can have no friends here, or possibly anywhere-how can your role in tax collection be taken as justifying your existence?" Alexander said, "I think it is not difficult to see that the IRS represents the single essential arm of the government. Presidents can die and be replaced at once, with but a slight and perfunctory hiccup of emotion. Congress can humble, the Supreme Court can drag, and we can lose ground diplomatically, economically, even militarily, yet perhaps make it all up afterward. Natural disasters are local, temporary, and pass by. "However, let the tax structure of the nation falter and the government can no longer function. That would mean a spreading paralysis far wider and longer and deeper than anything that can possibly occur short of a thermonuclear war." Rubin said, "But the tax structure is not likely to falter, is it?" "Not in the sense that the physical machinery is likely to break apart or that the computers will stop working. No, the weak link is the taxpayer himself. The American budget now approaches half a trillion dollars annually, and the largest part of this is collected out of the unwilling wallets of Americans everywhere." "Sorry, Manny," said Trumbull angrily, "but I've got to interrupt. What the hell has "unwilling" got to do with it? You enforce your own interpretation of the rules, act as prosecuting attorney and judge, hound us relentlessly, treat us as guilty till we prove ourselves innocent, and are perfectly ready to jail us if you can. What do you care if we're unwilling?" "In the first place," said, Alexander, "our judgments can be appealed to the courts. We are not the last word. Second, it would be much more harmful if we were not relentless. Despite everything we do, we cannot audit everyone, we cannot check into everything. If we tried, the cost would far outweigh what additional money we could collect. No, we are forced to depend on the average American filling out a reasonably honest return and we can count on this only as long as that average American is convinced of the essential honesty of the system. Within the bounds of the law-and the law is not completely equitable, but that's not our fault -we must show neither favor nor mercy or the structure will break down. "Thus, although Al Capone could commit theft on a grand scale and could murder with impunity, he could be grabbed on income-tax evasion. There is nothing ironical in this. Income-tax evasion is the greatest of these. Similarly, nothing that Nixon and Agnew did prior to their forced resignations was as mischievous as their tampering with the IRS and their making out of dubious income-tax returns. That they were willing to shake the faith of the American people in the honesty of the tax structure was of all their misdeeds the most unforgivable." Rubin said, "You're serious about this now? You're not pulling our legs?" "Dead serious." "Good God, Jim," Rubin said, "we ought to ask for your resignation. You've brought in a guy who's going to make it difficult for me to indulge in a little bit of honest expense-padding next time around." Avalon cleared his throat. "I don't. consciously pad, but I must admit that the IRS and I might not agree on just what constitutes a deductible expense in the first place." "Then you deduct it till we tell you otherwise," said Alexander, agreeably. "That's the tax man's version of keeping you innocent till proven guilty-but none of this is what I came here prepared to talk about." "Oh," said Rubin, "what are you prepared for?" "Jim told me," said Alexander, "that the Black Widowers like to hear some tale that involves a bit of a puzzle, and I happen to have one." "Jim was wrong to tell you that," said Avalon, austerely. "We meet for the purpose of participating in stimulating conversation, and a puzzle is not necessary; however-" I Alexander smiled. "In that connection, I was amused by the preprandial quarrel over the nature of intuition, since it is with a matter of intuition that my story is concerned." "Telepathy!" said Gonzalo at once. "No, I think not," said Alexander. "The whole conversation illustrated Mr. Rubin's thesis, actually. I agree with him that intuition is undetected observation and deduction, and I would like to point out that what is often considered telepathy is the same. Thus, when Jim introduced me, he said-and I think these are his exact words-'This is Simon Alexander, an investigator of sorts and a very good one. He can actually sense criminality by some kind of inner magic, I think." Isn't that what you said, Jim?" "I think so," said Drake. "I notice you said, "an investigator of sorts,"" growled Trumbull. "Tou didn't say he was from the IRS." Alexander said, "I am trying to make the point that the introduction took place when the drinks were being passed around-as the brandy is now, I see. Henry, do we have any curaqao?" "I believe so, sir." "I'll have some then. With everyone concentrating on alcohol, I don't think anyone heard the introduction. Does anyone recall having heard it?" There were no bites on that one, and Alexander smoothed his mustache with one forefinger and accepted the small glass with its orangecolored content from Henry. "But if Rubin and Gonzalo did not consciously hear it," he said, "they nevertheless heard it, I'm convinced, and that bit about sensing criminality by some kind of inner magic sparked the argument on intuition. Of course, I don't use some kind of inner magic. I use reason, and I am always quite conscious of the details of the reasoning. Except once . He looked thoughtful. Drake lit a cigarette from the dying stub of hid old one and said, "Tell us, Simon." "I intend to," said Alexander, "but it has a certain personal confidentiality about it. I have been given to understand that everything that goes on here is confidential." "Everything!" said Trumbull pointedly, "and that includes everything we say. We take it for granted that nothing you hear here can be used against us as far as our taxes are concerned." "Agreed," said Alexander, "but please be careful what you say, as I would rather not be asked to place too great a load on my integrity." Alexander sipped at his curaqao, looked pensive, and, for some reason, particularly Satanic. "You know, of course," he said, "that computers are now the lifeblood of the IRS. We couldn't operate without them. Because they never hesitate, never tire, never grow bored, they are our great strength. Because they never think, they are our great weakness. "To exploit a computer, however, and take advantage of its weakness, one must know every detail of a computer's working, and this eliminates almost all the human race. And it puts us ofF our guard. "Some years ago, the IRS was royally diddled by someone who knew his computers, by a mathematician who was tired of the type of remuneration that mathematicians receive." Halsted, who taught mathematics at a junior high school, sighed and said, "I know the type." "The long details of his operation don't concern you, but he managed to get a job that would involve the servicing of certain of our computers. For the purpose, he built himself a new statistical background, a new name, a new appearance, all the way down to a new Social Security number. How he managed that I won't tell you since, confidentiality or not, there is no point in spreading knowledge of the techniques of successful knavery." "I agree," said Avalon, nodding. "Nor," said Alexander, "will I tell you exactly how he managed to reprogram one key computer-for in that case, I don't understand it myself. I am no mathematician. Still it was done. For a period of five years, our mathematician-let us call him Johnson, to save syllables-received large tax refunds while paying no taxes. He received more money in that interval than he could have earned in a lifetime of honest endeavor. "He might still be receiving the money but for the accidental uncovering of an inconsistency in the program. The detection was the result of a most unusual coincidence, and I assure you the IRS could not have been more dismayed, or embarrassed, at the event. Naturally, two things were at once essential. The money leak must be stopped and the computer programs so modified as to make the Johnson type of knavery impossible in the future. That was carried through at once in the greatest secrecy. The secrecy was needed not so much to keep individual officials from looking personally ridiculous, though that was a factor, but to keep the Service itself from losing the confidence of the American people." "They will never learn the truth from any of us, " said Gonzalo, with suspiciously intense gravity, "I assure you." "The second thing," Alexander went on, "was to catch Johnson, make him disgorge what money was left, and clap him in jail for as long as ever the law would allow. It was the Al Capone reasoning, you see. Johnson might get away with murder without shaking the foundation of American civilization, but he could not be allowed to get away with income-tax fraud. And that was where I came in. I was placed on the case. "My reputation in the Service is, perhaps, an exaggerated one. More than one person there suspects, as Jim told you, that I solve my cases with some inner magic, with some mysterious intuitive faculty that defies analysis. It has been said among us, for instance, that I can look at a tax return that seems clean enough to have been etched in snowflakes and yet tell that somewhere money was clinging to fingers that smelled of garbage. Or that I could interview a person and know for certain that there was a thief hidden behind the saint. "Actually, there was no magic in it at all. I have a certain cleverness at observation and reasoning and a great deal of experience. -My memory is excellent and I have encountere all varieties of behavior patterns-and all the ways of laundering returns, too. What seems like magic or intuition boils down to noting small things that others don't and attaching the proper importance to those things. "It works the other way around, too. I can often detect the saint beneath the thief. I am quite certain, for instance, that you, Mr. Trumbull, are not short on your returns by even as much as fifty dollars. I suspect that you are ashamed of your relative honesty, and take it out by vilifying the office you dare not defraud. And that's not a guess; I've met others like you. It was hard for Trumbull to flush through his tan, but his expression made the flush unnecessary. Avalon said, "I'm afraid your reputation is ruined, Tom. Please go on, Mr. Alexander." "To put it in figures, in nearly a quarter of a century at my job, I have almost never pointed a finger in the direction of either guilt or innocence and been proven entirely wrong.ft "A quarter of a century?" said Avalon. "How old are you, Mr. Alexander?" "Fifty-two." "You don't look it," and Avalon's finger went unconsciously to his own graying mustache. Alexander said, "There's gray in my hair, too, but I touch it up a little. Not so much out of vanity, you understand, as because the darkness seems to give me a forbidding appearance that is useful to me in my line of work. However . . . , "Johnson was not an easy quarry. He could tell, somehow, that the game was up, and when the next refund came-this time under the eyes of the Service-it remained uncollected. It's not impossible he had an ally within the Service, but never mind that. Tracing him wasn't easy. He had quit his job long before and all records we had concerning him were false, down to his Social Security number, which, we suddenly discovered, was attached to no human being. "I was forced to follow the most evanescent clues and to build up the picture of the human being who had done the deed. We left absolutely nothing unturned that might lead us to the identity of the thief and we finally had several possibilities, all dim and uncertain. Different operatives were assigned to each one. The task was somehow to locate enough evidence to warrant a concentration of forces, a full-scale investigation of one particular man-an arrest, of course, if possible. "My own target was a rather mousey man of average weight and height and of undistinguished appearance. That, in itself, was a good sign, because the job had had to be carried through by someone who could be unnoticeable at crucial moments. He had a vague background that could not easily be traced without tipping our hand too soon-again a hopeful circumstance. At crucial periods, he seemed to be particularly untraceable. "Unfortunately, all this was negative and such things could never be made to stick. We needed some positive correspondence. We had to locate him at the site of action each time, prove computer expertise, and so on. For that, I haunted him like the ghost of a vulture. "In fact, I managed to collect a circle of mild acquaintances that I held in common with him, and I labored to be present at social gatherings along with him. "Then, at one gathering in early November, where both of us were present, he quiet and watchful, nursing a single drink for an hour; and I almost as quiet, certainly as watchful, and as abstemious, the host spoke of Halloween. He had a seven-year-old daughter who had gone out trickor-treating, along with several older friends, and who had come back in ecstasies. "That rang true for me, for I remembered very well my own daughter's first experience of the sort and I said, "Yes, I have always thought that, were it not for the enormous commercial overweighting of the Yuletide, a child's spontaneous reaction would be to treat Halloween with the full excitement of Christmas." "And, surprisingly, my quarry spoke up. As though overwhelmed by an emotion that forced his naturally quiet personality into the limelight, he said, with a warm smile that lightened and almost transfigured his face, "You are quite right. In a way, Halloween may be considered precisely equal to Christmas." Those were his exact words, gentlemen, for I noted them at the time with particular care." Rubin asked, "Why?" "Because, as a result of that comment, I instantly and completely elimi- nated him as a suspect. So certain was I that I remember having the distinct impulse to clap him on the shoulder and invite him out for a drink to celebrate his innocence. I couldn't, though, for I suppose his own unex- pected warmth had scared him. As soon as he made the remark, he flushed, looked frightened, and melted away. My own attention was distracted for a moment, and when I turned to find him, he was gone." Alexander paused and finished his last bit of curagao. He said, "At the time, my sudden conviction of innocence might have seemed pure intuition-even to myself-but it wasn't, of course. I cling to Rubin's bypotbesis the intuition is undetected reasoning. Here is the reasoning as I worked it out later. "Working laboriously from the tiniest beginnings, we had drawn a Picture of our criminal, this Johnson. He was a mathematician and had no family. The chances were that he was not only unmarried and childless, but also that he had no siblings and that his parents may have died while he was young. He was cold, utterly cold-and I don't mean by that that he was ruthless and sadistic-merely that he lacked any occasion or desire for love and affection. Let me put it in a wa that has great significance for me. He was not, in any way, a family man. Halsted pleated the tablecloth absently and said, "You, I take it, are a family man." "Completely. My parents, two brothers, and a sister all live, and we are all close. I married a childhood sweetheart, have three children, and a grandson newly born, plus nieces and nephews. I know the emotions of a family man and no one, no one, could have spoken with such genuine warmth of children's holidays unless be had experienced the kind of love and affection that accompanies those days. My quarry spoke that way; Johnson could not have; conclusion, my quarry was not Johnson and was innocent. What seemed like intuition:was, after all, reason. "Intuition or reason, I reported my belief in his innocence to my superiors, and the tracking of the remaining possibilities grew correspondingly more intense. Five months later we caught the criminal, and he is now in prison and likely to remain there a long time. Some of the money has been recovered; not all, of course." He paused and Avalon broke the short silence that followed, saying, oil am delighted to have a happy ending for the department, but you spoke of a puzzle and I see none." Simon Alexander sighed. "The happy ending is a qualified one. Having dismissed my suspect, we nevertheless found the other suspects fading as well. One after another" - they proved to be incompatible with the conditions of the fraud. One cly, out of nothing but desperation, I returned to my own dismissed suspect and, in the interval, something unexpected tthat had arisen cast a new light on affairs. Astounded, I followed it up and had him-my own suspect whose innocence I had previously maintained and, virtually, guaranteed. He was the criminal after all. "What puzzles me and, even now, keeps me awake occasionally, is the incongruity of it. He did indeed turn out to be what we had suspected he was-a man without family, love, or affection. Yet his remark about Christmas and Halloween, and the tone in which it was uttered, indicated the reverse. How is this contradiction possible and how could he have used it to throw me off the scent?" There was a silence around the table as Alexander waited for an answer. Avalon finally spoke, staring at his empty brandy glass, "Mr. Alexander, despite easy theorization, the fact remains that human beings are complicated and inconsistent creatures. There are undoubtedly contradictory aspects in the character of your suspect or of any man. You'll have to chalk it up to a had break." "I'd like to," said Alexander, "and I've tried to do so, but it is my experience that in fundamentals human beings are not inconsistent. A man who always puts on his left shoe first, may switch party allegiance and swap wives, but he will always put on his left shoe first." "Nothing will stop him from putting on his right shoe first, however uncomfortable that might be," said Halsted, "if it inecessary to do so to fool someone. He stepped purposely out of character to mislead you." Alexander didn't answer at once. Then he said, "I doubt that. Even if be knew I was at his heels, and that's a possibility, he couldn't possibly have known me so well as to be sure that one short-, apparently irrelevant sentence would deflect me." Rubin said, "The remark might have been misanthropically in character, and you interpreted it wrongly because of your own happy associations with the holidays. What the suspect might have meant was that Christmas was just as superstitious and nonsensical as Halloween." Alexander said, "An interesting thought, but the expression on his face and the tone of his voice did not fit. They were happy, delighted. I am still sure he meant it sincerely as a loving remark." Gonzalo said, "He could be a "Peanuts" fan and was thinking of Linus's "Great Pumpkin, which is a kind of satire on Santa Claus. That would set up a strong association between Halloween and Christmas." There was a general hoot from theaudience, but Alexander held up his hand. "Actually, that's the first suggestion I hadn't thought of myself. It doesn't sound in the least likely to me, but I will check whether the thief was a "Peanuts" fan." Trumbull said, "We don't have enough to go on. I don't think anything can be deduced from what he said to set your mind at ease. Sorry!" Drake said, "I agree, but we haven't heard from Henry yet." "Henry?" said Alexander in surprise, swiveling in his seat. Henry cleared his throat. "I admit, gentlemen, that a thought had en- tered my mind at the moment Mr. Alexander gave us the suspect's remark." "Oh?" said Alexander, "and just what thought was thatY" "The suspect, sir, did not say, as you or I might have said, that Halloween was just like Christmas or just as good as Christmas, or even equivalent to Christmas. If you quoted him correctly he said Halloween was "precisely equal" to Christmas. Surely that sounds like a mathematician speaking and would be in character." Alexander snorted. "Feeble. Feeble. A nonmathematician might have happened to put it that way if he were a prissy and meticulous person." Henry said softly, "Perhaps. Yet we might find more in the statement if we treat it mathematically than anyone has yet pointed out. After all, if your suspect were indeed the guilty man he would be not only a mathematician, but also a computer specialist." Alexander looked annoyed. "What has that to do with it?" Henry said, "Mr. Alexander, listening to the gentlemen of the Black Widowers month after month is an education in itself and there have been times when I have directed my readings in the directions they have opened up for me. Mr. Halsted, for instance, once discussed the rationale behind positional notation, the manner in which our Arabic numerals are constructed, and I went on to read further concerning the matter. If you'd care to have me explain it, I'm sure Mr. Halsted will be glad to correct me if I've made a mistake." Halsted said, "I'll be glad to, Henry, but I don't see what you're driving at. "You will in a moment, sir. Our ordinary numbers are written to the base ten. The first column at the right are the ones. The next to the left are the tens, the next are the hundreds or ten times tens, the next are the thousands or ten times ten times ten, and so on. Thus the number 12 1 31 Is one times a thousand plus two times a hundred plus three times ten plus one and that comes to one thousand, two hundred thirty-one." "Right so far," said Halsted. "But there's no need to consider ten the only possible base for a number system," said Henry. "You could use nine, for instance. The right-hand column in a nine-based system would be ones, the next to the left would be nines, the next would be eighty-ones or nine times nine, the next would be-uh-seven hundred twenty-nines or nine times nine times nine, and so on. The number 1231 would, in the nine-based system, be one times seven hundred twenty-nine plus two times eighty-one, plus three times nine, plus one. That would be, if you would allow me a moment to work it out-the equivalent of nine hundred nineteen in our ordinary ten-based system." He scribbled hastily on a napkin and held it up. "You could write the result this way: 1231 (nine-based)919 (ten-based)." Halsted, Drake, and Rubin nodded. Avalon and Trumbull looked thoughtful, and Alexander shook his head impatiently. Gonzalo said, "That's ridiculous. Why would anyone use that ninebt system and multiply nines?" a,sted said, "The other number bases look complicated, Mario, only because our number system is designed to fit ten as a base. Mathematically, all are equivalently rational, though some are more convenient than others. For instance, in computers, it is particularly useful at times to use-uh, oh . He looked at Henry with a grin and said, "I may be getting it, Henry, but you keep on and finish." "Thank you, sir," said Henry. "As Mr. Halsted was about to say, the eight-base system is, I understand, useful to computers. The number 31, for instance, in the ten-base system is, of course, three times ten plus one, or thirty-one. In the eight-base system, however, it is three times eight plus one, or twenty-five. "We can therefore write"-he used the napkin again-"this: 31 (eightbase)25 (ten-base). He went on, "The different number bases are sometimes given names derived from the Latin names of the numbers. The Latin for ten is decem, so a ten-base number belongs to the decimal system. The Latin for eight is octo, so eight-based numbers are octal. We can therefore write this: 31 (octal)25 (decimal). "By coincidence, we have the months October and December. Rubin roared out in sudden delight, "No coincidence at all. The ancient Romans started their year in March before Julius Caesar's time. By that system, October was the eighth month and December the tenth month and they were named accordingly." Henry nodded his head and said, "Thank you, sir. If, then, we abbreviate the terms "octal" and "decimal" in a natural way and omit the parentheses, we have 31 October25 December. How can this be described better than by saying that Halloween, which falls on 31 October, is precisely equal to Christmas, which falls on 25 December." Alexander's mouth had tended to slacken through this but now he tight- ened his jaw muscle and said, "Are you trying to tell me that the thief, blurting out his remark without thinking, gave away the fact that he was a computer expert?" "Yes, sir," said Henry. "It was not out of shyness that a look of alarm crossed his face and that he left as soon as he could. It must have been out of fright at the thought of having slipped into his real character. At that moment, if the significance of his remark had been seen by you, it would have been wise to begin arrangements for having him arrested." Alexander looked chagrined. "Well, I didn't see it. I interpreted it just wrong. But wait, all this is clever and may even be right considering that the man in question proved to be indeed the criminal, but how would you account for that look of love on his face? That was what threw me." Henry said softly, "You are a family man, sir, and that is your weakness. You naturally interpret love in human terms alone. 1, myself, am not a family man, and I know that love is broader than that. Even a misanthrope who hates the human race could love, and deeply, too." "Love what?" said Alexander impatiently. "The beauty and surprises of mathematics, for one thing," said Henry. "The Family Man"-Afterword Those of you who have read the first two volumes of the Black Widowers tales know that there is a real organization called "the Trap Door Spiders" to which I belong, and which serves as an inspiration for everything about the Black Widowers, but the mysteries. Occasionally, I even make use of a real-life guest-at least for appearance and general background. For instance, there was indeed a meeting of the Trap Door Spiders at which a magician, very much like the Amazing Larri of the first story in this volume, did dine with us as our guest. (There was no mystery introduced, of course, in the real-life occasion.) . And at another meeting, which I hosted, I brought my accountant as my guest. He is a very amiable gentleman with whom I share a million laughs as he strips me to the bone for the sake of good old Uncle Sam and then gnaws at the bones for his fee. I used him as an inspiration for Simon Alexander in "The Family Man," changing him from an accountant to a tax auditor (the enemy) and carrying on from there. As to the point about numbers to different bases, this was presented to me by a fellow member of another organization I belong to, the Baker Street Irregulars. It was presented to me with the urgent suggestion that I base a Black Widowers mystery on it, and I was delighted to oblige. "The Family Man" appeared in the November 1976 EQMM under the title "A Case of Income-tax Fraud." All things being equal, I prefera. short title, however, so I here restore my own. The Sports Page "Is "blain" an English word?" asked Mario Gonzalo, as the company of the Black Widowers sat down to their monthly banquet. "Brain?" asked James Drake, scraping his chair toward the table and looking over the selection of bread and rolls. "Blain," said Gonzalo sharply. "How do you spell it?" asked Roger Halsted, who had no difficulty in deciding to take two slices of pumpernickel. He was buttering them. "What's the difference how it's spelled?" said Gonzalo in annoyance. He placed his napkin carefully over his lightly striped and definitely pink trousers. "Spell it any way you want. Is it an English word?" Thomas Trumbull, host for the evening, furrowed his bronzed forehead and said, "Damn it, Mario, we've had a pretty sensible session so far. What's all this about lain?"" "I'm asking you a question. Why don't you answer it?" "All right. It's not an English word." Gonzalo looked about the table, "Everyone agree lain" isn't English?" There was a hesitant chorus of agreement. Even Emmanuel Rubin, his eyes magnified by his glasses and his straggly beard a bit shorter than usual, as though it had recently been absent-mindedly trimmed, finally muttered, "No such word." Lawrence Pentili, who had arrived as Trumbull's guest, and who was an elderly man with sparse white hair, and with muttonchop side-whiskers grown long, as though they were announcing that hair could still be produced, smiled and said, "Never heard that word." Only Geoffrey Avalon held his peace. Sitting bolt upright as always, be frowned and with his middle finger stirred the ice in the unfinished half of his second drink. "All right," said Gonzalo, "we all agree it's not an English word. You can see that in a second. But how do you see it? Do you go through a list of all the English words you know and see that blain" isn't on it? Do you check the sound for familiarity? Do you . . ." Halsted's soft voice interrupted, "No one knows how human recall works, so why ask? Even people who have theories about how the mechanism of memory works don't understand how information can be fished out once it has been inserted. Every word I use has to be recalled from my vocabulary, and each is there when I need it," Trumbull said, "There are lots of times when you can't think of the word you want." Halsted had just turned with satisfaction to the turtle soup that Henry, the incomparable waiter of the Black Widowers, had placed before him. He said, stuttering slightly as he often did under stress, "Yes, and that upsets you. Most people take it hard when they can't think of a word, get very upset, as though something has gone wrong that shouldn't have gone wrong. Me, I tend to stutter when I can't think of a word." Now at last Avalon's deep baritone sounded, and dominated the table. "Well, wait now. As a matter of fact, there is such a word as blain." It's archaic, but it's English. It's some sort of animal ailment, or blister." "Right," said Gonzalo with satisfaction. "The word is used in the Bible in connection with the plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. I knew someone here would get it. I thought it would be Manny." Rubin said indignantly, "I thought you meant current English." "I didn't say so," said Gonzalo. "Besides, it's part of the word "chilblains," and that's current English." "No, it's not," said Rubin, heating up further, "and besides . Trumbull said, loudly, "Don't get defensive, Manny. What I want to know is how Mario knows all this. And, incidentally, we're having finnan haddie today at my request, and if anyone here doesn't like it, he can negotiate with Henry for substitutes. Well, Mario?" Gonzalo said, "I read it in a psychology book. There's nothing that says I have to be born knowing everything, the way Manny claims he's been. I pick up knowledge by keeping my eyes and ears open. And what I want to do now is make a point. Remembering too well is dangerous." "It's a danger you'll never face," muttered Rubin. "I don't care," said Gonzalo. "Look, I asked a question and I got a quick and certain response from everyone here but Jeff. He was uncertain and hesitated because be remembered too much. He remembered the use of "blain'in the Bible. Well, human beings are faced with choices every minute. There has to be a decision and the decision has to be based on what he knows. And if he-knows too much, he'll hesitate." "And so," asked Drake who, having speared some of the firman haddie on his fork and placed it in his mouth, looked first thoughtful and then satisfied. "So that's had," said Gonzalo. "In the long run, what counts is a quick response and action. Even a less than good decision is better than indecision, most times. That's why human beings have evolved an imperfect memory. Forgetting has survival value." Avalon smiled and nodded. "That's not a had notion, Mario," he said, with, perhaps, a trace of condescension. "Have I ever told you my theory of the evolutionary value of contentiousness? In a hunting society . . ." But Gonzalo held up both arms. "I'm not finished, Jeff. Don't you all see that's why Henry here does so much better than we do in solving the puzzles that arise from time to time? Every one of us here at the table practices being deep. . ." "Not everybody, Mario," said Rubin, "unless you're about to startGonzalo ignored him. "Henry doesn't. He doesn't gunk his mind up with irrelevant information, so he can see clearly." Henry, who was clearing some of the excess dishes, said gently, "If I may interpose, Mr. Gonzalo, I'm afraid that whatever I do could not be done, were it not that you gentlemen usually eliminate all that would otherwise confuse me." His unlined, sixtyish face showed only imperturbable efficiency, as he next poured several refills of the whitewine. Trumbull said, "Mario, your theory is junk and, Henry, that false modesty is unbecoming to you. You have more brains than any of us do, Henry, and you know it." "No, sir," said Henry. "With respect, the most I'll admit is that I have a faculty for seeing the obvious." "Because," said Gonzalo, "you don't have the difficulty of trying to look at the obvious through layers of crud, as Manny does." Henry bowed his head slightly and seemed almost relieved when the infuriated Rubin launched into an analysis of the value of miscellaneous knowledge to the writer, and of the fact-which he announced as such with fervor-of the equation of general intelligence with the ability to remember, recall, analyze, and synthesize. But Pentili, the guest, seemed to have lost interest in the conversation. His eyes followed Henry thoughtfully. Waiting for the precise moment when the desserts had been eaten and when several of the coffees were about ready for the refill, Trumbull tapped his water glass with his spoon and announced it was time for the grilling. "Since I am bost," he growled, "I am delighted to be disqualified as griller. Mario, you did all that preaching over the soup. Why don't you grill our guest?1P Gonzalo said, "Dee-lighted," and cleared his throat ostentatiously. "Mr. Pentili, how do you justify your existence?" Pentili smiled broadly so that a round little ball of flesh bunched up over each cheekbone, giving him the look of a beardless Santa Claus in mufti. "Thank heaven, I no longer have to. I am retired and I have either already justified my existence or have already failed." "And in the days when you might have been justifying it, what were you doing to make your existence possible?" "Breathing. But if you mean, how did I make my living, I served Uncle Sam in the same fashion, more or less, that Tom does." "You were a cipher expert?" "No, but I was involved in intelligence." "And that justifies your existence?" put in Rubin. "Shall we argue the point?" said Pentili agreeably. "No," said Trumbull. "It's been argued fifty times. Go ahead, Mario." Gonzalo looked eager. "The last time Tom had a guest here, he had a problem. Do you have one?" "At the present time, certainly not. I leave problems to Tom and the others these days. I'm a more or less happy observer. But I have a ques-tion, if I may ask one." "Go ahead." Pentili said, "You had said that Henry-who, I take it, is our waiter rumbull said, "Henry is a valued member of the Black Widowers and the best of us all." "I see. But I take it that Henry solves puzzles. What kind?" A shade of uneasiness crossed Henry's face but disappeared almost at once. He said, "Some questions arise at one time or another on the occa- sion of these banquets, sir, and the members have been able to propose answers." "You have proposed them," said Gonzalo energetically. Avalon raised his hand. "I protest. This is not a fit subject for discussion. Everything said here is entirely confidential, and we ought not to talk about previous sessions in front of our guest.1) "No, no," said Pentili, shaking his head. "I ask for no confidences. It just occurred to me that, if it were appropriate to do so, I could pose a problem for Henry." Gonzalo said, ,I thought you said you didn't have a problem." "I don't," said Pentili, twinkling, "but I once had a problem, many years ago, and it was never solved to my satisfaction. It is of no importance any longer, you understand, except as an irritating grain of sand inside the tissues of my cur,iosity." "What was that, Larry?" asked Trumbull with sudden interest. "You had just entered the department, Tom. It didn't involve you--or almost anyone, but me." "May we hear it?" said Gonzalo. "As I said," said Pentili, "it's entirely unimportant and I assure you I had not meant to bring it up. It was just that when mention was made specifically of Henry's facility with . . ." Henry said softly, "If I may be allowed a word, sir. I am not the expert at solving puzzles that Mr. Gonzalo is kind enough to think me. There have been occasions when, indeed, I have been helpful in that direction but that has only been when the membership has considered the problem and eliminated much of what is not essential. If, in that case, some simple thread is left exposed, I can pick it up as well as another, but I can do no more than that." "Oh." Pentili looked abashed. "Well, I'm perfectly willing to present the problem to the membership generally." "In that case, sir," said Avalon, "we are all ears." Pentili, having finished his brandy and having declined a refill, said, "I Will ask you, gentlemen, to cast your mind back to 1961. John F. Kennedy was in the first months of his tragically abbreviated Administration, and an invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles was being planned. Kennedy had inherited those plans and had refused to chance the repercussions of having the invaders granted American air support. He was assured by intelligence reports that it was quite certain the Cuban populace would rise in support of the invaders. A free Cuban Government would quickly be formed, and at its request the United States might move. "It is easy, in hindsight, to realize how wretchedly we had underestimated Castro's hold on his army and his people, but at the time we saw everything through a pinkly optimistic haze. You all know what happened. The invaders landed at the Bay of Pigs and were met at once by well-organized Castroites. The Cuban people did not rise, and in the absence of effective air support, the invaders were all either killed or taken. It was a tragic affair for them and an embarrassing fiasco for the United States. Kennedy accepted the responsibility since he was President and had given the final kickoff signal. Although others were clearly more to " blame, no one stepped forward to take his medicine. As Kennedy said, "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan."" Rubin, who had been staring at his coffee cup, said suddenly, "I remember that. At the time, Kennedy said it was an old saying, but no one, to my knowledge, has ever discovered the source. It will have to go into the quotation books with Kennedy's name under it." Avalon cleared his throat. "A defeat or even a humiliation does not stand alone in time. Smarting from the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy was determined not to submit again, so the next year he faced down the Soviets on the Cuban missiles affair and won for us our greatest victory of the Cold War." Rubin said, with vehemence, "And victories don't stand alone, either. President Johnson, determined not to appear less macho than his predecessor, led us step by step into the quagmire of Vietnam, and this led to our . . .) "Come on, you idiots," shouted Trumbull. "This isn't a contemporary history class. We're listening to Larry Pentili.11 In the sudden silence that followed, Pentili said, with a bit of gloominess Hitting over his face, "Actually, it is all pertinent. You see, the real villain of the Bay of Pigs affair was faulty intelligence. Had we known quite accurately what the situation was in Cuba, Kennedy would have canceled the invasion or given it effective air support. In that case, there would have been no fiasco to give either Castro or Khrushchev the false notion that they could get away with establishing missile sites ninety miles off Florida and then, if we accept Rubin's psychohistorical interpretation, there would have been no Vietnam. I"And in my opinion, information need not have been faulty. We had one operative who had been planted in Cuba and who was back in Washington some half a year before the Bay of Pigs with reports he had been unable to radio out. . . ." "Why not?" said Gonzalo, at once. "Because he was playing a difficult role that he dared not risk. He was a Soviet agent, you see, and his whole value to us was that the Soviets allowed him to travel to the United States freely and to circulate in Washington freely because they thought he was spying on us for them." "Maybe he was," said Drake, peerin2 throuRh his cigarette smoke. "How can you tell which side a double agent is foling?" "Maybe both sides," said Halsted. "Maybe," conceded Pentili, "but the Soviets never discovered anything more than we deliberately had this Russian of ours reveal. On the other hand, through him we learned a great many useful things that the Soviets could not conceivably have wanted us to know." "I wonder," said Rubin, with something more than a trace of sarcasm in his voice, "if the Soviets might not have reasoned in precisely the same way.,, "I don't think so," said Pentili, "for in the end it was the Soviets who eliminated him and not we. How they caught on to him, how he had given himself away,we never discovered, but it was clear that the Soviets finally came around to -agreeing with us that he was essentially our Russian and not theirs. Too had, but, of course, from their standpoint he was a traitor. In reverse, we'd have done the same thing." Avalon said, "Frankly, I would hesitate to trust a traitor. A man who betrays once can betray again." "Yes," said Pentili, "and for that reason he never knew anything more than it was considered safe for him to know. Yet 1, for one, did trust him. It was always my opinion that he chose us because he came to believe in the American ideal. During the three years he worked with us, he never gave us any ground for concern. "His name was Stepan and he was an earnest man, rather humorless, who went about his task with a conscious dedication. He was determined to learn idiomatic English and to speak it with a General American accent. He was therefore a faithful listener to news programs not for their contents but for the sanitized pronunciations of men like Walter Cronkite. To develop his vocabulary, Stepan worked at crossword puzzles, with indifferent success, and was very fond of the word game Scrabble, at which he usually lost." Avalon said, "Scrabble is that game that involves small wooden tiles with letters on them out of which you form words on a board?" "It has its complications. . . ." began Rubin. Pentili overrode him. "You have the essentials, Mr. Avalon. I mention the game because it has something to do with the problem. Stepan never achieved his aim fully. He retained his Russian accent, and his vocabulary was never as unlimited as he would have liked it to be, but we encouraged him because we felt it to be a sign of increasing dedication to us. The Soviets probably supported it because they felt it would make him a more efficient spy on us and for them." "They may have been right," said Rubin dryly. "They killed him, remember," said Pentili. "In September 1960, Stepan arrived from Cuba. We had only the most indirect notion of his activities in that country, but his initial guarded contact with us gave us every reason to think he had information of the most vital importance. It remained only to get that information in such a way as not to blow his cover. "In very indirect fashion, we arranged to make contact with him in a hotel room. The trouble was that, although neither he nor we knew it at the time, his cover was already blown. Someone got to him before we did, and when our man finally arrived, Stepan was dead; knifed. What it was he meant to tell us, we never learned." Avalon ran his finger thoughtfully around the rim of his long-empty coffee cup. "Are you certain, sir, that he was killed by the Soviets? We live in a violent society and people are killed every day for a variety o reasons.f Pentili sighed. "To have an agent killed just at the point of delivery of a vital message, and to have that killing come about through some unrelated cause, is asking too much of coincidence. Besides, the Washington police were bound to treat it as an ordinary killi "ng, and we helped them since the man was a Soviet national. Nothing was-iumed up, no theft, no plausible motive arising out of his private life. There were no traces left behind of any kind; an ordinary culprit would have left some. "Second, there was some interest in the murder on the part of the Soviet embassy, but not enough. They were just a shade too easily satisfied. Third, certain avenues of information, which would have remained open had Stepan been in the clear and had he died for reasons not connected with his work, were closed. No, Mr. Avalon, there was no doubt in my mind that he died the death of an agentGonzalo, suddenly aware of crumbs defacing the fine cut of his lapel, brushed at himself delicately and said, "Where's the puzzle, though, Mr. Pentili? You mean who killed him? Now? After all these years)" "No, it doesn't matter a hippie's curse who killed him. Even after he was knifed, though, Stepan must have tried to get across something, perhaps enough to give us the essential core of what we needed, but if so, he failed. I live been wondering frequently, and painfully, in the years since my retirement whether a greater shrewdness or persistence on our part might not have saved our country some of its losses in the years since that murder." Halsted said, "I'm sorry if this question is embarrassing, Mr. Pentili, but was your retirement forced on you because of Stepan's death?" "You mean that I might have been fired as-punishment for not having kept him alive? No. The episode did not reflect any discredit on me and I retired only a few years ago, in the ordinary course of events, with a generous pension, the expressed esteem of my confreres, and an award handed me by President Nixon. In fact, danger came to me not through Stepan's death but through my insistence that he was trying to tell us something significant. The department dismissed the matter; erroneously, in my opinion; and I was more or less forced to dismiss it, too. But I have wondered about it since; all the more so, since my retirement." Gonzalo said, "What was Stepan's way of getting across the information?" Pentili said, "We are quite certain that Stepan had no documents on him, no letters, no written message. He didn't work that way. He had what any traveler might be expected to have in a hotel room. He had clothes, toiletries, and so on, in a single suitcase, and an extra suit in a garment bag. There were signs of a search, but it was a skillful one that left a minimum of disarray. Something may have been taken away, of course, but if so, we cannot tell what it ,as, and that has nothing to do with the problem. "The only items that might not be considered perfectly routine were a crossword puzzle book, with approximately half the puzzles worked out completely or nearly completely in Stepan's own handwriting, the scrabble set he always carried with him . . ." Rubin interrupted, "So he could strike up games with occasional strangers?" Pentili said, "No. He had the habit of playing four-handed games with himself when he had nothing to do and using a pocket dictionary to help. He said there was nothing better for developing a vocabulary. The dictionary was there, in his jacket pocket, with the jacket hanging in the closet. "He was knifed while standing, apparently, and that was the one flaw in an otherwise flawless performance, for he was not killed outright. The killer or killers had to leave rapidly, and they left a spark of life behind. Stepan had collapsed just next to the desk and, when they were gone, be managed to pull himself upright. On the desk was a newspaper-the Washington Post, by the way-and the Scrabble set. "He opened the top desk drawer and pawed about for the pen. He found it and tried to write with it but it was dry-a common situation in hotel rooms-so he dropped it to the floor. His own pen was in his inner jacket pocket at the other end of the room, and he knew he couldn't make it there. He had a couple of minutes to live and he had to make use of whatever objects were on the desk. "The newspaper, at the time of the knifing, was folded as it had been when he had bought it an hour earlier, but he . Halsted said, "How did you find out all this?" "Circumstantial. I assure you we are expert at this. The desk drawer was open; the pen, quite dry, was on the floor. Most of all, Stepan was bleeding, partly from his right hand, which he had instinctively used to try to ward off the weapon, and his own blood marked his every movement and everything be had touched. ".As I say, he unfolded the newspaper to the sports page. He then lifted the top of the box of the Scrabble set, removed the board, and managed to take out five letters, which he put in the wooden holder used for the purpose. Then he died. The letters were "e," "p," "o,p "c," and'k."" ,,In that order?" asked Drake. "In that order, left to right." "Epock is a period of time in history, isn't it?" said Gonzalo. "It's a point in time," said Rubin, "marked by some significant historical event and later used as a reference, but it's spelled e-p-o-c-h. It ends with an "Making a mistake in spelling under the conditions isn't surprising," said Gonzalo defensively. "The man was dying and maybe he could hardly see. Maybe the V looked like an V to him. Besides, he was a Russian, and he might not have known how to spell the word." Pentili said, with a trace of impatience, "That is not really the point. "Epock'or "epoch," Vor'h,'what does it mean?" Avalon said, "Actually, Tom is the code expert. Trumbull shrugged. "Larry has come to you men. You work at it. If anything occurs to me, I'll interrupt." Avalon said, "Would you have a code book, Mr. Pentili, in which "epock" stands for some phrase or sentence? Is it a recognized code?" "I assure you that neither "epock" nor "epoch" means anything in any code of which Stepan had knowledge. No, the answer had to he in the sports page, and if the letters had any meaning it was in connection with the sports page." "Why do you say that?" asked Halsted. "Let me explain further," said Pentili-then interrupted himself to say, "I will have a little more brandy, Henry, if you don't mind. You're listening to all this, I hope." "Yes, sir," said Henry. "Good!" said Pentili. "Now in the ordinary course of events, Stepan might have, in an emergency, transmitted information more denselythat is, with the greatest information per symbol-by transmitting a number., Each number could represent a given phrase. That's an inflexible message, of course, since the proper phrase might not exist, but a number might give a fair approximation, and in the extremity of approaching death, he could do no more. He opened the paper to a page on which there were numbers and where one number might be significant." Halsted said, "He might merely have wanted a sheet of paper to write "He had nothing to write with," said Pentili. "His blood." Pentili twisted his mouth distastefully. "He might have done that but he didn't. He might not even have been aware be was bleeding. And if he wanted to do that, why open the paper? The front page would have been enough." "He might have opened it at random," said Halsted stubbornly. "Why? He was a professional. He had lived wit "h death for years and he knew that the information he carried was more important than his life. What he did would have to be to pass on that information." Trumbull said, "Come on, Roger, you're being trivial." Pentili said, "It's all right"Tom. As a matter of fact, the general opinion in the department was that there was no puzzle; that Gregory's attempt at the point of death meant nothing; that whatever he tried to do had failed. I was the only one who wanted to follow it up, and I must admit I never succeeded in translating the message. "The trouble was, you see, that he had opened to the sports page. About the only page in the paper that could have been more littered with numbers was the financial page. How can we look at all the numbers on the sports page and select the one that was significant?" Avalon said, "If we assume that Gregory knew what he was doing, then despite all the numbers, the particular significant number must have been obvious, or should have been. For instance, all the numbers on the page may have had no meaning at all. It may have been the number of the page that counted." "First thought! However, it was page P, and 32 stood for "Cancel previous message." There was no previous message, and that was not it." Avalon said, "What was on the sports page?" "I can't reproduce it from memory, of course, and I don't have a Xerox copy to show you. That page dealt with baseball almost entirely, for the baseball season was in its last few weeks. It had baseball standings on it, the box scores of particular games, some pitching statistics." "And was Stepan knowledgeable about baseball?" "To a limited extent," said Pentili. "He was professionally interested in America, reading American history avidly, for instance, so he would be interested in the national game. You remember World War 11 movies with their clich6 that any Nazi spy, no matter how cleverly schooled, would always give himself away by his ignorance of last year's World Series? Stepan intended not to be caught in this fashion, but he could scarcely make himself an expert." "Well," said Avalon stiffly, "if ignorance of baseball is the hallmark of the Nazi spy, I had better turn myself in. I know nothing of the game." "Nor I," said Drake, shrugging. Gonzalo said, "Come on, nobody can read the papers, watch television, or talk to people without knowing something about the game. You guys are just indulging in snobbery. Why don't we- figure this out? What kind of a number ought it to be? How many digits?" Pentili said, "At least two digits, possibly three. Not more than three." "All right. If Gregory was no baseball expert, he would have to pick something simple and obvious. Batting averages are in three digits. Maybe there was some batting average that made the headlines." Pentili shook his head. "There were no numbers in the headlines. We would have been on to that like a shot. I assure you that nowhere on the page, nowhere, was there any one number that stood out from the rest. No, gentlemen, I am quite convinced that the sports page by itself was insufficient, that Gregory in his last moments used it only because there was nothing else he could do. The number was there but there was no way of picking it out without a bint-so he prepared one." Rubin said, "You mean the Scrabble letters? "Epock"?" "Yes." "I don't see what kind of hint that might be." Gonzalo said, "He might not have finished, you know. He managed to get five letters out and then died. Maybe he gave up on the sports page and was trying to spell out the number, only he didn't finish. If he wanted to write "one hundred twenty-two," for instance, that would take a lot more than five letters." Rubin said, "Are you telling us there's a number that begins with "epock"?" He rolled his eyes upward in exasperation. Gonzalo said, "The letters don't have to be in order. In Scrabble, you're always arranging and rearranging your letters-like in anagrams. After he had all the letters he wanted, he'd have rearranged them into the number he was spelling. He died too soon." Halsted said, "Sorry, Mario, that's not possible. The written forms of the numbers have an odd distribution of letters. For instance" (his mathematician's eyes gleamed), "do you know that you can write all the numbers from zero to nine hundred ninety-nine without using the letter V?" "So?" said Gonzalo. "There's no "a" in "epock." " "No, but there's a "p" and a V. Write out the numbers in order and you won't come to a "p" till you reach-uh-one heptillion, which has twentyfour digits. And you won't reach a V till one octillion, which has twentyseven. Of course, that's in the American system of numeration. In the British system . . ." "You made your point," growled Trumbull. Rubin said, "He could still have been incomplete, though. He may have given up on the sports page altogether, started fresh, and intended to take out those five letters plus a "t," rearranging the whole to spell "pocket." There may have been something in his pocket that carried the message. . . . "There wasn't," interposed Pentili curtly. "It may have been removed after the knifing and be was too far gone to realize it." "That's a second-order conjecture. You assume an additional T and then a pocket-picking as well to account for it. Unlikely!" "Might "pocket" have been a code word?" said Rubin. "No!" Pentili waved his hand left and right, palm outward, in a gesture of impatience. "Gentlemen, it is amusing to listen to your conjectures but you are moving in the wrong direction. Habit has a firm hold even at the moment of death. Stepan was a neat person, and when death came he had his hand on the top of the Scrabble box and was clearly making an effort to replace it. There is no question in my mind that he had taken out all the tiles he was going to. We have these five letters, no more." Halsted said, "He would not have had time to rearrange the letters." Pentili sighed. "There are exactly 120 different ways in which 5 different letters can be arranged. Not one of the rearrangements is an English word, any more than lain" is," he smiled briefly. "One arrangement is "kopec," which is a small Russian coin usually spelled "kopek," but that has no significance that any of us could see. No, there must be a reference to a number." Avalon said suddenly, "Was there anything on the sports page besides sports? I mean, were there advertisements, for instance?" Pentili looked with concentration into the middle distance as though he were concentrating on an invisible sheet of paper. He said, thoughtfully, "No advertisements. There was, however, a bridge column." "Ah, could the letters have referred to that? See here, Mr. Pentili, I am not a bridge buff in the real sense, but I play the game and sometimes read a bridge column. They invariably have a hand shown under the heads, "north," "south," "east," and "west." Each hand has its cards listed according to suit, "spades," "hearts," "diamonds," "clubs," and under each suit the cards are listed in descending order of value." "Well?" said Pentili stonily. "So consider "epock." The V may stand for "east," the V for "clubs." East's hand may have five clubs, which may, as an example, be J, 8, 4, 3, 2. The Jack and the 3 are excluded because they are occupied by letters that do not stand for digits. That leaves 842as your code." Pentili looked at him with some surprise. He said, "I must admit that I've never thought of this. When I am back in my office I will look at the bridge hand. Amazing, Mr. Avalon, I would not have thought a new notion could have been advanced at this stage of the game." Avalon said, flushing a little, "I can but do my poor best, sir." "However," said Pentili, "I don't believe your suggestion can be useful. Poor Stepan was not, to my knowledge, a bridge player, and it seems to me only a monomaniac on the subject would have tried to use bridge for a code like that at the point of death. It has to be very simple. He might have used the page number as the code, but I suspect he could no longer see the tiny symbols on the newspaper page. He recognized the sports page as a whole and he could still see the large letters of the Scrabble set. And we can find nothing simple there." Gonzalo said, "Unless Henry has a suggestion." "Ah," said Pentili, "then it comes to Henry in the end. What does all this mean, Henry?" Henry, who had been remaining silently at the sideboard throughout the discussion, said, "I cannot say, sir, unless the number 20 would be of signifi-" He was interrupted by a suddenly frowning Pentili. "Twenty! Is that a guess, Henry?" "Not entirely, sir. Is it significant, then?" "Significant? I've spent years gloomily suspecting he was trying to tell us twenty. Twenty meant "Government in firm control." I haven't men- tioned twenty in the course of the story, have I?" There was a chorused negative. "If I could have shown," said Pentili, "that Stepan was trying to tell us twenty, I might have been able to stop the Bay of Pigs. At least I would have tried; God, I would have tried. But I don't see how you get twenty out of this, Henry." "Why, sir, if it is true that Mr. Stepan was only moderately knowledgeable in baseball, then he would see on the sports page only what other moderately knowledgeable people would see-like myself, for instance. As Mr. Gonzalo would say, I speak from ignorance when I say that all I see on the sports page is the result of the games-the score in other words-and that brings "twenty" rather forcibly to mind." Avalon, possibly smarting at the failure of his own suggestion, said, don't think much of that, Henry. "Score" is rather an archaic word. Would Stepan have known it?" "I imagine be would, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, "Mr. Pentili has said that Stepan was an avid reader of American history, and one of the bestknown historical phrases is "Fourscore and seven years ago . - -,P Pentili looked disappointing, "It's a clever notion, Henry, but not convincing. Too had." "It becomes convincing, sir, when you realize that the Scrabble letters also signify twenty." "In what way?" "When Mr. Gonzalo asked his question about "blain" he specifically asked if it were an English word. No one has specified that epock" must be English." Gonzalo said delightedly, "You mean it's Russian for twenty?" Pentili said, "No, it is not Russian for twenty. I've already mentioned the "kopec'/'kopek" possibility, but that has nothing to do with twenty, surely." "I'm not thinking of Russian words," said Henry. "As you have said, babits are hard to break even at the point of death, and Mr. Stepan must have found himself using Russian letters. "The Cyrillic alphabet," said Rubin. "Yes, Mr. Rubin. Now, I have seen the USSR written in Russian in letters that look like CCCP. I suspect therefore that the Russian V is equivalent to our V and the Russian "p" is equivalent to our "r."" "Quite so," said Pentili, looking dumfounded. "And the Russian "k" is equivalent to our hard V so that in our letters, "epock" becomes "erosc," and that can be rearranged to read "score."" Pentili seemed overcome by a deep depression. "You win, Henry. Why couldn't you have told me all this in 1960?" "Had I but known, sir," said Henry. "The Sports Page"-Afterword In some ways, there is a certain inflexibility about my scheme for writing Black Widower stories. There is always the banquet and the general conversation; then the grilling and the presentation of a mystery; then the discussion and solution. But there is a certain flexibility as well, for the mystery itself can be anything at all. It can be a murder, or a theft, or a spy story, or a missingwill story. It can even, on occasion, be that hoariest of devices, the dying-clue mystery. Why not? They're always fun. "The Sports Page" appeared in the April 1977 EQMM. By the way, readers occasionally write me to offer alternative solutions to my Black Widowers. In the case of this story, two readers came up with identical alternate solutions that were (in my opinion) cleverer than the one I had constructed. One was Dan Button, editor of Science Digest, and the other was Paul Edwin Kennedy, a Boston lawyer. Let me quote the latter: "He [Stepan] left us the cryptic message "epock." Any person "moderately familiar" with baseball is familiar with the box scores. To him, the letters "e," "po," and "k" stand for "error," "put out," and "strike," respectively. We can then translate "epock" as "error put out c strike." Surely it's obvious then that V stands for Cuban." Dan Button, using identical reasoning, interprets the message as either "You will strike out (suffer disaster) if you go ahead with the plan," or "The strike (invasion) is out, because of the erroneous information you've received." Unbelievable that, without knowing it, while constructing one solution, I had laid the groundwork for another that was even more subtle. Second Best. When the Black Widowers opened the new season with their September banquet, following hard upon the national conventions, it was not surprising that the talk turned to politics, Emmanuel Rubin, who was host., had (as might be expected) considerable fault to find with both candidates, and a minute analysis of their shortcomings left each sounding highly unacceptable. Thomas Trumbull scowled. He said, "Who's your write-in candidate, then?" "Himself," said Mario Gonzalo quickly, smoothing the lapel of a jacket that bore the pattern of a patchwork quilt of the louder sort. " Manny has voted the straight Rubin ticket for years." Rubin said, "It certainly doesn't make sense to vote for someone I know to be less capable than I am. If, for the sake of argument, I admit I lack the capacity to be President of the United States, then any lesser man, ipso facto, should not get my vote, or anyone's." Geoffrey Avalon, sipping slowly at his second drink, which had not yet reached the midpoint at which he automatically stopped, said austerely, "All things being equal, I don't think it good practice to oust a sitting President. Experience and continuity count for a great deal." James Drake, peering through cigarette smoke, cleared his throat and said softly, "How much experience did he have two years ago when . . ." Rubin interrupted and overrode Drake. "Don't reason with him, Jim. Geoff voted for Nixon in "72." His straggly beard lifted and he glared through the thick lenses of his eyeglasses. Avalon stood more stiffly than usual and a faint flush rose to his cheeks. "I'm not ashamed of that. The chief issue in "72 was foreign policy, and I believe to this day that Nixon's foreign policy was a rational and useful one. "He was corrupt," said Rubin. "That was not known at the time. I cannot vote on the basis of future knowledge." "What future knowledge? I've known he was not to be trusted ever since be entered Congress in 1947." "We don't all have your 20-2o hindsight vision, Manny," said Avalon with wounded dignity. "Hindsight, hell," said Rubin. "I can produce a hundred witnesses who heard me denounce Nixon over a period of thirty years." "We all heard you many times right here at the Black Widowers," said Roger Halsted, looking over the hors d'oeuvres tray critically. Avalon, reaching the halfway mark of his drink, put it, down firmly and said, "I believe we're allowed our political differences, Manny. Membership in the Black Widowers does not deprive me of my civil rights." "Vote as you please," said Rubin, "but I would like to remind you that you were the only Black Widower to vote Republican that year." Avalon touched his neat graying mustache as though to convince himself his drink had not wetted it and said, "Does that include Henry?" Gonzalo said eagerly, "Whom did you vote for in "72, Henry?" Avalon said, "You needn't answer, Henry. Your political opinions are your own." Henry, the invaluable waiter at the Black Widower banquets, was putting the final touches at the table. He said, "I have no reason to keep it secret, Mr. Avalon. Like Mr. Rubin, I distrusted the President and so, with some misgiving, I voted for the other man." "Six to one against you, Geoff," said Rubin, grinning widely. Avalon said, "What about your guest?" With perhaps just a touch of spite, he added, "For whom, after all, you're putting on this show." "Because he's interviewing me?" began Rubin indignantly. The guest closed his notebook with a snap, loudly enough to draw all eyes, and said, in a surprisingly gentle voice, "Actually, I voted for Nixon. I'm not really keyed into politics, but I generally vote Republican." "Six to two," said Avalon, in low-voiced satisfaction, shooting a swift glance at Rubin, who looked a little put out. Gonzalo said, looking up from the portrait he was quickly sketching of the guest, "How can you be a reporter and not be keyed in to politics?" (i I'm not exactly a . . ." Trumbull lifted his voice. "Save it for the grilling, Mario, damn you. If you'd come on time, you could have been introduced to Mr. Gardner." "I don't have to take, lessons in early arrival from you, Tom," said Gonzalo, hurt. "They're paving Park Avenue, and my taxi . . ." Henry, waiting patiently, sent his voice through a momentary hole in the conversation. "Gentlemen, at the request of Mr. Rubin, tonight's host, our chef has been pleased to prepare a smorgasbord. If you will all be kind enough to help yourselves from the dishes on the sideboard . . ." They lined up with the avidity of healthy trenchermen and Halsted, whose incipient paunch was eloquent evidence of his brotherly affection for calories, said, "We've never had a smorgasbord before, Manny." "Nothing wrong with trying something new," said Rubin. "Oh I approve-I approve." Halsted's eyes wandered avidly over the selection. Gonzalo said, "That leaves you only semi-employed tonight, Henry." Henry smiled paternally and said, "I shall try to keep myself occupied, Mr. Gonzalo." The sideboard's contents had been reduced to fragments, coffee was at its second cup, and brandy wasbeing served, when Rubin clattered spoon on water glass and said, "Brother Black Widowers, it is time for the grilling, and Mario has clamored for the chance. Very much against my better judgment, I'm going to let him. Mario . . ." Gonzalo smiled and leaned back in his seat, draping an arm negligently over the back. He said, "Mr. Gardner, I apologize for having been late. Park Avenue was being paved. . . ." "We know all that," said Rubin. "Get on with it." "I managed to catch up over the meal, however. You are Arthur Gardner, and you work on a free-lance basis for Personalities magazine. Am I correct so far?" "Yes, sir." Gardner's gray hair, thick, moderately long, and well arranged, made him look the fiftyish be was, but none of his other features concurred. With a bit of hair dye he could easily have passed for something under forty. His teeth were good but his smile was uneasy. He didn't seem quite at home with the company. Gonzalo said, "I further gather that your current assignment is that of interviewing Manny Rubin for a piece in Personalities." "That's right. Front-of-the-book piece." "And you've come to this dinner, as Manny's guest, as part of the assignmenCy "Yes," said Gardner. "I do not conduct a simple interview. I try to sample Mr. Rubin's activities, so to speak." "Ah," said Gonzalo, "that brings us to the key question. If your activities are concerned with presenting Manny to the public, how can you possibly justify your existence?" Gardner said, "If Mr. Rubin can justify his, then mine is automatically justified." Avalon laughed loudly. "That's a good answer. You're squelched, Mario." "He was primed," said Gonzalo indignantly, "but never mind. Mr. Gardner, before dinner you said you weren't familiar with politics. Isn't that a handicap in your line of work?" "No, sir. If I were a political reporter, it would be, but I deal with personalities." "What if your personality is a politician?" "I know enough for that." "Have you ever messed up an assignment because of your ignorance of politics?" "I'm not ignorant of politics," said Gardner softly, and not noticeably annoyed. "I have never needed more than I have, even when-I have done an interview, for instance, with Hubert Hum-" Trumbull broke in, "Hold it, Mario. Mr. Gardner, we of the Black Widowers have grown sensitive over small things. You said, "even when-" then paused, and changed subjects on us. Please unchange. Even when what?" Gardner looked genuinely puzzled, "I don't understand." "You were about to say something and didn't. Now, what were you about to say?" Gardner comprehended. "Oh-that's a war story that seems to bother me a bit every presidential election year. It's not important." "Could you tell us just the same?" "But it happened a quarter of a century ago. It's all over." "Even so, that's the turn the Lyrilliniz has taken. I'm afraid it's part of the requirements of the game that you rust answer. I assure you everything said here is confidential." Gardner looked about him, rather helplessly. "There's nothing confidential about it. It was the winter of 1950- In Korea, the army under General MacArthur had reached the Manchurian border in late November and we were all going to be home by Christmas." "I know," said Drake, with dry reminiscence. "Then the Chinese came pouring south and caught us with our pants down." "You're so right," said Gardner bitterly. "To this day, I don't know how we could have been caught so flat-footed. Anyway, the South Korean divisions just melted away. After all, they could become part of the countryside. Take off the uniform and each of them is just another local peasant. For Americans and the few western Allies, it was another thing. We just had to scurry south as fast as we could and stay together as best we could till we had built a line that would hold. "Lots of us were separated from our units. I was. For five days I made my way southward wondering when some Chinese unit might spot me or when some Korean peasants might trap me for what I wore and carried. "I hid by day and moved on by night. My rations were gone and after a while I went hungry. I didn't know what was ahead or if there was an American army anywhere at all. It was the worst defeat in the field an American army had ever suffered since the Civil War. "The third day I came across another American soldier. I nearly shot him before I recognized him as one of us. He nearly shot me, for that matter. He was wounded and had difficulty moving. I helped him along but that slowed me down quite a bit and a dozen times I thought of leaving him behind. I couldn't quite make myself do that. I'd like to say it was a humanitarian impulse but he was another pair of eyes and he might see something that I alone would see too late. Besides that, he was company. God, I would do anything for company. "The fifth night, he was dying. I knew it and be knew it. I didn't know what to do to help him, or to just make it easier for him. So I stayed with him and he talked. I didn't really listen, you know. I just kept trying to watch all sides at once and was half wishing he would die so that I could move on, and half wishing he wouldn't die and leave me alone. "He was lightheaded and rambled on from topic to topic. He talked American politics. He said Truman was through and the Republicans would probably -put Taft in the White House in "52. 1 remember he said that would be the fourth set of relatives to become Presidents and the second father-son combination. That rather stuck in my mind-I don't know why-but everything else he said is just gone, except that it was all about Presidents. I think he must have been a presidential buff and that he knew everything about them. "Just before the end, he talked about himself and his family. He was married and had a kid, a little girl two months old whom he had never seen. He managed to get something out of a pocket and give it to me. "Get it to her," he said, "please. She'll know I at least saw her holding the little girl; that I thought of them at the last." He tried to kiss it. It was the photograpb of a woman and a baby and I suppose it had reached him just before the army had fallen apart. "I said, "Okay. What's your name? Where do you live?" In the two days we had been together, we hadn't exhanged names. Names hadn't been important those two ays. "His eyes were glazing and he was mumbling. He said, My name? A good name. Presidential name. No relative, of course. Second-best votegetter on the list. They love him." His voice trailed away, but I remember his exact words. I thought of it a lot, you see. "I shook him, but he was dead. Well, what could I do? I certainly wasn't going to linger behind to give him a Christian burial or anything like that. I just wanted out. But I did try to reach for his dog tags so I could hand them in if I ever got back to any American line. Also to get his name so I could deliver the photo. I thought that if I ever got back I had the obligation to try to do that. "My hand never touched him. I heard the sound of Cbinese-I guess it Was Chinese-and someone was on top of me. I think he tripped over me. I tore away, using my rifle as a club, and then I ran. I heard shots but nothing hit me, and I kept running. Then up ahead I heard someone swearing in English and I raised my hand, shouting, "American! American!" "I was with an American company and that was it. It was two more days before I got my thoughts sorted out, and part of that time I think I was on a stretcher." There was a pause and Halsted said, "So you never got the soldier's dog tags." "No, sir," said Gardner emphatically. "We were retreating. We didn't stop and turn till we were well south of Seoul, and then we came back only to the boundary between the two Koreas more or less. My buddy, whoever he was, died deep in North Korea, and he remains in North Korea to this day." "Then you couldn't deliver the photo?" said Halsted. Gardner said, "I tried. The trouble was I didn't even know what his unit was and we lost a great many men in that retreat. I checked as far as I could. I suppose I could have run a copy of the picture in some national magazine and waited for a woman to come and claim it, but that took more money than I was willing to spend. "It bothers me a bit. His daughter should be in her late twenties now, and his wife should be my age. His wife might be dead or married again; his daughter may be a mother herself and she may never give a thought to a father she's never seen. Still-it's just possible it might be nice for them to have some little thing he touched as he was dying, some assurance they filled his dying thoughts. But what can I do? Still, when presidential elections are in the air, I think of it more than I usually do." Avalon said, "One can't blame one's self for something that is completely outside one's control." Halsted said, "But you said you tried, Mr. Gardner. How could you possibly have tried? You had nothing to go on.)f Gardner said, "Sure I did. He said he had the name of one of the American Presidents. It was probably the accident of his name that made him such a presidential buff. And he said the President was the second-best vote-getter in the list and that the people loved him. That seemed clear enough to me.,After I got out, I wrote to Washington and I was able to have them run a check on the names of those missing in action in the course of the retreat. It seemed certain to me that his body was never recovered so he wouldn't be listed as killed in action, and that cut down on the numbers a bit." "I take it you didn't find anything," said Drake, lighting a fresh cigarette. "Nothing. There wasn't a single Roosevelt on the list." Rubin exploded. "Roosevelt? Why Roosevelt?" Gardner looked surprised. "Why not Roosevelt? It's the obvious name considering what he said. The only name. I don't know why there wasn't someone by that name missing in action. It could be typical Army snafu, but since there wasn't I came to a dead end." "How do you make out Roosevelt?" said Rubin. "Surely you're old enough to remember the 1936 election. I was ten years old then, but I remember the fuss ft made. Franklin Roosevelt carried forty-six of the forty-eight states and left poor Alf Landon with Maine and Vermont only-eight electoral votes." "And that made him second best?" "Well, Washington was elected twice by unanimous vote of the electoral college, in 1788 and in 1792. That put him in first place. You can't do better than unanimous. And FDR is in second place." Avalon, sitting bolt upright, his neat little pepper-and-salt beard giving him the air of a sage whenever he drew his eyebrows together and grel portentous, said, "Actually not. In 1820, James Monroe, our fifth President, was running for re-election. The United States was practically a oneparty nation at the time. The Federalist Party had virtually committed suicide by engaging injudiciously in what came to be considered treasonable activity during the War of 1812. Everyone who counted politically, therefore, called himself a Democratic-Republican. Later on new factions and new parties formed about several of the dominant personalities, but that time had not yet come. Therefore, Monroe ran for re-election with no formal opposition." He paused and gazed about at the others with a touch of complacence. Tom Trumbull said, "Come on, Geoff, you just happened to read all about this recently, so don't make it sound as though you're dredging it up from some deep well of remembered knowledge. What are you getting at?" "I did not read about it recently. These arc facts every schoolchild knows, or would know if schools were worth anything these days. The point is that Monroe got every electoral vote but one. The lone dissenter- from New Hampshire, I believe-cast his vote for John Quincy Adams, for the express purpose of keeping it from being unanimous. No man but Washington, he said, should be elected unanimously. "You see, then," Avalon continued, "that if Washington is in first place as a vote-getter, Monroe is in second place, F.D.R. is only in third. That is why you found no Roosevelts among the missing in action. The dead soldier's name must have been Monroe. . . ." Gardner stared about him with astonishment. "Incredible!" he said. "I cant believe it. I never thought for one minute there was anyone other than Roosevelt that it could be. Are you sure?" Avalon shrugged. "We can look it up. We have a couple of almanacs on the reference shelf." "Don't bother to get the almanac, Henry," said Rubin. "Geoff is right; at least in this case." Gardner said, "I suppose I can get back to Washington on this. The army must keep its records forever. You know, I feel rotten. If I hadn't been so cocksure, I might have found the wife and child a quarter of a century ago." "I don't know," said Drake thoughtfully. "It seems to me there are two parts to the identification. The President was the second-best vote-getter, and the peopled loved him. I'll grant Roosevelt's popularity, but how did Monroe stand?" "Nowhere," said Rubin at once. "Nowhere. He inherited the presidency because it had become almost traditional at the time to have it go to a Virginian. He was the fourth Virginian out of five Presidents, the four bein Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Monroe was the last an5 the least of them. His only great accomplishment was the Monroe Doctrine, and that was really the product of John Quincy Adams, his Secretary of State." "Well, then, was it Monroe or wasn't it Monroe?" said Gardner. "You've got me completely mixed up. What's the answer?" "I'm not sure," said Rubin, "but I'm positive it wasn't Monroe. Look, the Constitution gives the right to elect the President to the electoral college, and for the first eight elections or so there aren't even any records of any popular vote. No presidential candidate had to squeeze votes out of the general public in those early years; he had to intrigue for the votes of a few electors. That wasn't vote-getting in our modern sense and if we're going to try to figure out first and second place in vote-getting, we'll have to eliminate the early Presidents. I'm sure the soldier never thought of either Washington or Monfbe in any vote-getting capacity.)t Gardner rubbed the line of his jawbone. "When did the vote-getting start?" Rubin said, frowning, ,The first modern election campaign, a libelous circus featuring dirty tricks, was in 1840. That was William Henry Harrison winning over Martin Van Buren. I suspect we ought to start with him." Avalon said, "No, Manny. The 1840 election may have set the style but I think we've got to start with Andrew Jackson back in 1832." "All right," said Rubin, castinLy his right hand upward as though negligently tossing away a point. " iart with-Andy Jackson." Drake, sitting back in his chair, peered at the rest out of his contact lenses and said, "Johnson got a landslide vote in 1964 and Nixon got one in 1972, but the soldier died in late 1950. - - -" "Right," said Gardner. "Truman was President then, so we have to stop with him." Avalon said, "I'm pretty sure that if we restrict ourselves to the Presidents between Jackson and Truman, both included, then the greatest votegetter was Roosevelt in 1936 and the second greatest-and I'm certain of this-was Warren Harding over James Cox in 1920." Gardner said, "Are you saying then it's Harding)" "No, we're not," said Rubin quickly. "No one in their right mind can possibly suppose that your soldier friend would be proud of the presidential aspect of his name if he were named Harding." Drake said, "If Geoff is right and Harding won by the second biggest landslide in terms of percentages, then Harding it is. You can't argue with figures." "Yes, you can," said Rubin. "You can deny that one particular set of figures is the basis of the judgment. The fact is that in all the history of the presidency no one can possibly be considered for the top mark as a vote-getter but Roosevelt; that's why I was so astonished when Gardner decided on him as second-best. But why is Roosevelt considered tops? Not through percentage points, but because he was elected in four successive presidential years, 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944, and no other President has been elected more than twice. It's the number of elections that counts." Gardner said, "That doesn't do any good. Who's in second place, then?" Rubin said, "Well, I don't know. It should be one of the two-term Presidents, but how can we say which? It depends on your soldier friend's prejudices and predilections." "Perhaps not," said Avalon. "If he was a presidential buff, he must have had some logical criterion for his choice and we ought to be able to find it." Gonzalo said, "There's the bit about his being loved. Which President was most loved by the people after Roosevelt? That should tell us." Rubin said, "I don't think so. All Presidents were loved by most of those who voted for him. It's a kind of automatic reflex. Hell, I would say that right now there is a quarter of the electorate that think Nixon was done dirt and that love him still. I think we ought to be careful how we use that criterion." Avalon said, "Well, let's not talk aimlessly. Roosevelt was our only fourterm winner and there were no three-term winners. Therefore we have to pick our second-best vote-getter out of those Presidents who won two elections. From Jackson to Truman there were six two-election winners, if I count correctly. I'll name them and you check me off, Manny, and if we get into an argument, we'll refer to the almanac. The two-term winners are Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Ulvsses S. Grant, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, and Woodrow Wilson. "Now we can start eliminating, and Manny, you continue to correct me if necessary. Lincoln's first election in 1860 was a fluke and no tribute really to his vote-getting ability. It so happened that he faced a disunited Democratic Party, which ran both Stephen Douglas and John Breckenridge against him. I think a fellow called hell also ran. Had Lincoln faced a united opposition, he'd have been snowed under. As it was, he managed to get a majority of the electoral votes with a minority of the popular vote. "The same is true of Woodrow Wilson, who faced both Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft in 1912. If the Republican Party had been united, Wilson would have been badly beaten. As for Grover Cleveland, be won twice but not in successive election years. He beat James Blaine in 1884 and Benjamin Harrison in 1892, but was defeated in 1888. That makes him both twenty-second and twenty-fourth President, the only man in American history to get two presidential numbers. "That leaves just three Presidents who won two successive elections without benefit of a major split in the opposition, and they were Jackson, Grant, and McKinley. The second best has to be one of them." Avalon stopped for a few minutes, then said, "Only I'm not sure which." Trumbull said, "What's the good of an analysis that leaves us with three candidates?" Gonzalo said, "I still say we've got to remember that the soldier said the people loved him. It has to play some part." Rubin shrugged. "I don't know; I mistrust that. But let's see. For in- stance, McKinley was a gentle and lovable soul in his private life, but he was a weak President and stirred few bearts. In fact, it was his losing opponent, William Jennine Bryan, who received the fanatical adoration of his followers." Gonzalo said, "That makes McKinley all the better as a vote-getter, if he ran against a strong opponent." "Maybe," said Rubin, "but we're working now on the supposition that the man we're after won and was loved. So it's not McKinley. Grant was a war bero, so there were plenty of people to idolize him. However, his victories were over another part of the nation, and they didn't love him in the southern states." "Besides, he was corrupt, wasn't be?" said Gonzalo. "Not he himself. Those around him. And that was not fully realized till after the re-election victory of 1872, so it has nothing to do with the case. That leaves us Andrew Jackson, a strong vote-getter, idolized by many of those who were for him and with his popularity spread widely over the nation." "He was well hated by some," growled Trumbull. "Every President is. Even F.D.R. No, I'm pretty sure that second best would have to be Jackson. And it's a common name, too. I'll bet there were a number of Jacksons missing in action in that winter retreat in Korea." There was a longish silence, and then Gardner said, "Well, I'll try to track down the Jacksons. Maybe to play it safe I ought to get names and addresses on the Hardings and Monroes and McKinleys too." Avalon said, "Maybe you'll have to make a list of anyone with a presidential name. Manny's argument is ingenious, but it's too refined to carry conviction. I suspect Manny realizes that, too." Rubin was stung into instant defense. "No such thing. There is no other sensible way of working out the problem, given the data. If anyone can supply one, I should like to hear it, that's all." "Is that a general challenge?" said Gonzalo. "It is, " said Rubin. "Even to Henry?" "Even to Henry," said Rubin, after a slight hesitation. "I don't see how he can improve it." "That's- your cue, Henry," said Gonzalo, grinning. "Knock him dead." Henry, who had long since cleared the sideboard and who had been listening with the greatest interest, said, "I can scarcely claim to know more of American history than Mr. Rubin or Mr. Avalon." Gonzalo said, "Come on, Henry, they'll tell you any history you want, to know. Just improve on Manny's argument." "I'm not sure that I can," said Henry cautiously, "but I have a question of Mr. Gardner, if I may." Gardner, who looked puzzled at the sudden entry of the waiter into the argument, said, "Yes, of course." "Several of the gentlemen, and you yourself, have spoken of the second- best vote-getter having been loved by the people. That, however, is not my recollection of the wording in your account. Did the dying soldier say, "The people loved him"?" Gardner thought for a moment. "No. He said, "They love him."" "Are you sure, Sir? It was years ago." "I admit that. But I thought about it a lot that first year and it was "They love him."" Gonzalo said, "I see what Henry's driving at. The "they" doesn't refer to people generally, and once we figure out to whom it does refer, we've got it. Right, Henry?" "Well, no, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry. "I rather imagine it does refer to the people; I just wanted to get the exact wording. Mr. Gardner, was it a complete statement, or was the soldier trying to add something to it?" "There you've got me, Henry. I don't know." "But it was the last thing he said. "They love him." He didn't say anything after that? He might have intended to say something more, to add to the statement, but couldn't make it?" "I suppose so, but I don't know." Trumbull said impatiently, "What's all this about, Henry?" Henry said, "I'm not quite certain, yet. I am curious, however, about something Mr. Rubin said. Sir, did you say that Grover Cleveland was elected for two nonconsecutive terms?" "That's right, Henry," said Rubin, "in 1884 and 1892." "And he was defeated in 1888?" "Yes, by Benjamin Harrison, on whom he turned the tables in 1892. It was very unusual. A President in office was defeated for re-election in two elections running, and the same two candidates in those elections swapped victory and defeat." Henry said patiently, "Yes, Mr. Rubin, but the point is that Grover Cleveland ran as a candidate of one of the major parties three times in succession." "So he did. But he only won twice." "I understand. Of the other five two-term candidates, did any other run a third time?" "Andrew Jackson did. He ran three times and was elected only mrice." Avalon said, "Henry Clay and William Jennings Bryan ran three times each and each lost every time. Henry Clay. -. ." Trumbull overrode him hastily, "Nixon ran three times and won twice but that was after Truman." Henry said, "How did Cleveland do in the middle race? The one be lost?" Rubin said, "I can't give you the exact figures, but I think it was a narrow loss." Henry said, "Perhaps we should now turn to the almanac." He went to the reference shelf and brought it back. Rubin said, "Let me look it up. I know about where it is." He riffled the pages, then ran his fingers down one page, whistling softly. "Here it is. Oh good God, he lost in the electoral college233 to 168 but he had the lead in the popular vote. He was nearly 400,000 votes ahead of Harrison. Not an absolute majority because there were a couple of minor candidates in the field, Prohibitionists and Laborites." Henry said, "Then it seems to me that if Franklin D. Roosevelt led the field in four successive elections, Grover Cleveland led the field in three successive elections and he can be considered the second-best vote-getter." Avalon, however, said, "Hold on." He had been riffling through the almanac's pages. "Manny said Jackson ran a third time, too. He ran and was defeated in 1824, but he had the plurality in that year. Jackson also led the field in three successive elections." He held the page up before Henry's eyes. "That is so, Sir," said Henry, "but Mr. Rubin had discarded victories over a split opposition. In 1824, Jackson ran against three major opponents. Cleveland led the field three times in a row against a single unified opposition each time. He's still second best." Rubin said, "Well, Henry, you convince me. But how did you know? Did you just happen to know that Clcveland led Harrison in the popular vote the time Cleveland lost?" Gonzalo said, "It's no mystery. While we were all arguing, Henry just looked up all the statistics in the almanac. Right, Henry?" "No, Sir," said Henry, "it wasn't necessary to go to the almanac." "Frankly," said Gardner impatiently, "I don't think that Henry's analysis is any more convincing than the others." "It would not be," said Henry, "if it depended on the election statistics, but I just used those to confirm a decision made on other grounds." "On what other grounds, Henry?" said Avalon sternly. "Don't play games with us." "It did occur to me, Mr. Avalon, when Mr. Gardner told his story, that it was possible the dying soldier was not merely making a statement when be said, "They love him," but was attempting to complete a quotation. This is especially so since, if Mr. Gardner's memory is right, he used the present tense." "Well, Henry?" "I seemed to recall that there is a well-known quotation in the history of politics that goes, "They love him most for the enemies he has made." I thought the reference might have been to Franklin Roosevelt, but I didn't really know. While you were arguing, therefore, I consulted Bartlett. The remark was made on July 9, 1884, by one Edward Stuyvcsant Bragg, who was, at the time, seconding the nomination of Grover Cleveland." And the awed silence that followed was broken by Gardner, who said softly, "You've sold me, Henry. Mind if I do an article on you someday?" Henry smiled and shook his head. "I'd rather you didn't, sir. I value my anonymity." "Second Best"-Afterword "Second Best" was written in August 1976 in the heat of a presidential campaign. I suppose it was inevitable that, with my mind on what was taking place, I would do a Black Widowers story that dealt with e "lections. That was not very bright of me. I am experienced enough to understand that one should not deal with things that are topical at the time of writing-but at the time of publishing. After all, it takes about nine months between the time a story is accepted by EQMM and the time it is published. Though I submitted the story quite confidently (since I was fond of it), Fred Dannay shot it right back. It would have to appear after the election, and the readers would be sated with the subject by then. It was embarrassing to make so elementary a mistake, but it had its advantage, too. In each of the first two books of this series, I included three stories that had not appeared in any form prior to book publication, and I intended to have three such stories in this third book as well. "Second Best" was filed away cheerfully as the first of them. Emmanuel Rubin, resident polymath of the Black Widowers Society, was visibly chafed. His eyebrows hunched down into the upper portion of his thick-lensed spectacles and his sparse gray beard bristled. "Not true to life," he said. "Imagine! Not true to life!" Mario Gonzalo, who had just reached the head of the stairs and had accepted his dry martini from Henry, the unsurpassable waiter, said, "What's not true to life?" Geoffrey Avalon looked down from his seventy-four inches and said solemnly, "It appears that Manny has suffered a rejection." "Well, why not?" said Gonzalo, peeling off his gloves. "Editors don't have to be stupid all the time." "It isn't the rejection," said Rubin. "I've been rejected before by better editors and in connection with better stories. It's the reason he advanced! How the hell would he know if a story were true to life or not? What's he ever done but warm an office chair? Would he . . Roger Halsted, whose career as a math teacher in a junior high school had taught him how to interrupt shrill voices, managed to interpose. "Just what did he find not true to life, Manny?" Rubin waved a hand passionately outward. "I don't want to talk about "Good," said Thomas Trumbull, scowling from under his neatly waved thatch of white hair. "Then the rest of us can hear each other for a while. Roger, why don't you introduce your guest to the late Mr. Gonzalo?" Halsted said, "I've just been waiting for the decibel level to decrease. Mario, my friend Jonathan Thatcher. This is Mario Gonzalo, who is an artist by profession. Jonathan is an oboist, Mario." Gonzalo grinned and said, "Sounds like fun." "Sometimes it almost is," said Thatcher, "on dayswhen the reed behaves itself." Thatcher's round face and plump checks would have made him a natural to play Santa Claus at any Christmas benefit, but he would have needed padding just the same, for his body had that peculiar ersatz slimness that seemed to indicate forty pounds recently lost. His eyebrows were dark and thick, and one took it for granted that they were never drawn together in anger. Henry said, "Gentlemen, dinner is ready." James Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, "Thanks, Henry. It's a cold day and I would welcome hot food." "Yes, sir," said Henry with a gentle smile. "Lobster thermidor today, baked potatoes, stuffed eggplant . . ." "But what's this, Henry?" demanded Rubin, scowling. "Hot borscht, Mr. Rubin. Rubin looked as though he were searching his soul and then he said grudgingly, "All right." Drake, unfolding his napkin, said, "Point of order, Roger." "What is it?" "I'm sitting next to Manny, and if be continues to look like that he'll curdle my soup and give me indigestion. You're host and absolute monarch; I move you direct him to tell us what he wrote that isn't true to life and get it out of his system." "Why?" said Trumbull. "Why not let him sulk and be silent for the novelty of it?" "I'm curious, too," said Gonzalo, "since nothing he's ever written has been true to life. "How would you know, since you can't read?" said Rubin suddenly. "It's generally known," said Gonzalo. "You hear it everywhere." "Oh God, I'd better tell you and end this miasma of pseudowit. Look, I've written a novelette, about fifteen thousand words long, about a worldwide organization of locksmiths. . . ." "Locksmiths?" said Avalon, frowning as though he suspected he had not beard correctly. "Locksmiths," said Rubin. "These guys are experts, they can open anything-safes, vaults, prison doors. There are no secrets from them, and nothing can be hidden from them. My global organization is of the cream of the profession and no man can join the organization without some document or object of importance stolen from an industrial, political, or governmental unit. "Naturally, they have the throat of the world in their grip. They can control the stock market,- guide diplomacy, make and unmake governments and, at the time my story opens, they are headed by a dangerous megalomaniac. . . ." Drake interrupted even as he winced in his effort to crack the claw of the lobster. "Who is out to rule the world, of course." "Of course," said Rubin, "and our hero must stop him. He is himself a skilled locksmith. . . ." Trumbull interrupted. "In the first place, Manny, what the hell do you know about locksmithery or locksmithmanship or whatever you call it?" "More than you think," retorted Rubin. "I doubt that very much," said Trumbull, "and the editor is right. This is utter and complete implausibility. I know a few locksmiths, and they're gentle and inoffensive mechanics with IQ's . . ." Rubin said, "And I suppose when you were in the army you knew a few corporals and, on the basis of your knowledge, you'll tell me that Napoleon and Hitler were implausible." The guest for that evening, who had listened to the exchange with a darkening expression, spoke up. "Pardon me, gentlemen, I know I'm to be grilled at the conclusion of dinner. Does that mean I cannot join the dinner conversation beforehand?" "Heavens, no," said Halsted. "Talk all you want-if you can get a word in now and then." "In that case, let me put myself forcefully on the side of Mr. Rubin. A conspiracy of locksmiths may sound implausible to us who sit here, but what counts is not what a few rational people think but what the great outside world does. How can your editor turn down anything at all as implausible when everything . . ." He caught himself, took a deep breath, and said, in an altered tone, "Well, I don't mean to tell you your business. I'm not a writer. After all, I don't expect you to tell me how to play the oboe," but his smile as be said it was a weak one. "Manny will tell you how to play the oboe," said Gonzalo, "if you give him a chance." "Still," Thatcher said, as though he had not heard Gonzalo's comment, "I live in the world and observe it. Anything these days is believed. There is no such thing as "not true to life." Just spout any nonsense solemnly and swear it's true and there will be millions rallying round you." Avalon nodded magisterially and said, "Quite right, Mr. Thatcher. I don't know that this is simply characteristic of our times, but the fact that we have better communications now makes it easier to reach many people quickly so that a phenomenon such as Herr Hitler of unmourned memory is possible. And to those who can believe in Mr. von Ddniken's ancient astronauts and in Mr. Berlitz's Bermuda Triangle, a little thing like a conspiracy of locksmiths could be swallowed with the morning porridge." Thatcher waved his hand. "Ancient astronauts and Bermuda Triangles are nothing. Suppose you were to say that you frequently visited Mars in astral projection and that Mars was, in fact, a haven for the worthy souls of this world. There would be those who would believe you." "I imagine so," began Avalon. "You don't have to imagine," said Thatcher. "It is so. I take it you haven't heard of Tri-Lucifer. That's t-r-i." "Tri-Lucifer?" said Halsted, looking a little dumfounded. "You mean three Lucifers. What's that?" Thatcher looked from one face to another and the Black Widowers all remained silent. And then Henry, who was clearing away some of the lobster shells, said, "If I may be permitted, gentlemen, I have heard of it. There were a group of them soliciting contributions at this restaurant last week." "Like the Moonies?" said Drake, pushing his dish in Henry's direction and preparing to light up. "There is a resemblance," said Henry, his face a bit thoughtful, "but the Tri-Luciferians, if that is the term to use, give a more other-worldly appearance." "That's right," said Thatcher, "they have to divorce themselves from this world so as to achieve astral projection to Mars and facilitate the transfer of their souls there after death." "But why-" began Gonzalo. And Trumbull suddenly roared out with a blast of anger, "Come on, Roger, make them wait for the grilling to start. Change the-subject." Gonzalo said, "I just want to know why they call them . Halsted sighed and said, "Let's wait a while, Mario." Henry was making his way about the table with the brandy when Halsted tapped his water glass and said, "I think we can begin the grilling now, and Manny, since it was your remark about true-to-lifeness that roused Jonathan's interest over the main course, why don't you begin." "Sure." Rubin looked solemnly across the table at Thatcher and said, "Mr. Thatcher, at this point it would be traditional to ask you how you justify your existence, and we would then go into a discussion of the oboe as an instrument of torture for oboists. But let me guess and say that at this moment you would consider your life justified if you could wipe out a few Tri-Luciferians Am I right)" "You are, you are," said Thatcher, energetically. "The whole thing has filled my life and my thoughts for over a month now. It is ruining. . ." Gonzalo interrupted. "What I want to know is why they call themselves Tri-Luciferians. Are they devil worshipers or what?" Rubin began, "You're interrupting the man. . . ." "It's all right," said Thatcher. "I'll tell him. I'm just sorry that I know enough about that organization to be able to tell him. Apparently, Lucifer means the morning star, though I'm not sure why. . . ." "Lucifer," said Avalon, running his finger about the lip of his water glass, "is from Latin words meaning "light bringer." The rising of the morning star in the dawn heralds the soon-following rising of the Sun. In an era in which there were no clocks that was an important piece of information to anyone awake at the time." "Then why is Lucifer the name of the devil?" asked Gonzalo. Avalon said, "Because the Babylonian King was apparently referred to as the Morning Star by his flattering courtiers, and the Prophet Isaiah predicted his destruction. Can you quote the passage, Manny?" Rubin said, "We can read it out of the Bible, if we want to. It's the Fourteenth Chapter of Isaiah. The key sentence goes, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" It was just a bit of poetic hyperbole, and very effective too, but it was interpreted literally later, and that one sentence gave rise to the whole myth of a rebellion against God by hordes of angels under the leadership of Lucifer, which came to be considered Satan's name while still in heaven. Of course, the rebels were defeated and expelled from heaven by loyalist angels under the leadership of the Archangel Michael." "As in Paradise Lost?" said Gonzalo. "Exactly as in Paradise Lost." Thatcher said, "The devil isn't part of it, though. To the TriLuciferians, Lucifer just means the morning star. There are two of them on Earth, Venus and Mercury." Drake squinted through the curling tobacco smoke and said, "They're also evening stars, depending on which side of the Sun they happen to be. They're either east of the Sun and set shortly after sunset, or west of the Sun and rise shortly before sunrise." Thatcher said, with clear evidence of hope, "Do they have to be both together, both one or both the other?" "No," said Drake, "they move independently. They can be both evening stars, or both morning stars, or one can be an evening star and one a morning star. Or one or the other or both can be nearly in a line with the Sun and be invisible altogether, morning or evening." "Too had," said Thatcher, shaking his head, "that's what they say. Anyway, the point is that from Mars you see three morning stars in the sky, or you can see them if they're in the right position; not only Mercury and Venus, but Earth as well." "That's right," said Rubin. "And," said Thatcher, "I suppose then it's true that they can be in any position. They can all be evening stars or all morning stars, or two an be one and one can be the other?" "Yes," said Drake, "or one or more can be too close to the Sun to be visible." Thatcher sighed. "So they call Mars by their mystic name of TriLucifer-the world with the three morning stars." "I suppose," said Gonzalo, "that Jupiter would have four morning stars, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars, and so on out to Pluto, which would have eight morning stars." "The trouble is," said Halsted, "that the farther out you go, the dimmer the inner planets are. Viewed from one of the satellites of Jupiter, for instance, I doubt that Mercury would appear more than a medium-bright star, and it might be too close to the Sun for anyone ever to get a good look at it." "What about the view from Mars? Could you see Mercury?" asked Thatcher. "Oh yes, I'm sure of that," said Halsted, "I could work out what the brightness would be in a matter of minutes." "Would you?" said Thatcher. "Sure," said Halsted, "if I've remembered to bring my pocket calculator. Yes, I have it. Henry, bring me the Columbia Encyclopedia, would you?" Rubin said, "While Roger is bending his limited mathematical mind to the problem, Mr. Thatcher, tell us what your interest is in all this. You seem to be interested in exposing them as fakers. Why? Have you been a member? Are you now disillusioned?" "No, I've never been a member. I He rubbed his temple hesitantly. "It's my wife. I don't like talking about it, you understand." Avalon said solemnly, "Please be assured, Mr. Thatcher, that whatever is said here never passes beyond the bounds of this room. That includes our valued waiter, Henry. You may speak freely." "Well, there's nothing criminal or disgraceful in it. I just don't like to seem to be so helpless in such a silly . . . It's breaking up my marriage, gentlemen." There was a discreet silence around the table, broken only by the mild sound of Halsted turning the pages of the encyclopedia. Thatcher went on. "Roger knows my wife. He'll tell you she's a sensible woman. . . ." Halsted looked up briefly and nodded. "I'll vouch for that, but I didn't know you were having This . . ." "Lately, Carol has not been social, you understand, and I certainly haven't talked about it. It was with great difficulty, you know, that I man- aged to agree to come out tonight. I dread leaving her to herself. You see, even sensible people have their weaknesses. Carol worries about death." "So do we all," said Drake. "So do I," said Thatcher, "but in a normal way, I hope. We all know we'll die someday and we don't particularly look forward to it, and we may worry about hell or nothingness or hope for heaven, but we don't think about it much. Carol has been fascinated, however, by the possibility of demonstrating the actual existence of life after death. It. may have all started with the Bridey Murphy case when she was a teen-ager-I don't know if any of you remember that . . ." I do," said Rubin. "A woman under hypnosis seemed to be possessed by an Irishwoman who had died a long time before." "Yes," said Thatcher. "She saw through that, eventually. Then she grew interested in spiritualism and gave that up. I always relied on her to understand folly when she finally stopped to think about it-and then she came up against the Tri-Luciferians. I never saw her like this. She wants to join them. She has money of her own and she wants to give it to them. I don't care about the money-well, I do, but that's not the main thing-I care about her. You know, she's going to join them in their retreat somewhere, become a daughter of Tri-Lucifer, or whatever they call it, and wait for translation to the Abode of the Blessed. One of these days, she'll be gone. I just won't see her anymore. She promised me it wouldn't be tonight, but I wonder." Rubin said, "I take it you suppose that the organization is just interested in her money. " "At least the leader of it is," said Thatcher grimly. "I'm sure of it. What else can he be after?" "Do you know him? Have you met him?" said Rubin. "No. He keeps himself isolated," said Thatcher, "but I hear he has recently bought a fancy mansion in Florida, and I doubt that it's for the use of the nimbership." "Funny thing about that," said Drake. "It doesn't matter how lavishly a cult leader lives; how extravagantly he throws money around. The followers who support him and see their money clearly used for that purpose never seem to mind." "They identify", said Rubin. "The more he spends, the more successful they consider the cause. It's the basis of ostentatious waste in governmental display, too." "Just the same," said Thatcher, "I don't think Carol will ever commit herself entirely. She might not be bothered by the leader's actions, but if I can prove him wrong, she'll drop it." "Wrong about what?" asked Rubin. "Wrong about Mars. This head of the group claims he has been on Mars often-in astral projection, of course. He describes Mars in detail, but can he be describing it accurately?" "Why not?" asked Rubin. "If he reads up on what is known about Mars, he can describe it as astronomers would. The Viking photographs even show a part of the surface in detail. It's not difficult to be accurate." "Yes, but it may be that somewhere he has made a mistake, something I can show Carol." Halsted looked up and said, "Here, I've worked out the dozen brightest objects in the Martian sky, together with their magnitudes. I may be off a little here and there, but not by much." He passed a slip of paper around. Mario held up the paper when it reached him. "Would you like to see it, Henry?" "Thank you, sir," murmured Henry, and as he glanced at it briefly, one eyebrow raised itself just slightly, just briefly. The paper came to rest before Thatcher eventually and he gazed at it earnestly. What he saw was this: Sun -26 Phobos -9.6 Deimos -5-1 Earth -4-5 Jupiter -3-1 Venus -2.6 Sirius -.1-4 Saturn -0.8 Canopus -0.7 Alpha Centauri -0-3 Arcturus -0.1 Mercury 0.0 Thatcher said, "Phobos and Deimos are the two satellites of Mars. Do these numbers mean they're very bright?" "The greater the negative number," said Halsted, "the brighter the object. A -2 object is 2V2 times brighter than a - i object, and a -3 object is 2V2 times brighter still, and so on. Next to the Sun, Phobos is the brightest object in the Martian sky, and Deimos is next." "And next to the Sun and the two satellites, Earth is the brightest object in the sky, then." "Yes, but only at or near its maximum brightness," said Halsted. "It can be much dimmer depending on where Mars and Earth are in their respective orbits. Most of the time it's probably less bright than Jupiter, which doesn't change much in brightness as it moves in its orbit." Thatcher shook his head and looked disappointed. "But it can be that bright. Too had. There's a special prayer or psalm or something that the Tri-Luciferians have that appears in almost all their literature. I've seen it so often in the stuff Carol brings home, I can quote it exactly. It goes, "When Earth shines high in the sky, like a glorious jewel, and when the other Lucifers have fled beyond the horizon, so that Earth shines alone in splendor, single in beauty, unmatched in brightness, it is then that the souls of those ready to receive the call must prepare to rise from Earth and cross the gulf." And what you're saying, Roger, is that Earth can be the brightest object in the Martian sky." Halsted nodded. "At night, if Phobos and Deimos are below the horizon, and Earth is near maximum brightness, it is certainly the brightest object in the sk . It would be 3V2 times as bright as Jupiter, if that were in the sky, and times as bright as Venus at its brightest." "And it could be the only morning star in the sky." "Or the only evening star. Sure. The other two, Venus and Mercury, could be on the other side of the Sun from Earth." Thatcher kept staring at the list. "But would Mercury be visible? It's at the bottom of the list." Halsted said, "The bottom just means that it's twelfth briehtest, but there are thousands of stars that are dimmer and still visible. TKere would be only four stars brighter than Mercury as seen from Mars: Sirius, Canopus, Alpha Centauri, and Arcturus." Thatcher said, "If they'd only make a mistake." Avalon said in a grave and somewhat hesitant baritone, "Mr. Thatcher, I think perhaps you had better face the facts. It is my experience that even if you do find a Haw in the thesis of the Tri-Luciferians it won't help you. Those who follow cults for emotional reasons are not deterred by demonstrations of the illogic of what they are doing." Thatcher said, "I agree with you, and I wouldn't dream of arguing with the ordinary cultist. But I know Carol. I have seen her turn away from a system of beliefs she would very much like to have followed, simply because she saw the illogic of it. If I could find something of the sort here, I'm sure she'd come back." Gonzalo said, "Some of us here ought to think of something. After all, be's never really been on Mars. He's got to have made a mistake." "Not at all, said Avalon. "He probably knows as much about Mars as we do. Therefore, even if he's made a mistake it may be because he fails to understand something we also fail to understand and we won't catch him." Thatcher nodded his head. "I suppose you're right." "I don't know," said Gonzalo. "How about the canals? The Tri- Luciferians are bound to talk about the canals. Everyone believed in them and then just lately we found out they weren't there; isn't that right? So if he talks about them, be's cau ht." Drake said, "Not everybosy" believed in them, Mario. Hardly any as- tronomers did." "The general public did," said Gonzalo. Rubin said, "Not lately. It was in 1964 that Mariner 4 took the first pictures of Mars and that pretty much gave away the fact the canals didn't exist. Once Mariner 9 mapped the whole planet in 1969 there was no further argument. When did the Tri-Luciferians come into existence, Mr. Thatcher?" "As I recall," said Thatcher, "about 1970. Maybe 1971." "There you are," said Rubin. "Once we had Mars down cold. this guy, whoever he is who runs it, decided to start a new religion based on it. Listen, if you want to get rich quick, no questions asked, start a new religion. Between the First Amendment and the tax breaks you get, it amounts to a license to help yourself to everything in sight. I'll bet he talks about volcanoes. Thatcher nodded. "The Martian headquarters of the astral projections are in Olympus Mons. That means Mount Olympus, and that's where the souls of the righteous gather. That's the big volcano, isn't it?" "The biggest in the solar system," said Rubin. "At least, that we know of. It's been known since 1969." Thatcher said, "The Tri-Luciferians say that G. V. Schiaparelli-he's the one who named the different places on Mars-was astrally inspired to name that spot Olympus to signify it was the home of the godly. In an- cient Greece, you see, Mount Olympus was . . ." "Yes," said Avalon, nodding gravely, "we know." "Isn't Schiaparelli the fellow who first reported the canals?" asked Gonzalo. "Yes," said Halsted, "although actually when he said canali he meant natural waterways." "Even so, why didn't the same astral inspiration tell him the canals weren't there?" asked Gonzalo. Drake nodded and said, "That's something you can point out to your wife." "No," said Thatcher, "I guess they thought of that. They say the canals were part of the inspiration because that increased interest in Mars and that that was needed to make the astral-projection process more effective." Trumbull, who had maintained a sullen silence through the discussion, as though be were waiting his chance to shift the discussion to oboes, said suddenly, "That makes a diseased kind of sense." Thatcher said, "Too much makes sense. That". the trouble. There are times when I want to find a mistake not so much to save Carol as to save myself. I tell you that when I listen to Carol talking there's sometimes more danger she'll argue me into being crazy than that I'll persuade her to be rational." Trumbull waved a hand at him soothingly. "Just take it easy and let's think it out. Do they say anything about the satellites?" "They talk about them, yes. Phobos and Deimos. Sure." "Do they say anything about how they cross the sky?" Trumbull's smile was nearly a smirk. "Yes," said Thatcher, "and I looked it up because I didn't believe them and I thought I had something. In their description of the Martian scene, they talk about Phobos rising in the west and setting in the east. And it turns out that's true. And they say that whenever either Phobos or Deimos cross the sky at night, they are eclipsed by Mars's shadow for part of the time. And that's true, too." Halsted shrugged. "The satellites were discovered a century ago, in 1877, by Asaph Hall. As soon as their distance from Mars and their period of revolution were determined, which were almost at once, their behavior in Mars's sky was known." "I didn't know it," said Thatcher. "No," said Halsted, "but this fellow who started the religion apparently did his homework. It wasn't really hard." "Hold on," said Trumbull truculently, "some things aren't as obvious and don't get put into the average elementary-astronomy textbook. For instance, I read somewhere that Phobos can't be seen from the Martian polar regions. It's so close to Mars that the bulge of Mars's spherical surface hides the satellite, if you go far enough north or south. Do the TriLuciferians say anything about Phobos being invisible from certain places on Mars, Thatcher?" "Not that I recall," said Thatcher, "but they don't say it's always visible. If they just don't mention the matter, what does that prove?" "Besides," said Halsted, "Olympus Mons is less that twenty degrees north of the Martian equator, and Phobos is certainly visible from there any time it is above the horizon and not in eclipse. And if that's the headquarters for the souls from Earth, Mars would certainly be described as viewed from that place." "Whose side are you on?" grumbled Trumbull. "The trutb's," said Halsted. "Still, it's true that astronomy books rarely describe any sky but Eartb's. That's why I had to figure out the brightness of objects in the Martian sky instead of just looking it up. The only trouble is that this cult leader seems to be just as good at figuring." 4111ve got an idea," said Avalon. "I'm not much of an astronomer, but I've seen the photographs taken by the Viking landers and I've read the newspaper reports about them. For one thing, the Martian sky in the daytime is pink, because of fine particles of the reddish dust in the air. In that case, is;4,4t possible that the dust obscures the night sky so that you don't see anything? Good Lord, it happens often enough in New York City." Halsted said, "As a matter of fact, the problem in New York isn't so much the dust as the scattered light from the buildings and highways, and even in New York you can see the bright stars, if the sky isn't cloudy. "On Mars, it would have to work both ways. If there is enough dust to make the sky invisible from the ground, then the ground would be invisible from the sky. For instance, when Mariner 9 reached Mars in 1969, Mars was having a globewide duststorm and none of its surface could be seen by Mariner. At that time, from the Martian surface, the sky would have had to be blanked out. Most of the time, though, we see the surface clearly from our probes, so from the Martian surface, the sky would be clearly visible. "In fact, considering that Mars's atmosphere is much thinner than Earth's, less than a hundredth as thick, it would scatter and absorb far less Itht than Earth's does, and the various st "ars and planets would all look a little brighter than they would with Earth's atmosphere in the way. I didn't allow for that in my table." Trumbull said, "Geoff mentioned the Viking photographs. They show rocks all over the place. Do the Tri-Luciferians mention rocks?" "No," said Thatcher, "not that I ever noticed. But again, they don't say there aren't any. They talk about huge canyons and dry riverbeds and terraced icefields." Rubin snorted. "All that's been known since 1969. More homework." Avalon said, "What about life? We still don't know if there's any life on Mars. The Viking results are ambiguous. Have the Tri-Luciferians committed themselves on that?" Thatcher thought, then said, "I wish I could say I had read all their literature thoroughly, but I haven't. Still Carol has forced me to read quite a bit since she said I ought not defame anything without learning about it first." "That's true enough," said Avalon, "though life is short and there are some things that are so unlikely on the surface that one hesitates to devote much of one's time to a "study of it, However, can you say anything as to their attitude toward Martian life from what you've read of their literature?" Thatcher said, "They speak about Mars's barren surface, its desert arid- ity and emptiness. They contrast that with the excitement and fullness of the astral sphere." "Yes," said Avalon, "and of course, the surface is dry and empty and barren. We know that much. What about microscopic life? That's what we're looking for." Thatcher shook his head. "No mention of it, as far as I know." Avalon said, "Well, then, I can't think of anything else. I'm quite certain this whole thing is nonsense. Everyone here is, and none of us need proof of it. If your wife needs proof, we may not be able to supply it." "I understand," said Thatcher. "I thank you all, of course, and I suppose she may come to her senses after a while, but I must admit I have never seen her quite like this. I would join the cult with her just to keep her in sight but, frankly, I'm afraid I'll end up believing it, too." And in the silence that followed, Henry said softly, "Perhaps, Mr. Thatcher, you need not go to that extreme." Thatcher turned suddenly. "Pardon me. Did you say something, waiter)" Halsted said, "Henry is a member of the club, Jonathan. I don't know that he's an astronomer exactly, but be's the brightest person here. Is there something we've missed, Henry?" Henry said, "I think so, sir. You said, Mr. Halsted, that astronomy books don't generally describe any sky but Earth's, and I guess that must be why the cult leader seems to have a missing item in his description of Mars. Without it, the whole thing is no more true to life than Mr. Rubin's conspiracy of locksmiths-if I may be forgiven, Mr. Rubin." "Not if you don't supply a missing object, Henry." Henry said, "On Earth, Mercury and Venus are the morning and evening stars, and we always think of such objects as planets, therefore. Consequently, from Mars, there must be three morning and evening stars, Mercury, Venus, plus Earth in addition. That is memorialized in the very name of the cult and from that alone I could see the whole thing fails." Halsted said, "I'm not sure I see your point, Henry." "But, Mr. Halsted," said Henry, "where is the Moon in all this? It is a large object, our Moon, almost the size of Mercury and closer to Mars than Mercury is. If Mercury can be seen from Mars, surely the Moon can be, too. Yet I noticed it was not on your list of bright objects in the Martian sky." Halsted turned red. "Yes, of ,course. The list of planets fooled me, too. You just list them without mentioning the Moon." He reached for the paper. "The Moon is Smaller than Earth and less reflective, so that it is only one seventieth as bright as the Earth, at equal distance and phase, which. means-a magnitude of o.o. It would be just as bright as Mercury and in fact it could be seen more easily than Mercury could be because it would be higher in the sky. At sunset, Mercury as evening), star would never be higher than 16 degrees above the horizon, while Earth could be as much as degrees above-pretty high in the sky." Henry said, "Mars, therefore, would have four morning stars, and the very name Tri-Lucifer is nonsense." Avalon said, "But the Moon would always be close to Earth, so wouldn't Earth's light drown it out?" "No," said Halsted. "Lets see now-never get a pocket calculator that doesn't have keys for the trigonometric functions-the Moon would be, at t mes, as much as 23 minutes of arc away from Earth, when viewed from Mars. That's three quarters the width of the Moon as seen from Earth." Henry said, "One more thing. Would you repeat that verse once again, Mr. Thatcher, the one about the Earth bein2 hieh in the sky?" Thatcher said, "Certainly. "When Earth hir high in the sky, like a glorious jewel, and when the other Lucifers have fled beyond the horizon, so that Earth shines alone in splendor, single in beauty, unmatched in brightness, it is then that the souls of those ready to receive the call must prepare to rise from Earth and cross the gulf."" Henry said, "Earth may be quite high in the sky at times, and Mercury and Venus may be on the other side of the Sun and therefore beyond the horizon-but Earth cannot be "alone in splendor." The Moon has to be with it. Of course, there would be times when the Moon is very nearly in front of Earth or behind it, as seen from Mars, so that the two dots of light merge into one that seems to make Earth brighter than ever, but the Moon is not then beyond the horizon. It seems to me, Mr. Thatcher, that the cult leader was never on Mars, because if he had been he would not have missed a pretty big item, a world 2,i6o miles across. Surely you can explain this to your wife." "Yes," said Thatcher, his face brightening into a smile, "she would have to see the whole thing as a fake." "If it is true, as you say," said Henry quietly, "that she is a rational per-son. "The Missing Item"-Afterword A few of the stories in the first two volumes of Black Widowers stories did not appear in EQMM, but in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F SF) insf6ad. This was a bit difficult, for I couldn't make a Black Widowers tale an outright fantasy or science fiction. Once in a while, though, 1, being what I am, constructed one of the sto- ries in such a way that it dealt at least tangentially with science fiction or fantasy, and then F SF would get it. Or did get it, anyway. In 1977, a new magazine reached the newsstands, a sister magazine of EQMM. The new magazine was Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine (IASFM), and, of course, it was thereafter no longer cricket for me to give a story to any science-fiction magazine unless it had first been offered to IASFM. In fact, I deliberately tried to construct as distinct a science-fiction mystery as I could for my own magazine, and "The Missing Item" was the result. It appeared in the Winter 1977 issue of IASFM. (The magazine was a quarterly in its first year.) The Next Day. Emmanuel Rubin's glasses always gave the illusion of magnifying his eyes with particular intensity when he was aroused. He said, in an intense whisper, "You brought an editor as your guest?" James Drake's train from New Jersey had arrived late and he had, in consequence, almost committed the solecism of being late to his own hostship over the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers. He was in an uncharacteristically snappish mood therefore and said, "Why not?" He flicked the ash from his cigarette and added, "If we can have writers for guests, and even as members, Zeus help us, why not editors?" Rubin, a writer, of course, said haughtily, "I wouldn't expect a chemist to understand." He looked briefly in the direction of the guest, who was tall and spare, with longish red-blond hair and with the kind of abbreviated mustache and beard that gave him a Robin Hood air. Drake said, "I may be a chemist to you, Manny, and to all the world besides, but I'm a writer to him." Drake tried to look modest, and failed signally. "I'm doing a book." "You?" said Rubin. "Why not? I can spell and, judging by your career, that's the only requirement." "If your guest thinks it is, he has about the mental equipment needed for an editor. What's his name again?" "Stephen Bentham." "And what firm is he with?" Drake stubbed out his cigarette. "Southby Publications." "A shlock outfit," said Rubin, with contempt. "They're a sex-and-sensation house. What do they want with you?" Drake said, "I'm doing a book on recombinant DNA, which is a sensational subject these days-not that you know anything about it." Mario Gonzalo had just entered, brushing at his brown velvet jacket to remove the city fly-ash. He said, "Come on, Jim, all the papers are full of it. That's the stuff they're going to make new disease germs with and depopulate the world." Rubin said, "If Mario's heard about it, Jim, you'll have to admit I have, too-and everyone else in the world has." "Good. Then my book is what the world needs," said Drake. Gonzalo said, "The world needs it about as much as it needs air pollution. I've seen two books on the subject advertised already-" "Ha," said Drake, it they're talking about the controversy, the politics. I'm going to talk about the chemistry." "Then it will never sell," said Rubin. It was at this point that Henry, that paragon of waiters, without whom no Black Widowers banquet could endure, announced softly to Drake that the gentlemen might seat themselves. Geoffrey Avalon drifted toward Henry, having now, had the pleasure of a sedate conversation with the guest-with whom he had talked eye to eye, something which, from his 74 inches of height, he could not often do. it I detect a fishy aroma, Henry," he said. "What has been planned for this evening?" "A bouillabaisse, sit," said Henry. "An excellent one, I believe." Avalon nodded gravely, and Roger Halsted, smiling, said, "Even an aveTage bouillabaisse is excellent, and with Henry's encomium, I stand ready to be delighted." Avalon said, "I hope, Mr. Bentham, that you have no objection?" "I can't say I've ever eaten it." Bentham spoke in a distinct, but not exa ,erated, English accent, "but I'm prepared to have a go at it. A French dish, I believe." "Marscillaise in origin," said Halsted, lookinLy as thou2h he were coming very close to licking his chops, "but universal in appeal-Where's Tom, by the way?" "Right here," came an exasperated voice from the steps. "Damn taxi driver. Thanks, Henry." Thomas Trumbull, his tanned forehead creased and furrowed into fifty lines of anger, gratefully took the scotch and soda. "You haven't started eating, have you?" "Just about," said Gonzalo, "and if you hadn't arrived, Roger would have had your share of the bouillabaisse, so it would have been a silver lining for someone. What was with the taxicab?" Trumbull seated himself, took another invigorating sip of his drink, buttered a roll, and said, "I told the idiot to take me to the Milano and the next thing I knew I was at some dive movie on West Eighty-sixth Street called the Milano. We had to make our way through four extra miles of Manhattan streets to get here. He claimed he had never heard of the" Milano Restaurant, but he did know that flea dive. It cost me three bucks extra in taxi fare." Rubin said, "You're pretty far gone, Tom, if you couldn't tell he was going northwest when you wanted to go southeast." "You don't think I was watching the streets, do you?" growled Trumbull. "I was lost in thought." Avalon said austerely, "You can't rely on the local wisdom of the New York taxi driver. You ought to have said explicitly, "Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth Street."" "Thanks a lot," said Trumbull. "I shall instantly turn the clock back and say it." "I presume there'll be a next time, Tom, and that you're -capable of learning from experience," said Avalon, and received a scowl for his pains. After the bouillabaisse arrived, there was a lull in the conversation for a while as the banqueters concentrated on the evisceration of mussels and the cracking of lobster shells. It was Drake who broke it. He said, "If we consider recombinant DNA "We aren't," said Rubin, spearing a scallop neatly. ". . . then what it amounts to is that the whole argument is about benefits that no one can demonstrate and dangers that no one can really pinpoint. There are only blue-sky probabilities on either side, and the debaters make up for their lack of hard knowledge by raising their voices. What I propose to do is to go into the chemistry and genetics of the matter and try to work out the real chances and significance of specific ge .netic: change. Without that, both sides are just searching in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there." Avalon said, "And all this for the general public?" "Certainly." "Isn't that rather heavy going for the general public?" "It isn't for the comic-book audience, but I think I can manage the Scientific American to Natural History range. Tell them, Bentham, said Drake, with perhaps a trace of smugness, "you've seen the sample chapters." Bentham, who had tackled the bouillabaisse with a certain tentativeness but had grown steadily more enthusiastic, said, "I can only judge by myself, to be sure, but I suspect that since I follow the line of argument, the average college man ought to." "That still limits your audience," said Gonzalo. Bentham said, "We can't say that. It's a very hot subject and, properly promoted . . ." "AS.outhby specialty," muttered Rubin. "It could catch on," Bentham said. "People who don't really understand might nevertheless buy it to be in fashion; and who knows, they might read it and get something out of it." Drake tapped his water glass as Henry doled out the brandy. Drake said, "If everyone is sufficiently defishified and if Henry will remove the towels and finger bowls, I think we may start to grill our guest, Mr. Stephen Bentham. Tom, will you do the honors?" "Glad to," said Trumbull. "Mr. Bentham, it is our custom, ordinarily, to inquire as to how a guest may justify his existence. In this case, I suppose we can allow the fact that you are involved with the production of a book by our esteemed colleague, Dr. Drake, to speak for you. We will therefore pass on to more mundane questions. You seem young. How old are you?" "Twenty-eight." "I have the feeling you have not been long in the United States. Am I right?" "I've been living and working here for about five months now, but I have been here on brief visits before. Three times." "I see. And what are your qualifications for your post; as editor, that is?" "Not overwhelming." Bentham smiled suddenly, an oddly charming and rueful smile. "I have done some editing with Fearn and Russell in London. Rather happy with them-low-key concern, you know, but then, British publishing generally is low-key." "Why throw that over to take a job with an American firm where the Pressures are bound to be greater? They are greater, I assume." ,"Very much so," again the rueful smile, "but there's no mystery as to why I came. The explanation is so simple that it embarrasses me to advance it. In a word-money. I was offered three times my British salary, . and all moving expenses paid. Halsted intervened suddenly. "Are you a married man, Mr. Bentham "No, Mr. Halsted. Quite single, though not necessarily celibate. However, single men can use money, too." Rubin said, "If you don't mind, Tom, I would like to add the reverse of the question you asked. I can see why you've joined Southby Publications. Money is a potent argument. But why the hell did that shlock concern hire you? You're young, without much experience, and they're not the kind of firm to hire promising young men out of benevolence. Yet they triple your salary and pay moving expenses. What have you got on them?" Bentham said, "I met Mr. Southby on one of my earlier trips and I think he was rather taken with me." His fair skin turned a noticeable pink. "I suspect it was my accent and my appearance. Perhaps it seemed to him I would lend an air of scholarship to the firm." "A touch of class," murmured Avalon, and Bentham turned pinker still. Trumbull resumed the questioning, "Manny calls Southby Publications a shlock concern. Do you agree with that?" Bentham hesitated. "I don't know. What does the expression mean?" Rubin said, "Cheap, worthless books, sold by high-pressure campaigns hinting at sex and sensationalism." Bentham remained silent. Drake said, "Go ahead, Bentham. Anything you say here will never go beyond these walls. The club observes complete confidentiality." "It isn't that, Jim," said Bentham, "but if I were to agree, it might wound your feelings. You're an author of ours." Drake lit another cigarette. "That wouldn't bother me. You're hired to give the firm a touch of class and you'll do my book as another touch of class." Bentham says, "I grant you that I don't think much of some of the books on the list, but Dr. Drake is right. Mr. Southby doesn't object to good books if he thinks they will sell. He is personally pleased with what he has seen of Dr. Drake's book; even enthusiastic. Perhaps the firm's character can be improved." Avalon said, "I would like to put in my oar, Tom, if you don't mind. Mr. Bentham, I am not a psychologist, or a tracer of men's thoughts through their expressions. I am just a humble patent attorney. However, it seems to me that you have looked distinctly uneasy each time you mentioned your employer. Are you sure that there is nothing you are keeping from Dr. Drake that he ought to know? I want an unequivocal answer." "No," said Bentham quickly, "there is nothing wrong with Dr. Drake's book. Provided he completes the book and that the whole is of the quality of the parts we have seen, we will publish and then promote it adequately. There are no hidden reservations to that statement." Gonzalo said, "Then what are you uneasy about? Or is Geoff all wrong about your feelings in the first place?" He was gazing complacently at the caricature of Bentham he had produced for the iuest gallery that lined the walls of the meeting room. He had not missed the Robin Hood resemblance and had even lightly sketched in a feathered hat in green, of the type one associated with the Merry Men. Bentham said, in sudden anger, "You could say I'm uneasy, considering that I'm about to be bloody well slung out on my can." "Fired?" said Gonzalo, on a rising note. "That's the rouLyh one-syllable version of what I have just said." "Why?" said Dake, in sudden concern. "I've lost a manuscript," said Bentham. "Not yours, Dr. Drake." Gonzalo said, "In the mails?" "No. Through malice, according to Southby. Actually, I did every ruddy thing I could do to get it back. I don't know what was in that man's mind." "Southby's?" "No, the author ,s. Joshua Fairfield's his name." "Never heard of him," said Rubin. Trumbull said, "Suppose you tell us what happened, Mr. Bentham." Bentham said, "It's a grim, stupid thing. I don't want to cast a pall over a very pleasant evening." Trumbull said, "Sorry, Mr. Bentham, but I think Jim warned you that answering our questions was the price of the meal. Please tell us exactly what happened." Benthan said, "I suppose the most exciting thing that can happen in a publishing house is to have something good come in over the transom; sornethin2 eood that has not passed through the hands of a reputable agent ana i not by a recognized author; something that has reached you by mail, written by someone whom no one has ever heard of. "Aside from the sheer pleasure of the unexpected windfall, there is the possibility that you have a new author who can be milked for years to come, provided the product is not that of a one-book author-which is not an unheard-of phenomenon." Rubin began, "Margaret Mitchell and stopped when Trumbull, who sat next to him, elbowed him ungently. "Anyway," said Bentham, jarred only momentarily by the interruptiony "Southby thought he had one. One of the readers brought it to him in excitement, as well he might, for readers don't often get anything that's above the written-in-crayon-on-lined-paper level. "He should have gone to an editor-not necessarily me-witb the man- uscript, but he chose to go directly to Southby. I presume he felt there might be a deal of credit for the discovery and be didn't want Southby to be unaware of the discoverer. I can't say I blame him. "In any case, Southby was infatuated with the manuscript, called an editorial conference, said he was accepting the book and had notified the au- thor. He explained, quite enthusiastically, that it was to get the full Southby treatment. . . ." Rubin said indignantly, "Up to and including cooking the best-seller lists. Tom, if you give me the elbow again, I'll break it ofF." Bentham said, "I dare say you're right, Mr. Rubin, but this book deserved all it could get-potentially. Southby said he thought it needed work and he gave it to me to edit. That struck me as a remarkable sign of confidence and I was rather gung-ho on the matter. I saw quick promo- tions on the horizon if I could manage to carry it off. The other editors didn't seem to mind, though. One of them said to me, "It's your butt that's in the sling if this doesn't work, because Southby's never wrong."" Avalon said gravely, "It sometimes happens that when the boss makes a mistake, the underling tabbed to reverse the mistake is fired if he fails." Bentham nodded. "The thought occurred to me, eventually, but it excited me further. The scent of dangers sharpens the desire to be in at the kill, you know. "You can see, then, I went over the manuscript in a painstaking manner. I went through it once at moderate speed to get a sense of the whole and was not displeased. Southby's description of it was not, on the whole, wrong. It had a good pace and was rich in detail. A long family saga-a rough and domineering father, a smooth and insinuating mother in a rather subtle battle over the sons, their ivives, and their children. The plot was interlocking, never halting, and there was enough sex to be suitable for Southby, but the sex worked. It fit the story. "I turned in a favorable report of my own on the book, indicating its chief flaws, and how I proposed to handle them. It came back with a large ,very good" on it, so I got to work. It had to be tightened up. The last thing any beginner, however talented, learns is to tighten. Some scenes were misplaced or misemphasized, and that had to be corrected. "I am not myself a great writer and could never be, but I've studied writing that is great sufficiently closely to be able to amend and improve what-is already written well, even if, from a cold start, I could not produce anything nearly as good. It took me some six weeks of intense work to complete the job. I knew that my head was on the line and I was not about to lose the war for lack of a horseshoe nail. "It wasn't till after I had done a thorough piece of work that I called in the author, Joshua Fairfield. I thought it better that way. Had I called him in en route, so to speak, there would have been bound to be acrimonious arguments over the changes, and much time would be wasted on trivial points. If he could see the revisions as a whole, I felt he would be satisfied. Any minor disagreements could be easily settled. "Or so I reasoned, and perhaps I had need of a little experience myself. The author arrived and we met, actually, for the first time. I can't say I particularly liked his looks. He was about my age but he had a rather somber cast of countenance, small, dark eyes-almost beady-and poor teeth. "I went through the amenities. We shook hands. I told him how pleased we all were with the book; how well it was going to do; the promotion we would give it; and so on. "I then said, rather casually, in order to emphasize the minor nature of the changes-compared to what was not changed, you know-that I had taken the liberty of introducing some small emendations here and there. At that, he sat upright and his small eyes bulged. He seized the manuscript, which was on the table before us, shook some of it out of one of the boxes, riffled through the pages where I had made the necessary changes in a fine-point pencil, done quite lightly to allow of further changes, and shrieked. "He really did. He screamed that I had written something on every page and that he would have to get the whole thing retyped and that the bill would go straight to me. Then he seized the boxes and was gone. I couldn't stop him. I swear to you, I couldn't move, I was that thunderstruck. "But not panicky, either. The manuscript was photocopied and I had made copious notes of the changes I had made. Since he was under contract-or so I assumed-we could publish over his objections. He might proceed to sue us, but I don't think he could have won, and the publicity, I couldn't help but think, would simply sell more books. "The trouble is that when I went to see Southby to tell him what had happened, it turned out there was no contract and everything came apart. It seemed that Southby and Fairfield were haggling over the advance. I suppose I might have been more diplomatic when I heard this. It was not a good idea to ask Southby if, in view of the advertisiniz budget being planned, it made much sense to haggle over a matter of tWo thotsand dollars in the advance." Rubin grunted. "Well, now you know something about Southby." "I know he didn't like to have it made to look as though it were his fault. He ordered me to get that manuscript back and he made it pretty clear that I was in for it if I did not. "It proved difficult from the start. I tried Fairfield at his apartment, I tried him on the phone. It took me three days and then be finally answered the phone. I managed to keep him on the phone. I told him he could have the advance be wanted. I told him that every change was negotiable and that we could go over the book line by line-which was exactly what I had tried desperately to avoid in the first place-and I warned him that no publisher would take it precisely as it was. "He said, with a rather snide and unpleasant snicker, that that was not so, that another publisher would take it exactly as was. He had still not turned it over to that other publisher,- but he hinted that he might. "I took that as a bluff and didn't let it rattle me. I just told him quietly that no firm could guarantee a best seller as Southby could, reminded him of some of our othef books. . . Rubin said, "Sure. Trash like Dish for the Gods." Avalon said, "Let him speak, Manny." "Well, " said Bentham, "we were on the phone for over an hour and he finally put it to me straight. Would I publish it as written? I said, just as straight, that we could negotiate every change, but that there would have to be some-for his own good. "He remained truculent and nasty, but he gave in, just like that. He said he would deliver it the next day and I said enthusiastically-and trying to hide my relief-that that was top hole, and that he was to go to it, the sooner the better, and I would send a messenger if he'd like. He said, no, he didn't want any stinking messenger, and hung up." Halsted said, "Happy ending." "No, because he never delivered the manuscript. We waited a week and then Southby finally got him on the phone and all he got out of Fairfield were snarls to the effect that his paid monkey, Bentham, could keep his stinking sarcasm and shove it and we would get no manuscript from him on any terms, or words to that effect. "That's where it stands. Needless to say, I was not sarcastic. I was perfectly reasonable and diplomatic at all times. I was firm on the key point of revision, but not offensively so. In fact, he had agreed to deliver it the next day. As far as Southby was concerned, however, I had lost the manuscript through my malicious treatment of the man, and he's out of his mind with rage." Drake said, "But he hasn't fired you yet, Bentham. And if he hasn't, maybe he won't." "No, because he still has hopes. I told him that Fairfield was probably bluffing and was probably psychotic, but he's not listening to me these last few days. "In fact, I may soon be slidine along the street with Southby's bootmarks clearly imprinted on my rer end-This is all the more certain since he must realize that none of this would have happened if he had not played silly haggling games over pin money. He would certainly have had the man under contract otherwise. Firing me will be the evidence he needs for all the world, and most of all for himself, to see that I was to blame and not he.Halsted said, "But it would be difficult for you to work for Soutbby after this anyway, wouldn't it? You'd be better off somewhere else." Bentham said, "Unquestionably-but in my own time and at my own resignation. After all, the editorial field is not exactly wide open now, and I might have difficulty finding a new position, and with an as-yet thin re!erve of savings, that prospect does not fill me with delight. Southby might well try to see to it that my chances were even less than normal." Rubin said, "You mean, be would try to blacklist you? I wouldn't put it past him." Bentham's gloom showed him to be in full agreement. He said, "Still, what's worst is that with my editing we would have had a good book there. It would be something we could be proud of. Southby and Fairfield could make a fortune and I could make a reputation that would move me on to a much better position elsewhere. And the world would have a whacking good first novel with the promise of better things to come. "Fairfield has the makings of a great novelist, blast his soul, and I have my editorial pride and wanted to be part of that greatness. And I was not sarcastic and he did give in. He did say he'd deliver it the next day. Why in the devil's name didn't he? That's what bothers me. Why didn't he?" There was a rather dank pause. Avalon finally said, "There may be an explanation for this. There have been first-class men of genius who have been monsters of villainy in their private lives. Richard Wagner was one; jean-Jacques Rousseau was another. If this man, Fairfield, is bluffing, and I rather guess he is, too, then he may simply have judged Southby to be a kindred soul and he feels that you will be fired. It's what be would do in Southby's place. Then, when you are gone, he will show up with the manuscript." "But why?" said Bentham. "No puzzle there, I think," said Avalon. "In the first place, you dared tamper with his manuscript and he feels you must be punished. In the second, once you are gone he can be reasonably certain that Southby, after all this, will publish his manuscript as written." "Then why did he say he would deliver it the next day?" Avalon bent his formidable eyebrows together for a moment and said, "I suppose he felt you would tell Southby, ebulliently, that the thing was in the bag-as you did-and that Southby's anger, sharply intensified by falsely raised hopes, would explode and make certain your rapid firing." "And all that stuff about my sarcasm would then just be designed to further infuriate Southby?" "I should think so. Yes." Bentham thought about it. "That's a pretty dismal picture you've painted. Between Fairfield and Southby there's no escape." Avalon looked uneasy. "I'm sorry, Mr. Bentham, but that's the way it looks to me." Bentham said, "I can't believe it,, though. I spoke to the man for an hour or more on the phone. He did not sound vindictive. Stubborn and nasty, yes, but not personally vindictive." Avalon said, "I hate to be the insistent advocate of a solution personally abhorrent to me, but surely you were not looking for vindictiveness and would not be expected to see it if it were not absolutely in plain view." Bentham said desperately, "But there's more. I have read his book and you have not. I believe no one, however skillful, can write a book alien to his own philosophy and. . ." "That's nonsense," said Rubin. "I can write a piece of fiction hewing to any philosophy you please. I- could write one from the Nazi point of view if I were of a mind to, which I'm not." "You couldn't," said Bentham. "Please don't interpret that as a cballenge, but you couldn't. In Fairfield's book there were a variety of motivations, but none was out of the kind of motiveless malignity some people attribute to lago. There was no unreasoning anger arising over trivial causes. "But that's the very point," said Avalon. "It seems a trivial cause to you but you don't see through this man's eyes. Changing his novel in even a minor way is to him unforgivable and he'll bound you down over it." Trumbull said in a troubled voice, "I hate to join in this gallows fiesta, Mr. Bentham, but Geoff sounds as though he might be right." "Ah," said Rubin suddenly, "but I don't think he is." Bentham turned in his direction eagerly. "You mean you don't think Fairfield is out to get me?" Rubin said, "No. He's mad at you, surely, but not to the point of wanting to cut his own throat. What we've got to do is look at this thing carefully with writer psychology in mind. No, Mr. Bentham, I don't mean trying to see a writer's personality in his writing, which I still say can't be done for any really good writer. I mean something that holds for any beginning writer. "41 ant that a beginner might feel psychotic enough to fly into a fury at any czanges imposed on his oldcn prose, but even that pales into nothing compared to another need-that of getting into print. "Remember, this guy was haggling with Southby over a few thousand dollars in advance money, and what was that to him? We sneer at Southby for sticking at"a small sum when millions might be in view. Isn't it queerer that the author should do so and risk not only millions, but publication altogether? Is it conceivable that a beginner who must have worked on his book for years would even dream of chancing failure to publish by haggling over the advance?" Avalon said, "If he were the semipsychotic individual whom Mr. Bentham has described, why not?" Rubin said, "Isn't it much more likely that he already had another publisher on the string, and that he tried Southby only because of the firm's reputation for turning out best sellers? His quarrel over the advance was his effort to make the two firms hid against each other in an auction they didn't know was taking place. Then, when Bentham tried to make changes, he turned back to the other )I publisher, who perhaps was willing to make fewer changes, or even none. Bentham said, "Do you mean, Mr. Rubin, that Fairfield originally went to some publisher-call him X? X read the manuscript, suggested a revision, and Fairfield took it back, presumably to revise, but brought it to us instead. When we offered a lower advance and suggested greater revision, he took it back to X?" "Yes, and you marked up his copy," said Rubin. "I think that annoyed him more than the revision itself had. It meant he had to have the copy retyped in toto before submitting it. Even erasing the pencil marks would leave some marks, and he might be a little shy of letting X know he was playing tricks with the manuscript. "After all, you got him on the phone three days after he had stormed out and he already had another publisher on the hook. After three days?" Bentham said, "That's why I assumed he was bluffing." "And risk publication? No, Publisher X exists, all right." Trumbull said, "I must be going crazy, but I've switched sides. You've convinced me, Manny." Bentham said, "Even if you're right, Mr. Rubin, I'm still in a hopeless position." "Not if you can prove this Fairfield was playing games. Once Soutbby sees that, he'll be furious with the author, not with you. Then you can hide your time and resign at such time as suits yourself." Bentham said, "But for that I would have to know who Publisher X is, and I don't. And without that, he simply won't believe the story. Why should he?" Rubin said, "Are you sure Fairfield didn't mention the publisher?" "I'm sure." Halsted said, with a mild stutter, "How would you know? You've only been in the country a few months and may not know all the publishers." "There are hundreds in New York and surrounding areas and I certainly don't know them all," said Bentham. "I know the larger ones, though. Surely X would be among the larger ones." Rubin said, "I should think so. No hint at all?" "If there was, it whizzed by me." Rubin said, "Think. Go over the conversation in your mind." Bentham closed his eyes and sat quietly. No one else made a noise except Drake, whose bolo-tie tip clinked against his water glass when he reached forward to stub out a cigarette. Bentham opened his -eyes and said, "It's no use. There's nothing there." Drake looked leftward toward the sideboard where Henry was standing. "This is a serious situation, Henry. Do you have any suggestions?" "Only the publisher's name, sir." Bentham looked around in astonishment, "What" -> Trumbull said hastily, "Henry is one of us, Mr. Bentham. What are YOU talking about, Henry? How can you know?" "I believe the author, Mr. Fairfield, mentioned it in his phone conversation with Mr. Bentham." Bentham said, on the edge of anger, "He did not!" Henrys unlined face showed no emotion. "I beg your pardon, sir, I do not mean to offend you, but you inadvertently omitted an important part of the story. It was rather like Mr. Trumbull's misadventure in the cab when he left out an important part of the direction. Or like Dr. Drake's point that those who argue about recombinant DNA do so without adequate knowledge of the fundamentals." Gonzalo said, "You mean we're looking in a dark room for a black cat that is there?" "Yes, sir. If Mr. Bentham had told his story otherwise, the whereabouts of the black cat would be obvious." "In what way could I have told the story otherwise?" demanded Bentham. "You told the story with indirect quotations throughout, sir, and thus we never got the exact words anyone used." "For a very good reason," said Bentham. "I don't remember the exact words. I'm not a recording device." "Yet sometimes in indirect quotation, a person is reported as saying something he could not possibly have said in direct quotation." "I assure you," said Bentham coldly, "my account was accurate." Orin sure it is, within its limitations, sir. But if there is a Publisher X, why did Mr. Fairfield promise to deliver the manuscript the next day?" Bentham said, "Oh God, I forgot about that. Are we back to motiveless malignity?" "No, sir. I would suggest he didn't say that." "Yes, he did, Henry," said Bentham. "I'm unshakable in that." "Do you wish to put his remark into direct quotations and maintain that be said, "I will deliver the manuscript the next day." Bentham said, "Oh I take your meaning. "The next day" is a paraphrase, of course. He said, "I will deliver the manuscript tomorrow." What's the difference?" Henry said, "And then you agreed enthusiastically, urged him to do so at once, and offered to place a messenger at his service. You don't think that sounded like sarcasm, sir?tf "No. He said, "I will deliver the manuscript tomorrow" and I was enthusiastic. Where's the sarcasm?" "To Morrow," said Henry carefully, pronouncing it as two words. "Good God," said Bentham blankly. Rubin brought his fist down on the table, "Damnf William Morrow Company," he said, "one of New York's larger publishing houses." "Yes, sir," said Henry. "I looked it up in the telephone book, to make certain, immediately after Mr. Bentham's account of the phone convcr- sation. It is at 105 Madison Avenue, about a mile from here." Gonzalo said, "There you are, Mr. Bentham. just tell your boss that it's with William Morrow Company and that the author had it in to them first." "And he can then fire me for stupidity. Which I deserve." "Not a chance," said Gonzalo. "Don't tell him the literal truth. Tell him that as a result of your own clever detective work you uncovered the facts of the case through a confidential source you cannot reveal." Henry said, "After all, sir, confidentiality is the policy of the Black Widowers." "The Next Day"-Afterword I had a mild coronary on May 18, 1977, and you'd think the world was coming to an end the way Janet carried on. In July of that year, for instance, I wrote "The Next Day," and just because we were having a heat wave with temperatures in excess of a hundred degrees, Janet wouldn't let me leave our air-conditioned apartment to take it down to the EQMM offices. I had to mail it in. This was a horrible blow because whenever I submit a story to EQMM, I always spend some time chaffing with the beautiful Eleanor Sullivan, manaizine editor of the magazine. (By chaffing, of course, I mean chasing her around and around the desk-and Janet thought that wouldn't be good for my heart, either.) Fortunately, Eleanor bore up under the horror of being deprived of my company and sent on the story to Fred anyway. He took it and it appeared in the May 1978 EQMM. I sometimes wonder on how small an ambiguity it is possible to hang a Black Widower plot. This story may represent the record. Irrelevance! "I think," said Mario Gonzalo, "that I know Henry's secret; how he gets the answer when we don't." Gonzalo nodded in the direction of the waiter, who was quietly serving the drinks that were prelude to the monthly banquet of.the Black Widowers. James Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, "I've known it all along. He's smarter than we are." "Sure," said Gonzalo, flicking tobacco ash from the sleeve of his velvet jacket and helping himself to some Brie on a cracker, "but being smarter isn't enough." "Being dumber isn't enough, either," broke in Emmanuel Rubin, glowering through his thick-lensed glasses, "so what good will the secret do you, Mario?" "Being really dumb," said Gonzalo coolly, "is to be afraid to listen for fear of learning something. So I suppose you're not interested, Manny." "What, and miss a good laugh?" said Rubin. "Go ahead, Mario." Geoffrey Avalon, having accepted his drink from Henry, approached and said, "A good laugh about what?" "About Mario's idea as to how Henry manages to come up with solutions," said Rubin. "Henry, you can listen, too. Mario has your secret." Henry smiled discreetly. "I have made no secret of what I do. The gentlemen of the Black Widowers analyze the problems carefully, remove all the useless adornments, and leave a plain picture for me to describe." "Not at all," said Gonzalo, "not at all. You just say that to throw us off. The secret is-irrelevance!" There was a short pause. Then Rubin's scanty beard bristled and he said in high-pitched disbelief, "Is that what I'm supposed to listen to so that I can learn something?" "Sure," said Gonzalo. "We're all of us reasoning men-even you, sometimes, Manny-and we try to solve any little puzzle presented to us by catching at all the relevant angles. But if it were the relevant matters that mattered, so to speak, there'd be no puzzle. Anyone would then see the answer. It's Henry's trick of seeing the irrelevant that gives him the answer." Drake said, "This is a contradiction in terms, Mario. Something that is irrelevant has nothing to do . . .Gonzalo interposed patiently, "Something that seems irrelevant but isn't. We see that it seems irrelevant; Henry sees that it really isn't irrelevant. Right, Henry?" Henry's face showed no expression beyond a general benevolence. "It is certainly an interesting suggestion," he said. Avalon drew his formidable eyebrows together. "It is surely more than that, Mario. Henry sees what we do not, because be looks clearly at life while the rest of us do not have his direct and simple honesty and are not capable of doing so. Even if you were to see what Henry does, you would not get the answer." Gonzalo said, "I bet I can. Five dollars says that if there's a puzzle today, I'll use Henry's technique and get the answer before be does." "You're on," said Rubin at once. "Good," said Mario. "Geoff, you hold the stakes. But remember, no bet if there's no problem." Drake said, "Oh there'll be a problem. Personally, I think we're each of us deliberately choosing our guests for their problematical content." "And yet perhaps nt thi'time," said Avalon, "since the guest has not arrived-nor tonight's host, either, unless the steps on the stairs . . . No, it's Tom." Thomas Trumbull's white and crisply waved hair made its appearance, followed by the rest of his body as he mounted the stairs. He said, "If you're worried about the hoses whereabouts, Geoff, Roger Halsted's just arrived downstairs with a stranger who, I presume, is our guest for tonight. I raced ahead since I am a dying man who needs a drAh thank you, Henry." Gonzalo had taken his seat next to Halsted and, spreading out his napkin with a practiced Rick, said, "We almost thought we would have to start without a host or a guest, Roger. What happened? Decided you couldn't stand the expense?" Halsted reddened and his mild autter seemed a shade more pronounced. "Not my fault, really. Burry was delayed; Dan Burry, my guest. His phone rang just as I was picking him up and he grew very upset. I couldn't very well press, him too hard and urge him to hang up. For a while, in fact, I thought I'd have to leave without him." "What was it about, do you know? The phone call, I mean." Halsted looked in the direction of his guest. "I don't know. Something involving one of his students. He's a school principal, you know." "Your school?" "No, but why don't you save your questions for the grilling?" "Do you mind letting me start it?" "Not at all," and Halsted turned his attention to the crabmeat soup. Dan Burry was a rather large man with dark hair as crisply waved as Trumbull's and with a brief mustache of the kind Adolf Hitler had put out of fashion for at least a generation. His jowled face bore a worried look and he tackled his roast uck with an enthusiasm dulled by absence of mind. He did not participate in the general conversation and seemed to listen only distantly as Rubin and Drake debated the respective values of nuclear fusion and solar power as the ultimate energy source. Burry seemed unprepared, therefore, for the suddenness with which the focus of attention suddenly shifted. While Henry freshened the coffee and produced brandy, Gonzalo said, "Mr. Burry, how do you justify your existence?" Burry looked at Gonzalo with what seemed a momentary flash of indignation but then muttered in a depressed sort of way, "Ah yes, Roger warned me that there would be a question-and-answer period." "Yes," said Gonzalo, "and in return for the dinner, you are expected to answer frankly and fully, under terms of strict confidentiality, of course. So how do you justify your existence?" Burry said, "I try to maintain an atmosphere and organization at a city high school such that at least some of the student body can gain an education and a respect for learning. That is justification enough, I think whenever I succeed." "Do you succeed often?" "Not often." Avalon cleared his throat. "The education of the young of any species begins with discipline." "Those who believe so," said Burry, "all too frequently believe it ends with discipline, too, and confuse the purpose of a school with the purpose of a prison." Gonzalo said, "I understand that just as you were leavin for dinner tonight, you received an unsettling phone call. Did that involve school business?" Burry cast a hard glance in Halsted's direction. Halsted reddened and said, "I was explaining why we were late, Dan." Gonzalo said, "What was the phone call about?" Burry shook his head. "It is not something I should discuss. It is an unfortunate matter that involves a minor." "A minor wha0" "I'm using the word as a noun, Mr. Gonzalo, not as an adjective. It involves a human being who is only seventeen." Gonzalo said, "We understand your reluctance to discuss the matter, but I assure you, the fact that a minor is involved is irrelevant." He paused and seemed to savor the word for a moment. "The terms of the dinner are that you answer our questions. Roger should have explained that to you." "May I stress again," interrupted Avalon, " the confidentiality of our proceedings." "Including the waiter," said Trumbull, scowling, "who is a valued member of this organization." Burry glanced briefly at Henry, who had now taken up his post at the sideboard with his usual look of quiet attention, and said, "I won't deny, gentlemen, that I'd welcome a discussion of the matter, for I have been very frustrated over it. Still, I cannot use the name of the young man. Will it suit the rules of your organization if I refer to him only as John?" Rubin said, "It's our experience, Mr. Burry, that that kind of subterfuge always fails. You'll slip and use his real name." "John is his real name, Mr. Rubin, and is as nearly anonymous as a given name can be. I will merely refrain from using his full name." Halsted said, "I think we can allow that." Burry said, "Let me tell you about John first. He's a good-looking young man, a bit undersized but keen, quick, and intelligent. His intelligence attracted the attention of his teachers at once and L of course, am always on the lookout for such things. All students are, in theory, of equal importance and all deserve the best education we can give them, but the unusually bright ones are, of course, our special delight and, too often, our special heartbreak." "Why heartbreak?" asked Gonzalo quickly. "Because very often a bright child is as much the victim of his social handcuffs as he would be if be had not a brain in his head. It's a mistake to think that intelligence alone can lift you out of the mud, and there is no use in citing examples to the contrary. It may happen, given special circumstances; in most cases, it does not happen." "I presume," said Rubin sardonically, "John is a child of the ghetto-as was my father in his time." Burry said in a deliberate and even tone, "John is a child of the ghetto, but not as your father was, Mr. Rubin. Your father and you can, if you are circumspect, hide your origin. You may change your name, be careful with your speech, abandon your idiosyncrasies, and you might pass. It would take a special lam, to pin an identifying badge on you. John and others like him, however, are born with the identifying badge, and long before you can know them as individuals you recognize them s blacks." Rubin looked uncomfortable. "I meant no offense." "None taken. Some blacks do need identification, I might say. By the convention of our society a single black ancestor makes one black. A man might therefore be apparently white but socially black. As myself. I am black." "That makes no difference to us, sir," said Avalon austerely, "Why should it?" said Burry. "Nor do'es it seem to make a difference to some of the students. One prominent nonobscene graffito in the fourthfloor toilet reads, "Burry is five fourths white." just the same, my one ancestor does make a difference in my attitude toward John. "I" in desperate to give a youngster like that the kind of chance he might have if he looked like me. In the gathering crisis of our times, the human species cannot afford to waste brains, and this one may be wasted." "Drugs?" asked Trumbull. Burrv shrugged. "Pot, of course. That's a rite of passage with kids these Me days-like smoking a pipe was to Tom Sawyer, or to Mark Twain, for that matter. And then for all the talk about the damage done by marijuana, the evidence is not as strong as for the damage done by tobacco, yet not only is tobacco smoking legal and socially acceptable, but also the government subsidizes the tobacco growers." "You start with pot and you go on to heroin," said Avalon dryly. "Another rite of passage." "Sometimes-especially if you make both equally illegal, so that the pot smoker fails to see much difference-but only sometimes. One can go from social drinking to alcoholism, a condition as dangerous as heroin and far more common, yet society does not for that reason condemn or outlaw social drinking. .din any case," Burry went on, "John is not deeply involved in pot and does not have the makings of a heroin addict. No, I'm afraid John's temptations lie in another direction-crime." Avalon said, "What kind of crime, Mr. Burry?" "Nothing exceedingly dramatic. I suspected him of being a purse snatcher, a shoplifter, a petty thief. It was only a suspicion, until tonight. Now, I'm afraid, it's a certainty." "Is that what the phone call was about?" asked Gonzalo. "It was about John," said Burry despondently. "It was, indeed, from him. He was in trouble and he turned to me. There is some small satis- faction in that. I managed to obtain a lawyer for him and I promised to supply reasonable bail, if necessary. It was that which delayed our arrival. And yet I can take only minimal satisfaction from being of help now. I suspect I failed him to begin with." "In what way?" asked Gonzalo. "If I had been more ingenious, I might have persuaded him to cooperate with the police." "Not much chance of that, Dan," said Halsted. "Anyone who's a schoolteacher knows that in the bright lexicon of youth, there is no such word as "squeal.'The guys who keep their mouths shut go to jail, but they are heroes and are taken care of. The squealers may stay out of jail but they're ostracized and very likely beaten up." "I know that, Roger," said Burry, "I need no education in the mores of the street, but I might have done it if I were smart enough. I'll see him tonight after this meal-if you won't mind my leaving by ten-thirty at the latest-and if he'll co-operate, I'll get him out of the city. There are agencies who will help in this respect and I've used them before. These people we're after won't mount an intercity hunt for him. It isn't the Syndicate we're talking about." Avalon twiddled his empty brandy glass and said, "What are we talking about, Mr. Burry?" "A burglary ring organized by medium-sized racketeers who employ high-school studen as their field operatives. The kids bring in their takings and receive a percentage. It saves them the trouble of trying to peddle the goods themselves-but if they hold out for their own profit, and are caught at it, they are beaten up." Trumbull said, "It sounds very much like a Fagin operation." "It's exactly a Fagin operation," said Burry. "You don't suppose the practice died out with Oliver Twist, do you?" "And you're after Fagin himself, I take it," said Trumbull. Burry said, "It certainly does no good to pick up the kids. They're eventually let go and the game goes on. Even if they were not let go, replacements are easily obtained, and the game still goes on. You've got to get the corrupters themselves. And beyond that," he added sadly, "the quirks in our society that make such things possible." "If you can cure those quirks," said Avalon, "you will have achieved a first for our ten thousand years of so-called civilization." "Then at least the corrupters," said Burry. "If I were smart enough to see my way into persuading John to go in with me. . ." Gonzalo interrupted. "That's twice now you've said you needed to be smart enough. Why snia-rtenough? Persuasive enough, I can see; eloquent enough; unscrupulous enough; threatening enough. Why smart enough?" Burry hesitated and rubbed his chin, as though wondering what to say. He decided, apparently, and said, "The police have been after the burglary ring and, among others, they have consulted me. They had reason to think that some of the students at my school were involved and they wanted me to co-operate with them in finding the students. To be truthful, I wasn't anxious to do this." "To squeal?" asked Drake, stony-faced. For a moment, Burry stiffened with quite apparent indignation. Then be" relaxed. "You're right. I don't want to squeal, but that's just a gut reaction. There's more to it than that. As I told you, picking up the y(ungsters does not solve the problem, but it may manufacture hardened criminals. Were I to find some youngster I suspected of -being involved, what I would hope to do would be to obtain the necessary information from him and turn over the information, not the youngster, to the police." Avalon said, "I don't think you would get the necessary information by kindly persuasion, Mr. Burry. The police might have better arguments than you have." Trumbull slapped the table with the palm of his hand. "Geoff, that's stupid. Those kids are heroes to their peers if they resist the police, and if any police officer tried to beat anything out of them, not only is any information he gets inadmissible as evidence, but also the policeman involved will be up on charges." "I call that hobbling the police to the cost of the honest citizen," said Avalon. "I call it forcing the police to a single standard of conduct and having them treat the poor, the ill-educated, the unpopular as circumspectly as they would treat those with money and lawyers," said Trumbull. "Why not enforce the single standard by treating the well-to-do criminal as roughly as the poor ones, then?" demanded Avalon. Trumbull said, "Because they're only suspected criminals. The state of actual criminality comes only after trial and judgment, and until then the person in custody has all the rights and privileges of a free American, including decent treatment at the hands of the guardians of the very law that says so. Mr. Burry, I think your attitude is a good one." Burry said, "Thank you, but good or not, it didn't work. What the police need is evidence. They have suspicions as to the identity of the ringleaders, the Fagins, but until they can find them in action, surrounded by their stolen goods, they aren't likely to be able to prove it. One of the difficulties appears to be that the criminals change their base of operation frequently, and are never in one place long enough to leave a clear trail. Of course, if we knew in advance where they wotM be, we would have a chance. And that is the kind of information the youngsters would have, for they have to know where to bring the loot. "Without that-well, the poorer sections of New York are an incredible rabbit-warren that could swallow up an army of police searchers who would encounter frozen-faced inhabitants denying all knowledge of anything. From the pattern of the robberies, the police suspect the scene of operations must be on Manhattan's West Side somewhere between Eightieth Street and 125th Street, but that's not much of a hint. But I had my eye on John." "Why him?" asked Drake. "Money," snapped Burry. "It comes to that. We live in a society that measures all values by money, and that delivers unending pressures by advertising in every medium urging the possession of material things that can be had only for money. Sex standards are set by the beautiful people, and those can be met only with money. Well, then, if you don't have money, what do you do? Devote your life to gaining those skills that will make money in the end. What if you firmly believe that the disadvantages you were born with will make it impossible for you to make money even if you gain those skills? You give up, perhaps, and get the money by the shortest route-and another youngster is lost both to himself and to society." Drake said, "Yes, but this is true for many of the students at the school, I'm sure. Why John?" "Of course, it's true of many. That's why the youngsters are so easily recruited. But I have been interested in John, so my eye has been on him, and in recent months he has shown money." "In what way?" asked Rubin, who had been absently doodling dollar signs on his napkin. "Better clothes, for one thing; an air of self-confidence, for another. Something amounting almost to arrogance in his attitude toward girls. There's no point in having money if you don't show it, and I know the signs. I had no proof, of course, no real evidence, and I didn't want to confront John with my suspicions if, by any chance, I happened to be wrong. "Then last Monday, I passed him in the hall, quite by accident, and he had a piece of paper in his hand. It seemed to me it had been passed to him. I had not been looking in his direction; it had been an impression out of the corner of my eye. I certainly didn't see who had done the passing, for it was between periods and the halls were quite crowded. It's good to be in the halls at unpredictable interval's at such times, by the way. The possible presence of authority does impose some sense of discipline at such times, however minimal." Burry sighed, and smiled rather weakly. Gonzalo said, "But what about the paper?" "I had no reason to think the paper had anything to do with the robberies, but it seemed unusual, and I have learned to respond at once to anything unusual. "What's that paper you're holding, John?" I asked in what I hoped was a friendly tone. ""The paper, Mr. Burry?" he asked, and my suspicions were aroused at once. To repeat a question is almost invariably a play for time. So I asked to see it; I held out my hand for it. By now, the main flood of students had passed, though some turned for a quick look backward." Trumbull said, "Could you force him to hand over the paper? He has a right to his personal property, hasn't he?" Burry said, "I would not have used force, naturally, but within the school my powers to enforce discipline are, in theory, considerable. I might have suspended him from his classes for failure to comply, and that would have" been an unhappy position for John. He enjoyed his classes. In any case, he complied. "He hesitated, said, "It's just a piece of paper I picked up, Mr. Burry," glanced at it carelessly, and handed it over, saying with an air of mocking virtue, "I was going to put it in a wastebasket, Mr. Burry. You wouldn't want the halls all littered." "I resisted the temptation to point out that one more piece of paper would have made no difference in the extent of litter and said, "I am Pleased at your thoughtfulness. I'll see to it that this is thrown away," and put it in my pocket without looking at it. I then asked him how he was doing with his schoolwork and he answered easily enough. He seemed in no way perturbed at my having the paper in my possession. "I waited till I was back in my office before I looked at it, and I must say I was disappointed. It was a typewritten sheet, Xeroxed, not very professionally done, and it urged students to demand decent educational facilities, a message I wholeheartedly agreed with. "But there was nothing conspiratorial about it-or at least I could see nothing as conspiratorial. I didn't trust my own judgment in the matter, so I called the detective lieutenant who had approached me on the matter of the burglary ring. He visited me after hours; in plainclothes, of course; and I showed him the letter without telling him the name of the youngster from whom I had obtained it." Trumbull said, "Surely, he asked the name?" Burry said, 1 told the story in such a way that no one youngster of whatever name was implicated." Trumbull who, as a cryptographer by profession, might have been particularly interested, said, "By withholding information, you may have deprived the lieutenant of crucial clues in the understanding of the message. "He didn't think so," said Burry. "He laughed, and told me it was nonsense. I think he would have torn it up if I hadn't rescued it-perhaps out of disappointment, for when I called him, I may have given him the impression I had something. I've kept studying it myself the past few days. Heaven help me, I even tried warming it over a hot plate in case invisible ink showed up. "Now it is too late. Young John was arrested in what must have been the central clearing place; taken in clear guilt, with identifiable stolen ods in his possession. John called me from the police station; that was e phone call. And I've spoken to my detective friend. And if I had been clever enough to understand the letter, I might have stopped John." Avalon said, "If the letter had significance. Not every piece of innocent literature conceals a guilty secret." "This one does, though," said Rubin, his eyes Hashing, his voice strident. "Let me ask you a few questions, Mr. Burry. You say John was taken. You mentioned no one else, not even by inference. Was he alone?" "It's my understanding he was." "And had John been holding the paper for some indefinite period when you first became aware of it, or had he just received it?" "I can't answer that question definitely, Mr. Rubin," said Burry, "but it was my impression that it had been passed to him even as I watched. I wish I had seen who it was who passed it, but I didn't." Rubin said triumphantly, "Then the passer was there and watched you ask John to hand over the paper and watched him do so. The passer turned that information to the higher-ups of the burglary ring, and they had to take into account the possibility that John might talk. If the letter gave some sort of information that told John where to take the stolen goods, that information was quickly changed. John, being no longer trustworthy, would not be told of the change and he would walk in alone to the meeting place that was no longer to be a meeting place and was taken." Trumbull said, "Wait. Hold on. How had the police known about the meeting place, old or new?" Burry studied his fingers and said, "According to my detective friend, to whom I also talked before coming here, John had been under quiet surveillance for some time. Throu2h nothin2 I said," he added hurriedly. "He had been identified at the scne of a burglary-not with certainty, you understand, but they were keeping an eye on him. I hadn't known that." Trumbull said, "Then if you hadn't taken that paper and roused suspicion-assuming Manny Rubin's notion is correct-John would have led the police to an active clearinghouse, and right to some of the controlling figures." Burry nodded. "The thought had occurred to me." Gonzalo said hotly, "How the devil could Mr. Burry know this, Tom?" "I'm returning to an earlier point," said Trumbull. "Our guest showed the letter to the detective and it was ignored. He did not mention the name of the young man involved and I said that might be vital evidence. I was right. If the detective had known it was taken from a young man who was under surveillance, he would have treated it much more seriously." "You're right," said Burry. "I'll have to tell them now." "Wait," said Gonzalo. "I have a better idea. Why not tell them what the letter means? If you could be of help to them, they might be willing to go a bit easier on John if you asked them to." "John," rumbled Avalon, "may think he's been double-crossed already. He may think the burglary ring deliberately let him walk into a trap to pay him back for handing over the piece of paper. He may be willing to cooperate now." "The catch is," said Burry, "that I don't know what the letter means, so I can't use it to win either consideration from the police or co-operation from John." Gonzalo said eagerly, "Do you remember what the letter said, Mr. Burry? Can you repeat it?" "I don't have to," said Burry. "I have it with me. I've been carrying it in my pocket since I got it-and taking it out to stare at it now and then, for all the good it did me." He took it out. It was tightly creased and dog-eared. He unfolded it, flattened it out, and passed it to Gonzalo. It made its way about the table, and after it reached Drake, that gentleman passed it on to Henry, even as Burry's hand had reached out to take it. Henry glanced at it quickly and then returned it to Burry. The typewriting did not have a professional touch, nor did the Xeroxing. It had an all-capital headline: PROTEST NATIONAL DISCRIMINATION AGAINST NEW YORK. Underneath, it said, "Join the march on City Hall on October 20. Demand that Congress recognize the rights of the poor to a quality education. There is no disgrace in being a New Yorker. We are Americans, every bit as much Americans as the people of Tar Heel, North Carolina, anj we want our rights as Americans. No more, but certainly no less." th Is it at all?" said Avalon in astonishment. "That's all," said Burry. "What a remarkably stupid message," said Avalon. "Why march on City Hall? City Hall is helpless. What's more, no one is ever going to get much sympathy from small-town America by making fun of them. Tar Heel, North Carolina! I admit that "tarheeler" is a nickname for a North Carolinian because of the early production of rosin and tar from pine trees in that state, but that kind of name only sounds well when used by those who are so named. To make up a name like Tar Heel, North Carolina, is a deliberate insult. It would be like having a Southerner refer to the town of Damyankee, Massachusetts. What do they hope to gain?" "Nothing," said Rubin, smiling, "because it's not a call to action. I'll bet there isn't any march scheduled for October 20, is there, Mr. Burry?" "I don't know," said Burry. "I haven't heard of one." "Then it's a message, all right," said Rubin. Burry said, "Where? I tried looking at initial letters, final letters, every other word, every third word. I can't find anything." Mario Gonzalo shook his head slowly and with a moderately insufferable air of superiority. "It couldn't possibly be any of those things, Mr. Burry. I could have told you that before I ever saw the letter." There was a moment's complete silence and every other Black Widower turned to stare at Gonzalo. "Good God," said Drake, blinking through cigarette smoke, "he sounds like Sherlock Holmes." Gonzalo said, "If you don't mind, there's five dollars riding on this, so just listen." He put aside the free-flowing caricature of Burry that he had drawn in the course of the discussion and said, "John got the message as Mr. Burry was watching, and he handed it over promptly. But he looked at it first, isn't that right, Mr. Burry? Just a glance?" Burry hesitated and said, "Yes, just a quick look." "Exactly! If it was a message, he had to see what it was before he handed it over, and if a quick look was enough, then he had no time to match up first letters or last letters or skip words. And if we take just a glance at the letter we'll see what he saw." Rubin said with elaborate politeness, "And would you kindly tell us what you see?" Gonzalo said, "I told you what to look for at the start of the evening. Look for the irrelevancy. Tar Heel, North Carolina, is irrelevant. They could have made up the name of any other town-jet Air, Utah, or Lollipop, South Dakota. Why insist on Tar Heel? Because it's the key. John took one quick look at the letter to see the name of the town, and once he had it, that was all he needed, and be could give the paper away." Avalon said thoughtfully, "Well, you know, there's something to that." "Nothing much," said Rubin, "unless Mario can tell us what Tar Heel, North Carolina, means." "It could be an anagram." "Like what?" Gonzalo said, "I've-been working on one: "Al, the not real corn hair."" There was a sticky silence, and then Trumbull brought his fist down on the table. "Damn it, Mario, what does that mean?" "I don't know. There could be other anagrams. Or it could be a cryp- togram. Or there could be a book somewhere that has a list of word equivalents. Maybe it means, "Cheese it, the cops." I don't know. But it means something." Rubin said, "That's a big help, telling us it means something." Gonzalo said, in an aggrieved tone, "Then let's do some thinking. It won't hurt if we spend a few minutes trying to anagram it, or something, and maybe work out what it means." The minutes passed in a dead silence and finally Burry looked at his watch and sighed. He said, "I really must get down to the police station. I suppose the letter is really meaningless." "Well, now, Dan," said Halsted, stroking his hair back from his receding hairline, "we can't really say that till we've asked Henry." "The waiter?" "Why, yes. He has an uncommon knack for seeing the obvious. Except that I don't see him. Henry!" Henry's head appeared as he climbed the stairs with a rapidity quite different from his usual gentle flow. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Halsted," he said, "I did not intend to be gone long. May I ask Mr. Burry a question?" Burry had risen and was clearly on his way to the cloakroom. He said, "Well, yes, but nothing too complicated, I hope." "Unless you said something about it during the brief interval in which I was absent, sir, I believe you did not mention the actual place-the address-at which the student was apprehended." "No, I did not." "Do you know the place?" Burry sucked his lower lip inward and bit at it thoughtfully, "It was mentioned. Yes. But I don't think I remember it." Henry said, "Was it, by any chance, Z83 West gznd Street?" Burry stared at Henry for a moment, then sat down. "Yes, it was, now that you mention it. That was precisely the address. How did you know?" "It's in the letter, sir." "Where?" said Avalon. "Show us where." Henry said, "Mr. Gonzalo's reasoning seemed to me perfectly correct in every detail when he pointed out the irrelevance and, therefore, the importance of the town of Tar Heel, North Carolina. There seemed to be a 2eneral immession that it was a manufactured name, but it occurred to me ihat it mijht be a real one. There are very many peculiar names among the small towns of the United States; Tar Heel would be sedate and conservative compared to some. And if it were real, it would have unmistakable significance, so I went down to look it up." Avalon said, "You mean there is a Tar Heel, North Carolina?" "There is, Mr. Avalon." "And it's listed in the gazetteer?" "It may be, but I tried another source. The all-inclusive recording of all the inhabited places in the United States large enough to include a post office is in a Zip Code directory, and we have one downstairs. Tar Heel, North Carolina, is included, and, of course, so is its Zip Code. The directory is the book that Mr. Gonzalo referred to when he spoke of a list of word equivalents." "I was thinking of phrases," said Gonzalo. "It is numbers, but that's a mere detail. The number equivalent is of course, unique. Tar Heel has a Zip Code Of 28392 and no other, and if the clearinghouse is on the Upper West Side, 283 West 92nd Street would seem the likely interpretation. Undoubtedly, there are ways of coding for the East Side or the West Side, or if not all the numbers are used, as in 2 West 92nd Street, or if a named street such as Amsterdam Avenue is used. Still, the prevalence of numbered streets and avenues in Manhattan make a Zip Code code, if I may use the phrase, particularly useful." Burry said blankly, "How could I miss that?" Drake grunted. "We always ask ourselves that after Henry sees whatever there is to see." Burry said, "If I show this to the police, they'll see that the correspondence between the Zip Code and the address can't be a coincidence. And if they know that much, then they may learn more." "If they concentrate on the letter," said Rubin, "they might learn something about the typewriter, the Xeroxing, and so on. And if you confront John with what you know and indicate that the gang will assume the information came from him, he might be willing to tell more. He can be in no worse trouble with them and he might improve his standing with the police." Burry had his coat and hat on. "Thank you, all of you. Thank you, Henry." He whirled out. Avalon said, "Happy ending." "Not for everyone," said Henry. "What do you mean?" Henry said, "Mr. Gonzalo clearly had the answer, all but the trivial final step. In my opinion, Mr. Rubin owes him five dollars." "Irrelevance!"-Afterword In late January 1978, 1 attended a convention of mystery fans at Mohonk Mountain House (near New Paltz, New York). It was the second of what had been planned to be annual affairs, and it was every bit ,as much fun as the first had been. At the end, there was an auction to raise money for the Mohonk Trust Fund, and one of the items auctioned off was the privilege of having one's name used in a Black Widowers tale. when I The high bidder was one Dan Burry, and three months later, wrote "Irrelevance!" I had the guest at the banquet named Dan Burry. I used only the name, of course, and not the appearance, the job, or anything else about the auction winner. The story appeared in the March 1979 EQMM under the title of "A Matter of Irrelevance" but, as usual, I prefer the shorter title,and restore my own. The story came out just in time for the third annual meeting of mystery readers at Mohonk, and Dan Burry was beaming. He said that by an odd coincidence the views of the fictional Dan Burry bore a close resemblance to his own. None So Blind. Rog er Halsted, normally soft-spoken, did on occasion become emphatic Oeen the matter under discussion was something that struck at the inner core of his affections. He said, "You're quite wrong, Manny. Not only is the limerick an authentic and respectable verse form, it is to the English language what the haiku is to Japanese, an authentic and peculiar possession." Halsted's high forehead was pink and his slight stammer was emphasized as he grew, for him, passionate. The others present at the preprandial stage of the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers fell briefly silent in astonishment at Halsted's single-handed bearding of Emmanuel Rubin. Rubin, who grew passionate even over weather announcements, seemed afire with contradiction. "Are you trying to tell me, Roger, that limericks can't be written in any language?" "Of course not," said Halsted. "I know a number of limericks in French and German. It's just that it doesn't come naturally to those languages or to any other than English. They're not designed for it. For heaven's sake, you can write haikus in English; it's just a matter of counting syllables; but it doesn't have the same effect as in Japanese." "Subjective nonsense," said Rubin, his sparse gray beard bristling belligerently. "It's what you're used to, Teach American children haiku in grade school and they'll appreciate it in English as Japanese children learn to appreciate it in Japanese." "You underestimate the difference involved in the fact that syllables in Japanese are more regular in sound than those in English. And where limericks are concerned, what counts is the anarchy of the English language." "You call it anarchy, Roger, because you know no grammar." "That's my point," said Halsted. "English grammar is incredibly loose. It consists almost entirely of a collection of xceptions. And the English vocabulary, through a succession of historical accidents, is far larger than that of any other language. Every word in English has twenty synonyms, no two of which are ixactly alike in meaning." "I grant the flexibility of English," said Rubin. "Then you grant my argument. A limerick is made up of thirteen metrical feet divided into five lines with three, three, two, two, three feet each. There are two unaccented. syllables between each accented one in each line, one or two unaccented syllables at the start of each line, and zero, one, or two unaccented syllables at the end of each line. If . . ." At this point, Mario Gonzalo, the Black Widowers" resident artist, who had been following the argument over a martini and was smacking his lips over both, said, "Come on, Roger, we all know what a limerick is." Halsted said, "The point I'm trying to make is that the rules for a limerick are rigid and allow almost no leeway. We can get away with it in English because we can shift from a word to its synonym, we can alter word order, use a noun for an adjective, and so on. In other languages, you are not so free-there are too few synonyms, too fixed a word order, too inflexible a set of word properties." At this point, the one nonmember of the club, the guest brought in by the host of the evening, broke in eagerly. He had been hovering at the edge of the argument wait-Ing for a chance to insert himself, and he now said, "My favorite limerick goes: "From a crypt in the church of St. Giles . . ."" Halsted said, "Good! Take that one. I've often heard the second line given as "Came a scream that rang out for a mile." Now that's wrong! Between the two accented syllables "scream" and "rane there is only one unaccented syllable." "Not so," said James Drake, touching his small gray mustache as though to reassure himself of its microscopic presence. "fou can say it, "Came a scream that rang out for amile."" Halsted looked annoyed, "That defies the ordinary rhythm of English speech. If you were to read the line as prose, you would sound illiterate if you placed the accent on "out." You could say "Came a screaming that rang out for a mile," but now you have three unaccented syllables between "rang" and "mile, " and that's impermissible too. So you change it to "Came a screaming that rang out for miles," which sounds better and which, incidentally, preserves the rhyme, a matter that most amateur limericists are very cavalier about. However, the phrase "came a screaming," while permissible English-almost anything is-is a trifle unnatural. So you change it to'Came a scream that resounded for miles'and you have a perfect limerick line." Geoffrey Avalon's deep baritone rolled out, effortlessly rising above the general conversation, "And as Henry is trying to tell you, Roger, we have a perfect banquet waiting for us if you'll only shut up and let everyone sit down." Henry, whose role as waiter at the monthly banquet made him the one indispensable man of the eveninc,, said quietly, "I cannot guarantee Perfection, gentlemen, but there will be roast goose that I think you will find acceptable." Halsted sat doivn at once. It was widely rumored that the one way to stop him frorn composing limericks was to place food in front of him, and Halsted had more than once admitted the possibility of there being some truth to that. He was a valiant trencherman, be said. The guest tried Halsted again after the stuffed mushrooms had been disposed of and bones sprouted from the plates. He said, "I take it you know the St. Giles limerick, then?" Thomas Trumbull, scowling out of his tanned face under his thatch of white hair, said, "He was beard every limerick invented and, thanks to his insufferable mania and our own incomprehensible tolerance, so have we." Avalon said, "Since you came late as usual, Tom, I haven't had a chance to introduce my guest to you. This is Ananias St. John, a cousin of MY wife's but a splendid fellow all the same." "Ananias?" said Trumbull, with a thoughtful look in his eye. "Ananias," said St. John jovially. "My parents had a perverted sense of humor. However, the Bible is so rarely read these days that the natural allusion is lost. Well, almost so; it wasn't last week, I think. Usually, the trouble I have is in pronunciation. Which reminds me, Geoff, please overcome your Anglophilic love of elision and don't pronounce my last name Sinjon. Accent the last syllable and make it Sinjohn, or, better yet, give it the full sounding of Saint John." Halsted said, "Elisions can be useful: "There was a young fellow named Sinjon, Who said to his wife, "Honest Injun" . . ."" Trumbull shouted, "Damn it, Roger, I'd tell you not to torture us with another limerick, except that you won't find another rhyme for St. John, however execrable." Halsted said quietly, ""I was having no fling, with that pretty young thing. just a small bit of fatherly pinchin"."" ""Execrable" is the word, all right, Tom," said Avalon. "Can you do better?" demanded Halsted. "Who wants to?" said Trumbull. "To want to compose a better limerick is the mark of a man with micro-ambition." Avalon tapped his water glass with his spoon as Henry passed around the brandy in his usual unobtrusive way. "Roger," Avalon said, "you were unaccustomedly forward earlier in the evening. Suppose we take advantage of your brashness and ask you to conduct the grilling now." Trumbull let out a roar of disapproval. "Come on, Geoff. Roger will get this thing turned into a competition of limericks, and I swear I'll leave." Avalon looked austere. "As host, I make the decisions, and there are no appeals. Roger, you do the grilling, and the subject. of limericks is not to be brought up." Halsted said, eyebrows lifted, "I wouldn't dream of it. I've had my say. Mr. St. John" (he pronounced the name carefully as two equally stressed words), "it is customary, but not obligatory, to ask each guest to justify his existence, and in this case I choose not to. If I do, we may get off on a tangent and, instead, I want to move directly to a nonlimerical point. "Grill! Don't orate!" muttered Trumbull. "Quiet, Tom," said Avalon, with a stiff gesture. Halsted said, "Earlier, during the dinner, you said that few people saw the natural allusion to your name, Ananias. You mean, of course, the fact that it is used, metaphorically, to mean a liar." "That's right," said St. John cheerfully. "Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, tried to withhold property from the common fund b lyin abo t. .t and were struck dead by Peter in consequence. You'll find it at tie begin'ning of the Fifth Chapter of Acts." Rubin said, "Have you ever thought of changing your name?" "Why should V" said St. John. "I like it. It gives me a bit of individuality. I'm the only Ananias I ever met and that suits me fine." Halsted said, "Back to the point, though. You also said that there were allusions made last week. In other wor , someone thought you were a liar. Why?" St. John frowned and his round face assumed an anxious look. "Did I say anything about last week?" "You did," said Drake, nodding. "I heard it, too." "I shouldn't have," said St. John, "I've been asked not to talk about it." Trumbull leaned forward intently and said, "Wait! Are you the St. John who was connected with the Winston Arms incident?" St. John said cautiously, as though expecting entrapment, "I live in Winston Arms." "Okay. All I knew was your initial. If I had known your full first name I would have known on the instant of introduction. Look, Mr. St. John, the incident doesn't exactly fall under my jurisdiction and I know of it only from some distance, but it's all right to talk about it here. Everything said here never goes beyond the walls, and that includes Henry, our esteemed waiter." St. John's caution did not abandon him, "How do I know you have the authority to . . ." Avalon said, "It's all right, Ni. If Tom says you can go ahead, you can. The only thing is that I do try to pick my guests carefully and avoid these damned puzzles. Ni St. John is an electrical engineer with an unimpeachably quiet life, and now look." "It only happened last week, Geoff," said St. John weakly. "I'm sorry." "Would you tell us about it?" said Halsted. There was one last moment of hesitation and then St. John said, "To make it short, I found a dead man and I'm not sure the FBI doesn't think I may have been the killer." The company of Black Widowers emitted a collective sigh. "Murder!" whispered Gonzalo. "We hardly ever get anything like that." Halsted said, "Let the man speak! Would you start from the beginning, Mr. St. John?" "There isn't much to tell," said St. John. "Last Friday, I was leaving my apartment at the Winston Arms on a routine errand. I had a day off and my wife thought I ought to do some shopping lest unaccustomed leisure rot my moral fiber, I suppose. I was engaged in locking the door-three locks in New York, of course-when, behind me, I beard The door of the elevator open. That meant someone was getting off or going in, so I shouted, "Hold -it, please," because one can easily wait five r tn infi-lutes for an elevator, if you've just missed a cliance. When I got there, though, all three elevator doors were closed. No one was in sight and in the ten seconds it had taken me to get to the elevator bank, anyone getting off would not have had time to vanish into an apartment door. That meant someone had gotten on." Rubin, who lived in a large apartment complex of his own, said, "Elevators aren't that faultless. It might have stopped at the floor by way of a misfunctioning signal and no one either got on or off." "As it happened," said St. John, "there turned out to be every reason to suppose someone had got on-a murderer, in fact, which, selfishly speaking, makes it just as well I had my back to the hall and was delayed by the three locks. If I had seen him and tried to get on the elevator with him, he might have tried to kill me, too." "What time was it?" asked Halsted. "About four in the afternoon." "I should think he took a big chance on being seen." St. John said, "Not necessarily. The peephole in the door of the apartment he came out of commands a view of the length of the hall. I imagine be made sure the hall was empty before going out to signal for the elevator. Anyway, I knew nothing of this at the time. I just knew someone hadn't held the door for me and I chafed quite a bit and walked up and down to pass the time. The wait for an elevator always seems twice as long if you just stand there and stare at a closed door. "At the end of the corridor, the opposite end from my apartment, there was an apartment door, from within which I heard a distinct moaning, and the door was just a trifle ajar. I called out, "Hi! Something wrong?" and shoved the door open a bit. The moaning was a bit louder and I thought I did hear the word "help." I went in, very reluctantly. Oh it's easy to sneer, but getting involved can be troublesome and, in fact, it was. "There was a dying man in the living room. He had been knifed and it was sticking out of his chest and you'll excuse me if I don't go into details, but I don't revel in such things. He was a man I had seen in the elevator occasionally, and we had waited for it together once or twice, but we had never spoken. It's traditional in New York, you know, to ignore your neighbors. "I was rather paralyzed. I'm not a doctor; I didn't know what to do. I might have run out yelling for help, or I might have run back to my apartment and used the intercom to alert the doorman. But I just stood there frozen and the man looked at me and said, quite distinctly, "the blind man," and then his neck tendons just went loose. I had never seen anyone die, but there was no doubt in my mind that I had just seen it happen.St. John paused at this point and said, "Waiter, might I have a refill on the brandy?" Henry, as always, seemed to have anticipated the request. The Black Widowers remained silent and -finally St. John cleared his throat and said, "I didn't know what to do then, either. How could I be sure he was dead? Was I supposed to apply first aid to save his life-when I knew nothing about first aid? Besides, I also thought that if he were dead, I wasn't supposed to move the body or touch anything. I was afraid of touching even the phone, but then I picked it up with a handkerchief at one end and dialed the police. "I went back to my apartment after that to tell my wife what had happened, and she took some quieting, you can imagine. Then I returned to the dead man to wait for the police." Gonzalo said, "How did I come to miss the news story? A murder in a posh apartment house usually makes the lower left-hand corner of the Times front page and scare headlines in the News and the Post." St. John shrugged. "I suspect there was an attempt to keep it as quiet, as possible. It made its way through the apartment house, though, because my wife called the office. The tenants have already had a meeting on the problem of security, but that doesn't really have anything to do with the story. "The fact is that when the policemen came, there were intelligence agents along with them and it was one of those who interviewed me. When I gave him my name, he looked at me sharply and asked if I had my driver's license with me. It seemed to me he thought I was giving him a false name. I produced it, along with a few credit cards, and there it was -Ananias, in clear print." ""How well did you know this manY he asked. "I said, "Not at all. I'd see him ,in the corridor or in the elevator, but I never spoke to him." ""You're neighbors. You live on the same floor." "I tried to explain about New York. He listened, showed no expression. He said, "Did you straighten up in here?" ""Not in any way," I said. "I touched nothing but the phone, except that I pushed the door open, stepped across the floor, and may have put my hand somewhere on the furniture." I wasn't trying to be funny. I just wanted to be perfectly honest. "He said, "Did you do that?" "He pointed to the window shade, which hung crookedly as though it were broken, then to some books on a coffee table that seened disarryed. I hadn't even noticed that, and I said so. He asked if I had touched one of the ashtrays and I said I hadn't. "He asked me to tell him what had happened and I did-exactly as I told it to you earlier. "He said, "It's your opinion, then, that a blind man came in here and did this?" "I said I had no such opinion. The dying person had said, "the blind man," and that's all. He hadn't said a blind man had knifed him or had come in or anything. Three words and he had died. "The agent said, "What do you think he meant?" ""I don't know," I said. By now I was pretty wild because it seemed to me I could see how things were going. There was no real sign of a struggle. There seemed to have been no search and maybe nothing was stolen. It looked like a sudden quarrel between friends. There I was on the same floor. I could be the friend. I could have killed him and then tried to cover by calling the police with a story about the murderer going down the elevator and the dead man muttering a senseless phrase. "They finally let me go, but not until after I had begun to be sure that I was going to be arrested. I'm convinced, though, that if my name had not been Ananias, that agent wouldn't have been half convinced I was lying and he might not have given me such a hard time. Anyway, they warned me not to talk about it, and that's it. The whole story." Trumbull broke in. "I'm sure your name had nothing to do with it, Mr. St. John. The fact is that there's more to this than you can guess, and that's why it had to be kept reasonably quiet. What I am going to do-if I can get over my astonishment at the coincidence of having you here one week after the event-is to tell you as little as possible, and as much as is necessary. "The fact is that the dead man, whom we'll call Jones, was an undercover agent. Who and what he was investigating is of no concern to us here, but things were so delicate that he remained completely out of touch with us except on rare occasions and even then only by very tenuous devices concerning which I know no details. As I said, I was not directly concerned. He lived at Winston Arms for two years, had a complicated and thoroughly established cover, and went quietly about his very dangerous businessRubin muttered, "That kind of storybook spy activity never rings true to me. Who would want to live such a life?" "Very few," said Trumbull, "but it has to be done, it's very well paid, and the fringe benefits in the way of early retirement, medical insurance, and pension plans are attractive. But let me go on. . . ." "Somehow, we now see in hindsight, his cover was blown. Somehow, be was murdered. It might have been a nonassociated murder, having nothing to do with his job, but we don't believe in pure coincidence in such matters." Avalon said, "To be dramatic is not always to be correct. Why couldn't it have been someone who came in to burglarize the apartment, found Jones there, knifed him, and then fled in panic without taking anything?" Trumbull looked scornful. "There was no sign of a forcible entry, and Jones would not be likely to let himself be knifed by a two-bit sneak-tbief at four in the afternoon. No; it had to be a carefully planned entry designed to catch Jones off-guard, and it could only have been carried through by a well-organized cabal." Halsted said, "Why the apartment? Why not arrange an automobile ac- cident? Why not have him mugged in Central Park?" Trumbull said, "It could be Ine that way. It has, on occasion. But this was a special case, and it was a matter of psychological warfare, in a way. At least, so we believe. Look at it this way: People living this dangerous life have to be aware of danger at every moment anywhere in the street or in public buildings or in empty places. One's own home, though, is a place of refuge. If there weren't somewhere you could feel safe, the life would become unbearable. To be tracked down, then, and killed in your own apartment, not only gets rid of an important agent but may well demoralize the entire agency. "The question is not Why it was done there, but how. Jones had a gun and it wasn't used. He was a thoroughgoing expert in the various techniques of self-defense, yet there was no sign of a struggle. Combine that with the fact that the killer had gotten into the apartment with every sign of having been invited in. "To whom could Jones have said, "Come in."? Jones could not possibly have allowed anyone to enter his apartment under any but the most unambiguous conditions. I doubt that I could have gotten into his apartment even if I had flashed my identification. He didn't know me personally and be would have taken into account the fact that my card might have been forged." St. John said eagerly, "In that case, maybe the agent who questioned me had the right idea. A blind man could do it." "Why should he let in a blind man, MY" asked Avalon. "Why not? A blind man isn't dangerous. I know there are stories about blind men being able to get around in the dark When sighted men can't. But this was midafternoon on a sunny day. There was no advantage to being blind." Avalon said, "But if a blind man isn't dangerous, how could he kill Jones?" St. John said, "It all works out. Jones would be completely unsuspicious just because the man was blind. The blind man would hold out his left hand and Jones would automatically take it. The blind man could have an athlete's grip like Pew in Treasure Island, pull Jones off-balance, and before Jones could collect his wits he would be a dead man with a knife between his ribs. Or, actually, almost a dead man." Avalon said, "Why would a blind man want to get into Jones" apartment) What would be his excuse", A blind man comes to the door, let us say. What does he say to get in?" St. John said, "He could be collecting for some charity. It's hard to refuse a blind man. If Jones opened th6 door that might be all the murderer needed. The grip of a hand, a sudden twist, a push inward, the knife, and out again. The whole thing might take no more than fifteen seconds." "And how," asked Avalon, "would he know the corridor was clear, either when he was trying to get in or trying to get out)" "A blind man," said St. John, 41 would have learned to rely on his hearing. People in corridors talk, hum, drum their fingers, shift from foot to foot." Rubin, with the thick lenses of his glasses magnifying his eyes into orbs of fury, contained himself no longer. "What garbage!" he said. "Jones wouldn't open the door for a blind man under any circumstances. Tom, if he wouldn't let you in because he would suspect a forged identity card, wby should he let in a blind man who could be a fraud? What do you need to fake blindness? Dark glasses and a white cane and you've got it. Jones wouldn't fall for that." "Besides," said Trumbull, "there's no blind man who lives in the apart- ment house, and no blind man was seen entering or leaving at the time of the murder. The building is high-security, with doormen on duty, of course, and no one is allowed in without being announced." "Well, if it comes to that," said Rubin, switching sides at once, "I live in an apartment house with a doorman, and that means nothing. A doorman has a thousand jobs. He's on the phone, he rushes out to open a taxi door or help an older resident with her bundles, and a man can slip in. Or else, even with the doorman watching, he just waits for a resident to walk in and then walks in with him, saying cheerfully, "So how did things go?" The resident, puzzled but polite, says, "Fine, fine," and the doorman assumes the invader is a guest of the resident and lets him pass without a word." Trumbull said sarcastically, "A blind man could pull those clever tricks, could he?" Rubin shrugged. "I said there was no blind man." St. John said, his voice squeaking into a higher register, "He mentioned a blind man." "Sure," said Gonzalo. "Someone who seemed blind. The murderer sneaks into the apartment house in the way Manny describes. Once inside and up to the right apartment, he puts on the dark glasses and takes out the cane. "Where does he get the cane?" demanded Rubin. "They're something like three or four feet long. Does it telescope? If not, how does he hide it while sneaking in?" Gonzalo said, "All right. Dark glasses, then. He pretends he's blind to get in and then . . ." Rubin said flatly, "Jones wouldn't open the door to a stranger on the strength of dark glasses, or a cane, either. Right, Tom?" "Ilrght," said Trumbull. "The whole question hinges on who the hell he could possibly say "Come in" to. It would have to be someone he knew. A neighbor, perhaps, with whom he'd gotten friendly." "He wasn't friendly with me," said St. John. "Does that mean, though, that every person living in Winston Arms is going to have to be investigated on suspicion of friendship with intent to kill?" Trumbull said, "This is not a funny situation, Mr. St. John. But to answer your question, if I were running the investigation, why, yes, that is what I would do." Gonzalo said, "But Jones mentioned,a blind man. How do you get away from that? Do we suppose St. John is lying?" "My name may be Ananias," began St. John heatedly, "but. Avalon cut him off- with a wave of his hand. He said, "No dying man is going to enunciate clearly or know for sure what he is saying. It could have been anything and it could have meant anything." St. John said, -just the same, Geoff, I beard it. The man may not have known what he was saying, but what he said was "the blind man."" Drake lit a cigarette, squinted through the smoke, and said, "Could you swear he didn't say, "the blond man"?" St. John looked confounded. ""Blond man"?" "Sure. It's not so different from "blind man."" "N-no," said John. "It was "blind man."" Drake said, "Could you swear to it in a court of law, under oath?" St. John hesitated. "I'm not sure." Rubin, who for a few moments had seemed withdrawn, said suddenly, "No, it was "blind man."" "Stay on one side, damn it," said Trumbull. "Listen," said Rubin earnestly, "the problem remains that he said "Come in" to someone. It couldn't be a neighbor. His apartment had to remain sanctuary. No mere friend could get in. It would have to be something more than that. Think about it. Who are the only people he would let in?" Gonzalo said, with a wide grin, "Women!" Rubin looked disgusted, "Oh God!" Gonzalo, galvanized suddenly into seriousness, said, "Why not? You're not trying to tell me Jones is a eunuch. So they got to his girl-friend. He would let her in, you bet. They'd embrace and while they're kissing, she slips a nice little blade between his ribs. Do you think it never happened?" St. John said, outraged, "I've never seen a strange woman on our floor." "With a little bit of luck, you wouldn't have seen the murder, either," said Gonzalo. "A blond girl, I'll bet. Jim Drake's right. The word was "blond."" St. John said, ""Blind man.'Even if you switch "blind" to "blond," which I don't admit, I stick by "man."" "Besides," said Avalon, whose face had taken on an air of strong disapproval the moment the sex motif had been introduced, "surely he'd know the girl's name. He wouldn't call her "the blonde." He would say "Fifi" or "Tootsie" or even "my girl.")) "If I can get a word in edgewise," roared Trumbull, "I'll be glad to explain that the rules on sexual involvement during the kind of work Jones was doing are strict. The agents have to follow certain well-understood guides. I don't have to give the details, but you can take it as certain there Was no light-o-love in Jones" apartment." Gonzalo said, stubbornly, "People don't always follow rules." Rubin said, "Back to where I was, then, before Mario introduced nonsense. Who are the only ones Jones would admit into the apartment? Who could get close enough to draw a knife? A fellow agent." "What!" said Trumbull angrily. "Why not?" demanded Rubin. "If there have been murdering mistresses before this, so have there been traitorous double agents. Besides, Jones said as much." "When? How?" Trumbull's anger had not abated. "Think about it. Assuming a traitorous agent, what would have been Jones" last emotion? Maybe not sorrow over dying. He must have made peace with that possibility years before. What must have gotten right into his gizzard was the horror over the betrayal. His trusted coworker, on the inside, burrowing unsuspected. How was it no one had seen it? And as he lay dying, he is conscious of someone bending over him and his last words were a bitter and wondering, "They're blind, man." Rubin sat back, triumphant. There was silence, and St. John said, "That wasn't the intonation of the words. It didn't have the music of that phrase. It was flat-informational, nothing else." Trumbull said, "I don't believe a traitor was involved." "Well, of course not," said Rubin, "that's the downfall of half the organizations of your type. By the time you can believe that any of the good old boys are had old fakes, you've been diddled." He went on. "Besides, it all makes sense. The guy has been in the apartment before, but he has gotten in without being seen by the doorman in any of a dozen ways. He doesn't want to be seen on the floor either. He knows the elevator can take several minutes to arrive; he's been there before. So he checks the corridor through the peephole, then leaves the door slightly ajar behind him. "If he hears a noise at any door that signifies someone coming to join him in the corridor, be retreats into the apartment till the coast is clear. If the elevator is about to stop at the floor, he has time to move back, close the apartment door, and still get to the elevator." Gonzalo said, "What if someone gets off the elevator while he's getting on?" "Two people passing each other for two seconds isn't the same as having someone wait with you in the corridor and go down the elevator with you. The trouble was that, by a had coincidence for the murderer, St. John stepped out of his apartment door just as the elevator came. "If he now dashed back to the apartment he might still be safe, but the elevator door was opening and the temptation was to get in and down while he had the chance. And he did that-a split-second decision that was wrong, for he left the apartment door ajar behind him." Gonzalo said, "What a lot of horsefeathers. If he didn't want to be associated with the floor, why didn't he just walk down several flights and calmly wait for the elevator on another floor?" Rubin said sardonically, "The trouble with you, Mario, is that you live in a brownstone. Anyone involved in a high-rise'neVer uses the stairs. You don't even let yourself know the stairs are there." "All very pretty," said Trumbull, "but how do you prove it?" "I don't have to," said Rubin. "I've presented you with a case that answers every objection you can raise, and it's up to you to prove it. Don't have the organization waste its time checking the apartment-house residents. Let it check its own men. It'll find the culprit-and I hope it's not you, Tom." Trumbull snarled. "If you think our own men aren't under continuous surveillance, Manny, you're crazier than you're always making yourself sound. We spend too much time trying to corrupt the opposition to suppose that they're not trying to corrupt us. And from the fact that we succeed now and then, we deduce that they succeed now and then. I won't say that it's absolutely certain one of our men didn't do this, but it's a pretty damn close approach to certain. I wouldn't believe in betrayal unless I couldn't think of a single alternative explanation." "Well, can you?" demanded Rubin. "Can you offer any explanation that will account for Jones saying "Come in" to someone and for then saying something that sound like "the blind man"?" Trumbull said with sudden energy, "Where's Henry?" He shouted, "Henry!" "Yes, sir," came Henry's quiet voice. "Is there anything you wish?" :"Certainly. Have you been listening to the conversation?" "Yes, sir." "Then tell Manny he's wrong." The trace of a smile appeared on Henry's unlined but sixtyish face. "Mr. Rubin is, as always, extremely ingenious and persuasive. I suspect everything he says is correct except for the identity of the murderer." "That so, Henry?" said Rubin. "Are you telling us you know who did it?" "I believe the murderer's name is Peter Wanko. That at least is the name he goes under. It would have been unwise for him to disappear immediately after the murder, but I understand he has given notice and . . ." "Henry!" roared Trumbull. "What the hell are you talking about?" Henry said, "I'm sorry, sir, but in your anxiety to impress the company with Mr. Jones" intense privacy, you forgot that any apartment resident, however private and however suspicious, will welcome into his apartment, at almost any time, a number of different people." "And who are those?" "Why, sir, the service staff. Repairs must be made now and then, and it isn't likely that Mr. Jones will not demand that such repairs be made when they are necessary. If the opposition organization wished to kill Mr. Jones and if they could place one of their own agents on the apartmenthouse service staff, the rest is a matter of time." Gonzalo nodded vigorously. "Of course. As soon as Jones needed something repaired . . ." "Perhaps not that soon, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry. "The ordinary procedure would be for Jones to call the office and for the office to send a repairman. It would be known where the repairman was and when he was there. The repairman would be under instant and fatal suspicion. Even a dedicated assassin would prefer to escape afterward if he could." "Well, then?" asked Trumbull. "I imagine, sir, that this Peter Wanko cultivated a friendship with Mr. Jones-took to greeting him respectfully, asking if all was well. Wanko joined the staff over a year ago and there was ample time for that. As for Mr. Jones, he would be polite, I'm sure, even though he might never have learned the serviceman's name. I imagine when Wanko was in the apartment to do some assigned task, he did it efficiently, was well tipped, and was suitably grateful. It must have seemed natural for him to urge Mr. Jones to call him directly for small jobs and bypass the office. "I'll take care of you, sir," he may have said, "and it will get done sooner." "And eventually, Mr. Jones did call Wanko directly. He might have passed him in the lobby and told him he needed something done and would be home at 4 P.m- that day. Wanko went upstairs with no record as to where he would be then, taking care not to be seen. Since he appeared on a legitimate summons, Mr. Jones would not hesitate to let him in. Whereupon Wanko killed him." The silence was dense until, finally, St. John said, "But this seems more out-of-the-way than Mr. Rubin's theory. I know Peter Wanko and he's a completely harmless person. Where's the evidence?" Henry said, "There are the last words of Mr. Jones, which you yourself reported. You'll remember that in the argument over limericks before dinner, Mr. Halsted spoke of the flexibility of the English language and of how individual words can serve as different parts of speech. It ocurred to me at once, therefore, when you told us of Mr. Jones saying "the blind man" that while the normal use of "blind" is as an adjective meaning "unsighted," it could also be used as a noun. You mentioned a window shade banging crookedly as though broken, and a blind man could be a man who fixed blinds. "Toward the end of this evenings discussion, then, I called the Winston Arms, got the evening doorman, said I had an important job that needed good workmanship, and that the man who took care of the win- dow blinds at the Winston Arms had been recommended. "Oh, you mean Peter Wanko," said the doorman. "He's not supposed "to do any work outside the building, but he's given notice, so maybe you can use him." Then he gave me Wanko's phone number and address." "Good God!" said Trumbull. He leaped for the stairs and was back in just under five minutes. He was grinning broadly. "It's all right, Henry, they got the guy. They arrested him three hours ago-while we were all having our first drinks." "What gave him away?" asked St. John. "Apparently," said Trumbull, with satisfaction, "they followed the same line of reasoning Henry used-except that it took them seven days to do it." "They didn't have the help of the Black Widowers, sir," said Henry. "None So Blin'-Afterword As is well known to many people, I don't fly and I don't like to travel by any conveyance. I'm a homebody. When I take vacations, then, and seize the opportunity to write a Black Widowers tale, I am usually somewhere in upstate New York or in a similar not-very-distant locality. Every once in a while, though, I do take a cruise; I don't mind going somewhere by ship. In fact, I love being on a ship as long as I can keep my mindoff the fact that there is but an inch of steel between myself and a miles-deep stretch of water. So it happens that "None So Blind" was written in Bermuda. In fact, when the air conditioning on the Statendam (our ship on the occasion) was briefly shut down for repairs, Janet and I wandered off to a plush hotel, found an air-conditioned conference room that was not in use, and stayed there a couple of hours in perfect comfort while I finished the story. "None So Blind" appeared in the June 1979 issue of EQMM. just to show you that I don't always turn down Fred's title changes, my own original title was "Come in." As soon as I discovered what Fred was calling it I was overwhelmed at my dullwittedness in not thinking of it myself. The Backward Look. If Emmanuel Rubin knew how not to be didactic, he never exercised that knowledge. "When you write a short story," he said, "you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to a reader. To a writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there-or anywhere." Thomas Trumbull's young guest at this particular monthly banquet of the Black Widowers seemed all eyes as he watched Rubin's straggly gray beard quiver and his thick-lensed glasses glint.; and all ears as he listened to Rubin's firm, decibelic voice. The guest himself was clearly in his early twenties, quite thin, with a somewhat bulging forehead and a rather diminutive chin. His clothing almost glistened in its freshness, as though he had broken out a brand-new costume for the great occasion. His name was Milton Peterborough. He said, a small quiver in his voice, "Does that mean you have to write an outline, Mr. Rubin?" "No", said Rubin emphatically. "You can if you want to, but I never do. You don't have to know the exact road you're going to take. You have to know your destination, that's all. Once that's the case, any road will take you there. As you write you are continually looking backward from that known destination, and it's that backward look that guides you." Mario Gonzalo, who was quickly and carefully drawing a caricature of the guest, making his eyes incredibly large and filling them with a childlike innocence, said, "Come on, Manny, that sort of tight plotting might fit your cockamamy mysteries, but a real writer deals with character, doesn't he. He creates people and they behave in accordance with their characters and that guides the story, probably to the surprise of the author." Rubin turned slowly and said, "If you're talking about long, inverte- brate novels, Mario-assuming you're talking about anything at Ah-It's possible for an experienced or gifted writer to meander along and produce something passable. But you can always tell the 1-don't-know-where-I'mgoing-but-I'm-going book. Even if you forgive it its amorphous character for the sake of its virtues, you have to forgive it, and that's a strain and a drawback. A tightly plotted story with everything fitting together neatly is, on the other hand, the noblest work of literature. It may be had, but it never need ask forgiveness. The backward look. . ." At the other end of the room, Geoffrey Avalon glanced with resignation at Rubin and said, "I think it was a mistake, Tom, to tell Manny at the start that the young man was an aspiring writer. It brings out the worst in him; or, at any rate, the longest-winded." He stirred the ice in his drink with his forefinger and brought his dark eyebrows together forbiddingly. "Actually," said Thomas Trumbull, his lined face uncharacteristically Placid, "the kid wanted to meet Manny. He admires his stories, God knows why. Well, he's the son of a friend of mine and a nice youngster and I thought I'd expose him to the seamy side of life by bringing him here." Avalon said, "It won't hurt us to be exposed to youth now and then, either. But I hate being exposed to Rubin's theories of literature. Henry." The quiet and smoothly efficient waiter, who served at all the Black Widowers banquets, was at his side at once without seeming to have moved in order to have achieved that, "Yes, sir?" "Henry," said Avalon, "what are these strange manifestations?" Henry said, "Tonight we will have a buffet dinner. The chef has prepared a variety of Indian and Pakistani dishes." "With curry?" Rather heavy on the curry, sir. It was Mr. Trumbull's special request." Trumbull flared under Avalon's accusing eye. "I wanted curry and I'm the host." "And Manny won't eat it and will be unbearable." Trumbull shrugged. Rubin was not entirely unbearable but he was loud, and only Roger Halsted seemed unaffected by the Rubinian tirade against all things Indian. Halsted said, "A buffet is a good idea," patted his lips with his napkin, and went back for a third helping of everything, with a beatific smile on his face. Trumbull said , "Roger, if you don't stop eating, we'll start the grilling session over your chewing." "Go ahead," said Halsted cheerfully. "I don't mind." "You will later tonight," said Rubin, "when your stomach wall burns through." Trumbull said, "And you're going to start the grilling." "If you don't mind my talking with my mouth full," said Halsted. "Get started, then." Halsted said thickly, "How do you justify your existence, Milton?" "I can't," said Peterborough, a little breathlessly. "Maybe after I get my degrees." "What's your school and major?" "Columbia and chemistry." "Chemistry?" said Halsted. "I would have thought it was English. Didn't I gather during the cocktail hour that you were an aspiring writer?" "Anyone is allowed to be an aspiring writer," said Peterborough. "Aspiring," said Rubin darkly. "And what do you want to write?" said Halsted. Peterborough hesitated and said, with a trace of defensiveness in his voice, "Well, I've always been a science-fiction fan. Since I was nine, anyway." "Oh God," muttered Rubin, his eyes rolling upward in mute appeal. Gonzalo said instantly, "Science fiction? That's what your friend Isaac Asimov writes, isn't it, Manny?" "He's not my friend," said Rubin. "He clings to me out of helpless admiration." Trumbull raised his voice. "Will you two stop having a private conversation? Go on, Roger." "Have you written any science fiction?" "I've tried, but I haven't submitted anything. I'm going to, though. I have to." "Why do you have to?" "I made a bet." "What kind?" "Well," said Peterborough helplessly, "it's rather complicated-and embarrassing." "We don't mind the complications," said Halsted, "and well try not to be embarrassed." "Well," said Peterborough, and there appeared on his face something that had not been seen at the Black Widowers banquets for years, a richly tinted blush, "there's this girl. I'm sort of cra-I like her, but I don't think she likes me, but I like her anyway. The trouble is she goes for a basketball player; a real idiot-six-foot-five to his eyebrows and nothing above." Peterborough shook his head and continued. "I don't have much going for me. I can't impress her with chemistry; but she's an English lit major, so I showed her some of my stories. She asked me if I had ever sold anything, and I said, no. But then I said I intended to write something and sell it, and she laughed. "That bothered me and I thought of something. It seems that Lester del Rey- Rubin interposed. "Who?" "Lester del Rey. He's a science-fiction writer." "Another one of those?" said Rubin. "Never heard of him." "Well, he's no Isaac Asimov," admitted Peterborough, "but he's all right. Anyway, the way be got start "ed was once when he read a sciencefiction story and thought it was terrible. He said to his girl, "Hell, I can write something better than that," and she said, "I dare you," and he did and sold it. "So when this girl laughed, I said, "I'll bet I write one and sell it," and she said, "I'll bet you don't," and I said, "I'll bet you a date against five dollars. If I sell the story, you go with me to a dinner and dance on a night of my choosing.'And she agreed. "So I've just got to write the story now, because she said she'd go out with me if I wrote the story and she liked it, even if it didn't sell-which may mean she likes me more than I think," Jarres Drake, who had been listening thoughtfully, brushed his gray stub of a mustache with one finger and said, "Or that she's quite confident that you won't even write the story." "I ivill," said Peterborough. "Then go abead,"said Rubin. "There's a catch. I can write the story, I know. I've got some good stuff. I even know the ending so I can give it that backward look you mentioned, Mr. Rubin. What I don't have is a motive." " "A motive?" said Rubin. "I thought you were writing a science-fiction story." "Yes, Mr. Rubin, but it's a science-fiction mystery, and I need a motive. I have the modus operandi of the killing, and the way of the killing, but I don't know the why of the killing. I thought, though, if I came here, I could discuss it with you." "You could what?" said Rubin, lifting his head. "Especially you, Mr. Rubin. I've read your mystery stories-I don't read science fiction exclusively-and I think they're great. You're always so good with motivation. I thought you could help me out." Rubin was breathing hard and gave every appearance of believing that that breath was flame. He had made his dinner very much out of rice and salad, plus, out of sheer famishing, two helpings of coupe aux marrons, and he was in no mood for even such sweet reason as he was, on occasion, observed to possess. He said, "Let me get it straight, Joe College. You've made a bet. You're going to get a chance at a girl, or such chance as you can make of it, by writing a story she likes and maybe selling it-and now you want to win the bet and cheat the girl by having me write the story for you. Is that the way it is?" "No, sir," said Peterborou2b ur2ently, "that's not the way it is. I'll write it. I just want help with the motie"." "And except for that, you'll write it," said Rubin. "How about having me dictate the story to you? You can still write it. You can copy it out in your own handwriting." "That's not the same at all." "Yes it is, young man, and you can stop right there. Either write the story yourself or tell the girl you can't." Milton Peterborough looked about helplessly. Trumbull said, "Damn it, Manny, why so much on the high horse? I've heard you say a million times that ideas are a dime a dozen; that it's the writing that's hard. Give him an idea, then; he'll still have the hard part to do." "I won't," said Rubin, pushing himself away from the table and crossing his arms. "If the rest of you have an atrophied sense of ethics, go ahea and give him ideas-if you know how." Trumbull said, "All right, I can settle this by fiat since I'm the host, but I'll throw it open to a vote. How many favor helping the kid if we can?" He held up his hand, and so did Gonzalo and Drake. Avalon cleared his throat a little uncertainly. "I'm afraid I've got to side with Manny. It would be cheating the girl," he said. Halsted said, "As a teacher, I've got to disapprove of outside help on a test.pf "Tic vote," said Rubin. "What are you going to do, Tom?" Trumbull said, "We haven't all voted. Henry is a Black Widower, and his vote will break the tie. Henry?" Henry paused a brief moment. "My honorary position, sir, scarcely gives me the right to . . ." "You are not an honorary Black Widower, Henry. You are a Black Widower. Decide!" Rubin said, "Remember, Henry, you are the epitome of honest men. Where do you stand on cheating a girV" "No electioneering," said Trumbull. "Go ahead, Henry." Henry's face wrinkled into a rare frown. "I have never laid claim to extraordinary honesty, but if I did, I might treat this as a special case. Juliet told Romeo, "At lovers" perjuries/They say Jove laughs." Might we stretch a point?" "I'm surprised, Henry," said Rubin. Henry said, "I am perhaps swayed by the fact that I do not view this matter as lying between the young man and the young woman. Rather it lies between a bookish young man and an athlete. We are all bookish men and, in our time, we may each have lost a young woman to an athlete. I am embarrassed to say that I have. Surely, then . . ." Rubin said, "Well, I haven't. I've never lost a girl to"-He paused a moment in sudden thought, then said in an altered tone-"well, it's irrelevant. All right, if I'm outvoted, I'm outvoted. So what's the story, Peterborough?" Peterborough's face was flushed and there was a trickle of perspiration at one temple. He said, "I won't tell you any of the story I've been planning except the barest essentials of the point I need help on. I don't want anything more than the minimum. I wouldn't want that even, if this didn't mean-so much. . ."He ran down. Rubin said, with surprising quietness, "Go on. Don't worry about it. We understand." Peterborough said, "Thanks. I appreciate it. I've got two men, call them Murderer and Victim. I've worked out the way Murderer does it and how he gets caught and I won't say a word about that. Murderer and Victim are both eclipse buffs." Avalon interrupted, "Are you an eclipse buff, Mr. Peterborough?" "Yes, sir, I am. I have friends who go to every eclipse anywhere in the world even if it's only a 5 per center, but I can't afford that, and don't have the time. I go to those I can reach. I've got a telescope and photographic equipment." Avalon said, "Good! It helps, when one is going to talk about eclipses, if one knows something about them. Trying to Avrite on a subject concerning which one is ignorant is a sure prescription for failure.Gonzalo said, "Is the woman you're interested in an eclipse buff?" :, No," said Peterborough. "I wish she were." "You know," said Gonzalo, "if she doesn't share your interests, you might try finding someone who does." Peterborough shook his head. "I don't think it works that way, Mr. Gonzalo." "It sure doesn't," said Trumbull. "Shut up, Mario, and let him talk." Peterborough said, "Murderer and Victim are both taking eclipse photographs and, against all expectations, Victim, who is the underdog, the born loser, takes the better photograph, and Murderer, unable to endure this, decides to kill Victim. From there on, I have no trouble." Rubin said, "Then you have your motive. What's your problem?" "The trouble is: What kind of a better photograph? An eclipse photograph is an eclipse photograph. Some are better than others, but, assuming that both photographers are competent, not that much better. Not a murder's-worth better." Rubin shrugged, "You can build the story in such a way as to make even a small difference murderwoxthy-but I admit that would take an experienced hand. Drop the eclipse. Try something else." "I can't. The whole business of the murder, the weapon and the detcction, depends on photography and eclipses. So it has to stay." Drake said softly, "What makes it a science-fiction story, young man?" "I haven't explained that, have I? I'm trying to tell as little as possible about the story. For what I'm doing, I need advanced computers and science-fictional photographic gimmickry. One of the two characters-I'm not sure which-takes a photograph of the eclipse from a stratospheric jet.) "In that case, why not go whole hog?" said Gonzalo. "If it's going to go science-fictional . . . Look, let me tell you how I see it. Murderer and Victim are eclipse buffs and Murderer is the better man-so make it Murderer who's on that plane, and taking the best eclipse photograph ever seen, using some new photographic gimmick he's invented. Then have Victim, against all expectation, beat him out. Victim goes to the Moon and takes the eclipse photograph there. Murderer is furious at being beaten, goes blind with rage, and there you are." Rubin said energetically, "An eclipse photo on the Moon?" "Why not?" said Gonzalo, offended. "We can get to the Moon right now, so we can certainly do it in a science-fiction story. And there's a vacuum on the Moon, right? There's no air. You don't have to be a scientist to know that. And you get a better picture without air. You get a sharper picture. Isn't that right, Milton?" Peterborough said, "Yes, but . Rubin overrode him. "Mario," he said, "listen carefully. An eclipse of the Sun takes place when the Moon gets exactly between the Sun and the Earth. Observers on Earth then see the Sun blacked out because the opaque body of the Moon is squarely in front of it. We on Earth are in the Moon's shadow. Now, if you're on the Moon," his voice grew harsh, "how the hell can you be in the Moon's shadow?" Avalon said, "Not so fast, Manny, an eclipse is an eclipse is an eclipse. There is such a thing as a lunar eclipse, when the Earth gets between the Sun and the Moon. The Moon is in the Earth's shadow in that case, and the whole Moon gets dark. "The way I see it, then, is that Murderer takes a beautiful photograph of an eclipse on Earth, with the Moon moving in front of the Sun. He has advanced equipment that he has invented himself so that no one can possibly take a better photo of the Moon in front of the Sun. Victim, how- ever, goes him one better by taking an even more impressive photograph of an eclipse on the Moon, where, as Mario says, there is no air, with the T7 L : : r r L C I) art mov ng n ront o t e un. Peterborough mumbled, "Not the same thing." "It sure isn't," said Halsted, who had pushed his coffee cup to one side and was doing some quick figuring. "As seen from Earth, the Moon and the Sun have the same apparent width, almost exactly. Pure coincidence, of course; no astronomical necessity at all. In fact, aeons past, the Moon was closer and appeared larger, and aeons future, the Moon will be-well, never mind. The fact is that the Earth is larger than the Moon, and from the Moon you see the Earth at the same distance that you see the Moon when you're standing on Earth. The Earth in the Moon's sky is therefore as much larger than the Moon in appearance as it is in actuality. Do you get that?" "No," said Gonzalo flatly. Halsted looked annoyed. "Well, then, don't get it. Take my word for it. The Earth in the Moon's sky is about 32A as wide in appearance as the Moon is in the Earth's sky. That means the Earth in the Moon's sky is also that much bigger than the Sun, because the Sun looks just the same from the Moon as from the Earth." "So what's the difference?" said Gonzalo. "If the Earth is bigger, it gets in the way of the Sun that much better." "No," said Halsted. "The whole point about the eclipse is that the Moon just fits over the Sun. It hides the bright circle of the gleaming Sun and allows its corona-that is, its upper atmosphere-to shine all about the hidden Sun. The corona gleams out in every direction with the light of the full Moon and does so in beautifully delicate curves and streamers. "On the other hand, if you get a large body like the Earth in front of the Sun, it covers up the shining sphere and the corona as well. You don't see anything." Avalon said, "That's assuming the Earth goes squarely in front of the Sun. When you see the eclipse before or after midpoint, at least part of the corona will stick beyond the Earth's sphere." Peterborough said, "Part isn't the whole. It wouldn't be the same thing." There was a short silence and then Drake said, "I hope you don't mind if a fellow chemist tries his hand at this, young man. I'm trying to picture the Earth in the sky, getting in the way of the Sun. And if we do that, then there's this to consider: The Earth has an atmosphere and the Moon has not. "When the Moon moves in front of the Sun, as viewed from the Earth, the Moon's surface is sharp against the Sun. When the Earth moves in front of the Sun, as viewed from the Moon, the Earth's boundary is fuzzy and the Sun shines through Earth's atmosphere. Does that make a difference that you can use in the story?" "Well," said Peterborough, "I've thought of that, actually. Even when the Sun is completely behind the Earth, its light is refracted through the Earth's atmosphere on every side, and a red-orange light penetrates it and reaches the Moon. It's as though the Moon can see a sunset all around the Earth. And that's not just theory. When there's a total eclipse of the Moon, you can usually see the Moon as a dull brick-red circle of light. It gleams in Earth's sunset atmosphere. "As the eclipse, as viewed from the Moon, progresses, that side of the atmosphere that has just passed over the Sun is brighter, but grows gradually dimmer while the other side grows brighter. At eclipse midpoint, if you are viewing it from a part of the Moon that sees both Earth and Sun centered with respect to each other, the red-orange ring is evenly bright all the way around-assuming there isn't too muSin Se way of clouds in Earth's atmosphere at the time." Drake said, "Well, for God's sake, isn't that a sufficiently spectacular sight for Victim to photograph? The Earth would be a black hole in the sky, with a thin orange rim all around. It would be . . ." "No, sir," said Peterborough. "It isn't the same thing. It's too dull. It would be just a red-orange ring. Once the photograph is taken the first time, that would be it. It wouldn't be like the infinitely varying coronaTrumbull said, "Let me try! You want the corona visible all around, is that it, Milton?" "Yes, sir." "Stop me if I'm wrong, but in my reading, I've been given to understand that the sky is blue because light is scattered by the atmosphere. On the Moon, where there is no atmosphere, the sky is black. The stars, which on Earth are washed out by the scattered light of our blue sky, would not be washed out in the Moon's airless sky. They would be visible." "Yes, though I suspect the Sun's glare would make them hard to see." Trumbull said, "That's not important. All you would have to do is cut an opaque circle of metal and hold it up in the air at the proper distance from your photographic equipment in order to just block out the Sun's blazing disc. You can't do that on Earth, because even if you blocked out the Sun, the scattered light of the sky obscures the corona. On the Moon, there's no scattered light in the sky and the corona would shine out." Peterborough said, "In theory, that's possible. In fact, it can even be done on Earth on mountaintops, making use of a coronagraph. It still wouldn't be the real thing, though, for it's not just a matter of light scattered by the atmosphere. There's light scattered and reflected by the ground. "The lunar surface would be very brightly lit up and light would be coming in from every angle. The photographs you would take would not be good ones. You see, the reason the Moon does the good job it does here on Earth is that its shadow doesn't just fall on the telescope and camera. It falls on all the surrounding landscape. The shadow of the Moon can, under ideal conditions, be 160 miles wide and cover 21,000 square miles of the Earth's surface. Usually, it's considerably smaller than that, but generally it's enough to cover the immediate landscape-that is, if it happens to be a total eclipse." Trumbull said, "A bigger opaque object, then . "It would have to be quite big and quite far away," said Peterborough, is to achieve the effect. That would be too cumbersome." Halsted said, "Wait, I think I have it. You would need something big for the purpose, all right. Suppose there were spherical space settlements in the Moon's orbit. If Victim is in a spaceship and gets the space settlement between himself and the Sun, that would be exactly what he wants. He could arrange to be close enough to have the shadow-which, of course, is conical and narrows to a point if you get far enough away-to be just thick enough to enclose his entire ship. There would be no world surface to reflect light, and there you are." Peterborough said uneasily, "I hadn't thought of that. It's possible." Halsted grinned, and a flush of pleasure mounted to the hairline he had once had. "That's it, then." Peterborough said, "I don't want to be troublesome, but-but if we introduce the space motif, it's going to create some problems in the rest of the story. It's sort of important that everything stay on or near the Earth and yet that there be something so startling and unexpected that it would . . ." He paused and Rubin completed the sentence for him, "So startling and unexpected that it would drive Murderer to rage and vengeance." "Yes." "Well," said Rubin, "since I'm the master of mystery here, I think I can work it out for you without leaving Earth very far behind, just as soon as I get some points straightened out. You said that Murderer is taking the photographs from a plane. Why?" "Oh. That's because the Moon's shadow, when it falls on Earth, moves quickly-up to 1,440 miles an hour or about 0.4 mile a second. If you're standing in one place on Earth, the longest possible duration of a total eclipse is 7 minutes and then the shadow has moved beyond you. That's when the Earth is as deep into the Moon's shadow as it ever gets. When the Earth isn't as deep in and is nearer the final point of the shadow, the total eclipse may last only a couple of minutes, or even only a few seconds. In fact, more than half the time, the Moon's shadow during an eclipse doesn't reach the Earth's surface at all, and when the Moon i'squarely in front of the Sun, the Sun overlaps it on all sides. That's an "annular eclipse," and enough sunlight then slips past the Moon to wash out everything. An annular eclipse is no good at all." "But in the airplane?" prompted Rubin. "In an airplane, you can race along with the shadow and make the total eclipse last for an hour or more even if it would only endure a very short time on one position on Earth. You have a great deal more time to take photographs and make scientific observations. That's not science-fictional; it's done right now." "Can you take very good pictures from the plane " asked Rubin. "Does it allow a steady enough basis for photography?" "In my story," said Peterborough, "I've got a computer guiding the plane, allowing for wind movements, and keeping it perfectly steady. That's one of the places where the science fiction comes in." "Still, the Moon's shadow eventually leaves the Earth's surface altogether, doesn't it?" "Yes, the eclipse track covers a fixed portion of the Earth's surface, and it has an overall starting point and an overall ending point." "Exactly," said Rubin. "Now, Murderer is confident that his photographs taken from the stratosphere are going to include the best views of an eclipse ever seen, but he doesn't count on Victim's having a spaceship. Don't worry, there's no need to leave Earth very far. It's just that the spaceship follows the Moon's shadow after it leaves the Earth. Victim has a still longer chance to take photographs, a steadier base, and no atmospheric interference whatever. Murderer is hoist on his own petard, for he sees that poor simp, Victim, do exactly what he does but go him one better. He snaps and becomes a killer." Gonzalo waved both arms in the air in excitement. "Wait! Wait! We can do even better than that. Listen, what about that annular eclipse you mentioned a while ago? You said the shadow doesn't reach the Earth." "It doesn't reach the surface. That's right. "How high off the surface is it?" "That depends. Under extreme conditions, the end point of the shadow could miss the Earth by hundreds of miles." "Yes," said Gonzalo, "but could that end point miss Earth by, say, ten miles?" "Oh sure." "Would it still be annular, and no good?" "That's right," said Peterborough. "The Moon would come just barely short of covering the Sun. There would be just the thinnest sliver of Sun around the Moon, and that would give enough light to spoil things. If you took photographs, you'd miss the prominences, the flares, and the corona." "But what if you went ten miles up into the atmosphere?" said Gonzalo. "Then you'd see it total, wouldn't you?" "If you were in the right spot, yes." "There it is, then. One of those annular eclipses comes along, and Murderer thinks he'll pull a fast one. He gets into his stratoplane, goes ten miles up to get into the point of the shadow or just over it, and follows it along. He's going to make a total eclipse out of an annular one-and Victim, the usual loser, does the same thing, except he uses a spaceship and follows it out into space and gets better pictures. What can get old Murderer more torn up than having him play his ace-and getting trumped?" Avalon nodded his head. "Good, Mario. That is an improvement." Rubin looked as if he had unexpectedly bitten into a lemon. "I hate to say it, Mario. . ." "You don't have to say it, Manny," said Gonzalo. "I see it all over you. There you are, kid. Write the story." Peterborough said, with a sigh, "Yes, I suppose that is the best that can be done." "You don't sound overjoyed," said Gonzalo. "I was hoping for something more-uh-outrageous, but I don't think it exists. If none of you could think up anything. "May I interrupt, sir?" said Henry. "Huh? Oh-no, I don't want any more coffee, waiter," said Peterborough, absently. "No, sir. I mean concerning the eclipse." Trumbull said, "Henry's a member of the club, Milton. He broke the tie on the matter of the discussion. Remember?" Peterborough put a hand to his forehead. "Oh sure. Ask away-uh, Henry." "Actually, sir, would the photographs be that much better in a vacuum than in the thin air of the stratosphere? Would the difference in quality be enough to result in murder, unless Murderer was a close approach to a homicidal maniac?" "That's the thing," said Peterborough, nodding. "That's what bothers me. That's why I keep saying I need a motive. These differences in quality of photos aren't big enough." "Let us consider, then," said Henry, "Mr. Rubin's dictum that in telling a story one should look backward." "I know the ending," said Peterborough. "I have the backward look." "I mean it in another sense-that of deliberately looking in the other direction, the unaccustomed direction. In an eclipse, we always look at the Moon-just the Moon in a lunar eclipse, and the Moon covering the Sun in a solar eclipse-and that's what we take photographs of. What if we take a backward look at the Earth?" "What's to see on the Earth, Henry?" asked Gonzalo. "When the Moon moves into the Earth's shadow, it is always in the full Phase and it is usually completely darkened. What happens to the Earth when it moves into the Moon's shadow? It, certainly doesn't darken completely." "No," said Peterborough emphatically. "The Moon's shadow is thinner and shorter than the Earth's, and the Earth itself is larger than the Moon. Even when Earth passes as deeply as it can into the Moon's shadow, only a tiny bit of the Earth is darkened, a little dot of darkness that makes up, at most, about one six-hundredth of the Earth's circle of light. "Could you see it from the Moon?" asked Henry. "If you knew where to look and especially if you had a good pair of binoculars. You would see it start small, move west of cast across the face of the Earth, getting bigger, then smaller, and then vanish. Interesting, but certainly not spectacular." "Not from the Moon, sir," said Henry. "Now suppose we reverse the role of the characters. It is Victim who has the airplane and who can get a photograph from the stratosphere. It is Murderer who intends to trump his opponent's ace by taking a better photograph from space-a marginally better photograph. Suppose, though, that Victim, against all expectations, from his airplane overtrumps Murderer in his spaceship." Avalon said, "How can be do that, Henry?" "Victim, in his plane, suddenly realizes he needn't look at the Moon. He looks backward at the ground and sees the Moon's shadow racing toward him. The Moon's shadow is just a dark dot when seen from the Moon; it's just the coming of temporary night as seen from the Earth's surface-but from a plane in the stratosphere, it is a racing circle of darkness moving at 1,440 miles an hour, swallowing up the land and sea-and clouds, for that matter-as it goes. The plane can move ahead of it, and it is no longer necessary to take single snapshots. A movie camera can produce the most dramatic film. In this way, Murderer, having fully expected to outdo Victim, finds that Victim has captured world attention even though be had only an airplane to Murderer's spaceship." Gonzalo broke into loud applause and Trumbull said, "Right on!" Even Rubin smiled and nodded. As for Peterborough, he fired up at once, saying, "Sure! And the approaching shadow would have a thin red rim, for at the moment the shadow overtakes you, the red prominences cast their light unmasked by the Sun's white light. That's it, Henry! The backward look does it! If I write this one properly, I don't care even if it doesn't sell. I won't care even" (his voice shook) "if-uh-she doesn't like it and doesn't go out with me. The story is more important!" Henry smiled gently and said, "I'm glad to hear that, sir. A writer should always have a proper sense of priorities." "The Backward Look.-Afterword George Scithers, the clever and efficient editor of IASFM (who won the Hugo as best editor in the 1978 World Science Fiction convention after having edited only seven issues of the magazine-a speedy and welldeserved appreciation), decided that "The Missing Item" had gone over well with the readers. He therefore asked me for another Black Widowers item relating to science fiction. I complied with "The Backward Look," which appeared in the September 1979 IASFM. (In its second year of existence, IASFM rose to bimonthly appearances, and in its third year, it became a monthly.) In this story, by the way, I have someone refer to Isaac Asimov as a well-known science-fiction writer, and Manny Rubin, as always, reacts with a certain impatience at having Asimov termed a friend of his. I do this every once in a long while, and it is a Trap Door Spiders in-joke. This is self-indulgence, of course, but the bond between myself and my Gentle Readers is a close and friendly one and I like to think they won't mind an occasional self-indulgence on my part. This time, I made the injoke a degree of magnitude sharper by bringing in Lester del Rey and having him described as "Well, he's no Isaac Asimov, but he's all right." Naturally, I wait (in some apprehension) for Lester to decide on a suitable riposte. The fact is that Lester and I are very good friends and have been so for nearly forty years. It's just that we've been baiting each other for nearly forty years, too. What Time Is It? The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers had proceeded its usually noisy course and then, over the coffee, there had fallen an unaccustomed quiet. Geoffrey Avalon sipped at his coffee thoughtfully and said, "It's the little things-the little things. I know a couple who might have been happily married forever. He was a lay reader at an Episcopalian Church and she was an unreformed atheist, and they never gave each other a cross look over that. But be liked dinner at six and she liked it at seven, and that split them apart." Emmanuel Rubin looked up owlishly from his part of the table, eyes unblinking behind thick lenses, and said, "What's "big" and what's "little," Geoff? Every difference is a little difference if you're not involved. There's nothing like a difference in the time sense to reduce you to quivering )P Mario Gonzalo looked complacently at the high polish on his shoes and said, "Ogden Nash once wrote that some people like to sleep with the window closed and some with the window open and each other is whom they marry." Since it was rather unusual that at any Black Widowers banquet three successive comments should be made without an explosive contradiction, it didn't really surprise anyone when Thomas Trumbull furrowed his brows and said, "That's a lot of horsehair. When a marriage breaks up, the trivial reason is never the reason." Avalon said mildly, "I know the couple, Tom. It's my brother and sisterin-law-or ex-sister-in-law." "I'm not arguing that they don't say they've split over a triviality, or even that they don't believe it," said Trumbull. "I just say there's some- thing deeper. If a couple are sexually compatible, if there are no money problems, if there is no grave difference in beliefs or attitudes, then they'll stick together. If any of these things fail, then the marriage sours and the couple begin to chafe at trivialities. The trivialities then get blamed-but that's not so." Roger Halsted, who had been chasing the last of the apple pie about his plate, now cleansed his mouth of its slight stickiness with a sip of black coffee and said, "How do you intend to prove your statement, Tom?" "It doesn't require proof," said Trumbull, scowling. "It stands to reason." "Only in your view," said Halsted, warmly, his high forehead flushing pinkly, as it always did when he was moved. "I once broke up with a young woman I was crazy about because she kept saying "Isn't it a riot?" in and out of season. I swear she had no other Haw." "You'd be perjuring yourself unconsciously," said Trumbull. "Listen, Jim, call a vote." James Drake, host for the evening, stubbed out his cigarette and looked amused. His small eyes, nested in finely wrinkled skin, darted around the table and said, "You'll lose, Tom." "I don't care if I win or lose," said Trumbull, "I just want to see how many jackasses there are at the table." "The usual number, I suppose," said Drake. "All those who agree with Tom raise their hands." Trumbull's arm shot up and was the only one to do so. "I'm not surprised," he said, after a brief look, left and right. "How about you, Henry? Are you voting?" Henry, the unparalleled waiter at all the Black Widower banquets, smiled paternally, "Actually, I was not, Mr. Trumbull, but if I had voted, I would have taken the liberty of disagreeing with you." He was passing about the table, distributing the brandy. "You, too, Brutus?" said Trumbull. Rubin finished his coffee and put the cup down with a clatter. "What the devil, all differences are trivial. Forms of life that are incredibly different superficially are all but identical on the biochemical level. There seems a world of difference between the worm and the earth it burrows in, but, considering the atoms that make it up, both of them . . ." Trumbull said, "Don't wax poetical, Manny, or, if you must, wax it in your garage and not here. I suspect jackassery is universal but, just to make sure, I'll ask our guest if he is voting." Drake said, "Let's make that part of the grilling then. It's time. And you can do the grilling, Tom." The guest was Barry Levine, a small man, dark-haired, dark-eyed, slim, and nattily dressed. He was not exactly handsome, but he had a cheerful expression that was a good substitute. Gonzalo had already sketched his caricature, exaggeratinsz the good cheer into inanity, and Henry had placed it on the wall to oin the rest. Trumbull said, "Mr. Levine, it is our custom at these gatherings of ours to ask our guest, to begi , n with, to justify his existence. I shall dispense with that since I will assume that your reason for existence at the moment is to back me up, if you can, in my statement-self-evident, to my way of thinking-That trivialities are trivial." Levine smiled and said, in a slightly nasal voice, "Trivialities on the human level, or are we talking about earthworms?" "We are talking about humans, if we omit Manny." "In that case, I join the jackassery, since, in my occupation, I am concerned almost exclusively with trivia." "And your occupation, please?" "I'm the kind of lawyer, Mr. Trumbull, who makes his living by arguing), with witnesses and with other lawyers in front of a judge and jury. And that immerses me in triviality." Trumbull growled, "You consider justice a triviality, do you?" "I do not," said Levine, with equanimity, "but that is not with what we are directly concerned in the courtroom. In the courtroom, we play games. We attempl to make favorable testimony admissible and unfavorable testimony inadmissible. We play with the rules of questioning and cross-ex- amination. We try to manipulate the choosing of favorable jurors, and then we manipulate the thoughts and emotions of the jurors we do get. We try to play on the prejudices and tendencies of the judge as we know them to be at the start or as we discover them to be in the course of the trial. We try to block the opposition attorney or, if that is not possible, to maneuver him into overplaying his hand. We do all this with the trivia and minutiae of precedence and rationale." Trumbull's tone did not soften. "And where in all this litany of judicial recreation does justice come in?" Levine said, "Centuries of experience with our Anglo-American system of jurisprudence has convinced us that in the long run and on the whole, justice is served. In the short run, and in a given pecific case, however, it may very well not be. This can't be helped. To change the rules of the game to prevent injustice in a particular case may, and probably will, insure a greater level of injustice on the wbole-thougb once in a while an overall change for the better can be carried through." "In other words," interposed Rubin, "you despair of universal justice even as a goal of the legal profession?" "As an attainable goal, yes," said Levine. "In heaven, there may be perfect justice; on Earth, never." Trumbull said, "I take it, then, that if you are engaged in a particular case, you are not the least interested in justice?" Levine's eyebrows shot upward. "Where have I said that? Of course I am interested in justice. The immediate service to justice is seeing to it that my client gets the best and most efficient defense that I can give him, not merely because be deserves it, but also because American jurisprudence demands it, and because he is deprived of it at your peril, for you may be next. "Nor is it relevant whether he is guilty or innocent, for he is legally innocent in every case until he is proven guilty according to law, rigorousl applied. Whether the accused is morally or ethically innocer Z more difficult uestion, and one with which I am not primarily concerned. I am secondarly concerned with it, of course, and try as I might, there will be times when I cannot do my full duty as a lawyer out of a feeling of revulsion toward my client. It is then my duty to advise him to obtain another lawyer. "Still, if I were to secure the acquittal of a man I considered a scoundrel, the pain would not be as intense as that of failing to secure the acquittal of a man who, in my opinion, was wrongfully accused. Since I can rarely feel certain whether a man is wrongfully accused or is a scoundrel past redemption, it benefits both justice and my conscience to work for everyone as hard as I can, within the bounds of ethical legal behavior." Gonzalo said, "Have you ever secured the acquittal of someone you considered a scoundrel?" "On a few occasions. The fault there lay almost always in Mistakes made by the prosecution-their illegal collection of evidence, or their slovenly preparation of the case. Nor would I waste pity on them. They have the full machinery of the law on their side and the boundless public purse. If we allow them to convict a scoundrel with less than the most legal of evidence and the tightest of cases simply because we are anxious to see a scoundrel punished, then where will you and I find safety? We, too, may seem scoundrels through force of circumstance or of prejudice." Gonzalo said, "And have you ever failed to secure the acquittal of someone you considered wrongfully accused?" Here Levine's face seemed to crumple. The fierce joy with which he defended his profession was gone and his lower lip seemed to quiver for a moment. "As a matter of fact," he said, softly, "I am engaged in a case right now in which my client may well be convicted despite the fact that I consider him wrongfully accused." Drake chuckled and said, "I told you they'd get that out of you eventually, Barry!" He raised his voice to address the others generally. "I told him not to worry about confidentiality; that everything here was sub rosa. And I also told him it was just possible we migh0be able to help him." Avalon stiffened and said in his most stately baritone, "Do you know any of the details of the case, Jim?" "No, I don't." "Then how do you know we can help?" "I called it a possibility." Avalon shook his head. "I expect that from Mario's enthusiasm, but not from you, Jim." Drake raised his hand. "Don't lecture, Geoff. It doesn't become you." Levine interposed. "Don't quarrel, gentlemen. I'll be pleased to accept any help you can offer, and if you can't, I will be no worse off. Naturally, I want to impress on you the fact that even though confidentiality may be the rule here, it is particularly important in this case. I rely on that." "You may," said Avalon stiffly. Trumbull said, "All right, now. Let's stop this dance and get down to it. Would you give us the details of the case you're speaking of, Mr. Levine?" "I will give you the relevant data. My client is named Johnson, which is a name that I would very likely have chosen if I were inventing fictitious names, but it is a real name. There is a chance that you might have heard of this case, but I rather think you haven't, for it is not a local case and, if you don't mind, I will not mention the city in which it occurred, for that is not relevant. "Johnson, my client, was in debt to a loan shark, whom he knew-that is, with whom he had enough of a personal relationship to be able to undertake a personal plea for an extension of time. "He went to the hotel room that the loan shark used as his office-a sleazy room in a sleazy hotel that fit his sleazy business. The shark knew Johnson well enough to be willing to see him, and even to affect a kind of spurious bo-nhomie, but would not grant the extension. This meant that when Johnson went into default be would, at the very least, be beaten up; that his business would be vandalized; that his family, perhaps, would be victimized. "He was desperate-and I am, of course, telling you Johnson's story as he told it to me-but the shark explained quite coolly that if Johnson were let off then others would expect the same leniency. On the other hand, if Johnson were made an example of, it would nerve others to pay promptly and perhaps deter some from incurring debts they could not repay. It was particularly galling to Johnson, apparently, that the loan shark waxed virtuous over the necessity of protecting would-be debtors from themselves." Rubin said dryly, "I dare say, Mr. Levine, that if a loan shark were as articulate as you are, he could make out as good a case for his profession as you could for yours." Levine said, after a momentary pause, "I would not be surprised. In fact, before you bother to point it out, I may as well say that, given the reputation of lawyers with the public, people hearing the defenses of both professions might vote in favor of loan sharks as the more admirable of the two. I can't help that, but I still think that if you're in trouble you had better try a lawyer before you try a loan shark. "To continue, Johnson was not at all impressed by the shark's rationale for trying to extract blood from a stone, then pulverizing the stone for failure to breed. He broke down into a rage, screaming out threats he could not fulfill. In brief, he threatened to kill the shark." Trumbull said, "Since you're telling us Johnson's story, I assume he admitted making the threat." tlyc s, he did," said Levine. "I told him at the start, as I tell all my clients, that I could not efficiently help him unless be told me the full truth, even to confessing to a crime. Even after such a confession, I would still be compelled to defend him, and to fight at worst, for the least punishment to which he might be entitled and, at best, for acquittal on any of several conceivable grounds. "He believed me, I think, and did not hesitate to tell me of the threat; nor did he attempt to palliate or qualify it. That impressed me, and I am under the strong impression that he has been telling me the truth. I am old enough in my profession and have suffered the protestations of enough liars to feel confident of the truth when I hear it. And, as it happens, there is evidence supporting this part of the story, though Johnson did not know that at the time and so did not tell the truth merely because he knew it would be useless to lie." Trumbull said, "What was the evidence?" Levine said, "The hotel rooms are not soundproofed and Johnson was shrieking at the top of his voice. A maid heard just about every word and so did a fellow in an adjoining room who was trying to take a nap and who called down to the front desk to complain." Trumbull said, "That just means an argument was going on. What evidence is there that it was Johnson who was shrieking?" "Oh ample," said Levine. "The desk clerk also knows Johnson, and Johnson had stopped at the desk and asked if the shark were in. The desk clerk called him and sent Johnson up-and he saw Johnson come down later-and the news of the death threat arrived at the desk between those two periods of time. "Nevertheless, the threat was meaningless. It served, in fact, merely to bleed off Johnson's rage and to deflate him. He left almost immediately afterward. I am quite certain that Johnson was incapable of killing." Rubin stirred restlessly. He said, "That's nonsense. Anyone is capable of killing, given a moment of sufficient rage or terror and a weapon at hand. I presume that after Johnson left, the loan shark was found dead with his skull battered in; with a baseball bat, with blood and hair on it, lying on the bed; and you're going to tell us that you're sure Johnson didn't do it." Johnson held up his glass for what he indicated with his fingers was to be a touch more brandy, smiled his thanks to Henry, and said, "I have read some of your murder mysteries, Mr. Rubin, and I've enjoyed them. I'm sure that in your mysteries such a situation could occur and you'd find ways of demonstrating the suspect to be innocent. This, however, is not a Rubin mystery. The loan shark was quite alive when Johnson left." Rubin said, "According to Johnson, of course." "And unimpeachable witnesses. The man who called down said there was someone being murdered in the next room, and the desk clerk sent up the security man at once, for he feared it was his friend being murdered. The security man was well armed, and though he is not an intellectual type, he is perfectly competent to serve as a witness. He knocked and called out his identity, whereupon the door opened and revealed the loan shark, whom the security man knew, quite alive-and alone. Johnson had already left, deflated and de-energized. "The man at the desk, Brancusi is his name, saw Johnson leave a few seconds after the security man had taken the elevator up. They apparently passed each other in adjoining elevators. Brancusi called out, but Johnson merely lifted his hand and hurried out. He looked white and ill, Brancusi says. That was about a quarter after three, according to Brancusi-and according to Johnson, as well. "As for the loan shark, he came down shortly after four and sat in the bar for an hour or more. The bartender, who knew him, testified to that and can satisfactorily enumerate the drinks he had. At about a quarter after five he left the bar and, presumably, went upstairs." Avalon said, "Did he drink enough to have become intoxicated?" "Not according to the bartender. He was well within his usual limit and showed no signs of being drunk." "Did he talk to anyone in particular?" "Only to the bartender. And according to the bartender, he left the bar alone." Gonzalo said, "That doesn't mean anything. He might have met someone in the lobby. Did anyone see him go into the elevator alone?" "Not as far as we know," said Levine. "Brancusi didn't happen to notice, and no one else has admitted to seeing him, or has come forward to volunteer the information. For that matter, be may have met someone in the elevator or in the corridor outside his room. We don't know, and havee no evidence to show he wasn't alone when he went into his room shortly after a quarter after five. "Nevertheless, this two-hour period between a quarter after three and a quarter after five is highly significant. The security guard who encountered the loan shark immediately after Johnson had left at a quarter after three, found the shark composed and rather amused at the fuss. just a small argument, he said; nothing important. Then, too, the barman insists that the loan shark's conversation and attitude throughout his time in the bar was normal and unremarkable. He made no reference to threats or arguments." Halsted said, "Would you have expected him to?" "Perhaps not," said Levine, "but it is still significant. After all, he knew Johnson. He knew the man to be both physically and emotionally a weakling. He had no fear of being attacked by him, or any doubt that he could easily handle him if he did attack. "After all, he had agreed to see him without taking the precaution of having a bodyguard present, even though he knew Johnson would be desperate. He was not even temporarily disturbed by Johnson's outburst and shrugged it off to the guard. During that entire two-hour interval he acted as though he considered my client harmless and I would certainly make that point to the jury." Avalon shook his head. "Maybe so, but if your story is going to have any point at all, the loan shark, you will tell us, met with a violent death. And if so, the man who made the threat is going to be suspected of the murder. Even if the loan shark was certain that Johnson was harmless, that means nothing. The loan shark may simply have made an egregious error. Levine sighed. "The shark did die. He returned to his room at a quarter after five or a minute or two later and, I suspect, found a burglar in action. The loan shark had a goodish supply of cash in the room-necessary for his business-and the hotel was not immune to burglaries. The loan shark grappled with the intruder and was killed before half past five." Trumbull said, "And the evidence?" "The man in the adjoining room who had been trying to take a nap two hours before had seethed sufficiently to have been unable to fall asleep until about five and then, having finally dropped off, he was roused again by loud noises. He called down to the desk in a rage, and informed Brancusi that this time he had called the police directly." Gonzalo said, "Did he hear the same voice he had heard before?" "I doubt that any voice identification he would try to make would stand up in court," said Levine. "However, he didn't claim to have heard voices. Only the noises of furniture banging, glass breaking, and so on. "Brancusi sent up the security guard who, getting no answer to his knock and call this time, used his passkey at just about half past five and found the loan shark strangled, the room in wild disorder, and the window open. The window opened on a neighboring roof two stories lower. An experienced cat burglar could have made it down without trouble and might well have been unobserved. "The police arrived soon after, at about twenty to six.Trumbull said, "The police, I take it, do not buy the theory that the murder was committed by a burglar." "No. They could detect no signs on the wall or roof outside the window to indicate the recent passage of a burglar. Instead, having discovered upon inquiry of the earlier incident from the man who had called them, they scorn the possibility of coincidence and feel that Johnson made his way to the room a second time, attacked and strangled the loan shark, knocking the furniture about in the process, then opened the window to make it look as though an intruder had done the job, hastened out of the door, missing the security man by moments, and passing him on the elevator again." Trumbull said, "Don't you believe that's possible?" "Oh anything's possible," said Levine, coolly, "but it is not the job of the prosecutor to show it's possible. He has to show it's actually so beyond a reasonable doubt. The fact that the police saw nothing on the walls or roof is of no significance whatever. They may not have looked hard "enough. A negative never impresses either judge or jury-and shouldn't. And threats at a quarter after three have nothing to do with an act at twenty after five or so unless the man who made the threat at the former time can be firmly placed on the scene at the later time." Gonzalo was balancing his chair on its back legs with his hands gripping the table. "So what's the problem?" "The problem is, Mr. Gonzalo," said Levine, "that Johnson was placed on the scene of the crime at about the time of the killing." Gonzalo brought his chair forward with a clatter. "With good evidence?" "The best," said Levine. "He admits it. Here is what happened: In the two hours after he had left the loan shark, Johnson hurriedly scraped up every bit of money be had, borrowed small sums from several friends, made a visit to a pawnshop, and had raised something like a third of what he owed. He then came back to the hotel hoping for as long an extension as possible through payment of this part sum. He had little hope of success, but he had to try. "He arrived at the hotel at about a quarter to six, after the murder had been committed, and he noted a police squad ear at the curb outside the hotel. Except for noticing its existence, he paid it little attention. He had only one thing on his mind. "He headed straight for the elevator, which happened to be at the lobby with its door open. As he stepped out of it at the loan shark's floor, he saw a policeman at the door of the room he was heading for. Almost instinctively, he ducked back into the elevator and pushed the lobby button. He was the only man in the elevator and there were no calls to higher floors. The elevator moved downward, stopping at no floors. When he reached the lobby, he hastened out, went home, and stayed there till the police came for him." A curl of cigarette smoke bung above Drake's head. He said, "I suppose they learned of the earlier threat and took him in for questioning." "Right," said Levine. "But they can't make Johnson testify against himself, so how do they show he was on the spot at the time of the murder?" "For one thing, Brancusi saw him when he was heading for the elevator. Brancusi called out to-head him off and prevent him from running into the police. Johnson didn't hear him and the elevator doors closed behind him before Brancusi could do anything else. Brancusi insists, how-ever, that Johnson was back down again in two minutes or so and hastened out. And he is prepared to swear that Johnson left at precisely ten minutes to six. Drake said, "Is Brancusi really sure of that?" "Absolutely. His shift was over at six o'clock and he was furious at the fact that the murder had not taken place an hour later, when he would have been off duty. As it was, he was sure he would be needed for questionine and might be kept for hours. He was therefore unusually aware of the time. Ther was an electric clock on the wall to one side of his desk, a nice large one with clear figures that was new and had been recently installed. It was accurate to the second and he is absolutely certain it said ten to six." Avalon cleared his throat. "In that case, Mr. Levine, Brancusi backs up Johnson's story and places your client at the scene not at the time of the murder but afterward." Levine said, "Here is where the trivialities come in. Brancusi is a had witness. He has a small stutter, which makes him sound unsure of himself; he has one drooping eyelid, which makes him look hangdog and suspicious; and he has distinct trouble in looking you in the eye.'the jury will be ready to believe him a liar. "Second, Brancusi is a friend of Johnson's, has known him from child- bood, and is still a drinking buddy of the man. That gives him a motive for lying, and the prosecution is sure to make the most of that. "Finally, Brancusi may not want to testify at all.--He served six months in jail for a minor offense quite a number of years ago. He has lived a reasonably exemplary life since and naturally doesn't want that earlier incident to be made public. For one thing, it could cost him his job." Rubin said, "Could the prosecution bring up the matter? It's irrelevant, isn't it?" "Quite irrelevant, but if the prosecution takes the attitude that it serves to cast a doubt on the reliability of Brancusi as a witness, they might slip it past the judge." Rubin said, "In that case, if you put neither Johnson nor Brancusi on the stand, the prosecution would still be stuck with the task of proving, that Johnson was at the scene at the right time. They can't call Johnson themselves, and they won't call Brancusi to give his evidence because they then can't cross-examine him and bring out that jail term." Levine sighed. "There's another witness. The man is an accountant named William Sandow. He had stopped at the hotel lobby to buy a small container of breath fresheners, and while he was at the newsstand, he saw Johnson pass him, hurrying out of the hotel. Later in the evening, he read-, about the murder, and called the police to volunteer the information. Hidescription of the man he saw was a good one and, eventually, he made a positive identification out of a lineup. "Sandow said that what drew his attention to the man who passed him was the look of horror and anguish on his face. Of course, he can't use terms like that on the witness stand, but the prosecution can get him to make factual statements to the effect that Johnson was sweating and trembling this would give him the air of an escaping murderer." said, "No, it doesn't. Lots of things could make a man sweat and tremble, and Johnson had good reason to do so short of murder. Besides, Sandow just bears out the story of Brancusi and Johnson.Levine shook his head. "No, he doesn't. Sandow says he happened to catch a glimpse of the time as Johnson passed him and swears it was ex actly half past five, which is just after the murder was committed but be fore the police arrived. If true, that ruins Johnson's story and makes the as sumption that he committed the murder a very tempting one." Rubin said, "Brancusi backs Johnson. It's one man's word against another. You can't convict on that." "You can," said Levine, "if the jury believes one man and not the other If Brancusi is bound to make a bad impression, Sandow is bound to make a good one. He is open-faced, clean-cut, has a pleasant voice, and exudes edciency and honesty. The mere fact that be is an accountant gives him-, an impression of exactness. And whereas Brancusi is a friend of Johnson and therefore suspect, Sandow is a complete outsider with no reason to lie." Rubin said, "How sure are you of that? He was very ready to volunteer information and get involved. Does he have some secret grudge against Johnson? Or some connection with the loan shark?" Levine shrugged his shoulders. "There are such things as public-spirited citizens, even today. The fact that be came forward will be in his favor with the jury. Naturally, my office has investigated Sandow's background. We've turned up nothing we can use against him-at least so far." There was a short silence around the table, and then finally Rubin said, "Honest people make mistakes, too. Sandow says he just happened to catch a glimpse of the time. Just how did that happen? He just happened to glance at his wristwatch? Why? Brancusi had a good reason to watch the clock. What was Sandow's?" "He does not claim to have looked at his watch. He caught a glimpse of the same wall clock that Brancusi looked at. Presumably both Brancusi and Sandow were looking at the same clock at the same moment. The same clock couldn't very well tell half past five to one person and ten to six to another at the same time. Clearly, one person is lying or mistaken, and the jury will believe Sandow." Rubin said, "Brancusi was staring at the clock. Sandow just caught a glimpse. He may have caught the wrong glimpse." Levine said, "I have considered stressing that point, but I am not sure I ought to. Sandow's statement that he just happened to catch a glimpse sounds honest, somehow. The mere fact that he doesn't claim to see more than he saw, that he doesn't make an undue effort to strengthen his evidence, makes him ring true. And he's an accountant. He says he's used to figures, that he can't help noticing and remembering them. The prosecution will surely have him say that on the stand, and the jury will surely accept that. "On the other hand, Mr. Rubin, if I try to balance Sandow's cool certainty by having Brancusi become very, very definite and emotional about how certain he is it was ten to six, then he will carry all the less conviction for he will impress the jury as someone who is desperately trying to support a lie. And if it looks as though be is making a szood impression, the prosecution will make a major effort to bring ouhis-previous prison record." Halsted broke in with sudden animation. "Say, could Sandow see the clock from where he says he was standing at the newsstand?" Levine said, "A good point. We checked that out at once and the answer is: Yes, he could. Easily." There was another silence around the table, a rather long one. Trumbull finally said, "Let's put it as briefly as we can. You are convinced that Johnson is innocent and that Brancusiiis telling the truth. You are also convinced that Sandow is either lying or mistaken, but you can't think of any reason he might be or any way of showing he is. And the jury is going to believe Sandow and convict Johnson." Levie szid, "That's about it." Rubin said, "Of course, juries are unpredictable." "Yes, indeed," said Levine, "but if that's my only hope, it isn't much of one. I would like better." Avalon's fin ers were drumming noiselessly on the tablecloth. He said, "I'm a patent lawyer myself, and I have just about no courtroom experience. Still, all you need do is cast a reasonable doubt. Can't you point out that a man's liberty rests on a mere glimpse of a clock?" "I can, and will try just as hard as I can short of pushing the prosecution into attempting to uncover Brancusi's prison record. I would like something better thn that, too." From the sideboard, Henry's voice sounded suddenly. "If -you'll excuse me, Mr. Levine-I assume that the clock in question, the one to which both Mr. Brancusi and Mr. Sandow referred, is a digital clock." Levine frowned. "Yes, it is. I didn't say it was, did I? How did you know?" His momentary confusion cleared, and he smiled. "Well, of course. No mystery. I said it was a new clock, and these days digital clocks are becoming so popular that it is reasonable to suppose that any new clock would be digital." "I'm sure that is so," said Henry, "but that was not the reason for my conclusion. You said a few moments ago that Mr. Sandow was an accountant and that accountants couldn't help but notice and remember figures. Of course you don't notice and remember figures on an ordinary ial clock-you remember the position of the hands. On a dial clock it is just as easy to tell time when the hour numbers are replaced with dots or with nothing at all." "Well, then?" said Levine. "Almost any grown person of reasonable intelligence can tell time at a glance in that way. Accountants have no special advantage. A digital clock is different." Levine said, "Since it was a digital clock, then accountants do have a special advantage. You're not helping me, Henry." Henry said, "I think I am. You have been unconsciously misleading us, Mr. Levine, by giving the time in the old-fashioned way appropriate to a dial clock. You speak of a quarter after three and a quarter to six and so on. Digital clocks specifically show such times to be three-fifteen and five forty-five. As digital clocks become more and more universal, times will be spoken of in this way exclusively, I imagine." Levine seemed a little impatient. "How does this change anything, Henry?" Henry said, "Your statement was that Brancusi was certain that the time at the crucial moment was ten to six" while Sandow was certain it was half past five. If this were so, and if a dial clock were involved, the position of the hands at the two times would be widely different and neitber could make a mistake. A deliberate lie by one or the other would have to be involved. "On the other hand, if it is a digital clock, Brancusi claims he read fivefifty and Sandow claims he read fie-thirty, you see." Levine said, "Ah, and you think that Sandow misread the figure five for a three. No good; it could be maintained with equal justice that Brancusi mistook the three for a five in his annoyance over the fact that the end of his shift was approaching." Henry said, "It is not a question of a mistake that anyone could make. It is a mistake that an accountant particularly might make. There are ffifty cents to half a dollar but thirty minutes to half an hour, and an accountant above all is apt to think of figures in terms of money. To an accountant five-fifty is most likely to mean five and a half dollars. A quick glimpse at a digital clock reading five-fifty might trigger the response five and a half in an accountant's mind, and he will later swear be had seen the time as half past five." Avalon looked astonished. "You really think Mr. Sandow could have made that mistake, Henry?" But it was Levine who answered jubilantly, "Of course! It's the only way of explaining how two people could read the same clock at the same time and honestly come up with two different answers. Besides, there's the reasonable doubt. Suppose I set up a screen on which I can flash numbers on the pretext that I have to test Sandow's eyesight and memory of numbers, and ask him to detect and identify nuibes flashed only briefly on the screen. If I show him five-fifty with a dollar sign before it, he will be bound to say, "five and a half dollars."" Gonzalo said, "He might say "five-fifty" or something like that." "If he does, I'll ask him if be means five hundred and fifty dollars or five and a half dollars-after all, does he or does he not see the decimal point?-and be will be sure to say five and a half dollars. He will then repeat that with five-fifty written in other printing styles and with the dollar sign left out. Finally, when I flash the image of a digital clock reading five-fifty and ask whether that is five and a half or ten to six, he won't even have to answer. The jury will get the point." Levine rose to shake Henry's hand. "Thank you, Henry. I said that cases depend on trivialities, but I never dreamed that, this one would rest on something as trivial as the difference between a digital clock and a dial clock." "But," said Henry, "on that piece of trivia depends the freedom of a man who is presumably wrongfully accused of murder, and that is no triviality at all." "What Time Is It?'-Afterword It was almost with disappointment that I noticed that I had completed ten stories toward the twelve I needed for the third book and had managed to compile only one rejection. It meant that I would have to refrain from submitting the last two stories for magazine publication and just write them for the book itself. Since I had to do it, I did it-and this one was written at the third mystery-fan meeting at Mohonk, which I referred to in the Afterword to "Irrelevance!" You'll notice that "What Time Is It?" involves a murder, as is rarely the case with my Black Widowers tales. However, it is not a whodunit, or a howdunit, or a whydunit. It's just a matter of explaining a discrepancywhich is what the Black Widowers is all about. But at least the Black Widowers got an innocent man off the hook Middle Name. Roger I Halsted looked a bit doleful and said, "I almost didn't get here tonight. Geoffrey Avalon looked down at him from his straight-backed seventyfour inches and said, "Automobile accident?" "Nothing so dramatic," said Halsted. "Alice was in one of her feminist moods this afternoon and objected rather strenuously to the fact that the Black Widowers Society is a stag organization." "But she's known that from the start, hasn't she?" asked Avalon. "Of course, and it's graveled her from the start, too," said Halsted. "Sometimes it's worse than other times, that's all. And today, well, she may have seen something on TV, read something in the newspapers, had a talk with a friend, or whatever. Anyway, she was upset, and the trouble is, I rather sympathize with her." Emmanuel Rubin walked over from the other end of the room, where he had been exchanging insults with Mario Gonzalo, host at this month's Black Widowers banquet. Rubin said, "Are you talking about your wife, Roger?" "Yes, as a matter of fact." "I could tell by the troubled look on your face. had form. Black Widowers don't have wives." "Yes?" said Halsted sharply. "Have you told that to Jane?" "I mean during the banquets, and you know that's what I mean." "I've heard you mention Jane at the banquets and, besides, my own discussion is germane to the banquets. I would hate to have to give them up." "Who can make you?" demanded Rubin scornfully, his scanty beard bristling. Halsted said, "My own conscience, for one thing. And it's not worth breaking up a marriage over." "Why should it break up a marriage?" said Rubin. "Even if we grant equality for women-political, economic, and social-why should that prevent me from spending one evening a month with friends of my own choosing who just happen to be male?" Avalon said, "You know better than that, Manny. They don't just happen to be male. They are forbidden by the rules of the club to be anything but male." "And anything but intelligent," said Rubin, "and anything but compatible. If any one of us takes a dislike to anyone proposed for membership, however trivial or even nonexistent the cause of that dislike might be, that potential member can be blackballed. Just one of us can do it, regardless of the wishes of the rest, and we don't have to explain either." "Manny," said Avalon, "you're not usually so obtuse. A woman can't be blackballed, because she can't even be proposed for membership. Don't you see the difference? Whichever one of us is host for the evening can bring any guest he wishes, even one who would be instantly blackballed if he were proposed for membership. But the guest must be male. No woman can be brought. Don't you see the difference?" "Exactly," said Halsted. "If it were a black that we ruled out, or a Jew, or an Irishman, that would be bigotry and not one of us could live with it. But since it's only women, we don't seem to mind. What moral blindness!" "Well, then," said Rubin, "are you two suggesting that we permit women to join the society?" "No," said Avalon and Halsted in quick and emphatic simultaneity. "Then what are we arguing about?" Halsted said, "I'm just pointing out that we ought to recognize the immorality of it." "You mean as long as we know something is immoral, we are free to be immoral." "Of course I don't," said Halsted. "I happen to think that hypocrisy aggravates any sin. Nothing is so male chauvinist as to say, "I'm not a male chauvinist, but. . ."as I've beard Manny say." Mario Gonzalo joined them and said with clear self-satisfaction, "I don't say, "I'm not a male chauvinist, but . I am a male chauvinist. I expect a woman to take care of me." "That's just an admission you can't take care of yourself," said Rubin, "which is something I've always suspected, Mario." Gonzalo looked over his shoulder hurriedly in the direction of his guest and then said, in a low voice, "Listen, keep talking feminism during the dinner, off and on. It's a stroke of luck you've started on your own.P "Why?" said Avalon in a voice that had not been hushed since its invention. "What dire plot are you . . ." "Shh," said Gonzalo. "I want to draw out my guest. He's got something eating him he won't talk about. That's why I brought him. It could be interesting.) "Do you know what it is?" asked Halsted. "Only in a general way. . ." said Gonzalo. Henry, whose elegant service at the banquets ennobled the occasion, interrupted in his soft way. "If you don't mind, Mr. Gonzalo, dinner is served." Gonzalo placed his guest immediately to his right and said, "Has everyone met Mr. Washburn now?" There was a P-eneral murmur of agreement. Lionel Washburn was an almost classicalli handsome individual with a head of thick, dark hair cut neatly, with black-rimmed glasses, white shirt, dark-blue suit, and shiny black shoes. He looked dressed up without being uncomfortable. He did not yet seem to have passed his thirtieth birthday. He said to Gonzalo somberly, "Is there some argument about whether the organization is to be stag, Mario? I heard . . ." "No argument," said Gonzalo quickly. "It is stag. I invited you. I didn't suggest you bring a girlfriend." "I don't have one," said Washburn, biting off each word. Then, more normally, "How long have you been stag?" "From the start, but it's Jim's story. Jim, my guest would like to hear how the society got its start-if you don't mind, that is." James Drake smiled and held his cigarette to one side so that he could see the other's face clearly. "I don't mind, though I'm sure the others are pretty sick of it. Still-any objections?" Thomas Trumbull, who was cutting into his rack of lamb, said, "Tlenty of objections, but you go ahead and I'll attend to the inner man. Henry, if you can scare up an extra helping of mint sauce, I would be infinitely appreciative. And Jim, I would suggest you get our personal Book of Genesis printed up and handed out at the start of each banquet to the guest. The rest of us can then be spared. Thank you, Henry." Drake said, "Now that we have Tom out of the way, I'll go on. About thirty years ago, I married, but then we all make mistakes, don't we? I believe I was fascinated at the time, though I don't remember why. My friends, however, were not fascinated." Avalon drew in his breath in a long, rumbling sniff. "We remember why." "I'm sure you do," agreed Drake good-humoredly. "As a result, I found myself outcast. My friends fell away and I couldn't endure her friends or, after a time, her. It occurred to Ralph Ottur, then-He lives in California now, I'm sorry to say-to start a club for the sole purpose of seeing me without my wife. Naturally, this would only work if the club were stag. So there you are. We called it the Black Widowers because black widow spiders are quite apt to devour their mates, and we were determined to survive." Washburn said, "And does your wife know the nature of the origin of the club?" "She's not my wife," said Drake. "Anymore, that is. I divorced her after seven years. "And were you all members at the start?" Drake shook his head. "Geoff, Tom, and I are charter members. The others joined later. Some members have died or now live too far away to attend." "But the reason for the men-only character of the club is gone. Why do you . . . 1) "Because we want to," said Gonzalo quickly. "Because I like women in their place and I know exactly where that place is and here isn't it." "That's a disgusting statement," said Halsted, with the slight stutter that came when he grew emotional. Gonzalo said coolly, "You've got to say that because you're married and you're afraid that if you don't keep in practice, you'll let something chauvinistic, so-called, slip in front of your wife and then you'll be in trouble. I'm not married so I'm a free man. My girlfriends know where I stand, and if they don't like it, they can leave." Avalon said, "There's an uncomfortable Don Juanisin about that statement. Don't you care if they leave?" "Sometimes," admitted Gonzalo, "but I'd care a lot more if they stayed and argued with me. And there are always others." "Disgusting," said Halsted again. "The truth usually is," said Gonzalo. "Why don't all you highly moral feminists tell me why you don't want women at these meetings and see if you can make the reason nonchauvinist?" There was an uncomfortable silence about the table, and Gonzalo said, "Henry, you're a Black Widower, too, and I'm not letting you escape. Would you like to see women at these meetings?" Henry's face crinkled into a pleasant smile. "No, Mr. Gonzalo, I would not. I "Aba," said Gonzalo. "Now, you're an honest man, Henry, unlike these Black Hypocriticers you wait on. Tell me why not." Henry said, "Like you, Mr. Gonzalo, I am not married, but I'm afraid I lack your variegated experience with young women." "What's that got to do with it?" Henry said, "I was merely explaining the situation in case my theory on the subject should prove to be childishly foolish to other, more experienced men. It seems to me that most men during their childhood have had their mothers as their chief authority figures. Even when the father is held up as a mysterious and ogreish dispenser of punishments, it is, in fact, the mother whose outcries, yanks, pushes, and slaps perpetually stand in the way of what we want to do. And we never recover." Rubin said, in a voice of deep, masculine disdain, "Come, Henry, are you trying to say that men are afraid of women?" Henry said, "I believe many are. Certainly, many feel a sense of relief and freedom when in the company of men only and feel particularly free when women are not allowed to intrude. This society originated as a haven from women under the guise of being one from a particular woman. The particular woman is gone but the haven is still needed and still persists." Avalon said, "Well, that is at least not an example of outright chauvinism." "And totally untrue," said Rubin, his eyes Hashing behind the thick lenses that covered them. "How many here are afraid of women?" It was Washburn who intervened at this point. With his handsome face contorted into a mask of fury, he brought his fist down with a smash that rattled the dishes and caused Henry to pause in his task of pouring the coffee. Washburn said, "You don't expect anyone to admit it, do you? Your waiter is correct, but he doesn't go far enough. Of course, we're afraid of women. Why shouldn't we be? They're man-eaters, cannibals, harpies. They're bound by no rules, no canons of sportsmanship. They're the ruin of men and of all that is decent and human. I don't care if I never see another one in my life." He paused, drew a deep breath, then passed a hand over his forehead, which had dampened with perspiration and said, "Pardon me, gentlemen, I did not mean to lose my temper." Trumbull said, "But why. . ." and stopped at Gonzalo's raised hand. Gonzalo was grinning in triumph. "Later, Tom. It's almost grilling time and I'll choose you as inquisitor and you can ask your question." And, indeed, it was not long before Gonzalo began the ritualistic tapping of the water glass as the brandy was being distributed. He said, "It's up to you, Tom." Trumbull frowned ferociously under his white and crisply waved hair and said, "I will assume, Mr. Washburn, that Mario has explained to you that the payment, for what we hope you will agree is a fine dinner and at least partly edifying conversation, is a grilling. To our questions, you will be expected to answer fully and truthfully, even when that may be embarrassing. I must assure you that nothing said here ever leaves these four walls. "With that preamble, let me say this. I am not a judge of masculine pulchritude, Mr. Washburn, but it seems to me that women would judge you to be handsome." Washburn flushed and said, "I would not try to account for women's tastes. Still it is true that I have found that I can, on occasion, attract women. "That's a very modest way of putting it," said Trumbull. "Does the Coriverse bold as well? Do women attract you?" For a moment, Washburn looked puzzled. Then he frowned and said, "Are you asking me if I am gay?" Trumbull shrugged and said in a level voice, "In these times, it is a permissible question, and it is even permissible to answer in an open affirmative, if that should happen to be the case. I ask out of no personal interest, I assure you, but merely out of curiosity over your earlier angry remarks about women as a grouv.f) Washburn relaxe'd. "I see your point. No, I'm interested in women. Far too interested. And it was not the sex as a whole that I was really berating. I was striking out at one! One woman! And myself!" Trumbull hesitated. "The logical thing," he said, "would be to question you, Mr. Washburn, concerning this woman who so distresses you. Yet I hesitate. On the one hand, it is a peculiarly private matter, which I do not wish to probe and, on the other, if you don't mind my saying so, the details are likely to be peculiarly uninteresting. I suppose every one of us in our time. . ." Avalon interrupted. "If you don't mind, Tom, you are displaying an uncommon combination of delicacy and insensitivity. I am prepared, with your permission, to take over the grilling." "If you think you can do so, Geoff, within the bounds of good taste," said Trumbull huffily. Avalon lifted his dense eyebrows to maximum and said, "I think highly of you, Tom, and yet have never considered you an arbiter of good taste. Mr. Washburn, I have no wish to probe wounds unnecessarily, but let me guess. Your outburst came during a discussion of the pros and cons of feminism. May we take it, then, that your unhappy experience, whatever it was, involved feminism?" Washburn nodded and said, "It sure as hell did.,, "Good! Now it may be superfluous to ask this, but was whatever it was that happened something that has happened to many others? Putting aside the great pain it may have caused you and the unique unhappiness you may consider you have felt, would you in your calmer moments think that it might be the common lot of male humanity?" -- Washburn seemed lost in thought, and Avalon went on as gently as he could. "After all, millions have been jilted, millions have been sold out, millions have been betrayed by their lovers and their friends." "What happened to me," said Washburn, between remarkably white and even teeth, "has in a way happened to very many, as you suggest. I recognize that. To lose the woman one loves is not so rare. To be laughed at and humiliated," he swallowed, "may be the lot of many. But in one respect, I have been ill used particularly. In one respect." Avalon nodded. "Very good. I won't ask you any leading questions. just tell us about that one respect." Washburn bent his glance down to his brandy snifter and spoke in a hurried tone of voice. "I fell in love. It wasn't the first time. She was-she was not the most beautiful woman I have ever known-nor the pleasantest. In fact, we did not get along. Her company was always a maddening bumpy ride in a springless cart down a rough road. But., oh God, I couldn't help myself. I still can't seem to. Don't ask me to analyze it. All I can say is that I was caught, tangled, trapped, and I wanted her. And I couldn't get her. "She acted as though she hated me. She acted as though she wanted me to want her, just so she could show the world I couldn't have her. "She was a feminist. Her nerve endings stuck out six inches beyond her skin on that subject. She was successful. She was a magazine illustrator at the top of her field and commanded high fees. It wasn't enough, though. To make it right for her, I had to fail. "And there was no way I could argue effectively with her. She won every time. Of course, she was an intellectual and I'm not-though I like to think I'm intelligent. . . ." Rubin said, "Intelligence is the diamond and intellectualism only the facets. I've known many a beautifully faceted rhinestone. What do you do for a living)" Washburn said, "I'm a stockbroker." "Do you do well? I mean, as well as your feminist?" Washburn flushed. "Yes. And I've inherited a rather sizable trust fund. She seemed to resent that." "Let me guess," said Rubin dryly. "You make more money with less brains because you're a man. You get farther with less deserving because you're a man. You probably even inherited the trust fund because you were a man. Your sister would have gotten less." "That's about it," said Washburn. "She said the way I dressed, the way I held myself, everything about me was designed to show my masculine wealth and power. She said I might as well wear a neon sign saying, "I can buy women."" Trumbull said, "Did you ever try to defend yourself?" "Sure, " said Washburn, "and that meant a fight. I asked her why, if she thought she should be considered as a human being and as an intellectual, without being penalized for her sex, she insisted on emphasizing her sex? Why didn't she remove her makeup and meet the world with an unpainted face as men did? Why didn't she wear less revealing clothes, and accentuate her breasts and hips less? I said she might as well wear a neon sign saying, "I sell for a high price."" "She must have loved that," muttered Rubin. "You bet she didn't," said Washburn grimly. "She said a masculine society forced that on her in self-defense, and she wouldn't give up the only weapon.They granted her. I said she needed no weapon with me. I said I would marry her without enticement or allure, straight out of the shower with wet hair and a pimple on her shoulder if she had one. And she said, "To do what? To cook your dinner and clean your house for youY And I said, "I have a housekeeper for that." And she said, "Of course; another woman."" Halsted said, "What good would it have done you to marry her? You would have fought like that every day. It would have been a purgatory. Why not just walk away from that?" "Why not?" said Washburn. "Sure, why not? Why not just kick the heroin habit? Why not just stop breathing if the air gets polluted? How do I know why not? It's not the sort of thing you can reason out. Maybemaybe-if I had the chance, I could win her over." "You wouldn't have," said Rubin flatly. "She's a ballbuster, and she'd stay one." Halsted said, "That's a stupid phrase, Manny. It's part of the routine bigotry of the chauvinist. A man is ambitious; a woman is unscrupulous. A man is firm; a woman is stubborn. A man is witty; a woman is bitchy. A man is competitive; a woman is abrasive. A man is a hard-driving leader; a woman is a ballbuster." Rubin said, "Call it what you want. Say she's a lily of the valley if you want. I say her ambition and occupation would have been to make our friend here wish he had never been born, and she would have succeeded." Turning to Washburn, he said, "I assume from your early outburst, your failure with her was complete. If so, I congratulate you, and if I knew of a way to help you succeed, I would refuse to give it to you." Washburn shook his head. "No fear. She's married someone else-a dumb creep-and the last I've beard she is cooking and cleaning house." "Did she give up her career?" said Avalon in astonishment. "No," said Washburn, "but she does the other, too. What I'll never un- derstand is why him." Trumbull said, "There's no accounting for the nature of attraction. Maybe this other fellow makes her laugh. Maybe he dominates her without bothering to argue the point. Maybe she likes the way he smells. How can "you tell? How do you account for the way she attracts you? Nothing you ve said makes her attractive to me." "If she liked him better," said Washburn, fuming, "why not say so, for whatever reason-or for no reason? Why make it look like a straightforward test? Why humiliate me?" "Test?" said Rubin. "What test?" "That's what I referred to when I said earlier that in one way I had been particularly ill used. She said she would see if I were the kind of man she could live with. She dared me to give her a one-syllable middle name to represent what every schoolchild knew-and yet didn't know. She implied that she was giving the other fellow the same test. I knew about him and I didn't worry about him. My God, he was a stupid advertising copy writer who shambled about in turtleneck sweaters and drank beer." Avalon said, "Surely, you couldn't believe a woman would choose one man over another according to whether he could solve a puzzle. That happens in fairytales perhaps; otherwise, not." Washburn said, "I see that now. She married him, though. She said be had the answer. That idiot passed, she said, and I failed. Not getting her was had enough, but she arranged to make me lose in a battle of wits to someone I despised-or at least she said I had lost. It wasn't a test. It was nonsense. Suppose you chose a middle name with one syllable-John, Charles, Ray, George-any one of them. Who's to say the answer is right or wrong, except her? "if she were going to marry him anyway, she might have done that without going out of her way to make me look foolish in my own eyes." Halsted said, "What if the question were a legitimate one? What if he had gotten the correct answer and you hadn't? Would that make you feel better?" "I suppose so," said Washburn, "but the more I think of it, the more certain I am that it's a fake." "Let's see now," said Halsted thoughtfully. "We need a one-syllable middle name that every schoolboy knois-and yet doesn't know." "Schoolchild," growled Washburn. "Schoolboy is chauvinistic." Conzalo said, "Go ahead, Roger. You teach school. What does every schoolchild know-and yet not know?" "In my class at the junior high school," said Halsted, gloomily, "every schoolchild knows he ought to know algebra, and what be doesn't know is algebra. If algebra were a one-syllable middle name that would be the answer." Drake said, "Let's be systematic. Only people have middle names in the usual meaning of the word, so we can start with that. If we find a person whom every schoolchild knows-and yet doesn't know, then that person will have a middle name and that middle name will be the answer." "And if you think that," said Washburn, "where does it get you? For one thing, how is it possible to know something or someone-and yet not know? And if it were possible, then it's quite impossible that this should be true of only one person. How would you pick out the correct person? No, that witch was playing games." "Actually," said Avalon, "middle names are, on the whole, uncommon. Nowadays, everyone gets one, but they were much against the rule in the past, it seems to me. Think of some famous people-George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Bonaparte, William Shakespeare-no middle names in the lot. The Greeks had only one name-Socrates, Plato, Demosthenes, Creon. It limits the field somewhat." Halsted said, "There's Robert Louis Stevenson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gustavus Adolphus Vasa." "Who's Gustavus Adolphus Vasa?" asked Gonzalo. "A King of Sweden in the early 1600s," said Halsted. Gonzalo said, "I suppose every Swedish schoolchild would know him, but we should stick to the knowledge of American schoolchildren." "I agree," said Avalon. Rubin said thoughtfully, "The Romans had three names as a matter of course. Julius Caesar was really Gaius Julius Caesar. His assassin, Cassius, was Gaius Cassius Longinus. Every American schoolchild would know the names Julius Caesar and Cassius from Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar, which every American schoolchild is put through. Yet he wouldn't know the names Gaius Julius: Caesar and Gaius Cassius Longinus. He would think Julius was a first name and Cassius was a last name, but each would be a middle name. That would be the sort of thing we're after." Avalon said, "Many cultures use patronymics as routine middle names. Every Russian has one. Peter I of Russia, or Peter the Great, as he's usually known, was really Peter Alexeievich Romanov. Every schoolchild knows Peter the Great and yet doesn't know his middle name, or even that he has one." Rubin said, "There are other possibilities. Some middle names are treated as first names even for Americans. President Grover Cleveland was really Stephen Grover Cleveland. He dropped his first name and used his middle name, so every schoolchild knows Grover Cleveland and doesn't know Stephen Grover Cleveland. The same is true f or Thomas Woodrow Wilson and John Calvin Coolidge. "Then again, some middle names are lost in pen names. Mark Twain was really Samuel Langhorne Clemens, and Lewis Carroll was really Charles Lutwid2e Dodgson. Every schoolchild knows Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll but probably doesn't know Langhorne and Lutwidge." Washburn said impatiently, "Pardon me, gentlemen, but what good is all this? How does it help with the problem? You can rattle off a million middle names, but which one did that female want?" Avalon said solemnly, "We are merely outlining the dimensions of the problem, Mr. Washburn." "And doing it all wrong," said Gonzalo. "Look, every middle name I've heard from Julius to Lutwidge has more than one syllable. Why not think of a one-syllable middle name and work backward? If we want to consider American Presidents, we can start with the letter "s." You can't be more one-syllable than a single letter. Well, it was Harry S Truman; and the S was just S and stood for nothing. Every schoolchild has heard of Harry S Truman, but how many of them know S doesn't stand for anything?Drake said, "For that matter, every schoolchild knows Jimmy Carter; but his name really is James Earl Carter, Jr. The schoolchildren don't know about Earl, and that's one-syllable." Washburn said, "You still have a million answers, and you don't have one. Trumbull suddenly roared out angrily, "Damn it to hell, gentlemen, you're leaving out the third and crucial clue. I'm sitting here waiting for one of you to realize this fact, and you just run around in solemn pedantic circles." "What third clue, Tom?" asked Avalon quietly. "You need a one-syllable middle name; that's one. You need that rigmarole about schoolchildren; that's two. And you have the fact that the woman said that the puzzle was intended to indicate whether Washburn was a man she could live with. That's three. It means that the puzzle must somehow involve male chauvinism, since the woman is an ardent feminist. The implication is that a male chauvinist, such as she firmly believes Washburn to be, would not get the answer." Rubin said, "Good Lord, Tom, you've made sense. What next? Don't tell me you've worked out the answer, too." Trumbull shook his head. "Not exactly, but I suggest we confine ourselves to women's names. A feminist would argue that many women have played important roles in history but that male chauvinism tends to blot them out. Therefore every schoolchild should know them, but doesn't." Halsted said, "No, Tom. That's not the clue. It's not something every schoolchild should know but doesn't. It's something every schoolchild knows and doesn't. That's different." "Besides," said Rubin, "even if we confine ourselves to women, we have no clear route to the answer. If we stick to historic feminists,'for instance, we have Susan Brownell Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Helen Gurley Brown, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan-who's got a one-syllable middle name?" Drake said, "It needn't be a feminist." His little eyes seemed to peer thoughtfully into the middle distance. "It might just be a woman who contributed to history-like the one who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin and helped cause the Civil War, as Lincoln said." "Harriet Beecher Stowe," said Rubin impatiently, "and Beecher has two syllables." "Yes," said Drake, "but I merely mentioned it as an example. What about the woman who wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," Julia Ward Howe? How many syllables in Ward?" Avalon said, "How is that something every schoolchild knows and yet doesn't know?" Drake said, "Every schoolchild knows, "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord" and yet doesn't know the author, because she's a woman. At least that's what a feminist might claim.There was a confused outcry of objections, and Avalon's deep voice suddenly rose into an overtopping bellow, "How about Little Women, which was written by Louisa May Alcott? Which would the answer be: Ward or May?" Washburn suddenly cut in sharply, "Neither one." Drake said, "Why not? How do you know?" Washburn said, "Because she sent me what she said was the answer when she wrote to say she was married. And it isn't either Ward or May." Rubin said indignantly, "You've withheld information, sir." "No, I haven't," said Washburn. "I didn't have that information when I tried to get the answer, and now that I have it, I still don't see why. I think she just chose an answer at random as a continuing part of her intention of making me feel like an idiot. "Nor will I give you the solution now, since you'll be able to dream up a reason once you have the name, and that's not good. The point is to be able to get a solution and reason it out without knowing the answer in advance-though she did hand me a feminine name. I'll give Mr. Trumbull that much." Gonzalo said, "If we can reason out the name she gave and tell you what it is and why, will you feel better?" Washburn said gloomily, "I think so. At least I might imagine it was a fair test and that I might have had her if I were brighter, and she wasn't just laughing at me. But can anyone tell me what the middle name is?" He looked about the table and met six thoughtful stares. Gonzalo said, "Do you have any ideas on the subject, Henry?" The waiter, who was removing the brandy glasses, said, quietly, "Unless the middle name in question is Ann, Mr. Gonzalo, I'm afraid I am helpless." Washburn let out an incoherent cry, pushed back his chair with a loud scraping noise, and jumped up. "But it is Ann," he cried out. "How did you come to decide on that? Was it a guess or do you have a reason?" He had reached out almost as though he were going to seize Henry by his shoulders and shake the answers out of him, but controlled himself with obvious difficulty. Henry said, "The gentlemen of the Black Widowers supplied the pieces, sir. I needed only to put them together. Mr. Rubin said that a middle name might be hidden by a pseudonym, as in the case of Mark Twain. Mr. Trumbull pointed out that feminism was involved. It seemed to me quite possible that at times in history someone who was a woman might hide under a male pseudonym, and I pondered over whether there were such a case in connection with something every schoolchild would know. "surely, one book that schoolchildren have notoriously been required to read for decade after decade has been Silas Marner. Every schoolchild knows it, and the further fact that it was written by George Eliot. It seemed to me, though, that that was a pseudonym. I checked it in the encyclopedia on the reference shelf, while the discussion raged, and I found that Eliot's real name is Mary Ann Evans." Washburn said, eyes big with wonder, "Then it was a fair question. I'm glad of that. But do you mean that the jerk she married figured it out?" Henry said, "He may well have. I think it would be best for you, sir, to believe that he did." "Middle Name"-Afterword This story was written on a train trip to Richmond, Virginia, where I was slated to keynote a conference, and during my stay in Richmond. The Trap Door Spiders and, therefore, the Black Widowers too, are indeed stag orpnizations. Only men can be members; only men can be ts. What s more, the Trap Door Spiders actually had their beginnings in the way attributed, in this story, to the Black Widowers. Stag organizations are, of course, outmoded things in these days. I cannot speak for the other Trap Door Spiders, but my conscience hurts me over the matter. Janet, fortunately, is a very tolerant woman and is rather foolishly besotted with me so that she is willing to allow me to stay with not only one, but four, stag organizations, since she feels I enjoy them. Well, I do enjoy them and I quiet my conscience by agitating from within in favor of open membership for women as well as men-but so far vainly in every case. To the Barest. Emmanuel Rubin said in a scandalized whisper, "He offered to pay for the dinner." He glanced with owlish ferocity at the guest who was attending that month's Black Widowers" banquet. "Yes, he did," said Mario Gonzalo casually. "And I suppose you accepted," said Rubin. "No, I didn't, though I don't see why he shouldn't if he wants to. If someone is anxious to pay for the privilege of dining with us, why not let him?" "Because we would be selling our freedom of choice, you idiot, and that is without price to the rest of us. Do you think I'm willing to eat with anyone who'll pick up my check? I choose my companions. Damn it, Mario, if he offered to buy us that should in itself instantly disqualify him as a guest." "Well, it doesn't, so why not calm down, Manny, and listen? I've told the others already and saved you for last because I knew you'd rant away. He got in touch with me. "Do you know him?" "No, but he introduced himself. He's Matthew Parris, and he's a lawyer. He knew of the Black Widowers. He knew I was to be the next host and he wanted to see us professionally, all of us. He asked to join us at our banquet and offered to pay if that would help. He seemed like an interesting guy, so why not?" Rubin said discontentedly, "Why should professional matters intrude on the banquet? What does he want to do, serve us with summonses?" "No," said Gonzalo with an affectation of eye-rolling impatience. "He represents Ralph Ottur. We still send Ralph invitations, and that's how this Y, Parris, knew I was the next host. He got in touch with me at Ralp'Vs instructions. I suppose you remember Ralph." Rubin"s eyes flashed behind his thick-lensed glasses. "Of course I remember him. I'm surprised you do. I didn't know you had become a member before he left." "Memory decays with age, Manny." Rubin ignored that. "That was twelve, fifteen years ago when be left us, when the Black Widowers were just beginning. That was before we met at the Milano-before Henry's time." He looked in Henry's direction with a smile and said, "It doesn't seem possible we could have had meetings of the Black Wi "dowers without Henry. But then, in those days we wouldn't have believed it possible to have dinners without Ralph. It was in "65 he went to California, wasn't it? We were kids then." "I believe," said Geoffrey Avalon, who had drifted toward them, his neatly bearded face solemn, "that you and 1, Manny, were fortyish even then. Scarcely kids." "Oh well," Rubin said. "What does Ralph want with us, Mario?" "I don't know," said Gonzalo. "Parris wouldn't say. Have you beard from him lately?" "Not a word in years. He doesn't even send in a refusal card to the invitations. Have you heard from him, Geoff?" "No," said Avalon. "Tom Trumbull says Ralph is teaching navigation at CIT but has had no personal communication." "Well, then, Geoff, what do we do about this lawyer Mario has dragged in?" "Treat him as any other guest. What else can we do?" Henry approached, his smooth and unwrinkled face radiating the efficiency that was characteristic of this best of waiters. He said, "Mr. Gonzalo, we are ready to begin dinner if you will be so kind as to call the meeting to order." The dinner was quieter than usual as Matthew Parris somehow absorbed the attention of the others. He seemed oblivious to that, however, his smooth-shaven face shining pinkly, his graying hair slicked smoothly back, his smile wide and unaffected, his speech precise and with a flat midwestern accent. At no time did be refer to the business at hand, but confined himself to discussing the Middle Eastern situation. The trouble, he said, was that both sides were playing for time. The Arabs felt that as oil supplies dwindled, world hunger for energy would bring victory. Israel felt that as oil supplies dwindled, Arab influence would dwindle with it. To which James Drake said somberly that as oil supplies dwindled, civilization might break down and the whole matter of victory (quote, unquote, he said) in the Middle East or anywhere else would be irrelevant. "Ah," said Parris, "but your fiery ideolog doesn't care about trivial things such as survival. He would rather win in hell than lose in heaven." Mario Gonzalo, who had put aside his rather blinding pea-green jacket and was eating veal cordon bleu in his striped shirt-sleeves, leaned toward Thomas Trumbull and whispered, "This whole thing may be a practical joke, Tom. I only met Ralph two or three times before he left. He was a peculiar fellow as I recall." Trumbull's bronzed forehead furrowed under his white thatch of hair. "So are we all, I hope. Ralph Ottur founded this club. We used to eat at his house during the first two or three years. He was a widower, a gourmet cook, an astonomer, and a word buff." "That's what I remember. The word-buff bit." 41Y es," said Trumbull. "He's written books on acrostics and on novelty verse of all kinds. Conundrums involving word play and puns were a specialty of his. He's the one who got Roger Halsted interested in limericks." Gonzalo laughed. "How did you stand it, Tom?" Trumbull shrugged. "It wasn't the sole topic of conversation, and I was younger then. However, Ralph remarried, as you probably remember, went to the West Coast, and we never heard from him again. Then Jim Drake and I found the Milano, and the Black Widowers has been here ever since, better than ever." Henry refilled the coffee cups, and Gonzalo played a melodious tattoo on his water glass with his spoon. "Jim," he said, "as the oldest member and the one who best knew Ralph Ottur in the old days when even Manny claims to have been a kid, would you do the grilling honors?" James Drake lit a fresh cigarette and said, "Mr. Parris, how do you justify your existence?" "At the moment," said Parris, "by attempting to make you somewhat richer than you have been hitherto. Or if not you, Dr. Drake, then another one of you." "Don't you know which?" "I'm afraid not, gentlemen. In order to know, I must complete the reading of the will." "Will? What will?" Drake took the cigarette from his mouth, placed it in an ashtray, and looked uneasy. A heavy silence descended on the rest of the table. Henry, who had been serving brandy, desisted. Parris said seriously, "I was instructed to say nothing concerning the matter tilf I was a guest at a Black Widowers banquet and till I was being grilled. Not till this moment.Drake said, "It is this moment. Go on." Parris said, "I'm sorry to have to tell you that Mr. Ralph Ottur died last month. He had been pretty much of a recluse since his second wife died three years ago and, at his request, no announcement of his death was made. Though he had made a clean break with his life in New York after he left for California, he did not, apparently, forget his old friends of the Black Widowers. He asked that I hand out one of these to each of you, provided all six were present, and you all are." Envelopes were passed out to each of the stunned Black Widowers. Each bore the name of a Black Widower in careful India ink lettering. Drake muttered, "There's his monogram." Each envelope bore a stylized sketch of what was unmistakably an otter with a fish in its mouth. Trumbull said, "Did we each get the same?" Gonzalo said, "Read it and we'll see." Trumbull hesitated, then read in a low monotone, ""Well, don't sit there like idiots. There's no reason to get into a mood. Remember, "mood" spelled backward is "doom." I've been with you in spirit every month since I left, even if you haven't heard from me, and I'm with you again now, ready for our last game." "That's what mine says," said Gonzalo. There was a murmur of agreement from the rest. "Well, then," said Parris briskly, "I'll now read the mill-not the entire will, you understand, but only that portion that applies to the club. If you're ready. . There was silence and Parris read, "It is my further wish and desire to make a bequest to the Black Widowers, a club I helped found and for the members of which I have always had a profound affection. Therefore, I wish to leave a sum of money, which, after taxes are paid, is to come to ten thousand dollars. This sum is to go to one of the following gentlemen, all of whom were members of the club at the last meeting I attended and all of whom, I believe, are still alive. They are: Thomas Trumbull, James Drake, Emmanuel Rubin, Geoffrey Avalon, Roger Halsted, and Mario Gonzalo." Parris looked up and said, "For the record, there are six of you at the table and I believe you are the six whose names I have read off. Are there any discrepancies?" Gonzalo said, "There is a seventh member. Henry, our waiter, is the best Black Widower of them all.Halsted said, "He wasn't a member in Ralph's day. Hell, I can't believe he's dead. Do you remember that time he asked us to find a common Eng- lish word that contained the letters "ufa" in that order? It kept us quiet all that evening." "Yes," said Drake, "and it was you who got it. That's why you remember." Rubin said, "Quiet!" His straggly beard bristled. "I demand silence. The will hasn't been read yet. What does Ralph mean that one of us will get the money? Why only one and which one?" Parris cleared his throat. "I don't know. It is at this point I have been instructed to open a small envelope labeled, "One." Here it is." "Well, don't open it just yet," said Rubin violently. "Mario, you're the host, but listen to me. If any bequest were left to the club or to the six of us in equal division, that would be all right. To leave it to only one of uF would, however, create hard feelings. Let's agree, then, that whoever get, the money sets up a fund for the use of the Black Widowers as an entity." Gonzalo said, "I'm willing. Any arguments?" There was none, and Gonzalo said, "Open the envelope, Mr. Parris." Parris opened it, withdrew a three-by-five card, glanced at it, looked surprised, and said, "It says, "To the barest."" "What?" said Trumbull indignantly. Parris looked on the other side, shook his head, and said, "That's all it says. See for yourselves." The card was passed around. Avalon chuckled and said, "Don't you get it? He said in his note there would be a last game and this is it." "What kind of game?" said Gonzalo. Rubin snorted and said, "Not one of his good ones. Go ahead and explain, Geoff." Avalon looked solemn and said, "In the Greek myths, the sea nympl Thetis married the mortal Peleus, and to the wedding all the gods anc goddesses were invited. The goddess of discord, Eris, was overlooked. Furi, ous, she appeared unbidden and, into the happy throng, tossed a golder, apple, then left. Hermes picked it up and noticed a small message at tached. What it said was, "To the fairest." Three goddesses at once reache, for it-Hera, the queen of heaven; Athena, the goddess of wisdom; am Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty. The quarrel that resulte, ended in the Trojan War." "Exactly," said Rubin, "and I suggest we not play Ralph's game. I don'i know what the hell he means by the barest, but if we start arguing abou which one of us qualifies for ten thousand dollars we will end with ever one of us aggrieved, winner and losers alike, even if we put the mone, into a fund. Earlier, Mr. Parris said that ideologs valued victory above sur vival, but I don't. I don't want to see the Black Widowers come to an em over the question of who wins ten thousand dollars." "Hear, hear," said Gonzalo. "Even you say something sensible now and then, Manny. Let's agree that each one of us is in a six-way tic for barest, take the money, and put it into the fund." "Excellent," said Avalon. "I don't see that there would be any objection to that." Again, there was a silence, but Parris said, "I'm afraid my instructions were to allow discussion and then to open another small envelope marked Two.) )I Gonzalo looked surprised and said, "Well, open it." Parris opened the second envelope, removed a folded piece of paper, and unfolded it to find a single-spaced typwritten message. He glanced over it and chuckled. He said, "Here is what it says: "I have no doubt that Geoff Avalon, in his endearingly pedantic way, will have by now explained the connection of the message with the apple of discord at the wedding of Thetis and Peleus. . . ." Avalon, having flushed to his hairline, said stiffly, "I have never denied that I have a touch of pedantry about me. I trust that I have never been offensively so, or if I have, that I may count on my outspoken comrades of the Black Widowers to tell me so." "Don't get defensive, Geoff," said Trumbull. "We're all pedants. Go on, Mr. Parris." Parris nodded and said, of Thetis and Peleus. It may also be that someone, possibly Manny Rubin, will suggest that the game be refused and that the money be shared. Not so! Sorry to insist, but only one person gets the money, and that person will be he who can demonstrate himself to be the barest to the satisfaction of the executor of the will. Failin that, no one of them will get the money. I dare say Geoff can exp e appropriateness of this, if he has not already done so." Avalon cleared his throat and looked harassed. "I don't think it's necessary I do so." Rubin said, "It's all right, Geoff. I'll take over. Everyone knows Im no pedant." "Not bright enough," muttered Gonzalo. Rubin, glaring briefly at Gonzalo, said, "As Geoff said, three goddesses claimed that apple. Hermes, who had picked it up, could see at once that this was no place for an innocent god, and he absolutely declined to make a decision. One by one, the other gods also declined. After considerable discussion, someone suggested that some poor mortal be stuck with the task. The one selected was a shepherd boy on the slopes of Mount Ida near Troy. "The three goddesses appeared to him in all their magnificence, and each, fearing she might not win in a fair contest, attempted to bribe the judge. Hera offered him world conquest; Athena offered him the crown of wisdom; and Aphrodite offered him the most beautiful girl in the world as his wife. "The shepherd boy was young enough to find the third bribe the most attractive, and chose Aphrodite. Undoubtedly, she would have won in a fair contest of fairness, but it was a disastrous choice just the same. The most beautiful'girl in the world was Helen, queen of Sparta, and the shepherd boy some years later carried her off with Aphrodite's help, and that started the Trojan War. "The shepherd boy's name was Paris, and he was one of the fifty sons of Priam, king of Troy. The decision among the goddesses is a favorite scene among artists and is commonly referredto as "The Judgment of Paris." Clearly, Ralph couldn't resist playing on words and setting up "The Judgment of Parris'-two r's." Parris smiled and said, "I seem to have the worst of it. Instead of choosing among three glorious goddesses, I am faced with deciding among six not particularly attractive men." Rubin said, "You're not faced with any decision at all, actually. Ralph can't make us play the game. If the only way we can get the ten thousand dollars is to compete for it, then I suggest we let the whole thing go. Ten thousand dollars is something we can live without-we have livfd Vithout it all these years. What ve can't live without is our mutual friendship." Halsted looked regretful. "Well, now, we can use the money. It could defray part of the costs of the banquets. What with inflation, 1, for one, am finding it difficult to cover the expenses. Since I'm the most nearly bald member of the group, can't we say I'm obviously the barest and let it go at that?" Gonzalo said, "We could decide that "barest" means "the most nearly nude." Then I can strip to my underwear, collect, and we'll set up the fund." "Oh God," said Rubin. "Look, I'd pay you ten thousand dollars, if I had it to spare, not to strip." Drake said dreamily, "If we were ecdysiasts, it would all be simple. A nice six-way tie." Parris said, "Now, gentlemen, wait. This is serious. I disapprove of wills such as this one, but I am the executor and I must treat it seriously. I don't know what Mr. Ottur means by the arest," but it is undoubtedly something that is first, not obvious, and second, compelling. If one of you can demonstrate what is meant by "barest" and then show compellingly that one or another of you is "barest," I will release the money. Otherwise I can't. Baldness and, for that matter, nudity, do not strike me as clever explanations of the meaning of the phrase. Try again." "No, we won't," said Aubin. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Roger, for that baldness suggestion. If you need money that badly, I'll contribute to the payment when it's your turn to host." Halsted turned red and he pointed an angry finger at Rubin, "I don't need money that badly; and I wouldn't come to you for help if I were starving." Avalon said, "Well, the apple of discord is beginning to do its work, obviously. Manny is right. Let's let it go, whire we're still on speaking terms." " Halsted frowned as he passed the palm of his hand over his high forebead, but he kept quiet. Rubin muttered, "Sorry, Rog. I meant no offense." Halsted waved a briefly forgiving hand. Parris said, with considerably more than a trace Of aPOJO2 , "My instruc- gy tions are that after you have had time for discussion, I am to open the small envelope marked, "Three."" Drake said softly, "How many envelopes do you have, Mr. Parris? This can go on all night." "This is the last envelope," said Parris. "Don't open it," roared Rubin. "There's nothing he can say that will change our minds." Parris said, "I am compelled to open ind read this third message by the ethics of my profession. I can't compel you to listen, of course, so if any of you wish to leave the room, you may." No one did, however; not even Rubin. Parris opened the third envelope and this time he looked grim as he scanned the message. "I think you had better listen," he said. "The message reads, "I think it possible that the group may decide to turn down the bequest rather than play the game. If they do so, or if they play but do not solve the riddle, I do will and bequeath the money, unconditionally, to the American Nazi Party." There was a unanimous wordless rumble from the Black Widowers. Parris nodded. "That's what it says. See for yourselves." "You can't do that," said Halsted. "I am legally compelled to do so," said Parris, "if you refuse to play the game. I am just a sluice through which the money passes. I cannot take independent action. Of course, any or all of you may contest the will, but I don't see what grounds you can possibly have-what legal grounds, that is. A man can do as he wishes with his property within certain clearly defined legal limits, and those limits don't seem to be transgressed here." "Then let's play the game," said Halsted. "I say I'm the barest because I'm the baldest. I don't say that to. win the money, Manny; I say it to keep it out of the hands of the Nazis. Now if you'll agree to that, Mr. Parris, you can hand over the money, and we'll put it into the, fund, and thaes that." Parris hesitated. "I'd like to. I would really like to. The trouble is I can t. "Why not? Do you want the money to go to the Nazis?" "Of course not," said Parris, with some indignation, "but my only duty here is to respect the will of my client, and he wants one of you to demonstrate that he is the barest in so clever and unmistakable a way that I will be compelled to accept it and to select one of the six of you as the winner. After that, the money is the property of the winner and he is free to do with it as he wishes-keep it, divide it equally among the six of you, set UP a trust fund for whatever legal purpose, or anything else." "Are you sure?" said Trumbull. "No more clever little notes?" "No more," said Parris. "The reading is complete. I must remind you now that it's a case of "The judgment of Parris." You have to convince me of the validity of the solution or I have to give the money to-to- I have no choice." Gonzalo said, "According to Manny, Paris-the original Paris-was bribed into giving his judgment. Does that mean. - ." Parris said seriously, "Please don't finish that remark, Mr. Gonzalo. It will not be funny." Rubin said, "Then we have no choice. We have to play the game. Who's the barest?" Halsted says, "We can't answer that until we find out what the old bWell, nil nisi bonum and all that. What does Ralph mean by arest," if he doesn't mean baldest?" "He may mean "poorest," the person who is barest of money," said Gonzalo. "I think I'm in the running for that." "Or shortest," said Avalon, "the one who most nearly barely exists, so to speak. That's you, Manny." "You may have eight inches on me, Geoff," said Rubin, "but that could be eight inches of solid bone. How about the one with the smallest wardrobe, which eliminates Mario, or else the lowest IQ, which puts him right back into the running again?" "Gentlemen, gentlemen," interposed Parris, "none of this sounds in the least convincing. Please be serious." "You're right," said Rubin, "this is too serious a matter for fooling, but I hate this thing too much to be able to think clearly about it. I say we get Henry into the thing right now." Henry, who had been standing at the sideboard, listening attentively, now shook his head. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but that would not be fitting. The deceased di not know of me, did not consider me a member of the club, and I do not gualify to play the game." "You're a member now," said Trumbull gruffly. "You may not qualify to inherit the money, but you qualify to advise us as to who may. Go on and tell us, Henry." Henry said, "I don't think I can, Mr. Trumbull. If I am a member of the Black Widowers, I am the only member who has never met Mr. Ottur. I do not know the cast of his thought." Trumbull said, "There's no mystery there. You've heard us discussing him. He was a word nut. Come on, Henry, if you didn't know Ralph, neither did he know you. He didn't know your faculty for seeing the simple things." Henry sighed. 1 will do my best, sir. May I ask some questions? For instance, am I correct in taking it for granted that the deceased was not a Nazi sympathizer?" "Hell, no," said Rubin with a snort. "Quite the reverse. During the 1950s he was in trouble because some people thought his views were too leftist." "Then he doesn't want the money to be left to the Nazis?" "Of course not." "So he expects you to win." Avalon said, "He expects us to do so, but he may overestimate our abilities." Henry said, "Do you suppose his eagerness to have you win would extend to his giving you a hint?" Gonzalo said, "What kind of a hint?" "I'm not sure, Mr. Gonzalo, but let us see. Is Mr. Ottur's name spelled in the usual way?" "You mean like the animal?" said Trumbull. "O-t-t-e-r? No. It's spelled O-t-t-u-r. With a "u."" Henry said, "I believe that when the preliminary envelopes were handed out, Dr. Drake said something about Mr. Ottur's monogram." Drake said, "I meant this sketch on the envelope." "Yes. I had thought that might possibly be so. Has he always used that monogram, Dr. Drake?" "As long as I've known him, and that goes back a long time." Henry said, "I can understand the otter, which is a clear reference to Mr. Ottur's name, in a punning sort of way. May I ask if it is known whether the fish in the otter's mouth is a trout?" There was no reply at first, but finally Avalon said, "I don't know that I gave that any thought. It could be a trout, I suppose. Why do you ask?" "Only because trout, t-r-o-u-t, is an anagram of Ottur, o-t-t-u-r. The two words consist of the same letters in different arrangements. An otter hold- ing a trout is a double reference to his last name by -way of a pun and an anagram. Does that fit his character?" "Absolutely," said Rubin. "The otter was obvious to all of us but I never thought of the trout. He never explained that, as far as I can recall, but then he never explained anything. He wanted everything worked out. But what does all this have to do with the problem facing us, Henry?" "It seemed to me, gentlemen, that the preliminary message was not really a necessary prelude to the will and might well have been omitted. Furthermore, I saw no point in giving each one of you an identical message. A single message read out would have done as well, as in the case of the three messages in the three envelopes that were part of the will. "Looking at it in that fashion," Henry went on, "it occurs to me that he was really handing out his monogram and making sure that each one of you got a good look at it, and will therefore perhaps think of using it as a clue to the nature of the game. The monogram is a pun and anagram on Mr. Ottur's last name. The solution to the problem facing us may rest in just that-puns and anagrams on last names." The six Black Widowers looked thoughtful at that, each in his own way, and finally Drake stirred. He said, "You know, that sounds like Ralph, and if so, let me point out that d-r-a-k-e can be rearranged into r-a-k-e-d, and a piece of ground that has been raked is bare, so say nothing of the fact that it is only one letter removed from n-a-k-e-d, which is certainly barest." Parris said, ""Raked" doesn't sound compelling to me, and "naked" is completely impermissible. I don't think we would be allowed to substitute letters." Rubin said, "Let me offer a pun, then. We don't have to rearrange the letters r-u-b-i-n. Just change it into two words, r-u-b i-n, "rub in." Cold cream, which is rubbed into the skin, appears to vanish and leave the skin bare. How about that?" "Even more farfetched than "raked,"" said Parris. Gonzalo said, "g-o-n-z-a-l-o can be rearranged to a-z-o-l-o-n-g, which is "a so long" in a German accent. A good-bye, in other words, and when everyone says good-bye, you're left bare of company." "Good God!" said Rubin. "I can't think of anything else," said Gonzalo defensively. "If we're going to misspell," said Halsted, "my name can be rearranged into s-t-e-a-l-d-h, which is a misspelling of stealth," and if people steal away, the place is left bare." "Worse and worse," said Rubin. "I'm worst of all," said Trumbull, scowling. "The only vowels in my name are two U's, and I can't do anything with that." Parris said impatiently, "You are still not serious, gentlemen. None of this is worth anything at all. Please! If you want to keep the money from falling into vile hands, you must do better." Avalon, who had had a tight smile on his face for the preceding few minutes, now hunched his magnificent eyebrows down over his eyes and let out a satanic cackle. "But I have it, gentlemen, and I'm delighted to be able to say that Henry, our unexcelled waiter, has overlooked the key clue. No matter, Henry. Even Homer nods." "Far less often than I do, Mr. Avalon. What clue did I overlook, sir?" "Why, in the preliminary message, there is not only the monogram, as you correctly pointed out, Henry, but also a reference to the fact that m-o-o-d, spelled backward, is d-o-o-m. That statement is rather a non sequitur, and we have a right to wonder why it's brought in at all." "Because that's the way Ralph thinks-or thought," said Drake. "Undoubtedly, but if you will take the trouble to spell Avalon backward, you have n-o l-a-v-a. No puns, no rearrangements, just do as Ralph did in the message." Parris clenched both hands in excitement. "Now, that's the most interesting thing I've heard yet. But why "no lava"?" Avalon said, "A piece of ground over which lava has not flowed is bare." Parris considered this and shook his head. "We might just as easily consider that ground over which lava has not flowed is rich in vegetation and is not bare. In that sense, it would be land over which lava has flowed that would be bare." Avalon said, "Very well, then, we can rearrange the letters slightly and we have o-n l-a-v-a. By Councilor Parris's argument there would be no vegetation on lava, and that anagram represents bareness." "What'about the reversed lettering?" said Gonzalo. "Mood to doom and all that." "Well," said Avalon, "we'll have to eliminate that." Parris said, "I liked "no lava," but it was not convincing. The reason I liked it, though, was that the backward spelling did seem to be a reasonable solution. "On lava" without the backward spelling has nothing to recornmend it." There was a moment of silence and Rubin said, "You know, this is getting less funny all the time. Are we going to end up giving the money to the Nazis, even with Henry's help? Gonzalo said "Well, let's ask him. What are we doing wrong, Henry?" Henry said, "I'm not sure, Mr. Gonzalo. It does occur to me, though , that so far we have been punning and anagramming our last names-that is, the potential answers. Ought we to be working the question as well?" "I don't see what you mean, Henry," said Avalon. "It strikes me, Mr. Avalon, that the phrase "to the barest" might just pos- sibly be punned into "to the bearest"; that is, b-e-a-r-e-s-t, the Black Widower most like a bear." Trumbull said, "Terrible! It's a terrible pun and it's a terrible suggestion. I don't see how we can get any one of us to be clearly most like a bear anymore than we can get any one of us most bare." Gonzalo said, "I don't know, Tom. You've got a terrible temper. You're the most bearish." "Not while Manny is alive," said Trumbull hotly. "I've never lost my temper in my life, damn it," shouted Rubin, just as hotly. "Yes, like now," said Halsted. Parris said, "Gentlemen, this is getting us nowhere either. Unless someone can think of something, we'll have to give up." Henry said, "But we now have our solution, to my way of thinking, Mr. Parris. If we take the challenge to be that of finding the Black Widower most like a bear, may I point out that if we change the position of but one letter in r-u-b-i-n, we get b-r-u-i-n, the common name for the bear in the medieval animal epics, and still used today. I believe there is a hockey team known as the "Bruins."" Parris said energetically, "I'll buy that. It is a clear solution that fits and is unique." The Black Widowers broke into applause, and Henry turned pink. Rubin said, "Since the money is mine, then, I will set up the trust fund with directions that the earned interest be turned over to Henry as an honorarium for his services to the club." There was applause again. Henry said, "Gentlemen, please don't. I will be overpaid." "Come, come, Henry," said Rubin, "Are you refusing?" Henry considered, sighed, and said, "I accept, sir, with thanks." "To the Barest"-Afterword I don't want the Black Widowers to be part of the real world. In the case of the Trap Door Spiders, deaths have occurred, and new members have been elected, but I don't intend to let that happen to the Black Widowers. No one is going to die and no new member is goin to be elected. Nor is anyone going to age. Henry was "sixtyish" in the first story, and though nearly a decade has passed he is still "sixtyish," and he is going to stay that no matter how long I live and the stories continue. AvAlon will continue to stare down from his seventy-four inches of height, and Rubin's beard will continue to be straggly. And yet, the exigencies of the plot and the tug of nostalgia lured me on to introduce Ralph Ottur as the founder of the Black Widowers and to depict him as having died. Of course, the Trap Door Spiders were founded by science-fiction writer and naval historian Fletcher Pratt, who died over twenty years ago, and is fondly remembered by all who knew him. "To the Barest" appeared in the August 1979 EQMM. The Acquisitive Chuckle. Hanley Bartram was the guest, that night, of the Black Widowers, who monthly met in their quiet haunt and vowed death to any female who intruded-for that one night per month, at any rate. The number of attendees varied: five members were present on this occasion. Geoffrey Avalon was host for the evening. He was tall, with a neatly trimmed mustache and a smallish beard, more white than black now, but with hair nearly as black as ever. As host, it was his duty to deliver the ritual toast that marked the beginning of the dinner proper. Loudly, and with gusto, he said, "To Old King Cole of sacred memory. May his pipe be forever lit, his bowl forever full, his fiddlers forever in health, and may we all be as merry as be all our lives long." Each cried, "Amen," touched his lips to drink, and sat down. Avalon put his drink to the side of his plate. It was his second and was now exactly half full. It would remain there throughout the dinner and was not to be touched again. He was a patent lawyer and he carried over into his social life the minutiae of his work. One and a half drinks was precisely what be allowed himself on these occasions. Thomas Trumbull came storming up the stairs at the last minute, with the usual cry of "Henry, a scotch and soda for a dying man." Henry, the waiter at these functions for several years now (and with no last name that any Black Widower had ever heard used), had the scotch and soda in readiness. He was sixtyish but his face was unwrinkled and staid. His voice seemed to recede into the distance even as he spoke. "Right here, Mr. Trumbull." Trumbull spotted Bartram at once and said to Avalon in an aside, "Your guest?" "He asked to come," said Avalon, in as near a whisper as he could manage. "Nice fellow. You'll like him." The dinner itself went as miscellaneously as the Black Widowers" affairs usually did. Emmanuel Rubin, who had the other beard-a thin and scraggly one under a mouth with widely spaced teetb-had broken out of a writer's block and was avidly giving the details of the story be had finished. James Drake, with a rec- tangular face, a mustache but no beard, was interrupting with memories of other stories, tangentially related. Drake was only an organic chemist but he had an encyclopedic knowledge of pulp fiction. Trumbull, as a code expert, considered himself to be in the inner councils of government and took it into his head to be outraged at Mario Gonzalo's political pronouncements. "God damn it," he yelled, in one of his less vituperative moods, "why don't you stick to your idiotic collages and your burlap bags and leave world affairs to your betters?" Trumbull had not recovered from Gonzalo's one-man art show earlier that year, and Gonzalo, understanding this, laughed goodnaturedly, and said, "Show me my betters. Name one." Bartram, short and plump, with hair that curled in ringlets, clung firmly to his role as guest. He listened to everyone, smiled at everyone, and said little. Eventually the time came when Henry poured the coffee and began to place the desserts before each guest with practiced legerdemain. It was at this moment that the traditional grilling of the guest was supposed to begin. The initial questioner, almost by tradition (on those occasions when he was present), was Thomas Trumbull. His swarthy face, wrinkled into a perennial discontent, looked angry as he began with the invariable opening question: "Mr. Bartram, how do you justify your existence?" Bartram smiled. He spoke with precision as be said, "I have never tried. My clients, on those occasions when I give satisfaction, find my existence justified." "Your clients?" said Rubin. "What is it you do, Mr. Bartram?" "I am a private investigator." "Good," said James Drake. "I don't think we've ever had one before. Manny, you can get some of the data correct for a change when you write your tougb-guy crap." "Not from me," said Bartram quickly. Trumbull scowled. "If you don't mind, gentlemen, as the appointed grillster, please leave this to me. Mr. Bartram, you speak of the occasions upon which you give satisfaction. Do you always give satisfaction?" "There are times when the matter can be debated," said Bartram. "In fact, I would like to speak to you this evening concerning an occasion that was particularly questionable. It may even be that one of you might be useful in that connection. It was with that in mind that I asked my good friend Jeff Avalon to invite me to a Meeting, once I learned the details of the organization. He obliged and I am delighted." "Are you ready now to discuss this dubious satisfaction you gave or did not give, as the case may be?" "Yes, if you will allow me." Trumbull looked at the others for signs of dissent. Gonzalo's prominent eyes were fixed on Bartram as he said, "May we interrupt?" Quickly, and with an admirable economy of strokes, he was doodling a caricature of Bartram on the back of his menu card. It would join the others which memorialized guests and which marched in brave array across the walls. "Within reason," said Bartram. He paused to sip at his coffee and then said, "The story begins with Anderson, to whom I shall refer only in that fashion. He was an acquisitor." "An inquisitor?" asked Gonzalo, frowning. "An acquisitor. He gained things, be earned them, he bought them, be picked them up, be collected them. The world moved in one direction with respect to him; it moved toward him; never away. He had a house into which this flood of material, of varying value, came to rest and never moved again. Through the years, it grew steadily thicker and amazingly heterogeneous. He also had a business partner, whom I shall call only Jackson." Trumbull interrupted, frowning, not because there was anything to frown about, but because be always frowned. He said, "Is this a true story?" "I tell only true stories," said Bartram slowly and precisely. "I lack the imagination to lie." "Is it confidential?" "I shall not tell the story in such a way as to make it easily recognized, but were it to be recognized, it would be confidential." "I follow the subjunctive," said Trumbull, "but I wish to assure you that what is said within the walls of this room is never repeated, nor referred to, however tangentially, outside its walls. Henry understands this, too." Henry, who was refilling two of the coffeccups, smiled a little and bent his head in agreement. Bartram smiled also and went on, "Jackson had a disease, too. He was honest; unavoidably and deeply honest. The characteristic permeated his soul as though, from an early age, he had been marinated in integrity. "To a man like Anderson, it was most useful to have honest Jackson as partner, for their business, which I carefully do not describe in detail, required contact with the public. Such contact was not for Anderson, for his acquisitiveness stood in the way. With each object be acquired, another little crease of slyness en- tered his face, until it seemed a spider's web that frightened all flies at sight. It was Jackson, the pure and the honest, who was the front man, and to whom all widows hastened with their mites, and orphans with their farthings. "On the other hand, Jackson found Anderson a necessity, too, for Jackson, with all his honesty, perhaps because of it, had no knack for making one dollar become two. Left to himself, he would, entirely without meaning to, lose every cent entrusted to him and would then quickly be forced to kill himself as a dubious fonn of restitution. Anderson's hands were to money, however, as fertilizer is to roses, and he and Jackson were, together, a winning combination. "Yet no paradise continues forever, and a besetting characteristic, left to itself, will deepen, widen, and grow more extreme. Jackson's honesty grew to such colossal proportions that Anderson, for all his shrewdness, was occasionally backed to the wall and forced into monetary loss. Similarly, Anderson's acquisitiveness burrowed to such infernal depths that Jackson, for all his morality, found himself occasionally twisted into questionable practices. "Naturally, as Anderson disliked losing money, and Jackson abhorred losing character, a coolness grew between the two. In such a situation the advantage clearly lay on the side of Anderson, who placed no reasonable limits on his actions, whereas Jackson felt himself bound by a code of ethics. "Slyly, Anderson worked and maneuvered until, eventually, poor honest Jackson found himself forced to sell out his end of the partnership under the most disadvantageous possible conditions. "Anderson's acquisitiveness, we might say, had reached a climax, for he acquired sole control of the business. It was his intention to retire now, leaving its everyday running to employees, and concerning himself no further than was required to pocket its profits. Jackson, on the other hand, was left with nothing more than his honesty, and while honesty is an admirable characteristic, it has small direct value in a hockshop. "It was at this point, gentlemen, that I entered the picture. . . . Ah, Henry, thank you." The glasses of brandy were being passed about. "You did not know these people to begin with?" asked Rubin, his sharp eyes blinking. "Not at all," said Bartram, sniffing delicately at the brandy and just touching it to his upper lip, "though I think one of you in this room did. It was some years ago. "I first met Anderson when he entered my office in a white beat. "I want you to find what I've lost," he said. I have dealt with many cases of theft in my career and so I said, naturally, "Just what is it you have lost?" And he answered, "Damn it, man, that's what I've lust asked you to find out." "The story came out rather raggedly. Anderson and Jackson had quarreled with surprising intensity. Jackson was outraged, as only an honest man can be when be finds that his integrity is no shield against the conniving of others. He swore revenge, and Anderson shrugged that off with a laugh." "Beware the wrath of a patient man," quoted Avalon, with the air of precision research he brought to even his least portentous statements. So I have beard," said Bartram, "though I have never had oc- casion to test the maxim. Nor, apparently, had Anderson, for he had no fear of Jackson. As he explained, Jackson was so psychotically honest and so insanely law-abiding that there was no chance of his slipping into wrongdoing. Or so Anderson thought. It did not even occur to him to ask Jackson to return the office key; some- thing all the more curious since the office was located in Anderson's house, in among the knickknackery. "Anderson recalled this omission a few days after the quarrel, for, returning from an early evening appointment, be found Jackson in his house. Jackson carried his old attache case, which he was just closing as Anderson entered; closing with startled haste, it seemed to Anderson. "Anderson frowned and said, inevitably, "What are you doing here?" ""Returning some papers which were in my possession and which now belong to you," said Jackson, "and returning the key to the office." With this remark, he handed over the key, indicated papers on the desk, and pushed the combination lock on his battered attache" case with fingers that Anderson could swear trembled a little. Jackson looked about the room with what appeared to Anderson to be a curious, almost a secretively satisfied, smile and said, "I will now leave." He proceeded to do so. "It was not until Anderson beard the motor of Jackson's ear whirring into action and then retreating into the distance that be could rouse himself from a kind of stupor that had paralyzed him. He knew he had been robbed, and the next day he came to me." Drake pursed his lips, twirled his half-empty brandy glass, and said, "Why not to the police?" "There was a complication," said Bartram. "Anderson did not know what had been taken. When the certainty of theft dawned on him, be naturally rushed to the safe. Its contents were secure. He ransacked his desk. Nothing seemed to be missing. He went from room to room. Everything seemed to be intact as far as he could tell." "Wasn't he certain?" asked Gonzalo. "He couldn't be. The house was inordinately crowded with every variety of object and he didn't remember all his possessions. He told me, for instance, that at one time he collected antique watches. He had them in a small drawer in his study; six of them. All six were there, but be was nagged by the faint memory of seven. For the life of him, be could not remember definitely. In fact, it was worse than that, for one of the six present seemed strange to him. Could it be that he had had only six but that a less valuable one had been substituted for a more valuable one? Something of this sort repeated itself a dozen times over in every hideaway and with every sort of oddment. So he came to me-" "Wait a while," said Trumbull, bringing his hand down hard on the table. "What made him so certain that Jackson had taken anything at all?" "Ah," said Bartram, "that is the fascinating part of the story. The closing of the attache case, and Jackson's secretive smile as be looked about the room, served in themselves to rouse Anderson's suspicions, but as the door closed behind him, Jackson chuckled. It was not an ordinary chuckle. . . . But I'll let Anderson tell it in his own words, as nearly as I remember them. ""Bartram," be said, "I have beard that chuckle innumerable times in my life. I have chuckled that way myself a thousand times. It is a characteristic chuckle, an unmistakable one, an unmaskable one. It is the acquisitive chuckle; it is the chuckle of a man who has just obtained something be wants very much at the expense of someone else. If any man in all the world knows that chuckle and can recognize it, even behind a closed door, that man is myself. I cannot be mistaken. Jackson had taken something of mine and was glorying in it!" "There was no arguing with the man on this point. He virtually slavered at the thought of having been victimized and, indeed, I had to believe him. I had to suppose that for all Jackson's pathological honesty, he had been lured, by the once-in-a-lifetime snapping of patience, into theft. Helping lure him must have been his knowledge of Anderson. He must have known Anderson's intent hold on even the least valued of his belongings, and realized that the hurt would extend far deeper and far beyond the value of the object taken, however great that value might have been." Rubin said, "Maybe it was the attache case be took." "No, no, that was Jackson's. He'd owned it for years. So there you have the problem. Anderson wanted me to find out what had been taken, for until he could identify a stolen object and show that that object was, or had been, in the possession of Jackson, he could not prosecute-and he was most intent on prosecution. My task, then, was to look through his house and tell him what was missing." "How would that be possible, if he himself couldn't tell?" growled Trumbull. "I pointed that out to him," said Bartram, "but he was wild and unreasoning. He offered me a great deal of money, win or lose; a very handsome fee, indeed, and be put down a sizable portion of it as a retainer. It was clear he resented beyond measure the deliberate insult to his acquisitiveness. The thought that an amateur non-acquisitor like Jackson should dare beard him in this most sacred of his passions had driven him, on this one point, mad, and he was prepared to go to any expense to keep the other's victory from being final. "I am myself quite human. I accepted the retainer and the fee. After all, I reasoned, I had my methods. I took up the question of insurance lists first. All were outdated, but they served to eliminate the furniture and all the larger items as possible victims of Jackson's thievery, for everything on the lists was still in the house." Avalon interrupted. "They were eliminated anyway, since the stolen object would have had to fit into the attache" case." "Provided that it was indeed the attache case that was used to transport the item out of the house," pointed out Bartram patiently. "It might easily have been a decoy. Prior to Anderson's return, Jackson could have had a moving van at the door and taken out the grand piano had be so chosen, and then snapped the attache case in Anderson's face to mislead him. "But never mind that. It wasn't likely. I took him around the house room by room, following a systematic procedure of considering the floor, walls, and ceiling, studying all the shelves, opening every door, considering every piece of furniture, going through every closet. Nor did I neglect the attic and the basement. Never before had Anderson been forced to consider every item of his vast and amorphous collection in order that somewhere, somehow, some item would jog his memory of some companion item that was not there. "It was an enormous house, a heterogeneous one, an endless one. It took u days, and poor Anderson grew more befuddled each day. "I next tackled it from the other end. It was obvious that Jackson had deliberately taken something unnoticeable, perhaps small; certainly something that Anderson would not easily miss and therefore not something to which he was greatly attached. On the other hand, it made sense to suppose that it was something Jackson would want to take away, and which he would find valuable. Indeed, his deed would give him most satisfaction if Anderson, too, found it valuable-once he realized what it was that was gone. What, then, could it be?" "A small painting," said Gonzalo eagerly, "which Jackson knew to be an authentic Ce'zanne, but which Anderson thought was junk." "A stamp from Anderson's collection," said Rubin, "which Jackson noted had a rare mistake in the engraving." He had once written a story which had hinged on this precise point. "A book," said Trumbull, "which contained some hidden family secret with which, in due time, Jackson could blackmail Anderson." "A photograph," said Avalon dramatically, "that Anderson had forgotten but which contained the likeness of an old sweetheart which, eventually, be would give a fortune to buy back." "I don't know what business they were in," said Drake thoughtfully, "but it might have been the kind where some unvalued gimcrack might actually be of great value to a competitor and drive Anderson to bankruptcy. I remember one case where a formula for a bydrazo-intermediatc-" "Oddly enough," said Bartram, breaking in firmly, "I thought of each of these possibilities, and I went over each with Anderson. It was clear that he had no taste in art and such pieces as be had were really junk, and no mistake. He did not collect stamps, and though be had many books and could not tell for certain whether one was gone, be swore be had no hidden family secrets anywhere that were worth the skipped beat of a blackmailer's heart. Nor had be ever had any old sweethearts, since in his younger days he had confined himself to professional ladies whose photographs be did not prize. As for his business secrets, they were of the sort that would interest the government far more than any competitor, and everything of that sort had been kept far from Jackson's honest eyes in the first place and were still in the safe (or long in the fire) in the second. I thought of other possibilities, but, one by one, they were knocked down. "Of course, Jackson might betray himself. He might blossom out into sudden wealth, and in ferreting out the source of the wealth, we might learn the identity of the stolen object. "Anderson suggested that himself and paid lavishly to have a twenty-four-hour watch put on Jackson. It was useless. The man kept a dull way of life and behaved precisely as you would expect someone minus his life savings to behave. He lived parsimoniously, and, eventually, took a menial job, where his honesty and his calm demeanor stood him in good stead. "Finally, I had but one alternative left-" "Wait, wait," said Gonzalo, "let me guess, let me guess." He tossed off what was left of his brandy, signaled Henry for another, and said, "You asked Jackson!" "I was strongly tempted to," said Bartram ruefully, "but that would scarcely have been feasible. It doesn't do in my profession to even hint at an accusation without evidence of any sort. Licenses are too fragile. And in any case, he would simply deny theft, if accused, and be put on his guard against any selfincrimination." "Well, then said Gonzalo blankly, and petered out. The other four furrowed brows one and all, but only silence followed. Bartram, having waited politely, said, "You won't guess, gentlemen, for you are not in the profession. You know only what you read in romances and so you think gentlemen like myself have unlimited numbers of alternatives and invariably solve all cases. I, myself, being in the profession, know otherwise. Gentlemcn, the one alternative I had left was to confess failure. "Anderson paid me, however. I'll give him that much credit. By the time I said my goodbyes to him, be had lost some ten pounds. There was a vacant look in his eyes and, as he shook hands with me, they moved round and round the room be was in, still looking, still looking. He muttered, "I tell you I couldn't possibly mistake that chuckle. He took something from me. He took something from me." "I saw him on two or three occasions thereafter. He never stopped looking; he never found the missing object. He went rather downhill. The events I have described took place nearly five years ago, and last month, be died." There was a short silence. Avalon said, "Without ever finding the missing object?" "Without ever finding it." Trumbull said, with disapproval, "Are you coming to us to help you with the problem now?" "In a way, yes. The occasion is too good to miss. Anderson is dead and whatever is said within these walls will go no farther, we all agree, so that I may now ask what I could not ask before. . . . Henry, may I have a light?" Henry, who had been listening with a kind of absent-minded deference, produced a book of matches and lit Bartram's cigarette. "Let me introduce you, Henry, to those you so efficiently serve. . . . Gentlemen, may I introduce to you, Henry Jackson." There was a moment of clear shock and Drake said, "The Jackson." "Exactly," said Bartram. "I knew be was working here and when I heard it was at this club that you met for your monthly meetings, I had to beg, rather shamelessly, for an invitation. It was only here that I could find the gentleman with the acquisitive chuckle, and do so under conditions of both bonhomie and discretion.Henry smiled and bent his head. Bartram said, "There were times during the course of the investigation when I could not help but wonder, Henry, whether Anderson might not have been wrong and whether there might possibly have been no theft at all. Always, however, I returned to the matter of the acquisitive chuckle, and I trusted Anderson's judgment." "You did right to do so," said Jackson softly, "for I did steal something from my one-time partner, the gentleman you have referred to as Anderson. I never regretted the act for one moment." "It was something of value, I presume." "It was of the greatest value and no day passed without my thinking of the theft and rejoicing in the fact that the wicked man no longer had what I had taken away." "And you deliberately roused his suspicions in order that you might experience the greater joy." "Yes, sir." "And you did not fear being caught?" "Not for one moment, sir." "By God," roared Avalon suddenly, his voice soaring to breakneck loudness. "I say it again. Beware the wrath of a patient man. I am a patient man, and I am tired of this endless crossexamination. Beware my wrath, Henry. What was it you carried off in your attache case?" "Why, nothing, sir," said Henry. "It was empty." "Heaven help me! Where did you put whatever it was you took from him?" "I didn't have to put it anywhere, sir." "Well, then, what did you take?" "Only his peace of mind, sir," said Henry gently. Afterword This story first appeared in the January 1977 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. It taught me an object lesson, too, in this matter of chains of logical deduction. I've often thought that the ease with which story detectives weave their inexorable webs of logic was too pat; that in real life there would always be large holes. Sometimes, the holes appear even in the stories. After "The Acquisitive Chuckle" had appeared, a reader wrote to tell me that I had neglected to specify that Jackson's attache" case was really his own, and that it might well have been the attache case that he had stolen. That had never occurred to me and so, of course, it didn't occur to any of the characters in the story. For the book, therefore, I added a couple of lines to take care of that possibility. (That shows you, by the way, that readers aren't merely replete with troublesome questions, as the Introduction would seem to imply. Sometimes they are very useful, and I appreciate those occasions greatly.) Ph as in Phony. The meeting of the Black Widowers was marred, but only slightly, by the restlessness of James Drake. It was a shame that this had to be so, for the dinner was un- usually good, even allowing for the loving care with which the Milano Restaurant took care of its special group every month. And if the veal cordon bleu needed anything to add the final bit of luster, it was Henry's meticulous service, which had plates on the table where no plate had been before, yet Nvitbout any person present able to catch it en route. It was Thomas Trumbull's turn to host, something be did with a savagery to which no one paid the slightest bit of attention; a savagery made particularly bitter by the fact that, as host, be did not think it fit to come charging in just one second before the predinner drinks had completed their twice-around (three times for Rubin, who never showed the effects). Trumbull exercised best's privilege and had brought a guest for the grilling. The guest was tall, almost as tall as Geoffrey Avalon, the Black Widowers" patent-attorney member. He was lean, almost as lean as Geoffrey Avalon. He was clean-shaven, though, and acked the solemnity of Avalon. Indeed, his face was round and his cheeks plump, in a manner so out of keeping with the rest of his body that one might have thought him the product of a head transplant. He was Arnold Stacey, by name. "Arnold Stacey, Ph.D.," Trumbull had introduced him. "Ah," said Avalon, with the air of portentousness he automatically brought to his most trivial statement, "Doctor Doctor Stacey." "Doctor Doctor?" murmured Stacey, his lips parting as though getting ready for a smile at the pleasantry sure to follow. "It is a rule of the Black Widowers," said Trumbull impatiently, "that all members are doctors by virtue of membership. A doctor for any other reason is-" "A doctor doctor," finished Stacey. And he smiled. "You can count honorary doctorates, too," said Rubin, his widespaced teeth gleaming over a beard as straggly as Avalon's was crisp, "but then I would have to be called Doctor Doctor Doctor-" Mario Gonzalo was mounting the stairs just then, bringing with him a faint wbiff of turpentine as though be had come straight from his artist's studio. (Trumbull maintained you couldn't draw that conclusion; that Gonzalo placed a drop of turpentine behind each ear before any social engagement.Gonzalo was in time to catch Emmanuel Rubin's statement and said, before be had quite reached the top step, "What honorary doctorates did you ever receive, Manny? Dishonorary doctorates, I'm ready to believe." Rubin's face froze as it usually did when he was attacked without warning, but that was merely the short pause necessary to gather his forces. He said, "I can list them for you. In 1938, when I was only fifteen, it so happens I was a revivalist preacher and I received a D.D. from-" "No, for God's sake," said Trumbull, "don't give us the list. We accept it all." "You're fighting out of your weight, Mario," said Avalon with wooden amiability. "You know Rubin can never be spotted in an inconsistency when he starts talking about his early life." "Sure," said Gonzalo, "that's why his stories are so lousy. They're all autobiographical. No poetry." "I have written poetry," began Rubin, and then Drake came in. Usually, be was the first person there; this time, the last. "Train was late," be said quietly, shucking his coat. Since he had to come in from New Jersey to attend, the only surprise was that it didn't happen oftener. "Introduce me to the guest," Drake added, as be turned to take the drink Henry held out for him. Henry knew which he preferred, of course. Avalon said, "Doctor Doctor Arnold Stacey Doctor Doctor James Drake." "Greetings," said Drake, holding up his glass in salute. "What's the nature of the lesser doctorate, Doctor Stacey?" "Ph.D. in chemistry, Doctor Doctor, and call me Arnold." Drake's small grizzled mustache seemed to bristle. "Ditto," be said. "My Ph.D. is in chemistry, too." They looked at each other, warily, for a moment. Then Drake said, "Industry? Government? Academic?" "I teach. Assistant professor at Berry University." "Where?" "Berry University. It's not a large school. It's in-" "I know where it is," said Drake. "I did graduate work, there. Considerably before your time, though. Did you get your degree at Berry before you joined the faculty?" "No, I-" "Let's sit down, for God's sake," roared Trumbull. "There's more drinking and less eating going on here all the time." He was standing at the host's seat, with his glass raised, glowering at the others as each took his seat. "Sit down! Sit down!" And then be intoned the ritual toast to Old King Cole in singsong while Gonzalo blandly kept time with a hard roll, which he broke and buttered when the last syllable was done. "What's this?" said Rubin suddenly, staring down at his disb in dismay. "Pdt6 de la maison, sir," said Henry softly. "That's what I thought. Chopped liver. Damn it, Henry, I ask you, as a pathologically honest man, is this fit to eat?" "The matter is quite subjective, sir. It depends on the personal taste of the diner." Avalon pounded the table. "Point of order! I object to Manny's use of the adjectival phrase "pathologically honest." Violation of confidence. Rubin colored slightly. "Hold on, Jeff. I don't violate any confidence. That happens to be my opinion of Henry quite independently of what happened last month." "Ruling from the chair," said Avalon stubbornly. Trumbull said, "Shut up both of you. It is the ruling of the chair that Henry may be recognized by all Black Widowers as that rare phenomenon, a completely honest man. No reason need be given. It can be taken as a matter of common knowledge." Henry smiled gently. "Shall I take away the p, sir?" "Would you eat it, Henry?" asked Rubin. "With pleasure, sir." "Then I'll eat it, too." And he did so, with every sign of barely controlled nausea. Trumbull leaned over to Drake and said in a voice that was low for him, "What the hell's bothering you?" Drake started slightly and said, "Nothing. What's bothering you?" "You are," said Trumbull. "I've never seen a roll taken apart into so many pieces in my life." The conversation grew general after that, centering chiefly on Rubin's aggrieved contention that honesty lacked survival value and that all the forces of natural selection combined to eliminate it as a human trait. He did well defending his thesis till Gonzalo asked him if be attributed his own success as a writer ("such as it :is," said Gonzalo) to plagiarism. When Rubin met the point head on and tried to prove, by close reasoning, that plagiarism was fundamentally different from other forms of dishonesty and might be treated independently, he was hooted down. Then, between main course and dessert, Drake left for the men's room and Trumbull followed him. Trumbull said, "Do you know this guy Stacey, Jim?" Drake shook his head. "No. Not at all." "Well, what's wrong, then? I admit you're not an animated phonograph needle like Rubin but you haven't said a word all dinner, damn it. And you keep looking at Stacey." Drake said, "Do me a favor, Tom. Let me question him after dinner." Trumbull shrugged. "Sure." Over the coffee, Trumbull said, "The time has come for the grilling of the guest. Under ordinary circumstances, 1, as the possessor of the only logical mind at the table, would begin. On this occasion, I pass to Doctor Doctor Drake since be is of the same professional persuasion as our honored guest." "Doctor Doctor Stacey," began Drake heavily, "how do you justify your existence?" "Less and less as time goes on," said Stacey, unperturbed. "What the hell does that mean?" broke in Trumbull. "I'm asking the questions," said Drake with unaccustomed firmness. "I don't mind answering," said Stacey. "Since the universities seem to be in deeper trouble each year, and as I do nothing about it, my own function as a university appendage seems continually less defensible, that's all." Drake ignored that. He said, "You teach at the school where I earned my master's degree. Have you ever heard of me?" Stacey hesitated. "I'm sorry, Jim. There are a lot of chemists I haven't heard of. No offense intended." "I'm not sensitive. I never heard of you, either. What I mean is: Have you ever beard of me at Berry U.? As a student there?" "No, I haven't." "I'm not surprised. But there was another student at Berry at the same time as myself. He went on for his doctorate at Berry. His name was Faron, F-A-R-0-N; Lance Faron. Did you ever hear of him?" "Lance Faron?" Stacey frowned. "Lance may have been short for Lancelot; Lancelot Faron. I don't know. We always called him Lance." Finally Stacey shook his head. "No, the name isn't familiar." Drake said, "But you have heard of David St. George?" "Trofessor St. George? Certainly. He died the same year I joined the faculty. I can't say I know him, but I've certainly beard of him." Trumbull said, "Hell and damnation, Jim. What kind of questions are these? Is this old-grad week?" Drake, who had drifted off into thought, scrambled out of it and said, "Wait, Tom. I'm getting at something, and I don't want to ask questions. I want to tell a story first. My God, this has been bothering me for years and I never thought of putting it up to all of you till now that our guest-" "I vote the story," shouted Gonzalo. "On condition," said Avalon, "it not be construed as setting a precedent." "Chair decides the precedents," said Trumbull at once. "Go ahead, Drake. Only, for God's sake, don't take all night." "It's simple enough," said Drake, "and it's about Lance Faron, which is his real name, and I'm going to slander him, so you'll have to understand, Arnold, that everything said within these walls is strictly confidential." "That's been explained to me," said Stacey. "Go on," shouted Trumbull. "Youwill take all night. I know it." Drake said, "The thing about Lance is that I don't think he ever intended to be a chemist. His family was rich enough-well, I'll tell you. When he was doing graduate work, be had his lab outfitted with a cork floor at his own expense." "Why a cork floor?" Gonzalo wanted to know. "If you'd ever dropped a beaker on a tile floor, you wouldn't ask," said Drake. "He majored in chemistry as an undergraduate because be had to major in something and then he went on to do graduate work in the same field because World War II was on in Europe, the draft was beginning-it was 1.94o-and graduate work in chemistry would look good to the draft board. And it did; be never got into the Army as far as I know. But that was perfectly legitimate; I never got into uniform, either, and I point no fingers." Avalon, who had been an army officer, looked austere, but said, "Perfectly legitimate." Drake said, "He wasn't serious about it-about chemistry, I mean. He had no natural aptitude for it and be never worked, particularly. He was satisfied to get no more than a B minus and it was about all he was good for. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, and it was good enough to sweat out a master's degree for bimself-which doesn't amount to much in chemistry. The grades weren't good enough to qualify him for research toward the doctorate, however. "That was the whole point, We all-the rest of us who were in graduate chemistry that year-assumed be would only go as far as the master's. Then he'd get some sort of job that would keep his draft exemption going; we figured his father would help out there-"" "Were the rest of you jealous of him?" asked Rubin. "Because that kind of guy-" "We weren't jealous of him," said Drake. "Sure, we envied the situation. Hell, those were the days before government grants fell about us like snowflakes. Every college semester, I lived a suspense story called "Do I Dig Up the Tuition Or Do I Drop Out?" All of us would have liked to be rich. But Lance was a likable guy. He didn't parade the situation and would lend us a few bucks when we were in a hole and do it unostentatiously. And he was perfectly willing to admit he wasn't a brain. "We even helped him. Gus Blue tutored him in physical organic -for a fee. Of course, he wasn't always scrupulous. There was one preparation he was supposed to have synthesized in lab, and we knew that be bought a sample at a chemical supply house and turned it in as his own. At least, we were pretty sure be did, but it didn't bother us." Rubin said, "Why not? That was dishonest, wasn't it?" "Because it wouldn't do him any good," said Drake in annoyance. "It just meant another B minus at best. But the reason I bring it up is that we all knew be was capable of cheating." "You mean the rest of you wouldn't have?" interposed Stacey. There was a touch of cynicism in his voice. Drake lifted his eyebrows, then dropped them again. "I wouldn't guarantee any of us if we were really pushed. The point is, we weren't. We all had a fighting chance to get through without the risk of cheating, and none of us did. As far as I know. Certainly, I didn't. "But then there came a time when Lance made up his mind to go on for his Ph.D. It was at a smoker. The war jobs were just beginning to open up and there were a few recruiters on campus. It meant money and complete security from the draft, but Pb.D.'s meant a lot to us and there was some question as to whether we'd come back to school once we got away from class for any reason. "Someone (not 1) said be wished he were in Lance's shoes. Lance had no choice to make. He would take the job. ""I don't know," said Lance, maybe just to be contrary. "I think I'll stay right here and go on for the Ph.D! "He may have been joking. I'm sure be was joking. Anyway, we all thought be was, and we laughed. But we were all a little high and it became one of those laughs without reason, you know. If one of us started to die down, he would catch someone else's eyes and start off again. It wasn't that funny. It wasn't funny at all. But we laughed till we were half suffocated. And Lance turned red, and then white. "I remember I tried to say, "Lance, we're not laughing at you," but I couldn't. I was choking and sputtering. And Lance walked out on us. "After that, he was going for his Ph.D. He wouldn't talk about it but he signed all the necessary forms and that seemed to satisfy him. After a while, the situation was as before. He was friendly. "I said to him, "Listen, Lance, you'll be disappointed. You can't get faculty approval for doctoral research with not a single A on your record. You just can't." "He said, "Why not? I've talked to the committee. I told them I'd take chemical kinetics under St. George, and that I'd make an A in that. I said I'd let them see what I could do." "That made less than no sense to me. That was funnier than the remark we laughed at. You'd have to know St. George. You ought to know what I mean, Arnold." Stacey nodded, "He gave a stiff course in kinetics. One or two of the brightest would get an A minus; B's and C's otherwise." Drake shrugged. "There are some professors who take pride in that. It's a kind of professorial version of Captain Bligh. But he was a good chemist; probably the best Berry has ever had. He was the only member of the faculty to achieve national prominence after the war. If Lance could take his course and get a high mark, that would be bound to be impressive. Even with C's in everything else, the argument would be: "Well, be hasn't worked much because be hasn't had to, but when he finally decided to buckle down, he showed fire-cracking ability." "He and I took chemical kinetics together and I was running and sweating and snorting every day of that course. But Lance sat in the seat next to me and never stopped smiling. He took notes carefully, and I know be studied them, because when I found him in the library it was always chemical kinetics be was working on. It went down to the wire like that. St. George didn't give quizzes. He let everything bang on the discussion periods and on the final examination, which lasted three bours-a full three hours. "In the last week of the course, there were no lectures and the students had their last chance to pull themselves together before finals week. Lance was still smiling. His work in the other courses had been usual Lance quality, but that didn't bother him. We would say, "How are you doing in kinetics, Lance? and he would say, "No sweat!" and sound cheerful, damn it. "Then came the day of the finals-" Drake paused, and his lips tightened. "Well?" said Trumbull. Drake said, his voice a little lower, "Lance Faron passed. He did more than pass. He got a 96. No one had ever gotten over go before in one of St. George's finals. I doubt somehow that anyone ever did afterward." "I never beard of anyone getting it in recent times," said Stacey. "What did you get?" asked Gonzalo. "I got 8z," said Drake. "And except for Lance's, it was the best mark in the class. Except for Lance's." "What happened to the fellow?" asked Avalon. "He went on for his Ph.D., of course. The faculty qualified him without trouble and the story was that St. George himself went to bat for him. "I left after that," Drake went on. "I worked on isotope separation during the war and eventually shifted to Wisconsin for my doctoral research. But I would hear about Lance sometimes from old friends. The last I beard he was down in Maryland somewhere, running a private lab of his own. About ten years ago, I remember I looked up his name in Chemical Abstracts and found the record of a few papers he turned out. Run of the mill. Typically Lance." "He's still independently wealthy?" asked Trumbull. "I suppose so." Trumbull leaned back. "If that's your story, Jim, then what the hell is biting you?" Drake looked about the table, first at one and then at another. Then he brought his fist down so that the coffeecups jumped and clattered. "Because he cheated, damn his hide. That was not a legitimate final exam and as long as he has his Ph.D., mine is cheapened by that much-and yours, too," be said to Stacey. Stacey murmured, "Phony doctor." "What?" said Drake, a little wildly. "Nothing," said Stacey. "I was just thinking of a colleague who did a stint at a medical school where the students regarded the M.D. as the only legitimate doctor's degree in the universe. To them, a Ph.D. stood for "pbony.doctorDrake snorted. "Actually," began Rubin, with the typical air of argumentativeness be could put into even a casual connective, "if you-" Avalon cut in from his impressive height, "Well, see here, Jim, if he cheated, how did he get through?" "Because there was nothing to show he cheated." "Did it ever occur to you," said Gonzalo, "that maybe be didn't cheat? Maybe it was really true that when he buckled down, he 7P had fire-cracking ability. "No," said Drake, with another coffeecup-rattling fist on the table. "That's impossible. He never showed the ability before and be never showed it afterward. Besides be had that confidence all through the course. He had the confidence that could only mean he had worked out a foolproof plan to get his A." Trumbull said heavily, "All right, say he did. He got his Ph.D. but be didn't do so well. From what you say, be's just off in a corner somewhere, poking along. You know damn well, Jim, that lots of guys get through to all kinds of professional positions, even without cheating, who have all their brains in their elbows, and so what. Why get mad at one particular guy, cheating or not? You know why I think you're off your rocker on the subject, Jim? What gripes you is that you don't know how be did it. If you could figure it out, why you'd forget the whole thing." Henry interrupted, "More brandy for anyone, gentlemen?" Five delicate little glasses were raised in air. Avalon, who measured out his allowance with an eye dropper, kept his down. Drake said, "Well, then, Tom, you tell me. How did be do it? You're the code expert." "But there's no code involved. I don't know. Maybe he-bemanaged to get someone else to do the test for him and handed in someone else's paper." "In someone else's handwriting?" said Drake scornfully. "Besides, I thought of it. We all thought of it. You don't suppose I was the only one who thought Lance cheated, do you? We all did. When that 96 went up on that bulletin board, after we got our breath back-and that took a while-we demanded to see his paper. He handed it over without trouble and we all went over it. It was a near-perfect job, but it was in his handwriting and with his turns of phrase. I wasn't impressed by the few errors he made. I thought at the time he threw them in just in order not to have a perfect paper." "All right," said Gonzalo, "someone else did the test and your friend copied it over in his own words." "Impossible. There was no one in the class but the students and St. George's assistant. The assistant opened the sealed test papers just before the test started. No one could have written a paper for Lance and another for himself, even if you could imagine no one else seeing it done. Besides, there wasn't anyone in the class capable of turning out a 96-level paper." Avalon said, "If you were doing it right there, it would be impossible. But suppose someone managed to get a copy of the questions well before the test and then swatted away at the textbooks till be worked out perfect answers. Couldn't Lance have done that somehow?" "No, he couldn't," said Drake flatly. "You're not suggesting anything we didn't think of then, take my word for it. The university had had a cheating scandal ten years before or so and the whole procedure had been tightened up. St. George followed standard procedure. He worked out the questions and turned it in to his secretary the day before the test. She mimeographed the necessary number of copies in St. George's presence. He proofread them, then destroyed the mimeograph and the original. The question papers were packaged and sealed and placed in the school safe. The safe was opened just before the test and the papers handed to St. George's assistant. There was no chance of Lance seeing the questions." "Maybe not just then," said Avalon. "But even if the professor had the questions mimeographed the day before the test, how long might he have had the questions in his possession? He might have used a set of questions used on a previous-" "No," interrupted Drake. "We carefully studied all previous test papers prepared by St. George as a matter of course before the final exam. Do you think we were fools? There were no duplications." "All right. But even if be prepared an entirely new test, be might have prepared it at the beginning of the semester for all you know. Lance might somehow have seen the questions early in the semester. It would be a lot easier to work out answers to a fixed number of questions in the course of the semester than to try to learn the entire subject matter." "I think you've got something there, Jeff," said Gonzalo. "He's got crud there," said Drake, "because that's not the way St. George worked it. Every question in that final exam turned on some particular point that some particular student goofed up on in class. One of them, and the most subtle, covered a point that I had missed in the last week of lectures. I pointed out what I thought was a mistake in a derivation, and St. George-well, never mind. The point is that the test had to be prepared after the last lectures." Arnold Stacey broke in, "Did St. George always do that? If he did, be would have been banding a hell of a lot to the kids." "You mean the students would have been waiting for questions covering errors made in the discussion periods?" "More than that. The students would have deliberately pulled boners on those parts of the subject they actually knew well in order to lure St. George into placing twenty points" worth on it." Drake said, "I can't answer that. We weren't in his previous classes, so we don't know whether his previous tests followed the same line." "Previous classes would have passed on the news, wouldn't they? At least if classes in the forties were anything like classes now." "They would have," admitted Drake, "and they didn't. He did it that way that year, anyway." "Say, Jim," said Gonzalo, "how did Lance do in the discussion periods?" "He kept quiet; played it safe. We all took it for granted he'd do that. We weren't surprised." Gonzalo said, "What about the department secretary? Couldn't Lance have wheedled her into telling him the questions?" Drake said grimly, "You don't know the secretary. Besides, be couldn't have. He couldn't have suborned the secretary, or broken into the safe, or pulled any trick at- all. From the nature of the questions, we could tell the exam had been constructed in the last week before it "had been taken, and during that last week he couldn't have done a thing." "Are you sure?" asked Trumbull. "Oh, you bet! It bugged us all that be was so confident. The rest of us were sea green with the fear of flunking and he smiled. He kept smiling. On the day of the last lecture, someone said, "He's going to steal the question sbeet." Actually, I said it, but the others agreed and we decided to-to-well, we kept an eye on him.?? "You mean you never let him out of your sight?" demanded Avalon. "Did you watch at night in shifts? Did you follow him into the john?" "Damn near. He was Burroughs" roommate and Burroughs was a light sleeper and swore he knew every time Lance turned over."" "Burroughs might have been drugged one night," said Rubin. "He might have, but he didn't think so, and no one else thought so. Lance just didn't act suspicious in any way; he didn't even act annoyed at being watched." "Did he know he was being watched?" said Rubin. "He probably did. Every time he went somewhere be would grin and say, "Who's coming along?"" "Where did be go?" "Just the normal places. He ate, drank, slept, eliminated. He went to the school library to study, or sat in his room. He went to the post office, the bank, a sboestore. We followed him on every errand all up and down Berry's main street. Besides-" "Besides, what?" said Trumbull. "Besides, even if be had gotten bold of the question paper, it could only have been in those few days before the test, maybe only the night before. He would have had to sweat out the answers, being Lance. It would have taken him days of solid work over the books. If be could have answered them just by getting a look at them, be wouldn't have had to cheat; be would have gotten a look at them in the opening minutes of the test period." Rubin said sardonically, "It seems to me, Jim, that you've painted yourself into a corner. Your man couldn't possibly have cheated." "That's the whole point," cried Drake. "He must have cheated and be did it so cleverly no one could catch him. No one could even figure out how. Tom's right. That's what gripes me." And then Henry coughed and said, "If I may offer a word, gentlemen?" Every face went up as though some invisible puppeteer had pulled the strings. "Yes, Henry?" said Trumbull. "It seems to me, gentlemen, that you are too much at home with petty dishonesty to understand it very well." "Why, Henry, you hurt me cruelly," said Avalon with a smile, but his dark eyebrows curled down over his eyes. "I mean no disrespect, gentlemen, but Mr. Rubin maintained that dishonesty has value. Mr. Trumbull thinks that Dr. Drake is only annoyed because the cheating was clever enough to escape detection and not because it existed at all, and perhaps all of you agree to that." Gonzalo said, "I think you're hinting, Henry, that you're so honest that you're more sensitive to dishonesty than we are and can understand it better." Henry said, "I would almost think so, sir, in view of the fact that not one of you has commented on a glaring improbability in Dr. Drake's story that seems to me to explain everything." "What's that?" asked Drake. "Why, Professor St. George's attitude, sir. Here is a professor who takes pride in flunking many of his students, and who never has anyone get above the 8o's on the final examination. And then a student who is thoroughly mediocre-and I gather that everyone in the department, both faculty and students, knew of the mediocrity-gets a 96 and the professor accepts that and even backs him before the qualifying committee. Surely be would have been the first to suspect dishonesty. And most indignantly, too." There was a silence. Stacey looked thoughtful. Drake said, "Maybe he couldn't admit that be could be cheated from, if you know what I mean." Henry said, "You find excuses, sir. In any situation in which a professor asks questions and a student answers them, one always feels somehow that if there is dishonesty, it is always the student's dishonesty. Why? What if it were the professor who were dishonest?" Drake said, "What would be get out of that?" "What does one usually get? Money, I suspect, sir. The situa- tion as you described it is that of a student who was quite well off financially, and a professor who had the kind of salary a professor had in those days before the government grants began to come. Suppose the student had offered a few thousand dollars-" "For what? To hand in a fake mark? We saw Lance's answer paper, and it was legitimate. To let Lance see the questions before having them mimeographed? It wouldn't have done Lance any good." "Look at it in reverse, sir. Suppose the student had offered those few thousand dollars to let him, the student, show the professor the questions." Again the invisible puppeteer worked and there was a chorus of "What?"s in various degrees of intonation. "Suppose, sir," Henry went on patiently, "that it was Mr. Lance Faron who wrote the questions, one by one in the course of the semester, polishing them as he went along. He picked on interesting points that came up in class, never talking during the discussions so that he could listen the better. He polished them as the semester proceeded, working hard. As Mr. Avalon said, it is easier to get a few specific points straight than to learn the entire subject matter of a course. He included one question from the last week's lectures, inadvertently making you all sure the test had been created entirely in the last week. It also meant that be turned out a test that was quite different from St. George's usual variety. Previous tests in the course had not turned on students" difficulties. Nor did later ones, if I may judge from Dr. Stacey's surprise. Then at the end of the course, with the test paper completed, he would have mailed it to the professor." "Mailed it?" said Gonzalo. "I believe Dr. Drake said the young man visited the post office. He might have mailed it. Professor St. George would have received the questions with, perhaps, part of the payment in reasonably small bills. He would then have written it over in his own handwriting, or typed it, and passed it on to his secretary. From then on all would be normal. And, of course, the professor would have had to back the student thereafter all the way." "Why not?" said Gonzalo enthusiastically. "Good God, it makes sense." Drake said slowly, "I've got to admit that's a possibility that never occurred to any of us. . . . But, of course, we'll never know." Stacey broke in loudly. "I've hardly said a word all evening, though I was told I'd be grilled." "Sorry about that," said Trumbull. "This meathead, Drake, had a story to tell because you came from Berry." "Well, then, because I come from Berry, let me add something. Professor St. George died the year I came, as I said, and I didn't know him. But I know many people who did know him and I've beard many stories about him." "You mean be was known to be dishonest?" asked Drake. "No one said that. But be was known to be unscrupulous and I've heard some unsavory hints about how he maneuvered government grants into yielding him an income. When I beard your story about Lance, Jim, I must admit I didn't think St. George would be involved in quite that way. But now that Henry has taken the trouble to think the unthinkable from the mountain height of his own honesty-why, I believe he's right." Trumbull said, "Then that's that. Jim, after thirty years, you can forget the whole thing." "Except-except"-a half smile came over Drake's face and then he broke into a laugh---'l am dishonest because I can't help thinking that if Lance had the questions all along, the bastard might have passed on a hint or two to the rest of us." "After you had all laughed at him, sir?" asked Henry quietly, as be began to clear the table. Afterword. This story first appeared in the July 1972 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Phony Ph.D. " The reason for the title change was clear. EQMM runs a series of excellent stories by Lawrence Treat with titles such as "H as in Homicide," "C as in Cutthroat," and so on. Naturally, the magazine wanted to reserve such titles to Mr. Treat. Here in the book, however, I hope Mr. Treat won't mind if I go back to "Ph as in Phony," since that seems to me to be perfect. I promise I won't use that type of title again. This story, incidentally, betrayed me into a bit of vanity of a type unusual for me. (Certain other types are usual.) A Professor Porter of the University of Oregon wrote to point out certain infelicities in the story in connection with qualifying for research toward the doctorate. He signed it with a "Ph.D." after his signature to indicate that he was qualified to discuss the matter. And he was, for he was entirely right and I have adjusted the version of the story as presented here to meet his objections. However, in answering the letter, I was so anxious not to have him think I was myself unqualified that I placed a "Ph.D." after my signature, too. The initials were legitimate, for I obtained it in chemistry at Columbia in 1948, but I think it's the only time I used it in anything but official scholarly communications. Truth to Tell. When Roger Halsted made his appearance at the head of the stairs on the day of the monthly meeting of the Black Widowers, the only others yet present were Avalon and Rubin. They greeted him with jubilation. Emmanuel Rubin said, "Well, you've finally managed to stir yourself up to the point of meeting your old friends, have you?" He trotted over and held out his hands, his straggly beard stretching to match his broad grin. "Wbere've you been the last two meetings?" "Hello, Roger," said Geoffrey Avalon, smiling from his stiff height. "Pleased to see you." Halsted shucked his coat. "Damned cold outside. Henry, bring-" But Henry, the only waiter the Black Widowers ever had or ever would have, had the drink waiting. "I'm glad to see you again, sir." Halsted took it with a nod of thanks. "Twice running something came up. . . . Say, you know what I've decided to do?" "Give up mathematics and make an honest living?" asked Rubin. Halsted sighed. "Teaching matb at a junior high school is about as honest a living as one can find. That's why it pays so little." "In that case," said Avalon, swirling his drink gently, "why is free-lance writing so dishonest a racket?" "Free-lance writing is not dishonest," said free-lance Rubin, rising to the bait at once, "as long as you make no use of an agent-" "What have you decided to do, Roger?" interrupted Avalon blandly. "It's just this project I dreamed up," said Halsted. His forehead rose white and high, showing no signs of the hairline that had been there perhaps ten years ago, though the hair was still copious enough at the top and around the sides. "I'm going to rewrite the Iliad and the Odyssey in limericks, one for each of the forty-eight books they contain." Avalon nodded. "Any of it written?" "I've got the first book of the Iliad taken care of. It'goes like this: "Agamemnon, the top-ranking Greek, To Achilles in anger did speak. They argued a lot, Then Achilles grew hot, And went stamping away in a pique." "Not had," said Avalon. "In fact, quite good. It gets across the essence of the first book in full. Of course, the proper name of the hero of the Iliad is Achillcus, with the "ch" sound as in-" "That would throw off the meter," said Halsted. "Besides," said Rubin, "everyone would think the extra V was a mistake and that's all they'll see in the limerick." Mario Gonzalo came racing up the stairs. He was host for that session and be said, "Anyone else here?" "Nobody here but us old folks," said Avalon agreeably. "My guest is on his way up. Real interesting guy. Henry will like him because be never tells a lie.7" Henry lifted his eyebrows as be produced Mario's drink. "Don't tell me you're bringing George Washington!" said Halsted. "Roger! A pleasure to see you again. . . . By the way, Jim Drake won't be here with us today. He sent back the card saying there was some family sbindig he had to attend. The guest I'm bringing is a fellow named Sand-Jobn Sand. I've known him on and off for years. Crazy guy. Horse-race buff who never tells a lie. I've beard him not-telling Ties. It's about the only virtue be has." And Gonzalo winked. Avalon nodded portentously. "Good for those who can. As one grows older, however-" "And I think it will be an interesting session," added Gonzalo hurriedly, visibly avoiding Avalon's non-libidinous confidences. "I was telling him about the club, and that for the last two times we had mysterics on our hands-" "Mysteries?" said Halsted with sudden interest. Gonzalo said, "You're a member of the club in good standing, so we can tell you. But get Henry to do it. He was a principal both times." "Henry?" Halsted looked over his shoulder in mild surprise. "Are they getting you involved in our idiocies?" "I assure you, Mr, Halsted, I tried not to be," said Henry. "Tried not to be!" said Rubin hotly. "Listen, Henry was the Sherlock of the session last time. He-" "The point is," said Avalon, "that you may have talked too much, Mario. What did you tell your friend about us?" "What do you mean, talk too much? I'm not Manny. I carefully told Sand that there could be no details because we were priests at the confessional, one and all, as far as anything in this room is concerned, and be said be wished he were a member because he had a difficulty that was driving him wild, and I said he could come the next time because it was my turn to host and he could be my guest and-here be is!" A slim man, his neck swathed in a thick scarf, was mounting the stairs. ne slimness was accentuated when he took off his coat. Under the scarf, his tie gleamed bloody red and seemed to lend color to a thin and pallid face. He seemed tbirtyish. "John Sand," said Mario, introducing him all round in a pageant that was interrupted by Thomas Trumbull's heavy tread on the steps and the loud cry of "Henry, a scotcb and soda for a dying man." Rubin said, "Tom, you can come early if you relax and stop trying so hard to be late." "The later I come," said Trumbull, "the less I have to hear of your Goddamn stupid remarks. Ever think of that?" Then he was introduced, too, and all sat down. Since the menu for that meeting had been so incautiously devised as to begin with artichokes, Rubin had launched into a dis- sertation on the preparation of the only proper sauce for it. Then, when Trumbull had said disgustedly that the only proper preparation for artichokes involved a large garbage can, Rubin said, "Sure, if you don't have the right sauce-" Sand ate uneasily and left at least a third of an excellent steak untouched. Halsted, who had a tendency to plumpness, eyed the remains enviously. His own plate was the first one cleaned. Only a scraped bone and some fat were left. Sand seemed to grow aware of Halsted's eyes and said to him, "Frankly, I'm too worried to have much appetite. Would you care for the rest of this?" "Me? No, thank you," said Halsted glumly. Sand smiled. "May I be frank?" "Of course. If you've been listening to the conversation around the table, you'll realize frankness is the order of the evening." "Good, because I would be anyway. It's my-fctish. You're lying, Mr. Halsted. Of course you want the rest of my steak, and you'd eat it, too, if you thought no one would notice. That's perfectly obvious. Social convention requires you to lie, however. You don't want to seem greedy and you don't want to seem to ignore the elements of hygiene by eating something contaminated by the saliva of a stranger." Halsted frowned. "And what if the situation were reversed?" "And I was hungry for more steak?" "Yes. "Well, I might not want to eat yours for hygienic reasons, but I would admit I wanted it. Almost all lying is the result of a desire for self-protection or out of respect for social convention. To myself, though, it seems that a lie is rarely a useful defense and I am not at all interested in social convention." Rubin said, "Actually, a lie is a useful defense if it is a thoroughgoing one. The trouble with most lies is that they don't go far enough." "Been reading Klein Kampf lately?" said Gonzalo. Rubin's eyebrows went up. "You think Hitler was the first to use the technique of the big lie? You can go back to Napoleon 111; you can go back to Julius Caesar. Have you ever read his Coratnentaries?" Henry was bringing the baba an rhum and pouring the coffee delicately, and Avalon said, "Let's get to-our honored guest." Gonzalo said, "As host and chairman of this session, I'm going to call off the grilling. Our guest has a problem and I direct him to favor us with it." He was drawing a quick caricature of Sand on the back of the menu card, with a thin, sad face accentuated into that of a distorted bloodhound. Sand cleared his throat, "I understand everything said in this room is in confidence, but-" Trumbull followed the glance, and growled, "Don't worry about Henry. Henry is the best of us all. If you want to doubt someone's discretion, doubt someone else." "Thank you, sir," murmured Henry, setting up the brandy glasses on the sideboard. Sand said, "The trouble, gentlemen, is that I am suspected of a crime." "What kind of crime?" demanded Trumbull at once. It was his job, ordinarily, to grill the guests and the look in his eye was that of someone with no intention of missing the grillage. "Theft," said Sand. "There is a sum of money and a wad of negotiable bonds missing from a safe in my company. I'm one of those who have the combination, and I had the opportunity to get to it unobserved. I also had a motive because I've had some had luck at the races and needed some cash badly. So it doesn't look good for me." Gonzalo said eagerly, "But be didn't do it. That's the point. He didn't do it." Avalon twirled the half-drink he was not going to finish and said, "I think in the interest of coherence we ought to allow Mr. Sand to tell his story." "Yes," said Trumbull, "how do you know be didn't do it, Mario?" "That's the whole point, damn it. He says be didn't do it," said Gonzalo, "and that's good enough. Not for a court maybe, but it's good enough for me and for anyone who knows him. I've heard him admit enough rotten things-" "Suppose I ask him myself, okay?" said Trumbull. "Did you take the stuff, Mr. Sand?" Sand paused. His blue eyes flicked from face to face, then be said, "Gentlemen, I am telling the truth. I did not take the cash or the bonds. That is only my unsupported word, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I can be relied on." Halsted passed his hand over his forehead upward, as though trying to clear away doubts. "Mr. Sand," be said, "you seem to have a position of some trust. You can get into a safe with assets in it. Yet you play the horses." "Lots of people do." "And lose." "I didn't quite plan it that way." "But don't you risk losing your job?" "My advantage is, sir, that I am employed by my uncle, who is aware of my weakness, but who also knows I don't lie. He knew I had the means and opportunity, and he knew I had debts. He also knew I had recently paid off my gambling debts. I told him so. The circumstantial evidence looked had. But then he asked me directly whether I was responsible for the loss and I told him exactly what I told you: I did not take the cash or the bonds. Since he knows me well, he believes me." "How did you come to pay off your debts?" said Avalon. "Because a long shot came through. That happens, too, sometimes. That happened shortly before the theft was discovered and I paid off the bookies. That's true, too, and I told this to my uncle." "But then you had no motive," said Gonzalo. "I can't say that. The theft might have been carried out as long as two weeks before the discovery. No one looked in that particular drawer in the safe for that period of time-except the thief, of course. It could be argued that after I took the assets the horse came through and made the theft unnecessary-too late." "It might be argued," said Halsted, "that you took the money in order to place a large bet on the horse that came in." "The bet wasn't that large, and I had other sources, but it could be argued so, yes." Trumbull broke in, "But if you still have your job, as I suppose you do, and if. your uncle isn't prosecuting you, as I assume he isn't . . . Has he gone to the police at all?" "No, he can absorb the loss and he feels the police will only try to pin it on me. He knows that what I have told him is true." "Then what's the problem, for God's sake?" "Because there's no one else who can have done it. My uncle can't think of any other way of accounting for the theft. Nor can I. And as long as be can't, there will always be the residuum of uneasiness, of suspicion. He will aTways keep his eye on me. He will always be reluctant to trust me. I'll keep my job, but I'll never be promoted; and I may be made uncomfortable enough to be forced into resignation. If I do, I can't count on a wholehearted recommendation, and from an uncle, a halfhearted one would be fatal." Rubin was frowning. "So you came here, Mr. Sand, because Gonzalo said we solved mysteries. You want us to tell you who really took the stuff." Sand shrugged. "Maybe not. I don't even know if I can give you enough information. It's not as though you're detectives who can make inquiries. If you could tell me just how it might have been done-even if it's farfetched, that would help. If I could go to my uncle and say, "Uncle, it might have been done this way, mightn't it?" Even if we couldn't be sure, even if we couldn't ever get the assets back, it would at least spread the suspicion. He wouldn't have the eternal nagging thought that I was the only possible guilty party." "Well," said Avalon, "we can try to be logical, I suppose. How about the other people who work with you and your uncle? Would any of them need money badly?" Sand shook his head. "Enough to risk the possible consequences of being caught? I don't know. One of them might be in debt, or one might be undergoing blackmail, or one might be greedy, or just have the opportunity and act on impulse. If I were a detective I could go about asking questions, or I could track down documents, or whatever it is they do. As it is-" "Of course," said Avalon, "we can't do that either. . . . Now you had both means and opportunity, but did anyone else?" "At least three people could have gotten to the safe more easily than I and gotten away with it more easily, but not one of them had the combination, and the safe wasn't broken into; that's certain. There are two people besides my uncle and myself who have the combination, but one had been hospitalized over the period in question and the other is such an old and reliable member of the firm that to suspect him seems unthinkable!" "Aha," said Mario Gonzalo, "there's our man right there." "You've been reading too many Agatha Christies," said Rubin at once. "The fact of the matter is that in almost every crime on record, the most suspicious person is indeed the criminal." "That's beside the point," said Halsted, "and too dull besides. What we have here is a pure exercise in logic. Let's have Mr. Sand tell us everything be knows about every member of the firm, and we can all try to see if there's any way in which we can work out motive, means, and opportunity for some one person." "Oh, hell," said Trumbull, "who says it has to be one person? So someone's in a hospital. Big deal. The telephone exists. He phones the combination to a confederate." "All right, all right," said Halsted hastily, "we're bound to think up all sorts of possibilities and some may be more plausible than others. After we've thrashed them out, Mr. Sand can choose the most plausible and use it, too-" "May I speak, sir?" Henry spoke so quickly, and at a sound level so much higher than his usual murmur, that everyone turned to face him. - Henry said, softly once more, "Although not a Black Widower-" "Not so," said Rubin. "You know you're a Black Widower. In fact, you're the only one who's never missed a meeting." "Then may I point out, gentlemen, that if Mr. Sand carries your conclusions, whatever they may be, to his uncle, be will be carrying the proceedings of this meeting beyond the walls of this room." There was an uncomfortable silence. Halsted said, "In the interest of saving the ruin of an innocent person's life, surely-" Henry shook his head gently. "But it would be at the cost of spreading suspicion to one or more other people, who might also be innocent." Avalon said, "Henry's got something there. We seem stymied." "Unless," said Henry, "we can come to some definite conclusion that mill satisfy the club and will not involve the outside world." "What do you have in mind, Henry?" asked Trumbull. "if I may explain . . . I was interested to meet someone who, as Mr. Gonzalo said before dinner, never tells a lie." "Now come, Henry," said Rubin, "you're pathologically honest yourself. You know you are. That's been settled." "That may be so," said Henry, "but I tell lies." "Do you doubt Sand? Do you think he's lying?" said Rubin. "I assure you-" began Sand, almost in anguish. "No," said Henry, "I believe that every word Mr. Sand has said is true. He didn't take the money or the bonds. He is, however, the logical one against whom suspicion may rest. His career may be ruined. His career, on the other hand, may not be ruined if some reasonable alternative can be found, even if that does not actually lead to a solution. And, since he can think of no reasonable alternatives himself, he wants us to help him find some for him. I am convinced, gentlemen, that this is all true." Sand nodded. "Well, thank you." "And yet," said Henry, "what is truth? For instance, Mr. Trumbull, I think that your babit of perpetually arriving late with a cry of "Scotch and soda for a dying man" is rude, unnecessary, and, worse yet, has grown boring. I suspect others here feel the same." Trumbull flushed, but Henry went on firmly. "Yet if, under ordinary circumstances, I were asked if I disapproved of it, I would say I did not. Strictly speaking, that would be a lie, but I like you for'other reasons, Mr. Trumbull, that far outweigh this trick of yours, so the telling of the strict truth, which would imply a dislike for you, would end by actually being a great lie. Therefore I lie to express a trutb-my liking for you." Trumbull muttered, "I'm not sure I like your way of liking, Henry." Henry said, "Or consider Mr. Halsted's limerick on the first book of the Iliad. Mr. Avalon quite rightly said that Achillcus is the correct name of the hero, or even Akhillcus with a "k," I suppose, to suggest the correct sound. But then Mr. Rubin pointed out that the truth would seem like a mistake and ruin the effect of the limerick. Again, truth creates a problem. "Mr. Sand said that all lies arise out of a desire for selfprotection or out of respect for social convention. But we cannot always ignore self-protection and social convention. If we cannot lie, we must make the truth lie for us." Gonzalo said, "You're not making sense, Henry." "I think I am, Mr. Gonzalo. Few people listen to exact words, and many a literal truth tells a lie by implication. Who should know that better than a person who carefully always tells the literal truth?" Sand's pale cheeks were less pale, or his red tie was reflecting light upward more efficiently. He said, "What the hell are you implying?" "I would like to ask you a question, Mr. Sand. If the club is willing, of course." "I don't care if they are or not," said Sand, glowering at Henry. "If you take that tone, I might not choose to answer." "You may not have to," said Henry. "The point is that each time you deny having committed the crime, you deny it in precisely the same form of words. I couldn't help but notice since I made up my mind to listen to your exact words as soon as I heard that you never lied. Each time, you said, "I didn't take the cash or the bonds."" "And that is perfectly true," said Sand loudly. "I'm sure it is, or you wouldn't have said so," said Henry. "Now this is the question I would like to ask you. Did you, by any chance, take the cash and the bonds?" There was a short silence. Then Sand rose and said, "I'll take my coat now. Goodbye. I remind you all that nothing that goes on here can be repeated outside." When Sand was gone, Trumbull said, "Well, I'll be damned!" To which Henry replied, "Perhaps not, Mr. Trumbull. Don't despair." Afterword. This story first appeared in the October 1972 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Man Who Never Told a Lie." I think the magazine title is pedestrian, so I changed it back to my original one. I wrote this story on February 14, 1972. 1 remember that, not because I have a phenomenal memory, but because it was written in the hospital the day before my one and (so far) only operation. Larry Ashmead, my Doubleday editor, visited me that day and I gave him the manuscript and asked him to see that it was delivered to the EQMM offices by messenger. I also told him to explain that I was in the hospital, as I ordinarily deliver the manuscripts myself so that I can flirt with the beauteous Eleanor (to say nothing of the vivacious Constance DiRienzo, who is the executive editorial secretary). Larry did as requested, of course, and I got the news that the story was taken while I was still in the hospital recovering. Since then I have wondered (when I had nothing better to do) if the story was accepted out of sympathy for my poor, suffering self, but I guess not. It was tapped for a best-of-the-year mystery anthology put out by Dutton, so I guess it's okay. Oh, and that accounts for the fact that this story is the shortest in the book. I had to get it done before the surgeon took his scalpel from between his teeth, whetted it on his thigh, and got to work. Go, Little Book! "My wife," said Emmanuel Rubin, with a tremor of indignation shaking his sparse chin beard, "has bought another bull." Discussion of women and, particularly, of wives, was considered out of bounds at the staunchly masculine monthly meetings of the deliberately named Black Widowers, but habits die hard. Mario Gonzalo, who was sketching the guest of the meeting, said, "In your mini-apartment?" "It's a perfectly good apartment," said Rubin indignantly. "It just looks small. And it wouldn't look all that small if she didn't have bulls in it made of wood, of porcelain, of tile, of bronze, and of felt. She has them from a foot across to an inch across. She has them on the wall, on the shelves, on the floor, and suspended from the ceiling-2" Avalon, from his austere height, swirled his drink slowly and said, "She requires a symbol of virility, I prcsumc." "vVhen she has me?" said Rubin. "Because she has you," said Gonzalo, and took the drink pressed upon him by the Black Widowers" perennial and indispensable waiter, Henry-then hurried to his seat to avoid Rubin's explosive reply. At the other end of the table, James Drake said to Roger Halsted, "A, B-2" and paused, lengthily. "What?" said Halsted, his high, white forehead flushing and wrinkling as his eyebrows moved upward. "Long time, no C," said Drake, coughing at his own cigarette smoke, which he frequently did. Halsted looked disgusted. I think I'll make it longer next time. I was here last month, but you weren't. "Family!" said Drake briefly. "What's this I hear about you re- writing the Iliad into limericks?" "One for each book," said Halsted, with obvious selfsatisfaction. "The Odyssey, too." "Jeff Avalon recited the limerick to the first book as soon as be saw me." "I've written one for the second. Would you like to hear it?" "No," said Drake. "It goes like this: "Agamemnon's dream strategy slips, The morale of his troops quickly dips. First Thersites complains, But Odysseus restrains, And we next have the Cat'log of Ships." Drake received it stolidly. He said, "You have one too many syllables in the last line." "Can't help it," said Halsted with unusual heat. "It's impossible to do the second book without mentioning the Catalog of Ships and that phrase has three unaccented syllables in a row. I leave one out by elision and say Cat'log with an apostrophe. That makes it all fifteen perfect anapests." Drake shook his head. "Wouldn't satisfy a purist." Thomas Trumbull, scowling malevolently, said, "I hope, Henry, that you noticed I came early today, even though I'm not the host." "I did notice, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry, smiling urbanely. "The least you can do is give the act public approval after what you said about me last time." "I approve, sir, but it would be wrong to make an issue of it. That would give the impression that it was hard for you to arrive on time and no one would expect to have you repeat the feat next time. If we all ignore it, it will seem as though we take it for granted that you can do it, and then you will have no trouble repeating." "Give me my scotch and soda, Henry, and spare me the dialectic." As a matter of fact, it was Rubin who was the host and his guest was one of his publishers, a round-faced, smooth-checked gentle- man with a good-humored smile on his face. His name was Ronald Klein. Like most guests, be found it difficult to bop onto the merry-goround of talk, and be finally plunged in the direction of the one man at the table he knew. "Manny," he said, "did I hear you say Jane had bought another bull?" "That's right," said Rubin. "A cow, actually, because it's sitting on a crescent moon, but it's hard to tell for sure. The makers of these things rarely go into careful anatomical detail." Avalon, who had been wielding his knife and fork in workmanlike fashion over the stuffed veal, paused to say, "Collector's mania is something that seizes almost every gentleman of leisure. It has many delights; the excitement of the search, the ecstasy of the acquisition, the joy of later contemplation. You can do it with anything. I collect stamps myself." "Stamps," said Rubin at once, "are the very worst thing you can collect. They are thoroughly artificial. Vest-pocket nations put out issues designed deliberately to fetch high sums. Mistakes, misprints, and so on create false values. The whole thing is in the hands of entrepreneurs and financiers. If you've got to collect, collect things with no value." Gonzalo said, "A friend of mine collects his own books. So far, be has published a hundred and eighteen and carefully gets copies of every edition, American and foreign, hard-cover and paperback, book-club and condensed. He's got a whole roomful of them and says be is the only person in the world with a complete collection of his works and that it will be worth a tremendous sum someday." "After he's dead," said Drake briefly. "I think he's planning to fake death, sell the collection for a million dollars, then come back to life and continue writing under a pseudonym." At this point, Klein made his way back on the merry-go-round. "I met a fellow yesterday," be said, "who collects matchboo"ks." "I collected matchbooks when I was a kid," said Gonzalo. "I used to go searching all the curbs and alleys for-" But Trumbull, who had been eating in unwonted silence, suddenly raised his voice to a shout. "God damn it, you bunch of hack talkers, our guest has said something. Mr.-uh-klein, what was that you said?" Klein looked startled. "I said I met a fellow yesterday who collects matchbooks." "That could be interesting," said Halsted agreeably, "if-" "Shut up," roared Trumbull. "I want to hear about this." His creased, bronzed face turned to Klein. "What's the guy's name? The collector." "I'm not sure I remember," said Klein. "I just met him at lunch yesterday; never saw him before that. There were six of us at the table, and be got to talking about his matchbooks. Listen, I thought he was crazy at first, but by the time be got through, I decided to start a collection of my own." "Did he have grayish sideburns, with a little red in it?" asked Trumbull. "Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Do you know him?" "Umm," said Trumbull. "Hey, Manny, I know you're the host, and I don't want to overstep your prerogatives . "But you're going to," said Rubin. "Is that it?" "No, I'm not, damn it," said Trumbull hotly. "I'm asking your permission. I would like to have our guest tell us all about his lunch yesterday with this matchbook collector." Rubin said, "You mean instead of his being put on the grill? We never put anyone on the grill any more!" "This could be important." Rubin thought about it, with a look of some dissatisfaction on his face, then said, "Okay, but after the dessert. . . . What have we got for dessert today, Henry?" "Zabaglione, sir, to go with the Italian motif of tonight's meal." "Calories, calories," groaned Avalon softly. Halsted's teaspoon clinked as he stirred the sugar in his coffee and elaborately ignored Rubin's flat ukase that anyone who added anything at all to good coffee was a barbarian. He said, "Do we humor Tom now and get our guest to tell us about matchbooks?" Klein looked about the table and said with a small laugh, "I'm willing to do it, but I don't know that it's interesting-" "I say it's interesting," said Trumbull. "All right. I won't fight it. I started the whole thing, as a matter of fact. We were at the Cock and Bull on Fifty-third Street-" "Jane insisted on eating there one time because of the name," said Rubin. "Not so hot." Trumbull said, "I'll strangle you, Manny. What's all this talk about your wife today? If you miss her, go home." "You're the only one I know, Tom, who would make any man miss any wife." "Please go on, Mr. Klein," said Trumbull. Klein began again. "Okay. I started it, as I said, by lighting a cigarette, while we were waiting for the menu, and then getting uncomfortable about it. I don't know how it is, but it seems there's a lot less smoking at meals these days. At this table, for instance, Mr. Drake is the only one smoking. I guess he doesn't mind-" "I don't," muttered Drake. "I did, though, so after a few puffs I stubbed out the cigarette. Only I was embarrassed, so I fiddled with the matchbook I had lit the cigarette with; you know, the ones restaurants always supply at every table." "Advertising themselves," said Drake. "Yes." "And this fellow . . . I have his name now-Ottiwell. I don't know his first name." "Frederick," growled Trumbull, with glum satisfaction. "Then you do know him." "I do know him. But go on." "I was still holding the matchbook in my hand, and Ottiwell reached for it and asked if he could see it. So I passed it to him. He looked at it and he said something like "Moderately interesting. Not particularly imaginative in design. I've got it." Or something like that. I don't remember the exact words." Halsted said reflectively, "That's an interesting point, Mr. Klein. At least you know you don't remember the exact words. In all these first-person narratives, the fellow telling the story always re- members every word everyone has said, and in the right order. It never carries conviction with me." "It's just a convention," said Avalon seriously as be sipped at his coffee, "but I admit third-person is more convenient. When you use first-person, you know that the narrator will survive all the deadly perils into which he will be-" "I wrote a first-person narrative once," said Rubin, "in which the narrator dies." "That happens in the western song, "El Paso," too," said Gonzalo. "In "The Murder of Roger'-" began Avalon. And Trumbull rose and banged his fist on the table. "So help me, you bunch of idiots, I will kill the next guy who talks. Don't you believe me when I tell you this thing is important? . . . Go on, Mr. Klein." Klein looked more than a little uncomfortable. "I don't see its importance myself, Mr. Trumbull. There's not even much to it. This Ottiwell took to telling us about matchbooks. Apparently, there's a whole thing about it to people who are involved in it. There are all kinds of factors that increase the value: not only beauty and rarity but also whether the matches are intact and whether the friction strip is unmarked. He talked about difference in design, in location of the friction strip, in type and quantity of printing, whether the inside of the cover is blank or not, and so on. He went on and on, and that's about it. Except that he made it sound so interesting it captured me, as I said." "Did he invite you to visit his place and see his collection?" "No," said Klein, "he didn't." "I've been there," said Trumbull, and having said that, he sat back in his chair with a look of deepest dissatisfaction covering it thickly. There was a silence and, as Henry distributed the small brandy glasses, Avalon said, with a touch of annoyance, "If the threat of murder has been lifted, Tom, may I ask what the collector's place was like?" Trumbull seemed to return, as from a distance. "What? Oh . It's weird. He started collecting when he was a kid. For all I know he got his first samples out of gutters and alleys like Gonzalo did, but at some point it turned serious. "He's a bachelor. He doesn't work. He doesn't have to. He's inherited some money and has invested shrewdly, so all he lives for are those damned matchbooks. I'think they own his house and keep him on as a caretaker. "He's got exhibits of prize items on the wall; framed, if you please. He's got them in folders and cases, everywhere. His whole basement is given over to filing cabinets in which they're catalogued by type and alphabet. You wouldn't believe how many tens of thousands of different matchbooks have been manufactured the world over, with how many different legends, and with how many different peculiarities, and I think he's got them all. "He's got skinny matchbooks that hold two matches apiece; some as long as your arm that bold a hundred and fifty. He's got matches shaped like beer bottles, others shaped like baseball bats or bowling pins. He's got blank matchbooks with nothing on the cover; be's got matchbooks with musical scores on them. Damn it, he's got a whole folder of pornographic matchbooks." "That I'd like to see," said Gonzalo. "Why?" said Trumbull. "It's the same stuff you can see anywhere else, except that on a matchbook it's handier to burn and get rid of." "You've got the soul of a censor," said Gonzalo. "I prefer the real thing," said Trumbull. "Maybe at one time you could," said Gonzalo. "What do you want to do? Play verbal ping-pong? We have something serious under discussion." "What's so serious about a bunch of matchbooks?" demanded Gonzalo. "I'll tell you." Trumbull looked up and down the table. "Listen, you bunch of meatheads, what's said in here is always confidential." "We all know that," said Avalon dryly. "If anyone's forgotten, it's you, or you wouldn't have to remind us." "Mr. Klein will also have to-" Rubin interrupted at once. "Mr. Klein understands exactly. He knows that nothing that ever goes on in this room is ever, under any circumstances, to be referred to outside. I'll vouch for him." "Okay. All right," said Trumbull. "So now I'll tell you as little as I can. So help me God, I wouldn't have told you anything except for Klein's luncheon yesterday. It just irritates me. I've had this chewing holes in me for months now; over a year, in fact; and having it come up-" "Look," said Drake flatly. "Either tell us or don't tell us." , "There's an information leak." "What kind? Where?" said Gonzalo. "Never mind. I'm specifically not saying it's the government I'm specifically not saying foreign agents are involved, you understand. Maybe it's industrial espionage; maybe it's the theft of the New York Mets" baseball signals; maybe it's cheating on a test, as in the problem Drake brought up a couple of months ago. Let's just call it an information leak, all right?" "All right," said Rubin. "And who's involved? This guy Ottiwell?" "We're pretty sure." "Then reel him in." Trumbull said, "We have no proof. All we can do is try to block any information from getting to him, and we don't even want to do that-entirely." "Why not?" "Because it's not who the guy is. It's how be does it. If we pull him in and don't know the method he's using, then someone will take his place. People are cheap. It's the modus operandi we want." "Do you have any ideas on the subject?" asked Halsted, blinking slowly. "It's the matchbooks. What else? It's got to be. All our evidence points to Ottiwell as the leak and he's a crazy guy who collects matchbooks. There's got to be a connection." "You mean he started collecting matchbooks so he could- "No, he's been collecting them all his life. There's no doubt about it. That collection be has right now took thirty years a-building. But once he had his collection, when be was somehow recruited into the business of transmitting information, be naturally worked out a scheme that involved his matchbooks." "What scheme?" broke in Rubin impatiently. "That's what I don't know. But it's there. In a way, the matchbooks are perfect for the task. They carry messages already and, properly chosen, they need no tampering. For instance, the restaurant you were in yesterday, Klein, the Cock and Bull. Its matchbooks surely said "Cock and Bull" on the covers." "Sounds reasonable. I didn't look." "I'm sure of it. Well, now, if you want to cancel out a previous message, you put one of those things in the mail, or just tear off half the cover, and mail it. Aren't you saying the previous message was just a cock-and-bull story?" Gonzalo said, "That's pure bull. . . . Sorry, Manny, didn't mean to raise a sore point. . . . But look, Tom, anyone who mails a matchbook cover, let alone a matchbook, is asking for it. You spot something funny at once." "Not if there's a plausible reason to mail matchbooks." "Like what?" "Matchbook nuts do it. They correspond and they trade. They send matchbooks back and forth. Maybe one guy needs a Cock and Bull to flesh out an animal collection be's building up and re- turns a spare girlie picture for someone who's specializing in that kind of art." "And Ottiwell trades?" asked Avalon. "Sure he does." "And you never managed to pick up anything be put into the mail?" A look of contempt came across Trumbull's face. "Of course, we did. A number of times. We'd pick it up, go over it with a finetooth comb, then send it on." "And by so doing," said Rubin, looking off into the distance, "interfering with the United States mails. That's an easy thing to do when it's only a matter of the New York Mets" baseball signals." "Oh, for God's sake," said Trumbull, "don't be a jackass for, say, fifteen minutes, Manny, just for the novelty of it. You know my field is in codes and ciphers. You know I'm consulted by the government and have my contacts there. Naturally they're interested. They would be even if the leak involved only a case of over-thefence gossip, and I'm not saying it's any more than that." "Why?" said Rubin. "Are we that far gone in Big Brotherism?" "It's simple if you'll stop to think. Any system for transmitting information that can't be broken-wbatever the information isis top-flight dangerous. If it works and is being used for something utterly unimportant, it can be later used to deal with something vital. The government doesn't want any system of transmitting information to remain unbroken, unless it's under its own control. That's got to make sense to you." "All right," said Drake, "so you studied the matchbooks this Ottiwell puts in the mail. What did you get?" "Nothing," grunted Trumbull. "There was nothing we could make out of it. We studied those damned advertising items on each cover and came up with nothing." "You mean you looked to see if initial letters of the items spelled a word or something?" said Klein with interest. "If it were a six-year-old sending it, yes, that's what we would have tried. No, we worked a lot more subtly than that and came up with nothing." "Well," said Avalon heavily, "if you can't find anything in any of the printed matter of any of the matchbooks be mails-maybe it's a false lead." "You mean maybe it's not the matchbooks at all?" "That's right," said Avalon. "It could be all misdirection. This man has the matchbooks handy and be's a bona fide collector, so he makes his collection look as prominent as possible to attract all the attention it can. He shows it to anyone who wants to see it. . . .How did you get to see it, Tom?" "He invited me. I cultivated his friendship." "And be responded," said Rubin. "There's a man who deserves everything he gets. Don't cultivate my friendship, Tom." "I never have. . . . Look, Jeff, I know what you mean. He talked to Klein yesterday about the matchbooks; he'd talk to anyone. He'd show his collection to anyone willing to go out to Queens. That's why I asked if he invited Klein up to his place. With all that talking, all that self-advertisement, all that glitter and shine, it wouldn't surprise you, I suppose, if be then used some device that had nothing at all to do with the matchbooks. Right?" "Right," said Avalon. "Wrong," said Trumbull. "I just don't believe it. He's the real thing. He's really a matchbook nut with nothing else in his life. He has no ideological reason to run the terrible risk be's actually run- ning. He isn't committed to the side for which he's working; whether it is national, industrial, or local-and I'm not saying which. He lacks any interest in that. It's only the matchbooks. He's worked out a way of using his damned matchbooks in a new way and that's the glory of it as far as he's concerned." "Listen," said Drake, coming out of a reverie. "How many matchbooks does he mail off at a time?" Who can say? The cases we've intercepted have never been more than eight. And be doesn't really mail them often. I have to admit that." "All right. How much information can he get across in a few matchbooks? He can't use the messages literally and directly. If he tries to do the Cock and Bull bit to cancel a message, my kid nephew could spot him, let alone you. So it's something subtle and maybe each matchbook can work out to one word, or maybe only one letter. What can you do with that?" "Plenty," said Trumbull indignantly. "What do you think is needed in these cases? An encyclopedia? Whoever is looking for information, you simp, has it almost all to begin with. There's just some key point missing and that's what's needed. "For instance, suppose we're back in World War 11. Germany has rumors that something big is going on in the United States. A message arrives with only two words on it: "atom bomb." What more does Germany need? Sure, no atom bomb existed at the time, but any German with a high-school education would get the idea from those two words and any German physicist would get a damned good idea. Then a second message arrives saying: "Oak Ridge, Tenn." That would be a total of twenty individual letters in the two messages taken together and it could have changed the history of the world." "You mean this guy, Ottiwell, is putting across information like that?" demanded Gonzalo, in awe. "No! I told you he wasn't," said Trumbull, annoyed. "He isn't important at all in that way. Do you think I would be talking to all of you about it if he were? It's just that the modus operandi could be used for that as well as for anything else, and that's why we have to break it. Besides, there's my reputation. I say be's using the matchbooks and I can't show how. You think I like that?" Gonzalo said, "Maybe there's secret writing on the inside of the matchbooks?" "We tested for that routinely, but not a chance. If that's it, why bother using matchbooks? It could be done in ordinary letters and attract a lot less attention. It's a matter of psychology. If Ottiwell is going to use matchbooks, he's going to use a system that can be used only on matchbooks, and that means be's using only the messages that are on them already-somehow." his by mentioning yesterday's lunch. Do you have, maybe, a list of matchbooks he sent off? If you have a photostat, we could all look at it-" "And work out the code that I couldn't? Right?" said Trumbull. "You know ever since Conan Doyle pitted Sherlock Holmes against the Scotland Yard bunglers, there seems to be a notion going around that the professional can't do anything. I assure you, if I can't do it-" Avalon said, "Well, now, how about Henry?" Henry, who had been listening gravely, with a look of interest on his unlined, sixtyisb face, smiled briefly and shook his head. But a look of deep thought came over Trumbull's face. "Henry," he said. "I forgot about Henry. You're right, Jeff. He's the smartest man here, which would ordinarily be a compliment, if you weren't all a pack of prize imbeciles. "Henry," he said, "you're the honest man. You can see the dishonesty of the world without having it blurred by your own larcenous yearnings. Do you agree with me? Do you think this Ottiwell, if be were going to engage in this kind of work, would do so only by using his matchbooks in a way that would make them uniquely useful, or not?" "As a matter of fact, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry, collecting the dishes that remained, "I do. I agree with you." Trumbull smiled. "Here we have the word of a man who knows what he's talking about." "Because he agrees with you," said Rubin. "I don't entirely agree with Mr. Trumbull, to be sure," said Henry. "Aha," said Rubin. "Now what do you think, Tom?" "What I always think," said Trumbull. "That your silence is the best part of you." "May 1-make a little speech?" said Henry. "Wait a while," said Rubin. "I'm still the host, and I'm taking over. I decide on procedures, and I decide that Henry makes a. little speech and that the rest of us all keep quiet except to answer Henry's questions or to ask questions of our own that are right to the point. I have in mind particularly Tom-Tom the drumbeat as a candidate for quiet." "Thank you, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "I listen to you gentlemen, on the occasion of all your monthly meetings, with the greatest interest. It is obvious to me that all of you get enormous pleasure, in an innocent way, out of flailing at each other with words. You can't very well flail at a guest, however, so you all have a tendency to ignore the guest and to fail to listen to him when he speaks." "Have we done that?" asked Avalon. "Yes, and, it seems to me, Mr. Avalon, you may have missed a most important point in consequence. Since it is not my place to talk-ordinarily-I listen to all of you impartially, the guest included, and I seem to have heard what the rest of you did not. May I have permission, Mr. Rubin, to ask Mr. Klein a few questions? The answers may prove to be of no help, but there is a small chance-" "Well, sure," said Rubin. "He should be grilled anyway. Go ahead." "It wouldn't be a grilling," objected Henry softly. "Mr. Klein?" "Yes, Henry," said Klein, a rather pleased flush crossing his face at being the undoubted center of attention. "It's just this, Mr. Klein. When you began to tell, rather briefly, the story of your lunch yesterday, you said something like-and I can't repeat the exact words either-you thought he was crazy, but he made everything sound so interesting that by the time he was through, you decided to start a collection of matchbooks of your own." "That's right," said Klein, nodding. "Sort of silly, I suppose. I certainly wouldn't do anything at all like his deal. I don't mean the spying; I mean this huge collection of his-2" "Yes," said Henry, "but the impression I got was that you were driven to an impulse of collecting right on the spot. Did you by any chance pick up a Cock and Bull matchbook at the conclusion of the lunch?" "That's right," said Klein. "It's a little embarrassing, now that I think of it, but I did." "From which table, sir?" "From our own." "You mean you took the matchbook you had been holding and had passed on to Ottiwell? It was put back on the table eventually and you picked it up?" "Yes," said Klein, suddenly defensive. "Nothing wrong with that, is there? They're there for the diners, aren't they?" "Absolutely, sir. We have matchbooks on this table, which you're all welcome to. But, Mr. Klein, what did you do with the matchbook when you picked it up?" Klein thought a bit. "I don't know. It's hard to remember. I put it in my jacket pocket, or in my coat pocket after we got our overcoats out of hock." "Did you do anything with it once you got home?" "No, as a matter of fact. I forgot all about it. All this matchbook bit just passed out of my head till Manny Rubin mentioned about his wife collecting bulls." "You're not wearing the same jacket now, are you?" "No. But I'm wearing the same coat." "Would you look in the coat pocket and see if you have the matchbook there?" Klein vanished into the private cloakroom used by the Black Widowers on the occasion of their meetings. "What are you getting at, Henry?" asked Trumbull. "Probably nothing," said Henry. "I'm playing a long chance, and we've already had one this evening." "Which is that?" "That Mr. Klein had lunch with a man who turns out to be someone you've been stalking, and that you find out about it the day after. Asking for two chances like that is a bit much, perhaps." "Here it is," said Klein joyously, returning with a small object held high. "I've got it." He tossed it on the table and everyone rose to look at it. It said "Cock and Bull" upon it in semi-archaic lettering, and there was the small picture of a bull's head, with a rooster perched on one horn. Gonzalo reached for it. "If you please, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry. "I don't think anyone ought to touch it yet. . . . Mr. Klein, this is the matchbook that was at your table, the one you used to light a cigarette and which Mr. Ottiwell then used to demonstrate some points about the place where the friction strip is located and so on? "Yes. "And he put it down and you picked it up?" "Yes. "Did you happen to notice how many matches were present in the matchbook when you lit your cigarette?" Klein looked surprised. "I don't know. I didn't pay any attention." "But, in any case, you tore off one match to light your cigarette?" "Oh, yes. "So that even if it had been a full book of matches to begin with, there would be one missing now. Since this looks like a standard matchbook, with thirty matches, there can't be more than twenty-nine matches in it right now-and maybe less." "I suppose SO." "And how many matches are there in the book now? Would you look and see?" Klein paused and then opened the matchbook. He stared at it for quite a while, then said, "It hasn't been touched. It's got all thirty matches in it. Let me count them. . . . Yes, there are thirty." "But you did pick it up from your table, and you did think it was the matchbook you had used? You didn't pick it up from another table altogether?" "No, no, it was our matchbook. Or at least I was convinced it was. "All right. If you gentlemen would care to look at it now, please do so. If you'll notice, there is no mark on the friction strip, no sign of any match being lighted." Trumbull said, "You mean that Ottiwell substituted this matchbook for the one that was on the table?" "I thought such a thing was possible as soon as you said be was passing information, Mr. Trumbull. I agreed with you, Mr. Trumbull, that Mr. Ottiwell would make use of matchbooks. The psychology seemed sound to me. But I also agreed with Mr. Avalon that indirection might be used. It's just that Mr. Avalon did not quite see the possible subtlety of the indirection." "Being too crooked myself to see clearly," sighed Avalon. "I know." "By concentrating on his collection," said Henry, "and on his mailing and receiving matchbooks, he had you quite firmly pinned there, Mr. Trumbull. Yet it seemed to me that Mr. Ottiwell was not involved with matchbooks only in connection with his collection. Every time be ate in a decent restaurant, which might be often, be would be near a matchbook. Even if be were with others, it would be easy for him to substitute another matchbook for the one already on the table. Once be and the rest of the party left, a confederate could pick it up." "Not this time," said Rubin sardonically. "No, not this time. When the party left, the table was empty of matchbooks. This leads to some bothersome thoughts. Have you been followed, Mr. Klein?Klein looked alarmed. "No! At least-at least-I don't know. I didn't notice anyone." "Any pocket-picking attempts?" "No! None that I know of." "In that case, they may not be sure who took it-after all there were four others at the table besides yourself and Ottiwell; and a waiter might have cleared it, too. Or else they think that a lost matchbook will cause far less trouble than an attempt at retrieval might. Or else I'm all wrong from beginning to end." Trumbull said, "Don't worry, Klein. I'll arrange to have an eye kept on you for a while." He then went on. "I see the point you're making, Henry. There are dozens of these matchbooks in any given restaurant at any given time, all of them identical. Ottiwell could easily have picked up one or two on a previous visit-or a dozen, if he wanted toand then use them as substitutes. Who would notice? Who would care? And are you suggesting now that that one little substitute matchbook would carry the information?" "It certainly would seem a strong possibility to me," said Henry. "Go, little Book! from this my solitude / I cast thee on the waters-go thy way!" muttered Halsted. "That's Robert Southey!" "But how would it work?" said Trumbull, ignoring Halsted's whispered verse. He turned the matchbook from side to side between his fingers. "It's one matchbook, just like all the rest. It says "Cock and Bull" on it, plus an address and a phone number. Where would there be any information on this one as opposed to others?" "We would have to look in the right place," said Henry. "And where would that be?" said Trumbull. "I go by what you said, sir," said Henry. "You said Mr. Ottiwell would be sure to use the matchbook in a way that would involve its unique qualities, and I agree. But what is unique about the message that matchbooks carry? In almost every case, it is just advertising matter, and you'll find such matter in almost any number of other places from cereal boxtops to the inside covers of magazines." "Well, then?" "Only one thing is truly unique about a matchbook-and that is the matches it contains. In the standard matchbook there are thirty matches that seem to be arranged in a moderately complicated pattern. If you study the bottom of the matches, though, you will see that there are two pieces of cardboard, from each of Wbic there arise fifteen matches. If you count from left to right, first the back row-as you look at them from the direction of the opened flap-and then the front row, say, you can give each match a definite and unequivocal number from 1 to 30-" "Yes," said Trumbull, "but all the matches are identical with each other and with the matches in other matchbooks of the same kind. The matches in this particular matchbook are absolutely standard." "But do the matches have to stay identical, sir? Suppose you took out one match-any one match. There would be thirty different ways of taking out one match. If you took out two matches, or three, there would be many more additional ways." "No matches are missing." "Just a manner of speaking. Tearing out matches would be far too crude a way of differentiating. Suppose certain matches had pinholes in them, or little scratches, or a tiny drop of fluorescent paint on the tips that would show up under ultraviolet light. With thirty matches, how many different patterns could you produce by marking any number, from none at all to all thirty?" "I'll tell you that," interrupted Halsted. "Two to the thirtieth power, which comes to-oh, a little over one billion; that's billion, not million. And if you also marked or didn't mark the flap just behind the matches, you would double that to two billion." "Well," said Henry, "if you could give a particular matchbook any number from zero to two billion, such numbers could encode considerable information, perhaps." "As many as six words, easily," said Trumbull thoughtfully. "Damn!" he shouted, jumping to his feet. "Give me that thing. I'm leaving now." He left for the cloakroom at a run and was back fumbling into his coat and shouting, "Get your coat, Klein, you're coming with me. I need your statement and you'll be safer." Henry said, "I may be quite wrong, sir." "Wrong, hell! You're right; I know you are. The whole thing fits a few items you don't know about. . . . Henry, would you con- sider getting involved in this sort of thing? I mean, professionally." "Hey," shouted Rubin, "don't you go taking Henry away from us!7 "No fear, Mr. Rubin," said Henry softly, "I find it much more exciting here." Afterword. This story first appeared, in a slightly shorter version, in the December 1972 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Matchbook Collector." Once again, I consider the magazine title pedestrian. I'll leave it up to you. The phrase "Go, little Book!" is the beginning of a line from Chaucer and from a poem by Robert Southey, and that line from Southey was satirized very effectively by Lord Byron, so it has meaning in the history of English literature. On top of that, it perfectly expresses the nub of the story in which the little (match)books are sent outward on errands of information. What do you say, then? Don't I owe it to all mankind to change "The matchbook Collector" back into "Go, Little Book!"? Sure I do. By the way, when I first wrote the story I calculated out the Value Of 230 (that- is, 30 two's multiplied together) in my head out of sheer vainglory. Naturally, I got an answer that was off a little, and serves me right. A young lady named Mildred L. Stover wrote me a letter in which the value was carefully calculated out, multiplication by multiplication, and I corrected my mistake for the book. If you are interested, 230 1,073,741,824. Thank you, Miss Stover. Early Sunday mornIng. Geoffrey Avalon swirled his second drink as be sat down to the table. It had not yet diminished to the halfway mark and be would take one more sip before abandoning it. He looked unhappy. He said, "This is the first time within my memory that the Black Widowers have met without a guest." His bushy eyebrows, still black (although his mustache and trim beard had become respectably gray with the years), seemed to twitch. "Oh, well," said Roger Halsted, flicking his napkin with an audible slap before placing it over his knees. "As host this session, it's my decision. No appeal. Besides, I have my reasons." He placed the palm of his hand on his high forehead and made a motion as though to brush back hair that had disappeared from the forepart of his pate years before. "Actually," said Emmanuel Rubin, "there's nothing in the bylaws that says we must have a guest. The only thing we must have present at the dinner is no women." "The members can't be women," said Thomas Trumbull, glowering out of his perpetually tanned face. "Where does it say that a guest can't be a woman?" "No," said Rubin sharply, his sparse beard quivering. "Any guest is a member ex officio for the mcal and must abide by all the rules, including not being a woman." "What does ex officio mean, anyway?" asked Mario Gonzalo. "I always wondered." But Henry was already presenting the first course, which seemed to be a long roll of pasta, stuffed with spiced cheese, broiled, and sauce-covered. At last Rubin, looking pained, said, "As near as I can make out this seems to be a roll of pasta, stuffed-" But by that time, the conversation had grown general and Halsted seized a break to announce that he had his limerick for the third book of the Iliad. Trumbull said, "Damn it to hell, Roger, are you going to inflict one of those on us at every meeting?" "Yes," said Halsted thoughtfully. "I was planning just that. It keeps me working at it. Besides, you have to have some item of intellectual worth at the dinner. . . . Say, Henry, don't forget that if it's steak tonight, I want mine rare." "Trout tonight, Mr. Halsted," said Henry, refilling the water glasses. "Good," said Halsted. "Now here it is: "Menelaus, though not very mighty, Was stronger than Paris, the flighty. Menelaus did well in The duel over Helen, But was foiled by divine Aphrodite." Gonzalo said, "But what does it mean?" Avalon interposed, "Oh, well, in the third book, the Greeks and Trojans decide to settle the matter by means of a duel between Menelaus and Paris. The latter had eloped with the former's wife, Helen, and that was what caused the war. Menelaus won, but Aphrodite snatched Paris away just in time to save his life. . . . I'm glad you didn't use Venus in place of Aphrodite, Roger. There's too much of the use of Roman analogues." Halsted, through a full mouth, said, "I wanted to avoid the temptation of obvious rhyming." "Didn't you ever read the Iliad, Mario?" asked James Drake. "Listen," said Gonzalo, "I'm an artist. I have to save my eyes." It was with dessert on the table that Halsted said, "Okay, let me explain what I have in mind. The last four times we met, there's been some sort of crime that's come up every discussion, and in the course of that discussion, it's been solved." "By Henry," interrupted Drake, stubbing out his cigarette. "All right, by Henry. But what kind of crimes? Rotten crimes. The first time I wasn't here, but I gather the crime was a robbery, and not much of one either, from what I understand. The second time, it was worse. It was a case of cheating on an examination, for heaven's sake." "That's not such a minor thing," muttered Drake. "Well, it's not exactly a major thing. The third time-and I was here then-it was theft again, but a better one. And the fourth time it was a case of espionage of some sort." "Believe me," said Trumbull, "that wasn't minor." "Yes," said Halsted in his mild voice, "but there was no violence anywhere. Murder, gentlemen, murder!" "What do you mean, murder?" asked Rubin. "I mean that every time we bring a guest, something minor turns up because we take it as it comes. We don't deliberately invite guests who can offer us interesting crimes. In fact, they're not even supposed to offer us crimes at all. They're just guests." "so? " "so there are now six of us present, no guests, and there must be one of us who knows of some killing that's a mystery and-" "Hell!" said Rubin in disgust. "You've been reading Agatha Christie. We'll each tell a puzzling mystery in turn and Miss Marple will solve it for us. . . . Or Henry will." Halsted looked abashed. "You mean they do things like that-" "Oh, God," said Rubin emotionally. "Well, you're the writer," said Halsted. "I don't read murder mysteries." "That's your loss," said Rubin, "and it shows what an idiot you are. You call yourself a mathematician. A proper mystery is as mathematical a puzzle as anything you can prepare and it has to be constructed out of much more intractable material." "Now wait a while," said Trumbull. "As long as we're here, why don't we see if we can dig up a murder?" "Can you present one?" said Halsted hopefully. "You're with the government, working on codes or whatever. You must have been involved with murder, and you don't have to name names. You know that nothing gets repeated outside these walls." "I know that better than you," said Trumbull, "but I don't know about any murders. I can give you some interesting code items but that's not what you're after. . . . How about you, Roger? Since you bring this up, I suppose you have something up your sleeve. Some mathematical murder?" "No," said Halsted thoughtfully, "I don't think I can recall being involved in a single murder." "You don't think? You mean there's a doubt in your mind?" asked Avalon. "I guess I'm certain. How about you, Jeff? You're a lawyer." "Not the kind that gets murderers for clients," Avalon said, with an apparently regretful shake of his head. "Patent complications are my thing. You might ask Henry. He's more at home with crimes than we are, or he sounds it." "I'm sorry, sir," said Henry softly as he poured the coffee with practiced skill. "In my case, it is merely theory. I have been fortunate enough never to be involved with violent death." "You mean," said Halsted, "that with six of us here-seven, counting Henry-we can't scare up a single murder?" Drake shrugged. "In my game, there's always a good chance of death. I haven't witnessed one in the chem lab personally, but There've been poisonings, explosions, even electrocutions. At worst, though, it's murder through negligence. I can't tell you anything about any of them." Trumbull said, "How come you're so quiet, Manny? In all your colorful career, you mean you've never had occasion to kill a man?" "It would be a pleasure sometimes," said Rubin, "like now. But I don't really have to. I can handle them perfectly well at any size without having to lay a hand on them. Listen, I remember-" But Mario Gonzalo, who had been sitting there with his lips clamped tightly together, suddenly said, "I've been involved in a murder." "Oh? What kind?" asked Halsted. "My sister," be said broodingly, "about three years ago. That was before I joined the Black Widowers." "I'm sorry," said Halsted. "I guess you don't want to talk about it." "I wouldn't mind talking about it," said Mario, shrugging, his large and prominent eyes looking them all in the face, one by one, "but there's nothing to talk about. No mystery. It's just another one of those things that make this city the fun place it is. They broke into the apartment, tried to loot it, and killed her." "Who did?" asked Rubin. "Who knows? Addicts! It happens all the time in that neighborhood. In the apartment house she and her husband lived in, there'd been four burglaries since New Year's and it was only the end of April when it happened." "Were they all murders?" "They don't have to be. The smart looter picks a time when the apartment is empty. Or if someone's there, they just scare them or tie them up. Marge was stupid enough to try to resist, to fight back. There were plenty of signs of a struggle." Gonzalo shook his head. Halsted said, after a painful pause, "Did they ever get the ones who did it?" Gonzalo's eyes lifted and stared into Halsted's without any attempt at masking the contempt they held. "Do you think they even looked? That sort of thing goes on all day long. Nobody can do anything. Nobody even cares. And if they got them, so what? Would it bring back Marge?" "It might keep them from doing it to others." "nere'd be plenty of other miserable creeps to do it." Gonzalo drew a deep breath, then said, "Well, maybe I'd better talk about it and get it out of my system. It's all my fault, you see, because I wake up too early. If it weren't for that, maybe Marge would be alive and Alex wouldn't be the wreck he is now." "Who's Alex?" asked Avalon. "My brother-in-law. He was married to Marge, and I liked him. I think I liked him better than I ever did her, to be truthful. She never approved of me. She thought being an artist was just my way of goofing off. Of course, once I started making a decent living-no, she never really approved of me even then and most of the time she was, meaning no disrespect to the dead, one big pain. She liked Alex, though." "He wasn't an artist?" Avalon was carrying the burden of the questioning and the others seemed willing to leave it to him. "No. He wasn't much of anything when they married, just a drifter, but afterward he became exactly what she wanted. She was what he needed to get a little push into him. They needed each other. She had something to care for-" "No children?" "No. None. Unless you want to count one miscarriage. Poor Marge. Something biological, so she couldn't have kids. But it didn't matter. Alex was her kid, and he flourished. He got a job the month he was married, got promoted, did well. They were getting to the point where they were planning to move out of that damned death trap, and then it happened. Poor Alex. He was as much to blame as I was. More, in fact. Of all days, be had to leave the house on that one." "He wasn't in the apartment, then?" "Of course not. If he was, he might have scared them off." "Or be might have gotten killed himself." "In which case they would probably have run off and left Marge alive. Believe me, I've listened to him list the possibilities. No matter how he slices it, she'd still be alive if he hadn't left that day, and it bothers him. And let me tell you, he's gone to pot since it happened. He's just a drifter again now. I give him money when I can and he gets odd jobs now and then. Poor Alex. He had that five years of marriage when be was really making it. He was a gogetter. Now it's all for nothing. Nothing to show for it." Gonzalo shook his head. "What gets me is that the victim isn't the one who gets the worst of it. It's a senseless murder-bell, everything they got in the apartment amounted to no more than about ten, fifteen dollars in small bills-but at least Marge died quickly. The knife was right in the heart. But Alex suffers every day of his life now, and my mother took it hard. And it bothers me, too." "Listen," said Halsted, "if you don't want to talk about it-" "It's all right. . . . I think of it nights sometimes. If I didn't wake up early that day-" "That's the second time you said that," said Trumbull. "What's your waking up early got to do with it?" "Because people who know me count on it. Look, I always wake up at eight A.M. sharp. It doesn't vary by as much as five minutes one way or the other. I don't even bother keeping the clock by my bed; it stays in the kitchen. It's got something to do with rhythms in the body." "The biological clock," muttered Drake. "I wish it worked that way with me. I hate getting up in the morning." "It works with me all the time," said Gonzalo, and even under the circumstances, there was a hint of complacence in his voice as he said so. "Even if I go to sleep late-three in the morning, four-I always wake up at exactly eight. I go back to sleep later in the day if I'm knocked out, but at eight I wake up. Even on Sunday. You'd think I'd have the right to sleep late on Sunday, but even then, damn it, I wake up." "You mean it happened on a Sunday?" asked Rubin. Gonzalo nodded. "That's right. I should have been asleep. I should have been the kind of person people would know better than to wake early Sunday morning-but they don't hesitate. They know I'll be awake, even on Sunday." "Nuts," said Drake, apparently still brooding over his difficulties in the morning. "You're an artist and make your own hours. Why do you have to get up in the morning?" "Well, I work best then. Besides, I'm time-conscious, too. I don't have to live by the clock, but I like to know what time it is at all times. That clock I have. It's trained, you know. After it happened, after Marge was killed, I wasn't home for three days and it just happened to stop either eight P.m. Sunday or eight A.M. Monday. I don't know. Anyway, when I came back there it was with the hands pointing to eight as though rubbing it in that that was wake-up time." Gonzalo brooded for a while and no one spoke. Henry passed around the small brandy glasses with no expression on his face, unless you counted the merest tightening of his lips. Gonzalo finally said, "It's a funny thing but I had a rotten night, that night before, and there was no reason for it. That time of year, end of April, cberry-blossom time, is my favorite. I'm not exactly a landscape artist, but that's the one time I do like to get into the park and make some sketches. And the weather was good. I remember it was a nice mild Saturday, the first really beautiful weekend of the year, and my work was doing pretty well, too. "I had no reason to feel had that day, but I got more and more restless. I remember I turned off my little television set just before the eleven-o'clock news. It was as though I felt that I didn't want to hear the news. It was as though I felt there would be had news. I remember that. I didn't make it up afterward, and I'm not a mystic. But I had a premonition. I just did." Rubin said, "More likely you had a touch of indigestion." "All right," said Gonzalo, moving his hands as though to take in and welcome the suggestion. "Call it indigestion. All I know is that it was before eleven P.m. and I went into the kitchen and wound the clock-I always wind it at night-and said to myself, "I can't go to bed this early," but I did. "Maybe it was too early, because I couldn't sleep. I kept tossing and worrying-I don't remember about what. What I should have done was get up, do some work, read a book, watch some late movie-but I just didn't. I just made up my mind to stay in bed." "Why?" asked Avalon. "Don't know. It seemed important at the time. God, how I remember that night, because I kept thinking, maybe I'll sleep late because I'm not sleeping now and I knew I wouldn't. I must have dropped off at about four A.m., but at eight I was up and crawled out of bed to get myself breakfast. "It was another sunny day. Pleasant and cool, but you knew it was going to have all the warmth of spring with none of the heat of summer. Another nice day! You know it hurts me, now and then, that I didn't like Marge better than I did. I mean, we got along all right, but we weren't close. I swear I visited them more to be with Alex than to be with her. And then I got a call." Halsted said, "You mean a telephone call?" "Yes. Eight oVock of a Sunday morning. Who would make a call at that time to anyone unless they knew the jerk always got up at eight. If I had been asleep and had been awakened, and growled into the mouthpiece, the whole thing would have been different." "Who was it?" asked Drake. "Alex. He asked if he woke me. He knew he didn't, but be felt guilty calling that early, I suppose. He asked what time it was. I looked at the clock and said, "It's eight-oh-ninC A.M. Of course I'm awake." I was sort of proud of it, you see. "And then he asked if he could come over, because be had had an argument with Marge and had stamped out of the house and didn't want to go back till she had cooled down. I tell you, I'm glad I never married. "Anyway, if I'd only said no. If I'd only told him I'd had a had night and I needed my sleep and I didn't want company, he'd have gone back to his apartment. He had no place else to go. And then it all wouldn't have happened. But no, big-bearted Mario was so proud of being an early riser that he said, "Come on over and I'll fix you coffee and eggs," because I knew Marge wasn't one for early Sunday breakfasts, and I knew Alex hadn't eaten. "So he was over in ten minutes and by eigbt-thirty I had the scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him, and Marge was alone in the apartment, waiting for murderers." Trumbull said, "Did your brother-in-law tell his wife where be was going?" Gonzalo said, "I don't think so. I assumed he didn't. I figure what happened was he stamped out in a fit of rage without even knowing where he was going himself. Then he thought of me. Even if he knew he was going to visit me, he might not have told her. He would figure: Let her worry." "All right," said Trumbull, "and then when the junkies came to the door and maybe tried the lock, she figured it was Alex coming back and she opened the door to them. I'll bet the lock wasn't broken." "No, it wasn't," said Gonzalo. "Isn't Sunday morning a queer time for junkies to make the rounds?" asked Drake. "Listen," said Rubin, "they'll do it any time. The craving for drugs knows no season." "What was the fight about?" asked Avalon suddenly. "I mean, between Alex and Marge?" "Oh, I don't know. A little thing. Alex had done something at work that must have looked had and that was one thing that Marge couldn't stand. I don't even know what it was, but whatever it was, it must have been a blow at her pride in him and she was sore. "The trouble was that Alex never learned to just let her run down. When we were kids, I always did that. I would say, "Yes, Marge; yes, Marge," and then she'd run down. But Alex would always try to defend himself and then things would just get worse. That time, most of the night was filled with argument. . . . Of course, he says now that if he only hadn't made a federal case out of it, be wouldn't have left, and then none of it would have happened." ""The moving finger writes,"" said Avalon. "Brooding on these ifs does no good." "Sure, but how do you stop, Jeff? Anyway, they had a had night and I had a had night. It was as though there were some kind of telepathic communication." "Oh, bull," said Rubin. "We were twins," said Gonzalo defensively. "Only fraternal twins," said Rubin, "unless you're a girl underneatb all those clothes." "So what?" "So it's only identical twins that are supposed to have this telepathic sympathy, but that's bull, too." "Anyway," said Gonzalo, "Alex was with me and I ate and he didn't eat much, and be cried on my shoulder about how hard Marge was on him sometimes, and I sympathized and said, "Listen, why do you pay so much attention to her? She's a good kid if you'll only not take her seriously! You know all the consoling things people say. I figured in a couple of hours he'd be talked out and he'd go home and make it up and I'd go out to the park or maybe back to bed. Only in a couple of hours the telephone rang again, and it was the police." "How'd they know where to find Alex?" asked Halsted. "They didn't. They called me. I'm her brother. Alex and I went over and identified her. For a while there, be looked like a dead man. It wasn't just that she was dead. After all, he'd had a fight with her and the neighbors must have heard. Now she was dead, and they always suspect the husband. Of course, they questioned him and be admitted the fight and leaving the apartment and. coming to my place-the whole thing." "It must have sounded phony as hell," said Rubin. "I corroborated the fact that be was at my place. I said he'd arrived at my place at eigbt-twenty, maybe eight twenty-five, and had been there since. And the murder had taken place at nine." "You mean there were witnesses?" asked Drake. "Hell, no. But there'd been noise. The people underneath beard. The pcople across the ball beard. Furniture being overturned; a scream. Of course, no one saw anyone; no one saw any- thing. They sat behind their locked doors. But they beard the noise and it was around nine o'clock. They all agreed to that. "That settled it as far as the police were concerned. In that neighborhood, if it isn't the spouse, it's some petty thief, probably an addict. Alex and I went out and he got drunk and I stayed with him a couple of days because he was in no condition to be left alone and that's all there is to the story." Trumbull said, "Do you ever see Alex these days?" "Once in a while. I lend him a few bucks now and then. Not that I expect to get paid back. He quit his job the week after Marge was killed. I don't think be ever went back to work. He was just a broken man-because be blamed himself, you know. Why did be have to argue with her? Why did be have to leave the house? Why did he have to come over to my place? Anyway, there it is. It's a murder but no mystery." There was silence for a time, and then Halsted said, "Do you mind, Mario, if we speculate about it, just-just-" "Just for fun?" said Mario. "Sure, go ahead, have fun. If you have questions, I'll answer as best I can but as far as the murder is concerned, there's nothing to say." "You see," said Halsted awkwardly, "no one saw anybody. It's only an assumption that some nameless addicts came in and killed her. Someone might have killed her with a better reason, knowing that it would be blamed on addicts and he'd be safe. Or she, maybe." "Who's the someone?" said Mario skeptically. "Didn't she have any enemies? Did she have money that somebody wanted?" said Halsted. "Money? What there was was in the bank. It all went to Alex, of course. It was his to begin with; everything was joint." "How about jealousy?" said Avalon. "Maybe she was having an affair. Or be was. Maybe that's what the argument was about." "And he killed her?" said Gonzalo. "The fact is be was in my apartment at the time she was killed." "Not necessarily be. Suppose it was her boy friend, or his girl friend. The boy friend, because she was threatening to break off the affair. The girl friend, because she wanted to marry your brother-in-law." Mario shook his: head. "Marge was no femme fatale. I was al- ways surprised she made it with Alex. For that matter, maybe she didn't." "Did Alex complain about that?" asked Trumbull with sudden interest. "No, but then he's no great lover, either. Listen, he's been a widower for three years now and I'm willing to swear he has no girl of any kind. No boy, either, before you start talking about that." Rubin said, "Hold it, you still don't know what the argument was really about. You said it was something that happened at work. Did he actually tell you what it was and you've just forgotten; or did be never tell you?" "He didn't go into detail, and I didn't ask. It wasn't my business." "All right," said Rubin, "how about this? It was an argument about something big at work. Maybe Alex had stolen fifty thousand dollars and Marge was sore about it, and that was the argument. Or Marge had made him steal it and be was getting cold feet about it and that was the argument. And maybe the fifty thousand was in the house and someone knew about it and that someone killed her and took it and Alex doesn't dare mention it." "What someone?" demanded Gonzalo. "What theft? Alex wasn't that kind of guy." "Famous last words," intoned Drake. "Well, he wasn't. And if he had done it, the firm he worked for wouldn't have kept quiet. No chance." Trumbull said, "How about the kind of in-fighting that goes on in apartment houses? You know, feuds between tenants. Was there someone who hated her and finally let her have it?" "Hell, if there were anything that serious, I'd know about it. Marge never kept things like that quiet." " Drake said, "Could it be suicide? After all, her husband had just walked out on her. Maybe he said be was never coming back and she was in despair. In a fit of irrational depression, she killed herself." "It was a knife from the kitchen," said Gonzalo. "There's that. But Marge isn't the suicidal type. She might kill someone else, but not herself. Besides, why would there be that struggle and the scream if she had killed herself?" Drake said, "In the first place, things might have been knocked about during the argument with her husband. In the second place, she might have faked a murder to get her husband into trouble. Vengeance is mine, saith the aggrieved wife." "Oh. come on," said Gonzalo contemptuously. "Marge wouldn't do something like that in a million years." "You know," said Drake, "you don't really know all that much about another person-even if she's a twin." "Well, you won't get me to believe it." Trumbull said, "I don't know why we're wasting our time. Why don't we ask the expert? . . . Henry?" Henry, whose face mirrored only polite interest, said, "Yes, Mr. Trumbull?" "How about telling us all about it? Who killed Mr. Gonzalo's sister?" Henry's eyebrows lifted slightly. "I do not represent myself to be an expert, Mr. Trumbull, but I must say that all the suggestions made by the gentlemen at the table, including yours, are unlikely in the extreme. I myself think that the police are perfectly correct and that if, in this case, the husband" did not do it, then housebreakers did. And these days, one must assume that those housebreakers were drug addicts desperate for money or for something they can convert into money." "You disappoint me, Henry," said Trumbull. Henry smiled gently. "Well, then," said Halsted, "I guess we'd better adjourn after we settle who hosts next time, and I suppose we'd better go back to having guests. This scheme of mine didn't work out so well." "Sorry I couldn't make it better, folks," said Gonzalo. "I didn't mean it that way, Mario," said Halsted hastily. "I know. Well, let's forget it." They were leaving, with Mario Gonzalo bringing up the rear. A light tap at his shoulder caused Gonzalo to turn. Henry said, "Mr. Gonzalo, could I see you privately, without the others knowing? It's quite important." Gonzalo stared a moment and said, "Okay, I'll go out, say my goodbyes, take a taxi, and have it bring me back." He was back in ten minutes. "Is this something about my sister, Henry?" "I'm afraid so, sir. I thought I had better talk to you, privately." "All right. Let's go back into the chamber. It's empty now." "Better not, sir. Anything said in that room can't be repeated outside and I do not wish to talk in confidence. I don't mind finding myself hushed up about average run-of-the-mill misdeeds, but murder is another thing altogether. There's a corner here that we can use." They went together to the indicated place. It was late and the restaurant was virtually empty. Henry said, in a low voice, "I listened to the account and I would like your permission to repeat some of it just to make sure I have it right." "Sure, go ahead." "As I understand it, on a Saturday toward the end of April, you felt uneasy and went to bed before the eleven-o'clock news." "Yes, just before eleven o'clock." "And you didn't hear the news." "Not even the opening headlines." "And that night, even though you didn't slcep, you didn't get out of bed. You didn't go to the bathroom or the kitchen." "No, I didn't." "And then you woke up at exactly the same time you always do." "That's right." "Well, now, Mr. Gonzalo, that is what disturbs me. A person who wakes up every morning at exactly the same time, thanks to some sort of biological clock inside him, wakes up at the wrong time twice a year." "What?" "Twice a year, sir, in this state, ordinary clocks are shifted, once when Daylight Saving Time starts, and once when it ends, but biological time doesn't change suddenly. Mr. Gonzalo, on the last Sunday in April, Daylight Saving Time starts. At one A.M. Sunday morning the clocks are shifted to two A.M. If you had listened to the eleven-o'clock news you would have been reminded to do that. But you wound your clock before eleven P.m. and you said nothing about adjusting it. Then you went to bed and never touched it during the night. When you woke at eight A.M., the clock should have said nine A.m. Am I right?" "Good Lord," said Gonzalo. "You left after the police called and you didn't come back for days. When you came back the clock was stopped, of course. You had no way of knowing that it was an hour slow when it had stopped. You set it to the correct time and never knew the difference." "I never thought of that, but you're perfectly right." "The police should have thought of that, but it's so easy these days to dismiss run-of-the-mill crimes of violence as the work of addicts. You gave your brother-in-law his alibi and they followed the line of least resistance." "You mean he-2" "It's possible, sir. They fought, and be killed her at nine A.M. as the statements of the neighbors indicated. I doubt that it was premeditated. Then, in desperation, be thought of you-and rather clever of him it was. He called you and asked you what time it was. You said eight-oh-nine and he knew you hadn't altered the clock and rushed over to your place. If you had said nine-oh-nine, he would have tried to get out of town." "But, Henry, why should he have done it?" "It's hard to tell with married couples, sir. Your sister may have had too high standards. You said she disapproved of your way of life, for instance, and probably made that very plain, plain enough to cause you not to like her very well. Now she must have disapproved of her husband's way of life, as it was before she had marned him. He was a drifter, you said. She made of him a respectable, hard-working employee and be may not have liked it. After be finally exploded and killed her, he became a drifter again. You think this is so out of despair; he may have nothing more than the feeling of relief." "Well . . . What do we do?" "I don't know, sir. It would be a hard thing to prove. Could you really remember, after three years, that you didn't adjust the clock? A cross-examining attorney would tear you apart. On the other hand, your brother-in-law might break down if faced with it. You'll have to consider whether you wish to go to the police, sir." "l?" said Gonzalo hesitantly. "It was your sister, sir," said Henry softly. Afterword. This story first appeared in the March 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Biological Clock." In this case it seems to me that the magazine title stresses something I would rather the reader slurred over, since it is the key to the puzzle. If he concentrates too hard on that because of the title, he will outguess me. Therefore, it's back to "Early Sunday Morning," which refers to the matter also, so that it's fair, but is sufficiently neutral to give me a fair chance, too. The Obvious Factor. Thomas Trumbull looked about the table and said, with some satisfaction, "Well, at least you won't get yourself pen-and-inked into oblivion, Voss. Our resident artist isn't here. . . . Henry!" Henry was at Trumbull's elbow before the echo of the bellow had died, with no sign of perturbation on his bright-eyed and un- lined face. Trumbull took the scotch and soda the waiter had on his tray and said, "Has Mario called, Henry?" "No, sir," said Henry calmly. Geoffrey Avalon had reduced his second drink to the halfway point and swirled it absently. "After last month's tale about his murdered sister, it could be that he didn't-2" He did not complete the sentence, but put down his glass carefully at the seat he intended to take. The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers was about to begin. Trumbull, who was host, took the armchair at the head of the table and said, "Have you got them all straight, Voss? At my left is James Drake. He's a chemist and knows more about pulp fiction than about chemistry, and that probably isn't much. Then Geoffrey Avalon, a lawyer who never sees the inside of a courtroom; Emmanuel Rubin, who writes in between talking, which is practically never; and Roger Halsted. . . . Roger, you're not inflicting an- other limerick on us this session, are you?" "A limerick?" said Trumbull's guest, speaking for the first time. It was a pleasant voice, light and yet rich, with all consonants care- fully pronounced. He had a white beard, evenly cut from temple to temple, and white hair, too. His youthful face shone pinkly within its fence of white. "A poet, then?" "A poet?" snorted Trumbull. "Not even a mathematician, which is what he claims to be. He insists on writing a limerick for every book of the Iliad." "And Odyssey," said Halsted, in his soft, burried voice. "But, yes, I have my limerick." "Good! It's out of order," said Trumbull. "You are not to read it. Host's privilege." "Oh, for heaven's sake," said Avalon, the flat lines of his wellpreserved face set in disappointment. "Let him recite the poor thing. It takes thirty seconds and I find it fun." Trumbull pretended not to hear. "You've all got it straight about my guest now? He's Dr. Voss Eldridge. He's a Ph.D. So is Drake, Voss. We're all doctors, though, by virtue of membership in the Black Widowers." He then raised his glass, gave the monthly invocation to Old King Cole, and the meal was officially begun. Halsted, who had been whispering to Drake, passed a paper to him. Drake rose and declaimed: "Next a Lycian attempted a ruse With an arrow-permitted by Zeus. Who will trust Trojan candor, as This sly deed of Pandarus Puts an end to the scarce-proclaimed truce?" "Damn it," said Trumbull. "I ruled against reading it." "Against my reading it," said Halsted. "Drake read it." "It's disappointing not to have Mario here," said Avalon. "He would ask what it means." "Go ahead, Jeff," said Rubin. "I'll pretend I don't understand it and you explain." But Avalon maintained a dignified silence while Henry presented the appetizer and Rubin fixed it with his usual suspicious stare. "I hate stuff," he said, "that's so chopped up and drowned in goop that you can't see what the ingredients are." Henry said, "I think you'll find it quite wholesome." "And you know Henry's honesty," said Drake. "It wouldn't hurt a fly if be says it's wholesome." "Try it; you'll like it," said Avalon. Rubin tried it, but his face showed no signs of liking it. It was noted later, however, that he had finished it. Dr. Eldridge said, "Is there a necessity of explaining these limericks, Dr. Avalon? Are there tricks to them?" "No, not at all, and don't bother with the doctorate. That's only for formal occasions, though it's good of you to humor the club idiosyncrasy. It's just that Mario has never read the Iliad; few have, these days." "Pandarus, as I recall, was a go-between and gives us the word pander. That, I take it, was the sly deed mentioned in the lim. erick." "Oh, no, no," said Avalon, unsuccessfully hiding his delight. "You're thinking now of the medieval Troilus tale, which Shakespeare drew on for his Troilus and Cressida. Pandarus was the gobetween there. In the Iliad he was merely a Lycian archer who shot at Menelaus during a truce. That was the sly deed. He is killed in the next book by the Greek warrior Diomedes." "Ah," said Eldridge, smiling faintly, "it's easy to be fooled, isn't it?" "If you want to be," said Rubin, but he smiled as the London broil arrived. There was no mistaking the nature of the components there. He buttered a roll and ate it as though to give himself time to contemplate the beauty of the meat. "As a matter of fact," said Halsted, "we've solved quite a few puzzles in recent meetings. We did well." "We did lousy," said Trumbull. "Henry is the one who did well." "I include Henry when I say "we,"" said Halsted, his fair face flushing. "Henry?" asked Eldridge. "Our esteemed waiter," said Trumbull, "and honorary member of the Black Widowers." Henry, who was filling the water glasses, said, "You honor me, sir." "Honor, hell. I wouldn't come to any meeting if you weren't taking care of the table, Henry." "It's good of you to say so, sir." Eldridge remained thoughtfully quiet thereafter, as be followed the tide of conversation that, as was usual, grew steadily in intensity. Drake was making some obscure distinction between Secret Agent X and Operator 5, and Rubin, for some reason known only to himself, was disputing the point. Drake, whose slightly hoarse voice never rose, said, "Operator 5 may have used disguises. I won't deny that. It was Secret Agent X, however, who was "the man of a thousand faces." I can send you a Xerox of a contents page of a magazine from my library to prove it." He made a note to himself in his memo book. Rubin, scenting defeat, shifted ground at once. "There's no such thing as a disguise, anyway. There are a million things no one can disguise, idiosyncrasies of stance, walk, voice; a million habits you can't change because you don't even know you have them. A disguise works only because no one looks." "People fool themselves, in other words," said Eldridge, breaking in. "Absolutely," said Rubin. "People want to be fooled." The ice-cream parfait was brought in, and not long after that, Trumbull struck his water glass with his spoon. "Inquisition time," he said. "As Grand Inquisitor I pass, since I'm the host. Manny, will you do the honors?" Rubin said, at once, "Dr. Eldridge, how do you justify the fact of your existence?" "By the fact that I labor to distinguish truth from folly." "Do you consider that you succeed in doing so?" Not as often as I wish, perhaps. And yet as often as most. To distinguish truth from folly is a common desire; we all try our hands at it. My interpretation of Pandarus" deed in Halsted's limerick was folly and Avalon corrected me. The common notion of disguise you claimed to be folly and you corrected it. When I find folly, I try to correct it, if I can. It's not always easy." "What is your form of folly correction, Eldridge? How would you describe your profession?" "I am," said Eldridge, "Associate Professor of Abnormal Psychology." "Where do you . . . ?" began Rubin. Avalon interrupted, his deep voice dominating, "Sorry, Manny, but I smell an evasion. You asked Dr. Eldridge's profession and be gave you a title. . . . What do you do, Dr. Eldridge, to occupy your time most significantly?" "I investigate parapsychological phenomena," said Eldridge. "Oh, God," muttered Drake, and stubbed out his cigarette. Eldridge said, "You disapprove of that, sir?" There was no sign of annoyance on his face. He turned to Henry and said, "No, thank you, Henry, I've had enough coffee," with perfect calmness. Henry passed on to Rubin, who was holding his cup in the air as a signal of its emptiness. "It's not a question of approval or disapproval," said Drake. "I think you're wasting your time." "In what way?" "You investigate telepathy, precognition, things like that?" "Yes. And ghosts and spiritual phenomena, too." "All right. Have you ever come across something you couldn't explain?" "Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, "Yes, that's a ghost." I take it that's not what you mean." Rubin broke in. "I bate to be on Drake's side right now, but be means to ask, as you well know, whether you have ever come across any phenomenon you could not explain by the accepted and prosaic laws of science." "I have come across many such phenomena." "That you could not explain?" asked Halsted. "That I could not explain. There's not a month that passes but that something crosses my desk that I cannot explain," said Eldnidge, nodding his head gently. There was a short silence of palpable disapproval and then Avalon said, "Does that mean that you are a believer in these psychic phenomena?" "If you mean: Do I think that events take place that violate the laws of physics? No! Do I think, however, that I know all there is to know about the laws of physics? Also, no. Do I think anyone knows all there is to know about the laws of physics? No, a third time." "That's evasion," said Drake. "Do you have any evidence that telepathy exists, for instance, and that the laws of physics, as presently accepted, will have to be modified accordingly?" "I am not ready to commit myself that far. I well know that in even the mos t circumstantial stories, there are honest mistakes, exaggerations, misinterpretations, outright hoaxes. And yet, even allowing for all that, I come across incidents I cannot quite bring myself to dismiss." Eldridge shook his head and continued, "It's not easy, this job of mine. There are some incidents for which no conceivable runof-The-mill explanation seems possible; where the evidence for something quite apart from the known rules by which the universe seems to run appears irrefutable. It would seem I must accept-and yet I hesitate. Can I labor under a hoax so cleverly manipulated, or an error so cleverly hidden, that I take for the gold of fact what is only the brass of nonsense? I can be fooled, as Rubin would point out." Trumbull said, "Manny would say that you want to be fooled." "Maybe I do. We all want dramatic things to be true. We want to be able to wish on a star, to have strange powers, to be irresistible to women-and would inwardly conspire to believe such things no matter how much we might lay claim to complete rationality. 7 "Not me," said Rubin flatly. "I've never kidded myself in my life." "No?" Eldridge looked at him thoughtfully. "I take it then that you will refuse to believe in the actual existence of parapsychological phenomena under all circumstances?" "I wouldn't say that," said Rubin, "but I'd need damned good evidence-better evidence than I've ever seen advanced." "And how about the rest of you gentlemenDrake said, "We're all rationalists. At least I don't know about Mario Gonzalo, but he's not here this session." "You, too, Tom?" Trumbull's lined face broke into a grim smile. "You've never convinced me with any of your tales before this, Voss. I don't think you can convince me now." "I never told you tales that convinced me, Tom. . . . But I have one now; something I've never told you and that no one really knows about outside my department. I can tell it to you all and if you can come up with an explanation that would require no change in the fundamental scientific view of the universe, I would be greatly relieved." "A ghost story?" said Halsted. "No, not a ghost story," said Eldridge. "It is merely a story that defies the principle of cause and effect, the very foundation stone on which all science is built. To put it another way, it defies the concept of the irreversible forward flow of time." "Actually," said Rubin, at once, "it's quite possible, on the subatomic level, to consider time as flowing either-" "Shut up, Manny," said Trumbull, "and let Voss talk." !Quietly, Henry had placed the brandy before each of the diners. Eldridge lifted his small glass absently and sniffed at it, then nodded to Henry, who returned a small, urbane smile. "It's an odd thing," said Eldridge, "but so many of those who claim to have strange powers, or have it claimed for them, are young women of no particular education, no particular presence, no particular intelligence. It is as though the existence of a special talent has consumed what would otherwise be spread out among the more usual facets of the personality. Maybe it's just more noticeable in women. "At any rate, I am speaking of someone I'll just call Mary for now. You understand I'm not using her real name. The woman is still under investigation and it would be fatal, from my point of view, to get any kind of publicity bounds on the track. You understand?" Trumbull frowned severely. "Come on, Voss, you know I told you that nothing said here is ever repeated outside the confines of these walls. You needn't feel constrained." "Accidents happen," said Eldridge equably. "At any rate, I'll return to Mary. Mary never completed grade school and has earned what money she could earn by serving behind a counter at the five-and-ten. She is not attractive and no one will sweep her away from the counter, which may be good, for she is useful there and serves well. You might not think so, since she cannot add correctly and is given to incapacitating headaches, during which she,tAill sit in a back room and upset the other employees by muttering gibberish to herself in a baleful sort of way. Nevertheless, the store wouldn't dream of letting her go." "Why not?" asked Rubin, clearly steeling himself to skepticism at every point. "Because she spots shoplifters, who, as you know, can these days bleed a store to death through a thousand small cuts. It isn't that Mary is in any way shrewd or keen-eyed or unrelenting in pursuit. She just knows a shoplifter when he or she enters the store, even if she has never seen the person before, and even if she doesn't actually see the person come in. "She followed them herself at first for brief intervals; then grew hysterical and began her muttering. The manager eventually tied the two things together-Mary's characteristic behavior and the shoplifting. He started to watch for one, then the other, and it didn't take long for him to find out that she never missed. "Losses quickly dropped to virtually nothing in that particular five-and-ten despite the fact that the store is in a had neighborhood. The manager, of course, received the credit. Probably, he deliberately kept the truth from being known lest anyone try to steal Mary from him. "But then I think he grew afraid of it. Mary fingered a shoplifter who wasn't a shoplifter but who later was mixed up in a shooting incident. The manager had read about some of the work my department does, and he came to us. Eventually, he brought Mary to us. "We got her to come to the college regularly. We paid her, of course. Not much, but then she didn't ask for much. She was an unpleasant not-briglit girl of about twenty, who was reluctant to talk and describe what went on in her mind. I suppose she had spent a childhood having her queer notions beaten out of her and she had learned to be cautious, you see." Drake said, "You're telling us she had a gift for precognition?" Eldridge said, "Since precognition is just Latin for seeing-thingsbefore-They-happen, and since she sees things before they happen, how else can I describe it? She sees unpleasant things only, things that upset or frighten her, which, I imagine, makes her life a hell. It is the quality of becoming upset or frightened that breaks down the time barrier." Halsted said, "Let's set our boundary conditions. What does she sense? How far ahead in time does she see things? How far away in space. "We could never get her to do much for us," said Eldridge. "Her talent wasn't on tap at will and with us she could never relax. From what the manager told us and from what we could pick up, it seemed she could never detect anything more than a few minutes ahead in time. Half an hour to an hour at the most." Rubin snorted. "A few minutes," said Eldridge mildly, "is as good as a century. The principle stands. Cause and effect is violated and the flow of time is reversed. "And in space, there seemed no limits. As she described it, when I could get her to say anything at all, and as I interpreted her rather clumsy and incoherent words, the background of her mind is a constant flickering of frightening shapes. Every once in a while, this is lit up, as though by a momentary lightning flash, and she sees, or becomes aware. She sees most clearly what is close by or what she is most concerned about-the shoplifting, for instance. Occasionally, though, she sees what must be taking place farther away. The greater the disaster, the farther she can sense things. I suspect she could detect a nuclear bomb getting ready to explode anywhere in the world." Rubin said, "I imagine she speaks incoherently and you fill in the rest. History is full of ecstatic prophets whose mumbles are interpreted into wisdom." "I agree," said Eldridge, "and I pay no attention-or at least not much-to anything that isn't clear. I don't even attach much importance to her feats with shoplifters. She might be sensitive enough to detect some characteristic way in which shoplifters look and stand, some aura, some smell-the sort of thing you talked about, Rubin, as matters no one can disguise. But Then-2" "Then?" prompted Halsted. "Just a minute," said Eldridge. "Ub-Henry, could I have a refill in the coffeecup after all?" "Certainly," said Henry. Eldridge watched the coffee level rise. "What's your attitude on psychic phenomena, Henry?" Henry said, "I have no general attitude, sir. I accept whatever it seems to me I must accept." "Good!" said Eldridge. "I'll rely on you and not on these prejudiced and preconccpted rationalists here." "Go on, then," said Drake. "You paused at the dramatic mo- ment to throw us off." "Never," said Eldridge. "I was saying that I did not take Mary seriously, until one day she suddenly began to squirm and pant and mumble under her breath. She does that now and then, but this time she muttered "Eldridge. Eldridge." And the word grew shriller and shriller. "I assumed she was calling me, but she wasn't. When I re- sponded, she ignored me. Over and over again, it was "Eldridge! Eldridge!" Then she began to scream, "Fire! Oh, Lord! It's burning! Help! Eldridge! Eldridge!" Over and over again, with all kinds of variations. She kept it up for half an hour. "We tried to make sense out of it. We spoke quietly, of course, because we didn't want to intrude more than we had to, but we kept saying, "Where? Where?" Incoherently enough, and in scraps, she told us enough to make us guess it was San Francisco, which, I need not tell you, is nearly three thousand miles away. There's only one Golden Gate Bridge after all, and in one spasm, she gasped out, "Golden Gate," over and over. Afterward it turned out she had never beard of the Golden Gate Bridge and was quite shaky as to San Francisco. "When we put it all together, we decided that there was an old apartment house somewhere in San Francisco, possibly within eyeshot of the Bridge, that had gone up in fire. A total of twentythree people were in it at the time it burst into fire, and of these, five did not escape. The five deaths included that of a child." Halsted said, "And then you checked and found there was a fire in San Francisco and that five people had died, including a child." "That's right," said Eldridge. "But here's what got me. One of the five deaths was that of a woman, Sopbronia Latimer. She had gotten out safely and then discovered that her eigbt-year-old boy had not come out with her. She ran wildly back into the house, screaming for the boy, and never came out again. The boy's name was Eldridge, so you can see what she was shouting in the minutes before her death. "Eldridge is a very uncommon first name, as I need not tell you, and my feeling is that Mary captured that particular event, for all that it was so far away, entirely because she had been sensitized to the name, by way of myself, and because it was surrounded by such agony." Rubin said, "You want an explanation, is that it?" "Of course," said Eldridge. "How did this ignorant girl see a fire in full detail, get all the facts correct-and believe me, we checked it out-at three thousand miles." Rubin said, "What makes the three-thousand-mile distance so impressive? These days it means nothing; it's one sixtieth of a sec- ond at the speed of light. I suggest that she heard the tale of the fire on radio or on television-more likely the latter-and passed it on to you. That's why she chose that story; because of the name Eldridge. She figured it would have the greatest possible effect on you." "Why?" asked Eldridge. "Why should she put through such a hoax?" "Why?" Rubin's voice faded out momentarily, as though with astonishment, then came back in a shout. "Good God, you've been working with these people for years and don't realize how much they want to hoax you. Don't you suppose there's a feeling of power that comes with perpetrating a good hoax; and money, too, don't forget." Eldridge thought about it, then shook his head. "She doesn't have the brains to put something like this across. It takes brains to be a faker-a good one, anyway." Trumbull broke in. "Well, now, Voss. There's no reason to suppose she's in it on her own. A confederate is possible. She supplies the hysteria, he supplies the brains." "Who might the confederate be?" asked Eldridge softly. Trumbull shrugged. I don't know." Avalon cleared his throat and said, I go along with Tom here, and my guess is that the confederate is the manager of the fiveand-ten. He had noted her ability to guess at shoplifters, and thought be could put this to use in something more splashy. I'll bet that's it. He beard about the fire on television, caught the name Eldridge, and coached her." "How long would it take to coach her?" asked Eldridge. I keep telling you that she's not very bright." "The coaching wouldn't be difficult," said Rubin quickly. "You say she was incoherent. He would just tell her a few key words: Eldridge, fire, Golden Gate, and so on. She then keeps repeating them in random arrangements and you intelligent parapsychologists fill it in." Eldridge nodded, then said, "That's interesting, except that there was no time at all to coach the girl. That's what precognition is all about. We know exactly what time she had her fit and we know exactly what time the fire broke out in San Francisco. It so happens the fire broke out at just about the minute that Mary's fit died down. It was as though once the fire was actual, it was no longer a matter of precognition, and Mary lost contact. So you see, there could be no coaching. The news didn't bit the network TV news programs till that evening. That's when we found out and began our investigation in depth." "But wait," said Halsted. "What about the time difference? There's a three-hour time difference between New York and San Francisco, and a confederate in San Francisco-" "A confederate in San Francisco?" said Eldridge, opening his eyes wide, and staring. "Are you imagining a continental conspiracy? Besides, believe me, I know about the time difference also. When I say that the fire started just as Mary finished, I mean allowing for the time difference. Mary's fit started at just about one-fifteen P.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the fire in San Francisco started at just about ten forty-five A.M. Pacific Standard Time." Drake said, "I have a suggestion." "Go on," said Eldridge. "Ilis is an uneducated and unintelligent girl-you keep saying that over and over-and she's throwing a fit, an epileptic fit, for all I know." "No," said Eldridge firmly. "All right, a prophetic fit, if you wish. She's muttering and mumbling and screaming and doing everything in the world but speaking clearly. She makes sound which you interpret, and which you make fit together. If it had occurred to you to hear her say something like "atom bomb," then the word you interpreted as "Eldridge" would have become "Oak Ridge," for instance." "And Golden Gate?" "You might have beard that as "couldn't get" and fitted it in somehow." "Not had," said Eldridge. "Except that we know that it is hard to understand some of these ecstatics and we are bright enough to make use of modern technology. We routinely tape-record our sessions and we tape-recorded this one. We've listened to it over and over and there is no question but that she said "Eldridge" and not "Oak Ridge," "Golden Gate" and not "couldn't get." We've had different people listen and there is no disagreement on any of this. Besides, from what we heard, we worked out all the details of the fire before we got the facts. We had to make no modifications afterward. It all fit exactly." There was a long silence at the table. Finally Eldridge said, "Well, there it is. Mary foresaw the fire three thousand miles away by a full half-hour and got all the facts correct." Drake said uneasily, "Do you accept it? Do you think it was precognition?" "I'm trying not to," said Eldridge. "But for what reason can I disbelieve it? I don't want to fool myself into believing it, but what choice have I? At what point am I fooling myself? If it wasn't precognition, what was it? I had hoped that perhaps one of you gentlemen could tell me." Again a silence. Eldridge went on. "I'm left in a position where I must refer to Sherlock Holmes's great precept: "When the impossible has been eliminated, then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth." In this case, if fakery of any kind is impossible, the precognition must be the truth. Don't you all agree?" The silence was thicker than before, until Trumbull cried out, "Damn it all, Henry is grinning. No one's asked him yet to explain this. Well, Henry?" Henry coughed. "I should not have smiled, gentlemen, but I couldn't help it when Professor Eldridge used that quotation. It seems the final bit of evidence that you gentlemen want to believe. "The hell we do," said Rubin, frowning. "Surely, then, a quotation from President Thomas Jefferson would have sprung to mind." "What quotation?" asked Halsted. "I imagine Mr. Rubin knows," said Henry. "I probably do, Henry, but at the moment I can't think of an appropriate one. Is it in the Declaration of Independence?" "No. sir," began Henry, when Trumbull interrupted with a snarl. "Let's not play Twenty Questions, Manny. Go on, Henry, what are you getting at?" "Well, sir, to say that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, is to make the assumption, usually unjustified, that everything that is to be considered has indeed been considered. Let us suppose we have considered ten factors. Nine are clearly impossible. Is the tenth, however improbable, therefore true? What if there were an eleventh factor, and a twelfth, and a thirteenth . . ." Avalon said severely, "You mean there's a factor we haven't considered?" "I'm afraid so, sir," said Henry, nodding. Avalon shook his head. "I can't think what it can be." "And yet it is an obvious factor, sir; the most obvious one." "What is it, then?" demanded Halsted, clearly annoyed. "Get to the point!" "To begin with," said Henry, "it is clear that to explain the ability of the young lady to foretell, as described, the details of a fire three thousand miles away except by precognition is impossible. But suppose precognition is also to be considered impossible. In that case-" Rubin got to his feet, straggly beard bristling, eyes magnified through thick-lensed glasses, staring. "Of course! The fire was set. The woman could have been coached for weeks. The accomplice goes to San Francisco and they coordinate. She predicts something she knows is going to happen. He causes something be knows she will predict." Henry said, "Are you suggesting, sir, that a confederate would deliberately plan to kill five victims, including an eigbt-year-old boy?" "Don't start trusting in the virtue of mankind, Henry," said Rubin. "You're the one who is sensitive to wrongdoing." "The minor wrongdoings, sir, the kind most people overlook. I find it difficult to believe that anyone, in order to establish a fancied case of precognition, would deliberately arrange a horrible multi-murder. Besides, to arrange a fire in which eighteen of twenty-three people escape and five specific people die requires a bit of precognition in itself." Rubin turned stubborn. "I can see ways in which five people can be trapped; like forcing a card in conjuring-" "Gentlemen!" said Eldridge peremptorily, and all turned to look at him. "I have not told you the cause of the fire." He went on, after looking about the table to make sure be had the attention of all, "It was a stroke of lightning. I don't see how a stroke of lightning could be arranged at a specific time." He spread out his hands helplessly. "I tell you. I've been struggling with this for weeks. I don't want to accept precognition, but . . . I suppose this spoils your theory, Henry?" "On the contrary, Professor Eldridge, it confirms it and makes it certain. Ever since you began to tell us this tale of Mary and the fire, your every word has made it more and more certain that fakery is impossible and that precognition has taken place. If, however, precognition is impossible, then it follows of necessity, Professor, that you have been lying." Not a Black Widower but exclaimed at that, with Avalon's shocked "Henry!" loudest of all. But Eldridge was leaning back in his chair, chuckling. "Of course I was lying. From beginning to end. I wanted to see if all you so-called rationalists would be so eager to accept parapsycbological phenomena that you would overlook the obvious rather than spoil your own thrill. When did you catch me out, Henry?" "It was a possibility from the start, sir, which grew stronger each time you eliminated a solution by inventing more information. I was certain when you mentioned the lightning. That was dramatic enough to have been brought in at the beginning. To be mentioned only at the very end made it clear that you created it on the spot to block the final hope." "But why was it a possibility from the start, Henry?" demanded Eldridge. "Do I look like a liar? Can you detect liars the way I had Mary detect shoplifters?" "Because this is always a possibility and something to be kept in mind and watched for. That is where the remark by President Jefferson comes in." "What was that4(In 1807, Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale reported seeing the fall of a meteorite at a time when the existence of meteorites was not accepted by scientists. Thomas Jefferson, a rationalist of enormous talent and intelligence, on hearing the report, said, "I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that a stone would fall from heaven."" "Yes," said Avalon at once, "but Jefferson was wrong. Silliman did not lie and stones did fall from heaven." "Quite so, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, unruffled. "That is why the quotation is remembered. But considering the great number of times that impossibilities have been reported, and the small num- ber of times they have been proven possible after all, I felt the odds were with me." Afterword. This story first appeared in the May 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it. I hope that no reader thinks the solution in this tale "isn't fair." In real life, a great many reports of unconventional phenomena are the results of deviations from the truth, either deliberate or unconscious. And I am sick and tired of mysteries that end up with some indication that perhaps, after all, something supernatural really did happen. As far as I am concerned, if, when everything impossible has been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying. If that be treason, make the most of it. The Pointing Finger. It was a rather quiet Black Widowers banquet until Rubin and Trumbull had their nose-to-nose confrontation. Mario Gonzalo had been first to arrive, subdued and with the shadow of trouble upon him. Henry was still setting up the table when Gonzalo arrived. He stopped and asked, "How are you, sir?" in quiet and unobtrusive concern. Gonzalo shrugged. "All right, I guess. Sorry I missed the last meeting, but I finally decided to go to the police and I wasn't up to much for a while. I don't know if they can do anything, but it's up to them now. I almost wish you hadn't told me." "Perhaps I ought not to have done so." Gonzalo shrugged. "Listen, Henry," he said. "I called each of the guys and told him the story." "Was that necessary, sir?" "I had to. I'd feel constrained if I didn't. Besides, I didn't want them to think you had failed." "Not an important consideration, sir." The others came one by one, and each greeted Gonzalo with a hearty welcome that ostentatiously ignored a murdered sister, and each then subsided into a kind of uneasy quiet. Avalon, who was hosting the occasion, seemed, as always, to add the dignity of that office to his natural solemnity. He sipped at his first drink and introduced his guest, a young man with a pleasant face, thinning black hair, and an amazingly thick mustache which seemed to be waiting only for the necessary change in fashion to be waxed at the end. "This is Simon Levy," said Avalon. "A science writer and a splendid fellow." Emmanuel Rubin promptly said, "Didn't you write a book on the laser, Light in Step?" "Yes," said Levy with the energetic delight of an author greeting unexpected recognition. "Have you read it?" Rubin, who was carrying, as be always did, the self-conscious soul of a six-footer in his five-foot-four body, looked solemnly at the other through his thick glasses and said, "I did, and found it quite goodLevy's smile weakened, as though be considered a judgment of 41 quite good" no good at all. Avalon said, "Roger Halsted won't be with us today. He's out of town on something or other. Sends his regrets and says to say hello to Mario if be shows up." Trumbull said with his mouth down-curved in a sneer, "We're "Pared a limerick." "I missed last month's," said Gonzalo. "Was it any good?" "You wouldn't have understood it, Mario," said Avalon gravely. "That good, ch?" And then things quieted down to a near whisper until somehow the Act of Union came up. Afterward, neither Rubin no Trumbull could remember exactly how. Trumbull said, in what was considerably more than an ordinary speaking voice, "The Act of Union forming the United Kingdom of England, Wales, and Scotland was made law at the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713." "No, it wasn't," said Rubin, his straw-colored and straggly beard wagging indignantly. "The Act was passed in 1707." "Are you trying to tell me, you dumb jackass, that the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1707?" "No, I'm not," shouted Rubin, his surprisingly loud voice reaching a bellow. "The Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713. YOU guessed that part right, though God only knows how." "If the Treaty was signed in 1,713, then that settles the Act of Union." "No, it doesn't, because the Treaty had nothing to do with the Act of Union, which was 1707," "Damn you, five dollars says you don't know the Act of Union from a union suit." "Here's my five dollars. Where's yours? Or can you spare a week's pay at that two-bit job you've got?" They were standing up now, leaning toward each other over James Drake, who philosophically added a fresh dollop of sour cream and chives to the last of his baked potato, and finished it. Drake said, "No use shouting back and forth, my fellow jackasses. Look it up." "Henry!" roared Trumbull. There was the smallest of delays and then Henry was at hand with the third edition of the Columbia Encyclopedia. "Host's privilege," said Avalon. "I'll check, as an impartial observer." He turned the pages of the fat volume, muttering, "Union, union, union, Ah, Act of." He then said, almost at once, "1707. Manny wins. Pay up, Tom." "What?" cried Trumbull, outraged. "Let's see thatRubin quietly picked up the two five-dollar bills which had been lying on the table and said in a ruminating voice, "A good reference book, the Columbia Encyclopedia. Best one-volume all-round reference in the world and more useful than the Britannica, even if it does waste an entry on Isaac Asimov." "On whom?" asked Gonzalo. "Asimov. Friend of mine. Science fiction writer and pathologically conceited. He carries a copy of the Encyclopedia to parties and says, "Talking of concrete, the Columbia Encyclopedia has an excellent article on it only 249 pages after their article on me. Let me show you." Then he shows them the article on himself." Gonzalo laughed. "Sounds a lot like you, Manny." "Tell him that and he'll kill you-if I don't first." Simon Levy turned to Avalon and said, "Are there arguments like that all the time here, Jeff?" "Many arguments," said Avalon, "but they generally don't get to the wager and reference book stage. When it does happen, Henry's prepared. We have not only the Columbia Encyclopedia, but copies of the Bible, both the King James and the New English; Webster's unabridged-second edition, of course; Webster's Biographical Dictionary; Webster's Geographical Dictionary; The Guinness Book of Records; Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable; and The Complete Works of Shakespeare. It's the Black Widowers" library and Henry is the custodian. It usually settles all arguments." "I'm sorry I asked," said Levy. "Why?" "You mentioned Shakespeare and I react to that, right now, with nausea." "To Shakespeare?" Avalon gazed down at his guest with lofty disapproval. "You bet. I've been living with him for two months, reading him backward and forward till one more "Why, marry" or "fretful porpentine" and I'll throw up." "Really? Well, wait. . . . Henry, is dessert coming up?" "Directly, sir. Coupe aux marrons." "Good! . . . Simon, wait till dessert's finished and we'll carry on. Ten minutes later, Avalon placed spoon to water glass and tinkled the assemblage to silence. "Host's privilege," he said. "It is time for the usual inquisition, but our honored guest has let it slip that for two months past he has been studying Shakespeare with great concentration, and I think this ought to be investigated. Tom, will you do the honors?" Trumbull said indignantly, "Shakespeare? Who the hell wants to talk about Shakespeare?" His disposition had not been improved by the loss of five dollars and by the look of unearthly virtue upon Rubin's face. "Host's privilege," said Avalon firmly. "Humpli. All right. Mr. Levy, as a science writer, what is your connection with Shakespeare?" "None, as a science writer." He spoke with a distinct Brooklyn accent. "It's just that I'm after three thousand dollars." "In Shakespeare?" "Somewhere in Shakespeare. Can't say I've had any luck, though." "You speak in riddles, Levy. What do you mean three thousand dollars somewhere in Shakespeare that you can't find?" "Oh, well, it's a complicated story." "Well, tell it. That's what we're here for. It's a long-standing rule that nothing that is said or done in this room is ever repeated outside under any circumstances, so speak freely. If you get boring, we'll stop you. Don't worry about that." Levy spread out his arms. "All right, but let me finish my tea." "Go ahead, Henry will bring you another pot, since you aren't civilized enough to drink coffee. . . . Henry!" "Yes, sir," murmured Henry. "Don't start till he comes back," said Trumbull. "We don't want him to miss any of this." "The waiter?" "He's one of us. Best man here." Henry arrived with a new pot of tea and Levy said, "It's a question of a legacy, sort of. It's not one of those things where the family homestead is at stake, or millions in jewels, or anything like that. It's just three thousand dollars which I don't really need, but which would be nice to have." "A legacy from whom?" asked Drake. "From my wife's grandfather. He died two months ago at the age of seventy-six. He'd been living with us for five years. A little troublesome, but be was a nice old guy and, being on my wife's side of the family, she took care of most of it. He was sort of grateful to us for taking him in. There were no other descendants and it was either us or a hotel for old people." "Get to the legacy," said Trumbull, showing some signs of impatience. "Grandpa wasn't rich but be had a few thousand. When be first came to us, be told us that be had bought three thousand dollars" worth of negotiable bonds and would give them to us when be died." "Why when he died?" asked Rubin. "I suppose the old guy worried about our getting tired of him. He held out the three thousand to us as a reward for good behavior. If he was still with us when be was dying, be would give the bonds to us, and if we kicked him out, he wouldn't. I guess that was what was in his mind." Levy went on, "He hid them in various places. Old guys can be funny. He'd change the hiding place now and then whenever he began to fear we might find them. Of course, we usually did find them before long, but we'd never let on and we'd never touch them. Except once! He put them in the clothes hamper and we had to give them back to him and ask him to put them elsewhere, or sooner or later they would get into the washing machine. "That was about the time he had a small stroke-no connection, I'm sure-and after that he was a little harder to handle. He grew morose and didn't talk much. He had difficulties in using his right leg and it gave him a feeling of mortality. After that, he must have hidden the bonds more cfficiently, for we lost track of them, though we didn't attach much importance to that. We assumed he would tell us when he was ready. "Then two months ago, little Julia, that's my younger daughter, came running to us to tell us that Grandpa was lying on the couch and looking funny. We ran to the living room, and it was obvious that he had had another stroke. We called the doctor, but it was clear that his right side was gone entirely. He couldn't speak. He could move his lips and make sounds, but they came to no words. "He kept moving his left arm and trying to speak and I said, "Grandpa, arc you trying to tell me something?" He could just about tremor his head into a small nod. "About what?" I asked, but I knew he couldn't tell me, so I said, "About the bonds?" Again a small nod. "You want us to have them?" Again a nod and his hand began to move as though he were trying to point. "I said, "Where are they?" His left hand trembled and con- tinued to point. I couldn't help but say, "What are you pointing at, Grandpa?" but he couldn't tell me. His finger just kept pointing in an anxious, quivering way, and his face seemed in agony as he tried to talk and failed. I was sorry for him. He wanted to give the bonds to us, to reward us, and he was dying without being able to. "My wife, Caroline, was crying and saying, "Leave him alone, Simon," but I couldn't leave him alone. I couldn't let him die in despair. I said, "We'll have to move the couch toward whatever it is he's pointing to." Caroline didn't want to, but the old man was nodding his head. "Caroline got at one end of the couch and I at the other and we moved it, little by little, trying not to jar him. He was no lightweight, either. His finger kept pointing, always pointing. He turned his head in the direction in which we were moving him, making moaning sounds as though to indicate whether we were moving him in the right direction or not. I would say, "More to the right, Grandpa? "More to the left?" And sometimes be would nod. "Finally, we got him up against the line of bookcases, and slowly his head turned. I wanted to turn it for him, but I was afraid to harm him. He managed to get it round and stared at the books for a long time. Then his finger moved along the line of books till it pointed toward one particular book. It was a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Kittredge edition. "I said, "Shakespeare, Grandpa?" He didn't answer, be didn't nod, but his face relaxed and be stopped trying to speak. I suppose be didn't hear me. Something like a half-smile pulled at the left side of his mouth and he died. The doctor came, the body was taken away, we made arrangements for the funeral. It wasn't till after the funeral that we went back to the Shakespeare. We figured it would wait -for us and it didn't seem right to grab for it before we took care of the old man. "I assumed there would be something in the Shakespeare volume to tell us where the bonds were, and that's when the first shock came. We turned through every page, one by one, and there was nothing there. Not a scrap of paper. Not a word." Gonzalo said, "What about the binding? You know, in between the stuff that glues the pages and the backstrip?" "Nothing there." "Maybe someone took it?" "How? The only ones who knew were myself and Caroline. It isn't as though there were any robbery. Eventually, we thought there was a clue somewhere in the book, in the written material, in the plays themselves, you know. That was Caroline's idea. In the last two months, I've read every word of Shakespeare's plays; every word of his sonnets and miscellaneous poems-twice over. I've gotten nowhere." "The hell with Shakespeare," said Trumbull querulously. "Forget the clue. He had to leave them somewhere in the house." "Why do you suppose that?" said Levy. "He might have put it in a bank vault for all we know. He got around even after his first stroke. After we found the bonds in the clothes hamper, he might have thought the house wasn't safe." "All right, but be still might have put them in the house some- where. Why not just search?" "We did. Or at least Caroline did. That was how we divided the labor. She searched the house, which is a big, rambling one-one reason we could take in Grandpa-and I searched Shakespeare, and we both came out with nothing." Avalon untwisted a thoughtful frown and said, "See here, there's no reason we can't be logical about this. I assume, Simon, that your grandfather was born in Europe." "Yes. He came to America as a teen-ager, just as World War I was starting. He got out just in time." "He didn't have much of a formal education, I suppose." "None at all," said Levy. "He went to work in a tailor shop, eventually got his own establishment, and stayed a tailor till he retired. No education at all, except for the usual religious education Jews gave each other in Tsarist Russia." "Well, then," said Avalon, "how do you expect him to indicate clues in Shakespeare's plays? He wouldn't know anything about them." Levy frowned and leaned back in his chair. He hadn't touched the small brandy glass Henry had put in front of him some time before. Now he picked it up, twirled the stem gently in his fingers, and put it down again. "You're quite wrong, Jeff," be said, a little distantly. "He may have been uneducated but he was quite intelligent and quite well-read. He knew the Bible by heart, and he'd read War and Peace as a teen-ager. He read Shakespeare, too. Listen, we once went to see a production of Hamlet in the park and he got more out of it than I did." Rubin suddenly broke in energetically, "I have no intention of ever seeing Hamlet again till they get a Hamlet who looks as Hamlet is supposed to look. Fat!" "Fat!" said Trumbull indignantly. "Yes, fat. The Queen says of Hamlet in the last scene, "He's fat and scant of breath." If Shakespeare says Hamlet is fat-" "That's his mother talking, not Shakespeare. It's the typical motherly oversolicitousness of a not-bright woman-" Avalon banged the table. "Not now, gentlemen!" He turned to Levy. "In what language did your grandfather read the Bible?" "In Hebrew, of course," Levy said coldly. "And War and Peace?" "In Russian. But Shakespeare, if you don't mind, he read in English." "Which is not his native tongue. I imagine be spoke with an accent." Levy's coolness had descended into the frigid. "What are you getting at, Jeff?" Avalon harumphed. "I'm not being anti-Semitic. I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that if your wife's grandfather was not at home with the language, there was a limit to how subtly he could use Shakespeare as a reference. He's not likely to use the phrase 9and there the antick sits" from Richard II because, however wellread he is, he isn't likely to know what an antick is." "What is it?" asked Gonzalo. "Never mind," said Avalon impatiently. "If your grandfather used Shakespeare, it would have to be some perfectly obvious reference." "What was your father's favorite play?" asked Trumbull. "He liked Hamlet of course. I know he didn't like the comedies," said Levy, "because he felt the humor undignified, and the histories meant nothing to him. Wait be liked Othello." "All right," said Avalon. "We ought to concentrate on Hamlet and Othello." "I read them," said Levy. "You don't think I left them out, do you?17 "And it would have to be some well-known passage," Avalon went on, paying no attention. "No one would think that just pointing to Shakespeare would be a useful hint if it were some obscure line that were intended." "The only reason be just pointed," said Levy, "was that be couldn't talk. It might have been something very obscure which he would have explained if he could have talked." "If he could have talked," said Drake reasonably, "he wouldn't have had to explain anything. He would just have told you where the bonds were." "Exactly," said Avalon. "A good point, Jim. You said, Simon, that after the old man pointed to Shakespeare, his face relaxed and he stopped trying to speak. He felt that he had given you all you needed to know." "Well, he didn't," said Levy morosely. "Let's reason it out, then," said Avalon. "Do we have to?" said Drake. "Why not ask Henry now? . . .Henry, which verse in Shakespeare would suit our purpose?" Henry, who was noiselessly taking up the dessert dishes, said, "I have an average knowledge of the plays of Shakespeare, sir, but I must admit that no appropriate verse occurs to me." Drake looked disappointed, but Avalon said, "Come on, Jim. Henry has done very well on past occasions but there's no need to feel that we are helpless without him. I flatter myself I know Shakespeare pretty well." "I'm no novice, either," said Rubin. "Then between the two of us, let's solve this. Suppose we consider Hamlet first. If it's Hamlet, then it has to be one of the soliloquies, because they're the best-known portions of the play." "In fact," said Rubin, "the line "To be or not to be, that is the question" is the best-known line of Shakespeare. It epitomizes him as the "Quartet" from Rigoletto typifies opera." "I agree," said Avalon, "and that soliloquy talks of dying, and the old man was dying. "To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end the beart-acbe and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is-" "Yes, but what good does that do?" said Levy impatiently. "Where does it get us?" Avalon, who always recited Shakespeare in what be insisted was Shakespearean pronunciation (which sounded remarkably like an Irish brogue), said, "Well, I'm not sure." Gonzalo said suddenly, "Is it in Hamlet where Shakespeare says, "The play's the thing?" "Yes," said Avalon. ""The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."" "Well," said Gonzalo, "if the old man was pointing out a book of plays, maybe that's the line. Do you have a picture of a king, or a carving, or a deck of cards, maybe." Levy sbrugged-."'That doesn't bring anything to mind." "What about Othello?" asked Rubin. "Listen. The best-known part of the play is lago's speech on reputation, "Good name in man and woman, dear my lord "So?" said Avalon. "And the most famous line in it, and one which the old man was sure to know because it's the one everyone knows, even Mario, is "Who steals my purse steals trash; "tis something, nothing; "twas mine, "tis his . . ." and so on." "So?" said Avalon again. "So it sounds as though it applies to the legacy. "Twas mine, "tis his," and it also sounds as though the legacy were gone. "Who steals my purse steals trash."" "What do you mean, "gone"?" said Levy., "After you found the bonds in the clothes hamper, you lost track of them, you said. Maybe the old man took them off somewhere to be safe and doesn't remember where. Or maybe he mislaid them or gave them away or lost them to some confidence scheme. Whatever it was, be could no longer explain it to you without speech. So to die in peace, he pointed to the works of Shakespeare. You would remember the best-known line of his favorite play, which tells you that his purse is only trash-and that is why you have found nothing." "I don't believe that," said Levy. "I asked him if he wanted us to have the bonds and be nodded." ,"All be could do was nod, and be did want you to have them, but that was impossible. . . . Do you agree with me, Henry?" Henry, who had completed his tasks and was quietly listening, said, "I'm afraid I don't, Mr. Rubin." "I don't, either," said Levy. But Gonzalo was snapping his fingers. "Wait, wait. Doesn't Shakespeare say anything about bonds?" "Not in his time," said Drake, smiling. "I'm sure of it," said Gonzalo. "Something about bonds being nominated." Avalon said, "Ah! You mean "Is it so nominated in the bond?" The bond is a legal contract, and the question was whether something was a requirement of the contract." Drake said, "Wait a bit. Didn't that bond involve a sum of three thousand ducats?" "By Heaven, so it did," said Avalon. Gonzalo's grin split his head from ear to ear. "I think I've got something there: bonds involving three thousand units of money. That's the play to look into." Henry interrupted softly. "I scarcely think so, gentlemen. The play in question is The Merchant of Venice and the person asking whether something was nominated in the bond was the Jew, Shylock, intent on a cruel revenge. Surely the old man would not enjoy this play." Levy said, "That's right. Shylock was a dirty word to him-and not so clean to me, either." Rubin said, "What about the passage that goes: "Hatb not a Jew eyes? bath not a few hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions "It wouldn't appeal to my grandfather," said Levy. "It pleads the obvious and cries out for an equality my grandfather would not, in his heart, be willing to grant, since I'm sure be felt superior in that he was a member of God's uniquely chosen." Gonzalo looked disappointed. "It seems we're not getting anywhere." Levy said, "No, I don't think we are. I went through the entire book. I read all the speeches carefully; all the passages you mentioned. None of them meant anything to me." Avalon said, "Granted they don't, but you may be missing something subtle-" "Come on, Jeff, you're the one who said it couldn't be subtle. My grandfather was thinking of something tailored for the mind of myself and my wife. It was something we would get, and probably get at once; and we didn't." Drake said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe some in-joke is involved." "I've just said that." "Then why don't you try it backward? Can you think of something, some gag, some phrase? . . . Is there some expression he used every time?" "Yes. When he disapproved of someone be would say, "Eighteen black years on him."" "What kind of an expression is that?" asked Trumbull. "In Yiddish it's common enough," said Levy. "Another one was "It will help him like a dead man cups."" "What does that mean?" asked Gonzalo. "It refers to cupping. You place a lighted piece of paper in a small round glass cup and then put the open edge against the skin. The paper goes out but leaves a partial vacuum in the cup and circulation is sucked into the superficial layers. Naturally, cupping can't improve the circulation of a corpse." "All right," said Drake, "is there anything about eighteen black years, or about cupping dead men, that reminds you of something in Shakespeare?" There was a painful silence and finally Avalon said, "I can't think of anything." "And even if you did," said Levy, "what good would it do? What would it mean? Listen, I've been at this for two months. You're not going to solve it for me in two hours." Drake turned to Henry again and said, "Why are you just standing there, Henry? Can't you help us?" "I'm sorry, Dr. Drake, but I now believe that the whole question of Shakespeare is a false lead." "No," said Levy. "You can't say that. The old man pointed to The Collected Works without any question. His fingertip was within an inch of it. It couldn't have been any other book." Drake said suddenly, "Say, Levy, you're not diddling us, are you? You're not telling us a pack of lies to make jackasses out of us?" "What?" said Levy in amazement. "Nothing, nothing," said Avalon hastily. "He's just thinking of another occasion. Shut up, Jim." "Listen," said Levy. "I'm telling you exactly what happened. He was pointing exactly at Shakespeare." There was a short silence and then Henry sighed and said, "In mystery stories-" Rubin broke in with a "Hear! Hear!" "In mystery stories," Henry repeated, "the dying hint is a common device, but I have never been able to take it seriously. A dying man, anxious to give last-minute information, is always pictured as presenting the most complex hints. His dying brain, with two minutes" grace, works out a pattern that would puzzle a healthy brain with hours to think. In this particular case, we have an old man dying of a paralyzing stroke who is supposed to have quickly invented a clue that a group of intelligent men have failed to work out; and with one of them having worked at it for two months. I can only conclude there is no such clue." "Then why should he have pointed to Shakespeare, Henry?" asked Levy. "Was it all just the vague delusions of a dying man?" "If your story is correct," said Henry, "then I think he was indeed trying to do something. He cannot, however, have been inventing a clue. He was doing the only thing his dying mind could manage. He was pointing to the bonds." "I beg your pardon," said Levy huffily. "I was there. He was pointing to Shakespeare." Henry shook his head. He said, "Mr. Levy, would you point to Fifth Avenue?" Levy thought a while, obviously orienting himself, and then pointed. "Are you pointing to Fifth Avenue?" asked Henry. 44Well, the restaurant's entrance is on Fifth Avenue, so I'm pointing to it." "It seems to me, sir," said Henry, "that you are pointing to a picture of the Arch of Titus on the western wall of this room." "Well, I am, but Fifth Avenue is beyond it." "Exactly, sir. So I only know that you are pointing to Fifth Avenue because you tell me so. You might be p'ointing to the picture or to some point in the air before the picture, or to the Hudson River, or to Chicago, or to the planet Jupiter. If you point, and nothing more, giving no hint, verbal or otherwise, as to what you're pointing at, you are only indicating a direction and nothing more." Levy rubbed his chin. "You mean my grandfather was only indicating a direction?" "It must be so. He didn't say he was pointing to Shakespeare. He merely pointed." "All right, then, what was be pointing at? The-thc-" He closed his eyes and fingered his mustache gently, as he oriented the room in his house. "The Verrazano Bridge?" "Probably not, sir," said Henry. "He was pointing in the direction of The Collected Works. His finger was an inch from it, you said, so it is doubtful that be could be pointing at anything in front of it. What was behind the book, Mr. Levy?" "The bookcase. The wood of the bookcase. And when you took the book out, there was nothing behind it. There was nothing pushed up against the wood, if that's what you have in mind. We would have seen it at once if anything at all had been there." "And behind the bookcase, sir?" "The wall." "And between the bookcase and the wall, sir?" Now Levy fell silent. He thought a while, and no one interrupted those thoughts. He said, "Is there a phone I can use, Henry? " "I'll bring you one, sir." The phone was placed in front of Levy and plugged in. Levy dialed a number. "Hello, Julia? What are you doing up so late? . . . Never mind the TV and get to bed. But first call Mamma, dear. . . . Hello, Caroline, it's Simon. . . . Yes, I'm having a good time, but listen, Caroline, listen. You know the bookcase with the Shakespeare in it? . . .Yes, that Shakespeare. Of course. Move it away from the wall . . . .The bookcase. . . . Look, you can take the books out of it, can't you? Take them all out, if you have to, and dump them on the floor. . . . No, no, just move the end of the bookcase near the door a few inches; just enough to look behind and tell me if you see anything. . . . Look about where the Shakespeare book would be. . . . I'll wait, yes." They were all frozen in attitudes. Levy was distinctly pale. Some five minutes passed. Then, "Caroline? . . . Okay, take it easy. Did you move . . . ? Okay, okay, I'll be home soon." He bung up and said, "If that doesn't beat everything. The old guy had them taped to the back of the bookcase. He must have moved that thing sometime when we were out. It's a wonder he didn't have a stroke then and there." 4you did it again, Henry," said Gonzalo. Levy said, "Agent's fee is three hundred dollars, Henry." Henry said, "I am well paid by the club, and the banquets are my pleasure, sir. There is no need for more." Levy reddened slightly and changed the subject. "But how did you get the trick of it? When the rest of us- (it was not difficult," said Henry. "The rest of you happened to track down all the wrong paths, and I simply suggested what was left." Afterword This story first appeared in the July 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it. In the magazine the story has a slightly different beginning because it was thought that one story in the series shouldn't refer to events in earlier stories. After all, the reasoning is, many of the magazine readers don't get all the issues and might not have read the one with the earlier story. Or if they did, and if that had been half a year ago or so, they wouldn't remember. That's perfectly right, but here in the book I restore the original beginning. In fact, it occurs to me that if I had written the series for the book version to begin with, I would have interlocked them quite a bit. For instance, I wouldn't have let the matter of Halsted's limerick version of the Iliad and the Odyssey drop. As it was though, I felt that to come across them out of order, or missing some and reading others, would spoil the effect. Oh, well. Miss What? There was a certain frostiness about the monthly meeting of the Black Widowers and it clearly centered on the guest brought by Mario Gonzalo. He was a large man. His checks were plump and smooth, his hair was almost nonexistent, and he wore a vest, something no one had seen at the Black Widowers in living memory. His name was Aloysius Gordon and the trouble began when be calmly introduced himself by name and occupation, announcing himself quite casually as being connected with the 17th Precinct. It was like lowering a window shade against the sun, for the spark went out of the dinner at once. Gordon had no way of comparing the quiet now prevailing with the hubbub characteristic of the usual Black Widowers dinner. He had no way of knowing how unusual it was that Emmanuel Rubin was almost supernaturally reserved and had not contradicted anyone once; that Thomas Trumbull's voice, even when it was use , was subdued; that Geoffrey Avalon actually finished his second drink; that twice James Drake had stubbed out a cigarette before it was down to the quick; and that Roger Halsted, having unfolded the piece of paper on which be had written the limerick based on the fifth book of the Iliad, merely looked at it mildly, wrinkled his high, pink forehead, and put it away. In fact, Gordon seemed interested only in Henry. He followed the waiter with his eyes, and there was an unmistakable light of curiosity in them. Henry, ordinarily perfect in his job, upset a glass of water, to the horror of all. His cheekbones seemed to show in his unlined face. Trumbull rose rather ostentatiously and moved in the dircc- tion of the men's room. The gesture he made was unobtrusive but none the less urgent for that, and a minute later Gonzalo left the table, too. In the men's room, Trumbull said in a harsh whisper, "Why the hell did you bring that fellow?" "He's an interesting guy," said Gonzalo defensively, "and it's best's privilege. I can bring anyone I want." "He's a policeman." "He's a plainclothesman." "What's the difference? Do you know him, or is be here professionally?" Gonzalo raised his hands in a kind of helpless anger. His dark eyes bulged as they usually did in moments of passion. "I know him personally. I met him-it's none of your business how I met him, Tom-I know him. He's an interesting guy and I want him here." "Yes? What did you tell him about Henry?" "What do you mean, what did I tell?" "Oh, come on, you dumb jerk. Don't play games. Haven't you seen the guy watching Henry's every move? Why should he watch a waiter?" "I told him Henry's a whiz at solving puzzles." "In how much detail?" "No detail at all," said Gonzalo with heat. "Don't you suppose I know that nothing that goes on in the banquet room is mentioned outside? I just said Henry was a whiz at solving puzzles." "And he was interested, I suppose." "Well, be said be would like to be at one of our meetings and I-1p Trumbull said, "You realize this could be very embarrassing for Henry. Did you consult him?" Gonzalo played with one of the brass buttons of his blazer. "If I see that Henry's embarrassed, I'll use host's privilege and cut the proceedings." "What if this Gordon guy doesn't play along?" Gonzalo looked miserable and shrugged. They returned to the table. When Henry was pouring out the coffee and it came time for the game of placing the guest on the griddle, there was still no increase in verve. Gonzalo offered the role of inquisitor to Trumbull, as was traditional, and Trumbull looked unhappy about it. The traditional first question came out. "Mr. Gordon, how do you justify your existence?" "At the moment "" said Gordon, in a rather rich baritone, "by adding to the pleasure of this occasion, I hope." "In what way?" asked Avalon glumly. "It is my understanding, gentlemen," said Gordon, "that guests are expected to pose a problem which the members of the club then attempt to solve." Trumbull shot a furious glance at Gonzalo and said, "No, no, that's all wrong. Some guests have presented problems, but that was more or less a side issue. All that's expected of them is interesting conversation." "Besides," said Drake in his dry voice, "it's Henry who does the solving. The rest of us just bat things around foolishly." "For God's sake, Jim," began Trumbull, but Gordon's voice overrode his. "That's exactly what I've been given to understand," be said. "Now I am here in a strictly social capacity and not as a member of the Police Department at all. just the same, I can't help having a professional interest in the matter. In fact, I'm damned curious about Henry, and I've come to test him. . . . If I may, that is," he added in response to the cold silence that had fallen over everyone else. Avalon was frowning, and on his face, with its neat mustache, its closely cut and neatly kept chin beard, and its absolutely luxurious eyebrows, a frown was a portentous phenomenon. He said, "Mr. Gordon, this is a private club, the meetings of which serve no purpose but social camaraderie. Henry is our waiter and we value him and we do not wish him to be disturbed in this room. If your presence here is purely social and not professional, as you say, I think it would be best if we leave Henry to himself." Henry had just completed the coffee ritual and he interrupted with the faintest trace of agitation in his voice. He said, "Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I appreciate your concern. However, it may improve the situation if I explain something to Mr. Gordon." He turned to the guest and went on earnestly, "Mr. Gordon, on some half-dozen occasions I have been able to make some obvious point or other in connection with some problem that arose at the dinners. The puzzles were, in themselves, trivial, and not at all the sort that would interest a policeman. I know quite well that in solving the kind of cases that interest policemen, what is most important are records, informants, rather tedious procedural work, the cooperation of many different men and agencies. All of this is quite beyond my abilities. "In fact, I could not even do what I have done were it not for the other members of the club. The Black Widowers are ingenious men who can find complicated answers to any problem. When they are all done then, assuming none of the complicated answers are correct, I can sometimes wiggle past the complications to the simple truth. That is all I do, and I assure you that it is not worth your while to test me." Gordon nodded his head. "In other words, Henry, if there's a gangland killing and we have to track down half a dozen hoods and investigate their alibis, or try to find some bystanders not too afraid to tell us what they saw, you couldn't help us." "Not at all, sir." "But if I have an odd piece of paper that carries some words that might make sense and might not, and that may require a little thought past the complications to the simple truth, you could help." "Probably not, sir." "But would you look at the paper and give me your thoughts on the matter?" "Is that the test, sir?" "I suppose we can call it that," said Gordon. "Well, then," said Henry, with a slow shake of his head. "Mr. Gonzalo is the host. If he's willing to have you introduce it, then, by the rules of the club, you may." Gonzalo looked uncomfortable. Then he said defiantly, "Go on, Lieutenant, show it to him." "Hold on," said Trumbull, pointing his blunt finger at Gonzalo. Have you seen it, Mario?" "Yes. "Can you make sense out of it?" "No7" said Gonzalo, "but it's the kind of thing Henry might be able to handle." Rubin said, "I don't think we ought to put Henry on the spot like that." But Henry said, "It's host's privilege, sir. I'm willing to look at it." Gordon brought a piece of paper, folded into quarters, out of his upper right vest pocket. He held it over his shoulder and Henry took it. Henry looked at it for a moment, then handed it back. "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but I cannot see anything in it except what it says." Drake held out his band. "How about passing it around? Is that all right, Mr. Gordon?" "I'm willing to pass it around," said Gordon. He gave it to Halsted, who sat at his right. Halsted read it and passed it on. There was absolute silence till it had made its circle and returned to Gordon. Gordon glanced at it briefly and put it back in his pocket. The message, in full, written in a scrawled hand, went: Woe unto you, lezebels. Death unto you, Rahab. "It sounds Biblical," said Gonzalo. "Doesn't it?" He looked automatically at Rubin, who was the Biblical authority of the group. "It sounds Biblical," said Rubin, "and it may have been written by a Bible nut, but that is not a quotation from the Bible. You can take my word on that." "No one's likely to question your word on the Bible, Manny," said Avalon agreeably. Gordon said, "That note was delivered to a girl at the entrance to a restaurant within which the Miss Earth contestants were holding a press conference." "Who delivered it?" asked Trumbull. "A drifter. He had been given a dollar to hand the note to the girl and he couldn't describe the person who had given it to him, except that it was a man. There is no reason to suppose the drifter was more than an intermediary. We checked him out." Halsted said, "Any fingerprints?" Gordon said, "Any number of superimposed smudges. Nothing useful." Avalon looked austere and said, "I suppose that the Jezebels mentioned in the note referred to the young ladies of the Miss Earth contest." "That seems a natural thought," said Gordon. "The question is: Which one?" "All of them, I should say," said Avalon. "The note uses the plural, and the kind of person who uses the term in this context would not make fine distinctions. Anyone who presents her beauty to the public gaze for judgment would be a Jezebel. All of them would be Jezebels." "But what about the second phrase?" asked Gordon. Rubin said, with just a trace of self-importance, "I'll explain that. Suppose the writer is a Bible nut; I mean the kind who reads the Bible every day and hears God whispering in his ear, directing him to destroy immorality. Such a guy would automatically write in Biblical style. It so happens that the chief poetic device in Biblical times was the repetition of the same sentence in a slightly different way, such as . . ." He thought for a while, then said, "For instance, How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel. Another one is Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto nw, ye that have knowledge." Rubin's straggly beard grew stragglier as his lips parted in a broad smile and his eyes glinted through his thick spectacles as he said, "That second one is from the Book of job." "Parallelism," muttered Avalon. Gordon said, "You mean he's just saying the same thing twice?" "That's right," said Rubin. "First he predicts woe and then he predicts the ultimate woe, death. First be calls them Jezebels, then he calls them Rababs." "Not quite," said Gordon. ""Jezebel" is in the plural. "Rahab" isn't. The fellow who wrote that speaks of "Jezebels," plural, when be yells "Woe"; but only "Rabab," singular, when he predicts "Death."" "Can I see that paper again?" said Rubin. It was passed to him and he studied it. Then he said, "The way this fellow writes, I don't know whether we can expect exact spelling. He may have meant to put in the "s."" "He rnay have," said Gordon, "but we can't rely on that. His spelling and punctuation are correct and, scrawl or not, the other s" is clear and sharp." "It seems to me," said Avalon, "it would be safer to assume the singular is what is meant, unless we have good reason to the contrary." Drake tried to blow a smoke ring (an attempt at which no one had ever seen him succeed) and said, "Do you take this thing seriously, Mr. Gordon?" "My private inclinations," said Gordon, "are not in question. The note has a certain psychotic quality about it and I feel pretty safe in saying that if the writer is not playing a stupid practical joke, then he's crazy. And crazy people have to be taken seriously. Suppose the writer is someone who considers himself a spokesman for the wrath of God. Naturally, be announces it; he sends for the word of God because that's what the Biblical prophets did." "And be announces it in poetic terms," began Halsted. "Because that's what the Biblical prophets did, too," said Gordon, nodding. "A man like that may just possibly decide to be the arm of God as well as His voice. We can't take a chance. You understand that the Miss Earth contest offers a more ticklish situation than the Miss America contest does." "Because there are foreign contestants, I suppose," said Rubin. "That's right. There are about sixty contestants altogether, and exactly one-Miss United States-is home-grown. We'd just as soon nothing happened to any of them, even a minor incident. I don't say that it would plunge the world into a crisis if anything happened, but the State Department would be very unhappy. So a note like this means that the police have to supply protection for all sixty girls and these days we don't have all that manpower to waste." "If you don't mind," said Trumbull, frowning, "what the hell do you expect us to do about it?" Gordon said, "It's just possible be may not be planning to kill all the girls. He may have only one in mind, so that is why be uses the singular when be talks of death. Perhaps Henry might give us some ideas as to how to narrow it down. We'd rather concentrate on ten girls than on sixty. We'd rather concentrate on one girl only, in fact." "From that note?" said Trumbull, with perfectly obvious dis- gust. "You want Henry to pick out one Miss Earth contestant from that note?" He turned to look at Henry, and Henry said, "I have no idea, Mr. Trumbull." Gordon put the note away again. "I thought you might tell me who Rahab is. Why should he call one particular girl Rahab and threaten to kill her?" Gonzalo said suddenly, "Why should we suppose that Rahab applies to the girl he's after? Maybe it's his signature. Maybe it's a pseudonym he's using because Rahab was some important prophet or executioner in the Bible." Rubin let out his breath in a snort. "Oh, boy! Mario, how can even an artist know so little? "Rahab" is part of the line. If it were the signature, he would put it on the bottom. If he's the kind of guy who wants to call down the wrath of God in public, be would sign it proudly and unmistakably if he signed it at all. And if he did, he would never take the pseudonym of Rahab, not if he knew anything at all about the Bible. Rabab was . . . No, I tell you what. Henry, get us the King James from the reference shelf. We might as well make sure we get the words exactly right." "You mean you don't know the Bible by heart?" said Trumbull. "I miss a word now and then, Tom," said Rubin loftily. He took the Bible from Henry. "Thanks, Henry. Now the only person named Rahab in the Bible was a harlot." "She was?" said Gonzalo incredulously. "That's right. Here it is-first verse of the second chapter of the Book of Joshua. And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot's house, named Rahab, and lodged there." "And that's part of the parallelism," said Avalon thoughtfully. "Is that what you think?" "Of course. And that's why I think "Jezebel" and "Rabab" both apply to all the girls and should both be plural. Both Jezebel and Rahab are Biblical representatives of immoral women, and I take it that our note writer, whoever he may be, conceives all the Miss Earth candidates to be just that." "Are they?" asked-Gonzalo. "I mean, immoral." Gordon smiled slightly. "I won't guarantee their private lives, but I don't think they set any records in immorality. They're young women, carefully selected to represent their countries. I doubt that anything really notorious would slip by the judges." Avalon said, "When a Fundamentalist who's a little past the bend speaks of immorality, or when he starts calling someone a Jezebel, there is no need, in my opinion, for the existence of real immorality. It's probably purely subjective. Any woman who rouses feelings of sexual excitement within him will seem to him to be immoral; and the one who does so most will seem to him to be most immoral." "You mean," said Gordon, swiveling his eyes toward Avalon, "that he's after the most beautiful one and aims to kill her?" Avalon shrugged. "What's beauty? He may be after the one he thinks is most beautiful, but what are his standards? It might not even be beauty in the most literal sense. It might be that one of them reminds him of his dead mother, his childhood sweetheart, or some teacher he once had. How can we tell?" "All right," said Gordon. "You may be quite correct in all you say, but it doesn't matter. Tell me who he's after; tell me who Rahab s; and we can worry about motives afterward." Avalon shook his head. "I don't know that we can dismiss motive quite that easily, but, in any case, we won't get anywhere if we head down the wrong path. Despite what Manny says, I don't think there's any parallelism between Jezebel and Rabab." "There certainly is," said Rubin, his jaw lifting at once. "Where is it? To begin with, Jezebel wasn't a harlot. She was the Queen of Israel and there is no hint in the Bible that she was in any way sexually immoral. It's just that she was an idolator and opposed the Yahvists; that is, those who worshipped Yahveh-or Jehovah, to use the more common but less accurate name." Rubin said, "I'll explain it to you, if you want. Jezebel was the daughter of the King of Tyre, who was also a priest of Astarte. She was probably a priestess herself. As for Rahab, she was probably not a common harlot, but a priestess who participated in fertility rites. To the Israelites that was being a harlot." Halsted said, "Not everybody has gone into the Bible the way you have, Manny. The Bible calls Jezebel a queen and Rabab a harlot, and the average reader wouldn't go past that." "But that's not the point I'm trying to make," said Avalon. "Jezebel, whatever her status, came to a had end. She died in a palace coup and was eaten by dogs. Rahab, however, came to a good end. She was saved alive after the fall of Jericho, because she had kept the spies hidden and safe. One can assume she was converted to the worship of the God of Israel and was no longer a harlot or a pagan priestess. In fact . . . Manny, let me have the Bible." Avalon took it and turned its pages rapidly. "It's just at the opening of the Book of Matthew. Here it is: And Salmon begat Booz of Rachab; and Booz begat Obed of Ruth; and Obed begat Jesse; and Jesse begat David the king. There, that's the fifth and sixth verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. According to that, Rahab married a prominent Israelite and was the great-great-grandmother of David and therefore a distant ancestress of Jesus himself. Having helped the Israelites take Jericho, having married an Israelite, and being the ancestress of David and Jesus, Rabab couldn't possibly be used as a symbol of immorality by any Fundamentalist." The Bible passed from hand to hand, and Halsted said, "The name isn't spelled the same. It's "Rachab" in Matthew." Avalon said, "The New Testament is translated into English from the Greek; the Old Testament from the Hebrew. The transliterations aren't consistent. "Booz" in the passage I just read is "Boaz" in the Old Testament Book of Ruth." "Besides," said Rubin, "in this case "Racbab" is more nearly the correct spelling. The Hebrew letter that occurs in the middle of the name is correctly pronounced like the guttural German "cb."" "So if we are going to associate Rabab with one of the Miss Earth contestants," said Avalon, "we had better forget about the parallelism with Jezebel and look for something else." "But what?" asked Drake. "Don't worry." Avalon lifted an admonitory finger. "I have something in mind. Manny, isn't "Rahab" used in the Bible as the poetic equivalent of Egypt? 11 Rubin said excitedly, "Yes, you're right. It's not the same word in Hebrew. There the middle letter is an "b." Still, it's the same word in English. Usually it's translated into "pride" or "might" or something like that, but it's left untranslated in at least one place. . . .Somewhere in the Psalms, I think." He turned the pages and muttered, "I wish we had a Bible dictionary. That's something the club ought to buy and add to the reference shelf." Then, with his voice rising to a shout, he said, "Here it is, by God! Fourth verse of the 87th Psalm: I will make mention of Rahah, and Babylon to them that know me: behold Philistia, and Tyre, with Ethiopia." "How do you know that "Rabab" means Egypt there?" asked Gonzalo. "Because throughout Old Testament history the rival great powers were those in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and on the Nile. Babylon clearly typifies the former, so Rahab must typify the latter. There's no dispute there. Biblical scholars agree that "Rahab" stands for Egypt there." "In that case," said Avalon, "I don't think we have to fall back on Henry. I suspect that it's Miss Egypt that our mysterious friend is after. And that makes sense, too. There are a couple of million Jewish people in this city and considering the present situation between Israel and Egypt, one of them, with a little derangement, might feel called upon to threaten Miss Egypt." Gordon said, "An interesting thought. There's only one trouble." ",What's that, sir?" "There isn't any Miss Egypt. You see, the Miss Earth contest isn't as cut-and-dried as the Miss America contest. In the Miss America you have one contestant from each of the fifty states because foreign policy doesn't enter into it. In the Miss Earth contest, nations hostile to the United States, or those which look down on beauty contests as decadent, don't enter. This year, no Arab state is represented. On the other hand, some nations are represented by more than one entry, each with a different name. Some years ago, I understand, there were two German beauties. The top winner went as Miss Germany and the second went as Miss Bavaria." Avalon looked distinctly annoyed. "If there's no Miss Egypt, then I don't know what "Rabab" can mean." "What does it mean in the Bible?" asked Gonzalo. "Why do they give that name to Egypt? There has to be some reason." Rubin said, "Oh, well. Egypt was a river kingdom and Rahab was associated with the waters. In fact, it was a mythological rem- nant of a pre-Israelite creation myth. The land was viewed by the Sumerians as having been created from the sea. They visualized the sea as an enormous monster called Tiamat that had to be split in two so that the land emerged from between the halves. In Babylonian mythology, it was Marduk who killed Tiamat. "The priestly writers of the first book of Genesis cleaned up the Babylonian myths and removed the polytheism, but they left traces. In the beginning, before the first day of creation, according to Chapter i, Verse 7, of Genesis, And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Well, the Hebrew word translated as "the deep" is "tchom" and some commentators think that is a version of Tiamat and that this verse is all that is left of the cosmic struggle." "That's pretty farfetched," said Drake. "I don't know. There are occasional verses in the Bible which seem to refer to the earlier and less sophisticated creation myth. There's one toward the end of Isaiah, if I can find it. . . . I used to know where all these references are." He turned pages back and forth feverishly, ignoring the small glass of brandy Henry had placed before him. Gordon sipped at his own brandy and watched calmly. He made no attempt to stop Rubin or to attempt to bring the discussion back to the point. It was Trumbull who said, "Is this getting us anywhere?" But Rubin waved excitedly. "I've got it. I've got it. Listen to this: Isaiah, Chapter 51, Verse 9: Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the Lord; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab and wounded the dragon? You see, "cut Rahab" and "wounded the dragon" is another example of parallelism. Rahab and the dragon are alternate expressions that symbolize the raging ocean that has to be defeated and split before dry land can be formed. Some commentators maintain this refers to Egypt and the division of the Red Sea, but in my opinion it is certainly a version of the fight with Tiamat." There was perspiration on Rubin's forehead and be kept waving his left hand for silence, even while his right band continued to turn pages. "There- are references to it in the Psalms, too. I can find them if you'll give me a minute. Ah! Psalm 89, Verses 9 and 10: Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain. And then another one, Psalm 74, Verses 1-3 and 14: Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces. Leviathan was another name for the primeval ocean." Trumbull shouted, "God damn it, Manny. You're not a revivalist preacher any more. Where's this all getting us?" Rubin looked up indignantly and closed the Bible. "If you'll let me talk, Tom," be said, with exaggerated dignity, "and curb your impulse to bellow, I'll tell you." He looked about impressively. "I now suspect that to the fellow who wrote this note, Rabab meant the raging power of the sea. Now what is the raging power of the sea today? Who controls the sea? The United States does. With our aircraft carriers, our nuclear submarines, our Polaris missiles, we have the power of Rabab. I think maybe be's after Miss United States." "Is that so?" said Halsted. "The United States has been the predominant sea power only since World War 11. It hasn't had time to enter legend. It's Great Britain that's the ruler of the sea in song and story. "Britannia rules the waves." I vote for Miss Great Britain." Gordon interposed. "There's no Miss Great Britain. There's a Miss England, though." "All right. I vote for Miss England." Drake said, "llere's no way of getting into this nut's head. Maybe he was just using the name to indicate his method of operation. Rubin said "brakest the head" and "broken in pieces" when be read those verses. Maybe the writer meant be was going to use a blunt instrument." Rubin shook his head. "In one of the verses it was "cut Rahab."" Gonzalo said, "If Rabab is an arch opponent of God, the writer might be thinking of the Nazis. Jeff said the writer might be Jewisb and after Miss Egypt; why not after Miss Germany?" Trumbull said, "Why does the writer have to be Jewish? Most Fundamentalists are Protestants and they've had some neat terms in their time for the Pope. He was the "Whore of Babylon" to some of them and Rahab was a harlot. I don't suppose there's a Miss Vatican City, but how about Miss Italy?" Henry said, "I beg your pardon, gentlemen." Gordon looked up. "Ah, you have a suggestion, Henry?" "Yes, I have, sir. Whether it's useful or not, I don't know.... You said, Mr. Gordon, that the rules are rather flexible in the Miss Earth contest as far as the nations represented are concerned. Some nations have no representatives, some have two or more under different names. You mentioned a Miss Germany and a Miss Bavaria, for instance." "That's right," said Gordon. "And you said there was no Miss Great Britain, but that there was a Miss England." "Right again," said Gordon. "Does the Miss England imply the presence of a Miss Scotland as well?" "It does, as a matter of fact." Gordon's eyes narrowed. "And a Miss Ireland and Miss Northern Ireland as well." Gonzalo brought both hands before him down on the table. "I'll bet I know what Henry is driving at. If the writer of the note is Irish, he may be after Miss Northern Ireland. He would consider her as representing a political division that's a puppet of England, and England rules the waves and is Rahab." Henry shook his head. "It's not as complicated as that, I think. I have always thought that all things being equal, the simplest explanation is best." "Occam's razor," muttered Avalon. "I must admit," said Henry, "I never heard of Rahab before, but Mr. Rubin's explanation was quite enlightening. If Rahab is a monster representing the sea, and if the monster is also called leviathan, and if leviathan is sometimes used as a name for an actual sea monster, and the largest that lives, why might not the writer be referring to Miss Wales?" "Ah," said Gordon. Henry turned to him. "Was that the answer, Mr. Gordon?" Gordon said gravely, "It's a possibility." "No, Mr. Gordon," said Henry, "You know better than that. You came here to test me. How can you test me with a puzzle to which you don't know the answer?" Gordon broke into a laugh. "You win again, Henry," be said. "Everything I told you is true enough, but it happened last year. The person in question was caught. He had a knife in his band, but be wasn't really dangerous. He surrendered quietly and he's in a mental hospital now. He was quite incoherent. We could never be sure what his motive was except that he was sure his victim was particularly wicked. "The trouble was," Gordon went on, "we had to stake out a lot of men and we never did find out what Rabab meant. . . . But when we caught him be was making his way into the dressing room of Miss Wales. We should have had you last year, Henry. You're a remarkable detective." "The Black Widowers are. They explore the problem; I only pick up what's left," said Henry. Afterword. This story first appeared in the September 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "A Warning to Miss Earth," which I simply don't like. Back to "Miss What?" I don't always remember the exact genesis of a particular story, but I remember this one. Mrs. Anita Summer, who works with the Leonard Lyons column on the New York Post, and who is a science fiction reader, invited me to come with her to a cocktail party being given for the contestants for the Miss Universe award. Well, of course, I was delighted to go and I wandered from contestant to contestant in a happy daze. Anita, pleased at my artless delight, said, "Are you going to write a story about this, Isaac?" And I said, "All right." And I did. So this story, "Miss Wliat?", is dedicated to Anita Summer. The Lullaby of Broadway. For the first time in the history of the Black Widowers, the monthly banquet was being given in a private apartment. Emmanuel Rubin had insisted and his straggly straw-colored beard had waggled strenuously as he argued it out in parliamentary fashion. He was going to be the next host, be said, and the host was an absolute monarch within the wording of the bylaws and nowhere in the bylaws was the place of meeting specifically fixed. "According to tradition," began Geoffrey Avalon with the kind of solemnity that befitted his profession as patent lawyer, "we have always met right here." it If tradition is the master," said Rubin, "why the bylaws?" And in the end he had had his way, carrying it finally when be pointed out that he was a gourmet cook and Mario Gonzalo had grinned and said, "Let's go and smell him burn the hamburgers." "I do not serve hamburgers," said Rubin hotly, but by that time everyone had conceded the point. So Avalon and James Drake, who had both come in from across the Hudson on the same train, stood in the lobby of Rubin's West Side apartment house and waited for the doorman to pay attention to them. It was quite clear that they could Dot get in without the doorman's permission by anything short of violence. Avalon muttered, "It's the fortress mentality. It's all over New York. You can't go anywhere without having to pass the gimlet eye and being frisked for weapons." "I don't blame them," said Drake in his soft, hoarse voice. He lit a cigarette. "It's better than being mugged in the elevator." "I suppose so," said Avalon gloomily. The doorman turned to them. He was short, round-faced, and bald-headed, with a gray fringe of bair that was repeated in his mustache, which was as short and bristly as Drake's but which occupied a more generous space of upper lip. He did not look in the least formidable but his gray uniform lent him the cachet of authority and, presumably, that was enough to quell the intruder. "Yes?" he said. Avalon cleared his throat, and spoke in his most impressively rich baritone in order to conceal the shyness that no one could believe anyone as tall, straight, and impressive as he could have. "We are Dr. Drake and Mr. Avalon calling on Mr. Emmanuel Rubin in i.4-AA." "Drake and Avalon," repeated the doorman. "One minute." He moved to the bank of apartment bells and spoke into the intercom. The squawking sound of Rubin's voice came clearly. "Send them up. Send them up." The doorman held the door open for them, but Avalon besitated on the threshold. "Do you have many incidents here, by the way?y The doorman nodded importantly. "Sometimes, Sir. No matter what you do, things happen! Apartment on the twentieth floor was robbed last year. There was a lady got hurt in the laundry room not too long ago. Things like that happen." A voice said gently, "May I join you, gentlemen?" Drake and Avalon both turned to look at the newcomer. There was a perceptible moment in which neither recognized him. And the.n Drake chuckled briefly, and said, "Henry, when you're not waiting on us at the restaurant, you're beautiful." Avalon said, considerably more explosively, "Henry! What are you doing . . . ?" He choked it off and looked uncomfortable. "Mr. Rubin invited me, Sir. He said that as long as the dinner was not to be held in the restaurant and I could not have the privilege of waiting on you, then I would be his guest. I believe that was his purpose in insisting the dinner be held here. One would not think it, but Mr. Rubin is a sentimental gentleman." "Splendid," said Avalon with great enthusiasm, as though to make up for his previous surprise. "Doorman, this gentleman is with us." Henry hung back. "Would you like to inquire of Mr. Rubin, Sir?" The doorman, having held the door patiently through this, said, "No, that's all right. You go right ahead." Henry nodded, and all three advanced through the large blue lobby to the bank of elevators. Drake said, "Henry, I haven't seen an outfit like yours in years. They'll mob you in New York if you go around dressed like that." Henry looked down upon himself briefly. His suit was a charcoal brown and cut so conservatively that Drake was clearly wondering where the establishment could be found that would have such garments for sale. The shoes were a sober black, the shirt a gleaming white, and the tie, a narrow and somber gray held with a neat tie clip. Crowning it all was the dark-brown derby which Henry now doffed, holding it lightly by the brim. "I haven't seen a derby in a long time," said Avalon. "Or a bat at all," said Drake. "It is the freedom of the times," said Henry. "We each do our thing now, and this is mine." Avalon said, "The trouble is that some people consider the thing to do to be molesting women in laundries." "Yes," said Henry, "I heard what the doorman said. At least we can hope there will be no trouble today." One of the elevators arrived at the lobby and a lady with a dog got off. Avalon looked inside, right and left, then entered. They rose to the fourteenth floor without trouble. They were all gathered, or almost all. Rubin was wearing his wife's apron (it had a large "Jane" crocheted on it) and he was looking harried. The sideboard had a full collection of bottles and Avalon had appointed himself an impromptu bartender, after fending off Henry. "Sit down, Henry," said Rubin in a loud voice. "You're the guest." Henry looked uncomfortable. Halsted said, with his very slight stutter, "You've got a nice apartment, Manny." "It's all right-let me get past you for a minute-but it's small. Of course, we don't have children, so we don't need it much larger, and being in Manhattan has its conveniences for a writer." "Yes," said Avalon. "I listened to some of the conveniences downstairs. The doorman said women have trouble in the laundry." "Oh, hell," said Rubin contemptuously. "Some of the dames here want trouble. Ever since the Chinese delegation to the United Nations took over a motel a few blocks down, some of the dowagers here see the yellow menace everywhere." "And robberies, too," said D irake. Rubin looked chagrined as though any slur against Manhattan were a personal attack. "It could happen anywhere. And Jane was careless." Henry, the only one sitting at the table, and with an as yet untouched drink before him, looked surprised-an expression which somehow did not put a single wrinkle into his unlined face. He said, "Pardon me, Mr. Rubin. Do you mean your apartment was entered?" "Well, yes, the apartment lock can be opened with a strip of celluloid, I think. That's why everyone puts in fancy locks in addition." "But when was this?" asked Henry. "About two weeks ago. I'm telling you, it was Jane's fault. She went down the ball to see someone about recipes or something and didn't double-lock the door. That's just asking for it. The hoodlums have an instinct for it, a special ESP. She came back just as the bum was leaving and there was a hell of a fuss." "Did she get hurt?" asked Gonzalo, his ordinarily prominent eyes bulging slightly. "Not really. She was shook up, that's all. She yelled like anytbing-about the best thing she could have done. The guy ran. If I'd been there, I'd have taken after him and caught him, too. I'd have-" "It's better not to try," said Avalon austerely, stirring his drink by moving the ice with his forefinger. "The end result of a chase could be a knife in the ribs. Your ribs." "Listen," said Rubin, "I've faced guys with knives in my time. They're easy to ban- Hold it, something's burning." He dashed into the kitchen. There was a knock at the door. "Use the peephole," said Avalon. Halsted did, and said, "It's Tom." He opened the door to let Thomas Trumbull in. Avalon said, "How come you weren't announced?" Trumbull shrugged. "They know me here. I've visited Manny before." "Besides," said Drake, "an important government operative like you is above suspicion." Trumbull snorted and his lined face twisted into a scowl, but be didn't rise to the bait. That he was a code expert all the Black Widowers knew. What he did with it, none of the Black Widowers knew, though all had the same suspicion. Trumbull said, "Any of you counted the bulls yet?" Gonzalo laughed. "It does seem a herd." The bookcases that lined the wall were littered with bulls in wood and ceramic and in all sizes and colors. There were several on the end tables, others on the television set. "There are more in the bathroom," said Drake, emerging. "I'll bet you," said Trumbull, "that if we each count all the bulls in the place, we'll each come out with a different answer and every one of them will be wrong." "I'll bet you," said Halsted, "that Manny doesn't know how many there are himself." "Hey, Manny," shouted Gonzalo, "how many bulls have you got?" "Counting me?" called back Rubin, amid the clatter of pottery. He put his head out of the kitchen door. "One thing about eating here is you know damn well you don't get any liver in the appetizer. You're getting an eggplant dish with all kinds of ingredients in it and don't ask the details because it's my recipe. I invented it. . . .And, Mario, that bull will chip if you drop it and Jane knows them all by heart and she'll inspect each one when she comes back." Avalon said, "Did you hear about the robbery here, Tom?" Trumbull nodded. "He didn't get much, I understand." Rubin bustled out, carrying dishes. "Don't help, Henry. Say, Jeff, put down the drink a minute and help me put out the cutlery. . . .It's roast turkey, so all of you get ready to tell me if you want light meat or dark and don't change your mind once you've made it up. And you're all getting stuffing whether you want it or not because that's what makes or-" Avalon put out the last of the knives with a flourish and said, "What did they get, Rubin?" "You mean the guy who broke in? Nothing. Jane must have come back just as he started. He messed up some of the items in the medicine chest; looking for drugs, I suppose. I think he picked up some loose change, and my recording equipment was knocked about. He may have been trying to carry off my portable stereo to hock it, but he just had a chance to move it a bit. . . . Who wants music, by the way?" "No one," shouted Trumbull indignantly. "You start making your damned noise, and I'll steal the stereo and kick every one of your tapes into the incinerator." Gonzalo said, "You know, Manny, I bate to say it, but the stuffing is even better than the eggplant was." Rubin grunted. "If I had a bigger kitchen-" The wail of a siren sounded from outside. Drake jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the open window. "The lullaby of Broadway." Rubin waved his hand negligently. "You get used to it. If it isn't a fire engine, it's an ambulance; if it isn't an ambulance, it's a police car; if it isn't . . . The traffic doesn't bother me." For a moment be seemed lost in thought. Then a look of the deepest malignancy crossed his small face. "It's the neighbors who bother me. Do you know how many pianos there are on this floor alone? And how many record players?" "You have one," said Trumbull. "I don't play it at two A.m. at top volume," said Rubin. "It wouldn't be so had if this were an old apartment house with walls as thick as the length of your arm. The trouble is, this place is only eight years old and they make the walls out of coated aluminum foil. Hell, the walls carry sound. Put your ear to the wall and you can hear noise from any apartment on any floor, three up and three down. "And it's not as though you can really hear the music and enjoy it," he went on. "Yod just hear that damned bass, thump, thump, thump, at a subsonic level that turns your bones to water." Halsted said, "I know. In my place, we've got a couple who have fights and my wife and I listen, but we can never hear the words, just the tone of voice. Infuriating. Sometimes it's an interesting tone of voice, though." "How many families do you have here in this apartment house?" asked Avalon. Rubin spent a few moments computing with moving lips. "About six hundred fifty," he said. "Well, if you insist on living in a beehive," said Avalon, "you have to take the consequences." His neat and graying beard seemed to bristle with high morality. "That's a real fat hunk of comfort," said Rubin. "Henry, you're going to have another helping of turkey." "No, really, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, with a kind of helpless despair. "I just can't-" And he stopped with a sigh, since his plate was heaped high. He said, "You seem very put out, Mr. Rubin; and somehow I feel there is more to it than someone's piano playing." Rubin nodded and, for a moment, his lips actually trembled, as though in passion. "You bet it is, Henry. It's that Goddamn ear penter. You might be able to hear him now." He tilted his head in an attitude of listening and, automatically, all conversation stopped and all listened. Except for the steady whine of traffic outside, there was nothing. Rubin said, "Well, we're lucky. He isn't doing it now; hasn't for a while, in fact. Listen, everyone, dessert was a kind of disaster and I had to improvise. If anyone doesn't want to cat it, I've got cake from the bakery, which I wouldn't ordinarily recommend, you understand-" "Let me help this course," said Gonzalo. "Okay. Anyone but Henry." "That," said Trumbull, "is a kind of reverse snobbery. Henry, this guy Rubin is putting you in your place. If he weren't so damned conscious that you're a waiter, he'd let you help wait on US." Henry looked at his plate, still piled high, and said, "My frustration is not so much at being unable to help wait on table, as at being unable to understand." "Unable to understand what?" asked Rubin, coming in with desserts on a tray. They looked very much like chocolate mousse. "Are you having a carpenter working in this apartment house?" asked Henry. "What carpenter? Oh, you mean what I said. No, I don't know what the hell be is. I just call him a carpenter. He's forever banging. Three in the afternoon. Five in the morning. He's forever banging. And always when I'm writing and want it particularly quiet. . . . How's the Bavarian cream?" "Is that what this is?" asked Drake, staring at it suspiciously. "That's what it started out to be," said Rubin, "but the gelatin wouldn't set properly and I had to improvise." "Tastes great to me, Manny," said Gonzalo. "Little too sweet," said Avalon, "but I'm not much of a dessert man." 441t is a little too sweet," said Rubin magnanimously. "Coffee "Coming up in a minute; and not instant, either." "Banging what, Mr. Rubin?" asked Henry. Rubin had bustled away, and it wasn't till five minutes afterward, with the coffee poured, that Henry could ask again, "Banging what, Mr. Rubin?" "What?" asked Rubin. Henry pushed his chair back from the table. His mild face seemed to set into a harder outline. "Mr. Rubin," he said, "you are the host; and I am the guest of the club at this dinner. I would like to ask a privilege which, as host, you can grant." "Well, ask," said Rubin. "As guest, it is traditional that I be quizzed. Frankly, I do not wish to be, since, unlike other guests, I will be at next month7s banquet and at the one after that, in my ordinary capacity as waiter, of course, and I prefer-" Henry hesitated. "You prefer your privacy, Henry?" asked Avalon. "Perhaps I would not quite put it-" began Henry, and then, interrupting himself, he said, "Yes, I would quite put it that way. 1 want my privacy. But I want something more. I want to quiz Mr. Rubin." "What for?" asked Rubin, his eyes widening" behind the magnifying effect of his thick-lensed spectacles. "Something I have beard this night puzzles me and I cannot get you to answer my questions." "Henry, you're drunk. I've been answering every question." "Nevertheless, may I quiz you formally, sir?" "Go ahead." "Thank you," said Henry. "I want to know about the annoyance you have been having." "You mean the carpenter, and his lullaby of Broadway?" "My line," said Drake quietly, but Rubin ignored him. "Yes. How long has it been going on?" "How long?" said Rubin passionately. "For months." "Very loud?" asked Henry. Rubin thought a while. "No, not loud, I suppose. But you can hear it. It comes at odd moments. You can never predict it." ,"And who's doing it?" Rubin brought his fist down on the table suddenly, so that his coffeecup clattered. "You know, that's it. It isn't the noise so much, irritating though it might be. I could stand it if I understood it; if I knew who it was; if I knew what he was doing; if I could go to someone and ask him not to do it for a while when I'm having particular trouble with a plot line. It's like being persecuted by a poltergeist." Trumbull held up his hand. "Wait a while. Let's not have any of this poltergeist horse manure. Manny, you're not going to try to bring in the supernatural, here. Let's get one thing straight first-" Halsted said, "It's Henry that's doing the quizzing, Tom." "I'm aware of that," said Trumbull, nodding his head frigidly. "Henry, may I ask a question?" "If," said Henry, "you are about to ask why Mr. Rubin, hearing a noise, can't tell where it's coming from, it is what I am about to ask." "Go ahead," said Trumbull. "I'll help myself to more coffee." Henry said, "Would you answer the question, Mr. Rubin?" Rubin said, "I suppose it is hard for you all to understand. Let's see now, two of you live across the Hudson, one of you lives down in one of the older sections of Brooklyn, and one of you is in Greenwich Village. Tom lives in a reconverted brownstone. I'm not sure where Henry lives but I'm sure it's not a modern beehive, as Avalon calls it. None of you live in one of these modern apartment complexes with twenty-five stories or more, and twenty-five apartments on a floor, and nice sound-carrying concrete for a skeleton. " If someone had a good loud record player on, I might be able to tell if it's from upstairs or from downstairs, though I wouldn't bet on it. If I wanted to, I could go from door to door all along this floor, then door to door all along the floor beneath, and again all along the floor above, and I guess I would be able to tell what apartment it is by plastering my ear against the right door. "If it's just a soft hammering, though, it's impossible to tell. You can listen at a door and it wouldn't help. Sound doesn't carry so much through the air and the door. It goes through the walls. Listen, I've gone from door to door when I got mad enough. I don't know how many times I've crept through the corridors." Gonzalo laughed. "If you get caught doing that, that doorman downstairs will be getting reports about vicious-looking hoodlums sneaking around." "That doesn't worry me," said Rubin. "The doorman knows me." A look of coy modesty suddenly dripped over Rubin's face. "He's a fan of mine." "I knew you had one somewhere," said Trumbull, but Henry pushed at the turkey on his plate and seemed more distressed than ever, "Suppose your fan isn't on duty," said Gonzalo argumentatively. "You've got to have doormen around the clock and your fan has to sleep." "They all know me," said Rubin. "And this one, the guy at the door now, Charlie Wiszonski, takes the four-to-twelve evening shift weekdays, which is the heavy shift. He's senior man. . Look, let me clear the table." Henry said, "Could you have someone else do that, Mr. Rubin? I want to continue questioning you and I want to get back to the carpenter. If sound carries through the walls and you hear him, don't many other people hear him, too?" "I suppose so." "But if he disturbs so many-" "That's another irritating thing," said Rub ,in. "He doesn't. . . .Thanks, Roger, just pile all the dishes in the sink. I'll take care of them afterward. . . . This carpenter doesn't seem to bother anyone. During the day husbands are away and so are lots of the wives and the apartment house isn't rich in children. The wives that are home are doing housework. In the evening, everyone has the television set on. What does anyone care for an occasional banging? I care because I'm home night and day and I'm a writer. I care because I'm a creative person who has to do some thinking and needs a little quiet." "Have you asked others about it?" said Henry. "Oh, occasionally, yes." He tapped his spoon restlessly against the cup. "I suppose your next question is to ask what they said." "I should guess," said Henry, "from the look of frustration about you, that no one admitted ever hearing it." -,"Well, you're wrong. One or two would say something about hearing it once or twice. The trouble is, no one cared. Even if they heard it, they didn't care. New Yorkers get so deadened to noise, you could blow them up and they wouldn't care." "What do you suppose he's doing to make that noise, whoever he is?" asked Avalon. Rubin said, "I say he's a carpenter. Maybe not professionally, but he works at it. I could swear be has a workshop up there. I can still swear it. Nothing else will explain it." 4, What do you mean, you can still swear it?" asked Henry. "I consulted Charlie about it." "The doorman?" "What's the good of the doorman?" asked Gonzalo. "Why didn't you go to the superintendent? Or the owner?" "What good are they?" said Rubin impatiently. "All I know about the owner is the fact that he lets the air conditioning blow out every heat wave because be prefers to patch it with the finest grade of chewing gum. And to get the superintendent you have to have pull in Washington. Besides, Charlie's a good guy and we get along. Hell, when Jane had the run-in with the hoodlum, and me not there, Charlie was the one she called." 14 Didn't she call the police?" asked Avalon. "Sure she did. But first Charlie!" Henry looked terribly unhappy. He said, "So you consulted the doorman about the banging. What did he say?" "He said there were no complaints. It was the first he had heard of it. He said he would investigate. He did and he swore up and down that there were no carpenter's workshops anywhere in the building. He said he had men go into each apartment to check air conditioners-and that's one sure way of getting in anywhere." "So then the doorman dropped the matter?" Rubin nodded. "I suppose so. And that bugged me, too. It bothered me. I could see that Charlie didn't believe me. He didn't think there was any banging. I was the only one to mention it, he said." "Doesn't Mrs. Rubin hear it?" "Of course she does. But I have to call it to her attention. It doesn't bother her, either." Gonzalo said, "Maybe it's some gal practicing with castanets, or some percussion instrument." "Come on. I can tell something rhythmic from just random banging." "It could be a kid," said Drake, "or some pet. I lived in an apartment in Baltimore once and I had banging directly overhead, like someone dropping something a few hundred times a day. And that's what it was. They had a dog that kept picking up some toy bone and dropping it. I got them to put down a cheap rug." "It's no kid and it's no pet," said Rubin stubbornly. "I wish you wouldn't all assume I don't know what I'm hearing. Listen, I worked in a lumberyard once. I'm a pretty fair carpenter myself. I know the sound of a hammer on wood." "Maybe someone's doing some home repairs," said Halsted. "For months? It's more than that." Henry said, "Is that where the situation stands now? Did you make any other effort to find the source after the doorman failed you?" Rubin frowned. "I tried but it wasn't easy. Everyone has an un- listed number around here. It's part of the fortress mentality Avalon talks about. And I only know a couple of people to talk to. I tried knocking on the most likely doors and introducing myself and asking and all I got were bard stares." )p "I'd give up, said Drake. "Not I," said Rubin, tapping himself on the chest. "The main trouble was that everyone thought I was some kind of nut. Even Charlie, I think. There's a kind of general suspicion about writers It on the part of ordinary people. "Which may be justified," said Gonzalo. "Shut up," said Rubin. "So I thought I would present some concrete evidence." "Such as?" asked Henry. "Well, by God, I recorded the damned banging. I spent two or three days keeping my senses alert for it and then, whenever it started, I tripped the switch and recorded it. It played hell with my writing but I ended up with about forty-five minutes of banging-not loud, but you could hear it. And it was an interesting thing to do because if you listened to it you could tell just from the banging that the bum is a rotten carpenter. The blows weren't even and strong. He had no control over that hammer, and that kind of irregularity wears you out. Once you get the proper rhythm, you can hammer all day without getting tired. I did that many a time-2" Henry interrupted. "And did you play the recording for the doorman?" "No. A month ago I went to a higher court." Gonzalo said, "Then you did see the super. "No. There's such a thing as a tenants" organization." There was a general smile of approval at the table which left only Henry untouched. "Didn't think of that," said Avalon. Rubin grinned. "People wouldn't in a case like this. That's because the only purpose of the organization is to get after the landlord. It's as though no one ever beard of a tenant annoying another tenant and yet I'd say that nine-tenths of the annoyances in an apartment house are caused by tenant-tenant interactions. I said that. I-" Henry interrupted again. "Are you a regular member of the organization, Mr. Rubin?" :I'm a member, sure. Every tenant is a member automatically." "I mean do you attend meetings regularly?" "As a matter of fact, this was only the second meeting I'd attended." "Do the regular attendees know you?" "Some of them do. Besides, what difference does that make? I announced myself. Rubin, I said, :14-double-A, and I made my speech. I had my tape recording with me and I held it up and waved it. I said that was the proof some damn fool was a public nuisance; that I had it labeled with dates and times and would have it notarized if necessary and see my lawyer. I said that if the landlord had made that noise, everyone in the audience would be howling for united action against the nuisance. Why not react the same to one of the tenants?" "It must have been a most eloquent address," growled Trumbull. "A pity I wasn't there to hear you. What did they say?" Rubin scowled. "They wanted to know who was the tenant who made the noise and I couldn't tell them. So they let it drop. Nobody heard the noise; anyway, nobody was interested." "When did the meeting take place?" asked Henry. "Nearly a month ago. And they haven't forgotten about it, either. It was an eloquent address, Tom. I fried them. I did it deliberately. The word was going to spread, and it did. Charlie the doorman said he heard half the tenants talking about itwhich was what I wanted. I wanted that carpenter to hear it. I wanted him to know I was after him." "Surely you don't intend violence, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "I don't need violence. I just wanted him to know. It's been pretty quiet the last few weeks, and I'll bet it stays quiet." "When's the next meeting?" asked Henry. "Next week. . . . I may be there." Henry shook his head. He said, "I wish you wouldn't, Mr. Rubin. I think it might be better if you dropped the whole thing." "I'm not scared of whoever it is." "I'm sure you're not, Mr. Rubin, but I find the situation peculiar on several counts-" "In what way?" asked Rubin hastily. "I-1- It seems melodramatic, I admit but- Mr. Avalon, you and Dr. Drake arrived downstairs in the lobby just ahead of me. You spoke to the doorman." "Yes, that's right," said Avalon. "Perhaps I came too late. I may have missed something. It seems to me, Mr. Avalon, that you asked the doorman if there had been any incidents of a distressing nature in the apartment house and be said there had been a robbery in a twentieth-floor apartment the last year and that a woman had been hurt in some fashion in the laundry room." Avalon looked thoughtful and nodded. Henry said, "Yet he knew that we were beading for Mr. Rubin's apartment. How is it that he didn't mention that this apartment had been broken into only two weeks before?" There was a thoughtful pause. Gonzalo said, "Maybe he didn't like to gossip." "He told us about other incidents. There might have been a harmless explanation, but when I beard of the break-in, I grew perturbed. Everything I've heard since has increased my feeling of uneasiness. He was a fan of Mr. Rubin. Mrs. Rubin had turned to him at the time. Yet he never spoke of it." "What do you make of it, Henry?" asked Avalon. "Is be involved, somehow?" "Come on, Henry," said Rubin at once. "Are you trying to say Charlie is part of a holdup ring?" "No, but if there is something peculiar going on in this apartment house, it might be very useful to slip the doorman a tendollar bill now and then. He might not know what it's for. What is wanted may seem quite harmless to him-but then when your apartment is invaded, it may be that be suddenly understands more than he did before. He feels involved and he won't talk of it any more. For his own sake." "Okay," said Rubin. "But what would be so peculiar going on here? The carpenter and his banging?" Henry said, "Why should someone haunt the floor waiting for you and Mrs. Rubin to leave the apartment untenanted and single-locked? And why, when Mr. Avalon mentioned the matter Of the woman in the laundry early in the evening, Mr. Rubin, did you promptly dismiss the matter with some reference to the Chinese delegation to the United Nations. Is there a connection?" Rubin said, "Only that Jane told me some of the tenants were worried about the Chinese getting in here." "Somehow I feel that is too weak a reason to account for your non sequitur. Did Mrs. Rubin say that the man she had surprised in the apartment was an Oriental?" "Oh, you can't go by that," said Rubin, drawing his shoulders into an earnest shrug. "What can anyone really notice-" Avalon said, "Now wait a while, Manny. No one's asking you if the burglar was really Chinese. All Henry is asking is whether Jane said be was." "She said she thought be was; she had the impression he was. . . .Come on, Henry. Are you proposing espionage?" Henry said stolidly, "Combine all this with the matter of the irregular banging-I believe Mr. Rubin mentioned the irregularity specifically as the sign of a poor carpenter. Might the irregularity be the product of a clever spy? It seems to me that the weak point of any system of espionage is the transfer of information. In this case, there would be no contact between sender and receiver, no inten-nediate checkpoint, nothing to tap or intercept. It would be the most natural and harmless sound in the world that no one would hear except for the person listening-and, as luck would have it, a writer trying to concentrate on his writing and distracted by even small sounds. Even then it would be considered merely someone hammering-a carpenter." Trumbull said, "Come on, Henry. That's silly." Henry said, "But then what about a break-in where virtually nothing was taken?" "Nuts," said Rubin. "Jane came back too soon. If she had stayed away five minutes more, the stereo would have been gone." Trumbull said, "Look here, Henry. You've done some remarkable things in the past and I wouldn't totally dismiss anything you say. just the same, this is very thin." "Perhaps I can present evidence." "What kind?" "It would involve the recordings Mr. Rubin made of the banging. Could you get them, Mr. Rubin?" Rubin said "Easiest thing in the world." He stepped through an archway. Trumbull said, "Henry, if you think I'm going to listen to some stupid hammering and tell you if it's in code, you're crazy." "Mr. Trumbull," said Henry, "what connections you have with the government, I don't know, but it is my guess that in a few moments you will want to get in touch with the proper people and my suggestion is that you begin by having the doorman thoroughly questioned, and that-" Rubin came back, frowning and red-faced. "Funny. I can't find them. I thought I knew exactly where they were supposed to be. They're not there. So much for your evidence, Henry. I'll have to . . . Did I leave them somewhere?" "It's the absence that's the evidence, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, "and I think we know now what the burglar was after, and why there's been no hammering since." Trumbull said hastily, "I'd better make-" Then he paused as the doorbell sounded. For a moment all were frozen, then Rubin muttered, "Don't tell me Jane is getting home early." He rose heavily, moved to the door, and peered out the peephole. He stared a moment, then said, "What the hell!" and flung the door open. The doorman was standing there, red-faced and clearly uneasy. The doorman said, "It took time to get someone to stand in for me. . . . Listen," be said, his eyes darting uneasily from person to person. "I don't want trouble, but-" "Close the door, Manny!" cried Trumbull. Rubin pulled the doorman inside and closed the door. "What is it, Charlie?" "It's been getting to me. And now someone asked me about troubles here. . . . You did, sir," be said to Avalon. "Then more people came and I think I know what it must be about. I guess some of you are investigating the break-in and I didn't know what was going on but I guess I was out of line and I want to ex- plain. This fellow-" "Name and apartment number," said Trumbull. "King! He's in 15-U," said Charlie. "Okay, come into the kitchen with me. Manny, I'm going to make that phone call on the phone in here." He closed the kitchen door. Rubin looked up, as though listening. Then he said, "Hammering messages? Who'd believe it?" "Exactly why it worked, Mr. Rubin," said Henry softly, "and might have continued to work had there not been in the same apartment house a writer of your-if I may say so-marked eccentricity." Afterword This story, and the two that follow, did not appear in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, but, as I explained in the Introduction, were written especially for the book. This one is an example of how writing enriches one's life. The business about hearing mysterious banging from one's apartment is taken from actual fact. Someone in my apartment house bangs away at all hours. I've never taken the strong action Manny Rubin took, but have contented myself with shaking my head and gritting my teeth. I was getting more and more irritated at it and might have worked myself into an ulcer when it occurred to me that I might use it as the central point of a short story. So I did. This one. Now when I hear the banging (it isn't really so often or so had) I just shrug cheerfully and remember that it supplied me with a story. Then I don't mind it at all. Yankee Doodle Went to Toum. It was general knowledge among the Black Widowers that Geoffrey Avalon had served as an officer in World War 11 and had reached the rank of major. He had never seen active service, as far as any of them knew, however, and he never talked about wartime experiences. His stiff hearing, however, seemed suited to the interior of a uniform, so that it never surprised anyone to know that he had once been Major Avalon. When be walked into the banquet room with an army officer as his guest, it seemed, therefore, entirely natural. And when he said, "This is my old army friend Colonel Samuel Davenheim," everyone greeted him cordially without so much as a raised eyebrow. Any army buddy of Avalon's was an army buddy of theirs. Even Mario Gonzalo, who had served an uneventful hitch in the army in the late fifties, and who was known to have acerbic views concerning officers, was pleasant enough. He propped himself on one of the sideboards and began sketching. Avalon looked over Gonzalo's shoulder briefly, as though to make sure the artist member of the Black Widowers would not, somehow, draw the Colonel's head upward into a crown of ass's ears. It would have been most inappropriate for Gonzalo to have done so, for there was every indication of clear intelligence about Davenheim. His face, round and a little plump, was emphasized by outmoded hair, short above and absent below. His mouth curved easily into a friendly smile, his voice was clear, his words crisp. He said, "I've had you all described to me, for Jeff, as you probably all know, is a methodical man. I ought to be able to identify you all. For instance, you're Emmanuel Rubin since you're short, have thick glasses, a sparse beard-" "Straggly beard," said Rubin, unoffended, "is what Jeff usually calls it because his own is dense, but I've never found that density of facial hair implies-" "And are talkative," said Davenheim firmly, overriding the other with the calm authority of a colonel. "And you're a writer. . . .You're Mario Gonzalo, the artist, and I don't even need your description since you're drawing. . . . Roger Halsted, mathematician, partly bald. The only member without a full head of hair, so that's easy. . . . James Drake, or, rather, Dr. James Drake-" "We're all doctors by virtue of being Black Widowers," said Drake from behind a cud of cigarette smoke. "You're right, and Jeff explained that carefully. You're Doctor Doctor Drake because you smell of tobacco smoke at ten feet." "Well, Jeff should know," said Drake philosophically. "And Thomas Trumbull," said Davenheim, "because you're scowling, and by elimination. . . . Have I got everyone?" "Only the members," said Halsted. "You've left out Henry, who's all-important." Davenheim looked about, puzzled. "Henry?" "The waiter," said Avalon, flushing and staring at his drink. "I'm sorry, Henry, but I didn't know what to tell Colonel Davenheim about you. To say you're the waiter is ridiculously insufficient and to say more would endanger Black Widower confidentiality." "I understand," said Henry agreeably, "but I think it would be well to serve the Colonel. What is your pleasure, sir?" For a moment the Colonel looked blank. "Oh, you mean drinks? No, that's all right. I don't drink." "Some ginger ale, perhaps?" "All right." Davenheim was plainly grasping at straws. "That will be fine." Trumbull smiled. "The life of a non-drinker is a difficult one." "Something wet must be pressed on one," said Davenbeirn wryly. "I've never managed to adjust." Gonzalo said, "Have a cherry put in your ginger ale. Or better yet, put water in a cocktail glass and add an olive. Then drink and replace the water periodically. Everyone will admire you as a man who can hold his liquor. Though, frankly, I've never seen an officer who could-" "I think we'll be eating any minute," said Avalon hastily, looking at his watch. Henry said, "Won't you be seated, gentlemen?" and placed one of the bread baskets directly in front of Gonzalo as though to suggest he use his mouth for that purpose. Gonzalo took a roll, broke it, buttered one half, bit into it, and said in muffled tones, "-keep from getting sloppy drunk on one martini," but no one listened. Rubin, finding himself between Avalon and Davenheim, said, "What kind of soldier was Jeff, Colonel?" "Damned good one," said Davenbeirn gravely, "but be didn't get much of a chance to shine. We were both in the legal end of matters, which meant desk work. The difference is that be had the sense to get out once the war was over. I didn't." "You mean you're still involved with military law?" "That's right." "Well, I look forward to the day when military law is as obsolete as feudal law." "I do, too," said Davenheim calmly. "But it isn't as yet." "No," said Rubin, "and if you-" Trumbull interrupted. "Damn it, Manny, can't you wait for grilling time?" "Yes," said Avalon, coughing semi-stentorially, "we might as well let Sam eat before putting him through his paces." "If," said Rubin, "military law applied the same considerations to those-" "Later!" roared Trumbull. Rubin looked through his tbick-lensed glasses indignantly, but subsided. Halsted said, in what was clearly intended to be a change of topic, "I'm not happy with my limerick for the fifth book of the Iliad." "The what?" said Davenlicim, puzzled. "Pay no attention," said Trumbull. "Roger keeps threatening to put together five lines of crap for every book of the Iliad." "And the Odyssey," said Halsted. "The trouble with the fifth book is that it deals chiefly with the feats of the Greek hero Di- omedes, and I feel I ought to have him part of the rhyme scheme. I've been at it, off and on, for months." "Is that why you've spared us limericks the last couple of sessions?" asked Trumbull. "I've had one and I've been ready to read it, but I'm not quite satisfied with it." "Then you've joined the great majority," said Trumbull. "The thing is," said Halsted quietly, "that both "Diomedes" and its legitimate variant "Diomed" cannot be rhymed seriously. "Diomedes" rhymes with "Wheaties" and "Diomed" rhymes with sby-a-bed" and what good are those?" "Call him Tydeides," said Avalon. "Homer frequently used the patronymic." "What's a patronymic?" asked Gonzalo. "A father-name, which is the literal translation of the word," said Halsted. "Diomedes" father was Tydeus. Don't you think I've thought of that? It rhymes with "didies" or, if you want to go Cockney, with "Iydies."" "How about "ascites"?" asked Rubin. "Or "iron pyrites"?" said Drake. "Wit seeks its own level," said Halsted. "How about this? All I need do is distort the stress and give "Diomed" accents on first and last syllables." "Cheating," said Rubin. "A little," admitted Halsted, "but here it is: "In courage and skill well ahead, Into battle went brave Diomed. Even gods were his quarries, And the war-loving Ares He struck down and left nearly for dead." Avalon shook his head. "Arcs was only wounded. He had enough strength left to rise, roaring, to Olympus." "I must admit I'm not satisfied," said Halsted. "Unanimous!" said Trumbull. "Veal Parmesan!" said Rubin enthusiastically, for, with his usual agility, Henry was already placing the dishes before each. Colonel Davenheim said, after he had devoted considerable time to the veal, "You do yourselves well here, Jeff." "Oh, we do our Poor best," said Avalon. "The restaurant charges in proportion, but it's only once a month." Davenheim plied his fork enthusiastically and said, "Dr. Halsted, you're a mathematician-" "I teach mathematics to reluctant youngsters, which isn't quite the same thing." "But why, then, limericks on the epic poems?" "Precisely because it is not mathematics, Colonel. It's a mistake to think that because a man has a profession that can be named, all his interests must hear that name." "No offense," said the Colonel. Avalon stared at a neatly cleaned plate and pushed thoughtfully at his untouched last half-glass of liquor. He said, "As a matter of fact, Sam knows what it is to have an intellectual bobby. He is an excellent phoneticist." "Oh, well," said Davenheim, with heavy modesty, "in an ama- teur way." Rubin said, "Does that mean you can tell jokes in accent?" 14in any accent you wish-witbin reason," said Davenheim. "But I can't tell jokes even in natural speech." "That's all right," said Rubin, "I'd rather hear a bad joke in an authentic accent than a good one with a poor one." Gonzalo said, "Then how do you account for the fact that you laugh only at your own jokes when they fail in both respects?" Davenheim spoke quickly to cut off Rubin's rejoinder. He said, "You've got me off the subject." He leaned to one side to allow Henry to place the rum cake before him. "I mean, Dr. Halstedvery well, Roger-that perhaps you switch to the classics to get your mind off some knotty mathematics problem. Then, while your conscious mind is permutating rhymes, your unconscious mind is-" "The funny thing about that," said Rubin, seizing his own chance to cut in, "is that it works. I've never been so stymied by a plot that I couldn't get it worked out by going to a movie. I don't mean a good movie that really absorbs me, I mean a had one that occupies my conscious mind just sufficiently to allow my unconscious free reign. A spy-action film is best." Gonzalo said, "I can't follow the plot of those things even when I'm paying attention." "And yet they're aimed at the twelve-year-old mind," said Rubin, striking back at last. Henry poured the coffee, as Davenheim said, "I agree with what Manny says. I happen to think that a day spent on phonetics is sometimes the best way of contributing to a problem at work. But isn't there another aspect to this? It's easy to see that by keeping the conscious mind occupied, we leave the unconscious free to do as it wishes underground. But will it stay underground? Might it not obtrude aboveground? Might it not make itself seen or heard, if not to the person himself-the person who is thinking -then to others?" "Exactly what do you mean, Colonel?" asked Trumbull. "Look," said Davenheim, "if we're on first-name terms, let it be first names all round. Call me Sam. What I mean is this. Suppose Manny is working on a plot involving an undetectable, poison-" "Never!" said Rubin strenuously. "Tarantulas are out, too, and mystic Hindus, and the supernatural. That's all nineteenth-century romanticism. I'm not sure that even the locked-room mystery hasn't become a matter of-" "Just for example," said Davenheim, who had momentary trouble breasting the tide. "You do other things to let your unconscious work and as far as you yourself are concerned you can- swear that you have completely forgotten the mystery, that you're not thinking about it, that it's completely wiped out. lben, when you're hailing a cab, you call, "Toxic! Toxic!"" Trumbull said thoughtfully, "That's farfetched and I don't accept it, but I'm beginning to get a notion. Jeff, did you bring Sam here because he has a problem on his mind?" Avalon cleared his throat. "Not really. I invited him last month for many reasons-the most important of which was that I thought you would all like him. But he stayed over at my house last night and- may I tell them, Sam?" Davenheim shrugged. "This place is as quiet as the grave, you say." "Absolutely," said Avalon. "Sam knows my wife almost as long as be knows me, but twice he called her Farber instead of Florence." Davenheim smiled dimly. "My unconscious forcing its way through. I could have sworn I had put it out of my niffid." "You weren't aware of it," said Avalon. He turned to the others. "I didn't notice it. Florence did. The second time she said, "What are you calling me? and he said, "What?" She said, "You keep calling me Farber." And he looked absolutely thunderstruck." "Just the same," said Davenheim, "it's not my unconscious that's bothering me. It's his." "Farber's?" asked Drake, tamping out his cigarette with his stained fingers. "The other one's," said Davenheim. Trumbull said, "It's about time for the brandy anyway, Jeff. Do you want to grill our esteemed guest, or ought someone else do so?" "I don't know that be needs to be grilled," said Avalon. "Perbaps he'll simply tell us what's occupying his unconscious when his conscious mind is being diverted." "I don't know that I want to do that," said Davenheim grimly. "It's rather a delicate matter." "You have my word," said Trumbull, "that everything said here is in strictest confidence. I'm sure Jeff has told you that already. And that includes our esteemed Henry. And, of course, you needn't go into full detail." "I can't hide behind false names, though, can I?" "Not if Farber is one of the true ones," said Gonzalo, grinning. "Well, what the devil," sighed Davenheim. "Actually, it's not much of a story as stories go, and it may be nothing; nothing at all. I may be so damned wrong. But if I'm not wrong it's going to be embarrassing for the army, and expensive for the country. I could almost hope I was wrong, but I've committed myself so far that if I am wrong it may permanently-hamper my career. Yet I'm not so far away from retirement." For a moment be seemed lost in thought, then be said fiercely, "No, I want to be right. However embarrassing, it's got to be stopped." "Is it treason you're after?" asked Drake. "No, not in the narrow sense of the word. I almost wish it were. There can be a colossal dignity about treason. A traitor is some- times only the other side of the patriot coin. One man's traitor is another man's martyr. I'm not talking about the permv-ante handyman for hire. I'm talking about the man who thinks he is serving a higher cause than his country and wouldn't accept a penny for the risks he undergoes. We understand that quite well when it is the enemy's traitors we are dealing with. The men, for instance, whom Hitler considered-" "It's not treason, then?" said Trumbull, a bit impatiently. "No. just corruption! Stinking, fetid corruption. A gang of men -soldiers, I'm sorry to say, officers, conceivably high officersintent on bleeding Uncle Sam a bit." "Why isn't that treason?" snapped Rubin. "It weakens us and spreads decay in the army. Soldiers who think so little of their country as to steal from it are scarcely going to think so much of it as to die for it." "If it comes to that," said Avalon, "people put their emotions and actions in separate compartments. It's quite possible to steal from Uncle Sam today and die for him tomorrow and be perfectly sincere about it both times. Many a man who routinely cheats the national treasury out of half his proper income tax considers himself a loyal American patriot." Rubin said, "Leave the income tax out of it. Considering what consumes most of federal spending, you can make a good case for maintaining that the true patriot is he who goes to jail rather than pay his taxes.Davenheim, said, "It's one thing not to pay your taxes out of principle, to admit it, and go to jail for it. It's another thing to duck your share of the fair load for no other reason than to see others carry their own burden and yours to boot. Both actions are equally illegal, but I have some respect for the former. In the case I'm talking about the only motivation is simple greed. It is quite possible that millions of dollars of the taxpayers" money are involved." "Possible? Is that all?" asked Trumbull, his forehead wrinkling into a washboard. "That's all. So far. I can't prove it and it's a difficult thing to track down without a damned good scent. If I push too hard and can't back my suspicions all the way, I'll be torn in half. Some big names might be involved-and might not." "What's Farber got to do with it?" asked Gonzalo. "So far we have two men, a sergeant and a private. The sergeant is Farber; Robert J. Farber. The other is Orin Klotz. We've got nothing on them really." "Nothing at all?" asked Avalon. "Not really. As a result of the action of Farber and Klotz, thousands of dollars of army equipment have evaporated but we cannot show that their actions were illegal. They were covered in every case." "You mean because higher-ups were involved?" Gonzalo smiled slowly. "Officers? With brains?" "Unlikely as it seems," said Davenheim dryly. "That may be so. But I have no proof." "Can't you question the two men you have?" said Gonzalo. "I have," said Davenheim. "And with Farber I can get nothing. He is that most dangerous of men, the honest tool. I believe he was too stupid to know the significance of what he did, and that if be did know, he wouldn't have done it." "Confront him with the truth," said Avalon. "What is the truth?" asked Davenheim. "And I'm not ready to put my guesses on the table. If I tell what, I know now, it will be dishonorable discharge for the two, at best, and the rest of the ring will pull in its horns for a breathing space and then start in again. No, I'd like to cover my hand until such time as I can get a lead, some lead I can be sufficiently sure of to run the risk I'm going to have to run." "You mean a lead to someone higher up?" asked Rubin. "Exactly." "What about the other fellow?" asked Gonzalo. Davenheim nodded. "He's the one. He knows. He's the brains of that pair. But I can't break his story. I've been over and over it with him and he's covered." Halsted said, "If it's only a guess that there's something more to this than those two guys, why do you take it so seriously? Aren't the chances actually very good that you're wrong? , "To other people it would seem so," said Davenheim. "And there's no way in which I could explain why I know I'm not wrong except by pleading experience. After all, Roger, an experienced mathematician can be quite certain that a particular conjecture is true and yet be unable to prove it by the strict rules of mathematical demonstration. Right?" "I'm not sure that that's a good analogy," said Halsted. "It seems a good one to me. I've talked to men who were guilty beyond a doubt and to men who were innocent beyond a doubt and the attitude of each under accusation is different and I can sense that difference. The trouble is that that sense I have is not admissible as evidence. Farber I can dismiss, but Klotz is just a shade too wary, just a sbade too unconfused. He plays games with me and enjoys it, too, and that's one thing I can't possibly miss." "If you insist that you can sense such things," said Halsted, dissatisfied, "there's no arguing about it, is there? You put it outside the rational." "There's just no mistake in it," said Davenheim, unheeding, as though he were now caught up in the fury of his thoughts to the point where what Halsted said was just an outer sound that didn't impinge. "Klotz smiles just a little bit whenever I'm after him hotly. It's as though I'm a bull and be's a matador, and when I'm beginning to lunge at close quarters, be stands there rigidly with his cape flirting negligently to one side, daring me to gore him. And when I try, he's not there and the cape flips over my head. "I'm afraid he's got you, Sam," said Avalon, shaking his head. "If you feel as though be's playing you for a fool, you've reached the point where you can't trust your judgment. Let someone else take over." Davenheim shook his head. "No, if it's what I think it is, and I know it's what I think it is, I want to be the one to smash it." "Look," said Tmmbull. "I have a little experience in such things. Do you suppose Klotz can break the case wide open for you? He's only a private, and I suspect that even if there is some sort of conspiracy, he knows very little about it." "All right. I'll accept that," said Davenheim. "I don't expect Klotz to hand me the moon. Yet be's got to know one other man, one man higher up. He's got to know some one fact, some one fact closer to the center than he himself is. It's that one man and that one fact I'm after. It's all I ask. And the thing that breaks me in two is that be's giving it away and I still don't get it." "What do you mean, giving it away?" asked Trumbull. "That's where the unconscious comes in. When be and I are sparring, be's entirely occupied with me, entirely engaged in stop- ping me, beading me off, stymying me, putting me behind the eight ball. It's a game he plays well, damn him. The last thing he's going to do is to give me the information I want, but it's in him just the same and when he's busy thinking of everything else but, that information bubbles out'of him. Every time I'm close upon him and backing and maneuvering him into a corner-butting my horns against his damned cape just this far from his groin-he sings." "He what?" exploded Gonzalo, and there was a general stir among the Black Widowers. Only Henry showed no trace of emotion as he refilled several of the coffeecups. "He sings," said Davenheim. "Well, not quite-he bums. And it's always the same tune." "What tune is that? Anything you know?" "Of course I know it. Everyone knows it. It's "Yankee Doodle."" Avalon said heavily, "Even President Grant, who had no ear for music, knew that one. He said he knew only two tunes. One was "Yankee Doodle" and the other wasn't." "And it's "Yankee Doodle" that's giving the whole thing away?" asked Drake, with that look in his weary chemist's eyes that came when he began to suspect the rationality of another person. "Somehow. He's masking the truth as cleverly as he can, but it emerges from his unconscious, just a bit; just the tip of the iceberg. And "Yankee Doodle" is that tip. I don't get it. There's just not enough for me to grab bold of. But it's there! I'm sure of that." "You mean there's a solution to your problem somewhere in "Yankee Doodle"?" said Rubin. "Yes!" said Davenheim emphatically. "I'm positive of that. The thing is he's not aware he's humming it. At one point I said, "What's that?" and he was blank. I said, "What are you humming?" and he just stared at me in what I could swear was honest amazement." "As when you called Florence Farber," said Avalon. Halsted shook his head. "I don't see where you can attach much importance to that. We all experience times when tunes run through our minds and we can't get rid of them for a while. I'm sure we're bound to hum them under our breath at times." Davenheim said, "At random times, perhaps. But Klotz hums only "Yankee Doodle" and only at the specific times when I'm pressing him. When things get tense in connection with my probing for the truth about the corruption conspiracy I am sure exists, that tune surfaces. It must have meaning." "Yankee Doodle," said Rubin thoughtfully, half to himself. For a moment he looked at Henry, who was standing near the sideboard, a small vertical crease between his eyebrows. Henry caught Rubin's eye but did not respond. There was a ruminating silence for a few moments and all the Black Widowers seemed to be, to one degree or another, unhappy. Finally, Trumbull said, "You may be all wrong, Sam. What you may be needing here is psychiatry. This guy Klotz may bum "Yankee Doodle" at all moments of tension. All it may mean is that he heard his grandfather sing it when he was six years old or that his mother sang him to sleep with it." Davenheim lifted his upper lip in mild derision. "Can you believe I didn't think of that? I had a dozen of his close friends in. Nobody had ever beard him bum anything!" "They might be lying," said Gonzalo. "I wouldn't tell an officer anything if I could avoid it." "They might never have noticed," said Avalon. "Few people are good observers." 41 Maybe they lied, maybe they didn't know," said Davenheim, "but, taken at face value, their testimony, all of it, would make me think that the humming of "Yankee Doodle" is specifically associated with my investigation and nothing else." "Maybe it's just associated with army life. It's a march associated with the Revolutionary War," said Drake. "Then why only with me, not with anyone else in the army?" Rubin said, "Okay, let's pretend "Yankee Doodle" means something in this connection. What can we lose? So let's consider how it goes. . . . For God's sake, Jeff, don't sing it." Avalon, who had opened his mouth with the clear intention of singing, closed it with a snap. His ability to hold a true note rivaled that of an oyster and in his saner moments he knew it. He said, with a trace of hauteur, "I will recite the words!" "Good," said Rubin, "but no singing." Avalon, looking stern, struck an attitude and began declaiming in his most resonant baritone: "Yankee Doodle went to town A-riding on a pony. Stuck a feather in his cap And called it macaroni. Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle dandy. Mind the music and the step And with the girls be handy." Gonzalo said, "It's just a nonsense lyric." "Nonsense, hell," said Rubin indignantly, and his straggly beard quivered. "It makes perfect sense. It's a satire on the country boy written by a city slicker. "Doodle" is any primitive country instrument-a bagpipe, for instance-so a Yankee Doodle is a backwoods New Englander who's no more sophisticated than a bagpipe. He comes to town on his pony intent on cutting a fine figure, so he wears what he thinks are city clothes. He wears a feather in his hat and thinks he's a real dude. And in the late eighteenth century, that's what a "macaroni" was, a city hepcat dressed in the latest style. "The last four lines are -the chorus and show the country boy stepping it up at a city dance. He is mockingly told to stamp away and be gallant to the ladies. The word "dandy," which first came into use about mid-eighteenth century, meant the same as "macaroni."" Gonzalo said, "Okay, Manny, you win. It's not nonsense. But how does it help Sam's case?" "I don't think it does," said Rubin. "Sorry, Sam, but Klotz sounds like a country boy making a fool of the city slicker and be can't help but think of the derisive song and how he's turning the tables on you." Davenheim said, "I presume, Manny, that you think he must be a country boy because his name is Klotz. By that reasoning you must be a rube because your name is Rubin. Actually, Klotz was born and brought up in Pbiladelphia and I doubt that he's ever seen a farm, No country boy, he." "All right," said Rubin, "then I might have been looking at the wrong end of the stick. He's the city slicker looking down on you, Sam." "Because I'm a country boy? I was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, and went through Harvard right up to my law degree. And he knows that, too. He has made enough roundabout references to it in his matador moments." Drake said, "Doesn't your Massachusetts birth and upbringing make you a Yankee?" "Not a Yankee Doodle," said Davenheim stubbornly. "He might think so," said Drake. Davenbeini thought about that a while, then said, "Yes, I suppose he might. But if so, surely he would hum it openly, derisively. The point is, I think he's humming it unconsciously. It has a connection with something he's trying to hide, not something he's trying to show." Halsted said, "Maybe be's looking forward to a future when he's going to be enriched by his crimes and when he'll be able to strut his way to town; when be can "stick a feather in his cap" in other words." Drake said, "Or maybe Klotz is thinking that his treatment of you is a feather in his cap." Gonzalo said, "Maybe some particular word has significance. Suppose "macaroni" means he's booked up with the Mafia. Or suppose "with the girls be handy" means that some Wac is involved. They still have Wacs in the army, don't they?" It was at this point that Henry said, "I wonder, Mr. Avalon, if, as host, you will permit me to ask a few questions." Avalon said, "Come on, Henry. You know you can at any time." "Thank you, sir. Would the Colonel grant me the same permission?" Davenheim looked surprised, but said, "Well, you're here, Henry, so you might as well." Henry said, "Mr. Avalon recited eight lines of "Yankee Doodle" -four lines of a verse followed by the four lines of the chorus. But verse and chorus have different tunes. Did Private Klotz hum all eight lines?" Davenheim thought a moment. "No, of course not. He bummed -uh-" He closed his eyes, concentrated, and went "Dum-dum dum-dum dum-dum-dum, dum-dum dum-dum dum-du-u-um-dum. That's all. The first two lines." "Of the verse?" "That's right. "Yankee Doodle went to town, A-riding on a pony.", "Always those two lines?" "Yes, I think always." Drake brushed some crumbs from the table. "Colonel, you say this humming took place when the questioning was particularly tense. Did you pay particular attention to exactly what was being discussed at those times?" "Yes, of course, but I prefer not to go into detail." "I understand, but perhaps you can tell me this. At those times, was it be himself who was under discussion or Sergeant Farber as well?" "Generally," said Davenheim slowly, "the humming times came when he most emphatically protested innocence, but always on behalf of both. I'll give him that. He has never once tried to clear himself at the expense of the other. It was always that neither Farber nor he did thus-and-so or were responsible for tbis-andthat." Henry said, "Colonel Davenheim, this is a long shot. If the answer is no, then I'll have nothing more to say. If, however, the answer is yes, it's just possible we may have something." "What's the question, Henry?" asked Davenheim. "At the same base where Sergeant Farber and Private Klotz are stationed, Colonel, does there happen to be a Captain Gooden or Gooding or anything resembling that in sound?" Davenheim had, until then, been looking at Henry with grave amusement. Now that vanished in a flash. His mouth closed tight and his face whitened visibly. Then his chair scraped as he shoved it back and rose. "Yes," he said strenuously. "Captain Charles Goodwin. How the hell could you possibly have known that?" "In that case, he may be your man. I'd forget about Klotz and Farber, sir, if I were you, and concentrate on the captain. That might be the one step upward that you wanted. And the captain may prove an easier nut to crack than Private Klotz has been." Davenheim seemed to find no way to speak further and Trumbull said, "I wish you'd explain, Henry." "It's the "Yankee Doodle," as the Colonel expected. The point is, though, that Private Klotz hummed it. We have to consider what words he was thinking when he bummed." Gonzalo said, "The Colonel said be hummed the lines that go "Yankee Doodle went to town, A-riding on a pony."" Henry shook his head. "The original poem "Yankee Doodle" had some dozen verses and the macaroni lines were not among them. They arose later, though they're now the most familiar. The original poem tells of the visit of a young farmboy to the camp of Washington's Continental Army and his naivete" is made fun of, so I believe Mr. Rubin's interpretation of the nature of the song to be correct." Rubin said, "Henry's right. I remember now. Washington is even mentioned, but as Captain Washington. The farrnboy wasn't even aware of the nature of military rank." "Yes," said Henry. "I don't know all the verses and I imagine very few people do. Perhaps Private Klotz didn't, either. But anyone who knows the poem at all knows the first verse or, at any rate, the first two lines, and that's what Private Klotz may have been humming. The first line, for instance-and it's the farmboy speaking-is "Father and I went down to camp! You see?" ,"No," said Davenheim, shaking his head. "Not quite." "It occurred to me that whenever you pressed hard on Private Klotz and might say, "Farber and you did thus-and-so," and he answered, "Farber and I did not do tbus-and-so," the humming would start. You said, Colonel, that it was at the moment of denial that it tended to come and that he always denied on behalf of both Farber and himself. So when he said "Farber and I," it would trigger the line "Farber and I went down to camp."" Henry sang it in a soft tenor voice. "Farber and be were in an army camp," said Avalon, "but, good God, that's stretching for it." "If it stood alone, sir, yes," said Henry. "But that's why I asked about a Captain Gooden in the camp. If he were a third member of the conspiracy, the push to bum the tune might be irresistible. The first verse, which is the only one I know-" But here Rubin interrupted. Standing up, be roared: "Father and I went down to camp Along with Cap'n Good'n, And there we saw the men and boys As thick as hasty puddin"." "That's right," said Henry calmly, "Farber and I went down to camp along with Captain Goodwin." "By God," said Davenheim. "That must be it. If not, it's the most extraordinary coincidence. . . . And it can't be. Henry, you've put your finger on it." "I hope so. More coffee, Colonel?" said Henry. Afterword This story was the occasion of my making a great discovery. It came about this way: I compose on the typewriter. Even first drafts get typewritten. It was my firm belief that it had to be so. If I dictated, I couldn't see what I was doing, and if I tried writing by band, my fingers would get stiff and fall off halfway down the second page. So on November 9, 197.2, 1 found myself in a Rochester hotel room with a speech to give the next day. For that evening I had nothing to do and while driving to Rochester I had thought up the story you have just finished (unless you're skipping through the book just reading the afterwords). I was desperate. All I wanted to do was to write and I had not brought a typewriter with me. Finally, I dug out some of the hotel stationery and decided to start the story by band and keep on going till my fingers dropped off. It might kill a little time. So I wrote, and I wrote-and I wrote. Do you know I finished the entire story without lifting pen from paper and my fingers didn't hurt at all? Now I need never take my typewriter. Since then I have handwritten several other items, while I was on board ship. And you know what? While I was writing the story I discovered an odd thing. Writing by band with pen and ink is very silent. That noise I always make writing isn't the writing; it's the typewriter. I thouglit you'd want to know that. The Curious Omission. Roger Halsted was clearly suffused with a controlled glee when he arrived at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers. He unwound his scarf (it was a cold evening with considerably more than a hint of snow in the air-since half an inch of it already lay on the ground) and said, "Have I got a guest for you!" Emmanuel Rubin looked at him over his scotch and soda and said peevishly, "vVbere were you? Even Tom Trumbull beat you to the drinks and we thought you were welching on the host's responsibility." Halsted looked hurt and his high forehead grew pink. He said, "I called the restaurant. Henry-2" Henry had adjusted the bread baskets and seen to it that the bran muffins affected by Geoffrey Avalon were in plain view. He said, "Yes, Mr. Halsted. The company has been informed that you would be a little late. I believe Mr. Rubin is merely amusing himself at your expense." Trumbull said, "What guest?" "That's why I'm late. I had to pick him up in White Plains and it's snowing harder up there. I had to call the restaurant from a gas station." "So where is he?" asked Mario Gonzalo, more than usually nattily dressed in a maroon blazer, matching striped shirt, and matching patterned tie. "Downstairs. Men's room. His name is Jeremy Atwood; be's about sixty-five; and he has a problem." Avalon from his considerably better than six feet of height drew his thick and graying eyebrows together. "I've been thinking, gentlemen, of this very matter. The original purpose of the Black Widowers consisted of nothing more than dining and conversation. We have now reached the point where we never fail to have a problem to agitate us and disturb our digestion. What happens when we can't find one? Do we disband?" Gonzalo said, "Then we're back to conversation without a purpose. There's always Manny." Rubin said, his sparse beard lifting noticeably, "Nothing I say is without a purpose, Mario. Failing all else, there's the vague hope my words may serve to educate you. For one thing, I can show you why your latest painting is completely wrong." "You said you liked it," said Mario, frowning and stepping into the trap. "Only out of relief when you said it was your last painting and only until I found out you meant it was your latest." But Halsted's guest was coming up the stairs now. He moved rather slowly and he seemed tired. Halsted helped him off with his overcoat, and when th6 guest removed his hat, be showed himself to be quite bald. Only a fringe of white hair remained. Halsted said, "Gentlemen, this is my guest, Jeremy Atwood. I met him through the fact that one of his nephews is a fellow teacher. Mr. Atwood, let me present the company." By the'time the introductions were completed and a glass of dry sherry had been pressed into Atwood's hand, Henry had the first course on the table. Rubin stared at it suspiciously. "No liver?" be asked. "No liver, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "Kidney slices are the base." "Oh, Lord," said Rubin", "what's the soup?" "Cream of leek, Mr. Rubin." "Coming and going. They get you coming and going," he grumbled, and tackled the kidney with a gingerly probing fork. Drake, with a glimmer in his small eyes which meant he thought he was on the track of a fellow chemist, said, "What does your nephew teach, Mr. Atwood?" Atwood said, in a surprisingly musical tenor, "English literature, I believe. I am not very well acquainted with him." "I don't blame you," said Rubin at once. "Teachers of English literature have probably turned out more illiterates than have any other force of illegitimate culture in the world." "You see, Mr. Atwood," said Gonzalo, striving for his own back, "Manny Rubin is a writer whose works have never been discussed by any teacher who was sober at the time." Trumbull spoke at once to cut off Rubin's retort. "What's your own line of work, Mr. Atwood?" "I'm retired now, but once upon a time I was a civil engineer," said Atwood. . Avalon said, "You do not have to answer any questions now, Mr. Atwood. That will come with the dessert." It turned out to be unnecessary advice since Rubin had the bit in his teeth now and was off and running. With the soup, of which be had little, be developed the thesis that teachers of English generally and of English literature in particular had as their peculiar object the placing of the English language in chains and the making of literature a fossil in murky amblx. Over the main course, roast stuffed duck, Rubin proceeded to probe the motives of the English-teacbing criminals and found it to consist of an embittered and bate-filled envy of those who could, past and present, use the English language as a tool. "Like Emmanuel Rubin, of course," said Gonzalo in a stage whisper. "Like me," said Rubin, unabashed. "I know more grammar than any so-called English teacher and have read more literature more closely than they can possibly have done, any of them. The thing is I don't let the grammar bind me or the literature force me." "Anyone who writes ungrammatical twaddle can say the same," said Avalon. "That means something, Jeff," said Rubin hotly, "only if you're prepared to say that I write ungrammatical twaddle." Having disposed of his wild rice and somewhat neglecting the stuffing, Rubin began an eloquent dissertation on the damage done to young minds by those academic delinquents and took on the other five members as each raised objections until the Poire au vin was served and the coffee was poured. "Can I have a glass of milk, instead?" said Atwood apologetically. Henry's assent was lost in Rubin's triumphant "There you are. Any English teacher would have said, "May I have a glass of milk? but Atwood knows he may. The question is, does the restaurant have milk to serve? Therefore, "can" he, not "may" he?" Atwood said, "Actually, my grammar has always been poor and maybe I should have said-" Halsted rapped his spoon against the water glass and said, "Enough grammar, Manny, enough. It's time for our guest." "And that's why," said Rubin in a parting shot, "I don't collect reviews, because any English-lit type who would waste his time writing reviews-" "He collects only favorable ones," said Gonzalo. "I know. He showed me his empty scrapbook." Halsted's spoon kept up a series of chimes and finally be said, "My friend Stuart-Mr. Atwood's nephew-happened to mention, a couple of weeks ago, that Mr. Atwood had a literary problem. Naturally, I was interested-for reasons we all understand -and inquired further. It turned out Stu didn't know much about it. I got in touch with Mr. Atwood and he told me enough to make me think he would make an excellent guest for this meeting. Since I am hosting and he kindly consented to come-" Avalon harumphed stentoriously. "I trust Mr. Atwood understands that he may be cross-examined rather-" "I explained it all thoroughly, Jeff," said Halsted. "I also ex- plained to him that everything that goes on here is confidential. As it happens, Mr. Atwood is rather interested in a solution to his problem, and is anxious to have us help." Trumbull's dark face lined into savage creases. "God damn it, Roger, you haven't guaranteed a solution, have you?" "No, but we've got a fair record," said Halsted complacently. "All right, then. Let's begin . . . Henry! Is the brandy on the way? . . . Who does the grilling, Roger?" "Why, you, Tom." The brandy was being poured neatly into the small glasses. Atwood raised his hand in a timid negative and Henry passed him. He turned his bright blue eyes toward Trumbull, "Am I to be grilled?" "Only a manner of speaking, sir. We are interested in your literary problem. Would you care to tell us about it in whatever way you please? We will ask questions when that seems advisable, if you don't mind."Oh, I won't mind," said Atwood cheerfully. His eyes darted from one to the other. "I warn you that it isn't much of a mystery -except that I don't know what to make of it."" "Well, we might not know, either," said Gonzalo, touching his brandy to his lips. Drake, who was nursing the remains of a cold and who had to cut down on his smoking in consequence, stubbed out a halffinished cigarette morosely, and said, "We'll never know if we don't hear what it is." He blew his nose into a bright red bandkerchief and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. "Won't you go on, Mr. Atwood?" said Trumbull. "And let's have some silence from the rest of you." Atwood folded his hands on the edge of the table almost as though he were back in grade school, and a formal intonation colored his words. He was reciting. "This all involves my friend Lyon Sanders, who was, like myself, a retired civil engineer. We had never actually worked together but we had been neighbors for a quarter-century and were very close. I am a bachelor; he was a childless widower; and we both led lives that might, superficially, have seemed lonely. Neither of us was, however, for we had each carved out a comfortable niche. "I myself have written a text on civil engineering which has had some success and for some years I have been preparing a rather elaborate, if informal, tale of my experiences in the field. I doubt that it will ever be published but, of course, if it is- "But that's beside the point. Sanders was a more aggressive person by far than ever I was; louder; more raucous; with a rather coarse sense of humor. He was a games person-" Rubin interrupted. "A sports enthusiast?" "No, no. Indoor games. I believe be knew and could play well every card game ever invented. He could play anything else, too, that used counters, pointers, dice boards, cups, anything. He was a master at Chinese checkers, parcheesi, backgammon, Monopoly, checkers, chess, go, three-dimensional ticktacktoe. I couldn't even tell you the names of most of the games be played. "He read books on the subject and he invented games himself. Some were clever and I would suggest be patent them and place them on the market. But that was not what be wanted at all. It was only his own amusement that interested him. That was where I came in, you see. I was what be sharpened his analyses on." Trumbull said, "In what way?" "Well," said Atwood, "when I say be played those games, I do not mean in the ordinary sense of the word. He analyzed them carefully, almost as though they involved engineering principles-" "They do," said Rubin suddenly. "Any decent game can be analyzed mathematically. There's a whole field of recreational mathematics." "I know this," Atwood managed to interpose gently, "but I don't know that Sanders went at it in any orthodox manner. He never offered to explain it to me and I never bothered to ask. 4, Our routine over the last twenty years was to spend the weekend at the games, applying what had been learned over the week, for often he would spend time teaching me. Not out of any urge to educate, you understand, but merely to make the game more interesting for himself by improving the opposition. We might play bridge ten weeks running, then switch to gin rummy, then to something in which I had to match numbers be thought of. Naturally, he almost always won." Drake looked at an unlit cigarette as though he wished it would light itself and said, "Didn't that depress you?" "Not really. It was fun trying to beat him and sometimes I did. I beat him just often enough to keep up my interest." "Do you suppose he let you win?" said Gonzalo. "I doubt it. My victories would always either enrage or chagrin him and they would send him into a fury of further analyses. I think he enjoyed it a little, too, for when he had too long. a string of unbroken victories be would start educating me. It was a strange relationship but it worked. We were very fond of each other." "Were?" asked Avalon. "Yes," sighed Atwood. "He died six months ago. It was no great shock. We both saw it coming. Of course, I miss him dreadfully. The weekends are quite empty now. I even miss the -rowdy way in which be poked fun at me. He bullied me constantly. He never wearied of making fun of me for being a teetotaler and he never stopped teasing me about my religion." "He was an atheist?" asked Gonzalo. "Not particularly. In fact, neither of us went to church often. It's just that be was brought up one brand of Protestant and I another. He called mine high-cburch and found nothing so humorous as to tease me over the elaborateness of the worship I skipped every Sunday in comparison to the simplicity of the wor- ship be skipped every Sunday." Trumbull frowned. "I should think that would annoy you. . ?P1 Didn't you ever feel like taking a poke at him. "Never. It was just his way," said Atwood. "Nor need you think that poor Lyon's death was in the least suspicious. You needn't search for any motives of that kind. He died at the age of sixtyeight of complications from a mild but long-standing case of diabetes. "He had said that be was going to leave me something in his will. He expected to die before I did, you see, and be said it was to compensate me for my patience in accepting defeat. Actually, I'm sure it was out of affection, but he would be the last to admit that. "It was only in the last year before his death, when he knew he was failing, that this began to enter into our conversations. Naturally I protested that this was no fit subject for talk and that be merely made me uncomfortable. But he laughed one time and said, "I won't make it easy for you, you genuflecting idol worshipper! You see, just thinking about him makes me fall into his way of talking. I don't know that that's exactly what be called me at this time, but it was something. Anyway, leaving out the epithets, be said, "I won't make it easy for you. We'll be playing games to the end." "He said that on what turned out to be his deathbed. I was all be had, except for the various hospital personnel that hovered about impersonally. He had distant relatives, but none of them visited. Then late in the evening, when I wondered if I ought to leave and return the next morning, he turned his head to me and said in a voice that seemed almost normal, "The curious omission in Alice! "Naturally, I said, "What?" "But he laughed very weakly and said, "That's all you get, old friend, all you get." And his eyes closed, and he was dead." Rubin said, "A dying hint!" Avalon said, "You say his voice was clear?" "Quite clear," said Atwood. "And you beard him plainly?" "Quite plainly," said Atwood. "You sure be didn't say, "The curious admission of Wallace"?" Gonzalo said, "Or "The furious decision in Dallas."" Atwood said, "Please, I haven't finished the story. I was at the reading of the will. I was asked to be. Also present were several of the distant relatives who hadn't visited poor Lyon. There were cousins and a young grand-niece. Lyon wasn't a really rich man, but he left bequests to each of them, and one to an old servant, and one to his school. I came last. I received ten thousand dollars which had been placed in a safe-deposit box for me and for which I would be given the key on request. "When the will was read and done with, I asked the lawyer for the key to the safe-deposit box. There is no use denying that I can find perfectly good use for ten thousand dollars. The lawyer said that I must apply to the bank in which the box was to be found. If I failed to do so in one year from that date, the bequest was revoked and was to be otherwise disposed of. "Naturally, I asked where the bank was located and the lawyer said that except for the fact that it was located somewhere in the United States he could not say. He had no further information except for one envelope which be had been instructed to hand to me and which he hoped would be useful. He had one other envelope for himself which was to be opened at the end of one year if I had not, by then, claimed the money. "I accepted my envelope and found inside only the words I had beard from my friend's dying lips. "The curious omission in Alice! . . . And that's where the matter now stands." Trumbull said, "You mean you haven't got your ten thousand dollars?" "I mean I haven't located the bank. Six months have passed and I have six months more." Gonzalo said, "The phrase might be an anagram. Maybe if you rearrange the letters you will get the name of the bank." Atwood shrugged. "It's a possibility I've thought of. I can't re- member Sanders ever playing anagrams, but I've tried that sort of thing. I haven't come up with anything hopeful." Drake, who blew his nose again and looked as though be had no patience at the moment with careful reasoning, said, "Why don't you just go into every bank in White Plains and ask if there is a key to a safe-deposit box put away in your name?" Avalon shook his head. "Scarcely playing the game, Jim," be said severely. "Ten thousand dollars is no game," said Gonzalo. Atwood said, "I admit that I would feel as though I were cbeating if I simply tried to solve it by hit-or-miss, but I must also admit that I cheated. I tried the banks in several neighboring commu- nities as well as in Wbitc Plains. I drew a blank. I'm not surprised at that, though. It's unlikely he would place it near home. He had the whole country to choose from." "Did he make any trips out of town in the last year of his life -during the time he started talking will to you?" asked Halsted. "I don't think so," said Atwood. "But then he wouldn't have to. His lawyer could attend to that part." "Well," said Trumbull, "let's try it this way. You've had six months to think about it. What conclusions have you come to?" "Nothing on the message itself," said Atwood, "but I knew my friend well. He once told me that the best way to hide something was to make use of modern technology. Any document, any record, any set of directions could be converted into microfilm, and a tiny piece of material on which that was recorded could be hidden anywhere and never be uncovered by anything but blind luck. I suppose that the message tells me where to find the microfilm." Rubin shrugged. "That only switches the focus of the problem. Instead of having the message tell us the location of the bank, it tells us the location of the microfilm. That still leaves us with the curious omission. "I don't think it's quite the same," said Atwood thoughtfully. "The bank may be thousands of miles away, but the piece of microfilm, or just an ordinary piece of very thin paper, for all I know, might be close at hand. But no matter how close at hand, it might as well be a thousand miles away." He sighed. "Poor Lyon will win this game, too, I'm afraid." Trumbull said, "If we tackled the problem for you, and managed to solve it, Mr. Atwood, would you feel you had been cheating?" "Oh, yes," said Mr. Atwood, "but I would accept the ten thousand gladly just the same." Halsted said curiously, "Have you got some idea as to the meaning of the message, Tom?" "No," said Trumbull, "but if, as Mr. Atwood says, we're looking for a tiny message in a nearby and accessible place, and if we assumed that Mr. Sanders played fair, then maybe we could carry through some eliminations.To whom did he leave his own house, Mr. Atwood?" "To a cousin, who has since sold it." "What was done to the contents? Surely Sanders had books, games of all sorts, furniture." "Most of it was sold at auction," "Did anything go to you?" "The cousin was kind enough to offer me whatever I wanted of such material as was not intrinsically valuable. I didn't take anything. I am not the collecting type myself." "Would your old friend have known this of you?" "Oh, yes." Atwood stirred restlessly. "Gentlemen, I have had six months to think of this. I realize that Sanders would not have hidden the film in his own house since he left it to someone else and knew I would have no opportunity to search it. He had ample opportunity to hide it in my house, which be visited as often as I visited his, and it is in my house that I think it exists." Trumbull said, "Not necessarily. He might have felt certain that there would be some favorite books, some certain memento, you would have asked for." "No," said Atwood. "How could be be certain I would? He would have left such an item to me in his will." "That would give it away," said Avalon. "Are you sure he never hinted that you ought to take something? Or that be didn't give you something casually?" "No," said Atwood, smiling. "You have no idea how unlike Sanders that would be. . . . I tell you. I have thought that since be gave me a year to find it, he must have been pretty confident that it would stay in place for that length of time. It wouldn't be likely to be part of something I might throw away, sell, or easily lose." There was a murmur of agreement. Atwood said, "He might very likely have pasted it over the molding of a wall, somewhere on the undersurface of a heavy piece of furniture, inside the refrigerator-you see what I mean." "Have you looked?" said Gonzalo. "Oh, yes," said Atwood. "This little game has kept me busy. I've spent considerable spare time going over moldings and undersurfaces and drawers and various insides. I've even spent time in the cellar and the attic." "Obviously," said Trumbull, "you haven't found anything or we wouldn't be talking about it now." "No, I haven't-but that doesn't mean anything. The thing I'm after might be so small as to be barely visible. Probably is. I could look right at it and miss it, unless I knew I was in the,right place and was somehow prepared to see it, if you know what I mean." "Which brings us back," said Avalon heavily, "to the message. If you understood it, you would know where to look and you would see it." "Ah," said Atwood, "if I understood." "Well, it seems to me," said Avalon, "that the key word is "Alice." Does that name have any personal significance to you? Is it the name of someone you both knew? Is it the name of Sanders" dead wife, for instance? The nickname of some object? Some private joke you shared?" "No. No to all of that." Avalon smiled, showing his even teeth beneath his neatly trimmed, ever so slightly graying mustache. "Then I would say that "Alice" must refer to far and away the most famous Alice in the minds of men-Alice in Wonderland." "Of course," said Atwood, in clear surprise. ,That's what makes it a literary puzzle and that's why I turned to my nephew who teaches English literature. I assumed at the start it was a reference to the Lewis Carroll classic. Sanders was an Alice enthusiast. He had a collection of various editions of the book, and he had reproductions of the Tenniel illustrations all over the house." "You never told us that," said Avalon in hurt tones. Atwood said, "Haven't I? I'm sorry. It's one of those things I know so well, I somehow expect everyone to know it." "We might have expected it," said Trumbull, the corners of his mouth twisting down. "Alice involves herself with a deck of cards in the book." "It always helps to have all pertinent information," said Avalon stiffly. "Well, then," said Trumbull, "that brings us to the curious omission in Alice in Wonderland. . . . And what curious omission is that? Have you any thoughts in that direction, Mr. Atwood?" "No," said Atwood. "I read Alice as a child and have never rcturned to it-until the bequest, of course. 1 must admit I've never seen its charm." "Good Lord," muttered Drake under his breath. Atwood beard him, for he turned his head sharply in Drake's direction. "I don't deny there may be charm for others but I have never seen the fun in word play. I'm not surprised Sanders enjoyed the book, though. His sense of humor was rather raucous and primitive. In any case, my dislike was compounded by my annoyance at having to detect an omission. I did not wish to have to study the book that closely. I hoped my nephew would help." "A teacher of literature!" said Rubin derisively. "Shut up, Manny," said Trumbull. "What did your nephew say, Mr. Atwood?" "As it happens," said Atwood, "Mr. Rubin is right. My nephew was entirely at sea. He said there were a few passages in the original version of the story that Lewis Carroll had himself written in long hand that did not appear in the final published version. As it happens, an edition of the prepublisbed version is available now. 1 obtained a copy and checked through it. I found nothing that seemed significant to me." Gonzalo said, "Listen! Where we go wrong, Henry always tells us, is in getting too damned complex. Why don't we look at the message? It says, "The curious omission in Alice." Maybe we don't have to look at the book. There is a curious omission in the message itself. The name of the book isn't Alice. It's Alice in Wonderland." Avalon emerged from his wounded silence long enough to say, "It's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, if you wish to be accurate." "All right," said Gonzalo, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Then we ought to concentrate on the rest of the title, which is omitted in the message. . . . Isn't that right, Henry?" Henry, standing quietly by the sideboard, said, "It is certainly an interesting point, Mr. Gonzalo." "Interesting, hell," said Trumbull. "What's curious about it? it's an omission of convenience. Lots of people would say Alice.12 Halsted said, "Quite apart from that, I don't see what Adventures in Wonderland would mean. It's no more helpful than the original message. Here's my idea. Alice in Wonderland-beg pardon, Jeff, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland-contains verses, most of which are parodies of well-established poems of the day-" "Poor ones," said Rubin. "Beside the point," said Halsted. "They are not perfect parodies, however. Some verses are omitted. For instance, Alice recites a poem beginning "How doth the little crocodile," which is a parody of Isaac Watts's dreadful poem "How doth the little busy bee," though I don't think that's the actual title of the poem. Alice recites only two stanzas and I'm sure Watts's poem has at least four. Maybe the answer lies in the missing verses of the original." "Is that a curious omission?" said Trumbull. "I don't know. I don't remember the original version except for the first line, but it should be looked up. . . . The other originals to the parodies should be studied, too." "I'll be glad to do so," said Atwood politely. "The point had not occurred to me." Drake said, "I think that's a crock of crud. The message refers to a curious omission in Alice. I think it means in Alice as it now stands and not in some outside source." "You can't know that," protested Halsted. "Yes, but that's the point," said Trumbull. "It seems to me that if we get the right answer, we'll know at once it's right, and if we work out something that only uncovers a new layer of puzzle, that's just wrong." Avalon said, "Well, nothing more occurs to me. Do we ask Henry?" Atwood looked puzzled, and Avalon went on, "You have to understand, Mr. Atwood, that Henry, whose pleasure it seems to be to wait on us, has the faculty for seeing past complications." Gonzalo said, "That's what I tried to do and you all ran me down. . . . Henry, isn't the answer in the full title of the book?" Henry smiled regretfully and said, "Gentlemen, you must not put more on my shoulders than I can carry. I do not know the book very well, though I've read it, of course. If I'm to penetrate the meaning of the puzzle, it will have to be very simple." "If it were very simple," said Atwood, "we would have seen it." "Perhaps," said Henry, "yet it seems to me it must be simple. Surely, your friend, Mr. Sanders, wanted you to have the bequest. He put it in a game, and made a contest out of it, because that was his way, but he must have wanted you to win." Atwood nodded. "I would think so." "Then let's look for something very simple be felt you would Surely see, but just subtle enough, perhaps, to make the game interesting. As I said, I don't know the book very well, so I'll have to ask questions." Avalon harumphed. "I know Alice quite well, Henry. I'll answer your questions." "Very well, Sir. Mr. Trumbull said Alice in Wonderland involved a deck of cards, and I do remember, from the Disney cartoon version more than from anything else, that the Queen of Hearts kept sbouting "Off with his head."" "Yes," said Avalon. "A female Henry VIII. The King of Hearts and the Knave of Hearts are also involved." :"Any other cards?" "They're all mentioned," said Avalon. "The hearts are the royal family, the clubs are soldiers, the diamonds courtiers, the spades workmen. Three of the spades have speaking parts, the two, the five, and the nine. . . . Do you agree with me, Atwood?" "Yes," said Atwood grimly. "It's fresh in my mind." Trumbull said, "I suspect Henry is going to ask if any of the cards were omitted. Only a few are mentioned Specifically-" "The six I listed," said Avalon. "The King, Queen, and Knave of Hearts; the two, five, and nine of spades." But so what?" said Trumbull. "As many as necessary were mentioned and the rest were there in the background. There's noth- ing "curious" about that. I insist on respecting the word Acurions." " Henry nodded, then said, "Are you an Episcopalian, Mr. Atwood?" "I was brought up an Episcopalian. Why do you ask?" "You said Mr. Sanders teased you about your bigb-churcb proclivities and you said you were a Protestant. Putting those together, I felt you might be an Episcopalian. . . . Do you have a chess set, Mr. Atwood?" "Certainly!" "Yours? Or was it a present from Mr. Sanders?" "Oh, no, mine. A rather beautiful set that belonged to my father. Sanders and I played many a game on it." Henry nodded. "I ask because it seems to me that we've all discussed Alice in Wonderland without mentioning that there was a sequel." "Through the Looking-Glass," said Avalon. "Yes, of course." "Might that not be considered as included in the word Alice?" Avalon nodded. "Certainly. As it happens, the full title is Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, so it Surely bears as much right to be referred to as Alice as the other does." "And isn't Through the Looking-Glass about chessmen?" "Absolutely," said Avalon benevolently, his role as recognized expert having completely restored his good humor. "The Red and White Queens are important characters. The White King has a speaking role but the Red King just sleeps under a tree." "And there are knights, too?" Avalon nodded. "The White Knight has a battle with the Red Knight and then escorts Alice to the final square. He's the most amiable character in either book and the only one who seems to like Alice. He's usually considered a self-portrait by Carroll." "Yes, yes," said Trumbull testily. "What are you getting at, Henry?" "I'm looking for omissions. There is a reference to a white pawn at the start of the book, I think." Avalon said, "I don't think you're as unknowledgeable about the books as you pretend, Henry. There is a mention of a white pawn named Lily in the first chapter. Alice herself plays the part of a white pawn, too, and is eventually promoted to a white queen." "And rooks?" said Henry. Avalon frowned in silence for a while, then shook his head. Atwood interposed. "There's a reference to them. Take my word for it; I know the stupid books practically by heart. In Chapter i, Alice enters the Looking-Class house, sees chessmen moving about, and says to herself, "and here are two Castles walking arm in arm." The castles, of course, are also called rooks. Henry said, "That accounts, then, for the King, Queen, Rook, Knight, and Pawn. But there is a sixth chesspiece, the Bishop. Does it play a role in the book or is it even mentioned?" Avalon said, "No." Atwood said, "Two bishops are shown in one of the illustrations to the first chapter." "That's Tenniel's work," said Henry, "not Carroll's. Now isn't the total absence of the Bishop a curious omission?" I don't know," said Avalon slowly. "Lewis Carroll, a thoroughgoing Victorian, probably feared giving offense to the Church." "Isn't it curious to have him go so far in avoiding offense?" "Well, supposing it is?" asked Halsted. Henry said, "I think it possible that if Mr. Atwood checks the four bishops of his set, a set which Mr. Sanders knew Mr. Atwood cherished and would neither sell, give away, or lose, he will probably find the piece of film. If the head comes off, he should look inside. If the head doesn't come off, pull off the piece of felt it stands on." There was an uncomfortable silence. "That's farfetched, Henry," said Trumbull. "Perhaps not, sir," said Henry. "Mr. Sanders has more than once been described as having a raucous sense of humor. He teased Mr. Atwood constantly about his religion. Perhaps this final message is another way of continuing the joke. You are an Episcopalian, Mr. Atwood, and I suppose you know what the word means." "It's from the Greek word for bishop," said Atwood, half choking. "I imagine, then," said Henry, "Mr. Sanders might think it funny to hide the message in a bishop." Atwood started to his feet. "I think I had better go home." "I'll take you," said Halsted. I think the snow has stopped," said Henry, "but drive carefully." Afterword This, in a way, is a twice-told tale. At a time before I had begun the Black Widowers series, I was asked by Union Carbide Corporation to write a short mystery without a solution for a contest they were running for their employees, who were to supply solutions, with myself making the final judgment on excellence. Well, I wrote the short mystery, which was rather like the story you have just read. The contest was carried through successfully (two other writers also supplied short mysteries) and all was well. However, I was made restless by the fact that the short mystery I wrote was never published-except on the book jacket of an edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes which was given out to the contest applicants. That seemed a waste to me, and I abhor literary waste. It was especially annoying since the story appeared without my solution. So I completely rewrote the story, lengthening it a good deal, placing it against the Black Widower background, and now I feel ever so much better. Especially since now my solution is included. The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers had reached the point where little was left of the mixed grill save for an occasional sausage and a markedly untouched piece of liver on the plate of Emmanuel Rubin-and it was then that voices rose in Homeric combat. Rubin, undoubtedly infuriated by the presence of liver at all, was saying, even more flatly than was usual for him, "Poetry is sound. You don't look at poetry. I don't care whether a culture emphasizes rhyme, alliteration, repetition, balance, or cadence, it all comes down to sound." Roger Halsted never raised his voice, but one could always tell the state of his emotions by the color of his high forehead. Right now, it was a deep pink, the color extending past the line that had once marked hair. He said, "What's the use of making generalizations, Manny? No generalization can hold generally without an airtight system of axiomatics to begin with. Literature-" "If you're going to tell me about figurative verse," said Rubin hotly, "save your breath. That's Victorian nonsense." "What's figurative verse?" asked Mario Gonzalo lazily. "Is be making that up, Jeff?" He added a touch to the tousled hair in his careful caricature of the banquet guest, Waldemar Long, who, since the dinner had begun, had eaten in a somber silence, but was obviously following every word. "No," sid Geoffrey Avalon judiciously, "though I wouldn't put it past Manny to make something up if that were the only way be could win an argument. Figurative verse is verse in which the words or lines are arranged typographically in such a way as to produce a visual image that reinforces the sense. "The Mouse,s Tail" in Alice in Wonderland is the best-known example." Halsted's soft voice was unequal to the free-for-all and he methodically beat his spoon against the water goblet till the decibels had simmered down. He said, "Let's be reasonable. The subject under discussion is not poetry in general, but the limerick as a verse form. My point is tbis-I'll repeat it, Manny-That the worth of a limerick is not dictated by its subject matter. It's a mistake to think that a limerick has to be dirty to be good. It's easier-" James Drake stubbed out his cigarette, twitched his small grizzled mustache, and said in his hoarse voice, "Why do you call a dirty limerick dirty? The Supreme Court will get you." Halsted said, "Because it's a two-syllable word with a meaning you all understand. What do you want me to say? Sexual-excretoryblasphemous-and-miscellaneous-generally-irreverent?" Avalon said, "Go on, Roger. Go on. Make your point and don't let them needle you." And, from under his luxuriant eyebrows, he frowned austerely at the table generally. "Let him talk." "Why?" said Rubin. "He has nothing to . . . Okay, Jeff. Talk, Roger." "Thank you all," said Halsted, in the wounded tone of one who has finally succeeded in having his wrongs recognized. "The worth of a limerick rests in the unpredictability of the last line and in the cleverness of the final rhyme. In fact, irreverent content may seem to have value in itself and require less cleverness-and produce a less worthwhile limerick, as limerick. Now it is possible to have the rhyme masked by the orthograpbical conventions." "What?" said Gonzalo. "Spelling," said Avalon. "And then," said Halsted, "in seeing the spelling and having that instant of delay in getting the sound, you intensify the enjoyment. But under those conditions you have to see the limerick. If you just recite it, the excellence is lost." "Suppose you give us an example," said Drake. "I know what he means," said Rubin loudly. "He's going to rhyme M.A. and C.D.-Master of Arts and Caster of Darts." "nat's an example that's been used," admitted Halsted, "but it7s extreme. It takes too long to catch on and amusement is drowned in irritation. As it happens, I've made up a limerick while we were having the argument-" And now, for the first time, Thomas Trumbull entered this part of the discussion. His tanned and wrinkled face twisted into a dark scowl and he said, "The hell you did. You made it up yesterday and you engineered this whole silly nonsense so you could recite it. If it's one of your Iliad things, I'll personally kick you out of here." "It's not the Iliad," said Halsted. "I haven't been working on that recently. It's no use my reciting this one, of course. I'll write it down and pass it around." He wrote in dark block letters on an unused napkin: YOU CAN'T CALL THE BRITISH QUEEN MS. TAIN'T AS NICE AS ELIZABETH IS. BUT I THINK THAT THE QUEEN WOULD BE EVEN LESS KEEN TO HAVE HERSELF MENTIONED AS LS. Gonzalo laughed aloud when it came to him. He said, "Sure, if you know that MS is pronounced Miz, then you pronounce LS as Liz." "To me," said Drake scornfully, "LS would have to stand for "lanuscript" if it's going to rhyme with MS." Avalon pursed his lips and shook his head. "Using TAIN'T is a flaw. You ought to lose a syllable some other way. And to be perfectly consistent, shouldn't the rhyme word IS be spelled simply S?" Halsted nodded eagerly. "You're quite right, and I thought of doing that, but it wouldn't be transparent enough and the feader wouldn't get it fast enough to laugh. Secondly, it would be the cleverest part of the limerick and would make the LS anticlimactic." "Do you really have to waste all that fancy reasoning on a piece of crap like this?" asked Trumbull. "I think I've made my point," said Halsted, "the humor can be visual." Trumbull said, "Well, then, drop the subject. Since I'm bost this session, that's an order. . . . Henry, where's the damned dessert?" "It's here, sir," said Henry softly. Unmoved by Trumbull's tone, he deftly cleared the table and dealt out the blueberry shortcake. The coffee had already been poured and Trumbull's guest said in a low voice, "May I have tea, please?" The guest had a long upper lip and an equally long ebin. The hair on his head was shaggy but there was none on his face and be had walked with a somewhat bearlike stoop. When he was first introduced, only Rubin had registered any recognition. He had said, "Aren't you with NASA?" Waldemar Long had answered with a startled "Yes" as though be had been disturbed out of a half-resentful resignation to anonymity. He had then frowned. He was frowning now again as Henry poured the tea and melted unobtrusively into the background. Trumbull said, "I think the time has come for our guest to enter the discussion and perhaps add some portion of sense to what has been an unusually foolish evening." "No, that's all right, Tom," said Long. "I don't mind frivolity." He had a detp and rather beautiful voice that had a definite note of sadness in it. He went on, "I have no aptitude for badinage myself, but I enjoy listening to it." Halsted, still brooding over the matter of the limericks, said, with sudden forcefulness, "I suggest Manny not be the grill master on this occasion." "No?" said Rubin, his sparse beard lifting belligerently. "No. I put it to you, Tom. If Manny questions our guest, be will surely bring up the space program since there's a NASA connection. Then we will go through the same darned argument we ,ve had a hundred times. I'm sick of the whole subject of space and whether we ought to be on the moon." "Not half as sick as I am," said Long, rather unexpectedly, "I'd just as soon not discuss any aspect of space exploration." The heavy flatness of the remark seemed to dampen spirits all around. Even Halsted seemed momentarily at a loss for any other subject to introduce to someone connected with NASA. Then Rubin stirred in his seat and said, "I take it, Dr. Long, that this is a recently developed attitude of yours." Long's head turned suddenly toward Rubin. His eyes narrowed. "Why do you say that, Mr. Rubin?" Rubin's small face came as close to a simper as it ever did. "Elementary, my dear Dr. Long. You were on the cruise that went down to see the Apollo shot last winter. I'd been invited as a literary representative of the intellectual community, but I couldn't go. However, I got the promotional literature and noticed you were along. You were going to lecture on some aspect of the space program, I forget which, and that was voluntary. So your disenchantment with the subject must have arisen in the six months since the cruise." Long nodded his head very slightly a number of times and said, "I seem to be more heard of in that connection than in any other in my life. The damned cruise has made me famous, too." "I'll go farther," said Rubin enthusiastically, "and suggest that something happened on the cruise that disenchanted you with space exploration, maybe to the point where you're thinking of leaving NASA and going into some other field of work altogether." Long's stare was fixed now. He pointed a finger at Rubin, a long finger that showed no signs of tremor, and said, "Don't play games." Then, with a controlled anger, be rose from his chair and said, "I'm sorry, Tom. Thanks for the meal, but I'll go now." Everyone rose at once, speaking simultaneously; all but Rubin, who remained sitting with a look of stunned astonishment on his face. Trumbull's voice rose above the rest. "Now wait a while, Waldemar. God damn it, will all of you sit down? Waldemar, you too. What's the excitement about? Rubin, what is all this?" Rubin looked down at his empty coffeecup and lifted it as though he wished there were coffee in it so that he could delay matters by taking a sip. "I was just demonstrating a chain of logic. After all, I write mysteries. I seem to have touched a nerve." Then, gratefully, be said, "Thanks, Henry," as the cup before him sparkled black to the brim. "What chain of logic?" demanded Trumbull. "Okay, here it is. Dr. Long said, "The damned cruise has made me famous, too." He said ,too" and emphasized the word. That means it did sometbing else for him and since we were talking about his distaste for the whole subject of space exploration, I deduced that the something else it had done was to supply him with that distaste. From his hearing I guessed it was sharp enough to make him want to quit his job. That's all there is to it." Long nodded his head again, in precisely the same slight and rapid way as before, and then settled back in his seat. "All right. I'm sorry, Mr. Rubin. I jumped too soon. The fact is I will be leaving NASA. To all intents and purposes, I have left it-and at the point of a shoe. That's all. . . . We'll change the subject. Tom, you said coming here would get me out of my dumps, but it hasn't worked that way. Rather, my mood has infected you all and I've cast a damper on the party. Forgive me, all of you." Avalon put a finger to his neat, graying mustache and stroked it gently. He said, "Actually, sir, you have supplied us with something we all like above all things-the opportunity to exert our curiosity. May we question you on this matter?" 441t's not something I'm free to talk about," said Long, guardedly. Trumbull said, "You can if you want to, Waldemar. You needn't mention sensitive details, but as far as anything else is concerned, everything said in this room is confidential. And, as I always add when I find it necessary to make that statement, the confidentiality includes our esteemed friend Henry." Henry, who was standing at the sideboard, smiled briefly. Long hesitated. Then he said, "Actually, your curiosity is easily satisfied and I suspect that Mr. Rubin, at least, with his aptitude for guessing, has already deduced the details. I'm suspected of having been indiscreet, either deliberately or carelessly, and, either way, I may find myself unofficially, but very effectively, blocked off from any future position in my field of competence." "You mean you'll be blackballed?" said Drake. "That's a word," said Long, "that's never used. But that's what it will amount to." I take it," said Drake, "you weren't indiscreet." "On the contrary, I was." Long shook his head. "I haven't denied that. The trouble is they think the story is worse than I admit." There was another pause and then Avalon, speaking in his most impressively austere tone, said, "Well, sir, what story? Is there anything you can tell us about it or must you leave it at no more than what you have already said?" Long passed a band over his face, then pushed his chair away from the table so that be could lean his head back against the wall. He said, "It's so damned undramatic. I was on this cruise, as Mr. Rubin told you. I was going to give a talk on certain space projects, rather far-out ones, and planned on going into detail on exactly what was being done in certain fascinating directions. I can't give you those details. I found that out the hard way. Some of the stuff had been classified, but I had been told I could talk about it. Then, on the day before I was to give my lecture, I got a radiophone call saying it was all off. There was to be no declassification. "I was furious. There's no use denying I have a temper and I also have very little gift for spontaneous lecturing. I had carefully written out the lecture and I had intended to read it. I know that's not a good way of giving a talk, but it's the best I can do. Now I had nothing left to give to a group of people who had paid considerable money to listen to me. It was a damned embarrassing position." "What did you do?" asked Avalon. Long shook his head. "I held a rather pathetic question-andanswer session the next day. It didn't go over at all well. It was worse than just not having a talk. By that time, you see, I knew I was in considerable trouble," "In what way, sir?" said Avalon. "If you want the fun story," said Long, "here it is. I'm not ex- actly talkative at meals, as you may perhaps have noticed, but when I went in to dinner after getting the call, I suppose I put on a passable imitation of a corpse that had died with an angry look on its face. The rest tried to draw me into the conversation, if only, I suppose, to keep me from poisoning the atmosphere. Finally one of them said, "Well, Dr. Long, what will you be talking about tomorrow?" And I blew up and said, "Nothing! Nothing at all! I've got the paper all written out and it's sitting there on the desk in my cabin and I can't give it because I just found out the material is still classified."" "And then The-paper was stolen?" said Gonzalo excitedly. "No. Why steal anything these days? It was photographed." "Are you sure?" "I was sure at the time. When I got back to my cabin after dinner the door was not locked and the papers had been moved. Since then, it's become certain. We have proof that the information has leaked." There was a rather depressed silence at that. Then Trumbull said, "Who could have done it? Who heard you?" "Everyone at the table," said Long despondently. Rubin said, "You have a strong voice, Dr. Long, and if you were as angry as I think you were, you spoke forcefully. Probably a,number of the people at adjoining tables heard you." ,I No," said Long, shaking his head. "I spoke through clenched teeth, not loudly. Besides, you don't realize what the cruise was like. The cruise was badly undersubscribed, you see-poor promotion, poor management. The ship was carrying only forty percent capacity and the shipping company is supposed to have lost a packet." "In that case," said Avalon, "it must have been a dreary experience apart from your misadventure." "On the contrary, up to that point it was very pleasant for me, and it continued to be very pleasant for all the rest, I imagine. The crew nearly outnumbered the passengers and the service was excellent. All the facilities were available without crowding. They scattered us through the dining room and gave us privacy. There were seven of us at our dining table. Lucky seven, someone said at the beginning." For a moment Long's look of grimness deepened. "None of the tables near us were occupied. I'm quite certain that nothing any of us said was beard anywhere but at our own table." "Then there are seven suspects," said Gonzalo thoughtfully. "Six, since you needn't count me," said Long. "I knew where the paper was and what it was. I didn't have to hear myself to know that." "You're under suspicion, too. Or you implied that," said Gonzalo. "Not to myself," said Long. Trumbull said peevishly, "I wish you had come to me with this, Waldemar. I've been worrying over your obvious green-and-yellow attitude for months." What would you have done if I had told you?" Trumbull considered. "Damn it, I'd have brought you here. . All right. Tell us about the six at the table. Who were they?" "One was the ship's doctor; a good-looking Dutchman in an impressive uniform." Rubin said, "He would be. The ship was one of the HollandAmerican liners, wasn't it?" "Yes. The officers were Dutch and the crew-the waiters, stewards, and so on-were mostly Indonesian. They'd all had threemonth cram courses in English, but we communicated mostly in sign language. I don't complain, though. They were pleasant and bard-working-and all the more efficient since there was considerably less than the ordinary complement of passengers." "Any reason to suspect the Doctor?"'asked Drake. Long nodded. "I suspected them all. The Doctor was a silent man; he and I were the two silent ones. ne other five made a continuous uproar, much as you do here at this table. He and I listened. What I've brooded about in connection with him was that it was be who asked me about my talk. Asking a personal question like that was uncharacteristic." "He may have been worried about you medically," said Halsted. "He may have been trying to draw you out." "Maybe," said Long indifferently. "I remember every detail of that dinner; I've gone over and over it in my mind. It was an ethnic dinner, so everyone was supplied with little Dutch hats made out of paper and special Indonesian dishes were supplied. I wore the hat but I bate curried food and the Doctor asked about my speech just as a small dish of curried lamb was put before me as an bors d'oeuvre. Between fuming over official stupidity and sickening over the smell of curry, I just burst out. If it hadn't been for the curry, perhaps- "Anyway, after dinner I discovered that someone had been in my cabin. The contents of the paper weren't so important, classification or not, but what was important was that someone had taken action so quickly. Someone on the ship was part of a spy network and that was more important than the actual coup. Even if the present item were not important, the next might be. It was important to report the matter and, as a loyal citizen, I did." Rubin said, "Isn't the Doctor the logical suspect? He asked the question and he would be listening to the answer. The others might not have. As an officer, he would be used to the ship, know how to get to your cabin quickly, perhaps have a duplicate key ready. Did he have an opportunity to get to your cabin before you did?" "Yes, he did," said Long. "I thought of all that. The trouble is this. Everyone at the table heard me, because all the rest talked about the system of classification for a while. I kept quiet myself but I remember the matter of the Pentagon Papers came up. And everyone knew where my cabin was because I had given a small party in it for the table the day before. And those locks are easy to open for anyone with a little skill at it-tbougb it was a mistake not to close it again on leaving, but whoever it was had to be in a hurry. And, as it happened, everyone at the table had a chance to get to the cabin during the course of the meal." "Who were the others, then?" asked Halsted. "Two married couples and a single woman. The single woman -call her Miss Robinson-was pretty, a little on the plump side, had a pleasant sense of humor, but had the had babit of smoking during the meal. I rather think she liked the Doctor. She sat between us-we always had the same seats." "When did she have a chance to reach your cabin?" asked Halsted. "She left shortly after I made my remark. I was brooding too deeply to be aware of it at the time but of course I remembered it afterward. She came back before the fuss over the hot chocolate came up because I remember her trying to help." "Where did she say she went?" "Nobody asked her at the time. She was asked afterward and she said she had gone to her cabin to go to the bathroom. Maybe she did. But her cabin was reasonably near mine." "No one saw her at all?" "No one would. Everyone was in the dining room and to the Indonesians all Americans look alike." Avalon said, "What's the fuss over the hot chocolate you referred to?" Long said, "That's where one of the married couples comes in. Call them the Smiths and the other one the Joneses, or the other way around. It doesn't matter. Mr. Smith was the raucous type. He reminded me, in fact, of-" "Oh, Lord," said Rubin. "Don't say it." "All right, I won't. He was one of the lecturers. In fact, both Smith and Jones were. Smith talked fast, laughed easily, turned everything into a double-entendre, and seemed to enjoy it all so much he had the rest of us doing it, too. He was a very odd person. the kind of fellow you can't help but take an instant dislike to and judge to be stupid. But then, as you get used to him, you find you like him after all and that under the surface nonsense, he's extremely intelligent. The first evening, I remember, the Doctor kept staring at him as if he were a mental specimen, but by the end of the cruise, he was clearly pleased with Smith. "Jones was much quieter. He seemed horrified, at first, by Smith's outrageous comments but eventually be was matching him, I noticed-rather, I think, to Smith's discomfiture." Avalon said, "What were their fields?" "Smith was a sociologist and Jones a biologist. The idea was that space exploration was to be viewed in the light of many disciplines. It was a good concept but showed serious flaws in the execution. Some of the talks, though, were excellent. There was one on Mariner 9 and the new data on Mars that was superb, but that's beside the point. "It was Mrs. Smith who created the confusion. She was a moderately tall, thin girl. Not very good-looking by the usual standards but with an extraordinarily attractive personality. She was softspoken and clearly went through life automatically thinking of others. I believe everyone quickly grew to feel quite affectionate to her and Smith himself seemed devoted, The evening I shot my mouth off, she ordered hot chocolate. It came in a tall glass, very top-heavy, and, of course, as a mistaken touch of elegance, it was brought on a tray. "Smith, as usual, was talking animatedly and waving his arms as be did so. He used all his muscles when be talked. The ship swayed, be swayed-well, anyway, the hot chocolate went into Mrs. Smith's lap. "She jumped up. So did everyone else. Miss Robinson moved quickly toward her to help. I noticed that and that's how I know she was back by then. Mrs. Smith waved help away and left in a burry. Smith, looking suddenly confused and upset, tore off the paper Dutch bat be was wearing and followed. Five minutes later he was back, talking earnestly to the head steward. Then he came to the table and said that Mrs. Smith had sent him down to assure the steward that she was wearing nothing that couldn't be washed, that she hadn't been hurt, that it wasn't anyone's fault, that no one was to be blamed. "He wanted to assure us she was all right, too. He asked if we could stay at the table till his wife came back. She was changing Clothes and wanted to join us again so that none of us would feel as though anything very terrible had happened. We agreed, of course. None of us were going anywhere." Avalon said, "And that means she had time to get to your cabin." Long nodded. "Yes, I suppose so. She didn't seem the type but I suppose in this game you disregard surface appearances." "And you all waited?" "Not the Doctor. He got up and said he would get some ointment from his office in case she needed it for burns, but he came back before she did by a minute or so." Avalon said, tapping his finger on the table slowly to lend emphasis, "And be might have been at the cabin, too, then. And Miss Robinson might, when she left before the bot-chocolate incident." Rubin said, "Where do the Joneses come in?" Long said, "Let me go on. When Mrs. Smith came back she denied having been burned and the Doctor had no need to give her the ointment, so we can't say if he even went to get it. He might have been bluffing." "What if she had asked for it?" said Halsted. "Then be might have said he couldn't find what he had been looking for but if she came with him he'd do what he could. Who knows? In any case, we all sat for a while almost as though nothing had happened and then, finally, it broke up. By that time, we were the last occupied table. Everyone left, with Mrs. Jones and myself lingering behind for a while." "Mrs. Jones?" asked Drake. "I haven't told you about Mrs. Jones. Dark hair and eyes, very vivacious. Had a penchant for sharp cheeses, always taking a bit of each off the tray when it was brought round. She had a way of looking at you when you talk that had you convinced you were the only object she saw. I think Jones was rather a jealous type in his quiet way. At least, I never saw him more than two feet from her, except this one time. He got up and said be was going to the cabin and she said she would be there soon. Then she turned to me and said, "Can you explain why those terraced icefields on Mars are significant? I've been meaning to ask you all during dinner and didn't get a chance." "It had been that day that we had had the magnificent talk on Mars and I was rather flattered that she turned to me instead of to the astronomer who had given the talk. It seemed as though she were taking it for granted I knew as much as he did. So I talked to her for a while and she kept saying, "How interesting."" Avalon said, "And meanwhile, Jones could have been in your cabin." "Could be. I thought of that afterward. It was certainly atypical behavior on both their parts." Avalon said, "Let's summarize, then. There are four possibilities. Miss Robinson might have done it when she left before the hot-chocolate incident. The Smitbs might have done it as a team, Mr. Smith deliberately spilling the hot chocolate, so that Mrs. Smith could do the dirty work. Or the Doctor could have done it while going for the ointment. Or the Joneses could have done it as a team, with Jones doing the dirty work while Mrs. Jones kept Dr. Long out of action." Long nodded. "All this was considered and by the time the ship was back in New York, security agents had begun the process of checking the background of all six. You see, in cases like this, sus- picion is all you need. The only way any secret agent can remain undetected is for him or her to remain unsuspected. Once the eye of counterintelligence is upon him, be must inevitably be un- masked. No cover can survive an investigation in depth." Drake said, "Then which one did it prove to be?" Long sighed. "That's where the trouble arose. None of them. All were clean. There was no way, I understand, of showing any of them to be anything other than what they seemed." Rubin said, "Why do you say you "understand! Aren't you part of the investigation?" "At the wrong end. The cleaner those six are, the dirtier I appear to be. I told the investigators-1 had to tell tbem-That those six are the only ones who could possibly have done it, and if none of them did, they must suspect me of making up a story to hide something worse." Trumbull said, "Oh, hell, Waldemar. They can't think that. What would you have to gain by reporting the incident if you were responsible?" "That's what they don't know," said Long. "But the information did leak and if they can't pin it on any of the six, then they're going to pin it on me. And the more my motives puzzle them, the more they think those motives must be very disturbing indeed. So I'm in trouble." Rubin said, "Are you sure those six are indeed the only possibilities. Are you sure you really didn't mention it to anyone else?" "Quite sure," said Long dryly. "You might not remember having done so," said Rubin. "It could have been something very casual. Can you be sure you didn't?" "I can be sure I didn't. The radiophone call came not long before dinner. There just wasn't time to tell anyone before dinner. And once I got away from the table, I was back in the cabin before I as much as said anything to anybody. Anything at all." "Who heard you on the phone? Maybe there were eavesdrop- 7Y pers. "There were ship's officers standing around, certainly. However, my boss expressed himself Acsopically. I knew what he meant, but no one else would have." "Did you express yourself Aesopically?" asked Halsted. 1711 tell you exactly what I said. "Hello, Dave! Then I said, "God damn it to hell! Then I hung up. I said those seven words. No more." Gonzalo brought his hands together in a sudden, enthusiastic clap. "Listen, I've been thinking. Why does the job have to be so planned? It could be spontaneous. After all, everybody knows there's this cruise and people connected with NASA are going to talk and there might be something interesting on. Someone-it could have been anyone-kept searching various rooms during the dinner hour each day and finally came across your paper-" "No," said Long sharply. "It passes the bounds of plausibility to suppose that someone would, just by chance, find my paper just in the hour or two after I had announced that a classified lecture was sitting on my desk. Besides, there was nothing in the paper that would have given any indication of importance to the non- expert. It was only my own remark that would have told anyone it was there and that it was important." Avalon said thoughtfully, "Suppose one of the people at the table passed on the information, in perfect innocence. In the interval they were away from the table, they might have said to someone, "Did you hear about poor Dr. Long? His paper was shot out from under him?" Then that someone, anyone, could have done the job." Long shook his head. "I wish that could be so, but it can't. That would only happen if the particular individual at my table were innocent. If the Smitbs were innocent when they left the table, the only thing on their minds would be the hot chocolate. They wouldn't stop to chat. The Doctor would be thinking only of getting the ointment. By the time Jones left the table, assuming he was innocent, he would have forgotten about the matter. If anything, he would talk about the hot chocolate, too." Rubin said suddenly, voice rising, "All right. What about Miss Robinson? She left before the bot-cbocolate incident. The only interesting thing in her mind would have been your dilemma. YY She might have said something. "Might she?" said Long. "If she is innocent, then she was really doing what she said she was doing, going to the bathroom in her cabin. If she had to desert the dinner table to do so, there would have had to be urgency; and no one under those conditions stops for idle gossip." There was silence all around the table. Long said, "I'm sure investigation will continue and eventually the truth will come out and it will be clear that I'm guilty of no more than an unlucky indiscretion. By then, though, my career will be down the drain." "Dr. Long?" said a soft voice. "May I ask a question?" Long looked up, surprised. "A question?" "I'm Henry, sir. The gentlemen of the Black Widowers organ- ization occasionally allow me to participate-" "Hell, yes, Henry," said Trumbull. "Do you see something the rest of us don't?" "I'm not certain," said Henry. "I see quite plainly that Dr. Long believes only the six others at the table might possibly be involved, and those investigating the matter apparently agree with him-" "There's no way not to," said Long. "Well, then," said Henry. "I am wondering if Dr. Long mentioned his views on curry to the investigators." Long said, "You mean that I didn't like curry?" "Yes," said Henry. "Did that come up?" Long spread his hands and then shook his head. "No, I don't think it did. Why should it? It's irrelevant. It's just an additional excuse for my talking like a jackass. I tell it to you here in order to collect sympathy, I suppose, but it would carry no weight with the investigators." Henry remained silent for a moment, and Trumbull said, "Does the curry have meaning to you, Henry?" "I think perhaps it does," said Henry. "I think we are in rather the position Mr. Halsted described earlier in the evening in con- nection with limericks. Some limericks to be effective must be seen; sound is not enough. And some scenes to be effective must be seen." "I don't get that," said Long. "Well, Dr. Long," said Henry. "You sat there in the ship's restaurant at a table with six other people and therefore only those six other people heard you. But if we could see the scene instead of having you describe it to us, would we see something clearly that you have omitted?"" "No, you wouldn't," said Long doggedly. "Are you sure?" asked Henry. "You sit here with six other people at a table, too, just as you did on the ship. How many people hear your story?" "Six-" began Long. And then Gonzalo broke in, "Seven, counting you, Henry." "And was there no one serving you at table, Dr. Long? You said the Doctor had asked you about the speech just as curried lamb was put before you and it was the smell of curry that an- noyed you to the point where you burst out with your indiscretion. Surely, the curried lamb didn't place itself before you of its own accord. The fact is that at the moment you made your statement, there were six people at the table before you, and a seventh standing just behind you and out of sight." "The waiter," said Long in a whisper. nless Henry said, "There's a tendency never to notice a waiter u he annoys you. An efficient waiter is invisible, and you mentioned the excellence of the service. Might it not have been the waiter who carefully engineered the spilling of the hot chocolate to create a diversion; or perhaps he who took advantage of the diversion, if it was an accident? With waiters many and diners few, it might not be too noticeable if he vanished for a while. Or be could claim to have gone to the men's room if it were indeed noticed. He would know the location of the cabin as well as the Doctor did, and be as likely to have some sort of picklock." Long said, "But he was an Indonesian. He couldn't speak English " "Are you sure? He'd had a three-month cram course, you said, And be might have known English better than be pretended. You would be willing to conceive that Mrs. Smith was not as sweet and thoughtful underneath as on the surface, and that Mrs. Jones's vivacity was pretense, and the Doctor's respectability and Smith's liveliness and Jones's devotion and Miss Robinson's need to go to the bathroom. Might not the waiter's ignorance of English also be pretense?" "By God," said Long, looking at his watch. "If it weren't so late, I'd call Washington now." Trumbull said, "If you know some home phone numbers, do call now. It's your career. Tell them the waiter ought to be investigated, and for heaven's sake, don't tell them you got the no- tion from someone else." "You mean, tell them I just thought of it? They'll ask why I didn't think of that before." "Ask them why they didn't. Why didn't they think a waiter goes with a table?" Henry said softly, "No reason for anyone to think of it. Only very few are as interested in waiters as I am." Afterword This story appeared in the December 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine under the title "The Six Suspects." Again, I prefer my own title. The inspiration here arose out of the fact that I was on a cruise like the one described in the story. Some of the events even happened but, I hasten to say, there were no scientific secrets on board as far as I know and no mystery. One last word. Based on past experience, I am going to get a lot of letters asking me if I intend to write more Black Widowers stories. Let me answer that with a firm and definite: Yes. That, perhaps, will abort the letters. As a matter of fact, I have at the moment of this writing, completed and sold six more Black Widowers, five to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and one to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. You see, then, that it is quite possible that eventually you will be asked to read something entitled More Tales of the Black Widowers. I hope so, because it's fun writing these stories-and thank you all for reading them. Sixty Million Trillion Combinations. Since it was Thomas Trumbull who was going to act as host for the Black Widowers that month, he did not, as was his wont, arrive at the last minute, gasping for his preprandial drink. There he was, having arrived in early dignity, conferring with Henry, that peerless waiter, on the details of the menu for the evening, and greeting each of the others as he arrived., - Mario Gonzalo, who arrived last, took off his light overcoat with care, shook it gently, as though to remove the dust of the taxicab, and hung it up in the cloakroom. He came back, rubbing his hands, and said, "There's, an -autumn chill in the air. I think summer's over." "Good riddance," called out.Emmanuel Rubin, from where he stood conversing with Geoffrey Avalon and James Drake. "I'm not complaining," called back Gonzalo. Then, to Trumbull, "Hasn't your guest arrived yet?" Trumbull said distinctly, as though tired of explaining, "I have not brought a guest. " "Oh?" said Gonzalo, blankly. There was nothing absolutely irregular about that. The rules of the Black Widowers did not require a guest, although not to have one was most unusual. """Well, I guess that's all right." "It's more than all right ", said Geoffrey Avalon, who had just drifted in their direction, gazing down from his straightbacked height of seventy-four inches. His thick graying eyebrows hunched over his eyes and he said, "At least that guarantees us one, meeting in which we can talk aimlessly and relax." Gonzalo said, "I don't know about that. I'm used to the problems that come up. I don't think any of us will feel comfortable without one. Besideswhat about Henry?" He looked at Henry as he spoke and Henry allowed a discreet smile to cross his unlined, sixtyish face. "Please don't be concerned, Mr. Gonzalo. It will be my pleasure to serve the meal and attend the conversation even if there is nothing of moment to puzzle us." said Trumbull, scowling, his crisply waved hair startlingly white over his tanned face, "you won't have that pleasure, Henry. I'm the one with the problem and I hope someone can solve it: you at least, Henry." Avalon's lips tightened,, "Now by Beelzebub's brazen bottom, Tom, you might have given us one old-fashioned-" Trumbell shrugged and turned away, and Roger Halsted said to Avalon in his soft voice, "What's that Beelzebub bit? Wfiere'd you pick that up?" Avalon looked pleased. "Oh, well, Manny is writing some sort of adventure yam set in Elizabeth's EnglandElizabeth I of course-and it seems-I Rubin, having heard the magic sound of his name, approached and said, "It's a sea story. " Halsted said, "Are you tired of mysteries?" "It's a mystery also," said Rubin, his eyes flashing behind the thick lenses of his glasses. "What make's you think you can't have a mystery angle to any kind of story?" "In any case," said Avalon, "Manny has one character forever swearing alliteratively and never the same twice and -he needs a few more resounding oaths. Reelzebub's brazen bottom is good, I think. "Or Mammon's munificent mammaries," said Halsted. Trumbull said, violently, "There you are! If you don't come up with some problem that will occupy us in worthwhile fashion and engage our Henry's superlative mind,, the whole evening would degenerate into stupid triplet"y TUtankhamen's tin trumpet." "It gets you after a while," grinned Rubin, unabashed. "Well, get off it," said Trumbull. "is dinner ready, Henry?" "Yes it is, Mr. Trumbull . "All right, then. If you idiots keep this alliteration up for more than two minutes, I'm walking out, host or no host, The table seemed empty with only six about it and conversation seemed -a bit subdued with no guest to See before. Gonzalo, who sat next to Trumbull, said, "I ought to draw a cartoon of you for our collection since you're your own guest, so to speak. " He looked up complacently at the long list of guest-caricatures that lined the wall in rank and Me. "We're going to run out of space in a toliple of years. " "Then don't bother with me," said Trumbull, sourly, "and we can always make space by burning those foolish scrawls. "Scrawls!" Gonzalo seemed to debate within himself briefly concerning the possibility of taking offense. Then he compromised by saying, "You seem to be in a foul mood, Tom." "I seem so because I am. I'm in the situation of the Chaldean wise men facing Nebuchadnezzar." I Avalon leaned over from across the table. "Are you ,talking about the Book of Daniel, Tom?" "That's where it is, isn't it?" Gonzalo said, "Pardon me, but I didn't have my Bible lesson yesterday.. What are these wise men?" "Tell him, Jeff," said Trumbull. "Pontificating is your job-" Avalon said, "It's not pontificating to tell a simple tale. If you would rather-" Gonzalo said, "I'd rather you did, Jeff. You do it much more authoritatively. "Well," said Avalon, "it's Rubin, not 1, who was once a boy preacher, but I'll do my poor best.-The second chapter of the Book of Daniel tells that Nebuchadnezzar was once troubled by a bad dream and he sent for his Clialdean wise men for an interpretation. The wise men offered to do so at once as soon as they heard the dream but Nebuchadnezzar couldn't remember the dream, only that he had been disturbed by it. He reasoned, however, that if wise men could interpret a dream, they could work out the dream, too, so he ordered them to tell him both the dream and the interpretation. When they couldn't do this, he very reasonably-by the standqrds of Oriental potentatesordered them all killed. fortunately for them Daniel, a captive Jew in Babylon, could do the job." Gonzalo said, "And that's your situation, too, Tom?" "In a way. I have a problem that involves a cryptogrambut I don't have the cryptogram. I have to work out the cryptogram. "Or you'll be killed?" asked Rubin. "No. If I fail, I won't be killed, but it won't do me any good, either. " Gonzalo said, "No wonder you didn't feel it necessary to bring a guest. Tell us about it." "Before the brandy?" said Avalon, scandalized. "Tom's host," said Gonzalo, defensively. "If he wants to tell us now-" ""I don't," said Trumbull. "We'll wait for the brandy as we always do, and I'll, be my own griller, if you don't mind. When Henry was pouring the brandy, Trumbull rang his spoon against his water glass and said, "Gentlemen, I will dispense with the opening question by admitting openly that, I cannot justify my existence. Without pretending to go on by question-and-answer, I will simply state the problem. You are free to ask questions, but for God's sake, don't get me Off on any wild-goose chases. This is serious." Avalon said, "Go ahead, Tom. We will do our best to listen. " Trumbull said, with a certain w6ariness, "It involves a follow named Pochik. I've got to tell you a little about him in order to let you understand the problem but, as is usual in these cases, I hope you don't mind if I tell you nothing that isn't relevant. "In -the first place. he's from Eastern Europe, from someplace in Slovenia, I think, and he came here at about fourteen. He taught himself English, went to night school and to University Extension, working every step of the way. He worked as a waiter for ten years, while he was taking his various courses, and you know what that means.-Sorry, Henry. " Henry said, tranquilly, "It is not necessarily a pleasant occupation. Not everyone waits on the Black Widowers, Mr. Trumbull, "Thank you, Henry. That's very diplomatic of you.However, he wouldn't have made it, if it weren't plain. from the start that he was a mathematical wizard. He was the kind of young man that no mathematics professor in his right mind wouldn't have moved heaven and earth to keep in school. He was their claim to a mark in the history booksthat they had taught Pochik. Do you understand?" Avalon said, "We understand, Tom. Trumbull said, "At least, that's what they tell -me He's working for the government now, which is where I come in. They tell me he's something else. They tell me he's in a class by himself. They tell me he can do things no one else can. They tell me they've got to have him, I don't even know what he's working on, but they've got to have him. Rubin said,, "Well, they've got him, haven't they? He hasn't been kidnapped and hijacked back across the Iron Curtain, has he?" "No, no,"" said Trumbull, "nothing like that. It's a lot more irritating. Look, apparently a great mathematician can be an idiot in every other respect. " "Literally an idiot?" asked Avalon. "Usually idiots savants have remarkable memories and can play remarkable tricks in computation, but that is far from being any kind" of mathematician, let alone a great one. "No, nothing like that, either.-" Trumbull was perspiring and-paused ta mop at his forehead. "I mean he's childish. He's not really learned in anything but mathematics and that's all right. Mathematics is what we want out of him. The trouble is that he feels backward, he feels stupid. Damn it, he feels inferior, and when he feels too inferior, he stops orking and hides in his room." Gonzalo said, "So what's the problem? Everyone just has to keep telling him how great he is all the time, " "He's dealing with other mathematicians and they're almost as crazy as he is. One of them, Sandino, hates being second best and every once in a while he gets Pochik into a screaming fit. He's got a sense of humor, this Sandino, and he likes to call out to Pochik, "Hey, waiter, bring the check." Poe ik, can't ever learn to take it." I- Drake said, "Read this Sandino the riot act. Tell him you'll dismember him if he tries anything like that again." "They did," said Trumbull, !"or at least as far as they quite dared to. They don't want to lose Sandino either, In any case, the horseplay stopped but somethi much worse Ing happened.-You see there's something called, if I've got it right; "Goldbach's conjecture."" IRoger Halsted galvanized into a position of sharp interest "at once. "Sure," he said. "Very famous." "You know about it?" said Trumbull. Halsted stiffened. "I may just teach algebra to junior high school students, but yes, I know about Goldbach's conjecture. Teaching a junior high school student doesn't make me a junior- "All right. I apologize. It was stupid of me," said Trumbull. "And since you're a mathematician, you can be temperamental too. Anyway, can you explain Goldbach's conjecture?-Because I'm not sure I can. " ) "Actually," said Halsted, "it's very simple. Back in 1742, 1 think, a Russian mathematician, Christian Goldbach, stated that he believed every even number greater than 2 could, bewritten as the sum of two primes, where a prime is any number that can't be divided evenly by any other number but itself and 1. For instance, 4 2 + 2 3 + 3; 8 3 + 5; 10 3 + 7; 12 5 + 7; and on, as far as you want to go. " Gonzalo said, "So what's the big deal?" "Goldbach wasn't able to prove it. And in the two hundred and something years since his time, neither has anyone else, The greatest mathematicians haven't been able to show that it's true. Gonzalo said, "So?" Halsted said patiently, "Every even number that has ever been checked always works out to be the sum of two . They've gone awfully high and mathematicians are it. convinced the conjecture is true--but no one can prove Gonzalo,said, "If they can't find any exceptions, doesn't that prove it?" "No, because there are always numbers higher than the highest we've checked "and besides we don't know all the prime numbers and can't, and the higher we go, then the harder it is to tell whether a particular number is prime or not. What is needed is a general proof that tells us we don't have to look for exceptions because there just aren't any. It bothers mathematicians that a problem can be stated so simply and seems to work out, too, and yet that it can't be proved.", Trumbull had been nodding his head. "All right, Roger, all night. We got it. But tell me, does it matter? Does it really matter to anyone who isn't a mathematician whether Goldbach's conjecture is true or not; whether there are any exceptions or not?" "No," said Halsted. "Not to anyone" who isn't a mathematicianr, -but to anyone who is and who manages either to prove or disprove Goldbach's conjecture, there is an immediate and permanent niche in the mathematical haI11 of bull shrugged.: "There you are. What Pochik's really doing is of great importance. I'm not sure whether it' for the Department, of Defense, -the Department of Energy, NASA, or what, but it's vital. What he's interested in, however, is Goldbach's conjecture, and for that he's been using a computer." "To try higher numbers?" asked Gonzalo. Halsted said,promptly, "No, that would do no good. These days, though, you can use computers on some pretty recalcitrant problems. It doesn't yield an elegant solution, but it is a solution. If you can reduce a problem to a finite number of possible situations---say, a million-you can program a computer to try every one of them. If every one of them checks out as it's supposed to, then you have your proof. They recently solved the four-color mapping problem that way; a problem as well, known and as recalcitrant as Goldbach's conjecture. "Good," said Trumbull, "then that's what Pochik's been doing. Apparently, he had worked out the solution to a particular lemma. Now what's a lemma?" , Halsted said, "It's a partway solution. If you're climbing a, mountain peak and you set up stations, at various levels, the lemmas are analogous to those stations and the solution to the mountain peak. " "If he solves the lemma, will he solve the conjecture?" "Not necessarily," said Halsted, "any more than you'll climb the mountain if you reach a particular station on the slopes.'But if you don't solve the lemma, you're not likely to solve the problem, at least not from that direction." "All right, then," said Trumbull, sitting back. "Well, Sandino came up with the lemma first and sent -it in for publication. . Drake was bent over the table, listening closely. He said, "Tough luck for Pochik. Trumbull said, "Except that Pochik says it wasn't luck. He claims Sandino doesn't have the brains for it and couldn't have taken the steps he did independently; that it is asking too much of coincidence." Drake said, "That's a serious charge. Has Pochik got any evidence?" "No, of course not, The only way that Sandino could have stolen it from Pochik would have been to tap - the computer for Pochik's data and Pochik himself saysSandino couldn't have done that. "Why not?" said Avalon. "Because," said Trumbull, "Pochik used a code word. The code word has to be used to alert the computer, to a particular person's questioning. Without that code word, everything that went in with -the code is safely locked away. Avalon said, "It could be that Sandino learned the code word. "Pochik says that is impossible," said Trumbull. "He was afraid of theft, particularly with respect to Sandino, and he never wrote down the code word, never used it except when he was alone in the room. What's more, he used one that was fourteen letters- long, he says. Millions of trillions of possibilities, he says. No one could have guessed it, he says." Rubin said, "What does Sandino say?" "He says he worked it out himself. He rejects the claim of theft as the ravings of a madman. Frankly, one could argue that he's right. Drake said, "Well, let's consider. Sandino is a good mathematician and he's innocent till proven guilty. Pochik has nothing to support his claim and Pochik actually denies that Sandino could possibly have gotten the code word, which is the only way the theft could possibly have taken place. -1 think Pochik has to be wrong and Sandino right. ", Trumbull said, "I said one could argue that Sandino's right, but.the point is that Pochik won't work. He's sulking in his room and reading poetry and he -says he will never work again. He says Sandino has robbed him of his irnmortality and life means nothing to him without it.,, Gonzalo said, "If you need this guy so badly can you talk Sandino into letting him have his lemma?" "Sandino won't make the sacrifice and we can't make him unless we have reason to think that fraud was involved. If we get any evidence to that effect we can lean on him hard enough to squash him flat.-But now listen, I think it's possible Sandino " did steal it. Avalon said, "How?" "By getting the code word. If I knew what the code word was, I'm sure I could figure out a logical way in which San.dino could have found it out or guessed it. Pochik, however simply won't let me have -the" code word. He shrieked at me when I asked. I explained why, but he said it was impossible. He said Sandino did it some other waybut there is no other way." Avalon said, "Pochik wants an interpretation but he won't tell you the dream, and you have to figure out the dream first and then get the interpretation." "Exactly! Like the Chaldean wise men." "What are you going, to do?" "I'm going to try to do what Sandino must have done. I'm going to try to figure out what the fourteen-letter code word was and present it to Pochik. If I'm right, then it will .be clear that what I could do, Sandino could do, and that the lemma was very likely stolen. There was a silence around the table and then GonZalo said, "Do you think you can do it, Tom?" I "I don't think so. That's why I've brought the problem here. I want us all to try. I told Pochik I would,call him before 10:30 Pm. tonight "-Trumbull looked at his watch--" with the code word just to show him it could be broken. I presume he'smaiting at the phone." Avalon said, "And if we don't get it?" "Then we have no reasonable way of supposing the lerrima was stolen and no really ethical way of trying to force it away from Sandino. But at least we'll be no worse Avalon said, "Then you go first. You've clearly been thinking about it longer than w-e have, and it's. your line of work.," Trumbull cleared his throat. "All right. My reasoning is that if Pochik doesn't write the thing down, then he's got to, remember it. There-, are some people with trick- memories and such a talent is fairlycommon among mathematicians. However, even great mathernaticiansdon't always have the ability to remember long strings of disjointed symbols and, upon questioning of his coworkers, it would seem quite certain that Pochik's memory is an ordinary one. He can't rely on being able to remember the code unless it's-easy to remember. "That would limit it to some common phrase, or some regular progression that you couldn't possibly forget. Suppose it were ALBERT EINSTEIN, for instance. That's fourteen letters and there would be, no fear of forgetting it. Or SIR ISAAC NEWTON, or ABCDEFGHIJKLMN, or, for that matter, NMLKJIHGFEDCBA. If Pochik tried something like this, it could be that Sandino tried various obvious combinations and one of them worked." Drake said, "If that's true, then we haven't a prayer of solving the problem. Sandino might have tried any number of different possibilities over a period of months. One of them finally worked. If he got it by hit-and-miss over a long time, we have no chance in getting the right one in an hour and a half, without even trying any of them on the computer.,, I "There's that, of course," said Trumbull, "and it may well be that Sandino had been working on the problem for months. Sandino pulled the waiter routine on Pochik last June, and Pochik, out of his mind, screamed at him that he would show him when his proof was ready. Sandino may have, put this together with Pochik's frequent use, of the computer and gotten to work. He may have had months, at that. " "Did Pochik say something on that occasion that gave the code word away?" asked Avalon. "Pochik swears all he said was "I'll show you when the proof is ready," but who knows? Would Pochik, emember his, own exact words when he was beside himself")"" Halsted said, "J" rn surprised that Poehik didn't 6ylo-beat up this Sandino. Trumbull said, "You wouldn't be surprised if YOU knew" them. Sandino is built like a football player and Pochik we s 110 pounds with his clothes on." Gonfalo said, suddenly, "What's this guy's first name?" Mumbull said, "Vladinuir." Gonzalo paused a while, with all eyes upon him, and then he said, "I knew it. VLADIN41R POCHIK has fourteen letters. He used his own name. Rubin said, "Ridiculous. It would be the first combination anyone would try. "Sure, the purloined letter bit. It would be so obvious that no one would think to use it. Ask him. " Trumbull shook his head. "No. I can't believe he'd use that." Rubin said, thoughtftilly, "Did you say he was sitting in his room reading poetry?" "Yes. "Is that a passion of his? Poetry? I thought you said, that outside mathematics he was not particularly educated. " Trumbull said, sarcastically, "You don't'have to be a Ph.D. to read poetry" Avalon said, mournfully, "You would have to be an idiot to read modern poetry." "That's a point," said Rubin. "Does Pochik read contemporary poetry?" Trumbull said, "It never occurred to me to ask. When I visited him, he was reading from a book of Wordsworth's poetry, but that's all I can say." "That's enough," said Rubin. "If he likes Wordsworth then he doesn't like contemporary poetry. No one can read that fuddy-duddy for fun and like the stuff they turn out these days. "So? What difference does it make?" asked Trumbull. ,"The older poetry with its rhyme and rhythm is easy to remember and it could make for code words. The code word could be a fourteen-letter passage from one of Wordsworth's poems, possibly a common one: LONELY AS A CLOUD has fourteen letters. Or any fourteen-letter combinations from such lines, as, "The child is father of the man" or "trm ling clouds of glory" or "Milton!thou shouldst be living at this hour.'---Or maybe from some other poet.of'the Avalon said,."Even if we restrict ourselves to passages from the classic and romantic poets, that's a huge field to guess from." Drake said, "I repeat. It's an impossible task. We don't have the time. to try them all. And we can't tell one from another without trying. Halsted said, "It's even more impossible than you think, Jim. I don't think the. code word was in English words." Trumbull said, frowning, "You mean he used his native ".No, I mean he use a random collection of letters. You say that Pochik said the ode word was unbreakable because there were millions of tril ns of possibilities in a fourteenletter combination. Well, suppose that the first letter could be any of the twenty-six, and the second letter could be any of the twenty-six, and the third letter, and so on. In that case the total number of combinations would be 26 X 26 X 26, and so on. You would have to get the product of fourteen 26's multiplied together and the result would be"-he took out his pocket calculator and manipulated it for a while-- "about 64 million trillion different possibilities. "Now,if you used an,English phrase or a phrase in any reasonable European language, most of the letter combinations simply don't occur. You're not going to have an HGF or a QXZ or an LLLLC. If we include only possible letter combinations in words then we might have trillions of possibilities, probably legs, but certainly not millions of trillions. Pochik, being a mathematician, wouldn't say , a an ,millions of trillions unless he meant exactly that, so I expect the code word is a random set of letters. Trumbull said, ","He doesn't have the kind of memory-"" Halsted said, "Even a normal memory will handle fourteen random letters if you stick to it long enough. " Gonzalo said, "Wait awhile. If there are only so many combinations, you could use a computer The computer could try. every possible combination and stop 4t the one that unlocks it." Halsted said, "You don't realize how big a number like 64 million trillion really is, Ma-n'o. Suppose you arranged to have the computer test a billion different combinations every second. It would take two thousand solid years of work, day and night, to test all the possible combinations.", Gonzalo said, "But you wouldn't have to test them all. The night one might come up in the first two hours. Maybe the code was AAAAAAAAAAAAAA and it happened to be the first one the computer tried. " "Very unlikely," said Halsted. "He wouldn't use a solidA code any more than he would use his own name. Besides Sandino is enough of a mathematician not to start a 1COMputer attempt he would know could take a hundred lifetimes. Rubin said, thoughtfully, "If he did use a random code'l bet it wasn't truly random. Avalon said, "How do you mean, Manny?" "I mean if he doesn't have a superlative memory and he didn't write it down, how could he go over and over it in his mind in order to memorize it? Just repeat fourteen random letters to yourself and see if you can be confident of repeating them again in the exact order immediately afterward. And even if he had worked out a random collection of letters and managed to memorize it, it's clear .he had very little self-confidence in anything except mathematical reasoning. Could he face the possibility of not being able to retrieve his own information because he had forgotten the code?" "He could start all over, " said Trumbull. "With a new random code? And forget that, too?" said Rubin. "No. Even if the code word seems random, I'll bet Pochik has some foolproof way of remembering it, and if we can figure out the foolproof way, we'd have the answer. In fact, if Pochik would give us the code word, we'd see how he memorized it and see how Sandino broke the code. Trumbull said, "And if Nebuchadnezzar would only- have remembered the -dreapm, wise men could have interpreted it. Pochik woni-gi-ve us the code word, and if we work it with hindsight, we'll never be sufficiently sure Sandino cracked it without hindsight.-All right, we'll have to give it up. "It may not be necessary to give it up," said Henry, suddenly. "I think-" All turned to Henry, expectantly. "Yes, Henry," said Avalon. "I have a wild guess. It may be all wrong. Perhaps it might be possible to call up Mr. Pochik, Mr. Trumbull, and ask him if the code word is WEALTMDITEBIAT," said Henry. Trumbull said, "What?" Halsted said, his eyebrows high, "That's some wild guess, all right. Why that?" Gonzalo said, "It makes no sense." No one could recall ever having seen Henry blush, but he was distinctly red now. He said, "If I may be excused. I don't wish to explain my reasoning until the combination is tried. If I am wrong, I would appear too foolish.-And, on second thought, I don't. urge it be tried." Trumbull said, "No, we have nothing to lose. Could you write down that. letter combination, Henry?" "I have already done so, sir." Trumbull looked at it, walked over to the phone in the corner of the room, and dialled. He waited for four rings,, which could be clearly heard in the breath-holding silence of the room. There -was then a click, and a sharp, highpitched "Hello?" "Trumbull said, "Dr. Pochik? Listen. I'm going to read some letters to you-No, Dr. Pochik, I'm not saying I've worked out the code. This is an exper- It's an experiment sir. We may be wrong-No, I can't say how-Listen, W, E, A, I- Oh, good God." He placed his hand over the mouthpiece. "The man is having a fit. " "Because it's right or because it's wrong?" asked Rubin. "I don't know." Trumbull put the phone back, to his- ear. Dr. Pochik,Dr. Pochik. The, rest is'he consulted the paper-"T, M, D, I, T, E, B, I, A O T" He -listened. c "Yes, sir, I think Sandino cracked it, too, the same WAY we did. We'll have a meeting with you and Dr. Sandino, and we'll settle everything. Yes--please, Dr. Pochik, we will do our best." Trumbull hung up, heaved an enormous sigh, then said, "Sandino is going to think Jupiter fell on him.-All right, Henry, but if you don't tell us how you got that, you won't have to wait for Jupiter. I will kill you personally. " , "No need, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry. "I will tell you at once. I merely listened to all of you. Mr. Halsted pointed out it would have to be some random collection of letters. Mr. Rubin said, backing my own feeling in the matter, that there bad to be some system of remembering in that case. Mr. Avalon, early in the evening, was playing the game of alliterative oaths, which pointed up the importance of initial letters. You yourself mentioned Mr. Pochik's liking for old-fashioned poetry like that of Wordsworth. "It occurred to me then that fourteen was the number of lines in a sonnet, and if we took the initial letters of each line of some sonnet we would have an apparently random collection of fourteen letters that could not be forgotten as long as the sonnet was memorized or could, at worst, be looked up. "The question was: which sonnet? It was very likely to be a well-known one, and Wordsworth had written some that were. In fact, Mr. Rubin mentioned the first line of one of them: "Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour." That made -me think of Milton, and it came to me that it had to be - his sonnet "On His Blindness" which as it happens, I know by, heart. Please note the first letters of the successive lines. It goes: "When I consider how my light. is spent Ere hatf my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, -lest he returning chide; "Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?" I fondly ask; But Patience, to prevent That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need Either man's work or his own gifts; who best hear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed And post o'er land and ocean without rest: Henry paused and said softly, "I think it is the most beautiful sonnet in the language, Shakespeare's not excepted, but that was not the reason I felt it must hold the answer. It was that Dr. Pochik had been a waiter and was conscious of it, and I am one, which is why I have memorized the sonnet. A foolish fancy, no doubt, but the last line, which I have not quoted, and which is perhaps among the most famous lines Milton ever constructed-11 "Go ahead, Henry," said Rubin. "Say it!"." "Thank you, sir," "said Henry, and then he said, solemnly, ""They also serve who only stand and wait."" Afterword. I have a feeling that titles are an important part of a story and I take considerable care in choosing one. In fact, I cannot start a story until I have chosen a title. However, I don't follow certain clever rules in making the choice. I don't really know what makes a title good-or the reverse. It's just a gut feeling with me. I pick one that seems to suit the story, and even add to it. And often Fred Darmay, the editor of EQMM, would disagree with me-and I would then disagree with him and restore my own title when I put the story into a collection. On the other hand, sometimes Fred would choose a title that is an improvement (or so it would seem to me) and, since I am not a willfully stubborn man, I would go along with him. For instance, I called the story you have just finished "Fourteen Letters" which is, after all, what it's about; but Fred, when it appeared in the May 5, 1980, issue of EQMM, called'it "Sixty Million Trillion Combinations," which is also what it's about; and Fred's is infinitely more dramatic so I accepted it-with my usual annoyance at myself for not having thought of it to begin with. The Woman in the Bar. The hits and outs of baseball did not, as a rule""disturb the equanimity (or lack of it) of a Black Widowers banquet. None of the Black Widowers were sportsmen in the ordinary sense of the word, although Mario Gonzalo was known to bet on the horses on occasion. Over the rack of lamb,. however, Thomas Trumbull brushed at his crisply waved white hair, looked stuffily discontented, and said, "I've lost all interest in baseball. Once they started shifting franchises, they broke up the kind of loyalties, you inherited from your father. I was a New Yorks Giants fan when I was a young man, as was my fathwer before me. The San Francisco Giants were strangers to me and as for the Mets, well, they're just not the same. " I"There are still the New York Yankees," said Geoffrey Avalon, deftly cutting meat away from bone and bending his dark eyebrows in concentration on the task, "and in my own town, we still have die Phillies, though we lost the Athletics. - "Chicago still has both its teams," said Mario Gonzalo, "and there are still the Cleveland Indians, the Cincinnati Reds, the St. Louis--" "It's not the same," said Tumbull, violently. "Even if I were to switch to the Yankees, half the teams they play are teams Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey never heard of. And now you have, each league in two divisions, with playoffs before the World Series, which becomes almost anticlimactic, and "a batting average of ."290 marks a slugger. Hell, I remember when you needed .350 if you were to stand a chance at cleanup position, Emmanuel Rubin listened ivith the quiet dignity he considered suitable to his position as host-at least until his guest turned to him and said, "Is Trumbull a baseball buff, Manny?" At that, Rubin reverted to his natural role and snorted loudly. His sparse beard bristled. "Who, Tom? He may have watched a baseball game on TV, but that's about it. He ,1hinks,a double is two jiggers of Scotch." rizalo said, "Come on, Manny, you think a pitcher holds milk. Rubin stared at him fixedly through his thick-lensed spectacles, arid then said, "It so happens I played a season of semi-pro baseball as shortstop in the late 1930s. " "And a shorter stop began Gonzalo and then stopped and reddened. Rubin's guest grinned. Though Rubin was only,five inches above the five-foot mark, the guest fell three inches short of that. He said, "I'd be a shorter stop if I plhyed. "" . Gonzalo, with a visible attempt to regain his poise, said, "You're harder to pitch to when you're less than average height, Mr. Just. There's that." "You're heavily underestimated in other ways, too, which is convenient at times," agreed Just. "And, as a matter of fact, I'm not much of a baseball buff myself. I doubt if I could tell a baseball from a golf ball in a dim light. Darius Just looked up sharply at this point. "Waiter," he said, "if you don't mind, I'll have milk rather than coffee." James Drake, waiting expectantly for his own coffee, said, "Is that just a momentary aberration, Mr. . Just, or don't you drink coffee?" "Don't drink it," said Just. "Or smoke, or drink alcohol. My mother explained it all to me very carefully. If I drank my milk and avoided bad habits, I would grow to be big and strong; so I did-and I didn't. At least, not big. I'm strong enough. It's all very un-American, I suppose, like not liking baseball. At -least you can fake liking baseball, though that can get you in trouble, too.-Here's the milk. How did that get there?" Gonzalo smiled. "That's our Henry. Noiseless and efficient. " Just sipped his milk contentedly. His facial features were small but alive and his eyes seemed restlessly aware of everything in the room. His shoulders were broad, as though they had been made for a taller man, and he carried himself like an athlete. Drake sat over his coffee, quiet and thoughtful, but when Rubin clattered his water glass with. his spoon, the quiet ended. Drake's hand was raised and he said, "Manny, may I do the honors?" "If you wish." Rubin turned to his guest. "Jim is one of the more reserved Black Widowers, Darius, so you can't expect his grilling to be a searching one. In fact, the only reason he's volunteering is that he's written a book himself and he wants to rub shoulders with other writers. " I Just's eyes twinkled with interest. "What kind of a book, Mr. Drake?" "Pop science,", said Drake, "but the questions go the other way.-Henry, since Mr. Just doesn't. drink, could you substitute ginger ale for the brandy. I don't want him to be at a disadvantage. "Certainly, Mr. Drake," murmured Henry, that miracle of waiters, "if Mr. Just would like that. With all due respect, however, it does not seem to me that Mr. Just is easily placed at a disadvantage." "We'll see," said Drake, darkly. "Mr. Just, how do you justify your existence?" Just laughed. "It justifies itself to me now and then when it fills me with gladness. As far as justification to the rest of the world is concerned, that can go hang.-With all due respect, as Henry would say. "Perhaps," said Drake, "the world will go hang even without your permission. For the duration of this evening, however, you must justify Iour existence to us by answering our questions. Now I have been involved with the Black Widowers for more than half of a reasonably lengthy existence and I can smell out remarks that are worth elaboration. You said that you could get in trouble if you faked the liking of baseball. I suspect you did once, and I would like to hear about it." Just looked surprised, and Rubin said, staring at his brandy, "I warned you, Darius. " "You know the story, do you, Manny?" said Drake. "I know there is one but I don't know the details " said ROin. "I warned Darius we'd have it out of hQ.1" Just picked up the caricature Mario Gonzalo had drawn of him. There was a face-splitting grin on it and arms with prodigious biceps were lifting weights. "I'm not a weight lifter, " he said. "It doesn't matter," said Gonzalo. "That is how I see you," " Weight lifting," said Just, "slows you. The successful attack depends entirely on speed-" " You're not being speedy answering my request," said Drake, lighting a cigarette. ""There is a story," said Just. "Good," said Drake. "But it's an unsatisfactory one. I can't supply any rationale, any explanation-" "Better and better. Please begin." "Very well," said Just- "I like to walk. It's an excellent way of keeping in condition and one night I had made my goal-the new apartment of a friend I hadn't seen in a while - I was to be there at 9 Pm., and it was a moderately long walk by night, but I don't much fear the hazards of city streets in the dark though I admit I do not seek out particularly dangerous neighborhoods. "However, I was early and a few'blocks from MY destination, I stopped at a bar. As I said, I don't drink, but I'm not an absolute. fanatic-about it and I will, on rare occaslons, drink a Bloody Mary "There was a baseball game on the TV when I entered, but the sound was turned low, which suited me. There weren,'t many people present, which also suited me. There were two. men at a table against the wall, and a woman on a stool at the bar itself. "I took the stool next but one to the woman, and glanced at her briefly after I ordered my drink. She was reasonably pretty, reasonably shapely, and entirely interesting. Pretty and shapely is all right-what's not to Uk"ut interesting goes beyond that and it can't be described easily. It's different for each person, and she was interesting in my fi-ame of reference. "Among my abstentions, women are not included. I even speculated briefly if it were absblutely necessary that I keep my appointment with my friend, who suffered under the disadvantage, under the circumstances, of being male. I "I caught her eye just long enough before looking away. Timing is everything and I am not without experience. Then I looked up at the TV and ;Watched for a while. You don't want to seem too eager. "She spoke. I was rather surprised. I won't deny I have a way with. women, despite my height, but my charm doesn't usually work that quickly. She said, "You seem to understand the garne." It was just make-talk. She couldn't possibly know my relationship with baseball from my glazed-eye stare at the set. "I turned, smiled, and said, "Second nature. I live and breathe it. "It was a flat lie, but if a woman leads, you go along with the lead. "She said, rather earnestly, "You really understandit7" She was looking.into my eyes as though she expected to read the answer on my retina. "I continued to follow and said, "Dear, there isn't a move in the game I can't read the motivations of. Every toss of the ball, every crack of the bat, every,stance of the fielder, is a note in a symphony I cWbear in -my head. " After all, 4'rn a writer; I can lay it on. "She looked puzzled. She looked at me doubtfully; then, briefly, authemen at the table. I glanced in their direction, They didn't-teem interested--until J noticed their eyes in the wall minor. They were watching our reflection. "I looked at her again and it was like a kaleidoscope shifting and suddenly making sense. She wasn't looking for a pickup, she was scared. It was in her breathing rate and in ,the,tension,of her hands. , 66 And she thought I was there to help her. She was expecting someone and she had spoken to me with that in mind. What I answered was close enough--by accident-4o make her think I might be the man, but not close enough to make her sure of it. "I said, "I'm leaving soon. Do you want to come along?" It sounded like a pickup, but I was offering to protect her if that was what she wanted. What would happen afterwardwell, who could tell? . "She looked at me unenthusiastically, I knew the look. It said: "You're five-foot-two; what can you do for meT "It's a chronic underestimate that plays into my hands. Whatever I do do is so much more than they expect that it assumes enormous proportions. I'm the beneficiary of a low baseline. "I smiled. I looked in the direction of die two men at the table, looked back, let my smile widen and said, "Don't worry. I "There were containers of cocktail amenities just behind the bar where she sat. She reached over for the maraschino cherries, took-a handful and twisted the stems off, then one by one flicked them broodingly toward me, keeping her eyes fixed on mine. "I didn't know what her game was. Perhaps she was just considering whether to take a chance on me and this was a nervous habit she always indulged in when at a bar. But I always say: Play along. "I had caught four and wondered how many she would flick at me,, and when the, barman would come over to rescue his supply, when my attention shifted. "One of the men who had been seated was now between the woman and myself, and was smiling at me without humor. I had been unaware of his coming. I was caught like an amateur, and the kaleidoscope suddenly shifted again. That's the trouble with kaleidoscopes. They keepshifting. "Sure the woman was afraid. She wasn't afraid of the men at the table. She was afraid of me. She didn't think I was a possible rescuer; she thought I was a possible spoiler. So she kept my attention riveted while one of her friends got in under my guard-and I had let it happen. "I shifted my attention to the man now, minutes after I should have done so. He had a moon face, dull eyes, and a heavy hand. That heavy hand, his right one, tested on my hand on the bar, pinning it Idown immovably. ""He said, "I think you're annoying the lady, chum." "He underestimated me, too; took me for what I was not. "You see, I've, never been any taller than I am now. When I was young I was, in point of fact, smaller and slighter. When I was nineteen, I would have had to gain five pounds to be a ninety-six-pound weakling. "The result you can guess. The chivalry and sportsmanship of young people is such that I was regularly beaten up to the cheers of the multitude. I did not find it inspiring. "From nineteen on, therefore, I was subscribing to buildyourself-u'p courses. I struggled with chest expanders. I took boxing lessons at the Y. Bit by bit, I've studied every one of the martial arts. It didn't make me any taller, not one inch, but I grew wider and thicker and stronger. Unless I run into a brigade, or a gun, I don't get beaten up. "So the fact that my left arm was pinned did not bother me. I said-, "Friend, I don't like having a man hold my hand, so I think I will have to ask you to remove it." I had my own right hand at eye level, palm up, something that might have seemed a gesture of supplication. "He showed his teeth and said, "Don't ask anything, pal. I'll ask." "He. had his chance. You must understand that I don't fight to kill, but I do fight to maim:-Ilm not interested in breaking a hold; Ivant to be sure there won't be another one: "My hand Hashed across between us. Speed is of the essence, gentlemen, and my nails scraped sideways across his throat en route, as the arc of my hand brought its edge down upon his wrist. Hard! "I doubt that I broke his wrist that time, but it would be days, perhaps weeks, before he would be able to use that tandlon someone else as he had on me. My hand was free in a moment. The beauty of the stroke, however, was that he could not concentrate on the smashed wrist. His throat had to be burning and he had to be able to feel the stickiness of blood there. It was just a superficial wound, literally a scratch, but it probably frightened him more than the pain in his wrist did. -He doubled up, his left hand on his throat, his right arm dangling. He was moanig. "It was all over quickly, but time was running out. The second man was approaching, so was the bartender, and a newcomer, was in the doorway. He was large and wide and I was in no doubt that he was a member of the charming group I had run into. "The risks were piling up and the fun flattening out, so I walked out rapidly-right past the big fellow, who didn't react quickly enough, but stood there, confused and wondering, for the five seconds I needed to push past and out. "I didn't think they'd report the incident to the police, somehow. Nor did I think I'd be followed, but I waited for a "while to see. I was on a street with row houses, each with its flight- of steps leading to the main door well above street level. I stepped into one of the yards and into the shadow near the grillwork door at the basement level of a house that had no lights showing. "No one came out of the barroom. They weren'i after me. They weren't sure who I was and they still couldn't believe that anyone as short as I was could be dangerous. It was -the providential underestimate that had done well for me countless, times. "So I moved briskly along on my original errand, listening for the sound of footsteps behind me or the shifting of shadows cast by the streetlights. "I wasn't early any longer and I arrived on the corner where my friend's apartment house was located without any need for further delay. The green light glimmered and I crossed the street, and then found matters were not as straightforward as I had expected. "The apartment house was not an only child but was a member of a large family of identical siblings, I had never visited the complex before and I wasn't sure in which particular building I was to find my friend. There seemed no directory, no kiosk with a friendly information guide. There seemed the usual assumption underlying everything in New York that if you weren't bom witlithe knowledge of how to locate your destination, you had no business having one. "The individual buildings each had their number'displayed, but discreetly-in a whisper. Nor were they illuminated by the glint of the streedights, so finding them was an adventure. "One tends to wander at random at first, trying to get one's bearings. Eventually, I found a small sign with an arrow directing me into an inner courtyard with the promise that the number I wanted was actually to be found there. "Another moment and I Would have plunged in when I remembered that I was, or just conceivably might be, a marked man. I looked back, in the direction from which I had come. "I was spared the confusion of crowds. Even though it was not long,after 9 Pm., the street bore the emptiness characteristic of night in any American city of the Universal Automobile Age. There were automobiles, to be sure, in an unending stream, but up the street I had walked, I could see only three people in the glow of the streetlights, two men and woman. "I could not see faces, or details. of clothing, for though I have 20/20 vision; -fseeiia better thaii that. However, one -Of the men was tall and large and his outline was irresistibly reminiscent of the man in the doorway whom I had dodged z-past In leaving the bar. "They had been waiting for him, of course, and now they had emerged. They would probably have come out sooner, I thought, but there had been the necessity of taking care of the one I had damaged and, I supposed, they had left him behind. "Nor, I gathered, were they coming in search of me. Even from a distance I could tell their attention was not on something external to the group, as though they were searching for someone. Attention was entirely internal. The two men were on either" side of the woman and were hurrying her along. It seemed to me that she was reluctant to move, that she held back, that she was being urged forward. "And once again, the kaleidoscope shifted. She was a woman in distress after all. She had thought I was her rescuer and I had left her,cold-and still in distress. 1.1 ran across -the avenue against the lights, dodging cars, and racing toward them. Don't get me wrong. I am not averse to defending myself; I rather enjoy it as anyone would enjoy something he does well. Just the same I am not an unreasoning hero. I do not seek out a battle for no reason. I am all forjustice, purity, and righteousness, but who's to say which side, if either, in any quarrel represents those virtues? "A personal angle is something else, and in this case, I had been asked for help and 1, had quailed. "Oh, I quailed. I admit I had honestly decided the woman was not on my side and needed no help, but I didn't really stay to find out. It was that large man I was ducking, and I had to wipe out that disgrace. "At least that's what I decided in hot blood. If I had had time to think, or to let the spasm of outrage wear off, I might have just visited my friend. Maybe I would have called. the police from a street phone without leaving my name and then visited my friend. -But it was- hot-blood, and Iran toward trouble, wtighing the odds very skimpily. "They were no longer on the street, but I had wen which "I gate they had entered, and they had not gone up the steps. chased into the front yard after them and seized the grillwork door that led to the basement apartment. It came open but there was a wooden door beyond that did not. The Window blinds were down but there was a dim fight behind them. "I banged at the wooden door furiously but there was no answer. If I had to break it down, I would be at a disadvantage. Strength, speed, and skill are not as good at breaking down a door as sheer mass is, and mass I do not have. "I banged'again and then kicked at the knob. -If it were the wrong apartment, it was breaking and entry, which it also was if it was the right apartment. The door trembled at my kick, but held. I was about to try again, wondering if some neighbor had decided to get sufficiently involved to call the police-when the door opened. It was the large man-which meant it was the right apartment. "I backed away. He said, "You seem uncomfortably anxious to get in, sir." He had a rather delicate tenor voice and the tone of an educated man. "I said, "You have a woman here. I want to see her." ""We do not have a woman here. She has us here . This is a woman's apartment and we are here by her invitation." ""I want to see her." ""Very well, then, come in and meet her." He stepped back. "I waited, weighing the risks,--or I tried to, at any rate, but an unexpected blow from behind sent me staggering forward. The large man seized my arm and the door closedbehind. me. "Clearly, the second man had gone one floor upward, come out the main door, down the stairs and behind me. I should have been aware of him, but I-wasn't. I fall short'6f superman standards frequently. , "The large man led me into a living room. It was dimly lit. He said, "As you see, sir --- our hostess." "She was there. It was the woman from the bar but this time the kaleidoscope stayed put. The look she gave me was unmistakable. She saw me as a rescuer who was failing her. ."Now, " said the large man, "we have been polite to you although you treated my friend in the bar cruelly. We have merely asked you in when we might have hurt you. In response, will you tell us who you are and what you are doing here? "He was right. The smaller man did not have to push me in. He might easily have knocked me out, or done worse. I presume, though, that they were puzzled by me. They didn't know my part in it and they had to find out. "I looked about quickly. The smaller man remained behind me, moving as I did. The large man, who must have weighed 250 pounds, with little of it actually fat, remained quietly in front of me. Despite what happened in the bar, they still weren't afraid of ine. It was, once again, the advantage of small size. "I said, "This young woman and I have a date. We'll leave and you two continue to make yourself at home here." "He said, "That is no answer, sir." "He nodded and I saw the smaller man move out of the corner of my eye. I lifted my arms to shoulder level as he seized me about the chest. There was no use allowing my arms to be pinned if I could avoid it. The smaller man held tightly, but it would have taken more strength than he had at his disposal to break my ribs. I waited for the correct positioning and I hoped the large man would give it to me. "He said, "I do need an answer, sir, and if I do not get one very quickly, I will have to hurt you." "He came closer, one hand raised to slap. "What followed took less time than it will to explain but it went something like this. My arms went up and back, and around the smaller man's head to make sure I had a firm backing, and then my feet went up. -'.'My left shoe aimed at the groin of the. large gentleman and the man'doesn't live who won't flinch from that. The large man's hips jerked backward and his head autornatically bent downward and encountered the heel of my right shoe moving upward. It's not an easy maneuver, but I've practiced it enough times. "As soon as my heel made contact, I tightened my arm grip and tossed my head backward. My head and that of the smaller man made hard contact and I didn't enjoy it at all, but the back of my head was not as sensitive as the nose of the man behind me. "From the woman's point of view, I imagine, there could be no clear vision of what had happened. One moment, I se Iemed helplessly immobilized and then, after a flash of movement, I was free, while both of my assailants were howling. "The smaller man was on the floor with one hand over, his face. I stamped on one ankle hard to discourage him from attempting to get up. No, it was not Marquis of Queensberry rules, but there were no referees around. - "I then turned to face the larger man. He brought his hands away from his face. I had caught him on the cheekbone and he was bleeding fteely. I was hoping hehad no fight left in him, but hedid. With one eye rapidly puffing shut, he came screaming toward me in a blind rage. "I was in no danger from his mad rush as long as I could twist away, but once he got a grip on me in his present mood, I would be in serious trouble. I backed away, twisted. I backed away, twisted again. I waited for a chance to hit him again on the same spot. "Unfortunately, I was in a strange room. I backed away, twisted, and fell heavily over a hassock. He was on me, his knee on my thighs, his hands on my throat, and there was no way I could weaken that grasp in time. "I could hear the loud thunk even through the blood roaring in my ears and the large man fell heavily on mebut his grip on my throat had loosened. I wiggled out from below with the greatest difficulty thoughthe woman did her best to lift him. She said, "I had to wait, for him -to stop moving." There was a candle holder lying new him, a heavy wrought-ironpiece. "I remained on the floor, trying to catch my breath. I gasped out, "Have you killed himT ""I wouldn't care if I did," she said, indifferently, "but he's still breathing." "She wasn't exactly your helpless heroine. It was her . apartment so she knew where to find the clothesline, and she was tying both of them at the wrists and ankles very efficiently. The smaller man screamed when she tightened the ropes at his ankle, but she didn't turn a hair. "She said, "Why the hell did you mess up the response in the bar when I asked you about baseball? And why the hell didn't you bring people with you? I admit you're a pintsized windmill, but couldn't you have brought one backupT "Well, I don't really expect gratitude, but- - "I said, "Lady, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know about the baseball bit, and I don't go about in squadrons." ""She looked at me sharply. "Don't mo Ive. I'm making a phone call." "The policeT ""After a fashion." "She went into the other room to call. For privacy, I suppose. She trusted me to stay where I was and do nothing. Or thought me stupid enough to do so. I didn't mind. I wasn't through resting. "When she came back, she said, "You're not one of us, What was that remark about baseballT ,"I said, "I don't know who us is, but I'm not one of anybody. My remark about baseball was a remark. What e1seT "She said, "Then how-Well, you had better leave. There's no need for you to be imixed up in this. Ill take care of everything. Get out and walk some distance before you hail a taxi, If a car pulls up at, this building while you're within earshot, don't turn around and for God's sake, don't turn back." "She was pushing and I was out in the yard when she said, "But at least you knew what. I was telling you in the bar. I am glad you were here and waiting." "At last! Gratitude! I said, "Lady, I don't know what " but the door was closed behind me. "I made it over very quickly to my friend's apartment. He said nothing about my being an hour late or being a little the worse for wear and I said nothing about what had happened. "And what did happen was nothing. I never, heard a thing. No repercussions. And that's why it's an unsatisfactory story. I don't know who the people were, what they were doing, what it was all about. I don't know whether I was helping the good guys or the bad guys, or whether there were any good guys involved. I may have bumped into two, competing hands of terrorists "playing with, each other. - -"But that's the story about my faking a knowledge of baseball. When Just was done, a flat and rather unpleasant silence hung over the room, a silence that seemed to emphasize that for the first time in living memory a guest had told a rather long story without ever having been interrupted. Finally, Trumbull heaved a weary sigh and, said, "I trust you won't be offended, Mr. Just, if I tell you that I think you are pulling our leg. You've invented a very dramatic story for our benefit, and you've entertained us--me, at leastbut I can't accept it. Just shrugged, and didn't seem offended. "I've embroidered it a little, polished it up a bit-I'm a writer, after all-but it's true enough. Avalon cleared his throat. "Mr. Just, Tom Trumbull is sometimes hasty in coming to conclusions but in this case I am forced to agree with him. As you say, you're a writer, I'm sorry to say I have read- none of your works but I imagine you write what are called tough-guy detective stories. "As a matter of fact, I don't," said Just, with tompos tire. ,"I have written four novels that are9 I hope, realistic, but am not unduly violent. "It's:a fact, Jeff," said Rubin, grinning" Gonzalo said, "Do you believe him, Manny?" Rubin ghrugged. "I've never found Darius to be a liar, and I know something happened, but it's hard for a, writer to resist the temptation to fictionalize for effect. Forgive me, Darius, but I wouldn't swear to how much of it was ,true. " Just sighed. "Well, just for the record, is there anyone hem who believes I told you what actually happened?" The Black Widowers sat in an embarrassed silence, and then there was a soft cough from the direction of the sideboard. I "I hesitate to intrude, gentlemen," said Henry, "but despite the over-romantic nature of the story, it seems to me there is a chance that it is true. " "-'A chance?" said Just, smiling. "Thank you, waiter." "Don't underestimate the waiter," said Trumbull, stiffly. "If he thinks there is a chance the story is true, I'm prepared to revise my opinion.-What's your masoning, Henry?" "If the story were fiction, Mr. Trumbull, it would be neady tied; This one has an interesting loose end which, if it makes sense, cannot be accidental.-Mr. Just, just at the end of the story, you told us that the woman remarked at her relief that you knew what she was telling you in the bar. What had she told you?" Just said, "This is a loose end, because she didn't tell me a darim thing. I could easily make something up, if I weren't telling the truth. " ? "or you could let it remain loose now," said Halsted, "for the sake of verisimilitude." Henry said, "And yet if your story is accurate, she may indeed have told you, and the fact that you don't understand that is evidence of its truth. "You speak in riddles, Henry," said Just. Henry said, "You did not, in your story, mention'precise locations; neither the location of the bar, nor of the apartment,complex in which your friend lives. There are a -.:number of such apartment complexes in Manhattan. "I know," interposed Rubin, "I live in one of them." "Yours, Mr. Rubin," said Henry, "is on "West End Avenue. I suspect that the apartment complex of Mr. Just's friend is on First Avenue." IJust looked astonished. "It is. Now how did you know that?" Henry said, -Consider the opening scene of your story. The woman at the bar knew she was in the hands of her enemies and would not be allowed to leave except under escort. The two men in the bar were merely waiting for their large confederate. They would then take her to her, apartment for reasons of their own. The woman thought you were one of her group, felt you could do nothing in the bar, but wanted you on the spot, near her apartment, with reinforcements. "She therefore flicked maraschino cherries at you---an apparently harmless and, possibly, flirtatious gesture, though even that roused the suspicions of the two men, in the bar. 11 Just said, "What of that?" Henry said, "She had to work with what she could find. The cherries were small spheres-little balls-and she sent you four, one at a time. You had claimed to be a baseball fanatic. She sent you four balls, and, in baseball parlanceas almost anyone knows-four balls, that is, four pitches outside the strike zone, means the batter may advance to firstbase. More colloquially, he "walks to first." That's what she was telling you and you, quite without understanding this, did indeed walk to First Avenue for reasons of your own. Just looked stupefied. "I never thought of that." "It's because You didn't and yet incorporated the incident into the account," said Henry, "that I think your story is essentially true. " Afterword. I once wrote a mystery novel entitled Murder at the ABA in which my hero was a little guy named Darius Just. I liked the book very much. . (I usually like my own books very much, which is a lucky thing. Can you imagine how miserable my life would be if I disliked my books, considering how many of them I write?) I particularly liked Darius and I kept planning to write other books in the series, but somehow I never got the chance. In the first place there were so many nonfiction books I had to write and then, when the time came when Doubleday grabbed me by the throat and told me I had to write more fiction, they made it plain that by fiction they meant science fiction. So my.,hopes for additional Darius Just novels went glimmering-for a while anyway. But then it occurred to me that there was nothing to prevent me from putting Darius into an occasional short story and I thought up "The Woman in the Bar" specifically for him. When Fred published the story in the June 30, 1980, issue of EQMM, by the way, he called it "The Man Who Aretended to Like Baseball" and that is an example of a title I didn't like. Too long and too off-center in my opinion. So back to "The Woman in the Bar. The Driver. Roger Halsted looked,over his drink and said in his soft voice, "Successful humor has its incongruity. That is why people laugh. The sudden change in point of view does it and the more sudden and extreme the change, the louder the laugh." His voice took on. the slight stutter that marked his more earnest moments. James Drake thought about it. "Well, maybe, Roger. There ar6 lots of theories about humor, but for my money, once you've dissected a joke, you're about where you are when you've dissected a frog. It's dead.," "But you've learned something.-Think of ajoke." Drake said, "I'm trying to." Mario Gonzalo, resplendent in a turtlenecked shirt in rich purple under a beige jacket, said, "Try Manny Rubin," Emmanuel Rubin, having glowered at Gonzalo, and turned away with a look of unmistakable pain, said, "I claim no expertise in humor. My writing is invariably serious. Gonzalo said, "I'm not talking about your writing. I'm talking about you. Rubin said, "I'd answer that, Mario, but dressed as you are, you're taking an unfair advantage. I keep fighting nausea. The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers was in full swing and Henry, the indispensable waiter at these functi9ps, announced that dinner was served. "Easy on the food, Manny," said Mario, "it's roast beef and Yorkshire pudding today, Henry tells me, and we don't want trouble with your delicate intestines and gross wit. "Writing your own material, 1 see," Said Rubin. "Too, bad.-Ah, there's Tom. Tom Trumbull's white thatch of hair showed as he moved bastily up the stairs, follow- ety ihp- rest of him. "Apol- .ogies, gentlemen, minor family crisis, all taken care of and-Thank you, Henry." He seized his Scotch and soda gratefully. "You haven't begun eating yet?" Geoffrey Avalon said gravely, "Roger is buttering hi's roll "but, that's as far as we've gotten." Drake said, "Tom Trumbull, meet my guest, Kurt "Magnus. He's an exobiologist. I Trumbull shook hands. "Pardon me, Mr. Magnus. I didn't quite get Jim's job description. " Magnus was tall and thin, with lank black hair worn at medium length and a boyish face. He spoke'quickly, but with intervals of careful enunciation. "Exobiologist, Mr. Trumbull, E-x-o, a Greek prefix meaning "outside." Personally, I prefer "xenobiologist," which sounds as though it starts with a z, but is x-e-n-o from a Greek word meaning "Stranger." Either way it's the study of life on other worlds. "Like Martians," said Mumbull. "Or Mario in his shirt," said Rubin. Magnus smiled. "The subject evokes laughter, I admit. There is a certain incongruity in a field of study that includes no known cases and,,as Mr. Halsted was saying, incongruity is the very stuff of humor." . ""Exactly," said Halsted, swallowing a mouthful of kidney-on-toast. "I'll give you an example.-Jack is sitting glurrily in a bar, staring at his beer. Bob walks in, looks at Jack and says, "What's the matterT Says, Jack, "My wife ran away with my best friend." Bob says, "What are you talking about? I'm your best friend." And Jack says, "Not anymore. There was general laughter and even Trumbull condescended to smile. 39 Jac" k'You-sep,", said. Halsted,, "you're allowed to assume -tha"t is, weighted down with grief until the last three -We got 4,R,()g,,- said Rubin. "No need to belabor it," "Or tAe ihe,follwing-" "Praise the Lord," said Trumbull when Drake rattled his spoon on the water glass. "Henry,, make mine a double brandy.---Oh, you haw!" Yes,, Sir, said Henry, bland y, "I anticipated the need when Mr. Halsted began to quote limericks. " "I've already Iremembered you in my will, Henry, and more of these sessions will hasten your role as beneficiary.-What?" "I said," said Drake, patiently, "that I would like you to do the honors, Tom, and grill our exobiologist." "My pleasure," said Trumbull, "if I maybe allowed one invigorating sip.-Ah. Now, Mr. Magnus, it is usual for us to begin by asking a guest to justify his existence but I Will make the question less general.-How does your role as exobiologist justify your existence?" Magnus smiled "Would you believe the glory of seeking knowledge?" "For yourself, certainly, and for me, maybe-but your researchesdraw heavily on the public purse. How do you justify your existence to the taxpayer?" "I wish I could, Mr. Trumbull. I wish I could say to him loudly enough to be,heard-'Sir, the world pays out 400 billion dollars each year for its various sets of armed forces in order to buy nothing but the increasing certainty of destruction. Let us have one tenth of one percent of that to gain what may be fundamental knowledge concerning the Universe , 7 Avalon shook his head severely and said, "That won!t work, Dr. Magnus. The public sees national defense as their Security against invasion and oppression by hated foreigners. They may be wrong, but what have you to offer, instead? What if you do discover life, on Mars? Who cares? Why should anyone care?" Magnus sighed. "Somehow I didnt "expect- Philistiniarn here. Avalon said, "I plead the Philistine case on behalf of my exorbitant tax bill. What is your answer?" - "That your tax bill is exorbitant for -reasons that have nothing to do with exobiology or scienceand a great deal to do with folly and corruption, worldwide. -If we did discover life on Mars, which, since the Viking landings, is unlikely, then no matter how simple it is, it will offer us for observation, for the first time, a rife structure not in any way related to ourselves. ""All life forms on Earth, plant, animal, bacterial, and viral, are built around the same scheme; all the two million or so species are interconvertible in the sense that any one of them can be part of a food chain that ends in any other. Martian life, however simple it might be, would instantly double the varieties of life we know, with results of pNossibly incalculable benefits to the biologist and, of course, to all of us. After all, the better we can understand life, the better our chances for such things iis disease cure and life extension. I I Rubin interposed. "But the fact is that there is probably "no life on Mars, however simple." . Magnus said, "The odds now are that there isn't." "Or anywhere in the Solar System." "Possibly not. "And if there were, it might after all be built on the same plan as is Earth life " "That is conceivable." "And if it isn't, the difference may not help us understand ourselves at all. "I would hate to believe that, but I suppose that might be so. Rubin said, "Then, playing the devil's advocate, wouldn't you say that the odds you offer aren't worth the money you ask?" Trumbull said, "Manny, it's worse than that. I don't think exobiology concerns itself with'the Solar System only. Afen't there plans for trying to detect radio signalslof intelligent origin from other stars?" "From planets circling, other stars, yes," said Magnus. "And wouldn't that-(,,ost millions of dollars?" "Many millions if done properly." "And if we locate this life and draw their attention to us, then what? Do they invade us and take, us over? Is that what we'll pay those many millions for?" For the first time, Magnus allowed a took of impatience to "cross his face. "In the first place," he said, "we are merely listening, The process is SETI, "search for extraterrestrial intelligence." If we receive signals, we need not try to answer, if we do not wish to. In the second place, the chances are that if we do receive signals, the source will,be anywhere from dozens to hundreds of light-years away. That means it will take them decades to centuries to receive any message we send them and with conversations like that danger wouldn't seem to be imminent. In the third place, even if they could move faster than light and wanted to reach us, we have no reason to suppose conquest and destruction are what they have in mind. We think that only because we insist on transferring our own bestiality to them. In the fourth place, we have, in any case, given away our, existence. We have been leaking electromagnetic radiation Of clearly intelligent origin for eight decades and the leakage has been growing steadily more intense every year. So they'll know we're here if they want to listen. And in the fifth place-7,I He stopped suddenly. Trumbull said, "You rattle that off as though you have much occasion to go through the list. ","I do," said Magnus, "Then why did you stop? Have you forgotten the fifth place?" "No, it is, in fact, the easiest one to remember. We're not spending millions of dollars, you see, so the taxpayer has no worries for either his bankroll or his life. In point of fact, we're spending almost nothing. Rubin said, "What about Project Cyclops?--Over a thousand radio telescopes computerized into unison to listen for signals from any star within a, thousand light-yeam, one by one. Don't tell me that won't cost a fortune "Of course it would, and a bargain, too,,at almost any price. Even if we pick up no signals of intelligent origin at all, who can tell what bizarre and unexpected discoveries we will make when we probe the Universe with an instrument whole orders of magnitude more refined.than anything we use now?" "Exactly," said Rubin. "Who can tell? No one. For it may come up with nothing." ")Wll, no point in arguing," said Magnus. "It's very doubtful we'd ever get the necessary funds voted us by Congress. So far, it's been hard enough to get the money for some of us to attend international conferences on the subject -and even that may be phased out, thanks to the damndest set of circumstances." A spasm of unhappiness crossed Ins face. " There was a short silence and then Avalon, drawing his formidable eyebrows together said, "Would you care to describe the circumstances, Dr. Magnus?" "There's not much to describe," said Magnus. "There's a dull fog of suspicion that won't lift and that plays right into the hands of the niillions-for-defense-but-not-one-centfor-survival band of fools." Gonzalo looked delighted. "A dull fog of suspicion is just what we like to hear. Tell us the details. "It would scarcely be discreet to do so. " Trumbull said at once, "Nothing said here is ever repeated outside.'We are all discreet and that includes our, esteemed waiter, Henry. " "When I say it would not be discreet to tell you the details," said Magnus, sadly, "I am referring to my own folly. I am afraid it is I who caused the trouble and I find, it embarTassing to discuss. "If that's what's bothering you," said Trumbull, "then please tell us. Confession is good for the soul and even if it ,we ren't, thecondition of the dinner, as Jim has no doubt told you, is -submission to our grilling." "He told me," said Magnus. "Very well-" "Some time ago," said, Magnus, "we held an international meeting for those interested in SETI in New Brunswick, in Canada. The Soviets sent a sizable contingent of" some of I their top-flight astronomers, and, of course,, we ourselves, were present in force as were Canadians, British, French, Australians, Japanese, and a scattering of others, including a few Eastern Europeans. "There were also auxiliary personnel--translators,, for instance, though most of those attending could speak very good English. Oddly enough, the purest and most smoothly colloquial English came from the sole Bulgarian delegate, who sounded perfectly Ohio at our social gatherings, -but insisted on speaking Bulgarian and using an interpreter in the formal sessions, perhaps to show his orthodox side to the Soviet but that's neither here nor there. "Included also -were., I am quite certain, a few Soviet ringers who were, in actual fact, part of their security apparatus. I am equally certain that American security personnel were also present. " Gonzalo said, "What for, Mr. Magnus? Where's the danger in listening to the stars? Are the Soviets affaid we'll make an alliance with some little green men against them?" "Or vice versa?" asked Halsted, dryly. I I Magnus said, "No, but knowledge is indivisible. Those of us who are experts on radio astronomy know a good deal about such things as reconnaissance satellites and killer satellites, and on handling, misleading, and aborting elec tronic reconnaissance. Both sides, therefore, would be anxious to prevent their own men from being indiscreet and to trap their opposite numbers into being overtalkative. " Avalon, said, "It seems to me that security would, be helpless in such matters. Could a CIA operative know when" an astronomer was being indiscreet when he probably couldn't understand the subject rfiatter?" Magnus said, "You underestimate the training special agents - undergo. Then, too, actual astronomers "oil" either side might double as security. I name no names." Trumbull said, "No point in going into that any further. Would you go on, Dr. Magnus?" "Certainly," said Magnus. "I have stressed the total size of the delegation in order to explain that we could not all be housed in" one place. In fact, the New Brunswick site, although suitable as a quasi-neutral spot-an earlier meet ing had been held in Finland--and although beautiful and isolated, to say nothing of possessing tennis courts and a swimming pool, did not offer adequate housing. Personnel were rather widely scattered and the Canadian government supplied transportation. ,,We had several cars, each with a driver, and these were in constant demand. The Americans used a limousine which could hold six easily, although the driver Would readily carry.even a single passenger back and fourth. Wasteful of gasoline, but convenient. "The driver was Alex Jones, an eager young man in his late twenties, who seemed to have the fixed notion that we were all astrologers. He was as ignorant as anyone could -be without actually being retarded, but he was fascinated by us. He knew each one of us and called us all by some weird variety of our name. ""I got off rather lightly. He called me Maggins, which is rather close, and once Maggots, which is not so close. I didn't mind and I didn't try to correct him. Alfred Binder of Arizona State was routinely called Bandage, however, and he seethed each time. Sometimes, Binder shouted at the young man in a rather uncalled-for manner. " Avalon said, "May I interrupt, Dr. Magnus? Are you getting off the subject? You sound as though you were reminiscing rather aimlessly. There was a trace of stiffness in Magnus's response. "I am sorry, Mr. Avalon, but this is all essential to the story. There is little that is aimless about my manner of thought. " Avalon cleared his throat and said in a subdued tone, ,"my apologies, sir," then took a rather agitated sip at what was clearly an empty brandy glass. Henry quietly poured him a refill at once. "No offense, sir," said Magnus. "Alex was not the only driver, of course. There were half a dozen, at least, but he was the,one who usually serviced the American delegation. Binder I think, occasionally hitched a ride with the Canadians or British just to get away'from Alex. I suspect he would have ridden with the Soviets if he had thought he could clear it with security on both sides. "I must confess that Binder's irritation with Alex amused me. My sense of humor tends to be on the unkind side. now and then, and when Binder was in the car I would encourage Alex to ask questions. He would invariably ask what constellations we were studying, for -instance, and which constellation was lucky for that day. Once, I even called Binder "Dr. Bandage" when we were in the car-not really on purpose-and afterward he blew up at me." Rubin said, "People are generally sensitive about their names. I I "Granted," said Magnus, "and, as I said, I'm not really pleased with the direction my sense of humor takes, but when I am caught up in the fury of it, so" to speak, I can't resist the joke. "Of course, you must not suppose that these interludes in the car were nothing but nonsense. I "n fact, I should say -most of the delegates spoke. about their work with a feverish intensity, since we were there as our own little clique. Alex listened without understanding a wordand to me that was an added incentive, for I loved his off-target remarks. Once when someone mentioned Cygnus X-i-the putative black hole, you know-Alex said, "We're all sinners but it can't be helped. It's in the stars." For a minute there, I didn't see what he meant, but he was never completely off-base. It Was a matter of "Cygnus" and "sinner" and Alex freeassociated them. ."But the conference was drawing to its close. We had all given our talks, we had all had our informal discussions over meals and during evening relaxation, and on the last day but one we -were having a symposium, including six Of the more vociferous attendees, whose attitudes were sufficiently different to promise some exciting give-and-take. "A group of us were being driven to luncheon, with the symposium slated for the afternoon, and the people in the car were speculating on how hectic the arguments might get. Out of sheer troublemaking I suppose, and in order to bait Binder, I said, "And what do you think of the people who will be in the symposium, Alex?" "Alex said, "Pluhtahn," in a low voice and I said, "Pluhtahn9 Who's heT "That was where Binder overflowed. "What's the use of asking that idiot? God knows what poor devil he's plastered with that name or what he's talking about. Why in hell do YOU encourage hiniT I "That, in turn, made -me stubborn. I said, "Come'on, he may not get the names quite right, but he refers to definite people. "Binder said, "There's no one in our group who has a name anything like Pluhtahn. It's just idiocy." ""He's not an idiot," I said in a low voice, and anxious to prove that, I said, "Come on, Alex, which one of us" is Pluhtahn? What's he look likeT "But Alex looked terribly upset. I could see him in profile as I leaned over the back of the front seat. His lips were trembling and he had to swallow before he could say anything. Clearly, Binder's rage had frightened him. He muttered, "I guess I must have made a mistake, Mr. Maggins." "He was silent for the short remainder of the trip and when he piled out, he skipped his customary wave of the hand and his toothy grin. Poor fellow! I called out to him but he didn't answer. I couldn't help but think of Binder as a pompous fool. "If I had left it at that, all might have been well but, by pure chance, Yuri sat down next to me at lunch. "Yuri was a member of the Soviet group, of course, a dumpy man, quite stout, who was bald.except for a fringe of dark hair, which he kept quite short, He always wore a gray suit and a maroon tie and, while an excellent radio astronomer, he was given to grumpiness. I never saw him smile and probably that's why I couldn't resist kidding him.-That, and my troublemaking sense of humor. "I said to him, "What's this I hear, Yuri, about your driving in our group's limousineT "He put down his knife and stared at me indignantly, "What are you talking aboutT He spoke English quite well, as did most of the Soviets-which was humiliating for us, in a way, since none of us could speak more than a few words of Russian. "You see, Yuri's last name was Platonov, accent on the second syllable, and it just struck me that if Alex had had him in the car, the name Pluhtahn could well have -been wished on him. Of course, I knew that Platonov would never have used our car. Of the entire Soviet group, he was the least likely to chance anything unorthodox. He was ,never friendly and some of us were convinced he was a member of Soviet security. "Of course, that made my joking seem all the funnier to me. I said, "Our driver, Alex Jones, mentioned you, Yuri, so I gather you've been driving with him and talking to him, What have you been doing? Trying to get him to defect?" "Yuri grew furious. He said, "Is this 9 joke? I warn you, I shall place a protest. I do not think a sober scientific gatheriniz is the place for tasteless remarks." "Well, it was tasteless, f suppose, and besides, Yuri had raised his voice and people were looking at us from all parts of the room. So I backed off. I said, "No offense, Yuri. I just mentioned the symposium to our driver and he mumbled something about Pluhtahn and I thought I would tease you. Our driver always gets names wrong and it doesn't mean anything." "Yuri said, grumpily,,'Keep your teasing to yourself." He settled down to cat and neither looked at me nor talked to me during the remainder of the meal. In fact, he said nothing at all to anybody and seemed rather! deep. in thought. I "My. consm-ence smote me. He might- not be, part of Soviet security- He might, in fact, be very vulnerable. If anyone on the Soviet side haa heard me, all of Yuris protestations and all my insistence that I was just making a bad joke might do no good. The unreasoning arrow of suspicion might come to rest on him and, conceivably, his career might be ruined. By the time I reached that stage in my thoughts, I felt pretty sick, and I did not enjoy the -symposium. I "In fact, the symposium was just a bit of a fizzle. Yuri, who was one of the participants, had been counted on for fireworks and he didn't offer any. He seemed almost absentminded, as, though he had something on his mind. I felt terrible and, of course, things got worse,-" At this point, Gonzalo interrupted. "Don't tell me this guy Platonov got in trouble and has been sent to Siberia!" Magnus said, "No, not as far as I know. What did happen was that that evening, our last at thi conference, Alex 1clied. 11 "The driver?" said Avalon, clearly astonished. Trumbull said, "How did he die?" "Well, that's it," said Magnus, "It was not a natural death. Do you remember I mentioned a Bulgarian in the group who spoke excellent English? Well, he was driving one of the smaller cars of those reserved for the Soviet contingent to the village on an errand of some sort and he said that Alex came staggering into the road in front of him and there was no way of avoiding him. " "Did it happen in the village?" asked Rubin. "No, on the grounds, when the rest of us were gathering for the post-dinner convivial hour, so to speak, and most of us were there when the local police gathered. It was clear that the Bulgarian-his name was Gabrilovich, by the way---expected to be imprisoned and charged with murder, and he feared the excesses of the capitalist-imperialist constabulary, but there was nothing, like that, of course. He was -an honored foreign pest of the nation and was given the benefit of the doubt. During the, night the au sy was performed and it seemed that Alex had indeed been loaded with alcohol. He was quite drunk enough to have staggered out into the road helplessly. "We carried on with the final summarizing session the next morning-which Gabrilovich did not attend-and had permission to leave and go about our business after lunch.. Gabrilovich himself had to stay an extra day to undergo additional questioning, which must have frightened him badly. Several on the Soviet side kept him company and then they all left, too. "I called the Canadian police a few days later, but the case was closed. Alex had no relatives and no possessions to speak of. He was buried and that was the end of it. " Halsted said, his high forehead pink with suppressed excitement, "But you think it was no accident. Right?" Magnus nodded. "Wo reasons. First, what was Gabrilovich doing driving to the village alone when the people on the Soviet side, including the Eastern Europeans, never went in groups of less than three?" "Come, come," said Avalon, "that is custom and not cosmic law. "Custom is sometimes surer," said Magnus, ""and a man who could speak English perfectly, but used Bulgarian to parade his loyalty, - would not break that custom. Furthermore, he was going into town to buy himself an electric shaver, be said, because he was tired of nicking himself with his Bulgarian, straight razor. However, I had never seen nicks on his face and it seemed to me that he would not so parade his infatuation with Western technology." "Not so," said Avalon. "I imagine that there's nothing wrong with that. The Soviets buy all the eff-ete bourgeois products they can get-their hands on. To give them credit,, they make no bones about admiring the technology while claiming to despise the economic principles that go along with it." Magnus shrugged. "Maybe. the second thing that bother's me is that Alex -simply didn't seem like a drinker to me. Drinkers lard their conversation with casual references to drinks, and Alex never did. "That's even weaker than the first reason," said Avalon. "You can never tell a secret drinker. For all you know Alex was an alcoholic trying to stay off the booze at a conference where it probably drenched the proceedings at 41 times. On the last evening, he couldn't resist a drink, which led to er and another-No, Dr. Magnus, his death may not have been an accident but what you advance for thinking so would not suffice to make the police act upon it. " Magnus said, "But consider the coincidence. Earlier that day I had joked with Yuri Platonov concerning Alex's use of the name of Pluhtahn. "fbat'night he was dead. " Rubin said; skeptically, "Do You think the joke was worth a murder?" "Suppose," said Magnus, "Yuri had been in the automobile which Alex was driving. Suppose he had been talking to some Westerner, receiving information. They might well have disregarded Alex, who was so "clearly not ,mentally equipped to be dangerous. But suppose Alex had heard the Westerner address the other as Platonov and had picked up the name. Who knows what else he would remember? So he was killed to keep from blowing the cover of an important spy in the enemy camp. " Avalon said, "Surely, the chances that an ignorant young man could have heard anything of importance-" "if he could identify who was with Platonov at that time, and he might, that would be enough.-In any case," Magnus said, broodingly, "I'm not the only one who suspects murder and treason. I strongly suspect that American security has tumbled to the possibility probably because of what I was overheard to say. I've been discreetly questioned about events at the conference, and I gather that a few others have been, too. What's more, there's a certain amount of red tape that is slowing our ability to attend other conferences abroad. "In other words," said Trumbull, "you think the govern- ment suspects that one of the American delegation to the New Brunswick conference is a traitor, but it doesn't know which one." Magnus nodded wordlessly. "Do you think it's true?" said Trumbull. Magnus said, "I don't know. I hate to believe it's true. But it might be. The worst of it is that if it hadn't been for my joking in the car and at the luncheon table, there would be no grounds for supposing Alex's death to be anything but accident.-And maybe it was accident. " Gonzalo said suddenly, "No, it wasn't. It was murder." Rubin looked outraged, "On what grounds, Mario?" "The best in the world," said Gonzalo. "When Dr. Magnus said Alex had died that night, I happened to have my eye on Henry--and while the rest of you were registering surprise, Henry'nodded his head just a little as though he'd been expecting it. Come on, Henry, what do you think of that automobile accident?" Henry hesitated a moment, then said, "Clearly murder, I should say, Mr,- Gonzalo. I feel it to be uncomfortably melodramatic to say so, but I suspect, Alex Jones was pumped full of alcohol by persuasion or force, then pushed into the road in front of the car which Gabrilovich was driving for the sole purpose of committing a murder that was to be made to look like an accident. " Everyone stared at Henry in astonishment and Trumbull said, "This time, Henry, you've gone too far. On what can you possibly base that scenario, which you yourself call melodramatic?" Magnus, who looked rather thunderstruck at the sudden, participation of the waiter in the discussion, said, "Yes. Why do you say that?" "It's simple enough," said Henry. "When you mentioned the symposium, Mr. Magnus, Alex responded with "Pluhtahn." As it happens, there is a great literary work known as the Symposium. To mention it is bound to give rise, irresistibly, to the name of its author in anyone with a classical education. The author happens to be Plato and Thito's Symposium" is practically one word; one implies the other, Magnus said, ""You inean that when I said "syrriposium," Al ex couldn't resist saying "Plato"? Alex? He had no classical education. I doubt if he finished grade school. Henry said, "It is easy to pretend to be uneducated and simpleminded. If anything, Alex worked too hard at it. This business of "Mispronouncing names was rather a case of painting the lily, and in itself it arouses suspiciofi." Magnus said, "You can't have it both ways. If it was "Plato" he was trying to say, he pronounced. it incorrectly, which blows the theory of education sky:-high." "Ah," said Henry, "but he did not mispronounce Plato's name, Dr. Magnus. We do. In the, original Greek, the name was "Platon" and was pronounced closer to "Pluhtahn" than to our own "Playtoe." The Russians kept both the spelling arid the pronunciation and there was a famous high official of "the Russian Church named Platon. I looked him up in,the Biographical Dictionary while you were telling your story just to make sure I remembered correctly. "You remembered correctly," said Avalon. "Now why on earth didn't I think of that. "Platon" is the Greek word for ."broad" and Plato received it as a nicknamebecause of his broad -shoulders., His real name was Aristocles." Magnus said, "But why should Alex use the Russian version'of the name?" Henry said, "I suppose because he was Russian, and when you said "symposium," the free association trapped him into the Russian, rather than the English, version of the name. I imagine he was a Soviet agent, planted as a Canadian national, and playing the role of simpleton. His assignment at the time was, undoubtedly, to listen, to the conversations in the car. "However, when he muttered "Pluhtahn" and you picked that up, Dr. Magnus, the driver realized he" might have revealed his identity. You said he seemed stricken. You thought it was by Dr. Binder's rage, but I suspect it was for a more serious reason. "Then, when You Joked about it with Mr. Platonov, he had no trouble recognizing the author of Symposium andit seemed to him, too, that Alex had given himself away. Even if you did not see it, Dr., Magnus, you might mention it to someone who would. The Soviets might well suppose that Alex would no longer be reliable; that he might be,picked up; that he might defect out of the- fear of the consequences. And if he had become an embarrassment and danger while alive, he might be better off dead." Magnus was thoughtful for a moment. "I think I ought to report all this. " Trumbull said, "It would lift some of the undeserved heat from the astronomers at the conference. If you'll give me permission, I will make a phone call that will set the machinery moving. "Yes, yes, of course," said Magnus. "How strange for Alex to give himself away in such a fashion when he played his part so well. I Avalon said, philosophically, "Oh, well, educated men required to sound silly are under an intolerable strain. Sooner or later, they cannot resist the, urge to display their erudition. It will burst forth. "You demonstrate that all the time, Jeff," said Gonzalo. "I believe," said Avalon, austerely, "that I am not the only one here who is guilty in that respect." "I myself," said Henry, "fear I am not quite innocentin that respect." Afterword. Fred Darmay didn't like this one. At least, he sent it back to me. In a way it was my fault. This was before I had begun my Union Club series, and I was going hot and heavy on the Black Widowers. As it happened, I "wrote two of them in succession, "The Driver," and "The Good Samaritan," which follows. I then, in an attack of hubris, brought them in on the same day and handed them in together. This is clearly a matter of bad tactics. If an editor reads two of your stories at the same time, he is very likely to like one of the stones better than the other If he had read the weaker story by itself, suitably isolated from a similar story that came previously, it might seem a little weak even so,but perhaps not too weak to publish. With the direct comparison of the other story, its flaws are magnified, and back it goes. Fred accepted "The Good Samaritan" and when "The Driver" came back, I reread the two stories and decided that Pred was right and that "The Good Samaritan" was the better of the two. The lesson I learned, then, was not to tempt an editor by giving him two at once. And (since I'm prcjudiced) I don't think that "The Driver" is so weak that it ought to be discarded altogether. It appears here, then, for the first time in print. The Good Samaxitan, The Black Widowers had learned by hard experience that when Mano Gonzalo took his turn as host of the monthly banquet, they had to expect the unusual. They had reached the point where they steeled themselves, quite autornatically, for disaster. When his guest arrived there was a lightening of spirit if it turned out he had the usual quota of heads and could speak at least broken English. " When the last of the Black Widowers arrived, therefore, and when Henry's efficient setting of the table was nearly complete, Geoffrey Avalon, standing, as always, straight and tall, sounded almost- light-hearted as he said, "I see that your guest has not arrived yet, Mario. Gonzalo, whose crimson velvet jacket and lightly striped blue pants reduced everything else in the room to monochrome, said, "Well-" Avalon said, "What's more, a quick count of the settings placed at the table by our inestimable Henry shows that six people and no more -are tobe seated. And since all six of us are here, I can only conclude that you have not brought a guest. " "Thank Anacreon,", said,Enunanuel Rubin, raisinghis drink, "or whatever spirit it is that presides over convivial banquets of kindred souls. " I Thomas Trumbull scowled and brohed back his crisply waved white hair with one hand. "What are you doing, Mario? Saving money?" "Well-" said Gonzalo again, staring at his own drink with a totally spurious concentration. Roger Halsted said," "I don't know that this is so good. I like the grilling sessions. " "It won't hurt us," said Avalon, in his deepest voice, "to have a quiet conversation once in a while. If we can't amuse each other without a guest, then the Black Widowers are nnot what once they were and we should prepare, sorrowing, for oblivion. Shall we offer Mario a vote of thanks for his unwonted discretionT" "Well-" said Gonzalo a third time. James Drake interposed, stubbing out a cigarette and clearing his throat. "It seems to me, gentlemen, that Mario is trying to say something and is amazingly bashful about it. If he "has something he hesitates to say, 1, fear we are not going to like it. May I suggest we all keep quiet and'Iet him talk. I t "Well-" sai4 Gonzalo, and stopped. This time, though, there was a prolonged and anxious silence. "Well-" said Gonzalo again, "I do have a guest," and once more he stopped. "Rubin said, "Then where the hell is he?" -Downstairs in the main dining room--ordering dinner-at my expense, of course." Gonzalo received five blank stares. Then Trumbull said, "May I ask what dunder-headed reason you can possibly advance for that?" "Aside," said Rubin, "from being a congenital dunderhead?" - Gonzalo put his drink down, too "k a deep breath, and said, firmly, "Because I thought she would be more comfortable down there." Rubin managed to get out an "And why-" before the significance of the pronoun became plain. He seized the lapels of Gonzalos jacket. "Did you say "she?" ,- Gonzalo caught at the other's wrists. "Hands off, Manny. If you want to talk, use your lips not your hands-. Yes, I said ,she."" Henry, his sixtyish, unlined face showing a little conc Iem, raised his voice a diplomatic notch and said, "Gentlemen! Dinner is served!" Rubin,, having released Gonzalo, waved imperiously at Henry and said, "Sorry, Henry, there may be no banquet.Mario, you damned jackass, no woman can attend these meetings.," There was, in fact, a.general uproar. While no one quite achieved the anger and decibels of Rubin, Gonzalo found himself at bay with the five others around him in a semicircle. Their individual comments were lost in the general explosion of anger. Gonzalo, waving his arms madly, leaped onto a chair and shouted, "Let me speak!" over and over until, out of ,exhaustion,, it seemed, the opposition died off into a low growl. Gonzalo said, "She is not our guest at the banquet. She's justa woman- with a problem, an old "woman, and it won't do us any harm if we see her after dinner." There was no immediate response and Gonzalo said, "She needn't sit at the table. She can sit in the doorway." .Rubin said, "Mario, if she comes in here, I go,,and if I go, dainn it, I may not come back ever." Gonzalvsaid, "Are you saying you'll break up the Black Widowers rather than listen to an old woman in. trouble?" Rubin said, "I'm saying rules are rules!" Halsted, looking deeply troubled, said, "Listen, Manny, maybe we oughtto do this. The rules weren't delivered to us from Mount Sinai." You; too?" said Rubin, savagely. "Look, it doesn't matter what any of you say. In a matter as fundamental as this, one blackball is enough, and I cast it Either she goes" or I go and, by God, you'll never see me again. In view of that, is there anyone who wants, to waste his- breath?" Henry, who still stood't thehead of the table, waiting with,--markeldly less than his usual imperturbability for the company to seat itself, said, "May I have a word, Mr. Rubin?" Rubin said, ""Sorry, Henry, no one sits down till this is settled. Gonzalo said, "Stay out, Henry. I'll fight my own battles. It was at this point that Henry departed from his role as the epitome of all Olympian waiters and advanced on the group. His voice was firm as he said, "Mr. Rubin, I wish to take responsibility for this. Several days ago, Mr. Gonzalo phoned me to ask if I would be so kind as to listen to a woman he knew who had the kind of problem he thought I might be helpful with. I asked him if it was something close to his heart. He said that the woman was a relative of someone who was very likely to give him a commission for an important piece of work-" "Money!" sneered Rubin. "Professional opportunity," snapped Gonzalo. "If you can understand that. And sympathy for a fellow human being, if you can understand that." Henry held up his hand. "Please, gentlemen! I told, Mr. Gonzalo I could not help him but urged him, if he had not already arranged a guest, to bring the woman. I suggested that there might be no objection if she did not actually attend the banquet itself. Rubin, said, ""And why couldn't you help her otherwise?" Henry said,, "Gentlemen, I lay no claims to superior insight. I do not compare myself, as Mr. Gonzalo occasionally does on my behalf, to Sherlock Holmes. It is only after you gentlemen have discussed a problem and eliminated what is extraneous that I seem to see what remains. Merefore-" Drake said, "Well, look, Manny, I'm the oldest member hem, and the original mason for the prohibition. We might partially waive it just this once. "No," said Rubin, flatly. Henry said, "Mr. Rubin, it is often stated at these banquets that I am a member of the Black Widowers. If so, I wish to take the responsibUity. I urged Mr. Gonzalo to do this and I spoke to the woman concerned and assured her that she would -be welcomed to our deliberations after dinner. It was an impulsive act based on my estimate of the characters of the gentlemen of the club. "If the woman is now sent away, Mr. Rubin, you understand that my position here will be an impossible one and I will be forced to resign my position as waiter at these banquets. I would have no choice. Almost imperceptibly the atmosphere had changed -while Henry spoke arid now it was Rubin who was standing at bay. He stared at the semicircle that now surrounded him and said, rather gratingly, "I appreciate your services to tl club, Henry,, and I do not wish to place you in, a dishonorable position. Therefore, on the stipulation that this is not, to set a precedent and,reminding you that you must not do this again, I will withdraw my blackball. The banquet was the least comfortable in the history of ,the Black Widowers. Conversation was desultory and dull and Rubin maintained a stony silence throughout. There was no need to clatter the water glass during the serving of the coffee, since there was no babble of conversation to override. Gonzalo simply said, "I'll go down land see if she's ready. Her name, by the way, is Mo. Barbara Lindemann. Rubin looked up and said, "Make sure she's had her coffee, or tea, or whatever, downstairs. She can't have anything up here. Avalon looked disapproving, "The dictates of courtesy, my dear Manny- 11 " She'll have all she wants downstairs at Mario's expense., Up here, we'll listen to her. What more can she want?" Gonzalo brought her up and led her to an armchair that Henry had obtained from the, restaurant office and that he had -placed well away from the table. She was a rather thin woman, with blunt good-natured features, well-dressed and with her white haircarefully set. She carried a black purse that looked new and she clutched it tightly. She glanced, timidly at the faces of the Black Widowers and said, "Good evening." There was a low chorused rumble in return and she said, 6q apologiee for coming here with my ridiculous story. Mr. Gonzalo explained that my appearance here is out of the ordinary and, I have thought over my dinner that I should not - disturb you. I will go if you like, and,thank you for tdhie dinner and for letting me come up here." She made as though to rise and Avalon, looking remarkably shamefaced, said, "Madame, you are entirely welcome here and we would like very much to hear what you have to say, We cannot promise that we will be able to help you, but we can try. I'm sure that we all feel the same - way about this, Don't you agree, Manny?" Rubin shot a dark look at Avalon through his thick-lensed glasses. His sparse beard bristled and his chin lifted but he said in a remarkably mild tone, "Entirely, ma'am. There was a short pause, and then Gonzalo said, "It's our custom, Mrs. Lindemann, to question our guests and under the cuicurnstances, I wonder if you would mind having Henry handle that. He is our waiter, but he is a.member of our group." Henry stood motionless for a moment, then said, "I fear, Mr. Gonzalo, that-" Gonzalo said, "You have yourself claimed the privilege. of membership earlier this evening, Henry. Privilege carries with it responsibility. Put down the brandy bottle, Henry, and sit down. Anyone who wants brandy can take his own. Here, Henry, take my seat." Gonzalo rose resolutely and walked to the sideboard. Henry sat down. Henry said mildly to Mrs. Lindemann, "Madame, would you be willing to pretend you are on the witness stand?" The woman looked about and her look of uneasiness dissolved into a little laugh. "I never have been and I'm not sure I know how to behave on one. I hope you won't mind if I'm nervous. " "We won't, but yo needn't be. This will be very informal and we are anxious only to help you. The member's of the club have a tendency to speak loudly and excitably at times, but if they do, that is merely their way and means nothing.-First, please tell us your name." She said, with an anxious formality, ".My name is Barbara Lindemann. Mrs. Barbara Lindemann." "And do you have any particular line of work?" - "No, sir, I am retired. I am sixty-seven years old as you can probably tell by looking at me--and a widow., I was once a schoolteacher at a junior high school." Halsted stir-red and said, "That's my profession, Mrs. Lindemann. What subject did you teach?" "Mostly I taught American history." Henry said, "Now from what Mr. Gonzalo has t6ld me you suffered an unpleasant experience here in New York and-" . I "No, pardon me," interposed Mrs. Lindemann, "it was, on the whole, a very pleasant experience. If that weren't so, I would be- only too glad to forget all about it." "Yes, of course," said Henry, "but I am under the impression that you have forgotten some key points and would like to remember them. " "Yes," she said, earnestly. "I am so ashamed at not remembering. It must make me appear senile, but it was a very unusual and fightening thing in a way-at least parts of it were-and I suppose that's my excuse." Henry said, "I think it would be best, then, if you tell us what happened to you in as much detail as you can and, if it will not bother you, some of us may ask questions as you goalong. " "It won't bother me, I assure you," said Mrs. Lindemann. "I'll welcome it as a sign of interest." She said, "I arrived in New York City nine days ago. I was going to visit my niece, among other things, but I didn't want to stay with her. That would have been uncomfortable for her and confining for me, so I took a hotel room. "I got to the hotel at about Pm. on Wednesday and after a small dinner, which was very pleasant, although the prices were simply awful, I phoned my niece and arranged to see her the next day when her husband would be at work and the children at school. That would give us some time to ourselves and then in the evening we could have a family outing. "Of course, I didn't intend to hang about their necks the entire two weeks I was to be in New York. I fully intended to do things on my own. In fact, that first evening after dinner, I had nothing particular to do and I certainly didn't want to sit in my room and watch television. So I thoughtwell, all of Manhattan is just outside, Barbara, and you've read about it all your life and seen it in the movies and now's your chance to see it in real life. I "I thought I'd just step out and wander about on my own and look at the elaborate buildings, and the bright lights and the people hurrying past. I just wanted to get a feel of the city, before I started taking organized tours. I've done that in other cities in these recent years when I've been travelling and I've always so enjoyed it. " Trumbull said, " You weren't afraid of getting lost, I suppose.,, "Oh, no," said Mrs. Lindemann, earnestly. "I have an" excellent sense of direction and even if I were caught up, in my sight-seeing and didn't notice where I had gone, I had a map of Manhattan and the streets are all in a rectangular grid and nurnbered--not like Boston, London, or Paris, and I was never lost in those cities. Besides, I could always get in a taxi and give the driver the name of my hotel, In fact, I am sure anyone would give me directions if I asked. " Rubin emerged from his slough of despond to deliver himself of a ringing, "In Manhattan? Hah!" "Why, certainly," said Mrs. Lindemann, with mild reproof. "I've always heard that Manhattanites are unw friendly, but I have not found it so. I have been the recipient of many kindnesses-not the.least of which is the manner in which you gentlemen have welcomed me even though I aam quite a stranger to you. Rubin found'it, necessary to stare intently at, his fingernails. Mr-s. Lindemann said, "In any case, I did go off on my little excursion and stayed out much longer than I had planned. Everything was so- colorful and busy and the weather was so mild and pleasant. Eventually, I realized I was terribly tired and I had reached a rather quiet street and was ready to 90 back. I reached in one of the outer pockets of my purse for my map-" Halsted interrupted. "I take it, Mrs. Lindemann, you were alone on this excursion." "Oh, yes," said Mrs. Lindemann, "I always travel alone since my husband died. To have a companion means a perpetual state of compromise as to when to arise, what to eat, where to go. No, no, I want to be my own woman." "I didn't quite mean that, Mrs. Lindemann," said Halsted. "I mean to ask whether you were alone on this particular outing in a strange city-at night-with a purse. " Yes, sir. I'm afraid so. Halsted said, "Had no one told you that the streets of NeW'York aren't always safe at night-particularly, excuse me, for older women with purses who look, as you do, gentle and harmless?" "Oh, dear, of course I've been told that. I've been told that, of every city I've visited. My own town has districts that aren't safe. I've always felt, though, that all life is a gamble, that a no-risk situation is an impossible dream, and I wasn't going-to deprive myself of pleasant experiences because of fear. And I've gone about in all sorts of places without hann. " Trumbull said, "Until that first evening in Manhattan, I take it." Mrs. Lindemann's lips tightened and she said, "Until then. It was an, experience I remember only in flashes, so to. speak. I suppose that because I was so tired, and then so frightened, and the surroundings were so new to me, much of what happened somehow didn't register properly. Little things seem to have vanished forever. That's the problem She bit her lips and looked as though she was battling to hold back the tears. Henry, said softly, "Could you tell us what you rememher?" "Well," she said, clearing her throat and clutching at her purse, "as I said, the street was a quiet one, There were cars ,moving past, but no pedestrians, and I wasn't sure where I was. L was reaching for the map and looking about for a street sign when a young man seemed to appear from nowhere and called out, "Got a dollar ladyT He couldn't have been more than fifteen years old-just a boy. "Well, I would have been perfectly willing to let him have a dollar if I thought he needed it, but really, he seemed perfectly fit and reasonably prosperous and I didn't. think it would be advisable to display my wallet, so I said, "I'm afraid I don't, young man." "Of course, he didn't believe me. He came closer and said, "Sure you do, lady. Here, let me help you look,," and he reached for my purse. Well, I wasn't going to let him have it, of course-" Trumbull said, firmly, "No "of course" about it, Mrs. Lindemann. If it ever happens again, you surrender your purse at once. You can't save it in any case, and the hoodlums will think nothing of using force, and there is nothing in the purse that can possibly be worth your life." Mrs. Lindemann sighed. "I suppose you're right, but at the time I just wasn't thinking clearly. I held on to my purse as, a reflex action, I suppose, and that's when I start failing to remember. I recall engaging in a tug-of-war and I seem to recall other young men approaching. I don't know how many but I seemed surrounded. "Then I heard a shout and some very bad language and the loud noise of feet. There was nothing more for a while except that my purse was gone. Then there was an anxious voice, low and polite, "Are you hurt, madamT "I said, "I don't think sb,-but my purse is gone." I looked about vaguely I think I was under the impression it had fallen to the street. "There "was, an older young man holding my elbowrespectfully. He might have been twenty-five. He said, "They got that, ma'am, I'd. better get you out of here before they come back for some more fun. They'll probably have knives and I don't." "He was hurrying me away. I didn't see him clearly in the dark but he was tall and wore a sweater. He said, "I live close by, ma'am. It's either get to my place or we'll have a battle." I think I was aware of other young men in the distance, but that may.have been a delusion. "I went with the new young man quite docilely. He seemed earnest and polite and I've gotten too old to feel that I am in danger of-uh-personal harm. Besides, I was so confused and light-headed that I lacked any will to resist. "The next thing I remember is being at his apartment door. I remember that it was apartment 4-F I suppose that remains in my mind because it was such a familiar combinaton during World War U. Then I was inside his apartment and setting in an upholstered armchair. It was arather run-down apartment, I noticed, but I don't remember" getting.to it at all. "The man who had rescued me had put a glass into my hand and I sipped at it. It was some kind of wine, I think. I did not particularly like the taste, but it warmed me and it seemed to make me less dizzy-rather than more dizzy, as one would suppose. "The man seemed anxious about my possibly being hurt, but I reassured him. I said if he would just help me get a taxi I would get back to my hotel. He said I had better rest a while. "He offered to call the police to report the incident, but I was adamant against that. That's one of the things I remember very clearly. I knew the police could not recover MY purse and I did not want to become a newspaper item. "I think I must have explained that I was from out of town because he lectured me, quite gently, on the dangers of walking on the streets of Manhattan.-I've heard so much on the subject in the last week. You should hear my I niece go on and on aboutit. 441 remember other bits of the conversation. He wanted to know whether I'd lost much cash and I said, well, -about thirty or forty dollars, but that I had traveller's checks which could, of course, be replaced. I think I- had to spend some time reassuring him that I knew how to do that, and that I knew how to report my missing credit card. I had only had one in my purse. "Finally, I asked him his name so that I could speak to him properly and he laughed and said, "Oh, first names, will do for that." He told me his and I told him mine. And I said, "Isn't it astonishing how it all fits together, your name, and your address, and what you said back there." I explained and he laughed and said he would never have thought of that.-So you see I knew his address. "Then we went downstairs-and it was quite late by then, at least by the clock, though, of course, it wasn't really very late by my insides. He made sure the streets were clear, then made me wait in the vestibule while he went out -to get a cab. He told me he had paid the driver to take me wherever I wanted to go and then before I could stop him he put a twenty-dollar bill in my hand because he said I mustn't be left with no money at all. "I tried to object, but he said he loved New York, and since I had been so mistreated on my first evening there by New Yorkers, it had to be made up for by New Yorkers. So I took it--because I knew I wouli pay it back. .The driver took me back to the hotel and he didn't try to collect any money. He even tried to give me change because he said the young man had given him a five-dollar bill but I was pleased with his honesty and I wouldn't take the change. "So you see although the incident began very painfully, there was the extreme kindness of the Good Samaritan young man and of the taxi driver. It was as though an act of unkindness was introduced into my life in order that I might experience other acts of kindness- that would more than redress the balance.-And I still experience them; yours, I mean. "Of course, it was quite obvious that the young man was not well off and I strongly suspected that the twenty-five dollars he had expended on me was far more than he could afford to throw away. Nor did he ask my last name or what my hotel was. It was as though he knew I would pay it back without having to be reminded. Naturally, I would. .,You see, I'm quite well-to-do really, and it's notjust a matter of paying it back. The Bible says that if you cast your bread upon the waters it will be returned tenfold, so I think it's only fair that if he put out twenty-five dollars, he ought to get two hundred fifty back and I can afford it. 611 got back to my room and slept so soundly after all that; it was quite refreshing. The next morning"I arranged MY affairs with respect to the credit card and the traveller's checks and then I called my niece and spent.the day with her. . "I told her what had happened, but just the bare essentials. After all, I had to explain why I had no bag and why I was temporarily short of cash. She went on and on about it. I bought a new purse,--this one--and it wasn't till the end of the day when I was in bed again that I realized that I had not made it my business to repay the young man first thing. Being with family had just preoccupied me. And then the real tragedy struck me. " Mrs. Lindemann stopped and tried to keep her face from crumpling but. failed. She began to weep quietly and to reach desperately into her bag for a handkerchief. Henry said softly, "Would you care to rest awhile, Mrs. Lindemann?" Rubin said, just as softly, "Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Lindemann, or some brandy?" Then he glared about as though daring anyone to say a word. Mrs. Lindemann said, "No, I'm all right. I apologize for .behaving so, but I found I had forgotten. I don't remember the young man's address, not at all, though I must have known it that night because I talked about it. I don't remember his first name! I stayed awake all night trying to remember, and that just made it worse. I went out the next day to try to retrace my steps, but everything looked so different by day--and by night, I was afraid to try. "What must the young man think "of me? Re's never heard from me. I took his money-and just vanished with it". I am worse than those terrible young hoodlums who snatched MY purse. I had never been kind to them. They owed me no gratitude. Gonzalo said, "It's not your fault that you can't remem7 ber. You had a rough time. "Yes, but he doesn't know I can't remember. He thinks I'm an ungrateful thief. Finally, I told my nephew about my trouble and he was just thinking of employing Mr. Gonzalo for something and he felt that Mr. Gonzalo might have- the kind of worldly wisdom that might help. Mr. Gonzalo said he would try, and in the end-here I am. But now that I've heard myself tell the story I realize how hopeless it all sounds. Trumbull sighed. "Mrs. Lindemann, please don't be offended at what I am about to ask, but we must eliminate some factors. Are you sure it all really happened?" Mrs. Lindemann looked surprised. "Well, of course it really happened. My purse was gone!" "No," said Henry, "what Mr. Trumbull means I think is that after the mugging, you somehow got back to the hotel and then had a sleep that may have been filled with nightmares so that what you remember now is partly fact and partly dream-which would account for the imperfect memory. 11 "No," said Mrs. Lindemann firmly, "I remember what I do remember perfectly. It was not a dream." "In that case," said Trumbull, shrugging, "we have very little to go on. " Rubin said, "Never mind, Tom. We're not giving up. If we choose the right name for your rescuer, Mrs. Lin- demann, would you recognize it, even,though you can't remember it now?" "I hope so," said Mrs. Lindemann, "but I don't know. I've tried looking in a phone directory to see different first names, but none seemed familiar. I don't think it could have been a very common name." Rubin said, "Then it couldn't have been Sam?" "Oh, I'm certain that's not it. " "Why Sam, Manny?" asked Gonzalo, "Well, -the fellow was a Good Samaritan. Mrs. Lindemann called him that herself. Sam for Samaritan. His number, "and street -may have represented the chapter and verse in the Bible where the tale of the Good Samaritan begins. You said his name and address fitted each other and that's the only clue we have. "Wait," put in Avalon eagerly, "the first name might have been the much less common one of Luke. That's the gospel in which the, parable is to be found." "I'm afraid," said Mrs. Lindemann, "that doesn't sound right, either, Besides, I'm, not that well acquainted with the Bible. I I couldn't identify the chapter and verse of the parable. Halsted said, "Let's not get off on impossible tangents. Mrs. Lindemann taught American history in school so it's very likely that what struck her applied to American history. For instance, suppose the address were 1812 Madison Avenue and the young man's name was James. James Madison was President during the War Of 1812. " "Or 1492 Columbus Avenue," said Gonzalo, "and the young man was named Christopher." "Or 1775 Lexington Avenue and the name Paul for Paul Revere," said Trumbull. "Or 1623 Amsterdam Avenue and the name Peter," said Avalon,. "for Peter Minuit, or 1609 Hudson Avenue and the name Henry. In fact, there are many named streets in lower Manhattan. We can never pick an appropriate one unless Mrs. Lindemann remembers." Mrs. Lindemann clasped her hands tightly together "Oh, dear, oh, dear, nothing sounds familiar. " Rubin said, "Of course not, if we're going to guess" at random. Mrs. Lindemann, I assume you are at a midtown hotel. "I'm at the New York Hilton. Is that midtown?" "Yes. Sixth Avenue and Fifty-thW Street. The chances are you could not have walked more than a mile, probably less, before you grew fired. TUerefore, let's stick to midtown. Hudson Avenue is much too far south and places like 1492 Columbus or 1812 Madison are much too far north. It would have to be midtown, probably West Side--and I can't think of anything.", Drake said, through a haze of cigarette smoke, "You're forgetting one item. Mrs. Lindemann said it wasn't just the name and address that fit but what the young man said back there; that is, at the site of the rescue. What did he say back there?" "It's all so hazy," said Mrs. Lindemann. "You said he called out roughly at the muggers-Can you repeat what he said?" Mrs. Lindemann colored. "I could repeat some of what he said, but I don't think I want to. The young man apologized for it afterward. He said that unless he used bad language- the hoodlums would not have been impressedand would not have scattered. Besides, I know I couldn't have referred to that at all. Drake said thoughtfully, "That bites the dust then., Have you thought of advertising? You know, "Will the young man who aided a woman in distress--" and so on. " "I've thought of it," said Mrs. Lindemann, "but that would be so dreadful. He might not see it and so many imposters might arrive too make a claim.-Really, this is so dreadful." Avalon, looking distressed, turned to Henry, and said, "Well, Henry, does anything occur to you?" Henry said, "I'm not certain. Mrs. Lindemann, YOU said that by. the time, you took the taxi it was late by the .clock, but not by you insides. Does that mean you arrived from the West Coast by plane so, that your peweption of time was three hours earlier than the clock?" "Yes, I did," said Mrs. Lindemann. "Perhaps from Portland, or not, too far from there?" asked Henry. "Why, yes, from just outside Portland. Had I mentioned that. "No, you hadn't, " interposed Trumbull., "How'did you know, Henry?" "Because it occurred to me, sir," said Henry, "that the young man's name was Eugene, which is the name of a. town only about a hundred miles south of Portland." Mrs. Lindemann rose, eyes staring. "My goodness! The name was Eugene! But that's marvellous..How could you possibly tell?" Henry said, "Mr. Rubin pointed out the address had to be in midtown Manhattan on the West Side. Dr. Drake pointed out your reference to what the young man had said at the scene of the rescue and I recalled that one thing you reported" him to have said besides the bad language you did not describe specifically was that you had better get to his Place, or there'd'be a battle. "Mr. Halsted pointed out thaf the address ought to have some significance in American history and so I thought it might- be 54 West Fortieth Street, since there is the wellknown election slogan of "5440 or fight," the election of 1844, 1 believe. It would be particularly meaningful to Mrs. Lindemann if she.. were from the Northwest since it pertained to our dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory When she said she was indeed from near Portland, Oregon, I guessed that the rescuer's name might be Eugene. 11 Mrs. Lindemann sat down. ","To my dying day, I will never forget this. That is the address. How could- I have forgotten it when you worked it out so neady from I what little I did remember. And then she grew excited. She said, "But it's not too late. I must go dim at once. I must pay him.or shove an envelope under his door or something." Rubin said, "Will yourecognize the house if you see it? "Oh, yes," said-Mrs. Lindemann. "I'm sure of that. And it's apartment 4-F 1 remembered that. If I knew his last, name, I would call, but, no, I want to see him and explain. Rubin said mildly, "You certainly can't go yourself, Mrs. Lindemann. Not into that neighborhood at this time of night after what you've been through. Some of us will have to go with you. At the very -least, I will. Mrs. Lindemann said,, "I very much dislike inconvemencing you, Mr. Rubin. I "Under the circumstances, Mrs. Lindemann," said Rubin, "I consider it my duty." Henry said, "I believe we will all accompany you, Mrs. Lindemann. I know the Black Widowers." Afterword, I am rather stubborn about keeping my Black Widowers rigidly to the format. I have sometimes thought about getting them out on a picnic in Central Park or having them attend a large convention en masse, or separating them and having each do a bit of detective work with Henry pulling the strings together at last. (I may try that last bit if I ever do a Black Widowers- novel, which somehow is not a thought that greatly attracts me.) None of these variations strikes me, as safe, however. Once I begin playing games, with the formula, the whole thing might fall apart. And yet even within the rigidity of the game, there am some rules that can be bent. Might we not have a. woman guest despite the I die-hard male chauvinism of the Black Widowers? Might a woman not be in trouble? And if the Black, Widowers themselves are stupid about it, surely Henry wouldn't be. So I deliberately set about writing "The Good Samadtan." I didn't have to. It might just as easily have been a, okindly and unsophisticated elderly gentleman who had gotten into trouble with a mob of kids.-But I wanted, a woman, if only to watch Manny Rubin throw a fit. The story appeared in the eptember 10, 1980, issue of EQMM. The Year of the Action. "Sir Rupert Murgatroyd," caroled Geoffrey Avalon, "his leisure. and his RICHes; he ruthlessly employed in persecuting WITCHes--- He was returning from the men's room and was clearly in a happy mood. His dark eyes twinkled and his formidable eyebrows twitched in friendly fashion. Except that "caroled" isperhaps; not the right word to use in connection with any attempt Avalon ever made in the direction of song. it was not that he was either flat "or sharp, for on no occasion in the memory of any member of the Black Widowers had he ever struck a note close enough to the desired one to be either flat or sharp. Thomas Trumbull turned on his heel as though he had been jabbed in some tender portion of his anatomy with a thumbtack. He said, "Jeff,,shut up. Five years ago, when you last did this, I told you that any repetition. of this -vile noise you make, will induce homicidal mania in everyone and that I fully intended to beat them all to the punch." "Come on, Tom," said Mario Gonzalo complacently, "the man is just in a Gilbert and Sullivan mood. Let's put him to some interesting use. If he doesn't do the words but just hums, we can all try to guess the tune. " "Except," said James Drake, thoughtfully, "that it would be a lost cause. If Jeff hummed "Yankee Dobdle" and then "Old Man River," we, couldn't tell them apan." Roger Halsted said, "I don't think the experiment should be tried without earplugs. Avalon would have drawn himself up, had not his natural stance placed him in a perpetual seventy-four-inch updrawn position. His voice, in its na "tural rich baritonewhen he was speaking-was distinctly aggrieved in tone as he said, "I had not intended to continue singing after,l had, emerged from the men's room, and I will cheerfully stop. But might I remind you that as tonight's banquet host I am within my rights in declaring myself permitted to sing?" "To do something," said Trumbull, gratingly, "that someone, somewhere, at some time, in a state not too close to drunken insensibility can call singing, yes. That does not, however, include what you do." Henry, that best of waiters, who had listened blandly as -he completed the table, setting, raised his voice without, somehow, seeming to, and said, "Gentlemen, please seat yourselves. " They did, and Emmanuel Rubin, who had been talking to Avalon's, guest of the evening during the altercation, now drew the guest into the seat next to his. Henry held the seat for the guest and said, "Welcome to the Black Widowers, Mr. Graff." The guest looked up in surprise. "Do you know me?" He was rather short, not much taller than Rubin, roundfaced, with a generous mustache like that of a baby walrus, and thick graying hair that covered most of'his ears. Henry said, "I attended a lecture of yours at New York .University about a year ago and enjoyed it very much." Graff beamed. He said to Rubin, "See, who needs. intellectuals? With waiters, I'm big." Rubin said, "Don't disrm'ss Henry that easily, Graff. We intellectuals bask in his reflected glory." . Graff said, "Listen, do you guys talk like this all. the time? I never heard such fighting. Over every little thing, too. With words. With whole sentences.-And call me "Herb. Rubin said, "You have to understand, Herb, that each,of us,spends most of his time with ordinary people. We-can't pick on them-, it -wouldn't be fair. Once a monthi we're here, and we can let loose." "But you, sound as though you're getting mad. Look at Jeff Avalon. In one minute, he'll take his knife and carve up everyone here. " "Not at all," said Rubin. "I give him five mintues and "he'll be pontificating. Listen-" Rubin waited five minutes and then, as the roast goose was placed before him, he said, "Of course, Jeff, it is really unjust to say Gilbert and Sullivan. It should be Sullivan and Gilbert. In any of thenumerous parodies of the operettas, Gilbert's words are invariably changed but no one would dream of changing a note of Sullivan's music. " Jeff said, "You are quite wrong, Manny. There were other light-opera composers in Sullivan's time and afterOffenbach, Strauss, Lehar, Romberg, and so on. Many tunes of each one of these lives. But only in the case of Sullivan are any of the tunes ever sung by ordinary people. No one knows the words-except in the case of Sullivan, because only Sullivan had the greatest lyricist in the English language working with him." His ill temper seemed to have evaporated. "Gilbert is the one lyricist who used the full strength of the English language and the full vocabulary. He rhymes "executioner" with "ablutioner," "diminutioner and you shun her." He-- Rubin turned to Graff and said in a low voice, "See?" Henry was making the rounds with the brandy bottle, and Avalon bestirred himself. Rattling his spoon on the water glass, he said, "Gentlemen, we come now to the important portion of the evening. Manny, since you were the one person who, earlier in the evening, refrained from needless pseudo-wit at my expense, and showed an odd and unaccustomed gentlemanliness of behavior-" "Odd and unaccustomed?" said Rubin indignantly, his sparse beard quivering. "If you"re intending that as a compliment, it's a hell of an ungracious way of doing it." "Odd and unaccustomed is what l,said," said Avalon, loftily. ""And I am asking you to be in charge of, the grilling. "What grilling?" said Graff, looking startled. "The question-and-answer period, Herb," said Avalon, in what was for him-a low voice." "I told you," Graff, recollecting, nodded his head. Rubin intoned, "May I'ask you, Herb, just how you justify your - existence?" "Graff sat back in his seat and stared in astonishment at Rubin for a moment, before answering. "Justify, my existence?," he said, with a strong upward inflection. "Listen, you step out into the street and take a look, at the cockarnamie people passing by. You ever get into an elevator and listen to them talking? Three things you hear. Three. "What did you watch on television last night? "" "Where are you going to go on vacationV "You think the Mets will win today!-That is, if they can talk at all. I should justify iny existence? Let them all justify their existence, and I'll justify mine. Not before." - Rubin nodded his head. "There's something in what you say. Trumbull interrupted. "You knowi Jeff's right about you, Manny. Are you sure you're Emmanuel Rubin" or are. you a lookalike sent here to drive us mad with unaccustomed sweetness?" Rubin said, "I received word of a very nice paperback sale yesterday, so I'm in a good mood, but don't presume upon it. For instance, I'll just say politely once not to return to that subject.-Now, Herb, putting the question of your existence's justification out of court, what is it you do?" Graff said, "I'm a movie maven." "A what?" muttered Gonzalo, "Maven," said Rubin, "is from the Yiddish, for "expert, ,,You mean you make movies?" said Gonzalo. "Not actually," said Graff. "I talk about them. I have, or I can get, almost any old movie that's been made and I show them, or I showclips, and I lecture on them. People like it. I give lecture tours, especially on college campuses, and I make a living.-Henry, tell these'guys; about my lectures. " Henry's unlined, sixtyish face creased briefly into a gentle smile. "It was indeed an entertaining evening. I believe the audience, generally, enjoyed themselves." Graff said,"There you are, an unpaid testimonial. But just the same, I might actually be making a movie-, or helping make one, if I can only figure out how to handle the crazies. " "What kind-of movie?" asked Rubin. "Gilbert and Sullivan, "actually," said Graff, with what seemed a trace of embarrassment. "I've been talking to Jeff Avalon about it on the way here and that's what put him into--you should excuse the expression-a- singing mood." "Is there money in Gilbert and Sullivan in the movies?" asked Drake skeptically. "I should think it just has a small cult following." Graff said, "Bigger than you think, but you're right. You can't make a colossal extravaganza out of it. But then you don't have to spend ten million dollars on it. You can do it small-scale. It's been done. Kenny Baker sang Nanki-Poo in a movie version of The Mikado and was cut to ribbons by all the D'Oyly Carte types that supported him. The trouble is, you can't do much with Gilbert and Sullivan except photograph the stage play. You can't change the music or the words or the plot because as soon as you change anything it's not Gilbert and Sullivan and you're nowhere. So if you're just going to photograph the play, you're not taking advantage of the power of the camem and where are YOU "Where indeed?" said Drake. Graff said, "But these guys-I didn't tell you about these guys yet, did I? TWo kids in their early twenties, but young as they are, they've really got it. You know, in any field of art, it's the young people who look at things with new eyes. Thae guys are a pair of crazies, of course, but you've got to expect that. Their names are Sam Appelbaum and 7 ,im Mentz and they're pupils of mine., I give a course on moving making at the New School and that's how I met them. They want to do The Pirates of Penzance, one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, because they'd seen a performance by the Village Light Opera Group and were enthusiastic. "They joined the Gilbert Sullivan Society, which seems to be a very active group here in New York, and they met Jeff Avalon, who's Gilbert and Sullivan aficionado.-Is that the way you pronounce the word?" " "Quite," said Avalon. "Though my singing voice may not be approved by all, I presume that not even the most captious will try to prevent me fi-om listening to music and I know virtually all of Gilbert and Sullivan by heart.", Trumbull growled, "You may know Gilbert's words by heart, but if you know a single note of Sullivan's music---or anyone's--may I be struck by lightning right now." .,In any case," said Graff, "I met Jeff through Appelbaum and Mentz, and a couple of months ago we were talking about what strategy to use in making a movie of Pirates, and how limited we were in handling it, and Avalon suggested an animated cartoon. Appelbaum and Mentz fell over themselves to grab the idea. You have the voices, the words, the notes, and you have a free hand to be as fantastic as you want. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are always overacted, anyway, on principle. I'm certain that if Gilbert and Sullivan had worked in the 19,70s instead of the 1870s " they would have written the operettas for animation in We first place. " James Drake stubbed out his cigarette with a violent motion and said, "I think that's disgusting. You'll have a whole bunch of cutesie choruses dancing around Prince Charming Frederic and Snow White Mabel." "No!" said Graff, earnestly. "What do you think? Disney is all there is? Besides, who can spend the money on the kind of animation that Disney used'in the days of slave labor where . you "make a thousand different drawings . to show Dopey picking his nose realistically. We're counting on surrealism. In fact, these guys are going to use the techniques of modern art to evoke humor and fantasy in a whole new way. I can't explain how it will work. After all, am I an artist? But when they're through, it will work and you "11 see how it works. It will start a whole new fashion and, on top of that, it will make them trillionaires and it woul make me a few shiny pennies, too. Ifthey do it, that is.,, "Why ir" said Halsted. "Because they had a fight, that's why. And they're. still fighting," said Graff. "And go try and settle it. They've got all the money in the world waiting to be scooped -in and neither one will move unless the other gives in." "What are they fighting about?" asked Rubin. "Are they both in love with the same soprano?" Graff shook his head. "You don't know the crazies of this world, do you? Crazies don't fightover a woman or over anything sensible. that's for plain people like you and me. Crazies fight over things you can't imagine-like when did the action of the play take place. Appelbaum says the action begins on March 1, 1877, and Mentz says March 1, 1873, and, neither one will give in. "You see, you guys in the Black Widowers argue, but you forget, because you've got a million things to argue about, so you drop each particular argument in favor of another. I've been listening to you do it all through dinner. My two -guys are big talents but they're limited. They've only got one thing to fight over so there's no chance of their forgetting. With them it's 1873, 1877, 1873, 1877, till you can get sick and die. "I take it," said Halsted, "that Gilbert gives no indication which it is. " "No," said Graff. Trumbull said, with clear contempt, "Does it make a difference?" Graff said, "Actually, it does. Theguys, want. to keep up a running, set of montages dating. back to Victorian times to kee pace with the words and m . These would -be ,P usic accompaniments -and references to whatever was happening, sometimes so fast you couldn't really make out the details, but you would get it, uh, subliminally.-Is that how you say 0-It would be a kind of running visual gag, and it could start a cult. You know, people would say, did you sseee that picture of Disraeli, and who wa "s the other guy with him" and what was he doing, and they'd go several times just to try, to pick up all the clues they could. Well, there are places where what you show would depend on whether it was 1873 or 1877. Trumbull said, "Then let them pick one of the two years and get going. Who would care?" Graff said, "They would care. Neither one will give in. It's life and death with them. Look, do you know the'play?" "I don't," said Trumbull, flatly. Drake said, "I suppose Jeff knows it by heart, but I just know the Major-General's patter song, which is an example of what Jeff was talking about with its fancy vocabulary and ingenious rhymes." Rather surprisingly, he lifted his soft, hoarse voice in song, and with a fair approximation of the notes, went, ""Then I can hum a fugue of which I've heard the music's din afore, and whistle all the airs from that infernal nonsense, Pinafore.'-Which shows," he added, "that Gilbert could make a little fun.of himself, too, since Pinafore w "as his big early success." Graff said,-hastily, "Well, let me just outline the plot quickly, so you can see where the trouble is. Is that all right?" "Go ahead, Herb," said Avalon, indulgently. "I'm host and what I say goes--or should go," and he bent his formidable frown at Trumbull, who shrugged and muttered something under his breath. Graff said, "Frederic is a pirate-apprentice. It was all a mistake because his nursery-maid, Ruth, had been told to -apprentice him to -a pilot, but had misheard- th,'Word,. Unable" to return home and explain the mistake, she, too, joined the pirate band. "As the play opens, Frederic has just turned twenty-one, and entered his twenty-second year so his apprenticeship is,, over. As the slave of duty he has remained with the pirateii but now that he has served his term, he will abandon them, because he is also the soul of honor, he will, devote himself to their examination. I - "Ruth, a maiden of forty-seven, wants to go with him for she loves Frederic. But then they encounter the daughters of Major-General Stanley, and Frederic, realizing that Ruth is old and plain, falls in love instead with Mabel, the prettiest of the daughters. "The pirates surprise them and make ready to marry all the daughtem--anything but marriage being inconceivable to'good old Gilbert-when their father arrives and sings the Major-General's gong that Jim Drake mentioned. The Major-General persuades the pirates to give up their scheme, for marrying his daughters by claiming, falsely, to be an orphan, boy. The tenderhearted pirates burst into tears and the first act ends happily. "In the second act, Frederic prepares to lead the police against the pirates. Before he can leave with his band, however, the Pirate King, together with Ruth, come upon him alone and tell him they have just remembered that he was born on leap day, February 29. The apprenticeship papers say he must serve till his twenty-first birthday and, strictly speaking, he has had only five. "Frederic, the slave of duty, at once rejoins the band andi. as a loyal pirate, now tells them of the Major-General's lie. The furious pirates attack the Major-General's estate and, in a battle with the police, emerge the winners. "However, the police produce a Union Jack and demand the pirates yield in Queen Victoria's name. The pirates promptly do so, saying, "With all our faults, we love our Queen." As the pirates are about to be ledaway to jail, Ruth quickly explains that all the pirates are just noblemen gone wrong. The Major-General it once frees them saying, "With all out faults, we love our, House of Peers," and everything ends happily. " Graff beamed around the table and said, "It's actually "a very funny and happy play., There's just one line that creates the problem. When Frederic finds out his apprenticeship goes by birthdays and not by years, he explains to Mabel, In 1940 1 of age shall be."-That means that on February 29, 1940, he'll celebrate his twenty-first birthday. " Drake nodded. He had lit a new cigarette and he blinked his eyes slowly. "On February 29, 1940, the New York .77mes ran an'editorial on Frederic's being out of" his indentures. I remember reading it." Graff said", "All right, but if there's a leap day every four years-" Roger Halsted interrupted. "But there isn't,-" Graff shook his head violently. "Just wait a minute. If there's a Jeap day every four years, then Frederic was eighty-four years-old on his twenty-first birthday, and he was born in 1856. -He was twenty-one years old in 1877, a year after his fifth birthday. He would have had to celebrate his coming of age on March 1, 1877, since there is no February 29 in -that year and, Appelbaum says, that is therefore, the day on which the action of the play ope ns. ",But-" said Halsted. "But," said Graff, raising his voice, "apparently the year 1900 should halve been a leap year but wasn't. There was no February 29, 1900. That's what you're trying to say, isn't-it, Roger? I don't know -why that should be. Some Pope mged it." Halsted- said, "Pope Gregory XHI in-" ""That part doesn't matter," said Graff, impatiently. 14111he point is that one leap day, is missing, so to get twenty-one of them, you have to rhove four years further back. Frederic would have to have been borri in 1852 and become twentyone in .1873, so that the action of the play opens on March 1, 1873. That's what Mentz says. - - "The Pirates of Penzance opened in early 1880, so "1877 is the logical year, says Appelbaum, and Gilbert either forgot or didn't know that 1900 was not a leap year. Mentz says it is inconceivable that Gilbert would make a mistake about 1900 and that no true aficionado-yes, you told me I said it right-would think so for a minute, so the year was 1873. There they stand. Neither one will give in. " There was a silence around the table. Finally, Gonzalo said, "You really think there's a lot of money in the picture if they make itT" Graff said, "Who can tell about public taste-but there's a good chance." "Then can't you make up some argument that would convince them one year or the other was right? You know" something that sounds good?" "Like what?" said Graff. ,me trouble is," said Avalon, sententiously, "that the world of Gilbert and Sullivan is not a real one and it doesn't lend itself to logical arguments. For instance, though it is, clearly stated that Frederic has just turned twenty-one and thathis birthday is onFebruary 29, nevertheless the MajorGeneral's daughters, when they first arrive on the scene, decide to take off their shoes and socks and paddle their feet in the sea. The scene is set in Cornwall, where,the town of Penzance is located, and you can imagine what it would be like paddling in the English Channel in winter. " "Well," said Graff, "the daughters call themselves "hardy little lasses" in their first chorus." Gonzalo said, "Did the Major-General have any sons?" "No," said Graff, "just daughters. In a full performance, there could be'as many as twenty-four daughters, all pretty much the same age and no sign of any mother, either. It is unreal, so how are we going to find some way of deciding between 1873 and 1877 that will hold water9" Trumbull said, "You have to think of something that sounds good. It doesn't have to be good, or sensible. Look, wasn't "Quceri Victoria Empress of India, too?--Hemy, would you, be so kind as to go over to the reference shelf and look up Queen Victoria in the encyclopedia. Maybe it will say when she became Empress." After some moments, Henry said, "The tide was secured for her by Benjamin Disraeli in 1876, sir, and she was proclaimed Empress of India on January 1, 1877." "Ah, perfect. The whole thing is solved and we can forget about this nonsense." Graff looked doubtful. "How is it solved?" "Easy. Victoria loved the new title. Anyone wanting to please her would go around calling her "Queen-Empress., You quoted the pirates as saying that, with all their faults, they love their Oueen. Well, if the action opens on March 1, 1877, only two months after Victoria gained the imperial title, surely they would refer to her, with pride,, as QueenEmpress. The fact that they didn't proves it was 1873. " Graff looked still more doubtful. ""Queen-Empress" wouldn't rhyme or scan." "Don't-be an idiot," said IYumbull. "I told you the argument doesn't have to make sense. ft.just has to sound good. It's-just a piece of gobbledygook de,signed.to settle the matter. " "I don't think that would win over Appelbaum," said Graff. "Well ""then," said Avalon, "let's think up more arguments likethat, but let's keep them all on one particular year, because if we think up ways of arguing for both yews, that won't settle matters. What else is there we can use for 1873? It. doesn't have to -be sensible."" "Anything else about kings and queens?" asked Gonzalo. "Does the Pirate King represent anyone?" "I don't know that he does, " said, Avalon, shaking his head slowly, "but there is some mention of kings in the .Pirate King's opening solo. He admits he sinks more ships than a, well-bred monarch ought to do, but then he says, "Many a king on a first-class throne, if he wants to call "his crown his own, must manage somehow to get through more dirty work than ever I do." Now can he be referring to some particular king?" Rubin stared up through narrowed eyes. "Let's seeWho were the first-class thrones in the 1870s? There was -William I of Germany. The German Empire had just been established and there was a lot of chicanery there." " Drake said, "That was the chicanery of Otto von Bismarck, Manny. William I was just an old man who did what he was told." Rubin said, "You're right there, Jim.-Francis Joseph of Austria was a dim sort of monarch and Alexander 11 of Russia was not bad for a tsar. Those were the only ones whom Gilbert would have.considered as sitting on a firstclass throne. Halsted said, "How about Napoleon III of France? Wasn't he ruling about that time?" "No," said Rubin. "He got kicked out in the FrancoPrussian War in 1870, and France was a Republic in the 1870s and, in fact, ever since. Too bad, too, because Napoleon III was as crooked as a bolt of lightning. He was a conniver and an -intriguer who made it to the imperial throne by lying and cheating and he could at no time be trusted to keep his word unless you kept a gun trained,at him. Gonzalo said, "When did he die?" " Rubin said, "I'm not sure. Not long afterward, I think. Henry, would you check that'little matter. " Henry did so. "He died on January 9, 1873. Gonzalo was enthusiastic. "That's perfect. Gilbert wouldn't make snide remarks against a sitting monarch, -because that would create an international incident, but-" Rubin said, "Listen, Gilbert would not hesitate to-" "No, no, we're just building an argument," said Gonzalo, "so let's say he wouldn't. But -a king who was dead would be fair game. If it were 1877, the Pirate King might not think of Napoleon III, but if it were 1873, Napoleon III would have died only two months before, there would have been obituaries and biographies, and he would be fresh in the nuinds of pirates. Naturally, they would refer to the "dirty work" he did. So that's two arguments for 1873." Avalon said, "That won't Work, Mario. Napoleon III wasn't a king. He was an emperor. France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia were all empires in: Victoria's time. So was Japan, for that matter. That was one reason why Victoria was so pleased with the imperial tide. Without it, every other important monarch outranked her. "So?" said Gonzalo. "So," said Avalon, "Tom's argument is that it had to be 1873 because Victoria was called a Queen and not a QueenEmpress. But if you're going to be so picky about titles you can't have the Pirate King talk about kings when he is referring to Napoleon III, who was an emperor." "On this point, Jeff," said Rubin, "I side with Mario. Gilbert, as a loyal Britisher, would certainly not abate one jot of the tide of Victoria. However, he isn't going to worry about some French monarch. In Gilbert's time, France was still the traditional enemy of Great Britain through a series of wars stretching back to Henry U seven centuries before. " Graff nodded. "There's something to that. In RudOigore, there's a song by the sailor, Richard Dauntless, which makes I mild fun of the French and calls them "froggies,". "parley-voos," and "darned Mounseers."" "Exactly," said Rubin. "Gilbert wouldn't worry about the precise title of a darned Mounseer, so that's two arguments in favor of 1873." Graff said, "Yes, but they're--" He wiggled his hand in a rapid roll. "All right, then," said Avalon. "Anything else?" Silence. Finally, Halsted muttered, "I wish I knew the play better. LiAen, Herb, did you say the pirates were members of die, House of Peers?" "They have to be," said Graff. "When the MajorGeneral hears that the pirates are noblemen gone wrong, he says, "No Englishman unmoved that statement hears, because, with all our faults, we love our House of Peers." Then he goes on to say to the pirates, "Peers will be peers, and youth will have its fling. Resume your ranks and legislative duties-" So I suppose they're part of Parliament." "Ah," said Halsted, "then that settles it. In the 1870s, Great Britain was the dominant economic power on earth. In particular, there were heavy British investments in the United States. If a bunch of notorious pirates were suddenly to flood into Parliament, that would make Americans feel pretty shaky about the status of the British investments. You can't trust pirates. They might withdraw those investments. That would unsettle the American economy, and-" "You would have the Panic of 1873," said Rubin, triumphantly. "Exactly," said Halsted. Rubin said, "That really does it. There was a Panic of 1873. It was the worst economic downturn the United States had up'to the Great Depression of the 1930s."". Avalon said, "There you are, Herb. Three arguments in favor of 1873. Each one by itself is weak, perhaps, but surely all three combined have force. One: Victoria would have been referred to as Queen in 1873, but not in 1877 when she was Empress as well. Two: Napoleon III would have been referred to as an example of a royal conniver in 1873, soon after he died, but not in 1877 by which time he might have been out of mind. Three: the return of the pirates to Parliament could and did set off an'Amenican depression in 1873, while there was none in 1877. " I Graff nodded gloomily. "Yes, that's very nice and I hope it works. Maybe it will work. Anyway, I want to thank you all very much. If I can get Appelbaum to see the force of these arguments--" He paused, then said wistfully, ","There wouldn't be anything else you could feed me, would there? Something, I mean, that doesn't have all that subtle logic. Something simple. His eyes went from one to the other and met only blankness. Then Gonzalo said, "If you want something simple, we ought to ask Henry. He hasn't said,anything yet." Graff looked up at Henry curiously. "Don't tell me you go for Gilbert and Sullivan, too, Henry." "Not quite, sir," said Henry. "I have heard selections from the operettas on occasion, but I have never attended a performance of any of them. "Oh, well,." said Graff. "Nevertheless-" said Henry, and stopped. Avalon said, "Go on, Henry. If you've got argument number four backing 1873, so much the better. "That is the point, Mr. Avalon, I haven't. I admire the ingenuity of the arguments you have all presented and I am rather embarrassed to have to say anything against them." "You mean we're all wrong, Henry?" said Rubin. "I'm afraid so, Mr. Rubin. The dull fact is that 1873 is quite impossible as thetime of the action, as one can very simply demonstrate on the basis of what has already been said. " Graff said, "Impossible? You mean all those logical arguments aren't any good. "Completely useless. "Why?, Henry said, "Dr. Drake sang a couple of lines from the Major-General's song earlier in the evening. The MajorGeneral, if I heard him correctly, boasted that he knew all the airs from that infernal nonsense, Pinafore. "Damn!" said Rubin. "Of course!" "Yes, sir. As Dr. Drake said, Pinafore was an early play of Gilbert and Sutlivan,s, earlier than The Pirates of Penzance. While I was checking the various points in the encyclopedia, as requested, I found, for myself, that Pinafore was produced in 1878. We might imagine that-the Major-General, in view of his high rank, might somehow have gotten an advance look at the music when it was being written in 1877 and could have whistled the airs. No amount of twisting or logic chopping could explain his being able to whistle the airs in 1873. " Grairs round face had widened in a smile. "Of course. No argument anymore, no logic, no fancy reasoning. The Major-General mentions Pinafore and that's it. The time of action has to be 1877 and Gilbert forgot, or maybe he didn't know, that 1900 was not a leap year. Mentz will have to give in, and we can go ahead. Thank you,'Henry-but how is it I didn't see that?" "Or IT" said Drake. "After all, I sang the verses." Henry said, "I appear to be gifted with a simple mind, gentlemen-if you wish the, simple explanation.Afteirword. I have a number of wild, enthusiasms, and one of them is Gilbert and Sullivan. I am a member of The Gilbert and Sullivan Society and occasionally I like to drag some G reference into a story. Finally, I managed to think of a plot in which a G S angle is central and then you can bet that nothing could stop me from writing the story at once. Fred Darmay changed the title to "The Gilbert and Sullivan Mystery" but that struck me as too prosaic, so I kept my own title for this collection. Incidentally, the character Herb Graff in the story is, in A way, a real person. He is a dear friend of mine in the DutchTreat Club, another organization I belong to. He asked me to put him into a story, using his real name, description, and hobby. I was doubtful and asked him to give me a- piece of paper with his -signature on it, giving me permission to'do so. He gladly did so. I thereupon wrote him into "The Year of the Action", and gave him a copy of the January 1, 198 1, issue of EQW, in which the story appeared. That was at a Dutch Mtat luncheon, somethin we have every Thesday. The following lbesday I said, "How did you like the story?, " for I thought he would be pleased at how well I had captured his essence (and he's really one of the nicest guys in the world-funny, intelligent, and with a heart of gold . However, I had used a word he had disapproved of -and that spoiled everything. He drew himself up, fixed me with a piercing eye, and said, "Plump??T" I No word is worth hurting the feelings of a friend, so you won't find it in the version of the book. I have removed it. Can You Prove It? Henry, the smoothly functioning waiter at the monthly Black Widowers banquet, filled the water glass of the everung's guest as though knowing in advance that that guest Was reaching into his shirt pocket for a small vial of pills. The guest looked up. "Thank you, waiter-though the pills are small enough to go down au jus, so to speak." - He looked about the table and sighed. "Advancing, age! In our modern times we are not allowed to grow old ad lib. Doctors follow the faltering mechanism in detail and insist on applying the grease. My blood pressure is a touch high and I have an occasional extrasystole, so I take a pretty little orange pill four times a day. " Geoffrey Avalon, who sat immediately across the table, smiled with the self-conscious superiority of a man moderately stricken in years who kept himself in good shape with a vigorous system of calisthenics, and said, "How old are you, Mr. Smith?" "Fifty-seven. With proper care, my doctor assures me I will live out a normal lifetime. Emmanuel Rubin's eyes flashed in magnified form behind his thick spectacles as he said, "I doubt there's an American who reaches middle age these days who doesn't become accustomed to a regimen of pills of, one kind or another. I take zinc and vitamin E and a few other things. " .James Drake nodded and said in his soft voice as he peered through his cigarette smoke, "I have a special weekly pillbox arrangement to keep the day's dosages correct. That way you can check on whether you've taken the second pill of a particular kind. If it's in the Friday compartment still-assuming the day is Friday-you haven't taken it." Smith said, "I take only this one kind of pill, which simplifies things. I bought a week's supply three years ago--twenty-eight of them--on my doctor's prescription. I was frankly skeptical, but they helped me tremendously and I persuaded my doctor to prescribe them for me in bottles of. a thousand. Every Sunday morning, I put twenty-eight into my original vial, which I carry with me everywhere and at all times and which I still use. I know at all times how much I should have-right now, I should have four left, having just taken the twenty-fourth of theweek, and I do. In three years, I've missed a pill only twice. " "I," said Rubin, loftily, "have not yet reached that pitch of senility that requires any mnemonic devices at all. " "No?" asked Mario Gonzalo, spearing his last bit,of baba au rhum. "What pitch of senility have you reached?" Roger Halsted, who was hosting the banquet that night, forestalled Rubin's rejoinder by saying, hastily, "There's an interesting point to be made here. As increasing numbers of people pump themselves full of chemicals, there must be fewer and fewer people with untampered tissue chemistry. " "None at all," growled Thomas Trumbull. "The food we eat is loaded with additives. The water we drink has purifying chemicals. The air we breathe is half pollution of one sort or another. If you could analyze an individual's blood carefully enough, you could probably tell where he lived, what he eats, what medicines he takes. " Smith nodded. His short hair exposed prominent ears, something Gonzalo had taken full advantage of in preparing his caricature of the evening's guest. Now Smith rubbed. one Of them thoughtfully, and said, "Maybe you could, file everyone's detailed blood pattern i in some computer bank., Then if all else, fails, your blood "would be your identification - The pattern would be entered into the computer which would compare it with all those in its memory files and, within a minute, words would Bash across a screen saying, "The man you have here is John Smith of Fairfield, Connecticut," and I would stand up and how." Trumbull said, "If you could stand up and how, you could stand up and identify yourself. Why bother with a blood pattern?" "Oh, yes?" said Smith, grimly. Halsted said, "Listen, let's not get involved in this. Henry is distributing the brandy and it's past time for the grilling. Jeff, will you assume the task?" "I will be glad to," said Avalon in his most solemn tone. Bending his fierce and graying eyebrows over his eyes, Avalon said, with incongruous mildness, "And just how do you justify your existence, Mr. Smith?" "Well," said Smith, cheerfully, "I inherited a going business. I did well with it, sold it profitably, invested wisely, and now live in early retirement in a posh place in Fairfield-a widower with two grown children, each on his own. I toil not, neither do I spin and, like the lilies of the field, my justification is my beauty and the way it illuminates the landscape." A grin of self-mockery crossed his pleasantly ugly face. Avalon said, indulgently, "I suppose "we can pass-that. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your name is John Smith?" "And I can prove it," said Smith quickly. "."Name your poison. I have my card, a driver's license, a variety of credit cards, some personal letters addressed to me, a library card, and so on. 6.1 am perfectly willing to accept your word, sir, but it occurs to me that with a name like John Smith you must frequently encounter some signs of cynical disbelief-from hotel clerks, for instance. Do you have a middle initial'r" "No, sir, I am the real thing. My parents felt that any modification of the grand clich6 would spoil the grandeur. I won't deny that there haven't been times when I've longed to say my name was Eustace Bartholomew Wasservogel, but the feeling passes. Of the Smiths I am, and of that tribe-vaiiety, John-I remain." Avalon cleared his throat portentously and said, "And yet, Mr. Smith, I feel you have reason to feel annoyance at your name. You reacted to Tom's suggestion that you could merely announce your name and make the blood identification unnecessary with a clear tone of annoyance. Have you had some special occasion of late when you failed to identify yourself?" Trumbull said, "Let me guess that you did. Your eagerness to demonstrate your ability to prove your identity would show that some past failure to do so rankles. Smith stared around the table in astonishment, "Good God, does it -show that much?" Halsted said, "No, John, it doesn't, but this group has developed a sixth sense about mysteries. I told you when you accepted my invitation that if you were hiding a skeleton in your closet, they'd have it out of you." "And I told you, Roger," said Smith, "that I had no mystery about me." "And the matter of inability to prove identity?" said Rubin. "Was a nightmare rather than a mystery," said Smith, "and it is something I've been asked not to talk about." . Avalon said, "Anything mentioned within the four walls of a Black Widowers banquet represents privileged communication. Feel free." "I can't," Smith paused, then said, "Look, I don't know what it's alf about. I think I was mistaken for someone once when I was visiting Europe and after I got out of the nightmare, I was visited by someone from the-by someone, and asked not to talk about it. Though come to think of it, there Js a mystery of a sort." "Ah," said Avalon,, "and what might that be?" " I don't really know how I got out of the nightmare," said Smith. Gonzalo, looking pleased and animated, said, "Tell us what happened and I'll bet we tell you how you got out of it.,, "I can't very well-" began Smith. Trumbull's frowning face, having attempted to wither Gonzalo, turned to Smith. "I understand such things, Mr., Smith," he said. "Suppose you omit the name of the country involved and the exact dates, and any other such indentifiable paraphernalia. Just tell it as a story out of the Arabian Nights-if the nightmare will stand up without the dangerous detail. " Smith said, "I think it will, but seriously, gentlemen, if the matter does involve national security-and I can imagine ways in which it might-how can I be sure you are all to be trusted?" ,Halsted said, "If you trust me, John, I'll vouch for the rest of the Black Widowers-including, of course, Henry, our esteemed waiter. Henry, standing at the sideboard, smiled gently. Smith was visibly tempted. ","I don't say I wouldn't like to get this off my chest-" "If you choose not to," said Halsted, "I'm afraid the banquet ends. The terms of the invitation were that you were to answer all questions truthfully." Smith laughed. "You also said I would not be asked anything designed to humiliate me or to put me in a disgraceful light-but have it your way." "I was visiting Europe last year," said Smith, "and I'll put the location and date no closer than that. I was i recent widower, a little lost without my wife, and rather determined to pick up the threads of life once again. I -had not been much of a traveller before my retirement and I was anxious to make up for that. "I travelled alone and I was a tourist. Nothing more than that. I want to stress that in all truthfulness. I was not serving any organ of the government-and that's true of any government, not just my, owneither officially or, unofficially. Nor was I there to gather information for any private organization. I was a tourist and" nothing more and so steeped in innocence that I suppose it was too much to expect that I not get into trouble. "I could not speak the language of the country but that didn't bother me. I can't speak any language but English and I have the usual provincial American attitude that that's enough. There would always be someone, anywhere I might be, who would speak and understand English.-And as a matter of fact, that always proved to be correct. "The hotel I stayed at was reasonably comfortable in appearance, though there was so foreign an aura about it that I knew I would not fel at home-but then I didn't expect to feel at home. I couldn't even pronounce its name, though that didn't bother me. "I only stayed long enough to deposit my luggage and then it was ho, for the great foreign spaces where I could get to know the people. "The man at the desk--4he concierge, or whatever he might be called--spoke an odd version of English that, with a little thought, could be understood. I got a list of tourist attractions from him, some recommended restaurants, a stylized map of the city (not in English, so I doubted it would do me much good), and some general assertions as to how safe the city was and how friendly the inhabitants. "I imagine Europeans are always eager to impress that on Americans, who are known to live dangerously. In the nineteenth century they thought every Arrierican city lay under imminent threat of Indian massacre;, in the first half of the twentieth century, every one was full of Chicago gangsters; and now they are all full of indiscriminate muggers. So I -wandered off into the city cheerfully." I. "Alone? Without knowing the language?" said Avalon, with manifest disapproval. "What time was it?" "The shades,of evening were being drawn downward by a cosmic hand and you're right in the implication, Mr. Avalon. Cities are never as safe as their boosters claim, and I found that out. But I started off cheerfully enough. The world was full of poetry and I was enjoying myself. "There were signs of all kinds on buildings and in store windows that were beginning to be litup in defense against the night. Since I could read none of them, I was spared their deadly prosiness. "The people were friendly. I would smile and they would smile in return. Many said something-I presume in greeting--and I would smile again and nod and wave. It was a beautiful, mild evening and I was absolutely euphonic. "I don't know how long I was walking or how far I had gone before I was quite convinced that I was lost, but even that didn't bother me. I stepped into a tavern to ask my way to the restaurant where I had determined to go and whose name I had painstakingly memorized. I called out the name of the restaurant, and pointed vaguely in various directions and shrugged my shoulders and tried to indicatethat I had lost my way. Several gathered around and one of "them asked in adequate English if I was an American. I said I was and he translated that jubilantly to the others, who seemed delighted. "He said, "We don't see many Americans here." They then fell to studying my clothes and the cut of MY hair and asking where I was from and trying to pronounce "Fairfield" and offering to stand me drinks. I sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" because they seemed to expect it and it was a real love feast. I did have a drink on an empty.stomach and after that things got even love-feastier. "They told me the restaurant I asked for was very expensive, and not very good, and that I should eat right, there and they would order for me and it would be on the . house. It was hands across the sea and building bridges, you know, and I doubt if I had ever been happier since before Regina had died. I had another drink or two. "And then after that my memory stops -until I found myself out in me street again. it was quite dark, much ccler. There were almost no people about, I had no idea where I was, and every idea that I had a splitting headache. ""I sat down in a doorway and knew, even before I felt for it, that my wallet was gone. So was my wristwatch, MY pens-In fact, -my trousers pockets were empty and so were my jacket pockets. I had been Mickey Finned and rolled by my dear friends across the sea and they had probably taken me by car to a distant part of the city and dumped me. "The money taken was not terribly vital. My main supply was safely back in the hotel. Still I had no money at the moment, I didn't know where I was, I didn't remember the name of the hotel, I felt woozy, sick, and in pain-and needed help., "I looked for a policeman or for anyone in anything that looked like a uniform. If I had found a street cleaner, or a bus conductor, he could direct me or, better, take me to a ,police station. "I found a policeman. Actually, it wasn't difficult. They are, I imagine, numerous and deliberately visible in "that particular city. And I was then taken to a police station-in the equivalent of a paddy wagon, I think. My memory has its hazy spots "When I begin to remember a bit more clearly, f was sitting on a bench'in what I guessed to be the police station. No one was paying much attention to me and my headache was a little better. "A rather short man with a large mustache entered, engaged in conversation with a man behind a massive desk, then approached me. He seemed rather indifferent, but w my relief he spoke English and quite well, too, though he had a disconcertingly British accent. "I followed him into a rather dingy room, gray and depressing, land there, the questioning began. It was the questioning that was the nightmare, though, the questioner remained unfailingly, if distantly, polite. He told me his name but I don't remember it. I honestly don't. It began with a V, so I'll just call him Nee" if I have to. "He said, "You say your name is John Smith." ,,"Yes.9 1 . I "He didn't exactly smile. He said, "It is a very common name in the United States and, I understand, is frequently assumed by those who wish to avoid investigation." 61 it is frequently assumed because it is common," I said, "and since it is common, why shouldn't I be one of the hundreds of thousands who bear itT ""You have identificationT ""I've been robbed. I've come in to complain-" "Vee raised his hand and made hushing noises through his mustache. "Your complaint has been recorded, but I have nothing to do with the people here. They merely made sure you were not wounded and then sent for me. They have not searched you or questioned you. It is not their job. Now --- do you have identificationT "Wearily, and quietly, I told him what had happened. ""Then," he said, "you have nothing with which to support your statement that you are John Smith of Fairfield, Connecticut?" ""Who else should I beT ""That we would Re to find out. You say you were mistreated in a tavem. Its location, please." "."I don't know." ""Its nanieT ""I don't know." ""What were you doing thereT ""I told you. I was merely walking through the city-" "AloneT ""Yes, alone. I told you." ""Your starting pointT ""My hotel." ""And you have identification thereT ""Certainly. My passport is there and all my belongings." ""The name of the hotelT "I winced at that. Even to myself my answer would seem too much to accept. "I can't recall," I said in a low voice. ""Its locationT -1 don't know." "Vee sighed. He looked at me in a nearsighted way and I thought his eyes seemed sad, but perhaps it was only myopia. "He said, "The basic question is: What is your name? We must have some identification or this becomes a serious matter. Let me explain your position to you, Mr. Blank. Nothing compels me to do so, but I am not in love with every aspect of my work and I shall sleep better if I make sure you understand that you are in great danger." "My heart began to race. I am not young. I am not a hero. I am not brave. I said, "But why? I am a wronged person. I have been drugged and robbed. I came voluntarily to the police, sick and lost, looking for help--" "Again, Vee held up his hand. "Quietly! Quietly! Some speak a little English here and it is better we keep this between ourselves for now. Things may be as you have described, or they may not. You are an American national. My government has cause to fear Americans. That, at least, is our official position. We are expecting an American agent of great ability to penetrate our borders on a most dangerous mission. ""That means that any strange Anierican-any American encountered under suspicious circumstances-has, for a week now, been referred instantly to my department. Your circumstances were suspicious to begin with and have grown far more -suspicious now that I have questioned you." "I stared at him in horror. "Do you think I'm a spy? If I were, would I come to the police like thisT ","You may not be the spy, but you may still be a spy. There are people who will think so at once. Even I view it as a possibility- ""But no kind of spy would come to the police-" ""Please! It will do you good to listen. You may be a distraction. If you play chess, you will know what I mean when I say you may be a sacrifice. You are sent in to confuse and distract us, occupying our time and efforts, while the real work is done elsewhere." "I said4 "But it hasn't worked, if that's what I'm supposed to be. You're not confused and distracted. No one could be fooled by anything as silly as this. It's not a reasonable sacrifice and so it's no, sacrifice at all. It's nothing but the truth I've been telling you." "Vee sighed. "Then what's your nameT ""John Smith. Ask me a million times and it will stay my name." ""But you can't prove it.--See here," he said, "you have two alternatives. One is to convince me in some reasonable way that you are telling the truth. Mere statements, however eloquent, are insufficient. There must be evidence. Have you nothing with your name on it? Nothing material you can show meT ""I told you," I said, despairingly. "I've been rbbbed." ""Failing that," he said, as though he hadn't heard my remark, "it will be assumed that you are here to fulfill some function for your country that will not be to the interest of my country, and you will be interrogated with that in mind. It will not be my job, I am glad to say, but those who interrogate will be most thorough and most patient. I wish it were not so, but where national security is at stake-" . "I was in utter panic. I said, stuttering, "But I can't tell what I don't know, no matter how you interrogate." ""If so, they will finally be convinced, but you will not be well -off by then. And you will be imprisoned, for it will not then be politic to let you go free in your condition. If your country succeeds in what it may be attempting, there will be anger in this country and you will surely be the victim of that and will receive a long sentence. Your country will not be able to intercede for you. It will not even try." "I screamed. "That is unjust! That is unjust!" ""Life is unjust," said Vee, sadly. "Your own President Kennedy said that." ""But what am I to doT I babbled.. "He said, "Convince me your story is true. Show me something! Remember something! Prove your name is John Smith. Take me to the tavern; better yet to the hotel - Present me with your passport. Give me anything, however small, as a beginning, and I will have sufficient faith in you to try for the rest-at some risk to myself, I might add." "I appreciate that, but I cannot. I am helpless. I cannot." I was babbling. All I could think of was that I was facing torture and an extended prison term for the crime of having been drugged and robbed. It was more than I could bear and I fainted. I'm sorry. It is not a heroic action, but I told you I wasn't a hero. " Halsted said, "You don't know what they had put in your drink in the tavern. You were half-poisoned. You werewt yourself. " "It's kind of you to say so, but the prospect of torture and imprisonment for nothing was not something I could have faced with stoicism on my best day. "The next memory I have is that of lying on a bed with a vague feeling of having been manh4ndled. I think some of my clothing may have been removed. "Vee was watching me with the same expression I Of sadness on his face. He said, "I'm sorry. Would you care for some brandy?" "Iremembered. The nightmare was back. I shook MY head. All I wanted was to convince him of my utter innocence somehow. I said, "Listen! You must believe me. Every word I have told you is true! I-" "He placed his hand- on my shoulder and shook it. "Stop!. I believe you!" "I stared at him stupidly. "What!" "He said, "I believe you. For one thing, no one who was sent on a task such as yours might have been, could have portrayed utter terror so convincingly, in my opinion. But that is only my opinion. It would not have convinced MY superiors and I could not have acted on it. However, no one could be as stupid as you have now proved to be without having been sufficiently stupid to step into a strange tavern so confidingly and to have forgotten the name of your hotel." ""But I don't understand." ""Enough! I have wasted enough time. I should, erly, now leave you to the police, but I do not wish to abandon you just yet. For the tavern and the thieves within, I can do nothing now. Perhaps another time after another complaint. Let us, however, find your hotel.-Tell me everything you remember --- the d6cor-the position of the registration desk--the hair color of the man behind it-were them flowers? Come, come, Mr. Smith, what kind of street was it on? Were there shops? Was there a doorman? ,42ything?" "I wondered if it were a scheme to trap me into something, but I saw no alternative but to try to -answer the questions. I tried to picture everything as it had been when I had walked into the hotel for the first time less than twelve hours before. I did my best to describe and he hurried me on impatiently, asking questions faster than I could answer. "He then looked at the hurried notes he had taken and whispered them to another official of some sort, who was on the spot without my having seen him enter-a hotel expert, perhaps. The newcomer nodded his head wisely and ,Whispered back, "Vee said, "Very well, then. We think we know what hotel it was, so let us go. The faster I locate your passport, the better all around." "Off we went in an official car. I sat there, fearful and apprehensive, fearing that it was a device to break my spirit by offering me hope only to smash it by taking me to prison instead. God knows my spirit needed no breaking.---Or what if they took me to a hotel, and it was the wrong one, would they then listen to anything at all that I had to say? "We did speed to a hotel, however. I shrugged helplessly when Vee asked if it was the hotel. How could I tell in pitchdarkness? And I feared committing myself to what would turn out to be a mistake. "Butit was the correct hotel. The night man behind the desk didn't know me, of course, but there war, the record of a room for a John Smith of Fairfield. We went up there and behold-my luggage, my passport, my papers. Quite enough. "Vee shook hands with me and said, in a low voice, "A word Of advice, Mr. Smith - Get out of the country quickly. I shall make my report and exonerate you, but if things go wrong in some ways, someone may decide you should be picked up again. You will be better off beyond the borders. " "I thanked him and never took anyone's advice so eagerly in all my life. I checked out of the hotel, grabbed a taxi to the nearest station, and I don't think I breathed till I crossed the border. "To this day, I don't know what it was all aboutwhether the United States really had an espionage project under way in that country at that time or whether, if we did, we succeeded or failed. As I said, some official asked me to keep quiet about the whole thing, so I suppose the suspicions of Vee's government were moreor less justified. "In any case, I never plan to go back to that particular country. 1 - Avalon said, "You were fortunate, Mr. Smith. I see What you mean when you said you were puzzled by the ending. Vee, as you call him, did make a sudden about-face, didn't he?" "I don't,think so," interposed Gonzalo. "I think he was sympathetic to you all along" Mr. Smith. When you passed, out, he called some superior, convinced him you were just a poor jerk in trouble, and then let you go." "It might be," said Drake, "that it was your fainting that convinced him". If you were actually an agent, you would know the dangers you ran, and you would be more or less steeled for them. In fact, he said so, didn't he? He said you couldn't. fake fear so convincingly and you therefore had to be what you said you were or something like that.." Rubin said, "If you've told the story accurately, Mr. Smith,I would-think that Vee is out of sympathy with the regime or he wouldn't have urged you to get out of the country as he did. I should think he stands a good chance of being purged, or, has been since that time." ikumbull said, "I hate to agree with you., Manny, but I do. My guess is that Vee's failure to hang on to Smith may have been the last straw. "That doesn't make me feel very good," muttered Smith. Roger Halsted pushed his coffee cup out of the way and placed his elbows on the table. He said earnestly, "I've heard the bare bones of the story before and I've thought about it and think there's more to it than that. Besides, if all five of you agree on something, that must be wrong. Of He turned to Smith. "You told me, John, that this Vee was a young man." "Well, he struck me as being in his early thirties." "All right, then," said Halsted, "if a youngish mamn is in the secret police, it must be out of conviction and he;must plan to rise in the ranks. He isn't going to run ridiculous risks for some nonentity. If he were an old man, he might remember an earlier regime and might be out of sympathy with the new government, but-" Gonzalo said, "How do you know this Vee wasn't a double agent? Maybe that's why our government doesn't want Smith to be talking about the matter." "If Vee were a double agent," said Halsted, "then, considering his position in the government intelligence there, he would be enormously valuable to us - All the more reason that he wouldn't risk anything for the sake of a nonentity. I suspect that there's more than sympathy involved. He must have thought of something that authendeated John's story." "Sometimes I think that's it," said Smith, morosely. "I keep thinking of his remark after I came out of my faint to the effect that I was too stupid to be guilty He never did explain that remark." "Wait a minute," said Rubin, "After you came out of your faint, you said you seemed to be in disarray. While you were out, they inspected your clothes closely, realized they were American make-" "What would that prove?" demanded Gonzalo, scornfully. "An American spy is as likely to wear American clothes as an American jerk is.-No offense, Mr. Smith.", "None taken," said Smith. "Besides, I had bought the clothes I was then wearing in Paris." Gonzalo said, "I guess you didn't ask him why he thought you were stupid." I Smith snorted. "You mean did I say to him, "Hey, wise guy, who're you calling stupidT No, I didn't say that, or anything like it. I just held my breath." Avalon said, "The comments on your stupidity, Mr. Smith, need not be taken to heart. You have said several times that you were not yourself at any time during that difficult time. After being drugged, you might well have seemed stupid. In any case "I don't see that we'll ever know the inwardness of Vee's ciiange of mind. It would -be sufficient to accept it and norquestion the favors of fortune. It- is enough that you emerged safely from the lion's mouth. " "Well, wait," said Gonzalo. "We haven't isked Henry for his opinion yet." Smith said, with astonishment, "The waiter?" Then, in a lower voice, "I didn't realize he was listening., Does he understand this is all confidential?" Gonzalo said, "He's a member of the club and thebest man here.-Henry, can you understand Vee's change of heart?" Henry hesitated. "I do not wish to offend Mr. Smith. I would not care to call him stupid, but I can see why this foreign official, Vee, thought so." There was a general stir about the table. Smith said, stiffly, "What do you mean, Henry?" "You say the events of the nightmare took place some time last year." "That's right," said Smith. "And you say your pockets were rifled. Were they completely emptied?" "Of course," said Smith. "But that is clearly impossible. You've said you still carry the original vial of pills, and that you have carTied it everywhere and at all times, so that 1, suppose you had it with you when you travelled abroad and that you had it with you when you entered the tavem-and therefore still had it with you when you left the tavern. Smith said, "Well, yes, you're right. It was in my shirt pocket as always. Either they missed it or decided they didn't want it." "You didn't say anything about that in the course of the tale you have just told us. " "It never occurred to me. "Nor did you tell Vee about them, I suppose?" said Henry "Look here," said Smith, angrily, "I didn't think of them. But even if I did, I wouldn't voluntarily bring up the matter. They would use it to place a trumped-up charge of carrying dope against me and in that way justify an imphsonment. "You'd be right, if you thought of the pills only, sir," said Henry. "What else is there to think of?" "The container," said Henry, mildly. "The pills were available only by prescription and you told us it was the original vial. May we see it, Mr. Smith?" Smith withdrew it from his shirt pocket, glanced at it and said, vehemently, "Hell!" "Exactly," said Henry. "On the label placed on the vial by the pharmacist, there should be printed the pharmacist's name and address, probably in Fairfield, and your name should be typed in as well, together with directions for useyou Ire right. "And after you had denied having any identification on you, even in the face of torture, Vee looked through your pockets while you were unconscious, and found exactly what he had been asking you to give him. " "No wonder he thought I was stupid, " said Smith, shaking his head. "I was stupid. Now I really feel rotten." "And yet," said Henry, "you. have an explanation of something that has puzzled you for a year, and that should make you feel good." Afterword Here's another story in which I accepted Fred's tide and discarded my own. I had called this story "What's My Name?" and it seems to me that "Can You Prove It?" is much more successful. There's an air of hostility about "Can You Prove It?" that instantly increases the tension even before you begin the story Incidentally, this, like "The Driver," is one of those stories that derives its tension from the fact that tdhie world contains two superpowers that have confronted each other for forty years now, each with weapons of destruction so unparalleled that a war between them would mean loss (perhaps irreversible loss) for all mankind. It is for that reason that I hate to write stories, involving the confrontation, or even to read them. It strikes me that anything that serves to increase hatred and suspicion just increases the chances that in a moment of anger or miscalculation the nuclear button will be pushed. And yet, sometimes, the exigencies of plotting force me into it, and then as I reread the story I can't help but think sardonically that with the change ofa very few words, with just a substitution here and there of minor extent, the story could very well have been written by someone on the other side.-And that's rather sad, too. - The story appeared in the June 17, 1981, issue of EQMM. 110 The, -Phoenician Bauble Geoffrey Avalon, a patent lawyer by profession, did not often admit to reading light fiction. On the occasion of this particular Black Widowers banquet, however, he stirred the ice in his second drink (which had reached its halfway point and would be sipped no more) and said, "I read an interesting science fiction story yesterday." James Drake, a retired chemist, who had spent the better part of an otherwise misspent life in reading every kind of popular fiction periodical, said, "Did it hurt?" "Not at all. I was at a friend's place, saw a magazine, leafed through it, began reading, and, I must admit, rather enjoyed it. The premise was that to a man who had developed total recall there could be no secrets. If I were to recall everything you said, Jim, together with intonations and expressions, and combined it with what others said, and what 11 already knew, I would be able to deduce everything about you. No matter what it was you didn't want me---or anyqne-to know, you would give it away a dozen times a day without knowing it. It's only that in real life we pay no attention-or don't "hear-or forget-that secrets remain secrets. In the story, of course, the protagonist gets into trouble with his wild talent." "As they always do," said Drake, unimpressed. "It's a literary convention as old as Midas's golden touch. The story you read was, I suspect, "Lest We Remember" by Isaac Asimov,, in a recent issue -of his own magazine." "That's right," said Avalon. Mario Gonzalo, who had arrived late and had just placed his rubbers and raincoat in the cloakroom (for New York was not really enjoying the rain it badly needed for its reservoirs), ordered his drink from Henry with a small gesture, and said, "Asimov? Isn't he Manny's friend, the one who's even more stuck on himself than Manny is, if you can believe it?" Emmanuel Rubin turned his entire body to face Gonzalo and pointed his finger. "Asimov is not my friend. He merely dogs my footsteps because he needs help, on various simple points of science before I he can write his so-called stories. "I looked him up in Books in'Print, Manny," said Gonzalo, grinning. "He writes a lot more-" "Books than I do," Rubin finished. "Yes, I know. That's because I don't sacrifice quality for quantity. Here, meet my guest. Mr. Enrico Pavolini. This is Mario Gonzalo, who represents himself to be an artist and who will disprove the fact by concocting a caricature of you shortly. Mr. Pavolini is curator at the City Museum of Ancient Art. Pavolini bowed with continental courtesy, and said, "I listen sadly to the science fiction story you are discuss Mig. I fear that even a perfect memory could not, penetrate some - secrets, except in romances. And always those secrets that badly need penetrating prove the most "opaque. " His English was perfect but his vowels had a subtle distortion to them that made it clear he was not born ta the language. Trumbull said, "My feeling is that most secrets are safe because no one really cares. Most so-called secrets are so damned dull, it is only those who are desperately bored who would take the trouble to ferret them out. " "That may be so in some cases, my dear sir-" began Pavolini, but was interrupted by Henry's quiet announcement that dinner was -served. The guests sat -down to an arTay of Greek appetizers that bore a promise of moussaka to come. Roger Halsted made a small sound of pleasure as he draped his napkin over his thighs and Rubin, having speared a stuffed grape loaf, looked at it approvingly, placed it in his mouth, and ground it to nothingnessRubin then said (his mind clearly running on his earlier reference to quality versus quantity), "One of the unfortunate cons.equences of the era of pulp fiction, between 1920 and 1950, is that it raised a generation of Asimovs who learned to write without thought, in the pursuit of quantity only.11 "That's not entirely bad," said Drake. "It's far more common for a writer to fall into the opposite trap of postponing execution in a, useless search for nonexistent perfection. "I'm not talking about perfection," said Rubin. "I'M suggesting just a little extra trouble to move away from abysmal junk." "If you'll read some of the better pulp, you'll find it is far away from abysmal junk," said Drake, stiffly. "A lot of it, in fact, is recognized now as an important contribution to literature and its techniques are well worth study. Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Cornell Woohich--Come on, Manny, it's your own field.- Don't knock it. " - "They weren't pulp. They were real writers who had to make use of the available markets-" Drake laughed. "It's easy to prove that all pulp is bad, ift when examples of the contrary are cited, you say "If it's good, it isn't pulp."" Gonzalo said, "Once something is old, it gets slavered over by critics who would slap it down hard if they were contemporaries of the object criticized. I've heard Manny say a-hundred times that Shakespeare was a-hack writer who was despised in his own day. " - "For every Shakespeare," said Rubin, violently, his sparse beard bristling, "who was far ahead of the puny minds of his time, there were a hundred, or maybe a thousand, scribblers who were dismissed as zeroes in their own time and who are exactly zero today, if they are remembered at all." "That's the point," said Pavolini. "Surely survival is the best testimony of worth." "Not always," said Rubin, characteristically -shifting ground at once. "Accident must play a role. Aeschylus and Sophocles wrote over ninety plays each, and in each case only seven survive. Who can possibly say those were the seven best? Sappho was considered by the ancient Greeks to be in a class with Homer himself, and yet virtually nothing of her work survives." A curious silence fell over the Black Widowers, as .though in appreciation of true tragedy-the loss of the irreplaceable work of humah genius. The conversation was quieter and more general thereafter And finally, Rubin, as host, called for the grilling. "Not you, Mario," he said. "Youll try to prove you're an artist and bore Mr. Pavolini to death and he's too good a friend for me to lose. Jim, do the honors. Enrico Pavolini looked expectant. His smile which .seemed always radiant, gave every indication of welconiing all questions. He might have been in his fifties, but his neat mustache, his ungraying hair, his unlined face, his unsorrowing eyes, would have made the forties an equally reasonable guess. I Drake cleared his throat and said, "Mr. Pavolini, how do you justify your existence?" Pavolini showed no surprise at all at the question. He said "By doing what one man can do to prevent the tragedy id, of which we spoke earlier in the dinner. I labor to save those products of artistic genius that might otherwise be lost. In so doing, of course, I must deal, often, with thieves and criminals, and compound their felonies--but the nature of my work justifies even that. Drake said, "Who are these thieves and criminals you speak of?" "Throughout history," said Pavolini, "works of art have been hidden; sometimes purposely as when they are buried, with dead rulers or aristocrats, or when they are concealed from marauding hands of armed men; sometinies accidentally as when a temple is destroyed by an earthquake or a ship sinks at sea. And throughout history, there have been people in search of treasure, persistent robbers with spades who break into pyramids and tombs, who follow the legends of buried treasure, who poke about in sunken ships. Caches of coins, ingots of precious metals, jewels, works of art, are always turning up. Sometimes they are broken up, inelted- down, sold as bullion or stones. Sometimes, eIspecially in the last two hundred years, they are left intact and placed on the open market. That's where 1, and others like myself, come in. We hid for the material. Every museum of art in the world is filled with illegal loot. " Drake said, "What makes these so-called looters criminals? Are they supposed to leave works of art buried--4he property of, for instance, a pharaoh who has been dead for thirty-five centuries?" "In the first place," said Pavolini, "many looters am criminals against humanity. They are ignorant people who may come across a treasure either by accident, or design, but who, from the start, or in the end, are interested only in the negotiable. Everything they do not see as intrinsically valuable, they are liable to destroy, not so much out of malice as out of indifference. They are quite likely to break up priceless artwork in order to salvage a few emeralds or strips of gold. "Secondly, they are criminals in the eyes of the law. Over the,last century, nations have come increasingly to consider various relics of the past as part of their national heritage and therefore the property of the state. Searches should, in theory, be conducted under strict supervision, and finds cannot be sold to foreign museums. Even trained archeologists who flout these rules are, strictly speaking, criminals. "Still, many-governments are too inefficient to conduct proper searches, too-corrupt to resist bribery; and human cupidity is such that consideration of national pride... can alMost never compete with the fact dud a betterprice can be obtained from foreigners. Drake said, "If all museums combined in a policy of refusing to deal with looters--" Pavolini shook his head vigorously. "It would do no good. The museums are run by human beings, or by governments, with their own prides, cupidities", and corruptibilities. No museurn would want to lose a real find to another museum. And even if the museums were to stand firm M a group, items might be sold to private collectionsor be broken up and melted down. Some looters have resorted to blackmail and have used the threat of destruction to force a higher price. " Drake said, "Is it all worth it? Surely not everything is a great,work of art?" - "Some is," said Pavolini, smiling with a touch of condescension, "by any standards, as, for instance, the bust of Nefertiti, the Cretan snake goddess, Venus de Milo. That, however, is secondary, in a way. Every artifact of a past era is important as a living evidence of a society that is gone. The commonest pot of terra-cotta was once used, was part of a way of fife, was formed to fill a purpose. Each is as .important and as indispensable to an archeologist as the f6ssil tooth of an, extinct shark would be to a paleontologist. Trumbull said, "May I interpose, Jim?-l presume the City Museum of Ancient Art has its share of past artifacts, Mr. Pavolini?" Pavolini's smile broadened. "It certainly has,,Mr. Trumbull. You must rome visit us sometime and see for yourself. We are a comparatively young museum and do not have the resources of the Metropolitan, but we are more" finely ussed and our collection of pre-Columbian Mexican- art is world-farnous. "I will certainly visit you at my first opportunity," said Tkurnbull, "but I seem to remember that before dinner-, you said something about secrets not being easily penetrated. -Pavolim looked suddenly grave. "Did IT" "Yes. There was some mention of some idiotic science fiction story about a perfect memory being all that was required to penetrate any secret and you said-" "Ah, Yes, I remember."" "Well, then, were you referring to anything specific, anything that had to do with your work?" "As a matter of fact, Yes. " Pavolini shrugged his shoulders. "A small thing that has been haunting me for some time, but of no importance outside my own feelings, I suppose. "Ull us about it, " said Trumbull, conjugating himself abruptly into the imperative. Pavolini blinked. "As I said, utterly unimportant. Rubin put in gently, "Tell us anyway, Enrico. It's the price of the dinner. You remember I explained about the grilling. "Yes, Emmanuel," said Pavolini, "but it is not a thing I can discuss indiscriminately. From a strictly legal standpoint-" Rubin said, "We are all as silent as one of your preColumbian artifacts. That includes, particularly, our esteemed waiter and fellow member, Henry. Please continue, Enrico. Pavolini smiled, ruefully. "Our artifacts are not by any means silent, since they speak to us eloquently of past cultures, so it was an unfortunate simile. However-There was a Phoenician bauble on the market of the museum worldL-the black market, I suppose." "It had been dug up in Cyprus, where the confusion of the past decade has made it possible for looters to obtain and smuggle out valuable material. This was a small cup of gold and tnamel, dating back to some time about 1200 B.c. There was some question as, to whether it showed Mycenean influence and it bore promise of modifying some of our notions of events in the time of the Trojan war. "Naturally, we wanted it, and so, I imagine, did a dozen other major museums in the world. It wasn't, of course, a matter of mere bidding. The person offering it for sale had to cover his tracks for he wanted to get back to Cyprus, to obtain other pieces perhaps, without being stripped of his gains and being thrown into prison besides by the Cypriot authorities. For that reason, he needed to, have certain precautions accepted, certain guaranties made. And, of course, it helped to have a good man on the spot, a persuasive man." Rubin said, "You once told me about one of your people who you said was exactly like that-Jelinsky. Pavolini nodded. "The name is not merely Jelinsky. You forget how it came about I mentioned him to you in the first place. His full name was Emmanuel Jelinsky. That is actually how I came to know you, Emmanuel. It is an unusual first name and when I was introduced to you, I thought at once of my Emmanuel. It drew my attention to you. We talked about him and then I had my chance to get to know you. My Emmanuel, however, is now dead." "I'm sorry," said Rubin. "A heart attack. He was sixty-five and it was not entirely unexpected, but, if I may be permitted to view it selfishly, it was tragic, for with his death went all chance of obtaining the Phoenician bauble." Pavolini sighed heavily. "To be honest, it was with the greatest difficulty that I persuaded myself to attend the banquet tonight-but I had accepted your invitation nearly a month ago and my wife rather insisted I go. She said she did not want me brooding and tearing my hair. She said, "Have one evening out. Forget." So here I am, and I'm not forgetting after all." There was an uneasy silence at that, and then Gonzalo, the ever-hopeful, said, "Sometimes it turns out that we can help people with problems." Trumbull said with instant fury, "Will you stop making ridiculous statements like that?" "I said sometimes, " said Gonzalo, defensively, "and I intend to continue the grilling. How about it, Manny? You're the host. " Rubin looked uncomfortable. "Do you mind if we continue, Enrico?" Pavolini managed a smile. "Not talking will not bring him back, nor the bauble, either." "All right then," said Gonzalo. "You said that Jelinsky's death lost you that Phoenician whatever-it-was. Which museum got it?" "I wish one of them did. That would be better for the world generally. The trouble is that the object has simply disappeared. " "How? Why?" burst out Trumbull. Pavolini sighed. "Well, then, from the beginning. Let me explain about Jelinsky. He was with the museum longer than I was and he was simply invaluable. I don't wish to overdramatize but in some respects museums must engage in activities that have about them some of the atmosphere of espionage work. There are delicate negotiations to be carried through; clandestine contacts to be made; objects to be purchased illegally and, therefore, secretly; other museums to spy on and measures to be taken to foil the spies of others. "Of course, it is all small potatoes since the apparatuses involved and the stakes, too, are far smaller than those which governments or even industries can dispose of. On the other hand, we don't have great power to fall back on for protection, and to us, at least, if to no one else, the stakes are high. "Jelinsky was what we would consider a master spy, if he were an employee of the CIA. He could trace valuable items and make his contacts before anyone else was fairly in the field. He was persuasive, could talk a bird out of a tree and into his hand, could close a deal to the greatest advantage of ourselves even while others were after the same item with offers that were double what we could offer. We never knew how he did it. "I asked him once about that but he just let one eyelid close and said, "You'll never know, Enrico. After all, if you ever fire me, I would have to find work elsewhere and it would be inconvenient if you knew my methods then." "He had one peculiarity, however, -that we all knew about. it was impossible to miss . He doodled! He was never without a scratch pad and at any time that scratch pad had the top sheet covered with fascinating abstractions. They were never quite the same but they were always neatly geometric-triangles, squares, trapezoids, octagons, eitdhier alone or in bizarre combinations. Sometimes there would be words built up of letters neatly printed in geometric form. Sometimes I could tell it was a word that occupied his mind at the time of the doodling. I remember once, when we werme in conference, he wrote the first-few letters of my name, each letter constructed in a series of egg-shaped segments. I asked him if he would let me have it as a curio and he looked at it with astonishment as if not aware he had done it. He gave it to me with an air of wondering why I could possibly want it. I still have it. I "I asked him once why he doodled and he said he wasn't sure. He said, "Maybe it is what I do instead of jiggling my -feet or tapping my fingernails. I have a restless mind and this focuses it and keeps it from darting off in unwanted directions - Maybe. And maybe it just serves as an outlet for ,some artistic impulse that lies dormant in me. I don't know. In any case, I never notice that I'm doodling when I'm doodling. But at least I stick to geometry so I never give away my thoughts." ""Except when you write letters," I said, and he flushed and insisted they never meant anything." Gonzalo said, with satisfaction, as he sipped at his brandy and then held up the-glass for Henry to renew the infusion, "I'll bet one of Jelinsky's doodles has a part in all ,this. "Yes," said Pavolini, sadly, "or I should not have gone on at such length about it. Obviously. Two weeks ago, I received a call from Jelinsky, He was in Halifax. He did not speak of the Phoenician artifact directly for--and again I do not wish to overdrarnatize-ht well knew this room might be bugged.or his wire tapped. Some of our competitors are at least as unscrupulous as we ourselves are. "I understood well the significance of what he was saying, however. He had closed the deal and he had the object. Why the deal was closed in Halifax, I don't know and didn't ask. The looter may have been Canadian or Jelinsky rnay have persuaded him to come to that unlikely city to throw off the scent as far as the others in the field were concerned. It didn't matter. "Though Jelinsky had physical possession of the object,, he did not intend to carry it with him to New York. He had checked it inan unobtrusive place in the form of a package that gave no outward clue to its contents or its value, and under,conditions where it was clear to the people keeping it that it might be some time before it was called for. He was coming to New York with the information and someone else would fly to Halifax to get the object. All this was told me most indirectly; virtually in code. "Isn't all this indirection overdrawn?" said Halsted. "I know it sounds paranoid," said Pavolini, "but Jelinsky was a known man. He might be followed,. his baggage might be tampered with. After all, why hesitate to steal an object that was already stolen? In any case, Jelinsky did not feel it safe to carry the object to New York. We could send some unknown to carry the object, someone who would be safe because he was unknown. " "Except that he died," said Gonzalo, excitedly, "before he could pass on the necessary information. " "Of a heart attack, as I told you," said Pavolini, "at Kennedy airport. Naturally, he never had a chance to tell us where he had checked the object. " I Avalon looked grave and said,, "I scarcely wish to outdo you in overdramatizing the matter, so I will ask you to reassure us, and tell us that there is no chance that Jelinsky body. was murdered. and the information taken from his "Not at all possible," said, Pavolini. -There were those who saw him collapse-, there was his- history of heart disease, and dwe was a careful autopsy. There was, no question but that it was a natural death, and a most unfortunate one for us. For one thing, we had lost an irreplaceable man, but he would have died eventually. It was the precise moment of his death that was the calamity "We don't know where the object is. We -presume it is somewhere in Halifax-but that is all. Essentially, the Phoenician bauble is once again buried, and -it will be recovered only by accident and by-who can tell who. "Even if it were found by someone and were placed on the market again, the fact that we have already paid a substantial sum for it would mean nothing. We are not likely to be able to prove ownership and, what is worse, we are even less likely to prove legal ownership. If found, and if the find is publicized too openly, the Greek Cypriot Government will claim it and will probably receive it. We can live with the loss of the money, but the loss of the object itself is hard to bear. Very hard. " Pavolini shook his head despondently. Pavolini went on, "What makes it more frustrating is that there is absolutely no reason to think he was robbed. He was under observation by many, as I said, when he collapsed, and airport guards were at his side almost at once. His pockets were filled with the usual-a wallet reasonably supplied with cash, including both American and Canadian bills. There were coins, credit cards, keys, handkerchief, and so on." "Nothing of interest at all?" asked Halsted, incredulously. "Well, one of the items was a claim check. We, as his employers, were able to effect a claim to that-though not without considerable legal problems. However, it doesn't help us at all. I suspect-I hope--that the claim check is for the package containing the object, but what good does that do me? The claim check is entirely without distinguishing mark. It is red and rectangular and made of cardboard. On it in black block letters is the number 17. On the other side isnothing. There is no way identifying where on Earth, at least, where in Halifax the ticket belonged." Trumbull said , "Nothing else. No address book. No folded slip Of paper in his wallet. "Believe me, we went over everything in his pockets and in his baggage; under the eyes of the police, I might addand there seemed nothing that could indicate the place where he had checked the package. There was an address book, of course, but in it was not one Halifax address; nor was there oni non-Halifax address that seemed in any way suspicious. There was his scratch pad, too. If that had not been present, I would have been sure he was robbed. Still, under the. closest scrutiny, there was no address on any page of it. We might have tested everything for secret writing-I thought of that-but why on earth should he have gone to such lengths9" "I suppose," said Halsted, "you might use force majeure. You might go to every place in Halifax that could conceivably use such claim checks and try to recover a package at each one." "Every hotel? Every restaurant? Every train or bus terminal? Every airport?" said Pavolini. "That would truly be an act of desperation. No!-We tried cutting down the possibilities instead. " "The doodles!" ched out Gonzalo. "You haven't forgotten," said Pavolini. "Yes, there were doodles on the top page of the scratch pad. They might have been made on the plane, but he doodled chiefly when in conference, and that must have been in Halifax." "But you said," Avalon pointed out, "that there was no address on any page of the scratch pad." "That's right, but there were other things. There were his characteristic geometric constructions, as identifiable as fingerprints. If that were all there was, it would be useless, but there was more. It was one of those rare occasions when he constructed letters and I knew there must have been some word, some phrase, which had attracted his attention. Unfortunately, he had written down "only part of it. There was a capital 8, a small i, a4d a Ismall f, each in ornate script. Those letters were absolutely identifiable as his handiwork, too. In other'words, "Bif" was the beginning of some word that had caught his attention, when he was negotiating the sale, and if we could work out what the word was and where he had seen it, I have the feeling we would know where he had checked the package." Trumbull said, "For all you know, that doodle may have been made the day before the negotiations, or the week before. It may have no connection with the negotiations at all. "Possible," said Pavolini, "but not likely. In my expenence, Jelinsky never kept them long but disposed of the used top sheet when beginning another. Therefore, it could not have been very old." "But you cannot be sure," said Trumbull, persisting. "No, I cannot be sure but I have nothing else to go by," said Pavolini, exasperated. Gonzalo said, eagerly, "Do you have the paper with you?" "No," said Pavolini, l,ifting his arms up andthen letting them drop. "How can you think I would carry it with me? It is in my office safe. Could I have imagined this matter .would come up in the evening's discussion?" "It's just that it seemed to me, " said Gonzalo, "that if we ,could see the doodles, we might get somethiqg out of it you didn't. Could you reproduce them for us?" Pavolini lifted his upper lip in disdain. "I am not an artist. I could not do it. I could not even reproduce the curlicues in the letters. Believe me, there is nothing there but the letters, and nothing of any significance but the letters. Nothing. Halsted said, "The letters don't seem very significant to me. What word starts,with "bif" anyway?"." ""Bifurcate,"" said Rubin, at once. "Fine-!" said Pavolini. "A useful word, indeed. Where would Jelinsky see "bifurcate, in the course of the negotiations? My friends, I did not sit about and puzzle out the matter. I used the unabridged dictionary. "Bifurcate" means "to divide in two." There'is also "bifid" meaning" "in two parts." There are chemical terms, "biformate," "bifluoride," and so on. These are all useless. It is not in the -realm of possibility that he was looking at any of these words while he was sitting-wherever he was sittingwith the man who was selling the artifact. There is only one word, only one, that seemed as though it might be useful and that word is "bifocals. Rubin said, "Was the man Jejinsky dealt with an optometrist?" "I know nothing about the- man, but it seems reasonable that the negotiations might have taken place at an optornetrist's, or, mote likely, across the street from an, optome- ,trist's. With the word "bifocals" staring him in the face, Jehnsky might well have started writing it absently." "It's "possible," said Avalon, judiciously. But Pavolini folded his arms across his chest, looked sadly at the rnen assehibled about the table, and said, "It did not work. I had a couple of our men scour the city to find optometrists in whose window, or on whose signs, there -might be the word "bifocals." We have not yet found one. Optometrists do not stress bifocals. Those are for elderly, people. They do their best to impress the public with beauty and with the chic qualities of their spectacles. Everything for youth or pretended youth. Nevertheless, we are not done looking. " Drake said, "You might be looking in the wrong direction. If Jelinsky made his letters with curlicues they might not be, easily identifiable at all. For instance, it's easy to draw a small e and have it look like a small i. Jelinsky may not have intended "bif" at all. He may have intended "bef." His pep, might,have skipped the little, curve because the paper was greasy at that spot." "What would you have with "bef"?" asked Rubin. "I don't know. He might have been starting to write "beforehand," let us say, because-he had outthought , his rivals and had gotten to the seller beforehand." "That wouldn't help find the package," said Rubin. "Who says it has to?" demanded Halsted. "What Jelinsky wrote might have nothing to do with the,package ahd might be of no help at all. We're only trying to find out the truth, and if the truth doesn't suit us-" Drake spread his arms in fatalistic resignation. Pavolini said, "No, no. Let me stop you. I cannot say whether it would help us if we penetrated the meaning of the word. Perhaps not. But at least I am quite certain that the word begins with "bif" and nothing else. The i was an 1 and not an e because, for one thing, Jelinsky had placed a dot above it. In fact, Jelinsky even curlicued the dot so that it was a triple dot." "A triple dot?" said Gonzalo. "What do you mean?" "Like this," said Pavolini. "I can draw this much, anyway. It looked like this. " He withdrew a small pad from an inner jacket pocket, tore out a sheet of paper, and drew three short vertical lines, closely spaced. "There!" he said. "It was very small." It was at this point that Henry interrupted. "Mr. Pavolini, may, I see that piece of paper?" Pavolini stared at Henry for a moment; then, with a trace Of amusement, he said, "If you wish to look at it, waiter, here it is. Perhaps you will have a theory, too." Gonzalo said, "I wouldn't take that attitude, Mr. Pavolini. Henry might have a theory at that." Pivolini said, "Very well. Go ahead, waiter. From those three little lines, can you tell me where the package is hidden?" - "Not exactly, I Mr. Pavolinil"" said Henry, with careful deference. "I can think of two places and there may possibly be one or two others, but I can't pin it down precisely to one place.11 "Indeed?" said Pavolini. "You can give me two, possibly four, places, and the package will be in one of them?" "I believe-so, sir." "You believe so. Wonderful! In that case just give me the four.-4 challenge you." Pavolini's voice had risen to a shout. "May I first point out that since there is no really hopeful word in English that begins with "bif," it may be that Mr. Jelinsky, was not writing an English word." "Take my word for it," said Pavolini, freezingly. "Jelinsky knew no language other than English. He was not an educated man and-except for his specialty-rally knew very little. " "I will accept that," said Henry, "but we have to ask ourselves. not which word he knew and understood, but which word he encountered in the place in which he was negotiating the sale. If they were seated in a French restaurant, that restaurant-located in a city of British culture-might well sell steak, but would, of course, have it on'the menu, or in the window, or on the sign, according to a spelling all their own. "Beefsteak," in French, becomes bifteck. Pavolini said, in a small voice, "Bifteck?" "Yes, sir. I know of two good French restaurants in Halifax and there may be one or two more., I suggest you try the cloakroom in all four, if necessary .Pavolini said, -"You are guessing!" "Not really, sir. Not after I saw the three little lines you drew. Might those lines have looked a bit more like this, sir?" On the same sheet of paper, Henry drew: "Because if they did, that is a fleur-de-lis, which you would find prominently displayed in one place or another in almost any French restaurant. If we take the three letters and the fieur-de-lis together, then one can "scarcely doubt where Jelinsky was sitting when he prepared this doodle. " Pavolini's mouth was open, and now be closed it with an t28 audible I snap. -By heaven, you are right. I will leave, gentlemen. I will leave now. Good-bye to all of you, with my thanks for a wonderful dinner-but I have work to do. " He began to huffy out, then stopped and turned. "MY thanks to you particularly, Henry, but how did you do it?" I Henry said, gravely, "Restaurants are my specialty, sir. " AfterwoM This is the twenty-eighth Black Widowers story that Fred Dannay bought for EQMM and, alas, the last, for death (as it must to all) finally came to the man who probably did more for the mystery field than any other single person since Conan Doyle. He will always be missed by all those who read his Ellery Queen stories, by all who dealt with him as editor, and by all who knew him as friend. In connection with the story you have just read, by the way, I received a letter from a museum curator who pointed out that the story does not describe the actual methods used by museums to obtain their exhibits, and that it perpetuates a false stereotype of museums as promoters of skullduggery. I'm sure he's right and I apologize to all museums. Tbq fact, is that I know nothing about the actual workings of museum acquisitions and I make it all up out of my head in such a way as to have it fit in with the plot. I,suspect, though, that that's the way it's got to be, if the hardworking mystery writer is to make a living. Consider, for instance, the writings of Agatha Christie (that model of everything a mystery writer ought to be, even if she did have very peculiar notions about how Americans talk and act). If she were to be taken seriously, there is not an upper-class family in all of England that did not have a member done to death in the library, with a paper knife skewering his heart and a look of indescribable horror on his face, and that did not have another member who did the deed. But we accept that ("suspension of disbelief") and don't expect the world of the mystery to be in one-to-one correspondence with the world of reality. The story appeared in the May 1982 issue of EQMM. A Monday in April Charles Soskind was strikingly handsome. That much was obvious from the moment Thomas Trumbull introduced him to the membership of the Black Widowers on the occasion of their monthly. banquet. It was, in fact, obvious even before he was introduced. He was talL. slim, dark-haired.. He had a pale complexion with eyes that were all the more startlingly dark for that. He had astonishingly regular features, firm lips with just a trace of sensuousness about them, and an engaging smile. He shook hands with a strong grip and his fingernails were well cared for. He exuded just a trace of after-shave lotion and the paleness of his chacMmnihadowed by -the blueness of a buried beard-, ffift,,was no visible stubble. He was well-barbered anx,13-- gued like a throwback to a Gibson collar ad. Trumbull said, "Charles is relatively new at the Department. He took his degree in Slavic studies at the University of Michigan. " Hands were shaken all around and each Black Widower displayed that quite detectable air of distrust with which, ordinary males meet an extraordinary specimen of their own kind. Mario Gonzalo was perhaps most obvious in his reaction. He managed to locate his reflection in the mirror and refurbished the line of his jacket in what he might have thought was an unobtrusive manner. If so, Emmanuel Rubin promptly disabused him. With a broad grin which showed the pronounced gap between his upper first incisors, Rubin whispered, "Forget, it, Mario. You're straight out of the garbage can in comparison. Gonzalo lifted his eyebrows and stared down at the shorter Rubin in haughty displeasure. "What the hell are you talking about?" Rubin continued to smile. "You know," he said, "and I know,, and surely that's enough." Just the same, Rubin did manage to run his fingers absently through his straggly beard as though a sudden and impossible desire to have it flow downward in a neat and impressive manner had overtaken him. Geoffrey Avalon cleared his throat and stood straighter and more stiffly even than was his wont. He was two inches taller than Soskind, and it was clear that he didn't care if the whole world noticed that little fact. Roger Halsted sucked in his stomach and endured the discomfort of that for nearly two minutes. James Drake, the oldest of the Black Widowers,, looked" preternaturally indifferent, as though it was only age and nothing more that kept him out of the race-and, what's more, prevented him from winning. I Only Henry, the competent waiter, on whose shoulders the welfare of the banquets rested, seemed truly unaware of anything oa of the ordinary as he brought Soskind his, straight ginger ale, with a maraschino cherry in it. , 11 Soskind regarded the drink sombrely and then, with the air of someone who had survived questioning on the matter for years, said, even though no one asked, "I order cherry because that makes it look like an alcoholic drinitof some sort and I then don't have to explain why Vm not drinking. " "Why- don't you drink?" asked Rubin, with immediate perversity. .."It's not because I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, " said Soskind dryly. "I just have a low tolerance for alcohol. One drink gets me distinctly high and since I get no pleasure out of the sensation, I choose not to drink. I don't have I to be forced or argued into it." "if I were you," said Gonzalo, darkly, "I'd -get Pe rer with a pearl onion in it. That dye they use in maraschino cherries is carcinogenic, I hear." "So is everything," said Soskind, "if you choose the proper strain of rats to experiment with, and make the doses large enough." Halsted said, with the usual slight stammer that always seemed to invade his speech as soon as he tried particularly hard to seem a man of the world, "Too bad you're so adversely affected by alcohol. Overdoing it is bestial, but there is nothing quite as civilized as the ritual of the moderate sharing of drinks. It reduces the inhibitions standing in the way of the true grace of social intercourse. " -"Believe me," said Soskind, nodding, "I fully appreciate that particular disadvantage under which I labor. I usually avoid cocktail parties simply because I can't participate on equal terms. And that's by no means the worst of it. It's the business lunches that are the real strain. I assure you that if I could drink more easily, I would be glad to do so." And almost at once, as though on cue, Henry announced the end of the cocktail hour. "Dinner is served, gentlemen. 11 Drake found himself sitting next to the banquet guest and said, "Are you of Russian extraction, Mr. Soskind?" "Not as far as I know," said Soskind, his expression lightening a bit at the smoked salmon and onion bits. He reached for a section of the thin-sliced bread and butter and carefully brushed the capers to one side. "My father's father arrived here from Luxemburg, and my mother's parents were both Welsh. " "I asked," said Drake, "because of your degree in Slavic studies. Your doctorate, by the way?" "Yes, I have the right to be referred to as Dr. Soskind, though I never insist on it. You are Dr. Drake, I presume?" "Chemistry But all of us can refer to- each other as doctors by virtue of our membership in the club. Even our good Henry the-invaluable waiter of the organization, is Dr. Jackson, if we choose to call him that.-But how did you come to Slavic studies?" "Oh, that! No personal reasons, if you discount ambition. After all, the United States has been facing the Soviet Union in open competition for forty years now. Many Soviet citizens can speak English and have studied AngloAmerican history and culture, while very few Americans have returned the compliment. This puts us under a severe disadvantage and by my making a personal effort to help redress the balance, I am making myself a patriot and, in addition, am opening my way to advancement, since my knowledge is- useful." "You mean in Tom Trumbull's department?" "I mean," said Soskind, 6arefully, "in that organ of government in which we both serve." "I take it then," put in Avalon suddenly from the other side of the table, "that you speak and read Russian quite fluently. " "Yes, sir," said Soskind, "quite fluently, and Polish as well. I can make myself understood in Czech and Serbian. With time, I hope to learn other languages, too. Arabic and Japanese are extremely important in today's world, and I intend to take courses in each as soon as I finish my present damned task." Trumbull leaned forward from his position at the head Of the, table, which he occupied by virtue of serving as that evening's host of the banquet. "Stop it, you idiots! Is this grilling time? Charles, you answer no questions at all until it's time. Right now, you just enjoy your dinner undisturbed.-I don't understand you half-wits. Do the rules of this club have to be explained to you each time?" -"There are no rules," said Rubin, promptly. "Yes?" said Gonzalo. "I wonder if you'll expound that doctrine the next time I bring in a woman as my guest." "That's a matter of tradition!" howled Rubin. "If you can't understand the difference between tradition and rules-- And the discussion degenerated into a verbal free-for-all at once. The bouillabaisse was done; the hot, scented napkins had been put to their proper use; the baked Alaska was consumed; and the Black Widowers were lingering over their coffee (tea for the guest) when Trumbull rattled the spoon against the water glass and said, "Mario, -since you did not display the bad taste to grill my guest before he had been adequately fed, won't you now serve as griller-inchief?" Gonzalo jumped slightly. He had produced the needed caricature of the guest, catching him in a spectacularly Byronic profile. He said, "Mr. Soskind, it is customary to begin by asking the guest to justify his existence. Let me answer that question for myself. I judge that you would say in response that you are carrying through the justification by using your Russian to help the American government beat the Soviet Union. Soskind, who was glaring at the caricature, said, ""Me word "beat" has unpleasant connotations. I would prefer to say that I am doing my bit to secure the interests of the United States, which, I take it, means first and foremost the preservation of world peace and the protection of human rights. " Gonzalo said, "But wouldn't you be making a hell of a lot more money if you went into show business?" Soskind reddened and seemed to be struggling with himself to prevent an explosion. His control burst, however, and he said, "That's an idiotic question to ask, and the proper answer I ought to give you is a punch in the jaw." For a moment, the gathering froze and then Trumbull said, with totally uncharacteristic mildness, "That's uncalled for, Charles. I told you the way in which we play our game when I invited you to dinner. I do not deny that Mario is often idiotic, as are we al"ways excluding our good Henry---but he was in this case within his rights. He was asking a question, and -he may ask any question. You have been given to understand that you must, answer all questions truthfully. Whatever you say will never pass, outside this room. Soskind said, "Of course, Tom. I apologize to you, Mr. Gonzalo, and to all the company. " He drew a deep breath and said, not without some signs of continuing anger, "I suppose it might look to some people as though I might be successful in Hollywood, especially if I really looked like that sketch you have drawn, Mr. Gonzalo. I suppose you meant it to represent me but I earnestly hope I don't resemble it altogether. "Good looks, assuming I have them, might get me into the movies,, but I doubt they could make me a success unless I had some minimal acting ability as wellsomething I do not have. Even then, it could not make me happy unless I had the actor's temperament, which J am poles removed, from. I am doing what I want to dostudying the languages of humanity-for the ,resonsl have mentioned and if it returns an adequate compensation, I am quite ready.to disnuiss the dreams of avarice. Have I made that clear?" "Very clear," said Gonzalo,, "but what makes you think YOU lack the temperament of an actor? 1. know a number of actors and they come in all, shapes and varieties of temperament. As for acting ability, it seems to In e you haw the capacity for-histri.onics,, if Manny will tell me that is indeed the word I want." 44That's the word you want-for once," said Rubin. Soskind bowed his head for a moment. When he lifted it, it was as though the clouds. had thinned and the sun had broken through, His smile was all but irresistible. , I "Gentlemen," he said, "I find that I am still making things hard for you. I do not wish to do that. Honestly!, It is just that these last ten days or so I have not been myself. I assureyou that ordinarily I am not given to histrionics, and I will display none henceforth. " - Several of the Black Widowers spoke at once and Trumbull's voice rose piercingly. "Mario-has the floor!" . "Thank you, Tom," said Gonzalo, and at once asked what all had been trying o ask. "Why are you not yourselp. And,please don't say that it's private or that it's none of my "business. It's my question and I want an answer. " "I understand," said Soskind, calmly. "I'm afraid it's an old, dull story. A young lady with whom I was-am--oh, hell, always may be in love, if you don't mind my sounding like a romantic jackass, betrayed me and-and-Well, what more is there to say?" "Did she run off with your best friend?" asked Gonzalo. Soskind looked revolted. "Of course not. Nothing like that! She's not that kind of woman." "Well, then, what happened?" asked Gonzalo. Avalon's baritone voice boomed out. "Wait! Before you answer, Mr. Soskind-and with your permission, Marioplease tell me if there is any mystery to this. " "Mystery, sir?" Soskind looked nonplussed. "Yes. Anything you don't understand; anything that puzzles you and that can't be explained. " Soskind said, "Not at all! I wish there were! It's all very plain and, for me, heartbreaking. Claire broke her word, that's all. She took an unfair advantage and didn,'t even have the decency to be ashamed of it. I couldn't live with that no matter how much I might be in love with, her.-But it doesn't make me very happy, not being able to live with it." "No mystery," said Avalon, smiling. "You might want to let the matter dropthen, Mario. Why probe a sore subject just for the sake of probing it?" "Thank you," said Soskind. Gonzalo frowned. "Unless Tom makes a host's decision against me, Jeff, I won't drop the subject. I'm curious." Trumbull hesitated. "I'll poll the company. How many want the subject dropped?" He and Avalon raised their hands, and Trumbull said, "Four to two against dropping the subject. Henry----are you voting?" Henry, who was just adding 4 drop of brandy to Drake Is glass, said, "Yes, sir.,My handmas not raised. I feel that if Mr. Soskind still feels an affection for The young lady, he may have a suspicion that he is misjudging her. It might help if he tells us the details. Rubin said, "I was pretty much thinking the same thing," and now there was a murmur of agreement about the table. S6skind looked from face to face and said, "All right, I'll tell you, but you'll find there's simply no doubt about the matter. I have no suspicion that I'm misjudging her." "You know," said Soskind, "it's particularly hard for me to find a young woman fcan be interested in. Please don't, make mock faces of disbelief. I do attract instant female attention because, I suppose, of my----my appearance, as I would if I were ostentatiously wealthy, or if I were a rock star, but of what value is instant attention for superficial, reasons such as those? "Being human, I sometimes take advantage of such attention, particularly if I am lured into thinking it is, something more than a matter of superficial appearancie that attracts them, or if 1, in turn, am attracted by something or other that is really of no importance. I am, in" that case, quickly disillusioned, gentlemen, and so, it may- be, are they. "On the other hand, my appearance is often against me and actually repels young women, and you needn't make exaggerated expressions of disbelief at that, Mr. Gonialo. There are many women who come to an instant misjudgment concerning me through no fault of my own. "Unfortunately, the novelists who form-our stereotypical beliefs invariably make their heroines incredibly beautiful, but only very rarely stress the good looks of the hero. The male pTotagonist tends to look craggy and charmingly plain. The result is that if I am considered not plain, I arouse instant suspicion. . "I have heardthe comments, indirectly. "Who wants a boyfriend prettierthan I am?" "I'll have to fight for a-chance at the mirror." "The feeling is universal that if a man is, quote, goodlooking, unquote,- as I was accused of being by this assemblage, at least by implication, then he must be vain, self-centered, capricious, and, worst of all, a simpering, brainless fool. "These days, in fact, women are likely to dismiss me, on sight, as having homosexual tendencies-which I do not, by the way--simply because, quote, that's the way with all these pretty men, unquote. "As it happens, I am a serious person. I don't mean by that that I lack a sense of humor, or that I do not laugh, or that I do not occasionally enjoy being silly. The point lies in the use of the word "occasionally." "For the most part, I am interested in straightforward application of nose to grindstone, of myself to my career and to my intellectual interests. And I want my women serious, too. "The women most likely to interest me--the intelligent, serious, ambitious ones-they are the very ones most likely to be put off by me, the very ones who will quickly decide that I am an obnoxious nonentity; that I am, quote, too pretty, unquote. "Until I met Claire. "She is in all ways my. fellow (if you don't mind the Irish bull). She is d linguist, too, specializing in the modern Romance languages, as I in the Slavic. "She is quite good-looking--at least I find her so--and quite indifferent to that fact. She is serious, intelligent, hard-driving, and a feminist in fact, rather than in conversation, having driven her way forward, and without much fuss, in a man's world. "It was not love at first sight. What can one possibly know at first sight but superficialities-and very likely deceiving ones, at that? We met at the library, when we were each engaged in a little research and discovered we had interests in common. I was at the Department, she at Columbia. . -W6 met again, and then it became periodic. The more we learned about each other, the more satisfied we each became. It turned out we had the same opinions of politics, literature, and art-at least, in general, though there were enough differences in detail to lead to interesting discussions. "The thing I most approved about her was that where there was a disagreement, she expressed her point of view calmly and with cogent arguments, and considered my counterarguments dispassionately and thoughtfully. Therne were times when she accepted my point of view, and times when I accepted hers, though on most occasions, I must admit, we continued to disagree. I could not argue her into voting Republican, for instance. "In the end I was in love, by which I do not mean I was overcome by a mooning longing for physical intimacy. That existed, of course, but is not what I consider, quote, love, unquote. I was in love because I desperately wanted a continuing and, if possible, lifelong companionship where we could each pursue our aims and interests; together, if possible, but separately, if necessary--though even in the latter case, each with the interest and support of the other. "There was talk of marriage and of children and there were also what we might term romantic interludes--neither of us were entirely creatures of the mind----and then, one day, it turned 6ut that neither of us had really studied Latin. ""We ought to," said Claire, "if for no other reason than. the mental stimulation. Besides, it would please Professor Trent." "I must tell you about Marcus Quintus- Trent. He was a Latinist of the old school (and so was his father-hence his name) and he had an emeritus status at Columbia. He had been a friend of Claire's father and had been instrumental in rousing her interest in languages. I had met him and found hiin genial, interesting, and, above all, urbane. He had the manners of a gentleman, in the non-Amenican meaning.of that word, and it made hini seem both immensely oldfashioned and immensely civilized. "His Latinism led him to believe, it sometimes seemed, that he was-living in Julius Caesar's time. He was not only Latinate in his way of speaking, but I swear in his way of thinking as well. It seemed an effort for him not to refer to the American President as the Imperator. He would use Latin terms without being aware of it and was as likely to date his letters in the month of Februarius as not. "I suspect he was a bit woebegone over Claire's having studied all the direct descendants of Latin---even a bit of Catalan and Rumanian-without actually dealing with Latin itself. That may have helped her come to the decision to study it. "Automatically, I decided to go along with her and thus began what I referred to earlier in the evening as my, quote, present damned task, unquote. "I do not use the adjective to indicate that the task was difficult. Learning Latin is not the major task a nonlinguist might assume., For me, the case structure of Russian was excellent training for the actually rather simpler case structure of Latin. For Claire, the Latin vocabulary was no problem at all since it was first cousin to Italian, which she spoke like a native. And for both of us, there was a native talent for languages, to say nothing of considerable practice in learning them. No, the task was a damned one for something that had nothing to do with the language itself. "We discussed, with considerable animation-, the matter of which of us would have the final advantage, I with my grammatical head start or she with her vocabularial push forward. Unspoken was the question of which of us might be the better linguist in general. "Yes, Mr. Rubin, I quite realize that setting up a competition between two ambitious, hard-driving people might well endanger the affectioli that had grown up betWeen them. Neither of uswould have liked being beaten, but we both agreed that our love, was strong enough to survive the fact that one of us. was bound to be beaten by the other., "Tesides, what was a single defeat? If one of us was a clear loser at this time, he or she might win out on another day in the case of another challenge. The keen edge of intellect, sharpened by the, competition, might, in fact, serve -to further advance each of us in our profession, and this would more than make, up for the trivial score of victories and defeats. "At least, we persuaded each-,other that it was so. "The idea was that we were each, quite independently, to study Latin on our own, using texts and authors of our choice. After six months, Trent would give us a passage of Latin literature to translate and he would judge it on- the basis of both accuracy and eloquence of translation. In other words " a word-for-word translation was not enough. Trent intended to look, for English that- would capture the. style as well as - the meaning., aent threw himself into the matter with vigor. He chose Cicero as a matter of course since Cicero's Latin is the most elegant in existence and also the most gracefully convoluted " (Trent urged, us to read Milton's Paradise Lost if we wanted the nearest equivalent it English to Cicetbnian - style, and to- be guided by that.) "He chose a passage from one of Cicero's lesser essays. one which was likely to be unfamiliar to us, and handed it to each of us in a, sealed envelope. The terms were that each of us was to open the envelope at 9 A.M. on the- fifteenth of April and hand the translation to him no more than a week later-ample time not-only for translation, but for polishing and repolishing; in search of that elusive something called style. "In translating we might usea Latin dictionary but, of course, we were neither of us to search for -any already eMsting, translation, of the passage. We agreed to this readily, ,and Tient was gentleman pndugh to feel quite. certain that we:would both adhere to all conditions in all Ii6nor. As for myself, I knew he would not find me wanting and I assumed he would not find Claire wanting either. It did not even occur to me that Claire could possibly cheat. That was inconceivable. "The final condition was that Trent would be sole judge of the results and that his decision was to be accepted without argument. "Claire and I agreed that we would remain completely apart for the testing period, lest die presence of one prove a distraction to the other. In fact, I had to go out of town on Friday, the tenth of April, and was gone for the weekend. I ,didn't see her from the tenth until after our translations were handed -in. "d "I remember Trent chuckling over the result. He sal we were" twin souls indeed, for our translations were so remarkably similar that he could scarcely believe they were independently done. He judged Claire's the superior for reasons he outlined, but by a margin so small that I could scarcely consider it a defeat. I swear I held no animosity against Claire for winning. I was proud of her. "I was human enough to regret one thing, I had opened the sealed passage promptly at 9 A.M. on Wednesday, April 15. Actually, I opened it five minutes after the hour in an exaggerated effort to lean over backward not to break the spirit of the agreement, just in case my watch was a little fast. "But then, I had not taken the ftill time. We were allowed seven days, but I took only four. It was a bit of vainglory on my part, I think, but by that time, I had, in any case, grown tired of going over and over the passage and worrying endlessly over whether to say "of Time's great sway" or "of Time's mighty hest." So I just handed it in on the evening of Sunday, the nineteenth. "Later, of course, I thought that if I had spent three additional days improving my translation, it would have added just -that extra bit that would have made me first. After all, Claire told me she had handed in her translation on the afternoon of Monday, the twentieth, so- she had nearly a whole extra day. But then, the extra time might simply have resulted in damage through overmuch patching and repatching. "So I let it go and treated her to a late-evening champagne victory celebration, and we got along marvell- .ously well. After all, we had riot seen each other for nearly two weeks- and, we improved the occasion as lovers will. "And then, not t "00 long ago, I met an old friend who asked me how Claire was. I said, "Fine. Why? You sound concerned." "He said., "I met her in the Columbia library last month, sweating over a Latin dictionary and she seemed odd. She snapped at me.'- ""Do -you remember when it wasT ""In April. I know it was a Monday-" ""Monday, the twentieth," I said at once. "She had a paper due then and was making final corrections. I imagine she didn't welcorne distractions and she considered you one." I laughed, rather jovially, at the thought. "But he said, "No. It wasn't then. I remember that the day after my wife complained of a sore throat and we had to cancel a dinner engagement. Then I remember thinking of. Claire the day before and wondering if something was going around. That dinner was on 1hesday, die. fourteenth- I remember I that well. So I saw Claim in the library. on Monday, the thirteenth." "I snapped, "Impossible" "He said, coolly, "I don't see why it should be impossible. That was when I saw her." "That -ended that, but I clung to the hope that Claire had been at work in the library on some other aspect of the Latin competition -on that day. I sought her out. ""Claire!" 1. said. "Did you start translating the passage on the thirteenth?" "She looked at me in surprise. "Of course!" "I couldn't believe it. "Not on the fifteenthT ""Why on the fifteenth?" she countered. "I wanted as early a start as possible. I love you, darling, but I intended to win.'- "I turned on my heels and walked away, That was a week ago and I haven't seen her or communicated with her since. She called me once, but I simply hung up. , "Perhaps I could understand her eagerness causing'her to break the rules, but what put her over the edge as far as I was concerned was her calm assumption that cheating was permissible-the implication that if I was fool enough to follow the rules, I deserved to lose. She had no conscience I in the matter, and no honor, and that meant she was not the woman I thought she was and I could not continue the relationship. "That's the story and, as I told you, there's no mystery about it." There was a silence for several'moments when Soskind had finished, and then Halsted said, "You didn't put it to her directly, Mr. Soskind.,You didn't say "Why did you cheat, Claire?"" "I didn't have to, It was clear enough." There was another silence. Soskind said, defensively, "Come on. Are you saying I should have overlooked the matter? Forgive and forget?" Rubin said, "You might have misheard. Perhaps the professor said-" "The rules were in writing," said Soskind. "No mistake was possible. Avalon said, hesitantly, "Since the young woman was so suitable in all other respects, and since you still seem to be, in love with her " I Soskind shook his head violently. "That lack of honor cancels out everything. If I am still in love, that's a problem that time will cure. Drake peered through a cloud of cigarette smoke. "If you had won instead of her, would you be making allthis fuss?" "I certainly hope so. If I acted otherwise, I would be as bad as she. Drake shrugged. "You're a stiff-necked, moralist, Mr. Soikind. The club's own stiff-necked moralist is Henry. What do ou say, Hen A" Henry, who was standing thoughtfully at the, sideboard, said, "I believe there is a mystery to this. The young woman seems to have acted out of character. " Soskind said, "I prefer to think I didn't understand her character until she finally revealed it. " "if I may speak freely, Mr. Soskind-- "Go ahead," said Soskind, with a bitter snort. "Say what you want. It can neither hurt nor help. " Henry said, "Isn't it possible, sir, that Miss Claire was entirely in the right and that you have behaved hastily and unfairly?" Soskind reddened. "That's ridiculous!" "But was the fifteenth of April indeed the starting point?" "I have already, said that that was in writing." "But, Mr. Soskind, you also told us that Professor Trent tended to be Latinate in expression. Did he actually write "the fifteenth of April" or "April 157" "Well, of course, ho-Oh, I see what you mean. No, he sa ,id "die ides of April," but what's the difference?" "An enormous one," said Henry. "Everyone thinks of the ides of March in connection with the assassination of Julius Caesar, and everyone knows that is March 15 on our calendar. It is only natural to suppose that the ides of every month falls on the fifteenth, but I checked the encyclopedia while you were completing your account and that is true only of March, May, July, and October. In'all tire other months, including April, the ides fall on the thirteenth of the. month. Since the ides of April falls on April thirteenth, Miss Claire began on that day, very correctly, and was surprised that you questioned the matter and seemed to expect her to delay two days for no reason." Halsted was at the encyclopedia. "Henry's right, by I God," be said. Soskind's eyes opened in a fixed glare. "And I-started two days Late?" 146 Henry said, soffly, "If Professor Trent W known you did not know when the ides of April was, I suspect you would have lost the competition by a somewhat wider "margin. " Soskind seemed to collapse inward in his chair. He said, in a mutter, "What do I do now?" Henry said, "My experience with matters of the heart, Sir, is limited, but I believe you had better Waste no more time. Leave now and try to see the young lady. She may give you a -chance to explain and what I know of such matters leads me to think you had better grovel,-Grovel quite abjectly, sir- Afterword Eleanor Sullivan was managing editor of EQMM all through the period during which I wrote the Black Widowers stories, Since Fred Dannay always worked from his Westchester home, it was to Eleanor that I brought my stories, and it was with her that I carried on an assiduous and platonic flirtation. (Not that I wanted it to be platonic, you understand, but she insisted.) After Fred had passed on, she took over as editor, and following the grand tradition that Fred established she kept EQMM moving onward rock-steady. That includes (I am thankful to say) the occasional appearance of a Black Widower story, and of an occasional Union Club story, too This is the first Black Widower story she accepted in her capacity as editor, and I think that is suitable, for it is a romance. Very few of my Black Widower stories involve a murder or a violent crime of any kind (that's my personal distaste for violence, although that is not absolute as you will know if you have read my story "The Woman in the Bar, "- Which appeared earlier in this collection). What's more very few, if any, of my stories involve romance (mainly" because started writing when I was very young, and before I had had. any personal experience at all with romance). Still, I would rather have romance than violence in a Black Widower story, and when I manage to do this I like the result, and s80i in this case, did Eleanor, who is very sweet and softhearted indeed. The story appeared in the May 1983 issue of EQMM. Neither Brute Nor Human The monthly dinner of the Black Widowers was well under way and Emmanuel Rubin, his fork uplifted, and waving threateningly in the air, temporarily ignored his rack of lamb and said, "Edgar Allan Poe was the first important practitioner of the modern detective story and of the modern science fiction story. I'll give him that. " "Nice of you," murmured James Drake, the host of the occasion, in a low aside. -, Rubin ignored him. "He lifted the horror story.to new heights, too. Still, he had a morbid and unhealthy preoccupation with death." "Not at all," said Geoffrey Avalon, in his deep voice, his thick eyebrows lowering into a frown. "Poe was writing in the first half of the nineteenth century, and, there was still virtually no protection against infectious disease at the time. Life was short and death was ever-present. He wasn't being morbid; he was being realistic." Roger Halsted said, "Absolutely! Read any fiction of the nineteenth century. Read Dickens and the death of Little Nell, or Harriet Beecher Stowe and the death of Little Eva. Children frequently died in fiction because they frequently died in real life." Rubin's eyes, magnified by his thick glasses, took on a stubborn gleam, and his sparse beard seemed to bristle. "It's not death in i"tself. It's how you treat it. You can deal with it as the doorway to heaven, and treat the dying person as a saint-see the death of Beth in Little Women That can be sickeningly sentimental, but it is meant to be uplifting. Poe j- on the other hand, dwells with, An unholy glee on the elements of degradation and decay. He makes death worse than it is and--Come on, you all know very well what "morbid" is. He returned to his lamb and attacked it with vigor. Thomas Trumbull growled and said, "Certainly. "Morbid" is talking about morbidity over what would otherwise be a pleasant dinner." "I don't see that it makes any difference whether Poe was morbid or, not," said Mario Gonzalo, who was neatly dissecting strips of meat off the ribs, "What counts is whether he was a good writer or not, and I suppose no one argues with the fact" that be was good. Avalon said, judiciously, "Even good writers aren't good all the time. James Russell Lowell described Poe as "three fifths of, him genius and two fifths sheer fudge," and I would say that was pretty accurate. Halsted said, "My feeling is that a seminal writer has to accept some responsibility for his imitators. There- is something about Poe that makes it absolutely necessary for his imitators to be awful. Consider H. R Lovecraft-" "No," said Rubin, violently, "we are not discussing Lovecraft; we are talking about Poe-" And oddly enough, Drake's guest, who, until now, had sat mute through the dinner, said suddenly in a loud, almost metallic voice, "Why are we talking about Poe?" His name was Jonathan Dandle; short, plump around the middle, a round face that was now quiteflushed, a large bald head with a fringe-of white hair about the ears, and round gold-rimmed bifocals. He looked in his early sixties. He had startled the company into silence, and even Henry, the imperturbable waiter who was the pride of the Black Widowers, allowed an expression of surprise to flit momentarily across his face. - -Drake cleared his:ftoat and stubbed out his cigarette. "Ve talk -about anything we please, Jonathan. Poe is as good a subject as any, especially since Manny Rubin writes mysteries so that Poe might be considered his patron saint. Right, Manny?" Dandle looked about the table, from one to the other and some of the redness drained out of his face and left it a normal hue. He lifted his hands in a kind of shrug., "My apologies, gentleman. It was not my intention to dictate the, subject of the conversation." He looked a trifle unhappy. Rubin nodded atDandle in slightly haughty forgiveness, and said, "Actually, if we're talking about the patron saint of mysteries, I could make a good argument in favor of Conan Doyle. The Mystery Writers of America may hand out Edgars, but the archetypical detective, as all of us know-" and, with that, Poe was abandoned.' Dandle listened intently to the further course of the conversation, but said nothing else until Henry had served the coffee, and Gonzalo had produced a quick caricature which he showed the guest. Dandle regarded it solemnly, then smiled. "It is fortunate, Mr. Gonzalo, that I U've no great opinion of my beauty You make me look like the old-time' actor GUY Kibbee. Perhaps you don't remember him." Gonzalo said, "Certainly, I remember him, and now that you point it out there is a resemblance. A clever artist, with a few strokes of the pen, can bare essentials that are not necessarily obvious. " "What a pity, Mario, "'said Rubin, "that you don't find a clever artist who can teach you to do so." "And yet," said Gonzalo easily, "you have met any number of clever writers and none has been able to-help YOU. At which point, Drake raffled his water glass with his spoon. "Grilling time' gentlemen, so that Manny AndMorio are requested to shut up.-Jeff, will you do the honors." Geoffrey Avalon stirred the melting ice in his halfconsumed second Scotch with his middle finger, and said, ."Mr. Dandle, how do you justify your existence?" -Dandle said, thoughtfully, "A good question. Since I had nothing to do with the initiation of my existence in this unfortunate world, I might justifiably deny any need to defend myself. However, I have accepted my existence for ever six decades now--efter all, I might have killed myself easily enough-so I will defend, How would it be if I told you I am making it easier for people to communicate with each Other. Would that serve as grounds. for justificatitm?" "It depends on what they communicate,,, said Gonzalo. "Now Manny's attempts at-,, "Mario! ",said Avalon, sharply, and turned a frowning look in Gonzalos direction. Then, more gently, he said, "I have the floor and I would rather that we not descend into anarchy this time.-In what way, Mr. Dandle, do you make it easier for people to communicate?" "I work in fiber optics, Mr.,Avalon, and communication by laser light fluougli glass, rather than by electricity through copper, will make for cheaper and thinner cables that would nevertheless carry more messages. I admit that not all the high technology in the world will of itself serve to improve the quality of those messages. " "And yet, sir, if I may be allowed to interject a personal note, you do-not yourself show much tendency to communicate, considering that communication is your business. You have said hardly anything at all during cocktails or dinner. Is there a reason for that?" Dandle looked about him, his face reddening again. It was quite apparent that he flushed easily, and, like almost all people who do, that he was quite aware of it and seemed the more embarrassed--and to redden more-because of it. He mumbled something. I "I beg your pardon, sir," said Avalon. "I didn't hear you. ti IDrake, who sat next to his guest, and who looked rather uncomfortable himself, said, "Jonathan, saying 'I've nothing to say' is no answer. Dandle said, "It's an answer. if that's the answer I choose to give, Jim. "No," said Drake, peering V his guest out of his wrinkle-nested eyes.- "That's not among the pemmWiitled choices, Jonathan. I explained the deal on this meeting. You receive a good dinner and good company in exchange for substantive answers. No secrets. No evasions. My own experience is that you've always had plenty to say." Avalon said, "Let me coritinue,.Jim.-Mr. Dandle, I will accept your answer that you have nothing to say, though I wish you would speak up so that others besides your immediate neighbor might hear you. My next question is this: Why is it that you have nothing to say on this occasion considering that, if we are to believe Jim, such silence is not typical f you?" Dandle spread out his hands and said loudly enough; "Is a Man always accountable for his actions, Mr. Avalon? Does. he always know the origins of his moods?" Avalon said, "Then let me ask you another que- stion. You did, on one occasion, interject a question into the general conversation. You asked why we were talking about Poe,, and you did so quite forcibly. I interpreted your remark as indicating that you were offended, perhaps outraged, by the discussion. Is that so? And if it is so, why?" Dandle shook his head. "No, no. I just asked." Trumbull stood up and passed one hand over his tightly waved white hair. He said, with exaggerated patience, "Jim, as the host, you must make a decision. We are clearly getting- nothing out of our guest, and I think that, under the rules of the club, we might be forced to adjourn the meeting now. In fact, I move you consider adjournment. " Drake waved a hand at him petulantly. "Take it easy, Tom.-Jonathan, you've got to answer honestly. Nothing that is said here will ever be repeated outside these walls. Our waiter, Henry, is a member of the club and he is as closemouthed as we are, More so. I know you well enough to know you haven't committed a crime, or are planning to commit one, but even so, we-" "You're quite wrong," said Dandle, in a rather more high-pitched voice than hefore. "I am trying to commit what I consider a crime.. I'm certainly trying to be .dishonest." Drake said, "You?" "With . what 11 think is considerable justification, of course. "After that," said Trumbull, "if Mr. Dandle does not care to elaborate, Jim.- then we'can go no further." There was silence. Trumbull remained standing. Drake looked at Dandle and said, "Well, Jonathan?" Dandle said, "You told me, Jim, I would be grilled on the details of my profession. I did not expect this sort of thing. " "It can't be helped. If you had been yourself, none of this would have come up. What's wrong?" Dandle looked helples He clenched his fist, made as. though,he was going to bring it down'on the table, stopped the motion, and said, "It's my sister." "Your crackp-" began Drake, and stopped !uddenly. "My crackpot sister," said Dandle. "She's dying. Cancer. There was a sudden silence. "We've known it for months," said Dandle, "and she may live for months more, but it does produce problems." The silence continued. Finally, Henry said, "Brandy, gentlemen?" Avalon said, absently, "Just a small portion, Henry.- "What kind of problems, Mr. Dandle?" "Her will.7 "You mean, all this is a matter of money?" said Halsted, with rather more than-a shade of disapproval in his voice. "Not money at all," said Dandle, lifting his eyebrows., "Please understand, gentlemen, that my wife and I are well off. We have a son and daughter, but both are grown and both are reasonably well off. My sister has a house and some money that she inherited from our parents, but this is not something we lust for. At least, not the money. That she can dispose of as she wishes. She can leave it to a farm for, homeless, cats, if she wishes. It's the house, He fell into -momentary thought. "It was quite clear that she would never marry by the time my parents died. Itm,ade sense to leave the family house to her, even though it was unnecessarily, large for one person. Still, it's belonged to the family since it was built; I was born I there; lived there till, I married; I have a profound emotional attachment to it. Now my sister, Rachel," Dandle looked briefly at Drake, "being, as you say, a crackpot, is planning to leave it to a crackpot organization, and I don't want - her to. I'd be willing to have it sold to someone respectable. I'd even be willing to have it torn down in a decent way for a decent purpose. But I'm damned if I'm willing to let the-the Cosmic Order of Theognostics infest it." "The what?" said Gonzalo. Avalon said, "The word comes from the Greek and means "knowing God."" Dandle said, "What they really know are methods for extracting money from fools and nuts." Avalon said, "I assume they are extracting money from your sister."" "To some extent, yes, but not very much. She is a shrewd woman, financially, and is quite compos mentis outside her obsession. Still, they're. angling to get it all when she dies. And they may." . "WhAt is her obsession, sir?" "I believe it started with her-reading of Ploe when she was young. I think she read everything he had written;'memorized it, just about; and absorbed the unhea "Ithy morbidity that Mr. Rubin mentioned. And she read Lovecraft, too, and grew inclined to believe in horrors from outer space, in. elder intelligences, and so on. She lectured me often enough on that stuff. Naturally, she became part of the UFO mania. "Naturally," muttered Rubin, with a look of distaste. "She became convinced that intelligent beings from outer space are actually on Earth and have taken over Earth's leaders, and much of the general population. She thinks these, aliens are themselves,invisible, or can make themselves so, and can live within human beings parasitically. It's.all quite mad." I "I suppose," said Avalon, "that if anyone disagrees with her, or tries to argue against her views, she considers it a sign the arguer has "ibeen taken over." "Absolutely. I early recognized the mistake of trying to oppose -her." Halsted said, "Why haven't the aliens taken over everybody? How does your sister explain that she herself hasn't been taken over?" "I gather," said Dandle, "that the Cosmic Order of Theognostics fights them with prayer and introspection and meditation and incantation and whatever the devil- they claim to do, and they have taught her'the same. She has tried to teach me and I've just kept silent and listened. There's a lot of candle burning involved, and the recitation of whole pages of material that has no meaning whatever but I suppose she thinks it keeps me safe--so fir." Drake, said, through the -smoke of his cigarette, "When I referred to her as a crackpot, Jonathan, -1 was thinking of the LIFO stuff. I didn't know about this alien intelligences bit. " "It's not something I like to talk about, obviously," said Dandle, "and wouldn't be talking about now except under pressure." Avalon said, "You said you were thinking of committing a crime.. Surely, you're not thinking of mayhem against the Theognostics. "Nothing like" that. Just a "crime in my own eyes. I've been trying to cheat and deceive MY sister, and I'm not really proud of that. "Would, you be willing to explain that, sir?" asked Avalon, stiffly. "Well, since Rachel was, found to have cancer, things are at a crisis. She won't submit to surgery because she is sure that" under, anesthesia she will be taken over. She is suspicious of radiotherapy, too, since radiation is a weapon of those beings. She is relying entirely on The6gnostic ritual, and you can imagine how effective that-is." Rubin said, "-'The most ridiculous methods- can sometimes help if you believe firmly that they will. The mind is a powerful instrument. "That may be," said Dandle, "but it isn't helping her. She's going downhill, and, about a month ago, she began to talk of leaving the house and her money to the Theognostics so that they could continue the great fight against the aliens.-So I started a plan of my own." He reddened and stopped. After a short pause, Avalon said, - gently, "Yes, Mr. Dandle?" "To put it bluntly," said Dandle, "I came to her as an enthusiastic convert. I said she hadconvinced me and that I was heart and soul with her; that she could leave the money to the Theognostics if she wished, but that she should leave the house to me and I would make it the center of the fight against the aliens. I would allow the Theognostics to use it freely but I merely wanted to keep title to it'in honor of our parents. I was hypocritical and obsequious.-" "No doubt," said Avalon, "but did it work? People who, like your sister, believe in invisible, untestable dangers would be suspicious of everything. "I'm afraid so," said Dandle. "She's of two minds about me. She wants to believe, but, as you say, she is suspicious. She hesitates to tell me what Im sure she believes to be the "higher mysteries," so to speak. I asked for details about the form and attributes of the mysterious aliens, for instance, and she was closemouthed about it-as though she was not sure I was worthy of initiation. " Trumbull said,, "Maybe she doesn't know herself." Rubin said, "She can easily invent anything she wishes and then come to believe it. Such things are very common. " "Last week she said something in a sort of singsong whisper and I thought I was making progress, but then there was nothing more. "What did she say?" "Well, they're, hermaphroditic and are neither women nor men. And they weren't Earthly, of course. They aren't human beings or animals. And when they infest us they live on our spiritual nature rather than on our physical bodies, I gather, for she seized my arm, with a surprisingly strong grip, too, and whispered into my ear, "They are worse than cannibals, and that is not surprising considering where they come from. "Where do they come from?" asked Gonzalo. "That's what I asked," said Dandle, "but she didn't say., She said that once you achieve a certain enlightenment, you know where they come from; that that is the test of enlightenment. It comes over you like a wave of revelation and gives you a certain power against them. She knows, and the Theognostics know; but they don't tell anyone because that's their test for the people whoare strong against the aliens. It doesn't really make sense, but if I were to try to say that to her, it would mean the end of my chance to save the house. So I just said, earnestly, that I would meditate and try to gain the knowledge. " He looked about the table with a". grim face. "I'm supposed to be fasting.--She called me this morning." "Things are coming to a crisis?" asked Avalon- "Yes. That's why I've been, preoccupied this evening, and didn't say much. I Was of two minds whether to come here at all, but I didn't want to let. Jim Drake down." "But what was it your sister said to you this morning?" "She says she wants to make a decision about her will., She feels herself weakening and she knows that she nWst become'one with the Great Divine--which is the Theopostic term for God, apparently--and she wants to make sure she continue's the fight from beyond the grave. She can't let me have the house unless she is certain I won't bar the Theognostics from it. And,,of course, barring them is exact what I intend -to do so I am trying to flimflam he r.It's not exactly admirable of me. " Trumbull said., loudly, "We're on your side, Mr, Dandle. You're fighting a group of pernicious and vicious flimflam operators, and if counter-fliniflam is required, so be it.'9 "Thank you," said Dandle, "but I don't see that I will win out. She wants me to visit her tomorrow at noon and tell her where the aliens come from. If I can't, then she can't rely on me to remain strong against them and the Theognostics will get the house. And, of course, I can't tell her where the aliens come from. They're from outer space, I'm sure. That would fit in with her UFO madness, for they undoubtedly reached Earth by UFO. But where in outer space?" There was a short silence, then Gonzalo said, "She never gave you any hints?" I Dandle shook his head. "Only the remark about their being worse than cannibals and that that somehow was appropriate, considering where they come from. But.what does that mean?" "Nothing else?" "Not that I can think of. If she did, it went right past me.-So tomorrow I lose die house." Avalon said, "You know, sir, that you can contest the "No, not really," said Dandle. "You were introduced to me as a lawyer-71 "A patent lawyer," said Avalon. "I am not knowledgeable on the intricacies of testamentary litigation.,, "Well, on the one hand, there is a strong tendency to allow a testator to do as he wishes with his own property. It isn't easy to disallow a religious organization in favor of a relative who is already well off. I doubt that I can prove undue influence, nor would I care to try to make my sister seem to have been of unsound mind, if only out of family considerations. Then, even if I really thought I could, win, it would be a long-drawn-out fight in which the legal fees would come to considerably more than I would care to pay.---So I'm going to lose the. house. " Avalon said, "We might all of us think about this a bit." A flicker of hope seemed to enliven Dandle. "Are any of you astronomers. "Not professionally," said Halsted, "but we have the usual superficial knowledge of the field that any intelligent and reasonably well-read individuals would have." "Exactly," said Rubin, "and that means I can make a suggestion. We're looking for something in outer space that has cannibalistic associations. I've read articles recently that in clusters,of galaxies, there are occasional collisions and that, in such collisions, the larger member gains stars at the expense of the smaller one. The result is that in clusters, there is one galaxy that is larger than any -of the others, having cannibalized them. Halsted nodded vigorously. "You are right, Manny. I've read about it, too. There's, one outsize galaxy that has five small bright regions within itself that resemble galactic centers. The thought is that it swallowed five small galaxies whole. Gonzalo said, "Just for the record-what are- galaxies?" Avalon said, "Large conglomerations of stirs, Mario. Our own Milky Way Galaxy has a couple of hundred billion stars in it. Gonzalo said, "Well, then, has that cannibal galaxy-the one that swallowed up its five little sisters-got a name?" , The, Black Widowers stared at each other. Finally, Halsted said, "It may, but if it does, it's probably not an ordinary name. Just a particul "ar catalog number like NGCiiii, or something like, that. Gonzalo said, "I don't think Miss Dandle would be impressed by that." Dandle said, "I don't think so, either. I'm grateful to you for your attempts to help, but if galactic cannibalization is" a common phenomenon, which cannibal- would be the correct one? And I'm sure my sister knows nothing about modern sophistications in astronomy, a Inyway. Nor would the Theognostics. Where would they hear of this phenomenon?" Avalon said, "Does you sister, read anything at all in thee field of astronomy, M ., Dandle?" Dandle said, thoughtfully, "She's certainly read everything there is on UFOs and some astronomy-not necessarily correct-is bound to creep in there. She reads up on astrology, of course, which means additional possibly distorted astronomy. And I have seen astronomy popularizations in the house. I haven't actually seen her reading them but I wouldn't be surprised if she did. "Is she well-read otherwise, sir?" "Yes. All of Poe as I said, and Lovecraft, and some science fiction. A great deal of general nineteenth-century fiction, I should say, and, of course, she reads the" newspapers and a number of magazines thoroughly, if only to find evidence of how far the aliens have taken over the world. I've got to explain to you that there's nothing wrong with her intelligence, outside her-her crackpottery. "In that case," said Avalon, with, a certain sombre satisfaction, "I am quite sure I have the answer. " He paused and cast a glance in the direction of the waiter, who was standing at the sideboard, listening with polite but silent attention. "Henry," said Avalon, "I think that on this occasion we will not need your help." "Yes, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, quietly. Avalon cleared his throat. "You set, by far the bestknown portion of the Universe, even to astronomers, and certainly to the general public, are the planets of our own solar system. This is especially true for people like Miss Dandle, who are interested in astrology'and similar aberrations. "And of the planets, the one which in recent years has received the most attention and which is, in any case,. the most spectacular, is the planet Saturn, with its rings and satellites. The Voyager probes have taken close-up photographs of the Saturnian system and these have, made all -t"he newspapers and magazines. Miss Dandle cannot have missed them. Dandle said, "I'm sure she has not. But what then?" "Saturn," said Avalon, ""is named for an early Roman god of -agriculture whom the Romans, with scant justice, equated with the. Greek god Kronos. Kronos with his brothers and sisters made up the group of gods called the Titans, and they were the children of Ouranos and Gaea, the god of the sky and the goddess of the Earth, respectively. In a series of most unpleasant myths, the Greeks describe -Kronos as castrating his father, Uranus, and taking over the rule of the Universe. I" Since the Fates had decreed that Kronos would, in turn, be replaced as ruler by his own son, the new lord of the Universe took to devouring each child as it was born. His wife, Rhea, managed to save one son by offering Kronos a rock wrapped in the baby's swaddling clothes. The rather stupid Kronos swallowed that without noticing the substitutiory. The son, still uneaten, was"then hidden in Crete, and raised to maturity in secret. Eventually, the son, who, was named Zeus (Jupiter, to the Romans), warred upon- the Titans, defeated them, released his siblings, who were still alive within Kronos, and took over the Universe. All this Miss Dandle, in her reading, might very well have come across. "Now, then, Saturn was clearly a cannibal. If there are degrees in such things, devouring one's own children is surely worse than fattening on strangers, so he might well be viewed as worse than an ordinary cannibal. Miss Dandle's statement thai the aliens were worse than cannibals and that that was not surprising in view of where they came from would make sense if they came from Saturn. " And Avalon smiled at Dandle with self-conscious triumph. Dandle said, "You think, then, I had better tell my sister the alien beings come from Saturn?" "I can't say the matter is certain," said Avalon. "She may, after, all, suppose them to have come from some entirely fictitious planet such as,Zorkel, the fifth planet ofthe star Xanadu, in the galaxy of Yaanek. If, however, -she has a real astronomical body in mind, then I am virtuallly, certain that it is SaturnAt must be." "It sounds good to me," said Gonzalo. "It makes sense," admitted Rubin, looking distressed at having to say so.. Halsted said, "It's worth a try" Trumbull said, "I can't think of anything better." Drake said, "It seems unanimous. I'd take the chance, Jonathan. . Dandle began, "Well, since I can't think of anythingbetter, either-" Gonzalo interrupted. "Wait, Henry hasn't said anything. Henry, what do you think?" Dandle looked up in astonishment at having the waiter referred to. When Henry said, "May I ask Mr. Dandle if he shared in "his sister's enthusiasm for Poe?" Dandle looked more astonished still. Drake said, "Please answer, Jonathan. Henry is one of US-,, Jonathan said, "No, definitely not. I know "The Raven"; no one can avoid knowing that; but I know nothing- else. I stay away from him." ,"In that case," said Henry, "I fear that Mr. Avalon's suggestion, although most ingenious, is not the correct answer. I I Avalon looked offended. "Inded, Henry? Have you anything better to offer?" Henry said, "Consider, sir, that Miss Dandle was a great devotee of Poe, and that in describing the aliens she said that they were neither female nor male, animal nor human. "Well?" "Well, Mr. Avalon, 1, unlike Mr. Dandle but like his sister, am an admirer of Poe, though more so of his poetry than of his prose. Among my favorite poems, by Poe is "The Bells," in the fourth part of which he describes the, tolling of the funeral bells. There you have his morbid preoccupationwith -death, you see, something that is boundto follow his earlier descriptions, of sleigh bells, wedding bells, and firealarm bells. "Aha," said Rubin. "Yes,-Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "I suspect you already see what I mean. Part of the description of the funeral bells is---if I may quote: ,.And the people-ah, the people- -They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, 14 that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stoneThey are neither man nor womanThey are neither brute nor human-" Henry paused, then said, "Miss Dandle was undoubtedly quoting those last two lines, I think. You stated that she said them in singsong fashion, Mr. Dandle, but not being a Poe enthusiast, you did not recognize them." Avalon "said, "But even so-How does that help?" Henry said, "It-is the next line that counts, as Poe identifies the people who toll the funeral bells." And he and. Rubin quoted simultaneously: ""They are Ghouls. Henry said, "Ghouls are creatures of the Middle Eastern legend who infest graveyards and feed on dead bodies. That might -well strike Miss Dandle, or anyone, as worse than ordinarycannibalism, just as vultures are worse than hawks in the general estimation. Avalon said, "I grant that, but I still don't see the point. "Nor 1, " said Trumbull. Henry said, "There is a constellation in the sky named Perseus, named for the Greek hero who cut off the head of Medusa, a creature so dreadful in appearance that. anyone looking at it turned to stone. The constellation is pictured as the hero holding the head of Medusa and that head is marked by a second-magnitude stax, Beta Persei. I loo6ed it, up in the Columbia Encyclopedia during the discussiomn, to be sure of that fact. "Because of its position in the constellation, Beta Persei is sometimes called the Demon Star,, -it "consequence. The Arabs, who adopted the Greek view of the sky, named it Al Ghul, meaning "The Ghoul," their version of something as horrible as Medusa, and our English version of that Arabic name is "Algol." That is now the common name of the star. "Since Miss Dandle quoted that poem to define the aliens, she meant that they were ghouls, and therefore worse than cannibals, and she must have meant that it was not surprising that they were since they came, from the star known as "The Ghoul'-a fact she could surely have picked up from some book on popular astronomy, as I did, originally. I would suggest, then, Mr. Dandle, that you say, when you see your sister tomorrow, that the -aliens come from Algol." Dandle smiled brightly for the first time that evening and. broke into applause. "Henry, I will. That should be the answer, and I am sure it is. " Henry said, gravely, "Nothing may be completely sure in this case, sir, but it is worth the gamble. " Afterword Eleanor worried about this story a bit because it seemed to her (and to me, too) that it wasn't quite- admirable of Jonathan Dandle to want to deceive his sister, or of the Black Widowers to help him do so. Still I felt the cause was good enough to warrant the act, and.1 managed to convince Eleanor of it, too. When it comes to that, Dandle himself worried about it, and I had nothing to do with that, either. My characters always manage to have a life of their own and they generally do things without my consciously willing them to do so. Anyway, I have my own listof dislikes and disapprovals, and high on it are nonrational cults'of any kind, whether they cover themselves with a cloak of pseudoreligiosity or not. Mind you, this does not extend to honest and rational religious feeling, as I showed in my story "The One and Only East," which ap peared in an earlier Black Widowers collection. Consequently, if I can do one of them in the eye---even if only fictionally-I don't hesitate. The story appeared in the April 1984 issue of EQMM. The Redhead Mario Gonzalo, host of that evening's riveting of the Black Widowers, had evidently decided to introduce his guest with 6clat. At least he rattled his glass with a spoon and, when all had broken off their preprandial conversa tions and looked up from their cocktails, Mario made his intioduction. He had even waited for Thomas Trumbull's as-usual late arrival. before doing so. "Gentlemen," he said, "this is my guest, John Anderssew--that's an s-s-e-n at the end, You can discover anything you want about him in this evening's grilling. One thing, however, I must tell you now because I know that this bunch of asexual loudmouths will never discover it on their own. John has a wife who is, absolutely, the most gorgeous specimen of femininity the world has ever seen. And I say this as an artist with an artist's eye. " Anderssen reddened and looked uncomfortable. He was a blond young man, perhaps thirty, with a small mustache and a fair complexion. He was about five-ten in height and had rather chiseled features that came together, to form a handsome face. Geoffrey Avalon, looking down from his stiff-b4cked seventy-four inches, said, "I must congratulate you, Mr. Anderssen, although you need not take seriously- Mario's characterization of ourselves as asexual. I'm sure that each of us is quite capable of appreciating a beautiful woman. I, myself, although I might be considered to be past the first flush of hot-blooded youth, can-" Trumbull. said, "Spare us, Jeff, spare us. If you are going to give an embarrassing account,of your prowess, you are better off being interrupted. From my point of view, the next best thing to having the youngwoman in our midst-if our customs allowed it-would be to see her photograph. I imagine, Mr. Anderssen, you carry a photo of your fair wife in your wallet. Would you consent to let us look at it?" "No," said Anderssen, emphatically. Then, blushing furiously, he said, "I don't mean you can't look at it.1 mean I don't have a photograph of her with me. I'm sorry." But he said it challengingly, and was clearly not sorry. Gonzalo, unabashed, said,, "Well, that's your loss, my friends. You should see her hair. It's gloriously red, a live red that just about glows in the dark. And natural, totally natural-and no freckles." ""Well," said Anderssen in half a mutter, "she stays out of the sun.-Her hair is her best feature." Emmanuel Rubin, who had been standing on the out-. skirts, looking rather dour, said in a low voice, "And temper to match, I suppose." Anderssen turned to him, and said, with an edge of bittemess,,"She has a temper." He did not elaborate. ,Rubin said, "I don't suppose there's a more durable myth" than the one that redheads are hot-tempered. The redness of the hair is that of fire, and the principles of sympathetic magic lead people to suppose that the personality should match the hair. James Drake, who shared, with Avalon, the dubious privilege of being the - oldest of the Widowers, sighed reminiscently, and said, "I've known some very hotblooded redheads. " "Sure you have," said Rubin. "So has everyone, It's a self-fulfilling assumption. Redheaded children, especially girls, are forgiven for being nasty and ill-behaved. Parents sigh fatuously and mutter that it goes with the hair, and the one with red hair in the family explains how Great-Uncle Joe would mop up the floor with anyone in the barroom who said anything, that was less than a grovelling compliment. Boys usually grow up and have the stuffing knocked out of them by non-redheaded peers and that-teaches them manners, but girls don't. And, if they're, beautiful besides, they grow up knowing they can indulge their impoliteness to the hilt. An occasional judicious kick in the fanny would do them worlds of good." Rubin carefully did not look at Anderssen in the course of his comment and Anderssen said nothing at all. - Henry, the indispensable waiter at all the Black Widower functions, said quietly, "Gentlemen, you may seated." The chef at the Milano had clearly decided to be Russian for the evening, and an excellent hot borscht was followed by an even more delightful beef Stroganoff on a bed of rice. Rubin, who usually endured the food with an expression of stoic disapproval, on principle, allowed a smile -to play over his sparsely bearded face on this occasion, and helped himself lavishly to the dark pumpernickel. As for Roger Halsted, whose affection for a good meal was legendary, he quietly negotiated a second helping with Henry. The guest, John Anderssen, ate heartily, and participated eagerly in the conversation which, through a logical association, perhaps, dealt largely with the shooting down of the Korean jetliner by the Soviets. Anderssen pointed out that the ship had been widely referred to as "Flight 007," which was the number on the fuselage, during the first couple of weeks. Then someone must have remembered that 007 was the code number of James Bond, so when the Soviets "insisted the liner had been a spy plane, it became "Flight 7" in the news media, and the "00" disappeared as though it had never been. He also maintained vigorously that the jetliner, having gone off course almost immediately after leaving Alaska, should not have been left uninformed of the fact. He was shouting, red-faced, that failure to do so, when the Soviet Union was known to be on the hair trigger with respect to American reconnaissance planes and to Reagan's "evil empire" rhetoric, was indefensible. He paid no attention, in fact, to his dessert, a honeydrenched baklava; left his coffee half-finished; and totally ignored Henry's soft-request that he make his wishes known with respect to the brandy. He was actually pounding the table when Gonzalo rattled his spoon against his water glass. Avalon was forced to raise his baritone voice to a commanding, "Mr. Anderssen, if you please-" Anderssen subsided, looking vaguely confused, as though he were, with difficulty, remembering where he was." Gonzalo said, "It's time for the grilling, and Jeff, since you seem to have the-commanding presence needed in case John, here, gets excited, suppose you do the honors. " Avalon cleared his throat, gazed at Anderssen solemnly for a few moments, then said, "Mr. Anderssen, how do you justify your existence?" Anderssen said,, "What?" "You exist, sir. Why?" "Oh," said Anderssen, still collecting himself. Then, in a low harsh voice, he said, "To expiate my sins in an earlier existence, I should think. Drake, who was at the moment accepting a refresher from Henry, muttered, "So are we all.-Don't you think so, Henry?" And Henry's sixtyish unlined face remained expressionless as he said, very softly, "A Black Widowers banquet-is surely a reward for virtue rather than an expiation for sins. Drake lifted his glass. "A palpable hit, Henry." Trumbull growled, "Let's cut out the private conve,rsations. " Avalon raised his hand. "Gentlemen! As you all know, I do not entirely approve of our custom of grilling a guest in the hope of searching out problems that might interest us. Nevertheless, I wish to "call your attention to a peculiar phenomenon, We have here a young man-young, certainly, by the standards of old mustaches such as ourselveswell-proportioned, of excellent appearance, seeming to exude good health and an air of success in life, though we have not yet ascertained- what the nature of his work is--" "He's in good health and is, doing well at his work," put in Gonzalo. "I am glad to hear it," said Avalon, grtively. "In addition, he is married to a young and beautiful woman, so that one can't help but wonder why he should feel fife to be such a burden as to lead him to believe that he exists only in order to expiate past sins. Consider, too, that during the meal just concluded, Mr. Anderssen was animated and vivacious, not in the least abashed by our older and wiser heads. I believe. he shouted down even Manny, who is not one to be shouted down with impunity-" "Anderssen was making a good point," said Rubin, indignantly. "I think he was, too," said Avalon, "but what I wish to stress is that he is voluble, articulate, andnot backward at expressing his views. Yet during the cocktail period, when, the conversation dealt with his wife, he seemed to speak most reluctantly. From this, I infer'that the source of Mr. Anderssen's unhappiness may be Mrs. Anderssen.-Is that so, Mr. Anderssen?" Anderssen seemed stricken and remained silent, Gonzalo said, "John, I explained the terms. You must answer." Anderssen said, "I'm not sure how to answer.11 Avalon said, "Let me be indirect. After all, sir, there is no intention to humiliate you. And please be aware that nothing said in this room is ever repeated by any of us elsewhere. That includes our esteemed waiter, Henry. Please feel that you can speak freely.-Mr. Anderssen, how long -have you been married?" "Two years. Actually, closer to two and a half." "Any children, sir?" "Not yet. We hope to have some one day. "For that hope to exist, the marriage must not be foundering. I take it you are not contemplating divorce. "Certainly not. "I take it then that you love your wife?" "Yes. And before you ask, I am quite satisfied she loves me. 11 "There is, of course, a certain problem in being married to a beautiful woman," said Avalon. "Men will flock about. beauty Are you plagued by jealousy, sir?" "No," said Anderssen. "I've no cause for it. Helenthat's my wife-has no great interest in men-" " Ah, - said Halsted, as though a great light haddawned. "Except for myself," said Anderssen, indignantly. "She's not in the least bit asexual. Besides," he went on, "Mario exaggerates. She does have this luxuriant head of remarkable red hair, but aside from that she is not really spectacular. Her looks, I would say, are average--thouih I must" rely now on your assurance that all said here is confidential. I would not want thal assessment to be repeated. Her figure is good, and I find her beautiful, but there are no men caught helplessly in her toils, and I am not plagued by jealousy." "What about her temper?" put in Drake, suddenly. "That's been mentioned and you've admitted she had one. I presume there's lots of fighting and dish throwine. "Some fights, sure," said Anderssen, "but no more than is par for the course, And no dish throwing. As Mr. Avalon has pointed out, I'm articulate, and so is she, and we're both pretty good at shouting, but after we work off our stearn, we can be just as good at kissing and hugging." "Then am I to take it, sir, that your wife is not the source of your troubles?" said Avalon. Anderssen fell silent again. "I must ask you to answer, Mr. Anderssen," said, Avalon. Anderssen said, "She is the problem. Just now, anyway. But it's too silly to talk about." Rubin sat up at that and said, "On the contrary Till now, I felt, that Jeff was just wasting our time over the kind of domestic irritations that we attend these dinners, in part, to escape. But if there's something silly involved, then we want to hear it. "If you must know," said Anderssen. "Helen says she's a witch. I "Oh?" said Rubin. "Has she always claimed this, or just recently?" "Always. We joke about it. She would say she put me under enchantment to get me to marry her, and that she would cast spells and get me a promotion or a raise. Sometimes, when she is furious, she'll say, "Well, don't blame me if you blotch out in pimples just because you're going to be that stupid and mean." That sort of thing.", Rubin said, "It sounds harmless to me. She probably did put you under enchantment. You fell in,love with her and any woman of reasonable intelligence and looks can make a young man fall in love with her if she works hard enough being charming. You can call that enchantment if you wish. - "But I do get the promotions and raises." "Surely that could be because you deserve them. Do you get the pimples, too?" Anderssen smiled. "Well, I managed to trip and sprain an ankle and, of course, she said she had changed the spell because she didn't want to spoil my pretty face. " Halsted laughed and said, "You don't really act disturbed at this, Mr. Anderssen. After all, this sort of playacting by a young and vivacious woman isn't unusual. Personally, I find it charming. Why don't you?" Anderssen said, "Because she pulled it on me once too often. She did something that I can't understand. - He threw himself back in his chair and stared sombrely at the table in front of him Tru"mbull bent to one side as though to look into Anderssen's eyes and said, "You mean you think she really is a witch?" "I don't know what to think. I just can't explain what she did. - Avalon said, forcibly, "Mr. Andemen, I must ask you to explain just what it was that Mrs, Anderssen did. Would 1 91, you do that, sir. "Well," said Anderssen, "maybe I should. If I talk about it, maybe I can forget it.-But I don't think so." He brooded a bit and the Widowers waited patiently., Finally, he said, "It was just about a month ag6---The sixteenth. We were going out for dinner, just the two of us. We do that once in a while, and we like to try new places " We were trying a new place this time, the door to which was reached by passing through the lobby of a small midtown hotel. It was an unpretentious restaurant, but we had had good reports of it.-The trouble started in the lobby. "I don't remember exactly what set it off. In fact, I don't even remember what it was all about, really. What halipened afterward pushed it out of my mind. What it amounted to was that we had a-a disagreement. In less than a minute, we would have been inside the restaurant and studying the menu, and instead, we were standing to one side of the lobby, under a plastic potted plant of some sort. I can remember the sharply pointed leaves touching my hand disagreeably when I waved it to make a point. The registration desk was across the way, between the door to the restaurant and the door to the street. The scene is still painted in my mind "Helen was saying, "If that's your attitude, we don't have to have dinner together." "I swear to all of you, I don't remember what my attitude was, but we're both of us highly vocal, and we were both of us ,furious, I admit. The whole thing was highly ernbarrassing. It was one of those times when you and someone else-usually your wife or -girlfriend, I suppose-are shouting at each other in whispers. The words are being squeezed out between clenched teeth, and every once in a while one of YOU says, "For Heaven's sake, people are staring," and the other says, "Then shut up and listen to reason," and the first one says, "You're the one who isn't listening," and it just keeps on and on." Anderssen shook his head at the memory. "It was the most intense argument we had ever had up to that time,- or since, and yet I can't remember what it was about. Unbelievable! "Then she suddenly said, "Well, then, I'm going home. Good-bye." I said, "Don't you dare humiliate me by leaving me in public." And she said, "You can't stop me." And I said, "Don't tempt me, or I will stop you." And she said, "Just try," and dashed into the restaurant. - "That caught me by surprise. I had thought she would try to get past me to the door to the street-and I was ready to seize her wrist and hang on. It would have been better to let her go than to make a scene, I suppose, but I was past reason. In any case, -she fooled me, and made a dash for the restaurant. "I was stunned for a moment-two moments-and then I hurried in after her. I may have been twenty seconds behind her.--4,et me describe the restaurant. It was not a large one, and it had the deliberate decor of a living room. In fact, die restaurant is called The Living Room.-Are any of you acquainted with it?" There was a blank murmur about the table, but Henry, who had cleared the dishes with his usual unobtrusive efficiency and was standing by the sideboard, said, "Yes, sir. It is, as you say, a small but well-run restaurant. " "It had about a dozen tables," Anderssen proceeded, "the largest of which would hold six. There were windows with drapes, but not real windows. They had city views painted on them. There was a fireplace in the wall opposite the entrance door with artificial logs in it, and a couch facing it. The couch was real and, I suppost, could be used by people who were waiting for the rest of their party to arrive. At least, there was one man sitting on the left end of the, couch. He had his back to me, and was reading a magazine that he held rather high and close to his head as -though he were nearsighted. I judged from its typography that it was llme-" Avalon put in suddenly, "You seem to be a good observer and you are going into minutiae. Is this important that you've just told us?" "No," said Anderssen, "I suppose not, but I am trying to impress on you that I was not hysterical and that I was entirely myself and saw everything there was to see quite clearly. When I came in, about half the tables were taken, with two to four people at each. There may have been fifteen to twenty people present. There were no waitresses on the scene at the moment and the cashier was stationed justoutside the restaurant,, to one side of the"door in a rather unobtrusive recess, so it really did look like a living room. " Drake stubbed out his cigarette. "It sounds like an idyllic place. What was present there that disturbed you9" "Nothing was present that disturbed me. That's the point. It was what was absent there. Helen wasn't there.-Look, she had gone in. I saw her go in. I am not mistaken. There was no other door on that side of the lobby. There was no crowd within which she might have been lost to view for a moment. My vision was entirely unobstructed and she went in and did not come out. I followed in her tracks and entered, at, the most, twenty seconds after her-maybe less, but not more. And she was not there. I could tell that at a glance. Trumbull growled, "You can't tell anything at a glance. A glance will fool you." , "Not in this case," said Anderssen. "Mario mentioned Helen's hair. There's just nothing like it. At least I've seen nothing like it. There may have been, at most, ten women there and not one had red hair. Even if one of them had been a redhead, I doubt she would have been a redhead in quite the fluorescent and lavishly spectacular way that Helen was. Take my word for it. I looked right-left, and there wasno Helen. She had disappeared. "Gone out to the street by another entrance, I suppose," said Halsted. Anderssen shook his head. "There was no entrance to the street. I checked with the cashier afterward, and with the fellow at the registration desk. I've gone back there since to order lunch and managed to look over the place. Therr isn)t any entrance to the outside. What's more, the windows are fakes and they're solid something-or-other. They don't open. There are ventilation ducts, of course,but they're not big enough for a rabbit to crawl through." Avalon said, "Even though the windows are fake,, you mentioned drapes. She might have been standing behind one of them. " "No," said Anderssen, "the drapes hug the wall. There would have been an obvious bump if she were behind one " What's more, they only came down to the bottom of the window and there are two feet of bare wall beneath them. She would have been visible to mid-thigh if she were standing behind one." "What about the ladies" room?" inquired Rubin. "You know, so strong is the taboo against violating the one-sex nature of these things, we tend to forget the one we don't use is even there." "Well, I didn't," said Anderssen, with clear exasperation. "I looked around for it, didn't see any indication, and when I asked later, it turned out that both rest rooms were in the lobby. A waitress did show up while I was looking around and I said to her in, I suppo§e, a rather distracted voice, "Did a redheaded woman just come in here? "The waitress looked at me in a rather alarmed way, and mumbled, "I didn't see anyone," and hastened to deliver her tray load to one of the tables. "I hesitated because I was conscious of my embarrassing position, but I saw no way out. I raised my voice and said, "Has anyone here seen a redheaded woman come in just a moment agoT There was dead silence. Everyone looked up at me, staring stupidly. Even the man on the couch turned his head to look at me and he shook his head at me in a clear negative. The others didn't even do that much, but their vacant stares were clear enough indication that they hadn't seen her. I "Then it occurred to me that the waitress mu "st have emerged from the kitchen. For a minute, I was sure that Helen was hiding there and I felt -triumphant. Regardless of the fact that my actions might induce some of the staff to call hotel security, or the police, even, I marched firmly through a pair of swinging doors into the kitchen. There was the chef there, a couple of assistants, and another waitress. No Helen. There was one small further door which might. have been a private lavatory for the kitchen staff, and I had gone too far to back down. I walked over and flung the door open. It was a lavatory, and it was empty. By then the chef and his assistants were shouting at me, and I said, "Sorry," and left quickly. I didn't see. any closets there large enough to hold a human being. "I stepped back into the restaurant. Everyone was still looking at me, and I could do nothing but return to the lobby. It was as though the instant Helen had passed through the doorway into the restaurant, she had vanished." Anderssen'sat back, spread his hands in blank despair. "Just vanished." Drake said, "What did you do?" Anderssen said, "I went out and talked to the cashier. She had been away from her station for a few moments and she hadn't even seen me go in, let alone Helen. She told me about the rest rooms and that there was no exit to the street. "Then I went to talk to the room clerk, which demoralized me further. He was busy and I had to wait. - I wanted to yell, "This is a matter of life and death," but I was beginning to think I would be carried off to an asylum if I didn't behave in a totally proper way. And when I spoke to him, the room clerk turned out to be a total zero, though what could I really have expected from him?" "And then what did you do?" asked Drake. "I waited in the lobby for about half an hour. I thought Helen might show up again; that sh "e had been playing some practical joke and that she would return. Well, no Helen. 1. could only spend my time fantasizing, as I waited, of calling the police, of hiring a private detective, of personally scouring the city, but you know-What do I tell the police? That my wife has been missing for an hour? That my wife vanished under my eyes? And I don't know any private detectives. For that matter, I don't know how to scour a city So, after the most miserable half hour of I my whole life, I did the only thing there was to do. I hailed a taxi and went home." Avalon said, solemnly, "I trust, Mr. Anderssen, that you are not going to tell us your wife has been missing ever since, " Gonzalo said, "She can't be, Jeff. I saw her two days ago. Anderssen said, "She was waiting for me when I got home. For a minute, a wave of intense thankfulness swept, over me. It had been a terrible taxi ride. All I could think of was that she would have to be missing twenty-four hours before I could call the police and how would I live through the twenty-four hours? And what would the police be able to do? "So I just grabbed her and held on to her. I was on tthe point of weeping, I was so glad to see her. And then, of course, I pushed her away and said, "Where the hell have you beenT "She said, coolly, "I told you I was going home." "I said, "But you ran into the restaurant "She said, "And then I went home. You LA suppose I needed a broomstick, do you? That's quite old-fashioned. I just-pfft-and I was home." She made a sweeping motion of her right hand. "I was furious. I had gotten completely over my relief. I said, "Do you know what you've put me through? Can you imagine how I felt? I rushed in like a damn fool and tried to find you and then I just stood around.-I almost went to the police." "She, grew calmer and icier and said, "Well, it serves you right for what you did. Besides, I told you I was going home. There was no need for you to do anything at all but go home, too. Here I am. Just because you refuse to believe I have the power is no reason for you to begin scolding me, when I did exactly what I told you I would do." "I said, "Come on, now, You didn't pfft here. Where were you in the restaurant? How did you get here? "I could get no answer from her on that. Nor have I been able to since. It's ruining my life. I resent her having put me through an hour of hell. I resent her making a fool of me." Avalon said, "Is the marriage breaking up as a result? Surely, you need not allow one incident-" "No, it's not breaking up. In fact, she's been sweet as apple pie ever since that evening. She hasn't pulled a single witch trick, but it bothers the dickens out of me. I brood about it. I dream about it. It's given her a kind ofsuperiority-" Rubin said, " She's got the upper hand now, you mean." "Yes," said Anderssen, violently. "She's made a fool of me and gotten away with it. I know she's not a witch, I know there are no such things as witches. But I don't know how she did it, and I've got this sneaking suspicion she's liable to do it again, and it keeps me-it keeps me-under. Anderssen then shook his head and- said, in a more composed way, "It's such a silly thing, but it's poisoning my life. " Again there was silence about the table, and then Avalon said, "Mr.,,,Anderssen, we of the Black Widowers are firm disbelievers in the supernatural. Are you telling us the truth about the incident?" Anderssen said, fiercely, "I assure you I have told you the truth. If you have a Bible here, I'll swear on it. Or, which is better as far as I am concerned, I'll give you my word as an honest man that everything I've told you is as completely true as my memory and my human fallibility will allow. " Avalon nodded. "I accept your word without reservation. " Gonzalo said, in an aggrieved way, "You might have told me, John. As I said, I saw Helen two days ago, and nothing seemedwrong to me. I had no idea-Maybe it's not too late for us to help." "How?" said Anderssen. "How could you help?" Gonzalo said, "We might discuss the matter. Some of us may have some ideas." " Rubin said, "I have one, and, I think, a very logical one. I begin by agreeing with Anderssen and everyone else here that there is no witchcraft and that, therefore, Mrs. Anderssen is no witch. I think she went into the restaurant and somehow managed to evade her husband's eyes. Then when he was busy in the kitchen or at the registration desk, she left the restaurant and the hotel quickly, took a taxi, went home, and then waited for him. Now she won't admit what it is she has done in order to stay one-up in this needless marnage combat. My own feeling is that a marriage is useless if-" "Never mind the homilies," said Anderssen, the shortr ness of his temper fuse showing. "Of course that's what happened. I don't need you to explain it to me. But you skip over the hard part. You say she went into the restaurant and "somehow managed to evade her husband's eyes." Would you please tell me just how she managed that trick".?" well," said Rubin. "I will. You came in, looked ery right and left, and were at once certain she wasn't there. Why? Because you were looking for an unmistakable redhead.-Have you ever heard of a wig, Mr. Anderssen?" "A wig? You mean she put on a wig?" "Why not? If she appeared to have brown hair, your eyes would pass right over her. -In fact, I suspect that her red hair" is so much the most important thing you see in her that if she were wearing a brown wig and had taken a seat at one of the tables, you could have been staring right at her face without recognizing it." Anderssen said, "I insist I would have recognized her even so, but that point is of no importance. The important thing is that Helen has never owned a wig, For her to use one is unthinkable. She is as aware of her red hair as everyone else is, and she is vain about it, and wouldn't dream of hiding it. Such vanity is natural. I'm "Sure everyone here is vain about his intelligence." Rubin said, "I grant you. Intelligence is something to be vain about, Yet, if it served some purpose that seemed important to me, I would pretend to be an idiot for a few minutes, or even considerably longer. I think your wife would have been willing to slip on a brown wig just long enough to escape your eye. VaniCylis never an absolute in anyone who isn't an outright fool. " Anderssen said, ",I know her better than you do, and I say she wouldn't wear a wig. Besides, I told you this was a month ago. It was the height of summer and it was a hot evening. All Helen was wearing was a summer dress with only summer underwear beneath, and she had a light shawl to put on'against the air conditioning. She was holding a small pocketbook, just large enough to contain some money and her makeup. There was nowhere she could have hidden a wig. She had no wig with her. Why should she have brought one with her, anyway? I can't and won't believe that she was deliberately planning to have a fight, and to trick me in this way in order to achieve a long-term upper hand. She's a creature of impulse, I tell you, and is incapable-of making plans of that kind. I know her." Trumbull said, "Conceding her vanity and impulsive,ness, what about her dignity? Would she have been willing to duck under one of the tables and let the tablecloth hide her?" "The tablecloths did not come down to the ground. I would have seen her.-I tell you I've gone back to the restaurant and studied it in cold blood. There is nowhere she could have hidden. I was even desperate enough to wonder if she could have worked her way up the chimney, but the fireplace isn't real and isn't attached to one. Drake said, "Anyone have any other ideas? I don't." There was silence. Drake turned half about in his chair. "Do you have anything to volunteer, Henry?" - Henry said, with a small smile, "Well, Dr. Drake, I have a certain reluctance to spoil Mrs. Anderssen's fun. " "Spoil her fun?" said Anderssen in astonishment. "Are you telling me, waiter, that you know what happened?" I Henry said, "I know what might easily have hapened, sir, -that would account for the disappearance without the. need for any sort of witchcraft and I assume, therefore, that that was, indeed, what happened. "What was it, then?" "Let me be certain I understand one point. When you asked the people in the restaurant if they had seen a redheaded woman enter, the man'on the couch turned around and shook his head in the negative. Is that right?" ."Yes, he did. I remember it well. He was the only one who really responded." "But you said the fireplace was at the wall opposite the door into the restaurant and that the couch faced it, so that the man had his back to you. He had to turn around to look at you. That means his back was also to the door, and he was reading a magazine. Of all the people there, he was least likely to see someone enter the door, yet he was the one person to take the trouble to indicate he had seen no one. Why should he have?" "What has all that got to do with it, waiter?" said Anderssen. "Call him Henry," muttered Gonzalo. Henry said, "I would suggest that Mrs. Anderssen hurried in and took her seat on the couch, an ordinary and perfectly natural action that would have attracted no attention from a group of people engaged in dining and in conversation, even despite her red hair. " "But I would have seen her as soon as I came in," said Anderssen. "The back of the couch only reaches a person's shoulders and Helen is a tall woman. Her hair would have blazed out at me." "On a chair," said Henry, "it is difficult to do anything but sit. On a couch, however, one can lie down. " Anderssen said, "There was a man already sitting on the couch. "Even so," said Hemy "Your wife, acting on impulse, as you say she is apt to do, reclined. Suppose you were on a couch, and an attractive redhead, with.a fine figure, dressed in a skimpy summer costume, suddenly stretched out and placed her head in your lap; and that, as she did go, she raised her finger implotingly to her mouth, pleading for silence. It seems to me there would be very few men who wouldn't oblige a lady under those circumstances. Anderssen's lips tightened. "Welb-" "You said the man was holding his magazine high, as though he were nearsighted, but might that not be because he was holding it high enough to avoid-the woman's head in his,lap? And then, in his eagerness to oblige a lady, would he not turn his head and unnecessarily emphasize that he hadn't seen her?" Anderssen rose. "Right! I'll go home right now and have it out with her." "If I may suggest, sir," said Henry. "I would not do that. " "I sure will. Why not?" "In the interest of family harmony, it might be well if you would let her have her victory. I imagine she rather regrets it and is not likely to repeat it. You said she has been very well behaved this last month. Isn't it enough that you know in your heart how it was done so that you needn't feel defeated yourself? It would be her victory without your defeat and you would have the best of both worlds." Slowly, Anderssen sat down and, amid a light patter of applause from, the Black Widowers, said, "You may be right, Henry. "I think I am," said Henry. Afterword Actually, I dreamed this one. I don't often remember my dreams since, actually, I attach no importance to them whatever. (In this, I differ from my dear wife, Janet, who is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and considers them to be important guides to what makes a person tick. She may be right, of course.) Anyway, even when I do remember my dreams,'they seem remarkably uninteresting since they almost never contain any element of fantasy or imagination. It's as though I use up the entire supply in my writing business, leaving nothing over for dreams. In one dream, however, I followed someone into a dining room and found he had unaccountably disappeared. I was -quite astonished, for, as I said, even in my dreams I don't usually defy the laws of nature. A search through the room finally located the person I was looking for in the place where the heroine of the preceding story had hidden. I stared at him and said (so help me), "What a terrific idea for a Black Widowers story." Fortunately I woke at that moment and, for once, the dream was fresh in my mind. Thereupon I stored the notion in my waking memory and on the next occasion, I wrote the story and it appeared in the October 1984 issue of EQMM. I can't help but think that if I could dream all my gimmicks, life would be a lot easier. The Wrong House The guest at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers frowned at the routine question asked him by that best of all waiters, Henry "No," he said, vehemently. "Nothing! Nothing!--No, not even, ginger ale. I'll just have a glass of water, if you don't mind. " ,He turned away, disturbed. He had been introduced as Christopher Levan. He was a bit below average height, slim, and well-dressed. His skull was mostly bald but was so well-shaped that the condition seemed attractive rather than otherwise. He was talking to Mario Gonzalo and returned to the thread of his conversation with an apparent effort, saying, "The art of cartooning seems simple. I have seen books that show you how to draw familiar shapes qnd forms, starting with, an oval, let us say, then modifying it in successive stages till it becomes Popeye or Snoopy or Dick Tracy, And yet how does one decide what oval to make and what modifications to add in the first place? Besides, it is not easy to copy. No matter how simple the steps seem to be, when I try to follow them, the end result is distorted and amateurish. " Gonzalo looked, with a certain complacency, at the cartoon he had just drawn ofthe guest, and said, "You have to allow. for a kind of inborn talent and for years of experience, Mr. Levan. III suppose so, and yet you didn't draw any oval with modifications. You simply drew that head freehand as quickly as you could and without any effort as far as I could tell.-Except that somehow my head looks shiny. Is it?" "Not particularly. That's just cartoonist's license.". "Except that," said Emmanuel Rubin, drawing near with a drink in his hand, "if licenses were required for cartooning, Mario would never qualify. Some may have talent, but Mario gets by with effrontery." Gonzalo grinned. "He means chutzpah. Manny knows about that. He writes stories which he actually submits to editors. "And sells," said Rubin. "An indication of occasional editorial desperation.," Levan smiled. "When I hear two people spar like that, I am certain that there is actually a profound affection between them. "Oh, God," said Rubin, visibly revolted. His sparse beard bristled and his eyes, magnified through the thick tenses of his glasses, glared. "You've hit it, Mr. Levan," said Gonzalo. "Manny would give me the shirt off his back if no one were looking, The only thing he wouldn't give me is a kind word. " Geoffrey Avalon, the host of this banquet, called out, "Are you getting tangled up in some nonsense between Manny and Mario, Chris?", I "Voluntarily, Jeff," said Levan. "I like these bouts with pillows and padded bats." "It gets wearisome," said Avalon, staring down from his seventy-four-inch height, "past the fifty-seven thousandth time.But come and sit down, Chris. We are having nothing less good than lobster tonight." It is not to be denied that an elaborate lobster dinner tends to inhibit conversation a bit. The cracking of shells takes considerable concentration and the dipping into drawn butter is not a matter to be carried through casually. The period between the Portuguese fish chowder and the coupe aux marrons was largely silent, therefore, as far as the human voice wasconcerned, though the nutcracking play kept the table at a low growl,," "I despise lobster salad," said Roger Halsted over the coffee. "It's like eating seedless watermelon cut into cubes. The worth of the prize is directly proportional to the pains taken to win it." Levansaid, "I suppose, then, you would be very much against interest-free loans," and he chuckled with a sated air. "Well, ",said James Drake, in his hoarsely muted voice, "I imagine even Roger would consider that as carrying a principle too far." Thomas Trumbull fixed Levan with a glowering-eye, "1hat's a banker's joke. Are you a banker9" "One moment, Tom," said Avalon. "You're beginning to grill and the grilling session has not yet been opened." "Well, then, open it, Jeff. We're on our coffee, and "Henry is going to come around with the brandy in a millisecond." Trumbull looked at his watch. "And the lobster has delayed us, so let's go." "I was about to begin," said Avalon, with dignity. He iapped, his glass three or four times. "Tom, since you are so anxious, won't you beg-in the grilling. " "Certainly," said Trumbull. "Mr. Levan, are you a banker?" "That is not the traditional opener," said Gonzalo. Trumbull said, "Who asked you? What you're thinking of is traditional; it's not mandatory.-Mr. Levan, are you a -banker?" "Yes, I am. At least, I'm the vice president of a bank." " Hah, " said Trumbull. "Now I'll ask you the traditional opener. Mr. Levan, how do you justify your existence?" Levan's smile became a beam, "Easiest thing in the world. The human body is completely dependent on blood circulation, which is driven by the heart. The world economy is completely dependent on money circulation, which is driven by the banks. I do my bit. " "Are the banks motivated in this by a-desire for the good of the world or for the profits of their owners?" Levan said, "Socialist claptrap, if you don't mind my saying so. You imply that the- two motives are mutually exclusive, and that is not so. The heart drives the blood into the aorta and the first arteries to branch off are the coronaries, which feed what? The heart! In short, the heart's first care is for the heart, and that is as it should be, for without the heart all else fails. Let the coronaries get choked up and you'll find yourself agreeing'with the heart, and wishing it were anything else that was on short rations." "Not the brain," said Drake. "Sooner the heart.- Better die of a heart attack than live on in senility " - Levan thought a bit. "That's hard to disagree with, but we may treat and reverse senility a lot sooner than we are likely to be able to treat and reverse death." Gonzalo, frowning, said, "Come on ", what's this subject we've latched on to? And on a full stomach, too. Hey, Tom, may I ask a question?" Trumbull said, "All right. Subject changed. Ask a question, Mario, but don't make it a dumb one." Gonzalo said, "Mr. Levan, are you a member of Alcoholics Anonymous?" There was a sudden silence about the table and then Trumbull, face twisted in anger, growled, "I said, don't make it-" "It's a legitimate question," insisted Gonzalo, raising his voice, "and the rules of the game are that the guest must answer. 11 Levan, not smiling, and looking grim rather than,embarrassed, said, "I'll-answer the question. I am not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I am not an,alcoholic." "Are you a teetotaler, then?" For some reason, Levan seemed to find more difficulty answering that. "Well, no. ldrink on occasion-a bit. Not much. Gonzalo leaned back in his chair and frowned. -Avalon said, "May we change the subject onceagain and try to find something more civilized to discuss?" "No, wait a while," said Gonzalo. "There's something funny here and I'm not through. Mr. Levan, you refused a drink. I was talking to you at the time. I watched you." "Yes, I did," said Levan. "What's wrong with that?" "Nothing," said Gonzalo, "but you refused it angrily.Henry! "Yes, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry at once, momentarily suspending his brandy-pouring operation. "Wasn't there something funny about Mr. Levan's refusal?" "Mr. Levan was a bit forceful, I believe. I would not undertake to say that it was"funny."" "Why was it forceful, do you think?" "There could be-" Drake interrupted. "This is the damndest grilling session I can remember. Bad taste all around. Whom are we grilling, anyway? Mr. Levan or Henry?" "I agree," said Rubin, nodding his head vigorously. "Come on, Jeff, you're the host, Make a ruling and get us on track," Avalon stared at his water glass, then said, "Gentlemen, Christopher Levan is a vice president of the largest bank in Merion. In fact, he is my personal banker, and I know him socially. I have seen him drink in moderation but I have never seen him drunk. I did not hear him refuse a drink, but somehow I'm curious. Chris, did you refuse a drink forcefully? If so, why?" Levan frowned, and said, "I'm on the edge of resenting this. "Please don't, Chris ," said Avalon. "I explained the rules when you accepted my invitation, and I gave you a chance to back out. Nothing said here goes beyond the walls. Even, if you were to tell us you were absconding with batik funds, we would be unable to tell anyone that --- though I'm sure we would all urge you quite forcibly to abandon your intention. "I am not an absconder, and I -resent being forced to make that statement. I don't take this kindly of you, Jeff. "This has gone far enough," said Halsted. "Let's end the, session. " - "Wait," said Gonzalo, stubbornly, "I want an answer to my question- "I told you," said Levan. "I merely refused-" "Not my question to you, Mr. Levan. My question to Henry. Henry, why did Mr. Levan refuse the drink so vehemently? If you don't answer, this session might end prematurely, and that would be the first time it did so, at least during my membership in the club." Henry said, "I can only guess, sir, from what little knowledge of human nature I have. It may be that Mr. Levan, although ordinarily a moderate drinker, refused a drink this time, because in the near past he had suffered keen embarrassment or humiliation through drink, and, for a time at least, would rather not drink again." Levan had whitened distinctly. "How did you know that, waiter?" Gonzalo grinned with proprietary pride. "His name is Henry, Mr. Levan. He's an artist, too. The rest of us draw the ovals, and be adds the modifications and produces the final picture. The mood of the table had changed subtly. Even Trumbull seemed to soften, and there was an almost wheedling quality to his voice. "Mr. Levan, if something has happened that has left a lasting effect, it might help you to talk about it." Levan looked about the table. Every eye was fixed on him. He said in half a mutter, "The waiter-Henry--4s quite right. I made a total fool of myself and, right now, I firmly intend never to drink again. Jeff told you he's never seen me drunk. Well, he never has, but he's not always around. Once in a long while I do manage to get high. Nothing in particular ever came of it until two weeks ago, and then-it hardly bears thinking of." He frowned in thought, and said, "It might help if I did tell, you. You might be able to suggest something I can do. So far, the only, one I've told is my wife." "I imagine she's furious," said Halsted. "No, she's not. My first wife would have been. She was a teetotaler, but she's dead now, rest her soul. My children would have been sardonically amused, I think, but they're in college, both of them. My present wife, my second, is a worldly woman, though, who is not easily shaken by such things. She has a career of her own; in real estate, I believe. She has grown children, too. We married for companionship-and out of affection--but not in order to impose on each other. The world doesn't crash about her ears if I get drunk. She just gives me good practical advice and that ends it. "But what happened?" asked Avalon. "Well-I live on a rather exclusive street-four houses. They're very nice houses, not extraordinarily large, but well-designed and comfortable: three bedrooms, a television room, three baths, finished cellar, finished attic, aafilelectric (which is expensive) backyards stretching to the creek, ample space between thehouses, too. All four were put up by one contractor at one time about a dozen years ago. They're all identical in appearance and plan, and they were sold on ironclad condition that they be kept identical. We can't paint our house another color, or put on aluminun siding, or add a sun porch unless all four house owners agree to do the same. Well, you can't get agreement ever, as you can well imagine, so there have been no changes." "."Is that legal?" asked Halsted. "I don't know," said Levan, "but we all agreed," "Can you make changes inside?" asked Gonzalo. "0 f course. We don't have standardized furniture or wallpaper or anything like that. The agreement concerns only the,appearance from the outside. The houses are called the Four Sisters, Right,, Jeff?" Avalon nodded. Levanwent on.,"Anyway, I was out for the evening,. I" had warned Emma--my wife-ffiat I might-not be back till three in the morning. I didn't seriously intend to stay out that late, but I felt I might, because--well, it was one, of those college reunions and at. fifty-five, there's this wild urge for one evening to be twenty-two again. It never really works, I suppose. "I even thought I could carry my liquor, but by midnight I was pretty well smashed. I didn't think I was, but I must have been, because I can't carry my liquor we "11, and because several of the others tried to persuade me to go home. I didn't want to and I seem to remember offering to knock one of them down. " He rubbed his eyes fiercely, as though trying to wipe out the mental image. Drake said, dryly, "Not the thing for a bank vice president?" "We're human, too," said Levan, wearily, "but it ,doesn't help the image.-Anyway, in the end, two or three of them helped me out to a car and drove me out to Merion. When they found the street in question, I insisted they let me out on the corner. You see I didn't want to wake the neighbors. It was a noisy car, or I thought it was ""They did let me out on the corner; they were glad to get nd of me, I imagine. I realized I wasn't going to get anywhere much trying to ftimble my key into the lock. Besides I knew a better trick. There's a side door that I was pretty.sure would be open. There's no crime in our section to speak of-no burglaries-and the side door is never closed during the day. Half the time, it's not closed at night, either. "So I made my way to it. I felt my way along the side of the house and found the door. It was open, as I thought it would be. I tiptoed in as quietly as I could, considering my condition, and closed it behind me just as quietly. I was in a small anteroom mostly used for hanging up clothes, keeping umbrellas and rubbers, and so on. I just made my way around the umbreTa-stand and sank into a chair. "By that time, I was feeling rather dizzy and very tired. The dark was soothing, and I liked the feel of the soft old padding under me. I think I would have gone to,sleep right then, and might not have been found by Emma until morning, except that I became woozily aware of a dim light under the door that led to the kitchen. "Was Emma awake? Was she having a midnight snack? I was too far gone to try to reason anything out, but it seemed to me that my only chance of not embarrassing her, and myself, was to walk in casually and pretend I was sober. I was drunk enough to think I could do that. I "I got up very carefully, made my way to the door with some difficulty, flung it open, and said, in aloud, cherry voice, "I'm home, dear, I'm home." "I must have filled the air with an alcoholic fragrance that explained my condition exactly,, even if -my behavior had been perfectly sober, which I'm sure it wasn't. "However, it was all for nothing, because Emma wasn't there. There were two men there. Somehow I knew at once they weren't burglars. They belonged there. Drunk as I was, I could tell that. And I knew-my God, I knew that I was in the wrong house. I had been too drunk to get to the right one. "And there on the table was a large,suitcase, open, and stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Some of the stacks were on the table, and I stared at them with a vague astonishment. "I don't know how I could tell, gentlemen. modern techniques can produce some damned good imitations", but I've been a banker for thirty years. I don't have to lookat bills to know they're counterfeit. I can smell counterfeit, feel it, just know it by the radiations. I might be too drunk to tell my house from another house, but as long as I am conscious at all, I am not too drunk to tell a real hundreddollar bill from a fake one. "I had interrupted two.crooks, that's what it amounted to. They had neglected to lock the side door or just didn't know it was open, and I knew that I was in a dangerous situation. " Levan shook his head, then went on. "They might have killed me, if I had been sober, even thoughthey would then have had all the trouble of having to get rid of the body and of "perhaps rousing police activity in an undesirable way., But I was drunk, and clearly on the point of collapse. I even think I heard someone say in a kind of hoarse whisper, "He's dead drunk. Just put him outside. " It might even have been a woman's voice, but I was too far gone to tell. In fact, I don't remember anything else for a while. I did collapse. , "The next thing I knew I was feeling a lamppost and trying to get up. Then I realized I wasn't trying to get up. Someone was trying to lift me. Then I realized it was Emma, in a bathrobe. She had found me. "She got me into the house somehow. Fortunately, there was no one else about. There was no indication before or since that anyone had seen me lying in the gutter, or seen Emma having to drag me home.-Remember your promise of confidenti-ality, gentlemen. And I hope that includes the waiter. " Avalon said, emphatically, "It does, Chris. "She managed to get me undressed," said Levan, "and washed, . and put me to bed without asking me any questions, at least as far as I can remember. She's a terrific woman. I woke. in the morning with, as you might suspect, a king-sized headache, and a sense of relief that it was Sunday morning and that I was not expected to be at work. "After breakfast, which was just a soft-boiled egg for me, and several quarts of orange juice, it seemed, Emma finally asked me what had happened. "Nothing much," I said. "I must have had a little too much to drink, and they brought me home and left me at the corner and I didn't quite make it to the house." I smiled weakly, hoping she would find the understatement amusing, and let it go at that. "But Emma just looked it me thoughtfully--she's a very practical woman, you know, and wasn't going to act'tragic over my being drunk for the first and only time in her acquaintanceship with me--and said, "A funny thing happened." ""Whaff I asked. ""Someone called me," she said. "it was after midnight. Someone-called and said, "Your husband is outside drunk or hurt. You'd better go and get him." I thought it was some practical joke, or a ruse to get me to open the door. Still I thought if,it was true and YOU were in trouble, I would have to risk it. I took your banker-of-the-year award with me, just irr case I had to use it to hit somebody, went out in the street, and found you.-Now who could have called me? They didn't say who they were." "She stared at me, frowning, puzzled, and my memory stirred. My face must have given me away at once, because Emina-who's a penetrating woman-said at once, "What happened last night? What are you remembering?" "So I told her and when I bad finished she looked at me with a troubled expression, and said, "That's impossible. There can't be any counterfeiting in this block." ""Yes," I said, "I'm sure there is. Or at least someone in one of the other three houses is involved in it, even if the counterfeiting isn't actually taking place on the premises." ""Well, which house were you inT she wanted to know. But how could I tell? I didn't. know. ""Which house did you find me outsideT I asked. ""Our house," she said. ""Well, then, they just took me outside and put me in front of our house. That means they knew which house I belonged to. It's one of our neighbors." ""It canl be," she kept repeating. "But that's the way it is, just the same. I haven't the faintest idea which wrong house I'd gotten into, and I don't know who is involved in counterfeiting. And I can't report it.- "Why not?" asked Gonzalo. "Because I would have to explain that I was falling-down drunk. How else could I account for the fuzziness of the information?" said Levan. "I don't want to do that. I don't want to look like a fool or a drunken idiot and, ftankly, I don't want to lose my job. The story would be bound to get out and it wouldn't look good at the bank. ,"Besides, what would the police do? Search all three houses? They would find nothing, and three householders, two of whom would be completely innocent, would be outraged. We would have to sell our house and leave. Life would become unbearable, otherwise. "Emma pointed all this out carefully. In fact, she said; there would be a strong presumption that I had fantasied it all; that I was having d.t.'s. I'd be ruined. Emma's a bright woman, and persuasive. "Yet it eats at me. Counterfeiting! That's the banker's nightmare; it's the crime. I had stumbled onto something that might be big and I could do nothing about it.-I haven't touched a drink since, and I don't intend ever to, and that's why I was a bit vehement when Henry asked me, for the second time, if I would have one." There was a silence about the table for a time, and then Avalon, drumming his fingers lightly on the tablecloth, said, "I, know where you live, Chris, but I don't know your neighbors. Who are they? What do they do?," I Levan shrugged. "All well on in years. All in their fifties and beyond. Not a small child on the street. And all beyond suspicion, damn them.-Let's see, if you're facing the front of the four houses, the one on the left holds "the Nash couple. Re's an insurance agent, and she's arthritic; a nice lady, but a terrible bore. She's the kind you say hello to when you pass her, but keep on walking". The merest hesitation would be fatal. "The second house holds the Johnstones. He's in his seventies and she's perhaps two or three years younger. He's retired and they're supposed to be quite wealthy, but they don't bank in our bank and I have no personal knowledge of the matter. They sort of shuttle between Maine in the summer and Florida in the winter, but they have a bachelor son, about forty, who stays in the house year-round and is not employed. "The third house is ours, and the fourth belongs to two sisters, one a Mrs. Widner and the other a Mrs, Chambers. Both are widows and they seem to cling to each other for warmth. They're in their fifties and very wide awake. I'm astonished they weren't aware of my being picked- up at the, lamppost. They're light sleepers and have a sixth sense for local catastrophe. "Across the street, there are no houses but only a large lawm and a stand of trees belonging to the Presbyterian Church which is a distance off.-That's it." He looked about helplessly, and Rubin cleared his throat. "If we go by, probabilities, the. obvious choice is the bachelor son. He has the house to himself for a couple of months at a time and has nothing to do but work at his counterfeiting, with or without the knowledge of his parents. If the Johnstones ate mysteriously Wealthy, that may be why. I'm astonished you overlook this." "You wouldn't be if you knew the boy," said Levan. "Even though he's, middle-aged, it's hard to think of him as a man. He's boyish in appearance and attitude, and without being actually retarded in any way, is clearly unequipped to make his way in the world. " , "He's capable enough," said Rubin, "to take care of the house for a couple of months at a time, "He's not retarded, " repeated Levan, impatiently. "He's emotionally immature, that's all. Naive. And good-hearted in the extreme. It's impossible to think of him being involved in crime." Rubin said, "It might be that he's acting. Perhaps he's clever enough to appear incredibly naive so as to hide the fact that, actually, he is a criminal." Levan pondered. "I just can't believe that. No one could be that good an actor. " "If he were innocent and childlike," said Rubin, "it might make it all the easier for him to be used by criminals. He might be an unwitting pawn, " "That doesn't make sense to me. They couldn't trust him; he'd give - it away. " "Well," said Rubin, "however much you doubt it,- that seems to me to be the most reasonable possibility, and if you want. to-do a little investigating on your own, you had better take a closer look at young Johnstone." He sat back and folded his arms. Halsted said, "What about the two men with the suitcase? Had you ever seen them before?" Levan said, "I wasn't at my best, of course, but at the time it seemed to me they were strangers. They were certainly not members of any of the households. Halsted said, "if they were outside associates of the counterfeiting ring, we might be reasonably sure that the two widows weren't involved. They'd be reluctant to have men in the house, it seems to me." "I'm not sure about that," said Levan. "They're feisty ladies and they're not old maids. Men are no new .experience to them. Stiff, I agree; I don't see them as gun molls, so to speak." "And yet," said Drake, thoughtfully, "there may-have been at least one woman present. Didn't you say, Mr. Levan, that someone said, "He's dead drunk. Just put him outside," and that it was a woman?7 Levan said, "It was a whisper , and I couldn't tell for sure. It might have been a woman, but it might have been a man, too. And even if it were a woman, it might have been another outsider. Drake said, "I should think someone who belonged there would have to be on the spot. The house wouldn't be abandoned to outsiders, and there's at, least one woman in each house. " "Not really, " said Halsted. "Not in the Johnstone house, since the old folks should be away in Maine now. If we eliminate the widows, then that leaves the house on the left corner, the Nash house. Then, if Mr. Levan were let off on the corner, and was so under the weather he had difficulty walking, it would be likely that he would go into the first house he came to and that would be the Nashes", wouldn't it?" Levan nodded. "Yes. it would, but I can't remember that that's what .1 did.-So what's the use? However much we. argue and reason, I have nothing with which to go to the police. It's just guesswork." Trumbull said, "Surely these people don't live in their houses by themselves. Don't they have servants?" Levan said, "The widows have a live-in woman-of-allwork. "Ah," said Trumbull. "But that doesn't strike me as significant. It just means three women in the house instead of two; a third widow, as a matter of fact, and quite downtrodden by the sisters. She, has no more brains than is necessary to do the housework, from what little I know of her. She's impossible as a criminal conspirator. " "I think you're entirely t6o ready to dismiss people as, impossible," said Trumbull. "Any other servants?" / Levan said, "The Nashes have a cook, who comes in for the day. The Johnstones have a handyman. who works mainly in the yards, and helps the rest of us when he has time. Emma and I don't have any servants in the house. ,Emma is ptrong and efficient and she dragoons me into helping her-which is only right, I suppose. She doesn't believe in servants. She says they destroy privacy and,never do things right anyway, and I agree with her. Still, I do wish we could have someone to do the vacuuming besides myself. Trumbull said, with a trace of impatience, "Well, the vacuuming is not an issue. What about the Nash cook and the Johnstone handyman?" "The cook has five children at home, with the oldest in charge, according to the Nashes, and if she has spare time for criminality I think she should get a medal. The handyman is so deeply religious that it is ludicrous to think of him as breaking the commandment against theft." "Sanctimoniousness can easily be assumed as a cloak," said 1rumbull. "I see no signs of it in this case.,, "You don't suspect him?", Levan shook his head. "Do you suspect anyone?" Levan shook his head. Gonzalo said, suddenly, "What about whoever it was who called your wife to tell her you were outside in the gutter? Did she recognize the voice?" Levan shook his head emphatically "She couldn't have. It was just a whisper, "Is that just your judgment, or does she say so?" "She would have told me at once if she had recognized it.), "Was it the same whisper you heard in the house?" Levan said, impatiently, "She heard one and I heard the other. How can we compare?" 9" "Was the voice your wife heard that of a woman. "Emma never said. I doubt that she could tell: She said she thought it might be a way of getting her to open the door, so maybe it seemed to her to be a man. I don't know. " Gonzalo seemed annoyed, and said rather sharply, "Maybe there's no one to suspect. You may think you can sense counterfeit money, but how do you know you can do so when you're totally sozzled? It could be you saw real money and there's no counterfeiting going on at all." "No," said Levan, emphatically, "and even if that were so, what would two strangers be doing with a suitcase of hundred-dollar bills? New ones. I could smell the ink. Even if it weren't counterfeiting, there would have to be some sort of crime." Gonzalo said, "Maybe the whole thing-" He let it trail off, and Levan said, flushing a little, --is a pink elephant? You think I imagined it all?" I "Isn't that possible? If there's no one to suspect, if no one could be involved, maybe nothing really happened. "No, " said Levan. "I know what I -saw." "Well, what did you see?" said Drake suddenly, peering at Levan through the smoke of his cigarette. "You were in the kitchen. You saw the wallpaper, if any, the color scheme, the fixtures. The kitchen details aren't. identical, are they? You can walk into each house and then identify which kitchen you were in, can't you?" Levan flushed, "I wish I could. The truth is, I "saw nothing - There were just the- two men, the suitcase on the table, and the money. It occupied all my attention, and I can't even really describe the suitcase." He added, defen", sively, "I was not myself. I was--was-And besides, after fifteen or thirty seconds, I had passed out. I just don't know where I was. Avalon, looking troubled,- said, "What are you doing about it, Chris? Are you doing any investigating on your own? That might be dangerous, you know." "I know," said Levan, "and I'm not an investigator. Emma, who has more common sense in her left thumb than 11 have in my whole body, said that if I tried to do any questioning or poking about for clues, I would not only make a fool of myself, but I might get into trouble with the police. She said I had better just alert the bar to be on the lookout for bogus hundred-dollar bills and investigate t4ose, when they came in, by the usual methods. Of course, no hundred-dollar bills are coming in. I don't suppose the counterfeiters will pass them in this area. " Gonzalo said, discontentedly, "Then we haven't gotten anywhere and that's frustrating.-Henry, can you add anything to all this?" Henry, who was standing at the sideboard, said, "Them is a question I might ask, if permitted." "Go ahead," said Levan at once. "Mr. Levan, you said, earlier, that your wife has a career of her own in real estate, but you said, "I believe." Aren't you sure?" Levan looked startled, then laughed. "Well, we married five years ago, when we had each been single for quite a while, and were each used to independence. We try to interfere with each other as little as possible. Actually, I'm sure she is engaged in real estate, but I don't ask questions and she, doesWt. It "s one of these modern marriages; worlds different from my first." Henry nodded and was silent. "Well," said Gonzalo, impatiently. "What do you have in mind, Henry? Don't hang back." Henry looked disturbed. "Mr. Levan," he said, softly, ",when you entered the house by the side door and closed it behind you, you were then in the dark, I believe. "I certainly was, Henry." "You circled an umbrella stand. How did you know it was an umbrella stand?" "After I sat down, I happened to feel it. If it wasn't an umbrella stand, it was something just like it." Henry nodded. "But you circled it before you felt it, and you dropped into a chair in the dark with relief, and enjoyed feeling the soft padding, you said. "Yes. 11 "Mr. Levan," said Henry. "The houses were alike in every particular on the outside, but were free to vary on the inside, you said, and presumably they all did so vary. Yet in your not-quite-sober state, you managed to dodge the umbrella stand and drop into a chair. You did not bump into one or miss the other. You did not have the slightest idea you were in the wrong house at the time, did you?" "No, I didn't," said Levan, looking alarmed. "It was only when I opened the kitchen door and saw the men-" "Exactly, sir. You expected to find the arrangement of objects as it was in your own house, and you found that to be so. When you sat in the chair, which you must have thought was your own, you felt nothing to disabuse yourself of the notion. "Ohl my God," said Levan. "Mr. Levan," said Henry, "I think you must have been in your own house after all. Drunk as you were, you found your way home." "Ohl my God," said Levan, again. "You were not expected till much later, so you caught your wife by surprise. In your modern marriage, you clearly didn't know enough about her. Yet she did show affection for you. She did not allow you to be harmed., She had you carriedout, and then came to get you with an invented story about a phone call - By then the men and the suitcase had gone and since then she has, worked very hard to keep you from telling the story to the police or doing anything about it.-I'm afraid that's the only explanation that fits what you have told us." For a moment, there was an absolute silence over the horrified group. Levan said, in a small voice, "But what do I do?" And Henry said, sorrowfully, "I don't know, Mr. Levan.-But I wish you had not refused that drink." Afterword By the time I had sold the preceding story, I found that I had ten stories toward a new Black Widowers collection, and of those ten, only one, "The Driver," had failed to sell. As it happened, in my first Black Widowers collection, Tales of the Black Widowers, I had nine stories that had appeared in print and three stories that had not. Those stories that had not previously been published were involuntarily in that condition. I would gladly have stuck Fred with them if I had been able to. Once the book appeared, however, it seemed to me that it had worked out properly. Many of those who bought the book might well have been EQMM subscribers and would have read each of the Black Widowers when it appeared in the magazine. Even allowing that their tolerance and kind hearts would allow them to read each again with-pleasure, it did seem the decent thing to give them three stories they couldn't possibly have read before. In the collections that followed the first, my record wasbetter, and in each case (including this one) I reached the number-ten mark with only one failure to sell. In each case, therefore, I wrote two more stories that I did not submit anywhere, but saved for the collection. And so it is now. The story you have just read, "The Wrong House, " and the one that follows, "The Intrusion, were each written specifically for this collection, and have not appeared elsewhere. The Intrusion From the expression on the face of Mario Gonzalo, it might seem that there -was something singularly unsatisfactory about this particular banquet of the Black Widowers. There was nothing apparent to account for that. The dinner, which revolved about a main course of roast duck, smothered in dark cherries and underpinned by wild rice, with the skin delightfully crisp and the meat tender and moist, was perfection. The sausage in pasta that had preceded and the generous chocolate parfait that had succeeded represented the calories-be-damned attitude of Roger Halsted, who was hosting the evening. Now the Black Widowers sat over their brandy, grilling their guest, with all in a state, of satisfactory repletion. The weather outside. was delightful, and the guest was an intelligent and articulate person whose personality, fit the general aura of the society. Even the terrible-tempered Thomas Trumbull was agreeable and the argumentative Enunanuel Rubin disputed nothing. in any voice that was a decibel louder than that of ordinary conversation. The, guest's name was Haskell Pritchard and he was a civil servant. It had already been established that he was in chargeof solid waste disposal and some, traces of merriment at the start over his perhaps having to drive a garbage truck vanished under the undoubted seriousness of the problem. . "The fact is," Pritchard had said, "that we are running out of places to put the waste and we're going to need some innovative ideas on the matter. Rubin said, a bit sardonically, "The waste, sir, was once raw material, and that raw material came from somewhere, certainly not from within this city. Wherever it came from it left a hole, whether you call that hole a mine or a quarry or whatever. Why not put the waste back in the hole it came, from?" "Actually," said Pritchard, "this has been thought of. There are indeed abandoned mines, quarries and other such things in the countryside and there have been attempts to negotiate their use as dumps. However, it can't be done. People are willing to scH raw materials but are not willing to accept the residue after ft consumer is done with it-even if we pay both times, once for taking and once for returiiing. 11 Geoff-rey Avalon said, "It's a common sociological phenomenon. Everyone is in favor of cracking down on crime and sending criminals to jail, but nobody wants to spend money on building more jails to hold those crfirninadIs and, even more so, nobody wants any new jail built in his neighborhood. Halsted said, "I don't see the relevance of that, Jeff." "Don't yop?" Avalon's eyebrows rose. "I should tthink it was obvious. I am speaking of the general ability of the public to recognize a problem and to want to solve it, but to balk at any personal inconvenience involved in a solution. Might I also say that it is delightful, after a good dinner, to be discussing, in a more or less detached manner, problems that affect the public weal, with no personal puzzle involved. I take it, Mr. Pritchard, that your work, or your life, for that matter, does not,at the moment involve some conundrum that is robbing you of sleepr and peace of mind?" Pritchard looked surprised. "I can't think of amnything. Mr. Avalon. Ought I to have come here with something of the sort, Roger?" hat "Not at all, Haskell," said Halsted. "It's just that sometimes we are faced with a riddle, but I find it relaxing not to have one." "I don't," said Gonzalo, with energy, revealing -his reason for dissatisfaction, "and, I hope I never do. I think, all of you are getting too old, and I also think that I if Mr. Pritchard thinks hard he can come up with something interesting. Halsted bridled at once, and said, with the soft stutter that invaded his voice whenever he was indignant or excited, "U you're trying to say, Mario, that my guest is duh-" James Drake interposed. "Come on, Roger. Mario just wants a puzzle.-But think a moment, Mario; shouldn't Henry have a rest at a banquet now and then?" I "Sure," said Mario, "and just serve the dishes and take away the empty plates and get us water and drinks and anything else we ask for. He's having a great rest," Henry, that perfection of a waiter, without whom the Black Widowers were unthinkable, stood by the sideboard, and, at Gonzalo's words, a small smile played briefly over his unlined, sixtyish face. Avalon said, "Suppose we have a vote on the matter, with the host's permission. I move we be permitted, now and then, to have a banquet in which there is nothing more than civilized conversation. " , Halsted said, "All in favor of Jeff's motion-" And it was even as the hands began to go up (minus "Gonzalo's) that there came about something that marked an -utterly unprecedented event in the history of the banquets of the Black Widowers. There was a violent intrusion of an uninvited -person into their midst. There was, to begin with, the sound of a scuffle on the stairs, some vague shouting, a muffled cry of "Please, mister, please-" The Black Widowers froze-astonished--and then a young man broke into the room. He was slightly disheveled, and he was breathing hard. He looked from face to face and behind him a waiter said, "I couldn't stop him, gentlemen. Shall I call the police?" "No," said Halsted, who, as host, automatically took the initiative. "We'll, handle it.-What do you want, young man?" The intruder said, "Are you guys the Black Widowers?" Halsted said, "This is a private party Please leave."." The intruder raised a hand, placatingly, "I'll leave in a minute. I ain't here to eat nothing. But is this the place where the Black Widowers meet and are you the guys?" Avalon, his voice as baritone as he could make it, said, "We are the Black Widowers, sir. What is it you want?" "Well, you help guys, don't you?" "No, we do not. As you have been told, this is a private meeting and we have no other purpose but to meet." I The intruder looked baffled. "They told me you guys figure out things. I have a problem." Suddenly, he did not, look in the least formidable. He was of medium height, with thick dark hair, dark eyes, and dark eyebrows, and he was rather handsome. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties and, beneath a rather theatrical affectation of toughness, there was a touch of loss and confusion. He said, "They toldme you could help me-with my problem. His shirt collar was open and his Adam's apple, quite visible, moved up and down. He said, "I could paysomething. " Gonzalo said, joyously, "What's your problem?" Trumbull snarled, "Mario. He turned to'the intruder. "What's your name?" "Frank Russo," said the intruder, defiantly, as though: expecting someone to object to the designation. "And where did you hear we solve problems?" Russo said, "I just heard. It don't matter where, does it? Other guys who eat with you talk, and it goes -from one to another. So I asked and found out you eat here at the Milano, a good paesano restaurant-if you got the dough.. for it-and you were gonna be there tonight, and I thought what the hell, if you help other people, maybe you ceawmn help Rubin, looking combative, said, "Yes, but just who told you where and when we would be meeting?" Russo said, "If you don't like people should talk about you, then I'm telling you I won't. The way you're gonna know I won't is I itin't gonna talk about the guy who told me about you. " Drake muttered, "That sounds fair enough to me. "Now if you don't want to help me," said Russo, "I'll leave. After that, though, if I hear people say you help out, I'll deny it." There was silence at that, and then Russo said, with an authentic note of pleading in his voice, "Can I at least tell you what's bugging me?" I Halsted said, "What's the consensus? Anyone in favot of listening to Russo raise his hand. " He raised his, and Gonzalo's hand shot up vigorously. Drake said, "Well, listening can't hurt," and raised his. H"alsted waited, but the hands of Avalon, Trumbull, and Rubin remained resolutely down. Halsted said, "Three to three. I'm sorry, Haskell, I can see that you're itching to raise your hand, but you're not a Widower.-Henry, would you break the tie?" Henry said, "Well, Mr. Halsted, if you insist, then my own feeling is that when the Widowers are evenly balanced on some point, the preference should be given to the merciful. It is hard to turn away someone in trouble." And he raised his hand, Halsted said, "Good. Could you bring a chair, Henry, and put it near the door for the young man?-Sit down, Russo. Russo sat down, put his hands on his knees, and looked about anxiously. Now that he had made his point, he seemed to be uneasy at the surroundings he found himself in. Halsted said, "Haskell, we're going to have to interrupt your grilling to take care of Mr. Russo, if we can. I hope you don't mind. " "On the contrary," said Pritchard. "I wanted to vote in favor of the young man, as you suspected, and I'm glad the waiter'tipped the vote in his favor, though.1 thought only members could'vote. "Hemy is, a member.-And now, Jiro, would you do the hortors?" Drake stubbed out his cigarette. "Young man," he qaid, "ordinarily, I'd begin by asking you to justify your existence, but you are not a guest of ours and that question therefore doesn't apply. You can just tell us what your problem is, but I must warn you, that any of us can interrupt at any time to ask a question, and that Henry, our waiter, can do so, too. In return, you must answer all questions truthfully and fully, and you must understand that wecannot guarantee that we'll be able to help you. " "Okay, that suits me. I'm gonna tell you the story, but you gotta promise it don't go outside this room. " Drake said, "I assure you that nothing that goes on in this room is ever spoken of by the Black Widowers outside, although it does seem that at least one of our guests did not adhere to this rule." "Okay, then. " Russo closed his eyes a moment as though deciding where to begin. Then he said, firmly, "I got a sister who just turned eighteen. " "Whitt's her name?" said Gonzalo. "I'm gonna tell you," said Russo, "even if you didn't ask because that's part of the problem. Her name is Susan. All her life I called her Suzy, but she's got it in her mind she wants to be called Susan and that's what I call her now. "She's my kid sister. I'm twenty-four and I been taking care of her for six years now--ever since our ma died." "Have you got a job?" asked Avalon. "Course I got a job," said Russo, indignantly. "What kind of a question is that? How could I be taking care of her without a job. I been driving a truck for a. brewery since I was fifteen and two years ago I got a supervising job. I ain't rich, but I make decent money and I can pay you guys-some. Avalon looked uncomfortable. "There is no question of payment, sir. Just go on with your story. Is your father also dead?" "Russo said, "I don't know where my father is. I don't care, either. He's gone." His arm made a final, dismissive gesture. "I take care of Susan.-The thing is Susan ain'tbright. Drake said, "Do you mean she's retarded?" "She's not mental. Don't think that. She's just not bright. People could take advantage of her and there ain't much she could do, in the way of a job." "With special educational care-" began Avalon. Russo's face twisted. "What's the use of saying that? I ain't got money for that. - Avalon reddened and muttered, "There's the sociological problem again. People recognize the need and say they want a solution, but if it's a question of public funds, the taxpayer buttons his pocket. Russo said, "She cooks. She takes care of the place. She can go shopping, and the guys around the neighborhood know about her and they make sum nothing happens to her. Any of them step out, of line, he'll be taken care of." His fist clenched and a steely look came into his eyes. "They're all careful, you bet, but it's something I've been getting more and more worried about. She's the bestnatured kid in the world, always willing to help, always smiling. She takes care of herself real good, and the thing ir, she's getting to be very nice-looking. It's something to worry about, you know what I mean?" Drake said, "We know what you mean. Does she like men?" "Sure she does. She likes everybody, but she don't know about that sort of thing. She don't read and nobody talks dirty to her, you can bet on that. But these days, you gotta be careful about what movies she sees; it's getting so, you even gotta be careful about television, you know what I mean? Besides, any guy wants something, she'd go along, she's so good-natured, you know what I mean?" Drake said, "Do you have a girlfriend of your own?" Russo said, quickly, "What's that supposed to mean? You think I'm queer?" "I'm asking if you have a girlfriend of your own?" "Course I do." "Does she know about Susan?" "Course she does. And when we get hitched, she knows we gotta continue taking care of Susan. And "she's willing. She sits with her evenings when I gotta be away. Like now. " Avalon cleared his throat and -said, as delicately as he could, "Have you ever thought that, with an operation, she might be-" , Russo clearly had thought of that, for he did not allow the sentence to be finished. "We ain't gonna cut her up.," Gonzalo said, "Have you talked to your priest?" Russo said, "Nah. I know what he'll say. He'll just say to keep on doing what we're doing and to trust in God." Gonzalo said, "She might make a good. nun." "No, she doni have the call. And I'm "not gonna be making her a nun just to get rid of her. I don't wanna get rid of her, see. . Rubin said, "Do you expect she'll get married some day?" Russo said, defiantly, "Could be. She'd make a good wife; a lot better wife than most I see around. She's goodnatured, hardworking, clean." He hesitated. "Course, whoever marries her's gotta understand she"s not-smart, and he'd have to take care of her because anyone-could take advantage of her, if you know what I mean. And he'd have to take that into account if anyone does, and not take it out on her." "What if she has children?" "What if she does? She'd take good care of them. And they wouldn't have to be like her. I'm not. My ma wasn't. " Trumbull suddenly clanged his spoon against his water glass. There was silence and Trumbull said, "Gentlemen, this is all very well, but Mr. Russo is wasting our time.. What is hi problem? There's nothing we can do about his sister, if that's his problem. If-he's come to ask us for advice about what to do with her now that she's eighteen, it seems to me that what I would say would be the same as the priest, might say, to keep on doing what he's doing and trust in God.-I move we end this matter now." "Hey, hold on," said Russo, anxiously. "I ain't told you my problem yet. All this stuff so far is just to explain." Halsted said, "Well, then, Mr. Russo, I think we understand about your sister. Would you tell us your problem now?" Russo cleared his throat and there was a moment of silence as he seemed once again to be choosing among alternate beginnings. He said, "Two weeks ago, on the tenth, my sister was picked up- "By the police?" asked Gonzalo. "No, by some guy. No one from the neighborhood. F don't know who the guy ws. I was at work, of course, and Susan, she went out to do some shopping. She got strict instructions never to talk to anybody she don't know. Never. But I guess she musta this time. I did a lot of, asking around in the neighborhood these last two weeks. Everybody .knows Susan and they were all upset, and from whatone guy says and what another guy says, what it looks like is that she wastalking to some tall, skinny guy, good-looking kind of, but no one can swear to exactly what he looked like, except maybe he had: blond hair. I said how come they let something like that go on-her talking to a strange guy. They all said they thought it was some friend because they figured Susan wouldn't talk to a stranger. "He took her off in an automobile and when I got home from work, she was still gone, and I can tell you I went crazy. I ran all around the neighborhood and I had all the guys going all over." He shook his head. "I don't know what I would of done, if she hadn't come home. Trumbull said, "Then she did come home?" "Just about when it was getting dark. Whoever it was, he had put her on a commuter train and she got off at the right station, thank goodness, and she knew enough to take a taxi. She had money. She still had her train-ticket stub and I think she came from Larchmont in Westchester. "Was she all right?" asked Gonzalo. Russo nodded his head. "She wasn't hurt. I sort of managed not to say anything at the time, but the next day I stayed home from work, making out I was sick, and I got her to tell me everything that happened. I had to know. "Well, she met this guy and he talked to her, and he got around her, you know. She said he was very handsome and talked nice and bought her an ice-cream soda, and askedd if she wanted a drive in his car and it was a very pretty car. Well, she couldn't resist; she's always agreeable to everything anyway. I figure he's one of these guys from somewhere fancy who comes into a poor neighborhood to pick up something easy for cheap. This time he picked up something easy for nothing---except an ice-cream soda." ,Avalon began, "Did he--" Russo cut him off at once. "Yeah. He,did." "How do you know?" "Because Susan told me. She didn't know what it was all about, and she told me. The dirty-" He checked himself, then said, furiously, "He had to know she didn't know what it was all about. He had to know she wasn't-smart. It was like taking advantage of a little kid." . Avalon began. "If she had had the proper instruction-" caught Russo's furious eye, halted, and looked the other way. Rubin said, "How did your sister feel about it?" ","She thought it was great. That's the worst part. She'll want to do it again. She'll suggest it to guys." "No," said Rubin, "that's not the worst part. Is she pregnant'7" "Watch your language, " said Russo, tightly. Rubin raised his eyebrows. "Let me rephrase that. Is she in the family way?" "No, thank God. She isn't. She had her--time--since then.. She's all right that way. Trumbull said, "Well, "then, Mr. Russo, what's your problem?" Russo said, "I want to find the guy. Avalon said, "Why?" "I want to teach him a lesson." Avalon shook his head". "If you're thinking of killing him, we can't be,a party to that. As it happens, your sister is over eighteen, and she was not taken over a state line. She was not hurt, or impreg- or put in a family way. She went along willingly and had a good time, and he can always claim he had no idea she was retar- not responsible. I don't think he can be charged with kidnapping. She was returned promptly and there were no ransom demands. In fact, I don't think he, can easily be charged with any crime at all." Russo said, "That's why I'm not going to the police. I couldn't anyway, even if I could nail him with a crime. I can't let people know what happened to Susan. It woul Id be, a disgrace to her and to me. And if the guys know she's not a-not a-you know what I mean, they won't have no respect for her..They might figure, well, as long as it's gone, what's one more. "So I gotta find him. I ain't gonna kill him, but I just want, to explain,to him that it wasnt nice what he did, and since I probably ain't got his education and I can't explainit in fancy words, I'd like to use a different kind of language. Listen, he's -liable to do this to other people's sisters or daughters and maybe, just Maybe, if 1 rearmnge his face a little so it ain't so pretty, it won't be so easy for him next time. Avalon said, "I sympathize with your point of view. I think the man. is a cad and it might do him a little good I to pay for his intrusion on your life and your sister"ut'l fail to see how we can help you find him. " Russo said, "Actually, Susan remembered some things." "As, for instance. " "She said the guy kept saying, "Don't worry. Don't worry." Course he would, the dirty bastard. There was nothing for him to worry about. He could see she was a nice clean girl and wouldn't give him anything; though with his kind of life, he could have given something to her, and I don't mean a baby"? Avalon said, "Yes, we understand, but what was it Susan remembered?" "Well, he said, "Don't worry. Don't,worry," and then he said, "See, this is my house, and see w Ihat it's called?"" "What the house is called?" asked Gonzalo. "Yeah. One of those fancy places- they have in the suburbs with a name, I guess. You know, a hunk of wood on the lawn with a name on it. That's the kind of guy he is, fancy job, fancy house, fancy family, and when the fancy wife and kids go off to some fancy resort or something, he stays home and goes tomcatting around. " Trumbull said, with visibly mounting impatience, "What was the name of the house?" I"Susan said the housemas named for her. She said this guy even thought she was a saint." "What!" "She said the house was called "Saint Susan."" Halsted said, "Are you sure? Could Susan read that?" "She can read some, but actually, she said he read it to her. That makes me think maybe it was in fancy wnttng because one word Susan can make out easy in print is her own name. She says he read the name and it made her a saint. She knows what saints are, so she loved it. She thought he named the house just for her." Russo shook his head sadly. "It's the sort of thing she would think." Halsted said, "I never heard of a Saint Susan. Is there one?" "I wouldn't swear there wasn't," said Rubin, ""but I never heard of one, either. Did you, JeP." Avalon shook his head. Gonzalo said, "Why shouldn't a house be callied Saint Susan, even if there aren't any on the list? Maybe it was a reference to his wife or his mother." "You don't go around calling your wife or mother a saint on a board on the lawn, " said Rubin. "It takes 0 kinds," said Gonzalo. "There's one more point," said Russo. "He told Susan that the reason he named his house "Saint Susan" was because, of his own name. It wasn't his wife or mother, you see, but his own name, Of course, that tickled Susan, too. It meant the house was named for him and for her.-From Susan's reactions to all this and from everything else she must have said, that bum must have known she wasn't a-a-whole person. He had to know he was doing something terrible. There's just no excuse for him." Halsted said, "I agree, but is there anything else? Is it just that the house is "Saint Susan" and that it's. from his name? What is his name?" Russo shook his head. "I don't know. Susan can't remember. Susan never remembers names. She knows I'm Frank, but she calls everyone else "Johnny." She don't remember the guy's name. Maybe he never told her for all I know. I I "That's it, then? Nothing else?" Russo shook his head again. "That's it. So what do I do? How do I find this guy?" I Gonzalo said, "I'm afraid your sister must have it all wrong. "Saint Susan" seems silly, and it can't have a connection with the guy. He's not named Susan, I'm sure.Unless there's a man's name that sounds like Susan."." Drake said, "Sampson? Simpson?" Gonzalo said, "Saint Sampson? Saint -,Simpson? Thoseare worse than Saint Susan. " Pritchard raised his hand. "Gentlemen! Pardon me." "Yes, Haskell," said Halsted. "I know I'm not a member of the Black Widowers and can't vote. But can I participate in this discussion?" "Oh, sure". There was no intention of excluding you." Pritchard said, "Might Susan not be this fellow's last name,? If he lives in Larchmont, you could look up people with that last name in the phone book. Russo looked disappointed. "I thought of that myself, and I looked up the Larchmont phone book. No last-name, Susans there. Course, I could try other towns. He, coulda driven Susan to the Larchmont station from some other town. "Well, let's see now," said Rubin. "Can there bet little more subtlety to it? Susan is a very common name. In fact, I have seen statements -that at the present time it is the most common of all feminine names, commoner even than Mary. It dates back to the popular apocryphal book Susanna and the Elders, which was eventually stuck on to the Book of Daniel." He smirked a bit through his sparse beard and said, "I'm sorry if I sound a bit pedantic. Generally, I leave that sort of thing to you, Jeff, but "Susanna and the Elders" is generally considered to be the first detective story -in Western literature and so it interests me professionally, " I Trumbull said, "And does this have any point besides the fact that it interests you?" "Yes, it does, because Susanna is the English form of the Hebrew name Shosharmah, which happens to mean "lily."" Gonzalo said, "And you claim this guy's name is Lily?" "His last name," said Rubin coldly, "might be Lily, or Lilly with two 1's. Why not?" Avalon said, "It might be, and if Mr. Russo is fully determined to follow every lead, I suppose he might follow that one. However, I cannot imagine anyone but the most devoted pedant-such as the one you all insist on labelling me as-would, if he wanted to name the house for himself, do so by way of the Hebrew version of the name, just in order to end up with "Saint Susan." Surely he might as well name it "Saint Lily" and have done with it. " "Well," said Halsted, "has anyone else got any ideas?" There was silence around the table, and Halsted said, "I am sorry, Mr. Russo, but the information you have given us simply isn't enough. Perhaps you had better take the attitude that your sister has not really been harmed and decide that though the incident was deplorable, there is nothing to do now but forget it. " "No," said Russo,stubbornly. "I can't forget it. I'll have to keep looking.-If it takes all my life, " he added melodramatically. He rose. "I'm sorry you can't help me. I'm sorry I busted into your dinner. "Wait a while, said Gonzalo. "What is this? No one has -asked Henry yet.," Halsted said, "I asked if anyone else had any ideas. That includes Henry, doesn't 0-Henry, do I have to ask you specifically?" Henry looked apologetic. "It is difficult for me, Mr. Halsted, to think of myself as a Black Widower." "That's very "irritating, Henry," said Halsted. "There's not a banquet that passes that we don't tell you that you're a Black Widower. " "And the best one of all," muttered Trumbull. "So do you have a suggestion to make?" asked Halsted. Henry said, "Not exactly just yet, but I have a question to ask. "Then go ahead and ask it.," And Russo said, "Well, go ahead, waiter. If you're one of the bunch,, go and ask." "Mr. Russo," said Henry, "you said that your sister doesn't -remember names. If you were to suggest a specific name to her, do you suppose she would remember whether that name was that of, the man who had, carried her off?. Russo hesitated. "I don't know. You say any name to her, and she might say, "Yeah, that's the name," just to be agreeable, you know." "But suppose I give you three names and you try all three and she picks out one of them and says that's the one and not the other two. Would that be reliable?" "It might be," said Russo, doubtfully. "I never tried anything like that." "Can you reach your sister by telephone, Mr. Russo?" "Yeah. Sure. She's at home right now, with my girl. friend." "Then call her and ask her if the man's name was Bill. Then ask her if the man's name was Joe. And then ask her if the, man's name was Fred. Russo looked toward the others. Halsted said, "There's a phone over there by the cloakroom. " He held up a dime. Russo said, "I got a dime, thank you." He put it into the slot and dialled. "Hello, Josephine, it's Frank. Listen, is Susan sleeping?--Can you get her to the telephone?-Well, I know, but it's important. Tell her she'll make me happy if she comes to the telephone and it'll only take a minute and then she can go back to, the program. Okay?" He waited, and said, "She's watching television.-Hello, Susan, you okay? Yeah, this is Frank. I got to ask you a question. Do you remember the guy who took you for a ride in his car.Yes, yes, that guy, but don't tell me what he did. I know. I know.-Okay, listen, Susan doll, this guy, was his name Bill?" He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said in a hoarse whisper to the Black Widowers generally, "She says maybe. You can't tell from that. " "Try Joe, " said Henry in a low voice. "Susan," said Russo into the phone. "Maybe it was Joe. Do you think it was Joe, honey?" Again his hand went over the mouthpiece and he shook his head. "She says maybe. She'll say that to anything I try. " Henry said, "Now try Fred." "Susan," said Russo. "What about Fred? Could it have been Fred?" There was a pause and then he stared wildly over his shoulder at -the Black Widowers. "She's screaming, "It's Freddie. It's Freddie. That's his name."" He held the telephone receiver in- their direction and the sound of girlish squealing was clear. "Thanks, Susan," Russo said into the mouthpiece. "You're a good girl. Now go and watch television.-Yes, I'll be home soon." He hung tip the phone and said, "It's Fred all right. That was no "Maybe" just to be nice. That was jumping'up and down. How did you know?" , Henry smiled faintly. "It was just a guess, You see, there named Fred was an eighteenth-century Prussian monarch rick the Great-" At this, Avalon started suddenly and. said, "Good God, Henry, why do these things occur to you, when I miss them completely. " "I am sure, Mr. Avalon, that given another few minutes of thought, it would have occurred to, you, too. ""Hold on," said Russo, frowning, "what is all this? What's this Frederick the Great got to do with anything?" "Well,". said Henry, "Frederick-was, a hardworking monarch who built a small castle -in a rural setting to which he could retire once in a while and be relatively ftee of the cares of the state. It was rather like an American President taking off for Camp David for the weekend. At this castle, Frederick would get together with scholars and writers and indulge in intellectual conversations. He called this castle "Without Care" or Without Worry." I thought of that when you described how that man told your sister not to worry and then pointed out the name of his house as though there were a connectionRusso said, a look of honest bewilderment on his face, "He called his house "Don't Worry"?" "Not quite. Frederick the Great, although he ruled a German -kingdom, spoke French, and he called his castle by the French phrase meaning "without care." He called it Sans Souci. I imagine that this man who carried off your sister is named Frederick and that he has had enough of an education to have heard of Sans Souci and had the affectation to copy the great Frederick in this respect. I am sure, Mr. Russo, that if you go to Larchmont or the neighboring towns and check the city or town directories for a house by that name owned by someone whose first name is Frederick, you will find it." Russo said, "Is this real? San Soo-see? I never heard of it. But sure, Susan would think it was Saint Suzie. And even if she wants to be called Susan, all her life she's been called Suzie, and she would get the two mixed up, and say it was Saint Susan. " He looked up grimly, and rubbed his right fist into the palm of his left hand. "I think I'm gonna find this guy." "You may indeed so," said Henry, "but if you do, may I make a suggestion?"- "Sure.,, "We of the Black Widowers cani encourage violence. If it should be that this Frederick is a married man with a respectable position in the community, I would merely discuss the matter with his wife. You will avoid what might be a serious brush withthe law, and I think the results would then be far more unpleasant to the man than a bruised face would be. Russo thought awhile. "Maybe. " And he left. Avalon - said, "That was a cruel suggestion, Henry." "The man, had performed a cruel deed," said Henry. Afterword Here is another case in which (as in "The Good Samaritan") I have managed to bend the usual formula without doing irrevocable harm "to it. After all, by now the Black Widowers have solved no fewer than forty-seven problems and it is not in the least implausible that the word might have gotten out, and that, therefore, something would happen as it did in this story---an intrusion. Men No Man Purs-acth Thomas Trumbull scowled with only his usual ferocity and said, "How do you justify your existence, Mr. Stellar?" Mortimer Stellar lifted his eyebrows in surprise and looked about the table at the six Black Widowers whose guest he was for that evening. "Would you repeat that?" he said. But before Trumbull could, Henry, the club's redoubtable waiter, had moved in silently to offer Stellar his brandy and Stellar took it with an absently murmured "Thank you." "It's a simple question," said Trumbull. "How do you justify your existence?" "I didn't know I had to," said Stellar. "Suppose you did have to," said Trumbull. "Suppose you were standing before God's great judgment seat." "You sound like an editor," said Stellar, unimpressed. And Emmanuel Rubin, host for the evening, and a fellow writer, laughed and said, "No, he doesn't, Mort. He's ugly but he's not ugly enough." "You stay out of it, Manny," said Trumbull, pointing a forefinger. "All right," said Stellar. "I'll give you an answer. I hope that, as a result of my stay on Earth, I will have left some people a little more informed about science than they would have been if I had never lived." "How have you done that?" "By the books and articles I write on science for the layman." Stellar's blue eyes glinted from behind his heavily black-rimmed glasses and he added with no perceptible trace of modesty, "Which are probably the best that have ever been written." "Theyre pretty good," said James Drake, the chemist, stubbing out his fifth cigarette of the evening and coughing as though to celebrate the momentary pulmonary release. "I wouldn't put you ahead of Garnow, though." Tastes differ," said Stellar coldly. "I would." Mario Gonzalo said, "You don't write only about science, do you? It seems to me I read an article by you in a television weekly maga- zine and that was just humor." He bad propped up the caricature he had drawn of Stellar in the course of the meal. ne black-rimmed glasses were prominent and so was the shoulder-length, fading brown hair, the broad grin, and the horizontal lines across the forehead. "Good Lord," said Stellar. "Is that me?" "It's the best Mario can do," said Rubin. "Don't shoot him." "Let's have some order," said Trumbull testily. "Mr. Stellar, please answer the question Mario put to you. Do you write only about science?" Geoffrey Avalon, who bad been sipping gently at his brandy, said in his deep voice which could, whenever he chose, utterly dominate the table, "Aren't we wasting time? We've all read Mr. Stellar's articles. it's impossible to avoid him. He's everywhere." "If you don't mind, Jeff," said Trumbull, "it's what I'm trying to get at in a systematic way. I've seen his articles and Manny says be has written a bundred-and-something books on all sorts of subjects and the point is why and bow?" The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers was in its concluding phase-that of the grilling of the guest. It was a process that was supposed to be conducted along the simple, ordinary lines of a judicial cross-examination but never was. The fact that it so often dissolved into cbaos was a matter of deep irritation to Trumbull, the club's code expert, whose dream it was to conduct the grilling after the fashion of a drumhead court-martial. "Let's get into that, then, Mr. Stellar," be said. "Why the hell do you write so many books on so many subjects?" Stellar said, "Because it's good business. It pays to be unspecialized. Most writers are specialists; they've got to be. Manny Rubin is a specialist; be writes mysteries-when he bothers to write at all." Rubin's sparse beard lifted and his eyes widened with indignation behind his thick-lensed glasses. "I happen to have published over forty books, and they're not all mysteries. I've publisbed"-he began ticking off his fingers----"sport stories, confessions, fantasies-" "Mostly mysteries," amended Stellar smoothly. "Me, I try not to specialize. I'll write on any subject that strikes my fancy. It makes life more interesting for me so that I never go through a writer's block. Besides, it makes me independent of the ups and downs of fashion. If one kind of article loses popularity, what's the difference? I write others." Roger Halsted passed his hand over the smooth balding forepart of his head and said, "But how do you do it? Do you have set hours to write in?" "No," said Stellar. "I just write when I feel like. But I feel like all the time." "Actually," said Rubin, "you're a compulsive writer." "I've never denied it," said Stellar. Gonzalo said, "But steady composition doesn't seem to be consistent with artistic inspiration. Does it just pour out of you? Do you revise at all?" Stellar's face lowered and for a moment he seemed to be staring at his brandy glass. He pushed it to one side and said, "Everyone seems to worry about inspiration. You're an artist, Mr. Gonzalo. Jf you waited for inspiration, you'd starve." I "Sometimes I starve even when I don't," said Gonzalo. "I just write," said Stellar, a bit impatiently. "It's not so difficult to do that. I have a simple, straightforward, unornamented style, so that I don't have to waste time on clever phrases. I present my ideas in a clear and orderly way because I have a clear and orderly mind. Most of all, I have security. I know I'm going to sell what I write, and so I don't agonize over every sentence, worrying about whether the editor will like it." "You didn't always know you would sell what you wrote," said Rubin. "I assume there was a time when you were a beginner and got rejection slips like everyone else." "That's right. And in those days writing took a lot longer and was a lot harder. But that was thirty years ago. I've been literarily secure for a long time." Drake twitched his neat gray mustache and said, "Do you really sell everything you write now? Without exception?" Stellar said, "Just about everything, but not always first crack out of the box. Sometimes I get a request for revision and, if it's a reasonable request, I revise, and if it's unreasonable, I don't. And once in a while-at least once a year, I think-I get an outright rejection." He shrugged. "It's part of the free-lance game. It can't be-ftelped." "What happens to something that's rejected, or that you won't revise?" asked Trumbull. "I try it somewhere else. One editor might like what another editor doesn't. If I can't sell it anywhere I put it aside; a new market might open up; I might get a request for something that the rejected article can fill." "Don't you feel that's like selling damaged goods?" said Avalon. "No, not at all," said Stellar. "A rejection doesn't necessarily mean an article is bad. It just means that one particular editor found it unsuitable. Another editor might find it suitable." Avalon's lawyer-mind saw an opening. He said, "By that reasoning, it follows that if an editor likes, buys, and publishes one of your articles, that is no necessary proof that the article is any good." "None at all, in any one case," said Stellar, "but if it happens over and over again, the evidence in your favor mounts up." Gonzalo said, "What happens if everyone rejects an article?" Stellar said, "That hardly ever happens, but if I get tired of submitting a piece, chances are I cannibalize it. Sooner or later I'll write something on a subject that's close to it, and then I incorporate parts of the rejected article into a new piece. I don't waste anything." "Then everything you write sees print, one way or another. Is that right?" And Gonzalo shook his head slightly, in obvious admiration. "That's about right." But then Stellar frowned. "Except, of course," he said, "when you deal with an idiot editor who buys something and then doesn't publish it." Rubin said, "Oh, have you run into one of those things? The magazine folded?" "No, it's flourishing. Haven't I ever told you about this?" "Not as far as I remember." "I'm talking about Bercovich. Did you ever sell anything to him?" "Joel Bercovich?" "Are there likely to be two editors with that last name? Of course, Joel Bercovich." "Well, sure. He used to edit Mystery Story magazine some years ago. I sold him a few items. I still have lunch with him occasionally. He's not in mysteries any more." "I know he isn't. He's editing Way of Life magazine. One of those fancy new slick jobs that appeal to the would-be affluent." "Hold it. Hold it!" cried out Trumbull. "This thing's degenerating. Let's get back to the questioning." "Now wait," said Stellar, waving his hand at Trumbull in clear annoyance. "I've been asked a question as to whether everything I write sees print and I want to answer that because it brings up something I'm pretty sore about and would like to get off my chest." "I think he's within his rights there, Tom," said Avalon. "Well, go ahead, then," said Trumbull discontentedly, "but don't take forever." Stellar nodded with a sort of grieved impatience and said, "I met Bercovich at some formal party. I don't even remember the occasion for it, or very much who was involved. But I remember Bercovich because we did some business as a result. I was there with Gladys, my wife, and Bercovich was there with his wife and there were maybe eight other couples. It was an elaborate thing. "In fact, it was very elaborate, and deadly. It was formal. It wasn't black tie; they stopped short of that; but it was formal. The serving was slow; the food was bad;'the conversation was constipated. I hated it. -Listen, Manny, what do you think of Bercovich?" Rubin shrugged. "He's an editor. That limits his good points, but I've known worse. He's not an idiot." "He isn't? Well, I must admit that at the time be seemed all right. I bad vaguely beard of him, but he knew me, of course." "Oh, of course," said Rubin, twirling his empty brandy glass. "Well, be did," said Stellar indignantly. "It's the whole ppint of the story that he knew me, or he wouldn't have asked me for all -article. He came up to me after dinner and told me that he read my stuff and that he admired it, and I nodded and smiled. Then he said, 'What do you think of the evening?' "I said cautiously, 'Oh well, sort of slow,' because for all I knew he was the hostess' lover and I didn't want to be needlessly offensive. "And he said, 'I think it's a bomb. It's too formal and that doesn't fit the American scene these days.' Then he went on to say, 'Look, I'm editor of a new magazine, Way of Life, and I wonder if you couldn't write us an article on formality. If you could give us, say, twenty-five hundred to three thousand words, that would be fine. You could have a free hand and take any approach you want, but be lighthearted.' "Well, it sounded interesting and I said so, and we discussed price a little, and I said I would try and he asked if I could have it in his office within three weeks, and I said maybe. He seemed very anxious." Rubin said, "When was all this?" "Just about two years ago." "Ub-buh. That was about when the magazine started. I look at it occasionally. Very pretentious and not worth the money. I didn't see your article, though." Stellar snorted. "Naturally you haven't." "Don't tell me you didn't write it," said Gonzalo. "Of course I wrote it. I bad it in Bercovicb's office within a week. It was a very easy article to do and it was good. It was lightly satirical and included several examples of stupid formality at which I could fire my shots. In fact, I even described a dinner like the one we had." "And be rejected it?" asked Gonzalo. Stellar glared at Gonzalo. "He didn't reject it. I had a check in my hands within another week." "Well then," said Trumbull impatiently, "what's all this about?" "He never printed it," shouted Stellar. "That idiot has been sitting on it ever since, for nearly two years. He hasn't published it; he hasn't even scheduled it." "So what," said Gonzalo, "as long as he's paid for it?" Stellar glared again. "You don't suppose a one-time sale is all I'm after, do you? I can usually count on reprints here and there for additional money. And then I publish collections of my articles; and I can't include that one until it's published." "Surely," said Avalon, "the money involved is not very important." "No," admitted Stellar, "but it's not utterly unimportant either. Besides, I don't understand why the delay. He was in a hurry for it. When I brought it in be slavered. He said, 'Good, good. I'll be able to get an artist on it right away and there'll be time to do some strong illustrations! And then nothing happened. You would think he didn't like it; but if he didn't like it, why did be buy it?" Halsted held up his coffee cup for a refill and Henry took care of it. Halsted said, "Maybe he only bought it to buy your good will, so to speak, and make sure you would write other articles for him, even though the one you wrote wasn't quite good enough." Stellar said, "Oh no. . . . Oh no. . . . Manny, tell these innocents that editors don't do that. They never have the budget to buy bad ar- ticles in order to buy good will. Besides, if a writer turns out bad articles you don't want his good will. And what's more, you don't earn good will by buying an article and burying it." Trumbull said, "All right, Mr. Stellar. We listened to your story and you'll note I didn't interrupt you. Now, why did you tell it to us?" "Because I'm tired of brooding over it. Maybe one of you can figure it out. Why doesn't he publish it? -Manny, you said you used to sell him. Did he ever hold up anything of yours?" "No," said Manny, after a judicious pause. "I can't recall that he did. -Of course, he's bad a bad time." What kind of a bad time?" "nis dinner took place two years ago, you said, so that was his first wife you met him with. She was an older woman, wasn't she, Mort?" Stellar said, "I don't remember her. That was the only time we ever met." 4dIf it was his second wife, you'd remember. She's about thirty and very good-looking. His first wife died about a year and a half ago. She'd been ill a long time, it turned out, though she'd done her best to hide it and I never knew, for instance. She bad a heart attack and it broke him up. He went through quite a period there." "Oh! Well, I didn't know about that. But even so, he's married again, right?" "Sometime last year, yes." "And she's a good-looking person and he's consoled. Right?" "The last time I saw him, about a month ago-just in passing-he looked all right." "Well then," said Stellar, "why is he still holding out?" Avalon said thoughtfully, "Have you explained to Mr. Bercovich the advantages of having your article published?" Stellar said, "He knows the advantages. He's an editor." "Well then," said Avalon, just as thoughtfully, "it may be that on second reading he found some serious flaw and feels it is not publishable as it stands. Perhaps be's embarrassed at having bought it and doesn't know bow to approach YOU." Stellar laughed but without liumor. "Editors don't get embarrassed and they're not afraid to approach you. If he found something wrong on second reading, he'd have called me and asked for a revision. I've been asked for revisions many times." "Do you revise when they ask for it?" said Gonzalo. "I told you. . . . Sometimes, when it sounds reasonable," said Stellar. James Drake nodded as though that were the answer he would have expected and said, "And this editor never asked for any revision at all?" "No," said Stellar explosively, and then almost at once he added, 'Well, once! One time when I called him to ask if it were scheduled -1 was getting pretty edgy about it by Then-be asked if it would be all right if he cut it a little, because it seemed diffuse in spots. I asked where the bell it was diffuse in spots, because I knew it wasn't, and be was vague and I was just peeved enough to say, no, I didn't want a word touched. He could print as it was or be could send it back to me." "And he didn't send it back to you, I suppose," said Drake' "No, he didn't. Damn it, I offered to buy it back. I said, 'Send it back, Joel, and I'll return the money.' And be said, 'Oh, come, Mort, that's not necessary. I'm glad to have it in my inventory even if I don't use it right away.' Damn fool. What good does it do either him or me to have it in the inventory?" "Maybe be ,s lost it," said Halsted, "and doesn't want to admit it." "There's no reason not to admit it" said Stellar. "I've got a carbon; two carbons, in fact. Even if I wanted to keep the carbons-and they come in handy when it's book time-it's no problem these days to get copies made." There was a silence around the table, and then Stellar's brow furrowed and be said, "You know, he did ask once if I had a carbon copy. I don't remember when. It was one of the more recent times I called him. He said, 'By the way, Mort, do you have a carbon copy? -just like that, 'By the way,' as if it were an afterthought. I remember thinking he was an idiot; does he expect a man of my experience not to have a carbon copy? I bad the notion, then, that he was getting round to saying he had mislaid the manuscript, but be never said a word of the kind. I said that I bad a carbon copy and he let the subject drop." "Seems to me," said Trumbull, "that all this isn't worth the trouble you're taking." "Well, it isn't," said Stellar, "but the thing bothers me. I keep careful files of my articles; I've got to; and this one has been in the 'to be published' file for so long I can recognize the card by the fact that its edges are dark from handling. It's a sort of irritation. -Now why did he ask me if I had a carbon copy? If he'd lost the manuscript, why not say so? And if he hadn't lost it, why ask about the carbon?" Henry, who had been standing at the sideboard, as was his custom after the dinner had been served and the dishes cleared away, said, "'May I make a suggestion, gentlemen?" Trumbull said, "Good Lord, Henry, don't tell me that this nonsense means something to you?" Henry said, "No, Mr. Trumbull, I'm afraid I no more understand what it's all about than anyone else in the room. It merely strikes me as a possibility that Mr. Bercovich may have been prepared to tell Mr. Stellar that the manuscript was mislaid-but perhaps only if Mr. Stellar had said that he had no carbon. It might have been the fact that Mr. Stellar did have a carbon that made it useless to lose or, possibly, destroy the manuscript." "Destroy it?" said Stellar in high-pitched indignation. "Suppose we consider what would happen if he published the manuscript, sir," said Henry. "It would appear in print," said Stellar, "and people would read it. That's what I want to happen." "And if Mr. Bercovich had rejected it?" "Then I would have sold it somewhere else, damn it, and it would still have appeared in print and people would have read it." "And if he returned it to you now, either because you refused revi- sion or because you bought it back, then again you would sell it somewhere else and it would appear in print and be read." "Damn right." "But suppose, Mr. Stellar, the editor bought the article as he did and does not publish it. Can you then sell it elsewhere?" "Of course not. It's not mine to sell. Way of Life has bought first serial rights, which means they have the full and sole right to publish it before any other use is made of it. Until they publish it, or until they formally relinquish the right to do so, I can't sell it anywhere." "In that case, Mr. Stellar, does it not seem to you that the only conceivable way in which Mr. Bercovich can keep the article from being generally read is to do exactly as be has done?" "Are you trying to tell me, Henry," said Stellar, with naked incredulity in his voice, "that he doesn't want it read? Then why the hell did he ask me to write it?" Henry said, "He asked you to write an article, sir. He did not know the exact article you would write till he saw it. Isn't it possible that, once he read the article you did in actual fact write, he realized that he didn't want it read and therefore took the only action possible to keep it unpublished, perhaps forever unpublished? He probably did not expect you to be the kind of writer who would hound an editor over such a matter." Stellar spread out his hands, palms upward, and looked about at the faces of the Black Widowers in a kind of semi-humorous exasperation. "I never beard of anything so ridiculous." Avalon said, "Mr. Stellar, you don't know Henry as we do. If this is his opinion, I suggest you take it seriously." "But why should Joel want to destroy the thing or bury it? It's a perfectly harmless article." Henry said, "I merely advance a possible explanation for what has gone on for two years." "But yours is not an explanation that explains, Henry. It doesn't explain why he wants the article to be left unread." "You had said, sir, that he asked for permission to cut the aruL a little and you refused. If you bad agreed, be would perhaps have changed it so as to render it really innocuous and then be would have published it." "But what did he want cut?" "I'm afraid I can't say, Mr. Stellar, but I gatber that he wanted to do the cutting. That may have been in order not to call your attention to the precise passage he wanted altered." Stellar said, "But if he made the cuts himself, I'd still see what he had done once the article appeared." Henry said, "Would you be likely to read the article once publisbed and compare it sentence by sentence with the original manuscript sir?" "No," admitted Stellar reluctantly. "And even if you did, sir, there might be a number of small changes and you would have no reason to suppose that one change was more significant than the others." Stellar said, "You know, this is a more peculiar mystery than the first, Henry. What could I have said to bother him?" "I cannot say, Mr. Stellar," said Henry. Avalon cleared his tbroat in his best lawyer-like fashion and said, "It is rather a pity, Mr. Stellar, that you didn't bring the carbon copy of your manuscript with you. You could have read it to us and perhaps we could then spot the critical passage. At the very least, I'm sure we would have been entertained." Stellar said, "Who thought this sort of thing would come up?" Gonzalo said eagerly, "If your wife is at home, Mr. Stellar, we might call her and have her read the article to Henry on the phone. The club could afford the charge." Henry seemed to be lost in thought. Now be said slowly as though the thinking bad surfaced but was still a private colloquy be was holding with himself, "Surely it couldn't be anything impersonal. If the tenets of good taste had been broken, if the policy of the magazine had been violated, he would have seen that at once and asked for specific changes. Even if he had bought it after a hasty reading and then discovered these impersonal errors afterward, there would have been no reason to hesitate to ask for specific changes, surely. Could it be that some superior officer in the publishing firm bad vetoed the article and Mr. Bercovich is embarrassed to tell you that?" "No," said Stellar. "An editor who isn't given a free hand by the front office is very likely to quit. And even if Bercovich didn't have the guts to do that be would be only too glad to use upstairs interference as an excuse to return the manuscript. He certainly wouldn't just hold onto it." "T'lien," said Henry, "it must be something personal; something that has meaning to him, an embarrassing meaning, a horrifying meaning." "'nere's nothing of the kind in it," insisted Stellar. "Perhaps there is no significance in the passage to you or to anyone else; but only to Mr. Bercovich." "In that case," interrupted Drake, "why should Bercovich care?" "Perhaps," said Henry, "because, if attention were called to it, it would come to have significance. Tlat is ,vby be dared not even tell Mr. Stellar what passage be wanted cut." "You keep inventing perbapses," muttered Stellar. I just don't believe it." Gonzalo said abruptly, "I believe it. Henry has been right before and I don't bear anyone suggesting any other theory to account for the fact that the article isn't being published." Stellar said, "But we're talking about nothing. What is the mysterious passage that is bothering Joel?" Henry said, "Perhaps you can recall some personal reference, since that is what we suspect it would have to be. Did you not say that included in your article was an account of a dinner rather like the one that had inspired Mr. Bercovich to ask for the article in the first place?" "Aba," said Gonzalo, "got it! You described the dinner too accurately, old boy, and the editor was afraid that the host would recognize it and be offended. Maybe the host is an old and valued friend of the publisher and would get the editor fired if the article appeared." Stellar said, with no effort to hide his contempt "In the first place, I'm an old band at this. I don't write anything either actionable or embarrassing. I assure you I masked that dinner so that no one could reasonably speak of a resemblance. I changed every major ebaracteristic of the dinner and I used no names. -Besides, if I had slipped and made the damned thing too real, why shouldn't he tell me? That sort of thing I would change in a shot." Henry said, "It might be something more personal still, He and his wife were at the dinner. What was it you said about them?" "Nothing!" said Stellar. "Do you suppose I would make use of the editor to whom I was submitting the article? Give me that much credit. I didn't refer to him under any name or any guise; didn't refer to anything be said or did at all." "Or anything about his wife either, sir? as e enry. "Or about his wife- Well, wait, she may have inspired one small exchange in the article, but of course I didn't name her, describe her or anything of the sort. It was entirely insignificant." Avalon said, "Nevertheless, that may be it. The memory was too poignant. She bad died and he just couldn't publish an article that reminded him of-of-2' Stellar said, "If you're about to finish that sentence with 'the dear departed,' I walk out. Tlat's tripe, Mr. Avalon. With all respectno, without too damn much respect-That's tripe. Why wouldn't be ask me to take out a sentence or two if it roused too keen a memory? I would do it." Avalon said, "Just because I phrase the matter in sentimental fashion, Mr. Stellar, doesn't mean it can't have significance all the same. His failure to mention it to you might be the result of a certain shame. In our culture, such things as sorrow over lost love are made fun of. You've just made fun of it. Yet it can be very real." Stellar said, "Manny Rubin said she died about a year and a half ago. That means at least half a year after I wrote the article. Time enough to have it printed by then, considering his anxiety to have me meet an instant deadline. And it's been a year and a half since and be's married a beautiful woman. -Come on, bow long does one sorrow over a lost love after one has found another?" "It might help," said Henry, "if Mr. Stellar could tell us the passage in question." "Yes," said Gonzalo, "call your wife and have her read it to Henry." "I don't have to," said Stellar, who had only with difficulty withdrawn the wounded stare he had been directing at Avalon. "I've read the damn thing again a couple of weeks ago-about the fifth timeand I have it reasonably fresh in my mind. What it amounts to is this: we had. been served the roast at a kind of snail's pace and I was waiting for others to be served before beginning. A few weren't quite that formal and were eating. Finally I broke down and salted it and was going to eat when I noticed that Mrs. Bercovicb, who was on my right, bad still not been served. I looked surprised and she said she had a special request and it was delayed in getting to her and I offered her my plate and she said, 'No, thank you, it's been salted.' I told that passage, without names, just so I could get across my funny line, which I remember exactly. It went, 'She was the only one at the table who objected to the salt; the rest of us objected to the meat. In fact, several of us scraped off the salt, then ate it in a marked manner."' No one laughed at the funny line. Trumbull went to the trouble of simulating nausea. Halsted said, "I certainly don't see any great sentimental value in that." "I should say not," said Stellar, 'and that's every last mention of her, without name or description, and none of Joel himself." Henry said, "Yet Mr. Rubin said that the first Mrs. Bercovich died of a heart attack, which is rather a catch-all reference to circulatory disorders in general. She may well have had seriously high blood pressure and have been put on a low-salt diet." "Which is why she refused Stellar's salted meat," said Gonzalo. "Right!" "And why she was waiting for a special dish," said Henry. "And this is something to which Mr. Bercovich desperately wants no attention drawn. Mr. Rubin said Mrs. Bercovich bad done her best to hide her condition. Perhaps few people knew she was on a low-salt diet." Stellar said, "Why should Joel care if they know?" "I must introduce another perhaps, sir. Perhaps Mr. Bercovich, weary of waiting and, perhaps, already attracted by the woman who is now his second wife, took advantage of the situation. He may have salted her food surreptitiously, or, if she used salt substitute, he may have replaced it, at least in part, with ordinary salt-2' "And killed her, you mean?" interrupted Avalon. Henry shook his head. "Who can tell? She might have died at the same moment anyway. He, however, may feel he contributed to the death and may now be in panic iest anyone find out. The mere mention of a woman refusing salt at that table may, in his eyes, be a shrieking out of his guilt-2' Stellar said, "But I didn't name her, Henry. There's no way of telling who she was. And even if somehow one were to find out that it was she, bow could anyone suspect anything out of the way?" "You are perfectly right, Mr. Stellar," said Henry. "The only reason we have come to suspect Mr. Bercovich now is because of his peculiar behavior with respect to the article and not to anything in the article itself. -But, you know, we have biblical authority to the effect that the wicked flee when no man pursueth." Stellar paused a moment in thought, then said, "All this may be, but it's not getting my article published." He pulled out a black address book, turned to the Bs, then looked at his watch. "I've called him at his home before and it isn't ten yet." Avalon raised his hand in an impressive stop sign. "One moment, Mr. Stellar. I trust you are not going to tell your editor about what we've said here. It is all strictly confidential in the first place, and it would be slander in the second. You would not be able to W'Port it and you may get yourself into serious trouble." Stellar said impatiently, "I wish all of you would take it for granted that an experienced writer is aware of what libel and slander are. -Is there a telephone handy, Henry?" "Yes, sir," said Henry. "I can bring one to the table. -May I also suggest caution?" "Don't worry," said Stellar as be dialed. He waited a moment, then, "Hello, Mrs. Bercovich? This is Mort Stellar, one of the writers for your husband's maga2ine. May I speak to Joel? -Oh, sure, I'll wait." He did not look up from the telephone as he waited. "Hello, Joel, sorry to call you at home, but I've been going over the piece on formality. You don't have it scheduled yet, do you? -Well, all right, I didn't feel like waiting on this because I didn't want to weaken. You can shorten it if you want. --Oh, sure, that's all right. -No, Joel, just a minute, no. I don't want you to do it. I've got some things I want cut out and maybe that will satisfy you. -For instance, that line I have about eating the salt instead of the meat isn't funny, now that I think of it. -Yes, that's right. Suppose I cut out that part about the woman refusing the salted meat Will you publish it if I cut that out?" There was a pause at this moment and now Stellar looked up at the others, grinning. Then he said, "All right, Joel. -Sure I can do it. How about 11L A.M.? -Okay, see you then.' Stellar looked complacent. "It hit him right between the eyes. He repeated the line to me. You can't tell me that he remembered that passage, in an article he bought two years ago, right off the top of his head, unless it had special meaning to him. I'll bet you're right after all, Henry. -Well, I'll cut it. The important thing is that I'll get my article into print." Avalon frowned and said with heavy dignity, "I should say that, from the standpoint of public morality, the really important thing is that a man may have tried to kill his wife and may even have actually done so and will get away with it." Trumbull said, "Don't get virtuously aggrieved, Jeff. If Henry is right, then there's no way of proving that he did anything, or that if he did tamper with the salt it actually contributed to her death, so what is there to do? In fact, what do we have to do? The really important thing is that Stellar has done it all. He's given the man two years of agony, first by writing the article and then by being constantly after him to publish it." Henry said, "ne really important thing, sir, may be that Mr. Bercovich will, as a result of all this, be discouraged from attempting similar experiments in the future. After all, he has a second wife now, and he may grow tired of her too." I am sometimes asked whether any of the regular members of the Black Widowers is modeled on me. The answer is, No! Definitely notl Some people have thought that talkative know-it-all Manny Rubin is the author in disguise. Not at alli He is actually reminiscent of someone else, someone who is a dearly loved (talkative, know-itall) friend of mine. In "When No Man Pursueth" (which appeared first in the March .1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine) I took the liberty of introducing myself as the guest. Mortimer Stellar is as close as I could get to myself in appearance, profession, attitude, and so on. I showed the story to my wife, Janet, after I had written it and asked her how well she thought I bad caught the real me. She said, "But the character you drew is-arrogant, vain, nasty, petty, and completely self-centered." I said, "See how close I got?" She said, "But you're not like Mortimer Stellar at all. You're-2' And she went on to list a string of nice adjectives I won't bore you with. "Who'd believe that?" I said, and let the story stand as written. Incidentally, since I introduced myself into the story, I had better make sure no unwarranted conclusions are drawn. I have lived through some rotten banquets and, at an editor's suggestion, I have written an article entitled "My Worst Meal," but that editor is a pussycat who published the article promptly and who in no way resembles Bercovich in either word, thought, or deed. Quicker Than to Eye. Thomas Trumbull, who worked for the government as a cryptologist, was clearly uneasy. His tanned and wrinkled face was set in a carved attitude of worry. He said, "He's a man from the department; my superior, in fact. It's damned important, but I don't want Henry to feel the pressure." He was whispering and be couldn't resist the quick look over his shoulder at Henry, the waiter at the Black Widower monthly banquets. Henry, who was several years older than Trumbull, had a face that was unwrinkled, and, as he quickly set the table, he seemed tranquil and utterly unaware of the fact that five of the Black Widowers were huddled quietly at the opposite end of the room. Or, if not unaware, then certainly undisturbed. Geoffrey Avalon, the tall patent lawyer, bad, under the best of conditions, difficulty in keeping his voice low. Still, stirring his drink with a middle finger on the ice cube, he managed to impart sufficient hoarseness. "How can we prevent it, Tom? Henry is no fool." "I'm not sure anyone from the federal administration qualifies as a guest, Tom," said Emmanuel Rubin in a swerving non sequitur. His sparse beard bristled truculently and his eyes flashed through the thick lenses of his glasses. "And I say that even though you're in the category. Eighty per cent of the tax money I pay to Washington is expended in ways of which I strongly disapprove." "You've got the vote, haven't you?" said Trumbull testily. "And a fat lot of good that does, when the manipulation-" began Rubin, quite forgetting to keep his voice low. Oddly enough, it was Roger Halsted, the mathematics teacher, whose quiet voice had sufficient difficulty in controlling a junior high school class, who managed to stop Rubin in mid-roar. He did it by placing his hand firmly over the smaller man's mouth. He said, "You don't sound very happy about your boss coming here, Tom." "I'm not," said Trumbull. "It's a difficult thing. The point is that I've gotten considerable credit on two different occasions over matters that were really Henry's insights. I've had to take the credit, damn it since what we say here in this room is confidential. Now something has come up and they're turning to me, and I'm as stuck as the rest of them. I've bad to invite Bob here without really explaining why." James Drake, the organic chemist, coughed over his cigarette and fingered his walrus-head bolo-tie. "Have you been talking too much about our dinners, Tom?" I suppose it could be viewed in that way. What bothers me is Henry, though. He enjoys the game, I know, when it is a game, but if there's real pressure and he won't-or can't-under that pressure-" "Then you'll look bad, eh, Tom?" said Rubin with just a touch; perbaps, of malice. Avalon said frigidly, "I have said before and I will say it again that what began as a friendly social -get-together is becoming a strain on us all. Can't we have one session with just conversation?" "I'm afraid not this one," said Trumbull. "All right, here's my boss. -Now let's carry all the load we can and put as little as possible on Henry." But it was only Mario Gonzalo walking noisily up the stairs, uncharacteristically late, and resplendent in his long hair, a crimson jacket, and subtly matching striped shirt, to say nothing of a flowing scarf meticulously arranged to display the effect of casualness. "Sorry I'm late, Henry-" But the proper drink was in his hand before he could say more. "Thanks, Henry. Sorry, fellows, trouble with getting a taxi. That put me in a grim mood and when the driver began to lecture me on the crimes and misdemeanors of the mayor I argued with him." "Lord help us," said Drake. "I always argue every tenth time I hear that kind of crap. Then be managed to get lost, and I didn't notice and it took us a long time to pull out. -I mean, he was giving me this business about welfare recipients being a bunch of lazy, free-loading troublemakers ltdT how no decent person should expect a handout but instead they should work for what they get and earn every cent. So I said what about sick people and old people and mothers with young children and be started telling me what a hard life he had led and he had never gone to anyone for a handout. "Anyway, I got out and the fare came to $4.80, and it was a good half dollar more than it should have been because of getting lost, so I counted out four singles and then spent some time getting the exact eighty cents change and I handed it to him. He counted it over, looked surprised, and I said, just as sweetly as I could, 'That's what you earned, driver. You looking for a handout too?"' Gonzalo burst out laughing, but no one joined him. Drake said, "That's a dirty trick on the poor guy just because you egged him into arguing." Avalon stared down austerely from his lean height and said, "You might have gotten beaten up, Mario, and I wouldn't blame him." 'That's a hell of an attitude you fellows are taking," said Gonzalo, aggrieved-and at that point Trumbull's boss did arrive. Trumbull introduced the newcomer all round, looking uncommonly subdued as he did so. The guest's name was Robert Alford Bunsen and he was both heavy and large. His face was pink and his white hair was sleeked back from an old-fashioned part down the middle. "What will you have, Mr. Bunsen?" said Avalon, with a small and courtly bend at the middle. He was the only one present who was taller than the newcomer. Bunsen cleared his throat. "Glad to meet you all. No-no-I've had my alcoholic calories for today. Some diet drink." He snapped his fingers at Henry. "A diet cola, waiter. If you don't have that, a diet anything." Gonzalo's eyes widened and Drake, whispering philosophically through the curling smoke of the cigarette stub be held between his tobacco-stained fingers, said, "Oh well, he's government." "Still," muttered Gonzalo, "there's such a thing as courtesy. You don't snap your fingers. Henry isn't a peon." "You're rude to taxi drivers," said Drake. "This guy's rude to waiters." "That's a different thing," said Gonzalo vehemently, his voice rising. "That was a matter of principle." Henry, who had shown no signs of resentment at being fingersnapped, bad returned with a bottle of soft drink on a tray and had presented it solemnly for inspection. "Sure, sure," said Bunsen, and Henry opened it and poured half its contents into an ice-filled glass and let the foam settle. Bunsen took it and Henry left the bottle. The dinner was less comfortable than many in the past bad been. The only one who seemed unsubdued over the fact that the guest was a high, if a not very well known, official of the government was Rubin. In fact, he seized the occasion to attack the government in the person of its surrogate by proclaiming loudly that diet drinks were one of the great causes of overweight in America. - "Because you drink a lot of them and the one calorie per bottle mounts up?" asked Halsted, with as much derision as he could pack into his colorless voice. 'They've got more than one calorie per bottle now that cyclamates have been eliminated on the basis of fallacious animal ex- periments," said Rubin hotly, "but that's not the point. Diet any thing is bad psychologically. Anyone overweight who takes a diet drink is overcome with virtue. He has saved two hundred calories, so he celebrates by taking another pat of butter and consuming three hundred calories. The only way to lose weight is to stay hungry. The hunger is telling you that you're getting less calories than you're expending-" Halsted, who knew very well that there was a certain softness in his abdominal region, muttered, "Oh well." "But he's right, though," said Bunsen, attacking the veal Marengo with gusto. "The diet drinks don't do me any good, but I like the taste. And I approve of looking at matters from the psychological angle." Gonzalo, frowning, showed no signs of listening. When Henry bent over him to fill his coffee cup, he said, "What do you think, Henry? I mean about the taxi driver. Wasn't I right?" Henry said, "A gratuity is not quite a handout, Mr. Gonzalo. Personal service is customarily rewarded in a small way and to equate that with welfare is perhaps not quite just." "You're just saying that because you-!' began Gonzalo, and then he stopped abruptly. Henry said, "Yes, I benefit in the same way as the taxi driver does, but despite that I believe my statement to be correct." Gonzalo threw himself back in his chair and chafed visibly. "Gentlemen," said Trumbull, tapping his empty water glass with a fork, as Henry poured the liqueur, "this is an interesting oWsion. Mr. Bunsen, who is my superior at the department, has a s61 puzzle to present to us. Let's see what we can make of it." Again, he cast a quick glance at Henry, who had replaced the bottle on the sideboard and now stood placidly in the background. Bunsen, wiping his mouth with his napkin and wheezing slightly, also cast an anxious glance at Henry, and Trumbull leaned over to say, "Henry is one of us, Bob." Trumbull went on, "Bob Bunsen is going to present merely the bare bones, to keep from distorting your view of the matter with un- necessary knowledge to begin with. I will remain out of it myself since I know too much about the matter." Halsted leaned over to whisper to Drake, "I think it won't look good for Tom in the department if this doesn't work." Drake shrugged, and mouthed rather than said, "He brought it on himself." Bunsen, having adjusted the position of the breadbasket unnecessarily (he had earlier prevented Henry from removing it), began. "I will give you those bare bones of a story. There's a man. Call him Smith. We want him, but not just him. He's of little account. Clever at what he does, but of little account. If we get him, we learn nothing of importance and we warn off men of greater importance. If, however, we can use him to lead us to the men of greater importance-" "We all understand," interrupted Avalon. Bunsen cleared his throat and made a new start. "Of course, we weren't sure about Smith to begin with. It seemed very likely, but we weren't sure. If he was indeed a link in the apparatus we were trying to break up, then we reasoned that he transferred the information at a restaurant be regularly frequented. Part of the reasoning was based on psychology, something I imagine Mr. Rubin would approve. Smith bad the appearance and patina of a well-bred man about town who always did the correct social thing. On that basis, we-" He paused to think, then he said, "No, I'm getting off the subject and it's more than you need. We laid a trap for him." For a moment be reddened as though in bashfulness and then he went on firmly, "I laid the trap and it was damned complicated. We managed to beat down his caution, never mind how, and we ended with Smith having in his hand something he had to transfer. It was a legitimate item and would be useful to them, but not too useful. It would be well worth the loss to us if we had gained what we hoped to gain." Bunsen looked about him, clearing his throat, but no one made a sound. Henry, standing by the sideboard, seemed a quiet statue. Even the napkin be held did not move. Bunsen said, "Smith walked into the restaurant with the object on his person. After be left the restaurant he did not have the object on his person. We know therefore that he transferred the object. What we don't know is the exact moment at which he transferred it, how, and to whom. We have not been able to locate the object anywhere. Now ask your questions, gentlemen." Trumbull said, "Let's try this one at a time. Mario?" Gonzalo thought a moment and then shrugged. Twiddling his brandy glass between thumb and forefinger, be said, "What did this object-as you call it-look like?" "About an inch across and flat," said Bunsen. "It had a metallic shine so it was easy to see. It was too large to swallow easily; heavy enough to make a noise if it were dropped; too thick to place in a crack; too heavy to stick easily to anything; not iron so there could be no tricks with magnets. The object, as I still call it, was carefully designed to make the task of transferring, or hiding, difficult" "But what did he do in the restaurant? He ate a meal, I suppose?" said Gonzalo. "He ate a meal as he always did." "Was it a fancy restaurant?" "A fairly elaborate one. He ate there regularly." "I mean, there's nothing phony about the restaurant?" "Not as far as we know, although in general that is not enough to allow us to display a blind trust in it and, believe me, we don't." "Who was with him at the-meal?" "No one." Bunsen shook his head gravely. "He ate alone. That was his custom. He signed the check when he was through, as he always did. He had an account in the restaurant, you see. Then he left, took a taxi and after a while he was stopped and taken into custody. The object was no longer in his possession." "Wait, now," said Gonzalo, his eyes narrowing. "You say he signed the check. What was it he wrote? Would you know?" "We know quite well. We have the check. He added a tip-quite the normal amount and we could find nothing wrong with that-and signed his name. That's all. Nothing more. He used the waiter's pencil and he returned that pencil. Nor did he pass along anything else, and the waiter did not escape scrutiny, I assure you." Gonzalo said, "I pass." Drake, stubbing out his cigarette, lifted a gray eyebrow as Tmmbull's finger gestured at him. "I suppose Smith was kept under close surveillance while he was in the restaurant." "As close as though he were a coat and we were the lining. We had two men in that restaurant, each at a table near him. 41 rey were trained men and capable ones and their entire task was to note every movement he made. He could not scratch himself without being noticed. He couldn't fumble at a button, crook a finger, shift a leg, or raise a buttock without being noted." "Did he go to the men's room at any time?" "No, he did not. If he had, we would have managed to follow." "Were you there yourself, Mr. Bunsen?" "I? No, I'm no good for that kind of surveillance. I'm too noticea- ble. What's needed to keep a man in view is a shadow with a good, gray face and an overwhelming lack of distinction in form and feature. I'm too big, too broad; I stand out." Drake nodded. "Do you suppose Smith knew he was being watched?" "He may have. People in his line of work don't last long if they don't assume at every moment that they might be watched. In fact, to be truthful, at one point I got a clear impression he felt he was watched. I was across the street at a window, with a pair of binoculars. I could see him come out from the corner entrance of the restaurant. "The doorman held the taxi door open for him and Smith paused for just a minute. He looked about him as though trying to identify those who might be watching. And be smiled, a tight smile, not amusement, it seemed to me, as much as bravado. At that moment, I was sure we had lost. And, as it turned out, we had." "And you really are sure," said Drake, "that he had it on him when he walked into the restaurant and that he didn't have it on him when he left." "We really are sure. When he walked in, there was what amounted to a pickpocketing, an inspection, and a replacement. He had it; you can take that as given. When he left and took a taxi, that taxi driver was one of our men who came, when the doorman hailed him, in a completely natural manner. Smith got in with no hint of suspicion. We are positive about that. The driver, one of our best men, then- But never mind that. The point is that Smith found himself in a kind of minor trouble that had, apparently, nothing to do with us. He was arrested, taken to the police station, and searched. Later, when it became obvious that we couldn't find the object anywhere, he was searched more thoroughly. Eventually we used X rays." Drake said, "He might have left the object in the taxi." "I doubt he could have done that with our man driving, and in any case, the taxi was searched. See here," said Bunsen heavily, "there's no point in thinking we are incompetent in our business. When I say we watched, I mean that we watched with professional attention. Wben I say we searched, I mean we searched with professional thoroughness. You won't catch us on details." "All right," said Drake, nodding, "but you missed, didn't you? The object was there and then it wasn't there, so either we call upon the supernatural or we must admit that somewhere you failed. Somewhere you blinked when you were watching or skipped when you were searching. Right?" Bunsen looked rather as though he had bitten into a lemon. "There's no way of avoiding that conclusion, I suppose." Then, belligerently, "But show me where." Drake shook his head, but Halsted intervened rapidly, his high forehead pink with excitement. "Now wait, the hand is quicker than the eye. The thing you're looking for was shiny and heavy, but did it have to stay that way? Smith might have pushed it into a lump of clay. 'Men he had something dull and shapeless which he could push against the bottom of the table or drop on the floor. It might still be there." Bunsen said, "The hand is quicker than the eye when you have an audience that doesn't know what to watch for. We know all the tricks and we know what to expect. Smith couldn't have put the object into clay without our men knowing he was doing something.' He couldn't have placed it under the table or on the floor without our men knowing he was doing something." "Yes," said Halsted ' "but irf these quicker-tban-the-eye things, a diversion is usually created. Your men were looking somewhere else." "Phere was no diversion, and in any case the restaurant was searched quite thoroughly as soon as he left." "You couldn't have searched it thoroughly," protested Halsted. "There were still people eating there. Did you make them all leave?" "We searched his table, his area, and eventually all the restaurant. We are quite certain that he did not leave the object behind anywhere. He did not leave anything behind anywhere." Avalon had been sitting stiffly in his chair, his arms folded, his forehead creased in a portentous frown. His voice boomed out now. "Mr. Bunsen," be said, "I am not at all comfortable with this account of yours. I recognize the fact that you have told us very little and that neither places, names, occasions, nor identifications have been given. "Nevertheless, you are telling me more than I want to know. Have you permission from your superiors to tell us this? Are you quite certain in your mind that each one of us is to be trusted? You rn 'i:gbt get into trouble as a result and that would be regrettable, bAt I must admit that that is not the point I am most concerned with at the moment. What is important is that I do not wish to become the object of questioning and investigation because you have seen fit to honor me with confidences I have not asked for." Trumbull had vainly tried to break in and managed to say finally, "Come on, Jeff. Don't act like the rear end of a horse." Bunsen raised a massive and pudgy band. "That's all right, Tom. I see Mr. Avalon's point and, in a way, he's right. I am exceeding my authority and things will be sticky for me if some people decide they need a scapegoat. This little exercise of mine tonight, however, may get me off the book if it works. To my way of thinking, it's worth the gamble. Tom assured me it would be." 9'What you're saying," said Trumbull, forcing a smile, "is that if the department jumps on you, you'll jump on me." "Yes," said Bunsen, "and I weigh a lot." He picked up a breadstick and munched on it. "One more point. Mr. Avalon asked if I were sure you could each be trusted. Aside from the fact that Tom assured me you Could be-not that I consider it safe to trust to personal as- surances from close friends-There has been a little bit of investigation. Nothing like a full-scale affair, you understand, but enough to give me some confidence." It was at this point that Henry cleared his throat gently, and at once every face but that of Bunsen turned toward him. Bunsen turned only after he was aware of the shift of attention. Truml)ull said, "Have you got something, Henry?" Bunsen turned a clearly astonished look in Trumbull's direction, but Trumbull said urgently, "Have you, Henry?" "I only want to know," said Henry softly, "if I have been cleared also. I suspect I have not and that I should retire." But Trumbull said, "For God's sake, nothing critical is being said." Bunsen said, "Besides, the damage is done. Let him stay." "It seems to me," said Henry, "that the damage is indeed done. Surely there is no longer any purpose to the investigation. The man you call Smith must know he is being watched. By the time you began to use X rays on him, be must have guessed that he bad been set up for a kill. -Is he still in custody, by the way?" ,,No, we had no grounds to keep him. He's released." ,,Then the organization of which he is a part must undoubtedly know what has happened, and they will change their modus operandi. He will not be used further, perhaps; others involved will disappear. Things will be entirely rearranged." Bunsen said impatiently, "Yes, yes. Nevertheless, knowledge is important in itself. If we find out exactly bow he transferred the object, we will know something about a mode of operation we didn't know before. We will, at the least, get an insight into a system of thought. -It is always important to know." Henry said, "I see." Trumbull said, "Is that all you see, Henry? Do you have any ideas?" Henry shook his head. "It may be, Mr. Trumbull, that what has happened is complex and subtle. That would not be for me." "Bull, Henry," said Trumbull. "But it might be for Mr. Rubin," said Henry gravely. "I believe be is anxious to speak." "Darn right," said Rubin loudly, "because I'm annoyed. Now, Mr. Bunsen, you talk about watching carefully and searching thoroughly, but I think you'll agree with me when I say that it is very easy to overlook something which becomes obvious only after the fact. I can describe a way in which Smith could have transferred the object without any trouble and no matter how many people were watching him." "I would love to bear that description," said Bunsen. "Okay, then, I will describe exactly what might have happened. I don't say it did happen, but it could have happened. Let me begin by asking a question-" Rubin 'pushed his chair away from the table and, though he was short and small-boned, be seemed to tower. "Mr. Bunsen," he said, "since your men watched everything, I presume they took note of the details of the meal he ordered. Was it lunch or dinner, by the way?" "It was lunch and you are right. We did notice the details." "Then isn't it a fact that he ordered a thick soup?" Bunsen's eyebrows raised. "A score for you, Mr. Rubin. It was cream of mushroom soup. If you want the rest of the menu, it consisted of a roast beef sandwich with a side order of french fried potatoes, a piece of apple pie with a slice of cheese, and coffee." "Well," muttered Drake, "we can't all be gourmets." Rubin said, "Next, I would suggest that he finished only about half his soup." Bunsen thought for a while, then smiled. It was the first time he had smiled that evening and he revealed white and even teeth that gave a clear indication that there was a handsome man beneath the layers of fat. "You know," he said, "I wouldn't bavc thought you coill k me a single question of fact concerning that episode that I could not instantly have answered, but you've managed. I don't know, offhand, if he finished his soup or not but I'm sure that detail is on record. But let's pretend you are right and he only finished half his soup. Go on." "All right," said Rubin, "we begin. Smith walks into the restaurant with the object. Where does he have it, by the way?" "Left pants pocket, when he walked in. We saw no signs whatever of his changing its position." "Good," said Rubin. "He walks in, sits down at the table, orders his meal, reads his newspaper-was be reading a newspaper, Mr. Bunsen?" "No," said Bunsen, "be wasn't reading anything; not even the menu. He knows the place and what it has to offer." "Then once the first course was placed before him, be sneezed. A sneeze, after all is a diversion. Roger mentioned a diversion, but I guess be thought of someone rushing in with a gun, or a fire starting in the kitchen. But a sneeze is a diversion, too, and is natural enough to go unnoticed." "It would not have gone unnoticed," said Bunsen calmly. "He didn't sneeze." "Or coughed, or hiccuped, what's the difference?" said Rubin. "The point is that something happened that made it natural for him to pull out a handkerchief-from the left pants pocket, I'm sureand put it to his mouth." "He did no such thing," said Bunsen. "When he took away his hand," said Rubin, overriding the other's remark, "the object that had been in the left pants pocket was in the mouth." Bunsen said, "I don't think it would have been possible for him to place the object in his mouth without our seeing him do so, or keep it there without distorting his face noticeably, but go ahead- What next?" "The soup is before him and he eats it. You certainly won't tell me be pushed it away untasted." "No, I'm quite certain he didn't do that." "Or that he drank it from the bowl." Bunsen smiled. "No, I'm quite sure be didn't do that." "Then there was only one thing he could do. He placed a tablespoon in the soup, brought it to his mouth, brought it back to the soup, brought it to his mouth, and so on. Correct?" I must agree with that." "And on one of the occasions during which the tablespoon passed from mouth to bowl, the object was in it. It was placed in the soup and, since cream of mushroom soup is not transparent, it would not be seen there. He then drank no more of the soup and someone in the kitchen picked up the object." Rubin looked about at the others triumphantly. There was a short silence. Bunsen said, "That is all you have to say, sir?" "Don't you agree that's a possible modus operandi?" "No, I don't." Bunsen sighed heavily. "Quite impossible. The hand is not quicker than the trained eye, and the object is large enough to be an uncomfortable fit in the tablespoon bowl. -Furthermore, you again underestimate our experience and our thoroughness. We bad a man in the kitchen and no item came back from our man's table without being thoroughly examined. If the soup bowl came back with soup in it, you can be sure it was carefully emptied by a most careful man." "How about the waiter?" interposed Avalon, forced into interest clearly against his will. Bunsen said, "The waiter was not one of us. He was an old employee, and besides, he was watched too.Rubin snorted and said, "You might have told us you had a man in the kitchen." I might have," said Bunsen, "but Tom told me it would be best to tell you as little as possible and let you think from scratch." Avalon said, "If you had incorporated a tiny radio transmitter in the object-" "Then we would have been characters in a James Bond movie. Unfortunately, we must allow for expertise on the other side as well. If we bad tried any such thing, they would have tumbled to it. No, the trap bad to be absolutely clean." Bunsen looked depressed. "I put a bell of a lot of time and effort into it." He looked about and the depression on his face deepened. "Well, Tom, are we through here?" Trumbull said unhappily, "Wait a minute, Bob. Damn it, Henry--" Bunsen said, "What do you want the waiter to do?" Trumbull said, "Come on, Henry. Doesn't anything occur to you?" Henry sighed gently. "Something did, quite a while back, but I was hoping it would be eliminated." "Something quite plain and simple, Henry?" said Avalon. "I'm afraid so, sir." Avalon said, turning to Bunsen, "Henry is an honest man and lacks all trace of the devious mind. When we are through making fools of ourselves over complexities, he picks up the one straight thread we have overlooked." 1- Henry said thoughtfully, "Are you sure you wish me to speak, Mr. Bunsen?" "Yes. Go on." "Well then, when your Mr. Smith left the restaurant, I assume that your men inside did not follow him out." "No, of course not. They had their own work inside. They had to make sure he had left nothing behind that was significant." "And the man in the kitchen stayed there?" "Yes." "Well then, outside the restaurant, the taxi driver was your man; but it would seem fair to suppose that be had to keep his eye on the traffic so as to be able to be in a position where he could maneuver himself to the curb just in time to pick up Smith; no sooner, no later." "And a very good job be did. In fact, when the doorman hailed him, he neatly cut out another cab." Bunsen chuckled softly. "Was the doorman one of your men?" asked Henry. "No, be was a regular employee of the restaurant." "Did you have a man on the street at all?" "If you mean actually standing on the street, no." "Then surely there was a moment or two after Smith had left the restaurant, and before be had entered the taxi, when he was not being watched-if I may call it so-professionally." Bunsen said with a trace of contempt, "You forget that I was across the street, at a window, with a pair of binoculars. I saw him quite well. I saw the taxi man pick him up. From the door of the restaurant to the door of the taxi took, I should say, not more than fifteen seconds, and I had him in view at every moment." Rubin suddenly interrupted. "Even when you were distracted watching the taxi man maneuver to the curb?"' He was universally shushed, but Bunsen said, "Even then." Henry said, "I don't forget that you were watching, Mr. Bunsen, but you have said you do not have the proper appearance for that kind of work. You do not watch, professionally." "I have eyes," said Bunsen, and there was more than merely a trace of contempt now. "Or will you tell me the hand is quicker than the eye? "Sometimes even when the hand is quite slow, I think. -Mr. Bunsen, you arrived late and did not hear Mr. Gonzalo's tale. He had paid a taxi driver exactly the fare recorded on the meter, and so customary is it to pay more than that, that every one of us was shocked. Even I expressed disapproval. It is only when the completely customary is violated that the event is noticed. When it takes place, it is apt to be totally ignored." Bunsen said, "Are you trying to tell me that something was wrong with the taxi driver? I tell you there wasn't." "I am sure of that," said Henry earnestly. "Still, didn't you miss something that you took so entirely for granted that, even looking at it, you didn't see it?" "I don't see what it could have been. I have an excellent memory, I assure you, and in the fifteen seconds that Smith went from restau- ran to taxi be did nothing I did not note and nothing I do not remember." Henry thought for a moment or two. "You know, Mr. Bunsen, it must have happened, and if you had seen it happen, you would surely have taken action. But you did not take action; you are still mystified." "Then whatever it was," said Bunsen, "it did not happen." "You mean, sir, that the doorman, a regular employee of the restaurant, hailed a cab for Smith, who was a regular patron for whom be must have performed the same service many times, and that Smith, whom you described as a well-mannered man who always did the correct social thing, did not tip the doorman?" "Of course he-" began Bunsen, and then came to a dead halt. And in the silence that followed, Henry said, "And if he tipped him, then surely it was with an object taken from the left pants pocket, an object that, fron-L your description, happened to look something like a coin. -Then he smiled, and that you saw." 2 Afterword "Quicker Than the Eye" first appeared in the May 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. I have to make a confession here. In writing the Black Widower stories I have always been under the impression that I was doing my best to catch the spirit of Agatha Christie, who is my idol as far as mysteries are concerned. When I presented a copy of Tales of the Black Widowers to Martin Gardner (who writes the "Mathematical Recreations" column in Scientific American and who is a recently elected member of the Trap Door Spiders) I told him this and he read it with that in mind. When he finished, however, he sent me a note to tell heethat in his opinion I had missed the mark. What I bad really done, he said, was to catch some of the flavor of G. K. Chesterton's "Father Brown" stories. You know, be's right. I was an ardent fan of those stories even though I found Chesterton's philosophy a little irritating, and in writing "Quicker Than the Eye," I was strongly influenced by the great Cbestertonian classic, The Invisible Man. The Iron Gem. Geoffrey Avalon stirred his drink and smiled wolfishly. His hairy, still dark eyebrows slanted upward and his neat graying beard seemed to twitch. He looked like Satan in an amiable mood. He said to the Black Widowers, assembled at their monthly dinner, "Let me present my guest to you-Latimer Reed, jeweler. And let me say at once that he brings us no crime to solve, no mystery to unravel. Nothing has been stolen from him; he has witnessed no murder; involved himself in no spy ring. He is here, purely and simply, to tell us about jewelry, answer our questions, and help us have a good, sociable time." And, indeed, under Avalon's firm eye, the atmosphere at dinner was quiet and relaxed and even Emmanuel Rubin, the ever quarrelsome polymatb of the club, managed to avoid raising his voice. Quite satisfied, Avalon said, over the brandy, "Gentlemen, the postprandial grilling is upon us, and with no problem over which to rack our brains. -Henry, you may relax." Henry, who was clearing the table with the usual quiet efficiency that would have made him the nonpareil of waiters even if he had not proved himself, over and over again, to be peerlessly aware of the obvious, said, "Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I trust I will not be excluded from the proceedings, however." Rubin fixed Henry with an owlish stare through his thick glasses and said loudly, "Henry, this blatantly false modesty does not become you. You know you're a member of our little band, with all the privileges thereto appertaining." "If that is so," said Roger Halsted, the soft-voiced math teacher, sipping at his brandy and openly inviting a quarrel, "why is he waiting on table?" "Personal choice, sir," said Henry quickly, and Rubin's opening mouth shut again. Avalon said, "Let's get on with it. Tom Trumbull isn't with us this time so, as host, I appoint you, Mario, as griller in chief." Mario Gonzalo, a not inconsiderable artist, was placing the final touches on the caricature he was making of Reed, one that was intended to be added to the already long line that decorated the private room of the Fifth Avenue restaurant at which the dinners of the Black Widowers were held. Gonzalo had, perhaps, overdrawn the bald dome of Reed's head and the solemn length of his bare upper lip, and made over-apparent the slight tendency to jowl. There was indeed something more than a trace of the bloodhound about the caricature, but Reed smiled when he saw the result and did not seem offended. Gonzalo smoothed the perfect Windsor knot of his pink and white tic and let his blue jacket fall open with careful negligenW as he leaned back and said, "How do you justify your existence, Mr. Reed?" "Sir?" said Reed in a slightly metallic voice. Gonzalo said, without varying pitch or stress, "How do you justify your existence, Mr. Reed?" - Reed looked about the table at the five grave faces and smiled-a smile that did not, somehow, seriously diminish the essential sadness of his own expression. "Jeff warned me," he said, "that I would be questioned after the dinner, but he did not tell me I would be challenged to justify my self." "Always bes" said Avalon sententiously, "to catch a man by surprise." Reed said, "What can serve to justify any of us? But if I must say something, I would say that I help bring beauty into lives." "What kind of beauty?" asked Gonzalo. "Artistic beauty?" And be held up the caricature. Reed laughed. "Less controversial forms of beauty, I should hope." He pulled a handkerchief out of his inner jacket pocket and, carefully unfolding it on the table, exposed a dozen or so gleaming, deeply colored bits of mineral. "All men agree on the beauty of gems," be said. "Tbatja independent of subjective taste." He held up a small deep reAo-ne and the lights glanced off it. James Drake cleared his throat and said with his usual mild hoarseness just the same, "Do you always carry those things around with you?" "No, of course not," said Reed. "Only when I wish to entertain or demonstrate." "In a handkerchief?" said Drake. Rubin burst in at once. "Sure, what's the difference? If he's held up, keeping them in a locked casket won't do him any good. He'd just be out the price of a casket as well." "Have you ever been held up?" asked Gonzalo. "No," said Reed. "My best defense is that I am known never to carry much of value with me. I strive to make that as widely known as possible, and to live up to it, too." "That doesn't look it," said Drake. "I am demonstrating beauty, not value," said Reed. "Would you care to pass these around among yourselves, gentlemen?" ere was no immediate move and then Drake said, "Henry, would you be in a position to lock the door?" "Certainly, sir," said Henry, and did so. Reed looked surprised. "Why lock the door?" Drake cleared his throat again and stubbed out the pitiful remnant of his cigarette with a stained thumb and forefinger. "I'm afraid that, with the kind of record we now have at our monthly dinners, those things will be passed around and one will disappear." "That's a tasteless remark, Jim," said Avalon, frowning. Reed said, "Gentlemen, there is no need to worry. These stones may all disappear with little loss to me or gain to anyone else. I said I was demonstrating beauty and not value. This one I am holding is a ruby-quite so-but synthetic. There are a few other synthetics and here we have an irreparably cracked opal. Others are riddled with flaws. These will do no one any good and I'm sure Henry can open the door." Halsted said, stuttering very slightly in controlled excitement, "No, I'm with Jim. Something is just fated to come up. I'll bet that Mr. Reed has included one very valuable item-quite by accident, perhaps-and that one will turn up missing. I just don't believe we can go through an evening without some puzzle facing us." Reed said, "Not that one. I know every one of these stones and, if you like, I'll look at each again." He did so and then pushed them out into the center of the table. "Merely trinkets that serve to satisfy the innate craving of human beings for beauty." Rubin grumbled, "Which, however, only the rich can afford." 44 Quite wrong, Mr. Rubin. Quite wrong. These stones are not terribly expensive. And even jewelry that is costly is often on display for all eyes-and even the owner can do no more than look at what be owns, though more frequently than others. Primitive tribes might make ornaments as satisfying to themselves as jewelry is to us out of shark's teeth, walrus tusks, sea shells, or birch bark. Beauty is independent of material, or of fixed rules of aesthetics, and in my way I am its servant." Gonzalo said, "But you would rather sell the most expensive forms of beauty, wouldn't you?" "Quite true," said Reed. I am subject to economic law, but that ben3s my appreciation of beauty as little as I can manage." Rubin shook his head. His sparse beard bristled and his voice, surprisingly full-bodied for one with so small a frame, rose in passion. "No, Mr. Reed, if you consider yourself a purveyor of beauty only, you are being hypocritical. It's rarity you're selling. A synthetic ruby is as beautiful as a natural one and indistinguishable chemically. But the natural ruby is rarer, more difficult to get, and therefore more expensive and more eagerly bought by those who can afford it. Beauty it may be, but it is beauty meant to serve personal vanity. "A copy of the 'Mona Lisa,' correct to every crack in the paint, is just a copy, worth no more than any daub, and if there were a thousand copies, the real one would still remain priceless because it alone would be the unique original. and would reflect uniqueness on its possessor. But that, you see, has nothing to do with beauty." Reed said, "It is easy to rail against humanity. Rareness does enhance value in the eyes of the vain, and I suppose that something that is sufficiently rare and, at the same time, notable would fetch a huge price even if there were no beauty about it-" "A rare autograph," muttered Halsted. "Yet," said Reed firmly, "beauty is always an enhancing factor, and I sell only beauty. Some of my wares are rare as well, but nothing I sell, or would care to sell, is rare without being beautiful." Drake said, "What else do you sell besides beauty and rarity?" "Utility, sir," said Reed at once. "Jewels are a way of storing wealth compactly and permanently in a way independent of the fluctuations of the market place." "But they can be stolen," said Gonzalo accusingly. "Certainly," said Reed. "Their very values-beauty, compactness, permanence-make them more useful to a thief than anything else can be. The equivalent in gold would be much heavier; the equivalent in anything else far more bulky." Avalon said, with a clear sense of reflected glory in his guest's profession, "Latimer deals in eternal value." "Not always," said Rubin rather wrathfully. "Some of the jewelees wares are of only temporary value, for rarity may vanish. There was a time when gold goblets might be used on moderately important occasions but, for the real top of vanity, the Venetian cut glass was trotted out-until glass-manufacturing processes were improved to the point where such things were brought down to the five-and-ten level. "In the i88os, the Washington Monument was capped with nothing less good than aluminum and, in a few years, the Hall process made aluminum cheap and the monument cap completely ordinary. Then, too, value can change with changing legend. As long as the alicom-the hom of a unicorn-was thought to have aphrodisiac properties, the horns of narwhals and rhinoceroses were valuable. A handkerchief of a stiffish weave which could be cleaned by being thrown into the fire would be priceless for its magical refusal to bum -till the properties of asbestos became well known. "Anything that becomes rare through accident-the first edition of a completely worthless book, rare because it was wortbless-becomes priceless to collectors. And synthetic jewelry of all sorts may yet make your wares valueless, Mr. Reed." Reed said, "Perhaps individual items of beauty might lose some of their value, but jewelry is only the raw material of what I sell. There is still the beauty of combination, of setting, the individual and creative work of the craftsman. As for those things which are valuable for rarity alone, I do not deal with them; I will not deal with them; I have no sympathy with them, no interest in them. I myself own some things that are both rare and beautiful-own them, I mean, with no intention of ever selling them-and nothing, I hope, that is ugly and is valued by me only because it is rare. Or almost nothing, anyway." He seemed to notice for the first time that the gems he had earlier distributed were lying before him. "Ah, you're all through with them, gentlemen?" He scooped them toward himself with his left hand. "All here," he said, "each one. No omissions. No substitutions. All accounted for." He looked at each individually. "I have showed you these, gentlemen, because there is an interesting point to be made about each of them-" Halsted said, "Wait. What did you mean by saying 'almost nothing'?" "Almost nothing?" said Reed, puzzled. "You said you owned nothing ugly just because it was rare. Then you said 'almost nothing."' Reed's face cleared. "Ah, my lucky piece. I have it here somewhere." He rummaged in his pocket. "Here it is. -You are welcome to look at it, gentlemen. It is ugly enough, but actually I would be more distressed at losing it than any of the gems I brought with me." He passed his lucky piece to Drake, who sat on his left. Drake turned it over in his hands. It was about an inch wide, ovoid in shape, black and finely pitted. He said, "It's metal. Looks like meteoric iron." "That's exactly what it is as far as I know," said Reed. The object passed from hand to hand and came back to him. "It's my iron gem," said Reed. "I've turned down five hundred dollars for it." "Who the devil would offer five hundred dollars for it?" asked Gonzalo, visibly astonished. Avalon cleared his throat. "A collector of meteorites might, I suppose, if for any reason this one had special scientific value. The question really is, Latimer, why on Earth you turned it down." "Oh," and Reed looked thoughtful for a while. "I don't really know. To be nasty, perhaps. I didn't like the fellow." "The guy who offered the money?" asked Gonzalo. "Yes. Drake reached out for the bit of black metal and, when Reed gave it to him a second time, studied it more closely, turning it over and over. "Does this have scientific value as far as you know?" "Only by virtue of its being meteoric," said Reed. "I've brought it to the Museum of Natural History and they were interested in having it for their collection if I were interested in donating it without charge. I wasn't. -And I don't know the profession of the man who wanted to buy it. I don't recall the incident very well-it was ten years ago-but I'm certain be didn't impress me as a scientist of any type.22 "You've never seen him since?" asked Drake. "No, though at the time I was sure I would. In fact, for a time I had the most dramatic imaginings. But I never saw him again. It was after that, though, that I began to carry it about as a luck charm." He put it in his pocket again. "After all, there aren't many objects this unprepossessing I would refuse five hundred for." Rubin, frowning, said, "I scent a mystery here-" Avalon exploded. "Good God, let's have no mystery! This is a social evening. Latimer, you assured me that there was no puzzle you were planning to bring up." Reed looked honestly confused. "I'm not bringing up aA"uzzle. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing to the story. I was offered five hundred dollars; I refused; and there's an end to it." Rubin's voice rose in indignation. "The mystery consists in the reason for the offer of the five hundred. It is a legitimate outgrowth of the grilling and I demand the right to prove the matter." Reed said, "But what's the use of probing? I don't know why be offered five hundred dollars unless he believed the ridiculous story my great-grandfatber told." "There's the value of probing. We now know there is a ridiculous story attached to the object. Go on, then. What was the ridiculous story your great-grandfather told?" "It's the story of how the meteorite-assuming that's what it iscame into the possession of my family-" "You mean it's an heirloom?" asked Halsted. "If something totally without value can be an heirloom, this is one. In any case, my great-grandfather sent it home from the Far East in 1856 with a letter explaining the circumstances. I've seen the letter myself. I can't quote it to you, word for word, but I can give you the sense of it." "Go ahead," said Rubin. "Well-to begin with, the 1850s were the age of the clipper ship, the Yankee Clipper, you know, and the American seamen roamed the world till first the Civil War and then the continuing development of the steamship put an end to sailing vessels. However, I'm not planning to spin a sea yarn. I couldn't. I know nothing about ships and couldn't tell a bowsprit from a binnacle, if either exists at all. However, I mention it all by way of explaining that my greatgrandfather-who bore my name; or rather, I bear his-managed to see the world. To that extent his story is conceivable. Between that and the fact that his name, too, was Latimer Reed, I had a tendency, when young, to want to believe him. "In those days, you see, the Moslem world was still largely closed to the men of the Christian West. The Ottoman Empire still had large territories in the Balkans and the dim memory of the days when it threatened all Europe still lent it an echo of far-off might. And the Arabian Peninsula itself was, to the West, a mystic mixture of desert sheiks and camels. "Of course, the old city of Mecca was closed to non-Moslems and one of the daring feats a European or American might perform would be to learn Arabic, dress like an Arab, develop a knowledge of Moslem culture and religion, and somehow participate in the ritual of the pilgrimage to Mecca and return to tell the story. -My greatgrandfather claimed to have accomplished this." Drake interrupted. "Claimed? Was he lying?" "I don't know," said Reed. "I have no evidence beyond this letter be sent from Hong Kong. There was no apparent reason to lie since be had nothing to gain from it. Of course, he may merely have wanted to amuse my great-grandmother and sbine in her eyes. He had been away from home for three years and bad only been married three years prior to his sailing, and family legend has it that it was a great love match." Gonzalo began, "But after be returned-" "He never returned," said Reed. "About a month after he wrote the letter be died under unknown circumstances and was buried somewhere overseas. The family didn't learn of that till considerably later of course. My grandfather was only about four at the time of his father's death and was brought up by my great-grandmotber. My grandfather had five sons and three daughters and I'm the second son of his fourth son and there's my family history in brief." "Died under unknown circumstances," said Halsted. "There are all sorts of possibilities there." "As a matter of fact," said Reed, "family legend has it that his impersonation of an Arab was detected, that be had been tracked to Hong Kong and beyond, and had been murdered. But you know there is no evidence for that whatever. 'Me onIv information we have about his death was from seamen who broght a letter from someone who announced the death." "Does that letter exist?" asked Avalon, interested despite himself. "No. But where and bow be 'died doesn't matter-or even if he died, for that matter. The fact is he never returned home. Of course," Reed went on, "the family has always tended to believe the story, because it is dramatic and glamorous and it has been distorted out of all recognition. I have an aunt who once told me that he was torn to pieces by a bowling mob of dervishes who detected his imposture in a mosque. She said it was because he had blue eyes. All made up, of course; probably out of a novel." Rubin said, "Did be have blue eyes?" "I doubt it," said Reed. "We all have brown eyes in my family. But I don't really know." Halsted said, "But what about your iron gem, your lucky piece?" "Oh, that came with the letter," said Reed. "It was a small package actually. And my lucky piece was the whole point of the letter. He was sending it as a memento of his feat. Perhaps you know that the central ceremony involved in the pilgrimage to Mecca is the rites at the Kaaba, the most holy object in the Moslem world." Rubin said, "It's actually a relic of the pre-Moslem Wrld. Mohammed was a shrewd and practical politician, though,"and he took it over. If you can't lick them, join them." "I dare say," said Reed coolly. "'ne Kaaba is a large, irregular cube-The word 'cube' comes from 'Kaaba' in fact-and in its southeast corner about five feet from the ground is what is called the Black Stone, which is broken and held together in metal hands. Most people seem to think the Black Stone is a meteorite." "Probably," said Rubin. "A stone from heaven, sent by the gods. Naturally it would be worshiped. The same can be said of the origi- nal statue of Artemis at Ephesus-the so-called Diana of the Ephesians-2' Avalon said, "Since Torn Trumbull is absent, I suppose it's my job to shut you up, Manny. Shut up, Manny. Let our guest speak-7p Reed said, "Anyway, that's about it. My iron gem arrived in the package with the letter, and my great-grandfather said in his letter that it was a piece of the Black Stone which he had managed to chip off." "Good Lord," muttered Avalon. "If he did that, I wouldn't blame the Arabs for killing him." Drake said, "If it's a piece of the Black Stone, I dare say it would be worth quite a bit to a collector." "Priceless to a pious Moslem, I should imagine," said Halsted. "Yes, yes," said Reed impatiently, "if it is a piece of the Black Stone. But how are you going to demonstrate such a thing? Can we take it back to Mecca and see if it will fit into some chipped place, or make a very sophisticated chemical comparison of my lucky piece and the rest of the Black Stone?" "Neither of which, I'm sure," said Avalon, "the government of Saudi Arabia would allow." "Nor am I interested in asking," said Reed. "Of course, it's an article of faith in my family that the object is a chip of the Black Stone and the story was occasionally told to visitors and the package was produced complete with letter and stone. It always made a sensation. "Then sometime before World War I there was some sort of scare. My father was a boy then and he told me the story when I was a boy, so it's all pretty garbled. I was impressed with it when I was young, but when I considered it after reaching man's estate, I realized that it lacked substance." "What was the story?" asked Gonzalo. "A matter of turbaned strangers slinking about the house, mysterious shadows by day and strange sounds by night," said Reed. "It was the sort of thing people would imagine after reading sensational fiction." Rubin, who, as a writer, would ordinarily have resented the last adjective, was too hot on the spoor on this occasion to do so. He said, "ne implication is that they were Arabs who were after the chip of the Black Stone. Did anything happen?" Avalon broke in. "If you tell us about mysterious deaths, Latimer, I'll know you're making up the whole thing." Reed said, "I'm speaking nothing but the truth. There were no mysterious deaths. Everyone in my family since Great-grandfather died of old age, disease, or unimpeachable accident. No breath Of foul play has ever risen. And in connection with the tale of the turbaned stranger, nothing at all happened. Nothingi Which is one reason I dismiss the whole thing." Gonzalo said, "Did anyone ever attempt to steal the chip?" "Never. The original package with the chip and the letter stayed in an unlocked drawer for half a century. No one paid any particular heed to it and it remained perfectly safe. I still have the chip as you saw," and he slapped his pocket. "Actually," he went on, "the thing would have been forgotten altogether but for me. About 1950, 1 felt a stirring of interest. I don't have a clear memory why. The nation of Israel had just been established and the Middle East was much in the news. Perhaps that was the reason. In any case, I got to thinking of the old family story and I dredged the thing out of its drawer." Reed took out his iron gem absently and held it in the palm of his hand. "It did look meteoritic to me but, of course, in my greatgrandfather's time meteorites weren't as well known to the general public as they are now. So, as I said earlier, I took it to the Museum of Natural History. Someone said it was meteoritic and would I care to donate it. I said it was a family heirloom and I couldn't do that, but-and this was the key point for me-I asked him if there were any signs that it had been chipped off a larger meteorite. "He looked at it carefully, first by eye, then with a magnifying glass, and finally said he could see no sign of it. He said it must have been found in exactly the condition I had it. He said meteoritic iron is particularly hard and tough because it has nickel in it. It's more like alloy steel than iron and it couldn't be chipped off, he said, without clear signs of manhandling. "Well, that settled it, didn't it? I went back and got the letter and read it through. I even studied the original package. There was some blurred Chinese scrawl on it and my grandmother's name and address in a fadcd angular English. There was nothing to be made of it. I couldn't make out the postmark but there was no reason to suppose it wasn't from Hong Kong. Anyway, I decided the whole thing was an amiable fraud. Great-grandfather Latimer had pickedup the meteorite somewhere, and probably had been spending tGe in the Arab world, and couldn't resist spinning a yam." Halsted said, "And then a month later he was dead under mysterious circumstances." "Just dead," said Reed. "No reason to think the death was mysterious. In the i850s, life was relatively brief. Any of a number of infectious diseases could kill. -Anyway, that's the end of the story. No glamor. No mystery." Gonzalo objected vociferously at once. "That's not the end of the story. It's not even the beginning. What's the bit about the offer of five hundred dollars?" "Oh, that!" said Reed. "That happened in 1967 or 1963. It was a dinner party and there were some hot arguments on the Middle East and I was taking up a pro-Arab stance as a kind of devil's advocateit was well before the Six-Day War, of course-and that put me in mind of the meteorite. It was still moldering away in the drawer and I brought it out. "I remember we were all sitting about the table and I passed the package around and they all looked at it. Some tried to read the letter, but that wasn't so easy because the handwriting is rather oldfashioned and crabbed. Some asked me what the Chinese writing was on the package and of course I didn't know. just to be dramatic, I told them about the mysterious turbaned strangers in my father's time and stressed Great-granddad's mysterious death, and didn't mention my reasons for being certain it was all a hoax. It was just entertainment. "Only one person seemed to take it seriously. He was a stranger, a friend of a friend. We had invited a friend, you see, and when he said he bad an engagement, we said, well, bring your friend along. That sort of thing, you know. I don't remember his name any more. All I do remember about him personally is that he bad thinning red hair and didn't contribute much to the conversation. "When everybody was getting ready to go, be came to me besitantly and asked if be could see the thing once more. There was no reason not to allow it, of course. He took the meteorite out of the package-it was the only thing that seemed to interest him-and walked to the light with it. He studied it for a long time; I remember growing a little impatient; and then be said, 'See here, I collect odd objects. I wonder if you'd let me have this thing. I'd pay you, of course. What would you say it was worth?' "I laughed and said I didn't think I'd sell it and be stammered out an offer of five dollars. I found that rather offensive. I mean, if I were going to sell a family heirloom it surely wouldn't be for five dollars. I gave him a decidedly brusque negative and held out my hand for the object. I took such a dislike to him that I remember feeling he might steal it. "He handed it back reluctantly enough and I remember looking at the object again to see what might make it attractive to him, but it still seemed what it was, an ugly lump of iron. You see, even though I knew its point of interest lay in its possible history and not in its appearance, I was simply unable to attach value to anything but beauty. "vVhen I looked up, he was reading the letter again. I held out my hand and he gave me that too. He said, 'Ten dollars?' and I just said, 'No!' Reed took a sip of the coffee that Henry had just served him. He said, "Everyone else had left. This man's friend was waiting for him, the man who was my friend originally, Jansen. He and his wife were killed in an auto accident the next year, driving the very car at whose door he stood then, waiting for the man he had brought to my house. What a frightening thing the future is if you stop to think of it Luckily, we rarely do. "Anyway, the man who wanted the object stopped at the door and said to me hurriedly, 'Listen, I'd really like that little piece of metal. It's no good to you and I'll give you five hundred dollars for it. How's that? Five hundred dollars. Don't be hoggish about this, ' "I can make allowances for his apparent anxiety, but he was damned offensive. He did say 'hoggish'; I remember the word. After that, I wouldn't have let him ba've it for a million. Very coldly I told him it wasn't for sale at any price, and I put the meteorite, which was still in my hand, into my pocket with ostentatious finality. "His face darkened and he growled that I would regret that and there would be those who wouldn't be so kind as to offer money, and then off be went- The meteorite has stayed in my pocket ever since. It is my ugly luck piece that I have refused five hundred dollars for." He chuckled in a muted way and said, "And that's the whole story." Drake said, "And you never found out why he offered you five hundred dollars for that thing?" "Unless he believed it was a piece of the Black Stone, I can't see any reason why be should," said Reed. "He never renewed his offer?" "Never. It was over ten years ago and I have never beard from him at all. And now that Jansen and his wife are dead, I don't even know where be is or how he could be located if I decided I wanted to sell." Gonzalo said, "What did he mean by his threat about others who wouldn't be so kind as to offer money?" I don't know," said Reed. "I suppose be meant mysterious turbaned strangers of the kind I had told him about. I think he was just trying to frighten me into selling." Avalon said, "Since a mystery has developed despite everything, I suppose we ought to consider the possibilities here. The obvious motive for his offer is, as you say, that he believed the object to be a piece of the Black Stone." "If so," said Reed, "be was the only one there who did. I don't think anyone else took the story seriously for a moment. Besides, even if it were a chip of the Black Stone and the guy were a collector, what good would it be to him without definite proof? He could take any piece of scrap iron and label it 'piece of the Black Stone' and it would do him no less good than mine." Avalon said, "Do you suppose he might have been an Arab who knew that a chip the size of your object bad been stolen from the Black Stone a century before and wanted it out of piety?" "He didn't seem Arab to me," said Reed. "And if be were, why was the offer not renewed? Or why wasn't there an attempt at taking it from me by violence?" Drake said, "He studied the object carefully. Do you suppose he saw something there that convinced him of its value-whatever that value might be?" Reed said, "How can I dispute that? Except that, whatever he might have seen, I certainly never have. Have you?" "No," admitted Drake. Rubin said, "This doesn't sound like anything we can possibly work out. We just don't have enough information. -What do you say, Henry?" Henry, who bad been listening with his usual quiet attention, said, "I was wondering about a few points." "Well then, go on, Henry," said Avalon. "Why not continue the grilling of the guest?" Henry said, "Mr. Reed, when you showed the object to your guests on that occasion in 1962 or 1963, you say you passed the package around. You mean the original package in which the letter and the meteorite had come, with its contents as they had always been?" "Yes. Oh yes. It was a family treasure." "But since 1963, sir, you have carried the meteorite in your pocket?" "Yes, always," said Reed. "Does that mean, sir, that you no longer have the letter?" "Of course it doesn't mean that," said Reed indignantly. "We certainly do have the letter. I'll admit that after that fellow's threat I was a little concerned so I put it in a safer place. It's a glamorous document from the family standpoint, hoax or not." "Where do you keep it now?" asked Henry. "In a small wall safe I use for documents and occasional jewels." "Have you seen it recently, sir?" Reed smiled broadly. "I use the wall safe frequently, and I see it every time. Take my word for it, Henry, the letter is safe; as safe as the luck piece in my pocket." Henry said, "Then you don't keep the letter in the original package any more." "No," said Reed. "The package was more useful as a container for the meteorite. Now that I carry that object in my pocket, there was no point in keeping the letter alone in the package." Henry nodded. "And what did you do with the package, then, Sir?) Reed looked puzzled. "Why, nothing." "You didn't throw it out?" "No, of course not." "Do you know where it is?" Slowly, Reed frowned. He said at last, "No, I don't think so." "When did you last see it?" The pause was just as long this time. I don't know that either." Henry seemed lost in thought. Avalon said, "Well, Henry, what do you have in mind?" Henry said, "I'm just wondering"-quietly be circled the table removing the brandy glasses-"whether that man wanted the meteorite at all." "He certainly offered me money for it," said Reed. "Yes," said Henry, "but first such small sums as would offer you no temptation to release it, and which he could well afford to pay if you called his bluff. Then a larger sum couched in such offensive language as to make it certain you would refuse. And after that, a mysterious threat which was never implemented." "But why should he do all that," said Reed, "unless be wanted MY iron gem?" Henry said, "To achieve, perhaps, precisely what be did, in fact, achieve-to convince you he wanted the meteorite and to keep your attention firmly fixed on that. He gave you back the meteorite when you held out your hand for it; be gave you back the letter-but did he give you back the original package?" Reed said, "I don't remember him taking it." Henry said, "It was ten years ago. He kept your attention fixed on the meteorite. You even spent some time examining it yotl6ev and during that time you didn't look at him, I'm sure. -Can you say you've seen the package since that time, sir?" Slowly, Reed shook his head. "I can't say I have. You mean be fastened my attention so tightly on the meteorite that he could walk off with the package and I wouldn't notice?" "I'm afraid you didn't. You put the meteorite in your pocket, the letter in your safe, and apparently never gave another thought to the package. This man, whose name you don't know and whom you can no longer identify thanks to your friends' death, has bad the package for ten years with no interference. And by now you could not possibly identify what it was he took." "I certainly could," said Reed stoutly, "if I could see it. It has my great-grandmother's name and address on it." "He might not have saved the package itself," said Henry. "I've got it," cried out Gonzalo suddenly. "It was that Chinese writing. He could make it out somehow and he took it to get it deciphered with certainty. The message was important." Henry's smile was the barest flicker. "That is a romantic notion !hat had not occurred to me, Mr. Gonzalo, and I don't know that it is very probable. I was thinking of something else. -Mr. Reed, you had a package from Hong Kong in 1856 and at that time Hong Kong was already a British possession." "Taken over in 1848," said Rubin briefly. "And I think the British had already instituted the modern system of distributing mail." "Rowland Hill," said Rubin at once, "in 1840." 'Well then," said Henry, "could there have been a stamp on the original package?" Reed looked startled. "Now that you mention it, there was something that looked like a black stamp, I seem to recall. A woman's profile?" "The young Victoria," said Rubin. Henry said, "And might it possibly have been a rare stamp?" Gonzalo threw up his arms. "Bingo!" Reed sat with his mouth distinctly open. Then he said, "Of course, you must be right. -I wonder how much I lost." "Nothing but money, sir," murmured Henry. "The early British stamps were not beautiful." 3 Afterword "The Iron Gem" appeared in the July 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine under the title "A Chip of the Black Stone." Ordinarily, all things being equal, I go for the shorter title, so I'm changing it back to my original title in this case. (I don't always refuse to accept changes. The first story in this collection was called "No Man Pursueth" when I wrote it. The magazine changed it to "When No Man Pursueth" and I accept the extra word as an improvement.) I wrote this story on board the Canberra, which took me over the ocean to the coast of Africa and back in the summer of 1973, to view a total solar eclipse-the first total solar eclipse I had ever seen. Heaven knows, they filled my time, for I was on board as a lecturer, and I gave eight lectures on the history of astronomy, to say nothing of the time it took to be charming and suave to all twelve hundred women on board. (You should see me being charming and suave. Some of them have trouble getting away.) just the same, I did find time to hide out in my cabin now and then to write "The Iron Gem" in longhand. What puzzles me now that I look back on it, however, is why the story didn't have anything to do with a solar eclipse when that (and the twelve hundred women) was all I was thinking of on the cruise. The Three Numbers. When Tom Trumbull arrived-late, of course-to the Black Widowers' banquet, and called for his scotch and soda, be was met by James Drake, who was wearing a rather hangdog expression on his -ace. Drake's head made a gentle gesture to one side. Trumbull followed him, unpeeling his coat as he went, his tanned and furrowed face asking the question before his voice did. "What's up?" he said. Drake held his cigarette to one side and let the smoke curl bluely upward. "Tom, I've brought a physicist as my guest." 44so?" "Well, be has a problem and I think it's up your alley." "A code?" "Something like that. Numbers, anyway. I don't have all the details. I suppose we'll get those after the dinner. But that's not the point. Will you help me if it becomes necessary to bold down Jeff Avalon?" Trumbull looked across the room to where Avalon was standing in staid conversation with the man who was clearly the guest of the eve- ning since be was the only stranger present. "What's wrong with Jeff?" said Trumbull. There didn't seem anything wrong with Avalon, who was standing straight and tall as always, looking as though he might splinter if he relaxed. His graying mustache and small beard were as neat and trim as ever and he wore that careful smile on his face that he insisted on using for strangers. "He looks all right." Drake said, "You weren't here last time. Jeff has the idea that the Black Widowers is becoming too nearly a puzzle session each month. "What's wrong with that?" asked Trumbull as he passed his hands over his tightly waved off-white hair to press down the slight disarray produced by the wind outside. "Jeff thinks we ought to be a purely social organization. Convivial conversation and all that." "We have that anyway." "So when the puzzle comes up, help me sit on him if he gets grouchy. You have a loud voice and I don't." "No problem. Have you talked to Manny?" "Hell, no. He'd take up the other side to be contrary." "You may be right. -Henry!" Trumbull waved his arm. "Henry, do me a favor. T'his scotch and soda won't be enough. It's cold outside and it took me a long time to get a taxi so-" Henry smiled discreetly, his unlined face looking twenty years younger than his actual sixtyisbness. "I had assumed that might be so, Mr. Trumbull. Your second is ready." "Henry, you're a diamond of the first water" -which, to be sure, was a judgment concurred in by all the Black Widowers. "I'll give you a demonstration," said Emmanuel Rubin. He had quarreled with the soup which, he maintained, had had just a shade too much leek to make it fit for human consumption, and the fact that he was in a clear minority of one rendered him all the more emphatic in his remaining views. "I'll show you that any language is really a complex of languages. -I'll write a word on each of these two pieces of paper. The same word. I'll give one to you, Mario-and one to you, sir." The second went to Dr. Samuel Puntsch, who had, as was usually the case with guests of the Black Widowers, maintained a discreet silence during the preliminaries. Puntsch was a small, slim man, dressed in a funereal color scheme that would have done credit to Avalon. He looked at the paper and lifted his unobtrusive eyebrows. Rubin said, "Now neither of you say anything. just write down the number of the syllable that carries the stress. It's a four-syllable word, so write down either one, two, three, or four. " Mario Gonzalo, the Black Widowers' tame artist, had jW§t completed the sketch of Dr. Puntsch, and he laid it to one side. He looked at the word on the paper before him, wrote a figure without hesitation, and passed it to Rubin. Puntsch did the same. Rubin said, with indescribable satisfaction, "I'll spell the word. It's u-n4-o-n-i-z-e-d, and Mario says it's accented on the first syllable." "Yoo-nionized," said Mario. "Referring to an industry whose working force has been organized into a labor union." Puntsch laughed. "Yes, I see. I called it un-eye-onized; referring to a substance that did not break down into ions in solution. I accent the second syllable." "Exactly. The same word to the eye, but different to men in different fields. Roger and Jim would agree with Dr. Puntsch, I know, and Tom, Jeff, and Henry would probably agree with Mario. It's like that in a million different places. Fugue means different things to a psychiatrist and a musician. The phrase 'to press a suit' means one thing to a nineteenth-century lover and another to a twentieth-century tailor. No two people have exactly the same language." Roger Halsted, the mathematics teacher, said with the slight hesitation that was almost a stammer but never quite, "There's enough overlap so that it doesn't really matter, does it?" "Most of us can understand each other, yes," said Rubin querulously, "but there's less overlap than there ought to be. Every small segment of the culture develops its own vocabulary for the sake of forming an in-group. There are a million verbal walls behind which fools cower, and it does more to create ill feeling-" "That was Shaw's thesis in Pygmalion," growled Trumbull. "No! You're quite wrong, Tom. Shaw thought it was the result of faulty education. I say it's deliberate and that this does more to create the proper atmosphere for world collapse than war does." And he tackled his roast beef with a fierce cut of his knife. "Only Manny could go from unionized to the destruction of civilization in a dozen sentences," said Gonzalo philosophically, and passed his sketch to Henry for delivery to Puntsch. Puntsch smiled a little shakily at it, for it emphasized his cars more than a purist might have thought consistent with good looks. Henry put it on the wall with the others. It was perhaps inevitable that the discussion veer from the iniquities of private language to word puzzles and Halsted achieved a certain degree of silence over the dessert by demanding to know the English word whose pronunciation changed when it was capitalized. Then, when all had given up, Halsted said slowly, "I would say that 'polish' becomes 'Polish,' right?" Avalon frowned portentously, his luxuriant eyebrows hunching over his eyes. "At least that isn't as offensive as the usual Polish jokes I can't avoid bearing sometimes." Drake said, his small gray mustache twitching, "We'll try something a little more complicated after the coffee." Avalon darted a suspicious glance in the direction of Puntsch and, with a look of melancholy on his face, watched Henry pour the coffee. Henry said, "Brandy, sir?" Puntsch looked up and said, "Why, yes, thank you. That was a very good meal, waiter." "I am glad you think so," said Henry. "The Black Widowers are a special concern to this establishment." Drake was striking his water glass with a spoon. He said, trying to elevate his always fuzzily hoarse voice, "I've got Sam Puntsch here partly because he worked for the same firm I work for out in New Jersey, though not in the same division. He doesn't know a damn thing about organic chemistry; I know that because I heard him discuss the subject once. On the other hand, he's a pretty fair-to-middling physicist, I'm told. I've also got him here partly because he's got a problem and I told him to come down and entertain us with it, and I hope, Jeff, that you have no objections." Geoffrey Avalon twirled his brandy glass gently between two fingers and said grimly, "There are no bylaws to this organization, Jim, so I'll go along with you and try to enjoy myself. But I must say I would like to relax on these evenings; though perhaps it's just the old brain calcifying." "Well, don't worry, we'll let Tom be griller in chief." Puntsch said, "If Mr. Avalon-2' Drake said at once, "Pay no attention to Mr. Avalon." And Avalon himself said, "Oh, it's all right, Dr. Puntsch. The group is kind enough to let me pout on occasion." Trumbull scowled and said, "Will you all let me get on with it? Dr. Puntsch- how do you justify your existence?" "Justify it? I suppose you could say that trying to have our civilization last for longer than a generation is a sort of justification." "What does this trying consist of?" "An attempt to find a permanent, safe, and non-polluting energy source." "What kind?" "Fusion energy. -Are you going to ask me the details?" Trumbull shook his head. "No, unless they're germane '' to the problem that's disturbing you." 1. "Only very tangentially; which is good." Puntsch's voice was reedy, and his words were meticulously pronounced as though he had at one time had ambitions to become a radio announcer. He said ' "Actually, Mr. Rubin's point was a rather good one earlier in the evening. We all do have our private language, sometimes more so than is necessary, and I would not welcome the chance to have to go into great detail on the matter of fusion." Gonzalo, who was wearing a costume in various complementing tones of red, and who dominated the table visually even more than was usually true, muttered, "I wish people would stop saying that Rubin is right." "You want them to lie?" demanded Rubin, head thrown up at once and his sparse beard bristling. "Shut up, you two," shouted Trumbull. "Dr. Puntsch, let me tell you what I know about fusion energy and you stop me if I'm too far off base. It's a kind of nuclear energy produced when you force small atoms to combine into larger ones. You use heavy hydrogen out of the ocean, fuse it to helium, and produce energy that will last us for many millions of years." "Yes, it's roughly as you say. ty "But we don't have it yet, do we?" "No, as of today, we don't have it." "Why not, Doctor?" "Ah, Mr. Trumbull, I take it you don't want a two-bour lecture." "No, sir, how about a two-minute lecture?" Puntsch laughed. "About two minutes is all anyone will sit still for. The trouble is we have to heat Up our fuel to a minimum temperature of forty-five million degrees Centigrade, which is about eighty million Fiihrenbeit. Then we have to keep the fusion fuelheavy hydrogen, as you say, plus tritium, which is a particularly heavy variety-at that temperature long enough for it to catch fire, so to speak, and we must keep it all in place with strong magnetic fields while this is happening. "So far, we can't get the necessary temperature produced quickly enough, or hold the magnetic field in being long enough, for the fusion fuel to ignite. Delivering energy by laser may be another bet, but we need stronger lasers than we have so far, or stronger and better-designed magnetic fields than we now have. Once we manage it and do ignite the fuel, that will be an important breakthrough, but God knows there will remain plenty of engineering problems to solve before we can actually begin to run the Earth by fusion energy. tP Trumbull said, "When do you think we'll get to that first breakthrough; when do you think we'll have ignition?" "It's bard to say. American and Soviet physicists have been inching forward toward it for a quarter of a century. I think they've almost reached it. Five years more maybe. But there are imponderables. A lucky intuition might bring it this year. Unforeseen difficulties may carry us into the twenty-first century." Halsted broke in. "Can we wait till the twenty-first century?" "Wait?" said Puntsch. "You say you are trying to have civilization last more than a gener- ation. That sounds as though you don't think we can wait for the twenty-first century." "I see. I wish I could be optimistic on this point, sir," said Puntsch gravely, "but I can't. At the rate we're going, our petroleum will be pretty much used up by 2000. Going back to coal will present us with a lot of problems and leaning on breeder fission reactors will involve the getting rid of enormous quantities of radioactive wastes. I would certainly feel uncomfortable if we don't end up with working fusion reactors by, say, 2olo." "Apre's moi, le d6luge," said Avalon. Puntsch said with a trace of acerbity, "The deluge may well come after your time, Mr. Avalon. Do you have any children?" Avalon, who had two children and several grandchildren, looked uncomfortable and said, "But fusion energy may stave off the deluge and I take it your feelings about the arrival of fusion are optimistic." "Yes, there I tend to be optimistic." Trumbull said, "Well, let's get on with it. You're working at Jim Drake's firm. I always thought of that as one of these drug supply houses." "It's a bell of a lot more than that," said Drake, looking dolefully at what was left of a cigarette package as though wondering whether he ought to set fire to another one or rest for ten minutes. Puntsch said, "Jim works in the organic chemistry section. I work on plasma physics." Rubin said, "I was down there once, visiting Jim, and took a tour of the plant. I didn't see any Tokamaks." "What's a Tokamak?" asked Gonzalo at once. Puntsch said, "It's a device within which stable magnetic fieldspretty stable anyway-can be set up to confine the super-hot gas. No, we don't have any. We're not doing anything of the sort. We're more or less at the theoretical end of it. When we think up something that looks hopeful, we have arrangements with some of the large installations that will allow it to be tried out." Gonzalo said, "What's in it for the firm?" "We're allowed to do some basic research. There's always use for it. The firm produces fluorescent tubes of various sorts and anything we find about the behavior of hot gases-plasma, it's called-and magnetic fields may always help in the production of cheaper and better fluorescents. That's the practical justification of our work." Trumbull said, "And have you come up with anything that looks hopeful? -In fusion, I mean, not in fluorescents." Puntsch began a smile and let it wipe off slowly. "nat's exactly it. I don't know." Halsted placed his hand on the pink area of baldness in the forepart of his skull and said, "Is that the problem you've brought us "Yes," said Puntsch. "Well, then, Doctor, suppose you tell us about it." Puntsch cleared his throat and pursed his lips for a moment, looking about at the men at the banquet table and leaning to one side in order to allow Henry to refill his coffee cup. "Jim Drake," be said, "has explained that everything said in this room is confidential; that everyone"-his eye rested briefly on Henry-"is to be trusted. I'll speak freely, then. I have a colleague working at the firm. His name is Matthew Revsof and Drake knows him." Drake nodded. "Met him at your house once." Puntsch said, "Revsof is halfway between brillance and madness, which is sometimes a good thing for a theoretical physicist. It means, though, that he's erratic and difficult to deal with at times. We've been good friends, mostly because our wives have gotten along togetber particularly well. It became one of those family things where the children on both sides use us almost interchangeably as parents, since we have houses in the same street. "Revsof is now in the hospital. He's been there two months. I'll have to explain that it's a mental hospital and that he had a violent episode which put him into it and there's no point in going into the details of that. However, the hospital is in no hurry to let him go and that creates a problem. "I went to visit him about a week after he had been hospitalized. He seemed perfectly normal, perfectly cheerful; I brought him up to date on some of the work going on in the department and be had no trouble following me. But then he wanted to speak to me privately, He insisted the nurse leave and that the door be closed. "He swore me to secrecy and told me he knew exactly how to design a Tokamak in such a way as to produce a totally stable magnetic field that would contain a plasma of moderate densities indefinitely. He said something like this, 'I worked it out last month. That's why I've been put here. Naturally, the Soviets arranged it. The material is in my home safe; the diagrams, the theoretical analysis, everything."' I Rubin, who had been listening with an indignant frown, interrupted. "Is that possible? Is he the kind of man who could do that? Was the work at the stage where such an advance--2' Puntsch smiled wearily. "How can I answer that? The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insiihts that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did. I'll tell you this, though. When someone in a mental hospital tells you that be has something that has been eluding the cleverest pbysicists in the world for nearly thirty years, and that the Russians are after him, you don't have very 'great tendency to believe it. All I tried to do was soothe him. "But my efforts to do that just excited him. He told me he Planned to have the credit for it; he wasn't going to have anyone stealing priority while he was in the hospital. I was to stand guard over the home safe and make sure that no one broke in. He was sure that Russian spies would try to arrange a break-in and be kept saying over and over again that I was the only one be could trust and as soon as he got out of the hospital he would announce the discovery and prepare a paper so that he could safeguard his priority. He said he would allow me coauthorship. Naturally, I agreed to everything just to keep him quiet and gof the nurse back in as soon as I could." Halsted said, "American and Soviet scientists are co-operating in fusion research, aren't they?" "Yes, of course," said Puntsch. "The Tokamak itself is of Soviet origin. The business of Russian spies is just Revsof's overheated fantasy." Rubin said, "Have you visited him since?" "Quite a few times. He sticks to his story. -It bothers me. I don't believe him. I think be's mad. And yet sometbiDg inside me says: What if he isn't? What if there's something in his home safe that the whole world would give its collective eyeteeth for?" Halsted said, "When he gets out-" Puntsch said, "It's not that easy. Any delay is risky. This is a field in which many minds are eagerly busy. On any particular day, someone else may make Revsof's discovery-assuming that Revsof has really made one-and be will then lose priority and credit, and a Nobel Prize for all I know. And, to take the broader view, the firm will lose a considerable amount of reflected credit and the cliance-A'a substantial increase in its prosperity. Every employee of the firm will lose the chance of benefiting from what general prosperity increase the firm might have experienced. So you see, gentlemen, I have a personal stake in this, and so has Jim Drake, for that matter. "But even beyond that- The world is in a race that it may not win. Even if we do get the answer to a stable magnetic field, there will be a great deal of engineering to work through, as I said before, and, at the very best, it will be years before fusion energy is really available to the world-years we might not be able to afford. In that case, it isn't safe to lose any time at all waiting for Revsof to get out." Gonzalo said, "If be's getting out soon-' "But be isn't. That's the worst of it," said Puntsch. "He may never come out. He's deteriorating." Avalon said in his deep, solemn voice, "I take it, sir, that you have explained the advantages of prompt action to your friend." "That I have," said Puntsch. "I've explained it as carefully as I could. I said we would open the safe before legal witnesses, and bring everything to him for his personal signature. We would leave the originals and take copies. I explained what be himself might possibly lose by delay. -All that happened was that he-well, in the end be attacked me. I've been asked not to visit him again till further notice." Gonzalo said, "VVbat about his wife? Does she know anything about this? You said she was a good friend of your wife's." "So she is. She's a wonderful girl and she understands perfectly the difficulty of the situation. She agrees that the safe should be opened." "Has she talked to her husband?" asked Gonzalo. Puntsch hesitated. "Well, no. She hasn't been allowed to see him. He-be- This is ridiculous but I can't help it. He claims Barbara, his wife, is in the pay of the Soviet Union. Frankly, it was Barbara whom he-when hewas put in the hospital-" "All right," said Trumbull gruffly, "but can't you get Revsof declared incompetent and have the control of the safe transferred to his wife?" "First, that's a complicated thing. Barbara would have to testify to a number of things she doesn't want to testify to. She-she loves the man." Gonzalo said, "I don't want to sound ghoulish, but you said that Revsof was deteriorating. If he dies-2' "Deteriorating mentally, not physically. He's thirty-eight years old and could live forty more years and be mad every day of it." "Eventually, won't his wife be forced to request he be declared incornpetent?" Puntsch said, "But when will that be? -And all this still isn't the problem I want to present. I bad explained to Barbara exactly how I would go about it to protect Matt's priority. I would open the safe and Barbara would initial and date every piece of paper in it. I would photocopy it all and give her a notarized statement to the effect that I had done this and that I acknowledged all that I re, moved to be Revsof's work. The originals and the notarized state- ment would be returned to the safe and I would work with the copies. "You see, she bad told me at the very start that she bad the combination. It was a matter of first overcoming my own feeling that I was betraying a trust, and secondly, overcoming her scruples. I didn't like it but I felt I was serving a higher cause and in the end Barbara agreed. We decided that if Revsof was ever sane enough to come home, be would agree we bad done the right thing. And his priority would be protected." Trumbull said, "I take it you opened the safe, then." "No," said Puntsch, "I didn't. I tried the combination Barbara gave me and it didn't work. The safe is still closed." Halsted said, "You could blow it open." Puntsch said, "I can't bring myself to do that. It's one thing to be given the combination by the man's wife. It's another to-" Halsted shook his head. "I mean, can't Mrs. Revsof ask that it be blown open?" Puntsch said, "I don't think she would ask that. It would mean bringing in outsiders. It would be an act of violence against Revsof, in a way, and- Why doesn't the combination work? That's the problem." Trumbull put his hands on the table and leaned forward. "Dr. Puntsch, are you asking us to answer that question? To tell you how to use the combination you have?" "More or less." "Do you have the combination with you?" "You mean the actual slip of paper that has the combination written upon it? No. Barbara keeps that and I see her point. However, if you want it written down, that's no problem. I remember it well enough." He brought out a little notebook from his inner jacket pocket, tore off a sheet of paper, and wrote rapidly. "There it is[" 2 7 15 Trumbull glanced at it solemnly, then passed the paper to Halsted on his left. It made the rounds and came back to him. Trumbull folded his hands and stared solemnly at the bit of paper. He said, "How do you know this is the combination to the safe?" "Barbara says it is." "Doesn't it seem unlikely to you, Dr. Puntsch, that the man you described would leave the combination lying about? With the combination available, he might as well have an unlocked safe. -This row of symbols may have nothing to do with the safe." Puntsch sighed. "That's not the way of it. It isn't as though the safe ever had anything of intrinsic value in it. There's nothing of great intrinsic value in Revsof's house altogether, or in mine, for that matter. We're not rich and we're not very subject to burglary. Revsof got the safe about five years ago and had it installed because he thought be might keep papers there. He had this fetish about losing priority even then, but it wasn't till recently that it reached the point of paranoia. He did make a note of the combination for his own use so be wouldn't lock himself out. "Barbara came across it one day and asked what it was and he said that it was the combination to his safe. She said, 'Well, don't leave it lying around,' and she put it in a little envelope in one of her own drawers, feeling he might need it someday. He never did, apparently, and I'm sure he must have forgotten all about it. But she didn't forget, and she says she is certain it has never been disturbed." Rubin said, "He might have had the combination changed:' "That would have meant a locksmith in the house. Barbara says she is certain it never happened." Trumbull said, "Is that all there was written on the page? just six numbers and a letter of the alphabet?" That's all." "What about the back of the sheet?" "Nothing." Trumbull said, "You understand, Dr. Puntsch, this isn't a code, and I'm not expert on combination locks. What does the lock look like?" 4'Very ordinary. I'm sure Revsof could not afford a really fancy safe. There's a circle with numbers around it from I to 3o and a knob with a little pointer in the middle. Barbara has seen Matt at the safe and there's no great shakes to it. He turns the knob and pulls it open." "She's never done that herself?" "No. She says she hasn't." "'She can't tell you why the safe doesn't open when you use the combination?" "No, she can't. -And yet it seems straightforward enough. Most of the combination locks I've dealt with-all of them, in fact-have knobs that you turn first in one direction, then in the other, then back in the first direction again. It seems clear to me that, according to the combination, I should turn the 'knob to the right till the pointer is at twelve, then left to twenty-seven, then right again to fifteen." Trumbull said thoughtfully, "I can't see that it could mean anything else either." "But it doesn't work," said Puntsch. "I turned twelve, twentyseven, fifteen a dozen times. I did it carefully, making sure that the little pointer was centered on each line. I tried making extra turns; you know, right to twelve, then left one full turn and then to twentyseven, then right one full turn and then to fifteen. I tried making one full turn in one direction and not in the other. I tried other tricks, jiggling the knob, pressing it. I tried everything." Gonzalo said, grinning, "Did you say 'Open sesarne'?" "It didn't occur to me to do so," said Puntsch, not grinning, "but if it had, I would have tried it. Barbara says she Dever noticed him do anything special, but of course, it could have been something unnoticeable and for that matter she didn't watch him closely. It wouldn't occur to her that she'd have to know someday." Halsted said, "Let me look at. that again." He stared at the combination solemnly. "This is only a copy, Dr. Puntsch. This can't be exactly the way it looked. It seems clear here but you might be copying it just as you thought it was. Isn't it possible that some of the numbers in the original might be equivocal so that you might mistake a seven for a one, for instance?" "No, no," said Puntsch, shaking his -head vigorously. "There's no chance of a mistake there. I assure you." "What about the spaces?" said Halsted. "Was it spaced exactly like that?" Puntsch reached for the paper and looked at it again. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, as a matter of fact, there were no spaces. I put them in because that was how I thought of it. Actually the original is a solid line of symbols with no particular spacing. It doesn't matter, though, does it? You can't divide it any other way. I'll write it down for you without spaces." He wrote a second time under the first and shoved it across the table to Halsted. 12R2715 He said, "You can't divide it any other way. You can't have a 271 or a 715. The numbers don't go higher than thirty." "Well now," muttered Halsted, "never mind the numbers. What about the letter R?" He licked his lips, obviously enjoying the clear atmosphere of suspense that had now centered upon him. "Suppose we divide the combination this way": He held it up for Puntsch to see, and then for the others. "In this division, it's the twenty-seven which would have -the sign for 'right! so it's the two other numbers that turn left. In other words, the numbers are twelve, twenty-severi, and fifteen all right, but you turn left, right, left, instead of right, left, right." Gonzalo protested. "Why put the R there?" Halsted said, ,All he needs is the minimum reminder. He knows what the combination is. if he reminds himself the middle number is right, he knows the other two are left." Gonzalo said, "But that's no big deal. If lie just puts down the three numbers, it's either left, right, left, Or else it's right, left, right. If one doesn't work, he tries the other. Maybe the R stands for some- thing else." ,,I can't think what," said Puntsch gloomily. Halsted said "The symbol couldn't be something other than an R, could it, Dr. Puntsch?" "Absolutely not," said Puntsch. "I'll admit I didn't think of as- sociating the R with the second -number, but that doesiet matter anyway. When the combination wouldn't work right, left, right, I was desperate enough not only to try it left) right, left; but right, right, right and left, left, left. In every case I tried it with and without complete turns in between. Nothing worked." Gonzalo said7 "Why not try all the combinations? There can only be so many. Rubin said, "Figure out how many, Mario. The first number can be anything frorn one to thirty in either direction; so can the second- so can the third. The total number of possible combinations, if any'direction is allowed for any number, is sixty times sixty times sixty, or over two hundred thousand." "I think I'll blow it open before it comes to trying them all," said Puntsch in clear disgust. Trumbull turned to Henry, who had been standing at the side- board, an intent expression on his face. "Have you been following all this, Henry?" Henry said, "Yes, sir, but I haven't actually seen the figures." Trumbull said, "Do you mind , Dr. Puntsch? He's the best man here, actually." He handed over the slip with the three numbers written in three different ways. Henry studied them gravely and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I had had a thought, but I see I'm wrong." "What was the thought?" asked Trumbull. "It had occurred to me that the letter R might have been in the small form. I see it's a capital!P Puntsch looked astonished. "Wait, wait. Henry, does it matter?" "It might, sir. We don't often think it does, but Mr. Halsted explained earlier in the evening that 'polish' becomes 'Polish,' changing pronunciation simply because of a capitalization." Puntsch said slowly, "But, you know, it is a small letter in the original. It never occurred to me to produce it that way. I always use capitals when I print. How odd." There was a faint smile on Henry's face. He said, "Would you write the combination with a small letter, sir.Puntsch, flushing slightly, wrote: Henry looked at it and said, "As long as it is a small r after all, I can ask a further question. Are there any other differences between this and the original?" "No," said Puntscli. Then, defensively, "No significant differences of any kind. The matter of the spacing and the capitalization hasn't changed anything, has it? Of course, the original isn't in my handwriting." Henry said quietly, "Is it in anyone's handwriting, sir?" ", What?" "I mean, is the original typewritten, Dr. Puntsch?" Dr. Puntsch's flush deepened. "Yes, now that you ask, it was typewritten. That doesn't mean anything either. If there were a typewriter here I would typewrite it for you, though, of course, it might not be the same make of typewriter that typed out the original." Henry said, "nere is a typewriter in the office on this floor. Would you care to type it, Dr. Puntsch?" "Certainly," said Puntsch defiantly. He was back in two minutes, during which time not one word was said by anyone at the table. He presented the paper to Henry, with the typewritten series of wbers under the four lines of handwritten ones- I Henry said, "Is this the way it looked now7 The typewriter that did the original did not have a particularly unusual typeface?" "No, it didn't. What I have typed looks just like the original." Henry passed the paper to Trumbull, who looked at it and passed it on. Henry said, "If you open the safe, you are very likely to find nothing of importance, I suppose." "I suppose it too," snapped Puntsch. "I'm almost sure of it. It will be disappointing but much better than standing here wondering." "In that ease, sir," said Henry, "I would like to say that Mr. Rubin spoke of private languages early in the evening. The typewriter has a private language too. The standard typewriter uses the same symbol for the numeral one and the small form of the twelfth letter of the alphabet. "If you bad wanted to abbreviate left' and 'right' by the initial letters in handwriting, there would have been no problem, since neither form of the handwritten letter is confusing. If you had used a typewriter and abbreviated it in capitals it would have been clear. Using small letters, it is possible to read the combination as 12 right, z7, 15; or possibly 12, right 27, 15; or as left 2, right 27, left 5. The i in iz and 15 is not the numeral 1 but the small version of the letter L and stands for left. Revsof knew what he was typing and it didn't confuse him. It could confuse others." Puntsch looked at the symbols opertmouthed. "How did I miss that?" Henry said, "You spoke, earlier, of insights that anyone might make, but that only one actually does. It was Mr. Gonzalo who had the key." "I?" said Gonzalo strenuously. "Mr. Gonzalo wondered why there should be one letter," said Henry, "and it seemed to me be was right. Dr. Revsof would surely indicate the directions for all, or for none. Since one letter was indubitably present, I wondered if the other two might not be also." 4 Afterword 'nis appeared in the September 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's MystM Magazine under the title "All in the Way You Read It." Again I prefer the shorter title, so I return it to my own "The Tbree Numbers." I am sometimes asked where I get my ideas; in fact, I am frequently asked that. 'nere's no big secret. I get them from everything I experience, and you can do it, too, if you're willing to work at it. For instance, I know I've got a possible Black Widower story if I can think of something that can be looked at two or more ways, with only Henry looking at it the right way. So once, when I was sitting at my typewriter, xArisbing I bad an idea for a Black Widower story (because I felt like writing one of them that day rather than working at whatever task was then facing me), I decided to look at the typewriter and see if there was some useful ambiguity I could extract from the keyboard. After some thought, I extracted one and had my story. Nothing Misrder. Emmanuel Rubin looked definitely haggard when be arrived at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers. Whereas ordinarily he gave the clear impression of being a foot taller than the five feet five which literal minds would consider his height to be, be seemed shrunken this time into his natural limits. His thick glasses seemed to magnify less, and even his beard, sparse enough at best, straggled limply. 44you look your age," said the resplendent Mario Gonzalo. "What!s wrong?" "And you look like an overdressed D'Artagnan,' said Rubin with marked lack of snap. "All we Latins are handsome," said Gonzalo. "But, really, whaes ?Py wrong. "I'M short about six hours' sleep' " said Rubin aggrievedly. "A deadline trapped me when I wasn't looking. In fact, the deadline was two days ago." "Did you finish?" Just about. I'll have it in tomorrow." Who done it this time, Manny. "You'll just damn well have to buy the book and find out." He sank down in a chair and said, "Henry!" making a long gesture with thumb and forefinger. Henry, the perennial waiter of the Black Widowers' banquets, obliged at once and Rubin said nothing until about a quarter of the contents had been transferred into his esophagus. Then he said, "Where's everybody?" It was as though he had noticed for the first time that he and Gonzalo were the only two present. "We're early," said Gonzalo, shrugging. "I swear I didn't think I'd make it. You artists don't have deadlines, do you?" "I wish the demand were great enough to make deadlines neces- sary," said Gonzalo grimly. "Sometimes we're driven, but we can be more independent than you word-people. They recognize the demands of creativity in art. It's not something you can back out at the typewriter." "Listen," began Rubin, then thought better of it and said, "I'll get you next time. Remind me to describe your cockamamie crayon scribbles to you." Gonzalo laughed. "Manny, why don't you write a best seller and be done with it? If you're just going to write mystery novels to a limited audience you'll never get rich." Rubin's chin lifted. "think I can't write a best seller? I can do it any time I want to. I've analyzed it. In order to write a best seller you have to hit one of the only two markets big enough to support one. It's either the housewife or the college kids. Sex and scandal get the housewife; pseudo-intellect gets the college kids. I could do either if I wanted to but I am not interested in sex and scandal and I don't want to take the effort to lower my intellect so far as to make it pseudo." "Try, Manny, try. You underestimate the full measure of the incapacity of your intellect. Besides," Gonzalo added hastily to stave off a retort, "don't tell me that it's only the pseudo-intellect that gets through to the college students." "Surel" said Rubin indignantly. "Do you know what goes big with the college crowd? Chariots of the Gods?, which is sheer nonsense. I'd call it science fiction except that it's not that good. Or The Greening of America, which was a fad book-one month they were all reading it because it's the 'in' thing to do, the next month it's out." "What about Vonnegut's books? What about Future Shock, Manny? I heard you say you liked Future Shock." "So-so," said Rubin. He closed his eyes and took another sip. Gonzalo said, "Even Henry doesn't take you seriously. Look at him grinning." Henry was setting the table. "Merely a smile of pleasure, Mr. Gonzalo," he said, and indeed his smooth and sixtyish fam-ndiated exactly that emotion. '"Mr. Rubin has recommended a number of books that have been college favorites and I have read them with pleasure usually. I suspect he likes more books than he will admit." Rubin ignored Henry's remark and brought his weary eyes to bear on Gonzalo. "Besides, what do you mean, 'even Henry'? He reads a hell of a lot more books than you do." "Maybe, but he doesn't read your books." "Henry!" cried Rubin. Henry said, "I have bought and read several of Mr. Rubin's mysterics." Gonzalo said, "And what do you think of them? Tell the truth. I'll protect you.)) 411 enjoy them. They are very good of their kind. Of course, I lack a sense of the dramatic and, once the dramatic is discounted, it is possible to see the solution-where the author allows it." At that moment the others began to arrive and Henry was busied with the drinks. It had been a very long time since the Black Widowers bad had a foreigner as guest and Drake, who was host, basked in the glory of it and smiled quietly through the wreathed smoke from his eternal cigarette. Moreover, the guest was a Russian, a real Russian from the Soviet Union, and Geoffrey Avalon, who had studied Russian during World War 11, had the chance to use what he could remember. Avalon, standing tall and speaking with a severe and steady syllable-by-syllable stress, sounded as lawyer-like as though he were addressing a Russian jury. The Russian, whose name was Grigori Deryashkin, seemed pleased and answered in slow, distinct phrases until Avalon ran down. Deryashkin was a stocky man in a loose-fitting gray suit, a white shirt, and dark tie. He had blunt features, large teeth, an easy smile, and English that consisted of ar, adequate vocabulary, an uncertain grammaT, and a marked but by no means unpleasant accent. "Where'd you get him?" asked Thomas Trumbull of Drake in a low voice as Deryasbkin turned away momentarily from Avalon to take a large vodka on the rocks from Henry. "He's a science writer," said Drake. "He came to visit the laboratory to get some details on our work on hormonal insecticides. We got to talking and it occurred to me that be might enjoy hobnobbing with some filthy capitalists." That Deryasbkin enjoyed the meal was certain. He ate with huge gusto, and Henry, having caught the spirit of hands across the seaor perhaps to show off America at its most munificent-casually, and with the smooth unnoticeability that was his professional characteristic, brought him seconds of everything. Roger Halsted watched that process wistfully but said nothing. Ordinarily, second helpings were frowned upon at the Black Widowers' banquets on the theory that a swinishly crammed stomach detracted from the brilliance of the postprandial conversation and Halsted, who taught mathematics at a junior high school and who often felt the need of caloric support in consequence, most definitely disagreed with that. "From what part of the Soviet Union do you come, Mr. Deryashkin?" asked Trumbull. "From Tula, hundred-ninety kilometers south of Moscow. You have heard of Tula?" There was a moment of silence and then Avalon said magisterially, "It played a role, I belive, in the Hitlerian War." "Yes, yes." Deryashkin seemed gratified. "In the late fall of 1941 the drive for Moscow reached out claws to the north and to the south. The advanced German forces reached Tula. In the cold and the snow we held them; they did not take Tula. They never took Tula. We called out the home guard then: boys, old men. I was sixteen years old and carried a rifle made in our own factory. We make best samovars in Russia, too; Tula is notable in war and peace. Later in the way, I was with artillery. I reached Leipzig, but not Berlin. -We were friends then, Soviet Union and America. May we stay friends." He lifted his glass. There was a murmur of agreement and Deryashkin's good humor was further strengthened by the dessert. "What is this?" he asked, pointing with his fork, after his first mouthful. "Pecan pie," said Drake. "Very good. Very rich." Henry bad a second piece of pie on the table for Deryasbkin almost as soon as the first had been devoured, and then, having noted Halsted's eyes following the progress of that piece, quietly placed a similar second helping before him as well. Halsted looked in either direction, found himself studiously ignored, and fell to cheerfully. Trumbull leaned toward Drake and whispered, "Does your guest know the system of grilling?" Drake whispered, "I tried to explain but I'm not sure be really got it Anyway, let's not ask him the usual opener about bow be justifies his existence. He may consider that an anti-Soviet remark." Trumbull's tanned face crinkled into a silent snarl. Then he said, "Well, it's your baby. Get it started." Henry was quietly filling the small brandy glasses when Drake coughed, stubbed out his cigarette, and tapped his water glass with his fork. "It's time," he said, "to deal with our guest from abroad, and I suggest that Manny, who has been suspiciously silent throughout the meal, undertake the-" Deryashkin was leaning back in his chair, his jacket unbuttoned, his tie loosened. He said, "We come to the conversation now, and I suggest, with the permission of the company, that we talk about your great city of New York. I have been here for two weeks now, and I Will say it is a city of the damned." He smiled into the vacuum the remark had created and nodded his head jovially. "A city of the damned," he said again. Trumbull said, "You're talking about Wall Street, I suppose-that nest of imperialist bloodsuckers?" (Drake kicked his shin.) But Deryashkin shook his 'head and shrugged. "Wall Street? I haven't been there and it is of no interest. Considering condition of your dollar, I doubt Wall Street has much power these days. Besides, We are friends and I have no wish to speak phrases such as imperialist bloodsuckers. That is part of the newspaper clich6 like 'dirty Commic rat.' Is that not so?" "All right," said Rubin. "Let's not use ugly words. Let's just use nice words like city of the damned. Why is New York a city of the damned?" "It is a city of terror! You have crime everywhere. You live in fear. You do not walk the streets. Your parks are power vacuums in which only hoodlums and hooligans can stroll. You cower behind locked doors." Avalon said, "I suppose that New York shares the problems that beset all large and crowded cities these days, including, I am sure, the large cities of the Soviet Union. Still, these problems are not as bad as painted." Deryashkin lifted both arms. "Do not misunderstand. You are my excellent hosts and I have no wish to offend. I recognize the condition to be widespread, but in a city like New York, gorgeous in many ways, very advanced and wealthy in many places, it seems wrong, ironic, that there should be so much fear. Murders openly planned in the streets! Actual war of one segment of the population with another!" Rubin broke in with his beard bristling combatively for the first time that evening. "I don't want to offend any more than you do, Comrade, but I think you've g7ot a bad case of believing your own Propaganda. There's crime, yes, but for the most part the city is peaceful and well off. Have you been mugged, sir? Have you been molested in any way. Deryashkin shook his head. "So far, not. I will be honest. So far I have been treated with all possible courtesy; not least, here. I thank you. For the most part, though, I have been in affluent sections. I have not been where your troubles are." Rubin said, "'Den bow do you know there are troubles except for what you read and bear in urifriendly media?" "Ah," said Deryashkin, "but I did venture into paTk-near, the river. There I hear a murder planned. This is not what I read in any newspaper or what I am told by any enemy or ill-wisber of your country. It is the truth. I hear it." Rubin, his glasses seeming to concentrate the fury in his eyes into an incandescent glare, pointed a somewhat trembling finger and said, "Look-" But Avalon was on his feet and, from his better than six feet, be easily dominated the table. "Gentlemen," he said in his commanding baritone, "let's stop right here. I have a suggestion to make. Our guest, Tovarisch Deryashkin, seems to think be has heard murder planned openly in the streets. I confess I don't understand what he means by that, but I would suggest we invite him to tell us in detail what he heard and under what circumstances. After all, he could be right and it could be an interesting story." Drake nodded his head vigorously. "I take host's privilege and direct that Mr. Deryashkin tell us the story of the planned murder from the beginning and, Manny, you let him tell it." Deryashkin said, "I will be glad to tell the story as accurately as I can, for what it is. There are not many details, but that it involves murder there can be no doubt. -Perhaps before I start, more brandy. -Thank you, my friend," be said amiably to Henry. Deryasbkin sipped at his brandy and said, "It happened late this morning. Zelykov and I-Zelykov is colleague, brilliant man in biology and genetics, held down a bit in day of Lysenko, but excellent. He does not speak English well and I act to interpret for him. Zelykov and I were at the Biology Department at Columbia University for a couple of hours this morning. "When we left, we were not certain how to follow up the leads we had received. We were not entirely sure about significance of what we have heard or what we should next do. We went down toward the river-Hudson River, which is very polluted, I understand-and we looked across to other shore, which is very pretty from distance, but commercialized, I am told, and at highway, which is in between, and not so pretty. "It was a nice day. Quite cold, but cold days do not frighten a Russian from Tula. We sit and talk in Russian and it is a pleasure to do so. Zelykov has only a few words of English and even for me it is a strain to talk English constantly. It is a great language; I would not be offensive; the language of Shakespeare and your own Mark Twain and Jack London, and I enjoy it. But"-be cocked his head to one side and thrust out his lips-"it is a strain, and it is pleasant to speak one's native language and be fluent. "But I mention that we are speaking Russian only because it plays a part in the Story. You see, two Young men, who don' t look like hooligans, approach. They have short hair, they are shaved, they look well to do. I am not really paying attention at first. I am aware they are coming but I am interested in what I am saying and I am not Te- ally clear that they are going to speak to us till they do. I don't re- member exactly what they say, but it was like, 'Do you mind if we sit?' "Naturally, I don't mind. There is two halves to the bench, with a metal dividing in the middle. On each half is more than enough for two people. Zelykov and 1, we are in one half; these two young men can be in the other half. I say, 'Be our guests. You are welcome. Sit down and relax.' Something like that. "But-and this is the important thing-I have just been speaking Russian to Zelykov, so when the young men asked the question I an- swered, v6tbout thinking, still in Russian. I would have corrected this, but they sat down at once and did not pay more attention to us, so I thought, Well, it is done and what more is necessary to say? "You see, however"-and here he paused, and tapped his nose with his forefinger--'The significance of this?" Rubin said at once, "No. I don't." "They thought we were f0TCignCTs.'1' "And so you are," said Rubin. "Ah," said Deryashkin, "but foreigners who could not speak English." Trumbull interposed, "And how does that matter, Mr. Deryashkin?" Deryasbkin transferred his forefinger to the palm of his left hand, marking each emphasis. "If they think we speak English, they take another bench; but since they say to themselves, 'Aha, we have here foreigners who will not understand us,' they sit right down next to us and talk freely, and of course I listen. I talk to Zelykov, but I listen, yy too. Halsted, staring at his empty brandy glass, said, "Why did you lis- . . ?Y ten? Did they seem suspicious. "To me, yes," said Deryashkin. "They are students, since we are near Columbia University and they carry books. I 'know, of course, that the American student body is very activist and, in some cases, destructive." Rubin interrupted hotly, "Three years ago. Not now," "Of course," said Deryashkin genially, "You defend. I do not criticize. I understand that many students were motivated by hostility to war, and this I understand. Any humane idealist would be in favor of peace. Yet it is undeniable that under cover of idealism there are undesirable elements too. Besides, we are sitting in a park. It is empty and there is Dot someone we can count on for help if the students are armed and hostile. Also, it is well known that in New York bystanders do not interfere when a criminal action is taking place. "I do not actually think we are in immediate danger, but it would be foolhardy to let attention wander. I keep aware of the hooligans and, without looking at them, I listen a bit." Rubin said, "Why do you call them hooligans? They haven't done anything so far except to take a seat; and they asked permission politely before they did that much." "The politeness," said Deryasbkin, "cannot be given too much credit. That was only to check what it was we were. And I call them hooligans because that is what they were. What they were talking about was a plan for murder." There was a distinct air of incredulity about the table as Deryashkin paused at this point for effect. Finally Avalon asked, "Are you sure of that Mr. Deryashkin?" "Quite sure. They used the word 'murder.' They used it several times. I did not hear all that they said clearly. They were talking in low voices-a natural precaution. I was also talking, as was Zelvkov." Rubin leaned back in his chair. "So you caught only scraps 4 conversation. You can't be sure there was anything wrong with it.' "I beard the word 'murder,' Mr. Rubin," said Deryasbkin seriously. "I heard it several times. You know English better than I do, I'm sure, but you tell me if there is any word in the English language that is like 'murder.' If they say 'mother' I can hear the difference. I can pronounce the English th and I can hear it, so I do not put a d where it does not belong. I hear the initial letter m clearly, so it is not-ub-girder, let us say, which I think is word for steel beams in building construction. I hear 'murder.' What else does one talk about but killing if one speaks of murder?" Gonzalo said, "They could be using the word in a colloquial expression. If they were discussing an upcoming football game-with another college, they could say, 'We'll murder the burnsi"' Deryasbkin said, "They are talking too seriously for that my dear sir. It is not a football game they discuss. It is low tones, serious, very serious, and there is also to be taken into account what else they said." "Well, what else did they say?" asked Trumbull. "There was something about lying in the shadows which is something you don't do for football games. They would he in the shadows waiting to trap someone, catch them by Surprise, murder Py them. "Did they say all that?" demanded Rubin. i4No, no. This is my interpretation." Deryashkin frowned. "They also said something about tying them up. 'Tie them up in the dark.' That they did say. I remember distinctly. There was also talk about a signal." "Anat signal?" asked Avalon. "A ring of a bell. That I heard too. it is, I think, a well-organized conspiracy. They will lie in wait at night; there will be a signal when the right person is there or when the coast is clear; one ring of some kind; then they tie up the victim or victims and murder them. "There is no question about this in my inind'" Dervashkin coutinued. "One hooligan is doing, all the talking at first-as though he is reciting the plan-and when he is finished the other one says, 'Right! You have it perfect! We'll go over some of the other things, but you It make it. ' And he warned him against talking." "Against talking?" said Rubin. "Several times it was mentioned. About talking. By both of them. Very seriously." Rubin said, "You mean they sat down next to two strangers, talked their heads off, and warned each other against talking?" Deryashkin said rather tightly, I said several times they assumed we could not speak English." Trumbull said, "Look, Manny, let's not make a fight out of this. Maybe Mr. Deryashkin has something here. There are radical splinter groups among the student bodies of America. There have been 7P buildings blown up. "nere have been no cold-blooded murders planned and carried out" said Rubin. 941\lways a first time for everything," said Avalon, frowning, and clearly concerned. -ryashkin, did you do anything?" Trumbull said "Well Mr. De "Do anytbing" Derysbkin looked puzzled. "To hold them, you mean? It was not so easy. I am listening, trying to understand, learn as much as possible, without showing that I am listening. If they see I am listening, they will see we understand and will stop talking. We might even be in danger. So I don't look at them while I am listening and suddenly it is silent and they are walking away." "You didn't go after them?" asked Drake. Deryashkin shook his head emphatically. "'If they are hooligans, they are armed. It is well known that handguns are sold freely in America and that it is very common for young people to carry arms. They are young and look strong, and I am myself nearly fifty and am a man of peace. A war veteran, but a man of peace. As for Zelykov, be has a bad cbest and on him I cannot count If the hooligans leave, let them leave." "Did you report anything to the police?" asked Halsted. "l? Of what use? What evidence have I? What can I say? I see right now that you are all skeptical and you are intelligent men who know my position and see that I am a man of responsibility a scientific man. Yet you are skeptical. What would the policeman know but that I have beard these scattered things? And I am a Soviet citizen. Is it possible a policeman would accept the word of a Russian foreigner against American young men? And I would not wish to be involved in what could become a large scandal that would affect my career and perhaps embarrass my country. So I say bothing. I do nothing. Can you suggest something to say or do?" "Well, no," said Avalon deliberately, "but if we wake up one of these mornings and discover that murder has been done and that some group of college students are responsible, we would not exactly feel well. I would not." "Nor I," said Trumbull, "but I see Mr. Deryashkin's position. On the basis of what he's told us, be would certainly have a hard time interesting a bard-boiled police sergeant. -Unless we bad some bard evidence. Have you any idea what the students looked like, Mr. Deryasbkin?" "Not at all. I saw them for a moment as they approached. After that I did not look at them, merely listened. When they left, it was only their backs I saw. I noticed nothing unusual." "You could not possibly identify them, then?" "Under no conditions. I have thought about it. I said to myself, if the school authorities were to show me pictures of every young man who attended Columbia University, I could not tell which were the two who had sat on the bench." "Did you notice their clothes?" asked Gonzalo. "It was cold, so they wear coats," said Deryashkin. "Gray coats, I think. I did not really notice." "Gray coats," muttered Rubin. "Did they wear anything unusual?" said Gonzalo. 'Tunny hats, mittens, checked scarves?" "Are you going to identify them that way?" said Rubin. "You inean you're thinking of going to the police and they'll say, 'That must be Mittens Garfinkel, well-known hooligan. Always wears mittens.'Pt Gonzalo said patiently, "Any information-" But Deryashkin interposed. "Please, g ntlemen, I noticed nothi Ing of that kind. I cannot give any help in clothing." Halsted said, "How about your companion, Mr.-uh--2' "Zelykov! "How about Mr. Zelvkov?" Halsted's soft voice seemed thoughtful. "If he noticed anything--2' "No, he never looked at them. He was discussing genes and DNA. He didn't even know they were there." Halsted placed his palm delicately on his high forehead and brushed back at non-existent hair. He said, "You can't be sure, can you? Is there any way you can call him Lip right now and ask?" "It would be useless," protested Deryashkin. "I'know. Believe me. 'an you imagine the When they left I said to him 7 in Russian, 'C criminality of those hooligans? and be said, 'What hooligans?' I said 'Those that are leaving! And he shrugged and did not look but kept' on talking. It was getting cold even for us and we left. He knows nothing." "That's very frustrating," said Halsted. "Hell," said Rubin. "There's nothing to this at all. I don't believe it." "You mean I am lying?" said Deryashkin, frowning. "No," said Rubin. "I mean It's a misinterpretation. What you heard can't involve murder." Deryashkin, still frowning, said, "Do all you gentlemen believe that what I heard can't involve murder?" Avalon, keeping his eyes on the tablecloth in some embarrassment, said, "I can't really say I am certain that a murder is being planned, but I think we ought to act as though a murder is being planned. If we are wrong we have done nothing wcrse than make fools of our- selves. If we are right we might save one or more lives. Do the rest of you agree with that?" 'Mere was an uncertain murmur that seemed to be agreement, but Rubin clenched a hostile fist and said, "What the devil do you mean by acting, Jeff? What are we supposed to do?" Avalon said, "We might go to the police. It might be difficult for Mr. Deryashkin to get a hearing; but if one of us-or more-back him--2' "How would that help?" said Rubin sardonically. "if there were fifty million of us introducing our friend here, the evidence would still boil down to the uncertain memory of one man who recalls a few scraps of conversation and who cannot identify the speakers." "In that," said Deryashkin, "Mr. Rubin is right. Besides, I will not take part. It is your city, your country, and I will not interfere. Noth- ing could be done in any me, and when the murder takes place it will be too bad, but it cannot be helped." "Nothing will happen," said Rubin. "No?" said Deryasbkin. "How then can you explain what I beard? If all else is ignored, there is yet the word 'murder.' I beard it clearly more than once and it is a word that cannot be mistaken. In the English language there is nothing like 'murder' that I could have taken for that word. And surely if people speak of murder there must be murder in the wind. You are, I think, the only one here, Mr. Rubin, who doubts it." There was a soft cough from one end of the table. Henry, who bad cleared away the coffee cups, said apologetically, "Not the only one, Mr. Deryashkin. I doubt it too. In fact, I am quite certain thai what the young men said was harmless." Deryashkin turned in his seat. He looked surprised. He said, "Comrade Waiter, if you-" ' Trumbull said hastily, "Henry is a member of the Black Widowers. Henry, bow can you be certain?" Henry said, "If Mr. Deryashkin will kindly consent to answer a few questions, I think we will all be certain." Deryashkin nodded his head vigorously and spread out his arms. "Ask! I will answer." Henry said, "Mr. Deryashkin, I believe you said that the park was empty and that no one was in sight to help if the young men proved violent. Did I understand correctly? Were the other benches in the park area unoccupied?" "Tbose we could see were empty," said Deryashkin readily. "Today was not a pleasant day for park-sitting." "nen why do you suppose the young men came to your bench, the only one which was occupied?" Deryashkin laughed briefly and said, "No mystery, my friend. The day was cold and our bench was the only one in the sun. It was why we picked it ourselves." "But if they were going to discuss murder, surely they woda prefer a bench to themselves even if it meant being a little on the cold side." "You forget. They thought we were foreigners who could not speak or understand English. The bench was empty in a way." Henry shook his head. "That does not make sense. They approached you and asked to sit down before you spoke Russian. They had no reason to think you couldn't understand English at the time they approached." Deryashkin said testily, ',They might have heard us talking Russian from a distance and checked it out." you spoke Russian? "And sat down almost at once, as Soon as They didn't test you any further? They didn't ask if you understood English? With murder in the wind, they were satisfied with a small Russian comment from You, guessed they would be safe, and sat down to discuss Openly a hideous crime? Surely if they Were conspirators they would have stayed as far away fromyou as possible in the first place, and even if they were irresistibly attracted to the sun, they would have put you through a much more cautious testing process. The logical interpretation of the, events, at least to me, would seem to be that whatever they had to discuss was quite harmless, that they wanted a bench in the sun, and that they did not at all care whether they were overheard or not!y "And the word 'niurder'?" said Deryashkin with heavy sarcasm. "That, too, then, must be quite, quite harmless." "It is the use of the word 'murder,"' said Henry, "that convinces me that the entire conversation was harmless, Sir. It seems to me, surely, that no one would use the word 'murder' in connection with their own activities; only with those of others. If you yourself are going, to murder, you speak of it as 'rubbing him out,' 'taking him for a ride,' 'getting rid of him,' or if you'll excuse the expression, sir, 'liquidating him.' You might even say "killing him' but surely no one would casually speak of murdering someone. It is too ugly a word; it demands euphemism." "Yet they said it, Mr. Waiter,yp said Deryashkin. "Talk as you will, you won't argue me out of having heard that word clearly more than once. flicy did not say what you heard, perhaps." "And how is that possible, my friend? Eh?" Henry said, "Even with the best will in the world and with the most rigid honesty, Mr. Deryashkin, one can make mistakes in inteTpreting what one hears, especially-please excuse me-if the language is not native to you. For instance, you say the expression 'tie them up' was used. Might it not be that you heard them say 'bind them' and that you interpreted that as 'tie them up Deryasbkin seemed taken aback. He thought about it for a while. He said, "I cannot swear I did not hear them say 'bind them! Since you mention it, I begin to imagine perhaps I beard it. But does it matter? 'Bind them , means 'tie them up.'" "The meaning is approximately the same but the words are different. And if it is 'bind them' I know what it is you must have heard if all the scraps you report are put together. Mr. Rubin knows too-better than I do, I believe-though be may not quite realize it at the moment. I think it is bis sub-realization that has made him so resistant to the notion of Mr. Deryashkin having overheard an actual conspiracy." Rubin sat up in his seat, blinking. "What do I know, Henry?" Deryasbkin said, "You have to explain 'murder.' Nothing counts if you do not explain 'murder."' Henry said, "I am not a linguist myself, Mr. Deryashkin, but I once heard it said that it is the vowels of a foreign language that are hardest to learn and that what is called a 'foreign accent' is mostly a mispronunciation of vowels. You might therefore not be able to distinguish a difference in vowels and, even with all the consonants unchanged, what you beard as 'murder' might really have, been 'Mordor."' And at that Rubin threw up both hands and said, "Oh, my God." "Exactly, sir," said Henry. "Early in the evening, I recall a discusSion between yourself and Mr. Gonzalo concerning books that are popular with college students. One of them, surely, was The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien." "Tolkien?" said Deryasbkin, mystified, and stumbling over the word. Henry said, "He was an English writer of fantasy who died very recently. I am quite sure that college students form Tolkien societies. That would account for the references to 'talking' that you mentioned, Mr. Deryashkin, as part of the conversation of the young men. They were not exhorting each other to keep quiet but were speaking of the Tolkien Society that I imagine one of them wished to join. "In order to join, it might be that the candidate must first memorize the short poem that is the theme of the entire trilogy. If the young man were indeed reciting the poem, which twice mentions 'the Land of Mordor,' then I believe every scrap of conversation you heard could be accounted for. Mr. Rubin recommended the trilogy to me once and I enjoyed it immensely. I cannot renwwaber the poem word for word, but I suspect Mr. Rubin does." "Do P" said Rubin explosively. He rose to his feet, placed one band on his cbest, threw the other up to the ceiling, and declaimed grandiloquently: Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky, Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone, Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die, One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie. Henry nodded. "You see that it includes not only the word Mr. Deryashkin interpreted as 'murder' but also reference to the 'one ring,' to 'lying in the shadows,' to 'tying them up in the dark."' There was silence for a while. Then Deryashkin said, "You are right. Now that I hear the poem, I must admit that this is what I heard this morning. Quite right. -But how could you know, waiter?" Henry smiled. "I lack a sense of the dramatic, Mr. Deryashkin. You felt New York to be a jungle, so you beard jungle sounds. For myself, I prefer to suppose college students would sound like college students." 5 Afterword J. R. R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973. 1 was in Toronto at the time attending the 31st World Science Fiction Convention and was deeply moved at the news. -And yet on the very day I learned of his death, I won the Hugo for my science fiction novel The Gods Themselves and I couldn't help being happy. Having read Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings three times at the time of his death (and I've read it a fourth time since) and having enjoyed it more each time, I felt that the only way I could make up for having been happy on that sad (lay was to write a story in mem- ory of him. So I wrote "Nothing Like Murder." Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine decided, however, not to use it. The feeling was that the readers would not be well enough acquainted with Tolkien to be able to appreciate the story. So, after some hesitation, I sent it to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, for which I write a monthly science column. Rather to my surprise (for the story is neither fantasy nor science fiction), Ed Ferman, the editor of F 6 SF, accepted it, and it appeared in the October 1974 issue Of the magazine. I then waited for angry letters from science fiction fans, but all I got was a number of very pleased comments from readers who were delighted that I was an admirer of Tolkien. So it all worked out well. V1 No Smoking James Drake was by no means the only smoker among the small membership of the Black Widowers, but he certainly made the greatest single contribution to the pall that commonly hovered over the monthly banquets of thataugust body. It was perhaps for that reason that the dour-faced Thomas Trumbull, arriving toward the end of the cocktail hour, as he usually did, and having un-parched himself with a scotch and soda that bad been handed him deftly and without delay by the invaluable Henry, hunched his lapel ostentatiously in Drake's direction. "What's that?" asked Drake, squinting through the smoke of his cigarette. "Why the bell don't you read it and find out?" said Trumbull with somewhat more than his usual savagery. "If the nicotine has left you any eyesight with which to read, that is." Trumbull's lapel bore a button which read: "Thank you for not smoking." Drake, having peered at it thoughtfully, puffed a mouthful of smoke in its direction and said, "You're welcome. Always glad to oblige." Trumbull said, "By God, I'm a member of the most oppressed minority in the world. The non-smoker has no rights any smokpi feels bound to observe. Good Lord, don't I have any claim to '4 measure of reasonably clean and unpolluted air?" Emmanuel Rubin drifted toward them. His sparse and straggly beard lifted upward-a sure sign that be was about to pontificateand his eyes blinked owlishly behind the magnifying thickness of his glasses. "If you live in New York," be said, "you inhale, in automobile exhaust, the equivalent of two packs of cigarettes a day, so what's the difference?" And he ostentatiously lit a cigarette. "All the more reason why I don't want any more on top of the ex- haust I breathe," said Trumbull, scowling. "Don't tell me," said Drake in his softly hoarse voice, "that you believe this hogwash that-2' "Yes, I believe it," snapped Trumbull. "If you want to risk heart attacks, emphysenia, and lung cancer, that's your business, and I wish you joy of any or all of them. I wouldn't interfere with your pleasure for the world if you want to do it off in a closed room somewhere. But why the bell should I breathe your foul smoke and run the risk of disease so that you might have your perverse pleasurel He broke off since Drake, who was visibly attempting not to, had one of his not too infrequent coughing spells. Trumbull looked pleased. "Happy coughing," he said. "When's the last time you could breathe freely?" Roger Halsted, who occasionally smoked but was not doing so at the moment, said, with the mild stutter with which be was some- times afflicted, "Why are you so upset, Tom? What makes this meeting different from any other?" "Nothing at all, but I've had enough.I've overflowed. Every time I come home after an evening with you smoldering garbage piles, my clothes smell and I have to burn them." 4"vN7hat I think," said Drake, "is that be found that button when he was reaching into a subway trash can for a newspaper, and it's made a missionary out of him." "I feel like a missionary," said Trumbull. "I would like to push a law through Congress that would place tobacco in the same category with marijuana and hashish. By God, the evidence for the physiological damage caused by tobacco is infinitely stronger than for any daynage caused by marijuana." Geoffrey Avalon, always sensitive to any reference to his own profession of law, stared down austerely from his seventy-four inches and said, "I would not advise another law legislating morality. Some of the finest men in history have tried to reform the world by passing laws against bad habits, and there is no record of any of them working. I'm old enough to remember Prohibition in this country." Trumbull said, "You smoke a pipe. You're an interested party. Am I the only non-smoker here?" "I don't smoke," said Mario Gonzalo, raising his voice. He was in another corner, -talking to the guest. "All right then," said Trumbull. "Coyne here, Mario. You're host for the evening. Set up a no-smo ng rule." "Out of order. Out of order," said Rubin heatedly. "'Me host can only legislate on Black Widower procedures, not on private morality. He can't order the members to take off their clothes, or to stand on their heads and whistle 'Dixie,' or to stop smoking-or to start smoking, for that matter." "It could be done," said Halsted gently, "if the host proposed the measure and put it to -a vote, but the smokers are four to two against you, Tom." "Wait awbile," said Trumbull. "There's Henry. He's a member. What do you say, Henry?" Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers' banquets, bad nearly completed setting the table. Now he lifted his smooth and unwrinkled face which, as always, belied the fact that he was a sexagenarian, and said, "I do not myself smoke and would welcome a ban on smoking, but I do not demand it." "Even if he did," said Rubin, "it would be four to three, still a majority on the side of vice." "How about the guest?" said Trumbull doggedly, "Mr.-" "Hilary Evans," said Avalofi severely. He made it his business never to forget a guest's name, at least for the evening of the dinner. Trumbull said, "Where do you stand, Mr. Evans?" Hilary Evans was short and tubby, with cbeeks that were plump, pink, and smooth. His mouth was small and his eyes were quickmoving behind the lightly tinted lenses of his metal-rimmed spectacles. His hair, surprisingly dark in view of the lightness of his complexion, lay back smoothly. He might have been in his middle forties. He said in a tenor voice, "I smoke occasionally and do not often mind if others do, but I have current reasons for sympathy with you, sir. Smoking has been the occasion for misery for me." Trumbull, one eye nearly closing as he lifted the side of his mouth in a snarl, looked as though he would have pressed the matter furtber' but Rubin said at once, "Five to three. Issue settled," and Henry imperturbably announced that the dinner was served. Trumbull scrambled to get the seat next to Gonzalo, the other non-smoker, and asked him in an undertone, "Who is this ,F.Vans?" Gonzalo said, "He's personnel manager for a firm in whose advertising campaign I was involved. He interviewed me and, even though he's rather a queer guy, we got along. I thought he might be interesting." "I hope so," said Trumbull, "though I don't think much of a guy who votes with the enemy even though be sympathizes with me." Gonzalo said, "You don't know the details." "I intend to find out," said Trumbull grimly. The dinner conversation had trouble getting off the subject of to- bacco. Avalon, who had reduced his second drink to the usual halfway mark and had then left it severely alone, remarked that cigarette smoking was the only new vice introduced by modem man. "How about LSD and the mind-expanding drugs?" said Gonzalo at once and Avalon, having thought about that for a moment, owned defeat. Rubin loudly demanded the definition of "vice." He said, "Anything you don't like is a vice. If you approve of it, it isn't. Many a temperance crusader was addicted to food as viciously as anyone could be addicted to drink." And Rubin, who was thin, pushed his soup away half eaten, with a look of ostentatious virtue. Halsted, who was not thin, muttered, "Not many calories in clear turtle soup." Trumbull said, "Listen, I don't care what you do, or whether it's a vice or a virtue, as long as you keep it to yourself and to those you practice it with. If you drink whisky and I don't want to, no alcohol gets into my blood; if you want to pick up a dame, there's no risk of my picking up anything that goes along with that. But when you drag at a cigarette I smell the smoke, I get it in my lungs, I run the risk of cancer." "Quite right," said Evans suddenly. "Filthy habit," and be glanced quickly at Drake, who was sitting next to him and who shifted his cigarette to his other hand, the one farther from Evans. Avalon cleared his throat. "Gentlemen, there are no strictures against tobacco that can be considered new. Over three and a half centuries ago James I of England wrote a book called Counterblaste to Tobacco in which be rehearsed every point that Tom could make, allowing for gains in scientific knowledge since then-" "And you know what kind of a person James I was?" said Rubin with a snort. "Filthy and stupid." "Not really stupid," said Avalon. "Henry TV of France called him the'wisest fool in Christendom' but that merely indicated he lacked judgment rather than learning." "I call that stupid," said Rubin. "If lacking judgment were the criterion, few of us would escape," said Avalon. "You'd be first in line, Manny," said Trumbull, and then allowed his expression to soften as Henry placed a generous sliver of pecan pie, laden with ice cream, before him. Trumbull approved of pecan pie as be approved of few things. Over the last of the coffee Gonzalo said, "Centlemenl Gentlemeni I think it's time to leave the general for the specific. Our guest is now the subject and, Tom, are you willing-" Trumbull said with alacrity, "I am not only willing to take over the grilling, I insist on it. Let's have quiet. -Henry, you can bring the brandy at your convenience. -Mr. Evans, it is the custom of this organization to ask a guest, as our first question, how he justifies his existence. In this case, I will tell you how you may justify your existence as far as I am concerned. Please tell me why it is you have current reason to sympathize with my view on smoking, though you smoke yourself on occasions. Have you been cheated by the tobacco industry?" Evans shook his head and smiled briefly. "It has nothing to do with the tobacco industry. I wish it had. I work for an investment firm and my reasons have to do with my activities there." "In what way?" Evans looked rather gloomy. "That," he said, "would be difficult to explain adequately. I might say that a matter of smoking has rather spoiled a hitherto perfect record of mine in the Sherlock Holmes way. But," and here he sighed, "I'd rather not talk about it, to be perfectly honest." "Sherlock Holmes?" said Gonzalo delightedly. "Henry, if-" Trumbull waved an imperious arm. "Shut up, Mario. I think, Mr. Evans, that the price of the meal is an honest attempt on your part to explain exactly what you mean. We have time and we will listen." Evans sighed again. He adjusted his glasses and said, "Mr. Gonzalo, in inviting me, you told me I would be grilled. I must confess I did not think the sore spot would be probed at the very start." Trumbull said, "Sir, I merely followed up your own remark. You have no one to blame but yourself for making it. Please do not spoil our game., Gonzalo said, "It's all right, Mr. Evans. I told you that nothing said in this room is ever repeated outside." "Never!" saidTrumbull emphatically. Evans said, "Not that there is anything in the least crinUal or unethical about what happened to me. It is merely thatT will be forced to-deflate myself. I imagine I could easily be made fun of if it were to become general knowledge that-" "It will not get about," said Trumbull and, anticipating the other's next remark out of weary experience, went on ' "Nor will our esteemed waiter be a problem to you. Of us all, Henry is the most trustworthy." Evans cleared his throat and held his brandy glass between thumb and forefinger. "The point is that I am personnel manager. It is my job to help decide on whether this one or that one is to be hired, fired, promoted, or left behind. Sometimes I turn out to be the Court of last resort, for I have proven myself to be expert at the job. -You see, since I have been assured of the confidentiality of what I say, I can afford to praise myself." "Tell the truth even if it be self-praise," said Trumbull. "In what way have you proved yourself to be expert?" "In hiring a man to a sensitive position," said Evans, "and many of our positions are extremely sensitive since we routinely handle very large sums of money, we, of course, rely on all sorts of reference data which the applicant, whether coming from outside or facing promotion from inside, may be unaware of. We know much about his background, his character, his personality, his experience. "Yet that, you see, is often not enough. To know that a person has done well in a certain position is no certain augury that he will do well in another more responsible position, or one that is merely different. To know that he has done well in the past does not tell us what strains he is under that might cause him to do ill in the future. We may not know to what extent he dissimulates. The human mind is a mystery, gentlemen. "It may happen, then, that on certain occasions there is left room for doubt, despite all the information we have, and it is then that the judgment is left up to me. For many years my judgments have been justified by subsequent experience with those I have chosen for one position or another, and in many cases by indirect experience with those I have turned away. At least this has been so until-" Evans removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes as though aware that an inner sight had failed him. "My superiors are kind enough to say that one mistake in twenty-tbree years is excusable, but it doesn't help. I shall not be trusted in future as I have been before. And rightly so, for I acted too soon, and on the basis of a prejudice." Gonzalo, who was putting the final touches on the sketch of the guest, and making him look preternaturally prim with a mouth pursed to a dot, said, "Against whom or what were you prejudiced?" Rubin said, "Artists, I hope." Trumbull cried out, "Let the man talk. -The prejudice had something to do with smoking?" Evans replaced his glasses carefully and fixed his gaze on Trumbull. "I have a system which is impossible to describe in words, for it is based partly on intuition and partly on experience. -1 am a close observer of the minutiae of human behavior. I mean the small things. I select something highly characteristic of a particular person, out of some instinctive feeling I appear to have. th9ilt might be smoking, for instance. If so, I note bow be handles e cigarette; bow he fiddles with it; the manner in which he puffs; the interval between puffs; how far down he smokes the stub; how he puts it out. There is infinite complexity in the interaction between a person and his cigarette-or anything else, his tic clasp, his fingers, the table before him. I have studied the complexity of small behavior all my adult life, first out of curiosity and amusement and, soon enough, out of serious intent." Drake smiled narrowly and said, "You mean those little things tell you something about the people you interview?" 94yes, they do," said Evans emphatically. "All right. That's where the Sherlock Holmes angle comes in. And what can you tell us about ourselves, then?" Evans shook his head. "I have been paying little professional attention to any of you. Even if I had, the conditions here are not proper for my purposes and I am without the ancillary knowledge that more standardized investigftions would have placed on my desk. I can say very little about you." Trumbull said, "This isn't a parlor game anyway, Jim. Mr. Evans can tell you're a tobacco addict who flips ashes into his soup-" Evans looked surprised and said hastily, "As a matter of fact. Dr. Drake did get some ashes in his soup-" "And I noticed it too," said Trumbull. "What are the proper conditions for you to study your victim?" "The conditions I have standardized over the years. The person to be interviewed enters my office alone. He sits in a certain chair under a certain light. He is under a certain tension I do nothing to relieve. I take some time to choose what it is I will observe in detail, and then we start." "What if you don't find anything you can observe? What if be's a complete blank?" asked Gonzalo. "That never happens. Something always shows up." Gonzalo said, "Did something show up when you interviewed me?" Evans shook his head. "I never discuss that sort of thing with the individuals involved, but I can tell you this. There was a mirror in the room." Gonzalo bore up under the general laughter and said, "A handsome man has his problems." Trumbull said, "Someone must have told you that. -Mr. Evans, could you get to the crux of your story: your embarrassment." Evans nodded and looked unhappy. He turned slightly and said to Henry, "I wonder if I might have another cup of coffee." "Certainly, sir," said Henry. Evans sipped at it and said thoughtfully, "The trouble is, you see, that I have watched smoking so meticulously on so many occasions that I have developed a dislike for smokers; a prejudice, if you will; even though I smoke myself on occasion. It is not nearly as strong as yours, Mr. Trumbull, but on occasion it explodes and it did so to my own hurt on one occasion. "The story concerns two men who had worked in a branch office of ours; we can call them-uh, Williams and Adams." Avalon cleared his throat and said, "If I were you, Mr. Evans, I would use their real names. In the course of telling the story, you are very likely to do so anyway. Remember that you speak here in confidence." Evans said, "I will attempt the substitution in any case. The two men were quite different in appearance. Williams was a large, bulky man with something of a stoop and with a slow way of talking. Adams was smaller, straighter, and could be very eloquent indeed. "Both were of an age, both in their early thirties; both were equally competent, it appeared, and bad fulfilled their jobs with equal satisfaction; both seemed to be qualified to fill a key opening that had become available in the home office. Both were bachelors, both rather withdrawn. Both led quiet lives and did not seem to show elements of instability in their socializing-" Halsted interrupted. "What does that mean? Instability?" Evans said, "Neither gambled to a dangerous extent. Neither exhibited sexual or personal habits so at variance with their social surroundings as to make them unduly conspicuous. Neither exhibited strong likes or dislikes that might twist them into unexpected actions. They had come to be friendly in a mild sort of way while working in the same office, but it was symptomatic of the lack of intensity of emotion in both men that, although it was the closest friendship either had, as far as we knew, it was merely a casual relationship." Rubin, leaning back in his chair, said, "Well, that churns up my writer's soul. Here we have two mild buddies, going down life's pathway in parallel paths, both quiet milksops-and now they find that they are competing for the same job, a job with more money and more prestige, and suddenly the lambs become lions and turn on each other-" "Nothing of the kind," said Evans impatiently. "There was competition between the two, of course. That couldn't be helped. But neither before nor after was there any sign that this rivalry would find a release in violence. "Both bad taken advantage of the company's policy of encourag. ing further education and bad been involved in courses in computer technology which we supervised. Both bad done very well. It was hard to choose between them. All the data we bad indicated, rather surprisingly, that Williams-slow, bumbling Williams-was actually a trifle the more intelligent of the two. Yet there was hesitation; be somehow didn't seem more intelligent than the quick and articulate Adams. So they left it up to me, with their usual confidence in my methods-" Trumbull said, "Do you mean to tell us that your company knew you judged men by how they fiddled with paper clips and so on?" "They knew this," said Evans a little defensively, "but they also knew that my recommendations were invariably proven accurate in the aftermath. What more could they ask?" He finished his coffee and went on. "I saw Williams first, since I rather had the suspicion that he might be the man. I would not turn down the better-qualified man simply because he was slow-spoken. I suppose," and be sighed, "everything would have been entirely different if I bad seen Adams first, but we can't adjust past circumstance to suit our convenience, can we? "Williams seemed distinctly nervous, but that was certainly not unusual. I asked some routine questions while I studied his behavior. I noticed that his right forefinger moved on the desk as though it were writing words, but that stopped when he caught me looking at his hand; I should have been more careful there. In fact I bad not really settled on what I was to study, when he reached for the cigarettes and matches." "What cigarettes?" asked Rubin. "I keep an unopened pack of cigarettes on the desk, together with a matcbbook, some paper clips, a ball-point pen, and other small objects within easy reach of the person being interviewed. There is a great tendency to handle them and that can be useful to me. The pack of cigarettes is often played with, for instance, but it is rarely opened. "Williams, however, opened the pack and that caught me-Taitber by surprise, I must confess. His dossier had not mentioned him to be a heavy smoker, and for someone to help himself to the interviewer's cigarettes without asking permission would require a strong addiction." Evans closed his eyes as though be were reproducing the scene upon the inner surface of his eyelids and said, "I can see it now. I became aware of an incongruity in the proceedings when be placed a cigarette between his lips with an attempt at simulating self-posses- sion that utterly failed. It was then that I began to watch, since the incompatibility of the arrogance that led him to take a cigarette without permission and the timorousness with which he handled the cigarette caught my attention. "His lips were dry, so that he had to remove the cigarette briefly, and wet his lips with his tongue. He then put it back between his lips and held it there as though he were afraid it would fall out. He seemed more and more nervous and I was now watching nothing else, only his hand and his cigarette. I was sure they would tell me all I wanted to know. I heard him scratch a match to life and, still holding onto the cigarette, he lit it with the match in his left band. "He seemed to hesitate, taking one or two shallow puffs while I watched and then, as though somehow aware I was not impressed by his performance, he inhaled deeply, and instantly went into a prolonged and apparently dangerous fit of coughing. -It turned out that he didn't smoke." Evans opened his eyes. "That came out at once, of course. Apparently, he felt that by smoking he would impress me as a suave and competent fellow. He knew that he had a bumbling appearance and wanted to counteract that. It did quite the reverse. It was an attempt to use me, to make a fool of me, and I was furious. I tried not to show it but I knew at once that under no circumstances would I recommend Williams for the job. "And that was disastrous, of course. Had I seen Adams first, I would surely have interviewed him in my most meticulous fashion. As it was, with Williams out, I am afraid I treated Adams casually. I recommended him after the barest interaction. Do you wonder that my prejudice against smoking has intensified and that I am more inclined now than I was before to sympathize with your views, Mr. Trumbull?" Trumbull said, "I take it that Mr. Adams proved incompetent at the job." "Not at all," said Evans. "For two years be filled it in the fashion that I had predicted in my report after my inadequate examination of him. In fact, he was brilliant. In a number of cases he made decisions that showed real courage and that proved, in the aftermath, to have been correct "He was, in fact, in line for another promotion when one day be disappeared, and with him over a million dollars in company assets. When the situation was studied, it seemed that he had been intelli- gent enough and daring enough to play successful games with a computer, and his courageous decisions, which we had all applauded, had been part of the game. You see, had I examined him as thoroughly as I should have done, I would not have missed that streak of cunning and of patience. It was obvious be had been planning the job for years and bad studied computer technology with that thought in mind and with the object of qualifying himself for the promotion which he finally gained. -Quite disastrous, quite disastrous." Drake said, "Over a million is quite disastrous all right." "No, no," said Evans. "I mean the blow to my pride and to my standing in the company. Financially, it is no great blow. We were insured and we may even get the stolen items back someday. In fact, justice has been done in a crude sort of way. Adams did not get away with it; in fact he's dead." Evans shook his head and looked depressed. "Rather brutally, too, I'm afraid," he went on. "He had lost himself, quite deliberately and successfully, in one of the rabbit warrens of the city, disguised himself more by a new way of life than by anything physical, lived on his savings and didn't touch his stealings, and waited patiently for time to bring him relative safety. But he got into a fight somehow and was knifed. He was taken to the morgue and his fingerprints identified him. 'Mat was about six months ago." "M/ho killed him?" asked Gonzalo. "That's not known. The police theory is this- The privacy index of a slum is low and somehow the fact that Adams had something hidden must have gotten around. Perhaps he drank a bit to forget the rather miserable life he was leading while waiting to be safely rich, and perhaps he talked a bit too much. Someone tried to cut himself in on the loot; Adams resisted; and Adams died." "And did whoever killed him take the loot?" Evans said, "The police think not. None of the stolen items have surfaced in the six months since Adams' murder. Adams might have the patience to sit on a fortune and lie in hiding, but the average thief would not. So the police think the hoard is still wherever Adams kept it." Halsted made his characteristic brushing gesture up along his high forehead, as though checking to see if the hairline had ome down to its original place, and said thoughtfully, "Could you check on the company's knowledge of the details of Adams' life and personality and work out a kind of psychological profile that would tell where the stolen goods would have been placed?" "I tried that myself," said Evans, "but the answer we come up with is that a man like Adams would hide it most ingeniously. And that does us no good." Avalon said with a sudden slap of his hand on the table, "I have an idea. Where is Williams? The other man, the one who lost out, I mean?" Evans said, "He's still at his old job, and doing well enough." Avalon said, "Well, you might consult him. They were friends. He might know something the company doesn't; something vital that he himself wouldn't dream is vital." "Yes," said Evans dryly. "That occurred to us and be was interviewed. It was useless. You see, the friendship between the two men had been mild enough to begin with, but it had ceased completely after the incident of the interviews. "Apparently Adams bad, in apparent friendliness, advised Williams to practice smoking in order to demonstrate self-possession and nonchalance. Adams had often told the large, slow-moving, slowspeaking Williams that he made an unfortunate first impression and that he should do something about it. "Adams' often-repeated advice had its effect at precisely the wrong moment for Williams. Sitting in my office and keenly aware that he made a poor appearance, he could not resist reaching for the cigarettes-with disastrous results. The poor man blamed Adams for what happened, although the action was his own and be must bear the responsibility himself. Still, it ended the friendship and we could learn nothing useful from Williams." Gonzalo interrupted excitedly, "Wait a minute! Wait a minutel Couldn't Adams have deliberately set it up that way; sort of hypnotized Williams into the act? Couldn't be have arranged it so that Williams was sure to reach for a cigarette at some crucial point? The interview would be the crucial point; Williams would be eliminated; Adams would get the job." Evans said, "I don't accept such Maebiavellianism. How would Adams know that there would be cigarettes at hand on just that occasion? Too unlikely." "Besides," said Avalon, "that sort of lago-like manipulation of human beings works on the stage but not in real life." There was a silence after that and then Trumbull said, "So that's it, I suppose. One crook, now a dead man, and one bundle of stolen goods, hidden somewhere. Nothing much we can do with that. I don't think that even Henry could do anything with that." He looked toward Henry, who was standing by the sideboard patiently. "Henry! Could you tell us, by any chance, where the hiding place of the ill-gotten pelf might be?" "I think I might, sir," said Henry calmly. Trumbull said, "What?" Evans said in Trumbull's direction,"Is he joking?" Henry said, "I think it is possible, on the basis of what we have heard here this evening, to work out what may really have bappened." Evans said indignantly, "What really happened other than what I have told you? This is nonsense." Trumbull said, "I think we ought to hear Henry, Mr. Evans. He's got a knack too." "Well," said Evans, "let him have his say." Henry said, "It occurs to me that because of Mr. Williams' foolish behavior at the interview you were virtually forced to recommend Mr. Adams-yet it is bard to believe that Mr. Williams could be so stupid as to imagine he could pretend to smoke when he was a nonsmoker. It is common knowledge that a non-smoker will cough if he inhales cigarette smoke for the first time." Evans said, "Williams says he was tricked into it by Adams. It was more likely, stupidity. It may be hard to believe that a person could be stupid, but under pressure some quite intelligent people do stupid things and this was one of those occasions." "Perhaps it was," said Henry, "and perhaps we are looking at the matter from the wrong end. Perhaps it was not Adams who tricked Williams into attempting to smoke, thus forcing you to recommend Adams for the job. Perhaps it was Williams who did it deliberately in order to force you to recommend Adams for the job." "Why should he do that?" said Evans. "Might the two not have been working together, with Williams the brains of the pair? Williams arranged to have Adams do the actual work while he remained in the background and directed activities. Then might not Williams, after arranging a murder as cleverly as he had arranged the theft, have taken the profits? And if all that is so, would you not expect Williams, right now, to know where the stolen goods are?" Evans merely stared in utter disbelief and it fell to Trumbull to put the general stupefaction into words. "You've pulled that from thin air, Henry." "But it fits, Mr. Trumbull. Adams could not have arratroe the smoking attempt. He wouldn't have known the cigarettes would be there. Williams would-know; be was sitting there. He might have had something else in mind to force Adams into the job but, seeing the cigarettes, he used those." "But it's still out of whole cloth, Henry. There's no evidence." "Consider," said Henry earnestly. "A non-smoker can scarcely pretend to be a smoker. He will cough; nothing will prevent that. But anyone can cough at will; a cough need never be genuine. What if Williams was, in actual fact, an accomplished smoker who had once given up smoking? It would have been the easiest thing for him to pretend he was a non-smoker by pretending to cough uncontrollably." Evans shook his head stubbornly. "There is nothing to indicate Williams was a smoker." "Isn't there?" said Henry. "Is it wise of you, sir, to concentrate so entirely on one particular variety of behavior pattern when you interview a prospect? Might you not miss something crucial that was not part of the immediate pattern you were studying?" 4 27 Evans said coldly, No. Henry said, "You were watching the cigarette, sir, and nothing else. You were not watching the match with which it was lit. You said you heard him scratch the match; you didn't see it." "Yes, but what of that?" Henry said, "These days, there is no occasion to use matches for anything but cigarettes. A non-smoker, in an age when electricity does everything and even gas stoves have pilot lights, can easily go years without striking a match. It follows that a non-smoker who cannot inhale smoke without coughing cannot handle a matcbbook with any skill at all. Yet you described Williams as having held his cigarette with his right band and having used his left hand only to light it." "Yes. "An unskilled smoker," said Henry, "would surely use two hands to light a cigarette, one to hold the matchbook and one to remove the match and strike it on the friction strip. A skilled smoker pretending to be unskilled might be so intent on making sure he handled the cigarette with the properly amateurish touch that he might forget to do the same for the match. In fact, forgetting the match altogether, he might, absent-mindedly, use the kind of technique that only an accomplished smoker could possibly have learned and have lit the match one-handed. I have seen Dr. Drake do such a thing.2' Drake, who bad, for the last minute, been laughing himself into a quiet coughing fit, managed to say, "I don't do it often any more, because I use a cigarette lighter these days, but here's how it goes." Holding a book of matches in his left hand, he bent one of the matches double with his left thumb so that the head came up against the friction strip. A quick stroke set it aflame. Henry said, "This is what Williams must have done, and that onebanded match strike indicates an accomplished smoker far more surely than any number of coughs would indicate a non-smoker. If the police look back into his past life far enough, they'll find a time when be smoked. His act in your office will then seem exactly what it was-an act." "Good God, yes," said Trumbull, "and you can preserve Black Widower confidentiality. just tell the police that you rememberwhat you actually remember, what you've told us tonight." "But to have not realized this," said Evans confusedly, "will make me seem more a fool than ever." "Not," said Henry softly, "if your statement leads to a solution of the crime." 6 Aftemord "No Smoking" appeared in the December 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine under the title of "Confessions of an American Cigarette Smoker." I'm growing ever more fanatical on the subject of smoking. Trumbull in this story is speaking for me. I allow no smoking in either my apartment or my office, but one is limited in one's dictatorial powers elsewhere. The meetings of the Trap Door Spiders are indeed made bideous with smoke-as are almost all other meetings I attend. There's nothing I can do about it directly, of course, except to complain when the law is with me. (I once plucked the cigarette out of the hand of a woman who was smoking under a "No Smoking" sign in an elevator and who wouldn't put it out when I asked her, politely, to do so.) It helps a bit, though, to write a story expressing my views. Season's Greetings! Thomas Trumbull, whose exact position with government intelligence was not known to the other Black Widowers, creased his face into a look of agonized contempt, bent toward Roger Halsted, and whispered, "Greeting cards?" "Why not?" asked Halsted, his eyebrows lifting and encroaching on the pink expanse of his forehead. "It's an honorable occupation." Trumbull had arrived late to the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers and had been introduced to the guest of the evening even while Henry, the wonder-waiter, bad placed the scotch and soda within the curve of his clutching fingers. The guest, Rexford Brown, had a markedly rectangular face, a good-humored mouth, a closely cut fuzz of white hair, a soft voice, and a patient expression. Trumbull said discontentedly, "It's the season for it, with ChristInas next week; I'll grant you that much. Still it means we'll have to sit here and listen to Manny Rubin tell us his opinion of greeting cards." "Who knows?" said Halsted. "It may turn out that be's written greeting-card rhymes himself. Anyone who's been a boy evangelist-" Emmanuel Rubin, writer and polymath, bad, as was well known, an incredible sharpness of hearing where mention was made, however tangentially, of himself. He drifted over and said, "Written what?" "Greeting-card rhymes," said Halsted. "You know-There once were three travelers Magian, Who on a most festive occasion--"' "No limericks, damn you," shouted Trumbull. Geoffrey Avalon looked up from the other end of the room and said in his most austere baritone, "Gentlemen, I believe Henry wishes to inform us that we may be seated." Mario Gonzalo, the club artist, bad already completed his sketch of the guest with an admirable economy of strokes and said lazily, "I've been thinking about Roger's limericks. Granted, they're pretty putrid, but they can still be put to use." "If you printed them on toilet paper-" began Trumbull. "I mean money," said Gonzalo. "Look, these banquets cost, don't they? It would be nice if they could be made self-supporting, and Manny knows about a half dozen publishers who will publish anything if they publish his garbage-2' Drake, stubbing his cigarette out with one hand, put the other over Mario's mouth. "Let's not get Manny into an explosive mood." But Rubin, who was inhaling veal at its most Italian with every indication of olfactory pleasure, said, "Let him talk, Jim. I'm sure he has an idea that will add new dimensions to the very concept of garbage." "How about a Black Widowers' Limerick Book?" "A what?" said Trumbull in a stupefied tone. "Well, we all know limericks. I have one that goes 'There was a young lady of Sydney Who could take it-"' "We've heard it," said Avalon, frowning. "And, 'There was a young fellow of Juilliard With a-"' "We've heard that one too." "Yes," said Gonzalo, "but the great public out there hasn't. If we included all the ones we make up and all the ones we can remember, like Jim's limerick about the young lady of Yap, the one that rhymes 'interstices' and 'worse disease-2' "I will not," said Trumbull, "consent to have the more or less respectable name of the Black Widowers contaminated with any project of such infinite lack of worth." "What did I tell you about garbage?" said Rubin. Gonzalo looked hurt. "What's wrong with the idea? We could make an honest buck We could even include clean ones. Roger's are all clean." "That's because he teaches at a junior high school," said Drake, snickering. "You should hear some of those kids," said Halsted. "How many are in favor of a Black Widowers' Limerick Book?" Gonzalo's hand went up in lonely splendor. Halsted looked as though he might join him; his arm quivered-but stayed down. Rexford Brown asked mildly, "May I vote?" "It depends," said Trumbull suspiciously. "Are you in favor or not?" "Oh, I'm in favor." "Then you can't vote." "Oh well, it wouldn't change the result, anyway, but I'm for any- thing that will bring moments of pleasure. There aren't enough of those." Gonzalo, speaking with his mouth full, said, "Tom never bad one. How would be know?" Rubin, with a clear effort to keep from sounding sardonic, and marking up a clear failure, said, "Is it those moments of pleasure that justify you in spending your life in the greeting-card business, Mr. Brown?" "One of the ways," said Brown. "Hold it, Manny," said Avalon. "Wait for the coffee." The conversation then grew general, though Gonzalo kept sulkily silent and was observed to be fiddling with his napkin, on which he wrote, in careful Old English lettering, "There once was a group of dull bastards-" but never got to a second line. Over the coffee, Halsted said, "Okay, Manny, you nearly got to it earlier, so why don't you start the grilling?" Rubin, who was just holding up his hand to Henry to indicate that he had enough coffee for the moment, looked up at this, his eyes owlish behind the thick lenses of his glasses and his sparse beard quivering. "Mr. Brown," be said, "how do you justify your existence?" Brown smiled and said, "Very good coffee. It gives me a moment of pleasure and so does a greeting card. But wait, that's not all. There's more to it than that. You may take no pleasure from what you consider doggerel or moist sentiment or tired wit. That is you, but you are not everyone. The prepared greeting card is of service to those who can't write letters or who lack the time to do so or who wish only to maintain a minimal contact. It supplies the needs of those to whom doggerel is touching verse, to whom sentiment is a real emotion, to whom any wit at all is not tired." Rubin said, "What is your function in connection with them? Do you manufacture them, ship them, design them, write the verses?" "I manufacture them primarily, but I contribute to each of the categories, and more besides." "Do you specialize in any particular variety?" "Not too intensively, although I'm rather weak on the funny ones. Those are for specialized areas. I must say, though, the discussion on limericks interested me. I don't know that limericks have ever been used on greeting cards. How did yours go, Roger?" "I was just improvising," said Halsted. "Let's see now- 'There once were three travelers Magian, Who on a most festive occasion-2 Trumbull said, "Imperfect rhyme." Halsted said, "That's all right. You make a virtue out of necessity and keep it up. Let's see. Let's see-" He thought a moment and said: "There once were three travelers Magian, Who on a most festive occasion Presented their presents With humble obeisance To the King of the Israelite nation." "King of the Jews," muttered Avalon under his breath. "You just tossed that off?" asked Brown. Roger flushed a little. "It gets easy when you have the meter firmly fixed in your head." Brown said, "I don't know that that one's usable, but I sell one or two that are not too distant from that sort of thing." "I wish," said Avalon, with a trace of discontent on his handsome, dark-browed face, "that you had brought some samples." Brown said, "I didn't know it would be the kind of dinner where that would be expected. If you want samples, though, my wife is the one for you. Clara is the real expert." "Is she in greeting cards too?" asked Gonzalo, his large, slightly protuberant eyes filled with interest. "No. not really. She grew interested in them through me," said Brown. "She began to collect interesting ones, and then her friends began to collect them and send them to her. Over the last ten or twelve years the thing has been getting more and more elaborate. Christmastime especially, of course, since that is greeting-card time par excellence. There isn't a holiday, though, on which she doesn't receive a load of unusual cards. just to show you, last September she got forty-two Jewish New Year cards, and we're Methodists." Rubin said, "Jewish New Year cards are usually pretty tame." "Usually, but people managed to find some dillies. She putthem. up on the mantelpiece and you never saw such a fancy colRion of variations on the theme of the Star-of David and the Tablets of the Law. -But it's Christmastime that counts. She practically papers the walls with cards and the apartment becomes a kind of fairyland, if I may use the term without being misunderstood. "In fact, gentlemen, if you're really interested in seeing samples of unusual greeting cards, you're invited to my apartment We have open house the week before Christmas. All the people who send cards come around to see where and how theirs contribute. Practi- cally everyone from the apartment house comes too, and it's a large one-to say nothing of the repairman, doorman, postman, delivery boys, and who knows how many others from blocks around. I keep telling her we'll have to get the apartment declared a national landmark." "I feel sorry for your postman," said Drake in his softly hoarse smoker's voice. Brown said, "Don't be. He takes a proprietary interest and gives us special treatment. He never leaves our mail in the box-even when it would fit there. He always takes it up the elevator after all the rest of the mail has been distributed, and gives it to us personally. If no one's home, he goes back down and leaves it with the doorman." Drake said, "That sounds as though you have to give him a healthy tip come Cbristmastime." "A very healthy one," said Brown. He chuckled. "I had to reassure him yesterday on that very point." "That you would give him a tip?" "Yes. Clara and I were due at a luncheon and we were late, which was annoying because I had taken time off from work to attend and we dashed out of the elevator at the ground floor just as the postman was about to step into it with our mail. Clara recognized it, of course -it's always as thick as an unabridged dictionary in December-and said, 'I'll take it, Paul, thank you,' and off she whirled. The poor old guy just stood there, so caught by surprise and so shocked that I said to him, 'It's all right, Paul, not one cent off the tip.' Poor Clara!" He chuckled again. "Why poor Clara?" asked Trumbull. "I know," said Gonzalo, "it wasn't your mail." "Of course it was our mail," said Brown. "It's the only mail old Paul ever takes up. Listen, the days he's off they hold back the greeting-card items so be can bring them himself the next day. He's practically a family retainer." "Yes, but why poor Clara?" asked Trumbull, escalating the decibels. "Oh, that. We got into our car and, since it was a half-hour drive, she counted on going through the mail rapidly and then leaving it under the seat. -But the first thing she noticed was a small envelope, obviously a greeting card, sticking out from the rest of the mail, almost as though it were going to fall out. I saw it myself when she had snatched the mail from Paul. Well, we never get small greeting cards, so she took it out and said, 'What's this? "She flipped the envelope open and it was a Christmas card-the blankest, nothingest, cheapest Christmas card you ever saw-and Clara said, 'Who bad the nerve to send me this?' I don't think she'd as much as seen a plain card in years, It irritated her so that she just put the rest of the mail away without looking at it and chafed all the way to the luncheon." Halsted said, "It was probably a practical joke by one of her friends. Who sent it?" Brown shrugged. "That's what we don't know. -It wasn't you, Roger, was it?" "Me? Think I'm crazy? I sent her one with little jingle bells in it Real ones. Listen," and he turned to the others, "you really have to knock yourself out for her. You should see the apartment on Mother's Day. You wouldn't believe how many different cards have tiny little diapers in them." "And we don't have any children, either," said Brown, sighing. "Wasn't there a name on that card you got?" asked Trumbull sticking to the subject grimly. "Unreadable," said Brown. "Illegible." Gonzalo said, "I smell a mystery here. We ought to try to find out who sent it." "Why?" said Trumbull, changing attitude at once. "Why not?" said Gonzalo. "It might give Mrs. Brown a chance to get back at whoever it is." I assure you," said Brown, "you'll find no hint to the sender. Even fingerprints wouldn't help. We handled it and so did who knows how many postal employees." "Just the same," said Gonzalo, "it's a pity we can't look at it." Brown said rather suddenly, "Oh, you can look at it. I've got it." "You've got it?" "Clara was going to tear it up, but I had just stopped for a red light and I said, 'Let me see it,' and I looked it over and then the green light came on and I shoved it in my coat pocket and I suppose it's still there." "In that case," said Halsted, 'let's see it." "I'll get it," said Brown. He retired for a moment to the cloakroom and was back at once with a square envelope, pinkish -iebolor, and handed it to Halsted. "You're welcome to pass it around." Halsted studied it. It had not been carefully pasted and the flap had come up without tearing. On the back was the address in its simplest possible form: BROWN 354 CPS 21C NYC 10019 The handwriting was a just-legible scrawl. The stamp was a Jackson ico, the postmark was a black smear, and there was no return address. The other side of the envelope was blank. Halsted removed the card from within and found it to be a piece of cardboard folded down the middle. The two outside surfaces were the same pink as the envelope and were blank. The inner surfaces were white. The left-hand side was blank and the right-hand side said "Season's Greetings" in black letters that were only minimally omair -------- Underneath was a scrawled signature beginning with what looked like a capital D followed by a series of diminishing waves. Halsted passed it to Drake on his left and it made its way around the table till Avalon received it and looked at it. He passed it on to Henry, who was distributing the brandy glasses. Henry looked at it briefly and handed it back to Brown. Brown looked up a little surprised, as though finding the angle of return an unexpected one. He said, "Thank you," and sniffed at his brandy delicately. "Well," said Gonzalo, "I think the name is Danny. Do you know any Danny, Mr. Brown?" "I know a Daniel Lindstrom," said Brown, "but I don't think his own mother ever dared call him Danny." Trumbull said, "Hell, that's no Danny. It could be Donna or maybe a last name like Donner." "We don't know any Donna or Donner." "I should think," said Avalon, running his finger about the rim of his brandy glass, "that Mr. Brown has surely gone over every conceivable first and last name beginning with D in his circle of acquaintances. If he has not come up with an answer, I am certain we will not. If this is what Mario calls a mystery, there is certainly nothing to go on. Let's drop the subject and proceed with the grilling." "No," said Gonzalo vehemently. "Not yet. Good Lord, Jeff, just because you don't see something doesn't mean there ,s nothing there to be seen." He turned in his seat. "Henry, you saw that card, didn't you?" "Yes, sir," said Henry. "All right, then. Wouldn't you agree with me that there is a mystery worth investigating here?" "I see nothing we can seize upon, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry. Gonzalo looked hurt. "Henry, you're not usually that pessimistic." "We cannot manufacture evidence, surely, sir." "That's plain enough," said Avalon. "If Henry says there's nothing to be done, then there's nothing to be done. Manny, continue the grilling, won't you?" "No, damn it," said Gonzalo, with quite unaccustomed stubbornness. "If I can't have my book of limericks, then I'm going to have my mystery. If I can show you where this card does tell us something-" "If pigs can fly," said Trumbull. Halsted said, "Host's privilege. Let Mario talk." "Thanks, Roger." Gonzalo rubbed his hands. "We'll do this Henry-style. You listen to me, Henry, and you'll see how it goes. We have a signature on the card and the only thing legible about it is the capital D. We might suppose that the D is enough to tell us who the signer is, but Mr. Brown says it isn't. Suppose we decided then that the D is the only clear part of the signature because it's the only thing that's important." "Wonderful," said Trumbull, scowling. "Where does that leave us?" "Just listen and you'll find out. Suppose the greeting card is a device to pass on information, and it is the D that's the code." "What does D tell you?" "Who knows? It tells you what column to use in a certain paper, or in what row a certain automobile is parked, or in what section to find a certain locker. Who knows? Spies or criminals may be involved. Who knows?" "That's exactly the point," said Trumbull. "Who knows? So what good does it do us?" "Henry," said Gonzalo, "don't you think my argument is a good one?" Henry smiled paternally. "It is an interesting point, sir, but there is no way of telling whether it has any value." "Yes, there is," said Avalon. "And a very easy way, too. The letter is addressed to Mr. Brown. If the D has significance, then Mr. Brown should know what that significance is. Do you, Mr14own?" "Not the faintest idea in the world," said Brown. "And," said Avalon, "we can't even suppose that be has guilty knowledge which be is hiding, because if that were the case, why show us the card in the first place?" Brown laughed. "I assure you. No guilty knowledge. At least, not about this card." Gonzalo said, "Okay, I'll accept that. Brown here knows nothing about the D, but what does that show? It shows that the letter went to him by mistake. In fact that fits right in. Who would send a card like that to someone who makes her apartment into a Christmas card show place? It had to have gone wrong!) Avalon said, "I don't see how that's possible. It's addressed to him." "No, it isn't, Jeff. It is not addressed to him. It is addressed to Brown and there must be a trillion Browns in the world." Gonzalo's voice rose and he was distinctly flushed. "In fact I'll bet there's another Brown in the building and the card was supposed to go to him and he would know what the D means. Right now this other Brown is waiting and wondering where the devil the greeting card he's expecting is and what the letter is. He's in a spot. Maybe heroin is involved, or counterfeit money or-" "Hold on," said Trumbull, "you're going off the diving board into a dry pool." "No, I'm not," said Gonzalo. "If I were this other Brown, I would figure out that it probably went to the wrong Brown, I mean the right one, the one we've got here, and I would go up to the apartment to search for it. I would say, 'I want to look at the collection,' and I would poke around but I wouldn't find it because Brown has the card right here and-2' Brown had been listening to Gonzalo's fantasy with a rather benign expression on his face, but now it was suddenly replaced by a look of deep astonishment. He said, "Wait a minute!" Gonzalo caught himself up. He said, "Wait a minute, what?" "It's funny, but Clara said that someone had been poking around the cards today." Rubin said, "Oh no. You're not going to tell us that Mario's nonsense has something to it. Maybe she's just imagining it." Brown said, "I told her she was, but I wonder. She gets the mail each day and spends some time sorting it out in her-well, she calls it her sewing room, though I've never caught her sewing there-and then comes out and distributes it according to some complicated system of her own. And today she found that some of the cards had been misplaced since the day before. I don't really see her making a mistake in such a matter." "There you are," said Gonzalo, sitting back smugly. "That's what I call working out an inexorable chain of logic." "Who was in the house today?" said Trumbull. "I mean, besides you and your wife?" it No one. There were no visitors. It's a little too early for open house. No one. And no one broke in, either." "You can't be sure," said Gonzalo. "I predicted someone would be poking around and someone was. I think we've got to follow this up now. What do you say, Henry?" Henry waited a moment before replying. "Certainly," he said, "it seems to be a puzzling coincidence." Gonzalo said, "Not puzzling at all. It's just this other Brown. We've got to get him." Brown sat there, frowning, as though the fun bad gone out of the game for him. He said, "Tlere is no other Brown in the building." "Maybe the spelling is different," said Gonzalo, with no perceptible loss of confidence. "How about Browne with a final e or spelling it with an au the way the Germans do?" "No," said Brown. "Come on, Mr. Brown. You don't know the name of everyone in the building." I know quite a few, and I certainly know the Bs. You know, you look at the directory sometimes and your eyes automatically go to your own name." He thought awhile as though he were picturing the directory. Then he said with a voice that seemed to have grown pinched. "There's a Beroun, though, B-e-r-o-u-n. I think that's the spelling. No, I'm sure of it." The Black Widowers sat in silence. Gonzalo waited thirty seconds, then said to Henry, "Showed them, didn't we?" Halsted passed his hand over his forehead in the odd gesture cbaracteristic of him and said, "Tom, you're sometbing or other in the cloak-and-dagger groups. Is it possible there might be something to this?" Trumbull was deep in thought. "The address," be said finally, "is 354 CPS. That's Central Park South- I don't know. I might be happier if it were CPW, Central Park West." "It says CPS quite clearly," said Gonzalo. "It also says Brown quite clearly," said Drake, "and not Beroun." "Listen," said Gonzalo, "that handwriting is a scrawl. You can't tell for sure whether that's a w or a u and there could be an e in between the b and the r." "No, there couldn't," said Drake. "You can't have it both ways. It's a scrawl when you want the spelling different, and it's quite clear when you don't." "Besides," said Avalon, "you're all ignoring the fact that there's more than a name in the address, or a street either. There's an apartment number, too, and it's 21C. Is that your apartment number, Mr. Brown?" "Yes, it is," said Brown. "Well then," said Avalon, "it seems that the theory falls to the ground. The wrong Brown or Beroun doesn't live in 2iC. The right Brown does." For the moment Gonzalo seemed nonplused. Then he said, "No, it's all making too much sense. They must have made a mistake with the apartment number too." "Come on," said Rubin. "The name is misspelled and the apartment number is miswritten and the two end up matching? A Mr. Brown at the correct apartment number? That's just plain asking too much of coincidence." "It could be a small mistake," said Gonzalo. "Suppose this Beroun is in 2oC or 21E. It might take just two small mistakes, one to make )Beroun look like Brown and one to get 21C instead of 7oC." "No," said Rubin, "it's still two mistakes meshing neatly. Come on, Mario, even you can see bow stupid it is." "I don't care how stupid it may seem theoretically. What is the situation in actual practice? We know there is a Beroun in the same apartment house with Brown. All we have to do now is find out what Beroun's apartment number is and I'll bet it's very close to 21C, something where it is perfectly easy to make a mistake." Brown shook his head. "I don't think so. I know there's no Beroun anywhere on my floor, on the twenty-first, that is. And I know the people who live below me in 2oC and above me in 22C and neither one is Beroun or anything like it." "Well then, where does Beroun live? What apartment number? All we have to do is find that out." Brown said, "I don't know which apartment number is Beroun's. Sorry- "Mat's all right," said Gonzalo. "Call your wife. Have her go down and look at the directory and then call us back." "I can't. She's gone out to a movie." "Call the doorman, then." Brown looked reluctant. "How do I explain-" Drake coughed softly. He stubbed out his cigarette, even though there was still a quarter inch of tobacco in front of the filter, and said, "I have an idea." "What?" said Gonzalo. "Well, look here. You have apartment 21C and if you look at the envelope you see that 21C is made in three marks. There's a squiggle for the 7 and a straight line for the 1 and a kind of arc for the C." "So what?" said Gonzalo, looking very much as though ideas were his monopoly that evening. "So how can we be sure that the 1 belongs to the 2 and makes the number 21? Maybe the 1 belongs to the C, and if you take them to- getber, the guy's trying to write a K. What I'm saying is that maybe the apartment number is 2K." "That's it," said Gonzalo excitedly. "Jim, remind me to kiss any girl sitting next to you any time there are girls around. Sure! It's Beroun, 354 CPS 2K, and the postman read it as Brown, 354 CPS 2iC. The whole thing's worked out and now, Tom, you pull the right strings to get someone after this Beroun-" "You know," said Trumbull, "you're beginning to hypnotize me with this fool thing and I'm almost ready to arrange to have this damned Beroun watched-except that, no matter how I stare at this address, it still looks like Brown, not Beroun, and like 2iC, not zK." "Tom, it's got to be Beroun zK. The whole thing fits." Brown shook his head. "No, it doesn't. Sorry, Mario, -but it doesn't. If Beroun lived in zK, your theory might be impressive, but he doesn't." "Are you sure?" asked Gonzalo doubtfully. "It happens to be the Super's apartment. I've been there often enough." "The Super," said Gonzalo, taken aback for a moment and then advancing to the charge again. "Maybe he'd fit even better. You know-blue-collar worker-maybe be's in the numbers racket. Maybe -Hey, of course it fits. Who would be poking around your apartment today looking over the Christmas cards? The Super, that's who. He wouldn't have to break in. He'd have the keys and could get in any time." "Yes, but why is the card addressed to Brown, then?" "Because the names may be similar enough. What's the Super's name, Mr. Brown?" Brown sighed. "Ladislas Wessilewski," and be spelled it out carefully. "How are you going to write either one of those names so that it looks anything like Brown?" Avalon, sitting bolt upright, passed a gentle finger over each half of his mustache and said sententiously, "Well, Mario, there we have our lesson for the day. Not everything is a mystery and ineawrable chains of logic can end nowbere." Gonzalo shook his head. "I still say there's something wrong there. -Come on, Henry, help me out here. Where did I go off base?" Henry, who bad been standing quietly at the sideboard for the past fifteen minutes, said, "There is indeed a possibility, Mr. Gonzalo, if we accept your assumption that the Christmas card represents a code intended to transfer information. In that case, I think it is wrong to suppose that the card was misdirected. "If the card had been delivered to the wrong place, it is exceed- ingly odd that it should end up at an apartment where there is a notorious card collector, well known as such throughout the apartment house and perhaps over a much wider area." Gonzalo said, "Coincidences do happen, Henry." "Perhaps, but it seems much more likely that Mr. Brown's address was used deliberately. Who would pay any attention whatever to one greeting card, more or less, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Brown, when they get so many? Since they get many greeting cards even on such unlikely holidays, for them, as the Jewish New Year and Mother's Day, it would be quite convenient to use them as a target at any time of the year, especially if all the card says is a noncommittal 'Season's Greetings."' Brown said with sudden coldness, "Are you suggesting, Henry that Clara and I are involved in some clandestine operation?" Henry said, "I doubt it, sir, since, as someone said earlier, you would not have brought up the matter of the card if you were." "Well then?" "Assuming Mr. Gonzalo's theory to be correct, I suggest the cards were sent to you rather than to someone else, because if they actually reached you they would be unnoticeable. Tley may have underestimated here your wife's penchant for novel cards and her contempt for plain ones." "But as far as I know, this is the only card of the kind we've ever received, Henry." "Exactly, sir. It was an accident. You're not supposed to receive them. Your name on them is simply a blind, losing it in hundreds of other greeting-card envelopes similarly addressed. Only these particular cards are supposed to be intercepted." "HOW?" "By the person who well knows the quantity and kind of mail you get and could suggest that you be used for the purpose; by the person who would have the easiest opportunity to intercept, but failed this one time. Mr. Brown, how many times have you come out of the elevator just as the postman was going in, and how many times have you taken the package out of his hands on such an occasion?" Brown said, "As far as I know, that was the only time." "And the card in question was sticking out, almost as though it were falling out. That's how your wife noticed it at once." "You mean Paul-" "I mean it seems strange that a postman should be so insistent on dealing with your Christmas cards that he arranges to have them left in the post office an extra day when he is not on duty. Is it so that he remains sure of never missing one of the cards addressed to you that he must intercept?" Trumbull interrupted. "Henry, I know something of this. Postmen in the process of sorting mail are under constant observation." "I imagine so, sir," said Henry, "but there are other opportunities." Brown said, "You don't know Paul. I've known him since we've moved into the apartment. Years! He's a phenomenally cautious man. I imagine he'd lose his job if he were ever seen pocketing a letter he was supposed to deliver. That lobby is a crowded place; there are always two postmen working. I know him, I tell you. Even if he wanted to, he would never take the chance." Henry said, "But that is precisely the point, Mr. Brown. If- this man is as you say he is, it explains why be is so insistent on taking the mail up to you. Even in this crowded city, there is one place you can count on being surely unobserved for at least a few moments and that is in an empty automatic elevator. "There is nothing to prevent the postman, in sorting the mail and preparing the bundle, from placing one greeting card, which be recognizes by shape, color, and handwriting, in such a way that it will stick out from the rest. Then, in the elevator, which be takes only when he is sure he is the only rider, he has time to flick out the envelope and put it in his pocket, even if he remains alone only for the time it takes to travel one floor." Brown said, "And was it Paul who was poking around in our apartment today?" "It's possible, I should think," said Henry. "Your wife receives the mail from the postman at the door and, since it is getting close to Christmas, the arrangements she must make are getting complicated. She rushes to the sewing room without bothering to bolt the door. The postman has a chance to push the little button that makes it possible to turn the knob from outside. He might then have had a few minutes to try to find the card. He didn't, of course." Brown said, "A man so cautious as to insist on using an empty elevator for the transfer of a letter surely would not-" "It is perhaps a sign of the desperation of the case. He may know this to be an unusually important card. If I were you, sir-" "Yes?" "Tomorrow is Saturday and you may not be at work, but the postman willHand this card to the postman. Tell him that it can't possibly be yours and that perhaps it is Beroun's. His facial expression may be interesting and Mr. Trumbull might arrange to have the man watched. Nothing may come of it, of course, but I strongly suspect that something is there." Trumbull said, "There is a chance. I can make the arrangements." A look of gloom gathered on Brown's face and he shook his head. I hate laying a trap for old Paul at Christmastime." "Being guest at the Black Widowers has its drawbacks, sir," said Henry. 7 Afterword "Season's Greetings" was rejected by Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine for some reason, as it is their complete right to do, of courseeven without a reason, if they don't care to advance one. What's more, there clearly isn't the shadow of an excuse for sending it on to F 6 SF. So I just let it stay unsold. Actually, I like to have a few stories in the collections that have not appeared in the magazines. There ought to be some small bribe for the reader who has been enthusiastic enough and loyal enough to read them all when they first appeared. Of course, I might reason that in book form you have the stories all in one bunch without the admixture of foreign components so that it doesn't matter if all were previously published-but it would also be nice to have something new. This is one of them, and it isn't the only one in this book, either. will The One and Only East Mario Gonzalo, host of the month's Black Widowers' banquet, was resplendent in his scarlet blazer but looked a little disconsolate nevertbeless. He said in a low voice to Geoffrey Avalon, the patent attorney, "He's sort of a deadhead, Jeff, 'but he's got an interesting problem. He's my landlady's cousin and we were talking about it and I thought, Well, hell, it could be interesting." Avalon, on his first drink, bent his dark brows disapprovingly and said, "Is he a priest?" "No," said Gonzalo, "not a Catholic priest. I think what you call him is 'elder.' He's a member of some small uptight sect. -Which reminds me that I had better ask Tom to go a little easy on his language." Avalon's frown remained. "You know, Mario, if you invite a man solely on the basis of his problem, and without any personal knowledge of him whatever, you could be letting us in for a very sticky evening. -Does he drink?" I guess not," said Mario. "He asked for tomato juice." "Does that mean we don't drink?" Avalon took an unaccustomedly vigorous sip. "Of course we drink." "You're the host, Mario-but I suspect the worst The guest, standing against the wall, was dressed in a somber black and wore a mournful expression which may have been merely the result of the natural downward slant of the outer corners of his eyes. His face almost glistened with a recent close shave and bore a pallor that might merely have been the contrast with his dark clothes. His name was Ralph Murdock. Emmanuel Rubin, his spect4ple-magnified eyes glaring and his sparse beard vibrating with the energy of his speech, had taken the measure of the man at once and had managed to maneuver the dis- cussion into a sharp analysis of the nature of the Trinity almost before the meal bad been fairly begun. Murdock seemed unmoved, and his face remained as calm as that of Henry, the club waiter, who performed his functions as imperturbably as ever. "The mistake," said Murdock, "usually made by those who want to discuss the mysteries in terms of ordinary logic is to suppose that the rules that originate from observation of the world of sense impression apply to the wider universe beyond. To some extent, they may, but how can we know where and how they do not?" Rubin said, "That's an evasion." "It is not," said Murdock, "and I'll give you an example within the world of sense impression. We obtain our common-sense notions of the behavior of objects from the observation of things of moderate size, moving at moderate speeds and existing at moderate temperatures. When Albert Einstein worked a scheme for a vast universe and enormous velocities, he ended with a picture that seemed against common sense; that is, against the observations we found it easy to make in everyday life." Rubin said, "Yet Einstein deduced the relativistic universe from sense impressions and observations that anyone could make." "Provided," said Murdock smoothly, "that instruments were used which were unknown to man some centuries earlier. The observations we can now make and the effects we can now produce would seem to mankind a few centuries ago like the result of wizardry, magic, or even, perhaps, revelation, if these things were made apparent without the proper introduction and education." "Then you think," said Rubin, "that the revelation that has faced man with a Trinity now incomprehensible may make sense in a kind of super-relativity of the future?" "Possibly," said Murdock, "or possibly it makes sense in a kind of super-relativity that was reached by man long ago through the shortcircuiting of mere reason and the use of more powerful instruments for gaining knowledge." With open delight, the others joined in the battle, everyone in opposition to Murdock, who seemed oblivious to the weight of the forces against him. With an unchanging expression of melancholy and with unmoved politeness, he answered them all without any sense of urgency or annoyance. It was all the more exciting in that it did not deal with matters that could be settled by reference to the club library. Over the dessert, Trumbull, with a careful mildness of vocabulary that was belied by the ferocious wrinkling of his tanned face, said, "Whatever you can say of reasoning, it has lengthened the average human life by some forty years in the last century. The forces beyond reason, whatever they may be, have been unable to lengthen it a minute." Murdock said, "That reason has its uses and seeming benefit no one can deny. It has enabled us to live long, but look round the world, sir, and tell me whether it has enabled us to live decently. And ask yourself further whether length without decency is so unmixed a blessing." By the time the brandy was served and the lances of all bad been shivered against Murdock's calm verbal shield, it seemed almost anticlimactic to have Gonzalo strike his water glass with his spoon to mark the beginning of the post-dinner grilling. Gonzalo said, "Gentlemen, we have had an unusually interesting dinner, I think"-and here be made a brief gesture at Avalon, who sat on his left, one it was well for Murdock not to have seen-"and it seems to me that our guest has already been put through his hurdles. He has acquitted himself well and I think even Manny has suspicious signs of egg on his face. -Don't say anything, Manny. -As host, I am going to end the grilling then and direct Mr. Murdock, if he will, to tell us his story." Murdock 'who had ended the dinner with a large glass of milk, and who had refused Henry's offer of coffee and of brandy, said: "It is kind of Mr. Gonzalo to invite me to this dinner and I must say I have been pleased with the courtesy extended me. I am grateful as well. It is not often I have a chance to discuss matters with unbelievers who are as ready to listen as yourselves. I doubt that I have convinced any of you, but it is by no means my mission to convince you-rather to offer you an opportunity to convince yourselves. "My problem, or 'story' as Mr. Gonzalo has called it, has preyed on my mind these recent weeks. I have confided some of it, in a moment of agony of mind, to Sister Minerva, who is, by the reckoning of the world, a cousin of mine, but a sister by virtue of a common membership in our Church of the Disciples of Holiness. W,- for reasons that seemed worth while to berself',. mentioned it to her tenant, Mr. Gonzalo, and he sought me out and implored me to attend this meeting. "He assured me that it was possible you might help me in this problem that preys upon my mind. You may or you may not; that does not matter. The kindness you have already shown me is great enough to make failure in the other matter something of little consequence. "Gentlemen, I am an elder of the Church of the Disciples of Holiness. It is a small church of no importance at all as the world counts importance, but the world's approval is not what we seek. Nor do we look for consolation in the thought that we alone will find salvation. We are perfectly ready to admit that all may find their way to the throne by any of an infinite number of paths. We find comfort only in that our own path seems to us to be a direct and comfortable one, a path that gives us peace-a commodity as rare in the world as it is desirable. "I have been a member of the Church since the age of fifteen and have been instrumental in bringing into the fold several of my friends and relations. "One whom I failed to interest was my Uncle Haskell. "It would be easy for me to describe my Uncle Haskell as a sinner but that word is usually used to describe offenses against God, and I consider that to be a useless definition. God's mercy is infinite and His love is great enough to find offense in nothing that applies to Himself only. If the offense were against man that would be far graver, but here I can exonerate my Uncle Haskell by at least the amount by which I can exonerate mankind generally. One cannot live a moment without in some way banning, damaging or, at the very least, inconveniencing a fellow man, but I am sure my Uncle Haskell never intended such harm, damage, or inconvenience. He would have gone a mile out of his way to prevent this, if he knew what was happening and if prevention were possible. 'qbere remains the third class of damage-that of a man against himself-and it was here, I am afraid, that my Uncle Haskell was a sinner. He was a large man, with a Homeric sense of humor and gargantuan appetites. He ate and drank to excess, and womanized as well, yet whatever he did, he did with such gusto that one could be deluded into believing be gained pleasure from his way of life, and fall into the error of excusing him on the grounds that it was far better to enjoy life than to be a sour Puritan such as myself who finds a perverse pleasure in gloom. "It was this, in fact, that was my Uncle Haskell's defense when I remonstrated with him on one occasion when what might have seemed to himself and to others to have been a glorious spree ended with himself in jail and possessing a mild concussion to boot. "He said to me, 'What do you know of life, you such-and-such Puritan? You don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't swear, you don't-2 "Well, I will spare you the list of pleasures in which he found me lacking. You can, undoubtedly, imagine each one. It may seem sad to you, too, that I miss out on such routes to elevation of the spirit but my Uncle Haskell, if be knew a dozen ladies of doubtful virtue, bad never known the quiet heart-filling of love. He did not know the pleasurable serenity of quiet contemplation, of reasoned discourse, of communion with the great souls who have left their thoughts behind them. He knew my feelings in this respect but scorned them. "He may have done so the more vehemently because be knew what be had lost. While I was in college-in the days when I first came to know my Uncle Haskell and to love him-he was writing a dissertation on Restoration England. At times he spoke as though he were planning to write a novel, at times a historical exposition. He had a home in Leonia, New Jersey, then-still had, I should say, for he had been born there, as bad his ancestors and mine backto the Quaker days in colonial times. -Well, he lost it, along with everything else. "Now, where was I? -Yes, in his Leonia home, he built up a library of material on Restoration England, in which be found, I honestly believe, more pleasure than in any of the sensualities that eventually claimed him. "It was his addiction to gambling that did the real damage. It was the first of the passions he called pleasures that he took to extremes. It cost him his home and his library. It cost him his work, both that in which he made his living as an antique dealer, and that in which he found his joy as an amateur historian. "His sprees, however rowdily joyful, left him in the hospital, the jail, or the gutter, and I was not always there to find and extricate him at once. "What kept him going was the erratic nature of his chief vice, for occasionally be made some fortunate wager or turned up a lucky card and then, for a day or for a month, he would be well to do. At those times he was always generous. He never valued money for itself nor clung to it in the face of another's need-which would have been a worse vice than any he possessed-so that the good times never lasted long nor served as any base for the renewal of his former, worthier life. "And, as it happened, toward the end of his life, he made the killing of a lifetime. I believe it is called a 'killing,' which is reasonable since the language of vice has a peculiar violence of its own. I do not pretend to understand hcw it was done, except that several horses, each unlikely to win, nevertheless won, and my Uncle Haskell so arranged his bets that each winning horse greatly multiplied what had already been multiplied. "He was left, both by his standards and mine, a wealthy man, but he was dying and knewhe would not have time to spend the money in his usual fashion. What occurred to him, then, was to leave the world in the company of a huge joke-a joke in which the humor rested in what he conceived to be my corruption, though I'm sure he didn't look upon it that way. "He called me to his bedside and said to me something which, as nearly as I can remember, was this: "'Now, Ralph, my boy, don't lecture me. You see for yourself that I am virtuous now. Lying here, I can't do any of the terrible things you deplore-except perhaps to swear a little. I can only find time and occasion now to be as virtuous as you and my reward is that I am to die. "'But I don't mind, Ralph, because I've got more money now than I've had at one time for many years and I will be able to throw it away in a brand-new fashion. I am willing it to you, nephew.' "I began to protest that I preferred his health and his true reform to his money, but he cut me off. "'No, Ralph, in your twisted way you have tried your best for me and have helped me even though you disapproved of me so strongly and could have no hope of a reasonable return either in money or in conversion. On top of that, you're my only relative and you should get the money even if you had done nothing at all for me.' "Again I tried to explain that I had helped him as a human being and not as a relative, and that I had not done so as a kind of business investment, but again he cut me off. He was having difficulty speaking and I did not wish to prolong matters unduly. "He said, 'I will leave you fifty thousand dollars, free and clear. Matters will be so arranged that all legal expenses and all taxation will be taken care of. I have already discussed this with my lawyer. With your way of life, I don't know what you can possibly do with the money other than stare at it, but if that gives you pleasure, I'll leave you to it.' "I said gently, 'Uncle Haskell, a great deal of good can be done With fifty thousand dollars and I will spend it in ways that the Disciples of Holiness will find fitting and useful. If this displeases you, then do not leave the money to me.' "He laughed then, a feeble effort, and fumbled for my hand in a way that made it clear how weak he had grown. I bad not seen him for a year and in that interval he bad gone downhill at an incredible pace. "The doctors said that a combination of diabetes and cancer, treated inadequately, had advanced too rapidly across the bastions of his pleasure-riddled body, heaven help him, and left him with noth- ing but the hope of a not too prolonged time of dying. It was on himself and the horse races that he had made a simultaneous killing. "He clutched my hand weakly and said, 'No, do Whatever you want with the money. Hire someone to sing psalms. Give it away, a penny at a time, to five million bums. That's your business; I don't care. But, Ralph, there's a catch to all this, a very amusing catch.' "'A catch? What kind of catch?' It was all I could think of to ask. "'Why, Ralph, my boy, I'm afraid you will have to gamble for the money.' H patted my band and laughed again. 'It will be a good, straight gamble with the odds five to one against you. "'My lawyer,' he went on, 'has an envelope in which is located the name of a city-a nice, sealed envelope, which he won't open till you come to him with the name of a city. I will give you six cities to choose from and you will select one of these. One! If the city you select matches the one in the envelope, you get fifty thousand dollars. If it does not match, you get nothing, and the money goes to various charities. My kind of charities.'- " qbis is not a decent thing to do, Uncle,' I said, rather taken aback. "'Why not, Ralph? All you have to do is guess the city and you have a great deal of money. And if you guess wrong, you lose nothing. You can't ask better than that. My suggestion is that you number the cities from one to six, then roll a die and pick the city conesponding to the number you roll. A sporting chance, Ralpbl' "His eyes seemed to glitter, perhaps at the picture of myself rolling dice for money. I felt that sharply and I said, shaking my head, 'Uncle Haskell, it is useless to place this condition on me. I will not play games with the universe or abdicate the throne of conscience in order to allow chance to make my decisions for me. Either leave me the money, if that pleases you, or do not leave it, if that pleases you.' "He said, 'Why do you think of it as playing games with the universe? Don't you accept what men call chance to be really God's will? You have said that often enough. Well then, if He thinks you worthy, you will get the money. Or don't you trust Him? - "I said, 'God is not a man that He may be put to the MV "My Uncle Haskell was growing feebler. He withdrew his arm and let it rest passively on the blanket. He said in a while, 'Well, you'll have to. If you don't supply my lawyer with your choice within thirty days of my death, it will all go to my charities. Come, thirty days gives you enough time.' "We all have our weaknesses, gentlemen, and I am not always free of pride. I could not allow myself to be forced to dance to my Uncle Haskell's piping merely in order to get the money. But then I thought that I could use the money-not for myself but for the Church-and perhaps I had no right to throw it away out of pride in my virtue, when so much would be lost in the process. "But pride won. I said, 'I'm sorry, Uncle Haskell, but in that case, the money will have to go elsewhere. I will not gamble for it.' I rose to go but his hand motioned and I did not yet turn away. lie said, 'All right, my miserable nephew. I want you to have the money, I really do; so if you lack sporting blood and can't take your honest chance with fate, I will give you one hint. If you penetrate it, you will know which city it is-beyond doubt, I think-and you will not be gambling when you band in that name! "I did not really wish to prolong the discussion and yet I hated to abandon him and leave him desolate if I could avoid doing so. I said, 'What is this hint?' "He said, 'You will find the answer in the one and only east-the one and only east! "'The one and only east,' I repeated. 'Very well, Uncle Haskell, I will consider it. Now let us talk of other things! I made as though to sit down again, but the nurse entered and said it was time for my Uncle Haskell to rest. And, indeed, I thought it was; be seemed worn to the last thread. "He said, 'Saved a sermon, by the Almighty,' and laughed in a whisper. "I said, 'Good-by, Uncle Haskell. I will come again! "When I reached the door he called out, 'Don't jump too soon, nephew. Think it over carefully. The one and only east! "That is the story, gentlemen. My uncle died twenty-seven days ago. Within three days, by this coming Monday, I must give my choice to the lawyer. I suspect I will not give that choice, for my Uncle Haskell's clue means nothing to me and I will not choose a city as a mere gamble. I will not." There was a short silence after Murdock bad finished his tale. James Drake puffed thoughtfully on his cigarette. Tom Trumbull scowled at his empty brandy glass. Roger Halsted doodled on his napkin. Geoffrey Avalon sat bolt upright and looked blank. Emmanuel Rubin shook his head slowly from side to side. Gonzalo broke the silence uneasily, perhaps thinking it his duty to do so, as the host. He said, "Do you mind telling us the names of the six cities, Mr. Murdock?" "Not at all, Mr. Gonzalo. Since you asked me to come here in order that I might possibly be belped-and since I agreed to come-I obviously seek help. With that in view, I must answer any honorable question. The names of the cities, as I received them from the lawyer on the day of my Uncle Haskell's death, are on this paper. You'll notice it is on the lawyer's stationery. It is the paper he gave me." He passed it on to Gonzalo. Aside from the lawyer's letterhead, it contained only the typed list of six cities in alphabetical order: ANCHORAGE, ALASY-k ATHENS, GEORGIA AUGUSTA, MAINE CANTON, OHIO EASTON, PENNSYLVANIA PERTH AMBOY, NEW JERSEY Gonzalo passed it round. When be received it back be called, "Henry!" Then, to Murdock, "Our waiter is a member of the club. You have no objection to his seeing the list, I hope?" "I have no objection to anyohe seeing it," said Murdock. Avalon cleared his throat. "Before we launch ourselves into speculation, Mr. Murdock, it is only fair to ask if you have given the matter some thought yourself." Murdock's sorrowful face grew thoughtful. His lips pressed together and his eyes blinked. He said in a soft, almost shamefaced voice, "Gentlemen, I would like to tell you that I have resisted temptation completely, but the fact is I have not. I have thought at times and tried to convince myself that one city or another fits my Uncle Haskell's hint so that I can offer it to the lawyer on Monday With a clear conscience. On occasion I have settled on one or another of the cities on the list but each time it was merely a case of fooling myself, of compromising, of pretending I was not gambling when I was." Rubin said, with a face innocently blank, "Have you prayed, Mr. Murdock? Have you sought divine guidance?" For a moment it seemed as though Murdock's careful armor had been pierced, but only for a moment. After that slight pause be said, "If that were appropriate in this case, I would have seen a sqwtion without prayer. In God's eyes, it is my needs that count anx,Ot my desires, and He knows my needs without my having to inform Him." Rubin said, "Have you tried to approach the problem using the inferior weapon of reason?" "I have, of course," said Murdock. "In a casual way. I have tried to resist being drawn into it too deeply. I mistrust myself, I fear." Rubin said, "And have you come to any favorite conclusion? You've said that you have been unable to settle on any one city definitely, to the point where you would consider its choice as no longer representing a gamble-but do you lean in one direction or another?" "I have leaned in one direction at one time and in another direction at another. I cannot bonestly say that any one of the cities is my favorite. With your permission, I will not tell you the thoughts that have struck me since it is your help I seek and I would prefer you to reach your conclusions, or hypotheses, uninfluenced by my thoughts. If you miss anything I have thought of, I will tell you." "Fair enough," said Gonzalo, smoothing down one collar of his blazer with an air of absent self-satisfaction. "I suppose we have to consider whether any of those cities is the one and only east." Murdock said, "I would think so." "In that case," said Gonzalo, "pardon me for mentioning the obvious, but the word 'east' occurs only in Easton. It is the one and only east." "Oddly enough," said Murdock dryly, "I had not failed to notice that, Mr. Gonzalo. It strikes me as obvious enough to be ignored. My Uncle Haskell also said, 'Don't jump too soon."' "Ah," said Gonzalo, "but that might just be to throw you off. 11he real gambler has to know when to bluff and your uncle could well have been bluffing. If he had a real rotten kind of humor, it would have seemed fun to him to give you the answer, let it lie right there, and then scare you out of accepting it." Murdock said, "That may be so, but that sort of thing would mean I would have to penetrate my Uncle Haskell's mind and see whether he was capable of a double double cross or something like that. It would be a gamble and I won't gamble. Either the hint, properly interpreted, makes the matter so plain that it is no longer a gamble, or it is worthless. In short, Easton may be the city, but if so, I will believe it only for some reason stronger than the mere occurrence of 'east' in its name." Halsted, leaning forward toward Murdock, said, "I think no gambler worth his salt would set up a puzzle with so easy a solution as the connection between east and Easton. That's just misdirection. Let me point out something a little more reasonable, and a little more compelling. Of the six cities mentioned, I believe Augusta is easternmost. Certainly it is in the state of Maine, which is the easternmost of the fifty states. Augusta has to be the one and only east, and beyond any doubt." Drake shook his head violently. "Quite wrong, Roger, quite wrong. It's just a common superstition that Maine is the easternmost state. Not since 1959. Once Alaska became the fiftieth state, it became the easternmost state." Halsted frowned. "Westernmost, you mean, Jim." "Westernmost and easternmost. And northernmost too. Look, the 180' longitude line passes through the Aleutian Islands. The islands west of the line are in the Eastern Hemisphere. They are the only part of the fifty states that are in the Eastern Hemisphere and that makes Alaska the easternmost state, the one and only east." "What about Hawaii?" asked Gonzalo. "Hawaii does not reach the 180' mark. Even Midway Island, which lies to the west of the state, does not. You can look it up on the map if you wish, but I know I'm right." "It doesn't matter whether you're right or not," said Halsted hotly. "Anchorage isn't on the other side of the 180' line, is it? So it's west, not east. In the case of Augusta, the city is the easternmost of the six mentioned." Murdock interrupted. "Gentlemen, it is not worth arguing the matter. I bad thought of the eastern status of Maine but did not find it compelling enough to conveit it into a hid. The fact that one can argue over the matter of Alaska versus Maine-and I admit that the Alaska angle had not occurred to me-removes either from the cate, gory of the one and only east." Rubin said, "Besides, from the strictly geographic point, cast and west are purely arbitrary terms. North and south are absolute since there is a fixed point on Earth that is the North Pole and another that is the South Pole. Of any two spots on Earth, the one closer to the North Pole is farther north, the other farther south, but of those same two spots, neither is farther east or farther west, for you can go from one to the other, or from the other to the one, by traveling either eastward or westward. There is no absolute eastern point or western point on Ea "Well then," said Trumbull, "where does that get you, Manny?" "To the psychological angle. What typifies east to us in the United States is the Atlantic Ocean. Our nation stretches from sea to shining sea and the only city on the list which is on the Atlantic Ocean is Perth Amboy. Augusta may be farther east geogm1ftically, but it is an inland town." Trumbull said, "That's a bunch of nothing at all, Manny. The Atlantic Ocean symbolizes the east to us right now, but through most of the history of Western civilization it represented the west, the far west. It wasn't till after Columbus sailed westward that it became the east to the colonists of the New World. If you want something that's cast in the Western tradition, and always has been east, it's China. The first Chinese city to be opened to Westem trade was eCanton and the American city of Canton was actually named for the Chinese city. Canton has to be the one and only east." Avalon lifted his hand and said with majestic severity, "I don't see that at all, Tom. Even if Canton typifies the east by its recall of a Chinese city, why is that the one and only east? Why not Cairo, Illinois, or Memphis, Tennessee, each of which typifies the ancient Egyptian east?" "Because those cities aren't on the list, Jeff." "No, but Athens, Georgia, is, and if there is one city in all the world that is the one and only east, it is Athens, Greece-the source and home of all the humanistic values we hold dear today, the school of Hellas and of all the west-" "Of all the west, you idiot," said Trumbull with sudden ferocity. "Athens was never considered the east either by itself or by others. The first great battle between east and west was Marathon in 490 B.c. and Athens represented the west." Murdock interrupted. "Besides, my Uncle Haskell could scarcely have thought I would consider Athens unique, when it has purely secular value. Had he included Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on his list, I might have chosen it at once with no sense of gamble. As it is, however, I can only thank you, gentlemen, for your efforts. The mere fact that you come to different conclusions and argue over them shows that each of you must be wrong. If one of you bad the real answer it would be compelling enough to convince the others-and my self as well-at once. It may be, of course, that my Uncle Haskell deliberately gave me a meaningless clue for his own posthumous pleasure. If so, that does not, of course, in the least diminish my gratitude to you all for your hospitality, your company, and your efforts.) He would have risen to leave but Avalon, on his left, put a courteous but nonetheless authoritative hand on his shoulder. "One moment, Mr. Murdock, one member of our little band has not yet spoken. -Henry, have you nothing to add?" Murdock looked surprised. "Your waiter?" "A Black Widower, as we said earlier. Henry, can you shed any light on this puzzle?" Henry said solemnly, "It may be that I can, gentlemen. I was impressed by Mr. Murdock's earlier argument that reason is sometimes inadequate to reach the truth. Nevertheless, suppose we start with reason. Not ours, however, but that of Mr. Murdock's uncle. I have no doubt that he deliberately chose cities that each represented the east in some ambiguous fashion, but where would he find in that list an unambiguous and compelling reference? Perhaps we would know the answer if we remembered his special interests-Mr. Mur- dock did say that at one time be was working on a book concerning Restoration England. I believe that is the latter half of the seventeenth century." "Charles II," said Rubin, "reigned from 1660 to 1685." "I'm sure you are correct, Mr. Rubin," said Henry. "All the cities named are in the United States, so I wondered whether we might find something of interest in American history during the Restoration period." "A number of colonies were founded in Charles II's reign," said Rubin. "Was not Carolina one of them, sir?" asked Henry. "Sure. Carolina was named for him, in fact. Charles is Carolus, in Latin." "But later on Carolina proved unwieldy and was split into North Carolina and South Carolina." "That's right. But what has that got to do with the list? There are no cities in it from either Car6lina." "True enough, but the thought reminded me that there is also a North Dakota and a South Dakota, and for that matter a West Virginia, but there is no American state that has East in its title. Of course, we might speak of East Texas or of East Kansas or East Tennessee but-" "More likely to say 'eastern,"' muttered Halsted. "Either way, sir, there would not be a one and only east, but-" Gonzalo exploded in sudden excitement. "Wait a minute, Henry. I think I see what you're driving at. If we have the state of West Virginia-the one and only west-then we can consider Virginia to be East Virginia-The one and only east." "No, you can't," said Trumbull, with a look of disgust on his face. "Virginia has been Virginia for three and a half centuries. Calling it East Virginia doesn't make it so." "It would not matter if one did, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry, "since there is no Virginian city on the list. -But before abandoning that line of thought however, I remembered that Mr. MWock's uncle lived in New Jersey and that his ancestors had lived tY6re since colonial times. Memories of my grade school education stirred, for half a century ago we were much more careful about studying colonial history than we are today. "It seems to me, and I'm sure Mr. Rubin will correct me if I'm wrong, that at one time in its early history New Jersey was divided into two parts-East Jersey and West Jersey, the two being separately governed. This did not last a long time, a generation perhaps, and then the single state of New Jersey was reconstituted. East Jer- sey, however, is the only section of what are now the United States that had 'east' as a part of its official name as colony or state." Murdock looked interested. His lips lifted in what was almost a smile. "The one and only cast. It could be." "There is more to it than that," said Henry. "Perth Amboy was, in its time, the capital of East Jersey." Murdock's eyes opened wide. "Are you serious, Henry?" "I am quite certain of this and I think it is the compelling factor. It was the capital of the one and only east in the list of colonies and states. I do not think you will lose the inheritance if you offer that name on Monday; nor do I think you will be gambling." Rubin said, scowling, "I said Perth Amboy." "For a non-compelling reason," said Drake. "How do you do it, Henry?" Henry smiled slightly. "By abandoning reason for something more certain as Mr. Murdock suggested at the start." "What are you talking about, Henry?" said Avalon. "You worked it out very nicely by a line of neat argument." "After the fact sir," said Henry. "While all of you were applying reason, I took the liberty of seeking authority and turned to the reference shelf we use to settle arguments. I looked up each city in Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Under Perth Amboy, it is clearly stated that it was once the capital of East Jersey." He held out the book and Rubin snatched it from his hands, to check the matter for himself. "It is easy to argue backward, gentlemen," said Henry. 8 Afterword "The One and Only East," which appeared in the March 1975 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, was, like "The Iron Gem," written on board ship, longhand. On this occasion I was visiting Great Britain for the first time in my life-by ocean liner both ways, since I don't fly. It was a little difficult in one way because I didn't have my reference library with me. (I must admit that one of the reasons that my Black Widowers sound so erudite on so many different subjects is that the man who writes the words has put together a very good reference library in his lifetime.) The result was that I bad to play my cities back and forth out of what knowledge I bad in my head. As it happened, though, I got it nearly all correct Earthset and Evening Star Emmanuel Rubin, whose latest mystery novel was clearly proceeding smoothly, lifted his drink with satisfaction and let his eyes gleam genially through his thick-lensed glasses. "The mystery story," he pontificated, "has its rules which, when broken, make it an artistic failure, whatever success it may have in the market place." Mario Gonzalo, whose hair bad been recently cut to allow a glimpse of the back of his neck, said, as though to no one, "It always amuses me to hear a writer describe something he scrawls on paper as art." He looked with some complacency at the cartoon he was making of the guest for that month's banquet session of the Black Widowers. "If what you do is the definition of art," said Rubin, "I withdraw the term in connection with the writer's craft. -One thing to avoid, for instance, is the idiot plot." "In that case," said Thomas Trumbull, helping himself to another roll and buttering it lavishly, "aren't you at a disadvantage?" Rubin said loftily, "By 'an idiot plot,' I mean one in which the solution would come at once if an idiot investigator would but ask a logical question, or in which an idiot witness would but tell something he knows and which he has no reason to hide." Geoffrey Avalon, who had left a neatly cleaned bone on his plate as the only witness of the slab of roast beef that had oflerrsted there, said, "But no skilled practitioner would do that, Manny. What you do is set up some reason to prevent the asking or telling of the obvious." "Exactly," said Rubin. "For instance, what I've been writing is essentially a short story if one moves in a straight line. The trouble is the line is so straight, the reader will see its end before I'm halfway. So I have to hide one crucial piece of evidence, and do it in such a way that I don't make an idiot plot out of it. So I invent a reason to hide that piece, and in order to make the reason plausible I have to build a supporting structure around it-and I end with a novel, and a damn good one." His sparse beard quivered with self-satisfaction. Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers' banquets, removed the plate from in front of Rubin with his usual dexterity. Rubin, without turning, said, "Am I right, Henry?" Henry said softly, "As a mystery reader, Mr. Rubin, I find it more satisfying to have the piece of information delivered to me and to find that I have been insufficiently clever and did not notice." "I just read a mystery," said James Drake in his softly hoarse smoker's voice, "in which the whole point rested on character i being really character 2, because the real character i was dead. I was put on to it at once because, in the list of characters at the start, character iL was not listed. Ruined the story for me." "Yes," said Rubin, "but that wasn't the author's fault. Some flunky did that. I once wrote a story which was accompanied by one illustration that no one thought to show me in advance. It happened to give away the point." The guest had been listening quietly to all this. His hair was just light enough to be considered blond and it bad a careful wave in it that looked, somehow, as though it belonged there. He turned his rather narrow but clearly good-humored face to Roger Halsted, his neighbor, and said, "Pardon me, but since Manny Rubin is my friend, I know be is a mystery writer. Is this true of the rest of you as well? Is this a mystery writer organization?" Halsted, who bad been looking with somber approval at the generous slab of Black Forest torte that had been placed before him as dessert, withdrew his attention with some difficulty and said, "Not at all. Rubin is the only mystery writer here. I'm a mathematics teacher myself; Drake is a chemist; Avalon is a lawyer; Gonzalo is an artist; and Trumbull is a code expert with the government. "On the other band," he went on, "we do have an interest in this sort of thing. Our guests often have problems they bring up for discussion, some sort of mystery, and we've been rather lucky-" The guest leaned back with a small laugh. "Nothing of the sort here, alas. Of the mystery, the murder, the fearful hand clutching from behind the curtain, there is nothing in my life. It is all very straightforward, alas; very dull. I am not even married." He laughed again. The guest bad been introduced as jean Servais and Halsted, who bad attacked the torte with vigor, and who felt a friendly glow filling him in consequence, said, "Does it matter to you if I call you John?" "I would not strike you, sir, if you did, but I pray you not to. It is not my name. jean, please." Halsted nodded. "I'll try. I can manage that zh sound, but getting it properly nasal is another thing. Zhobng," be said. "But that is excellent. Most formidable." "You speak English very well," said Halsted, returning the politeness. "Europeans require linguistic talent," said Servais. "Besides, I have lived in the United States for nearly ten years now. You are all Americans, I suppose. Mr. Avalon looks British somehow." "Yes, I think he likes to look British," said Halsted. And with a certain hidden pleasure he said, "And it's Avalon. Accent on the first syllable and nothing nasal at the end." But Servais only laughed. "Ah yes, I will try. When I first knew Manny, I called him 'roo-bang' with the accent on the last syllable and a strong nasalization. He corrected me very vigorously and at great length. He is full of pepper, that one." The conversation had grown rather heated by this time over a general dispute concerning the relative merits of Agatha Christie and Raymond Chandler, with Rubin maintaining a rather lofty silence as though be knew someone who was better than either but would not mention the name out of modesty. Rubin seemed almost relieved when, with the coffee well in progress and Henry ready to supply the postprandial brandy, the time came or im to tap t e water ass wit is spoon an say, o it, cool it, gentlemen. We are coming now to the time when our guest, jean Servais, is to pay for his dinner. Tom, it's all yours." Tom scowled and said, "If you don't mind, Mr. Servais," giving the final s just enough of a hiss to make his point, "I'm not going to try to display my French accent and make the kind of jackass of myself that my friend Manny Rubin does. -Tell me, sir, how do you justify your existence?" "Why, easily," said Servais pleasantly. "Did I not exist, you would be without a guest today." "Please leave us out of it. Answer in more general terms,:'- "In general, then, I build dreams. I design things that cannot be built, things I will never see, things that may never be." "All right," said Trumbull, looking glum, "you're a science fiction writer like Manny's pal what's-his-name-uh-Asimov." "No friend of mine," said Rubin swiftly. "I just help him out now and then when he's stuck on some elementary scientific point." Gonzalo said, "Is be the one you once said carried the Columbia Encyclopedia around with him because be was listed there?" "It's worse now," said Rubin. "He's bribed someone at the Britan- nica to put him into the new 15th edition and these days he drags the whole set with him wherever he goes." "The new 15th edition-" began Avalon. "For God's sake," said Trumbull, "will you let our guest speak?" "No, Mr. Trumbull," said Servais, as though there bad been no interruption at all, "I am no science fiction writer, though I read it sometimes. I read Ray Bradbury, for instance, and Harlan Ellison." (He nasalized both names.) "I don't think I have ever read Asimov." "I'll tell him that," muttered Rubin, "he'll love it." "But," continued Servais, "I suppose you might call me a science fiction engineer." "What does that mean?" asked Trumbull. "I do not write of Lunar colonies. I design them." "You design them!" "Oh yes, and not Lunar colonies only, though that is our major task right now. We work in every field of imaginative design for pnivate industry, Hollywood, even NASA." Gonzalo said, "Do you really think people can live on the Moon?" "Why not? It depends on what mankind is willing to do, how large an initial investment it is ready to make. The environment on the Moon can be engineered to the precise equivalent of Earth, over restricted underground areas, except for gravity. We must be content with a Lunar gravity that is one sixth our own. Except for that, we need only allow for original supplies from Earth and for clever en- gineering-and that is where we come in, my partner and L" "You're a two-man firm?" "Essentially. -While my partner remains my partner, of course." "Are you breaking up?" "No, no. But we quarrel over small points. It is not surprising. It is a bad time for him. But no, we will not break up. I have made up my mind to give in to him, perhaps. Of course, I am entirely in the right and it is a pity to lose what I would have." Trumbull leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and said, "Will you tell us what the argument is all about? We can then state our own preferences, whether for you or for your partner." "It would not be a bard choice, Mr. Trumbull, for the sane," said Servais. "I swear it. -This is the way it is. We are designing a full Lunar colony, in complete detail. It is for a motion picture company and it is for a good fee. They will make use of some of it in a grand science fiction spectacle they are planning. We naturally supply far more than they can use but the idea is that if they have a totally selfconsistent picture of what may be-and for a wonder they want it as scientifically accurate as possible-tbey can choose what they wish of it for Use." "I'll bet they bollix it up," said Drake pessimistically, "no matter how careful you are. They'll give the Moon an atmosphere." "Oh no," said Servais, "not after six Lunar landings. That error we need not fear. Yet I have no doubt they will make mistakes. They will find it impossible to handle low-gravity effects properly throughout and the exigencies of the plot will force some infelicities. "Still that cannot be helped and our job is merely to supply them with material of the most imaginative possible. This is my point as you will see in a moment. -We plan a city, a small city, and it will be against the inner lip of a crater. This is unavoidable because the plot of the movie demands it. However, we have our choice as to the identity and location of the crater, and my partner, perhaps because he is an American, goes for the obvious with an American directness. He wishes to use the crater Copernicus. "He says that it is a name that is familiar; that if the city is called Camp Copernicus that alone will breathe the Moon, exotic adventure, and so on. Everyone knows, be says, the name of the astronomer who first placed the Sun at the center of the planetary system and it is a name, moreover, that sounds impressive. 1, on the other hand, am not impressed with this. As seen from Copernicus, the Earth is high in the sky and stays there. As you all know, the Moon faces one side always to the Earth, so that from any spot on the Moon's surface the Earth is always more or less in the same spot in the sky." Gonzalo said suddenly, "If you want the Lunar city to be on the other side of the Moon so that the Earth isn't in the sky, you're crazy. The audience will absolutely want the Earth there." Servais held up his hand in agreement. "Absolutely! I agree. But if it is always there, it is almost as though it is not there. One gets too used to it. No, I choose a more subtle approach. I wish the city to be in a crater that is on the boundary of the visible side. From there of course, you will see the Earth at the horizon. "Consider what this introduces. The Moon does not keep the same side to the Earth exactly. It swings back and forth by a very small amount. For fourteen days it swings one way and then for fourteen days it swings back. This is called 'libration"'-be had paused here as though to make sure he was pronouncing it correctly in English-"and it comes about because the Moon does not move in a perfect circle about the Earth. "Now, you see, if we establish Camp Babyee in the crater of that name, the Earth is not only at the horizon but it moves up and down in a twenty-eight-day cycle. Properly located, the Lunar colonists will see the Earth rise and set, slowly, of course. This lends itself to imaginative exploitation. The characters can arrange for some important action at Earthset and the different positions of the Earth can indicate passage of time and raise the suspense. Some terrific special effects are possible, too. If Venus is near the Earth and Earth is in a fat crescent stage, Venus will then be at its brightest; and when Earth sets, we can show Venus, in the airless sky of the Moon, to be a very tiny crescent itself." "Earthset and evening star, and one clear call for me," muttered Avalon. Gonzalo said, "Is there really a crater called Babyee?" "Absolutely," said Servais. "It is, in fact, the largest crater that can be seen from the Earth's surface. It is 29o kilometers across-180 miles." "It sounds like a Chinese name," said Gonzalo. "French!" said Servais solemnly. "A French astronomer of that name was mayor of Paris in .1789 at the time of the Revolution." "That wasn't a good time to be mayor," said Gonzalo. "So be discovered," said Servais. "He was guillotined in 1793." Avalon said, "I am rather on your side, Mr. Servais. Your proposal lends scope. What was your partner's objection?" Servais shrugged in a gesture that was more Gallic than anything he had yet said or done. "Foolish ones. He says that it will be too complicated for the movie people. They will confuse things, be says. He also points out that the Earth moves too slowly in the Moon's sky. It would take days for the Earth to lift its entire globe above the horizon, and days for it to lower entirely below the horizon." "Is that right?" asked Gonzalo. "It's right, but what of that? It will still be interesting." Halsted said, "T'hey can fudge that. Make the Earth move a little faster. So what?" Servais looked discontented. "That's not so good. My partner says this is precisely what the movie people will do and this alteration of astronomical fact will be disgraceful. He is very violent about it, finding fault with everything, even with the name of the crater, which be says is ridiculous and laughable so that he will not endure it in our report. We have never had arguments like this. He is like a madman." "Remember," said Avalon, "you said you would give in." "Well, I will have to," said Servais, "but I am not pleased. Of course, it is a bad time for him." Rubin said, "You've said that twice now, jean. I've never met your partner, so I can't judge the personalities involved. Why is it a bad time?" Servais shook his head. "A month ago, or a little more, his wife killed herself. She took sleeping pills. My partner was a devoted busband, most uxorious. Naturally, it is terrible for him and, just as naturally, be is not himself." Drake coughed gently. "Should be be working?" "I would not dare suggest he not work. The work is keeping him sane." Halsted said, "Why did she kill herself?" Servais didn't answer in words but gestured with his eyebrows in a fashion that might be interpreted in almost any way. Halsted persisted. "Was she incurably ill?" "Who can say?" said Servais, sighing. "For a while, poor Howard-" He paused in embarrassment. "It was not my intention to mention his name." Trumbull said, "You can sa anything here. Whatever is mentioned in this room is completely confidential -Our waiter, too, before you ask, is completely trustworthy." "Well," said Servais, "his name doesn't matter in any case. It is Howard Kaufman. In a way, work has been very good for him. Except at work, he is almost dead himself. Nothing is any longer important to him." "Yes," said Trumbull, "but now something is important to him. He wants his crater, not your crater." "True," said Servais. "I have thought of that. I have told myself it is a good sign. He throws himself into something. It is a beginning. And perhaps all the more reason, then, that I should give in. Yes, I will. -It's settled, I will. There's no reason for you gentlemen to try to decide between us. The decision is made, and in his favor." Avalon was frowning. "I suppose we should go on to question you further on the work you do and I suppose, moreover, that we should not intrude on a private misfortune. Here at the Black Widowers, however, no questions are barred, and there is no Fifth Amnent to plead. I am dissatisfied, sir, with your remarks concerning the unfortunate woman who committed suicide. As a happily married man, I am puzzled at the combination of love and suicide. You said she wasn't ill?" "Actually, I didn't," said Servais, "and I am uncomfortable at discussing the matter." Rubin struck the empty glass before him 'witb his spoon. "Host's privilege," he said vigorously. There was silence. "Jean," be said, "you are my guest and my friend. We can't force you to answer questions, but I made it clear that the price of accepting our hospitality was the grilling. If you have been guilty of a criminal act and don't wish to discuss it, leave now and we will say notbing. If you will talk, then, whatever you say, we will still say nothing." "Though if it is indeed a criminal act," said Avalon, "we would certainly strongly advise confession." Servais laughed rather shakily. He said, "For one minute there, for one frightened minute, I thought I bad found myself in a Kafka novel and would be tried and condemned for some crime you would rag ou o me agains my wi . en emen, ave commi e no crime of importance. A speeding ticket, a bit of creative imagination on my tax return-all that is, so I bear it said, as American as apple pie. But if you're thinking I killed that woman and made it look like suicide-please put it out of your heads at once. It was suicide. The police did not question it." Halsted said, "Was she ill?" "All right, then, I will answer. She was not ill as far as I know. But after all, I am not a doctor and I did not examine her." Halsted said, "Did she have children?" "No. No children. -Ah, Mr. Halsted, I suddenly remember that you spoke earlier that your guests had problems which they brought up for discussion, and I said I had none. I see you have found one anyway." Trumbull said, "If you're so sure it was suicide, I suppose she left a note." "Yes," said Servais, "she left one." "What did it say?" "I couldn't quote it exactly. I did not myself see it. According to Howard, it was merely an apology for causing unhappiness but that she could not go on. It was quite banal and I assure you it satisfied the police." Avalon said, "But if it was a happy marriage, and there was no illness and no complications with children, then- Or were there complications with children? Did she want children badly and did her husband refuse-" Gonzalo interposed. "No one kills themselves because they don't have kids." "People kill themselves for the stupidest reasons," said Rubin. "I remember-" Trumbull cried out with stentorian rage, "Damn it, you guys, Jeff has the floor." Avalon said, "Was the lack of children a disturbing influence?" "Not as far as I know," said Servais. "Look, Mr. Avalon, I am careful in what I say, and I did not say it was a happy marriage." "You said your partner was devoted to his wife," said Avalon gravely, "and vou used that fine old word 'uxorious' to describe him." "Love," said Servais, "is insufficient for happiness if it flows but one way. I did not say that she loved him." Drake lit another cigarette. "Ah," he said, "the plot thickens." Avalon said, "Then it is your opinion that that had something to do with the suicide." arasse is ore an my op nion, sir. now it had something to do with the suicide." "Would you tell us the details?" asked Avalon, unbending just slightly from his usual stiff posture as though to convert his question into a courtly invitation. Servais hesitated, then said, "I remind you that you have promised me all is confidential. Mary-Madame Kaufman and my partner were married for seven years and it seemed a comfortable marriage, but who can tell in affairs of this sort? "There was another man. He is older than Howard and to my eyes not as good-looking-but again, who can tell in affairs of this sort? What she found in him is not likely to be there on the surface for all to see." Halsted said, "How did your partner take that?" Servais looked up and flushed distinctly. "He never knew. Surely, you are not of the opinion that I told him this? I am not the type, I assure you. It is not for me to interfere between husband and wife. And frankly, if I bad told Howard, be would not have believed me. It is more likely he would have attempted to strike me. And then what was I to do? Present proof? Was I to arrange matters so as to have them caught under conditions that could not be mistaken? No, I said nothing." "And be really didn't know?" asked Avalon, clearly embarrassed. "He did not. It had not been going on long. The pair were excessively cautious. The husband was blindly devoted. What woul4-bu?" "ne husband is always the last to know," said Gonzalo sententiously. Drake said, "If the affair was so well hidden, bow did vou find out, Mr. Servais?" "Purest accident, I assure you," said Servais. "An incredible stroke of misfortune for her in a way. I bad a date for the evening. I did not know the girl well and it did not, after all, work out. I was anxious to be rid of her, but first-wbat would you have, it would not be gentlemanly to abandon ber-I took her home in an odd corner of the city. And, having said good-by in a most perfunctory manner, I went into a nearby diner to have a cup of coffee and recover somewhat. And there I saw Mary Kaufman and a man. "Alas, it jumped to the eye. It was late; her husband, I remembered at once, was out of town, her attitude toward the man- Accept my assurances that there is a way a woman has of looking at a man that is completely unmistakable, and I saw it then. And if I were at all unsure, the expression on her face, when she looked up and saw me frozen in surprise, gave it all away. 941 left at once, of course, with no greeting of any kind, but the damage was done. She called me the next day, in agony of mind, the fool, fearful that I would carry stories to her husband, and gave me a totally unconvincing explanation. I assured her that it was a matter in which I did not interest myself in the least, that it was something so unimportant that I had already forgotten it. -I am glad, however, I did not have to face the man. Him, I would have knocked down." Drake said, "Did you know the man?" "Slightly," said Servais. "He moved in our circles in a very distant way. I knew his name; I could recognize him. -It didn't matter, for I never saw him after that. He was wise to stay away." Avalon said, "But why did she commit suicide? Was she afraid her husband would find oui?" "Is one ever afraid of that in such a case?" demanded Servais, with a slight lifting of his lip. "And if she were, surely she would end the affair. No, no, it was something far more common than that. Something inevitable. In such an affair, gentlemen, there are strains and risks which are great and which actually add an element of romance. I am not entirely unaware of such things, I assure you. "But the romance does not continue forever, whatever the story books may say, and it is bound to fade for one faster than for the other. Well then, it faded for the man in this case before it did for the woman-and the man took the kind of action one sometimes does in such affairs. He left-went-disappeared. And so the lady killed herself." "Trumbull drew himself up and frowned ferociously. "For that reason?" "I assume for that reason, sir. It has been known to happen. I did not know of the man's disappearance, you understand, till afterward. After the suicide I went in search of him, feeling he was in some way responsible, and rather promising myself to relieve my feelings by bloodying his nose-I have a strong affection for my partner, you understand, and I felt his sufferings-but I discovered the fine lover had left two weeks before and left no forwarding address. He bad no family and it was easy for him to leave, that blackguard. I could have tracked him down, I suppose, but my feelings were not strong enough to push me that far. And yet, I feel the guilt-" "What guilt?" asked Avalon. "It occurred to me that when I surprised tbem-quite unintentionally, of course-the element of risk to the man became unacceptably high. He knew I knew him. He may have felt that sooner or later it would come out and he did not wish to await results. If I had not stumbled into that diner they might still be together, she might still be alive, who knows?" Rubin said, "That is farfetched, jean. You can't deal rationally with the ifs of history. -But I have a thought." "Yes, Manny?" "After the suicide your partner was very quiet, nothing is important to him. I think you said that. But now he is quarreling with you violently, though he has never done that before, I gather. Something may have happened in addition to the suicide. Perhaps now he has discovered his wife's infidelity and the thought drives him mad." Servais shook his head. "No, no. If you think I have told him, you are quite wrong. I admit I think of telling him now and then. It is difficult to see him, my dear friend, wasting away over a woman who, after all, was not worthy of him. It is not proper to pine away for one who was not faithful to him in life. Ought I not tell him this? Frequently, it seems to me that I should and even must. He will face the truth and begin life anew. -But then I think and even know that be will not believe me, that our friendship will be broken, and he will be worse off than before." Rubin said, "You don't understand me. Might it not be that someone else has told him? How do you know you were the only one who knew?" Servais seemed a bit startled. He considered it and said, "No. He would, in that case, certainly have told me the news. And I assure you, he would have told it to me with the highest degree of baftna- tion and informed me that he at once attempted to strike the villain who would so malign his dead angel." "Not," said Rubin, "if be bad been told that you were his wife's lover. Even if be refused to believe it, even if he beat the informant to the ground, could he tell you the tale under such circumstances? And could he be entirely certain? Would he not find it impossible to avoid picking fights with you in such a case?" Servais seemed still more startled. He said slowly, "It was, of course, not 1. No one could possibly have thought so. Howard's wife did not in the least appeal to me, you understand." He looked up and said fiercely, "You must accept the fact that I am telling you the truth about all this. It was not 1, and I will not be suspected. If anyone had said it was I, it could only be out of deliberate malice." "Maybe it was," said Rubin. "Might it not be the real lover who would make the accusation-out of fear you would give him away? By getting in his story first-" "Why should he do this? He is away. No one suspects him. No one pursues him." "He might not know that," said Rubin. "Pardon me." Henry's voice sounded softly from the direction of the sideboard. "May I ask a question?" "Certainly," said Rubin, and the odd silence fell that always did when the quiet waiter, whose presence rarely obtruded on the festivities, made himself heard. Servais looked startled, but his politeness held. He said, "Can I do anything for you, waiter?" Henry said, "I'm not sure, sir, that I quite understand the nature of the quarrel between yourself and your partner. Surely there must have been decisions of enormous complexity to make as far as the technical details of the colony were concerned." "You don't know even a small part of it," said Servais indulgently. "Did your partner and you quarrel over all those details, sir?" "N-no," said Servais. "We did not quarrel. There were discussions, of course. It is useless to believe that two men, each with a strong will and pronounced opinions, will agree everywhere, or even anywhere, but it all worked out reasonably. We discussed, and eventually we came to some conclusion. Sometimes I had the better of it, sometimes he, sometimes neither or both." "But then," said Henry, "there was this one argument over the actual location of the colony, over the crater, and there it was all different. He attacked even the name of the crater fiercely and, in this one case, left no room for the slightest compromise." "No room at all. And you are right. Only in this one case." Henry said, "Then I am to understand that at this time, when Mr. Rubin suspects that your partner is being irritated by suspicion of you, he was completely reasonable and civilized over every delicate point of Lunar engineering, and was wildly and unbearably stubborn only over the single matter of the site-over whether Copernicus or the other crater was to be the place where the colony was to be built?" "Yes," said Servais with satisfaction. "That is precisely how it was and I see the point you are making, waiter. It is quite unbelievable to suppose that he would quarrel with me over the site out of ill-humor over suspicions that I have placed horns on him, when he does not quarrel with me on any other point. Assuredly, he does not suspect me of ill-dealing. I thank you, waiter." Henry said, "May I go a little further, sir?" "By all means," said Servais. "Earlier in the evening," said Henry, "Mr. Rubin was kind enough to ask my opinion over the techniques of his profession. There was the question of deliberate omission of details by witnesses." "Yes," said Servais, "I remember the discussion. But I did not deliberately omit any details." "You did not mention the name of Mrs. Kaufman's lover." Servais frowned. "I suppose I didn't, but it wasn't deliberate. It is entirely irrelevant." "Perhaps it is," said Henry, "unless his name happens to be Bailey." Servais froze in his chair. Then be said anxiously, "I don't recall mentioning it. Sacred- I see your point again, waiter. If it slips out now without my remembering it, it is possible to suppose that, without quite realizing it, I may have said something that led Howard to suspect-2' Gonzalo said, "Hey, Henry, I don't recall jean giving us any name." "Nor I," said Henry. "You did not give the name, sir." Servais relaxed slowly and then said, frowning, "Then how did you know? Do you know these people?" Henry shook his head. "No, sir, it was just a notion of mine that arose out of the story you told. From your reaction, I take it his name is Bailey?" "Martin Bailey," said Servais. "How did you know?" "The name of the crater in which you wished to place the site is Bahyee; the name of the city would be Camp Babyee." 7y 'Yes. "But that is the French pronunciation of the name of a Freastronomer. How is it spelled?" Servais said, "B-a-i-l-l-y. -Great God, Bailly!" Henry said, "In English pronunciation, pronounced like the not uncommon surname Bailey. I am quite certain American astronomers use the English pronunciation, and that Mr. Kaufman does too. You hid that piece of information from us, Mr. Servais, because you never thought of the crater in any other way than Bahyee. Even looking at it, you would hear the French sound in your mind and make no connection with Bailey, the American surname." Servais said, "But I still don't understand." "Would your partner wish to publicize the name, and place the site of a Lunar colony in Bailly? Would he want to have the colony called Camp Bailly, after what a Bailey has done to him?" "But he didn't know what Bailey had done to him," said Servais. "How do you know that? Because there's an old saw that says the husband is always the last to know? How else can you explain his utterly irrational opposition to this one point, even his insistence that the name itself is horrible? It is too much to expect of coincidence." "But if he knew-if he knew- He didn't tell me. Why fight over it? Why not explain?" "I assume," said Henry, "he didn't know you knew. Would he shame his dead wife by telling you?" Servais clutched at his hair. "I never thought- Not for a moment." "There is more to think," said Henry sadly. ,Avlat?" "One might wonder how Bailey came to disappear, if your partner knew the tale. One might wonder if Bailey is alive? Is it not conceivable that Mr. Kaufman, placing all the blame on the other man, confronted his wife to tell her he had driven her lover away, even killed him, perhaps, and asked her to come back to him-and the response was suicide?" "No," said Servais. "That is impossible." "It would be best, then, to find Mr. Bailey and make sure he is alive. It is the one way of proving your partner's innocence. It may be a task for the police." Servais bad turned very pale. "I can't go to the police with a story like that." "If you do not," said Henry, "it may be that your partner, brooding over what be has done-if indeed he has done it-will eventually take justice into his own hands." "You mean kill himself?" whispered Servais. "Is that the choice you are facing me with: accuse him to the police or wait for him to kill himself?" "Or both," said Henry. "Life is cruel." 9 Afterword I got the idea for this one when I was in Newport, Rhode Island, attending a seminar on space and the future, sponsored by NASA. It got in the way, too. I was listening, in all good faith, to someone who was delivering an interesting speech. Since I was slated to give a talk too, I bad every reason for wanting to listen. And yet, when the craters of the Moon were mentioned, my brain, quite involuntarily, began ticking, and after some fifteen minutes had passed I had "Earthset and Evening Star" in my mind in full detail and had missed the entire last half of the speech. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, alas, thought that the business with the craters was a little too recondite to carry the story and sent it back. I then took the chance that the craters might be just science-fictionish enough to interest Ed Ferman. I sent it to birn, he took it, and it appeared in the October 1975 issue of F & SF. Friday the Thirteenth Mario Gonzalo unwound a long crimson scarf and bung it up beside his coat with an air of discontent. "Friday the thirteenth," he said, "is a rotten day for the banquet and I'm cold." Emmanuel Rubin, who bad arrived earlier at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers, and who had bad a chance to warm up both externally and internally, said, "This isn't cold. When I was a kid in Minnesota, I used to go out and milk cows when I was eight years old-" "And by the time you got home the milk was frozen in the pail. I've heard you tell that one before," said Thomas Trumbull. "But what the devil, this was the only Friday we could use this month, considering that the Milano is closing down for two weeks next Wednesday, and-" But Geoffrey Avalon, staring down austerely from his seventy-four inches of height, said in his deep voice, "Don't explain, Tom. If anyone is such a superstitious idiot as to think that Friday is unluckier than any other day of the week, or that thirteen is unluckier than any other number, and that the combination has some maleficent influence on us all-then I say leave him in the outer darkness and let him gnash his teeth." He was host for the banquet on this occasion and undoubtedly felt a proprietary interest in the day. Gonzalo shook back his long hair and seemed to have grown more content now that most of a very dry martini was inside him. He said, "That stuff about Friday the thirteenth is common knowledge. If you're too ignorant to know that, Jeff, don't blame me." Avalon bent his forinidable eyebrows together and said, "To hear the ignorant speak of ignorance is always amusing. Come, Mario, if you'll pretend to be human for a moment, I'll introduce you to my guest. You're the only one he hasn't met yet." Speaking to James Drake and Roger Halsted at the other end of the room was a slender gentleman with a large-bowled pipe, a weedy yellow mustache, thin hair that was almost colorless, and faded blue eyes set deeply in his head. He wore a tweed jacket and a pair of trousers that seemed to have been comfortably free of the attentions of a pressing iron for some time. "Evan," said Avalon imperiously, "I want you to meet our resident artist, Mario Gonzalo. He will make a caricature of you, after a fashion, in the course of our meal. Mario, this is Dr. Evan Fletcher, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania. There, Evan, you've met us all." And as though that were a signal, Henry, the perennial waiter at all the Black Widowers' banquets, said softly, "Gentlemen," and they seated themselves. "Actually," said Rubin, attacking the stuffed cabbage with gusto, "this whole business about Friday the thirteenth is quite modem and undoubtedly arose over the matter of the Crucifixion. That took place on a Friday and the Last Suipper, which had taken place earlier, was, of course, a case of thirteen at the table, the twelve Apostles and-" Evan Fletcher was trying to stem the flow of words rather ineffectively and Avalon said loudly, "Hold on, Manny, I think Dr. Fletcher wishes to say something." Fletcher said, with a rather apologetic smile, "I just wondered how the subject of Friday the thirteenth arose." "Today is Friday the thirteenth," said Avalon. "Yes, I know. When you invited me to the banquet for this evening, it was the fact that it was Friday the thirteenth that made me rather eager to attend. I would have raised the point myself, and I am surprised that it came up independently." "Nothing to be astonished about," said Avalon. "Mario raised the point. He's a triskaidekaphobe." "A what?" said Gonzalo in an outraged voice. "You have a morbid fear of the number thirteen." "I do not," said Gonzalo. "I just believe in being cautioqs'"' Trumbull helped himself to another roll and said, "What do you mean, Dr. Fletcher, in saying that you would have raised the point yourself? Are you a triskai-whatever too?" "No, no," said Fletcher, shaking his head gently, "but I have an interest in the subject. A personal interest." Halsted said in his soft, somewhat hesitant voice, "Actually, there's a very good reason why thirteen should be considered unlucky and it has nothing to do with the Last Supper. That explanation was just invented after the fact. "Consider that early, unsophisticated people found the number twelve very handy because it could be divided evenly by two, three, four, and six. If you sold objects by the dozen, you could sell half a dozen, a third, a fourth, or a sixth of a dozen. We still sell by the dozen and the gross today for that very reason. Now imagine some poor fellow counting his stock and finding be has thirteen items of something. You can't divide thirteen by anything. It just confuses his arithmetic and be says, 'Oh, damn, thirteenl What rotten luckl' -and there you are." Rubin's sparse beard seemed to stiffen, and he said, "Oh, that's a lot of junk, Roger. That sort of reasoning should make thirteen a lucky number. Any tradesman would offer to throw in the thirteenth to sweeten the trade. -That's good steak, Henry." "Baker's dozen," said James Drake in his hoarse smoker's voice. "The baker," said Avalon, "threw in a thirteenth loaf to make up a baker's dozen in order to avoid the harsh penalties meted out for short weight. By adding the thirteenth, he was sure to go over weight even if any of the normal twelve loaves were skimpy. He might consider the necessity to be unlucky." "The customer might consider it lucky," muttered Rubin. "As for Friday," said Halsted, "that is named for the goddess of love, Freya in the Norse myths. In the Romance languages the name of the day is derived from Venus; it is vendredi in French, for instance. I should think it would be considered a lucky day for that reason. Now you take Saturday, named for the dour old god, Satum Gonzalo had completed his caricature and passed it around the table to general approval and to a snicker from Fletcher himself. He seized the opportunity to finish his potato puffs and said, "All you guys are trying to reason out something that lies beyond reason. The fact is that people are afraid of Friday and are afraid of thirteen and are especially afraid of the combination. The fear itself could make bad things happen. I might be so concerned that this place will catch fire, for instance, because it's Friday the thirteenth, that I won't be thinking and I'll stick my fork in my cheek." "If that would shut you up, it might be a good idea," said Avalon. "But I won't," said Gonzalo, "because I have my eye on my fork and I know that Henry will get us all out if the place catches on fire, even if it means staying behind himself and dying in agony. -Right, Henry?" "I hope that the contingency will not arise, sir," said Henry, placing the dessert dishes dexterously before each diner. "Will you be having coffee, sir?" he asked Fletcher. "May I have cocoa? Is that possible?" said Fletcher. "Certainly it is," interposed Avalon. "Go, Henry, negotiate the matter with the chef." And it was not long thereafter, with the coffee (or cocoa, in Fletcher's case) steaming welcomely before them, that Avalon tapped his water glass with his spoon and said, "Gentlemen, it is time to turn our attention to our guest. Tom, will you initiate the matter?" Trumbull put down his coffee cup, scowled his face into a crosscurrent of wrinkles, and said, "Ordinarily, Dr. Fletcher, I would ask you to justify your existence, but having sat through an extraordinarily foolish discussion of superstition, I want to ask you whether you have anything to add to the matter. You implied early in the meal that you would have raised the matter of Friday the thirteenth yourself if it had not come up otherwise." "Yes," said Fletcher, holding bis large ceramic cup of cocoa within the parentheses of his two hands, "but not as a matter of superstition. Rather it is a serious historic puzzle that concerns me and that hinges on Friday the thirteenth. Jeff said that the Black Widowers were fond of puzzles and this is the only one I have for youwith the warning, I'm afraid, that there is no solution." "As you all know," said Avalon, with resignation, "I'm against turning the club into a puzzle-solving organization, but I seem to be a minority of one in this matter, so I try to go along with the consensus." He accepted the small brandy glass from Henry with a look compounded of virtue and martyrdom. "May we have this puzzle?" said Halsted. "Yes, of course. I thought for a moment, when Jeff invited me to attend your dinner, that it was to be held on Friday the thirteenth in my honor, but that was a flash of megalomania. I understand that you always hold your dinners on a Friday evening and, of course, no one knows about my work but myself and my immediate family." He paused to light his pipe, then, leaning back and puffing gently, be said, "The story concerns Joseph Hennessy, who was exQmftd in 1925 for an attempt on the life of President Coolidge. He was tried on this charge, convicted, and hanged. "To the end, Hennessy proclaimed his innocence and advanced a rather strong defense, with a number of people giving evidence for his absence from the scene. However, the emotional currents against him were strong. He was an outspoken labor leader, and a Socialist, Joseph Hennessy never e7dsted and, as far as I know, there was never an assassination attempt on Calvin Coolidge. All other historical references in the story, not involving Hennessy, are accurate-IA. at a time when fear of Socialism ran high. He was foreign-born, which didn't help. And those who gave evidence in his favor were also foreign-born Socialists. The trial was a travesty and, once be was banged and passions had had time to cool, many people realized this. "After the execution, however, long after, a letter was produced in Hennessy's handwriting that seemed to make him a moving figure behind the assassination plot beyond a doubt. This was seized on by all those who had been anxious to see him hanged, and it was used to justify the verdict. Without the letter, the verdict must still be seen as a miscarriage of justice." Drake squinted from behind the curling smoke of his cigarette and said, "Was the letter a forgery?" "No. Naturally, those who felt Hennessy was innocent thought it was at first. The closest study, however, seemed to show that it was indeed in his handwriting, and there were things about it that seemed to mark it his. He was a grandiosely superstitious man, and the note was dated Friday the thirteenth and nothing more." "Why 'grandiosely' superstitious?" asked Trumbull. "That's an odd adjective to use." "He was a grandiose man," said Fletcher, "given to doing everything in a flamboyant manner. He researched his superstitions. In fact, the discussion at the table as to the significance of Friday and of thirteen reminded me of the sort of man be was. He probably would have known more about the matter than any of you." "I should think," said Avalon gravely, "that investigating superstitions would militate against his being victimized by them." "Not necessarily," said Fletcher. "I have a good friend who drives a car frequently but won't take a plane because he's afraid of them. He has beard all the statistics that show that on a man-mile basis airplane travel is safest and automobile travel most dangerous, and when I reminded him of that, he replied, "Mere is nothing either in law or in psychology that commands me to be rational at every point! And yet in most things be is the most rational man I know. "As for Joe Hennessy, be was far from an entirely rational man and none of his careful studies of superstition prevented him in the least from being victimized by them. And his fear of Friday the tbirteenth was perhaps the strongest of all his superstitious fears." Halsted said, "What did the note say? Do you remember?" "I brought a copy," said Fletcher. "It's not the original, of course. The original is in the Secret Service files, but in these days of Xerox- yp ing, that scarcely matters. He took a slip of paper out of his wallet and passed it to Halsted, who sat on his right. It made the rounds of the table and Avalon, who received it last, automatically passed it to Henry, who was standing at the sideboard. Henry read it with an impassive countenance and handed it back to Fletcher, who seemed slightly surprised at having the waiter take part, but said nothing. The note, in a bold and easily legible handwriting, read: Friday the 13th Dear Paddy, It's a fool I am to be writing you this day when I should be in bed in a dark room by rights. I must tell you, though, the plans are now complete and I dare not wait a day to begin implementing them. The finger of God has touched that wicked man and we will surely finish the job next month. You know what you must do, and it must be done even at the cost of every drop of blood in our veins. I thank God's mercy for the forty-year Miracle that will give us no Friday the 13th next month. Joe Avalon said, "He doesn't really say anything." Fletcher shook his head. "On the contrary, he says too much. If this were the prelude to an assassination attempt, would he have placed anything at all in writing? Or if he had, would the references not have been much more dark and Aesopic?" "What did the prosecution say it meant?" Fletcher put the note carefully back into his wallet. "As I told you, the prosecution never saw it. The note was uncovered only some ten years after the hanging, when Patrick Reilly, to whom the note was addressed, died and left it among his effects. Reilly was not implicated in the assassination attempt, though of course he would have been if the note had come to light soon enough. "Those who maintain that Hennessy was rightly executed say that the note was written on Friday, June 13, IL924. The assassination attempt was carried through on Friday, July i 1, 1924. It wb-dfd' have made Hennessy nervous to have made the attempt on any Friday, but for various reasons involving the presidential schedule that was the only possible day for a considerable period of time, and Hennessy would be understandably grateful that it was not the thirteenth at least. "The remark concerning the finger of God touching the wicked man is said to be a reference to the death of President Warren G. Harding, who died suddenly on August 2, 1923, less than a year be- fore the assassination attempt was to 'finish the job' by getting rid of the Vice-President who had succeeded to the presidency." Drake, with his head cocked to one side, said, "It sounds like a reasonable interpretation. It seems to fit." "No, it doesn't," said Fletcher. "The interpretation is accepted only because anything else would highlight a miscarriage of justice. But to me-2' He paused and said, "Gentlemen, I will not pretend to be free of bias. My wife is Joseph Hennessy's granddaughter. But if the relationship exposes me to bias, it also gives me considerable personal information concerning Hennessy by way of my father-in-law, now dead. "Hennessy bad no strong feelings against either Harding or Coolidge. He was not for them, of course, for he was a fiery Socialist, supporting Eugene Debs all the way-and that didn't help him at the trial, by the way. There was no way in which he could feel that the assassination of Coolidge would have accomplished anything at all. Nor would he have felt Harding to be a 'wicked man' since the evidence concerning the vast corruption that had taken place during his administration came to light only gradually, and the worst of it well after the note was written. "In fact, if there was a President whom Hennessy hated furiously, it was Woodrow Wilson. Hennessy had been bom in Ireland and bad left the land a step ahead of English bayonets. He was furiously anti-British and therefore, in the course of World War 1, was an emphatic pacifist opposing American entry on the side of Great Britain. -That didn't help him at the trial either." Rubin interposed, "Debs opposed entry also, didn't be?" "That's right," said Fletcher, "and in 1918 Debs was jailed as a spy in consequence. Hennessy avoided prison, but he never referred to Wilson after American entry into war by any term other than 'that wicked man.' He had voted for Wilson in 1916 as a result of the 'He-kept-us-out-of-war' campaign slogan, and he felt betrayed, you understand, when the United States went to war the next year." "Then you think he's referring to Wilson in that note," said Trumbull. "I'm sure of it. The reference to the finger of God touching the wicked man doesn't sound like death to me, but something less-just the touch of the finger, you see. As you probably all know, Wilson suffered a stroke on October 2, 1919, and was incapacitated for the remainder of his term. That was the finger of God, if you like." Gonzalo said, "Are you saying Hennessy was going to finish the job by assassinating Wilson?" "No, no, therewas no assassination attempt on Wilson." "Then what does he mean, 'finish the job,' and doing it 'even at the cost of every drop of blood in our veins'?" "That was his flamboyance," said Fletcher. "If be was going out for a bucket of beer he would say, 'I'll bring it back if it costs me every drop of blood in my veins."' Avalon leaned back in his chair, twirled his empty brandy glass, and said, "I don't blame you, Evan, for wanting to clear your grandfatber-in4aw, but you'll need something better than what you've given us. If you can find another Friday the thirteenth on which the letter could have been written, if you can figure out some way of pinpointing the date to something other than June 13, 1924--2' "I realize that" said Fletcher, rather glumly, "and I've gone through his life. I've worked with his correspondence and with newspaper files and with my father-in-law's memory, until I think I could put my finger on where he was and what he did virtually every day of his life. I tried to find events that could be related to some nearby Friday the thirteenth, and I eNen think I've found some-but how do I go about proving that any of them are the Friday the thirteenth? -If only he had been less obsessed by the fact of Friday the thirteenth and had dated the letter in the proper fashion." "It wouldn't have saved his life," said Gonzalo thoughtfully. "The letter couldn't then have been used to besmirch his memory and give rise to the pretense that the trial was fair. -As it is, I don't even know that I've caught every Friday the thirteenth there might be. The calendar is so dreadfully irregular that there's no way of knowing when the date will spring out at you." "Oh no," said Halsted with a sudden soft explosiveness. "The calendar is irregular, but not as irregular as all that. You can find every Friday the thirteenth without trouble as far back or as far forward as you want to go." "You can?" said Fletcher with some astonishment. "I don't believe that," said Gonzalo, almost simultaneously. "It's very easy," said Halsted, drawing a ball-point pen out of his inner jacket pocket and opening a napkin on the table befors-him. "Oh, oh," said Rubin, in mock terror. "Roger teaches math at a junior high school, Dr. Fletcher, and you had better be ready for some complicated equations." "No equations at all necessary," said Halsted loftily. "I'll bring it down to your level, Manny. -Look, there are 365 days in a year, which comes out to fifty-two weeks and one day. If the year were 364 days long, it would be just fifty-two weeks long, and the calendar would repeat itself each year. If January i were on a Sunday one year, it would be on a Sunday the next year and every year. "That extra day, however, means that each year the weekday on which a particular date falls is shoved ahead by one. If January 1 is on a Sunday one year, it will fall on Monday the next year, and on Tuesday the year after. "ne only complication is that every four years we have a leap year in which a February 29 is added, making 366 days in all. That comes to fifty-two weeks and two days, so that a particular date is shoved ahead by two in the list of weekdays. It leaps over one, so to speak, to land on the second, which is why it is called leap year. Tliat means that if January 1 falls on, say, a Wednesday in leap year, then the next year January i falls on a Friday, having leaped over the Tbursday. And this goes for any day of the year and not just January 1. "Of course, February 29 comes after two months of a year have passed so that dates in January and February make their leap the year after leap year, while the remaining months make their leap in leap year itself. In order to avoid that complication, let's pretend that the year begins on March 1 of the year before the calendar year and ends on February 28 of the calendar year-or February 29 in leap year. In that way, we can arrange to have every date leap the weekday in the year after what we call leap year. "Now let's imagine that the thirteenth of some month falls on a Friday-it doesn't matter which month-and that it happens to be a leap year. The date leaps and lands on Sunday the next year. That next year is a normal 365-day year and so are the two following, so the thirteenth progresses to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, but the year in which it is Wednesday is a leap year again and the next year it falls on a Friday. In other words, if the thirteenth of some month is on a Friday of a leap year, by our definition, then it is on a Friday again five years later-!' Gonzalo said, "I'm not following you at all." Halsted said, "Okay, then, let's make a table. We can list the years as L, 1, 2, 3, L, 1, 2, 3 and so on where L stands for leap year, coming every four years. We can label the days of the week from A to G, A for Sunday, B for Monday through to G for Saturday. That will, at least, give us the pattern. Here it is-" He scribbled furiously, then passed the napkin round. On it was written: L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L 1 2 3 L ACDEFABCDFGA13DEFGBCDEGABCEFGA "You see," said Halsted, "on the twenty-ninth year after you start, A falls on leap year again and the whole pattern starts over. That means that this year's calendar can be used again twenty-eight years from now and then again twenty-eight years after that, and twenty-eight years after that, and so on. "Notice that each letter occurs four times in the twenty-eight-year cycle, which means that any date can fall on any day of the week with equal probability. That means that Friday the thirteenth must come every seven months on the average. Actually, it doesn't because the months are of different lengths, irregularly spaced, so that there can be any number of Friday the thirteenths in any given year from I to 3. It is impossible to have a year with no Friday the thirteenths at all, and equally impossible to have more than three." "Why is there a twenty-eight-year cycle?" asked Gonzalo. Halsted said, "Tliere are seven days in the week and a leap'year every fourth year and seven times four is twenty-eigbt." "You mean that if there were a leap year every two years the cycle would last fourteen years?" "That's right and if it were every three years it would last twenty one years and so on. As long as there are seven days a week and a leap year every x years, with x and 7 mutually prime-2' Avalon interrupted. "Never mind that, Roger. You've got your pattern. How do you use it?" "T'lie easiest thing in the world. Say the thirteenth falls on a Friday in a leap year, where you remember to start the leap year on March 1 before the actual calendar leap year. Then you represent it by A, and you will see that the thirteenth of that same month will fall wherever the A shows up, five years later and six years after that, and then eleven years after that. "Now this is December 13, 1974, and by our convention of leap years this is the year before leap year. That means that it can be represented by the letter E, whose first appearance is under 3, the year before L. Well then, by following the Es, we see that there will be another Friday the thirteenth in December eleven years from now, then in six more years, then in five years. That is, There,3ojl be a Friday the thirteenth in December 1985, in December 19q'i" and in December 1996. "You can do that for any date for any month, using that little series I've just written out, and make up a perpetual calendar that runs for twenty-eight years and then repeats itself over and over. You can run it forward or backward and catch every Friday the thirteenth as far as you like in either direction, or at least as far back as 1752. In fact, you can find such perpetual calendars in reference books like the World Almanac." Gonzalo said, "Why 1752?" "That's an unusual year, at least for Great Britain and what were then the American colonies. ne old Julian calendar which had been used since Julius Caesar's time had gained on the season because there were a few too many leap years in it. The Gregorian calendar, named for Pope Gregory XIII, was adopted in 1582 in much of Europe, and by that time the calendar was ten days out of synchronization with the seasons, so that ten days were dropped from the calendar, and every once in a while thereafter a leap year was omitted to keep the same thing from happening again. Great Britain and the colonies didn't go along till 1752, by which time another day had been added, so they bad to drop eleven days." "That's right," said Rubin. "And for a while they used both calendars, referring to a particular date as O.S. or N.S. for Old Style and New Style. George Washington was bom on February 11, 1732 O-S-, but instead of keeping the date, as many people did, he switched to February 22, 1732 N.S. I've won considerable money by betting that George Washington wasn't born on Washington's Birthday." Halsted said, "The reason Great Britain hesitated so long was that the new calendar was initiated by the papacy, and Great Britain, being Protestant, preferred going against the Sun than along with the Pope. Russia didn't switch till 1923, and the Russian Orthodox Church is on the Julian calendar to this day, which is why the Orthodox Christmas comes on January 7 now, since the number of accumulated days' difference is thirteen. "Great Britain went from September 2, 1752, directly to September 14, dropping the days in between. There were riots against that, with people shouting, 'Give us back our eleven days."' Rubin said indignantly, "That wasn't as crazy as you might think. Landlords charged the full quarter's rent, without giving an elevenday rebate. I'd have rioted too." "In any case," said Halsted, "that's why the perpetual calendar only goes back ta 1752- Those eleven missing days mess everything up and you have to set up a different arrangement for days before September 14, 1752." Fletcher, who bad listened to everything with evident interest, said, "I must say I didn't know any of this, Mr. Halsted. I don't pretend that I followed you perfectly, or that I can duplicate what you've just done, but I didn't know that I could find a perpetual calendar in the World Almanac. It would have saved me a lot of trouble-but of course, knowing where all the Friday the thirteenths are wouldn't help me determine which Friday the thirteenth might be the Friday the thirteenth." Henry interposed suddenly and said in his soft, polite voice, "I'm not sure of that, Mr. Fletcher. May I ask you a few questions?" Fletcher looked startled and, for a short moment, was silent. Avalon said quickly, "Henry is a member of the club, Evan. I hope you don't mind-" "Of course not," said Fletcher at once. "Ask away, Henry." "Thank you, sir. -What I want to know is whether Mr. Hennessy knew of this pattern of date variations that Mr. Halsted has so kindly outlined for us." Fletcher looked thoughtful. "I can't say for certain; I certainly haven't beard of it, if he did. -Still, it's very likely he would have. He prided himself, for instance, on being able to cast a horoscope and, for all the nonsense there is in astrology, casting a proper boroscope takes a bit of mathematics, I understand. Hennessy did not have much of a formal education, but he was fearfully intelligent, and he was interested in numbers. In fact, as I think of it, I am sure be couldn't possibly have been as interested in Friday the thirteenth as be was, without being impelled to work out the pattern." "In that case, sir," said Henry, "if I ask you what Mr. Hennessy was doing on a certain day, could you call up someone to check your notes on the matter, and tell us?" Fletcher looked uncertain. "I'm not sure. My wife is home, but she wouldn't know where to look, and it's not likely I'll be able to give her adequate directions. -1 could try, I suppose." "In that case, do you suppose you could tell me what Mr. Hennessy was doing on Friday, March 12, 1920?" Fletcher's chair scraped backward and for a long moment Fletcher stared openmouthed. "What makes you ask that?" "It seems logical, sir," said Henry softly. "But I do know what he was doing that day. It was one of the important days of his life. He swung the labor organization of which be was one of the leaders into supporting Debs for the presidency. Debs ran that year on the Socialist ticket even though he was stilL411 jail, and he polled over goopoo votes-the best the Socialists were ever able to do in the United States." Henry said, "Might not the labor organization have ordinarily supported the Democratic candidate for that year?" "James M. Cox, yes. He was strongly supported by Wilson." "So to swing the vote away from Wilson's candidate might be, in Mr. Hennessy's flamboyant style, the finishing of the job that the finger of God had begun." "I'm sure he would think of that in that fashion." "In which case the letter would have been written on Friday, February 13, 1920." "It's a possibility," said Fletcher, "but how can you prove it?" "Dr. Fletcher," said Henry, "in Mr. Hennessy's note he thanks God that there is no Friday the thirteenth the month after and even considers it a miracle. If he knew the perpetual calendar pattern he certainly wouldn't think it a miracle. There are seven months that have thirty-one days, and are therefore four weeks and three days long. If a particular date falls on a particular weekday in such a month, it falls on a weekday three past it the next month. In other words, if the thirteenth falls on a Friday in July, then it will fall on a Monday in August. Is that not so, Mr. Halsted?" "You're perfectly right, Henry. And if the month has thirty days it moves two weekdays along, so that if the thirteenth falls on a Friday in June it falls on a Sunday in July," said Halsted. "In that case, in any month that has thirty or thirty-one days, there cannot possibly be a Friday the thirteenth followed the next month by another Friday the thirteenth, and Hennessy would know that and not consider it a miracle at all. "But, Mr. Fletcher, there is one month that has only twenty-eigbt days and that is February. It is exactly four weeks long, so that March begins on the same day of the week that February does, and repeats the weekdays for every date, at least up to the twenty-eighth. If there is a Friday the thirteenth in February, there must be a Friday the thirteenth in March as well-unless it is leap year. "In leap year, February has twenty-nine days and is four weeks and one day long. That means that every day in March falls one weekday later. If the thirteenth falls on a Friday in February, it falls on a Saturday in March, so that, though February has a Friday the thirteenth, March has a Friday the twelfth. "My new appointment book has calendars for both 1975 and 1976. ne year 1976 is a leap year and, in it, I can see that there is a Friday, February 13, and a Friday, March 12. Mr. Halsted has pointed out that calendars repeat every twenty-eight years. That means that the 1976 calendar would also hold for 1948 and for 1920. "It is clear that once every twenty-eight years there is a Friday the thirteenth in February that is not followed by one in March, and Mr. Hennessy, knowing that the meeting of his labor group was scheduled for the second Friday in March, something perhapi maneuvered by his opposition to keep him at home, was delighted and relieved at the fact that it was at least not a second Friday the thirteenth." There was a silence all about the table and then Avalon said, "That's very nicely argued. It convinces me." But Fletcher shook his head. "Nicely argued, I admit, but I'm not sure-2' Henry said, "There is, possibly, more. I couldn't help wonder why Mr. Hennessy called it a 'forty-year miracle."' "Oh well," said Fletcher indulgently, "there's no mystery about that, I'm sure. Forty is one of those mystic numbers that crops up in the Bible all the time. You know, the Flood rained down upon the Earth for forty days and forty nights." "Yes," said Rubin eagerly, "and Moses remained forty days on Mount Sinai, and Elijah was fed forty days by the ravens, and Jesus fasted forty days in the wilderness, and so on. Talking about God's mercy would just naturally bring the number forty to mind." "Perhaps that is so," said Henry, "but I have a thought. Mr. Halsted, in talking about the conversion of the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, said that the new Gregorian calendar omitted a leap year occasionally." Halsted brought his fist down on the table. "Good God, I forgot. Manny, if you hadn't made that stupid joke about equations, I wouldn't have, been so anxious to simplify and I wouldn't have forgotten. -The Julian calendar had one leap year every four years without fail, which would have been correct if the year were exactly 365:V4 days long, but it's a tiny bit shorter than that. To make up for that tiny falling-sbort, three leap years have to be omitted every four centuries, and by the Gregorian calendar those omissions come in any year ending in 00 that is not divisible by 400, even though such a year would be leap in the Julian calendar. "That means," and he pounded his fist on the table again, "that .1900 was not a leap year. There was no leap year between 1896 and .1904. There were seven consecutive years Of 365 days each, instead of three." Henry said, "Doesn't that upset the perpetual calendar that you described?" "Yes, it does. The perpetual calendar for the 1800s meets the one for the 1900s in the middle, so to speak." "In that case, what was the last year before 1970 in which a Friday the thirteenth in February fell in a leap year?" "I'll have to figure it out," said Halsted, his pen racing over a new napkin. "Ah, ah," he muttered, then threw his pen down on the table and said, "In 1880, by God." "Forty years before 1970," said Henry, "so that on the day that Hennessy wrote his note, an unlucky day in February was not fol- lowed by an unlucky day in March for the first time in forty years, and it was quite fair for him to call it, flamboyantly, a forty-year miracle. It seems to me that February 13, 1920, is the only possible day in his entire lifetime on which that note could have been written." "And so it does to me," said Halsted. "And to me," said Fletcher. "I thank you, gentlemen. And especially you, Henry. If I can argue this out correctly now-" "I'm sure," said Henry, "that Mr. Halsted will be glad to help out." i o Afterword I had to write this one. On Friday, December 13, 1974, 1 was co-host for that month's meeting of the Trap Door Spiders. (The Trap Door Spiders have two hosts and twice the membership of the Black Widowers, you see.) I had picked a new restaurant and was particularly anxious that everything go well. I had guaranteed that twelve to fifteen members would show up and I feared that we might not make the number and that I would have a bad time with the restaurant. I counted them as they came in and when number twelve arrived I was relieved. (And the restaurant was pleased too. We were served an excellent meal with superb service-though, of course, no Henry.) Then, just as the cocktail hour was over and we sat down to dinner, in came member number thirteen. Personally, I think it's a credit to the membership that not one person present seemed the least bit concerned that we were thirteen at the table on Friday the thirteenth (and as far as I know, nothing has happened as a result.) I must admit I was concerned, because I could not let such an event pass without beginning to work on a Black Widower plot at once. Again Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine felt this to be too complicated a situation, and I passed it on to F 6 SF, which took it It appeared in the January 1976 issue. The Unabridged Roger Halsted, normally an equable person (as one would have to be to survive the teaching of mathematics at a junior high school), arrived at the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers in a highly apparent state of the sulks. "I'll have a bloody Mary, Henry," be said. "Light on the blood and an extra slug of Mary." Silently and deftly, Henry produced the drink, complete with slug, and James Drake, who was the host for the evening, stared at him over the smoke of his cigarette and let his inconsiderable gray mustache twitch. "What's the matter, Rog?" he asked in his soft, hoarse voice. Roger said, "I'm late." "So?" said Drake, who had to come in from New Jersey and had been known to be late himself. "Drink fast and catch up." "It's why I'm late that bothers me," said Halsted. His high forehead had turned pink past the place where the vanished hairline had once been. "I was looking for my cuff links. My favorite pair. -My only pair, actually. I spent twenty minutes. I looked everywhere." "Did you find them?" "No! Have you got any idea bow many hiding places there are in a two-story three-bedroom house? I could have spent twenty hpliw-and ended with nothing." Geoffrey Avalon drifted over, with the second drink at the halfway mark. "You don't have to look through the whole house, Rog. You didn't paste them over the molding or inside the drainpipe, did you? Where do you usually keep them?" "In a little box I've got in the drawer. I looked there first. They weren't there." His voice had risen well past its usual quiet pitcb and Emmanuel Rubin called out from the other side of the banquet table, "You left them in your shirt the last time you wore them and they got sent to the laundry and youT never see them again." "That's not so," said Halsted, clenching his left hand into a fist and waving it. "This is the only darned shirt I've got with French cuffs and I haven't worn it in three months and I saw the cuff links in the box just the other night when I was looking for something else." "Then look for something else again," said Rubin, "and they'll turn UP." "Ha-ha," said Halsted grimly, and finished his drink. Mario Gonzalo said, "Is that shirt you're wearing the one with the French cuffs, Rog?" "Yes, it is." "Well then, if that's the only shirt you've got with French cuffs, and you couldn't find your only pair of cuff links, what are you using to bold the cuffs together?" "Thread," said Halsted bitterly, shooting his cuffs for inspection. "I had Alice tie them with white thread." Gonzalo, himself an example of faultless sartorial splendor, with a predominant bluish touch in shirt and jacket, shading into the darker tints of his tie, winced. "Why didn't you put on a different shirt?" "My blood was up," saiol Halsted, "and I wasn't going to be forced into changing the shirt." Drake said, "Well, if you'll cool down a bit, Rog, I'll introduce my guest. Jason Leorrinster, this is Roger Halsted, and coming up the stairs yelling for a scotch and soda is the final member, Thomas Trumbull." Leominster smiled dutifully. He was not quite as tall as Avalon's six feet two, but he was thinner. He was clearly in his forties though he looked younger, and under his tan jacket he wore a black turtleneck sweater which managed to seem not out of place. He had high and pronounced cheekbones over a narrow and pointed chin. He said, "I'm afraid you're not getting much sympathy, Mr. Halsted, but you may have mine for what it's worth. When it comes to not finding things, my heart bleeds." Before Halsted could express what gratitude he felt for that, Henry signaled the beginning of dinner, the Black Widowers took their seats, and Trumbull, loudly and rapidly, proclaimed the ritualistic toast to Old King Cole. Rubin, staring bard at what was before him, lifted his straggly beard skyward in an access of indignation and said to Henry, "This thing looks like an egg roll. What is it, Henry?" "It's an egg roll, sir." "What's it doing here?" Henry said, "The chef has put together a Chinese meal for the club this month." "In an Italian restaurant?" "I believe be considers it a challenge, sir." Trumbull said, "Shut up and eat, Manny, will you? It's good." Rubin bit into it, then reached for the mustard. "It's all right," he said discontentedly, "for an egg roll." Even Rubin melted with the birds' nest soup, and ,vben the first of the seven platters proved to be Peking duck, he grew positively mellow. "Actually," he said, "it's not that you lose things. You forget them. It's that way with me. It's that way with anyone. You're holding something, and put it down with your mind on something else. Two minutes later you can't for the life of you tell where that something you put down is. Even if, by sheer accident, you find it, you still can't remember putting it down there. Roger hasn't lost his cuff links. He put them somewhere and he doesn't remember where." Gonzalo, who was daintily picking out a black mushroom in order to experience its unaccompanied savor, said, "Much as it pains me to agree with Manny-" "Much as it pains you to be right for one rare occasion, you mean." I've got to admit there's something to what he has just said. By accident, I'm sure. The worst thing anyone can do is to put something away where he knows it will be safe from a burglar's band. The burglar will find it right away, but the owner will never see it again. I once put a bankbook away and didn't find it for five years." "You hid it under the soap," said Rubin. "Does that work with you?" asked Gonzalo sweetly. "It doesn4t with me." "Where was it after you found it, Mario?" asked Avalon. "I've forgotten again," said Gonzalo. "Of course," interposed Leominster agreeably, "it is possible to put something in one place, shift it to another for still safer keeping, then remember only the first place-where it isn't." "Has that happened to you, Mr. Leominster?" asked Trumbull. "In a manner of speaking," said Leominster, "but I don't really know if it happened at all." Henry arrived with the platter of fortune cookies and said in a low voice to Halsted, "Mrs. Halsted has just called, sir. She wants me to tell you that the cuff links were found." Halsted turned sharply. "Found? Did she say where?" "Under the bed, sir. She says they had presumably fallen there." "I looked under the bed." "Mrs. Halsted says they were near one of the feet of the bed. Quite invisible, sir. She bad to feel around. She said to tell you that it has happened before." "Open your fortune cookie, Rog," said Avalon indulgently. "It will tell you that you are about to find something of great importance." Halsted did so, and said, "It says, 'Let a smile be your umbrella,"' and chafed visibly. Rubin said, "I'm not sure that it's proper for a Black Widower to be receiving a message from a woman while a stag meeting is actually in session." Gonzalo said, "Electric impulses have no sex, though I don't suspect you would know that, Manny, any more than you know anyw thing else about the subject." But Henry was bringing the brandy and Drake headed off the inevitable furious (and possibly improper) response by tapping a rapid tattoo on his water glass. Drake said, "Let me introduce Jason Leominster, a somewhat distant neighbor of mine. He's a genealogist and I don't think there's a single member of the Black Widowers-always excepting Henrywith a genealogy that would bear looking into, so let's be cautious." Leominster said, "Not really. No one has ever been disappointed in a genealogy. The number of ancestors increases geometrically with each generation, minus the effect of intermarriage. If we explore the siblings, the parents and their siblings, the grandparents and their siblings; all the attachments by marriage and their siblings; and the parents and grandparents that enter in with cases of remarriage; we have hundreds of individuals to play with when we go back only a single century. "By emphasizing the flattering connections and ignoring the others, we can't lose. To the professional genealogist, of course, there can be items of historic value uncovered, often minor, and sometimes surprisingly important. I discovered, for instance, a collateral descendant of Martha Washington who-" Trumbull, having raised his hand uselessly in the course of these remarks, now said, "Please, Mr. Leominster- Look, Jim, this is out of order. It's got to be question-and-answer. Will you indicate a griller?" Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, "It sounded interesting to me as it was. But go ahead. You be the griller." Trumbull scowled. "I just want everything in order. Mr. Leominster, I apologize for interrupting you. It was interesting, but we must proceed according to tradition. My first question would have been that of asking you to justify your existence, but your remarks have already indicated how your answer would be framed. Let me, therefore, go on to the next question. Mr. Leominster, you said in the course of the dinner that a person might hide something in one place, switch it to another, then remember only the first. You also said that it happened to you only in a manner of speaking and may never have happened at all. Could you elaborate on this? I am curious to know what was in your mind." "Nothing, really. My aunt died last month," and here Leominster raised his hand, "but spare me the formalities of regrets. She was eighty-five and bedridden. The point is that she left me her house and its contents, which bad been her brother's till he died ten years ago, and Mr. Halsted's affair. with the cuff links reminded me of what went on when my aunt inherited the house." "Good," said Trumbull, "what went on then?" "Why, she was convinced something was hidden in the house; something of value. It was never found and that's all there is to it." Trumbull said, "Then whatever it is is still there, isn't it?" "If it was ever there in the first place, then I suppose so." "And it's yours now?" "Yes." "And what do you intend to do about it?" "I don't see that I can do anything. We didn't find it when we looked for it, and I probably won't find it now. Still-" "Yes?)) "Well, I intend in time to put the house up for sale and auction off its contents. I have no use for them a's things and a reasonable use for the cash equivalents. It would be, however, annoying to auction off something for a hundred dollars and find that it contains an item worth, let us say, twenty-five thousand dollars." Trumbull sat back and said, "With the host's permissi6h, Mr. Leominster, I'm going to ask you to tell the story in some reasonable order. What is the thing that is lost? How did it come to be lost? And so on." "Hear, bear!" said Gonzalo approvingly. He bad finished his sketch, making Leominster's face a triangle, point-down, without in the least losing its perfect recognizability. Leominster looked at the sketch stoically and nodded, sipping at his brandy, while Henry noiselessly cleared the table. Leominster said, "I am from what is called an old New England family. The family made its money two centuries ago in textile mills and, I believe, in some of the less cheerful aspects of trade in those days-slaves and rum.Jhe family has kept its money since, investing it conservatively and so on. We're not tycoons, but we're all well off -those of us who are left: myself and a cousin. I am divorced, by the way, and have no children. "The family history is what makes me interested in genealogy, and the family finances make it possible for me to humor myself in this respect. It is not exactly a remunerative pursuit-at least, not in the fashion in which I pursue it-but I can afford it, you see. "My Uncle Bryce-my father's older brother-retired fairly early in life after the death of his wife. He built a rather fussy house in Connecticut and involved himself in collecting things. I myself don't see the pleasure in accumulation, but I imagine it gave rise in him to the same pleasures that are given me by genealogical research." "What did he collect?" asked Avalon. "Several types of items, but nothing unusual. He was a rather plodding sort of fellow, without much imagination. He collected old books to begin with, then old coins, and finally stamps. The fever never got to him so badly that he would invest really large sums, so that his collections are not what you might call first class. They're the kind that appraisers smile condescendingly over. Still, it gave him pleasure, and his thousand-book library isn't entirely worthless. Nor is the rest. And of course even a minor collector may sometimes get his hands on a good item." "And your uncle bad done so?" asked Trumbull. "My Aunt Hester-sbe was the third child, two years younger than my Uncle Bryce and five years older than my father, who died fourteen years ago- My Aunt Hester said that my uncle had a valuable item." "How did she know?" "My Aunt Hester was always close to my uncle. She lived in Florida, but after my uncle was widowed she took to spending some of the summer months with him in Connecticut each year. She had never married and they grew closer with age, since there was almost no one else. My uncle had a son but be has been in South America for a quarter century. He has married a Brazilian girl and has three children. He and his father were not on good terms at all, and neither seemed to exist as far as the other was concerned. There was myself, of course, and they entertained me often out of a sense of duty and distant liking; and I was rather fond of them. "Aunt Hester was a prim old lady, terribly self-conscious about the family position; to a ridiculous and outmoded extent of course. She was precise and stiff in her speech, and was convinced that she was living in a hostile world of thieves and Socialists. She never wore her jewelry, for instance. She kept it in a safe-deposit box at all times. "It was natural, then, that my uncle would leave the house to my aunt, and that she would in turn leave it to me. I'm genealogical enough, however, to remember that my Uncle Bryce has a son who is the direct heir and more deserving, by ties of blood, to have the house. I've written to my cousin asking him if be is satisfied with the will, and I received a letter from him three days ago telling me I was welcome to the house and contents. Actually, he said, rather bitterly, that as far as he was concerned I could bum the house and contents." Trumbull said, "Mr. Leominster, I wonder if you could get back to the lost object." "Ah, I'm sorry. I bad forgotten. Aunt Hester, considering her views, was not happy over my uncle's cavalier treatment of his collection. Aunt Hester had a totally exaggerated idea of its value. These items and sundries,' she would say to me, 'are of peerless worth."' "Is that what she called them? Items and sundries?" asked Avalon, smiling. "That was a pet phrase of hers. I assure you I remember it correctly. She had an archaic way of speaking-a deliberately cultivated one, I'm sure. She felt that language was a great mark of social status-" "Sbaw thought so too," interrupted Rubin. "Pygmalion." "Never mind, Manny," said Trumbull. "Won't you please proceed, Mr. Leominster?" "I was just going to say that Aunt Hester's fetish of verbal complication was something which she felt, I think, set her off from the lower classes. If I were to tell her that she ought to ask someone about something, she was quite certain to say something like, 'But of whom, exactly, dear, ought I to inquire?' She would never say 'ask' if she could say 'inquire'; she never ended a sentence with a preposition or split an infinitive. In fact, she was the only persgli,. I ever met who consistently used the subjunctive mood. She on6e' said to me, 'Would you be so gracious, my dear Jason, as to ascertain whether it be raining or no,' and I almost failed to understand her. "But I am wandering from the point again. As I said, she had an exaggerated idea of the value of my uncle's collection and she was always after him to do something about it. At her insistence, he put in an elaborate burglar alarm system and had a special signal installed that would sound in the local police station." "Was it ever used?" asked Halsted. "Not as far as I know," said Leominster. "There was never any burglary. My uncle didn't exactly live in a high-crime area-though you could never convince my aunt of that-and I wouldn't be sur-prised if prospective burglars had a more accurately disappointing notion of the worth of my uncle's collection than my aunt had. After my uncle's death, Aunt Hester had some of his belongings appraised. When they told her that his stamp collection was worth, perhaps, ten thousand dollars, she was horrified. 'They are thieves,' she told me. 'Having remitted ten thousand dollars, they would then certainly proceed to retail the collection for a million at the very least.' She would allow no further appraisals, and held onto everything with an unbreakable clutch. Fortunately, she bad plenty to live on and didn't have to sell anything. To her dying day, though, I am sure she was convinced that she was leaving me possessions equivalent to an enormous fortune. -No such thing, unfortunately. "My Uncle Bryce was hardheaded enough in this respect. He knew that the collections were of only moderate value. He said so to me on several occasions, though he also said he had a few items that were worth while. He did not specify. According to Aunt Hester, he went into more detail with her. When she urged him to put his stamp collection in a vault he said, 'What, and never be able to look at it? It would have no value to me at all, then. Besides, it isn't worth much, except for one item, and I've taken care of that.'" Avalon said, "That one item in the stamp collection that your uncle said he had taken care of-is that what is now lost? Was it some stamp or other?" "Yes, so Aunt Hester said at the time of my uncle's death. He had left her the house and its contents, which meant that stamp too. She called me soon after the funeral to say that she could not find the stamp and was convinced it bad been stolen. I bad attended the funeral, of course, and was still in Connecticut, having taken the occasion to track down some old gravestones, and I came over for dinner the day after she called me. "It was a hectic meal, for Aunt Hester was furious over not having found the stamp. She was convinced it was worth millions and that the servants bad taken it-or perhaps the funeral people had. She even had a little suspicion left over for me. She said to me over dessert, 'Your uncle, I presume, never discoursed on the matter of its location with you, did he?' "I said he did not-which was true. He had never done so." Trumbull said, "Did she have any idea at all where he hid it?" "Yes, indeed. That was one of her grounds for annoyance. He had told her, but had -not been specific enough, and she bad not thought to pin him down exactly. I suppose she was satisfied that he had taken care of it and didn't think further. He told her he had placed it in one of his unabridged volumes, where he could get it easily enough to look at it whenever he wished, but where no casual thief would think to find it." "In one of his unabridged volumes?" said Avalon in astonishment. "Did he mean in his collection?" "Aunt Hester quoted him as saying 'one of my unabridged volumes.' We assumed be meant in his collection." Rubin said, "It's a foolish place to put it. A book can be stolen as easily as a stamp. It can be stolen for itself and the stamp would go along as a side reward." Leominster said, "I don't suppose my uncle seriously thought of it as a place of safety; merely as a way of satisfying my aunt. In fact, if she had not nagged him, I'm sure that Uncle Bryce would have left it right in the collection, which is, was, and has always been safe and sound. Of course, I never said this to my aunt." Rubin said, "When people speak of 'the Unabridged,' they usually mean Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. Did your uncle have one?" "Of course. On a small stand of its own. My aunt had thought of that and had looked there and hadn't found it. That was when she called me. We went into the library after dinner and I went over the Unabridged again. My uncle kept his better stamps in small, transparent envelopes and one of them might have been placed among the pages. Still, it would have been quite noticeable. It was an onionskin edition, and there would certainly have been a tendency for the dictionary to open to that page. Aunt Hester said it would be just like Uncle Bryce to hide it in such a foolish manner as to make it easily stolen. "That was quite impossible, however. I bad used the Unabridged myself now and then in my uncle's last years and I'm sure there was nothing in it I inspected the binding to make sure that he hadn't hid it behind the backstrip. I was even tempted to pull the entire volume apart, but it didn't seem likely that Uncle Bryce bad wue to elaborate lengths. He had slipped it between the pages of Aookbut not the Unabridged. "I said as much to Aunt Hester. I told her that it might be among the pages of another book. I pointed out that the fact that he bad referred to 'one of the unabridged volumes' was a sure sign that it was not in the Unabridged." "I agree," said Rubin, "but how many unabridged volumes did he have?" Leominster shook his head. "I don't know. I know nothing about books-at least from a collector's point of view. I asked Aunt Hester if she knew whether he bad any items that were unabridged-an unabridged Boswell, for instance, or an unabridged Boccaccio-but she knew less about such matters than I did." Gonzalo said, "Maybe 'unabridged' means something special to a book collector. Maybe it means having a book jacket-just as an example-and it's between the book and its jacket." Avalon said, "No, Mario. I know something about books, and unabridged has no meaning but the usual one of a complete version." "In any case," said Leominster, "it doesn't matter, for I suggested that we ought to go through all the books." "A thousand of them?" asked Halsted doubtfully. "As it turned out there were well over a thousand and it was a task indeed. I must say that Aunt Hester went about it properly. She hired half a dozen children from town-all girls, because she said girls were quieter and more reliable than boys. They were each between ten and twelve, old enough to work carefully and young enough to be honest. They came in each day for weeks and worked for four or five hours. "Aunt Hester remained in the library at all times, banding out the books in systematic order, receiving them back, handing out another, and so on. She allowed no short cuts; no shaking the books to see if anything fell out, or flipping the pages, either. She made them turn each page individually." "Did they find anythine." asked Avalon. "Numerous things. Aunt Hester was too shrewd to tell them exactly what she was looking for. She just asked them to turn every single page and bring her any little thing they found, any scrap of paper, she said, or anything. She promised them a quarter for anything they found, in addition to a dollar for every hour they worked, and fed them all the milk and cake they could bold. Before it was over, each girl had gained five pounds, I'm sure. They located dozens of miscellaneous items. There were bookmarks, for instance, though I'm sure they were not my uncle's, for he was no reader; postcards, pressed leaves, even an occasional naughty photograph that I suspect my uncle had hidden for occasional study. They shocked my aunt but seemed to delight the little girls. In any case they did not find any stamp." "Which must have been a great disappointment to your aunt," said Trumbull. "It certainly was. She bad immediate dark suspicions that one of the little girls had walked off with it, but even she couldn't maintain that for long. They were perfectly unsophisticated creatures and there was no reason to suppose that they would have thought a stamp was any more valuable than a bookmark. Besides, Aunt Hester had had her eye on them at every point." "Then she never found it?" asked Gonzalo. "No, she never did. She kept on looking through books for a while -you know, those that weren't in the library. She even went up into the attic to find some old books and magazines, but it wasn't there. It occurred to me that Uncle Bryce may have changed the hiding place in his later years and had told her of the new one-and that she had forgotten the new place and remembered only the old one. That's why I said what I did during dinner about two hiding places. You see, if that were true, and I have a nagging suspicion that it is, then the stamp could be anywhere in the house-or out of it, for that matter-and frankly, a search is hopeless in my opinion. "I think Aunt Hester gave up too. These last couple of years, when her arthritis had made it almost impossible for her to move around, she never mentioned it. I was afraid that when she left the house to me, as he had made it quite plain she would, it would be on condition that I find the stamp-but no such thing was mentioned in her will." Avalon twirled the brandy glass by its stem and said rather porttously, "See here, there's no real reason to think that there was such a stamp at all, is there? It may well be that your uncle amused himself with the belief be had a valuable item, or may just have been teasing your aunt. Was he the kind of man capable of working up a rather malicious practical joke?" "No, no," said Leominster, with a definite shake of his head. "He did not have that turn of mind at all. Besides, Aunt Hester said she bad seen the stamp. On one occasion, be bad been looking at it and he called in Hester and showed it to her. He said, 'You are looking at thousands of dollars, dear.' But she did not know where he had gotten it, or to what hiding place he had returned it. All she had thought at the time was that it was unutterably foolish for grown men to pay so much money for a silly bit of paper-and I.;Aher agreed with her when she told me. She said there wasn't evn any. thing attractive about it." "Does she remember what it looked like? Could you recognize it if you found it?" asked Avalon. "For instance, suppose that shortly before the time of your uncle's death he had placed the stamp with the rest of his collection for some reason-perhaps because your aunt was in Florida and could not nag him, if he wanted it available for frequent gloating. -Was she in Florida at the time of his death, by the way? Leominster looked thoughtful. "Yes, she was, as a matter of fact." "Well then," said Avalon. "The stamp may have been in the collection all along. It may still be. Naturally, you wouldn't find it any where else." Trumbull said, "That can't be, Jeff. Leominster has already told us that the stamp collection was ajpraised at ten thousand dollars, total, and I gather that this one stamp would have raised that mark considerably higher." Leominster said, "According to Aunt Hester, Uncle Bryce once told her that the stamp in question was worth his entire remaining collection twice over." Avalon said, "Uncle Bryce may have been kidding himself or the appraisers may have made a mistake." "No," said Leominster, "it was not in the collection. My aunt remembered its appearance and it was unusual enough to be identifiable. She said it was a triangular stamp, with the narrow edge downward-something like my face as drawn by Mr. Gonzalo." Gonzalo cleared his tbroat and looked at the ceiling, but Leominster, smiling genially, went on. "She said it bad the face of a man on it, and a bright orange border and that my uncle referred to it as a New Guinea Orange. That is a distinctive stamp, you must admit, and while it never occurred to me that it might be in the collection itself, so that I did not search for it specifically, I did go through the collection out of curiosity, and I assure you I didn't see the New Guinea Orange. In fact, I saw no triangular stamps at allmerely versions of the usual rectangle. "Of course, I did wonder whether my uncle was, wrong about the stamp's value, and whether be might not have found out be was wrong toward the end and sold the stamp or otherwise disposed of it. I consulted a stamp dealer and be said there were indeed such things as New Guinea Oranges. He said some of them were very valuable and that one of them, which might be in my uncle's collection because it was not recorded elsewhere, was worth twenty-five thousand dollars." "Well, look," said Drake. "I have an idea. You've mentioned your cousin, the one in Brazil. He was your uncle's son, and he was disinherited. Isn't it possible that be wasn't entirely disinherited; that your uncle mailed him the stamp, told him its value, and let that be his inheritance? He could then leave the house and its contents to his sister with a clear conscience, along with whatever else he had in his estate." Leominster thought for a while. He said, "That never occurred to me. I don't think it's likely, though. After all, his son was in no way in financial trouble and I was always given to understand be was very well to do. And there was bard feeling between father and son, too; very bard. It's a family scandal of which I do not have the details. I don't think Uncle Bryce would have mailed him the stamp." Gonzalo said eagerly, "Could your cousin have come back to the United States and-" "And stolen the stamp? How could be have known where it was? Besides, I'm sure my cousin has not been out of Brazil in years. No, heaven only knows where the stamp is, or whether it exists at all. I wish I could get a phone call, as Mr. Halsted did, that would tell me it's been located under the bed, but there's no chance of that." Leominster's eye fell to his still unopened Chinese fortune cookie and he added whimsically, "Unless this can help me." He cracked it open, withdrew the slip of paper, looked at it, and laughed. "What does it say?" asked Drake. "It says, 'You will come into money,"' said Leominster. "It doesn't say how." Gonzalo sat back in his chair and said, "Well then, Henry will tell you how." Leominster smiled like one going along with a joke. "If you cdbld bring me the stamp on your tray, Henry, I'd appreciate it." "I'm not joking," said Gonzalo. "Tell him, Henry." Henry, who had been listening quietly from his place at the sideboard, said, "I am flattered by your confidence, Mr. Gonzalo, but of course I cannot locate the stamp for Mr. Leominster. I might ask a few questions, however, if Mr. Leominster doesn't mind." Leominster raised his eyebrows and said, "Not at all, if you think it will help." "I cannot say as to that, sir," said Henry, "but you said your uncle was no reader. Does that mean be did not read the books in his library?" "He didn't read much of anything, Henry, and certainly not the books in his library. They weren't meant to be read, only c,91lected. Dry, impossible stuff." "Did your uncle do anything to them-rebind them, or in any way modify them? Did be paste pages together, for instance?" "To hide the stamp? Bite your tongue, Henry. If you do anything to any of those books, you reduce their value. No, no, your collector always leaves his collection exactly as he receives it." Henry thought a moment, then said, "You told us your aunt affected an elegant vocabulary." "Yes, she did." "And that if you said 'ask,' for instance, she would change it to 'inquire."' P7 'Yes. "Would she have been aware of having made the change? -1 mean, if she had been asked under oath to repeat your exact words, would she have said 'inquire' and honestly have thought you had said it?" Leominster laughed. I wouldn't be surprised if she would. She took her false elegance with enormous seriousness." "And you only know of your uncle's hiding place by your aunt's report. He never told you, personally, of his hiding place, did he?" "He never told me, but I'm bound to say that I don't for a minute believe Aunt Hester would lie. If she said he told her, then he did." "She said that your uncle said he had hidden it in one of his unabridged volumes. That was exactly what she said?" "Yes. Exactly. In one of his unabridged volumes." Henry said, "But might not your aunt have translated his actual statement into her own notion of elegance, a short word into a long one? Isn't that possible?" Leominster hesitated. I suppose it is, but what short word?" "I cannot say with absolute certainty," said Henry, "but is not an abridged volume one that has been cut, and is not an unabridged volume therefore one that is uncut. If your uncle had said 'in one of my uncut volumes,' might not that have been translated in your aunt's mind to 'in one of my unabridged volumes'?" "And if so, Henry?" "Then we must remember that 'uncut' has a secondary meaning with respect to books that 'unabridged' does not. An uncut volume may be one with its pages uncut, rather than its contents. If your uncle collected old books which he did not read, and with which he did not tamper, some of them may have been bought with their pages uncut and would have kept their pages still uncut to this day. Does he, in fact, have uncut books in his library?" Leominster frowned and said hesitantly, "I think I remember one definitely, and there may have been others." Henry said, "Every pair of adjacent pages in such a book would be connected at the margin, and perhaps at the top, but would be open at the bottom, so that they would form little bags. And if that is so, sir, then the young girls who went through the books would have turned the pages without paying any attention to the fact that some of them might be uncut, and inside the little bag-one of them-a stamp in its transparent envelope may easily have been affixed with a bit of transparent tape. The pages would have bellied slightly as they were turned and would have given no sign of the contents. Nor would the girls think to look inside if their specific instruction were merely to turn the pages." Leominster rose and looked at his watch. "It sounds good to me. I'll go to Connecticut tomorrow." He almost stuttered as be spoke. "Gentlemen, this is very exciting and I hope that once I am settled you will all come and have dinner with me to celebrate. -You especially, Henry. The reasoning was so simple that I'm amazed none of the rest of us saw it." "Reasoning is always simple," said Henry, "and also always incomplete. Let us see if you really find your stamp. Without that, of what use is reason?" 11 Afterword 0 I sometimes feel faintly embarrassed over the slightness of the points on which the solution to a Black Widowers story rests, but that's silly. These are, frankly, puzzle stories, and the size of the puzzle doesn't matter as long as it's a sufficient challenge to the mind. And as for myself, I have the double pleasure of thinking of the puzzle point first, and then of hiding it under layers of plot without being unfair to the reader. "The Unabridged" I didn't submit anywhere, but saved it for this collection. The Ulumate Cnme "The Baker Street Irregulars," said Roger Halsted, "is an organization of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. If you don't know that, you don't know anything." He grinned over his drink at Thomas Trumbull with an air of the only kind of superiority there is-insufferable. The level of conversation during the cocktail hour that preceded the monthly Black Widowers' banquet bad remained at the level of a civilized murmur, but Trumbull, scowling, raised his voice at this point and restored matters to the more usual unseemliness that characterized such occasions. He said, "When I was an adolescent I read Sherlock Holmes stories with a certain primitive enjoyment, but I'm not an adolescent any more. The same, I perceive, cannot be said for everyone." Emmanuel Rubin, staring owlishly through his thick glasses, shook his head. "There's no adolescence to it, Tom. The Sherlock Holmes stories marked the occasion on which the mystery story came to be recognized as a major branch of literature. It took what had until then been something that had been confined to adolescents and their dime novels and made of it adult entertainment." Geoffrey Avalon, looking down austerely from his seventy-four inches to Rubin's sixty-four, said, "Actually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not, in my opinion, an exceedingly good mystery writer. Agatha Christie is far better." "That's a matter of opinion," said Rubin, who, as a mystery writer himself, was far less opinionated and didactic in that one field than in all the other myriad branches of human endeavor in which he considered himself an authority. "Christie had the advantage of reading Doyle and learning from him. Don't forget, too, that Christie's early works were pretty awful. Then, too"-he was warming up now--'Agatha Christie never got over her conservative, xenophobic prejudices. Her Americans are ridiculous. They were all named Hiram and all spoke a variety of English unknown to mankind. She was openly anti-Semitic and through the mouths of her characters unceasingly cast her doubts on anyone who was foreign." Halsted said, "Yet her detective was a Belgian." "Don't get me wrong," said Rubin. "I love Hercule Poirot. I think be's worth a dozen Sherlock Holmeses. I'm just pointing out that we can pick flaws in anyone. In fact, all the English mystery writers of the twenties and thirties were conservatives and upper-class-oriented. You can tell from the type of puzzles they presented-baronets stabbed in the libraries of their manor houses-landed estates-independent wealth. Even the detectives were often gentlemen-Peter Wimsey, Roderick Alleyn, Albert Campion-" "In that case," said Mario Gonzalo, who had just arrived and had been listening from the stairs, "the mystery story has developed in the direction of democracy. Now we deal with ordinary cops, and drunken private eyes and pimps and floozies and all the other leading lights of modem society." He helped himself to a drink and said, "Thanks, Henry. How did they get started on this?" Henry said, "Sherlock Holmes was mentioned, sir." "In connection with you, Henry?" Gonzalo looked pleased. "No, sir. In connection with the Baker Street Irregulars." Gonzalo looked blank. "What are--2' Halsted said, "Let me introduce you to my guest of the evening, Mario. He'll tell you. -Ronald Mason, Mario Gonzalo. Ronald's a member of BSI, and so am I, for that matter. Go ahead, Ron, tell him about it." Ronald Mason was a fat man, distinctly fat, with a glistening bald head and a bushy black mustache. He said, "The Baker Street Irregulars is a group of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts. They meet once a year in January, on a Friday near the great man's birthday, and through the rest of the year engage in other Sherlockian activities." "Like what?" "Well, they-" Henry announced dinner, and Mason hesitated. "Is there some special seat I'm supposed to take?" "No, no," said Gonzalo. "Sit next to me and we can talk." "Fine." Mason's broad face split in a wide smile. "That's exactly what I'm here for. Rog Halsted said that you guys would come up with something for me." "In connection with what?" "Sherlockian activities." Mason tore a roll in two and buttered it with strenuous strokes of his knife. "You see, the thing is that Conan Doyle wrote numerous Sherlock Holmes stories as quickly as he could because he hated them' "He did? In that case, why-" "Why did he write them? Money, that's why. From the very first story, 'A Study in Scarlet,' the world caught on fire with Sherlock Holmes. He became a world-renowned figure and there is no telling how many people the world over thought be really lived. Innumerable letters were addressed to him at his address in zzib Baker Street, and thousands came to him with problems to be solved. "Conan Doyle was surprised, as no doubt anyone would be under the circumstances. He wrote additional stories and the prices they commanded rose steadily. He was not pleased. He fancied himself as a writer of great historical romances and to have himself become world-famous as a mystery writer was displeasing-particularly when the fictional detective was far the more famous of the two. After six years of it he wrote 'The Final Problem,' in which he deliberately killed Holmes. There was a world outcry at this and after several more years Doyle was forced to reason out a method for resuscitating the detective, and then went on writing further stories. "Aside from the value of the tales as mysteries, and from the fascinating character of Sherlock Holmes himself, the stories are a diversified picture of Great Britain in the late Victorian era. To immerse oneself in the sacred writings is to live in a world where it is always 1895," Gonzalo said, "And what's a Sherlockian activity?" "Oh well. I told you that Doyle didn't particularly like writing about Holmes. When be did write the various stories, he wrote them quickly and he troubled himself very little about mutual consistency. There are many odd points, therefore, unknotted. threads, small holes, and so on, and the game is never to admit that anything is just a mistake or error. In fact, to a true Sherlockian, Doyle scarcely exists -it was Dr. John H. Watson who wrote the stories." James Drake, who had been quietly listening from the other side of Mason, said, "I know what you mean. I once met a Holmes fanhe may even have been a Baker Street Irregular-who told me he was working on a paper that would prove that both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were fervent Catholics and I said, 'Well, wasn't Doyle himself a Catholic?' which he was, of course. My friend turned a very cold eye on me and said, 'What has'that to do with it?y )p "Exactly," said Mason, "exactly. The most highly regarded of all Sherlockian activities is to prove your roint by quotations from the stories and by careful reasoning. People have written articles, for instance, that are supposed to prove that Watson was a woman, or that Sherlock Holmes had an affair with his landlady. Or else they try to work out details concerning Holmes's early life, or exactly where Watson received his war wound, and so on. "Ideally, every member of the Baker Street Irregulars should write a Sherlockian article as a condition of membership, but that's clung to in only a slipshod fashion. I haven't written such an article yet, though I'd like to." Mason looked a bit wistful. "I can't really consider myself a true Irregular till I do." Trumbull leaned over from across the table. He said, "I've been trying to catch what you've been saying over Rubin's monologue here. You mentioned 221b Baker Street." "Yes," said Mason, "that's where Holmes lived." "And is that why the club is the Baker Street Irregulars?" Mason said, "That was the name Holmes gave to a group of street urchins who acted as spies and sources of information. They were his irregular troops as distinguished from the police." "Oh well," said Trumbull, "I suppose it's all barmless." "And it gives us great please," said Mason seriously. "Except that right now it's inflicting agony on me." It was at this point, shortly after Henry had brought in the veal cordon bleu, that Rubin's voice rose a notch. "Of course," he said, "there's no way of denying that Sherlock Holmes was derivative. The whole Holmesian technique of detection was invented by Edgar Allan Poe; and his detective, Auguste Dupin, is the original Sherlock. However, Poe only wrote three stories about Dupin and it was Holmes who really caught the imagination of the world. "In fact, my own feeling is that Sherlock Holmes performed the remarkable feat of being the first human being, either real or fictional, ever to become a world idol entirely because of his ebaracter as a reasoning being. It was not his military victories, his political charisma, his spiritual leadership-but simply his cold brain power. There was nothing mystical about Holmes. He gathered facts and deduced from them. His deductions weren't always fair; Doyle consistently stacked the deck in his favor, but every mystery writer does that. I do it myself." Trumbull said, "What you do proves nothing." Rubin was not to be distracted. "He was also the first believable super-bero in modena literature. He was always described as thin and aesthetic, but the fact that be achieved his triumphs through the use of brain power mustn't mask the fact that he is also described as being of virtually superhuman strength. When a visitor, in an implicit threat to Holmes, bends a poker to demonstrate his strength, Holmes casually straightens it again-the more difficult task Then, too-" Mason nodded his head in Rubin's direction and said to Gonzalo, "Mr. Rubin sounds like a Baker Street Irregular himself-" Gonzalo said, "I don't think so. He just knows everything-but don't tell him I said so." "Maybe be can give me some Sherlockian pointers, then." "Maybe, but if you're in trouble, the real person to help you is Henry." "Henry?" Mason's eye wandered around the table as though trying to recall first names. "Our waiter," said Gonzalo. "He's our Sherlock Holmes." "I don't think-" began Mason doubtfully. "Wait till dinner is over. You'll see." Halsted tapped his water glass and said, "Gentlemen, we're going to try something different this evening. Mr. Mason has a problem that involves the preparation of a Sherlockian article, and that means he would like to present us with a purely literary puzzle, one that has no connection with real life at all. -Ron, explain." Mason scooped up some of the melted ice cream in his dessert plate with his teaspoon, put it in his mouth as though in a final farewell to the dinner, then said, "I've got to prepare this paper because it's a matter of self-respect. I love being a Baker Street Irregular, but it's difficult to bold my head up when every person there knows more about the canon than I do and when thirteen-year-old boys write papers that meet with applause for their ingenuity. "The trouble is that I don't have much in the way of imagination, or the kind of whimsey needed for the task. But I know what I want to do. I want to do a paper on Dr. Moriarty." "Ah, yes," said Avalon. "The villain in the case." Mason nodded. "He doesn't appear in many of the tales, but he is the counterpart of Holmes. He is the Napoleon of crime, the intellectual rival of Holmes and the great detective's most dangerous antagonist. just as Holmes is the popular prototype of the fictional detective, so is Moriarty the popular prototype of the master villain. In fact, it was Moriarty who killed Holmes, and was killed himself, in the final struggle in 'The Final Problem! Moriarty was not brought back to life." Avalon said, "And on what aspect of Moriarty did you,vish to do a paper?" He sipped thoughtfully at his brandy. Mason waited for Henry to refill his cup and said, "Well, it's his role as a mathematician that intrigues me. You see, it is only Moriarty's diseased moral sense that makes him a master criminal. He delights in manipulating human lives and in serving as the agent for destruction. If he wished to bend his great talent to legitimate issues, however, he could be world famous-indeed, be was world famous, in the Sherlockian world-as a mathematician. "Only two of his mathematical feats are specifically mentioned in the canon. He was the author of an extension of the binomial theorem, for one thing. Then, in the novel, The Valley of Fear, Holmes mentions that Moriarty bad written a thesis entitled The Dynamics of an Asteroid, which was filled with mathematics so rarefied that there wasn't a scientist in Europe capable of debating the matter." "As it happened," said Rubin, "one of the greatest mathematicians alive at the time was an American, Josiah Willard Gibbs, who-2' "That doesn't matter," said Mason hastily. "In the Sherlockian world only Europe counts when it comes to matters of science. The point is this, nothing is said about the contents of The Dynamics of an Asteroid; nothing at all; and no Sherlockian has ever written an article taking up the matter. I've checked into it and I know that." Drake said, "And you want to do such an article?" "I want to very much," said Mason, "but I'm not up to it. I have a layman's knowledge of astronomy. I know what an asteroid is. It's one of the small bodies that circles the Sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. I know what dynamics is; it's the study of the motion of a body and of the changes in its motion when forces are applied. But that doesn't get me anywhere. What is The Dynamics of an Asteroid about?" Drake said thoughtfully, "Is that all you have to go by, Mason? just the title? Isn't there any passing reference to anything that is in the paper itself?" "Not one reference anywhere. There's just the title, plus the indication that it is a matter of a highly advanced mathematics." Gonzalo put his sketch of a jolly, smiling Mason-with the face drawn as a geometrically perfect circle-on the wall next to the others and said, "If you're going to write about how planets-nYove, you need a lot of fancy math, I should think." "No, you don't," said Drake abruptly. "Let me handle this, Mario. I may be only a lowly organic chemist, but I know something about astronomy too. The fact of the matter is that all the mathematics needed to handle the dynamics of the asteroids was worked out in the 1680s by Isaac Newton. "An asteroid's motion depends entirely upon the gravitational influences to which it is subjected and Newton's equation makes it possible to calculate the strength of that influence between any two bodies if the mass of each body is known and if the distance between them is also known. Of course, when many bodies are involved and when the distances among them are constantly changing, then the mathematics gets tedious-not difficult, just tedious. "The chief gravitational influence on any asteroid is that originating in the Sun, of course. Each asteroid moves around the Sun in an elliptical orbit, and if the Sun and asteroid were all that existed, the orbit could be calculated, exactly, by Newton's equation. Since other bodies also exist, their gravitational influences, much smaller than that of the Sun, must be taken into account as producing much smaller effects. In general, we get very close to the truth if we just consider the Sun." Avalon said, "I think you 're oversimplifying, Jim. To duplicate your humility, I may be only a lowly patent lawyer, and I won't pretend to know any astronomy at all, but haven't I beard that there's no way of solving the gravitational equation for more than two bodies?" "That's right" said Drake, "if you mean by that, a general solution for all cases involving more than two bodies. There just isn't one. Newton worked out the general solution for the two-body problem but no one, to this day, has succeeded in working out one for the three-body problem, let alone for more bodies than that. The point is, though, that only theoreticians are interested in the threebody problem. Astronomers work out the motion of a body by first calculating the dominant gravitational influence, then correcting it one step at a time with the introduction of other lesser gravitational influences. It works well enough." He sat back and looked smug. Gonzalo said, "Well, if only theoreticians are interested in the three-body problem and if Moriarty was a high-powered inathematician, then that must be just what the treatise is about." Drake lit a new cigarette and paused to cough over it. Then he said, "It could have been about the love life of giraffes, if you like, but we've got to go by the title. If Moriarty had solved the threebody problem, be would have called the treatise something like, An Analysis of the Three-Body Problem, or The Generalization of the Law of Universal Gravitation. He would not have called it The Dynamics of an Asteroid." Halsted said, "What about the planetary effects? I've beard something about that. Aren't there gaps in space where there aren't any asteroids?" "Oh, sure," said Drake. "We can find the dates in the Columbia Encyclopedia, if Henry will bring it over." "Never mind," said Halsted. "You just tell us what you know about it and we can check the dates later, if we have to." Drake said, "Let's see, now." He was visibly enjoying his domination of the proceedings. His insignificant gray mustache twitched and his eyes, nested in finely wrinkled skin, seemed to sparkle. He said, "There was an American astronomer named Kirkwood and I think Daniel was his first name. Sometime around the middle 1800s he pointed out that the asteroids' orbits seemed to cluster in groups. There were a couple of dozen known by then, all between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, but they weren't spread out evenly, as Kirkwood pointed out. He showed there were gaps in which no asteroids circled. "By 1866 or thereabouts-I'm pretty sure it was 1866-be worked out the reason. Any asteroid that would have had its orbit in those gaps would have circled the Sun in a period equal to a simple fraction of that of Jupiter." "If there's no asteroid there," said Gonzalo, "how can you tell how long it would take it to go around the Sun? "Actually, it's very simple. Kepler worked that out in 1619 and it's called Kepler's Third Law. May I continue?" "That's just syllables," said Gonzalo. "What's Kepler's Third Law?" But Avalon said, "Let's take Jim's word for it, Mario. I can't quote it either, but I'm sure astronomers have it down cold. Go ahead, Jim." Drake said, "An asteroid in a gap might have an orbital period of six years or four years, let us say, where Jupiter has a period of twelve years. That means an asteroid, every two or three revolutions, passes Jupiter under the same relative conditions of position. Jupiter's pull is in some particular direction each time, always the same, either forward or backward, and the effect mounts up. "If the pull is backward, the asteroidal motion is gradually slowed so that the asteroid drops in closer toward the Sun and moves outpf the gap. If the pull is forward, the asteroidal motion is quickined and the asteroid swings away from the Sun, again moving out of the gap. Either way nothing stays in the gaps, which are now called 'Kirkwood gaps.' You get the same effect in Saturn's rings. There are gaps there too." Trumbull said, "You say Kirkwood did this in 1866?" ty "Yes. "And when did Moriarty write his thesis, supposedly?" Mason interposed. "About 1875, if we work out the internal consistency of the Sherlockian canon." Trumbull said, "Maybe Doyle was inspired by the news of the Kirkwood gaps, and thought of the title because of it. In which case, we can imagine Moriarty playing the role of Kirkwood and you can write an article on the Moriarty gaps." Mason said uneasily, "Would that be enough? How important was Kirkwood's work? How difficult?" Drake shrugged. "It was a respectable contribution, but it was just an application of Newtonian physics. Good second-class work; not first class." Mason shook his head. "For Moriarty, it would have to be first class." "Wait, wait!" Rubin's sparse beard quivered with growing excitement. "Maybe Moriarty got away from Newton altogether. Maybe be got onto Einstein. Einstein revised the theory of gravity." "He extended it," said Drake, "in the General Theory of Relativity in 1916." "Right, Forty years after Moriarty's paper. That's got to be it. Suppose Moriarty had anticipated Einstein-" Drake said, "In 1875? That would be before the Michelson-Morley experiment. I don't think it could have been done." "Sure it could," said Rubin, "if Moriarty were bright enough-and he was." Mason said, "Oh yes. In the Sherlockian universe, Professor Moriarty was brilliant enough for anything. Sure he would anticipate Einstein. The only thing is that, if he bad done so, would he not have changed scientific history all around?" "Not if the paper were suppressed," said Rubin, almost chattering with excitement. "It all fits in. The paper was suppressed and the great advance was lost till Einstein rediscovered it." "What makes you say the paper was suppressed?" demanded Gonzalo. "It doesn't exist, does it?" said Rubin. "If we go along with the Baker Street Irregular view of the universe, then Professor Moriarty did exist and the treatise was written, and it did anticipate General Relativity. Yet we can't find it anywhere in the scientific literature and there is no sign of the relativistic view penetrating scientific thought prior to Einstein's time. The only explanation is that the treatise was suppressed because of Moriarty's evil character." Drake snickered. "There'd be a lot of scientific papers suppressed if evil character were cause enough. But your suggestion is out anyway, Manny. The treatise couldn't possibly involve General Relativity; not with that title." "Why not?" demanded Rubin. "Because revising the gravitational calculations in order to take relativity into account wouldn't do much as far as asteroidal dynamics are concerned," said Drake. "In fact, there was only one item known to astronomers in 1875 that could be considered, in any way, a gravitational puzzle." "Uh-ob," said Rubin, "I'm beginning to see your point." "Well, I don't," said Avalon. "Keep on going, Jim. What was the puzzle?" Drake said, "It involved the planet Mercury, which revolves about the Sun in a pretty lopsided orbit. At one point in its orbit it is at its closest to the Sun (closer than any other planet, of course, since it is nearer to the Sun in general than the others are) and that point is the 'perihelion.' Each time Mercury completes a revolution about the Sun, that perihelion has shifted very slightly forward. "The reason for the shift is to be found in the small gravitational effects, or perturbations, of the other planets on Mercury. But after all the known gravitational effects are taken into account, the perihelion shift isn't completely explained. This was discovered in 1843, There is a very tiny residual shift forward that can't be explained by gravitational theory. It isn't much-only about 43 seconds of arc per century, which means the perihelion would move an unexplained distance equal to the diameter of the full Moon in about forty-two hundred years, or make a complete circle of the sky"- he did some mental calculations- "in about three million years. "It's not much of a motion, but it was enough to threaten Newton's theory. Some astronomers felt that there must be an unknown planet on the other side of Mercury, very close to the Sun. Its pull was not taken into account, since it was unknown, but it was possible to calculate how large a planet would have to exist, and what kind of an orbit it must have, to account for the anomalous motion of Mercury's perihelion. The only trouble was that they could never find that planet. "Then Einstein modified Newton's theory of gravitation, made it more general, and showed that when the new, modified eq-aidons were used the motion of Mercury's perihelion was exactly accounted for. It also did a few other things, but never mind that." Gonzalo said, "Why couldn't Moriarty have figured that out?" Drake said, "Because then he would have called his treatise, On the Dynamics of Mercury. He couldn't possibly have discovered something that solved this prime astronomical paradox that had been puzzling astronomers for thirty years and have called it any thing else." Mason looked dissatisfied. "Then what you're saying is that there isn't anything that Moriarty could have written that would have bad the title On the Dynamics of an Asteroid and still have represented a first-class piece of mathematical work?" Drake blew a smoke ring. "I guess that's what I'm saying. What I'm also saying, I suppose, is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't know enough astronomy to stuff a pies ear, and that he didn't know what he was saying when he invented the title. But I suppose that sort of thing is not permitted to 'be said." "No," said Mason, his round face sunk in misery. "Not in the Sherlockian universe. 'Mere goes my paper, then. it "Pardon me," said Henry, from his post at the sideboard. "May I ask a question?" Drake said, "You know you can, Henry. Don't tell me you're an astronomer." "No, sir. At least, not beyond the average 'knowledge of an educated American. Still, am I correct in supposing that there are a large number of asteroids known?" "Over seventeen hundred have had their orbits calculated, Henry," said Drake. "And there were a number known in Professor Moriart-fs time, too, weren't there?" "Sure. Several dozen." "In that case, sir," said Henry, "why does the title of the treatise read The Dynamics of an Asteroid? Why an asteroid?" Drake thought a moment, then said, "That's a good point. I don't know-unless it's another indication that Doyle didn't know enough-2' "Don't say that," said Mason. "Well-leave it at I don't know, then." Gonzalo said, "Maybe Moriarty just worked it out for one as- teroid, and that's all." Drake said, "Then he would have named it The Dynamics of Ceres or whatever asteroid he worked on." Gonzalo said stubbornly, "No, that's not what I mean, I don't mean he worked it out for one particular asteroid. I mean be picked an asteroid at random, or just an ideal asteroid, maybe not one that really exists. Then he worked out its dynamics." Drake said, "That's not a bad notion, Mario. The only trouble is that if Moriarty worked out the dynamics of an asteroid, the basic mathematical system, it would hold for all of them, and the title of the paper would be The Dynamics of Asteroids. And besides, what- ever be worked out in that respect would be only Newtonian and not of prime value." "Do you mean to say," said Gonzalo, reluctant to let go, "that not one of the asteroids had something special about its orbit?,, "None known in 1875 did," said Drake. "They all had orbits between those of Mars and Jupiter and they all followed gravitational theory with considerable exactness. We know some asteroids with unusual orbits now. The first unusual asteroid to be discovered was Eros, which has an orbit that takes it closer to the Sun than Mars ever goes and brings it, on occasion, to within fourteen million miles of Earth, closer to Earth than any other body its size or larger, except for the Moon. "That, however, wasn't discovered till 1898. Then, in 1906, Achilles was discovered. It was the first of the Trojan asteroids and they are unusual because they move around the Sun in Jupiter's orbit though well before or behind that planet." Gonzalo said, "Couldn't Moriarty have anticipated those discoveries, and worked out the unusual orbits?" "Even if he had anticipated them, the orbits are unusual onl4r in their position, not in their dynamics. The Trojan asteroids did offer some interesting theoretical aspects, but that bad already been worked out by Lagrange a century before." There was a short silence and then Henry said, "The title is, however, so definite, sir, If we accept the Sherlockian premise that it must make sense, can it possibly have referred to some time when there was only a single body orbiting between Mars and Jupiter?" Drake grinned. "Don't try to act ignorant, Henry. You're talking about the explosion theory of the origin of the asteroids." For a moment, it seemed as though Henry might smile. If the impulse existed, be conquered it, however, and said, I have come across, in my reading, the suggestion that there bad once been a planet between Mars and Jupiter and that it had exploded." Drake said, "That's not a popular theory any more, but it certainly bad its day. In 1801, when the first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered, it turned out to be only about 450 miles across, astonishingly small. What was far More astonishing, though, was that over the next three years three other asteroids were discovered, with very similar orbits. The notion of an exploded planet was brought up at once." Henry said, "Couldn't Professor Moriarty have been referring to that planet before its explosion, when speaking of an asteroid?" Drake said, "I suppose be could have, but why not call it a Planet?" "Would it have been a large planet?" "No, Henry. If all the asteroids are lumped together, they would make up a planet scarcely a thousand miles in diameter." "Might it not be closer to what we now consider an asteroid, then, rather than to what we consider a planet? Mightn't that have been even more true in 1875 when fewer asteroids were known and the original body would have seemed smaller still?" Drake said, "Maybe. But why not call it the asteroid, then?" "Perhaps Professor Moriarty felt that to call the paper The Dynantics of the Asteroid was too definite. Perhaps be felt the explosion theory was not certain enough to make it possible to speak of anything more than an asteroid. However unscrupulous Professor Moriarty might have been in the world outside science, we must suppose that he was a most careful and rigidly precise mathematician." Mason was smiling again. "I like that, Henry. It's a great idea." He said to Gonzalo, "You were right." "I told you," said Gonzalo. Drake said, "Hold on, let's see where it takes us. Moriarty can't be just talking about the dynamics of the original asteroid as a world orbiting about the Sun, because it would be following gravitational theory just as all its descendants are. "He would have to be talking about the explosion. He would have to be analyzing the forces in planetary structure that would make an explosion conceivable. He would have to discuss the consequences of the explosion, and all that would not lie within the bounds of gravitational theory. He would have to calculate the events in such a way that the explosive forces would give way to gravitational effects and leave the asteroidal fragments in the orbits they have today." Drake considered, then nodded, and went on. "That would not be bad. It would be a mathematical problem worthy of Moriarty's brain, and we might consider it to have represented the first attempt of any mathematician to take up so complicated an astronomical problem. Yes, I like it." Mason said, "I like it too. If I can remember everything you've all said, I have my article. Good Lord, this is wonderful." Henry said, "As a matter of fact, gentlemen, I thin this by k , potbesis is even better than Dr. Drake has made it sound. I believe that MT. Rubin said earlier that we must assume that Professor Moriartys treatise was suppressed, since it cannot be located in the scientific annals. Well, it seems to me that if our theory can also explain that suppression, it becomes much more forceful." "Quite so," said Avalon, "but can it?" "Consider," said Henry, and a trace of warmth entered his quiet voice, "that over and above the difficulty of the problem, and of the credit therefore to be gained in solving it there is a peculiar appeal in the problem to Professor Moriarty in view of his known character. "After all, we are dealing with the destruction of a world. To a master criminal such as Professor Moriarty, whose diseased genius strove to produce chaos on Earth, to disrupt and corrupt the world's economy and society, there must have been something utterly fascinating in the vision of the actual physical destruction of a world. "Might not Moriarty have imagined that on that original asteroid another like himself had existed, one who bad not only tapped the vicious currents of the human soul but bad even tampered with the dangerous forces of a planet's interior? Moriarty might have imagined that this super-Moriarty of the original asteroid had deliberately destroyed his world, and all life on it, including his own, out of sheer joy in malignancy, leaving the asteroids that now exist as the various tombstones that commemorate the action. "Could Moriarity even have envied the deed and tried to work out the necessary action that would have done the same on Earth? Might not those few European mathematicians who could catch even a glimpse of what Moriarty was saying in his treatise have understood that what it described was not only a mathematical description of the origin of the asteroids but the beginning of a recipe for the ultimate crime-that of the destruction of Earth itself, of all life, and of the creation of a much larger asteroid belt? "It is no wonder, if that were so, that a horrified scientific community suppressed the work." And when Henry was done, there was a moment of silence and then Drake applauded. The others quickly joined in. Henry reddened. "I'm sorry," be murmured when the applause died. "I'm afraid I allowed myself to be carried away." "Not at all," said Avalon. "It was a surprising burst of poetry that I was glad to have heardHalsted said, "Frankly, I think that's perfect. It's exactly what Moriarty would do and it explains everything. Wouldn't you say so, Ron?" "I will say so," said Mason, "as soon as I get over being speechless. I ask nothing better than to prepare a Sherlockian paper based on Henry's analysis. How can I square it with my conscience, however, to appropriate his ideas?" Henry said, "It is yours, Mr. Mason, my free gift, for initiating a very gratifying session. You see, I have been a devotee of Sherlock 34 Holmes for many years, myself." 12 Afterword Let me confess. I am a member of Baker Street Irregulars. I got in despite the fact that I bad never written a Sherlockian article. I was the one who thought it would be easy to write one if I bad to and then found to my horror that every member of the Baker Street Irregulars was infinitely more knowledgeable in the sacred writings than I was and that I couldn't possibly compete. (Nevertheless, Ronald Mason in this story is not I and does not look anything like me.) It was only under the urgings of fellow BSI-ers Michael Harrison and Banesh Hoffman that I finally stirred out of my paralysis, and then only after Harrison bad suggested I take up the matter of The Dynarnics of an Asteroid. I wrote a 1,600-word article with great enthusiasm and fell so deeply in love with my own clever analysis of the situation that I could not bear to think that only a few hundred other BSI-ers would ever see it. I therefore converted it into "T'he Ultimate Crime" and made a Black Widowers story out of it for a wider audience. And at last I feel like a real Baker Street Irregular. And once again, now that I have come to the conclusion of the book, I will have to repeat what I said at the end of the first book. I will write more Black Widowers. For one thing, I have fallen in love with all the characters. For another, I can't help myself. It's gotten to the point where almost everything I see or do gets run through some special pipeline in my mind, quite automatically and involuntarily, to see if a Black Widowers plot might not come out the other end.