More Tales of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  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—”

  “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 lest 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—”

  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, how 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 support 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 he dialed. He waited a moment, then, “Hello, Mrs. Bercovich? This is Mort Stellar, one of the writers for your husband's magazine. 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, 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 time 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 11 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, 'The 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.”

  1 Afterword

  I am sometimes asked whether any of the regular members of the Black Widowers is modeled on me. The answer is, No! Definitely not!

  Some people have thought that talkative know-it-all Manny Rubin is the author in disguise. Not at all! He is actually reminiscent of someone else, someone who is a dearly loved (talkative, know-it-all) 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 had 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—” 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.

  To Table of Contents

  2 Quicker Than the 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 T don't want Henry to feel the pressure.”

  He was whispering and he 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, had, 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 res
t of them. I've had 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, perhaps, 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 he 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 and 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 he 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 he 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 finger-snapped, had 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 had 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 experiments,” said Rubin hotly, “but that's not the point. Diet anything 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 occasion. Mr. Bunsen, who is my superior at the department, has a small 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 unnecessary 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 he regularly frequented. Part of the r
easoning was based on psychology, something I imagine Mr. Rubin would approve. Smith had 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 he 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 he held did not move.

  Bunsen said, “Smith walked into the restaurant with the object on his person. After he 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, he 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.”