More Tales of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  “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,” he 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 brilliance 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 together 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 he 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.' “

  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—”

  Puntsch smiled wearily. “How can I answer that? The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights 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 he has something that has been eluding the cleverest physicists in the world for nearly thirty years, and that the Russians are after him, you don't have a 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 he kept saying over and over again that I was the only one he 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 co-authorship. Naturally, I agreed to everything just to keep him quiet and got 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 he's mad. And yet something 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 he 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 chance at 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 he's getting out soon—”

  “But he 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 he himself might possibly lose by delay. —All that happened was that he—well, in the end he attacked me. I've been asked not to visit him again till further notice.”

  Gonzalo said, “What 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—he— 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 he was 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—”

  “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 incompetent?”

  Puntsch said, “But when will that be? —And all this still isn't the problem I want to present. I had explained to Barbara exactly how I would go about it to protect Mart'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 removed to be Revsof’s work. The originals and the notarized statement would be returned to the safe and I would work with the copies.

  “You see, she had told me at the very start that she had 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, he would agree we had 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 sai
d, “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!”

  12R 27 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 he 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 he 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?”

  “Very ordinary. I'm sure Revsof could not afford a really fancy safe. There's a circle with numbers around it from 1 to 30 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, twenty-seven, 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 twenty-seven, 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 sesame'?”

  “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 never 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.

  I2R27I5

  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”:

  12 R27 15

  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 other two numbers that turn left. In other words, the numbers are twelve, twenty-seven, 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 he 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 something 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 associating the R with the second number, but that doesn't 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 said, “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 from 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 sideboard, 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.”

  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:

  12 r 2715

  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 Puntsch. 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 typewriter that typed out the original.”