by Isaac Asimov
Henry said, “There 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 numbers under the four lines of handwritten ones:
l2r27l5
Henry said, “Is this the way it looked now? 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 case, 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 had 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, 27, 15; or possibly 12, right 27, 15; or as left 2, right 27, left 5. The 1 in 12 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 openmouthed. “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 he 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
This appeared in the September 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery 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 Three Numbers.”
I am sometimes asked where I get my ideas; in fact, I am frequently asked that. There'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, wishing I had 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.
To Table of Contents
5 Nothing Like Murder
Emmanuel Rubin looked definitely haggard when he 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, he 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.
“You 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, what's 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 necessary,” 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 hack 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.”
“Sure!” 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 face radiated 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 mysteries.”
Gonzalo said, “And what do you think of them? Tell the truth. I'll protect you.”
“I 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 had 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 II, 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 an adequate vocabulary, an uncertain grammar, and a marked but by no means unpleasant accent.
“Where'd you get him?” asked Thomas Trumbull of Drake in a low voice as Deryashkin 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 he might enjoy hobnobbing with some filthy capitalists.”
That Deryashkin enjoyed the meal was certain. He ate with huge gusto, and Henry, having caught the spirit of hands across the sea—or 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 believe, 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 war, 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 had a second piece of pie on the table for Deryashkin 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 he really got it. Anyway, let's not ask him the usual opener about how he 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 cliché like 'dirty Commie 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 conditions 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 got 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, “Then how do you know there are troubles except for what you read and hear in unfriendly media?”
“Ah,” said Deryashkin, “but I did venture into park— 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-wisher 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, he 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 he 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,” he said amiably to Henry.
Deryashkin 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 int
erpret 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 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”—he 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 really clear that they are going to speak to us till they do. I don't remember 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 I, 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 answered, without 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?
