More Tales of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  “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 foreigners.”

  “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?”

  Deryashkin transferred his forefinger to the palm of his left hand, marking each emphasis. “// 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, too.”

  Halsted, staring at his empty brandy glass, said, “Why did you listen? 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 not 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 Deryashkin, “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 Zelykov.”

  Rubin leaned back in his chair. “So you caught only scraps of conversation. You can't be sure there was anything wrong with it.”

  “I heard the word 'murder,' Mr. Rubin,” said Deryashkin 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 —uh—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 bums!'“

  Deryashkin 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 lie in the shadows waiting to trap someone, catch them by surprise, murder them.”

  “Did they say all that?” demanded Rubin.

  “No, 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.”

  “What 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 mind,” Deryashkin continued. “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'll 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 buildings blown up.”

  “There have been no cold-blooded murders planned and carried out,” said Rubin.

  “Always a first time for everything,” said Avalon, frowning, and clearly concerned.

  Trumbull said, “Well, Mr. Deryashkin, did you do anything?”

  “Do anything?” Deryashkin 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, he has a bad chest and on him I cannot count. If the hooligans leave, let them leave.”

  “Did you report anything to the police?” asked Halsted.

  “I? 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 heard 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 nothing. I do nothing. Can you suggest anything 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. / would not.”

  “Nor I,” said Trumbull, “but I see Mr. Deryashkin's position. On the basis of what he's told us, he would certainly have a hard time interesting a hard-boiled police sergeant. —Unless we had some hard evidence. Have you any idea what the students looked like, Mr. Deryashkin?”

  “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 authorit
ies 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. “Funny hats, mittens, checked scarves?”

  “Are you going to identify them that way?” said Rubin. “*You mean you're thinking of going to the police and they'll say, 'That must be Mittens Garfinkel, well-known hooligan. Always wears mittens.' “

  Gonzalo said patiently, “Any information—”

  But Deryashkin interposed. “Please, gentlemen, I noticed nothing of that kind. I cannot give any help in clothing.”

  Halsted said, “How about your companion, Mr.—uh—”

  “Zelykov.”

  “How about Mr. Zelykov?” Halsted's soft voice seemed thoughtful. “If he noticed anything—”

  “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 up right now and ask?”

  “It would be useless,” protested Deryashkin. “I know. Believe me. When they left, I said to him in Russian, 'Can you imagine the criminality of those hooligans?' and he 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 worse than make fools of ourselves. If we are right we might save one or more lives. Do the rest of you agree with that?”

  There 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—”

  “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. Nothing could be done in any case, and when the murder takes place it will be too bad, but it cannot be helped.”

  “Nothing will happen,” said Rubin.

  “No?” said Deryashkin. “How then can you explain what I heard? If all else is ignored, there is yet the word 'murder.' I heard 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 had cleared away the coffee cups, said apologetically, “Not the only one, Mr. Deryashkin. I doubt it too. In fact, I am quite certain that 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, how 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?”

  “Those we could see were empty,” said Deryashkin readily. “Today was not a pleasant day for park-sitting.”

  “Then 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 would 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.”

  “And sat down almost at once, as soon as you spoke Russian? 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 from you 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.”

  “And the word 'murder'?” 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,” said Deryashkin. “Talk as you will, you won't argue me out of having heard that word clearly more than once.”

  “They 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 interpreting 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 said that you heard them say 'bind them' and that you interpreted that as 'tie them up'?”

  Deryashkin 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 heard 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 he may not quite realize it at the moment. I think it is his 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?”

  Deryashkin 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 heard 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 Deryashkin, 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, Dr. 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 remember the poem word for word, but I suspect Mr. Rubin does.”

  “Do I!” said Rubin explosively. He rose to his feet, placed one hand on his chest, 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,