by Isaac Asimov
“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, Mr. Brown?”
“Not the faintest idea in the world,” said Brown.
“And,” said Avalon, “we can't even suppose that he has guilty knowledge which he 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—”
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 me 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?”
“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 had gone out of the game for him. He said, “There 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 B’s. 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 characteristic of him and said, “Tom, you're something or other in the cloak-and-dagger groups. Is it possible there might be something to this?”
Trumbull was deep in thought. “The address,” he 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 21C. 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 20C or 21E. It might take just two small mistakes, one to make Beroun look like Brown and one to get 21C instead of 20C.”
“No,” said Rubin, “it's still two mistakes meshing neatly. Come on, Mario, even you can see how 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 20C 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.”
“That'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 cough
ed 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 2 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 together, 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 21C. 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 21C, not 2K.”
'Tom, it's got to be Beroun 2K. The whole thing fits.”
Brown shook his head. “No, it doesn't. Sorry, Mario, but it doesn't. If Beroun lived in 2K, 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 he'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 he 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 inexorable chains of logic can end nowhere.”
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 had 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 exceedingly 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. They may have underestimated her--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 he 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 he recognizes by shape, color, and handwriting, in such a way that it will stick out from the rest. Then, in the elevator, which he 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—n
“Yes?”
'Tomorrow is Saturday and you may not be at work, but the postman will. Hand 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.”
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 course—even 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 & 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.
To Table of Contents
8 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 nevertheless.
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?”
