Tales of the Black Widowers - Asimov Isaac - Страница 17

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What do you say, then? Don't I owe it to all mankind to change "The Matchbook Collector" back into "Go, Little Book!"?

Sure I do

By the way, when I first wrote the story I calculated out the value of 2³⁰ (that is, 30 two's mukiplied together) in my head out of sheer vainglory. Naturally, I got an answer that was off a little, and serves me right. A young lady named Mildred L. Stover wrote me a letter in which the value was carefully calculated out, multiplication by multiplication, and I corrected my mistake for the book. If you are interested, 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824.

Thank you, Miss Stover.

Geoffrey Avalon swirled his second drink as he sat down to the table. It had not yet diminished to the halfway mark and he would take one more sip before abandoning it. He looked unhappy.

He said, "This is the first time within my memory that the Black Widowers have met without a guest." His bushy eyebrows, still black (although his mustache and trim beard had become respectably gray with the years), seemed to twitch.

"Oh, well," said Roger Halsted, flicking his napkin with an audible slap before placing it over his knees. "As host this session, it's my decision. No appeal. Besides, I have my reasons." He placed the palm of his hand on his high forehead and made a motion as though to brush back hair that had disappeared from the forepart of his pate years before.

"Actually," said Emmanuel Rubin, "there's nothing in the bylaws that says we must have a guest. The only thing we must have present at the dinner is no women."

The members can't be women," said Thomas Trum-bull, glowering out of his perpetually tanned face. "Where does it say that a guest can't be a woman?"

"No," said Rubin sharply, his sparse beard quivering. "Any guest is a member ex officio for the meal and must abide by all the rules, including not being a woman."

"What does ex officio mean, anyway?" asked Mario Gonzalo. "I always wondered."

But Henry was already presenting the first course, which seemed to be a long roll of pasta, stuffed with spiced cheese, broiled, and sauce-covered.

At last Rubin, looking pained, said, "As near as I can make out this seems to be a roll of pasta, stuffed-"

But by that time, the conversation had grown general and Halsted seized a break to announce that he had his limerick for the third book of the Iliad.

Trumbull said, "Damn it to hell, Roger, are you going to inflict one of those on us at every meeting?"

"Yes," said Halsted thoughtfully. "I was planning just that. It keeps me working at it. Besides, you have to have some item of intellectual worth at the dinner… Say, Henry, don't forget that if it's steak tonight, I want mine rare."

"Trout tonight, Mr. Halsted," said Henry, refilling the water glasses.

"Good," said Halsted. "Now here it is:

"Menelaus, though not very mighty,

Was stronger than Paris, the flighty.

Menelaus did well in

The duel over Helen,

But was foiled by divine Aphrodite."

Gonzalo said, "But what does it mean?"

Avalon interposed, "Oh, well, in the third book, the Greeks and Trojans decide to settle the matter by means of a duel between Menelaus and Paris. The latter had eloped with the former's wife, Helen, and that was what caused the war. Menelaus won, but Aphrodite snatched Paris away just in time to save his life… I'm glad you didn't use Venus in place of Aphrodite, Roger. There's too much of the use of Roman analogues."

Halsted, through a full mouth, said, "I wanted to avoid the temptation of obvious rhyming."

"Didn't you ever read the Iliad, Mario?" asked James Drake.

"Listen," said Gonzalo, "I'm an artist. I have to save my eyes."

It was with dessert on the table that Halsted said, "Okay, let me explain what I have in mind. The last four times we met, there's been some sort of crime that's come up every discussion, and in the course of that discussion, it's been solved."

"By Henry," interrupted Drake, stubbing out his cigarette.

"All right, by Henry. But what kind of crimes? Rotten crimes. The first time I wasn't here, but I gather the crime was a robbery, and not much of one either, from what I understand. The second time, it was worse. It was a case of cheating on an examination, for heaven's sake."

"That's not such a minor thing," muttered Drake.

"Well, it's not exactly a major thing. The third time- and I was here then-it was theft again, but a better one. And the fourth time it was a case of espionage of some sort."

"Believe me," said Trumbull, "that wasn't minor."

"Yes," said Halsted in his mild voice, "but there was no violence anywhere. Murder, gentlemen, murder!"

"What do you mean, murder?" asked Rubin.

"I mean that every time we bring a guest, something minor turns up because we take it as it comes. We don't deliberately invite guests who can offer us interesting crimes. In fact, they're not even supposed to offer us crimes at all. They're just guests."

"So?"

"So there are now six of us present, no guests, and there must be one of us who knows of some killing that's a mystery and-"

"Hell!" said Rubin in disgust. "You've been reading Agatha Christie. We'll each tell a puzzling mystery in turn and Miss Marple will solve it for us… Or Henry will."

Halsted looked abashed. "You mean they do things like that-"

"Oh, God," said Rubin emotionally.

"Well, you're the writer," said Halsted. "I don't read murder mysteries."

"That's your loss," said Rubin, "and it shows what an idiot you are. You call yourself a mathematician. A proper mystery is as mathematical a puzzle as anything you can prepare and it has to be constructed out of much more intractable material."

"Now wait a while," said Trumbull. "As long as we're here, why don't we see if we can dig up a murder?"

"Can you present one?" said Halsted hopefully. "You're with the government, working on codes or whatever. You must have been involved with murder, and you don't have to name names. You know that nothing gets repeated outside these walls."

"I know that better than you," said Trumbull, "but I don't know about any murders. I can give you some interesting code items but that's not what you're after… How about you, Roger? Since you bring this up, I suppose you have something up your sleeve. Some mathematical murder?"

"No," said Halsted thoughtfully, "I don't think I can recall being involved in a single murder."

"You don't think? You mean there's a doubt in your mind?" asked Avalon.

"I guess I'm certain. How about you, Jeff? You're a lawyer."

"Not the kind that gets murderers for clients," Avalon said, with an apparently regretful shake of his head. "Patent complications are my thing. You might ask Henry. He's more at home with crimes than we are, or he sounds it."

"I'm sorry, sir," said Henry softly as he poured the coffee with practiced skill. "In my case, it is merely theory. I have been fortunate enough never to be involved with violent death."

"You mean," said Halsted, "that with six of us here- seven, counting Henry-we can't scare up a single murder?"

Drake shrugged. "In my game, there's always a good chance of death. I haven't witnessed one in the chem lab personally, but there've been poisonings, explosions, even electrocutions. At worst, though, it's murder through negligence. I can't tell you anything about any of them."

Trumbull said, "How come you're so quiet, Manny? In all your colorful career, you mean you've never had occasion to kill a man?"

"It would be a pleasure sometimes," said Rubin, "like now. But I don't really have to. I can handle them perfectly well at any size without having to lay a hand on them. Listen, I remember-"

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