Read Tales of the Black Widowers Page 13


  They were all frozen in attitudes. Levy was distinctly pale. Some five minutes passed. Then, "Caroline? . . . Okay, take it easy. Did you move . . . ? Okay, okay, I'll be home soon."

  He hung up and said, "If that doesn't beat everything. The old guy had them taped to the back of the bookcase. He must have moved that thing sometime when we were out. It's a wonder he didn't have a stroke then and there."

  "You did it again, Henry," said Gonzalo.

  Levy said, "Agent's fee is three hundred dollars, Henry."

  Henry said, "I am well paid by the club, and the banquets are my pleasure, sir. There is no need for more."

  Levy reddened slightly and changed the subject. "But how did you get the trick of it? When the rest of us-"

  "It was not difficult," said Henry. "The rest of you happened to track down all the wrong paths, and I simply suggested what was left."

  Afterword

  This story first appeared in the July 1973 issue of El-lery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it.

  In the magazine the story has a slightly different beginning because it was thought that one story in the series shouldn't refer to events in earlier stories. After all, the reasoning is, many of the magazine readers don't get all the issues and might not have read the one with the earlier story. Or if they did, and if that had been half a year ago or so, they wouldn't remember.

  That's perfectly right, but here in the book I restore the original beginning. In fact, it occurs to me that if I had written the series for the book version to begin with, I would have interlocked them quite a bit. For instance, I wouldn't have let the matter of Halsted's limerick version of the Iliad and the Odyssey drop. As it was though, I felt that to come across them out of order, or missing some and reading others, would spoil the effect.

  Oh, well.

  8

  Miss What?

  There was a certain frostiness about the monthly meeting of the Black Widowers and it clearly centered on the guest brought by Mario Gonzalo. He was a large man. His cheeks were plump and smooth, his hair was almost nonexistent, and he wore a vest, something no one had seen at the Black Widowers in living memory.

  His name was Aloysius Gordon and the trouble began when he calmly introduced himself by name and occupation, announcing himself quite casually as being connected with the 17th Precinct. It was like lowering a window shade against the sun, for the spark went out of the dinner at once.

  Gordon had no way of comparing the quiet now prevailing with the hubbub characteristic of the usual Black Widowers dinner. He had no way of knowing how unusual it was that Emmanuel Rubin was almost supernaturally reserved and had not contradicted anyone once; that Thomas Trumbull's voice, even when it was used, was subdued; that Geoffrey Avalon actually finished his second drink; that twice James Drake had stubbed out a cigarette before it was down to the quick; and that Roger Halsted, having unfolded the piece of paper on which he had written the limerick based on the fifth book of the Iliad, merely looked at it mildly, wrinkled his high, pink forehead, and put it away.

  In fact, Gordon seemed interested only in Henry. He followed the waiter with his eyes, and there was an unmistakable light of curiosity in them. Henry, ordinarily perfect in his job, upset a glass of water, to the horror of all. His cheekbones seemed to show in his unlined face.

  Trumbull rose rather ostentatiously and moved in the direction of the men's room. The gesture he made was unobtrusive but none the less urgent for that, and a minute later Gonzalo left the table, too.

  In the men's room, Trumbull said in a harsh whisper, "Why the hell did you bring that fellow?"

  "He's an interesting guy," said Gonzalo defensively, "and it's host's privilege. I can bring anyone I want."

  "He's a policeman."

  "He's a plainclothesman."

  "What's the difference? Do you know him, or is he here professionally?"

  Gonzalo raised his hands in a kind of helpless anger. His dark eyes bulged as they usually did in moments of passion. "I know him personally. I met him-it's none of your business how I met him, Tom-I know him. He's an interesting guy and I want him here."

  "Yes? What did you tell him about Henry?"

  "What do you mean, what did I tell?"

  "Oh, come on, you dumb jerk. Don't play games. Haven't you seen the guy watching Henry's every move? Why should he watch a waiter?"

  "I told him Henry's a whiz at solving puzzles."

  "In how much detail?"

  "No detail at all," said Gonzalo with heat. "Don't you suppose I know that nothing that goes on in the banquet room is mentioned outside? I just said Henry was a whiz at solving puzzles."

  "And he was interested, I suppose."

  "Well, he said he would like to be at one of our meetings and I-"

  Trumbull said, "You realize this could be very embarrassing for Henry. Did you consult him?"

  Gonzalo played with one of the brass buttons of his blazer. "If I see that Henry's embarrassed, I'll use host's privilege and cut the proceedings."

  "What if this Gordon guy doesn't play along?"

  Gonzalo looked miserable and shrugged. They returned to the table.

  When Henry was pouring out the coffee and it came time for the game of placing the guest on the griddle/ there was still no increase in verve. Gonzalo offered the role of inquisitor to Trumbull, as was traditional, and Trumbull looked unhappy about it.

  The traditional first question came out. "Mr. Gordon, how do you justify your existence?"

  "At the moment," said Gordon, in a rather rich baritone, "by adding to the pleasure of this occasion, I hope."

  "In what way?" asked Avalon glumly.

  "It is my understanding, gentlemen," said Gordon, "that guests are expected to pose a problem which the members of the club then attempt to solve."

  Trumbull shot a furious glance at Gonzalo and said, "No, no, that's all wrong. Some guests have presented problems, but that was more or less a side issue. All that's expected of them is interesting conversation."

  "Besides," said Drake in his dry voice, "it's Henry who does the solving. The rest of us just bat things around foolishly."

  "For God's sake, Jim," began Trumbull, but Gordon's voice overrode his.

  "That's exactly what I've been given to understand," he said. "Now I am here in a strictly social capacity and not as a member of the Police Department at all. Just the same, I can't help having a professional interest in the matter. In fact, I'm damned curious about Henry, and I've come to test him. ... If I may, that is," he added in response to the cold silence that had fallen over everyone else.

  Avalon was frowning, and on his face, with its neat mustache, its closely cut and neatly kept chin beard, and its absolutely luxurious eyebrows, a frown was a portentous phenomenon.

  He said, "Mr. Gordon, this is a private club, the meetings of which serve no purpose but social camaraderie. Henry is our waiter and we value him and we do not wish him to be disturbed in this room. If your presence here is purely social and not professional, as you say, I think it would be best if we leave Henry to himself."

  Henry had just completed the coffee ritual and he interrupted with the faintest trace of agitation in his voice. He said, "Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I appreciate your concern. However, it may improve the situation if I explain something to Mr. Gordon."

  He turned to the guest and went on earnestly, "Mr. Gordon, on some half-dozen occasions I have been able to make some obvious point or other in connection with some problem that arose at the dinners. The puzzles were, in themselves, trivial, and not at all the sort that would interest a policeman. I know quite well that in solving the kind of cases that interest policemen, what is most important are records, informants, rather tedious procedural work, the cooperation of many different men and agencies. All of this is quite beyond my abilities.

  "In fact, I could not even do what I have done were it not for the other members of the club. The Black Widowers are ingenious men who can find complicated answers to any
problem. When they are all done then, assuming none of the complicated answers are correct, I can sometimes wiggle past the complications to the simple truth. That is all I do, and I assure you that it is not worth your while to test me."

  Gordon nodded his head. "In other words, Henry, if there's a gangland killing and we have to track down half a dozen hoods and investigate their alibis, or try to find some bystanders not too afraid to tell us what they saw, you couldn't help us."

  "Not at all, sir."

  "But if I have an odd piece of paper that carries some words that might make sense and might not, and that may require a little thought past the complications to the simple truth, you could help."

  "Probably not, sir."

  "But would you look at the paper and give me your thoughts on the matter?"

  "Is that the test, sir?"

  "I suppose we can call it that," said Gordon.

  "Well, then," said Henry, with a slow shake of his head. "Mr. Gonzalo is the host. If he's willing to have you introduce it, then, by the rules of the club, you may."

  Gonzalo looked uncomfortable. Then he said defiantly, "Go on, Lieutenant, show it to him."

  "Hold on," said Trumbull, pointing his blunt finger at Gonzalo. "Have you seen it, Mario?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you make sense out of it?"

  "No," said Gonzalo, "but it's the kind of thing Henry might be able to handle."

  Rubin said, "I don't think we ought to put Henry on the spot like that."

  But Henry said, "It's host's privilege, sir. I'm willing to look at it."

  Gordon brought a piece of paper, folded into quarters, out of his upper right vest pocket. He held it over his shoulder and Henry took it. Henry looked at it for a moment, then handed it back.

  "I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but I cannot see anything in it except what it says."

  Drake held out his hand. "How about passing it around? Is that all right, Mr. Gordon?"

  "I'm willing to pass it around," said Gordon. He gave it to Halsted, who sat at his right. Halsted read it and passed it on. There was absolute silence till it had made its circle and returned to Gordon. Gordon glanced at it briefly and put it back in his pocket.

  The message, in full, written in a scrawled hand, went:

  Woe unto you, Jezebels.

  Death unto you, Rahab.

  "It sounds Biblical," said Gonzalo. "Doesn't it?" He looked automatically at Rubin, who was the Biblical authority of the group.

  "It sounds Biblical," said Rubin, "and it may have been written by a Bible nut, but that is not a quotation from the Bible. You can take my word on that."

  "No one's likely to question your word on the Bible, Manny," said Avalon agreeably.

  Gordon said, "That note was delivered to a girl at the entrance to a restaurant within which the Miss Earth contestants were holding a press conference."

  "Who delivered it?" asked Trumbull.

  "A drifter. He had been given a dollar to hand the note to the girl and he couldn't describe the person who had given it to him, except that it was a man. There is no reason to suppose the drifter was more than an intermediary. We checked him out."

  Halsted said, "Any fingerprints?"

  Gordon said, "Any number of superimposed smudges. Nothing useful."

  Avalon looked austere and said, "I suppose that the Jezebels mentioned in the note referred to the young ladies of the Miss Earth contest."

  "That seems a natural thought," said Gordon. "The question is: Which one?"

  "All of them, I should say," said Avalon. "The note used the plural, and the kind of person who uses the term in this context would not make fine distinctions. Anyone who presents her beauty to the public gaze for judgment would be a Jezebel. All of them would be Jezebels."

  "But what about the second phrase?" asked Gordon.

  Rubin said, with just a trace of self-importance, "I'll explain that. Suppose the writer is a Bible nut; I mean the kind who reads the Bible every day and hears God whispering in his ear, directing him to destroy immorality. Such a guy would automatically write in Biblical style. It so happens that the chief poetic device in Biblical times was the repetition of the same sentence in a slightly different way, such as . . ." He thought for a while, then said, "For instance, How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel. Another one is Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge."

  Rubin's straggly beard grew stragglier as his lips parted in a broad smile and his eyes glinted through his thick spectacles as he said, "That second one is from the Book of Job."

  "Parallelism," muttered Avalon.

  Gordon said, "You mean he's just saying the same thing twice?"

  "That's right," said Rubin. "First he predicts woe and then he predicts the ultimate woe, death. First he calls them Jezebels, then he calls them Rahabs."

  "Not quite," said Gordon. " 'Jezebel' is in the plural. 'Rahab' isn't. The fellow who wrote that speaks of 'Jezebels,' plural, when he yells 'Woe'; but only 'Rahab,' singular, when he predicts 'Death.' "

  "Can I see that paper again?" said Rubin. It was passed to him and he studied it. Then he said, "The way this fellow writes, I don't know whether we can expect exact spelling. He may have meant to put in the 's.' "

  "He may have," said Gordon, "but we can't rely on that. His spelling and punctuation are correct and, scrawl or not, the other 's' is clear and sharp-"

  "It seems to me," said Avalon, "it would be safer to assume the singular is what is meant, unless we have good reason to the contrary."

  Drake tried to blow a smoke ring (an attempt at which no one had ever seen him succeed) and said, "Do you take this thing seriously, Mr. Gordon?"

  "My private inclinations," said Gordon, "are not in question. The note has a certain psychotic quality about it and I feel pretty safe in saying that if the writer is not playing a stupid practical joke, then he's crazy. And crazy people have to be taken seriously. Suppose the writer is someone who considers himself a spokesman for the wrath of God. Naturally, he announces it; he sends for the word of God because that's what the Biblical prophets did."

  "And he announces it in poetic terms," began Halsted.

  "Because that's what the Biblical prophets did, too," said Gordon, nodding. "A man like that may just possibly decide to be the arm of God as well as His voice. We can't take a chance. You understand that the Miss Earth contest offers a more ticklish situation than the Miss America contest does."

  "Because there are foreign contestants, I suppose," said Rubin.

  "That's right. There are about sixty contestants altogether, and exactly one-Miss United States-is homegrown. We'd just as soon nothing happened to any of them, even a minor incident. I don't say that it would plunge the world into a crisis if anything happened, but the State Department would be very unhappy. So a note like this means that the police have to supply protection for all sixty girls and these days we don't have all that manpower to waste."

  "If you don't mind," said Trumbull frowning, "what the hell do you expect us to do about it?"

  Gordon said, "It's just possible he may not be planning to kill all the girls. He may have only one in mind, so that is why he uses the singular when he talks of death. Perhaps Henry might give us some ideas as to how to narrow it down. We'd rather concentrate on ten girls than on sixty. We'd rather concentrate on one girl only, in fact."

  "From that note?" said Trumbull, with perfectly obvious disgust. "You want Henry to pick out one Miss Earth contestant from that note?"

  He turned to look at Henry, and Henry said, "I have no idea, Mr. Trumbull."

  Gordon put the note away again. "I thought you might tell me who Rahab is. Why should he call one particular girl Rahab and threaten to kill her?"

  Gonzalo said suddenly, "Why should we suppose that Rahab applies to the girl he's after? Maybe it's his signature. Maybe it's a pseudonym he's using because Rahab was some important prophet or executioner in the Bible."

  Rubin let out
his breath in a snort. "Oh, boy! Mario, how can even an artist know so little? 'Rahab' is part of the line. If it were the signature, he would put it on the bottom. If he's the kind of guy who wants to call down the wrath of God in public, he would sign it proudly and unmistakably if he signed it at all. And if he did, he would never take the pseudonym of Rahab, not if he knew anything at all about the Bible. Rahab was . . . No, I tell you what. Henry, get us the King James from the reference shelf. We might as well make sure we get the words exactly right."

  "You mean you don't know the Bible by heart?" said Trambull.

  "I miss a word now and then, Tom," said Rubin loftily.

  He took the Bible from Henry. "Thanks, Henry. Now the only person named Rahab in the Bible was a harlot."

  "She was?" said Gonzalo incredulously.

  "That's right. Here it is-first verse of the second chapter of the Book of Joshua. And Joshua the son of Nun sent out of Shittim two men to spy secretly, saying, Go view the land, even Jericho. And they went, and came into an harlot's house, named Rahab, and lodged there."

  "And that's part of the parellelism," said Avalon thoughtfully. "Is that what you think?"

  "Of course. And that's why I think 'Jezebel' and 'Rahab' both apply to all the girls and should both be plural. Both Jezebel and Rahab are Biblical representatives of immoral women, and I take it that our note writer, whoever he may be, conceives all the Miss Earth candidates to be just that."

  "Are they?" asked Gonzalo. "I mean, immoral."

  Gordon smiled slightly. "I won't guarantee their private lives, but I don't think they set any records in immorality. They're young women, carefully selected to represent their countries. I doubt that anything really notorious would slip by the judges."

  Avalon said, "When a Fundamentalist who's a little past the bend speaks of immorality, or when he starts calling someone a Jezebel, there is no need, in my opinion, for the existence of real immorality. It's probably purely subjective. Any woman who rouses feelings of sexual excitement within him will seem to him to be immoral; and the one who does so most will seem to him to be most immoral."