Read Tales of the Black Widowers Page 6


  "What?" said Halsted, his high, white forehead flushing and wrinkling as his eyebrows moved upward.

  "Long time, no C," said Drake, coughing at his own cigarette smoke, which he frequently did.

  Halsted looked disgusted. "I think I'll make it longer next time. 1 was here last month, but you weren't."

  "Family!" said Drake briefly. "What's this I hear about you rewriting the Iliad into limericks?"

  "One for each book," said Halsted, with obvious self-satisfaction. "The Odyssey, too."

  "Jeff Avalon recited the limerick to the first book as soon as he saw me."

  "I've written one for the second. Would you lake to

  hear it?"

  "No," said Drake. "It goes like this:

  "Agamemnon's dream strategy slips,

  The morale of his troops quickly dips.

  First Thersites complains,

  But Odysseus restrains,

  And we next have the Cat'log of Ships."

  Drake received it stolidly. He said, "You have one too many syllables in the last line."

  "Can't help it," said Halsted with unusual heat. "It's impossible to do the second book without mentioning the Catalog of Ships and that phrase has three unaccented syllables in a row. I leave one out by elision and say Cat'log with an apostrophe. That makes it all fifteen perfect anapests."

  Drake shook his head. "Wouldn't satisfy a purist."

  Thomas Trumbull, scowling malevolently, said, "I hope, Henry, that you noticed I came early today, even though I'm not the host."

  "I did notice, Mr. Trumbull," said Henry, smiling urbanely.

  "The least you can do is give the act public approval after what you said about me last time."

  "I approve, sir, but it would be wrong to make an issue of it. That would give the impression that it was hard for you to arrive on time and no one would expect to have you repeat the feat next time. If we all ignore it, it will

  seem as though we take it for granted that you can do it, and then you will have no trouble repeating."

  "Give me my scotch and soda, Henry, and spare me the dialectic."

  As a matter of fact, it was Rubin who was the host and his guest was one of his publishers, a round-faced, smooth-cheeked gentleman with a good-humored smile on his face. His name was Ronald Klein.

  Like most guests, he found it difficult to hop onto the merry-go-round of talk, and he finally plunged in the direction of the one man at the table he knew.

  "Manny," he said, "did I hear you say Jane had bought another bull?"

  "That's right," said Rubin. "A cow, actually, because it's sitting on a crescent moon, but it's hard to tell for sure. The makers of these things rarely go into careful anatomical detail."

  Avalon, who had been wielding his knife and fork in workmanlike fashion over the stuffed veal, paused to say, "Collector's mania is something that seizes almost every gentleman of leisure It has many delights; the excitement of the search, the ecstasy of the acquisition, the joy of later contemplation. You can do it with anything. I collect stamps myself."

  "Stamps," said Rubin at once, "are the very worst thing you can collect. They are thoroughly artificial. Vest-pocket nations put out issues designed deliberately to fetch high sums. Mistakes, misprints, and so on create false values. The whole thing is in the hands of entrepreneurs and financiers. If you've got to collect, collect things with no value."

  Gonzalo said, "A friend of mind collects his own books. So far, he has published a hundred and eighteen and carefully gets copies of every edition, American and foreign, hard-cover and paperback, book-club and condensed. He's got a whole roomful of them and says he is the only person in the world with a complete collection of his works and that it will be worth a tremendous sum someday "

  "After he's dead," said Drake briefly.

  "I think he's planning to fake death, sell the collection for a million dollars, then come back to life and continue writing under a pseudonym."

  At this point, Klein made his way back on the merry-go-round. "I met a fellow yesterday," he said, "who collects matchbooks."

  "I collected matchbooks when I was a kid," said Gon-zalo. "I used to go searching all the curbs and alleys

  for-"

  But Trumbull, who had been eating in unwonted silence, suddenly raised his voice to a shout. "God damn it, you bunch of hack talkers, our guest has said something. Mr.-uh-Klein, what was that you said?"

  Klein looked startled. "I said I met a fellow yesterday who collects matchbooks."

  "That could be interesting," said Halsted agreeably,

  "if-"

  "Shut up," roared Trumbull. "I want to hear about this." His creased, bronzed face turned to Klein. "What's the guy's name? The collector."

  "I'm not sure I remember," said Klein. "I just met him at lunch yesterday; never saw him before that. There were six of us at the table, and he got to talking about his matchbooks. Listen, I thought he was crazy at first, but by the time he got through, I decided to start a collection of my own."

  "Did he have grayish sideburns, with a little red in it?"

  asked Trumbull.

  "Why, yes, as a matter of fact. Do you know him?" "Umm," said Trumbull. "Hey, Manny, I know you're the host, and I don't want to overstep your prerogatives ..."

  "But you're going to," said Rubin. "Is that it?" "No, I'm not, damn it," said Trumbull hotly. "I'm asking your permission. I would like to have our guest tell us all about his lunch yesterday with this matchbook collector."

  Rubin said, "You mean instead of his being put on the grill? We never put anyone on the grill any more!" "This could be important."

  Rubin thought about it, with a look of some dissatisfaction on his face, then said, "Okay, but after the dessert. .. . What have we got for dessert today, Henry?"

  "Zabaglione, sir, to go with the Italian motif of tonight's meal."

  "Calories, calories," groaned Avalon softly.

  Halsted's teaspoon clinked as he stirred the sugar in his coffee and elaborately ignored Rubin's flat ukase that anyone who added anything at all to good coffee was a barbarian. He said, "Do we humor Tom now and get our guest to tell us about matchbooks?"

  Klein looked about the table and said with a small laugh, "I'm willing to do it, but I don't know that it's interesting-"

  "I say it's interesting," said Trumbull.

  "All right. I won't fight it. I started the whole thing, as a matter of fact. We were at the Cock and Bull on Fifty-third Street-"

  "Jane insisted on eating there one time because of the name," said Rubin. "Not so hot."

  Trumbull said, "I'll strangle you, Manny. What's all this talk about your wife today? If you miss her, go home."

  "You're the only one I know, Tom, who would make any man miss any wife."

  "Please go on, Mr. Klein," said Trumbull.

  Klein began again. "Okay. I started it, as I said, by lighting a cigarette, while we were waiting for the menu, and then getting uncomfortable about it. I don't know how it is, but it seems there's a lot less smoking at meals these days. At this table, for instance, Mr. Drake is the only one smoking. I guess he doesn't mind-"

  "I don't," muttered Drake.

  "I did, though, so after a few puffs I stubbed out the cigarette. Only I was embarrassed, so I fiddled with the matchbook I had lit the cigarette with; you know, the ones restaurants always supply at every table."

  "Advertising themselves," said Drake. "Yes."

  "And this fellow ... I have his name now-Ottiwell. I don't know his first name."

  "Frederick," growled Trumbull, with glum satisfaction. "Then you do know him." "I do know him. But go on."

  "I was still holding the matchbook in my hand, and Ottiwell reached for it and asked if he could see it. So I passed it to him. He looked at it and he said something like 'Moderately interesting. Not particularly imaginative in design. I've got it.' Or something like that. I don't remember the exact words."

  Halsted said reflectively, "That's an interesting point,
Mr. Klein. At least you know you don't remember the exact words. In all these first-person narratives, the fellow telling the story always remembers every word everyone has said, and in the right order. It never carries conviction with me."

  "It's just a convention," said Avalon seriously as he sipped at his coffee, "but I admit third-person is more convenient. When you use first-person, you know that the narrator will survive all the deadly perils into which he

  will be-"

  "I wrote a first-person narrative once," said Rubin,

  "in which the narrator dies."

  "That happens in the western song, 'El Paso,' too,"

  said Gonzalo.

  "In 'The Murder of Roger'-" began Avalon.

  And Trumbull rose and banged his fist on the table. "So help me, you bunch of idiots, I will kill the next guy who talks. Don't you believe me when I tell you this thing is important? . . . Go on, Mr. Klein."

  Klein looked more than a little uncomfortable. "I don't see its importance myself, Mr. Trumbull. There's not even much to it. This Ottiwell took to telling us about matchbooks. Apparently, there's a whole thing about it to people who are involved in it. There are all kinds of factors that increase the value: not only beauty and rarity but also whether the matches are intact and whether the friction strip is unmarked. He talked about difference in design, in location of the friction strip, in type and quantity of printing, whether the inside of the cover is blank or not, and so on. He went on and on, and that's about it.

  Except that he made it sound so interesting it captured me, as I said."

  "Did he invite you to visit his place and see his collection?"

  "No," said Klein, "he didn't."

  "I've been there," said Trumbull, and having said that, he sat back in his chair with a look of deepest dissatisfaction covering it thickly.

  There was a silence and, as Henry distributed the small brandy glasses, Avalon said, with a touch of annoyance, "If the threat of murder has been lifted, Tom, may I ask what the collector's place was like?"

  Trumbull seemed to return, as from a distance. "What? Oh . . . It's weird. He started collecting when he was a kid. For all I know he got his first samples out of gutters and alleys like Gonzalo did, but at some point it turned serious.

  "He's a bachelor. He doesn't work. He doesn't have to. He's inherited some money and has invested shrewdly, so all he lives for are those damned matchbooks. I think they own his house and keep him on as a caretaker.

  "He's got exhibits of prize items on the wall; framed, if you please. He's got them in folders and cases, everywhere. His whole basement is given over to filing cabinets in which they're catalogued by type and alphabet. You wouldn't believe how many tens of thousands of different matchbooks have been manufactured the world over, with how many different legends, and with how many different peculiarities, and I think he's got them all.

  "He's got skinny matchbooks that hold two matches apiece; some as long as your arm that hold a hundred and fifty. He's got matches shaped like beer bottles, others shaped like baseball bats or bowling pins. He's got blank matchbooks with nothing on the cover; he's got match-books with musical scores on them. Damn it, he's got a whole folder of pornographic matchbooks."

  "That I'd like to see," said Gonzalo.

  "Why?" said Trumbull. "It's the same stuff you can see anywhere else, except that on a matchbook it's handier to burn and get rid of."

  "You've got the soul of a censor," said Gonzalo. "I prefer the real thing," said Trumbull. "Maybe at one time you could," said Gonzalo. "What do you want to do? Play verbal ping-pong? We have something serious under discussion."

  "What's so serious about a bunch of matchbooks?" de-manded Gonzalo.

  "I'll tell you." Trumbull looked up and down the table. "Listen, you bunch of meatheads, what's said in here is always confidential."

  "We all know that," said Avalon dryly. "If anyone's forgotten, it's you, or you wouldn't have to remind us." "Mr. Klein will also have to-"

  Rubin interrupted at once. "Mr. Klein understands exactly. He knows that nothing that ever goes on in this room is ever, under any circumstances, to be referred to outside. I'll vouch for him."

  "Okay. All right," said Trumbull. "So now I'll tell you as little as I can. So help me God, I wouldn't have told you anything except for Klein's luncheon yesterday. It just irritates me. I've had this chewing holes in me for months now; over a year, in fact; and having it come

  up-"

  "Look," said Drake flatly. "Either tell us or don't tell

  us."

  Trumbull rubbed his eyes angrily. He said, "There's an

  information leak."

  "What kind? Where?" said Gonzalo.

  "Never mind. I'm specifically not saying it's the government. I'm specifically not saying foreign agents are involved, you understand. Maybe it's industrial espionage; maybe it's the theft of the New York Mets' baseball signals; maybe it's cheating on a test, as in the problem Drake brought up a couple of months ago. Let's just call it an information leak, all right?"

  "All right," said Rubin. "And who's involved? This guy

  Ottiwell?"

  "We're pretty sure."

  "Then reel him in."

  Trumbull said, "We have no proof. All we can do is try to block any information from getting to him, and we don't even want to do that-entirely."

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's not who the guy is. It's how he does it. If we pull him in and don't know the method he's using, then someone will take his place. People are cheap. It's the modus operandi we want."

  "Do you have any ideas on the subject?" asked Hal-sted, blinking slowly.

  "It's the matchbooks. What else? It's got to be. All our evidence points to Ottiwell as the leak and he's a crazy guy who collects matchbooks. There's got to be a connection."

  "You mean he started collecting matchbooks so he could-"

  "No, he's been collecting them all his life. There's no doubt about it. That collection he has right now took thirty years a-building. But once he had his collection, when he was somehow recruited into the business of transmitting information, he naturally worked out a scheme that involved his matchbooks."

  "What scheme?" broke in Rubin impatiently.

  "That's what I don't know. But it's there. In a way, the matchbooks are perfect for the task. They carry messages already and, properly chosen, they need no tampering. For instance, the restaurant you were in yesterday, Klein, the Cock and Bull. Its matchbooks surely said 'Cock and Bull' on the covers."

  "Sounds reasonable. I didn't look."

  "I'm sure of it. Well, now, if you want to cancel out a previous message, you put one of those things in the mail, or just tear off half the cover, and mail it. Aren't you saying the previous message was just a cock-and-bull story?"

  Gonzalo said, "That's pure bull . . . Sorry, Manny, didn't mean to raise a sore point . . . But look, Tom, anyone who mails a matchbook cover, let alone a matchbook, is asking for it. You spot something funny at once."

  "Not if there's a plausible reason to mail matchbooks."

  "Like what?"

  "Matchbook nuts do it. They correspond and they trade. They send matchbooks back and forth. Maybe one guy needs a Cock and Bull to flesh out an animal collection he's building up and returns a spare girlie picture for someone who's specializing in that kind of art."

  "And Ottiwell trades?" asked Avalon.

  "Sure he does."

  "And you never managed to pick up anything he put

  into the mail?"

  A look of contempt came across Trumbull's face. "Of course, we did. A number of times. We'd pick it up, go over it with a fine-tooth comb, then send it on."

  "And by so doing," said Rubin, looking off into the distance, "interfering with the United States mails. That's an easy thing to do when it's only a matter of the New York Mets' baseball signals."

  "Oh, for God's sake," said Trumbull, "don't be a jackass for, say, fifteen minutes, Manny, just for the novelty of i
t. You know my field is in codes and ciphers. You know I'm consulted by the government and have my contacts there. Naturally they're interested. They would be even if the leak involved only a case of over-the-fence gossip, and I'm not saying it's any more than that."

  "Why?" said Rubin. "Are we that far gone in Big

  Brotherism?"

  "It's simple if you'll stop to think. Any system for transmitting information that can't be broken-whatever the information is-is top-flight dangerous. If it works and is being used for something utterly unimportant, it can be later used to deal with something vital. The government doesn't want any system of transmitting information to remain unbroken, unless it's under its own control. That's got to make sense to you."

  "All right," said Drake, "so you studied the match-books this Ottiwell puts in the mail. What did you get?"

  "Nothing," grunted Trumbull. "There was nothing we could make out of it. We studied those damned advertising items on each cover and came up with nothing."

  "You mean you looked to see if initial letters of the items spelled a word or something?" said Klein with interest.

  "If it were a six-year-old sending it, yes, that's what we would have tried. No, we worked a lot more subtly than that and came up with nothing."

  "Well," said Avalon heavily, "if you can't find anything in any of the printed matter of any of the matchbooks he mails-maybe it's a false lead."

  "You mean maybe it's not the matchbooks at all?"

  "That's right," said Avalon. "It could be all misdirection. This man has the matchbooks handy and he's a bona fide collector, so he makes his collection look as prominent as possible to attract all the attention it can. He shows it to anyone who wants to see it. ... How did you get to see it, Tom?"

  "He invited me. I cultivated his friendship."

  "And he responded," said Rubin. "There's a man who deserves everything he gets. Don't cultivate my friendship, Tom."

  "I never have. . . . Look, Jeff, I know what you mean. He talked to Klein yesterday about the matchbooks; he'd talk to anyone. He'd show his collection to anyone willing to go out to Queens. That's why I asked if he invited Klein up to his place. With all that talking, all that self-advertisement, all that glitter and shine, it wouldn't surprise you, I suppose, if he then used some device that had nothing at all to do with the matchbooks. Right?"