More Tales of the Black Widowers Page 6

  “In those days, you see, the Moslem world was still largely closed to the men of the Christian West. The Ottoman Empire still had large territories in the Balkans and the dim memory of the days when it threatened all Europe still lent it an echo of far-off might. And the Arabian Peninsula itself was, to the West, a mystic mixture of desert sheiks and camels.

  “Of course, the old city of Mecca was closed to non-Moslems and one of the daring feats a European or American might perform would be to learn Arabic, dress like an Arab, develop a knowledge of Moslem culture and religion, and somehow participate in the ritual of the pilgrimage to Mecca and return to tell the story. —My great-grandfather claimed to have accomplished this.”

  Drake interrupted. “Claimed? Was he lying?” “I don't know,” said Reed. “I have no evidence beyond this letter he sent from Hong Kong. There was no apparent reason to lie since he had nothing to gain from it. Of course, he may merely have wanted to amuse my great-grandmother and shine in her eyes. He had been away from home for three years and had only been married three years prior to his sailing, and family legend has it that it was a great love match.”

  Gonzalo began, “But after he returned—”

  “He never returned,” said Reed. “About a month after he wrote the letter he died under unknown circumstances and was buried somewhere overseas. The family didn't learn of that till considerably later of course. My grandfather was only about four at. the time of his father's death and was brought up by my great-grandmother. My grandfather had five sons and three daughters and I'm the second son of his fourth son and there's my family history in brief.”

  “Died under unknown circumstances,” said Halsted. “There are all sorts of possibilities there.”

  “As a matter of fact,” said Reed, “family legend has it that his impersonation of an Arab was detected, that he had been tracked to Hong Kong and beyond, and had been murdered. But you know there is no evidence for that whatever. The only information we have about his death was from seamen who brought a letter from someone who announced the death.”

  “Does that letter exist?” asked Avalon, interested despite himself.

  “No. But where and how he died doesn't matter—or even if he died, for that matter. The fact is he never returned home. Of course,” Reed went on, “the family has always tended to believe the story, because it is dramatic and glamorous and it has been distorted out of all recognition. I have an aunt who once told me that he was torn to pieces by a howling mob of dervishes who detected his imposture in a mosque. She said it was because he had blue eyes. All made up, of course; probably out of a novel.”

  Rubin said, “Did he have blue eyes?”

  “I doubt it,” said Reed. “We all have brown eyes in my family. But I don't really know.”

  Halsted said, “But what about your iron gem, your lucky piece?”

  “Oh, that came with the letter,” said Reed. “It was a small package actually. And my lucky piece was the whole point of the letter. He was sending it as a memento of his feat. Perhaps you know that the central ceremony involved in the pilgrimage to Mecca is the rites at the Kaaba, the most holy object in the Moslem world.”

  Rubin said, “It's actually a relic of the pre-Moslem world. Mohammed was a shrewd and practical politician, though, and he took it over. If you can't lick them, join them.”

  “I dare say,” said Reed coolly. “The Kaaba is a large, irregular cube—the word 'cube' comes from 'Kaaba' in fact —and in its southeast corner about five feet from the ground is what is called the Black Stone, which is broken and held together in metal bands. Most people seem to think the Black Stone is a meteorite.”

  “Probably,” said Rubin. “A stone from heaven, sent by the gods. Naturally it would be worshiped. The same can be said of the original statue of Artemis at Ephesus—the so-called Diana of the Ephesians—”

  Avalon said, “Since Tom Trumbull is absent, I suppose it's my job to shut you up, Manny. Shut up, Manny. Let our guest speak.”

  Reed said, “Anyway, that's about it. My iron gem arrived in the package with the letter, and my great-grandfather said in his letter that it was a piece of the Black Stone which he had managed to chip off.”

  “Good Lord,” muttered Avalon. “If he did that, I wouldn't blame the Arabs for killing him.”

  Drake said, “If it's a piece of the Black Stone, I dare say it would be worth quite a bit to a collector.”

  “Priceless to a pious Moslem, I should imagine,” said Halsted.

  “Yes, yes,” said Reed impatiently, “if it is a piece of the Black Stone. But how are you going to demonstrate such a thing? Can we take it back to Mecca and see if it will fit into some chipped place, or make a very sophisticated chemical comparison of my lucky piece and the rest of the Black Stone?”

  “Neither of which, I'm sure,” said Avalon, “the government of Saudi, Arabia would allow.”

  “Nor am I interested in asking,” said Reed. “Of course, it's an article of faith in my family that the object is a chip of the Black Stone and the story was occasionally told to. visitors and the package was produced complete with letter and stone. It always made a sensation.

  “Then sometime before World War I there was some sort of scare. My father was a boy then and he told me the story when I was a boy, so it's all pretty garbled. I was impressed with it when I was young, but when I considered it after reaching man's estate, I realized that it lacked substance.”

  “What was the story?” asked Gonzalo.

  “A matter of turbaned strangers slinking about the house, mysterious shadows by day and strange sounds by night,” said Reed. “It was the sort of thing people would imagine after reading sensational fiction.”

  Rubin, who, as a writer, would ordinarily have resented the last adjective, was too hot on the spoor on this occasion to do so. He said, “The implication is that they were Arabs who were after the chip of the Black Stone. Did anything happen?”

  Avalon broke in. “If you tell us about mysterious deaths, Latimer, I'll know you're making up the whole thing.”

  Reed said, “I'm speaking nothing but the truth. There were no mysterious deaths. Everyone in my family since Great-grandfather died of old age, disease, or unimpeachable accident. No breath of foul play has ever risen. And in connection with the tale of the turbaned strangers, nothing at all happened. Nothing! Which is one reason I dismiss the whole thing.”

  Gonzalo said, “Did anyone ever attempt to steal the chip?”

  “Never. The original package with the chip and the letter stayed in an unlocked drawer for half a century. No one paid any particular heed to it and it remained perfectly safe. I still have the chip as you saw,” and he slapped his pocket

  “Actually,” he went on, “the thing would have been forgotten altogether but for me. About 1950, I felt a stirring of interest. I don't have a clear memory why. The nation of Israel had just been established and the Middle East was much in the news. Perhaps that was the reason. In any case, I got to thinking of the old family story and I dredged the thing out of its drawer.”

  Reed took out his iron gem absently and held it in the palm of his hand. “It did look meteoritic to me but, of course, in my great-grandfather's time meteorites weren't as well known to the general public as they are now. So, as I said earlier, I took it to the Museum of Natural History. Someone said it was meteoritic and would I care to donate it. I said it was a family heirloom and I couldn't do that, but—and this was the key point for me—I asked him if there were any signs that it had been chipped off a larger meteorite.

  “He looked at it carefully, first by eye, then with- a magnifying glass, and finally said he could see no sign of it. He said it must have been found in exactly the condition I had it. He said meteoritic iron is particularly hard and tough because it has nickel in it. It's more like alloy steel than iron and it couldn't be chipped off, he said, without clear signs of manhandling.

  “Well, that settled it, didn't it? I went back and got the letter and re
ad it through. I even studied the original package. There was some blurred Chinese scrawl on it and my grandmother's name and address in a faded angular English. There was nothing to be made of it. I couldn't make out the postmark but there was no reason to suppose it wasn't from Hong Kong. Anyway, I decided the whole thing was an amiable fraud. Great-grandfather Latimer had picked up the meteorite somewhere, and probably had been spending time in the Arab world, and couldn't resist spinning a yarn.”

  Halsted said, “And then a month later he was dead under mysterious circumstances.”

  “Just dead,” said Reed. “No reason to think the death was mysterious. In the 1850s, life was relatively brief. Any of a number of infectious diseases could kill. —Anyway, that's the end of the story. No glamour. No mystery.”

  Gonzalo objected vociferously at once. “That's not the end of the story. It's not even the beginning. What's the bit about the offer of five hundred dollars?”

  “Oh, that!” said Reed. “That happened in 1962 or 1963. It was a dinner party and there were some hot arguments on the Middle East and I was taking up a pro-Arab stance as a kind of devil's advocate—it was well before the Six-Day War, of course—and that put me in mind of the meteorite. It was still moldering away in the drawer and I brought it out.

  “I remember we were all sitting about the table and I passed the package around and they all looked at it. Some tried to read the letter, but that wasn't so easy because the handwriting is rather old-fashioned and crabbed. Some asked me what the Chinese writing was on the package and of course I didn't know. Just to be dramatic, I told them about the mysterious turbaned strangers in my father's time and stressed Great-granddad's mysterious death, and didn't mention my reasons for being certain it was all a hoax. It was just entertainment.

  “Only one person seemed to take it seriously. He was a stranger, a friend of a friend. We had invited a friend, you see, and when he said he had an engagement, we said, well, bring your friend along. That sort of thing, you know. I don't remember his name any more. All I do remember about him personally is that he had thinning red hair and didn't contribute much to the conversation.

  “When everybody was getting ready to go, he came to me hesitantly and asked if he could see the thing once more There was no reason not to allow it, of course. He took the meteorite out of the package—it was the only thing that seemed to interest him—and walked to the light with it. He studied it for a long time; I remember growing a little impatient; and then he said, 'See here, I collect odd objects. I wonder if you'd let me have this thing. I'd pay you, of course. What would you say it was worth?'

  “I laughed and said I didn't think I'd sell it and he stammered out an offer of five dollars. I found that rather offensive. I mean, if I were going to sell a family heirloom it surely wouldn't be for five dollars. I gave him a decidedly brusque negative and held out my hand for the object. I took such a dislike to him that I remember feeling he might steal it

  “He handed it back reluctantly enough and I remember looking at the object again to see what might make it attractive to him, but it still seemed what it was, an ugly lump of iron. You see, even though I knew its point of interest lay in its possible history and not in its appearance, I was simply unable to attach value to anything but beauty.

  “When I looked up, he was reading the letter again. I held out my hand and he gave me that too. He said, Ten dollars?' and I just said, 'No!'“

  Reed took a sip of the coffee that Henry had just served him. He said, “Everyone else had left This man's friend was waiting for him, the man who was my friend originally, Jansen. He and his wife were killed in an auto accident the next year, driving the very car at whose door he stood then, wailing for the man he had brought to my house. What a frightening thing the future is if you stop to think of it. Luckily, we rarely do.

  “Anyway, the man who wanted the object stopped at the door and said to me hurriedly, 'Listen, I'd really like that little piece of metal. It's no good to you and I'll give you five hundred dollars for it. How's that? Five hundred dollars. Don't be hoggish about this.'

  “I can make allowances for his apparent anxiety, but he was damned offensive. He did say 'hoggish'; I remember the word. After that, I wouldn't have let him have it for a million. Very coldly I told him it wasn't for sale at any price, and I put the meteorite, which was still in my hand, into my pocket with ostentatious finality.

  “His face darkened and he growled that I would regret that and there would be those who wouldn't be so kind as to offer money, and then off he went— The meteorite has stayed in my pocket ever since. It is my ugly luck piece that I have refused five hundred dollars for.” He chuckled in a muted way and said, “And that's the whole story.”

  Drake said, “And you never found out why he offered you five hundred dollars for that thing?”

  “Unless he believed it was a piece of the Black Stone, I can't see any reason why he should,” said Reed.

  “He never renewed his offer?”

  “Never. It was over ten years ago and I have never heard from him at all. And now that Jansen and his wife are dead, I don't even know where he is or how he could be located if I decided I wanted to sell.”

  Gonzalo said, “What did he mean by his threat about others who wouldn't be so kind as to offer money?”

  “I don't know,” said Reed. “I suppose he meant mysterious turbaned strangers of the kind I had told him about. I think he was just trying to frighten me into selling.”

  Avalon said, “Since a mystery has developed despite everything, I suppose we ought to consider the possibilities here. The obvious motive for his offer is, as you say, that he believed the object to be a piece of the Black Stone.”

  “If so,” said Reed, “he was the only one there who did. I don't think anyone else took the story seriously for a moment. Besides, even if it were a chip of the Black Stone and the guy were a collector, what good would it be to him without definite proof? He could take any piece of scrap iron and label it 'piece of the Black Stone' and it would do him no less good than mine.”

  Avalon said, “Do you suppose he might have been an Arab who knew that a chip the size of your object had been stolen from the Black Stone a century before and wanted it out of piety?”

  “He didn't seem Arab to me,” said Reed. “And if he were, why was the offer not renewed? Or why wasn't there 'an attempt at taking it from me by violence?”

  Drake said, “He studied the object carefully. Do you suppose he saw something there that convinced him of its value—whatever that value might be?”

  Reed said, “How can I dispute that? Except that, whatever he might have seen, I certainly never have. Have you?”

  “No,” admitted Drake.

  Rubin said, 'This doesn't sound like anything we can possibly work out. We just don't have enough information. —What do you say, Henry?”

  Henry, who had been listening with his usual quiet attention, said, “I was wondering about a few points.”

  “Well then, go on, Henry,” said Avalon. “Why not continue the grilling of the guest?”

  Henry said, “Mr. Reed, when you showed the object to your guests on that occasion in 1962 or 1963, you say you passed the package around. You mean the original package in which the letter and the meteorite had come, with its contents as they had always been?”

  “Yes. Oh yes. It was a family treasure.”

  “But since 1963, sir, you have carried the meteorite in your pocket?”

  “Yes, always,” said Reed.

  “Does that mean, sir, that you no longer have the letter?”

  “Of course it doesn't mean that,” said Reed indignantly. “We certainly do have the letter. I'll admit that after that fellow's threat I was a little concerned so I put it in a safer place. It's a glamorous document from the family standpoint, hoax or not.”

  “Where do you keep it now?” asked Henry.

  “In a small wall safe I use for documents and occasional jewels.”

  “Have yo
u seen it recently, sir?”

  Reed smiled broadly. “I use the wall safe frequently, and I see it every time. Take my word for it, Henry, the letter is safe; as safe as the luck piece in my pocket.”

  Henry said, “Then you don't keep the letter in the original package anymore.”

  “No,” said Reed. “The package was more useful as a container for the meteorite. Now that I carry that object in my pocket, there was no point in keeping the letter alone in the package.”

  Henry nodded. “And what did you do with the package, then, sir?”

  Reed looked puzzled. “Why, nothing.”

  “You didn't throw it out?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Do you know where it is?”

  Slowly, Reed frowned. He said at last, “No, I don't think so.”

  “When did you last see it?”

  The pause was just as long this time. “I don't know that either.”

  Henry seemed lost in thought.

  Avalon said, “Well, Henry, what do you have in mind?”

  Henry said, “I'm just wondering”—quietly he circled the table removing the brandy glasses—”whether that man wanted the meteorite at all.”

  “He certainly offered me money for it,” said Reed.

  “Yes,” said Henry, “but first such small sums as would offer you no temptation to release it, and which he could well afford to pay if you called his bluff. Then a larger sum couched in such offensive language as to make it certain you would refuse. And after that, a mysterious threat which was never implemented.”

  “But why should he do all that,” said Reed, “unless he wanted my iron gem?”