The Return of the Black Widowers Read online

  "Why?" asked Eldridge. "Why should she put through such a hoax?"

  "Why?" Rubin's voice faded out momentarily, as though with astonishment, then came back in a shout. "Good God, you've been working with these people for years and don't realize how much they want to hoax you. Don't you suppose there's a feeling of power that comes with perpetrating a good hoax; and money, too, don't forget."

  Eldridge thought about it, then shook his head. "She doesn't have the brains to put something like this across. It takes brains to be a faker—a good one, anyway."

  Trumbull broke in. "Well, now, Voss. There's no reason to suppose she's in it on her own. A confederate is possible. She supplies the hysteria, he supplies the brains."

  "Who might the confederate be?" asked Eldridge softly.

  Trumbull shrugged. "I don't know."

  Avalon cleared his throat and said, "I go along with Tom here, and my guess is that the confederate is the manager of the five-and-ten. He had noted her ability to guess at shoplifters, and thought he could put this to use in something more splashy. I'll bet that's it. He heard about the fire on television, caught the name Eldridge, and coached her."

  "How long would it take to coach her?" asked Eldridge. "I keep telling you that she's not very bright."

  "The coaching wouldn't be difficult," said Rubin quickly. "You say she was incoherent. He would just tell her a few key words: Eldridge, fire, Golden Gate, and so on. She then keeps repeating them in random arrangements and you intelligent parapsychologists fill it in."

  Eldridge nodded, then said, "That's interesting, except that there was no time at all to coach the girl. That's what precognition is all about. We know exactly what time she had her fit and we know exactly what time the fire broke out in San Francisco. It so happens the fire broke out at just about the minute that Mary's fit died down. It was as though once the fire was actual, it was no longer a matter of precognition, and Mary lost contact. So you see, there could be no coaching. The news didn't hit the network TV news programs till that evening. That's when we found out and began our investigation in depth."

  "But wait," said Halsted. "What about the time difference? There's a three-hour time difference between New York and San Francisco, and a confederate in San Francisco—"

  "A confederate in San Francisco?" said Eldridge, opening his eyes wide, and staring. "Are you imagining a continental conspiracy? Besides, believe me, I know about the time difference also. When I say that the fire started just as Mary finished, I mean allowing for the time difference. Mary's fit started at just about one-fifteen P.M. Eastern Standard Time, and the fire in San Francisco started at just about ten forty-five A.M. Pacific Standard Time."

  Drake said, "I have a suggestion."

  "Go on," said Eldridge.

  "This is an uneducated and unintelligent girl—you keep saying that over and over—and she's throwing a fit, an epileptic fit, for all I know."

  "No," said Eldridge firmly.

  "All right, a prophetic fit, if you wish. She's muttering and mumbling and screaming and doing everything in the world but speaking clearly. She makes sound which you interpret, and which you make fit together. If it had occurred to you to hear her say something like 'atom bomb,' then the word you interpreted as 'Eldridge' would have become 'Oak Ridge,' for instance."

  "And Golden Gate?"

  "You might have heard that as 'couldn't get' and fitted it in somehow."

  "Not bad," said Eldridge. "Except that we know that it is hard to understand some of these ecstatics and we are bright enough to make use of modern technology. We routinely tape-record our sessions and we tape-recorded this one. We've listened to it over and over and there is no question but that she said 'Eldridge' and not 'Oak Ridge,' 'Golden Gate' and not 'couldn't get.' We've had different people listen and there is no disagreement on any of this. Besides, from what we heard, we worked out all the details of the fire before we got the facts. We had to make no modifications afterward. It all fit exactly."

  There was a long silence at the table.

  Finally Eldridge said, “Well, there it is. Mary foresaw the fire three thousand miles away by a full half-hour and got all the facts correct."

  Drake said uneasily, "Do you accept it? Do you think it was precognition?"

  "I'm trying not to," said Eldridge. "But for what reason can I disbelieve it? I don't want to fool myself into believing it, but what choice have I? At what point am I fooling myself? If it wasn't precognition, what was it? I had hoped that perhaps one of you gentlemen could tell me."

  Again a silence.

  Eldridge went on. "I'm left in a position where I must refer to Sherlock Holmes's great precept: 'When the impossible has been eliminated, then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.' In this case, if fakery of any kind is impossible, the precognition must be the truth. Don't you all agree?"

  The silence was thicker than before, until Trumbull cried out, "Damn it all, Henry is grinning. No one’s asked him yet to explain this. Well, Henry?"

  Henry coughed. "I should not have smiled, gentlemen, but I couldn't help it when Professor Eldridge used that quotation. It seems the final bit of evidence that you gentlemen want to believe."

  "The hell we do," said Rubin, frowning.

  "Surely, then, a quotation from President Thomas Jefferson would have sprung to mind."

  "What quotation?" asked Halsted.

  "I imagine Mr. Rubin knows," said Henry.

  "I probably do, Henry, but at the moment I can't think of an appropriate one. Is it in the Declaration of Independence?"

  "No, sir," began Henry, when Trumbull interrupted with a snarl.

  "Let's not play Twenty Questions, Manny. Go on, Henry, what are you getting at?"

  "Well, sir, to say that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth, is to make the assumption, usually unjustified, that everything that is to be considered has indeed been considered. Let us suppose we have considered ten factors. Nine are clearly impossible. Is the tenth, however improbable, therefore true? What if there were an eleventh factor, and a twelfth, and a thirteenth . . ."

  Avalon said severely, "You mean there's a factor we haven't considered?"

  "I'm afraid so, sir," said Henry, nodding.

  Avalon shook his head. "I can't think what it can be."

  "And yet it is an obvious factor, sir; the most obvious one."

  "What is it, then?" demanded Halsted, clearly annoyed. "Get to the point!"

  "To begin with," said Henry, "it is clear that to explain the ability of the young lady to foretell, as described, the details of a fire three thousand miles away except by precognition is impossible. But suppose precognition is also to be considered impossible. In that case—"

  Rubin got to his feet, straggly beard bristling, eyes magnified through thick-lensed glasses, staring. "Of course! The fire was set. The woman could have been coached for weeks. The accomplice goes to San Francisco and they coordinate. She predicts something she knows is going to happen. He causes something he knows she will predict."

  Henry said, "Are you suggesting, sir, that a confederate would deliberately plan to kill five victims, including an eight-year-old boy?" "Don't start trusting in the virtue of mankind, Henry," said Rubin. "You're the one who is sensitive to wrongdoing."

  "The minor wrongdoings, sir, the kind most people overlook. I find it difficult to believe that anyone, in order to establish a fancied case of precognition, would deliberately arrange a horrible multimurder. Besides, to arrange a fire in which eighteen of twenty-three people escape and five specific people die requires a bit of precognition in itself."

  Rubin turned stubborn. "I can see ways in which five people can be trapped; like forcing a card in conjuring—"

  "Gentlemen!" said Eldridge peremptorily, and all turned to look at him. "I have not told you the cause of the fire."

  He went on, after looking about the table to make sure he had the attention of all, "It was a stroke of
lightning. I don't see how a stroke of lightning could be arranged at a specified time." He spread out his hands helplessly. "I tell you. I've been struggling with this for weeks. I don't want to accept precognition, but . . . I suppose this spoils your theory, Henry?"

  "On the contrary, Professor Eldridge, it confirms it and makes it certain. Ever since you began to tell us this tale of Mary and the fire, your every word has made it more and more certain that fakery is impossible and that precognition has taken place. If, however, precognition is impossible, then it follows of necessity, Professor, that you have been lying."

  Not a Black Widower but exclaimed at that, with Avalon's shocked "Henry!" loudest of all.

  But Eldridge was leaning back in his chair, chuckling. "Of course I was lying. From beginning to end. I wanted to see if all you so-called rationalists would be so eager to accept parapsychological phenomena that you would overlook the obvious rather than spoil your own thrill. When did you catch me out, Henry?"

  "It was a possibility from the start, sir, which grew stronger each time you eliminated a solution by inventing more information. I was certain when you mentioned the lightning. That was dramatic enough to have been brought in at the beginning. To be mentioned only at the very end made it clear that you created it on the spot to block the final hope."

  "But why was it a possibility from the start, Henry?" demanded Eldridge. "Do I look like a liar? Can you detect liars the way I had Mary detect shoplifters?"

  "Because this is always a possibility and something to be kept in mind and watched for. That is where the remark by President Jefferson comes in."

  "What was that?"

  "In 1807, Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale reported seeing the fall of a meteorite at a time when the existence of meteorites was not accepted by scientists. Thomas Jefferson, a rationalist of enormous talent and intelligence, on hearing the report, said, ‘I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that a stone would fall from heaven.'"

  "Yes," said Avalon at once, "but Jefferson was wrong. Silliman did not lie and stones did fall from heaven."

  "Quite so, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, unruffled. "That is why the quotation is remembered. But considering the great number of times that impossibilities have been reported, and the small number of times they have been proven possible after all, I felt the odds were with me."

  This story first appeared in the May 1973 issue of Ellery Queens Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it.

  I hope that no reader thinks the solution in this tale "isn't fair." In real life, a great many reports of unconventional phenomena are the results of deviations from the truth, either deliberate or unconscious. And I am sick and tired of mysteries that end up with some indication that perhaps, after all, something supernatural really did happen.

  As far as I am concerned, if, when everything impossible has been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying. If that be treason, make the most of it.

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  THE IRON GEM

  G

  eoffrey Avalon stirred his drink and smiled wolfishly. His hairy, still dark eyebrows slanted upward and his neat graying beard seemed to twitch. He looked like Satan in an amiable mood.

  He said to the Black Widowers, assembled at their monthly dinner, "Let me present my guest to you—Latimer Reed, jeweler. And let me say at once that he brings us no crime to solve, no mystery to unravel. Nothing has been stolen from him; he has witnessed no murder; involved himself in no spy ring. He is here, purely and simply, to tell us about jewelry, answer our questions, and help us have a good, sociable time."

  And, indeed, under Avalon’s firm eye, the atmosphere at dinner was quiet and relaxed and even Emmanuel Rubin, the ever quarrelsome polymath of the club, managed to avoid raising his voice. Quite satisfied, Avalon said, over the brandy, "Gentlemen, the postprandial grilling is upon us, and with no problem over which to rack our brains.—Henry, you may relax."

  Henry, who was clearing the table with the usual quiet efficiency that would have made him the nonpareil of waiters even if he had not proved himself, over and over again, to be peerlessly aware of the obvious, said, "Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I trust I will not be excluded from the proceedings, however."

  Rubin fixed Henry with an owlish stare through his thick glasses and said loudly, "Henry, this blatantly false modesty does not become you. You know you're a member of our little band, with all the privileges thereto appertaining."

  "If that is so," said Roger Halsted, the soft-voiced math teacher,

  71 sipping at his brandy and openly inviting a quarrel, "why is he waiting on table?"

  "Personal choice, sir," said Henry quickly, and Rubin's opening mouth shut again.

  Avalon said, "Let's get on with it. Tom Trumbull isn't with us this time so, as host, I appoint you, Mario, as griller in chief."

  Mario Gonzalo, a not inconsiderable artist, was placing the final touches on the caricature he was making of Reed, one that was intended to be added to the already long line that decorated the private room of the Fifth Avenue restaurant at which the dinners of the Black Widowers were held.

  Gonzalo had, perhaps, overdrawn the bald dome of Reed's head and the solemn length of his bare upper lip, and made over-apparent the slight tendency to jowl. There was indeed something more than a trace of the bloodhound about the caricature, but Reed smiled when he saw the result, and did not seem offended.

  Gonzalo smoothed the perfect Windsor knot of his pink and white tie and let his blue jacket fall open with careful negligence as he leaned back and said, "How do you justify your existence, Mr. Reed?"

  "Sir?" said Reed in a slightly metallic voice.

  Gonzalo said, without varying pitch or stress, "How do you justify your existence, Mr. Reed?"

  Reed looked about the table at the five grave faces and smiled—a smile that did not, somehow, seriously diminish the essential sadness of his own expression.

  "Jeff warned me," he said, "that I would be questioned after the dinner, but he did not tell me I would be challenged to justify myself."

  "Always best," said Avalon sententiously, "to catch a man by surprise."

  Reed said, "What can serve to justify any of us? But if I must say something, I would say that I help bring beauty into lives."

  "What kind of beauty?" asked Gonzalo. "Artistic beauty?" And he held up the caricature.

  Reed laughed. "Less controversial forms of beauty, I should hope." He pulled a handkerchief out of his inner jacket pocket and, carefully unfolding it on the table, exposed a dozen or so gleaming, deeply colored bits of mineral.

  "All men agree on the beauty of gems," he said. "That is independent of subjective taste." He held up a small deep red stone and the lights glanced off it.

  James Drake cleared his throat and said with his usual mild hoarseness just the same, "Do you always carry those things around with you?"

  "No, of course not," said Reed. "Only when I wish to entertain or demonstrate."

  "In a handkerchief?" said Drake.

  Rubin burst in at once. "Sure, what's the difference? If he's held up, keeping them in a locked casket won't do him any good. He'd just be out the price of a casket as well."

  "Have you ever been held up?" asked Gonzalo.

  "No," said Reed. "My best defense is that I am known never to carry much of value with me. I strive to make that as widely known as possible, and to live up to it, too."

  "That doesn't look it," said Drake.

  "I am demonstrating beauty, not value," said Reed. "Would you care to pass these around among yourselves, gentlemen?"

  There was no immediate move and then Drake said, "Henry, would you be in a position to lock the door?"

  "Certainly, sir," said Henry, and did so.

  Reed looked surprised. "Why lock the door?"

  Drake cleared his throat again and stubbed out the pitiful remnant of his cigarette with a stained thumb and forefinger. "I'm afraid that, with the kind of reco
rd we now have at our monthly dinners, those things will be passed around and one will disappear."

  "That's a tasteless remark, Jim," said Avalon, frowning.

  Reed said, "Gentlemen, there is no need to worry. These stones may all disappear with little loss to me or gain to anyone else. I said I was demonstrating beauty and not value. This one I am holding is a ruby—quite so—but synthetic. There are a few other synthetics and here we have an irreparably cracked opal. Others are riddled with flaws. These will do no one any good and I'm sure Henry can open the door."

  Halsted said, stuttering very slightly in controlled excitement, "No, I'm with Jim. Something is just fated to come up. I'll bet that Mr. Reed has included one very valuable item—quite by accident, perhaps— and that one will turn up missing. I just don't believe we can go through an evening without some puzzle facing us."

  Reed said, "Not that one. I know every one of these stones and, if you like, I'll look at each again." He did so and then pushed them out into the center of the table. "Merely trinkets that serve to satisfy the innate craving of human beings for beauty."

  Rubin grumbled, "Which, however, only the rich can afford."

  "Quite wrong, Mr. Rubin. Quite wrong. These stones are not terribly expensive. And even jewelry that is costly is often on display for all eyes—and even the owner can do no more than look at what he owns, though more frequently than others. Primitive tribes might make ornaments as satisfying to themselves as jewelry is to us out of shark's teeth, walrus tusks, sea shells, or birch bark. Beauty is independent of material, or of fixed rules of aesthetics, and in my way I am its servant."

  Gonzalo said, "But you would rather sell the most expensive forms of beauty, wouldn't you?"

  "Quite true," said Reed. "I am subject to economic law, but that bends my appreciation of beauty as little as I can manage."