Henry said softly, “Would you care to rest awhile, Mrs. Lindemann?”

  Rubin said, just as softly, “Would you like a cup of tea, Mrs. Lindemann, or some brandy?” Then he glared about as though daring anyone to say a word.

  Mrs. Lindemann said, “No, I’m all right. I apologize for behaving so, but I found I had forgotten. I don’t remember the young man’s address, not at all, though I must have known it that night because I talked about it. I don’t remember his first name! I stayed awake all night trying to remember, and that just made it worse. I went out the next day to try to retrace my steps, but everything looked so different by day—and by night, I was afraid to try.

  “What must the young man think of me? He’s never heard from me. I took his money and just vanished with it. I am worse than those terrible young hoodlums who snatched my purse. I had never been kind to them. They owed me no gratitude.”

  Gonzalo said, “It’s not your fault that you can’t remember. You had a rough time.”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t know I can’t remember. He thinks I’m an ungrateful thief. Finally, I told my nephew about my trouble and he was just thinking of employing Mr. Gonzalo for something and he felt that Mr. Gonzalo might have the kind of worldly wisdom that might help. Mr. Gonzalo said he would try, and in the end—here I am. But now that I’ve heard myself tell the story I realize how hopeless it all sounds.”

  Trumbull sighed. “Mrs. Lindemann, please don’t be offended at what I am about to ask, but we must eliminate some factors. Are you sure it all really happened?”

  Mrs. Lindemann looked surprised, “Well, of course it really happened. My purse was gone!”

  “No,” said Henry, “what Mr. Trumbull means I think is that after the mugging, you somehow got back to the hotel and then had a sleep that may have been filled with nightmares so that what you remember now is partly fact and partly dream—which would account for the imperfect memory.”

  “No,” said Mrs. Lindemann firmly, “I remember what I do remember perfectly. It was not a dream.”

  “In that case,” said Trumbull, shrugging, “we have very little to go on.”

  Rubin said, “Never mind, Tom. We’re not giving up. If we choose the right name for your rescuer, Mrs. Lindemann, would you recognize it, even though you can’t remember it now?”

  “I hope so,” said Mrs. Lindemann, “but I don’t know. I’ve tried looking in a phone directory to see different first names, but none seemed familiar. I don’t think it could have been a very common name.”

  Rubin said, “Then it couldn’t have been Sam?”

  “Oh, I’m certain that’s not it.”

  “Why Sam, Manny?” asked Gonzalo.

  “Well, the fellow was a Good Samaritan. Mrs. Lindemann called him that herself. Sam for Samaritan. His number and street may have represented the chapter and verse in the Bible where the tale of the Good Samaritan begins. You said his name and address fitted each other and that’s the only clue we have.”

  “Wait,” put in Avalon eagerly, “the first name might have been the much less common one of Luke. That’s the gospel in which the parable is to be found.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Lindemann, “that doesn’t sound right, either. Besides, I’m not that well acquainted with the Bible. I couldn’t identify the chapter and verse of the parable.”

  Halsted said, “Let’s not get off on impossible tangents. Mrs. Lindemann taught American history in school so it’s very likely that what struck her applied to American history. For instance, suppose the address were 1812 Madison Avenue and the young man’s name was James. James Madison was President during the War of 1812.”

  “Or 1492 Columbus Avenue,” said Gonzalo, “and the young man was named Christopher.”

  “Or 1775 Lexington Avenue and the name Paul for Paul Revere,” said Trumbull.

  “Or 1623 Amsterdam Avenue and the name Peter,” said Avalon, “for Peter Minuit, or 1609 Hudson Avenue and the name Henry. In fact, there are many named streets in lower Manhattan. We can never pick an appropriate one unless Mrs. Lindemann remembers.”

  Mrs. Lindemann clasped her hands tightly together. “Oh, dear, oh, dear, nothing sounds familiar.”

  Rubin said, “Of course not, if we’re going to guess at random. Mrs. Lindemann, I assume you are at a midtown hotel.”

  “I’m at the New York Hilton. Is that midtown?”

  “Yes. Sixth Avenue and Fifty-third Street. The chances are you could not have walked more than a mile, probably less, before you grew tired. Therefore, let’s stick to midtown. Hudson Avenue is much too far south and places like 1492 Columbus or 1812 Madison are much too far north. It would have to be midtown, probably West Side—and I can’t think of anything.”

  Drake said, through a haze of cigarette smoke, “You’re forgetting one item. Mrs. Lindemann said it wasn’t just the name and address that fit but what the young man said back there; that is, at the site of the rescue. What did he say back there?”

  “It’s all so hazy,” said Mrs. Lindemann.

  “You said he called out roughly at the muggers. Can you repeat what he said?”

  Mrs. Lindemann colored. “I could repeat some of what he said, but I don’t think I want to. The young man apologized for it afterward. He said that unless he used bad language the hoodlums would not have been impressed and would not have scattered. Besides, I know I couldn’t have referred to that at all.”

  Drake said thoughtfully, “That bites the dust then. Have you thought of advertising? You know, ‘Will the young man who aided a woman in distress—’ and so on.”

  “I’ve thought of it,” said Mrs. Lindemann, “but that would be so dreadful. He might not see it and so many imposters might arrive to make a claim.—Really, this is so dreadful.”

  Avalon, looking distressed, turned to Henry and said, “Well, Henry, does anything occur to you?”

  Henry said, “I’m not certain.—Mrs. Lindemann, you said that by the time you took the taxi it was late by the clock but not by your insides. Does that mean you arrived from the West Coast by plane so that your perception of time was three hours earlier than the clock?”

  “Yes, I did,” said Mrs. Lindemann.

  “Perhaps from Portland, or not too far from there?” asked Henry.

  “Why, yes, from just outside Portland. Had I mentioned that?”

  “No, you hadn’t,” interposed Trumbull. “How did you know, Henry?”

  “Because it occurred to me, sir,” said Henry, “that the young man’s name was Eugene, which is the name of a town only about a hundred miles south of Portland.”

  Mrs. Lindemann rose, eyes staring. “My goodness! The name was Eugene! But that’s marvellous. How could you possibly tell?”

  Henry said, “Mr. Rubin pointed out the address had to be in midtown Manhattan on the West Side. Dr. Drake pointed out your reference to what the young man had said at the scene of the rescue and I recalled that one thing you reported him to have said besides the bad language you did not describe specifically was that you had better get to his place or there’d be a battle.

  “Mr. Halsted pointed out that the address ought to have some significance in American history and so I thought it might be 54 West Fortieth Street, since there is the well-known election slogan of ‘54-40 or fight,’ the election of 1844, I believe. It would be particularly meaningful to Mrs. Lindemann if she were from the Northwest since it pertained to our dispute with Great Britain over the Oregon Territory. When she said she was indeed from near Portland, Oregon, I guessed that the rescuer’s name might be Eugene.”

  Mrs. Lindemann sat down, “To my dying day, I will never forget this. That is the address. How could I have forgotten it when you worked it out so neatly from what little I did remember.”

  And then she grew excited. She said, “But it’s not too late. I must go there at once. I must pay him or shove an envelope under his door or something.”

  Rubin said, “Will you recognize the house if you see it?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Lindemann. “I’m sure of that. And it’s apartment 4-F. I remembered that. If I knew his last name, I would call, but, no, I want to see him and explain.”

  Rubin said mildly, “You certainly can’t go yourself, Mrs. Lindemann. Not into that neighborhood at this time of night after what you’ve been through. Some of us will have to go with you. At the very least, I will.”

  Mrs. Lindemann said, “I very much dislike inconveniencing you, Mr. Rubin.”

  “Under the circumstances, Mrs. Lindemann,” said Rubin, “I consider it my duty.”

  Henry said, “I believe we will all accompany you, Mrs. Lindemann. I know the Black Widowers.”

  14

  Can You Prove It?

  Another thing I don’t like to do in my mysteries (there seem to be so many things I don’t like to do) is to write an Iron Curtain story. For one thing, I don’t like to picture good and evil as associated with different nationalities. There are many decent people and a few sourballs in every group of human beings, no matter how you slice them. I admit that back in the 1930s and 1940s I had difficulty feeling charitable toward Germans—any Germans—but even then I avoided placing German villains in my early stories.

  Then, too, at the present time, Soviet-American enmity poses such a threat to the world generally that I hesitate to add the tiniest trifle to that enmity.

  And yet, enmity exists between nations, and that can serve as the necessary basis for a mystery. So here is an Iron Curtain story that I’m proud of because I did it my way. The country is not named and the man on the other side is clearly a decent individual.

  Henry, the smoothly functioning waiter at the monthly Black Widowers banquet, filled the water glass of the evening’s guest as though knowing in advance that that guest was reaching into his shirt pocket for a small vial of pills.

  The guest looked up. “Thank you, waiter—though the pills are small enough to go down au jus, so to speak.”

  He looked about the table and sighed. “Advancing age! In our modern times we are not allowed to grow old ad lib. Doctors follow the faltering mechanism in detail and insist on applying the grease. My blood pressure is a touch high and I have an occasional extrasystole, so I take a pretty little orange pill four times a day.”

  Geoffrey Avalon, who sat immediately across the table, smiled with the self-conscious superiority of a man moderately stricken in years who kept himself in good shape with a vigorous system of calisthenics, and said, “How old are you, Mr. Smith?”

  “Fifty-seven. With proper care, my doctor assures me I will live out a normal lifetime.”

  Emmanuel Rubin’s eyes flashed in magnified form behind his thick spectacles as he said, “I doubt there’s an American who reaches middle age these days who doesn’t become accustomed to a regimen of pills of one kind or another. I take zinc and vitamin E and a few other things.”

  James Drake nodded and said in his soft voice as he peered through his cigarette smoke, “I have a special weekly pillbox arrangement to keep the day’s dosages correct. That way you can check on whether you’ve taken the second pill of a particular kind. If it’s in the Friday compartment still—assuming the day is Friday—you haven’t taken it.”

  Smith said, “I take only this one kind of pill, which simplifies things. I bought a week’s supply three years ago—twenty-eight of them—on my doctor’s prescription. I was frankly skeptical, but they helped me tremendously and I persuaded my doctor to prescribe them for me in bottles of a thousand. Every Sunday morning, I put twenty-eight into my original vial, which I carry with me everywhere and at all times and which I still use. I know at all times how much I should have—right now, I should have four left, having just taken the twenty-fourth of the week, and I do. In three years, I’ve missed a pill only twice.”

  “I,” said Rubin, loftily, “have not yet reached that pitch of senility that requires any mnemonic devices at all.”

  “No?” asked Mario Gonzalo, spearing his last bit of baba au rhum. “What pitch of senility have you reached?”

  Roger Halsted, who was hosting the banquet that night, forestalled Rubin’s rejoinder by saying, hastily, “There’s an interesting point to be made here. As increasing numbers of people pump themselves full of chemicals, there must be fewer and fewer people with untampered tissue chemistry.”

  “None at all,” growled Thomas Trumbull. “The food we eat is loaded with additives. The water we drink has purifying chemicals. The air we breathe is half pollution of one sort or another. If you could analyze an individual’s blood carefully enough, you could probably tell where he lived, what he eats, what medicines he takes.”

  Smith nodded. His short hair exposed prominent ears, something Gonzalo had taken full advantage of in preparing his caricature of the evening’s guest. Now Smith rubbed one of them thoughtfully, and said, “Maybe you could file everyone’s detailed blood pattern in some computer bank. Then if all else fails, your blood would be your identification. The pattern would be entered into the computer which would compare it with all those in its memory files and, within a minute, words would flash across a screen saying, The man you have here is John Smith of Fairfield, Connecticut,’ and I would stand up and bow.”

  Trumbull said, “If you could stand up and bow, you could stand up and identify yourself. Why bother with a blood pattern?”

  “Oh, yes?” said Smith, grimly.

  Halsted said, “Listen, let’s not get involved in this. Henry is distributing the brandy and it’s past time for the grilling. Jeff, will you assume the task?”

  “I will be glad to,” said Avalon in his most solemn tone.

  Bending his fierce and graying eyebrows over his eyes, Avalon said, with incongruous mildness, “And just how do you justify your existence, Mr. Smith?”

  “Well,” said Smith, cheerfully, “I inherited a going business. I did well with it, sold it profitably, invested wisely, and now live in early retirement in a posh place in Fairfield—a widower with two grown children, each on his own. I toil not, neither do I spin and, like the lilies of the field, my justification is my beauty and the way it illuminates the landscape.” A grin of self-mockery crossed his pleasantly ugly face.

  Avalon said, indulgently, “I suppose we can pass that. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Your name is John Smith?”

  “And I can prove it,” said Smith quickly. “Name your poison. I have my card, a driver’s license, a variety of credit cards, some personal letters addressed to me, a library card, and so on.”

  “I am perfectly willing to accept your word, sir, but it occurs to me that with a name like John Smith you must frequently encounter some signs of cynical disbelief—from hotel clerks, for instance. Do you have a middle initial?”

  “No, sir, I am the real thing. My parents felt that any modification of the grand cliche would spoil the grandeur. I won’t deny that there haven’t been times when I’ve longed to say my name was Eustace Bartholomew Wasservogel, but the feeling passes. Of the Smiths I am, and of that tribe—variety, John—I remain.”

  Avalon cleared his throat portentously and said, “And yet, Mr. Smith, I feel you have reason to feel annoyance at your name. You reacted to Tom’s suggestion that you could merely announce your name and make the blood identification unnecessary with a clear tone of annoyance. Have you had some special occasion of late when you failed to identify yourself?”

  Trumbull said, “Let me guess that you did. Your eagerness to demonstrate your ability to prove your identity would show that some past failure to do so rankles.”

  Smith stared around the table in astonishment, “Good God, does it show that much?”

  Halsted said, “No, John, it doesn’t, but this group has developed a sixth sense about mysteries. I told you when you accepted my invitation that if you were hiding a skeleton in your closet, they’d have it out of you.”

  “And I told you, Roger,” said Smith, “that I had no mystery about me.”

  “And the matter of inability to prove identity?” said Rubin.

  “Was a nightmare rather than a mystery,” said Smith, “and it is something I’ve been asked not to talk about.”

  Avalon said, “Anything mentioned within the four walls of a Black Widowers banquet represents privileged communication. Feel free.”

  “I can’t.” Smith paused, then said, “Look, I don’t know what it’s all about. I think I was mistaken for someone once when I was visiting Europe and after I got out of the nightmare, I was visited by someone from the—by someone, and asked not to talk about it. Though come to think of it, there is a mystery of a sort.”

  “Ah,” said Avalon, “and what might that be?”

  “I don’t really know how I got out of the nightmare,” said Smith.

  Gonzalo, looking pleased and animated, said, “Tell us what happened and I’ll bet we tell you how you got out of it.”

  “I can’t very well—” began Smith.

  Trumbull’s frowning face, having attempted to wither Gonzalo, turned to Smith. “I understand such things, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Suppose you omit the name of the country involved and the exact dates and any other such identifiable paraphernalia. Just tell it as a story out of the Arabian Nights—if the nightmare will stand up without the dangerous detail.”

  Smith said, “I think it will, but seriously, gentlemen, if the matter does involve national security—and I can imagine ways in which it might—how can I be sure you are all to be trusted?”

  Halsted said, “If you trust me, John, I’ll vouch for the rest of the Black Widowers—including, of course, Henry, our esteemed waiter.”

  Henry, standing at the sideboard, smiled gently.

  Smith was visibly tempted. “I don’t say I wouldn’t like to get this off my chest—”

  “If you choose not to,” said Halsted, “I’m afraid the banquet ends. The terms of the invitation were that you were to answer all questions truthfully.”