Drake said, “Anyone have any other ideas? I don’t.”

  There was silence.

  Drake turned half about in his chair. “Do you have anything to volunteer, Henry?”

  Henry said, with a small smile, “Well, Dr. Drake, I have a certain reluctance to spoil Mrs. Anderssen’s fun.”

  “Spoil her fun?” said Anderssen in astonishment. “Are you telling me, waiter, that you know what happened?”

  Henry said, “I know what might easily have happened, sir, that would account for the disappearance without the need for any sort of witchcraft and I assume, therefore, that that was, indeed, what happened.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “Let me be certain I understand one point. When you asked the people in the restaurant if they had seen a redheaded woman enter, the man on the couch turned around and shook his head in the negative. Is that right?”

  “Yes, he did. I remember it well. He was the only one who really responded.”

  “But you said the fireplace was at the wall opposite the door into the restaurant and that the couch faced it, so that the man had his back to you. He had to turn around to look at you. That means his back was also to the door, and he was reading a magazine. Of all the people there, he was least likely to see someone enter the door, yet he was the one person to take the trouble to indicate he had seen no one. Why should he have?”

  “What has all that got to do with it, waiter?” said Anderssen.

  “Call him Henry,” muttered Gonzalo.

  Henry said, “I would suggest that Mrs. Anderssen hurried in and took her seat on the couch, an ordinary and perfectly natural action that would have attracted no attention from a group of people engaged in dining and in conversation, even despite her red hair.”

  “But I would have seen her as soon as I came in,” said Anderssen. “The back of the couch only reaches a person’s shoulders and Helen is a tall woman. Her hair would have blazed out at me.”

  “On a chair,” said Henry, “it is difficult to do anything but sit. On a couch, however, one can lie down.”

  Anderssen said, “There was a man already sitting on the couch.”

  “Even so,” said Henry. “Your wife, acting on impulse, as you say she is apt to do, reclined. Suppose you were on a couch, and an attractive redhead, with a fine figure, dressed in a skimpy summer costume, suddenly stretched out and placed her head in your lap; and that, as she did so, she raised her finger imploringly to her mouth, pleading for silence. It seems to me there would be very few men who wouldn’t oblige a lady under those circumstances.”

  Anderssen’s lips tightened, “Well—”

  “You said the man was holding his magazine high, as though he were nearsighted, but might that not be because he was holding it high enough to avoid the woman’s head in his lap? And then, in his eagerness to oblige a lady, would he not turn his head and unnecessarily emphasize that he hadn’t seen her?”

  Anderssen rose. “Right! I’ll go home right now and have it out with her.”

  “If I may suggest, sir,” said Henry, “I would not do that.”

  “I sure will. Why not?”

  “In the interest of family harmony, it might be well if you would let her have her victory. I imagine she rather regrets it and is not likely to repeat it. You said she has been very well behaved this last month. Isn’t it enough that you know in your heart how it was done so that you needn’t feel defeated yourself? It would be her victory without your defeat and you would have the best of both worlds.”

  Slowly, Anderssen sat down and, amid a light patter of applause from the Black Widowers, said, “You may be right, Henry.”

  “I think I am,” said Henry.

  PART II

  UNION CLUB MYSTERIES

  16

  He Wasn’t There

  In 1980, after I had been writing Black Widower stories for eight years, Gallery magazine (a so-called “girlie” magazine) asked if I would write a short mystery for them in each issue. After I had made it plain that I would not write erotica, I accepted the task. These stories are something like the Black Widower stories, but they are shorter and feature a narrator called Griswold. I have now done forty-six of these Union Club mysteries and I present twelve of them here.

  In the case of this first one I offer, the idea wasn’t mine. It was suggested to me by Martin Gardner, that wonderful science writer. Generally, ideas that are offered to me are not useful; they are the product of another’s mind and don’t fit the bent of mine. Gardner’s mind, however (and I hope he’ll forgive my presumption), is sufficiently like mine for the idea to pass smoothly out of his and into mine. I thank him.

  The mood at the Union Club was one of isolation that night as the four of us sat in the library. It was fairly late and we had it to ourselves.

  Jennings must have felt that sense of removal from the rest of the world, for he said dreamily, “If we just stayed here, I wonder if anyone would ever come looking for us.”

  “Our wives would miss us after a week or two,” I said encouragingly. “The dragnet would be thrown out.”

  “Listen,” said Baranov. “You can’t rely on dragnets. Back in 1930, a certain Judge Crater stepped out onto the streets of New York and was never seen again. In fifty years, not a clue.”

  “Nowadays,” I said, “with social security numbers, credit cards and computers, it’s not that easy to disappear.”

  “Yes?” said Baranov. “How about James Hoffa?”

  “I mean, deliberately,” I said. “While still alive.”

  From the depth of his armchair, Griswold stirred and rumbled slowly to life. “In some way,” he said, “it’s easier to disappear now, I suppose. With today’s increasingly heterogeneous society, its increasingly self-centered people, who’s to care if one person, more or less, slips quietly through the mechanical motions of minimal social involvement? I knew a man once the Department was aching to find who simply wasn’t there.”

  Jennings said quickly, “What Department?” but Griswold never answers questions like that.

  I wonder [said Griswold] if you ever give thought to the careful putting together of small bricks of evidence into a careful edifice that isolates the foreign agent and neutralizes him. He doesn’t have to be taken into custody and shot at sunrise. We have to know who and where he or she is. After that, he is no longer a danger. In fact, he becomes a positive help to us, particularly if the agent doesn’t know he is known, for then we can see to it that he gets false information. He becomes our conduit and not theirs.

  But it’s not easy; or, at least, not always easy. There was one foreign agent who flickered always just beyond our focus of vision. Some of us called him Out-of-Focus.

  And yet, little by little, we narrowed the search until we were convinced his center of operations was in a particular run-down building. We had his office located, in other words.

  With infinite caution, we tried to track him down further without startling him into a change of base, which would mean having to redo all the weary work. We found threads of his existence at the local food stores, for instance, at the newsstands, at the post office, but we could never get a clear description or positive evidence that he was our man.

  He remained Out-of-Focus.

  We located the name he was using. It was William Smith and that gave us an idea.

  Suppose a lawyer were looking for a William Smith who was a legatee for a sizable sum of money. In that case, neighbors would be delighted to help. If someone you know is likely to get a windfall, you want to help if only because that might induce gratitude and bring about the possibility of a loan. Smith himself might instinctively stand still for one moment if the possibility of money dangled before him, and even though he would know he was not the legatee, he might not question the search.

  A real lawyer, amply briefed by ourselves, moved in to face William Smith—and he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been seen for days and no one had any information. Only the superintendent of the small building seemed curious. After all, there was the question of the next month’s rent, one might suppose.

  The disappearance, though frustrating—he always seemed one step ahead of us—at least gave us a chance to institute a legitimate police search. Nothing dramatic: just a missing person’s case. A local detective, rather bored, asked to see the apartment. The super let him in.

  Two rooms, a kitchenette, a toilet. That was it. And it told us nothing useful about the occupant, except that he might have been a writer—and the super told us that much.

  The days passed and no trace of William Smith could be picked up. He was no longer merely Out-of-Focus, he was clean gone, and we all had the rotten feeling he would be forever gone, like Judge Crater, and that he would be more dangerous than ever until we managed to get on the track again.

  Then the boss did what he should have done in the first place. He sent me to look about the apartment.

  I was always good at presenting a rather bumbling appearance, even in my younger days. A useful thing, too, because it sets people off their guard. I was sure the super would talk the more freely for feeling sorry for me when I looked about the apartment helplessly.

  He made no move to leave after he let me in, and of course I did not ask him to leave. He said, “Still looking for him, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’ve got to fill out a report.”

  “His family must be plenty worried. You know he got a legacy or something, and I guess they want the money even if they don’t want him.”

  I said, “I suppose,” and kept on looking around.

  One room was a library, not a big one, either the room or the library. The books were mostly reference and science books, so I suppose Smith could be considered a science writer—he had to have some cover. They weren’t brand-new; some of them looked used. There was also one upholstered couch, one wooden rocking chair, and one end table in the room. That was all except for the bookcases.

  The other room also had several bookcases, including one that contained an Encyclopaedia Britannica. It had a large desk, an upholstered armchair, several filing cabinets, an electric typewriter on a typewriting stand with a small swivel chair in front of it, a globe, and the minor paraphernalia of the writer’s trade, such as reams of paper; also pens, paper clips, carbon paper, paperweights, envelopes, stamps and so on.

  He was a very neat fellow. Everything was in the bookcases or in the filing cabinets or in the desk drawers or on top of the desk. Except for the items of furniture I’ve mentioned, there was nothing on the floor. Nor were there photographs of any kind and the walls were bare of anything framed.

  There had been no useful fingerprints.

  I said to the super, “You didn’t take anything out, did you?” After all, he had a key.

  “Who, me? With the police around? You crazy?”

  I said, “You sure you can’t describe the guy?”

  “You guys asked me a million times. I tried, but he ain’t much to look at. You know—just like a million other people.”

  I grunted. A successful agent has to look like a million other people or he’s useless. They had taken the super to the local police station and had him look at endless pictures to locate someone who looked like William Smith and he ended by picking six pictures, and not one of the six looked anything like the other five. Smith remained Out-of-Focus.

  There were two closets in the workroom. Clothes, of course. Nothing unusual.

  I wandered into the bathroom. The usual toiletries, more or less used.

  In the kitchenette, a sparse collection of comestibles in jars and cans. Some cutlery and pans and a can opener. None of it looked very used.

  The super shrugged and said, “I suppose he ate out mostly. That’s what I told the other guys.”

  “But you don’t know where?”

  He shrugged again, “I mind my own business. In this neighborhood, you got to.”

  “The guys at the station say you claim you talked to him sometimes.”

  “Well, you know, like when I come to collect the rent, or fix the shower when it leaks. Like that.”

  “What kind of stuff does he write?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing I read, I can tell you that.” He sniggered.

  I said, “I don’t see any books around with his name on them.”

  He said, “He said once he wrote for the magazines a lot. Maybe he don’t write books. I don’t think he used his own name, either. I think he said that once.”

  “What magazines did he write for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What name did he use?”

  “I don’t know that either. He never told me and I didn’t ask. No business of mine.”

  “His typing ever bother the neighbors?”

  “Nobody ain’t never complained. Listen, in this house you could beat up on your old lady at three in the morning and set her to screaming like a banshee, and no one would complain.”

  “Did you ever hear the typing?”

  “You mean in my apartment? Nah. I’m two floors down.”

  “I mean, in the hall?”

  “Sure. Once in a while. Very light. An old building like this got good walls.”

  “Ever see him type?”

  “Sure. I’d come to fix something and I’d hear the typewriter going, tap, tap. Like I said, lightly. He’d let me in and then he’d sit down again, and go back to typing. Probably didn’t make much money out of it or he wouldn’t live here.” He sniggered again.

  I grunted and left. There were three other neighbors on the floor. None could describe the missing man; all insisted they knew nothing about him. One thought she could hear the typing sometimes, but she never paid any attention. “We keep ourselves to ourselves, mister,” she said.

  They surely did. There was no use pursuing the case any further.

  For one thing, we didn’t have to. Smith was now clearly in focus. Without his knowing it, we knew where he was and who he was and from that point on Smith was useless to the opposition and very useful to us—until such time as the opposition realized his cover had been broken. At that time we took him neatly into custody before they could arrange a fatal accident for him.

  But if you don’t mind, I’ll go freshen my drink.

  Griswold made as though to rise, but Jennings pulled his own chair in front of Griswold’s and said, “You’ll simply have to die of thirst unless you tell us first where and who he was.”

  Griswold drew his white eyebrows together in an annoyed frown. “You mean it isn’t obvious?—There was no William Smith. He was a decoy designed to deflect the Department’s attention if they ever got too close, and it almost worked. Thanks to one forgotten detail, however, it was clear to me that no one ever used that apartment for writing of any kind, and since the super claimed he had actually seen Smith typing, the conclusion was that it was the super himself who was maintaining the deception and that he was our man. That’s all. Simplicity itself.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Baranov. “How could you tell the apartment was never used for writing?”

  “It lacked the essential. You can write without a library and without reference books. You can write without a desk. You can write without a typewriter. You don’t even have to have ordinary paper. You can write on the back of envelopes or on shopping bags or in the margins of newspapers.

  “But, gentlemen, any writer will tell you that there is one object that no writer can possibly do without, and that object was not in the apartment. I told you everything that was in the apartment and I didn’t mention that object.”

  “But what was it?” I demanded.

  Griswold’s white mustache bristled. “A wastepaper basket! How can a professional writer do without that?”

  17

  Hide and Seek

  A sizable number of my Union Club mysteries are spy stories. Griswold himself has been involved with some unnamed Department, and it may sound to some not-very-experienced readers as though I must have some inside knowledge of the world of secret agents.

  Not so at all. I know nothing about it. I am totally ignorant. I make it all up. I keep waiting for people to write to me and tell me that I’ve got it all wrong and I will then apologize and say that I’m just writing puzzle stories. So far, though, I haven’t been beaten over the head in the matter.

  And I like this story because, in my imagination, it describes exactly how staunchly upright, Sunday-school-and-apple-pie agents might act.

  “I see,” said Baranov, peering slyly in the direction of Griswold, “where two agents have been convicted of searching a place without a warrant.”

  He paused and neither Jennings nor I said anything. Griswold was at right angles to us, facing the fireplace in which a log smoldered, for it was a rather chilly fall evening. For a wonder, he wasn’t asleep, for his scotch and soda moved slowly to his lips and then away again. But he said nothing.

  Baranov tried again. “This sort of thing makes it hard for law-enforcement agencies to do their work; especially if they must work in secrecy and in the interest of national security.”

  Another pause. Jennings said in a slightly higher voice, “On the other hand, you can’t let law-enforcement agents break the law they are sworn to defend. That puts the liberties of the people in direct jeopardy.”

  At that point, Griswold swiveled his chair, faced the three of us with his eyebrows hunched over his china-blue eyes and his white mustache twitching. He said, “You’re trying to get a reaction out of me and you’re wasting your time. It is not so much a question of law as of prudence. They could have done what they did with impunity, if they had been given a direct mandate by those who were entitled to judge when something was a matter of national security. They did not obtain the proper authority, and not merely a search warrant.—Let me tell you. What can hold back an organization far more than just legal constraints is its own set of mind—which can be foolish. For instance—”