Long nodded. “All this was considered and by the time the ship was back in New York, security agents had begun the process of checking the background of all six. You see, in cases like this, suspicion is all you need. The only way any secret agent can remain undetected is for him or her to remain unsuspected. Once the eye of counterintelligence is upon him, he must inevitably be unmasked. No cover can survive an investigation in depth.”

  Drake said, “Then which one did it prove to be?”

  Long sighed. “That’s where the trouble arose. None of them. All were clean. There was no way, I understand, of showing any of them to be anything other than what they seemed.”

  Rubin said, “Why do you say you ‘understand.’ Aren’t you part of the investigation?”

  “At the wrong end. The cleaner those six are, the dirtier I appear to be. I told the investigators—I had to tell them—that those six are the only ones who could possibly have done it, and if none of them did, they must suspect me of making up a story to hide something worse.”

  Trumbull said, “Oh, hell, Waldemar. They can’t think that. What would you have to gain by reporting the incident if you were responsible?”

  “That’s what they don’t know,” said Long. “But the information did leak and if they can’t pin it on any of the six, then they’re going to pin it on me. And the more my motives puzzle them, the more they think those motives must be very disturbing indeed. So I’m in trouble.”

  Rubin said, “Are you sure those six are indeed the only possibilities. Are you sure you really didn’t mention it to anyone else?”

  “Quite sure,” said Long dryly.

  “You might not remember having done so,” said Rubin. “It could have been something very casual. Can you be sure you didn’t?”

  “I can be sure I didn’t. The radiophone call came not long before dinner. There just wasn’t time to tell anyone before dinner. And once I got away from the table, I was back in the cabin before I as much as said anything to anybody. Anything at all.”

  “Who heard you on the phone? Maybe there were eavesdroppers.”

  “There were ship’s officers standing around, certainly. However, my boss expressed himself Aesopically. I knew what he meant, but no one else would have.”

  “Did you express yourself Aesopically?” asked Halsted.

  “I’ll tell you exactly what I said. ‘Hello, Dave.’ Then I said, ‘God damn it to hell.’ Then I hung up. I said those seven words. No more.”

  Gonzalo brought his hands together in a sudden, enthusiastic clap. “Listen, I’ve been thinking. Why does the job have to be so planned? It could be spontaneous. After all, everybody knows there’s this cruise and people connected with NASA are going to talk and there might be something interesting on. Someone—it could have been anyone—kept searching various rooms during the dinner hour each day and finally came across your paper—”

  “No,” said Long sharply. “It passes the bounds of plausibility to suppose that someone would, just by chance, find my paper just in the hour or two after I had announced that a classified lecture was sitting on my desk. Besides, there was nothing in the paper that would have given any indication of importance to the nonexpert. It was only my own remark that would have told anyone it was there and that it was important.”

  Avalon said thoughtfully, “Suppose one of the people at the table passed on the information, in perfect innocence. In the interval they were away from the table, they might have said to someone, ‘Did you hear about poor Dr. Long? His paper was shot out from under him?’ Then that someone, anyone, could have done the job.”

  Long shook his head. “I wish that could be so, but it can’t. That would only happen if the particular individual at my table were innocent. If the Smiths were innocent when they left the table, the only thing on their minds would be the hot chocolate. They wouldn’t stop to chat. The Doctor would be thinking only of getting the ointment. By the time Jones left the table, assuming he was innocent, he would have forgotten about the matter. If anything, he would talk about the hot chocolate, too.”

  Rubin said suddenly, voice rising, “All right. What about Miss Robinson? She left before the hot-chocolate incident. The only interesting thing in her mind would have been your dilemma. She might have said something.”

  “Might she?” said Long. “If she is innocent, then she was really doing what she said she was doing, going to the bathroom in her cabin. If she had to desert the dinner table to do so, there would have had to be urgency; and no one under those conditions stops for idle gossip.”

  There was silence all around the table.

  Long said, “I’m sure investigation will continue and eventually the truth will come out and it will be clear that I’m guilty of no more than an unlucky indiscretion. By then, though, my career will be down the drain.”

  “Dr. Long?” said a soft voice. “May I ask a question?” Long looked up, surprised. “A question?”

  “I’m Henry, sir. The gentlemen of the Black Widowers organization occasionally allow me to participate—”

  “Hell, yes, Henry,” said Trumbull. “Do you see something the rest of us don’t?”

  “I’m not certain,” said Henry. “I see quite plainly that Dr. Long believes only the six others at the table might possibly be involved, and those investigating the matter apparently agree with him—”

  “There’s no way not to,” said Long.

  “Well, then,” said Henry. “I am wondering if Dr. Long mentioned his views on curry to the investigators.” Long said, “You mean that I didn’t like curry?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “Did that come up?”

  Long spread his hands and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think it did. Why should it? It’s irrelevant. It’s just an additional excuse for my talking like a jackass. I tell it to you here in order to collect sympathy, I suppose, but it would carry no weight with the investigators.”

  Henry remained silent for a moment, and Trumbull said, “Does the curry have meaning to you, Henry?”

  “I think perhaps it does,” said Henry. “I think we are in rather the position Mr. Halsted described earlier in the evening in connection with limericks. Some limericks to be effective must be seen; sound is not enough. And some scenes to be effective must be seen.”

  “I don’t get that,” said Long.

  “Well, Dr. Long,” said Henry. “You sat there in the ship’s restaurant at a table with six other people and therefore only those six other people heard you. But if we could see the scene instead of having you describe it to us, would we see something clearly that you have omitted?”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” said Long doggedly.

  “Are you sure?” asked Henry. “You sit here with six other people at a table, too, just as you did on the ship. How many people hear your story?”

  “Six—” began Long.

  And then Gonzalo broke in, “Seven, counting you, Henry.”

  “And was there no one serving you at table, Dr. Long? You said the Doctor had asked you about the speech just as curried lamb was put before you and it was the smell of curry that annoyed you to the point where you burst out with your indiscretion. Surely, the curried lamb didn’t place itself before you of its own accord. The fact is that at the moment you made your statement, there were six people at the table before you, and a seventh standing just behind you and out of sight.”

  “The waiter,” said Long in a whisper.

  Henry said, “There’s a tendency never to notice a waiter unless he annoys you. An efficient waiter is invisible, and you mentioned the excellence of the service. Might it not have been the waiter who carefully engineered the spilling of the hot chocolate to create a diversion; or perhaps he who took advantage of the diversion, if it was an accident? With waiters many and diners few, it might not be too noticeable if he vanished for a while. Or he could claim to have gone to the men’s room if it were indeed noticed. He would know the location of the cabin as well as the Doctor did, and be as likely to have some sort of picklock.”

  Long said, “But he was an Indonesian. He couldn’t speak English.”

  “Are you sure? He’d had a three-month cram course, you said. And he might have known English better than he pretended. You would be willing to conceive that Mrs. Smith was not as sweet and thoughtful underneath as on the surface, and that Mrs. Jones’s vivacity was pretense, and the Doctor’s respectability and Smith’s liveliness and Jones’s devotion and Miss Robinson’s need to go to the bathroom. Might not the waiter’s ignorance of English also be pretense?”

  “By God,” said Long, looking at his watch. “If it weren’t so late, I’d call Washington now.”

  Trumbull said, “If you know some home phone numbers, do call now. It’s your career. Tell them the waiter ought to be investigated, and for heaven’s sake, don’t tell them you got the notion from someone else.”

  “You mean, tell them I just thought of it? They’ll ask why I didn’t think of that before.”

  “Ask them why they didn’t. Why didn’t they think a waiter goes with a table?”

  Henry said softly, “No reason for anyone to think of it. Only very few are as interested in waiters as I am.”

  4

  Yankee Doodle Went to Town

  This story was written in Rochester. I was giving a talk there the following night, but on this particular night I was at a loss. Janet was sleeping in the other room, and I was not sleepy. I desperately wanted to write a story, but I had not brought my typewriter.

  Finally, the yearning grew to the point where I collected the stationery in the drawer and began to write in pen and ink. I didn’t think I could endure it long, but I grew interested and continued to scribble and scribble till I was finished. (I was fascinated by the fact that writing a story without a typewriter was a noiseless exercise.)

  At home, I typed the handwritten story and found it as good as any other. Since then, I have written at least one story almost every time I have been forced to be somewhere for a period of at least two days without my typewriter. It makes such times bearable and “Yankee Doodle Went to Town,” as the first to be written in this manner, is a favorite of mine, in consequence.

  It was general knowledge among the Black Widowers that Geoffrey Avalon had served as an officer in World War II and had reached the rank of major. He had never seen active service, as far as any of them knew, however, and he never talked about wartime experiences. His stiff bearing, however, seemed suited to the interior of a uniform, so that it never surprised anyone to know that he had once been Major Avalon.

  When he walked into the banquet room with an army officer as his guest, it seemed, therefore, entirely natural. And when he said, “This is my old army friend Colonel Samuel Davenheim,” everyone greeted him cordially without so much as a raised eyebrow. Any army buddy of Avalon’s was an army buddy of theirs.

  Even Mario Gonzalo, who had served an uneventful hitch in the army in the late fifties, and who was known to have acerbic views concerning officers, was pleasant enough. He propped himself on one of the sideboards and began sketching. Avalon looked over Gonzalo’s shoulder briefly, as though to make sure the artist member of the Black Widowers would not, somehow, draw the Colonel’s head upward into a crown of ass’s ears.

  It would have been most inappropriate for Gonzalo to have done so, for there was every indication of clear intelligence about Davenheim. His face, round and a little plump, was emphasized by outmoded hair, short above and absent below. His mouth curved easily into a friendly smile, his voice was clear, his words crisp.

  He said, “I’ve had you all described to me, for Jeff, as you probably all know, is a methodical man. I ought to be able to identify you all. For instance, you’re Emmanuel Rubin since you’re short, have thick glasses, a sparse beard—”

  “Straggly beard,” said Rubin, unoffended, “is what Jeff usually calls it because his own is dense, but I’ve never found that density of facial hair implies—”

  “And are talkative,” said Davenheim firmly, overriding the other with the calm authority of a colonel. “And you’re a writer…You’re Mario Gonzalo, the artist, and I don’t even need your description since you’re drawing…Roger Halsted, mathematician, partly bald. The only member without a full head of hair, so that’s easy…James Drake, or, rather, Dr. James Drake—”

  “We’re all doctors by virtue of being Black Widowers,” said Drake from behind a curl of cigarette smoke.

  “You’re right, and Jeff explained that carefully. You’re Doctor Doctor Drake because you smell of tobacco smoke at ten feet.”

  “Well, Jeff should know,” said Drake philosophically.

  “And Thomas Trumbull,” said Davenheim, “because you’re scowling, and by elimination…Have I got everyone?”

  “Only the members,” said Halsted. “You’ve left out Henry, who’s all-important.”

  Davenheim looked about, puzzled. “Henry?”

  “The waiter,” said Avalon, flushing and staring at his drink. “I’m sorry, Henry, but I didn’t know what to tell Colonel Davenheim about you. To say you’re the waiter is ridiculously insufficient and to say more would endanger Black Widower confidentiality.”

  “I understand,” said Henry agreeably, “but I think it would be well to serve the Colonel. What is your pleasure, sir?”

  For a moment the Colonel looked blank. “Oh, you mean drinks? No, that’s all right. I don’t drink.”

  “Some ginger ale, perhaps?”

  “All right.” Davenheim was plainly grasping at straws. “That will be fine.”

  Trumbull smiled. “The life of a non-drinker is a difficult one.”

  “Something wet must be pressed on one,” said Davenheim wryly. “I’ve never managed to adjust.”

  Gonzalo said, “Have a cherry put in your ginger ale. Or better yet, put water in a cocktail glass and add an olive. Then drink and replace the water periodically. Everyone will admire you as a man who can hold his liquor. Though, frankly, I’ve never seen an officer who could—”

  “I think we’ll be eating any minute,” said Avalon hastily, looking at his watch.

  Henry said, “Won’t you be seated, gentlemen?” and placed one of the bread baskets directly in front of Gonzalo as though to suggest he use his mouth for that purpose.

  Gonzalo took a roll, broke it, buttered one half, bit into it, and said in muffled tones, “—keep from getting sloppy drunk on one martini,” but no one listened.

  Rubin, finding himself between Avalon and Davenheim, said, “What kind of soldier was Jeff, Colonel?”

  “Damned good one,” said Davenheim gravely, “but he didn’t get much of a chance to shine. We were both in the legal end of matters, which meant desk work. The difference is that he had the sense to get out once the war was over. I didn’t.”

  “You mean you’re still involved with military law?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I look forward to the day when military law is as obsolete as feudal law.”

  “I do, too,” said Davenheim calmly. “But it isn’t as yet.”

  “No,” said Rubin, “and if you—”

  Trumbull interrupted. “Damn it, Manny, can’t you wait for grilling time?”

  “Yes,” said Avalon, coughing semi-stentorially, “we might as well let Sam eat before putting him through his paces.”

  “If,” said Rubin, “military law applied the same considerations to those—”

  “Later!” roared Trumbull.

  Rubin looked through his thick-lensed glasses indignantly, but subsided.

  Halsted said, in what was clearly intended to be a change of topic, “I’m not happy with my limerick for the fifth book of the Iliad.”

  “The what?” said Davenheim, puzzled.

  “Pay no attention,” said Trumbull. “Roger keeps threatening to put together five lines of crap for every book of the Iliad.”

  “And the Odyssey,” said Halsted. “The trouble with the fifth book is that it deals chiefly with the feats of the Greek hero Diomedes, and I feel I ought to have him part of the rhyme scheme. I’ve been at it, off and on, for months.”

  “Is that why you’ve spared us limericks the last couple of sessions?” asked Trumbull.

  “I’ve had one and I’ve been ready to read it, but I’m not quite satisfied with it.”

  “Then you’ve joined the great majority,” said Trumbull.

  “The thing is,” said Halsted quietly, “that both ‘Diomedes’ and its legitimate variant ‘Diomed’ cannot be rhymed seriously. ‘Diomedes’ rhymes with ‘Wheaties’ and ‘Diomed’ rhymes with ‘shy-a-bed’ and what good are those?”

  “Call him Tydeides,” said Avalon. “Homer frequently used the patronymic.”

  “What’s a patronymic?” asked Gonzalo.

  “A father-name, which is the literal translation of the word,” said Halsted. “Diomedes’ father was Tydeus. Don’t you think I’ve thought of that? It rhymes with ‘didies’ or, if you want to go Cockney, with ‘lydies.’”

  “How about ‘ascites’?” asked Rubin. “Or ‘iron pyrites’?” said Drake.

  “Wit seeks its own level,” said Halsted. “How about this? All I need do is distort the stress and give ‘Diomed’ accents on first and last syllables.”

  “Cheating,” said Rubin.

  “A little,” admitted Halsted, “but here it is:

  “In courage and skill well ahead,

  Into battle went brave Diomed.

  Even gods were his quarries,

  And the war-loving Ares

  He struck down and left nearly for dead.”

  Avalon shook his head. “Ares was only wounded. He had enough strength left to rise, roaring, to Olympus.”