The Return of the Black Widowers (28 page)

"I was twenty-four now, and far from the innocent child I had been ten years before. I had a vast miscellany of information at my fingertips, thanks to my reading, and when the time came for me to make my choice, I did not have to walk into the library. I named the book I wanted and explained exactly where it would be on the shelves, for I had read it, of course, though I had never dreamed it was valuable.

"The lawyer himself went in and got it for me, and it was the right book. As a book dealer, I now know why it was valuable, but never mind that. The point is that I had the lawyer—a good man—arrange to have it appraised, and then to have it sold at a public auction. It brought in seventy thousand dollars, a true fortune in those days. If it were offered for sale now it would bring in a quarter of a million, but I needed the money
then.

"The family was furious, of course, but there was nothing they could do. They brought suit, but the fact they had not let me enter the library and study the books lost them a great deal of sympathy. In any case, after the legal hassle was over, I bought a bookstore, made it pay through the Depression, when books were one form of relatively cheap amusement, and built things up to where they now are.—So am I a self-made man?"

Rubin said, "In my opinion, this doesn't come under the heading of luck. You had to pick one book out of ten thousand on the basis of a small and obscure hint, and you did. That's ingenuity, and, therefore, you earned the money. Just out of curiosity, what was the book?"

"Hey," said Gonzalo angrily.

Manfred said, "Mr. Gonzalo asked me not to give you the solution. He said you might want to work on it yourselves."

The smoke from Drakes cigarette curled up toward the ceiling. He said, in his softly hoarse voice, "One out of ten thousand on the basis of ‘triple devil. ‘We never saw the library and you did. You knew what books were present and we don't. It's scarcely a fair test."

"I admit that," said Manfred, "so I'll tell you if you wish."

"No," said Gonzalo. "We've got to have a chance. The book must have had 'devil' in the title. It might have been 'The Devil and Daniel Webster,' for instance."

"That's a short story by Stephen Vincent Benet," said Manfred, "and wasn't published till 1937."

Halsted said, "The usual image of the devil, with horns, hooves and a tail, is drawn, actually, from the Greek nature god, Pan. Was it a book about Pan, or with the word 'Pan' in the title?"

"Actually," said Manfred, "I can't think of one."

Avalon said, "The witch goddess, Hecate, is often thought of as triple—maid, matron, and crone—because she was a Moon goddess, too, and those were the phases—first quarter, full, and last quarter. As a witch goddess, she might be looked at as a triple devil.
Memoirs of Hecate County
was published too late to be the solution, but is there something earlier with Hecate in the title?"

"Not that I know of," said Manfred. There was a silence about the table, and Rubin said, "We just don't have enough information. I think the story was interesting in itself, and that Mr. Manfred can now tell us the solution."

Gonzalo said, "Henry hasn't had his chance. Henry—have you any idea what the book might be?"

Henry smiled. "I have a small notion."

Manfred smiled, too. "I don't think you will be correct."

Henry said, "Perhaps not. In any case, people are often afraid to mention the devil by name, lest they call him up in the process, so they use numerous nicknames or euphemisms for him. Very
frequently, they use the diminutive of some common masculine name as a kind of friendly gesture that might serve to placate him. 'Old Nick' springs to mind."

Manfred half rose from his seat, but Henry paid no attention.

"Once one thinks of that, it is simple to go on to think of
Nicholas Nickleby
which, so to speak, is old Nick twice, and is therefore 'double devil.' "

"But we want 'triple devil,' Henry," said Gonzalo.

"The diminutive of Richard gives us 'dickens,' a very well known euphemism for 'devil,' as in 'What the dickens?' and the author of
Nicholas Nickleby
is, of course, Charles Dickens, and there is the 'triple devil.' Am I right, Mr. Manfred?"

Manfred said, "You're completely right, Henry. I'm afraid I wasn't as ingenious as I've thought these past fifty-five years. You did it in far less time than I did, and without even seeing the library."

Henry said, "No, Mr. Manfred. I deserve far less credit than you. You see, you gave the solution away in your account of events."

"When?" said Manfred, frowning. "I was careful not to say anything at all that would give you a hint."

"Exactly, sir. You mentioned so many authors and never once mentioned the outstanding English novelist of the nineteenth century, or probably any other century, or even, perhaps, any other language. Your failure to mention him made me think at once there was particular significance to the name Charles Dickens, and 'triple devil' then had no mystery to me."

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called you here today to see if we could agree among ourselves on a sequence of five numbers." Paul Haskill, the local history teacher, got to his feet, his chair scraping against the bare floorboards of The Merry Tinker tavern. "But before formally presenting our guest, I think I should explain to him that the sole purpose of our little group is to emulate as far as possible an assemblage of men who exist only in the imagination and writings of Dr. Isaac Asimov."

Edgar Varsey, who'd come to Holcomb Mills to write a story for his newspaper,
The Times-Herald,
looked up quizzically at Haskill. His pencil was poised over the notebook in which he had been jotting impressions of the tavern and its occupants.

"Who?" the reporter asked.

"Asimo.v. That scientist fella who does all the writing." The voice of Jasper Zimmerman, a linesman for the Holcomb Mills Telephone Company, reminded Varsey of the chattering of a squirrel. There was nothing squirrel-like, however, about the other two men at the table. Gabriel Doone, the blacksmith, was huge, with muscles that bunched and rippled under his sweat-stained work shirt. And portly Sidney Warwick was the image of small-town respectability as befitted his position as president of the Holcomb Mills National Bank.

"A lot of Asimov's material is about science," said Haskill. "Several of his books are standard references over at our school."

"He's written about history too," Zimmerman put in.

181
"And mathematics." Numbers, especially as they related to money, were never far from the thoughts of banker Warwick.

"He writes good stories," rumbled Doone. "With rockets and robots and all kinds of exciting things. Better'n television."

Poetry, mythology, the Bible . . . the men tossed subjects at the astounded Varsey like verbal baseballs being peppered about a conversational infield until the reporter shook his head in dismay. "You mean one man has turned out all that?"

Haskill nodded. "Asimov's output is incredible."

"Not so." Zimmerman grinned. "All anyone would need is the ability to use both hands and both feet to keep four typewriters goin' at the same time."

"The Black Widowers, however, are of special interest to us." Haskill indicated Doone, Warwick, Zimmerman, and himself.

"The Black . . . what?" asked Varsey.

"In addition to his other works," Haskill explained, "Dr. Asimov has written a series of detective short stories. They concern a club called the Black Widowers—a group of men, most of whom have out-of-the-ordinary occupations, who meet monthly. At each meeting an invited guest is asked to pose a problem. The Black Widowers then attempt to solve it through a discussion which is carried on while postprandial drinks are served."

He turned toward the bar at the far end of the room. "And speaking of drinks, the sun's over the yardarm, and I could use one now. Anyone else?"

There was a chorus of assent from around the table.

"Findlay!" Haskill shouted. "A round for us here. Bourbon is traditional, Mr. Varsey. Okay with you?"

The reporter nodded. "Tell me more about the Black Widowers and you four," he said.

"It's five, including Findlay," said Haskill. "At any rate, while talking here one day we found we all shared an interest in the Black Widower stories. So we decided to meet from time to time, to solve problems just as they do."

"And how many problems have you solved?" asked Varsey.

The table was enveloped in sudden silence. Finally Doone cleared his throat. "You're the first, Mr. Varsey."

"Not that much happens in a small village like Holcomb Mills," added Warwick.

"We daydream a lot," Zimmerman mumbled.

The drinks arrived, carried by an astonishingly agile old man dressed in black, who put Varsey in mind of a cricket. "This is Findlay," said Warwick, "the proprietor of The Merry Tinker, and a charter member of our little group. He seldom offers an opinion, but when he does, he makes incredibly good sense."

"Verra fine o' ye tae say that, Mr. Warwick," said the elfin Findlay in accents reminiscent of plaid kilts, bagpipes, and heather. He passed out the drinks with spasmodic jerks of his hands, then returned to his place behind the bar.

Paul Haskill sipped from his glass and then rubbed his hands together expectantly. "Now then, Mr. Varsey. The problem. Pose it for us, if you please."

Varsey pocketed his notebook and got to his feet. "I guess you already know most of the background material," he began.

"Go over it anyway," urged Zimmerman. "From the beginning. If we're going to be like the Black Widowers, we've got to do things right."

Varsey shrugged good-naturedly. "Okay, here goes. Just up the street here in Holcomb Mills one of the biggest revolutions in retail selling in the country is now going on. The Value Today department store. That's the story I want to get for my newspaper."

"If Value Today gets any bigger," grumbled Doone, "there won't be a parking space in town during business hours."

"Davey Lotus—formerly David Lotocetto—owns the store," the reporter went on. "He was born and brought up right here in Holcomb Mills. As a kid he raised more hell than most, and everybody predicted he'd come to a bad end. But then, at the age of twenty-two, he got into a high-stake poker game."

"I remember it well," sighed Warwick. "He walked away with nearly three thousand dollars—a good part of it my money."
"Yes, but much to the surprise of the townspeople Lotus didn't fritter away his winnings. Instead, he rented an old building that had once been the Grange Hall. Within a month he'd painted
value today
across the front of it, installed a couple of display windows, and stocked it with merchandise, most of it obtained on credit. He sold items usually not found in a small town—the latest fashions, quality sporting goods, exotic perfumes, and such. Essentially, Lotus had created a huge department store, much too large for a village this size.

"People laughed at him, expecting him to go bankrupt within a year. But Lotus had the last laugh. Soon customers were coming from all over the county, then the state, because of a sales gimmick he'd developed."

"He let folks dicker with the clerks over prices," chirped Zimmerman. "It was fun. And for a while we figured we was puttin' one over on ol' Davey. But he was too smart for that."

"Yes, he was," agreed Varsey. "Every item in the store had its price clearly marked. But after the price came a series of letters—for example, $7.00, VUY. Most people just thought it was a shipping code or something. Then, after several months, a clerk let the cat out of the bag what those letters meant. But by that time Lotus was well on his way to becoming a millionaire."

"The letters was really numbers," said Doone.

"Exactly. Davey Lotus used the letters of his own name and assigned to each of them a number. D was 1, A was 2, V was 3, and so on, right up to the final letter S, which was zero. $7.00— VUY meant that the article cost Lotus $3.95, and between $3.95 and $7.00 the clerk was entitled to do a little bargaining. Lotus never claimed the idea was original, but he turned it into a bundle of money.

"Eventually, of course, people caught on. The resulting national publicity didn't do Value Today any harm either, and by then Lotus was into his next selling gimmick—a rare gold coin placed in plain sight somewhere inside the store. For weeks people hunted, until at last it was found—glued to a display bottle of perfume,
where it looked like part of the fancy label. Meanwhile, with all those people coming into the store, the cash registers were ringing merrily.