The Union Club Mysteries (16 page)
Read The Union Club Mysteries Online
Authors: Isaac Asimov
I looked about at the other three at the Union Club library (Griswold had smoothed his white mustache, taken up his scotch and soda and settled back in his tall armchair) and said rather triumphantly, "I've got a word processor now and, by golly, I can use it."
Jennings said, "One of those typewriter keyboards with a television screen attached?"
"That's right," I said. "You type your material onto a screen, edit it there—adding, subtracting, changing—then print it up, letter-perfect, at the rate of 400-plus words per minute."
"No question," said Baranov, "that if the computer revolution can penetrate your stick-in-the-mud way of life, it is well on the way to changing the whole world."
"And irrevocably," I said. "The odd part of it, too, is that there's no one man to whom we can assign the blame. We know all about James Watt and the steam engine, or Michael Faraday and the electric generator, or the Wright Brothers and the airplane, but to whom do we attribute this new advance?"
"There's William Shockley and the transistor," said Jennings.
"Or Vannevar Bush and the beginnings of electronic computers," I said, "but that's not satisfactory. It's the microchip that's putting the computer onto the assembly line and into the home, and who made that possible?"
It was only then that I was aware that for once Griswold had not closed his eyes but was staring at us, as clearly wide awake as if he were a human being. "I, for one," he said.
"You, for one, what?" I demanded.
"I, for one, am responsible for the microchip," he said haughtily.
It was back in the early 1960's [said Griswold] when I received a rather distraught phone call from the wife of an old friend of mine, who, the morning's obituaries told me, had died the day before.
Oswald Simpson was his name. We had been college classmates and had been rather close. He was extraordinarily bright, was a mathematician, and after he graduated went on to work with Norbert Wiener at M.I.T. He entered computer technology at its beginnings.
I never quite lost touch with him, even though, as I need not tell you, my interests and his did not coincide at all. However, there is a kinship in basic intelligence, however differently it might express itself from individual to individual. This I
do
have to tell you three, as otherwise you would have no way of telling.
Simpson had suffered from rheumatic fever as a child and his heart was damaged. It was a shock, but no real surprise to me, therefore, when he died at the age of forty-three. His wife, how-ever, made it clear that there was something more to his death than mere mortality and I therefore drove upstate to the Simpson home at once. It only took two hours.
Olive Simpson was rather distraught, and there is no use in trying to tell you the story in her words. It took her awhile to tell it in a sensible way, especially since, as you can well imagine, there were numerous distractions in the way of medical men, funeral directors and even reporters, for Simpson, in a limited way, had been well-known. Let me summarize, then:
Simpson was not a frank and outgoing person, I recall, even in college. He had a tendency to be secretive about his work, and suspicious of his colleagues. He has always felt people were planning to steal his ideas. That he trusted me and was relaxed with me I attribute entirely to my nonmathematical bent of mind. He was quite convinced that my basic ignorance of what he was doing made it impossible for me to know what notions of his to steal or what to do with them after I had stolen them. He was probably right, though he might have made allowance for my utter probity of character as well.
This tendency of his grew more pronounced as the years passed, and actually stood in the way of his advancement. He had a tendency to quarrel with those about him and to make himself generally detestable in his insistence on maintaining secrecy over everything he was doing. There were even complaints that he was slowing company advances by preventing a free flow of ideas.
This, apparently, did not impress Simpson, who also developed a steadily intensifying impression that the company was cheating him. Like all companies, they wished to maintain ownership of any discoveries made by their employees, and one can see their point. The work done would not be possible without previous work done by other members of the company and was the product of the instruments, the ambience, the thought processes of the company generally.
Nevertheless, however much this might be true, there were occasionally advances made by particular persons which netted the company hundreds of millions of dollars and the discoverer, mere thousands. It would be a rare person who would not feel ill-used as a result, and Simpson felt more ill-used than anybody.
His wife's description of Simpson's state of mind in the last few years made it clear that he was rather over the line into a definite paranoia. There was no reasoning with him. He was convinced he was being persecuted by the company, that all its success could be attributed to his own work, but that it was intent on robbing him of all credit and financial reward. He was obsessed with that feeling.
Nor was he entirely wrong in supposing his own work to be essential to the company. The company recognized this or they would not have held on so firmly to someone who grew more impossibly difficult with each year.
The crisis came when Simpson discovered something he felt to be fundamentally revolutionary. It was something that he was certain would put his company into the absolute forefront of the international computer industry. It was also something which, he felt, was not likely to occur to anyone else for years, possibly for decades, yet it was so simple that the essence of it could be written down on a small piece of paper. I don't pretend to understand what it was, but I am certain now it was a forerunner of microchip technology.
It occurred to Simpson to hold out the information until the company agreed to compensate him amply, with a sum many times greater than was customary, and with other benefits as well. In this, one can see his motivation. He knew he was likely to die at any time and he wanted to leave his wife and two children well provided for. He kept a record of the secret at home, so that his wife would have something to sell to the company in case he did die before the matter was settled, but it was rather typical of him that he did not tell her where it was. His mania for secrecy passed all bounds.
Then one morning, as he was getting ready to get to work, he said to her in an excited way, "Where's my library book?"
She said, "What library book?"
He said,
"Exploring the Cosmos.
I had it right here."
She said, "Oh. It was overdue. I returned a whole bunch of them to the library yesterday."
He turned so white she thought he was going to collapse then and there. He screamed, "How dare you do that? It was
my
library book. I'll return it when I please. Don't you realize that the company is quite capable of burglarizing the home and searching the whole place? But they wouldn't think of touching a library book. It wouldn't be mine."
He managed to make it clear, without actually saying so, that he had hidden his precious secret in the library book, and Mrs. Simpson, frightened to death at the way he was gasping for breath, said distractedly, "I'll go right off to the library, dear, and get it back. I'll have it here in a minute. Please quiet down. Everything will be all right."
She repeated over and over again that she ought to have stayed with him and seen to it that he was calmed, but that would have been impossible. She might have called a doctor, but that would have done no good even if he had come in time. He was convinced that someone in the library, someone taking out the book, would find his all-important secret and make the millions that should go to his family.
Mrs. Simpson dashed to the library, had no trouble in taking out the book once again and hurried back. It was too late. He had had a heart attack—it was his second, actually—and he was dying. He died, in fact, in his wife's arms, though he did recognize that she had the book again, which may have been a final consolation. His last words were a struggling "Inside—inside—" as he pointed to the book.—And then he was gone.
I did my best to console her, to assure her that what had happened had been beyond her power to control. More to distract her attention than anything else, I asked her if she had found anything in the book.
She looked up at me with eyes that swam in tears. "No," she said, "I didn't. I spent an hour—I thought it was one thing I could do for him—his last wish, you know—I spent an hour looking, but there's nothing in it."
"Are you sure?" I asked. "Do you know what it is you're looking for?"
She hesitated. "I
thought
it was a piece of paper with writing on it. Something he said made me think that. I don't mean that last morning, but before then. He said many times 'I've written it down.' But I don't know what the paper would look like, whether it was large or small, white or yellow, smooth or folded—
anything!
Anyway, I looked through the book. I turned each page carefully, and there was no paper of any kind between any of them. I shook the book hard and nothing fell out. Then I looked at all the page numbers to make sure there weren't two pages stuck together. There weren't. "Then I thought that it wasn't a paper, but that he had written something in the margin. That didn't seem to make sense, but I thought
maybe.
Or perhaps, he had written between the lines or underlined something in the book. I looked through all of every page. There were one or two stains that looked accidental, but nothing was actually written or underlined."
I said, "Are you sure you took out the same book you had returned, Mrs. Simpson? The library might have had two copies of it, or more."
She seemed startled. "I didn't think of that." She picked up the book and stared at it, then said, "No, it must be the same book. There's that little ink mark just under the title. There was the same ink mark on the book I returned. There couldn't be two like that."
"Are you
sure?"
I said. "About the ink mark, I mean."
"Yes," she said flatly. "I suppose the paper fell out in the library, or someone took it out and probably threw it away. It doesn't matter. I wouldn't have the heart to start a big fight with the company with Oswald dead. Though it would be nice not to have money troubles and to be able to send the children to college."
"Wouldn't there be a pension from the company?"
"Yes, the company's good that way, but it wouldn't be enough; not with inflation the way it is; and Oswald could never get any reasonable insurance with his history of heart trouble."
"Then let's get you that piece of paper, and we'll find you a lawyer, and we'll get you some money. How's that?"
She sniffed a little as though she were trying to laugh. "Well, that's kind of you," she said, "but I don't see how you're going to do it. You can't make the paper appear out of thin air, I suppose."
"Sure I can," I said, though I admit I was taking a chance in saying so. I opened the book (holding my breath) and it was there all right. I gave it to her and said, "Here you are!"
What followed was long drawn out and tedious, but the negotiations with the company ended well. Mrs. Simpson did not become a trillionaire, but she achieved economic security and both children are now college graduates. The company did well, too, for the microchip was on the way. Without me it wouldn't have gotten the start it did and so, as I told you at the beginning, the credit is mine.
And, to our annoyance, he closed his eyes.
I yelled sharply, "Hey!" and he opened one of them.
"Where did you find the slip of paper?" I said.
"Where Simpson said it was. His last words were 'Inside—inside—'"
"Inside the book. Of course," I said.
"He didn't say 'Inside the book,'" said Griswold. "He wasn't able to finish the phrase. He just said 'Inside—' and it was a library book."
"Well?"
"Well, a library book has one thing an ordinary book does not have. It has a little pocket in which a library card fits. Mrs. Simpson described all the things she did, but she never mentioned the pocket. Well, I remembered Simpson's last words and looked inside the pocket— and that's where it was!"
It was particularly cozy in the Union Club library that night. It always was, when it was raining hard outside. The wind whipped the rain and splattered it against the two-story-high windows, and that made the calm warmth inside seem calmer and warmer. Griswold's gentle and rhythmic snoring seemed all the counterpoint we needed.
I tried not to think of my wet raincoat in the cloakroom, and of the inevitable time when I would have to leave in order to try to locate a taxi. Sufficient unto the hour—
I stretched my legs out lazily and said, "Ever think about what a consistently bad press policemen get? Even in a society where they are clearly the stalwart wall between the law-abiding citizen and the criminal, they get hardly a kind word."
"Copper!" murmured Baranov. "Flatfoot! Cossack! Pig!"
"No, no," I said, annoyed. "Those are just names. Anyone will yell a name at anyone when annoyed. I'm talking about cold blood. Think of all the mystery writers who give all the brains and insights to dilettantes in private life—to the Sherlock Holmeses, the Hercule Poirots, the Peter Wimseys—and where are the police? Why, they're Scotland Yard bunglers, one and all."
Jennings made an impolite sound with his lips. "You're living in the past, old boy," he said. "It's quite common now to have brilliant policemen do the job. From Appleby to Leopold, we have public hirelings solving the most difficult and subtle crimes. In fact, the police procedural is now much more popular than the old-fashioned Philo Vance bit."
I had them where I wanted them now. I said, "Not if we listen to Griswold." (And I kept one eye cocked at the sleeping figure, sitting bolt upright in his winged armchair with his scotch and soda firmly in his hand.) "He always solves the crime, while the police are helpless. That old fraud expects us to believe in his systematic usurpation of police duties."
Griswold's ice-blue eyes opened at once, as I expected they would. "This old fraud expects only fools to believe that—a post for which you qualify. The police force does its job, always has. The only trouble is that police work is routine—laborious and unglamorous routine—ninety-nine percent of the time. It is only the very occasional problem that lends itself to a flash of brilliant insight that allows the gifted individual to come into his own. For instance—"
He sipped at his drink and trailed off.
"For instance—" I insisted.
The general armory of the police in its war against crime [said Griswold] is not brilliance. It is not the armchair genius, weaving a chain of inexorable logic, and producing the criminal in a kind of breathtaking legerdemain, because that won't work.
For one thing, that sort of thing would never stand up in court. It works in books, where the accused will confess once he's exposed, or kill himself, but that never happens in real life. The accused denies everything, and his lawyer casts doubt on everything, and if all you've got to present to a judge and jury is brilliance, the accused will get off.
The police have to gather evidence by going from possible witness to possible witness, and trying to get statements or identifications that they think will stand up under cross-examination. They have to track down guns or documents or pawn tickets, or, for that matter, bodies, by endless searches, by combing trash cans, or dragging ponds. It requires the concentrated and boring labor of dozens of people over weeks and months.
In fact, I'll tell you the single most important tool of police work—the informer.
You all know that our government cannot stop leaks, no matter what it does. Well, neither can the various criminal enterprises. There is always someone who will talk.
The motives? They are various. There are informers who seek revenge, who fancy themselves ill-used and are burning to get even. There are informers who could use a little extra money and who charge all the traffic will bear for the information they claim they have. There are informers who are chiefly interested in the blind eye: the privilege of continuing a life of mild crime—pickpocketing, purse snatching—knowing that the police will be tender about it, provided they are useful blabbers.
That's not glamorous either. Mystery writers who expect to use informers in their tales have to give up on brilliance and make do with violence. Usually, the informer is found dead in chapter four, and can only gasp out just enough to puzzle the detective.
Of course, sometimes—very rarely, when compared with the grand total of police work—everything fails. In that case, once in a while, they may come to me. And, occasionally, I can help with just that final piece of the puzzle, which they don't see because they are too worn out with their endless routine.
There was the case of the big diamond-smuggling flap that arose a few years ago. You may have read about it in the papers. If not, it doesn't matter; my part wasn't mentioned, you may be sure.
The police could not solve the method used to transport the diamonds. They searched desperately almost everything suspicious that came into the country, and never found a diamond.
They were small diamonds, individually not very lavish, well within the middle-class reach, but in the aggregate, thousands of carats were involved, and millions of dollars. And it was continuing in an open-ended fashion. Finally, one of the Treasury Department agents came to me. He was very nervous about it, because it was one of the times when I was particularly on the outs with the government. I had called someone a nasty name which he thoroughly deserved, and I was placed off bounds.
I don't blame the underlings, however, so I was willing to listen to him, and to help if I could. He told me about the diamond smuggling and it seemed there had been a break in the case. As one might expect, it came about through the use of an informer.
On that basis, the Treasury knew that a package was coming into the United States—a package that carried the diamonds, either directly or indirectly—that is, the diamonds would be in the package, or information concerning the when and how of their arrival would be there. The informer had no fine details, but he was' certain of the basic facts—he said—and it was going to be a
big
operation.
The package arrived at the time and place foretold. It was duly intercepted and was taken to headquarters, where it was opened (with all due precautions, I might add, in case it was a booby trap—which it wasn't).
Inside the box were three fine goblets of beautiful etched glass of delicate shape and fragile structure. Quite expensive, but declared in full, and customs paid in advance by a reputable source there was no real reason to distrust.
I said, "There was nothing else in the package? Just the goblets?"
"Just the goblets."
"No diamonds?"
"Not one."
"What did you do?"
The agent said, "Well, to begin with, we went over those goblets for anything we could find—"
"You mean the diamonds might have been added to the molten glass, so that they were now part of the goblets?"
"Not at all," said the agent stiffly. "Diamonds are carbon. They oxidize at elevated temperature, and mol- ten glass would certainly damage them. Besides, they would show up at once on refractive index measurements and we tried that just to be thorough."
(There's the value of police work! I have no equipment to run such tests, or the expertise for doing them, if I had the equipment.)
"What else did you do?" I asked.
"There was etching on the glass. It consisted of abstract shapes and it occurred to us it might carry coded information. It didn't. We photographed it and studied those photos under a low power microscope. We could find nothing, no irregularities at all in the symmetry of form—and perfect symmetry carries no information."
"The goblets must have been wrapped in something. What about that?"
"Oh, yes. They were wrapped in tissue paper, several thicknesses. We took them apart and went over them carefully, each sheet, both sides. We studied them under warmth, under magnification, under ultraviolet light. Nothing showed up. We had our invisible ink experts give it the full treatment. Nothing."
"The box itself?"
"We didn't ignore it, I assure you. We went over every inch of it inside and out, as carefully as we had done the tissue paper. We even removed the tape used to secure the box, as well as the various labels and stamps, so that we could study the portion of the box underneath, to say nothing of the tape, labels and stamps themselves."
"And I presume you found nothing."
"Not a damn thing."
I thought about it awhile and said, "Has it occurred to you that your informer may be mistaken—or lying?"
The agent grimaced. "Right away. We had him in. I don't know if he has a mother's grave, but he swore on it. We find ourselves believing him."
"Perhaps you picked up the wrong package."
"It fits every detail of the informer's advance description. The chances against its being wrong are astronomical." "How big was the package?"
"Twelve inches by nine inches by six inches, just about."
"And the goblets?"
"About six inches tall. Three inches across the opening.''
"Were any of the three cracked, chipped or damaged in any way."
"No, no. They were in perfect shape."
"And do you have the package now, exactly as it was to begin with?"
"Of course," said the agent gloomily. "We have to pass it on to the rightful owner with some lie about its having been lost or mislaid. Strictly speaking, we had no business taking it."
"No search warrant?"
"No."
"Well, don't worry. There's just a chance I may get you your diamonds."
And of course I did—in a way that you've probably already guessed. Just one of those few times when a moment of brilliance outweighs all the patient work of a crime laboratory.
Griswold took another sip of his drink and settled back in his chair.
We cried out, as one, "Where were the diamonds?"
Griswold looked surprised. "Unbelievable," he muttered. "You heard me ask the size of the box and of the goblets. Goblets of that size, placed in a box that size, would rattle around and, despite the tissue paper wrapping, would be reduced to slivers. Yet they were not cracked or chipped, though the agent specified they were fragile.
"That meant they were well packed, and these days, as you well know, the most common packing consists of light pellets of some kind of foam plastic. My own favorites are those that look like peanuts.
"In any case, the tendency is to ignore packing. You scarcely even look at it; you just get rid of it.—But I looked at it. I went through that box, looking at each of the pieces of plastic, and many of them showed signs of having been tampered with—something hard having been pushed in, and the end compressed to wipe out the hole of entry.
"We pulled all those plastic bits open, and nestling inside of a lot of them were very pretty diamonds. What a haul we made!"