The Union Club Mysteries

by Asimov, Isaac

  "What is this?" said Jennings grumpily. "A cosmic rule?"

  "Apparently," I said. "Before they're twelve, they haven't accumulated enough irritating knowledge. After they're twelve, they've had some sense and judgment knocked into them. At twelve, they're unbearable. Listen, I was once a twelve-year-old unbearable myself." "You still are," said Baranov gently.

  I ignored that with the contempt it deserved and said, "Ask Griswold. I'll bet he agrees with me."

  Griswold seemed, to all appearances, restfully asleep in his armchair, but we knew better.

  He stirred, brought his scotch and soda to his lips, brushed his white mustache and said, "Bright twelve-year-olds are cooperative enough if you can convince them you are their intellectual equal. Naturally, this puts the three of you behind the eight ball. In my own case, however—"

  Jennings said feelingly, "If you met my nephew—"

  In my own case [said Griswold, raising his voice somewhat, and opening his ice-blue eyes] I manage well.

  It was a matter that took place a couple of years ago. A Middle-Eastern diplomat was shot down in the streets of suburban Washington and it might have been an ordinary mugging, but the Department didn't think so.

  It's become commonplace to have the internal warfare of any nation in turmoil fought out on the streets of nations that have little or nothing to do with the matter directly. It's extremely difficult to do anything about it, too. Even when there's evidence that can be used—which isn't often—there are almost always diplomatic considerations involved.

  On the one hand, we can't condone terrorist activity or political assassinations within our borders. On the other hand, we don't want to introduce unnecessary complexities in sensitive relationships with other powers.

  Just the same, you at least want to know what really happened so that you can make whatever move you decide is most judicious under the circumstances out of a correct knowledge, and not out of guesses. There have been cases when we acted out of insufficient knowledge and landed neatly in the diplomatic soup—or in an embarrassing position vis-a-vis American public opinion.

  The assassination I speak of (and I can't go into detail because, for various important security reasons, the thing was pretty much hushed up) was a particularly sensitive one and, fortunately, there was a witness. In a way, it was the best kind of witness. One pair of eyes had been at a window and they belonged to a bright twelve-year-old.

  There was no question but that he had seen exactly what had happened and that he would be able to describe it in full and accurate detail.

  The assassins could not have known the formidable character of the witness, but they were desperate enough to take no chances. They sent a bullet through the window when they saw him there, and missed. Over the next couple of days, two other attempts were made on his life and failed, and then the youngster—I'll call him Eli—was taken into custody. Guards were placed on his home.

  There was a catch. Eli wouldn't talk.

  I was already in retirement, so I wasn't directly involved, but Jerry Bastwell came to see me, muttering under his breath and mopping at his bald head.

  "That little bastard," he said. "He just sits there and laughs at us. He says, 'You don't want to know. You'll just mess it up, anyhow.'"

  I said, "Did you talk to his parents? Let them ask the questions."

  "His parents!" said Jerry with disgust. "They say they can't handle him. They say he's very bright and reads at a high school level and is getting private tutoring for college entrance, and they can't handle him. I think they're afraid of him.—Sounds like a wise-guy dumb kid to me. Less tutoring and special treatment, and a little more slamming around would do him a lot of good and knock some of the crap out of him."

  "So, slam him around," I said. "Give him the third degree and knock the crap out of him."

  Jerry was not one to understand heavy irony when he heard it. "We can't," he said. "The kid's got a psychiatrist who says if we put pressure on him, he'll retreat into silence. He says the kid has autistic tendencies, whatever that means. We have to treat him carefully."

  "Why are you telling me all this?" I asked.

  "Some of the people at the Department think you ought to talk to him. You've got a way with you, some kind of a—a—" "Peculiar mind? Set a nut to catch a nut?"

  Jerry sighed with relief. "I wasn't sure how to put it, but that's it."

  It was exactly the kind of compliment designed to set me going. I was curious about the youngster and I agreed to see him.

  He was thin and undersized and moved with quick restlessness as is characteristic of bright twelve-year-olds. The world just doesn't get out of the way quickly enough and they're impatient. He gave me a contemptuous sneer. "You coming to ask questions, too?"

  "Maybe," I said, sitting down. "Mostly I'm interested in you."

  "Why?"

  "Because I think you're interesting. You know a lot, they tell me. Perhaps you can teach me something I don't know."

  "You know anything about cosmogony?"

  "Well," I said cautiously, "it's one of the few words with 'o' as the only vowel. 'Cosmology' and 'lobotomy' are two others." That was merely intended as a light-hearted way of indicating ignorance, but he caught me up at once.

  "There are 'y's' in those words and that counts as a vowel. 'Colophon' is a better example of an 'o'-only word. 'Syzygy' has three 'y's' as the only vowels. You interested in words?"

  I said, "Very much so."

  "We're lucky to have the English language," said Eli very seriously. "That's got the most words of any language and the spelling is crazy so you can have fun with it. Hardly anyone knows anything about spelling these days, but I won an all-school spelling bee when I was seven."

  "I'm pretty good at spelling," I said.

  He said, "Spell 'sizum.'"

  I said, "s-c-h-i-s-m. The 'ch' is silent, although some dictionaries say it doesn't have to be and you can say 'skizm.'"

  Eli nodded vigorously. "In English," he said, "s-c-h at the start is almost always pronounced 's-k' like, for instance, schedule, scheme, schizophrenia, school, scholar, schooner, Schenectady and Schuyler."

  I said, "How about schlemiel, schlock and wiener schnitzel?"

  He let out a squawk of laughter. "Those aren't English words. They're loan words from Yiddish or German."

  I said, "The British pronounce schedule as 'shedule.'"

  "They're crazy," said Eli flatly. "I heard an Englishman on a television program once who said 'school schedule' and pronounced it just the way you said, 'skool shedule.' Both words start with 'sch' so why didn't he pronounce it 'school schedule.'"

  "Well, that's the English language, Eli. As you said, the spelling is crazy, but the pronunciation is crazy, too. Did you ever throw a dollar bill from one room into another."

  For a moment, he stared at me suspiciously. "Why do you ask?"

  "Because if you did, I could say that you tossed dough through a door. That's 'doh throo,' right, even though the words each end in 'ough'. Why don't I say 'tossed doh throh' or 'tossed doo throo'?"

  He laughed and looked friendly for the first time. "That's nice. Do you mind if I use that?"

  "Of course not."

  He bounced up out of his chair, walked rapidly toward me and poked me in the chest with his finger. "Listen, I've got a puzzle for you."

  "Good," I said, careful to show no irritation at the poke though his fingernail was sharp, and it hurt. "Then it will be my turn."

  "You've got a puzzle, too?"

  "Sort of. A puzzle about murder. You ask me your question about your puzzle, then I'll ask you my question about my puzzle. And if I give you the correct answer, you'll have to give me the correct answer. Fair enough?"

  He fell silent, considered me owlishly, then said, "That's not the same kind of puzzle."

  "You're right," I said, "but we're not the same kind of people. You're young and quick and energetic, and I'm old and slow and tired, so you've got your kind of puzzle and I'
ve got mine, and if I can handle yours, you can surely handle mine."

  He considered a little longer, then said, "All right. It's a deal," and he stuck his hand out at me. I shook it gravely and then he said, "Besides you won't get this."

  "Try me," I said with a smile.

  He said, "I'll bet I can write out a word in capital letters, and you can't pronounce it."

  "Is that the one where you show me a word and I pronounce the word you show me and you say, 'No, I said you can't pronounce it' and the word 'it' is pronounced 'it,' of course."

  Eli made a face. "That's a silly-kid sort of thing. I really mean there's a word you can't pronounce. It's a short, very familiar word and everyone sees it all the time. And I'm not going to show it to you, either. What I'm saying is that if I were to write this short very familiar word in capital letters, you won't be able to pronounce that word I show you."

  "How am I going to pronounce the word if you don't show it to me?

  "Because you're going to have to guess what the word is. What word is unpronounceable even though it's written out clearly in capital letters and isn't very long and isn't very complicated?"

  "And if I tell you, will you answer my questions?"

  "Yes."

  So I told him and he crowed with laughter and bounced into my lap and hugged me out of sheer relief, I imagine, at having found an adult with a wit as quick as his own.

  After that, he told us all we wanted to know and we had a particular embassy do a bit of house cleaning and had some private no-nonsense conversations with a particular power. It wasn't much, but it was all we could conveniently do. It won't keep them quiet forever, I'm sure, but it's kept them quiet so far.

  I said ominously, "You know you're not going to get away without telling us the unpronounceable word." Griswold looked at me with contempt. He said, "Lend me your pen." He reached for the memo pad on the table on his right and carefully wrote "polish" upon it and said, "Pronounce it."

  I did and said, "What's the catch? I pronounce it every time I ask someone to polish my shoes."

  "There's no problem when it's in lower case. Eli said three times I couldn't pronounce it if it were written in capitals. He emphasized the capitals."

  Baranov protested, "But writing it in capitals doesn't change the pronunciation." He wrote "POLISH" under Griswold's "polish" on the memo pad.

  Griswold said, "You're quite wrong. There's no way of being sure of how to pronounce 'POLISH' in capital letters because you can't tell if it's a capitalized word or not. When all the letters are capitals, you can't tell the condition of the first letter. In the English language, one word that changes pronunciation on capitalization is 'polish' for it becomes 'Polish.' Now tell me which way you pronounce 'POLISH.'"

  To Contents

  Testing, Testing!

  There is always a sense of deep quiet at the Union Club, regardless of any hubbub that may be going on outside. The traffic sounds, the sirens, even the flashes and rumbles of a thunderstorm seem to be trapped and muffled in the immemorial drapes, leaving a hush behind that it would be sacrilege to break.

  Unless, of course, you want to count the soft snoring of Griswold as he slept in his stately armchair.

  Jennings eyed the sleeping figure, with its air of strange alertness-in-slumber and with the scotch and soda held rocksteady in its fingers, and said, "Do you get like that easily, I wonder?"

  Baranov said, "It takes a bad break in the gene pool, I suppose."

  "I mean, how do you get to be someone in his 'Department,' whatever that might be."

  "He never names it," I said huffily, "and I, for one, wonder if it exists."

  "Well, suppose it exists," said Jennings. "How did he get to work with it? How did he qualify? Did he just send in a letter saying 'I want to be a puzzler-out of queer riddles'?"

  "Don't you remember," I said, "that he once claimed that during World War II he had this knack of being able to detect spies—or something like that?"

  "That's what he says," said Jennings, "but if you were to ask him, he'd be sure to tell you a different story. I'll bet if you ask him—"

  Griswold stirred and one ice-blue eye opened. As usual, and by some process unknown to us, he had managed to begin hearing us as soon as our conversation had veered into something that involved him. He said, "If you asked me, my answer would be a simple one. They came looking for me. They came looking for me. They had sampled my brilliance in World-War-II days, and they wanted more of it, but they were hesitant just the same. They distrusted the very brilliance they wanted."

  "Why should that be?" I asked hostilely.

  "Because a brilliant agent has little to do. Most of the work requires the long, patient playing of a part, and for that you need a kind of dull capacity to submerge yourself. In fact, the most successful agent I ever knew was a jackass, and it was he who tested me at the crucial point."

  Griswold's voice faded off and I said, "And you passed with flying colors, I presume."

  "Of course," said Griswold, starting a little and emerging again from enveloping slumber, "but since that comes as no surprise to you, there's no point in telling you about it, is there?"

  "Come on," said Jennings. "Wild horses couldn't keep you from telling us about it." He looked at his wristwatch. "I'll give you fifteen seconds to start."

  Griswold took only five seconds, actually.

  As I told you once before [said Griswold]—and I always adhere rigidly to the truth—I had made my mark as a very young man during World War II. There were people in Washington who wanted to follow me up on this in the days immediately after the war and who wished to place me in a position where my talents could be of use to them.

  I was not at all keen on this, for the life of a government-employed agent is a difficult and stultifying one. I had met a number of them and I knew. Nevertheless, I was moved somewhat by feelings of patriotism and I had no objection to serving the government in a consulting capacity, so I allowed myself to be talked into coming to Washington in order that I might be studied at closer range.

  I didn't think it would be pleasant and it wasn't. The Cold War was beginning and there was considerable disarray in the internal caverns of the various departments as people were beginning to sniff out undependables. Naturally, the possession of brains stamped you at once as suspicious. An agent had to have an IQ of 120 at the very least—and at the very most, too.

  Naturally, I did not get along with the older officials who tended to take a dislike to me at sight. It may surprise you who now see me as a man of great dignity and maturity—and likeability withal—but in my younger days I was rather a rebel, and the merely conventional tended to bristle at once when they saw me.

  I remember being met in the halls of the Department building by a man of average height with a pink, smooth face, who was dressed as meticulously and unimaginatively as your average department-store dummy. He took one look at me, pointed his finger at me and said, "You!"

  I guess I was slouching a little, but I didn't bother taking my hands out of my pockets or straightening up. I wasn't in the army. I said, as pleasantly as I could, "That's what they call me. What do they call you?"

  He ignored my question and said, "Why aren't you wearing a tie and jacket?"

  I said, "Because when I woke up this morning, I noticed that—son of a gun—it was summer."

  "It's air-conditioned in here."

  "Interesting but irrelevant, since I'm only here temporarily."

  "Indeed? Give me your name and let's make sure about the 'temporarily.'"

  "'You' is good enough. I answer to that." And I walked away, whistling.

  I didn't know who he was but, of course, I found out. He was the Department favorite, the most successful agent of the 1940's. And he was the jackass I mentioned earlier. He had been working in and out of Germany throughout the war, facing death daily with the courage of a lion—I'll give him that—and about the brains of a lion, too.

  When he walked into a room, Senat
ors got to their feet in respect—or they would have, if they had known who he was, but of course they didn't, for an agent's stock in trade is his anonymity.

  I had heard of him, of course; we all had; but I had never met him or seen his photograph. It probably wouldn't have changed anything when I met him in the corridor, if I had known who he was, to be sure.

  But then, I had other things to think of. I, and five others like me, were enduring a long crash course. We had lectures on various aspects of espionage and counterespionage—on codes and cryptograms from the Morse code to those which required computers, since the first primitive electronic computers were already in operation, and on so many other things it would weary me to remember or you to hear.

  Lectures were broken into by little skits of one kind or another, and we were asked questions afterward to test our ability to observe under stress. A lecturer would talk to us for half an hour then suddenly demand how many times he had rubbed his forehead and whether he had done it with his right hand or his left.

  Of course, they never caught me out on any of those things. I might have deliberately failed in order to get myself booted out of the course, but I couldn't bring myself to let them think I was a fool.

  Then, one day we were told to expect a lecture by our wartime hero and in walked my friend of the corridors. He remembered me, you can be sure. He stood there in the front of the room and eyed each one of us coldly. When he came to me, he barked, "Griswold!"

  "Or 'you,'" I said calmly. "Either way."

  He gave me a long, hard stare and said, "You think highly of yourself, apparently."

  I said, "It would be poor judgment on my part not to."

  "And how are you on codes?"

  "I'm not an accomplished cryptographer," I said, "but I'm as good as anyone who isn't." He turned away from me and said to the class. "The truth is we use codes every day. We give high signs. We wink, nod, lift our eyebrows. There are gestures, expressions, vague sounds. They all mean something to someone. Some of them mean the same thing to almost everyone. A nod would mean 'yes.' A pointing finger would mean 'That!'

  "Just the same, we can change meaning. We can arrange to have someone shoot a gun when we nod. Nod may mean 'yes' to almost everyone at almost every time, but it means 'shoot' to one person at a particular time.