More Tales of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  He passed it on to Gonzalo. Aside from the lawyer's letterhead, it contained only the typed list of six cities in alphabetical order:

  ANCHORAGE, ALASKA

  ATHENS, GEORGIA

  AUGUSTA, MAINE

  CANTON, OHIO

  EASTON, PENNSYLVANIA

  PERTH AMBOY, NEW JERSEY

  Gonzalo passed it around. When he received it back he called, “Henry!” Then, to Murdock, “Our waiter is a member of the club. “You have no objection to his seeing the list, I hope?”

  “I have no objection to anyone seeing it,” said Murdock.

  Avalon cleared his throat. “Before we launch ourselves into speculation, Mr. Murdock, it is only fair to ask if you have given the matter some thought yourself.”

  Murdock's sorrowful face grew thoughtful. His lips pressed together and his eyes blinked. He said in a soft, almost shamefaced voice, “Gentlemen, I would like to tell you that I have resisted temptation completely, but the fact is I have not. I have thought at times and tried to convince myself that one city or another fits my Uncle Haskell's hint so that I can offer it to the lawyer on Monday with a clear conscience. On occasion I have settled on one or another of the cities on the list but each time it was merely a case of fooling myself, of compromising, of pretending I was not gambling when I was.”

  Rubin said, with a face innocently blank, “Have you prayed, Mr. Murdock? Have you sought divine guidance?”

  For a moment it seemed as though Murdock's careful armor had been pierced, but only for a moment. After that slight pause he said, “If that were appropriate in this case, I would have seen a solution without prayer. In God's eyes, it is my needs that count and not my desires, and He knows my needs without my having to inform Him.”

  Rubin said, “Have you tried to approach the problem using the inferior weapon of reason?”

  “I have, of course,” said Murdock. “In a casual way. I have tried to resist being drawn into it too deeply. I mistrust myself, I fear.”

  Rubin said, “And have you come to any favorite conclusion? You've said that you have been unable to settle on any one city definitely, to the point where you would consider its choice as no longer representing a gamble—but do you lean in one direction or another?”

  “I have leaned in one direction at one time and in another direction at another. I cannot honestly say that any one of the cities is my favorite. With your permission, I will not tell you the thoughts that have struck me since it is your help I seek and I would prefer you to reach your conclusions, or hypotheses, uninfluenced by my thoughts. If you miss anything I have thought of, I will tell you.” . “Fair enough,” said Gonzalo, smoothing down one collar of his blazer with an air of absent self-satisfaction. “I suppose we have to consider whether any of those cities is the one and only east.”

  Murdock said, “I would think so.”

  “In that case,” said Gonzalo, “pardon me for mentioning the obvious, but the word 'east' occurs only in Easton. It is the one and only east.”

  “Oddly enough,” said Murdock dryly, “I had not failed to notice that, Mr. Gonzalo. It strikes me as obvious enough to be ignored. My Uncle Haskell also said, 'Don't jump too soon.’”

  “Ah,” said Gonzalo, “but that might just be to throw you off. The real gambler has to know when to bluff and your uncle could well have been bluffing. If he had a real rotten kind of humor, it would have seemed fun to him to give you the answer, let it lie right there, and then scare you out of accepting it.”

  Murdock said, “That may be so, but that sort of thing would mean I would have to penetrate my Uncle Haskell's mind and see whether he was capable of a double cross or something like that. It would be a gamble and I won't gamble. Either the hint, properly interpreted, makes the matter so plain that it is no longer a gamble, or it is worthless. In short, Easton may be the city, but if so, I will believe it only for some reason stronger than the mere occurrence of 'east' in its name.”

  Halsted, leaning forward toward Murdock, said, “I think no gambler worth his salt would set up a puzzle with so easy a solution as the connection between east and Easton. That's just misdirection. Let me point out something a little more reasonable, and a little more compelling. Of the six cities mentioned, I believe Augusta is easternmost. Certainly it is in the state of Maine, which is the easternmost of the fifty states. Augusta has to be the one and only east, and beyond any doubt.”

  Drake shook his head violently. “Quite wrong, Roger, quite wrong. It's just a common superstition that Maine is the easternmost state. Not since 1959. Once Alaska became the fiftieth state, it became the easternmost state.”

  Halsted frowned. “Westernmost, you mean, Jim.”

  “Westernmost and easternmost. And northernmost too. Look, the 180° longitude line passes through the Aleutian Islands. The islands west of the line are in the Eastern Hemisphere. They are the only part of the fifty states that are in the Eastern Hemisphere and that makes Alaska the easternmost state, the one and only east.”

  “What about Hawaii?” asked Gonzalo.

  “Hawaii does not reach the 180° mark. Even Midway Island, which lies to the west of the state, does not. You can look it up on the map if you wish, but I know I'm right.”

  “It doesn't matter whether you're right or not,” said Halsted hotly. “Anchorage isn't on the other side of the 180° line, is it? So it's west, not east. In the case of Augusta, the city is the easternmost of the six mentioned.”

  Murdock interrupted. “Gentlemen, it is not worth arguing the matter. I had thought of the eastern status of Maine but did not find it compelling enough to convert it into a bid.

  The fact that one can argue over the matter of Alaska versus Maine—and I admit that the Alaska angle had not occurred to me—removes either from the category of the one and only east”

  Rubin said, “Besides, from the strictly geographic point, east and west are purely arbitrary terms. North and south are absolute since there is a fixed point on Earth that is the North Pole and another that is the South Pole. Of any two spots on Earth, the one closer to the North Pole is farther north, the other farther south, but of those same two spots, neither is farther east or farther west, for you can go from one to the other, or from the other to the one, by traveling either eastward or westward. There is no absolute eastern point or western point on Earth.”

  “Well then,” said Trumbull, “where does that get you, Manny?”

  “To the psychological angle. What typifies east to us in the United States is the Atlantic Ocean. Our nation stretches from sea to shining sea and the only city on the list which is on the Atlantic Ocean is Perth Amboy. Augusta may be farther east geographically, but it is an inland town.”

  Trumbull said, “That's a bunch of nothing at all, Manny. The Atlantic Ocean symbolizes the east to us right now, but through most of the history of Western civilization it represented the west, the far west. It wasn't till after Columbus sailed westward that it became the east to the colonists of the New World. If you want something that's east in the Western tradition, and always has been east, it's China. The first Chinese city to be opened to Western trade was Canton and the American city of Canton was actually named for the Chinese city. Canton has to be the one and only east.”

  Avalon lifted his hand and said with majestic severity, “I don't see that at all, Tom. Even if Canton typifies the east by its recall of a Chinese city, why is that the one and only east? Why not Cairo, Illinois, or Memphis, Tennessee, each of which typifies the ancient Egyptian east?” “Because those cities aren't on the list, Jeff.” “No, but Athens, Georgia, is, and if there is one city in all the world that is the one and only east, it is Athens, Greece—the source and home of all the humanistic values we hold dear today, the school of Hellas and of all the west—”

  “Of all the west, you idiot,” said Trumbull with sudden ferocity. “Athens was never considered the east either by itself or by others. The first great battle between east and west was Marathon in 490 B.C. an
d Athens represented the west”

  Murdock interrupted. “Besides, my Uncle Haskell could scarcely have thought I would consider Athens unique, when it has purely secular value. Had he included Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, on his list, I might have chosen it at once with no sense of gamble. As it is, however, I can only thank you, gentlemen, for your efforts. The mere fact that you come to different conclusions and argue over them shows that each of you must be wrong. If one of you had the real answer it would be compelling enough to convince the others—and myself as well—at once. It may be, of course, that my Uncle Haskell deliberately gave me a meaningless clue for his own posthumous pleasure. If so, that does not of course, in the least diminish my gratitude to you all for your hospitality, your company, and your efforts.”

  He would have risen to leave but Avalon, on his left, put a courteous but nonetheless authoritative hand on his shoulder. “One moment, Mr. Murdock, one member of our little band has not yet spoken. —Henry, have you nothing to add?”

  Murdock looked surprised. “Your waiter?”

  “A Black Widower, as we said earlier. Henry, can you shed any light on this puzzle?”

  Henry said solemnly, “It may be that I can, gentlemen. I was impressed by Mr. Murdock's earlier argument that reason is sometimes inadequate to reach the truth. Nevertheless, suppose we start with reason. Not ours, however, but that of Mr. Murdock's uncle. I have no doubt that he deliberately chose cities that each represented the east in some ambiguous fashion, but where would he find in that list an unambiguous and compelling reference? Perhaps we would know the answer if we remembered his special interests—Mr. Murdock did say that at one time he was working on a book concerning Restoration England. I believe that is the latter half of the seventeenth century.”

  “Charles II,” said Rubin, “reigned from 1660 to 1685.”

  “I'm sure you are correct, Mr. Rubin,” said Henry. “All the cities named are in the United States, so I wondered whether we might find something of interest in American history during the Restoration period.”

  “A number of colonies were founded in Charles II’s reign,” said Rubin.

  “Was not Carolina one of them, sir?” asked Henry.

  “Sure. Carolina was named for him, in fact Charles is Carolus in Latin.”

  “But later on Carolina proved unwieldy and was split into North Carolina and South Carolina.”

  “That's right. But what has that got to do with the list? There are no cities in it from either Carolina.”

  “True enough, but the thought reminded me that there is also a North Dakota and a South Dakota, and for that matter a West Virginia, but there is no American state that has East in its title. Of course, we might speak of East Texas or of East Kansas or East Tennessee but—”

  “More likely to say 'eastern,'“ muttered Halsted.

  “Either way, sir, there would not be a one and only east, but—”

  Gonzalo exploded in sudden excitement “Wait a minute, Henry. I think I see what you're driving at If we have the state of West Virginia—the one and only west—then we can consider Virginia to be East Virginia—the one and only east”

  “No, you can't” said Trumbull, with a look of disgust on his face. “Virginia has been Virginia for three and a half centuries. Calling it East Virginia doesn't make it so.”

  “It would not matter if one did, Mr. Trumbull,” said Henry, “since there is no Virginian city on the list —But before abandoning that line of thought, however, I remembered that Mr. Murdock's uncle lived in New Jersey and that his ancestors had lived there since colonial times. Memories of my grade school education stirred, for half a century ago we were much more careful about studying colonial history than we are today.

  “It seems to me, and I'm sure Mr. Rubin will correct me if I'm wrong, that at one time in its early history New Jersey was divided into two parts—East Jersey and West Jersey, the two being separately governed. This did not last a long time, a generation perhaps, and then the single state of New Jersey was reconstituted. East Jersey, however, is the only section of what are now the United States that had 'east' as part of its official name as colony or state.”

  Murdock looked interested. His lips lifted in what was almost a smile. “The one and only east. It could be,”

  'There is more to it than that” said Henry. “Perth Amboy was, in its time, the capital of East Jersey.”

  Murdock's eyes opened wide. “Are you serious, Henry?”

  “I am quite certain of this and I think it is the compelling factor. It was the capital of the one and only east in the list of colonies and states. I do not think you will lose the inheritance if you offer that name on Monday; nor do I think you will be gambling.”

  Rubin said, scowling, “I said Perth Amboy.”

  “For a non-compelling reason,” said Drake. “How do you do it, Henry?”

  Henry smiled slightly. “By abandoning reason for something more certain as Mr. Murdock suggested at the start.”

  “What are you talking about, Henry?” said Avalon. “You worked it out very nicely by a line of neat argument.”

  “After the fact, sir,” said Henry. “While all of you were applying reason, I took the liberty of seeking authority and turned to the reference shelf we use to settle arguments. I looked up each city in Webster's Geographical Dictionary. Under Perth Amboy, it is clearly stated that it was once the capital of East Jersey.”

  He held out the book and Rubin snatched it from his hands, to check the matter for himself.

  “It is easy to argue backward, gentlemen,” said Henry.

  8 Afterword

  “The One and Only East,” which appeared in the March 1975 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, was, like 'The Iron Gem,” written on board ship, longhand. On this occasion I was visiting Great Britain for the first time in my life—by ocean liner both ways, since I don't fly.

  It was a little difficult in one way because I didn't have my reference library with me. (I must admit that one of the reasons that my Black Widowers sound so erudite on so many different subjects is that the man who writes the words has put together a very good reference library in his life-time.) The result was that I had to play my cities back and forth out of what knowledge I had in my head. As it happened, though, I got it nearly all correct.

  To Table of Contents

  9 Earthset and Evening Star

  Emmanuel Rubin, whose latest mystery novel was clearly proceeding smoothly, lifted his drink with satisfaction and let his eyes gleam genially through his thick-lensed glasses.

  “The mystery story,” he pontificated, “has its rules which, when broken, make it an artistic failure, whatever success it may have in the market place.”

  Mario Gonzalo, whose hair had been recently cut to allow a glimpse of the back of his neck, said, as though to no one, “It always amuses me to hear a writer describe something he scrawls on paper as art.” He looked with some complacency at the cartoon he was making of the guest for that month's banquet session of the Black Widowers.

  “If what you do is the definition of art,” said Rubin, “I withdraw the term in connection with the writer's craft. —One thing to avoid, for instance, is the idiot plot.”

  “In that case,” said Thomas Trumbull, helping himself to another roll and buttering it lavishly, “aren't you at a disadvantage?”

  Rubin said loftily, “By 'an idiot plot,' I mean one in which the solution would come at once if an idiot investigator would but ask a logical question, or in which an idiot witness would but tell something he knows and which he has no reason to hide.”

  Geoffrey Avalon, who had left a neatly cleaned bone on his plate as the only witness of the slab of roast beef that had once rested there, said, “But no skilled practitioner would do that, Manny. What you do is set up some reason to prevent the asking or telling of the obvious.”

  “Exactly,” said Rubin. “For instance, what I've been writing is essentially a short story if one moves in a straight line. The troubl
e is the line is so straight, the reader will see its end before I'm halfway. So I have to hide one crucial piece of evidence, and do it in such a way that I don't make an idiot plot out of it. So I invent a reason to hide that piece, and in order to make the reason plausible I have to build a supporting structure around it—and I end with a novel, and a damn good one.” His sparse beard quivered with self-satisfaction.

  Henry, the perennial waiter at the Black Widowers' banquets, removed the plate from in front of Rubin with his usual dexterity. Rubin, without turning, said, “Am I right, Henry?”

  Henry said softly, “As a mystery reader, Mr. Rubin, I find it more satisfying to have the piece of information delivered to me and to find that I have been insufficiently clever and did not notice.”

  “I just read a mystery,” said James Drake in his softly hoarse smoker's voice, “in which the whole point rested on character 1 being really character 2, because the real character 1 was dead. I was put on to it at once because, in the list of characters at the start, character 1 was not listed. Ruined the story for me.”

  “Yes,” said Rubin, “but that wasn't the author's fault Some flunky did that. I once wrote a story which was accompanied by one illustration that no one thought to show me in advance. It happened to give away the point.”

  The guest had been listening quietly to all this. His hair was just light enough to be considered blond and it had a careful wave in it that looked, somehow, as though it belonged there. He turned his rather narrow but clearly good-humored face to Roger Halsted, his neighbor, and said, “Pardon me, but since Manny Rubin is my friend, I know he is a mystery writer. Is this true of the rest of you as well? Is this a mystery writer organization?”