The Return of the Black Widowers

by Isaac Asimov

  "Did you look under the bed?" asked Mario Gonzalo, grinning and smoothing his ascot tie.

  "No," said Avalon with a touch of hauteur, "I did not look under the bed. There was no room under the bed for a medium-sized dog, let alone a human being. However, I did inspect the bathroom and the closet. Nothing there. And there were no connecting doors to other rooms, by the way. I was alone, absolutely alone."

  "So?" said Roger Halsted, pushing away his plate.

  "So who poked me?"

  "Oh, for God's sake," exploded Trumbull. "It was a dream. Haven't you ever dreamed, Jeff?"

  "No," said Avalon, hunching his formidable eyebrows low, "it was not a dream. I know it was not a dream. Someone poked me."

  "Listen," began Trumbull, "I've had dreams—"

  "Never mind your dreams," said Avalon with unaccustomed abruptness, "this was not a dream."

  Trumbull shook his head. "I've never known you to be this stubborn, Jeff, and this stupid."

  The guest, DaRienzi, now spoke for the first time since the dinner had begun. He smiled down at his stewed pears and said, "What Jeff is doing here, gentlemen, is posing a locked-room puzzle. Something has happened in a locked room that could not have happened. My friend Jeff is an honest man who is presenting an honest problem and we—or at least you gentlemen of the club—must puzzle out the solution. And saying it was just a dream is not an acceptable solution, is it, Jeff?"

  "No," said Avalon, still testy. "I know the solution, and so do you, Marcellus, because I told you this earlier in the evening, but I want the Black Widowers to figure it out. I'm telling it to them in orderly fashion, if the idiots would only allow it."

  Rubin said, "You're the host, Jeff—you control the evening. Order silence and go on."

  Avalon glowered. "Silence! In the empty room, then, I was forced to consider the possibility of a supernatural warning."

  The five other Widowers at the table, rationalists all, scrambled to their feet and, the order for silence forgotten, yammered their indignation. DaRienzi kept his seat and smiled.

  Avalon raised his hands and thundered, "Silence! I don't say I accepted the supernatural as an explanation. I merely say I was forced to consider it. I don't believe in supernatural influences, but even my own firmest beliefs cannot be accepted by myself as unshakeable and invulnerable. Do you mind pursuing rationality that far?"

  "As a matter of fact," said Roger Halsted quietly, as he mopped his high pink brow with his handkerchief, "our society is so permeated and drenched with supernatural beliefs of any number of kinds and sorts that even the firmest skeptic may be corrupted, at least momentarily, if the conditions are right."

  "Thank you, Roger," said Avalon. "It's exactly what I would have wanted to say. It was two-fifteen when it happened, and if it hadn't been for the fact that I had a wife in New York I would have dismissed the matter. But I couldn't. Some forty-five years of marriage isn't something you can dismiss lightly. I phoned her. She answered at once. I don't know what I would have done if she hadn't answered—if she had been out shopping, for instance. I might well have raced home and made a complete fool of myself. But she did answer. I asked how things were and everything was perfectly in order, so I relaxed. And that left only the primary problem. Who had poked me?" "It was a dream!" said Trumbull stubbornly.

  "No," said Avalon. "It wasn't. After a while, I gave up the problem and decided to try to sleep again. And I became aware that when I prepare for sleep, at least if I'm alone in bed, I wrap my arms tightly about myself. I also know that in the borderland between sleep and wakefulness, my muscles twitch. I have felt them do so and my wife has commented on it with some amusement.

  "And of course, that was the solution. It fully explains the locked-room puzzle without calling upon the supernatural. In the process of falling asleep, my own finger had twitched and jabbed my shoulder." *

  Avalon looked about triumphantly and said, "And that is why I have brought my friend, Marcellus DaRienzi, Ph.D., as my guest. He has a natural connection with this sort of thing. And I have managed to finish my story without delaying the grilling too much, so let's proceed. Tom, you skeptic, I appoint you the griller."

  Thomas Trumbull studied Avalon's guest. DaRienzi was a cheerful-looking man with tufts of hair down his cheeks and only a tuft on top of his head. He wore old-fashioned round-rimmed glasses and a vest under his suit-jacket, and he had an air of permeating benevolence.

  Trumbull said, "Mr. DaRienzi—Marcellus—I will get right to the point without setting you the usual first task of justifying your existence. What is the so-called natural connection Jeff says you have with this mad dream-story he told us?"

  Avalon looked offended, but kept silent.

  DaRienzi said mildly, 'The connection, I suppose, is that I'm a psychic researcher."

  "Oh, Lord," muttered Trumbull, "oh, Lord." Then, more

  The reader may be interested to know that this matter of a poke in an empty room, and a panicky call to a wife, happened to me recently in exactly the manner described here.—i.e. loudly, "Does that mean you're trying to prove the existence of telepathy, spoon-bending, ghosts, and fairies at the bottom of the garden? Have you been working on poor Jeff so that he's beginning to be screwed up?"

  Avalon looked daggers, but still said nothing.

  DaRienzi said, "Why, no, Tom, rather the opposite. I've spent my time investigating and disproving reports of the existence of telepathy, spoon-bending, ghosts, and fairies at the bottom of the garden."

  "Do you mean," put in Rubin suddenly, "like the Amazing Randi?"

  "Something like," agreed DaRienzi, "but not completely. The Amazing Randi is probably the most doughty knight in the fight against hokum and pseudoscience that there is. But he is much in the news and the practitioners of nonsense try to avoid him, so that his task is harder than it might otherwise be.

  "I'm not the skilled magician that Randi is, which puts me under a disadvantage. However, I maintain a low profile. I stay out of the limelight so that I am easily accepted as a believer and the fakers don't go to any special efforts to fool me. For that reason, I can usually detect what it is they're really doing. I might say that I have never found any convincing evidence in favor of anything we might call supernaturalism or the paranormal. I'm ready to be convinced that such things exist, but only if the evidence is solid, and it never has been in my experience."

  "In that case," said Trumbull, "I presume you don't approve of Avalon s action in calling his wife."

  "It did no harm," said DaRienzi. "His momentary weakness in phoning his wife is something any of us might have fallen prey to. As Roger said, the social milieu in which we live makes it almost impossible not to weaken on occasion. And I surely approve of Jeff's final rationalistic solution of this locked-room mystery of his."

  Gonzalo interrupted, "Pardon me, Marcellus, I don't want you to take offense, but we have all heard of the Amazing Randi. I have, for one. But I have never heard of you." He looked about. "Has anyone? I mean, besides Jeff?"

  "I hope not," said DaRienzi with deep sincerity. "I said I keep a low profile and I mean it. I don't want anyone to know me in my capacity as a psychic researcher. That Jeff knows is partly the result of accident, but I am confident of his discretion. And I hope that—" He looked about uncertainly.

  Jeff said, "As I told you, Marcellus, nothing that is said at a Black Widowers banquet is ever repeated outside these walls. That assurance extends to our waiter, who is, in point of fact, a member of the club."

  "Well," said DaRienzi with a remnant of worry in his voice, "I'll accept that."

  Halsted cleared his throat and said, "Marcellus, what is your doctorate in?"

  "Psychology."

  "And do you work as a psychologist? Do you have a university position? Are you in private practice?"

  "No to all three questions, Roger. My work consists entirely of the psychic research I've mentioned."

  Halsted cleared his throat again and said, "I'm a math teacher at a
junior-high school and am therefore very knowledgeable on the subject of inadequate payment. How the devil do you make a living on your psychic research?"

  "I don't," said DaRienzi. "At least, I don't have to. My father saw to it that I was left with a secure and entirely adequate income so that I can quite afford to spend my life in doing something I consider very worthwhile and interesting, without regard to payment."

  "Lucky fellow," muttered Halsted.

  Trumbull reentered the grilling with what was almost a roar. "All right, so you don't need money. But do you mean to tell us that you have no hankering for fame, or at least recognition? Don't you want to have people know of your work?"

  DaRienzi reddened slightly. "Why, there, Tom," he said, "you touch a tender point. We live in a social environment whose orientation toward success is as corrupting as its orientation toward super naturalism. The truth is—and please let me remind you of your assurance of confidentiality—that I am writing a book describing my experiences. It will be a startling one and I have many amusing stories to tell that are not at all known to the general public. I don't suppose it will make a great deal of money— debunking books never do. Still, I have a publisher and I'm enjoying the task."

  "But you'll blow your cover," said Gonzalo. "I mean, you'll become known and then you'll have the disadvantages of that."

  "Scarcely," said DaRienzi with a small laugh. "My picture won't appear in the book and I plan to use a pseudonym. Any success I achieve in the book will redound to the work I've done and not to me personally. Of course, as I approach the end of my life I may reveal my identity if a hankering for any personal fame I can garner in this way overcomes me."

  "What progress are you making on your book?" asked Rubin. "Writing isn't an easy job."

  "Manny knows," put in Gonzalo at once. "He's a writer and it surely doesn't come easily to him."

  "You'll find," said Rubin loftily, "that writers have much to suffer at the hands of ignorant and captious critics. But what progress are you making?"

  "As Mario said, writing isn't easy, at least not for me, but I'm almost finished with the first draft. I made major progress late last summer when I was able to use a friend's Vermont home for two weeks. You remember, Jeff, that Harry Weinstein had to spend most of the summer in Europe and he was kind enough to let me have his summer home for the latter part of August. It was very peaceful and quiet, and perfect for what I needed.

  "As a matter of fact, he had a special bonus for me. 'You'll like my place, Marcellus,' he said, 'because I've heard a haunted cabin has turned up in the vicinity, and you once said you were interested in such things.' "And so I had. Such remarks do manage to slip out despite anything I can do, I've often thought it would be an accumulation of such slips that would blow my cover, to use Mario's phrase, and not my book."

  Halsted asked, with interest, "Have you investigated haunted houses?"

  "Certainly," said DaRienzi. "Half a dozen rather well-known cases, and a number of trivial ones."

  "How do you go about it?"

  "You examine the place rather meticulously by daylight, but the important test is to spend the night there. A dark and stormy night would be best—" DaRienzi grinned "—but unfortunately the condition of most haunted houses is such that a stormy night would produce as much rain and wind indoors as outdoors."

  Halsted said, "And you've actually slept in such houses?"

  "Of course." DaRienzi looked about good-humoredly. "Come, you're all rationalists. I heard you jumping all over poor Jeff a while ago. How many of you would prefer not to sleep in a supposed haunted house?"

  There was a rather sticky silence as the Black Widowers stared furtively at each other.

  DaRienzi waited a moment, then said lightly, "I withdraw the question. Everyone has seen enough haunted-house movies in childhood to scar the soul of even the boldest."

  "But," said Halsted, "do you actually sleep in these houses?"

  "Of course not," said DaRienzi. "You simply spend the night there. After all, you have to stay awake if you're going to be aware of any manifestations. Besides that, the condition of haunted houses is not generally conducive to sleep. The houses are old and full of creaks, the rooms are musty, the beds rickety, and the mattresses beneath contempt. I doubt that anyone, even a posturing daredevil, could actually sleep in one of your typical haunted houses unless he were in the last stages of extreme fatigue."

  "I don't suppose you ever came across any manifestations."

  "If you mean anything that could be counted as firm evidence of ghostly or paranormal activity, of course not. The true believers always maintain that the manifestations are best received by 'sensitives' and that skeptics are too coarse-fibered to receive the delicate vibrations or whatever. That, however, is only another way of saying that manifestations are received most easily by people who are credulous and suggestible, and we all know that.

  "Sometimes, to be sure, manifestations take place that are apparent even to my coarse-fibered, skeptical nature, and then I must nail them firmly to natural causes. I'm usually able to do that, but once I almost failed and I was then in the position Jeff found himself in when he was poked in the hotel room."

  "Ah," said Gonzalo with sudden satisfaction. "Now you're talking. Tell us about it."

  "I intend to," said DaRienzi, "because it happened last August in the little town in Vermont where I was using my friend's summer home."

  "You mean," said Gonzalo, "there was a haunted cabin there, as your friend had said."

  "Yes, there was, and it gave me quite a turn."

  Avalon looked surprised. "You didn't tell me this, Marcellus."

  "No, I had no occasion to, but after you told me your locked-room experience this afternoon, and I could see it was your reason for inviting me to the banquet, I thought it would be fitting to tell the story, since it matched yours so well."

  "Very well, then. Tell it from the beginning, Marcellus."

  "Certainly," said DaRienzi. "I drove there the evening before my formal occupancy was to begin and moved my baggage into the house. I was observed by some of the locals as I drove there, but they showed no curiosity. Harry loaned out his cottage for periods of time nearly every summer, and apparently the locals were used to the succession of 'city fellows' that came there. Besides, the locals kept themselves to themselves, as I found out. They were stolid and quiet, quite like the stereotype of the Vermont backwoodsman. They showed absolutely no interest in me socially, and that, as you can well imagine, was exactly what I wanted. "I found the cottage in good shape—electricity on, water flowing, a gas range in working order, a comfortably large refrigerator-freezer—but nothing to eat, if you don't count a half empty tin of coffee in the pantry. That was no problem, of course. The next morning, I drove down to the village store about three-quarters of a mile away and stocked up with two weeks of supplies. I did so rather munificently, getting rather more than I needed, because I intended to leave some items in Weinstein's freezer as a sort of rent for the cottage. The storekeeper scared up almost everything I asked for.

  "I then spent what I can only describe as a delicious two weeks working on my book, with my papers, notes, and reference materials scattered about me. No one disturbed me, and the weather, except for one dreary day of rain and wind, was fine. When the time came to leave, I was quite regretful."

  Gonzalo said, "Don't leave yet. What about the haunted cabin?"

  "I'm getting to that. Each evening, except for the rainy one, I'd walk to the village and back, partly for exercise, and partly to buy perishables. I exchanged a few remarks on the weather with any locals I met and they replied noncommittally. They were polite, if not communicative. Except in the matter of the haunted cabin. There they unbent as far as a Vermonter could unbend.

  "They were willing to point out its location, for instance. I asked them what the haunting consisted of. They didn't know, or wouldn't say. Apparently 'city fellows' had occasionally spent time in the cabin and one old local man said
he had heard tell that strange noises and sounds could be heard in the cabin.

  "I was suspicious of the whole deal but did my best not to show it. For one thing, the cabin was old but not very old. It was not in a dilapidated state. For another, there were no stories to account for the haunting and I considered that very odd. Your haunted house invariably comes with a dark tale of lust, cruelty, murder, or betrayal to account for the haunting, and the deeds almost always date back at least two centuries. Without it, I suspected bald-faced fakery."

  Avalon said, "Why? What kind of fakery?"

  DaRienzi smiled grimly. "I felt quite firmly that the whole thing was homegrown and of recent vintage. It was invented by the natives themselves as a kind of tourist attraction. I later found out that the village inn had prospered greatly in the last several years, and the Burlington newspapers had run several articles on the haunted cabin. The thing was their Loch Ness monster, if you know what I mean."

  Gonzalo snapped his fingers in frustration. "Damn! Then you're saying there was no haunted cabin, after all."

  "Of course not," said DaRienzi. "Did you think there would be? Even if the cabin were an old dilapidated wreck and had once been owned by a wicked farmer who abused and killed his innocent wife, do you think it would be haunted? Really haunted? — Besides, I haven't finished the story.

  "On the last evening there, I intended to inspect the so-called haunted cabin. The storekeeper had the key and he surrendered it to me at my request early in the day, with as near a smile as his habitually dour expression permitted. 'Here you are, sir,' he said. I'm sure he then spread the story and the locals looked forward with anticipation to scaring me and having another story for the Burlington papers, and another infusion of wealth for the village.