The Return of the Black Widowers (36 page)

sticky day and wearing a coat of any kind, even a thin raincoat, would be ridiculous, so I carried the umbrella—in my hand."

"Where else would you carry it?" asked Drake mildly.

Nemerson said, "Listen, when I say I carried it in my hand I mean I held it there and never let go. I'm always conscious of the risk of loss—of anything, not just my umbrella. I'm always fanning my pockets to make sure my wallet and keys are in place."

"I do, too," broke in Rubin. "When you live in New York—"

"So I hold onto my umbrella. I don't put it down in a taxi or a bus. Marilyn hates the fuss I make over it. Actually, she hates my being systematic and orderly and says I miss the joy of life

by

not being more easygoing."

"And does that bother you?" asked Halsted.

"Absolutely. I'm a writer, and I intend to set the world on fire. I'm serious and compulsive about my work and I don't believe you can divide yourself into antagonistic pieces. If I'm going to hard-drive my writing and do it with order and method, I've got to do it in all aspects of my life."

Rubin said, "You won't be as prolific as Asimov whatever you do, and he's an extrovert of the extroverts. You should see him when any female approaches within half a mile of him."

"I don't intend to model myself on Asimov," said Nemerson. "He may be prolific and he's been helpful to me, but I recognize him as a trivial man, and I intend to be an important one. — Anyway, I arrived at Marilyn's place this afternoon holding my umbrella. It was still in its folded state, bone-dry since it hadn't rained. Since I had no pocket to slip it into, I put it on her kitchen table—it's porcelain-topped and would in no way be damaged by the umbrella. What's more, the umbrella was black, so it stood out unmistakably. When I left, I'd pass the table on the way to the door and couldn't miss it.

"Marilyn made her usual dumb cracks about it. She prides herself on having a sense of humor and claims I don't have one, but my writing is well known for its sardonic aspects so I pay no attention to what she says. —In that respect, at least.

"And, as a matter of fact, we had a pleasant afternoon. Making allowance for her penchant for inappropriate remarks of the kind she calls humorous, she's highly intelligent, interesting, and a warm and affectionate person."

Trumbull broke in. "But what does she see in you, then? I mean, you're the kind of intense, driving person she wouldn't be able to endure."

Nemerson eyed him hostilely and said, "I like to think I have some good points that she values. —Anyway, eventually it was time to leave. Manny had made it plain I was expected to be on time, and I intended to be. There was the umbrella on the kitchen table right where I'd put it and I was about to leave, when Marilyn suggested I help myself to a nice cold beer before going out into the steam. I looked at my watch and decided I had time for one beer if I didn't waste time over it. It was a nice thought, but it disrupted my attention to my umbrella.

"After the beer, Marilyn walked me to the elevator, just ten yards down the corridor. We kissed, and I turned away, but even before the elevator arrived I turned back to her and said, 'I forgot my umbrella.'

"I guess I looked perturbed because she said, 'Well, don't throw a fit, no one's stolen it.'

"Back we went to her apartment. I knew quite well I'd left it on the kitchen table. I'd seen it there when I stopped for the beer and I could have sworn I'd picked it up, but I must have been mistaken—I certainly didn't have it with me. But it wasn't on the kitchen table, either.

"That was a terrible blow. I'd seen it there not ten minutes earlier. The breath just went out of me. Marilyn said, 'It must be
somewhere.'

"I said, 'I put it right here.'

"She said, 'I know, but you must have picked it up and put it somewhere else without thinking.'

"That seemed possible, so we went over her apartment. It isn't a large one. She has a living room, with an alcove serving as a bedroom, plus a bathroom, a small kitchen near the front door, and two sizable closets. It's all simply furnished and there aren't many places where the umbrella wouldn't have stood out easily. And I looked everywhere. I even moved the couch to look behind it and under it, moved all the cushions on the couch and the two chairs, looked on all the shelves of both closets, moving things to make sure it hadn't fallen behind. I went through the bathroom and the kitchen, poked into all the corners. I spent half an hour on it, which made me late here, and I tell you frankly I was in such a rage I almost didn't come at all.

"The point is, it was nowhere, absolutely nowhere, yet I'd seen it on the kitchen table not long before I left.

"Marilyn was no help. She's the one who said, finally, T guess it must have dropped through one of those space warps you write about.' She may have thought that was funny, but I didn't think so. Anyway, I bought a cheap umbrella at the corner store, got a taxi, and here I am. And that's the story of my umbrella and the space warp."

There was a short pause after Nemerson had done speaking and then Trumbull said, "I would suggest an easy solution. You left the apartment with the umbrella and dropped it in the corridor on your way to the elevator. You didn't notice, and someone came along, spied a poor orphan umbrella, and adopted it out of the kindness ol his heart."

"No,"
said Nemerson savagely. "In the first place, I didn't drop any umbrella, and if I had it would have made a noise. In the second, I said there was only a ten-yard stretch between Marilyn's apartment door and the elevator bank. It's a straight ten-yard stretch and there was no one else in the corridor when we went to the elevator or when we returned. We would, without fail, have seen anyone who passed.

"And if you think that I would be so lost in a passionate kiss at the elevator that I'd remain unaware of someone's approach, think again. Quite the reverse, I don't intend to be caught in such an
interlude and I keep my eyes open. And on the way back to the apartment, I scanned the corridor floor and there was nothing there. A black folding umbrella would have stood out—the corridor's well lit, the carpeting is pale blue, and there are no crannies into which it could have rolled, even if it could roll, which it couldn't."

"You know," said Avalon, attempting to make his baritone voice soothing, "all of us have undoubtedly lost items in our own offices that seem to have dropped through a space warp. I once had a thin pamphlet I used regularly for the reference information it contained. I was using it once on my desk when it disappeared. I ransacked my office as you ransacked your fiancée’s apartment before I, too, had to give up. And then one day, two years afterward, I pulled a reference book from the shelf—one that I rarely used. It fell open and there, nestled among its pages, was my long-lost pamphlet. I'd mindlessly used it as a bookmark in the reference book, and when I cleared the reference book off my desk and put it in its place on the shelf I unwittingly carried off the pamphlet with it. If I'd never used the reference book again, I'd never have found the pamphlet, and its disappearance would have remained a mystery to this day."

Nemerson said, "Fine, but my umbrella wasn't a small piece of cardboard that could find its way into all sorts of random places. It was a compact black cylinder ten inches long or so, and about two inches thick. —You know what I think? I think it was something Marilyn arranged."

"How?" asked Gonzalo.

"How do I know how? She gave it to a neighbor to hold for her, or she threw it out the window. What's the difference how? The point is that if she did this as her idea of something funny, then I won't take it. And I won't take
her
if that's her idea of a joke. Life with her would be unbearable if I had to watch out forever for this sort of thing."

Halsted said, "Aren't you being a bit unreasonable, Gary? You say yourself you saw the umbrella on the kitchen table not ten
minutes before you left. What could she have done in those last ten minutes? Dashed to the window? Run out the door to a neighbor's? Surely you'd have noticed any such thing if it had happened."

Nemerson was silent.

Drake said, "Roger's making a good point, Gary. Did you notice your fiancée doing
anything
unusual in the ten minutes between your last seeing the umbrella and your leaving the apartment?"

"No," said Nemerson reluctantly, "I didn't. But that doesn't mean she didn't do something. I wasn't watching her lynx-eyed. She might have done something none of us has thought of. She
must
have done something—unless there really
is
such a thing as a space warp."

Henry cleared his throat. "Mr. Nemerson, may I have your permission to ask you a few questions?"

Nemerson s face lifted in clear antagonism and Rubin said hastily, "It's all right, Gary. Henry is a member of the Black Widowers."

"The waiter?" said Nemerson, astonished.

"An esteemed member," said Rubin firmly.

"If that's the case," said Nemerson, "go ahead and ask, waiter."

Henry said, "Thank you, sir. My first question is this. Is your fiancée eating out tonight?"

Nemerson looked confused. "Eating out?"

"Yes, sir."

"I'm not sure. No, of course I'm sure. She was complaining about my going out. You see, I couldn't have brought her with me, as I most certainly would have tried to do ordinarily, because Manny told me this was a strictly stag organization."

There was a general murmur of assent from the Black Widowers.

"Well, that didn't make me exactly popular with Marilyn. She claimed that if I weren't a male chauvinist pig I wouldn't accept an invitation to a stag dinner. Naturally, I didn't see that— Come to think of it, I wonder if that's why she played the trick on me.

Huh, with that kind of desire for petty revenge, the marriage would never work."

Henry said, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Nemerson, but it has by no means been established that your fiancée was responsible for the disappearance of the umbrella."

Nemerson said, "I'm sure she was."

Henry said, "With all due respect, that is a conclusion based on emotion and not on logic. But I am asking if she was going out to dinner."

"Well, she complained that while I was dining out sumptuously, she would have to 'pig out'—her phrase, not mine—on a tuna fish salad. I imagine she was just saying that to make me feel guilty."

"Are you saying that she may simply have pretended she would have a tuna fish salad in order to play the martyr but that she would actually dine out?"

"No, I don't think so," said Nemerson thoughtfully. "She doesn't like dining out alone. She's not
that
much of a feminist. I'm sure she would be eating at home."

"Then she would be home right now?"

"I'm sure of it."

Henry said, "I have another question. Does she know where you've gone for dinner?"

"Of course. I told you I told her I was dining with the Black Widowers. And I told her what little I knew of the club—what Manny had told me."

"Yes, but did she know to which restaurant you were coming? Did you tell her you were dining at the Milano?"

Nemerson reflected. "No, I didn't mention that. I guess I didn't want her coming to the restaurant, finding an adjoining table, and making faces at us. I didn't know we'd have a private room."

"Then if she wanted to call you right now, there would be no way she could, is that right?"

"I suppose that's right. But why should she want to call me?"
Henry said, "It is my feeling, sir, that after you left, she found the umbrella—and would certainly have called you at once with the news had she known where to call."

Nemerson pressed his lips together, then said unforgivingly, "If she were to say she found it, it would be because she knew all along what she had done with it."

"I don't believe that is the case, sir. I believe I know where the umbrella is and how it got there. I have written down one word on this piece of folded notepaper, which I will ask Mr. Rubin to hold for me. If you will be so kind as to phone your fiancée—and if she tells you she has found it, and if the manner of her finding it matches the word I have written down, then she is quite innocent of your suspicions and the matter explains itself."

Nemerson stared at Henry, then said, "I don't know what this mumbo-jumbo is all about, but I'll call Marilyn."

He rose and went to the wall phone. "I suppose I may use this?"

"Yes, sir," said Henry. "Dial nine first."