Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 59, No. 1. Whole No. 338, January 1972
The Acquisitive Chuckle
by Isaac Asimov{©1971 by Isaac Asimov.}
The first of a brand-new series — about the Black Widowers and the piquant problems that challenged them monthly… In this opening adventure Bartram, the private detective, tells the Black Widowers the details of an old case that the detective had never been able to solve. Could the five members — patent lawyer Geoffrey Avalon, code expert Thomas Trumbull, writer Emmanuel Rubin, organic chemist James Drake, and artist Mario Gonzalo — could they solve the mystery?… Can you?
Hanley Bartram was the guest, that night, of the Black Widowers, who met monthly in their quiet haunt and vowed death to any female who intruded — for that one night each month, at any rate.
The number of attendees varied: on this occasion five members were present.
Geoffrey Avalon was host for the evening. He was tall, with a neatly trimmed mustache and a smallish beard, more white than black now, but with hair as black as ever.
As host it was his duty to deliver the ritual toast that marked the beginning of the dinner proper. Loudly, and with gusto, he said, “To Old King Cole of sacred memory. May his pipe be forever lit, his bowl forever full, his fiddlers forever in health, and may we all be as merry as he all our lives long.”
The six cried “Amen,” touched lips to drink, and sat down. Avalon put his drink to the side of his plate. It was his second and was now exactly half full. It would remain there throughout the dinner and not be touched again. He was a patent lawyer and he carried over into his social life the minutiae of his work. One and one-half drinks was precisely what he allowed himself on these occasions.
Thomas Trumbull came storming up the stairs at the last minute, with his usual cry of “Henry, a Scotch and soda for a dying man!”
Henry, the waiter at these functions for several years now (and with no last name that any Black Widower had ever heard used), had the Scotch and soda ready. He was sixtyish but his face was unwrinkled and staid. His voice seemed to recede into the distance even as he spoke. “Right here, Mr. Trumbull.”
Trumbull spotted Bartram at once and said to Avalon in an aside, “Your guest?”
“He asked to come,” said Avalon, in as near a whisper as he could manage. “Nice fellow. You’ll like him.”
The dinner itself went as miscellaneously as the Black Widowers’ affairs usually did. Emmanuel Rubin, who had the other beard — a thin and scraggly one under a mouth with widely spaced teeth — had broken out of a writer’s block and was avidly giving the details of the story he had just finished. James Drake, with a rectangular face, a mustache but no beard, was interrupting with memories of other stories, tangentially related. Drake was an organic chemist but he had an encyclopedic knowledge of pulp fiction.
Trumbull, as a code expert, considered himself to be in the inner councils of government and took it into his head to be outraged at Mario Gonzalo’s political pronouncements. “Damn it,” he yelled, in one of his less vituperative moods, “why don’t you stick to your idiotic collages and burlap bags and leave world affairs to your betters?”
Trumbull had not recovered from Gonzalo’s one-man art show earlier that year, and Gonzalo, understanding this, laughed good-naturedly, saying, “Show me my betters. Name one.”
Bartram, short and plump, with hair that curled in tiny ringlets, clung firmly to his role as guest. He listened to everyone, smiled at everyone, and said little.
Eventually the time came when Henry poured the coffee and placed the desserts before each guest with practised legerdemain. It was at this moment that the traditional grilling of the guest usually began.
The first interrogator, almost by tradition, was Thomas Trumbull. His swarthy face, wrinkled into perennial discontent, looked angry as he began with the invariable opening question: “Mr. Bartram, how do you justify your existence?”
Bartram smiled. He spoke with precision as he said, “I have never tried. My clients, on those occasions when I give satisfaction, find my existence justified.”
“Your clients?” said Rubin. “What is it you do, sir?”
“I am a private detective.”
“Good,” said James Drake. “I don’t think we’ve ever had one before. — Mannie, you can get some of the procedures correct for a change when you write your private-eye stuff.”
“Not from me,” Bartram said quickly.
Trumbull scowled. “If you don’t mind, gentlemen, as the appointed grillster please leave this to me. — Mr. Bartram, you speak of the occasions on which you give satisfaction. Do you always give satisfaction?”
“There are times when the matter can be debated,” said Bartram. “In fact, I would like to speak to you this evening concerning an occasion that was particularly questionable. It may even be that one of you might be useful in that connection. It was with this in mind that I asked my good friend, Jeff Avalon, to invite me to a meeting, once I learned the details of your organization. He obliged and I am delighted.”
“Are you ready now to discuss this dubious satisfaction you gave or did not give, as the case may be?”
“Yes, if you will allow me.”
Trumbull looked at the others for signs of dissent. Gonzalo’s prominent eyes were fixed on Bartram as he said, “May we interrupt?” Quickly, and with an admirable economy of strokes, he was doodling a caricature of Bartram on the back of a menu card. It would join the others which memorialized guests and which marched in brave array across the walls.
“Within reason,” said Bartram. He paused to sip at his coffee and then said, “The story begins with Anderson, to whom I shall refer only in that fashion. He was an acquisitor.”
“An inquisitor?” Gonzalo asked, frowning.
“An acquisitor. He acquired things, he earned them, he bought them, he picked them up, he collected them. The world moved in one direction with respect to him — it moved toward him, never away. He had a house into which this flood of material, of varying value, came to rest and never moved again. Through the years it grew steadily thicker and more amazingly heterogeneous. — He also had a business partner, whom I shall call Jackson.”
Trumbull interrupted, frowning, not because there was anything to frown about, but because he always frowned. He said, “Is this a true story?”
“I tell only true stories,” Bartram said slowly and precisely. “I lack the imagination to lie.”
“Is it confidential?”
“I shall tell the story in such a way as to make it difficult to be recognized; but if it were recognized, it would be confidential.”
“I follow the subjunctive,” said Trumbull, “but I wish to assure you that what is said within the walls of this room is never repeated, or referred to, outside its walls. Henry understands this, too.”
Henry, who was refilling two of the coffee cups, smiled a little and bent his head in agreement.
Bartram smiled also and went on, “Jackson had a disease, too. He was honest, unavoidably and deeply honest. The characteristic permeated his soul as though, from an early age, he had been marinated in integrity.
“To a man like Anderson it was most useful to have Honest Jackson as a partner, for their business, which I carefully do not describe in detail, required contact with the public. Such contact was not for Anderson, for his acquisitiveness stood in the way. With each object he acquired, another little crease of slyness entered his face, until it seemed a spider’s web that frightened all flies at sight. It was Jackson, the pure and the honest, who was the front man, and to whom all widows hastened with their mites, and orphans with their farthings.