Then the Pied Piper took up his flute and played very softly until the boy fell asleep.
A Matter of Irrelevance
by Isaac Asimov[10]
The Black Widowers grill a high-school principal with one of the most interesting postprandial problems ever presented to this remarkable club and to its discreet and unobtrusive waiter, Henry the Infallible. Who said the art of conversation was dead? Not when it involves juvenile delinquency, a letter containing an impenetrable (except to Henry) message, and a $5 grudge bet...
“I think,” said Mario Gonzalo, “that I know Henry’s secret — how he gets the answer when we don’t.” He nodded in the direction of the waiter, who was quietly serving the drinks that were prelude to the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers.
James Drake stubbed out his cigarette and said, “I’ve known it all along. He’s smarter than we are.”
“Sure,” said Gonzalo, flicking tobacco ash from the sleeve of his velvet jacket and helping himself to some Brie on a cracker; “but being smarter isn’t enough.”
“Being dumber isn’t enough, either,” broke in Emmanuel Rubin, glowering through his thick-lensed glasses, “so what good will the secret do you, Mario?”
“Being really dumb,” said Gonzalo coolly, “is to be afraid to listen for fear of learning something. So I suppose you’re not interested, Manny.”
“What, and miss a good laugh?” said Rubin. “Go ahead, Mario.”
Geoffrey Avalon, having accepted his drink from Henry, approached and said, “A good laugh about what?”
“About Mario’s idea as to how Henry manages to come up with solutions,” said Rubin. “Henry, you can listen, too. Mario knows your secret.”
Henry smiled discreetly. “I have made no secret of what I do. The gentlemen of the Black Widowers analyze the problems carefully, remove all the useless adornments, and leave a plain picture for me to describe.”
“Not at all,” said Gonzalo, “not at all. You must say that to throw us off. The secret is — irrelevance!”
There was a short pause. Then Rubin’s scanty beard bristled and he said in high-pitched disbelief, “Is that what I’m supposed to listen to so that I can learn something?”
“Sure,” said Gonzalo. “We’re all of us reasoning men — even you sometimes, Manny — and we try to solve any little puzzle presented to us by catching at all the relevant angles. But if it were the relevant matters that mattered, so to speak, there’d be no puzzle. Anyone would then see the answer. It’s Henry’s trick of seeing the irrelevant that gives him the answer.”
Drake said, “This is a contradiction in terms, Mario. Something that is irrelevant has nothing to do—”
Gonzalo interposed patiently, “Something that seems irrelevant but isn’t. We see that it seems irrelevant; Henry sees that it really isn’t irrelevant. Right, Henry?”
Henry’s unlined face showed no expression beyond a general benevolence. “It is certainly an interesting suggestion,” he said.
Avalon drew his formidable eyebrows together. “It is surely more than that, Mario. Henry sees what we do not, because he looks clearly at life while the rest of us do not have his direct and simple honesty and are not capable of doing so. Even if you were to see what Henry does, you would not get the answer.”
Gonzalo said, “I bet I can. Five dollars says that if there’s a puzzle today, I’ll use Henry’s technique and get the answer before he does.”
“You’re on,” said Rubin at once.
“Good,” said Mario. “Jeff, you hold the stakes. But remember, no bet if there’s no problem.”
Drake said, “Oh, there’ll be a problem. Personally, I think we’re each of us deliberately choosing our guests just for their problems.”
“And yet perhaps not this time,” said Avalon, “since the guest has not arrived — nor tonight’s host, either, unless the steps on the stairs— No, it’s Tom.”
Thomas Trumbull’s white and crisply waved hair made its appearance, followed quickly by the rest of his body as he mounted the stairs.
He said, “If you’re worried about the host’s whereabouts, Jeff, Roger Halsted’s just arrived downstairs with a stranger who, I presume, is our guest for tonight. I raced ahead since I am a dying man who needs a dr— Ah, thank you, Henry.”
Gonzalo had taken his seat next to Halsted, and spreading out his napkin with a practiced flick, said, “We almost thought we would have to start without a host or guest, Roger. What happened? Decided you couldn’t stand the expense?”
Halsted reddened and his mild stutter seemed a shade more pronounced. “Not my fault really. Burry was delayed — Dan Burry, my guest. His phone rang just as I was picking him up and he grew very upset. I couldn’t very well press him too hard and urge him to hang up. For a while, in fact, I thought I’d have to leave without him.”
“What was it about, do you know? The phone call, I mean.”
Halsted looked in the direction of his guest. “I don’t know. Something involving one of his students. He’s a school principal, you know.”
“Your school?”
“No, but why don’t you save your questions for the grilling?”
“Do you mind letting me start it?”
“Not at all,” and Halsted turned his attention to the crabmeat soup.
Dan Burry was a rather large man with dark hair as crisply waved as Trumbull’s and with a brief mustache of the kind Adolf Hitler had put out of fashion for at least a generation. His jowled face bore a worried look and he tackled his roast duck with an enthusiasm dulled by absence of mind.
He did not participate in the general conversation and seemed to listen only distantly as Rubin and Drake debated the respective value of nuclear fusion and solar power as the ultimate energy source.
He seemed unprepared, therefore, for the suddenness with which the focus of attention suddenly shifted. While Henry freshened the coffee and produced brandy, Gonzalo said, “Mr. Burry, how do you justify your existence?”
Burry looked at Gonzalo with what seemed a momentary flash of indignation but then muttered in a depressed sort of way, “Ah, yes, Roger warned me that there would be a question-and-answer period.”
“Yes,” said Gonzalo, “and in return for the dinner you are expected to answer frankly and fully, under terms of strict confidentiality, of course. So — how do you justify your existence?”
Burry said, “I try to maintain the kind of atmosphere and organization at a city high school in which at least some of the student body can gain an education and a respect for learning. That is justification enough, I think, whenever I succeed.”
“Do you succeed often?”
“Not often.”
Avalon cleared his throat. “The education of the young of any species begins with discipline.”
“Those who believe so,” said Burry, “all too frequently believe it ends with discipline, too, and confuse the purpose of a school with the purpose of a prison.”
Gonzalo said, “I understand that just as you were leaving for dinner tonight you received an unsettling phone call. Did that involve school business?”
Burry cast a hard glance in Halsted’s direction. Halsted reddened and said, “I was explaining why we were late, Dan.”