Aha!
Isaac Asimov
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«It’s got to be written by August, Darius.»
«That’s your problem. If nothing comes of this, you’ll have to work on the plot you’ve already made up. You’ll be no worse off than you were ten minutes ago.»
«Well, go ahead. What do you want to know about the autographing session?»
«When did Giles arrive at the session?»
«He came about five to eleven. I was there, seated and waiting. I believe in being early, damn it. I figure, what the hell, if people are kind enough to—»
«I know,» I said. «But he wasn’t late, was he?»
«About five minutes before, as I said.»
«Who was it who brought him in?»
«Brought him in?» Asimov looked blank.
«Some woman dragged him in and made sure he was on time. I was told that.» (I still didn’t remember who told me that, but I was sure of the fact.)
He shook his head. «I didn’t notice anyone.»
I said impatiently, «Well, then, what kind of mood was he in? How annoyed was he? Was he shouting?»
Asimov looked blank again. «I didn’t hear anything. Listen, there were a hundred people crowding round me and I was thoroughly occupied. There was the little dame showing up at the last minute and apologizing.»
«I remember,» I said in annoyance. «Go on.»
«So Giles wasn’t of great interest to me. I became aware of him sitting down at the other end of the stage about ten feet to my left. I shouted, ‘Hi, Giles,’ and he looked at me with one of his basset-hound expressions. He struck me as being angry but there was no time to weigh and analyze his expression and my impression. They were waiting for me to sign and I had two hundred and fifty or so copies of Before the Golden Age, Volume Two, to hand out.»
«But he did make a fuss eventually, didn’t he?»
«Oh yes, I couldn’t miss that. For one thing, he stopped signing and that meant there was a pile-up. After all, everyone who got my signature passed on to get Giles’s. When Giles stopped signing, the line stopped moving.»
«Did you know what was wrong?»
«Not right away. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ and someone in the line said that Mr. Devore’s pen had ran out of ink and I said I had a spare—you know, anything to get the line moving—but someone else gave him a pen, and then that ran out of ink—»
«Again?»
«Oh yes, twice in five minutes. Then Nellie Griswold of Hercules Books ran over with a pen and there was a little mix-up there of some sort and then everything settled down and that was it.»
«And what about Giles? I presume he was swearing at me?»
«No. I didn’t hear him swearing at you. Why should he swear at you?»
«Damn it, Isaac. He gave me a ticket to get a package for him out of the cloakroom, with a supply of pens in it, and I never got it for him. That’s the errand I failed to run. That’s where I messed him up. And he didn’t say a word about that?»
«Not that I heard. But I see now why you’re feeling bad about this. Why the hell didn’t he hand over the ticket to someone who was reliable?»
«You walked out on us, for one thing, if you’re talking about yourself… The hell with it. What you’re saying, Isaac, is that the whole fuss, all of it, was over pens running out of ink. Nothing else was involved at all? At all?»
«Not as far as I know.»
«I want something else to be wrong. Something else that I’m not responsible for.»
«I can’t help you. I told you all I know.» Asimov had signed the check, signed the credit-card slip, put away his credit card. He was clearly getting ready to leave. He said, «I wish I could do the dramatic thing. I wish that at the last minute I could remember something for you, some little apparently unimportant event that would break the whole case, but I can’t do it. But why should that bother you? I was ten feet away and completely busy with my own signings. I’m not your best witness. Why not ask what’s-her-name?»
«Nellie Griswold?»
«No. I mean, you can ask her if you want to, but that’s not the one.» He snapped his fingers. «I hate to forget anything. I’m always afraid that it might be the first sign of approaching senility.»
I tried to be helpful. «Eunice? What would she know?»
«Not Eunice! Damn it, the woman who’s your editor, too. The gal from Prism Press, what’s-her-name.»
«Teresa?»
«Teresa Valier. That’s it.»
I was surprised. «What’s she got to do with it?»
Asimov stood up. «She was sitting next to him, opening the books to the title page and handing them over for him to sign.» He looked aggrieved. «No one did that for me. I had to fumble the pages of two hundred and fifty books and sign them, too.»
I said the natural thing. «Why the hell didn’t you tell me this in the first place?»
He gave me the natural answer. «I assumed you knew.»
How could he assume I knew that if I hadn’t been there?
There was no point fighting over that, however. I looked at my watch and it was well past two.
Asimov said, «Will you be seeing her? Do you want me to come along?»
«I may see her. But if I do, then—no, I don’t want you along.»
He shrugged. I guess he didn’t really want to be involved and his momentary urge toward active Watson-dom abated.
So we separated and I didn’t see him again during what remained of the convention.
8 TERESA VALIER 2:20 P.M.
It was twenty after two, which was borderline. Teresa might be back from lunch or she might not—or she might not have come to work today—or she might be at the convention, though I doubted that strongly, not if she had gone home with a sick headache after she had heard of Giles’s death.
But I was only two blocks from the Prism Press offices and it was home away from home for me, anyhow. Why not walk over?
I did and found myself playing in luck. The elevator door was closing as I walked into the building, but the elevator operator knew me well, and having caught a glimpse of me through the closing door, opened it again. When I walked in, I found Teresa there.
Her loud, glad greeting was a little less loud and a lot less glad than usual and when I said, «I’ve got to have ten minutes, Terry—it’s about Giles,» it got dramatically less glad still. In fact, when we got off at the eighteenth floor, she was crying as she rushed past a startled receptionist.
I followed quickly. «Come on, Terry, they’ll think I made a pass at you.»
«I don’t cry over passes,» she said, «and I don’t want to talk about Giles, Darius.»
«Please, just a little,» I said. We were in her office but we hadn’t dashed in so quickly that I had lacked the time to note that Tom was not in his office—which was good. I didn’t want him to interfere.
I closed the office door. «Come on, Teresa. I’ve got to know what happened.»
«What’s to know? He fell and was killed and I just hate people I know dying—especially when I’ve been hating them before they died. It makes me feel so—damned responsible.»
The tears were still rolling and she was snatching paper tissues out of a box on her desk.
I felt distressed for her sake. «I mean what happened at the autographing session? That’s what I’ve got to know.»
Then desperately, «Don’t cry, Teresa, don’t cry. If you just talk to me, I promise that you’ll see it was my fault, not yours.»
«Your fault? You had nothing to do with it.»
«You heard Giles say it was my fault, didn’t you?»
She was looking at me suspiciously now, eyes still shining, but not actually overflowing. She said, «He didn’t say anything at all about you. What are you talking about? Unless it was while I was gone.»