"No, sir," said Henry calmly.
Geoffrey Avalon had reduced his second drink to the halfway point and swirled it absently. "After last month's tale about his murdered sister, it could be that he didn't--"
He did not complete the sentence, but put down his glass carefully at the seat he intended to take. The monthly banquet of the Black Widowers was about to begin.
Trumbull, who was host, took the armchair at the head of the table and said, "Have you got them all straight, Voss? At my left is James Drake. He's a chemist and knows more about pulp fiction than about chemistry, and that probably isn't much. Then Geoffrey Avalon, a lawyer who never sees the inside of a courtroom; Emmanuel Rubin, who writes in between talking, which is practically never; and Roger Halsted… Roger, you're not inflicting another limerick on us this session, are you?"
"A limerick?" said Trumbull's guest, speaking for the first time. It was a pleasant voice, light and yet rich, with all consonants carefully pronounced. He had a white beard, evenly cut from temple to temple, and white hair, too. His youthful face shone pinkly within its fence of white.
"A poet, then?"
"A poet?" snorted Trumbull. "Not even a mathematician, which is what he claims to be. He insists on writing a limerick for every book of the Iliad."
"And Odyssey," said Halsted, in his soft, hurried voice. "But, yes, I have my limerick."
"Good! It's out of order," said Trumbull. "You are not to read it. Host's privilege."
"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Avalon, the flat lines of his well-preserved face set in disappointment. "Let him recite the poor thing. It takes thirty seconds and I find it fun."
Trumbull pretended not to hear. "You've all got it straight about my guest now? He's Dr. Voss Eldridge. He's a Ph.D. So is Drake, Voss. We're all doctors, though, by virtue of membership in the Black Widowers." He then raised his glass, gave the monthly invocation to Old King Cole, and the meal was officially begun.
Halsted, who had been whispering to Drake, passed a paper to him. Drake rose and declaimed:
"Next a Lycian attempted a ruse
With an arrow-permitted by Zeus.
Who will trust Trojan candor, as
This sly deed of Pandoras
Puts an end to the scarce-proclaimed truce?"
"Damn it," said Trumbull. "I ruled against reading it."
"Against my reading it," said Halsted. "Drake read it."
"It's disappointing not to have Mario here," said Avalon. "He would ask what it means."
"Go ahead, Jeff," said Rubin. "I'll pretend I don't understand it and you explain."
But Avalon maintained a dignified silence while Henry presented the appetizer and Rubin fixed it with his usual suspicious stare.
"I hate stuff," he said, "that's so chopped up and drowned in goop that you can't see what the ingredients are."
Henry said, "I think you'll find it quite wholesome."
"Try it; you'll like it," said Avalon.
Rubin tried it, but his face showed no signs of liking it. It was noted later, however, that he had finished it.
Dr. Eldridge said, "Is there a necessity of explaining these limericks, Dr. Avalon? Are there tricks to them?"
"No, not at all, and don't bother with the doctorate. That's only for formal occasions, though it's good of you to humor the club idiosyncrasy. It's just that Mario has never read the Iliad; few have, these days."
"Pandarus, as I recall, was a go-between and gives us the word 'pander.' That, I take it, was the sly deed mentioned in the limerick."
"Oh, no, no," said Avalon, unsuccessfully hiding his delight. "You're thinking now of the medieval Troilus tale, which Shakespeare drew on for his Troilus and Cres-sida. Pandarus was the go-between there. In the Iliad he was merely a Lycian archer who shot at Menelaus during a truce. That was the sly deed. He is killed in the next book by the Greek warrior Diomedes."
"Ah," said Eldridge, smiling faintly, "it's easy to be fooled, isn't it?"
"If you want to be," said Rubin, but he smiled as the London broil arrived. There was no mistaking the nature of the components there. He buttered a roll and ate it as though to give himself time to contemplate the beauty of the meat.
"As a matter of fact," said Halsted, "we've solved quite a few puzzles in recent meetings. We did well."
"We did lousy," said Trumbull. "Henry is the one who did well."
"I include Henry when I say 'we,' " said Halsted, his fair face flushing.
"Henry?" asked Eldridge.
"Our esteemed waiter," said Trumbull, "and honorary member of the Black Widowers."
Henry, who was filling the water glasses, said, "You honor me, sir."
"Honor, hell. I wouldn't come to any meeting if you weren't taking care of the table, Henry."
"Its good of you to say so, sir."
Eldridge remained thoughtfully quiet thereafter, as he followed the tide of conversation that, as was usual, grew steadily in intensity. Drake was making some obscure distinction between Secret Agent X and Operator 5, and Rubin, for some reason known only to himself, was disputing the point.
Drake, whose slightly hoarse voice never rose, said, "Operator 5 may have used disguises. I won't deny that. It was Secret Agent X, however, who was 'the man of a thousand faces.' I can send you a Xerox of a contents page of a magazine from my library to prove it." He made a note to himself in his memo book.
Rubin, scenting defeat, shifted ground at once. "There's no such thing as a disguise, anyway. There are a million things no one can disguise, idiosyncrasies of stance, walk, voice; a million habits you can't change because you don't even know you have them. A diguise works only because no one looks."
"People fool themselves, in other words," said Eldridge, breaking in.
"Absolutely," said Rubin. "People want to be fooled."
The ice-cream parfait was brought in, and not long after that, Trumbull struck his water glass with his spoon.
"Inquisition time," he said. "As Grand Inquisitor I pass, since I'm the host. Manny, will you do the honors?"
Rubin said, at once, "Dr. Eldridge, how do you justify the fact of your existence?"
"By the fact that I labor to distinguish truth from folly."
"Do you consider that you succeed in doing so?"
"Not as often as I wish, perhaps. And yet as often as most. To distinguish truth from folly is a common desire; we all try our hands at it. My interpretation of Pandarus' deed in Halsted's limerick was folly and Avalon corrected me. The common notion of disguise you claimed to be folly and you corrected it. When I find folly, I try to correct it, if I can. It's not always easy."
"What is your form of folly correction, Eldridge? How would you describe your profession?"
"I am," said Eldridge, "Associate Professor of Abnormal Psychology."
"Where do you…?" began Rubin.
Avalon interrupted, his deep voice dominating, "Sorry, Manny, but I smell an evasion. You asked Dr. Eldridge's profession and he gave you a title… What do you do Dr. Eldridge, to occupy your time most significantly?"
"I investigate parapsychological phenomena," said Eldridge.
"Oh, God," muttered Drake, and stubbed out his cigarette.
Eldridge said, "You disapprove of that, sir?" There was no sign of annoyance on his face. He turned to Henry and said, "No, thank you, Henry, I've had enough coffee," with perfect calmness.
Henry passed on to Rubin, who was holding his cup in the air as a signal of its emptiness.
"It's not a question of approval or disapproval," said Drake. "I think you're wasting your time."
"In what way?"
"You investigate telepathy, precognition, things like that?"
"Yes. And ghosts and spiritual phenomena, too."
"All right. Have you ever come across something you couldn't explain?"