Tales of the Black Widowers - Asimov Isaac. Страница 43

"Oh, I won't mind," said Atwood cheerfully. His eyes darted from one to the other. "I warn you that it isn't much of a mystery-except that I don't know what to make of it."

"Well, we might not know, either," said Gonzalo, touching his brandy to his lips.

Drake, who was nursing the remains of a cold and who had to cut down on his smoking in consequence, stubbed out a half-finished cigarette morosely, and said, "We'll never know if we don't hear what it is." He blew his nose into a bright red handkerchief and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

"Won't you go on, Mr. Atwood?" said Trumbull. "And let's have some silence from the rest of you."

Atwood folded his hands on the edge of the table almost as though he were back in grade school, and a formal intonation colored his words. He was reciting.

"This all involves my friend Lyon Sanders, who was, like myself, a retired civil engineer. We had never actually worked together but we had been neighbors for a quarter-century and were very close. I am a bachelor; he was a childless widower; and we both led lives that might, superficially, have seemed lonely. Neither of us was, however, for we had each carved out a comfortable niche.

"I myself have written a text on civil engineering which has had some success and for some years I have been preparing a rather elaborate, if informal, tale of my experiences in the field. I doubt that it will ever be published but, of course, if it is-

"But that's beside the point. Sanders was a more aggressive person by far than ever 1 was; louder; more raucous; with a rather coarse sense of humor. He was a games person-"

Rubin interrupted. "A sports enthusiast?"

"No, no. Indoor games. I believe he knew and could play well every card game ever invented. He could play anything else, too, that used counters, pointers, dice boards, cups, anything. He was a master at Chinese checkers, parcheesi, backgammon, Monopoly, checkers, chess, go, three-dimensional ticktacktoe. 1 couldn't even tell you the names of most of the games he played.

"He read books on the subject and he invented games himself. Some were clever and I would suggest he patent them and place them on the market. But that was not what he wanted at all. It was only his own amusement that interested him. That was where I came in, you see. I was what he sharpened his analyses on."

Trumbull said, "In what way?"

"Well," said Atwood, "when I say he played those games, I do not mean in the ordinary sense of the word. He analyzed them carefully, almost as though they involved engineering principles-"

"They do," said Rubin suddenly. "Any decent game can be analyzed mathematically. There's a whole field of recreational mathematics."

"I know this," Atwood managed to interpose gently, "but I don't know that Sanders went at it in any orthodox manner. He never offered to explain it to me and I never bothered to ask.

"Our routine over the last twenty years was to spend the weekend at the games, applying what had been learned over the week, for often he would spend time teaching me. Not out of any urge to educate, you understand, but merely to make the game more interesting for

himself by improving the opposition. We might play bridge ten weeks running, then switch to gin rummy, then to something in which I had to match numbers he thought of. Naturally, he almost always won."

Drake looked at an unlit cigarette as though he wished it would light itself and said, "Didn't that depress you?"

"Not really. It was fun trying to beat him and sometimes I did. I beat him just often enough to keep up my interest."

"Do you suppose he let you win?" said Gonzalo.

"I doubt it. My victories would always either enrage or chagrin him and they would send him into a fury of further analyses. 1 think he enjoyed it a little, too, for when he had too long a string of unbroken victories he would start educating me. It was a strange relationship but it worked. We were very fond of each other."

"Were?" asked Avalon.

"Yes," sighed Atwood. "He died six months ago. It was no great shock. We both saw it coming. Of course, I miss him dreadfully. The weekends are quite empty now. I even miss the rowdy way in which he poked fun at me. He bullied me constantly. He never wearied of making fun of me for being a teetotaler and he never stopped teasing me about my religion."

"He was an atheist?" asked Gonzalo.

"Not particularly. In fact, neither of us went to church often. It's just that he was brought up one brand of Protestant and I another. He called mine high-church and found nothing so humorous as to tease me over the elaborateness of the worship I skipped every Sunday in comparison to the simplicity of the worship he skipped every Sunday."

Trumbull frowned. "I should think that would annoy you. Didn't you ever feel like taking a poke at him?"

"Never. It was just his way," said Atwood. "Nor need you think that poor Lyon's death was in the least suspicious. You needn't search for any motives of that kind. He died at the age of sixty-eight of complications from a mi!d but long-standing case of diabetes.

"He had said that he was going to leave me something in his will. He expected to die before I did, you see, and he said it was to compensate me for my patience in accepting defeat. Actually, I'm sure it was out of affection, but he would be the last to admit that.

"It was only in the last year before his death, when he knew he was failing, that this began to enter into our conversations. Naturally I protested that this was no fit subject for talk and that he merely made me uncomfortable. But he laughed one time and said, 'I won't make it easy for you, you genuflecting idol worshipper.' You see, just thinking about him makes me fall into his way of talking. I don't know that that's exactly what he called me at this time, but it was something. Anyway, leaving out the epithets, he said, 'I won't make it easy for you. We'll be playing games to the end.'

"He said that on what turned out to be his deathbed. I was all he had, except for the various hospital personnel that hovered about impersonally. He had distant relatives, but none of them visited. Then late in the evening, when I wondered if I ought to leave and return the next morning, he turned his head to me and said in a voice that seemed almost normal, The curious omission in Alice.'

"Naturally, I said, 'What?'

"But he laughed very weakly and said, That's all you get, old friend, all you get.' And his eyes closed, and he was dead."

Rubin said, "A dying hint!"

Avalon said, "You say his voice was clear?"

"Quite clear," said Atwood.

"And you heard him plainly?"

"Quite plainly," said Atwood.

"You sure he didn't say, The curious admission of Wallace'?"

Gonzalo said, "Or The furious decision in Dallas.' "

Atwood said, "Please, I haven't finished the story. I was at the reading of the will. I was asked to be. Also present were several of the distant relatives who hadn't visited poor Lyon. There were cousins and a young grand-niece. Lyon wasn't a really rich man, but he left bequests to each of them, and one to an old servant, and one to his school. I came last. I received ten thousand dollars which had been placed in a safe-deposit box for me and for which I would be given the key on request.

"When the will was read and done with, I asked the lawyer for the key to the safe-deposit box. There is no use denying that I can find perfectly good use for ten thousand dollars. The lawyer said that I must apply to the bank in which the box was to be found. If I failed to do so in one year from that date, the bequest was revoked and was to be otherwise disposed of.

"Naturally, I asked where the bank was located and the lawyer said that except for the fact that it was located somewhere in the United States he could not say. He had no further information except for one envelope which he had been instructed to hand to me and which he hoped would be useful. He had one other envelope for himself which was to be opened at the end of one year if I had not, by then, claimed the money.