Tales of the Black Widowers
6. The Obvious Factor
Thomas Trumbull looked about the table and said, with some satisfaction, "Well, at least you won't get yourself pen-and-inked into oblivion, Voss. Our resident artist isn't here... Henry!"
Henry was at Trumbull's elbow before the echo of the bellow had died, with no sign of perturbation on his bright-eyed and unlined face. Trumbull took the scotch and soda the waiter had on his tray and said, "Has Mario called, Henry?"
"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?"
"Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, 'Yes, that's a ghost.' I take it that's not what you mean."
Rubin broke in. "I hate to be on Drake's side right now, but he means to ask, as you well know, whether you have ever come across any phenomenon you could not explain by the accepted and prosaic laws of science."
"I have come across many such phenomena."
"That you could not explain?" asked Halsted.
"That I could not explain. There's not a month that passes but that something crosses my desk that I cannot explain," said Eldridge, nodding his head gently.
There was a short silence of palpable disapproval and then Avalon said, "Does that mean that you are a believer in these psychic phenomena?"
"If you mean: Do I think that events take place that violate the laws of physics? No! Do I think, however, that I know all there is to know about the laws of physics? Also, no. Do I think anyone knows all there is to know about the laws of physics? No, a third time."
"That's evasion," said Drake. "Do you have any evidence that telepathy exists, for instance, and that the laws of physics, as presently accepted, will have to be modified accordingly?"
"I am not ready to commit myself that far. I well know that in even the most circumstantial stories, there are honest mistakes, exaggerations, misinterpretations, outright hoaxes. And yet, even allowing for all that, I come across incidents I cannot quite bring myself to dismiss."
Eldridge shook his head and continued, "It's not easy, this job of mine. There are some incidents for which no conceivable run-of-the-mill explanation seems possible; where the evidence for something quite apart from the known rules by which the universe seems to run appears irrefutable. It would seem I must accept-and yet I hesitate. Can I labor under a hoax so cleverly manipulated, or an error so cleverly hidden, that I take for the gold of fact what is only the brass of nonsense? I can be fooled, as Rubin would point out."
Trumbull said, "Manny would say that you want to be fooled."
"Maybe I do. We all want dramatic things to be true. We want to be able to wish on a star, to have strange powers, to be irresistible to women-and would inwardly conspire to believe such things no matter how much we might lay claim to complete rationality."
"Not me," said Rubin flatly. "I've never kidded myself in my life."
"No?" Eldridge looked at him thoughtfully. "I take it then that you will refuse to believe in the actual existence of parapsychological phenomena under all circumstances?"
"I wouldn't say that," said Rubin, "but I'd need damned good evidence-better evidence than I've ever seen advanced."
"And how about the rest of you gentlemen?"
Drake said, "We're all rationalists. At least I don't know about Mario Gonzalo, but he's not here this session."
"You, too, Tom?"
Trumbull's lined face broke into a grim smile. "You've never convinced me with any of your tales before this, Voss. I don't think you can convince me now."
"I never told you tales that convinced me, Tom... But I have one now; something I've never told you and that no one really knows about outside my department. I can tell it to you all and if you can come up with an explanation that would require no change in the fundamental scientific view of the universe, I would be greatly relieved."
"A ghost story?" said Halsted.
"No, not a ghost story," said Eldridge. "It is merely a story that defies the principle of cause and effect, the very foundation stone on which all science is built. To put it another way, it defies the concept of the irreversible forward flow of time."
"Actually," said Rubin, at once, "it's quite possible, on the sub-atomic level, to consider time as flowing either-"
"Shut up, Manny," said Trumbull, "and let Voss talk."
Quietly, Henry had placed the brandy before each of the diners. Eldridge lifted his small glass absently and sniffed at it, then nodded to Henry, who returned a small, urbane smile.
"It's an odd thing," said Eldridge, "but so many of those who claim to have strange powers, or have it claimed for them, are young women of no particular education, no particular presence, no particular intelligence. It is as though the existence of a special talent has consumed what would otherwise be spread out among the more usual facets of the personality. Maybe it's just more noticeable in women.
"At any rate, I am speaking of someone I'll just call Mary for now. You understand I'm not using her real name. The woman is still under investigation and it would be fatal, from my point of view, to get any kind of pub-icity hounds on the track. You understand?"
Trumbull frowned severely. "Come on, Voss, you know I told you that nothing said here is ever repeated outside the confines of these walls. You needn't feel constrained."
"Accidents happen," said Eldridge equably. "At any rate, I'll return to Mary. Mary never completed grade school and has earned what money she could earn by serving behind a counter at the five-and-ten. She is not attractive and no one will sweep her away from the counter, which may be good, for she is useful there and serves well. You might not think so, since she cannot add correctly and is given to incapacitating headaches, during which she will sit in a back room and upset the other employees by muttering gibberish to herself in a baleful sort of way. Nevertheless, the store wouldn't dream of letting her go."
"Why not?" asked Rubin, clearly steeling himself to skepticism at every point.
"Because she spots shoplifters, who, as you know, can these days bleed a store to death through a thousand small cuts. It isn't that Mary is in any way shrewd or keen-eyed or unrelenting in pursuit. She just knows a shoplifter when he or she enters the store, even if she has never seen the person before, and even if she doesn't actually see the person come in.
"She followed them herself at first for brief intervals; then grew hysterical and began her muttering. The manager eventually tied the two things together-Mary's characteristic behavior and the shoplifting. He started to watch for one, then the other, and it didn't take long for him to find out that she never missed.
"Losses quickly dropped to virtually nothing in that particular five-and-ten despite the fact that the store is in a bad neighborhood. The manager, of course, received the credit. Probably, he deliberately kept the truth from being known lest anyone try to steal Mary from him.
"But then I think he grew afraid of it. Mary fingered a shoplifter who wasn't a shoplifter but who later was mixed up in a shooting incident. The manager had read about some of the work my department does, and he came to us. Eventually, he brought Mary to us.
"We got her to come to the college regularly. We paid her, of course. Not much, but then she didn't ask for much. She was an unpleasant not-bright girl of about twenty, who was reluctant to talk and describe what went on in her mind. I suppose she had spent a childhood having her queer notions beaten out of her and she had learned to be cautious, you see."
Drake said, "You're telling us she had a gift for pre-cognition?"
Eldridge said, "Since precognition is just Latin for seeing-things-before-they-happen, and since she sees things before they happen, how else can I describe it? She sees unpleasant things only, things that upset or frighten her, which, I imagine, makes her life a hell. It is the quality of becoming upset or frightened that breaks down the time barrier."
Halsted said, "Let's set our boundary conditions. What does she sense? How far ahead in time does she see things? How far away in space?"
"We could never get her to do much for us," said Eldridge. "Her talent wasn't on tap at will and with us she could never relax. From what the manager told us and from what we could pick up, it seemed she could never detect anything more than a few minutes ahead in time. Half an hour to an hour at the most." Rubin snorted.
"A few minutes," said Eldridge mildly, "is as good as a century. The principle stands. Cause and effect is violated and the flow of time is reversed.
"And in space, there seemed no limits. As she described it, when I could get her to say anything at all, and as I interpreted her rather clumsy and incoherent words, the background of her mind is a constant flickering of frightening shapes. Every once in a while, this?is lit up, as though by a momentary lightning flash, and she sees, or becomes aware. She sees most clearly what is close by or what she is most concerned about-the shoplifting, for instance. Occasionally, though, she sees what must be taking place farther away. The greater the disaster, the farther she can sense things. I suspect she could detect a nuclear bomb getting ready to explode anywhere in?the world."
Rubin said, "I imagine she speaks incoherently and you fill in the rest. History is full of ecstatic prophets whose mumbles are interpreted into wisdom."
"I agree," said Eldridge, "and I pay no attention-or at least not much-to anything that isn't clear. I don't even attach much importance to her feats with shoplifters. She might be sensitive enough to detect some characteristic way in which shoplifters look and stand, some aura, some smell-the sort of thing you talked about, Rubin, as matters no one can disguise. But then-"
"Then?" prompted Halsted.
"Just a minute," said Eldridge. "Uh-Henry, could I have a refill in the coffeecup after all?"
"Certainly," said Henry.
Eldridge watched the coffee level rise. "What's your attitude on psychic phenomena, Henry?"
Henry said, "I have no general attitude, sir. I accept whatever it seems to me I must accept."
"Good!" said Eldridge. "I'll rely on you and not on these prejudiced and preconcepted rationalists here."
"Go on, then," said Drake. "You paused at the dramatic moment to throw us off."
"Never," said Eldridge. "I was saying that I did not take Mary seriously, until one day she suddenly began to squirm and pant and mumble under her breath. She does that now and then, but this time she muttered 'Eldridge. Eldridge.' And the word grew shriller and shriller.
"I assumed she was calling me, but she wasn't. When I responded, she ignored me. Over and over again, it was 'Eldridge! Eldridge!' Then she began to scream, Tire! Oh, Lord! It's burning! Help! Eldridge! Eldridge!' Over and over again, with all kinds of variations. She kept it up for half an hour.
"We tried to make sense out of it. We spoke quietly, of course, because we didn't want to intrude more than we had to, but we kept saying, 'Where? Where?' Incoherently enough, and in scraps, she told us enough to make us guess it was San Francisco, which, I need not tell you, is nearly three thousand miles away. There's only one Golden Gate Bridge after all, and in one spasm, she gasped out, 'Golden Gate,' over and over. Afterward it turned out she had never heard of the Golden Gate Bridge and was quite shaky as to San Francisco.
"When we put it all together, we decided that there was an old apartment house somewhere in San Francisco, possibly within eyeshot of the Bridge, that had gone up in fire. A total of twenty-three people were in it at the time it burst into fire, and of these, five did not escape. The five deaths included that of a child."
Halsted said, "And then you checked and found there was a fire in San Francicso and that five people had died, including a child."
"That's right," said Eldridge. "But here's what got me. One of the five deaths was that of a woman, Sophronia Latimer. She had gotten out safely and then discovered that her eight-year-old boy had not come out with her. She ran wildly back into the house, screaming for the boy, and never came out again. The boy's name was Eldridge, so you can see what she was shouting in the minutes before her death.
"Eldridge is a very uncommon first name, as I need not tell you, and my feeling is that Mary captured that particular event, for all that it was so far away, entirely because she had been sensitized to the name, by way of myself, and because it was surrounded by such agony."
Rubin said, "You want an explanation, is that it?"
"Of, course," said Eldridge. "How did this ignorant girl see a fire in full detail, get all the facts correct-and believe me, we checked it out- at three thousand miles."
Rubin said, "What makes the three-thousand-mile distance so impressive? These days it means nothing; it's one sixtieth of a second at the speed of light. I suggest that she heard the tale of the fire on radio or on television-more likely the latter-and passed it on to you.
That's why she chose that story; because of the name Eldridge. She figured it would have the greatest possible effect on you."
"Why?" asked Eldridge. "Why should she put through such a hoax?"
"Why?" Rubin's voice faded out momentarily, as though with astonishment, then came back in a shout. "Good God, you've been working with these people for years and don't realize how much they want to hoax you. Don't you suppose there's a feeling of power that comes with perpetrating a good hoax; and money, too, don't forget."
Eldridge thought about it, then shook his head. "She doesn't have the brains to put something like this across. It takes brains to be a faker-a good one, anyway."
Trumbull broke in. "Well, now, Voss. There's no reason to suppose she's in it on her own. A confederate is possible. She supplies the hysteria, he supplies the brains."
"Who might the confederate be?" asked Eldridge softly.
Trumbull shrugged. "I don't know."
Avalon cleared his throat and said, "I go along with Tom here, and my guess is that the confederate is the manager of the five-and-ten. He had noted her ability to guess at shoplifters, and thought he could put this to use in something more splashy. I'll bet that's it. He heard about the fire on television, caught the name Eldridge, and coached her."
"How long would it take to coach her?" asked Eldridge. "I keep telling you that she's not very bright."
"The coaching wouldn't be difficult," said Rubin quickly. "You say she was incoherent. He would just tell her a few key words: Eldridge, fire, Golden Gate, and so on. She then keeps repeating them in random arrangements and you intelligent parapsychologists fill it in."
Eldridge nodded, then said, "That's interesting, except that there was no time at all to coach the girl. That's what precognition is all about. We know exactly what time she had her fit and we know exactly what time the fire broke out in San Francisco., It so happens the fire broke out at just about the minute that Mary's fit died down. It was as though once the fire was actual, it was no longer a matter of precognition, and Mary lost contact. So you see, there could be no coaching. The news didn't hit the network TV news programs till that evening. That's when we found out and began our investigation in depth."
"But wait," said Halsted. "What about the time difference? There's a three-hour time difference between New York and San Francisco, and a confederate in San Francisco-"
"A confederate in San Francisco?" said Eldridge, opening his eyes wide, and staring. "Are you imagining a continental conspiracy? Besides, believe me, I know about the time difference also. When I say that the fire started just as Mary finished, I mean allowing for the time difference. Mary's fit started at just about one-fifteen p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the fire in San Francisco started at just about ten forty-five a.m. Pacific Standard Time."
Drake said, "I have a suggestion."
"Go on," said Eldridge.
"This is an uneducated and unintelligent girl-you keep saying that over and over-and she's throwing a fit, an epileptic fit, for all I know."
"No," said Eldridge firmly.
"All right, a prophetic fit, if you wish. She's muttering and mumbling and screaming and doing everything in the world but speaking clearly. She makes sound which you interpret, and which you make fit together. If it had occurred to you to hear her say something like 'atom bomb,' then the word you interpreted as 'Eldridge' would have become 'Oak Ridge,' for instance."
"And Golden Gate?"
"You might have heard that as 'couldn't get' and fitted it in somehow."
"Not bad," said Eldridge. "Except that we know that it is hard to understand some of these ecstatics and we are bright enough to make use of modern technology. We routinely tape-record our sessions and we tape-recorded this one. We've listened to it over and over and there is no question but that she said 'Eldridge' and not 'Oak Ridge,' 'Golden Gate' and not 'couldn't get.' We've had different people listen and there is no disagreement on any of this. Besides, from what we heard, we worked out all the details of the fire before we got the facts. We had to make no modifications afterward. It all fit exactly."
There was a long silence at the table.
Finally Eldridge said, "Well, there it is. Mary foresaw the fire three thousand miles away by a full half-hour and got all the facts correct."
Drake said uneasily, "Do you accept it? Do you think it was precognition?"
"I'm trying not to," said Eldridge. "But for what reason can I disbelieve it? I don't want to fool myself into believing it, but what choice have I? At what point am I fooling myself? It it wasn't precognition, what was it? I had hoped that perhaps one of you gentlemen could tell me."
Again a silence.
Eldridge went on. "I'm left in a position where I must refer to Sherlock Holmes's great precept: 'When the impossible has been eliminated, then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.' In this case, if fakery of any kind is impossible, the precognition must be the truth. Don't you all agree?"
The silence was thicker than before, until Trumbull cried out, "Damn it all, Henry is grinning. No one's asked him yet to explain this. Well, Henry?"
Henry coughed. "I should not have smiled, gentlemen, but I couldn't help it when Professor Eldridge used that quotation. It seems the final bit of evidence that you gentlemen want to believe."
"The hell we do," said Rubin, frowning.
"Surely, then, a quotation from President Thomas Jefferson would have sprung to mind."
"What quotation?" asked Halsted.
"I imagine Mr. Rubin knows," said Henry.
"I probably do, Henry, but at the moment I can't think of an appropriate one. Is it in the Declaration of Independence?"
"No, sir," began Henry, when Trumbull interrupted with a snarl.
"Let's not play Twenty Questions, Manny. Go on, Henry, what are you getting at?"
"Well, sir, to say that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the troth, is to make the assumption, usually unjustified, that everything that is to be considered has indeed been considered. Let us suppose we have considered ten factors. Nine are clearly impossible. Is the tenth, however improbable, therefore true? What if there were an eleventh factor, and a twelfth, and a thirteenth..."
Avalon said severely, "You mean there's a factor we haven't considered?"
"I'm afraid so, sir," said Henry, nodding.
Avalon shook his head. "I can't think what it can be."
"And yet it is an obvious factor, sir; the most obvious one."
"What is it, then?" demanded Halsted, clearly annoyed. "Get to the point!"
"To begin with," said Henry, "it is clear that to explain the ability of the young lady to foretell, as described, the details of a fire three thousand miles away except by precognition is impossible. But suppose precognition is also to be considered impossible. In that case-"
Rubin got to his feet, straggly beard bristling, eyes magnified through thick-lensed glasses, staring. "Of course! The fire was set. The woman could have been coached for weeks. The accomplice goes to San Francicso and they coordinate. She predicts something she knows is going to happen. He causes something he knows she will predict."
Henry said, "Are you suggesting, sir, that a confederate would deliberately plan to kill five victims, including an eight-year-old boy?"
"Don't start trusting in the virtue of mankind, Henry," said Rubin. "You're the one who is sensitive to wrongdoing."
"The minor wrongdoings, sir, the kind most people overlook. I find it difficult to believe that anyone, in order to establish a fancied case of precognition, would deliberately arrange a horrible multi-murder. Besides, to arrange a fire in which eighteen of twenty-three people escape and five specific people die requires a bit of precognition in itself."
Rubin turned stubborn. "I can see ways in which five people can be trapped; like forcing a card in conjuring-"
"Gentlemen!" said Eldridge peremptorily, and all turned to look at him. "I have not told you the cause of the fire."
He went on, after looking about the table to make sure he had the attention of all, "It was a stroke of lightning. I don't see how a stroke of lightning could be arranged at a specified time." He spread out his hands helplessly. "I tell you. I've been struggling with this for weeks. I don't want to accept precognition, but... I suppose this spoils your theory, Henry?"
"On the contrary, Professor Eldridge, it confirms it and makes it certain. Ever since you began to tell us this tale of Mary and the fire, your every word has made it more and more certain that fakery is impossible and that precognition has taken place. If, however, precognition is impossible, then it follows of necessity, Professor, that you have been lying."
Not a Black Widower but exclaimed at that, with Avalon's shocked "Henry!" loudest of all.
But Eldridge was leaning back in his chair, chuckling. "Of course I was lying. From beginning to end. I wanted to see if all you so-called rationalists would be so eager to accept parapsychological phenomena that you would overlook the obvious rather than spoil your own thrill. When did you catch me out, Henry?"
"It was a possibility from the start, sir, which grew stronger each time you eliminated a solution by inventing more information. I was certain when you mentioned the lightning. That was dramatic enough to have been brought in at the beginning. To be mentioned only at the very end made it clear that you created it on the spot to block the final hope."
"But why was it a possibility from the start, Henry?" demanded Eldridge. "Do I look like a liar? Can you detect liars the way I had Mary detect shoplifters?"
"Because this is always a possibility and something to be kept in mind and watched for. That is where the remark by President Jefferson comes in."
"What was that?"
"In 1807, Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale reported seeing the fall of a meteorite at a time when the existence of meteorites was not accepted by scientists. Thomas Jefferson, a rationalist of enormous talent and intelligence, on hearing the report, said, 'I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that a stone would fall from heaven.' "
"Yes," said Avalon at once, "but Jefferson was wrong. Silliman did not lie and stones did fall from heaven."
"Quite so, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, unruffled. "That is why the quotation is remembered. But considering the great number of times that impossibilities have been reported, and the small number of times they have been proven possible after all, I felt the odds were with me."
Afterword
This story first appeared in the May 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it.
I hope that no reader thinks the solution in this tale "isn't fair." In real life, a great many reports of unconventional phenomena are the results of deviations from the truth, either deliberate or unconscious. And I am sick and tired of mysteries that end up with some indication that perhaps, after all, something supernatural really did happen.
As far as I am concerned, if, when everything impossible has been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying. If that be treason, make the most of it.
Henry was at Trumbull's elbow before the echo of the bellow had died, with no sign of perturbation on his bright-eyed and unlined face. Trumbull took the scotch and soda the waiter had on his tray and said, "Has Mario called, Henry?"
"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?"
"Explain in what way? I could explain a ghost by saying, 'Yes, that's a ghost.' I take it that's not what you mean."
Rubin broke in. "I hate to be on Drake's side right now, but he means to ask, as you well know, whether you have ever come across any phenomenon you could not explain by the accepted and prosaic laws of science."
"I have come across many such phenomena."
"That you could not explain?" asked Halsted.
"That I could not explain. There's not a month that passes but that something crosses my desk that I cannot explain," said Eldridge, nodding his head gently.
There was a short silence of palpable disapproval and then Avalon said, "Does that mean that you are a believer in these psychic phenomena?"
"If you mean: Do I think that events take place that violate the laws of physics? No! Do I think, however, that I know all there is to know about the laws of physics? Also, no. Do I think anyone knows all there is to know about the laws of physics? No, a third time."
"That's evasion," said Drake. "Do you have any evidence that telepathy exists, for instance, and that the laws of physics, as presently accepted, will have to be modified accordingly?"
"I am not ready to commit myself that far. I well know that in even the most circumstantial stories, there are honest mistakes, exaggerations, misinterpretations, outright hoaxes. And yet, even allowing for all that, I come across incidents I cannot quite bring myself to dismiss."
Eldridge shook his head and continued, "It's not easy, this job of mine. There are some incidents for which no conceivable run-of-the-mill explanation seems possible; where the evidence for something quite apart from the known rules by which the universe seems to run appears irrefutable. It would seem I must accept-and yet I hesitate. Can I labor under a hoax so cleverly manipulated, or an error so cleverly hidden, that I take for the gold of fact what is only the brass of nonsense? I can be fooled, as Rubin would point out."
Trumbull said, "Manny would say that you want to be fooled."
"Maybe I do. We all want dramatic things to be true. We want to be able to wish on a star, to have strange powers, to be irresistible to women-and would inwardly conspire to believe such things no matter how much we might lay claim to complete rationality."
"Not me," said Rubin flatly. "I've never kidded myself in my life."
"No?" Eldridge looked at him thoughtfully. "I take it then that you will refuse to believe in the actual existence of parapsychological phenomena under all circumstances?"
"I wouldn't say that," said Rubin, "but I'd need damned good evidence-better evidence than I've ever seen advanced."
"And how about the rest of you gentlemen?"
Drake said, "We're all rationalists. At least I don't know about Mario Gonzalo, but he's not here this session."
"You, too, Tom?"
Trumbull's lined face broke into a grim smile. "You've never convinced me with any of your tales before this, Voss. I don't think you can convince me now."
"I never told you tales that convinced me, Tom... But I have one now; something I've never told you and that no one really knows about outside my department. I can tell it to you all and if you can come up with an explanation that would require no change in the fundamental scientific view of the universe, I would be greatly relieved."
"A ghost story?" said Halsted.
"No, not a ghost story," said Eldridge. "It is merely a story that defies the principle of cause and effect, the very foundation stone on which all science is built. To put it another way, it defies the concept of the irreversible forward flow of time."
"Actually," said Rubin, at once, "it's quite possible, on the sub-atomic level, to consider time as flowing either-"
"Shut up, Manny," said Trumbull, "and let Voss talk."
Quietly, Henry had placed the brandy before each of the diners. Eldridge lifted his small glass absently and sniffed at it, then nodded to Henry, who returned a small, urbane smile.
"It's an odd thing," said Eldridge, "but so many of those who claim to have strange powers, or have it claimed for them, are young women of no particular education, no particular presence, no particular intelligence. It is as though the existence of a special talent has consumed what would otherwise be spread out among the more usual facets of the personality. Maybe it's just more noticeable in women.
"At any rate, I am speaking of someone I'll just call Mary for now. You understand I'm not using her real name. The woman is still under investigation and it would be fatal, from my point of view, to get any kind of pub-icity hounds on the track. You understand?"
Trumbull frowned severely. "Come on, Voss, you know I told you that nothing said here is ever repeated outside the confines of these walls. You needn't feel constrained."
"Accidents happen," said Eldridge equably. "At any rate, I'll return to Mary. Mary never completed grade school and has earned what money she could earn by serving behind a counter at the five-and-ten. She is not attractive and no one will sweep her away from the counter, which may be good, for she is useful there and serves well. You might not think so, since she cannot add correctly and is given to incapacitating headaches, during which she will sit in a back room and upset the other employees by muttering gibberish to herself in a baleful sort of way. Nevertheless, the store wouldn't dream of letting her go."
"Why not?" asked Rubin, clearly steeling himself to skepticism at every point.
"Because she spots shoplifters, who, as you know, can these days bleed a store to death through a thousand small cuts. It isn't that Mary is in any way shrewd or keen-eyed or unrelenting in pursuit. She just knows a shoplifter when he or she enters the store, even if she has never seen the person before, and even if she doesn't actually see the person come in.
"She followed them herself at first for brief intervals; then grew hysterical and began her muttering. The manager eventually tied the two things together-Mary's characteristic behavior and the shoplifting. He started to watch for one, then the other, and it didn't take long for him to find out that she never missed.
"Losses quickly dropped to virtually nothing in that particular five-and-ten despite the fact that the store is in a bad neighborhood. The manager, of course, received the credit. Probably, he deliberately kept the truth from being known lest anyone try to steal Mary from him.
"But then I think he grew afraid of it. Mary fingered a shoplifter who wasn't a shoplifter but who later was mixed up in a shooting incident. The manager had read about some of the work my department does, and he came to us. Eventually, he brought Mary to us.
"We got her to come to the college regularly. We paid her, of course. Not much, but then she didn't ask for much. She was an unpleasant not-bright girl of about twenty, who was reluctant to talk and describe what went on in her mind. I suppose she had spent a childhood having her queer notions beaten out of her and she had learned to be cautious, you see."
Drake said, "You're telling us she had a gift for pre-cognition?"
Eldridge said, "Since precognition is just Latin for seeing-things-before-they-happen, and since she sees things before they happen, how else can I describe it? She sees unpleasant things only, things that upset or frighten her, which, I imagine, makes her life a hell. It is the quality of becoming upset or frightened that breaks down the time barrier."
Halsted said, "Let's set our boundary conditions. What does she sense? How far ahead in time does she see things? How far away in space?"
"We could never get her to do much for us," said Eldridge. "Her talent wasn't on tap at will and with us she could never relax. From what the manager told us and from what we could pick up, it seemed she could never detect anything more than a few minutes ahead in time. Half an hour to an hour at the most." Rubin snorted.
"A few minutes," said Eldridge mildly, "is as good as a century. The principle stands. Cause and effect is violated and the flow of time is reversed.
"And in space, there seemed no limits. As she described it, when I could get her to say anything at all, and as I interpreted her rather clumsy and incoherent words, the background of her mind is a constant flickering of frightening shapes. Every once in a while, this?is lit up, as though by a momentary lightning flash, and she sees, or becomes aware. She sees most clearly what is close by or what she is most concerned about-the shoplifting, for instance. Occasionally, though, she sees what must be taking place farther away. The greater the disaster, the farther she can sense things. I suspect she could detect a nuclear bomb getting ready to explode anywhere in?the world."
Rubin said, "I imagine she speaks incoherently and you fill in the rest. History is full of ecstatic prophets whose mumbles are interpreted into wisdom."
"I agree," said Eldridge, "and I pay no attention-or at least not much-to anything that isn't clear. I don't even attach much importance to her feats with shoplifters. She might be sensitive enough to detect some characteristic way in which shoplifters look and stand, some aura, some smell-the sort of thing you talked about, Rubin, as matters no one can disguise. But then-"
"Then?" prompted Halsted.
"Just a minute," said Eldridge. "Uh-Henry, could I have a refill in the coffeecup after all?"
"Certainly," said Henry.
Eldridge watched the coffee level rise. "What's your attitude on psychic phenomena, Henry?"
Henry said, "I have no general attitude, sir. I accept whatever it seems to me I must accept."
"Good!" said Eldridge. "I'll rely on you and not on these prejudiced and preconcepted rationalists here."
"Go on, then," said Drake. "You paused at the dramatic moment to throw us off."
"Never," said Eldridge. "I was saying that I did not take Mary seriously, until one day she suddenly began to squirm and pant and mumble under her breath. She does that now and then, but this time she muttered 'Eldridge. Eldridge.' And the word grew shriller and shriller.
"I assumed she was calling me, but she wasn't. When I responded, she ignored me. Over and over again, it was 'Eldridge! Eldridge!' Then she began to scream, Tire! Oh, Lord! It's burning! Help! Eldridge! Eldridge!' Over and over again, with all kinds of variations. She kept it up for half an hour.
"We tried to make sense out of it. We spoke quietly, of course, because we didn't want to intrude more than we had to, but we kept saying, 'Where? Where?' Incoherently enough, and in scraps, she told us enough to make us guess it was San Francisco, which, I need not tell you, is nearly three thousand miles away. There's only one Golden Gate Bridge after all, and in one spasm, she gasped out, 'Golden Gate,' over and over. Afterward it turned out she had never heard of the Golden Gate Bridge and was quite shaky as to San Francisco.
"When we put it all together, we decided that there was an old apartment house somewhere in San Francisco, possibly within eyeshot of the Bridge, that had gone up in fire. A total of twenty-three people were in it at the time it burst into fire, and of these, five did not escape. The five deaths included that of a child."
Halsted said, "And then you checked and found there was a fire in San Francicso and that five people had died, including a child."
"That's right," said Eldridge. "But here's what got me. One of the five deaths was that of a woman, Sophronia Latimer. She had gotten out safely and then discovered that her eight-year-old boy had not come out with her. She ran wildly back into the house, screaming for the boy, and never came out again. The boy's name was Eldridge, so you can see what she was shouting in the minutes before her death.
"Eldridge is a very uncommon first name, as I need not tell you, and my feeling is that Mary captured that particular event, for all that it was so far away, entirely because she had been sensitized to the name, by way of myself, and because it was surrounded by such agony."
Rubin said, "You want an explanation, is that it?"
"Of, course," said Eldridge. "How did this ignorant girl see a fire in full detail, get all the facts correct-and believe me, we checked it out- at three thousand miles."
Rubin said, "What makes the three-thousand-mile distance so impressive? These days it means nothing; it's one sixtieth of a second at the speed of light. I suggest that she heard the tale of the fire on radio or on television-more likely the latter-and passed it on to you.
That's why she chose that story; because of the name Eldridge. She figured it would have the greatest possible effect on you."
"Why?" asked Eldridge. "Why should she put through such a hoax?"
"Why?" Rubin's voice faded out momentarily, as though with astonishment, then came back in a shout. "Good God, you've been working with these people for years and don't realize how much they want to hoax you. Don't you suppose there's a feeling of power that comes with perpetrating a good hoax; and money, too, don't forget."
Eldridge thought about it, then shook his head. "She doesn't have the brains to put something like this across. It takes brains to be a faker-a good one, anyway."
Trumbull broke in. "Well, now, Voss. There's no reason to suppose she's in it on her own. A confederate is possible. She supplies the hysteria, he supplies the brains."
"Who might the confederate be?" asked Eldridge softly.
Trumbull shrugged. "I don't know."
Avalon cleared his throat and said, "I go along with Tom here, and my guess is that the confederate is the manager of the five-and-ten. He had noted her ability to guess at shoplifters, and thought he could put this to use in something more splashy. I'll bet that's it. He heard about the fire on television, caught the name Eldridge, and coached her."
"How long would it take to coach her?" asked Eldridge. "I keep telling you that she's not very bright."
"The coaching wouldn't be difficult," said Rubin quickly. "You say she was incoherent. He would just tell her a few key words: Eldridge, fire, Golden Gate, and so on. She then keeps repeating them in random arrangements and you intelligent parapsychologists fill it in."
Eldridge nodded, then said, "That's interesting, except that there was no time at all to coach the girl. That's what precognition is all about. We know exactly what time she had her fit and we know exactly what time the fire broke out in San Francisco., It so happens the fire broke out at just about the minute that Mary's fit died down. It was as though once the fire was actual, it was no longer a matter of precognition, and Mary lost contact. So you see, there could be no coaching. The news didn't hit the network TV news programs till that evening. That's when we found out and began our investigation in depth."
"But wait," said Halsted. "What about the time difference? There's a three-hour time difference between New York and San Francisco, and a confederate in San Francisco-"
"A confederate in San Francisco?" said Eldridge, opening his eyes wide, and staring. "Are you imagining a continental conspiracy? Besides, believe me, I know about the time difference also. When I say that the fire started just as Mary finished, I mean allowing for the time difference. Mary's fit started at just about one-fifteen p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the fire in San Francisco started at just about ten forty-five a.m. Pacific Standard Time."
Drake said, "I have a suggestion."
"Go on," said Eldridge.
"This is an uneducated and unintelligent girl-you keep saying that over and over-and she's throwing a fit, an epileptic fit, for all I know."
"No," said Eldridge firmly.
"All right, a prophetic fit, if you wish. She's muttering and mumbling and screaming and doing everything in the world but speaking clearly. She makes sound which you interpret, and which you make fit together. If it had occurred to you to hear her say something like 'atom bomb,' then the word you interpreted as 'Eldridge' would have become 'Oak Ridge,' for instance."
"And Golden Gate?"
"You might have heard that as 'couldn't get' and fitted it in somehow."
"Not bad," said Eldridge. "Except that we know that it is hard to understand some of these ecstatics and we are bright enough to make use of modern technology. We routinely tape-record our sessions and we tape-recorded this one. We've listened to it over and over and there is no question but that she said 'Eldridge' and not 'Oak Ridge,' 'Golden Gate' and not 'couldn't get.' We've had different people listen and there is no disagreement on any of this. Besides, from what we heard, we worked out all the details of the fire before we got the facts. We had to make no modifications afterward. It all fit exactly."
There was a long silence at the table.
Finally Eldridge said, "Well, there it is. Mary foresaw the fire three thousand miles away by a full half-hour and got all the facts correct."
Drake said uneasily, "Do you accept it? Do you think it was precognition?"
"I'm trying not to," said Eldridge. "But for what reason can I disbelieve it? I don't want to fool myself into believing it, but what choice have I? At what point am I fooling myself? It it wasn't precognition, what was it? I had hoped that perhaps one of you gentlemen could tell me."
Again a silence.
Eldridge went on. "I'm left in a position where I must refer to Sherlock Holmes's great precept: 'When the impossible has been eliminated, then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.' In this case, if fakery of any kind is impossible, the precognition must be the truth. Don't you all agree?"
The silence was thicker than before, until Trumbull cried out, "Damn it all, Henry is grinning. No one's asked him yet to explain this. Well, Henry?"
Henry coughed. "I should not have smiled, gentlemen, but I couldn't help it when Professor Eldridge used that quotation. It seems the final bit of evidence that you gentlemen want to believe."
"The hell we do," said Rubin, frowning.
"Surely, then, a quotation from President Thomas Jefferson would have sprung to mind."
"What quotation?" asked Halsted.
"I imagine Mr. Rubin knows," said Henry.
"I probably do, Henry, but at the moment I can't think of an appropriate one. Is it in the Declaration of Independence?"
"No, sir," began Henry, when Trumbull interrupted with a snarl.
"Let's not play Twenty Questions, Manny. Go on, Henry, what are you getting at?"
"Well, sir, to say that when the impossible has been eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, is the troth, is to make the assumption, usually unjustified, that everything that is to be considered has indeed been considered. Let us suppose we have considered ten factors. Nine are clearly impossible. Is the tenth, however improbable, therefore true? What if there were an eleventh factor, and a twelfth, and a thirteenth..."
Avalon said severely, "You mean there's a factor we haven't considered?"
"I'm afraid so, sir," said Henry, nodding.
Avalon shook his head. "I can't think what it can be."
"And yet it is an obvious factor, sir; the most obvious one."
"What is it, then?" demanded Halsted, clearly annoyed. "Get to the point!"
"To begin with," said Henry, "it is clear that to explain the ability of the young lady to foretell, as described, the details of a fire three thousand miles away except by precognition is impossible. But suppose precognition is also to be considered impossible. In that case-"
Rubin got to his feet, straggly beard bristling, eyes magnified through thick-lensed glasses, staring. "Of course! The fire was set. The woman could have been coached for weeks. The accomplice goes to San Francicso and they coordinate. She predicts something she knows is going to happen. He causes something he knows she will predict."
Henry said, "Are you suggesting, sir, that a confederate would deliberately plan to kill five victims, including an eight-year-old boy?"
"Don't start trusting in the virtue of mankind, Henry," said Rubin. "You're the one who is sensitive to wrongdoing."
"The minor wrongdoings, sir, the kind most people overlook. I find it difficult to believe that anyone, in order to establish a fancied case of precognition, would deliberately arrange a horrible multi-murder. Besides, to arrange a fire in which eighteen of twenty-three people escape and five specific people die requires a bit of precognition in itself."
Rubin turned stubborn. "I can see ways in which five people can be trapped; like forcing a card in conjuring-"
"Gentlemen!" said Eldridge peremptorily, and all turned to look at him. "I have not told you the cause of the fire."
He went on, after looking about the table to make sure he had the attention of all, "It was a stroke of lightning. I don't see how a stroke of lightning could be arranged at a specified time." He spread out his hands helplessly. "I tell you. I've been struggling with this for weeks. I don't want to accept precognition, but... I suppose this spoils your theory, Henry?"
"On the contrary, Professor Eldridge, it confirms it and makes it certain. Ever since you began to tell us this tale of Mary and the fire, your every word has made it more and more certain that fakery is impossible and that precognition has taken place. If, however, precognition is impossible, then it follows of necessity, Professor, that you have been lying."
Not a Black Widower but exclaimed at that, with Avalon's shocked "Henry!" loudest of all.
But Eldridge was leaning back in his chair, chuckling. "Of course I was lying. From beginning to end. I wanted to see if all you so-called rationalists would be so eager to accept parapsychological phenomena that you would overlook the obvious rather than spoil your own thrill. When did you catch me out, Henry?"
"It was a possibility from the start, sir, which grew stronger each time you eliminated a solution by inventing more information. I was certain when you mentioned the lightning. That was dramatic enough to have been brought in at the beginning. To be mentioned only at the very end made it clear that you created it on the spot to block the final hope."
"But why was it a possibility from the start, Henry?" demanded Eldridge. "Do I look like a liar? Can you detect liars the way I had Mary detect shoplifters?"
"Because this is always a possibility and something to be kept in mind and watched for. That is where the remark by President Jefferson comes in."
"What was that?"
"In 1807, Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale reported seeing the fall of a meteorite at a time when the existence of meteorites was not accepted by scientists. Thomas Jefferson, a rationalist of enormous talent and intelligence, on hearing the report, said, 'I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that a stone would fall from heaven.' "
"Yes," said Avalon at once, "but Jefferson was wrong. Silliman did not lie and stones did fall from heaven."
"Quite so, Mr. Avalon," said Henry, unruffled. "That is why the quotation is remembered. But considering the great number of times that impossibilities have been reported, and the small number of times they have been proven possible after all, I felt the odds were with me."
Afterword
This story first appeared in the May 1973 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title I gave it.
I hope that no reader thinks the solution in this tale "isn't fair." In real life, a great many reports of unconventional phenomena are the results of deviations from the truth, either deliberate or unconscious. And I am sick and tired of mysteries that end up with some indication that perhaps, after all, something supernatural really did happen.
As far as I am concerned, if, when everything impossible has been eliminated and what remains is supernatural, then someone is lying. If that be treason, make the most of it.
