Banquets Of The Black Widowers - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,61
necked moralist is Henry. What do you say, Henry?"
Henry, who was standing thoughtfully at the sideboard, said, "I believe there is a mystery to this. The young woman seems to have acted out of character."
Soskind said, "I prefer to think I didn't understand her character until she finally revealed it."
"If I may speak freely, Mr. Soskind - "
"Go ahead," said Soskind, with a bitter snort. "Say what you want. It can neither hurt nor help."
Henry said, "Isn't it possible, sir, that Miss Claire was entirely in the right and that you have behaved hastily and unfairly?"
Soskind reddened. "That's ridiculous!"
"But was the fifteenth of April indeed the starting point?"
"I have already said that that was in writing."
"But, Mr. Soskind, you also told us that Professor Trent tended to be Latinate in expression. Did he actually write 'the fifteenth of April' or 'April 15'?"
"Well, of course, he - Oh, I see what you mean. No, he said "the ides of April,' but what's the difference?"
"An enormous one," said Henry. "Everyone thinks of the ides of March in connection with the assassination of Julius Caesar, and everyone knows that is March 15 on our calendar. It is only natural to suppose that the ides of every month falls on the fifteenth, but I checked the encyclopedia while you were completing your account and that is true only of March, May, July, and October. In all the other months, including April, the ides fall on the thirteenth of the month. Since the ides of April falls on April thirteenth, Miss Claire began on that day, very correctly, and was surprised that you questioned the matter and seemed to expect her to delay two days for no reason."
Halsted was at the encyclopedia. "Henry's right, by God," he said.
Soskind's eyes opened in a fixed glare. "And I started two days late?"
Henry said, softly, "If Professor Trent had known you did not know when the ides of April was, I suspect you would have lost the competition by a somewhat wider margin."
Soskind seemed to collapse inward in his chair. He said, in a mutter, "What do I do now?"
Henry said, "My experience with matters of the heart, sir, is limited, but I believe you had better waste no more time. Leave now and try to see the young lady. She may give you a chance to explain and what I know of such matters leads me to think you had better grovel. - Grovel quite abjectly, sir."
AFTERWORD
Eleanor Sullivan was managing editor of EQMM all through the period during which I wrote the Black Widowers stories. Since Fred Dannay always worked from his Westchester home, it was to Eleanor that I brought my stories, and it was with her that I carried on an assiduous and platonic flirtation. (Not that I wanted it to be platonic, you understand, but she insisted.)
After Fred had passed on, she took over as editor, and following the grand tradition that Fred had established she kept EQMM moving onward rock - steady. That includes (I am thankful to say) the occasional appearance of a Black Widower story, and of an occasional Union Club story, too.
This is the first Black Widower story she accepted in her capacity as editor, and I think that is suitable, for it is a romance.
Very few of my Black Widower stories involve a murder or a violent crime of any kind (that's my personal distaste for violence, although that is not absolute as you will know if you have read my story "The Woman in the Bar," which appeared earlier in this collection). What's more very few, if any, of my stories involve romance (mainly because I started writing when I was very young, and before I had had any personal experience at all with romance). Still, I would rather have romance than violence in a Black Widower story, and when I manage to do this I like the result, and so, in this case, did Eleanor, who is very sweet and softhearted indeed. The story appeared in the May 1983 issue of EQMM.
Neither Brute Nor Human
THE MONTHLY DINNER of the Black Widowers was well under way and Emmanuel Rubin, his fork uplifted, and waving threateningly in the air, temporarily ignored his rack of lamb and said, "Edgar Allan Poe was the first important practitioner of the modern detective story and of the modern science fiction story. I'll give him that."
"Nice of you," murmured James Drake, the host of the occasion, in a low aside.