Tales of the Black Widowers - Asimov Isaac (бесплатные серии книг txt) 📗

"Not at all, sir."

"But if I have an odd piece of paper that carries some words that might make sense and might not, and that may require a little thought past the complications to the simple truth, you could help."

"Probably not, sir."

"But would you look at the paper and give me your thoughts on the matter?"

"Is that the test, sir?"

"I suppose we can call it that," said Gordon.

"Well, then," said Henry, with a slow shake of his head. "Mr. Gonzalo is the host. If he's willing to have you introduce it, then, by the rules of the club, you may."

Gonzalo looked uncomfortable. Then he said defiantly, "Go on, Lieutenant, show it to him."

"Hold on," said Trumbull, pointing his blunt finger at Gonzalo. "Have you seen it, Mario?"

"Yes."

"Can you make sense out of it?"

"No," said Gonzalo, "but it's the kind of thing Henry might be able to handle."

Rubin said, "I don't think we ought to put Henry on the spot like that."

But Henry said, "It's host's privilege, sir. I'm willing to look at it."

Gordon brought a piece of paper, folded into quarters, out of his upper right vest pocket. He held it over his shoulder and Henry took it. Henry looked at it for a moment, then handed it back.

"I'm sorry, sir," he said, "but I cannot see anything in it except what it says."

Drake held out his hand. "How about passing it around? Is that all right, Mr. Gordon?"

"I'm willing to pass it around," said Gordon. He gave it to Halsted, who sat at his right. Halsted read it and passed it on. There was absolute silence till it had made its circle and returned to Gordon. Gordon glanced at it briefly and put it back in his pocket.

The message, in full, written in a scrawled hand, went:

Woe unto you, Jezebels.

Death unto you, Rahab.

"It sounds Biblical," said Gonzalo. "Doesn't it?" He looked automatically at Rubin, who was the Biblical authority of the group.

"It sounds Biblical," said Rubin, "and it may have been written by a Bible nut, but that is not a quotation from the Bible. You can take my word on that."

"No one's likely to question your word on the Bible, Manny," said Avalon agreeably.

Gordon said, "That note was delivered to a girl at the entrance to a restaurant within which the Miss Earth contestants were holding a press conference."

"Who delivered it?" asked Trumbull.

"A drifter. He had been given a dollar to hand the note to the girl and he couldn't describe the person who had given it to him, except that it was a man. There is no reason to suppose the drifter was more than an intermediary. We checked him out."

Halsted said, "Any fingerprints?"

Gordon said, "Any number of superimposed smudges. Nothing useful."

Avalon looked austere and said, "I suppose that the Jezebels mentioned in the note referred to the young ladies of the Miss Earth contest."

"That seems a natural thought," said Gordon. "The question is: Which one?"

"All of them, I should say," said Avalon. "The note used the plural, and the kind of person who uses the term in this context would not make fine distinctions. Anyone who presents her beauty to the public gaze for judgment would be a Jezebel. All of them would be Jezebels."

"But what about the second phrase?" asked Gordon.

Rubin said, with just a trace of self-importance, "I'll explain that. Suppose the writer is a Bible nut; I mean the kind who reads the Bible every day and hears God whispering in his ear, directing him to destroy immorality. Such a guy would automatically write in Biblical style. It so happens that the chief poetic device in Biblical times was the repetition of the same sentence in a slightly different way, such as…" He thought for a while, then said, "For instance, How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob, and thy tabernacles, O Israel. Another one is Hear my words, O ye wise men; and give ear unto me, ye that have knowledge."

Rubin's straggly beard grew stragglier as his lips parted in a broad smile and his eyes glinted through his thick spectacles as he said, "That second one is from the Book of Job."

"Parallelism," muttered Avalon.

Gordon said, "You mean he's just saying the same thing twice?"

"That's right," said Rubin. "First he predicts woe and then he predicts the ultimate woe, death. First he calls them Jezebels, then he calls them Rahabs."

"Not quite," said Gordon. " 'Jezebel' is in the plural. 'Rahab' isn't. The fellow who wrote that speaks of 'Jezebels,' plural, when he yells 'Woe'; but only 'Rahab,' singular, when he predicts 'Death.' "

"Can I see that paper again?" said Rubin. It was passed to him and he studied it. Then he said, "The way this fellow writes, I don't know whether we can expect exact spelling. He may have meant to put in the 's.' "

"He may have," said Gordon, "but we can't rely on that. His spelling and punctuation are correct and, scrawl or not, the other 's' is clear and sharp-"

"It seems to me," said Avalon, "it would be safer to assume the singular is what is meant, unless we have good reason to the contrary."

Drake tried to blow a smoke ring (an attempt at which no one had ever seen him succeed) and said, "Do you take this thing seriously, Mr. Gordon?"

"My private inclinations," said Gordon, "are not in question. The note has a certain psychotic quality about it and I feel pretty safe in saying that if the writer is not playing a stupid practical joke, then he's crazy. And crazy people have to be taken seriously. Suppose the writer is someone who considers himself a spokesman for the wrath of God. Naturally, he announces it; he sends for the word of God because that's what the Biblical prophets did."

"And he announces it in poetic terms," began Halsted.

"Because that's what the Biblical prophets did, too," said Gordon, nodding. "A man like that may just possibly decide to be the arm of God as well as His voice. We can't take a chance. You understand that the Miss Earth contest offers a more ticklish situation than the Miss America contest does."

"Because there are foreign contestants, I suppose," said Rubin.

"That's right. There are about sixty contestants altogether, and exactly one-Miss United States-is homegrown. We'd just as soon nothing happened to any of them, even a minor incident. I don't say that it would plunge the world into a crisis if anything happened, but the State Department would be very unhappy. So a note like this means that the police have to supply protection for all sixty girls and these days we don't have all that manpower to waste."

"If you don't mind," said Trumbull frowning, "what the hell do you expect us to do about it?"

Gordon said, "It's just possible he may not be planning to kill all the girls. He may have only one in mind, so that is why he uses the singular when he talks of death. Perhaps Henry might give us some ideas as to how to narrow it down. We'd rather concentrate on ten girls than on sixty. We'd rather concentrate on one girl only, in fact."

"From that note?" said Trumbull, with perfectly obvious disgust. "You want Henry to pick out one Miss Earth contestant from that note?"

He turned to look at Henry, and Henry said, "I have no idea, Mr. Trumbull."

Gordon put the note away again. "I thought you might tell me who Rahab is. Why should he call one particular girl Rahab and threaten to kill her?"

Gonzalo said suddenly, "Why should we suppose that Rahab applies to the girl he's after? Maybe it's his signature. Maybe it's a pseudonym he's using because Rahab was some important prophet or executioner in the Bible."

Rubin let out his breath in a snort. "Oh, boy! Mario, how can even an artist know so little? 'Rahab' is part of the line. If it were the signature, he would put it on the bottom. If he's the kind of guy who wants to call down the wrath of God in public, he would sign it proudly and unmistakably if he signed it at all. And if he did, he would never take the pseudonym of Rahab, not if he knew anything at all about the Bible. Rahab was… No, I tell you what. Henry, get us the King James from the reference shelf. We might as well make sure we get the words exactly right."