The Return of the Black Widowers Read Online Free PDF Page A

patient man. I am a patient man, and I am tired of this endless cross-examination. Beware my wrath, Henry. What was it you carried off in your attaché case?"
    "Why, nothing, sir," said Henry. "It was empty."
    "Heaven help me! Where did you put whatever it was you took from him?"
    "I didn't have to put it anywhere, sir."
    "Well, then, what did you take?"
    "Only his peace of mind, sir," said Henry gently.

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PH AS IN PHONY
    T
    he meeting of the Black Widowers was marred, but only slightly, by the restlessness of James Drake. It was a shame that this had to be so, for the dinner was unusually good, even allowing for the loving care with which the Milano Restaurant took care of its special group every month. And if the veal cordon bleu needed anything to add the final bit of luster, it was Henry's meticulous service, which had plates on the table where no plate had been before, yet without any person present able to catch it en route.
    It was Thomas Trumbull's turn to host, something he did with a savagery to which no one paid the slightest bit of attention; a savagery made particularly bitter by the fact that, as host, he did not think it fit to come charging in just one second before the pre-dinner drinks had completed their twice-around (three times for Rubin, who never showed the effects).
    Trumbull exercised hosts privilege and had brought a guest for the grilling. The guest was tall, almost as tall as Geoffrey Avalon, the Black Widowers' patent-attorney member. He was lean, almost as lean as Geoffrey Avalon. He was clean-shaven, though, and lacked the solemnity of Avalon. Indeed, his face was round and his cheeks plump, in a manner so out of keeping with the rest of his body that one might have thought him the product of a head transplant. He was Arnold Stacey, by name.
    "Arnold Stacey, Ph.D., "Trumbull had introduced him.
    "Ah," said Avalon, with the air of portentousness he automatically brought to his most trivial statement, "Doctor Doctor Stacey."
    "Doctor Doctor?" murmured Stacey, his lips parting as though getting ready for a smile at the pleasantry sure to follow.
    "It is a rule of the Black Widowers,” said Trumbull impatiently, "that all members are doctors by virtue of membership. A doctor for any other reason is—"
    "A doctor doctor," finished Stacey. And he smiled.
    "You can count honorary doctorates, too," said Rubin, his wide-spaced teeth gleaming over a beard as straggly as Avalon's was crisp, "but then I would have to be called Doctor Doctor Doctor—"
    Mario Gonzalo was mounting the stairs just then, bringing with him a faint whiff of turpentine as though he had come straight from his artist's studio. (Trumbull maintained you couldn't draw that conclusion; that Gonzalo placed a drop of turpentine behind each ear before any social engagement.)
    Gonzalo was in time to catch Emmanuel Rubin's statement and said, before he had quite reached the top step, "What honorary doctorates did you ever receive, Manny? Dis-honorary doctorates, I'm ready to believe."
    Rubin's face froze as it usually did when he was attacked without warning, but that was merely the short pause necessary to gather his forces. He said, "I can list them for you. In 1938, when I was only fifteen, it so happens I was a revivalist preacher and I received a D.D. from—"
    "No, for God's sake," said Trumbull, "don't give us the list. We accept it all."
    "You're fighting out of your weight, Mario," said Avalon with wooden amiability. "You know Rubin can never be spotted in an inconsistency when he starts talking about his early life."
    "Sure," said Gonzalo, "that's why his stories are so lousy. They're all autobiographical. No poetry."
    "I have written poetry," began Rubin, and then Drake came in. Usually, he was the first person there; this time, the last.
    "Train was late," he said quietly, shucking his coat. Since he had to come in from New Jersey to attend, the only surprise was that it didn't happen