More Tales of the Black Widowers (11 page)

Gonzalo said, “What about his wife? Does she know anything about this? You said she was a good friend of your wife's.”

“So she is. She's a wonderful girl and she understands perfectly the difficulty of the situation. She agrees that the safe should be opened.”

“Has she talked to her husband?” asked Gonzalo.

Puntsch hesitated. “Well, no. She hasn't been allowed to see him. He—he— This is ridiculous but I can't help it. He claims Barbara, his wife, is in the pay of the Soviet Union. Frankly, it was Barbara whom he—when he was put in the hospital—”

“All right,” said Trumbull gruffly, “but can't you get Revsof declared incompetent and have the control of the safe transferred to his wife?”

“First, that's a complicated thing. Barbara would have to testify to a number of things she doesn't want to testify to. She—she loves the man.”

Gonzalo said, “I don't want to sound ghoulish, but you said that Revsof was deteriorating. If he dies—”

“Deteriorating mentally, not physically. He's thirty-eight years old and could live forty more years and be mad every day of it.”

“Eventually, won't his wife be forced to request he be declared incompetent?”

Puntsch said, “But when will that be? —And all this still isn't the problem I want to present. I had explained to Barbara exactly how I would go about it to protect Mart's priority. I would open the safe and Barbara would initial and date every piece of paper in it. I would photocopy it all and give her a notarized statement to the effect that I had done this and that I acknowledged all that I removed to be Revsof’s work. The originals and the notarized statement would be returned to the safe and I would work with the copies.

“You see, she had told me at the very start that she had the combination. It was a matter of first overcoming my own feeling that I was betraying a trust, and secondly, overcoming her scruples. I didn't like it but I felt I was serving a higher cause and in the end Barbara agreed. We decided that if Revsof was ever sane enough to come home, he would agree we had done the right thing. And his priority would be protected.”

Trumbull said, “I take it you opened the safe, then.”

“No,” said Puntsch, “I didn't. I tried the combination Barbara gave me and it didn't work. The safe is still closed.”

Halsted said, “You could blow it open.”

Puntsch said, “I can't bring myself to do that. It's one thing to be given the combination by the man's wife. It's another to—”

Halsted shook his head. “I mean, can't Mrs. Revsof ask that it be blown open?”

Puntsch said, “I don't think she would ask that It would mean bringing in outsiders. It would be an act of violence against Revsof, in a way, and— Why doesn't the combination work? That's the problem.”

Trumbull put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “Dr. Puntsch, are you asking us to answer that question? To tell you how to use the combination you have?”

“More or less.”

“Do you have the combination with you?”

“You mean the actual slip of paper that has the combination written upon it? No. Barbara keeps that and I see her point. However, if you want it written down, that's no problem. I remember it well enough.” He brought out a little notebook from his inner jacket pocket, tore off a sheet of paper, and wrote rapidly. “There it is!”

12R 27 15

Trumbull glanced at it solemnly, then passed the paper to Halsted on his left. It made the rounds and came back to him.

Trumbull folded his hands and stared solemnly at the bit of paper. He said, “How do you know this is the combination to the safe?”

“Barbara says it is.”

“Doesn't it seem unlikely to you, Dr. Puntsch, that the man you described would leave the combination lying about? With the combination available, he might as well have an unlocked safe. —This row of symbols may have nothing to do with the safe.”

Puntsch sighed. “That's not the way of it. It isn't as though the safe ever had anything of intrinsic value in it. There's nothing of great intrinsic value in Revsof's house altogether, or in mine, for that matter. We're not rich and we're not very subject to burglary. Revsof got the safe about five years ago and had it installed because he thought he might keep papers there. He had this fetish about losing priority even then, but it wasn't till recently that it reached the point of paranoia. He did make a note of the combination for his own use so he wouldn't lock himself out.

“Barbara came across it one day and asked what it was and he said that it was the combination to his safe. She said, 'Well, don't leave it lying around,' and she put it in a little envelope in one of her own drawers, feeling he might need it someday. He never did, apparently, and I'm sure he must have forgotten all about it. But she didn't forget, and she says she is certain it has never been disturbed.”

Rubin said, “He might have had the combination changed.”

“That would have meant a locksmith in the house. Barbara says she is certain it never happened.”

Trumbull said, “Is that all there was written on the page? Just six numbers and a letter of the alphabet?”

“That's all.”

“What about the back of the sheet?”

“Nothing.”

Trumbull said, “You understand, Dr. Puntsch, this isn't a code, and I'm not expert on combination locks. What does the lock look like?”

“Very ordinary. I'm sure Revsof could not afford a really fancy safe. There's a circle with numbers around it from 1 to 30 and a knob with a little pointer in the middle. Barbara has seen Matt at the safe and there's no great shakes to it He turns the knob and pulls it open.”

“She's never done that herself?”

“No. She says she hasn't.”

“She can't tell you why the safe doesn't open when you use the combination?”

“No, she can't. —And yet it seems straightforward enough. Most of the combination locks I've dealt with—all of them, in fact—have knobs that you turn first in one direction, then in the other, then back in the first direction again. It seems clear to me that, according to the combination, I should turn the knob to the right till the pointer is at twelve, then left to twenty-seven, then right again to fifteen.”

Trumbull said thoughtfully, “I can't see that it could mean anything else either.”

“.But it doesn't work,” said Puntsch. “I turned twelve, twenty-seven, fifteen a dozen times. I did it carefully, making sure that the little pointer was centered on each line. I tried making extra turns; you know, right to twelve, then left one full turn and then to twenty-seven, then right one full turn and then to fifteen. I tried making one full turn in one direction and not in the other. I tried other tricks, jiggling the knob, pressing it. I tried everything.”

Gonzalo said, grinning, “Did you say 'Open sesame'?”

“It didn't occur to me to do so,” said Puntsch, not grinning, “but if it had, I would have tried it. Barbara says she never noticed him do anything special, but of course, it could have been something unnoticeable and for that matter she didn't watch him closely. It wouldn't occur to her that she'd have to know someday.”

Halsted said, “Let me look at that again.” He stared at the combination solemnly. “This is only a copy. Dr. Puntsch. This can't be exactly the way it looked. It seems clear here but you might be copying it just as you thought it was. Isn't it possible that some of the numbers in the original might be equivocal so that you might mistake a seven for a one, for instance?”

“No, no,” said Puntsch, shaking his head vigorously. “There's no chance of a mistake there, I assure you.”
   
'

“What about the spaces?” said Halsted. “Was it spaced exactly like that?”

Puntsch reached for the paper and looked at it again. “Oh, I see what you mean. No, as a matter of fact, there were no spaces. I put them in because that was how I thought of it. Actually the original is a solid line of symbols with no particular spacing. It doesn't matter, though, does it? You can't divide it any other way. I'll write it down for you without spaces.” He wrote a second time under the first and shoved it across the table to Halsted.

I2R27I5

He said, “You can't divide it any other way. You can't have a 271 or a 715. The numbers don't go higher than thirty.”

“Well now,” muttered Halsted, “never mind the numbers. What about the letter R?” He licked his lips, obviously enjoying the clear atmosphere of suspense that had now centered upon him. “Suppose we divide the combination this way”:

12 R27 15

He held it up for Puntsch to see, and. then for the others. “In this division, it's the twenty-seven which would have the sign for 'right' so it's the other two numbers that turn left. In other words, the numbers are twelve, twenty-seven, and fifteen all right, but you turn left, right, left, instead of right, left, right.”

Gonzalo protested. “Why put the R there?”

Halsted said, “All he needs is the minimum reminder. He knows what the combination is. If he reminds himself the middle number is right, he knows the other two are left.”

Gonzalo said, “But that's no big deal. If he just puts down the three numbers, it's either left, right, left, or else it's right, left, right. If one doesn't work, he tries the other. Maybe the R stands for something else.”

“I can't think what,” said Puntsch gloomily.

Halsted said, “The symbol couldn't be something other than an R, could it, Dr. Puntsch?”

“Absolutely not,” said Puntsch. “I'll admit I didn't think of associating the R with the second number, but that doesn't matter anyway. When the combination wouldn't work right, left, right, I was desperate enough not only to try it left, right, left; but right, right, right and left, left, left. In every case I tried it with and without complete turns in between. Nothing worked.”

Gonzalo said, “Why not try all the combinations? There can only be so many.”

Rubin said, “Figure out how many, Mario. The first number can be anything from one to thirty in either direction; so can the second; so can the third. The total number of possible combinations, if any direction is allowed for any number, is sixty times sixty times sixty, or over two hundred thousand.”

“I think I'll blow it open before it comes to trying them all,” said Puntsch in clear disgust.

Trumbull turned to Henry, who had been standing at the sideboard, an intent expression on his face. “Have you been following all this, Henry?”

Henry said, “Yes, sir, but I haven't actually seen the figures.”

Trumbull said, “Do you mind, Dr. Puntsch? He's the best man here, actually.” He handed over the slip with the three numbers written in three different ways.

Henry studied them gravely and shook his head. “I'm sorry. I had had a thought, but I see I'm wrong.”

“What was the thought?” asked Trumbull.

“It had occurred to me that the letter R might have been in the small form. I see it's a capital.”

Puntsch looked astonished. “Wait, wait. Henry, does it matter?”

“It might, sir. We don't often think it does, but Mr. Halsted explained earlier in the evening that 'polish' becomes 'Polish,' changing pronunciation simply because of a capitalization.”

Puntsch said slowly, “But, you know, it is a small letter in the original. It never occurred to me to produce it that way. I always use capitals when I print. How odd.”

There was a faint smile on Henry's face. He said, “Would you write the combination with a small letter, sir.”

 
Puntsch, flushing slightly, wrote:

12 r 2715

Henry looked at it and said, “As long as it is a small
r
after all, I can ask a further question. Are there any other differences between this and the original?”

“No,” said Puntsch. Then, defensively, “No significant differences of any kind. The matter of the spacing and the capitalization hasn't changed anything, has it? Of course, the original isn't in my handwriting.”

Henry said quietly, “Is it in anyone's handwriting, sir?”

“What?”

“I mean, is the original typewritten, Dr. Puntsch?”

Dr. Puntsch's flush deepened. “Yes, now that you ask, it was typewritten. That doesn't mean anything either. If there were a typewriter here I would typewrite it for you, though, of course, it might not be the same typewriter that typed out the original.”

Henry said, “There is a typewriter in the office on this floor. Would you care to type it, Dr. Puntsch?”

“Certainly,” said Puntsch defiantly. He was back in two minutes, during which time not one word was said by anyone at the table. He presented the paper to Henry, with the typewritten series of numbers under the four lines of handwritten ones:

l2r27l5

Henry said, “Is this the way it looked now? The typewriter that did the original did not have a particularly unusual typeface?”

“No, it didn't. What I have typed looks just like the original.”

Henry passed the paper to Trumbull, who looked at it and passed it on.