Casebook of the Black Widowers

1. The Cross of Lorraine

  Emmanuel Rubin did not, as a general rule, ever allow a look of relief to cross his face. Had one done so, it would have argued a prior feeling of uncertainty or apprehension, sensations he might feel but would certainly never admit to.

  This time, however, the relief was unmistakable. It was monthly banquet time for the Black Widowers; Rubin was the host, and it was he who was supplying the guest; and here it was about twenty minutes after seven and only now - with but ten minutes left before the banquet was to start - only now did his guest arrive.

  Rubin bounded toward him, careful, however, not to spill a drop of his second drink.

  "Gentlemen," he said, clutching the arm of the newcomer, "my guest, the Amazing Larri - spelled L - A - R - R - I. " And in a lowered voice, over the hum of pleased - to - meet - yous, "Where the hell were you?"

  Larri muttered, "The subway train stalled. " Then returned smiles and greetings.

  "Pardon me," said Henry, the perennial - and nonpareil - waiter at the Black Widower banquets, "but there is not much time for the guest to have his drink before dinner begins. Would you state your preference, sir?"

  "A good notion, that," said Larri, gratefully. "Thank you, waiter, and let me have a dry martini, but not too darned dry - a little damp, so to speak. "

  "Certainly, sir," said Henry.

  Rubin said, "I've told you, Larri, that we members all have our ex officio doctorates, so now let me introduce them in nauseating detail. This tall gentleman with the neat mustache, black eyebrows, and straight back is Dr. Geoffrey Avalon. He's a lawyer and he never smiles. The last time he tried, he was fined for contempt of court. "

  Avalon smiled as broadly as he could and said, "You undoubtedly know Manny well enough, sir, not to take him seriously. "

  "Undoubtedly," said Larri. As he and Rubin stood together, they looked remarkably alike. Both were of a height - about five feet, five - both had active, inquisitive faces, both had straggly beards, though Larri's was longer and was accompanied by a fringe of hair down either side of his face as well.

  Rubin said, "And here, dressed fit to kill anyone with a real taste for clothing, is our scribble expert. Dr. Mario Gonzalo, who will insist on producing a caricature of you in which he will claim to see a resemblance. Dr. Roger Halsted inflicts pain on junior - high students under the guise of teaching them what little he knows of mathematics. Dr. James Drake is a superannuated chemist who once conned someone into granting him a Ph. D. And finally. Dr. Thomas Trumbull, who works for the government in an unnamed job as code expert and who spends most of his time hoping Congress doesn't find out. "

  "Manny," said Trumbull wearily, "if it were possible to cast a retroactive blackball, I think you could count on five. "

  And Henry said, "Gentlemen, dinner is served. "

  It was one of those rare Black Widower occasions when the entree was lobster, rarer now than ever because of the increase in prices.

  Rubin, who as host bore the cost, shrugged it off. "I made a good paperback sale last month and we can call this a celebration. "

  "We can celebrate," said Avalon, "but lobster tends to kill conversation. The cracking of claws and shells, the extraction of meat, the dipping in melted butter, takes one's full concentration. "' And he grimaced with the effort he was putting into the compression of the nutcracker.

  "In that case," said the Amazing Larri, "I shall have a monopoly on the conversation," and he grinned with satisfaction as a large platter of prime - rib roast was dexterously placed before him by Henry.

  "Larri is allergic to seafood," said Rubin.

  Conversation was indeed subdued as Avalon had predicted until the various lobsters had been clearly worsted in culinary battle, and then, finally, Halsted asked, "What makes you Amazing, Larri?"

  "Stage name," said Larri. "I am a prestidigitator, an escapist extraordinaire, and the greatest living exposeur. "

  Trumbull, who was sitting to Larri's right, formed ridges on his bronzed forehead. "What the devil do you mean by exposeur?"

  Rubin beat a tattoo on his water glass at this point and said, "No grilling till we've had our coffee. "

  "For God's sake," said Trumbull, "I'm just asking the definition of a word. "

  "Host's decision is final," said Rubin.

  Trumbull scowled blackly in Rubin's direction. "Then I'll guess the answer. An exposeur is one who exposes fakes; people who, using trickery of one sort or another, pretend to produce effects they attribute to supernatural or paranatural forces. "

  Larri thrust out his lower lip, raised his eyebrows, and nodded his head. "Pretty good for a guess. I couldn't have put it better. "

  Gonzalo said, "You mean that whatever someone did by what he claimed was real magic, you could do by stage magic. "

  "Exactly," said Larri. "For instance, suppose that some mystic claimed he had the capacity to bend spoons by means of unknown forces. I can do the same by using natural force, this way. " He lifted his spoon and, holding it by its two ends, he bent it half an inch out of true.

  Trumbull said, 'That scarcely counts. Anyone can do it that way. "

  "Ah," said Larri, "but this spoon you saw me bend is not the amazing effect at all. That spoon you were watching merely served to trap and focus the ethereal rays that did the real work. Those rays acted to bend your spoon. Dr. Trumbull. "

  Trumbull looked down and picked up his spoon, which was bent nearly at right angles. "How did you do this?"

  Larri shrugged. "Would you believe ethereal forces?"

  Drake laughed and, pushing his dismantled lobster toward the center of the table, lit a cigarette. He said, "Larri did it a few minutes ago, with his hands, when you weren't looking. "

  Larri seemed unperturbed by exposure. "When Manny banged his glass. Dr. Trumbull, you looked away. I had rather hoped you all would. "

  Drake said, "I know better than to pay attention to Manny. "

  "But," said Larri, "if no one had seen me do it, would you have accepted the ethereal forces?"

  "Not a chance," said Trumbull.

  "Even if there had been no way in which you could explain the effect? Here, let me show you something. Suppose you wanted to flip a coin . . . "

  He fell silent for a moment while Henry passed out the strawberry shortcake, pushed his own out of the way, and said, "Suppose you wanted to flip a coin, without actually lifting it and turning it - this penny, for instance. There are a number of ways it could be done. The simplest would lie simply to touch it quickly, because, as you all know, a finger is always slightly sticky, especially so at mealtime, so that the coin lifts up slightly as the finger is removed and can be made to flip over. It is tails now, you see. Touch it again and it is heads. "

  Gonzalo said, "No prestidigitation there, though. We see it flip. "

  "Exactly," said Larri, "and that's why I won't do it that way. Let's put something over it so that it can't be touched or flipped. Suppose we use a . . . " He looked about the table for a moment and seized a salt shaker. "Suppose we use this. " He placed the salt shaker over the coin and said, "Now it is showing heads? . . . "

  "Hold on," said Gonzalo. "How do we know it's showing heads? It could be tails and then, when you reveal it later, you'll say it flipped, when it was tails all along. "

  "You're perfectly right," said Larri, "and I'm glad you raised the point. Dr. Drake, you've got eyes that caught me before. Would you check this on behalf of the assembled company? I'll lift the salt shaker and you tell me what the coin shows. "

  Drake looked and said, "Heads!" in his softly hoarse voice.

  "You'll all take Dr. Drake's word, I hope, gentlemen? Please, watch me p
lace the salt shaker back on the coin and make sure it doesn't flip in the process. . . . "

  "It didn't," said Drake.

  "Now to keep my fingers from slipping while performing this trick, I will put this paper napkin over the salt shaker. "

  Larri molded the paper napkin neatly and carefully over the salt shaker, then said, "But, in manipulating this napkin, I caused you all to divert your attention from the penny and you may think I have flipped it in the process. " He lifted the salt shaker with the paper about it and said, "Dr. Drake, will you check the coin again?"

  Drake leaned toward it. "Still heads," he said.

  Very carefully and gently, Larri put back the salt shaker, the paper napkin still molded about it, and said, 'The coin remained as is?"

  "Still heads," said Drake.

  "In that case, I now perform the magic. " Larri pushed down on the salt shaker, and the paper collapsed. There was nothing inside.

  There was a moment of shock, and then Gonzalo said, "Where's the salt shaker?"

  "In another plane of existence," said Larri airily.

  "But you said you were going to flip the coin. "

  "I lied. "

  Avalon said, 'There's no mystery. He had us all concentrating on the coin as a diversion tactic. When he picked up the salt shaker with the napkin around it to let Jim look at the coin, he just dropped the salt shaker into his hand and placed the empty, molded napkin over the coin. "

  "Did you see me do that, Dr. Avalon?" asked Larri.

  "No. I was looking at the coin, too. "

  "Then you're just guessing," said Larri.

  Rubin, who had not participated in the demonstration at all, but who had eaten his strawberry shortcake instead and now waited for the others to catch up, said, "The tendency is to argue these things out logically and that's impossible. Scientists and other rationalists are used to dealing with the universe, which fights fair. Faced with a mystic who does not, they find themselves maneuvered into believing nonsense and, in the end, making fools of themselves.

  "Magicians, on the other hand," Rubin went on, "know what to watch for, are experienced enough not to be misdirected, and are not impressed by the apparently supernatural. That's why mystics generally won't perform if they know magicians are in the audience. "

  Coffee had been served and was being sipped at, and Henry was quietly preparing the brandy, when Rubin sounded the water glass and said, "Gentlemen, it is time for the official grilling, assuming you idiots have left anything to grill. Geoff, will you do the honors today?"

  Avalon cleared his throat portentously and frowned down upon the Amazing Larri from under his dark and luxuriant eyebrows. Using his voice in the deepest of its naturally deep register, Avalon said, "It is customary to ask our guests to justify their existences, but if today's guest exposes phony mystics even now and then, I, for one, consider his existence justified and will pass on.

  "The temptation is to ask you how you performed your little disappearing trick of a moment ago, but I quite understand that the ethics of your profession preclude your telling us. Even though everything said here is considered under the rose, and though nothing has ever leaked, I will refrain from such questions.

  "Let me instead, then, ask after your failures. Sir, you describe yourself as an exposeur. Have there been any supposedly mystical demonstrations you have not been able to duplicate in prestidigitous manner and have not been able to account for by natural means?"

  Larri said, "I have not attempted to explain all the effects I have ever encountered or heard of, but where I have studied an effect and made an attempt to duplicate it, I have succeeded in every case. "

  "No failures?"

  "None!"

  Avalon considered that, but as he prepared for the next question, Gonzalo broke in. His head was leaning on one palm, but the fingers of that hand were carefully disposed in such a way as not to disarray his hair. He said, "Now, wait, Larri, would it be right to suggest that you tackled only easy cases? The really puzzling cases you might have made no attempts on. "

  "You mean," said Larri, "that I shied away from anything that might spoil my perfect record or that might upset my belief in the rational order of the universe? If so, you're quite wrong, Dr. Gonzalo. Most reports of apparent mystical powers are dull and unimportant, are crude and patently false. I ignore those. The cases I do take on are precisely the puzzling ones that have attracted attention because of their unusual nature and their apparent divorce from the rational. So you see, the ones I take on are precisely those you suspect I avoid. "

  Gonzalo subsided and Avalon said, "Larri, the mere fact that you can duplicate a trick by prestidigitation doesn't mean that it couldn't have been performed by the mystic through supernatural means. The fact that human beings can build machines that fly doesn't mean that birds are man - made machines. "

  "Quite right," said Larri, "but mystics lay their claims to supernatural powers on the notion, either expressed or implicit, that there is no other way of producing the effect. If I show that the same effect can be produced by natural means, the burden of proof then shifts to them to show that the effect can be produced after the natural means I have used are made impossible. I don't know of any mystic who has accepted the conditions set by professional magicians to guard against trickery and who then succeeded. "

  "And nothing has ever puzzled you? Not even the tricks other magicians have developed?"

  "Oh yes, there are effects produced by some magicians that puzzle me in the sense that I don't know quite how they do it. I might duplicate it but perhaps using a different method. In any case, that's not the point. As long as an effect is produced by natural means, it doesn't matter whether I can reproduce it or not. I am not the best magician in the world. I am just a better magician than any mystic is. "

  Halsted, his high forehead flushed with anxiety, and stuttering slightly in his eagerness to speak, said, "But then nothing would startle you? No disappearance like that you carried through on the salt shaker? . . . "

  "You mean that one?" asked Larri, pointing. There was a salt shaker in the middle of the table, but no one had seen it placed there.

  Halsted, thrown off a moment, recovered and said, "Have you ever been startled by any disappearance? I heard once that magicians have made elephants disappear. "

  "Actually, making elephants disappear is childishly simple. I assure you there's nothing puzzling about disappearances in a magic act. " And then a peculiar look crossed Larri's face, a flash of sadness and frustration. "Not in a magic act. Just. . . "

  "Yes?" said Halsted. "Just what?"

  "Just in real life," said Larri, smiling and attempting to toss off the remark lightheartedly.

  "Just a minute," said Trumbull, "but we don't let that pass. If there has been a disappearance in real life you can't explain, we want to hear about it. "

  Larri shook his head, "No, no, Dr. Trumbull. It is not a mysterious disappearance or an inexplicable one. Nothing like that at all. I just lost - something, and can't find it and it - saddens me. "

  "The details," said Trumbull. "

  "It wouldn't be worth it," said Larri. "It's a - silly story and somewhat . . . " He fell into silence.

  "Goddamn it," thundered Trumbull, "we all sit here and voluntarily refrain from asking anything that might result in your being tempted to violate your ethics. Would it violate the ethics of the magician's art for you to tell this story?"

  "It's not that at all. . . . "

  "Well, then, sir, I repeat what Geoff has told you. Everything said here is in confidence and the agreement surrounding these monthly dinners is that all questions must be answered. Manny?"

  Rubin shrugged. "That's the way it is, Larri. If you don't want to answer the question, we'll have to declare the meeting at an end. "

  Larri sat back in his chair and looked depressed. "I can't very well allow that to happen, considering the fine hospitality I've been shown. I will te
ll you the story and you'll find there's nothing to it. I met a woman quite accidentally; I lost touch with her; I can't locate her. That's all there is. "

  "No," said Trumbull, "that's not all there is. Where and how did you meet her? Where and how did you lose touch with her? Why can't you find her again? We want to know the details. "

  Gonzalo said, "In tact, if you tell us the details, we may be able to help you. "

  Larri laughed sardonically, "I think not. "

  "You'd be surprised," said Gonzalo. "In the past. . . "

  Avalon said, "Quiet, Mario. Don't make promises we might not be able to keep. Would you give us the details, sir? I assure you we'll do our best to help. "

  Larri smiled wearily. "I appreciate your offer, but you will see that there is nothing you can do sitting here. "

  He adjusted himself in his seat and said, "I was done with my performance in an upstate town - I'll give you the details when and if you insist, but for the moment they don't matter, except that this happened about a month ago. I had to get to another small town some hundred fifty miles away for a morning show and that meant a little transportation problem.

  "My magic, unfortunately, is not the kind that can transport me a hundred fifty miles in a twinkling, or even conjure up a pair of seven - league boots. I did not have my car with me - just as well, for I don't like to travel the lesser roads at night when I am sleepy - and the net result was that I would have to take a bus that would make more stops than a telegram and would take nearly four hours to make the journey. I planned to catch some sleep while on wheels and make it serve a purpose anyway.

  "But when things go wrong, they go wrong in battalions, so you can guess that I missed my bus and that the next one would not come along for two more hours. There was an enclosed station in which I could wait, one that was as dreary as you could imagine - with no reading matter except for some fly - blown posters on the wall - no place to buy a paper or a cup of coffee. I thought grimly that it was fortunate it wasn't raining, and settled down to drowse, when my luck changed.

  "A woman walked in. I've never been married, gentlemen, and I've never even had what young people today call a 'meaningful relationship. ' Some casual attachments, perhaps, but on the whole, though it seems trite to say so, I am married to my art and find it much more satisfying than women, generally.

  "I had no reason to think that this woman was an improvement on others, but she had a pleasant appearance. She was something over thirty, and was just plump enough to have a warm, comfortable look about her, and she wasn't too tall.

  "She looked about and said, smiling, 'Well, I've missed my bus, I see. '

  "I smiled with her. I liked the way she said it. She didn't fret or whine or act annoyed at the universe. It was a flat, good - humored statement of fact, and just hearing it cheered me up tremendously because actually I myself was in the mood to fret and whine and act annoyed. Now I could be as good - natured as she and say. 'Two of us, madam, so you don't even have the satisfaction of being unique. '

  "'So much the better,' she said, 'We can talk and pass the time that much faster. '

  "I was astonished. She did not treat me as a potential rapist or as a possible thief. God knows I am not handsome or even particularly respectable in appearance, but it was as though she had casually penetrated to my inmost character and found it satisfactory. You have no idea how flattered I was. If I were ten times as sleepy as I was, I would have stayed up to talk to her.

  "And we did talk. Inside of fifteen minutes, I knew I was having the pleasantest conversation in my life - in a crummy bus station at not much before midnight. I can't tell you all we talked about, but I can tell you what we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about magic.

  "I can interest anyone by doing tricks, but then it isn't me they're interested in; it's the flying fingers and the patter they like. And while I'm willing to buy attention in that way, you don't know how pleasant it is to get the attention without purchase. She apparently just liked to listen to me, and I know I just liked to listen to her.

  "Fortunately, my trip was not an all - out effort, so I didn't have my large trunk with the show - business advertising all over it, just two rather large valises. I told her nothing personal about myself, and asked nothing about her. I gathered briefly that she was heading for her brother's place; that he was right on the road; that she would have to wake him up because she had carelessly let herself be late - but she only told me that in order to say that she was glad it had happened. She would buy my company at the price of inconveniencing her brother. I liked that.

  "We didn't talk politics or world affairs or religion or theater. We talked people - all the funny and odd and peculiar things we had observed about people. We laughed for two hours, during which not one other person came to join us. I had never had anything like that happen to me, had never felt so alive and happy, and when the bus finally came at 1:50 A. M. , it was amazing how sorry I was. I didn't want the bus to come; I didn't want the night to end.

  "When we got onto the bus, of course, it was no longer quite the same thing, even though it was sufficiently nonfull for us to find a double seat we could share. After all, we had been alone in the station and there we could talk loudly and laugh. On the bus we had to whisper; people were sleeping.

  "Of course, it wasn't all bad. It was a nice feeling to have her so close to me; to be making contact. Despite the fact that I'm rather an old horse, I felt like a teen - ager. Enough like a teen - ager, in fact, to be embarrassed at being watched.

  "Immediately across the way were a woman and her young son. He was about eight years old, I should judge, and he was awake. He kept watching me with his sharp little eyes. I could see those eyes fixed on us every time a street light shone into the bus and it was very inhibiting. I wished he were asleep but, of course, the excitement of being on a bus, perhaps, was keeping him awake.

  "The motion of the bus, the occasional whisper, the feeling of being quite out of reality, the pressure of her body against mine - it was like confusing dream and fact, and the boundary between sleep and wakefulness just vanished. I didn't intend to sleep, and I started awake once or twice, but then finally, when I started awake one more time, it was clear that there had been a considerable period of sleep, and the seat next to me was empty. "

  Halsted said, "I take it she had gotten off. "

  "I didn't think she had disappeared into thin air," said Larri. "Naturally, I looked about. I couldn't call her name, because I didn't know her name. She wasn't in the rest room, because its door was swinging open.

  "The little boy across the aisle spoke in a rapid high treble - in French. I can understand French reasonably well, but I didn't have to make any effort, because his mother was now awake and she translated. She spoke English quite well.

  "She said, 'Pardon me, sir, but is it that you are looking for the woman that was with you?'

  "'Yes,' I said. "Did you see where she got off?'

  "'Not I, sir. I was sleeping. By my son says that she descended at the place of the Cross of Lorraine. '

  "At the what?'

  "She repeated it, and so did the child, in French.

  "She said, 'You must excuse my son, sir. He is a great hero - worshiper of President Charles de Gaulle, and though he is young he knows the tale of the Free French forces in the war very well. He would not miss a sight like a Cross of Lorraine. If he said he saw it, he did. '

  "I thanked them and then went forward to the bus driver and asked him, but at that time of night, the bus stop wherever a passenger would like to get off, or get on. He had made numerous stops and let numerous people on and off, and he didn't know for sure where he had stopped and whom he had left off. He was rather churlish, in fact. "

  Avalon cleared his throat. "He may have thought you were up to no good and was deliberately withholding information to protect the passenger. "

  "Maybe," said Larri despondently, "but what it amounted to was t
hat I had lost her. When I came back to my seat, I found a little note tucked into the pocket of the jacket I had placed in the rack above. I managed to read it by a street light at the next stop, where the French mother and son got off. It said, 'Thank you so much for a delightful time. Gwendolyn. '"

  Gonzalo said, "You have her first name, anyway. "

  Larri said, "I would appreciate having had her last name, her address, her telephone number. A first name is useless. "

  "You know," said Rubin, "she may deliberately have withheld information because she wasn't interested in continuing the acquaintanceship. A romantic little interlude is one thing; a continuing danger is another. She may be a married woman. "

  "Or she may have been offended at your falling asleep," said Gonzalo.

  "Maybe," said Larri. "But if I found her, I could apologize if she were offended, or I could reassure her if she feared me; or I might cultivate her friendship if she were neither offended nor afraid. Rather that than spend the rest of my life wondering. "

  "Have you done anything about it?" asked Gonzalo.

  "Certainly," said Larri, sardonically. "If a magician is faced with a disappearing woman he must understand what has happened. I have gone over the bus route twice by car, looking for a Cross of Lorraine. If I had found it, I would have gone in and asked if anyone there knew a woman by the name of Gwendolyn. I'd have described her. I'd have gone to the local post office or the local police station, if necessary. "

  "But you have not found a Cross of Lorraine, I take it," said Trumbull.

  "I have not. "

  Halsted said, "Mathematically speaking, it's a finite problem. You could try every post office along the whole route. "

  Larri sighed. "If I get desperate enough, I'll try. But, mathematically speaking, that would be so inelegant. Why can't I find the Cross of Lorraine?"

  "The youngster might have made a mistake," said Trumbull.

  "Not a chance," said Larri. "An adult, yes, but a child, riding a hobby? Never. Adults have accumulated enough irrationality to be very unreliable eyewitnesses. A bright eight - year - old is different. Don't try to pull any trick on a bright kid; he'll see through it.

  "Just the same," he went on, "nowhere on the route is there a restaurant, a department store, or anything else with the name Cross of Lorraine. I think I've checked every set of yellow pages along the entire route. "

  "Now wait a while," said Avalon, "that's wrong. The child wouldn't have seen the words because they would have meant nothing to him. If he spoke and read only French, as I suppose he did, he would know the phrase as Croix de Lorraine. The English would have never caught his eyes. He must have seen the symbol, the cross with the two horizontal bars, like this. " He reached out and Henry obligingly handed him a menu.

  Avalon turned it over and on the blank back drew the following:

  +

  ------

  |

  |

  "Actually," he said, "it is more properly called the Patriarchal Cross or the Archiepiscopal Cross, since it symbolized the high office of patriarchs and archbishops by doubling the bars. You will not be surprised to hear that the Papal Cross has three bars. The Patriarchal Cross was used as a symbol by Godfrey of Bouillon, who was one of the leaders of the First Crusade, and since he was Duke of Lorraine, it came to be called the Cross of Lorraine. As we all know, it was adopted as the emblem of the Free French during the Hitlerian War. " He coughed slightly and tried to look modest.

  Larri said, a little impatiently, "I understand about the symbol, Dr. Avalon, and I didn't expect the youngster to note words. I think you'll agree, though, that any establishment calling itself the Cross of Lorraine would surely display the symbol along with the name. I looked for the name in the yellow pages, but for the symbol on the road. "

  "And you didn't find it?" said Gonzalo.

  "As I've already said, I didn't. I was desperate enough to consider things I didn't think the kid could possibly have seen at night. I thought, who knows how sharp young eyes are and how readily they may see something that represents an overriding interest. So I looked at signs in windows, at street signs - even at graffiti, damn it. "

  "If it were a graffito," said Trumbull, "then, of course, it could have been erased between the time the child saw it, and the time you came to look for it. "

  "I'm not sure of that," said Rubin. "It's my experience that graffiti are never erased. We've got some on the outside of our apartment house. . . . "

  "That's New York," said Trumbull. "In smaller towns, there's less tolerance for these evidences of anarchy. "

  "Hold on," said Gonzalo. "What makes you think graffiti are necessarily signs of anarchy? As a matter of fact. . . "

  "Gentlemen! Gentlemen!" And as always, when Avalon's voice was raised to its full baritone splendor, a silence fell. "We are not here to argue the merits and demerits of graffiti. The question is: How can we find this woman who disappeared? Larri has found no restaurant or other establishment with the name of Cross of Lorraine; he has found no evidence of the symbol along the route taken. Can we help?"

  Drake held up his hand and squinted through the curling smoke of his cigarette. "Hold on, there's no problem. Have you ever seen a Russian Orthodox Church? Do you know what its cross is like?" He made quick marks on the back of the menu and shoved it toward the center of the table. "Here. . . . "

  He said, "The kid, being hipped on the Free French, would take a quick look at that and see it as the Cross of Lorraine. So what you have to do, Larri, is look for some Russian Orthodox Church en route. I doubt that there would be more than one. "

  Larri thought about it, but did not seem overjoyed. "The cross with that second bar set at an angle would be on the top of the spire, wouldn't it?"

  "I imagine so. "

  "And it wouldn't be floodlighted, would it? How would the child be able to see it at four o'clock in the morning?"

  Drake stubbed out his cigarette. "Well, now, churches usually have bulletin board affairs near the entrance. I don't know, there could have been a Russian Orthodox cross on the . . . "

  "I would have seen it," said Larri firmly.

  "Could it have been a Red Cross?" asked Gonzalo feebly. "You know, there might be a Red Cross headquarters along the route. "

  "The Red Cross," said Rubin, "is a Greek Cross with all four arms equal. I don't see how that could possibly be mistaken for a Cross of Lorraine by a Free French enthusiast. Look at it . . . "

  Halsted said, "The logical thing, I suppose, is that you simply missed it, Larri. If you insist that, as a magician, you're such a trained observer that you couldn't have missed it, which sounds impossible to me, then maybe it was a symbol on something movable - on a truck in a driveway, for instance - and it moved on after sunrise. "

  "The boy made it quite clear that it was at the place of the Cross of Lorraine," said Larri. "I suppose even an eight - year - old can tell the difference between a place and a movable object. "

  "He spoke French. Maybe you mistranslated. "

  "I'm not that bad at the language," said Larri, "and his mother translated and French is her native tongue. "

  "But English isn't. She might have gotten it wrong. The kid might have said something else. He might not even have said the Cross of Lorraine. "

  Avalon raised his hand for silence and said, "One moment, gentlemen, I see Henry, our esteemed waiter, smiling. What is it, Henry?"

  Henry, from his place at the sideboard, said, "I'm afraid that I am amused at your doubting the child's evidence. It is quite certain, in my opinion, that he did see the Cross of Lorraine. "

  There was a moment's silence and Larri said, "How can you tell that, Henry?"

  "By not being oversubtle, sir. "

  Avalon's voice boomed out. "I knew it. We're being too complicated. Henry, how is it possible to gain greater simplicity?"

  "Why, Mr. Avalon, the incident took place at night. Instead of looking at
all signs, all places, all varieties of cross, why not begin by asking ourselves what very few things can be easily seen on a highway at night?"

  "A Cross of Lorraine?" asked Gonzalo incredulously.

  "Certainly," said Henry, "among other things. Especially if we don't call it a Cross of Lorraine. What the youngster saw as a Cross of Lorraine, out of his special interest, we would see as something else so clearly that its relationship to the Cross of Lorraine would be invisible. What has been happening just now has been precisely what happened earlier with Mr. Larri's trick with the coin and salt shaker. We concentrated on the coin and didn't watch the salt shaker, and now we concentrate on the Cross of Lorraine and don't look for the alternative. "

  Trumbull said, "Henry, if you don't stop talking in riddles, you're fired. What the hell is the Cross of Lorraine, if it isn't the Cross of Lorraine?"

  Henry said gravely, "What is this?" and carefully he drew on the back of the menu . . .

  Trumbull said, "A Cross of Lorraine - tilted. "

  "No, sir, you would never have thought so, if we hadn't been talking about the Cross. Those are English letters and a very common symbol on highways if you add something to it. . . . He wrote quickly and the tilted Cross became:

  EXXON

  "The one thing," said Henry, "that is designed to be seen, without trouble, day or night, on any highway is a gas - station sign. The child saw the Cross of Lorraine in this one, but Mr. Larri, retracing the route, sees only a double X, since he reads the entire word as Exxon. All signs showing this name, whether on the highway, in advertisements, or on credit cards, show the name in this fashion. "

  Now Larri caught fire. "You mean, Henry, that if I go into the Exxon stations en route and ask for Gwendolyn . . . "

  "The proprietor of one of them is likely to be her brother, and there would not be more than five or six at most to inquire at. "

  "Good God, Henry," said Larri, "you're a magician. "

  "Merely simpleminded," said Henry, "though perhaps in the nonperjorative sense. "

  "The Cross of Lorraine" - Afterword

  Eleanor Sullivan, the delightful managing editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, who was the first to see the story after I had written it, was struck by the fact that although she had seen the sign "Exxon" any number of times, she had never noticed the Cross of Lorraine it incorporated.

  She decided to try an experiment. Not long after she had read the story, she was driving her car with a friend as passenger.

  She said, "There's a prominent Cross of Lorraine on some of the signs of the highway. Can you point it out to me?"

  The passenger knew what a Cross of Lorraine was and began to look. (It must have acted as a damper on conversation, I suspect, though Eleanor did not say so. )

  Eleanor even made it easier by deliberately driving into an Exxon gasoline station in order to tank up, but the passenger never saw it. In the end Eleanor had to explain.

  It's not surprising, really. You don't necessarily see what there is to see; you see what you expect to see. You know there are two x's in Exxon and that's all you expect to see and all you do see.

  "The Cross of Lorraine" appeared in the May 1976 EQMM.