Free The Union Club Mysteries by Isaac Asimov Page B

stalls. I looked in both of them and both were empty, thank goodness. I even checked the urinals, so help me, just in case they were loose and you could slip a six-foot package into the wall behind them. There was a small window, caked with dust and old paint. No way of opening it and the glass was unbroken."
    I said, "If the pawn took it in and didn't take it out, then it must still be in the restaurant."
    "But it isn't. I swear."
    "Then if it isn't there, it must have been sneaked out—a six-foot package with five agents watching."
    Winslow winced. "That couldn't be."
    "One or the other," I said.
    But Winslow looked so miserable, I relented. I said, "Stop suffering, Winslow. I'll save your hide. I know where it is."
    And it was where I knew it was. And I did save his hide.
    Griswold just sat there smiling at us fatuously. Then he leaned back in his chair as though he were about to close his eyes.
    I said, "Come on, Griswold. This time you've gone too far. You couldn't possibly know where it was. I defy you to explain yourself."
    "Defy? Defy? Good God, man, it was so easy. I told you what agents were like and what their chief had trained them to be. They might dash fearlessly into enemy fire, they might fearlessly search a place quite illegally. But not one of the chief's men would think of doing anything that was downright unmannerly and crude. They would poke about everywhere but one place—a place they probably didn't even let themselves realize existed."
    "What are you talking about?" said I.
    "With regard to the rest rooms, Winslow said, 'I looked through it carefully myself.' It. Singular! It was the men's room, because it had urinals. He mentioned them. Well, a restaurant can't possibly have a men's room without having one for women, too. Our culture demands that symmetry. But what respectable agent would dream of walking into a ladies' room, even in a slum restaurant?"
    "You mean the pawn hid it there?"
    "Sure. I imagine he listened to make sure it was empty, then he opened it and propped it up against one corner. Any woman entering that crummy rest room would have neither leisure nor desire to investigate the package, or do anything but go in and get out. Even if the room were not empty, it could be done so quickly, the woman inside would have had no time to scream. In any case, that's where Winslow and his men found the package when they forced themselves to look."
    "But why would he put it there?"
    "As it turned out on another occasion, the pick-up was a woman. So why not?"

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Gift
    For the last two or three weeks, Griswold had remained grimly silent during our weekly get-togethers in the quiet library of the reclusive Union Club, a room that, by common consent, no one but the four of us used on those nights.
    It was rather depressing, for we reluctantly agreed that the evening lost part of its charm without one of his tales, whether or not they were true—which was something none of us could ever decide.
    I said, "Listen. I have something to say that can't fail to draw him out. Just follow my lead."
    I turned to the old armchair that had long since fitted itself to the contours of Griswold's angular body and that no one else in the Club dared use even on the evenings he wasn't there, which weren't many.
    I said, "I read in the papers that they have now, through use of computers, invented coding systems that are so complicated that breaking them, even with the use of another computer, is impossible."
    Baranov said, "Well, there goes the entire profession of espionage."
    "Good riddance," said Jennings emphatically.
    Griswold's hand had trembled just slightly at my remark as it held the scotch and soda, though I knew there was no chance of his dropping it, even if he did seem fast asleep. With Baranov's remark, his feet shuffled a bit as though he were thinking of standing up and leaving. Finally, when Jennings made his observation, one eyelid went up and revealed Griswold's blue-ice eye glaring at us.