Plot: 5/9.
The acquisitive chuckle
A detective wondered what kind of object one could steal to go unnoticed yet irritate a mercenary businessman to death?
Henry answered that he didn’t steal anything but the poor businessman’s equanimity.
See here for more information.
Ph as in phony
A chemist wondered how his academically mediocre classmate had managed to cheat in a tough examination despite his close surveillance.
Henry replied that the classmate might bride the professor directly.
See here for more information.
Truth to tell
One man, characteristic of always telling the truth regardless of the social convention and self-protection, asked the widowers to help him abate the suspicion of a burglary that he claimed he had never ever committed.
Henry noticed the abnormality of using the exactly identical phrases in his affidavit and then pointed out he might just tell the literal truth—a assumption that was subsequently confirmed by the abrupt departure and the absence of response.
If we cannot lie, we must make the truth lie for us.
Many a literal truth tells a lie by implication.
Go, little books
How could information be passed inconspicuously by purely sending the matchbooks?
By marking the matches inside.
Early Sunday morning
How could a husband create an alibi of staying with his brother-in-law when his wife was killed?
By exploiting his brother-in-law’s unawareness of daylight saving time.
The obvious factor
How could a woman convey a precognition under the observation of a mass of skeptical scientists?
This is fabricated by the storyteller intentionally. Henry pointed out this because he observed that the storyteller always tended to bring up a spate of new evidence that would be more suitable to be given at first in order to dispel others’ speculation.
President Jefferson (1807): I would sooner believe that a Yankee professor would lie than that a stone would fall from heaven.
The pointing finger
The grandpa who suffered the stroke pointed to a Shakespeare book to indicate the location of the bond before he died suddenly without rendering further revelation. His son-in-law perused every line of the book hereafter while his wife searched every corner of the house—both efforts proved futile. Where had the grandpa hidden his bond?
Henry indicated the gap between the bookcase and the wall.
Miss what
A plainclothesman came to test Henry by demonstrating a note whose sender seemed to aim at attacking one of the beauty contestants representing their corresponding countries. So the gentlemen occupied themselves in decoding the reference according to the bible.
Eventually, Henry deduced from the discussion that the reference might mean the leviathan, the largest sea monster allegedly, and therefore drew an analogy between whales and Wales, which turned out to be just the case.
(It was an abundantly boring article boasting of Asimov’s understanding of the bible, and would be better if Henry prolonged the deliberation of others’ opinions against his quick wit or put a higher stake on the answer.)
The lullaby of Broadway
Henry felt suspicious when the doorman omitted telling him both the burglary and the strange sound related to Rubin, so he at last made an audacious assumption that the noise Rubin had heard was the transmission of secret information to the nearby Chinese delegation and the burglary was meant to take back Rubin’s recording of the espionage. (But for me, this is a terrible article because I don’t think it reasonable and efficient to pass intelligence by banging at midnight. There’s a conspicuous vacuum between the clues and the conclusion without solid deduction or compelling turning points.)
Yankee Doddle went to the town
An officer asked them for help to locate a hidden higher officer behind one suspect who couldn’t help humming some part of the titular song during the interrogation.
Henry found the name of the target might rhyme with the name appeared in the song so that the member had subconsciously let out the answer.
(Frankly speaking, I would like it better if others could present their guesses so as to set off Henry’s far-fetched assumption better.)
The curious omission
Today’s guest wondered where to find the name of the bank storing a considerable amount of inheritance bequeathed by his old friend as long as the guest was able to decipher the death note within a year:
“The curious omission in Alice.”
Alice suggested to the famous Alice in wonderland, in which the bishop deliberately omitted to avoid the religious controversy. Henry thought the specification had been hidden in the bishop of the guest’s chess set as the old friend’s last derision.
Out of sight
The guest lost his job because of his accidental leak of the location of the classified information at the dinner table, but all six suspect commensals bore further investigation and appeared innocent.
Henry corrected the waiter serving him at the time had been overlooked.
Character: 5/9.
Characters had their own peculiarities and their interactions were lively, casual, and cordial.
If only more of personal information about them would have been exposed, especially Henry whose intelligence and acuity were perfectly unfit to be just a waiter.
Core: 6/9.
Though I could always guess the answer before the eventual disclosure easily—unless it’s out of my knowledge base such as the bible or the folk song—yet I enjoyed the comic representation of the foreshadowing containing various speculations by a bunch of befuddled intellectuals, along with a convincing solution revealed by a waiter.
And here are some lessons I drew from this work in the 1973:
- The import of each case must be interesting enough to arouse readers’ interest.
- The intellectuals should offer their own distinctive assumptions based on interpretations, characteristics or experience, while leaving some moot points. (Some of the shallow stories I don’t like in this edition all ignored this important part of bringing out the depth of side characters.)
- The waiter solved the mystery by absorbing their views in an unexpected perspective, which could be corroborated somehow as the final conclusion.