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Roger Halsted, normally soft - spoken, did on occasion beco that struck at the inner core of his affections

He said, "You&039;re quite wrong, Manny Not only is the limerick an authentic and respectable verse fore what the haiku is to Japanese, an authentic and peculiar possession"

Halsted&039;s high forehead was pink and his slight starew, for hie of the monthly banquet of the Black Widowers fell briefly silent in astonish of Erew passionate even over weather announce to tell e?"

"Of course not," said Halsted "I know a number of limericks in French and German It&039;s just that it doesn&039;t colish They&039;re not designed for it For heaven&039;s sake, you can write haikus in English; it&039;s just asyllables; but it doesn&039;t have the same effect as in Japanese"

"Subjective nonsense," said Rubin, his sparse gray beard bristling belligerently "It&039;s what you&039;re used to Teach Arade school and they&039;ll appreciate it in English as Japanese children learn to appreciate it in Japanese"

"You underestimate the difference involved in the fact that syllables in Japanese are lish And where lilish language"

"You call it anarchy, Roger, because you know no gralish grammar is incredibly loose It consists allish vocabulary, through a succession of historical accidents, is far larger than that of any other language Every word in English has twenty synony"

"I grant the flexibility of English," said Rubin

"Then you grant ument A limerick is made up of thirteen metrical feet divided into five lines with three, three, to, three feet each There are two unaccented, syllables between each accented one in each line, one or two unaccented syllables at the start of each line, and zero, one, or two unaccented syllables at the end of each line If"

At this point, Mario Gonzalo, the Black Widowers&039; resident artist, who had been following the argu his lips over both, said, "Coer, we all knohat a limerick is"

Halsted said, "The point I&039;id and allow allish because we can shift from a word to its synonym, we can alter word order, use a noun for an adjective, and so on In other languages, you are not so free - there are too few synonyms, too fixed a word order, too inflexible a set of word properties"

At this point, the one nonht in by the host of the evening, broke in eagerly He had been hovering at the edge of the argu for a chance to insert hioes: &039;From a crypt in the church of St Giles&039;"

Halsted said, "Good! Take that one I&039;ve often heard the second line given as &039;Ca out for a ! Between the two accented syllables &039;screa&039; there is only one unaccented syllable"

"Not so," said Jah to reassure himself of its microscopic presence "You can say it, &039;Ca out for a mile&039;"

Halsted looked annoyed, "That defies the ordinary rhythlish speech If you were to read the line as prose, you would sound illiterate if you placed the accent on &039;out&039; You could say &039;Ca out for a mile,&039; but now you have three unaccented syllables between &039;rang and &039;e it to &039;Ca out for miles,&039; which sounds better and which, incidentally, preserves the rhyme, a matter that most amateur limericists are very cavalier about However, the phrase &039;calish - ale it to "Came a scream that resounded for miles&039; and you have a perfect limerick line"

Geoffrey Avalon&039;s deep baritone rolled out, effortlessly rising above the general conversation, "And as Henry is trying to tell you, Roger, we have a perfect banquet waiting for us if you&039;ll only shut up and let everyone sit down"

Henry, whose role as waiter at the monthly banquet , said quietly, "I cannot guarantee perfection, gentleoose that I think you will find acceptable"

Halsted sat down at once It idely ru limericks was to place food in front of him, and Halsted hadsome truth to that He was a valiant trencherain after the stuffed mushrooms had been disposed of and bones sprouted from the plates He said, "I take it you know the St Giles li out of his tanned face under his thatch of white hair, said, "He has heard every limerick invented and, thanks to his insufferable mania and our own incomprehensible tolerance, so have we"

Avalon said, "Since you came late as usual, Touest to you This is Ananias St John, a cousin of my wife&039;s but a splendid fellow all the sahtful look in his eye

"Ananias," said St John jovially "My parents had a perverted sense of humor However, the Bible is so rarely read these days that the natural allusion is lost Well, almost so; it wasn&039;t last week, I think Usually, the trouble I have is in pronunciation Which relophilic love of elision and don&039;t pronounce my last name SINjon Accent the last syllable andof Saint John"

Halsted said, "Elisions can be useful: &039;There was a young fellow named Sinjon, Who said to his wife, "Honest Injun"&039;"

Truer, I&039;d tell you not to torture us with another limerick, except that you won&039;t find another rhyme for St John, however execrable"

Halsted said quietly, "&039;I was having no fling, with that pretty young thing Just a small bit of fatherly pinchin&039;&039;"

"&039;Execrable&039; is the word, all right, Tom," said Avalon

"Can you do better?" demanded Halsted

"Who wants to?" said Trumbull "To want to compose a better limerick is the mark of a man with lass with his spoon as Henry passed around the brandy in his usual unobtrusive way

"Roger," Avalon said, "you were unaccustoe of your brashness and ask you to conduct the grilling now"

Truer will get this thing turned into a competition of limericks, and I swear I&039;ll leave"

Avalon looked austere "As host, I er, you do the grilling, and the subject of liht up"

Halsted said, eyebrows lifted, "I wouldn&039;t dream of it I&039;ve had my say Mr St John" (he pronounced the name carefully as two equally stressed words), "it is custouest to justify his existence, and in this case I choose not to It I do, we ent and, instead, I want to move directly to a nonlimerical point"

"Grill! Don&039;t orate!" muttered Truesture

Halsted said, "Earlier, during the dinner, you said that few people saw the natural allusion to your name, Ananias You mean, of course, the fact that it is used, ht," said St John cheerfully "Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, tried to withhold property fro about it and were struck dead by Peter in consequence You&039;ll find it at the beginning of the Fifth Chapter of Acts"

Rubin said, "Have you ever thought of changing your name?"

"Why should I?" said St John I like it It gives me a bit of individuality I&039;m the only Ananias I ever met and that suits h You also said that there were allusions ht you were a liar Why?"

St John frowned and his round face assu about last week?"

"You did," said Drake, nodding "I heard it, too"

"I shouldn&039;t have," said St John "I&039;ve been asked not to talk about it"

Trumbull leaned forward intently and said, "Wait! Are you the St John as connected with the Winston Arh expecting entrapment, "I live in Winston Arms"

"Okay All I kneas your initial If I had known your full first name I would have known on the instant of introduction Look, Mr St John, the incident doesn&039;t exactly fall under my jurisdiction and I know of it only froht to talk about it here Everything said here never goes beyond the walls, and that includes Henry, our esteemed waiter"

St John&039;s caution did not abandon him, "How do I know you have the authority to "

Avalon said, "It&039;s all right, Ni If To is that I do try to pick uests carefully and avoid these daineer with an unimpeachably quiet life, and now look"

"It only happened last week, Geoff," said St John weakly "I&039;m sorry"

"Would you tell us about it?" said Halsted

There was one last moment of hesitation and then St John said, "To make it short, I found a dead man and I&039;m not sure the FBI doesn&039;t think I may have been the killer"

The coh

"Murder!" whispered Gonzalo "We hardly ever get anything like that"

Halsted said, "Let the , Mr St John?"

"There isn&039;tmy apartment at the Winston Arht I ought to do so lest unaccustoed in locking the door - three locks in New York, of course - when, behind me, I heard the door of the elevator open Thatin, so I shouted, &039;Hold it, please,&039; because one can easily wait five or ten minutes for an elevator, if you&039;ve just h, all three elevator doors were closed No one was in sight and in the ten seconds it had takenoff would not have had tiotten on"

Rubin, who lived in a large apartment complex of his own, said, "Elevators aren&039;t that faultless It nal and no one either got on or off"

"As it happened," said St John, "there turned out to be every reason to suppose soot on - a , makes it just as well I had my back to the hall and was delayed by the three locks It I had seen hiht have tried to kill me, too"

"What time was it?" asked Halsted

"About four in the afternoon"

"I should think he took a big chance on being seen"

St John said, "Not necessarily The peephole in the door of the apartth of the hall I inal for the elevator Anyway, I knew nothing of this at the time I just knew someone hadn&039;t held the door for me and I chafed quite a bit and walked up and down to pass the ti if you just stand there and stare at a closed door

"At the end of the corridor, the opposite end from my apartment, there was an apart, and the door was just a trifle ajar I called out, &039;Hi! So?&039; and shoved the door open a bit The ht I did hear the word &039;help&039; I went in, very reluctantly Oh it&039;s easy to sneer, but getting involved can be troublesoout of his chest and you&039;ll excuse o into details, but I don&039;t revel in such things He was a man I had seen in the elevator occasionally, and we had waited for it together once or twice, but we had never spoken It&039;s traditional in New York, you know, to ignore your neighbors

"I was rather paralyzed I&039;ht have run out yelling for help, or I ht have run back to my apartment and used the intercom to alert the doorman But I just stood there frozen and the man looked at me and said, quite distinctly, &039;the blind man,&039; and then his neck tendons just went loose I had never seen anyone die, but there was no doubt in my mind that I had just seen it happen"

St John paused at this point and said, "Waiter, ht I have a refill on the brandy?"

Henry, as always, seemed to have anticipated the request The Black Widowers remained silent and finally St John cleared his throat and said, "I didn&039;t knohat to do then, either How could I be sure he was dead? Was I supposed to apply first aid to save his life - when I knew nothing about first aid? Besides, I also thought that if he were dead, I wasn&039;t supposed toeven the phone, but then I picked it up with a handkerchief at one end and dialed the police

"I went back to my apartment after that to tell , you can iine Then I returned to the dead man to wait for the police"

Gonzalo said, "How did I come to miss the news story? A murder in a posh apartment house usually e and scare headlines in the News and the Post"

St John shrugged "I suspect there was an atteh the aparth, because my wife called the office The tenants have already had aon the proble to do with the story The fact is that when the police with theave him my name, he looked at me sharply and asked if I had ht I was giving hi with a few credit cards, and there it was - Ananias, in clear print"

"&039;Hoell did you know this man?" he asked

"I said, "Not at all I&039;d see him in the corridor or in the elevator, but I never spoke to hihbors You live on the same floor&039;

"I tried to explain about New York He listened, showed no expression He said, &039;Did you straighten up in here?&039;

"&039;Not in any way,&039; I said &039;I touched nothing but the phone, except that I pushed the door open, stepped across the floor, and may have putto be funny I just wanted to be perfectly honest

"He said, &039;Did you do that?&039;

"He pointed to theshade, which hung crookedly as though it were broken, then to some books on a coffee table that seemed disarrayed I hadn&039;t evert noticed that, and I said so He asked if I had touched one of the ashtrays and I said I hadn&039;t

"He asked me to tell him what had happened and I did - exactly as I told it to you earlier

"He said, &039;It&039;s your opinion, then, that a blind man came in here and did this?&039;

"I said I had no such opinion The dying person had said, &039;the blind man,&039; and that&039;s all He hadn&039;t said a blindThree words and he had died

"The agent said, &039;What do you think he meant?&039;

"&039;I don&039;t know,&039; I said By noas pretty wild because it see There was no real sign of a struggle There see was stolen It looked like a sudden quarrel between friends There I was on the same floor I could be the friend I could have killed hi the police with a story about thea senseless phrase

"They finally let oing to be arrested I&039;h, that if ent wouldn&039;t have been half convinced I was lying and he iven me such a hard time Anyway, they warned me not to talk about it, and that&039;s it The whole story"

Tru to do with it, Mr St John The fact is that there&039;s uess, and that&039;s why it had to be kept reasonably quiet What I aet overyou here one week after the event - is to tell you as little as possible, and as much as is necessary

"The fact is that the dead ent Who and what he was investigating is of no concern to us here, but things were so delicate that he remained completely out of touch with us except on rare occasions and even then only by very tenuous devices concerning which I know no details As I said, I was not directly concerned He lived at Winston Arhly established cover, and went quietly about his very dangerous business"

Rubin s true to me Who would want to live such a life?"

"Very few," said Trumbull, "but it has to be done, it&039;s very well paid, and the fringe benefits in the way of early retirement, medical insurance, and pension plans are attractive But let ht, his cover was blown Soht have been a nonassociatedto do with his job, but we don&039;t believe in pure coincidence in such matters"

Avalon said, "To be dramatic is not always to be correct Why couldn&039;t it have been solarize the apartment, found Jones there, knifed hi?"

Trun of a forcible entry, and Jones would not be likely to let himself be knifed by a two - bit sneak - thief at four in the afternoon No; it had to be a carefully planned entry designed to catch Jones off - guard, and it could only have been carried through by a well - organized cabal"

Halsted said, "Why the aparte an autoed in Central Park?"

Trumbull said, "It could be done that way It has, on occasion But this was a special case, and it was a ical warfare, in a way At least, so we believe Look at it this way; People living this dangerous life have to be aware of danger at every s or in ee If there weren&039;t somewhere you could feel safe, the life would become unbearable To be tracked down, then, and killed in your own apartent but ency

"The question is not why it was done there, but how Jones had a gun and it wasn&039;t used He was a thoroughgoing expert in the various techniques of self - defense, yet there was no sign of a struggle Cootten into the apart been invited in