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didn't you miss something that you took so entirely for granted that, even looking at it, you didn't see it?”
    “I don't see what it could have been. I have an excellent memory, I assure you, and in the fifteen seconds that Smith went from restaurant to taxi he did nothing I did not note and nothing I do not remember.”
    Henry thought for a moment or two. “You know, Mr. Bunsen, it must have happened, and if you had seen it happen, you would surely have taken action. But you did not take action; you are still mystified.”
    'Then whatever it was,” said Bunsen, “it did not happen.” “You mean, sir, that the doorman, a regular employee of the restaurant, hailed a cab for Smith, who was a regular patron for whom he must have performed the same service many times, and that Smith, whom you described as a well-mannered man who always did the correct social thing, did not tip the doorman?”
    “Of course lie—” began Bunsen, and then came to a dead halt. And in the silence that followed, Henry said, “And if he tipped him, then surely it was with an object taken from the left pants pocket, an object that, from your description, happened to look something like a coin. —Then he smiled, and that you saw.”

    2    Afterword

    “Quicker Than the Eye” first appeared in the May 1974 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
    I have to make a confession here. In writing the Black Widower stories I have always been under the impression that I was doing my best to catch the spirit of Agatha Christie, who is my idol as far as mysteries are concerned. When I presented a copy of Tales of the Black Widowers to Martin Gardner (who writes the “Mathematical Recreations” column in Scientific American and who is a recently elected member of the Trap Door Spiders) I told him this and he read it with that in mind.
    When he finished, however, he sent me a note to tell me that in his opinion I had missed the mark. What I had really done, he said, was to catch some of the flavor of G. K. Chesterton's “Father Brown” stories.
    You know, he's right. I was an ardent fan of those stories even though I found Chesterton's philosophy a little irritating, and in writing “Quicker Than the Eye,” I was strongly influenced by the great Chestertonian classic, The Invisible Man.

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3    The Iron Gem

    Geoffrey Avalon stirred his drink and smiled wolfishly. His hairy, still dark eyebrows slanted upward and his neat graying beard seemed to twitch. He looked like Satan in an amiable mood.
    He said to the Black Widowers, assembled at their monthly dinner, “Let me present my guest to you—Latimer Reed, jeweler. And let me say at once that he brings us no crime to solve, no mystery to unravel. Nothing has been stolen from him; he has witnessed no murder; involved himself in no spy ring. He is here, purely and simply, to tell us about jewelry, answer our questions, and help us have a good, sociable time.”
    And, indeed, under Avalon's firm eye, the atmosphere at dinner was quiet and relaxed and even Emmanuel Rubin, the ever quarrelsome polymath of the club, managed to avoid raising his voice. Quite satisfied, Avalon said, over the brandy, “Gentlemen, the postprandial grilling is upon us, and with no problem over which to rack our brains. —Henry, you may relax.”
    Henry, who was clearing the table with the usual quiet efficiency that would have made him the nonpareil of waiters even if he had not proved himself, over and over again, to be peerlessly aware of the obvious, said, “Thank you, Mr. Avalon. I trust I will not be excluded from the proceedings, however.”
    Rubin fixed Henry with an owlish stare through his thick glasses and said loudly, “Henry, this blatantly false modesty does not become you. You know you're a member of our little band, with all the privileges thereto appertaining.”
    “If that is so,” said Roger Halsted, the soft-voiced math teacher, sipping at his brandy and openly inviting a