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Congressman Lutts frowned. “You’re asking the waiter?”
“Henry is much more than a waiter,” Rubin explained. “He’s one of us. Often in the past he’s come up with solutions to problems none of us could untangle.”
“I may be of some slight help, sir,” Henry admitted. “ Just a minute,” Trumbull said, holding up both hands to restore some semblance of order. “We’re talking about a very serious matter here. What if Henry’s explanation supports the notion that the election was fixed, that you were returned to Congress through fraud of some sort. What action would you take?”
“Action?” Walter Lutts repeated. “I really hadn’t thought it through that far. “
“Would you resign?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“I for one have always admired your service in the House of Representatives,” Tom Trumbull continued. “I would not want to lose you over something like this when you had no control of it.”
“How do you know he had no control?” Gonzalo countered. “I admire his politics too, but his staff-”
“Would he have told us about it if he’d really tried to fix the election? Use your head, Mario!”
Avalon again resorted to his commanding voice to restore some degree of decorum. “Let’s all listen to what Henry has to say before we start speculating about resignations. Henry?”
“Well, sir, it seems to me that you’re all forgetting these were college students. I assume that having lived in the neighborhood of the campus for some years Congressman Lutts was accurate in identifying them. They probably were graduate students, but their exact year of study needn’t concern us. What does concern us is the topic of their conversation. In my limited experience students sometimes discuss politics, but they also discuss other topics as well-young women:, and their studies.”
“Nothing was said about young women,” Drake pointed out.
“No, sir-but what about studies? Does the second young man’s reply suggest anything to you?”
“It’s as easy as homes?” Drake repeated. “Not a thing, unless Ma
Henry’s bland face seemed to suggest a twinkle. “If we rule out the immortal Sherlock, and the equally immortal Oliver Wendell Holmes, I believe we can agree that the congressman was quite accurate in reporting what he heard. The word was indeed homes. “
“Does It’s as easy as homes make any sense?” Trumbull wondered. “There used to be an expression safe as houses. Is it something like that?”
“You may have forgotten it since your school days,” Henry said, “but the word homes is a device for remembering the names of the Great Lakes-Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior. “
Rubin nodded agreement. “That’s right. It sometimes appears in crossword puzzles. But what could that have to do with the crucial first line of the overheard conversation? Most voters earn money just showing up near polls?”
“Since the second student compared it to the word homes, it’s obvious that the other speaker’s sentence was also a memory device of some sort-no doubt one thought up on the spot since it dealt with voting and they were entering the polling place. “
“A memory device?” Lutts looked blank.
“Might I suggest the first letters of each word, sir, as in the Great Lakes?”
“MV-E-M-J-S-U-N-P?” James Drake grunted. “It certainly doesn’t remind me of anything. “
Avalon cleared his throat. “Henry, your entire theory rests upon coming up with a list of nine objects a student might need to remember. What is it?”
“I would suggest, sir, the nine known planets of our solar system, in order of their distance from the sun Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus… Neptune, and Pluto.”