The Return of the Black Widowers by Isaac Asimov Page A

He pulled a handkerchief out of his inner jacket pocket and, carefully unfolding it on the table, exposed a dozen or so gleaming, deeply colored bits of mineral.
    "All men agree on the beauty of gems," he said. "That is independent of subjective taste." He held up a small deep red stone and the lights glanced off it.
    James Drake cleared his throat and said with his usual mild hoarseness just the same, "Do you always carry those things around with you?"
    "No, of course not," said Reed. "Only when I wish to entertain or demonstrate."
    "In a handkerchief?" said Drake.
    Rubin burst in at once. "Sure, what's the difference? If he's held up, keeping them in a locked casket won't do him any good. He'd just be out the price of a casket as well."
    "Have you ever been held up?" asked Gonzalo.
    "No," said Reed. "My best defense is that I am known never to carry much of value with me. I strive to make that as widely known as possible, and to live up to it, too."
    "That doesn't look it," said Drake.
    "I am demonstrating beauty, not value," said Reed. "Would you care to pass these around among yourselves, gentlemen?"
    There was no immediate move and then Drake said, "Henry, would you be in a position to lock the door?"
    "Certainly, sir," said Henry, and did so.
    Reed looked surprised. "Why lock the door?"
    Drake cleared his throat again and stubbed out the pitiful remnant of his cigarette with a stained thumb and forefinger. "I'm afraid that, with the kind of record we now have at our monthly dinners, those things will be passed around and one will disappear."
    "That's a tasteless remark, Jim," said Avalon, frowning.
    Reed said, "Gentlemen, there is no need to worry. These stones may all disappear with little loss to me or gain to anyone else. I said I was demonstrating beauty and not value. This one I am holding is a ruby—quite so—but synthetic. There are a few other synthetics and here we have an irreparably cracked opal. Others are riddled with flaws. These will do no one any good and I'm sure Henry can open the door."
    Halsted said, stuttering very slightly in controlled excitement, "No, I'm with Jim. Something is just fated to come up. I'll bet that Mr. Reed has included one very valuable item—quite by accident, perhaps— and that one will turn up missing. I just don't believe we can go through an evening without some puzzle facing us."
    Reed said, "Not that one. I know every one of these stones and, if you like, I'll look at each again." He did so and then pushed them out into the center of the table. "Merely trinkets that serve to satisfy the innate craving of human beings for beauty."
    Rubin grumbled, "Which, however, only the rich can afford."
    "Quite wrong, Mr. Rubin. Quite wrong. These stones are not terribly expensive. And even jewelry that is costly is often on display for all eyes—and even the owner can do no more than look at what he owns, though more frequently than others. Primitive tribes might make ornaments as satisfying to themselves as jewelry is to us out of shark's teeth, walrus tusks, sea shells, or birch bark. Beauty is independent of material, or of fixed rules of aesthetics, and in my way I am its servant."
    Gonzalo said, "But you would rather sell the most expensive forms of beauty, wouldn't you?"
    "Quite true," said Reed. "I am subject to economic law, but that bends my appreciation of beauty as little as I can manage."
    Rubin shook his head. His sparse beard bristled and his voice, surprisingly full-bodied for one with so small a frame, rose in passion. "No, Mr. Reed, if you consider yourself a purveyor of beauty only, you are being hypocritical. It's rarity you're selling. A synthetic ruby is as beautiful as a natural one and indistinguishable chemically. But the natural ruby is rarer, more difficult to get, and therefore more expensive and more eagerly bought by those who can afford it. Beauty it may be, but it is beauty meant to serve personal vanity.
    "A copy of the 'Mona Lisa,' correct to every