But then, back in 1971, I received a letter from that gorgeous blond young lady, Eleanor Sullivan, who is managing editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (or EQMM for short), asking if I would consider writing a short story for the magazine. Of course, I jubilantly agreed, because I thought that if they asked for one, they couldn't possibly have the cruelty to reject it once written, and that meant I could safely write my own kind of story -very cerebral.

I began revolving plot possibilities in my head rather anxiously, for I wanted something with a reasonable twist to it and Agatha Christie, all by herself, had already used virtually all possible twists.

While the wheels were slowly turning in the recesses of my mind, I happened to be visiting the actor David Ford (who was in both the Broadway and Hollywood versions of 1776). His apartment is filled with all kinds of interesting oddities, and he told me that he was convinced once that someone had taken something from his apartment but he could never be sure because he couldn't tell whether anything was missing.

I laughed and all the wheels in my head, heaving a collective sigh of relief, stopped turning. I had my twist.

I then needed a background against which to display the twist and here we have something else.

Back in the early 1940's, legend has it, someone got married to a lady who found her husband's friends unacceptable, and vice versa. In order to avoid breaking off a valued relationship, those friends organized a club without officers or bylaws for the sole purpose of having a dinner once a month. It would be a stag organization so that the husband in question could be invited to join and his wife legitimately requested not to attend. (Nowadays, with Women's Lib so powerful, this might not have worked.)