The Speck is a mystery short story by Isaac Asimov.
Part of the Union Club series, it was first published in the December 1983 issue of Gallery magazine. It was later collected in The Best Mysteries of Isaac Asimov.
Summary[]
In the Union Club, the narrator is self-conscious about a speck of food on his shirt. This leads Griswold to recount a case from after World War II. The Allies were searching for a traitor known as "Lieutenant Nobody," a French-Canadian from Montreal who had infiltrated a British POW camp, orchestrated a failed escape that resulted in numerous deaths, and then disappeared. An American sergeant named Drisack was identified by a surviving soldier as the traitor, but the evidence was weak, consisting only of a facial resemblance. Drisack had convincing American documentation and a background that checked out superficially.
Griswold was tasked by a colonel to find a "speck" of evidence that Drisack was actually Canadian. He engaged the sergeant in a conversation designed to make him relax, asking him to write down various things, including the address "721 Sherwood Street, Montreal." Drisack complied, but in writing the word "Montreal," he unconsciously placed an acute accent over the letter 'e', spelling it "Montréal."
This accent mark was the crucial speck of evidence. Griswold reasoned that an uneducated American would have no reason to use a French diacritical mark. This orthographic detail strongly suggested that Drisack was a French-Canadian who was so accustomed to the proper French spelling of his hometown that he wrote it automatically. This justification led to a fuller investigation, which confirmed Drisack was indeed Lieutenant Nobody.
Characters[]
- Griswold
- Club Member (the narrator)
- Baranov
- Jennings
- Colonel
- Sergeant Drisack
- The British Soldier
- The Guard
Organizations and Factions[]
- The Allies
- The Nazis
- British prisoners of war
- American prisoners of war
- French-Canadians
See Also[]
List of short stories by Isaac Asimov