In the Best Families

by Rex Stout

  One step inside the first room, the warm one, I stopped and surveyed. It was more of a shock, somehow, than it had been a year ago when it had been used as a target for tommy-guns from across the street. Then they had at least left a mess; now there was nothing but the benches and stands. It really got me for a minute. I moved on through: medium room, cool room, potting room, spray chamber,

  Theodore’s room-all empty. Hewitt must have sent an army to clean all that out in one day,I thought, heading back downstairs.

  In the kitchen was another longer note from Fritz, reporting phone calls that had come before he left and various minor matters. I opened the refrigerator and poked around, and settled for a jar of home-made pate, a hunk of Italian bread,

  Vermont cheese, and milk. As I sat working at it with an evening paper propped up before me, I kept listening for something-nothing in particular, just something. That had never been a noisy house, but I had never known it anything like that quiet. Almost no cars went by, and the few that did must have been coasting in neutral.

  My meal finished and things put away, I wandered into the dining-room, office, front room, down to the basement to Fritz’s room, up one flight to Wolfe’s room, up another to my room. As I undressed for my post-jail bath, I thought that the hell of it wasn’t how I felt, but that I didn’t know how to feel. If I had actually seen the last of Nero Wolfe, it was a damn’ sad day for me, there were no two ways about that, and if I got a lump in my throat and somebody walked in

  I would just as soon show him the lump as not. But what if it was Wolfe himself who walked in? That was the trouble. Damned if I was going to work up a fancy lump and then have him suddenly appear and start crabbing about something.

  After I had bathed and shaved and got into clean pyjamas, and answered a couple of phone calls from journalists, and moseyed down to the office and fooled around a while, someone did walk in. When I heard the front door open I made for the hall as if I had been expecting another package of sausage, and there was

  Fritz. He turned from closing the door, saw me, and beamed.

  “Ah! Archie! You escaped? ‘

  “I’m out on bail. He seemed to want to shake hands, and I was willing. “Thanks for your note. How’s the new job?

  “Terrible. I’m played up. Mr Wolfe?

  “I know nothing about Mr Wolfe. I ate half a jar of pate.

  He stopped beaming. “Mr Vukcic is going to sell this house.

  “He’s going to offer it for sale, which is not the same thing.

  “Perhaps not. He sighed. “I’m tired. Mr Vukcic said there is no reason why I should not sleep here but I should ask you. It would be good for me-I am so used to that room…

  “Certainly. I’m used to mine too. I’m going to sleep here until further notice.

  “Good. He started for the kitchen, stopped, and turned. “Are you going to look for him?

  “No! Hearing myself shout, it seemed a relief and I did it again. “I am not! I went to the stairs and started up. “Good night.

  “Good night, Archie.

  I was on the landing when his voice came. Til get your breakfast! I don’t have to leave until ten!

  “Swell! I called back. “We’ll never miss him!

  The next day, Tuesday, I had no time to raise a lump. There were dozens of phone calls, from newspapers, former clients, friends, and miscellaneous. One was from

  Calvin Leeds, asking me to go up there to see him, and I told him I had had enough of Westchester for a while. When he insisted, I agreed to receive him at the office at two o’clock. I took advantage of another call, from Lon Cohen at the Gazette, to ask about my recent cell mate, Max Christy. Lon asked why I wanted to know. Lon is a good guy, but no newspaperman on earth can answer the simplest question without asking you one first, and more if possible.

  “Just curious, I told him. “I met him in jail over the weekend, and thought he was charming. I don’t want a biography, just a line or two.

  “For quotation?

  “No.

  “Right. He’s comparatively new to this section, but he’s a fast mover. Not really big yet. As far as I know, the only thing he’s close to right in town is a string of rooms for transients. He seems to be specialising on little weekend roundups in the suburbs.

  “Just games, or women, or what?

  “Anything men risk money for. Or pay it for. I have heard that he is seen around sometimes with Brownie Costigan. How curious are you? Is it worth a steak? Or is it worth a phone number or address where I can reach Nero Wolfe?

  By that time I had abandoned the idea of selling anyone, even Lon Cohen, the idea that I ever told the truth, so I thanked him and hung up.

  A couple of cheques in the morning mail, one from a man who was paying in instalments for having a blackmailer removed from his throat, were no problem, since there was a rubber stamp for endorsing them, but in order to pay three bills that came in I had to make a trip to Fifty-fourth Street to see if the formalities about Marko’s power of attorney had been attended to. They had, by

  Parker, and I was glad to see that Marko signed the cheques on my say-so, without looking at the bills. If he had started auditing on me I swear to God I would have moved out and got a hotel room.

  There were other chores, such as phoning Hewitt’s place on Long Island to ask if the plants and Theodore had arrived safely, making arrangements with a phone-answering service, handling a report from Fred Durkin on a poison-letter job that was the main item of unfinished business and so on, but I managed to have them all under control when two o’clock came and brought Calvin Leeds.

  When I went to let him in and took him to the office, there was a problem.

  Should I sit at my desk or at Wolfe’s? On the one hand, I was not Wolfe and had no intention of trying to be. On the other hand, when a pinch-hitter is called on he stands at the plate to bat, not off to one side. Also it would be interesting to see, from Wolfe’s position, what the light was like on the face of a man sitting in the red leather chair. So again, this time intentionally, I sat behind Wolfe’s desk.

  “I came here to get an explanation, Leeds said, “and I’m going to get it.

  He looked as if he could stand a dose of something-if not an explanation, then maybe castor oil. The hide of his face still looked tough and weathered, or rather as if it had been but someone had soaked it in something to make it stretch and get saggy. His eyes looked determined, but not clear and alert as before. No one would have guessed that he had just inherited half a million bucks, and not from a dearly beloved wife or sister but merely a cousin.

  Something like a million times I had seen Wolfe, faced with a belligerent statement from a caller, lean back and close his eyes. I thought I might as well try it, and did so. But the springs which let the chair’s back slant to the rear were carefully adjusted to the pressure of Wolfe’s poundage, not mine, and I had to keep pushing to maintain the damn’ thing in the leaning position.

  “A man who comes forty miles for an explanation, I said, with my eyes closed,

  “is entitled to one. What needs explaining?

  “Nero Wolfe’s behaviour does.

  “That’s nothing new. It was too much of a strain keeping the chair back in a leaning position, and I straightened up. “It often has. But that’s not my department.

  “I want to see him.

  “So do I.

  “You’re a liar, Goodwin.

  I shook my head, my lips tight. “You know, I said, “I have probably told as many lies as any man my age except psychos. But I have never been called a liar as frequently as in the past twenty-four hours, and I have never stuck so close to the truth. To hell with it. Mr Wolfe has gone south to train with the

  Dodgers. He will play shortstop.

  That won’t help any, Leeds said, patient but determined, “that kind of talk. If you don’t like being called a liar, neither do I, and the difference is that I’m not. The district attorney says I’m lying, because Nero Wolfe has suddenly disap
peared, and he disappeared because he doesn’t dare answer questions about my cousin Sarah’s visit to him here, and that proves that your report of that visit is false, and since my report is the same as yours mine is false too. Now that sounds logical, but there’s a flaw in it. The flaw is their assumption that his disappearance was connected with my cousin’s visit. I know it couldn’t have been, because there was nothing about our talk that day that could possibly have had such a result. I have told them that, and they think I’m lying. As long as they think I’m lying, and you too, they’ll have their minds on that and they won’t find out who killed my cousin and why-and anyway, I don’t want to be suspected of lying when I’m not, especially not in connection with the murder of my cousin.

  Leeds paused for breath and went on, “There’s only one way out that I can see, and that’s for you to tell them the real reason for Wolfe’s disappearance-or, better still, he ought to tell them himself. I want you to put this up to him.

  Even if his own safety is involved, he ought to manage somehow. If it was something about some client that made him disappear, in the interest of some client, then you can tell him from me that I saw him take a cheque from my cousin for ten thousand dollars and it seems to me he’s under obligation to her as much as any other client, to protect her interests, in the wrong place about who killed her-and killed her dog too. His jaw quivered a little, and he clamped it tight.

  “Do you mean, I inquired, “that suspicion is centred on you? How come?

  “Not on me as-as a murderer, I don’t suppose so, but on me as a liar, and you and Wolfe. Even though she left me a great deal of money-I’m not thinking about being arrested for murder.

  “Who do you think ought to be?

  “I don’t know. He gestured. “You’re trying to change the subject. It’s not a question of me and what I think, it’s you and what you’re going to do. From what

  I’ve heard of Wolfe, I doubt if it would help for you to tell him what I’ve said; I’ve got to see him and tell him myself. If he has really got to hide from somebody or something, do it however you want to. Blindfold me and put me face down in your car. I’ve got to see him. My cousin would have wanted me to, and he took her money.

  I was half glad there for a moment that I did not know where Wolfe was. I had no admiration for Leeds’ preference in pets, since I would put a woman ahead of a

  Doberman pinscher any day, and there was room for improvement in him in a few other respects, but I couldn’t help but admit he had a point and was not being at all unreasonable. So if I had known where Wolfe was I would have had to harden my heart, and as it was all I had to harden was my voice. It struck me then, for the first time, that maybe I shouldn’t be so sore at Wolfe after all.

  Leeds hung on for another quarter of an hour, and I prolonged it a little myself by trying to get something out of him about the progress the cops had made, without success. He went away mad, still calling me a liar, which kept it unanimous. What he got from me was nothing. What I got from him was that Mrs

  Rackham’s funeral would be the next morning, Wednesday. Not a profitable way to spend most of an hour, for either of us.

  I spent what was left of the afternoon looking into the matter of sausage.

  Within ten minutes after the package had been opened that day, Wolfe had phoned both Mummiani and the Fleet Messenger Service and got a blank as expected; but on the outside chance that I might at least get a bone for my curiosity to gnaw on I made a trip to Fulton Street and one uptown. At Mummiani’s no one knew anything. Since Wolfe had been getting Darst’s sausage from them for years, and in that time their personnel had come and gone, any number of outsiders could know about it. At the Fleet Messenger Service they were willing to help but couldn’t. They remembered the package because Wolfe had phoned about it, but all

  I learned was that it had been left there by a youth who might have been playing hookey from the eighth grade, and I didn’t even bother to listen to the description, such as it was.

  Fed up with an empty house and the phone ringing and being called a liar, I put in a call myself from a drug-store booth, and made personal arrangements for dinner and a show.

  Wednesday morning a visitor came that I let in. I had formed the habit, since returning from jail, of hearing the doorbell ring, going to the hall, observing through the one-way glass panel who it was out on the stoop, making a face, and returning to the office. If the bell kept ringing long enough to be a nuisance I flipped the switch that turned it off. This time, around eleven Wednesday morning, instead of making a face I went and opened the door and said, “Well, hallo! Coming in?

  A chunky specimen about my height, with wrinkled pink skin and grey hair and sharp grey-blue eyes, grunted a greeting and stepped over the sill. I said it was cold for April, and he agreed. As I hung his topcoat on the rack I told myself that I must be more restrained. The fact that I was alone in the house was no reason to give Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide the impression that

  I was glad to see him. Wolfe or no Wolfe, I could keep up appearances.

  I let him lead the way to the office. This time I sat at my own desk. I was tempted to take Wolfe’s chair again just to see how he would react, but it would have put me at a disadvantage, I was so used to dealing with him, in the red leather chair, from my own angle.

  He eyed me. “So you’re holding the fort, he growled.

  “Not exactly, I objected. Tm only the caretaker. Or maybe I’m going down with the ship. Not that those who have left are rats.

  “Where’s Wolfe?

  “I don’t know. Next, you call me a liar. Then I say I have been, but not now.

  Then you-

  “Nuts. Where is he, Archie?

  That cleared the atmosphere. Over the years he had called me Goodwin fifty times to one Archie. He called me Archie only when he wanted something awful bad or when he had something wrapped up that Wolfe had given him and his humanity overcame him. So we were to be mellow.

  “Listen, I said, friendly but firm. “That routine is all right for people like district attorneys and state cops and the representatives of the press, but you’re above it. Either I don’t know where he is, or I do know but I’m sitting on it. What’s the difference? Next question.

  He took a cigar from his pocket, inspected it, rubbed it between his palms, and inspected it again. “It must be quite a thing, he remarked, not growling. “That ad in the paper. The plants gone. Fritz and Theodore gone. Vukcic listing the house for sale. I’m going to miss it, I am, never dropping in to see him sitting there thinking he’s smarter than God and all His angels. Quite a thing, it must be. What is it?

  I said slowly and wearily, “Either I don’t know what it is, or I do know but-

  “What about the sausage that turned into tear gas? Any connection?

  I am always ready for Inspector Cramer, in the light of experience guided by intelligence, and therefore didn’t bat an eye. I merely cocked my head a little, met his gaze, and considered the matter until I was satisfied. “I doubt if it was Fritz, I stated. “Mr Wolfe has him too well trained. But in the excitement

  Sunday morning, Mr Wolfe being gone, Fritz told Theodore, and you got it out of

  Theodore. I nodded. “That must be it.

  “Did the tear gas scare him out of his skin? Or out of his house, which is the same thing. Was that it?

  “It might have, mightn’t it? A coward like him?

  “No. Cramer put the cigar between his teeth, tilted up. “No, there are plenty of things about Wolfe I can and do object to, but he’s not a coward. There might have been something about that tear gas that would have scared anybody. Was there?

  “As far as I know, it was just plain tear gas, nothing fancy. I decided to shove a little. “You know, it’s nice to have you here any time, just for company, but aren’t you spreading out some? Your job is homicide, and the tear gas didn’t even make us sick, let alone kill us. Also your job is in the County of New York, and Mrs Rackham di
ed in Westchester. I enjoy talking with you, but have you got credentials?

  He made a noise that could have been a chuckle. “That’s more like it, he said, not sarcastically. “You’re beginning to sound natural. I’ll tell you. I’m here at the request of Ben Dykes, who would give all his teeth and one ear to clear up the Rackham case ahead of the state boys. He thinks that Archer, the D.A., may have swallowed the idea that you and Leeds are lying too deep, and he came to me as an expert on Nero Wolfe, which God knows I am. He laid it all out for me and wanted my opinion.

  He shifted the cigar to a new angle. “The way it looked to me, there were three possibilities. First, the one that Archer has sold himself on, that you and

  Leeds are lying, and that what Mrs Rackham really told Wolfe when she came here, together with her getting murdered the next day, somehow put Wolfe on a spot that was too hot for him, and he scooted, after fixing with you to cover as well as you could. I told Dykes I would rule that out, for various reasons-chiefly because neither you nor Wolfe would risk that much on a set-up that depended on a stranger like Leeds sticking to a lie. Shall I analyse it more?

  “No, thanks, that’ll do.

  “I thought so. Next, the possibility that when you phoned Wolfe right after the body was found you told him something that gave him a line on the murderer, but it’s tricky and he had to go outdoors to get his evidence, preparing to grandstand it for the front page.I told Dykes I would rule that out too. Wolfe is quite capable of a play like that, sure he is, but if that’s all it amounted to, why move the plants out and put Fritz to work in a restaurant and list the house for sale? He’s colourful, but not that colourful. Mrs Rackham only paid him ten thousand, about what I make a year. Why should he spend it having his orchids carted around?

  Cramer shook his head. “Not for my money. That leaves the third possibility: that something really did scare him. That there was something about Mrs Rackham’s murder, or anyhow connected with it, that he knew he couldn’t handle sitting there in that chair, but for some reason he had to handle it. So he scooted. As you say, you either don’t know where he is or you know and won’t tell-and that’s no help either way. Now I’ve got a lot to say about this possibility. You got time to listen?