Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families

by Rex Stout

  Dykes stood up and asked Archer, “Hadn’t I better send for him? He went home.”

  Archer nodded, and Dykes went. “Good God,” Archer said with feeling, not to Noonan or me, so probably to the People of the State of New York. He sat biting his lip a while and then asked me, “Was that all Mrs. Rackham wanted?”

  “That’s all she asked for.”

  “Had she quarreled with her husband? Had he threatened her?”

  “She didn’t say so.”

  “Exactly what did she say?”

  That took half an hour. For me it was simple, since all I had to use was my memory, in view of the instructions from Wolfe to give them everything but the sausage. Archer didn’t know what my memory is capable of, so I didn’t repeat any of Mrs. Rackham’s speeches verbatim, though I could have, because he would have thought I was dressing it up. But when I was through he had it all.

  Then I was permitted to stay for the session with Leeds, who had arrived early in my recital but had been held outside until I was done. At last I was one of the party, but too late to hear anything that I didn’t already know. With Leeds, who was practically one of the family, they had to cover not only his visit with his cousin to Wolfe’s office, but also the preliminaries to it, so he took another half-hour more. He himself had no idea, he said, where Rackham had been getting money. He had learned nothing from the personal inquiry he had undertaken at his cousin’s request. He had never heard, or heard of, any serious quarrel between his cousin and her husband. And so on. As for his failure to tell Noonan of the visit to Wolfe’s office and the real reason for my presence at Birchvale, he merely said calmly that Noonan hadn’t asked and he preferred to wait until he was asked.

  District Attorney Archer finally called it a night, got up and stretched, rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, asked Dykes and Noonan some questions and issued some orders, and addressed me. “You’re staying at Leeds’ place?”

  I said I hadn’t stayed there much so far, but my bag was there.

  “All right. I’ll want you tomorrow—today.”

  I said of course and went out with Leeds. Ben Dykes offered to give us a lift, but we declined.

  Together, without conversation, Leeds and I made for the head of the trail at the edge of the woods, giving the curving paths a miss. Dawn had come and was going; it was getting close to sunrise. The breeze was down and the birds were up, telling about it. The pace Leeds set, up the long easy slope and down the level stretch, was not quite up to his previous performances, which suited me fine. I was not in a racing mood, even to get to a bed.

  Suddenly Leeds halted, and I came abreast of him. In the trail, thirty paces ahead, a man was getting up from his hands and knees to face us. He called, “Hold it! Who are you?”

  We told him.

  “Well,” he said, “you’ll have to keep off this section of trail. Go around. We’re just starting on it. Bright and early.”

  We asked how far, and he said about three hundred yards, to where a man had started at the other end. We stepped off the trail, to the right into the rough, and got slowed down, though the woods were fairly clean. After a couple of minutes of that I asked Leeds if he would know the spot, and he said he would.

  Soon he stopped, and I joined him. I would have known it myself, with the help of a rope they had stretched from tree to tree, making a large semicircle. We went up to the rope and stood looking.

  “Where’s Hebe?” I asked.

  “They had to come for me to get her. She’s in Nobby’s kennel. He won’t be needing it. They took him away.”

  We agreed, without putting it in words, that there was nothing there we wanted, and resumed our way through the woods, keeping off the trail until we reached the scientist at the far end of the forbidden section, who not only challenged us but had to be persuaded that we weren’t a pair of bloodthirsty liars. Finally he was bighearted enough to let us go on.

  I was glad they had taken Nobby away, not caring much for another view of the little hall with that canine corpse on the bench. Otherwise the house was as before. Leeds had stopped at the kennels. I went up to my room and was peeling off the pants I had pulled on over my pajamas when I was startled by a sudden dazzling blaze at the window. I crossed to it and stuck my head out: it was the sun showing off, trying to scare somebody. I glanced at my wrist and saw 5:39, but as I said, maybe it wasn’t a true horizon. Not lowering the window shade, I went and stretched out on the bed and yawned as far down as it could go.

  The door downstairs opened and shut, and there were steps on the stairs. Leeds appeared at my open door, stepped inside, and said, “I’ll have to be up and around in an hour, so I’ll close your door.”

  I thanked him. He didn’t move.

  “My cousin paid Mr. Wolfe ten thousand dollars. What will he do now?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t asked him. Why?”

  “It occurred to me that he might want to spend it, or part of it, in her interest. In case the police don’t make any headway.”

  “He might,” I agreed. “I’ll suggest it to him.”

  He still stood, as if there was something else on his mind. There was, and he unloaded it.

  “It happens in the best families,” he stated distinctly and backed out, taking the door with him.

  I closed my eyes but made no effort to empty my head. If I went to sleep there was no telling when I would wake up, and I intended to phone Wolfe at eight, fifteen minutes before the scheduled hour for Fritz to get to his room with his breakfast tray. Meanwhile I would think of something brilliant to do or to suggest. The trouble with that, I discovered after some poking around, was that I had no in. Nobody would speak to me except Leeds, and he was far from loquacious.

  I have a way of realizing all of a sudden, as I suppose a lot of people do, that I made a decision some time back without knowing it. It happened that morning at 6:25. Looking at my watch and seeing that that was where it had got to, I was suddenly aware that I was staying awake, not so I could phone Wolfe at eight o’clock, but so I could beat it the hell out of there as soon as I was sure Leeds was asleep; and I was now as sure as I would ever be.

  I got up and shed my pajamas and dressed, not trying to set a record but wasting no time, and, with my bag in one hand and my shoes in the other, tiptoed to the hall, down the stairs, and out to the stone slab. While it wasn’t Calvin Leeds I was escaping from, I thought it desirable to get out of Westchester County before anyone knew I wasn’t upstairs asleep. Not a chance. I was seated on the stone slab tying the lace of the second shoe when a dog barked, and that was a signal for all the others. I scrambled up, grabbed the bag, ran to the car and unlocked it and climbed in, started the engine, swung around the graveled space, and passed the house on my way out just as Leeds emerged through the side door. I stepped on the brake, stuck my head through the window, yelled at him, “Got an errand to do, see you later!” and rolled on through the gate and into the highway.

  At that hour Sunday morning the roads were all mine, the bright new sun was at my left out of the way, and it would have been a pleasant drive if I had been in a mood to feel pleased. Which I wasn’t. This was a totally different situation from the other two occasions when we had crossed Arnold Zeck’s path and someone had got killed. Then the corpses had been Zeck’s men, and Zeck, Wolfe, and the public interest had all been on the same side. This time Zeck’s man, Barry Rackham, was the number one suspect, and Wolfe had either to return his dead client’s ten grand, keep it without doing anything to earn it, or meet Zeck head on. Knowing Wolfe as I did, I hit eighty-five that morning rolling south on the Sawmill River Parkway.

  The dash clock said 7:18 as I left the West Side Highway at Forty-sixth Street. I had to cross to Ninth Avenue to turn south. It was as empty as the country roads had been. Turning right on Thirty-fifth Street, I went on across Tenth Avenue, on nearly to Eleventh, and pulled to the curb in front of Wolfe’s old brownstone house.

  Even before I killed the engine I saw some
thing that made me goggle—a sight that had never greeted me before in the thousands of times I had braked a car to a stop there.

  The front door was standing wide open.

  Chapter 6

  My heart came up. I swallowed it down, jumped out, ran across the sidewalk and up the seven steps to the stoop and on in. Fritz and Theodore were there in the hall, coming to me. Their faces were enough to make a guy’s heart pop right out of his mouth.

  “Airing the house?” I demanded.

  “He’s gone,” Fritz said.

  “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know. During the night. When I saw the door was open—”

  “What’s that in your hand?”

  “He left them on the table in his room—for Theodore and me, and one for you—”

  I snatched the pieces of paper from his trembling hand and looked at the one on top. The writing on it was Wolfe’s.

  Dear Fritz:

  Marko Vukcic will want your services. He should pay you at least $2000 a month.

  My best regards….

  Nero Wolfe

  I looked at the next one.

  Dear Theodore:

  Mr. Hewitt will take the plants and will need your help with them. He should pay you around $200 weekly.

  My regards….

  Nero Wolfe

  I looked at the third one.

  AG:

  Do not look for me.

  My very best regards and wishes….

  NW

  I went through them again, watching each word, told Fritz and Theodore, “Come and sit down,” went to the office, and sat at my desk. They moved chairs to face me.

  “He’s gone,” Fritz said, trying to convince himself.

  “So it seems,” I said aggressively.

  “You know where he is,” Theodore told me accusingly. “It won’t be easy to move some of the plants without damage. I don’t like working on Long Island, not for two hundred dollars a week. When is he coming back?”

  “Look, Theodore,” I said, “I don’t give a good goddam what you like or don’t like. Mr. Wolfe has always pampered you because you’re the best orchid nurse alive. This is as good a time as any to tell you that you remind me of sour milk. I do not know where Mr. Wolfe is nor if or when he’s coming back. To you he sent his regards. To me he sent his very best regards and wishes. Now shut up.”

  I shifted to Fritz. “He thinks Marko Vukcic should pay you twice as much as he does. That’s like him, huh? You can see I’m sore as hell, his doing it like this, but I’m not surprised. To show you how well I know him, this is what happened: not long after I phoned him last night he simply wrote these notes to us and walked out of the house, leaving the door open—you said you found it open—to show anyone who might be curious that there was no longer anyone or anything of any importance inside. You got up at your usual time, six-thirty, saw the open door, went up to his room, found his bed empty and the notes on the table. After going up to the plant rooms to call Theodore, you returned to his room, looked around, and discovered that he had taken nothing with him. Then you and Theodore stared at each other until I arrived. Have you anything to add to that?”

  “I don’t want to work on Long Island,” Theodore stated.

  Fritz only said, “Find him, Archie.”

  “He told me not to.”

  “Yes—but find him! Where will he sleep? What will he eat?”

  I got up and went to the safe and opened it, and looked in the cash drawer, where we always kept a supply for emergency expenses. There should have been a little over four thousand bucks; there was a little over a thousand. I closed the safe door and twirled the knob, and told Fritz, “He’ll sleep and eat. Was my report accurate?”

  “Not quite. One of his bags is gone, and pajamas, toothbrush, razor, three shirts, and ten pairs of socks.”

  “Did he take a walking stick?”

  “No. The old gray topcoat and the old gray hat.”

  “Were there any visitors?”

  “No.”

  “Any phone calls besides mine?”

  “I don’t know about yours. His extension and mine were both plugged in, but you know I don’t answer when you’re out unless he tells me to. It rang only once, at eight minutes after twelve.”

  “Your clock’s wrong. That was me. It was five after.” I went and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “Okay. I hope you like your new job. How’s chances for some breakfast?”

  “But Archie! His breakfast …”

  “I could eat that too. I drove forty miles on an empty stomach.” I patted him again. “Look, Fritz. Right now I’m sore at him, damn sore. After some griddle cakes and broiled ham and eight or ten eggs in black butter and a quart of coffee, we’ll see. I think I’ll be even sorer than I am now, but we’ll see. Is there any of his favorite honey left that you haven’t been giving me lately? The thyme honey?”

  “Yes—some. Four jars.”

  “Good. I’ll finish off with that on a couple of hot cakes. Then we’ll see how I feel.”

  “I would never have thought—” Fritz’s voice had a quaver, and he stopped and started over again. “I would never have thought this could happen. What is it, Archie?” He was practically wailing. “What is it? His appetite has been good.”

  “We were going to repot some Miltonias today,” Theodore said dismally.

  I snorted. “Go ahead and pot ’em. He was no help anyhow. Beat it and let me alone. I’ve got to think. Also I’m hungry. Beat it!”

  Theodore, mumbling, shuffled out. Fritz, following him, turned at the door. “That’s it, Archie. Think. Think where he is while I get your breakfast.”

  He left me, and I sat down at my desk to do the thinking, but the cogs wouldn’t catch. I was too mad to think. “Don’t look for me.” That was him to a T. He knew damn well that if I should ever come home to find he had vanished, the one activity that would make any sense at all would be to start looking for him, and here I was stopped cold at the take-off. Not that I had no notion at all. That was why I had left Leeds’ place without notice and stepped it up to eighty-five getting back: I did have a notion. Two years had passed since Wolfe had told me, “Archie, you are to forget that you know that man’s name. If ever, in the course of my business, I find that I am committed against him and must destroy him, I shall leave this house, find a place where I can work—and sleep and eat if there is time for it—and stay there until I have finished.”

  So that part was okay, but what about me? On another occasion, a year later, he had said to five members of a family named Sperling, in my presence, “In that event he will know it is a mortal encounter, and so will I, and I shall move to a base of operations which will be known only to Mr. Goodwin and perhaps two others.” Okay. There was no argument about the mortal encounter or about the move. But I was the Mr. Goodwin referred to, and here I was staring at it—“Don’t look for me.” Where did that leave me? Certainly the two others he had had in mind were Saul Panzer and Marko Vukcic, and I didn’t even dare to phone Saul and ask a couple of discreet questions; and besides, if he had let Saul in and left me out, to hell with him. And what was I supposed to say to people—for instance, people like the District Attorney of Westchester County?

  That particular question got answered, partly at least, from an unexpected quarter. When I had finished with the griddle cakes, ham, eggs, thyme honey, and coffee, I went back to the office to see if I was ready to quit feeling and settle down to thinking, and was working at it when I became aware that I was sitting in Wolfe’s chair behind his desk. That brought me up with a jerk. No one else, including me, ever sat in that chair, but there I was. I didn’t approve of it. It seemed to imply that Wolfe was through with that chair for good, and that was a hell of an attitude to take, no matter how sore I was. I opened a drawer of his desk to check its contents, pretending that was what I had sat there for, and was starting a careful survey when the doorbell rang.

  Going to answer it, I took my time because I had done n
o thinking yet and therefore didn’t know my lines. Seeing through the one-way glass panel in the front door that the man on the stoop was a civilian stranger, my first impulse was to let him ring until he got tired, but curiosity chased it away and I opened the door. He was just a citizen with big ears and an old topcoat, and he asked to see Mr. Nero Wolfe. I told him Mr. Wolfe wasn’t available on Sundays, and I was his confidential assistant, and could I help. He thought maybe I could, took an envelope from a pocket, extracted a sheet of paper, and unfolded it.

  “I’m from the Gazette” he stated. “This copy for an ad we got in the mail this morning—we want to be sure it’s authentic.”

  I took the paper and gave it a look. It was one of our large-sized letterheads, and the writing and printing on it were Wolfe’s. At the top was written:

  Display advertisement for Monday’s Gazette, first section, two columns wide, depth as required. In thin type, not blatant. Send bill to above address.

  Below the copy was printed by hand:

  MR. NERO WOLFE

  ANNOUNCES HIS RETIREMENT

  FROM THE DETECTIVE BUSINESS

  TODAY, APRIL 10, 1950

  Mr. Wolfe will not hereafter be available. Inquiries from clients on unfinished matters may be made of Mr. Archie Goodwin. Inquiries from others than clients will not receive attention.

  Beneath that was Wolfe’s signature. It was authentic all right.

  Having learned it by heart, I handed it back. “Yeah, that’s okay. Sure. Give it a good spot.”

  “It’s authentic?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Listen, I want to see him. Give me a break! Good spot hell; it’s page one if I can get a story on it.”

  “Don’t you believe your own ads? It says that Mr. Wolfe will not hereafter be available.” I had the door swung to a narrow gap. “I never saw you before, but Lon Cohen is an old friend of mine. He gets to work at noon, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Tell him not to bother to phone about this. Mr. Wolfe is not available, and I’m reserved for clients, as the ad says. Watch your foot, here comes the door.”