Рекс Стаут: In the Best Families

She dropped her head into her hands to cover her face, and convulsions began.

They sat and looked at her. I looked at them. Archer was pulling jerkily at his lower lip. Dykes was shaking his head, his lips compressed.

“I suggest,” I said modestly, raising my voice to carry over the noise Lina Darrow was making, “that when she quiets down it might pay to find out if Rackham has told her anything that might help. That item about his getting dough from gambling or rackets could be true, if they actually got intimate enough for him to tell her the story of his life.”

They kept their eyes on her. She was crying away what had looked like a swell chance to wrap up a tough one, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had burst into tears too. I pushed back my chair and stood up.

“If you get anything that I can be of any help on, give me a ring. I’ll have a crowded afternoon, but word will reach me.”

I walked out.

As I hit the sidewalk in front of the courthouse my watch said 11:17. It was sunny and warm, and people looked as if they felt pleased with the way things were going. I did not. In another few minutes they would have Lina Darrow talking again, and whether she gave it to them straight this time or tried her hand on a revised version, they might decide any minute that they wanted to talk with Barry Rackham, and that could lead to anything. The least it could lead to was delay, and my nerves were in no condition for it.

I dived across the street to a drugstore, found a booth, and dialed Roeder’s number. No answer. I went to where my car was parked, got in, and headed for the parkway.

On my way back to Manhattan I stopped four times to find a phone and dial Roeder’s number, and the fourth try, at a Hundred and Sixteenth Street, I got him. I told him where I was. He asked what they had wanted at White Plains.

“Nothing much, just to ask some questions about a lead they had got. I’m going to the Churchill to fix it to go ahead with that date today.”

“You can’t. It has been postponed until tomorrow at the other end. Arrange it for tomorrow.”

“Can’t you switch it back to today at your end?”

“It would be difficult and therefore inadvisable.”

I considered how to put it, in view of the fact that there was no telling who or how many might hear me. “There is a possibility,” I said, “that the Churchill will have a vacant suite tomorrow. So my opinion is that it would be even more inadvisable to postpone it. I don’t know, but I have an idea that it may be today or never.”

A silence. Then, “How long will it take you to get to your office?”

“Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty.”

“Go there and wait.”

I returned to the car, drove to a parking lot on Third Avenue in the upper Forties, left the car there, and made steps to Madison Avenue and up to 1019. I sat down, stood at the window, sat down, and stood at the window. I wouldn’t ring the phone-answering service because I wanted my line free, but after a few minutes I began thinking I better had, in case Roeder had tried for me before I arrived. The debate on that was getting hot when the ring came and I jumped for it.

It was Roeder. He asked me through his nose, “Have you phoned the Churchill?”

“No, I was waiting to hear from you.”

“I hope you will have no trouble. It has been arranged for today at four o’clock.”

I felt a tingle in my spine. My throat wanted to tighten, but I wouldn’t let it. “I’ll do my best. In my car?”

“No. I’ll have a car. I’ll stop in front of your office building precisely at two forty-five.”

“It might be better to make it the Churchill.”

“No. Your building. If you have to reach me I’ll be here until two-thirty. I hope you won’t have to.”

“I do too.”

I pressed the button down, held it for three breaths, and dialed the Churchill’s number. It was only ten to one, so surely I would get him.

I did. As soon as he heard my name he started yapping about the message I had sent him, but I didn’t want to try to fix it on the phone, so I merely said I had managed to call off the trip out of town and was coming to see him. He said he didn’t want to see me. I said I didn’t want to see him either, but we were both stuck with this and I would be there at one-thirty.

At a fountain service down on a side street I ate three corned-beef sandwiches and three glasses of milk without knowing how they tasted, burned my tongue on hot coffee, and then walked to the Churchill and took the elevator to the tower.

Rackham was eating lunch, and it was pitiful. Apparently he had done all right with a big glass of clam juice, since the glass was empty and I couldn’t see where the contents had been thrown at anything, but all he did in my presence was peck at things — some wonderful broiled ham, hashed brown potatoes, an artichoke with anchovy sauce, and half a melon. He swallowed perhaps five bites altogether, while I sat at a distance with a magazine, not wanting to disturb his meal. When, arriving, I had told him that the appointment with Zeck was set for four o’clock, he had just glared at me with no comment. Now, as he sat staring at his coffee without lifting the cup, I got up and crossed to a chair near him and remarked that we would ride up to Westchester with Roeder.

I don’t think I handled it very well, that talk with Barry Rackham, as he sat and let his coffee get cold and tried to pretend to himself that he still intended to eat the melon. It happened that he had already decided that his only way out was to come to some kind of an understanding with Arnold Zeck, but if he had been balky I doubt if I would have been able to manage it. I was so damned edgy that it was all I could do to sit still. It had been a long spring and summer, those five months, and here was the day that would give us the answer. So there are two reasons why I don’t report in detail what Rackham and I said there that afternoon: first, I doubt if it affected the outcome any, one way or another; and second, I don’t remember a word of it. Except that I finally said it was time to go, and he got himself a man-sized straight bourbon and poured it down.

We walked the few blocks to my building. As we waited at the curb I kept my eyes peeled for a Chevy sedan, but apparently Roeder had been promoted, either that or the Chevy wasn’t used for important guests, for when a car nosed in to us it was a shiny black Cadillac. I got in front with the driver and Rackham joined Roeder in the rear. They didn’t shake hands when I pronounced names. The driver was new to me — a stocky, middle-aged number with black hair and squinty black eyes. He had nothing whatever to say to anyone, and for that matter neither did anybody else, all the way to our destination. Once on the Taconic State Parkway a car passed and cut in ahead of us so short that it damn near grazed our bumper, and the driver muttered something, and I went so far as to glance at him but ventured no words. Anyway my mind was occupied.

Evidently Rackham had been there before with his eyes open, for there was no suggestion that he should take to the floor, and of course I was now a B. We left the parkway a couple miles south of Millwood, to the right, followed a curving secondary road a while, turned onto another main route, soon left it for another secondary road, and after some more curves hit concrete again. The garage was at a four-corners a little out of Mount Kisco, and I never did know what the idea was of that roundabout way of getting there. In front it looked like any other garage, with gas-pumps and a graveled plaza, and cars and miscellaneous objects around, except that it seemed a little large for its location. Two men were there in front, one dressed like a mechanic and the other in a summer suit, even a necktie, and they exchanged nods with our driver as we headed in.