Rex Stout - In the Best Families

“I don't want you to expose my husband, Mr Wolfe. She was holding the cheque with her thumb and fingertip. “God knows I don't! I just want to know. You're not ugly and afraid and neurotic like me, you're big and handsome and successful and not afraid of anything. When I knew I had to have help and my cousin couldn't do it, and I wouldn't go to anyone I knew, I went about it very carefully. I found out all about you, and no one knows I did, or at least why I did. If my husband is doing something that will hurt me that will be the end; but I don't want to expose him, I just have to know. You are the greatest detective on earth, and you're an honest man. I just want to pay you for finding out where and how my husband is getting money, that's all. You can't possibly say you won't do it. Not possibly!

She left her chair and went to put the cheque on his desk in front of him. “It's for ten thousand dollars, but that doesn't mean I think that's enough. Whatever you say. But don't you dare say I want to expose him! My God-expose him?

She had my sympathy up to a point, but what stuck out was her basic assumption that rich people can always get anything they want just by putting up the dough.

That's enough to give an honest working man, like a private detective for instance, a pain in three places. The assumption is of course sound in some cases, but what rich people are apt not to understand is that there are important exceptions.

This, however, was not one of them, and I hoped Wolfe would see that it wasn't.

He did. He didn't want to, but the bank account had by no means fully recovered from the awful blow of March fifteenth, only three weeks back, and he knew it.

He came forward in his chair for a glance at the cheque, caught my eye and saw how I felt about it, heaved a sigh, and spoke.

“Your notebook, Archie. Confound it.

Chapter Two

The following morning, Saturday, I was in the office typing the final report on a case which I will not identify by name because it was never allowed to get within a mile of a newspaper or a microphone. We were committed on Mrs Rackham's job, since I had deposited her cheque Friday afternoon, but no move had been made yet, not even a phone call to any of the names she had given us, because it was Wolfe's idea that first of all we must have a look at him. With Wolfe's settled policy of never leaving his house on business, and with no plausible excuse for getting Barry Rackham to the office, I would have to do the looking, and that had been arranged for.

Mrs Rackham had insisted that her husband must positively not know or even suspect that he was being investigated, and neither must anyone else, so the arrangements for the look were a little complicated. She vetoed my suggestion that I should be invited to join a small week-end gathering at her country home in Westchester, on the ground that someone would probably recognise the Archie

Goodwin who worked for Nero Wolfe. It was Calvin Leeds who offered an amendment that was adopted. He had a little place of his own at the edge of her estate, where he raised dogs, called Hillside Kennels. A month ago one of his valuable dogs had been poisoned, and I was to go there Saturday afternoon as myself, a detective named Archie Goodwin, to investigate the poisoning. His cousin would invite him to her place, Birchvale, for dinner, and I would go along.

It was a quiet Saturday morning in the office, with Wolfe up in the plant rooms as usual from nine to eleven, and I finished typing the report of a certain case with no interruptions except a couple of phone calls which! handled myself, and one for which I had to give Wolfe a buzz-from somebody at Mummiani's on Fulton

Street to say that they had just got eight pounds of fresh sausage from Bill

Darst at Hackettstown, and Wolfe could have half of it. Since Wolfe regards

Darst as the best sausage-maker west of Cherbourg, he asked that it be sent immediately by messenger, and for heaven's sake not with dry ice.

When at 11.1, the sound of Wolfe's elevator came, I got the big dictionary in front of me on my desk, opened to H, and was bent over it as he entered the office, crossed to his over-sized custom-built chair, and sat. He didn't bite at once because his mind was elsewhere. Even before he rang for beer he asked, “Has the sausage come?

Without looking up I told him no.

He pressed the button twice-the beer signal-leaned back, and frowned at me. I didn't see the frown, absorbed as I was in the dictionary, but it was in his tone of voice.

“What are you looking up? he demanded.

“Oh, just a word, I said casually. “Checking up on our client. I thought she was illiterate, her calling you handsome-remember? But, by gum, it was merely an understatement. Here it is, absolutely kosher: "Handsome: moderately large." For an example it gives "a handsome sum of money." So she was dead right, you're a handsome detective, meaning a moderately large detective. I closed the dictionary and returned it to its place, remarking cheerfully, “Live and learn!

It was a dud. Ordinarily that would have started him tossing phrases and adjectives, but he was occupied. Maybe he didn't even hear me. When Fritz came from the kitchen with the beer, Wolfe, taking from a drawer the gold bottle opener that a pleased client had given him, spoke.

“Fritz, good news. We're getting some of Mr Darst's sausage-four pounds.

Fritz let his eyes gleam. “Ha! To-day?

“Any moment. Wolfe poured beer. “That raises the question of cloves again. What do you think?

“I'm against it, Fritz said firmly.

Wolfe nodded. “I think I agree. I think I do. You may remember what Marko Vukcic said last year-and by the way, he must be invited for a taste of this. For

Monday luncheon?

“That would be possible, Fritz conceded, “but we have arranged for shad with roe-

“Of course. Wolfe lifted his glass and drank, put it down empty, and used his handkerchief on his lips. That, he thought, was the only way for a man to scent a handkerchief. “We'll have Marko for the sausage at Monday dinner, followed by duck Mondor. He leaned forward and wiggled a finger. “Now about the shallots and fresh thyme: there's no use depending on Mr Colson. We might get diddled again. Archie will have to go-

At that point Archie had to go answer the doorbell, which I was glad to do. I fully appreciate, mostly anyhow, the results of Wolfe's and Fritz's powwows on grub when it arrives at the table, but the gab often strikes me as overdone. So

I didn't mind the call to the hall and the front door There I found a young man with a pug nose and a package, wearing a cap that said “Fleet Messenger

Service. I signed the slip, shut the door, started back down the hall, and was met not only by Fritz but by Wolfe too, who can move well enough when there's something he thinks is worth moving for. He took the package from me and headed for the kitchen, followed by Fritz and me.

The small carton was sealed with tape. In the kitchen Wolfe put it on the long table, reached to the rack for a knife, cut the tape, and pulled the flaps up.

My reflexes are quick, and the instant the hissing noise started I grabbed

Wolfe's arm to haul him back, yelling at Fritz, “Watch out! Drop!