Rex Stout - In the Best Families

Til 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 dialled 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 drank 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 Chewy sedan, but apparently Roeder had been promoted, either that or the Chewy 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 of miles south of Millwood, to the right, followed a curving secondary road a while, turned on to 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 gravelled 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.

The big room we drove into was normal too, like a thousand others anywhere, but a variation was coming. Our car rolled across, past pillars, to the far end, and stopped just in front of a big closed door, and our driver stuck his head out, but said nothing. Nothing happened for thirty seconds; then the big door slowly opened, rising; the driver pulled his head in, and the car went forward. As we cleared the entrance the door started back down, and by the time we had eased across to a stop the door was shut again, and our reception committee was right there-two on one side and one on the other. I had seen two of them before, but one was a stranger. The stranger was in shirt sleeves, with his gun in a belt holster.

Stepping out, I announced, “I've got that same gun under my armpit.

“Okay, Goodwin, the tenor said. “We'll take care of it.

They did. I may have been a B, but there was no discernible difference between inspection of a B and of an unknown. In fact, it seemed to me that they were slightly more thorough than they had been on Sunday, which may have been because there were three of us. They did us one at a time, with me first, then Rackham, then Roeder. With Roeder they were a little more superficial. They went over him, but not so enthusiastically, and all they did with the brief-case was open it and glance inside and let Roeder himself shut it again.

One change from Sunday was that two of them, not one, accompanied us to the door in the rear wall, and through, across the vestibule, and down the fourteen steps to the first metal door. The sentinel who opened and let us in was the same pasty-faced bird with a pointed chin-Schwartz. This time the other sentinel did not stay at the table with his book work. He was right there with Schwartz, and interested in the callers, especially Rackham.

“We're a little early, Roeder said, “but they sent us on in.

That's all right, Schwartz rumbled. “He's ahead of schedule to-day. One didn't come.

He went to the big metal door at the other end, pulled it open, and jerked his head. “On in.

Entering, Roeder took the lead, then Rackham, then me. Schwartz brought up the rear. He came in three paces and stood. Arnold Zeck, from behind his desk, told him, in the cold precise tone that he used for everything, “All right,

Schwartz.

Schwartz left us. As the door closed I hoped to heaven it was as soundproof as it was supposed to be.

Zeck spoke. The last time you were here, Rackham, you lost control of yourself and you know what happened.

Rackham did not reply. He stood with his hands behind him like a man ready to begin a speech, but his trap stayed shut, and from the expression of his face it was a good guess that his hands, out of sight, were making a tight knot.

“Sit down, Zeck told him.

Since the seating was an important item of the staging, I had stepped up ahead after we entered and made for the chair farthest front, a little to the left of