Free Nero Wolfe 16 - Even in the Best Families by Rex Stout

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 toEleventh, and pulled to the curb in front of Wolfe’s old brownstone house.
    Even before I killed the engine I saw something 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
    M y 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