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

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 helpanyhow. 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