Fer-De-Lance

This day I knew it was a relapse as soon as I saw him sitting in the kitchen arguing with Fritz, and I was so disgusted that after I had gone upstairs and had a couple of drinks I came down again and went out. I started walking, but after a few blocks the appetite from the drinks was quite active and I stopped at a restaurant for a meal. No restaurant meal was much after seven years of Fritz’s everyday cooking, but I wouldn’t go home to eat; in the first place I was disgusted and in the second place those relapse menus couldn’t be depended on-sometimes it was a feast for an epicure, sometimes it was a dainty little taste good for eighty cents in Schrafft’s and sometimes it was just a mess.

But after the meal I felt better, and I walked back to Thirty-fifth Street and told Wolfe what Anderson had said that morning and added that it looked to me as if there would be something doing before the full moon came.

Wolfe was still sitting at the little table, watching Fritz stir something in a pan. He looked at me as if he was trying to remember where he had seen me before. He said, "Don’t ever mention that shyster’s name to me again."

I said, hoping to get him sore, "This morning I phoned Harry Foster at the Gazette and told him what was up. I knew you’d want plenty of publicity."

He didn’t hear me. He said to Fritz, "Have boiling water ready in case it should disunite."

I went upstairs to tell Horstmann he’d have to nurse his babies alone that afternoon and maybe for a week. He would be miserable. It was always funny how he pretended to be annoyed when Wolfe was around, but if anything happened to keep Wolfe from showing up on the dot at nine or four he was so worried and anxious you might have thought mealy bugs were after him. So I went upstairs to make him miserable.

That was two o’clock Friday afternoon, and the first sane look I got from Wolfe was eleven Monday morning, sixty-nine hours later.

In between things happened a little. First was the telephone call from Harry Foster Friday around four. I’d been expecting it. He said they had dug Barstow up and done the autopsy but wouldn’t make any announcement. It wasn’t his story any more; others had got wind of it and were hanging around the coroner’s office.

A little after six the second phone call came. This time it was Anderson. I grinned when I heard his voice and glanced at my wrist; I could see him fuming around waiting for six o’clock. He said he wanted to talk to Wolfe.