In the Best Families

“No doubt. Besides, I haven't forgotten your brilliant exposure of the murderer of Louis Rony. It happened then that your interest ran with mine. But it doesn't now, with Mrs Barry Rackham, and that won't do. Because of my regard for you, I don't want you to lose a fee. Return her money and withdraw, and two months from to-day I shall send you ten thousand dollars in cash. Twice previously you have disregarded similar requests from me, and circumstances saved you. I advise strongly against a repetition. You will have to understand-

Wolfe took the phone from his ear and placed it on the cradle. Since the effect of that would be lost if my line stayed open, I did likewise, practically simultaneously.

“By God, we're off again, I began. “Of all the rotten-

“Shut up, Wolfe growled.

I obeyed. He rested his elbows on his chair arms, interlaced his fingers in front of where he was roundest, and gazed at a corner of his desk blotter. I did not, as a matter of fact, have anything to say except that it was a lousy break, and that didn't need saying. Wolfe had once ordered me to forget that I had ever heard the name Arnold Zeck, but whether I called him Zeck or Whosis or X, he was still the man who, some ten months ago, had arranged for two guys with an SM and a tommy-gun to open up on Wolfe's plant rooms from a roof across the street, thereby ruining ten thousand dollars' worth of glass and equipment and turning eight thousand valuable orchid plants into a good start on a compost heap. That had been intended just for a warning.

Now he was telling us to lay off Barry Rackham. That probably meant that without turning a finger we had found the answer to Mrs Rackham's question-where was her husband getting his pocket-money? He had got inside the circle of Arnold Zeck's operations, about which Wolfe had once remarked that all of them were illegal and some of them were morally repulsive. And Zeck didn't want any snooping around one of his men. That was almost certainly the sketch, but whether it was or not, the fact remained that we had run smack into Zeck again, which was fully as bad as having a gob of Darst sausage turn into a cylinder of tear gas.