In the Best Families

“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 to-day, Theodore said dismally.

I snorted. “Go ahead and pot 'em. He was no help anyhow. 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 Mr Goodwin and perhaps two others. Okay. There was no argument about the mortal encounter or about the move. But I was the Mr Goodwin referred to, and here I was staring at it-Don't look for me. Where did that leave me? Certainly the two others he had had in mind were Saul Panzer and Marko Vukcic, and I didn't even dare to phone Saul and ask a couple of discreet questions; and besides, if he had let Saul in and left me out, to hell with him. And what was I supposed to say to people-for instance, people like the District Attorney of Westchester County?