In the Best Families

I'll have a bite of lunch and then drive up there, unaccompanied, or I'll make it as hard as I possibly can for this man you sent to get me outside the city limits-whichever you prefer. Here he conies now.

“Here who comes?

“Your man. Coming in the door. If you decide you want to see me to-day, tell him not to trail along behind me. It makes me self-conscious.

A silence. Then, “You were told not to leave the county.

“I was not. By no one.

“Neither you nor Wolfe was at home at eleven o'clock-or if you were you wouldn't see my man.

“I was in the Easter parade.

Another silence, longer. “What time will you be here? At Birch vale.

“I can make it by two o'clock.

“My man is there?

“Yes.

“Let me talk to him.

That was satisfactory. I liked that all right, except for one thing. After the

Westchester dick was finished on the phone and it was settled that I would roll my own, and the sergeant had generously said that the Police Department would contribute the phone call, I asked the dick if he understood that I didn't care to be tailed, and he replied that I needn't worry because he was going back to

Thirty-fifth Street to see Nero Wolfe. I didn't care much for that, but said nothing because I hadn't yet decided exactly what to say. So when I found a place on Lexington Avenue for a sandwich and a malted, I went first to a phone booth, called the house, and told Fritz to leave the chain bolt on, tell callers that Wolfe was out of the city and no more, and admit no one.

Being on the move did help. Having decided, while touring the park and avenues, what my immediate trouble was, I now, on my way to Birchvale, got the whole thing into focus. Considering the entire picture, including the detail of putting the house up for sale and the lack of even one little hint for me, let alone a blueprint, it was by no means a bet that Wolfe had merely dived into a foxhole. Look how free Marko had been with his poor-young-friending. It was not inconceivable that Wolfe had decided to chuck it for good. A hundred times and more, when things or people-frequently me-didn't suit him, he had told me about the house he owned in Egypt and how pleasant it would be to live there. I had always brushed it off. I now realised that a man who is eccentric enough to threaten to go and live in Egypt is eccentric enough to do it, especially when it gets to the point where he opens a package of sausage and has to run for his life.