In the Best Families

“Anything men risk money for. Or pay it for. I have heard that he is seen around sometimes with Brownie Costigan. How curious are you? Is it worth a steak? Or is it worth a phone number or address where I can reach Nero Wolfe?

By that time I had abandoned the idea of selling anyone, even Lon Cohen, the idea that I ever told the truth, so I thanked him and hung up.

A couple of cheques in the morning mail, one from a man who was paying in instalments for having a blackmailer removed from his throat, were no problem, since there was a rubber stamp for endorsing them, but in order to pay three bills that came in I had to make a trip to Fifty-fourth Street to see if the formalities about Marko's power of attorney had been attended to. They had, by

Parker, and I was glad to see that Marko signed the cheques on my say-so, without looking at the bills. If he had started auditing on me I swear to God I would have moved out and got a hotel room.

There were other chores, such as phoning Hewitt's place on Long Island to ask if the plants and Theodore had arrived safely, making arrangements with a phone-answering service, handling a report from Fred Durkin on a poison-letter job that was the main item of unfinished business and so on, but I managed to have them all under control when two o'clock came and brought Calvin Leeds.

When I went to let him in and took him to the office, there was a problem.

Should I sit at my desk or at Wolfe's? On the one hand, I was not Wolfe and had no intention of trying to be. On the other hand, when a pinch-hitter is called on he stands at the plate to bat, not off to one side. Also it would be interesting to see, from Wolfe's position, what the light was like on the face of a man sitting in the red leather chair. So again, this time intentionally, I sat behind Wolfe's desk.

“I came here to get an explanation, Leeds said, “and I'm going to get it.

He looked as if he could stand a dose of something-if not an explanation, then maybe castor oil. The hide of his face still looked tough and weathered, or rather as if it had been but someone had soaked it in something to make it stretch and get saggy. His eyes looked determined, but not clear and alert as before. No one would have guessed that he had just inherited half a million bucks, and not from a dearly beloved wife or sister but merely a cousin.