In the Best Families

Within ten minutes after the package had been opened that day, Wolfe had phoned both Mummiani and the Fleet Messenger Service and got a blank as expected; but on the outside chance that I might at least get a bone for my curiosity to gnaw on I made a trip to Fulton Street and one uptown. At Mummiani's no one knew anything. Since Wolfe had been getting Darst's sausage from them for years, and in that time their personnel had come and gone, any number of outsiders could know about it. At the Fleet Messenger Service they were willing to help but couldn't. They remembered the package because Wolfe had phoned about it, but all

I learned was that it had been left there by a youth who might have been playing hookey from the eighth grade, and I didn't even bother to listen to the description, such as it was.

Fed up with an empty house and the phone ringing and being called a liar, I put in a call myself from a drug-store booth, and made personal arrangements for dinner and a show.

Wednesday morning a visitor came that I let in. I had formed the habit, since returning from jail, of hearing the doorbell ring, going to the hall, observing through the one-way glass panel who it was out on the stoop, making a face, and returning to the office. If the bell kept ringing long enough to be a nuisance I flipped the switch that turned it off. This time, around eleven Wednesday morning, instead of making a face I went and opened the door and said, “Well, hallo! Coming in?

A chunky specimen about my height, with wrinkled pink skin and grey hair and sharp grey-blue eyes, grunted a greeting and stepped over the sill. I said it was cold for April, and he agreed. As I hung his topcoat on the rack I told myself that I must be more restrained. The fact that I was alone in the house was no reason to give Inspector Cramer of Manhattan Homicide the impression that

I was glad to see him. Wolfe or no Wolfe, I could keep up appearances.

I let him lead the way to the office. This time I sat at my own desk. I was tempted to take Wolfe's chair again just to see how he would react, but it would have put me at a disadvantage, I was so used to dealing with him, in the red leather chair, from my own angle.

He eyed me. “So you're holding the fort, he growled.

“Not exactly, I objected. Tm only the caretaker. Or maybe I'm going down with the ship. Not that those who have left are rats.

“Where's Wolfe?

“I don't know. Next, you call me a liar. Then I say I have been, but not now.

Then you-