In the Best Families

August. I had drawn no pay from Wolfe's chequebook since May sixth, I had not gone near my personal safe deposit box, and my personal bank balance had not only, not sunk, it had lifted. I decided I had a vacation coming. The most I had ever been able to talk Wolfe out of was two weeks, and I thought I should double that at least. A friend of mine, whose name has appeared in print in connection with one of Wolfe's cases, had the idea that we should take a look at Norway, and her point of view seemed sound.

Slow but sure, I was working myself around to an attitude towards life without

Nero Wolfe on a permanent basis. One thing that kept it slow was the fact that early in July Marko Vukcic had asked me to bring him another cheque for five grand drawn to cash. Since if you wanted to eat in his restaurant you had to reserve a table a day in advance, and then pay six bucks for one helping of guinea-hen, I knew he wasn't using it himself, so who was? Another thing, the house hadn't been sold, and, doing a little snooping on my own account, I had learned that the asking price was a hundred and twenty thousand, which was plain silly. On the other hand, if Marko was getting money to Wolfe, that didn't prove that I was ever going to see him again, and there was no hurry about selling the house until the bank balance began to sag; and also there was Wolfe's safe deposit box. Visiting his safe deposit box was one item on the select list of purposes for which Wolfe had been willing to leave his house.

I did not really want to leave New York, especially to go as far as Norway. I had a feeling that I would about be passing Sandy Hook when word would come somehow, wire or phone or letter or messenger, to Thirty-fifth Street or 1019, in a code that I would understand-if I was there to get it. And if it did come I wanted to be there, or I might be left out of the biggest charade Wolfe had ever staged. But it hadn't been days or weeks, it had been months, and my friend was pretty good at several things, including riding me about hanging on forever to the short end of the stick, so we had reservations on a ship that sailed August twenty-sixth.