The Father Hunt

I said, "Yes, please," poured a shot of bourbon, sat at my breakfast table, took a swallow, and scowled. Fritz, seeing the scowl, didn't talk.

As I lifted lie glass for the third swallow the door swung open and Wolfe was there. He said to Fritz, "I'll have coffee here," and went and mounted the stool at the near side of the center table. Once in the past he had bought a chair big enough for the back of his lap and had it put in the kitchen, but the next day it wasn't there. Fritz had taken it to the basement. As far as I know it has never been mentioned by either of them-not then, and not since.

Another thing that had never been mentioned but was mutually understood was that the rule about talk at meals didn't apply when I was eating alone in the kitchen

or office, because it was a snack, not a meal. So when my snack was on my plate and I had chewed and swallowed a man-size morsel of duck Mondor and a forkful of carrots, I told Wolfe, "I appreciate this. You knew I had something on my chest I wanted to unload and you came to have coffee perched on that roost instead of in your chair. I appreciate it."

He made a face. "You're drinking whisky with food." "It should be hemlock. Who drank hemlock?" "You're posing. We have discussed that at length more than once. Your chest?"

I was using the knife on the duck-a knife with a wooden handle and a blade dull to the eye but sharp enough to filet a fish. There is plenty of stainless steel up in the plant rooms-the bench frames-but it's taboo in the kitchen or dining room. "This knife would be fine for hara-kiri," I said, "but you'll have to know how it stands so you can carry on. I'll tell you in installments between bites. And swigs of bourbon."

I did so, word for word, a couple of sentences at a time. By the time I got to Jarrett's exit line the carrots were gone and there wasn't much left of my share of the duck but bones, and most of the sauce had been mopped up with pieces of rolls. Wolfe had finished his first cup of coffee and poured the second.

I swallowed the last bite of duck and said, "I don't like flie idea of hara-kiri on a full stomach, and anyway I've got about a dime's worth of comments. Do you want to go first?"