The Rubber Band

Walsh had gone through several colors before fading out to his present dim obscurity. He had made three good stakes in Nevada and California and had lost all of them. He had tried his hand as a building contractor in Colorado early in the century, made a pile, and dropped it when a sixty-foot dam had gone down the canyon three days after he had finished it. He had come back east and made a pass at this and that, but apparently had used up all his luck. At present he was night watchman on a constructing job up at 54th and Madison, and he was inclined to be sore on account of the three dollars he was losing by paying a substitute in order to keep this appointment with Clara Fox. She had found him a year ago through an ad in the paper.

Wolfe was the gracious host. He saw that Mike Walsh got two rye highballs and the women a bottle of claret, and like a gentleman he gave Walsh two extra slices of the beef, smothered with sauce, which he would have sold his soul for. But he wouldn't let Walsh light his pipe when the coffee came. He said he had asthma, which was a lie. Pipe smoke didn't bother him much, either. He was just sore at Walsh because he had had to give up the beef, and he took it out on him that way.

We hadn't any more than got back to the office, a little after nine o'clock, and settled into our chairs-the whole company present this time- when the doorbell rang. I went out to the front door and whirled the lock and slid the bolt, and opened it. Fred Durkin stepped in. He looked worried, and I snapped at him, "Didn't you get it?"

"Sure I got it."

"What's the matter?"

"Well, it was funny. Is Wolfe here? Maybe he'd like to hear it too."

I glared at him, fixed the door, and led him to the office. He went across and stood in front of Wolfe's desk.

"I got the car, Mr. Wolfe. It's in the garage. But Archie didn't say anything about bringing a dick along with it, so I pushed him off. He grabbed a taxi and followed me. When I left the car in the garage just now and walked here, he walked too. He's out on the sidewalk across the street."

"Indeed." Wolfe's voice was thin; he disliked after-dinner irritations. "Suppose you introduce us to the dick first. Where did you meet him?"